This deck, as you might have gleaned from the title, likes to blast people (and occasionally planets) to smithereens in one big shot. The way we'll be going about this is through massive, red X spells like Comet Storm and Banefire, which we can copy utilizing Wort, the Raidmother's Conspire ability for double the damage and double the fun. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. We don't want to put all of our eggs into one, counterspell-baiting basket, so the deck is also geared towards token-swarming. There's a few synergies in the deck that have the two strategies feeding into each other.
Quick note: This is a deck I've been constructing for the last two or three months, and it got the final boost it needed towards completion with the release of several excellent cards from Origins. It hasn't seen actual gameplay as of this initial post, but it's been solitaired endlessly and will be getting real gameplay soon.
This deck really wants to win by getting maximum value out of Conspiring spells. When Conspiring an instant or sorcery spell, you tap two creatures (regardless of summoning sickness) which share a color with said spell. This will put a copy of that spell on the stack, including any particular values of it. You may not Conspire any one spell more than once while it is on the stack. The obvious route to go here is Conspiring X spells where X is equal to a bazillion. However, getting to a bazillion takes a lot of mana, but most of the ramp in the deck happens to be in instant or sorcery form just waiting to be Conspired. The ideal line of play involves lots of ramping in the early and mid game, then obliterating life totals with copying and doubling effects.
However, as mentioned above, going all-in on one singular plan with a deck can leave us completely vulnerable to a good counter strategy. Including token support will give us bodies to use for Conspiring spells, sources of straight damage, blockers, and the potential for a gargantuan swarm strategy.
Notable Card Choices:
Generator Servant - He's in here primarily to get Wort down on turn four or sooner.
Explore - We wouldn't be running this if we didn't have the Conspire mechanic at our fingertips. It's decent in the early game and good in the mid game.
Nissa, Vastwood Seer/Nissa, Sage Animist - The main reason to run her here is for her ETB trigger and her +1 ability for ramp and card advantage. However, Ashaya could work well with Shared Animosity and some other elementals, and her ultimate is good when the circumstances call for it.
Garruk Wildspeaker - Garruk's +1 ability will be the main one we use but his -4 is excellent when we hit a critical mass of tokens.
Xenagos, the Reveler - Xenagos is one of our super-synergistic cards for spanning the two strategies. The more tokens you've got on the field, the bigger his +1 will be. The bigger his +1 is, the more mana you can put into your spells.
Twinflame/Heat Shimmer/Conjurer's Closet - We use a lot of "armies in a can" (creatures with ETB effects which put additional tokens on the field) in this deck and these are good for getting second and third uses out of those cards. Conspire when able.
Impact Tremors/Purphoros, God of the Forge - We spam tokens. These enchantments love when we spam tokens. The more tokens we spam with these on the field, the more damage our opponents will take before we hit one of our big spells and the easier it'll be to finish them.
Beastmaster Ascension/Shared Animosity - These are specifically here to push through the token swarm strategy. Note for Shared Animosity, we should at least have plenty of Goblins choking up the field to reap a huge benefit from it. Elementals and Satyrs are also definite possibilities.
Revel of the Fallen God - It looks like an inefficient spell, but we're including it for the "colors matter" part of the Conspire mechanic. Creatures that are both red *and* green will be able to Conspire any spell in our deck, and the only cards which produce tokens that are both red and green are Wort, Xenagos, and this card.
Rude Awakening - If this deck has one of those "Going off" turns, this card is an essential part of it. Let's say we have ten lands and four RG creatures on the field, and a Banefire and this card in hand. Tap for 10 mana, use 5 mana for Rude Awakening and Conspire it. After the first resolves, retap our lands to float 15 mana. Let the second resolve, tap again to float 25 mana, cast Banefire for 24 and Conspire it, blast somebody in the face for 48 uncounterable, unpreventable damage. Also, if need be, Rude Awakening's second choice works well with Beastmaster Ascension.
Volcanic Vision & Ravaging Blaze - These are newer cards that haven't been proven yet, so they'll be tested in this deck for their value and kept if they're good enough for it.
Mana Echoes - This is another card for going off with. Use in the mid-to-late game while playing armies in a can to work up an ungodly amount of mana to throw into a big Fireball.
Hostility - Here's another card that should have super-synergy between both strategies. If we play this with our big X spells, we can concoct a crazy token swarm and flatten opponents' life totals. Be warned, this is not advisable when playing against Pillow Fort decks or anyone capable of instant-speed board wipes.
This deck is still new and untested, so any advice, recommendations, or fun experiences involving any of the cards in this deck, please share!
It's something I've been really considering, I have a foil sitting in my rares box. I used to run it in another deck and it was next to useless 4/5 times I drew it. Have you had good experiences with Mana Geyser?
