12 months, 12 decks (IX) Thrulls! EC

Preface

The little thrull trudged clumsily, dragging its furry body up the damp, moldy stone steps that spiraled down. Suddenly there was a piercing scream coming from the dungeon and a litany that grew in intensity until the steps ended in what seemed to be a cavernous room. The thrull stuck its little hairy head out, and with its yellowish lemur eyes it observed a human from behind dressed in a dark tunic, who held a knife with a wavy blade in his left hand and from his right hand, swinging upside down, hung a being. with a hairy appearance and lemur eyes, whom he recognized as his breeding brother. The human, whose face he couldn’t see, sang now with more force: «For Tourach, for Tourach», his brother screamed, a cry that was drowned out by the knife that penetrated his throat spilling a green liquid and thick; this lump fell into the depth of the well from which gray mists of mana emanated, then fell the sacrificed thrull. The little thrull also screamed when he saw him fall into that hole as if it were a sack of debris, frightened he perceived the danger, especially when the human, a wizard with bright eyes and a long gray beard turned around, looked at him and exclaimed between laughs: «Welcome!».
What little survival instinct the creature still had made it back off, but the steps that were so easy to climb down recently were now difficult to climb with its short legs. He squealed like a weanling piglet when he felt a hand grabbing hard at the scruff of his back.
«Stay still, it will only be a moment,» the sorcerer said before beginning to sing again for Tourach.
The last thing the nameless little thrull saw was his terrified face reflected in the curved knife edge.

–From Endrek Sahr, Sarpadian Empires, vol. II

Thrulls!

Introduction

Hello again, old school people! Some time ago I wrote about one of my fetish expansions in the world of Magic: Fallen Empires, a expansion that was characterized by its «tribal» theme, which until then had not been so exploited in the game, and among those tribes were the thrulls, spawn bred through dark arts to be slaves to the Order of the Ebon Hand, and to be used in sacrifices.
I’ve always wanted to build a thrull deck that would at least work, not be competitive, but I also didn’t want to just throw together every thrull that was out there. Is not the first deck of thrulls that has been made, far from it. I think the deck is based on a very interesting concept: being able to play six or seven «Bad Moons» to turn your harmless thrulls into a terrifying army, let’s check it out!

The thrulls

There are in old school up to seven thrulls creatures that we can choose, for the moment we are going to discard Derelor that, perhaps is the best of them, but in a monoblack deck it is complicated to play it, instead it shines in multicolor decks with a small splash to black.

Armor Thrull is the weakest of the eligibles, since for three mana it’s weak and its ability isn’t good

next on the list is Necrite, which improves a bit in terms of ability but doesn’t reach the bar of its first cousin: Mindstab Thrull

that has gained a certain respect since from turn one many decks have to get rid of it or they will lose three cards along the way, so the card advantage it generates is something to take into account.

Thrull Wizard is almost as bad as Armor Thrull but it can be a sideboard card if you sense that a lot of black is going to be played in your local metagame, but I would only play it if it was accompanied by Sinkhole, although beware careful with decks with splash to black that this card can ruin your plans;

Thrull Champion, our Bad Moon with legs, is a lord that gives that plus to himself, something that doesn’t happen with other Old School lords, in this deck will be essential, and the ability to steal other thrulls is funny but difficult to activate; and let’s go with the penultimate in the list and together with Mindstab the base of the deck,

Basal Thrull, it doesn’t look like much at first glance but it’s the thrull that comes into play earlier (if you don’t cast Mindstab with Dark Ritual) and its ramp ability will help us for a more lethal Mind Twist or to lower the lord earlier, and if there was a cost one thrull in old school it would be the most playable as I consider this deck an aggro deck and the earlier you cast your creatures the better.

And the last thrull, which is not a thrull exactly, but an enchantment: Breeding Pit. The small detail that the 0/1 thrull enters at the end of the turn makes the card go from being bad to playable, the inconvenience of paying in each of your upkeep is not so much and you will have every turn an infinite blocker or, if the opponent lets the table flooded with small annoying creatures, then we can swell them with our bad moons.

Deck concept

• The deck is based on the premise of playing six, seven or even eight moons (Bad Moon + Thrull Champion) that boost your creatures from being small thrulls to being super thrulls! It won’t be uncommon for your Basal Thrull to be 3/4 creatures.
• I play four Dark Ritual, like many Monoblack decks, so far nothing out of the ordinary, but we know that the Ritual is a horrible card to top deck, luckily here we will have enough turn one objectives to make it a better card, because not only we have the four Hippies, but we also have the four Mindstab Thrull that the more I play them the more I like them, because in the end it happens the same as with the specter, they have to eliminate it because if not they run out of cards, and then it will be easier to finish it off with our The Rack.
• The mana base is typical of so many mono blacks decks we see in old school. Sixteen black sources to be able to have the double black turn two almost assured. The four Strip Mines and the four mandatory Mishras. Library of Alexandria doesn’t go well in this deck, because there will be games where you will be left with four cards in hand at the start of the game, so it’s not profitable, and it is not convenient to put more colorless sources.
• Sideboarding: Gloom is an essential card to slow down many of our worst pairings, Terror is the perfect card to deal with Erhnam, Serra or Sedge Troll style fatties; Drain Life will help us to hold against red, the second Breeding Pit together with Greed and Disrupting are good against control, disks are necessary against strategies that play The Abyss, Moat or many artifacts.
• There are some cards that can be taken into consideration, such as Gate to Phyrexia, which is an interesting card and that we can take advantage of thanks to the Breeding Pit, playing only one in main is risky to play it as a base, but as a sideboard card I see it useful. Tourach’s Gate, having the thrull theme deserves at least mention it, it doesn’t go well with Breeding Pit because if there is no moon / Champion at that time your little thrulls will be mutilated, but the worst thing is that in a format with four Strip Mines you risk getting an easy 2×1 for having to enchant land, in a format with a quarry I see more future. Aeolipile can be used to kill creatures with protection against black, such as the dreaded Whirling Dervish. Greed: the deck lacks a draw engine and bases its strategy on getting the card advantage by discarding the opponent, but against control decks it’s a very powerful card that will get us out of more than one jam.
  Soul Exchange may seem a priori an auto-includable card in a deck of thrulls, especially when those thrulls can be sacrificed to generate an effect, but there are few slots in the deck and it has several conditions to play with a creature on the battlefield and in the graveyard at the same time, so if you don’t meet any of these conditions it can be a dead card in hand and that in a deck with little draw engine isn’t good.
  Thrull Retainer, another of the thrull-themed cards I’ve always wanted to play but haven’t found a deck for, this one is not it. I think it’s a card that can shine in decks where creatures have evasion or are hard to kill, and attaching this enchantment to them would be a survival bonus, or with some main disk. Royal Assassin + Icy Manipulator, in one of the previous versions I played I added this combo because I saw that the deck was lacking removal, but although it’s a good idea I preferred to be more direct and play it to have more creatures, and it worked better.

