As I sit and write this, it’s the day before the Prerelease, or a mere eight or so hours if you count the midnight flight being run out of Neutral Ground NYC for the merry souls who need their Ravnica fix as fast as humanly possible, or who have merely abandoned the notion of sleep when they can partake of one of the two bars within falling-down distance of that particular gaming Mecca. We still haven’t “seen” a Ravnica card, but because of a fortunate mischance, we all know what’s in the set. I don’t know how Rancored_Elf does it, but because of him and quite a few other diligent intelligentsia we have had the Ravnica spoiler for a month now. An Apprentice patch lets you play post-rotation Standard, and I’m told there’s drafting updates to boot. This prescient effect, knowing what’s going to shape up in a month’s time of playing with the new set because it’s a month old before even cracking the first pack, is kind of unnerving… but also rather cool.
Teddy Cardgame’s challenge to many writers on this here fine website was to participate in the Championship Deck Challenge, some of which are easy hurdles (“Talk about Black/Green decks for Standard!”) and others of which are something more difficult. Or at least less popular, as it would seem. My mission, as I have chosen it for myself, is to take a hard look at some of the unloved archetypes that are inevitably going to have some kind of footprint on the format, be they the stomping boot of progress or the mangled road-kill of first-iteration stinkers. This week, I’ll be talking about Mono-Green, and if you haven’t been following Jamie Wakefield recent spewing of bile and hatred over the travesty of Green in Ravnica, you can find it here, just to give you an idea of the wall of static we’re pushing up against here. When the man who loves his Mono-Green more than you can even begin to explain is screaming about how much he hates this right now, what hope is there that I can change his (and your) opinions about Mono-Green and bring about the belief that maybe, just maybe, there’s a deck in here somewhere?
And if this week’s challenge wasn’t hard enough, next week I tackle the red-headed stepchild of Constructed Magic, Gadiel Szleifer… I mean White/Green, also known as the Selesenya Guild.
Green is in a sticky situation right now, a color seemingly without an identity. The color Green excels at putting all the other colors to work. It’s currently the bridge that brings disparate themes and abilities to bear, and whether it is whoring off the other colors or is itself a lady of negotiable virtues is for you to decide. A lot of Green’s identity is the toys it gets to play with, as it can squeeze anything in and make it work. Now, what if you don’t want to employ this magical talent for shuffling one’s deck and twiddling one’s Top and putting more lands into play? What have you got left to work with, when you turn your spectrum away from the polychromatic and to the simple mossy hue of the color that Wizards R&D forgot? There is an identity in there somewhere, presumably, and what that identity is now is what we’re looking to see.
For a brief while, Green beatdown decks got to take advantage of an entirely different color’s card advantage abilities, and this shot in the arm sustained it quite nicely in the world of Urza’s lands and the Sensei’s oh so sticky oracular device. That Plow Under was technically Green, despite its non-Green tempo-swinging and card-advantage-gaining abilities, and distinctly Black feel, only helped out. The more Forests these blokes had, the happier they were with their lot in life as they cracked an army out of the box with Beacon of Creation. To look at a workable Mono-Green deck, we can’t really look at the best Mono-Green beats deck from the last format, because without the platinum hits of Plow Under, Troll Ascetic, Beacon of Creation, and Sword of Fire and Ice, things are just not the same. Kamigawa Block Constructed Mono-Green doesn’t help any, because it didn’t exist. (Cue Jamie’s rant.)
There are however two decks I consider quite important for the beginnings of this comparison, one being a Wakefield creation in and of itself, and the second being a little-known deck that snuck into a Top 8 or two in the post-Ninth standard season to the surprise of all involved. Aggressive beatdown can be quite a wonderful thing, and cards that pump damage very quickly or that make opposing creature combat a difficult thing can be worthwhile enough to validate an otherwise obsolete archetype.
“Joshie Green”
Suggested by Jamie Wakefield on 2005-06-19 as a potential deck for Standard
2
“>Sword Of Light And Shadow
4
“>Blanchwood Armor
4
“>Umezawa’s Jitte
4
“>Elvish Pioneer
4
“>Jukai Messenger
4
“>Rushwood Dryad
4
“>Sakura-tribe Elder
4
“>Troll Ascetic
3
“>Iwamori Of The Open Fist
4 Beacon Of Creation
23 Forest
…
Creatures (25)
- 3 Iwamori of the Open Fist
- 2 Child of Thorns
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 2 Viridian Zealot
- 4 Viridian Shaman
- 4 Troll Ascetic
- 3 Slith Predator
- 3 Shinen of Life's Roar
Lands (22)
Spells (13)
Now, things have changed… but the notion of a simplistic, stupid Green beatdown deck is apparently not without some minor amount of finesse, as one of these decks was metagame tech for Regionals… and the other was played at the start of last month in a serious National Championships. (Or at least my assumption was that Dutch Nationals was serious. With jokers like Tomi Walamies coming from “that corner” of the world, I can never be sure about the non-British European spellcasters.) Building from the ground up, we want to aggressively use the mana curve to push fast threats at our opponent, and capitalize on this early-game attack with big swingers like Blanchwood Armor and Umezawa’s Jitte.
When I say mana curve, I’m not talking about the Green way to do it, which is a pile of Birds and Elves that let you skip the two-drop entirely. While this is a great time to try it, with Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves, and Elves of Deep Shadow all providing mana as one-drops, I’m thinking that attacking early in the game is the plan rather than sitting for a turn and tapping for mana. There’s good reason to think this: Standard in the advent of a new block tends to lean towards the beatdown decks, at least initially; there’s an old adage that you play with beatdown at States and with control at Nationals because a new block favors creature combat and a full block of tools favors killing the hell out of said creatures. This adage predated Affinity, and will presumably survive it now that it’s nothing more than a bad memory and a lingering sour taste in the back of the throat.
If you want to be serious about beating down with a monochrome deck, you have to look at what advantages doing so brings you. Very simply, the key benefits here are a one-drop mana accelerator (Llanowar Elf), and the existence of Blanchwood Armor telling you that getting a lot of Forests is profitable. Surely there are other benefits to be gained in other colors, like burn and fliers, but we aren’t looking at them right now, instead hyperattenuating our focus to things Green. Limiting ourselves for the time being to looking only at creatures costing one to three mana, let’s see the options:
9th:
1cc: Elvish Berserker, Tree Monkey, Norwood Ranger, Groundskeeper, Llanowar Elves.
2cc: Zodiac Monkey, Grizzly Bears, Utopia Tree, Elvish Warrior (?).
3cc: Ley Druid, Rootwalla, Viridian Shaman, Wood Elves, Yavimaya Enchantress, Elvish Champion (?), Trained Armodon, Verduran Enchantress.
Ninth Edition has some definite key cards, like the nuttiness of cheap and easy mana acceleration thanks to Llanowar Elves, and the positive interaction between your Viridian Shaman and your opponents’ Jitte. Where Block Constructed White Weenie stretched to get Jitte advantage, “breaking” Manriki-Gusari as metagame tech, squatting on it and hitting it with a rock worked for Uktabi Orangutan, and its Elvish descendent would have been a godsend in the format which will currently be providing the greatest number of cards to Standard. Zodiac Monkey is unblockable by fellow Green decks, but also by Sakura-Tribe Elder, whose Green virtues have been called into question all too often of late. With a popular control element starting with Green mana acceleration and the chump-blocking Rampant Growth Guy, this is not to be overlooked.
Elvish Warrior sticks out as a subtle benefit of playing Green, where your two-drops survive a fight with non-Watchwolf two-drops unaided. It may not sound like very much, but the quality of Elvish Warrior was proven in the morph-centric Onslaught Limited format, and we are presumably still going to see at least some 2/2’s for two, like Eight-and-a-Half-Tails and Kami of Ancient Law. (To anyone who laughs at the notion of White Weenie playing Kami of Ancient Law, ask yourself exactly how you think White Weenie intends to disrupt the Heartbeat of Spring deck, especially with the shot in the arm brought by Early Harvest and Eye of the Storm.) And with three Elves being looked at, Elvish Champion bears recognition, if for no other reason than as an unlikely but potential sideboard card.
