Onslaught

[Lord_of_Me]

yeah i've read those - 10 card looks fun

[Prometheus]

Yeah it was. During our mini-tournament I won one of my matches with an audacious little deck I called Final Hope. I used a couple of mana elves to race to a 7 mana base, then I threw down an Angel of Retribution and the Legacy Weapon. If even 1 mana elf was killed in the process it was game over, (thus the name Last Hope) but I managed to pull it off.

2 Forests
Plains
Mountain
2 Quirion Elves
Urborg Elf
Moment's Peace
Legacy Weapon
Angel of Retribution

Turn one: Land (I don't have Llanowar Elves. Very sad.)
Turn two: Forest + urborg elf
Turn three: Land + 2 quirion elves
Turn four: Land + Angel of Retribution
Turn five: Legacy Weapon
Turn six-end: Remove all enemy pernaments.

This order was expected to be broken up by the need to Moment's Peace twice, but this was the idea. A cheaper creature than the Angel of Retribution might have been a better choice, but it worked out fine.

[Lord_of_Me]

cool, imagine a crush of wurms deck, is that even possible?

[Prometheus]

Sorry. I didn't see this for a while. Let's see...12 mana in 10 cards is definitely possible & we won't need a discarding method since it's better to hardcast Crush of Wurms. (unlike Roar of the Wurm) Defending yourself until the 12 mana threshold might be tricky, but let's not worry about that right now.

Standard 10-card Sylvan Crush

3 Forests
3 Llanowar Elf
Elvish Guidance
Wirewood Channeler
2 Crush of Wurms

Turn 1: Forest, Llanowar Elf, 2 mana
Turn 2: Forest, Elvish Guidance, 4 mana
Turn 3: Forest, 2 Llanowar Elves, Wirewood Channeler, 14 mana
Turn 4: Crush of Wurms
Turn 5: Crush of Wurms Flashback
Turn 6: Crush of Wurms
Turn 7: Crush of Wurms Flashback

It's pretty slow for 10-card Magic, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work. A Wellwisher or Moment's Peace might help survivability. I intentionally sacrificed everything I could for solid hand reliability (a concept that doesn't really make sense in other MTG formats) and speed in getting the Wurms out. Replacing the some of the Llanowar Elves or Elvish Guidance with Wellwishers or Wirewood Channelers would get the Wurms out slower, but you might have a better chance of surviving long enough to Crush. A Wirewood Lodge would be a good choice for land replacement as well if you choose to sacrifice hand reliability.

[Fellfrosch]

In my mind, 10-card decks are inherently combo decks, and in that sense your plan above is wasting turns 5, 6, and 7. Once you've cast 3 elves and 3 wurms, why do you need to spend three more turns to get more wurms? You've already got 21 points of potential creature damage on the table. Find a way to bypass blockers and you can shoot for the win on turn 5.

[Prometheus]

I didn't include combat maneuvers of any sort. You're right that attacking would be the natural-seeming thing to do in this situation. With the build I gave for the deck, though, there also isn't anything else left to do with the mana, so I just continued to facetiously make wurms for a few more turns, assuming that my theoretical player would attack with all the wurms I was making if that was the smart thing to do. If a single other spell comes to mind for turn 5, it's Overrun.

It should also be noted that both of the decks we've presented here are insanely slow for 10-card Magic. Waiting until turn 4 to put down a defense (elves don't count, as losing them cuts into your mana pool and messes up the combo) isn't necessarily a good idea. I got away with it when I tried Last Hope, but it easily could have gone the other way. The Flame Burst deck I recall Fell running during our 10-card tournament, for instance, would have gotten in 10+ burn damage and a significant creature attack by turn 4 with more on the way.

[Lord_of_Me]

there must be thousands of ten card decks, but it seems morw about luck and getting the right opponent


3 plains
3 suntail hawk
4 cloudreach cavalry

fun flying beatdown

[Fellfrosch]

Yeah, a lot of 10-card is luck and opponent. Too much, probably, which is why it's more of a novelty than a real format. My question is this: how much destruction should be allowed in the format? Realistically, all you need to utterly destroy a person's strategy is a single discard spell, land destruction spell, or creature kill spell. Two or even one LD spell will undermine most 10-card decks to the point of unplayability. How much of this should be allowed, and how much shouldn't?

[Prometheus]

My initial feeling is that land destruction should definitely be disallowed by rule, but not by card restriction (thus allowing Chain of Acid ect). 10-card decks are too limited to support what may be the most disliked tactic in all of Magic.

