9.8.04  Ok cimsonspider sent me a Nature/Light deck of his. Here is his initial build:

Nature Creatures:10
4x Psyshroom
3x Poisonous Mushroom
3x Bronze-Arm Tribe

Nature Spells:10
4x Mana nexus
3x Dimension Gate
3x Pangea's song

Light Creatures:16
3x Gran Gure, Space Guardian
4x Dia Nork, Moonlight Guardian
4x La Ura-Giga, Sky Guardian
2x Ladia Bale, the Inspirational
3x Toel, Vizier of Hope

Light Spells:9
3x Holy Awe
3x Diamond Cutter
3x Sun-Drop Armor

Total:45

And here's what he had to say about his deck...

"The Theme: Sheer defense.

The vast assortment of blockers gives me plenty to defend with. With the Armor and the Nexus, I can have up to 12 shields. But the deadliest combo in this deck is the Nexus+Psyshroom. First, I get a Mana Nexus as a shield. Then I place all my other Mana Nexuses into the mana zone. Each time they break a Nexus, I activate it and place another one into my shield zone from my mana zone. The next turn I attack with Psyshroom and place Nexus from the graveyard to the mana zone, causing a cycle of shield replacement. If I ever run out of Mana Nexus in the mana zone, I can just place Holy Awe there when they break the last Nexus. All the while I'm picking at them with the Psyshrooms, making an offensive and defensive combo all in one. The rest of the nature cards are devoted to mana-building and card-drawing.

Toel, Vizier of Hope, not only allows my creatures to attack theirs without having to worry about not blocking, but it also keeps my more vulnerable creatures from being killed i.e. Psyshroom. That way I can rest easier when Ladia Bale double-breaks. Diamond cutter allows me to strike my opponent directly with my blockers, and in combination with Toel, could leave them dead in the water.

Because of BAT and that my deck could probably cause my opponent to draw their last before me, I kept the total cards a little higher than normal.

Kettou Da!"


Certainly an interesting build. I liked the fact that he gave me a good explanation of how his deck wins. Before I take this into the field and playtest with it I'm going to take out the bad stuff, and put in more of what's good. Pangea's Song isn't really something that most players like to use in their decks. The Song/Tribe/Shroom combo does let you gain mana quickly. However it bleeds your hand dry way too fast. So I'm taking all the Songs out of his deck. I feel that Holy Awe, Poisonous Mushroom, and Bronze Arm Tribe are needed in fours for most decks that use them. Most players would agree. So it's -3 Song and +1 Holy Awe, +1 Tribe, and +1 Shroom.

OK now it's time to playtest *runs along and playtests against a Mono-Water and then a Diamond Cutter deck*.

*returns* OK I'm back. One card just didn't help me very much at all. That card is Sundrop Armor. I often found myself playing a non-trigger card into my shield zone. Diamond Cutter was used only once in two games, but it worked very well when I did use it. Psyshrooms didn't work out much, but there's not much else to put into this deck. So Shrooms stays. Toel worked out nicely. Toel let me freely attack my opponent's tapped creatures without worrying about defending on the next turn. Ladia Bale didn't help too much. A lot of times I was putting a Ladia Bale on top of a Dia Nork. I didn't like doing that at all. Gran Gure seemed to help more. Dimension Gate only really helped when I got it as a Shield Trigger. It still let me grab some good stuff though.

Given what I said above I'm going to make these changes to the deck...

-2 Ladia Bale
-3 Sundrop Armor

+1 Gran Gure

I've taken out the Bales, and maxed out the Gran Gures because I think Gran Gure works out better.

OK now I'm off to go and playtest this newer version. *Finds someone online to play agianst*

*Returns from facing a Mono-Nature deck* OK after three battles against a Mono-Nature deck I have to say that this deck needs more early game defense. Seems to me like the Gran Gures will stop Natures bigger creatures until a Natural Snare comes along. Mana gain let's Gran Gure hit the table on turn four or five most of the time. The early creatures hurt a lot. I think I'll drop your Dia Norks down to Jade Trees. It's OK if Barkwhip takes a few shields. Better than letting all the weenies take even more shields if you ask me. Anyway it's -4 Dia Nork, and +4 Jade Tree. Psyshrooms only works out half of the time so I'm going to drop it's count down to three.

Incase anybody's lost here's what the deck looks like now...

x4 Poisonous Mushroom
x3 Psyshroom
x4 Bronze Arm Tribe
x4 Mana Nexus
x4 Dimension Gate

x4 Gran Gure
x4 La Ura Giga
x4 Jade Tree
x3 Holy Awe
x3 Diamond Cutter
x3 Toel

OK now I'm going to take this to my local tourney area to see how it does. I have to hurry up and make this deck in real life though. I'll be back in a few hours. *goes to league night at Mayhem Collectibles in Des Moines Iowa*

OK I've returned. The deck ran fine except for one problem. Gran Gure got removed/bounced a lot. Also I'm very disappointed in the Psyshrooms combo. It doesn't go off that much. Mainly because there's rarely a Nexus to combo it off of. So to fix those two problems I'm going to add in x4 Natural Snare. Now you have more ways to deal with big creatures. You also have four more cards to combo Psyshrooms from. Natural Snare should have been in this deck from the beginning. I didn't want to add it in though, because it would have ran your deck count even higher. I don't like high deck counts. Anyway here is the final build...

x4 Poisonous Mushrooms
x4 Bronze Arm Tribe
x3 Dimension Gate
x4 Natural Snare
x3 Psyshrooms

x4 Gran Gure
x4 Holy Awe
x3 Toel
x3 Diamond Cutter
x4 Jade Tree
x4 La Ura Giga

If this was my deck I would be doing things a bit differently. I would be using Seeker of Thunder to combo off of Holy Awes. I would be running a 40 card build. And of course I would be running four copies of anything that I would stick into the deck. Of course that would be imposing my playstyle upon your deck. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to take your deck and make it better for YOU. Not me lol.

One thing I learned from using this deck was that Toel has more uses than I thought... but only agianst decks without a lot of removal. Attacking shields with weenies and then untapping them so that my opponent couldn't kill them on the next turn was fun. If I had more than a week to playtest I could probably get this deck to do even better, but I gotta post at least one deck fix per week lol.

Anyway that's it for this week.