Kamigawa Block:
1cc: Child of Thorns, Hana Kami, Jukai Messenger, Orochi Leafcaller, Promised Kannushi, Sakura-Tribe Scout, Traproot Kami.
2cc: Budoka Gardener, Dripping-Tongue Zubera, Humble Budoka, Loam Dweller, Matsu-Tribe Sniper, Orochi Ranger, Orochi Sustainer, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Petalmane Baku, Shinen of Life’s Roar, Soilshaper.
3cc: Gnarled Mass, Azuza, Lost but Seeking, Elder Pine of Jukai, Ghost-Lit Nourisher, Isao, Enlightened Bushi, Kami of the Hunt, Matsu-Tribe Decoy, Orochi Eggwatcher, Reki, the History of Kamigawa, Budoka Pupil, Dosan the Falling Leaf, Kashi-Tribe Elite, Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant, Shizuko, Caller of Autumn.
Kamigawa Block is less kind, unless you like bears and are a great fan of Trained Armodon. Serious decks shouldn’t consider Spiritcraft, and so the only useful options are Shinen of Life’s Roar, for the peculiar way in which it can skewer conventional combat, and Child of Thorns as a reasonable one-drop. No wonder there wasn’t a Green deck of the sort Jamie is talking about in Jitte Block Constructed.
Ravnica, City of Guilds:
1cc: Elves of Deep Shadow, Birds of Paradise, Elvish Skysweeper.
2cc: Transluminant, Vinelasher Kudzu, Golgari Guildmage, Selesnya Guildmage.
3cc: Carven Caryatid, Civic Wayfinder, Golgari Brownscale, Ivy Dancer, Scion of the Wild, Centaur Safeguard, Trophy Hunter.
Yeah, I wasn’t impressed either. Vinelasher Kudzu is the right kind of spiffy to be usable in a specific deck, as a tamer and toned-down Quirion Dryad, and Trophy Hunter will be good if White Weenie continues on its ‘white skies’ approach… which seems likely. Good doesn’t mean better than Arashi, The Sky Asunder, and so this cool three-drop finds itself outclassed by a Kamigawa Block legendary Rare.
So, given that we have standards and all for what dreck we will and will not play with, and what we will and will not pay more than three for, the start of the deck looks something like this:
1cc: 4 Llanowar Elves, 4 Child of Thorns
2cc: 4 Zodiac Monkey, 4 Shinen of Life’s Roar, 4 Umezawa’s Jitte
3cc: 4 Viridian Shaman, 4 Blanchwood Armor
That makes for twenty-eight cards, and hopefully between four Shamans and four Jittes covers the basic need to avoid being caught on the wrong way of the equipment card that singlehandedly defines beatdown formats. The assumption here is that there will be serious beatdown decks among the commonly-played archetypes we’ll see by States, which is an assumption but probably a fair one. Black/Green, White Weenie, and White/Red all probably play Jitte, and those are just the obvious archetypes rather than the hold-overs from Kamigawa Block Constructed, where Jittes were put on Jushi Apprentice with a straight face. From there, we can build in the top end of the deck, figuring we have between eight and ten slots left depending on how many lands we want to play. We’d like to fill out the mana curve, and we’d like to add some more dangerous creatures as well, dipping into the four-drops for a bit of power that is otherwise lacking. There’s also something worth noticing, with eight Elves already in the deck… filling out the mana curve with Elvish Warrior and Elvish Champion with those slots gives a combo boost to half the creatures in the deck, but we’ll probably want to put some genuine fat in instead of building our own.
