GWB HARD CONTROL (WANNA GIVE UP SMOKING?)

As in every pure control deck, we start the game losing hard and our goal is just one: not to die to spells and creatures relentlessly thrown to us, hold the game just to not lose. If we manage to survive, soon there will be a moment in game where we can start thinking about winning, while the strength, resources and hopes of our opponents are slowly fading away.

To achieve this beautiful and glorious challenge in every control game versus ugly and disgusting aggresive enemy decks, we must include in our deck some different elements. This time we will talk about:  Lands, Removal, Stabilizers, Value and Win Condition.

This list I’m playing is, in my humble opinion, one of the purest control decks being posible to build in Old School 7p Singleton. We pack a total of 0 creatures in our 60 cards…beautiful, huh? This will transform a lot of enemy cards in useless draws, such as removals or any creature-hate card.

We are going to travel through the different categories present in our list, notice that some cards can belong to more than one group at the same time, but every card has its own and important role in this 60 card list.

LANDS: We are packing 26 lands + Fellwar Stone, a high count because we NEED to make our first 4-5 landrops with ease. There is nothing special here, basic lands for each color, City of Brass…Mishra’s Factory and Desert are very important in our most aggressive matchups. Strip Mine’s job is usually to destroy enemy Factory.

REMOVAL: Give it to me, baby. Swords to Plowshares, Spirit Link, Disenchant, Divine Offering, Balance, Dust to Dust, Wrath of God, Crumble, Drop of Honey, Chaos, Aeolipile. We need these cards to eliminate dirty creatures, evil artifacts and some annoying enchantments that will try to disrupt our humble and glorious path to victory. Drop of Honey does some big work in early game, being re-usable in later stages of the game for bigger guys. Crumble and Divine Offering will be used many times to gain some life, at the cost of destroying our own brownies.

STABILIZERS: Transition from loss to win. Some of them will lock our enemy, destroying their dreams of winning and pulling them into the depths of despair. Circle of Protection: Red, Greater Realm of Preservation, Moat, The Abyss, Nova Pentacle, Icy Manipulator, Disrupting Scepter. We also have some ways of life gain, keeping us as far as possible from the terrible number 0: Fountain of Youth, Ivory Tower, Alabaster Potion. Fountain of Youth looks like a weak card, but it can give us 10+ life in a single matchup. Alabaster Potion is the weakest slot in our deck, but it is here because of the latest inclusion of Greed. Both Circle of Protection and Greater Realm are necessary in our gameplan, this deck plays long term games, and we can’t allow our enemy, rich in mana, to eliminate us with a single 10+ dmg gigantic spell (fireball, Desintegrate, etc). Nova Pentacle is slow (second weakest slot in the list), but messes with creatures, and if there are some of those in play, he will prevent us from spell damage to our beautiful faces. Moat and Abyss are our strongest bets, white and black together once, just to humiliate our enemies. Disrupting Scepter will shine in slower matchups, but probably G2 or G3 it will lose some potential, since opponents will discard all of their useless removal.

VALUE: Look, find and refill. Greed, Regrowth, Sylvan Library, Skull of Orn, Jalum Tome, Jayemdae Tome. These are the engine of our deck, very important for us to keep with our opponents. Greed and Sylvan Library give us cards if we can manage to keep a healthy life total. We are packing lots of enchantments, making our Skull of Ornn a treasure in later stages of the game. Jalum Tome will swap some useless Circles and extra lands into (hopefully) some decent fuel.

WIN CONDITION: Very few, 0 creatures. Our main win condition is (no joke) our opponents conceding the game in tears, otherwise…we need to finish them. Animate Dead (corner cases, opponent will now use his removal), Hurricane (we need more HP than them), Rod of Ruin (20 turns?), Rocket Launcher (extremely slow), The Hive (sorry for some creatures), and our main weapon: Mirror Universe. Our life total will often be very low: naturally versus aggresive decks, drawing like crazy with our Greed or Sylvan Library or simply burning out our mana before exchanging our tiny HP for the bigger and healthier from our opponent. It DOES work. Our remote wincons look way better if, instead of 18, we only need to take 2 lives from them.

