Those of you who check out the mothership on a regular basis may have seen the announcement last week of the Stronghold Precon Project in Thursday’s Magic Arcana. Inside were links to two different contests being sponsored by Wizards, with the goal of making two additional preconstructed decks for the upcoming release of Stronghold into Magic Online.
Now, I love the idea of preconstructed decks, if not the execution. My wife and I both learned how to play Magic at the same time, and bought many of the Tempest and Stronghold precon decks. She would usually play the control deck, while I would play the aggro decks. I remember being soundly whipped at times by a single Invulnerability. Probably has something to do with why I told her she’s not allowed to play Magic with me anymore.
Right! Anyway…
One of the precon challenges happened to be for a pauper deck. Having started playing Magic with Tempest and Stronghold, this seemed like something right up my alley!
Here were the rules of the pauper contest:
The deck must be exactly 60 cards and two colors. The exceptions are G/R, B/W, and U/R since those are the color combinations of the existing Stronghold theme decks. The decks can only contain commons from Tempest and Stronghold, with these numerical limitations: no more than 3 copies of any one card; only 3 cards with more than 2 copies; and no more than 15 cards from Tempest.
Let’s take a little walk through my history.
Takes Me Back To My Youth
My favorite common from Stronghold is, for some reason, Youthful Knight. Back when Stronghold first came out, I was still in my “White Weenie” stage, and since I didn’t get into the game until AFTER cards like White Knight and Order of Leitbur, I didn’t have access to a lot of cards that populated the “normal” White Weenie type of decks. And it didn’t help that the protection shadow guys were uncommon; I was relying on the guys from the Tempest preconstructed decks like Soltari Trooper.
So when Stronghold came out, Youthful Knight was a pretty big deal for me. A 2/1 first-striker for two mana seemed really good, even without the protection or the pumpability of the other guys. I loved first strike as an ability — it meant that, more often than not, my guys were surviving any rumbles in combat. There were plenty of ways to pump up a guy, the common one being Empyrial Armor.
There are plenty of ways to pump up Youthful Knight in this challenge as well — and a handful of other first-strike guys from Tempest to back him up!
The threes: Youthful Knight is the obvious pick for a three-fer, and for another I’m picking Seething Anger, the buyback pumper, to keep my first-striking guys bigger than the opposition. The east choice for the third is Kindle, as the deck will need some removal, and Kindle is really best the more multiples of the card there are.
The Tempest cards: Playing up the first-strike theme of the deck, we definitely want to include a pair of copies of Sandstone Warrior and Soltari Lancer, as well as Advance Scout to give other members of our team first strike. Coiled Tinviper is a first-striker as well, so why not?
The rest of the deck: Shock seems like an auto-include, and I really like Smite — there’s certainly a possibility that we will get into a ground war that not even a horde of first-strikers can survive. For those instances, being able to just outright destroy bigger attackers just because I have a blocker available seems like a bargain for only one white mana. We also need to curve out our creature base, filling in the lower part of the curve with Mogg Fanatic and Duct Crawler, and upping the middle of the curve with Flowstone Shambler and Venerable Monk.
3 Youthful Knight
2 Sandstone Warrior (Tempest)
2 Advance Scout (Tempest)
2 Mogg Fanatic (Tempest)
2 Duct Crawler
2 Flowstone Shambler
2 Venerable Monk
2 Mogg Flunkies
1 Coiled Tinviper (Tempest)
1 Soltari Lancer (Tempest)
3 Kindle
3 Seething Anger
2 Shock
2 Smite
2 Conviction
2 Crown of Flame
s
1 Flowstone Blade
1 Rolling Thunder (Tempest)
1 Shatter (Tempest)
1 Giant Strength (Tempest)
The deck gets rounded out with some creature-pumping enchantments. I think now we realize the sheer power of Rolling Thunder, but back then, it was just a weird Earthquake variant, and would definitely be a one-of in any precon deck at best. I also think that Wizards would include a utility card, so I did too in the one Shatter.
