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The new Misthollow Griffin from Avacyn Restored has a great interaction with Food Chain. You can cast and exile it repeatedly for infinite mana of any color. Unfortunately you can only use this mana on creatures.
Now there are a couple of ways that you can use this mana to win. Doubling Cube copies your mana, but gets rid of restrictions on it. Unfortunately it costs 5 mana to use, which is not ideal.
Lightning Serpent and Maga, Traitor to Mortals are the best creature-based options. I think it's pretty obvious which is the better choice... Lightning Serpent can get PtEd, or Fogged, and Maga sticks around if you can't find a Griffin for infinite mana. Maga is obviously the better choice.
Instants: Misdirection: Redirects counters, hand disruption, and kill spells. Exiling Griffin is sweet. Pact of Negation: Free counterspell. It does force you to combo out on the turn you play it though. Enlightened Tutor: Tutors for your combo piece.
Sorceries: Glimpse of Nature: Helps you dig through your deck for combo peices, or draws the entire thing if you have your Griffin.
Artifacts: Lotus Petal: Free mana. That's it. Tested Chrome Mox, but I typically only need the mana once, and Chrome often didn't give me the color I needed.
Enchantments: Food Chain: There can only be one. Er.... Four. Amazing card. Come would say broken. It's what makes this deck function.
Thanks for reading. I've tested it a bit and it typically combos out on turn 2-4. Any suggestions or criticisms would be welcome.
How about Extract? It's pretty singularly focused, but it can also be nifty if your opponent is playing combo.
Chrome Mox looks good too.
Maybe 1x Emrakul, 1x Maga for the kill-con?
Is Slithermuse worth considering?
How about Xantid Swarm?
Amazing. I was gonna ask about how the deck finds Food Chain.
edit:
How about the Fierce Empath -> Kozilek / Emrakul stuff that Food Chain Elves uses? Why dig when you can Tutor? Or they could replace the Recruiters when budgets are limited.
I most assuredly wouldn't use serum powder. that card has never been anything but bad in my testing.
Summoner's pact seems limited here. I mean, it can only find elvish spirit guide or dryad arbor. If that's what you want, by all means, but it seems not so worthwhile.
[CARD]
Enlightened tutor[/CARD] seems the most bang for your buck if you want a tutor for food chain, but other than that, the deck seems quite able to dig with the 12 creatures it has for digging already.
I don't know if this is going to help at all but while back I was working on a Food Chain deck myself and this is what I came up with, maybe you can take the concept and incorporate the new critter in there;
The whole point is getting Scornful Egotist and Grozoth with Fierce Empath, With Grozoth getting all of the 9 CC creatures and then dropping them all with Myojin of Life's Web at the same time XD.
@Slithermuse
Haven't tested it. I haven't found myself running out of cards because many of the creatures cantrip, but with Chrome Mox that could change. I'll test it.
@Glimpse of Nature
Haven't tried this out, but it seems like it might be useful. There is already a ton of digging, but meh.
@Serum Powder
I strongly dislike this card. Even in Vintage Dredge I don't like playing it. It's never functioned well for me. I'd much rather just play tutors.
@Fierce Empath
Yeah, should probably be playing one of these. Coming in.
@Spoils of the Vault
If Enlightened isn't enough I'll try this out, but I'm not enthusiastic.
I don't know if this is going to help at all but while back I was working on a Food Chain deck myself and this is what I came up with, maybe you can take the concept and incorporate the new critter in there;
The whole point is getting Scornful Egotist and Grozoth with Fierce Empath, With Grozoth getting all of the 9 CC creatures and then dropping them all with Myojin of Life's Web at the same time XD.
Interesting build, but it's completely different from what I'm going for.
Will post changes after I get to test a bit more. Thanks for the help so far guys!
Ok, apparently I need to explicit my ideas here, because some of you don't seem to get the synergy.
Spoils of the Vault : name Food Chain, exile cards from you library until you get one, hopefully exiling a Griffin along the way. For B, instant-speed, you tutor the 2 cards of your combo. And that's not good enough for you ?
Serum Powder : The card itself is pretty bad. Except it exiles your hand before your free mulligan. So you don't use it just to increase your chances of getting a Food Chain in your starting hand, you use it to have a starting hand of 8 cards or more. If your first hand has Serum Powder + Griffin, you get a free mulligan into 8 cards : the Griffin + 7 new ones. So stop comparing it to a tutor.
