Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy (
More info?)
Indy Tech wrote:
> howdy all,
>
> I'm asking for opinion here: What current preconstruct decks are the
> strongest & fastest in the current tournament environment?
>
I assume you are talking T2 (Standard) only; it certainly wouldn't make
sense to take an Odyssey precon (for example) into an Extended-format
tournament.
First off, I'd guess that all 12 Onslaught-block precons are weak,
simply because they were designed for an environment where artifacts
were very unusual. So, unless they have Naturalize (which appeared in
ONS), they're starting one step back of the start line.
So that leaves us with the 4 MIR and 4 DKS decks. I've not played them,
but I did buy the blue one to get two Skullclamps.
The "Bait and Bludgeon" deck (U/B MIR) has a few things going for it:
Broodstar, Lodestone Myr, lots of Affinity-powered card drawing and
cheap, cheap creatures. If you were planning to play non-Ravager
Affinity, this would be a good starting point. But it's probably not
very competitive out of the box.
"Wicked Big" (mono-green) is just awful, unless you get matched against
a very slow artifact based deck.
"Little Bashers" (mono-white) is just awful. I don't think it *has* a
favored matchup...
"Sacrificial Bam" (R/B) is a sort of combo deck. If you draw a lot of
mana and get out a Disciple of the Vault and a way to sacrifice all your
artifacts at once, you might be able to smack your opponent for
double-digits all at once. Might be.
On the DKS side, as I noted before "Transference" (mono-blue with
Arcbound critters and Skullclamps) is about the easiest way to get
Skullclamps. It's a fun little deck for casual play, but it won't go
farther than that.
"Mind Swarm" (mono-black) is another metagame deck. An unblocked
Emissary of Despair against a handless Affinity deck is rude. Against
anyone else, the Emissary is a slightly overcosted 2/1 flyer (compare
Dusk Imp).
The other two, "Swarm and Slam" (G/W) and "Master Blaster" (mono-red)
are just more junk. They could take on a decent sealed-deck pile, but
not any kind of tournament deck.
If you are really determined to turn some of these into tournament
competitors (and we're talking local Friday Night Magic events, not the
big-time), you'd be best off with one of the Affinity builds plus as
many Ravagers as you can afford. For that matter, given that precons
cost about the same as a Ravager now (maybe a little less), you could
drop $60 on a foursome of Ravagers, scavenge everything else you need
from someone's spare commons box, and have a better deck.
--
(Posted from an account used as a SPAM dump. If you really want to get
in touch with me, dump the 'jboes' and substitute 'mur'.)
________
Jeffery Boes <>< jboes@qtm.net
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