Grindyard

I’m still startled at price differences on Magic Online. The store is inconvenient enough to use that I sometimes find myself looking silly when I’m building a deck, and assuming cards are out of my price range, then being stunned when they’re not. The most recent example is this one, Grindyard.

9 Swamp
4 Llanowar Waste
5 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Oran-Rief, The Vastwood

3 Fleshbag Marauder
2 Mournwhelk
4 Nyx Weaver
3 Reclamation Sage
1 Rune-Scarred Demon
4 Satyr Wayfinder
3 Shriekmaw
2 Tombstalker
2 Walker of the Grove

4 Commune With The Gods
3 Murderous Cut
3 Rescue from the Underworld
3 Whip of Erebos

Now, I already owned the Overgrown Tomb and Llanowar Waste. They are important to the early game mana of the deck – being able to cast a turn two Commune With The Gods and a turn three Tombstalker is sort of nice, and it’s very hard to do when your deck is running on basics only. If you don’t use these lands, get Golgari Guildgates and Golgari Rot-farms. They’ll make your life at least a bit easier.

So far, Murderous Cut and Shriekmaw aren’t pulling their weight. I don’t see enough creatures that I need a full set of both, so far. On the other hand, I really like being able to Whip up some removal, and I like Delve for capitalising on the way I can flood the graveyard. Still torn on how to handle that.

I tried Grisly Salvage for a while but it can’t get Whips of Erebos, and that card, just for its passive life-link, has proven fascinatingly strong. And that’s where I was really tripped up. Because I bought everything in this deck – tombstalkers, runescarred demon, the weavers, the Theros commons and all, and the Whips… for four tickets.

Four dollars is pretty cheap for a whole deck.