You are never going to resolve a Jace in the mirror. Just throwing that out there right now. Unless you manage to bait a Leak and Extract it, you will never win a counter war tapping first. And using it as an anticipatory move against other blue decks (pretty much just delver and zombies) seems terrible, because if they don't use it, then you've wasted a slot. It's not as popular as Thrun (for example) right now, whereas I feel comfortable pre-boarding my Image in against Wolfrun, plus Jace is a much narrower answer than Image is. If they tap out for a Jace (and you can't counter it?), just tap out right back at them for your own fatty of choice (like Grave Titan, Karn etc.) and kiss Jace goodbye. You should be able to handle losing 20 cards in these matchups from a couple of +0s before your fatty can get in.
Your argument against Jace is flawed. Very, very flawed. He cost less than a titan and is arguably more threatening.
Yes you have to tap 5 mana for him, and that leaves you @ a disadvantage in a counter war. Well, it happens. Your opponent drew more counters, and whether or not you tapped for a jace or for a titan, you would lose that war all the same. So there is no argument there.
You're also assuming Jace will be played into counter magic. Negative Ghostrider. What if they tapped out for their fatty, you won the counter war, and are untapping to their clear board?
You said if they tap for a Jace, you tap right back for a fatty, no?
If you do that in a game against me thinking your titan, a creature, will last longer than my jace, a planeswalker, I'll laugh in your face and Go for the Throat or Tragic Slip your titan, and watch you squirm as you get milled.
I will resolve a Jace against you if you have that kind of mentality. Just throwing that out there right now.
I think the Huntmaster is out of place. With only 1 mountain and no mana fixing other than birds, if you draw him GSZ can't even fetch him. I'd -1 Huntmaster of the Fells, +1 Acidic Slime
Birthing Pod doesn't seem effective here either. You barely have any ETB effects to make sacrificing a big creature worth it. -2 Birthing Pod +2 Garruk, Primal Hunter or +2 Garruk Relentless. Either one is solid for card advantage.
I'd also like to mention Thrun... Thrun, the last troll deserves at least a 1-of in your 75... I'd say -1 the random golem in your Sb.
Why are people playing Burning Vengeance with Time reversal? It's like taking 1 step forward casting the BV, then 5 steps back shuffling either all your flashback, or none of you flashback and all your discarded land.
I think you should add Lavamancer. He exiles all the lands you don't want to shuffle with reversal, and to be honest, he's a win condition.
Jace draws you a card or threatens to mill late. He's a win condition. I like him here.
Also, perhaps you should add Tumble Magnet? It clears blockers for your Crawler and can tap Titans and wurmcoil, which is a big deal. Plus, it's adds to your artifact count.
I mean its... monogreen allrighty. The card pool got stronger but did it really get strong enough??
what are you "looking to beat" Monored still comes out of the gate faster, has more reach and some resilience in shrine and phoenix. While ramp has stronger must answer threats and huge value when something plops down. If you want creature aggro or if you want to play forest I think there are better options tbh. I just am having a hard time thinking of a matchup where I would want to be on this side of the table.
I think there is the question of... do you load up on one drop mana dorks (birds+elves+ possiiibbblyy pilgrim) and then look to accelerate into a three drop skipping the two drop slots, and then go for an overrun. Or do you cut the mana dorks and go with high value cards like ezuris archers mixing the two like you are doing doesn't "Feel right"
EVEN in your list there is no reason not to run a few more GSZ a prime time and mountain singleton wolf run singleton
Yes, I think it did get strong enough. It's so strong in fact, I think it's the most consistent aggro deck I've seen. Ever. You have 8 undying creatures, one of which has haste. 4 Hexproof, 4 Indestructible. Both get larger quickly. Then you have a 3 of GG for 3 power & trample. It really doesn't get much better than that.
The 4 Elves are to accelerate when needed. Note however they are still 1/1 bodies that can swing on turn 2 or block a fresh Stromkirk Noble. If I'm not against any red, I side in the swords. T1 Elf, T2 Sword, T3 Strangletroot Geist swing. That's 5 damage on turn 3, and then I'm playing a 3/3 Dungrove.
I feel like this deck is explosive. The creatures don't have evasion. It's green. They don't need evasion until T4, 5, or 6. They're big and scary, and there is no efficient way of adding in evasion. It only leads to having to break your enemies defenses quickly with resilient, powerful threats. A T3 Lilliana is no problem to my Dungrove with a 2/1 undying, or a 1/1 undying.
As you can see what my next point will be. T2 in this deck, like in every other aggro deck, is crucial. I chose my creatures very carefully.
Skinshifter: He's good against red. He turns into a huge toughness body that blocks everything except deathtouch, he can fly, and he swings for 4 on T3. Fantastic.
Stangleroot Geist: This is what green needed. More than anything, a cheap haste that gets bigger when it dies. No one wants to block this. No one wants to trade with it. Can't kill it efficiently. So it just swings. And swings. And swings.
Garruk's Companion: He's big with trample. He's only a 3 of because trample isn't that special. However, he does trade with the 2/1 bodies, but he gets through. It's an aggro deck. He fits the bill.
Take 2-4 GSZ.
4 Lead the stampede is too much. I would do 2-3 if any.
Would not main deck Beast within since you are very stompy. Would do Dismember instead. It's cheaper, and doesn't allow for them to have a 3/3 to block which beats more than half your creatures.
2-3 Overrun. You run a lot of creatures but only 1 evasion in bellowing tanglewurm.
Not sure if you need 11 2 drops. Take out all skinshifters or all Garruk's companion. Could add Vorapede or Overrun for them for a better curve.
Lead the stampede I feel gives the deck gas to finish. It can draw 5 cards for 3 mana with all the 2 drops, and I can drop a lot at a time. I'm going to continue testing 4.
I agree with you on Beast Within. I do feel I need an answer to certain things, such as titans and wurmcoils, but I'm not sure if it's beast within.
One last point. Bellowing Tanglewurm is fetched by both zenith and Lead the stampede... It gives every single creature in the deck intimidate, which in my opinion, should warrant I add a few more worms before I add the overrun. It gets sent to the bottom by stampede.
I like the huntmaster too, but he competes with a lot of 4 drops. Garruk does what he does, except he's harder to remove. Then of course, Thrun, the definition of resilient.
If we're going to play the huntmaster, I think we need to play him alongside Mayor & Daybreak.
I also think we should play moonmist. A fog were* our creatures nor us take damage, transforming our creatures and getting value, then swinging next turn?
Thoughts?
What about the snapcaster + werewolves problem? :/
You need more support for Glissa and Melira... Spellskite is your answer. Take out tree of redemption. It's sorely outclassed by spellskite when Glissa is out.
Also, I understand wurmcoil is good, but not as a 4 of. Perhaps 2 of, since you don't want to draw 2 on your opening hand...
If you're going to ramp, do it with either rampant growth or sphere of the suns. Sphere comes back with glissa, but growth is the actual mana. Everyone has gutshot now, so BoP really isn't consistent. Viridian Emissary also isn't bad, but he's not going to be dying much with Glissa, Spellskite and Melira out... Lol.
Garruk and Lilli really don't do much... Garruk will rarely have targets out when you're whipping the board, and he has trouble dealing with big creatures. Lili really must make you suffer when she's going up. Discarding a Glissa or a thrun can suck. You want to ramp into either BIG black sun's, or BIG threats... I suggest removing them for fatties and some extra removal to back black sun up, since you won't always have it.
-1 Tree of Redemption
-2 Wurmcoil Engine
-4 Birds of Paradise
-3 Garruk Relentless
-3 Liliana of the veil
+3 Spellskite
+1 Solemn Simulacrum
+3 Sphere of the sun's
+3 Doomblade
+3 Grave Titan
This seems more consistent to me. Your creatures protect themselves and you. Glissa + spells kite cripples aggro. Anything dies with Glissa out and you get artifacts back, including spellskite. Melira i think is something you hold onto until you're about ready to black sun and need your glissa/spellskite combo going.
Just don't see that much reason to have them in the main deck right now since I usually either play against decks with nothing small enough for Slagstorm or that are so aggressive I'd rather kill a guy for 0 mana and shoot their tempo.
I think gut shot is bad in this deck and slagstorm is a must. The 2 R shouldn't be a problem. It's not for me most of the time, anyways. Against RDW and t-steel 1 gut shot will save you 3-4 points of damage at best. Slagstorm prevents them from killing you all together.
I've had games were I T2 rampant growth into the 2nd R, they temp steel and swing. I slagstorm right after. They play another small army T4, then I snapcaster into another slag leaving the T-steel deck in top deck mode the rest of the game.
I want to start with this is my first attempt at a deck like this. I want to play RUG for FNM, but I'm not sure how to go about making the deck more consistent. I'll get into my list then my card choices. Any advice is helpful!
BoP: The single bird is for t2 Slagstorm against T-steel decks, Geist of Saint Traft, and to draw it late game isn't too bad with batterskull out.
Snapcaster & Thrun: These are self explanatory. Snappy gets slagstorm in a pinch, and thrun survives it with ease. They are also good bodies for batterskull .
The Titans: I chose 1 of Inferno and 1 of Frost simply because they're both different threats. Inferno takes over against aggro, kills the beast tokens from beast within nicely, and can get pumped to be a 2 turn clock. Frost, on the other hand, can swing into other titans without a problem, can tap shrine forever, wurmcoil, Kessig wolf run... You name the threat, he taps it. Not to mention, he's near impossible to remove with just 1 mana leak in hand, much less 2 or a negate.
The draw power: I'm sure a lot of it is self explanatory. Rampant growth into an island or whenever, and it'll be useful. I'm never sad to see mana thus far.
Batterskull: I'm not sure what to do with this. I like it, but it's expensive, and with ancient grudge around, it's iffy. Although, a t3 batterskull with a BoP out(if it manages to survive) can be dumb.
Control: The control is self explanatory I feel as well. Although, the Devil's play may be up for question. It does hurt... A lot. It can go for 9+ from the grave late game.
I can't help but think that Skinshifter deserves mention. He's good against rdw if you leave the 1 mana open, swings for 4 on t3, and carries swords... That's good enough to build a deck around imo.
Volt charge is broken... It wins me games all the time.
t1 Stromkirk, t2 Berserk, t3 Volt charge accelerates me past any aggro matchup. It's 11 damage in 3 turns if it all goes to the dome, and if you need to use it to kill a creature to gain board presence, it's much better than swinging in on turn 3 and hoping one of your guys die to morbid a brimstone.
Also note that t1 stromkirk, t2 Shrine, t3 Volt Charge is an instant win against u/b control, and a very nasty two threat combo to solar flare that demands to be answered right away. Often times, they'll have the doom blade but not the O-ring until it's too late. Or vise versa.
Volt charge, as it stands in my opinion, is the best 3cmc burn IF you run the proliferate targets. Rarely, you'll draw a hand with nothing to proliferate and the volt charge will be staring at you.
I don't recommend Koth nor Hero in MB... You want to keep that lands @ 21-22, so you won't really have the luxury of always getting that 4th mana, so I'd just run 1-2 copies of each side board and put them in accordingly. I've found that method to be effective against pretty much every matchup I need them.
I thought about Sorrin's Vengance, but at 7 mana, it seems like it'll be dead in my hand a long time unless I top deck it just in time. I'd rather just finish with a shrine/forked burn by Chandra.
I'll test it as a 1-of, see where it goes from there.
I understand it may not be a aggro heavy variant, but it does use burn aggressively since it won't need to use it to kill creatures. The shrine allows me to outpace control decks that counter all my spells, and with no fragile creatures on my side of the field, they have a lot of dead cards. With no 5+ drops, I kept the land base simple, and it looks harsh to have slagstorm & Liliana competing, but I don't want a t3 slag, I'd rather save it to -2 Chandra to kill Grave Titan and his army, Hero of Bladehold and her army, or any other army you can think of really.
The deck may not seem aggressive at first glance, but when it goes off on your life total, it goes off hard. A t2 Shrine guarantees a victory with hand disruption and card advantage generated by Tezze's Gambit. A combo of Chandra -2 -> Tezzeret's Gambit could be hard to recover from for any deck, but even more devastating is if you sideboard Slagstrom for Volt Charge. A Chandra forking that bad boy double proliferates everything on board, with 6 damage attached. That's 4 counters on a shrine if it's out. That's getting Lili to ultimate faster or edict a hexproof.
So, as you can see, I made the deck to be able to deal with any threat it's presented with, and I feel the deck finishes explosively. Any feedback/advice would be great!
I posted this in another r/b thread, but they seem pretty inactive. I would love some feedback on this deck!
Your argument against Jace is flawed. Very, very flawed. He cost less than a titan and is arguably more threatening.
Yes you have to tap 5 mana for him, and that leaves you @ a disadvantage in a counter war. Well, it happens. Your opponent drew more counters, and whether or not you tapped for a jace or for a titan, you would lose that war all the same. So there is no argument there.
You're also assuming Jace will be played into counter magic. Negative Ghostrider. What if they tapped out for their fatty, you won the counter war, and are untapping to their clear board?
You said if they tap for a Jace, you tap right back for a fatty, no?
If you do that in a game against me thinking your titan, a creature, will last longer than my jace, a planeswalker, I'll laugh in your face and Go for the Throat or Tragic Slip your titan, and watch you squirm as you get milled.
I will resolve a Jace against you if you have that kind of mentality. Just throwing that out there right now.
Thoughts?
8 mana dorks seems a bit much without swords. I'd -2 Llanowar Elves, +2 Sword of Feast and Famine. Sorry, but it's just that good...
Birthing Pod doesn't seem effective here either. You barely have any ETB effects to make sacrificing a big creature worth it. -2 Birthing Pod +2 Garruk, Primal Hunter or +2 Garruk Relentless. Either one is solid for card advantage.
I'd also like to mention Thrun... Thrun, the last troll deserves at least a 1-of in your 75... I'd say -1 the random golem in your Sb.
I think you should add Lavamancer. He exiles all the lands you don't want to shuffle with reversal, and to be honest, he's a win condition.
-2 Burning vengeance
+2 Grim lavamancer
Jace draws you a card or threatens to mill late. He's a win condition. I like him here.
Also, perhaps you should add Tumble Magnet? It clears blockers for your Crawler and can tap Titans and wurmcoil, which is a big deal. Plus, it's adds to your artifact count.
Yes, I think it did get strong enough. It's so strong in fact, I think it's the most consistent aggro deck I've seen. Ever. You have 8 undying creatures, one of which has haste. 4 Hexproof, 4 Indestructible. Both get larger quickly. Then you have a 3 of GG for 3 power & trample. It really doesn't get much better than that.
The 4 Elves are to accelerate when needed. Note however they are still 1/1 bodies that can swing on turn 2 or block a fresh Stromkirk Noble. If I'm not against any red, I side in the swords. T1 Elf, T2 Sword, T3 Strangletroot Geist swing. That's 5 damage on turn 3, and then I'm playing a 3/3 Dungrove.
I feel like this deck is explosive. The creatures don't have evasion. It's green. They don't need evasion until T4, 5, or 6. They're big and scary, and there is no efficient way of adding in evasion. It only leads to having to break your enemies defenses quickly with resilient, powerful threats. A T3 Lilliana is no problem to my Dungrove with a 2/1 undying, or a 1/1 undying.
As you can see what my next point will be. T2 in this deck, like in every other aggro deck, is crucial. I chose my creatures very carefully.
Skinshifter: He's good against red. He turns into a huge toughness body that blocks everything except deathtouch, he can fly, and he swings for 4 on T3. Fantastic.
Stangleroot Geist: This is what green needed. More than anything, a cheap haste that gets bigger when it dies. No one wants to block this. No one wants to trade with it. Can't kill it efficiently. So it just swings. And swings. And swings.
Garruk's Companion: He's big with trample. He's only a 3 of because trample isn't that special. However, he does trade with the 2/1 bodies, but he gets through. It's an aggro deck. He fits the bill.
Lead the stampede I feel gives the deck gas to finish. It can draw 5 cards for 3 mana with all the 2 drops, and I can drop a lot at a time. I'm going to continue testing 4.
I agree with you on Beast Within. I do feel I need an answer to certain things, such as titans and wurmcoils, but I'm not sure if it's beast within.
One last point. Bellowing Tanglewurm is fetched by both zenith and Lead the stampede... It gives every single creature in the deck intimidate, which in my opinion, should warrant I add a few more worms before I add the overrun. It gets sent to the bottom by stampede.
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Young wolf
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Skinshifter
3 Garruk’s Companion
4 Dungrove Elder
4 Predator Ooze
1 Bellowing Tanglewurm
1 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Lead the Stampede, 4 Beast Within
23 Forest
2 Crushing Vines
2 Thrun, the last Troll
3 Viridian Emmisary
1 Garruk, Primal hunter
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Batterskull
1 Vorapede
1 Overrun
2 Naturalize
Any suggestions would be fantastic!
If we're going to play the huntmaster, I think we need to play him alongside Mayor & Daybreak.
I also think we should play moonmist. A fog were* our creatures nor us take damage, transforming our creatures and getting value, then swinging next turn?
Thoughts?
What about the snapcaster + werewolves problem? :/
Also, I understand wurmcoil is good, but not as a 4 of. Perhaps 2 of, since you don't want to draw 2 on your opening hand...
If you're going to ramp, do it with either rampant growth or sphere of the suns. Sphere comes back with glissa, but growth is the actual mana. Everyone has gutshot now, so BoP really isn't consistent. Viridian Emissary also isn't bad, but he's not going to be dying much with Glissa, Spellskite and Melira out... Lol.
Garruk and Lilli really don't do much... Garruk will rarely have targets out when you're whipping the board, and he has trouble dealing with big creatures. Lili really must make you suffer when she's going up. Discarding a Glissa or a thrun can suck. You want to ramp into either BIG black sun's, or BIG threats... I suggest removing them for fatties and some extra removal to back black sun up, since you won't always have it.
-1 Tree of Redemption
-2 Wurmcoil Engine
-4 Birds of Paradise
-3 Garruk Relentless
-3 Liliana of the veil
+3 Spellskite
+1 Solemn Simulacrum
+3 Sphere of the sun's
+3 Doomblade
+3 Grave Titan
This seems more consistent to me. Your creatures protect themselves and you. Glissa + spells kite cripples aggro. Anything dies with Glissa out and you get artifacts back, including spellskite. Melira i think is something you hold onto until you're about ready to black sun and need your glissa/spellskite combo going.
Just some idea's.
I think gut shot is bad in this deck and slagstorm is a must. The 2 R shouldn't be a problem. It's not for me most of the time, anyways. Against RDW and t-steel 1 gut shot will save you 3-4 points of damage at best. Slagstorm prevents them from killing you all together.
I've had games were I T2 rampant growth into the 2nd R, they temp steel and swing. I slagstorm right after. They play another small army T4, then I snapcaster into another slag leaving the T-steel deck in top deck mode the rest of the game.
1 Birds of Paradise
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Thrun, The Last Troll
1 Inferno Titan
1 Frost Titan
Card Advantage:
3 Rampant Growth
3 Ponder
4 Desperate Ravings
3 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Batterskull
The Control:
4 Mana Leak
2 Negate
2 Devils Play
3 Slagstorm
2 Beast Within
Land:
4 Forest
3 Mountain
2 Island
1 Swamp
4 Copperline Gorge
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Sulfer Falls
BoP: The single bird is for t2 Slagstorm against T-steel decks, Geist of Saint Traft, and to draw it late game isn't too bad with batterskull out.
Snapcaster & Thrun: These are self explanatory. Snappy gets slagstorm in a pinch, and thrun survives it with ease. They are also good bodies for batterskull .
The Titans: I chose 1 of Inferno and 1 of Frost simply because they're both different threats. Inferno takes over against aggro, kills the beast tokens from beast within nicely, and can get pumped to be a 2 turn clock. Frost, on the other hand, can swing into other titans without a problem, can tap shrine forever, wurmcoil, Kessig wolf run... You name the threat, he taps it. Not to mention, he's near impossible to remove with just 1 mana leak in hand, much less 2 or a negate.
The draw power: I'm sure a lot of it is self explanatory. Rampant growth into an island or whenever, and it'll be useful. I'm never sad to see mana thus far.
Batterskull: I'm not sure what to do with this. I like it, but it's expensive, and with ancient grudge around, it's iffy. Although, a t3 batterskull with a BoP out(if it manages to survive) can be dumb.
Control: The control is self explanatory I feel as well. Although, the Devil's play may be up for question. It does hurt... A lot. It can go for 9+ from the grave late game.
t1 Stromkirk, t2 Berserk, t3 Volt charge accelerates me past any aggro matchup. It's 11 damage in 3 turns if it all goes to the dome, and if you need to use it to kill a creature to gain board presence, it's much better than swinging in on turn 3 and hoping one of your guys die to morbid a brimstone.
Also note that t1 stromkirk, t2 Shrine, t3 Volt Charge is an instant win against u/b control, and a very nasty two threat combo to solar flare that demands to be answered right away. Often times, they'll have the doom blade but not the O-ring until it's too late. Or vise versa.
Volt charge, as it stands in my opinion, is the best 3cmc burn IF you run the proliferate targets. Rarely, you'll draw a hand with nothing to proliferate and the volt charge will be staring at you.
I don't recommend Koth nor Hero in MB... You want to keep that lands @ 21-22, so you won't really have the luxury of always getting that 4th mana, so I'd just run 1-2 copies of each side board and put them in accordingly. I've found that method to be effective against pretty much every matchup I need them.
I'll test it as a 1-of, see where it goes from there.
I posted this in another r/b thread, but they seem pretty inactive. I would love some feedback on this deck!