As I wrote a couple weeks back, I’ve
been excitedly brewing up Standard deck ideas, some of which have promise and some of which obviously don’t. And if you’re a fan of Modern, I’ve even
got a special treat for you towards the end of the article!
Anyway, one card I’ve been really interested in playing with in Standard is Garruk, Primal Hunter and a lot of my time has been spent trying to figure
out the best deck to fit him in. So I was pretty excited to find recently that Terry Soh wrote about a new deck his
brother played to a Top 4 finish at the Malaysia National Championship that prominently featured the new Garruk:
Creatures (16)
- 2 Solemn Simulacrum
- 3 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 4 Lotus Cobra
- 1 Obstinate Baloth
- 1 Primeval Titan
- 1 Sylvan Ranger
- 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
- 2 Consecrated Sphinx
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (16)
Terry wrote quite extensively about Snakeblade, breaking down each card choice and presenting a slightly altered version of his own. In addition to
Garruk, there were a few other things that appealed to me:
1. Utilizing Lotus Cobra (the “snake”) for mana advantage, and
2. Utilizing Sword of Feast and Famine (the “blade”) for mana advantage + card advantage, basically as a Time Walk. There’s a reason why this is
the most powerful equipment choice in CawBlade decks.
So, between Cobra, Sword, and Garruk, you’re talking about decidedly powerful methods of achieving mana and card advantage at a fundamental level that
harkens back to the most powerful cards in Magic—Cobra as your Black Lotus, Sword as your Time Walk, and Garruk as your Ancestral Recall.
With twelve non-land slots accounted for, I went about rebuilding the deck, keeping an eye on what seemed to work in the Soh brothers’ lists while also
thinking through how I envisioned games to play out.
Terry’s revised list went down to one Bird of Paradise as a tutor target for Green Sun’s Zenith, of which he had four copies. Now, Green Sun’s Zenith
is a card I love for adding that redundancy and flexibility to a deck… but to my mind, it offered up a bit of distraction from the focus of what this
deck is trying to do best. We’ve already got the amazing Lotus Cobra in the deck, and Birds of Paradise is one of the best mana cards ever printed, so
it seems to me that Birds supports one of the pillars is trying to do — gaining mana advantage. It also supports the Sword plan with its evasion
ability. Turn 1 Birds into turn 2 Sword is a pretty powerful opener to complement the main plan of turn 2 Cobra into turn 3 Sword, equip, attack,
untap your lands.
So… four Birds of Paradise.
Now, the next thing I want in this deck is to protect my game plan. Mana Leak obviously fills that role and plays especially nice with the untapping
of your lands with the Sword, and I thought maybe a single Spell Pierce in the main would help as well. What else? Spellskite jumped to mind as being
able to both protect your creatures from removal (especially vital when going to equip them with a Sword) and protect your Sword from artifact
removal!
As I was rooting through my card boxes, I stumbled across my lone copy of Skinshifter (a.k.a. Nicolas Cage, a.k.a. Beastmaster). Hm… as a 4/4 trampler
or 2/2 flying bird, this dude provides two methods of evasion — which seems like pretty good support for the goal of smacking your opponent with a
Sword! He turned out to be fantastic when I drew him.
For some added redundancy I went with a single Green Sun’s Zenith and a Phyrexian Metamorph, and sprinkling in a few other cards this is what I took to
Friday Night Magic… and won with!
Creatures (17)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 4 Lotus Cobra
- 1 Obstinate Baloth
- 1 Sylvan Ranger
- 2 Consecrated Sphinx
- 2 Spellskite
- 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
- 1 Skinshifter
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (14)
Sideboard
Along the way I beat an Elf deck, a Red deck, a RUG Value Pod deck, and a Caw-Blade deck, along with losing to Caw-Blade. I was pretty happy with just
about everything except for the Khalni Gardens — though if I faced more aggro, perhaps I’d feel differently. I did manage to get one smack in with a
Sword-equipped plant token, so perhaps that made it all worthwhile.
For point of reference, a slightly less Blade-y version of Snake-blade made Top 4 of British Nats, and seems to support Birds of Paradise, Skinshifter,
and no Gardens. I thought hard about Sword of War and Peace, which is obviously pretty amazing against Hawks and Timely Reinforcements, but the Sword
of Feast and Famine’s mana and card-advantage machine is what makes this deck insane. I guess William was using the Preordains to dig for the Swords?
Creatures (14)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (24)
Spells (19)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 2 Spell Pierce
- 1 Nature's Claim
- 3 Preordain
- 2 Tumble Magnet
- 2 Sword of Feast and Famine
- 4 Beast Within
- 1 Sword of War and Peace
Sideboard
Going forward, this is the list I’m going to test:
Creatures (17)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (14)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 1 Dispel
- 1 Nature's Claim
- 1 Unified Will
- 1 Green Sun's Zenith
- 4 Sword of Feast and Famine
- 2 Beast Within
Sideboard
I’m going to try a bit more counter-power to “protect the queen,” and move a Nature’s Claim to the maindeck to help win the Sword wars, especially
since the Claim is a much better rip off the top deck after your opponent has equipped his Squadron Hawk with a Sword of Feast and Famine than the
Dismember.
Speaking of that, I’m not sure whether I really need Dismember or not — it wasn’t stellar at FNM, but wasn’t terrible either. I’m going to try the
deck without it for now.
I’d like to test three each Spellskite and Skinshifter, since both reinforce the primary game plan of getting connecting with your Time Walk Sword.
I’m thoroughly under whelmed by Khalni Gardens, and prefer leveraging the considerable mana advantage even more with no comes-into-play tapped lands.
So has anyone else been playing around with Snakeblade (or as Chapin called the British deck, Skinblade)? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
The Possibilities of Modern
I’ve been moderately intrigued by the possibilities of Modern, but when I saw the new banned list a few cards really stood out to me:
Dread Return
Golgari Grave-Troll
Some of you might have been around long enough to remember when Jay Delazier and I discovered Dredge could be a real deck back in 2005 for the State
Champs tournament. I played a Dredge deck to the Top 8, and you can find the account here. Here was the original list:
Creatures (23)
- 3 Isao, Enlightened Bushi
- 1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
- 1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
- 1 Nekrataal
- 2 Festering Goblin
- 2 Dimir House Guard
- 3 Golgari Thug
- 1 Grave-Shell Scarab
- 3 Greater Mossdog
- 2 Nullmage Shepherd
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
Lands (24)
Spells (13)
One of the bucket list items for a deckbuilder with any ego is to be featured in a Mike Flores column about decks — and this thing managed to do just
that for me, with Mike saying:
Check out Virginia’s number five… That’s our own Bennie Smith behind… one of the ugliest decks I’ve ever seen. Bennie is actually a former
Virginia State Champion with B/G. It looks like he figured out how to grab the old lightning and post another B/G States Top 8.
Now it is said that nobody remembers second place, and certainly fifth place is not usually something to write home about, but Bennie’s deck is
genuinely… odd. Running a Stinkweed Imp engine to hold off even the most efficient, sleek, and beautiful threats on a persistent basis, Bennie
can Dredge through his deck to set up a Demonic Tutor-like availability of graveyard options. The selection is extreme in this case when we hit
Dimir House Guard. I am sure that I am not alone in double taking that particular 2/3 for four mana… In Constructed deck?
Now, Mike’s obvious bafflement over this deck is understandable because at the time no one but me and Jay Delazier understood the real power of the
Dredge mechanic outside of Limited, along with the funky “Dredge math” that have numbers less than a playset make a lot more sense when you’re in
Dredge mode. Playing a “slow Dredge” deck is just weird and even after I did well with it, wrote it up, and got briefly mentioned in Mike’s column, it
didn’t really catch on.
It wasn’t until all the funky combo pieces from the Time Spiral block came around that Dredge really took off as a strategy — but as a fast combo deck
instead of the interesting funky slow deck that I really found fun and challenging. Obviously I hated the new fast combo deck — not the least of which
was the fact that everyone else packed a ton of graveyard hate to combat it, which was even more effective against my slow version! And in the older
formats combo Dredge is a constant threat that is almost always prepared for. One of the coolest decks I ever helped cooked up was no longer playable
anywhere, and it made me sad.
Now though, in Modern… with the banning of the mega-Dredger Troll and the combo-kill Dread Return, I don’t see anyone talking about Dredge decks.
Which means, at this point anyway, that graveyard hate will be relatively small (keeping an eye on the Living End deck).
Might my “slow” Dredge strategy have some game in Modern? I certainly want to find out!
Here’s my initial pass, incorporating some Retrace goodness and a few other enhancements:
Creatures (22)
- 1 Golgari Brownscale
- 3 Golgari Thug
- 1 Grave-Shell Scarab
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 4 Fa'adiyah Seer
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 1 Wurmcoil Engine
- 3 Vengeful Pharaoh
Lands (25)
Spells (13)
Sideboard
Vengeful Pharaoh (“King Tut”) seems insane in the Dredge deck since you can run multiples but still get them back into your graveyard immediately
without having to draw through them — many of your cards conveniently dredge 3 or more.
I went up to 4 Loams to help further fuel the Retrace spells, and the sac lands improve the odds of casting turn 2 Loam for value instead of just
dumping a dredge spell into the graveyard.
The Fa’adiyah Seer might bring some head-scratching, but he’s actually pretty awesome here. Not only can he play a role to Loot your Vengeful Pharaoh
that ended up on the top of your deck, he can basically tap to draw a dredge card from your graveyard at instant speed — since the dredge replaces the
draw ability, the “discard if it’s not a land” clause doesn’t apply.
There are a lot of interesting graveyard-centric cards and strategies that you can consider here, like Unearth and Masked Admirers. One thing that
might be cool is running Demigod of Revenge; mill a few copies in the graveyard and get one back with Golgari Thug when you’re ready to go aggro:
Creatures (22)
- 1 Golgari Brownscale
- 3 Golgari Thug
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 4 Fa'adiyah Seer
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 4 Demigod of Revenge
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 1 Vengeful Pharaoh
Lands (25)
Spells (13)
Another card in Modern that might play really well with Dredge is Smallpox, which does a ton of heavy lifting in this sort of deck. Not only does it
attack your opponent’s resources (and can be a real blowout if they play a creature before you do), but it provides you with a way to discard a dredge
card to start the dredging, or pitch a Pharaoh that’s in your hand. And Life from the Loam is a perfect card to break the symmetry of Smallpox.
Here’s one stab at such a deck:
Creatures (22)
- 1 Golgari Brownscale
- 3 Golgari Thug
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 4 Fa'adiyah Seer
- 4 Tarmogoyf
- 4 Demigod of Revenge
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 1 Vengeful Pharaoh
Lands (25)
Spells (13)
Modern is a huge format with tons of cards that could play a role in a Dredge deck. Have I missed any obvious or not-so-obvious choices? Have you
seen anyone else dabbling with Modern Dredge? The comment section below awaits!
That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend everyone!
Take care,
Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com
Make sure to follow my Twitter feed (@blairwitchgreen). I check it often so feel free to send me
feedback, ideas, and random thoughts. I’ve also created a Facebook page
where I’ll be posting up deck ideas and will happily discuss Magic, life, or anything else you want to talk about!
I’ve started a blog
. It’s not Magic-related, but you may find it fun to read and comment on. I update at least once a week, so check on it often and let me know what
you think!
New to Commander?
If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:
-
Commander Primer Part 1
(Why play Commander? Rules Overview, Picking your Commander) -
Commander Primer Part 2
(Mana Requirements, Randomness, Card Advantage) -
Commander Primer Part 3
(Power vs. Synergy, Griefing, Staples, Building a Doran Deck)
My current Commander decks
(and links to decklists):
- Damia, Sage of Stone ( Ice Cauldron shenanigans)
- Glissa Sunseeker (death to artifacts!)
- Glissa, the Traitor ( undying artifacts!)
- · Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer (replacing Brion Stoutarm in Mo’ Myrs)
Previous Commander decks currently on hiatus: