Hello Everyone! I'm brand new to the forum, but I wanted to join for some advice. I have always been fascinated by Bear cards, simple little 2/2 vanilla beasts.
The problem with vanilla cards, as I'm sure you'd imagine, is that they tend to be fairly...well, vanilla. No first strike, no flying, no real abilities outside of Werebear, but nonetheless almost universally mana-efficient.
So how do you compete with decks that are trying to outpace you? You slow them down of course! I will credit an article I found with this idea, but a brilliant addition to the deck is Winter Orb. In addition to dramatically slowing down opponents, it also combos spectacularly with Bear Umbra, as I can untap all of my lands while my opponent get stuck. In addition, Werebear guarantees that I'll have the two mana necessary to play a bear per turn, even untapping only one land. Rancor is a good card to make the bears individually scary, but it's worth mentioning that the bears themselves can be recycled through bearscape, so chipping away with rancor-damage can pay off in the long run by granting threshold to werebear and building towards bearscape later in the game.
The big fear at this point would be mass removal, as the bears do have a relatively low toughness factor. The good news of course is that they are fairly replacable, so any big boom and/or wrath of god would definitely be a hit, but filling the graveyard helps werebear and the eventual bearscape. In a perfect game I'd imagine early winter orb, slow down opponent enough to get bear umbra, then take advantage of mana ramp to overwhelm him before he is able to catch up.
All that being said, I have been away from the game for a long time, and this is more something I'd want to take to the local card shop and be "that guy with a bear deck" than something I'd take to a tournament.
So I'm turning to the forum for help, bearing (ha!) in mind that I want to keep the theme good and bear-focused, are there any good combos and/or additions to the instants, sorceries, or artifacts? Coat of Arms was my first thought, as with any theme deck, but it seems like if I have the mana to cast it, the game should already be well in hand.
If the creatures were completely vanillas, I would suggest Muraganda Petroglyphs, but only some of them aren't.
If you find that you aren't getting the Winter Orb + Bear Umbra combo as often as you like, you could add some tutoring, but that would probably require splashing a second color or using a higher CMC artifact like Ring of Three Wishes.
The problem with vanilla cards, as I'm sure you'd imagine, is that they tend to be fairly...well, vanilla. No first strike, no flying, no real abilities outside of Werebear, but nonetheless almost universally mana-efficient.
So how do you compete with decks that are trying to outpace you? You slow them down of course! I will credit an article I found with this idea, but a brilliant addition to the deck is Winter Orb. In addition to dramatically slowing down opponents, it also combos spectacularly with Bear Umbra, as I can untap all of my lands while my opponent get stuck. In addition, Werebear guarantees that I'll have the two mana necessary to play a bear per turn, even untapping only one land. Rancor is a good card to make the bears individually scary, but it's worth mentioning that the bears themselves can be recycled through bearscape, so chipping away with rancor-damage can pay off in the long run by granting threshold to werebear and building towards bearscape later in the game.
The big fear at this point would be mass removal, as the bears do have a relatively low toughness factor. The good news of course is that they are fairly replacable, so any big boom and/or wrath of god would definitely be a hit, but filling the graveyard helps werebear and the eventual bearscape. In a perfect game I'd imagine early winter orb, slow down opponent enough to get bear umbra, then take advantage of mana ramp to overwhelm him before he is able to catch up.
All that being said, I have been away from the game for a long time, and this is more something I'd want to take to the local card shop and be "that guy with a bear deck" than something I'd take to a tournament.
So I'm turning to the forum for help, bearing (ha!) in mind that I want to keep the theme good and bear-focused, are there any good combos and/or additions to the instants, sorceries, or artifacts? Coat of Arms was my first thought, as with any theme deck, but it seems like if I have the mana to cast it, the game should already be well in hand.
Any advice is welcome and appreciated!
4x Werebear
4x Ashcoat Bear
4x Grizzly Bears
4x Runeclaw Bear
3x Dragon-Scarred Bear
3x Ulvenwald Bear
3x Winter Orb
Spells
2x Bearscape
3x Bear Umbra
4x Rancor
4x Explore
3x Overrun
21x Forest
If you find that you aren't getting the Winter Orb + Bear Umbra combo as often as you like, you could add some tutoring, but that would probably require splashing a second color or using a higher CMC artifact like Ring of Three Wishes.