Like many of you out there I build decks on a whim. Whenever I see a new interesting preview or when a friend talks about a card that has worked well for him, you can bet I'll be at my computer typing card names and number on a new word pad ASAP. Unfortunately around 75-80% of these decks never see the light of day for one reason or another, usually because they aren't up to snuff, or because I've found a new interesting card I want to build with more. Now that I have this new shiny blog, I plan to chronicle some of my deck building endeavors for you guys to read.

Today I've been working on a deck for an upcoming EDH game with Tsu and Shino's Dad. For those of you who don't know what EDH is, you can find out by going to Bandai and checking out the Casual Format section of the site. For those of you who know what it is and haven't tried it, you don't know what you're missing. Anyway, I'm going to be building a deck around a platoon I really like, Sasori & 3rd Kazekage. As a General/Village Leader Sasori/Kazekage has a lot of appeal in the form of good stats and characteristics, relevant names and combat attributes, and a powerful effect. Despite the appealing aspects to the platoon, it has one huge drawback: it only has one element symbol. Having only one symbol effectively cut's my card pool in half, but despite this I still plan to go ahead and build this deck (hopefully with a bit of help from you guys). So lets get started!

It's safe to assume that since i'm playing a manipulation combat attribute general I'm going to use the puppet strategy in this deck, so right off the bat we can throw in these cards:

Sasori (Childhood)- Remarkable Talent

Kankuro- Trick

Kankuro- Tactician

Ebizo- Fishing

Chiyo- Retired Master

Black Ant- Lifeless Warrior

Crow- Lifeless Warrior

Salamander- Lifeless Warrior

Father and Mother- Lifeless warrior

Concealed Weapon

Substitute

Sasori of the Red Sand

Arbitration

Seeing as these cards are the foundation of the Puppet theme, not including them would probably be a crime. Also, while Sasori (Childhood) does have our General's Name, he is on such an early turn, and has such a powerful effect that including him will help more than it would hurt. Now that we put these cards in we can also add in some of the other commonly played cards in wind decks that aren't puppet devoted, like these cards:

Shino- Insect Warriors

Sakura- A Double Personality

Matsuri- Follower

Mikoshi- Follower

Temari- Wind Scythe

Temari- Violent Temper

Toki- Frozen Time

Gaara- Tragic Name

Baki- Able Brain

Shizune- Medical Kunoichi

The 4th Kazekage- Dignity

The Fifth Hokage- Establishment of Medicine

Gigantic Fan

Knockout Blow

Windstyle: Great Breakthrough

Sakura's Decision

Information Gathering

One morning

Village Hidden in the Wind

Luckily the Sand Village theme happens to tie into the Puppets theme, allowing me to make full use out of cards like Village hidden in the wind, Matsuri, and Mikoshi. With that we already have about 30 cards for the deck, and that was only the easy part. The next part is reanalyzing the current card pool. It's a long and tedious task where I re-look at every card from the beginning of the game to find cards that aren't completely terrible. Luckily, with the new card search engine this process is much easier, as I can search for cards only in my colors (Or in this case, color) and I can also search for specific keywords to find cards the support themes in my deck. Another thing I can do is search out cards that specifically refer to the Ninjas on my General/Village leader. This lets us find those random Nome cards that have really strong effects, but are too situational for competitive play.

So after searching Wind + Puppet/Manipulation/Sasori/3rd Kazekage/Iron and re-evaluating the search results, I've come up with these cards to add to the deck:

Kankuro- Skillful Manipulation of Puppets

Ebizo- Return

Chiyo- Rich Experience

Chiyo- Showdown

Secret White Move: Chikamatsu's Ten Puppets

Perfect Defense

Capture

Chakra Thread

Flame Thrower

Continuous Firing Poison Needles

Thousand Arm Manipulation

Secret Red move: Performance of a Hundred Puppets

Sealing Jutsu: Breaking the Lion's Roar

Sasori and 3rd Kazekage had some pretty sick user specific cards like Flame thrower, Continuous poison Needles, and Thousand Arm Manipulation which give my deck the explosive field warping power it needs to overcome its lack of a second element. After grabbing the theme specific stuff, I went more broad and looked for specific entrance costs for Ninjas, specific keywords like "Draw" and "Search" for missions, and words like "Negate", "Return", "Discard", and "Damage" on jutsus. After a few searches I was able to come up with these:

Tonton- Adorable Pet

Mizura- Affected Body

Sakura- Toughness

Sakura- I Can Do It

Moegi- Rookie of the Leaf

Temari- Analytical Mind

Shino- Silence

Yashamaru- Sister's Memento

Ebisu- Repeated Defeat

Kusuna- The Quartet

Kurenai- (Vanilla)

Gaara (Possessed Mode)- Insanity

Baki- Clean up

5th Kazekage- Reliance

Tsunade- Expert of Medical Ninjutsu

Tsunade- Handicap

Shukaku- Formidable Monster

Unguarded Moment

Paper Bomb

Wind Scythe (Coils)

Wind Scythe (ANC)

Wind Blade

Protean

Control by Fear

Delivery

Successive Kazekage

Search Party

Inauguration

Selecting the Strongest

Notice some of the synergy these cards have with my deck's General/Village Leader, like Inauguration, Successive Kazekage, and Selecting the strongest. I'm finally Left with exactly 75 cards. This is where I pretty much just grab five filler ninja to throw in the deck. So I can play with Tsu and Shino's Dad.

I hoped you enjoyed reading about my EDH deck building process. For those of you who aren't interested in EDH, or weren't feeling this blog post because it lacked that competitive feel, I plan to do both Block and Unlimited decks in future posts, so keep your eyes posted. As always, comments on todays content is appreciated, as it lets us know what YOU like so we can give YOU more of it. Until next time.

-Andrew

Labels: Deck Building, EDH, Zero