Lands:
24 Plains
Creatures:
4 Soul Warden
4 Squall Drifter
4 Whitemane Lion
4 Cloudchaser Kestrel
4 Icatian Crier
3 Celestial Crusader
2 Ghost Tactician
4 Stormfront Riders
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
Other Spells:
4 Locket of Yesterdays
2 Mantle of Leadership |
 Mane-o'-War.
Description of deck by it's author
(quoted):
As I'm sure I've said a kazillion times, one
of my favourite cards (of all time!) is Man-o'-War from Visions. (How a
jellyfish can stuff a dragon back into the aether from whence it came is
a question best left to philosophers and theologians.) I've used this
card a ton, not only as a great "tempo" creature in aggressive decks,
but also as a key cog in decks that are built to abuse the
comes-into-play abilities of creatures like Scrivener (returning Memory
Lapse) and Auramancer (returning Standstill).
Well, Johnnies, you can forget about Man-o'-War now.
Heavy metal is dead. Besides, there's a hep new cat in town and I ain't
lyin'. Robby Bullis (a.k.a. Redland Jack), who seems to be producing as
many decks for my column as I am, sent me a very interesting deck built
around Whitemane Lion and its unlikely sidekick, Locket of Yesterdays.
With a Lion in the graveyard (put there, perhaps, by an Icatian Crier),
and a Locket in play, you can play a second Lion for W and have it bounce
itself. Admittedly, this will get you nowhere fast (although bouncing is
fun, just ask my personal cheques). To get, uh, somewhere slow, all you
have to do is add Stormfront Riders which will let you make a Soldier
token for each W you spend. With Soul Warden in play, you can gain one
life for every W spent, and any creature enchanted with Mantle of
Leadership will gain +2/+2.
Robby's version was more focussed on producing token
creatures, with both Jötun Owl Keeper and Twilight Drover joining Icatian
Crier and Stormfront Riders to pump out little white men. He also used
single copies of Leyline of the Meek, Gauntlet of Power, and Hour of
Reckoning, as well as a few copies of Sky Hussar (who can be a
card-drawing machine in the presence of all those tokens). Those are all
fine cards and complement the deck's strategy, but I wanted to up the
creature count (Celestial Crusader and Crovax, Ascendent Hero perform
similar functions). As always, feel free to build the deck any way you see
fit. There are certainly many options. Stonecloaker, Aven Riftwatcher,
Conclave Phalanx, Jedit's Dragoons, Belfry Spirit, and Tivadar of Thorn
are all worth consideration. That's without leaving white! Red gives you,
among other things, Pandemonium. The colour I'd most like to add would be
green, which gives you Congregation at Dawn (to fetch Whitemane Lion),
Loxodon Hierarch, Primordial Sage, Herd Gnarr, Juniper Order Ranger, and
some other cards that I'll be writing about in a future column. |
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