We conclude this month’s deck tech series with a terraific brew by Jonas Bjärnstedt. Enjoy! / Martin
Today is all about a deck for those who want to destroy all lands, all the time, and not play red. The deck is shock full of synergies and has answers for most decks you can run into, especially when piloted by someone better than me. This deck has been tweaked a whole bunch with the help of both the international Facebook group and the Discord people, so a big shoutout to all the helpful people of the community!
Without further ado, let’s present… TERRACLYSM! Terrifying name, right? And the name says it all. The main beatdown, when the time is right, which is anywhere from turn 3 to 25, is Terravore. Together with a well-timed Cataclysm, it almost always leaves you with the biggest beater on the table.
While Cataclysm looks symmetric in its destruction, it’s fairly easy to have it work to your advantage, and the only real drawback it has is the WW in the casting cost. And Terravore is a card that synergizes particularly well with Cataclysm.
The deck
The deck looks like this.
SIDEBOARD
The package of Land Tax, Scroll Rack, Undiscovered Paradise and Mox Diamond is the way to stay ahead from turn 1. Undiscovered Paradise, Land Tax, go, has made many an opposing player lose their confidence. The Undiscovered Paradises are not as useful without Land Tax, however, hence the low count.
The fetches synergise well with both Werebear and Terravore, and if your opponent doesn’t play any non-basic lands, you can always crack your own Wasteland on them just to feed the Terravore. Wasteland plays a similar double role in this deck, what with both wrecking your opponents plans and furthering your own at the low, low cost of one land drop.
The Enlightened Tutor package has gone through a few revisions before the current version. One reason for a full tutor package is that it allows for a very flexible sideboard with answers to a variety of possible threats. In the main deck, the tutorable targets are Parallax Wave, Masticoree, Seal of Cleansing, Land Tax, Zuran Orb, Scroll Rack and Mox Diamond. Parallax Wave is good at clearing out blockers, or just for making cataclysm so unfair that Balance starts to seem reasonable. Masticore is almost always a good target, as we all know. The one-of Seal of Cleansing lets us deal with possibly unwinnable board states, such as a Worship, Solitary Confinementt or just to have as an insurance against Trix. Speaking of Trix, Zuran Orb is a great tutor target against that deck, since losing 20 life doesn’t really matter if you can gain two life and the opponent doesn’t have any other win cons. Land Tax might seem like primary tutor target in the deck, and that might be true in some matchups, but far from all.
The sideboard targets for our happy tutor from Femeref includes three Circles of Protection, two Tormod’s Crypt, Bottle Gnomes and Compost. The Circles represent the expected beatdown colours, the Crypts are there for all of the graveyard-based shenanigans that fill the format, and the Bottle Gnomes and the Compost is capable to give the deck just the edge it needs to eke out a win against quick black and red decks.
The two Disenchants and the lone Tranquility is for when we run into Enchantress or MUD decks. Disenchantis especially helpful if you need to destroy something immediately, as we all know might be the case now and then.
The two Gaea’s Blessing are there for a variety of reasons. If we face life.dec, Brain Freeze or a Solitary Confinement that we can’t break through, Scroll Rackstill saves us from decking, but not being able to draw a useful answer is frustrating. Gaea’s Blessing helps with that, and it is enjoyable to be able to waste someone ten times over during the course of a long game.
Mystic Enforcer is pretty much a flex slot, and since my meta so far has been full of Suicide Black (like the winning deck at the Premodern Easter Champs), a 6/6 flying beat stick with protection from black seemed like a really, really good idea. It can also make sense to board it in, e.g., against The Rock, if for nothing else to force them to pay another mana when they blow up their Pernicious Deed.
A short report from Premodern Easter Champs
I tried out the deck in the Premodern Easter Champs, with the following results.
The first match was against Astral Slide, which never really got going and couldn’t stop the Werebeargeddon. With quick threshold thanks to Armageddon, a pair of Werebears quickly reduced the opponent’s life total. Boarding in CoP: Red and Disenchants didn’t hurt either.
The second match was against life.dec, which generated an arbitrary large amount of life in game 1. I was unsure on the rules regarding Scroll Rack and decking at that point, so I scooped and hoped for better luck in game 2. Life got the combo on turn 3 again, but as I had boarded in my blessings, the rest of the game consisted of me blowing up all of his lands and waiting for him to draw out, resulting in a drawn match.
The third match was against Cheerios, which never managed to assemble the full combo, sadly resulting in some non-games. I boarded in two Disenchant here as well, taking out two Wall of Roots.
In the fourth and final match I assumed I was up against The Rock, based on what I saw in the first game, which I managed to close out pretty quick with a large Terravore and some well-timed Swords to Plowshares, but I was a bit confused about seeing a couple of Veteran Explorers on the battlefield. I decided to board in the three Mystic Enforcers, a Compost and a Circle of Protection: Green, taking out the Terravores, and two Wall of Roots, fully expecting a full squirrel army charging towards me. In the second game I got out a quick Compost. It was nice drawing cards while getting Duressed, but the fun didn’t stop there. It turned out that my opponent played Angry Druid in a Rock shell, and as he milled his entire library into his graveyard, I got to draw 12 cards, and it was all over.
That’s all for this time, but I’m sure the great minds in the community will be able to tweak this deck to make it even better.
– Jonas
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