I’m running 4 Nimble Mongoose today. That’s right 4. You know how many Treasure Cruise are in my 75? Zero. Not one. Why would I forego playing one of the most powerful draw spells to ever … draw spells? I prefer to play a deck I’ve been jamming for over a year with success over playing the same cookie cutter UR Delver everyone else is bringing to Edison. Or even worse that Frankenstein “make your Graveyard big/make it small” RUG deck that has the nerve to run Tarmogoyf and then makes the concession of running 2 Treasure Cruise and replaces the Swiftspears for Stifles. ITS THE SAME DECK! But now it dies to Blood Moon.
Sorry, sorry. Where’s my head at?
I’m playing good old fashioned RUG Delve. Y’know the deck. Nimble Mongoose, Tarmogoyf, Delver of Secrets, Hooting Mandrils. The old stand bys. What, you doubt my Hooting Mandrils Tech? Go ahead, Abrupt Decay it, Bolt it, Block it with your True Name Nemesis. What’s that? You’d rather just take 4 damage. That’s fine.
It’s true Hooting Mandrils is sort of a nonbo with Mongoose. Guess what Einstein (err… Edison)? I’m not a combo deck. Tempo decks do 4 things.
1. Stick a threat
2. Stop you from doing your thing
3 ???
4. Profit.
Enough joking for a second.
I will actually be playing Nimble Mongoose this weekend and I will be playing Hooting Mandrils (2 Main deck). The reasons are two fold.
1.Mongoose lets me run Rough//Tumble
2.Mandrils shores up a bad match-up.
Rough//Tumble is a great card to run right now. So much so that I’m running it main. One Main, one in the board. Elves, Goblins, Storm, Charbelcher (Empty the Warrens), Death and Taxes, Merfolk, and to some extent Dredge all get put in the corner like Baby with Rough//Tumble. It affects none of my creatures (assuming Delvers flip and Mongeese Threshold). It’s really good against U/R Delver and fine vs BUG Delver. UR delver is gonna be such a huge part of the meta that I’m willing to get weird to hedge against it.
Mandrils it’s my super secret tech. I’m traditionally weak to BUG variants. Abrupt Decay is my archnemesis. Hooting Mandrils is my ace in the hole against this card. I’m not too fond of True Name Nemesis either (He’s also apparently my Nemesis). Mandrils swings right through ole Truthy. Trample hooks you in the mouth for 3. Trample is pretty cool on its own. And thanks to bolt, double blocking to kill a Mandrils is a dicey proposition at best.
Why RUG/Why not Cruise?
Wasteland, Daze and Stifle are even better in a meta where the most popular Wasteland, Daze, Stifle Deck only plays Daze. That means more Combo Decks are out to prey on UR, more folks are trying to tap out in the early turns of the game, and most importantly, MOAR turn one Fetchland “Go” into Fetchland “Crack” HOLD YOUR HORSES, LONE RANGER, STIFLE!” It’s a Treasure Cruise Meta for sure. It think Cruise is a trap for RUG.
As Leto Atriedes once told his son Paul, “The first step in avoiding a trap I’d knowing it’s there.”
I have some other surprises in my 75. So I can’t post a decklist for you. It’ll be up 10 hours before that main event and even though I’m not a big enough name to think someone may have read my article, but that’s the kind of luck I have and I don’t want to have a really good run cut down by someone’s friend passing him my decklist just before he sits down against me.
Good luck today, and a special good luck to all my buds from Brooklyn, all the Hipsters and my TDL buds! Let’s put another cat on the tour!