Please hold while we load your cart...
Gearing up for Regionals, now less than a month away, I've been combing the web for new tech - and, of course, seeing what's winning elsewhere. Thanks to Brainburst for their cataloging of the early international Regionals decks, which, to my mild surprise, includes a heavy proportion of R/G"Fast Beats" decks.
I hadn't given the archetype much thought, but with the obviously good showing of R/G (as well as the new variants) it obviously requires consideration.
Let's start with the"traditional" R/G decks, which use a dash of mana acceleration to bring out heavy hitters like Call of the Herd, Flametongue Kavu, and Skizzik - backed up by a lot of burn. Beyond those three spells, there's a lot of variety. Some use Kavu Titan, Blurred Mongoose, Beast Attack, and Raging Kavu to fill out the creature base, but the premise never changes - fatties and burn.
Just for the heck of it, let me haul out my deck from States, which I thought was pretty darn good:
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Wild Mongrel
4 Call of the Herd
4 Raging Kavu
4 Thornscape Familiar
3 Skizzik
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Fire/Ice
4 Urza's Rage
3 Firebolt
2 Mossfire Valley
4 Karplusan Forest
2 Barbarian Ring
8 Forest
6 Mountain
Sideboard:
3 Price of Glory
3 Spellbane Centaur
2 Shivan Wurm
3 Hull Breach
2 Simoon
2 Thornscape Battlemage
The deck ran two powerful hasty creatures: Skizzik and Raging Kavu. The Raging Kavu has been missing from many international Regionals builds, replaced in favor of Mongrels and Kavu Titans. Raging Kavu is a hasty three power for three mana - but that one toughness makes it very vulnerable to instant burn, especially Fire/Ice. The deck would dominate the red zone, dealing damage early and then finishing things off with a massive creature rush or burning an opponent out. Against a control-oriented field (which States really wasn't, surprisingly), Urza's Rage, Barbarian Ring, and Keldon Necropolis usually tipped the scales in favor of the aggressive R/G deck.
Most decks are now running Birds of Paradise over Thornscape Familiar. I don't get it. True, you are trading a little bit of early mana acceleration, but from the mid to late game, it's seldom a dead card with its two power, which the Birds often are. Trust me, if you're going to run R/G Fast Beats of a similar variant, stick with the beetle.
The sideboard was pretty much straightforward. Price of Glory (not that great) and Spellbane Centaur (very great) against control, Shivan Wurm and Simoon for the mirror, Hull Breach for annoying artifacts and enchantments. And Thornscape Battlemage for annoying pro-red stuff, which was everywhere at States (yes, that's sarcasm).
What I find odd is the total lack of Torment cards in these R/G decks. It's as if Torment hasn't been shipped to these countries yet - or, more likely, people chose not to mess with a good thing and leave a successful formula alone. I do find it curious, though, about the lack of innovation I've seen at Regionals events overseas. Last year, a lot of innovative decks cropped up at these events. This year, it's all R/G and 'Tog bunched up at the top.
This takes us to Jay Schneider's Frog in a Blender. I've been playing around with the deck and come up with this build, currently:
4 Raging Goblin
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Quirion Sentinel
4 Firebolt
4 Sonic Seizure
4 Fiery Temper
3 Violent Eruption
4 Reckless Charge
4 Karplusan Forest
2 City of Brass
2 Barbarian Ring
8 Mountain
5 Forest
Sideboard:
4 Simplify
3 Mages' Contest
4 Flametongue Kavu
1 Keldon Necropolis
3 Engulfing Flames
Frog is fast. Blazing fast. As in"What's red and green and goes sixty miles an hour?" fast. It's really just a Sligh deck with green. Whereas Fast Beats is usually good for an optimal kill around turn 5 or 6, Frog can win on turn 4 at the earliest.
I've made some tweaks to the build. Since Psychatog is, if not dead, badly wounded, Yavimaya Barbarians have been removed from the build in favor of the mana-producing Quirion Sentinel. A turn 2 Quirion Sentinel followed by a Reckless Charge for five isn't too shabby.
Yes, Raging Goblin is horrible. But it's really the only good one-drop in the environment for R. Maybe Mogg Sentry is worth testing. Why did they reprint Jackal Pup in black?
Also, many criticize the lack of synergy between Grim Lavamancer and Barbarian Ring. It's been my experience that usually, you'll get to use one or the other; either the Lavamancer will deal six to eight damage by himself, or it gets burned early and helps to fuel to Barbarian Ring.
I've also included more sideboard copies of Engulfing Flames for those annoying regenerators - primarily Lynxes, but it's also capable of taking out Spiritmongers (although if your opponent has a Spiritmonger on the table against R/G, it's usually time to enter the scoop phase), and using Simplify over Elvish Lyrist due to the fragility of the Lyrist.
Frog has two major glass jaws, though - one being it's rather low mana/spell ratio. Even with all the cheap casting cost spells, you have a tendency to suffer through a lot of mana screw- that's why there's two copies of City of Brass for those times you have a handful of green spells to go with two Barbarian Rings. Unlike Fast Beats, Frog has no mana accelerators - but it's quite happy sitting at two or three mana, whereas Fast Beats prefers to get up to five or six.
The other problem is that there's only two ways in the deck to abuse madness spells... And only one, Wild Mongrel, is non-random. Usually if you can drop a Mongrel and keep it alive, you win. I've toyed with Minotaur Explorer and Hell-Bent Raider, but they don't seem to fit the bill. The random discard will do you in more often than not.
So as much as I liked Frog initially, I've kind of soured on it.
However, a melding of the two R/G decks may yield a stronger deck than the other two. Sometimes, crossbreeding results in a stronger progeny that combines the best traits of both parents. That's what I'm hoping is the case here.
R/G"Hybrid"
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Thornscape Familiar
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Call of the Herd
3 Skizzik
3 Firebolt
3 Fire/Ice
4 Fiery Temper
2 Narcissism
3 Violent Eruption
4 Karplusan Forest
2 Mossfire Valley
2 Barbarian Ring
1 Keldon Necropolis
8 Forest
6 Mountain
Sideboard:
4 Spellbane Centaur
3 Yavimaya Barbarian
3 Hull Breach
3 Urza's Rage
2 Engulfing Flames
Yeah, it looks a lot different (again, sarcasm). It's not Frog, and it's not Fast Beats - although it looks a lot closer to the latter than the former. But it does manage to incorporate elements of both into a familiar format.
Temper, temper, no need to get angry. Okay, Fiery Temper is no Rage. But combined with a Mongrel, it enters the bah-roken zone. Even without that, it's essentially the same casting cost as a Rage. Is a cheaper madness cost better vs. noncounterability? Okay, I'm not 100% on this one, but I think it's worth trying. Also, is Violent Eruption, with a triple red non-madness casting cost, too expensive for a deck that doesn't run much in the way of double red spells? I think it's too good not to run.
The big question here is whether or not Narcissism is too slow. The deck doesn't have a lot of three-drops, and it fits the mana curve fairly nicely. It does provide another source of non-random discard (which Sonic Seizure does not provide) - and man alive, does it make stuff big. Now, toss a Fiery Temper or Violent Eruption to it - and throw momma from the train, it's game over in a hurry!
I'm not sold on whether or not this hybrid of the two R/G decks is ideal... But it shows some promise. Somewhere between these two decks may exist an ideal that is truly abusive. If anyone out there has any better ideas, heck, I'm flexible.
Dave Meddish
bddave@yahoo.com
