The Return of Sweater

[jeek]

There's a store in town that's introduced a Type I arena-ish feeling event on Tuesday nights, prize is a couple of packs, and I expect the local field to be sort of.. not good. I figured this was the forum to build a deck for such a field.

I'm building no-proxy, but I've got an e-mail in to the store owner to see if there are proxies allowed at the event, so there might be a big change to this list at some point today.

I've decided to try to update my old Sweater deck. It was designed to be a hoser against the Psychatog and the Tools'n'Tubbies decks that were big at the time it was developed. Sadly, storm-based combo increased the speed of the game to the point where it was no longer competitive in a real field.

Sweater was a Red/Green burn/Oath deck that ran 4 Treetops and 4 Factories as a backup kill against creatureless decks. However, with the printing of the Oath enabler Forbidden Orchard, I feel that this backup kill may no longer be necessary, leading to a stronger mana base.

The field I expect to see is a lot of poorly built aggro decks, with maybe a couple of control decks tossed in. I'm not taking this event very seriously due to the Arena vibe I got from it, so you'll see a couple of reallllly horrible cards (Gorilla Titan and Molten Influence, off the top of my head) in this list.

// Creepy Guy in a Sweater II: The World's Scariest Horror Movie (updated for 2006)

4 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
4 Forest
3 Mountain

4 Oath of Druids
2 Blistering Firecat
2 Gorilla Titan
2 Gaea's Blessing

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
2 Kaervek's Torch

4 Gamble
4 Fling
2 Berserk

2 Naturalize
4 Magma Jet

SB: 4 Molten Influence
SB: 4 Blood Moon
SB: 4 Null Rod (There was always a random playing Affinity back in the old days)
SB: 2 Naturalize
SB: 1 Djinn Illuminatus (Needed to fill a spot, thought this would be a good chuckle considering the amount of cheap burn in the maindeck)

How the deck works:
It's not the most complex of decks... get an Oath into play, Oath out something with ridonkulous power (that is also almost playable without managing to resolve an Oath), Berserk it, attack, then Fling for the kill. This is the primary game plan, quite vulnerable to countermagic (which I don't expect to see), but pretty vicious against aggro.

That's what happens during a perfect game. Most games are not perfect, and I usually end up taking multiple Oaths to kill, or often using burn for the kill.

Why I've posted this deck: I'm brainstorming for the perfect combination of burn spells in the maindeck, as well as possible replacements for the creature base. The burn spells need to be cheap and efficient (esp. if I side in the Djinn for hilarity), and the creatures ideally should be capable of being hardcast. For instance, in the old deck I ran Shock, I've replaced it with Magma Jet, figuring it'll help me find Oaths. The old deck also ran 64 cards, I've since trimmed it to 60. I think the major cut there was Seize the Day, which is too bad even for this casual version of the deck.

-Update: 8am-
After discussion in the SomethingAwful IRC channel, of all places, realized that I'd accidentally left the Torches in there. We came up with Pyroclasm as a replacement, to help deal with the massive quantity of tokens the deck can generate.
Change: +2 Pyroclasm/-2 Kaervek's Torch

Going to keep the final version of the deck at the bottom of the post.

-Update: 9am-
Discussion in #themanadrain has led to replacing Gorilla Titan with a throwback to the original creature base of Sweater: Ancient Hydra. (The original design build ran Ancient Hydra and Spore Frog, then Onslaught came out and gave us Naturalize, Wooded Footkills, and Blistering Firecat.) I feel this will help deal with the Orchard tokens better than Pyroclasm.
Change: +2 Ancient Hydra, +1 Gaea's Blessing, -2 Gorilla Titan, -1 Pyroclasm

-Update: 1pm-
Duh. Red Elemental Blast > Molten Influence
Change: +4 Red Elemental Blast, -4 Molten Influence (in SB)

-Update: NEXT DAY, 7:30am-
I didn't have the time to build this for last night, but I've gotten a look at the "field". I showed up with Legacy Gr Stompy, and there was also a Miracle Gro deck, some horrible green/red deck that felt like a badly-ported Type II Gruul deck, and a player that I brought along running Suicide. The Suicide player (who will be my baby momma in a few months) won the event, even though she's only been playing a month or so. At any rate, I've decided to run Slice and Dice over Magma Jet, both for dealing with tokens and for lategame board sweeping. Also, decided Woodripper makes more sense than the joke Djinn in the side.
Change: +4 Slice and Dice, -4 Magma Jet | SB: +1 Woodripper, -1 Djinn Illuminatus

// Creepy Guy in a Sweater II: The World's Scariest Horror Movie (updated for 2006)

4 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
4 Forest
3 Mountain

4 Oath of Druids
2 Blistering Firecat
2 Ancient Hydra
3 Gaea's Blessing

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
1 Pyroclasm

4 Gamble
4 Fling
2 Berserk

2 Naturalize
4 Slice and Dice
SB: 4 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 4 Blood Moon
SB: 4 Null Rod (There was always a random playing Affinity back in the old days)
SB: 2 Naturalize
SB: 1 Woodripper

[Harlequin]

4 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Forest
3 Mountain
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Cycle land
   
4 Oath of Druids
2 Terravore
1 Krosian Reclaimation
   
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
2 Kaervek's Torch
   
3 Gamble
3 Fling
2 Berserk
3 Life From the Loam
   
1Fastbond

2 Naturalize
4 Magma Jet


This more or less accomplishes the main objective.  Maybe even up your land count more.  Something like -4 Incinerates for +4 Barbarian Ring.  This just gives you much more fuel for the Terra-fire!

[jeek]

2 Ghost Quarter
1 Cycle land
2 Terravore
1 Krosian Reclaimation
3 Life From the Loam
1 Fastbond

I like where you're going with this, although if I ran this style of deck I'd probably run 3 cyclelands over the Ghost Quarters, partially due to card availability, partially because I expect mostly basics in the field, and partially because I don't think Ghost Quarters is actually that good. I'll definitely keep this decklist in mind, though.

One thing I don't like is that it reduces the game even moreso to be dependant on keeping a creature in play. The Blessing build doesn't mind losing a creature, even depends on it, where this Terravore build reduces the number of threats that need to be dealt with.

[Harlequin]

I think Krosian Rec. is nice becuase you can oath your deck to 0 and then durring your upkeep put back Fling x3 and go to your draw.  That ought to be lethal.  Also you don't want to shuffle back all your lands and subsiquently KILL Terravore.  So I think if you go the Terravore Road you need to leave Blessing out.  If both your Terravore's Die, then you can Rec back both terravores and a fling.  Reguardless of what you draw, you should be able to oath one in, and then either fling it, or draw the other and wait a turn to swing with Terravore x2 (with a fling in hand).

The other reason I like GQ for a terravore is that you can use it on your own lands to "pump" your Terravore.  The idea being your not nessiarily useing GQ as mana denial so much as a land that says "T Sac: Terravore gets +2/+2."  Similar to Wasteland, and strip mine.  However Lands that say "G: Terravore gets +1/+1 and draw a card" are equally broken.

If your in a world of Basics GQ is likely going to be better than wasteland anyhow.

[jeek]

...if you go the Terravore Road you need to leave Blessing out...

Well, yeah, that is obvious. I was merely musing that I couldn't combine the Firecat plan with the Terravore plan for extra threats. Terravore and Cognivore both want to have fewer copies of themselves in the maindeck to increase their power. Decks based around them are very vulnerable to Diabolic Edict, however, which I am quite sure I'm going to be seeing tonight.

The other reason I like GQ for a terravore is that you can use it on your own lands to "pump" your Terravore.  The idea being your not nessiarily useing GQ as mana denial so much as a land that says "T Sac: Terravore gets +2/+2."  Similar to Wasteland, and strip mine.  However Lands that say "G: Terravore gets +1/+1 and draw a card" are equally broken.

If your in a world of Basics GQ is likely going to be better than wasteland anyhow.

You make a very strong case for Ghost Quarter, unfortunately I haven't managed to acquire any yet, so, barring a miracle, I will not be able to run that card tonight. I'll work on acquiring some for next week, however.

[Illissius]

Rorix Bladewing! Crater Hellion! Skizzik! Ball Lightning! Spark Elemental! Hunted Dragon!

[Zeke]

Back during the Tinker-era of extended a few years ago, I ran a r/g oath deck, but I used the popular-at-the-time Cognivore as the kill.  It was chock full of burn, and also played a card that just seemed to be a wrecking ball: Fling. 

I never got to seriously play it, because 1) no Orchid, 2) Tinker rapped it.

Just some food for thought.

[jeek]

.... and also played a card that just seemed to be a wrecking ball: Fling. 

Err, Fling has been in my decklist the whole time, even since I designed the deck in 2002.

[Zeke]

Sorry, I can't read X_X.  Mostly I was just being an advocate of the cognivore route.  I was always very pleased with it.

[P_f]

I had a pretty fun casual deck awhie ago that was basically this. I think in my list, I played 4 firecats, 4 fling, 4 berserk, and 4 forks. That set of cards gave me the highest chance to kill the opponent out of nowhere, which was the original intention of the deck. In addition, cards like berserk and fork have random applications aside from serving as kill which made games a lot of fun to play.

I think there are probably creatures other than the firecat that will serve better in this type of deck but I chose firecat because it does the best in keeping the opponent on his toes rather than give him a 1 turn buffer to do whatever he needs to do.