[Deck] Glacial Chasm / Crucible Green Control

[EGarrett]

This is a deck I've been playing and tinkering with over the last few years. It's quite competitive while also being complex and fun to play.

2 Summer Bloom
4 Exploration
4 Rites of Flourishing

2 Seal of Primordium
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Crop Rotation

3 Life from the Loam
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Zuran Orb
3 Constant Mists
4 Glacial Chasm

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Savannah
3 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
3 Horizon Canopy
3 Wasteland
2 Kabira Crossroads
4 Pirahna Marsh
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Treetop Village

SIDEBOARD:
4 Pithing Needle
3 Treetop Village
1 Nantuko Monastery
2 Ray of Revelation
2 Krosan Grip
2 Crop Rotation
1 Summer Bloom

Alright. The deck is nearly mono-green and contains no creature kill. The basic idea of it is to exploit the synergy of Glacial Chasm, Constant Mists and Zuran Orb with Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam to make it extremely difficult for the opponent to lower your life total. Once you stabilize, you exploit your ability to bring tons of land into and out of play by sacrificing and recurring Pirahna Marsh over and over until your opponent is hopefully dead.

The deck tends to play pretty consistently, but it also uses Horizon Canopy recursion for repeated draws, along with Enlightened Tutor and Crop Rotation to smooth its draws further. It tends to do very well against aggro decks, and against control, recurring Bojuka Bog and Wastelands can be devastating. Emrakul the Aeons Torn is also a "secret weapon" that provides infinite graveyard recursion (just keep your important lands in play instead of in the graveyard when dredging Life from the Loam in case you hit Emrakul)...and he can also be hard-cast in order to bash the opponent over the head in a pinch. The single Treetop Village can also be recurred as an immortal 3/3 trampler if needed.

The sideboard is pretty generalized. Against non-damage decks you can swap out the Kabira Crossroads, Constant Mists and Glacial Chasms for 3 more Treetop Villages and the Nantuko Monastery (because you can't have 5 Treetop Villages in your deck), along with the Krosan Grips (counterspell-resistant) and Ray of Revelations (discard-resistant) and the Crop Rotations add more consistency if needed. The Pithing Needles help protect against Pernicious Deed, Nevinyrral's Disk and the like, and the single Summer Bloom is just filler and can be anything you want.

For weaknesses, the deck has some vulnerabilities against graveyard-hate, but very often the opponent gets confused by what you're doing and doesn't know exactly how to stop you. Since the deck uses lands, buyback spells, and artifacts in different ways to fuel its defense, it can be quite resilient against any single line of disruption (very few decks have discard or counters AND graveyard hate AND landkill etc etc).

Overall, it takes some practice to play, since it requires so many choices and thought into what you play, what lands you sac, when you dredge from the loam, how often you pay the upkeep on Glacial Chasm instead of saccing it to Zuran Orb and using one of your land drops to get it back into play and so on. But I find it really fun and competitive and tends to catch people by surprise.

[Piceli89]

Ok, it's a hard question but someone must do it: how does this win to Storm combo?

[Vandalize]

Ok, it's a hard question but someone must do it: how does this win to Storm combo?

Perhaps fitting 4 Chalice of the Void + 4 Sphere of Resistance. Still, why someone should play this instead of 43 Lands (other than financial matters)?

[Lusian]

Why not go blue?
You could get stuff like Jace, Force, Clique and Walk the Aeons.
This could prove better vs combo, and you can cut emrakul too.

[evanmartyr]

Mox Diamond seems fairly solid in a deck with 25 lands. Maybe cut a few Zuran Orbs for a wee bit of acceleration? It would improve the likelihood of you dropping a turn 2 Rites of Flourishing or Crucible by quite a bit, and you can obviously recoup the "cost" of it quite easily.

Mishra's Factory is loads better than Treetop Village most of the time, and better than Nantuko Monastery like 99% of the time. I'd rather run those in the sideboard for your beatdown plan...but really, "non-damage" decks just mean combo, so you'd be better off with Sphere of Resistance, Trinisphere, or Chalice of the Void (you can slow-play through such effects but combo pretty much has to answer them to go off).

Horizon Canopy seems pretty reasonable.

Summer Bloom seems much worse than Explore: if you can dump a bunch of lands into play, it's unlikely to gain you much real benefit since the chance of having something relevant in hand is less. If you can't dump a bunch of lands into play, you don't have the mana to cast another relevant spell. Explore is much less explosive, but replacing itself is a massive benefit, and its value is much less dependent on your hand quality.

This deck idea is frickin cool, btw.

[Vacrix]

Considering what you got here.. wouldn't Entomb be way better than Enlightened Tutor? Entomb finds Loam, and it finds lands like Wasteland for Wastelock, Chasm for that lock, and Karakas, which you absolutely must play, its way too good against Reanimator/SneakShow. Also, with Entomb you won't need to play so many copies of Glacial Chasm, while Crop Rotation just seems way better in its place anyway. A lot of the Loam Pox and Lands lists at the most recent SCG open in DC were playing it.

Also, Entomb can find Raven's Crime; boss.

[lavafrogg]

If your not going to play black for entomb, ravens crime and such; please look up animal farm, eternal garden or turbo land, they were pretty established and thought out.

[evanmartyr]

The only things Enlightened Tutor does that Entomb does not seem a bit win more. Tutoring up a Crucible is comparable to Entombing a Loam. Tutoring up a Rite or Exploration is kind of contradictory acceleration.

So your best E-Tutor targets are Seal of Primordium (Entomb could get Ray of Revelation or Ancient Grudge) and Zuran Orb. Entomb can't replace E-Tutor's functionality as far as Zorb goes, but the added benefit of annihilating your opponents' hands with Raven's Crime seems like it would be a fair trade-off.

So you monkey with the manabase to make it Black-freindly (Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth at least as a one-of), throw in a Raven's Crime or two. Black also gives you some pretty saucy SB options (Discard, graveyard hate, creature removal, etc).

[ForlornEgoist]

This seems like it belongs in the "New and Developing," category. I hardly see how this is established by any means.

Could you please diccuss, as has been forementioned, why people should play this over Lands? I could understand if you built this mono-green version out of financial necessity, but frankly your game plan is much slower than Lands and much more prone to being damaged by the weaknesses both you and Lands possess.

A primary reasons Lands is annoying is because it has MD answers to creatures (Maze/Chasm) as well as a viable mana denial game (Waste/Port/Quarter) with EE taking care of anything else that might've survived.

Exploration seems much more viable a card to run than Summer Bloom as it can be ETutored if necessary, lasts longer than a single turn, and assures you can consistently abuse Loam/Crucible to their maximum.

4 Zuran Orb is overkill. You're plan isn't to cast it asap and try to gain obscene amounts of life nor do you ever want it in doubles. Runnin 3 ETutor means you can easily live off 2-3 (I believe Lands when using it tends to go with 1-2).

Presently you have an even worse combo MU than Lands because you lack decent hate. Chalice of the Void, Tangle Wire, Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, and Trinisphere are just a couple cards you could look into. Heck, even Leyline of Sanctity could be a possibility.

Forlorn Egoist