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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Mono Green Bear Deck
February 8, 2010

It's always nice to see a deck that has a real theme to it, not necessarily just a strategy. Luckily, William's deck has both. 

Hi BMoor! 

I am a extremely casual player, and I've been running my Bear Deck for over a year now. When I designed it I was pretty active in magic, but I have not been playing in the last year. I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for it from the last few sets, and as a exterior perspective.

Bear Deck

Deck List

4 Grizzly Bears
4 Forest Bear
4 Bear Cub
4 Balduvian Bears
4 Gaea's Anthem
4 Giant Growth
2 Dolmen Gate
2 Bearscape
2 Harrow
4 Muraganda Petroglyphs
2 Soul Foundry 
2 Caller of the Claw
2 Words of Wilding
20 Forest

At the moment, I'm thinking about removing the Caller of the Claw and the Words of Wilding, both of which are lackluster and counter synergistic with the rest of the deck, and replacing them with the new Runeclaw Bear for consistency. This will truly make it a Tribal deck with 20 Bears. The deck itself is a nice little engine, with the bears coming out as 2/2's, being pumped with the Anthem's and the Petroglyphs. I'll imprint one on a Soul Foundry and create myself a Bear Factory, and when the nontoken bears do die, they can be recycled alongside the Giant Growth's into even more bear's using Bearscape.

Although I will admit the deck is not the best set up for winning duels, (it has a slow start, and any competent control player will contain it), it is an absolute blast to play in Chaos Multiplayer or Two Headed Giant, where you have other players to take your fire. My favorite part of playing with this deck is when you decisively destroy you opponent, yelling and growling like a bear. Despite these, I would not be surprised to be beaten utterly with the deck by the power level creep which has occurred in more recent sets.. If this is so, what do you suggest for a replacement to the deck? In any changes, I would prefer you too keep it Monogreen, despite the new ease in having decent manabase for multicolor decks.

Thanks ahead of time,

William C. Coney

Vae Victis!
Sonae-yo Tsuneni.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, William,  let's see what we can do. Sadly, there haven't been all that many new Bears printed for a while other than Runeclaw. It made sense in Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, but you'd think one of Alara's shards, or Zendikar, would have Bears. Oh well.

Fortunately, while Lorwyn didn't have any Bears, it did have creatures that technically counted as Bears-- the Changelings. Woodland Changeling in particular does a very nice impression of a Bear, though if you can get Chameleon Colossus, that'd probably be your best bet.

Of course, you don't really have any effects that say "all Bears get...". The closest thing you have is Muraganda Petroglyphs, which won't work on any creature with changeling. Of course, if you're more committed to Bears than you are to vanilla creatures, you can replace the Petroglyphs with either Door of Destinies (naming "bear") or Brass Herald (naming "bear") The Herald is probably better-- even though the Door can give a bigger bonus, it won't do so until you play at least two more Bears. The Herald will not only give the bonus right away, it will help you draw some more Bears.

Speaking of more Bears, what other Bears could you add? Well, Runeclaw Bears, obviously. You could also use Ashcoat Bear, who also makes a neat combat trick or can pretend to have haste. Then there's River Bear, if you think Islandwalk would help you. Striped Bears, like Brass Herald, will help you keep your hand stocked with extra Bears, and Werebear, while not having synergy with Bearscape, can accelerate your mana.

And as though I hadn't already harped on being able to draw extra cards enough already, I'd also ask you to add Harmonize. Remember, whoever draws the most cards has the most resources with which to win!

Good luck!

~BMoor