Historic - Some Dudes and an Elephant

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JOIN THE MTGHISTORIC SUBREDDIT AT: https://www.reddit.com/r/MtGHistoric/ 

JOIN THE MTGHISTORIC SUBREDDIT DISCORD AT:  https://discord.gg/pDffNVR 

WE HOST CASUAL, WEEKLY TOURNAMENTS EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY AND HAVE NO INTENTION TO EVER STOP.

Seriously tho, join the Discord. The tournaments are super fun, and everyone brings their pet decks so it's not just Gruul and Esper Control being shoved down your throat all the time.

Now that the shilling's out of the way, here's the most recent deck I've been playing. The Discord recently had a small 11 player tournament, and I came out on top with, of all decks, Selesnya Tokens.

This deck is way less refined than my others, since I really only have the tournament and some other test runs to base my experiences off of.

So uhh... yeah. Welcome to...

Some Dudes and an Elephant

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Why Selesnya Tokens?

Well, first off, I like Selesnya tokens. Like. Really like Selesnya tokens.

Second of all, the meta can get really greedy with Field of the Dead running around. Thus, I thought maybe I could make a deck that utilizes that.

Therefore, I decided to maybe try a more aggressive deck, and hey. What better way to do that than to try recreating one of my favorite aggro decks of all time?

The Gameplan:

So our deck's pretty straightforwards: we're Selesnya Tokens, so we want to vomit our hand onto the board and start swinging in with some anthems to (ideally) get them from 18 to -20 in a single turn. We don't really want to grind our opponent out - their individual topdecks are bound to be better than ours - and we can't afford to wait around for our opponent's gameplan to get online, so our deck is overall very low to the ground.

Very often, the deck can just become "try to kill opponento before they can launch a board wipe off", but hey. It's Selesnya tokens. What can ya do.

The Weenies:

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Here are the dudes.

What's a token deck if it doesn't have tokens, amirite? Our deck is jam-packed with token producers and cheap creatures that we're trying to turbo out, pump, and turn sideways for lethal.

Skymarcher Aspirantimage: Savannah Lionsimage with upside. Unsurprisingly, the City's Blessing is pretty damn easy to turn on in this deck, and having a flyer can let us get in for that last bit of damage when the ground starts getting clogged.

Legion's Landing // Adanto, the First Fortimage: I mean... at minimum, Legion's Landing is a 1/1 with lifelink, which isn't... bad, I guess. But when we can flip it (and you gosh darn bet we usually can), it helps us get a bit more mana and also gives us a pretty neat source of recurrable tokens. Just simply because it's so easy to flip this thing, I have no qualms with including Legion's Landing in the deck.

Giant Killerimage: 1 mana 1/2 tapper with some nice removal stapled on. Cut Down hits Bonecrusher Giantimage, Questing Beastimage, Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hungerimage, a big Ajani's Pridemateimage, and a lot more. Plus we can always just play a 1/2 tapper, which is pretty decent by itself. 

Raise the Alarmimage and Saproling Migrationimage: These are effectively the same cards in this deck, so I'll just talk about them together. We're paying 2 mana for 2 1/1s, which isn't anything particularly special. However, this lets us do some crazy stuff, like get a fully convoked Venerated Loxodonimage down on turn 3 and basically add 9 power to the board for 5 mana. Raise the Alarmimage has the nice benefit of being an instant, and Saproling Migrationimage has kicker for lategame. We don't really ever want to be at 6 mana, and being able to flash in extra blockers end of turn is really nice when we also want to save up mana for other things, so Migration's more of serving as Raise the Alarms number 5 and 6 instead of the other way around.

Emmara, Soul of the Accordimage: A bear with convoke upside. Slamming Emmara down turn 2 can feel really nice sometimes, but she's impressively bad on the draw. Plus, the fact she's only one body until she taps means that she can get a bit awkward when we're trying to say, flip Legion's Landing // Adanto, the First Fortimage or convoke out a Venerated Loxodonimage on limited lands. Nonetheless, she can be some real value, so I'm not against having 2 Emmaras in here.

