I could probably make a huge joke here about how the guy doing the 'Land' series decided to do something non-land for Land Week, but I'm sure you can get the irony all on your lonesome. My editors also seemed to find the whole idea amusing as well. Since I hadn't covered lands that help a specific creature type yet in the "Lands: More Than Mana" series, I figured it'd be a nice addition to this, our Land Week. So without further ado, here are some decks based around lands that help specific Tribes.

Oh good lords, Tribal Elephants? Why is it I picked this theme again? If you actually happen to possess this old gem of a card, I'm sure you'd appreciate even more insight into its glorious uses. Quite frankly, the problem with running an Elephant deck is that almost all your worthwhile creatures start at high mana costs and only increase from there; it’s not exactly a lightweight tribe. You'll need a way to either slow down your opponents’ strategies or speed up your own if this is going to be a really good deck. Preferably, you'd like to acheive both these goals at the same time.

The best way to slow them down is, conveniently enough for our theme, an enchantment called Elephant Grass. I'd have to say from the look of the card; the idea is that the damn grass is so thick, only an elephant could move through it easily! Suffice it to say, such a quick enchantment, even with its cumulative upkeep, is exactly the sort of thing you need to buy time with this deck. Just to make doubly sure your opponents slow down, we'll throw a few Tangle in as well. Just like fog, but even better if you ask me. Tangle shuts down two combat phases, after all.

Now that we've slowed them down, we need to speed ourselves up as much as possible. For this role, I'm looking at two very fast enchantments: Wild growth and Gaea's touch. While Wild Growth essentially acts as an extra forest, Gaea's touch lets you lay an extra forest every turn AND can later be sacrificed to add back the two mana you spent to play it in the first place. It's actually a very nice accelerant in a mono green deck like this. Heck, if I'm going to play a deck with an old land card, then I'm going to go all out and use LOTS of old cards!

Now for the real beef of this deck, and man, is there a lot of it! Our smallest creature option is Rogue Elephant, but I don't think this is the sort of deck worth playing it in, as it will simply make a mess of your effort to continuously accelerate into more and more elephants on the board. However, at three mana, we get both Trained Armadon as well as Wooly Mammoths, which are both solid – if not exactly terrifying – creatures. A jump up to four mana and suddenly we find ourselves in pachyderm heaven, with Elephants coming out of the woodwork. Bull elephant is not only an extremely efficient four mana 4/4 creature, but its drawback means absolutely nothing if you have a Gaea's Touch in play, since you can simply drop two lands either the same turn (if you haven't played one yet) or the turn after you play the Bull.

The four mana hit parade continues with the awesome Stronghold common, Endangered Armadon. In a deck like this with zero small creatures, this is essentially an Ernham Djin with no drawback whatsoever. Follow this up with the Tempest rare Crazed armadon, which can destroy itself at end of turn for the return effect of gaining +3/+0 and trample until end of turn. Since this cost specifically says "destroy" and not "sacrifice", you are allowed to use a certain land card to regenerate this creature every turn. So, once it's down, for the cost of two land every turn (Elephant Graveyard and a forest), you have a 6/3 trampler every turn, that only costs four mana initially. Not a bad deal over all.

((errata etc double checked: if it didnt allow regeneration, it would most likely say so. in fact, the current wording of this card is almost exactly the same as when first printed. You cannot regenerate from a 'sacrifice this: do X' style affect, but if the affect simply says destroy, yes))

And finally, batting on the clean up crew, we have a real late game terror of a card, Metamorphic Wurm. I'm not sure why this creature’s types are wurm AND elephant, but I'm certainly not going to argue with a Threshold 7/7 for five mana. It's probably not something you want four of, but just a couple to draw late game will give you quality threats to end the game with.

If you’re short Elephant Graveyards, might I happily recommend either of two green cards that let you dig any land you want out of your deck? Sylvan Scrying lets you simply search a land card of your choice out of your library and into your hand at sorcery speed, for 1G. For even more weirdness, go for a few Crop Rotation's. These only cost G, but require you to sacrifice a land as part of their casting cost. However, they are also instant speed, allowing you to regenerate elephants when your opponent thinks it wouldn't be possible.

It pumps goblins, cannot be countered, and still taps for mana. Considering goblins are probably the most offensive tribe in existence and then some, this deck should really be a no-brainer. A creature curve flatter then Nebraska's landscape, with a small amount of Burn spells for assistance.

Yes, it’s a incredibly unsubtle deck. Rush, rush, burn a blocker, rush, kill. Or, at least, that’s the PLAN. Simple aggro decks have a way of falling apart when you least expect it (or when your opponent plays White in any form), so maybe something a little more subtle is in order. Or you could just pour some money into this one. Fetch lands to thin out the mountains (Wooded Foothills, Bloodstained Mire), back up the burn with Char, or even add Goblin Warchief and Goblin Piledriver for more Gobbo-centric rush action. Considering you’re running 32 goblins, a few goblin ringleader's couldn't hurt either.

For something completely different, try this weird extended creation that showed up recently on a Pro Tour event:

It's aggro-combo, and except for the Lands, not insanely expensive either. How does it work? Well, at heart it’s a Goblin Rush deck. You have all the classic heavy hitters. Now add a ton of mana producing cards, a set of Empty the Warrens and some Fecundity and you have a serious combination engine as backup. Whenever a creature goes to your graveyard, you get to draw a card. Yes, even the tokens (tokens exist in the graveyard just long enough to set off state based affects like Fecundity). So if you get a Skirk Prospector and a Fecundity, you can sacrifice any goblin for a Red mana and a card draw.

Or, if you cast a Mogg War Marshall, it’s even more fun! And if you don't draw the combination? Don’t worry, it’s still a damn fast Goblin deck.

It untaps elves. If you thought I was going to do anything other then an "ElfBall" deck, you are sadly mistaken!

This is the perfect example of the sort of deck you want to break in half with this card. First you need a good source of Elf based mana for the deck to abuse. Then it'd probably be for the best to focus on as many synergistic elves as you can. I don't know, something like.... this:

Rush rush rush is your early game here. Late game you try to set up a Wirewood Channeler and some untap affects with either a Nomadic Elf or your lone mountain so you can hurl a game-winning fireball. Pretty simple really. Sprouting Vines does a great job of thinning, especially with so many cheap spells to storm it up with, and Enshrined Memories sucks Elves out of the deck into your hand, where you can then easily get them into play where they do the most good. Sylvan Scrying, of course, plays a key role in thinning your deck and finding your required 'special' lands.

Some notes: Birchlore Rangers lets you tap elves for mana the turn they come into play. This makes your turn 2-3 explosive in the extreme. Sprouting Vines is instant speed, never forget that. If you find yourself playing against a deck that crams lots of spells into its turns, considering waiting for their end of turn step or just before, then cast it to take advantage of their storm count. And do not worry about having only the one Mountain. Besides the Mountain and your Channeler, you also can use Birchlore Rangers or Nomadic Elf for your Red mana to Fireball with.

You could easily turn this into just a straight out rush deck by just changing a few cards. Just throw in some combination of Overrun, Tribal Forcemage and Gempalm Strider. You'll probably want to take out the Mountain, Scrying's, Lodges etc to make room for those and more one cost or two cost elves.

And because the site owner told me to do it.... I present to you a *shudder* Swarmyard deck. It's even going to be... wait for it.... Standard Legal!

Why on earth did I pick this theme, again? Why am I doing a deck based around a Land card that only assists Rats, Spiders, Insects and Squirrels? Well, this is a casual Magic site, so I suppose I'll go with the site owners wishes. This time. [Thanks.  ~Streetz~]

Okay, this isn't too bad yet. There seems to be a fair mix of Rat, Spider, and Insect creatures to abuse. Sadly though, no Squirrels for you in Standard. What a shame that is. So let’s take a quick look at the sort of resources a deck full of Spiders, Insects, and Rats gives us.

Standard Legal Spiders gives us seven bodies, all green. Casting costs start at two with aquastrand spider, and we also have a three cost frostweb spider, but those are the only cheap spiders in the curve. At four mana we gain the ages old Giant Spider and the in-every-way-superior Penumbra Spider. The curve stops at five with Steam Spitter, at least in my mind. He's really the last cheap, easy to find and useable spider. Silklash spider is a Rare that finds use in constructed deck sideboards, and Goliath Spider, as a friend pointed out, isn't really a spider. It’s a Scaled Wurm who will hang around for one turn and then go crashing into your opponent, no longer playing defense.

I really think that Frostweb and Penumbra are the good cards for this deck, as Swarmyard makes them both into very hard to kill creatures. With a Swarmyard active to regenerate, Frostweb can block anything, and if it blocks a flier, you’re going to start getting a very BIG spider very quickly. By all means, encourage your opponent to swing into the Frostweb when at all possible! And as for the Penumbra spider, well, it's ridiculously hard to kill as it is. But if it can regenerate as well as copy itself when it actually does die, it makes for one superb blocker. Not only do they have to kill it twice, but also they have to find two ways to kill it that disallow regeneration.

Looking into the Insect side of the card pool doesn't show as much promise at first. Brass Gnat, Plague Beetle, Jhoira's Timebug and Swamp Mosquito really do not add anything to this deck in my opinion. Nantuko Husk is a possibility, but he really wants to be in a deck that cranks out Saproling tokens like there's no tomorrow, so I think he's a pass as well. However, Nantuko Shaman shows a little promise. It's not only a better creature than Husk in a straight cost for power/toughness sense, but it can also be suspended to draw you an extra card now and then. Giant Cockroach might be used if you need an okay body to simply fill in deck slots, but the real treasure that pops out at me for the four mana slot is Mortipede. Mortipede is a nasty decoy to suck off your opponents blockers, and hopefully kill a few in the process. The one Toughness isn't too bad a drawback with a Swarmyard in play as well.

By all means, if you have Graveshell Scarab, Giant Solifuge and Gleancrawler that you’re not using for anything else, throw them in here. They’re great insects but not everyone's going to have a bunch just laying around.

Moving on, we come to the Rats portion of the deck. There's not a whole lot of cards in the pool to take advantage of. Ravenous Rats will give you a cheap drop that can make your opponent discard, but it really doesn’t fit too well into the deck’s overall theme. Razortooth Rats lets you have a little bit of evasion, and the one Toughness is, again, offset by the presence of swarmyard. Swarm of Rats just isn't impressive with only twelve rats in the deck. However....

If you’re willing to add Red, and fiddle a lot with your mana base, you gain two more rats, as well as a possible insect in Barbed Shocker. Having Red also makes another spider, Steam Spitter more viable as well. But can we cram all this in and still have a good deck? Let’s find out.

Last Gasp and Dark Banishing give you excellent removal options to help open holes in the opposing defense or simply kill off an annoying creature that you wouldn't normally be able to deal with effectively. Wildsize is a bit expensive, but it’s hard to argue with three affects on the same card for three mana at instant speed. You’re not fast enough to be a real aggressive Aggro deck, so you’re forced into playing Aggro Control and trying to wear them down with your durable (thanks to Swarmyard) creatures.

And there we have it, some Tribal boosted decks with Synergistic lands. Hopefully I've shown you some things today that got you thinking about your own creations along these lines. As always, live and learn.

Greyfell

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.
Find other articles by this author here.
Find other articles from this series here.

[ Back ] [ Home ] [ Up ] [ Next ]

Articles Spotlights from 2007:
Lorwyn Theme Week Intro & Schedule of Events
Blink And Bounce: Timing is Key
Going Blind: XCB Metagaming - A Prolonged Conclusion.
The Science of Magic: Genetic Engineering, Part Two.
Shifting Lineaments: Casual Metagaming (Pt. 2).
The Dungeon Of Malefict: Pure Evil!
Land Week Introduction & Schedule.
Combofusion: Legends Timeshifted.
One Card to Rule Them All: Coastal Piracy
Irrational Love: Chimeras. The Lego's of Magic.