Let's Get Those Cheeks Clappin'
This is a fun little tempo deck that focuses around Assault Formation and creatures with large posteriors who benefit from it. Assault Formation is pretty self explanatory; you play minions with a lot of toughness so that your minions are less mana and bigger than your opponent's. It also has a pump on it, which is nice (the defender ability doesn't matter for our deck). Let's meet the twerk team now:
Sidisi's Faithful
: Early play that can swing in for 4 on turn 2 when followed up by an Assault Formation. Can serve as a sorcery-speed Unsummon in the late game when you're pushing for damage, or you can exploit a different creature after it attacks if you need to play more defensively.
Permeating Mass
: This is our other turn 1 play that can be a huge pain for your opponent. With an Assault Formation out, his ability allows you to trade up with virtually everything, or can stall out boards so you can win with a trigger off of Westvale Abbey
. We'll get more into that later...
Tide Drifter
: This guy has the most booty of all, and even has enough to share with the rest of your team. Effectively a 5/5 for 2 that buffs your other colorless ass-slappers is nothing to scoff at, but wait. What colorless creatures? I'm glad you asked.
Benthic Infiltrator
: This guy can get through 4 damage a turn unblocked, and recieves the buff from our good pal
Tide Drifter
. The ingest clause is just icing on the cheeks.
Void Grafter: The final creature in our deck is an interesting one. With so much spot removal running around, this guy does a great job protecting our dudes from things like Reflector Mage, Declaration in Stone, and even Nahiri, the Harbinger. Flash is really nice as well, because you can hold him until your opponent's end step in case you want to Anticipate or something. He again has great toughness and like we said above, does get the butt-buff from
Tide Drifter
.
Now you might be saying to yourself "Yeah, so what? If you don't draw Assault Formation this deck sucks nuts, ya doofus," but let me tell you a little something... it goes like this:
Vessel of Nascency
: Would you look at that! It can grab any of our beaters, Westvale Abbey
or any other land, and even Assault Formation! (also Imprisoned in the Moon if we side it in)
Anticipate: This is our other dig card. Can grab stuff that we need. Yep. That's about it. Oh that's right, it can fuel spell mastery too for
Send to Sleep
.
"Alright, that's pretty nifty, but you don't have any hard removal..."
You're right, we're a tempo deck so we have an alternative:
Send to Sleep
: This is a really strong tempo play in the right scenario. Aside from
Sidisi's Faithful
, this is our main removal piece. Between playing Anticipates,
Send to Sleep
s,
Shape the Sands
, and milling any of those with
Vessel of Nascency
, having that spell mastery can be a devastating 2 swings in with the ass blasters. Wait,
Shape the Sands
?!
Shape the Sands
: Yep. I bet you didn't even know this card existed. Slap this guy on
Benthic Infiltrator
or any other unblocked creature and you got yourself 5 damage for 1 mana! In other cases you can use it to blast a flier out of the air on blocks (because fliers are an issue for us), or trade up on the attack with something really big.
Our land base is very small and features 1 Westvale Abbey
. This might seem like a weird card to have but you can easily stall out with
Permeating Mass
and your other walls to amass a big 'ol flying win con. (I know
Ormendahl, Profane Prince
has a bit of a nonbo with Assault Formation, but c'mon. It's still a 14 point life swing... you're probably stalled out because you don't have your Assault Formation anyway, nerd.)
"Well how could you possibly put together a sideboard for a deck like this? There's not a whole lot of room for change!"
Well you're right, but I tried my best:
Clip Wings
: I mentioned this earlier, but fliers are an issue for us. Being able to kill Dragonlord Ojutai,
Icefall Regent
, Thunderbreak Regent, or any of those big legendary angels is essential to not getting our hams clapped.
Dispel: Counters Collected Company, counterspells and some removal. Usually just a good option to have.
Engulf the Shore: This is a cool one against tokens and aggro decks, because we run mostly islands in our mana base, and with so few lands total we'll usually have no more than 3 out at a time. This means it's a one-sided board wipe for tokens and small creatures, save for maybe our
Permeating Mass
.
Imprisoned in the Moon: Since we already have a hard time getting rid of creatures, we have an even harder time getting rid of planeswalkers. This guy gets rid of creatures as well, same with lands if we desperately need to lock out an opposing Westvale Abbey
or manland.
Natural State: This one is here for Always Watching , Stasis Snare, or any other pesky artifacts or enchantments, since I can't think of any over 3 mana that are really played...
Negate: Well, if there are we can counter them with this. Same goes for planeswalkers. And counterspells. And removal. Wow this is a really good card.
Well, that's about it... I really want to put
Ishkanah, Grafwidow
in this deck, but there's just no way I can consistently get 5 lands out every game without it going really long... but either way,
Thank you so much for stopping by, and have a fantastic day :)
