Maximum C's Casual Brews #3 - Candelabra!

[MaximumC]

This deck was inspired by the fact that Wizards finally went and made Ley Druid obsolete with Voyaging Satyr. This innocuous little goat managed to knock Ley Druid off a perch it had occupied since Alpha, as being the go-to way to untap lands. Yes, yes, Krosan Restorer had kind of already done this, but at least that card was at parity with Druid when you didn't have threshhold. Except for the extra point of toughness. Look, the point is, once they printed Satyr, Ley Druid was finally doomed to only see play in cubes that specialize in bad cards. Which makes me sad.

Outta the way, grandpa! Power creep comin' through!

On the bright side, having a 2-drop that untaps lands means I could also find a good next step in the curve for a deck focusing on Magus of the Candelabra, which has been on my radar since forever. Both Magus and Neo Ley Druid are very nutty with lands that tap for more than one mana. So, I made the goat date the guy with no shirt, and then looked to see what I would do with that.

So, first off, what colors are we going to put in here? Green, obviously, but I think you need to pair it with red. Why? Because if you're spending the first few turns resolving cards that just increase your mana, you're going to need a one-sided board wipe to get you back into the game. White is bad for this because Wrath kills your dorks, too. Red offers X-casting cost cards that scale with mana, like Street Spasm, and an excellent way to keep the fun going once you do reach StupidMana - Dragon Mage.

Okay, so what kind of mana are we gonna pair with this? Well, the Ravnica Bouncelands are no-brainers, since they tap for more than one mana on their own. However, you can't got nuts with them because you don't want them to ruin your curve of Magus->Satyr. So, I think just the 4 [cards]Gruul Turf[/card]s would be fine. The original Karoos don't give you enough upside to go into them. Other than that, I think another four Karspluan Forests work well, since they come into play untapped. On top of that, Wild Growth seems like an excellent choice, and since we're aiming for really big mana, maybe a few Overgrowths as well.

Mana Flare effects are good, too. They're downright stupid with an active Magus. In the first iteration of this deck, I really tried to get Zhur-Taa Ancient to do work. I mean, he's a win condition AND a mana flare! It turns out, though, that giving your opponent All The Mana first is just really, really bad, and I ended up scaling this guy back in favor of Dictate of Karametra. If Ancient had trample, I'd change my mind, but as it is, I was just never happy giving the opponent a turn to barf out their hand full of chump blockers or combo off before my win condition ever got to attack.

He studied Bolas' texts carefully and then did exactly the opposite of what they instructed.

Finally, we need more win conditions. Like I said earlier, Dragon Mage seems like almost the best thing you can do if you're pulling busted amounts of mana out of your butt. Red and Green have us covered in droves, here. Keeping up with the theme of excellent cards thats scale as you gain mana but get broken when you're on infinity mana, Clan Defiance fits in here really nicely. Flameblast Dragon and Hellkite Charger also seem like they win pretty fast if you land em. Finally, we probably need at least SOME low-curve creature to avoid getting stomped if we can't draw a Dragon. Either Lightning Berserker or Stonewright fit the bill at the bottom of the curve; the former is better late game, but only as a surprise, and the latter works nicely with spare Magi or goatboys. Mid-range, we have Onmath, Locus of Mana who does everything you want to do. I opt to run a singleton Berseker just for surprise factor, and otherwise use the more beefy Locus over Stonewright.

The final thing I think I'll stick in here is some Nature's Claims. Why? Because I expect this deck to eventually go over the top of smaller aggro decks, but be very vulnerable to combo decks that work faster than this one can kill. At least a few ways of killing artifacts and enchantments seems like a very important consideration.

Creatures (17)

1 Lightning Berseker
4 Magus of the Candelabra
4 Voyaging Satyr
2 Omnath, Locus of Mana
4 Dragon Mage
1 Hellkite Charger
1 Flameblast Dragon


Blowing Stuff Up (9)

2 Nature's Claim
3 Street Spasm
4 Clan Defiance


Stop - Mana Time (10)

4 Wild Growth
2 Overgrowth
4 Dictate of Karametra


Lands (24)

4 Gruul Turf
4 Karspluan Forest
6 Forest
6 Mountain


More so than even the silly combo decks I've posted before this deck really is an all-or-nothing proposition. It spends 3-4 turns ramping mana, then as long as it can deal with whatever the opponent has done productively in the meantime, it tends to overwhelm the board. It loses hard and fast against decks that check out fatties (such as another casual deck focusing on [cards]Lure of Prey[/card] and Dramatic Entrance) but it does just fine against most mid-range decks. The problem is, it has no way of smoothing out its card draw, so if it can't find an equalizer or win condition, it just goes bust. This one needs some tinkering!

[Sidneyious]

I remember seeing a deck that sounds like this at the modern forum on mtgs. Basically a modern "high tide deck".

Problem is anyone with a ghost quarters ruins the day.

I forgot about MotCandle, I can have fun with that.

The deck list was something like this, I can't find the original topic.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-high-tide-3/

[MaximumC]

I remember seeing a deck that sounds like this at the modern forum on mtgs. Basically a modern "high tide deck".

Problem is anyone with a ghost quarters ruins the day.

I forgot about MotCandle, I can have fun with that.

The deck list was something like this, I can't find the original topic.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-high-tide-3/

Ah, you're thinking of a twiddle deck that was on the mothership. It relied on going off by casting Peer Through Depths, Ideas Unbound, and similar Arcane while having a Psychic Puppetry that you would splice onto each draw spell. You set it up by dumping a ton of Wild Growth effects on a single land. The deck you linked sounds like an evolution of that.

That's totally a good deck, and probably more consistent, but this was more of a Red/Green version of that. And, since it doesn't rely on loading up a single land to the degree that the Puppetry combo deck does, I'd like to think its a LITTLE more resilient to hate.

Nevertheless, it's certainly casual!

EDIT: Here we go, this is more like what I remember:

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ug-arcane-combo-deck/

[Sidneyious]

I really want to make use of MotCandle.

I think I can do something with many of the ideas on n here.

Fun stuff

[rufus]

You could try running a mono-green deck with all Snow-Covered Forest as the mana base and use Extraplanar Lens as a one-sided mana flare. Caged Sun will also work as a 1-sided mana flare of sorts. Gauntlet of Power restricts its effect to basic lands which can make for 1-sided effects.

Of course if you're running forest-only stuff, you can use Arbor Elf and basic land could abuse Early Harvest.

[rufus]

So you have some options in mono-green.

Untap creatures:

Arbor Elf
Magus of the Candelabra
Voyaging Satyr


Non-creature untappers

Early Harvest
Woodland Guidance
Nissa, Worldwaker
Rude Awakening


Semi one-sided mana flares:

Extraplanar Lens
Dictate of Karametra
Vernal Bloom
Caged Sun


Haste Effects

Lightning Greaves
Thousand Year Elixir


Payoff cards?

Emrakul
Genesis Wave
Helix Pinnacle