MTG Salvation

I just wanted to hop in and address one specific sentiment I've seen popping up over the past few pages; the idea that Surrak is only going to be good if countermagic is good. Whether it's the quantity or quality of good countermagic..that isn't the issue, and this view is very shortsighted. EDIT for clarity - with respect to discussing how good he'll be specifically in Standard

The fact that Surrak himself has Flash should underscore the greater point about Temur Charm (and gives this card additional value, similar to how more quality Morph creatures in a deck increase one another's potential) - you have your OWN countermagic if playing this clan - OR you flash in this huge monster. I cannot stress enough how huge this is, in colors that have access to ramp/more mana + colorfixing, to have powerful efficient, above the curve Flash creatures, as well as access to your own countermagic to protect them.

This (Temur as a whole deck) is basically everything RTR Simic counter-aggro wanted to do (in this past Standard), except better, with some haste thrown in, and less durdling with counters.

Temur / RUG all the way.

Don't even care about how it looks right now/limited info/pictures, RUG is my favorite, and I'm mainly just happy that it's being based in green.

Also, I've never cared for white or black, as I see them as more "ideas" than "elements" of magic, whereas RUG are the "primal/elemental" magic colors. Earth, Fire, Water...and two colorless, GOOOO PLA-, I mean, summoning Captain Planet.

It's one thing to talk about a mono green tool kit in a vacuum, but it's a total other thing to actually back up your claim. Please do tell what either of the above lists would do against MBD, MUD, U/W control or Jund Monsters on a consistent basis. These are the power houses in Standard right now. I simply do not believe that a mono green tool box can stand up to any of these decks which you see everywhere. Given the option, I'd rather play Green devotion with or without a splash. It's also tough to tool box with the creatures in the colors right now because only a few actually do something when they come down. I'd rather have a Plummet as a one of in the main, or a Ranger's Guile as stupid as that sounds simply because it's more of an answer to X than a Hind, a Soul, a Colossus, an Acolyte, a Hunter etc etc. Reclamation Sage and Phyrexian Revoker are two great toolbox creatures because they impact the board the turn they hit the table. IMO until green gets more creatures like that, a tool box deck will only be half full.

Uh, sure, what claim? You know, I was actually agreeing with you, that the "harsh truth" is that toolboxing is nowhere near as good as it used to be. I was trying to encourage more explanation "why" it's bad now vs then, as you can't just tell a player who wasn't around then that "this just sucks compared to how it used to be". Followed by some generic overlook on the format, why the bombs you can tutor aren't that good, etc.

Nowhere am I championing a full on toolbox build, or did you need that spelled out for you? There's certainly some good cards that already deserved inclusion, such as Nylea. Reclamation Sage, Scooze, those are easy to justify 1-of's. The simple biggest upgrade in Chord of Calling is that now I can cut down on the number of actual Nylea's I run, but am still effectively running a full 3-4 copies of her, in the form of Chords. If there are a "few creatures" that can be good enough on their own, but aren't worth playing high quantities of, then are we "trying to force toolboxing?" Or just optimizing and benefiting on the side from the tools we're given?

IMO until green gets more creatures like that, a tool box deck will only be half full.

I'm totally fine with that, and want to work with what works first. If that means an incomplete toolbox, but an otherwise fully solid midrange green devotion core, I'll take it.

@ Bostonsteve - it's also worth mentioning a little further than that, I think. It's one thing to say the tools now just suck as opposed to then. It's hard to do in today's standard *because* the tutorable bombs by and large have nowhere near the inevitability or immediate killing power as say, Primeval Titan + Kessig Wolf Run. Whatever 1-of tutorables are very much "situational" at the moment...I like Chord'ing in Nylea before damage happens right now a lot, to grant my team trample and blowout chump blockers, which is a pretty common/versatile situation, and very strong play.

Just due to the nature of the format now, and the lower power level of bombs (in all colors) in general, and lack of much inevitability (as compared to previously Wolf Run Ramp / Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle for instance) - we are forced to play the longer, grind it out games.

