I've been quite busy since my last posting, with work, and my wonderful girlfriend causing an unknown amount of time to pass, and seem like three times that much (or 1/3 as much, either way...)
However, I've still been watching quite a bit of Magic, and I've been thinking quite a bit about a few cards, and have been very excited to build decks around them.
In particular:
I mean, how can you not be excited about this guy? He gives a huge board presence, interacts favorably with most any popular card out there these days, and doesn't get blown out by the typical blowout cards (Vapor Snag, Restoration Angel, even Sever the Bloodline isn't terrific against it). Also, he's "only" a rare, so his price can't get TOO out of control. (Granted, he's probably one of the best rares we've seen in quite a while).
I really can't say enough about this guy. He is very easy to splash, has power = CMC, and just provides incredible advantage for what you're paying, independent of any other cards that might be in your hand, deck, graveyard, etc. Really the only bad part is the art, because this semi-legendary beast looks like a glorified yak, not exactly something I'm trembling in fear over. (Compare to Obstinate Baloth, yowza!)
I've been thinking about two deck philosophies with this guy, overwhelming board control (creature-based), and more of an omni-color control deck, which features hard-to-deal-with creatures to provide a fast clock.
The first one I'd like to talk about is the easier one to build, because it is mostly doable with searches on gatherer. (Text contains battlefield? Sounds good!)
The main card that draws me to Green/White is another absurd card in the metagame (that is not rotating), Restoration Angel:
Restoration is another simply absurd card. It has 7 power + toughness for 4 mana, which is just about tops these days. Only 14 creatures in standard have power and toughness over 3 for 4 mana, and 9 of those have substantial drawbacks, so if all we got was a 3/4 for 4, we'd be doing okay, but we get not one, but three very relevant abilities these days.
Flash on it's own is almost a 2:1, or just for having the threat of the card in your deck you can often get a "gain 2-4 life" out of the deal by your opponent being afraid to attack into your four open mana.
Flying is extremely relevant. Blocking one of the most aggressive creatures (Delver of Secrets) in the format and coming out alive, as well as gobbling up the morass of 1/1 flying spirit tokens from Moorland Haunt, Lingering Souls, etc is great, but it also flies over clogged boards, which is very nice.
These two abilities are quite absurd on this four mana threat and answer, but it also has a third extremely relevant ability, to "flicker" one of your (non-angel) creatures when it comes into play (at instant speed).
This ability is quite exciting for several reasons.
1) You get to reuse enters the battlefield effects.
2) You get to untap your creatures for blocking.
3) You get to save your guys from (non-sweeper) removal.
4) You get to reuse your leaves the battlefield triggers (not dies, but Thragtusk...)
5) You get to block, and not lose your guy in combat.
6) You get to reset undying triggers.
That's a huge list of possibilities for a third ability on a extremely relevant creature....
(Again, art quibble, you can tell the artist put a lot of effort into it, but what's with that hair....)
So, we have a core for a deck with these two cards, and there are a few ways we can go with it.
The standard approach would be to go with a Birthing Pod strategy, but I'm not a huge fan of that.
Birthing Pod is an amazing Magic card. It tutors guys out of your deck, works very well with clones, and rewards you for playing good value creatures. But it does not do so for free. There are a few costs to this, that add up to this not being an auto-include:
1) It is a 4-drop, that does nothing on it's own.
2) It is not a creature.
3) It requires you to sacrifice a creature, making your overall board position perhaps more even than you'd like for having spent a card, mana, etc.
4) It is an artifact. Grudge, Divine Offering, and even Crushing Vines are seeing some main-deck play, and a fair amount of sideboard slots these days.
5) If you are behind, going "sideways" into a good threat doesn't catch you up as much as just playing another good threat.
6) Torpor Orb, Grafdigger's Cage shut this card down pretty hard.
7) It works best with cards that are, frankly, impossible to cast, (Geralf's Messenger, Strangleroot Giest) or do nothing on their own (Phantasmal Image).
Don't get me wrong, getting most any creature you can want out of your deck, in a relatively uncounterable way, for 1-2 mana, and putting it into play is one of the most powerful things you can do in a game of Magic. Birthing Pod is an amazing card. I just don't think we're going to be playing this as a 4-of, because we're looking to build and build and build our board position, rather than transforming our board position.
I just don't get that excited about turning my Restoration Angel into my one-of Thragtusk, netting even on life, when I could just cast a Thragtusk, and still have the Angel. If my goal is to tutor out a Sun Titan, by saccing my Thragtusk, why wouldn't I just play another Thragtusk, and still have the first one. Or just play a Sun Titan, and not downgrade my Thragtusk into a 3/3 that is easily Snagged. I want my resilient guys because they are resilient, not so I can do half the work of killing them for my opponent... That just doesn't make sense to me.
What I do want to do with my crazily powerful creatures that give me incredible value when they come into play, leave play, and are very hard to kill, is to DO THAT MORE!
And that's where the core of this deck lies:
Cast crazily powerful creatures, with great abilities when they enter the battlefield. Make your opponent try to deal with them, and then react to their last, best, hope for victory by doing it all again.
Cloudshift is an amazing card if your deck is built with it in mind, and obviously, we'll be doing that here. Both of our core cards work quite well with Cloudshift, and I've just rattled off 6 reasons why the "flicker" ability on Restoration Angel is great.... Restoration Angel IS amazing, but I love redundancy, and Cloudshift offers redundancy in the best possible way, as a one-mana instant. Good luck playing around this card.
Tempo can be defined as wasting a bunch of your opponent's mana/time/phases. Well, Cloudshift counters any (targetted) removal spell for less than what that removal spell would have cost. It counters their tricks, and combat phases. It kills their guys, and buys you a lot of triggers, for the cost of one mana. It is not good against Sweepers, or sacrifice effects, but those are not amazingly prevalent these days. (And, if a Black Sun's Zenith is a partial sweeper, you can undo the part...)
One of the reasons clones are good is that you can do what your opponent just did, but you generally pay less for doing it yourself. Well, Cloudshift is certainly not a clone (you can't copy your opponent's stuff, or legend rule them, or get a full second copy of your own guy), Cloudshift does a pretty good impression of being a clone with a Thragtusk or Restoration Angel or Borderland Ranger in play, at a cost that can't really get any lower.
I likely wouldn't use Cloudshift proactively against open blue mana, or on a one-toughness creature against zero to one open mana as long as phyrexian mana is around, because then you walk into the opposite of what you want Cloudshift to be, but that's another beautiful part of Cloudshift, it only costs W, so leaving it up to react to what your opponent is doing is relatively painless!
We might be able to use a ninth flicker effect, is there anything that really stands out?
Aah Venser, how I love thee...
I really think it is a good idea, especially in a creature-heavy deck, to include a few planeswalker threats that your opponent has to deal with. Venser is such a threat. He ramps very quickly with his +2, that is actively great in a deck like this. His -1 also happens to incidentally win the game in the board stalls we are likely to get into with our large creature swarms. (Sleep you, GG).
Since we are going to be playing some good land-fixing from Green creatures, and Venser is a 5-drop, we can afford to run him off a single Island that we can find by the time we need it.
Venser works with the theme of the deck, is a win condition, and is not super-vulnerable (starting at 5 loyalty) to non-miracled Bonfire of the Damned, Delver of Secrets, Restoration Angel, or other threats that make a planeswalker like Liliana (any version) so vulnerable.
So, we have some absurd flickering, what can we put in that is worth flickering?
This is where the Gatherer search comes in...
First, let's look at some solid, cheap, value creatures.
We need some guys that come down early, for defense, and to be in play already when it comes time to start flickering things. We have some solid contenders to start the list off:
Blade Splicer is one of the cornerstone creatures of this type. It drops down a huge 3/3 first-striker, and often takes two cards to answer. This gal really clogs up the board, and first strike works pretty well on offense as well. Reactive flickering here is going to be solid.
Elvish Visionary might be a bit controversial when Strangleroot Giest is in the format, but I think more and more people will be moving to this guy over time, for a very simple reason: You can cast Elvish Visionary.
Geist is just not easy to cast, even in a two-color deck, and we will be drawing on average more powerful cards than a 3/2 off this guy. We need all the mana we can get, to activate our Townships, and cast our Thragtusks, and smoothing draws is way more important than getting in for 2 damage, when Blade Splicer, and Pillar of Flame are common sights.
This deck really does need all the land it can get. Skimping on this guy would be the easy call, but when you want to cast Thragtusk with Cloudshift up, or Activate Gavony Township and still do something else, Borderland Ranger is your guy. He is also exceptional at fixing your mana, and enabling splashes. (I'd splash a single mana card of almost any color with four of this guy, and perhaps one other way to support it.)
This deck will be playing quite a few basics, because we have plays all the way up the curve, so relying on Scars lands to fix mana seems unwise, when we're using every mana we can get in every turn of the game, especially as it goes late.
I'd be pretty happy with 4x's of each of these cards in the final version of the deck, but it's plausible that I'll only have 10 of them once we get to that stage. (/cry)
Next, some potential one-ofs...
These three cards are really competing with what is probably 0-1 slots. Swords and Pikes are scary, so War Priest is probably a sideboard card. Corruptor is good (read: cheap), but somewhat hard to cast. If I had only one main-deck slot, I'd probably go with Slime, just because of the versitility. It's also possible that a non-creature like Ancient Grudge gets the main-deck nod, because it's even cheaper, and buys itself back if necessary. (I can see having Grudge and Ray of Revelation in the side)
These little guys are all "acceptable" with blink effects, and give me something to do with the one-slot. They prevent me from getting too far behind, and aren't embarrassing vs Vapor Snag, or Gut Shot, which is about all you can ask from a one-drop. I wouldn't play more than three total from this slot, and would probably pick one of them to represent the group.
Snapcaster is awesome, but there aren't looking to be a ton of spells in this deck, so he might not have a lot of targets. (Flashing back Cloudshift to re-re-reuse effects is probably going a bit too deep...)
Sun Titan goes well with the "theme" of the deck, but Elesh Norn is another way to win the game on the spot in any kind of board stall. We will probably have the mana to cast either one, so Elesh Norn seems like the best candidate while she's around...
Sunblast is the clear sweeper of choice for a deck like this, if we want one. It kills hexproof guys, kills Restoration Angels, and is a huge come-from-behind card. I don't mind having one of that kind of thing in my deck, I think I'd like it more than a card like Stonehorn Dignitary. Another card that'd max out at one.
Misc/Other creatures:
It should come at no great surprise that I propose Phyrexian Metamorph here. Since we're doing such powerful things, being able to do them again in another way is solid. Metamorph has a huge amount of versitility as a legend-killer, artifact(sword)-copier, me-too-er, double-downer, etc, etc. I wouldn't have more than two or three of these, because we aren't overly weak to Giest of Saint Traft (infinite blockers), and it is not the best on an empty board.
Um... WTF?
If you've been paying attention so far, you've seen quite a few creatures that do something when they enter the battlefield, but this guy doesn't exactly match the pattern of the rest, he triggers on death... So what is going on here? Am I just trying to see if you're paying attention?
Actually, no, this is a serious proposal. If you take a gander up the list, you see quite a few very powerful, and VERY EXPENSIVE cards. You also don't see very many (appetizing) low drops to get me in the game early, or to prevent me from dying. Cloudshift is a cheap card, but not exactly a one-drop, so we need something early.
Now, why this guy? Well, at 2, we have Augur of Bolas (not good with 1x Island), Dawntreader Elk (probably worse than this guy), Perilous Myr (defense, defense against swords, but doesn't kill a hexproof legend or get me some lands), and that's about it. This guy does his job of clogging things up, has 2 power for 2 mana, and will eventually chump block for some land (to cast a game-winning bomb hopefully), or be blinked in to trade while getting in some damage.
He does sort of turn off the attack phase for your opponent, which is just what we want out of this little guy.
He could just be Rampant Growth, because that is a more straightforward approach to what we want this guy to do in the long run (fix basic land mana, get me to the late game), but this guy's better to have "left around" at the end when you're pumping Gavony Township, or swinging for lethal with Venser, so while he has some real downsides over an actual ramp spell, he has upsides too.
Wait, where are the Elves?
This format is defined in many ways by Bonfire of the Damned, and Gut Shot. The creatures selected above are designed to be as resilient to those sweepers as possible. That is why we're talking about Rampant Growth above, instead of Llanowar Elves. I'm interested in getting permanent sources of mana into play to use to cast my big guys, I'm not willing to maybe get there a turn earlier, and actually get there two turns later, by shaving lands for 1/1's with effectively no ability late game. (I'm also not podding so I can't turn a 1 into a "good" two (like Strangleroot Giest))
Removal/Misc Non-Creatures
So, while I'd love to just have 36 creatures and go from there, it is likely that my opponent is going to try and do something during the course of the game, so we should have at least some interaction with them.
Oblivion Ring is a solid answer to most any big threat (Planeswalker, Equipment, Titan, Enchantment). It's clearly the most versitile (and not coincidentally the most expensive) answer of the three.
The phyrexian mana (Ruining the color pie since NPH) spells are another option to consider in our GWu deck.
Gut Shot is another answer to Delver of Secrets, as well as the mana dorks other decks will be relying on. I admit It would be nice to be able to punish those decks for choosing to rely on dudes for mana, instead of just counting on other decks to do it for me). It's also a good answer to Inkmoth Nexus, and other little infect dorks.
Dismember is perhaps the best creature answer. It's not ideal, but it is very cheap, and an instant. It takes down Angels, Splicer tokens, and other things that might clog up the way. It does not deal with Titans very well, but if we're aggressive enough, it will do the trick.
I'm not sure which is best, but the more Viridian Emissaries and Young Wolves I have, the more I feel like I can lean on O-Ring as a generic answer.
Green Sun's Zenith is another pod-like effect, that in theory gets mana acceleration early, and Thragtusk late. However, I'd probably rather just have 1x Emissary and 1x Venser in my deck, than 2x GSZ. Without GSZ, some of the one-of green guys lose a bit of their value, but that's only looking like Acidic Slime at this point...
Mimic Vat is pure awesome. It's a cheap drop, that's great against removal, and awesome with most any of the other cards in the deck. It's another way to double-down on enters-the-battlefield, and exploit either a control opponent, or a creature opponent where we'll be trading back and forth, with me on a million mana.
I really like Rancor, as a way to make your cheap guys into real threats, but I don't think it fits in this deck. Alot of what we've done up until now has made us relatively Vapor Snag and Gut Shot immune. When we try and put a Rancor on a x/1, we say to our opponent "okay, I didn't really want those spells to rot in your hand...". If we want something in this slot, we could go with some form of equipment (or Batterskull, which I own), to try and get through a board stall. However when it comes to breaking board stalls, I think a card like Venser or Elesh Norn probably just does that way better....
Lands, aka how we're going to cast all this stuff...
It might be strange to lead off a "Three Color" deck with a colorless land, but Gavony Township is one of the backbones of this deck. It is another awesome late-game card, that
actually helps cast virtually every spell in this deck, unlike most Green/x decks of this age. We don't have Elves, Birds, Geists, or Elders to make Gavony non-great.
