A Treatise on Mono-Green

Sorry for another delayed article, things are starting to get pretty crazy on campus as finals approach. Expect sporadic articles until after the 15^th of May. Moving on now, for those of you that don’t know April 13^th was the PTQ held in Lubbock, TX that I competed in with a little deck I like to call M.G. Geist. This simple mono green deck managed to go 6-1-1, with the draw being to ID into top 8 contention, and finished in 2^nd place. While I didn’t take many notes to run down the tournament I’ll run through the deck and how certain matchups work.

Most Dangerous

 The Deck

The complete deck list for M.G. Geist can be found on the WOTC website here, and despite my name being spelled wrong I assure you that it is me. Now I will start off with by saying that I did not originally create this list and that it is based on a list Melissa DeTora had wrote about a couple months ago and can be found here. Now for this event I did some testing with the original version in the weeks leading up to the event and decided to make a couple changes that would fit into the more competitive side of my local meta. However before I talk about my changes let’s look at the bread and butter of the list that managed to stick around for the final version.  So starting with one-drops we have Arbor Elf, Dryad Militant, and Ulvenwald Tracker. The Arbor Elves are self-explanatory to be used as ramp, but the Militants are used for early aggression and can be made even better by a turn two miracle.  They also help shut down Lingering Souls decks and the tail end of Unburial Rites, or the card in its entirety if they bin it off of a Mulch or Grisly Salvage. Rounding off the one-drops we have two copies of Ulvenwald Tracker that we use to eat our opponent’s creatures with predator ooze to make him grow or remove blockers so we can swing all in. Moving up the curve in our two and three-drop slots we have Strangleroot Geist, Champion of Lambholt, and Predator Ooze. Geist is a great way for some early aggression especially combined with dryad militant or rancor it up off of a turn one arbor elf and you’re swinging for a fifth of their life total on turn two. The geists are also resilient to board wipes and kill spells because of undying, allowing you to keep swinging and making for easy recovery. While Champion of Lambholt is one of the first cards I board out in the control matchup, they are great against creature based decks. Due to the speed of the deck and multiple abilities to grow it only takes a turn of two of it being on the field for your opponent to no longer be able to block thanks to Rancors, Silverhearts, undying triggers, and cheap creatures in general.  Now we get to possibly the best card in the deck, Predator Ooze. Right now in my local meta nothing can really get rid of Ooze once it resolves, there are a couple decks that have Tragic Slip in their side board along with Oblivion Ring and other cards with similar exile effects and Selesnya Charm is almost non-existent. So early game once you land him and attack to grow him a bit you can easily take over the game as nothing will beat the card. Finally we got the big boys Rubblebelt Raiders and Wolfir Silverheart. Raiders, in my opinion, is the weakest card in the deck, but it does serve a purpose. If you can throw a Rancor on it then it is great and can push through a lot of damage since most of your creatures should be swinging every turn, but even without Rancor is does serve a purpose being able to just destroy a board by the need to usually have multiple creatures to block it if an opponent wants to kill it and as well it becomes a big target to your opponents and they focus on it more than your other creatures allowing you to sneak in extra damage. Ending the original creature sweet we come to Wolfir Silverheart. This guy is amazing; he turns even the weakest creatures into a formidable one and making each creature an immediate threat. His main friends in the deck though are Ooze, Champion, and Geist. Ooze to allow him to eat even more creatures, Champion to help keep blockers down, and Geist since after the first death he gets right back up even bigger and can hold hands again. Moving away from creatures let’s look at the other cards in the deck, enchantments, sorceries, and land. For enchantments what green deck wouldn’t be complete without a Rancor, and baby we got Rancors for days. Having a playset of the means that you will always hit at least one in any match and it has plenty of uses. Being able to force through damage, helping our Ooze once again eat anything, growing Champion to keep blockers down, and giving a good amount of damage in the early game against control lists makes this card great and an instant four of in a deck like this. For our sorcery spot we have one of the coolest cards in the deck Revenge of the Hunted. Nothing is better than turning this over turn two with an Arbor Elf or Militant on the field and hitting your opponent for a quarter+ of their life total. However, I have run into problems where this can easily delay a game plan for a turn since you just used your mana accelerant to smack your opponent in the face instead of landing an Ooze or Champion. This card is also great at helping breaking up a stalled board position by just slapping it on a big creature and sending him in to eat up an entire board. Unless there are multiples in your opening hand or it’s the first card you draw when not on the play it will most always be a bomb in any match up. Lastly for land we have an exciting suite of 23 Forests………..that’s all you get folks pretty exciting huh? The changes I made to the main board of the deck were pretty simple, but had a big impact in my mind on giving the deck a bit more resilience. Originally the deck ran playsets of Silverhearts and Raiders; I dropped one of each to make room for two Vorapedes. These guys are amazing and will stick around for a while if they aren’t hit by a counter spell on the way down. It’s a 5/4 for five that also has vigilance, trample, and undying making it a perfect creature to top off the curve. Lastly the sideboard is pretty stock, running 3 Naturalize, 3 Plummet, 3 Wolfir Avenger, 4 Acidic Slime, and 2 Ranger’s Guile. The sideboard used to have 3 Tormod’s Crypt, but I dropped them for the Avengers that come in against control lists in exchange for Champions.

Flubber from hell

Matchups

Esper-

This matchup is pretty simple. Just play out your creatures and bash face. Most decks don’t run more than around four counter spells in the main and our creatures will hopefully hit the board before they can play them. The undying creatures and Ooze should be able to take over the game pretty handily with what they are trying to play. For the sideboard it’s a good idea to drop the Champions for Avengers since the biggest benefit of Champion is turned off by their low creature count if they run the mill version of Esper, and if they are running Soring Esper their creatures don’t matter much anyway and you want a creature that can withstand a board wipe and spot removal. Other cards to bring in would be either Ranger’s Guile or Acidic Slime. Slimes to take out their utility lands and Ranger’s Guile to avoid spot removal, but these can be situational depending on how the Esper list is playing.

American-

This matchup plays out almost the same way as the Esper matchup. The difference is that it will be a good idea to keep in Champion since they will have a larger creature count. Also with sideboarding the slimes will be unneeded, but it would be a good idea to drop the Trackers in exchange for Guiles. Since their creatures will either be untargetable like Geist of SaintTraft or something you don’t want to target like Boros Reckoner.

Unburial Rites-

This matchup plays like the control matchups, but the sideboard doesn’t really matter. Like the control matchups you want to race very fast damage before they can stabilize, but like creature/agro matchups the sideboard won’t matter since they deck is pretty well set for the creature matchups. As well Dryad Militants can ruin their game plan if Mulches and Grisly Salvages go wrong.

Naya Blitz-

This is possible the hardest matchup as most decks can out race us. So the best plan would be to just hold back blockers in the early game until you can fully take control of the board. It definitely is a change up from the other matchups of being the one on the back foot, but if done right and with a little luck you can easily take over the game. For the sideboard I really don’t change anything since the deck is pretty well made for the creature matchup.

B/R Zombies­-

Against the old guard of current agro lists take a more aggressive, but still defensive stance. The early game isn’t as hard as it is against Blitz, but make sure to hold back a creature or two incase blocking becomes a necessity. After their board is pretty contained just start swinging with the big creatures. When it comes to sideboarding I take out the Trackers for Guiles since certain creatures like Geralf’s Messengers want to die and most of our creatures can one-for-one theirs, and the Guiles can be very important since these list will have access to tragic slip which will kill Ooze, a card very important in the creature matchups.

The Aristocrats: Act II-

Say hello to the new kids on the block, and updated version of Tom Martel’s Pro-Tour winning deck. They have dropped the knights and champions in exchange for things like Blood Artist and play and aggressive mid-range game. The key to this matchup is too early on kill their  small creatures, as late game a little Doomed Traveler can become something scary if you don’t want to turn on their SkirsdagHigh Priests. Just keep bashing in and try to race damage before multiple Boros Reckoners show up to ruin the fun. For sideboard just bring in the Guiles in exchange for Trackers to help keep them off morbid and save Oozes from slipping tragically.

Basic Strategy against most lists-

Just turn ‘em sideways and make your opponents have it. While sometimes it is better to play with caution, at times you are just giving your opponent more time to find the answer you don’t have. And always hope for miracles. Several times I’ve hardcast Revenge, but there is nothing better than miracle casting it on turn two with a Dryad Militant, and in late game it can be the card needed to sneak in the winning damage or break a stalled board.

Well guys that the deck, I hope you enjoyed it. It’s a really fun list to play and even though I’ve put it back on the shelf I still pick it up for a couple games. While I hope to have it up this weekend I can’t make any promises, but look out for the next article where I’ll be going over my Top 10 cards from Dragon’s Maze.

Thanks for reading,

Zack

P.S. Sorry for the wall of text, the image up-loader wasn't working when I published this.