Conclusion

Playing thrulls is always fun, if you’re tired of playing the typical version of knights in Monoblack this may be an option. You can leave me your comments, ideas, suggestions or opinions here or, if you prefer, on my Instagram account: @retroplayermtg
Until next time!

12 months, 12 decks (VIII) Titania Combo 7pts

INTRODUCTION

Hello again Old Schoolers! We’re back with a new publication of the #12months12decks challenge. This time we will talk about one of my favorite win conditions: Titania’s Song. I think it’s one of the most elegant old school ways to end alongside milling your opponent’s library, and this time we have both in the same deck!

We could summarize that the strategy consists of stopping the rival’s game and controlling the battlefield thanks to the many artifacts we have to, when the time comes, cast the sweet song of Titania and destroy everything with a withering blow. And it was thanks to the sage advice of my friend Joserra that the deck took a surprising turn, and adding just two cards made it a combo deck with a second win condition. Let’s see everything as a whole.

Titania 7pts Singleton 93/94 Old School

DISCUSSION

• The first thing we are going to look at is the choice of points, where we find a lot of competition. If something differentiates 7pts Singleton 93/94 Old School, apart from the fact that it´s a singleton format, it´s that you will not be able to put the best cards as you please, but rather you will have to rack your brain to know which cards are to include. The first decision is choosing which colors to play. It´s clear that green has to be one of them because Titania’s Song, the card on which the strategy revolves, is green. If we look at the key card for the second win condition – Power Artifact – we see that it’s blue, so we have the second color. I chose white because it has the best anti-creatures in the format, Balance, Swords to Plowshares and Wrath of God, although we could choose black for Demonic Tutor and The abyss, or red for Fireball and Disintegrate but, as we would have to choose Braingeyser –or so I think– because they no longer give us the points to include all the cards we wanted. With this we already have the colors with which we are going to play: UGW, and among these colors there are many cards on which we can invest the seven points.

• Within the blue we have Timetwister, Control Magic, Mana Drain, etc. But for now we are going to make sure of Braingeyser and Recall, which will be essential in our strategy: 4 points. White offers us Balance and Moat, but we must discard the latter because it invalidates our main win condition, which is to kill with Titania’s Song. Land Tax doesn’t work if our curve is big or we don’t have enough accelerators. We point Balance for one more point, without a doubt one of the best Magic cards. We have spent 5 points. Green gives us Regrowth, Sylvan Library or Channel, all three are very interesting, for now let’s write down Regrowth, since like Recall, the cards in our graveyard will be very important. We have spent six points, we only have one point left… we have to choose well. Let’s take a look at the colorless cards. Traditional Titania Prison decks run Winter Orb for playing multiple Icy Manipulator and Relic Barrier, but here with a copy of each it seems pretty risky, because we’re going to need a lot of free mana to use our artifacts. The jewerly are running out of points, so we are going to move on to the lands, and we find Maze of Ith, Karakas and Mishra’s Workshop, the latter could be a good choice since we play a lot of artifacts. Karakas is good if we have some legend to interact with in the style of Rasputin, Stangg or Hazezon Tamar, but if not, it’s not worth taking it, and we come to Maze of Ith, and here we enter a dilemma, because previously we have left Sylvan Library behind, important draw engine, but the Maze helps us endure those turns until Titania arrives, and here it´s up to each one, the three cards are valid for the strategy but only one can enter, I went with Sylvan Library because it’s a cheap draw engine that hopefully you can take down from second turn, and it pairs well with Mirror Universe, Skull of Orms, Jalum Tome, or Howling Mine, it helps us dig deeper into the deck to find the pieces of the combo. Another option would be to remove Braingeyser and we would have free points, to, for example, include Workshop and Maze, but Braingeyser in this format is God, when your opponent has a card and you draw six, the card advantage it provides is overwhelming and, therefore, if that were not enough, it serves as a finisher with the Power Monolith combo. So we have already configured our points, a decision that as you can see is not a trivial matter, in fact, the game begins here.

Titania in action

• The concept on which the deck is based is to develop our game by accumulating the greatest amount of resources and controlling the battlefield with them, until we play a lethal Titania’s Song, including a second victory condition that allows us –with a combo– to kill our opponent without having to attack him with a creature. You can comb by either milling with Braingeyser, or gaining infinite life with Alabaster Potion, or doing infinite damage with Rocket Launcher. To get to this we need the deck to have elements that help us draw, accelerate, and control. Since we’re only going to have one of each card, we can’t fit two Wrath of God, so recursive cards will be vital. Power Artifact and Titania are both enchantments so Skull of Orms should go into the strategy in case they go to the graveyard. Balance will not only remove creatures from us, but it will also be able to clean the opponent’s hand, because we don’t have to worry about keeping cards in hand, since we don’t play counters, we can develop our game until we draw a Balance and clean the battlefield and hand. imagine a Balance or Wrath of God and then, on the same turn, Titania… let’s see some more tricks:
• Disrupting Scepter is an annoying card for us, but if we have the skull in play we can cancel it, we always raise the same enchantment to the hand in response to its activation and thus draw a new card.
• Ring of Maruf is one of our tutors, and if we copy it with Copy Artifact it can be a double tutor.
• Mirror Universe is a third pseudo-win condition because if we’re short on lives and we manage to trade it in time we might be able to kill with Rocket Launcher or a simple Aeolipile, or even with Mishra’s Factory.
• Referring to the latter, before I said that we don’t have creatures but we do have one, Mishra’s Factory, and I include it for a reason, and that is that there will be times when we have the opponent blocked with Nova Pentacle, and so that he can kill us with a fireball or similar will have to kill its own creatures first and that’s where the factory comes into play, which in these situations can become a creature to be able to redirect the damage with Nova Pentacle.
• Power Artifact doesn’t just give infinite mana with Basalt Monolith, you can also use it on other artifacts like Rocket Launcher. If you have managed to exchange life points with Mirror Universe, the logical thing is that the opponent has less life, and with the Rocket each mana you have counts as a point of damage so if you have many lands you can use it as if it were a Fireball, or even better, because if you perform the Launcher trick you will do double damage. It’s slow, but for the speed of the format it’s fine.
• If you play Weakstone and Bone Flute at the same time you will see how you control the weenies decks, a combination for which the deck earned the nickname «dog-flute deck” (Spanish argot) among the Madrid community.
• If you have Skull of Orms and Chaos Orb or Aeolipile on the table and you’re going to play Copy Artifact, with enough mana you can continuously copy these artifacts and add the enchantment to your hand with the skull every turn.

Aka «Dog-Flute»

Possible cards

Drop of Honey, Arboria, Urzatron, Aladdin´s Ring, Amulet of Kroog, Fountain of Youth, Control Magic, Steal Artifact, Counterspell, Desert twister, Flood, Circles, Jade Statue, Knowledge Vault, Meekstone, Ring of Immortals, Ring of Renewal, Stone Calendar, Urza’s Miter, Forcefield, Blue and White Batteries… the list is long, we are going to put the magnifying glass on the most relevant ones.

• I tried Drop of Honey and it didn’t bother me but I don’t think it’s a substitute for The Abyss, because the trigger is on your upkeep there’s always a chance that you’ll be attacked at least once first; I found it slow.
• Arboria isn’t the card we’re looking for to defend ourselves since, since we always have to develop our game, we’re never going to be able to activate it, discarded.
• Fountain of Youth and similars. There are various artifacts that help us gain lives, such as the Fountain, Amulet of Kroog, or Conservatory, these last two go well with Titania, but in the end there was no room for everything, and they have no synergy with Mirror Universe.
• Steal Artifact is an interesting card to try out that works well with the skull.
• Counterspell; at the beginning I played one counter but we can’t be saving mana, we have to use all the mana each turn if necessary, I preferred the plan of developing our game without worrying about what the opponent did, also all these discards can be included in the “sideboard” from Ring of Maruf.
• I prefer to include the circles of protection in that “sideboard” we were talking about, since playing them as a base seems risky to me in the sense that they will be a dead card in the middle of the games.
• Jade Statue was in the first version I played. You can do a lot of shenanigans with it, with Balance and with Wrath of God, but I ended up removing it because all the removals that the opponent left in hand played it them against him, this is an interesting topic to discuss, since we do not have creatures –only one Mishra’s Factory– and the opponent’s draws are going to be worse because each removal he draws will be a dead card, and with it a lost turn. So I decided to take zero creatures for that to happen and I can say that it worked.
• I played Knowledge Vault in the early versions, but I realized that this was not their strategy, since you could have the situation of having one of the combo pieces in your hand and the other under the artifact, and if you were played a removal to the artifact you were «forced» to activate it, so there was always the risk of one of the pieces going to the graveyard. Not for this type of deck.
• Something similar happened with Ring of Renewal, there were times when I couldn’t discard because I was waiting for the next combo piece to combo in a single turn and on top of that it has an expensive activation, so it didn’t work either.
• The mana batteries did work, I found it interesting to be able to accumulate mana and also be an accelerator, and then become a 4/4 with Titania, but I ended up replacing it with Sand Silos because it was more difficult to «destroy».
• Aladdin’s Ring is a card that gave me good results at first and became one more win condition, especially when the monolith combo went down and I didn’t have any of the cards to win in a single turn, its very high cost makes it unplayable in most strategies but here you can give it a try.

Some strategies

• I finally find a deck in which Ring of Maruf works, its cost is high and you will almost always give your opponent a turn before you can use it, since you will need at least twelve mana if you intend to use it in the same turn in the game that enters, but if the opponent does nothing and leaves it on the battlefield, the possibilities are almost endless, and here another factor that I love about this deck comes into play, imagine being able to make the sideboard you want, almost without limit, well that himself offers you this card.

My «sideboard» for Ring of Maruf…

• Some of the cards are alternative cards to the combo, since you cannot search for a card that you already have included in the deck, Fireball, Disintegrate, Stream of Life, for example. Also alternative cards to Wrath of God or Balance, such as The Abyss, Earthquake, etc, or cards against certain colors in particular, such as circles of protection, or Karma. It´s also interesting to be able to search for point cards because the rule allows you to skip the 7pts rule, it´s always interesting to be able to search for any P9 card.
• We have another important tutor who is Transmute Artifact and who will look for an artifact for us; like, of course, Basalt Monolith, which will be our main objective, Chaos Orb, Relic Barrier if we already have the Mine in play, Jayemdae Tome, Icy Manipulator, Aeolipile if we need to scratch those 2 life points, Rocket Launcher if we already have the Power Artifact combo, or Mirror if we see that we need to change life points.
• An important part of the strategy is graveyard retrievers. Reconstruction, Skull of Orms, Regrowth and Recall. We carry all we can. Recall is undoubtedly the best of all as it can take more than one card from the graveyard. The Skull sometimes seems useless because you may not have enchantments in the graveyard but basically it´s there to recover the Titania or the Power Artifact, it can always be used to feed the Jalum Tome or to sacrifice with the Transmute Artifact.
• Deck enemies are mainly decks with red, also the decks with counters or Disenchant can hurt us. Then the deck works very well against control and midrange, unless they play red, which for us is the most dangerous color, that’s why Mirror Universe is important.
• Winter Orb is very annoying, Shahrazad, which is becoming fashionable now, also beats us, Millstone takes away our combo pieces, Shatterstorm blows us up, Dust to Dust does a lot of damage, Manabarbs annihilates us in a couple of turns…

Mana base

• We have 26 mana sources plus Fellwar Stone. They may seem too many, but this deck cannot get stuck, the most important color is white since without it we cannot defend ourselves, but when it comes to kill with our combo, blue is the one we need, that’s why the accumulation land, Sand Silos, is blue. Green, even though it’s the one that gives the deck its name, only has four cards, so we have fewer. I tried the urzatron lands and, although they didn’t bother me, I decided that it was better to have colored lands because they were often more necessary, apart from the fact that of all the times I played them I couldn’t link the urzatron in any game. We also carry the land of rigor, Mishra, Strip Mine and Desert.

Most spicy winner. Wonderful alterations that Thomas, Mikl, Erik and company brought us to the 2nd OS 7pts Singleton Wolrd Championship held in Madrid

Conclusion

If you like to suffer in games and make epic comebacks, this is your deck. Mix of control and combo, with a multitude of rarely played cards, quite spicy, but combined they work perfectly. It can feel like you’re doing nothing the whole game and suddenly you’ve won in one turn, that’s magic. You can see the report they did in the LMOS about the 7pts world championship held in Madrid and in which I made top8 with this list and I won the most spicy winner award that you can see in the photo.

If you want to tell me something you can do it through the comments or on my Instagram account: @retroplayermtg

Until next time!

P.S: the deck is the same as the one I played in the 7pts world championship, the last change of points has not affected it.

12 months, 12 decks (VII) Mono Green 7pts

Hello again, old schoolers! It’s been a long time since the last time, I know, and I owe you an explanation. This last year has been hard in many aspects, between pandemics, health problems, brutal spikes (not just cards) and, above all, the arrival of a new format in our local gaming scene, meant that made him not spend as much time as he should on the format we played in our league: Eternal Central. The new format I am referring to is «7pts Singleton Old School 93/94«, which came like a train running over everything in its path, and which we are playing like crazy and which I have been exploring throughout this last year; if you want to know what I’m talking about I leave you the link to this magnificent introductory article to the format written by our friend Diliz

But we’re back stronger than ever, and of course today’s deck tech is tied to our new favorite format, and it’s an archetype that many of us have loved for a long time, specifically since we started playing Magic… We are talking about Mono Green.

INTRODUCTION

Those of us who have played for a long time know that what we liked as children was to play the biggest creatures to kill our enemy as quickly as possible, the bigger the better, who doesn’t know Craw Wurm, or Force of Nature? Mythical cards. That is what characterizes the color green, large and forceful creatures, but we all agree on something and that is that green is possibly the worst color of Old School, and gossips say that with Mono Green you cannot win tournaments… it’s the ugly duckling of OS, that’s why, perhaps, we are so fond of him. Mono Green players know all this and today I’m going to present you with a deck with which you can stand up to the best strategies and even win tournaments, in fact I won one with a similar list , Let’s start!

Mono Green 7pts

DISCUSS

• First of all, let’s start with the choice of points. If you have read the bases of the format, we have 7 points to spend on a list of cards that have a certain cost. It’s a vital choice for deck building, and adds one more incentive of deck design. As you can see in the photo, the cards that are marked with a dice are Sol Ring, with 4 pts, Mana Vault with 1 pts, Sylvan Library with 1 pts and Regrowth with 1 pts, that has been my choice. There are players who exchange the Vault for the Maze of Ith and others who exchange the Mox Emerald for the Sol Ring and thus have one more point to invest, but in general the Sylvan and the Regrowth are always inside the decks; then we will see the importance of these cards in our strategy.
• We are going to analyze the cards by groups, being a singleton format it would take a long time to explain each card in detail. In the group of mana generators we have two of the cards that are worth points, the Sol Ring is one of the most powerful cards in the format and starting with it in play gives us the possibility of playing on second turn our large creatures with cost 4, Juggernaut, War Mammoth or Erhnam Djinn, something that will be difficult to stop, is undoubtedly one of the best accelerators in the game. Mana Vault is the card with which I have had the most doubts when it comes to including it, but in this deck we are going to take advantage of it thanks to the fact that it accelerates our bombs, the bad thing is that it’s weak against Icy Manipulator or Relic Barrier, which are cards quite played. Wild Growth is a good accelerator because being an enchantment is more consistent than if it were a creature, and the elves also fulfill their function very well, you can miss Birds of Paradise, but since the deck is so aggro and monocolor -and because we played Hurricane and Ifh-Biff Efreet–, it doesn’t make much sense to include them, I prefer elves that start hitting, every life point you subtract from the opponent is important. Green Mana Battery is too slow for the deck concept. Fellwar Stone is a staple of the format and could be a good option, but in the end I didn’t find a place for it.
• Draw engine: as we said before, the cards that should always enter are Sylvan Library and Regrowth, which are also an excellent draw engine and are the cards that everyone plays as a splash to green, Jayemdae Tome can be included because we generate a lot of mana, but I haven’t found a slot in it because I need to be very aggressive. Untamed Wilds combined with Sylvan is a pseudo-cantrip since it shuffles the library and takes a basic land from it.
• Removals: Green doesn’t have as many removals as other colors. Scavengers Folk, Crumble, will help us deal with artifacts as annoying as Icy Manipulator, or Jayemdae Tome, Desert Twister is our wildcard, it goes for anything, so use it wisely, it may seem slow but with the acceleration and tempo of the format it works good; Aeolipile is perhaps the most played 7pt card, a must. Tranquility is our Wrath of God of enchantments, it may seem sometimes that it isn’t necessary but there are very good enchantments, we cannot allow The Abyss or Moat to stop us, or to make us a 2×1 with a Control Magic. Chaos Orb is the card that everyone plays or should play, it’s the quintessential Oldschool Card. Ice Storm is a good option against Maze of Ith or Desert, but we already have cards that can deal with them. The Icy can also fulfill the function of removal on certain occasions, since it takes away creatures with regenerate, which are very annoying, or Mazes and Deserts for a turn.

With these two on the battlefield you can do many tricks (yes, I know, that Ifh-Biff has seen a lot of schoolyard)

• The bombs: Rocket Launcher, Sword of the Ages, Winter Blast, Hurricane, Triskelion, Thelonite Druid, Ifh-Bíff Efreet, Force of Nature and Berserk, are what I consider the bombs of the deck, the ones that will help us win. In addition, they are good removals when the occasion requires it, the least obvious is the sword, but in this deck it works perfectly because avoid Moat, Circles, Arborias and any card that prevents us from attacking, and since it is part of the cost, the activation can’t be stopped if you get killed by a creature in response, thanks to the amount of creatures we play, the damage is usually lethal. Winter Blast is a finisher because the ability to tap X creatures is lethal if we have our army of little critters ready to attack. Thelonite Druid usually doesn’t last long on the table because if we have 5 or 6 forests the attack can be brutal and it combines well with the sword. Hurricane will be the card our opponents fear the most because it’s the green fireball and they’re supposed to go under life, which is what the deck is designed to do. Rocket Launcher has a trick that is being used a lot on 7pt battlefields, and that is its activation after the opponent declares their end game phase, since they don’t have to destroy it that turn and it gets destroyed at the start of the next end step, so we will have it on the table one more turn to be able to activate it 2 times! It’s one of those cards that have improved with the new Oracle text and are better at 7pts than in traditional OS. Triskelion, we already know him, is an old friend, our favorite sniper. Ifh-Bíff Efreet is a Hurricane with wings, he can do ten damage in 2 turns on his own! Force of Nature plus Berserk is a classic, apart from the fact that it works very well with the sword. Berserk is multipurpose because it also serves to destroy the opponent’s attacking creatures at the cost of taking double damage, how many Assembly-Workers and Hypnotic Specter have succumbed to Berserker fever!
• The creatures: I made the choice of creatures based on the mana curve, like all traditional stompy decks, it’s based on the concept of a curve similar to the Sligh decks but in green, with accelerators and big creatures. The idea is to put three threats in the first three turns, the bigger the better, and there will come a time when the opponent controls the battlefield, that’s where the bombs come into play that will scratch the remaining life points. There is a lot to choose from in the color green, but key creatures are Erhnam Djinn, Juggernaut, Scryb Sprites, Elvish Archer, Argothian Pixies, Elves or Cockatrice. The idea of ​​the deck is to be as fast as possible, and there are only three creatures with a cost of five or more; why play a Craw Giant on the sixth turn if you may not be able to attack with it because there’s a Maze of Ith. Then there are creatures that also serve as removal such as Tracker, very useful against 1/1 creatures such as Preacher, Argivian Archaeologist, or –very important– Royal Assassin; or Thorn Thallid who may seem slow (and he is), but he fits the curve well, he’s 2/2 and you don’t need to turn to hit Triskelion-style shots, trust me, no one will let him get to the third counter. Other interesting creatures are Radjan Spirit, Whirling Dervish, Spitting Slug, Master of the Hunt, or Killer Bees. And we leave for the end a creature that has an ability that I find interesting for this strategy: Whippoorwill, the first winged bird in history that doesn’t fly, at the end I included it because it occupies the curve 1 slot of any 1/1 creature (we can also play Timber Wolves) and because with its ability we can skip at some point the creatures with regenerate, which are more than just a nuisance for us, and not only does it not allow us to activate the ability, but on top of that if the creature goes to the graveyard it is exiled, it’s the terror of the Will-o-the-Wisps.

Sniper duel

• Mana base: it’s simple, 21 lands, of which 18 give green, with which we have double forest guaranteed in the second turn, this amount of lands in other decks is insufficient but in Mono Green it’s quite tight thanks to the amount of accelerators we run already the mana curve goes down. We have mandatory Mishra’s Factory and Strip Mine, and one Desert that, being monocolor, will not bother us at any time and that is a very useful card if you face weenie-style decks.
• There are many cards that have been left out, it is something that usually happens in this format, you want to put all of them in, but you can’t! Still we will try to generate a rough list of possible cards to try. In my previous version I included Aladdin’s Ring, a cannon, the downside is its high cost, I think I’ve played it twice in total, but when it comes to the battlefield… be careful. Clay Statue is a good option, the bad thing is that it’s not really a curve 4 creature, but a curve 6, because since you play it you will want to defend it… right? Durkwood Boars, Wormwood Treefolk, Moss Monster, Ironroot Treefolk are strong creatures but as we said before we prefer to be faster than the opponent and in that slot we have the Cockatrice, which is a better creature. Nevinyrral’s Disk is a card that is often associated with Mono Green, but in this case I think it doesn’t combine well with Sword of the Ages and apart from that we generate a lot of presence on the table. Elven Riders is interesting for its evasion ability and can be tested from time to time supported by Hurricane and Radjan Spirit. Niall Silvain can be a good turn 3, but his ability ultimately requires a good chunk of mana to be mortgaged every turn.

Why doesn’t it fly?

CONCLUSION

«Mono Green 7pts» is still a fairly casual archetype full of fun cards, although I think that in this format it improves a lot in terms of competitiveness, so we can say that it is «spicy» and effective at the same time.

Tell me which cards you’re missing or would remove, or tell me about your battles with some Mono Green deck, I’ll be happy to hear it! You can tell me your impressions through the blog comments or on my Instagram account: @retroplayermtg

Thanks for reading and until next time!

BONUS TRACK:

Before saying goodbye, I leave you some links to several articles dedicated to this archetype and that are worth reading.

OLD SCHOOL MTG: MG report in the mythical Old School Mtg blog about a tournament where he played his own and very interesting version of Mono Green.

MTG UNDERGROUND: Great article where they tell us a story about green, going through an interview with a player who loves this color, and reviews several Mono Green Old School decks, great.

THE WIZARD’S TOWER: Good selection of Mono Green decks, he explains how he has built his and what it has been based on, I love the title of the articles. They are two parts.

12 months, 12 decks (VI) BRw War Drums

INTRODUCTION

Hi again, Oldschoolers!
We started with the first deck tech of the year. The deck that we bring today shares many cards with the archetype known as Spice Rack, although they born of different concepts. Jared Doucette explains the evolution of this archetype very well on Svante Landgraf’s blog, End of the turn, draw a card . This time we’re going to give this type of deck a twist and launch a horde of creatures at the opponent to the rhythm of our war drums. The card that gives the deck its name is Goblin War Drums and to which I already dedicated the first issue of this challenge and to which I can’t stop seeing possibilities. This is an aggro deck based on small creatures that «trigger» an ability when attacking or damaging the opponent and that improve once the red enchantment is on the battlefield, with 3 lands we can cast everything and where speed and efficiency are combined of the best possible way.

