Have you ever looked at Mono-Red Aggro (also known as Red Deck Wins or simply RDW) and thought “Wow, such a powerful, consistent deck – I wonder if I could make it worse”
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All articles filed in Deck Tech
Dimir Control Deck Tech
Dimir Control deck tech and GBGG & Top 8 recap
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Four Color Blood Deck Tech
A deep dive into the Four Color Blood decklist, card choices, and play patterns.
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The Armory #4: Polymorph Tokens
Greetings Gladiators! Today’s article, the fourth in the series, will demonstrate why artifacts and creatures are overrated, and why you don’t need more than two in your entire deck.
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A First Timer’s Great Big Gladiator Games Tournament Report
The Great Big Gladiator Games have come and gone, and I was glad to have been a part of it. It was my first foray into the competitive side of Gladiator…
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Great Big Gladiator Games Deck Tech: Mono-White Death & Taxes
Decks these days can have so many colors. I’ve even heard rumors of disturbed individuals who will play four or more…
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The Armory #3: Lorehold Control
Welcome students! In today’s class, we’ll study the history of Lorehold Control, a pet deck of your professor. The deck aims to eliminate the opponent’s board presence, accumulate card advantage, and win with big Dragons! Although the matches were played before the release of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, the deck list has been updated with the new cards. Can Control decks exist without Islands? Let’s find out!
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The Armory #2: Mono Blue Tempo
Hello Gladiators! Welcome to my second article in The Armory! Today’s article will be about Mono-Blue Tempo, an idea submitted by FreeCats#52240. This deck aims to deploy early evasive threats and protect them with counterspells. It also has many ways to gain card advantage while maintaining pressure on the opponent’s life total. How many flying creatures does it take to be lethal? Let’s find out!
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The Armory #1: Pirate Tribal
Pirate tribal, an idea submitted by Fungustober#71587. These fearsome warriors of the high seas aim to quickly take down their opponents with evasive bodies and efficient removal. The deck also contains a minor artifact sub-theme and tribal synergies. Will the Pirates seize the treasures they desire or meet their fate at the bottom of the stormy sea? Let’s find out!
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Green-Black Aggro Deck Tech
Green-Black Aggro (henceforth referred to as GB Aggro) is a creature-based aggressive deck whose game plan revolves around playing threats resistant to removal while using its own removal and hand disruption to clear the way for those threats. It is slower than the fastest Aggro decks, instead favoring a longer term, more resilient strategy. This gives it more endurance in the face of board wipes than other decks, as well as additional avenues to disrupt Combo and Control lists proactively instead of relying on racing them.
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Blue Red Control Deck Tech
and then develop a threat and protect it. In this article I’ll be going over why I chose to play this deck, the game plan of the deck, my card choices and potential changes to the list.
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The Metagame Loop
The concept of the Metagame in this article specifically relates to the cycle of player decisions and actions leading up to, and during, any given competitive constructed tournament. I refer to this in the article as a single metagame cycle. This cycle is format agnostic. The steps within this cycle may or may not be executed consciously by the players, but all players in a given tournament execute this fundamental gameplay loop.
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Snow Mana, Hot or Not?
Thanks to Kaldheim, snow payoff cards entered the format in February 2021. Most of the card pool that cares about snow mana comes from Kaldheim, though Wizards of the Coast has made additions to the snow matters pool through Historic Anthologies. It’s unlikely they will add more snow payoff cards in the near future, but it’s not impossible. Snow lands have many clear upsides and some downsides for playing them. In this article I am going to discuss some of the most played cards that affect or are affected by snow lands and share my opinion about playing them in Gladiator.
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Tech-Edge: Bant Nexus Deck Tech
Bant Nexus is a hybrid ramp and control deck, built to drag the game out long to generate a sufficient mana advantage to decisively win the game. This deck is perfect for anyone who enjoys playing very long, interactive games of Magic. Each game features important decisions, which rewards player skill while still being accessible to learning players, since the length of the game means a single mistake will not make or break the game.
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Tech-Edge: 4 Color Eggs Deck Tech
Of the many decks I have brewed since starting Gladiator a few weeks back, this is by far the most intriguing of them so far, full to the brim with impactful decisions. Though it does not lend itself well to beginners, it has a steep learning curve, the deck will test you to become a better magic player, as often the slight deviations from optimal play are the difference between victory and loss.
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Tech-Edge: Jeskai Control
Jeskai Control is an excellent choice for you if you’re looking to learn the fundamentals of control. Playing Jeskai Control means drawing cards, countering spells, and controlling the battlefield with removal. Every win with Jeskai Control is decisive; by the time you’ve killed the opponent, they will have no cards in hand and no cards in play. If you’re looking to win tournaments and aren’t afraid of long matches, then look no further than Jeskai Control.
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Tech-Edge: Mono-Green Stompy Deck Tech
Mono-Green Stompy looks to play large creatures ahead of the curve, to attack for lethal damage before the opponent has time to deal with each threat you play. The deck is fairly linear, as it aims to be aggressive most of the time, but is resilient enough to switch to defense and grind, if the need arises.
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Tech-Edge: Esper Manse Deck Tech
The Esper Manse deck began its life in the late 2019 standard with Throne of Eldraine introducing the titular card, Dance of the Manse, and persists in Gladiator today. The deck uses multiple enchantments and artifacts to grind the opponent out and resurrect problem enchantments from the graveyard to the battlefield. In singleton, the deck favors a controlling gameplan, employing high-value enchantments like sagas to grind out the midgame and threaten our opponents with armies of tokens. Meanwhile, actions are setting up for a huge Dance to close out the game or to resurrect a big threat from our graveyard to threaten our opponent’s life total.
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Boros Prowess Deck Tech
Today I’d like to introduce my favorite Gladiator deck, Boros Prowess. This list started from Ben Wheeler’s but has slowly evolved over the ~100 matches I’ve played with the deck. The goal of the deck is simple; cast aggressive creatures and pump/support them with spells. The deck hopes to go under nearly all other decks in the format, threatening lethal on T4/T5 in best case scenarios. The reasons to play Prowess over other agro options the deck’s explosiveness; 12+ damage with just two creatures on board is easily doable. If attacking with a 5/5 trample Fencing Ace on T3 is your type of Magic, you’re considering the right list.
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Bant Counters Deck Tech
By HD_Dabnado 12 May 2020 Bant Counters Decklist I started playing Magic: The Gathering during the gap between M15 and Khans of Tarkir block. It was a unique time for Magic; before the Magic Origins shift began. While I did not play much standard, I was actively interested in standard cards. Back then I played…
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Evaluating the Meta-Game: Why I Play White-Weenies and How Gx Decks are Going to Take Over the Format
By Horatius, 12 May 2020 Gladiator is very new and the best deck is still being debated. In the early days, there is space to improve win rate by analyzing and adapting faster than your opponents to the idiosyncrasies of this singleton format. I went 4-0 and 4-1 in the early tournaments choosing white weenie…
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Dealing With Planeswalkers
There are currently 2,857 cards on Magic Arena, and 98 of those are planeswalkers. With only 205 of these game winning bombs made in the 25 year history of the game, in gladiator the density of playable planeswalkers is higher in our format than in any other. With War of the Spark in the format it’s essential to ask when deck building: how does this deck answer planeswalkers?
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Esper Control Deck Tech
Hello everyone, and welcome to my first (hopefully not last) deck tech for Gladiator. I’m gonna do the proper thing, considering we are super early in the format; set up what exactly Gladiator is. The Rules of Gladiator Gladiator is a 100 card singleton format, intended to be played primarily on MTG Arena. Many of…
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