I’ve been interested in Mono-Green since 1996, when I was out there casting Waiting in the Weeds and Uktabi Wildcats. Sadly, I’ve never had the impact with Mono-Green that I would have wanted, unlike some of my friends and erstwhile teammates. Jamie Wakefield finally made a truly Tier 1 deck way back in the day with Secret Force (qualifying him for the Pro Tour again, not to mention several other people as well). Bill Macey co-designed Senor Stompy, a deck that has in various incarnations been a kind of recurrent figure in tournament magic. Shane Neville’s Battleford deck from roughly that same era, was the Canadian version of the Texans’ Senor Stompy. I’m told that my Mono-Green deck from back then (Green Machine) inspired some of the English to make Trinity Green, but gotten mixed reports back from those who should know.
But, aside from Secret Force (and maybe if I stretch a little bit, Dan Bock’s Premature Green), there is only one Mono-Green deck of any note that is also just a little wacky. And that, of course, is Seth Burn old deck from 1998’s U.S. Nationals. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this little number, it took a card that many people considered largely unplayable, and made it the centerpiece of his deck. That card? Eladamri’s Vineyard.
Here’s the deck:
Stupid Green Deck “SGD” – Seth Burn, U.S. Nationals 1998
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Spike Feeder
4 Spike Weaver
4 Stampeding Wildebeests
2 Uktabi Orangutan
3 Wall Of Blossoms
4 Wall Of Roots
4 Winter’s Grasp
4 Creeping Mold
3 Desert Twister
4 Eladamri’s Vineyard
1 Survival Of The Fittest
Sideboard:
4 Emerald Charm
2 Null Brooch
3 Scragnoth
4 Cursed Scroll
It’s a strange deck, all right. But, one of the really interesting things about the deck, was how damn effective it could be.
We live in a post-Lorwyn world. That makes it that much easier to stand on the shoulders of giants. What we need to do is look at this deck and see what about it translates over into a new format. The answer is, quite a lot.
Pure Translations
There are plenty of cards that simply are what they are, no questions asked. Llanowar Elves, Stampeding Wildebeest, and Creeping Mold make the leap directly. Viridian Shaman is your new Uktabi Orangutan. Spike Feeder and Wall of Roots are reprints, but they actually have some added utility beyond that. Spike Feeder’s ability to move around tokens is likely to be an incredibly potent thing in this format. Wall of Roots is far better than it used to be, if only because the cards in the format are probably just so much weaker than they used to be.
Near Analogs
Winter’s Grasp and Desert Twister don’t exist in this world. Mwonvuli Acid Moss, on the other hand, does. It’s not nearly as good, in some ways, as Winter’s Grasp. In other ways, it is fantastically better. Desert Twister is an incredibly expensive card. It’s possible, that we might get some mileage out of a card like Rootgrapple, or, then again, maybe the direction we should go is without it.
One of the big cards in the deck can be “replaced” by Magus of the Vineyard, but this is not without some major risks. The original Vineyard was so good exactly because it was an enchantment, and could thus dodge the creature kill that would otherwise go right towards it. You could expect that your opponent would start burning at some point, unable to find an outlet for their mana. That is certainly something that you can’t expect with the Magus. The question then becomes is it worth it?
You’ll probably be amused at how I choose to represent a number of cards aside from that. One of the first ones I’m going to look at is the formats elephant in the room, Tarmogoyf. Tarmogoyf is not Wall of Blossoms. But, when you’re on defense, he’s probably better. It does cost the same amount of mana. And it is liable to buy you a lot of time, on way or the other. I recognize that it is in no way the same card, but it does seem to fit in a kind of intuitive way.
Lost in Translation
Survival of the Fittest and Spike Weaver are not cards that we really have anything particularly close to in this format. Summoning Pact and Troll Ascetic? Or Thelonite Hermit? Meh. Too bad for us, eh?
