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| La_Sin_Grail |
![]() Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2006 10:04 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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--- description ---
Apparently, nobody felt like giving me ideas for casual cards to build decks around... so Conor chose them! See the Hunted Combo and Surging Earth decks inside.
--- end description ---
Surging Earth
This was the first response from my challenge to name a card in standard around which I’ll build a deck. As commanded by Conor Himself, here is the land-happy earth surge deck.
2 Annex
4 Natural Affinity
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Genju of Cedars
4 Genju of the Falls
2 Reclaim
4 Groundskeeper
4 Earth Surge
4 Early Harvest
4 Storage Matrix
2 Recollect
11 Forest
9 Island
2 Breeding Pool
Annex- This is a great tool to steal some extra land for affinity as well as choke your opponent’s resouces.
Natural Affinity- This is the main bomb of the deck, which should be able to shove loads of damage down with earth surge. If you can play both, you’ll win.
Gifts Ungiven- This is a necessary evil of many combo decks. In this case, choose a pile of natural affinity, recollect, reclaim, and gifts ungiven.
Genju of Cedars- This guy is the most solid genju there is, able to take down any creature with three mana cost or less without a scratch.
Genju of the Falls- I played blue for gifts ungiven, but more importantly because this is the best genju late game. A 5 power flyer is big enough to kill any sort of Kokusho, Keiga, or Meloku that may cause problems.
Reclaim- A way to pull back Affinity or gifts to animate lands.
Groundskeeper- Your lands will die at some point; there’s no way around it, wheather it be burn or combat damage, and the problem with genjus is you eventually lose the lands. The genju auto-bounces back to your hand and now you can pull the land back as well, causing a cycle of beating at no card loss.
Earth Surge- The point of the deck. Whereas beating with five or six 2/2’s won’t end the game, making them 4/4’s will. You should be able to pull off at least 4-8 damage with early genjus, then surge will make them big issues.
Early Harvest- The problem with playing natural affinity is that you miss out on three lands which could be swinging away for loads of damage. With Harvest, that isn’t the case; you get to swing with all of your lands in an all out tree-pounding.
Storage Matrix- This is a great tool because during your upkeep, there are no animated genjus and basically nothing is left tapped for you. For your opponents, you either make them too nervous to attack or completely locked out of playing more spells.
Recollect- More ways to pull a gifted Affinity from the graveyard. There are two copies played of this and reclaim each so I can put one of each in a gifts ungiven pile, which I couldn’t do with just a playset of one and none of the other.
Land Base- I only played two breeding pool because groundskeeper can only pull back basic land and honestly there usually aren’t many color problems. More green because harvest and affinity need green, but that’s about it.
Analysis
I think I’ll skip matchups because this isn’t exactly going to be beating the zoo or owling mine or the like, but I will say this for sure. Nobody and I mean NOBODY will accuse you of playing a netdeck.
The only real problems I’ve seen in this deck is play curve. There just isn’t a whole lot you can do on turn two, but there doesn’t seem to be much you can do to fix that. Genjus by nature can’t swing until turn three, storage matrix is turn three, gifts is turn four, and affinity/harvest should trigger turn six.
I would have liked there to be room for elder, but I found annex necessary because it helps stall your opponents (especially on bouncelands) and the groundskeepers are just good for too long.
Hunted Combo
4 Hunted Horror
4 Hunted Troll
4 Hunted Phantasm
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Leyline of Singularity
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Last Gasp
4 Carven Caryatid
4 Dimir Doppleganger
4 Putrefy
2 Watery Grave
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Breeding Pool (U/G shockland from Dissension)
6 Forest
5 Island
5 Swamp
Hunted Horror- With the blue leyline, this is the best hunted, so it had to be in the hunted combo deck.
Hunted Troll- I’m playing green for mana fixers, so I might as well play an eight power swinger for four.
Hunted Phantasm- Unblockable is quite fun if they have reasonable board control.
Birds of Paradise- Mana fixing is useful in a three color deck. Also, this lets you pop down hunteds faster than before.
Leyline of Singularity- Duh.
Gifts Ungiven- This is a great tool to find those big creatures you need.
Last Gasp- This is here to take down those pesky scab-clan maulers and other weenies in the way of hunteds, or as a last bail out if they play token generation to kill selesnya evangel or guildmage.
Carven Caryatid is also here to stop agro, giving card advantage a massive blocker than most agro can’t roll with.
Dimir Doppleganger- This is a great weapon for if they kill a hunted or if one hits the graveyard because of gifts. Three mana paid and he’s a 7/7 beater.
Putrefy- This is a nice utility for the occasional rumbling slum or hypnotic specter just to make sure your opponent can’t throw down and keep anything important.
Land Base- Not too too many shocklands because this isn’t a rushing deck and you can’t afford too much self-inflicted damage.
Analysis
The only problem I have with this deck is consistancy. Godhand on godhand this is one of the sickest decks you’ll find, but that usually doesn’t happen. If you draw enough gas and can stall for long enough, this is a dangerous deck, but it always has problems without the blue leyline. If you grab the blue leyline in your opening hand, you’ve got a decent shot at beating some tier one decks, but without it, they’ll pound you 100% of the time.
Other issues this deck has are devouring light and anything that involves killing enchantments (blue leylines). |
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| Cobra |
![]() Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 1:40 am |
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Joined: 12 Jul 2005
Posts: 1202
Location: Austin, TX, USA
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Cool ideas, definitely creative... and I like the idea of building a theme deck around a not-much-played but still inspirational card, I might use that as a promo idea once we get more people around here. 
I would be very interested in some description of your deckbuilding process for these decks. For example, when I said "Leyline of Singularity + Hunted Horror," what first crossed your mind? What pieces of the deck fell into place most quickly, and what came as an afterthought? Why    rather than just ? Were there any other builds you thought about?
You say yourself that these decks aren’t exactly going to be top-tier; rather, the point is creativity and giving yourself a challenging deckbuilding task. So in this case I’d like to see less focus on the finished product, and more on the process.  |
| http://cobracards.com -- Web's best deals on Trading Card Games. |
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| La_Sin_Grail |
![]() Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:03 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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Very good question. I made the hunted combo with green because I found a few criteria that had to be met.
1) I need to have some sort of removal for bigger creatures. That means I need green or white for putrefy or mortify
2) To play a three color deck, mana fixers are good. Also, the only hunted that comes out turn two is black- the others take some time. With mana fixers, they take less time.
3) I want a good wall in case I have trouble pulling out the hunteds.
Green fit all of this because of putrefy, birds of paradise, and hunted troll. |
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| Osion |
![]() Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 10:48 pm |
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Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Posts: 62
Location: MD
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Grail - with regard to the singularity deck
Why not use Clone instead of Putrefy/ Mortify? With the Leyline out, it will instantly kill any creature you opponents can play.
You are running 4 copies of the hunteds. What do you do when you are loaded with dead cards because the legendary clause stops you from playing anything else? |
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| La_Sin_Grail |
![]() Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 11:04 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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Good points. I don’t play clone because it costs more mana. Also, putrefy can hit artifacts that get annoying, like howling mine or jitte.
If I have each hunted down and I haven’t won, something is terribly wrong. Namely, they’re playing a very, very high class tourney deck against a casual one.
If I have a hunted horror turn two without their tokens, there’s no reason I should lose. |
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| Felipe Musco |
![]() Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 6:16 pm |
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Joined: 18 May 2006
Posts: 2434
Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil
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| Hey, I kinda liked this idea! We (how many of us are there in here, anyway?) could, for fun, name someone to choose their "dream card" that’s not playable, and the rest could, under the post, post in, let’s say, two weeks, tops, deck ideas on to how to use the named card! Now THIS would be a lot of fun, and who knows, we could even discover enough cards to make a "Sleeper Cards" section (they have one of those at yugioh.com, in the cardgame page, although I believe we could do something better than THAT). |
| I don't like YOU. |
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| La_Sin_Grail |
![]() Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 6:52 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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Yeah... there’s not many of us. I got a few kids from my HS, but we all have APs and some of them like to do well in them
I like the idea... I’ve actually been practicing with this idea (and I posted a response to walking archive) |
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| Ilvaldi |
![]() Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 6:54 pm |
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Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Posts: 59
Location:
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Hmm, a very creative idea for your "Surging Earth" deck Grail. However, The only card that gives you mana acceleration is your Annex. With that in mind, you really can’t speed up the land process in which you overswarm your opponents with lands. In reality, it’ll probably be 6 damage when you use natural affinity on 6 lands or 12 if you have Earth Surge. By then, your opponent should have an answer to your 3-creature assault.
Using recollect and Gifts may be a good way to solve your problems as to getting the stuff you need and to provide a flow of onslaught, but they’ll fail to have your lands provide consistent damage per turn because it take you one turn to get the cards you need to turn your lands into creatures.
Quote: Hey, I kinda liked this idea! We (how many of us are there in here, anyway?) could, for fun, name someone to choose their "dream card" that’s not playable, and the rest could, under the post, post in, let’s say, two weeks, tops, deck ideas on to how to use the named card! Now THIS would be a lot of fun, and who knows, we could even discover enough cards to make a "Sleeper Cards" section (they have one of those at yugioh.com, in the cardgame page, although I believe we could do something better than THAT).
This has happened before on this website. If you go to General dicussions, I posted a challenge on building a deck on the card Worldslayer. However, the only person who seemed to answer was Grail (Thanks by the way for that). |
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| La_Sin_Grail |
![]() Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 7:13 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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yeah... one of our major people left because he wouldn’t listen to me that a "bear" is 2 for a 2/2... He insisted Tree Monkeys fit under the term for like a week until I kind of lost it. I can take not knowing something, it’s all good. But calling me a scrub when I’m trying to teach pushed me over the edge. Another big problems is school... I know Osion’s parents make him get a 4.0, which doesn’t leave much time for MTG  . Glad to see you back, Ilvaldi.
So, to the comments, I would like to add that a genju of cedars can take out every two mana or less drop in standard and live, and probably every three-mana one, but I’m not sure on that. Ideally, I’d be swinging with genjus and wouldn’t have to do all my damage with affinity. Plus, keep in mind that if they chump block their lands against mine with affinity, they’ll wreck their whole mana base and I won’t. I’m not sure I can afford to spend so much mana on other cards, but I’ll think about it. Good idea. |
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| Felipe Musco |
![]() Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 9:44 pm |
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Joined: 18 May 2006
Posts: 2434
Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil
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| Yeah, well, is it doable or what? After all, guys, I’m talking about something like TWO WEEKS to build a deck FOR FUN (not a real tournament winner)! I bet we could do it, c’mon, I’m in College, and working an 8-hour shift everyday, and I still can find the time for doing it... |
| I don't like YOU. |
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