Whispers of the Muse: Henry S’s ‘Predators Trample Underfoot’
Today’s Whispers of the Muse (our community-feedback deckbuilding series) comes to us by way of Henry S, a player relatively new to the game but already keen to try out his brewing skills. In possession of two heavily Green decks, he’s looking to fuse them into one powerful set of 60 cards. Of course, suggestions from outside the card pool never hurt, either! Says Henry,
I’m the sort of person that enjoys creating new decks and my next idea is something I’m very unfamiliar with: a trample deck.
I will be basing the the deck on a synergy between Garruk’s Teeth of the Predator and Archenemy: Trample Civilisation Underfoot, both of which, as you know, are green decks excelling at pumping out the fatties. I’m a player that likes speed, so I would the deck to be as quick as is possible.
Combining both of these decks will allow me access to several large creatures (two Molimo, a Vigor, Verdant Force, and Kanahl, Fist of Krosa) but, being that I would like some of my own changes in the deck, I am currently holding a Liege of the Tangle that I would like to put to use, although I’m not sure here to put it or how start the deck in general.
If you’d like a refresher on the contents of both decks, look no further:
Trample Civilization Underfoot
Teeth of the Predator
Can anyone offer any suggestions for Henry? How would you build this deck? What would you keep/cut/add?
Ertai's Lament 
That Liege could feel right at home in this deck. Especially if you use Teeth as the foundation and build from there. Throw in the Kamahl. I wouldn’t go to nuts on the higher CMC creatures. Stuff like Forgotten Ancient may not have trample, but with Overrun, Kamahl, and such you’ll get trample fast. Ancient also gets huge fast in multiplayer.
I’d focus your lower CMC creatures on ramp. Llanowar Elves x4 for sure.
Maybe a couple of harrows. A harmonize or two wouldn’t be terrible. Those 2 Rampant Growths would be great in it. Rancor for sure. A pair of overruns. Basic stuff really, but I feel the deck should be mostly creatures.
You have to decide to a degree if you want to go sparolings or not. Verdant Force plays into Verdeloth the Ancient, Thelonite Hermit, and such. Abuse the fact you’ll be creating sparolings. Personally, I wouldn’t go that way. Just not my style.
Maybe start with a creature line up like this if not basing it off sparolings.
Kamahl (A second wouldn’t be bad)
Vigor (“)
2 Molimo
A couple Forgotten Ancients
4 Llanowar Elves
Possibly another mana creature.
Not a big green player outside of my elves deck. Not sure what’s out there, but I do have this archenemy deck. Used it to beef up my Coalition deck. It has a lot of good cards in it depending on which way you want to go.
I nearly wrote a novel in response as this is a play style that I’m _very_ familiar with. Before I drown you all in text, I want to ask Henry a question. What style of deck would you prefer–token/weenie that overruns and pumps or a deck of huge fatties? I ask because both of these decks are trying to straddle the line between the two. If you want to ramp into big fatties on turn five and bash face it’s an entirely different strategy than playing lots of smaller creatures and using overrun effects like Kamahl.
I found both of these decks to be rather weak and in need of some major meddling due to the poor mana ramp options and lack of solid disruption. At least the Archenemy deck had Schemes to lean on, but Teeth of the Predator had no such help.
Henry here,
Being that I run a Myr deck and a Reanimator deck, I’m familiar with both swarm tactics and ME SMASH FACE tactics; my friend runs a green deck like this, which happens to be a “smash face” variant.
Both styles have pros and cons, my main concern is that my poor Saprolings will be Pyroclasmed (since the majority of my playgroup sideboard one, specifically for my Myr) and summoning the fatties can be potentially slow (I like speed).
I love the idea of having a field of 0/1’s being pumped by Vigor and Vigor being pumped by the Forgotten Ancient but I’m not all that fussed – it could be a mash of both…as long as it maintains my standards of being ruthless to the core.
Thanks!
Henry here,
I enjoy the idea of the little Saprolings being beefed up by Vigor, and Vigor being beefed up by the Forgotten Ancient.
Both play styles have their pros and cons, primarily lack of speed for the big beefy guys, and the looming prospect of my opponents saying “Tap two, pyroclasm” to scorch all my little weenies.
To be fair if a stew of weenie and beefy were possible I’d consider it, but I do love people’s faces when you drop something big.
Thanks!
Thing is. Unless I’m mistaken, the cards that would make sparolings aren’t small at all. The sparolings in a deck like this are icing on the cake.
Using Verdeloth the Ancient, each will be at least 2/2. Throw in the Hermit, 3/3.
I’m sure there are a few all your creatures get +_/+_ that you could use. Sigil Blessing is one, but you’d need to splash white. Sure there is a pure green card similar to it.
I don’t know. I don’t think I’d worry too much about a pyro burning a few tokens. I’d only focus on that if you were using a full Sparoling deck. A mix of sparolings and creatures? Nah.
I see, so exactly how many things are there that spawn Saprolings? Verdeloth and the Hermit are the ones I know of besides the schemes that come in the archenemy.
Oh, and I apologise for the double post…i’m incompetent.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text=+%5Bsaproling%5D&color=+@%28%5BG%5D%29&output=spoiler&method=visual
That link is to gatherer. I limited the search to green cards that mention saprolings in the text. 35 in all. Without just green, it’s like 80.
There are some nice ones there. Mycoloth for example. Devour 2 it has then each turn you get a saproling for each counter on it.
Could make a saproling deck, but the only pure green boosts to them as a saproling lord are the above I mentioned before.
Aha…I see what you mean about there being very little support for them, I imagine an Overrun or Beastermaster Ascension would solve that quickly.
What about the other style? You see to know your stuff, so what about some ideas for a more…fat deck?
See my initial reply. Posted in there a possible start for the alternative large creature deck.
Not really a green player, so I really don’t know what’s out there.
Too bad you got only one vigor, two of them on the field basically make indestructible all your creatures!
In my meta board wipes (day, black sun) are commonplace, so I prefer to play one large threat at a time while holding back spells to quickly rebuild. I like to drop a leatherback Baloth or terra stomper and watch how my opponent reacts. I find equipment useful, especially strides harness as it’s a very cheap way to provide haste. If my opponent is holding a board wipe then he also needs to answer the harness or I can drop a creature and swing right away on the following turn. I also use lead the stampede to refill my hand with business and with 26-28 creatures this spell is likely to net me two or three creatures for a mere three mana.
I realize that this isn’t exactly the kind of deck you’re wanting to play but these are important fundamentals for any deck that does all of its talking in the red zone.
Also, green is notorious for losing momentum and getting stuck in a top decking situation–waiting to draw something useful with no cards in hand. To stave this off I almost always include two crystal balls. Being able to scry in green is very strong. Mid to late game you’ll want to push useless ramp and lands to the bottom of your deck every turn and draw threats.
I hope this is helpful. Good luck and good gaming.
Thank you, and likewise.
Your goal on this deck has to be to ramp up your mana to power out huge creatures and win the game. To that effect, go with more elves. Llanowar elves, arbor elves, and greenweaver druids are a great way to get up to that mana. However, if you want to get land for mana base to use with molimo, then go for sylvan rangers, viridian emissaries, and frontier guides. The frontier guides wont help ramp as much, but getting land drops to boost your dudes is still pretty sweet.