Hello again, and welcome to Alternate Vortex! If you haven't noticed, it's Druid Week here at Magic Deck Vortex and at first I wasn't for it. However, with time I was swayed to fill a position for this week. I hope you enjoy this article, as you enter my station once more.

You enter the station, seeing the tram seated as usual in its normal spot. You see many streamers and banners hung on the wall in a festive way. Each one has a phrase such as “Druid Week!” or “Go Go Druids!” Apparently the station has taken up festive attire like the main website, you wonder. You look up at the tram schedule and see something unexpected.

Under the Vortex of Wrath, where it said "Next Destination" before, you see in bold red letters what every traveler does not want to see:

          Cancelled         

Below it you see another destination, "Druid Week" You walk up to the man clad in a midnight black mechanized suit and ask him when the tram is leaving.

"As soon as the Druids arrive. Apparently we have to have some druids join us for the ride. Don't worry, they won't bite. Well, they might, but they won't bite me."

Reassured by your host that nothing should go wrong, you step on the tram and sit down on the bench inside. You hear a scuttling sound, then when the door opens you see a Nantuko scuttle in, Kamahl walk across the tram silently, a man covered in Squirrels, and a man hooded in a green cloak, seemingly protective of the ground around him.

“Permission to come aboard, Guardian?” says the Nantuko in a rather hissy voice.

“Permission granted,” says the man. “Other visitors, this is a member of the Broodhatch Nantuko. Also say hello to Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, a member of the Squirrel Wranglers, and the local Groundskeeper."

“They will be assisting us in our quest in the various Alternate Vortexes we visit, and as they are druids, they fit the requirements set by our landlord for our festive week of fun with druids.” You notice that the Guardian says this with mock sarcasm.

“Prepare for Departure in 5….4… 3… 2… 1…”

You hear the tram roar to life, lift off its tracks, and float down the tunnel. You see the tracks below shift, and the tram slowly accelerates. You feel wind plummeting in your face, so much so that you have to squint to see. You see a bright flash and the scenery changes.

Woohoo! No more flavor stuff, on to Serra and the Druids! The hand size boost helps significantly if you want to get any combo pieces, and it allows for a more aggressive mulligan. The life isn’t as significant as the hand size, even though every single life boost helps.

Now, our first deck will feature the Broodhatch Nantuko.

If you read the Nantuko carefully, you should realize that the more toughness he has, the more chance he has at surviving and making his awesome insect minions. The more insects, the better! So, with all this need to break the Broodhatch, we need consistent sources of damage. Crypt Rats is a nice consistent source of damage. This would allow 2 damage a turn, and the insects would survive as well.

But what if you want more? What if you are overflowing with black mana for some reason unbeknownst to the game? What works with Crypt Rats, the Extended Legal Pestilence? Rite of Passage! Well this deck seems to be building itself. The more damage you deal, the more insects you get, and they get stronger with each activation! Let’s build, shall we!

As you can see, the only non-creature card that does NOT tutor is something that is to be tutored: Rite of Passage. Dimir Machinations and Shred Memory are there for Transmute purposes only. Green Mana is not as important as Black Mana, so if you are in no need desperate for forests, search for swamps with your Sakura-Tribe Elder so it makes it that much easier to get the mana to transmute. Diabolic Tutors are for unbridled tutoring, allowing you to get anything if you are in a tight spot. Your Farseeks are very useful if you are in desperate need of more black mana, for it can get you the Overgrown Tombs you need. The maximum amount of black mana this deck can make is 16, but if you have that much mana, you should be swarming with Insects.

If you don’t seem to be drawing any of your nice combo pieces or any of the massive tutors, the Ornithopters provide a nice defense. If you are able to get Crypt Rats and Rite of Passage, it’s always fun to swing for 5 with an Ornithopter. However, the most satisfying victory is that of swinging with an army tokens made by your one and only druid, Nantuko Broodhatch. That is, of course, the key plan in this deck. If someone plays Cranial Extraction, you might as well scoop. Well, Extraction usually does that to combo decks. It usually does that to most decks. Stupid overpowered cards.

