~ Where the Werewolves were, amongst the brush and burr,
whispers can be heard, and rustles in the fir.
One must move swiftly to never be caught out;
For when the full moon rises you hear only howling and the shouts… ~
*** OUT OF DATE INFO, MAJOR DECK SHIFT ***
Werewolves; Where have they been?!
Well, I've always advocated for these little doggoned folk, no matter how bad I've been told they were.
Value Plays
Vines of Vastwood and Aether Vial provide a lot of protection from removal or counter magic, as well as giving you lots of opportunity to float your mana into the opponent's turn, allowing werewolves to flip.
Duskwatch Recruiter
Werewolf Pack Leader
These card offer extremely reliable card draw, making them all priority removals for any opponent.
Don't over commit these cards, having creatures board wiped is an opponents best avenue for value, so don't give them all your draw engines.
Geier Reach Bandit
Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
Aether Vial
Each of these cards allows us a lot of opportunity to flip our creatures and maintain them as we need for our turn.
Additional flips on Huntmaster of the Fells
is always nice.
Speaking of,
Huntmaster of the Fells
Mayor of Avabruck
Arlinn, the Pack's Hope
While these aren't traditional card draw, for each of these cards, they are perpetual token creation that will also warrant removal.
That brings the value engines up to 1 18 counting with all the creatures plus The Great Henge
You should probably get a third
Turn One
Aether Vial , baby! We're aiming to have an Aether Vial with two counters by turn 3 for the perfect tempo play of our deck.
Noble Hierarch is obviously the backup play. And if you don't own enough Aether Vials, Ignoble Hierarch is the best substitute.
Neglected Heirloom
is another fun budget option for more kitchen table style magic.
Turn Two
The second turn is where things get very spicy for this deck.
From this point forward, you'll always need to consider leaving the mana for Vines of Vastwood to dodge removal, but that this point, if they're using it on your Wolf Bitten Captives, that's probably fine. You want to use Vines to protect your card draw engines, or apply the buff for the discount to drop The Great Henge turn 4 or beyond. Which is your ultimate card draw engine.
If you've got an Aether vial turning, now is your chance to play Wolf Bitten Captive for free.
With the two mana for the turn, you have the choices of Duskwatch Recruiter
, Werewolf Pack Leader or maybe Mayor of Avabruck
. However, I would save the mayors if you have options. We're aiming to play them turn three using Aether Vial, so that hopefully the former two mentioned creatures can attack with the buff from our lord. In fact, I would priorities playing those creatures in just the order I mentioned. Neither the pack leader and recruiter will last long, they're some of the best card advantage engines in your deck, and turn three if you have the option for using the recruiters card draw, that could be your best play. Pack Leader becomes slightly more consistent with more board presence/mana, so if you've played any WBC's, Pack Leader will be better tempo in a Mayor turn three.
Turn Three
Using Aether Vial to play Mayor of Avabruck
, we could bring bringing Pack Leaders to 4/4, Wolf Bitten Captives up to 2/2, or 4/4 on the flip, and recruiters would be 3/3 or 4/4 on the flip.
If you have the chance to, attacking with Pack Leaders for the card draw is very possible here. Either with committing the three mana to Geierg Reach Bandit, or if you were fortunate enough to have the Mayors and Bitten Captives in play, that is enough as well. Tovolar, Dire Overlord
might sneak the card draw, too.
Turn Four
Who cares about Arlinn, Pack's Hope or Huntmaster of the Fells
, WE WANT The Great Henge!
Using Aether Vial drop whatever it is you need this turn to get a werewolf to 7/7 or higher.
If not another Mayor, than drop another Geiger Reach Bandit, Tovolar, or Werewolf Pack Leader. One of those 3/3 bodies we love so much.
Because that, in combination with a kicked Vines of Vastwoods should grant us a 7/7, and we should be able to use the remaining two mana to play Great Henge.
Barring all that, from here on, you're just playing your werewolves, doing Aether vial stuff to allow them to flip/be uncounterable, and using the oppressive draw engines and value to eventually overwhelm the opponent.
We have a lot of tempo to match up with aggro, and late game payoff to out value combos.
For second and third games, Blood Moon is very easy to activate without disrupting yourself; otherwise you have a mess kit of options to shut down the opponent.
Silverfur Partisan is an excellent option to sub in if the opponent runs targeted removal, such as burn, otherwise it's fairly dead.
That's it for the Midnight Hunt update; happy hunting!
Deck Inspiration History Archive
(Old description from ye olden days before I knew how to properly build a mana base, or much about deck building at all)
"Damn, aren't Lambholt Pacifist
and Scourge Wolf both great defensive turn two plays?"
