Ranger of Crabs Deck For Worldwake Standard
February 12, 2010 | Posted by Dee
Bill Stark brings us an interesting decklist by Kyle Sanchez that he found on Kyle’s Twitter account. Kyle is one of the premium writers for Starcitygames. He’s known for his rogue decks, most of which are mediocre imo, but occasionally he has some good ones.
His latest list is a mill deck with Archive Trap, Hedron Crab, and Ranger of Eos to fetch the Crabs. He claims it’s the best deck in Worldwake Standard. Time and playtesting will tell if he’s right.
He had a version before Worldwake came out that seemed to be doing all right in local tournaments and MTGO. Maybe his addition of Worldwake cards makes the deck much better.
Also, while I may not like most of Kyle’s creations, he does playtest his decks. Anyways, here’s the decklist.
| Ranger of Crabs | |||||||||||
Creatures (18) Spells (18) | Lands (24)
Sideboard (15) |
| |||||||||
If anything, the deck looks fun and it attacks from a different angle than most decks.
Basically, the deck works by getting multiple Crabs on the battlefield with Ranger of Eos and then using fetchlands and Knight of the Reliquary’s ability to mill out your opponent.
Archive Trap speeds up your clock and combos well with Path to Exile.
Ponder, Treasure Hunt, Jace, Halimar Depths, and fetchlands provide a card draw and card selection engine that helps you find the cards you need quickly.
Kor Firewalker in the sideboard is a nice addition for Red Deck Wins and Boros Bushwhacker, both tough matchups. With a full set of Wall of Reverence and Kor Firewalker, you should have the advantage in games 2 and 3.
Negate comes in against decks with few creatures.
Pithing Needle helps in case people are still playing with Quest for Ancient Secrets, which is one of the best cards against you.
7 Responses to “Ranger of Crabs Deck For Worldwake Standard”
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I was testing this list and i found that the sideboard could go this way:
1 path to exile
3 perimeter captain
1 scute mob
2 negate
4 wall of reverence
4 baneslayer angel
The deck’s original plan isnt remotely as good as the scg columnist says, but its OK. With this sideboard you can fetch perimeter captains with Ranger of Eos and ocassionally Scute Mob as an win condition.
Perimeter Captain can boost those walls of reverence and with 2 of these guys you have a decent plan against fast decks. KorFW sure is good, but you cant fetch for him and besides RDW (which seems like leaving the tier 1 status) most decks can easily deal with him.
The Jwar Jwar is solid as win condition, but with the rising popularity of Basilisk Collar, its hard to tell if BSA is better or not, as the sphinx has shroud and can beat BSA and Abyssal Persecutor thanks to noble hierarchs, but its useless against those Naya Boss and mono white decks, the only out is using Jace as an unsummon trick… in the end i chose BSA because Negate can protect it from targeted removal, but its still a gamble to know if it will survive enough turns.
I haven’t tried playing this deck, but I wonder how it survives. The only removal spells in the list are three Path to Exiles. What happens, to take a not remotely theoretical situation, if someone goes turn two Putrid Leech, turn three Sprouting Thrinax and turn four Bloodbraid Elf into… whatever. Ranger of Eos can kill the latter two, but they’re still left with either their three tokens or their cascaded spell. Hard to see it running out the clock. Maybe trade in some of those Ponders and Treasure Hunts.
It seems to me like Lotus Cobra would be a much better accelerator than birds or noble, seeing how there is bound to be lots of landfall in this deck. I understand that you can tutor them instead, but why would you waste Ranger on a Birds or a noble when you could be pulling a Crab?
I also feel like Harrow would be a good fit in this deck for the triple landfall along with Vines of Vastwood or Canopy Cover to protect the Hedron Crabs. Clone or Rite of Replication also seem like they would have a better synergy with the deck since they can copy your Crabs for mill, Ranger for extra tutors and the opponents cards for defense.
Howing Mine or Font of Mythos can replace Treasure Hunt and Ponder for draw engines, since they mill the opponent as well. For more mill, I suggest playing Memory Erosion, so it penalizes them for playing spells and gives you another way to mill them
How about Guardian Zendikon for some defense? It gives you a 2/6 blocker that grabs you an additional landfall when it dies. Vapor snare can also work to your favor as a constant source of landfall as well as removal and defense.
Finally, you could run 1 or 2 Sejiri Steppe. They can be tutored with Knight of the Reliquary’s ability in order to save a Crab.
I played this deck on MTGO and was suprised and excited by it. I was playing an with an aggressive vampire build and it killed me turn 4. Turn 1, island into ponder. Turn 2, cast hedron crab, drop forest, cast birds. Turn 3 Misty rainforest for island, mill 6, drop ranger, tutor two crabs. Turn 4, drop two crabs and scalding tarn, into misty rainforest, into misty rainforest into misty rainforest into… and my deck is gone. All I had time to do was drop three guys and attack for like 6, which he totally ignored. He ended the game at like 10 life after fetch lands. If I had known where to point my removal I may have had a chance, but the deck definitely works.
Mark, how did he play multiple lands on turn 4?
My buddy Richie, who I play a lot with, runs this deck. I must say, it is ridunkulous and think it’s a very good rogue deck choice for the current meta…especially since Sanchez stopped writing about it. He’s won several FNM’s with the thing, but with a modified decklist – i’ll see if I can get his list. I am concerned with Rise of Eldrazi though, as the Eldrazi have that “if I go to the graveyard from anywhere, shuffle your deck into your library” special ability.
Overall this is an excellent deck. There is only 1 fatal point and 1 improvement point.
1 fatal point is if they have cards like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn,
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and etc, this deck would be good as dead as I am still facing this problem. Only Ravenous Trap can solve this problem as it can exile all cards from graveyard when Emrakul ability kick in. But still you only have 4 cards to face these creatures with this ability and at any time before you play cards like MInd Funeral and etc, you would need Ravenous Trap in your hand. Also good to have is Haunting Echoes.
1 improvement point will be adding Lotus Cobras to further mana accel which is better than BOP, Vines and Canopy Cover for Hedron and Knight of Req protection.
Why protect Knight is because by turn 4 or 5 your knight would normally be 5/5 and above so with Canopy Cover, not only you can prevent removal but also able to hit creatures with flying.
That’s all I have to say.