4c Spreading Seas - Butter Spread

// Lands
4 Seaside Citadel
2 Jungle Shrine
3 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Arid Mesa
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
3 Island
2 Plains
2 Forest
1 Mountain

// Creatures
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Acidic Slime
3 Sphinx of Jwar Isle

// Spells
4 Spreading Seas
4 Convincing Mirage
4 Ardent Plea
4 Captured Sunlight
4 Ajani Vengeant
4 Day of Judgment

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Pyroclasm
SB: 4 Rhox War Monk
SB: 4 Baneslayer Angel
SB: 3 Pithing Needle

This is basically Gerry Thompson's Spreading Seas deck, except it has a better anti-Boros sideboard, and it has Acidic Slime over Sphinx of the Lost Truths because getting something on the board now is generally preferred to getting something on the board later -- and it can handle things other than lands, such as Eldrazi Monument.

With 45% of the entire deck (79.4% of the nonlands) being land disruption of some sort, you'll have a solid chance of getting the opponent to a mono-blue deck.

It has essentially auto-win game against every non-U three color deck (Jund and Naya) and every 4+ colour deck. It basically autoloses to Boros game 1, but picks up g2 and g3 fairly easily with the sideboard (but not as easy as it looks). Pyroclasm makes a large difference and is much better than Deft Duelist because it can clear out Geopedes and Step Lynxes, while Duelist just blocks the bad cards like Goblin Guide.

The Pithing Needles are for when you go against UW Fog, which may be this deck's worst matchup. They also work against Eldrazi, a relatively untested matchup.

It's a still relatively unexplored deck and it's pretty much a meta choice. It's great if your field is 33% Jund because you WILL WIN AGAINST JUND, but other than that... who knows?

We'll need more testing.

BUT STILL... AUTOWINS AGAINST JUND!

The Daily Deck Goes on Break!

Yes, while the Daily Deck may have just started, I'm taking Thanksgiving off from blogging on both Greatplay.net and this site. Both sites will return to regular updates on November 30th.

Hopefully by then Worlds will be over and we will have a brand new meta to ponder decklists in.

See you then!

Four Colour Cascade II

// Lands
3 Savage Lands
3 Jungle Shrine
3 Rupture Spire
2 Arid Mesa
2 Marsh Flats
2 Verdant Catacombs
3 Forest
3 Mountain
3 Swamp
2 Plains

// Creatures
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Baneslayer Angel
2 Enlisted Wurm

// Spells
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Terminate
4 Blightning
2 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Captured Sunlight
2 Ajani Vengeant
3 Bituminous Blast

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Celestial Purge
SB: 3 Dragon's Claw
SB: 3 Day of Judgment
SB: 3 Goblin Ruinblaster
SB: 1 Terminate
SB: 1 Maelstrom Pulse

This deck has been placing 4-0 on MTGO Standard in nearly every tournament for the past few weeks, so it's obviously doing something right. If I were to play it, I would be worried about running Baneslayer Angel -- I'd want to get some Broodmates in there to compliment it.

Barbed Boros II

// Lands
4 Teetering Peaks
4 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Plains (1)
3 Mountain (2)

// Creatures
4 Elite Vanguard
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Goblin Guide
2 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Plated Geopede
3 Kor Skyfisher
2 Ranger of Eos

// Spells
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
3 Burst Lightning
3 Manabarbs

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Harm's Way
SB: 4 Celestial Purge
SB: 4 Baneslayer Angel
SB: 2 Ranger of Eos
SB: 1 Manabarbs

This list is an improvement from my previous Alternate Boros, but it was not created by me. It was created by Kedi and I lifted the list 100% verbatim and posted it here, but I'm pretty sure he would be okay with that.

I tested it out a few games and it plays faster and better than my previous Boros, but it does have just a tiny bit less late-game staying power. However, the old list didn't have a large late-game anyway, so this list is better than the previous one.

Since it's not my list, I'm not exactly sure how you board, but I imagine Harm's Way for red damage spells and Purge for black things works well. Baneslayer for the mirror and Eldrazi, and more Rangers and Barbs for big control decks.

Try it out.

Five Colour Cascade Control II

// Lands
3 Jungle Shrine
3 Savage Lands
2 Seaside Citadel
1 Crumbling Necropolis
4 Rupture Spire
2 Exotic Orchard
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Marsh Flats
1 Arid Mesa
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Plains
2 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Island

// Creatures
4 Rhox War Monk
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Baneslayer Angel
3 Broodmate Dragon

// Spells
4 Blightning
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Captured Sunlight
3 Ajani Vengeant
3 Bituminous Blast

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Jund Charm
SB: 4 Esper Charm
SB: 3 Lightning Bolt
SB: 3 Day of Judgment
SB: 1 Broodmate Dragon

This deck is a more rapid departure against the Esper Charm / Blightning deck, and I consider it to be the "fair ground" point between Four Colour and Five Colour Cascade. The problem with the Four Colour Cascade deck is that while it does indeed address the correct meta and doesn't think a t3 Maelstorm Pulse will kill Boros Bushwhacker, it gets owned by the Five Colour or anything that can transform into the Infinite Blightnings of Doom in the mirror.

