It all starts one fateful Tuesday night. I’m packing my bag to take to work so I can play Magic at the club on the way home Wednesday. To my horror, I discover my deck box is at my girlfriend’s from the weekend. I need some decks and fast, so I decide I need something quick and easy to build. I go for a Red-Green Gruul Beats deck with what cards I have to hand. I have been loath to play Beatdown for a while due to some terrible experiences in Nationals qualifiers with Zoo. A three-and-ten record over three events had me at my wits end. Then came the calming words of an old friend who commented, “You know, when you used to play Control, you were tough to beat. I’m surprised to see you with an Aggro deck.” This got me thinking, and next week, I was playing Ghost-Husk, and thanks to Craig Smith, I was offering up a few savage beatings myself. Yes, okay, Ghost-Husk was offensive, too, but it also made me think more about my plays and helped my game to no end.
The burn suite came first, as I put in Demonfire, Char, and Seal of Fire. Sure, I played with the idea of Rift Bolt and even had Disintegrate in the board until I acquired more than a single Demonfire. My favourite Ravnica card, Moldervine Cloak, made it into the deck next, as it has just beaten so solidly for so long, and Stonewood invocation just rocks. There was a brief dalliance with Stormbind, which maybe should come back, but it always seemed to be the first card to be sideboarded out.
Creatures were a pretty common affair: Kird Apes, a couple of Solifuges, my foreign Wildfire Emissaries (dating back to the first printing), Llanowar Elves, and some early beats. The deck worked surprisingly well and was winning more than it lost. At this point, I decided maybe the deck needed to address its own major flaw, stalling out. Defeat would be clutched from the jaws of Victory just when I least expected. Out came the idea that maybe the deck needed to trample more, even as I sat reading a Mike Flores article on how Stonebrow had the potential to be broken. Click, whirr, something started triggering. I decided that, hang on, Necropotence was a £1 rare once just like Stonebrow is now; why couldn’t it work in the right deck?
That settled things, as I decided to set about rebuilding into a Trampler deck. In came the Scryb Ranger and Spectral Force combo coupled with Stonebrow. The deck suddenly became better and was becoming a nightmare at the Wednesday club, as it was surprisingly solid. I was confident enough to take it to our local Standard event the following Saturday. It demolished its first opponent then mana screwed three out of the next four games and was history. However, that problem went back to the original build when nothing cost above 4 and the majority, 2 or 3. With the mana issues fixed by adding a bit more land, things looked a bit rosier, but work still needed to be done. With my Ghazi-Glare deck dismantled, I suddenly had four spare elephants lurking about the place, and in went the Call of the Herds. Magus of the Scroll rounded out the curve, as it had seen plenty of recent play in Red decks; however, it proved to add very little to the strategy as a whole.
Unbelievably—well, not if you know me—I went all Rogue at this point, after Mike Duke was looking over the deck list and commented his surprise that Scab-Clan Mauler wasn’t present. Scan-Clan What? Amazingly, I had forgotten about Guildpact’s bloodthirsty little Common Trampler and scurried away to the Guildpact folder to find some to replace the Magus. This is where I went Rogue; as I turned over the sheets, I saw Gruul War Plow looking at me. Mike almost choked when he heard that had appeared in the deck, and several online players gave derisory comments about the humble artifact. This was soon to change, when the 3/3 elephants suddenly started to Trample, and chump blockers were less of an annoyance. Many players still were of the opinion “Yeah, I can see why it fits, but it is a crap card.” At least until Stonebrow came into play the next turn, and all the elephants became 5/5 Tramplers, and it was game over. However, at some point, sanity took over. To help the mana base plus create a few creature shocks, I slotted in single Weatherseed and Forisyian Totems, which round off the deck quite nicely, as they also Trample.
After much chopping and changing and pretty much half the deck being rotated out, here is what we are left with.
Current Decklist
4 Seal of Fire
4 Char
3 Demonfire
1 Weatherseed Totem
1 Foriysian totem
3 Scab-Clan Mauler
2 Stonewood Invocation
3 Moldervine Cloak
4 Call of the Herd
2 Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Scryb Ranger
3 Spectral Force
4 Stomping Ground
2 Gemstone Mine
4 Karplusan Forest
1 Skargg, the Rage Pits
6 Forest
6 Mountain
Sideboard Tech
2 Indrik Stomphowler
2 Burning-Tree Shaman
1 Stonewood Invocation
2 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Serrated Arrows
3 Guerilla Tactics
4 Giant Solifuge
So, if you are on MTGO and want to give the deck another run out, just challenge me to a duel, and we’ll see how the deck goes. I don’t think the deck is Tier 1 at the moment, but it may have the possibility to be more competitive in the future with some more tuning and tweaking. Suggestions, Anyone?
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