How’s that old saying go? Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.
I’m starting to suspect there’s a plot of some sort, perpetuated by Wizards of the Coast, to reduce my successful decks into so much fragmented rubble, piercing my veins with the shrapnel of their callous decisions. Perhaps they fear the power of my words. Come, disciples, let us retreat to a more advantageous stronghold! ::looking around furtively::
Then again, maybe I just have bad timing.
To wit: I create God deck, which has amazing success. Actually, this past Saturday I once again supplied some cards to a few individuals participating in the JSS Challenge. Will routinely recruits them from other games and graciously volunteers his time and effort driving them hither and yon. One of them, Joe Boyer, has made God his personal deck for a couple of months, posting over a hundred victories against only two losses. I think he plays the deck better than I do; he could have been 6-0 if not for poor land draw in two games, and he beat up on red/black where I routinely roll over to it. I’ve received numerous emails from people who have been tuning their own variants and having success. It was on the brink of becoming something other than a deck mentioned in the back alleyways of Internet Magic, at least in the shadows of my own mind. Yes! God is here! Hallelujah!
Wizards, heretics that they are, must have decided that God owned Fires a bit too well.
Channeling Rizzo:
Dear R&D,
Thank you for inventing Blastoderm and Saproling Burst. I think that having three 4/4 guys for only five mana is great. It’s like super Waylay. However, I think that the deck isn’t powerful enough. It has trouble with enchantment/artifact removal and the fact that only the Two-Headed Dragon is really hard to block, and I don’t like that they keep blocking ‘Derms with regenerators and those stupid Glittering things. Could you please help with that?
-johnny netdecker
p.s.: It would also be nice if you made us a creature that could kill other creatures and swing for four on the same turn. Thanks.
Voila! Wizards takes sympathy on the Fires players, and creates a 7/7 trampler that goes by Shivan Wurm (Mr. Wurm, if you’re nasty.) In case you’re not down with evasion, Trample = Bad.
Wurm wasn’t too bad. No, really. I saw it coming. I knew it was there when I wrote the God series of articles. Despite that, I shook off the feeling of uneasiness that settled on me like a shroud and said, "That’s okay… Totems and Waves’ll still shut ’em down."
Then they invented Hull Breach.
Feh.
Even then, hey, doesn’t bother me. I can work with that! Sure, they added cards that were the equivalent of Fires’ Missing Link. No Piltdown Man here, kids, the presence of a Shivan Wurm on the board – hasted – is one of the most frightening things you’ll see. If you’re sans Terminate, it’s pretty freakin’ hard to kill. But I have Wraths and Waves, and even if a 1/6 Wall suddenly ISN’T good enough defense, I’m sure I can come up with something. Just give me a little time.
::ring::
Excuse me? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. You’re planning to remove WHAT from 7th Edition?
Oh. No, I didn’t. Thank you.
::click::
I’ll be leaving a message at WotC’s wrist, thankyouverymuch, and witnessing the crescendo of God’s success fading into silence.
With haste.
At least I still have Ankh-Tide.
Woo-hoo! I love Ankh-Tide. It’s even more fun for me to play than God. I’m not much of a combo player, but I sure do love phasing out your lands for a few turns and watching them reappear like land-grenades so that my Djinn and Scuta can finish you off. That’s it, it’s settled; once Cursed Totem is gone I’m going to devote myself once again to Ankh-Tide.
::ring::
Yes? Oh, hi, you already called here.
What? You’ve decided that you don’t want to include Ankh of Mishra, either, and that it’s going to be gone?
Are you sure? I mean, really, it’s a pretty neat card. No one really abuses it.
Oh, that is NOT a broken combo – quit it. Didn’t you see my article on brokenness?
Hmmph. Well, same to you, buddy. Forget you. I’m going to go build a frelling Blastogeddon deck.
Get OUT. No way. You are not removing a staple card from the environment. You are NOT even telling me that you’re taking out the three cards of the three Standard decks I play most. Armageddon can NOT leave. Cannot! DO YOU HEAR.."
::click::
Sigh.
It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. The Man wants to keep me down all up in here. Now, I realize as much as anyone that the supposed 7th Edition spoiler up on Mag2 is just that – supposed. Judging by their 98% success rate for the last couple of expansions, however, I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Cursed Totem, Ankh of Mishra, Armageddon, and my personal Standard deck listings are rendered moot. At least I’ll have Perish. Nope.
At least THEY’LL lose River Boa.
Oh.
Mind you, you read about Survival of the Fittest last time. Doubt that there’s a conspiracy? 4 cards removed will render about twenty-five various builds useless. Fourteen Survival, four God, five Tide, two ‘Geddon variants. Now, I’m going to have to diversify, but it’s becoming exponentially more difficult to construct strange rogue decks based around interesting combinations. I mean, effective ones. Is anyone else noticing this? Perhaps it’s because artifacts in general are so weak right now; I’m not sure. I can look forward to abusing Ensnared Bridge in some form or fashion. Enchantments will bring me Megrim.
Gotta go to work.
Richard Garfield is a Fires fan. He has to be. The deck with the most success against it was God. That changed. The deck with the second-highest success rate against it was blue/black Tide. Now that will change.
Sigh squared.
REALITY CHECK
Actually, self-pity aside, if you take a step away from the paranoia for a second, Fires is a fascinating deck. In my personal experience, I’ve never seen a creature deck rise to become the top deck in an environment. Not only does it seem to become better with each passing week, but it seems as if there are numerous options for Fires deck that there simply isn’t enough space to include.
There are excellent creatures that may be squeezed out. You’d think Urza’s Rage would be considered, but it’s suboptimal. Jade Leech is becoming inefficient. Battlemages? Worthless. Dragon Legends? Puh-leeze.
At the same time, the deck is customizable (like God, actually), able to mold itself to your local metagame or your own predilections in a way that few decks truly can. In many ways, the metagame has progressed to the point that the best anti-Fires tech is "run THIS in the mirror match."
That? That’s anti-Fires metagaming? To presume that you have to play it yourself?
Wow.
How far we’ve fallen.
Anti-Fires tech needs to be some sort of effective global card like Cursed Totem, OR an instant-speed response. Hopefully 7th Edition will herald the return of Hibernation. Though I’ve always been partial to it, in this environment in particular it would be very strong. Kills Burst tokens dead, doesn’t target, and gives you a tempo advantage on turn 3.
Gotta like it.
Hibernation’s quite preferable to Perish. Perish is simply too slow.
Hold on, Mason – too slow? Perish at 2B? You sure you’re not thinking of Persecute?
Did I stutter? Yes. Perish is too slow because it’s a sorcery. Perish doesn’t stop a Blastoderm from hitting you for five, a Burst from hitting you for twelve, or a Flametongue Kavu or Two-Headed Dragon at all. Fires of Yavimaya is able to get around one of the most powerful color hosers of all time. Who cares if you kill the creatures? They still pummeled you. Perish should wreck green. All it winds up doing is turning a handful of Fires creatures into Ball Lightnings – and that’s a trade that most of them are willing to make. Well-timed Perishes are very nice, yes, and you’ll surely run into the foolish Fires player here and there who decides that he needs Horned Kavus and Shivan Wurms because they both bounce Blastoderms and drops the Dragons and Flametongues. But generally, Perish needs to be faster.
It’s not.
What about Submerge? Submerge is faster. It’s free, generally. It’s an instant. It’s tempo advantage. So it’s better, right?
Nah. Destroying a token or putting a Bird back on the library is sweet, but it still doesn’t take care of Da ‘Derm and Da Burst.
Fires ups the clock in strange, subtle ways. You need to be able to react quickly. I’ve always been an advocate of instants and an opposer of sorceries, and nowadays it seems like oftentimes that’s the difference between life and death.
Well, against Fires at least.
There’s simply too much: a power enchantment, an untargetable creature, a huge trampler, a powerful flier, and mana acceleration. It’s a combination of cards that are nearly impossible to metagame against. What do you sideboard in against it? Do you try to stop the ‘Derm, the Burst, or the Dragon? What about Flametongue Kavu’s ability to clear out your chump blockers?
And in a month and a half, the decks I own that beat it will have been rendered into little more than glassy-eyed eunuchs.
Well, turn that frown upside-down, proud soldier, it’s time to prepare for Regionals – and while I’m none-too-pleased about Wizards’ decision to remove my favorite cards, a month from now I’ll be sitting in Lincoln, Nebraska playing one of them for the last time.
As usual, Binary21’s been working hard at developing decks for the upcoming Regionals. Carl Jarrell’s been welcomed into our playtesting and interjected a number of top-quality decks – and sometimes, I feel Carl is actually the bastard child named "Son of Brokenness."
I’m not sure what my name would be, but please don’t volunteer any.
Developing a deck to beat Fires AND the other archetypes, however, is what I’M here to volunteer.
Free James Tech.
Why was God so gosh-darned successful against Fires? Cursed Totem. It stunts their mana development. Fires’ one Achilles heel at the moment is that it’s expensive. Putting in cheaper creatures is antithetical to the win condition of the deck. In the mirror match, Simoon is gargantuan. Stunting their mana development is the one surefire (pun unintentional) method of creating a tempo advantage that works for you, not Fires.
Totem turns off the Birds and Elves. If only Shivan Wurm or Hull Breach were introduced, I’d still favor God in any matchup. However, with both potentially there, things get rough in a hurry. Take pre-Planeshift Fires, and it’s an easy correlation, though: Forcing them to tap mana for everything makes things a lot more difficult.
Well, God doesn’t seem as viable an option now – but there’s another deck that excels at tempo advantage and mana denial.
That deck is Ankh-Tide.
I’ve been piloting a pair of successful Ankh-Tide decks, and one of them is likely to carry me to Regionals. The reason Ankh-Tide is successful is that it has the all-powerful bounce element. If you can force Fires to recast its permanents and replay the same lands again and again, you can seize an advantage and drop Parallax Tide so that they stall.
STUDYING ANKH-TIDE
There’s been one successful Ankh-Tide deck that’s inspired duplication, if I go by E-league and tournament reports. That one was Bob Maher’s Ankh-Tide variant, played at PT: Chicago. For those who don’t recall the deck, the listing went like this:
//NAME: Ankh-Tide (Bob Maher)
// Land
15x Island
4x Svyelunite Temple
4x Rishadan Port
1x Rath’s Edge
// Critters
4x Spiketail Hatchling
4x Rishadan Airship
4x Chimeric Idol
4x Troublesome Spirit
// Denial
4x Tangle Wire
4x Withdraw
4x Ankh of Mishra
4x Wash Out
4x Parallax Tide
Sideboard:
3x Mana Short
2x Daze
2x Boomerang
4x Rootwater Thief
4x Overburden
If you examine the deck, its strengths are obvious. Ankh-Tide by its lonesome is tricky, even cute, but not dominant in the least. That’s why it’s only close to a true combo deck; its combo doesn’t generate a near-instantaneous win. Backing Ankh-Tide up with something threatening has been a challenge. What can you include in the deck that can up the clock and not leave you on the defensive, or sitting around waiting for the Tide to come in?
Maher did an excellent job of uniting the Blue Skies deck with this. Hatchling provides a small measure of counter backup, and both Airship and Idols are creatures that can dish out quick damage.
Please note that Maher decided to forego the usual complement of Hoodwinks in this deck, which so often garner a three-to-one land advantage with your third land drop. He relied instead upon Tangle Wire at this point to lock down the opponent while he dropped threats.
This was a very effective strategy, but has one weakness, which is becoming more vivid. Fires builds are packing Simoons, which are both an instant-speed response that supersedes Tangle Wire, but destroy 50% of the deck’s creature base. Simoon kills Airships and Hatchlings dead.
Is the deck still solid? Yes. But although I loved Maher’s chutzpah in creating this, I thought there might be more threatening methods of utilizing the Ankh-Tide combo – ones that aren’t as vulnerable to cheap spells.
Deck numero uno:
//NAME: BROKEN DAM
// Paper
4x Hoodwink
4x Rushing River
4x Wash Out
4x Undermine
4x Nightscape Familiar
// Scissors
4x Indentured Djinn
4x Phyrexian Scuta
4x Parallax Tide
4x Ankh of Mishra
// Rock
10x Island
4x Underground River
6x Swamp
4x Rishadan Port
Sideboard:
3x Tsabo’s Decree
4x Dry Spell
4x Perish
4x Misdirection
The first thing that’s evident in this deck is that it’s going to produce faster and harder to kill creatures – as well as being able to maintain a strong mana denial/advantage ratio. Typically, a second-turn Hoodwink and a third-turn Djinn is one of the stronger openings you can have. Not many decks can deal with a 4/4 flyer on the third turn. The drawback of giving your opponent three cards is highly minimized, because typically they will be forced to discard due to the inability to cast spells.
Let’s examine the three parts of the deck:
Paper: Paper beats Rock, right? Right. Hoodwink on turn 2 is your favorite play; barring that, dropping Nightscape Familiar only makes your life slightly less sweet. Nightscape Familiar powers bounce like you wouldn’t believe: a 1U River? A 2U Wash Out? Hoodwink for U? Typically you can drop the Familiar and then bounce two or three permanents on the third turn by casting multiple spells.
Rushing River is a superior card, and one of my favorite new components. If your opponent drops some mana creatures, you can answer them with this. Wash Out is excellent redundancy. Is there anything Fires dislikes more than having to start its acceleration over again?
In addition, Rushing River takes care of what Wash Out cannot – Chimeric Idols, for example. Splash-colored creatures. It saves your own critters from removal. Sacrificing a land – particularly with Familiar out – is typically not a great setback.
Whereas Maher’s deck used Tangle Wires, they’re strictly inferior in this more aggressive deck. You want to press the tempo advantage and keep your opponent on their heels. This is where Ankh-Tide has often failed, having to rely upon bounce and prayer. No more.
Scissors: Scissors beats Paper. Bounce sure is nice, but what’s going to win the game? Damage. Swinging with a 4/4 Djinn or a 5/5 Scuta can worry your opponents in a hurry. You can bounce all you want, but creatures WILL keep coming back unless you Undermine them or generate enough damage in a hurry to stop them from being relevant.
Bring on the fatties.
Indentured Djinn: A 4/4 flyer for three mana whose disadvantage is negated. This is where abuse of cards occurs, my friends, when you can take a card’s effect and either make it irrelevant or and turn it into an advantage for you and a disadvantage for your opponent. For example, Cursed Totem in the God deck is a prime example of asymmetry when melded with the Glittering Cats. Indentured Djinn is a wonderful blue card – it’s a strong flyer, its disadvantage is in flavor, and it’s something that counteracts blue’s basic strategy, which is often "a counterspell for every important spell."
Card advantage means nothing if you can’t cast anything, if everything you cast is returned to your hand, or if you’re not going to draw answers to the Djinn.
Phyrexian Scuta: The problem with the Djinn is that, given enough land, it can be killed with a Flametongue Kavu. Indeed, Kavu HATES the Djinn with mad intensity. Scuta escapes the Kavu with its five toughness, and is large enough to swing severely. If only for one or two turns, the Djinn and Scuta are fast – and yes, faster than Fires. Tempo, tempo, tempo. A turn-3 Djinn/turn-4 Scuta is pretty freakin’ threatening.
(I’m not going to mention that Terminate can kill both, by the way; that’s self-evident.)
Parallax Tide/Ankh of Mishra: This is the mini-combo. Everyone understands this interaction by now, correct? If you have the ability to Tide, then do so. If you are facing someone with white, target their white mana first. If they Wane or disenchant it, you have two options:
1. If you have an Ankh out, in response target their other lands. This, of course, usually happens against decks packing Wane. Disenchanters are smart enough to take care of the Ankh.
2. If you don’t have an Ankh out, target your own lands so that they come back into play untapped.
In the first case, it does its job. Wane is not a threat. In the second situation, you’ve essentially cast a free spell. No harm, no foul. I’ve even cast one and then followed it up directly with another, using the exact same lands I tapped the first time.
Rock: Rock beats Scissors, of course. If they get land, then they can cast the spells they draw from Djinn, put out blockers or Blastoderms to deal with Scuta, have plenty of mana to counteract Tide. Your job is to ensure that they DON’T have available mana.
The mana distribution is easy: 24 lands, which is my standard amount for any two-colored deck. Because of the double blue of Djinn and Tide, you need to favor it over black. Underground River is a given; Salt Marsh is not viable in this deck because it costs you a crucial turn of tempo advantage. If it’s your first-turn land, no problem. If it’s your second-turn land, you’re already behind the eight ball.
Ports? Is there any more of a given?
Rishadan Port is so incredibly annoying. Every deck packs them. If they’re not packing them, they’re at a disadvantage. Entire decks of all varieties lose simply because their opponent happens to have a Port out. If you didn’t read last week’s rant on bannings, do so. There’s no rationale for them leaving Port in the environment.
Sideboard: This should be relatively easy. Perish is something that must be included simply because it’s good. I actually don’t necessarily consider it a given versus Fires, for reasons mentioned earlier. The tempo control cards are preferable to the Perish – ideally, there won’t be any creatures for you to have to kill, because they’ll all be in the Fires player’s hand.
Dry Spell is the equivalent of Simoon against decks such as Blue Skies. As it’s able to generate creatures quickly, being able to rid the clouds of the Airships and Hatchlings mentioned previously is often critical to 1) punching your spells through and 2) having your creatures punch your opponent.
Tsabo’s Decree says, "Rebels, die!" Aside from Cursed Totem, there’s no more effective way of destroying Rebels than this card. Strip ’em out, strip ’em out, waaaay out. Resolving this is often a gamebreaker. It’s also effective against Blastoderms, but please see Perish above. They shouldn’t get on the table. A Sergeant, however, can do damage in the realm of "not many good one-drops," and a Counter-Rebels build can ensure that its permanents stay on the table.
Ta-duh.
This deck beats Fires, Skies, and Rebels, and is an even matchup with U/W Control because they generally have few permanents to bounce. I typically remove the Tide in favor of Misdirection and attempt to force through a Scuta. It’s also quite amusing to see just how far a lone Nightscape Familiar can go.
Deck numero dos:
//NAME: CRIMSON TIDE
// Offense
4x Veteran Brawlers
4x Kris Mage
4x Indentured Djinn
// Defense
4x Urza’s Rage
4x Hoodwink
4x Rushing River
// Special Teams
4x Blood Oath
4x Ankh of Mishra
4x Parallax Tide
// Home Field
11x Island
10x Mountain
3x Rishadan Port
Sideboard:
3x Wash Out
4x Overburden
4x Seal of Removal
4x Misdirection
Now, we saw the effectiveness of blue/black, a very straightforward Ankh-Tide build. However, I’m looking for some way to abuse the effects of the deck, correct?
As I’ve said before, there are certain cards that just cry out to me "use me." Urza’s Guilt was one in IBC (and still is, in Standard – but that’s for the post-7th environment, peeps). Another card I’ve been infatuated with for a long time is Blood Oath.
Blood Oath is unfamiliar to some people; for the uninitiated, it’s 3R, an instant, and does three damage to your opponent for each card of a certain type in their hand. It resolves, and you declare creatures, artifacts, lands, enchantments, instants, or sorceries.
Potential.
Strong potential.
Common words said by yours truly: "Blood Oath for creatures." ::looking through Fires hand:: "Take 18. Game."
Cart. Horse. Let’s examine the deck.
Offense: This is straightforward and simple. Kris Mage is one of the few efficient one-drops that have been mentioned before. After all, Forest/Bird does present problems for Ankh-Tide – wouldn’t it be nice if you could just kill their adorable little mana critters? Kris Mage is maindeck control against Skies and Fires and Rebels, and has a great picture to boot. It’s all about the artwork. Kris Mage’s mere presence on the board stops many creatures from being cast. That means, of course, more cards in hand. Remember that – you’ll sense a theme here.
Kris Mage, left unchecked, beats all sorts of decks. I first became a fan of her in Masques Block Constructed, when she’d often provide ten to twelve points of damage over the course of any match. And hey, for those of you who fear the arrival of Turbo-Chant, here’s your answer.
Veteran Brawlers amaze me, because every time I see them, I wait for them to suck. Yet they win me a lot of games. Second turn Brawlers once again is a tempo card – it slows opponents down. With Tide and Port backup, lands are very frequently all tapped. Few early game creatures want to block a Brawler. With the number of instants in the deck, it’s also easy to cast something in order to enable HIM to block.
And, if you absolutely have to trade Brawlers/Mage for Blastoderm, wouldn’t you do it? Thought so. This deck, obviously, punishes bad land draws.
Indentured Djinn? Same as before. Quick 4/4 flyer. Dropping Mage/Brawlers/Djinn is tough to beat. Draw the cards, fill up your hand? Alrighty, then! I’m all over that.
Defense: You can see the effects of Hoodwink and Rushing River replicated in this deck. However, we’ll examine them in a new light momentarily. I consider Urza’s Rage to be removal as well. The Rage/Mage combo can clear out most creatures that you can’t bounce. In addition, Rage makes an excellent finisher against any deck.
I love Urza’s Rage. Urza’s Rage has such a great synergetic name with "Force of Will." Two diametrically opposed cards – but I guess that unbridled anger overcomes intense stubbornness. Booya.
Special Teams: Okay, here’s the nuts. Again, you know Ankh-Tide. What you don’t know is Blood Oath.
Blood Oath averages a net of 9 to 12 damage. That’s for 3R, folks–that’s card economy. That’s a finisher. It forces you to pay attention more to what types of cards your opponent has cast, yes, but against most decks, you should know what types will likely be in their hand. Rebels and Fires? Creatures. Skies? Instants. Black/Red is more of a mix, but you’re in for the fight of your life anyway.
The synergy with Rushing River and Hoodwink is excellent. Remember, you CAN declare "land" as a card type with Blood Oath in a pinch. Rivering two permanents back to their hand at end of turn is a guaranteed six damage. Between the Djinn’s CIP effect, River, and Kris Mage Deterrence, their hand should be chock-full of damage.. Er, I mean cards.
Blood Oath is an underutilized card, I think. Considering the strong ability it has to finish matchups, I’m surprised it isn’t splashed more in decks with burn. Yes, there are cheaper and more efficient ones, but no other instant has such a highly efficient cost-to-damage ratio than this card. I’ve Oathed for eighteen more frequently than I’ve Oathed for three.
Home Field: The land distribution is fairly boring, because these are opposing colors. I’m not sold on City of Brass in the deck, because I dislike using it in an environment where Ports are standard in 95% of the decks. However, it seems consistent. Splashing a couple of Cities in place of Mountains may be something worth trying.
There are only three Ports in the deck because this deck is more reliant on early-game spells of different colors. In the black/blue version, the majority of the early drops were blue, aside from Nightscape Familiar. In this version, your cheapest spells are red, and your later drops are blue – thus, you need to ensure having colored mana available. As this deck does damage quicker than the other version, the important thing is not Porting. It’s killing.
