Assault Formation

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Historic Brawl Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Assault Formation

Enchantment

Each creature you control assigns combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power.

: Target creature with defender can attack this turn as though it didn't have defender.

: Creatures you control get +0/+1 until end of turn.

seshiro_of_the_orochi on Shell Hath No Fury Like A Turtle With Crabs

1 month ago

Looks awesome! I have a 60 card turtle tribal, and I actually considered building Pride in a similar way.

I do have some cards you might want to consider:

Rapid Hybridization, Pongify: Both are cheap kill spells, and the tokens left behind will badically never be a problem for you.

Dive Down: Quite the great protection spell, and once you have Bedrock Tortoise or Assault Formation online, it will even be a combat trick.

Charix, the Raging Isle: Duuh ;D

Profaner of the Dead: One-sided wipe that's taylor-made for the deck.

Bident of Thassa: The card draw is great, but the activated ability is powerful for you, as it's basically redundancy for Angler Turtle.

Balaam__ on Turtle Power!

3 months ago

@Siege- Whichever format you settle on, you’ll want to narrow your deck’s focus. Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none approaches seldom (if ever) work. You already have the objectively ‘best’ way to play Turtles—the Assault Formation approach—so I would encourage you to double down on it. Build around that specific functionality.

Oftentimes the hardest part of deck building is cutting the ‘…but I really like this card’ cards which don’t move your core strategy forward. Once you do, you’ll find consistency skyrockets and wins tend to come along with that. Not having access to cards is a perfectly legitimate reason to not include them, but keep them in mind nonetheless in case you get the opportunity to acquire them.

Balaam__ on Turtle Power!

3 months ago

There’s a lot to like here, but also room for improvement. A simple ‘strictly better’ change is to get rid of Uncharted Haven and replace it with some type of dual that’s appropriate for whatever budget you’ve allotted this deck. The problem with Uncharted Haven is it enters tapped, which automatically puts you behind schedule. Legacy is ridiculously fast paced (even in non-competitive settings) so anything with [this card] enters the battlefield tapped stapled to it is dead weight. There are a whole host of better lands to occupy that spot, some more expensive than others. Misty Rainforest and Breeding Poolfoil immediately come to mind, as do Hengegate Pathway  Flip and Hinterland Harbor. There’s Tropical Island too but that’s prohibitively expensive.

At a glance, your turtles seem a bit unfocused. You’ve stuck within the creature type, yes, but they’re all pulling in different directions—Ninjutsu, Flash, counters etc. You have the right idea with the Assault Formation/Treefolk Umbra strategy, you just need to trim the extraneous stuff and double down on that. Run 4x copies of those to ensure you draw them every single game.

Cut cards you probably wont have the mana to fully utilize like Primal Might, and replace fringe-use cards like Artful Dodge and Witch's Web with things that play into Turtle Assault strengths.

You have a good base here to work with, and the good news is you wouldn’t have to change much at all to significantly streamline things, and the core idea will remain intact.

multimedia on Exploding Kobolds

6 months ago

Hey, interesting deck.

Consider adding green? By adding green you get Glimpse of Nature, Noxious Revival, Elvish Spirit Guide. Glimpse and Revival go well together to keep casting Glimpse. Guide provides a green mana source without needing a land that can make green. Green also has Assault Formation, not needing an anthem effect to increase Kobolds power since only toughness matters. With 4x Glimpse you would only need 1x Formation as well as some kind of haste for all your creatures source such as Burst of Speed that you cast after casting all your Kobolds for the turn. With 4x Glimpse, 1x Grapeshot is all you need.

Stomping Ground, Karplusan Forest, Copperline Gorge can be dual lands that could replace Mountains? Lotus Petal and/or Wild Cantor, replacing some Mountains gives you a mana source of any color while also counting towards storm. The problems with Impact Tremors and Purphoros, God of the Forge are they need to be on the battlefield before you start casting Kobolds. In theory Tremors/Purphoros seem good, but in gameplay they seem slow, too inconsistent hit or miss.

Consider this package for upgrades?

Good luck with your deck.

Eloniel on Nobody has the intention of building a Wall

6 months ago

Azeure To be honest there is plenty of redundancy that we don't play:

The only one worth running for me is High Alert because it does both "every creatures with defender may attack" and "they assign combat damage equal to their toughness" for every creatures without having to pay mana to apply the effect.

The second best one for me is Assault Formation but i still cuted it. Bedrock Tortoise is almost playable, if either the hexproof was not conditionnal to your turn or if it's mana value was 3 instead of 4.

For 3 mana we usually have 0/7 defender without abilities Glacial Wall / Wall of Ice or 0/6 with abilities Hover Barrier ( i don't take into account the 2 very good 3 mana drop that are Wall of Denial / Weathered Sentinels).

So now let's review Plagon, Lord of the Beach, Plagon is only a 0/3, don't deal damage equal to it's toughness without paying 1 extra mana each time, it's doesn't draw us a card with Arcades and it's ability only fufill one of the 2 needed condition for redundancy as explained above. I agree it could draw us lot of cards, ranging from 2 to 5-6. If we didn't had draw engine in the command zone i would say it worth it, bu since we have one i don't thinks it's necessary.

It's already very hard to find room for each new creatures cards, i'm already having hard time finding room for Crystal Barricade and consider removing Brave the Sands from my deck. A 3 mana creature has to be really really good to make the cut in Arcades now, and i don't speak about 4 mana creatures. I'm still on fence regarding Corrupted Shapeshifter since the only 4 mana creatures i play are Arcades, Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa and Tree of Redemption, and i wonder if i would not rather include Towering Titan instead as another wincon.

PS: My decklist if you want to have a look

9-lives on Azorius Testudo Spearhead

8 months ago

Thanks, Predator_90! I would love to run that card with Charix, the Raging Isle, but this is an Azorius deck. Would be great if I could, but that would require me running a better manabase. If I did, I would include Assault Formation and Tower Defense.

Azeure on Nobody has the intention of building a Wall

8 months ago

Just wanted to drop a comment here to say thanks! I just built my first EDH deck based your deck list and all the discussions made from this comment thread! I've always loved Bant colors and enjoyed playing Assault Formation during its time in standard around 2016 when I last played MTG! So hearing that Arcades exists (and has decks on a good budget), it got me excited to return and build an EDH deck! Really enjoyed the discussions on this thread and I learned a lot!

I hope I get the chance to play with Arcades soon! I just have to look for nearby hobby shops and try to make new friends to play with. I'm excited!

Balaam__ on

9 months ago

I really enjoy (incoming pun…) off the wall deck ideas, uncommon mechanics or anything else that shakes up a stagnant format, so this was pleasant to see. That said, there are some issues.

To begin with, no matter what direction the deck inevitably takes I’d say 12 lands is far, far too low. Yes, most of your cards are low costed, but that won’t make much of a difference if half your lands are buried at the bottom of your library after you shuffle. So give the land count a bump.

As for the general idea of what you’re trying to accomplish, I think it can be molded into something playable and fun, but I wouldn’t expect many wins. I think you need a more focused wincon at the moment. Off the top of my head I’d say you have a few choices if you want to retain the ‘wall stall’ theme: Either scour all available walls for one that somehow causes direct damage and build around that, go the somewhat tried-and-true route of Assault Formation/High Alert and turn those walls into offensive tanks (might be tough to do in Pauper—is The Great Forest pauper legal?), or else think outside the box and find a way to repurpose any given wall. Something along the lines of Fling but utilizing toughness, if such a card exists.

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