Explorational Frenzy

Welcome back everyone!

I hope you guys have survived your self-induced food coma and are ready to come back to Standard. With Ravnica Allegiance spoiling soon, we will surely have a lot of new toys to play with here in the Lab.

Gabe, a friend of mine from Team Champ, referred me to a R/G based deck that used the same explore package as the BG midrange deck. The full playsets of Wildgrowth Walker, Jadelight Ranger and Merfolk Branchwalker were an auto-include in the list but that’s all where the similarities stop. The RG deck pushed the explore mechanic even further by making every creature trigger explore through Path of Discoveries

This means that Jadelights will now explore for 3, Merfolk for 2, and a lone Wildgrowth Walker can make itself bigger with zero assistance needed.  With so much lands getting drawn in between explore triggers, there should be way to drop them just as quick.

Four copies of Wayward Swordtooth de-clogs our hand of excess lands and helps get to City’s Blessing quicker. Llanowar Scout comes in as a one-off, but essenially the 5th copy of Wayward because I really want this effect available to us early. A 1/3 body for 2 is also not bad to hold down early aggression to help us stabilize and get our motor running.

What makes the deck go crazy is Coffee. Experimental Frenzy together with Path of Discovery sculpts the top of our deck allowing us to play whatever is on top, most of the time. The problem of revealing 2 lands off of Frenzy is minimized thanks to Swordtooth. In multiples, we can technically play 4-5 spells a turn and play 2-3 lands easy.

I’m also playing a single copy of Dryad Greenseeker to somewhat minimize the risk of having too much lands on top of the library. We can use Dryad Greenseeker to draw that land and clear the top of our library, and use Llanowar Scout to play the land despite having Experimental Frenzy out.

Another up side of running a bunch of 1/3 creatures is that they survive Fiery Cannonade pretty well. Sure the Branchwalker will die from it but it usually dies in combat since it’s not designed to block well anyway unlike her brother in black, Seeker’s Squire.

What do we do with all the mana, you ask? We burn face, that’s what. Kicking Fight with Fire is not unusual for the deck that can generate 9 mana before turn 6 even without Llanowar Elves. Casting an uncounterable Banefire has also won me games against Jeskai control. Just be careful with kicking Fight with Fire against UR based control decks because they can cast Expansion and copy it and burn you first (kicker does not add cost to the CMC).

Here’s the final list I ended up with, with my own take on the sideboard plan.

Upon testing, the deck is very weak to fliers, sweepers, and planeswalkers. There are ways to mitigate this within the 75 but because this is a build-around deck, we must recognize the weaknesses in case you’re interested to build it.

Fight with Fire is in the deck specifically for flying creatures like Shalai, Lyra and Aurelia. It is short of 1 damage to kill Doom Whisperer but thankfully it’s not a common sight to see. We can always kick FoF to deal with it, and some other creature lying around.

The sideboard plan changes the overall game play of the deck. I side the big fat hexproof creatures in against control, midrange and go-tall decks. With the decreasing number of Goblin Chainwhirler, Vine Mare has become more playable now then ever before. Joining the hexproof club is Nullhide Ferox as the king of 4-drops and Carnage Tyrant as the coup de grace.

I also play 2 copies of Find // Finality in the sideboard to compliment the hexproof package we’re siding in. If the opponent is busy trying to get rid of our creatures, then we retrieve them very easily, we can keep them off of their game plan while we progress our board, explore with Frenzy, play all our lands and keep doing our stuff.

Vivien Reid comes in for two specific purposes. She keeps us running by providing the gas, and she shoots down Niv-Mizzet and Drakes really well. I’ve made some plays where I used her to remove Experimental Frenzy so I can dump all the cards I have in my hand with her -3 ability.

That’s it for today’s new year deck tech. I hope you guys continue to subscribe, like, comment, and share the content you see here. Let’s break that 100,000 visitors/views milestone together!

May you all top deck lethal in all of your games!

Vanson