The only issue I see and know from experience, people will not let zada live past turn 4. That is an immediate threat that needs to be removed. This is a great combo idea, kinda like with Boros Reckoner Lightning Strike and Boros Charm and Dictate of the Twin Gods. That combo deals enough lethal damage but how consistent is it?

I was considering that card Arcbond but I didn't want to lose life. Nor be dependant on gaining life. I have to be very fast before the opponent even has a chance to do anything. Abzan starts firing off during turn 4 and up. The longer it takes to beat them the quicker you will lose.

But it all depends on what the meta is in your local game store. Mine is mostly Abzan with like one jeskai deck and a home brew.

Halospades I think you missed reading something about this deck combo. When Arcbond's effect triggers after being cast, the creature is what does the damage. This is important because the deck is filled with lifelink creature options, meaning I will actually be gaining life if the combo goes off properly. This means against decks I fall behind for whatever reason, If I pull the combo off I can still make comeback because I will be stealing life.

The idea for the deck is still experimental... I have only tested with theory and not actually put in to play yet because I just picked up most of the cards this Friday and haven't had chance to give it a real test. Plan on taking to next FNM after I get swiftspears and pain lands. I will let you know after next Friday how it went.

Definitely want to hear about it.

Sorry I can't update you on how the deck works yet... Finals took more of my time up then first anticipated. Till next FNM.

Nice Build! +1 upvote from me for originality!

psyopsauce glad you liked the deck and thank you for the upvote.

I a as reading an article for Abzan players and it was giving them advice about beating an atarka red deck which is similar to what I'm doing and they say Surge of Righteousness would be a stopper for atarka red. However they aren't taking into consideration about zada. Anyhow any chance you played your deck at fnm?

Yes. Ran into that card. It stopped one of my swiftspears but won that game thanks to Gideon. The deck uses a fair amount of white aggressors so its not that crippling from the feel of things.

With this deck build, I don't really fear Surge of Righteousness being used from the side deck since it can't really do much to stop Zada combo. The only targets that spell has is Monastery Swiftspear, Zada, Hedron Grinder, and goblin tokens. While it can hurt that the spell can be used early to stop the swiftspear, thats the only really good target they have. Usualy when Zada is in play and you go to swing the effect replicating sells causes you to swing for game. That spell might kill zada in the attack but you are still able to profit from his ability. The final target are 1/1 tokens, meaning they are desperate using it on those.

The deck true fear from side decks are things that remove out sited of combat:

White: Silkwrap, Planar Outburst

Red: Radiant Flames, Seismic Rupture

Black: Languish, Crux of Fate

These are the cards decks don't put in the main all the time that can really prove problematic. Red and black also have single target spells that cause problems as well, but when you see they have a lot of single targeted hate you can just side in to go wide.

I hope this comment helps make what I tried to say in the last post more clear as to why I don't fear the Surge of Righteousness card too much. It is still not a bad side since swift spear can do a lot of damage early if you don't have an answer.

Halospades you mentioned that you are worried about the card since you have a something similar to an atarka red deck. Not sure if my comments will help you specifically since I don't know how your deck is setup and my deck is NOT an atarka red deck.

Someone at the shop I go to said my deck was like an atarka deck and was so insistent that the fact that I was using white instead of green made it still an atarka deck. The balance of my cards compared to your typical atarka deck is very different, because they are usually at least 70% red and the few non red cards aren't even creatures. This makes it so anti red cards are easy side options and can help you get rid of problem cards easily. The problem with my deck in this comparison, is that I have plenty of non-red creatures that those cards don't always have a good target. While it is true my deck does use inflate spells like Atarka deck builds; my deck is slower because it runs a lot of control type spells because they are required for making a silly combo and are effective when used without combo.

Also I run Valorous Stance that can allow me to prevent the card from working.

Sorry for rambling, but making sure I get my thoughts out as to make the decks strength and weaknesses understood. This way if you try to create your own, you can understand the purpose for the card choices and also understand how to make use of the side deck for certain pairings. Hope that 3 part explanation helped.

I have a suggestion, Soulfire Grand Master might do well. Lifelink as well as giving your arcbond lifelink, and you can recycle multiple spells. You can keep using arcbond over a few times instead of hoping you get more.

Also, could you use low costing defenders to block three of their creatures, cast arcbond on it, and bounce their damage right back at them?

nevermind, i misunderstood the meaning of defender.

ajstorey456 you do have a point with the Soulfire Grand Master being a good add to the deck because he is another 2 drop lifelinker and has a useful ability. My worries about the card is that his ability does take a lot of mana to use and the only spell he would give lifelink to would potentially not work because of how the spell is worded. The spell imprints the ability onto the creature, so the creature has to have lifelink for it to function how we want.

The deck for the most part is a budget deck with the exception of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar because I got lucky and pulled my copies from packs (price without Gideon: $52). The main deciding factor for not using him is that Hidden Dragonslayer costed me $2 for a play set, while he was priced at $10 each. If I had the card on hand I would consider running 2-4 copies of him because his ability can help if the game gets dragged out allowing you to recast not only buff spells, but also token spawn spells. I would possibly tweak the spell options in the deck to better suit his deck presence.

