Picking a Deck

By Norman Ralph

Having made my call to arms last month, FNM Hero Team Leeds style is starting to warm up. M14 has been released bringing with it the official start date for my challenge. From release day onwards, any Planeswalker Points I earn will be with my FNM Hero deck.

Talking of decks, the Event Deck for M14 has now been spoiled. In terms of cards per pound Event Decks are almost certainly the best way to go but, as with a lot of the recent Event Decks, I have been left unimpressed with the offering. Whilst there are some good cards in the deck, I feel that they could have been stronger. My thoughts on Event Decks for the last few sets have focussed on why Wizards keep producing decks that are OK but are missing some glaringly obvious cards. I want an Event Deck to be a strong deck out of the box whilst being open to improvement. I understand that Wizards won't just package up a fully powered Jund deck or similar and I would not want them to. I appreciate a budget deck that works without the more powerful additions. I would love them to make a R/G deck that plays well against the big boys straight out of the box, not because it is stuffed fall of bombs and mythics but because it is built with synergy and fluidity in mind.

Having said all of that, I am quite tempted to start off with this Event Deck mainly due to the fact that all of cards are going to be Standard legal for the whole of the coming year which means that I can focus my initial budget and any winnings on replacing cards with better options rather than having to replace cards once they rotate out. The other option is to build an Izzet aggro deck built around Young Pyromancer, Nivix Cyclops and Guttersnipe. This has the benefit of fitting my play style better as well as being relatively cheap to build. It does, however, rely on some cards that will rotate out of Standard in September.

I have created my tracking documents for people to follow my card pool and budget. You can them on my Google Drive.

As we are now fully underway on FNM Hero I will be bringing you updates on a weekly basis from now on, so get this added to your feed reader, or favourite the site, and keep up with the fun and frolics of the next 12 months.

Comments are always welcome.