Hi! Thanks for coming to read about my take on The Gitrog Monster. Obviously, strategy will be the focus of our discussion today, but before we start, I'm going to talk about myself, my history in EDH, and this deck's history. For those of you who couldn't care less and want to get to the meat, go ahead and close this spoiler and start off.
First things first, my name is Razzliox, and I've been playing EDH for about six years now, but I've only been really playing for about half of that. When I say "really playing," I mean playing decks to their full potential, picking strategies based primarily on their competitive component rather than pet preferences or soft rules. (That means that for those of you who refuse to include turn-three kills or infinite combos in your decks, you may be sorely disappointed with this thread.) I moderate /r/EDH, a community of around 35k subscribers, as well as /r/CompetitiveEDH, with nearly 10k.
My first real deck was Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. This was a graveyard midrange combo deck that could play an explosive combo roll. Jarad, whose primer can be found in my signature, was a real powerhouse when I first made him, but unfortunately I feel I no longer have the success with him I used to. That is one of the many reasons I decided to create this deck. Since then, I have had great success with one other deck, Sidisi, Undead Vizier mono-black storm (again, there is a link in my signature). This deck is, in a way, a combination of my first two - Jarad is present in the raw power of Golgari, whereas Sidisi is represented in the powerful quick kills provided by black's Dark Ritual effects combined with Ad Nauseam.
When The Gitrog Monster was first spoiled, I was very excited. A fellow moderator organized a community brew, and we spent about 4 hours in voice chat discussing the best way to build it and creating a list. They elected me to test the deck that night, and I joined a Cockatrice room against three opponents with what was at the time considered tier one decks. On my third turn, I sacrificed all my lands to Rain of Filth on turn three to try and combo off, but my opponent had a Force of Will. It took me awhile, but ultimately using Life from the Loam in combination with my commander I was able to rebuild my manabase. After about an hour, I did manage to go off, but it took me another 45 minutes to kill them! (You can read the recap post here.) I was instantly hooked, and I've been tweaking it ever since.
I certainly can't take all the credit for this creative and innovative list. Special thanks to MTGS users DTrain and bobthefunny for their input, as well as reddit users JimWolfie and ShaperSavant.
Why Play the Deck?
First things first, let's talk pros and cons. You will enjoy this deck if:
You enjoy a deck that rewards your piloting skill. This build of TGM is more difficult to play than any other deck I’ve spent a significant amount of time with, and the deck is actually pretty bad until you have a decent amount of experience with it. Between complicated Doomsday lines, all-in risky plays where you “might just draw the combo” like Rain of Filth, and convoluted dredge chains, things get complicated quickly.
You enjoy wonky combos. Our actual kill-con is very silly, but in my opinion is still elegant and the most compact way to play the deck.
You think that your commander should be an integral part of the deck. Not only is The Gitrog Monster part of our only win-condition, it's also our most powerful engine for drawing cards and ramping. This deck leans hard on its commander.
Your meta is full of midrange decks that will try and out-value you. When not disrupted, this deck will be ending games on turns three to five.
On the other hand, this deck might not be your cup of tea if:
You are new to the format, or you are unwilling to put in the time to learn to play a deck properly. Again, the deck takes practice.
You want a straight, stable line to victory. Many times, the best play is to risk it, when you have only a 70% chance of winning. If you're a conservative player, this deck will challenge your intuitions.
You often play against tax effects, gravehate, and hatebears. These effects will be the bane of your existence.
You don't enjoy explaining things to people who have never seen this combo. Our combo can get quite complicated when we are pushed for resources, and especially when Skirge Familiar has been exiled from the deck.
Your playgroup doesn't allow proxies and you don't want to spend a lot of cash. Unfortunately, there is a huge power level difference between this deck with vs without Bazaar of Baghdad. Maxing out on fetchlands is also important, and you will want access to all the fast mana like Mox Diamond, Grim Monolith, and Lion's Eye Diamond.
What's the big deal with this frog dude anyway?
The most important thing that our commander does for us is provide us with a very clean and compact combo. With any discard outlet such as Wild Mongrel and with Dakmor Salvage in hand, we will be able to put two cards from our library into our graveyard. Combined with our commander's ability, as well as a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth anywhere in the deck, we will be able to draw our entire deck and win from there. This will be explained in detail below.
Froggy does more than combo, though. Making your fetchlands cantrip, Exploration on a stick, and having seriously insane interaction with Bazaar of Baghdad makes our commander a card advantage engine to be reckoned with. The card-drawing ability also turns our dredge cards into potential sources of card advantage. The upkeep trigger looks like a downside, but we'll be drawing so many cards that we'll be replacing our lands faster than they get sacrificed.
Strategy
Let's talk gameplay. The majority of the time you're playing, you will be searching for the fastest line to victory, so the most important thing for you to know is exactly how the combo works. With that in mind... Finishing the Game
The only way this deck wins the game is with Dakmor combo. The combo requires our commander in play, Dakmor Salvage in hand, and a discard outlet such as Putrid Imp. We discard Dakmor, get a draw trigger, and dredge Dakmor back to our hand. We mill two cards, and if we hit a land, we get a draw trigger. We're now at the same position we were in the beginning of the loop, except that we've milled two cards and potentially put a draw trigger onto the stack.
We can repeat the loop, playing around Faerie Macabre and similar effects by discarding Dakmor before the “draw a card” trigger resolves. This ensures Gaea’s Blessing never has a chance to enter our hand. Eventually, we dredge into either Kozilek or Gaea's Blessing. At that point, we’ll have to let the shuffle resolve before continuing the combo - again, to play around instant-speed gravehate effects.
By the time we’re done, Putrid Imp will have
300 instances of Flying.
By continuing the loop, we will generate an arbitrarily large amount of “draw a card” triggers. From here, we will want to produce arbitrarily large amounts of black mana. We can proceed to allow some of our triggers to resolve, drawing our deck. Then we discard Kozilek, shuffle up, and draw our deck again. (If at this point we are disrupted by Faerie Macabre, we should be able to beat it with Noxious Revival. To ensure this is always an option, we’ll need to make sure never to discard the Kozilek while Blessing is in our hand and Noxious is not.) At this point, there should still be an arbitrarily large number of “draw a card” triggers on the stack.
We have now reached a point where we need to generate infinite black mana. At sorcery speed, this is as simple as putting Skirge Familiar in play, but at instant-speed we’ll need to do better. (For the sake of explanatory narrative, let’s assume Necromancy is in exile, meaning no instant-speed Skirge Familiar.) It’s as simple as casting Dark Ritual, discarding Kozilek, and drawing them back. By looping rituals like this, we can generate infinite black mana.
We can also loop cards at sorcery-speed without having infinite draw on the stack. This is actually our most simple kill method - looping Praetor’s Grasp. After we’ve generated infinite black mana, we can clear the stack of draw triggers by repeatedly discarding Kozilek and drawing it. Looping cards at sorcery speed is only slightly more convoluted. First, we cast Grasp. Then we cycle two lands, putting four “draw a card” triggers on the stack. Then we discard Kozilek, shuffling those four cards into our library, and draw them again! From here, we do something fun like infinitely reanimate our opponent’s Triskelion... or just loop it forever and steal every card in their deck.
Beating disruption
The combo is disrupted by any kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, as well as by gravehate. However, it does have built-in protection. If our opponent casts a kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, for each extra land in our hand (or any other cantrip), we can simply draw another card continue going off. This means if there are four lands in our hand, we can hypothetically beat four removal spells. This really shouldn’t ever happen though as our opponents will be removing the discard outlet in response to the frog, or vice versa.
Remember: Deathrite Shaman does not have a mana ability.
You can respond if they try to exile your Dakmor.
As for gravehate, we have a few more tricks. If you're responding to something like Tormod's Crypt with the Dakmor salvage in the graveyard, the above trick works to pull it out of the graveyard. If the graveyard has some indispensable cards such as Kozilek, Riftsweeper or Necromancy, we always have the option to continue dredging in response to the exile until we hit another shuffle effect (either Koz or Blessing).
Since we’re playing two shuffle effects, there would need to be three cases of instant-speed graveyard exile, like a Scavenging Ooze with three open mana, to disrupt the combo. The first activation would exile our Kozilek, the second would exile the Blessing that hit the yard in response. But since the Blessing trigger resolves before the first Ooze activation, the Koz is still protected unless they have a third activation active. However, if the Blessing hits the yard first, this can occasionally put us in the awkward situation of having only Gaea’s Blessing as a shuffle effect. You can make infinite draw triggers easily without Koz in the deck, but once you draw your deck, you’ll be unable to put simply discard Blessing and get a shuffle, therefore clearing the stack. This potential problem introduces us to a new skill we will have to acquire!
