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Showing posts with label eldrazi green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eldrazi green. Show all posts

7.30.2010

Eldrazi Greens

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Happy Friday MTG Peeps,

This is our last post for a bit as we are away for a much needed vacation at the fam's cottage next week. While we are away playing with bears (our bear vid here) in the wilderness and dreaming of an internet connection / cell phone coverage, we invite you to check out the latest posts over at our good friends at Gathering Magic, Casual Magic, or get some trading done at CCG Tradepost.

Magic the Gathering loves Fridays, so make sure you make tracks to your local game store as it is FNM, or perhaps just wipe the chicken wing sauce / pizza droppings off your kitchen table before your mates pop over. Righto - you lot were likely looking for another article - so let's yatter about the horrid state of our Eldrazi Green deck. We've not touched this build for rather some time and think we took a few key cards out for other decks and cannot quite remember what was in there to start.

What got us thinking about this build again was the interesting interaction between Mycoloth (SoA) and Primal Cocoon (M11). One can put this green aura on Mycoloth and enjoy additional saproling tokens each turn - rather fun. Alternatively, we were thinking about fishing additional lands out each turn (via Harrow and the like) to pave the way for Avenger of Zendikar. The punchline with either (or both) of these routes is of course Eldrazi Monument. There's always a moment however in most of our games where we are feeling nekkid / exposed to removal of Mycoloth / Avenger before they pay out - similar case when we have our puked out a board of saproling / plant tokens before getting Eldrazi Monument out in play - yeah - we're thinking about Chain Reaction and the ilk.


Anywhoos - Here is what we found after blowing the dust off . .
Some solid mana acceleration with Lawnmower Elf and Lawnmower ver. 2.0. Some insurance against removal with Vines of the Vastwood and Canopy Cover (love both these cards). Oddly, we found two Elvish Visionary - not sure if we had a deck set of these or they simply bled in some time ago from the side-board. There is also a deckset of Deadly Recluse which certainly saved our bacon a few times in the past by forcing our opponent to think twice before swinging in with Fatty McFatster. Finally, the build gets a bit more interesting with Leatherback Baloth, Garruk Wildspeaker, Mycoloth, Eldrazi Monument, and Avenger of Zendikar. As for land, we found the requisite Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and Khalni Garden.


We were thinking perhaps using Fauna Shaman to fish out the correct cards at the most strategic moment and then lost our train of thought (done fairly easily unfortunately), as we thought about our Knight build from yesterday - Imagine the slim chances of getting two Knight Exeplars out in play - this could be potentially solved with Fauna Shaman - anyways - more to think about we guess.

Right - as this build is no where ready to hit the game table, we would very much appreciate any suggestions you may have - send 'em in as we are away next week and we will get back to work on it upon our return (if the bears don't eat us).

Lastly, if did not know, MTG Mint Card has for you, a 5% Off Coupon. You may be asking, hey MTG Realm, how do we get the deal? - Glad you asked, just enter "FACEBOOKMTG" on the checkout page, and you will get 5% off.
Thnx - and don't forget to eat your Greens.

3.11.2010

Planted Green

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Good Day folks,

With all the awesome cards we are expecting in the very next set, Rise of the Eldrazi, we figured we would do a revisit and re-tweak of some of the casual decks with the notion to put up some sort of defence against Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and the like.


To this end, this particular deck we scrapped together was rather big on the fun factor at the kitchen table and we encourage you to assist us in some of the slot choice.

Let's have a look - here is Planted Green . . .

Avenger of Zendikar
Eldrazi Monument
Mycoloth
Leatherback Baloth
Snapping Creeper
Deadly Recluse
Elvish Visionary
Canopy Cover
Vines of the Vastwood
Arbour Elf
Llanowar Elves
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
Khalani Garden
Tectonic Edge
Forest
















We were actually rather impressed with Lawnmower Man V2.0, Arbour Elf. Together with the ubiquitous Llanowar Elves, we had found that we could mana accelerate ahead of our opponents to our deck's punch-line, Avenger of Zendikar and Mycoloth.


And of course Eldrazi Monument is without doubt, the bee's knees. This allowed all our our Plant and Saproling tokens to become a deadly airborne cloud.

Some protection is afforded through Canopy Cover and Vines of the Vastwood which on more than one occasion frustrated the heck out of our opponents. These of course are the go-to cards for green decks who are lacking any white protection a la Brave the Elements or Sejiri Steppe, etc.

Finally, we were rather pleased with how Deadly Recluse worked for us during play - a death-touch critter with reach really does provide a level of threat on the board which will make your opponent think twice before swinging.

That's it for now but please fire off your comments for improvement - we are still looking for something better to replace Snapping Creeper.
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2.23.2010

San Diego Deck Techs

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Good Day MTG folks,

Still trapped in Toronto for a week of meetings which means we may not be able to get regular daily posts up on MTG Realm - so hang in until we return back to the mothership in Barrie by week's end.

Anywhoos - odd thing happened tonight. We trudged across the street from the hotel we're staying at to our new fav game store (401 Games) to get a couple of cards and we bump into a buddy from Barrie - wow. Especially so if one considers the population of Toronto is about 2.5 million and the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) is around 5.6 million - we assume the improbable but guess local gamery stores are strong magnets for MTG fans and should expect to bump into someone we know from time to time.

Right - anyways, our buddy 'Anakin' was able to oblige us and we did a round of decktesting with the new builds we have going. Anakin's Kor tech and blue-white build were rather brilliant so much fun was had.

Speaking of deck tech, make sure you check out these videos from WoTC from the recent Pro Tour-San Diego 2010 last weekend where German player Simon Görtzen Jund build took him to the top. The Player field looked like this . . .

1. Simon Görtzen (Jund)

2. Kyle Boggemes (Jund)
3. Luis Scott-Vargas (Boss Naya)
4. Craig Wescoe (White Weenie)
5. Daniel Gräfensteiner (Junk)
6. Niels Viaene (Esper Control)
7. Yoshihiko Ikawa (Jund)
8. Jeroen Kanis (Mono-Red)

Righto - The Deck Tech we had promised earlier . . .

First up - Craig Wescoe shows off his unique take on White Weenie which propelled him to an 8-2 record in the Standard portion of the Pro Tour.



2 Dragonskull Summit
4 Forest
2 Lavaclaw Reaches
3 Mountain
4 Raging Ravine
1 Rootbound Crag
4 Savage Lands
3 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Broodmate Dragon
4 Putrid Leech
3 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Blightning
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Rampant Growth

Sideboard
4 Deathmark
4 Great Sable Stag
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Master of the Wild Hunt
1 Pithing Needle
2 Terminate

And . . . Lucas Florent shows off his updated to Eldrazi Green for Standard.



4 Llanowar Elves
4 Arbor Elves
4 Leatherback Baloth
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Joraga Warcaller
4 Wolfbriar Elemental
4 Master of the Wild Hunt
3 Eldrazi Monument
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Omnath, Locus of Mana
1 Druid of the Anima
1 Noble Heirarch
1 Ant Queen
1 Bestial Menace
4 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
18 Forest

Sideboard
4 Great Sable Stag
4 Wind Storm
4 Acidic Slime
2 Thornling
1 Naturalize

That's it for now - we hope to get another post off tomorrow.
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1.11.2010

Joraga Green

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Happy Monday MTG fans,

As the Worldwake spoiler well has run bone dry, we have to wait until the official Wizards previews begin next week. With this time we thought we might as well revisit that new Worldwake Elf Lord Joraga Warcaller as we have been giving it some thought as to how it may impact the casual standard Magic the Gathering environment.

One choice that has been yattered about is to slide this very excellent new card into a modified 'Eldrazi Green' deck. If you are not aware, 'Eldrazi Green' has not only been seeing some popular casual play but also has been venturing into some tournament play as well.

Here are some of the typical existing cards one would see in these decks . . .
Artifact : Eldrazi Monument

Creatures : Ant Queen, Elvish Archdruid, Elvish Visionary, Great Sable Stag, Llanowar Elves, Master Of The Wild Hunt, Nissa's Chosen, Noble Hierarch.

Planeswalkers : Garruk Wildspeaker, Nissa Revane

Lands : Forests and a deck set of Oran-rief, The Vastwood.

Right off the hop, we see that Eldrazi Monument really shines in a deck that consistently pukes tokens out each turn but starts to loose its appeal as we do not have anything (yet!) that produces Elf tokens. We are unsure whether there will be such an Elf token generator in the rest of Worldwake but for the moment, it appears we have a road block - that is unless you play extended with the likes of Elvish Promenade, Imperious Perfect, etc.

You may not want a full deck set of Eldrazi Monument, but certainly will want to keep Elvish Archdruid, Elvish Visionary, Nissa's Chosen and Nissa Revane. After this, a careful selection of other Elves are in order - perhaps you even want to consider introducing a cascade mechanic with Bloodbraid Elf.
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A quick reference for Joraga

Joraga Warcaller, (Rare)
Creature - Elf Warrior
Multikicker 1
(You may pay an additional {1} as you play this spell as many times as you choose.)
Joraga Warcaller enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each time it was kicked.
Other Elf creatures you control get +1/+1 for each +1/+1 counter on Joraga Warcaller.
1/1


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Wherever you pilot this deck, you will most likely want to try to dump as many +1/+1 counters on Joraga Warcaller as possible. Your choices are Sigil Captain, Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, Ajani Goldmane and Quest for the Gemblades and even Blade of the Bloodchief. Perhaps you may not even want to multikick this card when you play it put hold onto some extra mana in the event that your opponent will want to kill it as soon as it enters the battlefield. We suggest that you at least one green mana for Vines of Vastwood which may work in your favour.

We are unsure that we will see some other lovely Worldwake cards coming out to support this but we do know that wherever the chips will fall, you will have some fun building a deck with this critter. Take a minute and drop a comment as to what your fiendish plans are for this build.

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Now for something completely different . . .

We're sure everone has dropped into their local games store to pick up cards . . .
BUT . . .

What if you are in a hurry to catch a train and know that you have the next several hours to kill. Instead of catching up on some sleep, you and your MTG buddy should drop some coins into this vending machine on the train platform. This machine is found at the Zürich Hauptbahnhof trainstation and in our opinion a very cool idea.
Photo cred to Sapphireblue.