Against the Odds: XXX Stompy (Modern)

Tweet by SaffronOlive // Nov 16, 2017

video modern Against the Odds

Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 110 of Against the Odds. Last week, we had an all-Iconic Masters Against the Odds poll in celebration of the set's release this week, and in the end, it was the newly uncommon legend Rosheen Meanderer that came out on top! As such, this week, we are heading to Modern to play a deck I'm calling XXX Stompy, which looks to use the oodles of mana Rosheen Meanderer makes to play some massive X-threats early in the game and hopefully use them to smash the opponent before they get a chance to recover! Can we make Rosheen Meanderer into a competitive card in Modern with the help of some powerful X-spells? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!

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Against the Odds: XXX Stompy (Deck Tech)

Against the Odds: XXX Stompy (Games)

The Deck

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Building around Rosheen Meanderer is pretty simple: we need X-spells—lots and lots of X-spells. While being a 4/4 for four mana is fine, the real power of the Giant Shaman is the ability to tap for four mana. While taking advantage of this mana requires a bit of work, there are some really powerful X-spells in Modern, especially when you consider that Rosheen Meanderer's mana can be used to pay for any cost with "X" in it, and not for just true X-spells like Fireball.

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Apocalypse Hydra is our biggest payoff for Rosheen Meanderer because the math lines up really well to double the counters. We need four mana to cast Rosheen Meanderer, which means if we untap and play a land, we have a total of nine mana to spend on Apocalypse Hydra, which gives us a casual 14/14 thanks to the counter-doubling power. With the right draw, we can have our 14/14 Apocalypse Hydra as early as Turn 3, which is a lot for most decks to deal with, and then we simply go on the stompy plan, smashing in with our huge Apocalypse Hydra (perhaps after shooting down some smaller blockers with the Walking Ballista-esque pinging ability) turn after turn until we get our opponent to dead.

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The biggest problem with making a huge Apocalypse Hydra is that it doesn't have any form of evasion, and while removing counters to kill things can help, we need a way to make sure we are getting in combat damage with our huge stompy creatures. For this, we use Kessig Wolf Run, which works amazingly well with Rosheen Meanderer. With a Kessig Wolf Run on the battlefield, Rosheen Meanderer not only taps for four mana to cast our big X-spells but also taps to give a creature +4/+4 and trample, with the help of a Kessig Wolf Run activation, which is quite powerful. More importantly, Kessig Wolf Run gives us a repeatable X-cost, so even if we don't have any huge X-spells to cast, we still always have something to spend our Rosheen Meanderer mana on.

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While Apocalypse Hydra is the most exciting creature in our deck, we have a bunch of backup X-creatures as well. Walking Ballista is very important to our plan, since most of our other creatures are pretty expensive, so having something to run out on Turn 2 to maybe kill a Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch helps us stay in the game while we're setting up our huge mid- and late-game Rosheen Meanderer plan. Polukranos, World Eater is basically the green Wrath of God, thanks to all the Rosheen Meanderer mana we can dump into the monstrous ability, while also giving us another huge stompy creature to use with Kessig Wolf Run. Finally, Mistcutter Hydra is just a one-of in the main deck (we have a couple more in the sideboard), and it's amazing against control decks (and random blue decks like Merfolk), since it can't be countered and has protection from blue. Plus, in other matchups, it comes down as a huge hasty threat to take big, surprising chunks out of our opponent's life total.

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Apart from our powerful X-creatures, we also have some strong X-spells. Bonfire of the Damned is a great way to steal a game once we have a Rosheen Meanderer on the battlefield. When we miracle it, we can usually sweep away our opponent's board, clearing the way for our huge creatures, while also dealing around 10 damage to our opponent's face. More importantly, thanks to Rosheen Meanderer, we can also use it like a really inefficient (but one-sided) Pyroclasm by casting it from our hand, which is good against aggro decks. Meanwhile, Banefire is another finisher, while also doubling as a bad removal spell in the early game. It's especially helpful against removal-heavy decks that can kill our creatures, offering a huge chunk of uncounterable damage to close out the game.

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Commune with Lava (probably better know as the red Sphinx's Revelation) is just a one-of, but it's a great way to churn through our deck and find a huge creature or Banefire to kill our opponent. The plan is to cast it on our opponent's end step, untap, and cast as many of the cards we exile as possible during the one-turn window it gives us.

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Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl do triple duty in our deck. First, they help us ramp into our Rosheen Meanderer, which is key. Modern is a fast format, so simply playing a Rosheen Meanderer on Turn 4 and than hopefully playing a big X-spell on Turn 5 just isn't fast enough in most matchups, but with Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl, we can play our Rosheen Meanderer on Turn 3 or even Turn 2. Speaking of Turn 2, the second reason Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl are important is that they give us a legitimate nut draw of playing Rosheen Meanderer on Turn 2 and a massive 14/14 Apocalypse Hydra on Turn 3, since Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl together can make four mana, with Arbor Elf untapping the enchanted land. Finally, Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl give us some backup ramp for games when we don't draw our Rosheen Meanderer, which is important because our deck is pretty expensive.

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Last but not least, we have Blood Moon, which is another important way of slowing down the game for long enough to make our Apocalypse Hydra / Rosheen Meanderer plan work. Thanks to Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl, we can play our Blood Moon as early as Turn 2, which should disrupt our opponent for long enough for us to stomp over for the win with our huge X-spells and creatures!

The Matchups

By far the worst matchup for XXX Stompy is combo, especially fast combo. While we have a lot of ways of dealing with creatures thanks to our X-spells, we don't have many good ways of interacting with spells, so our odds of winning are pretty low if our opponent is planning on Storming off or is playing Eggs (as we learned during our matches). In theory, we can win on Turn 4 with our best possible draw, but Turn 5 or even 6 is much more likely, which gives combo decks a lot of time to set up their win. On the other hand, creature decks are our best matchups, since we are playing bigger threats and have a lot of sneaky ways of killing our opponent's stuff (like Polukranos, World Eater or Walking Ballista pings). We also perform oddly well against control, mostly because the combination of Mistcutter Hydra and Banefire is a great way to fight through counterspells. Plus, of course, we pick up some free wins against a wide range of decks by sometimes playing a Blood Moon on Turn 2.

The Odds

Discounting our very last game where we got our Turn 3 Apocalypse Hydra draw (which was against a Standard Ingest Eldrazi ultra-budget deck, for some reason), we played a total of six matches and won five, good for an 83.3% match win percentage, along with winning 10 of 14 games (for a 71.4% game win percentage), which is extremely above the curve for an Against the Odds deck. In fact, the only match we lost was to Eggs, and in all honesty, we'll probably lose to Eggs roughly 9 out of 10 times; it's just a horrible matchup. While Blood Moon was important, Rosheen Meanderer was actually very impressive, with the mana giving us everything from Turn 3 Apocalypse Hydras to lethal Bonfire of the Damneds off the top of our deck—we even won a game by beating down with the 4/4! All around, the deck was fun, and the X-spell stompy plan was way more effective than I ever could have imagined.

Vote for Next Week's Deck

With the printing of Unclaimed Territory in Ixalan to go along with Cavern of Souls, multi-color (and often five-color) tribal decks have suddenly become popular, with Humans, Spirits, and Slivers all making a bit of a comeback. But what if these decks don't push Unclaimed Territory far enough? Which of these five-color tribes should we play in Modern next week? Let us know by voting below!

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Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.