Popping in to see if anyone has tried out tribal flames in this archetype yet. The card is quite powerful, especially paired with the zoo elements of the deck, and seems like it's only a small jump to allow the manabase to handle the full 5 damage. has anyone tried something like that?
Just an update to my previous comments, I've done a small amount of testing, and I've come to some interesting conclusions. gnarlwood dryad and delver of secrets simply do not play nicely together. while I was able to get the two of them to function properly in the same shell, it was awkward, and underwhelming. I then tried a version of the deck where delver was replaced by dryad, and while that worked to some degree, I never liked having to devote extra slots to tarfires or to mishra's bauble. I have come to the conclusion that it is possible to build a sort of "turbo delirium" version of the deck which uses fewer card types but plays more cards like faithless looting or thought scour to put exactly 4 card types into the graveyard very quickly and very consistantly, but without the potential for 6/7 goyfs being as real I doubt the legitamacy of such a strategy. I'm going to suspend further testing for a good while, so I guess this result will stand for now as far as I'm concerned.
With respect, I've read the article and I believe that it might be premature to abandon dryad in the counter cat shell. being able to be a 3/3 deathtouch immediately upon hitting the board is very relevant as the game progresses, and the ability to bring tarmogoyf to immense sizes also seems quite appealing. It may be the case that if delver and dryad fight each other for deck space then perhaps we should be cutting delvers for dryads, but that does not mean that dryad is a poor card choice in the counterspell-cantrip-burn-beats shell that is counter cat. In much the same way that tribal flames is likely better in domain zoo than here, but still playable here I believe that gnarlwood dryad is likely better in a zoo shell, but might be worth it here regardless.
I intend to figure out a deck and test it to the best of my abilities, as I genuinely believe that there is potential here. Besides, worst case scenario I find out that gnarlwood dryad is completely unplayable, and learn something about card selection and enabling delirium in the process.
I've been following Counter Cat for a while with some time now with varying levels of interest, and with eldritch moon on the horizon I once again find myself very intrigued with the deck. What got me going this time was the thought that it might be possible to slide a few copies of gnarlwood dryad into the main next to the bugs and cats, an Idea made all the more appealing by throwing a few rancor into the list as well. Being a Death and Taxes player, I have very little familiarity with the finer aspects of this type of deck, and so rather than try to innovate on my own, I thought I'd ask the opinions of several more experienced players.
The way I was thinking about it, if I wanted to play gnarlwood I would need a stronger delirium package than the deck naturally supports, and the first natural way to do that would be to add more card types to the deck. this makes me want to add something like Mishra's Bauble as a cantrip to go alongside a beefy rancor count so I had as many hits as I could find. the problem I have with this is I don't really like bauble very much, and I certainly don't want to devote as much as 6 cards (an amount I thought would be necessary) to the combination of baubles and rancors. in answer to that I thought about possibly running thought scour as a means of more reliably getting the card types already in the deck into the graveyard, but I'm not sure that thought scour is actually a card I would want to play if other options are available, since it does very little other than help with delirium (and I suppose setting up mandrills). More recently I've been thinking about faithless looting, a card very dear to me, as a delirium enabler since it allows for superb selection and can get tricky card types into the graveyard more easily. I don't know if looting is the type of card I even should be looking at, but it does appeal to me.
One big question I has was what cards would I need to cut to make room for whatever delirium package I came up with. The answer I keep thinking of is gitaxian probe since it seems to be the more replacable cantrip, but if it's more essential than I had realized, I would like to know. Another question I had was if I'm going to look at maindecking enchantments anyway, is curiosity worth trying. In a similar vein, it might be worth trying to fit some number of tarfire maindeck, though I'm not sure the deck would really benefit from that, and if we have isochron scepter in the list anyway, would it be worth putting one main to potentially assist delirium. As I said above, I'm not familiar enough with the inner workings of the deck to be able to answer these questions on my own, so any thoughts would be appreciated.
on a totally different note, it's nice to recognize a few people from over on modern nexus
I intend to figure out a deck and test it to the best of my abilities, as I genuinely believe that there is potential here. Besides, worst case scenario I find out that gnarlwood dryad is completely unplayable, and learn something about card selection and enabling delirium in the process.
The way I was thinking about it, if I wanted to play gnarlwood I would need a stronger delirium package than the deck naturally supports, and the first natural way to do that would be to add more card types to the deck. this makes me want to add something like Mishra's Bauble as a cantrip to go alongside a beefy rancor count so I had as many hits as I could find. the problem I have with this is I don't really like bauble very much, and I certainly don't want to devote as much as 6 cards (an amount I thought would be necessary) to the combination of baubles and rancors. in answer to that I thought about possibly running thought scour as a means of more reliably getting the card types already in the deck into the graveyard, but I'm not sure that thought scour is actually a card I would want to play if other options are available, since it does very little other than help with delirium (and I suppose setting up mandrills). More recently I've been thinking about faithless looting, a card very dear to me, as a delirium enabler since it allows for superb selection and can get tricky card types into the graveyard more easily. I don't know if looting is the type of card I even should be looking at, but it does appeal to me.
One big question I has was what cards would I need to cut to make room for whatever delirium package I came up with. The answer I keep thinking of is gitaxian probe since it seems to be the more replacable cantrip, but if it's more essential than I had realized, I would like to know. Another question I had was if I'm going to look at maindecking enchantments anyway, is curiosity worth trying. In a similar vein, it might be worth trying to fit some number of tarfire maindeck, though I'm not sure the deck would really benefit from that, and if we have isochron scepter in the list anyway, would it be worth putting one main to potentially assist delirium. As I said above, I'm not familiar enough with the inner workings of the deck to be able to answer these questions on my own, so any thoughts would be appreciated.
on a totally different note, it's nice to recognize a few people from over on modern nexus