Jumping Right In and Bugging Out
Greetings! Welcome to the first installment of my ravings on the WWGB Network. This comes as a result of Neale winning a bet with me, regarding getting Jace’s third ability off during a Return to Ravnica draft, but never mind that. I’m thrilled to be here, and hopefully I can start pushing new ideas off on all of you to mess with your standard metagames. Along with that, there’ll be occasional forays into Modern, Limited, and Commander. If I hit the lottery, maybe we’ll even bring Legacy into it. I think what this network does is great for the MtG community, and I hope I can add to it
We’re skipping the obligatory introducing myself to jump right into my first great (see: terrible and/or rogue) deck idea for this format. Recently I acquired my fourth Thragtusk on a fairly severe budget of 75-100$ a month, including tournament fees. Almost immediately, I began to wonder what it would be like to have more than four Thragtusks. “What if I had six? What about… oh this could be diabolical!” And away to the lab I went.
I think Evil Twin is an amazing tool against midrange right now, especially non-blue versions. Being able to copy their best creature and then blow up their copy is amazing, but so it copying one of your own creatures. With that in mind, I had BuG as a color palette, and began wondering what else I would like to copy. As pairings were going up for the Sunday afternoon standard at my local card store, this was my 60 card list.
11Tusk
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
4 Hinterland Harbor
7 Forest
3 Swamp
2 Island
4 Slitherhead
4 Dreg Mangler
4 Thragtusk
4 Desecration Demon
4 Clone
3 Evil Twin
2 Deadbridge Goliath
2 Wolfir Silverheart
2 Havengul Lich
1 Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
4 Farseek
2 Jarad’s Orders
I’ll spare the detailed report and say while I went 1-3, the deck certainly has potential. My three losses were to two counter-heavy decks and an aggro enchantment deck that revolved around making Invisible Stalker as fat as possible. There definitely needs to be a twenty-fifth land and 4 Cavern of Souls for counter protection. Watery Grave also makes the deck significantly better when Gatecrash comes out. As for a sideboard and changes to make, try this
To the main:
Swap 4 Cavern of Souls for some assortment of basics (Naming Demon/Beast first, then Shapeshifter)
+1 Bloodgift Demon
+1 Primordial Hydra
+2 Corpsejack Menace
+2 Yeva, Nature’s Herald
+2 Sever the Bloodline
+2 Borderland Ranger
+25th land (Swamp or Drowned Catacombs)
-1 Jarad’s Orders
-1 Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
-2 Havengul Lich
-2 Wolfir Silverheart
-2 Deadbridge Goliath
-2 Clone
Sideboard:
4 Dryad Militant
4 Vampire Nighthawk
3 Naturalize
2 Tribute to Hunger
1 Sever the Bloodline
1 Jarad’s Orders
I’m excited to see how this does, feel free to leave comments and questions, and I’ll try to address them all. Until next time, keep finding ways to make Magic interesting.