by Joseph Watson

Created on: July 09, 2008   Last Updated: July 17, 2008

Elements of Victory: Building An Elemental Deck In Standard
For my debut Magic: The Gathering article I just couldn't think what to write about and then it occurred to me; the Lorwyn tribes. It might sound like an obvious choice as they are a very up to date set but many people at the moment are running the strongest tribe, which would be Faeries or are attempting to crack the tribe considered the worst, Giants.

I then had to decide on which tribe to begin with and I thought I'd start with the elementals for several reasons:
They're just plain cool
They're very versatile with them being in every colour
Very different decks can be built with them
So then I needed a starting point I don't know how many people will read this article (hopefully lots) and I can't gauge the average skill level of these readers but I can have a good guess that it will be the "casual player" so I like a base to work from and that's where the theme decks come in handy.
So here is the "Elementals' Path" pre-constructed theme deck.

1 Dawnfluke

1 Mulldrifter

2 thersnipe

1 Shriekmaw

2 Mournwhelk

1 Flamekin Bladewhirl

2 Flamekin Brawler

2 Flamekin Harbinger

3 Smokebraider

3 Soulbright Flamekin

1 Incandescent Soulstoke

2 Inner-Flame Igniter

1 Inner-Flame Acolyte

2 Ceaseless Scarblades

2 Changeling Berserker

1 Faultgrinder

1 Briarhorn

1 Changeling Titan

1 Horde of Notions

3 Consuming Bonfire

2 Springleaf Drum

3 Wanderer's Twig

1 Plains

2 Island

2 Swamp

12 Mountain

1 Forest

2 Shimmering Grotto

1 Vivid Crag

Theme decks are always a big jumble of good and not so good cards with loads of major and minor themes that can be tweaked and worked on to create a pretty decent, respectable deck.
Theme decks are never going to win many matches to begin with against anything other than another theme deck due to them being generally inconsistent but the deck has serious inconsistencies. That's because of every single colour being crammed into the deck.
Despite that there are several cards I really do like from this deck:

Incandescent Soulstoke: One of the two rares in this deck, he is brilliant having the "Lord" ability along with a very aggressive support ability, this guy can throw a Supreme Exemplar at your opponent on turn four!

Changeling Berserker: Another card that reinforces this decks emphasis on aggressive playing, very efficient as long as you have another creature in play.

Shriekmaw: This guy is probably the biggest rival to Nekrataal in decks running plenty of Black creature kill but it's his versatility that makes

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