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By: Lord Erman, Nafiz Erman
Dec 06 2011 8:12am
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ROGUE PLAY
From Casual Room to FNM
Part III
by Nafiz Erman

Hello everybody, I'm once again back with your weekly addiction. As you know, in my last two articles I showed you many decks for many different levels of Magic. But all those decks had a starting point and that was a casual deck. And all those casual decks started with an inspiration. In the first article I showed you lots of nice mono Black decks and the inspiration for them was Sorin Markov. Last week was mono White week, and my inspiration was the Suture Priest / Inquisitor Exarch duo.

And this week our journey will start in the misty and dangerous Forests of Innistrad and will go to many different directions from there. Recently while wandering there I came across a very impressive "being". And that being has become my whole inspiration for this article.

Do you wonder what that being is? Well, it is this one:

Essence of the Wild

So yes dear readers, I looked at Essence of the Wild and I was simply amazed. I knew I had to use him (it?) somehow and started thinking about it. And that's how everything has started.

 

DECK #1
Casual Essence of the Wild Deck

My first goal was to determine the type of deck in which Essence of the Wild was going to be a superstar. I tried a few things and went over a bunch of ideas, but then realized that the best of them was to put him into a tokens deck. It wasn't a good idea to turn my Primeval Titan into a "lesser" being. Playing Thrun, the Last Troll or Dungrove Elder together with Essence of the Wild was meaningless. What I needed was cheap and small bodies. And tokens were the only logical option.

Token decks are already being played these days and that was surely a good thing. So there were lots of great and playable cards for such a deck. But my search revealed that not all of them were great with Essence of the Wild. Cards like Precursor Golem or Myr Battlesphere sadly were useless. Myr Battlesphere was entering the battlefield as a copy of Essence of the Wild and thus wasn't giving me any tokens. The same problem occurred with Precursor Golem as well. Therefore I had to "dig a bit deeper" so to speak to find the right cards that I was going to play with my Essence of the Wild. And then I came across these:

Jade Mage Druidic Satchel

Jade Mage, huh?

Well yes my inner-me, I was surprised myself as well. I totally forgot about this card and to be honest I wasn't even remembering it at all. But a search in the Deck Builder screen made me remember it and all of a sudden I said "Yes! That's it!".

Later during testing, I also added these two:

Mortarpod Mimic Vat

As you know, when Mortarpod enters the battlefield it creates a 0/0 Germ token. Well, not in this deck! Because when playing this deck that Mortarpod token is a 6/6 monster!

So the plan was simple: I was going to ramp into a hopefully turn five or sooner Essence of the Wild, then I was going to play it and then I was going to start producing tokens. Every token was going to come into play as a 6/6 and from there I was going to swarm my opponent and win.

I think I should show you the deck right at this point dear readers, and then we'll talk more about it. Here it is:

Essence of Nature
A Standard deck by Nafiz Erman
Creatures
3 Essence of the Wild
3 Jade Mage
3 Mayor of Avabruck
3 Viridian Emissary
3 Acidic Slime
15 cards

Other Spells
4 Rampant Growth
3 Druidic Satchel
3 Beast Within
2 Mimic Vat
2 Parallel Lives
2 Mortarpod
2 Dismember
2 Hunter's Insight
1 Asceticism
1 Elixir of Immortality
22 cards
 
Lands
2 Buried Ruin
21 Forest
23 cards

 
Essence of the Wild

 

Alright, let's take a look at what I'm doing here. First I have to say that I need mana. Lots of mana even. And therefore I have Viridian Emissary and Rampant Growth. The latter was Llanowar Elves for a long time (and it was a perfect top-deck later in game (a 6/6 for a mere !))) but then I realized that my Elf creature was dying quite often before I was even using it. I needed more "certain" ways of ramping, and therefore switched to Rampant Growth.

I also thought a lot about my removal package. As a matter of fact, that part of the deck was the part that I changed the most until I reached to this above final version. Now I have Beast Within, two Dismembers, my Acidic Slimes which were a late addition, and Mortarpod. As you know, Mortarpod with tokens is a great way of killing things. As I said, I tried many things, changed the numbers a lot but this final removal package works great so far.

