A Deck for All of Us

I'm not generally one for competitive Magic. Don't get me wrong - I love to draft and play in tournaments, and even when I'm not, I still play to win. "In it to win it." I just don't have the free time I used to have when I was young and single. I've got fond memories of playing in eight-man drafts, even though I rarely won. I remember winning my first constructed tournament playing with Rebels featuring Gaea's Cradle and Masitcore. But those are dreams long gone. Now I hop onto MTGO for a half-hour to an hour at a time, picking up a few casual games or finding myself at a two-headed table in the multiplayer room.

A couple of weeks ago, in a daily phone conversation with Basic Land, this new "mono green aggro" deck was brought up. He said it was lightning fast and dirt cheap compared to some of the other Standard decks going around. He fired off names of a few of the cards in the deck and I realized I had most of those cards - and could get the rest for pretty cheap. So I went home, logged on MTGO, and started piecing the deck together. I had some help from jamuraa and finally ended up with something that looked pretty decent:

The deck is pretty cheap in terms of both money and casting cost. Only four spells at five casting cost and eight at four casting cost, the rest three or cheaper. For the most part, the individual cards are all under one dollar at MTGO Traders. At the time I wrote this article, Groundbreaker, at $1.26, was the only card over a dollar. So what Mono Green Aggro (MGA) does, if I understand it correctly, is overwhelm the opponent using creatures with haste and/or trample and a timely Stonewood Invocation. The real heart of the deck is Primal Forcemage. Groundbreaker's trample enables the +3/+3 to go straight to the opponent. The same works for Timbermare. Because everything else is tapped, Primal Forcmage is essentially hitting for an additional 3 damage. With two in play, things get really crazy. The deck really utilizes its mana production. It's meant to go all out every turn and the 1/1's that add  mana help speed this process. Scryb Ranger's flash ability allows him some nifty combat tricks for a surprise blocker. On your opponent's turn, if they attack into your tapped creatures, you can flash the Ranger into play, bounce a Forest, untap a blocker and usually take out the attacker. He also is in for Spectral Force so that you can untap and attack repeatedly for eight points of trample damage.

Not My Style

Pretty straightfoward, huh? This was the first (and obviously very rough) draft of the deck. I threw it together and took it to the tourney practice room without even the merest hint of a sideboard. Before I get too far into how it played, I think it's important to mention that "aggro" is not really my style. The term "aggro" refers to a deck style that tries to win as quickly as possible, focusing primarily on small, efficient creatures and spells that deal damage directly to the opponent. Personally, I find myself leaning towards the "combo" end of the spectrum. I like setting up and going off in one turn. I like playing a spell with storm and watching all those copies appear on the stack. I like bringing out really big creatures for really cheap. So to find myself behind the wheel of a deck which plays very differently from what I'm used to was a bit of a surprise. As such, I'm sure I have made and will continue to make terrible game play decisions with this deck. But the more I play, the more I learn what to do and when to do it. And to be honest, it's quite fun running at full-speed and seeing if your opponent can weather the storm or if he dies trying.

Initial Results

The first dozen games I played with the deck revealed some major flaws. I generally won the first game and lost the second two. This could have had something to do with my lack of knowledge about any of the decks I was playing against and/or the lack of a sideboard. I found that the deck burned out quickly. I would get a few creatures on the board, swing for big and then stop dead in my tracks. I also knew there were too many lands in it from the beginning, and this could have played a significant role in jamming things up. Mid-game often became a luck draw contest. If the top card of my deck was a Forest, Boreal Druid or Llanowar Elves, I lost. If it was anything else, I was looking pretty good.

Stonewood Invocation is a real enigma. I don't know if I love it or hate it. Sometimes I feel like it's the most overcasted, do-nothing card in the game. At other times I feel like it's so incredible I've just got to have four in the deck. Being split second is really handy. Giving a creature shroud really plays the role of a counter spell and can save it from Shriekmaw - a card I have encountered a lot. The deck invests so much in its creatures that it's important to be able to protect them or replace them easily. Since replacing them (via drawing cards) isn't really an option, you've got to protect your investment if you're unable to win the game. The problem with Invocation is that it has a relatively high casting cost and often you can't play it when you need to. For example, it takes seven mana to play Stonewood Invocation on a Groundbreaker. Granted, this allows you to attack for 12 points of trample damage, but it's an ideal situation, one that I have come across very rarely. To use the Invocation on an opponent's turn is even worse as the deck is designed to use all of its available mana on each turn. I believe it's in the deck for the kill, which is frustrating to me when my creatures are getting hammered and I've got an uncastable solution in my hand.

Propositions

The deck has trouble keeping up its own frenetic pace. In making some changes, I took a look at some cards that could help.

First, a card that a lot of people run in this deck: Horizon Canopy. It's in as a land so it doesn't occupy any other slots in the deck which should be devoted to creatures. It can be sacked after it's use has expired for an additional card. My problem with this card is that it's pretty pricey. Since it's a popular Standard card, we can expect the price to drop significantly in a few months. I just have trouble investing in a card like this. Maybe that's why I don't normally play Standard.

There's another card that might help with the mid-game dead draw problem: Ohran Viper. Now, Necro, you just got done smack talking high-priced Standard cards and you're going to suggest another one? One even more expensive? Yes, well, I already own four copies of this particular gem so I might as well try and make use of him. I bought him a few weeks ago when he was around $8. Looks like he's gone up in price since then - ouch - but he's an amazing card. Head-to-head he kills Tarmogoyf because of his deathly touch. He doesn't have haste or trample but if he stings you draw, which could be much more useful in certain situations.

Another card that my initial deck left out was Pendelhaven. This isn't solving any of the problems that I was experiencing in the initial run, but it does power up twelve of the creatures in the deck. It's good enough to include, I just missed it the first time around.

The final task is to create a working sideboard. I still didn't really know what was out there in terms of opposing decks so I didn't know what to prepare for. I knew Pithing Needle was a good sideboard card, in general, but other than that I was lost. So I turned to ozzymage for some guidance. His suggestions included Eyes of the Wisent, Quagnoth, and Seal of Primordium. I also considered Loxodon Warhammer (but didn't know how well it would do) and Mirri, Cat Warrior for the mirror match (kidding).

Adjustments

I dropped the land count down to twenty two. With eight creatures casting cost green (and each adding one mana) twenty four land was a bit much. I did end up taking the Stonewood Invocation count down to three, as well as the Spectral Force. Once again, I felt that Stonewood Invocation played too significant a role to be taken out altogether. At the same time, I couldn't deny that there were times where I'd reach a dead state with one or more useless Invocations in hand. To avoid that, I dropped down to three. We'll see how it plays out. I also felt that Spectral Force was an incredible creature but that at five mana it was too expensive for the deck. I dropped it to three as well and will watch the results. The four Ohran Vipers replaced two Forests and the aforementioned cards.

All I can do at this point is play it out. I'll return next week with some results on how the deck fared. Hopefully by that point I'll have a good idea of what the Standard metagame is like in the MTGO Tourney Practice room. I'm interested to see how well Ohran Viper does and what roles he plays in the deck. It could be that he's better off in the sideboard or out of the deck, altogether. Time will tell.

If you have comments on MGA featuring Primal Forcemage, I'd love to hear them. Also, if you'd like to see how your Standard deck of choice stacks up against that listed above, look me up on MTGO.

Until next time.