BRw War Drums

DISCUSSION

• The number of creatures that must be played is a factor to consider, in my opinion, for it to work it has to run at least 18-20 creatures. At most, you would have to run 2 copies of the red enchantment, since if you draw the second one it will be a dead card in hand and we don’t have cards like Jalum Tome or Recall to be able to discard it and exchange it for another card, our draw engine is limited and any slot counts.
• We have 3 Dark Rituals because by placing the curve so low (maximum 3) they are not so necessary, and they are only effective when you have Hymn to Tourach, Hypnotic Specter or Mind Twist in hand, then at the top is a card that you never want to see, it’s even better to draw a land.
• At first my idea was to design the deck with strong cards like Juggernaut, Su-Chi or Sengir Vampire, but without power nine it was difficult to play them in this combination. Then I thought about putting together a series of creatures that would do something in the combat phase or when dealing combat damage to the opponent to better take advantage of the effect of Goblin War Drums. In old school there is not much variety in this regard, but within black we have some creatures that fulfill this function. The best creature in the deck, of course, is Hypnotic Specter, which is the second best «lightning rod» in the game (the first is Juggernaut), and is good on its own, it does not need any other cards, but it’s true that at late game, if there is Serendib Efreet or Serra Angel it is worse, but with Goblin War Drums on the battlefield that changes and the opponent will be aware of being able to defend himself so as not to discard a card. Order of the Ebon Hand is a toothache for players who love white or for The Deck that will have no way to take it off except with evils like The Abyss, Fireball or Balance, and that also do something when attacking as they swell taking advantage of the mana that we have left. Mindstab Thrull seems a priori quite innocent because he’s killed by Lightning Bolt and can be easily blocked because he has no evasion, but with the red enchantment he becomes a greater threat and a dangerous source of card advantage, and they will be forced to throw the Lightning Bolt or the Swords to Plowshares at him instead the specter. Erg Raiders does nothing in the combat phase and also it has a great handicap but I chose it because it improves the mana curve and because among the black two-cmc creatures it’s one of the best in terms of cost / strength / resistance, and on top of that they don’t demand double black (we are talking about a 4 strip mines environment) so we can cast an Erg Raiders and a Mishra’s Factory on turn 2, and on turn 3 we will be attacking with 2 creatures. The Mishra’s Factory are essential and hence I choose the Erg Raiders over the Black Knight since we are going to play 8 colorless lands and we cannot lose a turn, so with the factories, when counting as creatures and lands, we will be developing our game while adding creatures to continue scratching points of life to the opponent. It seems like a selection of cards a little random to each other but if something these creatures have in common is that they all improve once Goblin War Drums is on the table.
• Balance is a great addiction and a very common card in decks like Spice Rack, this card will save us from many situations, and it is a great discarder, basically it is a Mind Twist for only 2 mana.
• Another card that Spice Rack style decks run is Storm World that here will function as the fifth The Rack and that has 2 characteristics that differentiate it from this one, the first being a enchant world with what can be a chance to take out annoying enchantments such as The Abyss or Nether Void, it also does one point of damage before The Rack, if the opponent has 3 cards in hand it will do damage, another advantage is that it’s an enchantment and not an artifact, so there will be fewer cards than eliminate it, its great handicap is that it also hurts us, that’s why we only run just one copy.
• Lightning Bolt will be another alternative to kill the opponent’s Factories, and specially they will be very useful against the terror of the Mono black decks: Whirling Dervish.
• I’ve been playing Sedge Troll for a while but it’s really a turn 4 creature because you’re never going to cast it if you can’t protect it, and in the end I had to remove it to keep the mana curve at max 3. Underworld Dreams is a card that It helps you against those decks that draw a lot of cards but in the end did not give it a place in the deck, the triple black cost clashes with the 8 colorless lands, although the deck is well supplied with black sources (16). Necrite and Murk Dwellers are cards that do something when they attack but one is too circumstantial and the other cost 4 that dies with a spark.
• The worst pairing for our deck are RUG zoo because its curve is better than ours and its better and more forceful creatures or decks with The Rack that will do us a lot of damage since we soon run out of cards and unless we sideboard we don’t have enough hatred against artifacts.
• Prison-style decks also beat us since they draw many cards and cancel our factories, our only option in that case is Disenchant. Goblins are bad pairing because they play more creatures than us and have a lot of direct damage, and bombs like Goblin Grenade that will leave us shivering every time they play them. Blood Moon is dangerous because we only have 3 basic Swamps, and we need double black in all games for the deck to work, so be careful if there is a lot of moon in your meta because you should consider including more swamps. Pink Weenie doesn’t seem like a good pairing either since its combination of Disenchant, sparks and creatures with protection against black can neutralize us.
• Although it seems strange, The Deck is not a bad pairing and we can beat it since we have many cards that it hates, such as Order of the Ebon Hand or Hymn to Tourach. Hypnotic Specter or Mindstab Thrull are also annoying and you will have to remove them quickly or they will take over your hand in no time. It’s clear that if The Deck begins well and manages to control the battlefield we will not have many options to recovering because The Abyss is a card that beats us, although at the base we have a very interesting option to remove the damn black enchantment: Storm World. Erhnamgeddom also seems like a bad pairing but far from it, if we get out fast we can hurt them and it will turn into a race in which they have more to lose because we have more direct damage, the Ebon Hand are a nightmare for them, and with the sideboard we improve, since our Terror and Paralyze will terrorize their enormous creatures; Goblin War Drums will shine against this pairing. Disco Troll is also a good pairing since they have very few creatures and they trust all their power in them and our Strip Mine and War Drums will do a good job, it’s true that a disk will stop us, but once we sideboard Disenchant and Terror and discard the counterspells out of your hands, it will cost him a lot to control the game. Atog is really a 50/50 since each game becomes a race to see who does more damage, I’m not saying it is easy, but they can be beaten, their Serendib Efreet will become our perfect allies for that point of damage extra that they do every turn and The Rack will dust them because they run out of cards very quickly, once we sideboard Terror we will get rid of the annoying Atog.
• Basically, the function of the Strip Mine in this deck is to get rid of the omnipresent Mishra’s Factory and remove the double blue to avoid Counterspell. Combined with Hymn to Tourach we can get the opponent stuck for a few turns in which our pesky little creatures will do their job.
• From the sideboard Terror will be our great asset against midrange, especially against Erhnangeddom or against QuickSilver-style aggro decks. Disrupting Scepter could even fit as a base in a deck like this, but playing unpowered it’s very slow, and I only include it as a sideboard versus control decks, where it’s really good. The 4 Disenchant will save us many games, and it’s our Swiss army knife in multiple situations. Paralyze will work well against midrange and especially against Juzam Djinn and Serendib Efreet.

The horde

CONCLUSION

If you want to play an aggro unpowered deck that works I think this is a good option. The decklist that I present today is almost identical to the one I played on the last day of the Liga madrileña old school, with which I finished in seventh place, you can see it here .
If you have any ideas or suggestions I will be happy to hear from you, you can tell me your impressions through the blog comments or on my Instagram account: @retroplayermtg

Thanks for reading and see you next time!

12 months, 12 decks (V) The Wizard’s Rack

INTRODUCTION

Hello to everyone again! The idea for this deck emerged when I saw a video on Timmy’s channel, YouTuber that I recommend you follow if you don’t already. In that video, Timmy, commented on 10 janky, unusual, but fun combos, and one of them was the Apprentice Wizard combo with Disrupting Scepter that, as you may be thinking, may not be a winning combo, or a devastating one, but I realized that perhaps the wizards werean undervalued and little played card, and combining it with the Disrupting Scepter made it a useful card, and let’s remember that the objective of this challenge is to transform cards that nobody plays into cards, at least, playable and achieve strategies different but that work. My first idea was to make a pure control deck, while you were removing cards from the opponent´s hand you had blue mana untapped to counter any threat and finish the games with The Rack.
This was the initial idea but the deck gradually became more versatile.

The idea is to play threats in the first turns and then discard cards from the opponent´s hand with the scepters while with the Icy Manipulator you control the battlefield, and finish the games with The Rack or Psionic Blast. I don’t play Counterspell because we´re not draw cards like The Deck and we don´t play white, and there comes a time when you cannot face all the opponent’s threats and you don´t get to develop your game, that’s why I ended up removing them, so I only play Mana Drain, which also helps you ramp, something necessary in deck strategy:

