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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Progenitus Contest Winner
July 31, 2009

Today marks our final winner in the Five Colors, Six Choices contest, and we’re going out with a bang. Three people have done their best to make Progenitus their kill card of choice, and we get to appreciate the fruits of their labor!

Now, in higher-level tournaments people have already made attempts to cheat out Progenitus, mostly with Dramatic Entrance and Polymorph. Unfortunately for our contestants, both of those cards are monocolored and therefore banned. Fortunately for us, that means we get to watch them squirm as they try and figure out other ways of squeezing this card out, including—gasp!—coming up with the mana to pay for it.

Our first contestant is C. Riggs.

Land:

x4 Jungle Shrine

x2 Highland Weald

x4 Naya Panorama

x2 Frost Marsh

x2 Artic Flats

x2 Boreal Shelf

x1 Dark Depths

x2 Tresserhorn Sinks

x2 An-Havva Township

x1 Skarrg, the rage pits

Creatures:

x4 Progenitus

x4 Angus Mackenzie

x4 Autochthon Wurm

x2 Borborygmos

x4 Wolly Thoctar

Non-Creature Spells:

x2 Fist of Suns

x2 AEther Mutation

x4 AEther Rift

x4 AEthermage's Touch

x4 Alter of Bone

x4 Armadillo Cloak

The idea here is to amass an army of big nasty creatures, with Progenitus at the helm.  With the right synergy you should have your opponent flatlining and ready to be put down by the time you can get your first or second on the field.

Second, we have Morten.

 -----

Progentius is cool however he/she does require an absurd manacost of 10 shuffled mana. Lets play it in a 2 color deck in shall we ? :D
 
4 Izzet Guildmage
4 Jhiora of the Ghitu
3 Spellbound dragon
4 Mindwrack liege
4 Progenitus
 
2 Swerve
4 Electrolyze
4 suffocating blast
3 Prophetic bolt
 
4 Izzet signet
2 izzet boilerworks
3 Fairy conclave
2 terrain generator
4 Tropical island
6 Islands
7 Mountains
 
The decks is based on playing the role of control the blue red way while building up a situation where progentius can make its magnificent entrance to finish the job.

This happens through either Jhitu or mindwrack liege, which both are happy to assist the big guy with jhitu being cheaper and mindwrack liege giving all creatures in the deck (progenitus included) a usefull bonus. Cards like swerve and suffocating blast helps protecting your investments. 

Should everything go wrong then spellbound dragon will be happy to eat extra progetiuses? protegisa? protegisae? nvm for a gigantic bonus. After a hit like this very little burn should be enough to finish the job. Izzet guildmage is a usefull body and together with izzet signet it gives you something to do in the early rounds.

 ---------------

And last, but not least, we have St4rwind. Or, at least that’s what I gathered from his/her E-mail address.

If I can get Dragon Arch/Mindwrack Liege out, Progenitus technically has flash and can’t be countered, and with a single two Knights out I can swing for 20 in one turn, which would be awesome.  The two Mox should provide enough acceleration for me to play what I need early, and since the deck is mostly blue/red, mana shouldn’t ever be an issue.

Here's the List

Creatures (11):

Progenitus x4

Knight of New Alara x3

Mindwrack Liege x2

Jhoira of the Ghitu x2

Artifacts (10):

Dragon Arch x4

Mox Ruby x3

Mox Sapphire x3

Spells (23):

Invoke the Firemind x2

Suffocating Blast x4

Double Negative x4

Voidslime x4

Electrolyze x3

Snakeform x3

Firespout x3

Lands (16):

Tropical Island x4

Volcanic Island x4

Pillar of the Paruns x4

City of Brass x4

And there you have it.

1: How does each deck win?

Riggs wants to use Aethermage’s Touch, Aether Rift, and Fist of Suns (among others) to put Progenitus (among others) into play from just about every zone there is. The Touch will pull it out of your deck, let you swing with it, then bouce it to your hand, where the Rift can make your opponent pay 5 more life to keep it off the field or Fist of Suns can cut its mana cost in half.

Morten wants to use Mindwrack Liege to put it into play for four mana, or Jhoira of the Ghitu to put it into play for two mana and four turns.

St4rwind uses the same tricks as Morten, plus Dragon Arch to put it down for two mana now.

2: What is each deck’s flaw?

Riggs’s biggest mistake? Two words: Angus Mackenzie. As hilarious as it is that he tried to find a deck for it, this deck isn’t it. Also, in an unfortunate slip-up, he has 4 Naya Panorama in his deck and no lands with basic land subtypes for him to search for.

Morten’s biggest problem is that he put in Izzet Guildmage as a two-drop and has no instants or sorceries he can copy with it except Swerve, which is useless to copy unless your opponent is playing Grapeshot Storm.

St4rwind’s biggest problem is his bizzare choice of color distribution. He’s playing red and blue as his bases, with a few green spells (Voidslime and the flying damage of Firespout) and one white card (Knight of New Alara). And to support this, he has a total of 22 mana sources counting the Moxen. This just looks incredibly weird on paper.

3: What does each deck do if it doesn’t draw Progenitus?

Riggs uses Borborygmos or Autochthon Wurm instead and proceeds as planned.

Morten has Prophetic Bolt, Spellbound Dragon, and the cantrip on Electrolyze to dig for the legendary Hydra, but even if he draws it with the Dragon, he’s probably better off discarding it for the +10/+0 and winning right then and there.

St4rwind can hold an opponent off with countermagic and burn until he or she can fire off an Invoke the Firemind big enough to either kill the opponent or dig Progenitus out of his or her deck.

Well, decision time. Riggs’s inclusion of Borborygmos and Autochthon Wurm renders Progenitus little more than Random Huge Creature. Since this is the Progenitus Contest, that hurts him a lot. Which narrows it down to the two Jhoira/Mindwrack Liege decks. And even though St4rwind found a third way to cheat the big guy out, Morten just plain built a better deck. It has focus, it has a good mana base, and it has a good chance of both getting Progenitus out and of winning without it. Congratulations, Morten!

Now, my turn. I have to admit, this one really had me puzzled. My first thought was to fill the deck with Ravnica signets to create a massive store of mana, but then how to search for Progenitus? For that matter, how to make sure you draw anything other than another mana rock, turn after turn?

Creatures:

4 Progenitus

4 Mishra, Artificier Prodigy

Spells:

4 Boros Signet

4 Orzhov Signet

4 Golgari Signet

4 Simic Signet

4 Izzet Signet

4 Vigean Intuition

4 Time Sieve

4 Razia’s Purification

Lands:

4 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea

4 Tree of Tales

4 Great Furnace

4 Seat of the Synod

4 Vault of Whispers

The plan here is to use Mishra to double your artifact spells, thus turning every signet into a landcycle of sorts. Once you’ve pulled enough signets out of your library, with Mishra or with Vigean Intuition, you should be able to hardcast Progenitus and then win on the spot by taking extra turns with Time Sieve.

And that concludes the Five Colors, Six Choices contest! I hope you all had as much fun with it as I did, and to our six winners: if you haven’t sent me your address yet, get it to me so you can get your prizes!

Next week, we’ll be back to me fixing your decks. I’m sure at least a few of you out there are glad all this silliness is finally over.

~BMoor