Decisions, decisions…
Looking at the deck of old, I can see two ways that the deck can go. One is to go with the land-destruction sub theme, or the other is to go with the Wildebeest theme. It seems unlikely to be able to do both. The problem with the LD theme is that losing a three-cast LD seems almost insurmountable. That, coupled with the loss of Wasteland and Desert Twister as both land kill and “problem kill,” leads me to the conclusion that the other theme is the way to go.
With the Wildebeest comes the question of Vineyard or no. I’ve thought about it again and again, and it seems pretty clear that he isn’t the man that he once was back in his old enchantment days. This means that we are going to need to find some extra mana to join our Wall of Roots and Llanowar Elf. As this is a Wildebeest deck, one of the easy solutions is to include Yavimaya Dryad. In addition, since we are going to be including Tarmogoyf, finding some relevant graveyard-filling cards is going to be useful. Thankfully, we have something that can fill several roles in the form of Evolution Charm. Also, as an interesting thought, the 0/3 Treefolk Harbinger seems like it could be exciting with the Wildebeest. This, in turn, brings a number of other interesting elements.
I start with:
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Treefolk Harbinger
3 Evolution Charm
4 Wall of Roots
4 Yavimaya Dryad
4 Stampeding Wildebeest
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Rootgrapple
1 Changeling Titan
1 Verdeloth the Ancient
4 Dauntless Dourbark
2 Deadwood Treefolk
2 Lignify
20 Forest
1 Dryad Arbor
This deck looks like it is going to have just a ton of creatures to be able to throw at an opponent, and it also looks like it is going to have a fabulous end game, should it get to that point.
It also looks like it might be somewhat underpowered. I can’t help but feel that Treefolk Harbinger is simply not good enough. Worldly Tutor is a lot worse than simply getting the card into your hand. Yes, the Treefolk Harbinger is kind of cute, but I just can’t help but feel like so much more could be done. The Deadwood Treefolk engine seems somewhat exciting, but some actual pure card draw would probably be nice.
Here’s an attempt at that build:
4 Llanowar Elf
2 Boreal Druid
4 Wall of Roots
4 Yavimaya Dryad
4 Ohran Viper
4 Stampeding Wildebeest
3 Harmonize
3 Evolution Charm
3 Summoner’s Pact
1 Verdeloth the Ancient
4 Dauntless Dourbark
2 Deadwood Treefolk
1 Briarhorn
20 Forest
1 Dryad Arbor
At this point, I’m still building these decks without Spike Feeder. In addition, I like how Ohran Viper draws cards and kills other creatures and all, but it sure kills incredibly slowly. Can’t I do better? If I’m really interested in drawing cards, maybe I can just use the Pact to get me there?
4 Llanowar Elf
2 Boreal Druid
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Yavimaya Dryad
4 Stampeding Wildebeest
4 Troll Ascetic
3 Summoner’s Pact
1 Verdeloth the Ancient
1 Masked Admirers
1 Changeling Titan
1 Deadwood Treefolk
2 Briarhorn
4 Harmonize
3 Evolution Charm
4 Treetop Village
17 Forest
1 Dryad Arbor
This looks kind of interesting. Here’s a deck that can actually end up putting out a pretty fast initial beatdown, but if it gets bogged down in a long game has a lot of stuff going on for it that can keep things going. As far as how much the Wildebeest gets to do his work, it is fairly minimal, but it is, I think, quite important. Just in bouncing the dryad, Verdeloth and the other treefolk, you can get quite a bit of mileage.
Evolution Charm is a card I imagine that a lot of people are going to have questions about. I’ve gotten so much out of Evolution Charm, it’s pretty amazing. In one sense, it let’s me “cheat” mana slightly, and run quite a bit less. In addition, it gives you extra copies of anything that might die. Many decks struggle to kill a Troll Ascetic. Putting out another one after they do manage to kill it can be a real problem. Even the flying ability can be huge, either taking out a flier, or going “to the air” for the kill.
