The deck's transformation into the new age continues, courtesy of one of the bogeyman absentees from the list. As is very often the case, thanks to Ebline for helping me see the light on this.
I see old me pulling his hair out at the thought of Patron stooping to such levels of un-synergistic goodstuffery in the 99. The prior evaluation of Genesis Wave happened before Temur Sabertooth even existed, and literally all the deck ever did was slowly amass ants. As such, the old concerns were correct then, as an inopportune overextending of some engines/finishers could be disastrous and the Wave was imprecise in nature and mana-hungry. That's mana you could just devote to making tokens to kill people after you tutored up precisely what you need! However, Temur Sabertooth exists now. A bunch of other stuff exists now too, the infinite mana cheat sheet in the primer's been growing. A hefty X is likely to flip pieces that you can wedge together into a combo and win on the spot. Genesis Wave has gone from a horrible nonbo with the game plan to a win in a can. Even if the flipped cards lack an immediate combo, there are permanent-based tutors and recursion options. Something is almost certainly possible, and even on the off-chance it somehow "fizzles" you still get an insanely fat board with a lot of extra ramp. This will make bouncing back far easier if somebody tries to deal with you.
The choice of X is up in the air. I did a bunch of goldfishes with X=20 with no relevant non-land pieces on the board to see how it would fare, as it seems like a reasonable conservative estimate for when it could come down. About 80% of those Waves had an instant win within the 20 flipped cards. On its maiden voyage in an actual game, I got to crack an X=62 (and obviously won immediately thereafter). Try to leave a few cards in the deck just in case, and a little bit of mana in the case of smaller X'es in case you need it for follow-up plays/activations.
Room needed to be made. Well of Knowledge out. Funny to see it go, given the last few updates' keenness to smooth out the early game, but the timing limitation makes it very awkward to topdeck later on in the game. You rip it from the top on a board with 20+ mana, you set it down. Everybody handily tops up, and the thing probably explodes before it's your turn again. Even in the early game you're potentially handing out cards as you try to efficiently use mana allotments between ramp spells. Next possible inclusion - Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger. No immediate slot opens itself up, but didn't I literally just say this after the prior cut? A similar cut scenario to the one discussed above is not super likely, as the risky low-cost mana doublers come with the huge upside of potential explosive Patron starts.
2016 has been a good year for the deck. The list measurably improved with each of the minute tweaks executed over time, growing a bit of a mind of its own and deviating from the original derpy token spam design proposed two and a bit years ago. I've been getting a lot of play time with this sucker lately, easily the biggest playing spree since the list's inception and initial burst of tuning. A few conclusions from those games:
The deck's resilience is through the roof in comparison to where it started out. I've won through a Contamination lock, through a Leovold + Puzzle Box lock (twice!), and a showdown that saw my board wrathed multiple times of non-land permanents, my stuff eating 10+ pieces of spot removal in addition to that, and an X=30 Genesis Wave getting countered. There was a time when the list would have gone to cry over a fraction of those things in a single game, but now it can pull dumb crap out of nowhere in spite of disruption, truly earning its cockroach stripes.
The deck's clock is a little bit faster than it used to be. Turn five kills are pretty common. I've performed turn four ones as well. I blame the smoothing out of the draw, both through dedicated things like Harmonize and incidental cards off things like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. Who would have thought that seeing more cards is good as it allows for chaining plays that go better together? Earthcraft doesn't hurt here either - all the utility chickens double as mana chickens! Will this list ever hit competitive-tier kill timers? Hell no. But it's awesome to watch a mono green jank heap combo through disruption on turn four.
Going infinite without infinite Patron untaps is actually preferable, as it doesn't give your opponents the benefit of them. Usually if there is potential for a Patron-dependent infinite, something with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds can be pieced together with a slight amount of fiddling.
Time of Need got new life breathed into it, and a turn two Time into a turn three Selvala has become a very common play.
Brutalizer Exarch hasn't really been used as a tutor much, but the removal it offers is phenomenal in reach. As such, it gets moved to the removal card section. The potential to tutor is still a very good thing to have on tap though. Primal Command has also been very handy as a tempo hit, often shunting a land to the top of someone's deck to trip up their sequencing, kind of like a junior Plow Under with more utility. It also doesn't hurt it's a piece of graveyard hate.
Wildest Dreams is a sleeper hit. The potential to grab pinpoint precision stuff to recur on the cheap, or go wide and splashy and pick up a whole graveyard's worth of ramp are wonderful options to have. I am aware that the "go wide" recursion would be better handled by Praetor's Counsel, but the fact that Wildest Dreams is a Recollect at its core works fundamentally in its favour.
A number of potential augmentations to play to the strengths of the list were considered:
Permanent-based tutoring/draw - Who could have foreseen that hitting something like Planar Portal off Genesis Wave would make me feel like a million bucks? Additionally, those options tend to be re-use'able, making for good combo assembly and resilience. However, nothing really presented itself - Skyship Weatherlight isn't that good here.
Land enchantment ramp - Something like Dawn's Reflection is as efficient as a Skyshroud Claim if doublers don't become involved, plus it works incredibly well with Earthcraft and Genesis Wave. Didn't make the cut in the end due to opening the list up to getting Strip Mine for mad value. There are already a few cards that do this in the list, and they're the most efficient at it, making the risk worth it.
More haste outlets - For comboing, as a lot of the combos involve haste and Temur Sabertooth bouncing. However, none were deemed good enough - Concordant Crossroads would have to be held up until the combo turn, and could backfire spectacularly if I got disrupted, and the equipment haste is all inferior to existing options (plus, having a non-zero equip cost makes the very tempting Patron + Selvala + Sabertooth combo not work).
Hateful stuff - The deck's ability to juke Winter Orb with Patron out had me rethink the stax package, but the list's reliance on actually having Patron out to make use of it didn't make the idea go too far. Hall of Gemstone is the only one in serious consideration at this point.
A slot was found for Vorinclex - Illusionist's Bracers was identified as another cute leftover, doing little more in the deck than being a conditional multiplicative doubler due to none of the crucial abilities requiring tapping, and Vorinclex offers a relatively similar benefit in a more standalone (and dickish) way. But then AER spoilers started...
