How competitive is this The Rock and His Millions deck in Premodern?

[SeekerOfTruth007]

4 Spiritmonger

4 Ravenous Rats

4 Wall of Blossoms

4 Krosan Tusker

4 Ravenous Baloth

4 Pernicious Deed

4 Powder Keg

4 Duress

4 Cabal Therapy

6 Forest

4 Treetop Village

4 Mishra's Factory

10 Swamps

Sideboard:

4 Uktabi Orangutan

3 Genesis

4 Tormod's Crypt

4 Engineered Plague

[Cyfris]

So you ask enough premodern questions I had to look in to it and from what I can tell this is another midrange deck. In my experience mid range is a one trick pony in competitive settings. Once the gig is up its over and the faster decks outpace them when you reach the very top tier or measure long data sets. Could you sneak a win out of an unsuspecting tournment or local game night with it yeah maybe but will it become meta defining and consistently win over time there not very likely. The way to break the mold seems to be do more things faster sooner. It's why when things like badgermole come out they redefine the format because they are faster then everything else at what they do. Why cards like lanowar elves ends up in every green deck thats good and is a card I would suggest for in this one.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Pernicious Deed and Powder Keg hose the hell out of Goblins and Elves, but just in case, there's Engineered Plague in the Sideboard. It doesn't make a lot of sense to go with a mana acceleration strategy in a deck archetype which traditionally runs 8 board wipes in the mainboard.

The discard and reset also helps against Dreadnought and against Landstill decks, which are the leading decks right now.

This game is not always about speed, when there are 8 Resets mainboard and 4 copies of Engineered Plague in the sideboard.

If I owned Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fittest, I'd be playing those mainboard too somehow. That looks something like this:

4 Recurring Nightmare
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Spiritmonger
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Wall of Blossoms
4 Uktabi Orangutan
4 Bone Shredder
4 Deranged Hermit
4 Pernicious Deed
24 lands

[Cyfris]

Your actually wrong. A board wipe against a deck that is faster then yours is a losing strategy. What happens is you tap out and board wipe and the deck that is faster rebuilds faster again and is again at an advantage faster then your mid range. you can wipe 4 times but i'm still going to rebuild faster every time. thats why i say you will sneak the first win but after that you will get handed your lunch because I will know not to over commit and just maintain an advantage so I am prepared for the rebuild.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Board wipe helps the person playing bigger creatures, not smaller ones. /why would you run board wipe in a weenie deck? You cannot recover faster, because Deed kills several of your cheap creatures and leaves Spiritmonger alive. That's "N-for-one card advantage".

The theme here is called "Two for One Card Advantage".

If I realized Hymn to Tourach was legal in the format, I would have it in the list. Here's a better list:

4 Spiritmonger
4 Krosan Tusker
4 Uktabi Orangutan
4 Bone Shredder
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Wall of Blossoms
2 Genesis
4 Pernicious Deed
2 Powder Keg
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Treetop Village
6 Forest
4 Mishra's Factory
10 Swamp

SB:
4 Engineered Plague
2 Powder Keg
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Ostracize
1 Persecute

You play your useless elves. I board wipe and kill them all. Then you play what? Atop decked elves on turn 5? I'm really scared of a turn 5 elves, guy.

[Cyfris]

But thats what I am saying is I wouldn't play all out in to your board wipe twice. youd get me the first game maybe but after that I wouldn't be so confidant. What good is a 5 cmc creature you'll never be able to cast when Elves have winter orb for instance and can still tap creatures for mana. There is always a counter to a counter and I'm sure if you were right midrange would be the predominate deck type accross formats instead of faster decks. The good thing about magic is anyone can have fun doing what they like to do it doesn't have to be about winning the most but if it is about winning the most that teir 2 deck is like bringing a knife to a gunfight and prolly why similar decks have about a 2% representation instead of a 7% like the top decks due in the meta.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Okay, here's a deck which uses Elves for ramp, and still has at least a snowball's chance in hell against dreadnought and Landstill.

"Pay the Piper"
4 Dark Ritual
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Elvish Piper
4 Defense of the Heart
4 Uktabi Orangutan
4 Blastoderm
4 Spiritmonger
4 Verdant Force
8 Swamps
12 Forest
4 Treetop Village

SB:
4 Engineered Plague
4 Compost
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Duress

The goal here is to cheat 1 or 2 Verdant Forces into the play without paying their mana costs.