We come from the land of the ice and snow…
By Josh Wren aka Plutar
I have a snow deck to show you that doesn’t use expensive cards but is very powerful. I love this deck, I just can’t stop playing it. It’s good at a lot of things, has elements of control and has several ways to win. But first I feel I have to defend my use of snow permanents. There are some tourney decks using snow lands and Scrying Sheets but I feel in generality people look at Coldsnap as kind of a failure, a ploy to get more money from the consumer by releasing an extra set this year. It is. But that’s beside the point.
I get the drift that most people feel Coldsnap is underpowered. I disagree. I like Coldsnap. I really do. I think the snow-covered lands add almost a 6th color to play with, and making all your lands snow-covered gives you a real advantage in today’s type 2 casual metagame (if there really is such a thing). Spells like Skred are insanely powerful when all or most of your permanents are snow. There are so many great cards (Rimefeather Owl, Rimescale Dragon, and Heidar, Rimewind Master etc.,) that are very cheap right now because they’re only good with snow mana. If these cards didn’t rely on snow permanents do you think they would be so inexpensive right now? I certainly don’t.
If there was a blue creature for 5uu that’s power and toughness was equal to the amount of permanents in play do you think it would cost about 2 for a dollar? That card would undoubtedly be a chase rare. If you take these cards’s reliance on snow away from all them, they would be too good. Then it stands to reason that if you put these cards in a dedicated snow deck they are almost unfair to your opponent. Advantages are good. Here’s my snow deck:
Izzet Cold in here or is it just me.dec
The chilly mana base:
12 Snow-Covered Island
12 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Coldsteel Heart
16 Creatures:
4 Phyrexian Ironfoot
4 Stalking Yeti
2 Heidar, Rimewind Master
3 Rimescale Dragon
3 Rimefeather Owl
Other Spells:
3 Confiscate
4 Telling Time
3 Pyroclasm
4 Skred
2 Mouth of Ronom “What?! Mouth of Ronom is not a spell!”
Yeah, it’s technically a land, but I agree with Noah Weil’s recent suggestion of counting lands like Mouth of Ronom as a spell instead of a land, because it doesn’t just add mana, it kills creatures too. It’s un-counterable, snow, and creature control. Also, this deck’s high curve demands more lands than usual, 26 seems to work fine for me in this deck, but usually I pretty much always stick to 24.
I also included Confiscate in here because I kept getting trounced by artifacts and enchantments. The only way I could think of controlling them was stealing them and it’s very effective. I only included 3 because, honestly, this card makes people mad. If I had 4 in my deck I’d be casting them more frequently on smaller threats, and as a casual player on Magic online I hate concessions. For now I save the Confiscates for threats I can’t deal with. I just wish they were snow. And In some games Confiscates are a win condition. It’s just a great card that I can’t live without, my favorite enchantment.
I just love playing the dragons and the owls. I’m a timmy-johnny according to Mark Rosewater, and flashy creatures really appeal to me. I rarely lose a game after they hit the board. I used to run 4 of each but found that in the interest of keeping my curve low I had to include Heidar. Heidar is a good card in his own right, there’s always something to bounce, but I find that he kind of acts as a decoy for creature desctruction. I usually cast him with an owl or a dragon in hand and my opponent will usually cast their critter kill spell on him, leaving the owl or the dragon to finish things up.
I don’t think I have to tell you all how good Pyroclasm, Phyrexian Ironfoot, and Telling Time are, by now they’ve already established themselves as auto-includes in a lot of decks. In this deck Pyroclasm helps clear the board and I consciously did not include any creatures with toughness below 3 and I only cast him when I’m killing more than one opposing creature. Telling Time helps me hit my land drops so I can be sure to cast an owl or dragon by turns 5-7. The Phyrexian Ironfoot’s power and toughness are well above par even if it annoys me that I have to untap him. Although, I’ve killed an unsuspecting opponent’s creature by surprise untapping it after they declare their attackers, which is always fun.
This deck does suffer from the lack of enemy dual snow lands in Coldsnap. But the inclusion of Coldsteel Heart really makes up for that. I rarely suffer from mana screw even though the deck has some cards with double color casting requirements.
If you have them you’ll want to add 4 Scrying Sheets, they’d work great in this deck. The deck is certainly a budget deck by most standards, as it costs around $22 dollars to assemble. I wouldn’t call this deck tier 1 by any stretch of the imagination, but it wins more than it loses in the casual room, and as with all of my decks I guarantee you’ll have fun playing it!