Well, sadly I couldn’t pull off a third top 8 in a row this year at States. A draw in the third round knocked me into a bracket that it was tough to claw out of, and in the end my record was 3-2-2. However, the deck I played enjoyed great success in the hands of others, including Star City’s own Carl Jarrell (who achieved second place in West Virginia). Two friends of mine playing the deck made top 8 here in Virginia, and Skip Potter took it all the way to the finals.
While Carl does a good job going over his victories with the deck at States, I figured I’d chronicle the actual evolution of the deck. The journey starts in early October, when I started wondering how Odyssey was going to impact the new environment. I paid particular attention to the new green and black spells, since that color combination is one of my all-time favorites (and has led to my best successes over the years). This was my first stab at a G/B deck:
Ebony Stomp (circa 10/2)
4x Diligent Farmhand
4x Llanowar Elves
4x Llanowar Dead
4x Wild Mongrel
4x Ebony Treefolk
4x Call of the Herd
3x Roar of the Wurm
2x Spiritmonger
4x Duress
4x Muscle Burst
2x Entomb
4x Llanowar Wastes
7x Swamp
10x Forest
Right away, I was intrigued by the power of the Flashback cards. While I thought Beast Attack was the strongest of the bunch, I was trying for a faster, more beatdown approach here. I picked Mongrel Hound over Kavu Titan in order to get Roar of the Wurm into the graveyard in case I drew it. I particularly liked the idea of Entomb in the deck as either an instant Tutor for Roar of the Wurm, or as a way to boost Muscle Bursts by placing a Farmhand into the graveyard. Ironically, Ebony Treefolk and Spiritmonger were thrown in mainly to round out the deck.
But while I thought the deck had some potential, I was not really interested in playing a Stompy deck. For one thing, it didn’t have any utility to it, and relied strictly on creature rush to win. I am all too familiar with how easy it is to blunt and eventually shut down such narrow approaches.
Another card I was very interested in trying out was Haunting Echoes, which seemed to be simply the bomb-diggity when paired up with discard and sweeper effects. I quickly threw together this black/white/green deck to see how it looked:
Haunting Deeds (circa 10/5)
4x Duress
4x Gerrard’s Verdict
4x Vindicate
2x Death Grasp
4x Pernicious Deed
4x Skeletal Scrying
2x Haunting Echoes
4x Spectral Lynx
4x Putrid Warrior
3x Spiritmonger
25 lands
When looking at the emerging metagame, I started to realize just how amazingly good Pernicious Deed was, especially in conjunction with your own regenerating creatures. Of course, it was pointed out to me that this deck really didn’t have any way to deal with opposing regenerating creatures, either. Being that Spectral Lynx had been all over IBC and showed up in any deck that could produce white mana, that concerned me too. I decided to try something a little different, focusing on another interesting Odyssey card.
Braids (circa 10/12)
4x Duress
4x Pernicious Deed
4x Skeletal Scrying
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Llanowar Elves
4x Ravenous Rats
4x Phyrexian Rager
4x Braids, Cabal Minion
3x Spiritmonger
4x Llanowar Wastes
2x City of Brass
9x Swamp
10x Forest
The deck was conceived on the idea that I could achieve early card advantage with Rats, Ragers, and early Scrying, blow up the world with Deed then drop a Braids down for a sort of soft lock. Seemed good in theory, but the emerging metagame suggested that red/green decks were still very strong, and those decks could churn out quick permanents as well as toss burn around to nuke my four-drop 2/2. Playtesting made me very happy, with both Deed and Spiritmonger being bomb cards that often swung games heavily in my favor. So I decided to steer back towards G/B beatdown; however, the inclusion of Pernicious Deed gave me enough utility to feel comfortable. We had a tournament coming up on October 20th that was going to be using November 1st-legal Type 2 cards in order to prepare for States, and I wanted to test out some more of Odyssey’s goodies to see how they worked. While the flashback token creatures didn’t exactly go along with Pernicious Deed, my thought was to use the Deed as more of an emergency reset button. This is what I played:
G/B (circa 10/19)
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Wild Mongrel
2 Call of the Herd
2 Spellbane Centaur
4 Ebony Treefolk
4 Beast Attack
4 Spiritmonger
4 Sylvan Might
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Cabal Pit
4 Llanowar Wastes
11 Forest
5 Swamp
I positively stomped people with this build, and won the tournament quite handily. I quickly grew to love Sylvan Might much better than Muscle Burst as a creature boost. Cabal Pit also worked great as Lynx killers and as uncounterable removal. I was very happy with the deck and decided I’d come up with a solid base to tweak for States.
