Challenge of the Week: Ooze Garden

When I did the pre-release for Shards of Alara one of my rares was a two-cost green enchantment that made creatures. Nifty, I thought, as I began to read it. Then I noticed the bit about sorcery speed. Suck, I thought, and immediately put it into the stack of non-playable cards.

But it doesn't have to be that way, right? I mean, surely there has to be a way to make a terrible card slightly less terrible, or possibly even playable. And so this week's new challenge awaits.

Decklist spoiler below the card image, so if you want to think about it before you see anything, don't scroll down!!



















Ooze Garden. Good name. Good picture. Enchantments are good. So how do we get the most benefit from it?

Here is my idea, and it comes from a deck we have already discussed.

Recurring Ooze
3x Condemn
3x Ooze Garden
4x Safehold Elite
4x Kitchen Finks
4x Murderous Redcap
4x Heartmender
4x Wrath of God
2x Ajani Goldmane
3x Reveillark
4x Mulldrifter
25 lands

Pretty straight forward. The deck is designed to get persist creatures back into play and then get the -1/-1 counters off of them, with Heartmender, or Ajani Goldmane. Your opponent has seventeen 1/1 fairy tokens and you just have a murderous redcap and a safehold elite? No problem! Just Wrath of God and then watch as their fairies hit the yard and yours bounce back. What about if you have a reveillark and a finks in play? Finks returns, reveillark targets heartmender and mulldrifter. Your opponent loses all his or her creatures, you get two cards, two life, and three creatures.

And oh yeah, what about Ooze Garden?
Turn one plains.
Turn two forest. Play Safehold Elite.
Turn three swing with elite, drop a swamp, play a kitchen finks.
Turn four swing with the team, drop a land and a heartmender.
Turn five swing with the team, then play ooze garden and sac a finks.
Turn six you have a 2/2 elf, a 3/3 ooze, a 3/2 finks, a 2/2 elemental. Swing with them, make some trades, play a wrath or evoke a reveillark, keep creature advantage.

You can use reveillark to get back a heartmender. You can use Ajani to remove counters or create a diversion from your creatures so they have time to smash face. You control with condemn, redcap and wrath.

Wispmare is good for the board, and although it doesn't fit the theme, I would have two or three Cloud Threshers. I wanted to add Pyrrhic Revival to the mix, but couldn't quite fit it in there, but with condemn as removal, and unmake or bekon apparition, you could conceivably add it maindeck, or from the board.

Having four colors (use black or red for redcap, blue from mulldrifter) will hurt my deck, cause I'll probably be playing lands that come into play tapped, slowing things down. Which is fine, as long as I'm holding a wrath, I can afford to have things slow, and it might work out in my favor vs. aggro. Vs. combo or control, or any variation of those, slow is bad. In other words, this is far from optimal.

Alright, I'm interested in seeing everyone's decklists. Surely you can improve on my deck, or come up with a whole new deal.