Hi all, it's time to produce another meta-warping deck.
My meta has always been fairly removal-heavy and sweep-light. We went through a phase about a decade ago where everyone packed sweepers, and it resulted in every game going for hours on end with a reset before anyone was able to get set again. It sucked. So we've had somewhat of a gentlemen's agreement since then to not be too heavy on the sweepers.
We're left with a meta that doesn't run many (if at all), but is increasingly intense on the removal. We're currently at the point where you're doing well to keep anything non-land on the table for more than three turns, and if you do, it's likely an enchantment. But...
... nobody has completely abused hexproof yet. Hexproof creatures see a little play, are well-respected, and are hard to deal with (even in this meta). So I sense an opening.
There are obviously a bunch of hexproofers out there, but I'm looking at three in particular right now:
Invisible Stalker - Always works in my meta, doesn't always prove fatal. Finding ways of it dealing 20 to the face will be part of the trick here.
Lumberknot - There is obviously lots of creature death going on, so he's going to get large. So we just need to get him through.
Aven Fleetwing - Mostly because it's flying and I have piles of them available.
Sigarda and Thrun are things I don't have yet, but I can certainly potentially source them.
So that leaves us in UG, with the option of adding a third colour, and trying to find ways of growing our hexproofers and getting them through for damage.
UG cards I am considering are Predatory Hunger (which makes fatties) and Aqueous Form (which makes things unblockable and gives us some incidental scry), as well as some combination of bounce, removal and countermagic.
Given these are both enchantments, we can take this down a green enchantment route, and throw in Enchantress's Presence, Abundance, Rowen, Curse of Predation...
Baha! Yes it might!
How soon I forget Ethereal Armor and Ancestral Mask.
But your thoughts on Witchstalker? It strikes me as something that would be a bit more hit-and-miss than Lumberknot in terms of how big it gets.
Baha! Yes it might!
How soon I forget Ethereal Armor and Ancestral Mask.
But your thoughts on Witchstalker? It strikes me as something that would be a bit more hit-and-miss than Lumberknot in terms of how big it gets.
I ignore the body and see 3 mana vs 4 mana. You could very easily play more Bogles or Troll Ascetic or anything really in that slot. Hexproof, to me, is all about cost. You want your creatures to be cheap so that you can suit them up early on. I like the Stalker because he's a 3/3 for 3 which is "good enough" to protect you early on. A 1/1 on turn 4 is miserable by comparison.
Remember, the body is going to come from Mask/Armor + a Cloak + Hyena Umbra if needed for First Strike. The base stats of the critter matter very little at that point.
Like I literally expect Witchstalker to get 0 counters. I only recommended it over Troll Ascetic because I don't think that it matters at all which you choose and the former is cheaper.
EDIT: And that's when I realized that I'm living in the past because I thought the Troll was still worth something. It turns out that isn't. Egg on my face!
EDIT: Also my deck is clearly built with a reasonable budget in mind. You could go crazy with Daybreak Coronets if you wanted to and the mana base could obviously have a ton of money poured in to it but this is what I built for myself.
A few remarks to Cz's deck based on my own experience, but they are only minor changes:
I would add a playset of Khalni Gardens and one or two Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree to the mana base for token production for protecting your big one against Cruel Edict effects. If you got the budget, you could also use Wirewood Lodgea s pseudo-vigilance for your elfs.
A few remarks to Cz's deck based on my own experience, but they are only minor changes:
I would add a playset of Khalni Gardens and one or two Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree to the mana base for token production for protecting your big one against Cruel Edict effects. If you got the budget, you could also use Wirewood Lodgea s pseudo-vigilance for your elfs.
