Danish brews, part II

Let's continue with some more sweet tech from Hans Henrik Rasmussen. If you missed it, you'll find the first part here. Enjoy! /Mg

Old School Lands

We don’t have a lot of toys for a lands deck, but we have Fastbond which is a lot by itself. Also, this deck includes the coolest win combo I’ve ever discovered: Hazezon Tamar plus Karakas which works in a very odd way. Hazezon Tamar comes into play with a trigger, but a so-called “delayed trigger”, so if you play him and then bounce him with Karakas the trigger is still there and will be resolved during your next upkeep where you get a bunch of sand warriors with no danger of them being removed in one swoop by your opponent removing Hazezon (since he is already gone). When your sand warriors have dwindled in number you can then replay Hazezon and do the trick again to make a new bunch.

Old School Lands

Sideboard

The second advantage of playing a lot of lands is that Nevinyrral’s Disk can be used quite effectively. It’s too bad that Mishra’s Factory is good in almost all decks, otherwise Lands would really have something going for it, but it is still a fun deck to try.

Desert is quite good and Desert with Candelabra is excellent. Island of Wak-Wak as the less good Maze of Ith of course needs to be included, and the Drop of Honey Living Plane combo is also a good option. And of course we need Tabernacle though it doesn’t combo too well with Hazezon (still it isn’t that bad to have to tap out if you’ve got enough tokens to win).

Consecrate Land fits the theme and works very well on a Mishra’s Factory or in case you want to preserve your Maze of Ith or something similar.

A fun start is Turn 1: Fastbond, Lands, Wheel of Fortune, More Lands – Turn 2: Hazezon Tamar with Karakas – Turn 3: sand warriors en masse.

The sideboard has a lot of cards against control: 2 Sylvan Library, 1 Greed, 1 Tsunami and 3 REB as well as 1 Wrath and 2 StP against creature decks and finally some massive tech against land destruction in Equinox and Pyramids.

A note about Hazezon Tamar: I’ve also played him in another deck that seeks to take full advantage of the tokens, playing 3 Hazezon, 4 Gauntlet of Might, 3 Jacques le Vert to pump them as well as 4 Kird Ape and 4 Scarwood Goblins (which are also pumped by both le Vert and Gauntlet). It really wasn’t that hard to get something like 8 3/5s on board.

And another note: I’m right now toying with both a Lands deck featuring Ley Druid to have even more Maze-Desert-Island of Wak-Wak untapping as well as a Lands deck featuring Sindbad/Sylvan Library/Field of Dreams/Millstone as the draw engine (milling your opponent with Field of Dreams in play feels very much like fate sealing with Jace the Mind Sculptor, except way better) – perhaps more on these later.

Old School Goblins

Even back in 93/94 there were some very decent Goblins available. Our house rule of letting the Alpha Orcish Oriflamme have a casting cost of 1R doesn’t hurt of course.

Old School Goblins

Sideboard

The main trick here is including 3 Pendelhaven to have something to pump all of your 1/1s in case you don’t get an anthem effect going (remember to pump before you attack if you have an Orcish Oriflamme in play). And splashing green also gives you access to perhaps the best Goblin (or at least second to Balloon Brigade) in Scarwood Goblins. The lone Blood Moon is nice to make Goblins of the Flarg unblockable (most likely more Blood Moons main deck would be better but remember Old School is about style, not winning!). Late game Fireballs can get pretty big with a couple of Gauntlets in play.

The sideboard is usual stuff but worth highlighting is the Hurricane which doesn’t hurt your creatures and can also be used to finish of the opponent (I’ve often played one main deck) and green allows for Tranquility which takes care of especially COP: Red, Moat and Control Magic on Goblin King. Also, against decks with few, big creatures Raging River is an all-star letting you bypass a big blocker.

MonoWhite Suleiman

This one is janky! Certainly not the best deck ever, but if the coins flip your way anything is possible. The main combo is Bottle of Suleiman with either COP: Artifacts or Martyrs of Korlis to prevent the damage. Argothian Archaeologist brings back the bottle for another flip. Ashnod’s Transmogrant is pretty fun in that it can both make a turn 1 Savannah Lion into a sizable early threat and also play defense by turning an opponent’s creature into an artifact and then letting you use COP: Artifacts on it or tap it with Relic Barrier. The Urza Lands feed all of these shenanigans and if everything goes well, you can make several 5/5 Djinns per turn. Or at least loose several coin flips per turn!

MonoWhite Suleiman

Sideboard

Maybe Angelic Voices has a place in here. A version splashing green could add Argothian Pixies which could block everything Ashod’s transmogrant has … transmogranted? And also Titania’s Song to make the bottles attack on their own.

The sideboard has some tech in Reverse Polarity (Reverse Damage is even better though less on theme) and Armageddon Clock, more creature hate and more card draw versus control.

I got a little carried away and made a token using a picture from another card as the Djinn:

Djinn tokens

Well, that’s all for now. For an eventual Part 2, aside from those mentioned above, I’ve got decks featuring Eureka, Land Equilibrium, Tron Decks in each color, Aladdin’s Lamp, Leviathan(!) with Halfdane, The awesome Guardian Beast-Life Matrix-Nevinyrral’s Disk-combo, Living Lands, Obelisk of Undoing/Stasis, Rukh Egg/Drop of Honey/Disk/Kabal Ghoul, Serendib Djinn/Land Tax etc. (oh and discard – The Rack/Storm World are really very good cards).

Any and all questions are welcome. Thanks for reading and have fun (if you’re not having fun, you’re probably playing some other format)!

Hans