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Mathas, the Instigator: a multiplayer deck for making havoc. http://mtgcommander.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=18688 |
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Author: | spacemonaut [ 2017-Aug-28 12:59 am ] |
Post subject: | Mathas, the Instigator: a multiplayer deck for making havoc. |
The goal of this deck is pretty simple: incentivise players to engage in combat (sometimes force them to), and create collaborative fun. It's a little bit of a group hug deck, except via making people beat each other up, so it's more like a group bear hug deck. You might win from your exploitation of the strife you instigate, but winning isn't the goal. I've tested it out and it's pretty fun for a relaxed casual game. Mathas, Fiend Seeker, the deck's commander, turns out to be extraordinary for this purpose. He lets me place Bounty counters on specific dangerous creatures and have players collaborate to take them down. Importantly, the collaboration against cards means it isn't specifically the player who's targeted (just a dangerous creature of theirs) which creates a level of indirection that's still fun & low-tension. Being red-white-black, Mathas gives us access to red-white combat tricks, white protective effects, white-black or black resurrection, and red and black removal. All of those are instrumental to the deck's game plan. AFAIK this deck has no infinite combos. Important note: Mathas's bounties stack. The same creature can be chosen multiple times, and will get an extra copy of the triggered ability. As long as the creature keeps at least one bounty counter, when it dies, each of those abilities will trigger separately. 3 bounties on the one creature = 6 life and 3 cards when it dies. TappedOut link: Mathas, the Instigator (value ~$150), or budget version (value ~$85, and could still be made cheaper) See further down for a breakdown of cards by function. Quote: Commander: Mathas, Fiend Seeker Creature (26) Adriana, Captain of the Guard Alms Collector Angelic Skirmisher Ankle Shanker Bastion Protector Boros Battleshaper Boros Reckoner Brutal Hordechief Charging Cinderhorn Feldon of the Third Path Gisela, Blade of Goldnight Grenzo, Dungeon Warden Grenzo, Havoc Raiser Guardian of the Gateless Harvester of Souls Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs Noxious Gearhulk Orzhov Advokist Ravos, Soultender Selfless Squire Solemn Simulacrum Souls of the Faultless Sun Titan Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts Treasury Thrull Tyrant's Familiar Enchantment (13) Aura of Silence Black Market Curse of Disturbance Curse of Opulence Curse of Vitality Duelist's Heritage Flameshadow Conjuring Ghostly Prison Gratuitous Violence Phyrexian Arena Rite of the Raging Storm True Conviction Underworld Connections Sorcery (6) Beacon of Unrest Damnable Pact Death by Dragons Disrupt Decorum Grave Upheaval Painful Truths Instant (9) Boros Charm Chaos Warp Comeuppance Crackling Doom Curtains' Call Master Warcraft Mortify Utter End Wear / Tear Artifact (8) Assault Suit Commander's Sphere Conqueror's Flail Darksteel Ingot Fellwar Stone Lightning Greaves Sol Ring Sword of the Animist Land (37) 5x Mountain 5x Plains 4x Swamp Blood Crypt Boros Garrison Command Tower Dragonskull Summit Evolving Wilds Exotic Orchard Ghost Quarter Mortuary Mire Myriad Landscape Needle Spires Nomad Outpost Opal Palace Orzhov Basilica Rakdos Carnarium Reliquary Tower Rupture Spire Scoured Barrens Secluded Steppe Shambling Vent Spinerock Knoll Temple of Triumph Terramorphic Expanse Wind-Scarred Crag Tokens used 1/1 white/black spirit with flying - from Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts 5/1 red Lightning Rager elemental - from Rite of the Raging Storm 3/3 red Ogre - from Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs 2/2 black zombie - from Curse of Disturbance Gold - from Curse of Opulence (In Commander 2017, there's several token cards that are Zombie tokens on one side and Gold on the other. I suggest grabbing those if you want to keep your tokens compact.) Playing this deck (if you want to) Cards sorted by function The basic plan
Assault Suit is a significant card in the deck. Here's what you'll loan out with it:
Finalising the game You can finalise the game through a combination of the following:
Strengths, weaknesses, and potential changes In the games I've played, this deck's been open and vulnerable in the first few turns, but steadily snowballs after that. It's dropped below 20 or even 10 life midgame, then with the benefit of bounties and lifelink effects it's begun climbing up again. Sometimes bounties bunch up and aren't getting claimed, so a couple of board wipes might be warranted. I'm going to see if I can give it a couple of cards for more consistent early-game defences. Changelist of cards I'm looking at:
Ruling notes for Mathas and his bounties
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Author: | Segrus [ 2017-Sep-03 8:54 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Mathas, the Instigator: a multiplayer deck for making havoc. |
I do enjoy Mardu combat manipulation decks. I've been grooming my own for a while now with Kor creatures and damage redirection. They can be a lot of fun without being too oppressive. I've been wanting to build Mathas myself, or perhaps switch over from Queen Marchesa, and there's a decent amount of good stuff here. I feel like there's a bunch of things you could do with the base you've got here, like more forced attack (plenty of stuff available there), other combat tricks (Gustcloak Savior, Reconnaissance, Sunforger), or timely indestructible (Nahiri's Machinations, Archangel Avacyn). But these are just examples and such, not suggestions. It's difficult to balance what you need and what you don't need. It is highly dependent on the meta it is being used in. So overall, cool deck. |
Author: | spacemonaut [ 2017-Sep-15 3:38 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Mathas, the Instigator: a multiplayer deck for making havoc. |
