MtG Decktype Compendium

Started by Kenny_C.002 March 27th, 2007 10:13 AM
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Rokkenjima
Seen June 16th, 2013
Posted July 10th, 2012
1,849 posts
19.6 Years
Hey they did one for YGO, why not MtG? Okay probably because deck types change rapidly, at least in Standard anyway. Also, nobody cares about block. XD

I'll start as early as I can remember, and work on type 2 from there on. Extended is too hard to categorize, as well as legacy. Vintage is just vintage and nobody cares about it other than them rich ppl.

Odyssey/Onslaught Standard
The Odyssey Onsalught Standard (several years ago) consisted of 4 main deck types:

Tog
Blue/Black control deck that finishes using psychatog and upheaval. Stalls the early game with bounce and creature disruption and churn through the deck using cards like compulsion, and countering big threats with counterspell and cicular logic.

UG Madness
Blue/Green cards that uses the discard and madness mechanic for a lightning-fast aggressive deck that sometimes splashes for the 4 logics as a light permission. Other forms just go straight aggro. Interestingly, this deck is almost entirely of commons and uncommons.

Slide
Ranges from White/Red to White/Red/Green creature-based variants. Both types of decks uses mainstay astral slide and lightning rift to stall the early game and to use the lightning rift to slam them for the 20 damage, or slide out an exalted angel so she's a 3 mana 4/5 flyer with spirit link. Creature-based variants have more staying power in terms of getting the cycling cards coming back, but generally are less reactive. The common variant is the WR one.

Goblins
Lightning fast with turn 2 warchief chaining to turn 3 pile drivers with haste. Capable of turn 3 kills. Mono-red variants play an early aggressive style using sharpshooters for a quicker kill, while black/red variants also have the game-ending patriarch's bidding, which brings all of their goblins back from the grave for a second round of hasted kills.

Monoblack Control
Semi-rogue deck that uses heavy creature destruction and sometimes even discard to kill off early threats. Coincidentally, this also helps power a game-ending haunting echoes, as all of a sudden the opponent will be without threats, and monoblack can just sit back and stall the game to win by deck out (or drop a shade ftw). Usually a resolved haunting echoes would generate a concession.

Wake
Dominant decktype after counterspell rotated out of standard. The first big-mana deck it is, and it is Blue/White/Green control. Green is to accelerate and play moment's peace to stall the early game. White has board control with WoG. Blue draws and counters. When the time is right, wake drops its namesake Mirari's Wake, which doubles their mana base, allowing them to draw more, counter more, and do everything else more. An EoT decree of justice seals the deal.

RB Reanimator
Reanimator using red and black. Goal is to dump big guys into the grave using entomb and buried alive, then reanimate them using stitch together and zombify. Buried alive always takes anger as one of the 3 to be dumped in, and generally they pick either Visara (creature destruction), Arcanis (draw cards), or Akroma (Own target red deck) for the remainder.
Rokkenjima
Seen June 16th, 2013
Posted July 10th, 2012
1,849 posts
19.6 Years
Onslaught/Mirrodin
Generally a boring standard, with only really 3 deck types that stand out from the rest.

Affinity
Big daddy of the standard. Aggressive using fast "two-mana producing" lands and affinity cards. Uses skullclamp to draw lots of cards, as well as using arcbound ravager to pwn. A faster kill was made using disciple of the vault and sacing everything to the ravager. Later variants (due to clamp banning) used cranial plating for faster damage, but less drawing power. The entire archetype was nerfed when all of the lands, disciple, and ravager himeself were all banned from standard.

12Post
Big-mana deck that used the fact that ravager was so fast that removal was practically useless unless it killed artifacts. 12post used the namesake card "cloudpost" and 8 tutors for them (amounting to 12) to get to large amounts of mana to power a 9-mana tooth and nail, which found their winning condition (which used to be leonin abunas + platinum angel, or vampire + triskelion). The rest of the deck was designed to be anti-affinity or mindslaver, which later became mana disruption when affinity was banned. Later variants used urza lands instead of cloudpost, due to the advent of ponza.

