What % of the meta has remand for that to even be relevant? Even if it is a high percentage, you don't let the counterspell deck play that game. They have to answer your board. Summons is also a very good follow-up to a Wrath effects.
The probability that you play it and get blown out for it is not that small. Maelstrom Pulse blows you out. Remand/Mana Leak blow you out. In the cases where it's ok, you were already winning and didn't need it. There are better things to play.
Is Flinthoof Boar the best two? There's also the 4/3 revolt guy and Tarmogoyf.
Most likely. The revolt guy is a bad tarmogoyf, since it dies to bolt and matches up poorly against opposing Goyfs, delve creatures, and even Flayers. Goyf is good if you plan to play a medium-longer game, and it's exactly where I'd want to be if there were a bunch of midrange in the metagame. But Boar's haste makes it much more appealing more generally, and as long as you can deal with opposing fatties, it's still very strong vs the midrange and control decks. I haven't tried the revolt guy out at all, but I've tried the other two in previous shells.
What % of the meta has remand for that to even be relevant? Even if it is a high percentage, you don't let the counterspell deck play that game. They have to answer your board. Summons is also a very good follow-up to a Wrath effects.
Against decks with wrath effects, saccing your lands is a dicey proposition. They have plenty more removal - and wrath effects, especially if they have snapcaster. If you go all in and they answer your elementals, you just lose. And it's not like we can consistently present a reasonable threat with this card without essentially going all in given how few lands we run.
Hey guys played bushwacker zoo last night at local tournament went 3-1 i really like the deck.
Went 2-0 vs tron
2-1 infect
1-2 wierd r/w plainswalker deck he got me with anger
2-1 burn
Im wondering what you guys think of thorn of amethyst as a 1 or 2 of its easy to cast i know there is thalia but she is harder to play off are free mana. Thoughts?
I ran some math myself and the results are rather surprising.
If your goal is to see exactly 2 or 3 mana by turn 3, then you want 15 lands in your deck, assuming that all 1, 2, and 3-land hands are keeps, all lands you draw are fetches, and mulls to 4 never pan out. In this case, you have a 61.78% chance of success. For 17, 18, 19, and 20 land decks, the chances of success are 61.16%, 60.24%, 58.99%, and 57.48%, respectively.
If your goal is to keep the highest percentage of hands, then, for pr(keep a 1-lander) = 0.00, 0.10, ..., 1.00, you want 21, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19, 18, 18, 17, 17, 16 lands in your deck, giving you respective keep probabilities of 59.63%, 61.41%, 63.32%, 65.31%, 67.44%, 69.65%, 72.02%, 74.46%, 77.09%, 79.78%, and 82.67%.
I just looked at 100 1-landers from an 18-land deck and, by my account, 62% of them were keepers, so 18 lands might be just about perfect, giving you roughly 72.02% chance to keep and 60.24% of seeing exactly 2 or 3 lands by turn 3.
Hey guys played bushwacker zoo last night at local tournament went 3-1 i really like the deck.
Went 2-0 vs tron
2-1 infect
1-2 wierd r/w plainswalker deck he got me with anger
2-1 burn
Im wondering what you guys think of thorn of amethyst as a 1 or 2 of its easy to cast i know there is thalia but she is harder to play off are free mana. Thoughts?
That thorn can't attack is a pretty big liability compared to Thalia. On the other hand, vs. some decks, not dying to bolt is a huge advantage. The disruption has to be fairly backbreaking though for it to be worth putting a card in the deck that doesn't impact the board or otherwise deal damage. If there's enough spell based combo in your meta that also happens to regularly have removal for Thalia, I could see it. E.g. if Cheerios picks up - and it should, given what I've seen of the deck. But until you see paths or bolts in those decks, I'd lean toward playing Thalia instead if you want that effect. It's much better vs burn, for example, and more reasonable to bring in vs control decks (though in my experience Thalia typically just makes them pay 1 more mana once to kill her with minimal impact on the game, but not being a dead draw when you need a creature is huge there).
I ran some math myself and the results are rather surprising.
If your goal is to see exactly 2 or 3 mana by turn 3, then you want 15 lands in your deck, assuming that all 1, 2, and 3-land hands are keeps, all lands you draw are fetches, and mulls to 4 never pan out. In this case, you have a 61.78% chance of success. For 17, 18, 19, and 20 land decks, the chances of success are 61.16%, 60.24%, 58.99%, and 57.48%, respectively.
