GRed Deck Wins — Aggro You Never See Coming
When you get hit by a Ball Lightning with a Kicked Vines of the Vastwood, with a Noble Hierarch also on your opponent’s team, you really feel it. That Ball Lightning attacked as an 11/6 with Trample, if you’re keeping score. This is my brother’s Friday Night Magic deck.
My brother and I hit Friday Night Magic this week, and we both went 2-2. He dealt me a serious beating in the first round with his Green/Red aggro deck. The deck below is close to what he played (I don’t have his cards in front of me, so some things, especially the sideboard, are slightly different). The specifics may change as we tinker with it somewhat, but the core idea remains the same: throw down powerful Haste creatures, give them a boost and smash your opponent in the face. Also, I wanted to test out this new Magic card plugin I installed — seems pretty cool so far.
[deck title=GRed Deck Wins]
[Creatures]
*4 Noble Hierarch
*4 Hells Thunder
*4 Hellspark Elemental
*1 Ball Lightning
*4 Bloodbraid Elf
*4 Blitz Hellion
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*4 Lightning Bolt
*4 Burst Lightning
*4 Vines of Vastwood
*3 Colossal Might
[/Spells]
[Lands]
*3 Teetering Peaks
*4 Rootbound Crag
*9 Mountain
*8 Forest
[/Lands] [Sideboard]
*4 Goblin Ruinblaster
*4 Punishing Fire
*2 Earthquake
*2 Banefire
*3 Spellbreaker Behemoth
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
The name is a variation on the popular Standard deck archetype “Red Deck Wins.” Frankly, I think this deck accomplishes what Red Deck Wins does, but better. Blitz Hellion is very underrated, and gaining access to Bloodbraid Elf offers some amazing Cascade plays. Bloodbraid into a Hellspark Elemental? Ow. Noble Hierarch accelerates you into Bloodbraids and Blitz Hellions a little faster, and the Exalted boost is not to be overlooked.
By far my favorite card is Vines of Vastwood. I think a lot of people are underestimating this card. With the amount of creature removal in Standard right now (and this deck’s heavy reliance on creatures), it’s like a Green counterspell. It can be tricky to use, but sometimes a tapped out opponent takes an Unearthed Hellspark with a Kicked Vines right to the head. That hurts. It can save a big attack from being undone by a Path to Exile or Terminate, or even a Disfigure.
Even more than straight burn decks, this deck can throw out unexpectedly brutal plays. Your opponent feels secure at 11 life or so and taps out to attack or play a Planeswalker, next thing he knows an exalted Ball Lightning is causing you harm in significant quantities.
We still have some experimenting to do with this. Colossal Might, for example, is under consideration along with Violent Outburst. Mage Slayer could be interesting, too. There were three Goblin Guides, which could do some damage early, especially with a well-timed Teetering Peaks, but they’re out for now.
What’s interesting is how this deck developed. Joe’s original idea was to use a ton of cheap Exalted creatures to power up one-shot wonders like the Blitz Hellion and Hellspark Elementals. We tried it as a Naya deck, but it wasn’t consistent enough. I rebuilt it into the GRed version, and we’ve worked on it together for many weeks now. It seems to be hitting its stride, but we’ll have to wait and see how Worldwake changes Standard.
Related posts:
January 23rd, 2010 1:49 PM
This reminds me of the classic red/green decks from the Ice Age era. People would run Kird Apes, Sprites, Orcish Lumberjacks, into Ball Lightning and Erhnam Djinn. The deck would attack with a horde quick like Boros Bushwacker but the creature that made it through would explode with Blood Lust, Giant Growth, and maybe Berserk. The strength of that deck was that once your hand was near empty you could Wheel of Fortune to restock and do it again.
Bloodbraid Elf does a great job of helping with the card advantage but how does he deal with Cascading into a Vines?
January 23rd, 2010 2:31 PM
There are certainly some sub-optimal Cascades. The nice thing about Vines is, if you have a green mana open, you can pay the kicker and stick it on a Hierarch. But sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Siding in Earthquake against Elf or Boros decks, for example, is good, but also a terrible Cascade.
