According to my test. Dromoka's Command can kill creatures in Human deck, add a counter on Hangarback, and remove Virulent Plague after sideboarding. Sometimes it can kill Kalitas with advocate and Avacyn in late game. But still want Declaration in main. Kalitas is annoying.
Sounds like a good sideboard. That is an additional removal spell to Goggle and Virulent Plague. Now I use Naturalize. This one looks better. But breaking Hangerback in own main phase is dangerous against decks with languish.
For control decks that run Virulent Plague in the side, I would consider running Display of Dominance in the sideboard when you side out Commands, so not only do you have a two mana instant card that deals with the pesky enchantment, you can also hit Jace, Sorin, Nahiri, Lili, and Ob Nixlis.
Sounds an odd one but i have been looking at Angelic Purge as an option, 1 more mana than declaration but it still exiles, can break open Hangarback, flip Avacyn and make an opposing declaration fizzle so a few up sides for 1 more mana, any thoughts?
Angelic Purge is a Sorcery, so it wouldn't really work to make anything fizzle. It's basically trading in the chance of hitting multiple creatures for being able to hit anything at the cost of 1 mana (sometimes relevant early) and a sac (usually bearable for token strategies). If you're facing lots of Superfriends decks, this is a card to consider, but I wouldn't call it a strict upgrade from Declaration. That card has been a powerhouse from what we've seen.
With everyone in favor of Declaration, would you choose that over Stasis Snare? I've been finding it hard to figure out where to cut cards from the MB since everything seems to work so well.
Edit: Also I know Sigarda is good against control decks since it is tough to kill. Sigrist also liked Linvala due to its ability to turn the corner against Bant CoCo and Humans. To save room on sideboard, what are people's thoughts on combining both by switching them out for a DL Dromoka? Its uncounterable, has lifelink, and is multicolored with a big butt to avoid removal.
Removal has seemed much less about damage so far, so I don't think Dromoka's butt is relevant. Diversifying threats with Linvala is nice, and it comes with immediate life gain. Other than as a token producer, I don't really see how Sigarda is a better choice than Linvala (other than costing one less). She helps gum up the ground, but if you're already behind she isn't quite as swingy as Linvala (or even Dromoka).
Linvala was more of an evasive flier that is hard to kill. With many of the black decks running Grasp, Languish and Ult price, the only card that kills her is Ruinous Path. Linvala avoids Grasph and Languish but is open to Ult. Sigarda is nice though against the rise of black control decks as it protects you from hand disruption, though at 5 mana, who knows how many cards in your hand are left.
Ohh I completely forgot Sigarda gives you Hexproof. Your point stands, though. At turn 5-6, will it just be too late for her to protect you? Dodging Price is good, though. I guess it'll depend upon what you commonly face.
BBD has said that he will writewritten about the deck, presumably on Channelfireball. Until then, I am willing to offer some ignorant suggestions, hoping that others will correct them.
Here is Shaun McLaren's more controlling version that he played at the PT. Though he says he likely should have included some Hangerbacks to trigger Avacyn. I think I will build one between the two.
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Top MTGO Limited Rating: 1968
2nd place behind Paulo after round 3 of Pro Tour M15
(finished 8-8, but beat Alexander Hayne and Ben Stark)
BBD and Mike Sigrist added World Breaker to their sideboard. Anyone have any idea what it would be for? Seems like a big step from Sigrist's idea of Natural Conclavist's
Is this thread exclusively for GW Tokens, or are splashes open for discussion as well?
I'm working on a Naya Tokens deck that splashes red for Radiant Flames and Chandra. It seems to me that GW Tokens is somewhat weak to Cryptolith Rite decks (both the BG version with Nantuko Husk and the rainbow one with Eldrazi Displacer and friends), because they can get on board quicker than Nissa can come online with regularity, and both decks have a way to convert that edge into beating our planeswalkers and then us even once the walker duo comes online. I therefore thought that playing Radiant Flames and Chandra, Flamecaller in the maindeck would be an excellent way to counteract this weakness.
I'm not sure who could say you nay. Lugger started the thread, seemingly by default. Vitalidze seems to have contributed the most. He/she and others have posted about a red splash also.
That said, there is a Naya Planeswalker thread in established that might fit better.
