Hi, me and my wife seem unable to make green decks that are successful in our 2 player cube.
A few weeks ago I listened to Lucky paper radio (or Solely Singleton?) where they briefly spoke about their experience with drafting a peasant cube. A takeaway was that it mostly ended in topdeck mode where value (2-for-1s) were more important than tempo. I can also remember LSV mentioning that peasant cube was mostly about getting 2-for-1s.
The mentioning about tempo not being worth it, were in regards to mana elves not being what they wanted to pick. If the tempo advantage from mana elves are too small, are they even worth running? And if they are not worth running, what does green offer that other colours do not? In my experience, ramping into Pelakka wurm has rarely been worth it. If the opponent can just take care of your big threats with removal or deathtouch you are left with mana dorks and low impact cards in play. 7 life and draw a card has rarely been enough to make up for the "cost" of having lots of mana dorks/ramp that have minor impact on board state. Mana fixing through fetching lands to play more colours? If this is it, why not just cut green from the deck?
About our environment: I have banned all cards that forces shuffling of the library and double faced cards for slowing down our games or being a bit tedious. I have cut the "broken"/autopic artifacts, so destroying artifacts is not realy necessary. I guess this artifact/enchantment destruction are one of green's strength. I haven't cut any green cards for power level reasons.
Lately I tried to up the amount of interaction in green through combat tricks, but I suspect that depowering my removal will be necessary to make this work. Currently it seems that WB goodstuff and UW blink are the decks to beat in our environment.
Tldr:
1. What are green decks strength at peasant level?
2. Have green decks been successful in your environment?
3. If yes, what about your environment makes them competetive?
4. Some excaples of green "3-0" decks would be appreciated.
I didn't realize you had a link to your cube till I wrote the below, but I think you're just split between too many archetypes for 240. You have aggressive 2s, but no aggressive 1s or 3s. You have ramp but no resilient payoffs. You have 4(!) go wide payoffs but only 2 token makers in green that are both slow as well as a reasonably low creature count for green. The guild cards are similarly not supported: GW counters has no green payoffs for the counters, GR doesn't have much to follow-up a Rhythm of the Wild, GB has basically no ways to fill the yard in general, and UG has no support for Tatyova, Benthic Druid what-so-ever.
I run my green decks more aggressively than rampy, but most of them end up revolving around dropping aggressively orientated midranged threats. Stuff like Blastoderm, Briarhorn, Phantom Centaur, Ridgescale Tusker, Trollbred Guardian, Great Oak Guardian, etc. all get "2 for 1s" through just being ahead on board. This is where mana dorks tend to come into play in these decks. Taking 15 from a Blastoderm is an unreasonable thing to do in most games, but starts to be difficult not to do for a lot of decks when the Blastoderm is played on t3 and is followed by a 5 drop.
GR aggro might be the best deck in my environment. Experiment One -> Voltaic Brawler -> 1 + 2 drop or 3 drop -> Bloodbraid Elf -> burn wins a lot of games on t4-6 if not answered perfectly. You don't have access to Kessig Prowler, but I don't think it's an important enough card to kill the deck. Also, not including Experiment One should be a crime imo.
Slower green decks that don't revolve around attacking try to rely as little as possible on removable threats. Pelakka Wurm hasn't aged well in this regard since we have so many better options. Plated Crusher, Warden of the Woods, and Scaled Behemoth are not much easier to deal with through combat and are substantially better against removal when ramped (or reanimated) out. Arborback Stomper is also mostly better if you want lifegain. Ramping out hexproof threats early takes off significant pressure and can start abyssing your opponent if they aren't threatening you.
GB decks have stuff like Worm Harvest, Spider Spawning, and Baloth Null as win conditions when combined with a filled yard. Here mana dorks up your creature count, let you start your engines early, help out the endless mana requirements these decks have, and chump block.
Thanks for the feedback! I recently tested +1/+1 counters and persist combo in green. My wife didn't like the combo and the payoffs seemed a bit underwhelming, especially outside of Selesnya. You have identified a few cards that should have been cut after the test.
