Hello and welcome to Thursday, the coolest day of the week after Monday and Friday. Why do I like Thursday? Because my column is published, of course. This week, I have my regular article and my daily here. Of course, I'm writing this daily article about a month before you read it, so I have absolutely no idea what the weekly column article is about. The last time I had a daily and a weekly together, I connected them. This time, however, no such luck.

As you may know, I've been taking a random creature type and then forcing myself to create a deck around said type. On Monday, I pulled everybody's favorite creature type – the carriage! On Tuesday, it was the Volvers' turn. On Wednesday, nomads were in the spotlight. Who will get picked on today?

Today's article is sponsored by the animal: crocodile.

Afterwhile, Crocodile Featured by Abe Sargent on 2006-08-27 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/12606.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 4 Dross Crocodile 4 Emperor Crocodile 4 Grayscaled Gharial 4 Marsh Crocodile 4 Sandbar Crocodile 4 Skeletal Crocodile Enchantments 4 Veiled Crocodile	Instants 4 Predator's Strike Sorceries 4 Pack Hunt Basic Lands 6 Forest 4 Island 6 Swamp Lands 4 Salt Marsh 4 Yavimaya Coast	Stats: Average mana: 2.07 Average creature mana cost: 3.67 Average creature power: 4.33 Average creature toughness: 2.83 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 26.67% Lands: 13.33% Creatures: 40.00% Instants: 6.67% Sorceries: 6.67% Enchantments: 6.67%
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This deck is your simple crocodile deck. I included crocs in Green, Blue and Black. As a result, I had to really stretch the manabase, and it might need some work.

I'll talk about the two non-crocodile cards first. When I build a fun theme deck like this, I want everything to fit. Even my two non-basic lands are places where crocs can hide out. Maybe there are crocs slithering along the Yavimaya Coast? I think everything should be in flavor.

Pack Hunt represents crocs when they are hunting as a group. In this deck, every croc is included in a full set, so you can always use Pack Hunt to get three other crocs. I love that not only does this card fit the theme of the deck from a flavor standpoint, but also what it does fits the deck mechanically. Play a croc, and more will follow.

The other non-croc is Predator's Strike. Crocs are predators, and they do strike in one blinding flash. Again, this worked for me because it fit the flavor of crocs.

The Green croc is the basic Emperor Crocodile. He is the big mama, but not really (as we'll see later). You need other creatures for the Emperor Crocodile to truly function, and Pack Hunt can help here. We also have some crocs that are cheaper than the Emperor so you hopefully won't be staring at him as a four-drop and wondering why you can't play him.

Dross Crocodile and Skeletal Crocodile are very similar. That's because they are both 5/1 and Black for four mana. These are fragile crocs and you have to treat them as such. Depending on what the board situation looks like, you'll either want to wantonly attack and force trades or hold them back for a more appropriate time, like a Predator's Strike that will turn these into an 8/4 trampler, like Silvos.

The Grayscaled Gharial is a cheap 1/1 croc for one mana and it can get through with its Islandwalk. I love this little croc, because he's so cute compared to the other crocs.

Veiled Crocodile is not a croc, but an enchantment. Don't worry about that though, because he can croc it up real easy.

The “I'm Bigger Than the Emperor Croc” croc is the Sandbar Crocodile. This guy is a 6/5, topping out on all crocs. The only problem is he forgot to bring a watch, so he'll pop out for a bit caught in the time stream every other round. Phasing means you only get you 6/5 beater half of the time. Still, it beats a croc in the eye.

I really decided to stick to them and refused to put in Rootwater Alligator. I didn't pick gators, I picked crocs. I wasn't sure if the gators are taboo in croc land or not, but I figured to err on the side of croc purity in the deck. No gators here!

Again, I can't stress enough how important a theme is to me. I'd rather leave out gators and good card if there are more flavorful options. Obviously, in this deck, I'd rather have removal that could take out flyers, but instead, I'm running the flavorful cards of Pack Hunt and Predator's Strike. Being in theme, where possible, is worth playing a worse deck, because the theme is the important thing to me.

That concludes another happy deck based around a randomly selected creature type. On Monday we had Carriages, Tuesday brought Volver, and yesterday we had Nomads. What will tomorrow bring?

Until later,

Abe Sargent