First Go At Werewolves

   Midnight Hunt is upon us! My first deck experiment is a werewolf tribal one, naturally. Initially I tried a three-color deck to include a couple of good black werewolves, but I was having mana issues and decided instead to stick to Gruul colors.

I've had mixed successes. I think I need to figure out which rares to burn my wildcards on (though I already used three on copies of Tolovar, which I haven't actually drawn in any of my games yet). So far, the stand-outs of the deck have been the Arlinn planeswalker card as well as Kessig Naturalist/Lord of the Ulvenwald.

The latter is a 2/2 for RG, and when you attack, you add either R or G, which sticks around until the end of turn if it's not spent. When it flips, it becomes 3/3 and retains the previous ability, but also gives all wolves and werewolves +1/+1 (other than itself).

Arlinn has an ability it took me a game to figure out how to use properly. Her +1 allows you, until the start of your next turn, to play creatures as if they had flash, and when they come into play they get a +1/+1 counter. She then has a -3 to create two 2/2 wolf tokens. When she flips, her +1 (unless it's more?) just adds some mana (I believe RG) while her +0 ability turns her into a 5/5 werewolf with indestructible.

So, there are a couple ways I think you could sequence Arlinn's abilities. One option is to -3 her on the turn she come out to get those wolves to protect her, and then the next turn, you use her +1 ability and wait, letting it become night at the end of your turn. Because her flash condition carries over to your opponent's turn, you wait until then to cast as many creatures as you can, all getting boosted and conveniently not turning things to day because it's not your turn. Then, you've got a boosted, transformed team of werewolves (assuming that your opponent doesn't have the cards to spend on setting it back to day) the next turn, when you can swing in with Arlinn and the rest of your wolfpack.

I did also put together a spirit deck, which actually did decently on my first game (it won) though I definitely need to do a fair amount of iteration on it to really make it work.

I'll be curious to see what cards wind up really blowing people away. I had some buyer's remorse burning four wildcards for Demiliches, which turned out to be really hard to use effectively.

I'm also waiting to see if the new dual-lands are worth 4-ofs. I got two of the Gruul ones and two of the Selesnya ones, and two copies are working out pretty well in my werewolf deck. I worry that drawing multiples in your opening hand will be a pain, though I guess at worst they come in tapped.

Weirdly it appears that there's only one basic land art for each type, though that might be because we'll get another in Crimson Vow later this year. I tend to like to diversify my land art when possible just to make things a little more interesting.

Anyway, it remains to be seen how strong the tribal themes will be in effective decks - I suspect instead we're likely to see individual werewolf cards proving themselves highly effective in decks that don't necessarily care about you having werewolves. But I like playing with set themes, like my Orzhov dungeoneering deck from AFR.

I'm eager to play around with the other Innistrad tribes, but I'm going to focus on refining this deck first.

EDIT:

Several matches later, I think I've started to figure out the rhythm and challenges of a werewolf deck.

As an aggressive deck (as is typical for Gruul,) you want to be putting a new creature into play each turn, but this of course means delaying nightfall, which is the state you really want the game to be in as much as possible.

Tovolar is one solution to this: if he's out and you have at least two other wolves or werewolves, then it becomes night at the start of your turn regardless, and he'll draw you a lot of extra cards.

Where the deck struggles is when the opponent has hefty creatures of its own. The werewolves aren't as impressive against a green stompy deck that already has a ton of big creatures.

Still, I really enjoy the flavor of it - the notion that you amass a bigger and bigger pack of wolves that can then seriously go on the offensive once your opponent misses a turn of spellcasting. Decks that draw a bunch of cards will make it harder to achieve this, but Tovolar (Tolovar? Cannot remember) helps force the situation.