When two tribes go to war....

I've spoken about tribal decks many times in the articles I've written on this blog. A tribal deck is one that uses creatures of all one type as it's main theme.

Common tribal decks are Zombies, Soldiers, Elves, Goblins, Vampires, Dragons, Angels and more recently Humans.

Most of the main creature types in magic and some of the lesser ones will have been turned into tribal decks at some point by someone. There are even builds for creature types that do not have a legend to use as a commander such as Werewolves.

Way back in the days of Alpha, Beta etc tribes were backed up by Lords.

Lord of Atlantis is a perfect example of this. You can see from above how the card changed over time. The image on the left is the Alpha version of the card on the right is the Time Spiral version.

You can see how he gives Other Merfolk +1/+1 and islandwalk. Something to note is that these early lords gave their bonuses to any Merfolk whether they were controlled by you or your opponent.

In 2007 as part of an update to creature types the Lord type was dropped. However, it still remains as a generic term for any card that gives bonuses to a single type of creatures.  Note also how Merfolk Sovereign only gives bonuses to creatures you control.

As well a creatures that boost your tribe there are usually spells that will assist your tribe as well. Merrow Commerce and Summon the School are good examples of this.

Merfolk actually have surprisingly few of these types of spells. Some tribes have a lot more, Zombies for example, others may have none.  So in order to make tribes work better we turn our attention to Artifacts. There are a series of artifacts that can be placed into ANY tribal deck and if you ever intend to play tribal then it pays to make sure you have a set of them.

Brass herald and Adaptive Automaton are the two tribal staple artifact creatures. You can see that they both act like lords. Adaptive Automaton actually becomes the chosen type while Brass Herald lets you dip into the top four cards of your library to find more creatures of your chosen tribe.

At first glance Caged Sun might look like a functional reprint of Gauntlet of Power, However, there is one important difference; Caged Sun only affects creatures you control and lands you tap whereas Gauntlet of might affects everyone.

Konda's Banner is great but it does affect all the creatures on the battlefield not just those you control. Although a well build tribal deck should get more bang out of such a card than your opponents will.

Obelisk of Urd is one of the newest tribal artifacts to be produced by wizards. It acts like a super lord giving +2/+2 to creatures you control of the chosen type. It can also be cast cheaply by using the Convoke ability.

Eldrazi Monument and Akroma's Memorial both give extra bonuses in the form of abilities to your creatures. The Monument does have a downside but that shouldn't amount to too much of an issue in a tribal deck.

These three, Belbe's Portal, Cryptic Gateway and Urza's Incubator, are all designed to make it easier to put creatures from your chosen tribe into play.

 I've saved the best two cards until last:

Door of Destinies.

You need to get the door out early and note it only has a charge counter placed on it when you cast a creature of the chosen type or a spell that specifies it is tribal like two Merfolk spells above.

Of course cards like Power Conduit, Surge Node and Energy Chamber can help to increase the number of charge counters on Door of Destinies. 

However you do it putting multiple charge counters on the Door means a huge boost for creatures in your tribe.

Coat of Arms

This is a lot more complex as it affects every creature on the battlefield not just those you control.

At it's simplest if you have 5 merfolk in play then they each gain +4/+4. If two of those were wizards and your opponent had a wizard in play then your two merfolk wizards would gain an extra +1/+1 and your opponent's wizard would gain +2/+2.

Where Coat of Arms excels is if you drop a large number of creatures at once or you manage to produce a night on infinite number of creatures.

Play Army of the Damned when you have Coat of Arms in play and your opponents will be facing an army of thirteen 14/14 zombies.

So there you have it. All the tribal artifacts that you can use in any tribal deck collected together just for you.

I hope you find that useful.

Until next time may you top deck the last card you mentioned.

Phil