I've tested my deck some more, and while I do like how powerful it can be, there just isn't enough interaction for me. Sure, there are many relevant decisions, many paths to take, but at the end of the day, the deck doesn't interact with my opponents enough.
I'm not sure where to go from here, maybe an abzan toolbox type list with some removal and more instants would better suit me...
I feel that we are able to beat a lot of decks without much interaction. I've also tested having 3-4x Reclamation Sage in my main board which provided some consistent turn 2 interaction, but I'd usually prefer to add more ramp on turn 2. 1x Acidic Slime with a few copies of Summoner's Pact have also helped out mid to late game.
Another point is that we can splash really easily, despite being Green Devotion in nature. Playing 6-8 Fetches allows us to easily add another color via Ravinca-lands, and this is further supplemented by Utopia Sprawl, Birds of Paradise, Abundant Growth, Oath of Nissa, and other cards which let us really easily produce or find an off color. With that in mind, red is the usual splash (for Kessig) which gives access to Blood Moon. However, you could also go for either white or black, which are both perfectly valid options as well, and provide tons more disruption. You can probably comfortably have a splash of up to three colors without too much effort. Duress, PtE, and other things are all in easy reach. I'd probably avoid blue, though, as permission doesn't really mesh with our play-style.
While I'm looking forward to drafting that, it's 2 more mana than oath to see one extra card. Devotion decks don't generally use the yard, so putting the cards there isn't really a benefit, and while hitting enchantments and artifacts is nice I don't imagine it's worth the extra mana.
While I'm looking forward to drafting that, it's 2 more mana than oath to see one extra card. Devotion decks don't generally use the yard, so putting the cards there isn't really a benefit, and while hitting enchantments and artifacts is nice I don't imagine it's worth the extra mana.
Yeah the only benefits over Oath are
-digs 1 deeper
-grabs Enchantments/Artifacts
-can have multiple on field
-might be better in the odd situation of revealing a one-of that you really want later (Craterhoof Behemoth/Hornet Queen) since you can grab it from the yard with Eternal Witness instead of relying on shuffle effects+draw rng
but Oath at least does something when it enters so it's really hard to justify. Maybe for a build that's very reliant on hitting Artifacts or specific Enchantments
I'm thinking about going the PW route.. Do I need to include Doubling Season? Or can the deck be competitive without that card?
'
You absolutely do not need doublling season. I've actually found that you are probably better off without it to be honest (and I really did try to make it work )
Green really is getting a lot of Tools for card selection right now
It has been very interesting to see that they are moving card selection heavily to green. Between Oath of Nissa, Traverse the Ulvenwald, and now this...it seems they are very interested in letting us dig through our deck for the peices we need. as someone who's deck includes Cloudstone Curio, this appealed to me. My only issue is that it is somewhat mana intensive in the end. Traverse is pretty cool too. Early fixing, helps with land screw, etc. and then late becomes a great tutor. I don't mind if they will end up making Green Devotion in Modern; but in the right deck all of them certainly have a chance (and should be tested).
Green really is getting a lot of Tools for card selection right now
It has been very interesting to see that they are moving card selection heavily to green. Between Oath of Nissa, Traverse the Ulvenwald, and now this...it seems they are very interested in letting us dig through our deck for the peices we need. as someone who's deck includes Cloudstone Curio, this appealed to me. My only issue is that it is somewhat mana intensive in the end. Traverse is pretty cool too. Early fixing, helps with land screw, etc. and then late becomes a great tutor. I don't mind if they will end up making Green Devotion in Modern; but in the right deck all of them certainly have a chance (and should be tested).
If you're running cloudstone curio it might be worth having a couple copies of Ancient Stirrings. It lets you hit both nykthos and curio, which it seems is pretty important for your build. Worst case scenario you pull a land out of your library.
My first thought was if you run ancient stirrings it might be worth using Wormcoil engine or another colorless threat to dig for late game.
My next thought was to use the devotion / enchantment ramp package but use stirrings, eye of ugin, and the whole threat package from r/g tron.
At that point the deck is just a really janky version of tron. The devotion package can generate much more mana than the tron lands (In goldfishing you can genesis wave for ~20 with the right opening hand), but is also much more weak to disruption. The only thing that really stops tron from hitting 7-8 mana (their magic range) is land destruction. Also the threats that devotion has access to that no other decks can run (Craterhoof, Genesis Wave/Hydra, Garruk overrun, Primeval Titan + Kessig) aren't nearly as good in tron as they are in our deck.
That isn't to say we can't use some of their threats. Devotion decks have deployed Karn and Wurmcoil before for various reasons. But if you're trying to just be tron with a different ramp engine, you might as well just play tron. Even in a meta with a lot of land destruction, Bolt is more common mainboard than Crumble to Dust.
