What's the hardest and coolest good deck I can play?

[Mr.C]

I'm toying with the idea of 'selling all my stuff'; i.e. keeping one serious deck and just playing shitty casual decks over beer and wings, with some pre-releases here and there. Just don't have the desire to invest any more, nor the desire to keep around thousands of dollars that can be wast-, er, invested in other things, like old German cars or travelling.

I've always enjoyed seeing people play Doomsday Tendrils. It seems like a very resilient deck, but incredibly difficult to play correctly. Is it a deck that can be easily transferred to Vintage? i.e. jam some power and play more or less the same Legacy list?

I love combo and obscure decks. I'd like something that, barring any major shake-ups or hate cards printed in the future can be reasonably competitive in a varied meta, assuming you know how to play it correctly. Budget unimportant.

Suggestions?

Edit: Maybe T.E.S.?

[thecrav]

Doomsday sounds like exactly the deck you want to play.

For vintage, a year or two back, Menendian started pushing Doomsday hard. Based on the lists I find on a quick google, the deck is very close to "just jam in some power" as you've described.

[JPoJohnson]

You could build storm. If your wanting both a legacy and vintage list in the end you could build ANT/TES for legacy and TPS for vintage.

[twndomn]

Coolest deck is subjective, pretty much like a beauty pageant.

Hardest deck is simply DDFT Doomsday Fetchland Tendrils. Hardest deck would also mean a long learning curve, quite some times to overcome.

[Lemnear]

It sounds like you are indeed looking for a combo deck like storm. Doomsday is more successful these days with Laboratory Maniac than with the Tendrils kill, but the later is much more fun/challenging. The traditional storm twins TES and ANT have a lot of overlap in their lists even if TES is closer to it's Vintage brother, running also Wishes and Gold-Lands (at times). Storm is a good trait for long-time, but occasional play as you don't have to metagame the shit out of your deck every week.

[Mr.C]

Excellent. So which Storm variant is better all-around? DDFT or TES? I know it's subjective.

[lordofthepit]

Excellent. So which Storm variant is better all-around? DDFT or TES? I know it's subjective.

TES is the better deck. DDFT is harder to play and more flexible, but I feel that even if played optimally, it would still fall short of TES (and ANT).

[Lemnear]

Excellent. So which Storm variant is better all-around? DDFT or TES? I know it's subjective.

If you are new to the mechanic (in terms of never played it in a tournament against real decks), I would start with ANT without a doubt and once you feel that you want more lines of play and flexibility (aka getting annoyed by hatebears and graveyard-hate) you might want to try the two you mentioned above.

DDFT isn't made to push through matchups like the combo mirror or prison-decks like Death&Taxes with brute force and speed like TES, but a deck which needs a lot of strategic planning to achieve results which is a serious challenge in todays age of (storm-hate) powercreep. Hovering around the card Doomsday, the deck has it's own issues in regards to learning piles and strategic linearity (get DD resolved and not killed by a Lightning Bolt after) which is a reason the deck shifted towards the Lab. maniac which is a lot more casual-friendly AND dodges a lot of common storm-hate. TES is a poker-players magic deck; you need to have a good read on your opponent and are required to accept that there are situations in which you WILL lose not because you made a mistake, but because your opponent was doing right/was lucky, which contain scenarios of going All-In (poker again) against an unknown hand and the like.

I hope this dodges the subjective recommendation :)

[death]

Hard can also mean frustrating, DDFT is both. In Vintage, Doomsday has unfavorable match ups against MUD and Control decks. For coolness factor, I'd go with Miracles or Loam decks in legacy. Fuck Vintage unless you actually own a set of Power.

[Final Fortune]

I think LED Dredge would be pretty high up on my list.

[Megadeus]

I'm with death. Loam decks are both fun and powerful, have plenty of different lines of play, and is fairly flexible.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Just keep all the cards required to play the 3 major Storm decks (ANT, TES, Doomsday) so you can play them all.

[TsumiBand]

Tight Sight

[Zombie]

Elves could also be a nice deck. It's not the hardest one out there (or at least it's a bit more forgiving of misplays than its other engine combo brethren), but it basically does nearly every proactive thing you might want to do in Magic. Grindy, value-hogging plays on the board, combat tricks, playing humongous creatures, swarming with little guys, cheating broken things into play, traditional beatdown => burn aggro gameplan, figuring out tight lines to do broken things, drawing your deck within a single turn, and just plain doing ridiculous amounts of non-infinite damage. There's no end to the fun.

[Megadeus]

Elves could also be a nice deck. It's not the hardest one out there (or at least it's a bit more forgiving of misplays than it's other engine combo brethren), but it basically does nearly every proactive thing you might want to do in Magic. Grindy, value-hogging plays on the board, combat tricks, playing humongous creatures, swarming with little guys, cheating broken things into play, traditional beatdown => burn aggro gameplan, figuring out tight lines to do broken things, drawing your deck within a single turn, and just plain doing ridiculous amounts of non-infinite damage. There's no end to the fun.

This. There are hands where you simply derp a Hoof or Prog on T2 and win, but some hands where your experience and knowledge of the deck really get you there over what a newer player would get out of the deck.

[Mr.C]

This. There are hands where you simply derp a Hoof or Prog on T2 and win, but some hands where your experience and knowledge of the deck really get you there over what a newer player would get out of the deck.

Elves are for little kids.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

If I'd be to play a hard and cool deck, I'd build something of my own. A linear combo isn't what I'd love to play for years, it gets pretty old. Same goes for any Tempo deck. Elves? Well, might be good, but it has a deep design flaw, it doesn't use Islands.
I'd build something with both aggro, control and combo elements so that the deck plays never the same, is unpredictable, unstable and generally strange. Doomsday is quite a "solid" choice, but maybe something like Tezz-Jace control might be even better. Aggro-combo-control-prison; sounds good.
That, or Tight Sight.

[Megadeus]

Lands

[Aesir]

Lands

This for sure. It's cool, hard to play, and everyone gets to come watch you beat people with expensive cards.

[Megadeus]

This for sure. It's cool, hard to play, and everyone gets to come watch you beat people with expensive cards.

Plus, games generally have lots of different lines of play, and it is flexible in what cards to play

[joemauer]

Battle of the Wits.

[JPoJohnson]

Battle of the Wits.

The deck that hard counters Show N' Tell.

[DarkJester]

I'm toying with the idea of 'selling all my stuff'; i.e. keeping one serious deck and just playing shitty casual decks over beer and wings, with some pre-releases here and there. Just don't have the desire to invest any more, nor the desire to keep around thousands of dollars that can be wast-, er, invested in other things, like old German cars or travelling.



I did this a few months ago for exactly the same reasons you mentioned while keeping my Dredge-Stuff + Playset Bazaar if a Vintage-Event should show up. Pretty happy with my decision at this point. So +1 to Final Fortune mentioning Dredge.

[Phelix]

This for sure. It's cool, hard to play, and everyone gets to come watch you beat people with expensive cards.


Tripletruth.

And ppl often read you cards

[Lemnear]

Tripletruth.

And ppl often read you cards

Is it a good thing if a million people pick up and read your cards, so you Jace to replace filthy sleeves every second tourney and games drag into the overtime because of checking cards and grave over and over?

[YamiJoey]

UW CONTROOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!!!

Seriously. Deck is super complex and super fun and super powerful. It's also really good right now, except that you will get crushed in the mirror because you've only just picked it up.

Apart from that you should flat out win every other game because it's the best deck in the format.

[Koby]

If you want to keep invested in a bunch of real estate, then pick Lands.
If you want to keep a powerful deck, then pick Storm variants (they are all mostly the same core, just mana bases are different).
If you want to practice an exercise in futility, pick DDFT.

[clavio]

Isn't doomsday terrible?

[Koby]

Isn't doomsday terrible?

Doomsday Deck is Fucking Terrible = DDFT

[Phelix]

Is it a good thing if a million people pick up and read your cards, so you Jace to replace filthy sleeves every second tourney and games drag into the overtime because of checking cards and grave over and over?

I always think its fun to level players w. unknown Cards.

And no, I dont think i get into timetrouble.

My 39 rounds of playing lands at major events.

Amsterdam: 10-3-3
Ghent: 12-2-2
BoM secondary event: 5-1-1

I dont think thats alot of draws. But its very true that time is a factor, both for good and bad.

But w. new builds, you pack instawin combo, to make that alot less true.

[ph88]

i vote lands, too. it's not hard to play in the way that DDFT is, but it's challenging in other ways. and it's really powerful.

i go to time with 4 color control lands about the same amount i go to time with my other decks -- mav and 12-post -- which isn't much. since the stage/depths combo became a thing, the deck plays at a very reasonable pace. i would say that the ole glacial chasm lock + punishing fire kill happens in maaaaybe 5% of games. the majority of the time you are killing with marit lage sometime in the first 10 or 12 turns.

[FTW]

Sounds like you're looking for Johnny thrills.

If you're not looking to play Tournament Magic, then play 4 Horsemen. This deck is so good (/terrible but fun for Johnny) that it's banned from Tournament play. But you can play it anywhere else. If you want to spend 40 minutes masturbating and having the opponent ask you what in the *** you're doing, this is the deck to play. If you want to have them read your cards 20 times too, get the whole deck in Japanese.