As for your second idea of being defensive and offensive you can always use the enchantment Brave the Sands. This way you can block multiple creatures to get more damage in a single battle stacked up on the one "defender" and have vigilance to be able to attack and defend at the same time. Personally I don't feel the need to run this because the deck rushes early game at a fare pace with its cheap costs and lots of inflate spells; but see it being a useful support spell if you want to maintain a defense while aggressing. Would not run more then 2 since its not pivotal but could be helpful.

I hope this answers your question and even give you ideas if you want to try and make your own version. If you have any other questions or suggestions I will definitely like to hear them and will try to respond as well and soon as I can.

Woah, cool!

I was fiddling with basically this exact same thing for a while, but never committed because I was greedy and playing blue, so the manabase was prohibitively expensive. Very cool to see it having success. Arcbond is ridiculous under the right circumstances. The life swings are beautiful.

On that note, how have you felt things go when you Arcbond without indestructability?

Does this combo work?I mean, lifelink triggers when the creature deals damage, not when it's dealt damage. Therefore, when you cast arcbond and it hits seeker of the way, you will not gain any life.

19englishm if you read the card Arcbond closely it is worded that the creature you targeted with the spell gains a function until end of turn. The function is worded that "Whenever that creature is dealt damage this turn, it deals that much damage to each other creature and each player." This means that after the creature takes damage, the creature then dose damage to all creatures on board and each player. If a creature you target has lifelink you would be gaining life because the creature does the damage with similar results from fight cards like Dromoka's Command. I know its complicated but I hope this makes sense to you now. If you are still confused let me know what part of the ruling confuses you.

dinomiah To answer your question it happens a lot that I use the spell not even targeting zada because I can make some amazing trades and often can get lethal because my opponent block fearing inflate spells.The faster you can widdle down your opponent, the easier it can be to bait your opponent into blocking with their larger creatures for you to make use of this tactic. Make sure to be creative in how you use the spell because sometimes you can get away with using this spell on enemy creatures and getting away with board wiping them if they have lots of small creatures and losing none. The spell is like a double edged sword; handle with care and it can be effective, but if used reckless can hurt you more then your enemy.

If you have Zada and for combo without stance it can still be lethal. Just be careful how you choose to resolve the damage. The damage trigger from spreading the love will make each creature do more damage as it is sent to the grave and can make math tricky. Example:

You have three creatures on board: Zada, Hedron Grinder, Seeker of the Way, Monastery Swiftspear

One creature is going to be delt 3 damage so you go for arcbond in response. For this purpose we will say it was Zada that was targeted for the damage. Now that Zada takes the damage he will deal 3 damage to everything, this causes you to choose which trigger you want to go for damage next: Seeker or Swiftspear. In this case you would want to trigger seeker to do its damage next to give you the most lifelink possibility especially if you are low. The will cause the seeker to now do 3 damage to everything meaning you gain at minimum 9 life (6 if you want to consider the damage you take being healed right away). What is left now is that swiftspear will now do 6 damage to everything. The reason is because you resolved the damage from both the other creatures first, thus causing the swiftspear to stack up more damage. So the total damage outcome with just these three creatures on board would be your opponent taking 12 damage and you taking 3 (you took 12 but healed 9).

This is an example of how it works and I am sorry if that chunk of text is confusing but I was trying to break it down as much as I could to make the most amount of sense. The point of the example is that the incomplete combo is not guaranteed lethal, but has potential to be since the math gets wonky pending on which cards you choose to resolve damage with first.

Let me know if there are anymore questions and I will try to answer as well as I can. Have to admit its easier to talk this out then type.

Are you sure about that? Won't state-based actions get checked after Zada blasts the board and see that the Swiftspear has taken lethal damage? Then it's not on the board to get hit by Seeker's blast as well, and only gets its own trigger from Zada. That was one reason I really liked Jeskai Ascendency. It gets your creatures bigger so they can get more triggers. Seeing your success, I'd say the deck's better off in two colors with a more linear game plan, though.

dinomiah, How the damage works in this sense is that after a creature takes damage, it does a check for the damage trigger and must perform this action before the creature is sent to the graveyard. With multiple triggers trying to resolve you end out having to chose which ones resolve first. Because the triggers are all damage based it causes one to explode before the other has a chance to go to the grave and take more damage, thus resulting in more damage when the next card triggers. Last time I checked this is how the damage should flow and haven't herd of changes to the rules that would say otherwise.

If you do find a ruling or a judge that state otherwise I would like to hear that so I make sure not to make this mistake. I talked this over with a person I know is judge and he said this would be the way the damage would be resolved before I put the deck together, but rules sometimes change.

I'm specifically looking at 116.3b and 704.3.

From what I read there, your situation goes like this: You cast Arcbond on Zada. Now you have three triggered abilities ready to go off. Zada takes 3 damage, so his trigger goes, doing 3 damage to everything else. This puts their triggers on the stack, but since an ability resolved, state-based actions are checked. Since all your creatures have lethal damage marked, they are destroyed. Their abilities are still on the stack and go off, but they are not still in play to take damage and have their triggers go off again.

dinomiah While my computer is having trouble with the links I will fully trust you as you took the time to research it more in depth then me. Haven't had any games yet where this has become an issue yet (mostly because they die before it has the chance to ramp like that), but I will make sure to play it like so from now on. Thank you for correcting my error. Still means that you need to be mindful when performing this to be aware which creatures to trigger first more so now, because if the damage that spreads isn't enough to kill off all creatures in first wave of damage then be mindful which ones to trigger to get the most value.

Thanks again for taking the time to research this.