The Apprentice's Workshop - Episode 7

The Apprentice's Workshop

KrazyCaley

22 February 2013

1571 views

Welcome!

As always here in the Apprentice's Workshop, we aim to take a community deck and make it better, stronger, FASTER than before.

Today our deck is Eldrazi, Win Turn 6!!! by w999, an Extended/Modern-format deck.

If you want YOUR deck to be featured in this space, go post on my wall. ( KrazyCaley! )

Let's have a look.

The decklist

Creatures (38)

4x Axebane Guardian

1x Blightsteel Colossus

4x Elvish Archdruid

4x Elvish Visionary

1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

1x It That Betrays

1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

4x Llanowar Elves

2x Oracle of Mul Daya

4x Overgrown Battlement

4x Primeval Titan

1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

3x Wall of Tanglecord

4x Wall of Vines

Land (22)

4x Eldrazi Temple

2x Eye of Ugin

16x Forest

First Impressions

This deck obviously wants to win by ramping up to terrifying Eldrazi creatures (and also Blightsteel Colossus ) as fast as possible. It is doing this using some pretty standard-issue green ramping creatures. There is a small minor theme of mana-generating walls.

(For those unfamiliar with the term, "ramp" is slang term, derived, some say, from Rampant Growth, which refers to accelerating your deck by using cards that produce extra mana. For instance, Llanowar Elves is a ramp card, since it produces extra mana.)

The first thing I want to correct when I look at this deck is the land count. Even with ramping creatures, 22 lands is really, really short for a deck that wants to cast Eldrazi. I would prefer that number to be at 25 or 26 for a deck like this, which really wants constant land drops in addition to its rampers. Really it should be more than that because two of them are Eye of Ugin, which is utterly useless except for casting Eldrazi. So we'll keep that in mind as we press forward.

Compartmentalizing

One way of thinking about a deck that can be useful is something I call "compartmentalizing." This means breaking down the deck into its constituent parts. The parts are not cards, rather, the parts of a deck are a group of cards that all fill the same or similar roles. With some decks, this idea loses coherence, but with decks that are simple, or which do have coherent different "parts," it can be helpful to think this way.

This is just such a deck. We can compartmentalize this deck into three pieces: 1 - Land. 2 - Ramp. 3 - Eldrazi. We've already talked a little about the land, and we'll come back to it in a bit, but let's take a look at our other parts.

The Ramp

This is the most important part of this deck. Fine-tuning your Eldrazi selection isn't quite as important; if you can cast an Eldrazi, you will probably win even if you picked some bad Eldrazi. More important is ensuring the smooth functioning of our ramp.

Here are some handy rules to think of when you want to ramp up.

1 - Make sure your mana curve makes sense.

Ramping decks, more than other decks, need to have REALLY clean mana curves. They can't be trying to cast a bunch of ramping spells at once, causing a spell traffic jam, because that causes delays that defeat the whole point of the deck. A ramp deck wants to cast something every turn, to put it simply.

2 - Make sure your ramp cards are as fast as possible.

This one is self explanatory. Make sure that you're using the cards that will get you the MOST mana, as fast as possible.

3 - Make sure your ramp is survivable/sustainable.

Our deckbuilder here has elected to make all his ramp cards creatures. This is definitely a respectable choice, but one should always consider the possibility of ramping through harder-to-kill enchantments, instants, etc. Wild Growth, Rampant Growth, etc. are often well worth it because they are a lot harder to stop.

Let's have a look at each ramp card, and cross-examine it skeptically to see if it really is doing as good a job as something else we might put in.

Llanowar Elves

The classic choice, Llanowar Elves has, along with Birds of Paradise, been one of the most popular one-drops of Magic history because it ramps so nicely. There is, however, another creature we might consider for this deck. It is a riskier and bolder choice, but it may make sense for this deck. It is Magus of the Vineyard. Advantage - Ramps us for TWO, for FREE, EVERY turn. Disadvantage - Does the same for our opponent. Now, of course, the mana is green, and we probably have a better late game than our opponents, but most decks will make full use of the free mana anyway. AND our opponent will get to use the mana first. AND their mid-range cards are probably better than ours. So, to the surprise of no one, Llanowar Elves probably makes much more sense. But always be on the lookout for alternatives.

Elvish Visionary

This is not a ramp card in and of itself. It is there to draw us a card and be a 1/1. This is of no real value to this deck in and of itself, so why is it here? Because Elvish Archdruid is also here. This creature's only real function is to be a really efficient way to make Elvish Archdruid work. This is a little dubious because this card's effectiveness as a ramper depends totally on Elvish Archdruid.

Why choose? We could have a card that ramps AND that lets Elvish Archdruid give us a better ramp. The best option, in my opinion, is Devoted Druid, which lets us ramp for TWO one time, and one the rest of the time. Bloom Tender is an intriguing idea, but to make it work we'd have to tear this deck completely down and start from scratch, which is not what we're here to do.

So I am going to scratch 4x Elvish Visionary and replace it with 4x Devoted Druid. We lose the card draw, but we gain a much more effective ramper.

Elvish Archdruid

This works really well if we have Elves. Otherwise it does not. We'll leave it in for now, but we will have to be cautious and make sure we have Elves to make it go.

Primeval Titan

A fantastic card. It gets us two forests even if it dies a horrible death. The only way to keep it from doing its damage is to throw a counterspell, etc. at it. It stays.

