Monkey Mania, Fit the Second

All right, is everybody ready to Kong it up? Monkey Mayhem? Gorilla Greatness? Primo Primate? Outstandangutan?

Anyway.

I’m sure you all remember the premise from last time, so I’ll just get one with it so you won’t be reading all day.

The first thing I thought about Skull Island was that those giant stone demon-heads in the water surrounding it would look great on a Magic card:

Rocky Headwaters
Land
2, T: Add UB to your mana pool
2UB: Return target creature from an opponent’s graveyard to play under your control. Sacrifice that creature at end of turn.

Or

Beach of the Skulls
Land
[This] comes into play tapped.
T, Sacrifice [this]: Add 2 mana of any one color to your mana pool.
Whenever [this] becomes tapped, lose two life.

Yeah, something cool and semi-broken. Actually, that last one might just be regular broken. Maybe not. It might not even need the 2 life loss thing. Hard to say.

On with the show:

Skull Island

1x Uktabi Kong – Well, obviously. Kong, meet the card that was made for you. Unfortunately, this card was not made for this deck, as you’ll see. Plus, the Venture deck from yesterday has no artifacts. Oh well. You get an 8/8 trampler for 8, and that’s decent.

3x Canopy Dragon – These are the t-rexes, or would that be t-reges in the plural. Probably. Anyway, these guys don’t normally have flying, but when Kong throws them off a cliff, they do. It’s sweet.

4x Monstrous Growth – Everything seems sort of large on Skull Island. There must be something going on. I bet it’s this.

And I guess everything beyond those is just cool stuff to see on the island:

4x Pygmy Allosaurus
4x Pangosaur
4x Xantid Swarm
4x Vampire Bats
4x Mole Worms
4x Giant Spider
4x Mortipede
4x Endless Cockroaches
11x Forest
9x Swamp

Yeah, simple, right? Play creatures and destroy. It’s a bad strategy for this deck because a lot of the creatures are just so bad. I mean Pygmy Allosaurus was pretty cool in the Black Summer, but against a UW Enchantment/Legends deck it’s a Gray Ogre. Xantid Swarm and Vampire Bats are flyers that…attack for 0, sweet! Giant Spider would be cool against a deck that had more than two ways to give creatures flying.

Right, so, not great.

You do have twice the creatures as the other deck, though, and as we all know, there are no wrong threats, only wrong answers, like Parapet for example. Remember when that card was played in Standard? Me either.

I do have some suggestions for alternate rules for playing these decks, though.

1. Atalya cannot attack.
2. If Uktabi Kong is in play, Atalya has protection from creatures.
3. If Barrin, Master Wizard is in play, Kong must attack each turn if able.
4. When Kong comes into play, destroy all Auras.
5. When Hakim Loreweaver comes into play, you may pay 1. If you do, search your library for a Stormscape Apprentice and put it into play. Shuffle your library afterward.
6. If an opponent asks about the background art on Uktabi Kong, you win.
7. Pirate Ship has the ability, “UW, T: Crew members gain the ability ‘T: Deal 1 damage to target creature,’ until end of turn.” And “Crew Member” means Gerrard Capashen, Tobias Andrion, Gosta Dirk, Kitsune Mystic, Autumn-Tail, or Merfolk Traders.
8. When Ward of Lights comes into play, remove all insects, spiders and worms from the game. Return them to play at end of turn.
9. Endless Cockroaches reads “When Endless Cockroaches is put into to a graveyard from play, return Endless Cockroaches to your hand or destroy target aura.”
10. If Gosta Dirk is in play, all damage dealt to Kitsune Mystic is reduced to 0.
11. Autumn-Tail has the ability, “When Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage comes into play, sacrifice Gosta Dirk and target player sacrifices a creature. Search your library for an Aura and put it into play enchanting Autumn-Tail.”
12. Monstrous Growth may be played as an instant. (Alternate: replace Monstrous Growth with Giant Growth.)

That seems more interesting. Now it plays more like a story and there’s a lot more to consider. I mean, do you play Ward of Lights now or wait until there are more insects on the board that you can waltz past for a crushing attack? Do you return an Endless Cockroaches to your hand or destroy a Parapet? If Barrin’s not in play, do you attack with Uktabi Kong or not?

The answer to all of these questions, and more! Is yes.

But seriously, I think you should at least attack with the Kong every turn once it’s out. Why not?

And now that I think about it, doing these two theme decks was really fun. I mean, King Kong was fairly simple to do, but why not try other movies and books? Star Wars has kind of already been done, since they had an entire Rebel mechanic (including my favorite creature type ever, Rebel Bird), but you could disregard that particular aberration and build decks for those movies. Try to build Jawas and Wookies using Scavenger Folk and, umm…something larger and hairier than Scavenger Folk, like Sloths. Shoot, go ahead and make Rootwater Gungans as long as you promise never to ever, ever talk like Jar-Jar, ever.

I remember one time I built an Ent deck using a whole bunch of treefolk after seeing Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. If treefolk weren’t such a weak, generally over-costed creature type, it probably would have been good. As it was, it only won every few games, but those games were lots of fun to play because I got to attack with trees.

If you really want a challenge, try to do something more complex than just a simple creature theme. Make a 5-color deck based on the characters from Catch-22. Orr could be Blinking Spirit or any number of Phoenixes or Squee. Milo could be Agent of Masks. Kid Sampson could be Stangg!

Tell me I’m not the only one who appreciates those.

Anyway, try some theme decks to play against each other. You might be surprised how much fun it can be to have your face smashed in by classic cartoons from the 80s or by the characters from Sneakers or CosbyShow.dec.

Until then, keep flies in your eyes.