Subject: [Deck] Puff the Misty Dragon Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 12:27:41 PST From: Chris Warren Hey there folks. Just my latest attempt at a deck that's looking promising, and I'm looking for ideas and willing to share my findings in return. As anyone who pays attention to me (well, the 2 of you) knows, I tend to flip between green and blue as my pet color. I've been trying to combine the two for some time, but haven't really had a breakthrough. I've lately been thinking that green can be a good minor complement to blue instead of white, as it offers life gain, artifact and enchantment control, as well as Gaea's Blessing, which is a terrific card for control decks. I was also interested in Adrian Sullivan's Baron Harkonen deck. For people who aren't familiar, The Baron is an extended U/G control deck. Green supplies weenie control in the way of Wall of Roots and Hailstorm, and Sylvan Library and Gaea's Blessings added to the library manipulation aspect. The Baron himself was the Mahamoti Djinn, the only victory method in the deck besides Gaea's Blessing recursion to deck the opponent. Another deck I was interested in, but never got a chance to play was the Turbo-Xerox deck. TX used a LOT of library manipulation to get the key cards (counters, Disks, and the kill cards: Rainbow Efreets and Suq'Ata Firewalkers) while allowing itself to run a low land total. I've managed to successfully (I think) combine the two concepts in a type 2 deck I like to call: Puff the Misty Dragon Land [21] 12 Island, 4 Forest, 2 Skyshroud Forest, 1 Undiscovered Paradise, 2 Wasteland Critters [4] 3 Wall of Roots, 1 Mist Dragon Library Manipulation [19!] 4 Brainstorm, 4 Whispers of the Muse, 4 Impulse, 2 Portent, 1 Mystical Tutor, 1 Sylvan Library, 3 Gaea's Blessing Control/Defense/Life [17] 4 Counterspell, 3 Dismiss, 3 Dissipate, 3 Nevinyrral's Disk, 2 Natural Spring, 2 Choking Vines Total: 61 cards You'll notice some odd points to the deck. Let me try to address them: * A low land total for a control deck. Only 21/61 land, 2 of which are wastelands. Granted, this is low, but with all the manipulation, it shouldn't be a problem digging to land early and away from it late. This comes from Turbo-Xerox and has looked ok in testing. * A skewed mana ratio -- only 4 forests. I tried to keep all the green cards to G in the casting cost, except for the Natural Spring, which (a) costs 5, and (b) is probably late-game anyway. Besides, if you can get one green source down, the Wall of Roots will provide the other. If I'm stuck with only blue, I can use the counters for defense and use the library manipulation for defense. This makes blue more important than green for the early game, and I need to skew that way. * No Propaganda(!) -- Prop is a terrific card, but I'm expecting to be using Disks for the LARGE portion of my defense. With that, the fewer permanents I have, the better. You'll notice that besides the Disks, the only Diskable permanents in the deck are the single Sylvan, Misty, who can phase away, and the Walls of Roots. * 4 Whispers of the Muse -- I really expected to see this become a blue-deck staple. Think about it. It's either a book replacement, if you have the mana, or if not, spend U to thin your deck by 1. Also nice with the Mystical Tutor to grab what you need right away. * Choking Vines -- this is my own pet card that I used with terrific success in my own extended deck. It takes out a lot of weenies, can act as a fog, stops Ball Lightnings, and has the Bonus of being cast during declare blockers. Hail Storm was the card in the Baron, but it's no longer T2, and this is the best replacement. Might up to 3. * Mist Dragon as the kill card -- Another card I'm surprised I haven't seen more. A 4/4 flier or not, as you choose, whith an optional Phase (albeit expensive) is an amazing card for T2. Rainbow Efreet (what Turbo Xerox used) is much cheaper, but the Rainbow's not much of a blocker and can't really plow through defenders like Misty can. Besides, Misty's bigger, and cuts down the amount of times he has to hit to finish the game from 7 to 5. Ok, all very pretty. But does it work? First blush seems to be yes. Let me give you my playtest results thus far (all games played via Apprentice ... try making a Mist Dragon-Library Manip-Gaea's Blessing deck on manalink!) First game was vs a GOrb deck (Goblin-Orb). Winter Orbs are showing up in odd places. In the first game, I probably made an error in not saving enough mana to Choke about 5 weenies at once and lose. Second game, I side in Sandstorms, Crumbles, a 4th Disk, 2 Natural Springs (was only running 1 maindeck) as well as 4 Hydroblasts and toast a jillion weenie critters between chokes, disks, and sandstorms as I stay alive via a couple Natural Springs and win with 5 hits from Misty with about 5 cards left in my library (I had removed all my blessings, probably a bad move). Second test deck was a Chrono-Root-Stasis deck. Game 1, I draw a ton of land, but so does my opponent. We both lay land for a LONG time, he tutors a few times, but by the time he's ready to roll, I have about 5 counters in hand. He concedes. I side out the Chokers and bring in Disk 4, 2 Disrupts, and an Interdict. Game 2, I do some manipulation, we tussle over little stuff, he lays out 3 Chokes at various times (no islands in a stasis deck! Boil probably would've been better for him) as I lay 3 disks over time. I let him drop a Stasis twice, but both times, they just run down. He concedes again with me clearly in control of the game. He did play a Sirocco on me at one point. I just Disrupted it twice, then let it resolve and played the cards I'd drawn afterwards. Third test is against a Merfolk-Orb deck. Very odd. Game 1, I'm managing to stay afloat via walls of Roots for defense until he drops an Orb, counters my counter, then drops a Waterspout(!!) a couple turns later and beats me to death. No sideboards here, game 2 he lays down a merfolk or two, I get a wall of roots to slow things down, choke a Manta Riders, counter the Lords of Atlantis. I slip a disk in under a WOrb with about 4 creatures down, then counter the follow-up Waterspout Djinn. With me at about 8 life, he gets a Firewalker out. I drop Misty and win the race at about 3 life. This convinces me to up the Springs to 2. Meanwhile, my first playtest opponent gave the deck a test and beat a R/B shadow deck. I didn't get many details, but he said he stabilized the game at about 6 life, started recursing the Natural Spring, and won at about 30 with the Puff Draggy. Deck/Sideboard Ideas: Rampant Growth: gives me a little deck thinning, especially if I can recurse it, but once those 16 basics are out, it's just a shuffle effect for 2 mana. Also a way to blue mana if I somehow draw only green early. If the rumor of the 2GG enchantment to get land in Stronghold is true, I'll use that in this deck without a second thought. Thawing Glaciers as an enchantment for green? I have my hopes. Adding a third Vines, or Sandstorm, or a 4th Disk... lots of options. Tweaking various deck cards up and/or down. The 4th Disk looks most appealing, as it is a large part of my permanent defense. Binding Grasp and/or Ray of Command. Creature defense and an alternate route to victory. Dream Tides: not just a green hoser, it's a nice propaganda-type effect, and since I only have 1 critter I'll ever tap... extra effect of stopping River Boas, which could be a problem Capsize: obvious usage here, but I think it'd compete for late-game mana with the Whispers. Nice combo with Disk, tho. Relearn or Elven Cache: obvious extra manipulation. Quicksand: maybe in replacement for wasteland, or possibly instead of it. Nice weenie defense, takes out toughness 2 or 3 in conjunction with the Vines. Sideboard: Current list looks like this: 4 Hydroblast, 1 Disk, 2 Natural Spring, 3 Sandstorm, 3 Crumble, 2 Disrupt, and 1 Interdict. Mind Bend/Sleight? Firewalker? A walker or two could even find its way to the main deck, as much as I'm trying to avoid permanents. Some enchantment removal, Tranquility or Tranquil Domain? Tranquil Grove? Emerald Charm? Chill? Dream Tides here, maybe. Phyrexian Furnace is another possibility, to battle graveyard-dependent decks and other recursive control decks. I do like the Crumbles, they act as artifact removal as well as a 4-point life gainer if I want to use one as I pop a disk. I put 2 in for the life gain against the GOrb deck, not having seen the Orbs yet, and was glad I did as I managed to crumble an Orb after a Tinkerer took out my Disk. Something anti-black would also be nice, as Necro can do a job on control, since I don't have enough quick damage to make Necroing low dangerous. Green's recent black-hoser was Reap (yeah, Reap vs Perish, that's fair), Elephant Grass doesn't do much for me, and Lifeforce is probably too green-intensive for this deck. Zur's Weirding could also be an interesting sideboard card for me, as I have tons of ways to get cards, many of them not drawing, and they could further cement the Misty lock. In any case, I'd love to hear any comments anyone has. Collaboration is always welcome. --Chris Bugbind on Efnet #mtg The Beestmaster ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com