This round of Ironroot Chef is a little different from before. With the 2015 Community Cup on the horizon, the opportunity for a special challenger presented itself. Robert Schuster, a designer on the Magic Online team, arrived to dish out the flavor in a pre-September showdown.

Why does September matter? Ironroot Judge Adam Styborski is on the Community Team this year, and there wasn’t any way he wouldn’t turn down a chance to put his flavor chops to work taking down a Wizards warrior twice.

With an unusual competition, you need an unusual judge. Ironroot Chefs Mike Linnemann and Ant Tessitore joined forces to fill in the void left by Adam stepping into the arena.

Can a judge of flavor prepare it as well as he claims? Can the Wizards team find any room for an early victory? This giant-sized Ironroot Chef fight can only be settled by giant-sized taste.

This is Battle Giant Caterpillar.

Challenger Robert Schuster

When researching what to cook up for the fine judges of this competition, I was immediately struck by the fact that there’re very few butterflies represented on Magic cards. In order to do our plump friend justice, I figured it was high time we made a few more. To do this, we’d need to be some sort of visionary—or at least enlist one’s help. But I’m getting ahead of myself!

First, we’re going to need a place to keep our plump wurm friends and feed them plenty of tasty greenery while they prepare for their grand transformations. The lands on many planes have wonderful gardens and blossoming expanses of lush leaves. These will be the buffets that we treat our aspiring wurms to! Normal wurms just won’t do for this though. For you judges who demand something special, we’re going to need to feed epicly large appetites. That’s where the massive leaves of the Horizon Canopy come in. With the luscious wilds, we’ll need the help of a Leaf Gilder and a literal Gardener to help keep things growing right.

But the vast majority of the wurms in Magic won’t turn to flying beauties of their own volition. For this, we’ll need the help of the Simic. Their Simic Growth Chambers and Breeding Pools are perfect for aiding us with the next evolutionary step.

Next, we’ll figure out who’s up to the task of helping us make the Multiverse’s most dangerous butterflies. On Innistrad, there exist brilliant wizard Wingcrafters who share our vision that even the biggest green creatures should have a chance to experience the exhilaration of flight. Let’s be honest. I only know of one person who’s successfully made wurms fly in the past. If his work on Simic Sky Swallower is any indication, we’re going to need the expertise that Momir Vig, Simic Visionary brings to the table to get the job done.

Note that I don’t feel it’s correct to use simple Levitation to get our wurms in the skies. Obviously, we want the wings to be as butterfly-eqsue as possible, so we’ll be enchanting our specimen with only the best Pollenbright Wings that mana can buy. Also, I feel that the gossamer strands of Ghostly Wings will both protect our specimens and synergize with our friend the Arrogant Wurm. We should also invest in further protecting our investments with a Lifeline (which additionally allows our Giant Caterpillars to pump out many beautiful progeny).

What if our creations turn on us? We’ll have to calm them with Pollen Lullabys and distract them with a Wall of Blossoms. Let’s hope they won’t bite the hand that feeds them, but perhaps the Oracle of Nectars knows the answer to that question.

Finally, we have our roster of the best butterfly candidates that Magic’s wurms have to offer. The Caustic Caterpillar may come from humble means, but that doesn’t mean he should be ignored. Hailing from Rath, we have the non-too-tidy Dirtcowl Wurm, whose growth potential makes it prime for taking to the skies. Mirrodin has wurms that can engulf whole creatures in one quick haumph! Let’s see how they look when fluttering around the battlefield! Alara has several interesting species to choose from. The wurms they’ve enlisted have probably always dreamed of flight, and in this deck, they even have a chance of sprouting wings and flying on away on their own.

Havenwood Wurm makes the cut for proving its resilience. Also in the big and strong category, we have the Symbiotic and Rootbreaker Wurms. And if those aren’t enough, we have a few wurms that come with wurms inside of them: Penumbra Wurm and Worldspine Wurm. Wurmcalling and Crush of Wurms will further serve to keep us crawling with fresh would-be-butterflies.

There you have it, honorable judges: the best sixty-card home for a Giant Caterpillar and a grand evolutionary plan to make Giant Butterflies worth of the secret ingredient’s flavor.

Note that the Forests below should be Christopher Rush Forests because of the green, tasty-looking leaves!

Battle Giant Caterpillar ? Ironroot Chef | Robert Schuster

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Arrogant Wurm
• 1 Budoka Gardener
• 1 Caustic Caterpillar
• 1 Dirtcowl Wurm
• 1 Engulfing Slagwurm
• 1 Havenwood Wurm
• 1 Leaf Gilder
• 1 Metamorphic Wurm
• 1 Oracle of Nectars
• 1 Penumbra Wurm
• 1 Rootbreaker Wurm
• 1 Simic Sky Swallower
• 1 Symbiotic Wurm
• 1 Worldspine Wurm
• 2 Enlisted Wurm
• 2 Wall of Blossoms
• 3 Wingcrafter
• 4 Giant Caterpillar
• 1 Momir Vig, Simic Visionary

• Spells (10)
• 2 Pollen Lullaby
• 1 Crush of Wurms
• 1 Wurmcalling
• 2 Ghostly Wings
• 3 Pollenbright Wings
• 1 Lifeline

• Lands (24)
• 5 Forest
• 1 Blossoming Sands
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Novijen, Heart of Progress
• 1 Selesnya Sanctuary
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Tranquil Garden
• 2 Vivid Creek
• 2 Vivid Grove
• 2 Vivid Meadow
• 4 Horizon Canopy

Buy This Deck

Ironroot Judge Adam Styborski

Giant Caterpillar isn’t a curious card.

It does Magic’s best impression of transformation for the era it was designed in: investing some mana for growth, sacrificing its current form to become something new. It’s the essence of nature to behave like that, and it captures what the natural world shows us everywhere, with something dying so that something else may live.

It’s a transformation so simple my daughter can understand it.

Before unpacking my cooking tools and sitting down to tap into the flavor of Giant Caterpillar, we embarked on some field research of the real thing: touching a butterfly, seeing real hungry caterpillars, and gaining a broader understanding that the world around us was refreshing. Passing from one form to another—natural transformation—delights her.

Caterpillars go away, but they become butterflies, just as she’ll grow from being small to maybe taller than daddy and as Grover (our cat) will someday feed worms in the ground. We’re quite big-picture, like the Golgari, though with significantly less the-dead-can-rise-again in view.

Cards like Evolutionary Leap and Natural Order are integral to the world: Things change over time, or simply have to die, to advance things. Creatures like Tukatongue Thallid, Deadly Grub, and Bond Beetle pass on their power in time. Endless Cockroaches and Fog of Gnats capture the tenacity of the nature around us with an estimated ten quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) insects in the world: a mind-boggling two hundred million insects per person.

And if you’ve traveled the world—the truly wide world beyond the reach of everyday Internet and convenience—you know those insects are deadly.

Heartstabber Mosquito is a real threat to some places in the world. Ant Queen and Hornet Queen are the apex of insect developments, pulling together the tenacity for true Attrition by numbers with the coordination of a singular purpose.

The caterpillar-to-butterfly isn’t just about insects, it’s about cycles, too: Given enough time, everything will Putrefy or undergo Regrowth for future generations. From the plants the provide the sources of food—Wall of Roots, Wall of Blossoms—to the apex predators of the microcosms around us—Giant Mantis, Giant Spider—the world is full of natural cycles and development. Rampant and Primal Growth underpins what nature self-designed to do: constantly push forward for life despite the death it encounters.

This is what the Giant Caterpillar really shows us:

Stybs's Giant Caterpillar Lesson ? Ironroot Chef | Adam Styborski

• Creatures (33)
• 1 Hornet Queen
• 2 Ant Queen
• 2 Endless Cockroaches
• 2 Fog of Gnats
• 2 Giant Mantis
• 2 Giant Spider
• 2 Heartstabber Mosquito
• 2 Wall of Roots
• 3 Bond Beetle
• 3 Deadly Grub
• 4 Giant Caterpillar
• 4 Tukatongue Thallid
• 4 Wall of Blossoms

• Spells (12)
• 2 Putrefy
• 2 Natural Order
• 2 Primal Growth
• 2 Rampant Growth
• 2 Regrowth
• 1 Attrition
• 1 Evolutionary Leap

• Lands (25)
• 4 Swamp
• 9 Forest
• 4 Jungle Hollow
• 4 Pine Barrens
• 4 Tainted Wood

Buy This Deck

The deck is a small, visible slice of the massive world of life we live in. Harmless, and annoying, creatures are in greater numbers than the powerful and dangerous ones. They will grow, changes, and fuel development through their life and death. And they can be found in natural environments (no Rot Farms where I live!) a reasonable trip away.

