Subject: A saga tradewind deck Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 12:44:20 -0700 (PDT) From: The Black Dog To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Frank, This is a first attempt at a post saga tradewindgeddon deck. With firestorm rotating out it will be more difficult for people to break out of a tradewind lock. Furthermore, sligh decks are going to be slowed down tremendously, Saga has no tournament worthy direct damage. For this reason the only speed deck left in the environment is suicide black. Which means control decks are going to become more common. I have included several of the new Saga cards that promote the tradewind lock. 4 tradewind riders 4 wall of blossoms 4 spike feeder 4 armageddon 4 disenchant 3 propaganda 3 argothian wurm(3G 6/6 trample when argothian wurm comes into play any player may sac. a land to put a. wurm on top of owners library.) 4 mana leak 4 birds of paradise 3 umbilicus (during each players upkeep that player pays 2 life or returns a permanent to it's owners hand) 3 mox diamond 4 thran query(T: add a mana of any color to your pool. at the end of each turn if you control no creatures sac thran query) 2 gaea's cradle(T: add G to your pool for each creature you control.) 4 city of brass 9 forest This deck uses the basic concepts associated with a tradewindgeddon deck in that the goal is to have a tradewind and three creatures in play and then cast armageddon. The Maro's have become argothian wurms which force an opponent to choose after a 'geddon whether or not they want to sacrifice their lands or deal with a 6/6 trampler. hopefully with a tradewind out they will have no lands so you get a 6/6 for 4 with no draw back. I think umbilicus works in this deck in a manner similar to stampeding winningbeests. It helps you because you can bounce spike and gain life or bounce walls and draw cards. Your opponent however, may end up bouncing lands or taking damage both of which make for an unhappy opponent. I chose to put mox Diamonds in because they speed up the deck which helps against cuneo blue. cuneo blue hates fast mana, because it allows the opponents to cast threats faster than cuneo blue can counter them. The disenchants are a question in the deck it all depends on how players choose to use the new enchantments available to them, some are quite powerful, if it turns out that no uses the new enchantments, the disenchants could leave for a card that better suites the environment. thran query is a land that replaces the void left by gemstones and undiscovereds. If you lay a first turn birds followed by a second turn creature, the land should be pretty safe, the only problems I see is disk becomes land destruction and a bird that gets fanaticed by the opponent could hurt. Another experiment is the gaea's cradle. If it is played after the armageddon, with three creatures in play it could make it so you feel no ill effects from the armageddon because your mana base is almost immediately replaced. E-mail me with comments on the deck, note the deck has only been tested in a very limited structure as it can't be played against current T2 decks and I don't know what the new power decks are. Thank you for reading. David Nitka dnitka@willamette.edu "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." -Sir Francis Bacon