On further reflection, a splash just isn't needed. One thing I've enjoyed about the deck in early testing is that you can basically keep any hand with the right number of lands... as long as you don't have mono-Plains/mono-green-spells or mono-Westvale Abbey, you should be able to draw into the colors you need. Not having to mulligan as frequently is a huge boon for grinding since every card matters so much.
I started with the Michael Majors list, as I believe his two innovations in the maindeck (Evolutionary Leap and Tragic Arrogance) are phenomenal and I have seen them substantially overperform expectations in early testing. Compared to Mike Sigrist (my other primary source for all things GW Tokens), I think his deck does a lot of other little things better -- the 26th land, dropping Stasis Snare, only playing the highest-impact creatures in the maindeck, overall better sideboarding due to having a better preboard plan with Leap + Arrogance. However, Majors himself said that he wanted to play Den Protector in the sideboard, and that he couldn't properly objectively evaluate Nissa, Vastwood Seer in his sideboard (as it's a pet card of his). Sigrist also goes into deeper detail regarding how his version works against the metagame at large, so I used that as a reference point for how to approach each matchup in sideboarding and came up with this 75.
This deck just has so many plausible lines of attack at once, which makes perfect sense given that the core cards consist of two planeswalkers, a big flash creature, and an instant-speed mass-token generator. I think the deck ends up being very skill-intensive as a result; it's very much nonlinear and you can plausibly "turn the corner" whenever you want, frequently before your opponent is ready.
If I had to give one piece of advice for playing the deck: don't go for the win until you absolutely have it, or can leave your opponent with needing to hit consecutive runners off the top to escape. Focus on the board. You are in some ways an "aggro-control" deck that seeks to use its token generators to "control" the board with creatures and a light spot removal suite. Don't invest full cards into just pressure plays -- it's almost always wrong to use a Secure the Wastes just to pressure the opponent during the middle turns. For example, if your opponent is at 18 life, the board's empty except for a Hangarback Walker that just broke (and gave you 3 Thopters), and you can Secure for 5, you should basically never do it unless you have an anthem effect in hand or they're hellbent. Just chip shot them for a couple of turns and hold up a big (and probably increasingly bigger) Secure the Wastes for the turn when they finally decide to do something about the Thopters. This deck doesn't actually have any "raw" card advantage -- it just generates incremental edges with token generation that can be punished by a board wipe if you overextend. So don't do it! (Until you can kill them for tapping out / tapping low to wipe the board. Then do it.)
Eldrazi Displacer is really good against us, yeah. There isn't much we can do about it. Once you realize you're facing that deck, try to hold your removal for the Displacer. The only significant concession you can make to it in deckbuilding is to play fewer Dromoka's Command maindeck and more Declaration in Stone or the like. Tragic Arrogance is strong in the matchup, but you have to draw it in the right window because Displacer just puts us too far behind if it gets going for more than a turn or so.
Took a version including Chandra to FNM last night. Finished second of fifteen going 3-1. Beat goggles, BG and UW humans but lost narrowly 2-1 to UW Dragons.
Found myself wanting Chandra against both the aggro matches for sweeping and the goggles match for tempo. Only sided her out against UW and never had a problem finding oath so I could cast her.
The removal of Nissa, Voice of Zendikar altogether from the 75 might be a significant mistake, but I found from carefully studying Gerry's deck and playtesting his exact 75 that the secret to his deck's success was its ability to go over the top of the other decks in the format pretty reliably.
Among the decks in the format that could play the long game reasonably well, GW already had the best earlygame thanks to Hangarback Walker, Sylvan Advocate, and Gideon. Nissa, Voice of Zendikar is almost superfluous -- she certainly helps make the early game even stronger, but it was already pretty strong. Voice of Zendikar generally is at her best in facilitating relatively quick token-heavy beatdown wins, but GW doesn't normally win that way; the other beatdown decks are faster than you and put you on defense, where Nissa tends to have her most fluctuating value (depending on whether you can reliably protect her, she's either a valuable asset for gumming up the ground game or too much of a liability to even try to preserve), and the controlling decks have Languish and Virulent Plague to make quick token beatdowns a rare treat instead of a matter of course.
This earlygame strength comes at a price -- it's possible for decks that are just doing more powerful things to go over the top of us. Getting into a topdeck war is a risky proposition against some other decks in the format, as we tend to have some airy cards like Voice of Zendikar or Dromoka's Command that don't scale well going late, and if an opposing deck can find a way to keep Gideon under control and kill a 4/4 at instant speed, our two haymakers tend to have limited effectiveness. This is a format where sometimes your opponents can stumble on answers for your threats and you just win, but if that's all we're trying to do then we can run into some trouble against decks with a bigger top end.
