Worlds 2009 Standard Deck List: Magical Christmasland by Conley Woods
November 20, 2009
Conley Woods is an MTG pro that’s known for his competitive rogue decks. In this deck tech video, he talks about his latest brew, a Jund mana ramp land destruction deck that features a full set of Lotus Cobras and Violent Ultimatums. He went 5-1 in the Standard portion of Worlds 2009 with the list.
| Magical Christmasland | |||||||||||
Creatures (22)
Spells (15) | Lands (23) Sideboard (15) |
| |||||||||
Deck Analysis
The deck gets its name from the term “Magical Christmasland”, which refers to the rare occasions when you get a powerful combo going that takes a lot of luck to set up. More specifically, this term was used a lot for Lotus Cobra fanboys who wanted to use the creature to enable insane but highly unlikely plays like turn three Violent Ultimatum.
This deck can still play a turn three Ultimatum by going turn two Cobra and then double Harrow on turn three. However, turn four is a much more common occurrence. The list has 12 mana accelerators (Cobra, Harrow, and Khalni Heart Expedition) and eight fetchlands that work well together to produce a lot of mana very quickly.
Harrow and Khalni Heart Expedition are important because they provide redundancy since you’re not always going to draw Cobra.
Even if you don’t play an early Ultimatum, the mana in many Standard decks is not very good. So, an early Ruinblaster followed by a Slime can easily win you the game especially if you follow it up with Rampaging Baloths or Ox Nixilis.
Against decks like Nissa Elves that have a lot of mana sources, you may not be able to mana screw them. However, you have many ways to destroy one of their best cards, Oran-Rief, the Vastwood. And you can destroy their planeswalkers with Mold Shambler.
The finishers, 4 Rampaging Baloths and 2 Ob Nixilis, fit the landfall theme so you can quickly make a bunch of 4/4 beast or send many Bolts to the face and grow Ob Nixilis. Conley had a 3/3 split before but Baloths is better versus Jund.
Ob Nixilis is especially good against decks like Nissa Elves that clog up the battlefield and make it hard to attack and deal damage. Mono Green Nissa Elves doesn’t have creature removal so Conley was able to deal 20 damage with just Ob Nixilis in one game.
The sideboard is very interesting with more seven mana spells and even basic lands to play those big spells. Cruel Ultimatum can be brought in versus Jund since it allows you to recover from Blightning. Late game, Cruel is better topdeck than Violent because Sprouting Thrinax is pretty good against Violent. And your one-for-one land destruction spells are good enough against Jund so you don’t really need Violent.
The Grixis ultimatum is also good against Mono Red Aggro to gain back life. You can split your ultimatums with a 2-3 or 2-2 split if you see Thought Hemorrhage. Of course, Cruel is can function as a Mind Shatter versus control and combo decks that get wrecked by discard.
Still, Conley says that three Cruel Ultimatum is probably the right number. He didn’t have time to test a card in the slot of the fourth Cruel Ultimatum.
Aggro decks are tough game one matchups. Jund Charm comes in for Boros Bushwhacker and Red Deck Wins. The Caldera Hellions and some Jund Charms is for Nissa Elves. And the fourth Terminate is good against aggro and Baneslayer Angel.
Terminate is great with Harrow since you can tap out for Harrow at instant speed EOT and still play Terminate.
Note: The strategic content on this deck is based on Conley’s comments on the video.
Got something to say?
-
Subscription Options
-
Popular MTG Cards on eBay
-
Categories
