Dry Anger

-- Introduction --

In my never ending attempt to make an angry deck work, I decided to take another shot after the recent changes to a lot of "angry" cards. I felt like trying to make a dual colored deck just to see if I could, and I ended up with a less conventional angry deck that looks more like a conventional yellow deck with red anger splashed in. To my surprise it seems to be working fairly well.

Yellow creatures pair wonderfully with the angry archetype as there are a lot of powerful yellow creatures with high attack and low life. Every single creature in this deck (except for hate seed itself) discounts hate seed and buffs your win-condition firebringers (even the firebringers buff the firebringers now!). We're using Wind Soldier instead of Flame Burst and Oradrim Fanatic instead of Flash Wind to get similar effects while taking advantage of that sweet synergy.

-- Gameplay --

For the vast majority of games I've found that it's best to start yellow and play like a yellow control deck, trying to gain board control with mobility. Manta rider is your bread and butter for this. Air elemental is useful for getting up to 3 deserts quickly and maybe getting a flying creature into double collection on the opposite side of the board that your opponent goes to.

Campfire and Fanatic are really useful for getting good trades, and Soul Drain helps you keep the board under control and combat burn a little. One of this deck's biggest weaknesses are red control and red burn decks since almost every creature is within Seifer's Wrath, Flame Burst, and Firestorm range. Try not to over-commit in these matches and use campfire to push key creatures out of range of these events when possible.

I feel this deck performs decently partially due to the surprise factor. A lot of the time you'll be able to play the yellow tempo game until you get an opportunity to dash a manta up, drop a mountain by their well, and slam down a surprise Axe Grinder. Then, on the following turn, slam down a fat Firebringer. Even if you need to build mountains earlier to get your red cards down, no one is expecting cost 0 Hate Seeds and fat Fire Bringers until they come down; most people will think you're going for Scourgeflame when they see a mountain. Early Outland Rangers may give away your secret early on for some astute players, but mostly it'll have them scratching their heads and perhaps thinking you're running an event deck.

Playing mono yellow at first and secretly wracking up angry buffs/discounts is how I try to play most games. Most decks can be caught unawares and won't be able to deal with either a huge Firebringer or several dirt-cheap Hate Seeds when they aren't expecting it.

-- Matchups --

As stated earlier, I've had trouble against red decks with this list due to the low health of most of the creatures, specifically burn decks. However I haven't been completely shut-down yet, and games have been close. They just make it much more of a challenge to control the board and put you at a disadvantage a lot of the time.

I included devouring plant specifically for rush decks. It works well against yellow rush, but not as well against red rush. Generally I've had good luck in my matchups against rush, specifically the Manta Riders can be really annoying for a rush player to get through for an orb hit.

Matchups against green have gone pretty decently for me, as this deck has decent trades and answers for big bois and the mobility to out-maneuver green early game. Ruunin might terrorize you if she gets out of control and you're running Nightmare instead of Flower, but it's not impossible to deal with her.

Blue transforms can make your Manta Riders and Firebringers a bit sad, but none of your cards are so expensive that a lone frogify will immediately screw you. Devouring plant is hilariously effective at eating up 2/2 jumpers in the right situation. Soul Drain gives you a lot of flexibility dealing with many blue creatures as well, either killing them outright or allowing for a clean trade.

-- Card Inclusions and Alternatives --

I thought about replacing Last Nightmare with Crystal Flower because Flower is cheaper, but seeing as how this deck isn't the quickest deck in the world, I thought early enemy big boys would be dealt with better by Last Nightmare. Flower could work well and it's worth trying, especially to deal with Ruunin.

As mentioned earlier, I included Devouring Plant to help combat rush decks. It's done its job so far, but it could be replaced by Sky Anemone, or just removed entirely in favor of some other card you like better.

Crumbling Golem might be a good inclusion if you can fit it in. A surprise mountain + golem could really screw with your opponent due to its shear power and relatively cheap cost. However, they'd be less effective in the early game when your opponent would have time to widdle down its health with summons, but even so some early pressure and trades with movement tricks could get you that win early.

This deck in general is in its infancy (and may or may not survive to adulthood), so there are a lot of possible tweaks and evolutions. I've thought about trying to build a Sacrificial Alter version (infinite angry buffs!) but I'd need to spend quite a bit of memoria and I'm not keen on doing that right before the pay-to-play changes.

-- Conclusion --

I'm pretty happy when any of my decks turn out to be at least adequate, and I haven't seen a list like this used before. I'm not sure how truly good this deck is since I feel the "wtf" factor has contributed to a lot of the success I've had, but it's fun and it's different.