I absolutely agree that I don't have room for many archetypes, and parasitic/narrow archetypes is something I try to avoid. It feels like I have been successful in other colours, but not in green. Including 5 City of Brass supports 2 colour aggro and allow me to play fewer 1 CMC in agreesive colours and still being able to get a decent amount. As green is the only ramp colour, this "burden" can't be split between several colours. Maybe unless I include signets/talismans?
Would you say that aggressive green decks are viable outside of RG in your cube? I guess I'm looking for the strongest and most flexible themes for my green section.
E.g.
White: Aggressive creatures, flying tokens, good removal, anthem.
effects
Blue: Etb/value creatures, counter spells, bounce and card draw.
Black: Death/graveyard matters, strong destroy cards.
Red: Aggro and burn spells
Green: ?
GR aggro doesn't take up that many slots since it uses mainly red 3s and removal. If you looking for flexibility you might want to consider Noose Constrictor for it too.
In my cube GW aggro is definitely viable, if a bit fragile. I do have a hard time judging exactly how good it is since it's not a fan favourite and it's not really my style of deck.
Since we play with 2 players, we have often done 120 card sealed and made two decks each. This gives a bit more variety and forces us to try new strategies. Often we make one 2 colour deck and one 3 colour deck. Wall of blossoms and Llanowar Visionary are nice in Bant blink decks and should be fine in a ramp deck? The 16 lands we have can fix any colour, so 3 colour decks are quite easy to make.
I went a bit heavy in my last update on aggressive two drops and added all the green combat tricks. Thanks for pointing out cards that were no longer supported. Renata, Called to the Hunt were mainly for the persist deck and GW +1/+1 counter deck and will also be cut.
I guess one of the issues I've had is that green decks often need defense to not be overwhelmed by W/U/B fliers. My wife loves playing aggressive Wx decks with flyers/tokens. The green decks end up on the defensive and even if I am able to create a board stall, the fliers eventualy end up being able to chip in for damage until the green deck looses. To me it seems that green lacks a big finisher that auto wins if I'm able to jump through all the hoops. No evasion (outside of trample) and little interaction seems like a poor recepie for a deck that often has to play reactive.
I've actually been considering just cutting green from my cube, so I truly appreciate your inputs.
I think I will try to revamp my green section to:
GW/GR agressive (go wide)
UG/BG ramp, with posibility for UBG reanimator.
A slower more value based reanimation should be possible in abzan. Bant blink is also fun. Trostani's Summoner should fit both of these archetypes.
One advantage of green is mana fixing, so I would like to have the slower midrange decks primarily be three colours. No shuffling restriction probably hurts, because I can't run Cultivate. Perhaps Paradise Druid, Utopia Sprawl, Song of Freyalise, Fertile Ground and some signets/bounce lands would be enough at 240. These cards should also be more resilient to "bolt the bird".
I agree that Voltaic Brawler is good, but we cut the energy cards. Ghor-Clan Rampager is flexible and can also push through damage as a combat trick that can't be countered.
Noose Constrictor has been in before, and as someone who played with Wild Mongrel during Odyssey I don't need much to be convinced about that card.
I have considered Hermit Druid for ramp/graveyard decks. What are your experiences with that card?
W/x flyers is pretty annoying to deal with. If you can get onto the board fast enough you can start racing them, but that's pretty play/draw and starting hand dependent. Fortunately green's gotten more tools recently to deal with it. Crocanura is another boring yet decent option for decks that can't get onto the board that fast, but it might be overkill at this point.
Noose Constrictor seems to do everything you want green to do here: deals with flyers, attacks well, and enables reanimation.
