Five With Flores

Hey everyone!

As promised I am going to share my suggested deck for the 2008 State Championships.

I have been pretty good at this tournament in the past (won in 2006, finished 2d in 2005 losing the mirror to Julian Levin), usually playing an unusual deck for the metagame.

This year I am going to play Jund Mana Ramp. Because you probably care more about the deck list than the analysis, here it is:

1 Broodmate Dragon
4 Firespout
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Jund Charm

4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Chameleon Colossus
4 Cloudthresher
2 Farhaven Elf
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Primal Command
4 Rampant Growth

4 Fire-lit Thicket
8 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Savage Lands
2 Swamp
4 Treetop Village

sb:
3 Mind Shatter
2 Broodmate Dragon
4 Gutteral Response
2 Primal Command
4 Lash Out

My decision to play this style of a deck is based on two things, 1) the lack of good two mana acceleration in Standard (save Rampant Growth) and 2) the fact that I think that Gift of the Gargantuan is the strongest card for Standard Constructed in Shards of Alara. This card is exceptional. Until you have flipped up a Cloudthresher and a Treetop Village against a Five-color Control deck you don’t know how good it is.

I played the pair for a long while in my Reveillark deck (which I was going to play until about mid-way through this week) but I came to the conclusion that it was not strong enough against Five-color Control (which I estimate will be the most populous deck of the 2008 State Championships). The problem with Reveillark, Four-color Control, and similar decks was that I was worrying about stopping a Five-color Control’s Stage Three game plan of Cruel Ultimatum / Nucklavee by sandbagging cards like Cryptic Command and Hindering Light but the clever Five-color Control player (in sideboarded games at least) can just wait until he has eight mana and beat me with Vexing Shusher or Gutteral Response.

Ultimately I decided to tune towards a more proactive strategy.

The secret of this deck is that it plays very much like an Onslaught Standard era Beasts (”Bests”) deck. That is, it plays very deceptively towards card advantage. Jund Ramp is almost Blue in its implementation.

Gift of the Gargantuan - two for one.

Civic Wayfinder - two for one.

Farhaven Elf - two for one with acceleration.

… Right on down the line.

It’s like I have my own little squad of Mulldrifters.

The acceleration lets you get ahead of the opponent on mana even while you are proactively dealing with other aspects of the game.

The advantage is most pronounced in sideboarded games against Five-color Control. You ramp out your mana, test spell them with a Cloudthresher; usually they will counter this. Now you untap and go at it with Mind Shatter, ideally with Gutteral Response waiting. The game will usually be yours!

So anyway, that’s my deck, at least as of right now. This deck is pretty powerful and has some really good board presence and defense in an eight -pack of sweepers; it has a superb matchup against Five-color control, and has the tools to be competitive with Faeries. Broodmate Dragon came from Evan Erwin as a solution to Red Decks in State Three with Demigods crashing into me every turn. “Double Dragon” produces multipe relevant defenders.

Post any questions in the comments below and I will try to get to them asap.

Thanks for reading, and good luck tomorrow!

LOVE
MIKE

P.S. Were I not playing Jund Mana Ramp for States, I would likely be on Blightning Beatdown. After tonight’s Mock Tournament — where Brian David-Marshall went 3-0 — BDM said that he would be on Blightning Beatdown as well (Blightning itself being very powerful). Brian did a short writeup on the deck at Top8Magic.com.