Soul Fire

[zabuza]

Hi everybody,

I´m developing an ultra-fast aggro deck that is very funny to play so I would like you to help in the development.

The deck tries to play as fast as possible so all the creatures we play has haste. Because almost every creature on the deck is going to die at the end of turn, removal from the opponent usually is semi-un-useful. Because of that we have a great match-up against dredge ;).

This deck can win on turn 2 easily and usually in turn 3, so we are fast enough for lot of decks in legacy.

The list and the card´s explanation can be found below.

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Arid Mesa
4 Bloodstained Mire
6 Mountain
2 Plateau
------18 lands

4 Spark elemental
4 Goblin guide
4 Lightning Serpent
4 hellspark elemental
4 Greater Gargaddon
-----20 creatures

4 Blazing shoal
4 Fireblast
4 Cave-in
4 Lightning bolt
4 Wheel of fate
3 Reckless abandon/pyrokinesis


SDB
3 Sulfuric vortex
3 Fight to death
3 Pulverize
2 Disenchant.
4 vexing susher



The explanation of the cards is the following:

Spark elemental: A hasted guy for R. It has 3 power, great in this deck
Goblin guide: A hasted permanent guy with 2 power. it´s drawback is not noticed in this deck because we are very fast.
Lightning Serpent: A 2/1 guy that can be pumped to deal lot of damage. it can kill goyfs and so.
hellspark elemental: A 3 power hasted guy that can be replayed. It diversify costs.

With these 16 creatures we are going to inflict lot of damage, usually they are not blocked because dying at the end of turn makes the opponent not focusing on them.

Greater gargadon: It takes several roles in this deck. it´s best blazing shoal food but it also recycles all your dudes before dying. Is a 9/7 hasted creature that sometimes finishes the game and gives +10 with shoal.


Blazing shoal: The power tempo boost. It gives +10 pr +6 or +5 power for free and later can be played with mana to pump our dudes if needed.
Fireblast: They are the best finisher. We play 4 because we can use it to feed shoal, to feed cave-in, to feed pyrokinesis or to deal the 4 last damages.
Cave-in: The sweeper. It´s free so daze is not a problem at all, reset the table in the first turn, feeds the shoal and doesn´t affect us at all. It deals damage to the opponent too so...
Lightning bolt: The best burn spell. Instant and cost R.
Wheel of fate: Is the way to refill our hand. We can play it when we don´t have lot of cards in hand and wait till they is filled again. Because all our dudes has haste, have few lands and our burn is free or vey cheap if one of them resolves the opponent is die. Because it works with suspend we don´t have to spend mana to cast it so we find 7 new almost free cards in hand to kill the opponent.
Reckless abandon/pyrokinesis: Reckless is a 4 damage for R in this deck because all our dudes are going to die anyways. Pirokinesis helps us to clean the table in the begining of the match while can be used to feed shoal. I´m not sure yet about which one of them play.


And 12 fetchs to assure we don´t draw lot of lands.

SDB
Sulfuric vortex : deals damage and prevent life gaining. A must in this deck.
Fight to death: To care about big creature decks. Ours are going to die, and yours?
Pulverize: A 6 mana free spell to wreck stax, affinity and so
Disenchant: to destroy some problematic enchantments like chill, COP: red and so.
vexing shusher: to assure our spells are going to work.


Another cards I´m considering:

BOIL: Destroying all islands at instant speed when they are tapped because countered (or anything) one of our free spells is great. A SDB card that i don´t know if must be played.
Wispmare: To substitute disenchant. This card usually dodges CB and cost W and can be sacced with gargaddon too.
Erase:Cheap spell to destroy enchantments in multiples.
Blood Moon: To deny non basic strategies
Meekstone: To stop decks with big and fast creatures. They won´t untap.
Vines of the vastwood: To prevent our dudes from being killed when pumped. I don´t know if it´s necessary, but need to test it. If played i´ll add a couple of taigas instead 2 mountains.
Price of progress:To punish non-basic strategies, a must counter.
shattering spree: I think pulverize is better here but this card is so good.

More ideas? Suggestions? Please help.

[meanee]

PLease explain how this deck EASILY wins on turn two. I can see that it is possible if your opponent has muliganned to 0 and you have the God draw, but EASILY??? Really?

This deck looks like it is a blast (all the pun in the world, is intended) to play, but it also looks like it will roll over and die to an opponent playing free counterspells and a lot of swords to plowshares.

