This week, Tim Ward will share a story that makes squirrels look like lemmings. It?s really all about weird cards that make amazing combos all of a sudden… And this story definitely has that dirty combo feeling. Don?t you just love it when a plan comes together?
Squirrel Fodder by Tim Ward
It was a four-way chaos game, with me and my friends D., T., and J., I was playing a red-green deck geared around generating a lot of token creatures, and spells that take advantage of hordes of creatures (Spidersilk Armor, Overrun, Mob Justice, etc.) D. was playing a blue-white controllish deck, T. was playing a Sliver deck, and J. was playing a red burn deck.
I got off to a slow start with not very much mana, and was slowed down still further by an early Winter Orb from D. I had gotten a couple Thallids in play, but they’d gotten wasted before they started growing Saprolings, but I did finally get off a Spontaneous Generation to grow five of those adorable little critters. I then got out a Liege of the Hollows and Spidersilk Armor on consecutive turns and was hanging onto Fireball, hoping to take someone else out if they got low on life ? and I wasn’t playing too many other spells because I wanted to save mana for the Liege, hoping the third part of the combo would fall into place. No one wanted to attack me because they didn’t want to kill the Liege, because I had a lot of untapped mana… And shortly afterwards I added a Citanul Hierophant to the mix.
There was a possible combo on the table, but no one else put two and two together. I laid low and flew under the radar for awhile.
Finally, T. played the Sliver Queen and started cranking out Slivers like there was no tomorrow. We all figured it would be all over soon as he had the Winged and Muscle Slivers out, and all those little critters were birthed extra-large with wings. J. started aiming burn at T’s head, but T. gained a quick twelve life with the Victual Sliver before it, too, got turned into a crispy carbonized lump. It wasn’t looking good for me…
…until I drew Ashnod’s Altar, and tried not to cackle. Got it out, and waited until the end of T’s turn, when I’d play next. No one had figured it out yet. Drew a deep breath, and tapped seven creatures, including the Liege and the Hierophant for mana, adding an additional eight from my mana pool. Fifteen mana floating. Then I threw everyone but the Hierophant down on the altar, and much gore flowed forth, along with an additional twelve mana. With the Liege dead, I bought twenty-seven squirrels.
Everyone winced, but it was too late.
I untapped, then tapped out everyone using the Hierophant (twenty-eight mana), tapped ten of my eleven lands (up to thirty-eight) and threw all the squirrels on the Altar. The resulting pile of squirrel guts netted me fifty-six mana. Adding the ten mana from my lands gave me sixty-six mana total, plus one for the R in Fireball’s mana cost.”Let’s see ? that’s Fireball, X is 66, split into three so that’s two for the extra targets, round down… That will be 21 to each of you.
Blam, boom, I win.
Next two games I played that deck and got the Liege out, it was met with Swords to Plowshares. Served me right, I guess.
Next Week
I have some cool stories lined up, but I never have enough so please send them to [email protected]; any comments are welcome as well.
Until then, have fun!
Gis