Dipping into the four-drops gives us a few good options. Iwamori of the Open Fist is clearly very good, especially since legendary creatures are less likely to appear in an open block with several sets. Kodama Southside is also worth considering, with eight Spirits, but eight isn’t enough and Spirit/Arcane cards are not going to be what we fill the remaining slots with. Stampeding Serow also has potential, with a size similar to Iwamori’s, but without any clear way to take advantage of the big man’s drawback I think Iwamori will remain standing while the Serow look around for Eternal Witness and Plow Under. Being willing to pay up to five mana, you can get Kodama Northside, who doesn’t get to use some of the other fun cards but whose size and Trampler status speak for themselves. Being willing to spend more than five is being willing to have cards in hand that will never, ever be cast, so that plan is right out. Hunted Troll will work for some, but not for us. Ursapine is just within range of being considered, as passing around free pump at a reasonable cost is the right idea… but there’s some stiff competition.
Considering Iwamori requires us to have a sense of what we can expect to see in the upcoming Standard format, and then consider the ramifications of such creatures being put into play for free. White decks could be playing Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, which saves them all of two mana and thus is a negligible drawback, and (less likely) Celestial Kirin would be a nightmare to give your opponent for free. Red decks will have Zo-Zu the Punisher as their key legendary option, again something that costs less than Iwamori and thus could quite reasonably be in play before Iwamori is even cast. Blue has Meloku, and that’s a shame. Azami, Lady of Scrolls isn’t going to survive the transition from Block Constructed to Standard, and even the consideration that this might be possible is ludicrous, not to mention irrelevant compared to the difficulties a free Meloku would present. Black has Kokusho, Ink-Eyes, and Kagemaro as potential free plays, any of which makes Iwamori quite sad… and other Green decks could have Iwamori, Kodama North, and possibly Meloku as well if the trend from the PT Philadelphia-era Green decks is continued. It’s only the Black creatures and Meloku that are problematic… and only Black/Green decks are likely to play those in considerable enough numbers to make Iwamori “bad”. Gifts-like builds will be the nightmare for Iwamori, while aggro-control Black/Green doesn’t seem like it will be saturated with legends such as Kokusho as prior Green/Black decks have been. One matchup is bad for the card, and the rest of the time you’ve got a pretty safe bet that Iwamori will shine.
The plan seems to be to take advantage of some quick beats on early drops thanks to Blanchwood Armor, and keeping up constant pressure with creatures that are difficult to handle. We don’t have to be stupid about it, but there’s definitely something to be said for being blunt… blunt means direct, powerful, single-minded. Ported directly into Kamigawa Block, I’d be looking for a few maindeck Pithing Needles right about now, while in old Standard we’d be talking Damping Matrix. There’s something to be said for assuming that a bit of disruption is worthwhile, so I’m mentally nudging three Pithing Needles into the main in hopes that they don’t prove useless and can provide some much needed protection against Kagemaro, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, and other problematic things that get between your fist and their face. Sadly, it’s a card that neither attacks nor blocks, but no card is perfect.
Getting from 28 to 36-38 isn’t that hard, then; three Needles takes us to 31, and if we’re nudging in four-drops we want the twenty-fourth basic Forest. [With 4 Elves, that seems a bit land heavy. – Knut] Maximizing the reliability of having Blanchwood Armor be impressive is more relevant than attempting to assemble Okina + Iwamori, and have that extra point be relevant to the game to boot. With five slots left, I’d toss in three Iwamori and two Elvish Warrior, just to fill in the mana curve properly. A similar case can be made for Elves of Deep Shadow, but we’re really not advancing to all that much and having another sizable body filling the mana curve is a good thing, especially since we’re playing Shinen of Life’s Roar for its beatdown lock potential with Jitte and Blanchwood Armor rather than for its aggressive stats. Compile that and let’s see what we’ve got:
This is a deck that laments the loss of Scryb Sprites, and is jealous of White for having stolen them so blatantly from Green where they originated. A strong desire to play Scryb Sprites is either a very good or a very bad thing, but it worked for White Weenie in Kamigawa Block and it’d work in Standard with a tree stapled onto them.
