MaxDymond/MTG Deck Ideas

This page is where I'm going to write down deck ideas/card synergies for MagicTheGathering. They are likely to be bad, and not entirely fleshed out.

Transcendence

Transcendence + phasing might be good. You can bounce your life total back and forth between 0 and 20 and take advantage of "Pay x life" cards.
Alternately, maybe something like Platinum Angel could work - just make sure that there's a way of bouncing the Transcendence if your Angel dies.

: I got good use out of MTG: Cavern Harpy and MTG: Mischievous Poltergeist for the infinite combo; similar cards like MTG: Carrion Howler, MTG: Martyrs' Tomb or MTG: Kuro, Pitlord would work as well. It's fun to destroy MTG: Transcendence with a million "Gain 2 life" triggers on the stack. --AC

Ant Queen

Having failed to acquire some eBay MTG: Protean Hydra, I instead randomly bought some MTG: Ant Queen. Let's analyse the properties and try and break it.

Creature - Insect. Not many cards care about Insects, except when they're putting them into play. The main useful card may only be MTG: Swarmyard (regenerate the Queen and her drones).

5/5. Naya has many things which like 5 power creatures. MTG: Drumhunter looks plausible, meaning that you only need a spare G to activate the Queen.

Token creation. Yay, tokens! Obviously MTG: Doubling Season is a given (which I think gives a combo with MTG: Earthcraft for infinite creatures, and pair with the normal "Gain 1 life when a creature ETB" cards for infinite life.).

Could also hack the Queen with MTG: Artificial Evolution or MTG: Conspiracy to produce other creatures as well; say, Saproling (cause everyone loves Insect Saprolings).

I'm not entirely sure how brilliant Ant Queen is, but I hope I can find something else to break it.

Random Ideas

MTG: Inkfathom Witch and MTG: Suicidal Charge looks quite nice. Force your opponents creatures to attack (and get -1/-1 in the process), decline to block, then pay 2UB to kill them all as a state-based effect. Fun!

MTG: Nether Traitor (CMC2), MTG: Genesis Chamber (CMC2) and MTG: Phyrexian Altar (CMC3) form an infinite mana combo. MTG: Sword of the Meek (CMC2) and MTG: Thopter Foundry (CMC2) also form a combo of sorts (1: Put a 1/1 blue flying Thopter artifact creature into play, and gain 1 life). They're both quite cheap, and in UB. Maybe add a MTG: Deathgreeter into the mix? MTG: Time Sieve will also work quite nicely for infinite turns (the original combo was SotM + Thopter Foundry + 5 mana + Time Sieve).

: If you're going for cheese involving repeatedly saccing artifacts, you probably want to consider MTG: Disciple of the Vault :) --AC

: Sounds good, DotV? = infinite life loss (with an infinite combo)... In addition I realised that the cards above do infinite life as well! (add Phyrexian Altar to SotM and TF, cook for an arbitrarily large amount of time, and serve) However this edit is to keep track of other nice cards. MTG: Arcum Dagsson toolboxes any of the expendable artifact creatures into the remainder combo pieces. MTG: Grinding Station could lead to large amounts of milling, which is always nice. MTG: Krark-Clan Ironworks is a more expensive but more lucrative creature->mana converter. MTG: Scourglass may be a nice Wrath, just in case (but is not in UB). However, I am worrying about the large numbers of non-creatures.. maybe these fears are unfounded

: Have just had it pointed out to me that if the combo cards are CMC<=3, that Cascade will work quite nicely. I am inclined to agree! I think maybe splashing into White might be a plan, to get access to MTG: Ardent Plea. MTG: Kathari Remnant might also be nice. So long as non-combo pieces are CMC>3 I think there's possible utility in Cascade. Hey, look at Swans :)

Fun Rules interactions

The layering system for determining P/T says that P/T switchers are applied last. Therefore, a series of MTG: Cumber Stone (or similar) and MTG: Mannichi, The Fevered Dream could be quite amusing! It's a pity that it's red/blue - pairing with Treefolk would be lovely.

: Hee. Or do it all at once with MTG: Meishin, the Mind Cage. Scary! I should put one of them in my Mannichi deck, except it's currently red-white... --AC