The deck has a lot of ups and downs. If you get all the cards you need in your opening hand, your pretty much set. If you get mana and tutors, your set as well. But if you don’t get the mana you need or get a hand filled with Ornithopters, don’t be afraid to mulligan. Remember, the added card size is your friend, and you should use it to your advantage. If things don’t look up from the start, mulligan. The mulligan is very much a powerful and deadly tool in Vanguard games. If your avatar doesn’t have the maximum hand size to support mulligans, you could be in a very tight spot from the beginning. If, however, you run avatars like Serra or other hand boosting avatars, mulligans are all the more worthwhile in the long run.

You may have noticed 2 things while reading through my article. First, my deck featured only ONE DRUID. This is druid week, for god’s sake, where are the druids? Second, Kamahl joined the fun on the tram. Where is he?

Coming up!

My next deck will abuse both abilities of Kamahl. The deck will be chock full of druids, mind you, but the focus is our buddy Kamahl. Let’s take a look see.

Hey look, he animates lands AND Overruns! Isn’t he just plain awesome! No, he’s more than plain awesome. He’s WICKED AWESOME! He does have some cons, though, so don’t get too excited.

Kamahl can animate lands, yes. But unless you have lots of alternate sources of mana, your land is going be used to animate lands. If used to animate you opponents lands, you should be able to use most of your mana. That is if you have some sort of way to kill your opponents lands, I wouldn’t suggest it. His second ability is an Overrun that can be used at instant speed. If it could only be used at sorcery speed, his uses would be that much less. The nice thing with him is that once you attack, you can tap the lands that don’t attack to overrun! But with all the mana you make to animate the lands, if you even want to attack for a decent amount of damage, you have to have lots and lots of lands. What, then, is our answer?

Heartbeat of Spring? Nay, our solution comes in a vanguard!

Say hello to Selenia!

Vigilance is the key, my friends. Our nice friend Selenia yet again gives us a nice hand boost like her more holy oriented relative, Serra. Selenia, however, gives a nice seven life buffer. Seven life is nothing to scoff at, as you are gonna need all the life you can get in any game. With massive amounts of abilities in Vanguard, a life buffer is always a great thing to run, in case someone likes to beat with massive hasters. But the key factor in using Selenia in this deck is her gift of Vigilance. Because your lands can now attack without tapping, it leaves them open to pay for Kamahl’s Overrun ability! Animate 5 lands, swing for 20! With ten mana! Wait, that’s a lot. Thankfully, this deck has some ways of getting around it AND more! Kamahl’s gonna be joined by his other Legendary friends in Druid Frat House Party!

This deck loves mana. Llanowar Elves provide early mana, while pioneers bring in your lands that are most likely in your deck because of the 28 Forests. Exploration is a great opening move, almost always allowing for 5 mana second turn with the right hand. If you don’t have him, Time Of Need for Kamahl, then for Seton. With all your druids, you announce your attackers, then in response, tap your druids that are attacking and your lands that are attacking to activate Kamahl’s Overrun.

Yet another addition is Guildpact’s oh so lovable Earth Surge! In Type 2, you can see these with Genju or maybe Siege of Towers. However, in this situation, a mere one green mana makes a 3/3 for a turn! Maybe even a 5/5! This is incredibly useful if you are playing against an aggro deck. With a couple of Earth Surge out, you can have blockers for the onslaught that might come your way. If your opponent is running aggro, remember, you do have the seven life buffer from the beginning. However, if you do get Kamahl and Earth Surge, save the massive attack of the lands for when you are absolutely sure you can kill your opponent.

Yavimaya Elder is one of those cards most people just see as good. You get two lands, you draw a card, and you get a blocker, all in one card! But most people overlook the fact that it’s a druid! [Not me!!!  ~Streetz~] If you have all the lands you need, Seton can be very useful in making the Elder that much more lovable. Thriss, the oddball Legend of the group, is in their because of Selenia’s vigilance. If you activate Kamahl’s Overrun and then Thriss after an attack, it can swing the game in your favor. I personally don’t want to stare down a 13/13 trample. Hopefully you don’t either.

Our third and final deck is something I had a little help from. No Alternate Vortex Passes were used in this article, since this kind of snuck up on me. However, I was able to enlist the help of EinsteinMonkey, Onikani from MTGS, and most especially Twinkee. EM, Oni, and Twink all helped me with the deck just shown above. The next deck, however, was built completely by Twinkee from just a basic combo outline. He chose the Vanguard. He built the deck. Really, I’m grateful for all of it. The one thing he didn’t do is write an explanation! Guess I still have a job after all.

Druid-Druid Combo.

Our last two guests on the tram are Squirrel Wrangler and Groundskeeper. Don’t know them? Here they are!

If you notice, the Wrangler loves him some Squirrels. The sacrificing of the lands, however, can be a steep price to pay. That’s where the Groundskeeper comes in. He brings back the lands to your hand! This allows consistent squirrel production with almost no drawbacks! Our last problem to overcome is the fact that their abilities cost 1G to use. 2 mana and one land isn’t reasonable. Without assistance, that’s 2 lands, plus a sacrifice to get 2 squirrels. That puts you down severely, especially if you plan on using the Groundskeeper the same turn. Now what could we do, what could we do… Twinkee knows!

This is a Vanguard article, let’s throw someone in for the kill! Say hello to Sisay!

Sisay automatically gives you a personal Heartbeat of Spring! Isn’t that just fine and dandy.

Well… not really.

You take a hit to the life AND the hand. Two to the hand, in fact. That’s a lot. No matter how you look at it, that hurts. To only have 5 as your maximum hand size doesn’t allow for much. In all respect, I would have chosen Titania for the Vanguard. If you wish to browse the Vanguard Galleries, please visit our buddies over at www.cabalcity.com. Maybe you see a Vanguard you think should be used. If you do, post in the forums when your done reading! For now, I present Twinkee’s Squirrel Farm!

The deck has mana galore because of Sisay. 6 mana third turn is just nasty. Weird Harvest, however double edged it may be, will help you get the creatures you need to get out the combo. Once you get out your creatures, go trigger happy. Start making Squirrels up the wazoo. Gaea’s Touch is even more useful then it ever has been. Sacrifice a forest to the Wrangler, return it to your hand with the Keeper, then play it. Rinse and repeat with the Gaea’s Touch and you’ve net 4 squirrels and only 2 lands tapped.

The massive amounts of mana are going to need to go somewhere else, though. That’s where cards like Decree of Savagery and Parallel Evolution come in. Once you’ve got enough Squirrels to sustain yourself, go off by either doubling up on Parallel Evolution with Flashback, or use Parallel Evolution then cast Decree. Suddenly, your small Squirrel army has become four times as deadly. Early Harvest is there to untap all those lands you tapped to use Groundskeeper or any of your bigger spells.

Some of our final cards include Nut Collector and Yavimaya Elder. The Elder is in for the EXACT same reasons as last time. He’s just that good. The Nut Collector can be abused in a different way. Once you have enough lands and/or Squirrels to sustain yourself, you can stop using the Groundskeeper so you can get Threshold. This will activate Nut Collector, strengthening your Squirrels even more!

This concludes our tour of the Vortex today. There were many more ideas I wished to add, but with time constraints, expect a follow up next time on Alternate Vortex! Please post your thoughts on the forums or email me at this address.

Thank you, and enjoy your stay at MDV!

-Yusuke

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

Most Popular Articles of 2006
The Games People Play - Tactical Magic.
If I worked at R&D
The Beginner’s Guide to Rogue
Druid Week Primer
Opting In: Ravnica
MDV Idol: Finale!
Avatar Week Primer
Delusions of Mediocrity: Getting Stuffy in Here.
Lands-More than Mana: Part One
Raiding Ravnica: Guildmages and You!