Lands:
17 Forest
4 Swamp
4 Terramorphic Expanse
Creatures:
4 Bramblewood Paragon
3 Canker Abomination
2 Dauntless Dourbark
1 Deity of Scars
3 Drumhunter
2 Rhys the Redeemed
3 Scuzzback Marauders
2 Wren's Run Packmaster
Other Spells:
4 Hunting Triad
3 Mighty Emergence
4 Nameless Inversion
4 Ooze Garden |
  Ooze
the Beatdown?
Description of deck by its author
(quoted):
Mighty Emergence, I'll admit, didn't really
jump out from the spoiler when I was combing it for cards to discuss for
Naya Week, which, by the way, we're in the middle of in case you didn't
know. It seems a bit redundant, in the sense that when you play a fat
creature, two +1/+1 counters don't make that much of a difference
because, well, it's a fat creature. It's going to be big any way you
slice it. For those reasons, I dub it a reject uncommon, and although
it's a bit restrictive, it's interesting and fun enough to qualify as a
build-around-me card.
I was electronically approached by Tim Nyberg a couple
of weeks ago in an email, in which he came up with a cool combo with
Mighty Emergence but was worried that someone else had come up with it
before him. No worries, Tim, I heard it from you first! In Tim's words,
"Ooze Garden + Mighty Emergence + (any creature with stats 5/x). Play
your creature, it gets +2/+2, and is now a 7/x. Sacrifice to Ooze
Garden, replace with a 7/7 creature that gets +2/+2 (counters) and is
now 9/9." An engine that makes the big bigger? Sign me up! Tim also
mentions that trample would be a nice touch to your beefy Oozes, so
Bramblewood Paragon gets the start. With the Paragon and Emergence in
play, any 5-power Warrior you play will get three +1/+1 counters!
Two interesting Warriors that I wanted to point out as
good complements to Ooze Garden are Wren's Run Packmaster and Rhys the
Redeemed. Firstly, the Packmaster has long been overshadowed by its
fellow Wren's Run clan member, the Vanquisher, and it was time for the
5/5's due. Not only is it an automatic Mighty Emergence trigger, but it
can repeatedly spawn Wolves, which become endless fodder for the Ooze
Garden. The same can be said for Rhys's first ability, but the Redeemed
one's second ability excites me even more because it allows the
duplication of all the Ooze tokens you've already made. Assuming all
these tokens had a power of 5 or greater when the pseudo Doubling Season
hit, they'd all get a couple +1/+1 counters and thus trample from the
Bramblewood Paragon!
One of the coolest interactions, though, is that from
Nameless Inversion. On the surface, yes, it's great removal, but it's a
sweet (although one-shot) combo with Ooze Garden. Let's say you've got
lots of mana at your disposal, Nameless Inversion in hand, and Ooze
Garden and a 5/5 Ooze token in play. If you cast the Inversion on the
Ooze, it becomes a creature that is blatantly not an Ooze any longer,
because of the creature type deletion from the Inversion. Meaning, you
can then sacrifice the now 8/2 Nothing to the Ooze Garden and wind up
with a bigger Ooze. And if Mighty Emergence is in play, it becomes even
biggerer. This trick is really, really fun to pull off to clinch the
last couple of damage points.
The Treefolk duo of Canker Abomination and Dauntless
Dourbark are both cheap for 5-power oaks. When played the turn after a
Mighty Emergence, a Canker won't be so sore from -1/-1 counters. Hunting
Triad proved to be the glue that held the deck together, both by making
lots of juicy Elf Warrior tokens, and by boosting a creature to Mighty
levels. I also wanted to add Drumhunter in the spirit of Naya week for
some good old card drawing based on creature power.
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