Can I Win a Game with 99 Mountains and a Monkey? | Brewer's Kitchen
Well, hello there! Brewer’s Kitchen here and today we’re trying to find out if we can win a game with only 99 Basic Mountains and a Monkey.
The Gameplan
The plan is simple: Play Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer on turn one and try to snowball it into a victory.
While this is a solid plan in every format where the Monkey is legal, it’s usually supported by efficient removal and interaction to ensure that Ragavan survives and gets in the combat damage. But that would be a bit boring wouldn’t it?
All we have is 99 Mountains and a dream. That dream is that the opponent either doesn’t play removal or blockers and we get lucky and steal a real win condition out of their deck.
Since we’re playing Historic Brawl, we will always have the monkey on turn one. The problem is that means our opponents also play a commander that can likely stonewall us out of ever dealing combat damage to them by just blocking.
But hey, at least we will hit our land drop every turn.
Wrap up
After 100 Games, I ended up with a 21% win rate. While this would be abysmal for any other deck, that means that we got every fifth opponent to salt scoop to a deck that plays 99% Basic Mountain.
Sadly, we never got to actually win a game by bringing our opponent’s life to zero. Judging by how we didn’t even get close to this, it seems very unlikely to match up with an opponent that can’t answer the monkey and then stays in the game long enough for us to win before conceding out of frustration.
While I usually don’t recommend crafting my gimmick decks to play for yourself, this one is only a single mythic wildcard. And if you throw in some removal and value, you will end up with a very competitive deck. Just imagine a normal win rate plus the 21% of people just scooping out of salt.
Here’s a start on the decklist:
If you have questions or ideas for this or any other deck, you can reach me on Twitter @Brewers_Kitchen or at brewerskitchen@mtggoldfish.com.
