Nulamog was talked about last page. Too expensive and non tutorable. Ugin + counter back up is way better in the non tutorable game winning bomb slot. 10 mana is way too much anyway when one of our strengths is being able to drop our bombs without needing tron to do so.
Played this deck the other night, got matched against UWR Control unfortunately piloted by a top 8 GP player, I just got outplayed. Interestingly enough turn 2 snapcaster beat down is surprisingly hard to deal with as it's not a card you want to bounce and let them recast usually. Game 2 I got into a counter war over an aven mind censor that ended up resolving and that was GG.
What would you cut for hellkite? The advantage over Ugin is that he's tutorable, but at the same time he doesn't clear the board the turn he's played which is what we want in the matchups where hellkite is good. Might be good against affinity, but I think tapping out to cast this card against that deck means we die
Most of the deck is pretty cheap aside from the vines and the lands. I don't think there's any way to make it any cheaper really since most of e cards serve very specific roles that other cards don't replicate, and the only card that can be substituted without gimping the deck is already dirt cheap (angler). I wouldn't play the deck without vines as its probably my win condition in at least a third of my games that couldn't be replicated with another card
I'm running my build similar to the woolwine list and I'm quite happy with how it's playing. I don't like murderous cut as I feel the graveyard is under too much pressure with anglers and wanting to have creatures in the yard for GGT, but otherwise it's quite similar. I'm not at all convinced we need a ton of removal aside from utility creatures as we generally beat everything in creature combat and those removal spells end up getting dredged an awful lot anyway.
My meta has seen a big uptick in Grixis control which is fantastic because its more or less impossible to lose to that deck if you're running GGT
Maybe that's just it, I have yet to play an event locally without hitting twin at least one out of 4 games. Those always turn into kill as fast as possible and permanently hold up mana for removal if your opponent has 3 mana up on your turn. Bloodghast is great in that matchup alongside lotleth troll that you've usually pumped up discarding a crawler and any number of ghasts
This deck doesn't like paying more than 2 for anything, and double coloured mana of one type is problematic.
My only (continued) argument against Bloodghast is that they're best in matchups we're already good against. They're icing on the cake against control, but do nothing against Merfolk, Elves, Zoo, Burn, Coco, or things of that nature. If they always had haste it would be different, but as it is they aren't reliably aggressive enough to help us in the race against fast decks, and we already run four creatures that can't block, I don't want four more.
Well, burn I think is just a hard matchup for us that for me comes down to whether I get off a good gnaw to the bone or not. For the other decks you listed I actually feel the opposite though, as big guys like gurmag anglers will always get chumped and the ability to go wide for free is usually the way I win those matches. As well, the decks that can flood the board as quick as us don't tend to do so with creatures that have greater than 2 toughness, so they either trade with the ghasts and lose out on card advantage, or we start pulling ahead very quickly in the damage race. Haste isn't really a big deal on the ghasts as you can usually afford to play your lands on the second main phase so they can attack/die/recur on every combat turn. While the flashy games where we swing three vines on turn 3 are awesome, I honestly think I win as many games just beating down with a recurring wall of 6 2/1s and a lotleth troll.
Well, it's far from a solved deck so by all means try it, however with this deck turns one and two are often used for setup, using turn 3 for a liliana which is yet more setup seems pretty weak compared to putting your vines into play or slamming down some gurmag anglers. Part of how we grind people down with attrition is by playing early creatures and never easing up on pressure which Liliana does not fit into.
Also, if you've got a lotleth troll to stick on turn 2 you're almost never going to want to tap out to cast Lilly as you need to keep mana up for regen once you're swinging that troll.
Three mana for a Liliana is pretty unimpressive for a deck that can instead spend the three mana to cast 2 gurmag anglers and have any number of vengevines come out of the graveyard with haste.
Also, really have to say I'm very happy with still running bloodghasts. Most of our creatures don't haVe trample or evasion and additional 2 damage creatures to go wide with can seal the deal when the field starts getting gummed up with signal pests, elves, or pyromancer tokens.
Speaking of elves, played a round tonight against the deck and darkblast is absolutely hilarious in that matchup.
Recently tried cutting to 2 grisly salvage and adding 2 GGT and I'm thinking that not running GGT is a mistake in this list. You pretty much never want to cast it, but the synergy with lotleth troll is huge and being able to look for your crawlers/vines for 0 mana makes it much more likely you can cast what you find than paying 2 mana for a salvage.
Also, no fastlands is fascinating. They've been some of my favourite early plays. And with no basic mountains to fetch, that makes for a consistently painful T1 Looting.
He plays four Blackcleave Cliffs. I missed them at first, too.
I'm also suprised he doesn't play Bloodghast (one of the reasons like you mentioned probably being their inability to block) while choosing the Grave-Troll over Stinkweeds, which are superb blockers.