Gerry addressed this problem in his sideboard, as he played Linvala and Nissa, Vastwood Seer to try to go over the top. Linvala is lights out for several decks in the format and Nissa is a quick clock that pays you back in spades even if she gets answered before her ultimate wins the game. He supplemented them with his maindecked Evolutionary Leaps, which allowed him to chain Avacyn flips and grind out removal-heavy decks. To make all this work, he put Voice of Zendikar on the bench in games 2 and 3, and while Gerry insists that the Voice still has a place, I'm not as convinced.
Some card decisions:
I decided on a maindeck Dragonlord Dromoka because I think she fits the gameplan of going a little bigger than the established decks very well, and because she is a total house against the fringe new decks that people are starting to pick up. Dromoka basically hard counters the entire Ux flying/flash/counter deck by herself, since they can't remove her once she hits the field, they can't race her because of her lifelink, and they can't counter anything on your turn. She beats up on the Mono-U Prison deck because she's very hard to remove with Engulf the Shore and she forces them to play it at sorcery speed, which makes it very hard for them to reset with Day's Undoing and Engulf -- they can't just cast Day's Undoing with her in play and use the remaining mana to Engulf the board or, indeed, do anything else with all those shiny spells they drew. She's also big against the UR Eldrazi deck for mostly the same reasons -- she hampers countermagic if she sticks, and she tends to stick because the removal spells in that deck don't line up against her. As for going bigger, Avacyn and Sylvan Advocate are the biggest creatures in the stock GW decks, and Linvala is increasingly becoming the sexy pick to trump them. Dromoka trumps Linvala as well as Avacyn and Advocate, and can be played more proactively than Linvala can, since she's not dependent on you being behind to be fantastic. Linvala is great and I have two of her in the sideboard, but Dromoka is substantially more maindeckable.
I have a couple of deviations in the sideboard. Aerial Volley is a nod to the Ux flying/flash/counter shell -- all those 1-toughness fliers leave them prone to getting 3-for-1'd for 1 mana (and that it's only 1 mana is very important, no one has Volley on their radar so leaving up a single green doesn't telegraph anything, and it also makes Clash of Wills a bad defense against it). Quarantine Field is a pet holdover of mine from my older GW lists. I wouldn't bring it in except for the grindiest of matches; if you played during Theros block, think about how Silence the Believers got used, and you basically have the idea. But it's one of the most powerful catch-up cards you can play, and importantly it catches you up against all nonland permanents, not just creatures like Linvala does. Hallowed Moonlight is a 1-of I'm testing for Company decks. Most Company pilots don't play around it at all out of GW, which is generally good policy but gives us the chance to engineer some blowouts.
I'm excited for this version of GW. I think this fixes any problems we might have had with Virulent Plague. It's true that Plague still does some things against us, like making Hangarback Walker pretty bad and neutering Gideon's tokens, but this version is much less dependent on the tokens to win than previous versions, and it's possible that this fixes the weakness to Plague enough that it's actually bad for people to bring in. I think this also fixes the other systemic issue GW has, which is that you could sometimes just lose the grindy game despite drawing a bunch of cards with Leap and flipping Avacyn a bunch because your opponent was doing something bigger than you. Sage Animist and Dragonlord Dromoka give us the extra oomph against the decks that can go a little bigger.
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Standard: GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern: RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy: BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
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GW Tokens won the PT. It also did well as a team deck throughout the PT.
Below is the list:
4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
4 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
Creature (16)
4 Archangel Avacyn
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Sylvan Advocate
4 Thraben Inspector
Instant (6)
4 Dromoka's Command
2 Secure the Wastes
1 Evolutionary Leap
3 Oath of Nissa
1 Stasis Snare
Land (25)
4 Canopy Vista
7 Forest
4 Fortified Village
7 Plains
3 Westvale Abbey
1 Evolutionary Leap
1 Secure the Wastes
2 Lambholt Pacifist
1 Linvala, the Preserver
1 Sigarda, Heron's Grace
2 Clip Wings
3 Declaration in Stone
1 Quarantine Field
3 Tragic Arrogance
This deck is about controlling the board and playing a bunch of threats that your opponent cannot deal with.
You guys can discuss this deck strategy below.
