Mobile Shooting Gallery

Decklist!

        1 Spellbreaker Behemoth

        1 Iwamori of the Open Fist

        1 Rumbling Slum

        4 Tinder Wall

        3 Blastoderm

        2 Shivan Wurm

        3 Hunted Dragon

        2 Argothian Wurm

        2 Crater Hellion

        4 AEther Flash
        2 Relentless Assault
        3 Kavu Lair 
        3 Hull Breach
        3 Firespout
        2 Pyroclasm

        4 Taiga
        1 Hickory Woodlot

        1 Sandstone Needle

        1 Grove of the Burnwillows

        1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits

        7 Mountain

        9 Forest

A very early deck whose origins are a little unclear to my memory but was inspired by the card Aether Flash and my love of big green creatures.

Mobile Shooting Gallery (named after the brilliant opening song from Bill Ward's album) wants to win the game by killing everything that's small and mopping up with a really big 5/5 that can come down on turn 4.

So I have Tinder Walls in so I can get to turn 4 without being beat up by tiny creatures, either by dropping a Flash on turn 2 (which is the best play) or by putting out a large creature that has to be dealt with (suboptimal but sometimes you do what you gotta do.) There are 24 lands-more than I usually go for in a deck-because if the Tinder Walls don't appear, I want to be able to use my other tools and cast nasty creatures on turn 4.  

With it's low threat density, an important question for this deck is; how do I keep the beats rolling? My answer was Kavu Lair. When every creature I cast, aside from Tinder Walls, can draw me a card and essentially 'replace' itself, having that creature get Doom Blade'd isn't so bad, although the creatures I had to work with initially were not fun. Funny thing happened through the years though; the 5/5s got a lot better. The initial creature selection included cards like Emperor Crocodile, Hunted Wumpus, Endangered Armadoon-an inspired choice if I do say so- and Jackalope Herd, which I really liked but...

Over many, many depressing games demonstrating that I had to have a way to get to the midgame where I could drop 5/5s and win, certain things became necessary. The other funny thing about taking a card and saying: this is key to the deck: my choices become a lot more focused, by necessity. If it can't survive coming out with at least one Aether Flash in play, potentially two, that creature is pretty much useless to me. If I can't survive to actually get an Aether Flash out, why am I playing that card?

Since this deck plays a bit more like a control deck: the opponent does stuff, I wipe the board with Pyroclasm or Firespout or best of all, Crater Hellion, then mop up, play Aether Flash to make small creatures dead draws and win on the back of one or two of my creatures, cards like Blastoderm or Hunted Dragon, the number of board resets, the aforementioned Pyroclasm and Firespout, had to go up. The always fun Relentless Assault is there to snatch victories from the jaws of defeat, which it does pretty well. You don't always need it but when you do, it's awesome.

Now, this deck is going have fun against a few matchups but is really there to stop weenie hordes. Decks that don't want to interact on the battlefield are going to give me a lot of trouble with and my thin layer of threats it may very well be time for a makeover, putting in Garruk's Packleader as a Kavu Lair with legs. The pros: the Packleader can win games. The cons: everyone has ways to kill creatures; enchantments, less so and the Packleader costs 5. I want to cast the nasty creature on turn 4 and draw something off that, so I'm reluctant to add them in.

Which leads me to the next problem; generally, a big creature that is undercosted will come with some sort of drawback (see Hunted Wumpus or Shah of Naar Isle) which leaves the obvious difficulty of how I get around that drawback and still push MSG's theme. In addition, because there are so many ways to kill creatures, the ones I run have to be pretty good-and not leave me in an unwinnable situation if I use them and they die.

So we'll see how things go.