I got bored. Through a long, complicated mental process that even I don't fully understand, somehow my brain came to an awesome image: Groudon as a Planewalker.
An hour in the Gatherer later, I emerged with a Groudon themed Commander deck.
For those of you interested the list can be found here:
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1013093
For those of you too lazy to do that, here's the list imbedded:
Yes, the list includes two banned cards. I have a replacement list here:
These two were included for flavor reasons, really. And balance.
See, about halfway through the deck, I started to brainstorm a Kyogre deck, almost purely on principle. The Groudon and Kyogre decks would, inevitably, play like Duel Decks. Somewhere in this realization, I decided that each deck would get a Mox in their primary color, Emrakul, and another legendary Eldrazi. Since Groudon's deck was shaping up to be more aggro and Kyogre the control, Kyogre was originally given Kozilek for the card draw. Groudon also really liked "Destroy target Permanent" on an Indestructable 11/11. So yeah.
Back to the deck. For Groudon, I immediately went to Mountains being important to him. As the list filled out, he got every "X, where X is the number of Mountains you control" I could find. This lead him towards burn instead of pure aggro....and he ended up with 30 Sorceries/Instants. And there are a total of five of those 30 that do not deal direct damage.
Now, that number might change, depending on where Kyogre's deck falls on the sliding scale of counter magic.
As for the permanents, I wanted to continue the 'Mountains matter" theme. After some digging, I found Landfall. I also found Fire breathing. Both made the deck, as did a sub-theme of Hellions, continued by the Commander himself, since I couldn't just use Groudon. The choice of the Commander was also what gave the deck its splash of Green, which fed back into the Landfall theme, which in turn moved the deck from the ~45 Instants/Sorceries it ran at one point. I think the 30 number will go over a lot better at a EDH table, should someone take this deck to actual play.
On the note of actual play, I really can't guarantee how well this deck would do at a Commander table. Once I get the Kyogre deck finalized, those two should work amazingly together in a 1-on-1 scenario.
I think, somewhere deep inside, this thread was what I wanted to start all along once the group was named Smogon: the Gathering. Because only here would a Groudon vs Kyogre Commander Duel Decks happen. Kyogre should be finished by this time tomorrow, unless I procrastinate.