Some of the tutorables really are situational, some of them decent. I just completely doubt whether Yisan himself is worth it or not, so far I'm leaning towards no, because he really is slow to get going before you see a return on him, plus removal is so heavily played, so I would rather build around Chord entirely. Reid Duke's Simic/Bant take on Yisan is powerful if unchecked, but that's only relevant in midrange vs midrange type matchups where there's no interaction, it's a "who can go bigger" type board stall. Good points though, it is the "harsh truth".

A couple of thoughts I've had, while browsing here and following the more aggro-centric Mono-G thread;

#1 - The decision to splash a color or not, right now I'm thinking no. The biggest reason is, right now we're operating/deckbuilding on the axis of "how much self-interaction" does this list provide? We're essentially figuring out the nuts and bolts of consistency, self-interaction, and what can this deck do on it's own with it's own resources. The metagame come october could completely warp everything, making Green decks look like something none of us envisioned now. A good example of this would be this current Standard's Jund Monsters - a lot of card choices in that deck are reactionary, it's very much an "in response to the meta + the mirror" thing. We're nowhere near approaching that point yet, so I think it's best to figure out simply what works best for us, and not care about the what-if meta that much.

White Splash
- My first draw is towards white, mainly for Voice of Resurgence, (at least while it's still around). Voice and some elements of Selesnya to me seem mechanically positioned to really take advantage of Convoke (ability to make more dudes, and always have dudes around more so than other colors). Biggest turnoff from White; Karametra, God of Harvests. The biggest appeal in being a Chord deck to me, is getting to run 1-of on Gods, and the appeal of a splash is getting a 1-of dual color God, but Karametra is pretty weak in general.


Black Splash
- I'm leaning against this at first glance. I like what a lot of GB decks are doing with cards like Garruk, Apex Predator + Vraska the Unseen, but those decks are structured completely differently (lots of removal) and more traditionally Rock style. Black doesn't really add any more explosive power or another dimension to our creatures, IMO, it just pulls us into wanting to play a longer, grindier game. Which is fine too, for instance, Pharika seems reasonable to splash for, but I wouldn't splash black for her alone. Shadowborn Demon seems excellent in a lot of ways to me, we have cheap creatures to feed him with, and Chord of Calling can possibly cast him for entirely green mana, if we're not heavily splashing black, at instant speed. More exploration needed here, I think, this is just me spitballing a few cards that jump out to me for splashing.


Blue Splash
- Reid Duke's article really covered the bases here, and he has been a champion proponent of Bant decks for a long time now. I'll definitely defer to his choices here. Blue is very easy to splash, since it has Yavimaya Coast instead of Temple of Mystery and has a lot of mirror breaking options (Cyclonic Rift). Just as a preference for splashing, I'd rather do Blue or Black simply because they have access to faster mana at the moment.


Red Splash
- Xenagos, God of Revels, Xenagos, the Reveler. I say with complete certainty that cards like Stormbreath Dragon and Soul of Shandalar are only going to dilute and weaken any green devotion we have going on. I've tried green devotion / Monsters hybrids, and it really feels better to commit to one or the other. I honestly like Red the least here, with the exception of Xenagod, the whole point of adding Red is to make the deck "more explosive" or "hastier", yet adding another color, even a light splash may slow down the rest of things a tad (or make mana more painful).


#2 - Respecting aggro - this is my only rule of caring about the meta at the start of new seasons. Aggro decks are always advantaged, because nothing is fully figured out yet. If anything, this would skew me more towards Courser of Kruphix, although I'm very much in agreement with you on your reasons for excluding it, Sslater. It's a very low priority to fetch at 3 CMC, and the land count isn't there. There's certainly other ways we are respecting aggro anyway - Nylea's Disciple, Scooze, etc.

#3 - Biggest reason *not* to splash - Nissa. I know you're leaning towards keeping your lists budget (Sslater), but I'm heavily exploring the decks that can be built around Nissa. If she has a home here, she really doesn't like non-forests, from my limited testing already, I've been doing entirely Forest + 4x Nykthos type land bases, and even one Nykthos (instead of another Forest) in play can change my decision on whether to cast her or not. This really makes her more of a turn 5 play most of the time for me, instead of ramping her out T4, as she'll on average only untap 3 lands the turn she comes down. Which is fine, I'm just stressing that she is not okay with splashing anything. The biggest advantage she offers MonoGreen really is another angle of attack against control decks - animating lands is very good for us, since this "play tons of dudes" strategy is very much arguably playing straight into sweepers, we need all the resilience we can get IMO.

TLDR: weaknesses or areas I'm focusing on; cards that give us resilience to fight through removal/sweepers - Nissa, Worldwaker, Voice of Resurgence, Boon Satyr, Soul of Zendikar, and, focused on surviving/beating aggro.

Thanks for sharing! Not going to lie, I really like what's going on here, a lot. I've been looking for a long time for an actual standard deck that wants to make a home for 4x Deathrite Shaman, and thought the same thing about Evolving Wilds coming in M15 - giving us more incentive to play both together.

It's also worth mentioning - I wouldn't tinker with it myself yet, but since you've got more experience with the mana, have you considered adding 4x Caves of Koilos + 4x Llanowar Wastes?

The main reason I say this, I've seen similar situations with the RUG/BUG/Dega shards - they have a very strong mana advantage at the moment the allied colors obviously don't have. It's surprisingly not quite as painful mana as you'd expect, with the upside being much faster mana. I would think at first glance at least, since this is a fairly low curve mana deck, but you still want as much open mana as possible for removal + deathrite activations (or Monstrous activations), that fewer comes into played tapped lands seems really desirable here.

Even then, if you have to eat some pain, it seems worth it since you can get more use out of your DRS's, and gain life off of them+scooze to counteract things.

All in all, really like what's going on here. If I were to try my hand at this, I'd like to work in at least 1-of Pharika, God of Affliction, probably, it just looks (at first glance for what it's worth) this list needs another way to close games out. Could you tell us more about what matchups you find are hard to finish games, or do you find that it doesn't need more finishing power? Or, sideboard options for that? Will definitely be giving this a try soon. I'd probably try to squeeze in an Obzedat, Ghost Council somewhere too... =] Sideboard if nothing else, seems perfect for the late game grind them out kill, and manafixing doesn't seem like an issue at all.

Hot damn, thanks for the idea/post Ryan. It did not occur to me that certain wedges have an unfair mana advantage at the moment (well, it's obvious that enemy color pairings do for the moment).

Just as a slight aside, I feel bad for disappearing from this thread, it's a lot of things really. Just been on a bit of a magic hiatus, mostly, and also the thread/archetype never really picked up much steam, unfortunately. I'm still interested in coming back and exploring, but the direction you suggest, "RUG Monsters" is entirely different (and better IMO) than what was initially worked on here.

This began as really a Monogreen devotion deck, splashing two colors instead of one, and still aiming to milk Nykthos. Back in Born of the Gods, Kiora was just a pet card, not a cornerstone to this archetype, obviously, and since the completion of the set, I think it's fair to say she's been completely replaced by Eidolon of Blossoms. I definitely agree with you now that she's not needed, and only dilutes things.

But yeah, the question really lingers - what are we really gaining by splashing Blue, other than Cyclonic Rift at this point? The mana can certainly work, and be fast despite tri-color, and not too painful, I'm on board with this, and think there's exploring to be done. Just working on theory alone here, blue adds nothing to a "meat and potatoes green/red beats" strategy - nothing in the way of mana development, or big creatures, or hitting faster. My initial vision with RUG was basically just splashing blue for extra card draw. Rift is obviously an awesome blowout trick, and you have more experience than I do on which matchups it shines in.

Basically, maybe a Zegana or two at the top end? Drawing another GCR or another Dragon to close games seems desirable to me - there's serious synergy with Bloodrush and bursty card draw, although that's assuming the games gone late and you're having trouble finishing, or it's a grindy match.

