Took the new Todd Anderson list to a FNM... got top 4.
Rd1. Won 2-0 vs GW Hatebears
Rd2. Won 2-1 vs Burn
Rd3. Won 2-1 vs GW Hatebears
Rd4. Draw Top 8
Quarterfinals
Won 2-1 vs Storm
Semifinals
Lost 1-2 vs GW Hatebears
The list is so solid, and the deck is so much fun to play... Thalia is a HUGE problem and is really annoying. PTE is a rough card as well, so i am thinking of adding 2-3 pact of negation but i dont know what to cut. I do want to cut the 2 sleight of hand and add 2 Serum Visions.
Let me know your thoughts on the SB also, was thinking of adding Leyline of Sanctity if a lot of Jund is played.
I think Sleight of hand is better than serum visions in this deck. This is a combo deck, serum forces you to draw the top card then scry 2. Sure it lets you setup your next draw or two but sleight of hand is going to let you see two cards which is huge. In a deck so devoted to its combo you really want to see the extra card rather than set-up the next turn.
Yup. Sleight of Hand is always the better card in combo decks as it let's you actually filter through cards instead of randomly drawing you a card. It's quite good for finding that combo piece you were missing and going off the same turn.
Congrats on the top 4! I wouldn't change the deck at all. Emrakul is still a brutal card to land against hatebears. Discard is annoying, but I don't see it as something worth adding almost uncastable leylines for. Discard genuinely doesn't hurt us as badly as it does other combo decks.
Just stopping by to give an update on how the Gristlebrand deck has been doing. Main additions were to add red because it is way to valuable to not include. It has since gone 3-2 ad 2-2 again. Still waiting on getting into that top 3 with it.
Some of the nice additions were the Bolts which provided some reach after hitting once with Griselbrand. The Faithless Lootings are also very good like they are in Assualt Loam. They work much the same way and allowed the deck to have lower numbers on graveyard centric cards. Any ideas on what could be done to improve it next?
Not sure I like the red splash. While Faithless is obviously a nice addition, you've further cut away the legendary creature base to the point where you're very all in on getting the Griselbrand combo and unlike the Fury versions, you aren't quite guaranteed a win of a single reanimate or even 2. Here, there's no Emrakul, no Borborygmos, nothing else that can be reanimated to win a game if someone manages to Surgical your Griselbrand. At that point your only backup plan is Bloodghasts and bolts, which very well just may not get there in many games, especially if the bolts have to be used on creatures instead of the opponent.
I'd strongly consider a man land or three. A couple of Treetop Village or Raging Ravine would give you a solid clock that's somewhat hard to remove, easy to recur with Loam, and still gives you mana. It also gives you at least one more out to Grafdigger's Cage, which shuts down both ghasts and the Goryo's plan.
The RB(u) versions, and some of the other loam-based versions run between 5 and 10 goryo's targets. I'd also consider at least 1 or two other targets for Goryo's, many of which have been used in list variations in the past:
Just something, anything, which you could reliably expect to change the game's flow in one turn when reanimated. That was why I originally suggested at least 1 Thrun over the goyfs. Hardcastable as a great effect, but even a 4/4 haste reanimated for one turn could be sufficient to close out a tight game.
did we ever try Sundial of the Infinite in an attempt to circumvent the end of turn triggers that are placed on our reanimated creatures?
while goryo's vengeance delayed trigger is on the stack, taping sundial would in an effect remove that delay trigger by resolving. the same goes for footsteps of the goryo and through the breach.
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did we ever try Sundial of the Infinite in an attempt to circumvent the end of turn triggers that are placed on our reanimated creatures?
while goryo's vengeance delayed trigger is on the stack, taping sundial would in an effect remove that delay trigger by resolving. the same goes for footsteps of the goryo and through the breach.
the same is true if we have 1 white for cloudshift
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since we don't have entomb in modern we need to up the creature count to compensate, these are my creature choices, yours might be different, increased creature count is just a fact when dealing with a these sorts of reanimator decks.
compared to legacy we might be able to sort of mimic show and tell back up plan with a synergy of fetch land for a single dryad arbor to combo with polymorph.
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[I]Some call it dig through time, when really your digging through CRAP!
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since we don't have entomb in modern we need to up the creature count to compensate, these are my creature choices, yours might be different, increased creature count is just a fact when dealing with a these sorts of reanimator decks.
compared to legacy we might be able to sort of mimic show and tell back up plan with a synergy of fetch land for a single dryad arbor to combo with polymorph.
true ape definitely a road block, but if our opponent is over confidenly hiding behind relics this is a cheap means of getting around them and keeping a creature on the board permanently, unlike through the breach.
originally in that mock up list i was thinking of using footsteps of the goryo but it doesn't give a creature haste, which is why i wrote in the whip of erebos. that way one can reanimate as soon as 4 mana is available over waiting a turn after 4 mana. depends on preference i guess.
over all though whip activation plus sundial is 5 mana which is cheaper than going through the breach and sundial.
i'm not sure how many opponents will fall for it but if you land sundial at 2 mana or appear to be tapped out and have a spirit guide in hand you can trap your opponent when they try and do typical end of your turn activities such as,
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Not sure I like the red splash. While Faithless is obviously a nice addition, you've further cut away the legendary creature base to the point where you're very all in on getting the Griselbrand combo and unlike the Fury versions, you aren't quite guaranteed a win of a single reanimate or even 2. Here, there's no Emrakul, no Borborygmos, nothing else that can be reanimated to win a game if someone manages to Surgical your Griselbrand. At that point your only backup plan is Bloodghasts and bolts, which very well just may not get there in many games, especially if the bolts have to be used on creatures instead of the opponent.
I'd strongly consider a man land or three. A couple of Treetop Village or Raging Ravine would give you a solid clock that's somewhat hard to remove, easy to recur with Loam, and still gives you mana. It also gives you at least one more out to Grafdigger's Cage, which shuts down both ghasts and the Goryo's plan.
The RB(u) versions, and some of the other loam-based versions run between 5 and 10 goryo's targets. I'd also consider at least 1 or two other targets for Goryo's, many of which have been used in list variations in the past:
Just something, anything, which you could reliably expect to change the game's flow in one turn when reanimated. That was why I originally suggested at least 1 Thrun over the goyfs. Hardcastable as a great effect, but even a 4/4 haste reanimated for one turn could be sufficient to close out a tight game.
Very well thought out advice. I'll look into upping the legendaries again and looking for some manlands. When you suggested them though, are you speaking as a midrange backup plan for the occasion you can't reanimate on turns 2 or 3? because that is what I took it as.
did we ever try Sundial of the Infinite in an attempt to circumvent the end of turn triggers that are placed on our reanimated creatures?
while goryo's vengeance delayed trigger is on the stack, taping sundial would in an effect remove that delay trigger by resolving. the same goes for footsteps of the goryo and through the breach.
I looked into this, but it feels like you re playing a bad card just to make another slightly better. It's almost as if you are now playing a 3 card combo when it only needs to be two. None the less, the value you get from negating the trigger is great. Could Squelch also work as it serves the same purpose but a bit more versatile? And it cantrips.
Very well thought out advice. I'll look into upping the legendaries again and looking for some manlands. When you suggested them though, are you speaking as a midrange backup plan for the occasion you can't reanimate on turns 2 or 3? because that is what I took it as.
Pretty much.
The Kahleya and Todd Anderson style lists are relatively all in on the combo. They're running multiple redundant pieces, usually 8 of each, (Goryo + Breach, Griselbrand + Emrakul) to help ensure they hit them on in the first few turns. They're running draw and discard spells to dig (Faithless, Izzet Charm, Night's Whisper + Lightning Axe) to ensure they can get to the pieces and put them where they belong. Then they're adding in Fury or Soul Spike or similar to guarantee that when they do hit the combo, they only need to hit it once. There's very little room left over in those shells for anything but the most minimal control to ensure they can survive to go off (Bolts + Thoughtseizes, and even the latter do double duty as self-discarding your Goryo's targets). And the goal is to go off very very fast. Preferably on turn 2, and not much later than turn 4. Otherwise their very meager control suite is going to be overwhelmed and they'll probably lose to the opponent's gameplan.
