Combo Craziness 3

Features

squire1

22 August 2010

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Welcome to another addition of Combo Craziness. If you are new to the series, the idea is to build a viable legacy deck focused around using a specific underused card in MTG. The purpose of this is not to make a tourney deck but force ourselves to examine cards in ways that some never do. In turn this will make us better deck builders by enabling us to look at how each card can be used and think critically about the game. Last time we took a look at a card that is traditionally underused because people view it as a "bad card". This time we are looking at a card that is often thought of as the worst card ever made. The debate for worst card usually comes down to Sorrow's Path and our new friend to be examine. So the question is, can this "bad card" be used effectively in a playable deck? I would venture to say yes. Without further ado, our card is:

Wood Elemental

Oracle Text:
As Wood Elemental enters the battlefield, sacrifice any number of untapped Forests. Wood Elemental's power and toughness are each equal to the number of Forests sacrificed as it entered the battlefield.

Ok, so if you have never seen this guy before, take a deep breath. It is indeed a bad card at a glance. Now read it again, "untapped Forests". Yes it is a really bad card. But that should not stop our Legends friend from getting the spotlight and a shot at greatness. Well greatness may be pushing it, effectiveness. So lets take a look.

The Good

So we see a bad card and toss it aside rather than truly examine it. Bad, no no. We should look at and understand every card in order to determine its usefulness. This guy does have some good features. He is an X/X for 4CMC. That is not bad. an 8/8 for 4 is just good. He is green. So he fits right in with forests, having a lot of land, and beef creatures. Now I am not saying he is great, but there are good qualities.

The bad

The restrictive parts of Wood Elemental are that:

1. His X/X is limited to the number of lands you sacrifice.
2. He has no trample.

The limit of his P/T makes sense at this stage, but what really gets me is the no trample, or even shroud would be ok. But that is not too bad. I can work with losing some land. I can give stuff trample.

The Ugly

You can only sacrifice "untapped forests"! Seriously?! So this poses a bigger problem. If you only have basic lands out, then on turn 8 you can pay half of your mana and sac half of your lands for a no ability 4/4. And probably have to play mono-green. That is rough. Again, we can overcome. With 16,000+ cards we can make this guy work for us.

What to do with him

The first thing that comes to my mind here is that if we have lands going to the graveyard, let's exploit that by using something like Terravore or Knight of the Reliquary. We still could run into problems though with running out of land if we actually get a big Wood Elemental out. I would suggest combatting this with Crucible of Worlds. I think that those measures should deal with the sacrificing lands part.

Now we have to look at the untapped lands part. Here there are three approaches: 1.) use alternate mana sources and accelerate into casting a Wood Elemental without using the forests so that they can stay untapped, 2.)use other means to untap the forests we wish to sacrifice, or 3.) play enough land fast enough that it is not an issue.

So mana acceleration from alternate source can be gotten from a billion cards. I tend to stick with a few easy creatures like Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise (which may be helpful for casting Knights of the Reliquary), and Noble Hierarch.

For the untapping of lands we have some good options too: Argothian Elder, Garruk Wildspeaker, Juniper Order Druid, Krosan Restorer,Ley Druid, Stone-Seeder Hierophant, and Arbor Elf are all good creature options. A couple of noncreature options are Early Harvest, Nature's Chosen, Bear Umbra, Nature's Will, Reset, Rude Awakening, or Woodland Guidance.

Now for getting land out quickly we have some good options too. i would say that these are some options:Burgeoning, Coiling Oracle, Cultivate, Explosive Vegetation, Far Wanderings, Harrow, Hunting Wilds, Khalni Heart Expedition, Kodama's Reach, Manabond, Primeval Titan will all drop lands from library to battlefield. There are cards to consider though that will just allow us to drop more lands each turn like:Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Exploration, Explore, Gaea's Touch, or Oracle of Mul Daya. For my money I think that all three of these tactics are important, so we should use a couple of each. My favorites here are Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, Garruk Wildspeaker, Stone-Seeder Hierophant, Arbor Elf, Bear Umbra, Cultivate, Exploration, and Harrow. I would most likely go with some configuration of those.

The last concern that I had about wood elemental is that it had no abilities once it hit the battlefield. I would really like it to have trample and/or shroud, but trample first. Some ways to achieve trample would be Armadillo Cloak, Berserk, Elvish Herder, Fanatical Fever, Garruk Wildspeaker, mosstadon, Overrun, Overwhelming Stampede, Predator's Strike, and Behemoth Sledge. Since Garruk Wildspeaker was already in the running for mana purposes, I think that he would be good. Behemoth Sledge would be my next choice as it can be used with other creatures as well.

After all of this, here is the deck I came up with: I've got wood elemental . Let me know what you think.

So there you go. A lot of options really to make this guy work effectively. As always, please post comments on the article about changes you would make, different perspectives on Wood Elemental, postings of your own wood elemental decks for people to check out, or about cards for the next article.