With Magcon warming back up for next year, I always get excited to play some MTG in person. So I always start looking for new cards to upgrade my two main decks. So I thought it would be fun to break them down and explain them in detail (that and I'm bored and it gives me something to do). So I'll break down my current builds. I'll be linking the mostly support cards or cards that have similar features underneath a lot of the cards I list here. If went over each individual one, this would take a lot longer.

I have two main decks; a rat deck, and a shrine deck. FOr those not familiar with MTG, there are tens of thousands of cards in the game (just over 20,000 I believe), so there is practically limitless themed decks and combos you can have. Each deck has to have a minimum of 60 cards, and you can have no more than 4 of any one card in your deck.
_________________________________________________________________________

Rat deck breakdown:

The rat deck is a completely black mana based deck with all rat creature types. Rats are low cost and usually have fairly useful abilities. When combo'd with other rats and spells, they can be rather broken. The big weakness being that it's not really that good against other black decks.

I'll go over the creatures individually and mention the cards that combo with them as I go over them.




What I love about Crypt rats is how it globally attacks absolutely everything. As long as you are ahead in total life, you can use this guy ALONE to not only destroy all all your opponents creatures, but kill him as well. The only problem is that Crypt Rats should die if you ever use his ability. That's where Swarmyard comes into play. You'll be able to use the ability and tap this to regenerate him and use the ability again. Also, just for funzies, if you know you are going to lose, you can just kill yourself with this card as a middle finger. Also, Swarmyard is good to have regardless if you had Crypt Rats or not. Seeing as this is a rat deck, it works on everything. Also, there's an enchantment I use called Pestilence that has the same function as Crypt Rats. It really pays off to have something that does global damage.




This is another rat that benifits greatly from Swarmyard. Deathtouch make any enemy it fights, die. The only problem is that it's a 1/1, so it would more than likely die too. But with Swarmyard, your opponent will most likely not attack at all since he would lose a creature and you would be out absolutely nothing. But even without swarmyard, a one drop deathtouch is fantastic. Most deathtouch creatures aren't near that cheap.




You'll see a theme with cards doing bad things to me as well as the opponent. But it's usually for another purpose. When Rotting Rats his the board, all players have to discard... including me. At least if Rotting Rats die, I can pay 2 mana to bring it back for a turn and cause another discard and get some cheap damage in. But the real purpose of making myself discard is this: Dark Withering is a very expensive kill card that outright destroys any non-black creature. If I'm despirate, I can pay the cost... OR, I can play Rotting Rats. That will force me to discard. But Dark Withering has the Madness ability. instead of discarding, I can pay the madness cost of 1 mana and use the card immediately. So in a single turn, I can get a creature out in play, cause the player to discard, AND kill off a creature for only 3 mana that turn.




Pack Rats are a rare instance where a rat can become incredibly powerful. Since the deck is composed of rats, any creature that comes out makes this guy bigger. And what's even better, you can spend 3 mana to duplicate this guy. I have to discard too. But that's what Dark Withering is for. So in a single turn I can copy this guy and kill a creature for only 3 mana. Keep this card in mind though because:




This guy right here has won me several games. Firstly, he gives ALL rats fear... meaning that if your opponent doesn't control black or artifact creatures, they simply can not block. The second reason is that you can sacrifice any rat, and spawn 1/1 rat tokens for however many rats are left in play. So if I have five rats... I can sacrifice one. Since I have four left, I get four tokens... bringing my total rat count to 8. And remember Pack Rats? Very quickly I will amass an army of several rats with a few HUGE ones running around... all of which are unblockable.




Speaking of unblockable... the Stronghold Rats have shadow. Meaning that they can only block or be blocked by other creatures with shadow. Not many people run creatures with shadow anymore, so this is pretty much free damage. Not to mention it makes opponents discard... as well as myself. So it's a 100% way to get off a cheap Dark Withering. Plus if I don't have any cards in my hand, why not? Other than that, there are a few other cheap rats in there that also make the player discard such as Ravenous Rats. They are cheap and are a quick way to get your opponents hand size down.




The strongest rats in MTG are all ninja rats. And I run a few of them... Ink-Eyes being the best. The ninjustu ability is a bit difficult to explain, but here it goes. If you attack your opponent with any creature and that creature was NOT blocked and would deal damage, you can instead pay the ninjustu cost of a ninja rat in your hand (which will always be cheaper than paying it normally) and instead, the attacking creature goes back into your hand and the ninja takes it's place in combat. This results in two things. First, they will more than likely be taking more damage. If I attack with say Typoid Rats, they probably won't block because of the deathtouch. Or Stronghold Rats will usually be unblockable. OR Marrow-Gnawer might have given them all fear... so there's a good chance you can get in damage regardless. The second thing being that ALL ninja rats have a special ability that goes off every time they hit. Ink-Eyes lets you actually steal a creature from your opponents graveyard (something you've already killed) and put it in play under your control. This is pretty nasty. I have other ninjas in the deck too, like Okiba-Gang Shinobi who makes you discard two cards for dealing damage, and Throat Slitter who makes the player destroy a non-black creature of your choosing. Basically, if you have fear on these guys, you can be doing a lot of nasty things other than just dealing damage.