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
Standard: BG Golgari Midrange
Modern: U Merfolk GWUBR 5 Color Humans UBW Esper Gifts GW Bogles
Angelic Purge is a Sorcery, so it wouldn't really work to make anything fizzle. It's basically trading in the chance of hitting multiple creatures for being able to hit anything at the cost of 1 mana (sometimes relevant early) and a sac (usually bearable for token strategies). If you're facing lots of Superfriends decks, this is a card to consider, but I wouldn't call it a strict upgrade from Declaration. That card has been a powerhouse from what we've seen.
Edit: Also I know Sigarda is good against control decks since it is tough to kill. Sigrist also liked Linvala due to its ability to turn the corner against Bant CoCo and Humans. To save room on sideboard, what are people's thoughts on combining both by switching them out for a DL Dromoka? Its uncounterable, has lifelink, and is multicolored with a big butt to avoid removal.
said that he will writewritten about the deck,presumablyon Channelfireball.Until then, I am willing to offer some ignorant suggestions, hoping that others will correct them.RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
2nd place behind Paulo after round 3 of Pro Tour M15
(finished 8-8, but beat Alexander Hayne and Ben Stark)
Creatures (14)
4 Hangarback Walker
2 Lambholt Pacifist
4 Sylvan Advocate
4 Archangel Avacyn
Planeswalkers (8)
4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
4 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
Lands (25)
8 Forest
7 Plains
4 Canopy Vista
4 Fortified Village
2 Westvale Abbey
Spells (13)
1 Stasis Snare
4 Dromoka's Command
2 Secure the Wastes
4 Oath of Nissa
2 Declaration in Stone
Sideboard
2 Evolutionary Leap
1 Quarantine Field
2 Silkwrap
2 Clip Wings
1 Hallowed Moonlight
1 Secure the Wastes
1 Linvala, the Preserver
2 Declaration in Stone
2 Tragic Arrogance
1 Westvale Abbey
I'm working on a Naya Tokens deck that splashes red for Radiant Flames and Chandra. It seems to me that GW Tokens is somewhat weak to Cryptolith Rite decks (both the BG version with Nantuko Husk and the rainbow one with Eldrazi Displacer and friends), because they can get on board quicker than Nissa can come online with regularity, and both decks have a way to convert that edge into beating our planeswalkers and then us even once the walker duo comes online. I therefore thought that playing Radiant Flames and Chandra, Flamecaller in the maindeck would be an excellent way to counteract this weakness.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
That said, there is a Naya Planeswalker thread in established that might fit better.
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
I started with the Michael Majors list, as I believe his two innovations in the maindeck (Evolutionary Leap and Tragic Arrogance) are phenomenal and I have seen them substantially overperform expectations in early testing. Compared to Mike Sigrist (my other primary source for all things GW Tokens), I think his deck does a lot of other little things better -- the 26th land, dropping Stasis Snare, only playing the highest-impact creatures in the maindeck, overall better sideboarding due to having a better preboard plan with Leap + Arrogance. However, Majors himself said that he wanted to play Den Protector in the sideboard, and that he couldn't properly objectively evaluate Nissa, Vastwood Seer in his sideboard (as it's a pet card of his). Sigrist also goes into deeper detail regarding how his version works against the metagame at large, so I used that as a reference point for how to approach each matchup in sideboarding and came up with this 75.
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Sylvan Advocate
4 Archangel Avacyn
Enchantments (6)
2 Evolutionary Leap
4 Oath of Nissa
Instants (6)
4 Dromoka's Command
2 Secure the Wastes
4 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Sorceries (2)
2 Tragic Arrogance
Lands (26)
9 Forest
7 Plains
4 Canopy Vista
4 Fortified Village
2 Westvale Abbey
2 Den Protector
3 Lambholt Pacifist
2 Linvala, the Preserver
2 Clip Wings
2 Angelic Purge
3 Declaration in Stone
1 Tragic Arrogance
This deck just has so many plausible lines of attack at once, which makes perfect sense given that the core cards consist of two planeswalkers, a big flash creature, and an instant-speed mass-token generator. I think the deck ends up being very skill-intensive as a result; it's very much nonlinear and you can plausibly "turn the corner" whenever you want, frequently before your opponent is ready.
