Mono-Black Standard

   And Now, the moment you've all been waiting for. Or maybe you haven't been waiting for it, but you're exited it's here anyways. Either way, without further ado, here is our Mono-Black new Standard build. We have playtested this build quite a bit and made a few changes along the way, and we will dictate how we arrived at this final build and why we did what we did.

The List:

Creature: (19)

4x Desecration Demon

2x Erebos, God of the Dead

3x Gray Merchant of Asphodel

4x Lifebane Zombie

4x Nightveil Specter

2x Returned Phalanx


Enchantment: (2)

2x Whip of Erebos


Instant: (8)

3x Doom Blade

2x Hero's Downfall

3x Pharika's Cure


Sorcery: (7)

2x Corrupt

2x Read the Bones

3x Thoughtseize


Planeswalker: (1)

1x Liliana of the Dark Realms


Land: (23)

23x Swamp


   So there you have it. And I know the first thing you are asking. And we've answered it 90 times. Why are there only 3 Thoughtseize
? It's the best 1 drop in Standard right now. Well, the answer is simple. We saw it more than we needed it. There are only so many times you want to see that card in a game without it being not worth it. One time, opening hand. And time 2, when your opponent re-fills his hand. Which again is also why we decided to throw a couple of Read the Bones
in there. Hopefully at that point in the game we have held onto a Read the Bones
for just such a time as this. And we also hope that it nets us that Thoughtseize
we so want to see at that point. Even so, not overly critical with the removal we run as well.
   So we decided to go with the Devotion aspect of this rather than the Heroic effect of Agent of the Fates
, which is an awesome card, we agree. And you are more than welcome to use it if you so desire in your own build. But we found that it didn't really do much in our build, and just ended up taking up space that could have been so much better utilized by something else. In our first version of this, we tried to run 4 of an Insatiable Harpy
, and found that Nightveil Specter
does the same thing, except with less casting cost, and more Devotion to help us out.
   Along the way someone suggested we utilize Liliana of the Dark Realms
, and we looked at her. She fits, if for nothing else just icing on the cake. But we don't need her taking up any more space than she needs to, as you never want too much icing and not enough cake. Speaking of having your cake and eating it too, we thought that the Whip of Erebos
fit just that description. For games that go longer than we like, it nets us the life to stick around and keep producing threats, plus it turns all those guys in the graveyard into very useful tools when we have lots of mana or dead draws late game.
   The Desecration Demon
, well, we think it's just about the best 4-drop out there right now. Every combat phase we are part of they are going to want to beat this guy down. And eventually they are going to run out of guys to sack . . . and then. Oh yeah, he's been stabbing and eating lots of guys. We want two of him out very quickly.
   Erebos, God of the Dead
, we love him. He is excellent. No LG for our opponent, and we get a chance to draw some cards. Never bad, and the indestructible just makes him SO good.
   And while we agree that Lifebane Zombie
may be only SUPER good against the G/W decks, he's still good any time, and that Intimidate helps out too.
   And the last guy that needs introduction, the Gray Merchant
, who can do lots of damage, and is friendly to our LG strategy as well. He can be a game changer with things like Nightveil Specter on the field. So many uses both early game and late, and with the whip, just fantastic.

    So let us know what you think, whether you'll use it, or what you'd change. As always, thanks for reading, and we look forward to seeing you soon. Don't forget to check out our friends at MTG Madness and take advantage of their October deals. 20% off can never be a bad thing.

Ames PTQ Experience

   So we here at MTG The Journey played the Ames, IA P.T.Q. Sealed event, hosted by Mayhem Comics. We hoped to pull some good stuff and have a great time, and we sure did. We posted some updates as to how we did throughout the day, and took some pictures of our decks we put together, and we now have them here for your enjoyment.

   Before we go into the decks though, we just want to say that this was our first PTQ Event ever, and we were a bit overwhelmed by the sheer size of the event. There were 238 people who showed up, as opposed to last year's 183 people who showed. Also we were not ready for registering our cards, and then passing them away from us and getting a set that someone else had registered, but we dealt with it. We both decided to drop in round 4, as we were not expecting 9 rounds, and had afternoon activities already planned. We both ended up 2-2 though, and the prize payout for the day was X-2, and we didn't figure that we were going to go 5 more rounds with no losses, so rather than keep playing, as it was already 3:30pm, we just decided to drop and run.

    First up, we will go through David's Deck and how it performed.

