If ppl want to try a fun deck try this.. i made this deck 2 week ago and its go pretty well ! its a big zoo version able to win game 1 with bloodmoon rush. Can be early agresssive with nacatl and tarmo.
So is only Blitz versions of Zoo viable? Seems to be the only one to get results in recent events, and even then very sparringly. Is this deck even viable anymore?
So is only Blitz versions of Zoo viable? Seems to be the only one to get results in recent events, and even then very sparringly. Is this deck even viable anymore?
What do you mean?
Very few play Big Zoo relative to the field, making it a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy in regards to results. Big Zoo is a viable strategy, you just have to recognize that you're playing an underpowered strategy relative to the field and you're a shapeshifter in regards to your role in MUs. Sometimes, even then, because what you're doing isn't fundamentally unfair, you can be rather disadvantaged.
Big Zoo rewards lots of reps, the ability to SB perfectly and fluidly (meaning that you don't have a set SB plan, rather that you intuit your way there), and the ability to afford Tarmogoyfs -- at which point many just choose to play DS or Jund.
If Big Zoo is a strategy that you feel is fundamental to how you define yourself as a person, then you should play it. If you're all about winning, then you should play decks like DS or a streamlined deck like Ad Naus.
Big Zoo's consistency and ability to shift roles according to the match-up are exactly what makes them more viable in large events than the one-dimensional game plan of blitz-style zoo. In the last round of Modern GPs (Brisbane and Vancouver), 2 big zoo decks cracked top 32 (one of them is a participant in this thread) while blitz zoo was nowhere to be seen.
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.
Has anyone tried or thought about Insult // Injury as a sideboard tech against Combo/Big Mana? (In Big/Collected Company Zoo)
The Idea would be to make the Deck a consistent turn 4 Deck after boarding.
No.
I just play Blood Moon as it's considerably more disruptive and requires specific disruption itself rather than just a Lightning Bolt or path to exile on one of your dudes.
Hey guys! Going to the open this weekend and can't decide what to play. I own landfall zoo, bushwhacker zoo and tribal zoo.
Ive been playing bushwhacker zoo for over a year now but it seems poorly positioned in a 9 round tournament. Ive had the other two decks for about a month now. What do you guys think? Any suggestions?
I've been playing this build of Gruul zoo for some time now, and I think it may be the build little zoo is looking for. In terms of speed, Burning-Tree and Bushwhacker can't be beat, but that build relies too much on getting lucky with our opening hand. Additionally, the high density of 2-toughness creatures in bushwhacker zoo makes enemy collective brutalities and kolaghan's commands far too effective for us to be okay with that. The reason that everyone went with cards like herbalist, burning-tree, and bushwhacker is so that we can effectively go wide, but I thought, why not just punch right through?
Let me break down my choices a bit. I elected to make a creature base of 20 one drops plus a set of tarmogoyfs. This makes the deck incredibly consistent; experiment ones are almost always wild nacatls. The fact that most of our creature base is one mana makes up for the speed we lose by not including bushwhacker. While it is true that this makes us weak to Engineered Explosives, we were already soft to that card in the other builds so the higher impact isn't a huge consequence. The tarmogoyfs are there as a concession to the fact that we need a late game in some capacity.
The four paths and four ghor-clans seem excessive, but I think given the current metagame they're warranted. Everyone's playing abzan, bant eldrazi, and death's shadow, and we want ghor-clans and paths against all three of those decks. In my experience, losing to abzan is hard to do (we draw so many more spells than them with 18 lands), bant eldrazi is favorable until they find their EE's, and death's shadow is favorable if we pack some burn in the SB (which we want to do anyway with lightning helix against burn, and a pair of boros charm against decks with sweepers).
The bolts and atarka's commands are self-explanatory.
18 lands is not alot of lands but since so much of our deck is one mana we can miss for one or two turns and be fine. With the ghor-clans and paths, this particular deck is better at playing from behind as well.
The Lightning Helixes are here mostly for burn, but they come in in the mirror as well as against death's shadow decks. Very often once playing against death's shadow we're walled off from attacking with our guys against their removal/creatures while they're at 6, so once our guys stop being able to attack we go into chump and kill you with burn mode. Helix gives us more outs and buys time.