POINTS SELECTED: The Abyss (2), Moat (2), Balance (1), Regrowth (1) and Sylvan Library (1).

MULLIGAN: We always want a decent number of lands, at least 2 on the draw and 3 on the play. We must avoid high costed cards in our starting hand, we are packing some slow stuff, useless at the beginning of the game. It is also dangerous to keep win conditions in hand from the start, because our opponent can discard them, making it even more difficult for us to “actually win” the game. Remember we have no shuffle effect in our 60, so if we mulligan, we won’t see the bottom card of our deck. We want low costed cards and lands. Special care with Ivory Tower, as the only card affected by our hand size.

GAMEPLAY: Hold, hold, hold, survive. We must play our turns VERY fast or we won’t finish in time, even use shortcuts for end of turn activations (don’t waste your time tapping mana). We must use the opponent turn to think (classic control gaming approach). Extract maximum value of every card or effect. Playing this absolutelyreactive deck means our life total is another resource, the only goal is not to lose. We don’t mind about winning, our extremely limited wincons only touch the table to close the game or in life/death emergencies. There will be plenty of situations where we won’t even need to use them, because our opponent will concede facing our lockdowns or looking at our stupid accumulated life total.

CARDS THAT DIDN’T MAKE IT: Titania’s Song, Arboria, Forcefield, Triskelion + Tawnos Coffin, Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale + Living Plane + Karakas, Maze of Ith…they can be also viable, but point distribution in this list is very tight, difficult to swap selected cards (probably Alabaster Potion, Rocket Launcher, Rod of Ruin or Disruptive Scepter are the main candidates).

TLDR: Play lands, slow down the opponent, think in their turn, hold and don’t do any aggressive move. Victory time will come with turns passing by. Very fast choices and plays or we won’t finish the round in time. Mulligan for lands and cheap cards.

It is always a pleasure to bore, annoy and wear our opponents…try it with your (until next game) friends. Forget about smoking between rounds.

Lucas Marín – TMT – LMOS

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.

Top 10 most tricky creatures in 7pts Singleton

7pts Singleton is an Old School format that has revived the utility of many creatures that are unplayable in regular Old School due to everyone playing 12 bolts and 4 swords. In fact, from this list 8 of the 10 are barely played in the regular Old School and thanks to this beautiful format we have been able to see the true power they have, designed for a game in which not everyone would play four copies of each card.

Without a doubt, these creatures are the ones that no Old School 7pts Singleton player wants to see in front of them and will sometimes be forced to spend the scarce and precious removal of 7pts creatures on them.

Top 10

Witch hunter

This sinister witch hunter from The Dark can turn into a real nightmare. Going the Distance is a combination of Time Elemental and Prodigal Sorcerer even though he can only return the opponent’s creatures to the hand and deal direct damage to the target player instead of player and creatures.

Its mana cost puts it at the bottom of the list, but it’s a creature to keep in mind as it’s very good against control (it doesn’t need to attack to deal damage) and against midrange decks we can slow them down a lot by returning the big creatures big on opponent hand.

At first you never want to spend your removal on him, but as the turns go by you will begin to notice her annoyance and… You will end up taking him out of the way!

Top 9

Ifh-Bíff Efreet

I’ve loved this creature since I’ve been a traditional Old School player, and I’ve played it in both Eternal Central and Swedish Rules. But as I said in the introduction, in 12-bolt formats it used to not work very well. However, with our beloved 7pts Singleton we can see its true potential.

For many he is simply recognized by his drawing, since he was the face of the apocryphal version of the Serendib Efreet from Revised, but thanks to the 7pts Singleton people are already beginning to see him in his original version and his true power.

It is called  “hurricane creature» for its ability to cause «hurricanes». Against control it is incredibly good, and against smaller flying bugs it will sweep the table. If for whatever reason he cannot attack, he will be able to do two damage each turn to both players, which if you win the race of lives means victory. He can also come into play and finish off the opponent as soon as he enters as his ability doesn’t require him to tap.

Like all Efreets and Djinns it is dangerous to its controller, and in this case the danger comes if the opponent plays green. There we have to be very smart when it comes to the table it and activating it the number of times we consider appropriate.