First of all you're telling him to drop from 23 lands to 19 in a deck that basically has to cast 3 drops (more-or-less) on curve in order to do anything significant. If that's not setting off any alarm bells, this will:
What scares me is that you're telling him to add Khalni Gardens and Wirewood Lodges to an extremely finicky list. These completely ruin what is an otherwise intricately constructed mana base. The reason why my mana base works is because I have 14 sources of untapped Green mana that I can cast on turn 1 and from there I can string 1-2 more untapped sources to ensure 3 mana for turn 3 with consistency. I also have a ton of color fixing through cheap Enchantments which enables me to avoid having to run Plains and tapped sources of white mana which might otherwise prevent you from establishing something on turns 1, 2 and 3. Your plan of adding tapped lands and colorless lands completely destroys that balance. Neither of those lands help Sunpetal Grove and neither of them cast any of your spells on turn 1... or 2... or 3. I don't see how he could possibly gain win% points employing your suggestions if the only thing that it accomplishes is that it helps him play around Edicts. You're going to destroy his curve 70% of the time (I made up a number) in order to maybe possibly play around something that could happen. It makes no sense to me and I don't believe for a second that this is something that you've actually tested yourself.
Keen Sense is a good card. Snake Umbra is a fine card. I'm not opposed to adding either. What am I opposed to is the way that you're going about fitting them in. Cutting lands for spells is basically never the right thing to do.
Not sure how to fit it in with the current deck list, but Leyline of Sanctity seems like it would love to find a home here..
I stopped pushing that card when I realized that it's $10.00 and adding 4 of them often doubles the cost of an otherwise reasonably priced deck. Obviously not a problem if he already owns them however.
Using Totem Armor would allow your creatures to survive a multiplayer favorite Wrath of God.
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Casual multiplayer meta since Urza. Mass land destruction makes you a political target, metal workers are killed on sight and infinite combos are never executed.
I have a list very similar to cz's however its 1v1 and drops the three costing (except mask) for 1 drops r rancor is one of my favorite enchantments. Your creatures will get big fast , with no evasion, so the trample is extremely important. can't think of the list, but cz has a great start. anyway you guys know what you're doing.
Why do I want Leyline of Sanctity? (Which I don't have anyway... but I do have Ivory Mask, which is similar enough)
Is that just to completely shut the gate and prevent Diabolic Edict-type stuff? Really, I'm going to see more of Sheoldred and Your Mom than targetted sacrifice work. I probably want to lean more into Sigarda and/or O-Rings, given my meta, methinks.
I was leaning towards things that dish out +1/+1 counters (such as Lumberknot and Predatory Hunger), simply because there are a couple of these style of decks running around in my meta, and their answer is usually to blow away the auras providing the beef (i.e. Ethereal Armor, Ancestral Mask) when they can't take the actual creature out. Having something that actually leaves the counters on there is going to be another workaround to what I'm expecting my meta to throw at me (much as I'm not completely going to remove the problem).
Lumberknot is nice, but I feel like you need a way to get the hits through.
If enchantment removal is low, I'd look at exploiting that.
I'd usually just go with cheap to play card-advantage choices like Rancor, but if you're looking for a way to get pseudo-unblockable, there's always Flickering Ward?
It's cheap, gets your creature of choice protection from whatever colour you fear at the time, (and you can change it from attacking to defending targets every turn) and there's plenty of white stuff that interacts well with Ward for card draw, token generation etc.
It looks light-on for land and creatures, but this seems to be a good mix at first playtest (with all but two non-land cards 3CC and under, 21 land is likely acceptable anyway). Arcane Denial is here solely to counter the things running around my meta that are going to take this deck apart (namely Bruna, Sheoldred and Fleshbag Marauder).
I've left a singleton Lumberknot and the batch of Predatory Hunger in simply to see how they play.
I'd really, really like to run Troll Ascetic, but I kept running into them playtesting and not wanting to spend double green dropping them (because I would rather be playing Ancestral Mask or Armadillo Cloak at that point anyway). Poor Troll. I like him so, especially now he's 80c a copy.
And yes, singleton Replenish for the surprise post-Wrath GG.
