Sunday, February 26, 2012

I think I've just won five straight games with my Rhys the Redeemed deck.

I'm not sure because the losses are never as memorable as the wins, so I might just be blocking out the bad games. Also, I haven't been keeping a real count. But on the whole, the deck's been performing exceptionally well.

I think people sort of assume token decks are vulnerable to Wrath of God. That's not really true. Actually, the Rhys deck is extremely resilient against board sweepers because it can put a lot of creatures on the board without investing a lot of cards. What happens is I can play my general turn 1, start making tokens, and if they don't do anything, it gets out of hand and they flat-out need a Wrath to keep from getting overrun. But they're not getting any card advantage out of it--I only spent one card. And it went right back to my command zone, too.

Of course, 1/1 elves alone are kind of slow if you're spending your whole turn to make them. You want to get some ramp out there so that you can play some enchantments too. Ideally you drop a Primeval Titan. Titan is insane in every deck, obviously, but the token deck really loves him because he fetches Kjeldoran Outpost and Vitu-Ghazi, which are extremely important for quickly rebuilding the board post-Wrath. You don't want to leave up six for Rhys, get Wrathed, and then feel like an idiot because you wasted your turn. That's awful. So you get some token-making lands and start making more 1/1 durdles at the end of their turn.

Oh, and Gavony Township--I've only added that recently, obviously, since it's a new card, but it's kind of ridiculous in a token deck. I guess that probably isn't surprising to anyone who's ever read what the card does. The utility lands are so sweet that I'm also running Sylvan Scrying and Reap and Sow to fetch them, and I run Green Sun's Zenith just to find Primeval Titan.

The real sweet thing the deck does, though, is just surprise-kill people. End of your turn, instant-speed X-spell token generator, make 20 guys. Untap, Overrun effect, kill you. They never see it coming. It's great. Especially after a Wrath effect. (See? Wraths won't save you!) White Sun's Zenith is one of my favorite cards in this deck; it's a lot of fun to use.

Biggest weakness is probably Elesh Norn. I mean come on. How do you even beat that card? Also, decks that go over the top with combos and stuff can be pretty tough, since GW doesn't have a lot of ways to disrupt them.

From Dark Ascension, I've been trying out Jar of Eyeballs and Haunted Fengraf. Jar's been nice. I got it out in just one game, but I had Perilous Forays + Seedborn Muse to sacrifice dudes and charge it up, and it ended up being pretty godly--basically a tutor. Fengraf has been nice for when I get out an early Primeval Titan. I can search up Fengraf, and if they kill the Titan, I just bring it right back because it's the only guy in my graveyard. Ha!

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