I agree with the above. We may look a bit like Tron (big mana, big threats), but we are distinct: RG Tron is an all-in race to a fast, huge threat; U Tron is an old-school, draw-go permission deck with huge threats to close the game, we are a flexible deck with threats large and small and multiple strategies in any given game or match. Because of that, we must consider our threats with care. Note that even the two above Tron decks differ on certain threats (like Karn) because they can only accept threats that fit their singular strategy. For us, we must go a step further, and select threats that will work under a variety of circumstances rather than in only a few (because we're not consistent enough to dictate a specific game line).
My first thought was if you run ancient stirrings it might be worth using Wormcoil engine or another colorless threat to dig for late game.
My next thought was to use the devotion / enchantment ramp package but use stirrings, eye of ugin, and the whole threat package from r/g tron.
I do play Ancient Stirrings in the Karn version of the Walker deck as it then hits Lands (with specific targets of Nykthos and Wolf Run), Cloudstone Curio, Karn, and numerous sideboard options). It's a great card with enough targets!
I saw this on MTGDecks too. Looks great! There's tge never ending Treespeaker debate; but other than that it is mostly just a great traditional devotion deck (and if it ain't broke, don't fix it ).
I've been working on the devotion deck a bit. Kitchen Finks and Strangleroot Geist have been great. I even eeked out a win in a game in which I had no ramp, but 2 Elvish visionaries, a Strangleroot Geist and Kitchen Finks in hand. Despite a slow start, the geist got in early pressure against a greedy mana base and kitchen finks kept me alive until I eventually overwhelmed the opponent. I wouldn't normally keep a hand with no mana acceleration but it worked out.
Been thinking about why Nissa, Voice of Zendikar is better than most people expected. I don't believe there is another planeswalker that has a plus one ability to make a token in the 3 converted mana cost slot. The fact that we can often get it out on turn 2 means a lot of creatures for our opponent to get through and damage us. I've upped my count to 3 and am interested to see the results.
Speaking of Nissa, I wonder if she along with our other walkers could turn this card into a crazy wincon Furystoke Giant. Consider: If we play an elf on turn one, sprawl/Nissa turn 2, Xenagos turn 3 and a strangleroot geist and this guy turn 4. If all creatures are still alive we can deal 12 direct damage on turn 4. I wonder if Furystoke Giant backed up by strangleroot geist, Kitchen Finks, Burning-Tree Emissary, Nest Invader, the superfriends and summoner's pact could make a playable deck. ***Edit*** I just remembered that Summoner's Pact is only good for a green creature. Doh!
The current project has focused on making the deck's overall cmc lower lately. Those strangleroot geist and Kitchen finks can really keep the opponents at bay while fishing for a wincon.
The main change I made was to include 2 Primeval Titan's and 4 Summoner's pact. Primeval Titan is a win con that is cheaper than Craterhoof. I like that he helps negate the cost of summoner's pact by getting you two lands before you must pay pact's cost. Grabbing that Kessig wolf run is so appealing too.
Another card to consider: Faithless Looting. Might it be better than Oath of Nissa considering it can filter 4 cards (eventually) and grab anything we want? It also plays well with Eternal Witness, a card already liked by Devotion Players. Hmmmm...
I can't stop building with Elesh Norn and Nissa, I knew there was something interesting there. I'm more of a control player at heart and like to interact so I prefer this style of play to ramping into a trampling win condition or comboing off - just personal preference on how I want to spend my evening. BUT...This seems pretty interesting.
Chord of Calling and Nissa are a great match. Those 0/1s are now mana too! There's plenty of Green mana symbols to get the devotion count reasonably high and the flexibility offered by Chord is amazing. Path gives me more interaction. Eldrazi Displacer...I mean c'mon how sweet is that! And the sideboard options are ridiculous: Kataki, War's Wage, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Gaddock Teeg, Spellskite, Aven Mindcensor etc. etc.