Not sure how the landbase is going to play, given most of it is ETB tapped. I'm sure there are better options, but the vast majority are cards I have decked elsewhere and $10+ a copy. Perhaps Exotic Orchard is worth a try? I've got them sitting around.
I'm not a fan of Exotic Orchard.
Every time I've played that card in a deck it's bitten me on the arse.
If you're playing enchantment draw-effects, how about upping the forests for Utopia Sprawl or Abundant Growth and the like?
I'd also have a look at Rogue's Passage.
Since you're not running Silhana Ledgewalker, but scout instead, you might benefit from a little unblockable, and somewhere to sink your mana in the lategame may not hurt either.
Myself, I like Cz list. His philosophy of cheap hexproofers is spot on, but I would still find room for Dungrove elder to make sure you have some mid/end game power.
The amount of moaning from the table is priceless as he's just a thorn at virtually any point in the game. While you will want to give him trample/lifelink to really abuse him, the fact that he just gets bigger every time you drop a forest cannot be underestimated.
The only issue with him in a dual color deck is that you need to add Temple Gardens (white) at a minimum, while ditching Razorverge Thicket thus adding to the decks cost a bit. It's a must simply to keep the "forest" count as high as possible. Clearly if you have original duals as well then you drop the Sunpetals too and your golden, but obviously for budget reasons this is not feasible for most players.
Not sure I would add a third color in a deck like this as I have found the best success comes with focusing on 2 colors.
Also (not budget) but awesome if you play blue is *cough* TNN *cough* which is Invisible Stalker on steroids. Perhaps that is for a different deck though, as it is for me
Now that I have spent all your money, I shall flee
EDIT: Sigarda is a beast in G/W, I run 2 because I face a lot of Sheoldred type decks and well she says FU to that nonsense
If you're playing enchantment draw-effects, how about upping the forests for Utopia Sprawl or Abundant Growth and the like?
I thought about that in the initial list, and was running out of room to fit everything in. We can always try and smash this in and drop the number of other things. How many of these should we run?
My meta has always been fairly removal-heavy and sweep-light. We went through a phase about a decade ago where everyone packed sweepers, and it resulted in every game going for hours on end with a reset before anyone was able to get set again. It sucked. So we've had somewhat of a gentlemen's agreement since then to not be too heavy on the sweepers.
We're left with a meta that doesn't run many (if at all), but is increasingly intense on the removal. We're currently at the point where you're doing well to keep anything non-land on the table for more than three turns, and if you do, it's likely an enchantment.
But...
... nobody has completely abused hexproof yet. Hexproof creatures see a little play, are well-respected, and are hard to deal with (even in this meta). So I sense an opening.
There are obviously a bunch of hexproofers out there, but I'm looking at three in particular right now:
So that leaves us in UG, with the option of adding a third colour, and trying to find ways of growing our hexproofers and getting them through for damage.
UG cards I am considering are Predatory Hunger (which makes fatties) and Aqueous Form (which makes things unblockable and gives us some incidental scry), as well as some combination of bounce, removal and countermagic.
Given these are both enchantments, we can take this down a green enchantment route, and throw in Enchantress's Presence, Abundance, Rowen, Curse of Predation...
If we go three colours, what should be the third?
White gives me Sigarda, Ajani Goldmane and removal.
Red gives me Mage Slayer, Curse of Stalked Prey and burn.
Black gives us Sadistic Glee, Necropolis Regent and removal.
So plenty of directions we could take this in. What say ye?
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11x Forest
4x Sunpetal Grove
4x Razorverge Thicket
Creatures (13)
4x Gladecover Scout
4x Slippery Bogle
4x Silhana Ledgewalker
1x Troll Ascetic
4x Utopia Sprawl
4x Spider Umbra
4x Hyena Umbra
4x Ethereal Armor
4x Ancestral Mask
4x Unflinching Courage
4x Armadillo Cloak
This might help you out :).
