Lands:
9 Snow-Covered Forest
5 Snow-Covered Island
4 Snow-Covered Swamp
4 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
Creatures:
4 Aurochs Herd
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Mulldrifter
3 Fertilid
Other Spells:
4 Edge of Autumn
4 Remove Soul
4 Strangling Soot
3 Mystical Teachings
3 Skred
2 Grim Harvest
1 Nameless Inversion
1 Sprout Swarm
Sideboard:
4 Essence Warden
4 Festercreep
3 Faerie Trickery
3 Terror
1 Sprout Swarm |
    Greedy
Pyramid Scheme.
Description of deck by its author
(quoted):
Due to lack of interesting new decks, I
thought I'd highlite one of "my own" creations, based of the Polish
Level Grimdrifter decks that were moderatly succesfull at the beginning
of this season. The basic idea of the deck is using Edge, Wayfinder and
Fertilid to accelerate and make sure you don't miss any land drop if you
get to two to three mana. You can use this mana to do rediculous things,
including playing and abbusing Herd and Mulldrifter with Grim Harvest,
having all the answers and threats at your fingertips with Mystical
Teachings, all while keeping mana open for answers like Skred, Soot and
Remove Soul.
The beauty of having this much mana fixing is than
both mana screw and color screw generally don't happen, even when
playing a mana intensive four color deck. You might look at the list and
say, "this deck wants , and turn two and turn three, how does it do
that?", but the deck doesn't want that all actually. You want one of
those three colors turn two to be able to cast Edge or Skred or Remove
Soul, and will then play a Wayfinder turn three to find the missing
color. You just need to practice which land to fetch in the earlygame in
what situation. Fetching lands out of your deck is also a form of card
advantage. Even though it won't topdeck you your winning spell like a
Phyrexian Rager, in the long run, where this deck wants to go, thinning
you deck of lands will increase your topdecks drastically. I have had
multiple times that I was out of lands to fetch and all my topdecks were
bombs.
In comparison to a deck like Grimdrifter, Pyramid
Scheme has a couple of advantages. It can end the game much more quickly
by playing a barrage of Aurochs, hard hitting and difficult to deal
with, or by using its superior mana to create a bunch of saps with
Swarm. It should also be able to outresource all other decks with Grim
Harvest based endgames. There are two main dissadvantages. First of all,
Grimdrifter can start the game with a lot of tempo; turn two Pit Keeper,
turn three Phyrexian Rager and then beating down with them while keeping
the ground clear. Without a two drop two powered beater this is almost
impossible, you can't put pressure enough early enough. The second main
problem is the Storm Control matchup. All discard and maindeck Shamblers
have been removed, which makes the Storm matchup allmost impossible,
even post board. This can be dealt with by puting a number of Ravenous
Rats and Mournwhelk in the boards, complementing the Festercreeps.
I think this deck, in it's current incarnation, can
handle metagames without a lot of Storm Control or Red Deck Wins. Jungle
Storm can be handled with the Festercreeps from the side in combination
with removal for their big guys. White Weenie is though, but beatable if
you can prioritize threats and gum-up the board with threats before your
big beaters and saps start taking over the board. With Wardens and more
removal from the side, the match is far easier. RDW has reach, which
makes it far more difficult to beat. They play early threats and then
finish you off with burn, which you don't have an answer too. Warden is
nice, but usually gets blown away early. Mid-range decks, aggro-control
decks and most control decks (that don't have a bunch of 1/1's as
win-condition) fall to lots of removal on their wincons while ramping up
to giant, hard-to deal threats. |
