Have been playing my red/black Minotaurs tribal deck with limited success for a while now but need a change of speed. So I decided to jump on the Garruk bandwagon and try playing a little green for a while.
So for my land base I decided to avoid Overgrown Tomb, I am trying to make the deck as rotation proof as possible and keep the spending down on those cards and I only have it as a one of. I also feel that the deck being heavily skewed towards green that 8 dual lands and Urborgs Tomb give me all the access to black mana I need. The singleton Nykthos is just for value.
Elvish Mystic/Sylvan Caryatid: I am running a lot of mana dorks in the deck because like green is want to do, I want to be casting big fatties ahead of the curve. And Caryatid doubles up as a nifty defender. (Need to monitor if I have committed to mana slots to mana.
3 drop: I looked through the options and I felt like the best two were Boon Satyr and Netcaster Spider. As much as I love Courser of Kruphix I don't think it was at it best here and I was skittish about going further in on committing cards to mana plays. I like Boon Satyr over Netcaster because of his versatility except in match ups where flyers will be a problem. So I am main boarding Boon and side boarding Netcaster for the right match ups. I am not sure if it is going to do any work but I am giving a slot to Bow of Nylea as a singleton as well.
4 drop: I really like Polukranos, World Eater is this spot. His value is well known. He is a nice fatty to crash in with that can get out early in this deck. His monstrosity is removal. Whats to complain. I might regret not spending more time looking through the options in this slot. I am putting Mistcutter Hydra into the board for the mono blue match up
5 drop: (EDIT) After deliberation I took out the Nessian Game Wardens in favor of an additional 4 drop Nylea and 7 drop Horbet Queen. I may go back to Game Warden post rotation once Primodial is gone assuming we don't get something cool once we get to Tarkir.
6 drop: Nessian Wilds Ravager is my pick here. Sort of going all in on the Hyrdas at this point. But when you're spending six mana to cast creatures a 12/12 or a 6/6 that fights target creature seems exactly the kind of thing you want to be doing. And Soul of Zendikar seems like the weaker one of that cycle.
7 drop: Obviously Garruk. This guy is nuts and my hope that he is viable is the whole reason to be splashing black into the deck. Having moving into the black also opens me up to utilising some black non creature spells I would otherwise be looking at. I just want to jump ahead of the curve and be playing turn 4 or 5 Apex Predators for days. I also decided to play Sylvan Primordial at the 7 drop slot mainly because he is awesome and not long for this world (lol) I may consider Hornet Queen post rotation.
Sideboard tech: 2x Plummet to come in with Netcaster for the anti air defense. 2x Bile Blight to deal with the Elspeth and Master of Waves tokens that I seem to play against on a weekly basis. 1x Phyrexian Revoker because I do not have another Pithing Needle handy and it will survive rotation anyway and its ability has a lot of targets besides Planeswalkers such as Mutavaults.