Instant-speed Exile Protection
Very often, we will have to use cards in our exile zone to combo off. This commonly happens because one of our combo pieces is exiled. To do this, we will loop Riftsweeper at instant speed. First, it is important that we already have infinite draw triggers on the stack, and infinite black mana. (This can be achieved without Kozilek using the above methods.) At this point, we will discard Riftsweeper, and reanimate it with Necromancy. If Kozilek is in exile, it will have to be our first Riftsweeper target. Finally, we will sacrifice Riftsweeper to Culling the Weak, discard Koz, shuffle up, and draw the cards back, to be at the beginning of the loop!
This process can be repeated infinitely! Most commonly, it’s used to retrieve exiled combo pieces. If you’re feeling extra spicy, you can use it to return your opponcnts’ exiled combo pieces and win with those. More importantly, the loop can be used to produce infinite green mana at instant speed with Elvish Spirit Guide.
“But Razzliox! Why would you need to produce infinite green mana at instant speed? So far, every card you’ve talked about is black!” Glad you asked! Sometimes, we win the game outside of our main phase, meaning we can’t rely on looping Praetor’s Grasp. In such a scenario, we’ll need to take a few extra steps to kill our opponent.
Instant-speed Kill
After generating infinite black and green mana, and still with infinite draw triggers on the stack, we’re going to loop Rath’s Edge infinitely to kill all of or opponents. At this point, it’s usually easier to perform the combo with our commander off the board, so we’ll start off by Culling it.
Should exile have remained the “gone forever” zone?
Probably. But that’s not my fault.
So it’s just like the Riftsweeper loop: First we discard Arbor, then we Necromancy it and sacrifice it. Instead of sacrificing to Culling the Weak, however, we’re going to use Crop Rotation. With Rotation on the stack, we can discard Rath’s Edge and Kozilek, resolve Rotation, and tutor Rath’s Edge. Finally, we’ll re-draw our deck, discard Koz again, and re-draw Koz and Edge, which puts us back at the beginning of the loop.
How often do we actually win at instant speed? Outside of the cornercase of our opponent wheeling us into our combo piece, why would we be able to assemble it at instant speed? Well, it’s actually quite common - possibly more common than the main phase kill is the infamous cleanup phase kill. It’s easier to disrupt, but it has the advantage of being a one-card combo with our commander - no discard outlet needed.
Cleanup Step Kill
If we have more than seven cards at the end of our turn, we can use our cleanup step as our "discard outlet." Discarding Dakmor as our eighth card will produce a “draw a card” trigger, which causes priority to be passed around. We'll replace the draw by dredging Dakmor, and then if we dredge into a land, we'll draw another card. After the stack clears, we will receive another cleanup step and be forced to discard down to seven again. (Rule 514.3: "Normally, no player receives priority during the cleanup step, so no spells can be cast and no abilities can be activated. However, this rule is subject to the following exception. At this point, the game checks to see if any state-based actions would be performed and/or any triggered abilities are waiting to be put onto the stack, including those that trigger at the beginning of the next cleanup step. If so, those state-based actions are performed, then those triggered abilities are put on the stack, then the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities. Once the stack is empty and all players pass in succession, another cleanup step begins.")
By repeating this loop, we’re going to be drawing through our deck just like normal! The only problem is that we have to discard down to seven each iteration. What we need to do here is sculpt our hand - continue flipping through our deck until we have Necromancy and Skirge Familiar in our hand. (If we don’t have any open mana, we can filter to Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation, and Dark Ritual. Remember - between cleanup steps, your mana pool empties, so the Dark Ritual must be cast in the same phase as Necromancy!) Skirge Familiar produces infinite black mana, which turns into infinite green mana, and finally lethal through Rath’s Edge.
The problem with the cleanup phase is that it opens us up to gravehate and instant-speed removal. Without a discard outlet in play, a simple Faerie Macabre exiles our Salvage and we lose the game. While the cleanup phase is a powerful way to assemble the combo, it’s also very all-in. Thankfully, there are two other easy ways to assemble the combo.
Chaining Dredgers into Combo
A lot of the time, we won't have the land tutor for Dakmor, but we will have a discard outlet and Gitrog. Thankfully, we can almost always win with another dredge card, provided you have a cantrip. Let's say Stinkweed Imp is in the graveyard, with a Wild Mongrel in play. If we play our cantrip effect and dredge our imp, we're pretty darn likely to hit a land in our top five, netting another draw trigger. In response to the new draw trigger, we can discard the dredger again and continue the loop. Once we hit a bigger dredger, in this case Golgari Grave-Troll, we can dredge with that instead.
I ran a program to determine some probabilities about whether we are more likely to "whiff" (meaning not hit a land on our dredge) on all our dredge pieces - that is, Golgari Grave-Troll (dredge 6), Stinkweed Imp (dredge 5), and Life from the Loam (dredge 3). For the simulation, I assumed that there were 88 cards remaining in our library, 30 of which were lands (including one Dakmor Salvage). With no extra lands in our hand, dredging for 6 gives us a 58% chance, and dredging for 5 gives us a 43% percent chance. However, if we have just one land in our hand - meaning that one "whiff" is forgiven - our numbers boost to dredging 6 at 89%, and dredging 5 at 79%. Finally, if we have enough mana to cast Life from the Loam and get 3 free resets, we have a 75% chance of hitting Dakmor before we whiff!
Doomsday
What, more combo lines? Yes, more combo lines! Doomsday is traditionally used in Laboratory Maniac decks, and to my knowledge this is the first deck other than Grenzo, Dungeon Warden to use Doomsday in this format without blue! Doomsday is the easiest way to assemble our entire combo besides the cleanup phase kill.
You’ll want to know a few different lines. The first thing to realize is that we need five specific cards in the deck to win. To kill our opponents, we’ll need a discard outlet, Dakmor Salvage, Kozilek, a ritual effect we can loop to produce infinite black mana, and Praetor’s Grasp. Since Doomsday only searches for five cards, this means that our options will be extremely limited. However, we can fit one extra non-essential card into the pile if our discard outlet is Skirge Familiar, allowing us to eschew the ritual effect. With that in mind, our best piles are as follows:
Rain of Filth Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant Rain of Filth Putrid Imp Dakmor Salvage Praetor’s Grasp Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This pile assumes you have some sort of ritual effect in your hand, but either Grasp or Koz can be in your hand instead (in which case you put Lotus Petal in the pile). It requires the one cantrip to open, one black mana, and two lands in play.
Lake of the Dead Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant Lake of the Dead Putrid Imp Dakmor Salvage Praetor’s Grasp Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
The Lake Pile is open to the same modification as the Rain Pile. If you have a ritual effect (or Koz, or Grasp) in your hand when Doomsday resolves, you have no need for Skirge Familiar. All this line requires is one open land drop and two swamps, but it works with no mana in pool!
Three Cantrips Pile Putrid Imp Lotus Petal Dakmor Salvage Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Praetor’s Grasp
This pile requires one cantrip to open the pile, one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage, and one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage. Our third cantrip can be a land in hand, which we can then discard to Putrid Imp to draw Salvage. Regardless, we’ll have to find some way of putting a land into our graveyard so that looping Dakmor Salvage is actually card advantage.
Because the deck was too simple without it
Two Cantrips Pile Putrid Imp Dakmor Salvage Lotus Petal Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Praetor’s Grasp
The only difference between this pile and the first is the placing of Lotus Petal. By putting it under Dakmor Salvage, we eliminate the requirement for for a third cantrip, which we make up for by assuming we already have one black mana for Putrid Imp.
One Cantrip Pile Barren Moor Skirge Familiar Dakmor Salvage Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Praetor’s Grasp
After resolving Doomsday, six mana can often be hard to generate, but this is the only pile I have found that requires only one cantrip that works with no lands in play. It should be noted that Barren Moor may be replaced with Bazaar of Baghdad; doing so requires an open land drop and some cards in hand, but reduced the cost of the pile by one mana.