Around this time, Carl Jarrell had given up on his pet WW/r deck, Atomic Jesus. One thing that AJ taught Carl was that Flametongue Kavu was simply the nuts in the current environment. So he took my G/B build and added red to it, coming up with this:
Hot Garbage by Carl Jarrell, circa End of October
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Call of the Herd
4 Ebony Treefolk
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Spiritmonger
4 Urza’s Rage
4 Pernicious Deed
6 Forest
4 Swamp
3 Mountain
2 City of Brass
2 Darigaaz’s Caldera
3 Mossfire Valley
4 Llanowar Wastes
Carl was extremely happy with the initial playtesting results of the deck, and it didn’t take long for him to convince me this was a move in the right direction. Conventional wisdom suggested that both Deed and Spiritmonger were bombs in this metagame, but the trick was to find a deck that would support these cards. Carl was convinced this deck was it. But he didn’t want to let the cat out the bag to the public at large – he told me”Bennie, if you publish the G/B deck I’m going to strangle you.” Gulp. As much as I wanted to share it with my half-dozen readers, I had to honor Carl’s wishes.
I didn’t want to completely go with Carl on his decklist, however. I was still very much enamored with Sylvan Might. We had another”new” Type 2 tournament coming up, so I built this deck to try out:
GBr (circa 10/31)
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Llanowar Elves
4x Mongrel Hound
4x Ebony Treefolk
4x Call of the Herd
4x Flametongue Kavu
4x Spiritmonger
1x Dariagaaz, the Igniter
4x Sylvan Might
4x Pernicious Deed
2x City of Brass
2x Dariagaaz Caldera
4x Llanowar Wastes
2x Karplusan Forest
2x Shadowblood Ridge
8x Forest
5x Swamp
I was very happy with this particular mix of Birds and Elves. Skip Potter mentioned to me that last year, while testing Fires, six turn 1 mana critters seemed the optimal number to give you a good chance of drawing and dropping one the first turn, but not to keep drawing them later on when you needed gas. Playtesting showed that I was losing to Opposition decks, and I started to see the value of needing some extra removal in the deck. Unfortunately, that meant that Sylvan Might needed to leave to make room. The deck slowly changed into this:
GBr (circa 11/5)
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Llanowar Elves
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Ebony Treefolk
4 Call of the Herd
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Spiritmonger
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Urza’s Rage
2 Skeletal Scrying
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Karplusan Forest
2 City of Brass
2 Darigaaz Caldera
2 Shadowblood Ridge
1 Mountain
3 Swamp
6 Forest
I had two extra slots that I ended up adding Skeletal Scrying in, until a better idea came along. I really liked the idea of Scrying, but it hadn’t proven to be amazing quite yet… Especially with so much burn flying around. A few people started advocating Tainted Pact. Then Mike McFadden suggested that it sure would be nice to have Shivan Wurms and Spiritmongers in the same deck. Holy beefcake, Batman!
Hot Garbage, by Carl Jarrell (circa 11/9)
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Llanowar Elves
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Ebony Treefolk
4 Call of the Herd
4 Flametongue Kavu
2 Shivan Wurm
4 Spiritmonger
4 Urza’s Rage
4 Pernicious Deed
8 Forest
4 Swamp
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Sulfurous Springs
2 Darigaaz’s Caldera
2 Karplusan Forest
Sideboard:
4 Duress
3 Hull Breach
4 Terminate
4 Slay
This is the”final” deck that Carl posted to our mailing list before States weekend – though he obviously made a last-minute change of Kavu Titans over Wild Mongrels. I’ve had quite a bit of discussion with people regarding which card is”better” in a deck if you’re only going to run four two-drops. I’m convinced the answer is Mongrel. As a two drop, he’s just better than a vanilla 2/2 Titan, and the Titan as a five-drop pales in comparison to the competition — when you look at Spiritmonger, Shivan Wurm, and Beast Attack, Kavu Titan isn’t in the same league. The thing that some folks can’t get over is the”card disadvantage” you generate to use the Mongrel’s ability. My answer to that is simply to be smart about using the ability. Don’t pitch cards to boost the Mongrel unless it can kill something and survive, kill your opponent, or maintain board position (such as when you want to dodge Hibernation). Often, it’s simply the threat of using the Mongrel’s ability that makes him powerful… Even if you never actually have to use it. If your opponent has a Spectral Lynx but no black mana, it’s gonna hold off an unkicked Titan all day long, but if you have a Mongrel, he’s probably not going to block it, so you get a”free” two points through. If he does block it, you just traded the worst card in your hand to destroy a Lynx, not a bad trade. While late in the game it’s better to pull a Titan than a Mongrel, I think it’s smarter to want a better early-game creature in your two-mana slots.
Virginia States was Sunday, so our local game shop held an 11th hour Type 2 on Saturday. I built my deck to mimic Carl’s maindeck, but I wasn’t completely happy with his sideboard. Late Friday night, I came upon a revelation that my sweet psycho chick Braids would be uber-good sideboard tech against non-burn decks with fewer early game permanents than I could generate. In creature-light or creature-less decks, I’d pull the FTKs for Braids. Against U/B Opposition or decks that ran a limited number of quality creatures, I’d drop Spiritmonger and Ebony Treefolk for Terminates and Braids.
We built a nasty Holistic Wisdom deck for a local player that was absolutely terrifying to me, it was so good sometimes. That, along with the Time Stretch deck convinced me to fit a couple of Steamclaws into the sideboard, and this is what I ended up with.
Sideboard:
4x Terminate
3x Slay
2x Hull Breach
4x Braids, Cabal Minion
2x Steamclaw
I won the tournament and was very confident in my chances of doing well with it the following day. One of our local players, Chuck, was so impressed with the deck that he went home that night and did his best to build it with the cards he had on hand. His audible paid off with a Top 8 appearance the next day.
My day at States started off quite well, with two sweeps in the first two rounds. My third round opponent was playing Deed-Go, a blue/black control deck that splashed green for Deeds and Spiritmongers. Since I wasn’t anticipating facing many ‘Mongers or Deeds across the table, my maindeck wasn’t exactly prepared for it and I eventually lost. Second game was a nailbiter, as I decided to gamble by bringing in Braids and the Terminates. I had him low in life, had a sleight creature advantage, and we both had five lands out when I finally slammed Braids down. He sacrificed a land, dropped another land, and dropped a Spiritmonger. Hmm. Suddenly, I didn’t feel I had as much control of the board as I had anticipated. But at this point I’m locked in, and Braids is my only shot at containing the ‘Monger until I can top deck a Terminate. Turns go by as our permanents are whittled away, though we both seem to draw plenty of land to keep our positions. Eventually his land supply stumbles more than mine, and I draw a Rage to kill one of his other creatures. He has a land and the Monger to my Braids and two permanents, when he sacs a land, fails to draw another one, and loses ‘Monger next turn. I peel another land off the top to keep Braids on the board, drop a Bird, and he concedes. Whew!
Unfortunately, this doesn’t leave much time to finish the match. I get a fairly slow draw; he stops my offense but doesn’t have any of his own so we draw. Being in the draw bracket with an aggressive deck that’s tuned to beat other aggressive decks isn’t the best place to be, and thus my poor showing.
But hey, at least the deck did well in the hands of others, and there’s satisfaction to be had in that. There’s always next year!