Subject: [Deck] GoTTAG Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 21:51:59 -0500 From: Chris Warren To: MTG-STRATEGY-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM Hey, folks, a few people have chimed in with nice notes or found me on IRC to discuss the Battlebrooch deck I tossed over to the Dojo last week, and I have to agree with Jamie Wakefield -- people have a hunger for competitive decks in mono-green. You just don't see them much. So, since I come up with a lot of different decks in green, and I had another mono-G that was panning out well, I thought I'd share a work in progress. This one's less developed than Battlebrooch but shows promise. It looks like a total pile of muck (ok, a lot of my decks do) so let me explain why it contains what it does before I list it for a change. I was considering Randy Buehler's EXCELLENT report from worlds where he talks about how good River Boa is in T2 right now. It comes down to the fact that it's darn hard to kill and, at 2/1 for 2 mana is decent at the beatdown. Part of the reason it's so good vs blue is that cuneo et al are using the disk as a reset button, and you can just regenerate from the darn disk. So, heck, if Boas are that good, maybe I can create a deck where they shine, using disks of my own. To highlight this, I should include a backup creature that has as many of the same features as possible. for that, I went to Pygmy Troll. It's the only other green regenerator under 4 mana, and that cheap casting cost is vital when you're saving mana for other stuff. Ok, so I have the creatures, add the disks. To go with the disks, let's get some other good green stuff. Wall of Blossoms, besides just being good, really fits the design, since it can get your opponent to toss down extra creatures to get some damage through, before you reset the world with extra card advantage. Spike Feeders give life to survive the early rush, and can toss counters onto the regenerators before disking. Much the same holds true for the Spike Weavers. Uktabi Orangutans have an obvious purpose, and that closes out the creature count with one exception. Since the deck really needs to set up its environment, I worked in a lot of cantrips (13) to keep it consistent and get me what I need. To that purpose, I added Mind Stones (which also provide an early mana boost which is nice when you often need spare G mana to protect a boa or troll), Gaea's Blessings, the walls, of course, and a couple Phyrexian Furnaces to help fight the growing horde of graveyard decks. Either wreck 'em, or cantrip them away. The only other non-land cards in the deck are 4 Emerald Charms, just because they're so damn useful, plus sometimes it can be a real bugger to kill off Tradewinds. This way, with 6 mana, if you can make the Tradewind tap (or catch it with summoning sickness), you can cast the disk, untap it, and pop it off in one turn. This is besides the obvious usages of suprise blockers, enchantment removal, or whatever other devious tricks you can come up with (I untapped a quicksand to kill a pesky opposing river boa before disking yesterday). So, here's how they fit together in a deck I call GoTTAG, meaning: Good Things That Are Green Land [21] Everything's pretty low-cost, plus we have the stones 14 Forest and a lot of cantrips, so 21 will do. 4 Quicksand These lands are mix-and-match (see sideboard below) 2 Wasteland 1 Maze of Shadows Handier than you might think. Critters [22] 4 River Boa The Force doesn't really fit the general deck 3 Pygmy Troll design, but after a disk or two, you often get 4 Wall of Blossoms into a stalemate with a bunch of land. I've cast 4 Spike Feeder it pretty much without exception when I've drawn 4 Uktabi Orangutan it. Make your own choice. Carnassid regenerates 2 Spike Weaver but you're essentially paying the same mana cost. 1 Verdant Force Something like Jay Tome or Elkin Bottle's another option for this slot, or maybe a 3rd weaver. Accessories [17] 4 Nevinyrral's Disk 4 Mind Stone 4 Emerald Charm 3 Gaea's Blessing 2 Phyrexian Furnace Sideboard [under construction] 2 Wasteland I like being able to swap my lands for each other 1 Maze of Shadows to fit the opponent without changing my mana ratios. 1 Tranquil Domain Extra utility. Crumble works well with a disk, as 1 Crumble if there's nothing handy, you can get 4 life. 2 Disrupting Scept In for anti-blue, I don't know if you could even 2 Hall of Gemstone get a scepter down vs blue, but it's a threat. 2 Torture Chamber vs weenies and other quick decks. 2 Bottle Gnomes Pretty apparent. 2 Phyrexian Furn to add to the maindeckers vs graveyard decks. Only thing I'm really missing is good Tradewind defense, a hurricane or two might not hurt. Ok, I showed a pretty well-respected pro tour player this, and his first reaction was "I don't like the disks" which means he doesn't see how the deck runs, so apparently it's not obvious at first glance. I'll try to explain it. A normal game goes something like this: Turns 1-2, you lay land, walls, mind stones, furnaces, maybe do an empty blessing or charm something. Turns 3-5 you start playing defense, lay regenerators, spikes against fast decks, maybe monkey a scroll or something. At this point, you've probably taken a little damage and your opponent is at peak development. Get a disk on the table and blow it when appropriate. Don't forget that regenerators like spare Spike tokens! Most likely, you'll be left with 1 creature or so. Post-disk: Bless back what you need, do a little attacking until your opponent re-establishes their attack. Cantrip as much as you can while blunting their attack to get to another disk. Play it. Boom. You'll now have 2 or so creatures and a lot of mana and probably still some cards in hand. You may need to repeat this process, or lay down the Force to finish the deed, but raw card advantage is usually enough to ensure you have what you need by this point to stay on the offensive and stay alive. It's a more-or-less unseen design for mono-green, and it's worth a look, my testing record is something like 23-4 games, losing one to a mono-red I beat twice, 2 to a suicide black I beat twice, and 1 to a tradewind. I wouldn't worry about the red, good green creature decks generally give red a hard time and this one's no exception, and one of the losses to black, I drew no land, then sat with 2 quicksands until I died. I'll keep working at it and if anyone has any questions, ideas, or comments, send them to me or the list, and I'll try to address them. --Chris The Mad Greenius (muahaha) Bugbind on Efnet IRC