Hey there! Welcome back for the third installment of the Challenger Series. Today we’ll be looking at what I feel is a pretty unique red green deck. Playing red green outside of a ramp deck is not something I’ve really done before, so this week has been an interesting and fun challenge. Let’s get started.
Red Green- Ulasht, the Hate Seed
For our commander this week I chose to build a deck around Ulasht, the Hate Seed. Ulasht is a strange hyrda. With no X in its mana cost and not wanting to go tall, it differs from almost every other hydra card I know. Let’s look at what Ulasht does and see what kind of strategy he leads us to.
Ulasht is a four mana legendary hydra 0/0. It enters with +1/+1 counters for each red creature and green creature you control (with creatures that are both colors counting twice!!). Ulasht also lets you pay one and remove a counter to either deal one to target creature or put a 1/1 saproling creature into play. I didn’t want to go too hard on the token route with Ulasht as I wanted to do something off the wall. Now, the list ended up being more casual and slower because of that but I am still satisfied with how it turned out. Ulasht allows you to ping a creature for one damage by paying a mana and removing a counter. I looked through gatherer and tried to add as many decent “T: ~ deals one damage” creatures as I could. I found creatures like Thermo-Alchemist, Lobber Crew, and Fanatical Firebrand to fill these slots. A lot of the creatures I found were fairly cheap and still decent without the ping ability, but I knew I had to go deeper.
Next I went with cards that could use our creatures that couldn’t naturally ping, or would help reuse some of our pinger’s abilities. Cards like Impact Tremors and Goblin Bombardment will be able to help us get extra damage through and block profitably with our small pingers. If we end up dropping a ton of tokens at one time, these cards, especially the strongest one, Purphoros, God of the Forge, can do a ton of damage to all of our opponents, leaving us far ahead.
I still had a small token focus to help synergize with the other part of Ulasht’s ability, although I did not put a ton of token cards as I didn’t want the deck to be taken in that direction. Avenger of Zendikar and Seige-Gang Commander give a lot of blockers, as well as more fuel for some of the sac outlet pingers.
To fill out the rest of the deck we have typical ramp and removal in a red green deck, a couple planeswalkers, and a few virtual “I win” cards in the deck that I’ll go into below. First lets go through the deck list and see how it ended up!
Ulasht, the Hate Seed EDH
Commander
Creatures
- Anger
- Avenger of Zendikar
- Birds of Paradise
- Brimstoen Mage
- Clockwork Hydra
- Craterhoof Behemoth
- Cunning Sparkmage
- Dragonlair Spider
- Dryad Arbor
- Elvish Mystic
- Endbringer
- Eternal Witness
- Fallen Ferromancer
- Fanatical Firebrand
- Firebrand Archer
- Golbin Sharpshooter
- Jeska, Warrior Adept
- Lightning-Rig Crew
- Llanowar Elves
- Lobber Crew
- Nettle Drone
- Purphoros, God of the Forge
- Reckless Fireweaver
- Reclamation Sage
- Sakura-Tribe Elder
- Siege-Gang Commander
- Spireside Infiltrator
- Tana, the Bloodsower
- Thermo-Alchemist
- Thromok the Insatiable
- Tunneling Geopede
- Walking Ballista
- Welder Automaton
- Wood Elves
- Zhur-Taa Druid
Artifact
- Blasting Station
- Granite Shard
- Gruul Signet
- Lifecrafter’s Bestiary
- Panharmonicon
- Skullclamp
- Sol Ring
Enchantment
- Barrage of Expendables
- Cryptolith Rite
- Fecundity
- Fires of Yavimaya
- Goblin Bombardment
- Impact Tremors
- Warstorm Surge
Instant
Sorcery
- Blasphemous Act
- Cultivate
- Flame Fusillade
- Harmonize
- Kodama’s Reach
- Overrun
- Rampant Growth
- Rishkar’s Experties
- Saproling Symbiosis
- Triumph of the Hordes
Planeswalkers
Land
- Cinder Glade
- Command Towers
- Fire-Lit Thicket
- Gruul Turf
- Karplusan Forest
- Kessig Wolf Run
- Kher Keep
- Mossfire Valley
- Mosswort Bridge
- Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
- Rootbound Crag
- Sheltered Thicket
- Shivan Gorge
- Stomping Ground
- Temple of Abandon
- Wooded Foothills
- 9x Forest
- 7x Mountain
Now a couple of cards I’d like to highlight:
Triumph of the Hordes: I’ve seen this card steal so many games. With enough creatures, there just isn’t a way to profitably block, and this deck always has enough creatures. Not guaranteed to make friends with this card but it will help you win games.
Craterhoof Behemoth: We all know this card, most of us have probably been killed by this card, but it’s notable because even in a non-dedicated token deck we still get enough creatures that we can swing for 40+.
Shivan Gorge: I just love this card. It’s a repeatable pinger on a land! It fits with the theme of the deck perfectly, as well as giving colorless for Endbringer. I love this card.
That is it for Ulasht today! This was honestly really hard for me to build, but it’s super fun. Not really for the competitive groups but I’ve had a lot of fun with it in my playgroup this past week. Slow at some times but it can blow up fast.
Next week I’m hoping to have a gameplay video to go along with the article! Along with the deck I will post next week, I will pick my favorite and take it along to xmage to see how these decks may fair in the wild. I’ll leave next week’s deck a mystery, but contact me on twitter or in the comments here if you’d prefer one deck over the other! Thank you for reading today and I’ll see you next week!
Cameron
@camcole113 on twitter
