Hunter Pence wants to be a ‘Magic: The Gathering’ champion. Let’s build him a deck

The San Francisco Giants won media day with their school photo-themed motif, but there was something about Hunter Pence’s that really stood out.

No, it’s not that his favorite food is kale salad, though that’s disturbing enough on its own — it’s what Pence wants to be when he grows up that really caught my eye.

For the uninitiated, Pence is referring to the “Magic: The Gathering Mythic Championship,” an esports tournament in Magic: The Gathering Arena, which is a computer-based version of the card game. As a giant nerd who has been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1995, and also a sports fan, I feel I’m uniquely qualified to help Pence realize his dream of becoming mythic champion and build him a deck that suits his strengths.

Firstly, this isn’t a bit from Pence. He really, really loves playing MtG. The Giants’ outfielder has made numerous appearances on various popular MtG streams, and even has his own Twitch channel where he plays Magic: The Gathering Arena almost exclusively, and routinely played Magic: The Gathering Online in the past.

I combed through Pence’s history to try and understand his preferences when playing MtG, but really it’s all over the map. He’s been playing a lot of draft lately, which means he’s building a deck from scratch every time he plays out of a random assortment of cards. This doesn’t help understand his nature when approaching an organized, constructed deck format.

However, ultimately I decided on building Pence a Gruul (Red/Green) deck for two reasons: Firstly, he played a Gruul deck a few years ago in Magic: The Gathering Online, and also that I believe a magic deck inherently reveals someone’s personality. For example, I am generally risk-averse and prefer social engineering in games, so I play Bant (Blue/White/Green). Pence’s messy, high-energy style naturally lends itself to an aggressive deck looking to hit people in the face quickly with creatures, and burn them down with spells.

The lazy thing to do would be for me to go to the results from the recently held “Magic: The Gathering World Championships” and copy a deck for Pence, but no Gruul deck placed highly. Also that’s incredibly lazy, and I don’t believe in being lazy. I am home brewing Pence a standard-legal deck from scratch that he can build on arena and, I believe, potentially get a win.

The deck, which I not-so-creatively call “Messy Gruul Aggro for Hunter Pence,” has potential.

A creature-heavy deck, MGAHP uses a solid base of haste creatures which can immediately start hitting in for damage with Bonecrusher Giant’s ability to be played as a two damage instant, and Robber of the Rich stealing cards being the deck’s main sources of disruption.

Into the mid-game I hope Pence has built up a pretty strong Pelt Collector to start holding its own against larger creatures, along with Klothys, who hopefully has had its devotion turned on so it can be a wall of a blocker.

Finally I want Pence to finish with a combo of Questing Beast and Embercleave, potentially hitting in for ten damage on its own thanks to double strike.

Make no mistake, I’m not saying this deck will win the Mythic Championship. Azorious Control is much too strong in the standard meta game right now with Teferi, Time Raveler and Dream Trawler locking down the board — but I think this Gruul deck could at least compete a little.

I am also well aware that everything I wrote in the bottom half of this story probably sounds like a foreign language to 99 percent of our reading audience, and that’s OK. This is for Pence, and he knows what I’m talking about.

Hunter, you’re welcome.