Yeah the list linked seems to be more dredgevine midrange than the explosive aggro lists this thread has mostly been focussing on. I don't know that I'd build the list that way personally as I'd rather have venge vines swinging on turn 2 than trying to out grind Jund or be looking to actually hard cast GGT on turn 5 against twin, but obviously it worked for him that day.
I find I've usually got at least two instants or sorceries in my graveyard between the looting/salvage in my opening hand and whatever gets milled in after a couple turns. I think this is good I just don't know if I want salvage number 5-8 or not.
I think it definitely fits in the deck though especially as a way to reload late game
Yeah way finder is probably better at filling the yard even without the zombie synergy. If you're really worried about having zombies in play to recur your crawlers a copy or two of rotting rats works really well but I haven't found it an issue between 4 crawlers, 4 trolls (that regen can be the difference between keeping your board or not) and a couple gurmags
I find twin to be a great matchup because you've usually got your board online in time to hold up mana for abrupt decay and the deck blanks almost all of their control options (creatures getting bolted to the graveyard is fine, vengevines can't be countered, they don't run exile effects so everything just comes back) and often times you can just kill them before they get their combo pieces.
I find rather that stuff like ad nauseum can be very hard as you either get your golgari charms in time or they combo off and you lose, as I have found we generally can't kill them through a phyrexian unlife fast enough.
Way finder is amazing though and if never drop it IMO
I think situational 2 card combos are not where this deck wants to be. The biggest strength of this deck is that it is ridiculously consistent, most of our stuff works great in our hand or in our graveyard so that our initial 7 is almost always good, and our grisly salvages are always getting us more than just one card, and faithless looting basically reads (R) - draw 2 cards. Adding cards that are only good when paired with another of 4 copies in our deck that we need in hand is bad. Snap caster becoming good if you can snap back a faithless looting is way weaker than the hedron crab you're not running which would have put SIX cards in your graveyard by the time you're snapping back a faithless looting, and not cost you any mana to do it besides the initial investment.
When the deck works it's because EVERY creature card in your hand can be used to bring back venge vines by turn 2/3. It's good because you get attacking power or card draw just for playing lands that you were going to play anyway. Having creatures that don't support the game plan of using the graveyard as a massive draw engine and beating with recurring creatures is making the deck worse.
Nulamog was talked about last page. Too expensive and non tutorable. Ugin + counter back up is way better in the non tutorable game winning bomb slot. 10 mana is way too much anyway when one of our strengths is being able to drop our bombs without needing tron to do so.
Played this deck the other night, got matched against UWR Control unfortunately piloted by a top 8 GP player, I just got outplayed. Interestingly enough turn 2 snapcaster beat down is surprisingly hard to deal with as it's not a card you want to bounce and let them recast usually. Game 2 I got into a counter war over an aven mind censor that ended up resolving and that was GG.
My meta has seen a big uptick in Grixis control which is fantastic because its more or less impossible to lose to that deck if you're running GGT
Well, burn I think is just a hard matchup for us that for me comes down to whether I get off a good gnaw to the bone or not. For the other decks you listed I actually feel the opposite though, as big guys like gurmag anglers will always get chumped and the ability to go wide for free is usually the way I win those matches. As well, the decks that can flood the board as quick as us don't tend to do so with creatures that have greater than 2 toughness, so they either trade with the ghasts and lose out on card advantage, or we start pulling ahead very quickly in the damage race. Haste isn't really a big deal on the ghasts as you can usually afford to play your lands on the second main phase so they can attack/die/recur on every combat turn. While the flashy games where we swing three vines on turn 3 are awesome, I honestly think I win as many games just beating down with a recurring wall of 6 2/1s and a lotleth troll.
Also, if you've got a lotleth troll to stick on turn 2 you're almost never going to want to tap out to cast Lilly as you need to keep mana up for regen once you're swinging that troll.
I just can't see it fitting the deck
Also, really have to say I'm very happy with still running bloodghasts. Most of our creatures don't haVe trample or evasion and additional 2 damage creatures to go wide with can seal the deal when the field starts getting gummed up with signal pests, elves, or pyromancer tokens.
Speaking of elves, played a round tonight against the deck and darkblast is absolutely hilarious in that matchup.
Yeah the list linked seems to be more dredgevine midrange than the explosive aggro lists this thread has mostly been focussing on. I don't know that I'd build the list that way personally as I'd rather have venge vines swinging on turn 2 than trying to out grind Jund or be looking to actually hard cast GGT on turn 5 against twin, but obviously it worked for him that day.
I think it definitely fits in the deck though especially as a way to reload late game
I find rather that stuff like ad nauseum can be very hard as you either get your golgari charms in time or they combo off and you lose, as I have found we generally can't kill them through a phyrexian unlife fast enough.
Way finder is amazing though and if never drop it IMO
When the deck works it's because EVERY creature card in your hand can be used to bring back venge vines by turn 2/3. It's good because you get attacking power or card draw just for playing lands that you were going to play anyway. Having creatures that don't support the game plan of using the graveyard as a massive draw engine and beating with recurring creatures is making the deck worse.