Notes:

I originally wanted to create a Pauper-legal decklist that would work on Magic Online, but in my past criticisms of competitors, I’ve pointed out that additional restrictions do not always net benefits above their drawbacks. Excluding cards like Natural Order and Evolutionary Leap because of their rarity would have been foolish, but these cards are not the centerpiece of the deck either—all flavor is seasoned intentionally.

It’s also vaguely multiplayer-focused with the goal of proving nature out, amassing a growing army of small insects to overrun the battlefield over time. I can’t think of a better analogy for how insect infestation or reclamation-by-nature would feel in Magic.

For cards where multiple art or flavor text is available, here are cards I’d choose to best present the deck:

• Giant Caterpillar — Visions, as it’s a huge part of nature and the deck but passive and endearing
• Giant Spider — Unlimited or Revised, as the white border and lighter printing washes out the too-dark brown, making it look like a common wood spider around the house
• Rampant Growth — Seventh Edition, as nature truly grows solutions to her problems
• Putrefy — Dragon’s Maze, as dying simply means returning to feed life again by breaking down whence we came
• Regrowth — Vintage Masters, because I have a damn tree I cut down that keeps coming back from its roots no matter how many times I chop and hack it away. It’s persistence is just a taste of the broader world itself.
• Jungle Hollow — Two each from Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged since, over time, nature always grows
• Swamp — Steve Prescott’s from Lorwyn—it’s vibrant and bright with the colors of life. Swamps have decay, but from that decay, life flourishes.
• Forest — Tony Roberts’s from Mirage—these match the brightness of Prescott’s Swamps but are a from-a-panorama variety to mix and match at will

The Vote

Below, you can read the judge’s scoring to see how Nate and the “MANT” of Mike and Ant cast their ballots. However, this is your chance to score the winner of Battle Giant Caterpillar.

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The Judging

Nate’s Judgment

Nathan Holt @walktheplanes

Nate’s the host of Walking the Planes, a documentary series about Magic: The Gathering with a healthy dose of sketch comedy (for value).

Two odes to Mother Nature: one that reveres her uncorrupted purity and one that warps her creatures with bizarre, Simic science. You chefs are an odd couple. The names "Adam & Robert" may one day supplant "Oscar & Felix" or even "Harold & Kumar." And like those funny, friendly foes, the two of you have put on an entertaining show for us!

Challenger Robert Schuster

Your strange brew has the same mad, whimsical touch as the Simic that you honor with it. I don't think I would have ever stared at Giant Caterpillar and thought, "I must make wurms fly!" But that's the beauty of Ironroot Chef. Now I've tasted a flavor I've never tasted before—very creative. Momir Vig would be proud.

I wanted more boldness. There's kinda just a whole lotta wurms in this dish. Don't get me wrong, I love eating worms. I used to eat them at summer camp to gross out the girls and then later claim to be sick when I didn't want to do arts and crafts. But too many wurms gets a little bland. Your only subtheme seems to revolve around Pollen Lullaby and Oracle of Nectars, which is a little thin to get points for boldness.

And now we have "the talk"—no, not about the birds and the bees, but about the Wurms and the Insects. Giant Caterpillar is an insect larva. Wurms are the descendants of the Elder Land Wurms, which is the name that the Elder Dragons took when they lost their limbs and wings in the Elder Dragon Wars. Wurms have saurian heads (like dragons) and endoskeletons. Calling a caterpillar a wurm makes less sense than calling a tiger a type of wolf, simply because they kind of share the same shape and they're both hungry. And even if you were confusing wurms with worms (also a flavor crime), you should know that worms are also not insects. So yeah, what's up with that?

