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Kich867
04-21-2011, 03:22 AM
After looking at the NPH spoilers, I've been kinda obsessed with the Beast Within card. The name is just an on-the-spot thing mashing the two obvious cards of the deck together. Plus I think Beast Hole sounds incredibly funny, perhaps even an allusion to the butt pounding of land destruction the deck aims to accomplish.


Beast Within
2G: Instant: Destroy target permanent, give it's controller a 3/3 beast token.

It's not as good as other 3 mana land kills, but it is instant and it's super flexible in that it can just kill anything. I'd rather have flexible than narrow. The 3/3 shouldn't ever be an issue, obviously it could be in the event I never draw a single creature kill or terravore, but yeah.

There's a few other cards I really liked from New Phyrexia that I felt would go well with the deck, but I don't recall all of them at the moment. I'll update the list tomorrow afternoon if necessary.

I don't know if this would fall under "The Rock" category as it is a black/green deck, but I feel the heavy emphasis on land destruction and capitalizing on that as best I can seems like a different concept from what they're achieving. This would very much be a mana denial deck (but without stifles etc. Fetch lands on their side is actually beneficial as it removes 2 potential land pulls and fills their graveyard with land).

So the idea would basically be, between Wasteland / Sinkhole / Beast Within that's a lot of land destruction. Step two would be try to kill anything they play. Step three would be drop a Terravore and beat them to death with it. It seems like a simple enough concept, no? I don't own many of these cards so it's purely theoretical at the moment, but I could certainly proxy it and give it a whirl.

Here's the decklist I kind of rummaged together tonight:

//Spells: 28

4 Beast Within
4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Syphon Life
4 Go for the throat
2 Life From the Loam
2 Diabolic Edict
4 Duress

//Creatures: 8

4 Terravore
4 Dark Confidant

//Land: 24

4 Wasteland
2 Bayou
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Marsh Flats
5 Swamp
5 Forest

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Not much has gone into thinking about sideboard, but probably some of the green all-land kills, tribal hate, graveyard hate (which would be awkward but, I'll get to how that would work in a bit), and now that I think about it, entomb might not be a bad idea to couple with the graveyard hate. So, let's say the sideboard looks something like this:

Sideboard:
3 Tsunami
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Entomb
4 Engineered Plague

The reason for entomb would be for the alternate win condition. In the event I need to use my own graveyard hate against them, I would also board in Entomb to fill up my own graveyard with Syphon Life / Life from the loam. This way I can essentially tutor the cards that would operate better than Terravore against an opponent with no lands in his graveyard.

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I would lean more towards basic land, as I feel wasteland is rather powerful in legacy and would rather my own lands aren't destroyed by it in turn. The bayou's perform a role of acting as the median between those really awful moments where I have to have a dual land on hand. It's actually often surprising at how little one needs dual lands in a 2 color deck so long as you run the proper fetches. In my UG Madness deck I run 2 UG duals and have been land screwed a grand total of 1 time where I literally drew every forest in my deck without hitting any other land. That's it. So I feel confident in running few duals and much prefer not having to worry about wasteland.

So the deck would basically work to try and destroy as much land as humanly possible. The obvious ones are Sinkhole, Beast Within, and Wasteland. Hymn to Tourach can also hit land. I'm running Wasteland as more of a "spell" in the deck at 24 land but I think I'd rather keep the land count high.

I'd run many fetches so that my graveyard is full of land for Terravore. Bob just helps speed things along. All the creature kill kills creatures and stuff.

On to the little nuances: in the event Terravore gets killed and then extirpated, my alternative is Syphon Life / Life from the Loam. Syphon Life sits happily in the graveyard while I refill my hand with land > discard that land to constantly retrace Syphon Life until they're dead. Life from the Loam also lets me recycle wastelands to have a near-infinite land blowing-up engine.

In the event they're running graveyard hate towards me, I have Maelstrom Pulse and Beast Within to kill their artifacts off.

I think duress has a place in the deck, I just don't really know where yet, maybe someone can help me with that. It'd be nice to have a turn one play, it'd be super ideal if they Force of Will'd duress so that on their turn with 5 cards in hand, one to three of which being land, Hymn has a much higher chance of hitting land / Sinkhole would do some damage. *Edit* HERP DERP Duress might have a pretty sick spot in the deck when the list is only 56 cards *facepalm* -- I'm inclined not to run Thoughtseize due to the volume of fetch lands and Bob. I'd rather not kill myself for the opponent.

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Alternatives:

I can see splashing white for KOTR and Swords, but Terravore / Syphon Life seemed sufficient enough of a win condition. But I acknowledged while building it that KOTR would be pretty absurd for the deck and Swords is just awesome inherently.

eq.firemind
04-21-2011, 03:31 AM
Alternatives:

I can see splashing white for KOTR and Swords, but Terravore / Syphon Life seemed sufficient enough of a win condition. But I acknowledged while building it that KOTR would be pretty absurd for the deck and Swords is just awesome inherently.
Relic of Progenitus is the reason why KotR is much better than Terravore. Oh, and you'll be able to play Vindicate which happens to be just plain better Beast Within.

P-E
04-21-2011, 06:28 AM
what about living plane + darkblast ? haha

Kich867
04-21-2011, 01:23 PM
Vindicate is not instant, would force me to splash white and alter the landbase (and essentially force myself to be prone to wastelands and non basic land hate), does the same thing, and the 3/3 is pretty negligible. Also, KOTR doesn't get nearly as large as Terravore does for the same cost and does not trample.

I absolutely understand that though, I would prefer to maintain the deck to be green/black and not splash anything else.

