I Can Haz Proxy?!

With Rise of the (Lol)Drazi on the Rise (Yes, the pun was necessary) I have been testing what will work with hopes of having a competitive deck ready by week after the Release. I considered forwarding my Grixis Control. I have considered Mono-Green. I have considered Mono-White-Walls. Hell, I've even considered running some kind of Eldrazi deck involving Umalog and the Artisans, Mono-Black-ish. None of which I can fully grasp, while my best friend struggles with adapting Jund for the new set. Surprisingly, Sarkhan the Mad works well. Imagine using his minus two on a sprouting thrinax for 3 saproling tokens and a 5/5 dragon flier, sounds pretty Kickass to me for Main Phase 2.

If only it could be as simple for me. Grixis was my first choice. I've been playing Grixis since WorldWake came out because of how amazing the new Jace makes the deck. I did wind up flipflopping around with the composition but wound up settling on a deck that wins a fair amount of games and that I am confident in.

THEN CAME RISE OF THE ELDRAZI
...balls

Deprive looks like the only card that would fit the deck but the problem is that you need to have that land in play. What's the point of bouncing a land in Grixis that isnt your own land.

Deprive proves to be more for Chapin-Control seeing as that deck plays Halimar Depths. It also plays Everflowing Chalice which compensates for that popped land.
It seems to me that Grixis gets nothing other than a whole bunch of new threats to look at and the possibility of running Consume the Meek in sideboard. For that reason alone ROtE has been disappointing me as a player.

I had a Mono-Green deck built for my brother that was showing a hell of a lot of promise. He could sometimes even beat me. I've never been challenged by any of his decks, and as soon as I put something together for him it becomes pretty solid. I thought that maybe this deck could benefit from Vengavine or Khalni Hydra. And so I playtested. Khalni Hydra hits turn three and eats removal. Vengavine is a threat in the beginning but after turn 5, all creatures are generated, not cast, ans so it sits in the graveyard anyway. There's the loss of update.

I saw some of the new black cards, I liked the vampire that double your mana. That was pretty cool. I thought that maybe I could use that to my advantage and cast a couple of those uncastable eldrazi spells. Ulamog, Artisans. Both were good, not too expensive (Cough Emrakul the Crap) and had a direct effect when they came in (Unlike the Butcher of LOLZ) so it looked pretty promising, but then I realized, wow, Im working so hard to cast something that's not going to be cast because all of my ramp becomes board wipe targets. With Consume The Meek, Earthquake, Day of Judgment, Chain Reaction and Shrivel Loldrazi Spawn (Or biddies, as me and my friends are trying to get them known as) will never stay on the field for long enough to sac for the eldrazi creatures. It's just a mono-black deck with a crapload of dead cards. So there goes that idea. I LOVE MAGIC.

My last though was some kind of mono-white wall/lifegain deck. Playing like, wall of reverence, the new colorshifted 0/4 wall/ felidar sovereign, something like that. Sad thing is though, I have not had time to test it and all of my friends are bashing the idea. I like it but I'm still not sure how it would work.

So at this point, as soon as ROtE launches on April 24th I am out of a deck. Ugh.

Fail enough for ya?