Bonjour, mes amis! I love new sets and the deckbuilding ideas that come with them. A set like Ravnica has loads of great ideas in it, and today I wanted to build a Standard deck.
There are always going to be "initial idea" decks right after the release of a new set; I want to build a deck, play it a few times, get a feel for it, and then decide if I like it or not. There may be a great deck idea here, or I may decide that the idea is chaff. You are encouraged to playtest, tweak, and otherwise try to fix this deck in any way you see fit.
Ravnica has quite a few cards that suggest decks to me. One of my favorite decks of yore was the Wildfire deck; at a time when Urza Block made bunches of powerful cards, it was one of the dominant decks. From Covetous Dragon to Thran Dynamo, that deck was a lot of fun to play, and even more fun to master.
Wildfire has existed since then, but the deck really has never taken off. In order to really work, a Wildfire deck needs three things to be legal: First, it needs Wildfire. Wildfire’s legality comes and goes with the basic sets that include it. It wasn’t in 8th Edition – but here it is, recently re-released in 9th.
Secondly, the Wildfire deck needs fast mana. When you play Wildfire, you want to be in an advantageous position in terms of mana development. Typically this comes from artifact mana. The old Wildfire deck ran Grim Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Voltaic Key, and sometimes even Fire Diamond. That’s a lot of mana to be made. A new Wildfire deck may not need as much mana acceleration, but to survive, it will certainly need some.
The third requirement for a Wildfire deck is the hardest to come across. A Wildfire decks needs a big Red creature that costs five mana or less and will survive a Wildfire. This is a key position, and few creatures fit it. Since this will be your reliable, regular winning condition, ideally it has evasion. This is the Covetous Dragon spot in the old Wildfire Decks.
That’s where Ravnica comes in. Hunted Dragon appears to be a perfect fit into a Wildfire strategy: you play the Dragon, and swing for six immediately. Then, on the next turn, you can sweep away the tokens that are made – as well as any hope your opponent has of winning the match. You swing for another six in the air, and your opponent is down to eight life or less, and you have a strong board position.
The Mana
While we have both the Wildfire and the Hunted Dragon, we will also need the mana acceleration. The first thing I look at is artifact mana. Here are our decent options for artifact mana in Type Two:
That’s a pretty disappointing amount of artifact mana. There’s nothing on a level with previous Wildfire decks. The Signet is about equal to a Fire Diamond, but other than that, there really isn’t anything special. The next thing I took a look at is lands. We have the Urzatron available. However, post-Wildfire we need to have both Red mana and colorless mana available. There’s no way we can reliably keep the Urzatron together post-Wildfire, let alone also leave a couple of Mountains.
That leaves any potential Wildfire build with two options: Run a traditional Wildfire deck with poor accelerants and try to find some way to slow opponents until we have the mana, or find another method of speeding our mana development.
Adding Green
When you want to speed your mana, you have one place to go – Green. I took a look at all of the Green options available that would work under a Wildfire. I laughed at options like Birds of Paradise, for example, since Birds would die quite easily to a Wildfire.
Here are the options that I noted:
I really like several of these options. Sakura-Tribe Elder gives you a needed speed bump while also accelerating your mana. Overgrowth really seems attractive as the only solution to permanently add two mana for a cost of three mana or less. In fact, a second turn Farseek or Sakura-Tribe Elder that leads into a third-turn Overgrowth could cast Wildfire as early as turn 4 if necessary. In that case, you’d be left with three mana to your opponent’s zero.
The Kodama’s Reach gives you acceleration and another land drop, which is pretty attractive. Rampant Growth might be desirable over Farseek until we eventually see that Red/Green dual land we’re all waiting for. Wood Elves might be playable, but probably only after that Guild land – whatever it’ll be called – is added as well.
It looks like the playable cards here include Kodama’s Reach, Rampant Growth, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Overgrowth, with emphasis on the Elder and Overgrowth.
The problem comes in combining these methods. For example, suppose your first few turns look like this:
- Forest
- Mountain – Sakura Tribe Elder – Sac for Land before next turn – get Mountain
- Forest – Overgrowth Mountain
- Forest – Wildfire – Sac everything but Overgrown Mountain
In this case, mentioned above, you have three mana while your opponent has none. Now, suppose that your turns look like this:
Now, if you play Wildfire on turn 4, you lose all of your lands and you can’t even activate the Ring. Mixing artifacts and lands is not an ideal solution, because although you have the exact same amount of mana available on turn 4 (seven, in case you care), a Wildfire barely hurts you in one case, but in the other it leaves you as bad off as your opponent.
Now, if we develop a bit further, it starts to look better. In both cases, if you play Hunted Dragon on turn 4, attack for six, then play another land and Wildfire on turn 5, the board looks very similar:
- Mountain with Overgrowth
- Forest or Mountain
Versus
- Mountain with Overgrowth
- Signet Ring
In both cases, you have four mana and a 6/6 beater. As such, in a combined deck, Wildfire might not be as beneficial in terms of a Wrath of God-style effect as you might think.
