Magical Construction: starting a 100 singleton deck from the ground up.

Self Interview: aka 'I am therefore I play magic.'
Q:Who are you? A:I am Paul Emerson Leicht (aka Winter.Wolf on Modo) and I am a magic player.
Q:How long have you been playing? A: Since 1994 early summer, I started learning how to use the cards I'd owned since the previous Christmas.
Q:So 15 years, and you write for a living? A: No. I am just a player but I have written many magic related articles in the past and am a songwriter in my spare time.
Q:Unhuh...so why play 100 singleton? A:Because no two games are exactly alike.
Q:But isn't that true of many other formats? A: Prismatic/5c formats aside, not really. And in addition while you need more cards per deck you get to see more interesting card interactions each game.
Q:Ok but you keep complaining that you don't have the money to field the big cards. How can you compete? A: By building a deck that doesn't need them. I don't claim you can build on a budget of say $20. The format is still very limiting in terms of what is in your collection and what you can afford but you can still play and have fun without the big cards. (Force of Will, Dual Lands, Vindicate, Tarmgoyf, etal)
Q:But wait a second why write an article about this? Cant anyone just put 100 random cards together to have fun? A: I think that while it is possible to do so, you will lose often and resoundedly. I hope (and I say this with fingers crossed) that my decks can win sometimes too. Fun is all well and good but doesn't really last if you are busy losing all the time. I am trying to apply the lessons I've been learning here and share them as I apply them.
Q:Do you really consider Land destruction in Singleton 100 classic to be fun? A: Well it is more fun infinitely than Helmline and Grimpainter. That said I consider ALL 100s games to be a bit more serious than other formats. Because of the depth of the card pool and the great variety of cards available you never know what you will face and you should be prepared for any of the major strategies. If someone asks me not to play land destruction I will always oblige if it is a friendly game but really I play to win.
Q:Does Land Destruction win? A: That is a very good question. I think it does in judicious application. It is not hard to lose to bad play running land destruction as you are often given choices to make. Choices while very important for tactical health also give you room to make mistakes. Mistakes can be like snowflakes on a mountainside. You may find yourself on the receiving end of a very nasty avalanche of consequences after a series of bad plays. Land destruction strategy  is also counterable via careful play and a well prepared opponent will be a tough matchup no matter the deck they are running. That said it does provide a challenge. More on this below.

Phew! Interviewing one's self is not as easy as it may appear. Just because you know the answers ahead of time doesn't mean you will ask the pertinent questions. Now that we have that out of the way, " Lands Matter" ??! Of course they do! :evil grin: Borrowing a page from some other excellent 100cs writers (particularly Archgenius (aka Markus)) I have decided to present the deck in blocks and give my thoughts on each block below.

The blocks:

Land destruction:

Armageddon, Ravages of War, Desolation Angel, Zuran Orb, Avalanche Riders, Dwarven Blastminer, Wasteland, Strip Mine, Ankh of Mishra, Zo-zu the Punisher, Pillage, Acidic Slime, (Realm Razor), Creeping Mold, Goblin Trenches

Description:
Of course this is the land destruction suite and as such needs to be both mass removal and spot removal. The mass removal spells are symmetrical so you need to be able to maximize their effects and minimize your losses. (See Mana preservation section below.)

Avalanche Riders, Acidic Slime, Creeping Mold, Strip Mine and Wasteland (both which I don't own yet) are your land depletion tools. You may find the creatures recursable via Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker (coming later on) and various other retrieval methods.

Zuran Orb and Goblin Trenches, while not land destruction themselves, help you capitalize on your expenditures. Only be wary of the out of the blue Force of Will to stop you after you've sacced your lands. If you think that is likely, it is better to side out the Orb and Trenches in favor of other tricks in games 2/3. On the other hand if you see one on the opposing side of the table you may wish to remove it with your dual use cards.

Playing land destruction versus Aggro is tough since they usually don't need more than a few lands to begin with and can just hold extras to wait for your massive removal and restart. That is if they see you coming. On the other hand they are most likely to run out of spells/threats if you manage to survive their hand. Counters on the other hand mean playing these cards carefully and with the eye towards drawing out a counter then hitting with the card you really want to resolve. This type of game does not favor your chances if you hold off too long.

Desolation Angel is a late game bringer of mass destruction and can be a win condition if the opponent is left without removal because of a lack of land. Realm Razer serves a similar purpose. The difference is that the land may come back if he is killed/exiled.

