I run a home brew that I have been working on for over two years now called Winter Maze that has gotten a bit of attention online. It's a toolbox deck that features a Winter Orb and Root Maze soft lock in conjunction with Trinisphere to cut off your opponent's resources while ramping into a toolbox of huge creatures that are cheated out via Natural Order and Green Sun's Zenith. Since I moved into a small town with nearly no Legacy environment I haven't been able to take it to a major tournament, however in my testing with my friends we've discovered that it smashes Death and Taxes and a number of top tier decks. Combo is probably it's biggest weakness but Trinisphere and Root Maze do help in that match up as does a nice anti combo sideboard which we are still fleshing out. It is unintentionally budget friendly. Here's the current list:
Search and Destroy:
4x
Green Sun's Zenith
4x
Natural Order
Toolbox / Beatz:
1x
Carnage Tyrant
1x
Deadbridge Goliath
1x
Dragonlord Atarka
1x
Gigantosaurus
1x
Hornet Queen
1x
Omnath, Locus of Mana
1x
Scavenging Ooze
2x
Steel Leaf Champion
1x
Thrashing Brontodon
1x
Worldspine Wurm
Disruption / Lock Down:
4x
Root Maze
2x
Trinisphere
3x
Winter Orb
Ramp:
4x
Arbor Elf
2x
Garruk Wildspeaker
4x
Elvish Spirit Guide
4x
Utopia Sprawl
4x
Wild Growth
Land:
1x
Dryad Arbor
13x
Forest
Sideboard (15)
2x
Cursed Totem
3x
Krosan Grip
3x
Mindbreak Trap
2x
Pithing Needle
4x
Surgical Extraction
1x
Xantid Swarm
One of the main strengths of the deck is that it is mono colored. Root Maze is a nutty tempo card against fetchlands. Combine it with Winter Orb and your opponent will give you the finger. Often you will get explosive turn one plays such as: Drop a Forest, pitch Elvish Spirit Guide casting Wild Growth, tap Growthed Forest, cast Arbor Elf and Root Maze, pass the turn. Your opponent will get a tapped land drop and pass the turn back. You then drop Natural Order for Worldspine Wurm and follow up with either Winter Orb or Trinisphere to lock them out.
Winter Orb is tight with land enchantments such as Wild Growth and Utopia Sprawl as the one land you untap each turn is enchanted. Combined with either Arbor Elf or Garruk and you will generate a huge amount of mana. Hard casting Worldspine Wurm happens frequently.
GSZ is so good in this deck! Early game it's Arbor Elf numbers 5,6, 7 and 8. Late game it's Worldspine Wurm, Hornet Queen, Carnage Tyrant etc...
With Natural Order you can crank out Worldsine Wurm turn two. I used to run
Progenitus here but I got sick of drawing him or having him in my hand as I can't cast him.
With the printing of Gigantosaurus, Thrashing Brontodon and Steel Leaf Champion the deck has evolved from good to very competitive. Anyway, give it a few play tests if you are interested and let me know what you think.
Winter Maze