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By: Flippers_Giraffe, Simon Smith
Feb 11 2015 1:00pm
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Once again I bring you the weird and wonderful from the casual room of MTGO. With the cold and bleak winter nights in the UK I find myself playing more on MTGO than normal, so for you lucky readers that means you'll be seeing more articles from me for a while. Fate Reforged is now out and there are about 20 million reviews of its contents all over the web so I'm not going to give you my review. I had a look and found quite a few interesting cards mostly in the Mythic Rare slots which doesn't really surprise me now days. The majority of the rares are now well under a $ apart from the ones which will be seeing lots of play in competitive Std. For those of you that like drafting these are the current ones which are worth rare drafting for in the rare slot. Crux of Fate which is very good wrath effect and is just an extra mana more than Damnation so may see some interest in Modern as well. Flamewake Phoenix which is an excellent card in graveyard tool box decks. Then we have the delve master Tasigur, the Golden Fang who would work really well with those Phoenix's.

 

Now we delve into Standard for our first deck of this article. It seems that my Standard image is a bit out of date but it's an excellent piece of art so I'll leave her as she is for this article and find something more suitable next time round. As per the title of the article it's turtle time and no we won't be having any of these dude's in our deck, we are going to be hitting a far sight more heavy than these mutants could dream of getting close too.

My turtle of choice is Meandering Towershell. You may wonder what's so special about him or you may wonder why on earth I'm going to be building my entire deck around him. His special talent is not being there when you need him, most likely going off for a pizza break. So how can we build a deck around such an unreliable card?

The answer is to make the most of the time when he's not there. So when he attacks he meanders off the play area into the exile zone where he's nice and safe. At that point in time we can even the odd's by removing all the threats in the play area, incidentally that includes our own creatures so planning is key here. Our removal cards are End Hostilities and Perilous Vault. The first is the current white Standard version of the wrath effect, while Perilous Vault goes that extra bit further and just plain exiles everything that's not a land. When our turtles come back attacking the next turn there won't be much left to stand in their way. I can see myself using End Hostilities in other decks outside of Standard due to its ability to destroy equipment attached to creatures as well. Perilous Vault is like an upgraded version of the original Nevinyrral's Disk.

That's are game plan but we are going to need a few other creatures to while away the turns until the Turtles show up. In the early game we have Hero of Leina Tower who starts life out as a wee 1/1 creature. But she won't be staying small for long. Her trigger ability lets you pay X mana each time she's targeted by a spell giving her X +1/+1 counters. In this deck I'm using Ordeal of Nylea as one of our trigger spells which in turn gives her more +1/+1 counters or if she already has three you sacrifice Ordeal of Nylea and search your library for two basic lands putting them into play tapped. Our other spell is Awaken the Bear giving her a huge boost and trample.

Helping her out is the ever playful kitty Fleecemane Lion, who really benefits from his Monstrous ability which makes him indestructible. To help boost our mana up for the mid range creatures we have Sylvan Caryatid, which leads us into our second heavy hitter of the deck the Hooded Hydra. Who can be found in most cities loitering in groups of five or six on street corners with their hoods up, this is before they unmorph into greater and more useful beings. Then we have our mobile wall that only comes out when times are desperate the mighty Colossus of Akros, he has indestructible so will be safe from End Hostilities and by the time he comes out you should be fine paying his monstrosity cost the following turn.

 

Which leaves a few cards of interest left to go over. Nylea, God of the Hunt who gives creatures trample and you can boost them as well, she's also a great hitter when you get your devotion to green on. I'm also using her bow as well the Bow of Nylea which has a few useful tricks the ones which I've found most useful are the ability to give out +1/+1 counters and the life gain. The Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx comes in quite handy as well as there's usually lots of green cards on our side, lastly the very important Windswept Heath who without this deck would have lots of mana issues.

The final deck. 

    Creatures     Artifacts 
Anthousa, Setessan Hero   2 Perilous Vault
1 Colossus of Akros    
4 Fleecemane Lion   Lands
Hero of Leina Tower 4 Blossoming Sands
Hooded Hydra 9 Forest
Meandering Towershell Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Sedge Scorpion   5 Plains
Sylvan Caryatid  4 Windswept Heath
       
  Spells    
3 Awaken the Bear    
1 Bow of Nylea    
4 End Hostilities    
Nylea, God of the Hunt    
Ordeal of Nylea    
       
       

 

Now we roll into the two Vintage decks of the article. I did think about Modern but the prices for the good cards are just amazingly high at the moment. I expect I'll wait for Modern Masters II before I delve into that particular format. So onwards into vintage we go.

The card I'll be building around for the first deck is an old favourite who I felt it was time to acquire again Underworld Dreams. It's been with us since the Legends set and still has the ability to win games now. Every time an opponent draws a card they take a point of damage. It's as easy as that.

So we need ways to make our opponent draw lots and lots of cards. I've seen a lot of players using Howling Mine, but it’s not nearly fast enough to rip the life out of your opponent before they have amassed a large enough army to stomp on your face. But there is another artifact that works in a better way and really does the job well, but and it’s a big but you will need to know your deck inside and out to master it. The card is Teferi's Puzzle Box, every upkeep that player puts the cards in their hand onto the bottom of their library and then draws that many cards. If you bring it out early it's going to be painful. As I say though you will be doing the same so you’re going to be going through cards really quickly and will need to know what's in your deck and be very careful what you play and when. Another card which will force your opponent to discard their hand and draw seven new cards is Wheel and Deal, be careful though as you could be helping your opponent out if they are playing fast creature decks. Then we have a new card Dark Deal to help fill in, it makes your opponent discard his hand and draw the same number of cards minus one. There is another card which was built for this deck and won’t need any grand introduction's Timetwister. As you may have guessed the deck does make the game quite random once you have a Puzzle Box in play.

Now we have a look at another way to deal damage to aid Underworld Dreams which is Fate Unraveler which essentially has the same ability but comes with a 3/4 body. Now he's the only creature in the deck so I decided to help him out in the early game by using Mishra's Factory. It gives you an extra edge against those pesky 1/1 creatures that pop up from time to time.

Speaking of time we will be doing a bit of time manipulation in this deck the first card is the classic Time Walk. The second is another new card from Fate Reforged which I find works really well Temporal Trespass. Yup it's a delve card so if you can dig far enough into you graveyard you could be paying  for another Time Walk which I think is a good cost seeing as I'm not running any graveyard recursion. I only picked up one of these though in case it's restricted like Treasure Cruise has been.

As to the remaining cards in the deck we have Jace Beleren as our chosen planeswalker, who really helps with his first ability giving each player a card. We have library manipulation in the form of Ponder and Brainstorm. A few counters Mana Leak and Force of Will. Dark Ritual for that extra mana boost along with some very helpful jewellery Mox Jet and Mox Sapphire. As we are playing black the usual tutors are present as well Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor which are both staples in most vintage decks that I play that have black in.

Now we see the final build. 

    Creatures     Artifacts 
Fate Unraveler  1 Mox Jet
    Mox Sapphire
  Spells 4 Teferi's Puzzle Box
1 Brainstorm    
Dark Deal   Lands
Dark Ritual  1 Academy Ruins
Demonic Tutor  4 Island
Force of Will 1 Library of Alexandria
Jace Beleren Mishra's Factory 
Mana Leak Polluted Delta
1 Ponder 1 Strip Mine
1 Temporal Trespass 6 Swamp
1 Time Walk Watery Grave
Timetwister    
Underworld Dreams    
Vampiric Tutor     
4 Wheel and Deal     

In the comments of my last article Rerepete mentioned using Melira, Sylvok Outcast with Unstable Mutation. In my last article I was using Unstable Mutation in conjunction with a fast blue creature deck.Melira, Sylvok Outcast would stop the -1/-1 counters being applied giving any creature a permanent +3/+3 bonus. Which is a great idea so I took it and ran with it for the final deck. Unstable Mutation never made it into the final build though, but oh what an interesting deck I ended up with. Now let's have a look at Melira. She's a 2/2 legendary creature who cancels out poison counters, all of my creatures can't have -1/-1 counters and my opponents creatures lose infect.

Now she's only a little lass so needs some protection as she will be picked on once our opponents notice what our plan is. So I included some Lightning Greaves for her to wear, they are not the height of fashion but I'm sure she won't mind. I'm sure she would rather wear the Mox's though.

Now let's move on to the more interesting creatures that have a good relationship with Melira. The first is a card I thought I'd never see anyone using, it's just plain bad Aboroth. But take away its negative side and we get a 9/9 for 6 mana which isn't bad. The next card is a tad more interesting. If it comes into play while Melira is in play you have a 10/10 artifact creature for five mana. If she's not in play you have a 5/5 artifact creature that you can pay  to remove his five -1/-1 counter from to draw three cards and end up with a 10/10 creature, win win really. The card if you haven't guessed it is Etched Monstrosity.

Next up on the creature front is Glen Elendra Archmage the never dying. Yes that is in fact true as long as Melira is in play she will not go down in a fight or if you sacrifice her to counter a spell, she's one tough cookie. Back to the Mirage block again for our next creature Harbinger of Night, his talent is dishing out -1/-1 counters every turn at the beginning of our upkeep. But our creatures will be safe from his evil grasp. Lastly because I wanted something else a bit more interesting and just because I like the card I included Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon.

The most interesting spell we have in our deck is in fact an Enchantment Everlasting Torment. While it's in play players can't gain life, damage can't be prevented and most importantly for us all damage is dealt as though it had wither. And what does wither do? yes that's right it deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters, which our deck is invulnerable to while our lovely lady of Mirrodin is in play. We also have a few removal spells to help us on our way Swords to Plowshares and Maelstrom Pulse. Nylea, God of the Hunt to give our guys trample. The only other card which I haven't talked about in this article that's included is Sylvan Tutor, which lets you search your library for a creature card and put it on top.

As the deck has so different coloured cards in it the lands really do play an important role which is usually the case with Vintage decks. The most common colour in our deck is green and black so Bayou was the most important choice, it was then a case of adding in as mana duels that also had green our most prominent colour, then adding fetch lands to call upon them.

 It's a really fun deck and catches a lot of people out as it’s very fast once things start to fall into place, here's what the final version looks like.

    Creatures     Artifacts 
Aboroth  3 Lightning Greaves
4 Etched Monstrosity Mox Emerald
2 Glen Elendra Archmage 1 Mox Jet
Harbinger of Night 1 Mox Sapphire
Melira, Sylvok Outcast 1 Sol Ring
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon     
      Lands
  Spells    
Demonic Tutor Bayou 
Everlasting Torment Savannah
1 Maelstrom Pulse 1 Scrubland
2 Nylea, God of the Hunt 4 Taiga
1 Regrowth Tropical Island
Swords to Plowshares Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sylvan Tutor  Windswept Heath
Time Walk  Wooded Foothills
Vampiric Tutor      

That's all from me until next time, always prepare for the unexpected dude and dudettes.

Flip 

6 Comments

Wow. Great Job! by CalmLittleBuddy at Wed, 02/11/2015 - 14:51
CalmLittleBuddy's picture
5

Your articles are so much fun to read! I would really love to see that Standard Turtle deck in action. Do you do videos? Or could you walk us through a few test games verbally? Have you had a lot of luck playing it?

It's the kind of deck that makes the opponent sit up and pay attention.

Cheers I'm glad you find my by Flippers_Giraffe at Wed, 02/11/2015 - 17:19
Flippers_Giraffe's picture

Cheers I'm glad you find my articles funny, I do try and make them a bit more interesting.

I don't really like videos. I don't watch them myself I prefer to read articles with lots of nice images etc, it also gives me more of an outlet for creative writing.

Now the deck its self is really fun to play, when you play the first turtle people get the wrong impression and think its an arms race and start to empty their hand of creatures to keep up. They do this even when I have the vault in play! Then the turtle wonders off and I think at that point it dawns on them that they have made a grave error as they suddenly start to play a bit more conservatively but at that point its too late.

A lot of games I do actually win in the early game due to how fast my creatures are. Hero of Leina Tower is much better than I thought she would be.

I did used to write up a few matches in my articles but its just too time consuming. I'd end up only being able to share one deck an article instead of three.

Thanks for the comment CLB

Perhaps you missed my by Paul Leicht at Wed, 02/11/2015 - 17:43
Paul Leicht's picture

Perhaps you missed my Towershell lich deck from October but it abused the turtle in an entirely different way than yours. Love the interactions. The orc that is indestructible on your turn is a possible inclusion too if you don't mind splashing red and black. (you can see how I love those 5 color decks right?)

I think by CalmLittleBuddy at Wed, 02/11/2015 - 19:20
CalmLittleBuddy's picture

If they reprint the Zen fetch lands, Paul's dreams of a rainbow standard will be one step closer to a reality!

Hey there - I liked the by Clan Magic Eternal at Wed, 02/11/2015 - 19:58
Clan Magic Eternal's picture
5

Hey there -

I liked the vintage list but couldn't help chuckling at the lack of ancestral recall in a deck where the true duality of the card could shine for once in the vintage format - outside of a dredge match and a desperation decking attempt.

Cheers - keep up the good work

Zach

Thanks Zach. I did consider by Flippers_Giraffe at Thu, 02/12/2015 - 17:15
Flippers_Giraffe's picture

Thanks Zach.

I did consider Ancestral Recall but it fell into the same realm as Underground Sea, not enough hobby funds. My power is at level 7 and I can't see it getting much higher unless prices go down or I win the lottery!