Wait, what? All that wall of text and then a single change? Well, I put in a bunch more thinking than just the single swap that occurred, and I felt it relevant to chronicle it in case future me tries to retrace this path at some point. Also, wasn't Vorinclex supposed to be coming in for the Bracers? Well, yeah. He was. But he just doesn't play that well in the list for some reason. The fact he's a creature makes him die very easily, and people become very forthcoming with removal when he lands. Plus, somehow, the CMC of 8 makes him awkward to sequence. No idea, really, as 7 is perfectly fine (Zendikar Resurgent). Planar Bridge just had to go in, that much was obvious to anyone who ever played against the deck - I learned from its existence when a guy from the Golden Meta asked me if it was going into Patron Originally it was going to replace Time of Need, but that card's new early game life where it fetches Selvala really helps the deck out. Summoner's Pact is too efficient for its own good, and Primal Command has a number of cool utility features. No obvious cut presented itself. Vorinclex was being clunky, so out he went instead, and Genesis Wave got another permanent-based tutor buddy. It's not quite the power upgrade Selvala, Earthcraft or Genesis Wave were, but it's a good card that fits into the deck's mission statement and contributes to its resilience.
A fun little nugget of interaction with the Bridge - now the deck can actually get around hexproof/shroud when in full infinite mode. The Bridge fetches out Song of the Dryads from the deck, the Song slides onto a hexproof/shroud object as it doesn't target when it hits play like that, and you Brutalizer Exarch it away as presumably the resulting forest is targetable. You then recycle the Song from your graveyard, slap it onto anything else, and shunt it into your deck for Bridging with Exarch again. You do have to reset the Bridge by destroying and recurring it, but that's perfectly doable in full infinite mode. Not really a relevant interaction, but a wonderfully satisfying addition to the deck's Johnny chain that deals with a plausible corner case. Now the corner case is the opponent having multiple untargetable things that make their lands untargetable.
I'm not seeing how, in fairness. The deck's mana tends to be in lands, and the Patron ability already untaps him and limits ability use to once per turn as well. Am I missing something glaringly obvious here?
Heh, no problem. Like, it could situationally go infinite with Temur Sabertooth, albeit requiring Earthcraft or Selvala, Heart of the Wilds support, but on its own it doesn't really do enough to merit a space. There are enough commander decks that will windmill the hell out of this anyway
There are a number of cute green cards in AKH, but I don't think any are going to crack the 99. The closest to doing so at this time is Shefet Monitor, as recently, nearly three years into my EDH career, I finally learned the value of stapling card draw onto just about anything possible As such, paying on top of a Nature's Lore to have it cantrip is a reasonable deal, especially in a deck as hand-barf'y as this one once the mana base is set up. However, the deck likes its early plays to be efficient, and its late plays to be game-warping, and this is stuck in the awkward middle ground where it's not really efficient as mid-game ramp or draw. Manglehorn is neat, but I prefer my removal to be as hit-all as possible, especially when running as little as I do here. Harvest Season is going to become an EDH all star forever, but as usual we don't have the creature density to support it.
If anything, the closest to a potential change would be reintroducing Keeper of Progenitus into the deck. I miss having tutorable doubling a bit, plus the games where I skilfully yank a Extraplanar Lens or Vernal Bloom from my deck tend to be over pretty quickly. However, he is a double-edged sword, so I'm proceeding with caution (especially as my meta is a nondescript naya-heavy slugfest).
There are a number of cute green cards in AKH, but I don't think any are going to crack the 99. The closest to doing so at this time is Shefet Monitor, as recently, nearly three years into my EDH career, I finally learned the value of stapling card draw onto just about anything possible As such, paying on top of a Nature's Lore to have it cantrip is a reasonable deal, especially in a deck as hand-barf'y as this one once the mana base is set up. However, the deck likes its early plays to be efficient, and its late plays to be game-warping, and this is stuck in the awkward middle ground where it's not really efficient as mid-game ramp or draw. Manglehorn is neat, but I prefer my removal to be as hit-all as possible, especially when running as little as I do here. Harvest Season is going to become an EDH all star forever, but as usual we don't have the creature density to support it.
If anything, the closest to a potential change would be reintroducing Keeper of Progenitus into the deck. I miss having tutorable doubling a bit, plus the games where I skilfully yank a Extraplanar Lens or Vernal Bloom from my deck tend to be over pretty quickly. However, he is a double-edged sword, so I'm proceeding with caution (especially as my meta is a nondescript naya-heavy slugfest).
I mean, you don't really ever end up across a pod from me these days, so that saves you some of the worst grief you've eaten for a poorly timed Keeper >:P
There's actually quite a lot more to reintroducing the Keeper than not playing with Ebline much anymore my paper meta has always had a tendency to be a Naya-heavy slog, so the Keeper was quite beneficial to most of the table at all times. This was to the detriment of the original swarm-only gameplay, sometimes biting the deck on its tuckus. However, with time, as openly acknowledged time and time again in here, the deck shifted towards a more combo-oriented game style. This has also led to the clock of the average swarm backup kill going up a bit. Keeper is a gotta go fast card, fitting that faux-glass-cannon philosophy pretty well. The benefit is conferred at any stage of the game - a Keeper off four forests is a Patron next turn, while a Keeper onto a field of 24 forests is 40 untapped mana. What can I say, the deck likes its cheap doubling, as highlighted in my sentiments on Extraplanar Lens and Vernal Bloom not long ago. This is a similar class of effect, and a bit of a misplaced cut really. Needed to make room, so Ranger's Path goes away. Imagine untapping with four lands... which would you rather do? Simple card 1v1, again. The deck tends to make its cuts this way.