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Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Baha! Yes it might!
How soon I forget Ethereal Armor and Ancestral Mask.
But your thoughts on Witchstalker? It strikes me as something that would be a bit more hit-and-miss than Lumberknot in terms of how big it gets.
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I ignore the body and see 3 mana vs 4 mana. You could very easily play more Bogles or Troll Ascetic or anything really in that slot. Hexproof, to me, is all about cost. You want your creatures to be cheap so that you can suit them up early on. I like the Stalker because he's a 3/3 for 3 which is "good enough" to protect you early on. A 1/1 on turn 4 is miserable by comparison.
Remember, the body is going to come from Mask/Armor + a Cloak + Hyena Umbra if needed for First Strike. The base stats of the critter matter very little at that point.
Like I literally expect Witchstalker to get 0 counters. I only recommended it over Troll Ascetic because I don't think that it matters at all which you choose and the former is cheaper.
EDIT: And that's when I realized that I'm living in the past because I thought the Troll was still worth something. It turns out that isn't. Egg on my face!
EDIT: Also my deck is clearly built with a reasonable budget in mind. You could go crazy with Daybreak Coronets if you wanted to and the mana base could obviously have a ton of money poured in to it but this is what I built for myself.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I would add a playset of Khalni Gardens and one or two Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree to the mana base for token production for protecting your big one against Cruel Edict effects. If you got the budget, you could also use Wirewood Lodgea s pseudo-vigilance for your elfs.
And i would drop Utopia Sprawl in favor to card draw, Snake Umbra or Keen Sense.
Actually those are major changes.
First of all you're telling him to drop from 23 lands to 19 in a deck that basically has to cast 3 drops (more-or-less) on curve in order to do anything significant. If that's not setting off any alarm bells, this will:
What scares me is that you're telling him to add Khalni Gardens and Wirewood Lodges to an extremely finicky list. These completely ruin what is an otherwise intricately constructed mana base. The reason why my mana base works is because I have 14 sources of untapped Green mana that I can cast on turn 1 and from there I can string 1-2 more untapped sources to ensure 3 mana for turn 3 with consistency. I also have a ton of color fixing through cheap Enchantments which enables me to avoid having to run Plains and tapped sources of white mana which might otherwise prevent you from establishing something on turns 1, 2 and 3. Your plan of adding tapped lands and colorless lands completely destroys that balance. Neither of those lands help Sunpetal Grove and neither of them cast any of your spells on turn 1... or 2... or 3. I don't see how he could possibly gain win% points employing your suggestions if the only thing that it accomplishes is that it helps him play around Edicts. You're going to destroy his curve 70% of the time (I made up a number) in order to maybe possibly play around something that could happen. It makes no sense to me and I don't believe for a second that this is something that you've actually tested yourself.
Keen Sense is a good card. Snake Umbra is a fine card. I'm not opposed to adding either. What am I opposed to is the way that you're going about fitting them in. Cutting lands for spells is basically never the right thing to do.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I stopped pushing that card when I realized that it's $10.00 and adding 4 of them often doubles the cost of an otherwise reasonably priced deck. Obviously not a problem if he already owns them however.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Is that just to completely shut the gate and prevent Diabolic Edict-type stuff? Really, I'm going to see more of Sheoldred and Your Mom than targetted sacrifice work. I probably want to lean more into Sigarda and/or O-Rings, given my meta, methinks.
I was leaning towards things that dish out +1/+1 counters (such as Lumberknot and Predatory Hunger), simply because there are a couple of these style of decks running around in my meta, and their answer is usually to blow away the auras providing the beef (i.e. Ethereal Armor, Ancestral Mask) when they can't take the actual creature out. Having something that actually leaves the counters on there is going to be another workaround to what I'm expecting my meta to throw at me (much as I'm not completely going to remove the problem).
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If enchantment removal is low, I'd look at exploiting that.
