Subject: Recycle/Vineyard/Scroll Deck Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 07:56:18 -0500 From: Len Blado OK, another deck. This one is partly inspired by an Extended deck I've been playing lately, and partly inspired by some discussions on the Dojo: Creatures: (10) 4 River Boa 4 Rootwalla 2 Stampeding Wildebeest Removal: (8) 3 Disenchant 3 Cursed Scroll 2 Extinction Disruption: (9) 4 Coercion 2 Phyrexian Furnace 3 Stupor Deck Manipulation: (9) 4 Gaea's Blessing 3 Recycle 2 Vampiric Tutor Mana: (24) 4 Elamdri's Vineyard 4 Undiscovered Paradise 1 Reflecting Pool 2 Ghost Town 2 Gemstone Mine 5 Forest 2 Swamp 4 Wall of Roots As normal, sideboard to taste. The basic concept is to play a primarily defensive, disruptive deck based out of black/green, and use Recycle for card advantage. Note that there are a large number of effects in the deck that prevent the Recycle from 'locking' you (Undiscovered Paradise, Ghost Town, Stampeding Wildebeests, Phyrexian Furnace), so this might just be paranoia on my part. Working with this are the Vineyards (to provide the fast mana necessary to land a 6 mana enchantment), as well as various ways to consume the Vineyard mana (Cursed Scroll, Rootwalla, Stampeding Wildebeests). The Cursed Scroll also works fairly well with the low hand size Recycle. The road to victory is (obviously) a combination of damage from fast, offensive creatures, Vineyards, and Cursed Scrolls. Is it practical? Well, somewhat. The Recycle is somewhat difficult to land even with the mana structuring (note the comparitively weak land-based mana), and Winter Orb can slow up the deck substantially (not a negligable worry), although this is not necessarily a bad thing, considering that it takes some time to win. Much of the deck is consumed with perhaps unnecessary levels of compensation for the Recycle/Vineyard- this possibly could be cut down for additional effects, although most of them work fairly seamlessly with the deck. The basic strategy is to open up the game as soon as possible with Hand Destruction, taking a few points of damage from early creatures, and then start playing the largely cheap, defensive creature complement. At some point, Recycle can be landed and the 'engine' starts to work. Since it's almost a guarantee you'll draw a card a turn with the Ghost Towns/Paradises, this is only a disadvantage in terms of hand size. Against most decks, it tends to have a fighting chance, although obviously a sideboard is needed to deal with extremely fast decks, especially as the Vineyards can pump up their speed a bit. Anyhoo, comments welcome as always. -Len Blado