Green/White/Black Tokens Deck (1st out of 351 Players)

October 16, 2012 | Posted by Dee

I appreciate a good green/white/black non-reanimator deck because I’ve been trying to build one ever since the complete Return to Ravnica spoiler was released.

The three colors have a lot of good cards and the mana is great because you can play two different shocklands. However, I couldn’t build anything that did well in testing.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I saw the first place deck from this past weekend’s Starcitygames Standard Open in Providence: Green/White/Black (GWB) Tokens.

Marc Blesso took down the tournament with an innovative Tokens deck. It is probably not what you expect. It has 0 Call of the Conclave, 0 Midnight Haunting, and 0 populate cards.

In fact, it has a bunch of non-token cards including 4 Arbor Elf, 4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim, and 4 Borderland Ranger.

How is it even a Token deck, you might ask?

But it’s actually very good. I tested it and crushed most of my opponents. Check out Marc’s decklist below.

GWB Tokens
Creatures (18)
Spells (17)
Lands (25)
Sideboard (15)

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Borderland Ranger

[Buy Borderland Ranger on eBay at a low price]

The main innovation by Marc is definitely his use of Borderland Ranger. This creature looks unassuming but it adds a lot to the deck. It allows you to play 4 spell-lands (3 Gavony Township and 1 Vault of the Archangel) in a three color deck without hurting your mana base.

The spell-lands are very important because they provide powerful effects. Gavony Township is not just good with token creatures. It turns the one-drop mana creatures and Borderland Ranger into big threats.

Vault of the Archangel is great at racing other creature decks and it gets you out of burn range against a burn deck like Black/Red Zombies.

Plus, the spell-lands don’t cost you a spell slot so they help you negate mana flood.

However, they are not cheap to activate and they don’t give you colored mana. Borderland Ranger overcomes these drawbacks. It gives you more lands so you can activate the spell-lands and it fixes your mana.

The extra mana from Borderland Ranger also gives us incentive to play expensive powerful cards. In this deck, you’ve got 4 Thragtusk, 1 Armada Wurm, and 1 Angel of Serenity as the cards that cost five or more mana. You can also add the seven mana flashback cost of Sever the Bloodline.

These four cards can definitely be game-changers.

Mana Dorks

[Buy Arbor Elf on eBay at a low price]

Another cool thing Marc did was include eight one-drop mana creatures. Having 4 Arbor Elf and 4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim speeds up the deck a lot.

They allow you to have some pretty sick nut draws. For example:

T1: Arbor Elf
T2: Lingering Souls
T3: Intagible Virtue, flashback Lingering Souls.

By turn three, you have four 2/2 flyers with vigilance!

To make things worse for your opponent, on turn four, you can drop Thragtusk, activate Gavony Townhip, or add four more Spirit tokens on the battlefield.

Here’s another strong start enabled by the mana dorks:

T1: Avacyn’s Pilgrim
T2: Borderland Ranger
T3: Garruk Relentless
T4: Thragtusk

This start is not as good as the first one but it’s still going to give most decks trouble.

Also, the mana dorks combo well with Gavony Township because they give you mana to activate the land. A few 1/1 creatures may not be threatening to your opponent but they can quickly become big threats with a few activations from the Innistrad land.

Planeswalkers

[Buy Sorin, Lord of Innistrad on eBay at a low price]

Going with token producing planeswalkers was an excellent move by Marc. Token decks traditionally are weak against boardwipe spells like Supreme Verdict and Terminus.

Planeswalkers are great against these spells because they give you a recurring source of token creatures.

Also, you get other abilities from them, which helps the deck deal with a variety of threats. Garruk Relentless is not just a token producer. He also shoots down Olivia Voldaren and Sublime Archangel.

He can kill a Huntmaster of the Fells and then tutor up a creature from your library. I’ve used his search ability to get Armada Wurm and earn an instant concession from my opponent.

Sorin, Lord of Innistrad doesn’t just make 1/1 Vampire tokens. He also has a great ability for Token decks. By spending two loyalty, he gives all your creatures a permanent boost in power. In my testing, I think I’ve used this ability as much as his creature making ability.

Sideboard Tips

[Buy Angel of Serenity on eBay at a low price]

Against other midrange decks, I recommend:

-2 Selesnya Charm
-1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

+2 Angel of Serenity
+1 Sever the Bloodline

Against fast Zombie decks, you should cut the really expensive cards because you need early defense instead. Here’s a general sideboard plan you can follow.

-1 Angel of Serenity
-1 Armada Wurm
-3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
-3 Intagible Virtue

+1 Sever the Bloodline
+4 Centaur Healer
+3 Deathrite Shaman

Reanimator decks can be a tough matchup but sometimes you can just kill them before they take control of the game. Also, they could be in big trouble if they don’t find an answer to Deathrite Shaman. Here’s how I’ve been sideboarding against them.

-1 Angel of Serenity
-1 Armada Wurm
-1 Garruk Relentless
-1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
-1 Oblivion Ring

+3 Deathrite Shaman
+2 Appetite for Brains

Filed Under Standard 

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One Response to “Green/White/Black Tokens Deck (1st out of 351 Players)”

  1. cgsublimelee on November 10th, 2012 1:08 pm

    I really enjoy playing this deck. have not tried it at FNM yet but im sure it will suprise my meta game.

    One question, at the moment i only have one serenity angle main borad. im running 2x acidicslimes im its place SB. figure ramping into some land hate, enchantment hate, and spell land hate is good enough ( Go Slime!)

    Any other suggestions?