Magic the Gathering

Except when would you ever play tibalt over Ash Zealot, or double vexing devil, probably never unless your insane. RDW does best by applying tons of pressure before your opponent stabilizes, one turn for them to catch their breath and do things is a lot. Tibalt doesn't apply pressure, he is slow and requires you pitch cards (cards you can't pick).

Read bonfire, read it very closely (hell read it 3 times xD), flip bonfire turn 3 with two dudes, suppose the rakdos dude and ash zealot, clear board and tick 6 life off turn 3. That sounds amazing.

As far as pillar v. magma spray, pillar, exiling the creature is very relevant a lot of times.

ok one for the when i would play tibalt over ash zealot i wouldnt xD. i would play him over double vexing devil though and i wouldnt play him over double rakdos cackler (or whatever the name is) and probably would play him over goblin arsonists.

basically hes just a good card bro play test him the discarding a card at random isnt all that bad when all your cards do good damage. Plus discarding 2 cards is definitly worth 5 damage imo.

ok and really ok well same scenario rakdos dude and ash zealot turn 3 pull a 5 damage thunder then play the 2 mana rakdos dude and swing. 12 damage one turn literally doubled because i didnt have bonfire of the damned of course some of it might be blocked but probably like at least 9 of it is getting though you might lose somebody to blockers

also im not even using pillar as removal its mostly just for a poke to their face if they stablalise at like 3 health but it does kinda good at removal anyway

the worst card in the deck right now imo is stormkirk noble. Hes only good if hes played turn one and hes too slow i need a switch for him honestly xD.

best cards are vexing devil, ash zealot, rakdos 2/1 (3/2) unleash guy, and 5 damage thunder bolt

After my goblin deck was destroyed by the Dawn Elemental/Worship combo (which hurts because it came from my pile), I decided to make an exalted deck. Not to mention that I'm finally trying a new deck.

What do you guys think of this? 63 cards in total.

4 Sublime Archangel
2 Battlegrace Angel
3 Aven Squire
4 Duty-Bound Dead
2 Knight of Glory
3 Knight of Infamy
2 Servant of Nefarox
2 Tormented Soul
2 Deathbringer Liege
3 Silent Arbiter
2 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Guardians of Akrasa
1 Neferox, Overlord of Grixis

2 Nevermore
3 Angelic Benediction
2 Whispersilk Cloak
1 Spirit Mantle

9 Plains
9 Swamp
2 Cathedral of War
4 Isolated Chapel

Four Sublime Archangel... Well, your spending a lot there...
But It is a damn good card.

First bit of advice though, try to cut 3 cards. You want as few cards in your deck as possible so you can draw your best stuff. And since 60 in the minimum...

3 Silent Arbiter looks redundant to me. That kind of effect is excellent for this deck, but additional ones don't do anything. I understand insurance in the event of killspells, so I guess it's justifiable at that level, but I'd use only two, myself.
Kinda feel the same way about Angelic Benediction... except multiple copies do actually do something...

I think you'll want more ways to protect your guys, too, other than just the cloaks and mantle. Your opponent can simply kill the one creature you're attacking with and essentially taking the whole combat step away from you.

Adding to that, I think offensive cards like Go For The Throat or Doom Blade will go well in that deck.

I would suggest removing the Servant of Neferox. For a 3 cost creature that's only a 3/1 is a bit much to me. That and there are easy burns to get rid of that exalted, Like Flames of The Firebrand.

I'd also remove that Guardians of Akrasa. You really only have one of him in there, and to me I find him to be a great defender for his cost and effect, but at the same time, the fact that you only have one of him gives you the chance of pulling him when you need him, rare.

Yes, the decklist was quite lacking in removal, as well.

Also, your original list had more white than black, so you'll have wanted to alter the Plain to Swamp ratio. You do have fixing in the form of Isolated Chapel which is good, but you still need to consider which side you're leaning more on.

Though it can wait until you've finalized your list.

Well, just got back from a MTG tournament.

Got 3rd place out of 22 participants. I find that very good considering that my deck was Red/White Deck, and everyone else either Mono White or Mono Black decks.

My friend that built an Mono-Black Exalted/Infect Deck got second, and another friend placed first with an Mono-Black Sacrifice Deck.

All in all, good times.

Me against the Mono-Black Sacrifice Deck :



Winners. I'm on the left, my friend with the exalted deck is on the right. Other friend in the middle.

Very nice. It seems that Boros-colored deck worked out well for you.
Haha, nice shot of you and your friends, too.
Exactly what was his sac-engine, though? Trading Post or something?

On another note, I went to the midnight prerelease for Return to Ravnica last night. Not bad, I went 3-1 with my Azorius-splash-green control deck. Didn't get any really exciting pulls from my packs though, but I got the new Niv, which is kinda nice.
My friend pulled THREE mythics though, none of which he could use, all of which would've ben great in my own pull. One of those Mythics: Jace, Architect of Thought. The one card I wanted to see most. I was so jealous... He even pulled Isperia, Azorius's guild leader, even though he was Golgari. And in his proze pack, he got yet another mythic: the Worldspine Wurm, the other card I really wanted to see, though just because I'm a big time Timmy.

Hey had stuff that were Undying, paired with Blood Artists, Gravecrawlers, and Degraf's Ghoul, I lost within 7 turns both games since he could destroy my human swarm real quick.

Blood Artist and any sacrifice outlet will destroy people if not answered right away... All that life draining adds up quickly.

Went to a prelease as well, did terrible (than again I am terrible at limited), while it was a ton of fun, I get the feeling that you really want to be in either white or blue (mostly white really) in some way, picked golgari, although if I had to go back, I'd probably pick selesnya.

Bar none the most fun pre-release I've been to however.

Selesnya and Azorius were the most popular ones, with Golgari trailing, at the shop I go to. Seemed to me Detain was better than Populate, at least in limited. One Selesnya player I played, pretty good player, but I just had him locked down with the promo Archon and the Detention Sphere, the "multi-O-Ring" as I call it.

Unleash is pretty crazy though. Barely won against a Rakdos player I was up against. Had to Wrath the board in both our games. He had a ton of power on the board fairly quickly. Thankfully, he unleashed everything he played so I did get some points of damage in before my Wrath effect.

Golgari was the most popular by a mile, mostly because it has all the money right now and tehy were legacy players (abrupt decay FTW). Detain is nuts, most pros were doing it or selesnya.

Yeah, arresting your opponents permanents for a turn is powerful. Love how detain sometimes works on noncreature nonland permanents, lock down planeswalkers and such.

And abrupt decay... Hope that's worth a lot so I can sell any I pull for a high price. I don't play legacy (I'm just not that good a player), so it won't see much use from me.

It will see legacy/modern play, so your probably going to see a pretty penny for it, if it sees standard play, you'll see a even shinier one

also, you don't have to be a good player to do well in legacy, I blow chunks at Limited for one..

Well, if I can say so myself, I'm pretty decent at limited, though I'm also in it for the cards so somedays I'll have a messy pool because I sometimes took what I wanted in a draft and not neccessarily what was useful for the direction I was going with my deck.
It may be just because there's more luck involved in getting the right cards for your deck and working with what you have in limited.

In sanctioned constructed is where I'm not so good since I wouldn't know how to beat popular decks or how to sideboard well, or even know how to build a sideboard. As I've said before in an earlier post about a tourney I went to, I just netdecked a sideboard for the infect deck I was running, with a couple of small innovations since my deck wasn't (completely) a netdeck.

The biggest problem for me is that tournament decks have all kinds of cards that seem so narrowly focused in my opinion, like abrupt decay. "Destroy target nonland permanent with converted mana cost 3 or less." My casual-playing friends and I always go big with our strategies, our playgroup being full of Johnnies and Timmies. That won't destroy the Eldrazi or Darksteel whatever they played.
So I wouldn't know that much about narrowly focused cards that are actually really good. Took me a while to realize Gut Shot was a good card, since it apparently killed Delver of Secrets for 0 mana.

On a different note, I did see a kinda budget Legacy deck that looked pretty sweet to me; a suicide black deck. Forget it's contents exactly but it involved Death's Shadow.

Sideboarding comes from experience, testing and most importantly, research. The best way to do so is to (no joke) play the decks everyone else is playing, theorycraft all you want, unless you have hands on experience with the deck on both sides of the field, all you have is theory, no experience playing against, no idea how to go about applying hate or anything.

Easiest way to research for legacy or standard is forums and star city, usually you find a article or graph breaking down the meta (what everyone is playing) and you make your sideboard decisions as such.

Aggro and Control are easy to board (relatively speaking) once you get the hang of it, combo is tricky as you board based on hate, not based on the decks strategy, further, you also typically slow down 2-3 turns, depending on the combo.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em..then beat them later ;).

(As far as budget legacy, I always recommend building tribal, they are easy to build budget versions of and the money cards they do use carry over between decks)

Hmm... Delver decks are expensive though, since Snapcasters are 25 bucks a pop, though nothing really stops me from using proxies in not sanctioned games.

Star City, huh... Feel like I've heard of that before.

And tribal for budget legacy... Interesting. I already know Goblins are apparently really good. The best thing I could think of, though when thinking up a Legacy-legal deck was a Mono-Black Aggro, likely suicide.
Speaking of that... Even though he's expensive, I did think Bob would make a great addition to the list... Not that I'm gonna buy him since I'm not a tourney player or rich, but, what kind of deck is he better in, aggro or control? 2/1 is a nice body at 2 mana, but he is basically letting you draw two a turn.

Bob is typically found in control lists with curves that top out at 3 usually (excluding force of will), he's also 50 partially because of modern (prior to modern, he was 35, same with goyf, prior to modern, you could trade a JtMS for goyf), bob isn't a really aggressive card, yes he beats for two, but in a suicide-black list, you already have a bunch of cards that are goig to hurt playing, you have enough redundancy to where bob isn't usually needed, although I'd have to see a list tbh.

Well, I never made a concrete list, but the inspiration was Death's Shadow. So I thought to put in stuff like phyrexian mana spells like Vault Skirge or Dismember for removal. Saw Vampire Lacerator and thought that'd be nice too. And recently I discovered Snuff Out.