2001)

For many months now, I have been wondering what WOTC was thinking when they made the card Okk. For those of you unfamiliar with the card, it is a 4/4 red creature for 1R. The draw back on the card is that it can only attack or block if another creature you control with power greater than Okk also attacks or blocks. This is a pretty serious drawback in a mono-red deck since most creatures in red are not large enough to meet this requirement.

Needless to say, I have been laying up in bed at night thinking of ways to use this stupid card in a deck. Let's just say that either I love a challenge or am a complete loser. Either way the result is a deck that has a chance to use this very undercosted card in an unique way. How is it done?

Enter the ´´flailing´´ cards. Here's another batch of cards that sees very little constructed play because of the obvious problem that your opponent can kill off all of your creatures easily. These cards allow any player to give the flailing creature +1/+1 by paying 1 colorless mana, or -1/-1 for the same price. It's really easy to get into mana wars with your opponent to try to save a flailing soldier from certain death.

So why build a deck around these cards? The answer is speed. This is a type II mono-red speed deck that has some very efficient creatures compared to the rest of the slow multi-colored decks out there.

Here's the decklist:

4:Raging Goblin (1/1 for R, haste)
4:Flailing Soldier (2/2 for R)
4:Okk (4/4 for 1R)
4:Flailing Ogre (3/3 for 2R)
4:Flailing Manticore (3/3 for 3R, flying/first strike)
4:Skizzik (5/3 for 3RR, haste)

4:Shock
4:Pillage
4:Stone Rain
4:Tangle Wire

20:Mountain

The deck's goal is to bring out a ton of creatures fast and overwhelm the slow multi-color player. The secondary goal of the deck is to control your opponents land by using Stone Rain, Pillage and Tangle Wire. These 3 cards will put serious pressure on your opponents mana availability and will keep your opponent from killing off your flailing creatures or casting other spells. Often they will have to choose between casting spells and killing your creature (or at least keeping it from getting huge when it attacks).

Since you have 24 creatures in this deck, it is easy to replace any one of them. Your mana curve tops out at 5 too, so it is very efficient and fast. Okk is so undercosted and can actually be played in this deck in combination with Skizzik and the flailing trio.

Here's a play example, you could cast a first turn Flailing Soldier, a second turn Okk and then on turn three, pump the soldier to be a 5/5 and attack with a 5/5 and a 4/4. Most likely your opponent will provide some opposition but by turn 5-7 when you have them tangled once, stone rained/pillaged once or twice and drop a Flailing Manticore or Skizzik / Okk combo on them for 2 turns; there won't be much left to your opponent after that.

One word of caution... it might be better to play things like Raging Goblin, Shock and Okk the first few turns until a tangle wire is out. This will give you a few things to tangle up besides your land and also keeps your mana free early game to cast permanents instead of protecting your flailing creatures... Then, turn 3-5 you should cast Tangle wire, stone rain, and pillage to control their land while building yours. Finally turn 5-7 drop a bunch of flailing creatures and skizzik and pump them up and attack with everyone. Any Okks you cast turn 2-5 are not sick and if you drop a Skizzik, you can attack with 3-5 creatures most of which are power 4 or greater.

Although Okk did poorly in school and get's picked on by all the other Goblin kids, his team spirit and go-getter attidude really makes him shine in this deck! Way to go Okk!

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