To finish, special mention has its interaction with a very played card in 7pts, the Spirit Link. If we put one on it and activate it twice, we’ll deal 2 damage to the Efreet: we gain 2 life, 2 damage to the opponent: we gain other 2 life, 2 damage to yourself: you gain 2 lives more. The result will be 2 less life for the opponent and 4 more life for us. That is if there are no more creatures that fly on the table but imagine the amount of lives we can win. Who gives more?

Top 8

Brothers of Fire

These brothers who give their name to a British Old School community have shown their true power in 7pts Singleton. At the last 7pts Singleton World Championship held in Madrid, they were included in C. Dominique’s champion UR deck and did well during the tournament.

The ability to activate his ability several times without turning allows him to attack and then, for example, activate his ability twice, doing a total of 4 damage. They are good at the beginning of the game and also in the late game where we can activate their ability several times per turn if we have a lot of mana available. Against decks of small creatures, like weenies, it is devastating and against control it is a constant annoyance.

Also, unlike the Cuombajj Witches, the damage is always redirected to us and there is no possibility of redirecting it to one of our creatures, and in the end 1 point of damage is a small price to pay to activate that great ability; and it has proven to be better card than Orc Artillery (also highly played at 7pts).

Top 7

Prodigal Sorcerer

Our friend «Timmy» since 1993, played a thousand times in the schoolyard and known in Spain by countless names: «The Baker», «The Popeye», «The Basque»…

Unplayable in regular Old School and one of those creatures you never want to see up front in 7pts as it maintains the quality it had in school in 1993. Unlike other creatures like its black step-sister the Sorceress Queen, who looked very good in the school, and has been shown to actually not be that good (since the creatures it transforms keep their abilities), the Prodigal has proven to still be a very useful creature.

Also played in the world champion deck, this wizard skips Moats and will kill all of your bottom one creatures. Trust me, you’ll end up spending removal on this little bastard…

Top 6

Royal Assassín

Mythical, legendary, lethal, another one that has been with us since the schoolyard of 1993. In our beloved 7pts format we can see how powerful it really is, and just as in traditional Old School we have only seen a few loose copies of sideboard, at 7pts it’s a must if you play black as your main color.

More than as a true assassin, he has proven to be more of a «handbrake» for games. If the opponent plays well, in the end it is like a kind of wall since few creatures will attack with this assassin in front of them. However, sometimes you will be forced to attack to continue doing damage, and that’s when the killer can claim some victims…

Another noteworthy point is that it also cancels activated abilities of creatures that require tapping, because it will be the last action of it before dying…

In closing, one of our favorite 7pt combos should be noted and that is the combination of him with the Icy Manipulator as seen in the 7pts Worlds semi-finals in the BR matchup against White Weenie.

Top 5

Argívian Archaeologist

This Argivian archaeologist has worked tirelessly unearthing ancient remains from Atlantis, Hyperborea, Lemuria, Mu, the Hollow Earth… but more importantly, he recovers our buried artifacts back to hand.

Such a recursive creature usually doesn’t last long on the table (it’s one of those creatures that when they come into play and the opponent has a dangerous artifact in the graveyard… you have to kill instantly!). I find it really powerful in Control and Midrange decks, and a bit slower for aggro decks like White Weenie where I wouldn’t play it.

My favorite interactions are with cards from Fallen Empires (and there’s nothing more reminiscent of an RPG than an archaeologist unearthing artifacts from «fallen empires»), such as Conch Horn or Aeolipile, but of course it’s brutal with the Chaos Orb if you have five mana on the board.

In the end, direct recalls like Regrowth, Recall, or Reconstruction are better, but it’s a plugin that can really annoy your opponent and win you the game.

Top 3-4

Preacher

I really didn’t know whether to place it in the Top 3 or in the Top 4 because I consider it to be at least similar in power to its next counterpart.

A pissed off preacher, with a classic pompadour, fresh from the depths of Alabama to convince the opponent’s creatures to fight on our side.

Monogreen mages will understand that this is one of your worst nightmares when playing low removal creature decks. It will always steal our smallest creature and use it to block if we attack, chipping away at our army on every attack. If we are lucky to have a creature with evasion to be able to give another one, the opponent will attack every turn with our creature that we do not want to block and kill it because then it would steal the good creature, which would make it «unblockable» at times.

