Yeah, I have so many soldiers now that I have two decks, and given the fun play garned from the heroic mechanic I might have to run 3 because of the large number of such attuned cards I got in the Born prerelease.
Dat Sphere of safety looks exactly what you suggested it to be, expensive, but entertaining. Prolly not mainboard material but I could definitely use a few in the sideboard.
February 4, 2014 6:40 a.m.
I'd recommend bringing the deck down to 60 cards. It definitely improves consistency.
March 12, 2014 8:20 p.m.
Also, take out a bunch of the cards you only have one of. If you don't want to run more than one, then don't run that card at all.
March 12, 2014 8:24 p.m.
trulychaos says... #5
Hope you didn't play that Coat of Arms vs my deck :) lol. Very fun build; I'll play test against it and let you know what happens.
March 12, 2014 8:28 p.m.
trulychaos says... #6
So here's how my play test went... Game 1 I had what I though was gonna be a good start dropping some zombies, vampires, and Mutavault s. All was looking up until your deck exploded with a thousand tokens and ate me up in no time. Game 2 was a little different however; I turned the tide dropping early Pack Rat s and zombies devouring everything that hit the board on your side with creatures and hate. Game 3 Liliana hit the field turn 3, and in no time you were top decking nothing but land... Sounds pretty awesome for me, however I got mana starved on 3 friggin land (swamp, cemetery, vault). i managed to get a Pack Rat into play, you got Gideon, Champion of Justice . Gideon kept me occupied pumping every time i hit him with vault and rat until... BAM an Overgrown Tomb (I was never so happy to see a land) I shocked it in spitting my 2 Bloodghast onto the field made a rat activated vault and pinged gideon again. You top decked a couple creatures but in the end you got beat down by a massive army of rats (I was even discarding my recursion for rats). I didn't see a Griselbrand any of the 3 games... Funny thing is that I was super torn on whether or not to keep Pack Rat in my build. This match has re-solidified the power of Pack Rat in my mind once again.
March 12, 2014 9:31 p.m.
trulychaos says... #7
Just a note on your deck. I agree with Boat that your card count is just too high, you should never run more than 60. I don't however agree with the theory on 1 of rule... Playing a few singles in a deck is a fantastic way to throw your opponent off base, and makes you very difficult to sideboard against. That being said there should be versatility in your singles or like Boat said they aren't worth playing. The debate of constancy vs making your plays less predictable for your opponent to read is a big one, and it has to be taken on a case to case basis. My deck Griselbrand's Apocalypse is an example of constancy and synergy.
March 12, 2014 10:24 p.m.
Well you guys truly gave me a bit to think about, the problem for me is where to cut. When I play with the physical deck, having 70 cards isn't generally a problem, for me. But as I suspected it doesn't ever work the same for other people. I don't know what I could get rid of to bring it down to 60. I thought 70 was a good number for 2 reasons, the first being that it was still a relatively low number while still giving me more options, and the second being that this is a decommissioned EDH deck and I needed to cut down while still adding more copies of things.
Also, a thing you, and anyone reading this should know, I typically have ones and twos for a single reason, that being card price/availability. As I've said previously, I'm not a big spender, and shoveling out 20 bucks for a set of Field Marshals (or worse 160 for the same number of Brimaz) doesn't appeal to me, secondly, finding copies of the card that is rare, or even a decent common/uncommon is maddening, and ordering off of the internet is a tricky proposition for one who greatly prefers dealing in cash.
Anyways, thanks for your advice, I'll try and think of something to get rid of, or shuffle into sideboard.
March 13, 2014 7:02 a.m.
UpperDeckerTaco says... #9
A couple Champion of the Parish would go great with this deck.
April 23, 2014 6:12 p.m.
Hey there. I even don't know how I ended on your deck, but here I am. I like mono white soldiers tribal as I run one when I was starting with magic a few years ago. And looking at your deck, I think I can give you some hints how make your deck better.
When playing mono-white Soldiers, you have to realize that this kind of deck is an aggro deck, might be tagged as a midrange, but definitely not control. With that in mind, I suggest you to remove all Story Circle - Soldiers should be fast. Having permanents like Story Circle might be good in decks that are slow and need time to evolve their battlefield. But Soldiers is definitely not that kind of deck. The Circle only slows you down.
Spear of Heliod is nice. I agree. But in standard. Here in modern we have access to cards like Honor of the Pure - it costs 1 less to cast, which means that you are going to be faster. And that is what you need. If you somehow have spare mana to use the Spear's ability and a creature went through your defenses, something is wrong. Similar to this is the True Conviction . Imagine a game when you get the Conviction on your opening hand or on your first draw - then that spell is just sitting in your hand and is doing absolutely nothing. Now, if you are playing against control, the Conviction will be absolutely useless, as you will either have no creatures on the board or they will counter it. Against aggro, if you got so far that you can cast the Conviction, you are probably without creatures and some other creature would be much better.
Soul Warden is not needed and shall be replaced: a) it is not a soldier, b) you won't need the lifegain. Against aggro, If you have just a few life left, something went wrong and you are, most probably, about to loose. And against control it is not important how much life you have. Might be important against Burn, but against that, the best strategy is attacking.
Master Decoy - tapping opponent's creatures is definitely nice, but there is, for example, Gideon's Lawkeeper who does the same and is cheaper.
Avacyn, Angel of Hope is nice, but not in this deck. She is too slow.
Drop the Mistveil Plains - they are always coming into play tapped, so, again, you are slowed down.
Now, what to add:
Champion of the Parish is just great. You shall be dropping at least one creature a turn, so he will be growing pretty fast.
Preeminent Captain shall be here. It is just so insane together with Captain of the Watch .
Hero of Bladehold - I know that he is not a Soldier, but he produces soldiers every attack and even just a single attack with him you will most probably win the turn you attacked or the next one.
Previously mentioned Honor of the Pure . It is great here.
Brave the Elements to protect you guys or to make an unblockable attack.
And I almost forget: Raise the Alarm - it is also very good here. You have some anthems here and then those little guys produced of this instant won't be that little anymore.
So, changes I would make:
-4 Story Circle
-4 Soul Warden
-2 Master Decoy
-1 Gideon, Champion of Justice
+4 Plains
Again, the strength of white soldiers is in their speed. Making the deck more aggressive is only good. Hope this helps!
August 25, 2014 7:57 p.m.
Hey there, sorry about the slow response but I should prolly reply to your feedback. First I would like to say that we are thinking on two different levels here. I do believe that you are thinking of a pure soldiers deck, which is something I am not thinking of. What this is is a Mono White deck featuring soldiers and lifegain (yes I know it isn't particularly good in competitive Modern meta, but this is not my competitive Modern deck), and really shouldn't be thought of in those terms. Secondly along a similar vein, this is not a competitively oriented deck. Yes I would like for it to not be completely curbstomped by competitive decks, but the primary focus of the deck is to be something that is fun (for me) to play, and not to win tournaments (I have other decks for that). Now on to specific cards suggestions.
As to the removal of Story Circle and Spear of Heliod I will say this, I understand that in an aggro deck they are simply too slow to actually be workable, but this is not an aggro deck, it can barely qualify as a Midrange Deck (and that's being nice). Furthermore I find it far more entertaining to actually delay a game for the sake of seeing the more interesting plays of a longer game (thus hitting the second point of my opening remarks).
As to the removal of Soul Warden, I can understand that being a fair point in general Modern Tournament Meta, and were this a pure soldier or pure tournament deck I would certainly take your suggestion. This is however neither, and I do quite often find constant life gain something that has saved my ass from defeat several times, and sometimes enabled me to follow up with a game winning blow on the following turn. The same could be vaguely said of True Conviction, though I've though to Sideboarding it for play with my less competitive playgroup.
As to the removal of Avacyn, Angel of Hope, that one I've considered, and when I do take this deck to tournament I do oftentimes swap her out for something else, but for this "standard" version of the deck, she stays. That being said, I've not really ever had her as dead weight in the hand, so I suppose it would prolly be a more pertinent thing to one who has had deadweight Avacyn.
That being said, you did bring up several valid points, though in many cases I have already integrated them into the deck (in particularly the Honor the Pure), or considered them (Hero of Bladehold & Champion of the Parish. That being said there are two things that I think are good ideas in regards to adding, but have yet to implement, those being the replacement of Master Decoy with Gideon's Lawkeeper, and the addition of Preeminent Captain. I like both of those suggestions, but have yet to do them for reasons relating to the use of real world currency.
woligan says... #1
It is something with soldier decks that gets to me :)
this deck is similar to one of mine earlier builds (I split it up in to two because I had too many cards I wanted to add) and i love it!
+1 for nostalgia
In this deck I think you can have a lot of fun with Sphere of Safety , expensiv in mana but lot of fun!
February 4, 2014 4:49 a.m.