Single Card Deck Building Contest Mark VIII

[DarthFerret]

Ok, I know it has been a long time since I have done one of these, however here it goes. To make it a lot more interesting, I am going to attach some stipulations to the contest. As I said before, I am running out of ideas on deckbuilding, and really want to get my creative juices flowing. So, seeing others come up with stuff may help me get off my duff and do the same. Here it goes....


Card Required: Clockspinning (Timespiral common)

Other Requirements: The deck may NOT contain any artifacts (including the Clockwork creatures...that would be too easy!)

Ok, sound easy enough....lets start building...

The contest will end on Friday, Nov. 17th at 11:59 p.m.

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[Oversoul]

Um, remind me to post my deck before Friday. I built it (nearly finished) instead of studying Mendelian genetics or something, so I should probably do SOMETHING with it...

 

[DarthFerret]

Ok, will do...

At least you have your priorities straight..

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[DarthFerret]

Last Day of the Contest!

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[Oversoul]

My deck would have been better, but I cannot read. I totally missed the "no artifacts" and built a deck that went crazy with Magistrate's Scepter and some other stuff. I cut that and had to completely change the deck from a fast infinite turns deck to a slow (and scrubby) control deck. I kept the kill condition, though. I could not resist. When I looked up Clockspinning, I immediately thought of Goblin Bomb.

Goblin Bomb has appeal for a number of reasons...

-It does 20 damage by itself.
-It only costs two mana.
-It does 20 damage for two mana.
-It is an investment--just like buying stocks or the Power 9.
-It will eventually get five counters, guaranteed. I think there's probably some mathematical proof for this.
-It is the most powerful burn spell ever printed.

So yeah, Clockspinning and Goblin Bomb, but no Magistrate's Scepter because it's an artifact. My alternative was this boring engine of slowness that I didn't bother to playtest for optimization, but I think it could work...

Mana for casting spells:
13 Island
9 Mountain

Some blue stuff:
2 Capsize
2 Boomerang
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
3 Frantic Search

Some red stuff:
3 Chain Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt

Stereotypical boring lockdown:
4 Ertai, Wizard Adept
4 Arcane Laboratory

Kill you:
4 Goblin Bomb
4 Clockspinning

 

[KingAlanI]

For it to work with just the coin flips, you'd almost have to get 5 favorable flips in a row. Since there's only a 1/2 chance for each of those flips to be favorable, the odds of getting 5 in a row is 1/32.

Since one bad flip negates one good flip, to get 5 counters, you could go 6 for 7, 7 for 9, 8 for 11, 9 for 13, etc. (Also with low probabilites; you basically need some counter-generating card for that to work.)

To use that card well, I might also suggest a red-green deck that combines Goblin Bomb with Doubling Season.

 

[Oversoul]

For it to work with just the coin flips, you'd almost have to get 5 favorable flips in a row. Since there's only a 1/2 chance for each of those flips to be favorable, the odds of getting 5 in a row is 1/32.

Since one bad flip negates one good flip, to get 5 counters, you could go 6 for 7, 7 for 9, 8 for 11, 9 for 13, etc. (Also with low probabilites; you basically need some counter-generating card for that to work.)

To use that card well, I might also suggest a red-green deck that combines Goblin Bomb with Doubling Season.

Thread necromancy! I was looking for something and saw this. I wish that I would have responded to it back then because this person's understanding of Goblin Bomb was way off. 1 in 32 is the probability of getting Goblin Bomb to go off as quickly as it is possible for the card to do so by itself. However, the card doesn't require five favorable coin flips in a row, nor would that be the norm for getting it to work. For example, I could win four flips in a row, lose one, then win two in a row. Or I could lose three in a row, win two in a row, lose two in a row, then win five in a row. The important part is that because the number of counters doesn't drop below zero, there is eventually some cluster that gets it to five counters, at which point there's a big boom. Of course, now that we have the "proliferate" mechanic, Clockspinning looks tame in comparison. But this was 2006, and that hadn't happened yet...

 

[Melkor]

Well, I'd say the math still doesn't support a plan of just letting the Goblin Bomb go off by itself. But with proliferate, this seems much more doable, though you still have to get that first favorable flip. I'm already imagining waiting several turns of losing flips, all the while proliferating to no effect.

 

[Oversoul]

It doesn't take that long, just too long for it to be a reliable kill by itself. If Goblin Bomb at been blue, it would have been a semi-popular kill condition in control decks at some point. The blue/red control decklist I made back in 2006 isn't great, but I think that it shows how the concept isn't terrible by casual standards.