One popular strategy for Magic the Gathering players involves removing the opponents cards from their hand. The idea is to deny the opponent he or she needs to win the game. Two colors will dominate discard decks, black and blue. Magic decks that use this color combination of black and blue are often referred to by players as bruise decks. A mono black Magic discard deck is possible, but the single color discard deck will suffer from a significant, namely a way of returning the cards the Magic discard deck player's opponent put into play into their hand and back into their graveyard.
Once a Magic the Gathering player has decided to build a discard deck as his deck theme, getting the appropriate cards together will be first step in deck construction. The two card types that should comprise the deck are discard cards which are black in color and bounce cards which are blue.
A discard card is a card that forces an opponent to put cards in his hand to the graveyard, and a bounce card is a card that returns a card in play to an opponent's hand. For the Magic player that has access to the older card sets such as Fallen Empires, the best discard card is in fact the Hymn to Tourach, which forces an opponent to discard two cards at random from his hand.
Specters: the Discard Player's Flying Friends
The creatures available for use in a discard deck include a variety of rats and specters. With the recent reprinting of the hypnotic specter in tenth edition, that card is easier for players just entering or re-entering the game to obtain. The reprinted hypnotic specter is rare in the new sets rather than uncommon as it was in the sets in which it was originally printed. Other specters that should make it in your deck to round it out are the Abyssal Specter, originally from Ice Ages, and the Shimian Specter which forces an opponent to go through his deck and remove all non-land cards with the same name as the card discarded. The Abyssal and the Hypnotic specter are similar in function, bu the Hypnotic Specter is a 2/2 which force a random discard while the Abyssal Specter is a slightly higher casting cost 2/3 which lets your player pick.
Rats Help Destroy An Opponents Hand
Many rats have a discard ability worth looking at, and while the Mindstab Thrall from the Fallen Empires Magic the Gathering set may not look like much, forcing your opponent to discard 3 cards early in the game can be quite devastating.
Adding Blue Cards for your Late Game Strategy
Going with all black is well and good but after a few rounds, an opponent will no longer have any cards in his or her hand. This where the bounce part of the Magic the Gathering Discard deck comes in. Blue players normally load up on counter spells, but for this part you will want to go for the spells that return permanents to the owners hand such as Unsummon, Remove Soul or Boomerang.
Bringing it all Together
Many bounce spells are instants, but the point in using the bounce strategy in the discard deck is not to delay an opponent, but to deny an opponent the resources he already has on the playing field. A discard player should play the bounce he has spells on his main phase. This allows the discard player to send the cards back to his opponent's hand before the discard deck player attacks with the creatures he has that force his or her opponent to discard. Once the playing field is as clear as it can be of opposing creatures, the Magic the Gathering discard deck player should take his attack phase. The goal of the game is still to get your opponent down to zero life, but the strategy employed is resource denial.
Magic the Gathering discard decks are effective, but as they tend to annoy other players, it is probably best to leave them for competitive play instead of bringing a discard deck out for casual play
 |