First Round:
 Came out 1-2 after mana-flooding game 1, winning game 2 handily and mana screwing game 3. He is playing a R/W, Heroic based deck. He played against a U/G/W beatdown deck.

Second Round:
   So the deck did better this round, he went 2-0 against a U/B who drew bad hands. Both games were over within 6 turns, so he came over to watch my games at that point.

   It went to a 45 minute lunch break at this time, then we came back and started into the next round.

Third Round:
   David won 2-1 against a U/R deck that utilized Scry a lot. The game he lost to he drew a 1-mana hand and kept it, not very smart.

Fourth Round:
   Not so good this round, David went 0-2 due to bad hands and mana screw after mulligans down to 5. No dice.

Here are some pics of David's build, and what he ran with: 

The Whole Deck

The Unused White Cards

The Unused Red Cards

The White Creatures

The White Support Spells

The Red Creatures

The Red Support Spells

The Multi-Colored Spells

 

     Not bad pulls, he also could have gone a couple of different directions with the other cards he pulled, and if you feel like checking it out, you can look at them on our Photobucket account under David's PTQ Deck.

    On to how Chuck did now!

Round 1:
   I played a R/G/W beat-down with heavy creature and burn emphasis. I went 2-0 first round after my opponent, who was playing U/W couldn't respond to my Xenagos.

Round 2:
   I went 1-2 against a guy who pretty much was playing the same deck as I was with more flying, and more emphasis on White. He won game 1 handily and game 3 was close, but he came away with it because of the flyer with a finishing life total of 6. Game 2 was lengthier due to Xenagos saving the day once again.

Round 3:
   Well I lost to a R/B/G beat down deck that just had too many answers. 1-2 on that one. Never saw Xenagos in any of the games and mana screwed hard both of the last games.

Round 4:
   So I went 2-1 this round against a B/U combat trick deck with a lot of evasion, and the last round he had to mull down to 5 and keep there. Just steamrolled over it. It was a hard choice after this to drop. But the chances of going 5-0 after that point just didn't seem likely.

Here are some pictures of Chuck's deck!

The whole deck

The Green Spells

The Red Spells

The White Spells

The Multi-Colored Spells

The Green Sideboard

The Red Sideboard

The White Sideboard

   If you want to look at the rest of the Sealed pools, once again, both of them are available at our MTG The Journey Photobucket page. Feel free to check those out!

   As always, thanks for reading! Look forward to our next post, featuring our Mono-Black Build.

Looking forward to playing Junk Reanimator

   So we are waiting for our card orders to come in from MTG Madness and from various trades on Tappedout to complete our Theros Junk Re-Animator deck. We can't wait to try it out this weekend, as well as a PTQ Sealed event here in Ames, IA.
   We're not sure whether or not the FNM events this weekend will be Standard or Draft yet, but most of our LGS run Draft or Sealed events first weekend of the month. So we might be able to buy some extra time to get our Mono-Black deck together and ready to run a few trial games by then as well. We are eager to see how they perform in our local meta and in other meta's as we travel to different locations to get an overall feel of what we need to tweak and mainboard.
   Look forward to some reviews of casual playtesting of Junk Re-Animator, as well as our Mono-Black decklist this week upcoming as well! We are still working on brewing an All-American-Control deck, it's just to get through with all the card sorting we've been doing lately.
   We are going through our binders and card boxes, and clearing out anything older than RTR block, and throwing together our collectors' binders of M13 and Innistrad for later use with EDH and Modern. This is eating up quite a bit more time than we imagined, and we have a ton to trade in at coolstuffinc towards some store credit. We sure do love that extra 20% store credit on turn-ins!
   As always thanks for reading, and don't forget to check out our review of MTG Madness that we did just recently, go check out their card store and take advantage of the 20% off they are offering for the month of October! You can find the links through the banners here on the blog as well!
   Also, make sure you look at our Theros Standard Budget Brew Contest we are hosting. With top deck taking prizes home in January!!

Theros Standard Budget Brew Challenge

   We here at MTG The Journey had an idea, and want to extend a challenge to you the readers. If you can get your home-brewed Standard deck to do 3-1 or better for 3 weeks straight, we want to feature your deck on here for others to see and experiment with. The rules will be as follows:

#1 - The total deck price cannot exceed more than $100 (we will give you two bonus Theros booster packs if it's less than $50!!) Also, use TCG player as the price base for your submission.

