New Wave

Phew! Finally! I am back with a REAL update. I know I promised I'd have a list for my newly-rebuilt big highlander (not EDH, it's 250-cards, 5 color). But... I built a new deck that I wanted to share first.

Ever since Scars of Mirrodin started being spoiled, there is one card in the set that made me moist with anticipation above and beyond all others. It's not the best card in the set, but it is the most exciting card, at least for me. It's the one card I absolutely HAD to have 4x of immediately upon release. And I did in fact accomplish this goal. I had my playset of this particular rare before I'd even managed to collect a 4x set of any of the commons!

What is this card? you ask...

Yeah. Genesis Wave. This card just screams "USE ME!" because it's one of those cards that can do really, really disgustingly broken things, OR it can do really, really hilariously awesome things. You can be a total prick by breaking this thing in half, or you can just have fun with it. It's powerful enough that you don't need to try to hard for it to be good.

That said, there are some obvious steps you would want to take if you want this to be playable. First off, you need plenty of mana. Second, you need plenty of permanents. This thing "misses" on sorceries or instants, but any permanent - land or non-land - is fair game. In a deck built around Genesis Wave, you really want as few Sorceries or Instants as possible. I suggest that you run ZERO Sorceries or Instants other than the wave itself.

That way, the only card in your deck that Genesis Wave will miss is another Genesis Wave. For this reason and others, I heavily recommend Eternal Witness as a stop gap. Say you cast your first Wave for x = 10, and somehow manage to reveal all 3 of your remaining Waves. Sucks don't it? But, should you also reveal at least one Eternal Witness, you're still in great shape. You can Wave again next turn.

But for those of you who know me, you probably have guessed that this isn't good enough for me. I don't want to cast Wave 4 turns in a row. I want to Wave 4 times in one single turn. Why? Cause I like to party, that's why. How? Well, I'll show you:

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Joraga Treespeaker
4 Lotus Cobra
3 Eternal Witness
3 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Emeria Angel
2 Rampaging Baloths
2 Primeval Titan
2 Admonition Angel

3 Khalni Heart Expedition
3 Mirari's Wake
4 Genesis Wave

3 Temple Garden
4 Forest
2 Plains
1 Gaea's Cradle
4 Misty Rainforest (sub Windswept Heath, if you got 'em)
4 Cloudpost
4 Vesuva
1 Glimmerpost

Yes, that's a 9-post mana base. I run the singleton Glimmerpost because you never know when gaining 4-8 life might mean the difference between losing and not losing. And because this deck WILL draw hate, once your group knows what you're up to. Also, it just helps make Cloudposts that much more potent.

Anyway, 75% of this deck is Mana Engine, Wave and Witness are the "Combo Peices" and  then a 10-card package of Win Conditions. (Primeval Titan pulls double duty, primarily as part of the Mana Engine, can easily moonlight as a Win Condition). So, you can easily play games were you make 34 mana buy turn 4, but have little else to do. The good thing about this deck, though, is that you don't NEED Wave to win.

I gold-fished a game moments ago where I cast a Primeval Titan on turn 3, and followed it up with a Admontion Angel AND Rampaging Baloths, both hardcast on turn 4... and that was BEFORE I attacked with the Primeval Titan, getting two more lands to trigger the Angel and the Baloth twice each, leaving me with 29 power on the board (counting an Elf and a Cobra). On turn 4. Without casting Genesis Wave. True, that's a god-hand scenario, but it can and will happen sometimes.

Usually though, you'll just accelerate until you can Wave for 12 or so, and then with a combination of Lotus Cobras, Lands coming into play, Kahlni Garden, Witness and maybe a Wake or a Titan, you should be in a position to immediately cast a second Wave, for at least another 12 to 15, then if you have enough Library left, a third Wave is not out of the question.

This begs the question: What happens if you Genesis Wave out two-thirds of your library or more and your opponent simply grins and plays Wrath of God?

Well, my good sir, you lose, that's what you do. Unfortunately, this is the drawback to this kind of all-in deck style. It wants to win big, Big, BIG and a well-timed Wrath can fuck it's shit up pretty thoroughly.

But, remember what I said, this deck CAN win without Wave, or you can at least be conservative with the Waves. I'd recommend that, if you are reasonably sure your opponent is running mass removal, you should cast your Waves for x = 6. Nothing in the deck cost above 6, so you'll be guaranteed to hit something, but you won't over-commit too badly. Then again, the first time I cast Wave for x=6, I hit the following: Misty Rainforest, Lotus Cobra, Emeria Angel, Primeval Titan, Rampaging Baloth and Admontion Angel. So even if my opponent had the Wrath, I still had one of each of the 6/6 guys left in my deck, plus two Emeria Angels. I'd say I was in okay shape if Wrath was in store.

There are a few tweaks I'd like to make. First and foremost is bumping Eternal Witness up to 4x, but one of my set is in the Big Highlander. I'm not too sure if Wake is needed, but Mirari's Wake is one of my favorite cards in the entire game of Magic, and I can't conceive of building a G/W deck that wants tons of mana, and not running Wake. Just seems wrong somehow. Khalni Heart Expedition is a bit iffy too, but so far it's been acceptable.

