Gnarrly Beats --> Saps Rising --> Spore Cry |
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I think I'll start from scratch and try to discover a 'core build' for Saps Rising. This may be stream of consciousness, so buckle up.
4 Selesnya Evangel 4 Kjeldoran War Cry If you can't keep saprolings on the board, you can't win, so you have to have a way to protect 'em from those nasty red board sweepers! 4 Veteran Armorer To help convoke saps out faster, and to help afford the costly pump spells needed to win with blistering speed, it's important to have mana acceleration. 4 Llanowar Elves It's highly likely that your army will meet with some resistance, so it's a good idea to have some ways of dealing with threats. 4 Temporal Isolation And, of course, you have to pay for all of this. Thanks to Llanowar and convoke, you can cut back reasonably comfortably to 20 lands. 20 Lands That gives us a grand total of: 76 Cards Obviously, we have some overkill on some of our ideas.
For that reason, and due to a great deal of testing, I guarantee you'll be happy with the cycling pump spell. 4 Marshaling Cry Early game, it moves you along in your deck, helping you find the pieces you need to set up your saproling assembly line. Mid- to late-game, it pumps your team AND grants vigilance, which is especially helpful for many reasons (most notably convokers and defenders). I really can't see anyone convincing me that 4 Marshaling Cry is not the way to go. Even though it's a sorcery -- it's not like people don't know what your deck is trying to do to them. The surprise factor is only sometimes beneficial. Now, I know that Hokusai22 (another fine backer of Saps Rising) has said that 'Fortify wins games.' However, I'm going to get all radical on you and suggest that Kjeldoran War Cry may be the better fit for this deck. It's still an instant. It's faster. It has the added bonus of pumping both power AND toughness. And by time you cast the second one, it's already better than Fortify -- for less mana! Too many games I've seen two or three Fortify in my opening hand. It's too clunky a spell to use for anything much other than the final beatdown (which is where Marshaling Cry shines, because it waits patiently for you in the graveyard). Meanwhile, Kjeldoran War Cry can be defensive, and it can also grow to proportions greater than Fortify's wildest dreams. 4 Kjeldoran War Cry If the lack of Fortify makes you nervous, there are usually 2 extra slots in the deck that you could fill with it. Or just don't heed my advice. It's not like I win very much, so who am I kidding?
4 Selesnya Evangel As much as I like Pallid Mycoderm as a sap engine, instant-speed pump, and substantial body, there just isn't enough room (or tempo) to keep him as a 4-of. So I'm planning to cut him down to 2. If that makes you nervous, try 3. 2 Pallid Mycoderm After all that, and 4 Llanowar Elves, and 20 lands, we're at 50 cards. This leaves us 10 precious slots to fill. 4 of those are easy. 4 Veteran Armorer My testing has revealed Lumithread Field to be too slow and underwhelming as a maindeck card, so I'm going to pass on that for now. I almost forgot that precious and key piece of the maindeck strategy! Sometimes, while building up your army, you chance to sustain more damage than is comfortable. That's where this next card comes in. As you're cranking out the saprolings, she's counting all their souls and adding them to your life total. She even counts the opponent's creatures, too! 4 Essence Warden Such a great common, and perfectly at home in the maindeck of this build. She's also a great convoker for the early game and will help power out your sap forces. That leaves us with just 2 slots, and those need to be dedicated to the customary removal suite for Gnarrly Beats / Saps Rising: 2 Temporal Isolation Don't worry; the other 2 copies, as well as a full compliment of Sunlance, will reside safely in the sideboard, ready to come in whenever white is absent from the opponent's deck. Speaking of the sideboard, what's it made of? The sideboard truly makes or breaks this deck. It's so focused on its one goal that it doesn't devote many slots to answering unique threats from the opponent. That's where the sideboard comes in. I can't begin to tell you the answer to this question. I do know that 4 Sunlance is a must. Lumithread Field may become a good answer to R/x control decks packing board sweep. Guardian used to be good but has been moved down a peg by Ghostfire. Mire Boa may become useful if Rakdos, Golgari, and Dimir start showing up. There are all kinds of options, and really, the sideboard should change and morph as the metagame progresses. But there are certain weaknesses the Selesnya mage should be aware of: 1. Board Sweep. Our worst nightmare. If our deck is playing correctly, we have strong matchups (pre-board) against Orzhov Blink [or Azorius Blink], R/x aggro, and U/x control. We die horribly to R/x control, especially UR Control which is our nemesis. We don't like Parlor Tricks or Storm, either. Red aggro is great for us, but red control is horrible for us. I'm sure individual taste and personality, as well as the influence of the developing metagame, will cause mutations of the following list. However, I aimed to produce a 'core list' from scratch that will hopefully prove a solid starting place for all Selesnya mages interested in this amazingly fun deck!
4 Llanowar Elves 2 Temporal Isolation 4 Sprout Swarm ----- 4 Sunlance |
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My experience in tonight's tournament, SPDC 3.01, left me bewildered, frustrated, and disappointed. Nonetheless, I am driven to develop Saps Rising in the new metagame, for I am a backer of the deck. I just happened to make too many drastic changes too quickly, and in doing so, I learned a lot about how NOT to play the deck.
The deck wins by pushing a swarm of saprolings through enemy defenses and pumping them up to gigantic proportions.
Pump is the first thing I think we need to look at. Without creatures on the board, it's useless. You really need to have a tight suite of pump spells so that they work for you and not against you.
Next, we're on to the saproling spells. These are really the most important pieces of the deck, so the more the merrier. I might suggest cutting Scatter the Seeds down to 3 if you're looking for room in the deck, but otherwise, I think 16 sap producers is just about where you want to be.
8 Forest