Microbrews; Young Pyromancer Aristocrats

Evening folks.

I don't write enough. And when I do, it tends to be on the spot. This stuff that you're reading right now? Wrote it in one pass. No editing. Eyep.

That's not doing the webspace my blog occupies any favors, so I figured I should try to do something to encourage more frequent updates.

Why not dinky little home brews?

YES! In what I hope to become a regular occurrence, I'm going to latch onto a card in standard (because the smaller card pool keeps me from dying from choice paralysis) and build a working deck around it.

This week's lucky winner; Young Pyromancer.

There's a lot I like about this card. It's effect is very straight forward, but can push you into any number of avenues of play. Aggressive burn deck? Tokens matter? Some weird combo deck thing?
THE SKY'S THE LIMIT.
Plus look at that art.

Look at that smarmy little twit. He's got such an obnoxiously punchable face.

Makes me angry just looking at it.
So think of what it will do to the other guy!

My first thought with this guy was very straight forward; lots of burn spells. Meh. Boring.
It did occur to me that if you cast Krenko's Command, you would get three tokens out of the deal.
Same deal with Gather the Townsfolk.
Same with Lingering Souls.
Hmmm....

And that's where this came from;

4 Young pyromancer
4 Blood Artist
4 Cartel Aristocrat
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat

4 Tragic Slip
4 Krenko’s Command
4 Lingering Souls
4 Intangible Virtue
4 Gather Townsfolk

USE ALL THE TOKENS.

Young Pyromancer makes tokens when you cast an instant or sorcery. So do most of the instants and sorceries in the deck. From there, there's lots of things you can do.
Blood Artist them to death with sac outlets. Dome them repeatedly with your hard to block aristocrats. Make your dudes enormous off of Intangible Virtues.

My main concern is the manabase.

24 lands

I've not actually figured this out yet because I haven't actually built or tested it yet. Stream of consciousness, yo. But I figure that it works something akin to counting the mana symbols when you build your limited deck (I was taught to, when building sealed or draft decks and figuring out the mana base, count up the number of colored mana symbols in your card's mana costs and have a similar ratio of those colored basic lands).

So, that's my first Microbrews.
Love to hear your thoughts on the deck and the article idea.
Thanks for reading!

Brewing Tibalt

I'm in a bad place right now, readers.

A dark metaphorical hellhole from which there is no escape. A midnight black quagmire of despair and woe that threatens to consume my very sanity and leave me but a wretched husk of what I once was.

I want to brew a Tibalt deck.

I don't know why. Maybe it's because he's a Planeswalker that is cheap, affordable and easily acquirable because no one wants any. Maybe its exactly because no one wants any and some Magic players latch onto things that are unique and unappreciated. Maybe I want to satiate myself on someone's tears when I beat them with a deck built around the worst Planeswalker printed to date. Maybe I've fallen off my meds and you'd best call the police before I hurt someone.

Whatever the reason, I've had Tibalt on my mind a lot lately, and I'd like to share with you some ideas I've had.

First of all, I am in no way saying that Tibalt is good, merely that he is playable. That his downside is one that can be built around.

There are two ways that I can tell to build around that wretched line "discard at random".

Firstly, make sure that your deck is highly redundant. Have lots of cards in your deck that accomplish nigh identical functions. If you pitch a burn spell you want to have lots of other burn spells of similar scope to replace it with. Same with creatures, token makers, draw spells. Whatever you're filling your deck with.

Secondly, ideally, you want most anything Tibalt pitches to be something you would want to pitch. Things with madness that you cheat out with Tibalt. Things that you want in the graveyard in the firstplace like Unearthers, Flashbackers, reanimation targets, etc. Things that you can bring back with recursion outlets.

Or if you can manage, both.

Here's a list I came up with yesterday.

4 Stomping Ground
4 Rootbound Crag
2 Kessig Wolf Run
6 Mountain
6 Forest

4 Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded

4 Wasteland Viper
4 Boneyard Wurm
4 Dawntreader Elk
4 Lightning Mauler
4 Splinterfright
4 Slaughterhorn
4 Ghor-Clan Rampager
4 Zhur-Taa Swine
3 Kessig Cagebreakers
1 Ghoultree
You see the battleplan, yes?
I get a Boneyard Wurm or Splinterfright, or if the game lasts long enough, a Cagebreakers into play, and go to town! The whole deck is creatures and most of them have ways of getting into the yard whether by saccing themselves, or being bloodrushed, or by way of Tibalt.
Then I bash face my my graveyard fueled monsters.

I have yet to test this and there's probably ways to optimize.
A green-based creature deck in standard usually wants to run Rancors.
This many creatures, maybe Domri is worth including.
That many things in the yard, Garruk Relentless' ultimate would be handy.
Faithless Looting or Mulch to help fill the yard?

I'm not sure, but I look forward to finding out.