If I had to give one piece of advice for playing the deck: don't go for the win until you absolutely have it, or can leave your opponent with needing to hit consecutive runners off the top to escape. Focus on the board. You are in some ways an "aggro-control" deck that seeks to use its token generators to "control" the board with creatures and a light spot removal suite. Don't invest full cards into just pressure plays -- it's almost always wrong to use a Secure the Wastes just to pressure the opponent during the middle turns. For example, if your opponent is at 18 life, the board's empty except for a Hangarback Walker that just broke (and gave you 3 Thopters), and you can Secure for 5, you should basically never do it unless you have an anthem effect in hand or they're hellbent. Just chip shot them for a couple of turns and hold up a big (and probably increasingly bigger) Secure the Wastes for the turn when they finally decide to do something about the Thopters. This deck doesn't actually have any "raw" card advantage -- it just generates incremental edges with token generation that can be punished by a board wipe if you overextend. So don't do it! (Until you can kill them for tapping out / tapping low to wipe the board. Then do it.)
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
Found myself wanting Chandra against both the aggro matches for sweeping and the goggles match for tempo. Only sided her out against UW and never had a problem finding oath so I could cast her.
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Sylvan Advocate
2 Den Protector
2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
4 Archangel Avacyn
1 Dragonlord Dromoka
Planeswalkers (4)
4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Enchantments (7)
4 Oath of Nissa
2 Evolutionary Leap
1 Stasis Snare
4 Dromoka's Command
Sorceries (2)
2 Declaration in Stone
Lands (26)
4 Canopy Vista
4 Fortified Village
9 Plains
7 Forest
2 Westvale Abbey
1 Den Protector
2 Linvala, the Preserver
1 Quarantine Field
1 Stasis Snare
2 Aerial Volley
1 Hallowed Moonlight
2 Secure the Wastes
2 Declaration in Stone
3 Planar Outburst
The removal of Nissa, Voice of Zendikar altogether from the 75 might be a significant mistake, but I found from carefully studying Gerry's deck and playtesting his exact 75 that the secret to his deck's success was its ability to go over the top of the other decks in the format pretty reliably.
Among the decks in the format that could play the long game reasonably well, GW already had the best earlygame thanks to Hangarback Walker, Sylvan Advocate, and Gideon. Nissa, Voice of Zendikar is almost superfluous -- she certainly helps make the early game even stronger, but it was already pretty strong. Voice of Zendikar generally is at her best in facilitating relatively quick token-heavy beatdown wins, but GW doesn't normally win that way; the other beatdown decks are faster than you and put you on defense, where Nissa tends to have her most fluctuating value (depending on whether you can reliably protect her, she's either a valuable asset for gumming up the ground game or too much of a liability to even try to preserve), and the controlling decks have Languish and Virulent Plague to make quick token beatdowns a rare treat instead of a matter of course.
This earlygame strength comes at a price -- it's possible for decks that are just doing more powerful things to go over the top of us. Getting into a topdeck war is a risky proposition against some other decks in the format, as we tend to have some airy cards like Voice of Zendikar or Dromoka's Command that don't scale well going late, and if an opposing deck can find a way to keep Gideon under control and kill a 4/4 at instant speed, our two haymakers tend to have limited effectiveness. This is a format where sometimes your opponents can stumble on answers for your threats and you just win, but if that's all we're trying to do then we can run into some trouble against decks with a bigger top end.
Gerry addressed this problem in his sideboard, as he played Linvala and Nissa, Vastwood Seer to try to go over the top. Linvala is lights out for several decks in the format and Nissa is a quick clock that pays you back in spades even if she gets answered before her ultimate wins the game. He supplemented them with his maindecked Evolutionary Leaps, which allowed him to chain Avacyn flips and grind out removal-heavy decks. To make all this work, he put Voice of Zendikar on the bench in games 2 and 3, and while Gerry insists that the Voice still has a place, I'm not as convinced.
Some card decisions:
I'm excited for this version of GW. I think this fixes any problems we might have had with Virulent Plague. It's true that Plague still does some things against us, like making Hangarback Walker pretty bad and neutering Gideon's tokens, but this version is much less dependent on the tokens to win than previous versions, and it's possible that this fixes the weakness to Plague enough that it's actually bad for people to bring in. I think this also fixes the other systemic issue GW has, which is that you could sometimes just lose the grindy game despite drawing a bunch of cards with Leap and flipping Avacyn a bunch because your opponent was doing something bigger than you. Sage Animist and Dragonlord Dromoka give us the extra oomph against the decks that can go a little bigger.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB