So Werewolves are a thing again.
I really like the idea of Werewolves, but there are actually a few nice Wolves available as well and I think the two play well together. I'm going to go a little bit off the beaten path and try out this Wolf/Werewolf Tribal deck for Standard.
I'm going the be the only person that makes a deck like this and doesn't auto-add Arlinn Kord
. I'm not being stubborn or stupid, I'm being realistic. I don't have the kind of luck to pull a Planeswalker out of a pack (though I was sitting next to the guy at our draft that got one in his first pack...) and I'm certainly not going to drop $25+ for a single card. I prefer to make things work as good or better on a budget.
My favorite Wolf that ends up as the mascot for this deck is the
Scourge Wolf
. Delirium has proven to be very easy and dependable, so he's pretty much guaranteed to have Double Strike. Also, he reminds me of
White Knight
. Except undead. And is a Wolf. Anyway, the idea here is to take advantage of the Double Strike as much as possible, and that's where
Haunted Cloak
and
Neglected Heirloom
come into play. A 5/5 Haste, Trample, Vigilance, Double Strike for RR plus 4 Equip sounds good to me. So good, they had to print it on 3 cards... and require you to flip one of them over... by using another creature... and sometimes another player...
It's not meant to be the best play you've ever seen. It's meant to be the weirdest thing you've ever seen and make you wonder why it worked so good. In fact, it's pretty much the only reason I decided to add Werewolves in the first place. There weren't quite enough regular Wolves introduced to make the deck work on their own, and using the cheapest Werewolves with the most useful abilities was the best remedy. It helps that Moonlight Hunt, Howlpack Resurgence, and Silverfur Partisan all benefit towards or from both Wolves and Werewolves.
I like the idea of shooting two Wolves with Dual Shot to spawn two more 2/2 Wolves if you have Silverfur on the board. It's an amusing surprise to swing out with no blockers left behind and then before you declare blockers on their turn, you shoot two of your own tapped creatures to create two 2/2 Wolves to block and kill something.
Pack Guardian
is another interesting option that does the same thing for a few more mana and brings a little more to the table as a 4/3. Combine both at the end of your opponents turn and you've got 3 2/2's and a 4/3 that weren't there a second ago that will be able to add another 10 damage to your next attack phase. Nice.
The
Village Messenger
s were originally put in for their cheap casting cost as a means of starting the game aggressive, but they are actually pretty powerful with a flipped
Ashmouth Blade
equipped making them a 5/5 First Strike with Menace for a single red mana.
Speaking of red mana, I've found that
Vessel of Volatility
along with all the other vessels make great fuel for Delirium, and in this case is actually pretty useful ramp early on.
Fork in the Road
and Traverse the Ulvenwald also help speed up the deck while fueling Delirium.
Rabid Bite and Moonlight Hunt are fun cards that use your creatures to pick off your opponents defenders or big attackers while also triggering Silverfur's ability. Well, Bite does anyway. I'm pretty sure Hunt doesn't because it is not specifically targeting any of your creatures it is using all of your creatures at once to deal damage to a different target creature which doesn't sound like it works. If it does in fact trigger Silverfur's ability and basically doubles your creatures, then both cards will immediately get bumped to x4. That's just absurd.
Duskwatch Recruiter
was an easy choice for a low cost Werewolf because both sides of the card have really useful abilities. If Geier Reach Bandit
doesn't pull his weight, then
Hinterland Logger
or
Kessig Forgemaster
will quickly take his place. I'd like to see how instantly transformed werewolves play out.
Lastly,
Ember-Eye Wolf
has some seriously bad-ass artwork that says "...don't mess with me, I just set this whole place on fire". I almost used a full set of 4 but I didn't think having more of them would really improve its presence. I've always enjoyed creatures with Firebreathing, and although I'd prefer +1/+0 for a single Red instead of +2/+0 for two mana he's still a nice drop with Haste that can be pretty useful early and mid game.
The sideboard is just full of answers to questions no one has asked yet.
So this isn't like every other Werewolf deck that's out there, mostly because it's a Wolf deck with Werewolves in it... I am looking forward to Eldritch Moon as I think it stands to reason that it will have a lot more in this category that could make the deck even better (I would be so happy for a Young Wolf reprint...) But as it is, on a budget and limiting myself to only cards from this block, I'm thinking that this is going to play out nicely.
Thanks for reading, and be sure to drop a comment and let me know what you think!