Any other form of destruction I see as having its natural drawback. Creatures might not be played to terror, Enchantments may not be around to naturalize, or artifacts to Shatterstorm, but there will always be land to kill. There just isn't any other way to get a deck going. (stupid Basking Rootwallas)

Also, from what I see, even 10-card decks should have sufficient capacity to deal with the loss of a creature or enchantment and still have an outside shot at winning. If the deck isn't built that way, then that's the builder's choice.

With such a limited card supply, however, the exact count of lands is a critical feature of a deck. People can't afford to throw in one extra land just in case someone does Stone Rain and they shouldn't have to.

Something like Petravark however, that disables but doesn't destroy a land, is a trickier question. I'm not sure about that one. I suppose I'd probably have to stick with voting to disallow it though as too disruptive.

[Lord_of_Me]

even the cheapest ld spell costs about 3 mana. that gives your opponent plenty of time to start atacking/get their combo working. e.t.c

[Fellfrosch]

Unless they go first and your combo requires more than two land. LD is the bane of 10-card decks.

Regarding discard and creature removal, I would say that disallowing them would make the games more fun--it would eliminate a couple of decks, but make a lot more decks possible. I suppose the question is this: should a 10-card deck win by destroying the other person's strategy or by creating it's own? It's very easy to just toss out a Wrath of God on turn four and make any opponent's deck obsolete, but it's much more challenging (and interesting) to make 6 flying 6/6 wurm tokens.

What it all comes down to, for me at least, is this: if you play a 10-card deck you want to see your cool idea work. Discard, LD, and removal aren't cool ideas, they're just tools to ruin the other guy's cool idea. I say ban them...but I'm still open to discussion.

[Prometheus]

Under the 'cool idea' model you're certainly right, and the Wrath of God effects don't help that sort of thing. Counterspells would be another category to consider banning. Terror maybe, but that would fit in as a general-use card.

I'm not sure whether I feel comfortable going entirely with the 'cool idea' model, since it implies to some degree that you're just out to do your cool thing and also that, to some extent, you're not allowed to defend yourself. (Terror would be an attempt at defense. Wrath of God would not.) That doesn't quite explain it though, because you could include Wall of Faith instead. If decks are *only* based on your cool idea though, it becomes a matter of who can pull their idea off first, and that's nothing more than a mana efficiency race---not a terribly exciting way to describe a format.

One thing I've noticed as we've gone along in this discussion is that nearly everything we've described are effects belonging largely to instants and sorceries. I wouldn't want to put in a no-instants rule to deal with destruction methods since I think that Flame Burst deck you designed was a great example of 10-card, but it does describe the problem somewhat. (Bane of the Living would be one example of another problem such a rule would have.)

The problem is with the lack of ability to have extensive redundancy in a 10-deck. Losing a forest isn't as big a problem if you could potentially draw one next turn. Lands I don't see it as reasonable to expect a good 10-card player to include a redundant land, but what about a mana elf? Or a Crush of Wurms?

Maybe one way to solve the problem is to allow an automatic ability along the lines of:
'At the beginning of your upkeep, tap all your lands and empty your mana pool: return one card from your graveyard to your hand.'

Allowing automatic (and expensive) graveyard recursion would allow players to potentially survive destruction tactics, turning terror into a delaying spell instead of a complete game-buster. The cost I described above doesn't prevent mana elves or Krosan Restorer from adding mana to the pool anyway, but I felt too uncomfortable about forcing the player to tap their blockers. My automatically available recursion idea probably comes with more problems than it solves, but I'm interested to hear what you guys think.

[Fellfrosch]

You know, that's actually not bad; it seems balanced and would allow you to survive a lot of destructive tactics. On the other hand, at some level it's still doing the same thing that a ban would do: it negates LD, removal, and discard while allowing people to set up combos. If we're just going to replace card destruction with delays, why not just ban the destruction and let you add in your own delays if you want them?

You're right about counters, though--they're just as bad as the other removal spells. and you may be right (maybe) about local terror effects being okay. What would you say to a ban of discard, counters, LD, and mass removal?

[Prometheus]

I'm not sure I'd say that the automatic recursion negates LD ect, especially since the LD can be recovered just as quickly as the land that was destroyed. Banning I'm just not sure about. Wizards allows some hideously unfair combos to go on without even restricting them simply because banning is a bad thing to do. I'd want to try exploring other options first. Maybe we could even set up a time to playtest both the banning and recursion options. The simple process of trying to make decks under the ban would tell us a lot more than we could guess just by discussing it.

[Fellfrosch]

We're working with a ridiculously goofy, incredibly fragile format here--I have no problems with banning whatsoever. And I like the idea better than making such a drastic change to the basic rules of the game.