3 color decks viable?
General forum
Posted on May 4, 2012, 10:23 p.m. by Ayleron
Avacyn has a lot of really fun cards and I am wrestling with my desire to build a Naya (W/G/R) deck. Are three color decks able to still hold their own, or are the spread too thin? What are your opinions?
Many are difficult to pull off. I enjoy trying to build them because people doubt you and then you try it and tweak it a couple times and it can come out really good if you can find the right spells
May 4, 2012 10:52 p.m.
Ohthenoises says... #4
Just try and keep symbol count down on your cards. It's hard to have 3 colors if you are trying to play cards that are double or triple costed. (Unless of course you have ways to cheat them out then it doesn't matter much.)
May 4, 2012 11:22 p.m.
nightmear321 says... #5
Just ran Naya humans tonight at FNM and took first deck ran well so 3 color is completely viable.
May 4, 2012 11:34 p.m.
BrokenZygoma says... #6
Personally I think they can. Naya is my favorite tri-color and I've made a few very consistent Naya decks. Like Ohthenoises said, keep the multi-symbol count to 2 if you can. 3 cost cards can get tricky in multi-color. check out my Naya deck: Godsire, and see if you like how it runs. If you run Naya I definitely recommend a deck with big fatties.
May 4, 2012 11:38 p.m.
IAmKingTony says... #7
Cavern of Souls definitely made 3 color tribal decks very viable, even in odd color combinations.
May 5, 2012 midnight
In competitive standard Esper control, solar flare, and delver have all seen top 8 in major tournaments. Frites is often all 5 colors and it does well. Most Birthing Pod decks run 3+ colors.
May 5, 2012 3:49 a.m.
Scars lands (Darkslick Shores & friends) are essential to running a three-colour deck.
It works best if you choose a Shard (a colour and its two allies), and focus primarily on the central colour.
You generally want to avoid double-colour spells, but sometimes you can get away with using them. For example, Naya (R/G/W) aggro is still able to play Strangleroot Geist because green is the central colour, so they have 8 green-producing dual lands that ETB untapped in the early turns. However, they would tend to avoid double-red and double-white casting costs, which are more difficult to play on time.
Alternately, you can play two colours and "splash" a third. The pre-DKA Esper Control decks are a good example of this; they were base U/W, splashing black only for Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, and the flashback cost of Forbidden Alchemy. If you examine their mana bases, they have very few black-producing lands relative to their blue and white counts.
May 5, 2012 11:57 a.m.
thebeardedshuffler says... #10
It's hard. There are good mana fixes, but they're expensive (Cavern of souls is the best one) but if you're playing Naya I'm guessing you want speed and aggro. Colour screw can really mess you up there so I would personally try to keep it to two colours.
May 5, 2012 2:55 p.m.
I say to hell with it, live it up and go for glory. I run 3 color decks week in and week out at my local FNM draft and I place every week. It is really about having the right PROPORTION of mana fixing and prioritizing the way in which your spells/creatures are going to come into play.
For instance, as I am sure you already know, there are an abundance of dual mana producing lands and plenty of utility lands at gamers' disposal in standard right now. If you happen to want to play the utility lands, for instance Cavern of Souls and the other new ones from Avacyn Restored you need to account for their inability to produce lands of a color. I found that (in the sealed and draft at least), Abundant Growth was one of my best friends. If you pursue Naya as I think you stated you were trying to above, and it happened to be what I was playing last night, Abundant Growth was UNREAL. I had Slayers' Stronghold and Desolate Lighthouse which were a problem because they didn't feed INTO any of my mana costs but instead played OFF of them. So naturally, the having an Abundant Growth to put on them gives them the ability to produce anything that you may need an extra one mana of when you aren't using them for their utility. On top of all that, you get the chance to "fix" your Utility Lands, as well as draw an extra card in the early turns.
I can't be sure how Abundant Growth would be worth the application in standard play, but I still consider it to be a pretty unreal card, and it beats the pants off of playing something like a Shimmering Grotto.
Moral of the rant is that there are plenty of ways to EASILY work around 3 colors, and decks that have 5 colors, so long as they stick to 2-3 main colors with limited application for the other colors you splash is more than viable, it is extremely powerful to boot. The difficulty is striking the right balance for consistency.
May 5, 2012 4:25 p.m.
MacheteMable says... #12
Every single deck i play at FNM, and i really mean every single deck, is 3 colors and i continually get 4th to 1st most of the time. Mana fixing is absolutely awesome right now. Innistrad Duals and then Evolving Wilds makes it really easy to do 3 colors. One tip though, as others have said, you must keep your colored symbols on each card down. Like take Day of Judgment that card is even hard to cast sometimes since you have to have the 2 white.
The biggest thing that would help make 3 colors is the mana base. Once you learn how to make a good mana base then you could even venture into the world of 5 color decks.
I play Grixis Control (BUR), Esper Superfriends (BUW), Tokens (WBR), and am gonna start running Griselbrand Combo which is BRW.
2 colors is just boring when there are so many to choose from. Once you go tres you wont be back.
May 5, 2012 5:26 p.m.
I haven't read the entire thread, but just to add my 2-cents' worth...
I've been running a 3 colour Spirit deck for a while now (Mortiferum Spiritus), can't say I've ever really had mana issues... It was a bit unpredictable in the beginning, but I've never seen a deck that worked perfectly from the first time it was played, they all need a bit of tweaking. :)
I don't use Green, so mana ramp is not really a viable option, and my choice of Blue doesn't do much for card draw.. However, because of the mana cost of my cards, I hardly ever need to use more than one or two of the 4x Evolving Wilds, and I've never needed to rely on any of the 4x Manaliths (hence the fact that two have been in my sideboard for so long).
At the end of the day, whether or not a 3 colour deck will work for you depends quite heavily on what you expect each of the colours to do for you in the deck and the distribution of colours (per-card and per symbol on each card). If you can get to a place where (for example) things like Evolving Wilds and Manalith are a "safety net" for when you don't get the right lands, then you know you have a nicely balanced 3 colour deck.
May 8, 2012 5:11 a.m.
Oh, and my Spirit deck has gotten me to the top 5 of our FNM group (about 18 to 20 people on average) quite regularly. :)
May 8, 2012 5:13 a.m.
nightmear321 says... #15
"nayamans" went 3-0 tieing the fourth game on purpose for first ran perfect ill report what happens this friday hopefully runs like a charm again
killroy726 says... #2
It really depends on if you want to stay standard. Legacy has some great 3 color spells, lands. It would be possible to run a 3 color standard deck you would have to run a lot of mana fixing cards and lands like Cavern of Souls
, Shimmering Grotto
, Clifftop Retreat
it really depends on how you want to go about it
May 4, 2012 10:32 p.m.