They tap, they untap, they make some more... who knew so many different types of soldier decks could exist?
The deck was originally designed around the two soldiers with untap effects -
Duergar Mine-Captain
and
Patrol Signaler
- with
Catapult Squad
. Being able to attack, untap for useful effects, then tap again to sling damage around combat (maybe even untapping and tapping again, if you have the mana!) seemed pretty cool. Somewhere along the way, though, in piecing together soldiers with tap/untap functionality, this was overshadowed by another combo.
Sunstrike Legionnaire
/
Midnight Guard
+
Elemental Mastery
/
Splinter Twin
Enchant the creature, then tap it for a hasty token. This untaps the creature, who can tap for more tokens; again and again until you have an arbitrarily large force that can bulldoze your opponent in one go. It is only a two-card combo, and it has the incredible fortune of having eight copies of both pieces of the combo! It will be pretty hard not to draw both halves, let alone multiple times.
Patrol Signaler
is rife with utility. With
Catapult Squad
in play, you can attack with her, then untap and have both her and the new token ready to fling two damage at something - and she still gets to do combat damage! If your opponent does block, it's just two mana to deal two damage to a creature and gain another token for as much as you have mana. Other than that, she's a great way to stall and make tokens, triggering
Mentor of the Meek
or
Sunstrike Legionnaire
.
Duergar Mine-Captain
is probably one of the less-important cards in the deck. Still, he can score you some quick and vicious wins even if you can't go infinite. He of course plays nicely with
Catapult Squad
, and he can really push the tokens from a
Patrol Signaler
or
Elemental Mastery
to do heavy damage.
Mentor of the Meek
helps you draw into what you need, and can draw off nearly every creature in the deck. He works particularly well with
Patrol Signaler
: three mana for a card and a creature is nothing to sneeze at. He really shines with
Elemental Mastery
, though - you can tap a creature and pay its power in mana to draw that many cards.
Sunstrike Legionnaire
is normally just half of your infinite combo, but he has other uses until then, too. He can trigger your
Duergar Mine-Captain
and
Patrol Signaler
if it isn't safe to attack with them, and he can tap down attackers against fast, aggressive decks to buy you time. With the Signaler, you can just tap her, then use her untap ability and trigger the Legionnaire to untap as well. That means pay two mana to gain a token at will - pretty good!
The single
Catapult Master
is more for fun. Still, if
Patrol Signaler
is allowed to flood the board, he can give you a way to wipe out opposing creatures for no mana. If your opponent has a
Peacekeeper
on the board, he'll be your only way to knock it out!
Kyren Negotiations
is there in case for some reason your tokens can't attack.
Moat
,
Reverence
,
Isochron Scepter
/
Holy Day
, what-have-you. It also is pretty nice with
Patrol Signaler
, especially if you have a
Midnight Guard
or two standing by - you'll likely blow your opponent away before you can draw the other half of the infinite combo.
Mana Echoes
... do you want infinite mana? Why not?! There's not actually a way to use that: It is more for use with
Patrol Signaler
and/or
Mentor of the Meek
. Still, it wouldn't be hard to add a way to use infinite mana.
Altar of Dementia
is in the sideboard in case your opponent doesn't even worry about his life total emptying - hey, it happens! The rest is way to deal with things or protect your creatures.
Gustcloak Savior
is mostly an idea for using
Patrol Signaler
and
Duergar Mine-Captain
without them dying in combat.