If your goal is to keep the highest percentage of hands, then, for pr(keep a 1-lander) = 0.00, 0.10, ..., 1.00, you want 21, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19, 18, 18, 17, 17, 16 lands in your deck, giving you respective keep probabilities of 59.63%, 61.41%, 63.32%, 65.31%, 67.44%, 69.65%, 72.02%, 74.46%, 77.09%, 79.78%, and 82.67%.
I just looked at 100 1-landers from an 18-land deck and, by my account, 62% of them were keepers, so 18 lands might be just about perfect, giving you roughly 72.02% chance to keep and 60.24% of seeing exactly 2 or 3 lands by turn 3.
Maximizing the probability of keeping can be misleading though. What we want to maximize is the probability of winning, and I'm more than willing to keep less hands if that the chance of winning with the hands I do keep increases enough. The extra land in the deck does increase the quality of keeps since it makes 1 landers more likely to hit and increases the number of 2 and 3 landers we get to keep, plus it also makes mulliganing to 6 a little less bad. Whether this outweighs mulliganing more is tough to say without the relevant numbers (which we can't have), but we could get some idea of whether this concern even matters if we knew the probability of having a keepable hand with the sub-optimal 19 land build. If the difference between 18 and 19 lands is small enough, I'm inclined to stay at 19.
I've been running tribal zoo to some moderate success lately. I've been working on a more grim flayer oriented version as I like the feeling of a fast jund deck. The link to my list is below and I am working on a primer of sorts in the description on tappedout. I started with a list from a few pages back on this forum in conjunction with Caleb Durward's list from a Channel Fireball video series a while back and tuned it with a friend who'd been playing the noble/geist version for a while. I really think the deck can go places with a bit of refinement and a bit more experience with the deck by the pilot. Any thoughts are appreciated especially if you're playing some tribal zoo variant as well.
I have some feedback and criticism to share with you. Tribal zoo is secretly one of the most powerful midrange decks but I don't agree with where you have taken it.
1. Geist!
Casting geist on turn two is one of the best things you can do in modern. You get to outrace the linear decks and it's one of the most difficult threats for other midrange decks to beat. Geist is, in my opinion, the #1 reason to play tribal zoo, and the deck could probably be renamed tribal geist.
2. K command, thoughtseize, inquisition.
Ok these are all good cards but they are not contributing to the hyper aggressive strategy. We can goldfish faster than most linear decks so discard effects are not needed, you just need to get in once or twice with a creature and then end the game with burn. Two for one effects, while nice, are also not needed. We gain a form of card advantage just by having the best cards at each slot on the curve.
3. Grim flayer.
Oh boy so I know a lot of people like this card. There was even a pro brewing this card in tribal zoo somewhat recently... and it makes me really sad to see. Here is a 2/2 that wants black mana on turn two. Most of the time that's all he will ever be. Later in the game he has the potential to be a 4/4. I think about another two drop with late game potential: snapcaster mage. If grim flayer is a 4/4 then snapcaster is a 2/1 tribal flames.
4. Lingering souls.
Same story as grim flayer. Souls does nothing to help you goldfish turn 3/4. We already have a three drop that dodges spot removal but hits three times harder (geist :)).
5. Fatal push/abrupt decay.
Path is better when we need a non burn removal spell. It hits tasigurs, anglers, wurmcoils, titans, eldrazi, etc. The extra land is a small price to cleanly answer things that we can't swing geists and rhinos into.
This is all just how I personally evaluate what cards to put in my tribal zoo deck.
I have some feedback and criticism to share with you. Tribal zoo is secretly one of the most powerful midrange decks but I don't agree with where you have taken it.
1. Geist!
Casting geist on turn two is one of the best things you can do in modern. You get to outrace the linear decks and it's one of the most difficult threats for other midrange decks to beat. Geist is, in my opinion, the #1 reason to play tribal zoo, and the deck could probably be renamed tribal geist.
2. K command, thoughtseize, inquisition.
Ok these are all good cards but they are not contributing to the hyper aggressive strategy. We can goldfish faster than most linear decks so discard effects are not needed, you just need to get in once or twice with a creature and then end the game with burn. Two for one effects, while nice, are also not needed. We gain a form of card advantage just by having the best cards at each slot on the curve.
