Burst of Green

Posted on May 15, 2013

One toy people have tried to break in Standard is Gyre Sage. The idea is that in combination with Burst of Strength and Increasing Savagery, we can create a bunch of mana and a huge Simic Elf very quickly. With an Arbor Elf, for example, we could, on turn three, cast Increasing Savagery on Gyre Sage and then tap it for

. Burst of Strength brings us down to

but also adds another +1/+1 counter and lets us tap for another

, bringing us up to

, which is plenty enough to flash back the Increasing Savagery. Next turn—or with another Burst of Strength, this turn—we can then attack for 17 or 18—or with Rancor, we can make that lethal—or just make a ton more mana and cast something like Worldspine Wurm.

While that’s far too inconsistent for competitive Standard play, I decided to take most of those cards and break the confines of the format, stretching back into Magic’s history to see what other tools we might find useful.

Elvish Redundancy

Gyre Sage is super-important in the sequence above. Burst of Strength and Increasing Savagery are the best there are at what they do, but they are replaceable, so we need to have backup for the Sage as well.

Fortunately, Mirrodin gave us Viridian Joiner. He doesn’t care about +1/+1 counters, instead generating mana based on his power. He doesn’t evolve, and he costs an extra mana up front, but gaining a boost from Rancor is pretty nice. I’m just happy we have eight of the Gyre Sage effect for the deck.

However, eight still isn’t that many. Fortunately, as our power-hungry Elves also happen to be green creatures, the widespread and banned-in-Modern Green Sun's Zenith can act as a 1-mana-extra copy of whichever Elf we want. With two of these, we bring our mana-producing combo core of Elves up to ten.

Strength, Energy, and Vitalization

Burst of Strength is so great at the job of untapping because it also grants a permanent +1/+1, and for Gyre Sage’s sake, that boost comes in the form of a counter. However, we’ll need a few more ways to untap our Elves than just the Bursts.

Vitalize is my favorite because it also untaps whatever other creatures we control, and it does so at instant speed—as opposed to the slower Mobilize. That way, if we have both a Joiner and a Sage, and they both have power boosts, Vitalize can be worth much more than a Burst of Strength. I decided to cut Seeker of Skybreak for space reasons, but she has a great untap superpower as well, and she works quite well in conjunction with Vitalize.

A pet card of mine is Instill Energy, though it always seems just bad enough to miss the cut. It seems quite strong here, though, as it is a single-target untap effect for one turn, but if you aren’t able to outright win that turn—which I think will be most of the time—it can continue generating value turn after turn, potentially creating large amounts of mana. And if you decide to run a massive creature as a finisher—such as Worldspine Wurm—a copy of Instill Energy can allow that creature to attack as though it had haste. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow a creature to activate abilities as though it had haste, so don’t drop a Viridian Joiner, attach an Instill Energy, and expect to start producing mana right away.

Sweet, Sweet Power Suite

Again, we start with the best tool for the job, which is Increasing Savagery. It has two points that make it such a great choice. First, it creates more +1/+1 counters than it costs mana, meaning the conversion rate is great when we spend it basically just to generate mana. We spend 4 mana, and we get 5 mana in return! It’s like a Dark Ritual! Kind of. Second, it has flashback. Being able to use the spell twice is obviously great, but spending 7 for 5 counters (a.k.a. mana) doesn’t sound great. Fortunately, it gives us 10 counters on the flash back instead, meaning we make 10 mana for only 7. Cabal Ritual anyone?

I wanted to find another +1/+1-counter-making card with a good conversion rate, but the only one I saw was Hunger of the Howlpack, and that only works with morbid, which this deck doesn’t have a particular talent for activating. Blessings of Nature can do a pretty great conversion for us as well, but only when it’s a miracle, and we can hardly count on that either.

So instead, I went for cards with one-to-one ratios, as that was the best I could find. Shape of the Wiitigo is somewhat expensive at 6, but that just means we are able to make 6 counters—an investment that pays off the more times we untap. Unfortunately, we lose a counter on each of our upkeeps if our creature isn’t engaging in combat, but even 5 is a lot of counters. I like the idea of playing with Decree of Savagery, as 6 mana for 4 counters and a card is somewhat enticing, but I think the 2 extra mana is just more important that a single card here . . . as much as it pains me to say so. Hard-casting the Decree is nice as well, but it’s a lot of mana, and it’s only good if we have two or three Elves.

I was pretty excited to be building a mono-green deck. Almost all of the decks I build are some degree of multicolored, so finding the exception was pretty cool. However, I just couldn’t stay away from blue. With a deck like this, spending so many card resources to generate mana and massive creatures, we’re bound to run out of fuel quite quickly, often leaving us without a way to win—or just with a single creature into which we’ve invested everything. Green has some ways of its own to draw cards, and I considered other blue cards—primarily Fathom Mage with some kind of Bioshift package—but ultimately, Give // Take stood out to me as the best option.

Primarily, it can just be cast as Give. We put 3 counters on an Elf for 3 mana—that’s the one-to-one ration I was looking for, so while I wouldn’t be happy with just that, it is passable for the slot. However, Take gives us another option later in the game when we need it. With an Elf with, for example, 10 or so counters, we can Give // Take and draw thirteen cards. That should put us in a pretty good position to start the engine up again, rebuilding the counters and possibly even drawing even deeper with another drawn Give // Take.

Other Tools

I tend to go all-in with my decks, and there are a couple other tools necessary to make the engine run smoothly—or at least not extremely clunkily. You might decide to find room for more utility spells, such as, you know, removal, protection, and/or other things that actually interact with your opponents besides just trying to combo out on them.

Manamorphose has always seemed to be such a weird card to me. Often, I want to run something like Skyshroud Elf to filter my mana from one color to another, but Manamorphose—which spends itself (a card) and 2 mana to give you 2 mana and a card—just does the job so much better. It seems to do nothing, but it actually does so much so efficiently. In a deck with Pyromancer Ascension, Melek, Izzet Paragon, or some other spell-doubling effect, Manamorphose is just a crazy-powerful card, but here, we can just dig a little deeper into the deck while gaining the blue mana we need for Give // Take.

Rancor is actually the deck’s seemingly innocuous win condition. We can make a huge creature or two, and we can make a ton of mana, and we might even be able to draw a whole bunch of cards, but the list I settled on is pretty win-condition-light. Rancor lets us take a massive mana-producer and turn it into a damage-dealer. You might think a massive beater is good enough on its own, but chump-blockers have their own opinion on the matter, and a turn or two of blocks can be the difference between winning and being blown out by a removal spell. Also, Rancor can really get the ball rolling with a Viridian Joiner on turn four or so.

Finally, we have Praetor's Counsel. I wanted a 7-or-more-mana spell, and this is the one I settled on. As we cast a bunch of untap effects, Manamorphoses, and copies of Give // Take, we might struggle to keep up the momentum. Well, picking up our graveyard should be all the fuel we need. After a Counsel, we can dig deep again with Take and Manamorphose, generating a ton more mana with the untap effects. This can also help us find the Rancor we need to finish out the game—or whatever other win condition you might decide to throw in.

If you want to be able to protect your creatures, you might find room somewhere for spells such as Apostle's Blessing and Ranger's Guile.

Elven Lands

Breeding Pool and Yavimaya Coast can make the

we might need for Give // Take, and two other lands round out the nonbasic portion of the deck. I threw in a single Wirewood Lodge as an additional untap effect. I’m not sure how frequently we’ll have extra lands available to spend—I think most of it will be floating

from Elf activations—but just in case, this singleton has the potential to generate a bunch of value. An ability on a land tends to be more potent than the same ability on a spell or creature because of the versatility lands have of just tapping for mana as usual.

Finally, we have Llanowar Reborn. This graft land from Future Sight starts with a +1/+1 counter of its own, and it’s willing to pass it on to any creature that comes along. Gyre Sage starts out producing 0 mana, and Viridian Joiner only makes 1, so Llanowar Reborn can give either the head start it needs with the small downside of initially entering the battlefield tapped. With no 1-drops in the deck, I hope that isn’t too big a downside.

"Burst of Green"

Creatures (8)
4 Gyre Sage
4 Viridian Joiner

Pyrohemia and Vigor

Another little combo idea I had at some point along the way—but that I didn’t feel fit into the deck—was using Vigor and Pyrohemia. With a Skyshroud Elf, Gyre Sage, Vigor, and Pyrohemia, we can spend 1 mana to deal 1 damage to each creature and each player. Instead of 1 damage, Gyre Sage and Skyshroud Elf will receive a +1/+1 counter each, and Gyre Sage can make that into mana. Make some , turn it with Skyshroud Elf, and activate Pyrohemia again. This sequence is limited both because Vigor can only take 5 before dying and because Gyre Sage can only tap for mana once, but it will let you kill off a bunch of creatures from the board while making some massive creatures and dwindling players’ life totals. Add in Opalescence and Noble Purpose, and you can make sure your life total doesn’t suffer while having a really weird enchantment creature Pyrohemia with a bunch of +1/+1 counters on it.