All Grown Up
The other thing I remember about what I affectionately refer to as my “Timmy years” is that pure joy, that unadulterated ear-to-ear smile that came with getting to cast something insanely gigantic — and just knowing that your opponent had no way of dealing with it. I’ve always loved “ramping up” into something gigantic; you can ask any of the local players here who have seen me playing with Hellkites and dragons and other giant creatures.
Stronghold was the home of the super Wild Growth, Overgrowth. The idea is to match Overgrowth with some other mana accelerants, and push up into the heavy hitters before our opponent can muster a reaction.
The question is, which color do we match it with? Red’s out due to the rules, and none of the other colors provide anything that has a casting cost over four. So I started looking at other things that I could do with large amounts of mana — and remembered that Buyback was the big mechanic for the block. Surely I can find interesting Buyback cards to use multiple times!
… Well, interestingly enough, there aren’t any green Buybacks in Stronghold’s commons. Grah. Brush with Death is a great card, but has a heavy Black requirement in its Buyback cost and the whole thing costs seven — whereas Lab Rats makes tokens on five mana. Too bad that Lab Rats is the only token generator at our disposal. Change of Heart is the last of what’s available, and as a reusable Pacifism on four mana, I’d… well, I’d rather just use Pacifism.
I like Black here. Lab Rats is a good token generator, and that will also allow us to use Evincar’s Justice from Tempest as a sort of mass removal. Yes, I know they aren’t a combo — thankfully, you can recreate your Lab Rat mob afterwards with the same single card.
The Three-fers: Overgrowth and Lab Rats seem like obvious choices. For the third, I’d like to go back to the idea of pumping out giant creatures by choosing Spined Wurm. A 5/4 generic guy on 5 mana may not seem like much, but when you can cast it on turn four, he outweighs anything on the other side of the board.
The Tempest cards: Rootbreaker Wurm is my other fatty of choice here. Endless Scream is a great way to turn extra mana into extra damage. I want to use Rampant Growth as another mana accelerator, and we’ve already talked about Evincar’s Justice as a reusable Pyroclasm.
The rest of the deck: Skyshroud Troopers pushes the mana further while still not being a combative slouch either. Endangered Armodon may faint at the sight of a Lab Rat token, but he likes the rest of our creatures so far. And Serpent Warrior might not benefit from the mana ramp, but is still a good-sized body for combat.
3 Spined Wurm
2 Rootbreaker Wurm (T)
2 Skyshroud Troopers
2 Endangered Armodon
2 Serpent Warrior
2 Spike Colony
2 Canopy Spider (T)
1 Skyshroud Troll (T)
1 Lowland Basilisk
1 Dungeon Shade
3 Overgrowth
3 Lab Rats
2 Rampant Growth (T)
2 Evincar’s Justice (T)
2 Death Stroke
2 Diabolic Edict (T)
2 Provoke
1 Cannibalize
1 Elvish Fury (T)
1 Natural Spring (T)
A lot of the creature base ended up being selected around not only providing the biggest creature on the board, but also around keeping Endangered Armodon on the table as long as possible. Provoke takes advantage of having the biggest creature on the board in much the same way as the mechanic would later, and Death Stroke and Diabolic Edict round out the removal package.
I wonder what the blue would have looked like? There’s probably a sort of tempo-aggro deck to be built, using Mana Leak and Power Sink as countermagic. If you could figure out a way to give your opponent an Island, Sea Serpent is another big fatty that you can add to the creature base.
Only the Stronghold Survive
I submitted these to PureMTGO on Sunday night, and the winner will be announced on Thursday. In any event, it was certainly a fun walk through my Magical beginnings. I really like that Wizards is going back and putting these old sets into Magic Online — it exposes the young, Internet-using generation to the old cards that were the beginning of the game we know and love. Thanks to the guys at PureMTGO for hosting this challenge!
Until next week…
Dave
dave dot massive at gmail and facebook