What got me playing.
So everyone, welcome to my first post about Magic the Gathering (MTG for short). MTG is my other hobby, next to PC gaming. I haven’t been playing for very long: about 5 or 6 months now, so I’m not too knowleagable when it comes to deck building. Nevertheless, I’m here to tell you about the deck I’m making at the moment. Before we start though, here’s a short intro on what got me interested in MTG.
I got interested in playing MTG after I saw my favourite YouTuber (Boogie2988) talking about it, and about how it helped him meet many new people and was just a generally fun game to play. I did some research, and came to the conclusion that I should buy the digital game: Duals of The Planeswalker 2013 (now Magic 2014). I thoroughly enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone who’s interested or just doesn’t want to spend the money on the real-life stuff.
I showed it to some friends and convinced them to try it out too. We each bought a Deck Builders Toolkit (here’s the newest one: Magic 2014 Deck Builder’s Toolkit) and started playing! Unfortunately, there isn’t a store that sells MTG products around here, so it’s just us that play.
Anyway, let’s get on to what I wanted to talk about: the Spirit deck I’m making.
The Spirit deck.
The colours I chose for the deck are white and blue, purely because that’s where most of my Spirits are. What also made me choose them is that white has plenty of life regeneration spells, and blue has spells to detain other creatures.
Let’s start with the creature spells.
The creatures had to be spirits and have flying. The only exceptions are Cathedral Sanctifier and Angel of Flight Alabaster.
You can probably guess why: Cathedral Sanctifier is a handy 1-drop that can give you a quick 3-life boost and Angel of Flight Alabaster can give me back some of the creatures I lose, which is invaluable if something I need has already been put in my graveyard.
The creatures (besides Cathedral Sanctifier) that I’ve put in 4 times are Drogskol Captain and Voiceless Spirit. Drogskol Captain gives my creatures a handy +1/+1 boost and Voiceless Spirit makes prime use of this seen as it’s equipped with first strike and can mop up some early game creatures.
Together with Drogskol Captain, Battleground Geist and its white counterpart Gallows Warden both pump up my other Spirits. Unfortunately they come at a higher price, so probably wont be of any use untill a bit further along in the game.
I added 2 Dungeon Geists and 3 Niblis of the Urn to make sure that the enemies’ creatures won’t pose a threat. Together with some of the enchantments and sorceries I put in, enemy creatures won’t be able to get near me!
Now for the other spells.
Instants:
I have 2 different instants, and both are for life gain: 3x Angel’s Mercy and 2x Rest for the Weary. Angel’s Mercy is just straight-up life gain, 7 extra life for 4 mana. For half the price, Rest for the Weary gives me 4 extra life, but if I played a land on the same turn it gives me double that! I think it’ll be of great use, mainly in the first few turns when you’re most likely to be playing land.
Enchantments:
The enchantments are a bit more varied than the instants: a single Field of Souls for added Spirits: together with any buffing Spirits like Drogskol Captain they make for a formidable army that you can get for free.
The rest of the enchantments are all for creature detainment: 4x Pacifism to stop creatures for a very cheap price. The downside to this is that abilities can still be activated, so if there are any abilities I don’t want my opponent to use I’ll just play Oblivion Ring or Paralyzing Grasp. Oblivion Ring exiles any creature that I dont want on the field and Paralyzing Grasp just makes sure they don’t untap during my opponents untap step. They are both a little bit more expensive though, so there aren’t as many of them as there are Pacifisms : 2 Oblivion Rings and 2 Paralyzing Grasps.
Sorceries:
Like with the instants, I only have 2 different sorceries: Hands of Binding and Search Warrant. Hands of Binding does nearly the same as Paralyzing Grasp, but the effect only lasts untill my next turn. What makes it so good, though, is that I can cipher it onto one of my creatures, and every time I attack someone directly with that creature I can choose another creature to apply that effect to. Seen as most of my creatures have flying, I’ll hopefully be able to do this often!
Search Warrant has 2 great bonusses: I get to look into my opponents hand, and then I get 1 extra life for every card I get to look at! This is an amazing card early game, as then your opponent has the most cards in his hand and you can guess his early strategy. On top of all that, it only costs 2 mana.
Land:
There isn’t really much to say about the land cards: 4x Azorius Guildgate so I can get 2 types of mana, a Haunted Fengraf so I can return a creature from my graveyard if I need to and a Sejiri Steppe for a bit of protection. Other than that, all I have are Islands and Plains.
Here’s the full decklist:
And the page that the deck is on can be found here.
Leave me a reply to tell me what you think of the deck, tell me what I should change or just to say ”hi”.
And as always, thanks for reading.
Happy gaming everyone,
Teague
Gaming/ MTG Centre 