Thanks to Sauceman "I've seen this great land from every angle. I know its every tree, stone, and river bend. Yet I have come to realize that knowing a thing is not the same as healing it" - Diary of Azusa
I am working towards turning this into a primer, bear with me!
Deck History:
This was the first magic deck that I ever built, and it began life as just a mono-green play dudes and durdle deck with Verdeloth the Ancient as the commander. This was great, but the only usual win-con for the deck was generating an absurd amount of mana and playing Verdeloth kicked for a billion, or comboing out with Squirrel Nest and Earthcraft, both of which required me to let the table have a turn for an answer because it didn't have concordant crossroads.
After a while I got bored with the strategy and wanted to try an win through general damage, so I changed the general over to Omnath, Locus of Mana. I liked that build a lot because if you could get him out and protect him, you could play massive amounts of large spells all in one turn. All the while during each version of the deck, Azusa had always been in there, but she had always been more of an enabler than the focus of the deck itself. It was only after I decided to try her out as the general for one game that I realized just how powerful she really is. Being able to play a Primeval Titan or some other arbitrarily large creature on turn 3 was too intoxicating to pass up.
I've been playing the deck with Azusa as the general now for probably a good two years now, playing, tweaking, and updating the deck as I discovered new interactions and as new sets became available. With the recent banning of Primeval Titan, one of the decks easiest ways to win was removed, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that; although it was nice to gain such a massive advantage through titan, he was not a necessity in the deck.
For a long time, and at the inception of this thread; the deck was based around really abusing Birthing Pod. I loved the card and the deck played really well with it, going through a pod chain was a ton of fun. Eventually though, I realized that there was a lot of potential that was being wasted by having to keep certain creatures and cards in the deck to be able to truely abuse the pod. So I cut it, and have been further developing the list since then, really trying to optimize it.
I do a lot of my testing for this deck on MTGO where I have a slightly different iteration of it. This is mostly because most cards are cheaper and more easily accessible online. It also allows me to grind as many games as I want to see whether or not a card is worthy of fitting into the deck. However, it can sometimes skew my view of a card because when I am testing, it is in the 1v1 games, and not the multiplayer games (mostly because the multiplayer games take hours on end to complete on MTGO) so for me, some cards seems more useful than others. That being said, the deck that is talked about below is built in paper and is played quite often in multiplayer games.
Why Play Azusa:
If you're playing mono-green, you're probably playing it because you want to ramp and you want to play big creatures with big effects. There are a lot of enablers out there for this color, but I still feel that Azusa is the best for it. She can come down as early as turn 2 in this build, and being able to have access to around 13 mana on turn 3 in an extremely fast hand is incredibly powerful. Even with a slower hand, the ability to play 3 lands a turn is incredibly easy to abuse. You should consider running Azusa if you want a general that you will play almost always see play; one that although may seem innocent, but that unknowing opponents will soon learn is extremely powerful in her own right.
This is a deck that can cater to many different types of players, if you like to play combo, there are many ways to play the deck in that way, abusing the synergies and card advantage engines that are easily accessible in the deck. In addition, the deck can also be played as a straight up beat down deck, where you just ramp as much as possible and attack with your large creatures. It is this fact that makes this deck a great way to introduce new players to the format; there is a simple enough strategy that the deck can follow for someone new to the game to win, but with playtime and a very good understanding of how the deck works and what to do in certain situations, the deck can be a fearsome competitor.
Reasons to play Azusa:
- You like hitting land drops
- You like making big plays often and early.
- You don't mind taking extremely long turns later in the game.
- You like using lands with powerful effects to give you advantages that other players may not have access to.
- You enjoy playing with a resource and on an axis that many people aren't expecting by abusing the sanctitiy of lands in the format.
Reasons not to play Azusa:
- You want to control the board, you can do it to some extent, but you're more worried about what you're doing than what anyone else is.
- You want to play draw-go or counter spells. This deck is a very active deck and likes to control the game by out pacing it's opponents, not waiting to see what they do.
- You don't want to draw attention to yourself early on. Playing a lot of lands and powerful creatures quickly can put a target on your head, you have to know how to protect yourself so you dont get ganged up on.
- You want to play a lot of basic lands, or non-basic land hate; I suppose this type of deck could be built with Azusa, but I've yet to see one like that. Non-basics are what give her the power she has.
Personal Bio:
My name is Matt and I am 27 years old, I recently moved back to the Chicago, IL area after living near Phoenix, AZ. I began playing magic right before the release of New Phyrexia, I was enamored with all of the thought and mental engery that I could put forth into the game. My first EDH playgroup consisted of my friend who taught me how to play, and then grew into playing with those at the LGS near where I was living, mostly everyone was very casual. When I moved to Arizona, I had to adjust my style of play as most of the EDH players I encountered out there were much more competitive, coming from tournament format backgrounds. The games were mostly 1v1 as well while I lived out there, so a lot of the decks or cards that would be good in a group setting were less than impressive. When my wife and I recently moved back, I got together with my old playgroups and started to see just how much my play had changed, I am still working on becoming less competitive and coming back down to the casual level that my groups are made up of.
I like cards that can show me immediate value, I am very much a spike in that regard. For example, I once built an entire deck just for the purpose of chaining draw spells together so that I could just draw a lot of cards. However, I can also appreciate a big dumb creature that just beats my opponents face in.
I am however, a control player at heart, I like long games where I can eventually cast back breaking spells that my opponents cannot deal with. Playing lands and drawing cards are my two favorite parts of the game. I try to work that into any type of deck that I play.
Card synergy is something that I usually try to work into all of my decks and it is one aspect that I think is extremely important in good deck construction. I believe that staples are staples for a reason and that powerful cards should be used whenever possible; this can sometimes get me into trouble with others that I play with because I have no issues with infinite combos or almost anything else for that matter, so my decks can usually do very powerful things for very little effort. I have had "first drafts" of decks had to be taken apart because of some random synergy that I worked into the deck because of it upsetting a group.
I am constantly thinking up new decks and deck ideas, I like brewing EDH decks because there is so much versatility in what you can do, I would say that at least 4 or 5 times a week I will open MTGO or Cockatrice to put a list together and see how the curve works, what the deck would play like, etc... New and creative axis' of attack are my favorite ways to build decks, if I see a route to victory that I haven't explored yet, I will often want to try it out and see how plausible it is.
The game plan of the deck really is just to get Azusa out as quickly as possible while being able to gain advantage through the different non-basics that the deck plays.
Unless you have a hand in which you can setup an extremely strong turn 4 play, there is almost no reason to play anything other than Azusa by turn 3.
The longer you take to play her, the more fair the deck is going to be playing; and you're trying to play unfair. In the current build of the deck, the earliest you are able to get her into play is turn 2, the only way that this would be able to change (to my knowledge) would be to add a Mana Crypt which would enable a turn 1.
As long as you can play Azusa early and keep her on the board (Lightning Greaves helps here), you should be able to play out the deck quick enough that you're not really concerned with what the other players at the table are doing. A lot of times, players will leave her alone as she is innocuous enough p/t wise that she isn't going to be going into the red zone often (which also keeps her away from a lot of harm). She is the enabler for all of the broken things that the deck can do, and the longer she is in play, the better chance you have of winning the game.
As you can probably guess by looking at her frail power and toughness; Azusa rarely, if ever, gets put into the red zone. However, this isn't really an issue as you should be able to have a plethora of large creatures at your disposal shortly after playing her.
In short, play Azsua as soon as possible, and keep her on the table as long as possible. If your opponents steal her or try to put her into your deck, you have ways of finding her or getting her back, use them, she is the #1 priority in the deck.
Deck Strategies:
I will admit that the deck feels very much like a combo deck, with the ramp spells and things like Crop Rotation seeming more like what a multi-colored combo deck would do with tutors.
Although the main strategy of the deck; playing a lot of lands and dropping big, versatile, abusive beatsticks, is fairly straight forward, there are a lot more underlying strategies that the deck utilizes so that
it can be flexible if it is inhibited in some way. Usually if a player or players try to stop you from pursuing one route to victory, it is relatively easy to use one of the other plans listed below.
When you ramp, you can use finishers like Avenger of Zendikar paired with Regal Force to draw basically your entire deck, play a few lands or the extra ramp spells you've drawn and follow it all up with a Concordant Crossroads. This is almost always enough to kill and entire table.
The Combo Plan:
There is one infinite creature combo in the deck: combo is using Squirrel Nest and Earthcraft to create infinite 1/1 squirrels. This combo is not easily tutored for or searched for in the deck, but with the amount of card draw that you can have in the deck, it's not all that difficult to pull off. The difficulty comes in being able to have the combo survive an entire circle around the table without being dealt with. This is because in order to create another squirrel, you must tap the original one that you created, you can do this infinitely for any number of squirrels, but like I said, they have to survive to all untap.
There is also a way that you can continiously draw and recycle your entire deck to find what cards you are looking for by tutoring up Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre or Kozilek, Butch of Truth, playing them and then sacrificing them to Greater Good. This will shuffle your graveyard into your library and allow you to draw massive amounts of cards.
The Draw Your Deck Plan:
If it seems as though for the most part, you're going to be unchallenged in playing out all of the lands you can, you can use Horn of Greed and Recycle to draw out your entire deck. Using Azusa and Horn, you are able to out pace your opponents with card draw, and the great thing about it is that usually Horn only feeds itself with more lands. Add Recycle into the mix and each land will draw you two cards. Because of this, if you plan on using this gameplan, it is usually a good idea to try to find and play Reliquary Tower as soon as you can.