This deck has the same preboard plan as Four Colour Control... use a solid blocker (Rhox) and solid removal (Pulse) to actually answer the opposing aggro deck. It is not coincidental that all three cascade-into spells are the three best to handle Eldrazi, while also being solid against Jund and Boros.

When it comes time to play unfair against other control decks, you can easily take out 4 Rhoxes and 4 Pulses and put in 4 Esper Charms, 1 Broodmate, and 3 Day of Judgements. You are now playing the Infinite Blightings of Doom.

Another departure from this deck and a few other decks is the Broodmate Dragon over Enlisted Wurm thing. This is a smart choice, because even if you don't Enlisted Wurm into Blast into Bloodbraid into Blightning or don't Enlisted Wurm into Baneslayer, you're not beating Broodmate. Broodmate is like a 4/4 flier that cascades into a 4/4 flier all the time. (And even if you do Wurm -> Slayer, it's handled by the same removal as Broodmate.)

The boarding is what makes this deck great. I've figured I probably should include board plans with each deck, so:

Boros: -4 Maelstrom Pulse, -3 Blightning / +3 Lightning Bolt, +4 Jund Charm
Jund: No boarding (Or -3 Ajani Vengeant / +3 Day of Judgement)
Eldrazi: -3 Ajani Vengeant, -1 Broodmate Dragon, -1 Bituminous Blast, -1 Rhox War Monk / +3 Lightning Bolt, +3 Day of Judgement
Vampires: No boarding (Or -4 Maelstorm Pulse / +4 Jund Charm)
Mirror / Other Control: -4 Maelstorm Pulse, -4 Rhox War Monk / +3 Day of Judgement, +1 Broodmate Dragon, +4 Esper Charm
Crypt/Graveyard/Unearth Decks: -4 Maelstorm Pulse / +4 Jund Charm
Mill/Fog: +4 Esper Charm, -4 Rhox War Monk

No Posts Friday

I've changed my mind and decided not to post on Fridays. Instead, I will be getting you decks Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

See you around.

Alternate Boros

// Lands
4 Teetering Peaks
4 Marsh Flats
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
6 Mountain
2 Plains

// Creatures
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Plated Geopede
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Hell's Thunder
4 Goblin Ruinblaster

// Spells
4 Burst Lightning
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Manabarbs

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Harm's Way
SB: 4 Celestial Purge
SB: 4 Ajani Vengeant
SB: 3 Earthquake


There's not too much to say about this. I played it on MWS for seven matches, won one match -- accidentally and unintentionally disconnected due to lag in the other six. Not a good day.

This is a meta-deck. The current meta is very land hungry at the moment, and it only got worse with Cascade Control tapping out a million lands a turn. This deck takes Ruinblasters and Manabarbs to stop the opponent from ever getting anything out of their lands until they're dead to a barrage of Hell's Thunder (best RDW threat ever) and Steppe Lynxes.

Just kill them before they kill you.

Four Colour Cascade

// Lands
4 Jungle Shrine
4 Savage Lands
2 Rootbound Crag
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Sunpetal Grove
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
2 Arid Mesa
2 Mountain
2 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Plains

// Creatures
3 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Broodmate Dragon

// Spells
3 Lightning Bolt
4 Blightning
3 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Captured Sunlight
3 Ajani Vengeant
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Bituminous Blast

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Jund Charm
SB: 4 Goblin Ruinblaster
SB: 3 Acidic Slime
SB: 2 Mind Rot
SB: 1 Lightning Bolt
SB: 1 Sprouting Thrinax

I decided to play wildly different from the Five Colour Cascade from yesterday because I wasn't winning with it. It was far too slow for my liking.

With Deny Reality gone, blue existed only for Rhox War Monk, which could be replaced by the more all-around Sprouting Thrinax, and Esper Charm, which was not good enough to be the only blue card in the deck.

Enlisted Wurm was also not pulling his weight -- sometimes it was straight Cascade Lottery but other times it was Wurm into... Esper Charm. Whee... I think I'm just unlucky.

This deck has all the spells required to beat Nissa Aggro first and foremost, while retaining good matchups with the rest of the field. The additional spells at the bottom of the curve speed up the deck, and the Garruks + Ajanis can still give control a hard time without having to clear out their hand obsessively.

Baneslayers no longer fit here because they now get killed all the time because you're no longer clearing out their hand. Hopefully Broodmates can win the game for you.

This will be the list I develop over the next few days. I'd like to thank Glux because this is mostly his list that I modified.

(Honorable Mention: Old 5c Cascade from the previous post with Sphinx of Jwar Isle over Enlisted Wurm.)

