Tapping Deck
Deck Help forum
Posted on July 30, 2012, 10:11 p.m. by Loli
I'm still fairly new to mtg, but I love tapping cards, I would like to know/get help in making a deck for tapping with maybe some kill cards or counters
Epochalyptik says... #3
Sounds like you should go with a blue black control deck. Do you want the deck to be Standard or casual? The former means you can only use cards from the most recent sets (as of now, Scars of Mirrodin and newer and as of Return to Ravnica's release, Innistrad and newer). The latter means you can use pretty much any card.
July 30, 2012 10:51 p.m.
If you didn't already know, MTG has a very useful tool called the Gatherer [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx] where you can search their database for cards with certain key phrases in it. My friend also really liked the idea of tapping and created a blue white deck built around that principle. If I remember correctly, His big Mana cards were Frost Titan and Tamiyo, the Moon Sage , and he used other cards like Crippling Chill and Frost Breath and Niblis of the Urn to aid in keeping things tapped while he pinged with his hitters
July 30, 2012 11:12 p.m.
A friend of mine built a white/black deck with card:Gideon's Lawkeeper, card:Gideon's Avenger and Royal Assassin It was pretty obnoxiously consistent.
July 31, 2012 12:19 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #6
I used to use a blue/white tap deck when I started playing. It was casual and took advantage of effects like Sleep and Blinding Beam along with Dichotomancy and Sunblast Angel . It worked well enough and was decently consistent.
July 31, 2012 12:29 a.m.
@Epoc - I think I'd prefer more of a casual deck, and that looks like a sweet combo
@ everything - all those look like awesome ones, it'd be hard to choose between those D: would it be possible to add all those main cards without straying from say a 60-80 card deck range?
July 31, 2012 1:22 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #8
You should always stay at the 60-card mark. Once you go over, your chances of drawing any one card drop, which reduces consistency. Also, you should try to include 3 or 4 of each card instead of 1 or 2. As with before, this helps consistency. A deck with a lot of copies of a few different cards will be more stable than a deck with a few copies of a lot of different cards.
July 31, 2012 1:29 a.m.
You're definitely going to have to narrow it down some, or you will wind up with a deck to big. Since you are starting out you probably will want to stick with two colors to begin with. An easy way to narrow it down (unless you are strictly making theoretical decks) is to look at the cards you have, and the price points on cards you are thinking about getting. Typically I shy away from dropping big money on decks I am just thinking about using =p.
July 31, 2012 1:30 a.m.
@ Epoch: I agree with what you are saying, but having 1 or 2 of an expensive card is not a bad idea since you will typically not have as much use for them until the end game where you will have drawn more cards and are thus more likely to run into them. But for most cards, yes 3 or 4 is probably best.
July 31, 2012 1:33 a.m.
yea I know less is better, also I don't fully like multi land decks, I prefer 1-2 but I don't mind 3 but thats about as high as I prefer :P I was looking at cards, though I'm fairly horrible with the going over things like that haha
so I should prob go with a Blue/White, cause I really like the Sunblast Angel and the Gideon's law keeper combo
July 31, 2012 1:35 a.m.
It is a nice Combo, but it is important to remember that if you use card:Gideon's Lawkeeper to tap down a creature and then play Sunblast Angel , you will lose your lawkeeper because Sunblast destroys all tapped creatures, not just the ones you control.
July 31, 2012 1:40 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #13
@Aaronese: There will always be obvious exceptions, as you pointed out. You don't need 4x Dichotomancy . But the general trend you want to go for is to have multiples of low and midrange costing cards.
July 31, 2012 1:41 a.m.
yea, I think I'd need to put in 1 or 2 puppet strings to protect some of my creatures, I also just remembered I have the Frost Titan card I got from a intro pack from buying planeswalkers 2012 on steam :)
July 31, 2012 1:42 a.m.
so I guess I'll have to try building it and see how it turns out, so what is a good land ratio? its the one I have most problems with figuring out
July 31, 2012 1:51 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #16
You should avoid cards like Puppet Strings because they're kind of mana-intensive and slow. Instead, I would use cards like Downpour , Blinding Beam , and Sleep . These spells hit multiple creatures and get around hexproof and shroud for very little mana.
July 31, 2012 1:53 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #17
It depends on the deck's mana curve. You should try 24 and then work from there as you get feedback.
