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BMoor's Magic
The
Gathering Deck Garage
Monogreen Saproling Deck
March 22, 2010
Recently on BMoor's Deck Garage, I fixed a deck built
around Emeria the Sky Ruin, but I made a small mistake.
Alex, the deck's owner, asked me a rules question I
completely forgot to answer. If you're reading this, Alex,
the creatures that come into the field during your upkeep
will indeed have summoning sickness. In order to not have
summoning sickness, a creature must be under your
control continuously since before the beginning of your
upkeep.
But in a way, it's a lucky thing I'm explaining that rule
today, because Dan's deck also has a card that can put
creatures into the field during his upkeep. Only in Dan's
deck, the creatures aren't from the graveyard, they're
tokens.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey Bmoor,
Big fan of your articles! I definitely think my deckbuilding
has got better since I've began reading them.
Anyhow, my project pretty much since I started playing magic
has been to build a monogreen saproling deck. I've began
acquiring the cards, and I wanted to see if you had any
awesome ideas before I start heading down the wrong path.
The deck would be played entirely casually with friends, so
no restrictions on formats. I do have a budget, but this has
and will continue to be a long term project, so it's not
really a big issue, just no 100$+ cards.
Here's the decklist:
Creatures: 18
Llanowar elves- X4
Birds of Paradise- X4
Verdant Force- X4
Mycoloth- X4
Nemata, Grove Guardian- X2
Noncreature Spells: 20
Natural Order- X4
Reap and Sow- X4
Crop Rotation- X4
Doubling Season- X4
Souls Majesty- X4
Land- 22
Forest- X20
Gaea's Cradle- X2
Llanowar elves and the birds provide early turn mana
acceleration (which is needed badly due to the high cost of
my other creatures,) Verdant force provides early saps when
brought out via natural order saccing a bird or elf which
will
eventually
be eaten by mycoloth and reinforced by Nemata with the
stupid amount of mana Gaea's cradle can produce. Doubling
season is a natural choice in this deck, and it has
hilarious interactions with Mycoloths abilities, especially
if I have multiples out. Souls Majesty is a card drawing
engine used pretty well exclusively on Verdant force to
redraw myself a hand, it is not uncommon for me to be able
to create enough mana with Gaea's cradle to entirely play
that redrawn hand.
I've thrown around the idea of putting more nonbasic lands
in there, such as Oran Rief the Vastwood to make all the
saps that come into play each turn 2/2's, just for some
utility. I am also debating throwing out either the playset
of crop rotation or reap and sow in favour of some fogs (you
never know, especially in multiplayer) overrun's, (which is
just mean,) or heart stone (nemata just pumps out saps like
crazy.)
The decks one major weakness is obviously flying (and blue,
damned counters,) and I think that I could throw in some
windstorms (nice X spells with all the mana I make) to make
things a little better. But I honestly don't know what I'd
take out.
Anyways, that's about all I have to say about this deck.
Hope you think it has potential!
Thanks a lot
Dan
---------
Saproling decks always have potential and they're always
fun. Personally, I ascribe it to the fact that there have
been so many cards in the history of Magic that make them.
The oldest card in your deck, Verdant Force, was first
printed in Tempest in 1997, while the most recent Saproling-producing
card in your deck, Mycoloth,
was
printed in 2009.
And we all know there have been quite a few between those
two extremes, meaning a Saproling deck can take all sorts of
shapes or forms. For example, in Ravnica block, most
Saproling decks took a green/white form from the Selesnya
Conclave, with some folks occasionally splashing red for
Dogpile (in drafts) or Flame Fusillade (in constructed). I
doubt you want to add a color to this deck, Dan, but that's
okay, because Ravnica did give us one little beauty of a
monogreen Saproling-maker in Scatter the Seeds. This one is
good not only because it can flash in three creatures at
instant speed, but because you can tap Saprolings to pay for
it as well as lands.
That same functionality came back in Future Sight, with
Sprout Swarm, a card that can fill a table with glass beads
or pennies all on its own. Since you can keep buying it
back, and it has convoke, each casting of Sprout Swarm
facilitates future casting, all at end of turn of course.
What do you pull out for these cards? Some of your mana
fixing I suspect. I can appreciate either Crop Rotation OR
Reap and Sow in your deck, as a way to find a Gaea's Cradle,
but you don't need both. Nor do you need four copies of
Llanowar Elves AND Birds of Paradise. In a monogreen deck,
the only purpose the Birds serve is to block flying
creatures, and there's much better options for that. I'm not
convinced you need Llanowar Elves either, especially since
your Cradles should have you swimming in the green stuff
before
too long.
Here's a creature I can get behind you playing, though--
Thallid Shell-Dweller. Oh, it's a slow way to produce
Saprolings, but it's also an excellent blocker, and
resistant to burn spells by dint of its high toughness. A
Saproling deck needs time to build up a critical mass of
tokens if it expects to press its advantage. Thallid
Shell-Dweller can buy you that time.
Another card I'd like you to add here is Primal Command. I
doubt there's a monogreen deck out there that doesn't want
to run Primal Command, and yours is no exception. Not only
does it give you an answer to any permanent other than
creatures and a weapon against decks that rely on their
graveyards, it lets you recover a dead Nemata while putting
the rest of your graveyard back into the deck for eventual
re-drawing. And the "gain 7 life" option? Remember what I
said about your deck wanting to be able to buy time? I may
be on record as being down on life gain as a core deck
strategy, but don't kid yourself. The gain 7 option is "for
real". If your opponent is aggro or midrange, gaining 7 life
and putting one of their lands on top is a huge setback for
them. Primal Command also means you have cards other than
Natural Order that can fetch you a Nemata.
And finally, since you're already packing cards that can
tutor you up a nonbasic land-- and for the record I'm a bit
partial to Reap and Sow over Crop Rotation-- I'd say go
ahead and add a copy or two of Oran-Rief, the Vastwood.
Other nonbasics that you might enjoy include Treetop Village
and Sapseep Forest.
Good luck!
~BMoor
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