I'd usually just go with cheap to play card-advantage choices like Rancor, but if you're looking for a way to get pseudo-unblockable, there's always Flickering Ward?
It's cheap, gets your creature of choice protection from whatever colour you fear at the time, (and you can change it from attacking to defending targets every turn) and there's plenty of white stuff that interacts well with Ward for card draw, token generation etc.
4 Gladecover Scout
4 Invisible Stalker
1 Argothian Enchantress
1 Lumberknot
Enchantments - 21
4 Ethereal Armor
4 Ancestral Mask
4 Predatory Hunger
4 Armadillo Cloak
3 Enchantress's Presence
2 Soul Snare
2 Seal of Primordium
2 Idyllic Tutor
3 Arcane Denial
1 Replenish
Land - 21
4 Seaside Citadel
4 Sejiri Refuge
4 Simic Guildgate
7 Forest
1 Island
1 Plains
It looks light-on for land and creatures, but this seems to be a good mix at first playtest (with all but two non-land cards 3CC and under, 21 land is likely acceptable anyway).
Arcane Denial is here solely to counter the things running around my meta that are going to take this deck apart (namely Bruna, Sheoldred and Fleshbag Marauder).
I've left a singleton Lumberknot and the batch of Predatory Hunger in simply to see how they play.
I'd really, really like to run Troll Ascetic, but I kept running into them playtesting and not wanting to spend double green dropping them (because I would rather be playing Ancestral Mask or Armadillo Cloak at that point anyway). Poor Troll. I like him so, especially now he's 80c a copy.
And yes, singleton Replenish for the surprise post-Wrath GG.
Not sure how the landbase is going to play, given most of it is ETB tapped. I'm sure there are better options, but the vast majority are cards I have decked elsewhere and $10+ a copy. Perhaps Exotic Orchard is worth a try? I've got them sitting around.
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Every time I've played that card in a deck it's bitten me on the arse.
If you're playing enchantment draw-effects, how about upping the forests for Utopia Sprawl or Abundant Growth and the like?
I'd also have a look at Rogue's Passage.
Since you're not running Silhana Ledgewalker, but scout instead, you might benefit from a little unblockable, and somewhere to sink your mana in the lategame may not hurt either.
The amount of moaning from the table is priceless as he's just a thorn at virtually any point in the game. While you will want to give him trample/lifelink to really abuse him, the fact that he just gets bigger every time you drop a forest cannot be underestimated.
The only issue with him in a dual color deck is that you need to add Temple Gardens (white) at a minimum, while ditching Razorverge Thicket thus adding to the decks cost a bit. It's a must simply to keep the "forest" count as high as possible. Clearly if you have original duals as well then you drop the Sunpetals too and your golden, but obviously for budget reasons this is not feasible for most players.
Not sure I would add a third color in a deck like this as I have found the best success comes with focusing on 2 colors.
Also (not budget) but awesome if you play blue is *cough* TNN *cough* which is Invisible Stalker on steroids. Perhaps that is for a different deck though, as it is for me
Now that I have spent all your money, I shall flee
EDIT: Sigarda is a beast in G/W, I run 2 because I face a lot of Sheoldred type decks and well she says FU to that nonsense
I thought about that in the initial list, and was running out of room to fit everything in. We can always try and smash this in and drop the number of other things. How many of these should we run?
Yeah, great call, that one. Should definitely be in the list.
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1x Argothian Enchantress
4x Gladecover Scout
4x Invisible Stalker
1x Lumberknot
Enchantments - 24
4x Abundant Growth
3x Ancestral Mask
4x Armadillo Cloak
3x Enchantress's Presence
4x Ethereal Armor
2x Predatory Hunger
2x Seal of Primordium
2x Soul Snare
2x Arcane Denial
2x Idyllic Tutor
1x Replenish
Land - 21
11x Forest
2x Island
3x Plains
1x Rogue's Passage
4x Terramorphic Expanse
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
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