However, it should be noted that because of time stamping you must lay Tower after Recycle in order to maintain no maximum hand size. In addition to these engines, you can easily cast Tooth and Nail late into the game to get Avenger of Zendikar and Regal Force to draw a billion cards. This will usually be able to win you the game through drawing multiple ramp spells to pump the Avenger tokens and drawing Concordant Crossroads in order to allow you to kill the table all at once that turn.
The Life from the Loam Plan:
This is one of the lines of play that I don't use very often, it is however very powerful and consistent when you get it going. The idea is to dredge with Life from the Loam each turn so that you can continiously fill your graveyard with lands that you can get back and use them to hit your land drops. The creatures you dredge can be retrieved using things like Genesis or in a pinch, Eternal Witness. You do not have to worry about milling yourself out because of having both Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Worldspine Wurm. If you do end up needing to put your graveyard back into your deck and you don't hit the eldrazi, you can also use Primal Command to do so. The nice thing about this strategy is that it is one that doesn't interact with others and it is an axis that others don't normally play along. It is also innocent enough to where a lot of players will just see you playing lands and nothing else. Beware, however, because this plan can be disrupted somewhat easily and can also cause you to get blown out if answered with vigilant graveyard hate.
Synergy and Combos:
Squirrel Nest & Earthcraft: As I said, this is the only infinite creature combo that was built into the deck. It creates infinite Squirrels, but again, needs to survive a turn around the table in order to be able to kill everyone.
Genesis: Pitching any creature to find Genesis and then pitching him to the yard allows you to rebuy any creature you have in your graveyard, which because of Survival means basically any creature in your deck.
- Azusa, Lost but Seeking or/and Oracle of Mul Daya -This should be pretty self explanatory, but; being able to play multiple lands per turn allows horn of greed to fuel your ramp, it is not uncommon to let your first land drop let you draw more lands to fuel more card draw. Oracle also gives you the benefit of being able to play your lands off the top and hopefully draw the spells that are under it.
- Sensei's Divining Top - This allows you to set up your draws to either fuel more lands into your hand or get the spell you want. Playing a land, top with the Horn trigger on the stack, draw what you want. You can also flip the top in order to continiously draw more land if need be (no land in hand> Top> put land on top> flip Top> play land> draw top> rinse and repeat). This strategy is extremely powerful in the early game allowing you to hit every possible land drop you can.
Recycle: This card basically synergizes with the entire deck, for each land you play, you draw a card; and if you have Horn of Greed out as well, then you're drawing 2 for each land. This is basically the card that can let you go off in a turn if you have the mana to do so. With Azusa out along side this card, you should effectively be able to draw and play your entire deck, remember Recycle's effect is not optinal, it is a must, meaning you can draw yourself out of the game. I've never had it happen to me, but it is a possibility.
Sylvan Library & Abundance: This is a pretty well known synergy, Abundance replaces the draws from the Library allowing you to draw 3 cards of your choice of land or non-land card on each turn.
- Predator, Flagship - These two cards allow you to machine gun any targetable creature for cost of 7 mana, 5 if they already fly!
- Winding Canyons - Canyons and Muse with any decent amount of mana is going to allow you to play out your creatures on the end step before your turn, giving your creatures psuedo haste and allowing you to mess up peoples plans.
-Eye of Ugin - These two make it so that you can tutor any colorless creature out of your deck and into your hand. If you also happen to have Winding Canyons out then you probably have enough mana to tutor and play creatures each turn, seems good, right?
- Fetchlands - I play Misty Rainforest and Verdant Catacombs but there are plenty of other fetches that could be played in the deck, if you play Crucible, this allows you to fetch out basics, as well as Dryad Arbor and thin your deck. If you have Azusa out with it as well, that's 3 fetches a turn. Try not to bolt yourself to death.
- Strip Mine & Tectonic Edge - This does exactly what it sounds like, you can continiously destroy your opponents mana base. Again, with Azusa, this gets out of hand and can very quickly end games if you keep your opponent off of any lands. This isn't something that I like to do, or do very often, but it is always an option if another player is getting out of hand.
- Glacial Chasm - I will talk more about chasm in its own topic (under Card Choices), but with Crucible, you are able to be protected on your opponents turns and able to go on the offensive on your turn, yes, you do have to sacrifice a land every time you play it; however, you should be playing more than 1 or 2 land a turn anyhow.
- Realms Uncharted - This is a little nifty trick that I like to pull off, usually casting Realms at the end of an opponents turn and then casting Crucible on my turn to retrieve the other two lands, but it doesn't have to be played that way. The fact that you can search for your most powerful lands or the lands that you need at that moment in time and then have the ability to play them all, eve the ones in the yard, is extremely powerful.
Weaknesses: Non-Basic Land Hate: Cards like Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Ruination, etc.. are rough. Although not a complete hoser, non-basic land hate can impede your plans because of the number of non-basics in the deck. You have ways to recur your lands, and you have other ways to be able to get more lands out of your deck if need be. Like I've said before, the deck is very resilient and can recover from things like this rather quickly, although it is a weakness of the deck.
Excessive Amounts of Answers to Creatures/Combat Damage: cards like Wrath of God, Damnation, Day of Judgement are all fine once in a while and while they might slow you down, they aren't going to automatically make you lose the game. When they're used over and over again and you're not able to stick a threat to the board is when it starts to become difficult to play around. Look out for cards like Rout and the like that can wipe the board at instant speed. Fog effects can also be annoying, although not completely unbeatable.
Counter Magic: Counters are something that Azusa doesn't like to see, most of the things your casting cost a lot of mana, and you want them to resolve. It isn't a game ender, but it does slow you down and make you play a bit more conservatively. For your spells, you do have Boseiju, Who Shelters All to be able to fight this, which should be a priority if it seems that the player with the counter magic is trying to target you. You have spells that you can cast with Boseiju that can win you the game, such as Rude Awakening and Genesis Wave. Other than that, you just have to play smart and try to get plays in before they can counter them or go over the top of their counters; you should be able to ramp faster than they can accumulate enough mana and counterspells to stop all of your lines of play.
Card Choices:
Card by Card Explanation:
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
- This guy is a pretty simple explanation, he ramps, hard. If your opponents let you untap with him, you're going to be able to win pretty quickly.
Fauna Shaman
- Survival of the Fittest is one of the most broken cards in this deck, this guy does the same thing once a turn. It doesn't hurt to mention that you can tutor for him using Primal Command or Survival itself, because what's better than 1 Survial? 2!
Eternal Witness
- Rebuys anything in your graveyard, very fun to abuse Tooth and Nail or Genesis Wave with.
Yavimaya Elder
- This guy out-value's Solemn Simulacrum in this deck. He get's you 2 lands that you can play with Azusa, Blocks, and draws you a card if you need to.
Fierce Empath
- Tutors for any of the backbreaking creatures that the deck has. This guy literally says "Find your biggest threat this turn, you may play it this turn for an extra ."
Oracle of Mul Daya
- Mini Azusa. She also lets you play off the top of your deck, meaning if you have her and Azusa out, you're playing 4 cards out of your deck each turn.
Acidic Slime
- Slime is simply a good utility dude. He blocks and kills things, and he blows up whatever is giving you trouble.
Lotus Cobra
- What's better than playing 3 lands a turn? Getting free mana off of those land drops. Even better with fetchlands.
Genesis
- You always want this guy in the graveyard. He is one of the first creatures you get with Survival of the Fittest, and you immediately pitch him to the yard to board the value train.
Wurmcoil Engine
- This guy is always a good bet. He attacks, blocks, survives a wrath. Can be found with Eye of Ugin as well. Phyrexia's Core, Buried Ruin and Wurmcoil are pretty good friends.
Steel Hellkite
- Flying, Non-targeted destruction, wrecks token decks, can deal with things green normally can't. Eye of Ugin gets it.
Avenger of Zendikar
- This is one of the main win-cons of the deck. Playing him and following it up with 3 land drops will almost always win you the game. In a pinch he creates a huge amount of blockers.
Regal Force
- This guy will draw you boatloads of cards, usually anywhere from 5-30. That's not an exaggeration either. In addition to that, he's got a 5/5 body, which is nothing to scoff at. Remeber to draw from Dryad Arbor if you have it out!
Woodfall Primus
- What can be said about Primus, a massive trampling body that allows you blow stuff up. Greater Good and this guy are pretty good friends. If you can get a +1 +1 counter on him after he dies, you're going to be sitting pretty.
Terastodon
- Blow up 3 things, sometimes they're your own. Remember it is an up to and a may ability, so you don't have to make enemies if you don't need to.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
- Have you ever drawn 4 cards?! How about played a 12/12? Now imagine doing both at the same time! Vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue. He goes
great with Greater Good as well. I rarely if ever attack with the Eldrazi, they're used in this deck mostly for their utility and their ability.
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
- Vindicate on an indestructible 10/10 body. Ulamog and Kozilek can be used in tandem with Greater Good to continiously draw your deck until you find the cards that you're looking for.
Garruk, Primal Hunter
- Usually reads Draw a million cards. Garruk floods the board with blockers (or attackers), or can draw you a whole lot of cards if left unchecked. I don't think that I've ever used his ultimate in this deck, although if Concordant Crossroads happens to be out and he goes off, it would be pretty sweet to see.
