thanks for tips, money wont be a option. lol jsut slowly getting it. I wont do mesas till.... well whenever they come out :(. I love Zoo so many good variations.
I actually have photos in my article HERE where I talk very briefly about my card choices, and how the deck has fared thus far. if you've got pics send me a link.
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Currently Running: MODERN Big Zoo, UR Tempo Twin and U Merfolk COMMANDER White Soldiers and Black Vampires STANDARD Sealed and Draft
Won against Gruul Zoo 2-0 (nothing newsworthy. Coco shone)
Lost against Affinity 1-2 (it feels like I can only get to keep on game 2 if I have at least some kind of hate in order for me to keep. Regular good hands do not cut it)
Won against Grixis Control 2-1 (Went to extra turns, both with empty hands. I get to drew a CoCo on turn 3. Swing for the win on game 5. Felt great)
Lost against Grixis Control 0-2 (I felt like my lack of experience shone. I kept an iffy first game hand, with a lot of 3 drops, when in this matchup I think I learned that you need to have a lot of early pressure in order for you to win. Either way I think it is a winnable matchup, but the pilot also drew and played pretty good)
Its provabably just an experience thing. Alot of players such as myself, crazy cow, and osackpo, have played the deck a long while and consister anything playing island almost a free win. You just need to know when to makenwhat call. Its not hard, its generally the same choices over and over, just it becomes second nature after awhile.
Affinity, as always is tough, but i love to play against it. You just need to decide if your faster than them or not( which is generally onlu the case when you have a nut draw and they have a slow hand.). Play control otherwise.
I do love casting coco on turn three against affinity and finding kataki or qasali pridemage. On that note, does anyone also run something like reclamation sage?
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Modern UB Tezzerator UBW Gifts B 8Rack
Legacy RB Goblins
went to tourney, forgot it was game day in standard. creature heavy for coco. may take vexing out for another pridmage. other than that, this is my list. still trying for a sidedeck. lots of control and a few cascade decks
I think it's highly unlikely BFZ will provide us with anything playable or good enough in terms of 1 drops that will slot into Zoo. Even with the ability to cast t2 3-drops off hierarch and the value generated by CoCo, having too many 3 drops in this deck feels really 'clunky' vs faster decks and decks packing a lot of cheap disruption. Casting cards like goyf and especially Pridemage is simply too much value to ignore here and allows us to keep up mana for our own removal / qasali activation. Even though this iteration of Zoo is more 'midrangey' we still want to keep as low a curve as possible.
I went to an IQ yesterday. Top 4'd and ended up splitting. Only game I lost to was affinity/robots. Matches were infect, grixis control, burn, robots, and the mirror. I'll post my deck and every thing if any one is interested.
I went to an IQ yesterday. Top 4'd and ended up splitting. Only game I lost to was affinity/robots. Matches were infect, grixis control, burn, robots, and the mirror. I'll post my deck and every thing if any one is interested.
I went to an IQ yesterday. Top 4'd and ended up splitting. Only game I lost to was affinity/robots. Matches were infect, grixis control, burn, robots, and the mirror. I'll post my deck and every thing if any one is interested.
Guys, I've been wondering about the new CoCo lists going around and one thought came to my mind.. At what point will Zoo stop being an aggressive deck and instead be a slightly faster midrange deck relying only on dorks turn 1, just a few turn 2 plays, and loaded on 3 drops and Company?
This kinda looks like the road the deck is taking in recent times, so if Battle for Zendikar brought up another 1 drop with power level similar to Noble Hierarch, will the deck move to 8 1-CC mana dorks? If that happens, 2 drops might become obsolete since the best start would involve a dork turn 1 and a 3 drop turn 2. Is Tarmogoyf going to be good enough then to still keep 2-drops in zoo decks? If that happens to not be the case anymore, it also becomes hard to justify other "utility" 2-drops in the main deck such as Qasali Pridemage and Scavenging Ooze.
This might be a little bit of a stretch, and is still only hypothetical thinking, but it could be a new way to see the deck, which would become a more midrange list and thus would probably completely change what cards to look for, and maybe would bring back some cards into consideration.
EDIT: Messed up with card tags.
That deck already exist. It's called little kid abzan. Anymore more midrange and you become jund.
Our advantage is playing red for lightning bolt and wild nacatl.
I can't imagine Wotc printing a dork better than nacatl anytime soon, and I belive they've even said that their moving away from really powerful 1 mana dorks.
I'll explain why I rank them as such. So for 1 mana you need to be 3/3 or higher. It makes a ton of differnce from 2/X because with nacatl in two swings youre already a full swing up over kird ape and the like, at 5 swings, your a full 2. Its litterally 33% better. Cant agrue that.
Noble hits the same deal here. She gets in for more damage than Ape and the like. Now I can hear you saying "She exalts maybe 2-3 times a game, thats hardly more damage." But if she ramps me into a turn 2 knight, then she IS getting in for damage. She made me cast knight early, there for that extra damage on the swing is because of her. So it counts.
After that I rate baby gideon highest. Reason is really simple actually. He grows. Problem with kird ape and the rest is they stay the same. After so much power creep on creatures, these guys cant compete anymore. You need a creature whos good early and late. Noble and nacatl does this. Gideon (and E1) are the only other creatures that can do this as well. Basically turning from a savannah Loin to a Smiter is great, but he also has other applications as well (indestruct, untap for knight) Hes a great zoo creature, he just lacks support.
After this comes kird ape. Hes a stable body and does what he needs to, but the great have fallen far. You have a world of beaters at the same mana cost who do more damage than him, or do more damage "faster" because of haste. his 3 toughness butt is the only saving grace. Hes pretty easly the diffention of "Meh" creature now. Hes just outclassed.
E1 comes in around here, but Id rather have him over kird ape. The problem is you need to run kird ape and ilk to run him. If a second nacatl were ever printed, then he suddenly because way more playble. Litterally the only thing holding him back is the lack of 2 easy 3/3 one mana drop guys.
Loam lion comes after, and only because it can be rending vollyed or deathmarked. After the lion, its all fast hitting guys who are weak in the late game. Zoo wants dudes who hit hard and fast, but not at the cost of their playablity midgame, thats why they are lower ranked, even though they are arguably better cards than kird ape.
Alright, with all that out of the way, why did I bring this all up? Because it shows how lacking the "classic zoo" is. The only really good small zoo attack, aggro, grrr, cards currently existing are E1, Nacatl, Gideon (which you have to limit to 2-3, probably 2), and dromokas command, (bolt and path and boros) your not lacking in your spells, your lacking in "good" one drops, by about 1-2 cards. E1 is only playable with 8ish 3/X one drops, and 4ish 2/X. Anything else, you'll have to jump through hoops to make it worth the slot, like adding in X/3s, or swiftspear who actually limits your creature count.
Gideons pretty good, but sadly not 3/X which means hes relegated to the bottom tier of your evolving 1 drops, meaning hes worse than E1 (in this hypothetical senerio, hes still plenty powerful) Youre 2 and 3 drops are fine in our usual line up of beaters and utility. Your just missing a second version of nacatl.
If I could make up a design for 2nd nacatl it would be something like
Second Nacatl- G
This creature gets 1+/1+ if you control a basic land.
This creature gets 1+/1+ if your opponent controls a nonbasic land.
1/1
Something like that would allow Zoo to actually be worth testing going aggro aggro again, because it would enable you to be faster clockwise (you can actually reliably race rdw) while turning on E1 as a nacatl number 3 without having to worsen your deck to do so, while also maintaining an edge in later game combat. With out a key card like this, you lose Gideon and E1 as backup support cards, and you're left with a lackluster core.
This isnt to say CoCo zoo is big zoo, hardly is. CoCo is just a way to get back in the game against removal. It very very rarely tutors answers or grinds wins midrange. The deck is still FIRMLY aggro. Just instead of going turn 1: 2 damage, turn 2: 5 damage, Turn 3: 7 Damage, turn 4: 3 Damage, turn 5: 0 damage. It goes Turn 1:0 damage, turn 2: 0 damage, turn 3: 5 damage, turn 4: 11 Damage, turn 5: 15 damage. While it does less dam,age turn 1/2 it does more turn 3/4. Still ends the game around turn 5. This version however, doesnt loose damage as the game goes on, it keeps going. Its more resilient rather than fast.
Edit: Hope that was a good insight. Its one of the parts of zoo I knew best, as I'm always trying to push the more aggressive smaller zoo. It just is missing elements to compete.
Edit 2: Original Zendikar gave us goblin guide, steepe lynx, and loam lion. Dont count it out.
The side board is more then a bit of a mess. Wasn't sure what do to with it as this was only the second time I've played it. Also, I'll warn you, I have a horrible memory but I'll tell you the highlights as best as I can remember.
Round 1 vs infect
Game 1, bolt and Nacatl win everything.
Game 2, would have been the same as game one had I not forgot to play a land on my turn before he become immense'd
game 3, bolt and goyf do work.
2-1
Round 2 vs grixis control
games were really fast and simple. I don't know if he didn't really draw any creatures to block because aside from bolt and tasigur I didn't see much. Also, Tasigur ate a path every time and he never was able to do much.
2-0
Round 3 Burn (my ride)
Game 1, I draw all my Nacatls and he runs out of gas too soon.
Game 2, I don't see my fire walkers but my ScOoze does enough work to keep me alive through the burn he has and Dromoka's Command ends up being the major winner here. Having him sac his eidolon of the great revel and fight his swift spear was amazing.
2-0
Round 4 Robots
I've only play affinity/robots like 3 times in total and when I did I was playing infect. Not much to say here, game one I was killed with inkmoth Nexus + cranial plating. game two I didn't have any green after I got my Magus out because he killed my Noble.
0-2
Round 5 Twin
We knew if we drew we were both going into top 8 so we drew and just watched others play.
Round 6 Coco Zoo
Game 1, Nacatl, Noble, and Kytheon in my opening with 2 lands and a bolt. drew into another creature and the opponent didn't seem to. I ended up getting to flip Kytheon and He did some major work in this match. I used him once or twice in a few other matches but he was a game winner. Near the end my opponent had a 4/5 goyf and I made him attack Gideon, CoCo'd into two 5/5 KotR and that ended that game quickly.
game 2, we honesly had very similar draws. Like, VERY similar. He fetches, I fetch, He coco's at the end of my turn, attacks, and I Coco. Just a lot of fun, but I ended up winning end the end.
2-0
Got to top 4, we all split. I got 12 packs of origins (mostly junk) and $63. all in all I had a lot of fun and I'll be sure to keep playing Zoo! If anyone has a little bit of ideas on possible changes or a better side board hit me up!
Guys, I've been wondering about the new CoCo lists going around and one thought came to my mind.. At what point will Zoo stop being an aggressive deck and instead be a slightly faster midrange deck relying only on dorks turn 1, just a few turn 2 plays, and loaded on 3 drops and Company?
This kinda looks like the road the deck is taking in recent times, so if Battle for Zendikar brought up another 1 drop with power level similar to Noble Hierarch, will the deck move to 8 1-CC mana dorks? If that happens, 2 drops might become obsolete since the best start would involve a dork turn 1 and a 3 drop turn 2. Is Tarmogoyf going to be good enough then to still keep 2-drops in zoo decks? If that happens to not be the case anymore, it also becomes hard to justify other "utility" 2-drops in the main deck such as Qasali Pridemage and Scavenging Ooze.
This might be a little bit of a stretch, and is still only hypothetical thinking, but it could be a new way to see the deck, which would become a more midrange list and thus would probably completely change what cards to look for, and maybe would bring back some cards into consideration.
EDIT: Messed up with card tags.
With lightning bolt all around, that's quite a far imo. T1 mana dork is almost always a bolt magnet. If they kill your dork, and your 1st play is on T3 because you're running too little 2-drops,that's way too slow. You're not putting on pressure at all.
As an aggro-midrange deck, giving your opponent an extra turn where you're not doing anything is big in modern.
With that said, I think the current 2 drops we have are pretty good. The 'weakest' being pridemage. But even he has his uses in multiple matchups and exalted matters. Goyf is goyf and Scavenging ooze is just a powerhouse and does a lot of heavy lifting.
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
I've been thinking about sideboard options lately. Considering we revolve heavily around CoCo, I am focusing on "CoCo accessible" sideboard options, meaning creatures with converted mana cost 3 or less. Here are some interesting options:
Witchstalker/Mindsparker: both good against delver/control variants. Sulfur Elemental: good against tokens and for pumping our own guys against other aggro decks. Kataki, War's Wage: I like this card in addition Stony Silence because it can be grabbed off CoCo, it actually gets rid of artifacts rather then shutting them down. Phyrexian Revoker: A better Pithing Needle, basically one of our only answers to combo. Magus of the Moon: A better Blood Moon, considering that both of the major decks this affects (Amulet-Bloom and Tron) both use artifact/enchant removal (Nature's Claim), and therefore Magus is harder to remove for them.
Then of course there are the usual suspects, Thalia, Finks, Kor Firewalker, and Aven Mindcensor which CoCo can get and are solid sideboard options. Here are some non-CoCo accessible sideboard options that I haven't seen mentioned:
Eyes of the Wisent: Oh god to I love this card. Completely under appreciated. It just wrecks control. A neat thing is that this fuels two points of Tarmo, if they manage to remove it.
Luminarch Ascension: Another good option against control, a slower Eyes of the Wisent in my opinion.
Has anyone run manlands, and if so, with what success? I run 1 Treetop Village, which I usually grab off Knight in response to a board wipe. What about Raging Ravine and Stirring Wildwood? With Nacatl, I find it hard to pack typeless lands, but has anyone been successful with using lots of ETB tapped and utility lands?
Just to make clear, we dont revolve around company. But we do like using it. If i felt that i needed a better spell in my board that isnt a creature (forked bolt vs grim lavamancer) ill do that. Im not married to the card, but ill keep its use in mind.
Steppe and bog are the only cards worth using the etb tapped and isnt a man land. Soaring used to be used, but not since wolfrun came out. Feel free to test what ever you like, but most lands are winmore. Below is my list of lands that are even slightly playable, from most to least.
1. Wolfrun
2. Stirring wildwood
3. Horizon canopy
4. Ghost quarter
(From here it goes into depends on the deck)
5. Treetop village (if you are lower cmc curve)
6. Raging ravine (if you have 23 lands or more)
7. Senjiri steppe (if you run fragile but strong creatures like steepe lynx or baby gideon. Must run knight, only one of)
8. Bojuka bog (only in sideboard, only with knight, only a one of, only if you want to save sodeboard slots)
9. Slayers stronghold (only 1 of, only with knight, only if you are mostly
10. Arena (only one of, only with knight, only if your lacking burn for somereason like thalia main deck.
Also, any thoughts on Abbot of Keral Keep? Seems interesting, and Jund has had some moderate success with it as a "4 drop".
Finally, the last cute thing I wanted to talk about was Alesha, Who Smiles At Death. Apart from Tarmogoyf, she has great synergy with most of our creatures as they rely on pumps after hitting the field (Nacatl, Knight), in addition to the previously mentioned Huntmaster. She has a decent sized body. and her ability isn't that hard to activate. She is something I have tested and been successful with, but I still wanted to hear others' opinions on her.
Abbot is likely too slow for us and definitely too small of a body for the limited amount of non critter or land cards we usually run. Huntmaster is too slow and not enough of an impact imo and Ghorclan is great in small zoo as "removal"
As for Alesha, I don't like how fragile the body is for the ability.
MODERN Big Zoo, UR Tempo Twin and U Merfolk
COMMANDER White Soldiers and Black Vampires
STANDARD Sealed and Draft
EDIT: I JUST REALIZED THAT YOU WERE REFERRING TO IMAGES THAT I ALREADY POSTED. I DID NOT MEAN TO REPOST THE SAME IMAGES. I APOLOGIZE.
MODERN Big Zoo, UR Tempo Twin and U Merfolk
COMMANDER White Soldiers and Black Vampires
STANDARD Sealed and Draft
Won against Gruul Zoo 2-0 (nothing newsworthy. Coco shone)
Lost against Affinity 1-2 (it feels like I can only get to keep on game 2 if I have at least some kind of hate in order for me to keep. Regular good hands do not cut it)
Won against Grixis Control 2-1 (Went to extra turns, both with empty hands. I get to drew a CoCo on turn 3. Swing for the win on game 5. Felt great)
Lost against Grixis Control 0-2 (I felt like my lack of experience shone. I kept an iffy first game hand, with a lot of 3 drops, when in this matchup I think I learned that you need to have a lot of early pressure in order for you to win. Either way I think it is a winnable matchup, but the pilot also drew and played pretty good)
Affinity, as always is tough, but i love to play against it. You just need to decide if your faster than them or not( which is generally onlu the case when you have a nut draw and they have a slow hand.). Play control otherwise.
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
4 Wild nacatl
1 vexing devil
4 Tarmagoyf
2 Goblin Guide
3 scavenging ooze
4 loxodon smiter
4 Noble Hierarch
1 quasali pridemage
2 woolly throctar
3 kitchen finks
3 path to exile
3 collected company
3 lighting helix
4 Lightning bolt
1 arid mesa
1 bloodstained mire
4 windswept heath
4 woodland foothills
3 stomping ground
2 sacred foundry
1 temple garden
1 plains
1 mountain
1 forest
One of the upsides Naya has is being more aggressive than other CoCo builds.
WGUBR 5c Humans
GWR Naya Zoo
Legacy:
GW GW Maverick
R Goblins
always intrested
Go ahead and post! It's always good to share
That deck already exist. It's called little kid abzan. Anymore more midrange and you become jund.
Our advantage is playing red for lightning bolt and wild nacatl.
I can't imagine Wotc printing a dork better than nacatl anytime soon, and I belive they've even said that their moving away from really powerful 1 mana dorks.
1. Wild Nacatl
2. Noble Heirarch
3. Baby Gideon
4. Kird Ape
5. Experiment One
6. Loam Lion
7. Goblin Guide
8. Monistary Swiftspear
9. Steppe Lynx
I'll explain why I rank them as such. So for 1 mana you need to be 3/3 or higher. It makes a ton of differnce from 2/X because with nacatl in two swings youre already a full swing up over kird ape and the like, at 5 swings, your a full 2. Its litterally 33% better. Cant agrue that.
Noble hits the same deal here. She gets in for more damage than Ape and the like. Now I can hear you saying "She exalts maybe 2-3 times a game, thats hardly more damage." But if she ramps me into a turn 2 knight, then she IS getting in for damage. She made me cast knight early, there for that extra damage on the swing is because of her. So it counts.
After that I rate baby gideon highest. Reason is really simple actually. He grows. Problem with kird ape and the rest is they stay the same. After so much power creep on creatures, these guys cant compete anymore. You need a creature whos good early and late. Noble and nacatl does this. Gideon (and E1) are the only other creatures that can do this as well. Basically turning from a savannah Loin to a Smiter is great, but he also has other applications as well (indestruct, untap for knight) Hes a great zoo creature, he just lacks support.
After this comes kird ape. Hes a stable body and does what he needs to, but the great have fallen far. You have a world of beaters at the same mana cost who do more damage than him, or do more damage "faster" because of haste. his 3 toughness butt is the only saving grace. Hes pretty easly the diffention of "Meh" creature now. Hes just outclassed.
E1 comes in around here, but Id rather have him over kird ape. The problem is you need to run kird ape and ilk to run him. If a second nacatl were ever printed, then he suddenly because way more playble. Litterally the only thing holding him back is the lack of 2 easy 3/3 one mana drop guys.
Loam lion comes after, and only because it can be rending vollyed or deathmarked. After the lion, its all fast hitting guys who are weak in the late game. Zoo wants dudes who hit hard and fast, but not at the cost of their playablity midgame, thats why they are lower ranked, even though they are arguably better cards than kird ape.
Alright, with all that out of the way, why did I bring this all up? Because it shows how lacking the "classic zoo" is. The only really good small zoo attack, aggro, grrr, cards currently existing are E1, Nacatl, Gideon (which you have to limit to 2-3, probably 2), and dromokas command, (bolt and path and boros) your not lacking in your spells, your lacking in "good" one drops, by about 1-2 cards. E1 is only playable with 8ish 3/X one drops, and 4ish 2/X. Anything else, you'll have to jump through hoops to make it worth the slot, like adding in X/3s, or swiftspear who actually limits your creature count.
Gideons pretty good, but sadly not 3/X which means hes relegated to the bottom tier of your evolving 1 drops, meaning hes worse than E1 (in this hypothetical senerio, hes still plenty powerful) Youre 2 and 3 drops are fine in our usual line up of beaters and utility. Your just missing a second version of nacatl.
If I could make up a design for 2nd nacatl it would be something like
Something like that would allow Zoo to actually be worth testing going aggro aggro again, because it would enable you to be faster clockwise (you can actually reliably race rdw) while turning on E1 as a nacatl number 3 without having to worsen your deck to do so, while also maintaining an edge in later game combat. With out a key card like this, you lose Gideon and E1 as backup support cards, and you're left with a lackluster core.
This isnt to say CoCo zoo is big zoo, hardly is. CoCo is just a way to get back in the game against removal. It very very rarely tutors answers or grinds wins midrange. The deck is still FIRMLY aggro. Just instead of going turn 1: 2 damage, turn 2: 5 damage, Turn 3: 7 Damage, turn 4: 3 Damage, turn 5: 0 damage. It goes Turn 1:0 damage, turn 2: 0 damage, turn 3: 5 damage, turn 4: 11 Damage, turn 5: 15 damage. While it does less dam,age turn 1/2 it does more turn 3/4. Still ends the game around turn 5. This version however, doesnt loose damage as the game goes on, it keeps going. Its more resilient rather than fast.
Edit: Hope that was a good insight. Its one of the parts of zoo I knew best, as I'm always trying to push the more aggressive smaller zoo. It just is missing elements to compete.
Edit 2: Original Zendikar gave us goblin guide, steepe lynx, and loam lion. Dont count it out.
4 Arid Mesa
2 Forest
1 Kessig Wolf Run
2 Plains
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Stomping Ground
2 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
Creatures(25)
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Loxodon Smiter
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Kytheon, Hero of Akros
1 Dromoka's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
3 Collected Company
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Bonfire of the Damned
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Collected Company
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Stony Silence
2 Choke
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Kor Firewalker
The side board is more then a bit of a mess. Wasn't sure what do to with it as this was only the second time I've played it. Also, I'll warn you, I have a horrible memory but I'll tell you the highlights as best as I can remember.
Round 1 vs infect
Game 1, bolt and Nacatl win everything.
Game 2, would have been the same as game one had I not forgot to play a land on my turn before he become immense'd
game 3, bolt and goyf do work.
2-1
Round 2 vs grixis control
games were really fast and simple. I don't know if he didn't really draw any creatures to block because aside from bolt and tasigur I didn't see much. Also, Tasigur ate a path every time and he never was able to do much.
2-0
Round 3 Burn (my ride)
Game 1, I draw all my Nacatls and he runs out of gas too soon.
Game 2, I don't see my fire walkers but my ScOoze does enough work to keep me alive through the burn he has and Dromoka's Command ends up being the major winner here. Having him sac his eidolon of the great revel and fight his swift spear was amazing.
2-0
Round 4 Robots
I've only play affinity/robots like 3 times in total and when I did I was playing infect. Not much to say here, game one I was killed with inkmoth Nexus + cranial plating. game two I didn't have any green after I got my Magus out because he killed my Noble.
0-2
Round 5 Twin
We knew if we drew we were both going into top 8 so we drew and just watched others play.
Round 6 Coco Zoo
Game 1, Nacatl, Noble, and Kytheon in my opening with 2 lands and a bolt. drew into another creature and the opponent didn't seem to. I ended up getting to flip Kytheon and He did some major work in this match. I used him once or twice in a few other matches but he was a game winner. Near the end my opponent had a 4/5 goyf and I made him attack Gideon, CoCo'd into two 5/5 KotR and that ended that game quickly.
game 2, we honesly had very similar draws. Like, VERY similar. He fetches, I fetch, He coco's at the end of my turn, attacks, and I Coco. Just a lot of fun, but I ended up winning end the end.
2-0
Got to top 4, we all split. I got 12 packs of origins (mostly junk) and $63. all in all I had a lot of fun and I'll be sure to keep playing Zoo! If anyone has a little bit of ideas on possible changes or a better side board hit me up!
(edited some spelling and added the last line.)
With lightning bolt all around, that's quite a far imo. T1 mana dork is almost always a bolt magnet. If they kill your dork, and your 1st play is on T3 because you're running too little 2-drops,that's way too slow. You're not putting on pressure at all.
As an aggro-midrange deck, giving your opponent an extra turn where you're not doing anything is big in modern.
With that said, I think the current 2 drops we have are pretty good. The 'weakest' being pridemage. But even he has his uses in multiple matchups and exalted matters. Goyf is goyf and Scavenging ooze is just a powerhouse and does a lot of heavy lifting.
Witchstalker/Mindsparker: both good against delver/control variants.
Sulfur Elemental: good against tokens and for pumping our own guys against other aggro decks.
Kataki, War's Wage: I like this card in addition Stony Silence because it can be grabbed off CoCo, it actually gets rid of artifacts rather then shutting them down.
Phyrexian Revoker: A better Pithing Needle, basically one of our only answers to combo.
Magus of the Moon: A better Blood Moon, considering that both of the major decks this affects (Amulet-Bloom and Tron) both use artifact/enchant removal (Nature's Claim), and therefore Magus is harder to remove for them.
Then of course there are the usual suspects, Thalia, Finks, Kor Firewalker, and Aven Mindcensor which CoCo can get and are solid sideboard options. Here are some non-CoCo accessible sideboard options that I haven't seen mentioned:
Eyes of the Wisent: Oh god to I love this card. Completely under appreciated. It just wrecks control. A neat thing is that this fuels two points of Tarmo, if they manage to remove it.
Luminarch Ascension: Another good option against control, a slower Eyes of the Wisent in my opinion.
Another thing I wanted to talk about was land tech. I run a playset of Knight of the Reliquary, and therefore I use a few good utility lands, such as Sejiri Steppe and Skarrg, the Rage Pits. Other great options that I want to test out are Teetering Peaks and Smoldering Spires.
Has anyone run manlands, and if so, with what success? I run 1 Treetop Village, which I usually grab off Knight in response to a board wipe. What about Raging Ravine and Stirring Wildwood? With Nacatl, I find it hard to pack typeless lands, but has anyone been successful with using lots of ETB tapped and utility lands?
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Steppe and bog are the only cards worth using the etb tapped and isnt a man land. Soaring used to be used, but not since wolfrun came out. Feel free to test what ever you like, but most lands are winmore. Below is my list of lands that are even slightly playable, from most to least.
1. Wolfrun
2. Stirring wildwood
3. Horizon canopy
4. Ghost quarter
(From here it goes into depends on the deck)
5. Treetop village (if you are lower cmc curve)
6. Raging ravine (if you have 23 lands or more)
7. Senjiri steppe (if you run fragile but strong creatures like steepe lynx or baby gideon. Must run knight, only one of)
8. Bojuka bog (only in sideboard, only with knight, only a one of, only if you want to save sodeboard slots)
9. Slayers stronghold (only 1 of, only with knight, only if you are mostly
10. Arena (only one of, only with knight, only if your lacking burn for somereason like thalia main deck.
Thats it. The others arent worth using, ever.
And on that topic, are there any 4cmc creatures worth running, like Huntmaster of the Fells or Ghor-Clan Rampager?
Also, any thoughts on Abbot of Keral Keep? Seems interesting, and Jund has had some moderate success with it as a "4 drop".
Finally, the last cute thing I wanted to talk about was Alesha, Who Smiles At Death. Apart from Tarmogoyf, she has great synergy with most of our creatures as they rely on pumps after hitting the field (Nacatl, Knight), in addition to the previously mentioned Huntmaster. She has a decent sized body. and her ability isn't that hard to activate. She is something I have tested and been successful with, but I still wanted to hear others' opinions on her.
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As for Alesha, I don't like how fragile the body is for the ability.
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Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn