Time to try a 5 color deck?

[Ninja_Of_Ni]

I've been kicking around the idea of building a 5 color deck and could use some help with ideas as to what to do with it. Also, I would like to keep this deck to a fair budget (I'm currently limiting myself to $50 per month for MTG and have spent about half that amount for this month).

Of course, the first obstacle to overcome with 5 colors is going to be mana. I was considering buying 4 copies of each of the 3 color lands from Shards of Alara and maybe 2-4 copies of City of Brass or 4 Birds of Paradise. The downside I can see to this idea is having almost all my lands enter the battlefield tapped. The other idea which I've heard for 5 colors is to run Green (for mana fixing) plus 2 other colors and include the 4th and 5th colors in very minor roles (I'm thinking just for the 5 color spells).

The other thing I have to decide is what I'm going to do with 5 colors. I've thought about building a deck that uses Progenitus and have come up with 2 possible ways to be able to play it: Elvish Piper or Mirari's Wake. Of course, I think those cards run $10-$15 each so this may have to be a deck that I buy the cards split up over the course of a couple months.

My second idea for the 5 color deck is Slivers (just because I know there is a pre-built 5 color sliver deck out there, but I prefer to use decks I built over pre-existing ones). I think from looking at sliver cards that the idea for this deck would be to take advantage of the abilities that my Slivers would gain as I put more out.

So, those are my thoughts on this deck for now. I could use some other input on this idea as well as card suggestions.

 

[turgy22]

I recommend the base-green build. I've tried playing five colors both ways and the green way is not only more reliable, but a whole lot cheaper. If you're using two and three-color lands (tap lands, pain lands, shock lands, etc) they all have drawbacks in addition to costing a buttload of money (well, not the tap lands, but you get the idea.) Alternatively, green has dozens, if not hundreds, of common mana fixers / accelerators. Harrow, IMO, is still the gold standard, but Kodama's Reach is a fine choice, too. Then you got Sakura-Tribe Elder, Borderland Ranger, Rampant Growth and many, many more that I can't think of off the top of my head. And they're all commons. Of course, if you have Birds of Paradise, you play as many of those as you can fit in the deck.

As far as what to do with it, that's up to you. Progenitus will probably be prohibitively expensive if you want to make it the centerpiece of your deck. And I'm not a fan of Slivers, because they aren't much of a challenge to build a deck around. If I were attempting a 5-color deck, I'd pursue an Elemental theme around Horde of Notions. It's only a rare (not mythic!), so you can pile in a couple fairly cheaply, and add four Fusion Elementals (because you need as many 5-color cards as possible). There are a ton of fun and interesting elementals out there that not only good in their own right, but are downright abusive combined with the Horde (Doomgape + recursive 8/8 creatures = win). I'd also throw in a Cromat and Coalition Victory just for fun.

 

[Spiderman]

Is it for single-player or multi- primarily?

 

[Killer Joe]

I once used this deck to play in tournaments back in '98:

5 Color-Green
2x Derelor (3B)
4x Tradewind Rider (3U)
3x Man-O'-War (2U)
4x Birds of Paradise (G)
4x River Boa (1G)
3x Quirion Ranger (G)
4x Granger Guildmage (G)
4x Wall of Blossoms (1G)
4x Uktabi Orangutan (2G)
4x Incinerate (1R)
4x Armageddon (3W)
9x Forest
1x Reflecting Pool
4x Undiscovered Paradise
4x Gemstone Mine
2x City of Brass

This deck was all the rage in those days and the Granger Guildmage totally kicked Ball Lightning's ARSE!!!

 

[Ninja_Of_Ni]

I think the first thing I need to come up with for this deck is my idea. It is mainly going to be used in multi-player games usually with 3-6 players. I was briefly considering making an atog deck, but I'm not so sure I like the idea of having to sacrifice artifacts enchantments and lands in order to boost a creature until the end of turn. I think that if I'm running a 5 color deck, 5 color spells would be a must so now my goal is determine which one(s) I want to try to use. Also, would anyone know of a MTG card database where I could search for cards based on mechanics?

 

[turgy22]

Gatherer is the best MTG card database I've ever encountered.

 

[Ninja_Of_Ni]

I could try for a win using Coalition Victory + Transguild Courier.

 

[Oversoul]

A warning about Coalition Victory: it sucks. No really. It does. I mean, that's okay: playing decks that can successfully use horrible cards is one of the most fun things about this game. Coalition Victory's conditions aren't that difficult to set up. Natural Balance can get the hard part out of the way by itself. The problem is that the cost is exorbitant. If you use Natural Balance and Transguild Courier, you're paying eight mana to set up a win condition for a spell that itself costs another eight mana. That's sixteen mana and three cards to win the game. You could address that by forgoing Natural Balance and using Thawing Glaciers or something instead, but that would slow things down in a different way. With a card like Coalition Victory, you're stuck. There's no way to make it reasonable.

If you want to build a Coalition Victory deck, go for it. You'll need some way to either stop opponents from getting in your way so that you can cast your winning spell, or some way to get the spell through before opponents can stop you. Really, it is technically possible to build a deck around any card that uses either of those methods. In the case of Coalition Victory, the former is probably more viable (because it's hard to outrace other decks when your win is going to cost you 3WURBRG and setting up two separate conditions). If you didn't already guess, this is probably not going to look like a "five-color" deck. Sure, you'll use a five-color spell (Coalition Victory). But the rest of the deck, the support and setup, is probably only going to be two colors. Maybe a third splashed in for a few key cards, but probably not.

If you just want to build a five-color deck, look at the KJ's list and come up with something like that using cards you own or want to play with. If you want to build a Coalition Victory deck, do that. But one of the mistakes I made many times some number of years ago was to think, "Sliver Queen is a card I like. Sliver Queen is five colors [back then, Sliver Queen was the only such card, actually]. I will make a five-color deck and use Sliver Queen." Eventually, that deck shifted from being a hopeless hodgepodge of cards from all five colors to a finely tuned Sliver Queen infinite combo deck. But you don't need to waste all the time that I did learning that it's not about building a deck that uses certain colors. It's about building a deck with the right cards.

 

[turgy22]

I agree with Oversoul's assessment. I've always viewed Coalition Victory as a card you put 1 copy of into a deck that naturally sets up for the possibility that it will be playable at the right time. I wouldn't try to build a deck around it. It sounds like fun, but I think you'd end up with a pile of cards that's a lot more boring to play with than you might imagine.

 

[Ninja_Of_Ni]

Meh, I'm not coming up with a good enough idea for a 5 color deck. I think I'll still look some into this possibility, but it will be put on the back-burner for now. I have an idea for a G/R/B deck using the devour mechanic plus tokens which I think I'll try building next. 5 colors seems like you need a pretty well developed idea for it to work, otherwise it would end up being more of a gimmicky deck.

 

[Spiderman]

but I'm not so sure I like the idea of having to sacrifice artifacts enchantments and lands in order to boost a creature until the end of turn.

I know it's on the back burner now, but the trick for that is to use other stuff that takes advantage of the permanents going to the graveyard, or use permanents where they're good in the graveyard, or stuff that brings stuff out of the graveyard once it's there.

 

[Killer Joe]

Take another look at the deck I listed. The main idea is to deny the other players a mana base via Armageddon. Green is the central color mostly because of Birds of Paradise. The Quirion Ranger is there for Tradewindwind Rider (it helps with Armageddon, too). Wall of Blossoms is also a good companion for Tradewind as well as it's CIP effect of Draw-a-Card, you can use the Tradewind to send it back and play it again cheap for 1G and draw yet another card.
The red can be splashed for any kind of red; Incinerate at the time seemed good against creatures with regeneration but Flametongue Kavu could easily replace Incinerate.
Derelor (the 4/4 black fatty) was there because it was a good fatty and at 4 mana not too bad (the draw back never seemed to rear it's ugly head). You could make that slot for Syphon Soul or Dark Banishing or Terminate.
The staples are:
4x Armageddon
4x Tradewind Rider
4x Quirion Ranger
You could add Propaganda for that extra pain in the butt strategy ^_^

 

[Ninja_Of_Ni]

So it looks like you basically used G/U with R/W/B as splash for 1 spell each playing the deck as control. I haven't really used any land destruction in decks, but I have a friend who has considered it. I was actually thinking about maybe going with the idea of using things that allow me to play creatures without paying their mana cost (e.g. Elvish Piper, Aether Vial). One of the guys I play regularly has a 5 color deck running these sort of things as a way to get Progenitus out. It seems quite effective as that stops one of only a few ways to stop Progenitus by countering. I do think this might be a little expensive to buy cards for, but I think I could do it by buying them only a few at a time over a few months while using the cards I own (and I have a good size card pool of stuff not in any decks) plus maybe a few purchases to build other decks.

 

[Ninja_Of_Ni]

I know this idea has been on the back-burner for 3 months now, but I think I might have a pretty good 5 color deck concept in mind now. I got the idea looking at the card Gaea's Balance http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=28668. The big advantage I can see with this card is that it would be landfall happening 5 times in 1 turn. This card would not only set me up for being able to produce all 5 colors of land, but it would also build up say a Steppe Lynx by +10/+10 or could get me 5 tokens if I had an Emeria Angel out. Of course, I think that I could also combine Gaea's Balance with a Khalni Heart expedition which would in turn give me 8 landfall.

So, based on these ideas, this deck is shaping up to be mostly a G/W landfall and mana acceleration deck. I think red would work out nice in this deck to give those bird tokens generated by Emeria Angel haste and also for me to be able to fling those Steppe Lynx's after building them up huge with landfall. As for the blue and black mana, a single Gaea's Balance would give me all 5 basic lands to cast Draco for 6 mana.

I think this is starting to shape up into a good deck idea. Some more opinions on what to play in this would be appreciated.

 

[Oversoul]

Landfall could be a useful mechanic in a five-color green deck. Since you mentioned Gaea's Balance, that reminds me of a combo you might not be familiar with, but that can produce large amounts of mana in any colors you want fairly quickly: Squandered Resources and Natural Balance. Even using only basic lands as mana producers, those two cards can generate up to twelve mana on turn three. I'm picturing stuff like that along with Planar Birth for some landfall craziness. No idea if it's practical, but it sounds cool.

I, uh, don't recommend Draco. That card's usually only good for its sky-high mana cost (it can be put on top of the library for Erratic Explosion, for example). I know it looks like it synergizes with a deck that gets all basic lands out, but five-color decks have access to much better creatures. The domain mechanic Draco uses, though, is well worth checking out for five-color decks. So if you haven't already, look through Invasion block for any cards you might want to use.

 

[Ninja_Of_Ni]

I've taken a look at your Squandered Resources and Natural Balance combo, and I think it could work pretty well in my landfall deck. The only issue I'm seeing now with either that combo or using Gaea's balance is that if either of those spells get countered, I've cost myself a bunch of land. It might be something I only run 1 or 2 of for the deck and try to do the rest of my landfall using Rampant Growth, Cultivate and Khalni Heart Garden. Maybe a few Harrows could be added in if I want to do something similar, but not as risky.

As for my 5 color spells, I'm thinking about throwing a couple Cromats in. I haven't really considered Domain much. I had a friend who had a few domain cards that said he didn't like the mechanic. Maybe there are a few good domain cards out there.