Five Colour Cascade Control

// Lands
4 Rupture Spire
3 Jungle Shrine
2 Seaside Citadel
2 Arcane Sanctum
2 Savage Lands
3 Exotic Orchard
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Island

// Creatures
3 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Baneslayer Angel
4 Enlisted Wurm

// Spells
4 Esper Charm
3 Grixis Charm
4 Captured Sunlight
3 Day of Judgement
4 Bituminous Blast

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Maelstrom Pulse
SB: 4 Blightning
SB: 4 Ajani Vengeant
SB: 3 Jund Charm

I didn't set out to make my own deck; I actually started with a direct netdeck of Chase Lamm's 2nd Place List at the Starcitygames 5k. I played five matches with it on Magic Workstation (the only testing program I have) and kept losing at the very end of each game when I should have the match locked up. I also got mana screwed a bit even with 27 lands, just because of how high the curve is.

I also noticed that as far as I could tell, Deny Reality did absolutely nothing. It bounced a CIPT land against control, but if you wanted to do that, there were better cards to accomplish that goal, and you could lower your curve.

I also noticed that before you board, if you lost the roll, you lose to aggro.

So enter the 3 Grixis Charm / 3 Sprouting Thrinax / 4 Esper Charm package for cascading into. All three cards work well against both aggro and control.

Grixis Charm bounces a CIPT land against control, and can do really well if you snag a Rupture Spire. Against aggro, it's a 3cmc removal spell.

Sprouting Thrinax is a chump blocker against aggro that blocks four times, and a "wrath-proof" 3/3 attacker against control.

Esper Charm makes your opponent discard cards, or draw you out of ruts.

Moving up the list, the 4 Bloodbraid / 4 Captured Sunlight is the same as in all commonly accepted cascade decks. However, I added Day of Judgements for added stay-in-the-game against aggro. They're swappable with Ajani Vengeants against control.

In the 5cmc, I still have the Baneslayers and Bituminous Blasts, but I dropped the Deny Reality because it doesn't really do anything besides cascade.

At the top is 4 awesome Enlisted Wurm. Enigma Sphinx was pushing the curve a bit too upward for me. It's great when you get up there, but getting up there and staying in control can be hard.

For the sideboard, Pulse kills the Planeswalkers of Nissa Aggro, Blightning does what Blightning does (good against control and Nissa), Ajani Vengeant does what is already described, and Jund Charm sweeps the boards of Boros / Token-y things while also removing the graveyards of any Open the Vaults or Unearth-Crypt of Agadeem deck.

I'll be developing this list until I give it up for something better.

Eldrazi Green (Nissa Monument)

The first decklist of this blog is the new "Deck to Beat" on the Standard Block, the mono-green elf aggro deck piloted to a first place finish by Kali Anderson at the Starcitygames Nashville 5k.

// Lands
4 Oran-rief, The Vastwood
20 Forest

// Creatures
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Noble Hierarch
4 Nissa's Chosen
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Elvish Archdruid
3 Great Sable Stag
2 Master Of The Wild Hunt
3 Ant Queen

// Spells
4 Nissa Revane
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Eldrazi Monument

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Acidic Slime
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 3 Mycoloth
SB: 2 Windstorm
SB: 1 Great Sable Stag
SB: 1 Mold Shambler
SB: 1 Eldrazi Monument

This deck powers up green creatures by just dropping it's hand like last Standard season's Elfball decks, which attempted to beat the metagame in pretty much the same way -- by outward assault.

While the deck loses Regal Force to draw and no longer has Burrenton Forge-Tender to protect against red sweepers, it gains sweeper protection from Oran-Reef and a second Garruk in the form of Nissa, which can chain out a near endless stream of 2/3s, and a Eldrazi Monument to just straight up win.

Also, unlike last season, nearly the entire deck is out of Pyroclasm/Fallout range except for the delicate Llanowar-Noble mana start.

The deck seems initially weak to Baneslayer Angel, having absolutely no way to defeat it except for a straight rush, and weak to Pithing Needle shutting down it's main Nissa engine.

For the meantime, though, it beats Jund and most other decks quite quickly, and is too fast for most control to handle.  This deck will probably necessitate Needles to defeat, which will end up with this deck getting some Needle destruction like possibly sideboard Naturalize, more Acidic Slimes or even red for Vithian Renegades.

Should be fun to play on Workstation until the meta adapts to solve it.

The First Post

Welcome to The Daily Deck!

This is a fast and easy blog run by Peter Hurford, known to most other Magic internet players as Greg_the_Egg.

In this blog, I am going to focus a post each weekday on a decklist.  Usually it will be the tweaked version of whatever I happen to be playing around on Workstation, with a little bit of commentary on why I'm playing what I'm playing.  Occasionally the list might be a list by someone else.

So if you're ever looking to see what I'm playing, make sure to look here.