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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Green/Red Bears Deck
September 4, 2008

 I played a noobish green deck a long time ago, found the list for a  bears deck tried it out, it was a lot of fun, then sets came out it  went away, I didn't care too much, I started playing blue control, stopped playing for a while etc. Well. Nostalgia has set in. So the  other day I picked up my collection and set about retooling the bears deck to work in standard. So I came up with this.

 10x Forest

 12x Mountain

 4x Grizzly Bears

 4x Woodland Changeling

 4x Llanowar Elves

 4x Goblin Rager

 2x Imperiosaur

 4x Lash Out

 4x Tarfire

 4x Incinerate

 4x Blaze

 2x Lava Axe

 2x Spring Cleaning

 It works OK. It just seems so... awkward. The objective is to drop  some early, cheap, effective creatures (the bears/changlings in this rendition), use the burns to take out their creatures and hopefully kill them before they kill you. The Lava Axes are there to help mop the player up, so to speak, the spring cleanings are to take out those pesky enchantments.

 (Hopefully...) the Imperiosaur is the Imperiosaur. The only problem I have with it is it feels awkward to play, the bears/changlings/ragers are only good for so long, and then it starts to go down hill. If you could help tune this deck up, (it lost a lot of steam with out the Orcish lumberjacks), I would appreciate it. I could probably figure out where you're going if all you have time for is an e-mail with -4 x +4y, but at any rate

 Thanks for your time,

 Charles

 ----------

So, Grizzly Bear beatdown isn't giving you enough potency?  Magic has come to be defined by the cornerstone of a 2/2 for two mana, so much so that most decks come to expect it.  Honestly, I can see why you might be struggling-- a 2/2 is a great play on turn two, but after a long, drawn-out fight, topdecking another 2/2 in the face of an opponent's 6/6 may be a bit of a disappointment.  No matter.  It's just time you looked into a few upgrades.

Now, I won't deny the effectiveness of 2 power for 2 mana, but have you considered 2 power... for 1 mana?  That's right, you can now double down.  Tattermunge Maniac from Shadowmoor and Nettel Sentinel from Eventide each give you the opportunity to swing for 2 a whole turn earlier.  They may not technically be bears, but they can hit just as hard.

And once you've gotten your early game up even earlier, you'll need to extend your late game as well.  Imperiousaur is the Imperiousaur, but you may want to branch out a bit.  Boggart Ram-Gang is an excellent choice for a quick and sudden wallop for three mana, and at four mana, there's Boartusk Liege.  The Liege is especially nice here, since it will give all your other bears a power boost to help them scale with the creatures your opponent will be dropping.

You may have a little difficulty getting your hands on a Boartusk Liege, however, so if you want to be able to pump up your creatures more easily, you can't go wrong with the old standby Giant Growth.  Giant Growth works especially well on Nettle Sentinel as mentioned before.  If you need a blocker, play it on a tapped Sentinel who will then untap as a 5/5 your opponent wasn't expecting to be attacking into.  Or it works in the early game as a much cheaper Lava Axe-- to just smack an opponent for an extra 3.  In fact, I'd say remove Lava Axe, along with Spring Cleaning, for four Giant Growth.

Finally, as you probably know if you played blue control for so long, your late game will also improve if you have some means of drawing extra cards.  In R/G, Harmonize is probably the best way to do that, or possibly Wistful Selkie, just for the extra 2/2.

Good luck!

~BMoor