Creativity: 3

Boldness: 1

Adherence to the theme: 1

Ironroot Chef Adam Styborski

A nice, classy, simple, elegant dish. A tried and true recipe. Tasty. The theme of a wide army of insects is balanced by a subtheme of transformation and regrowth. Didn't blow me away with something I've never tasted before, but I like this flavor. It's an old favorite.

Like Robert's deck, I wanted more boldness. I wanna see what happens when this deck hits the fifth gear and the wheels start to wobble and shake like they might fall off. How far could you have pushed this theme? What's the biggest thing this deck could do if the stars aligned?

Your adherence to the theme is pretty much perfect. The essence of Giant Caterpillar is natural processes and transformation. You hit that nail right on the head.

Creativity: 2

Boldness: 1

Adherence to the theme: 3

MANT’s Judgement

Challenger Robert Schuster — Ant’s Judgement

You brought many flavors to the table this day! The Mercadian Masques version of our secret ingredient is lacking any beloved flavor text, so I can appreciate that you decided to allow the narrative of the card itself to inform your deck-building. Gameplay is one of the many flavors of Magic after all.

From the onset, this challenge was a tough one indeed. A quick Gatherer search will confirm your observation that there is a severe lacking in both caterpillars and butterflies in Magic. What is an aspiring chef to do?

You chose to take a scientific approach and attempted to create your own butterflies. I must admit, I was not on board with your use of wurms at first glance. However, your use of Horizon Canopy and its football-field-sized leaves had me thinking back to fond memories of reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Image found here

I do wish you would have continued this theme of gigantic leaf-eaters with a few copies of the Future Sight land-grabber Edge of Autumn.

Unlike its reprint, Giant Caterpillar’s original Visions version does in fact have flavor text, and though you used Magic’s wurms and not worms, I still felt there was some connection there worth noting.

We all know that you can feed a wurm gigantic leaves all you want, it still isn’t going to turn into a butterfly. As Tyler Durden would say, “Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”

Employing the Simic Combine and its masterful biomancers to create mutant wurm butterfly creations is not only smart, it crafted a compelling narrative that I can actively experience in game via the wing-themed enchantments you included in your list.

All in all, I felt your creativity was solid, your inclusions were bold, and—while the Giant Caterpillar itself got a little lost in a crowd of giant wurms—the overall theme was captured nicely.

Challenger Robert Schuster — Mike’s Judgement

I love butterflies. Hailing from Minnesota, we see Monarch butterflies cross our northern border of Castle Black on their trip down to Mexico for the winters. They are beautiful and epitomize my state’s relaxing summers on lakes in the outdoors.

Adding to my excitement is that I know two art collectors who snapped up both versions of the original artworks to Giant Caterpillar, simply due to the whimsical nature. Much to my personal enjoyment, whimsy is not this challenge—do not be fooled about the serious-business nature of the Ironroot Chef competition.

I keep finding ways to like your deck after each read, as after the first read, I didn’t get it.

While wurms are technically just big caterpillars and Magic has countless examples of gaining wings for flight, one of the easiest art descriptions to write, I feel there’s something missing here.

Your synergy is fun, the wurm-to-butterfly idea is solid, but you’re a designer, you know when you’re picking low-hanging pollenated bright fruit. Shimmering Wings is actually more in tune with what you were trying to do with making wurms gain wings. The art even shows you an example! It’s right there!

Shimmering Wings by Carl Critchlow

Speaking of on-point art, where was Warping Wurm? It’s on color and on flavor that it disappears only to eat more, coming back larger and ready to be butterflied. Also, it’s one of Scott Fischer’s early major works, an utterly beautiful painting that would fit also into a transformation of art into amazing. I’ll let the latter slide, but not the former—that’s an egregious oversight such that I should stop now.

Warping Wurm by Scott Fischer

Using singleton wurms was a smart choice, and making them into butterflies is fun, but it feels like a draft to me. It’s rushed. You began so strong with blossom walls, with horizon canopies, and with setting us in the scene of a delicate creature being tended, and then you added a bio-hazard enormous butterfly. Your Kamigawa block could be more finely selected, and your natural growth versus your unnatural growth fights each other for breathing room. For example, Wurmcalling and Crush of Wurms are great cards, but they seem like an afterthought, as a Simic deck would unnaturally “grow” the wurms faster and bigger. That could be ramp spells for Simic, or “fertilizer” if you will.