Also, I had a delayed moment of realisation that Rishkar's Expertise is actually good here. Picture this - you cast the Expertise, people remove the Patron in response. Oh no! But wait! What if the Patron is active? Then you tap him and get a boatload of mana going, probably enough to just replay the Patron immediately. Expertise "whiffs" (you still get the free spell cast, mind you), but you're not too far behind and you baited a removal spell. In fact, this very scenario makes it so you can play the Expertise with confidence against people who have a rudimentary understanding of how the deck operates and get full value out of it. Knowledgeable opponents gun for Patron, and will try to do so before he becomes active. As such, just avoid playing the Expertise into a summoning sick Patron and you're gonna be fine. If there was removal with Patron's name on it, it would have likely reached him before the summoning sickness went away to prevent the deck from revving its engine a bit. Bit silly of me to not connect the dots before. So, obviously, the Expertise had to go in. Fierce Empath out. The tutors vs. rest of deck balance was skewed a bit recently with the introduction of Planar Bridge, so losing the worst tutor wasn't going to be the end of the world. Empath unfortunately fits that bill. In the current Patron climate, a tutor should be able to hit as much of the set of Selvala, Sabertooth, token engine and finisher as possible. Empath only hits the last two, along with some nice tech in Greenwarden of Murasa and Brutalizer Exarch. The next most limited tutor, Time of Need, hits three of these, only missing the Sabertooth, plus it curves perfectly into the Selvala. Primal Command is costly to cast, but it's also tech as hell, including being the deck's only piece of grave hate.
...Picture this - you cast the Expertise, people remove the Patron in response. Oh no! But wait! What if the Patron is active? Then you tap him and get a boatload of mana going, probably enough to just replay the Patron immediately. Expertise "whiffs" (you still get the free spell cast, mind you), but you're not too far behind and you baited a removal spell...
If only you had a snake in play to offer up you could flash the Patron back into play before the expertise resolves.
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You would never guess, at the terrifying sight of the man, that Hunding was as charming a companion as one could wish for.
That's a decent catch actually. Sakura-Tribe Elder, continuing to be awkwardly useful, now in weird ways. I'll try to keep him around if I have the Expertise on tap.
Thanks for catching that, it's a bit of a corner case one. Added to the primer.
I'd imagine Harvest Season is pretty fine in decks which routinely generate many creatures turned sideways. My bet is that it'll become an EDH all star, but then my guesswork has been rather horrid - Zendikar Resurgent is by far the most played OGW card while Temur Sabertooth never made it.
No changes to the list in a while. Nothing particularly enticing came out, and no glaring omissions have been spotted at this point. I thought they printed the deck a neat card in C17 with Traverse the Outlands. I mean, this is like a Riskhar's Expertise for ramp, it's gonna be good, right? In spite of having all the potential in the world on paper, it goldfishes like a brick. Turns out the deck likes its ramp Patron independent.
Speaking of Rishkar's Expertise, that card's become an all-star in the list, to the point where I'm considering slotting in other similar'ish options. However, I then remind myself just how busted the Expertise is, what with its free spell and leaving Patron alive at the end of it. If anything, I may trial Garruk, Primal Hunter at some point, but that's not looking super likely either.
What's the general opinion of Mirage Mirror here? It may do nothing by itself, but the fact that it can act as another doubler or quite literally anything else (ours or otherwise) seems like good reason to give it some consideration in this deck which has all the mana to make it work at the smallest cost.
Hm, that's an interesting observation. I didn't give it the slightest bit of consideration here as it was proposed in my other primer and played like dirt there. If anything, it'd probably be of more use there than here - the only serviceable targets here are mana doublers and the tap-to-tutor artifacts. Magus of the Candelabra works kind of similarly, only ever "coming online" with doublers and, to a lesser extent, enchantment ramp, and that guy's been written off as far too conditional. The fact the Mirror can copy other people's crap is not hugely enticing either, as the deck plays its own weird janky game and packs its own lunch
No Ixalan changes in danger of happening. The main purpose of this post is that I managed to stumble upon another guy's take on a comboriffic Patron of the Orochi over on TappedOut, all primered out and everything, and it feels like the sort of thing that should be documented in the thread.
The main conceptual difference between the decks is that his lynchpins pretty damn hard on the Temur Sabertooth/Cloudstone Curio combos and runs draw about as heavy as green allows to try to get the pieces online. The list is also filled with more low to the ground stuff, with less crazy mana buildup and ridiculously expensive plays like Planar Portal et al. that I tend to sport. On the whole, I think I'm happier with the build I've got going here, as there is a ridiculous amount of combo potential and the swarm backup feels like it'd be better at closing out games than his take (he does have an Ant Queen as well, as who wouldn't really, but no way to make the swarm bigger than 1/1s). Nevertheless, it's nice to stumble upon someone else who independently did a similar thing. His heavy draw suite has me reconsidering those cards yet again, and I've given some fleeting thought to Haunted Cloak before as well. Gotta keep transitioning the deck from its swarm roots to the weird combo machine it has become, although it feels like it's in a pretty good spot right now for what it's worth.
Seeing how other list stirred something in how I think of the deck, it only makes sense to act on the impulse. Even if the impulse ends up manifesting in the form of a solitary swap.
So yeah, draw is good. Rishkar's Expertise, Harmonize and Sylvan Library have all been tearing it up big time since being introduced, and that other list offers up some options for going down that road some more. The problem is that stuff like Greater Good requires you to kill off Patron for maximum benefit, which is pretty devastating given the scarcity of haste outlets. Garruk, Primal Hunter can come down early and gum up the board if there's nothing better to do, or can be a five mana draw seven later on. That sounds acceptable. Let's slot it in over Primal Command, the most expensive creature-only tutor in the shell. I'm going to miss all its tech options, being super ugly to people's lands like a junior Plow Under, but at this point the deck doesn't need a near infinite supply of creature tutors. It wants to be able to find whatever pieces it's missing, and a hefty burst of draw usually allows some game plan to be pieced together. Are the old draw pieces, such as Book of Rass or Diviner's Wand in danger? Not really. There isn't exactly a large orderly queue of draw spells waiting for slots in the 99, and it's quite fun to play jank like that and have it be effective.
Well, I still wonder why you play such lackluster pieces of draw. Wouldn't using Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or even Mind's Eye you've discarded earlier better? At least you can tutor for the first one (Time of Need) and the second is bonkers when facing decks with blue.
How about Selvala's Stampede? Given your creature count is low it would work like one-sided Oath of Druids and the option to drop stuff from your hand is useful for expensive draw/tutor artifact things (Planar Portal/Bridge).
The reason why I play suck lacklustre draw is because the deck tends to generate a downright stupid mana pool. Untap, 30 mana available, what do. Since green doesn't get to have nice things like Blue Sun's Zenith, this is the best way to get many cardboards. And the jank factor is also amplified by the fact I can do that in everybody else's turns too! Usually if I do get to do that and live to tell the tale, I tend to win post untap for some reason
Just in case, I yanked out Diviner's Wand for Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and got some dedicated playtesting in. The Kozilek just didn't feel right. He was essentially a ten mana Harmonize that baited out a boardwipe immediately thereafter, not unlike a drawback of Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger not stated in the thread. We're most likely to be able to play Kozilek with Patron out (in terms of a relevant turn space), and the soul-sucking annihilator body getting dealt with usually results in a feisty tempo slug not really worth the four cards. It's not that the board is actually made any more wipeable by the Kozilek being there, from the perspective of the deck's combo/swarm game plan, but people become far more willing to pull the trigger. Maybe I'm missing something, but he just doesn't play right.
Selvala's Stampede is a hard pass. It is not uncommon for the deck to be down to a small trickle of cards in hand, or topdecking altogether, and with a healthy mix of utility and specific linchpin in the deck's 15 creatures the wild mode isn't that enticing either. Both this and the Kozilek feel like suggestions geared towards a more robust, redundant, dare I say goodstuffy green build, which this deck is not and likely never will be. It's its own weird thing, a slow motion combo deck that can untap and steal the game out of nowhere. Is it the best green deck possible? Hell no. But it's a kooky contraption, and each of the pieces (including Book of Rass and Diviner's Wand) fits within the mechanism. Mind's Eye is the closest of the suggestions, and I should probably give it a try. However, for some reason, drawing three off this versus a stock four player table compared against drawing upwards of thrice as much off the inferior options without any dependence on what the others are doing... yeah. Nevertheless, I'll probably try Mind's Eye again at some point.
Yeah, the mana totals get crazy, quite often out of nowhere. It's not uncommon to end a turn with a Patron and eight lands with no other doubling/ramp, untap, do stuff, and slam down a 50+ Genesis Wave or something of the sort. Let alone the infinites.
Yeah, I see your point with regards to both those options. You'd think flash would make a hell of a lot of difference, but somehow it did not. I ran an even stronger version of the effect in Vedalken Orrery, but it just ended up being rather do-nothing. It had a few games early on in the deck's life where it led to crazy ramp cascades and whatnot, which led to it being grandfathered in for a long time while it accomplished quite little. Maybe I should try it again now, given the shell has become quite a bit more draw-happy since 2015. Squirrel Nest is cute as hell with Earthcraft, yes, and makes chumps at any stage of the game to slightly stem the bleeding. I'd imagine it won't do too much, but as always, the only way to find out is to try.
Well, I playtested the Squirrel Nest and it was largely irrelevant outside of Earthcraft scenarios. However, I did realise that I am missing something reasonably obvious from the deck, so time to fix it.
Once again, some stupidity on past me's behalf. But current me, he'd pipe up, this doesn't untap from a Patron untap, and it can bolt you in the face while you dribble life as you try to stabilise! Well, you know what else it does? How does a turn one Kodama's Reach sound? How does untapping with five mana and surprise dumping a Patron sound? The Crypt helps repeatedly accelerate plays, and the deck's all about building up mana. So chasing this bad boy out will translate to quicker amassing of more resources that you can actually untap with Patron. Not quite a Genesis Wave tier omission, but it's better in than out. And now's a reasonable time to get one still - I might have missed the window for bottomed out 30 euro reprint copies, but the originals have been constantly falling like a brick so all it took was 5 euro more than a reprint and Patron will have another pretty piece of pimp. I'll never have the deck 100% decked out with OG printings, as I'm not gonna blow money on an alpha/beta Sol Ring for no reason beyond cosmetic, but every bit is cool.
And as for the life loss - I've frequently gutted myself with Sylvan Library and lived to tell the tale, and Book of Rass has been in here even longer. By contrast, the Crypt does just about nothing. That was a bit of a silly stance to take, given the advantages you can get from giving up some life points. You stabilise quicker, making it harder for others to kick you in the life total. Seems worth it overall. However, other "busted" rocks (Mana Vault, Grim Monolith etc.) are not actually worth it. The joke is that we aren't merely racing to Patron, we want a constant and reusable large mana pool.
Also, a fun observation - the deck now has a possible turn two win. Turn one: Crypt, land, Overgrowth. Turn two: Earthcraft, one drop (or two drop + land), Ant Queen, any one of the many cards that win off infinite mana. Quite improbable, yes, but nevertheless the very fact the possibility exists is pretty funny.
RIX is a lovely set. It was obviously designed with EDH in mind, but in a more subtle way than a lot of cards with us as a target demographic turn out. The mono colour elder dinos could be argued to be the strongest mono colour legend cycle since the praetors, the ascend mechanic is delightful, a lot of the flip options are juicy as well. Unfortunately, nothing for this deck. There's a three-drop dino you can sac to pop an artifact/enchantment, but why not run Caustic Caterpillar for pure efficiency if that sort of effect were to be desired? Azor's Gateway/Sanctum of the Sun is a superbeast card that immediately nested in my Daxos the Returned, but it's a little on the slow/inconvenient side for this shell. Need to test it some more, but the initial results are not promising.
In terms of non-RIX matters, I tested Oracle of Mul Daya. It proved to be a very high variance card, some games cheating in ludicrous amounts of mana off the top in conjunction with some shuffle effects, in others sitting there and accomplishing nothing. Not going to replace the low-variance, extremely reliable land ramp currently employed by the deck. It reminded me a bit of my old Lotus Cobra/Emerald Medallion goldfishes around the time I made this list into a primer, either things really clicked or everything fell on its face and accomplished nothing. The card that's closest to being included in the 99 is Duplicant, but the deck isn't exactly control city and only so many slots can be removal.
Oh boy! A set leak! We haven't had one of those in forever... and as usual, leak or not, there's nothing for Patron to be found. It's possible some wicked cool thing is hiding among the cards that weren't special enough to get card notes, but let's face it, that's not super likely. There's a super cute creature cloner which would be about as winmore as humanly possible in here. However, I did realise that there's a slight improvement to be made, thanks to a logic glitch around the time CN2 hit...
