The next Commander 2013 precon I'm going to look at is Power Hungry! We get a couple of fun cards to mess with in this deck:
I was hoping for something a little more aggressive than I played last week when I used Eternal Bargain. However, it wasn't quite what I was expecting.
Deck Tech
So the deck definitely has a game plan: Sacrifice creatures for fun and profit. Unfortunately, while there are plenty of synergies in the deck, there's no real game ending plays other than using Prossh to beat down. On top of that, some of the things that you can sacrifice creatures for don't provide enough bang for the buck. There's no Grave Pact or Butcher of Malakir to keep control of the board, no Attrition either. Really I found that sometimes I would have a Viscera Seer out with Ophiomancer and Jar of Eyeballs in play so that I could scry every turn, but after doing this a few times I realized that there wasn't really anything in the deck I wanted or could usually help me. This made me sad.
As with all the precons, the deck needs help with mana fixing. The old stand bys like Kodama's Reach and Cultivate are obviously out there and available, but creature based ramp like Yavimaya Elder and even cheap stuff like Sylvan Ranger and Viridian Emissary that can be sacrificed later can work.
This deck also need answers. The Shattergang Bros. and Spine of Ish Sah are not enough by themselves. This means Damnation, Artifact Mutation, Decree of Pain, a better sweeper than Plague Boiler like Oblivion Stone. Hull Breach is also versatile. Heck, you can even go the creature based route and use Acidic Slime, Indrik Stomphowler, Woodfall Primus, (Terastadon), Viashino Heretic and more.
The deck needs card draw. Fecundity is nice, but the deck doesn't make nearly enough tokens to really abuse it, and often times other people got more of a benefit out of it than I did. Black gives you all the draw you need with Phyrexian Arena, Graveborn Muse, Bloodgift Demon, even Necropotence if you want it. Green also gives you access to stuff like Hunter's Insight, Momentous Fall and Garruks. Red gives you Wheel of Fortune and Knollspine Dragon. And Skullclamp should be the first card you buy!
Any sort of recursion would be helpful. Phyrexian Reclamation, Volrath's Stronghold, Phyrexian Delver, Regrowth, etc.
Finally, the deck needs bombs. Seriously, look at the deck list again. Aside from Prossh which cards are "Holy crap I need to deal with that right now!" cards? Maybe Inferno Titan or Capricious Efreet? Widespread Panic if you tutor a ton? The deck lives and dies with Prossh and it shouldn't be like that. Avenger of Zendikar, Sheoldred, Craterhoof Behemoth can all help you end games. Heck, Overwhelming Stampede is another good one. I would have killed for another couple of dragons even! Just stuff that can end the game would be nice.
So really the deck just needs to be more competitive. There's a lot of durdling for not a lot of pay off. But let's see what it does in action.
Game 1
In this game Glissa drops out early, so it's just me, Karador and another Prossh deck. Essentially what happens is that I screw up early by not using Armillary Sphere to grab 2 Swamps, assuming that my Vivid land would be enough. Unfortunately I don't think that it would have mattered even if I had though, as Karador had answers for every threat, card draw and mana fixing, using stuff like Bloodgift Demon, Woodfall Primus and Sylvan Primordial. When Karador plays Oblivion Stone, I threaten him with my Prossh and he blows up the world. This makes me happy until he uses Living Death to bring everything back and stomp all over me.
Sek'Kuar was a completely dead card in this game. The deck is all about sacrificing tokens, and Sek'Kuar doesn't care about that. The other Prossh deck was kind of a non-factor as well.
Game 2
Here's a game where I had no mana issues, but multiple board wipes keep me from ever really being a threat. The deck really has no way to recover from those situations. The Oloro player is kind of planeswalker heavy and manages to ultimate (Liliana of the Dark Veil) but doesn't really use it much early. Nothing I draw is really threatening but I use Mass Mutiny to steal Teneb's Commander so that I can grab Oloro's Drogskol Reaver but it's immediately answered with a Wrath. Seshiro just keeps pumping out snake that get blown up as well.
Teneb eventually gets taken out and Oloro hides behind Ghostly Prison while getting the advantage in card draw and leeching us. He's able to draw into some fat like Akroma and answer our threats and then take us out. Oloro wasn't the most tuned deck, but it looks like he didn't have to be. Charnelhoard Wurm got dealt with early so I had no recursion or draw for a very long time.
Game 3
Here Linvala is problematic because she shuts down Prossh's ability to sacrifice stuff. This is compounded when the Heliod player plays Angel of Jubilation and I can't use my Goblin Bombardment. Linvala's deck is actually pretty interesting, using a bunch of auras to pump her up. The Heliod deck is interesting as well, using Light from Within to pump his dudes. Also, Land Tax is out there early. How do you guys use it?
But really all that happened here was that Rith got his Commander out, hit people twice to make a bunch of saprolings, then used Overwhelming Stampede to kill everyone at once. I certainly didn't help by making a bunch of Red permanents to increase Rith's number of saprolings, but without removal none of us really had a shot.
So.... yeah. I never won a game with this deck, which was disappointing because I heard from several people that this was the best of the precons. I actually think it would take a decent amount of work to really get it in the right spot. Still, Prossh is a powerful beater and he should be pretty good to build around. Tell me about how you would change up the deck, or how you did, in the comments! Thanks!
Leviathan, aka Tarasco on MTGO
mrmorale32 at yahoo dot com
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