Subject: Beating Perish in Standard Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 13:54:37 -0400 (AST) From: Glenn MacEachern To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Contrary to popular belief, Perish should NOT make Mono-Green critter decks just roll over and die. Perish is only a temp draw back, the keys to making sure you arn't killed by it are as follows. #1 Make sure you have the resources to quickly overcome it. #2 Have the resources to take advantage of it. Ok, so how do you ensure the resources to overcome a perish. If you hold creatures, you are comprimising the strength of the deck, 'specially against black which often becomes a race to 0. What I am suggesting, is the strength of the almighty cantrip critters...Striped Bears and Wall of Blossoms in particular. Now, nobody argues against the power of the Wall of Blossoms, but most people see the bears as being over-costed. Now, I can assure you that the 4 mana for this creature is perfectly balanced. 2 mana for a 2/2 + 2 mana for a card?..way cool in my book....now, how do we recycle these cards? The amazing power of the Wildabeast of course...this allows us to have not only a 5/4 trample for 4 mana, but also allows us to draw an extra card every turn, for 2 or 4 mana...wait a sec, this is a Tome, without the card loss? (I consider the Tome out to be a card loss)...hmm..way cool...so, with this, we should have some extra cards in hand....(not to mention the fun beatdown)...how do we ensure that we recover quickly?...we dont' go half-ass on creatures..we go ALL THE WAY....40 creatures....they couldn't possibly take care of EVERY creature in the deck....(well...some locks could do it...but they would have to race us...which most lock decks just can't do)...that's the problem with most of the Mono-Green decks now...they try to do too much....to deal with their opponents threats instead of just being a threat themselves... #2 How do we make the most of the perish? By using cards that give us an advantage for creatures in the GY, we can massacre the opponent fairly quickly, their perish wasted...now...the 2 cards that do this well are Lhurgoyf, and Natures Resurgance...both allow us to form some kind of defence quickly, and without much fuss.... Now, it's a given, you'll lose to perish straight out every once in a while, I.E (I'll perish, then attack with everything, no way to stop that) but the trick is to put him in such a defensive position fast enough that he's unable to do that. by forcing him to focus on creature removal, and not putting out creatures, when the fattie comes out that he can't deal with..boom..it's over.... Good..fast..green swarm/fattie attack is what's needed...how do we obtain speed..I'm going to suggest something that..well..is quite unpopular...Elves...Mana Elves....4 BoP, 4 Llanowar, 4 Skyshroud, should give us a very good speed boost, we all know that with all the pingers out there, we cannot expect to keep these out for very long...well..that's why you pack the Grangers...to get ping advantage...(one of the fundimental aspects of scrub level magic is...get the first pinger out...huge advantage)..the Skyshroud Elves rather that Wall of Roots help to power the Granger, (not to mention fun scrub-making tricks, this + the quirion ranger should give you quite a few options...) This decks flash point is obviously 4 mana, very good for fatties...but..our "win" card....Overrun..is at 5...no matter...Overrun is essential for Mono-Green to overcome other WW/BW, not to mention suprising blue, sligh, and pox for victories... So, how is the TII mono-Green deck that is going to be at the qualifiers going to shape up?...hmm...16 forests...quirion Ranger KILLS LD.....3 Overruns...41 creatures perhaps? 12-16 elves...8 Cantrip Critters standard...4 SW standard..okokok...it'll look something like this... ZooTV '98 16 Forests 4 BoP 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Skyshroud Elves 4 qurion rangers 4 Granger Guildmages 4 Wall of Blossoms 4 Striped Bears 4 Stampeeding Wildabeasts 3 Llurgoyf (reason for this, with this deck, either one player is going to be chump blocking, or you're not going to need this card at all:) 4 Jorael's 2 River Boa's 3 Overrun Side Board: :) Not going to tell you...for I suck at SB's....I do have some super special tech vs certain decks though..which I'm NOT sharing..not yet at least:) well..ok..that's my latest essay on my Green theory...I know it's seriously messed up...but the thing is..this deck wins alot..it just wins...doesn't do it fancy..but puts the hurt on your opponent...I'm suprised more people don't give this style a shot...it couldn't really hurt..now could it?:) Glenn MacEachern Glenn on Dalnet,Efnet "Don't believe the hype"