But note the awkwardness of the second option! Even with four mana available, getting it is quite awkward.
If we combine our resources, here is what we have for the deck so far:
4 Wildfire
4 Hunted Dragon
4 Signet Ring
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Overgrowth
You could also run Kodama’s Reach. With that in mind, let’s flesh out the rest of the deck.
I’m A Little Bit Tempo…
One of the things that the initial Wildfire deck wanted to do was run enough Land Destruction to either stall a deck or follow up a Wildfire to keep a deck down. Both Pillage and Avalanche Riders often made the cut when they were available, as did the ubiquitous Stone Rain. We still have Stone Rain, luckily enough… But let’s take a look at the other realistic options:
As can be seen, there really aren’t any other options of any power. There certainly aren’t any good three casting cost land destruction spells. I included Uproot because it could give you needed tempo in the early game. Seismic Spike seems to have potential because you’ll have a lot of extra mana, and you could use the mana it produces to good effect. If you have five mana, then you can play Seismic Spike, followed by Stone Rain; that’s a pretty powerful fourth turn! Of course, you could also find yourself occasionally burning for two damage, so it’s not all good.
Demolish adds the nice ability to off artifacts. It won’t be used very often, but you certainly don’t want to waste card space on Naturalize effects, so having an emergency removal spell for artifacts might be helpful.
Let’s try out a full set of Stone Rains and a pair of Demolishes.
…And a Little Bit Control
Your deck will want additional removal spells. Some will be played early to help keep the pressure off you, while other spot removal will be played after a Wildfire to keep the momentum. There are several options available here as well:
Each of these options offers something different. Char deals a good amount of damage for a cheap price, keeping off mid-range range creatures and doubles as a potent player killer. However, a casting cost of three mana is too much in the early game; you’re busy setting up mana. You might be able to squeeze in one or two mana, but probably not much more than that.
Blaze has a different use. It can be used early to take out an annoying attacker, but it can also be used near the end as a finisher. Blaze was used in the old Wildfire decks, but those desk made more mana than this deck does. Blaze may no longer be a viable option.
Shock and Volcanic Hammer are the standards. They are easy to add into any red-based deck. But neither adds anything different. If all that is needed is pure burn, then these spells can suffice… But if you need more (and we do), then you should look elsewhere.
I also included a couple of interesting choices above. This deck can easily have the mana to run splice, so playing a full set of Glacial Rays would result in the occasional splice to give the deck an extra removal spell. The Yamabushi’s Flame is both an instant and able to take out creatures that can come back (Dredge, Soulshift, etc). Recursive creatures have often been the bane of this type of deck, and a Flame might be a nice metagame call if those type of creatures become more prevalent.
I think that I’ll go with the standard Shock and Hammer at first, and see if we have any additional needs.
Here is the current deck:
4 Wildfire
4 Hunted Dragon
4 Signet Ring
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Overgrowth
4 Stone Rain
2 Demolish
4 Shock
4 Volcanic Hammer
This is a deck that needs a lot of lands. Currently I have twenty-six lands and thirty-four other cards. Of those thirty-four, twelve get lands or make mana. That’s thirty-eight mana sources and twenty-two other cards and spells. That’s not going to get it done, so I’m going to lower the land count slightly. I can’t hurt it too much, of course.
We do have another need in this deck, though….
Winning Condition Redux
With just four Hunting Dragons, what our deck can really benefit from is more creatures. We need more kill. I decided to take a look at a variety of relatively cheap Red creatures that could survive a Wildfire.
I also decided, just for kicks, to take a look at a few solid Green creatures:
It would be poetic to run Hunted Wumpus as well as Hunted Dragon. Hunted Wumpus might fit very well, especially against certain aggressive decks. When you are just going to Wildfire away small creatures anyway, the Wumpus might help secure significant card advantage. On the other hand, you could see an opponent Wump out a really nasty creature that you can’t handle.
That leaves the possibility of Iwamori. It is less likely that an opponent will be stocking legendary creatures, especially ones that can survive a Wildfire. Still, you don’t want an opponent to drop Kokusho or something.
Thundermare can get in a guaranteed hit for five damage. However, it suffers from the same problem that the two Green creatures have. If you are only relying on a few creatures to win the game, then you would ideally want them to have some sort of evasive ability. Three creatures listed above do – namely the three Dragons.
Of the three, the easiest to dismiss is the Rathi Dragon. We will have lands that aren’t mountains, so we can’t guarantee making the sacrifice. Additionally, the Rathi Dragon makes it harder to keep lands after a Wildfire.
That leaves a Shivan or a Ryusei. The Shivan Dragon is tough and can hit for a lot of damage. However, after a Wildfire, we may only have one, two, or three Red mana left to pump the Shivan Dragon. Still, that’s better damage than Ryusei can provide.
Where Ryusei shines is performing a role as a backup Wildfire. It will take out a lot of ground creatures when it dies, conveniently killing both Knight tokens and ground creatures. Only the largest ground creatures will survive, while a certain Hunted Dragon escapes unharmed. This is a pretty powerful function for our backup dragon to have.
Let’s take a look at the official decklist, along with mana base:
4 Wildfire
4 Hunted Dragon
4 Boros Signet
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Overgrowth
4 Stone Rain
2 Demolish
4 Shock
4 Volcanic Hammer
2 Ryusei, the Falling Star
4 Karplusan Forest
8 Forest
12 Mountain
Now we have our Wildfire deck completed. I load up Apprentice and head over to IRC to grab some games. I just want to take a few moments to play a few games and get a feel for the deck. Is it any good? Are there any tweaks that I can easily make? Let’s take a look at a few games:
My first contest is against a Dimir deck. I start out slowly, with only a Sakura-Tribe Elder to get land. My Stone Rain takes out a Waterveil Cavern, setting him back a turn. He Hinders my Hunted Dragon. I now have five mana, while my opponent has three. He misses his next land drop, and I start to smile as I topdeck another Stone Rain. I Stone Rain a land, but he has a Mana Leak. After a bit, I am able to get out a Ryusei. Ryusei goes long and far and wins the game all by himself.
In the second game, my opponent does not miss a land drop for some time, all the while countering my LD spells and Dark Banishing Ryusei. Later, he would told me that he had to side out his Rend Flesh because he saw Ryusei.
He plays a pair of Glimpse the Unthinkables against me, and I am quickly running out of options. I cast a desperate Wildfire with the intent of shorting my opponent on lands, since he has no creatures out. He allows it to resolve, then with his remaining five mana, he transmutes a spell into another Glimpse and hits me again. I get decked shortly thereafter.
We only played the two matches, but I can already tell that this deck will not have good matchups against Dimir decks. So many cards in this deck are dead in that matchup – like Shock and Hammer. I have so few business spells that it becomes easy for a U/B deck to counter, bounce or kill anything too worrisome. I hesitated to play a Hunted Dragon, knowing that my opponent might very well immediately kill my creature and start swinging with Knights. A sideboard should include either more land destruction or more creatures.
I then get a Selesnya matchup; a lot of people are testing Ravnica-based decks right now online. I grab an opponent by promising a quick game… And I wasn’t wrong. Wildfire decimated a lot of his 1/1 saprolings and 2/2 fellows. I took some serious early damage, but the loss of lands and all of his creatures hurt him pretty badly. I couldn’t find of my winning conditions for a while, but the Shocks and Hammers held him off until a Hunted Dragon came to play. I hit my opponent for six damage, and then took the counter attack for six. My followup, a second Wildfire, was sufficient to knock him out permanently while my Dragon soared above for a few hits.
Pyroclasm might be a nice sideboard card for heavily creature-based attacks. If I take a lot of damage early, then the counter attack by Knight tokens could be too much. I’d hate to topdeck a Hunted Dragon at six or less life and be unable to play it because of the counter attack. Now, Pyroclasms will help with that. This deck can easily play Hunted Dragon, then follow with Pyroclasm.
Still, I want to change my deck a bit. I take out a Hunted Dragon and add a third Ryusei.
I ask for another game, and this time, I get a B/G Spirit deck. It’s your typical spirit deck complete with Hana Kami, Thief of Hope, and tossing in a few powerful Ravnica cards – namely, Plague Boiler and Putrefy.
I hadn’t considered combining a powerful spirit core with two of the most powerful Ravnica cards… But as it turns out, that’s a pretty good idea. As I mentioned once before, creatures that come back are an issue for decks like mine. I got steamrolled in two games specifically because I couldn’t stop recursionary brokenness. In the other game, I won because of my land destruction. Since I might want more land destruction in the sideboard for the Dimir matchup, it seems like a good sideboard for this one as well.
By the way, bringing in Pyroclasms from the board game me a lot of breathing room in this matchup. It really helped.
I know that Pyroclasms are good and that some decks aren’t prepared for land destruction. I just finished playing a U/W control deck, and my LD simply overcame her weak Mana Leak defenses. After the first match, I sided into more LD (Demolish and Rolling Spoil) and I simply steamrolled her in the next game.
Here is the deck in its first form, after some initial playtesting:
Creatures (10)
Lands (24)
Spells (26)
Sideboard
With this sideboard, I can side into cards that hurt control decks, especially Blue-based decks. I can also slide into a more control role against hyperactive aggro decks with the Pyroclasm. I also have extra creatures when more pressure is needed.
Now, obviously this deck needs more work and a plethora of testing. However, for now, I’m pretty happy with my Neo-Wildfire deck. I’ll keep playing around with it and tinkering.
I hope that you enjoy today’s deck. Take it for a spin and see where it goes! Casual Magic, Friday Night Magic, States, maybe more – who knows? I wish you luck!
Until later,
Abe Sargent