Anyway, I played this deck one time last night, and after resolving my first Genesis Wave, I started adding up my resulting mana, and after deducing I had somewhere around 15 mana, one of my opponents asked if I had another Wave. I said "yeah" and the whole table scooped at once. I guess no one had a Wrath that time...


Enjoy!!

Snakes... Why did it have to be snakes?

So, I just traded for my 4th Lotus Cobra, finally completely the sexy, sexy playset. Is it weird that I referred to it as sexy? It's a snake. Well, regardless of the adjective you'd chose, having 4x Lotus Cobras pretty much DEMANDS that you put them in a deck. Why would you lets such an amazingly powerful and expensive card go to waste, sitting in your binder?

So I took apart my Bant Conscription deck (which is what I wanted the Cobra for in the first place) because I've gotten sick of Type 2 again and decided to start drafting instead. So I needed to build a deck as a showcase for my new playset of Cobras, but I didn't need or want to make it Standard legal. I got to thinking what kinds of decks would want this card in it.

First off, he accelerates, as we all know, but he also fixes. Meaning, he can enable differently-color spells (don't want to sound racist against non-green cards, do we? NO!). So putting him in a mono-green deck is perfectly acceptable, but it dilutes the Cobra's potential. You really want to put in in a multicolor deck, to take advantage of his fixing properties as well. Plus, he's really good with Fetch Lands like Misty Rainforest, so that's another reason to avoid mono-green.

Speaking of Misty Rainforest... that happened to be the ONLY Fetch land I had any extra copies of laying around, so Blue Green was pretty much the most viable option based on that.

So I started thinking about what other cards the Cobra would play nicely with. Coiling Oracle came to mind almost immediately, as did Sakura Tribe Elder. After pondering these potential interactions for a few moments, I suddenly realized that all three cards were snakes! In light of this I immediately remembered the old Kamigawa/Ravnica era U/G snake deck that enjoyed very brief but immense success in Standard. That deck had some insane mana-ramping potential with the Oracle, Elder and Sakura Tribe Scout vomiting lands upon your Battlefield at a blistering rate. That sounds like something the Cobra could take advantage of, doesn't it? Lands coming into play? Sometimes two or three in a single turn? Yeah, I think our little Lotus Cobra would feel right at home in this deck...

Okay, so at this point, you're all like "So you're taking an old net-deck and just updating it with a broken-ass Mythic that just happens to fit the theme in both ability and creature type?" To which I reply "Yeah, why not?" In my defense though, I'm not running Umezawa's Jitte, which was a pretty damned important card in that era. I'm also running Mystic Snake, Ohran Viper and Lorescale Coatl. These aren't exactly brilliant innovations on my part, as they're A) Snakes, B) In the right colors and C) Playable cards that probably would have been in the Net Deck had they been in the format (or existed) at the time.

Another "innovation" is that I'm running the under-appreciated Chord of Calling (John Conlon, you of all people should appreciate this, as you're the one other person I know who realized the potential of this card).

So anyway, I've pretty much told you most of the deck already, so lets just formalize it with a proper list:

3 Sakura-Tribe Scout
3 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Coiling Oracle
3 Lorescale Coatl
2 Ohran Viper
3 Patagia Viper
3 Mystic Snake
2 Seshiro, the Anointed

4 Sosuke's Summons
3 Chord of Calling
2 Coat of Arms

4 Simic Growth Chamber
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Yavimaya Coast
2 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
6 Forest
6 Island

Okay, so not much to explain, really. Play lands, cast Snakes, draw cards, etc... Chord of Calling can tutor out a Mystic Snake in response to a board sweeper or something equally problematic. But if you aren't facing down a Wrath, the funnest play is to Chord for Seshiro at your opponents end step. Seshiro and Ohran Viper draw a lot of cards, which makes Lorescale Coatl bigger. Lots of little synergies like that make this deck really fun to play. It can be downright explosive, winning before your opponent even knows what's coming, but it has a decent long game too. Sosuke's Summons gives you a good chance to come back from a Wrath effect. Every snake you draw will come with two 1/1 friends, allowing you to rebuild fairly quickly.

But, Mystic Snake should help you avoid those pesky sweepers. If at all possible try to avoid wasting him on pinpoint removal or anything else that won't outright cost you the game. Speaking of removal, this build has none. If you like, or your metagame calls for such, Snakeform is on theme, and not at all terrible, and Winged Coatl is a nice little surprise that an unsuspecting oppoent can walk right into. You can Flash him in from hand, or Chord him out if need be. He has flying so he can block the vast majority of creatures, and with Deathtouch he'll kill the vast majority as well. Trample, Indestructible and First Strike are all keywords that this little guy doesn't want to see, but really he will successfully block and kill something like 90% of the creatures ever printed in Magic, so not bad for U/G.

However, for my tastes, I like to think the best defense is killing your opponents with a swarm of angry snakes, so I forgo the more defensive play in favor of pure offense. I do think the deck could use a bit of fine-tuning, but I'll have to play it in a few more games to really hone in on its weaknesses.