It feels like two decks in one, and while both are good, neither is great. As such, it’s a good deck with really great ideas. I like it, but I don’t love it. It’s a high-school girlfriend, not a wife. It just needs time, some love, and some tightening to be perfect.

MANT’s Ruling

Creativity: 2

Boldness: 3

Adherence to the theme: 2

Ironroot Judge Adam — Ant’s Judgement

Ironroot Judge Adam, every great chef knows that you don't just wing it in the kitchen. I appreciated the fact that you took the time to not only do your research, but get your daughter involved as well. However, showcasing pictures of the little card-sorting machine will not make your decklist any more flavorful, and so I cannot justify granting you any extra points for their inclusion, however cute they may be.

Where your opponent went all in on the caterpillar-to-butterfly theme, you decided to focus on the broader picture. Whereas your rival focused on the fantastical, you honed in on the natural. You peeled back the cocoon around our ingredient and revealed the true lessons involved when observing the natural world.

Through your decklist, you were able to capture many of life’s cycles. Your use of Evolutionary Leap and Natural Order were perfect representations of what our crawly critter is going through. Rampant and Primal Growth allow the players to experience that same growth for themselves, an added narrative that was appreciated in your list.

Where you began to lose me was with your inclusion of insects known to swarm over the earth. While I agree that cockroaches and spiders showcase a level of determination on par with our plump little flyer, I have not known caterpillars to take over the battlefield the way I would expect cockroaches to. I feel that in your attempt to capture the tenacity of all insects, you caused the ingredient to no longer be the star.

Finally, I noticed that you did not include Magic’s only other caterpillar in your deck. I also know for a fact that you know I named the little bugger, and for that, I dock you one friendship point.

While your creativity and boldness were not lacking, I felt that, like your competitor, you allowed the Giant Caterpillar to get lost in a swarm of other creatures (even if it does fit the Golgari way of life).

Ironroot Judge Adam — Mike’s Judgement

This is new. You built what you thought we would, but your choices are tight. You touched on something deeper than just a card game. We have been doing this a bit too often, involving family in our flavorful decks, but you held back to show us something about art: the memento mori.

Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Liber chronicarum by Hartmann Schedel

This concept was a reminder that you, too, have to die. It was a religious marrying of excess, vanity, and the deadly sins to concentrate on the afterlife through Christianity. It is literally everywhere in Renaissance paintings. If you ever see moldy fruit on a still life, that’s what that means. Even our fellow artist Adam Rex showed us an example in Terror:

Terror by Adam Rex

That is what’s hidden beneath the surface of this simple, “I’m talking about butterflies, guys.” No, no, you’re not. I see what you did there. That’s very creative of you.

I don’t feel as strong a boldness, considering the mechanic is so visible, apparent, and streamlined. The land inclusion feels bold, but upon closer look, to someone who looks at land art—a lot—it could’ve gone deeper. Of all the art choices, they’re a solid B+.

Your aversion to the Simic disgusting abominations of nature is a wise one, as butterflies are as delicate as a singular insect, with slow changes like humans building an apartment building shattering them. The three creatures of giant bugs feel arbitrary to me, but if it were just a giant caterpillar, it feels weirder for it to be alone.

I feel some wonder of childhood science classes, of me looking at bugs, to being a teenager and making fireworks and finally to respecting nature as an Eagle Scout. This is very well done, and the intentional choices show the dedication to deck-building.

MANT’s Ruling

Creativity: 3

Boldness: 2

Adherence to the theme: 2

Voting closes midnight Thursday, and the first winner will be announced Friday (8/21/2015). Follow @IronrootChef on Twitter for the final score and victory announcement and to share your ideas for secret ingredients. Chairman Holt will continue to use your suggestions to challenge our chefs to the core.

And if you think you have what it takes to challenge the chefs, send an email to IronrootChef AT gmail DOT com with all of your flavorful qualifications. We’re looking for new Ironroot Chefs and competitors, and you could be the next to take a shot at impressing the judges.