Heck, there are only five or so spell slots in the whole deck that have more than a single colored mana in their costs (and only Acidic Slime costs less than 6).
Sunpetal Grove is pure gold, coming in untapped in the late game, and coming in tapped turn one if we don't have any other basics.
Razorverge Thicket is a card I won't cry to see leave standard for this deck, because we just don't need the untapped colored mana turn 1-3, and we aren't color intensive. It coming into play tapped turn 4-8, where we intend to be playing some serious magic, could easily be more of a liability than it's fixing is worth.
If I were playing 4x Viridian Emissary, and 4x Borderland Ranger, I wouldn't play any Evolving Wilds for any Blue (or Red, or Black) splashes, but if we go down on one of those, we'll have to fill in with Evolving Wilds, Shimmering Grotto, or a card like Glacial Fortress or Hinterland Harbor (Seachrome Coast is terrible in this deck)
I would say something like Hinterland Harbor would be best, since Green is more critical early than White, and the blue spell in the deck is BlueWhite3, so having your only white land be your only blue land (unlikely) isn't that useful. I would certainly have an Island in any case, due to Ghost Quarter, and the various basic land searchers in the deck.
So, let's see a deck-list already?
Flicker Core: 9
4x Restoration Angel
4x Cloudshift
1x Venser, the Sojurner
Flicker Targets: 17
4x Thragtusk
4x Borderland Ranger
3x Elvish Visionary
4x Blade Splicer
2x Phyrexian Metamorph
One-Of Creatures: 2
1x Elesh Norn
1x Acidic Slime
Random Creatures: 4
4x Viridian Emmissary
Removal: 4
3x Oblivion Ring
1x Dismember
Land: 24
4x Gavony Township
4x Sunpetal Grove
4x Razorverge Thicket
1x Island
11x Forest + Plains
Sideboard:
1x Sunblast Angel (Creature decks)
2x Ray of Revelation (Oblivion Ring, Wild Defiance)
2x Creeping Renaissance (Attrition Matchups (is this all matchups with this deck?))
2x Mimic Vat (Creature Attrition Matchups)
3x Ancient Grudge (Pike/Sword, Tempered Steel, Trading Post)
1x Mountain (Casting Grudges)
3x Celestial Purge (Zombies)
1x Stingerfling Spider
I'd really like to get some more one-ofs in there, Mimic Vat seems great, or main-deck Ancient Grudge with all the incidental artifacts people have.
I'm not sure how well some of the low-drops will work, I feel pretty weak on the low end of the curve, but if I survive, I can certainly cast more than one spell a turn late.
What is this deck best at?
This is one of the best Thragtusk decks.
This is one of the best Gavony Township decks.
This deck is awesome against removal. (Even pesky blue removal)
This deck is a creature deck, that does not fold to Bonfire or Gut Shot.
This deck creates a board stall, and then smashes through to win the game on the spot.
What needs to be improved?
I think the deck needs 1-2 more super-top-end cards, to continue to go over the top in board stalls. Wolfyr Silverheart could be a problem, as could a appropriate sword.
What didn't make the cut?
Jens is just a bit slow for our purposes. Our action spells start around 4-5, while Sad Robot is best if you're on your way to 6+. (We can use this land, but we have many other creatures filling in before this comes online)
Ghostly flicker works great with the deck, but is 3cc vs Cloudshift's one. It doesn't bounce our O-Rings either =(
This guy is super-slow, does nothing when he comes into play, costs 6, and does nothing the next turn if they remove either this guy, or the guy he's bonded with, unless you draw yet ANOTHER creature to bond with it (at which point you probably aren't doing much crazy stuff that turn either...). Also, double blue =(
Primeval is great, It might be nice to search out 2x Gavony Townships, but at that point, I'd still rather Norn.
Huntmaster of the Fells is awesome. We could be splashing it over splashing Venser, with our plethora of instants, and this guy does fit the general theme of good vs Gut Shot and other removal...
