Could a deck that was once a force to be reckoned be any good once its traditional power cards had been stripped?

That was the question I was asking myself when I built a post-7^th edition Wildfire deck for our local Type 2 event a few Fridays back. Kai Budde, of course, made the deck famous by winning the World Championship with this powerful and fast deck.

However, a great deal of the power of the deck was now gone. No longer would City of Traitors and Covetous Dragon be allowed to come together to drop out the beastie on turn 3. No more would Darwin Kastle ride down mountains, carrying avalanches behind him. No more Grim Monolith, dammit!

What did Type 2 have to offer, though? Some pretty good things, to be sure. Some of the classic cards were still in — namely, Stone Rain, Pillage, and of course Wildfire. However, without Ghitu Encampment and Avalanche Riders it seems hard to be able to go mono-red. There has been much discussion (at least locally) about what color Land Destruction decks should use. Most people have been going for Black so they can go for Terminate, Rain of Tears, and Despoil.

However, I went with Green. Initially, it was for Creeping Mold to give the deck a way to rid of enchantments (B/R's weakness)... But the more I looked at green, the more I liked the synergy it had with Wildfire.

Why?

Fat.

Green has lots of things that live through Wildfire. The old way was to play a Dragon, then Wildfire. Why not keep the old plan alive? What good things have at least a five toughness in red and green? Hmmm... BLASTODERM, anyone? (Okay, like we didn't all see that coming anyway.) What else? Jade Leech and Scoria Cat round things out nicely. We can also go with the ever-present Chimeric Idol, because though it doesn't have a five toughness it lives through the Wildfire and has excellent synergy with the Cat.

Since nothing can replace the sheer brokenness of the first Wildfire deck in terms of mana acceleration, I wanted to be at least faster than a Wildfire on turn 6, so I had two obvious routes to go: Artifact acceleration or mana creature acceleration. Since Elves and Birds do not live through burn but Fire Diamond does, I chose the Diamonds.

My initial deck was pretty basic, but it contained all the elements for success:

4x River Boa*
4x Chimeric Idol
4x Blastoderm
4x Scoria Cat
2x Copperleaf Angel **
- 18 -

4x Stone Rain
4x Wildfire
4x Seal of Fire
2x Earthquake
2x Pillage

- 16 -

3x Fire Diamond
3x Moss Diamond
4x Karplusan Forest
9x Mountain
9x Forest
- 26 -

4x Boil
4x Urza's Rage
4x Hull Breach
3x Hurricane

Nothing too fancy or"techy" - just some land, some dudes, and a damn good spell at resetting the board on your terms. So did she fare? Victory over about twenty people. Yeah for me. (Yes, we know about the Boa — check the footnote — The Ferrett)

To me, the star of the whole deck is the sideboard card of Hurricane. Why is Hurricane so good? Because 90% of those damn Voice of All's that come out against you are being pro-Red. What does Hurricane think of pro-Red? French it.

It is also"some good" against Skies deck, which have tons of weenie losers, and it doesn't affect my ground troops at all.

I faced a fair amount of blue decks, mostly B/U, and I found them to be a fairly easy match-up. They could come in early with some Merfolk or Zombies, but once I hit four to six mana I was dropping Derm after Wildfire and they just couldn't keep up with the smashing I put on. In one game I had, I was Bribed for Scoria Cat when my opponent tapped out to try and throw down a blocker against my growing forces. I untapped, upkeeped, drew, Earthquaked for four, Sealed the Bribed Cat, and served with The Kitty and Blasty for eleven more. Damn.

I did have to face a"real" land destruction deck during the day also. It was B/R, and piloted by an excellent player. To boil the games down to their barest essentials, I will imitate one of the many tournament reports often seen on the net:

Game 1: I win the die roll and so get to three mana first. I top deck a ton of Land-D and some Blastoderms and win.

Game 2: He goes first, so gets to three mana first and gets a ton of Land-D, plays a Trench Wurm, and kills me.

Game 3: See game 1.

In many ways the Wildfire deck was an excellent metagame choice, even without me knowing it. Regionals had little to no Land-D in it, so it was not something that people expected. They brought their mana-intensive decks and I smacked 'em around for a night. Yeah for me.

So what now for the Wildfire deck? I have played around with it and tried several versions; the most important change was to remove River Boa's in place of Jade Leech, meaning I have twelve large creatures that all live through Wildfire. I have also tried adding in Tangle Wire, but I have found that it hurts me so much in the early game because I need to be playing Diamonds and Idols that it is not worth it. Rishadan Port? If I had 'em...

All of these things have proven to not be that good. Perhaps it is just a metagame shift. Since the initial playing of the deck, I have seen tons of Land-D. Wildfire has a moderate amount of Land-D and so cannot stand up to a deck with sixteen-plus Stone Rains. Apparently, everyone locally cued into my deck’s success with the"we can do better than that" attitude... And they sure have. B/R Land-D decks run free across the landscape while mono-red Thundercats-style decks are popping their heads up more and more.

Wildfire had its glorious time in the sun for me and now I think it is time to store it away. It will not lay forgotten though. It will have to wait for a time when weenie decks once again roam free and tons of mana can be generated on turns 2-4. Once that prophecy has been realized - Wildfire will come back to Anchorage.

 

Thanks for reading,

David P.

* - Yes, as was pointed out to me during the tournament, River Boas are NOT in 7^th.... Oops. Chalk that one up to stupidity. So after I had to take those out, I was up to thirty mana sources.

** - Copperleaf is mad Knappster tech. At five mana, you cast the Angel. At six, you Wildfire and in response you sac your lands (which were going away anyway) to the Angel. Now you have a HUGE flying source of colorless damage.