Subject: Musings on TEMPEST Constructed Decks
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 06:43:57 GMT
From: ashsu@midway.uchicago.edu (Andrew S. Hsu)
Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc

Hi,

I looked over the preconstructed decks and these are my 2 cents.

Deep Freeze:
My first reaction was, "wow!  you get an avenging angel!!"  I will
probably play this deck or Swarm because I am a traditional
Blue/white/green creature/counter player. It has the most counters and is
mostly a white blue flying creature deck.  It has a touch of Shadow which
is nice and all of its creatures are relatively easy to get out.  The
ground turtles and the gaseous forms can provide good ground defense while
you pound from the air.  The master decoys, pacifisms and the puppet
strings are nice to avoid annoying creatures and get the air damage
through.  The counters are mostly of the cheap kind and has two of the 4
cost get another card counters.  the Tome is nice for more cards and the
precognition makes the counters even better.  A well rounded deck.

The Flames of Rath:
I have a mono-red deck and I like to play "Sligh" (now that I know what it
is).  So the one complaint (a major complaint) I have about this deck is
that the creatures are TOO expensive.  They are on the Huge side but
it doesn't have many reliable low cost creatures.  However, if this deck
gets the mana and gets rolling, I can see the potential.  Hopefully the
direct damage can fend off the smaller monsters in the beginning and
later the direct damage (especially rolling thunder) could be used to get
rid of the bigger creatures (many little creatures) and the
deck's intrinsic big creatures can stomp through.  The Maze of Shadows is
a nice touch but I think that it was unnecessary considering the amount of
DD the deck has.  Also once you get the mana, the Magmasaur could
function as a personal Wrath of God.  If it had Jackal Pupsor some staple
2/2 or 2/1 creature for 1R, I would play this deck. However, this deck
looks slow and with over half of it's creatures having 4 or more mana to
cast, I can see the mana screw potential/power sink fodder.  But hey!  You
get a Furnace of Wrath.

The Slivers:
I wish that this deck was 3 colors so it could encorporate more slivers.
I decided not to play this deck because of it's lack for any solid
creatures.  The deck ties deep freeze for the least creatures and when the
Mnemonic or Minwhip Sliver comes out, it is time to sacrifice.  This is
dangerously low defense.  The counter potential is there and may help this
deck very much.  The Fevered Convulsions is also helpful to get rid of
the opponent's creatures.  I don't know why Extinction is in this deck at
all.  It seems like the perfect card against this type of deck.  I guess
that after all your slivers get regeneration and flying, this deck could
be trouble but they are just too small.  However regeneration seems to be
extrememly powerful in an Incinerateless environment.  Lobotomy is also
powerful because of the notion of preconstructed decks.  Again, I think
red would have been a good addition to this deck offering the barbed
sliver to make the regenerating slivers more powerful.

Swarm:
I love this deck.  Aside from red sligh, I play a green variant.  I was
fortunate enough to get overrun at the prerelease and have abused this
card many times.  After looking at this deck, my complaint is that there
are no 1 cast green creatures.  Most of the creatures here are in the two
category making the 2-4 turns very strategic.  Also we see the slight
possibility for the fated Aluren-Recycle combo.  We shall see how this
turns out.The buyback of Anoint and elvish fury will be interesting as a
way to preserve the creatures.  I may be worried about flying but this
deck seems to have the decoys, pacifism and the Needle storm to prevent
death from above while stomping through underneath.  With 2 Overruns, this
deck is extremely scary.  Even with just three creatures, thats +9 trample
damage.

Some general notes:
I definitely want to get the preconstructed deck with the avenging angel.
I'm slave to artwork so I really don't have any choice.  Plus it doesn't
bother me too much because my personality fits with DFreeze If I can get
both the swarm and freeze, I'll play with the swarm (If uncountered,
overrun is just too powerful!!). Though I wish that it had G cost
creatures which may be uncounterable if played quickly.

I think that the sliver deck is the worst deck.  It has amazing defense
with the regenerating flying slivers.  However, the creatures are just too
weak.  The potential for a truly great offense is not there.  If the deck
needs to use a dark banishing or something to remove a blocker, the mana
may not bbe there to regenerate its extremely valuable creatures.  It is a
good thing that there are so few uncommons slivers because I couldn't
imagine sacrificing them.  I can't imagine casting a metallic sliver then
spending the mana to get a new card (unless it were a blocker).  The
Whispers of the Muse soaks up valuable regerating mana and so does the
essence bottle.  BTW, I'm sure this is the deck I will lose to.

I am surprised that there is so much white.  In three of the four decks,
there is one with white as a major color and 2 with it as secondary.
Black gets very little creature representation (2 types of sliver).  The
major deck types are respresented pretty well.  I interpret them as:

Counter-DFreeze
Burn-The Flames of Wrath
Weenie-Slivers
Stompy-Swarm

I wonder if they could have made a graveyard deck or a deck concentrating
on running the opponent out of cards.  My prediction is that the Swarm
will conquer before the first boosters are put in.  However, I would like
to applaud wizards for the balance.  Even though I like decks over others,
I think that they'll all put up a good fight.

Any comments would be appreciated.  As the pre-Arena season draws to a
close, I would like to try to do my best next season.
--
Andrew Hsu
ashsu@midway.uchicago.edu