Skullclamp
- Not much to be said about this card. Everyone knows it's good. Your guys die, you draw cards. For maximum value, combine with Squirrel Nest.
Scroll Rack
- Rack is a great resource to use, you put aside cards that you don't particularly want to use at the moment and get fresh ones. Fetchlands and search effects help this artifact to be used to greater effect.
Lightning Greaves
- You're usually using this to protect Azusa. If not her, then whatever is the most valuable creature that you have out at the time. Remember you can use Greaves to activate your creatures abilities the turn they come down, and move then back afterwards.
Crucible of Worlds
- Sometimes your lands are going to get nuked, this helps you replay them. It starts getting bonkers when you abuse some of your utility lands.
Horn of Greed
- At first glance, this card seems uninspiring, but the effect isn't symmetrical with our general. This is one of the main draw engines in the deck, if you have Azusa out, you're drawing 3 cards a turn.
Predator, Flagship
- This card gives us repeated removal, or repeated evasion, whichever we need at the time. Have you ever seen a flying Kozilek, Butcher of Truth? It gives us great versatility.
Caged Sun
- Mana Doubler, and offers us a small power boost to our creatures. I play this over Gauntlet of Might because Sun only effects us, no one else.
Concordant Crossroads
- This is an effect that most people don't expect green to have. If you flood the board with creatures and then give them all haste, you're probably going to win.
Sylvan Library
- One of the best sources of card draw in green. The life loss is negligible if you're drawing cards and winning faster.
Earthcraft
- Yes, this combos with Squirrel Nest, but it works just fine without it as well. With a mana doubler out, all of your creatures tap for GG.
Survival of the Fittest
- Tutor for any creature in your deck at instant speed. There is a reason this card is banned in other formats.
Squirrel Nest
- Makes 1/1 Squirrels. Even better becuse I have the actual token. Although this card is mostly used to just combo, it can be used in conjunction
with Skullclamp. Makes little blockers too.
Greater Good
All of our guys are big, and some of them come back when they die. We like drawing cards, and when we have big dudes, this lets us draw lots of them.
Abundance
- Sometimes we just don't want to draw a land, when we have Abundance out, we get to choose what we draw!
Recycle
- Read it again. Play a card, draw a card. That includes lands. This enchantment will have you chugging along happily through your deck.
Crop Rotation
- We almost always use this to find Gaea's Crade, but it can really be used to find any land we need at any time. It's an instant, so if one of our dudes gets stolen, we can find Homeward Path, or if our opponents are going to alpha strike us, we can go find Glacial Chasm. It's great utility and really one of the all star tutors in the deck.
Primal Command
- It's a Command, so you know it does a lot of stuff. All of the modes are useful as well, we can get a big guy, get rid of a non-creature problem, hate on the graveyard (or regrow our whole yard), and if we don't really need any of the others, we can just gain 7 life.
Life from the Loam
- A massive engine for this deck. If you can get Loam online early, you're going to be very happy because you'll be hitting all 3 of your land drops the entire game. Works incredibly well with the cycling lands.
Cultivate
- Basic green ramp, Kodama's Reach is the other version of this. I don't play both because I would rather dedicate the ramp slot to another spell since I'll be drawing so much land anyways.
Krosan Grip
- Best targeted artifact or enchantment destruction in the deck. You can destroy anything and they can't respond. Great for blowing up Sensei's Divining Top without trouble.
Journey of Discovery
- Another card that has been amazing, both abilities are extremely useful, and if you have the mana and can take advantage of having to pay :4mana::symg::symg: you can entwine it to get infinitely ahead of your opponents.
Tempt with Discovery
- This card is the current replacement for Sylvan Primordial since he got banned. It's yet to see if it is a good replacement or not.
Explosive Vegetation
- Puts two lands into play. This is a card that I've been on the fence about, it's a solid ramp card however.
Natural Order
- This is the one card game ender, if you can Natural Order on turn 4 into something like Sylvan Primordial, you've pretty much all but won. It's also a card that can be great later in the game to find any sort of threat.
Rude Awakening
- I find myself more and more just using this card to fuel massive Genesis Wave's rather than using it to kill people with my lands. Although, it can certainly do just that if you end up drawing it later in the game when you have an ungodly amount of land out.
Praetor's Counsel
- Regrow your whole graveyard and never have to discard down to 7 again.
Green Sun's Zenith
- Great for turn 1 into Dryad Arbor so you can turn 2 Azusa. This card is basically a second copy of every creature in your library. It's reusable too? Sign me up!
Genesis Wave
- Duh. With access to so much mana so quickly, you'll be able to flip your deck over in no time!
Arena
- Repeatable removal, it's kind of tricky to use, but if you can keep you opponents creatures off the board, you can kill them one by one with this and your bigger threats. Wurmcoil Engine and Acidic Slime synergize particularly well with this.
Deserted Temple
- With all of the crazy useful lands and effects that they have in this deck, being able to untap them to reuse them at any time is great. Broken when combined with Gaea's Cradle.
Dryad Arbor
- It's a dude, it's a land. It can do so much! Fetch it with multiple cards in the deck, tap it for mana. Just dont play it turn one. Because it will die. You'll be sad.
Gaea's Cradle
- Taps for way too much mana, if you play this card, you're probably going to be playing big spells. Try not to play it early because you'll expose it to removal. Once you play Avenger of Zendikar, you'll be able to play all of the cards in your deck with this one land. Combines well with Deserted Temple and Mana Reflection.
Glacial Chasm
- This card has saved me from dying so many times it's not even funny. It is so easily abused in this deck because you can sacrifice it and recur it through using Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds, or if you really need to stop your opponents from hurting you, you just leave it on the board. The life loss is usually less than what they'll be swinging for anyways.
Havenwood Battleground
- A lot of people don't like this card, but being able to use it to play Azusa on turn 2 can usually put you so far ahead that you're able to win. It can also ber incredibly useful to eek out that last little bit of mana you need to cast your game winning spell or to just put you up a crucial turn later in the game.
High Market
- A small source of lifegain, what we're usually using this card for is to abuse through sacrificing our creatures to reuse them or to stop them from getting taken from us.
Khalni Garden
- This gives us a free early blocker when played in the begining of the game, it taps for :symg:. Note: The token is a plant, Avenger of Zendikar creates plant tokens for his counters. Just sayin.
Mosswort Bridge
- A great hideaway land. Ever cast a hidden Tooth and Nail at instant speed for only :2mana::symg:? I have. It was glorious. You usually just want to get a large threat under it, but worse comes to worse you still get to cast something for usually cheaper and at instant speed.
Maze of Ith
- Stops voltron generals in their tracks unless they have shroud/hexproof. You can also use it to save your own creatures from dying in combat or give them psuedo-vigilance by removing them after combat damage. A great utility land. It's too bad it doesn't tap for mana on its own.
Reliquary Tower
- No maximum hand size. It sounds funny to say, but a lot of the time, this deck has too many cards being drawn. This stops us from having to choose what to get rid of. You want to play this after Recycle to void the had size restriction the enchantment places on you.
Strip Mine
- The best land destruction land their is, no cost, no downside (other that loosing it). This card is so devistating if used in the right situation or if abused. To lose the most friends possible, combine with Crucible of worlds or Life from the Loam.
Tectonic Edge
- Another very stong ld land. It's a bit slower, and it only hits non-basics. Still incredibly useful and still stops overpowered lands. (Other than Island).
Temple of the False God
- Taps for :2mana:, usually by turn 3 or 4 at the latest. A great land to copy to get ahead. Just solid, non-spell ramp.
Thawing Glaciers
- A great source of slow card advantage. You're getting the basic lands out of your deck so you have a chance to draw more useful lands or spells. I repeat, this card is slow, but don't underestimate it in a deck that can play more than one land a turn. Seedborn Muse makes this card happy.
Tower of the Magistrate
- I really like this card, it has performed amazingly. You can block any artifact creature, shut down an equipment strategy, use it politically. It's very versitle, and a lot of players either are not expecting it or don't actually know that it exsists.
Tranquil Thicket
- Cycling land, if you draw it late you can turn it into another card, it taps for if you play it early. Its main useage is to recycle Life from the Loam over and over with it to gain access to all of your utility lands by putting them into the graveyard to Loam back.
Treetop Village
- Great man-land, it's a 3/3 so it's one of the larger bodied ones. It only costs :1mana::symg: to activate, so it's also one of the cheapest.
Winding Canyons
- Aside from Yeva, Nature's Herald, this is the closest that mono-green gets to Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. This also has the upside to being harder to remove because it is a land, and it doesn't have the restriction of only allowing green creatures to be played like Yeva does. With Seedborn Muse out, you're basically going to be getting multiple turns.
Vesuva
- This becomes a second copy of any land you need to to be. With the new legend rule, you can't use it as removal for legendary lands, but you can get your own copies of some of the more broken lands.
Buried Ruin
- We play a lot of powerful articats, and when they die, or get into the graveyard somehow, we want to get them back. Ruin allows us to do so.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
- If we can't get our creatures through, we want to be able to get our spells through. This makes them not able to be countered. Venser, Shaper Savant, Mindbreak Trap, and Time Stopall still stop our spells though. This land is incredibly useful for forcing big spells like Genesis Wave or Tooth and Nail to reslove. The damage isn't noteworthy when we're winning with the spells we're casting.
