April 20th Deck Tech [R/G Werewolves]

April 20, 2012

This week we’re going Tribal. We take a popular tribe and build around that idea.

Transform cards are not going to be featured in Avacyn Restored, so we should play with them while we can. And nothing embodies transformation cards better than Werewolves.

I’m going to present two similar decks, one built with more of a budget in mind, and one that wants to play the more expensive Werewolves. We’ll start with the budget version, and then dive into the expensive version afterwards.

As a rule of thumb we should never count on our werewolves being flipped 100% of the time, we will aim to keep them flipped as reliably and for as long as possible. But we must assume a worst case scenario, so our creatures must be good on front first and foremost, with a nice bonus on the back should the situation work in our favor.

We’re a pretty aggressive deck with a curve topping out at the 4 mana mark. We would like to run Copperline Gorge since it will give us the most flexibility and fixing with our early drops, but any fixing with Rootbound Crag is better than none at all. Werewolves transform after a turn where neither player casts a spell. So that means we need to be able to do things with our mana that isn’t a spell, so we include Kessig Wolf Run as both a mana dump, and a late game out if you need to squeeze in a bit more damage.

Reckless Waif is a very aggressive one drop, if your oponent doesn’t have a turn 1 play you can have a 3/2 beater ready to go on turn 2. While significantly worse when on the draw a flipped Waif is still a reasonable threat. Wolfbitten Captive is another potentially aggressive 1 drop, with built in pump it’s especially good for using your mana while not casting spells to flip your werewolves. In the early game you want Captive unflipped so you can reliably pump, his stat gains from being flipped are medeocre but the jump to a 4 mana requirement for pump makes it less useful at the start. But at the end 4 mana for a 6/6 is a pretty good tradeoff. Young Wolf is just another aggressive drop for us, being able to have some board presence against removal is important, with our high density of X/1’s (on the front side) baiting our removal with the wolf is a trade we take all day long.

Mayor of Avabruck is our first Lord. He buffs all of our humans when on the front side, this means all of our unflipped werewolves are now slightly better, though his restriction to human does not buff our flipped werewolves or wolves. He is a 1/1 making him very vulnerable to removal so be aware of that. After flipping he buffs all werewolves and wolves while generating wolf tokens, this is his ideal state buffing all of our creatures and outside of Tragic Slip/Gut Shot range.

Kruin Outlaw is a potential finisher and a big utility card, though the aggressive red cost in a more green weighted deck can make this a difficult creature to cast. Unflipped a 2/2 with first strike is a decent creature, after flipping a 3/3 with double strike is great, with the exceptional bonus of turning all of your werewolves into Stormblood Berserker, making advantageous attacks and preventing simple chump blocks against token decks. Daybreak Ranger is our main answer to spirit/delver decks. On the front side you can ping down any small flyer, and on the flip side her ability to fight any creature becomes very valuable removal on a stick, with 5/5 stats this wolf is able to take down all but the very biggest creatures. Immerwolf is our second Lord, and most importantly prevents our werewolves from flipping back. A highly synergistic lynch-pin of our deck, Immerwolf gives us board advantage and allows us to cast spell freely without worying about flipping our creatures back.

Instigator Gang is our curve topper. On the front side it’s a passive battlecry, on the flip side it’s a Buff Banner and a great 5/5 trampler as well. After we top out at 4 mana we can usually pas a turn without too many downsides to boost up our creatures to finish the game.

Passing a turn to flip our werewolves is usually a sub par option, but we have a trump card. Moonmist flips our werewolves and negates our opponents combat damage, pretty much guaranteeing we are victorious in combat this round. If Immerwolf is on the feild, even if Moonmist is our second spell of the turn we won’t flip our werewolves back. A valid tactic is turn 3 immerwolf, then on turn 4 Mayor + moonmist to flip and buff our werewolves and have mayor generate a token the turn he comes out.

I also mainboard Mutagenic Growth, this is to protect our important 1/1’s from Tragic Slip/Gut Shot while giving us a combat trick as well should we need it.

Another card that work very well for werewolves is Full Moon’s Rise, an enchantment to buff up our werewolves and give them trample, but most importantly we can sac it to regenerate all of our werewolves after a board wipe. Since our flipped werewolves technically have a Converted Mana Cost of 0, they are extremely vulnerable to Ratchet Bomb, Full Moon’s Rise is our best out against that while still being a good card if they don’t have Ratchet Bomb out.

Now on to the big budget deck.

Huntmaster is our biggest gun, so we’re going to build to enable him. We definitly lean more toward green in this build, removing both our red 1 drop of Waif and the red intensive Kruin Outlaw. But we do have a few new toys, Birds of Paradise is a good alternative 1 drop, the sooner we can get Huntmaster (or other bombs) out the better. Since Huntmaster is our biggest gun we want as many of him as possible, so we cheat and run Green Sun’s Zenith. We can tutor up Huntmaster, Immerwolf, Daybreak Ranger, or Mayor when we need them. We also run Garruk Relentless for extra wolves, creature tutor, or an Overrun ult. We also play very agressive, and with Huntmaster flipping fairly often we want to make the best of his creature kill, or chump with wolf. Brimstone Volley is a great way to squeeze in some extra damage for a win against ramp decks that stabalize with a Titan or White decks that think they’ve stabalized after a Wrath. Our biggest problems are other aggressive decks, mostly White and Red decks, so we have Sword of War and Peace to protect against their spot removal while helping us win the damage race.

That should be a fairly broad archetype for starting a werewolves themed deck, there’s a lot of room for customization and tuning in each version. Always build for your meta, be that your playgroup, FNM, or the Pro Tour, pre-board and build accordingly.