Then I started looking for ways of making my deck better and more dangerous. Parallel Lives was such an addition. It's great when you get two 6/6 giants each time you activate your Jade Mage. It's perfect when you use your Mimic Vat and get not one but two tokens. Basically, Parallel Lives fits perfectly into this deck.

My final addition to the deck was Asceticism. That's not only a great protection for my creatures against spot removal spells, but it also saves them from Wrath of Day of Judgment. I first started with two copies but heavy testing showed that one copy was enough.

Okay, and now I'll show you a few screenshots I took while playing the deck. I believe that they will give you a better idea about the deck.

Tokens, tokens, tokens... Now double the number and six times the size!
Day of who? Judgment what?
One Mimic Vat, tons of tokens.

Did you like it? I hope you did.

So that was my mono Green deck I built for my casual entertainment. Now let's take a look at what we can do with it if we're going to take it to our local card shop.

 

DECK #2 & DECK #3 & DECK#4
Semi Competitive Essence of the Wild Decks

Just like I did in the last two articles (by the way, Part I is here and Part II can be found here, if you missed them), at this point I will once again add two cards to the above deck and with just those two cards the deck you see above will "reach" to FNM level. The deck above is perfect for casual entertainment, but things are most probably a bit different at your local shop. You may not be needing the last Pro Tour winner's deck but you will still need something good to be able to compete.

And to make the above deck a good choice for the local FNM, I'm going to add these two cards to the deck:

Solemn Simulacrum Garruk, Primal Hunter

As a matter of fact Garruk was in my mind since the moment I decided to build a deck around Essence of the Wild. Sadly he was out of my budget in my casual deck but now it's time to use his assistance. He's such a perfect way to produce tokens, and when Essence of the Wild is out, things really get wild!

And here's the deck I have in mind:

Semi Competitive Essence of Nature
A Standard deck by Nafiz Erman
Creatures
3 Essence of the Wild
3 Viridian Emissary
3 Mayor of Avabruck 
3 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Jade Mage 
2 Acidic Slime
17 cards

Other Spells
4 Garruk, Primal Hunter
3 Rampant Growth
3 Beast Within
2 Hunter's Insight
2 Parallel Lives
2 Dismember
2 Druidic Satchel 
2 Mortarpod 
20 cards
 
Lands
2 Buried Ruin
21 Forest
23 cards

Garruk, Primal Hunter

 

Sadly I had to remove some good cards from the casual version, such as Asceticism and Mimic Vat, but I had to make room for my Garruk, Primal Hunters and my Solemn Simulacrums.

Solemn Simulacrum A few words about Solemn Simulacrum: In my first deck I was using Rampant Growth and Viridian Emissary to ramp. Now I'm still using those but also added the sad robot to the mix. During testing I saw that I was in need of lots of mana because I was doing lots of different things. I was activating my Jade Mage and my Druidic Satchel, I was casting my Essence of the Wild, I was playing Mortarpod and was killing things with it (each point of damage costs , you know)... So I needed mana.

And that's the reason why I added that many mana ramping spells to the deck.

Finally let's talk a bit about the sideboard too. I have Wall of Tanglecord against Aggro, Ratchet Bomb is against other and faster tokens, Autumn's Veil and Surgical Extraction are how I fight Control and the third Dismember comes in against midrange decks (such as decks with Phyrexian Obliterator).

The above deck is a perfect deck and it's great for all your FNM needs. But there are other possibilities one can use Essence of the Wild in. For example why not try a  deck? That known Township tokens deck can be a base and from there we can surely modify it to become an Essence of the Wild deck. And besides, having Oblivion Ring in the deck will be great. Oh and this as well of course:

Elspeth Tirel

Using Elspeth's second ability and creating three 1/1s is good of course. But how about using the same ability of hers to get six 6/6 tokens instead! Yeah, that would be amazing, wouldn't it?

This is what I'm talking about!

And here's the deck that made that dream come true:

 

I must say that I sadly had to remove Solemn Simulacrum from the deck. As you know, we're now at the "Semi Competitive" section and here I allow myself to add only two expensive cards to my casual deck(s). And for this deck I chose two planeswalkers; Garruk, Primal Hunter and Elspeth Tirel.

I will actually not talk about the above deck in long paragraphs because I think that it is very self-explanatory. The only thing I must mention is that I frequently played either of my planeswalkers on turn three with this deck. That's amazing and not many decks can beat a third turn Elspeth or Garruk. Not to mention that the tokens they produce are 6/6 giants! Seriously, you should really try Essence of the Wild with Elspeth Tirel. That's simply amazing.

Alright, now I will show you a final budget friendly semi competitive Essence of the Wild deck. I know that not everybody owns those planeswalkers so I should also be showing you something playable that doesn't use any planeswalker. And for that, I have the following deck in my mind:

 

Okay, what's going on here?

This three colored deck is a bit different than the previous decks I showed you this far. This time I'm not playing any creatures other than my Solemn Simulacrum and Essence of the Wild. Because this time my plan is to swarm my opponent with my tokens I get with my spells and not creatures.

Midnight Haunting and Moan of the Unhallowed are my mid game token producers. Origin Spellbomb is for early game as well as for card drawing. Then after I reach to enough mana, I start casting my bigger threats; such as White Sun's Zenith and Army of the Damned.

Army of the Damned is already a ridiculous card but did you ever wonder how it would look like when used together with Essence of the Wild?

Well, check this out then:

My opponent has his army of the damned. I have my army of the wild. I win.

Looks cool, doesn't it?

As the deck is a bit slow, I also added a good amount of removal. Oblivion Ring, Day of Judgment, Go for the Throat and Doom Blade are all in the deck. The rest is mana ramping, card drawing and token giant producing!

 

DECK #5 & DECK #6 & DECK #7
Competitive Essence of the Wild Decks

Alright I hope we had fun so far. Because now it's time to go really wild! Now at this final section of the article we will not have any price limitations. This time we are aiming for the best deck we can build with Essence of the Wild.

And here's the first deck I have in mind:

 

I still live the dream of attacking with my Hero of Bladehold and getting FOUR attacking 7/6 bodies with her. That never happened during testing but hey; a man can dream right?! And at least I did play my Timely Reinforcements once and got three 6/6 bodies with it!

This above in my opinion is one of the best things you can do with Essence of the Wild. The deck mana ramps like crazy and then starts threatening the opponent with its planeswalkers and its Essence of the Wild. At first the opponent doesn't realize what I'm doing with Essence of the Wild but only after he sees my planeswalker tokens turning into 6/6 giants, he understands what's going on.

Okay that was one way to use Essence of the Wild competitively. Below I have another one which (ab)uses the Living Weapon tokens:

 

Of course a 4/4 vigilance and lifelink creature for is nice, but I think a 10/10 vigilance and lifelink one for the same price is nicer!

Mortarpod When I first decided to build this deck with Living Weapon cards, I first added Parallel Lives to it as well. In theory, it was going to be perfect to cast one Batterskull and get two 6/6 tokens. But reality of course was something completely different. And after I lost two matches in a row to Wolf Run Ramp (both 0-2 I might add), I sadly said goodbye to Parallel Lives and added Mortarpod. I was already killing their creatures but their Inkmoth Nexus was a problem.

And therefore I decided to add Mortarpod to the deck which now works like a charm. I even killed one Koth of the Hammer with it during testing and those deathtouch Wolf tokens of flipped Garruk were excellent together with Mortarpod (one "shot" takes down a huge titan!).

Okay dear readers, now I'll show you the final Essence of the Wild deck I have in mind. This time it's a three colored deck and surprisingly one of its colors is Blue!

 

Finally! Finally I have my Islands which means card drawing and counterspells. I cannot tell you how I missed them! Since weeks I'm building decks without Islands and since weeks I'm trying to fight Control decks. And now finally I am the Control player! 

So, what I do with this deck is very simple: I mana ramp, draw cards, counter a few spells, kill things and then win with my tokens. Garruk Relentless is one way to get 6/6 tokens out, but most of the time my win condition is White Sun's Zenith.

White Sun's Zenith simply wins games... in a very brutal way, I might add.
Did I mention how absurd White Sun's Zenith is in this deck?
And the best thing is that Essence of the Wild isn't always needed to win the game (that's exactly twenty damage right there, in case it isn't clear).
Garruk is also a good friend of Essence of the Wild.

I think those screenshots tell you everything about the deck.

 

WRAP UP

Okay dear readers, that's all from me for this week. I hope I was successful in showing you many nice and playable decks which you can use your Essence of the Wilds in. It's such a fun card but in the right deck it turns into much more than just fun; it becomes a real beast!

There is, however, one deck I tried but sadly couldn't build properly. And that deck had this one:

Kessig Cagebreakers

So the idea was this: Send tons of stuff to your graveyard and fill it with creatures (Jace, Memory Adept was one of the cards that were helping me with this), get your Kessig Cagebreakers out and the next turn first play your Essence of the Wild and then attack with your Kessig Cagebreakers. Have one or two Parallel Lives out for even more fun. Also add Spider Spawning to the deck as an alternate win condition.

At fist this sounded like a perfect deck,(at least in theory), but sadly reality was something completely different. I will not tell you all the things that went wrong but I can tell you that even in the Casual Room I had difficulties winning with that deck. Most probably it was my fault; I'm sure there is a way to build this deck properly. I just couldn't do it. But who knows, maybe you can!

 

HELLO AND GOOD LUCK
It's A Trap!!

Just because I'm writing these From Casual Room to FNM articles, I am spending a lot of time in the Casual Room these days. And there I realized one thing: Hello and Good Luck is a trap! Every time someone starts the game with that, I find myself facing a netdeck. Every time! I already knew that there were many players in the Casual Room who like to smash people with their Pro Tour caliber decks, but the thing I didn't know was that they were trying to look nice to people before starting the game. 

I don't know how frequently you encounter those players in the Casual Room but as I said, every time someone said Hello and Good Luck to me, I found myself battling either Wolf Run Ramp or Geistblade or something similarly powerful (oh and I'm not complaining by the way; I'm just stating a fact).

So yes, watch out for that Hello and Good Luck. That isn't a good sign. At least my personal experience in the Casual Room tells me so. Surely there must be nice casual players who still say Hello and Good Luck to their opponents in the Casual Room simply because they are nice and polite people, but sadly I never encountered one!

 

NEXT WEEK ON ROGUE PLAY
From Casual Room to FNM, Part IV

Unless someone tells me to stop, I think I will continue writing these articles for a while. And next week I will return back to Black because there are a few things left I want to do with that color. Next week's article isn't mono Black though (well, at least not the whole article), but it will at least start with a Black card.

Curious? Tune in next week then!

And thanks for reading.

See you online
Nafiz Erman, aka Lord Erman

12 Comments

Hey, nice article, I like to by grandpoobah at Tue, 12/06/2011 - 08:37
grandpoobah's picture

Hey, nice article, I like to see how you develop the ideas as you add the more expensive cards. However, you need to do follow up articles with FNM tournaments reports, detailing how the "FNM ready" deck performed. Also, you should take the final "no limitation" deck through a DE and give us at least a summary of how it did. Don't need turn by turn report there--the article is called Casual to FNM not casual to DE after all; however you may have an easier time making videos on MTGO than taking notes to give accurate reports from an FNM.

no plans for your set eval by whiffy at Tue, 12/06/2011 - 10:49
whiffy's picture

no plans for your set eval article with masques? i like those "my xxx" articles

No, because that's a classic by Lord Erman at Tue, 12/06/2011 - 11:16
Lord Erman's picture

No, because that's a classic set and I thought that me talking about a classic set instead of you guys would be... uhm... inappropriate?

I actually played those cards in paper, own most of them still and know all of them, but still didn't want to do a Classic set review.

My 'My Dark Ascension' article will of course come when all the cards are spoiled.

Grandpoobah sadly I don't play paper Magic anymore (at least not at FNM level), so I cannot do a FNM report. Since years I'm investing in the digital cards (heavily I might add) and sadly that means that I cannot buy their paper counterparts (that would require a serious budget).

But why not a TNMO report, right? I will think about that, thanks for the idea.

LE

In that case, in all honesty, by grandpoobah at Tue, 12/06/2011 - 17:26
grandpoobah's picture

In that case, in all honesty, you should change the name of the article. If you are not playing at FNM regularly, you probably shouldn't be writing an article about decks for FNMs. If you're not actually taking these decks from the casual room (well Just for Fun room...) to FNMs it's a little disingenuous. That said, I still like the articles and find them more interesting than the official Building on a Budget articles.

I say "hi gl hf :)" no matter by Paul Leicht at Tue, 12/06/2011 - 15:10
Paul Leicht's picture

I say "hi gl hf :)" no matter what deck I'm playing. :) I try to avoid out and out copying net decks because usually such decks aren't fun for me. That said I'd still say it if I was bringing copied Netdecks. Why not? If they aren't going to have fun that isn't on me, and why shouldn't I wish them luck? Besides I know you aren't concerned about facing unfun decks. You enjoy the game regardless.

Hello and Good Luck! by BlippyTheSlug at Wed, 12/07/2011 - 01:03
BlippyTheSlug's picture

I also say that every game, regardless of what I'm playing. And while I don't "netdeck", I'm reasonably sure several of my decks are similar enough to published decks, but oh well! And I KNOW I don't have any "Pro Tour caliber decks" (yet!). So not EVERY utterance of those words are a trap...

Hello and Good luck! by 2of1 at Wed, 12/07/2011 - 03:31
2of1's picture
5

an awsome article, as usual :)

I always start the match with "Hello and Good Luck".
I think I never netdecked... I usually get ideas to decks from articles like yours but never build them exactly.

Isn't mortarpod 6/7? by protocol_7 at Wed, 12/07/2011 - 11:18
protocol_7's picture

Isn't mortarpod 6/7?

Germs by Marcelo Tiellet at Wed, 12/07/2011 - 11:47
Marcelo Tiellet's picture

The germ is 0/0 will turn to 6/6, so equipped will be 6/7

I love this series, keep them by Leviathan at Wed, 12/07/2011 - 15:09
Leviathan's picture
5

I love this series, keep them coming!

I usually start with a typed good luck or howdy. I get the most interaction from people with howdy for sure.

Thanks everyone for the by Lord Erman at Thu, 12/08/2011 - 17:39
Lord Erman's picture

Thanks everyone for the comments and sorry for not being able to reply sooner.

First, it's good to hear that not everyone in the casual room are using Hello and Good Luck as a trap to "lure" people to their cutthroat Tier-1 decks. I love those decks, I play them myself all the time but the question is this: Do they belong to the casual room? Maybe yes, maybe no. But Paul you're right, I don't mind playing against them. Not even with my totally casual decks.

Mike and 2of1, I'm glad you guys like the series. If what you saw this far was good, then be ready for some awesome stuff coming in the next two weeks. I just finished Part V and working on Part VI now, and I know that you'll like what I'll show you next week and the week after that.

Grandpoobah, I think the name of the article is good in giving the correct message about the article. It basically says all what I'm doing in the article. So I think I'll keep it for a while (until those "..., Part #" part becomes boring). And thank you for the compliment; I think Building on a Budget is a very good series already, and even the fact that you compare my articles to it, is a big compliment for me.

And finally Whiffy, we will have a chat very soon. Oh and yes, it'll be about the format you know best. Not today, not tomorrow but soon.

Thanks again everyone for reading and commenting.

LE

What is this "casual" room by themonkey at Thu, 12/08/2011 - 19:32
themonkey's picture

What is this "casual" room you speak of?

Seriously though, great article. And well timed. I've been working on an Essence of the Wild deck for the past week. I went the Green/Black route and included the cagebreakers and spider spawnings.

Here is my list:
1 Woodland Cemetary
11 Swamp
12 Forest

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Veridian Emissary
4 Ambush Viper
4 Jade Mage
2 Bloodline Keeper
2 Kessig Cagebreaker
4 Essence of the Wild

4 Rampant Growth
4 Moan of the Unhallowed
1 Creeping Renaissance
2 Spider Spawning
1 Army of the Damned

It plays okay. Aside from mana problems (Although the shuffler seems to have a grudge against me lately. I don't know how with 24 lands I can have one 7 round game where I draw 1 land and the next game I draw 10 lands?) I have a 50% or so win rate.

This article gave me a lot of ideas to try. In particular if I step away from the Spider Spawning and Kessig Cagebreakers like you did, I'll be able to replace a lot of the creatures with more useful sorceries and instants.

Thanks!