My league deck strategy

[Margalis]

I'm not going to post a full card list. (Unless someone can tell me an easy way)

Right now after 2 weeks in league I'm ranked 33, which is probably as high as I will ever get since I don't have time to play tiebreakers and given the usual mana-screw/flood losses. I have what I think is a pretty unique deck.

I opened my first pack and saw a lot of good cards, but not a lot of cards that worked well together. Cards spread pretty evenly over the 5 colors, thin on creatures overall. (My league decks tend to be creature light, usually 10-12)

Two things stood out to me: Not many bomb artifacts, and molder slug. So, I decided to make a basically artifact-less deck. The only artifacts I run are mana accelerators and card drawers, and a Loxodon Warhammer in games 2 or 3 sometimes.

I am playing green/black, the stars of my deck are Molder Slug, Viridian Shaman, Emissary of Despair and Greater Harvester. (Along with Predators Strike for trample goodness) And Pentad Prism, which provides some amazing acceleration.

My deck is not great, but it wins, because I can potentially get huge benefits from Molder Slug and my opponents anti-artifact cards are useless.

In game 1 I start with Black/Green with a splash of white for arrest and blinding beam. In game 2 I might side out white and side in red for shatter and unforge. In game three if they seem to have gotten the point that I'm not playing artifacts I might side in loxodon warhammer.

I've had a number of opponents concede rather early in the game (3rd or 4th turn slug) and a number of other opponents die with a fistful of cards that I assume are either artifacts that are going to get slugged away or anti-artifact cards that don't do anything.

Next week I will need some help to keep going, as my 2nd week pack didn't give me much help, and I am running some pretty sorry filler, but overall it's a good deck and a fun one to play, very different than the usual artifact-fest.

[Xilren's Twin]

Sounds somewhat similar to my previously posted League deck.  Molder slug was my MVP in weeks 1 and 2; by week 3 and 4 though, most people had enough removal to play around it or I had enough artifacts I wanted to play that made it self limiting.  To give you some idea what you might face, I had one opponent play a Nusince Engine to put a 0/1 art critter into play each turn and sac it to get around the slug.  had another with a modular artifact and Skeleton Shard so each turn he would sac the modular, put it's counters on another art critter, then return it to his hand and recast it; that one got ugly quick.

If you have some decent artifact removal in red, i would play it anyway since some players will simply try to get enough artifacts on the board to sacrifice low value ones like art lands or myr, to keep the good ones.  A timely shatter at the end of your turn can force them into sacrificing something they wanted to keep.

(BTW, to post a card listing, save you league deck on your HD, then call it up in the regular deck editior and you can save it as a CSV file.  I only wish it gave you more than just card names as new players wont always know what each card does by name alone.)

My current league deck is a pile of suck; no real critter removal other than a single terror (which in art heavy environments doesn't always help) and not a single artifact removal card at all; only direct damage i've got is a Goblin Tim, a Grab the Reins, and a Surestrike Trident of all things, and almost zero combat tricks.  Hell I dont even have a counter spell.  My best synergy comes from playing Vulshok Gauntlets (+4/+2 equipment but you critter can't untap) with a variety of things that either don't tap to attack or get untapped in other ways (like Goblin War Machine and Battered Golem).  If my opponent gets something I can't deal with into play im toast so i've been trying to race them out.  Fer instance, if i can get my gauntlets on a 3/3 or 3/4 creature attack with them once, i could then sac it with the Grab the Reins to do 14 damage in a single turn.  I may hold off playing any more match games this week and hope my packs bring me more luck.  (You can save up all 20 of your league matches and play in week 4 if you so chose; i hadn't tried it b/c everyone should have much better card pool by that time so it would seem to be a tougher road).

Xilren

[Margalis]

I played a modular + skeleton shard deck, very annoying, guy got skeleton shard out very early in all three games. I just barely won, thanks to emissary of despair, a couple green +x/+x combat tricks and a loxodon warhammer I sided in for game 3. He had a duplicant and an icy manipulator also,  very difficult to deal with. Ended up winning with a Karstoderm that he chump blocked and I played +3/+3 + trample on him for the win.

I would agree that you see more removal in later rounds. However I try to protect my slug by playing some other scary lookng threats first. For example emissary (which is scary if they don't have flyers), Fangren Hunter, etc. I've won quite a few games by holding off on slug and forcing them to use up some removal first. Fill with Fright helps in that regard too.

Week 3 I'm not sure what I'm looking for, a couple more good red cards would make my red playable, that would probably be best.

[Anonymous]

Random update:

I got the darksteel booster, and it gave me a lot of duplicates. Another grimclaw bats, another unforge, another spire golem, another veldaken engineer, another karstoderm.

The second grimclaw bat is nice, and the second unforge is nice for my red sideboard. Another karstoderm is ok, sometimes he is great for me, sometimes lousy.

I didn't get anything that made me go "wow" and I figured I was in trouble this week, but I am currently 4-0.

I think it is because I got more tools to deal with popular deck builds. My red sideboard now has two unforges, which is great against spikeshot or skyhunter cub + some equipment. I also got a deconstruct, which is quite handy. (Nothing like playing deconstruct then using the 3 green to play Verdidian Shaman)

In general though, the main thing was I was able to get rid of some of the fluff from my deck. Garbage like Dross Prowler. Basically my deck is just more consistent now, with a strong anti-equipment sideboad. (Shatter + 2 unforge) At one point I was actually considering running necrogen mists, because I tend to accelerate my stuff out then play with an empty hand a lot of the time. I think I have a nice mana curve because I usually empty out my hand much faster than my opponent, and use some scry to keep the draws coming.

I'm currently ranked 17th (?) with one more game to play. I haven't broken top 64 before, hopefully I can do that (avoid a terrible last week) or break top 32. Top 16 looks tough since I don't have time to play enough tiebreaks.