I wanted to run mono-G again. There are a number of reasons as to why, but the only one that really matters is that I have had an absolutely gorgeous foil Greater Good sitting in my binder for far too long, and it is arguably my favorite card. Mono-G is fun to play and as good a place as any for Greater Good, so I was off to the races.
Traditionally, mono-G decks are known for ridiculous ramp followed by a string of dinosaurs or a swarm of tokens. While there's nothing wrong with this strategy, I wanted to take a slightly different approach to it, so I went for Sakiko, Mother of Summer. A lot of the usual suspects in green ramp are missing here in favor of ramp on creature bodies and weird cards that I've wanted to play for a while. This is also much lower on the totem pole than my Sisters deck, so if I think a card would work well in each deck but only have a single copy, Sisters gets priority. That might help to explain why some of the seemingly obvious choices aren't here.
There's really nothing subtle about this deck. The gameplan is to play some early creatures, preferably some that ramp you a bit, drop Sakiko, then hit to generate a bunch of mana. Manlands, card draw, and repeatable token generation all supplement this plan and try to keep overextending to a minimum. What the deck really wants at the moment is additional card draw and maybe a mana sink or two. I'm trying to keep the focus on creatures, both for the obvious reason that they work well with Sakiko and the less obvious reason that most of my decks are extremely creature light.
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[Pr]Jaya | Estrid | A rotating cast of decks built out of my box.
Soul of the Harvest type cards, Primordial Sage, Garruk's Packleader. Depends on your creature base, and how big they are, but a decent way to get some cards off another body. You want to swing for damage, so Hunter's Insight might not be bad. Soul's Majesty is one I play in Uril and Omnath, and you can draw a ton-o-card off it. Praetor's Counsel is one you've probably already considered, but it's pretty good CA.
Garruk's Packleader could definitely be a solid one, though I think I would desperately want at least one more token generator that could pump out 3+ power tokens (The Garruks, Centaur Glade, Rampaging Baloths, and Wurmcalling being the current ones).
Soul and Sage both rely on nontoken creatures, which doesn't really help with the overextending. There's a good chance they'll still make an appearance here, partly because they have a meaningful power and chaining creatures together can mitigate overextending by just crushing in and killing people.
Insight and Majesty I shy away from because I hate having the creature removed in response, but it might be worthwhile with the large token producers. I don't feel nearly so bad if some Swords my beast token in response.
Counsel, I have no idea. I honestly hadn't put any serious thought into it for this deck. I run it in a couple others, so I'm used to it, but I'm not sure I want it here.
Some definite options that I may have no been giving enough credit. Thanks for checking out the list!
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[Pr]Jaya | Estrid | A rotating cast of decks built out of my box.
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Traditionally, mono-G decks are known for ridiculous ramp followed by a string of dinosaurs or a swarm of tokens. While there's nothing wrong with this strategy, I wanted to take a slightly different approach to it, so I went for Sakiko, Mother of Summer. A lot of the usual suspects in green ramp are missing here in favor of ramp on creature bodies and weird cards that I've wanted to play for a while. This is also much lower on the totem pole than my Sisters deck, so if I think a card would work well in each deck but only have a single copy, Sisters gets priority. That might help to explain why some of the seemingly obvious choices aren't here.
1 Sakiko, Mother of Summer
//Creatures
1 Acidic Slime
1 Ant Queen
1 Avenger of Zendikar
1 Baru, Fist of Krosa
1 Brawn
1 Bellowing Tanglewurm
1 Caustic Wasps
1 Dawntreader Elk
1 Fierce Empath
1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Jade Mage
1 Kessig Cagebreakers
1 Nemata, Grove Guardian
1 Nullmage Shepherd
1 Omnath, Locus of Mana
1 Ondu Giant
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Rampaging Baloths
1 Regal Force
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
1 Verdeloth the Ancient
1 Viridian Emissary
1 Wickerbough Elder
1 Wood Elves
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Yavimaya Dryad
1 Birthing Pod
1 Cloudstone Curio
1 Eldrazi Monument
1 Slate of Ancestry
1 Sol Ring
1 Tower of Fortunes
1 Umezawa's Jitte
//Enchantments
1 Asceticism
1 Beastmaster Ascension
1 Centaur Glade
1 Cream of the Crop
1 Doubling Season
1 Druids' Repository
1 Greater Good
1 Mirri's Guile
1 Night Soil
1 Overwhelming Instinct
1 Parallel Lives
1 Perilous Forays
//Planeswalkers
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
//Instants
1 Beast Within
1 Chord of Calling
1 Nature's Claim
1 Slice in Twain
1 Cultivate
1 Explore
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Harmonize
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Overwhelming Stampede
1 Waiting in the Weeds
1 Wurmcalling
//Lands
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Treetop Village
1 Wasteland
31 Forest
There's really nothing subtle about this deck. The gameplan is to play some early creatures, preferably some that ramp you a bit, drop Sakiko, then hit to generate a bunch of mana. Manlands, card draw, and repeatable token generation all supplement this plan and try to keep overextending to a minimum. What the deck really wants at the moment is additional card draw and maybe a mana sink or two. I'm trying to keep the focus on creatures, both for the obvious reason that they work well with Sakiko and the less obvious reason that most of my decks are extremely creature light.
WUBRG Some of these decks can actually win games...WUBRG
How I know I should build a deck:
Soul and Sage both rely on nontoken creatures, which doesn't really help with the overextending. There's a good chance they'll still make an appearance here, partly because they have a meaningful power and chaining creatures together can mitigate overextending by just crushing in and killing people.
Insight and Majesty I shy away from because I hate having the creature removed in response, but it might be worthwhile with the large token producers. I don't feel nearly so bad if some Swords my beast token in response.
Counsel, I have no idea. I honestly hadn't put any serious thought into it for this deck. I run it in a couple others, so I'm used to it, but I'm not sure I want it here.
Some definite options that I may have no been giving enough credit. Thanks for checking out the list!