Deepwood Disappointment

So I felt like running through another “double deck” exercise, and thought it might be interesting to load up the Red Green “Deepwood Menace” theme deck from Mercadian Masques. My first ever Magic deck. Looking on it 24 years later… it’s not very good. So let’s see if we can improve it by getting extra copies of the good cards and cutting the weak ones. The problem is… well, let’s check the list:

Trying out MTG Goldfish for it’s deck visualiser.

Yeah. So the issue is less of what dreadful cards do we cut, but more of how do we actually salvage something out of this? There’s a number of factors which count against this deck, the first being that Masques was a weak set and a week block. But then we did actually get some solid green creatures in the block: Blastoderm in Nemesis being the poster child. I was quite fond of Hunted Wumpus which admittedly did need to be built around: my mates mostly played Weenies so AEther Flash dealt with those. Shoutout to Thresher Beast too: another pet card of mine. All cards I’d have originally have got from later precons in the block (he mentions trying to segue back to the point) which doesn’t really help too much when discussing this.

The second issue is this is a bit confused. Is it a low mana curve big bodies for how little the cards cost style Stompy? Or more of a classic ramp into fatties deck? Because it kinda tries to do both while not having creatures good enough for either strategy. I don’t know if trying to build from two copies of the deck if you’re going to be able to do much to focus it towards either the fast or big side of things either.

The deck box. Weird choice of a card to highlight.

So I’m going to approach this the opposite way I normally do. What cards are we definitely wanting to include? Identify the best cards and then try and twist everything else to fit. So for me I really like Deepwood Wolverine. Your opponent doesn’t really want to block it because it can trade up pretty well with it’s +2/+0 trigger. So it normally gets through for 1. Which isn’t much, sure, but it all adds up. A few early points might be the difference later. I don’t know, I like it: it’s an elegant little one drop.

The other card that stands out to me is Battle Squadron. It’s one of the rares so you’d hope that it would, right? Weird card for Red I always thought. The variable power and toughness feels much more green, and other than dragons red isn’t a massive flying colour either. But it does give us some direction to take this deck in I think. Have lots of creatures, smash face with big flyer.

The core of the deck.

So if we care about having lots of creatures… the other rare Natural Affinity will be good too. And given that it affects your opponent’s lands too then Volcanic Wind seems fun too. Getting both out on the same turn? Unlikely. But it is a dream play to strive for so probably want to grab those Vine Trellises too. It doubles as early defence which is likely almost more important than it generating mana as you do want to keep your creatures around to pump the Squadron. For a similar reason I think we add the Horned Trolls to the mix. They’re not an exciting offensive option but G to regenerate on defense? That’s looking much better. The trellis can provide that mana once it blocks, too, actually.

So that gives us:

Back to Arkidekt.

Next some removal. I’m not sure about Lunge: it’s technically 4 damage for 3 mana guess. But yeah. You want to be able to do a bit better than killing x/2s. Thunderclap on the other hand: this is solid. Sad it only hits creatures… but we know how good Fireblast is. Still, I’m going to start with 3 of these initially. But I think that might be it.

We do want a good mass of creatures, and both Kris Mage and Cinder Mage do double duty there. Kris Mage always felt underwhelming to me: throwing away a card for just one damage? But there are times you might want that, and otherwise it’s a one drop which the deck wants too.

Cinder is one of the best cards in the deck with it being able to become a fireball helping with reach. I don’t think the full playset is needed though, 3 is enough. Maybe even two. It’s a later game card, don’t want to have multiples in your starting hand.

Shock troops? No.

My copy of the actual deck.

So 8 or 9 more cards to go. I’m going to chuck in 3 Saber Ants largely as this is a bit of a pet card I tried to build around trying to maximise its effect. Without much luck. Here I guess you just use it to block things that have less than two power. I guess you could Kris Mage it too if for some reason that was strategic to do so? Then, even though it’s overcosted as hell, Tiger Claws. Maybe your opponent has a stream of flying chump blockers? Trample is nice to have in the arsenal and being able to be played instant speed gives it some extra utility as a combat trick. Squallmonger arguably could fill a similar role of clearing 1/1 Spirit tokens or whatever… but I don’t think we are risking that. Especially as it’s another 4 drop.

I think we finish things up with a pair of Deepwood Drummer: a two drop with a potentially useful ability. Not quite Giant Growth but it may complicate combat maths for your opponent just having it sitting there. There’s validity in that alone. A singleton Desert Twister is number 60. Strong effect, but expensive. The 4th Thunderclap or Tranquility were possibilities too.

The finished deck.

I’m actually feeling way more positive about these cards now after doing this. I know that logically they’re all super terrible and this improved deck of mine is still going to be absolutely terrible… but right now I’m actually pretty proud of it. At the very least it’s better than the source material and that was not necessarily a given here.

Anyone that happens to read this want to chime in on my process and how you’d do it? Chuck through a comment, would be stoked if you did.