Heart of Rage [PreDH]

[Oversoul]

I haven't gotten to sling old-school creatures as much as I wanted to lately. I haven't built a deck helmed by a commander from *Legends* lately. So here's a PreDH Marhault Elsdragon deck full of creatures.

Commander:
1 Marhault Elsdragon

1 Ancient Tomb
1 Anger
1 Arid Mesa
1 Beast Within
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Borborygmos
1 Call of the Wild
1 Craw Giant
1 Crop Rotation
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Defense of the Heart
1 Dragon Broodmother
1 Elvish Piper
1 Engulfing Slagwurm
1 Eternal Witness
1 Expedition Map
1 Far Wanderings
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Flameblast Dragon
10 Forest
1 Forgotten Ancient
1 Frost Giant
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Gamekeeper
1 Garruk's Packleader
1 Genesis
1 Greater Gargadon
1 Harrow
1 Inferno Titan
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Keldon Warlord
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Krosan Tusker
1 Lurking Predators
1 Mana Flare
1 Mana Reflection
1 Master of the Hunt
1 Maze of Ith
1 Misty Rainforest
10 Mountain
1 Multani, Maro-Sorcerer
1 Nacatl War-Pride
1 Nature's Claim
1 Pelakka Wurm
1 Penumbra Wurm
1 Platinum Emperion
1 Quicksilver Amulet
1 Regrowth
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits
1 Sol Ring
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Spike Weaver
1 Spore Frog
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Stomping Ground
1 Strip Mine
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Symbiotic Wurm
1 Taiga
1 Taurean Mauler
1 Terastodon
1 Thicket Elemental
1 Tinder Wall
1 Urabrask the Hidden
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Verdant Force
1 Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
1 Wall of Roots
1 Wasteland
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Yavimaya Hollow

1 Avatar of Fury
1 Boartusk Liege
1 Fires of Yavimaya
1 Phyrexian Colossus
1 Two-Headed Giant of Foriys

 

[Oversoul]

So, I got to play this deck on Wednesday night and I also got to play at a table with a friend who'd been on hiatus for over a year. Didn't win, but I had a lot of fun. I need to do decks like this more often.

 

[Oversoul]

This deck won a game! Not only did I pull off a win, but the card that pulled it off? The one and only Keldon Warlord!

Got Survival of the Fittest and used it to dig for answers against opponent with superior decks. So, I used Spore Frog + Genesis to protect myself from Kresh, the Bloodbraided. Then I used Elvish Piper to get Platinum Emperion on the battlefield and largely blank the threat of a huge squirrel army across the table from me. Genesis got exiled, so I had to be ready to find something else. But then the deck helmed by The Odd Acorn Gang managed to both kill the Kresh deck and use the Scurry Oak + Ivy Lane Denizen combo to make a million squirrels. I used Survival to get Anger into my graveyard and to find Nacatl War-Pride. Because each of the 1,000,000 squirrels had to block a Nacatl War-Pride, Keldon Warlord could get through for over a million damage (I think that technically it was 1,000,010 or something).

 

[Oversoul]

This deck is fun! I used this in my final game last night. Didn't win, but managed to hit an opponent for 60-something damage (too bad he was at 140 life).

 

[Oversoul]

Bought some cards yesterday, so I can swap some cards in this deck:

-1 Avatar of Fury
-1 Boartusk Liege
-1 Fires of Yavimaya
-1 Phyrexian Colossus
-1 Two-Headed Giant of Foriys
+1 Borborygmos
+1 Engulfing Slagwurm
+1 Flameblast Dragon
+1 Greater Gargadon
+1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa

 

[Oversoul]

I picked this deck for my first game last night. The deck performed decently, but was decisively outmatched by some newfangled Simic value stuff. No surprises there. If I'd been able to pull off an upset, that would have remarkable. And if I'd try to put more pressure on that Simic player earlier, then the player with a deck full of Liliana planeswalkers might have taken over the game. Oh well, still pretty fun.

 

[Oversoul]

Just to prove that I can play EDH on days other than Wednesday, I went down to my old LGS last night (it's still essentially the same distance from my house as the new one, just in the opposite direction). This deck won an epic slugfest of a game against three decks that were all probably stronger than it. I was struggling early on against a Dinosaur Tribal deck because the player was making his attacks in a rotating pattern (he was inexperienced, so he just kept swinging with all of his dinosaurs at each opponent in order). Had to focus on defense instead of trying to deal with the real threat at the table. Eventually, I was able to kinda do both, but board wipes slowed my progress down. I also lost my graveyard to Szat's Will at one point and, although it wasn't too big of a hit, I lost my Anger to that. I lost other key creatures and continued struggling to keep up, but I was able to keep ramping gradually, so I had plenty of mana to work with.

Eventually, the deck that seemed to be the strongest one at the table, an enchantments deck helmed by Zur, Eternal Scheme, started to run out of steam. The player suspected that I was going to win if the Giada, Font of Hope deck across from him didn't win first, so he made a deal with the Pantlaza player and myself to take the Giada player out (using Nighthowler). I was able to use Kiki-Jiki to make copies of Eternal Witness in order to retrieve key cards from my graveyard (especially Survival of the Fittest and Quicksilver Amulet). Closed the game out over my next couple of turns with Flameblast Dragon attacks.

I am so glad that I went PreDH for this one. Haven't actually played the deck against other fellow PreDH lists, but the deck has been a blast to play, and the constrained card pool always makes it feel like the underdog.

 

[Oversoul]

Last night, I kept an opening hand with both Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Nacatl War-Pride. While there was initially no thought to any sort of synergy between them when I included both cards in this deck, they have somehow becomes its signature move. I was able to steal victory from the jaws of defeat with this little combo and, yet again, Keldon Warlord.

I mentioned this to a friend at the adjacent table and we were both commenting on how Nacatl War-Pride kind of blew up in EDH back in 2017 because of the "Feline Ferocity" precon. The card wasn't actually in the deck, but players who upgraded the precon sought out strong cat cards from Magic's past, and Nacatl War-Pride reached a kind of EDH zenith for a while. Despite its obvious strength, we figured that it sort of fell out of favor due to power creep (its utility is more conditional than most creatures these days) and lack of reprints. But it really is a good card.

 

[Oversoul]

Somehow, this deck won another game. Played it yesterday and built up a lethal board state with Elvish Piper to help accelerate things. Nothing fancy. Just old-fashioned beatdown. I was actually kind of surprised that it worked.

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck on Wednesday night. I forget the details. I think that I was about a turn too late to stop someone from winning. Since, I've taken it apart to rebuild my "Hypergenetic Eureka" deck.