Red/Green Turboland? WTF? Isn’t Turboland supposed to be U/G with stuff like Gush, now banned in Legacy? What are you spewing, Mr. X? You must be one crazy old fart, let me tell you.
Yeah, so?
It’s been rather weird, how this deck came together. It’s entirely my own creation, so I will take credit for its success. Mostly, however, you will note its failure. Formally a Legacy deck, it will never win a game in a competitive field, no matter how hard I’ve tried. Some of you, though, may find it fun and different, which makes it worthwhile to play. It sure as heck beats playing Landstill and being bored out of your skull for three straight mirror matches, which is the cause of all of this.
Speaking of which, I should provide some backstory: About six months ago, I was so bored playing Landstill mirrors that I skipped out of Heroes & Fantasies and headed down to the San Antonio Riverwalk. Beautiful, but very boring. Unless you’re going to sit down to eat somewhere, or walk into Coyote Ugly Saloon when it actually has people there (empty on a Saturday night? What the…?), there is basically nothing to do.
So I returned back to the Rivercenter mall to check out the comedy club. Of course, I’m one of the only black guys in the audience and certainly the only one in the front row, so one comedian starts picking on me nice and good. Most of the stuff I can’t repeat here, but suffice it to say that I laughed so hard, Doctor Mox would be cleaning up my spleen along with his Swiss ladyfriend Jetta.
Some nice lady sitting at my table orders a really strange drink. She called it a Polish Butterfly, which she indicates as vodka with a splash of kerosene. “That’s gives it a bluish tinge,” she tells me. Uh huh… kerosene. More like food dye. (As you can probably tell, she didn’t seem to be the most sober woman around.) She followed with a Bloody Mary. Out it came, all red with a giant stalk of celery propped up in it, with two not-so-conspicuous Spanish olives dangling in a not-so-innocuous manner. “Ah, red and green in a glass,” she tells me.
And thus, I had my inspiration. (What she said, not what she drank, you sicko.) Not really “inspiration” per se, as I was thinking about an R/G Legacy deck for a while. There was something poignant and coincidental about the situation, though, that cemented my resolve to write an article about my R/G deckbuilding endeavor. A few seconds later, she was laughing so hard she snarfed the thing all over me, so the scene was no longer poignant but instead rather disgusting.
Okay, enough backstory; let’s talk about the deck. Originally, this build started off as a green Goblin Charbelcher deck that aimed to win by pulling all of the land out of its library, supplemented with burn. As I tested the engine, it became clear that Charbelcher wasn’t the way to go. What I wanted was a way to harness the power of my lands without tying up my mana; yet still wanting a good reason to cast Kodama’s Reach for the last two lands in my deck without the fear of it being countered.
So I set out to build a solid Legacy deck, as a pure experiment and exercise in endeavor. What happened is that the deck couldn’t hold a candle to the hardcore Legacy decks, but I found that I enjoyed playing the deck so much that I couldn’t stand withholding it from the public. So while I have to suck it up and admit that I, well, suck — at least you get an interesting deck to read about.
The following deck, affectionately name Azusa’s Revenge, is what resulted:
Creatures (8)
Lands (24)
Spells (28)
While the deck isn’t anything special, I thought it would be best to give you my thoughts on how I came to put this heap together. While it may be of little benefit to those of you are hell-bent tournament chompers, it would be a good walkthrough for less experienced deckbuilders. It would be good to analyze it as though it really could be brought to a small Legacy tourney, in case any of you decide to do that kind of thing for fun. (“Fun in Magic? Who came up with that idea?”)
First, I need to explain the theoretical underpinnings of the deck. As the deck began to evolve into a more controllish R/G deck, and away from a bad Charbelcher build, the most important fundamental I applied to deck construction was that of land advantage. Anyone worth their Magic salt will tell you that a major component in the Control mirror is land advantage. This deck aims to maximize that advantage in as many ways as possible.
Let me say that it is not unusual to end the game with eighteen lands or more. Crucible with Explorations basically let you go nuts. Repetitive uses of Wooded Foothills each turn will allow you to easily amass large quantities of land at a faster pace than your opponent, making your Beacons huge in a very short amount of time and granting you the ability to play several key spells per turn. The ability to recur Wastelands multiple times per turn means that even Landstill with a Crucible on the table can’t keep its non-basics safe. Only Sacred Ground can keep them ahead, but Conclaves become just as useless (since they come into play tapped) and Factories can’t attack since they will have summoning sickness.