A word about Zo-zu and Ankh: These two cards are double edged being symmetrical which is why it is critical that you have nonland sources in play when you cast them. They must also come out vs any kind of burn deck because inevitably you will violate their ban and take damage as a result because you need to play that one land to cast the hoser card in your hand. This said, in conjunction with Zuran Orb and Armageddon they can really swing the game in your favor.

Mana Preservation:

Birds of Paradise, Fellwar Stone, Darksteel Ingot, Llanowar Elves, Sylvan Scrying, Harrow, Land Tax, Kodama's Reach

If your goal is to rid the realm of lands the best way to avoid losing to this yourself is to not be hampered by a lack of land. Birds of Paradise and other nonland mana producers not only help accelerate into your removal and harder to cast spells but they survive the blast (usually :p). Armageddon decks have long since relied on nonland mana sources to operate effectively.

Land Tax is another way to help your cause. I don't actually own one but the interactions between Land Tax, Armageddon, Scroll Rack (see tutors and enablers below) are pretty darn nifty. These cards allow you to dip into colors you wouldn't ordinarily to play cards like Wall of Denial (see Creatures section) which stops so many attackers and is so cheap that it cries out to be in the deck. Cheap you say at 1WU? yes cheap at twice the price even.

Enablers and Tutors:

Armadillo Cloak,Sword of Light and Shadow, Sensei's Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Grim Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, Mystical Teachings, Wargate, Enlightened Tutor, Brainstorm, Ancestral Vision, Mirri's Guile, Grim Harvest

Armadillo Cloak on a little guy can race fatties and on a bigger creature just wins. The same can be said for Sword with the caveat that they don't play well together. On the other hand Sword can just shut down Monoblack or White on the right critter.

Scroll Rack, Brainstorm and to a lesser extent Divining Top keep your cards from being disrupted by hand denial. Having faced the power of a 5 swamp driven Sludge recently, I highly recommend not being caught off guard and losing your whole hand to it.

Ancestral Vision is just great if you get it castable early. It comes in late as a replenisher and does not interfere with your casting the turn it resolves. The only downside is your opponent may counter it during your upkeep.

Sensei's Divining Top does in fact seem ubiquitous in this format showing up in a lot of good decks as a way of replenishing a depleted hand or simply sorting through the top of your library. Mirri's Guile works almost the same way but is less mana intensive at the cost of the potential to draw what you set up.

Enlightened Tutor is the fetcher of many artifacts and enchantments in this deck. Unfortunately at the moment I don't own one as they cost nearly $8 in tix but it is on my goals list.

Grim Harvest is a useful recursable way of getting creatures back that you need.

Creatures:

Zo-zu the Punisher, Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves, Avalanche Riders, Desolation Angel, Desolation Giant, Stonecloaker, Eternal Witness, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Wall of Denial, Reveillark, Mulldrifter, Necrotic Sliver, Flametongue Kavu, Trygon Predator, Qasali Pridemage, Knight of the Reliquary, Stingmoggie, Ingot Chewer, Eternal Dragon, Krosan Tusker, Pale Recluse, Jhessian Zombies, Sanctum Plowbeast, Noble Templar, Shoreline Ranger, Twisted Abomination, Trinket Mage, Dwarven Blastminer, Duplicant, World Queller

Every deck, no matter how many combos and tutors it has, needs at least a modicum of creatures to withstand the early assaults of one's opponents. Very often I have seen people top deck (opening draw into) a plethora of weenies that while fragile do a lot of damage early on if unchecked. My choice of creatures is based on their reusability and searchability.

Eternal Witness is a must have staple if you play green. It is so good because it is relatively cheap, a retriever of any card in your graveyard and it can be recursed by Kiki. The double green cost (as well as the triple red of Kiki) may seem prohibitive but this is a 5 color deck. You may not be packing dual lands (if you do use them by all means) or even fetchlands but you will have plenty of mana if you don't get bad draws.

Reveillark is a great card for this deck as a lot of your creatures are 2 power or less. Being able to come back from creature removal can mean the difference between win and lose. Mulldrifter is self explanitory and Zo-zu is your backup Ankh.

Stonecloaker brings back to hand any number of your "Enters the Battlefield" creatures and also serves as graveyard removal. If you have extra mana at the beginning of your opponent's (the villain!) end step you can remove their most likely recursable cards or you can do this as a surprise tactic. Either way, you may decided to return Stonecloaker to your hand to continue the threat of doing it again.

Creature Removal:

Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Flametongue Kavu, World Queller, Duplicant

The first 3 cards are staples and are must haves in a very light suite of removal. Each provides early protection from beaters and late game can remove something horrendous. Flametongue Kavu also works nicely with Kiki assuming your op has no tricks to redirect his damage. World Queller can be both land destruction and creature removal if used judiciously.

Lands:

(Stripmine), Wasteland, Overgrown Tomb, Godless Shrine, Sacred Foundry, Plateau, Stomping Ground, Watery Grave, Steam Vents, Temple Garden, Vivid Marsh, Vivid Grove, (Vivid Creak), Vesuva, Terramorphic Expanse, Bant Panorama, Esper Panorama, Grixis Panorama, Jund Panorama, Naya Panorama, Tranquil Thicket, Secluded Steppe, Lonely Sandbar, Forgotten Cave, Barren Moor, Forest x3, Island x2, Mountain x4, Plains x4, Swamp x3.

16 basic lands and 24 non basics. 40% land I find is usually great if you bring in fetchers and other mana sources. Wargate is particular good early on bringing in the remaining two colors if need be.

The panoramas serve double duty as do the cycling lands as fuel for the Knight of the Reliquary if he hits the table. Also since there is a Mystic Enforcer in the Sideboard (see below) the threshold level gets a little easier to hit with the lands that hit the graveyard.

The Sideboard:

Mystic Enforcer, Crimson Acolyte, Riftmarked Knight, Duskrider Peregrine, Burrenton Forge-Tender, Living Death, Martial Coup, Krosan Grip, Rout, Void, Primeval Light, Austere Command, Shatterstorm, Damnation, Fracturing Gust

Perhaps one of the most critical parts of any good deck is it's sideboard. I have found that sideboarding is quite difficult and can be pretty meaningless in 100s if you don't draw your sideboards. On the other hand a sideboarded card can make all the difference in the world, particularly if you sideboarded out correctly. For example what to sideboard in if you take out Zuran Orb and Goblin Trenches?

And that is a question I don't have an exact answer for. More to the point, most of the cards in my sideboard hose a specific strategy and the reason they aren't main deck is because they didn't quite fit. Facing an artifact heavy esper deck the mass land destruction elements of the deck become less useful since they will recover quickly if they are affected at all. (Right Zimbardo?) In that case I side in the pro black cards and take out the mass removal elements. I probably also want to add in the Void since it hits a good many artifacts at once since a lot of the good artifacts are similarly costed and Shatterstorm for the same reason.

Against a heavy aggro deck I'm going to want to side in mass creature destruction in all the forms necessary while keeping what removal I have in the deck. Out come the spot land destruction cards. Against Enchantress style combo decks Primeval Light is great and so are the mass kill cards. Playing versus mono red and red green aggro variants the pro red creatures become a must as does the instant speed potential of Rout.

Food for thought:

Snakes? Not on this Plane!

Aggrocontrol deck for Tribal wars.

Creatures 4 Mystic Snake 4 Ohran Viper 2 Mire Boa 2 River Boa 4 Coiling Oracle 4 Lorescale Coatl 20 cards Other Spells 4 Counterspell 4 Complicate 4 Ancestral Vision 2 Sensei's Divining Top 2 Counterbalance 16 cards

Lands 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Tropical Island 4 Simic Growth Chamber 4 Breeding Pool 6 Island 2 Forest  24 cards

I post this simply  because I keep hearing there are no control decks in Tribal Wars. Well I imagine there aren't many running counters because it tends to encourage aggro and combo styles but here is a deck I think that could do both duties as Control and Aggro. All that you need worry about is correctly countering the right threats. Complicate could also be Remand but I like the possibility of hard countering something and the occasional cycle while countering is priceless. Yes countertop is a 2 card combo. No I don't think it is in the same league as the I WIN NOW combos listed above. Annoying? Perhaps but there are many annoying combos that don't deserve banning, Hypergenesis Cascade for example.

That is all for this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it and I hope it stimulates you to start playing or continue playing these formats. Feel free to message me on MODO if I am online for a game or chat.

Magickly,

Paul Emerson Leicht aka Winter.Wolf on Modo (gandoDOTthebardATgmailDOTcom if you want to drop me a line.)