A Casual Deck

After a while of dabbling into the madness of infinite mana and an arcane burn deck based on mistaken beliefs, I have decided to walk into a simpler sense of a deck. A casual budget deck which ran pretty strange. I borrowed my younger brother's Spirit Flames preconstructed deck and added and removed a few cards to see how well the deck would go. Needless to say, it didn't go quite as well as planned. ;) I took the deck and removed the one fundamental portions of the deck: Jiwari. These two were actually the star players of the deck, and I removed them. Spirit Flames was now not much of a flame. Jiwari was, in my opinion, absolutely unplayable due to the triple red in the mana cost, which was extremely difficult to attain, even with mana fixing via Kodama's Reach: it wasn't fast enough. I removed Glitterfang, Frostling, Kami of Tended Garden and many more cards. I put in a few cards of my own. In fact, I took out the entire red component of the deck.

I eventually put together all my cards to make a terrible first version of the deck: 23 Forest 4 Promised Kannushi 4 Hana Kami 4 Kodama's Might 4 Unchecked Growth 4 Kodama's Reach 4 Petalmane Baku 3 Kami of the Hunt 2 Wear Away 2 Forked-Branch Garami 2 Shinen of Life's Roar 2 Scaled Hulk 1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder 1 Briarknit Kami

I'm not sure if all the cards are accounted for, but this is about the way that I went about it. After that, I played it and found that it was good, but it was vulnerable to flying. Horribly vulnerable to flying|: I had only one anti flying card in the entire deck: Arashi. I stuck to trying recursion using the Hana Kami + Soulless Revival soft lock, but I never had enough mana to run it. Ever. There went the Soulless Revival idea. After that, I tried the deck out with Elder Pine of Jukai and found it to be nothing short of amazing for mana: but I found that I had nothing to do with the mana.

The recursion idea wouldn't work because it would be way too slow. Then, I decided to make the mana acceleration a little more overwhelming by inserting Loam Dweller. I found that this Spirit was more often than not seen with Elder Pine of Jukai, making the deck an absolute mess.

With the removal of Arashi, I put in Traproot Kami to counter flying and make the mana curve less steep. This was a good move. With the removal of Arashi, Promised Kannushi was become more and more useless: it had to go. Forked-Branch Garami's soulshifting had proven to be no good. It was too good a creature being a 4/4, and refused to die when I needed it most: I went, and I brought back Kami of Tended Garden instead, favouring it's soulshift 3 during which upkeep you which to not pay for it. A four to cast 4/4 was actually great whenever you had a mana problem. Elder Pine of Jukai ensures you have a land drop every turn, meaning: you will never run short of mana. You may run short of cards, yes, but never out of mana.

The massive amounts of cheap spirits such as Hana Kami, Traproot Kami, Petalmane Baku and Loam Dweller ensured that you would never miss a turn without a spiritcraft trigger. Then, I tested it again and found that there was one fundamental extra: Kodama's Reach. with your deck being thinned of land by Elder Pine, Kodama's Reach had to go (surprising, huh?)

The end result of all these changes you can work it out for yourself, but here it is if you need it ;) 23 Forest 4 Traproot Kami 4 Hana Kami 4 Kodama's Might 4 Unchecked Growth 4 Loam Dweller 4 Elder Pine of Jukai 4 Petalmane Baku 2 Kami of the Hunt 2 Wear Away 2 Kami of Tended Garden 2 Shinen of Life's Roar 2 Scaled Hulk 1 Briarknit Kami

But, if you haven't noticed already, I haven't told you much about my games: this is because this version of the deck is nowhere close to what I'm playing right now. I made a massive turn after realising a critical error during my deck design, and I've fixed it since.

This deck here however, still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Why is mana important? Because splicing Kodama's Might is of utmost importance. With enough mana, you could play an Unchecked Growth, splice two Kodama's Might, play one Kodama's might, splice the other Kodama's Might and play your last Kodama's Might on your Scaled Hulk. The end result is nothing short of terrifiying: Your Scaled Hulk which is a 4/4, get +14/+14 alone from these three spells, in addition, Scaled Hulk's spiritcraft trigger on the three spells give it +6/+6. Your Scaled Hulk is now a giant 24/24 trampling... err.... green hulk. This essentially is the winning damage dealer and creature killer, since most opponents don't have enough creatures with enough toughness to block a 24/24 trampler, especially after you've played Unchecked Growth and spliced Kodama's Might earlier (returning your Unchecked Growth with Hana Kami) which would have probably decimated his army a lot earlier.

Of course, this play is no crazy dream: the immensely and obscenely large creatures do stomp across the table often enough to make your opponent think a lot before playing against this deck.

Come on everyone, and swing at your opponent with a 24/24 trampler!