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19-09-2000
 Update to The Lean Mean Green Machine
You may remember this deck, its the one where you try to cast as much free stuff as you possibly can. Everything has an alternate casting cost of G or 0 (and discard something).
Surprisingly, Prophecy and Nemesis have been kind. We are now faced with an embarrassment of riches. Prophecy is everyone's opportunity to become a sensitive new age guy, or SNAG for short. This should do wonders for the mirror matchup or versus any other creature based beatdown.
Nemesis gives us the awesome power of fading and everyone's favourite green creature ... Blastoderm? ****BZZZT**** Wrong! No, we want the Skyshroud Ridgeback. It rounds out nicely our collection of 2 power for 1 mana critters. Animate Land may help put over that finishing touch and increase the consistency of the turn 4 kill. Note: I haven't tested with this, but it should improve the deck's performance in the goldfish test, and it gives you tricks for the mirror match or against Sligh or Slivers for instance.
Control decks appear to be relying on a couple of artifacts to slow us down. One is of course the Powder Keg, which can be ... embarrassing to say the least. But even more decks seem to run Masticore, particularly green decks who have the mana to make it truly abusive. Now of course what everyone's going to be doing is playing with Masticores and hoping to get one down and ping away your lovely army. The answer to this is of course ... Mossdog. No, really. Go on, have a look at the card! :-) But wait! Send no money now!
The broken-ness of Nemesis continues with Reverent Silence, a practically free way to trash all of the other guy's enchantments. Bring on the Replenish decks, and practically everything else that tries to abuse the awesome power of enchantments.
I think these are worth a look and they help round out the Stompy deck. Remember, if it costs more than 1 mana, it ain't what the Rock is cooking.
Less feared matchups:
Marsh Boa will help you crush black. Do you fear black? Put em in the sideboard. Decklist 8 Forest 4 Land Grant 4 Elvish Spirit Guides 4 Giant Growth 4 Briar Shield 4 Rancor 4 Bounty of the Hunt 4 Scent of Ivy 4 Animate Land 4 Rogue Elephants 4 Skyshroud Elite 4 Mtenda Lion 4 Vine Dryads 4 Skyshroud Ridgeback Sideboard 4 Mossdog 4 Shanodin Dryads 4 Elvish Lyrists 3 Reverent SilenceOkay, this is embarrassing. Pouncing Jaguar now isn't good enough to make the deck. Urk. And the powerhouses that were Ghazbans and Wild Dogs are gone as well. The sideboard opens up tremendously because of this. We no longer have to side out the treacherous creatures, so we can put a lot more into the sideboard to respond to the metagame. This is just one of many possible configurations. You can see it really hates enchantments and its big brother, Large Green Stompy. Of course, removing the Pouncing Jaguars frees up a lot of mana (by this decks standards), which should improve the consistency of the deck by another couple of percent. On the day, you need to watch out for bad draw syndrome. Now that Rishadan Port has been printed obviously there are going to be a lot more non-basic lands played. Mono-coloured decks are going to run Ports, and multi-coloured ones will run multi-coloured land anyway. This is just another reason to move the Skyshroud Elite into the maindeck. If everyone is going to play Masticores you might want to move the Mossdogs into the main deck, and ditch the Mtenda Lions for Ghazban Ogres. You would also do if you expect to face a lot of blue decks, which are probably not going to draw first blood. Okay, now here's another configuration, based on a more 'big push' theory. Swap out the Giant Growths for Seals of Strength and put in Ancestral Masks instead of the Animate Lands. I have the nagging feeling that there is a better way to turn a land into a creature. What we are looking for is an enchantment obviously, but all the ones I can think of cost way too much. Two or more mana probably isn't worthwhile. And lastly of course we have the question of evasion. This is where the Marsh Boas and Spore Frogs would come in handy, but do not overlook the power house that is the Scryb Sprite. Against anything except Blue they might as well read 'may not be blocked'. Obviously Scryb Sprite plus Rancor is not a combo, but if you draw Rancor you should just win anyway.
Rick |
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