My last post was all about killing people in a single turn either through Poison or Commander damage. And while that's completely viable, sometimes whittling away your opponents over a couple of turns is way safer. Especially because if you threaten to kill people every moment they'll most likely try everything they can to do the same to you, which is a problem since One-Shot-Voltron decks aren't good at defending themselfs by any stretch.
The advantages of Slow-and-Resilient over One-Shot are:
- You're better at defense
- You're safer when it comes to blowouts
- You don't have to rely that much on drawing a good mix of cards
- It's more fun in a more casual playgroup
The disadvantages of Slow-and-Resilient when compared to One-Shot are:
- Your offense is weaker
- Your opponents are able to prepare themselfs against what's coming
- Being slower leaves your opponents with time to recover
- Combo-decks are your nightmare since they can kill in one turn and you can't
As you can see it's mainly a preference and metagame choice. Alright, moving on...
SLOW-AND-RESILIENT VOLTRON
Let's start where we left last time: Infect & Poison counters. One of the funny things about a slower approach on infect is that it offers a form of "Multiple-player-Burn" in Proliferate:
When a player proliferates, he or she chooses any number of players and/or permanents with a counter on them, then puts another of those counters on these players or permanents.
Ok, I'll admit, one point of "damage" doesn't sound much, but hey 1 poison counter is 10% still. That's equal to 4 damage to each opponent and I'll take that all day every day if its source is a permanent.
But that's the top of the iceberg. Let's start from the... start......?
Again I think those three bad boys are the perfect choice for what we're trying to do. Rafiq and Shu Yun, again, are shining because they provide our beloved double strike, and especially in the Rafiq deck any random 1/x dork will at least swing for 4 poison with your commander out. Shu Yun on the other hand offers the great opportunity to go crazy with Equipment because of his colors.
And both are in Blue which has the best colored proliferate cards (in addition to those already mentioned):
It's pretty simple, get that 1/x Infect Creature equiped with a random equipment like a Darksteel Axe, give it double strike and swing for a chunk of poison counters. Usually that will put your opponents at a pretty bad spot since they're halfway dead but you didn't commit too much to the board at all. See what I mean by "resilient"? And still you'll be what I would define as a Voltron deck, riding one creature to victory by supporting it.
Now for Commander-damage based, our options increase drastically. Especially commanders that give themselfs protection are desired, since you can then desgin deck to cover the one spot at which the commander might still be attackable from and use the rest of the deck to boost his combatability to a point at which a few swing will end the game for a player.
Since there are not many commanders out there that are Indestructible and can take up Enchantments/Equipments, Hexproof is the kind of thing to look out for. Once they're not going to die against a Path to Exile or something similar, you're only worried for two things: "Sacrifice a creature" and "Destroy all creatures". While there's not much you can do against the first problem besides playing a second creature or playing Sigarda, Indestructibility is a thing that you can get via both Equipments and Enchantments:
Simply play a bunch of tutors to have access to these cards almost always and your opponents might find themselfs caught between "a rock and a hard place".
Once you've settled on a commander and the type of enhancement you want to run, try to figure out a Plan B if you get into any trouble. For example, while Geist of Saint Traft is nearly unkillable once he hits play, what if he gets countered two or more times and now you don't want to play him for the next few turns because he's so expensive to cast. You could then, according to wether you're Equipment of Enchantment based, play cards along the lines of ...
...these bad boys. Similar to Geist you can win games on the back of just supporting them, they are pretty strong in both defense and offense and offer a lot of flexibility. But that's only what I would do, you could of course incorporate a bunch of mana rocks into the deck and ramp your way into big creatures, or use some amount of combos to win the game if your commander doesn't get there. As long as you don't put all your money on one horse its fine.
I think because of the nature of slower Voltron decks it is always a good idea to at least play a few creatures that will pick up any enhancements if you don't have access to your commander. Your general will always be the first choice of course but since you can still win through putting your opponents to 0 why not play some other creatures to jump in when Thrun needs a nap.
And most importantly, what people seem to forget sometimes is that a slower Voltron deck can also play a higher amount of removal and get away with it since you won't need all your cards to kill someone in one big swing.
Personally I definitely enjoy playing Voltron from time to time, since it kind of feels like an aggressive creature deck and a combo deck had a baby. Every turn has its mini-combos, your attacks deal a bunch of damage all while you sit back and try to protect your threat and disrupt your opponents.
That's it for Voltron, I hope you learned something, see y'all 'round!
Now for Commander-damage based, our options increase drastically. Especially commanders that give themselfs protection are desired, since you can then desgin deck to cover the one spot at which the commander might still be attackable from and use the rest of the deck to boost his combatability to a point at which a few swing will end the game for a player.
Since there are not many commanders out there that are Indestructible and can take up Enchantments/Equipments, Hexproof is the kind of thing to look out for. Once they're not going to die against a Path to Exile or something similar, you're only worried for two things: "Sacrifice a creature" and "Destroy all creatures". While there's not much you can do against the first problem besides playing a second creature or playing Sigarda, Indestructibility is a thing that you can get via both Equipments and Enchantments:
Simply play a bunch of tutors to have access to these cards almost always and your opponents might find themselfs caught between "a rock and a hard place".
Once you've settled on a commander and the type of enhancement you want to run, try to figure out a Plan B if you get into any trouble. For example, while Geist of Saint Traft is nearly unkillable once he hits play, what if he gets countered two or more times and now you don't want to play him for the next few turns because he's so expensive to cast. You could then, according to wether you're Equipment of Enchantment based, play cards along the lines of ...
...these bad boys. Similar to Geist you can win games on the back of just supporting them, they are pretty strong in both defense and offense and offer a lot of flexibility. But that's only what I would do, you could of course incorporate a bunch of mana rocks into the deck and ramp your way into big creatures, or use some amount of combos to win the game if your commander doesn't get there. As long as you don't put all your money on one horse its fine.
I think because of the nature of slower Voltron decks it is always a good idea to at least play a few creatures that will pick up any enhancements if you don't have access to your commander. Your general will always be the first choice of course but since you can still win through putting your opponents to 0 why not play some other creatures to jump in when Thrun needs a nap.
And most importantly, what people seem to forget sometimes is that a slower Voltron deck can also play a higher amount of removal and get away with it since you won't need all your cards to kill someone in one big swing.
Personally I definitely enjoy playing Voltron from time to time, since it kind of feels like an aggressive creature deck and a combo deck had a baby. Every turn has its mini-combos, your attacks deal a bunch of damage all while you sit back and try to protect your threat and disrupt your opponents.
That's it for Voltron, I hope you learned something, see y'all 'round!
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