The Boros charms are here to combat sweepers and finish off tapped out control players. Occasionally double strike comes up with renegade's deathtouch but it usually doesn't. This is another card we bring in against shadow decks.
The ancient grudges are for lantern, affinity, and chalice of the void.
The stony silence is also for lantern and affinity, but can also be boarded in against bant eldrazi to shut off EE. Normally this would seem like a bad idea, but one card is not a huge price to pay and with 4 path 4 ghor clan we can beat them in combat.
The rest in peace is there for Jund shadow, grixis control, reanimator, and storm. Those decks will not be able to keep up with you once this is in play.
The grafdigger's cages are there for storm, reanimator and company decks. Additionally, since echoing truth is a thing in storm, this gives us a slight edge in combination with rest in peace.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is also there for storm, but is also a huge player against burn and control decks. Burn has to spend a turn and a card dealing with this usually, and if they can't they're almost certainly dead. Same goes for control.
Finally, the pyroclasms. These are the two best cards in the sideboard in my opinion. We bring them in against company, elves, merfolk, and death and taxes. The most valuable aspect of their inclusion is that literally no one plays around a sweeper from a zoo deck. Every time you cast this for the first time against an opponent, it will be a 3 for 1 at minimum. I would not register this deck with less than two of these in the board.
All in all, this is just the thoughts of some dude who's played modern little zoo for a year and a half. I won't claim that my list is perfect, but I think that right now at least, it's worth some consideration that this is close to what zoo needs to make an appearance in this metagame. I'd love to hear your opinions though, that's why I posted this mini-primer in the first place.
So is only Blitz versions of Zoo viable? Seems to be the only one to get results in recent events, and even then very sparringly. Is this deck even viable anymore?
Sorry, been at work for 2 weeks so I couldnt answer. I'm famously the "I wish zoo was better" guy in this thread. I love zoo, a lot, favorite deck, but I also really like winning (like lugger said) so I play dredge. Zoo isnt dead by any means. The 2 forms of super aggro archetypes that zoo is, Green creature Sligh, and Green White Beats, just really arent all that good in modern. The main reason why is because the decks they beat, slower redundant combo, control decks, and tempo delver like decks dont really have a foothold in modern. Modern is fast aggro, aggro that doesnt care about removal, removal heavy midrange and fast combo.
However, the power level of zoo is clearly there... Its like dinosaurs. They didnt go extinct because a comet hit the earth. It was because the comet made dust clouds which killed the crops that killed the things the T-rex ate. The T-Rex wasnt any less powerful, it didnt have prey.
Zoo's in the same boat. Zoo's 2 viable options are Big Zoo and Little Zoo. Right now the best big zoo is some kinda rhonas strat with company or walkers. Right now the best little strat is blitz. Can they put up results? You bet your ass they can. But it have to fight "worse" matchups more than not because the free win matchups like delver and control are rare. Thus the divide between viable and usage. Zoo is a bad meta deck. Zoo is a good deck.
Out of sheer boredom, I made and playtested a Zoo deck with a sideboard of pure hate cards (and an Elspeth because she steals games constantly). In playtesting I found it to actually be stupidly effective, and maliciously fun to play:
I want to talk about my sideboard and changes to it for this weekend:
-2 Thalia.
I don't want to play Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. She's fine and good vs. Ad Naus and other rando decks, however, she's moderately low impact and often doesn't gel with the rest of the SB plan (see: Blood Moon).
However, I still want to have disruptive creatures as a SB plan. I was thinking something along the lines of:
I never tried eidolon of rhetoric but i can say Aven Mindcensor can be great vs a lot of decks. I won some matchup vs abzan company when the deck was very popular. He is strong vs the new "flavour of the month deck" Counter company, strong vs elves, Tron.. All these decks are hard to win with zoo so i think it’s a pretty good side card. Still really nice with path and vs greedy manabase decks. I might add them back in my side but right now i like the choke..
Aven is a pretty weak card but when a lot of the room is Chording and, additionally, not flying, Aven isn't absurd. It stops Tron, Scapeshift, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Gifts Storm, and, I guess, disrupts fetches... kinda.
I hate Bonfire but I think it's our best way to disrupt updated Abzan CoCo. It also scales when they try to play fair with Township.
Depending on how Abzan plans on killing you, Stony Silence might be fine to turn off their Ballistas. On the other hand, you can't really afford to fall behind on board.
Intrepid Hero is a nod to the fact that I want my "big guy" removal to be reusable. Dec in stone is great vs. decks like DS but I think Hero is best vs. Drazi.
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.
Well we have some sort of death shadow tribal zoo deck in top 8 GP Copenhagen. Looks super janky to me but obviously it was the right choice for this event:
He was 1-1 against grixis deaeth's shadow in the top 8, had opponent down to 4, but just kept drawing dead renegade ralliers and then died to lightning bolt!
Im, looking to try 1-2 walking balista in the deck. That can be really nice mid game and for tarmogoyf. still working on the deck but it surprise me.
What do you mean?
Very few play Big Zoo relative to the field, making it a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy in regards to results. Big Zoo is a viable strategy, you just have to recognize that you're playing an underpowered strategy relative to the field and you're a shapeshifter in regards to your role in MUs. Sometimes, even then, because what you're doing isn't fundamentally unfair, you can be rather disadvantaged.
Big Zoo rewards lots of reps, the ability to SB perfectly and fluidly (meaning that you don't have a set SB plan, rather that you intuit your way there), and the ability to afford Tarmogoyfs -- at which point many just choose to play DS or Jund.
If Big Zoo is a strategy that you feel is fundamental to how you define yourself as a person, then you should play it. If you're all about winning, then you should play decks like DS or a streamlined deck like Ad Naus.
No.
I just play Blood Moon as it's considerably more disruptive and requires specific disruption itself rather than just a Lightning Bolt or path to exile on one of your dudes.
4x Noble Hierarch
1x Birds of Paradise
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Scavenging Ooze
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Knight of the Reliquary
2x Tireless Tracker
3x Loxodon Smiter
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
4x Wooded Foothill
4x Arid Mesa
2x Stomping Grounds
1x Temple Garden
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Kessig Wolf Run
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Horizon Canopy
2x Forest
1x Plains
3x Blood Moon
2x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2x Declaration in Stone
1x Ancient Grudge
2x Stony Silence
1x Selfless Spirit
1x Blessed Alliance
2x Kitchen Finks
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1-2 Elves
I get game one. Games 2 and 3 he casts CoCo on turn 3, 4 and 5. Lame.
2-0 BG.
He leaves in discard and casts it against me when I have one card in hand (it's a smiter).
Whoopsie.
1-2 eldrazi tron.
game 1 he natural trons and ugins me on turn 4.
game 2 I blood moon him on turn 3.
game 1 he natural trons and ugins me on turn 4.
modern is nothing if not swingy.
2-1 Mono black devotion
I don't remember a ton of this but I think all 3 games end in top deck wars due to the nature of discard and removal.
BW Tokens. 2-0.
New player. Doesn't understand that Knight gets Kessig. Probably a bad MU otherwise.
Ive been playing bushwhacker zoo for over a year now but it seems poorly positioned in a 9 round tournament. Ive had the other two decks for about a month now. What do you guys think? Any suggestions?
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
4 Arid Mesa
2 Stomping Ground
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Mutagenic Growth
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Atarka's Command
Creatures
4 Experiment One
4 Goblin Guide
4 Narnam Renegade
4 Kird Ape
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Tarmogoyf
I've been playing this build of Gruul zoo for some time now, and I think it may be the build little zoo is looking for. In terms of speed, Burning-Tree and Bushwhacker can't be beat, but that build relies too much on getting lucky with our opening hand. Additionally, the high density of 2-toughness creatures in bushwhacker zoo makes enemy collective brutalities and kolaghan's commands far too effective for us to be okay with that. The reason that everyone went with cards like herbalist, burning-tree, and bushwhacker is so that we can effectively go wide, but I thought, why not just punch right through?
Let me break down my choices a bit. I elected to make a creature base of 20 one drops plus a set of tarmogoyfs. This makes the deck incredibly consistent; experiment ones are almost always wild nacatls. The fact that most of our creature base is one mana makes up for the speed we lose by not including bushwhacker. While it is true that this makes us weak to Engineered Explosives, we were already soft to that card in the other builds so the higher impact isn't a huge consequence. The tarmogoyfs are there as a concession to the fact that we need a late game in some capacity.
The four paths and four ghor-clans seem excessive, but I think given the current metagame they're warranted. Everyone's playing abzan, bant eldrazi, and death's shadow, and we want ghor-clans and paths against all three of those decks. In my experience, losing to abzan is hard to do (we draw so many more spells than them with 18 lands), bant eldrazi is favorable until they find their EE's, and death's shadow is favorable if we pack some burn in the SB (which we want to do anyway with lightning helix against burn, and a pair of boros charm against decks with sweepers).
The bolts and atarka's commands are self-explanatory.
18 lands is not alot of lands but since so much of our deck is one mana we can miss for one or two turns and be fine. With the ghor-clans and paths, this particular deck is better at playing from behind as well.
The sideboard I have right now is as follows:
2 Boros Charm
3 Lightning Helix
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Grafdigger's Cage
Enchantment
1 Rest in Peace
1 Stony Silence
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Sorcery
2 Pyroclasm
The Lightning Helixes are here mostly for burn, but they come in in the mirror as well as against death's shadow decks. Very often once playing against death's shadow we're walled off from attacking with our guys against their removal/creatures while they're at 6, so once our guys stop being able to attack we go into chump and kill you with burn mode. Helix gives us more outs and buys time.
The Boros charms are here to combat sweepers and finish off tapped out control players. Occasionally double strike comes up with renegade's deathtouch but it usually doesn't. This is another card we bring in against shadow decks.
The ancient grudges are for lantern, affinity, and chalice of the void.
The stony silence is also for lantern and affinity, but can also be boarded in against bant eldrazi to shut off EE. Normally this would seem like a bad idea, but one card is not a huge price to pay and with 4 path 4 ghor clan we can beat them in combat.
The rest in peace is there for Jund shadow, grixis control, reanimator, and storm. Those decks will not be able to keep up with you once this is in play.
The grafdigger's cages are there for storm, reanimator and company decks. Additionally, since echoing truth is a thing in storm, this gives us a slight edge in combination with rest in peace.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is also there for storm, but is also a huge player against burn and control decks. Burn has to spend a turn and a card dealing with this usually, and if they can't they're almost certainly dead. Same goes for control.
Finally, the pyroclasms. These are the two best cards in the sideboard in my opinion. We bring them in against company, elves, merfolk, and death and taxes. The most valuable aspect of their inclusion is that literally no one plays around a sweeper from a zoo deck. Every time you cast this for the first time against an opponent, it will be a 3 for 1 at minimum. I would not register this deck with less than two of these in the board.
All in all, this is just the thoughts of some dude who's played modern little zoo for a year and a half. I won't claim that my list is perfect, but I think that right now at least, it's worth some consideration that this is close to what zoo needs to make an appearance in this metagame. I'd love to hear your opinions though, that's why I posted this mini-primer in the first place.
Sorry, been at work for 2 weeks so I couldnt answer. I'm famously the "I wish zoo was better" guy in this thread. I love zoo, a lot, favorite deck, but I also really like winning (like lugger said) so I play dredge. Zoo isnt dead by any means. The 2 forms of super aggro archetypes that zoo is, Green creature Sligh, and Green White Beats, just really arent all that good in modern. The main reason why is because the decks they beat, slower redundant combo, control decks, and tempo delver like decks dont really have a foothold in modern. Modern is fast aggro, aggro that doesnt care about removal, removal heavy midrange and fast combo.
However, the power level of zoo is clearly there... Its like dinosaurs. They didnt go extinct because a comet hit the earth. It was because the comet made dust clouds which killed the crops that killed the things the T-rex ate. The T-Rex wasnt any less powerful, it didnt have prey.
