Decks From Outside My Comfort Zone

Welcome again to A Gathering of Magic the Gathering! We hope you’ve been enjoying this blog so far. If you haven’t been, then you need to start.

Today I thought I’d talk about decks, which is going to be a topic that is talked about quite a bit on here. As I’ve said before; my two favorite colors to play with are Green and Artifacts, but today I thought I’d talk about a couple of my favorite decks that are colors other than those two. Two of the decks I’ll talk about are ones that I own, the third will be one that I built, but which belongs to my friend. Let’s actually start with that one.

The deck I built for my friend is what most card players call a Mill Deck. What that means is that the deck focuses almost solely on making your opponent discard not only his hand, but his entire deck. You’ll find Mill Decks in almost any trading card game, but Magic seems to have some of the more wicked milling cards, usually in the Blue or Black color sets. Currently my friend’s deck has both those colors in it. The trump card for his deck is easily Traumatize. If you’re unfamiliar with that card I’ll explain: Traumatize is a Blue Sorcery card that, when played, causes your opponent to put half of their deck in their graveyard. I think we put 2 of that card in the deck. Tied for best card in the deck is Jace Beleren, who can potentially make your opponent discard the top 20 cards of their deck. There are also killer filler cards in it, such as Tome Scour, which is also a Blue Sorcery that causes your opponent to put the top 5 cards in their graveyard. There’s one card we’d love to have in the deck, but which is somewhat hard to find; Szadek; Lord of Secrets. Szadek is a vampire lord from the Ravnica block who starts out as a 5/5 with flying. However, his ability is what makes him so evil. Anytime Szadek would deal damage to a player, you instead put that many +1/+1 counters on Szadek and that player puts that many cards from his library into his graveyard. It’s a pretty killer card, when played right. That flying ability makes it easy to hit a player directly and the more times you do, the stronger you get and the worse off your opponent is. All in all, it’s a brutal deck to go up against. I think it’s only lost once, and that wasn’t against me.

The next deck I’d like to talk about is a rather popular deck with many players; my Sliver Deck. If you’ve never played against a Sliver Deck, consider yourself lucky. Slivers are easily the most annoying creatures to go up against. The reason Sliver Decks are so mean is because Slivers all have abilities that beef up all other Slivers on the field. Some Slivers give all other Slivers +1/+1, or they could give them all Flying or Trample or whatever, really. Most Sliver decks have some of every color of card in them, mine included. I particularly like my Sliver deck because it has Slivers in it from all through the history of the Magic Multiverse. I’ve got plenty of old Slivers as well as a bunch of new ones. There are two cards in particular that I love in my deck. The first is Coat of Arms, which is an artifact. Coat of Arms gives creatures +1/+1 for each creature on the field that shares a creature type with it. In layman’s terms; if I have 7 Slivers on the field, as well as Coat of Arms, each sliver would then get +6/+6. And the buffing up only gets better the more slivers I have on the field. The second card I absolutely love is called Sliver Legion. Sliver Legion is a 7/7 creature that costs one of each mana and has the same ability as Coat of Arms. So, same situation as before; 7 normal Slivers on the field as well as Coat of Arms, but now we’ll add in Sliver Legion. Each of my slivers would then get +14/+14, ridiculous, right? I think so, but I love it. My Sliver deck, not unlike most other Sliver decks, is pretty unbeatable.

The third and final deck I’d like to talk about is the deck that I’ve spent the most time making; my Angel deck. Angel decks, like Sliver decks, are quite popular among players. For the most part, each set of cards that is released has at least one Angel in it. (This isn’t always the case, but usually it is.) Some Angels are more powerful than others, but that’s fine with me because I need some lower cost angels to defend myself at the beginning of the match. My Angel deck is my only deck that is (almost) solid White. Possibly the most notorious Angel in the Magic Multiverse is Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Akroma is a 6/6 Angel that has flying, first strike, trample, haste, protection from red, protection from black and vigilance. She’s a pretty unstoppable force. I currently have 3 of her in my deck, just in case one of them is destroyed. A couple of the other popular angels in my deck are Platinum Angel and Pristine Angel. Platinum Angel is an artifact creature with one of the best abilities in the game; you cannot lose the game and your opponents cannot win the game. It’s a killer card. Then there’s Pristine Angel, which, among other things, has protection from artifacts and from all colors. All Angels have flying and most of them have some kind of ability to make them even harder to beat, but the trump card in my Angel deck isn’t actually an Angel card. Concerted Effort is the card that really makes my deck shine. It’s an enchantment that, at the beginning of each player’s upkeep, gives all creatures I control flying if I control a creature that has flying. The same is true for fear, first strike, double strike, landwalk, protection, trample, and vigilance. Basically it’s an ability sharing card, and with cards like Akroma and Pristine Angel, all my creatures would have protection from everything as well as first strike, trample, haste and vigilance. Once I get that card out on the field, there’s almost no stopping me.

Anyway, that’s enough for today. What about you? What decks do you play with that aren’t your usual color/type? Or do you prefer to stick with what you’re comfortable with? Do you own and play with any decks that are notorious among other players? Let us know in the comments.

A Rather Large Project

Welcome back to a Gathering of Magic the Gathering! Today I'd like to talk about, and get ideas on, the topic of sorting and cataloguing cards. It's something that I think most collectors do no matter the size of their collection, and I think we could get some good discussions going about how everybody organizes their cards.



Does your card collection look something like this?



As far as sorting goes, I think the long white boxes you can buy at most hobby shops are a MTG enthusiasts best friend. They usually only cost around a dollar and each one can hold hundreds of cards, making them the best way to store your cards without spending a ton. I've been using the white boxes for years now and I can't think of a better way to store and sort my cards. I'm kind of OCD when it comes to my cards, so I tend to go a bit overboard on my sorting of them. Each color (Green, White, Red, Black, Blue & Gold) gets it's own box, or set of boxes. After I've sorted them by color, each color is also sorted out into the types of card. (Creature, Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, etc.) Once I've finished that, it's time to sort each type of card into rarity. (Mythic Rare, Rare, Uncommon, Common.) You're going to laugh, but when I've done that, I sort each of those groups once more, this time alphabetically. Artifacts get a similar treatment, but instead of sorting by Creature, Instant, etc., they are sorted by Artifact, Artifact - Creature, & Artifact - Equipment. Lands are sorted in much the same way. (Yes, Lands get their own box(es)). I know, it's a bit extravagant, but it's how I work.

Recently, I've been buying the Fat Pack for each set that is released. Aside from getting 8-9 booster packs, the Fat Packs come with a custom card box for that particular set, which has made me think that maybe I'd like to sort my newer cards differently. Instead of all my cards being in one big group, I've thought that maybe it'd be cool to have the new sets organized into a box just for that set. Instead of my super complicated way of sorting the cards, I could just use the Card-pedia that comes with each Fat Pack to sort each set into the numerical order they appear in in the set. It's just an idea right now, but it's one that I kind of like. I'll have to give it a try and see if I like it.

My collection of cards has gotten big enough that I have many, many of those white boxes full of cards. For the longest time I had them in stacks on my old computer desk, but that wasn't really the best way to organize them, plus the desk took up a lot of space and I was really only using it for storage purposes. On a whim one day I cleaned off the desk, tore it apart, and threw it away and began searching for a cabinet of some kind that I could use to store my cards. It only took an hour or two and I found a solid wood armoire at the D.I. (Utah's version of Goodwill.) I bought it and began figuring out the best way to store my cards in it. I didn't realize how nice it was going to be for that purpose. It has drawers for the boxes as well as a large cabinet for the other random boxes. It has plenty of space for all of my cards. If you have a lot of cards and boxes like I do, I highly recommend getting something similar to it to store them in.

That all works well and good for my non-deck cards, but I needed a way to keep my decks in a safe place, but in such a way that they were easy to haul around to places. The deck boxes I usually use don't fit in the white boxes, so I had to find another way. Now, don't judge too harshly, but I had seen a few episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh, and had seen that one of the characters keeps his cards in a briefcase. I loved this idea, so I started looking for a decent briefcase. I was lucky enough to find one (again, at the D.I.) and it works perfectly. I can fit all of my custom built decks as well as most of the pre-built decks I own. The briefcase has a dual lock, so I don't have to worry about my decks falling out when I carry it around. Again, if you need a way to transport a lot of decks around to tournaments or what-have-you, I recommend a briefcase.



Or even this?



Now, on to the topic of cataloguing. I've been meaning to make an official catalogue of all my cards for some time now, but with how large my collection is, the task is rather daunting. I need to buckle down and actually do it though. I've talked to a few people about how they catalogue their cards, and most of them use Microsoft Excel. I use Excel to create my deck lists, so I know it would work well for a full catalogue. The only problem at this point is actually sitting down and creating the list. It's going to be time consuming for sure. Now I just have to decide how I want to catalogue them. Should I do it by set? That seems like it would be the easiest. I think I'll go with that.

What about all of you? How do you organize, sort, and catalogue your cards? Are you a fan of the white boxes? Are you as OCD about your cards as I am? Let us know in the comments. (Just an FYI: feel free to comment about your card habits even if you collect a different game.)