I don't currently have a decklist, but here are some things that a few friends and I have been brainstorming:
1. Lim-Dul's Vault is absolutely amazing in a deck like this. It allows you to tutor up multiple pieces of your combo very quickly.
2. If you add black, you do get access to Thoughtseize.
3. We really like Wall of Roots. Wall is a great 2 drop that blocks like a champ, and can easily allow you to cast the Griffin the turn you drop Food Chain. If you want more blocking action, Overgrown Battlement can also serve the same purpose.
4. Griffin also pitches to Misdirection. Just a thought.
edit -
@Youdz:
While Serum Powder has the opportunity to give you a free mulligan to 8, it's a completely dead card otherwise. You can't have dead cards in a combo deck! Also, Spoils isn't terrible but it suffers from two problems:
1. You will kill yourself with it a non-trivial amount of the time due to the amount of damage you take off of your own manabase. Also, I include not being able to tap your lands for mana because of Spoils killing yourself.
2. You still will need two turns after casting Spoils to kill them. Unlike Vintage Storm Combo, where you just kill them on the spot, a decent aggro deck can conceivably kill you before you get to combo out if you give them a 10 life head start.
Food chain is the weak link (pun intended) of this combo. Is there another effect that can be used with the griffin to combo out? Or even another deck where the food chain-griffen package could work? Even with force the combo seems fragile ATM.
Food chain is the weak link (pun intended) of this combo. Is there another effect that can be used with the griffin to combo out? Or even another deck where the food chain-griffen package could work? Even with force the combo seems fragile ATM.
Food chain at 3 cmc is a huge target for all relevant discard. If you have another target in hand then you can avoid it with misdirection, but if the discard is say hymn, or if you have a food chain/griffin in hand and you get hit with IoK? I looked and there's no alternate wincons using the exiling effect, so food chain ultimately needs to be protected, or another method of victory should be present. I think running a full countersuite rather than simply force will probably alleviate this problem, to some extent.
I really like the glimpse/emrakul finisher, and then you just make sure you have 2 emrakul for an infinite extra turn chain. That means your combo package only takes up 14 cards in the deck! (4 food chain, 4 griffin, 2 emrakul, 4 glimpse)
Ideally you'd want tutor effects and ramp in order to go off as soon as possible. I feel a stronger opening hand might (at least in game 2) be enlightened tutor rather than food chain, so you don't end up with your entire combo extracted (obviously you don't care about the griffins, but if they hit food chain....)
Mentor of the Meek is a semi-Glimpse that unfortunately only provides mana parity, not mana ramp, with most creatures with power 2 or less in the deck, but he still produces mana with Mulldrifters flying in and out. Imperial Recruiter also finds him.
In case I didn't tell you, I don't care about your opinion I just want your facts. And not the facts that make you seem smart. I want the ones that are actual facts.
In case I didn't tell you, I don't care about your opinion I just want your facts. And not the facts that make you seem smart. I want the ones that are actual facts.
I have been testing the following list, which has been pretty fast so far. I'm not sure that playing cards which are unplayable without food chain (raven familiar / court hussar) are the way to go. Show and tell as a backup plan seems like a much stronger option.
I think a griselbrand or two may be worth considering. It's not a complete win condition, but if you resolve one, its pretty much impossible to fizzle afterwards.
This deck is mainly a food chain build with win-cons with brain freeze and emerakul. The set up cards are intuition and worldy tutor to find the peices of the deck and brainstorm helps too. Manipulate fate allows you to get misthollow in exile and start the combo faster
This deck is mainly a food chain build with win-cons with brain freeze and emerakul. The set up cards are intuition and worldy tutor to find the peices of the deck and brainstorm helps too. Manipulate fate allows you to get misthollow in exile and start the combo faster
The problem I see with the combo in general, is that Food Chain is an enchantment, so to make it consistent, you need an alt win or ways of finding FC.
Basically with this list you draw/tutor into combo, Cast demon or empath > demon > Emmy, swing 21 in your extra turn. Or something like demon > demon > demon > Urabrask the Hidden
If you include cantripping creatures, a la Mulldrifter you could potentially go off on food chain, before even worrying about griffin, plus you need ways of creature-based drawing into Empath, Recruiter, Emmy, Kozilek, etc.
Remember, in Food Chain Based decks, the creatures are your ramp and win, otherwise it's hard.
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The new Misthollow Griffin from Avacyn Restored has a great interaction with Food Chain. You can cast and exile it repeatedly for infinite mana of any color. Unfortunately you can only use this mana on creatures.