If you make your turn 2 GOD-INSANITY you play a spark elemental, blazing shoal (with gargadon, because you drew the nutz), and declare attackers. You opponent is all calm, cracks his brand new misty rainforest, finds a tundra and puts it into play. And then taps the tundra for W, playing path (or swords in response to the shoal), leaving you with nothing but a terrible headache. You've just thrown away 3 cards for his one. If you're lucky, you get an extra basic land. If you're not, you get 3 life, which is irrelevant.

On your next turn, you throw yet another hasted critter. This time you can beat him for 3 because he didn't have his sword number two. Then he is at about 13 life (loosing 3 in your turn 1, fetching, and now 3 more)... And up until now he has used 0 force of will, 0 daze, 0 tarmogoyf and so on...

Don't get me wrong, the deck looks hilarious, but I do not think it is a viable contender in a format filed with free counters undercosted beaters and a lot of swords.

- meanee

[zabuza]

When i say easily is because any of dudes + shoal (gargadon) =12-13 damages, second turn mountain lightning fireblast usually is enough. You are right, is a good hand but think that turn 1 guide-->2 damage, turn2 spark, serpent beat for 7 = 9 damage, third turn guide attack + lightning + fireblast is usually a kill too. When i said that i said because is posible (Good hand) and if not you are close enough to it.

When opponent is playing lot of free counters and swords i think we must win because we have more threats than him counters and swords.

you are right about if opponent only play fetch and go you must be careful. I don´t play shoal on this kind of situations. But think about opponent plays taiga kird ape instead. Then you can cast your god hand without any problem. The shoal is there to help winning the race damage against faster decks. Think about dredege, he can dredge in the first turn, but he is dead on the second. The thing is that you must know when to shoal and when not. Against the dude with the rainforest i would suspend gargadon and try to beat him till he remains tapped or kill him with the other bombs we have.
Sometimes you´ll have a 2x1 (because fow) but never 3x1 (well sometimes you are forced to risk for winning the match. In this situations you must think: Without risk there is no glory).

I think the deck can be improved. I´m thinking on including defense grid MD so you can play everything you want when you want (your turn) but not sure yet. Another inclusion could be figure of destiny to dspend mana on lategame but again not sure yet.

Please can you give me some feedback and help?

[J.V.]

Just one thing I'm going to point out, your running a 63 card deck...

[zabuza]

It has 61 cards, not 63 because it only plays 18 lands ;) and 61 is the magic number, so I´m confortable with it.

[Filth]

I count 20 lands. You might want to check again.

Wheel of Fate is terrible. If your deck can win easily on turn 3, why do you need a spell that won't ever resolve before turn 6? And that's assuming you have one to suspend on turn 2. The later you topdeck one of these, the more you're going to hate them.


removal from the opponent usually is semi-un-useful.

I also found this comment funny. You can't say the opponent's removal is useless when you have four copies of Blazing Shoal in your deck. Have an opponent respond to Shoal with a removal spell, and you're looking at a 3-for-1 right there.

If you really want to go all out, you should look into Fury of the Horde or Soul's Fire(!). The former is the more terrible of those two, but it allows for turn 1 kills with something like Spark Elemental + Blazing Shoal (pitching either Gargadon or another Fury). Soul's Fire opens you up to even more card disadvantage from removal, but it can be pretty hilarious with a Shoaled creature.

The white splash for Disenchants is unneeded. Red has Anarchy or Everlasting Torment for CoP / Sphere of Law, and Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast for Chill.

[Zinch]

Soul's Fire(!)

Well, in this deck Fling is a lot better tha Soul's Fire: It costs one mana less, is not affected by creature removal and the creature is going to die anyway.

[Vacrix]

Why don't you splash black? Your hasty dudes can be sacrificed to pay the flashback. Also you could possibly get Quest for the Gravelord or even Tombstalker as a finisher (remove all those sacrificed guys). Think about this, there is absolutely no reason to play this over burn unless you can somehow take advantage of playing creatures that die over playing spells you can play at instant speed. That means you want to play a lot of stuff that requires you to sacrifice a creature. Stuff that comes to mind includes:

Bone Splinters (kill creatures but its a sorcery so it requires your opponent to not block.)
Tendrils of Despair (for the cost, I think its a must run)
Spawning Pit (for every 2 creatures get 1 free! but you would need more creatures for this to be even remotely effective)
Cabal Therapy (functions as protection)
Recurring Nightmare(?) (if you run some reanimation action (and creatures like Iona) in tandum with this you couldn't possibly pass up this thing)
Reanimate (your creatures are going to the grave anyway. why not throw in reanimate as basically another 3/1 hasty guy with the exception of -1 life?)