3. Grim flayer.
Oh boy so I know a lot of people like this card. There was even a pro brewing this card in tribal zoo somewhat recently... and it makes me really sad to see. Here is a 2/2 that wants black mana on turn two. Most of the time that's all he will ever be. Later in the game he has the potential to be a 4/4. I think about another two drop with late game potential: snapcaster mage. If grim flayer is a 4/4 then snapcaster is a 2/1 tribal flames.
4. Lingering souls.
Same story as grim flayer. Souls does nothing to help you goldfish turn 3/4. We already have a three drop that dodges spot removal but hits three times harder (geist :)).
5. Fatal push/abrupt decay.
Path is better when we need a non burn removal spell. It hits tasigurs, anglers, wurmcoils, titans, eldrazi, etc. The extra land is a small price to cleanly answer things that we can't swing geists and rhinos into.
This is all just how I personally evaluate what cards to put in my tribal zoo deck.
I've played the Grim Flayer Tribal Flames deck. It's quite a bit better than you give it credit for. Grim Flayer sets up quite a few draws and is a reasonable magic card in a variety of situations, it doesn't require a mana dork like Geist, and it plays with the game plan of "draw into Tribal Flames" really really well.
The deck suffers from the fact that it's a Tribal Flames deck and not on account of Grim Flayer. Discard is also entirely reasonable in the deck, assuming your room is heavy on Tron/combo.
The deck tries to play like a Jund deck that just closes the door faster -- it may be some people's cup of tea and can be great in the right room. Dismissing the deck because it's lacking power level? I'm nothing but suspicious of a claim such as that.
The deck is also much more resilient to the sequence of bolt-Liliana.
Geist Tribal Flames might as well be a bye for a deck that can sequence removal spells into a stabilized Liliana. Souls, in that specific situation, is considerably better.
I've been running tribal zoo to some moderate success lately. I've been working on a more grim flayer oriented version as I like the feeling of a fast jund deck. The link to my list is below and I am working on a primer of sorts in the description on tappedout. I started with a list from a few pages back on this forum in conjunction with Caleb Durward's list from a Channel Fireball video series a while back and tuned it with a friend who'd been playing the noble/geist version for a while. I really think the deck can go places with a bit of refinement and a bit more experience with the deck by the pilot. Any thoughts are appreciated especially if you're playing some tribal zoo variant as well.
I have some feedback and criticism to share with you. Tribal zoo is secretly one of the most powerful midrange decks but I don't agree with where you have taken it.
1. Geist!
Casting geist on turn two is one of the best things you can do in modern. You get to outrace the linear decks and it's one of the most difficult threats for other midrange decks to beat. Geist is, in my opinion, the #1 reason to play tribal zoo, and the deck could probably be renamed tribal geist.
2. K command, thoughtseize, inquisition.
Ok these are all good cards but they are not contributing to the hyper aggressive strategy. We can goldfish faster than most linear decks so discard effects are not needed, you just need to get in once or twice with a creature and then end the game with burn. Two for one effects, while nice, are also not needed. We gain a form of card advantage just by having the best cards at each slot on the curve.
3. Grim flayer.
Oh boy so I know a lot of people like this card. There was even a pro brewing this card in tribal zoo somewhat recently... and it makes me really sad to see. Here is a 2/2 that wants black mana on turn two. Most of the time that's all he will ever be. Later in the game he has the potential to be a 4/4. I think about another two drop with late game potential: snapcaster mage. If grim flayer is a 4/4 then snapcaster is a 2/1 tribal flames.
4. Lingering souls.
Same story as grim flayer. Souls does nothing to help you goldfish turn 3/4. We already have a three drop that dodges spot removal but hits three times harder (geist :)).
5. Fatal push/abrupt decay.
Path is better when we need a non burn removal spell. It hits tasigurs, anglers, wurmcoils, titans, eldrazi, etc. The extra land is a small price to cleanly answer things that we can't swing geists and rhinos into.
This is all just how I personally evaluate what cards to put in my tribal zoo deck.
For what its worth, while everyone was dieing over landfall zoo, I posted success with tribal zoo and was promptly ignored completely:
Did a Modern monday with this. Felt like brewing a zoo list togather again and wanted to go domain since I got a hold of push and we were allowed to use em. Mostly made up of cards I wanted to play with, but theres actually a loose strat that went into the card numbers. The mana is correct, I've done enough domain mana bases in my life to know how to make one. Openers should fetch T1: Stomping ground, T2: Goddess shrine T3: What ever is left with blue.
