Dear Joshua,
Hi! I was hoping I would never have to actually tell you this, but holy Christ on a cracker are you ever awful at this game!
You tried to build a cheap competitive deck for this article series, and you kind of succeeded, but you also made yourself out to look like a jerk, and I hope you learned your lesson. I mean, really… who plays a deck with Hunted Wumpus? (I can hear you say that some Zoo decks side it in. However, that is not my point.) Who picks Loxodon Warhammer over Blanchwood Armor? You took a deck that has seen small success in some tournament play and actually made it worse! Seriously, Shinen of Life’s Roar? Can you please explain to me why Elvish Warrior is any worse?
You made me look bad, Joshua, and that was a disappointment. You’ve failed me as a Magic player, as a deck builder, and you still lost to Talen Lee!
*laughs out loud*
You’re bad, but I never expected it to be as much a blowout as possible. I figured even though I was the huge underdog, I’d somehow pull out two games – heck, maybe even the match – but no, you had to pack me full of slow lumbering elephant related equipment. I truthfully think Talen gave you some kind of incentive to toss the match… I mean, did you even see your horrible misplay in game 1?
Joshua, Joshua, Joshua… who casts Hunted Wumpus when you have the game all but wrapped up? You had lethal damage on the board, and his only out was Skeletal Vampire, you know, the last card in his hand! Why did you give him that out? Can you please explain to me why you let him attack back for lethal with his air force? Did you really have to cast that stupid four-mana monster? Of course not, n00b. Maybe you were doing it to be entertaining, but I was trying to win. That, my friend, is why I had to turn my back on you.
Did you not think it was a coincidence that the game we won was also the same one that Talen was plagued by manascrew? Yeah, we sure showed him how good this little Green machine could be! We tore him a new one, right? I pulled that match out all by myself, and you had nothing to do with it. You made a man, and I coughed up a Cloak, and then you actually did not mess up the attack step.
I know game 3 was disappointing, but by this time I had already given up on you guiding us to victory. I figured it was only a matter of time before you made a misplay, or before Talen got his Vampire friend out, and you mentally packed it up.
I never could get over having to play with Hunted Wumpus.
*hangs head in hands*
Arashi just called. I think he wanted to know why he was not even invited along to the party. He watched the replays, and wanted to let you know that you two could have had something special. How good is he against bat tokens? Yeah, I can see you nodding in agreement, noticing that you let another good card pass you by.
Sorry, the phone rang again… did you know that you can buy Giant Solifuge for four tickets on Magic Online? What’s your excuse here? Wrong! There is no excuse for this kind of poor building.
Jugan, the Rising Star would have been better than Hunted Wumpus.
We hate that guy.
So we go to game 4, and you’re down, but I show you an opening hand that looks strong. It looks good doesn’t it, Joshua? Yeah, it looked real good. You still lost though, didn’t you? You never could punch through the Skeletal one, and I just gave you land after land. I wanted you to lose, just so you could not maim another deck in another Battle Royale. Craig has a good thing going with this, why should you screw it for the champ?
You could have been a contender, Joshua… it just so happened that you ran into a bulldozer, with wrecking balls for arms, and he might have had a giant blue ox for a pet.
You’ll never know that, will you?
Sincerely Yours,
Mono Green Aggro.
P.S. Are we still on for the Premiere Event later on today?
…
As you can see by the letter, I lost the match last Saturday, and it had a lot to do with me. I punted game 1. Seriously. I had lethal damage on the board, and all I had to do was not screw up, so of course, I screw up by casting Wumpus, and the last card Talen had in his hand was Skeletal Vampire. Happily, Talen put the broken Limited card into play, and he had exactly enough to swing through the air to kill me.
I did play with a lot of bad cards. Hunted Wumpus should have been Giant Solifuge. It also would have passed as Arashi, the Sky Asunder. I was trying not to break the wallet though, as every dollar in the Claytor household has to be accounted for. Such luxuries are not for me to have.
Loxodon Warhammer should have been Blanchwood Armor, and that is no one’s fault but my own. I just wanted to play with a splashy life-gaining rare.
Shinen of Life’s Roar should have been Elvish Warrior. I have no real reasoning for that.
So after I got throttled by Talen, I checked out the Premiere Event room on MTGO, because well, I had tickets to burn, and I enjoyed playing the deck, as it was really fun, but there was no way I could play the current build in a serious environment.
I saw that there was a 4am Standard event, and I decided to play. I was going to make a splash with the mono-Green deck if it killed me. I had nothing to lose by playing it, and nothing really to gain by going to bed, so I made this new build of the deck.
22 Forest
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Warriors
4 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk
4 Silhana Ledgewalker
4 Dryad Sophisticate
2 Hunted Wumpus (Yeah, I had tickets to spare, but not enough to get a better card)
4 Giant Growth
4 Moldervine Cloak
4 Blanchwood Armor (This is better than Loxodon Warhammer by a country mile)
4 Might of Oaks
Sideboard
4 Naturalize
3 Shielding Plax
3 Genju of the Cedars
2 Hunted Wumpus
3 Carven Caryatid
I stay up until 4am, and promptly get paired against UW Control. I found out that I really cannot win this match. Next round I get paired against a seventy-plus card Rakdos Aggro deck, and win, and round 3 sees me take down UR Tron. I draw with a friend playing Heartbeat round 4, and in round five, needing a win to get into the Top 8, I beat Simictron.
I go in to the Top 8 as the eighth seed, and get paired against WUB control, and get solid draws both games to win. The semis, I get paired against Tron again, and win easily. We split in the finals, and I finally get to go to bed with 11 packs in my account and a win in a Premiere Event under my belt. Did I mention there were only twenty four players?
The deck should not be played in a large tournament setting , at least without some work. Arashi needs to be in the deck somewhere, as does Solifuge, and Jitte would be a nice addition.
I do want to thank Talen Lee for being a great sport, and providing a fun casual match last Saturday.
Thanks for reading,
Joshua