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27-03-2001

Clearing Even More Land

Last time I left you with the combo of Scouting Trek and Clear the Land, and wondering what to do with it. After all, what requires huge amounts of Mana? Well, obviously there are some artifacts out there that could do with a mana or eight.

In Extended there is the Phoenix Deck, with Forbids etc. Thinking about Extended got me thinking about Zur's Wierding, one of those rares that begs to be broken in some way shape or form. Now obviously the effect is very powerful, and is balanced by the symmetry of the effect. Naturally to break it then requires breaking the symmetry. There are three ways to do this:

1) Play with life gain
Obviously the way this works is that unless they have the answer in hand right now, they will never draw the answer, and must defeat you with what they have right now, though this falls to the symmetrical problem in that you need to find and play the life gain before playing the Zur's Weirding.

2) Play with recursion (Squee, Hammer, Phoenix)
This works because you don't care if they make you discard the card you just drew, if it has some way of bringing itself back.

3) Don't draw cards, put them into your hand instead.
Necro does this, but already has a heavy life commitment. There are a variety of strange Green rares that have done this; the one that springs first to mind is Abundance. This has much the same problem as playing life gain, in that you have to have it first.

What about Type 2 then? Amazingly enough Zur's Weirding is legal in Type 2, could it be abused there? Obviously the Hammer of Bogardens went straight in, and after a bit of tweaking, the Zur's Weirding went straight back out again, leaving this Red/Green pile:

4 Scouting Trek

4 Clear the Land

4 Harrow

4 Hammer of Bogardan

4 Chimeric Idol

1 Thicket Elemental

3 Worldly Tutors

4 Shivan Wurm

Obviously what you want to do is get a Thicket Elemental and then 'oath' out the rest of the fat by bringing out an Elemental Wurm and then being 'forced' to return the Thicket Elemental to your hand, thereby alternating Thicket Elemental/Wurm. Chimeric Idols don't get in the way of this because they are not creatures. Originally there were four Thicket Elementals, but of course you don't want to run into one once the combo is going. It might be better though to replace three of the Thicket Elementals with Worldly Tutors, since one Thicket Elemental is all you want once the combo has started.

You could also include Nesting Wurms, in which case you would want to add another Thicket Elemental, the second one being for after you hit the first Nesting Wurm. The Nesting and Shivan Wurms provide some serious beatdown, both having trample, and the Nesting Wurms give you something to do with all the mana that Scouting Trek and Clear the Land are going to give you.

Blue was originally in for Mystic Tutor and Zur's Weirding. With Mystic Tutor not only do you have faster access to the combo, but you could include the following Silver Bullets: Wrath of God, Armageddon, and Shatterstorm. Or just Jokulhaups, which does all of the above. Also having cleared the land once, you should have enough mana to be able to do it again and Jokulhaups on the same turn. Tranquility and Hurricane/Earthquake/Hammer of Bogardan should be on this list as well.

White could be included for Wrath of God or Armageddon, if you had enough mana (ie for the second Scouting Trek/Clear the Land) you could Armageddon and have enough mana left in your pool to play Clear the Land in the same turn, leaving you with six lands and the opponent with none.

Black would give you access to more Graveyard Recursion, or hand disruption. Scandalmonger would actually be useful for once. Of course then you need a third Thicket Elemental if you want to get all your Wurms.

Let's leave those concerns to the sideboard.

4 Scouting Trek
4 Clear the Land
3 Harrow
4 Hammer of Bogardan
4 Chimeric Idol
4 Worldly Tutor
2 Thicket Elemental
4 Nesting Wurm
4 Shivan Wurm
18 Forest
9 Mountain

Note that the above list without silver bullets contains 35 cards worth of library thinning, which is what might possibly save it from being a complete pile. I cut down the number of Harrows and boosted the number of lands when I saw that there was 28 cards worth of land thinning and only 26 lands! Now there are 27 lands and 26 cards worth of land thinning.

That last sentence makes me want to add in Jolrael, Mistress of Beasts. Because of the Fatness Generating Engine, it only needs one Jolrael, and possibly another Thicket Elemental.

And land, we need more land muahahahaha *ahem* sorry, time to switch to decaf I think.

Rick
(AWOL from Paradise)

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