I consider Hermit Druid to be mostly a novelty, though I don't have an incredible amount of experience with it. It's fragile, inconsistent, inflexible, and expensive, but some people also enjoy going really deep on an archetype and styling on their opponents. Dryad Greenseeker being cheaper to activate and having defensive utility largely makes it the more responsible choice, even in graveyard decks. Black options like Stinkweed Imp or Darkblast are generally easier to trigger and have some utility outside of milling if you do want to go deeper on graveyard decks, not even mentioning one time mill effects like Mire Triton, Carrion Grub, Gorging Vulture, Renegade Reaper, Grapple with the Past, or Stitcher's Supplier. That being said, if it's not removed, you're not aggro'd down, and you get good RNG, it is pretty sweet.
Typically the best green decks from experience tend to be G/U/x or G/B/x goodstuff since they can shore up on weaknesses on green more easily, and generally just play good 4s and 5s. After that G/W counters tends to be good if supported, and I've made efforts to make sure G/R aggro performs well in my cube. I do find however good green decks lean very heavily on specific cards more than other colours which is why I've often found them less consistent.
Typically the best green decks from experience tend to be G/U/x or G/B/x goodstuff since they can shore up on weaknesses on green more easily, and generally just play good 4s and 5s. After that G/W counters tends to be good if supported, and I've made efforts to make sure G/R aggro performs well in my cube. I do find however good green decks lean very heavily on specific cards more than other colours which is why I've often found them less consistent.
Do you have a link to your cube? I would recommend putting it in your signature
I tested GW counters, but it felt a bit parasitic as the other green decks didn't want/benefit from the counters.
It seems to me that 3 different strategies might be difficult for me in a smaller cube, if there is a shortage of overlap between them.
I often think of green as the creature colour, but I don't think green has the best creatures until I hit CMC 6... And then it seems a bit costly to go into a colour just for CMC 6+.
A few creatures I would pick before the best green creature at specific CMCs:
CMC 3
Vampire Nighthawk
Aerial Responder
Lingering Souls
Anax, Hardened in the Forge
I've toyed with the idea of making green more focused on manafixing amd increasing the green guild sections. By saying that green decks are good stuff piles of 3 colours, including Gx bounce lands, signets and larger Gx guild sections and cutting down the green monocoloured section. Green can perhaps be a bit top heavy as this is where they have better options than other colours in my opinion.
Is this an insane idea? Are Gx guild cards better than mono green?
Counters tend to not be especially parasitic if supported right, I know for a fact G/R aggro enjoys extra counters and the beefy beater Renata or Trollbred Guardian offer and R/W tokens likes the Mentor creatures/Basri's Acolyte style creatures for team buffs. Hell even U/W flicker has put some of the ETB counter creatures to work in the past for me. Green tends not to peak with creatures but just has a consistently great average creature especially in terms of stats. Imo though leaning some degree into fixing helps the midrangey and ramp centric green decks.
A few weeks ago I listened to Lucky paper radio (or Solely Singleton?) where they briefly spoke about their experience with drafting a peasant cube. A takeaway was that it mostly ended in topdeck mode where value (2-for-1s) were more important than tempo. I can also remember LSV mentioning that peasant cube was mostly about getting 2-for-1s.
The mentioning about tempo not being worth it, were in regards to mana elves not being what they wanted to pick. If the tempo advantage from mana elves are too small, are they even worth running? And if they are not worth running, what does green offer that other colours do not? In my experience, ramping into Pelakka wurm has rarely been worth it. If the opponent can just take care of your big threats with removal or deathtouch you are left with mana dorks and low impact cards in play. 7 life and draw a card has rarely been enough to make up for the "cost" of having lots of mana dorks/ramp that have minor impact on board state. Mana fixing through fetching lands to play more colours? If this is it, why not just cut green from the deck?
About our environment: I have banned all cards that forces shuffling of the library and double faced cards for slowing down our games or being a bit tedious. I have cut the "broken"/autopic artifacts, so destroying artifacts is not realy necessary. I guess this artifact/enchantment destruction are one of green's strength. I haven't cut any green cards for power level reasons.
