Mono-Light Deck - Sundials, Animate Weapons etc.

[Chival]

i tested a simular deck, but it was mixed with gravity, animated titans have momuntum which really helps, and i have otyughs in it. but the problem was i never got enough white mana to use miracle.

[Parabol]

This deck is designed to give some of the stall/swarm tactics of Scaredgirl's deck, combined with some immortal and tough creatures, to replicate the strengths of the aether deck.  If you don't have a lot of the rares, you may not have much of a chance with it, I don't know.  This is the main deck that I'm playing, and am in the process of upgrading it using a modified Scaredgirl's deck to farm gods (I'm not certain enough of this deck's strength to use it against gods just yet!).  I'm still playing around with pillars/towers to see how many will work, but around 16 would seem right, maybe one or two fewer in a deck with less than 5-6 morning stars/miracles.

Any weaknesses you can point out are greatly appreciated, but please flame the idea and not the person.

Mark of Light
6x Sundials: Upgraded.  Form an approximate substitute for Dim Shield, are free, speed up light's already fast creature damage, lend light a stalling mechanism AND haste function.
nx Morning Stars/Glories: As many as you can get in.  I have 5, which appears to work well.  If you only have one, I suspect it's still possible to make the deck work, and you save room on Animate Weapons.  Form a substitute for Phase Dragons.
n-1/n x Animate Weapons: Your choice whether to have one fewer ani weap than you have weapons, or the same amount.  I prefer the same amount.
1x Purify: Upgraded.
6x Miracle: Should be easy to get, probably the most common rare from level 3 or from Gods.  Less common in Top 50.
1-6x Golden/Light Dragons: Power...use fewer dragons if you're having light quanta problems, more if you're comfortable or if you keep wasting 30+ light quanta with miracle.
6x Archangel: Don't bother with Guardian Angel.
Pillars: not sure how many to put in yet.  Can't experiment in the trainer because you need to grind miracles all over again there.

Possibly put some Holy Lights or flashes in, too, for (a) a chance at ele mastery, (b) control of dark decks.

Strengths:
Makes Light competitive with Aether, Rainbow decks (although not their equal).
Creatures are strong and tough to kill if not actually immortal (thru morning glories).
Stalls; Fast Heals; Haste; Fast output of creatures.
Should be able to out-last dim shield by using sundial, destroy bone wall with large numbers of creatures, break through diss field through brute force.
Original-ish deck.
Use for shard of divinity: Put these in and your miracles increase in power proportionately.

Weaknesses:
EXPENSIVE.  Upgrades are 100% necessary for sundial, animate weapon and purify (if you include Purify, that is).
No eternity = no guard against deck out.
No permanent control (weapons are especially worrying).
Creature control limited to Sundials, holy light IF you put it in and IF you draw it against the appropriate decks.
Extremely weak to Discord, being a mono deck.
Destroyed by Grav shield. (Unless you have multiple flying morning glories).
Rares required.  Although some may see this as a good thing, as you are unlikely to come across 3000 decks the same style the next day.

Any comments? I thought this was quite interesting.

[Uncle Jellyfish]

i tested a simular deck, but it was mixed with gravity, animated titans have momuntum which really helps, and i have otyughs in it. but the problem was i never got enough white mana to use miracle.

I'd replace the Holy Lights with Reflector Shields, upgraded is better. This would prevent people from finishing you off with direct damage spells, and would shut down Drain Lifes that are so popular in Darkness Decks. o-o Not to mention that if you're stalling with Sundials while waiting for a Miracle, of for the the Quanta to use one, you're better off being protected from being finished off with a Fire Lance. >.<

[Parabol]

I meant Titan.

Titan has the effect of bypassing shields, which this deck previously lacked.  Explosions do the same job, but for just mark of fire's cost.

Someone else talked about considering using Titans in a similar deck earlier, so I was answering them - I tried to reference every reply in my post.

[Parabol]

Wow, that's definitely a much more flexible deck :O

And I already love making decks which can fund an entire element (in this case firesplosions) with just mark, so...sweet.

I agree, light creatures can be pretty easy to control at times, I mostly use them to soak up quanta before I cast miracle o_O.  And a shield is sorely needed.  I think Mirror shield might edge out diamond shield for me, as it is already immortal and allows the deck to stay a little simpler - as Mr Jellyfish said, it is very useful against those fire lances/siphon lives.  I also thought about titans, but explosions seem simpler, with less fuss.

Thanks for all your help!

[Parabol]

Yeah, that wasn't very clear, my bad 

[Scaredgirl]

Very cool idea.