There is only ONE creature card in this entire deck that isn't a rat. It's an ogre. And he has the ability to let you search your deck every single turn for a rat of your choosing and put it into your hand. This guy is devistating as you can get out everything you need WHEN you need it. It's also nice that he's a 4/4 with fear. I can't tell you how useful this guy has been in this deck. Though his casting cost is a little high, that's why there are Dark Rituals in the deck as well to help cover some of the higher casting cards like Ratcatcher.




The only other cards I have are support. Seeing as a lot of these rats aren't very powerful, this card REALLY helps out. Every time you play a creature type of your choosing (of course I'd be choosing rats), you put a counter on Doors. All rats get +1/+1 for as many counters as you have. So imagine if you will... Marrow-Gnawer is out. And you've spawned a few tokens. If doors comes out and you play a few rats... ALL those tokens get plus however many rats you've played. Unfortunately, tokens coming into play doesn't boost Doors, but there are plenty of other rats in the deck. You can even use the unearth ability of Rotting Rats to boost Doors again if they've already been in play and have died. This also boots Pack Rats to a crazy bloated size. And since rats are fairly small by nature, I have a few Engineered Plagues to get the enemy's creatures a bit closer to my creatures sizes... or just outright kill them off as they hit the field.

And that's that. This rat deck has done amazingly well against non-black decks. Though recently I've only been playing Ix... and he runs a black zombie deck. So wins aren't as frequent as what they should be. Stil though, I'm really proud of this deck as every single card has some kind of fucntionality with one or more other cards. That's really important to have in a deck. Decks that have cards "just because" have a lot of room for improvement.
_________________________________________________________________________


Shrine deck breakdown:

The shrines are my favorite deck I've ever owned in MTG. They are extremely fun to play and do very well against ALL colors. The only real weakness it has is against disenchants. But people don't often have a lot of those in their decks... so this does well.

Actually, this isn't really a shrine deck so much as it is an upkeep deck. Upkeep is something that happens durring the beginning of your turn. If you don't have any cards that utilize upkeep, then nothing happnes. People overlook upkeep alot, which is why I really enjoy having a deck that abuses the heck out of it. If you read the rat cards, Ratcatcher had an upkeep ability. So you'll kind of know how this works if you understand that. But before I get into the meat, I'll show you a few of my other cards that are in here to buy me as much time as possible to set up the shrines.




Most of the creatures in this deck are considers walls. Walls can deal NO damage. In fact, they don't even have the ability to attack. What Fog Bank here does is negate ALL combat damage. So if you are swinging for 20 damage, I can block with Fog Bank, and it won't kill Fog Bank. The only way to kill Fog Bank is with non combat abilities like burns and debuffs. Really great for buying time. I only have three other creatures in this deck. One being Steel Wall which is a really good AND cheap blocker.




...the other being Overgrown Battlmement. Overgrown battlement is very special because it helps generate mana like crazy. I have 4 of each of these 3 defenders. A maximum of 12 defenders can be out at one time. I can tap a single one of these Overgrown Battlements and get a maximum of 12 free mana to spend on spells. So these cards pull double duty for blocking and generating mana. These are live savers. But on the subject of mana...




The problem with a rainbow deck (a deck that uses all five color of mana, and not just like how the rats are black) is that mana is hard to come by. For example, if I didn't have any green mana, I couldn't play Overgrown Battlement. If I didn't have blue, I couldn't play Fog Bank. So you need to be extremely careful about how you generate your mana. Seaside Citadel is one of several special mana that will allow you to tape it for one of three differen mana types. The others are Arcane Sanctum Savage Lands Jungle Shrine and Crumbling Necropolils. These alone really aid in making sure all many types are avalible. Then there are non-land based cards like Kodama's Reach and Terramprphic Expanse that let you search for the mana you need. That along with Overgrown Battlement, and most of your mana needs are met.




