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12.21.04 Hey all, and welcome back to the Deck Garage! Hope all of y’all are enjoying the holidays. I was on the lookout for a green and red deck list for this week’s article, but no such luck. Instead, I decided to go with a fun, green and white casual deck. Here’s a compilation of the e-mails I received.
I am a casual magic player, who only plays
because I have friends who play. I don't know allot
about deck building, nor do I have a vast knowledge
of magic cards, so my decks usually stink. However,
I have finally made a deck I enjoy to play, and wins
a fair amount of the time (against my friends). The
details of my deck change from time to time, but I'd
like to settle down on something solid. I'd like
you to take a look over it. This is for extended.
It looks like our contributor is off to a great start! He has a good concept behind his deck (Swing with my Big Dude and gain some life) and he seems pretty focused. He also doesn’t have an issue with 1-ofs and 2-ofs, which is always a plus.
The first thing I want to do is fix the lone 2-of in the deck by upping it to four. Sometimes, its OK to only have two of a certain card in your deck, especially if it has a high casting cost or you don’t really need multiples. Birds of Paradise doesn’t meet any of those standards.
+2 Birds of Paradise
While on the topic of mana producers, I’m not sure I like the presence of Fertile Ground and Wild Growth. Both are decent cards in their own right, but I think this deck might be better served if I removed both, threw in a set of Yavimaya Elders, and then upped the land count to 22. This will help guarantee that our contributor draws the necessary amount of land at the beginning of the game, and he can search more out later. Otherwise, he could be a prime target for a well-aimed Stone Rain.
-4 Fertile Ground -4 Wild Growth +4 Yavimaya Elder +2 Basic Land (we can decide on particulars later)
Again, on the topic of mana producers, we (unfortunately) have to cut Wall of Roots. The e-mail said that this deck was for Extended, and Wall of Roots was only printed in Mirage.
-4 Wall of Roots
I noticed Exalted Angel was in the sideboard, but Essence Sliver made the cut into the main. This seems a bit backwards to me, as I would almost always rather play a face down Exalted Angel on Turn 2 (with help from Birds) and flip it on Turn 3 than a Turn 3 Sliver that can attack on Turn 4.
-4 Essence Sliver +4 Exalted Angel
I was noticing that this deck seems light on threats right now. Yes, it has Ageless Entity and Exalted Angel, but those come a bit later in the game. Yavimaya Elder is OK, but he doesn’t do too good of a job clearing a hole. After looking through the different options, I think Troll Ascetic would be a good addition to this deck. It obviously works well in Extended, as it can’t be targeted by any number of removal spells, it regenerates, and it has a decent size for its cost. To make room, I’m pulling Cho-Manno’s Blessing. I realize that it gives protection, but it seems a bit unnecessary with the size of the creatures in this deck.
-4 Cho-Manno’s Blessing +4 Troll Ascetic
Werebear is another card that made me curious. It seems decent enough, but with all of the cards available in Extended, it really isn’t the best option. Instead, why not play the best green 2-Drop ever made? It regenerates, it is a 2/1 as opposed to a 1/1, and it Islandwalks all over those pesky control decks.
-4 Werebear +4 River Boa
I won’t mess too much with the Spirit Link and Armadillo Cloaks, as they are a central piece to the deck that is being fixed. However, if I were given a choice between playing Spirit Link or playing Armadillo Cloak, I’m going to take Cloak every time – meaning we should probably have four Cloak and two Link as opposed to three and three.
-1 Spirit Link +1 Armadillo Cloak
It seems like there are always viable targets for Naturalize in Extended, as I can name very few decks that don’t play any enchantments or artifacts. Why don’t we go ahead and throw in four copies of Naturalize?
+3 Naturalize
As I sat mulling over Reverent Mantra, I knew that it wasn’t the right call here. Something was really off, and I couldn’t figure it out. Only once I thought about creatures did I come up with the solution. This deck is just destined to be really creature-heavy, as instead of Reverent Mantra, I think we need to play Mother of Runes.
-4 Reverent Mantra +4 Mother of Runes
As the last piece of work on the main deck, I rearranged the land to reflect a heavier leaning towards green (as opposed to an even split between green and white), and I threw in a set of Treetop Village. As long as the deck is creature heavy, why not make it *really* creature heavy?
-3 Plains +1 Forest +4 Treetop Village
Turning attention to sideboard, we have already brought Exalted Angel to the main deck, so it is gone. I don’t think Plated Sliver or Soul Link to anything additional for the deck, and I’m not sure when they would come in and make a huge difference, so they get cut, too.
-4 Exalted Angel [SB] -4 Plated Sliver [SB] -2 Soul Link [SB]
Since Affinity has made its presence felt in Extended, too, I think it would probably do us well to include more artifact destruction in the sideboard. This is a case where I think Oxidize is a better call than Viridian Shaman, just because the deck already wants to make better creatures than Shaman with its mana. It can just use the little bit of leftover mana to nuke artifacts with the one-green-mana Oxidize.
+4 Oxidize [SB]
Blue-Green Madness is another Extended deck that made its debut in Type II and just never went away. Although Green and White don’t have a lot of tools to deal with it, they have one especially good one in the form of Ray of Revelation. If there is a better way for these colors to take care of Deep Analysis, Roar of the Wurm, and Wonder, I don’t know what it is. Reanimator is also staging a reemergence in Extended, meaning Ray of Revelation should probably go in times four.
+4 Ray of Revelation [SB]
I’m seeing a few goblin decks in Extended roaming around, and although I think this deck can take them if it gets rolling soon enough, it probably wouldn’t hurt to have some sideboard ammo against them. Masticore could work well here by pinging out the smaller guys and blocking the relevant men.
+2 Masticore [SB]
On the topic of red, Red Deck Wins (pretty much good creatures teamed with burn) made a Pro Tour appearance recently, meaning it will rear its head a few times every tournament. I might be making a random bad call here, but I think Ivory Mask might be worth sneaking into sideboard. RDW doesn’t have a way to deal with it, and you only need one to set yourself up in great position.
+2 Ivory Mask [SB]
As the final sideboard card, I’m sneaking in a somewhat random choice, but I think it would do well to have it in case our contributor runs into any deck that is slower but can go toe-to-toe with his creatures. Why fight when you can remove them from the game?
+3 Parallax Wave [SB]
I think that about wraps up work on this deck; let’s see how it turned out.
LAND (22): 4 Brushland
7
Forest
4
Treetop Village
CREATURES (28): 4 Ageless Entity 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Exalted Angel 4 Mother of Runes 4 River Boa 4 Troll Ascetic
4
Yavimaya Elder
NON-CREATURE SPELLS (10): 4 Naturalize 2 Spirit Link
SIDEBOARD (15): 2 Ivory Mask 2 Masticore 4 Oxidize 3 Parallax Wave 4 Ray of Revelation
Hope that helps, nameless contributor, and good luck!
Happy Holidays,
Paul Hagan |
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