Subject: Fruit of the Vine Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 18:01:56 -0400 From: Bennie Smith Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy After reading John's excellent article on Eladamri's Vineyard I decided to look at using some of his ideas and some of my own that came from playtesting with this cheap, potent enchantment. Here's a prototype, untested deck, entitled cheesily enough: "Fruit of the Vine" 4 Gaea's Blessing 3 Eladamri's Vineyard 3 Disenchant 3 Wrath of God 3 Disrupting Scepter 2 Jayemdae Tome 4 Llanowar Elves 3 Quirion Ranger 3 Wall of Roots 2 Killer Bees 3 Stampeding Wildebeasts 3 Maro 1 Force of Nature 3 Undiscovered Paradise 4 Brushland 2 Vec Townships 13 Forest Elements of the deck-- The Vineyard: Fast, consistant mana, much as Shuler pointed out, this card will deliver a huge amount of mana over the course of the game. Even if your opponant is playing green, unless he is equipped with mana sinks, he is liable to take a goodly amount of mana burn. If he instead uses the mana to dump his hand quickly, he can lose alot of creatures to the Wrath and be running off an empty hand as the Disrupting Scepter goes to work. With a next to empty hand, you can run your deck with little to no surprises, barring top-decking miracles. The deck also packs a good amount of mana sinks in the form of the Scepters, the Jayemdaes, the Killer Bees, and recasting creatures from the Wildebeasts. Chances are you'll be able to avoid mana burn more so than your opponant. Card drawing: with the nice card advantage generated from Wrath of God and the Disrupting Scepter, why not add the card drawing capacity of Gaea's Blessing and Jayemdae Tomes? The Blessings are just all good, putting cards that have been Wrathed or otherwise put into your graveyard back into the deck, and giving some protection from the possible resurgeance of Mill decks now that Kjeldoran Outposts are gone. And the Jayemdae Tomes are just solid, if usually slow card drawers; with the Vineyards they are no longer so slow. Lots of "useless to you" critters: one thing I think is extremely important, especially for green mages, is playing what I call "useless to you" creatures. That is, creatures that pump or have some kind of upkeep that may be difficult or unsavory for decks that typically enjoy stealing other person's creatures (ie. blue and black). The Wildebeasts, Forces of Nature and Killer Bees are all next to useless in anything but a green deck. The Maros are the only thing worth stealing, and the odds are that, between dumping their hand due to the Vineyard, and the Scepters working them over, the size of their Maro won't be much. Playing with these kind of creatures can cause some problems with players relying on Abductions, Legacy's Allure, various Animate options, or sided-in Mind Harnesses as part of their creature control strategy. Anyway, I can go on and on (I guess I already have) about the *theory* behind the deck. What I will need to do is test the damn thing. There could be some unforseen problems that will come out in the wash after the cards are shuffled up and played; I'll see how it goes the next time I play. Anyone with any ideas of their own to contribute please do! ------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Fruit of the Vine Date: 21 Oct 1997 02:05:51 GMT From: jshuler@osf1.gmu.edu (John M Shuler) Bennie Smith (bencoz@ix.netcom.com) wrote: : After reading John's excellent article on Eladamri's Hello Bennie. I'm going to reply via followup so everyone else has a chance to comment, as well. Deck critique & comments: : 4 Gaea's Blessing Why 4? What do you have so few of, that you need to recurse? : 3 Eladamri's Vineyard This works with the rest of all your fast mana. : 3 Disenchant : 3 Wrath of God Yes.. : 3 Disrupting Scepter I think that you only really need 2. And, say, an enlightened tutor to go grab one or a jayemdae. You'll draw one or the other with 4 in your deck. : 2 Jayemdae Tome Yes. But what are you drawing? You don't really have any pure win condition cards, so you are putting cards in your hand just to cast them & to pump up maro? : 4 Llanowar Elves : 3 Quirion Ranger : 3 Wall of Roots You are going to have a lot of mana. : 2 Killer Bees : 3 Stampeding Wildebeasts : 3 Maro I like the Maros, but not the others. I'd consider Mongrel Pack, as when you wrath, you don't really lose anything. : 1 Force of Nature Who can argue with this? :) : 3 Undiscovered Paradise You have off-color mana, use it. Play with 2 fireballs, or *some* type of targetted creature removal. Right now, all you have a wraths. In a creature win condtioned deck. Not strong. :) : 4 Brushland : 2 Vec Townships : 13 Forest I would add disruption in the form of geddon, a creeping mold, targetted removal/nullification such as repentance or pacifism, and heck, maybe even just use safeguard or invulnerability. end of reply to Bennie other thoughts- can we now use mind warp? You can mindwarp for 1 on turn 3 now, with a vineyard out. That is essentially a coercion. On turn 4, you might be able to mind warp for 3 (you lay a mana source like an elf or diamond or medallion on turn 2), and it just gets worse and worse for your opponent as you get more mana. Will the vineyard allow us to use more than a single mind warp in our decks now? a turn 1- forest, vineyard turn 2- swamp, coercion/stupor turn 3- land, mind warp (as a coercion), or mind warp for more if you played an elf instead of the first discard device. something to think about, anyway. shuler -- John M. Shuler jshuler@gmu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a painful fact of Magic that skill is not everything. A well constructed Dandan deck will usually lose to an average T.1 deck. - Nicolas Sabin --------------------------------------------------------------------