G/R Monsters
Jonathon Habel
1st Place at StarCityGames Standard Open on 2/22/2014
No groundbreaking shake-up to be found here just a solid and consistent Midrange deck which aims to throw huge beaters at you whirled up with powerful planeswalkers to gain advantage.
Start it up with a ramp package consisting of Elvish Mystic and Sylvan Caryatid which is an integral cog in the machine to power your monster out ahead of the curve. The deck runs Scavenging Ooze as its two drop which can come down early but is best once there is already food in the graveyard for him to grow fatter upon. The main threats in the deck come in the form of the ‘Monstrous’ Polukranos, World Eater and Stormbreath Dragon ready to rip chunks of life from your opponent. Then you have the buffs in Ghor-Clan Rampager and Boon Satyr both of which can either make your monsters into ridiculously large game-enders or can turn your little guys into formidable threats in a pinch. The creatures are backed up primarily by the powerful dynamic duo of planeswalkers in Domri Rade and Xenagos, the Reveler with a little additional assistance from Garruk, Caller of Beasts. We have very few spells in this extremely creaturecentric deck finding a trio of the powerful onesided sweeper Mizzium Mortars and also a copy of Flesh // Blood which is used almost solely for the Blood half as removal or burn but the other half could be used with black mana from a Caryatid if necessary.
This deck is nothing new as this big monster strategy has been very successful for the past few months but what strikes me as odd was that the new players from Born of the Gods Xenagos, God of Revels and Courser of Kruphix are inexplicably absent from this list. Seeing as he did win the event I’m not so much questioning the decision but more wondering the reasoning, was it some sort of meta choice or more of a card selection issue.
Eric J Seltzer
@ejseltzer on Twitter