One Cantrip Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant Barren Moor Dakmor Salvage Putrid Imp Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Praetor’s Grasp
This line assumes you have Lotus Petal or some similar effect in your hand, giving us a little more room in the pile. This pile’s mana constraints are dependent on what ritual it is. Assuming it is Petal, all that is needed is one black mana, because the Petal will pay to cycle Barren Moor. If it is a ritual effect, we will have to be conscious that we have enough mana to re-cast the ritual after beginning the Dakmor loop. In this pile as well, Barren Moor may be substituted with Bazaar of Baghdad.
Laboratory Maniac Pile Barren Moor Crop Rotation Praetor’s Grasp Lion’s Eye Diamond Bazaar of Baghdad
This line is one of the most fun! It requires that one of your opponents has Laboratory Maniac in their library. Simply cycle Barren Moor to draw two cards, rotate a land away for Bazaar (drawing LED), use LED to cast Laboratory Maniac, and tap Bazaar! Unfortunately this requires five mana, so is only a hair less expensive than the One Cantrip pile, but hey, you never know!
Gameplay Mulliganning and Opening Turns
When you’re looking at an opening hand, there are three things to evaluate. The first thing is determining how quickly your hand will be able to resolve a The Gitrog Monster. The second thing is determining how powerful your turns will be after that, assuming our Froggy friend sticks around. The third thing is identifying the presence or lack of a backup plan should he be removed.
In general, the formula is something like this. If we can cast Frog on turn two or three and you have land drops to follow it up, the hand is probably keepable. If we can cast Frog on turn four or five but you have some other business going on in case it gets countered, the hand is probably keepable. If we have Sylvan Library or Necropotence, the hand is probably keepable. Even if we just have some sort of land-sac engine - say an Exploration with Life from the Loam and a cycle land, for example - that’ll do.
The other thing to look out for in an opening hand is a quick Ad Nauseam. A hand with three lands, a Demonic Tutor, and a Dark Ritual is very attractive. We can tutor for Ad Naus on turn two, hold Ad Naus for your opponent's end step on turn three, and turn four, untap and probably win the game.
Lotta text for "Draw two cards, then discard three cards."
Midgame
Except for early Ad Naus games, we'll almost always want to jam Froggy into play. If this means tutoring Cavern of Souls over Bazaar of Baghdad, so be it - Bazaar's not that good without Frog anyway. After this, our main goal is to make sure we're taking full advantage of his abilities. Froggy is a Phyrexian Arena that makes your fetchalnds cantrip, your cycle lands draw 2, and your dredges now read "Any time you would draw a card, you may instead mill X and draw a card." All of this comes with an Exploration tacked on. Our focus at this point is going to be using mana efficiently and hitting all our land drops. Missing land drops, even our extra land drops, can really hurt when we're sacrificing a land every upkeep. We'll want to find some sort of way to make sure we continue hitting those land drops, ideally in the form of Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam.
Loam is significantly better thanks to its combo potential, since it makes dredging into Dakmor pretty easy. Loam also has an incredibly powerful synergy with the cycle lands, meaning we can dredge multiple times per turn. If we draw a discard outlet with Loam and Gitrog in play, we have a good chance of winning either that turn or the next by dredging into our combo. During this phase of the game, we should be filling our hand and ramping, and preparing for a combo turn.
If for some reason, we can't stick Gitrog in the early game, our best bet is Bazaar of Baghdad. Strictly speaking, Bazaar is not a draw engine, but it provides virtual card advantage and lets us discard dredgers. Since the deck plays so many cards that aren't terribly useful when you're not comboing, we'll occasionally be stuck with something like Gaea's Blessing or Riftsweeper. Bazaar converts these cards into live draws at a 2/3 ratio, drawing us into the ramp spells / rituals needed to recast our commander. Once we have Bazaar and Frog in play together, Bazaar does function as a card advantage engine.
Imagine the following scenario: We tap Bazaar of Baghdad with our commander in play. For our first draw, we dredge a Stinkweed Imp, and that hits a land, as well as flipping over Life from the Loam. For our second draw, we dredge Loam, and that hits a land too. Finally, we have to discard three cards, so we discard our two dredgers and, you guessed it, a land. Gitrog cares about whether the lands were put into the graveyard at the same time (not during the resolution of the same ability), so he'll trigger three times. Our first draws, however, will once again give us free dredges, since we just discarded our dredges to Bazaar!
On a turn we think might be the combo turn, we will probably want to sacrifice Bazaar to Gitrog in our upkeep. This is primarily to preserve your mana-tapping lands, whose full value cannot be realized until our main phase. Sometimes, we will be casting Loam on our combo turn, in which case we can replay the Bazaar to get two Bazaar activations on the same turn. There are lots of ways to get multiple Bazaar activations in one turn, including Petrified Field, Life from the Loam, or simply shuffling Bazaar back in with Kozilek and tutoring for it again.
Speaking of Life from the Loam, it is our second most important mid-game card (after Bazaar). Usually, it takes a few turns to set up the combo, but its power is undeniable. To get a Loam engine going, we're going to need a land that draws a card - meaning a cycle land, or (if you have Frog in play) any land that sacrifices itself, like Petrified Field or a fetchland. We'll use the drawland to dredge Loam so we are able to cast it multiple times in a turn. If we don't have Gitrog already, we need to put him in play. Dredging Loam will fill our grave and draw us a bunch of cards. At some point, we'll be able to either dredge into Bazaar and Loam it to play, or dredge directly into Dakmor.
As mentioned in the above supersection, Life from the Loam can also very easily dredge into Dakmor combo if you have the discard outlet. The more lands in your hand (meaning the more times you can cast Loam) the more sure it is that you won't whiff. Three lands gives a 75% certainty, and six lands gives you an impressive 98% certainty. If you have other dredgers, those numbers skyrocket.
Using Bazaar of Baghdad or Life from the Loam in conjunction with our commander is the easiest way to assemble an end-step kill. These engines also produce massive amounts of card advantage, virtually guaranteeing that we'll have the requisite eight cards in hand, allowing us to take multiple cleanup phases. However, sometimes we won't be able to close out the game before it goes long, usually due to hatebears. That requires us to enter the endgame.
Endgame
For a deck that spends most of its time worrying about the first six turns, we have a great late-game. Turns out, if we can stick Gitrog in play, he's a card advantage engine that won't quit. Really, our late-game looks a lot like our mid-game, so there's not much to say - we just keep building more and more resources. Make sure you don't get too much of your deck in the graveyard such that you can't combo, and keep playing lands and drawing cards. It sounds tricksy, but don't be afraid to Praetor's Grasp for an opponent's win-condition if for whatever reason you can't get combo online.
Don't forget about Strip Mine either. We rarely pull it out when we're in the mid-game, since we're still trying to win. In the end game, often we'll need to grind a few turns for advantage before pulling it out. With an Exploration effect or two running and a way to recur Strip Mine from the grave, we can destroy our opponents' manabases faster than they can rebuild them. This is often necessary when for some reason we can't stick Froggy.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this goes to show that Froggy is a new contender for top meta slot. I believe the deck is far more powerful than has been recognized, and I aim to change that. Now that you know the ins and outs of the coolest deck in the metagame... go build it!
Removed :
1x Boreal Druid
1x Chains of Mephistopheles
1x Eternal Witness
1x Geth's Verdict
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Noose Constrictor
1x Tranquil Thicket
1x Traverse the Ulvenwald
Added:
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Darkblast
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Harrow
1x Nature's Claim
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Priest of Titania
1x Rath's Edge
1x Scroll Rack
1x Wild Mongrel
Removing bad cads and getting used to the deck, as well as importing the Rath's Edge package for instant-speed kills.
Removed Beast Within, Darkblast, and Phyrexian Tower; added Priest of Titania, Doomsday, and Diabolic Intent. Wanted to be faster
Would abrupt decay, natures claim, and beast within be worth a slot to kill off things like rest in peice or problematic enchantments or hatebears.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hey guys so I've actually moved on from commander on to 60 card decks so I don't have any commander decks.
Anyway I've started my own gameplay channel in which I play games (Magic also)
I know in the primer you said that Bazaar and Chains are very important but if because of budget restraints those two cards are not feasible, is this deck
still competitive vs top tier decks like zur or grixis storm? What would be the best replacements for these two cards? I plan to make this deck depending your answers, I was going to buy into edric tomorrow but this has really caught my eye and I have almost everything in gb colors. Thank you very much for your time.
I'm basically in the same boat, I love the idea of this deck but without BoB, Chains, or LED the deck does seem like it would lose a lot of power. Not sure what the list would look like as more of a midrange deck.
I know in the primer you said that Bazaar and Chains are very important but if because of budget restraints those two cards are not feasible, is this deck
still competitive vs top tier decks like zur or grixis storm? What would be the best replacements for these two cards? I plan to make this deck depending your answers, I was going to buy into edric tomorrow but this has really caught my eye and I have almost everything in gb colors. Thank you very much for your time.
I'm basically in the same boat, I love the idea of this deck but without BoB, Chains, or LED the deck does seem like it would lose a lot of power. Not sure what the list would look like as more of a midrange deck.
Bazaar is pretty important for the turbo version; I probably would go with a more midrange route without it. Other than that, the cards mentioned above are all super replaceable if you don't have them. Dark Confidant could be Scroll Rack, Chains could be any other discard outlet, and LED should probably be another piece of ramp or a land.
I've updated the OP, vastly expanding on the strategy section and sharing my freshest take on Frog combo. The biggest change is that I'm no longer playing Geth's Verdict and now relying on a Rath's Edge kill.
Pretty interested in this lately. Willing to give a really dedicated response to Gaea's Blessing? I've been fond of the card for ages and seeing it here is honestly what caused me to invest in the deck during trades for other decks. Im inherently a UB player but since I was a kid, GB has been my favorite color combo aesthetically. Please help convince me to run this deck and help participate to its growth :]
Pretty interested in this lately. Willing to give a really dedicated response to Gaea's Blessing? I've been fond of the card for ages and seeing it here is honestly what caused me to invest in the deck during trades for other decks. Im inherently a UB player but since I was a kid, GB has been my favorite color combo aesthetically. Please help convince me to run this deck and help participate to its growth :]
Gaea's Blessing provides me with ultimate protection. First of all, it lets me win through Anafenza the Foremost, which Kozilek does not let me do. Secondly, it beats one-shot gravehate targeting Kozilek like Deathrite Shaman. Unless I have Noxious Revival or Necromancy in hand, there's no way to get Kozilek out of the graveyard once he's in there. With Gaea's Blessing in the deck, I can just respond by dredging a bunch of cards and getting another shuffle trigger. Even if they have 2x gravehate, the Blessing trigger will still shuffle Kozilek back in, so they need 3x gravehate to beat the combo.
As for your last sentence, I sincerely believe that the turbofroggy build can easily race top decks like Zur, Jeleva, Prossh, and has very favored matchups against grindier decks like Karador. This deck is GB but don't let that fool you; half the time, you win off Laboratory Maniac that you Praetor's Grasp for. With an Ad Nauseam + Ritual package, it definitely doesn't have that traditional Golgari feel.
razzliox, I'd love to hear your updates on the following from a competitive game play perspective, i.e. the following may work, and be very clear to explain in a goldfishing scenario, but may be more vulnerable to disruption:
1 - Dakmor Salvage to generate draw triggers with every flipped land
2 - When you hit Gaea's Blessing or Kozilek, immediately shuffle (there may be edges cases covered by the algorithm, but this works in practice)
3 - Repeat (there may be some edge cases that are covered more fully in your algorithm and proof, mazeTemporal) until draw trigger > number of cards in deck. I find in practice this takes about 5-6 loops to a shuffle trigger.
4 - Draw deck
5 - Discard Kozilek, shuffle into library, and draw so all remaining draw triggers are removed from stack (so we can play non-instants)
5 - Lotus petal, crack for one mana
6 - Discard four lands generating four draw triggers, discard Kozilek shuffling library. mazeTemporal, do you consider this the simplest base case for which you can show every possibility leads, in a finite number of steps, to drawing the entire library to repeat step 5? Of course you can do it with less discarded lands, but it seems in those cases you can only say that you can draw your library with arbitrarily close to 1 probability. For example, say you crack Lotus Petal, discard land (draw trigger), Kozilek shuffle, but the order of the library is not with the petal in the third slot, then you have to shuffle with the first dredge and repeat until petal is in third slot, which will get arbitrarily close to one, but in an infinite number of steps.
So, in the above, crack Petal, 4x land/draw triggers, Kozilek. If at least one land in top 2, then we increase our draw triggers and repeat. If Petal and Kozilek in top two, then bottom four are lands. Dredge, hitting two lands, draw the last two lands, shuffle, and then draw 4-card library with 4+ draw triggers on stack.
Now, it seems it is easier to just use free rocks to land Skirge Familiar, after drawing the deck, but I want to better understand this particular interaction, as it is closely related to the general process of drawing the deck. The above process with Petal is how we win, it seems, with Praetor's Grasp (i.e. discarding four lands after casting Praetor's Grasp), exiling everybody's library (if necessary).
It seems the above allows you create more draw triggers than library size in about five minutes. After that, all the infinite interactions, like creating infinite mana, or casting Praetor's Grasp repeatedly, it seems, can be shortcut with fairly straightforward explanations.
Sorry if I sound like a complete scrub but what is the exact procedure for the infinite triggers with necromancy, riftsweeper and culling the weak? otherwise the list looks very solid to me.
Get to Dakmor in hand, Gitrog on table, discard outlet
Draw deck with Dakmor Salvage (or, for cleanup phase kill, craft a hand of Necromancy, Dark Ritual, Skirge Familiar, Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation; requires land on battlefield; thanks to razzliox for this one)
Infinite black mana. You can do this at instant or sorcery speed. At instant speed, razzliox mentions exile of Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation on land for land that produces black mana, tap for B, Dark Ritual to BBB, Necromancy as an instant on Skirge Familiar. Discard land and Kozilek, shuffle library. Dakmor for infinite black mana and infinite draw triggers.
Infinite green mana with Riftsweeper. Let's create a cycle in the state graph. Current state: zero green mana, Riftsweeper in hand, Necromancy in hand, Culling the Weak in hand, ESG in exile, infinite black mana, infinite draw triggers. Discard Riftsweeper, Necromancy (as an instant) on Riftsweeper, Riftsweeper ETB, Elvish Spirit Guide to library, draw ESG, exile ESG, one green, Culling the Weak sacrificing Riftsweeper, Riftsweeper and Necromancy to graveyard, discard Kozilek, draw library with draw triggers. New state: one green mana, Riftsweeper in hand, Necromancy in hand, Culling the Weak in hand, ESG in exile, infinite black mana, infinite draw triggers. Cycle complete, infinite green mana.
razzliox, I'd love to hear your updates on the following from a competitive game play perspective, i.e. the following may work, and be very clear to explain in a goldfishing scenario, but may be more vulnerable to disruption:
1 - Dakmor Salvage to generate draw triggers with every flipped land
2 - When you hit Gaea's Blessing or Kozilek, immediately shuffle (there may be edges cases covered by the algorithm, but this works in practice)
3 - Repeat (there may be some edge cases that are covered more fully in your algorithm and proof, mazeTemporal) until draw trigger > number of cards in deck. I find in practice this takes about 5-6 loops to a shuffle trigger.
4 - Draw deck
5 - Discard Kozilek, shuffle into library, and draw so all remaining draw triggers are removed from stack (so we can play non-instants)
5 - Lotus petal, crack for one mana
6 - Discard four lands generating four draw triggers, discard Kozilek shuffling library. mazeTemporal, do you consider this the simplest base case for which you can show every possibility leads, in a finite number of steps, to drawing the entire library to repeat step 5? Of course you can do it with less discarded lands, but it seems in those cases you can only say that you can draw your library with arbitrarily close to 1 probability. For example, say you crack Lotus Petal, discard land (draw trigger), Kozilek shuffle, but the order of the library is not with the petal in the third slot, then you have to shuffle with the first dredge and repeat until petal is in third slot, which will get arbitrarily close to one, but in an infinite number of steps.
So, in the above, crack Petal, 4x land/draw triggers, Kozilek. If at least one land in top 2, then we increase our draw triggers and repeat. If Petal and Kozilek in top two, then bottom four are lands. Dredge, hitting two lands, draw the last two lands, shuffle, and then draw 4-card library with 4+ draw triggers on stack.
Generally, I'll let the draw triggers resolve as I perform the combo, instead of putting them all on the stack at once. That gives me a better chance of drawing into cards that significantly hasten the process, like, say, Ad Nauseam. Once I have my deck in my hand, I'll create infinite black mana with Skirge Familiar just by cycling cards. You can discard ten lands to Familiar, make ten black mana and get ten draw triggers, cycle Barren Moor for two more instances of "draw a card," and pitch Kozilek, shuffle up, resolve all your draw triggers, and repeat. I generally don't use Lotus Petal just because everything needs to be able to be done instant-speed. If you don't already have familiar, and it's the end-step, you can Elvish Spirit Guide -> Crop Rotation -> Dark Ritual -> Necromancy on it.
In the main phase, it's generally pretty simple. Just Praetor's Grasp for someone else's combo and win with that.
Get to Dakmor in hand, Gitrog on table, discard outlet
Draw deck with Dakmor Salvage (or, for cleanup phase kill, craft a hand of Necromancy, Dark Ritual, Skirge Familiar, Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation; requires land on battlefield; thanks to razzliox for this one)
Infinite black mana. You can do this at instant or sorcery speed. At instant speed, razzliox mentions exile of Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation on land for land that produces black mana, tap for B, Dark Ritual to BBB, Necromancy as an instant on Skirge Familiar. Discard land and Kozilek, shuffle library. Dakmor for infinite black mana and infinite draw triggers.
Infinite green mana with Riftsweeper. Let's create a cycle in the state graph. Current state: zero green mana, Riftsweeper in hand, Necromancy in hand, Culling the Weak in hand, ESG in exile, infinite black mana, infinite draw triggers. Discard Riftsweeper, Necromancy (as an instant) on Riftsweeper, Riftsweeper ETB, Elvish Spirit Guide to library, draw ESG, exile ESG, one green, Culling the Weak sacrificing Riftsweeper, Riftsweeper and Necromancy to graveyard, discard Kozilek, draw library with draw triggers. New state: one green mana, Riftsweeper in hand, Necromancy in hand, Culling the Weak in hand, ESG in exile, infinite black mana, infinite draw triggers. Cycle complete, infinite green mana.
This may sound dumb af, but once you create infinite black and infinie draw on the stack, you used necromancy to get back skirge, so how do you get riftsweeper in play at instant speed, with necromancy already on your discard outlet. You cant cast another one at instant speed, and you can culling the weak the skirge and all the cards, but i still cant figure out how to get riftsweeper in play, i was debating on using gsz but that doesnt seem right.
Tl;dr gitrog and skirge with necromancy attached in play, infinite black and draw, entire library in hand minus esg which is exiled, no green mana available. How do i win at instant speed?
Or, you could use praetor's grasp on your opponent's library, discard kozilek, shuffle both back in, then reset to the orignal "whole deck in hand" state and repeat until your opponents have no libraries left.
Or, you could use praetor's grasp on your opponent's library, discard kozilek, shuffle both back in, then reset to the orignal "whole deck in hand" state and repeat until your opponents have no libraries left.
Praetors grasp is sorcery speed and this is at the end of turn
More spicy: When Necromancy leaves the battlefield, it creates a trigger that forces you to sacrifice Skirge Familiar. You can win in response to the trigger
Hi, really enjoy this deck I was just wondering though. Why don't you run Manabond? I mean it's hardcore ramp, a discard outlet, and it's 1 green so it won't hurt when we hit it with Ad Nauseam.
Hi, really enjoy this deck I was just wondering though. Why don't you run Manabond? I mean it's hardcore ramp, a discard outlet, and it's 1 green so it won't hurt when we hit it with Ad Nauseam.
Hey, great question! I always found that Manabond was a bit of a trap. I don't get to keep any of the good cards that I want to cast, so I'm in complete topdeck mode! After Manabond, if Frog gets removed, I'm usually immediately dead. Thanks for asking!
Can you explain the doomsday lines in more detail. For example does there have to be certain cards in hand and how to accomplish teh combo then. Thanks.
Hi! Thanks for coming to read about my take on The Gitrog Monster. Obviously, strategy will be the focus of our discussion today, but before we start, I'm going to talk about myself, my history in EDH, and this deck's history. For those of you who couldn't care less and want to get to the meat, go ahead and close this spoiler and start off.
First things first, my name is Razzliox, and I've been playing EDH for about six years now, but I've only been really playing for about half of that. When I say "really playing," I mean playing decks to their full potential, picking strategies based primarily on their competitive component rather than pet preferences or soft rules. (That means that for those of you who refuse to include turn-three kills or infinite combos in your decks, you may be sorely disappointed with this thread.) I moderate /r/EDH, a community of around 35k subscribers, as well as /r/CompetitiveEDH, with nearly 10k.
My first real deck was Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. This was a graveyard midrange combo deck that could play an explosive combo roll. Jarad, whose primer can be found in my signature, was a real powerhouse when I first made him, but unfortunately I feel I no longer have the success with him I used to. That is one of the many reasons I decided to create this deck. Since then, I have had great success with one other deck, Sidisi, Undead Vizier mono-black storm (again, there is a link in my signature). This deck is, in a way, a combination of my first two - Jarad is present in the raw power of Golgari, whereas Sidisi is represented in the powerful quick kills provided by black's Dark Ritual effects combined with Ad Nauseam.
When The Gitrog Monster was first spoiled, I was very excited. A fellow moderator organized a community brew, and we spent about 4 hours in voice chat discussing the best way to build it and creating a list. They elected me to test the deck that night, and I joined a Cockatrice room against three opponents with what was at the time considered tier one decks. On my third turn, I sacrificed all my lands to Rain of Filth on turn three to try and combo off, but my opponent had a Force of Will. It took me awhile, but ultimately using Life from the Loam in combination with my commander I was able to rebuild my manabase. After about an hour, I did manage to go off, but it took me another 45 minutes to kill them! (You can read the recap post here.) I was instantly hooked, and I've been tweaking it ever since.
I certainly can't take all the credit for this creative and innovative list. Special thanks to MTGS users DTrain and bobthefunny for their input, as well as reddit users JimWolfie and ShaperSavant.
First things first, let's talk pros and cons. You will enjoy this deck if:
The most important thing that our commander does for us is provide us with a very clean and compact combo. With any discard outlet such as Wild Mongrel and with Dakmor Salvage in hand, we will be able to put two cards from our library into our graveyard. Combined with our commander's ability, as well as a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth anywhere in the deck, we will be able to draw our entire deck and win from there. This will be explained in detail below.
Froggy does more than combo, though. Making your fetchlands cantrip, Exploration on a stick, and having seriously insane interaction with Bazaar of Baghdad makes our commander a card advantage engine to be reckoned with. The card-drawing ability also turns our dredge cards into potential sources of card advantage. The upkeep trigger looks like a downside, but we'll be drawing so many cards that we'll be replacing our lands faster than they get sacrificed.
1x The Gitrog Monster
//Land (36)
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Barren Moor
1x Bayou
1x Bazaar of Baghdad
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Cabal Pit
1x Cavern of Souls
1x City of Brass
1x City of Traitors
1x Command Beacon
1x Command Tower
1x Dakmor Salvage
1x Dryad Arbor
2x Forest
1x Gemstone Caverns
1x Lake of the Dead
1x Llanowar Wastes
1x Mana Confluence
1x Marsh Flats
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Petrified Field
1x Polluted Delta
1x Polluted Mire
1x Rath's Edge
1x Slippery Karst
1x Strip Mine
2x Swamp
1x Twilight Mire
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Woodland Cemetery
1x Arbor Elf
1x Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Dark Confidant
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Elves of Deep Shadow
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Elvish Spirit Guide
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Golgari Grave-Troll
1x Hermit Druid
1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Lotus Cobra
1x Priest of Titania
1x Putrid Imp
1x Riftsweeper
1x Skirge Familiar
1x Stinkweed Imp
1x Sylvan Safekeeper
1x Wild Mongrel
//Artifact (11)
1x Chrome Mox
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Expedition Map
1x Grim Monolith
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mox Diamond
1x Scroll Rack
1x Sol Ring
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Diabolic Intent
1x Doomsday
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Life from the Loam
1x Praetor's Grasp
1x Sylvan Scrying
//Instant (14)
1x Abrupt Decay
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Cabal Ritual
1x Crop Rotation
1x Culling the Weak
1x Dark Ritual
1x Entomb
1x Harrow
1x Nature's Claim
1x Noxious Revival
1x Rain of Filth
1x Realms Uncharted
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Worldly Tutor
//Enchantment (9)
1x Burgeoning
1x Carpet of Flowers
1x City of Solitude
1x Exploration
1x Necromancy
1x Necropotence
1x Oblivion Crown
1x Squandered Resources
1x Sylvan Library
Strategy
Let's talk gameplay. The majority of the time you're playing, you will be searching for the fastest line to victory, so the most important thing for you to know is exactly how the combo works. With that in mind...
Finishing the Game
The only way this deck wins the game is with Dakmor combo. The combo requires our commander in play, Dakmor Salvage in hand, and a discard outlet such as Putrid Imp. We discard Dakmor, get a draw trigger, and dredge Dakmor back to our hand. We mill two cards, and if we hit a land, we get a draw trigger. We're now at the same position we were in the beginning of the loop, except that we've milled two cards and potentially put a draw trigger onto the stack.
We can repeat the loop, playing around Faerie Macabre and similar effects by discarding Dakmor before the “draw a card” trigger resolves. This ensures Gaea’s Blessing never has a chance to enter our hand. Eventually, we dredge into either Kozilek or Gaea's Blessing. At that point, we’ll have to let the shuffle resolve before continuing the combo - again, to play around instant-speed gravehate effects.
300 instances of Flying.
We have now reached a point where we need to generate infinite black mana. At sorcery speed, this is as simple as putting Skirge Familiar in play, but at instant-speed we’ll need to do better. (For the sake of explanatory narrative, let’s assume Necromancy is in exile, meaning no instant-speed Skirge Familiar.) It’s as simple as casting Dark Ritual, discarding Kozilek, and drawing them back. By looping rituals like this, we can generate infinite black mana.
We can also loop cards at sorcery-speed without having infinite draw on the stack. This is actually our most simple kill method - looping Praetor’s Grasp. After we’ve generated infinite black mana, we can clear the stack of draw triggers by repeatedly discarding Kozilek and drawing it. Looping cards at sorcery speed is only slightly more convoluted. First, we cast Grasp. Then we cycle two lands, putting four “draw a card” triggers on the stack. Then we discard Kozilek, shuffling those four cards into our library, and draw them again! From here, we do something fun like infinitely reanimate our opponent’s Triskelion... or just loop it forever and steal every card in their deck.
Beating disruption
The combo is disrupted by any kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, as well as by gravehate. However, it does have built-in protection. If our opponent casts a kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, for each extra land in our hand (or any other cantrip), we can simply draw another card continue going off. This means if there are four lands in our hand, we can hypothetically beat four removal spells. This really shouldn’t ever happen though as our opponents will be removing the discard outlet in response to the frog, or vice versa.
You can respond if they try to exile your Dakmor.
Since we’re playing two shuffle effects, there would need to be three cases of instant-speed graveyard exile, like a Scavenging Ooze with three open mana, to disrupt the combo. The first activation would exile our Kozilek, the second would exile the Blessing that hit the yard in response. But since the Blessing trigger resolves before the first Ooze activation, the Koz is still protected unless they have a third activation active. However, if the Blessing hits the yard first, this can occasionally put us in the awkward situation of having only Gaea’s Blessing as a shuffle effect. You can make infinite draw triggers easily without Koz in the deck, but once you draw your deck, you’ll be unable to put simply discard Blessing and get a shuffle, therefore clearing the stack. This potential problem introduces us to a new skill we will have to acquire!
Instant-speed Exile Protection
Very often, we will have to use cards in our exile zone to combo off. This commonly happens because one of our combo pieces is exiled. To do this, we will loop Riftsweeper at instant speed. First, it is important that we already have infinite draw triggers on the stack, and infinite black mana. (This can be achieved without Kozilek using the above methods.) At this point, we will discard Riftsweeper, and reanimate it with Necromancy. If Kozilek is in exile, it will have to be our first Riftsweeper target. Finally, we will sacrifice Riftsweeper to Culling the Weak, discard Koz, shuffle up, and draw the cards back, to be at the beginning of the loop!
This process can be repeated infinitely! Most commonly, it’s used to retrieve exiled combo pieces. If you’re feeling extra spicy, you can use it to return your opponcnts’ exiled combo pieces and win with those. More importantly, the loop can be used to produce infinite green mana at instant speed with Elvish Spirit Guide.
“But Razzliox! Why would you need to produce infinite green mana at instant speed? So far, every card you’ve talked about is black!” Glad you asked! Sometimes, we win the game outside of our main phase, meaning we can’t rely on looping Praetor’s Grasp. In such a scenario, we’ll need to take a few extra steps to kill our opponent.
Instant-speed Kill
After generating infinite black and green mana, and still with infinite draw triggers on the stack, we’re going to loop Rath’s Edge infinitely to kill all of or opponents. At this point, it’s usually easier to perform the combo with our commander off the board, so we’ll start off by Culling it.
Probably. But that’s not my fault.
How often do we actually win at instant speed? Outside of the cornercase of our opponent wheeling us into our combo piece, why would we be able to assemble it at instant speed? Well, it’s actually quite common - possibly more common than the main phase kill is the infamous cleanup phase kill. It’s easier to disrupt, but it has the advantage of being a one-card combo with our commander - no discard outlet needed.
Cleanup Step Kill
If we have more than seven cards at the end of our turn, we can use our cleanup step as our "discard outlet." Discarding Dakmor as our eighth card will produce a “draw a card” trigger, which causes priority to be passed around. We'll replace the draw by dredging Dakmor, and then if we dredge into a land, we'll draw another card. After the stack clears, we will receive another cleanup step and be forced to discard down to seven again. (Rule 514.3: "Normally, no player receives priority during the cleanup step, so no spells can be cast and no abilities can be activated. However, this rule is subject to the following exception. At this point, the game checks to see if any state-based actions would be performed and/or any triggered abilities are waiting to be put onto the stack, including those that trigger at the beginning of the next cleanup step. If so, those state-based actions are performed, then those triggered abilities are put on the stack, then the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities. Once the stack is empty and all players pass in succession, another cleanup step begins.")
By repeating this loop, we’re going to be drawing through our deck just like normal! The only problem is that we have to discard down to seven each iteration. What we need to do here is sculpt our hand - continue flipping through our deck until we have Necromancy and Skirge Familiar in our hand. (If we don’t have any open mana, we can filter to Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation, and Dark Ritual. Remember - between cleanup steps, your mana pool empties, so the Dark Ritual must be cast in the same phase as Necromancy!) Skirge Familiar produces infinite black mana, which turns into infinite green mana, and finally lethal through Rath’s Edge.
The problem with the cleanup phase is that it opens us up to gravehate and instant-speed removal. Without a discard outlet in play, a simple Faerie Macabre exiles our Salvage and we lose the game. While the cleanup phase is a powerful way to assemble the combo, it’s also very all-in. Thankfully, there are two other easy ways to assemble the combo.
Chaining Dredgers into Combo
A lot of the time, we won't have the land tutor for Dakmor, but we will have a discard outlet and Gitrog. Thankfully, we can almost always win with another dredge card, provided you have a cantrip. Let's say Stinkweed Imp is in the graveyard, with a Wild Mongrel in play. If we play our cantrip effect and dredge our imp, we're pretty darn likely to hit a land in our top five, netting another draw trigger. In response to the new draw trigger, we can discard the dredger again and continue the loop. Once we hit a bigger dredger, in this case Golgari Grave-Troll, we can dredge with that instead.
I ran a program to determine some probabilities about whether we are more likely to "whiff" (meaning not hit a land on our dredge) on all our dredge pieces - that is, Golgari Grave-Troll (dredge 6), Stinkweed Imp (dredge 5), and Life from the Loam (dredge 3). For the simulation, I assumed that there were 88 cards remaining in our library, 30 of which were lands (including one Dakmor Salvage). With no extra lands in our hand, dredging for 6 gives us a 58% chance, and dredging for 5 gives us a 43% percent chance. However, if we have just one land in our hand - meaning that one "whiff" is forgiven - our numbers boost to dredging 6 at 89%, and dredging 5 at 79%. Finally, if we have enough mana to cast Life from the Loam and get 3 free resets, we have a 75% chance of hitting Dakmor before we whiff!
Doomsday
What, more combo lines? Yes, more combo lines! Doomsday is traditionally used in Laboratory Maniac decks, and to my knowledge this is the first deck other than Grenzo, Dungeon Warden to use Doomsday in this format without blue! Doomsday is the easiest way to assemble our entire combo besides the cleanup phase kill.
You’ll want to know a few different lines. The first thing to realize is that we need five specific cards in the deck to win. To kill our opponents, we’ll need a discard outlet, Dakmor Salvage, Kozilek, a ritual effect we can loop to produce infinite black mana, and Praetor’s Grasp. Since Doomsday only searches for five cards, this means that our options will be extremely limited. However, we can fit one extra non-essential card into the pile if our discard outlet is Skirge Familiar, allowing us to eschew the ritual effect. With that in mind, our best piles are as follows:
Rain of Filth Pile
Rain of Filth
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This is our go-to pile. It requires nothing other than 1B in pool and four lands (or one additional mana for each missing land). In this pile and in any other with Rain of Filth, it may be replaced by Squandered Resources for an additional green mana.
Rain of Filth Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Rain of Filth
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This pile assumes you have some sort of ritual effect in your hand, but either Grasp or Koz can be in your hand instead (in which case you put Lotus Petal in the pile). It requires the one cantrip to open, one black mana, and two lands in play.
Lake of the Dead Pile
Lake of the Dead
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This pile works like the Rain of Filth pile, except instead of casting Rain of Filth, you have to play Lake of the Dead and sacrifice swamps. That means it costs a low low low one generic mana, but you have to have a land drop open.
Lake of the Dead Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Lake of the Dead
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
The Lake Pile is open to the same modification as the Rain Pile. If you have a ritual effect (or Koz, or Grasp) in your hand when Doomsday resolves, you have no need for Skirge Familiar. All this line requires is one open land drop and two swamps, but it works with no mana in pool!
Three Cantrips Pile
Putrid Imp
Lotus Petal
Dakmor Salvage
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
This pile requires one cantrip to open the pile, one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage, and one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage. Our third cantrip can be a land in hand, which we can then discard to Putrid Imp to draw Salvage. Regardless, we’ll have to find some way of putting a land into our graveyard so that looping Dakmor Salvage is actually card advantage.
Two Cantrips Pile
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Lotus Petal
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
The only difference between this pile and the first is the placing of Lotus Petal. By putting it under Dakmor Salvage, we eliminate the requirement for for a third cantrip, which we make up for by assuming we already have one black mana for Putrid Imp.
One Cantrip Pile
Barren Moor
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
After resolving Doomsday, six mana can often be hard to generate, but this is the only pile I have found that requires only one cantrip that works with no lands in play. It should be noted that Barren Moor may be replaced with Bazaar of Baghdad; doing so requires an open land drop and some cards in hand, but reduced the cost of the pile by one mana.
One Cantrip Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Barren Moor
Dakmor Salvage
Putrid Imp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
This line assumes you have Lotus Petal or some similar effect in your hand, giving us a little more room in the pile. This pile’s mana constraints are dependent on what ritual it is. Assuming it is Petal, all that is needed is one black mana, because the Petal will pay to cycle Barren Moor. If it is a ritual effect, we will have to be conscious that we have enough mana to re-cast the ritual after beginning the Dakmor loop. In this pile as well, Barren Moor may be substituted with Bazaar of Baghdad.
Laboratory Maniac Pile
Barren Moor
Crop Rotation
Praetor’s Grasp
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Bazaar of Baghdad
This line is one of the most fun! It requires that one of your opponents has Laboratory Maniac in their library. Simply cycle Barren Moor to draw two cards, rotate a land away for Bazaar (drawing LED), use LED to cast Laboratory Maniac, and tap Bazaar! Unfortunately this requires five mana, so is only a hair less expensive than the One Cantrip pile, but hey, you never know!
Gameplay
Mulliganning and Opening Turns
When you’re looking at an opening hand, there are three things to evaluate. The first thing is determining how quickly your hand will be able to resolve a The Gitrog Monster. The second thing is determining how powerful your turns will be after that, assuming our Froggy friend sticks around. The third thing is identifying the presence or lack of a backup plan should he be removed.
In general, the formula is something like this. If we can cast Frog on turn two or three and you have land drops to follow it up, the hand is probably keepable. If we can cast Frog on turn four or five but you have some other business going on in case it gets countered, the hand is probably keepable. If we have Sylvan Library or Necropotence, the hand is probably keepable. Even if we just have some sort of land-sac engine - say an Exploration with Life from the Loam and a cycle land, for example - that’ll do.
The other thing to look out for in an opening hand is a quick Ad Nauseam. A hand with three lands, a Demonic Tutor, and a Dark Ritual is very attractive. We can tutor for Ad Naus on turn two, hold Ad Naus for your opponent's end step on turn three, and turn four, untap and probably win the game.
Except for early Ad Naus games, we'll almost always want to jam Froggy into play. If this means tutoring Cavern of Souls over Bazaar of Baghdad, so be it - Bazaar's not that good without Frog anyway. After this, our main goal is to make sure we're taking full advantage of his abilities. Froggy is a Phyrexian Arena that makes your fetchalnds cantrip, your cycle lands draw 2, and your dredges now read "Any time you would draw a card, you may instead mill X and draw a card." All of this comes with an Exploration tacked on. Our focus at this point is going to be using mana efficiently and hitting all our land drops. Missing land drops, even our extra land drops, can really hurt when we're sacrificing a land every upkeep. We'll want to find some sort of way to make sure we continue hitting those land drops, ideally in the form of Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam.
Loam is significantly better thanks to its combo potential, since it makes dredging into Dakmor pretty easy. Loam also has an incredibly powerful synergy with the cycle lands, meaning we can dredge multiple times per turn. If we draw a discard outlet with Loam and Gitrog in play, we have a good chance of winning either that turn or the next by dredging into our combo. During this phase of the game, we should be filling our hand and ramping, and preparing for a combo turn.
If for some reason, we can't stick Gitrog in the early game, our best bet is Bazaar of Baghdad. Strictly speaking, Bazaar is not a draw engine, but it provides virtual card advantage and lets us discard dredgers. Since the deck plays so many cards that aren't terribly useful when you're not comboing, we'll occasionally be stuck with something like Gaea's Blessing or Riftsweeper. Bazaar converts these cards into live draws at a 2/3 ratio, drawing us into the ramp spells / rituals needed to recast our commander. Once we have Bazaar and Frog in play together, Bazaar does function as a card advantage engine.
Imagine the following scenario: We tap Bazaar of Baghdad with our commander in play. For our first draw, we dredge a Stinkweed Imp, and that hits a land, as well as flipping over Life from the Loam. For our second draw, we dredge Loam, and that hits a land too. Finally, we have to discard three cards, so we discard our two dredgers and, you guessed it, a land. Gitrog cares about whether the lands were put into the graveyard at the same time (not during the resolution of the same ability), so he'll trigger three times. Our first draws, however, will once again give us free dredges, since we just discarded our dredges to Bazaar!
On a turn we think might be the combo turn, we will probably want to sacrifice Bazaar to Gitrog in our upkeep. This is primarily to preserve your mana-tapping lands, whose full value cannot be realized until our main phase. Sometimes, we will be casting Loam on our combo turn, in which case we can replay the Bazaar to get two Bazaar activations on the same turn. There are lots of ways to get multiple Bazaar activations in one turn, including Petrified Field, Life from the Loam, or simply shuffling Bazaar back in with Kozilek and tutoring for it again.
Speaking of Life from the Loam, it is our second most important mid-game card (after Bazaar). Usually, it takes a few turns to set up the combo, but its power is undeniable. To get a Loam engine going, we're going to need a land that draws a card - meaning a cycle land, or (if you have Frog in play) any land that sacrifices itself, like Petrified Field or a fetchland. We'll use the drawland to dredge Loam so we are able to cast it multiple times in a turn. If we don't have Gitrog already, we need to put him in play. Dredging Loam will fill our grave and draw us a bunch of cards. At some point, we'll be able to either dredge into Bazaar and Loam it to play, or dredge directly into Dakmor.
As mentioned in the above supersection, Life from the Loam can also very easily dredge into Dakmor combo if you have the discard outlet. The more lands in your hand (meaning the more times you can cast Loam) the more sure it is that you won't whiff. Three lands gives a 75% certainty, and six lands gives you an impressive 98% certainty. If you have other dredgers, those numbers skyrocket.
Using Bazaar of Baghdad or Life from the Loam in conjunction with our commander is the easiest way to assemble an end-step kill. These engines also produce massive amounts of card advantage, virtually guaranteeing that we'll have the requisite eight cards in hand, allowing us to take multiple cleanup phases. However, sometimes we won't be able to close out the game before it goes long, usually due to hatebears. That requires us to enter the endgame.
Endgame
For a deck that spends most of its time worrying about the first six turns, we have a great late-game. Turns out, if we can stick Gitrog in play, he's a card advantage engine that won't quit. Really, our late-game looks a lot like our mid-game, so there's not much to say - we just keep building more and more resources. Make sure you don't get too much of your deck in the graveyard such that you can't combo, and keep playing lands and drawing cards. It sounds tricksy, but don't be afraid to Praetor's Grasp for an opponent's win-condition if for whatever reason you can't get combo online.
Don't forget about Strip Mine either. We rarely pull it out when we're in the mid-game, since we're still trying to win. In the end game, often we'll need to grind a few turns for advantage before pulling it out. With an Exploration effect or two running and a way to recur Strip Mine from the grave, we can destroy our opponents' manabases faster than they can rebuild them. This is often necessary when for some reason we can't stick Froggy.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this goes to show that Froggy is a new contender for top meta slot. I believe the deck is far more powerful than has been recognized, and I aim to change that. Now that you know the ins and outs of the coolest deck in the metagame... go build it!
Removed :
1x Boreal Druid
1x Chains of Mephistopheles
1x Eternal Witness
1x Geth's Verdict
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Noose Constrictor
1x Tranquil Thicket
1x Traverse the Ulvenwald
Added:
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Darkblast
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Harrow
1x Nature's Claim
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Priest of Titania
1x Rath's Edge
1x Scroll Rack
1x Wild Mongrel
Removing bad cads and getting used to the deck, as well as importing the Rath's Edge package for instant-speed kills.
Removed Beast Within, Darkblast, and Phyrexian Tower; added Priest of Titania, Doomsday, and Diabolic Intent. Wanted to be faster
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
Anyway I've started my own gameplay channel in which I play games (Magic also)
Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/dies_to_doom_blade
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/UpsidedownHandshake
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
I'm converting this into MTGS form and will put it in the OP.
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
still competitive vs top tier decks like zur or grixis storm? What would be the best replacements for these two cards? I plan to make this deck depending your answers, I was going to buy into edric tomorrow but this has really caught my eye and I have almost everything in gb colors. Thank you very much for your time.
I play Noose Constrictor in its place.
Bazaar is pretty important for the turbo version; I probably would go with a more midrange route without it. Other than that, the cards mentioned above are all super replaceable if you don't have them. Dark Confidant could be Scroll Rack, Chains could be any other discard outlet, and LED should probably be another piece of ramp or a land.
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
Card-by-card incoming.
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
URXSurf's Up, Mizz Magnus!XRU
URGWKynaios and Tiro's Multiplayer MenagerieWGRU
Gaea's Blessing provides me with ultimate protection. First of all, it lets me win through Anafenza the Foremost, which Kozilek does not let me do. Secondly, it beats one-shot gravehate targeting Kozilek like Deathrite Shaman. Unless I have Noxious Revival or Necromancy in hand, there's no way to get Kozilek out of the graveyard once he's in there. With Gaea's Blessing in the deck, I can just respond by dredging a bunch of cards and getting another shuffle trigger. Even if they have 2x gravehate, the Blessing trigger will still shuffle Kozilek back in, so they need 3x gravehate to beat the combo.
As for your last sentence, I sincerely believe that the turbofroggy build can easily race top decks like Zur, Jeleva, Prossh, and has very favored matchups against grindier decks like Karador. This deck is GB but don't let that fool you; half the time, you win off Laboratory Maniac that you Praetor's Grasp for. With an Ad Nauseam + Ritual package, it definitely doesn't have that traditional Golgari feel.
Also, 1500 posts! woo
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
Minor error in Finishing the Game: it only takes two graveyard strikes to stop the combo, one for each shuffler.Edit: oh I see what you mean, they would need to retarget the first one again. Pretty cool
mazeTemporal, I recognize you as having created the algorithm which shows, deterministically, how to draw the deck with Dakmor Salvage, discard outlet, and Gitrog: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveEDH/comments/4fbhk1/proof_of_determinacy_for_the_gitrog_monster_combo/
razzliox, I'd love to hear your updates on the following from a competitive game play perspective, i.e. the following may work, and be very clear to explain in a goldfishing scenario, but may be more vulnerable to disruption:
1 - Dakmor Salvage to generate draw triggers with every flipped land
2 - When you hit Gaea's Blessing or Kozilek, immediately shuffle (there may be edges cases covered by the algorithm, but this works in practice)
3 - Repeat (there may be some edge cases that are covered more fully in your algorithm and proof, mazeTemporal) until draw trigger > number of cards in deck. I find in practice this takes about 5-6 loops to a shuffle trigger.
4 - Draw deck
5 - Discard Kozilek, shuffle into library, and draw so all remaining draw triggers are removed from stack (so we can play non-instants)
5 - Lotus petal, crack for one mana
6 - Discard four lands generating four draw triggers, discard Kozilek shuffling library. mazeTemporal, do you consider this the simplest base case for which you can show every possibility leads, in a finite number of steps, to drawing the entire library to repeat step 5? Of course you can do it with less discarded lands, but it seems in those cases you can only say that you can draw your library with arbitrarily close to 1 probability. For example, say you crack Lotus Petal, discard land (draw trigger), Kozilek shuffle, but the order of the library is not with the petal in the third slot, then you have to shuffle with the first dredge and repeat until petal is in third slot, which will get arbitrarily close to one, but in an infinite number of steps.
So, in the above, crack Petal, 4x land/draw triggers, Kozilek. If at least one land in top 2, then we increase our draw triggers and repeat. If Petal and Kozilek in top two, then bottom four are lands. Dredge, hitting two lands, draw the last two lands, shuffle, and then draw 4-card library with 4+ draw triggers on stack.
Now, it seems it is easier to just use free rocks to land Skirge Familiar, after drawing the deck, but I want to better understand this particular interaction, as it is closely related to the general process of drawing the deck. The above process with Petal is how we win, it seems, with Praetor's Grasp (i.e. discarding four lands after casting Praetor's Grasp), exiling everybody's library (if necessary).
It seems the above allows you create more draw triggers than library size in about five minutes. After that, all the infinite interactions, like creating infinite mana, or casting Praetor's Grasp repeatedly, it seems, can be shortcut with fairly straightforward explanations.
What is your opinion on Crystal Vein?
Generally, I'll let the draw triggers resolve as I perform the combo, instead of putting them all on the stack at once. That gives me a better chance of drawing into cards that significantly hasten the process, like, say, Ad Nauseam. Once I have my deck in my hand, I'll create infinite black mana with Skirge Familiar just by cycling cards. You can discard ten lands to Familiar, make ten black mana and get ten draw triggers, cycle Barren Moor for two more instances of "draw a card," and pitch Kozilek, shuffle up, resolve all your draw triggers, and repeat. I generally don't use Lotus Petal just because everything needs to be able to be done instant-speed. If you don't already have familiar, and it's the end-step, you can Elvish Spirit Guide -> Crop Rotation -> Dark Ritual -> Necromancy on it.
In the main phase, it's generally pretty simple. Just Praetor's Grasp for someone else's combo and win with that.
Both lands are playable, but the landbase is super tight. I don't want to cut my basic count or go down on colored sources.
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
This may sound dumb af, but once you create infinite black and infinie draw on the stack, you used necromancy to get back skirge, so how do you get riftsweeper in play at instant speed, with necromancy already on your discard outlet. You cant cast another one at instant speed, and you can culling the weak the skirge and all the cards, but i still cant figure out how to get riftsweeper in play, i was debating on using gsz but that doesnt seem right.
Tl;dr gitrog and skirge with necromancy attached in play, infinite black and draw, entire library in hand minus esg which is exiled, no green mana available. How do i win at instant speed?
Modern
UWGB 4c Snow Control BGWU
Modern
UWGB 4c Snow Control BGWU
Or, you could use praetor's grasp on your opponent's library, discard kozilek, shuffle both back in, then reset to the orignal "whole deck in hand" state and repeat until your opponents have no libraries left.
Praetors grasp is sorcery speed and this is at the end of turn
Modern
UWGB 4c Snow Control BGWU
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
Hey, great question! I always found that Manabond was a bit of a trap. I don't get to keep any of the good cards that I want to cast, so I'm in complete topdeck mode! After Manabond, if Frog gets removed, I'm usually immediately dead. Thanks for asking!
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog