Zoo

“Zoos are such fun!” they told me. “It’s a blast!” they yelled. I just wish I’d heard them whisper “oderm” at the end. Getting its name from the numerous animals at its command, the Zoo archetype has been around for a very long time. At some point, WotC had printed enough cheap beaters/pump spells that weren’t just in White, and the RGx aggro deck was born! In fact, I remember having the best deck at my school (a UW control deck), and getting smashed by my friend’s RG weenie deck he’d read about. Nature is to be respected my friends!

The main focus of the deck is speed. You want to get out as many cheap and efficient threats as you can to beat your opponent down. In that sense, Zoo’s best T1-drops are Kird Ape and Skyshroud Elite - creatures that say 1/1 but are actually 2/3. Combine either with a Rancor, and you have a 4/4 trampler hitting the opponent by turn two! The deck also contains Werebear and Nimble Mongoose, both of which are cheap creatures that get bigger as you accumulate more cards in your graveyard.

Another thing Zoo likes to do is Armageddon the opponent out of the game. Once they establish a large number of efficient threats, a Zoo player can then clear the board of land. This leaves the Zookeeper with a fast clock and protection from most mass removal. Armageddon can also help the player reach Threshold, thus growing their bears and geese to finish the opponent off.

If you scrolled down to the deck first, then you may have noticed the lack of Swords to Plowshares in either of the boards. I didn’t add them to the deck because Zoo does NOT want the opponent gaining life. The long game is not your friend, and that’s exactly what Swords can create. The deck does contain a lot of burn-type removal however, which can help clear the way for attackers or finish the opponent off. Zoo is a super fun deck that has a lot of different weapons in its arsenal - how you want to build it is up to you. Happy brewing!

 

Zoo

Land:

4 Plateau

4 Taiga

4 Savannah

4 Wooded Foothills

4 Windswept Heath

Total: 20

Creatures:

4 Kird Ape

1 Blastoderm

4 Nimble Mongoose

4 Savannah Lions

4 Werebear

4 Skyshroud Elite

Total: 21

Spells:

4 Lightning Bolt

3 Armageddon

4 Chain Lightning

4 Rancor

4 Shock

Total: 19

Sideboard:

2 Disenchant

4 Red Elemental Blast

4 Giant Growth

1 Pyroclasm

4 Tormod’s Crypt

WG Enchantress

“Please don’t play that Tranquility in your hand!” Now that’s something you don’t hear every day - unless someone’s playing Enchantress of course. The good news is that no one plays Tranquility anyway, so you probably won’t be hearing it any time soon. Wait, no one plays enchantment hate cards these days? That also sounds like a great reason for you to be playing Enchantress!

What is Enchantress? It’s a prison-style deck that aims to lock out the opponent via enchantments, before casting a win condition and beating them down to 0. It accomplishes this by generating massive card advantage vis its namesake Enchantresses: Argothian Enchantress, Verduran Enchantress and Enchantress’ Presence. These three cards allow the player to go through their deck pretty quickly and assemble the lock before winning the game.

What is the lock? It can actually be a couple of cards: Elephant Grass and/or Solitary Confinement. If your opponent’s playing creatures, these two cards are your new best friends. Why? Because they make it very difficult, if not impossible, to deal damage to you. Elephant Grass costs G to cast, and has a Cumulative Upkeep of 1. It stops black creatures from attacking you, and forces the opponent to pay 2 for every other creature they want to send your way. Solitary Confinement goes even further, making it so you receive no damage while it is out in play. Oh right, and you can also play Moat if you want to.

The win condition. As with most prison-style decks, the majority of the cards are meant to lock out an opponent. The win condition is almost an afterthought, put in to take the game once your opponent can’t. In GW Enchantress, that win condition is Sacred Mesa. Once the board has been filled with enchantments, it becomes quite easy to pump out a lot of Pegasus tokens via Serra’s Sanctum. This allows the Enchantress player to either fly over the opponent’s defenses, or swarm past their flyers in large numbers. If you want more win conditions, Yavimaya Enchantress is another option, albeit much slower and vulnerable to removal.

Other versions of the deck have included Red for War of Words, or even gone Blue/Green and not even played White. As always, customizing the deck is up to you. Happy brewing!

WG Enchantress

Land:

4 Serra’s Sanctum

4 Windswept Heath

4 Savannah

4 Forest

4 Plains

Total: 20

Creatures:

4 Argothian Enchantress

4 Verduran Enchantress

Total: 8

Spells:

4 Sacred Mesa

4 Enlightened Tutor

4 Sterling Grove

4 Enchantress’ Presence

4 Elephant Grass

4 Solitary Confinement

4 Wild Growth

2 Mirri’s Guile

1 Replenish

1 Moat

Total: 28

Sideboard:

4 Tormod’s Crypt

1 Ground Seal

4 Swords to Plowshares

2 Null Rod

2 Carpet of Flowers

2 Karmic Justice

Burn

“Some men just want to watch the world burn”. Variants of burn have been around for a long time – a LONG time. What’s not to love? The deck hits hard, fast and consistently. Burn is a very aggressive deck with 1 goal: get your opponent’s life total to zero ASAP. While technically the deck does have interactions via creature removal, that’s usually not the path you want to take. Only remove creatures when necessary – the rest of the time? Go for the opponent directly.