The Wizard’s Rack

DISSCUSSION

• The «star card» is Apprentice Wizard, from which we will get a lot of value from the 3 mana it provides, because the whole strategy is built around it. It´s a slow way of ramping, isn’t the same as Mishra’s Workshop or Mana Vault, the wizards are very useful in the middle of the game when you have mana displayed and at least one Disrupting Scepter and with him on the battlefield you will be able to play anything that you draw. It´s also very useful when there is Energy Flux or when you need to pay for the Mana Vault to untap it.
• Another star card is Disrupting Scepter. It´s somewhat slow but it goes well against control and against aggro it will be devastating because once The Rack is in play the opponent will try to keep the cards in hand but with the scepter we will discard them and with Apprentice Wizard we will only have to spend a blue mana, having untapped the rest of the lands.
• We know the power of Sage of Lat-Nam in artifact decks, here it´s essential and it´s our draw engine together with Library of Alexandria, with which it gets along very well (we already know that sages go to the library a lot) but above all, it combines well with Mana Vault since we can play a Su-Chi or an Icy Manipulator in the first turns and then sacrifice the vault to draw a card before it hurts us.
• We will need the Icy Manipulators to defend us from the opponent’s creatures, our favorite victims will be the omnipresent Serendib Efreet and Juzam Djinn. The Icy is usually the main objective of the Copy Artifact and with 3 Icy Manipulator on the table we can control aggro or midrange decks.
• The Rack is another of the main objectives of the Copy Artifact, especially in the late game, and it´s that many times the game is decided by a double rack.
• Azure Drake doesn´t see much game because Serendib Efreet is better, but here it shines because, being a pseudo-control deck in which many times you need to defend yourself rather than attack, the drake is perfect to block Serendib, Hypnotic Specter, etc, and doesn´t die with Lightning Bolt. For its cost you can easily play it with Mana Vault or Apprentice Wizard. Plus, survive the dreaded Energy Flux. The bad news is that he dies with a red blast, you can’t have everything…
• A 4/4 for 4 mana was never bad and Su-Chi is the best example, and you can play it even on turn one, its greatest handicap are the 4 mana that must be used when it goes to the graveyard so that you don´t burn for mana burn (in EC rules) but that’s why we have the Mishras Factory, the scepters, the Icy Manipulator and even the Fountain of Youth. Su-Chi allows us to have that versatility I was talking about before, since we can get very aggro together with Copy Artifact. Apart from that it will help us ramp with Sage of Lat-Nam or avoid an Energy Flux in upkeep thanks to the 4 mana it provides.
• In the photo there are 3 Psionic Blast but I played 4 and they works very well, so 3 or 4 is the ideal number, never less. They are necessary to remove threats like Serra Angel, or to surprise and get to remove 10 life points in the same turn with several The Rack in play.
• Because I only run a Tetravus, or a single Triskelion? Well, as I said before, they are cards that raise the mana curve a lot and if we don´t have a Workshop then it´s more difficult to cast them. In this deck they are included as a finisher, they are large creatures, and the Tetravo is included in main because it flies and can jump Moat, a card that must always be taken into account, especially if you don´t play Disenchant.
• Braingeyser or Mana Drain are the best restricted cards that you can include if you play blue and unpowered, and with all the mana you can generate they work well. Mana Drain can be saved you against threats like Armageddon or Energy Flux, which is better they not to touch the battlefield because if they don´t complicate the game much.
• There are some cards that could be included, for example Jayemdae Tome, but this one gets on very badly with Mana Vault and Disrupting Scepter. Mind Bomb could be an option although I have always seen it more as a card for suicide-style decks, where it´s accompanied by fast creatures, such as Flying Men or Serendib Efreet, the latter we could also play it but that point of life that we take turn by turn It hurts us a lot, especially playing Mana Vault and Psionic. The Hive is a card to consider because the wasps are the perfect food for the sages and we will generate an infinite blocker and works well with Apprentice Wizard, even so it´s too slow and you need a lot of mana. Mirror Universe might be an option against burn decks but it doesn’t go well with The Rack. Recall may seem weak but you still have good goals like recovering a Braingeyser or a Chaos Orb.
• Broadly speaking, The Wizard´s Rack works well against aggro and even better against midrange, that has fewer creatures and we can control better, and it works especially well against Monoblack decks since it cannot remove some of our threats (Control Magic, for example). Against control isn´t bad because we discard the cards with the scepters, but The Deck has so many options that we’re always one step behind, maybe it´s our worst pairing. We are going badly against Erhnangeddom because an Armaggedom sends us home, and against Atog or UR since the amount of sparks they have doesn´t give us time to react. Another horrible pairing is Ponza, against which it will cost us a lot to overcome the games.
• The mana base has worked quite well for me playing in an environment of 4 Strip Mines and it would not change anything, and with so much colorless spell we can run the playset of Strip Mines and factories, the latter is essential to avoid burning ourselves with the colorless mana of the Su-Chi.
• From the sideboard, Blue Elemental Blast are essential, Amnesia will be our best trick against The Deck and control decks, Control Magic is a «must have» against decks that cannot be removed it. Psychic Purge is another «must» against Monoblack but also against small creatures decks as it removes other annoying threats, such as Argothian Pixies or Preacher. Triskelion is a similar case, at once it enter the battlefield can make a 3 for 1, apart from being a good finisher. Fountain of Youth works great against decks like Atog or with Black Vise and Ankh of Mishra, since they go down for free and that life point you gain helps you cushion the damage of the Ankh since you need to drop land every turn and when already you don´t need them you can give them as food to the sage. Steal Artifact, Flash Counter or Boomerang are other options for the sideboard.

CONCLUSION

If you thought that Apprentice Wizard not worthed a penny, here you can see that it´s worth something else. In limited format or cube it´s a card to consider, but nobody played it in constructed, or at least I had not seen it in any deck. The Wizard’s Rack is a versatile deck with which maybe you will not win tournaments (or maybe yes, who knows), but with which you will have a good time. If you are curious, here you can see the list I played in the 1st day of the Madrid old school league in which I got a 3-2 and top 8.
If you want to comment on something I will be happy to hear from you, you can tell me your impressions through the blog comments or on my Instagram account @retroplayermtg
Regards and until next time!