4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Reclaim
4 Summer Bloom
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Kodama's Reach
4 Reap and Sow
4 Creeping Mold
4 Wildfire
2 Arcane Spyglass
14 Forest
4 Mountain
4 Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai
4 Stalking Stones |
  Lands
Gone Wild.
Description of deck by its author (quoted):
This deck is essentially a Green/Red control
deck. Wildfire is there to do what Wildfire does best: Sweep the board
of creatures and cripple an opponent's land base. Creeping Mold and Reap
and Sow help out the land destruction theme, although just as often the
Mold kills a non-land or Reap fetches a nonbasic land for me. Just as
with my original idea, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Kodama's Reach, and Summer
Bloom are there to speed up my land base. Some of the newer bits are
Stalking Stones and Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai, which are there to
give me creatures after a big Wildfire. Indeed the lands are my only
real win condition.
Lands? Win condition? Crucible of Worlds has muscled its
way into the feature card slot alongside Wildfire. With a Crucible on the
table, I can recover from Wildfire much easier than my opponent, play two
Gods' Eyes turn after turn to give me tokens, make my Stalking Stones nigh
indestructible, and turn Arcane Spyglass into a card-drawing (or
token-creating) machine. Reclaim mostly helps me play Wildfire or Creeping
Mold a second time, or just nabs a lost Crucible.
No game ends quickly with this deck. Usually I'll win by
concession when my opponent has no land on the table and I'm rebuilding
quickly (try playing Summer Bloom with Crucible of Worlds on the table
after a Wildfire... great fun!). When I'm forced to earn my win, I do so
via 3/3 lands and a steady stream of 1/1 Spirit tokens. I've been called
"crazy," "warped," and "demented" by spectators for creating this deck,
but even my opponents can't help but smile when the deck is working. There
are lots of small interactions between the cards that make everything hang
together well.
What the deck loses from Mirrodin... Ouch.
Unfortunately, most of the quirky cards that made the deck fun are gone.
Crucible of Worlds is the biggie, of course. It's no fun losing a feature
card from a deck, especially one with a unique effect. Stalking Stones was
one of the only ways for me to actually kill an opponent. Arcane Spyglass
is also a surprisingly big loss for the deck, since it not only helped
muscle through the deck via card-drawing but also helped speed along my
winning through Gods' Eye tokens. Reap and Sow isn't a huge loss, frankly,
although searching for a Stalking Stones or Gods' Eye while killing an
opposing land always tasted sweet.
So, I'm left with Wildfire, terrific mana-acceleration,
Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai, and Creeping Mold. Is this enough of a
skeleton to build around?
What the deck gains from Ravnica... I see three viable
rare replacements to partner with Wildfire for an interesting deck. The
obvious (read: expensive) one is Vinelasher Kudzu, which will get huge in
a deck like mine and will almost certainly survive a Wildfire. I think a
Kudzu-Wildfire deck makes loads of sense. Hunted Troll is another idea,
though it might backfire. The good news is that the Troll survives
Wildfire whereas the Faerie tokens do not. If I went the Hunted Troll
route, I think Pyroclasm would almost certainly show up in my deck.
A card that is much more in line with my original plan,
however, is Life from the Loam. It isn't a perfect substitute for Crucible
of Worlds, but it's along the same trajectory. Couple this with Reclaim
and Recollect, and I think I may have something. The Gods' Eye plan is
still there, along with the quick recovery from Wildfire. The more I think
about it, the more enamored with Life from the Loam I become. The deck
remains a slow, grind-it-out-with-land control deck with a lot of the same
interactions.
Lots of cards from Ravnica make sense in the deck.
Carven Caryatid survives Wildfire and gives some much needed defense, for
example. Civic Wayfinder and Barbarian Riftcutter make a nice one-two
punch, especially if the deck is going to stock up on graveyard
reanimation. Probably my favorite addition beyond Life from the Loam is
Stoneshaker Shaman, which seems flat-out terrific for a deck like mine.
Yes, these creatures die to Wildfire, but then again my new plan would
rely heavily on regrowing my graveyard.
The deck needs a win condition to replace Stalking
Stones, whether I use more fragile creatures or not. If Vinelasher Kudzu
and Hunted Troll aren't it, I think Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree is an
excellent idea. Unlike the previous deck, splashing an off-color is easy
given all of my Green mana-fixers. I choose Vitu-Ghazi over Svogthos, the
Restless Tomb simply because I don't think many creatures are likely to
end up in my graveyard and/or stay there.
The Verdict... Although the deck has lost some key
ingredients, I think enough options exist in Ravnica to breathe new life
into my land-based Wildfire deck. It won't play exactly the same, of
course, but with Life from the Loam I can imagine the deck to be a fair
reproduction. I'll at least try it in my idle time and get back to you
with the results. |
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