Now there are a couple of ways that you can use this mana to win. Doubling Cube copies your mana, but gets rid of restrictions on it. Unfortunately it costs 5 mana to use, which is not ideal.
Lightning Serpent and Maga, Traitor to Mortals are the best creature-based options. I think it's pretty obvious which is the better choice... Lightning Serpent can get PtEd, or Fogged, and Maga sticks around if you can't find a Griffin for infinite mana. Maga is obviously the better choice.
2x Ingot Chewer
4x Mulldrifter
4x Court Hussar
1x Maga, Traitor to Mortals
1x Fierce Empath
4x Raven Familiar
4x Imperial Recruiter
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Misthollow Griffin
4x Gemstone Mine
3x City of Traitors
4x Ancient Tomb
4x City of Brass
Sorcery (3)
3x Glimpse of Nature
Instant (9)
4x Pact of Negation
2x Misdirection
3x Enlightened Tutor
Enchantment (4)
4x Food Chain
4x Lotus Petal
4x Wispmare
4x Leyline of the Void
2x Cloudthresher
2x Misdirection
2x Ingot Chewer
1x Maga, Traitor to Mortals
A few short card explanations.
Creatures:
Maga, Traitor to Mortals: Finisher. Kills with your infinite mana. If you can't find a Misthollow Griffin, you can normally get enough mana to damage somebody and set up for a lethal swing next turn.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn: Win condition. This guy is pretty threatening...
Ingot Chewer: Only played because it gives you the largest net gain in mana for the lowest initial cost. The artifact removal can come in handy too.
Misthollow Griffin: A combo piece. Goes infinite with Food Chain.
Mulldrifter, Court Hussar, Raven Familiar: Vital pieces. These dig for combo pieces and get you extra mana.
Imperial Recruiter: A very important part of the deck. These chain together to net you 4 extra mana, and can end with your combo piece, Maga, Traitor to Mortals. If you have a Maga, you can go for some digging with Court Hussar, Raven Familiar, or Mulldrifter.
Fierce Empath: Tutors Emrakul. Tutored by Recruiter.
Lands:
City of Traitors, Ancient Tomb: Tap for 2. Ramp you. Pretty simple.
City of Brass, Gemstone Mine: Tap for any color. Again, pretty simple.
Instants:
Misdirection: Redirects counters, hand disruption, and kill spells. Exiling Griffin is sweet.
Pact of Negation: Free counterspell. It does force you to combo out on the turn you play it though.
Enlightened Tutor: Tutors for your combo piece.
Sorceries:
Glimpse of Nature: Helps you dig through your deck for combo peices, or draws the entire thing if you have your Griffin.
Artifacts:
Lotus Petal: Free mana. That's it. Tested Chrome Mox, but I typically only need the mana once, and Chrome often didn't give me the color I needed.
Enchantments:
Food Chain: There can only be one. Er.... Four. Amazing card. Come would say broken. It's what makes this deck function.
Thanks for reading. I've tested it a bit and it typically combos out on turn 2-4. Any suggestions or criticisms would be welcome.
GRRWHazezon Tamar (Valakut)GRRW
UKami of the Crescent Moon (
Group Hug)UUHeidar, Rimewind Master [Mini-Primer]U
WKemba, Kha Regent (Stax)W
GEzuri, Renegade Leader [Primer]G
Chrome Mox looks good too.
Maybe 1x Emrakul, 1x Maga for the kill-con?
Is Slithermuse worth considering?
How about Xantid Swarm?
I'll think about it when I get back from work
You're welcome.
Amazing. I was gonna ask about how the deck finds Food Chain.
edit:
How about the Fierce Empath -> Kozilek / Emrakul stuff that Food Chain Elves uses? Why dig when you can Tutor?
Summoner's pact seems limited here. I mean, it can only find elvish spirit guide or dryad arbor. If that's what you want, by all means, but it seems not so worthwhile.
[CARD]
Enlightened tutor[/CARD] seems the most bang for your buck if you want a tutor for food chain, but other than that, the deck seems quite able to dig with the 12 creatures it has for digging already.
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
The whole point is getting Scornful Egotist and Grozoth with Fierce Empath, With Grozoth getting all of the 9 CC creatures and then dropping them all with Myojin of Life's Web at the same time XD.
Fake Entomb is awesome.
@Xantid Swarm
Going into the board.
@Slithermuse
Haven't tested it. I haven't found myself running out of cards because many of the creatures cantrip, but with Chrome Mox that could change. I'll test it.
