Welcome to Turn One Magic! This is a site devoted to sharing strategies, synergies, and, most importantly, fun deck lists.

My name is Skyler and I am a cube addict. I draft several live cube drafts a week and frequently draft multiple times in a day. I do not view myself as an authority on Magic: The Gathering but, rather, as a student.

Alright, enough about me, let’s get into a deck list.

Decklist: Golgari B-B-B-Beatdown

This is the product of a three man Winston draft. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Magic drafting formats, please see here.

Win Conditions

The deck primarily plays black for monstrous beaters like grave titan, massacre wurm, puppeteer clique, pack rat, and bloodgift demon along with green for Thrun.

All of these cards are bonkers on their own, but throw a Sword of Body and Mind or Fire and Ice on them and their going to run away with the game. (FYI: Thrun + equipment = sad opponents)

Sword of Fire and Ice is pretty sweet here mainly just because its a sword in a deck with Thrun and some other elusive creatures. Sword of Body and Mind, on the other hand, does something extra. The mill effect combos very nicely with our Puppeteer Clique. This combination can easily translate into a win since, we are playing a cube, and there are pretty high odds that your opponent has really powerful creatures in their deck.

The red splash is great here since rolling earthquake hits planeswalkers while also giving this deck the reach it needs to steal a win.

White ended up in the list because who is going to pass a fifth pick land tax. Seriously, who?

Although tax never saw the light of day in this tournament, the card is just too good to not play in a limited format. Forty card decks are thin enough as it is without the possibility of pulling out all of your lands by turn 5. The added synergy with pack rat and liliana of the veil is just the right level of absurdity we need to make land tax a must play.

Answers

Let’s talk about removal.

Creature removal is pretty good here. We have bone shredder, profane command, liliana of the veil, go for the throat, massacre wurm, and rolling earthquake.

Bramblecrush, phyrexian revoker, and rolling earthquake all help us deal with a multitude of issues. Revoker, probably being the weakest removal here, has the power to stop Jace, Memory Adept from decking you at the cost of measly two colorless. Bramblecrush not only hits that Jace, but is also blows up a dangerous Umezawa’s Jitte.

Oh, remember all those massive creatures we’re playing? Well, if your opponent tries his hand at some control magic, bramblecrush hits that too. Wait, what if they play bribery and take away your precious grave titan? Don’t worry about it, you have a rolling earthquake AND a massacre wurm. Let him get his 2/2′s and then take them away in one massacre of a win.

FORGET ABOUT IT. This deck has answers.

Conclusion

Well, there you go. I hope you liked the deck. As I said before, I am not an authority on Magic or cube drafting, I am just a student and a fan. That being said, comments and questions are always welcome. Through discussion, I aim to learn from all of you and hope to share as much of what I have learned with the entire Magic: The Gathering community. I hope you’ve enjoyed the first post of Turn One Magic. Please, stay tuned for more updates from Turn One Magic.