Subject: [Deck] Recursive Nightmare Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:35:32 -0400 From: Michael Siciliano To: Magic Dojo I played the following deck in a tournament last Monday and did better than I expected. Explanation of how the deck functions follows the deck list. Recursive Nightmare ------------------------- Land 9 Forest 7 Swamp 3 Gemstone Mine 2 Undiscovered Paradise 3 Quicksand Artifacts 1 Mox Diamond Black 4 Recurring Nightmare 3 Nekrataal 2 Gravedigger White 3 Cloudchaser Eagle Red 1 Orcish Settlers Green 4 Wall of Blossoms 4 Wall of Roots 4 Spike Feeders 3 Cartographer 3 Uktabi Orangutan 3 Stampeding Wilderbeast 2 Spike Weaver Sideboard 3 Dread of Night 3 Stronghold Taskmaster 3 Scragnoth 1 Uktabi Orangutan 2 Tranquility 2 Needlestorm 1 Wasteland 61 Cards total Main Deck This is a creature-based green/black control deck. Recurring Nightmare is the card the entire deck revolves around. The deck works like this: You are attempting to take control of the board by removing your opponents threats-repeatedly-until they run out of resources. After they have exhausted themselves or hold back cards they know will be lost you can begin the beatdown. This will force them to either use up the cards they have in hand or abandon their original strategy. The walls are a delaying strategy, but they also work wonderfully with the rest of the deck. Putting a Wall of Blossoms into play (either from your hand or the graveyard) nets you a decent wall and another card. Putting a Wall of Roots into play (either from your hand or the graveyard) nets you a decent wall and the potential for five green mana. If a Wall of Roots has counters on it you can remove those counters by sacrificing it and bringing it back with the use of Recurring Nightmare or you can simply have the Stampeding Wilderbeast return it to your hand for recasting. The use of Spike Feeders is obvious-life gain. You can remove one counter off the Feeder to gain two life and then sacrifice the Feeder to bring something else back from the graveyard with Recurring Nightmare. The Coming-Into-Play effects of the various creatures are the key way to remove your opponents threats: Nekrataal for creatures, Cloudchaser Eagle for enchantments, and Uktabi Orangutans for artifacts. To help you get your own resources back the Gravedigger will get a creature back from the graveyard for you and the Cartographer will let you get back any land (ie. Quicksand, Wasteland, Gemstone Mine, any land lost due to land destruction). The Orcish Settler is for the late game when you have mana to pump into it to go after your opponents lands (non-basic was my first choice). The Stampeding Wilderbeast returns green creatures to your hand for subsequent reuse (Orangutans, Feeders, Cartographers, Walls, and most importantly Weavers). This brings me to the most important defense aspect of the deck: The Spike Weaver. It is very easy to use and reuse the Spike Weavers with this deck. Bringing them back into play via the Recurring Nightmare, recasting them after the Wilderbeast returned it to your hand, or simply by putting counters from the Feeders onto the Weaver can give you INFINITE fog effects. Your opponent must have a way to remove the Weavers as a defensive measure or they will never be able to deal creature damage to you. If there is one Weaver in the graveyard and one in play with one counter left you can use Recurring Nightmare to bring a fresh new Weaver into play by sacrificing the old one-repeat this process until your opponent finds a way to stop you. One of the last games of a match lasted so long that the match ended in a tie. I would have eventually won but the deck was working too slow for the time limit. Remember to cast the Recurring Nightmares only when you want to use them immediately. If an opponent tries to disenchant it you will have to use it so as not to lose it. The ability works as a sorcery so you can only do it on your turn-be sure it is safe if you leave it on the board during your opponent's turn. Sideboard Scragnoths wreak havoc on mono-blue decks-if they don't have non-blue creature removal they are toast. Dread of Night is very cheap to cast and takes the teeth out of White Weenie in a hurry. Empyrial Armor can be taken care of with Cloudchaser Eagles. Stronghold Taskmaster does the same thing to Suicide Black. Suicide black is so fast however, that you do not have much time to get one into play. The Walls, Feeders and Weavers stop the Sligh creature rush. There are no sideboard cards for Sligh because the main deck works fine as is against it. The additional Orangutan is to stack up against artifact-based decks (the hated Scroll-Bridge-Tongs garbage, and the newer and better Vineyard Brooch decks). The Tranquility is to wipe out enchantment-based combo decks (Pandemonium, Propaganda and Vineyards). With so many mono-color decks the need for non-basic land is diminished. That is why the Wasteland is in the sideboard-it can be moved to the main deck if you prefer-put one of the three Quicksand in the sideboard in that case. Have fun giving your opponent Recurring Nightmares of never-ending Spike Weavers. Michael Siciliano