In the update where Greenwarden of Murasa was introduced, I explicitly called out that he's there as a recursion element for the Fierce Empath toolbox. Okay, cool, but why not just treat it as a weird proxy for all sorts of utility with Woodland Bellower instead? Recur a graveyard bit with Eternal Witness, make stuff go kerblooey with Reclamation Sage or Ulvenwald Tracker. Unfortunately you can't get Selvala with this. Stupid nonlegendary clause, what good would have fetching Nissa been anyway? Still, the mirror for all sorts of utility feels like it'll bring more to the deck than the Greenwarden (who was good enough to keep after offing the Empath, mind you). Games where I'd use both the Witness and Greenwarden were very few and far in between, so all in all this should be okay.
Also, I don't tend to do game snippets in here, but I just had a wicked crazy one that embodies the current form of the deck perfectly. A random Cockatrice pub, my foes being slivers and Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. Turn five. Selvala is doing bonkers stuff, sets up a swole board including a Terastodon (who ate my Garruk, Primal Hunter) and Soul of the Harvest, runs out of mana, pokes me with Sword of Feast and Famine to untap his lands, barfs out a Genesis Wave for 18. 15 8/9 plant tokens staring the board in the face, pretty gg if it gets back to him. By contrast, I have a Greaves'ed up Selvala of my own, the beast Garruk made and the elephant Garruk became, and four forests. Not the best. Untap, wicked "hold my beer" turn:
Earthcraft. Tap two 3/3s and the Keeper to bring mana total back up to 8. Patron!
Untap everything, Tooth and Nail. Set up Temur Sabertooth + Selvala infinite mana, plus Brutalizer Exarch to tuck noncreatures and Ulvenwald Tracker to frag creatures. Can't draw as the actual Selvala deck has fat fatter than Patron, so have to do it by proxy like so. Get out Kamahl and kill off...
...just the Selvala, as I forgot the slivers guy phased out at some point during Selvala's turn. Right. Now bounce Patron up and down, draw a bunch, prepare Staff of Domination. In the guy's upkeep, animate his lands and tap down his entire mana base.
The fact the list was able to pull this off, by the skin of its teeth, out of a rather unimposing board makes it one of my favourite wins I've ever had piloting it. Just a testament to a brief moment of greatness.
Grow from the Ashes is no Skyshroud Claim, but it comes with the panic button of being a hardcast Search from Tomorrow if things go south. Untapped ramp is pretty good, given the density of doublers in the list. Finding a cut was a bit troublesome - the four mana ramp twos already took a hit recently with making room for Keeper of Progenitus, and nothing non-ramp has been underperforming. In the end, a Rampant Growth variant gets offed. The least impactful of ramp variants, they only really shine when there's a business four drop to chase out of a starting hand. In the interest of evaluating just how hindered starting hands would be, 50+ hands were tested. ~25% visibly missed the Rampant Growth and sported a tempo hit when the business four drop got slowed down. However, ~75% were perfectly fine sequencing with this new option instead. Combine that with the fact that Grow from the Ashes is far preferable when ripped off the top later and the swap seems to be convincing enough.
As happens every now and then, playing other decks provides insight into potential construction improvements for this list. Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is slight similar to his friend Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, in that in principle he's supposed to die on sight. In Tromokratis, I've quite often played Jin Gitface ahead of Tromo to milk value and/or potentially bait removal. Maybe I should see if I can use Boringclex in the same way here? Just set him down when eight is around, like Patron, and see if someone poofs him? I remember that back when I tested him, I tended to chase Patron out on the dot when eight came around, making Boringclex slightly unwieldy if encountered at the wrong time. Next turn I'd untap, get Boringclex out, proceed with rest of game plan, and the board would typically explode, typically setting me back a little more than normal as that was one more card from hand that went to die. However, having this board exploding happen in a controlled fashion pre-Patron... hmmm...
2018 has been a quiet year for Patron. Grow from the Ashes got printed and included, but that's about it really. The deck does what it wants to, has the same set of putative includes that sit on the outskirts, yet never quite make it in as the deck plays well already. The list rarely gets walked in my playgroup as it sticks out a bit in terms of power level, which further limits playing time to assess any possible tweak avenues. Still, it's my flagship casual terror jank heap, and I'm very happy it exists.
DEVIL: Hey, kid. Yeah, you. What if I told you that instead of tutoring for a non-legendary 3-or-less drop for 6 mana, you could tutor for an X drop for X+2 mana, and also you could get it back from your graveyard, and if you dump enough mana into it your dudes get pumped and hasty until end of turn?
DEVIL holds out contract. KID snatches it to analyse the fine print.
KID: There's gotta be a catch, let's look here... Right, I'd lose the 6/5 body as it's a sorcery, but it doesn't exile itself or anything, and there's no trample. I was expecting trample for some reason.
DEVIL: (cackles maniacally) Everything comes at a price!
KID signs. DEVIL looks mildly confused at how easy this went.
1 Well of Knowledge
1 Genesis Wave
I see old me pulling his hair out at the thought of Patron stooping to such levels of un-synergistic goodstuffery in the 99. The prior evaluation of Genesis Wave happened before Temur Sabertooth even existed, and literally all the deck ever did was slowly amass ants. As such, the old concerns were correct then, as an inopportune overextending of some engines/finishers could be disastrous and the Wave was imprecise in nature and mana-hungry. That's mana you could just devote to making tokens to kill people after you tutored up precisely what you need! However, Temur Sabertooth exists now. A bunch of other stuff exists now too, the infinite mana cheat sheet in the primer's been growing. A hefty X is likely to flip pieces that you can wedge together into a combo and win on the spot. Genesis Wave has gone from a horrible nonbo with the game plan to a win in a can. Even if the flipped cards lack an immediate combo, there are permanent-based tutors and recursion options. Something is almost certainly possible, and even on the off-chance it somehow "fizzles" you still get an insanely fat board with a lot of extra ramp. This will make bouncing back far easier if somebody tries to deal with you.
The choice of X is up in the air. I did a bunch of goldfishes with X=20 with no relevant non-land pieces on the board to see how it would fare, as it seems like a reasonable conservative estimate for when it could come down. About 80% of those Waves had an instant win within the 20 flipped cards. On its maiden voyage in an actual game, I got to crack an X=62 (and obviously won immediately thereafter). Try to leave a few cards in the deck just in case, and a little bit of mana in the case of smaller X'es in case you need it for follow-up plays/activations.