Oracle of Mul Daya

A little suspect because she is not RELIABLE. However, she might make up for it in two ways: a- She powers Elvish Archdruid, and b- She KEEPS ramping us, over and over again, potentially, if her ability is effective. What else is decent and available in the four-mana slot in green that ramps?

1 - Dawn's Reflection. Reliably ramps for two, and is a very hardy little enchantment that only depends on the survival of a land. (Note that we would usually want to cast it on a BASIC land in this format). Worth consideration.

2 - Elemental Resonance. Potentially ramps us for a LOT, but we'd need to throw it on a fragile creature. Suspect for that reason.

3 - Kozilek's Predator - Ramps us for two, but the mana is one-time only, and is in the form of vulnerable creatures. Scratch.

4 - Sakura-Tribe Springcaller - Gives us a constantly-filling reserve of mana to cast our Eldrazi from, which is VERY useful. Still, it's pretty slow to get going, as it doesn't even start to ramp us until our next upkeep.

5 - Vernal Bloom - Forests produce double mana. Like Magus of the Vineyard, this has potential upside for our opponent. However, our opponent is much less likely to benefit from this vs. the Magus, and by the time we cast the ol' Bloom, our opponent will have enough mana to cast mid-range stuff anyway. Unless he's casting REALLY big things like us, we needn't sweat it too much. Also, the upside to us is HUGE - we run nothing but forests and Eldrazi-related lands.

Of these, my favorite is Vernal Bloom. So I'm going to cut the Oracle and replace it with Bloom, which I think is much more dangerous.

All The Walls

These are Axebane Guardian, Overgrown Battlement, Wall of Tanglecord, and Wall of Vines. Tanglecord and Vines don't actually ramp us, of course; only Axebane Guardian and Overgrown Battlement do that, but they rely on those other walls to be effective.

This is a little unwieldy and unreliable. You'll notice that up above I cut all the creatures that were unreliable rampers and/or depended on Elvish Archdruid. These walls are of the same cloth.

There are two choices here. You can cut all of these walls and fill the spaces with more lands and other ramping effects, but let's assume our deckbuilder wants to keep the "Defender mana" ramp. I humbly suggest, in that case, that we replace Wall of Tanglecord and Wall of Vines with walls that ramp, so that even if Axebane Guardian and/or Overgrown Battlement aren't there, we still have a ramper. Options:

Vine Trellis (Good)

Wall of Roots (Not quite as good)

Both of these are in the 2-mana slot, and 2-mana spells are the most common kind in this deck, so it would be a little iffy to include both of these. Here's my plan: Eliminate ALL the Wall of Tanglecords and Wall of Vines, and replace them with just 4x Vine Trellis. Then we'll use the rest of the space to get some of the lands that we so badly need.

Now, let's turn to the FUN, not-as-technical part of this deck:

The Win Conditions

We have 1x Blightsteel Colossus, 1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, 1x It That Betrays, 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, and 1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre.

This is 5x win conditions, which is slim, but acceptable as long as we keep at least one Eye of Ugin around, and as long as we keep in mind that our Primeval Titans can be used for beating people down on occasion. Really we could go down to 4x win condition cards and still be ok, most likely, but 5 is a good number that we'd like to stay at if possible.

What about the composition of our win conditions? The ones that are unquestionably good are Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, which is as sure a win condition as you can get in this game, and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, who is not quite as devastating or as hardy as Emrakul, but still gets the job done right.

The other three are more suspect. It That Betrays and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth are both vulnerable to simple removal and/or counterspells, and with only 5x win condition cards, this might not be acceptable. Blightsteel Colossus is hardy, but he is also not an Eldrazi, and thus does not benefit from Eldrazi Temple or Eye of Ugin.

Because we are really pressed for land spaces, I am indeed going to go down to 4x win conditions. I am also going to make all the win conditions into Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, at 2x a piece. Of course, they are legendary and thus we can't cast more than two win conditions at once (one Emrakul and one Ulamog), but that's hardly a problem to be worried about; that should be quite sufficient. Really, one is more than enough.

Land

I have cleared up four extra spaces for lands. All of these will become Forests. Since this only puts us to 26 lands, I am going to cut one Eye of Ugin and turn it into a Forest as well. I'm so crushingly harsh about this because a- Eye of Ugin is TOTALLY USELESS for us except to cast Eldrazi. If we draw a bunch of it early, that's really bad for us because it won't help us cast our ramp cards at all. Also, b- We have Vernal Bloom now, which cares about Forests. We want lots of Forests.

So now we're done! Let's see what we ended up with:

KrazyCaley's Recommended Build:

Creatures (32)

4x Axebane Guardian

4x Elvish Archdruid

4x Devoted Druid

2x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

2x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

4x Llanowar Elves

4x Overgrown Battlement

4x Primeval Titan

4x Vine Trellis

Enchantments (2)

2x Vernal Bloom

Lands (26)

21x Forest

1x Eye of Ugin

4x Eldrazi Temple

And we're done! The real point of this article, though, is for you to say below what you think. Would you get rid of the mana-defenders mechanics? Go to an entirely enchantment-based ramp mechanism? Make it a multi-color deck? Go talk about it below, just remember that this is a Modern-legal deck.

And once again, if you want YOUR deck featured here, go post on my wall, over here: KrazyCaley.

Until next time, folks!