This deck basically gets cards off of sacrificing lands, discarding lands, and milling lands. Cards are generally plentiful, with mana being the limiting resource.
The philosophy behind this build of the deck is that the frog allows you to turn land card advantage into REAL card advantage. Thus, we play every Cultivate variant ever to maximize the odds of keeping up in lands every turn. The fact that some of our ramp can be treated as legitimate card advantage as well as acceleration is an advantage that cannot be ignored. Same with the landbase, in fact! The slots that would normally be reserved for card draw in other decks are not needed here because there is no opportunity cost to playing lands that cantrip for free! Lastly, this deck rarely ever worries about having a draw engine but no mana to abuse it because our mana sources ARE our draw engine. This means that cards like Crucible of Worlds also act as insane card advantage engine in themselves as well as resistance to resource disruption.
This deck also carries a discard package with a symmetry broken by your deck. While discarding lands lets you draw a card again, it gets really stupid if you end up keeping Dakmor Salvage in your hand. That way, not only do you discard salvage and get it back through dredge, but you are likely to hit a land off the dredge and draw an extra card! When the plan is to attrition everyone via Oppression, the card to tutor for is Dakmor Salvage.
It is generally advantageous to activate Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage combo if you can afford to lose 2 lands. Not only do you get the Marit Lage token but you also draw two cards out of doing it!
-This deck was intentionally built as a non-infinite, non-instant win combo deck to show that this commander can still be ridiculous even in "fair" metas.-
BIG WEAKNESSES OF THE DECK:
- Mass land destruction (the ACTUAL Achille's Heel of the deck)
- Winter Orb effects (We can still actually play through these pretty well by default, but not if they have tons of nonland mana to keep up)
- Hatebears (Spirit of the Labyrinth, mostly.)
I like this deck! I'm also looking forward to building a simple, non-infinite loop The Gitrog Monster EDH deck and I like your discard theme. It's very oppressive (see what I did there?, lol) and a good way to deal with any kind of opponent - not just control players. Reanimation can bite you back so you should run at least a couple of cards to deal with removing cards from a player's graveyard. Some players love discarding and you're just giving them a reason to.
I think you could keep Blighted Woodland because at least it taps for so that's always a good thing. It's also not as limiting as Myriad Landscape, which comes into play tapped and both lands have to be the same type (even though it's cheaper to use its ability than Blighted Woodland). On that note, you should run Amulet of Vigor. It helps with lands big time (especially if you get Crucible of Worlds) 'cause recurring lands like Ebon Stronghold and Havenwood Battleground when they enter untapped is always a good thing.
Thawing Glaciers is another card I want to recommend since it gets you lands pretty efficiently in EDH (and even more so if you have Amulet of Vigor in play). I also think you need more basics since you have Groundskeeper and "fetchlands" that only interact with basics.
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Thawing Glaciers is an excellent suggestion because it helps ensure that you can always take advantage of the extra land play you have even if your draws brick you on lands.
And yes, global discard is good against almost any deck. I'm aware of decks that can take advantage of it and actually ran into one the other day. I currently have 4 ways of nuking cards in gys that don't include land tutors that go to the hand. I'm hoping I don't need a 5th.
I'm thinking of cutting Temple of the False God for another basic. Late-game, I can barely manage to nab all of my basics out of the deck. I'd personally much rather have a fetch but I'm not exactly getting the rest of them until they are reprinted.
I might have one piece of excess ramp to cut for something else.
Lastly, I counted it up, and I only have around 9 etb tapped lands in the whole deck. 4 cycles, 2 basic fetches, bojuka bog, salvage, and the rot farm. Having my curve disrupted actually doesn't come up as often as it seems! 9 is probably the max as far as etb tapped lands go for me though..
Alot of talk going on about this new guy, this is more my avenue of deck building. The meta I play in is really casual and promotes "Fair" deck building.
Ideas to bring forth
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Would Azusa, Lost But Seeking be a good add as another way to dump lands from hand for sac fodder? If you do add Crucible, that's even more lands you can get back from being milled. Gitrog is such a cool card design.
Hey, glad to see someone else is playing a deck like this. I have two different playgroups i play in, one being significantly less competitive than the other, so I'll be maintaining two versions of The Gitrog Monster, one with infinite combos, and one that still has them, but doesn't focus on getting them out. I went a bit deeper on the discard/light stax plan.
Some cards I've been liking in testing:
Volrath's Dungeon: This is a good way to put the hurt on someone's hand, and you can keep doing it as long as you're able to keep discarding lands. Your opponents will almost certainly just pay 5 life the turn they're able to, but that first turn you can get a good amount of use out of it.
Raven's Crime: Retracing it draws you a card, and like Volrath's Dungeon, you can focus down a problematic player's hand. This one works particularly well wtih Cabal Coffers.
Recycle/Null Profusion + Reliquary Tower: This creates a stupid powerful draw engine, and even without the Tower in play, you can still abuse having a max hand size of two by using the cleanup step to discard lands and continue to go through your deck a little. Note, however, that you have to play Recycle/Null Profusion *before* playing Reliquary Tower, thanks to timestamps.
Mesmeric Orb: A great source of card advantage, since each instance of mill is a separate possible trigger for The Gitrog Monster.
Bottomless Pit: Despite the random nature of this card, we're still going to come out ahead a decent amount of the time with it, and it hurts our opponents even more.
Nightmare Void: The Gitrog Monster loves dredge, and a repeatable source of targeted discard is quite good for stopping control decks and slower combo decks from setting up.
Out of all of those, I'm liking Mesmeric Orb, Raven's Crime, and Nightmare Void the most. Orb I like especially over something like archive because you pretty much draw a crazy number of cards but also costs less so you are likely to get value more quickly from it.
Raven's Crime and Nightmare Void I like as an alternative to something like Creeping Dread. It's also quite important that both hit lands! The former is utterly insane with Dakmor Salvage. That alone might be enough to convince me to run it over the 4cmc enchantment. Also works well with Creeping Renaissance should I choose to re-add that card.
If I can keep my hand stacked with lands, Bottomless Pit is also viable.
I've never yet actually felt like I needed to run Reliquary Tower.
There are so many good cards for this list that I can't possibly fit them all. This deck can go in so many different directions and have serious power.
The sheer possibilities with The Gitrog Monster is basically limited to your pod. It's so easy to stick to a singular theme or a combination of two themes with this guy and get so much mileage out of it. Being able to consistently draw cards for answers against your opponent is always clutch. It's also a 6/6 beater meaning that once you clear the board of any threats you can swing away with commander damage if you were to go that route. Again, as you pointed out, lots and lots of possibilities.
If I were to build this guy (already got 2 decks which focus on GB so maybe it'll be awhile), I would go with a more "casual" setting because it can be lent for some degenerate interactions. But I think playing with lands and graveyard to draw into responses is OK as far as casualness goes. I'll see what I can muster and post my list for your consideration.
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So, here's what I'm thinking for changes if I can get these cards. The Entomb I can borrow from another deck, but the Crucible.. I don't know how I'm getting one of those anytime soon.
I also counted my ramp/extra land cards and they totaled to 14 (not including tutors!). Wow. I think I can cut that down to 12 pretty safely.
15 basics is barely enough for the deck and I've pretty much fetched every single basic during the games that go long (and this deck always won a game that went long).
I've been testing stuff. Creeping Renaissance has been okay. The best thing I was able to do with it was pick up a bunch of lands to fling at someone via Raven's Crime.
Speaking of Raven's Crime, that card is insane beyond belief here. After seeing Dakmor Salvage in my opener, I drew into Entomb and just had to entomb for it over everything else. With enough black sources, it just wrecks hands, even through counterspells (except Dissipate, which actually happened :(.)
I actually haven't needed the extra basic, so I don't need to sub it.
As it turns out, while killing The Gitrog Monster prevents me from getting insane value out of it the next turn, the fact that I don't sacrifice the extra land I played ends up making me able to keep recasting him over and over. At one point he costed 13 to cast, and while I could do it, I had the cards I needed and had better things to do by then.
If I had the money, Liliana of the Veil would actually be pretty decent here. The -2 eats mana dorks, and by the time I'm ready to play Gitrog I can start immediately breaking the symmetry. $100 is not worth an upgrade to my Cunning Lethemancer though.
Lastly, Stronghold Rats is really good. Being able to play it on my turn 3, then play Gitrog to make people start pitching cards on turn 4 really amps up the pressure. It might even be worth delaying a toad to turn 5 if you can spend your mana efficiently. With Necrogen Mists, it generally starts working on turn 5 and Lethemancer on turn 6!
Current permanent changes
+ Raven's Crime
+ Entomb
- Farseek
- Creeping Dread
There was someone today who didn't believe in the toad, but after I made him lose his mind with a Raven's Crime retraced five times, now he believes....
I WAS planning on getting a Burgeoning as almost an upgrade to Skyshroud Ranger but the same day I was deliberating on it then it got bought out. ******* hell.
On the plus side, this deck has been demolishing people in my group. I'm getting around a 70% win rate with it. Two of the losses were 1v1s where my opponents got either very lucky or I got unlucky. Basically outliers.
Removing 1v1 outliers, out of all multiplayer testing I have done, it has lost once out of 7 games. By comparison, the Xenagod deck I tuned for more than a year could reasonably win around 2 or 3 of those games out of 7. I've had my gy hated out but not persistently in those games. On my end my GY hate package can allow me to persistently hate out other players with recycling Bojuka Bog. I expect my winrate to go down once Rest in Peace becomes more common and more Scavenging Oozes (more than there already are) make it into decks. Adjustments to my removal suite may require one more piece of artifact or enchantment removal on a stick but is otherwise acceptable. You don't want a crazy amount but you want one for when you really need it.
MVPs: Glacial Chasm, Constant Mists. Buys so much time since the deck sets up its kill slowly. Saved from theoretical Roidnath and/or Purphoros combo-kill by holding Crop Rotation to get surprise chasm.
Other very good cards: Far Wanderings. Very easy to get threshold at a reasonable time (turn 5-6). Acceptable to play without threshold (Although not great). Nissa's Pilgrimage: Again, super easy to hit spell mastery, but perfectly acceptable ramp if you don't! Groundskeeper: Feeds the discard engines hard.
In fact, there's really not a single card that I was disappointed to see in this deck. That's a first!
Play your creature-based win conditions such as Avenger of Zendikar late unless you know they won't get answered by a sweeper. Getting it answered before you untap is fine considering that you can get 3 landfall triggers easy before they have untap to kill it. The same goes for Dark Depths in metas where bounce is common (Such as mine). Worm Harvest tokens are mostly expendable but also not profitable early. Good for blocking.
I remember I had a Yawgmoth's Will. It seems kind of good here, although better in the builds that go crazy with Summer Bloom
I actually was trying to do the same thing. I didn't know he could be busted until I first played and my opponent grumbled about me comboing off turn 4 and he's rage quit. 9 turns later I beat him with Ob. So good.
I made mine for frenchlist. So you will see some obvious cards missing (sol ring, vamp, etc), and Prime Time (cause if you can play it, why the heck not?)
So this is where I'm at right now. After reading through the combo thread for this guy I quickly became board just because I don't really find tutoring for the same combo win every game much fun. So instead I went with a much more fun stax strategy (fun for me anyway) The deck isn't perfect yet but I think I have a good shell and would love to here some feed back on it. A card of note that I have not seen mentioned yet are: Glacial Chasm This card plus The Frog and Crucible of Worlds means you take no damage from anything which seems good to me.(I think you still have to pay the two life each of your turns but you also get to draw two cards each of your turns)
I think cuttables among your list are Grave Pact, Mutilate, mostly because they're hard to activate. Lotleth Troll because you don't really plan on discarding creature cards.
In this deck, I think Volrath's Dungeon is pretty much one-turn use only. However, I do like how unlike crime you don't pay mana if you want to disassemble someone's whole 7 card hand when you're holding Dakmor Salvage.
I did talk about Glacial Chasm in the deck and how it is the nuts, even without crucible.
You may want more removal because the symmetry of your discard outlets can only be broken while your gy can take stuff. If you are facing down RiP or even just scooze, you'll probably want it. Definitely so if the hate prevents you from drawing extra cards.
You can choose how to stack the triggers during your upkeep. You choose to put Glacial Chasm on first then the Gitrog trigger on top. Gitrog resolves first, you sac Chasm, then cumulative upkeep resolves and you choose not to pay the 2 life.
Other options for discard outlets: Pack Rat - Could get out of hand quickly Greenseeker - Becomes "G, Tap: Draw a card" every turn, so long as you run enough basics Silverglade Pathfinder - Like Greenseeker, but puts the land into play Mortiphobia - Useful to exile specific cards from a graveyard Call the Bloodline - Maybe?
My YouTube Channel: The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
I think cuttables among your list are Grave Pact, Mutilate, mostly because they're hard to activate. Lotleth Troll because you don't really plan on discarding creature cards.
I think I had included Grave Pact because I really want my copy to find a home, but I don't think this is the deck for it because of the low creature count. Same goes for Lotleth Troll.
In this deck, I think Volrath's Dungeon is pretty much one-turn use only. However, I do like how unlike crime you don't pay mana if you want to disassemble someone's whole 7 card hand when you're holding Dakmor Salvage.
Yeah I feel like most of the time you will be using Volrath's Dungeon in response to somebody destroying it. But it still seems pretty good.
You can choose how to stack the triggers during your upkeep. You choose to put Glacial Chasm on first then the Gitrog trigger on top. Gitrog resolves first, you sac Chasm, then cumulative upkeep resolves and you choose not to pay the 2 life.
Cool, I was thinking that's how it worked but thanks for confirming it.
Thanks for all the suggestions, This has made me really excited to build this deck.
So far in playing the fair frog found my deck list durdled and ramped then didn't have any gas if it could not find Titania, Avenger or Baloths. Added in Emerald Medallion because the bonus to frog and all the ramp spells I find myself playing multiple in a turn.
A lot of my quicker takedowns with this deck involve an early Marit Lage off of a Dark Depths.
Also a good amount of time I end up taking out players via Exsanguinate. Once off of an opponent's Gaea's Cradle I blew up and then proceeded to Restore for myself.
Having Worm Harvest ended up being relevant at least once so far for closing out games. I basically have six wincons that can overwhelm opponents in the deck.
This deck I know doesn't really win quickly. It'll probably have issues against fast decks that gun for you from the start.
I actually ran Silverglade Pathfinder until I found a lotus cobra and realized that it went so much more nuts than the pathfinder did.
I'm still trying to figure out if I even need too many cards that are purely for gassing up the deck, as one of the deck's biggest strengths is that you basically get the cards to keep going out of the landbase and doing what you would normally do with those lands. There's almost no opportunity cost for your CA engine other than the need to keep hitting those land drops, which is pretty easy when you easily draw 3-4 cards in a turn.
+ Yawgmoth's Will (basically an upgraded Treasured Find in this deck)
+ Genesis Wave (It's actually not THAT much better than Animist's Awakening here, but I want to see how much of a difference being able to hit Lotus Cobra or Avenger of Zendikar makes. I mean, you got to win SOMEHOW, and when you have 15 mana the 2 fewer digs are rarely felt)
If Azusa or Crucible were within my reach I would add those first obviously, but I'm not shelling out how much they cost at the present moment. I also don't feel like getting a Scapeshift right now.
Bob would also be super sweet if I could ever get one. Too many good things to play with and not nearly enough space to fit it all.
EDIT: I suspect that, considering how nuts Lotus Cobra has been in the deck, that I probably want a Frontier Siege over any of these. Not surprising, considering that the card has been one of my favorite things to see in Xenagod. Time to test next chance I get. Although the really insane 1 drop is also quite tempting...
By the end of turn 4 I am sitting on 11 lands and still three cards in hand. Eventually I draw into a way to get Life from the Loam and completely run away with the game.
Also, Cunning Lethemancer has sucked. Time to cut him. Raven's Crime already makes people scared enough of the discard aspect of the deck. It's pretty much as oppressive as Oppression.
Genesis Wave has been alright. Even casting it for x=6 is fine as you usually get three lands activate your threshold/spell mastery/delirium.
In metagames without hyper fast combo or mass land destruction, there are three things players must do to stop this deck.
A) Keep The Gitrog Monster off the board
B) Blow up the key lands (ESPECIALLY coffers)
C) Nuke my graveyard.
Doing only one of these actions isn't enough. It would take two of these actions to beat it. Alternately, cards like Rest in Peace and World Breaker are extra-effective against this deck.
Racing the deck is also possible, however it isn't always easy to do so. One reason I can say this is because people have tried and my removal suite is adequate enough to make it a non-trivial matter.
1x The Gitrog Monster
Artifacts
1x Sol Ring
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Sensei's Divining Top
Creatures
1x Avenger of Zendikar
1x Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1x Bane of Progress
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Eternal Witness
1x Lotus Cobra
1x Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
1x Oracle of Mul Daya
1x Mindslicer
1x Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar
1x Ramunap Excavator
1x Sylvan Safekeeper
1x Titania, Protector of Argoth
1x Underrealm Lich
1x World Shaper
Enchantments
1x Burgeoning
1x Exploration
1x Oppression
1x Pernicious Deed
Instants
1x Assassin's Trophy
1x Beast Within
1x Constant Mists
1x Crop Rotation
1x Entomb
1x Harrow
1x Krosan Grip
1x Murderous Cut
1x Shred Memory
1x Snuff Out
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Sorceries
1x Cultivate
1x Damnation
1x Dark Petition
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Far Wanderings
1x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Hour of Promise
1x Kodama's Reach
1x Life from the Loam
1x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Pir's Whim
1x Raven's Crime
1x Regrowth
1x Scapeshift
1x Splendid Reclamation
1x Torment of Hailfire
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Traverse the Ulvenwald
1x Yawgmoth's Will
Lands (44)
1x Ash Barrens
1x Barren Moor
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Cabal Coffers
1x Command Tower
1x Dakmor Salvage
1x Dark Depths
1x Drownyard Temple
8x Forest
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Glacial Chasm
1x Golgari Rot Farm
1x High Market
1x Llanowar Wastes
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Petrified Field
1x Polluted Delta
1x Polluted Mire
1x Slippery Karst
6x Swamp
1x Strip Mine
1x Tectonic Edge
1x Thespian's Stage
1x Tranquil Thicket
1x Twilight Mire
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Woodland Cemetery
This deck basically gets cards off of sacrificing lands, discarding lands, and milling lands. Cards are generally plentiful, with mana being the limiting resource.
The philosophy behind this build of the deck is that the frog allows you to turn land card advantage into REAL card advantage. Thus, we play every Cultivate variant ever to maximize the odds of keeping up in lands every turn. The fact that some of our ramp can be treated as legitimate card advantage as well as acceleration is an advantage that cannot be ignored. Same with the landbase, in fact! The slots that would normally be reserved for card draw in other decks are not needed here because there is no opportunity cost to playing lands that cantrip for free! Lastly, this deck rarely ever worries about having a draw engine but no mana to abuse it because our mana sources ARE our draw engine. This means that cards like Crucible of Worlds also act as insane card advantage engine in themselves as well as resistance to resource disruption.
This deck also carries a discard package with a symmetry broken by your deck. While discarding lands lets you draw a card again, it gets really stupid if you end up keeping Dakmor Salvage in your hand. That way, not only do you discard salvage and get it back through dredge, but you are likely to hit a land off the dredge and draw an extra card! When the plan is to attrition everyone via Oppression, the card to tutor for is Dakmor Salvage.
It is generally advantageous to activate Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage combo if you can afford to lose 2 lands. Not only do you get the Marit Lage token but you also draw two cards out of doing it!
Getting Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth early is also a wise move as it allows you to avoid cracking early fetches until you play The Gitrog Monster.
-This deck was intentionally built as a non-infinite, non-instant win combo deck to show that this commander can still be ridiculous even in "fair" metas.-
BIG WEAKNESSES OF THE DECK:
- Mass land destruction (the ACTUAL Achille's Heel of the deck)
- Winter Orb effects (We can still actually play through these pretty well by default, but not if they have tons of nonland mana to keep up)
- Hatebears (Spirit of the Labyrinth, mostly.)
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
I think you could keep Blighted Woodland because at least it taps for so that's always a good thing. It's also not as limiting as Myriad Landscape, which comes into play tapped and both lands have to be the same type (even though it's cheaper to use its ability than Blighted Woodland). On that note, you should run Amulet of Vigor. It helps with lands big time (especially if you get Crucible of Worlds) 'cause recurring lands like Ebon Stronghold and Havenwood Battleground when they enter untapped is always a good thing.
Thawing Glaciers is another card I want to recommend since it gets you lands pretty efficiently in EDH (and even more so if you have Amulet of Vigor in play). I also think you need more basics since you have Groundskeeper and "fetchlands" that only interact with basics.
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
And yes, global discard is good against almost any deck. I'm aware of decks that can take advantage of it and actually ran into one the other day. I currently have 4 ways of nuking cards in gys that don't include land tutors that go to the hand. I'm hoping I don't need a 5th.
I'm thinking of cutting Temple of the False God for another basic. Late-game, I can barely manage to nab all of my basics out of the deck. I'd personally much rather have a fetch but I'm not exactly getting the rest of them until they are reprinted.
I might have one piece of excess ramp to cut for something else.
Lastly, I counted it up, and I only have around 9 etb tapped lands in the whole deck. 4 cycles, 2 basic fetches, bojuka bog, salvage, and the rot farm. Having my curve disrupted actually doesn't come up as often as it seems! 9 is probably the max as far as etb tapped lands go for me though..
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
Ideas to bring forth
Another card I'd like to recommend:
Creeping Renaissance
Gets all them lands back into your hand and it has flashback! Joy!
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
G Azusa, Wherever I May Roam
UG Rashmi Simic Power
WB Kambal Life Gain Kills
URG Maelstrom Wanderer Howdy
Some cards I've been liking in testing:
Volrath's Dungeon: This is a good way to put the hurt on someone's hand, and you can keep doing it as long as you're able to keep discarding lands. Your opponents will almost certainly just pay 5 life the turn they're able to, but that first turn you can get a good amount of use out of it.
Raven's Crime: Retracing it draws you a card, and like Volrath's Dungeon, you can focus down a problematic player's hand. This one works particularly well wtih Cabal Coffers.
Recycle/Null Profusion + Reliquary Tower: This creates a stupid powerful draw engine, and even without the Tower in play, you can still abuse having a max hand size of two by using the cleanup step to discard lands and continue to go through your deck a little. Note, however, that you have to play Recycle/Null Profusion *before* playing Reliquary Tower, thanks to timestamps.
Mesmeric Orb: A great source of card advantage, since each instance of mill is a separate possible trigger for The Gitrog Monster.
Bottomless Pit: Despite the random nature of this card, we're still going to come out ahead a decent amount of the time with it, and it hurts our opponents even more.
Nightmare Void: The Gitrog Monster loves dredge, and a repeatable source of targeted discard is quite good for stopping control decks and slower combo decks from setting up.
Raven's Crime and Nightmare Void I like as an alternative to something like Creeping Dread. It's also quite important that both hit lands! The former is utterly insane with Dakmor Salvage. That alone might be enough to convince me to run it over the 4cmc enchantment. Also works well with Creeping Renaissance should I choose to re-add that card.
If I can keep my hand stacked with lands, Bottomless Pit is also viable.
I've never yet actually felt like I needed to run Reliquary Tower.
There are so many good cards for this list that I can't possibly fit them all. This deck can go in so many different directions and have serious power.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
If I were to build this guy (already got 2 decks which focus on GB so maybe it'll be awhile), I would go with a more "casual" setting because it can be lent for some degenerate interactions. But I think playing with lands and graveyard to draw into responses is OK as far as casualness goes. I'll see what I can muster and post my list for your consideration.
EDIT:
Another suggestion: Elixir of Immortality.
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
I also counted my ramp/extra land cards and they totaled to 14 (not including tutors!). Wow. I think I can cut that down to 12 pretty safely.
- Temple of the False God
- Skyshroud Ranger
- Farseek
- Tectonic Edge
- Creeping Dread
+ Crucible of Worlds
+ Entomb
+ Strip Mine
+ Forest
+ Raven's Crime
15 basics is barely enough for the deck and I've pretty much fetched every single basic during the games that go long (and this deck always won a game that went long).
Entomb now has 4 viable targets (Life from the Loam, Dakmor Salvage, Worm Harvest, Raven's Crime)
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
Speaking of Raven's Crime, that card is insane beyond belief here. After seeing Dakmor Salvage in my opener, I drew into Entomb and just had to entomb for it over everything else. With enough black sources, it just wrecks hands, even through counterspells (except Dissipate, which actually happened :(.)
I actually haven't needed the extra basic, so I don't need to sub it.
As it turns out, while killing The Gitrog Monster prevents me from getting insane value out of it the next turn, the fact that I don't sacrifice the extra land I played ends up making me able to keep recasting him over and over. At one point he costed 13 to cast, and while I could do it, I had the cards I needed and had better things to do by then.
If I had the money, Liliana of the Veil would actually be pretty decent here. The -2 eats mana dorks, and by the time I'm ready to play Gitrog I can start immediately breaking the symmetry. $100 is not worth an upgrade to my Cunning Lethemancer though.
Lastly, Stronghold Rats is really good. Being able to play it on my turn 3, then play Gitrog to make people start pitching cards on turn 4 really amps up the pressure. It might even be worth delaying a toad to turn 5 if you can spend your mana efficiently. With Necrogen Mists, it generally starts working on turn 5 and Lethemancer on turn 6!
Current permanent changes
+ Raven's Crime
+ Entomb
- Farseek
- Creeping Dread
There was someone today who didn't believe in the toad, but after I made him lose his mind with a Raven's Crime retraced five times, now he believes....
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
On the plus side, this deck has been demolishing people in my group. I'm getting around a 70% win rate with it. Two of the losses were 1v1s where my opponents got either very lucky or I got unlucky. Basically outliers.
Removing 1v1 outliers, out of all multiplayer testing I have done, it has lost once out of 7 games. By comparison, the Xenagod deck I tuned for more than a year could reasonably win around 2 or 3 of those games out of 7. I've had my gy hated out but not persistently in those games. On my end my GY hate package can allow me to persistently hate out other players with recycling Bojuka Bog. I expect my winrate to go down once Rest in Peace becomes more common and more Scavenging Oozes (more than there already are) make it into decks. Adjustments to my removal suite may require one more piece of artifact or enchantment removal on a stick but is otherwise acceptable. You don't want a crazy amount but you want one for when you really need it.
MVPs: Glacial Chasm, Constant Mists. Buys so much time since the deck sets up its kill slowly. Saved from theoretical Roidnath and/or Purphoros combo-kill by holding Crop Rotation to get surprise chasm.
Other very good cards: Far Wanderings. Very easy to get threshold at a reasonable time (turn 5-6). Acceptable to play without threshold (Although not great).
Nissa's Pilgrimage: Again, super easy to hit spell mastery, but perfectly acceptable ramp if you don't!
Groundskeeper: Feeds the discard engines hard.
In fact, there's really not a single card that I was disappointed to see in this deck. That's a first!
Play your creature-based win conditions such as Avenger of Zendikar late unless you know they won't get answered by a sweeper. Getting it answered before you untap is fine considering that you can get 3 landfall triggers easy before they have untap to kill it. The same goes for Dark Depths in metas where bounce is common (Such as mine). Worm Harvest tokens are mostly expendable but also not profitable early. Good for blocking.
I remember I had a Yawgmoth's Will. It seems kind of good here, although better in the builds that go crazy with Summer Bloom
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
I made mine for frenchlist. So you will see some obvious cards missing (sol ring, vamp, etc), and Prime Time (cause if you can play it, why the heck not?)
Land
1 Bayou
1 Blighted Fen
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Buried Ruin
1 Cabal Pit
1 Cavern of Souls
1 City of Traitors
1 Crystal Vein
1 Dakmor Salvage
1 Dark Depths
1 Dust Bowl
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Homeward Path
1 Llanowar Wastes
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mouth of Ronom
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Petrified Field
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Polluted Delta
6 Snow-Covered Forest
3 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Twilight Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Blighted Woodland
1 Damnation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Edge of Autumn
1 Explore
1 Grim Tutor
1 Into the North
1 Languish
1 Life from the Loam
1 Nostalgic Dreams
1 Raven's Crime
1 Regrowth
1 Restore
1 Scapeshift
1 Sylvan Scrying
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Worm Harvest
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Scout the Borders
Instant
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Beast Within
1 Crop Rotation
1 Grisly Salvage
1 Harrow
1 Rain of Filth
1 Realms Uncharted
1 Constant Mists
Enchantment
1 Dark Tutelage
1 Exploration
1 Squandered Resources
1 Sylvan Library
1 Zombie Infestation
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Dark Confidant
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Primeval Titan
1 Sakura-Tribe Scout
1 Skirge Familiar
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Titania, Protector of Argoth
1 Eternal Witness
1 Satyr Wayfinder
1 The Gitrog Monster
1 Panglacial Wurm
1 Skyshroud Ranger
1 World Breaker
1 Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
1 Avenger of Zendikar
Planeswalkers
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Vraska the Unseen
Artifacts
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Expedition Map
1 Horn of Greed
1 Lightning Greaves
Damia, Jenara, Xiahou Dun, Mareth, Nekusar, Oloro, Kresh, Deretti
0 Barren Moor
0 Bojuka Bog
0 Command Tower
0 Dakmor Salvage
0 Deserted Temple
0 Drownyard Temple
0 Evolving Wilds
4x Forest
0 Glacial Chasm
0 Golgari Guildgate
0 Golgari Rot Farm
0 Hissing Quagmire
0 Khalni Garden
0 Lake of the Dead
0 Lotus Vale
0 Myriad Landscape
0 Overgrown Tomb
0 Petrified Field
0 Polluted Mire
0 Rupture Spire
0 Slippery Karst
4x Swamp
0 Tainted Wood
0 Temple of Malady
0 Temple of the False God
0 Terramorphic Expanse
0 Tranquil Thicket
0 Transguild Promenade
0 Twilight Mire
0 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
0 Verdant Catacombs
0 Vivid Grove
0 Vivid Marsh
0 Woodland Cemetery
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Elvish Mystic
2 Hermit Druid
2 Lotleth Troll
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3 Eternal Witness
3 Stinkweed Imp
5 Doomwake Giant
5 Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest
5 Titania, Protector of Argoth
6 Massacre Wurm
6 Primeval Titan
9 Void Winnower
Sorcery (12)
1 Raven's Crime
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Life from the Loam
2 Sylvan Scrying
3 Victimize
3 Yawgmoth's Will
3 Pox
3x Death Cloud
4 Dread Return
4 Mutilate
4 Natural Balance
5 Creeping Renaissance
Enchantment (7)
1 Burgeoning
3 Bottomless Pit
3 Oppression
4 Grave Pact
4 Living Plane
4 Pestilence
4 Volrath's Dungeon
1 Expedition Map
1 Sol Ring
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Torpor Orb
2 Winter Orb
2 Golgari Signet
2 Null Rod
3 Trinisphere
3 Static Orb
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
4 Thran Dynamo
5 Gilded Lotus
Instant (9)
1 Noxious Revival
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Crop Rotation
2 Golgari Charm
2 Grisly Salvage
2 Constant Mists
3 Putrefy
3 Realms Uncharted
Planeswalker (1)
5 Vraska the Unseen
In this deck, I think Volrath's Dungeon is pretty much one-turn use only. However, I do like how unlike crime you don't pay mana if you want to disassemble someone's whole 7 card hand when you're holding Dakmor Salvage.
I did talk about Glacial Chasm in the deck and how it is the nuts, even without crucible.
You may want more removal because the symmetry of your discard outlets can only be broken while your gy can take stuff. If you are facing down RiP or even just scooze, you'll probably want it. Definitely so if the hate prevents you from drawing extra cards.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
Other options for discard outlets:
Pack Rat - Could get out of hand quickly
Greenseeker - Becomes "G, Tap: Draw a card" every turn, so long as you run enough basics
Silverglade Pathfinder - Like Greenseeker, but puts the land into play
Mortiphobia - Useful to exile specific cards from a graveyard
Call the Bloodline - Maybe?
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
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I think I had included Grave Pact because I really want my copy to find a home, but I don't think this is the deck for it because of the low creature count. Same goes for Lotleth Troll.
Yeah I feel like most of the time you will be using Volrath's Dungeon in response to somebody destroying it. But it still seems pretty good.
I feel like Glacial Chasm is going to pretty great. Along with Constant Mists it should make dealing damage to us pretty difficult
Cool, I was thinking that's how it worked but thanks for confirming it.
Thanks for all the suggestions, This has made me really excited to build this deck.
Also a good amount of time I end up taking out players via Exsanguinate. Once off of an opponent's Gaea's Cradle I blew up and then proceeded to Restore for myself.
Having Worm Harvest ended up being relevant at least once so far for closing out games. I basically have six wincons that can overwhelm opponents in the deck.
This deck I know doesn't really win quickly. It'll probably have issues against fast decks that gun for you from the start.
I actually ran Silverglade Pathfinder until I found a lotus cobra and realized that it went so much more nuts than the pathfinder did.
I'm still trying to figure out if I even need too many cards that are purely for gassing up the deck, as one of the deck's biggest strengths is that you basically get the cards to keep going out of the landbase and doing what you would normally do with those lands. There's almost no opportunity cost for your CA engine other than the need to keep hitting those land drops, which is pretty easy when you easily draw 3-4 cards in a turn.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
- Treasured Find
- Chord of Calling (rarely convoked)
+ Yawgmoth's Will (basically an upgraded Treasured Find in this deck)
+ Genesis Wave (It's actually not THAT much better than Animist's Awakening here, but I want to see how much of a difference being able to hit Lotus Cobra or Avenger of Zendikar makes. I mean, you got to win SOMEHOW, and when you have 15 mana the 2 fewer digs are rarely felt)
I also feel like I can safely cut a land here. I can add Deathrite Shaman, Frontier Siege, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest, the archive? Realms Uncharted would be great once I get Crucible. Hell, with Drownyard Temple and Dakmor Salvage as powerful options that card isn't even half bad by itself.
If Azusa or Crucible were within my reach I would add those first obviously, but I'm not shelling out how much they cost at the present moment. I also don't feel like getting a Scapeshift right now.
Bob would also be super sweet if I could ever get one. Too many good things to play with and not nearly enough space to fit it all.
EDIT: I suspect that, considering how nuts Lotus Cobra has been in the deck, that I probably want a Frontier Siege over any of these. Not surprising, considering that the card has been one of my favorite things to see in Xenagod. Time to test next chance I get. Although the really insane 1 drop is also quite tempting...
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
Been trying Recycle and Null Profusion and they both lose out to Alhammarret's Archive. Deck goes Turbo with that thing.
Tried Death Cloud but without a Crucible of Worlds or Titania, Protector of Argoth its cantrip doesn't help us that much, maybe in a dedicated discard build with Waste Not ect.
Turn 1: two lands, Exploration
Turn 2: Two lands, Sakura-tribe Elder
Turn 3: land, The Gitrog Monster, cycle a land, play a land
Turn 4: Sacrifice a land (6 lands), cast Crop Rotation to get Cabal Coffers (opponent had Urborg), cast Cultivate and play the land I put into my hand.. (8 lands) cast Nissa's Pilgrimage, get 3 forests (2 to hand).. Play both forests. (11 lands)
By the end of turn 4 I am sitting on 11 lands and still three cards in hand. Eventually I draw into a way to get Life from the Loam and completely run away with the game.
Also, Cunning Lethemancer has sucked. Time to cut him. Raven's Crime already makes people scared enough of the discard aspect of the deck. It's pretty much as oppressive as Oppression.
Genesis Wave has been alright. Even casting it for x=6 is fine as you usually get three lands activate your threshold/spell mastery/delirium.
Turn 2 Stronghold Rats is also pretty broke.
In metagames without hyper fast combo or mass land destruction, there are three things players must do to stop this deck.
A) Keep The Gitrog Monster off the board
B) Blow up the key lands (ESPECIALLY coffers)
C) Nuke my graveyard.
Doing only one of these actions isn't enough. It would take two of these actions to beat it. Alternately, cards like Rest in Peace and World Breaker are extra-effective against this deck.
Racing the deck is also possible, however it isn't always easy to do so. One reason I can say this is because people have tried and my removal suite is adequate enough to make it a non-trivial matter.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.