The other advantage of this deck that I forgot to mention is how madly it negates Sorcery speed creature removal. Gatekeeper of Malakir is useless, along with Sorin Markov‘s first ability, among others.
January 23rd, 2010 2:33 PM
By the way, the Magic plugin works in the comments too. It’s just like bbcode: use {card}Cardname{/card} around any cards you name, and you’ll get the popup. Just use regular brackets instead of curly brackets (I couldn’t use regular brackets in the example or it would parse them and try to show a Magic card called “Cardname”). Make sure you spell it correctly or you’ll get the Magic cardback instead.
I edited followthecamel’s comment to show this off.
January 23rd, 2010 5:28 PM
I love Spellbreaker Behemoth, My girlfriend has it in her R/G/w deck. It wreaks havoc on Blue. As always, Bloodbraid Elf is showing up in everything.
January 24th, 2010 12:27 AM
I’m trying to build me a standard legal Vampire deck, mostly cuz I got two Nocturnii. I’m still trying to fill out the list.
January 24th, 2010 2:10 AM
Vamps is definitely going to get a lot better with WWK. Post your list (or what you have so far), if you’d like.
January 25th, 2010 1:36 AM
Well, this is the dream:
15 Swamp
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
23 creatures
4 Vampire Lacerator
4 Guul Draz Vampire
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
1 Malakir Bloodwitch
4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Vampire Nocturnus
15 other spells
3 Disfigure
2 Hideous End
2 Consume Spirit
3 Sign in Blood
3 Tendrils of Corruption
2 Bloodchief Ascension
This is sort of a combination of what I have so far, and what I want. I’d replace all the 1 drops with Bloodghast and more Nocturnii if I get those, but they are some costly rares, so they’re probably not going in. Bloodchief Ascension is there primarily because I got two out of a draft and
It Wins Games once activated. Plus it turns on in three turns consistently with the Vampire Lacerators. The mana base is mostly a dream, I know I’ll have to make do with Swamps, mostly because I’m really cheap. I don’t have all the Vampire Nighthawks or Vampire Hexmages yet, but those will be much easier to obtain than the rares.
January 25th, 2010 4:49 PM
Looking at that list, a few things occur to me:
4 x Nocturnus isn’t really optional in a vampires deck. I know he’s expensive, but…there’s no avoiding it. On the plus side, there’s really no need for the eight fetch lands unless you’re using Ob Nixilis, the Fallen, and you aren’t. Yeah, they let you play tricks with Bloodghast, but not $60′s worth of tricks.
The hard thing about making a vamps deck is making it something other than a pile of cards that say “Vampire” on them. Not every vamp card is worth playing. Guul Draz Vampire isn’t really very good, and alot of vamp players skip the Lacerators. If you’re going with a Bloodchief Ascension build, then Lacerators work, though. One additional Ascension shouldn’t be too hard to get a hold of.
Doom Blade is better than Hideous End. The life loss doesn’t really mean anything compared to the reduced cost of the Blade – more speed, better ability to cast it along with other things. With Blade, turn 5 you can bring out that Nighthawk you just drew and kill one of their creatures. Depending on what you play against, Deathmark might actually be the best option.
Malakir Bloodwitch is key – stops Baneslayer Angel! Wrecks a lot of other annoying white cards too. being immune to Path to Exile is awesome. Try and get 1 more. I’d go to just 1 Consume Spirit and add a Liliana Vess. Actually, add 2 or 3 if you can. She makes vamps hum. Get Nocturnus when you need him. Get a black card to the top of your library to make your big attack. Keep your opponent’s hand empty (and activate the Ascension). Perfect.
Last suggestion: run 3 Mind Sludge. If you cast it turn 5, you’ll almost definitely win (unless you’re facing a fast deck that already emptied its hand). For all intents and purposes, Sludge is the win condition for monoblack decks right now. Very few decks/players can come back from a big Sludge. Plus, with Ascension online? “Discard five cards. Also, you lose ten life and I gain ten life.”
“Concede.”