Red Deck Wins/Ponza
Generally Red Deck Wins and Ponza are relatively similar. Ponza blew up lands, and was ideal for killing TnN as well as affinity. Red Deck Wins was just heavy against artifacts (aka affinity). Both used powerful burn and arc slogger to finish the game relatively quickly after destroying the early beatings. A note to that was that it beat 12post in the finals when affinity first appeared.

Slide
Slide was still around, and was designed to be White/Green and was designed solely to beat affinity to the ground. Every card in that deck was anti-affinity in some form or shape! The same principle of the original slide still applied (stall the game with slide and WoG, win with a winning condition).

Goblins
No change from before, except during the short period when skullclamp was around, in which goblins went to hyper-mode with giant biddings and laughing an WoGs even though they overextended. There was no such thing as overextending with skullclamp around. Died down later because it was slower than affinity. Monored variant fell out of favour and the black/red variant was the common one.

Mirrodin/Kamigawa

Tooth and Nail
The Urza land variant ran rampant, with 3 winning conditions (TnN, Rude Awakening, and mindslaver) as well as heavy land disruption from the green. TnN was the big one coming out of Mirrodin after Affinity's death. Same thing as before. Monogreen.

Monoblue Control
Control using only blue cards. Wins by Miroku, the Clouded Mirror (of victory). Jushi Apprentice variants also occured.

Greater Gifts
Uses the namesakes Gifts Ungiven to tutor for stuff, and greater good to sac the 6-mana dragons for massive card advantage. Lots of variations between builds, but always had green, blue, and black. Green for greater goods and acceleration, blue for gifts, and black for Kokusho.

White Weenies
Monowhite with efficient small beaters with leaders such as that stupid dog whose name I have forgotten. Plays jitte, the new most hated card in standard.

Viridian Rats
A bunch of rats and viridian shaman. Aggro-control deck that punishes the hand, kills early creatures, and then wins with the jitte. Shaman destroyed any artifact threats.

Alarm
A combo deck using Intruder Alarm, the green spellbomb (don't remember name), and forbidden orchard to generate infinite mana and win. Rest of the deck rounded out with card drawing, and kiki-jiki for alternative alarm winning condition.

Just to show you that I never paid attention to this standard. I don't remember anymore decks... Oh, all creature and creature-based decks played jittes. 4 of them. Automatically.
Rokkenjima
Seen June 16th, 2013
Posted July 10th, 2012
1,849 posts
19.6 Years
Kamigawa/Ravnica
The beginnings of tier 2 decks galore.

Greater Gifts
Monoblue Control
White Weenies
Boros Deck Wins
Ghazi-Glare (+ Dovescape Variant)
Solar Flare
Enduring Ideal
Zoo
Izzet Tron
Owling Mine
Heartbeat
Heazy Street
Ghost Dad
Ghost Husk
Hand-in-Hand
Rokkenjima
Seen June 16th, 2013
Posted July 10th, 2012
1,849 posts
19.6 Years
Ravnica/Coldsnap/Time Spiral (current)

Ghazi Glare
UW Tron
UW Control
Proclamation
Boros Deck Wins
WG weenies
Solar Flare
Solar Pox
UB Dralnu
Dragonstorm
Zoo
Vore
Wildfire Tron (aka Izzettron)
Firemane Control
Scryb Force
Heazy Street
Rack
UG Aggro
Blink Riders
KarstenBot BabyKiller
URW Control/Rean/Aggro
Pickles
Dredge
Sliver Deck Wins

digi-kun

Hourai NEET

Age 33
Male
Seen March 12th, 2018
Posted July 12th, 2016
4,638 posts
19.3 Years
I started playing FNM in Kamigawa/Ravinica

i think i remember playing against Control, not neccesarrily mono-blue but it was really annoying, actually i think most of it then was Izzet-Tron XD um, i was surprised with the Owling Mine build actually, make the opponent draw cards and have em take damage from it? genius XD eh, I saw Zoo a lot too, welll, where i was