Meeple: The Gathering, feat. Rukarumel
Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2023 9:37 pm
In board games, it's pretty common to have a limit on the number of actions that you can do. In Carcassonne, a popular tile placement game that has you constructing a medieval town and its surroundings, this takes the form of little wooden humanoid figurines that you can place on the growing board to denote your control of a feature. Once the scenery develops and the feature is completed, the figurine has served its purpose and returns to your pool for further use. The pieces were affectionately dubbed "meeple" by the player base within months of Carcassonne's release, and the term has spread to other relevant games.
Back in 2018/2019, I had an ill-fated Kumena deck, which perished due to my inability to nerf it enough. The deck left me with a Trop I jumped the gun on, as well as an appreciation of tapping creatures into activated abilities. Random cheap crappy merfolk were a finite resource, like the meeple. I liked the concept, and once I hit a dry spell of EDH deck construction in 2022-2023 I decided to revisit the idea. I always build my decks from the commander down, what if I consciously tried exploring a theme in the 99 rather than waiting for a legend to tickle my fancy and then hold up in brewing?
The general constituents of the deck were obvious from the get-go:
Since Rukarumel only adds the type to non-token bodies, the list became very creature-heavy. There is some token generation, as the more meeple the merrier and there will typically be something for them to do, but the card draw abilities are type-locked and appreciate various crappy non-token bodies that can serve as fodder. The meeple can accomplish other standard deck functionality as well - ramp, interaction. The card pool turned out quite shallow once particularly unpleasant abilities were weeded out, and convoke came to the rescue. Some choice convoke spells allow the creatures to serve a purpose by tapping into them. Neat!
The list is still in its early days, and currently my main concern is how will this actually win games. I've gotten five rounds in against various configurations of my playgroup, and in four of those I drew Halo Fountain and won off that. But other than that, things are looking a little sketchy. I guess some of the cards offer ways to deploy some pump, mostly in a Rukarumel-dependent manner, but the tokens don't get as swole or as evasive as I'm accustomed to. Anybody got anything? Or cool tech I missed elsewhere? I'm quite excited by this deck and am hopeful it will translate to paper, but for now need to iron some stuff out.
Back in 2018/2019, I had an ill-fated Kumena deck, which perished due to my inability to nerf it enough. The deck left me with a Trop I jumped the gun on, as well as an appreciation of tapping creatures into activated abilities. Random cheap crappy merfolk were a finite resource, like the meeple. I liked the concept, and once I hit a dry spell of EDH deck construction in 2022-2023 I decided to revisit the idea. I always build my decks from the commander down, what if I consciously tried exploring a theme in the 99 rather than waiting for a legend to tickle my fancy and then hold up in brewing?
The general constituents of the deck were obvious from the get-go:
- Activated abilities that tap creatures
- Creatures that respond well to being tapped
- Untap shenanigans (but no Intruder Alarm)
Since Rukarumel only adds the type to non-token bodies, the list became very creature-heavy. There is some token generation, as the more meeple the merrier and there will typically be something for them to do, but the card draw abilities are type-locked and appreciate various crappy non-token bodies that can serve as fodder. The meeple can accomplish other standard deck functionality as well - ramp, interaction. The card pool turned out quite shallow once particularly unpleasant abilities were weeded out, and convoke came to the rescue. Some choice convoke spells allow the creatures to serve a purpose by tapping into them. Neat!
meeple.dec
Approximate Total Cost:
The list is still in its early days, and currently my main concern is how will this actually win games. I've gotten five rounds in against various configurations of my playgroup, and in four of those I drew Halo Fountain and won off that. But other than that, things are looking a little sketchy. I guess some of the cards offer ways to deploy some pump, mostly in a Rukarumel-dependent manner, but the tokens don't get as swole or as evasive as I'm accustomed to. Anybody got anything? Or cool tech I missed elsewhere? I'm quite excited by this deck and am hopeful it will translate to paper, but for now need to iron some stuff out.
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The Quest Begins!
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07.09.2023 Changes
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