UG Stompy - Battle Box Part 1

[Diz]

So, I used to have what I called a Battle Box. What this was was 2 piles of 120 cards, each. One pile was BR, one pile was GU. Each pile had a core of cards that I recommended using in each deck, and 4-5 different archetypes (Elemental aggro, Biovisionary clones, etc.) from it that you could build. In the interest of consolidating what I had, and partially because they weren't the most evenly matched dependent upon what was built/some cards and archetypes just weren't getting used, I decided to pare these piles down to 2 Casual-60 decks, each, based on which I thought were the strongest/most fun to play of the archetypes. Each deck has been periodically touched up since they've been built, and I'm pretty satisfied with where they currently are, based on performance with friends. I'll probably post the BR list in a separate post, but for now, here's what became of the UG pile:

Decklist

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Small fries

4 Ice-Fang Coatl

4 Coiling Oracle

4 Shardless Agent

Fatties

4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

4 Carnage Tyrant

4 Simic Sky Swallower

Instants & Sorceries

4 Explore

4 Growth Spiral

4 Unexpected Results

Lands

4 Temple of Mystery

10 Snow-Covered Forest

10 Snow-Covered Island

Approximate Total Cost:

Simic Sky Swallower is one of my pet cards - it was the first rare I ever pulled from a Magic booster, thus holding a special place in my heart, so I wanted one of the archetypes to be centered around efficiently bringing it out and controlling the game with it. Its counterpart in this deck, for a while, was Sagu Mauler - but I found Sagu Mauler to be fairly underwhelming. It just didn't evoke the same feelings in me that SSS did. So I thought, "Is there anything that I can replace this with?" I thought about Inkwell Leviathan, but with a much higher mana cost, it was an extremely unappealing option - I was already struggling to stabilize with SSS at 7 mana, so I knew I needed another 5 or 6-drop to make it work. I considered Kodama of the North Tree, but it was Legendary, which is not optimal for a beatstick. I didn't want to ruin the almost-symmetry I had with most of my stuff being UG spells, but Explore was already in, and I wasn't gonna run Wistful Selkie, instead. What was a Diz to do?

Well, having played Legacy for a while, I grew to like combo/cheaty strategies, and came to realize that Carnage Tyrant was an excellent replacement as a card I used to enjoy running in Legacy in Nic Fit-type strategies. I weighed the pros and cons of Mauler vs. Tyrant, and whether or not the Morph cast was worth the loss of uncounterability and 1 power. Then, I realized something else:

Bounty of the Luxa, another pet card of mine in this deck, was not carrying its weight.

Sure, it was nice to draw an extra card every turn and have extra mana every turn when I had two of them out, but I often found that I would rather play something immediately relevant to the board state rather than something that could potentially get me what I needed a few turns down the road - and playing just one never felt great.

Then, Theros Beyond Death came out.

I realized that I could rectify both of my issues if I swapped Bounty for Uro, and Mauler for Tyrant.

Removing Bounty opens up a 3/4 mana slot for another, far more relevant spell - that being Uro. If I'm not dedicating my 3-drop cast to a morphed Mauler, and then my 5-drop "cast" to flipping Mauler, I can potentially ramp, instead, and power out one of my fatties by using either Uro or a Growth Spiral/Explore. Uro is an additional Explore effect, which the deck loves. Uro is lifegain, which helps stabilize from early on, even if the deck has a slow start. Uro is a UG fatty. With the extra umph from Tyrant added, could the choice be any easier?

Anyway, this deck has gone through a lot of consideration for a Casual-60 deck, but it's one of the ones I always enjoy playing - it's just putting out lands rapidly, bringing out big dudes, and turning them sideways. Who doesn't love a good Timmy deck?

[The Fluff]

about Simic Sky Swallower, let me share a story I heard when my brother was in college. They played mtg during break time.. there's this one person who played reanimator. The reanimator deck did well until people started packing unsummon type cards. Well, last part my brother told me that the reanimator adapted to the blue bounce spells.. by having SSS and Plated Slagwurm as reanimation targets, then it started doing well again.

Unexpected Results is a rather cool card. Is it able to put fatties into the field often? Well, I guess it could also cast the other nonland cards that are not creatures.

Not much to say about Uro, except it's a 50 dollar card, so expect usefulness.

The only thing I worry about in this deck is the total lack of removal. How does it fare against other decks from the Battle Box?

[Ginuqu]

I admire the four of everything discipline, I could never! I don't mind that this deck folds to Worship or Humility or any of the world's other white boredom enchantments cos that's how I've always viewed casual - make a deck that's got a purpose and a plan without worrying if it beats all the other existing plans. The deck looks powerful and fun to play and I'd probably try and construct something akin to it, with a few spicy/pointless one-ofs, if Uro wasn't such an expensive and sought-after card. I'd definitely stuff in junk like Urza's Filter or Vivid Revival or Guildmages' Forum, and Pillar of the Paruns would be practically drawbackless except that it's not a snow permanent! but again it's just as cool that you've maintained an almost completely gold deck! i like it!

[Diz]

about Simic Sky Swallower, let me share a story I heard when my brother was in college. They played mtg during break time.. there's this one person who played reanimator. The reanimator deck did well until people started packing unsummon type cards. Well, last part my brother told me that the reanimator adapted to the blue bounce spells.. by having SSS and Plated Slagwurm as reanimation targets, then it started doing well again.

Unexpected Results is a rather cool card. Is it able to put fatties into the field often? Well, I guess it could also cast the other nonland cards that are not creatures.

Not much to say about Uro, except it's a 50 dollar card, so expect usefulness.

The only thing I worry about in this deck is the total lack of removal. How does it fare against other decks from the Battle Box?

I approve of UG Reanimator, haha.

Unexpected Results, well...the results are unexpected! I kind of wish the shuffling clause were optional, as Temple → Results would be a fun play, but alas. As for what the card, itself, gets, well, it can be used as a repeatable ramp spell, if it hits something smaller it's still card advantage, and if it hits a fatty...jackpot. There are 12 fatties to hit, so assuming they don't pile up in your hand (as they often do ), you have a reasonable chance of getting a good bit of value out of Results, whether it be ramp, draw, or cheaty.

Yeah, Uro was kind of a "gritting my teeth because it's a freaking casual deck but I also really wanna run this because it's perfect for it so oh well" thing. Being able to power through the draw/ramp spells and having a lot of weaker creatures makes him not take very long at all to be able to Escape with, so it's good board presence and stabilization provided your hand doesn't suck.

As for the lack of removal...meh, it's fine. Typically, in Casual-60, your opponent's not gonna be running boardwipes, and will often have to dedicate holding back their own creatures to taking out the stuff with Shroud and Hexproof. They're deterrent, removal, and damage in one - and if I lose to something dumb like Ensnaring Bridge, then I just change decks. I'm not gonna post all the archetypes of the Battle Box - only what I ended up settling on for the decks to keep, themselves, so stay tuned for the other part of this when I post it, haha.

I admire the four of everything discipline, I could never! I don't mind that this deck folds to Worship or Humility or any of the world's other white boredom enchantments cos that's how I've always viewed casual - make a deck that's got a purpose and a plan without worrying if it beats all the other existing plans. The deck looks powerful and fun to play and I'd probably try and construct something akin to it, with a few spicy/pointless one-ofs, if Uro wasn't such an expensive and sought-after card. I'd definitely stuff in junk like Urza's Filter or Vivid Revival or Guildmages' Forum, and Pillar of the Paruns would be practically drawbackless except that it's not a snow permanent! but again it's just as cool that you've maintained an almost completely gold deck! i like it!

Right, I feel that. Not all of my decks are straight 4-ofs, but when I originally designed the Battle Box, it was to play with a friend who didn't like Commander because of the too large variety of cards - so I wanted to offer some level of choice so as to not homogenize the experience, but also not offer too much variety in the card pool that they became overwhelmed. But yes, I agree with your principle about Casual-60 - and that's why I don't bother with stuff like Trygon Predator and the like, even though they'd definitely fit right in for such occasions.

I have another friend I've been playing Casual-60 with a lot, lately, and for a while, he was like, "Hold on, let me check my sideboard" and I was just like, "Dude...I know you mostly use old Standard decks, but it's casual. You really don't need a sideboard." He finally agreed and now we're having a blast with it.

[The Fluff]

@Iso

I think the common problem with casual decks is that eventually it becomes an arms race, until people have warped unfun decks at the end of it. We solved this in our playgroup by using only decks of similar power level.. like for example when someone had a preconstructed deck, that deck is fought only with other precon, and "upgrading" the precons with other cards is not allowed - this prevents the arms race scenario. Or in my mono color "duel" decks , we used only cards from the same set.. so it turned out quite balanced after some tweaking and testing.

if this ug deck is meant to duel with the br in the other thread. I think it's fine already.

[Diz]

Yeah, we pretty much only play decks that are around similar power levels. I have some decks that are weaker than these, and some that might be stronger - it's a toss-up, and we adjust accordingly.

[The Fluff]

About this deck. Have you goldfished it a few times already. Is the mana performing fine?
Asking since, I'm using the draw 7 of nexus, and drawn 4 or 5 unkeepable opening hands in 10 tries. The usual is the spells in hand cannot be cast because wrong mana. For example, 2 same color snow basic + growth spiral or oracle hand. Perhaps we can remove one of each snow land, then replace with 2 Botanical Sanctum, to smooth the manabase a bit more?

Hmm, me and friend are building a dog vs cat duel deck. When we finish I'm making a thread and will ask your advice / opinion on it. ^^

[Diz]

I almost never have mana issues with this deck, and I've played it a number of times versus both the other Battle Box deck and a number of a couple of friends' decks. On occasion, I'll get color screwed (rare, but happens once every 8 or 10 games), but there's rarely ever an issue with mana. What sorts of hands are you deeming unkeepable? Because as long as you have 2-3 lands, including preferably one of each basic (or even one as a Temple), you can make basically any hand in this deck work that isn't just "oops I drew 2 Carnage Tyrant and 3 Simic Sky Swallower in my opening hand".

Edit:



I did a Draw 7 just after posting this and this is very keepable. T2 Oracle, get the Forest, T3 Shardless, Cascade into Explore, get the extra land drop, and that's a T4 Carnage Tyrant and T5 Simic Sky Swallower.

[The Fluff]

sorry for late reply.

to the best that I can remember, the unkeepable hands I got were

hand one: 2 island, 2 oracle, 1 growth, 1 spiral, Uro

hand two: 2 forest, 2 spiral, 1 tyrant, 2 unexpected results

then two or three more variants of those.

well, but if you're getting good hands, then maybe I just had badluck with the nexus card draw.

[Diz]

Yeah, I mean bad draws are fundamentally a part of Magic Just gotta do what you can.

[Diz]

I no longer own this deck, though I do still have the other part of the battle box (Blightning Tribal). A lot of the strategies used in this deck were ported over to my Sidsi Commander deck.