Zoo's in the same boat. Zoo's 2 viable options are Big Zoo and Little Zoo. Right now the best big zoo is some kinda rhonas strat with company or walkers. Right now the best little strat is blitz. Can they put up results? You bet your ass they can. But it have to fight "worse" matchups more than not because the free win matchups like delver and control are rare. Thus the divide between viable and usage. Zoo is a bad meta deck. Zoo is a good deck.
1 Birds of Pardise
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Wild Nacatl
2 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Voice of Resurgence
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Loxodon Smiter
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
3 Lightning Helix
Fixers
2 Arid Mesa
2 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Mountain
2 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
2 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Stony Silence
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Blood Moon
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 Leyline of Sanctity
I want to talk about my sideboard and changes to it for this weekend:
-2 Thalia.
I don't want to play Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. She's fine and good vs. Ad Naus and other rando decks, however, she's moderately low impact and often doesn't gel with the rest of the SB plan (see: Blood Moon).
However, I still want to have disruptive creatures as a SB plan. I was thinking something along the lines of:
+1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
+1 Aven Mindcensor
Both are different but both shore up matches where Thalia was good or great.
Eidolon vs combo? Lights out. Mindcensor vs. big mana? Also great.
Any thoughts or experiences regarding these cards and the current meta?
Keep it in mind though!
4x Noble Hierarch
1x Birds of Paradise
4x Tarmogoyf
2x Scavenging Ooze
2x Qasali Pridemage
4x Knight of the Reliquary
2x Tireless Tracker
2x Loxodon Smiter
2x Aven Mindcensor
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
3x Collected Company
4x Windswept Heath
4x Arid Mesa
2x Stomping Grounds
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Temple Garden
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Kessig Wolf Run
2x Forest
1x Plains
2x Stony Silence
2x Bonfire of the Damned
3x Blood Moon
1x Declaration in Stone
2x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Blessed Alliance
2x Kitchen Finks
1x Selfless Spirit
1x Intrepid Hero
I'm kind of curious to see how this may turn out.
Aven is a pretty weak card but when a lot of the room is Chording and, additionally, not flying, Aven isn't absurd. It stops Tron, Scapeshift, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Gifts Storm, and, I guess, disrupts fetches... kinda.
I hate Bonfire but I think it's our best way to disrupt updated Abzan CoCo. It also scales when they try to play fair with Township.
Depending on how Abzan plans on killing you, Stony Silence might be fine to turn off their Ballistas. On the other hand, you can't really afford to fall behind on board.
Intrepid Hero is a nod to the fact that I want my "big guy" removal to be reusable. Dec in stone is great vs. decks like DS but I think Hero is best vs. Drazi.
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Loxodon Smiter
3 Rhonas the indomitable
1 birds of paradise
3 Thunderbreak Regent
Instants(8):
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
2 domri Rade
1 Arlinn Kord
Lands(21):
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Arid Mesa
2 Stomping Ground
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Forest
1 Plains
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Kitchen Finks
1 Scavenging ooze
1 Thrun, the last troll
3 blood moon
1 blessed alliance
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Declaration in stone
1 Sweltering Suns
I have my foiled big zoo and it stock list with 2 voice but this is all extra I have extra so I rotate
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Death's Shadow
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Street Wraith
2 Ghor-Clan Rampager
2 Renegade Rallier
2 Grim Flayer
Sorcery (4)
4 Tribal Flames
Instant (9)
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Mutagenic Growth
3 Temur Battle Rage
4 Mishra's Bauble
Land (17)
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Steam Vents
4 Arid Mesa
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Renegade Rallier
1 Dismember
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Seal of Primordium
4 Thoughtseize
1 Forest
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Ratchet Bomb
He was 1-1 against grixis deaeth's shadow in the top 8, had opponent down to 4, but just kept drawing dead renegade ralliers and then died to lightning bolt!
Tribal Zoo video series
I'll talk about the MUs tomorrow.
I played 3 fair matchups all weekend. 5 if you count affinity as fair (which it probably is all things considered).