Hello.
I wanted to write about Magic: the Gathering for some time. One day I noticed these nice blogs at TCGplayer.com and decided to give it a shot. I didn't want my first piece and all the other jewels of insight that are surely going to follow be bad, so I, understandably, held back until I could test some decks and write something constructive or even metagame breaking. That is going to take some time, because State exams are approaching and I must study, so no testing for me right now. Yes, I know how sad that is.
However, when the last exam is over, I am going to start seriously testing for Lithuanian Nationals 2008. At least i hope so. Sometimes procrastination rears it's ugly head upon me and nothing gets done. Yeah, that is really sad.
Anyways, today I wanted to talk about one deck.It is a well-known archetype called RG Big Mana a.k.a. Mana Ramp. I believe that everyone knows what it seeks to do, so I won't start explaining. Anyways, I think that this deck has great potential to remain one of the Tier 1 decks in today's Standard.
The list:
4x Highland Weald
4x Treetop Village
2x Fire-lit Thicket
2x Mouth of Ronom
6x Snow - Covered Forest
6x Snow - Covered Mountain
4x Wall of Roots
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Siege-Gang Commander
3x Cloudthresher
2x Murderous Redcap
4x Harmonize
4x Skred
3x Primal Command
4x Sulfurous Blast
4x Into the North
Sideboard:
4x Mwonvuli Acid Moss
3x Krosan Grip
2x Avalanche Riders
2x Vexing Shusher
2x Akroma, Angel of Fury
1x Primal Command
1x Cloudthresher
The list looks normal, there is nothing strange about it, cards explain themselves. I can see only a couple of problematic issues:
1. Cutting of Garruks. To explain myself, I can only say that I feel that they do almost nothing in a good number of matchups. They only die against RDW. you could say that it saves 3 life, but there definitely are better and efficient ways of gaining three life than a card with converted mana cost 4. Does Kitchen Finks ring any bells? :) Also it doesn't really do anything against Faeries. I may be wrong, but the nasty buggers jus fly over the tokens. Their clock is probably faster than Ramp's so racing is not an option. I may be wrong about this. Strangely, no one plays Faeries in my shop. In my scarce experience Reveillark doesn't care about Garruk too. He just bounces the tokens.
The card is one of the best in Standard, but not suited for this fast metagame.
2. Murderous Redcap. Some people dislike this card a lot. They say that it's place is in a recursion deck like Mannequin and nowhere else. I would have to dissagree. It is a removal spell against aggro. It can stop some RDW creatures before dying. That can't be said about Garruk though. If you have a Siege-Gang on the table and untap with both of them in play then you can deal 5 damage to the face or sweep opponent's board. Let's remember the 2 damage it dealt when it came into play. It is quite expensive mana-wise, but worth it in my opinion. That needs a lot of extensive testing that i can not manage yet.
Well, that is all i wanted to say this time. Please tell me if my writing is a torture to read or a blessing to your eyes and minds. I would really like to get some opinions about my most probably lacking writing skills.
Tags: Introduction Writing
