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Space for Rent!

Paul Hagan's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
 Moonfolk, Type II - 5.31.05

Hey all! Sorry I’ve been running so late with my articles recently, but as it turns out -- I’m lazy. Who knew?

Anyways, we’re still hanging out in the Realm of Type II this week. Here’s the e-mail I received…

I was looking over the moonfolk wizards from the kamigawa block, and
noticed that they all have control abilities that require you to bring
land back to your hand. I decided to make a blue/green deck, the blue
cards being mostly wizards, and the green cards helping out with land.
I use Azusa and Budoka Gardener to put lands back into play after using
the moonfolk abilities.
I need to keep this T2 legal, and a moderate budget. Here is the
decklist:


Blue

3 Soratami Savant
3 Soratami Cloudskater
4 Floodbringer
4 Soratami Rainshaper
2 Uyo, Silent Prophet
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
2 Patron of the Moon
3 Sage Owl

Green
3 Sakura-Tribe Scout (Saviors card...I'm using proxies)
2 Budoka Gardener
2 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
3 Fertile Ground
4 Rampant Growth
3 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Lifegift

Lands
10 Island
10 Forest

I originally had 2 Heartbeat of Spring in it, but I took them out.

-Jon

----------------------

OK, first things first, I’m a little bit concerned about the amount of stuff to put lands into play in this deck. I agree that it is good to generate a lot of mana fast, but I’m not so sure that we need Fertile Ground, Rampant Growth, and Sakura-Tribe Elder. Looking at the set of those, why don’t we go ahead and cut Fertile Ground, since it seems the most vulnerable to disruption. I’ll also throw in a fourth copy of Sakura-Tribe Elder while we’re here.

-3 Fertile Ground
+1 Sakura-Tribe Elder

I’d also like to get rid of Lifegift. Life gain in general is pretty useless unless attached to another good ability, such as is the case with Exalted Angel or Armadillo Cloak. Remember: the point of the game is to reduce your opponent to 0 Life, not for you to gain 1000 Life.

-1 Lifegift

Next, I want to go ahead and add a fourth copy of Sakura-Tribe Scout. We’re going to have a mass amount of Moonfolk bouncing land in this deck, so we might as well have a good number of ways to put it back into play.

+1 Sakura-Tribe Scout

Finally, I want to throw in another card from Saviors of Kamigawa. I think that it has great potential in this deck, but Jon probably can’t put it into play until he has a decent board set-up. What card am I speaking of? Seed the Land…

Seed the Land [2GG]
Enchantment
Whenever a land comes into play, its controller puts a 1/1 Snake token into play.

Although it works for Jon’s opponent as well as Jon, I think that a deck built around abusing it will have a little bit more luck. Plus, it gives me an excuse to sneak Saviors of Kamigawa cards into the Deck Garage and make me look better at my job.

+2 Seed the Land

OK, moving our attention over to the Blue portion of the deck, I see a few cards that make me sad. With only one sorcery in the deck (Rampant Growth), Uyo doesn’t serve much of a purpose. Yes, I’m aware that Jon’s opponent could play a devastating instant or sorcery that would be really cool to copy and redirect, but that seems more like a sideboard card – at best.

-2 Uyo, Silent Prophet

I’m also unimpressed with Floodbringer. If you only had to return one land, I might be more willing to think about it, but as is, there are much better things for Jon to be doing with his mana than tapping one or two lands a turn.

-4 Floodbringer

Next, I’m going to go ahead and round out the set on Soratami Savant and Soratami Cloudskater.

+1 Soratami Cloudskater
+1 Soratami Savant

I’m also going to up the count on Meloku the Clouded Mirror to three. I realize that this might be a slightly high number, but I’m a bit concerned about the number of true win conditions in this deck. Most of the creatures are small, and could easily be held off by a few 3/3 or 4/4 creatures.

+2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror

That said, I’m not too happy about Sage Owl being in the deck. It does have a decent ability, but once in play, it is just bad.

-3 Sage Owl

In its place, and to help provide some defense for this deck, I’m throwing in a full set of Echoing Truth. If the game seems to be going in a bad direction, Jon will at least be able to buy himself an extra turn or two.

+4 Echoing Truth

To help smooth out the mana base a bit, I’m going to go to eight Forests and one Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers for the green mana. Blue mana will be provided by eleven Islands and one Minamo, School on Water’s Edge.

Here’s the final decklist…

CREATURES (29):
2 Azusa, Lost But Seeking
2 Budoka Gardener
3 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
2 Patron of the Moon
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Sakura-Tribe Scout
4 Soratami Savant
4 Soratami Cloudskater
4 Soratami Rainshaper

NON-CREATURE SPELLS (10):
4 Echoing Truth
4 Rampant Growth
2 Seed the Land

LANDS (21):
8 Forest
11 Island
1 Minamo, School on Water’s Edge
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers

Hope that helps, Jon, and good luck!

I’ll see y’all next week.

-Paul Hagan