As a win condition, Beacon of Creation is an excellent choice for a Control deck, despite how unintuitive that may seem at first. Although it is most often conceived as an offensive weapon, it is excellent at winning the war of attrition. In the early game, it allows you to create chump blockers that can collectively take out much larger creatures; in the late game you will surely have inevitability as you keep recurring them. It’s also a great match against Decree of Justice, for much less cost. Often, you won’t even care if you lose all of your insect tokens to your own Pyroclasm; you will simply make more. By the end of the really long games, it’s pretty easy to watch your opponent’s library dwindle to nothing while you sit back and shuffle yet another Beacon into your stack.
As a threat, it also sidesteps the most important removal of the format — Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt. Since those two spells do little against nine insects, it provides you with strategic superiority against those spells. It also ignores common sideboarded hate such as Pithing Needle, Red Elemental Blast, Blue Elemental Blast, and Circle of Protection: Red. Even your one major weakness, Goblin Sharpshooter, is easily rectified through all of the available burn — and the Sharpshooter doesn’t go back into its owner’s library like the Beacon does. Countering it isn’t an effective strategy; you can get it back with Eternal Witness. Cranial Extraction doesn’t work because you can Burning Wish for it. It’s robust, it’s flexible, it’s immune to several established removal mechanisms — it’s just what the doctor ordered. (Well, actually he ordered a new prosthetic leg for Jetta, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Miscellaneous maindeck choices worth noting: Sakura-Tribe Elder and Eternal Witness provide early chump blockers with built-in card advantage. At first, I was using Horn of Greed, but in comparison to Eternal Witness, the Horn is awful. You would think that Horn of Greed would be required in Turboland, but I can honestly tell you I haven’t missed it one bit since I took it out. Even if I spontaneously found room, I don’t think Horn would make the cut. Crucible is much more effective in the late game, and that’s where this deck wants to be.
Exploration makes Kodama’s Reach ridiculous. Three mana to put two lands into play? Thank you, sir. By the end of turn 2, you can have five lands on the table. Six or seven Forests by turn 3 and you can ‘Clasm the board away and then start creating swarms of insect minions to do your bidding. At that point, if you can maintain board advantage, you can wish for Decree and seal the deal; or play out Crucible and then Wasteland the opponent into manascrew. Whatever works.
Yes, I play three Crucibles; even though they may be dead draws in multiples. Since Azusa’s Revenge really wants to get the Crucible engine going, and I expect opponents to work hard at trying to blow up the Pot of Worlds; the third You-Make-the-Card favorite is worthwhile despite the potential for dead draws. When Landstill plays Nevinyrral’s Disk, it also helps to know that you will have more Crucibles than they will.
The wishboard is packed with all sorts of tools against a variety of decks. My favorite tech is the sideboarded Decree of Annihilation. In the middle of a match against Landstill, after they Wrath away all of your insects, you can wish for a Decree and blow up all of the land on the table at instant speed when you’re ready. If they don’t have Stifle right then and there, they are in for a very rough time; as you will almost certainly be able to recover more quickly due to your superior mana ramping capabilities. If you have a Crucible in play and a fetchland in your ‘yard, a cycled Decree is a death knell against many decks; just watch out for Aether Vial.
Cave-In is obviously the fifth Pyroclasm against Goblins, but most often I grab the Firebolt. Firebolt is extremely versatile. Testing showed that Firebolt is particularly useful because it can be used easily on the same turn you wish for it, and it’s not hard to flashback in a deck like this. That simple flashback ability can be serious card advantage against some decks, and I would definitely be sure to have at least one in the board as a wish target; and I might want one maindeck as well. The reason it is so amazing is that once you flash it back, it’s removed from the game and thus returns as an eligible target for your next Burning Wish. This allows you to use a single Firebolt with both maindeck Wishes, which may seem like a small measure of card advantage but actually amounts to a serious edge over time. Against some decks, that can buy you enough time to win as you set up, since you know you will always have a burn spell handy in the wishboard for that brand new Lackey or Piledriver your opponent just played. It may seem insignificant with only two Burning Wish, but it has come into play enough times that it’s more than worthwhile as a sideboard slot.
Call of the Herd is also a nice sideboard option for the same reason, but I run Overrun instead. Admittedly, when looking for wish targets that would supplement the deck’s core strategy, I experimented with Collective Unconscious as a wish target. Eight mana to draw twelve cards doesn’t seem awful in the late game, so it was worth a test or two. Ghitu Fire was another experimentation, which happens to be quite nice since it allows Burning Wish to get instant-speed removal; handy against decks like Landstill that have creatures that need to be hit with instants. Ultimately, I found Overrun to be too powerful not to have at my disposal; but this sideboard slot is certainly open and could always be something better. Even Regrowth isn’t a bad idea. Attacking with seven 4/4 trampling bugs on turn five is pretty hard to deal with, however; hence Overrun is my current weapon of choice.
The one thing I really wanted to fit, but couldn’t make room for, was Quicksand. Quicksand with a Crucible can really put a damper on Goblins. Multiple Quicksands with Crucible and Exploration almost entirely nullifies the attack step. Their only real out at that point is Pithing Needle. Alas, they didn’t make the cut; the deck can only have so many lands and it can’t afford to cut any more Forests or Mountains.
A side note – one of the reasons I think this deck performs decently despite its shortcomings is due to the high basic land count. With Wastelands becoming an important part of the metagame, I find that I almost always fetch a basic land with a Wooded Foothills unless I’ve pulled up most of my Forests already. Diluting the land count with manlands, Quicksands, Ports, or other non-basics would not only weaken your win condition but also damage the deck’s integrity. One of R/G Turboland’s strongest advantages is its comparatively rock-solid manabase; something which allows the deck to pull ahead. It’s also the reason I don’t run Windswept Heath; I want actual basic lands. With a deck sporting playsets of Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kodama’s Reach, you want enough basics to search out most of the time; even though it’s not uncommon for you to pull all twelve of them out over the course of a game.
Azusa’s Revenge can be brutal. My favorite game (i.e. the one where I got the perfect hand) went like this:
Forest, Exploration, Wasteland your Conclave; go.
Untap; Forest, Exploration, Forest, Fetchland for Mountain, Crucible; go.
By the third turn, I could fetch a land, play a land, and waste an opposing land each turn. All I had to do was sit back, let my hand grow out of proportion as I starved off Landstill’s manabase, and played two Beacons on one turn. One was Forced, the other gave me eight creepy crawlers. Game over.
Unfortunately, games against Landstill didn’t often go like that. Landstill has little that bothers you in the long run; but they can control the game through sheer card advantage and countermagic. You would think that only Disk presents a serious problem — a major reason to have Artifact Mutation and the wish-ready Hull Breach in the board. (Wrath can be bothersome, they only have so many.) Unfortunately, they overwhelm you with pure card advantage, which makes winning a tourney difficult.
Pyroclasms are pretty useless against Landstill, so they come out for the aforementioned set of artifact hate. They will probably side out their Swords to Plowshares for Disenchants (unless they have them maindeck) for your permanents. If you think that’s the case, I try to win the sideboard war by taking out the Explorations and Crucibles and siding in all six blasts and the extra Beacon. If you guess correctly, it becomes very hard for them to get an accurate handle on what you are going to do. You do remove your engine, but overall you have the upper hand due to better land search, recurring Beacons, and the ability to blast away their counters and blow up their Disks. With only Wrath to really save them (or Akroma’s Vengeance if they run it), you might be able to beat them in a real match.
Goblins is also in the crosshairs with a full set of maindeck Pyroclasms, but as I will outline later, Goblins has come to the point where it’s simply too resilient. Before I get to that, though, I want to make note of something that might surprise you.
Once you can get it online, Beacon of Creation is surprisingly good against Goblins. You probably won’t believe me unless you try it for yourself. I know it seems incredibly counterintuitive, since they can play Goblin Sharpshooter — but once you deal with the Gattling Gun, Beacon of Creation is pretty good if you can get it active. I was skeptical at first when I thought about it, but my mind was quickly changed.
An example: sometimes, you can sense a Goblins player sculpting the perfect hand. They have a Warchief on the table, and you know from a previously cast Ringleader that they are about to play two Piledrivers and a Lackey all on the same turn for an all-out assault.
They are getting ready to alpha strike you next turn into oblivion when you vomit seven chumping insects on the table. When the opponent attacks, you double block each Piledriver, block the Lackey, double-block the Warchief and *POOF* – it’s like the combat phase vanished. You just traded all seven tokens and no life for four hypercritical threats — a four-to-one is nothing to sneeze at. If they don’t attack into you, you’ll just gain even more time to play another Beacon, or pull Overrun out of the board and end the game with your own alpha strike. They can’t expect you to not draw your bombs when you’ve pulled most of the land out of your deck; your card quality is too good at that point. Not a great position to be in for the Goblins player; they have to keep you from amassing critical board position.
Unfortunately, modern Goblins will typically overrun you before you have enough time to develop your board position. You take too much damage in the early game to give you a safety buffer against surprise assaults. You would think that your heavy load of burn, and chumping Sakura-Tribe Elders, would give you some time, but testing showed it wasn’t enough.
When it goes well, though, it’s pretty impressive. Often, games start off with a Forest, Exploration, Mountain; ready with Lightning Bolt in hand to answer a turn 1 Goblin Lackey. At opponent’s end-of-turn you Bolt said Lackey, untap, play another Forest, another Mountain, Eternal Witness for the Bolt, ready to hit another offending critter. Alternatively, play a third land, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and sit back on the Bolt you didn’t need to use because they played a Aether Vial. Untap, Kodama’s Reach putting a two Forests into play (one untapped). In either scenario, you now have a critter to chump with (which is capable of making acceptable trades against some Goblins) and a Bolt in hand. When you untap, you’re pretty much set; you can play whatever it is you need.
It should go without saying that Azusa’s Revenge’s worst possible matchup is Solidarity, since game 1 is an autoloss. You really have nothing that can stop them from proceeding with their combo — the only method I know of is to Burning Wish for Decree of Annihilation and try to blow up their lands. Fat chance you can hit the mana for that, and they will likely use their counters for the Wish itself; but that’s the only shot you’ve got. Thankfully, after boarding, you can pull in the six blasts for the Pyroclasms and Wishes, and side in the extra Beacon for the third Crucible and the Firebolt for the fourth Exploration. Then, you have a chance; although don’t expect to come away with a favorable record. They will be more than prepared to defeat you handily.
Survival decks come in different shapes and sizes, so it’s hard to initially assess how the matchup could go when I started piecing together this Turboland build. I admittedly haven’t had time to test the matchup, so I don’t know how it would go; but I would suggest that Survival decks probably have the upper hand against you, since they have an overall effective toolbox approach. Land advantage and strategic superiority, though, may be enough to help you survive; so it’s possible that you could come out ahead. If anybody plays out the matchup enough to give reliable results, shoot me a PM or leave a message in the forums.
I was hoping that I could have brought this to the Legacy GPs, but I couldn’t get it to work well enough. I’ve tried honing it since then, since it has some potential, even if it’s not much. An R/G control framework should be able to provide enough punch to beat both Goblins and Landstill, with the “8-Blast Plan” giving you some hope against Solidarity and Threshold. Those of you more familiar with the format can probably offer advice as how to tune it, if that’s even possible. More likely, some of you will enjoy it in casual settings, where you can play it with a bit more breathing room.
Until next time, enjoy the fun of making twelve insects, untapping, casting Overrun, Eternal Witness for the Overrun, and then Overrun again to attack for 84 points of trample damage; all by turn nine.
Cheers!
-Nathan J
Props: To our retired editor, Mr. Kanootsuen, for being Awesome McAwesomeness; and to our new editor, for being English.
Slops: RajMahal, who stole my laptop just so that I couldn’t submit an article on his super-techy deck that he hasn’t even brought to a tournament six months after he developed it. I’ll get it out there, you evildoer!
(I should actually thank Jamie Wakefield, whose multiple rants about Green and his love of the green Beacon made me think about it. He never suggested it to me, and I haven’t spoken about this deck with him; but he did inspire me to investigate it as a win condition. So kudos to the King of Fatties — finally there’s a control deck that will let you play with your dinosaurs.
(I know Jamie and his wife are in a tough time now. My prayers are with them, and I wish them all the best.)
This article comes to you courtesy of the Indianapolis Tourism Board, because there is absolutely nothing to do here that doesn’t involve lots and lots of drinking — for better or for worse. Hiccup.