Ugh. Creature Feature help.

[Norm4eva]

So the only regular Legacy event in town is HobbyTown's Creature Feature, and this week I had a strong shot at going all the way but lost out to the killer turn 1 Ritual --> Plague.  Both games.  Damnation.

Anyway, the rules for our Creature Feature are pretty basic: the creatures in your deck must all share a creature type, 1/3rd of your deck must be creatures, and the B/R list is identical to Legacy's.  I know you're thinking, why not just play Goblins??  Well there was such a rash of Gobbos that the prize money shifted to emphasize creature types that haven't won yet.  50 buck store credit to a new deck, 10 bucks to an old deck.  Meh.

So yeah, I played Berserkers.  Scab-Clan Mauler is the 'good one', followed closely by Frenzied Goblin.  Decklist as follows:

4 Raging Goblin
4 Frenzied Goblin
4 Scab-Clan Mauler
4 Gruul Scrapper
4 Vulshok Berserker

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Incinerate

4 Rancor
3 Moldervine Cloak (stupid good.  seriously.)

2 Stomping Ground
1 Taiga
4 Fetchlands
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Forest
8 Mountain

SB:
3 Naturalize
4 Price of Progress (mistake)
4 REB
4 Tormod's Crypt

Basically my lack of resilience to Engineered Plague is someting that must be addressed, because it's everywhere and ruins my low-toughness guys (see also, every damn Berserker ever).  I had hoped that Moldervine Cloak and a SB of Naturalizes would help, but truth is I could never fully recover once one came down.  Price of Progress will probably be replaced with Pillage or similar effect.  If anyone can suggest a means to get around Engineered Plague I'd appreciate it; aside from the huge jump in CC from 2 to 4 in my creatures it's a solid deck.

[Jacob Orlove]

Has anyone won with the Shaman deck yet? You run a thousand mana acceleration guys into Tooth and Nail.

[Matt]

I thought this format banned E. Plague, Extinction, and uh...[card]An-Zerrin Ruins[/card].

[Anusien]

You consider Dwarves?  There are a few good ones, and you get Dwarven Recruiter, stack your deck and Belch them out.  The problem is that the alternative plan is really really bad (you don't get Lackey->SGC like starts).

[Kowal]

Legacy banned list?  Lame.  Otherwise, Dragons would have been hot.

[Norm4eva]

I thought this format banned E. Plague, Extinction, and uh...[card]An-Zerrin Ruins[/card].

No, no and... very no.  The storeowner's rationale behind these things is that Engineered Plague is the "great equalizer"; it allows for 6ccFatty.dec to exist because they can drop a Plague and then crush face with a Desolation Angel or similar thing.  Extinction costs 5, which is terrible in a format full of aggro.  As for An-Zerrin... go figure.
Seriously, though, aside from suggesting a change in creature type, is there a chance someone could evaluate the decklist?  Keep in mind, the impetus behind runing Berserkers over a more 'obvious' creature type is the fact that types which have already won only net 10 bucks store credit vs. 50 for a new type.

[LordHomerCat]

If you could list the types that have won, it would give a better idea about whats still available to make stupid decks out of (like Cleric-ScepterChant, Shaman-T&N, Shaman-Infinite mana combos, etc.).

[Norm4eva]

Off the top of my head?

Goblins
Elves
Birds
Wizards
Beasts
Barbarians
Specters
Rebels
Zombies
Wurms (I think? greatergood.dec or something)
Soldiers
Rats
Slivers
Spirits (including Zubera-Spirits)
Shamans
Humans
Clerics
flipping Nomads O_o

...plus one or two other random jank I'm sure.  Not that any of this really addresses my question. :)  I already know which creature type I'll be playing, I was just hoping that maybe someone had some insight into the format that I didn't.  Some incredibly obvious counter to Engineered Plague or some tech that I'm just not seeing.

[Jacob Orlove]

Artificial Evolution would be a hilarious counter to E. Plague.

[Norm4eva]

As in, suddenly my Scab-Clan Mauler is a Cephalid?  Sounds fishy.  I might need a ruling, actually.

[Jacob Orlove]

No, as in "suddenly Plague is hitting your entire table instead of mine".

Edit, wait, that totally doesn't work. Stupid Plague.

[Norm4eva]

Yeah, that's why I thought you were talking about changing my guys' creature types.  I don't know of a card that would let me choose the outcome of the other player's Engineered Plague (or Tsabo's Decree for that matter) besides Mindslaver, and suffice it to say that doesn't really fit the curve. :/
What I may end up doing is just providing more ways to boost p/t, since things like Pyroclasm aren't too hot for me either.  The downside of running Disenchant effects is that a deck that is 1/3rd creatures has already lost resource to the Plague, so it's almost always going to be stupid card disadvantage for me.

[Anusien]

Why aren't you splashing for plague yourself?  It's really crazy good.

[LordHomerCat]

Im not sure why every deck doesnt either run plague or completely ignore it (by like, cheating the format and running combo or something like that, which happens to have creatures in it).  It seems like, in a format where you have to have 20 creatures, a card which reads "All you opponents guys get -1/-1" would be a no-brainer.  On the topic of Berserkers, uhhh... I'm not really sure how you beat a card that kills a vast majority of your guys... Naturalize main seems pretty safe though?

[Matt]

[card]Veteran Armorer[/card]

[Norm4eva]

Er, that's not a Berserker.  No off-types allowed.  I guess I assumed that was understood.

[Jacob Orlove]

That's actually important, because it stops most of the Tooth and Nail shenanegans.

Spidersilk Armor is a fairly weak, but proactive answer to Plague killing your guys.

