4 Birds of Paradise
3 Norin the Wary
4 Primal Forcemage
4 Viashino Sandstalker
3 Avalanche Riders
4 Giant Solifuge
2 Eron the Relentless
1 Lovisa Coldeyes
4 Seal of Fire
4 Rift Bolt
4 Pandemonium
7 Mountain
6 Forest
4 Stomping Ground
4 Karplusan Forest
1 Kher Keep
1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits |
  Norin-demonium.
Description of deck by it's author
(quoted):
As anyone who is stuck in the past would know,
last week was Legendary Creatures of Time Spiral Week. It was a nice
week, to be sure, but there are so many cool Legends in Time Spiral that
I couldn't possibly have covered them all. I wrote about three of them
(Dralnu, Stonebrow, and Mishra), but if I had to cover just one more,
it'd have to be Norin the Wary.
Nicknamed “Nervous Nelly” in playtesting (at least, in
my playtesting), Norin the Wary is a pretty polarizing character. After I
wrote about him a few weeks ago, the responses I received varied from
“He's useless and boring. Stop talking about him!” to “I just named my
first-born son Norin, because I love this card so much. (My son is also a
reluctant adventurer.)” Unfortunately for the haters, I'm going to talk
about Norin a little bit more.
In his feature article Magicthegathering.combos Time
Spiral Edition, Mark Gottlieb wrote about pairing Primal Forcemage with
Pandemonium. Both cards will trigger any time a creature comes into play
on your side, so you just have to make sure that the Forcemage's
pump-effect is applied first to maximize your Pandemonium damage. A number
of readers (including Zac Chute, Geoff Matteson, and Kevin Thompson) wrote
in to tell me how well Norin fits into this equation, since the Wary
Warrior keeps flickering in and out of play. Along similar lines, Loren
“eL'z” mentioned that he uses Norin with Pandemonium in an all-Legend deck
with Day of Destiny.
Now all we have to do is put these things together and
build a deck. Primal Forcemage works best with two kinds of creatures: the
kind you can play as an instant and the kind with haste. The instant
creatures make great surprise blockers, and the haste creatures allow you
to take advantage of the Forcemage's free Giant Growth while on offense.
Nicky Castermans sent me deck that used the Forcemage in exactly this way.
Imagine following up a turn-three Forcemage with a turn-four Pandemonium
and a turn-five Giant Solifuge, Viashino Sandstalker, or Avalanche Riders.
You could put your opponent in quite a hole with such an opening.
Besides the haste guys, Nicky had a couple of other
nifty innovations. The first one is the inclusion of Kher Keep. By itself,
it can churn out an endless number of 0/1 chump-blockers, which isn't bad.
With Primal Forcemage, those powerless Kobolds become 3/4 monsters. Add
Pandemonium and those 3/4 monsters hit the scene shooting frickin'
Lightning Bolts. The second card I was pleased to see in Nicky's deck is
none other than the Balduvian Chieftain herself, Lovisa Coldeyes. It
confused me for a while, but then I realized that, wary though he is,
Norin is in fact a Warrior. So is Viashino Sandstalker. Nicky also used
Raging Goblin, whose Berserker status means that Lovisa pumps him up as
well.
Not long after I heard from Nicky, Chris Martin wrote to
tell me that he took a Norin + Pandemonium deck to Friday Night Magic …
and won! Admittedly, the deck isn't really a Norin the Wary deck (Chris
only played two copies of the Legend), but it still uses Norin to great
effect. Chris built his deck with many of the same critters Nicky did
(Avalanche Riders, Giant Solifuge, Viashino Sandstalker), but he added
Homelands “favourite” Eron the Relentless to the mix and replaced some of
the weaker creatures (Raging Goblin) with more burn. Here's what you'd get
when you combined Nicky's deck and Chris's deck. Feel free to tweak it and
make it your own.
Fans of Standard Tribal Wars take heed. You know what,
keep the heed and take notice. While I haven't actually built a Warrior
deck myself, Lovisa Coldeyes, Pandemonium, Norin the Wary, and Viashino
Sandstalker seem like they'd form the nucleus of a fun deck. Just sign a
few Goblins as free agents to fill out the roster, and you'll be set. |
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