That was my original thought that spawned this deck, when my idea was maybe I could play a slower style of werewolves.
This list might look unorthodox, but there's specific ideas I had in mind with each card I included, and so I'll sort of go through and try to describe each of those reasons.
Turn One
I'll start with explaining why I haven't included any turn one creatures; Lambholt Pacifist
and Scourge Wolf are the center pieces of the deck, and ensuring we have the proper mana is more important and consistently valuable than any wolf or werewolf one cost creatures.
Game Trail, Evolving Wilds and Traverse the Ulvenwald make twelve cards that help shape the ever so important mana base for the next several turns, the latter of the two contributing to the delirium effect of Scourge Wolf as well.
The times we're very fortunate with lands in our opening hand, Neglected Heirloom
can even come into play turn one, which would sit, neglected, waiting to be equipped. Equipping allows us to spend our mana without having to play spells, giving us control over our werewolves.
Sometimes by our opponent's turn three or four, we could have a Lambholt Butcher or a Krallenhorde Howler
with an Ashmouth Blade
. Holy ****. Neglected Heirloom
can allow our Lambholt Pacifist
to attack, and it's fine on a Scourge Wolf too.
Turn Two
We've already gotten quite familiar with them, but why do I feel Lambholt Pacifist
and Scourge Wolf are so powerful? Well, maybe it's because I'm brand new to magic, but maybe it's because they both shut down many aggressive openings and build into fantastic offensive tools, and the pieces are all there to utilize them.
Duskwatch Recruiter
is pretty good too, I guess. He'll ensure a great turn three play for us in his activated ability, giving us a probable draw of a creature and his flip of Krallenhorde Howler
for the following turn. Against decks too slow, this guy will run over them.
You could have the option for playing and equipping neglected heirloom this turn, supposing you have gotten a Wolf Bitten Captive out. In which case, you've suddenly t5urned all of those captives into priority removals for the opponent.
Turn Three
I've mentioned this some already, but we aim for our plan on turn three to be spending our mana in ways that allow either Lambholt Pacifist
or Duskwatch Recruiter
to flip. That could be done through the use of abilities, by equipping our artifacts, or by floating the mana into our opponent's turn and playing something then.
Howlpack Resurgence is perfect for this strategy. Flash allows us to play it on our opponent's turn, which is so important here. No one will have time to deal with this enchantment with wolves breathing down their necks, giving us a boon for the rest of the game.
Moonlight Hunt is our removal if it just must be so. With a converted mana cost of 2 we still have mana to equip our Neglected Heirloom
, or the opportunity to play Evolving Wilds or Traverse the Ulvenwald which could be stuck in your hand otherwise.
Playing Geier Reach Bandit
turn three would (ironically) stop what potential werewolves we have from flipping, though sometimes we'll have a Scourge Wolf out, or let's face it by saying maybe no creatures at all. She's at least a good offensive push, and if she flips for your turn four or five, your board state should be set. Playing her alongside Traverse the Ulvenwald or Evolving Wilds on turn four is just fine too.
Turn Four, Beyond
Pack Guardian has a few different supporting angles. Obviously there's the tribal one, benefiting from our wolven buffs, and the choice of sacrificing a land for a another wolf to work with, but it also has flash giving us a legitimate reason to float mana on turn four, letting us again flip werewolves our opponent might have messed up, or the previously mentioned Geier Reach Bandit
we may have played only a turn ago. The 4 power is perfect for allowing Lambholt Pacifist
to attack, too.
Arlinn Kord
isn't hard to understand being in the lineup. The intention would be to end the game before ever getting the emblem, but she provides a great lock out if we do.
Ulvenwald Hydra isn't set in this deck by any means. I feel with the inclusion of Traverse the Ulvenwald, should the delirium effect take place, we can pull out a one-off finisher that we could search the deck for. I'm still searching through cards to find that best finisher, and for now I think it's the hydra.
(*Turns out, no. Stick to the guns (or swords))
Final Notes
I apologize if I haven't gotten to all the descriptions yet, or if I haven't spent time ironing out the mana base. I wanted to make it public so that I may more easily show the list to friends while I finalize, before I purchase.
10/27/2018 Edit:
I took Scourge wolves out, turns out they're too difficult to reliably play. But Embereye Wolf worked great for me when I realized this very soon after making the deck.
After taking scourge wolf out, I didn't feel the need for evolving wilds or traverse or hydra. The Consistencywas actually quite strong. The sideboard is mostly for fun, I just wanted to try the Zada combo it's not really an appropriate sideboard for a best of 3, but it's fun and I mostly play kitchen table
