At my local multiplayer game, several of us were discussing tournament decks that don’t translate well into multiplayer decks. Primarily we talked about Psychatog and Arcbound Ravager decks. It was the general consensus that both of these decks have trouble in multiplayer because they devote so many resources to taking out one opponent that they are vulnerable to the rest of the table.
I, however, felt that a Ravager Affinity deck could do well in multiplayer with some changes... so I decided to try to develop a multiplayer version of Ravager that could take out a table full of people.
As a quick note, this deck is for a group that uses Type 1 rules but no power (except for a few Moxes that we own we'd use the Power Nine if we had 'em). This deck is designed to be used against six to nine people.
Ravager Affinity is designed to drop creatures quickly to kill an opponent while carrying out a combo kill backup plan in the form of Disciple of the Vault and Arcbound Ravager. It can do this extremely effectively, as has been demonstrated countless times over the last year or so. Since I was building this to Type 1 deck rules I decided to base it off of a pre-banning Skullclamp Ravager deck, to take advantage of the established power of Skullclamp. This is the deck I chose for the starting point.
Lands:
4 Great Furnace
4 Glimmervoid
4 Seat Of The Synod
4 Vault Of Whispers
Creatures:
4 Ornithopter
4 Frogmite
3 Arcbound Worker
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Disciple Of The Vault
4 Myr Enforcer
Spells:
2 Tooth Of Chiss-Goria
4 Skullclamp
3 Welding Jar
4 Thoughtcast
4 Shrapnel Blast
4 Pyrite Spellbomb
Before I made any changes, I wanted to see how the original fared in multiplayer. After playing it through several games and types of multiplayer, the deficiencies of the deck became evident.
The biggest problem that would occur during multiplayer games was that by the mid-game, some of my creatures became small and less useful than the behemoths my opponents played. Arcbound Ravager can make itself (or another creature) large, but other players usually ended up Avatar of Woe, Forgotten Ancient, or Verdant Force and my Shrapnel Blasts and Pyrite Spellbombs couldn't handle them. The deck was generally forced to switch to the combo/Disciple kill backup plan to take out people, and the effectiveness of that approach was limited by how many Disciples were in play. The basic result was that I would take out two or three players usually one from the fast attack and one or two with the combo kill. Then I'd die.
Even though some of the creatures did not seem to pull their weight in combat, their affinity ability kept the combo kill engine going, so I decided that they needed to stay.
After deciding the creatures needed to stay, I looked at what else wasn't measuring up and that was definitely the Shrapnel Blasts and Pyrite Spellbombs. They were not taking out as many opponent or their creatures as was needed, so I decided that other cards could better take up those spaces. Removing them from the deck meant that the Great Furnaces could also be changed, if need be.
The next few cards I decided to remove were the utility artifacts: Welding Jar and Tooth of Chiss-Goria. They had not been very useful in long multiplayer games, and there were Type 1 cards that I wanted to use that could take those spaces.
I decided to change the four Great Furnaces into three Darksteel Citadels and the obvious Tolarian Academy. Some people in this group have a passion for land destruction (either in single or global forms), and the indestructibility of the Citadel was helpful. The Type 1 cards that I wanted to include were my Mox Sapphire, Sol Ring, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Tinker, Yawgmoth’s Will, and two Feldon’s Canes.
Yawgmoth’s Will and Feldon’s Cane are the keys to making the deck able to take out as many people as possible. The Feldon’s Canes allow you to draw, play, and sacrifice almost your entire library twice and Yawgmoth’s Will allows it to be done a third time (but without the sacrifice on the same turn).
After adding in the Vintage cards that I wanted to use, there were five spaces left for me to try to help with the creatures in the deck. One spot went to a fourth Arcbound Worker to up that number to four and give me more cheap creatures.
With the four spots left, I needed to address the problem of creatures for the mid- to late- game. I decided to split the four spots between two different creatures. Since my problem was other creatures becoming bigger and having better abilities than mine, I decided that two Darksteel Colossi would handle that problem very well and the ability to churn out turn 1 and turn 2 Colossen would be fun (and intimidating).
I tried out several ideas for the last two creatures, but finally settled on Dross
Scorpions. Then benefit of adding the Scorpions to the deck is the interaction with artifact mana sources to allow the combo kill to continue while drawing additional cards.
So the final deck looked like this:
Multiplayer Ravager
Lands:
3 Darksteel Citadel
4 Glimmervoid
4 Seat Of The Synod
4 Vault Of Whispers
1 Tolarian Academy
Creatures:
4 Ornithopter
4 Frogmite
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Disciple Of The Vault
4 Myr Enforcer
2 Dross Scorpion
2 Darksteel Colossus
Spells:
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Tinker
2 Feldon’s Cane
4 Skullclamp
4 Thoughtcast
The obvious question is: Does it work against a table full of people? The answer is, "Yes, it does." You do need to watch out for people playing artifact destruction, especially Shatterstorm; they are your biggest threat and should be your first target. The synergies of this deck make it fun to play... but not something that should played every game in a night, unless you don’t want to be invited back. Personally, I play it very rarely. I’ll use it for an Emperor game sometimes, but I usually like to try out something new and experimental.
Dan Farrelly
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