Exodus: Week 1

I spent the first week of Exodus doing some non-Magic stuff. I did some testing of MoMa strategies, and couldn't make them consistant. And the number of "green is so weak" rants really surprised me. I read about Pandemonium, about Hatred and about Equilibrium and Mind Over Matter. Many interesting cards have not come up at all in any deck. And yet, for now, as far as I can tell...

3rd Edition Stompy is the way to go.

For all those who kept reading, thank you. By stompy, I mean a primarily Green deck exploiting the land manipulation cards - Harvest Wurm, Fallow Wurm, Rouge Elephant.

The reason is that Green has all the cards that defeat all the basic strategies.

Survival of the Fittest. If one creature would wreck an enemy deck you can get it, and you will never get one you don't need. Llurgoyf is nice, but it isn't necessary and slows down the deck. This can be used as a SB card to bring in more copies of the cards you need.

Uktabi Orangatang. With so many Mox Diamonds popping up (even in my stompy), this card can wreck even more havoc than usual. In addition, the card disadvantage decks cannot deal with Uktabi Orangatang, because Null Brooch can't counter it.

Emerald Charm. Comes up in sideboards every now and then, and for 1 CC it does a lot. Aside from destroying Propoganda, Equilibrium, Pandemonium, Mind over Matter, etc, it has two other good uses. Just having one effectivly breaks up most of the new combination decks.

Cartographer. The lack of interest in this card surprised me. Aside from having 8 Harvest Wurms, this card has the ability to recurse non-basic lands. This works especially well on Quicksand and Wasteland, both of which are good cards even when you have enough land against half the decks out there.

Sylvan Library. Always a good card, players who know when they can pay 8 life can clean up, and Survival of the Fittest and Sylvan Library is a cheap, awesome engine.

The new playing of Lotus Vale. This makes a deck that packes extra Wastelands that much better.

The first version will have all the cards I think might be worth it, some of which can be cut out later.

So here's the way I see it working:

This deck expects to divide according to the question: Does your opponent have a lot of non-basic lands? If he does, This is a land destruction deck. If not, then your opponent is probably playing a creature deck, and you race him with the Wurm and Diamond speed. Your defense against Hatred is that you have bigger creatures, and can hit him turn 2 (and have 1 Quicksand and 1 Firestorm). Combination decks have to deal with destruction of their lands and Emerald Charm combined with a quick kill. Control decks will fall behind, and will probably face no useless cards. Against Sligh and Suicide Black you can put in the Quicksands and recurse those. You can also play around with transformation sideboards (hint: The Firestorm in the main deck becomes a Kaervak's Torch). One of these decks will be my next test.