Snap was likely to be dumb with this spell suite. Its literally the best things you can cast... ever. Same with the creatures. Narnam Renegade and Renegade Rallier are ok cards, but Geist, Knight, goyf, and rhino are all in their own league. Grim Flayer is a 1 of, and thats just to make sure my 2 drops were well rounded. He has odd utlity too, which is later game draw filter, getting me end game reach or spells, taking out excess land for knight, and keeping my geists solo as well as feeding snapcasters.
Sideboard could probably use an odd amount of Denials. But I was more worried about eldrazi killing me so the discard went instead.
Round 1 Vs GR Eldrazi
I went turn 1 dork, turn 2 goyf and nacatl. then turn 3 geist nacatl. I had him down to 1, but made a mistake early on in not playing flames early for 4 damage (Because I'm full of greed and stupid. Its been a while guys.) and that cost me the game. Had I drawn a bolt, rhino, flames, or snap (12 cards mind you.) Id have won, and Id have won if I didnt pass the turn then be like "wait that was dumb." So this SHOULD have been a win.
Sided in 2 aven mancers because I assumed wrong. No fetches or stuff. Sided out 2 bolts, because they dont hit enough.
Game 2, Same as above, just also their was a rhino. Ran him way over.
Sided out the avens, and another bolt for 3 discard. I forgot thats the whole reason I ran the discard in the side.
Opened a hand that let me turn 1 noble turn 2 goyf and discard. Saw his hand lacked sol lands, so I took a risk and snagged his reshaper instead, as it was the only thing he could cast. Went to pound town with goyf, dropping geist again, followed by a rhino. He eventually got to 5 mana for his threats, but goyf and team did enough damage that he was tribal flames range.
2-1/ 1-0
Round 2 Esper Control
Game 1 I saw the delta and knew I was in push land. Bring it on baby, I have a geist in my opener. So I play out nacatl, then goyf, and force him to kill my goyf on turn 3, opening him for geist, and... yeah. No chance to get back. That deck is super interactive, and takes way less damage then it used to with their new lands and push, but remands still suck, and my threats are ALL MUST KILL so his 1 or 2 removal spells will lose if they cant hit my 3rd or 4th dude.
Sided out 3 path and two push for 2 aven and 3 discard. It was clear he wasnt doing a creature based deck, and if he cast something like a mentor or what ever, I was going to die to control anyways. The discard would be a way to open up windows for me and the aven is just nasty against control.
Game 2 I opened a lack luster hand with far too many lands, but it had noble and 2 goyfs, so I kept because I figured, eh, push on my mana dork, turn 2/3 goyfs are still fine. No push, just control magic, but my goyfs... at 2 damage a turn mind you, still were doing enough, and I had tribal flames in hand. So I waited, casting something here and there which would get hit with a path or push, and I played a tempo game, eventually having him at 9 and me with flames and rhino in my hand. I drew a snap, and went for rhino, got remanded twice, brought him to 5, passed, he wiped the board, leaving up 4 mana, I rhinoed, mana leak, flames, snared, snap flames and won.
2-0/ 2-0
8 Rack
Making a long story short, a lot of discard and removal happened, but I stuck 1 Knight, 7/7, then 2. So he was dead.
Sided in 1 decay, and out 1 push. I does the same thing to pack rat but i get racks too.
I know this matchup, and its actually a really easy one. They are really bad vs us... even with push. Its just about sticking a threat. And they overload on removal game 2, so I got to worry a lot less about discard. So I got pushed a few times, but he doesnt take anything from my hand. Which is bad news for him. I get to stick two 5/5 knights, a 3/3 nacatl, and a snap in hand and bolt in yard. At 15 thats leathal baby.
2-0/ 3-0
Round 4 vs Tron
Turn 1 pushed on my mana dork, turn 2 chalice, turn 3 tron. Yeah. I concede early to hide my cards from thought-knot
Side in 3 discard, 1 decay, out all bolts.
Game 2 I faced down 2 relics on my 2 goyf hand. Greattttt... Well. I still play to my outs, holding fetchs uncracked to maybe get in some damage. I draw a crap ton of rhinos, and eventually can go all in with an alpha strike, cracking fetches, and pathing a batterskull germ token, to make my goyfs actually useful. I manage to slide him down to 8 with it, then cast a 3rd rhino, which should insure leathal even through the batterskull life link.
Then he casts all is dust.
Sigh.
0-2/ 3-1
Round 5 vs Infect
Played really cat and mouse the first few rounds since I opened a slow but removal heavy hand. I barely lost due to a topped leathal pump.