January 25th, 2010 5:01 PM
i would have to agree when it comes to the vampire sugestions. now with thes red green deck i would deffenitly go with Violent Outburst over collosal might and i would get rid of the ball lighting if you add the violent outburst because you want to stack blood braid with ciolent out burst into a higharch or even better a hell spark. As for that side bored i would take out the earth quakes and baine fires just because they dont do so well with cascade. i would add pyroclasm or volcanic fallout no idea for that last spot. for the most part its a prety solid deck just needs a tweek or two.
January 25th, 2010 6:06 PM
Hideous End is there because that two damage is two damage on your opponent’s turn speeding up my Ascension. I really love the Doomblade though. . . anyway, I wasn’t going to actually get the fetches. Their purpose is mostly to thin lands out of the deck to make it night more often. That’s just about the line where you risk becoming an uber-competetive jerk.
January 25th, 2010 6:29 PM
I’ve seen the statistical analysis on how much of a deck thinning effect fetch lands have. It’s there, but it’s statistically small. Not worth the cost of those cards to the non-Pro Tour player unless you’re using them for some other effect. Even with Nocturnus out, Liliana is a much better way to keep black cards on top.
It seems like you might have conflicting strategies in your deck. Vamps can be efficient mid-range beat-down with some control aspects. Ascension kind of works with that, but you end up doing two things at once (especially if you’re making the choice to run less efficient cards to help Ascension). I actually think a control/discard deck more purely focused on Ascension stuff will be much better than straight vamps post-WWK.
January 25th, 2010 8:05 PM
I’ve been testing with both Doom Blade and Hideous End I really can’t decide which to run. I’m really leaning towards Doom Blades because it really is more efficient. From what I’ve seen of WWK there’s not going to be much help on the vampire front, so it might be better to go the ascension route, but that’s not come yet. I do like the mind sludge plan, I think I will swap the Consume Spirits for Mind Sludge as after a bit of playtesting they really aren’t worth it. Vess is definitely in, now I just need some. You mentioned Deathmark I think that goes in the sideboard. The heaviest green and white player I know is also the greenest so popping his wurms for one mana just seems mean. It’s also a dead card against anything not green/white. I see that as slaughtering in games 2-3 though.
January 26th, 2010 12:51 AM
Without a doubt, Deathmark is usually sideboard. But if your FNM has a lot of the more common Standard decks (Jund, Naya Lightsabre, G/W Tokens/Eldrazi Green, WW), it can definitely hold its own in the maindeck. It actually kills a LOT of the stuff you want it to kill. But if you’re not sure what you’ll be running into, it’s a gimme for the sideboard.
Any black deck should probably be running 4 x Sign in Blood. With all the lifegain you have access to, it’s basically a free card. If you have fetch lands, Grim Discovery is amazing. WWK seems to be bringing a lot more land destruction than we’ve had in a while, so it could end up useful even without fetches or Gargoyle Castles.
January 26th, 2010 1:52 AM
Yea, all I have is a lonely Marsh Flats I’m trying to sell or trade, so the Grim Discovery is probably not worth it. My area’s metagame skews towards blue controlish things. It’s quite a bit more experimental than the rest of the world I think. Too many guys trying to build a milling deck with the insistence that Esper is the best shard. Part of it’s probably because of the University Bubble effect, the gaming equivalent of inbreeding, I’m sure. Most folks are still in Alara with very little Zendikar. Our resident power-gamer wishes it was still Alliances, and maybe one of us will see anything bigger than a campus FNM.
February 16th, 2010 1:08 PM
Why not just run a Jund deck? This deck list is so close to becoming one. Could you even do a review of a Jund deck?
February 16th, 2010 3:05 PM
This deck has exactly two cards in common with Jund: Bloodbraid Elf and Lightning Bolt. So, it’s really not remotely close to Jund in terms of cards or play style.
As for reviewing a Jund deck, I don’t generally discuss top competitive decks here, simply because I’m not an expert player and there are tons of better places around the Internet for that kind of content. In Crash Test Magic, I’ll bring out a deck idea now and then, usually something fun and possibly competitive (if I’m lucky).
On the other hand, maybe articles explaining how some of the Tier 1 decks work would be useful? It’s hard to gauge interest in this sort of thing.