Other points:
Cave-In: It's bad. Sure it's daze proof but you are already running 2cc spells? Why play this over pyroclasm when you have to pitch a card to play this one? And also, 2 damage is not going to take out anything in zoo with the exception of lavamancer.
Blazing Shoal: Seems like a lot of the time I would rather have something else. Like a reach spell. When you get your opponent to 3 and then he drops moat, you will wish you played more reach spells.
Wheel of Fate: Against aggro, they will have killed you with their fast ass clocks. Against combo, same case. Against control, well, they have too many turns to find an answer so that it doesnt resolve. You need protection if you want to run this, and more than just 4 therapy.

Also, run steppe lynx. It is NUTS when you are running 12 fetch lands and you already have the 2 plateau to support it. Trust me on this, I have tested it and in R/w burn it allows for turn 3 wins (not as rare as you might think).


In general the concept is cool, but you need to take advantage of the concept more. Otherwise its just really slow burn that dies to Moat effects.

My take on this:

Land: (19)
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Arid Mesa
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Mountain
3 Badlands
2 Plateau

Creatures: (25)
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Spark elemental
4 Goblin guide
4 Lightning Serpent
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Greater Gargadon
1 Tombstalker

Spells: (16)
4 Reanimate
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Tendrils of Despair
4 Lightning Bolt

Obviously it needs work, but it's a start.

[zabuza]

Yeah, i´ve misswrited 2 mountains. The deck is using only 4 mountains and 2 plateaus.

When i say that the opponent´s removal is useless is because my critters are going to die anyways so people usually doesn´t sword/remove the critter unless you are shoaling it, and you don´t soal it if the oponent has open mana so 3x1 is not as usual as you can think. Beside of that you can shoal paying mana so then it would be 2 x 1.

If would use one of the cards you´ve mentioned before fling, soul´s fire (i only called the deck in this way because i think it describes the environment of the deck as the primal idea of its creation), i would use fling but i´m not going to use none of them because i don´t think is a good idea. With those cards you need to cast a dude, cast a shoal and after that fling it. sometimes our dude will be chumpblocked and sometimes removed so if you are questioning about shoal, those cards are not considerable.

I was using disenchant because it´s versatil. Cards you suggested only take care about some others so i don´t like them. The white is neccesary for fight to death (if you want to use it) but it´s only an option.

I´m thinking on removing Pyrokinesis -Reckless to add figures of destiny or more burn (chain lightning) or defense grid (great agains any kind of removal. What do you think?

[Draener]

I really dislike wheel of fate in this build. By the time it becomes relevant you have either won or lost. I would probably go solid red and replace them with 2 browbeat and 1 barbarian ring. The adding of the fetches just open you up to wastelands and stifle for a very small gain.

[zabuza]

I don´t like wheel of fate too, but red doesn´t offer any good card to draw with beside of wheel and Browbeat. Sincerely none of them is good, but wheel is slighly better than browbeat because three main reasons.
With wheel you spend mana several turns after drawing so when you draw your new 7 fresh cards you have all your mana open to play with. The second reason is that is non conditional card, opponent can choose about so if they doen´t counter it you are going to draw. The third reason is that you can throw to the oppoenent all isntant burn spells you have when this card is going to resolve so he will be in a very bad point because if he/she counters your burn you are going to draw 7 new burn or semiburn spells (lot of them free) and if he waits to counter your wheel taking all the damage he will be in danger or dead.

The only problem of this card is that 4 time counters are a lot but there is no better choice so...

Perhaps adding timecarfting to speed up wheels and gargadones, or may be lavacore elemental?

[The Gifted One]

EDIT
I should have read the whole thread...

If you really want to go all out, you should look into Fury of the Horde or Soul's Fire(!). The former is the more terrible of those two, but it allows for turn 1 kills with something like Spark Elemental + Blazing Shoal (pitching either Gargadon or another Fury). Soul's Fire opens you up to even more card disadvantage from removal, but it can be pretty hilarious with a Shoaled creature.

First of all, having played a very similar deck some time ago:

Don't get me wrong, the deck looks hilarious, but I do not think it is a viable contender in a format filed with free counters undercosted beaters and a lot of swords.