EDIT: Aside - I also really like the idea of some Ral Zarek in a RUG Monsters build, that does not care about Nykthos/Devotion. He's far more aggressive than Kiora can be - tap something in order to swing through with Polukranos, or help you ramp a little, or shoot something.
He seems valuable in the mirror early on even, shooting early mana dudes, or even an early Scavenging Ooze. Or perhaps that is christmasland thinking, and he doesn't do anything relevant for the rest of your matchups.
But I don't like Domri at all in mirrors, as he seems to only help you "get more ahead" if you're already ahead, and feel like it's the worst feeling to have another Domri in hand, but no meat on field to fight with. I ultimately felt he was 4 of good in previous (Kibler) Gruul Aggro (last year's standard again, 8x 1CMC dorks, faster mana, and a much better early aggressive creature package made him far better, I'm pretty biased against him now).
I would not consider running Zarek before in the Kiora/Green Devotion/Nylea shell as he's strictly Izzet, and always try for maximum synergy/focus in my decks.

@Afosz - Actually I like the Black Cat, if anything, it's just an offensive Elvish Visionary in this sense, since we don't have him available to us.

You may be onto something, and I like what that list is doing - offensive disruption to buy yourself time for ramping, it's not what I'm used to, but I can get behind it. I would definitely think at first glance without playing your list that some Silence the Believers is worth a few slots - it's huge value if you can Strive it even once. Either way, I'm a huge fan of modal cards like that, that have a cheap mode and a late game super mode, and they're probably ideal for our purposes - Cyclonic Rift / Mizzium Mortars are old obvious options for buying time, less so Mortars though due to the RRR.

Let us know how it goes! I hope we get the rest of the spoilers finished soon so that we can have real threads (that won't be archived soon) and real results coming in. :>

So far, I see multiple ways to build around Nissa actually. Here's what I'm starting with, and it's pretty radical, plus only based on the shared M14-15 pool that we'll have for a few months.

It's also somewhat built around / incorporating Yisan, Wanderer Bard. I do think that both Yisan and Nissa are at home in the same kind of deck - a deck that wants to defend early, takes it's time developing mana/ramping/drawing cards, and then going big. Yisan encourages playing a few tutorable 1-of's however, and having creatures at every spot on the curve (playing a gradual curve rather than skipping 5 drops for instance going straight to 6).



This is a rough sketch of mine mostly gauging the addition of Wall of Mulch. Gatecreeper is close to playable on it's own (I have a soft spot for it too I'll admit), but Mulch + Yisan are there to help ensure that these resources aren't dead draws even later on. The rest is pretty obvious why it's there, develop mana, go big. Soul of Zendikar certainly belongs if that's the plan, although I'm not sure what the best particular ramp "shell" is for him - which is what I'm attempting to explore.

The other route would be to use the already existing and proven MonoGreen devotion shell;

• 4x Elvish Mystic
  
• 4x Burning Tree Emissary
  
• 4x Voyaging Satyr
  
• 4x Sylvan Caryatid

+

• 4x Eidolon of Blossoms
  
• 4x Boon Satyr
  
• 4x Courser of Kruphix

as the deck's engine/draw power.

I do see a bit of tension though between Monogreen Devotion's current shell versus Yisan, into whether it really wants him in it's strategy. Currently I don't think it does, why force him into a deck that draws a ton of cards just fine without him? Both Eidolon of Blossoms and Yisan are stand-alone build arounds, and I'm thinking it's not worth it to try and merge the two.

On the other side of the coin, I'm having trouble just trying to jam Nissa herself into current MonoG devotion - that deck in it's current form really comes together around 4x-Garruk, and falls apart like a bunch of weak cards without him. The current deck doesn't need *more* ramp at all at the moment, which is what new Nissa would provide, she'd essentially be a Forest animator, or another versatile threat that helps you play through removal/sweepers - in other words I don't see her fitting in more than 2-3 for any purpose other than threat diversity really. Which is awesome, don't get me wrong, having more threats to fight through MonoBlack+Control is definitely a good thing, in a deck full of low impact dorks. I just say that to stress that I don't think she's much of a player, or close to 4-of good/needed in there like Garruk is.

If there can be a deck for her, it's one that prefers real land ramping over mana dudes (possibly the defenders with some card advantage), has some draw power on it's own (not reliant on 4-of Garruk), and wants big things to do with it's mana (Soul of Zendikar, Nykthos, Nylea, Polukranos).

Quote from Fhorar »

Kibler just wrote an article on this archetype over on SCG (he has been as enamoured with the deck as I have), and I found a lot of the things he had to say we're interesting. First off, he decided to cut white because of how he felt banishing light is a liability (which I disagree with) and subsequently cut Elspeth (which is a mistake IMHO). Sure there are situations where a timely abrupt decay from Bg dev can 'blow you out' by freeing a demon from banishing light during combat, but that situation is rare. Usually I save my downfalls for demons (the exception being killing their turn 2 rat when I'm on the play) and BLs for connections. He has been testing a BG version with primeval bounty and my experience is that this severely weakens the deck. Part of why Elspeth is so good here is because she can get you back in the game when you're behind along with being a quick way to close games where you're ahead. Bounty, while resilient, is worse and slower at doing both of these things.

Another interesting thing he brought up was main decking thoughtseize over maggot. Now this is something that I think is actually a really good idea. Yes, they're more dead than maggot in the late game because at least maggot can trigger constellation, but the trade-off of being able to permanently strip something from their hand is more than reasonable. The downside of it being a dead draw is also somewhat mitigated by scrying with temples and drawing a million cards once you get your engines online. I highly recommend anyone with premium on SCG read his article though if you're interested in this archetype.

@Fhorar - just got through reading Kibler's take on it, agree with all of the above. I'm new to this deck and just lurking, but have a lot of experience with Junk decks. I can't imagine for the life of me, in his whole article, he talks about struggling immensely vs control decks, but I saw zero mention of Vraska the Unseen. I haven't seen Vraska mentioned in this thread yet either, and cannot stress enough just how powerful she is post board vs control decks, for those of you running B. When we're splashing R just to get Slaughter Games post board, just to fight Sphinx's Revelation is when I feel a deck is structurally flawed or needs some serious re-adjustment. It doesn't surprise me too much, he's running the full 4 Doomwake Giant, which are pretty mediocre on their own as threats vs control, with the fringe exception of them getting the chance to clear Elspeth tokens.

I'm convinced he hasn't thoroughly tried all of the options available in GW or GB alone, yet. Not to go too far into johnny-suggestion-land, just spitballing some ideas that are conceptually good at fighting through attrition; some of these are from my experience playing the Rock in last year's standard - Varolz, the Scar-Striped, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord(who's finally beginning to see competitive play!), even a hilarious 1-of Rot Farm Skeleton did well vs Esper. The best postboard strategy vs control you could do in last standard's the rock was basically, dump removal, transformational sideboard into Gravecrawler + Varolz + Lotleth Troll + Vraska/Jarad.

Point being, there's gotta be some more recursive threats good at fighting through attrition that need to be tried, IMO. I strongly think post board, to beat control, we want to transition more into the beatdown as much as possible. The goal of these regenerating, recurring threats is they all demand Detention Sphere(s), they won't have enough D-spheres for ALL of your threats, and even if they do, that is a perfect setup for Vraska, as she ends up being 2 for 1 or better most of the time when she comes down and eats spheres (or their walkers).

EDIT: Grammars, also, hell, forgot to mention Erebos, God of the Dead + Whip of Erebos as even more fine options for more long game recursion vs control decks.

Quote from Tizoc

He's/she's/it's bad, but I definitely want 4 of him/her/it. I've said it before and I'll say it again; Simic (UG) is probably the worst represented and designed color combination in Magic. It's never had a clear identity and for some reason Wizard's seems afraid to push it's power level and creative space. Whereas other 2-color combinations have been given interesting and/or powerful interpretations of their slice of the color pie, Simic has always been an afterthought at best.

That said, I love the potential for Simic and am hopeful of how it could be used in the future. As of now, and this card, I'll just jank it up every other FNM and enjoy the ride.

