Subject: Stronghold Constructed Deck Review
Date: 26 Feb 1998 07:10:59 GMT
From: rscottk@aol.com (RScottK)
Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc

Hey all you Arena players!  I just came from a small shop "prerelease" which
was actually an event designed to get folks into the next Arena season.  About
20 people showed up.  We each got a Stronghold preconstructed deck (our choice)
and 2 Tempest boosters we could use to modify the deck.  I don't remember the
names of these decks, but here are my first thoughts on them:

"Black Discard deck" - My brother-in-law chose this one and turned out to be
not his style at all.  He was swept in the first round but looking through his
deck, and seeing how it played, I think it has real potential.  This is a pure
black control/denial deck with some interesting twists.  The creatures were
mostly crap and I'd modify them greatly or make it creatureless and a 2-color
deck with a bit of burn to get those few creatures that slip into play before
the discard lock clamps on.

"Red/Blue counterburn" - I think this is the weakest of the four decks.  Not
enough burn (and mostly those junky Lightning Blasts & buyback fireballs which
were always sitting in people's hands uncast and they waited and waited to
build up mana).  The blue control is OK, with Propagandas and the buyback
twiddle and a few other interesting bits.  But people who had these decks
pretty much got abused in the tourney.  My sister played this deck and finally
won some games when she sided in some blue shadow she had gotten in the Tempest
boosters.

"Green/Red Spike Deck" - This one turned out to be the bomb.  Used properly,
those annoying spikes just gave everyone fits, tossing around counters, sacking
counters for cheap life-gains, and enough red cheese to cut down most opponents
creatures (there are few fatties in the other decks).  I faced a spike deck in
the 2nd round and one of the cards he put in it from the Tempest boosters was
an Eledamri's Vineyard!  Strong, strong card for this deck.

"Black/White en-cor" - This is the deck I chose.  Having played in the
pre-release on Saturday I knew the en-cors would be strong, and this one had
lots of goodness:  Trampling en-cors, flying en-cors, a few shadows, a couple
black regenerators, Lab Rats, lots of black creature removal.  I got a Spirit
Mirror and Disturbed Burial in my Tempest packs which worked wonderfully in
here.  And by and large the en-cor decks were strong, challenged mainly by the
Spike decks, which could frustrate the en-cors by getting out faster swarms and
big tramplers which just slap around the redirection dudes and regenerators.

Well that's my .02 on the the new Preconstructed decks.  See you in arena play!

Roger "Super Scrub" Keith