#2 - The deck HAS to be original, (your idea) and cannot mimic a net-deck that you found.

#3 - The deck HAS to feature cards from Theros.

#4 - The deck has to go 3-1 or better at Sanctioned events for 3 consecutive "*attended" weeks. (and we have to see proof of this, IE Screenshots of your Planeswalker Points showing your wins)

*attended weeks being 3 FNMs in a row that you attend, we understand if you can't make every FNM.

   If you manage to fulfill these rules, and send us your decklist in the form of an email (provided at the end of the post) we will feature your deck on the blog with you as the creator, and we will build and play the deck ourselves at an FNM event, and report how it did for everyone else to see vs. our current meta.

   The point is to get your decks out there that you spend so much time perfecting, so that other people in other meta's can use fresh and new ideas. And we want to see how people use these cards in this new set creatively. The contest will end Jan 1'st, 2014. And the top deck that was featured will win 3 booster packs of the next Theros Set, Born of the Gods, and (if we can get them made by then) a MTG The Journey T-shirt. To make the competition a little more heated.

    We look forward to seeing what people come up with, and wish you the best of luck in your brewing!!
As always, thanks for reading and stay tuned for future posted decks and contests!

    Email your suggestions to contests@mtgthejourney.com

Theros Box and Packs

   So today those of us at MTG The Journey picked up our box we pre-ordered. We didn't happen to be in the top 30 who ordered a box, so we didn't get the "buy a box" Sylvan Caryatid promo, which was rather disappointing. But we did manage to get a few good pulls, and quite a few Mythics in our box. Just to name a few:

Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver 
Erebos, God of the Dead 
Stormbreath Dragon 
Underworld Cerberus 
Ashen Rider Thoughtseize 
Sylvan Caryatid 
Whip of Erebos 
Swan Song 

and many more, we played a few pack wars in the beginning, but after 5-6 rounds, just opened packs up and got excited at some of the pulls we had. We took an hour or so to do some sorting and get into our Xen mode of working through our cards. We then called it a night and said we'd sort through the commons later. All in all we got very close to $190 of worth out of our $95 box, so it was very worth our investment.

   The best part of the whole night was the packs we bought from Wal-Mart, that weren't even included in our case. We each bought one pack, just for the pure sake of getting one the day they came out. And sure enough, he pulled a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, worth $7 on the $4 he spent! And I pulled a Purphoros, God of the Forge, worth $28 on the $4 I spent! So well worth the investment! Never underestimate those random packs!

   Over the next few days, we will be waiting for our pre-orders to come in from MTG Madness and Coolstuffinc, and get ready to work on some new brews. Look forward to the Mono-Black deck we have coming up, as well as our All-American-Control brew we are working as well.

     Thanks for reading, and we hope to hear some input from you soon!

Theros BUG Reanimator Deck

Okay MTG Brewers, my friends and I on Tappedout brewed up a little BUG re-animator (yes, I know I am stuck on the re-animator thing) deck tonight and I think it warrants a look see.

Now it does have a bit of a slow get up and go, but man does it have all the tools it needs to survive. It hits hard and keeps getting stronger.

Here's the decklist so you can check it out for yourself

Creatures:(21)

2x Desecration Demon

2x Giant Adephage

2x Kalonian Hydra

4x Lotleth Troll

2x Prime Speaker Zegana

3x Reaper of the Wilds

2x Shadowborn Demon

4x Sylvan Caryatid


Instant(s):(10)

3x Abrupt Decay

3x Dissolve

4x Rescue from the Underworld


Enchantment(s):(5)

2x Bident of Thassa

3x Whip of Erebos


Land:(24)

4x Breeding Pool

4x Swamp

2x Forest

4x Overgrown Tomb

3x Temple of Deceit

3x Temple of Mystery

4x Watery Grave


So that's the deck. I think it's got a ton of potential. Early game you have the concept of feeding the larger creature to the Troll until you get established, dropping the Reaper early game (turn 3-4) for defense and then following with either of the Demons. Once your board presence is established, you Whip or Rescue your larger creatures from the graveyard for serious mid-game damage.
And you still have the counters and removal to deal with any serious threats, and the Bident for some card draw as well. Lots of weapons to use here.

Let us know what you think, and as always, thanks for reading and we hope you check out our other decks and articles. Including the one we just did reviewing MTG Madness, go check out their website and give our review of them a read! Until next time, keep brewing!

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