@Tizoc - Summed up my thoughts exactly. Every serious discussion I ever see about trying to make "Simic" in standard always gets caught up in the classic "identity crisis". Do we want to be a green beatdown deck, basically using blue for card draw? Do we want to try aggro-counter? (Like the old days, it can almost be done now, but the quality of the creatures is rather poor compared to Mystic Snake of old. Then, we fall into the trap of "maybe it should be more controlling.." Then there's your FNM brews that play every cute add +1/1 counters effect, because well, that's "simic's thing".

Just for reference, the framework "aggro-counter" build I was referencing was roughly along the lines of: (this is the 20 creature package for certain, not sure what the spell count was).

4x Skylasher
4x Shambleshark (nod)
4x Boon Satyr (decent)
4x Horizon Chimera (awesome)
4x Briarpack Alpha (forced)

4x Dissolve
2-4x Plasm Capture

It's really not much to work with, and I'm holding out some hope that the other UG unspoiled cards can redeem the color combination. Kiora, hurry up and summon/spoil some undercosted Flash Leviathan(s) for us without any catches?

As it stands though, I really see Simic/UG needing more of:

-Better quality flash creatures (not necessarily at 4 CMC, the Chimera is very reasonable IMO)
-More things to facilitate with Plasm Capture. Not asking for Sphinx's Revelation, but if Urban Evolution existed as an instant instead, this style of deck wouldn't need Sphinx's at all.
-Same goes for Prophet of Kruphix, and Kruphix himself. They lend themselves to giving us all this additional mana, but this color combination really is at a loss for useful things to do with it.

What is this type of deck supposed to do exactly, with all of this mana? If you're interested in Flash creatures, it logically follows that this can then position itself as a "reactive deck", and in the business for Plasm Capture.

This is the fundamental problem with this color combination's identity crisis currently. You give up the countermagic/blue elements aside from card draw, and basically become a green deck with some tempo elements (Rift). Or, if you want blue's elements, namely Blue's classic strongest element, Countermagic, you need flash critters.

The problem is, other than Cyclonic Rift, I don't see any versatile-modal expensive spells without again, being forced to splash W or R for the power cards in other colors.

I could honestly see a "big green deck" working in tandem with blue, without countermagic, if it had access to effects like Into the Roil as well. This deck would be proactively building it's own board presence instead (giving up the ability to counter things) and attacking the opponents tempo. That's another way GU could be represented, IMO

I'm going to be that guy for a change on spoiler season, and completely and utterly vent, sorry in advance. I'm a totally biased Simic fanboy who is not pleased and I'll come right out of the gates with that admission.

Side rant: Serious question, but why can't wizards just print more commander toys, in actual commander sets, or you know, make more commander sets for these shenanigan win more abilities? I really do not understand why they insist on some of the gods being very constructed playable, but then seem to arbitrarily decide that one certain color combination is getting shipped off to commanderville funzies. Is there really a method to this? I really would love to be enlighted and proven wrong, seriously. Thassa? You're totally deck-defining, and 4 of good, obviously intended for constructed, but sorry Karametra, you're an EDH toy. (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ct/294) < - Today's article, the source of Kruphix's spoil, they are completely and blatantly showing him off as their new EDH brainchild.

Back on topic/trying to be objective about this guy in CONSTRUCTED:

-5 CMC in a midrange simic build, okay, curve considerations aside, let's figure a few things, and first actually discuss *possibly welcoming homes/shells* for this card. I'm completely open to the johnny magic possibility that this could be "built around", but it seems very damned unlikely by all rights.

--What "draw engines" does Simic (Aka Green splash blue Devotion/Nykthos spam.deck)really employ? Garruk, Caller of Beasts, to a lesser extent, Prime Speaker Zegana. The point that needs to be stressed here is, this isn't a deck that really keeps a full grip of creatures - there is a strong mix of ramp (mana dudes)+ lands + bombs, and these draw engines are needed (along with living mana dudes / Nykthos) to keep the deck going through pockets of dead draws more than anything.

>For *all intents and purposes* the you have no maximum hand size is flavor text for constructed. By the time I'm playing a 5 drop, I'm down to 2-4 cards in 90% of real games. I'm sure any green midrange standard player can agree/easily see the gist of what I mean there.

Okay, so half of our God's ability is very damn likely almost always null, we are not getting full value out of our card already. Half of the card, no potential payoff, the second half HAS TO BE AMAZING, and CONSISTENT.

CAN the no mana-emptying be useful enough in standard? That's not entirely the right question, whether any card is *good in it's format* is going to be determined by meta factors as well as the cards own power level. I'm just disappointed overall at this card's standalone power - "think of what he can do WITH WITH WITH WITH Sphinx's Revelation!" "Clan Defiance!"

Sure, sounds fun. This does nothing to turn around a losing/behind game state, unless you have free turns to play with your mana, and that extra card *right there* you need in order to dump said mana.

But more on PRINCIPLE, where is a SIMIC splashy effect besides the old, obvious Cyclonic Rift Overload? This guy absolutely should not need to splash another color, just to break even, despite the synergies that may be possible.

This is just a rough sketch rambling of mine, but seriously, I hope to be proven wrong on this card being constructed playable, but I'm not holding my breath. Also, seriously pissed at wizards for pushing a commander toy on a color combination that badly needed a Xenagod-esque power player, if they really were "trying to push GU" at all.

TLDR: I'm just a mad gruul player wanting to splash blue, and viewing this completely in the context of this is worthless for smashing things better. Truth be told I want simic competitive playable on it's own damned merits and in it's own colors.

EDITs-Grammar/readability + Thanks for the support guys, I really did not "want" to slam down as hard as I did on a card I was so looking forward to.

@Once - Hot damn, nice first post! WELCOME ABOARD! I think I saw you post on SCG (Adrian Sullivan's RUGMonsters article?) talking about Kalonian Tusker? I just kinda skim comments, but yeah, seriously thank you for taking the time/putting in the thought and interest + joining our community. :>

I definitely see where you're coming from on wanting to try a more consistent, less explosive build, right off the bat.

I also think your "hybrid" approach is perhaps the best place to be right now - trying to leverage some extra mana bursts, while sticking to the consistent shell. It really is always about those PolyK activations, they break games wide open. PolyK in respect to beating the mirror, I'd much rather be the one with Nykthos, every time, than the stock GR Monsters deck playing 0-2 Mutavault. Even though you're not "all in" on Nykthos, you can reasonably expect to do more than Monstrous X=2 him, frequently, I believe.

Anyway, let me touch base on some of all the good points you made;

Tusker - Agree on all counts, and like it. Can't go wrong with dependable, solid creatures.

Deadbridge Goliath - Props for experimenting, and I'm inclined to think this format is actually theoretically good for him, with how long and grindy some of these games go. I'd personally stick with the 4th PolyK, as you mentioned, for the Rolling Thunder interaction angle. You could just as easily do Ghor-Clan in this slot, though, and the argument should be made that in the mirror, the games are not going to go long enough for scavenge to matter/you'd rather race and be able to bloodrush or want to present the legitimate threat of it.

^Side note: I know a lot of players are against running 4 of a legendary creature, but with the third color and running the extra scry-lands, I do believe you "get away with it" consistently more.

Onto the tough part - Nylea. I'm personally of the opinion you should choose between Stormbreath, or her, sorry if it's nitpicky, but I can give several subtle reasons.

-Heavy removal / attrition games as you mentioned, you will care about every single drop of devotion you have or don't have. Nylea would be a great, resilient card in theory for those removal heavy/control matchups, but you will probably run into the issue of her and the Dragons simply not helping each other at all. Nylea is the easier cut, as a one of. Unfortunately she is one of the "weakest" Gods, compared to how good Blue has it with Thassa, and Green having bad devotion enablers compared to Red/Blue/Black (We lack a Boros Reckoner/Nightveil Specter/amazing 3 devotion 3 drop)are definitely there. All of these small factors together/the bigger point here is - Nylea really needs all the help she can get, in my humble opinion. Yeah, you're playing Kalonian Tusker, but in the attrition matchups, you will notice the devotion counts on your top curve cards a lot more, should you choose to run Nylea at all. TLDR: she's *somewhat* likely to be do nothing, and arguably not her best in the matchups where she should be good, simply by virtue of the structural support you're running her with.

-Now Xenagod, he is completely great and exempt from the Nylea criticisms, because he's a much less restrictive card on our devotion colors.

-Your reasons for Stormbreath are solid, and I certainly cannot fault how good he is vs U/W. Personally, I eat control decks/seem to have little to no trouble with them, and that's from lots of games and being on the fence for a long time on Arbor Colossus vs Dragon.

Anyway, I don't want to suggest more changes to your list when I'm just spitballing ideas in a vacuum here - you definitely know what you're doing.

On the exclusions, nail on the head on all of them/agree. Let's get some more games in where we are, and get you prepared to steamroll your next SCG. :>

@Sieben-

The thing is that this would also be true if I started playing chess. I would lose a lot at first but thoughtful grinding would get me better. It's just that if I become a top tier magic player, I put my win rate from 65% to 75%. That doesn't seem like a huge incentive to get better.

True. There is very little incentive or probability of going pro in this game, and I think it's healthy to take a very polarizing, but honest stance on this. If you're going to go competitive, go balls to the wall, put your full effort in, and enjoy yourself, but I refuse to half-ass it if I'm going to try. That's my personal stance and you have to honestly address the old real life vs hobby conundrum. Pro players have been doing this for years, they have their affairs in order, and manage their other side projects/lives whatever, but I'm certain any of them would advise against anyone wanting to go pro unless they truly love the game, know the odds are against them, and have everything else in order - and still want to do it.

Most of my friends are brewers, and being a brewer at heart myself, it's worth it to see how we fare (competitively) with rogue ideas. The payoff has to be worth it to YOU. YOU have to be getting something else out of it, fulfillment-wise - especially when as you said you look at the odds of making top 8, the costs of travel/play/other costs, it's all against you.

Yeah this seems like it's going to be part of "how I talked myself into selling all my magic cards and playing X".

When you say all of this isn't a huge incentive to get better, I think you've answered your own questions. I won't try to talk you out of it or convince you to stay the course, but I believe you made this thread because you're looking for other people's "other reasons" for sticking it out. Like, fulfillment in brewing and challenge, whatever it may be, I'm sure you've heard all this before.

That's my own personal/honest take as for why I continue, and hope you find some other insight from others who might post in here. Good luck either way mate.

Some of my own personal stories on competitive grinding, if you care, doing this 4chan /greentext style :>

I'm of the opinion that the biggest draw to W for me would be hands down Voice of Resurgence. Seconding what Merl says though, that W doesn't offer much in the midgame creature department, and Loxodon Smiter is very easily replaced now.

I think that if we had 8x 1 drop mana accelerants available, it would be a completely different story, and a big Naya Zoo would be very possible. Having the 8 T1 mana guys would make your 3 drops on T2 that much more consistent, and the deck could operate on that aggressive angle.

Currently though, in my mind at least, there's a lot of reasons why 3 drops that aren't named Domri Rade or Courser of Kruphix are plain not where we want to be.
-4 T1 mana guys as opposed to up to 8
-You need two non-scrylands on T2 to get that magical 3 drop.
-A lot of the time, a scryland is a good/correct choice in the early turns.

All of this in tandem means you're (ideal game scenario) better off just going for the T3 4 drop, as that's way more consistent right now/the mana is too slow to care about a lot of heavy hitting 3 drops.

Curve considerations aside, I would love to run Advent of the Wurm in an aggressive beatdown route, but the anti-synergy with Domri is pretty damning. And then you remember, Polukranos is every bit as good, in slightly different ways, but interchangable.

I'd like to see W add another compelling angle of attack, or something to help shore up matchups besides Chained to the Rocks - 10 Mountains or not, I don't count on this card and think it is a crutch, sometimes it will be uncastable even with Caryatids against the very creatures you're trying to beat with it.

Points in favor of Naya - the biggest compelling reason I (personally) see to look to adding White is to better smash Green midrange decks (or the new burn decks popping up) via life-gain. It can easily be argued that the other color splashes can help with the mirrors (Blue and Cyclonic Rift for instance), it comes down to what you're most wanting to beat.