Segrus wrote: I do enjoy Mardu combat manipulation decks. I've been grooming my own for a while now with Kor creatures and damage redirection. They can be a lot of fun without being too oppressive. I've been wanting to build Mathas myself, or perhaps switch over from Queen Marchesa, and there's a decent amount of good stuff here. I feel like there's a bunch of things you could do with the base you've got here, like more forced attack (plenty of stuff available there), other combat tricks (Gustcloak Savior, Reconnaissance, Sunforger), or timely indestructible (Nahiri's Machinations, Archangel Avacyn). But these are just examples and such, not suggestions. It's difficult to balance what you need and what you don't need. It is highly dependent on the meta it is being used in. So overall, cool deck. Thank you!! I'm glad you enjoyed seeing this one. Thanks for the suggestions -- I've adopted a couple onto my potential changes list. I do want some more forced attacks, though I also want to avoid Avatar of Slaughter effects -- if everything attacks all the time, it's all tapped, meaning creatures with bounties on them can't block. (Once around the table may do some major damage. Thankfully there's some Goad for that.) This deck actually originally started out as a Queen Marchesa deck, built for giving away the Monarch token then letting people fight over it, but I decided Mathas was going to work out far better for fun & politics. I summarised my thoughts & reasoning in the top of this post here in case it may resonate or be helpful for you. (Sometime I'd like to make a combat manipulation deck that includes such cards as Portal Mage and Domineering Will -- but that will have to wait until I find a compelling theme to drive it.) |
Author: | Nigerian Prince [ 2017-Dec-14 11:20 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Mathas, the Instigator: a multiplayer deck for making havoc. |
I'm really intrigued by this deck. I've played a Gahiji, Honored One deck for a while now, motivating people to attack each other, but it's been getting a little stale. Also, table starts to see me as an evil manipulator, which is probably a fair assessment. I'm building Mathas, and I'm very curious to see how it will be received. How has the deck done for you? |
Author: | spacemonaut [ 2018-Jan-02 11:16 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Mathas, the Instigator: a multiplayer deck for making havoc. |
Nigerian Prince wrote: I'm really intrigued by this deck. I've played a Gahiji, Honored One deck for a while now, motivating people to attack each other, but it's been getting a little stale. Also, table starts to see me as an evil manipulator, which is probably a fair assessment. I'm building Mathas, and I'm very curious to see how it will be received. How has the deck done for you? I'm really positive about the feeling of this deck, but it's also got some issues I'm trying to figure out: essentially somewhat often, people don't actually go after the bounties, and I feel that breaks down the deck's point a bit. I find this Mathas deck works best in a 4-player game where at least a couple of other players are playing multiple creatures. Sometimes I've brought Mathas out to find I'm at a table where 2-3 players are playing no creatures other than their commander, and instead playing lots of instants, sorceries, enchantments, or artifacts -- then there's nothing for Mathas to put bounties on, and that's the heart of the deck's interactions. I've taken to checking with the table whether they're playing decks with much plan for playing creatures, and telling them I've got a fun deck to use but it relies on other people playing creatures. That helps me make sure Mathas is played in games where he's relevant, and in other games I just pick another deck. However, Mathas himself aside, this deck can get scarily strong if it's allowed to assemble its wall & start putting down threats. If that's my main goal, the bounties can serve as a sort of distraction to point peoples' attention elsewhere. In maybe half the games I've played, I've found people kind of just ignore the bounties and do whatever they were planning on originally. Once, I was in a game where there were like 6 different active bounties on creatures and none of them had been dealt with -- then someone played an "exile all creatures" card, which nullified the bounties entirely, which sucked! My initial build of the deck (above) was built on the assumption I wouldn't need to do any work to destroy creatures myself, but that was mistaken. I've since added Fumigate and a couple of other cards (I don't remember what they are right now) so that I have options if too many bounties build up. Hex is also on my list. I'm also looking at adding in more compulsory combat cards -- I think I added Goblin Spymaster recently, and I've also added Disrupt Decorum. Too much compulsory combat is bad because if everyone's swinging all the time their creatures aren't open to block and get killed, but one or two rounds of compulsory combat is good, and Goblin Spymaster usually gets killed after one or two rounds. I also probably need to verbally goad players into attacking each other for bounties more often. "Wouldn't drawing another card be great?" If there were a global Alhammarret's Archive in Mardu colors I'd use it to encourage people to chase after bounties. I'll update this post with the revised decklist once I feel it's improved, but the above is still a great starting point. One thing I did was replace Grave Upheaval with Sepulchral Primordial -- I found I was mostly just using Grave Upheaval to get one of my won cards back, which is a huge under-use of its potential, but one of my cards was often more threatening than any one single creature card from my opponents. So, I decided to tip that balance by giving myself the option to steal one thing from each of my opponents. I can still use Ravos, Soultender and Beacon of Unrest to get my own stuff back if I come across them, and they're cheaper. I've only ever gotten to share Mathas with Assault Cuirass once but I want to do that more often and I'm considering adding Godo, Bandit Warlord just to help me bring it out. The coins I bring have regularly been received very well. People usually are surprised and delighted, which makes me really happy, and usually want to take a closer look at them. In one friendly game when I brought them out for my first bounty, someone laughed and told me I should already win the game just for those. If you have atmospheric bounty coins available, I really recommend using them, since I find it really helps set a friendly tone. |
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