In short, a real nightmare that we will have to kill if we want to win with creatures, also, I see it as good in control, midrange and aggro decks.

Top 3-4

Old Man of the Sea

The counterpart of the Preacher in blue, this old strangler of the sea comes from the most ancient tales of the Arabian Nights to kidnap your creatures.

Unlike the Preacher he doesn’t allow us to control big creatures, but he makes up for it positively in that we can choose which creature we want to control (whereas with the Preacher the opponent chooses it).

Assuming that at 7pts a 2/3 for three mana isn’t bad anymore, imagine if you pair it with the ability to steal your opponent’s creatures. It’s true that they can’t have power 3 or more, but imagine how many good creatures of power 2 or less are played at 7pts. Without going any further from this same list he could control 8 of the 10 creatures!

Another creature that fits perfectly in all types of decks that play blue and that you will have to eliminate many times if you have it in front of you and you want to play small creatures.

Top 2

Guardian Beast

This beast has seen some play in regular Old School, at least one copy in Grixis Discotrol, BR Discotrol, due to its great interaction with the Nevinyrral Disc, and also Power-Monolit to defend artifacts. Let’s not forget that while it is untapped our artifacts are indestructible so, for example, the disc will not destroy itself and we can use it twice.

Assuming that it is a 2/4 for four mana, what is already a good «wall» base, which makes it really powerful at 7pts, and one of the reasons why it is on the watch list of possible points cards, is its interaction with the Chaos Orb, since according to the text the Chaos Orb destroys itself when using it, but being indestructible it would stay tapped and we can use it once per turn.

The combination Guardian Beast – Chaos Orb often means the end of the game if we can not destroy the beast (a creature with ass 4 difficult to kill), and also many times it is played in decks with Demonic Tutor capable of searching one of the two pieces of the combo. It will start by destroying one land per turn and then all our permanents… A nightmare!

Without a doubt, for me it is the second best creature in the format because it is easy to splash (it only requires a black mana), it is good in statistics and can also be used to attack, it is the most difficult to kill on this entire list (it skips bolts, terror…) and its ability stays with other pseudoremovals like Spirit Link, Gaseous Form… etc. And of course for its multiple combos with the aforementioned Chaos Orb, Disco and Rocket Launcher (which we can activate as many times as we want).

Top 1

Triskelion

The “coffee pot” has earned in her own right being the first creature in the format to earn 1 value point. And it is not by chance. It goes into any deck, aggro and especially midrange and control due to its combo with Tawnos’s Coffin which can do a «fireball effect» as a finisher even in decks that don’t play red.

For those of you who don’t know much about the format, a classic style of ending games in 7pts is with a Tawnos’s Coffin and a Triskelion, since the exiled creature keeps the counters, so the Triskelion comes out of the coffin with three more counters, in total 6, then 9, then 12… also if we only have an artifact destroyer we will have to cast over the coffin and in response our opponent will eat the Triski so that he returns to the game with 6 counters in total, with what we will have in front of us a 7/7 monster with the ability to deal 6 direct damage.

On many occasions, he usually generates card advantage since he can kill up to 3 creatures with resistance 1 as soon as he enters, staying on the table. We can raise it to the hand with Reconstruction, copy it with Copy Artifact, if they are going to steal it from us with Steal Artifact or Control Magic, do 2 damage to the opponent and sacrifice it to himself, if they are going to hit him with swords we can do the same and thus have it in the graveyard to recover it… etc. etc.

In short, the creature with the most tricks in the format and the one most seen at the tables. We will now see what his presence will be by having to pay 1 point to wear it and if it is still as definitive as it has been up to now, but, without a doubt, it is the biggest bomb in the format.

In closing, this list is based on my personal opinion, and my experience of two years playing the format. You guys will have your most broken creatures, but I think this list fits the format pretty well. Of course, I’m waiting for your comments, especially on Facebook, so you can tell me which creatures you think should be included in this list because of their abilities, and because their power has increased a lot by 7pts Singleton compared to the traditional Old School.

Cheers and Old School!

Luis E.

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.