Homeward Path
- Everyone knows that green decks play big, mean creatures. Other colors like to steal our creatures after we cast them. This land lets us get our things back and still taps for mana when it's not doing that. The text on the card says "owns" so even if your guys get stolen from your graveyard or library you get it back for free.
Ancient Tomb
- Being able to get Azusa out early is extremely helpful to the deck, Tomb taps for :2mana:, so we're going to get her out turn 2 if this is in our opening hand. Again, we don't really mind the damage because we're going to win before our life total matters.
Eye of Ugin
- Lets us get any colorless creature in our library to our hand. It also makes Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre cost and respectively. This is a huge advantage, especially if we're playing them, sacrificing them to Greater Good, and finding them again with Eye.
Miren, the Moaning Well
- Another great sacrifice outlet, this one gains us a bit more life than High Market. This is a great source of life late game because we nickel and dime ourselves so early with other utility lands and things like Sylvan Library.
Scorched Ruins
- This card seems like a terrible card when it comes to EDH, you want to be playing lands, not sacrificing them; but this puts the deck way far ahead in mana advantage. The downside of sacrificing lands isn't something that we're particularly worried about anyways, because we have so many ways to get them back.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- A BLACK card in a GREEN deck?! Whaaaaat? Urborg, like all otehr lands, doesn't have a color identity. The other thing that's missing from Urborg is a mana symbol, meaning that it can be played in any deck. In Azusa, it allows all of our lands that don't tap for mana, or that hurt us when we tap them for mana, to tap for a colorless without drawback. This is a card that should be played carefully, because you can turn on your opponents cards like Cabal Coffers or Karma. However, if we somehow copy a Cabal Coffers with this out, then we're pretty set when it comes to mana in this deck.
Misty Rainforest & Verdant Catacombs
- These are just simply fetchlands, and they're not the slow ones. They do ping the life total when used, but it isn't something that is going to worry us. Dryad Arbor is again, a vaild target for these fetches.
Why aren't you playing ....?:
- Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger - This guy was in the deck for a looooooong time. I ended up taking him out because although his effect for you is great, the other ability is one that paints a massive target on your head and unless you can protect yourself, you're going to get ganged up on by the rest of the table. I find Mana Reflection and Caged Sun, although not tutorable in the deck, are less likely to make your opponents want to kill you dead.
- Craterhoof Behemoth - This is a card that I am on the fence about. Although it does just win if you are able to Tooth and Nail for him and Avenger of Zendikar and are able to have Concordant Crossroads in play as well, it's awfully cheesy, and if you don't have Crossroads, then you may be able to only kill one player at a table and then the others will team up on you. When you T&N for Avenger and Regal Force, you're usually able to draw into Crossroads and go for the table kill.
- Mindslaver - This is another card that was in the deck for a long while, and one that I eventually took out. Being able to get slaver out early and recur it with Buried Ruin and Crucible of Worlds to lock players out of the game is extremely powerful. However, if you only slaver one or two players, the others again are going to team up on you. It's also a very way to win. Because you don't actually win, your opponents are just scooping instead of letting you play 4 games of solitaire for an hour till you can actually kill them.
- Exploration - Simply put, I don't have one. I would love to try this card out, as I think it would be insane, but I don't have the time/money to acquire one.
- Wasteland - While I have them at my disposal, I feel that between Strip Mine, Tectonic Edge, and all of the creatures that can hit lands in this deck, that there is enough mana denial and mana base control that it's not needed.
- Blasted Landscape&Slippery Karst - I haven't found one yet, but also, I'm still on the fence about going the full Life from the Loam route with the deck. I know the engine is powerful, but it seems from play testing that it's easy to get blown out by graveyard hate if you commit to this strategy too much.
Wanted to try out this guy, so I lowered the curve slightly. He produces more card advantage than the baloths, and whenever I had the baloths, I usually found myself wanting something else in hand.
More lands = better drops for Azusa, also, who doesn't want to untap Gaea's Cradle after playing a bunch of dudes? Orangutang is nice, and it fit the pod chain, but there are already ways to deal with artifacts in the deck.
I've finally decided to go the optimized route and cut the Birthing Pod. I've built another deck that it's easier to use in and that means that there are a bunch of open/semi-open slots in this deck now. Solemn, Artisan, and Moldgraf all get the cut for two bigger dudes and two lands. Arena its reusable spot removal, and Urborg allows the lands that don't tap for mana to do so.
I am currently working on foilling out the deck, for those who are interested in that sort of thing you can see my progress below.
Foiled Out:
Bolded cards are foiled.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Fauna Shaman Eternal Witness
Yavimaya Elder
Fierce Empath Oracle of Mul Daya
Seedborn Muse Acidic Slime Lotus Cobra
Genesis
Duplicant Wurmcoil Engine
Steel Hellkite Avenger of Zendikar Regal Force Sylvan Primordial Woodfall Primus Terastodon
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre Garruk, Primal Hunter
Skullclamp Sensei's Divining Top Sol Ring Scroll Rack Lightning Greaves
Crucible of Worlds
Horn of Greed
Predator, Flagship Caged Sun
Concordant Crossroads
Sylvan Library
Earthcraft
Survival of the Fittest
Squirrel Nest
Greater Good
Abundance
Recycle
Mana Reflection
Crop Rotation
Primal Command
Life from the Loam Cultivate Krosan Grip Journey of Discovery
Realms Uncharted
Explosive Vegetation Skyshroud Claim
Harmonize Rude Awakening Praetor's Counsel Tooth and Nail Green Sun's Zenith Genesis Wave
Deserted Temple Dryad Arbor
Gaea's Cradle Glacial Chasm
Havenwood Battleground High Market
Khalni Garden
Mosswort Bridge Maze of Ith Oran-Rief, the Vastwood Reliquary Tower
Strip Mine Tectonic Edge
Temple of the False God Thawing Glaciers
Tower of the Magistrate
Tranquil Thicket Treetop Village
Winding Canyons Vesuva Buried Ruin Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Homeward Path Ancient Tomb
Eye of Ugin
Arena Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Misty Rainforest
Verdant Catacombs 13 Basic Forests
53/100
Thats a really good suggestion! I like that idea a lot, however, the cost and difficulty of finding that guy make it a little less plausable.
The reason that I really like Azusa right now is that she allows me to ramp early so that I can begin to drop bombs on turn 3 or 4 if the deck is cooperating.
The big problem with abusing Survival and Pod in Monogreen is that you have literally only two ways to tutor them: Planar Portal, and Kuldotha Forgemaster into Pod. Forgemaster is tutorable with green's plethora of creature tutors, but you also need to have enough artifacts to turn him on, which is kind of difficult.
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I truly don't see any reason why you would run Azusa as your general. You have very few cards that get lands into your hand, and you only run 37 land. So the likelihood of you drawing land / getting land into your hand to throw into play with your general seems really low. I would honestly cut some cards and add some more Azusa friendly cards, or change your general.
I truly don't see any reason why you would run Azusa as your general. You have very few cards that get lands into your hand, and you only run 37 land. So the likelihood of you drawing land / getting land into your hand to throw into play with your general seems really low. I would honestly cut some cards and add some more Azusa friendly cards, or change your general.
Which is kind of the point of this thread, developing a more pod/survival friendly deck with a general that can assist in the matter.
What I'm getting at is, would you rather run Azusa or would you be interested in finding a different general? We can't necessarily direct you if you don't know where you want to go. Do you enjoy having a lot of creatures? Do you want swarms of tokens? Do you want to ramp into holy hell? Do you want to deny others mana while gaining some for your own? As previously stated there are only two ways to find pod in mono green and you don't have many ways to protect it.
I can only think of one card and it's GW. So building your deck around pod isn't the best idea IMO. I too really enjoy pod and I typically throw it in early renditions of my decklists. However I generally look at it once I get down to the very last cuts and see whether or not the mana curve is appropriate for the card. Out of my three decks running green, only one has made the cut.
List has been updated and changed drastically. Considering doing a primer, is there interest in that?
Will also be uploading a video gameplay of the deck vs. a Sharuum deck later today. The game was a nut draw and it went off pretty quickly, but it seemed to represent the deck quite well.
I've been considering playing the Urzatron lands, anybody have any input on that? They would be easy to fetch up in this deck and could ramp even faster, even though they only produce colorless.
Started thinking about more lands for this deck again, anybody have any input on the Locus (glimmerpost, cloudpost, glimmervoid)subtype lands? Theoretically I could have 4 in the deck if I include Vesuva in the mix, but I am wondering just how helpful they would be?
posting a decklist isn't exactly giving constructive input... Im hardly new to playing this deck, I just like to brainstorm and think about new card choices and would like to get others actual input.
If I wanted to pull a decklist off of the internet I'd have done that long ago.
I'd use something like Horn of Greed over Mindslaver. You can't tutor easily for either, the latter draws hate, and the former just draws (and people won't hate you so much).
I'd use something like Horn of Greed over Mindslaver. You can't tutor easily for either, the latter draws hate, and the former just draws (and people won't hate you so much).
Considering adding Craterhoof Behemoth as a new finisher. He seems pretty good when I can Tooth and Nail into Avenger of Zendikar and himself and probably win on the spot in a duel and Knock at least 1 person out in a Multiplayer game. The idea gets even better if I can play out Concordant Crossroads in the same turn.