TheRedBaron
04-21-2011, 06:16 PM
I Think that I could build it More Like "Trisonmy 21". I also think that G And Red should be the splash Color IMO. I'm not saying to splash W if you don't wish to, but W and/or R does have good options as well. Red offers Raze.

Here is one of my approaches.


Creatures
1 Terravore
3 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Tarmagoyf

Artifacts
3 Life from the Loam
3 Ęther Vial
3 Mox Diamond

Sorcery
3 Raze
4 Vindicate
4 Sinkhole
2 Armageddon

Instant
4 Beast Within
3 Swords to Plowhares

Land
4 Wasteland
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Bayou
2 Taiga
2 Scrubland
1 Plateau
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats


...or some Hybrid NO deck


Creatures
2 Progenitus
4 Birds of Paradise

Sorcery
3 Natural Order
3 Life From The Loam
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
4 Raze

Instants
4 Beast Within
4 Swords to Plowshares

Artifacts
4 Mox Diamond

Land
3 Dryad Arbor
3 Taiga
2 Scrubland
3 Bayou
4 Wasteland
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest
1 Swamp

TheInfamousBearAssassin
04-21-2011, 06:28 PM
You run 8 creatures, 4 of whom die to a 3/3 in combat, and 8 creature removal spells, 2 of which can't kill the 3/3 reliably and the others of which would mean you spent 5-6 total mana and two cards to remove a permanent, comparing pretty unfavorably to Desert Twister.

Why then should the 3/3 not "ever be an issue"?

evanmartyr
04-21-2011, 06:50 PM
You run 8 creatures, 4 of whom die to a 3/3 in combat, and 8 creature removal spells, 2 of which can't kill the 3/3 reliably and the others of which would mean you spent 5-6 total mana and two cards to remove a permanent, comparing pretty unfavorably to Desert Twister.

Why then should the 3/3 not "ever be an issue"?

Well, it's an issue, but your crusade against this poor card is beginning to become unseemly :( It compares favorably to Desert Twister in that it can, you know...be cast. At all.

Off the top of my head though, I'm wondering why OP got all hard about an "LD" deck that runs almost no LD, and some of the LD it does run would be better spent hitting scary things like Planeswalkers and Tombstalkers and such.

I mean, here's my take on the card. It's better than IBA insists it is, and it's worse than you think it is. The only (ONLY) advantage it has over normal green removal is that it hits Planeswalkers, and the only advantage it has over all the other removal that hits Planeswalkers is that it's an instant. I'm not convinced either of these things make it playable as anything other than a Cunning Wish target.

Kich867
04-21-2011, 08:40 PM
Admittedly I overstepped reality a bit and over-exaggerated some statements. Thanks for all of the very useful input, splashing white seems like the more apt approach (Raze feels like it'd be better if you aren't running armageddon. I'm still a little used to the Standard deck construction ideology where they aren't nearly as focused as the decks in Legacy are).

So perhaps something of a compromise to the B/G/w/r decklist:

//Creatures:

2 Terravore
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Dark Confidant

//Sorcery:

4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
4 Armageddon
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Life from the loam

//Instant:

4 Beast Within
4 Swords to Plowshares

//Land:
4 Wasteland
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Marsh Flats
4 Bayou
4 Scrubland
1 Savannah
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Swamp

Something perhaps along those lines?

Also, what is the opinion on Crucible of Worlds in a deck like this? To me it seems like a turn 3 COW, Turn 4 Armageddon, would let me rapidly recover from the situation compared to my opponent.

LostButSeeking
04-21-2011, 09:48 PM
Also, what is the opinion on Crucible of Worlds in a deck like this? To me it seems like a turn 3 COW, Turn 4 Armageddon, would let me rapidly recover from the situation compared to my opponent.

This is a really old trick, and outside of a handful of decks (such as stax) it's really not a great idea. This is for two reasons. The first, is half the legacy decks are just going to counter one of those two pieces. You spent two cards and seven mana doing nothing, while dreadstill/landstill/countertop got down its lock pieces. The second is that the OTHER half of legacy (the one that let you resolve and keep your cruicible + armaggedon) dropped a knight of the reliquary on their third turn, and as you played a cruicible of worlds instead of destroying it, they're bashing your skull in for 10 a turn while you scramble to get enough mana to vindicate it.

Still, there seems like there should be enough land destruction now . . . maybe a pox shell?

TheInfamousBearAssassin
04-22-2011, 03:10 AM
Admittedly I overstepped reality a bit and over-exaggerated some statements. Thanks for all of the very useful input, splashing white seems like the more apt approach (Raze feels like it'd be better if you aren't running armageddon. I'm still a little used to the Standard deck construction ideology where they aren't nearly as focused as the decks in Legacy are).

So perhaps something of a compromise to the B/G/w/r decklist:

//Creatures:

2 Terravore
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Dark Confidant

//Sorcery:

4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
4 Armageddon
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Life from the loam

//Instant:

4 Beast Within
4 Swords to Plowshares

//Land:
4 Wasteland
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Marsh Flats
4 Bayou
4 Scrubland
1 Savannah
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Swamp

Something perhaps along those lines?

Also, what is the opinion on Crucible of Worlds in a deck like this? To me it seems like a turn 3 COW, Turn 4 Armageddon, would let me rapidly recover from the situation compared to my opponent.

You need to rearrange the manabase to have Horizon Canopies and a Karakas.

Also needs first turn discard, and since you already run Vindicate and only 6 creatures that are better than a 3/3, just cut the Beast Within for Tarmogoyfs...

And at that point the deck is just Junk. But why shouldn't it be? What does this list bring that Junk doesn't already? Who needs 8 answers to Moat?

klaus
04-22-2011, 03:33 AM
If you up the creature count slightly the following play would become more likely:
opponent: stp your guy
you: in response beast my guy