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Take a look at it, let it sink in. This card is the real deal. 

It's a pretty straightforward card, you tap it for mana now, later you tap it pay some mana make a dude big and try and kill them simple idea right, but there's a lot going on. Now everything you have from Birds of Paradise to Solemn Simlacrum has the potental to trade with a titan. On top of that with Garruk, Primal Hunter the land can replicate a Mind Spring effect. Pumping +0 still gives a fatty trample, which thanks to M11 interacts in wonderfull ways with Wurmcoil Engine 's Deathtouch, +0 also allows us to remove a phantismal without wasting a card which is always awesome.

Thats a lot comming from a humble land, but its not without a price, mana lots of mana. Good thing we don't have a skeleton of a deck from last season that generates a ton of mana and tutors up nonbasic lands as a win con floating around, if that was true someone would try and abuse this. . .what? oh?

Enter Brian Sondag's Wolf Run Green, fresh from a 1st place win at SCG Nashville:

Spoiler: Show

Again a straight forward plan: Play Ramp -> Play Fatties with a lot going on under the hood.

We've got 2 different very strong tutors (one good enough to get banned in modern).

The Titan fetches us up the titualr Wolf Run, along with a seperate wincon with Inkmoth Nexus .
Sondag opted to keep the lands simple and not much about with other utility (utility land tutoring being far more the realm of knights not giants). However singleton Ghost Quarter or Burred Ruin could have a place here if you feel like running less than 4 inkmoths. Anything more then 6 colorless lands I fear would cut into the mana base too much, but its your funeral if you feel like getting greedy.

Green Sun's Zenith gives us some redudnacy in the ramp department getting the single bird or an emissary. There's also some toolbox action going on with Slime and the sideboard, Melira, Silvok Outcast could become a target if you findyourself fearing U/x infect. Honestly I feel this tutor is stronger then the deck is at this point, offereing really just redudancy on the ramp I fully expect that to change as the format evolves.

Beast Within is pretty awesome here too, providing a way to interact with walkers, fatties and artifacts that our gszed up friends couldn't get at. Pointing it at lands early is also viable in this format where there's two very strong three color decks running around, stripping them over their very commonly single basic land forces their lands to etb: taped buying you precious time to ramp out your bombs.
The very best part is that you don't even need to sweat that 3/3 beast, seeing as it will very soon be outclassed, slagstormed, or held at bay by an Emmisary or Solemn. 


I'll be updating the op later with a breakdown of known matchups and alternative builds, alternate card options. I'll try and keep the op for proven tourny lists, and reserve a second post for more experiemntal brews.

I like the original list a lot. The only change I would make is replacing a viridian emissary with a Jade Mage .

Oct 11, 2011 -- 1:17AM, Gilgiga wrote:

Beast Within is pretty awesome here too, providing a way to interact with walkers, fatties and artifacts that our gszed up friends couldn't get at. Pointing it at lands early is also viable in this format where there's two very strong three color decks running around, stripping them over their very commonly single basic land forces their lands to etb: taped buying you precious time to ramp out your bombs.
The very best part is that you don't even need to sweat that 3/3 beast, seeing as it will very soon be outclassed, slagstormed, or held at bay by an Emmisary or Solemn. 

good post.

i think it's worth adding that Beast Within is ridiculous in this deck for an additional reason:
It's a very strong win condition, especially against control decks who won't get a chance to untap against it (and wrath, BSZ, liliana, gideon, etc.)before it swings for 8+.

all told, the deck runs 46ish cards that function as ramp or land, and 31 that are short-clock win conditions by midgame.  absolute nightmare to face with a control deck.  against aggro, it still has a pretty good game, emissaries and obviously slagstorm followed up with a wurmcoil engine.  but i might move a tree main:/

Sondag's list seems pretty optimal (it was obviously good enough to win Nashville) ... the only changes I would make to it going forward, at this point in time, is to somehow fit in a second Acidic Slime maindeck and a singleton Devil's Play .  The Slime is to fight opposing Wolf Runs, primarily, but it also deals with problem permanents like Angelic Destiny , Sword of whatever, Oblivion Ring , etc.  The Devil's Play will just win the game sometimes, or randomly save your butt from Mirran Crusader , Puresteel Paladin , Phantasmal Image copying whatever, etc. ... and what's great about it is, sometimes it'll do both!

However, as much as I love Slagstorm in this meta, I can't help but think that running blue for Phantasmal Image , Consecrated Sphinx , and board answers like Flashfreeze and Memory's Journey might make for a really scary deck.  I kind of see aggro phasing out over the past couple weeks and bigger-game midrange and control decks moving in, and while skimping on mass removal might not be the best idea right now, a G/U deck that splashes red to activate Kessig Wolf Run sounds a bit more strictly powerful to me than straight R/G, and I think we'll see some "Kessig Wolf RUG" decks making top 8s within a month or so.

I dunno... I think adding a 2nd Slime and a Devil's play increases your odds of having an awkard opening hand...
Considering than the deck has 4 beast withins, and 4 green suns that can call a slime, it seems to have enough answers to problem permanents... and in a miror match, having a BoP means you can ramp faster.

As for Devil's play... if you run 1... your not going to see it much of the time, and the deck already has answers to all those cards you listed.  Wolf run kills the Phantasmal Image without even having to lose a card, slagstorm takes care of Mirran Crusader and Puresteel Paladin (which is hardly even a threat now that basilisk collar rotated out.)

One thing that I think will change is adding more wolf runs (either to main deck or sb.)  He had the advantage that no one was prepared for it, so no one was going to have a way to take out his namesakes.  When solar flare starts putting in ghost quarters (which will be scary considering sun titans can call them back) this deck will need to have more than 2 runs.