On Theme: Tribal All Stars

One of the easiest and most prolific theme decks are Tribal Decks. Every format of magic has seen some form of Tribal decks, from merfolk to zombies. These decks are fun and fairly easy to build plus they are usually very synergistic. Now in the future we might explore certain tribes, today we are going to look at all star cards in any tribal deck, as well as some that specific tribe related cards that are part of a cycle.




With over two hundred different creature types the first step is finding out what tribe to play. DO you like elves? How about vampires? Zombies are fun. Once you figure out which of the many groups you wanna build a deck around the first group of cards to look at has to be Lords. Lords are creature cards that offer bonuses to a certain group of creatures, these might be a certain creature type, like Merfolk for Master of the Pearl Trident, or it could a certain color like the cycle of Liege Cycle. Some of these Lords offer flat bonuses, some also give abilities like Captain of the Watch giving out Vigilance to Soldiers.


With all the tribes out there you might be saying, “I wanna play Tribal Frogs, but there isn’t a Frog Lord!” And you would be wrong. You forgot we have two Uber Lords. Adaptive Automaton and Brass Herald. These two robots just love to beef up your creatures, Automaton even goes so far as to become one of those critters. And while the Herald has a neat effect I am pretty sure that Adaptive is just a better card.








There are a few other cards that do something similar, being modular lord/anthem effects.


Door of Destinies - A nice buff that grows as you cast the right creatures.
Shared Triumph - Cheap anthem effect, affects all creatures not just yours.
Steely Resolve - Shroud for all your creatures is kinda nice
Konda's Banner - Double bonus for color and type. Great if you commander fits your tribe.


Now pumping your creatures does you no good if you can’t cast your creatures, so making them cheaper is a good thing. So the next little group of cards are cost reduction cards. Starting with the Warchief Cycle.


Daru Warchief - Soldiers
Goblin Warchief - Goblins
Krosan Warchief - Beasts
Mistform Warchief - Anything
Undead Warchief - Zombies


Now the Undead and Daru ‘Chiefs also work as buffing lords, while Goblin and Krosan give some neat abilities Haste and Regenerate. Mistform is interesting because it lets you make any creature cheaper so it is somewhat like out Uber Lords, but has the drawback of being in Blue.

Another cycle of cards is similar to the Warchiefs, but they make both a creatures cheaper based on “Race” or “Class”.


Ballyrust Banneret - Kithkins and Soldiers
Bosk Banneret - Treefolks and Shamans
Brighthearth Banneret - Elementals and Warriors
Frogtosser Banneret - Goblins and Rogues
Stonybrook Banneret - Merfolks and Wizards


These guys are pretty nice, and they are all cheaper then the warchiefs being 2 drops. And cost reduction really only helps early so having these guys drop at the beginning of the game is sure helpful.


Some other random cost reduction cards are:


Dragonspeaker Shaman - Dragons
Edgewalker - Clerics
Etherium Sculptor - Artifacts
Eye of Ugin - Colorless Eldrazi
Stinkdrinker Daredevil - Giants
Urza's Incubator - Modular and colorless lets you use it in any deck.


Others that fit in with the make things easy to play are cards like Cavern of Souls, Belbe's Portal, or Cryptic Gateway. Cards that find and put creatures into play based on card type like Call to the Kindred or Descendants' Path are nice for upping your board presence.


But what do you do if your tribe is a bit weak, like Scarecrows if you are building around Reaper King, how do you build a 100 card deck when there are only a handful of that tribe. In one word, Changelings. These guys play so well with tribal cards, with some all stars being Mirror Entity, Taurean Mauler and Chameleon Colossus.


There are also a couple artifacts, Riptide Replicator and Volrath's Laboratory, the make tokens of a chosen color and/or creature type that would help fill out any tribal deck that is lacking some dudes.

There are also some cards that make other creatures into a certain creature type, these can be used in combo ways or just to make certain creature fit in a deck, like Grave Titan in a Zombie Deck.


Conspiracy
Standardize
Xenograft


But how do you win in a tribal deck, some of the decks play like aggro beat down with creature rushes, but how about some nice big spells the work with lots of creatures that share a creature type.


Doom Cannon - a repeatable lightning bolt , Not the best card but sac outlets that damage are pretty fun.
Coordinated Barrage - Single white to use your numbers to take out an attacker or defender.
Roar of the Crowd - Can be a KO if you have enough creatures, and hitting players is always fun.

Some other nifty cards that you might try out in a tribal deck.

Cover of Darkness - Fear for all your critters is a nice way to get some damage in.
Distant Melody - Who doesn’t like card draw? Wizard tribal might like this, or maybe Faries.
Luminescent Rain - Creatures into life, seems like it might be fun.
Patriarch's Bidding - Almost a one sided Living Death and it benefits a tribal deck more then others, sign me up.


So that wraps up my breakdown of awesome tribal cards to try out. Next week I will take you through the deck I play the most often, my Zombie Deck, and you will see some of cards from this list in it. As always if you got any ideas for the deck or any other strange themes you would like to see built shoot me an email at jmfelber@gmail.com, or hit my twitter @RealFelber. I am also on the Salvation boards, as HatterofMad, all the time and if you wanna check out my experiment in MTG Trading check out The One Red Mountain Project, it is starting to get exciting up to about 20 bucks from trading starting with a single foil mountain.

Jon Felber