Pages

Popular Posts

12.07.2009

What I'm Playing 9

~
Good Day my Peeps and welcome to another post as to what we're playing (Magic the Gathering of course!). We've moved along from our recent 'Sneak Kor' deck (post HERE) as it was rife with issues. We hope to revisit this build after further support (hopefully) is found in the next Zendikar expansions of Worldwake and / or Rise of the Eldrazi is released.


Anywhoos - the particular itch we had to scritch involved employing the power found in the cards Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, and Sigil Captain. Both these cards would love to dump extra counters on critters as they come into play. Specifically, Oran-Rief will drop one extra counter on EACH green creature which entered the battlefield and Sigil Captain will grant TWO additional counters for each 1/1 critter which entered play. With the right token producers and the correct planets aligned, the player would be able to puke out vast numbers of 4/4 Insect or Saproling creature tokens to outpace Rampaging Baloths or just simply overwhelm an opponent.






















Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's have a look at the build so far . . . remember that this is a casual deck that does not want to go anywhere but on the kitchen table or an FNM and more importantly, the 'fun' factor was at a satisfactory level.


Rief Captain

Creatures [25]
4 x Birds of Paradise,

4 x Tukatongue Thallid,
4 x Steward of Valeron,
3 x Dauntless Escort, 1
4 x Sigil Captain, 1
4 x Mycoloth, 3
2 x Ant Queen, 3

Other Spells [15]
3 x Path to Exile,

4 x Behemoth Sledge, 1
3 x Oblivion Ring, 2
2 x Elspeth, Knight-Errant, 2
3 x Martial Coup, X

Land [20]
4 x Oran Rief, the Vastwood
2 x Sunpetal Grove (cuz we only have two!)
7 x Forest
7 x Plains
(EDIT - there is 20 lands)
You will immediately note that there is only 20 Lands in the deck. We have not had an issue with manascrew yet in playtesting. What really helps is the 8 mana-accelerators in place with Birds and Steward. We have on several occassions dropped the Mycoloth on turn three which speaks onto the tempo of this build.


We have an issue with Tukatongue Thalid. Sure this this is fairly economical by providing two 1/1 critters for just one green mana, and it does reap the benefits of the Captain and Vastwood but we have a feeling we may be better served by something else in this slot. Send us your suggestions please.

Dauntless Escort is good economy (a 3/3 for 3 mana) and goes hand in hand with Martial Coup just like Spongebob and Patrick. We have yet to witness this combo go off in playtesting as we have usually won the game before we needed it (really, really), but we're cetain it is sound.

Now - the to the coda / finale of this opus in G (
) major . . . The most lovely synergy of Sigil Captain / Oran Rief, the Vastwood with the token producers Mycoloth and Ant Queen.


For 5 mana, you get a 4/4 Mycoloth with Devour 2 - which means for every creature you sac, this big Fungus comes into play with twice that many counters. We recall one particular game during playtesting that on turn five, we were swinging with a 10/10 Mycoloth which also happened to have a Behemoth Sledge attached to it. A 12/12 lifelinking trampler is rather a beautiful thing to behold in action.

We found that with the level of mana production available to us in this build, we required a safety valve come mid to late game. One should always attempt to avoid untapped mana (unless of course you are running counterspells or other strategic instants). The answer for this was found in Ant Queen, which not only takes advantage of the Captain / Vastwood synergy but also presented a convenient place to dump extra mana to generate additional tokens.

~
Our Play-Testing results . . .

The deck performed very well against a variety of builds. We played against a mono-black Vampire deck, a Zendikar Ally deck, and an Esper Artifact / Control deck.

Very fortunate for us our opponent who was playing the Vamp deck did not get the opportunity to play Blood Seeker which certainly would have had a very adverse effect upon our life total given all the tokens we were throwing out on the table.

For the multiple matches we had against each of these decks, it appeared that the winning condition resided quite solidly in our ability to outpace the opponent and drop more creatures than they.

Even with removal of one of the token producers (Mycoloth / Ant Queen), there was either another one just around the corner or the tokens produced before removal was good enough to win the game. In one interesting game, we had our token engine removed but still had a handfull 4/4 Insect or Saproling creature tokens, one of which had the Behemoth Sledge equipped to still win the game. An Ant with a hammer is just plain funny.

Well, drop us a line and suggest some improvements to make this build either more effective or fun. Also - we are going to need some help generating a side-board with this.
~

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I actually REALLY like this build, seems really fun to just keep kicking out dudes and watch your opponent try and keep up with the madness. Mycoloth plus Oran-Rief just seems insane! Kicking out tokens to boost up to 4/4.

I think Garruk would be fun in this honestly. His untap ability makes those Oran-Rief just unfair. I certainly think he deserves a main board spot possibly?

Anonymous said...

I think you may only have 59 cards in that deck. Correct me if I'm wrong...

CopySix said...

#1. Garruk would make a most excellent addition - Thanks for the great advice.
#2. Whoops - For some reason, I am missing one extra forest here (sorry) - should be 8 x Forest and 7 x Plains. I'm thinking I took out a spot for the extra Oran Rief I'm picking up latter.

gregtron said...

I really like this deck, too. A couple of suggestions:

Drop the Birds for Llanowar Elves. You're only running two colors, so using a dude that gets the Captain's benefit seems like a pretty good idea. Also, dropping that Thalid for Elvish Visionary gives you some amount of card advantage, and still a dude that reaps the deck's 1/1 benefits.

Conqueror's Pledge * Eldrazi Monument! The cool thing about the monument is you then don't need the Escorts.

Try this list out, see if you like it. :)

4 x Llanowar Elves,
4 x Elvish Visionary,
4 x Steward of Valeron,
3 x Dauntless Escort
4 x Sigil Captain
4 x Mycoloth
2 x Ant Queen

4 x Path to Exile,
3 x Behemoth Sledge
2 x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 x Conqueror's Pledge
3 x Eldrazi Monument


4 x Oran Rief, the Vastwood
2 x Sunpetal Grove
9 x Forest
5 x Plains

Credendo said...

I would think instead of the Tukatung Thallid that Scute Mob would be better.

Anonymous said...

I would add maybe one or two Conqueror's Pledge(s) for the many tokens and some Emera Angel(s) for the landfall tokens all 1/1's.

buh-roken said...

Great build, I agree that Garruk, Elvish visionary, and Scute Mob would be good to main deck, but have you considered using Oran-Rief Survivalist. Stacked correctly, its own ability plus those of the Captain and the Oran-Rief could net you a 5/5 for 2 mana. That is just by itself, no other allies to help him, and at worst he is just a bear.

As for the sideboard, I don't know what the current meta is out there, I would consider Vines of the Vastwood(almost a Negate), Brave the Elements, Celestial Purge, Ethersworn Canonist(against a Cascade deck), Journey to Nowhere, Marisi's Twinclaws, Windstorm(kills Vamps and Baneslayer plus walls), Soul Warden, and Valeron Outlander.

R said...

this doesn't look budget to me dude. elspeth?

if u throw in garruk that's definitely not casual anymore. :D

CopySix said...

Oh Boy - some really awesome ideas here - thanks guys. Right - the Elspeth - I really am the luckiest casual player out there - I opened up two in booster packs - one at an FNM and another three weeks latter - so in my opinion, you can keep what you kill. I am thinking of budget alternatives for the spot held by Elspeth currently.

Unknown said...

I've had a token build for quite some time in my mind. It's a pure G elf mana accel deck. The deck's is still pretty rough, I'm thinking about Using:

4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Nissa's Chosen
3 Nissa Revain
3 Garruk Wildheart
3 Ant Queen
2 Soul's Majesty
3 Gift of the Gargantuan
3 Naturalize
3 Oran Reef
20 Forest

I also have another version, 3 colors with white and red. Using sigil of the nayan gods & mayael's aria. Pumping up the elfs & tokens with the sigil and using the aria for an alternate winning condition.

Anonymous said...

Reguarding the sideboard, Gigantiform might be a good pick. With your abundance of mana, you can make one of those 1/1 tokens with +1/+1 counters on it into a nice big 8/8 Trampler with those same amount of +1/+1 counters. Beastmasters Ascension does something of the same sort if you can provide attackers. Since you put counters on the Ascension as you attack, if you do not have Sigil captain out and you attack with 7 /1/'s they all become 6/6's.

Anonymous said...

you do realize that your tokens with all four sigils would be +8+8 right? all there effects go off AT ONCE

Anonymous said...

oh man i love this deck! I have decided to run this deck as soon as i get the cards i need to need,but instead of running the Tukatongue Thallid im going to run emeria angels and instead of behemtoth sledge im going to run either two garruks and two conqueror's pledge or 3 garruk and one pledge. thanks for the great idea! do you have advice for playing against white weenie decks?there rampant at my local metagame