The Polyphant Massacre

here at the weekly MTG page I will post a blog every week about Magic: The Gathering. Most will be about deck ideas and my thinking as to why they should be good. Sometime in the future i would like to post results of play testing.

Post Date : 5/31/2011

---

              Some time ago, Jacob Van Luren, a wizards column writer, wrote about a mass polymorph deck Called "It's Gonna be a massacre". This made me lol so hard, I had to come up with my own version. Luren's deck is designed to be a budget build, using cheap but good cards such as foresee. I decided i would like this deck to win, so i bumped the price up to an uncomfortable position, and did my own build.

Polyphant Massacre

 
TheWillRogers Type II

Main Deck:

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

3 Massacre Wurm

1 Terastodon

4 Awakening Zone

2 Beast Within

4 Explore

4 Fresh Meat

4 Growth Spasm

4 Mass Polymorph

4 See Beyond

4 Spell Pierce

7 Forest

9 Island

4 Khalni Garden

4 Misty Rainforest

Sideboard:

1 Blightsteel Colossus

1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

4 Fog

1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur

3 Naturalize

1 Urabrask the Hidden

4 Vapor Snag

Alright, lets explain myself. The point of the deck is the same as any mass polymorph deck, get some dudes, then make them into game winners. The main deck focuses on pumping out spawn and then mass polymorphing into a win. let's say you go off on turn 5, they should have at minimum 3 lands and 1 other permanent(artifact, planeswalker, dude, enchantment) you polymorph away 4 spawns and get your 3 Massacre Wurms and 1 Terastodon. Since you are in control here, you get the choice of how your polymorphed creatures enter the battlefield.

First: Terastodon
Trigger off of terastodon: turn 3 enemy lands(or planeswalker if they have it) into 3/3 Elephants.
Second: All 3 of the massacre wurms enter the battlefield simultaneously
Trigger off of Wurms: all of your opponents creatures get -6/-6 until the end of the turn.(-2/-2 for each wurm)
Trigger off Wurms: your opponent looses 6 life for each creature lost this way, if they only had 3 lands and a lack of anything else, that makes 18 life lost.

At this point the opponent concedes to the Johny.

That's the gist of the build. let's examine the rest of the lay out.
Token Generators
Khalni Garden
Awakening Zone
Growth Spasm

Mana Acceleration/Land Ramp
Awakening Zone
Growth Spasm
Explore

Hand Fixing/Draw
Jace, The Mind Sculptor
See Beyond

Combo Oriented
Terastodon
Massacre Wurm
Mass Polymorph

Mid game
Fresh Meat

Removal
Beast Withen

one of my favorite spells in here right now has to be Beast Withen, it does 2 things for this deck. Shuts down other combo decks such as Splinter Twin, it also give you opponents a dude that can be wrecked by the wurms for an additional 6 damage. Fresh Meat is a nice toolbox card to have, if it's in your hand, as soon as  you have 3 spawn and if there is no Mass Polymorph in sight, you should definitely spend your tokens to cast this spell. 3 Spawn, and 1 green mana to drop 3 3/3 Beasts is too good of a trade to pass up, it allows you to live by blocking on the ground for a turn or 2 while you dig up a mass poly morph

Although i despise how much this card costs, you cannot deny how incredibly powerful Jace, the Mind Sculptor is. He is key in getting something like one of your fatties from your hand back in your deck, not to mention a straight up ridicules amount of card advantage. See Beyond serves the same purpose.

The Sideboard
Answers and stuff right? well, Fog is a god send and one of the best cards ever printed, this stops decks like Kuldotha Red for a few turns(Marrow shards works much better against kuldotha, but fog is more versatile). Naturalize is just perfect for the format right now. if they drop a batterskull and don't have the mana base to return the sucker -- naturalize that shit. if they are playing artifact weenies(Tempered Steel deck) naturalize the shit out of everything. really, there is no reason not to play naturalize right now, a glorious sideboard. Vapor Snag, a strictly better unsummon, is great for dealing with combos like splinter-win or Relic Whoreder.(soul sisters combo). it also is a great defense card.

Ok, so after playing this in game one, any good player will side board in answers. Enchantment removal, mass destruction, counters, cards like memoricide. How do we answer that? well, depending on the deck your playing you could just go into game 2 only side boarding out Fresh Meat for some form of control, but if that fails then you can just sideboard in a slightly less expected wincon.

Introducing Team America! Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite; Urabrask the hidden; and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur. for shiggles lets just toss in blightsteel colossus for added terror.

These guys replace the 3 wurms and the Terastodon in the main deck. Same way to win, mass polymorph, except you're tossing out a card that wrecks their hand, 2 cards that wreck what ever creatures they want to play, oh yeah ... your dudes have haste now, attack with everything, a 13/13 Blight'frigginSteel Colossus? GG