MTG

2089 readers

14 users here now

Magic: the Gathering discussion

General discussion, questions, and media related to Magic: the Gathering that doesn't fit within a more specific community. Our equivalent of /r/magicTCG!

Type [[Card name]] in your posts and comments and CardBot will reply with a link to the card! More info here.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

[MTG Arena - Deck Help] I need help with my token deck (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This deck is a Blue/Green token/counter deck where the end-game is a Doubling Season/Extravagant Replication or Doubling Season with Homunculus Horde combo to produce exponentially more and more tokens/counters. Proft's along with Crawler are there to generate tokens as is Brisly, while Soul Cauldron is there to make the most of all those tokens. Along with Homunculus Horde or Elfsworn Giant, that's game. Problem is, lots of the cards in this deck are geared towards getting mana, which leaves not much room for creatures outside of Llanowar Elves or Lumbering Worldwagon. To counter this, lots of these low-cost cards are there to serve as defense while I gather mana, or counter what the opponent tries to play.

I feel like I'm trying to do too much, but this is what I've come up with with the cards I have unlocked. Can anyone suggest cards to add/remove from this deck to streamline mana production while not leaving myself vulnerable to early game cards?

- Cogwork Wrestler 
- Dive Down 
- Fleeting Distraction 
- Opt
- Sleep-Cursed Faerie 
- Ankle Biter 
- Bushwhack 
- Llanowar Elves 
- Malamet Battle Glyph 
- Sunshower Druid 
-
- Deduce 
- Don't Make a Sound 
- Drake Hatcher 
- Essence Scatter 
- Fog Bank 
- Mischievous Mystic 
- Proft's Eidetic Memory 
- Stalked Researcher 
- Basking Capybara 
- Bite Down 
- Bristly Bill, Spine Sower
- Druid of the Cowl 
- Dwynen's Elite 
- Explorer's Cache 
- Scavenging Ooze 
- Sita Varma, Masked Racer 
- Skyserpent Seeker 
- Agatha's Soul Cauldron 
- Campus Guide 
- Swiftfoot Boots 
-
- Unstoppable Plan 
- Worldwalker Helm 
- Refute 
- Blighted Burgeoning 
- Imperious Perfect 
- Lumbering Worldwagon 
- Return from the Wilds 
- They Went This Way 
- Wildwood Mentor 
- Scrawling Crawler 
-
- Homunculus Horde 
- Out of Air 
-
- Elfsworn Giant 
- Doubling Season 
-
- Extravagant Replication
-
-Various tap G or B lands plus 6 basic Forest and Islands

top 8 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Like thomasw, I'm wondering what format this is for. What are the quantities of each card? Without knowing more details, it will be hard to give useful advice. Counting the amount of cards you listed, I'm suspecting this is for a 60-card format but you're only using one of each card?

If this really is a 60-card deck, try the nine-card deck technique to focus your deck. Choose the nine nonland cards your deck needs, get four of each, and put in 24 lands to get a decent starting point for a 60-card deck.
What is Swiftfoot Boots for?
Some cards don't look relevant to your game plan:
- Cogwork Wrestler
- Unstoppable Plan
Sleep-Cursed Faerie gets worse with Doubling Season.
You don't have enough Elves for Imperious Perfect to be impactful.
Finally, are you a token deck or a +1/+1 counter deck? Half of the deck goes one way and the other half goes the other way. It would suck if you drew the wrong half because there's little that makes the two work together.

By the way, if you want a fun Brawl deck, Bristly Bill is a cheap commander that can work well with common/uncommon wildcards. Throw in land ramp, creatures that benefit well from +1/+1 counters, and punch cards like Hard-Hitting Question and Bite Down.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is for 60-card standard. Lots of things I had in my deck mostly to defend with while I built my forces. That's where Cogwork and Unstoppable come in, as well as Sleep-cursed fairy (before I would use Doubling Season). Swift boots is too protect whatever I need to from spells, again, to cover my weaknesses. This deck was meant to split between both tokens and +1/+1 counters, but maybe I should focus on one instead of the other.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This "just in case" attitude is sacrificing your ability to build to your game plan. Just in case what? Ideally, every card in your deck should be "live" in as many situations as possible. Sleep-Cursed Faerie will not do much to defend you early on and is actually bad once you're set up with Doubling Season. Fog Bank will block a creature, but it'll never win you the game.

Every card that's not contributing to what you want to achieve (building counters fast or making lots of tokens) is wasting your draw step. Imagine if you started with Campus Guide, a creature that lets you have a land next turn. Wouldn't you have been happier with a second Llanowar Elves, which deploys sooner and accelerates mana production? Instead of drawing Unstoppable Plan, you could have drawn one of your four copies of Proft's Eidetic Memory.

My examples here are overly narrow, but my point is that putting a card in your deck has an opportunity cost: you lose the chance to put a different, more synergistic card in. You want to concentrate the amount of cards in your deck that make you say, "yes, this is just what I wanted", which is certainly Doubling Season and cards that make tokens or counters. The more of those you have, the fewer draw steps it takes you to find them all. You'll get to winning sooner.

The first steps to achieve this is to cut down to 60 cards and make sure your most important cards are 4-of each.

Swift boots is too protect whatever I need to from spells, again, to cover my weaknesses.

Swiftfoot Boots protects only one creature. If you're a doubling token deck, you'll have way more than one creature to protect. Negate would probably do a better job in that case.

Having irrelevant cards is also one of your deck's weaknesses. Your opponents will be happy to see you spend your turn doing nothing because the card you drew doesn't do anything with Doubling Season.

This deck was meant to split between both tokens and +1/+1 counters, but maybe I should focus on one instead of the other.

I highly recommend it. The only card I know of in standard that can really fuse the two strategies is Insidious Roots, which would require you to ditch blue for black.

Again, try the nine-card deck exercise. It'll get you to think about what role each card in your deck plays.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

@silverchase @SecretSauces I support a lot of these points! Many of the just-in-case cards belong in the sideboard. Focus on making your own deck do its thing as efficiently as possible, and then bring cards back in from the sideboard to counter the opponent's plan after you've play tested it and know how the deck plays against the metagame.
What gives you the the most explosive start? Play that. Unless you're a hard control deck, most of your cards should have 2x-4x copies

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

For which format is this deck? For 60 card formats, you should try to stick to 60 cards and have 4-ofs of your combo pieces

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Edit: stun counters don't work; see reply below.

~~Stun counters and~~ certain cards with the proliferate mechanic could offer ways to get some early defense that also synergize with Doubling Season. Consider these:

As others have pointed out, you should decide whether this deck is for Standard or Standard Brawl. If it's for Standard, go up to four copies of your best cards. If it's for Standard Brawl (which is where I personally would go, from this starting point), you'll need a commander -- Sita Varma will serve, but one of these might be even better:

Whichever one you choose, other legends can still be in your maindeck. Bristly Bill is a great choice here.

Good luck and have fun!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This deck is for standard, but it's currently over 60 because of all the minor junk trying to account for my downsides. I like the the cards you recommended, and Zimone so I'll go ahead and craft those.

I've tried Sita in this deck, but never could get around to using it's ability before it, or I, died

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Actually, I have to take back what I said -- stun counters don't work with your plan. Doubling Season only doubles counters on permanents you control.

But overall you're getting good advice in this thread. Try to have multiple copies of your best cards, and focus more (but not necessarily exclusively) on prosecuting your own plan, as opposed to accounting for everything your opponent might do.

Unfortunately, a lot of your best cards are rares -- which is often the case in Magic -- and it may be expensive to fill your deck with them. But at least use as many as you can, and find placeholders for the rest while you work on building up your collection.

Since you're building for Standard, one advantage of having four copies of your cards is that it'll improve consistency. Sometimes you might find yourself thinking, for example, "I should be able to win next turn as long as I draw a counterspell to answer any removal they might have." That'll be a lot more likely to happen if you know you have four, or eight, counterspells in the deck, versus the scattered few in the original list.