Room needed to be made. Well of Knowledge out. Funny to see it go, given the last few updates' keenness to smooth out the early game, but the timing limitation makes it very awkward to topdeck later on in the game. You rip it from the top on a board with 20+ mana, you set it down. Everybody handily tops up, and the thing probably explodes before it's your turn again. Even in the early game you're potentially handing out cards as you try to efficiently use mana allotments between ramp spells. Next possible inclusion - Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger. No immediate slot opens itself up, but didn't I literally just say this after the prior cut? A similar cut scenario to the one discussed above is not super likely, as the risky low-cost mana doublers come with the huge upside of potential explosive Patron starts.
A number of potential augmentations to play to the strengths of the list were considered:
A slot was found for Vorinclex - Illusionist's Bracers was identified as another cute leftover, doing little more in the deck than being a conditional multiplicative doubler due to none of the crucial abilities requiring tapping, and Vorinclex offers a relatively similar benefit in a more standalone (and dickish) way. But then AER spoilers started...
1 Illusionist's Bracers
1 Planar Bridge
Wait, what? All that wall of text and then a single change? Well, I put in a bunch more thinking than just the single swap that occurred, and I felt it relevant to chronicle it in case future me tries to retrace this path at some point. Also, wasn't Vorinclex supposed to be coming in for the Bracers? Well, yeah. He was. But he just doesn't play that well in the list for some reason. The fact he's a creature makes him die very easily, and people become very forthcoming with removal when he lands. Plus, somehow, the CMC of 8 makes him awkward to sequence. No idea, really, as 7 is perfectly fine (Zendikar Resurgent). Planar Bridge just had to go in, that much was obvious to anyone who ever played against the deck - I learned from its existence when a guy from the Golden Meta asked me if it was going into Patron Originally it was going to replace Time of Need, but that card's new early game life where it fetches Selvala really helps the deck out. Summoner's Pact is too efficient for its own good, and Primal Command has a number of cool utility features. No obvious cut presented itself. Vorinclex was being clunky, so out he went instead, and Genesis Wave got another permanent-based tutor buddy. It's not quite the power upgrade Selvala, Earthcraft or Genesis Wave were, but it's a good card that fits into the deck's mission statement and contributes to its resilience.
A fun little nugget of interaction with the Bridge - now the deck can actually get around hexproof/shroud when in full infinite mode. The Bridge fetches out Song of the Dryads from the deck, the Song slides onto a hexproof/shroud object as it doesn't target when it hits play like that, and you Brutalizer Exarch it away as presumably the resulting forest is targetable. You then recycle the Song from your graveyard, slap it onto anything else, and shunt it into your deck for Bridging with Exarch again. You do have to reset the Bridge by destroying and recurring it, but that's perfectly doable in full infinite mode. Not really a relevant interaction, but a wonderfully satisfying addition to the deck's Johnny chain that deals with a plausible corner case. Now the corner case is the opponent having multiple untargetable things that make their lands untargetable.
If anything, the closest to a potential change would be reintroducing Keeper of Progenitus into the deck. I miss having tutorable doubling a bit, plus the games where I skilfully yank a Extraplanar Lens or Vernal Bloom from my deck tend to be over pretty quickly. However, he is a double-edged sword, so I'm proceeding with caution (especially as my meta is a nondescript naya-heavy slugfest).
I mean, you don't really ever end up across a pod from me these days, so that saves you some of the worst grief you've eaten for a poorly timed Keeper >:P
Most Used (of many dozens) EDH Decks:
Brago, King Eternal - Stax
Grenzo, Dungeon Warden - Aggro Combo
Wort, the Raidmother - Spellslinger Swarm Control
Animar, Soul of Elements - Tempo Combo
Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder - Spellslinger
Exodia the Forbidden One:
Oona, Queen of the Fae - Combowins.dec
1 Fierce Empath
1 Ranger's Path
1 Keeper of Progenitus
1 Rishkar's Expertise
There's actually quite a lot more to reintroducing the Keeper than not playing with Ebline much anymore my paper meta has always had a tendency to be a Naya-heavy slog, so the Keeper was quite beneficial to most of the table at all times. This was to the detriment of the original swarm-only gameplay, sometimes biting the deck on its tuckus. However, with time, as openly acknowledged time and time again in here, the deck shifted towards a more combo-oriented game style. This has also led to the clock of the average swarm backup kill going up a bit. Keeper is a gotta go fast card, fitting that faux-glass-cannon philosophy pretty well. The benefit is conferred at any stage of the game - a Keeper off four forests is a Patron next turn, while a Keeper onto a field of 24 forests is 40 untapped mana. What can I say, the deck likes its cheap doubling, as highlighted in my sentiments on Extraplanar Lens and Vernal Bloom not long ago. This is a similar class of effect, and a bit of a misplaced cut really. Needed to make room, so Ranger's Path goes away. Imagine untapping with four lands... which would you rather do? Simple card 1v1, again. The deck tends to make its cuts this way.
Also, I had a delayed moment of realisation that Rishkar's Expertise is actually good here. Picture this - you cast the Expertise, people remove the Patron in response. Oh no! But wait! What if the Patron is active? Then you tap him and get a boatload of mana going, probably enough to just replay the Patron immediately. Expertise "whiffs" (you still get the free spell cast, mind you), but you're not too far behind and you baited a removal spell. In fact, this very scenario makes it so you can play the Expertise with confidence against people who have a rudimentary understanding of how the deck operates and get full value out of it. Knowledgeable opponents gun for Patron, and will try to do so before he becomes active. As such, just avoid playing the Expertise into a summoning sick Patron and you're gonna be fine. If there was removal with Patron's name on it, it would have likely reached him before the summoning sickness went away to prevent the deck from revving its engine a bit. Bit silly of me to not connect the dots before. So, obviously, the Expertise had to go in. Fierce Empath out. The tutors vs. rest of deck balance was skewed a bit recently with the introduction of Planar Bridge, so losing the worst tutor wasn't going to be the end of the world. Empath unfortunately fits that bill. In the current Patron climate, a tutor should be able to hit as much of the set of Selvala, Sabertooth, token engine and finisher as possible. Empath only hits the last two, along with some nice tech in Greenwarden of Murasa and Brutalizer Exarch. The next most limited tutor, Time of Need, hits three of these, only missing the Sabertooth, plus it curves perfectly into the Selvala. Primal Command is costly to cast, but it's also tech as hell, including being the deck's only piece of grave hate.
earthcraft + 1 basic land that can tap for 3 + rings of brighthearth + Kamahl, fist of Krosa. If the lands are animated, they can tap to untap themselves, which can then be copied to untap other lands.
While I'm here, what are other people's opinion on harvest season? I run more mana dorks.
Kemba | Linvala | Talrand | Geth | Krenko | Zada | Patron of the Orochi | Medomai | Athreos | Gisela | Trostani | Nin | Silumgar | Kaervek | Jarad | Xenagos | Sydri | Narset | Roon | Zurgo | Ghave | Marath | Uril | Tasigur | Animar | Riku | Riku | Sek'Kuar | Cromat
I'd imagine Harvest Season is pretty fine in decks which routinely generate many creatures turned sideways. My bet is that it'll become an EDH all star, but then my guesswork has been rather horrid - Zendikar Resurgent is by far the most played OGW card while Temur Sabertooth never made it.
No changes to the list in a while. Nothing particularly enticing came out, and no glaring omissions have been spotted at this point. I thought they printed the deck a neat card in C17 with Traverse the Outlands. I mean, this is like a Riskhar's Expertise for ramp, it's gonna be good, right? In spite of having all the potential in the world on paper, it goldfishes like a brick. Turns out the deck likes its ramp Patron independent.
Speaking of Rishkar's Expertise, that card's become an all-star in the list, to the point where I'm considering slotting in other similar'ish options. However, I then remind myself just how busted the Expertise is, what with its free spell and leaving Patron alive at the end of it. If anything, I may trial Garruk, Primal Hunter at some point, but that's not looking super likely either.
The main conceptual difference between the decks is that his lynchpins pretty damn hard on the Temur Sabertooth/Cloudstone Curio combos and runs draw about as heavy as green allows to try to get the pieces online. The list is also filled with more low to the ground stuff, with less crazy mana buildup and ridiculously expensive plays like Planar Portal et al. that I tend to sport. On the whole, I think I'm happier with the build I've got going here, as there is a ridiculous amount of combo potential and the swarm backup feels like it'd be better at closing out games than his take (he does have an Ant Queen as well, as who wouldn't really, but no way to make the swarm bigger than 1/1s). Nevertheless, it's nice to stumble upon someone else who independently did a similar thing. His heavy draw suite has me reconsidering those cards yet again, and I've given some fleeting thought to Haunted Cloak before as well. Gotta keep transitioning the deck from its swarm roots to the weird combo machine it has become, although it feels like it's in a pretty good spot right now for what it's worth.
1 Primal Command
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
So yeah, draw is good. Rishkar's Expertise, Harmonize and Sylvan Library have all been tearing it up big time since being introduced, and that other list offers up some options for going down that road some more. The problem is that stuff like Greater Good requires you to kill off Patron for maximum benefit, which is pretty devastating given the scarcity of haste outlets. Garruk, Primal Hunter can come down early and gum up the board if there's nothing better to do, or can be a five mana draw seven later on. That sounds acceptable. Let's slot it in over Primal Command, the most expensive creature-only tutor in the shell. I'm going to miss all its tech options, being super ugly to people's lands like a junior Plow Under, but at this point the deck doesn't need a near infinite supply of creature tutors. It wants to be able to find whatever pieces it's missing, and a hefty burst of draw usually allows some game plan to be pieced together. Are the old draw pieces, such as Book of Rass or Diviner's Wand in danger? Not really. There isn't exactly a large orderly queue of draw spells waiting for slots in the 99, and it's quite fun to play jank like that and have it be effective.
The reason why I play suck lacklustre draw is because the deck tends to generate a downright stupid mana pool. Untap, 30 mana available, what do. Since green doesn't get to have nice things like Blue Sun's Zenith, this is the best way to get many cardboards. And the jank factor is also amplified by the fact I can do that in everybody else's turns too! Usually if I do get to do that and live to tell the tale, I tend to win post untap for some reason
Just in case, I yanked out Diviner's Wand for Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and got some dedicated playtesting in. The Kozilek just didn't feel right. He was essentially a ten mana Harmonize that baited out a boardwipe immediately thereafter, not unlike a drawback of Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger not stated in the thread. We're most likely to be able to play Kozilek with Patron out (in terms of a relevant turn space), and the soul-sucking annihilator body getting dealt with usually results in a feisty tempo slug not really worth the four cards. It's not that the board is actually made any more wipeable by the Kozilek being there, from the perspective of the deck's combo/swarm game plan, but people become far more willing to pull the trigger. Maybe I'm missing something, but he just doesn't play right.
Selvala's Stampede is a hard pass. It is not uncommon for the deck to be down to a small trickle of cards in hand, or topdecking altogether, and with a healthy mix of utility and specific linchpin in the deck's 15 creatures the wild mode isn't that enticing either. Both this and the Kozilek feel like suggestions geared towards a more robust, redundant, dare I say goodstuffy green build, which this deck is not and likely never will be. It's its own weird thing, a slow motion combo deck that can untap and steal the game out of nowhere. Is it the best green deck possible? Hell no. But it's a kooky contraption, and each of the pieces (including Book of Rass and Diviner's Wand) fits within the mechanism. Mind's Eye is the closest of the suggestions, and I should probably give it a try. However, for some reason, drawing three off this versus a stock four player table compared against drawing upwards of thrice as much off the inferior options without any dependence on what the others are doing... yeah. Nevertheless, I'll probably try Mind's Eye again at some point.
Yeah, I see your point with regards to both those options. You'd think flash would make a hell of a lot of difference, but somehow it did not. I ran an even stronger version of the effect in Vedalken Orrery, but it just ended up being rather do-nothing. It had a few games early on in the deck's life where it led to crazy ramp cascades and whatnot, which led to it being grandfathered in for a long time while it accomplished quite little. Maybe I should try it again now, given the shell has become quite a bit more draw-happy since 2015. Squirrel Nest is cute as hell with Earthcraft, yes, and makes chumps at any stage of the game to slightly stem the bleeding. I'd imagine it won't do too much, but as always, the only way to find out is to try.
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Mana Crypt
Once again, some stupidity on past me's behalf. But current me, he'd pipe up, this doesn't untap from a Patron untap, and it can bolt you in the face while you dribble life as you try to stabilise! Well, you know what else it does? How does a turn one Kodama's Reach sound? How does untapping with five mana and surprise dumping a Patron sound? The Crypt helps repeatedly accelerate plays, and the deck's all about building up mana. So chasing this bad boy out will translate to quicker amassing of more resources that you can actually untap with Patron. Not quite a Genesis Wave tier omission, but it's better in than out. And now's a reasonable time to get one still - I might have missed the window for bottomed out 30 euro reprint copies, but the originals have been constantly falling like a brick so all it took was 5 euro more than a reprint and Patron will have another pretty piece of pimp. I'll never have the deck 100% decked out with OG printings, as I'm not gonna blow money on an alpha/beta Sol Ring for no reason beyond cosmetic, but every bit is cool.
And as for the life loss - I've frequently gutted myself with Sylvan Library and lived to tell the tale, and Book of Rass has been in here even longer. By contrast, the Crypt does just about nothing. That was a bit of a silly stance to take, given the advantages you can get from giving up some life points. You stabilise quicker, making it harder for others to kick you in the life total. Seems worth it overall. However, other "busted" rocks (Mana Vault, Grim Monolith etc.) are not actually worth it. The joke is that we aren't merely racing to Patron, we want a constant and reusable large mana pool.
Also, a fun observation - the deck now has a possible turn two win. Turn one: Crypt, land, Overgrowth. Turn two: Earthcraft, one drop (or two drop + land), Ant Queen, any one of the many cards that win off infinite mana. Quite improbable, yes, but nevertheless the very fact the possibility exists is pretty funny.
In terms of non-RIX matters, I tested Oracle of Mul Daya. It proved to be a very high variance card, some games cheating in ludicrous amounts of mana off the top in conjunction with some shuffle effects, in others sitting there and accomplishing nothing. Not going to replace the low-variance, extremely reliable land ramp currently employed by the deck. It reminded me a bit of my old Lotus Cobra/Emerald Medallion goldfishes around the time I made this list into a primer, either things really clicked or everything fell on its face and accomplished nothing. The card that's closest to being included in the 99 is Duplicant, but the deck isn't exactly control city and only so many slots can be removal.
1 Greenwarden of Murasa
1 Woodland Bellower
In the update where Greenwarden of Murasa was introduced, I explicitly called out that he's there as a recursion element for the Fierce Empath toolbox. Okay, cool, but why not just treat it as a weird proxy for all sorts of utility with Woodland Bellower instead? Recur a graveyard bit with Eternal Witness, make stuff go kerblooey with Reclamation Sage or Ulvenwald Tracker. Unfortunately you can't get Selvala with this. Stupid nonlegendary clause, what good would have fetching Nissa been anyway? Still, the mirror for all sorts of utility feels like it'll bring more to the deck than the Greenwarden (who was good enough to keep after offing the Empath, mind you). Games where I'd use both the Witness and Greenwarden were very few and far in between, so all in all this should be okay.
Also, I don't tend to do game snippets in here, but I just had a wicked crazy one that embodies the current form of the deck perfectly. A random Cockatrice pub, my foes being slivers and Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. Turn five. Selvala is doing bonkers stuff, sets up a swole board including a Terastodon (who ate my Garruk, Primal Hunter) and Soul of the Harvest, runs out of mana, pokes me with Sword of Feast and Famine to untap his lands, barfs out a Genesis Wave for 18. 15 8/9 plant tokens staring the board in the face, pretty gg if it gets back to him. By contrast, I have a Greaves'ed up Selvala of my own, the beast Garruk made and the elephant Garruk became, and four forests. Not the best. Untap, wicked "hold my beer" turn:
1 Into the North
1 Grow from the Ashes
Grow from the Ashes is no Skyshroud Claim, but it comes with the panic button of being a hardcast Search from Tomorrow if things go south. Untapped ramp is pretty good, given the density of doublers in the list. Finding a cut was a bit troublesome - the four mana ramp twos already took a hit recently with making room for Keeper of Progenitus, and nothing non-ramp has been underperforming. In the end, a Rampant Growth variant gets offed. The least impactful of ramp variants, they only really shine when there's a business four drop to chase out of a starting hand. In the interest of evaluating just how hindered starting hands would be, 50+ hands were tested. ~25% visibly missed the Rampant Growth and sported a tempo hit when the business four drop got slowed down. However, ~75% were perfectly fine sequencing with this new option instead. Combine that with the fact that Grow from the Ashes is far preferable when ripped off the top later and the swap seems to be convincing enough.
As happens every now and then, playing other decks provides insight into potential construction improvements for this list. Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is slight similar to his friend Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, in that in principle he's supposed to die on sight. In Tromokratis, I've quite often played Jin Gitface ahead of Tromo to milk value and/or potentially bait removal. Maybe I should see if I can use Boringclex in the same way here? Just set him down when eight is around, like Patron, and see if someone poofs him? I remember that back when I tested him, I tended to chase Patron out on the dot when eight came around, making Boringclex slightly unwieldy if encountered at the wrong time. Next turn I'd untap, get Boringclex out, proceed with rest of game plan, and the board would typically explode, typically setting me back a little more than normal as that was one more card from hand that went to die. However, having this board exploding happen in a controlled fashion pre-Patron... hmmm...
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Finale of Devastation
Curtain. DEVIL and KID.
DEVIL: Hey, kid. Yeah, you. What if I told you that instead of tutoring for a non-legendary 3-or-less drop for 6 mana, you could tutor for an X drop for X+2 mana, and also you could get it back from your graveyard, and if you dump enough mana into it your dudes get pumped and hasty until end of turn?
DEVIL holds out contract. KID snatches it to analyse the fine print.
KID: There's gotta be a catch, let's look here... Right, I'd lose the 6/5 body as it's a sorcery, but it doesn't exile itself or anything, and there's no trample. I was expecting trample for some reason.
DEVIL: (cackles maniacally) Everything comes at a price!
KID signs. DEVIL looks mildly confused at how easy this went.
Curtain.