I've been trying to do something with upgraded Sundials for some time now but haven't really found anything good because Light creatures are pretty bad. I had no idea that Morning Glory would be immortal as flying weapon which makes it pretty damn good.

For the past 2-3 hours I've been trying on trainer all kinds of decks based on this Morning Glory + Flying weapon. This is the best I could come up with:



Mark is Fire.

I simplified your version by getting rid of some cards and instead took Diamond Shield, Protect Artifact and Explosion because I really think you need..

1. A way to destroy permanents (Phase Shields, Hourglasses, Sundials)
2. A shield.

Now you might not need a shield if you have multiple Miracles. I couldn't test it because trainer doesn't have them. If I had 4 Shards of Divinity and 4 Miracles I could probably drop all Earth cards and just keep spamming Miracle.

I dropped all the dragons and angels because I didn't want to give my opponent anything to target. You could also take 1 Fire Storm if you wanted to get rid of those Fireflies etc.

Here is this deck in action:

Epic battle against top-50 rainbow (which I lost).


Yeah.. this deck needs Miracle

[Uncle Jellyfish]

Lol, sorry. When you mentioned that you thought of using Titans instead of Explosions, I thoguht that you were talking about ways to destory the shields, so I assumed that you meant Pulverizer instead of Titan.

[Uncle Jellyfish]

Wow, that's definitely a much more flexible deck :O

And I already love making decks which can fund an entire element (in this case firesplosions) with just mark, so...sweet.

I agree, light creatures can be pretty easy to control at times, I mostly use them to soak up quanta before I cast miracle o_O.  And a shield is sorely needed.  I think Mirror shield might edge out diamond shield for me, as it is already immortal and allows the deck to stay a little simpler - as Mr Jellyfish said, it is very useful against those fire lances/siphon lives.  I also thought about titans, but explosions seem simpler, with less fuss.

Thanks for all your help!

I think you mean Pulverizer, since Titan has Momentum, and Pulverizer has Destroy.

[RoKetha]

Funny you mention that... I PvPed against a mono-air that floated Eagle Eyes earlier today.

As soon as I got out Eternity (and I have Enchants in my deck anyway), it was a laugh. Other than Morning Glory, Flying Weapon decks HATE reverse time.

So... in your last screen, please tell me how you'd win if your opponent had a Bone Wall and the intelligence to eat and mutate his own Fireflies as soon as they came out, after seeing your Diamond Shield.

Yeah.. if in that last screen he had a Bone Wall I would have lost.

I would have also lost if he had 12 Light Dragons and I had one poisoned Rustler with a limp.

You see you cannot take one random situation and base the effectiveness of a deck on that. With a bit of luck, I could have beat that rainbow, human player or not. It's not like this deck is not cabable of doing so, like you suggested. Difficult? Yeah, it's a freaking rainbow! Impossible? No.

EDIT: I wish I had a Fire Storm in that situation. I DID have it earlier but I wanted to make the deck smaller so I got rid of it. Damn, it would have been beautiful.

Having a Bone Wall in that deck is the MORE common situation. That deck has 3 Bone Walls in it, and with no creature control and Otys/FFQ in play that long, I could quite easily build the Bone Wall up to 20+ while you're waiting to float the rest of your weapons (not to mention you have to choose between deflaging my sundials, dimensional shields, and bonds, and every sundial I can have up after the bone wall is several free walls), and that also leaves Otys with 10-15 attack that are pounding through your shield. That's the entire reason the deck even has Bone Walls; to protect against the few attacks your Otys can't stop; your Morning Glories are about the same as Gemini's Colossal Dragons except many of his have Momentum and yours can't be mutated. Seeing as a massive Bone Wall is standard when a human player is running the deck, I don't think you can shrug it off like that.

Yes, you would eventually win with lots of Miracles since he's only fueling 4 walls a turn and you're hitting 6 at the end, but give him the typical 15-20 wall head start and you're likely decking before that happens.

As for the Fire Storm, don't think he cares if he has Bone Wall and his Otys have eaten even one thing.

None of this makes it a weak deck or anything, it's just indicative of how Bone Wall completely nullifies far too many decks.

[RoKetha]

So... in your last screen, please tell me how you'd win if your opponent had a Bone Wall and the intelligence to eat and mutate his own Fireflies as soon as they came out, after seeing your Diamond Shield.

[RoKetha]

This deck suffers from the same problem as every non-poison non-momentum deck in the game: There's far too many ways to gain complete and total invincibility to every single method of attack it has.