If you're looking to netdeck affinity or Death's Shadow and go bully your local fnm, you're in the wrong place. Defenders are the type of deck that bring smiles to your opponents face as you make them read most of your cards then go infinite, draw your deck, and banefire them for 100,000.
The main combo is Overgrown Battlement or Axebane Guardian and Staff of Domination, with at least 5 defenders, this creates infinite mana, draws your entire deck, play Assault Formation, pump your guys to 0/infinity, tap all of their defenders, and swing for infinite. If you couldn't guess, its fun when it works.
Keep in mind, people don't know how this deck works, so that's your advantage, don't show decks with Leyline of Sanctity that you run banefire. If you don't win game one, keep everything a secret and let them flounder on their sideboard. It's pretty fun to keep em guessing.
Card Choices:
- Genesis Wave. You need a lot of defenders out to combo, so this helps a ton. Basically, a genesis wave for more than 5 will often win you the game.
- Drift of Phantasms: Need a flying defender? Need a genesis wave? Need either Axebane or Staff to combo off? Heck, want a Blood Moon? Drift of Phantasms does it all. Its the main reason I'm running blue. Without it, the deck just feels dead when the one win con in hand gets countered. Its also a flying 5/5 win-con with assault formation.
- Blood Moon: After a few turns and mana dorks, this deck can work through a blood moon, but there are other decks out there that flounder like no other. Tutor-able with Drift.
- Celestial Colonnade: This is my next purchase for this deck, but quite a few match-ups, especially the weird ones, end up pretty grindy. This card has been known to win games on its own.
Why am I not runnning:
- a playset of Assault Formation? -it just doesn't win many games, it distracts from the combo, and while 5 in the air with Drift of Phantasms has won me a game or two, it can just as easily be a dead card if they have Fatal Push. Honestly if you want to play assault formations, this isn't the right deck. a playset of Collected Company? -not enough creatures, nuff said. These often come out when I side in non-creature spells.
- Doran, the Siege Tower? -Doesn't let defenders attack, so its basically just a weird 5/5 for 3 that turns spellskites into beaters. Not bad, but again, distracts from the combo.
- Freed from the Real?: sure its infinite mana, but only on the worse of the two combo mana-dorks, and combo-ing with staff draws its own win condition. I don't like a combo that gets shut down by lightning bolt.
Good Matchups from my experience: Most Aggro, boglesBad Matchups: TRON, non-budget control decks
Big thanks to THE SOURCE WALL For the inspiration.