Sideboarding can be tricky. This deck is much more transformational than the other. Against decks with enchantment removal, I like to remove the Ankh-Tide combo and move into the Aggro-Control range of decks. Against many creature-oriented decks, I simply replace them with Wash Out, Overburden, or Seal of Removal. Against decks that have very few one-toughness creatures, I remove the Kris Mages. Overburden can be brutal, particularly in multiples – again, please note how well it works with Blood Oath. In fact, both Seal and Overburden work remarkably well. The deck can present a large number of options for creature prevention and removal, and everything, I repeat, everything works well with Blood Oath.
Just beware of Boil. It happens – and when it happens, it’s brutal.
This deck can goldfish on turn 4, which is a very fast clock in Standard. Does that mean it will? No. But that sort of potential makes me very happy, and having a pair of decks that outrace Fires pushes me straight past "joy" on the happy-o-meter and straight into "freakin’ ecstatic." The toughest matchup for this is, obviously, any red/black deck, because of the instant-speed responses, the Terminating of my efficient creatures (in which case I normally just remove them for control options), and their ability to pack a lot of damage into a little time frame.
And, by the way, Seal of Removal is a GREAT response to a kicked Scuta.
OTHER MISCELLANY
Finally, most finally, we have the traditional "This is something you’ve never seen and probably won’t, but it’s fun to try out" deck. As you know, I’m a fan of lifegain. I’m also a fan of Armadillo Cloak, and am determined to make it viable in constructed. Creature enchantments are at an all-time low. Even Sinister Strength, which turns any creature into a stud for the low price of 1B, sees hardly any use. I mean, +3/+1. It’s a beating. No thought necessary. Plop one of those on Brawlers and swing with your third-turn 7/5 creature and see just how fast your little LD deck wins. I dare you.
But that’s another deck for another time.
I’m going to mention this deck and not discuss it too thoroughly, as it’s very self-evident. Trust me.
//NAME: Get A Life
// Offense
4x Birds of Paradise
4x River Boa
4x Thornscape Familiar
4x Noble Panther
3x Pious Warrior
4x Horned Cheetah
// Offense
4x Wax/Wane
2x Disenchant
3x Gerrard’s Command
4x Armadillo Cloak
// Offense
4x Brushland
4x Rishadan Port
7x Plains
9x Forest
Sideboard:
4x Canopy Surge
4x Tangle
4x Kavu Chameleon
3x Light of Day
I think the concept here is rather simple: Lifegain creatures and Armadillo Cloaks. This deck’s built to hate Fires – six maindeck enchantment removal. Since the Wax part of Wax/Wane is very handy with your lifegain critters, the deck has a strong degree of versatility and response. Gerrard’s Command is a card that’s likely not going to be used very frequently with Wax/Wane available in a utility slot, but I rather like it. Turning a Noble Panther into a first-striking Blastoderm killer is some good. Putting an Armadillo Cloak on a Cheetah and gaining eight life per swing is some good
Sometimes, jankiness is king.
I think that white/green is a very underestimated build, considering they have a typically strong creature base and extraneous removal. Using Command and Cloak can garner it a creature superiority that’s hard to beat.
Except Terminate.
Gotta keep saying that, yes.
If only you could Terminate Blastoderms.
Bastards.
The games are afoot, my friends, and you’re going to see a lot of Blastoderms, a lot of Kavus, a lot of Wurms, a lot of Bursts. It is the dominant deck that you must have an answer for.
7th Edition might be taking MY answers away.
Bastards.
Time to start creating new ones. Until Regionals, however, I’m going to dance with the girl who brought me and try and go out with a bang.
Or, at least, a very strong Oath.
-m / 00010101
p.s.:
Number of Blurred Mongoose in Top 8 of Tokyo: 16.
Amount of disbelief and criticism leveled by pros about my Blurred Mongoose fetish: Much.
Thank you.