The list I’ve provided is by no means fine-tuned. I put it together to show the main cards in the deck, as well as a few less played options to show how customizable it can be. “Burn” spells have always been popular and as such, are considered to be the defining aspect of Red. The versatility of either removing a creature or damaging your opponent is just so good that a lot of decks have made them the focus of their strategy.

I’ve decided to talk about a few cards that seem to have significant drawbacks, but are actually quite strong. Ball Lightning has been around since the early days of Magic, and remains a decent card to this day. Yes, you have to sacrifice it at the end of turn. But before that? Your opponent can either block it and lose some creature(s) (and still possibly take some damage), or just take the hit and lose almost a third of their life total. For RRR! Jackal Pup and Cursed Scroll are cards from the Tempest set, and really made an impact when they came out. As an aggressive 1-drop red creature, Jackal Pup was something the deck/colour had wanted for a long time; it gave red decks a turn 1 creature that could attack for 2. Sure, if it got hit you would take some damage, but when you’re playing a deck that deals damage faster than most decks, that’s ok. Cursed Scroll also saw a lot of play despite its drawback seeming to make it inconsistent. Burn often only has 1-2 cards in its hand anyway however, so the card was very consistent once you’d cast all of your spells. Scroll also gives the deck some virtual card advantage – something the deck often lacks. I included Browbeat for the same reason, as it either deals 5 damage (awesome) or puts cards in your hand (also awesome).  

As you can see, there are a lot of options for building a Burn deck. I don’t recommend cutting Bolts, but there are tons of cards from the game’s first sets to choose from. Whether you prefer a more creature-heavy deck, want to focus on spells, or even splash another colour, the choice is yours. Happy brewing!

Burn

Lands:

10 Mountain

8 Fetchlands

2 Barbarian Ring

Total: 20

Creatures:

4 Grim Lavamancer

4 Jackal Pup

4 Ball Lightning

Total: 12

Spells:

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Chain Lightning

4 Fireblast

1 Cursed Scroll

1 Shock

4 Flame Rift

4 Price of Progress

2 Browbeat

Total: 28

Sideboard:

1 Pyroclasm

2 Red Elemental Blast

2 Pyroblast

2 Ensnaring Bridge

4 Pyrostatic Pillar

4 Tormod’s Crypt

Elves

Do you enjoy playing lots of creatures, ramping mana and pointy ears? Then have I got a deck for you! Elves have always been synonymous with fantasy, so it should come as no surprise that they’ve always been a part of Magic. What IS surprising however, is that they originally did not get a Lord like Goblins, Merfolk or Zombies did. They’ve gotten them since however, along with lots of other awesome cards that have made them into the powerhouse tribal deck they are today.

Why play Elves? Well for starters, the deck has a lot of fun synergies. For example, the amount of mana you can generate on turns 2-4 can be pretty ridiculous(ly awesome). The most obvious creature for this is Priest of Titania, which pairs well with Quirion Ranger and Wirewood Symbiote to untap and produce more and more mana. Birchlore Rangers are also good at generating a lot of mana by allowing creatures you just cast to be tapped as well. An example of this would be to cast Birchlore Ranger, a bunch of 1-drop Elves, tap those for more 1-drop elves, then tap Priest of Titania for even more mana to cast more 1-drop elves and continue the cycle. Did you follow me there? The deck isn’t as simple as you might think.

Another strength of this deck is its ability to generate a lot of card advantage. The two ways of doing this are via Multani’s Acolyte and Sylvan Messenger, both of which allow you to draw more cards to add to your arsenal. Combine this with the aforementioned mana ramp, and you can constantly draw and cast more recruits for your forest army. Yes, you read that correctly – you can do this constantly. Remember when I mentioned Wirewood Symbiote untapping your mana creatures? These two are the ones you want to be bouncing back to your hand. That means you can re-cast them again and again to draw more cards. Playing this deck often means having 4-5+ creatures on the board and 7 cards in your hand at the end of turn 2.

Options. I put the Weird Harvest there as a pseudo 5^th copy of Sylvan Messenger or Multani’s Acolyte, but unless you cast it for one of these two creatures it’s just card disadvantage. Living Wish was added as a toolbox/game 1 answer against artifacts/enchantments et cetera but I admit I haven’t put much thought into the sideboard as the card is just a 1-of. Both of these sorceries are big maybes and the deck definitely has other options.

One of the great things about Elves is its resiliency. Yes, board sweepers exist, but this deck is so fast at generating mana and drawing more cards that it can recover from Wrath-effects. Elves' have been around since the beginning of the game, and their popularity has ensured a lot of new printings; this means there are a LOT of Elf cards you can use to customize the deck the way you want. Happy brewing!

 

Elves

Land:

5 Forest

2 Bayou

4 Windswepth Heath

4 Gaea’s Cradle

2 Wirewood Lodge

Total: 17

Creatures:

4 Llanowar Elves

4 Fyndhorn Elves

4 Priest of Titania

4 Quirion Ranger

4 Wirewood Symbiote

4 Birchlore Ranger

4 Multani’s Acolyte

4 Elvish Champion

4 Sylvan Messenger
2 Wirewood Hivemaster

1 Elves of Deep Shadow

Total: 39

Spells:

2 Overrun

1 Living Wish

1 Weird Harvest

Total: 4

Sideboard:

4 Tormod’s Crypt

1 Wellwisher

2 Naturalize

2 Caller of the Claw

4 Duress

1 Elvish Scrapper

1 Elvish Lyrist