[Matt]

Play humans!

[49 Cents]

U/W Jushi!

Wait, Bob is a Human too.. UWB, sweet!

[Norm4eva]

Humans already won once.  Eternal Witness abuse. :P

[Jacob Orlove]

http://www.magicdeckvortex.com/creature_types_text_list.htm

That page seems useful.

[BradWayne]

If spirits hadn't taken it...I totally would have suggested Food Chain Myojins.

[Jank Golem]

What about playing humans with salvagers combo. Auriok Salvagers and Trinket Mage to find LED and go off. Maybe run Weathered Wayfarer to to find Wasteland or Ancient Tomb or something. There must be some other good humans you can run too. Good luck.

[Godder]

Shared Triumph seems a potential answer here (and G/W gives you Wax/Wane as well), and I have to ask, why no Talruum Minotaur?

[Thug]

Maybe something with walls
Green has 5 walls worth playing for a good defense
and they all cycle, create mana or do both
The hard part is finding a decent win condition:

• Wall of Blossoms
• Wall of Roots
• Tinder Wall
• Wall of Mulch
  (this seems pretty decent)

• Vine Trellis

Every creature-type I think off already has won, and that takes away all the fun 

Koen

Edit: Can we cheat a little and use Mishra's Power Plant in Plants  (land - Mishra's Power Plant)

[Norm4eva]

Talruum Minotaur!  That'd be better than either of the current 4cc beaters.  If I can actually dig any up I'll run those.
And I think Walls already won somehow.  I seem to recall someone bitching about Glyph.dec running them over?  Not for certain.

Every creature-type I think off already has won, and that takes away all the fun  :?

Word.  I keep suggesting to the TO that they rotate the list every 6 months or so, just so the format can actually be somewhat competitive and the 'major players' can come out of hiding with their 4-Land Belcher Elf decks and whatnot, but I've been unsuccessful in this endeavor.  Really all the best ones have already rolled everyone, it's coming down to like.... Druid.dec going up against Counter-Ninjas and bad bad things like that.

EDIT: And please oh PLEASE, quit asking me to change the creature type. :/  Once I pimp this one out I'll try the next one, I don't have time or energy to strip down my deck from my limited little cardpool and build up another one without some longterm-esque planning.

[Thug]

EDIT: And please oh PLEASE, quit asking me to change the creature type. :/  Once I pimp this one out I'll try the next one, I don't have time or energy to strip down my deck from my limited little cardpool and build up another one without some longterm-esque planning.

I'm sorry, I think thats what you get when you introduce a (new) format to some people.

On your deck:

The problems is there are not enough decent Berserkers, and there is not really 1 that makes it worth running some suboptimal ones.
The power of your deck lies in the other cards, and I think it's hard to improve those.

---

Oh, and Hounds probably already won too, it got some very decent creatures (Jackal Pup, Isamaru, Wild Mongrel backup with a lot of decent ones). If it hasn't won yet it should make a nice deck.

[Toad]

We have had tourneys like these in France quite a while ago. I remember playtesting a bit for fun. The two strongest decks I could come up with were a Myr deck running Krark-Clan Ironworks and Myr Incubator (It was insane, pulling consistant turn 4 kills) and a Dragon Bidding deck with the good Dragons from Kamigawa (Yosei, Kokusho) and utility Dragons (Thunder Dragon, Eternal Dragon) with draw/discard spells (Careful Study and Thirst for Knowledge), Burning Wish, Firestorm (so so good) and obviously Living Death.

[Norm4eva]

The problems is there are not enough decent Berserkers, and there is not really 1 that makes it worth running some suboptimal ones.

You've got to realize that by now, most of the truly efficient creature types have already won The Big Prize, so no one's really playing them except for the occasional goon who plays Gobbos and they're dying to have 10 whole dollars of sto' credit. :P  This isn't like other formats, where you can just bring "the best deck" and win big.  They had to shift the prize money in order to make that happen - it used to be 50 for whoever won, but nobody wanted to play against all the Goblin decks every week so it became 40/20, and people still kept playing Goblins.  Once it became 10 for an old deck, 50 for a new deck, the problem mostly went away but this new problem of not wanting to win a crummy prize has arisen.  This is probably why everyone plays Type 2 in Nebraska. :(
That said, you're misunderestimating some of the goodies.  The combination of burn, Raging and Frenzied Goblin make for easy activation of Scab-Clan Mauler's Bloodthirst.  Mauler, btw, is a house at RG, allowing you to drop a Rancor the same turn or keep mana open for burn.  Frenzied Goblin is actually the MVP of the deck as it reads "target creature can't block this turn" as opposed to the assumed "target creature can't block THIS", so when you've got a Rancor'd beater swinging unencumbered the game ends quickly.  The only truly suboptimal cards are the 4cc guys, but again I point to the likes of pirate.dec.  In a format like that, 3/2 hasty beaters for 4 aren't so shabby.
Also I have decided on a handful of changes; Ancient Tomb is right out in favor of 2 Chrome Mox.  Colored mana >> Tomb.  Also, either Incinerate or Chain Lightning is turning into Magma Jet, because Scry is amazing - especially in a deck with 0 draw spells.

[Jacob Orlove]

Here's an interesting idea:

Knights!
4 Silver Knight
4 Paladin en-Vec
4 Skyknight Legionnaire
4 Leonin Skyhunter
4 Warrior en-Kor
4 Earthquake
4 Lightning Helix
etc.

Note that all of those creatures are 2/2, so you can easily incorporate Crusade and Disenchant type cards to fight Plague, if you want. Additional Earthquake effects are also available.