Posted - April 15, 2014

I was very happy with the Gruul Wildings Aura Edition v2 until I started playing against control decks. I'm not saying I lost most of my games against control decks. I'm saying I lost all of my games against control decks. All. Every single one. I know I've been going on about how I like the story more than winning games but to lose every game is just too much. Clearly, a revamp is in order.

Let's start with changes to Lands. Here are the Lands from the Gruul Wildings Aura Edition v2 deck

Lands

Here are the new Lands I'm adding at the cost of two Forests and two Mountains:

Shimmering Grotto and Unknown Shores produce colorless mana, and, for a cost, gives me the flexibility to play Red or Green mana.

Now let's look at the creatures from Gruul Wildings Aura Edition v2:

Creatures

I'm saying goodbye to these creatures:

I've reduced both Sparkmage Apprentice and Bloodscale Prowler to one copy from two to make space for other cards.

Indentured Oaf has been removed because he won't go up against Red creatures and that's too much of a hindrance.

The two Gruul Scrappers have been removed but I'm starting to have second thoughts about the removal because the Scrappers are fantastic considering the Gruul theme of the deck - the activated Haste is also something that I'm starting to miss.

Burning-Tree Bloodscale is another reluctant swap but, as I'll point out later, I have a very strong idea about the new direction for this deck, and the Bloodscale with his useful block/unblock activated ability had to go.

Lastly, Borborygmos. What kind of Guild deck lets go of the Guild leader? The big guy was let go because of his steep mana cost. Borborygmos kept sitting in my hand so much he might as well just sit it out in my binder.

Painful cuts but necessary. So what creatures am I adding? Here they are:

Yup, just two additions. This is to make way for more Enchantments. The new recruits are one drops and come in with some very interestig 'extras'. The Gladecover Scout is hexproof, a wonderful ability, and a rare one, I heard that - as of Born of the Gods - only fify-seven creatures in all of Magic are hexproof. Speaking of Born of the Gods, the Akroan Crusader has the Heroic mechanic, which dovetails beautifully with the Enchantment theme of this deck and produces a soldier token.

That's it for the creatures, let's go and check out the changes to the non-creature spells.

Here are the Spells from Gruul Wilding Aura Edition v2:

Spells

I'm taking out these spells:

I've taken out all these non-Enchantment spells in order to strengthen the Enchantment theme of the deck.

Wurmweaver Coil is an Enchantment-Aura, and a powerful spell at that, but this six-drop is just too costly and this deck doesn't have any ramp.

I've taken out quite a lot of spells but I'm adding even more. Here are the new spells.

Enchantments, enchantments and more enchantments! And, oh, I've added this artifact:

The Gruul Keyrune. The Gruuls never leave home without it. Or at least now they won't

This deck started out as the Gruul Wilding Theme Deck, a preconstructed Red-Green deck from the Guildpact set of the Ravnica cycle. Playing the deck revealed that it was trying to do too many things at once and tripping over its own lack of focus, so I made some changes to create the Gruul Wilding Aura Edition deck. The Gruul Wilding Aura Edition deck did two things: It focused on Enchantments as the primary capability of the deck and it removed high-mana cost creatures that tended to stay in my hand rather in the battlefield. A later modification called Gruul Wilding Edition v2 added some dual lands, changed a few creatures to make the deck more Gruul-like and swapped an artifact for an Enchantment-Aura.

I want my MTG!

This latest iteration of the Gruul Deck will no longer bear the designation 'Wilding'. I've changed so many cards that the original Gruul Wilding deck is no longer recognizable. What remains -stronger than ever - is the focus on Enchantments.

So here it is, the Gruul Enchantments deck:

Lands

Creatures

One drops, two drops, three drops at the most, except for the Bramble Elementals. I need my creatures to get to the battlefield very early to receive, hopefully, lots of Enchantment-Auras. I've kept my costly Bramble Elementals as backup heavy hitters with a very neat Enchantment-activated ability.

Now about those Enchantments . . .

Enchantments

Enchantment-Auras

Artifact

What this deck is trying to do is to get creatures out on the battlefield early in the game and pile on the Enchantments on those creatures.