July 31, 2012 1:54 a.m.
ah okay, I was referring to the puppet strings for untapping my creatures for when I got Sunblast Angel
July 31, 2012 1:56 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #19
I realize that, but the utility is still not quite worth the cost. If you know you're going to cast Sunblast Angel one turn, just don't tap your creatures on that turn.
Also, Ponder , Preordain , or Brainstorm to set your next few draws up and get better situated to deal with board state.
July 31, 2012 2:06 a.m.
ah, yea I use puppet strings currently with my phyrexian deck I got from the coalition vs phyrexia along with a rathi trapper and sometimes its a pain if I'm running low mana in a match
July 31, 2012 2:10 a.m.
I think the point being made is that Sunblast Angel is expensive by itself, with Puppet Strings you had to pay three previously to cast it, and then pay another two to activate it's ability, and THEN if you had used the card:Gideon's Lawkeeper's activated ability (the reason you be using puppet strings anyway) that's another mana . So to play Sunblast Angel . AFTER all that you would have to have had at least 9 mana total, that's just a little unrealistic to kill 1 more creature than you would have for 6.
July 31, 2012 2:10 a.m.
Something you might want to consider if you have a couple ETB effect monsters would be Cloudshift if you use that when Sunblast is on the field you could use Frost Breath before hand easily to kill two of your opponents creatures. It could also just be useful to avoid direct targeting removal spells.
July 31, 2012 2:15 a.m.
Also, I notice in the builder, the EDH General/Commander whats that for?
July 31, 2012 2:29 a.m.
That's for EDH format only. Basically in that style of play you can only have 1 of any card except for basic lands. going to see if I can get the official MTG description of it...
July 31, 2012 2:38 a.m.
unfortunately I need to get some sleep, however I did manage to put some together, I tried a test play and it seemed to do decently on the first one, will have to try again to see the consistency Tapping Deck
July 31, 2012 2:56 a.m.
thanks a lot for the help so far, hopefully we can talk again soon - have a good day/night Aaron
July 31, 2012 2:57 a.m.
Took a look at it, and I do have to say there are probably some small issues with the deck. I don't know how close you want to actually focus on tapping, but a lot of the things in the deck you created only tapped specific things, or ignored the tapping theme all together..for example AEther Shockwave is a bit hit or miss, in that unless your opponent is running a spirit deck, you are going to end up tapping most of your own creatures. You also have a few high cost creatures that are simply not good like Air Servant and Alaborn Cavalier . You are also currently 2 cards short of 60, and the deck would be not be legal in standard format(which isn't a big deal if you're just playing casually). The good news is that if you wanted to you could actually construct that deck fairly cheaply.
If I were to construct a deck around this idea, I would probably build something like Tapping Deck. However, unlike your deck, this deck is not cheap and from scratch would cost about 150 dollars to make.
July 31, 2012 4:08 a.m.
ah, yea I know there are ones like that, I would use those as a last resort kind of tap. though I like yours, I don't really mind spending lots of money, I just wont do it in one go :P
July 31, 2012 9:59 a.m.
Also I play with usually about 2-3 bother people, how good is it in matches with more than one enemy?
July 31, 2012 10:05 a.m.
Sorry to take so long to respond, was out all day today, but ya the more people you have, the more difficult it is to effectively control your opponent. this is mostly because of the fact that you have to split your control between two people who because of controls typical lack of creatures is typically an easier target. this is especially true with using tapping as control because you have to target them BEFORE they attack meaning you don't know if they would be targeting you until it is too late. That is of course assuming this is a free for all. if you are trying something akin to two headed giant, then a tap deck could very easily compliment a deck that has a quick ramp up to quickly kill off one of your opponents and then focus down the remaining
However, if I am correct in my assumption that you are doing free for all you could try a turbo fog deck and probably use it to great effect. in a deck like this, you focus on using effects like Fog that prevent combat damage for the turn at a cheap cost. this type of deck would be either Monogreen or Green white in all likelyhood, and the idea for a multiplayer setting would be simply to prevent combat damage on turns where they focused on you, and this would basically discourage people from attacking you until you were well set up and ready to overwhelm your opponent.
July 31, 2012 10:20 p.m.
Excuse me I mean green blue, not green white for turbofog
July 31, 2012 10:28 p.m.
lol, its all good, yea for the most part its just ffa we have done a couple THG matches though
UmbrotheUmbreon says... #2
Royal Assassin for killing off attackers/tapped creatures
July 30, 2012 10:38 p.m.