Rush of the Wild
Playing the Deck
With your horde of warriors, shamans, and wild beasts, your goal is to put your opponents on the back foot, then smash through their defenses. This deck lets you take the offensive, dominating the battle and denying your enemy time to execute a strategy.
Your game plan is to attack early and often. Ideally, you'll start by playing a couple of creatures in the first three turns. If your opponent summons some early blockers, clear them away with
Shock and
Flames of the Firebrand rather than trade them for your creatures in combat. Your cards are at their best when you're attacking, so it's important to keep some creatures on the battlefield.
Once your creature assault begins, your other cards provide support for the offensive. This deck makes great use of the
Gatecrash set's bloodrush mechanic, which can help your attacking creatures barrel over your opponent's blockers. When boosting your creatures in combat, your first priority should be to keep your attackers alive. Unless you can finish off your opponent this turn, it's almost always better to pump up a blocked creature than it is to deal more damage to your opponent.
Ghor-Clan Rampager is particularly awesome because it lets you do both by granting +4/+4 and trample.
One of the most powerful tricks this deck can do involves
Wild Beastmaster plus a bloodrush card. You can attack with
Wild Beastmaster and discard a bloodrush card from your hand to boost its power before
Wild Beastmaster's ability takes effect. The result? The bonus from the bloodrush ability is effectively passed on to all of your attacking creatures for a bone-crushing combat phase.
Armed/Dangerous can also set up a huge attack when you use its fuse ability to cast both halves of the card. By choosing two different targets, you can force your opponent to block a small creature, leaving the path clear for your double-striking monstrosity to connect.
Your sideboard offers options to counter your opponent's strategy and give you the advantage. If your opponent is gaining lots of life, respond with
Skullcrack to put a stop to it.
Annihilating Fire helps permanently burn away creatures that come back from the graveyard or have effects when they die. Against other decks with big creatures,
Act of Treason and Enlarge are trump cards that let you turn combat dramatically in your favor.
Gruul Charm comes in handy against decks with flying creatures or lots of blockers. Savage Summoning is a powerful weapon against counterspells.
An aggressive strategy is among the most satisfying routes to victory in
Magic™. If you enjoy this style of game play, there are a couple of directions you could choose when you customize the "Rush of the Wild" deck. If you're a fan of powerful creatures that are capable of taking over a game, Scavenging Ooze and Kalonian Hydra from the
Magic 2014 core set are great choices. If you're the type that favors building an insurmountable advantage over time, the planeswalker cards Chandra, Pyromaster and
Domri Rade are fantastic additions.
Sideboards
Each
Magic™ deck may have a sideboard — a group of extra cards that are particularly good against certain opponents. For example, a card that says "Destroy all artifacts" is great against someone playing a deck that relies on lots of artifacts, but useless against opponents who aren't playing with artifacts. After you play a game against an opponent, you may make changes to your deck using cards from your sideboard. You must reset your deck to its original configuration before playing someone new.
In a Constructed game, your sideboard consists of up to 15 cards. Your combined deck and sideboard can't have more than four copies of any card other than basic land cards. Your deck must have at least 60 cards.
In a Limited game, all the cards you opened that aren't in your main deck are in your sideboard. Your deck must have at least 40 cards.