Lately I tried to up the amount of interaction in green through combat tricks, but I suspect that depowering my removal will be necessary to make this work. Currently it seems that WB goodstuff and UW blink are the decks to beat in our environment.
Tldr:
1. What are green decks strength at peasant level?
2. Have green decks been successful in your environment?
3. If yes, what about your environment makes them competetive?
4. Some excaples of green "3-0" decks would be appreciated.
I run my green decks more aggressively than rampy, but most of them end up revolving around dropping aggressively orientated midranged threats. Stuff like Blastoderm, Briarhorn, Phantom Centaur, Ridgescale Tusker, Trollbred Guardian, Great Oak Guardian, etc. all get "2 for 1s" through just being ahead on board. This is where mana dorks tend to come into play in these decks. Taking 15 from a Blastoderm is an unreasonable thing to do in most games, but starts to be difficult not to do for a lot of decks when the Blastoderm is played on t3 and is followed by a 5 drop.
GR aggro might be the best deck in my environment. Experiment One -> Voltaic Brawler -> 1 + 2 drop or 3 drop -> Bloodbraid Elf -> burn wins a lot of games on t4-6 if not answered perfectly. You don't have access to Kessig Prowler, but I don't think it's an important enough card to kill the deck. Also, not including Experiment One should be a crime imo.
Slower green decks that don't revolve around attacking try to rely as little as possible on removable threats. Pelakka Wurm hasn't aged well in this regard since we have so many better options. Plated Crusher, Warden of the Woods, and Scaled Behemoth are not much easier to deal with through combat and are substantially better against removal when ramped (or reanimated) out. Arborback Stomper is also mostly better if you want lifegain. Ramping out hexproof threats early takes off significant pressure and can start abyssing your opponent if they aren't threatening you.
GB decks have stuff like Worm Harvest, Spider Spawning, and Baloth Null as win conditions when combined with a filled yard. Here mana dorks up your creature count, let you start your engines early, help out the endless mana requirements these decks have, and chump block.
Green also has a lot of ways to use mana dorks in combat: Curse of Predation (a card on some people's ban lists), Song of Freyalise, Rancor, Scale Up, Imperious Perfect, Briarhorn, Ridgescale Tusker, and Great Oak Guardian allow mana dorks to be respectable attackers.
I've slightly depowered some of my removal and removed the black 4 drop Nekrataals, but neither of those things were done because green was weak.
I absolutely agree that I don't have room for many archetypes, and parasitic/narrow archetypes is something I try to avoid. It feels like I have been successful in other colours, but not in green. Including 5 City of Brass supports 2 colour aggro and allow me to play fewer 1 CMC in agreesive colours and still being able to get a decent amount. As green is the only ramp colour, this "burden" can't be split between several colours. Maybe unless I include signets/talismans?
Would you say that aggressive green decks are viable outside of RG in your cube? I guess I'm looking for the strongest and most flexible themes for my green section.
E.g.
White: Aggressive creatures, flying tokens, good removal, anthem.
effects
Blue: Etb/value creatures, counter spells, bounce and card draw.
Black: Death/graveyard matters, strong destroy cards.
Red: Aggro and burn spells
Green: ?
Edit: Spelling
GR aggro doesn't take up that many slots since it uses mainly red 3s and removal. If you looking for flexibility you might want to consider Noose Constrictor for it too.
In my cube GW aggro is definitely viable, if a bit fragile. I do have a hard time judging exactly how good it is since it's not a fan favourite and it's not really my style of deck.
UG aggro is more on the Whirler Rogue / Briarhorn / Ongoing Investigation side of aggressive decks, if you consider that aggro. A lot of its threats like Cloudfin Raptor, Experiment One, or Infiltrator Il-Kor scale well enough, but they're not much more subtle than large cheap threats that attack.
I don't support black aggro in general, so I've never even attempted GB aggro. Doesn't look particularly exciting even if I did try to draft it.
I went a bit heavy in my last update on aggressive two drops and added all the green combat tricks. Thanks for pointing out cards that were no longer supported. Renata, Called to the Hunt were mainly for the persist deck and GW +1/+1 counter deck and will also be cut.
I guess one of the issues I've had is that green decks often need defense to not be overwhelmed by W/U/B fliers. My wife loves playing aggressive Wx decks with flyers/tokens. The green decks end up on the defensive and even if I am able to create a board stall, the fliers eventualy end up being able to chip in for damage until the green deck looses. To me it seems that green lacks a big finisher that auto wins if I'm able to jump through all the hoops. No evasion (outside of trample) and little interaction seems like a poor recepie for a deck that often has to play reactive.
I've actually been considering just cutting green from my cube, so I truly appreciate your inputs.
I think I will try to revamp my green section to:
GW/GR agressive (go wide)
UG/BG ramp, with posibility for UBG reanimator.
A slower more value based reanimation should be possible in abzan. Bant blink is also fun. Trostani's Summoner should fit both of these archetypes.
One advantage of green is mana fixing, so I would like to have the slower midrange decks primarily be three colours. No shuffling restriction probably hurts, because I can't run Cultivate. Perhaps Paradise Druid, Utopia Sprawl, Song of Freyalise, Fertile Ground and some signets/bounce lands would be enough at 240. These cards should also be more resilient to "bolt the bird".
For my multicolour section, I will probably make these cuts:
Rhytm of the Wild > Ghor-Clan Rampager
Tatyova, Benthic Druid > Shardless Agent
Conclave Mentor > Trostani's Summoner
I agree that Voltaic Brawler is good, but we cut the energy cards. Ghor-Clan Rampager is flexible and can also push through damage as a combat trick that can't be countered.
Noose Constrictor has been in before, and as someone who played with Wild Mongrel during Odyssey I don't need much to be convinced about that card.
I have considered Hermit Druid for ramp/graveyard decks. What are your experiences with that card?
Noose Constrictor seems to do everything you want green to do here: deals with flyers, attacks well, and enables reanimation.
I consider Hermit Druid to be mostly a novelty, though I don't have an incredible amount of experience with it. It's fragile, inconsistent, inflexible, and expensive, but some people also enjoy going really deep on an archetype and styling on their opponents. Dryad Greenseeker being cheaper to activate and having defensive utility largely makes it the more responsible choice, even in graveyard decks. Black options like Stinkweed Imp or Darkblast are generally easier to trigger and have some utility outside of milling if you do want to go deeper on graveyard decks, not even mentioning one time mill effects like Mire Triton, Carrion Grub, Gorging Vulture, Renegade Reaper, Grapple with the Past, or Stitcher's Supplier. That being said, if it's not removed, you're not aggro'd down, and you get good RNG, it is pretty sweet.
450 Peasant Cube:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/io8
Do you have a link to your cube? I would recommend putting it in your signature
I tested GW counters, but it felt a bit parasitic as the other green decks didn't want/benefit from the counters.
It seems to me that 3 different strategies might be difficult for me in a smaller cube, if there is a shortage of overlap between them.
I often think of green as the creature colour, but I don't think green has the best creatures until I hit CMC 6... And then it seems a bit costly to go into a colour just for CMC 6+.
A few creatures I would pick before the best green creature at specific CMCs:
CMC 3
Vampire Nighthawk
Aerial Responder
Lingering Souls
Anax, Hardened in the Forge
CMC 4
Whirler Rogue
Ravenous Chupacabra
Flametongue Kavu
Skinrender
Talrand's Invocation
CMC 5
Cloudgoat Ranger
Shriekmaw
Mulldrifter
I've toyed with the idea of making green more focused on manafixing amd increasing the green guild sections. By saying that green decks are good stuff piles of 3 colours, including Gx bounce lands, signets and larger Gx guild sections and cutting down the green monocoloured section. Green can perhaps be a bit top heavy as this is where they have better options than other colours in my opinion.
Is this an insane idea? Are Gx guild cards better than mono green?
450 Peasant Cube:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/io8