Still, there are a few cards that should be examined for their potential use in the sideboard. Clearly, you’re going to want to have means of dealing with potentially problematic cards like Teferi’s Moat, Haakon/Inversion, and other cards. Getting into creature wars is another potential issue. With all of this in mind I have a few cards that come to my mind.
Aside from just removing a land, it’s added ability to knock out a Moat is well-worth paying attention to. It’s possible that Rootgrapple might be the card to go with, or conversely, a narrower card like Krosan Grip. In any case, the deck is probably going to want to have something like this in order to deal with the “random” problem. I’m actually thinking that it is more likely to want to be something like Rootgrapple, so that it might be able to take out a Planeswalker.
Lignify seems like a great answer to a card like Haakon (or any other Legend for that matter). Unlike a card like Utopia Vow, you aren’t actually making the card potentially dangerous. Lignify is shockingly good at what it does, so long as you don’t mind them having a potential blocker. Lignify can even turn off previously problematic cards like the new Ali from Cairo, Fortune Thief.
Spike Feeder/Penumbra Spider/Ohran Viper
When playing against other beatdown decks, you’re going to want to have cards that could maybe turn around a race. Spike Feeder is great when you’re bouncing it with a Wildebeest, or in making your own Goyf win a war, but is largely unexciting otherwise. Penumbra Spider is particularly good against fliers and against burn, but doesn’t really provide more than a speed bump against a big creature. Ohran Viper, on the other hand, is a walking killer, but puts up no real clock. However, in the beatdown matchup, you often don’t care about a clock.
Singletons
There are a ton of useful creatures that would be potentially devastating that you can include as singletons to make any particular matchup turn around, thanks to Summoner’s Pact. Really, there are a ton of choices that you could use here.
With that said, here is the deck and sideboard:
Creatures (28)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 1 Verdeloth the Ancient
- 4 Troll Ascetic
- 4 Stampeding Wildebeests
- 2 Boreal Druid
- 4 Yavimaya Dryad
- 1 Deadwood Treefolk
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 2 Briarhorn
- 1 Changeling Titan
- 1 Masked Admirers
Lands (5)
Spells (27)
Sideboard
There are a lot of ways that you could go with a deck inspired by Seth Burn Stupid Green Deck, but I think that this particular deck has a lot of merit. I’m actually sad that I didn’t end up with Dauntless Dourbark in the deck, but it just seemed so hard to not include Treetop Village.
This is not a pure beatdown deck. This is definitely a midrange-Aggro deck. If you imagine some openings (turn 1 Elf, turn 2 Troll Ascetic, turn 3 Briarhorn), you can see that the deck is capable of these incredibly fast starts, but it is more commonly going to be putting on pressure in a much different way. The Tarmogoyf in this deck is not as particularly aggressive as in a much more attack-based deck, but it does provide an incredibly great answer to an opposing Tarmogoyf. Whereas the other deck might be able to “finish off” a Tarmogoyf with a burn spell, this deck can respond by Evolution Charming it back into play, or using Deadwood Treefolk to recover it, or simply a Harmonize to find more.
This kind of archetype has a lot of room to be flexible according to your tastes. You can find space to make it more aggressive or more controlling. If you really loved the LD aspect of the original list, you can definitely nudge it that way (hint to some of you thinking about doing just that: Vesuva). Decks like this usually have the problem of falling under the weight of a pure control deck, but this deck has a lot of long-game power because of Masked Admirers, Deadwood Treefolk, Evolution Charm, and Wildebeest.
I have a pretty straightforward deck that I’m looking at for States, but I hope it will make a big splash. This is the first year in a long time that I haven’t done a lot of work on States (I was deflected by Pro Tour: Valencia preparations), but I’m still very, very excited about the event. I’ll be playing in Madison, and I’m sure I’ll see some of you there.
Good luck! (And wish me some luck, too!)