Mina and Denn, Wildborn - Aggressive & Anti-Control

Ruiner · Post by **Ruiner** » 3 years ago

Mina and Denn, Wildborn - Aggressive & Anti-Control

Mina and Denn, Wildborn

Approximate Total Cost:

Deck Comments & Explanations

If you enjoy an aggressive playstyle, ramping out and playing multiple lands a turn this deck could totally be the deck for you. This deck will often win through flooding the board with various tokens due to land based ETB/land dying triggers, or just beating down with some of the larger finisher creatures augmented by Kessig Wolf Run, Xenagos, God of Revels, or Cavalier of Flame, etc.,.

This deck tends to want to take advantage of denying others of resources while ramping itself. With cards like Crucible of Worlds and Splendid Reclamation you can feel free to destroy your own lands knowing well you will be able to (hopefully) recover them later.

Occasionally you can pull off a semi-lock with multiple land drops per turn effects, Crucible of Worlds type effects, and Strip Mine effects. This isn't the general goal of the deck but it is an option you have and I have utilized it when approaching the endgame to attempt to cripple the one remaining opponent. I don't tend to do this earlier in the game as a rule because without any way to actually finish off your opponent you are kind of holding yourself back and simultaneously not really advancing any sort of threatening state and keeping just one other person from playing. Keeping a big mana control player a few lands down is not a bad option of course.

If you tend to see a lot of control decks, this deck can give them a bit of a fit. Decks that prefer to play at instant speed or build up massive land bases do not tend to enjoy some of what this deck does. Keeping these decks from getting the critical mana for a huge Exsanguinate/Torment of Hailfire style finisher, or Cyclonic Rift type of board reset is fairly crucial. Decks that usually use most of their mana every turn just playing out their own threats aren't generally as affected by the resource denial aspect. You don't want to just use the land wipe/sacrifice cards as soon as possible, you have to make sure you will still have a board state.

This deck may not be for you if . . .

Clearly, this deck is not suitable for every meta. While there are no true mass land wipe cards, this deck is not averse to destroying some amount of lands throughout the course of a game. In my experience I believe it isn't too oppressive on this angle but if your playgroup doesn't like having ramp kept in check then this probably will not go down well (I say the deck keeps ramp in check but it obviously ramps fairly well itself). This deck could be modified by removing any number of items under the "Resource Denial" section to adjust for playgroups averse to this sort of thing but I rarely get complaints myself.

Once this deck gets going, you can end up in an archenemy sort of situation depending on the decks you are facing. Slower controlling decks are going to focus on you as much as they can. Other aggressive decks with lower mana curves don't generally care so much as you aren't usually wiping lands down to nothing, just a few at a time here and there, and they don't tend to care so much about cards like Price of Glory and Stoneshaker Shaman. If you can't embrace that situation every so often, you probably would want to at least dial back on the resource denial aspect but it would fundamentally change the deck in some ways.

Alternative Commanders

Radha, Heart of Keld could easily be swapped in from the 99 to be the commander of this deck. It would change your options up slightly as Mina and Denn, Wildborn give you some options for really ramping out mana for huge turns that Radha can't, such as returning a Gaea's Cradle to your hand with their activated ability, just to replay and use it again can give you a ton of mana. You would also be losing out on Horn of Greed and other landfall synergies a bit. I'd probably remove Temple of Abandon from the deck if trying this out, as Mina & Denn have the option of repeatedly playing it to scry and dig, which is the primary reason for including it in my list. Radha will certainly swing for more damage on her own though if you would prefer a more aggressive commander to swing with. I've never tried this switch myself though and don't really really feel like trying it.

Omnath, Locus of Rage could also certainly be swapped in from the 99 to be the commander of this deck. You'd be trading the guaranteed access to replaying land synergies and additional land drop synergies with just constant access to Omnath, which may not be an awful trade. I haven't tested it myself and don't really have any plans to try it at this time.

Additional Notes

In the above decklist two cards, Bend or Break and Geode Rager, are untested. These are very recent additions to the list that I have not been able to try out since adding them. In theory I believe they will perform fairly well.

Post by **tstorm823** » 3 years ago

Hey! I played kind of this deck! Sort of. I mean, I played it pretty all in on the land destruction, with a bunch of mana doublers so that I could bounce most of my lands before destroying everything and then immediately rebuilding. And oh boy, it worked, but I'll try and not recommend going that route cause it makes people not want to play against it.

Things that were genuinely great outside of specifically mana doublers and mass land destruction:

Creeping Renaissance: in a ramp deck, the big mana cost can be brushed off. This was double recursion for me in games that became long slogs, and mass land recursion when I had a graveyard full.

A lot of lands and land drawing cards: I played with 40-45 lands in my Min and Denn deck, and loved every one of them. I quickly grew to prioritize cards like Journey of Discovery over something like Wood Elves because of how frequently a 1 land ramp spell feels just worse than drawing a land when you have Exploration in the command zone.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: the bouncing trick with Gaea's Cradle works with Nykthos as well. It was not uncommon for me to stumble into 8-10 devotion to green without really trying and just pump out a massive turn on the back of Nykthos.

Non-suggestion comment: Cavalier of Flame didn't exist when I played this deck, so that's an exciting tool to gain access to. My number 1 comment looking at your list was that an anti-control deck should be hastier, but then I saw Cavalier and was like "perfection."

Ruiner · Post by **Ruiner** » 3 years ago

Yeah, my initial idea when I made this deck a while ago was to make a "fair" land destruction/resource denial deck that wouldn't be too oppressive so it is heavy on the resource denial without going totally all in on it, since no one in my usual playgroup had ever really run that sort of deck. My usual playgroup is totally cool with most playstyles luckily, and we all play a decent variety of decks each to mix things up quite a bit.

When Cavalier of Flame came out my first thought was "into the deck it goes!" It has definitely worked really great.

Creeping Renaissance is certainly nice and you are right that it is pretty trivial to get the mana to cast. I will definitely pick that up.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is one I haven't ever thought to try in any of my multi-color decks but it may be worth a shot here.

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