Having just acquired gorgeous Sauruses for my birthday, I was quite sure I had to play them somehow in the next tournament. I was a bit worried about performance though, and tempted by Rasputin’s robotic tinning factory too. But after Timo put his deck choice to popular vote, and Enchantress won, I knew there were no other options anymore - Sauruses it would be.

I first had this age old plan of Sauruses and Pestilences, maybe with some Nether voids and Dervishes. However, in testing the Pestilence - saurus combo felt clunky. Casting two four casting cost cards (or three, counting Void) and then needing Pestilence activation mana felt both slow and fragile. Deserts on the other hand worked perfectly with Fungusaurs!

When looking for further inspiration, I changed upon Tales of Green and Black , particularly from this deck pic onwards:

The idea of building B/G Void with single colored casting cost cards, Mana vaults and 4-mana beaters resonated strongly. Especially as I wanted to play 8-10 colorless lands (factories and deserts, strip, library), double colored casting cost requirements were hard... So out with the pestilences, but how to nurture my Sauruses then? 4 deserts is not enough by it’s own. I toyed with Witches, and Tornadoes, but they were both clunky, and Witches have the BB cost. Rods of ruin I did not even try…. After some false ends, I tried this card:

And it seemed to work quite nicely. But… now I had three colors and 8-10 colorless mana sources? Can this ever work? I sat down, cut stuff, added stuff, strictly following the ”single colored mana cost rule”. I admit the following is still very fragile, but it was good enough to win the North star II/21 cup. Here it is, the “Nethersaurus” (named by fine gentleman/lady “trout of Orms-by-Gore” from the international discord channels).

Make no mistake, changing the Sauruses & associated self damage package to e.g. Su-chis and probably cutting blue altogether makes a better Nether Void deck probably, but this is not the topic for today.

Omission of on-color moxen was intentional, - I needed multicolor sources, and I wanted the boosting effect of Pendelhavens more than moxen to have beaters under Void, as I already had 8 1/1 critters. Similarly, birds were not an option to have more beaters under the Void.

To get the number of colorless lands down, one Desert was cut as two are not needed in play, and Library of Alexandria was cut for the Sylvan - Bazaar draw package, as my hand was quite rarely at seven cards after the first turn. I tried out also Greed/Ivory tower package, but was not satisfied with it.

Some notes on individual cards:

• One main deck Terror and three in the sideboard: answers to Dibs, Ernies and Serras are absolutely critical. Maze untaps their creatures to block your fungusaur, but could also work on saving fungusaur. Perhaps worth a try?

• Crumbles are needed for both factories and moxen - would not go below 4 in main deck - can side some out as needed.

• The single Living plane (with GG in casting cost) to combo with Tims as the 61st card was my lucky charm.

• About sideboarding: for red decks if you suspect Blood Moons, you have to board in BEBs no matter what.

Some other things I would consider in hindsight:

• Cutting blue power, Tims and Living Plane for 4 Thallids, 2 Thorn Thallids, 1 Thallid devourer: more beaters under void and better mana base (also adding back 4th Desert and on-color moxen)

• A single Cry shield

• 1-2 Dark heart of the Wood at least in sideboard - I often wished I had it available agains burn decks.

Short tourney report

I did not make notes (expecting to go down glorious in flames), so below is based on memory, and surely includes horrible mistakes. Tournament report has the decklists of all opponents.

I wish I could tell you stories about humungous sauruses, but the amount of bolts and chains on the other side of most tables meant that most sauruses died 2/2 or 3/3, I think some reached 4-5 range but cannot remember the match. Still, the sauruses were doing a job, baiting burn.

Round 1 - BYE

Hard fought win.

Round 2 - Odber, BR Dreams (2-1)

Memories are very hazy, but if I remember right, the credit for the wins goes mainly to ernies (with no terror available) and one well-timed Nether void. In the one loss I think the BR deck just steamrolled me, doing exactly the thing it was designed to do. Maybe 4/4 or 5/5 sauruses happened in this match?

Round 3 - Prote, UG Aggro, Unstable berserkers (2-1)

Agains so many 1/1s, the Deserts and Tims were stellar. I remember some Ice storms/strips on key Pendelhavens, and I think the last game was the nailbiter where neither of us was drawing relevant outs for quite a while? Prote also got some really nice Ancestral - Regrowth drawing going in one of the games.

Round 4 - binks, RGB Aggro (2-0)

I have to admit my memory fails me here, but I think there was some unlucky mulliganing involved by binks in one of the games, and Ernies were angry again.

Semifinals - preacher, RG Goblins (2-1)

Deserts and LD were the best thing in my deck here, and blood moons happily made no appearance after sideboarding (though I had BEBs). In the one loss, preacher burned me to death and then to dust in a glorious blaze fueled by a wheel. In these games I also got the bazaar + Sylvan draw engine together. It was much better than I would have thought - will definitely play it elsewhere in the future.

Finals - binks, RGB Aggro (2-1)

One game I was beaten to death very convincingly :-) Both wins came from Nether Voids in a way: 1st was a classic first turn Void + Mishra, followed by Mishra beatings and some spot on removal of resources. 2nd win could have gone either way for a long time, but I had paralyzed a Serendib, and binks drew mostly painful Cities (I focused on killing any non-painful mana sources). There was a 1/1 ape held at bay by Desert and lack of forests. Finally I found an Ernie, and a Void to wait under while Ernie did it’s job with much help from the dib & cities.