As I begin this, it’s Day 1 of Worlds – December 11, 2008. Even though the pairing lists for Round 5 have been posted on Wizards’ website, the Feature Match coverage has only been put up for Round 1, and the three matches covered feature: Toast, Faeries, Faeries, Kithkin, Faeries, and an attempt to port Elves! into Standard.
And I’m left thinking, Really? This is the hot “tech” that Pros keep so carefully guarded in the weeks, nay! Months! Leading up to Worlds? Where is this year’s Dragonstorm? All I have to whet my whistle is … maindeck PEPPERSMOKE?
I think that my frustration at the lack of innovation being displayed thus far is because, back when I started playing Magic, there was no such thing as the Internetz. Oh sure, there was an Internetz, but it was only 2400-baud and so no one really spent a lot of time or energy on it. There wasn’t really a Net Deck Phenomenon yet, and even if you saw a deck that you liked, odds were you didn’t have all the cards and couldn’t acquire them before the next time you played.
It meant that some of us played really bad builds based around Tempest Precons, but back then we felt invested in our decks. I don’t feel that way nowadays when I play something I see on the Internetz. Since the format changed, I haven’t really played anything interesting. I played Demigod Red at Grand Prix: Denver, to a lackluster finish. I played Vengeant Kithkin at States, to a lackluster finish. I’ve played Planeswalkers at FNM, which was fun, but kinda shrugworthy, and definitely NOT something that I’m invested in – probably because it was reliant on cards that I was still borrowing from States.
So the title for the Round 4 Feature Match is, “Is That In The Format?” I clicked it in eager anticipation, expecting something exciting from Antoine Ruel – I already know that Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa is playing Faeries. Is he playing some weird heretofore unknown combo deck? Something based around a forgotten rare in Tenth Edition? Imagine my gross disappointment to find that, not only is Antoine playing Five-Color Control, not only is HE the one who asks that question, but that he asks it about FLASHFREEZE!
Flashfreeze. I am tempted to send Kevin a text message that says “FLASHFREEZE SRLSY OMG NOOB,” but then I remember that Antoine Ruel has an Invitational card and I have… well, none.
But I will say that if that’s the most exciting “surprise, it’s in the format!” card that this Worlds will provide, I will probably implode.
It did, however, remind me that I really need to look at Tenth Edition and remind myself what cool cards are in there. We get a card now and then that pops up (Soul Warden in the B/W Token deck, for instance), but there are some real gems in there. And so I did, and learned (maybe for the first time) that Stampeding Wildebeests got the reprint treatment.
…
A little trip in the Wayback Machine may be in order. The year was 1998. There were, effectively, two Mono-Green decks of note: the original Stompy deck designed by Bill Macey, and Jamie Wakefield Secret Force. And then, at Nationals, Seth Burn unveiled a deck that looked goofy on paper, but turned out to be a ridiculously effective machine: Stupid Green.
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
The deck’s centerpiece was Eladamri’s Vineyard. An early Vineyard would accelerate you into your higher-casting-cost cards, provide you with the ability to ravage your opponent’s on-color lands, and eventually start dealing damage directly to your opponent in the form of mana burn. Stampeding Wildebeests helped to make sure you always had an outlet for two Green mana. The rest of the deck was made largely of stall tactics and some minor disruption, and you held out until the 5/4 trampler or the Vineyard killed your opponent.
…
It would have been MUCH easier to rebuild this deck in the pre-Shards Standard, because you had access to Spike Feeder, Wall of Roots, and a Vineyard analogy — the Magus of the Vineyard.
I like this deck because, as some of you know, I’ve always been interested in comes-into-play abilities and how to abuse them. That’s why I like the Warp World deck, and why this deck works on some of the same levels: it takes what should normally be a “fair” play (a 187 creature) and sets up a game state where you reuse the 187 abilities over and over. Warp World is a little random but you get to do eight at a time; Stupid Green is a little less “unfair” but a little more controllable.
Adrian Sullivan wrote an interesting article last year about how to re-invent the Stupid Green deck in the modern world — again, this was pre-Shards, but a lot of his thought process is still valid (and he ended up NOT using Magus of the Vineyard, so that’s moot). It went away from abusing the Wildebeests to some extent; it became a sort of Tarmogoyf-Troll-Ascetic-fueled beatdown deck. Looked fun. But I do wonder what a new Stupid Green would look like?
Green 187 creatures: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is Kitchen Finks as a stand-in for Spike Feeder. The interaction seems pretty good (resetting a Persisted Finks, even) but I’ll miss moving those counters before bouncing a Feeder. After that, we need a 187 card drawer — but there are a ton (believe it or not) in Standard right now. Elvish Visionary? Masked Admirers? Even Kavu Climber or Regal Force could fit. I’d prefer either Visionary (for the mana cost) or Admirers (for the recursion), but ultimately one Regal Force might not be too bad. I’d run one Viridian Shaman for artifacts like Loxodon Warhammer.
Mana ramping: You can’t replace the mana ramping ability of the Vineyard. It’s just not possible. But the deck ran eight (!) mana accelerants on top of that! Nuts. Four Llanowar Elves are in, but what else can we use to make mana? It’s too bad Elvish Harbinger costs 3 because that would be a great double-use card. I’m thinking Devoted Druid might be the way to go, as you can reset (and thus reuse) his mana-ramping ability with the Wildebeests.
The land-destruction package: We still have Creeping Mold and… that’s about it. Oh, Drain the Well too, hmm. I wonder if you could replace Desert Twister with Woodfall Primus and feel good about yourself… But I also wonder if there’s a real reason to even include the land-dee package when you aren’t running the Vineyard.
New cards: I think this deck needs some sort of tutoring, be it from Primal Command or maybe even Gift of the Gargantuan.
Here’s a first cut:
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Masked Admirers
4 Devoted Druid
4 Stampeding Wildebeests
2 Cloudthresher
2 Woodfall Primus
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Mycoloth
1 Regal Force
4 Creeping Mold
3 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Primal Command
18 Forest
4 Treetop Village
Rare Cost Summary:
Masked Admirers ($2.00 x 4 = $8.00)
Cloudthresher ($7.50 x 2 = $15.00)
Woodfall Primus ($1.50 x 2 = $3.00)
Mycoloth ($3.00 x 1 = $3.00)
Regal Force ($1.00 x 1 = $1.00)
Primal Command ($5.00 x 2 = $10.00)
Love it. Have no idea if it’s good or not.
…
I must also be a sucker for this deck. I think I’ve now tried to rebuild it something like three separate distinct times. There’s even an old column on StarCityGames.com where I talk about getting “feedback” from Seth Burn and Rob Kinyon, the other gentleman who built the original deck. There’s no link to the original article, but I remember (and infer in the article) that the feedback was, shall we say, less than gentlemanly. All this talk about how “nothing new ever populates” but people can still be VERY protective of what few innovations do come around.
I think I also tried to rebuild it when Wizards printed Stampeding Serow. I’m glad they went back to the original.
…
Okay, this looks like a good point to wrap up. Point yourself into the forums and tell me what you think. Does the deck have merit? A chance against any of the top-tier decks? Does it need to sideboard heavily to have a chance against Faeries, like most of the decks I build? If so, one potentially good option might be the new Elf archer in Conflux:
Scattershot Archer — G
Creature — Elf Archer (C)
Tap: Scattershot Archer deals 1 damage to each creature with flying.
1/2
This guy is fairly extraordinary for a common, I think. A 1/2 for 1 mana is already above the curve, and then this Green Devoted Hero gets that amazing tap ability on top of that. Sure, he wears a giant “Agony Warp Me” sign on his back, but he comes down before Faeries has any chance at countering him, and he kills off pretty much the entire team, meaning a LOT less things for Mistbind Clique to Champion. You’ll probably need him AND Cloudthresher AND Firespout but that certainly gives you a lot of questions that they have to answer, all while bouncing and replaying your Kitchen Finks, which they also hate.
Until next week!
Dave
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