Game 2 I sided in decay and aven, explosion, and bonfire, siding out the other 3 drops for it. He must have took a really slow hand with Wild Defiance. I was swinging in with 5/5 nacatls, then dropped a aven when he went all in and blocked, then killed him on the back swing.
Game 3, I put out a few beaters, while bolting one of his threats and explosives his second, dancing around the hexproof. It opened up enough time for me to just swing and win. Rhinnnoooooossss
2-1/ 4-1
Bonus game! Vs Jund
Turn 1 Hierarch, turn 2 geist, turn 3 swing, double flames for lethal. Breakin' the turn 4 rule like a champ.
Overall
4-1 is pretty good for something I brewed up last second ehhhhhh? The deck is powerful, snaps are great at a 2 of, and 3 flames is correct if you have push, since one of flames good at killing dudes and facing. But with push the need for killing dudes is less. Plus both play great with snap, but you have to use em first, so snap is best at 2 of.
Sometimes the deck felt like it needed a bird, or grim should be cut or boosted in numbers, I think thats up in the air. Sometimes push felt like it should be 3 of and path 2 of, but It might mess with the colors a bit too much. Side was wack a noodle, but meh, always is the first time around.
Never-the-less, the deck plays like an aggressive jund deck and feels more powerful than company or walker zoos. I never felt like I was losing damage by not doing bushwacker, because I was always threathening leathal, even with disruption, and I never felt like I wasnt doing something big, because I always was.
I've still been getting results with this, but havent been posting it because no one really cared the first time around. To your points: Yes, grim isnt amazing in the deck, but he does some work. Hes not better than snap, but he's better when you already have snap. So a 1-2 of. Discard is meant to be in the board for zoo, you want aggression, not interaction, but you do want it in the board. And Push is much much better in aggressive decks than not. You can enable it almost always, and when you cant, it doesnt matter, because it costs one mana letting you put down threats early game while using it non revolted. Are there times path is better? Yep. But you dont want to path a mana dork or tarmo. you want to push them.
For what its worth, while everyone was dieing over landfall zoo, I posted success with tribal zoo and was promptly ignored completely:
To be fair, most bigger variant zoo thread regulars have posted Tribal Flames lists they've played with, myself included.
But, as you have stated previously, most lists suffer from the fact that they have to build a manbase with Tribal Flames in mind and not because the power level of the cards is low.
Sorry. Musta got buried. The reason why I run 3 is because its job was to end the game or be removal. With push being a mana cheaper, it can let me do more attacking while also casting more creatures. Tarmogoyf and push on turn 2.
Basically I feel 3 is enough to see one and close out the game with snap, but not often enough to have them strained in my hand.
As far as painful mana? Yeah totally. Its always a strain. But alot of people have been talking about increasing fetches to 14... thats just as painful.
I'm not commenting on Domain because I had to sell some of the cards for that shell when I was buying my Goyfs, so I'm unable to play it for now until I get that stuff back.
But I read every post in here, even when I don't reply, I'm interested in hearing how ppl are doing with different versions of Zoo
Would a 2/3x Tslsra Batallions be worth considering in the main instead of the boars?
No, Talara's Battalion locks you out of playing it unless you can play something else first. Greenwheel Liberator is an easier to achieve 4/3, and it's not better than Flinthoof either.
Right. But landfall will take the damage for its "combo" and deal 6 damage. Domain will take the damage, cast a geist or flames and deal 12.
I dont think thats a defense. If landfall takes damage it takes damage. The difference is one has speed and one has relislancey. They still take damage frim lands and are equally bad vs aggro
I reached 100 games with the Manamorphose version the other day. As I said throughout testing it, I prefer Mutagenic Growth in that spot. I went 70-30 in games with the Manamorphose version and 29-8 (0.7838 win rate) in matches. In my previous post with the Mutagenic Growth version, I was 64-38 (0.6275 win rate) in games and 25-12 (0.6757 win rate) in matches. However, I wouldn't put much stock in that difference. Through 100 games, I had 10 outright T3 kills and 20 outright wins or concessions by the end of T3. I got the opponent to 10 life or less in 59% of games.
I'm at 232 games total. 152-80 (0.6552) and 62-24 (0.7209) with a total of 27 outright T3 wins and 50 wins/concessions by that point. Through those 232 games, 55% had the opponent at 10 or less by T3.