- meanee

+1

But, as someone also posted, it's just plain fun playing this deck, like:
'lemme try this...'
'fow?, swords?'
yes ->gg no-> i win ;)


For further develpoment of the deck you may consider these cards:

Boros Swiftblade
Boros Swiftblade targeted with a Blazing Shoal via Gargadon wins the game.

Fury of the Horde
When playing this deck i've found myself often in situations when i needed a card with enough CC to pitch to Shoal. CC 7 should do it.

You may also attack with any other creature then Swiftblade, play Shoal and then get a second attack step with Fury of the Horde.

Simian Spirit Guide
Enables T1 Swiftblade
Red manasource which pitches to FoW Fury of the Horde

SB-Options
Silence and Orim's Chant may help vs. FoW, Swords or any disruption.


So it may add up to something like this:
4 Arid Mesa
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Scalding Tarn
3 Wooded Foothills
4 Mountain
2 Plateau

4 Boros Swiftblade
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Lightning Serpent
1 Plated Geopede
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Spark Elemental
4 Steppe Lynx

4 Blazing Shoal
4 Fireblast
4 Fling
4 Fury of the Horde

SB: 4 Orim's Chant/Silence
SB: 4 Pyrokinesis
SB: ...

[zabuza]

Well, the problem of Fury of the horde is that it requires 2 more red cards to be played so you are discarding half of your hand to beat with few critters. I don´t like it at all because if oppoenent counters it you are dead or dead.

I like boros swiftblade, as I like vishino slaughtermaster, warren instigator, kor duelist, heartfire hobgoblin and so on. They are great with equipment like jitte and perhaps in a metagame where there isn´t lot of removal it could be playable, but paying two mana for each non-hasted guy you want to play is not fast at all. Being slower gives the opponent lot of more tempo so it make your deck worse.

Orim´s chant was a sideboard option that i was considering. It´s good against combo, helps you to play spark + shoal without any fear and can save you from one turn combat phase from the opponent. The problem is that playing it make the deck slow. If you want to play a protected guy you must, at least, spend W & R mana for being effective. It´s assumible but you are spending 4 cards in this attack (shoal, spark, removed from shoal and chant). After this situation you only have 3 cards to kill the opponent so i´m not very sold about it.

I only would like to find any red card that does something like:
a) Draw more cards. The more I draw the better it is.
b) Put lot o dudes or something like that in order to be sacced to gargadon and have a cheap cost (empty the warrens is not a valid option because its CC).
c) Deals lot of damage (price of progress, oath of blood are interesting options).
b) Remove time counters (this is the worst option).

I´m thinking on including those two cards (oath of bloods and POP).

Oath can deal lot of damage and goblin guide gives us some information to name the right type (lands ???? ;) ) and POP punish opponent for playing them. Beside of that Oath has an acceptable cost to be used as shoal food. If i would use those cards i need something that provides me huge amounts of red mana. What do you think? Could be an option??


PD: OHH!!! FOrk could be an interesting option to fork counters or fork shoal. mmm Could be an option??

[Mishrax]

I feel like everyone in this thread is purposefully ignoring the obvious, which is to basically copy what some zoo is doing. Add green for Tarmogoyf, no haste but come on, he's worth it anyway. Then in place of some wheels add two or three Sylvan Libraries. You only have white for Disenchant, so just replace that with Naturalize. Green also lets you consider Berserk, which increased the odds of a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1, but can produce fast lethality and can be spot remove at the cost of some life. Adding as many as 8 green cards makes cave-in less appealing, however. Before you even jump to trying, I can tell you Vines of Vastwood is appealing in theory but in practice it's like fling and the rest, too much mana to use well.

To be clear, Tarmo sucks on turn 2 most of the time, as far as lots of damage, but you can't expect to always win that quickly, Plan B is a good thing.

[zabuza]

I could add green instead of white. I´m loosing fight till death (which is awesome against aggro matches), Orim´s chant or Silence which make me play shoal with absolute confidence and lot of other cards but gaining advantage in form of ancient grudge, vines of the vastwood and so. I don´t want playing goyf in this deck because i think it´s not neccesary here (understand me, goyf is GREAT, but i think this deck has no place to it). Beside of that green doesn´t priovide me lot of good cards because berserk is only playable if you play at least 8 more pumping spells so i don´t like it here.
Sylvan library Could be an interesting option. With fetches you can always have new bomb cards to play and 8 damage sometimes is admisible.

More ideas??