Subject: PLease post this deck
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 18:30:29 EST
From: Smash0 <Smash0@aol.com>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

G/W MaroGeddon  by P. Cape
This deck is an exercise in resource control and expansion.  In Magic, there
are three main resources the player has at his disposal: life, mana and cards.
This deck seeks to expand all three, while denying the opponent the most
important of those resources, their mana.  Here is my Current Decklist:
Green
Creeping mold x 2
Mulch x 4
Gaea’s Blessing x 4
Sylvan library x 3
Maro x 2

White
Armageddon x 4
Wrath of God x 4
Gerrard’s Wisdom x 3
Disenchant x 2
Pursuit of Knowledge x 2

Artifact
Moss Diamond x 3
Marble Diamond x 3
Scroll Rack x 3
Snake Basket x 1
Jester’s Cap x 1

Land
Plains x 9
Forest x 8
Quicksand x 3

Sideboard is, as of yet, unmade, but I’m looking at COP: Red and City of
Solitude as sure candidates for 3-4 Copies in the board.

Now, the deck seeks to gain control of the game by increasing its resources so
as to gain such an incredible card advantage that them winning should be
impossible.  It has so many ways to gain card advantage that it’s not even
funny.  It can gain card advantage vs. Burn with Gerrard’s ( since they send
burn at me because I show no creatures, three incinerates is equal to less
than one Gerrard’s, so 3-1 card advantage), it can use sylvan for card
advantage vs. slow control or in conjunction with wisdom, wrath against swarm
or fast  weenie decks, Armageddon against decks that horde their land, Pursuit
of Knowledge against anything, mulch, the basket, the list goes on and on, so
I won’t talk anymore about that.  However, note that it has cards to provide
not only card advantage, but card selection ( sylvan and scroll rack , which
used at the same time, during your draw phase, are phenomenal).  Not only
that, but the deck also boasts at least four spells to remove any type of
permanent. With that kind of library manipulation, it should be completely
possible for you to leave them with ZERO permanents on the board.  Two
Geddons, a mold and a cap can mana screw them enough so that they cannot ever
cast spells again.  The upside to using maro rather than a more defensive
creature (like staunch defenders) is the ability f the deck to go into a quick
beatdown mode, wherein you get a few diamonds on the board, drop a maro and
geddon, and simply outrace them.  However, the defenders are an enticing
choice, and I would like to fit them into the deck somehow.  I’m thinking of
removing the basket (even though hitting them with eight snakes against their
clear board is so much fun) for a defenders, and possibly going 3 defenders
over 2 maro one defender.  Please give me some advice on this.  The reason I
went to the 2 maro/basket/cap kill setup was that I used to run 4 maro, but
then I got lobotomized in one game and had to deck them ( while at 190 life
and climbing).

 Now to the downsides of the deck.  The deck is relatively slow, as most of
its big spells cost 4 mana to cast.  This problem is partially alleviated by
the use of diamonds , but not enough.  If it draws to little land and no
diamonds, it’ll go down hard to a speed deck.  Sligh in particular is often
too fast for it, even if it does get off an early Gerrard’s.  In testing, this
deck lost to Sligh approximately 5 of every 7 games ( unsideboarded, of
course). The key to it winning was either Sligh getting a sub-par draw or it
getting of a turn 3 Gerrard’s, followed by a turn four wrath, or having
quicksand to stop the ball lightning’s.  This difficulty with Sligh prompted
me to consider Staunch Defenders, but I decided they were too slow and
therefore did not include them.  However, After sideboarding (I have made a
few simple boards, featuring 4 COP: red and 3 City of Solitude), I won about 5
out of 7 times.  These were the times that I got out COP: Red.  It completely
shuts the Sligh deck down, as long as you play defensively, thinking that they
could kill you next turn ( which is often the case) and search for your
tong/scroll removal.  Sometimes I boarded in some additional disenchants for
just that purpose.

Other than Sligh, the deck has very few problems with all the other decks.
Re-Animators are annoying ( as Wrath is insufficient creaturekill), but rather
easy to handle.  Could you please give me some sideboard suggestions, and
possible ways to improve the deck ( especially hurt Sligh without losing
effectiveness against other deck types)  Thanks in advance.
-Phil