[Deck] Free Fat.dec (Abuse of Show and Tell)

[Ruinn]

Dicemanx suggested I throw this up as its own thread and I feel that it can be a competitive and extremely fun deck to play.  Here is the post that was made in the skull.dec thread:

The idea of throwing huge creatures on the board has always been a fun thought to me and I have been in a constant state of trying to find the best way to do it. When I saw darksteel colossus I went back to the drawing board and came up with a solid decklist. In seeing this thread I notice a lot of similarities and figured I might as well share my findings.

Free Fat.dec

Mana:
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Eladamri's Vineyard
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby

The Fat:
4 Darksteel Colossus
4 Plated Slagwurm
4 Verdant Force
2 Silvos

The Stuff that makes the fat free:
4 Eureka
4 Show and Tell
4 Oath of Druids

Leaving them out would be silly:
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker

The obvious difference between my deck and the one originally posted is the switching of sneak attack for show and tell, plus the subsequent switching of the creature base due to this change.

You mention your leaving out the colossus because he is not castable, and I feel that his impact warrants his inclusion regardless. First turn colossus is not that uncommon and second turn happens creature drops is basically guaranteed. The two turn clock he creates is superior to any creature that could be put in this deck.

The massive acceleration provided by the 30 mana sources in this deck gives a solid backup plan of just hardcasting either a verdant or slagwurm, turn two being fairly likely and third turn nearly 70%.

I have not worked out a solid sideboard yet, but it would seem that the best options would be xantid swarm, and possibly city of solitude to combat control.  City may seem odd but getting three mana first turn for this deck is cake.  Chalice of the Void is also logical as you have very few things costing 1 or 2 and easily the mana to set chalice there early.

[Daniel_112]

I think you should take out a polluted delta for a island.

What do you think of Sundering Titan? That's a card with utility AND fat!  :lol:

[Necrologia]

Sundering Titan probably won't be that great in this deck. The idea is to drop a fatty ASAP, but Titan is better after the game has been going on for some time. A turn 2 titan will take out at most 2 of the opponents lands (barring Time Walk), but one of yours as well. Since this build is a little land light it'll prbably be better to just drop a Slagwurm or Colussus.

[Ruinn]

Titan is a cute card, but this deck wants beef as opposed to cute.  The seven power is great and all but Titan really offers very little else.  Mana disruption is not really much of a threat for this deck because it either has the acceleration or it doesn't.  Because of this running another basic land really does not seem to help a great deal.

[Alfred]

It would seem to me that Oath of Druids is useless in many of the matches this deck will face. Keeper, Tog, Chronic, non-welder prison decks and any combo deck would love to to play this card. Obviously it is included to increase the number of ways that a fattie can come out. I suppose that only testing can tell if it is indeed better than splashing red for sneak attack.

[mrieff]

I would try to cut some fat for BoPs, and include a few other creatures. Which would allow you to run Natural Order

[mask]

I used to play a lot of oath, until i moved on to workshop decks. But while i was playing one of my most unique oath deck invovled oath with griffon canyon, with counters, and resets buttons and man lands. The real snygery of this came from animate land while oath was in play. It allowed me to during the beginning of my upkeep since it my turn and i stack the upkeep, i then proceed to animate an oppents land, to allow me to oath creatures in.

by the way for the metagame push against dragon, put in at least one gaea's blessing, and even if you hard cast it, it acts just like cycleing abilty. in no way does it make the deck weaker even if paired against dragon recycling your deck helps a lot against graveyard hate.

Another though it include one dreams halls, show and tell it in, and whack hard with your creatures.

4 Eladamri's Vineyard, why?

i also suggest taking the off colour moxen (chrome too) and replacing them with wastelands. my reasoning lies in as soon as you have a beater in play and you set your oppents land drop a turn it will just overwhelm him tougher desions to make

Well those are my two cents.

[Ruinn]

@Alfred: Oath of Druids is the weakest of the cards that give you creatures for free, however there are many games where it is the best option given its 1G CC.  It would most likely be the most sided out card, but I am hesitant to add a third color to the deck.  Sneak attack fits the theme perfectly but adding red would mean not getting the proper mana in your opening hand as often.  If you are sitting there with a Eureka and only blue/red mana, its not going to do you a whole lot of good.  One of the other more subtle things that would have to be changed is the creature base.  When using sneak attack it makes more sense to use creatures with comes into play and when leaves play abilities, rather than just huge ones.  Therefore I think the deck is better without red.

@mrieff: I'm hesitant to cut anything large in this deck because when playing this deck, the worst feeling is when you have the mana to play eureka and there are no big creatures in your hand.  Birds would be in there if not for the vineyards which are just stronger in the deck.  However, if I were to go with the red splash Birds would replace the Vineyards, and natural orders would indeed most likely be brought in because the pair work so well together.

[Astro]

One field I can see this deck improving on is disruption or at least some form of a draw engine to battle control.  With only 12 true threats Eureka, Show and Tell, and Oath it seems this deck would be weak in those match ups.  Theres not enough blue to run FoW, but Xantid's or even Daze would be better than nothing.

Also, I've never been a fan of Eladamri's Vineyard for mana accel.  It gives your opponent mana before you, very dangerous card, as 'mask' already pointed out.  However, I'd cut them for Wastelands over off color moxen.  Off color moxen are a must, especially with Tinker.

[mask]

Also, I've never been a fan of Eladamri's Vineyard for mana accel.  It gives your opponent mana before you, very dangerous card, as 'mask' already pointed out.  However, I'd cut them for Wastelands over off color moxen.  Off color moxen are a must, especially with Tinker.

don;t forget when oathing you trash your libary, play test against a workstop deck or a goblin welder, they weld away your colour moxen for off colour moxen granted it still mana, but simple swaping will change your plays. Case Example i was playing oath tier 2 metagame, played three creature morphling feeder and weaver, usuaslly i lose about 10 cards in my libary till i drop a creature or geae blessings. against workshop i played null rods main deck, and of course moxen. i watched after he dropped a welder, i oath, oathed up superman, and he welded a mox i lost to oath for null rod. in this deck my point is okay you tinker up a darksteel coloss, and he welds it for whatever you tinkered up, -1 tinker +darksteel in libary (serra avatar abilty)

But if you want to change the matchup use lightning greaves. haste and untargetable , in any creatures decks is a must meta game move for creatures decks, against all noncombo decks, but even if they lack creature removal, haste just kill them faster.

A creature to consider Thicket Element, you bring it in and it acts like an oath for your deck, when paying the kicker. drops you another beater.

[Purple Hat]

by the way for the metagame push against dragon, put in at least one gaea's blessing, and even if you hard cast it, it acts just like cycleing abilty. in no way does it make the deck weaker even if paired against dragon recycling your deck helps a lot against graveyard hate.

with 4x darksteel colossus it just doesn't matter.  if dragon trys to ambassador your colossus away it shuffles it self back into your deck.  you basically have a never ending deck.  they can't even remove your colossi from your 'yard cus it's a replacement effect.  it never goes there.

[gzeiger]

I'm really having a hard time with the idea of putting Verdant Force in a deck with Oath of Druids. That's just asking for it. Wouldn't additional copies of Silvos or the aforementioned Sundering Titan be a lot better? Silvos is more readily castable if necessary, and the deck could easily be tweaked to grant itself immunity from the Titan. I guess you have the basic lands to protect yourself from Blood Moon or Back to Basics, but as mentioned above, this deck has no long game anyway. If a red deck gets to three mana before you do something impressive you're probably dead in any case. Blue decks that run Back to Basics tend not to run extreme amounts of mana acceleration, and you seem to only need one spell anyway, so it probably will help more than hurt because they'll tap out to cast it. The Forest isn't accessible by fetches anyway, so you don't have all that much protection against these cards as is, especially considering Eureka's double green. Therefore I suggest that Tropical Islands, Polluted Deltas and the basics become 4 City of Brass, 4 Gemstone Mine and 2 Undiscovered Paradise.

[Methuselahn]

I don't like Oath of Druids with Verdant Force either.  Except, I don't really like the Oath of Druids cards here.  Let's examine your redundancy a little bit.

Show and Tell-(puts creatures from HAND to Play)
Eureka-(puts creatures from HAND to Play)
Oath of Druids-(puts creatures from DECK to Play)

Yes, all 12 slots DO get fatties into play, but in very different ways.  So different, that it hurts your overall deck design.  You have 14 creatures and Oath of Druids.  Ideally, you want much, much fewer with Oath, right?

If you wanted redundancy with Oath, wouldn't you want to use things that produce the same effect?  Examples are Gamekeeper and Polymorph.  

So I would stick to Show and Tell + Eureka, but replace the Oath (and some creature slots) with probably Force of Will, search, and/or more fast mana.

Oh, Where are your 4 MD Ancient Tombs?  They are just awesome with Show and Tell/Eureka.

[dicemanx]

I disagree about the Oath issue.

The Eureka decks are ideal in a meta where aggro or aggro-control (or control/prison with MD creatures) is present in abundance. In a control heavy meta, these decks will fail miserably, so its better to focus on situations where the deck performs ideally. Because of this, it makes perfect sense to stick with Oaths, as every bit of redundancy helps. Plus, Oath is a quick solution to fast aggro decks - sometimes Eureka and/or Show and Tell are too slow against fast aggro.

The negative synergy between Verdant and Oath is a bit of an illusion - once a Verdant hits, your aggro opponent is in big trouble even if he gets to Oath out blockers every turn. You always get two 1/1's for every creature they Oath, and any ground stall that you create is usually heavily in your favor as you get the time you need to set up for a big Eureka or Show and Tell. There is one major exception to this - Madness can overwhelm you very quickly if they get Wonder in the graveyard. However, most other aggro decks or aggro-control decks have little or no evasion.

[Methuselahn]

I disagree about the Oath issue.

The Eureka decks are ideal in a meta where aggro or aggro-control (or control/prison with MD creatures) is present in abundance. In a control heavy meta, these decks will fail miserably, so its better to focus on situations where the deck performs ideally. Because of this, it makes perfect sense to stick with Oaths, as every bit of redundancy helps. Plus, Oath is a quick solution to fast aggro decks - sometimes Eureka and/or Show and Tell are too slow against fast aggro.

Ok, perhaps you are right.  My main beef was that there was no disruption/countering.  Does the deck, as well as Skull.dec, perform better by just puking out fatties and disregarding any form of disruption?

[dicemanx]

Yeah, you eschew disruption in favor of playing game ending threats. Any spell that resolves should practically spell doom for most decks. Combo is exempt from this oversimplification, since they are much faster than any of your fast clocks.

In Skull I like to leave the disruption in the SB - it typically consists of bombs such as Blood Moon, Null Rod, and Chalice.