[Standard] Leveling in Control

[Dark Wolf]

This is just an idea that I have in my head that I think would be fun. I don't know if levelers will end up being tier one or not, but I think they have a lot of potential. The deck I'm posting is going for an aggro/control theme, and I'd appreciate any comments anyone has. Anything to spice up these forums! Start posting deck ideas people! The whole visual spoiler is out! The Eldrazi are upon us! The time for new strategies and discussion is at hand!

4 Student of Warfare
4 Skywatcher Adept
4 Hada Spy Patrol
4 Venerated Teacher
2 Kabira Vindicator
2 Echo Mage

4 Path to Exile
4 Deprive
2 Negate
2 Training Grounds
4 Time of Heroes

4 Glacial Fortress
4 Halimar Depths
9 Island
7 Plains

Sideboard
2 Hyena Umbra
4 Distortion Strike
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Demystify (I think a lot of enchantment hate is going to quickly appear with the Totem Auras and Time of Heroes in the mix)
Comments for more?


This deck seems pretty straightforward to me. You draw and level up your leveler guys as fast as possible to swing for the win, while counterspells and removal keep the board clear for you to level up without interruption. Any comments would be greatly appreciated!

[browncoat]

Skywatcher adept makes me want to kill myself due to its patheticness. Replace it with knight of cliffhaven. I would also recommend replacing the vindicators as you are not necessarily swarming the board with creatures as using a few powerful creatures to wreck your opponent. I would up the number of training fields to 3 and then add a singleton eldrazi monument for a crazy attacking trick. You may want to consider enclave cryptologist as well.

Your sideboard is a bit strange. What matchup would you side in Elspeth or the distortion strikes? While your enchantment hate may be necessary, I would be more worried about lightmine field than time of heroes. Putting a few more hyena umbras would be a good idea as the biggest problem with this deck is jund with all its removal. The sideboard could use some flashfreeze. Oblivion ring could be another option, adding removal and a way to deal with noncreature permanents.

[Ferridge]

Have you seen the blue creature that puts 2 level counter on all your creatures when he comes into play?
He might be fun with rite of replication to as a casual trick to max out all your levellers.

[browncoat]

(2010-04-15 12:31 PM)Ferridge Wrote:  Have you seen the blue creature that puts 2 level counter on all your creatures when he comes into play?
He might be fun with rite of replication to as a casual trick to max out all your levellers.

He already has 4 of them in the deck, it is called venerated teacher. I think the rite of replication trick pretty pointless. Leveling up all your levelers not that good as allies are far better targets.

[valk]

Actually, thinking of which would regress be useful here? It's versatile, Echo mage and venerated teacher should work well with it, not to mention seijiri steppe or halimar depths. if you drop an echo mage, then teacher next turn, you can bounce teacher and use the echo mage to bounce one of their permanants, recast teacher following turn you're well on your way. If you've had out the adept and the spy patrol, you're in good shape.

[browncoat]

The problem with bouncing permanents is that you don't have a target you want to bounce other than the teacher. You have to consider that you pay 6 to bounce and replay the teacher, while you could have just used that mana to level up one or multiple creatures. The reason this matters is that level up creatures are already weak against removal but when you require multiple creatures on the field to get value out of bouncing the teacher the deck is even weaker to removal.

[valk]

sort of true about slow teacher and lots of mana investment, but then this is a deck that takes a bit of time to ramp anyway. Also, bounce aids in buying you the time when done right on their key combo creatures. The bounce on teacher is just an option. You can use bounce to slow land development, save any important enchants of your own and my fave is going to be bouncing creatures summoned by drones. Suck it, hand of emrakuul.

the synergy with bounce does take a hit because you can't bounce-save your own level creatures as effectively. But It's also a damn nice thing to bounce out things like joraga warcallers and other AoE boosts just as they attack (in my instance recently, it was the Coat of Arms, +1+1 for creatures of shared type artifact.) Bouncing that as they attack changes the game. A slaughter turns to a route, and works better than a creature removal sometimes.

[browncoat]

Bounce is useful but I think this deck just wants to play cards and think less about stalling. Maybe it is better for the sideboard than the main deck but I am not sure. It may depend on how standard shapes up post ROE.

As a note coat of arms looks at creature type. Artifact creatures have creature types, the artifact nature does not count as towards the type. If your opponent is using coat of arms to boost artifact creatures then he is cheating.

[valk]

no no, that was just my bad grammar. It was the wolfbriar elemental and a few other wolves that caused the hassle. I won, but not by much anyway. Let the elemental through and smacked the doggies knowing the CoA would be back. Was close, only won because I'd got a fast start and was just waiting to deal that last 4 damage. Got a sage owl and he had no fliers and got none of his removal. Lucky.