Okay, this is going to take some explaining. Instant spells and interupt spells can be used one time only. They happen immediately and then go away. Isocrhron Scepter let's you copy that spell onto its self. And then it because re-usable in battle by just tapping and paying two mana. I have a few cards that do amazingly well with this that give me just about all the time I need to get the main combo set up. For example. Imprinting Counterspell on Iso lets you counter a spell every turn. As long as you have two mana untapped, you can always screw over one of your opponents upcoming spells. I also use Echoing Truth which is really good at getting anything bugging you off the board. Like if there's a huge creature or an enchantment that's really holding you back. Actually, if you had both Counterspell and Echoing Truth on Iso, you can use the Echoing Truth to bounce back the spell to their hand, and wait for them to try and cast it again and Counterspell it. This tactic has saved me a LOT of trouble. It also helps that Echoing Truth works on all cards with the same name. It instantly kills all tokens and gets rid of multiple irritating cards. Also, I'm running Enlightened Tutors which greatly help with the main combo of this deck. All the shrines and supporting cards are enchantments or artifiacts, so having these on Iso really make things MUCH easier. But one of the best things to put on Iso is Angel's Grace. It makes it to where you can NOT lose the game and your opponent can NOT win. So as long as you have it on Iso and have two mana free at the end of your turn, you can use this to make the game almost impossible to lose.


Okay, so here's the big deal about this deck:





These are the shrines. They play off of each other. For example. If I have the white shrine out, I heal 2 during my upkeep. If I have another shrine out, I heal 4 instead. If I have all five shrines out, I heal 10 every turn. The maximum potential of all the shrines are:

White = Heal 10 every turn
Black = Opponent discards 5 ever turn
Green = Spawn 5 1/1 tokens every turn
Red = Deal up to 5 damage every turn
Blue = Draw 5 additional cards every turn (you still get your normal draw phase)

So as you can see, it would be really really bad to have all of these up at once. But it gets worse... MUCH worse... thanks to one card:



This card gives me an extra upkeep every turn. I have four of these. Plus my normal upkeep, I can get five upkeeps every turn. So just take the max potential I just listed... and multiply it times 5. I've never gotten all shrines and all Paradox Hazes out at once because no one can survive that long. This is the main goal of this deck. I have to take care though, that blue shrine can screw me over quick. If you run out of cards in your library, you lose. So I either have to use Echoing Truth to get it back in my hand, or play another blue shrine so that the Legendary Rule takes effect (if a card has legendary status, no more than one of those cards can be in play at once. If another comes out, they are both destoried). Also, you can't have more than seven cards in you hand by the end of your turn, so that's why I run Reliquary Tower which, aside from being mana, makes it to where I can have as many cards in my hand as I want. There are also some support cards for the shrines like Greater Auramancy which make all the shrines and Paradox Hazes impossible to target or counter. If I get another Greater Auramancy out, they give the effect to eachother... making it just about impossbile to get rid of.




And even if that wasn't enough. There's this thing. It comes out already indestructible. And it gets a counter every upkeep. If it hits 20, I win. No questions asked. And with Paradox Haze, I can get tokens on it REALLY quick. I can even use Enlightened Tutor to get this out sooner. So as soon as I have four mana, I can search for this and get it going. That puts a lot of strain on your opponent.


That leave just one card...



This is the ONLY creature in the deck that can attack. Actually, Scute Mob, the Fire Shrine, and the tokens form Jungle Shrine are the only sources in the deck that can deal damage. What's special about Scute Mob is that after you have four mana (which doesn't take long) every upkeep, Scute Mob gets +4/+4. With a few paradox Hazes out, this thing gets freaking huge really really fast. It's amazing how useful a 1/1 creature that cost one mana to play can be this useful.


But that's about it. That's all the cards in the shrine deck. It's built to stall for as much time as possible so that it can build up enough shrines to completely screw over your opponent. And it does. I once played against Kajak and Ixion and took both of them out at the same time. This deck is super fun, very powerful, and very unique. And that's the two decks I run. Thanks for taking the time to listen to me nerd the hell out.

Sounds like something fun to do, Lantis. I will join you.

I have two decks currently: Zombies and Healing. I'll just do the Zombie one, though, because I still need tweaks on the Healing one.

Zombie deck breakdown:

My Zombie deck has gone through various mutations over the years. It used to be a full mono-black deck, but with some research and some new cards, it has become a blue/black combination that has some nasty combos and hits hard and fast. A weakness of this deck is that most of the creatures in it can not block opponent creatures, but it's something I've compensated for with my card choices. All my zombies also have low toughness, which make them easy prey for cards that drop toughness.

Like Lantis, I'll go over the creatures individually and mention the cards that combo with them as I go over them.

Carrion Feeder


Carrion Feeder is the glue that brings this deck together. By itself, Carrion Feeder is unimpressive. It's a 1/1 that can't block. But the power of him comes through his ability to sacrifice a creature I control at will and then put a +1/+1 counter on him. Most of my strategies in games are ways to buff up Carrion Feeder or use his ability to buff all of my support cards in the deck. Every card in the deck is used to help this. I will list the ways below:

+Gravecrawler


Gravecrawler is a unique card. It’s a one-drop (only costs 1 mana to play), 2/1, which means you can easily get 2 damage on your opponent by turn 2. Like Carrion Feeder, it can't block. It’d be an overall solid card by itself, but the ability is what I’m talking about. It says that as long as I control a zombie, I can cast Gravecrawler from the graveyard. This is an amazing ability. Basically, if you play it right, he can never truly stay out of play.

This is made even better when paired with Carrion Feeder. If you need a creature to sacrifice to buff him up, what’s better than a zombie you can cast over and over again?

I combine Carrion Feeder/Gravecrawler with such cards as:

Diregraf Captain, which has an ability that says that whenever another zombie I control dies, an opponent loses 1 life. I’ll usually use this combo to drain life out of an opponent without even attacking. He also is the only zombie who can block in my deck, but has Deathtouch (which can kill a creature instantly if he deals damage to them), so he’s a fantastic blocker. He also gives other zombies I control +1/+1. Great guy.

Grave Pact, which says that when a creature I control dies, each other player has to sacrifice a creature (and who else better than something I can cast back?). I can clear my opponent’s board of creatures and leave them open to an assault by my zombies.

Yoke of the Damned, an enchantment which says that when a creature anywhere dies, destroy the enchanted creature. So I can put this on a tough-to-kill creature, sac Gravecrawler, and then immediately kill that problem child fast.

Tragic Slip is a nice one. By itself, it gives a creature -1/-1, which is helpful in some ways. Some creatures in Magic are indestructible, which means that any card that has “destroy” in their names don’t affect them and they cannot be killed by lethal combat damage. They are nasty customers. However, if their toughness drops to 0 or less, they are sent to the graveyard. That’s where Tragic slip is so useful. The secondary ability of the card states that if a creature died this turn, that the effect of the card becomes -13/-13 instead of -1/-1. I usually can sacrifice Gravecrawler, then use this card to take out cards that are indestructible or are tough to take out via traditional methods, like a card Lantis has in his deck called Fog Bank, which can’t be dealt combat damage.

+Endless Ranks of the Dead


This isn’t utilized much if I have Rooftop Storm out, but this is still significant for Carrion Feeder. Basically, this card will add more zombies to my ranks to use for attacking, blocking or sacrificing by Carrion Feeder to beef up the card combinations above.


+Gravecrawler + Rooftop Storm


This is a new addition to the deck and the reason it’s changed to blue/black. Rooftop Storm is an enchantment that states that any zombie spell I want to cast is now free. This is significant. Usually, the Carrion Feeder + Gravecrawler combo is limited to how much mana I have untapped in a turn. This card makes it so I can sacrifice and recast Gravecrawler UNLIMITEDLY, which means that Carrion Feeder could be an infinity/infinity creature.

I use this with all the combinations above with Gravecrawler to magnify the intensity of those effects.

Support & Special Mana

When you have a deck, you need a bunch of cards to support your strategy. Here are a few of the ones I use for Zombies:

Engineered Plague


Engineered Plague is quite nasty, especially against people who run themes of creature types (like zombies >_>). Basically, you can choose any creature type and their power and toughness are immediately dropped by 1. That means that if your opponent has a 1/1 on the field and this comes into play, that creature is immediately sent to the graveyard. It forces your opponents to hold their 1/1s and play more powerful creatures. Oh, and this effect stacks. So if you have 4 out and say “walls”, then all creatures that are walls get -4/-4, which makes most walls pretty much useless. I use this card to soften up the enemy for my low-power zombies to break through.

Plunge Into Darkness


Most of my zombies can’t block. Therefore, I’m generally in the position to take a lot of damage if I’m not careful. Plunge into Darkness helps me here. I can either choose to sacrifice any number of my creatures in order to get 3 life back per creature (which works well with Endless Ranks of the Dead generating tokens to feast on) OR I can pay X life, then look at the top X cards of my deck, put one in my hand, then remove the rest from the game (useful if I really need a card) OR I can do both. Very versatile and useful.

Sunken Ruins and Drowned Catacombs



Whenever you have a multi-color deck, even two colors, getting the right mana becomes harder than ever. That’s why I have these two cards in my deck. Drowned Catacomb is as it says. It comes into play tapped if you don’t have a swamp or an island, but the next turn, it’ll definitely give you black or blue mana.

Sunken Ruins, on the other hands, is a beast. As normal, it will only give you colorless mana. However, if you tap another mana and THEN tap this, it becomes a mana color converter. You can choose to turn the mana into 2 blues, a blue and a black, or two blacks. This is wonderful, as it’s flexible and let’s you play the mana that you need.

Other Cards
Dark Ritual is the standard black deck card. You pay one mana, you get 3. Amazing value. I have 4 in my deck.

Diabolic Tutor is a little expensive, but it helps you find the card you need asap.

Disentomb is necessary. Carrion Feeder can’t recast himself from the grave, so this is here as insurance.