History of Benaliaimage: A 3 mana enchantment that gives 8 power on the board to siwng with on turn 5? Yes please. Unfortunately, History's a bit slow in this meta, but so is the entire deck, and it can still be really powerful as a 3-drop. Plus, History gets us 3 permanents for the City's Blessing and 2 bodies for convoking stuff out. Just some nice value all around.

The Payoffs:

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And now we hit the big boys - the metaphorical elephants (in Venerated Loxodonimage's case, the literal elephant). These cards help us close the game once we've established a board.

Venerated Loxodonimage: This is a 5 drop we can usually power out on turn 3, letting us usually add 7 or more power onto the field early on. There's not much more to say about the elephant here except that he's good. A definite and easy 4-of. Drawing multiple in the opening hand can be a bit awkward, but the explosiveness that Loxodon brings is definitely worth it.

Trostani Discordantimage: Bam. An anthem. And bodies. And Agent of Treacheryimage hate because why not. Since most of our tokens will be 1/1s, Trostani can basically double our deck's damage instead of just a small boost that she would provide in other decks that don't go as wide. Plus, letting us drop 3 bodies onto the battlefield can really help convoking out a big March of the Multitudesimage or a Conclave Tribunalimage

March of the Multitudesimage: And here's another way to basically double our damage - just double the number of things we have in play. March can be really explosive in a board stall, and even if we're just casting it for X = 4, we're still adding a lot of power to the board if we can get an anthem down to buff them all. I don't like how March can just sit awkwardly in our hand until we can actually use it, so I'm not using the whole 4. But I think that it's powerful enough that 3 is a good amount.

The Utility:

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And now here's the rest of our deck - stuff to make sure that our gameplan goes by a bit smoother.

Flower // Flourishimage: Flower // Flourish basically serves as a tapland that can also be an anthem later on for an alpha strike. It's because of this card that we can run 20 lands and not get mana screwed every game. And then later on, sometimes +2/+2 to every creature is just what you need to finish the job.

Unbreakable Formationimage: Another anthem, Unbreakable Formation lets us get in without having to worry about any unfavorable trades. It also functions as board wipe protection, and since we can usually play tokens at instant speed, it's not a huge tempo loss if our opponent decides not to cast that Shatter the Skyimage.

Conclave Tribunalimage: Quite literally our only removal in the deck, Conclave Tribunal is a 1 or 2 mana Oblivion Ringimage when we need it to be. Having blanket removal is pretty nice for problematic permanents, and the fact that we don't need to tap 4 lands for it make it much more consistent than if we were to run say, Banishing Lightimage.

The Manabase:

We're running triple Flower // Flourishimage, so we can cut back on some lands. Especially since we'd prefer screwing more than flooding. So of course we're running the playset of Shocks and Checks.

We're running Castle Ardenvaleimages to serve as a poor man's Adanto.

We're also running two Ghost Quarterimages to deal with Field of the Deadimage, although any other utility land would do. In particular, I was thinking of Mobilized Districtimage or Arch of Orazcaimage.

A lot of our deck is white, so we're running 7 basic Plains, and the 1 basic Forest is mainly to be searched up for by Flower // Flourishimage.

The Sideboard:

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uhh... the sideboard. Still a WIP and I'm not even really sure what I'm supposed to be putting here. But here we go.

Adanto Vanguardimage: For control decks. It's basically a 3/1 with indestructible against them, and that's pretty darn good for 2 mana.

Drannith Magistrateimage: This is Lurrus hate. A 1/3 is a good wall against most of their board, and the ability to prevent them from playing Lurrus or escaping Kroxa shuts down a large portion of their gameplan. We can usually just end up flooding them with all the tokens, but we have to make sure they can't get the Lurrus or Kroxa value train going. I decided on Magistrate over Grafdigger's Cageimage because it was a body for convoking and attacking. It's possible cage is just better since it also stops Call of the Death-Dwellerimage and Cauldron Familiarimage from recurring.

