MTG Salvation

Just as the title says, dropping 24 basics on turn five:

Turn 1: Forest, Llanowar Elves/Elvish Mystic/Fyndhorn Elves
Turn 2: Mountain, Young Pyromancer
Turn 3: Forest, Explosive Vegetation/Ranger's Path
Turn 4: Mountain, Wort, the Raidmother
Turn 5: Forest, attack with the elemental token you created on turn 3, cast Howl of the Horde, conspire it (tapping Wort and Young Pyromancer, cast Harvest Season, conspire it (the goblin warrior tokens from casting Wort). Resolve six copies of Harvest Season with four tapped creatures in play when they start resolving.

Now this is obviously magical christmasland, but it shows the potential of Wort as a gruul spellslinger commander. I've built this deck for a budget playgroup which has as the main deckbuilding restriction that no card can cost more than $1 on MagicCards.info. Without further ado, the list:This is a deck for those who:

• Are tired of those Izzet players hogging all the spellslinging fun.
• Enjoy the look on an opponent's face when they drop a Fireball the size of Kansas on their head.
• Enjoy the look on that same opponent's face when that same massive Fireball gets copied two to four times even more.
• You don't mind supplementing that strategy with a little oldfashioned going wide with tokens.

Piloting manual:
This deck follows a fairly typical Wort strategy - ramp and token generation through instants and sorcery spells - with the final objective being blowing out players with stupidly big Fireball cards that are made even bigger by being doubled and then recursed for even more violent fun.

Early on, you want to drop mana dorks and low key ramp spells like Gaea's Touch and Nature's Lore, coupled with some hand sculpting through Magmatic Insight, Tormenting Voice, Cathartic Reunion and Wild Guess. Note that Wort can generate value out of these spells even late in the game, since you can conspire them without having to pay the additional cost for the copies. Ideally, you want to drop Wort, the Raidmother on turn four or five.

From there the party begins. You can start playing bigger ramp spells, such as Animist's Awakening and Nissa's Renewal, then copy those via Wort, or any instant or sorcery that copies spells (which you can also conspire). You can begin expanding your token army, which in turn fuels your spell copying shenanigans, and even mana generation through cards like Battle Hymn and Harvest SeasonTh. row out the medium-sized draw spells and make them feel huge by doubling them.

Around this point in the game you'll also start whittling down your opponents with seemingly innocuous plinking effects. Guttersnipe, Throne of the God-Pharaoh and Impact Tremors are perfect for bringing all your opponents within range of your big blowout spells simultaneously in a way that complements the general strategy very well.

Once you reach a critical mass of lands and creatures it's time to blow out the game with Fireball and similar cards. This is where you can do some truly nutty things with cards like Early Harvest.

Say you have ten basics in play. Tap them all for ten mana. Cast Early Harvest and conspire it. Seven mana left. Let the copy resolve, untap your basics, then tap them again. Seventeen mana. Then let the original spell resolve and tap all your lands again. Twenty-seven mana. Make Comet Storm feel like a card that deserves its mythic rarity.

Of course with the recursion package you have the ability to do all this multiple times. If your first Fireball and its copy isn't quite big enough, just Recollect it.

I also love the idea of Wort spellslinger. Check out the list in my sig. I need to update it, but the deck is so much fun. I'll post again with thoughts when I'm off work.

This is exactly the next type of deck I want to build. It's good to see that something solid can be made from Budget.

I'm curious why you aren't using Treacherous Terrain. It's a way to laser the table on a resource that they tend to use. Another pet massive laser card of mine would be Vengeful Rebirth.

Edit: No Skullclamp?!

Treacherous Terrain seems like it's worth testing. Vengeful Rebirth seems alright, but I feel like I already have enough recursion effects, and Volcanic Vision is almost a boardwipe for just one mana more. Skullclamp is out of budget, currently $1.90 mid.

Hmmm.... Considering your price per card limit, I like this. I'm saying that as a fellow Wort player.
Though... 37 lands and 18 ramp seems more then a bit much to me... How is it treating you?

I started out with 26 basics and various duals along with some utility stuff like Temple of the False God and the Blighted Lands but the more I played it, the more I realized I would be fine running an (almost) even split of forests and mountains. The thing is, at this budget point, there are no duals available that enter the battlefield tapped even conditionally. And you really want to hit the first four or so in order to spiral out of control into a massive Fireball-like effect within a reasonable amount of time. It also means that cards like Explosive Vegetation are less dead when I draw them after a big Harvest Season and that Early Harvest becomes much more explosive. The ramp also functions in thinning out the deck, making the somewhat limited draw options in red and green more reliable in finding me more fuel for the fire.

In a related note,I noticed I'm missing Farseek but I'm having trouble finding something to cut for it. Also, fingers crossed that the Archenemy reprint pushes Cultivate under a dollar... not holding my breath on that one though.

Since you're committed to Basics, I would suggest Wave of Vitriol, Ruination and/or From the Ashes - it'll punish all of those greedy manabases while leaving you untouched. Add whatever one meets your price and code of morality (I think I'd stay away from Ruination, but resolving From the Ashes against certain players will be so satisfying).

Sadly we don't allow mass land destruction in the meta, but they're valuable suggestions nonetheless.

Not allowed or frowned upon?

I think From the Ashes is fine because it leaves the poor players alone while the guys who are willing to buy blingy lands (and yeah, that includes myself I guess) are the ones who get punished.

I'm going to second Tev on Wave of Vitriol and From the Ashes. The Wave especially is so effective against so many difficult permanents: things like Theros gods and Dark/Blightsteel Colossus. And it's not really land destruction because it replaces the destroyed/sacrificed lands with basics. Even when I make 5c decks, I make sure to toss in a basic or two of each land type for exactly this circumstance.

Rhonas's Last Stand
Thoughts? Might be nice for early game...

Not really. Not untapping your lands in any stage of the game can be killer. Early game I want to slap down as many lands and tokens as I can.

In other news, I've done some playtesting and made the following changes:

Out:
Gelatinous Genesis
Sylvan Offering
Guttersnipe

In:
Hurricane
Squall Line
Toil to Renown

I needed ways to effectively deal with flyers, and Toil to Renown is just absurd for its ability to place me firmly outside of the range of aggro decks as I'm building towards critical mass.

Update after the last round of playtesting:

Out:
Rosheen Meanderer
Holistic Wisdom
Goblin Bombardment
Volcanic Offering
Ezuri's Predation

In:
Hurricane
Squall Line
Sporemound
Hostility
Primal Command

I often found myself getting eaten away by flyers, and an early Hurricane/Squall Line could potentially save me. They can also blow out multiple players at once under the right circumstances. Sporemound generates nice chunks of tokens off of something that my deck was doing anyway. Holistic Wisdom generally came into play at moments that my hand was relatively bereft of things I could afford to exile. Primal Command is more versatile than Volcanic Offering. Since I don't play a straight-up token production focus Goblin Bombardment generally wasn't as effective as I would like it to be. Hostility has been extremely effective, potentially tripling the damage output of my Fireball effects. It only gets more effective with Hurricane/Squall Line. At a four player table a Hurricane with X = 10 drops 30 hasty 3/1 beaters on the table.

I don't know if you like the Creature type off of Sporemound, but if you're not too attached there's Zendikar's Roil for 2/2 Elementals.

I'm surprised you've cut Goblin Bombardment, it's always been an all star.

The deck has been playtested extensively during the past few months. It has resulted in this deck tech video.