The difference between each of the graphs below compared to the total for the Mutagenic Growth version is at the few percent level, with the Manamorphose version getting 7, 8, or 9 power on board more often and getting the opponent to 9 or 10 life by T3 slightly more often.
I think this suggests that it's a little more explosive, letting Herbalists turn in to Bushwhacker more often and dealing more damage early or just turning the deck into a 58 card deck. However, it's a little more fragile if Manamorphose doesn't draw gas. I like the more stable Mutagenic Growth version, partially since it can save a creature from a Bolt. Going forward, I'm going to give 2 Flinthoof a shot in exchnage for 2 Kird Apes.
Just want to bring another card like Manamorphose to the discussion.
Wild Cantor.
He is useful in the same ways Manamorphose is. Can enable a Bushwhacker by itself with 2 lands on the field, can make the transition between HH to Bushwhacker on the chain but, unlike Manamorphose, he has a 1/1 body. It's not that great, but still a body.
I still think Mutagenic is better overall, but maybe Cantor is better than Manamorphose.
If you're using Cantor for mana, he's not a 1/1 body. It lets you convert from Herbalists to Bushwhacker, but it doesn't add power to the board and it doesn't draw a card. I think I'd rather have Manamorphose than Wild Cantor just for the draw.
The probability that you play it and get blown out for it is not that small. Maelstrom Pulse blows you out. Remand/Mana Leak blow you out. In the cases where it's ok, you were already winning and didn't need it. There are better things to play.
Most likely. The revolt guy is a bad tarmogoyf, since it dies to bolt and matches up poorly against opposing Goyfs, delve creatures, and even Flayers. Goyf is good if you plan to play a medium-longer game, and it's exactly where I'd want to be if there were a bunch of midrange in the metagame. But Boar's haste makes it much more appealing more generally, and as long as you can deal with opposing fatties, it's still very strong vs the midrange and control decks. I haven't tried the revolt guy out at all, but I've tried the other two in previous shells.
Against decks with wrath effects, saccing your lands is a dicey proposition. They have plenty more removal - and wrath effects, especially if they have snapcaster. If you go all in and they answer your elementals, you just lose. And it's not like we can consistently present a reasonable threat with this card without essentially going all in given how few lands we run.
Went 2-0 vs tron
2-1 infect
1-2 wierd r/w plainswalker deck he got me with anger
2-1 burn
Im wondering what you guys think of thorn of amethyst as a 1 or 2 of its easy to cast i know there is thalia but she is harder to play off are free mana. Thoughts?
If your goal is to see exactly 2 or 3 mana by turn 3, then you want 15 lands in your deck, assuming that all 1, 2, and 3-land hands are keeps, all lands you draw are fetches, and mulls to 4 never pan out. In this case, you have a 61.78% chance of success. For 17, 18, 19, and 20 land decks, the chances of success are 61.16%, 60.24%, 58.99%, and 57.48%, respectively.
If your goal is to keep the highest percentage of hands, then, for pr(keep a 1-lander) = 0.00, 0.10, ..., 1.00, you want 21, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19, 18, 18, 17, 17, 16 lands in your deck, giving you respective keep probabilities of 59.63%, 61.41%, 63.32%, 65.31%, 67.44%, 69.65%, 72.02%, 74.46%, 77.09%, 79.78%, and 82.67%.
I just looked at 100 1-landers from an 18-land deck and, by my account, 62% of them were keepers, so 18 lands might be just about perfect, giving you roughly 72.02% chance to keep and 60.24% of seeing exactly 2 or 3 lands by turn 3.
That thorn can't attack is a pretty big liability compared to Thalia. On the other hand, vs. some decks, not dying to bolt is a huge advantage. The disruption has to be fairly backbreaking though for it to be worth putting a card in the deck that doesn't impact the board or otherwise deal damage. If there's enough spell based combo in your meta that also happens to regularly have removal for Thalia, I could see it. E.g. if Cheerios picks up - and it should, given what I've seen of the deck. But until you see paths or bolts in those decks, I'd lean toward playing Thalia instead if you want that effect. It's much better vs burn, for example, and more reasonable to bring in vs control decks (though in my experience Thalia typically just makes them pay 1 more mana once to kill her with minimal impact on the game, but not being a dead draw when you need a creature is huge there).
Maximizing the probability of keeping can be misleading though. What we want to maximize is the probability of winning, and I'm more than willing to keep less hands if that the chance of winning with the hands I do keep increases enough. The extra land in the deck does increase the quality of keeps since it makes 1 landers more likely to hit and increases the number of 2 and 3 landers we get to keep, plus it also makes mulliganing to 6 a little less bad. Whether this outweighs mulliganing more is tough to say without the relevant numbers (which we can't have), but we could get some idea of whether this concern even matters if we knew the probability of having a keepable hand with the sub-optimal 19 land build. If the difference between 18 and 19 lands is small enough, I'm inclined to stay at 19.
I have some feedback and criticism to share with you. Tribal zoo is secretly one of the most powerful midrange decks but I don't agree with where you have taken it.
1. Geist!
Casting geist on turn two is one of the best things you can do in modern. You get to outrace the linear decks and it's one of the most difficult threats for other midrange decks to beat. Geist is, in my opinion, the #1 reason to play tribal zoo, and the deck could probably be renamed tribal geist.
2. K command, thoughtseize, inquisition.
Ok these are all good cards but they are not contributing to the hyper aggressive strategy. We can goldfish faster than most linear decks so discard effects are not needed, you just need to get in once or twice with a creature and then end the game with burn. Two for one effects, while nice, are also not needed. We gain a form of card advantage just by having the best cards at each slot on the curve.
3. Grim flayer.
Oh boy so I know a lot of people like this card. There was even a pro brewing this card in tribal zoo somewhat recently... and it makes me really sad to see. Here is a 2/2 that wants black mana on turn two. Most of the time that's all he will ever be. Later in the game he has the potential to be a 4/4. I think about another two drop with late game potential: snapcaster mage. If grim flayer is a 4/4 then snapcaster is a 2/1 tribal flames.
4. Lingering souls.
Same story as grim flayer. Souls does nothing to help you goldfish turn 3/4. We already have a three drop that dodges spot removal but hits three times harder (geist :)).
5. Fatal push/abrupt decay.
Path is better when we need a non burn removal spell. It hits tasigurs, anglers, wurmcoils, titans, eldrazi, etc. The extra land is a small price to cleanly answer things that we can't swing geists and rhinos into.
This is all just how I personally evaluate what cards to put in my tribal zoo deck.
Tribal Zoo video series
I've played the Grim Flayer Tribal Flames deck. It's quite a bit better than you give it credit for. Grim Flayer sets up quite a few draws and is a reasonable magic card in a variety of situations, it doesn't require a mana dork like Geist, and it plays with the game plan of "draw into Tribal Flames" really really well.
The deck suffers from the fact that it's a Tribal Flames deck and not on account of Grim Flayer. Discard is also entirely reasonable in the deck, assuming your room is heavy on Tron/combo.
The deck tries to play like a Jund deck that just closes the door faster -- it may be some people's cup of tea and can be great in the right room. Dismissing the deck because it's lacking power level? I'm nothing but suspicious of a claim such as that.
The deck is also much more resilient to the sequence of bolt-Liliana.
Geist Tribal Flames might as well be a bye for a deck that can sequence removal spells into a stabilized Liliana. Souls, in that specific situation, is considerably better.
For what its worth, while everyone was dieing over landfall zoo, I posted success with tribal zoo and was promptly ignored completely:
I've still been getting results with this, but havent been posting it because no one really cared the first time around. To your points: Yes, grim isnt amazing in the deck, but he does some work. Hes not better than snap, but he's better when you already have snap. So a 1-2 of. Discard is meant to be in the board for zoo, you want aggression, not interaction, but you do want it in the board. And Push is much much better in aggressive decks than not. You can enable it almost always, and when you cant, it doesnt matter, because it costs one mana letting you put down threats early game while using it non revolted. Are there times path is better? Yep. But you dont want to path a mana dork or tarmo. you want to push them.
To be fair, most bigger variant zoo thread regulars have posted Tribal Flames lists they've played with, myself included.
But, as you have stated previously, most lists suffer from the fact that they have to build a manbase with Tribal Flames in mind and not because the power level of the cards is low.
Tribal Zoo video series
Basically I feel 3 is enough to see one and close out the game with snap, but not often enough to have them strained in my hand.
As far as painful mana? Yeah totally. Its always a strain. But alot of people have been talking about increasing fetches to 14... thats just as painful.
Domain takes damage just from playing Magic.
But I read every post in here, even when I don't reply, I'm interested in hearing how ppl are doing with different versions of Zoo
WGUBR 5c Humans
GWR Naya Zoo
Legacy:
GW GW Maverick
R Goblins
No, Talara's Battalion locks you out of playing it unless you can play something else first. Greenwheel Liberator is an easier to achieve 4/3, and it's not better than Flinthoof either.
I dont think thats a defense. If landfall takes damage it takes damage. The difference is one has speed and one has relislancey. They still take damage frim lands and are equally bad vs aggro
I'm at 232 games total. 152-80 (0.6552) and 62-24 (0.7209) with a total of 27 outright T3 wins and 50 wins/concessions by that point. Through those 232 games, 55% had the opponent at 10 or less by T3.
The difference between each of the graphs below compared to the total for the Mutagenic Growth version is at the few percent level, with the Manamorphose version getting 7, 8, or 9 power on board more often and getting the opponent to 9 or 10 life by T3 slightly more often.
I think this suggests that it's a little more explosive, letting Herbalists turn in to Bushwhacker more often and dealing more damage early or just turning the deck into a 58 card deck. However, it's a little more fragile if Manamorphose doesn't draw gas. I like the more stable Mutagenic Growth version, partially since it can save a creature from a Bolt. Going forward, I'm going to give 2 Flinthoof a shot in exchnage for 2 Kird Apes.
Original post here.
Cumulative tables for Manamorphose since Spooly wanted that last time:
Value T2Cast T2Onboard T2Life T3Life
0 0.00% 1.00% 0.00% 10.00%
1 0.00% 2.00% 0.00% 11.00%
2 3.00% 15.00% 0.00% 15.00%
3 11.00% 21.00% 0.00% 18.00%
4 29.00% 41.00% 0.00% 20.00%
5 36.00% 48.00% 0.00% 27.00%
6 50.00% 59.00% 1.00% 31.00%
7 66.00% 71.00% 2.00% 36.00%
8 84.00% 86.00% 5.00% 40.00%
9 94.00% 95.00% 9.00% 51.00%
10 98.00% 98.00% 12.00% 59.00%
11 100.00% 100.00% 13.00% 62.00%
12 100.00% 100.00% 19.00% 73.00%
13 100.00% 100.00% 22.00% 77.00%
14 100.00% 100.00% 28.00% 80.00%
15 100.00% 100.00% 39.00% 85.00%
16 100.00% 100.00% 53.00% 90.00%
17 100.00% 100.00% 72.00% 93.00%
18 100.00% 100.00% 92.00% 97.00%
19 100.00% 100.00% 95.00% 98.00%
20 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%
And the same for the aggregate total:
Value T2Cast T2Onboard T2Life T3Life
0 0.00% 2.16% 0.00% 11.64%
1 0.86% 3.02% 0.00% 14.22%
2 5.60% 15.52% 0.43% 16.81%
3 10.78% 19.40% 0.43% 20.69%
4 30.17% 41.81% 0.43% 24.14%
5 39.22% 50.43% 0.43% 29.31%
6 53.45% 62.50% 1.29% 33.62%
7 67.24% 71.98% 2.59% 37.50%
8 83.19% 85.34% 4.31% 42.67%
9 91.81% 93.10% 8.19% 50.00%
10 96.98% 97.41% 12.07% 55.17%
11 99.14% 99.14% 13.79% 59.91%
12 99.57% 99.57% 18.53% 71.98%
13 99.57% 99.57% 21.12% 77.16%
14 99.57% 99.57% 30.17% 82.76%
15 99.57% 99.57% 43.10% 88.79%
16 100.00% 100.00% 57.33% 93.53%
17 100.00% 100.00% 72.84% 95.69%
18 100.00% 100.00% 91.81% 97.84%
19 100.00% 100.00% 93.97% 99.14%
20 100.00% 100.00% 98.71% 100.00%
21 100.00% 100.00% 99.57% 100.00%
22 100.00% 100.00% 99.57% 100.00%
23 100.00% 100.00% 99.57% 100.00%
24 100.00% 100.00% 99.57% 100.00%
25 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%
Wild Cantor.
He is useful in the same ways Manamorphose is. Can enable a Bushwhacker by itself with 2 lands on the field, can make the transition between HH to Bushwhacker on the chain but, unlike Manamorphose, he has a 1/1 body. It's not that great, but still a body.
I still think Mutagenic is better overall, but maybe Cantor is better than Manamorphose.
WGUBR 5c Humans
GWR Naya Zoo
Legacy:
GW GW Maverick
R Goblins