DTK Mono Green Aggro

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

Today it is raining cats 'n' dawgs and other things here in Barrie, Ontario and the last stubborn remnants of snow are sure to be purged by day's end.  Chances are that we won't be needing the dog sled to get to our local gaming store, OMG! Games from now on in as things are starting to green up and shy foliage are just now starting to appear.

Speaking of green, we think it apropos to look at a standard constructed (post Dragons of Tarkir) mono-green decklist.  Quite specifically, a mono-green aggro list posted by Magic: the Gathering great, Tomoharu Saito.  Saito has been an exceptional player since bursting onto the scene in 2000 and has been gaming ever since.  He is owner of the Hareruya & Saito Card Shop and for some time, shortly after each set release, he posts a number of fun suggestions - here is his Mono-Green Aggro list -

4x Elvish Mystic
4x Avatar of the Resolute
4x Swordwise Centaur
4x Bassara Tower Archer
4x Reverent Hunter

Looks very decent to take full advantage of any devotion to green strategies so far.  Avatar  and Swordwise is value at double green and decent 3/2 bodies with the Av receiving conditional eotb counters.  Rev Hunter is the first devotion card here and expected to benefit greatly.

4x Boon Satyr
4x Surrak, the Hunt Caller
4x Aspect of Hydra
4x Cached Defenses
2x Nylea, God of the Hunt

The Satyr is an obvious choice, adding another two to devotion tech and is decent both early and late game.  Dragons of Tarkir new Surrak also adds another double green and is saddled with the new formidable mechanic allowing a conditional haste to a creature.  Alhtough Surrak is legendary, a full book-set of four may be acceptable considering this will have a large target on it for removal.  We can imagine that this may occasionally be a dead card in your hand but perhaps not often.  We are not altogether certain of Saito's choice of a deckset of Cached Defenses - perhaps this is intended to apply to Bassara or Avatar in order to fend off flying dragons.  Nylea, God of the Hunt looks good in the list.

Lands
2x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
20x Forest
Good Choice here

We would love to take this for a spin and really only need to complete our decksets of Avatar and Surrak to get if off the ground.

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Monday Miscellany

Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We trust all had a great weekend.  For today's post we wanted to cover off a variety of Magic: the Gathering items and we'll kick things off first with news from the weekend's tournament - Grand Prix Vienna.

Just under 1,500 players participated in GP Vienna which was won by Polish player Marcin Staciwa who perhaps not surprisinly won with a mono-blue devotion deck.  In fact, if we recall correctly seven of the top sixteen (and three of the top eight) decks were mono-blue.  Here at MTG Realm, we're developing a few different decks with recent MTG singles ordered from MTG Mint Card (who by the way is running a sweet Cyber-Monday sale) to exploit the current metagame (mono-colour devotion builds).  Anywhos - Here is Marcin's winning list -

25 lands : 20  Island, 4  Mutavault, 1  Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
28 creatures : 4  Cloudfin Raptor, 4  Frostburn Weird, 4  Judge's Familiar, 4  Master of Waves, 4  Nightveil Specter, 4  Thassa, God of the Sea, 4  Tidebinder Mage
5 other spells : 2  Bident of Thassa, 2  Cyclonic Rift, 1  Rapid Hybridization
2 planeswalkers : 2  Jace, Architect of Thought

Something else of interest also out of Vienna - It is reported that local authorities had dropped in and imposed an age limit of 18 and at this time the reasons are not completely clear but it may be an interpretation of a gambling by-law as there was a cash prize (and obviously an entry fee).  This unfortunately had blind-sided not only the tournament organizer but any parents who may have travelled (perhaps even from another country) to participate.  Rather unfortunate as the legal age for alcoholic consumption (non-distilled beverages) is 16.  What gives?

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Next up - some MTG rumours are leaking out for the next set, Born of the Gods.

Post by forum member 'Ceth' who incidates Selesnya (green / whhite), and Azorious (blue / white) 'scrylands' are in for Born of the Gods.  Ceth also indicates he saw about twenty potentially new card arts which may be the multi-colour demi-gods or minor gods, an enchantment-themed mechanic.

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And lastly - Forum moderator 'TK-421' received some fodder for the rumour mill, which he promptly provided a bit of a puzzle for members to chew on.  To this end, here are TK-421's Born of the Gods rumour nuggets -

• "The temple for the Goddess of Harvest has gratitude for their Goddess, as she provides them plenty."
• "People seek for enlightenment in the temple for the Goddess of Polis."
• "Unlike other temples, where they asked for guidance"

From this, we can arrive at the following assumptions -
Harvest - Karametra, green / white
Polis - Ephara, blue / white
Slaughter - Mogis, black / red

Furthermore, the following three scrylands are suggested for inclusion in Born of the Gods, with the remaining two scryland appearing in Journey into Nyx.
Temple of Enlightenment (blue / white)
Temple of Malice (black / red)
Temple of Plenty (green / white) 

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Better Red Than Dead

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

Today on the MTG Realm blog, we wanted to yatter a bit about the new Magic: the Gathering standard constructed environment and in particular about a fairly fun build around devotion to red.  Similar to that older 'Chroma' ability in Eventide, the 'Devotion' mechanic in Theros has you sum up all the stated mana symbols within a specific colour and subsequently delivers a particular effect.  The official rules (700.5) states that 'A player's devotion to [color] is equal to the number of mana symbols of that color among the mana costs of permanents that player controls.'  

In Theros, there are about 16 cards with Devotion tech - 2 in white, 2 in blue, 5 in black, 2 in red, 4 in green and 1 reference in Nykthos, the legendary land card.  We realised quite some time ago, that going 'all out' on one particular stategy does not make for a robust build of 60 cards in that it blew out more than it would win, and it was less adaptable to an opponent's sideboard.  To that end, we worked on a few derpy builds to test out and settled on the two red cards - Fanatic of Mogis (which has a ping equal to devotion upon eotb) and Purphoros, God of the Forge which evolves from enchantment to creature after a devotion of five, similar to that of the other Theros 'god' cards, and arguablly, perhaps one of the better cards in this cycle of five.

To this end, we assembled a short list of cards to help us across the finish line - bascically any card with a double or triple count for red mana. Burning Tree Emissary, Ash Zealot, Frostburn Weird, and Boros Reckoner all made the cut.

After some time playing, we added Hammer of Purphoros and the R/G Planeswalker Xenagos, the Reveler.  We discovered just how much we enjoyed the synergy Xenagos had with Purphoros - generate a Xenagos token and have Purphoros ding two damage each time a creature dropped on the game table.  We went even so far as to explore a Naya build (Red / Green / White) with creature tokens from Molten Birth Birth and Elspeth, the new White 'Walker.  Alas, we dropped this idea and may now consider going with a Red / Green monster strategy with Domri Rade and / or Garruk, Caller of Beasts.

We don't know where this may go but we do know for certain that this is a work in progress and there will likely be a few more singles purchased at MTG Mint Card before we call this particular deck finished.
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