Now, not all of these cards necessarily make sense at first glance, and so you’ll need to have a idea of what it is that I expect we’ll see before too long. My prediction is that we’ll have some definite early beatdown going on, with White/Red and White Weenie presenting very legitimate threats that dictate how fast the format is, and thus what control decks will succeed. A workable mono-Red beatdown deck exists, because one always exists so long as you have creatures that are not distinctly worse than Ironclaw Orcs and Red burn spells that can be pointed at men or to the dome for a reasonable cost. This doesn’t mean it’s a proper choice for the format, as the rest of the metagame develops, but with early creatures backed up by burn like Char, it’s definitely premature to rule out Red by itself. The clock is set by the beatdown decks at the start of a format, and this is one of the odd-ball decks that help define the clock. Stick Might of Oaks where Pithing Needle is currently sitting and you’ve got a fair estimate of what this deck would look like in a vacuum, and a decent sense of how quickly it wants to attack for the kill. This helps shape the rest of the format around it, and the mix of combo and control decks that will appear will be designed respecting and acknowledging the speed of the format.
For the other beatdown decks, we have an obvious need to fight the Jitte war. Pithing Needle can do in a pinch, though it’s not ideal when you’re playing Jitte yourself, and the maximum number of both Viridian Shaman and Umezawa’s Jitte help defend against opposing Jittes. The benchmark for creatures out of White and White/Red, and to a lesser extent the Red deck, is going to be a 2/2 for two. Having one-drops is good, but they have to do something here, and lacking anything with two power or evasion for one mana we have the best Elf we can play and a one-drop that muddles up creature combat in the early game, trading a one mana investment for a card of greater cost and power than itself. Having an obvious tempo play available, Child of Thorns it is. Opening the game with Child of Thorns and Shinen of Life’s Roar makes it difficult for your opponent to play a turn 2 creature, as a 2/2 is dead on the board to your one-drop, before we even talk about Blanchwood Armor. The belief that we are going to have a field predicated upon the existence of several good beatdown decks is why we start out with Shinen/Child and Jitte/Shaman, but also help explain the mana-curve-filler Elvish Warriors. In the fight of the two-drops, it wins against anything reasonable short of Watchwolf. It fits the benchmark and keeps the deck running at the proper speed, while also being the most tempo-positive choice still available.
There will be good decks using Kagemaro, not to mention the potential to shut down someone doing what they shouldn’t be doing off of a Myojin of Seeing Winds. There will be useful activated abilities, like Meloku and Jushi Apprentice. At the worst, there will be just one target for Pithing Needle, and that will be a card in your deck, but if you’ve got an active Jitte against an opposing beatdown deck you can probably accept a lost draw or two by riding the ridiculosity of the Jitte to a check in the win column.
Sakura-Tribe Elder still exists, and still validates the holdover best deck from the last similar Constructed format, the Gifts deck. With Dredge targets added in to an already considerable toolbox, and better mana if you’re willing to pay just a little for it, it will cross over in respectable fashion. Decks using Early Harvest and Heartbeat of Spring will probably exist, of which I am especially certain thanks to the fact that a considerable amount of my energy has been going to toying with it and waiting to see what develops. Forests will be good, thanks to Black/Green being a key contender and early front-runner, and White/Green has some arguments to it as well when the mana comes that freely at an acceptable cost, even if it is nothing more than adding Watchwolf and Viridian Shaman to an otherwise mono-White beatdown deck. Zodiac Monkeys will happily forestwalk where Rushwood Dryads used to tread, and instead of a scantily-clad woman pleasing to the eye, you have a big, hairy monkey at the center of the picture, and I tell you I’m pretty sure he’s getting ready to fling some poo. What did you think it was he had in his hand? Where Joshie Green led, this deck follows, with a little nod to Bram along the way for proving the impossible dream merely improbable.