Yeah, way down yonder on the Chattahoochee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
But I learned how to swim and I learned who I was
A lot about living and a little 'bout love
- Alan Jackson, Chattahoochee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
But I learned how to swim and I learned who I was
A lot about living and a little 'bout love
- Alan Jackson, Chattahoochee
Florida Man
Approximate Total Cost:
I'm from Florida. I can make these jokes. @TheAmericanSpirit is a fellow Southerner and, I'm sure, will back me up.
Old Rutstein
Florida Man isn't a particularly powerful Magic card. It is, however, very good at generating incremental value which, over time, enables engines that actually are pretty powerful once they get going. This is Florida Man's secret: remain unassuming until WHAM!! sucker punch.
What Does This Deck Actually Do?
Since Old Rutstein mills, ramps, loots, and makes bugs, we're going to lean into resource exchange and recursion. These strategies dovetail nicely since you can easily churn cards through your board, graveyard, and hand, depending on your needs. For example, you can mill a big creature, create a 1/1 insect, then cast Victimize to bring it back with a friend. Need removal? Flashback Dread Return to bring back Eternal Witness to bring back that Putrefy. Nothing too fancy, just a good old fashioned Golgari Graveyard Grind deck. Please point your Bogs elsewhere.
This is my take on what a good precon would look like right out of the box. The price is a little under $50, probably a little under the expected value of a precon these days, but since this wouldn't need much upgrading it balances out.
Property
It's obvious, but these days it needs to be emphasized that a manabase's primary function is to make sure you can consistently cast your spells when you need them, so we're keeping things simple. We're only running a handful of utility lands, and since our budget is so low we can only run a smattering of duals. It's not bad, but it would be the first thing I would drop some extra cash into.
Mattress Cash
While Old Rutstein does a little bit of self-milling, a little more helps us get our recursive engines going. Some of these also generate more tokens so the deck can start exchanging resources. Nothing revolutionary, there are some obvious budget exclusions, though.
Grave Robbing
This is the real meat of the deck. Since everything revolves around the graveyard, using it as a second hand gives you so much value that these prices can't be beat. The deck is mostly full of creatures, so bringing those back is the primary focus, especially some of the bigger bombs we have.
Gators
Speaking of bombs, have you read Blight Titan? These are our finishers. While we can eke out incidental damage with our enabler dorks, this is where most of our tings are coming from. Pure and simple.
Critters
Florida Man poops out a lot of tokens, but sometimes he's going to get removed and we need more ways to make sure our token production is on pace. Sengir Autocrat is a personal favorite from the old days.
Beer Run
Gotta draw cards, Cotton.
Shotgun Blast
This part also suffers from budgetary constraints, but I tried to be as efficient as possible. These cards, like the manabase, have a very specific function and trying to get too cute with them will make you lose games.
That's all I have to say about that.