Soul Wardenimage: Spicy RDW tech. This is me trying to be cheeky and gaining some life from all the tokans. But maybe it'd be better to just run like, Hushbringerimage so we can actually deal with opposing Soul Wardens.

Thorn Lieutenantimage: This is the one I'm not sure about the most. This is also RDW tech, since they can't remove the Lieutenant without also giving us a creature. However, most of the lists these days don't really care about your 2/3 when Anax is a 99/3 doublestriking trampler swinging in turn 4.

Baffling Endimage: For our aggressive matchups. The first that come to mind are Soul Sisters, RDW, and especially Lurrus sac. Not much to say here except that it's basically "2 mana: Exile target creature", which isn't half bad.

Elspeth, Sun's Nemesisimage and Gideon Blackbladeimage: Planeswalkers to try to grind against Control. Should probably just be double Gideon, but I really wanted to try making Elspeth work.

The Matchups:

I'm gonna be straight with you here. Apart from a couple decks, our matchups are abysmally bad.

vs. Soul Sisters: Soul Wardenimage locks us out of the game by making all of our tokens gain them life. We hate this matchup.

vs. Gruul: Burning-Tree Emissaryimage makes them go wider and taller than us. They also have a bunch of trample, so we can't even chump effectively. Sideboard Ferocidon makes us lose life for every token we create. We hate this matchup too.

vs. literally any Control: The matchup basically turns into "can we hold up an Unbreakable Formation the turn you wipe". If that's a yes, we can usually snatch the match. If not, things get really ugly. Also, Virulent Plagueimages intended for Field matchups absolutely demolish us. Not very favored.

vs. Field of the Dead: Field of the Deadimage makes more zombies than we can soldiers. Also, postboard they bring in Shatter the Skyimage or some other sort of mass removal, which we struggle against. Also not favored.

vs. RDW: This matchup might actually be ok if they're the lighter version and they don't draw Goblin Chainwhirlerimage. We can usually trade decently well, and powering out a turn 3 Venerated Loxodonimage can really stall the board in our favor. Slightly favored towards us to slightly not favored towards us. Depending on the deck.

vs. Lurrus Sac: We win this matchup almost all the time. Tokens are already pretty good against their "steal your stuff and sac it" gameplan, so it's very hard for them to 2-for-1 us. Plus, since we're a rogue deck and they're not, we get to bring in a bunch of good cards from the side and they struggle to bring in much more than Dead Weightimage. That means we become very heavily favored.

Wrapping Up:

This one's slightly shorter than the others just because I still need to do some testing (especially with HA3 that just came out).

Overall, I think this deck is a fun Tier 2-2.5 deck that can sometimes scrap out a win. In the tourney, I faced Lurrus Cycling, Mono Black Midrange, Lurrus Sac, and Bant Golos Field. I beat the first three, then lost to Field the first match, but managed to get them in the second match.

Honestly, I think the deck won the tournament by simply being a meta call rather than actually being good, so I don't expect Selesnya Tokens to become the next big thing. But hey, it's insanely fun, so I enjoyed it.

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ILike2Lose
Last Updated: 21 May 2020
Created: 21 May 2020
854 224 0

Mainboard - 60 cards (19 distinct)

Creature (15)
$0.20€0.050.03
$0.35€0.310.20
$0.400.02
$0.50€0.480.02
$0.44€0.230.02
Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, Artifact (25)
$0.49€0.340.02
$0.20€0.070.03
$1.33€0.820.02
$0.20€0.090.03
$0.20€0.190.03
$3.62€3.710.02
$0.98€0.970.06
$0.20€0.090.03
Land (20)
$10.58€9.680.24
$0.68€0.410.03
$2.72€1.880.02
$0.46€0.440.02

Sideboard - 15 cards (7 distinct)

$0.28€0.260.02
$0.25€0.170.03
$2.77€1.330.03
$13.30€17.603.19
$0.20€0.080.03
$0.95€0.750.02
$1.00€0.960.02

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