The issue is that I already have quite a few 6/7/8 drop and I'm not sure I want to cut one of those that is already in the deck. Input?
i was going to go through the deck to see how good it was, then stop. when i saw you have 25 lands... i know someone has already commented on this major problem for your deck but still (and i'm really trying not to get warned for this post) you need 40+ land in an azusa deck. it's principle reason for being a general is to drop massive volumes of land fast then winning by turn 4( i admit when i asked someone how that worked it still confused me). still you need the land man, that or all the mana addition cards (extraplanar for example)
i was going to go through the deck to see how good it was, then stop. when i saw you have 25 lands... i know someone has already commented on this major problem for your deck but still (and i'm really trying not to get warned for this post) you need 40+ land in an azusa deck. it's principle reason for being a general is to drop massive volumes of land fast then winning by turn 4( i admit when i asked someone how that worked it still confused me). still you need the land man, that or all the mana addition cards (extraplanar for example)
huh, when i counted them up i got 25 for some reason must have forgotten the basic land (Though i started off with them first), now i look like and idiot lol
huh, when i counted them up i got 25 for some reason must have forgotten the basic land (Though i started off with them first), now i look like and idiot lol
No worries!
There is 40 lands, and the number will probably go up as I test out different cards to see what I like and what I don't.
Ill be continiously updating the list whenever I do make a concrete change, but for now the decklist is pretty sold. It wins about 95% of the games that I pull it out in.
Thanks to Sauceman
"I've seen this great land from every angle. I know its every tree, stone, and river bend.
Yet I have come to realize that knowing a thing is not the same as healing it" - Diary of Azusa
I am working towards turning this into a primer, bear with me!
Deck History:
This was the first magic deck that I ever built, and it began life as just a mono-green play dudes and durdle deck with
Verdeloth the Ancient as the commander. This was great, but the only usual win-con for the deck was generating an absurd amount of mana and playing Verdeloth kicked for a billion, or comboing out with Squirrel Nest and Earthcraft, both of which required me to let the table have a turn for an answer because it didn't have concordant crossroads.
After a while I got bored with the strategy and wanted to try an win through general damage, so I changed the general over to Omnath, Locus of Mana. I liked that build a lot because if you could get him out and protect him, you could play massive amounts of large spells all in one turn. All the while during each version of the deck, Azusa had always been in there, but she had always been more of an enabler than the focus of the deck itself. It was only after I decided to try her out as the general for one game that I realized just how powerful she really is. Being able to play a Primeval Titan or some other arbitrarily large creature on turn 3 was too intoxicating to pass up.
I've been playing the deck with Azusa as the general now for probably a good two years now, playing, tweaking, and updating the deck as I discovered new interactions and as new sets became available. With the recent banning of Primeval Titan, one of the decks easiest ways to win was removed, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that; although it was nice to gain such a massive advantage through titan, he was not a necessity in the deck.
For a long time, and at the inception of this thread; the deck was based around really abusing Birthing Pod. I loved the card and the deck played really well with it, going through a pod chain was a ton of fun. Eventually though, I realized that there was a lot of potential that was being wasted by having to keep certain creatures and cards in the deck to be able to truely abuse the pod. So I cut it, and have been further developing the list since then, really trying to optimize it.
I do a lot of my testing for this deck on MTGO where I have a slightly different iteration of it. This is mostly because most cards are cheaper and more easily accessible online. It also allows me to grind as many games as I want to see whether or not a card is worthy of fitting into the deck. However, it can sometimes skew my view of a card because when I am testing, it is in the 1v1 games, and not the multiplayer games (mostly because the multiplayer games take hours on end to complete on MTGO) so for me, some cards seems more useful than others. That being said, the deck that is talked about below is built in paper and is played quite often in multiplayer games.
Why Play Azusa:
If you're playing mono-green, you're probably playing it because you want to ramp and you want to play big creatures with big effects. There are a lot of enablers out there for this color, but I still feel that Azusa is the best for it. She can come down as early as turn 2 in this build, and being able to have access to around 13 mana on turn 3 in an extremely fast hand is incredibly powerful. Even with a slower hand, the ability to play 3 lands a turn is incredibly easy to abuse. You should consider running Azusa if you want a general that you will play almost always see play; one that although may seem innocent, but that unknowing opponents will soon learn is extremely powerful in her own right.
This is a deck that can cater to many different types of players, if you like to play combo, there are many ways to play the deck in that way, abusing the synergies and card advantage engines that are easily accessible in the deck. In addition, the deck can also be played as a straight up beat down deck, where you just ramp as much as possible and attack with your large creatures. It is this fact that makes this deck a great way to introduce new players to the format; there is a simple enough strategy that the deck can follow for someone new to the game to win, but with playtime and a very good understanding of how the deck works and what to do in certain situations, the deck can be a fearsome competitor.
Reasons to play Azusa:
- You like hitting land drops
- You like making big plays often and early.
- You don't mind taking extremely long turns later in the game.
- You like using lands with powerful effects to give you advantages that other players may not have access to.
- You enjoy playing with a resource and on an axis that many people aren't expecting by abusing the sanctitiy of lands in the format.
Reasons not to play Azusa:
- You want to control the board, you can do it to some extent, but you're more worried about what you're doing than what anyone else is.
- You want to play draw-go or counter spells. This deck is a very active deck and likes to control the game by out pacing it's opponents, not waiting to see what they do.
- You don't want to draw attention to yourself early on. Playing a lot of lands and powerful creatures quickly can put a target on your head, you have to know how to protect yourself so you dont get ganged up on.
- You want to play a lot of basic lands, or non-basic land hate; I suppose this type of deck could be built with Azusa, but I've yet to see one like that. Non-basics are what give her the power she has.
Personal Bio:
My name is Matt and I am 27 years old, I recently moved back to the Chicago, IL area after living near Phoenix, AZ. I began playing magic right before the release of New Phyrexia, I was enamored with all of the thought and mental engery that I could put forth into the game. My first EDH playgroup consisted of my friend who taught me how to play, and then grew into playing with those at the LGS near where I was living, mostly everyone was very casual. When I moved to Arizona, I had to adjust my style of play as most of the EDH players I encountered out there were much more competitive, coming from tournament format backgrounds. The games were mostly 1v1 as well while I lived out there, so a lot of the decks or cards that would be good in a group setting were less than impressive. When my wife and I recently moved back, I got together with my old playgroups and started to see just how much my play had changed, I am still working on becoming less competitive and coming back down to the casual level that my groups are made up of.
I like cards that can show me immediate value, I am very much a spike in that regard. For example, I once built an entire deck just for the purpose of chaining draw spells together so that I could just draw a lot of cards. However, I can also appreciate a big dumb creature that just beats my opponents face in.
I am however, a control player at heart, I like long games where I can eventually cast back breaking spells that my opponents cannot deal with. Playing lands and drawing cards are my two favorite parts of the game. I try to work that into any type of deck that I play.
Card synergy is something that I usually try to work into all of my decks and it is one aspect that I think is extremely important in good deck construction. I believe that staples are staples for a reason and that powerful cards should be used whenever possible; this can sometimes get me into trouble with others that I play with because I have no issues with infinite combos or almost anything else for that matter, so my decks can usually do very powerful things for very little effort. I have had "first drafts" of decks had to be taken apart because of some random synergy that I worked into the deck because of it upsetting a group.
I am constantly thinking up new decks and deck ideas, I like brewing EDH decks because there is so much versatility in what you can do, I would say that at least 4 or 5 times a week I will open MTGO or Cockatrice to put a list together and see how the curve works, what the deck would play like, etc... New and creative axis' of attack are my favorite ways to build decks, if I see a route to victory that I haven't explored yet, I will often want to try it out and see how plausible it is.
Decklist:
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
Creatures:
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Eternal Witness
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Fierce Empath
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Acidic Slime
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Genesis
1 Duplicant
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Regal Force
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Terastodon
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Planeswalkers:
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
Artifacts:
1 Skullclamp
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Scroll Rack
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Horn of Greed
1 Predator, Flagship
1 Caged Sun
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Sylvan Library
1 Earthcraft
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Squirrel Nest
1 Greater Good
1 Abundance
1 Recycle
1 Mana Reflection
Instants/Sorceries:
1 Crop Rotation
1 Primal Command
1 Life from the Loam
1 Cultivate
1 Krosan Grip
1 Journey of Discovery
1 Realms Uncharted
1 Tempt with Discovery
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Skyshroud Claim
1 Natural Order
1 Harmonize
1 Rude Awakening
1 Praetor's Counsel
1 Tooth and Nail
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Genesis Wave
Lands:
13 Forest
1 Arena
1 Deserted Temple
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Havenwood Battleground
1 High Market
1 Khalni Garden
1 Mosswort Bridge
1 Maze of Ith
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Strip Mine
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Temple of the False God
1 Thawing Glaciers
1 Tower of the Magistrate
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Treetop Village
1 Winding Canyons
1 Vesuva
1 Buried Ruin
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Homeward Path
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Eye of Ugin
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Scorched Ruins
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
Using Azusa:
The game plan of the deck really is just to get Azusa out as quickly as possible while being able to gain advantage through the different non-basics that the deck plays.
Unless you have a hand in which you can setup an extremely strong turn 4 play, there is almost no reason to play anything other than Azusa by turn 3.
The longer you take to play her, the more fair the deck is going to be playing; and you're trying to play unfair. In the current build of the deck, the earliest you are able to get her into play is turn 2, the only way that this would be able to change (to my knowledge) would be to add a Mana Crypt which would enable a turn 1.
As long as you can play Azusa early and keep her on the board (Lightning Greaves helps here), you should be able to play out the deck quick enough that you're not really concerned with what the other players at the table are doing. A lot of times, players will leave her alone as she is innocuous enough p/t wise that she isn't going to be going into the red zone often (which also keeps her away from a lot of harm). She is the enabler for all of the broken things that the deck can do, and the longer she is in play, the better chance you have of winning the game.
As you can probably guess by looking at her frail power and toughness; Azusa rarely, if ever, gets put into the red zone. However, this isn't really an issue as you should be able to have a plethora of large creatures at your disposal shortly after playing her.
In short, play Azsua as soon as possible, and keep her on the table as long as possible. If your opponents steal her or try to put her into your deck, you have ways of finding her or getting her back, use them, she is the #1 priority in the deck.
Deck Strategies:
I will admit that the deck feels very much like a combo deck, with the ramp spells and things like Crop Rotation seeming more like what a multi-colored combo deck would do with tutors.
Although the main strategy of the deck; playing a lot of lands and dropping big, versatile, abusive beatsticks, is fairly straight forward, there are a lot more underlying strategies that the deck utilizes so that
it can be flexible if it is inhibited in some way. Usually if a player or players try to stop you from pursuing one route to victory, it is relatively easy to use one of the other plans listed below.
The Ramp Plan:
This is the simple one: play Azusa, use things like Oracle of Mul Daya, Sol Ring, Skyshroud Claim, Cultivate, Explosive Vegetation, and the best land ever Gaea's Cradle to power out massive spells and creatures much earlier than your opponents can deal with.
This deck is completely capable of a turn 5 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. You have spells like Tooth and Nail, Genesis Wave, and Rude Awakening which can win you the game on their own; and you can protect these spells through use of your many easily abused utility lands especially Boseiju, Who Shelters All.
When you ramp, you can use finishers like Avenger of Zendikar paired with Regal Force to draw basically your entire deck, play a few lands or the extra ramp spells you've drawn and follow it all up with a Concordant Crossroads. This is almost always enough to kill and entire table.
The Combo Plan:
There is one infinite creature combo in the deck: combo is using Squirrel Nest and Earthcraft to create infinite 1/1 squirrels. This combo is not easily tutored for or searched for in the deck, but with the amount of card draw that you can have in the deck, it's not all that difficult to pull off. The difficulty comes in being able to have the combo survive an entire circle around the table without being dealt with. This is because in order to create another squirrel, you must tap the original one that you created, you can do this infinitely for any number of squirrels, but like I said, they have to survive to all untap.
There is also a way that you can continiously draw and recycle your entire deck to find what cards you are looking for by tutoring up Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre or Kozilek, Butch of Truth, playing them and then sacrificing them to Greater Good. This will shuffle your graveyard into your library and allow you to draw massive amounts of cards.
The Draw Your Deck Plan:
If it seems as though for the most part, you're going to be unchallenged in playing out all of the lands you can, you can use Horn of Greed and Recycle to draw out your entire deck. Using Azusa and Horn, you are able to out pace your opponents with card draw, and the great thing about it is that usually Horn only feeds itself with more lands. Add Recycle into the mix and each land will draw you two cards. Because of this, if you plan on using this gameplan, it is usually a good idea to try to find and play Reliquary Tower as soon as you can.
However, it should be noted that because of time stamping you must lay Tower after Recycle in order to maintain no maximum hand size. In addition to these engines, you can easily cast Tooth and Nail late into the game to get Avenger of Zendikar and Regal Force to draw a billion cards. This will usually be able to win you the game through drawing multiple ramp spells to pump the Avenger tokens and drawing Concordant Crossroads in order to allow you to kill the table all at once that turn.
The Life from the Loam Plan:
Synergy and Combos:This is one of the lines of play that I don't use very often, it is however very powerful and consistent when you get it going. The idea is to dredge with Life from the Loam each turn so that you can continiously fill your graveyard with lands that you can get back and use them to hit your land drops. The creatures you dredge can be retrieved using things like Genesis or in a pinch, Eternal Witness. You do not have to worry about milling yourself out because of having both Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Worldspine Wurm. If you do end up needing to put your graveyard back into your deck and you don't hit the eldrazi, you can also use Primal Command to do so. The nice thing about this strategy is that it is one that doesn't interact with others and it is an axis that others don't normally play along. It is also innocent enough to where a lot of players will just see you playing lands and nothing else. Beware, however, because this plan can be disrupted somewhat easily and can also cause you to get blown out if answered with vigilant graveyard hate.
Weaknesses:
Non-Basic Land Hate: Cards like Back to Basics, Blood Moon, Ruination, etc.. are rough. Although not a complete hoser, non-basic land hate can impede your plans because of the number of non-basics in the deck. You have ways to recur your lands, and you have other ways to be able to get more lands out of your deck if need be. Like I've said before, the deck is very resilient and can recover from things like this rather quickly, although it is a weakness of the deck.
Excessive Amounts of Answers to Creatures/Combat Damage: cards like Wrath of God, Damnation, Day of Judgement are all fine once in a while and while they might slow you down, they aren't going to automatically make you lose the game. When they're used over and over again and you're not able to stick a threat to the board is when it starts to become difficult to play around. Look out for cards like Rout and the like that can wipe the board at instant speed. Fog effects can also be annoying, although not completely unbeatable.
Counter Magic: Counters are something that Azusa doesn't like to see, most of the things your casting cost a lot of mana, and you want them to resolve. It isn't a game ender, but it does slow you down and make you play a bit more conservatively. For your spells, you do have Boseiju, Who Shelters All to be able to fight this, which should be a priority if it seems that the player with the counter magic is trying to target you. You have spells that you can cast with Boseiju that can win you the game, such as Rude Awakening and Genesis Wave. Other than that, you just have to play smart and try to get plays in before they can counter them or go over the top of their counters; you should be able to ramp faster than they can accumulate enough mana and counterspells to stop all of your lines of play.
Card Choices:
Card by Card Explanation:
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
- This guy is a pretty simple explanation, he ramps, hard. If your opponents let you untap with him, you're going to be able to win pretty quickly.
Fauna Shaman
- Survival of the Fittest is one of the most broken cards in this deck, this guy does the same thing once a turn. It doesn't hurt to mention that you can tutor for him using Primal Command or Survival itself, because what's better than 1 Survial? 2!
Eternal Witness
- Rebuys anything in your graveyard, very fun to abuse Tooth and Nail or Genesis Wave with.
Yavimaya Elder
- This guy out-value's Solemn Simulacrum in this deck. He get's you 2 lands that you can play with Azusa, Blocks, and draws you a card if you need to.
Fierce Empath
- Tutors for any of the backbreaking creatures that the deck has. This guy literally says "Find your biggest threat this turn, you may play it this turn for an extra ."
Oracle of Mul Daya
- Mini Azusa. She also lets you play off the top of your deck, meaning if you have her and Azusa out, you're playing 4 cards out of your deck each turn.
Seedborn Muse
- Tap out on your turn, untap on theirs. Works great with Thawing Glaciers, Winding Canyons, Eye of Ugin, etc.
Acidic Slime
- Slime is simply a good utility dude. He blocks and kills things, and he blows up whatever is giving you trouble.
Lotus Cobra
- What's better than playing 3 lands a turn? Getting free mana off of those land drops. Even better with fetchlands.
Genesis
- You always want this guy in the graveyard. He is one of the first creatures you get with Survival of the Fittest, and you immediately pitch him to the yard to board the value train.
Duplicant
- Solid removal for creatures that the deck might otherwise not have an answer too. Can be tutored up using Fierce Empath, Fauna Shaman, Survival, and Eye of Ugin.
Wurmcoil Engine
- This guy is always a good bet. He attacks, blocks, survives a wrath. Can be found with Eye of Ugin as well.
Phyrexia's Core, Buried Ruin and Wurmcoil are pretty good friends.
Steel Hellkite
- Flying, Non-targeted destruction, wrecks token decks, can deal with things green normally can't. Eye of Ugin gets it.
Avenger of Zendikar
- This is one of the main win-cons of the deck. Playing him and following it up with 3 land drops will almost always win you the game. In a pinch he creates a huge amount of blockers.
Regal Force
- This guy will draw you boatloads of cards, usually anywhere from 5-30. That's not an exaggeration either. In addition to that, he's got a 5/5 body, which is nothing to scoff at. Remeber to draw from Dryad Arbor if you have it out!
Woodfall Primus
- What can be said about Primus, a massive trampling body that allows you blow stuff up. Greater Good and this guy are pretty good friends. If you can get a +1 +1 counter on him after he dies, you're going to be sitting pretty.
Terastodon
- Blow up 3 things, sometimes they're your own. Remember it is an up to and a may ability, so you don't have to make enemies if you don't need to.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
- Have you ever drawn 4 cards?! How about played a 12/12? Now imagine doing both at the same time! Vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue. He goes
great with Greater Good as well. I rarely if ever attack with the Eldrazi, they're used in this deck mostly for their utility and their ability.
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
- Vindicate on an indestructible 10/10 body. Ulamog and Kozilek can be used in tandem with Greater Good to continiously draw your deck until you find the cards that you're looking for.
Garruk, Primal Hunter
- Usually reads Draw a million cards. Garruk floods the board with blockers (or attackers), or can draw you a whole lot of cards if left unchecked. I don't think that I've ever used his ultimate in this deck, although if Concordant Crossroads happens to be out and he goes off, it would be pretty sweet to see.
Skullclamp
- Not much to be said about this card. Everyone knows it's good. Your guys die, you draw cards. For maximum value, combine with Squirrel Nest.
Sensei's Divining Top
- Allows you to cycle through your deck, and with Oracle of Mul Daya out; you're continiously putting lands into play.
Sol Ring
- Duh. Best artifact ramp in the deck.
Scroll Rack
- Rack is a great resource to use, you put aside cards that you don't particularly want to use at the moment and get fresh ones. Fetchlands and search effects help this artifact to be used to greater effect.
Lightning Greaves
- You're usually using this to protect Azusa. If not her, then whatever is the most valuable creature that you have out at the time. Remember you can use Greaves to activate your creatures abilities the turn they come down, and move then back afterwards.
Crucible of Worlds
- Sometimes your lands are going to get nuked, this helps you replay them. It starts getting bonkers when you abuse some of your utility lands.
Horn of Greed
- At first glance, this card seems uninspiring, but the effect isn't symmetrical with our general. This is one of the main draw engines in the deck, if you have Azusa out, you're drawing 3 cards a turn.
Predator, Flagship
- This card gives us repeated removal, or repeated evasion, whichever we need at the time. Have you ever seen a flying Kozilek, Butcher of Truth? It gives us great versatility.
Caged Sun
- Mana Doubler, and offers us a small power boost to our creatures. I play this over Gauntlet of Might because Sun only effects us, no one else.
Concordant Crossroads
- This is an effect that most people don't expect green to have. If you flood the board with creatures and then give them all haste, you're probably going to win.
Sylvan Library
- One of the best sources of card draw in green. The life loss is negligible if you're drawing cards and winning faster.
Earthcraft
- Yes, this combos with Squirrel Nest, but it works just fine without it as well. With a mana doubler out, all of your creatures tap for GG.
Survival of the Fittest
- Tutor for any creature in your deck at instant speed. There is a reason this card is banned in other formats.
Squirrel Nest
- Makes 1/1 Squirrels. Even better becuse I have the actual token. Although this card is mostly used to just combo, it can be used in conjunction
with Skullclamp. Makes little blockers too.
Greater Good
All of our guys are big, and some of them come back when they die. We like drawing cards, and when we have big dudes, this lets us draw lots of them.
Abundance
- Sometimes we just don't want to draw a land, when we have Abundance out, we get to choose what we draw!
Recycle
- Read it again. Play a card, draw a card. That includes lands. This enchantment will have you chugging along happily through your deck.
Mana Reflection
- Our other mana doubler. Notice that this is the only one that actually says "double." Sol Ring taps for , Scorched Ruins taps for , Gaea's Cradle taps for infinite.
Crop Rotation
- We almost always use this to find Gaea's Crade, but it can really be used to find any land we need at any time. It's an instant, so if one of our dudes gets stolen, we can find Homeward Path, or if our opponents are going to alpha strike us, we can go find Glacial Chasm. It's great utility and really one of the all star tutors in the deck.
Primal Command
- It's a Command, so you know it does a lot of stuff. All of the modes are useful as well, we can get a big guy, get rid of a non-creature problem, hate on the graveyard (or regrow our whole yard), and if we don't really need any of the others, we can just gain 7 life.
Life from the Loam
- A massive engine for this deck. If you can get Loam online early, you're going to be very happy because you'll be hitting all 3 of your land drops the entire game. Works incredibly well with the cycling lands.
Cultivate
- Basic green ramp, Kodama's Reach is the other version of this. I don't play both because I would rather dedicate the ramp slot to another spell since I'll be drawing so much land anyways.
Krosan Grip
- Best targeted artifact or enchantment destruction in the deck. You can destroy anything and they can't respond. Great for blowing up Sensei's Divining Top without trouble.
Journey of Discovery
- Another card that has been amazing, both abilities are extremely useful, and if you have the mana and can take advantage of having to pay :4mana::symg::symg: you can entwine it to get infinitely ahead of your opponents.
Realms Uncharted
- Gifts Ungiven for lands. Sick synergy with Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam. I like to get Winding Canyons, Eye of Ugin, Deserted Temple, and Gaea's Cradle usually.
Tempt with Discovery
- This card is the current replacement for Sylvan Primordial since he got banned. It's yet to see if it is a good replacement or not.
Explosive Vegetation
- Puts two lands into play. This is a card that I've been on the fence about, it's a solid ramp card however.
Skyshroud Claim
- In this deck, it's simply a better Explosive Vegetation. Also worth noting that you can find Dryad Arbor with this card.
Natural Order
- This is the one card game ender, if you can Natural Order on turn 4 into something like Sylvan Primordial, you've pretty much all but won. It's also a card that can be great later in the game to find any sort of threat.
Harmonize
- Green's Concentrate, not much else to say. Solid card draw.
Rude Awakening
- I find myself more and more just using this card to fuel massive Genesis Wave's rather than using it to kill people with my lands. Although, it can certainly do just that if you end up drawing it later in the game when you have an ungodly amount of land out.
Praetor's Counsel
- Regrow your whole graveyard and never have to discard down to 7 again.
Tooth and Nail
- The good old one card combo. Regal Force and Avenger of Zendikar, Terastadon and Sylvan Primordial, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. Whatever you want. Go find it.
Green Sun's Zenith
- Great for turn 1 into Dryad Arbor so you can turn 2 Azusa. This card is basically a second copy of every creature in your library. It's reusable too? Sign me up!
Genesis Wave
- Duh. With access to so much mana so quickly, you'll be able to flip your deck over in no time!
Arena
- Repeatable removal, it's kind of tricky to use, but if you can keep you opponents creatures off the board, you can kill them one by one with this and your bigger threats. Wurmcoil Engine and Acidic Slime synergize particularly well with this.
Deserted Temple
- With all of the crazy useful lands and effects that they have in this deck, being able to untap them to reuse them at any time is great. Broken when combined with Gaea's Cradle.
Dryad Arbor
- It's a dude, it's a land. It can do so much! Fetch it with multiple cards in the deck, tap it for mana. Just dont play it turn one. Because it will die. You'll be sad.
Gaea's Cradle
- Taps for way too much mana, if you play this card, you're probably going to be playing big spells. Try not to play it early because you'll expose it to removal. Once you play Avenger of Zendikar, you'll be able to play all of the cards in your deck with this one land. Combines well with Deserted Temple and Mana Reflection.
Glacial Chasm
- This card has saved me from dying so many times it's not even funny. It is so easily abused in this deck because you can sacrifice it and recur it through using Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds, or if you really need to stop your opponents from hurting you, you just leave it on the board. The life loss is usually less than what they'll be swinging for anyways.
Havenwood Battleground
- A lot of people don't like this card, but being able to use it to play Azusa on turn 2 can usually put you so far ahead that you're able to win. It can also ber incredibly useful to eek out that last little bit of mana you need to cast your game winning spell or to just put you up a crucial turn later in the game.
High Market
- A small source of lifegain, what we're usually using this card for is to abuse through sacrificing our creatures to reuse them or to stop them from getting taken from us.
Khalni Garden
- This gives us a free early blocker when played in the begining of the game, it taps for :symg:. Note: The token is a plant, Avenger of Zendikar creates plant tokens for his counters. Just sayin.
Mosswort Bridge
- A great hideaway land. Ever cast a hidden Tooth and Nail at instant speed for only :2mana::symg:? I have. It was glorious. You usually just want to get a large threat under it, but worse comes to worse you still get to cast something for usually cheaper and at instant speed.
Maze of Ith
- Stops voltron generals in their tracks unless they have shroud/hexproof. You can also use it to save your own creatures from dying in combat or give them psuedo-vigilance by removing them after combat damage. A great utility land. It's too bad it doesn't tap for mana on its own.
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
- This little land seems pretty innocious at first, but it can turn into a powerhouse when combined with the correct cards. Woodfall Primus likes the counters, as do the tokens from Avenger of Zendikar.
Reliquary Tower
- No maximum hand size. It sounds funny to say, but a lot of the time, this deck has too many cards being drawn. This stops us from having to choose what to get rid of. You want to play this after Recycle to void the had size restriction the enchantment places on you.
Strip Mine
- The best land destruction land their is, no cost, no downside (other that loosing it). This card is so devistating if used in the right situation or if abused. To lose the most friends possible, combine with Crucible of worlds or Life from the Loam.
Tectonic Edge
- Another very stong ld land. It's a bit slower, and it only hits non-basics. Still incredibly useful and still stops overpowered lands. (Other than Island).
Temple of the False God
- Taps for :2mana:, usually by turn 3 or 4 at the latest. A great land to copy to get ahead. Just solid, non-spell ramp.
Thawing Glaciers
- A great source of slow card advantage. You're getting the basic lands out of your deck so you have a chance to draw more useful lands or spells. I repeat, this card is slow, but don't underestimate it in a deck that can play more than one land a turn. Seedborn Muse makes this card happy.
Tower of the Magistrate
- I really like this card, it has performed amazingly. You can block any artifact creature, shut down an equipment strategy, use it politically. It's very versitle, and a lot of players either are not expecting it or don't actually know that it exsists.
Tranquil Thicket
- Cycling land, if you draw it late you can turn it into another card, it taps for if you play it early. Its main useage is to recycle Life from the Loam over and over with it to gain access to all of your utility lands by putting them into the graveyard to Loam back.
Treetop Village
- Great man-land, it's a 3/3 so it's one of the larger bodied ones. It only costs :1mana::symg: to activate, so it's also one of the cheapest.
Winding Canyons
- Aside from Yeva, Nature's Herald, this is the closest that mono-green gets to Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. This also has the upside to being harder to remove because it is a land, and it doesn't have the restriction of only allowing green creatures to be played like Yeva does. With Seedborn Muse out, you're basically going to be getting multiple turns.
Vesuva
- This becomes a second copy of any land you need to to be. With the new legend rule, you can't use it as removal for legendary lands, but you can get your own copies of some of the more broken lands.
Buried Ruin
- We play a lot of powerful articats, and when they die, or get into the graveyard somehow, we want to get them back. Ruin allows us to do so.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
- If we can't get our creatures through, we want to be able to get our spells through. This makes them not able to be countered. Venser, Shaper Savant, Mindbreak Trap, and Time Stopall still stop our spells though. This land is incredibly useful for forcing big spells like Genesis Wave or Tooth and Nail to reslove. The damage isn't noteworthy when we're winning with the spells we're casting.
Homeward Path
- Everyone knows that green decks play big, mean creatures. Other colors like to steal our creatures after we cast them. This land lets us get our things back and still taps for mana when it's not doing that. The text on the card says "owns" so even if your guys get stolen from your graveyard or library you get it back for free.
Ancient Tomb
- Being able to get Azusa out early is extremely helpful to the deck, Tomb taps for :2mana:, so we're going to get her out turn 2 if this is in our opening hand. Again, we don't really mind the damage because we're going to win before our life total matters.
Eye of Ugin
- Lets us get any colorless creature in our library to our hand. It also makes Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre cost and respectively. This is a huge advantage, especially if we're playing them, sacrificing them to Greater Good, and finding them again with Eye.
Miren, the Moaning Well
- Another great sacrifice outlet, this one gains us a bit more life than High Market. This is a great source of life late game because we nickel and dime ourselves so early with other utility lands and things like Sylvan Library.
Scorched Ruins
- This card seems like a terrible card when it comes to EDH, you want to be playing lands, not sacrificing them; but this puts the deck way far ahead in mana advantage. The downside of sacrificing lands isn't something that we're particularly worried about anyways, because we have so many ways to get them back.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- A BLACK card in a GREEN deck?! Whaaaaat? Urborg, like all otehr lands, doesn't have a color identity. The other thing that's missing from Urborg is a mana symbol, meaning that it can be played in any deck. In Azusa, it allows all of our lands that don't tap for mana, or that hurt us when we tap them for mana, to tap for a colorless without drawback. This is a card that should be played carefully, because you can turn on your opponents cards like Cabal Coffers or Karma. However, if we somehow copy a Cabal Coffers with this out, then we're pretty set when it comes to mana in this deck.
Misty Rainforest & Verdant Catacombs
- These are just simply fetchlands, and they're not the slow ones. They do ping the life total when used, but it isn't something that is going to worry us. Dryad Arbor is again, a vaild target for these fetches.
Why aren't you playing ....?:
- Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger - This guy was in the deck for a looooooong time. I ended up taking him out because although his effect for you is great, the other ability is one that paints a massive target on your head and unless you can protect yourself, you're going to get ganged up on by the rest of the table. I find Mana Reflection and Caged Sun, although not tutorable in the deck, are less likely to make your opponents want to kill you dead.
- Craterhoof Behemoth - This is a card that I am on the fence about. Although it does just win if you are able to Tooth and Nail for him and Avenger of Zendikar and are able to have Concordant Crossroads in play as well, it's awfully cheesy, and if you don't have Crossroads, then you may be able to only kill one player at a table and then the others will team up on you. When you T&N for Avenger and Regal Force, you're usually able to draw into Crossroads and go for the table kill.
- Mindslaver - This is another card that was in the deck for a long while, and one that I eventually took out. Being able to get slaver out early and recur it with Buried Ruin and Crucible of Worlds to lock players out of the game is extremely powerful. However, if you only slaver one or two players, the others again are going to team up on you. It's also a very way to win. Because you don't actually win, your opponents are just scooping instead of letting you play 4 games of solitaire for an hour till you can actually kill them.
- Exploration - Simply put, I don't have one. I would love to try this card out, as I think it would be insane, but I don't have the time/money to acquire one.
- Wasteland - While I have them at my disposal, I feel that between Strip Mine, Tectonic Edge, and all of the creatures that can hit lands in this deck, that there is enough mana denial and mana base control that it's not needed.
- Blasted Landscape&Slippery Karst - I haven't found one yet, but also, I'm still on the fence about going the full Life from the Loam route with the deck. I know the engine is powerful, but it seems from play testing that it's easy to get blown out by graveyard hate if you commit to this strategy too much.
Changelog:
- Rampaging Baloths + Garruk, Primal Hunter
1/6/13 - Uktabi Orangutang + Deserted Temple
2/19/13 - Forest + Scorched Ruins
- Worldspine Wurm + Natural Order
- Beast Within + Miren, the Moaning Well
3/18/13 - Birthing Pod, Solemn Simulacrum, Artisan of Kozilek, Moldgraf Monstrosity + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Arena, Sylvan Primordial, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre.
I am currently working on foilling out the deck, for those who are interested in that sort of thing you can see my progress below.
Foiled Out:
Bolded cards are foiled.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Fauna Shaman
Eternal Witness
Yavimaya Elder
Fierce Empath
Oracle of Mul Daya
Seedborn Muse
Acidic Slime
Lotus Cobra
Genesis
Duplicant
Wurmcoil Engine
Steel Hellkite
Avenger of Zendikar
Regal Force
Sylvan Primordial
Woodfall Primus
Terastodon
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Garruk, Primal Hunter
Skullclamp
Sensei's Divining Top
Sol Ring
Scroll Rack
Lightning Greaves
Crucible of Worlds
Horn of Greed
Predator, Flagship
Caged Sun
Concordant Crossroads
Sylvan Library
Earthcraft
Survival of the Fittest
Squirrel Nest
Greater Good
Abundance
Recycle
Mana Reflection
Crop Rotation
Primal Command
Life from the Loam
Cultivate
Krosan Grip
Journey of Discovery
Realms Uncharted
Explosive Vegetation
Skyshroud Claim
Harmonize
Rude Awakening
Praetor's Counsel
Tooth and Nail
Green Sun's Zenith
Genesis Wave
Deserted Temple
Dryad Arbor
Gaea's Cradle
Glacial Chasm
Havenwood Battleground
High Market
Khalni Garden
Mosswort Bridge
Maze of Ith
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
Reliquary Tower
Strip Mine
Tectonic Edge
Temple of the False God
Thawing Glaciers
Tower of the Magistrate
Tranquil Thicket
Treetop Village
Winding Canyons
Vesuva
Buried Ruin
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Homeward Path
Ancient Tomb
Eye of Ugin
Arena
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Misty Rainforest
Verdant Catacombs
13 Basic Forests
53/100
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
Thats a really good suggestion! I like that idea a lot, however, the cost and difficulty of finding that guy make it a little less plausable.
The reason that I really like Azusa right now is that she allows me to ramp early so that I can begin to drop bombs on turn 3 or 4 if the deck is cooperating.
I was also thinking of putting in Heartwood Storyteller for the extra card draw.
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
Which is kind of the point of this thread, developing a more pod/survival friendly deck with a general that can assist in the matter.
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
I can only think of one card and it's GW. So building your deck around pod isn't the best idea IMO. I too really enjoy pod and I typically throw it in early renditions of my decklists. However I generally look at it once I get down to the very last cuts and see whether or not the mana curve is appropriate for the card. Out of my three decks running green, only one has made the cut.
Will also be uploading a video gameplay of the deck vs. a Sharuum deck later today. The game was a nut draw and it went off pretty quickly, but it seemed to represent the deck quite well.
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
If I wanted to pull a decklist off of the internet I'd have done that long ago.
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
(U/B)(U/B)(U/B) JUMP IN THE LINE, ROCK YOUR BODY IN TIME
(R/W)(R/W)(R/W) RISING FROM THE NEON GLOOM, SHINING LIKE A CRAZY MOON
(U/R)(R/G)(G/U) STEALIN' WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUYIN'
Horn of Greed is in my list already... and a turn 3/4 Mindslaver is pretty brutal, especially if I have Buried Ruin and Crucible of Worlds out.
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
The issue is that I already have quite a few 6/7/8 drop and I'm not sure I want to cut one of those that is already in the deck. Input?
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
I'm seeing 40 lands.
huh, when i counted them up i got 25 for some reason must have forgotten the basic land (Though i started off with them first), now i look like and idiot lol
No worries!
There is 40 lands, and the number will probably go up as I test out different cards to see what I like and what I don't.
Ill be continiously updating the list whenever I do make a concrete change, but for now the decklist is pretty sold. It wins about 95% of the games that I pull it out in.
Uril, The Miststalker:Enchantress Beatdown
Borborygmos Enraged: Terrain Assault
Shattergang Brothers: Superfriends
I run 54 lands in my Azusa, and since I have to take Prime out, maybe I will throw another land in.
...
Azusa - Derevi - Glissa - Mizzix - Sharuum - Wanderer - Wort
good luck man