If you can't maintain the density of critical draws necessary to match that (which, you really can't, if you're opening up room for things like Smallpox, Loam, Decay, etc), then you have to at least pay some lip service to the idea that you might not actually draw into the combo, or that it might not be effective enough to kill them when you do. Pox/Loam shells are usually pretty grindy control-ish-midrange-ish strategies. Smallpox, like Thoughtseize or Izzet Charm, does double duty as both a control element and a combo-setup element. But ultimately, if you can't get the combo (Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void in play, Surgical Extraction, Slaughter Games on Goryo's, etc), you have to have some other way to put pressure on them, or they'll eventually dig out of the hole and execute whatever their deck's plan is. That's where things like manlands and hardcastable or cheatable resilient bodies like Bloodghast or Thrun come into play. Combined with taxing resources, they can put enough pressure on that your opponent is forced to do nothing but deal with your plays, rather than advance their own.
Sam Pardee's take on this list, which boopmaster1 reworked a few pages ago, meshes pretty well with your Pox take. You'd probably swap out some extra Raven's Crimes and Darkblasts for Smallpoxes and Decays, maybe trim some Loams and Unburial Rites and a fattie or two for some resilient threats like Bloodghast.
With good luck, you can just Combo off turn 2 like every other GoryoGrisel deck. Crime or Thoughtseize yourself turn 1 to discard a Fatty, then Goryo's on 2 before they can hope to go off. If your plan fails because you don't have the cards or they counter everything you play, or they path your fatty or whatever, you move to the pox/loam strategy. Kill all their lands, strip their hands, and eventually stick Thrun and some 'ghasts, animate your Ravine or Lavaclaw, and attrition them to victory.
did we ever try Sundial of the Infinite in an attempt to circumvent the end of turn triggers that are placed on our reanimated creatures?
while goryo's vengeance delayed trigger is on the stack, taping sundial would in an effect remove that delay trigger by resolving. the same goes for footsteps of the goryo and through the breach.
I looked into this, but it feels like you re playing a bad card just to make another slightly better. It's almost as if you are now playing a 3 card combo when it only needs to be two. None the less, the value you get from negating the trigger is great. Could Squelch also work as it serves the same purpose but a bit more versatile? And it cantrips.
unfortunately no. squelch says activated ability and were dealing with a triggered ability. to be specific i've heard judges call it a "delayed trigger ability" (from cards like goryo's vengeance). trickbind would work if you wanted to use a card with that casting cost.
i wouldn't write squelch off completely though, it does stop graveyard hate, can stop an opponents fetchland, pod will turn red in the face if the creature they podded away was for nothing (because you squelched the pod activated ability).
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unfortunately no. squelch says activated ability and were dealing with a triggered ability. to be specific i've heard judges call it a "delayed trigger ability" (from cards like goryo's vengeance). trickbind would work if you wanted to use a card with that casting cost.
i wouldn't write squelch off completely though, it does stop graveyard hate, can stop an opponents fetchland, pod will turn red in the face if the creature they podded away was for nothing (because you squelched the pod activated ability).
Ah, my mistake. Although I think Trickbind is the same level of narrow card that Sundial is, but it does have slightly more applications I guess.
So given it's Modern season and there's a few major tournaments within easy travel distance for me the next few months, I'm looking at variations on this deck as strong contenders for what I want to try. I think this deck has a lot of potential, and am trying to figure out what version is best for walking into an unknown field, given the current overall Modern meta.
As I see, it there's really about 5 major variants, each with a bit of play as to the exact cards within them.
The first set are those that keep the full Griselbrand + Emrakul package. They're more or less all in on the package of cheating one of the big fatties into play to close the game on the spot. They've got the highest chance of a nut draw win on turn 2 or even 1, but tend to fall apart a bit under pressure from decks with sufficient disruption or control like Twin, Scapeshift, and certain WB/x or GB/x deck. If their first attempt to go off gets handled, they usually can't quickly rebuild.
Classic BR, with or without Fury of the Horde. Straight up, with modest amounts of interaction in the form of bolts, axes, and discard to protect until the combo goes off.
Grixis variant like Anderson's, which gives up some consistency in the manabase and most early interaction for consistency in the combo by adding more looting effects like Izzet Charm, See Beyond or Ideas Unbound.
Tin Fists variant, which goes for a somewhat horrifying 5c manabase in order to be able to hardcast the fatties for WUBRG via Fist of Suns as early as turn 4, skipping the worst drawbacks of Goryo's/Breach.
The second set of options are mostly adding green for the ability to go long in the face of interaction. They often forego Emrakul for Borborygmos Enraged, relying on his ability to fling lands at people like Lightning Bolts. As a group, these decks tend to lack the explosive turn 2 win percentage. They can do it, but usually they play a little longer game, letting them play against control and control-combo decks like Twin at the potential cost of losing to fast all in combo and aggro decks. They also tend to have at least viable non-combo plans, beating down with Lotleth Trolls, Necrotic Oozes, or playing enough lands to even hardcast the fatties. Also as an advantage for the Ooze decks in particular, they can actually win at instant speed in response to hate.
The Necrotic Ooze decks, which allow for being able to not deal with actually reanimating a fatty, but instead using their abilities from the graveyard via Ooze. Major advantage is playing straight through counters with Cavern of Souls on Ooze and potentially having other instant-win ooze combos like Kiki-Jiki/Mogg Fanatic.
The Life from the Loam based decks, such as those based around Sam Pardee's Borborygmos Vengeance deck, the reimage by boopmaster and the new Smallpox-based deck by Torpf. These accelerate their looting via dredge and add a strong control element with discard, so they can afford to win more slowly.
There's also a few more variants I don't believe have seen serious play, but do have some potentially good ideas. However, while I normally like to brew with such offbeat combos, this time I'm actually looking at challenging myself to go deep into the field, and maybe make day 2 of a GP at some point. So those are off the table for now.
I have (or can fairly easily get) the card set to be able to run any of these variants, so it's really a matter of deciding which version I should start putting in serious repetitions with in order to learn it inside and out.
I've played the straight RB Fury variant a few times at FNM level events, and enjoyed the turn 2 kills, but had a lot of trouble with both Twin and UWR control matchups and with those occasional hands where you just miss one combo piece for too many turns in a row, even through looting. I've also tried an Ooze version in a few casual games, which did moderately well against Merfolk, but not terribly well at all against Affinity (being about a half turn to turn too slow).
It feels like the Ooze or Loam versions of the deck have a higher skill cap to them, in that there's a lot more potential interaction available and a much better resiliency against a deck with discard, counters or early removal. But with the loss of DRS, they're a bit slower, while the various all-in versions obviously can just flat win more often on turn 2 or 3, beating out other fast combo decks.
What are people's opinions on which of these decks is best for a larger tournament for the next month or two, and why?
Rd1. Won 2-0 vs GW Hatebears
Rd2. Won 2-1 vs Burn
Rd3. Won 2-1 vs GW Hatebears
Rd4. Draw Top 8
Quarterfinals
Won 2-1 vs Storm
Semifinals
Lost 1-2 vs GW Hatebears
The list is so solid, and the deck is so much fun to play... Thalia is a HUGE problem and is really annoying. PTE is a rough card as well, so i am thinking of adding 2-3 pact of negation but i dont know what to cut. I do want to cut the 2 sleight of hand and add 2 Serum Visions.
Let me know your thoughts on the SB also, was thinking of adding Leyline of Sanctity if a lot of Jund is played.
Congrats on the top 4! I wouldn't change the deck at all. Emrakul is still a brutal card to land against hatebears. Discard is annoying, but I don't see it as something worth adding almost uncastable leylines for. Discard genuinely doesn't hurt us as badly as it does other combo decks.
Modern: Jund Legacy: RUG Delver EDH: Captain Sisay
2 Bloodghast
4 Griselbrand
Other Stuff
3 Liliana of the Veil
2 Pentad Prism
Instants
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Thoughtseize
3 Raven's Crime
4 Faithless Looting
3 Smallpox
2 Life from the Loam
Lands
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Swamp
2 Forest
1 Mountain
Some of the nice additions were the Bolts which provided some reach after hitting once with Griselbrand. The Faithless Lootings are also very good like they are in Assualt Loam. They work much the same way and allowed the deck to have lower numbers on graveyard centric cards. Any ideas on what could be done to improve it next?
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
I'd strongly consider a man land or three. A couple of Treetop Village or Raging Ravine would give you a solid clock that's somewhat hard to remove, easy to recur with Loam, and still gives you mana. It also gives you at least one more out to Grafdigger's Cage, which shuts down both ghasts and the Goryo's plan.
The RB(u) versions, and some of the other loam-based versions run between 5 and 10 goryo's targets. I'd also consider at least 1 or two other targets for Goryo's, many of which have been used in list variations in the past:
Just something, anything, which you could reliably expect to change the game's flow in one turn when reanimated. That was why I originally suggested at least 1 Thrun over the goyfs. Hardcastable as a great effect, but even a 4/4 haste reanimated for one turn could be sufficient to close out a tight game.
while goryo's vengeance delayed trigger is on the stack, taping sundial would in an effect remove that delay trigger by resolving. the same goes for footsteps of the goryo and through the breach.
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Interesting, what would you cut for it? Fury?
using sundial turns on other legendary options as well. such as iona, shield of emeria, elesh norn grand cenobite for untility purposes.
the same is true if we have 1 white for cloudshift
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2 iona, shield of emeria
2 sheoldred whispering one
2 Godo, Bandit Warlord
4 simian spirit guide
2 batterskull
4 Sundial of the Infinite
4 whip of erebos
4 goryo's vengeance
4 faithless looting
4 izzet charm
4 thoughtseize
what it might look like if running sundial.
since we don't have entomb in modern we need to up the creature count to compensate, these are my creature choices, yours might be different, increased creature count is just a fact when dealing with a these sorts of reanimator decks.
compared to legacy we might be able to sort of mimic show and tell back up plan with a synergy of fetch land for a single dryad arbor to combo with polymorph.
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But then you'd need to remove the apes
true ape definitely a road block, but if our opponent is over confidenly hiding behind relics this is a cheap means of getting around them and keeping a creature on the board permanently, unlike through the breach.
originally in that mock up list i was thinking of using footsteps of the goryo but it doesn't give a creature haste, which is why i wrote in the whip of erebos. that way one can reanimate as soon as 4 mana is available over waiting a turn after 4 mana. depends on preference i guess.
over all though whip activation plus sundial is 5 mana which is cheaper than going through the breach and sundial.
i'm not sure how many opponents will fall for it but if you land sundial at 2 mana or appear to be tapped out and have a spirit guide in hand you can trap your opponent when they try and do typical end of your turn activities such as,
-crack there fetchland for a tapped shock
-cast a blue card draw spell, (such as peer through depths , telling time etc.)
-flash in restoration angel
any of which can be exiled from the stack by activating sundial.
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I looked into this, but it feels like you re playing a bad card just to make another slightly better. It's almost as if you are now playing a 3 card combo when it only needs to be two. None the less, the value you get from negating the trigger is great. Could Squelch also work as it serves the same purpose but a bit more versatile? And it cantrips.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
Pretty much.
The Kahleya and Todd Anderson style lists are relatively all in on the combo. They're running multiple redundant pieces, usually 8 of each, (Goryo + Breach, Griselbrand + Emrakul) to help ensure they hit them on in the first few turns. They're running draw and discard spells to dig (Faithless, Izzet Charm, Night's Whisper + Lightning Axe) to ensure they can get to the pieces and put them where they belong. Then they're adding in Fury or Soul Spike or similar to guarantee that when they do hit the combo, they only need to hit it once. There's very little room left over in those shells for anything but the most minimal control to ensure they can survive to go off (Bolts + Thoughtseizes, and even the latter do double duty as self-discarding your Goryo's targets). And the goal is to go off very very fast. Preferably on turn 2, and not much later than turn 4. Otherwise their very meager control suite is going to be overwhelmed and they'll probably lose to the opponent's gameplan.
If you can't maintain the density of critical draws necessary to match that (which, you really can't, if you're opening up room for things like Smallpox, Loam, Decay, etc), then you have to at least pay some lip service to the idea that you might not actually draw into the combo, or that it might not be effective enough to kill them when you do. Pox/Loam shells are usually pretty grindy control-ish-midrange-ish strategies. Smallpox, like Thoughtseize or Izzet Charm, does double duty as both a control element and a combo-setup element. But ultimately, if you can't get the combo (Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void in play, Surgical Extraction, Slaughter Games on Goryo's, etc), you have to have some other way to put pressure on them, or they'll eventually dig out of the hole and execute whatever their deck's plan is. That's where things like manlands and hardcastable or cheatable resilient bodies like Bloodghast or Thrun come into play. Combined with taxing resources, they can put enough pressure on that your opponent is forced to do nothing but deal with your plays, rather than advance their own.
Sam Pardee's take on this list, which boopmaster1 reworked a few pages ago, meshes pretty well with your Pox take. You'd probably swap out some extra Raven's Crimes and Darkblasts for Smallpoxes and Decays, maybe trim some Loams and Unburial Rites and a fattie or two for some resilient threats like Bloodghast.
Maybe something like this:
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Borborygmos Enraged
4 Griselbrand
4 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Unburial Rites
4 Mulch
3 Life from the Loam
3 Thoughtseize
4 Smallpox
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Marsh Flats
1 Blood Crypt
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Swamp
2 Forest
1 Raging Ravine
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
3 Ghost Quarter
With good luck, you can just Combo off turn 2 like every other GoryoGrisel deck. Crime or Thoughtseize yourself turn 1 to discard a Fatty, then Goryo's on 2 before they can hope to go off. If your plan fails because you don't have the cards or they counter everything you play, or they path your fatty or whatever, you move to the pox/loam strategy. Kill all their lands, strip their hands, and eventually stick Thrun and some 'ghasts, animate your Ravine or Lavaclaw, and attrition them to victory.
unfortunately no. squelch says activated ability and were dealing with a triggered ability. to be specific i've heard judges call it a "delayed trigger ability" (from cards like goryo's vengeance). trickbind would work if you wanted to use a card with that casting cost.
i wouldn't write squelch off completely though, it does stop graveyard hate, can stop an opponents fetchland, pod will turn red in the face if the creature they podded away was for nothing (because you squelched the pod activated ability).
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Vintage will rise again! Buy a Mox today!
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[I]Some call it dig through time, when really your digging through CRAP!
Merfolk! showing magic players what a shower is since Lorwyn!
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge
As I see, it there's really about 5 major variants, each with a bit of play as to the exact cards within them.
The first set are those that keep the full Griselbrand + Emrakul package. They're more or less all in on the package of cheating one of the big fatties into play to close the game on the spot. They've got the highest chance of a nut draw win on turn 2 or even 1, but tend to fall apart a bit under pressure from decks with sufficient disruption or control like Twin, Scapeshift, and certain WB/x or GB/x deck. If their first attempt to go off gets handled, they usually can't quickly rebuild.
The second set of options are mostly adding green for the ability to go long in the face of interaction. They often forego Emrakul for Borborygmos Enraged, relying on his ability to fling lands at people like Lightning Bolts. As a group, these decks tend to lack the explosive turn 2 win percentage. They can do it, but usually they play a little longer game, letting them play against control and control-combo decks like Twin at the potential cost of losing to fast all in combo and aggro decks. They also tend to have at least viable non-combo plans, beating down with Lotleth Trolls, Necrotic Oozes, or playing enough lands to even hardcast the fatties. Also as an advantage for the Ooze decks in particular, they can actually win at instant speed in response to hate.
There's also a few more variants I don't believe have seen serious play, but do have some potentially good ideas. However, while I normally like to brew with such offbeat combos, this time I'm actually looking at challenging myself to go deep into the field, and maybe make day 2 of a GP at some point. So those are off the table for now.
I have (or can fairly easily get) the card set to be able to run any of these variants, so it's really a matter of deciding which version I should start putting in serious repetitions with in order to learn it inside and out.
I've played the straight RB Fury variant a few times at FNM level events, and enjoyed the turn 2 kills, but had a lot of trouble with both Twin and UWR control matchups and with those occasional hands where you just miss one combo piece for too many turns in a row, even through looting. I've also tried an Ooze version in a few casual games, which did moderately well against Merfolk, but not terribly well at all against Affinity (being about a half turn to turn too slow).
It feels like the Ooze or Loam versions of the deck have a higher skill cap to them, in that there's a lot more potential interaction available and a much better resiliency against a deck with discard, counters or early removal. But with the loss of DRS, they're a bit slower, while the various all-in versions obviously can just flat win more often on turn 2 or 3, beating out other fast combo decks.
What are people's opinions on which of these decks is best for a larger tournament for the next month or two, and why?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.