Angry Angry Hermit
Got rares to spare?

By Fetar



I'll start this off by talking about the version of this deck I made, then the theoritical version.

About three-four years back when I was beginning to play Magic and learning how to play, I always asked people to donate cards to my Charity Society for Lack of Cards or something that sounded good, I figured if you bugged them enough they're bound to shell out at least something crappy, the more you bug them the better the card you'll get! But thats besides the point, because I did just that to a friend's brother so I ended up mooching a Howling Wolf and a Hermit Druid. The Howling Wolf was completely worthless to me, and according to the person I got it from, Hermit Druid was his worst card. Being new to the game, I read the card and thought: "Why on earth would I waste all those cards for a stupid land?". So I thought of it as my worst card too, and eventually traded it away to another friend of mine.

Just the other weekend, I went out and bought myself three copies of that very card, now that I knew they are rares from stronghold and could easily be abused. Only three copies? I also knew that my friend had that copy I traded him, he liked it because he saw its potential for getting threshold really fast in a GU Odyssey threshold deck. And it did exactly that, and whenever it was out you would never get land screwed either! A basic land EVERY turn for no horribly costs. Sure, the library removal might seem like a bad thing. Got a few copies of Gaea's Blessing?

But thats not the strategy I want to talk about. Threshold can be useful, but so can a whole ton of whoppingly gargantuan creatures piled high in your graveyard. With a few reanimation spells, Hermit Druid can turn your graveyard into another hand. A really big hand. And again, you'll never be land screwed!

If you have a stack of rare creatures that you don't usually use, they can be great in the deck. Thorn Elemental, Hypnox, Devouring Strossus, even Arcanis, the Omnipotent: Any color will work, but make sure the converted mana cost of the card is over 6, not things like Barrow Ghoul and Ruby Leech. Why over 6? So that you can get your Dragon Breath and Dragon Fangs activated, dummy!

Heres my favorite play:

First Turn-
Glimmervoid
Mox Diamond, discarding a Bloodstained Mire.
Hermit Druid

Second Turn-
Activate the druid's ability, dumping about half your library into your graveyard and getting a land.
Play the land.
Play Exhume, targeting Sutured Ghoul.
Sutured Ghoul comes into play as a 21/21 or so.
Dragon Breath and 2x Dragon Fangs return to play enchanting the Ghoul.
Swing for 23 damage. Game over.

Now to explain the relevance of the cards in this deck. Sutured Ghoul is by far the BEST target to reanimate in this deck. If you can fill your graveyard with 13/13s, 11/11s, or just 6/6s, you can remove them to Sutured Ghoul's comes into play ability, and it of course gains haste from Dragon Breath.

And how to dump half your library into your graveyard? Hermit Druid's ability stops only when it reaches a basic land. What if you don't have any basic land in your deck? The ability will go through your entire library until you reach the bottom, and you'll be decked shortly after. What I've done is put all of my best non-basic land and put it in the deck in place of regular basic lands. Tarnished Citadel, Glimmervoid, City of Brass, Tree of Tales, Vault of Whispers, Llanowar Wastes, Bloodstained Mire, Cabal Pit, Cephalid Colliseum, Tainted Wood and a ton of others make excellent additions. You can regulate how many cards you want to put into your graveyard through probability. 10 basic lands will on average stop the ability faster than 4 basic lands will. There are exceptions as always, like revealed a Forest as your first card. They happen sometimes, but you can't help that. The game is always random. Fetch Lands can help you regulate the land in your deck mid-game (if there is a mid-game).

Blue can kill this deck. Unsummon, Seal of Removal, Force Spike and many other annoying fast blue control cards will make it hard to do anything at all, and frankly there aren't many ways to get around this then play the game out. You could attempt splashing blue for Force of Will or Foils, letting Foil get rid of the big creatures in your hand and saving the ones in play.

Here is the deck I created:

Now, that theoritical version would be way more consistent with some even more horribly expensive cards. Four of each City of Brass, Ancient Tomb, Llanowar Wastes and NO basic land. Instead of all those nice big creatures, four copies of Krosan Cloudscraper and Sutured Ghoul, and Hermit Druids being the only other creatures. Add in a ton of moxes, Buried Alives, Entombs, make the reanimation consistent (4x Exhume, Corpse Dance) and more first turn plays like Duress. A deck like this can be found at Star City Games. That may be a lot more tournament quality, but remember at MTGCouncil we play virtually always casually. And the random aspect of my deck makes it one of the funnest to play.

And thats about all I have to say except:

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!