@Glimpse of Nature
Haven't tried this out, but it seems like it might be useful. There is already a ton of digging, but meh.
@Imperial Recruiter
IMO this is what makes any Food Chain deck function on a competitive level.
@Serum Powder
I strongly dislike this card. Even in Vintage Dredge I don't like playing it. It's never functioned well for me. I'd much rather just play tutors.
@Fierce Empath
Yeah, should probably be playing one of these. Coming in.
@Spoils of the Vault
If Enlightened isn't enough I'll try this out, but I'm not enthusiastic.
@Enlightened Tutor
I can normally get Food Chain after one mulligan, but maybe I'm just lucky. Coming in.
@Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Coming in.
Interesting build, but it's completely different from what I'm going for.
Will post changes after I get to test a bit more. Thanks for the help so far guys!
GRRWHazezon Tamar (Valakut)GRRW
UKami of the Crescent Moon (
Group Hug)UUHeidar, Rimewind Master [Mini-Primer]U
WKemba, Kha Regent (Stax)W
GEzuri, Renegade Leader [Primer]G
Spoils of the Vault : name Food Chain, exile cards from you library until you get one, hopefully exiling a Griffin along the way. For B, instant-speed, you tutor the 2 cards of your combo. And that's not good enough for you ?
Serum Powder : The card itself is pretty bad. Except it exiles your hand before your free mulligan. So you don't use it just to increase your chances of getting a Food Chain in your starting hand, you use it to have a starting hand of 8 cards or more. If your first hand has Serum Powder + Griffin, you get a free mulligan into 8 cards : the Griffin + 7 new ones. So stop comparing it to a tutor.
1. Lim-Dul's Vault is absolutely amazing in a deck like this. It allows you to tutor up multiple pieces of your combo very quickly.
2. If you add black, you do get access to Thoughtseize.
3. We really like Wall of Roots. Wall is a great 2 drop that blocks like a champ, and can easily allow you to cast the Griffin the turn you drop Food Chain. If you want more blocking action, Overgrown Battlement can also serve the same purpose.
4. Griffin also pitches to Misdirection. Just a thought.
edit -
@Youdz:
While Serum Powder has the opportunity to give you a free mulligan to 8, it's a completely dead card otherwise. You can't have dead cards in a combo deck! Also, Spoils isn't terrible but it suffers from two problems:
1. You will kill yourself with it a non-trivial amount of the time due to the amount of damage you take off of your own manabase. Also, I include not being able to tap your lands for mana because of Spoils killing yourself.
2. You still will need two turns after casting Spoils to kill them. Unlike Vintage Storm Combo, where you just kill them on the spot, a decent aggro deck can conceivably kill you before you get to combo out if you give them a 10 life head start.
Extractor Demon creates infinite mill.
Realm Razer shuts your opponent out while you keep going.
Magus of the Future lets you effectively filter through your deck and just cast everything.
Garruk's Packleader is effectively another Glimpse.
Reckless Waif; It's the red Delver of Secrets.
If thats not enough..you can add a misdirection.
I really like the glimpse/emrakul finisher, and then you just make sure you have 2 emrakul for an infinite extra turn chain. That means your combo package only takes up 14 cards in the deck! (4 food chain, 4 griffin, 2 emrakul, 4 glimpse)
Ideally you'd want tutor effects and ramp in order to go off as soon as possible. I feel a stronger opening hand might (at least in game 2) be enlightened tutor rather than food chain, so you don't end up with your entire combo extracted (obviously you don't care about the griffins, but if they hit food chain....)
Mentor of the Meek is a semi-Glimpse that unfortunately only provides mana parity, not mana ramp, with most creatures with power 2 or less in the deck, but he still produces mana with Mulldrifters flying in and out. Imperial Recruiter also finds him.
This is the list iv been running and may stick with the shell, just have to fit in misthollow griffin but dont know what to take out, does anyone have any suggestions. will lose 1 gaea's cradle and 1 wall of blossoms for a forest and the third fierce empath
2 Islands
2 Forests
4 Tropical Island
3 Ancient Tomb
2 Gaea's Cradle
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Myojin of Seeing Winds
2 Noble Hierarch
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Court Hussar
1 Æthersnipe
4 Mulldrifter
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
2 Fierce Empath
4 Wall of Blossoms
3 Raven Familiar
4 Force of Will
4 Food Chain
3 Show and Tell
should protect the combo pretty well the turn you're going off.
U G W NO Bant U G W
U G W R B Dredge! U G W R B
B G W Junk B G W
R G W B Aggro Loam R G W B
B W Deadguy B W
W Death & Taxes (almost!) W
G W Green & Taxes G W
B G W Junk & Taxes B G W
Momir Vig
Brion Stoutarm
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
Arcum Daggson
Cockatrice username: Blackcat77
Cockatrice username: Blackcat77
2 colored mana isn't easy to get...
@Wall of Roots
The Impulse creatures and Mulldrifter are better for digging, and you shouldn't need to block. You want to combo out by turn 3.
@Misdirection and discard
Testing Misdirection right now.
@Primordial Sage
I wouldn't ever want to spend six mana on something that doesn't win me the game, and this just digs more.
@Mentor of the Meek
Food Chain mana can't be spent on abilities.
I think it would too, but there really isn't enough room for that much countermagic while keeping the combo consistent.
There isn't enough extra mana or color consistency to prevent spells from being countered. I'd rather be running straight countermagic.
You can delete your posts.
Again, thanks for the comments. Editing OP with the changes I've been using in testing.
GRRWHazezon Tamar (Valakut)GRRW
UKami of the Crescent Moon (
Group Hug)UUHeidar, Rimewind Master [Mini-Primer]U
WKemba, Kha Regent (Stax)W
GEzuri, Renegade Leader [Primer]G
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
Enlightened Tutor is great, would Idyllic Tutor work as well or is it to costly
Paper: WUR Waffle Control, RG and U Tron
MTGO: U Tron, BRG Living End, B Infect
Testing Modern on MTGO and helping to craft decks on a Budget
I stream!
Hermit Druid Combo:
4 misthollow giffin
4 force of will
4 manipulate fate
4 daze
4 food chain
4 brainstorm
4 brain freeze
4 worldy tutor
4 intuition
1 emerakul the aeons torn
This deck is mainly a food chain build with win-cons with brain freeze and emerakul. The set up cards are intuition and worldy tutor to find the peices of the deck and brainstorm helps too. Manipulate fate allows you to get misthollow in exile and start the combo faster
You're missing Maga, Traitor to Mortals.
Brain Freeze may be ok, but Food Chain only lets you spend mana on Creatures. Worldly Tutor can't look for Food Chain.
Also, Fierce Empath works great with finding Emmy.
The problem I see with the combo in general, is that Food Chain is an enchantment, so to make it consistent, you need an alt win or ways of finding FC.
Also: Shriekmaw, Mulldrifter and Slithermuse envoke creatures work really well with Food Chain.
Actually Rune-scarred demon, Griselbrand and/or Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Tidespout Tyrant are good Empath targets.
You can use Rune-Scarred Demons to chain into Emmy + Demon or 3 Demons and swing next turn.
Brainstorm, Intuition, etc. Doesn't flow well with FC.
We need to think in terms of Court Hussar, Academy Rector, Hapless Researcher, Fathom Seer. Sun Titan, as Utility, Wurmcoil Engine as alt Win con.
Or Artifact-Human route with Trinket Mage, Treasure Mage, Brass Herald, Blightsteel Colossus.
Board can contain; Defense Grid, Æther Vial
Basically with this list you draw/tutor into combo, Cast demon or empath > demon > Emmy, swing 21 in your extra turn. Or something like demon > demon > demon > Urabrask the Hidden
And Obviously Imperial Recruiter + Maga, Traitor to Mortals is probably best.
Here is my rough approach:
4 MistHollow Griffin
4 Mulldrifter
2 Sphinx of Lost Truths
4 Fierce Empath
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Court Hussar
1 Rune-Scarred Demon
1 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Wall of Blossoms
4 Food Chain
Instant
2 Spell Pierce
4 Force of Will
2 Enlightened Tutor
Land
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Ancient Tomb
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
If you include cantripping creatures, a la Mulldrifter you could potentially go off on food chain, before even worrying about griffin, plus you need ways of creature-based drawing into Empath, Recruiter, Emmy, Kozilek, etc.
Remember, in Food Chain Based decks, the creatures are your ramp and win, otherwise it's hard.
Thank you mchief111, great sig
Lvl 37 Planeswalker
Current:
Legacy:
:symu::symb::symr::symw::symg: TES |
Vintage:
:symb::symu: Titan Dredge | :symb::symu::symw: Bomberman
Modern:
:symu::symr: Kiki-Twin | :symr::symg: Tron
Standard:
Wip
EDH:
:symb::symu::symw: Zur