I tried your list 7hor and I must say, I really like it. I rant Cower in Fear main over Golgari charm just to see how relevant it was not killing my own creatures. To be honest, it never really came up. Thragtusk and tokens usually were what I had on the board when I was casting it. If I needed it early where charm would have been better, it really would not have hit any dudes since I had none out. So I think really, lowering the count is not really something I would personally do. 3 seems to be a solid number of charms. Aside from that, early blockers would be nice... Love the list man.
I think you are assuming that it is focused on zombies because that is the match up we have been discussing. All the perks of the creature package are just as relevant in any aggro match, we have just been discussing zombies in particular.
If you mill Chronic Flooding that is it, there is no extra use beyond that. If you play it early, you are not getting the mill effect the moment you cast it which cost you a turn of seeing cards. You deck can cast Gisela, but it cannot do so without either being slower than it should be or costing you a fair amount of life to cast it in time. That is my problem with her in your list.
I have played Frites since the PT when I saw Levy playing it. I also have been playing a list which is loosely based on the block version and have been crushing with it. It is one of my favorite decks of all time (the human based version) it will be sad to see Hero of Oxid Ridge rotate. We want something that is resilient to aggressive decks an control. What makes the human version strong is that it can block block block and then bidding it's way to a victory out of nowhere. I played a Battle of Wits deck that landed BoW turn 4 with 21 life and managed to 1 shot him out of nowhere with an angel bringing back heroes and malcontents.
Back to this deck though, I really do not think discarding fat is what we want to actively be doing. I think the game plan needs to be maintaining the board until you start casting things to come over the top and if you are lucky, cheating in a win early on off a nice mulch or salvage.
Zombies is heavily focused on because it is a proven strategy leading into the new season with rotation. It is not the only match I focus on just one we can actually expect to see. It gives a good idea of how your other aggro matches play out to a degree.
You list seems awful, but I will sleeve it up and test it before I actually say it is. Just looking at it, I dislike the idea of being able to actually cast my threats if I cannot cheat them into play and I like to cast them in a reasonable time frame. That many shocks is not going to help me achieve that without losing a good portion of life just from the lands. I also don't like being so graveyard oriented in a meta that has so much hostility available towards it through the sideboard.
Chronic Flooding is opening the doors to 2-1's as well as a potential waste of a turn. It is not efficient resource use until it has been used for multiple turns.As a fan of Rapheal Levy, I would argue that Dream Twist is better as it follows Levy's idea that if it is not a creature, it needs flashback to take advantage of the disadvantage of milling yourself. It also lets you virtually see 3 cards deep. To the same idea, Snapcaster is not even in your deck to take advantage of the counters you are putting in your yard which is going to happen. If you are not drawing it, you want to be able to either play it, or get the full value out of the card when you do play it. While this works with counters, it does not work with your land enchantment.
I am starting to like Lotleth Troll more and more, but as a SB card against control and that is about it. His ability to regenerate and offer a snowball effect is great against them. He alone is inevitability in that match. Aggro, not so much.
The reason Elderscale Wurm is so bad is that it only affects damage not loss of life. So you play the Wurm, go to 7, they can still kill you with Blood Artist, Geralf's Messenger, or even Sign in Blood if they play it. Basically, with a Blood Artist they just have to cast and sac a Messenger and one other creature. That is if the Wurm doesn't just bite a removal spell immediately.
I think you are looking at the Wurm as the only tool against Zombies, when the Wurm is also surrounded by Griselbrand, Thragtusk, and Angel of Serenity. All of which are pretty strong in that match.
Bit outdated now but it's the usual 8 dorks, 4 trolls/LS/tusk, 4 craterhoofs and 2 AoGR with all the other enablers.
Yeah, I make that match a straight up boar attrition game, I usually stabilize around 8-14 life. Someone said that Elderscale Wurm was not very good against zombies... but to be honest without being able to copy messengers getting someone to lose 8 life off messengers after the Elderscale Wurm hits is hard. They do not have the ability to Phantasmal image it and they have more than likely already used all their messengers, or at least 1 or two at that point. This is why I like the Abrupt Decay/Liliana/Desecration Demon/Vraska set up. You can keep forcing them to spit dudes out until you just clear the board with an Angel and start wrapping the game up. I am going to try and record a video so I can upload it here when I have some free time and I run into a good Zombie match.
Ahahahahaha golgari charm is another dagger in the heart of this deck. it was bad enough that red got a dork/souls hoser, now the best deck in the format got a dork/souls hoser...:mad:
This definitely forces the deck to run slower, and unless we get a freaking AMAZING offensive reanimate target with the last 4 cards spoiled, I don't see myself trying to make this work anymore, because craterhoof only functions with a redundancy of souls tokens and mana dorks. I'm gonna test out the farseek/Runekey build, but it's not looking good.
'Dagger in the heart'... why are you so reliant on mana dorks and graveyard interaction? I think that all the bashing you are doing is really amusing when I see you swallowing your own words like this.
In theory, we should be seeing 2 more of the mythic X spells and we can say that one is Golgari, so here it so hoping. I am betting it is some sort of heavy sweeper though :S
On a side note, Golgari Charm is not that bad, I could see it being a board item for us.
I don't disagree with your statement in the abstract, but none of his threats can be considered diverse in terms of how they are answered, nor do they provide tangibly different lines of attack against an opponent. The upside of the mana dork/craterhoof plan is that it forces an opponent to either prevent critical mass or die. Angel is nice for stabilizing, and griselbrand is OK if you managed to get him out with a respectable life total, but neither card presents a hard choice for the opponent, which is absolutely necessary if you are relying on natural card draw and 3 farseeks to curve out...
Electrickery still worries me, and I'm hoping that a couple of the unspoiled cards present us with either a solid tempo option or a fatty that simply stops aggro in their tracks. I also realize that we are dealing with a card pool that is quite small compared to 7 months from now. Who knows? Maybe we get a blazing archon reprint in gatecrash ; )
Craterhoof plan is exactly that. Deal or die. Which I can respect, but I do not like having to rely on having other things in play for that plan to flesh out. Respectable none the less.
Angel pulls extra things out of my yard and back to my hand. How is that not netting me advantage? Two angels creates a soft lock.
Mulch and Salvage are great virtual advantage. If souls, creature, or rites are in my yard, they might as well be in my hand. We can all agree on that right? So where is this lack of CA statement coming from? Vraska and Liliana are also decent card advantage in that they stick around on the board for a turn or two after removing something... technically, I still have those cards.
Why I like running diverse set of finishers is that they all have overlapping features to a degree. It makes extraction effects weaker and it lets me flex on casting restriction when I need to in the later stages of the game.
I have been playing for hours every day with the deck, it is less theory crafting and more testing than the other way around sir.
Flying Game Enders (7)
- 2 Angel of Serenity
- 2 Griselbrand
- 3 Desecration Demon
It is not about finding those things early on, it is about finding them when I need them and when I need them is when my removal and stall tactics are exhausted. Salvage is there to find them, Rites is there to recur them everything else is to find time to start casting them if I cannot cheat them into play. Your idea of card advantage is very skewed.
I'm going to disagree with this definition because I think it's pertinent to where the deck wants to go. You're deck may work fine, but I don't think it's really a rock deck. If anything, it's more of a control deck that DOES want to tap out and go over the top. Classic rock cards are like these:
The way a classic rock deck works is by playing efficient aggressive cards, cards that 2-for-1 the opponent (actually, like Shriekmaw or Damnation, or virtually, like Hierarch), and ways to get card advantage. It goes over the top of aggro decks, but can go over the finishers control decks play. The beauty of the rock is flexibility; controlling versus aggro, aggro versus control, and always playing the attrition game. Rock decks care less about going over the top than they care about value, getting bang for the card. At least, this is my understanding of what people mean by the rock.
Anyway, I think this is what we want to be doing with reanimator. Playing a solid midrange plan, with the potential to reanimate into something game winning.
What? The Rock used early ramp dorks to start clearing the board and ensure Spirit Monger could clean up. It utilized edicts, point removal and deeds to maintain control while using tutor and wish to fish out beaters like Spirit Monger and Visara and Ravenous Baloth and when those were exhausted it would bring them all back with Living Death. Fall backs were cards like Living Death, Treetop Village and Genesis.
It would continuously remove creatures against aggro and come over the top with creatures that other decks had a hard time dealing with and it would just do it again when it exhausted it's resources.
I agree that the idea is to be aggressive against control and controlling against aggro, but you just described what a mid-range deck is... not what the Rock is...
And why not 4 unburial rites? Isn't the point of the deck to t2 Salvage Rites + a fatty? How does your list do this with any consitency?
No, did you read anything I said? Rites is there for blow outs plays with Salvage, which is a card to ensure you have a creature or a land when you need it. Salvage is not a dumping tool, it is a filter tool. Rites is also there to help find those redundancies and reuse exhausted creatures.
Those are some pretty hilarious statements about your deck, considering how inconsistent your list is. You run griselbrand, but only have 3 discard outlets. You call your version a rock deck, but you have 3 removal spells, and literally zero early creatures to protect a liliana. Desecration demon has no backup against an opponent capable of saccing a token or two to make it completely useless. Only 2 of each thragtusk/grisel/angel means that you don't have any consistency in terms of seeing the right fatty for the right situation.
I actually find it hilarious that you consider your list any good against zombies - if you don't have a decay in your opener, any sort of pressure from the zombies player is going to put you down before you stabilize.
There are 9 removal 'spell' with a total or 12 souces for actual removal. 9 of which potentially remain on the board after the first application. The deck is build on redundancy which is what makes it consistent, and those redundancies are diversified to avoid hate.
If you are assuming the deck is dead because of a single narrow hate card, which there are plenty of valid answers for, I am really curious why you even bother with magic... try the list before you knock it champ. My evaluations are not based on what I am looking at but what I have tested and discovered.
I feel like your analysis that the deck should play more like a rock or midrange deck with the reanimation late-game is right, but I feel like your deck seems more all-in on the reanimation plan. It seems like you're leaning pretty hard on Lingering Souls, Decay, and Liliana to get you the mid-game, but with only 3 Rites, I don't know if you can dependably reanimate a fatty. If the thing you reanimate doesn't win you the game, it seems like you'd be in trouble.
I think the Desecration Demon is pretty bad against zombies. They can sac their guys and do a ton of damage if they play Blood Artist and Geralf's Messenger.
I think mana dorks are still going to be good. They are fragile, but there's no Gut Shot, and so an opponent will have to burn real removal on them. Also, the deck is going to be way more consistent than Frites with the new and better lands. I think you want some dorks and value creatures, that's what the rock is built on, solid aggression, 2-for-1s, and card advantage.
7 Life to do in terms of losing life with messenger is not easy. I promise. Doable, but certainly quite difficult. What makes demon good against zombies is it slows them down. by the time he hits, you are ready to stabilize, remove dudes and gain life. If they sac to tap that is one less attack, in the case of messenger, potentially 1 less life lost. It also forces them to use up their resources to deal with the card outside of straight up killing it. He is there to deplete those resources and he is very effective in doing so in the zombie match up.
I am actually usually hardcasting with that list. Reanimation is for later in the game, or an early blow out. Running 23 land, mulch and salvage are there to help me find those lands to ensure I can make it to the point where I am able to start casting fat.
The Rock is a deck that creates value by going over the top. it is about one upping your opponent. Luring your opponent into difficult plays where you are almost guaranteed to come out ahead is what this list is doing.
My problem with mana dorks are that I would rather be putting pressure on my opponent by forcing them to react in the early mid game. Mana dorks do not do that effectively. If I am dropping a turn 1 dork to ramp, I am taking the damage from their dudes. That is just how it is going to be. If I need to trade or chump I will, but I would rather not. In those turns I am taking damage, I would rather be proactively working towards inevitability rather than dropping dorks that MAY help me get my fat out sooner, but will probably end up dying to save me life in the early game.
I will profess a VERY strong zombie match, which is why this deck is my number one contender for states 2012
If you mill Chronic Flooding that is it, there is no extra use beyond that. If you play it early, you are not getting the mill effect the moment you cast it which cost you a turn of seeing cards. You deck can cast Gisela, but it cannot do so without either being slower than it should be or costing you a fair amount of life to cast it in time. That is my problem with her in your list.
I have played Frites since the PT when I saw Levy playing it. I also have been playing a list which is loosely based on the block version and have been crushing with it. It is one of my favorite decks of all time (the human based version) it will be sad to see Hero of Oxid Ridge rotate. We want something that is resilient to aggressive decks an control. What makes the human version strong is that it can block block block and then bidding it's way to a victory out of nowhere. I played a Battle of Wits deck that landed BoW turn 4 with 21 life and managed to 1 shot him out of nowhere with an angel bringing back heroes and malcontents.
Back to this deck though, I really do not think discarding fat is what we want to actively be doing. I think the game plan needs to be maintaining the board until you start casting things to come over the top and if you are lucky, cheating in a win early on off a nice mulch or salvage.
You list seems awful, but I will sleeve it up and test it before I actually say it is. Just looking at it, I dislike the idea of being able to actually cast my threats if I cannot cheat them into play and I like to cast them in a reasonable time frame. That many shocks is not going to help me achieve that without losing a good portion of life just from the lands. I also don't like being so graveyard oriented in a meta that has so much hostility available towards it through the sideboard.
Chronic Flooding is opening the doors to 2-1's as well as a potential waste of a turn. It is not efficient resource use until it has been used for multiple turns.As a fan of Rapheal Levy, I would argue that Dream Twist is better as it follows Levy's idea that if it is not a creature, it needs flashback to take advantage of the disadvantage of milling yourself. It also lets you virtually see 3 cards deep. To the same idea, Snapcaster is not even in your deck to take advantage of the counters you are putting in your yard which is going to happen. If you are not drawing it, you want to be able to either play it, or get the full value out of the card when you do play it. While this works with counters, it does not work with your land enchantment.
I am starting to like Lotleth Troll more and more, but as a SB card against control and that is about it. His ability to regenerate and offer a snowball effect is great against them. He alone is inevitability in that match. Aggro, not so much.
I think you are looking at the Wurm as the only tool against Zombies, when the Wurm is also surrounded by Griselbrand, Thragtusk, and Angel of Serenity. All of which are pretty strong in that match.
Yeah, I make that match a straight up boar attrition game, I usually stabilize around 8-14 life. Someone said that Elderscale Wurm was not very good against zombies... but to be honest without being able to copy messengers getting someone to lose 8 life off messengers after the Elderscale Wurm hits is hard. They do not have the ability to Phantasmal image it and they have more than likely already used all their messengers, or at least 1 or two at that point. This is why I like the Abrupt Decay/Liliana/Desecration Demon/Vraska set up. You can keep forcing them to spit dudes out until you just clear the board with an Angel and start wrapping the game up. I am going to try and record a video so I can upload it here when I have some free time and I run into a good Zombie match.
'Dagger in the heart'... why are you so reliant on mana dorks and graveyard interaction? I think that all the bashing you are doing is really amusing when I see you swallowing your own words like this.
In theory, we should be seeing 2 more of the mythic X spells and we can say that one is Golgari, so here it so hoping. I am betting it is some sort of heavy sweeper though :S
On a side note, Golgari Charm is not that bad, I could see it being a board item for us.
What is your list?
Craterhoof plan is exactly that. Deal or die. Which I can respect, but I do not like having to rely on having other things in play for that plan to flesh out. Respectable none the less.
Angel pulls extra things out of my yard and back to my hand. How is that not netting me advantage? Two angels creates a soft lock.
Mulch and Salvage are great virtual advantage. If souls, creature, or rites are in my yard, they might as well be in my hand. We can all agree on that right? So where is this lack of CA statement coming from? Vraska and Liliana are also decent card advantage in that they stick around on the board for a turn or two after removing something... technically, I still have those cards.
Why I like running diverse set of finishers is that they all have overlapping features to a degree. It makes extraction effects weaker and it lets me flex on casting restriction when I need to in the later stages of the game.
I have been playing for hours every day with the deck, it is less theory crafting and more testing than the other way around sir.
Life Gain (4 sources)
- 2 Thragtusk
- 2 Griselbrand
Virtual removal (5 sources)
- 3 Desecration Demon
- 2 Angel of Serenity
Virtual Card Advantage (6 sources)
- 2 Griselbrand
- 2 Angel of Serenity
- 2 Thragtusk
Flying Game Enders (7)
- 2 Angel of Serenity
- 2 Griselbrand
- 3 Desecration Demon
It is not about finding those things early on, it is about finding them when I need them and when I need them is when my removal and stall tactics are exhausted. Salvage is there to find them, Rites is there to recur them everything else is to find time to start casting them if I cannot cheat them into play. Your idea of card advantage is very skewed.
What? The Rock used early ramp dorks to start clearing the board and ensure Spirit Monger could clean up. It utilized edicts, point removal and deeds to maintain control while using tutor and wish to fish out beaters like Spirit Monger and Visara and Ravenous Baloth and when those were exhausted it would bring them all back with Living Death. Fall backs were cards like Living Death, Treetop Village and Genesis.
It would continuously remove creatures against aggro and come over the top with creatures that other decks had a hard time dealing with and it would just do it again when it exhausted it's resources.
I agree that the idea is to be aggressive against control and controlling against aggro, but you just described what a mid-range deck is... not what the Rock is...
No, did you read anything I said? Rites is there for blow outs plays with Salvage, which is a card to ensure you have a creature or a land when you need it. Salvage is not a dumping tool, it is a filter tool. Rites is also there to help find those redundancies and reuse exhausted creatures.
There are 9 removal 'spell' with a total or 12 souces for actual removal. 9 of which potentially remain on the board after the first application. The deck is build on redundancy which is what makes it consistent, and those redundancies are diversified to avoid hate.
If you are assuming the deck is dead because of a single narrow hate card, which there are plenty of valid answers for, I am really curious why you even bother with magic... try the list before you knock it champ. My evaluations are not based on what I am looking at but what I have tested and discovered.
7 Life to do in terms of losing life with messenger is not easy. I promise. Doable, but certainly quite difficult. What makes demon good against zombies is it slows them down. by the time he hits, you are ready to stabilize, remove dudes and gain life. If they sac to tap that is one less attack, in the case of messenger, potentially 1 less life lost. It also forces them to use up their resources to deal with the card outside of straight up killing it. He is there to deplete those resources and he is very effective in doing so in the zombie match up.
I am actually usually hardcasting with that list. Reanimation is for later in the game, or an early blow out. Running 23 land, mulch and salvage are there to help me find those lands to ensure I can make it to the point where I am able to start casting fat.
The Rock is a deck that creates value by going over the top. it is about one upping your opponent. Luring your opponent into difficult plays where you are almost guaranteed to come out ahead is what this list is doing.
My problem with mana dorks are that I would rather be putting pressure on my opponent by forcing them to react in the early mid game. Mana dorks do not do that effectively. If I am dropping a turn 1 dork to ramp, I am taking the damage from their dudes. That is just how it is going to be. If I need to trade or chump I will, but I would rather not. In those turns I am taking damage, I would rather be proactively working towards inevitability rather than dropping dorks that MAY help me get my fat out sooner, but will probably end up dying to save me life in the early game.
I will profess a VERY strong zombie match, which is why this deck is my number one contender for states 2012