Another point is that we can splash really easily, despite being Green Devotion in nature. Playing 6-8 Fetches allows us to easily add another color via Ravinca-lands, and this is further supplemented by Utopia Sprawl, Birds of Paradise, Abundant Growth, Oath of Nissa, and other cards which let us really easily produce or find an off color. With that in mind, red is the usual splash (for Kessig) which gives access to Blood Moon. However, you could also go for either white or black, which are both perfectly valid options as well, and provide tons more disruption. You can probably comfortably have a splash of up to three colors without too much effort. Duress, PtE, and other things are all in easy reach. I'd probably avoid blue, though, as permission doesn't really mesh with our play-style.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
Green really is getting a lot of Tools for card selection right now
Yeah the only benefits over Oath are
-digs 1 deeper
-grabs Enchantments/Artifacts
-can have multiple on field
-might be better in the odd situation of revealing a one-of that you really want later (Craterhoof Behemoth/Hornet Queen) since you can grab it from the yard with Eternal Witness instead of relying on shuffle effects+draw rng
but Oath at least does something when it enters so it's really hard to justify. Maybe for a build that's very reliant on hitting Artifacts or specific Enchantments
You absolutely do not need doublling season. I've actually found that you are probably better off without it to be honest (and I really did try to make it work )
It has been very interesting to see that they are moving card selection heavily to green. Between Oath of Nissa, Traverse the Ulvenwald, and now this...it seems they are very interested in letting us dig through our deck for the peices we need. as someone who's deck includes Cloudstone Curio, this appealed to me. My only issue is that it is somewhat mana intensive in the end. Traverse is pretty cool too. Early fixing, helps with land screw, etc. and then late becomes a great tutor. I don't mind if they will end up making Green Devotion in Modern; but in the right deck all of them certainly have a chance (and should be tested).
Thing is that you kinda want to play Vessel of Nascency and Traverse the Ulvenwald together because of Delirium and that's a pretty heavy investment slotwise
My next thought was to use the devotion / enchantment ramp package but use stirrings, eye of ugin, and the whole threat package from r/g tron.
That isn't to say we can't use some of their threats. Devotion decks have deployed Karn and Wurmcoil before for various reasons. But if you're trying to just be tron with a different ramp engine, you might as well just play tron. Even in a meta with a lot of land destruction, Bolt is more common mainboard than Crumble to Dust.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
This will go mainboard as soon as I get one !
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
I do play Ancient Stirrings in the Karn version of the Walker deck as it then hits Lands (with specific targets of Nykthos and Wolf Run), Cloudstone Curio, Karn, and numerous sideboard options). It's a great card with enough targets!
I saw this on MTGDecks too. Looks great! There's tge never ending Treespeaker debate; but other than that it is mostly just a great traditional devotion deck (and if it ain't broke, don't fix it ).
Been thinking about why Nissa, Voice of Zendikar is better than most people expected. I don't believe there is another planeswalker that has a plus one ability to make a token in the 3 converted mana cost slot. The fact that we can often get it out on turn 2 means a lot of creatures for our opponent to get through and damage us. I've upped my count to 3 and am interested to see the results.
Speaking of Nissa, I wonder if she along with our other walkers could turn this card into a crazy wincon Furystoke Giant. Consider: If we play an elf on turn one, sprawl/Nissa turn 2, Xenagos turn 3 and a strangleroot geist and this guy turn 4. If all creatures are still alive we can deal 12 direct damage on turn 4. I wonder if Furystoke Giant backed up by strangleroot geist, Kitchen Finks, Burning-Tree Emissary, Nest Invader, the superfriends and summoner's pact could make a playable deck. ***Edit*** I just remembered that Summoner's Pact is only good for a green creature. Doh!
The current project has focused on making the deck's overall cmc lower lately. Those strangleroot geist and Kitchen finks can really keep the opponents at bay while fishing for a wincon.
The main change I made was to include 2 Primeval Titan's and 4 Summoner's pact. Primeval Titan is a win con that is cheaper than Craterhoof. I like that he helps negate the cost of summoner's pact by getting you two lands before you must pay pact's cost. Grabbing that Kessig wolf run is so appealing too.
What do you think of this?
2 Birds of Paradise
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Strangleroot Geist
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
2 Primeval Titan
2 Xenagos The Reveler
3 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
4 Summoner's Pact
2 Oath of Nissa
1 Fertile Ground
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Windswept Heath
2 Stomping Ground
1 Kessig Wolf Run
7 Forest
2x Birds of Paradise
2x Voice of Resurgence
2x Eternal Witness
2x Kitchen Finks
1x Eldrazi Displacer
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Acidic Slime
1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Scavenging Ooze
4x Chord of Calling
4x Garruk Wildspeaker
3x Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
4x Utopia Sprawl
1x Canopy Vista
4x Forest
2x Gavony Township
3x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Plains
4x Temple Garden
4x Windswept Heath
2x Wooded Bastion
2x Wooded Foothills
I can't stop building with Elesh Norn and Nissa, I knew there was something interesting there. I'm more of a control player at heart and like to interact so I prefer this style of play to ramping into a trampling win condition or comboing off - just personal preference on how I want to spend my evening. BUT...This seems pretty interesting.
Chord of Calling and Nissa are a great match. Those 0/1s are now mana too! There's plenty of Green mana symbols to get the devotion count reasonably high and the flexibility offered by Chord is amazing. Path gives me more interaction. Eldrazi Displacer...I mean c'mon how sweet is that! And the sideboard options are ridiculous: Kataki, War's Wage, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Gaddock Teeg, Spellskite, Aven Mindcensor etc. etc.
Anyone out there splashing white this hard?