I've never run a Wort deck but I did have a Melek, Izzet Paragon deck for several months that played very similarly to this (though with counters and Cyclonic Rift instead of tokens) and Mana Geyser was an all-star there. If you can copy it, it can easily make 30+ mana. You may also want some more card draw, perhaps Collective Unconscious to go with your Shamanic Revelation? Commune with Lava is pretty good too, as are mono-red classics Wheel of Fortune and Reforge the Soul. You do make a ton of tokens, so maybe you'd want to try The Great Aurora to draw more cards and get more mana? It would unfortunately mean that you have to rebuild a board of conspire tokens.
The other cards that really stick out to me as missing are Past in Flames and Empty the Warrens. Empty can spit out a ton of tokens (though it's admittedly useless to conspire) for either the token beatdown path or to conspire with later and PiF can let you keep going off when you need to.
I've never run a Wort deck but I did have a Melek, Izzet Paragon deck for several months that played very similarly to this (though with counters and Cyclonic Rift instead of tokens) and Mana Geyser was an all-star there. If you can copy it, it can easily make 30+ mana. You may also want some more card draw, perhaps Collective Unconscious to go with your Shamanic Revelation? Commune with Lava is pretty good too, as are mono-red classics Wheel of Fortune and Reforge the Soul. You do make a ton of tokens, so maybe you'd want to try The Great Aurora to draw more cards and get more mana? It would unfortunately mean that you have to rebuild a board of conspire tokens.
The other cards that really stick out to me as missing are Past in Flames and Empty the Warrens. Empty can spit out a ton of tokens (though it's admittedly useless to conspire) for either the token beatdown path or to conspire with later and PiF can let you keep going off when you need to.
I'll probably make room for Mana Geyser then once I play the deck once or twice. Collective Unconscious was in the first draft of the deck, but I cut it for more efficient things. I think if Skullmulcher doesn't work as I want it to, I'll cut that for Collective Unconscious. I play a lot of red in Commander and I love Commune with Lava, but I wouldn't run it in a deck that's also green because I like feeling greedy and having a huge hand. Green's just got superior card advantage capabilities to red's and I'd rather use those. The same goes for the Wheels. As for The Great Aurora (and Warp World), I haven't figured out if this is that kind of deck yet. As I play it in real games and get a handle for it, I'll be looking to see if that's what we want to do.
Past in Flames sounds like a great idea, I'll see if I can track down a good trade for one. Empty the Warrens isn't something I intend to use, I made a conscious decision when designing it to not make it a Storm deck. The idea is more to blast opponents with one or two huge spells, not a flurry of smaller spells.
Animist's Awakening is a little gamble I'm taking. Whenever I play it in solitaire, it turns out huge results and sets up well for a huge Fireball down the line. We'll just have to wait and see how it does in actual game-testing. If it does work well, I'm going to go deeper on a Landfall theme, especially after seeing this new art previewed
Oh rootborn defenses, why must your color be so wrong. Dragon Roost is slow, but is a great mana dump and an alt win condition by itself. I assume goblin assault was excluded for obvious reasons though. Caller of the Claw for super secret backup plan?
Oh rootborn defenses, why must your color be so wrong. Dragon Roost is slow, but is a great mana dump and an alt win condition by itself. I assume goblin assault was excluded for obvious reasons though. Caller of the Claw for super secret backup plan?
I never considered Dragon Roost. If I find the deck has a big weakness to flying beatsticks, I'll definitely consider putting it in. God knows we'll have the mana for it. Caller of the Claw would be a good include if the tokens he made were red too. I need to put a premium on the red tokens to Conspire my Fireball-esque spells. Besides, usually we'll have a max of three nontoken creatures on the field, one of which usually being Wort.
I always forget about that card. Tempt with Vengeance is definitely something I should make room for. It could just end the game with the right cards.
Update:
I've gotten in a handful of games with Wort, two of which are of particular note. The first was versus a good friend who was running his new Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter deck. The game was back-and-forth, very competitive. I had Wort working well on the token plan until I drew into Animist's Awakening and Banefire, the results of which did him 36 damage, which was exactly how much life he had. It was exceptional that I managed to blast him at that moment too, apparently he was about to combo out in the next turn with Exquisite Blood and Vizkopa Guildmage.
The second game of note took place this last Sunday at the Commander League I like to attend in Cleveland Heights. I believe my opponents were Nekusar, Freyalise and Grenzo. The Nekusar player played an early Torpor Orb that completely wrecked the fact that I had just drawn into Purphoros. I did not draw into any artifact removal to destroy the Torpor Orb, so I pointed my resources at straight-up killing him. Fortunately, the other two players wanted him gone too, though I did most of the heavy lifting with a Bonfire of the Damned for 15ish. After the Nekusar player was out of the game, I rode Constant Mists all of the way to the bank and set up a Comet Storm to blast both other players for 70ish simultaneously.
The Torpor Orb really did a number on my ability to play out the game, so because of that, I'll be introducing some more control elements to the deck to better deal with these sorts of things.
Cuts:
Revel of the Fallen God - It's a fun idea and I happen to have a foil copy, but it's expensive and Satyrs don't exactly have the greatest critical mass of token-producers to benefit from Shared Animosity.
Chancellor of the Forge - He costs a lot, so playing him out in the early-to-mid game will likely take an entire turn where we could be setting up for something else. He's also totally dependent on having other creatures on the field to reap his benefit. Torpor Orb really hosed this guy in my most-previous game.
Desert Twister - This is being replace by instant-speed removal that's half the price.
Ravaging Blaze - This may come back into the deck in the future, but for now we're still working on the right balance of support cards to business cards.
Adds:
Beast Within - Instant-speed, destroys any type of permanent.
Chaos Warp - More instant-speed, tucks any type of permanent. More control helps.
Sylvan Library - Most of the methods to gain card advantage in this deck require creatures on the field to do so. Library gets around that. There's a reason why this is a $20 card.
Doubling Season - This will serve two purposes for us. First, it doubles all of the tokens we make. Second, it doubles all of the counters on our Planeswalkers. Two words: Value town.
Exploration - Lands don't do much just sitting in our hand, so let's play more of them, faster. Getting Wort down by turn 3 sounds pretty great.
Considering:
Mana Geyser - This belongs in the same category as Rude Awakening and the like to make a super-ton of mana, setting up for a huge Fireball. I'm wary of its restriction of working off of opponents' tapped lands. I'm worried it might not be reliable.
Hellrider - This is one of my all-time favorite cards. If the token plan is continually improved upon, Hellrider will probably go in.
Avenger of Zendikar - Goodstuff all-star, and conveniently works very well with token and ramp strategies.
Chandra, the Firebrand - We would run Chandra for her -2, because three Banefires are better than two. Plus, I'm introducing more support for 'walkers in the deck, adding more might only be logical.
Omnath, Locus of Rage - We've already got some elemental synergies in the deck, and Omnath's tokens will hit like freight trains compared to what we already run.
Ran a similar Wort deck awhile back. I ran only 5 actual mountains in the deck and used the green fetch sorceries and such to find all 5 while still drawling into forests since you usually only need 2-4 actual red mana to go nuclear.
This deck, as you might have gleaned from the title, likes to blast people (and occasionally planets) to smithereens in one big shot. The way we'll be going about this is through massive, red X spells like Comet Storm and Banefire, which we can copy utilizing Wort, the Raidmother's Conspire ability for double the damage and double the fun. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. We don't want to put all of our eggs into one, counterspell-baiting basket, so the deck is also geared towards token-swarming. There's a few synergies in the deck that have the two strategies feeding into each other.
Quick note: This is a deck I've been constructing for the last two or three months, and it got the final boost it needed towards completion with the release of several excellent cards from Origins. It hasn't seen actual gameplay as of this initial post, but it's been solitaired endlessly and will be getting real gameplay soon.
1 Wort, the Raidmother
Lands
15 Forest
15 Mountain
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Temple of the False God
1 Temple of Abandon
1 Gruul Guildgate
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Kessig Wolf Run
Ramp
1 Sol Ring
1 Exploration
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Generator Servant
1 Explore
1 Rampant Growth
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Nissa's Pilgrimage
1 Harrow
1 Cultivate
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Xenagos, the Reveler
1 Mana Reflection
1 Boundless Realms
1 Animist's Awakening
1 Skullclamp
1 Mogg War Marshal
1 Twinflame
1 Krenko's Command
1 Dragon Fodder
1 Impact Tremors
1 Goblin Bombardment
1 Shared Animosity
1 Beastmaster Ascension
1 Hordeling Outburst
1 Heat Shimmer
1 Parallel Lives
1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
1 Beetleback Chief
1 Ogre Battledriver
1 Conjurer's Closet
1 Siege-Gang Commander
1 In the Web of War
1 Embermaw Hellion
1 Zendikar's Roil
1 Shamanic Revelation
1 Skullmulcher
1 Goblin Marshal
"The Spell Conspiracy Plan" & Utility
1 Constant Mists
1 Hull Breach
1 Sylvan Library
1 Chaos Warp
1 Beast Within
1 Mana Echoes
1 Harmonize
1 Wild Ricochet
1 Mirari
1 Pyromancer's Goggles
1 Doubling Season
1 Restock
1 Rude Awakening
1 Hostility
1 Vengeful Rebirth
1 Volcanic Vision
1 Banefire
1 Devil's Play
1 Comet Storm
1 Clan Defiance
1 Bonfire of the Damned
This deck really wants to win by getting maximum value out of Conspiring spells. When Conspiring an instant or sorcery spell, you tap two creatures (regardless of summoning sickness) which share a color with said spell. This will put a copy of that spell on the stack, including any particular values of it. You may not Conspire any one spell more than once while it is on the stack. The obvious route to go here is Conspiring X spells where X is equal to a bazillion. However, getting to a bazillion takes a lot of mana, but most of the ramp in the deck happens to be in instant or sorcery form just waiting to be Conspired. The ideal line of play involves lots of ramping in the early and mid game, then obliterating life totals with copying and doubling effects.
However, as mentioned above, going all-in on one singular plan with a deck can leave us completely vulnerable to a good counter strategy. Including token support will give us bodies to use for Conspiring spells, sources of straight damage, blockers, and the potential for a gargantuan swarm strategy.
Notable Card Choices:
This deck is still new and untested, so any advice, recommendations, or fun experiences involving any of the cards in this deck, please share!
| Omnath | Zada | Alesha | Scion |
| Mazirek | Animar |
Modern
UR Storm RU
UBRG Dredge GRBU
Standard
UR Thermo-Thing RU
It's something I've been really considering, I have a foil sitting in my rares box. I used to run it in another deck and it was next to useless 4/5 times I drew it. Have you had good experiences with Mana Geyser?
The other cards that really stick out to me as missing are Past in Flames and Empty the Warrens. Empty can spit out a ton of tokens (though it's admittedly useless to conspire) for either the token beatdown path or to conspire with later and PiF can let you keep going off when you need to.
Animist's Awakening is very bad and should probably just be Skyshroud Claim/Hunting Wilds.
| Omnath | Zada | Alesha | Scion |
| Mazirek | Animar |
Modern
UR Storm RU
UBRG Dredge GRBU
Standard
UR Thermo-Thing RU
I'll probably make room for Mana Geyser then once I play the deck once or twice. Collective Unconscious was in the first draft of the deck, but I cut it for more efficient things. I think if Skullmulcher doesn't work as I want it to, I'll cut that for Collective Unconscious. I play a lot of red in Commander and I love Commune with Lava, but I wouldn't run it in a deck that's also green because I like feeling greedy and having a huge hand. Green's just got superior card advantage capabilities to red's and I'd rather use those. The same goes for the Wheels. As for The Great Aurora (and Warp World), I haven't figured out if this is that kind of deck yet. As I play it in real games and get a handle for it, I'll be looking to see if that's what we want to do.
Past in Flames sounds like a great idea, I'll see if I can track down a good trade for one. Empty the Warrens isn't something I intend to use, I made a conscious decision when designing it to not make it a Storm deck. The idea is more to blast opponents with one or two huge spells, not a flurry of smaller spells.
Animist's Awakening is a little gamble I'm taking. Whenever I play it in solitaire, it turns out huge results and sets up well for a huge Fireball down the line. We'll just have to wait and see how it does in actual game-testing. If it does work well, I'm going to go deeper on a Landfall theme, especially after seeing this new art previewed
Always.
Is tempt with vengeance too unreliable for this gameplan?
I never considered Dragon Roost. If I find the deck has a big weakness to flying beatsticks, I'll definitely consider putting it in. God knows we'll have the mana for it. Caller of the Claw would be a good include if the tokens he made were red too. I need to put a premium on the red tokens to Conspire my Fireball-esque spells. Besides, usually we'll have a max of three nontoken creatures on the field, one of which usually being Wort.
I always forget about that card. Tempt with Vengeance is definitely something I should make room for. It could just end the game with the right cards.
I've gotten in a handful of games with Wort, two of which are of particular note. The first was versus a good friend who was running his new Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter deck. The game was back-and-forth, very competitive. I had Wort working well on the token plan until I drew into Animist's Awakening and Banefire, the results of which did him 36 damage, which was exactly how much life he had. It was exceptional that I managed to blast him at that moment too, apparently he was about to combo out in the next turn with Exquisite Blood and Vizkopa Guildmage.
The second game of note took place this last Sunday at the Commander League I like to attend in Cleveland Heights. I believe my opponents were Nekusar, Freyalise and Grenzo. The Nekusar player played an early Torpor Orb that completely wrecked the fact that I had just drawn into Purphoros. I did not draw into any artifact removal to destroy the Torpor Orb, so I pointed my resources at straight-up killing him. Fortunately, the other two players wanted him gone too, though I did most of the heavy lifting with a Bonfire of the Damned for 15ish. After the Nekusar player was out of the game, I rode Constant Mists all of the way to the bank and set up a Comet Storm to blast both other players for 70ish simultaneously.
The Torpor Orb really did a number on my ability to play out the game, so because of that, I'll be introducing some more control elements to the deck to better deal with these sorts of things.
Cuts:
Adds:
Considering:
Suggestions
Caged Sun (green)
Gauntlet of Power (Green)
Rolling Thunder
Edit