Deckbuilders’ Challenge VIII: Big vs Small

Yes indeed

OK, if lands count...



This deck has an average CMC of 0.5, despite all of the non-land cards having CMC 5.

BigDrazi

Poster card: Animar, Soul of Elements

An Animar Deck with a high CMC and Eldrazi theme. I threw in some morphs for utility and to get Animar started. And to top it off, I got a Keruga sitting in the sideboard. There is even a Grozoth that can find up to 4 cards (3 Eldrazi and Blasphemous Act).
It has an average CMC of 4.29 (not counting Keruga of course).

I just looked it up and I think I was the only one who voted on that last poll. We should definitely find a way to make this more popular.

Y'know, When I first proposed this Challenge category, I did suggest putting it on the frontpage.

Good luck making a reasonable deck with average CMC 4 or greater - if you have 24 lands, every other card has to cost 7 or more mana for the average to be above 4. With 20 lands, you can manage a CMC of 6 for every other card, but you won't be casting any of 'em anytime soon.

Ah, I didn't realize it included the sideboard. 

I made this after pondering thaneofglamis 's comment about how how playable a deck with all 6-7-CMC cards or above would be. Clocking in at a meaty average CMC of 4.27, I'd like to present:

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Self-Mill Heavyweights

Decklist:


This deck's core strategy is to use the Breaking half of Breaking / Entering to try and mill a ton of instants and sorceries into our graveyard. Since we are running mostly instants, sorceries, and lands, it is easy for us to bring the costs of any Cryptic Serpent, Bedlam Reveler, and Ore-Scale Guardian* we draw into a cost efficient range to throw down. The Discovery half of Discovery / Dispersal functions as Breakings 4-8, allowing us to have a high chance of milling ourselves on turn 2 to ramp into our payoffs.

Failing that, we are capable of playing like a more traditional control deck with spells like Never / Return and Reduce / Rubble until we can put down a big creature on the board, likely accelerated out by our heavy use of instants, sorceries, and fetches. One of the benefits of having almost all our cards be Aftermath or Split Cards is that our spells can take on different roles at different stages of the game - if we're desperate for a creature, we can cast the Entering half of Breaking / Entering for example to fish out a fatty we milled into our graveyard. Perhaps if the graveyard is well stocked and we're looking to clear the board further instead of self-milling more, we can use the Dispersal half of Discovery / Dispersal to clear the way for another swing. This deck has very few dead draws as a result and is very flexible with its hands.

*Note: I specifically chose payoffs that wouldn't have to worry about exiling cards in the graveyard so that it would be easy to drop multiple of these on the field at once. Magmatic Sinkhole is our sole exception here because it's just that good a removal spell (and sometimes doubles as an emergency combat trick).

Playing on a Budget:

The good news is that since most of the cards in this deck are split cards and payoffs intended for limited or jank brewing, the majority of the deck is relatively inexpensive. The main pricyness comes from using a fetchland manabase to to benefit Ore-Scale Guardian and the use Bedlam Reveler for even more card advantage.




We swap Bedlam Reveler with a 2 each of Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler, which you can adjust as you feel as appropriate - I primarily chose this split to minimize the number of multi-Tasigur draws that occurred each game. Delve isn't as ideal for this deck since we have to exile cards from the graveyard, but it's a necessary evil when many of the cards are so cheap.

That said, we still want to keep Delve to a minimum and find ways to power out Ore-Scale Guardian, so we trade out Magmatic Sinkhole for Fireblast and use Evolving Wilds to take advantage of the fact we often don't have a turn 1 play. While Sulfur Vent is a bit clunky, it also is a powerful 3-mana burst acceleration for a payoff if used right, so I think it was worth giving it a try here - the mana base is a bit experimental so perhaps proxy this deck out if you really want to give it a shot before you buy any of the cards in it. Our average CMC is still a nice smooth 4.17 - just above the limit!

Otherwise, happy spell slinging! May your heavyweights drop off the rush of an 8-card self-mill.