Out of all the cards that got the precious new art, Thallids got it? I love me a Thallid as much as the next guy, but I can't help but think that it's the wrong choice to go with new art.
I'll have to second the Ghoulraiser suggestion. Card recursion is never bad. The nature of the deck is to be a swarm deck, being able to aggressively trade off your creatures and then get them back is always useful. Rather than think of it as a random Grave Scrabbler, think of it as a zombie that'll always draw you a zombie in your deck. I'd probably play it over the chant and cadaverous knight.
Also, let me suggest Shepherd of Rot. As you are a zombie swarm style deck, Shepherd represents A LOT of unblockable damage. Between that and Gempalm Polluter, you'll have a lot of reach to kill other decks.
If you're running blue, might I suggest Piracy Charm? It'll give the deck some amount of reach and kill for some problem cards like Goblin Fireslinger out of burn and Disciple of the Vault out of Affinity. The discard mode could possibly relevant as well in some cases.
Guildgates are only strictly better than Evolving Wilds when:
1) You are running Gatecreeper Vine. (do not do this)
2) You're running a lot of color-intensive cards of different colors.
Other than that it's really a wash. The statistical advantage to land-fetching is comically minor.
4 Tortured Existence is too many, but with only 3 you can't count on working quickly - this is perhaps the main weakness of the archetype.
My build is mono:symb: zombie-tribal, and my favorite cyclers are Unearth, Viscera Dragger, and Gempalm Polluter - the latter lives on the sideboard as a silver bullet against stalled-out aggro decks, especially other zombie-intensive builds.
There's also basic-land-cycling, i.e. Twisted Abomination - it's a weaker ability than Krosan Tusker, but it's pretty good at letting you hit lands while dredging.
Tortured Existence is a color-intensive card though. It gets better the more black mana you have. Having a source that only produces green can hurt quite a bit when you want to "go off" with TE.
Do you believe that the gates should replace the evolving wilds?
And are their cycling options out there that we can play as creatures in a pinch? In addition, 4 Te is probably the way to go just because we can really need to get to one if not in our opening hand quickly.
Also what about slaughterhorn as pump to push damage through and act as removal similar to stompy does?
Easily replace. There is no need for a basic forest that enters the battlefield tapped when you have a guildgate.
There's Gempalm Polluter, but that's a BB cycler.
I personally don't like 4 TE, but that's just me. Three has always been the sweet spot for me, especially due to cycling and my deck simply not needing it as badly as some other versions.
Slaughterhorn doesn't seem too useful in my opinion. My main attackers can already be pumped by themselves and spending mana and a card doesn't seem great.
Snail; I like the Traitor's Clutch in theory and is definitely worth trying out although I rarely have a dude big enough to warrant trying to make him unblockable. I'll have to put Vampire Hounds back in and test it out. Honestly I cut the Hounds because they WERE usually chump blocked over and over and 3 for a 2/2 that your opponent stands in front of sucked and the fact that it can block big stuff was outshined by Stinkweed Imp.
Only three TE???
I don't like the cycling. Having 3 more Golgari Rot Farm lets me start the dredge party much sooner and still be making land drops although I could certainly get behind testing Barren Moor. The cycle dudes don't do anything though. You can only cast the Krosan Tusker and I've maybe hit 7 mana in a quarter of the games I've played with the deck. Once you start dredging you don't have land drops anymore. Also, the idea of discarding a dude to Tortured Existence - to get a dude to discard to draw a card - to potentially just draw a land seems horrible. If I'm using tortured existence it is to discard a dredge creature that I just dredged up - to get back something I just dredged into the graveyard with it - that is then going on the field and attacking for damage. Does that make sense? Your deck is very different from mine despite being the same shell. So perhaps it is good in ways that I am not seeing.
Traitor's Clutch is in there as a miser's win. There's been plenty of times where I've just been sitting on the board with a million creatures, but no good attacks. Clutch helps win out of nowhere.
I also found the Dogs to be really good against Affinity. Simply being able to trade for their dudes in the early game is so important as the longer the game goes the more likely you are to win.
And yes, only three tortured existences simply because drawing a second one is almost always your worst draw in the deck. Lands are always welcome when you have stuff going on because it'll help you do more things like Tortured Existence or simply playing dudes. Drawing creatures is always a good thing. I also have cycling in my list that helps me dig for the Tortured Existence in the early game if I don't have it. TE shouldn't be the sole focus of the deck in my opinion. It's a tool to help you win and an extremely powerful tool.
The deck I feel has two main lines of play. A super aggressive line where you aggro out with your Rootwallas, your Dogs and your zombie leeches while gaining incremental advantage with your raise dead effects and a more grindy line where you simply trade off as much as possible and out card-advantage your opponent, usually with some combination of Grave Scrabblers and Rootwallas and what-not. For me it really depends on what I draw for how I'll play out the game. Tortured Existence simply adds to the effectiveness of both lines.
My biggest problem with Golgari Rot Farm is that with so many taplands in my deck, I really don't want to lose tempo. Cycling lands, yes, hurt your tempo in the beginning, but allow you to do things later in the game when you're looking for a specific answer. After I hit my sweet spot on lands (somewhere between five or six) I'll be happy to cycle away those cards for more dredging or even a card draw.
Cycling dudes are so useful in accelerating your deck though. They're extremely relevant raise dead targets and will almost never be a dead card in your hand. So many blue decks in the meta will simply out CA you before you can set up your own engine. Being able to cycle repeatedly helps keep up with the blue decks, even if it's just a little bit. Krosan Tusker again is not in the deck as a 6/5. He's in the deck to draw cards and to get more lands. The fact that he's a 6/5 is only a bonus to his primary role. If he was a 0/0, I'd still probably run him because I'm able to get him back. I know what you mean by that you'll just play the dude you get back instead, but sometimes, you don't have anything to get back. My viewpoint comes from the early game where some decks will outrun you before you get started and the decks that have enough CA to outclass you by the time you are set up. Cycling helps put all the pieces together and gives you something to do with extra mana.
Also, I'd lik to point out where you said that when we start dredging, we don't hit land drops anymore. That right there is what I found to be the biggest problem with the deck. When cloudpost can do a million things with their CA and large quantities of mana, here we are with a toolbox of a million things, but only a couple of lands to use it with. There is never anything wrong with having more lands when you're trying to do a million things.
I've also played your version of the list amongst other versions (I love the archetype greatly and have been playing with it my entire pauper life. I've dabbled in UB lists, GWB lists, RGB lists and RB lists and found this one to be the most consistent) and found it to be too easily outclassed by other decks. I've also come to the conclusion that Golgari Brownscale should almost never be cast. It's fairly bad on the field and it's sole use is to be another dredge card that gains life. Stinkweed Imp as well is only okay on the field. I mean, I'll play them if I'm playing my defensive game, but if I'm trying to aggro out, they're better in my hand to fuel my dogs or other effects. I'd rather let my other dudes do the beatings.
Crypt Rats were huge against the delver fae matchup. It made them use all of their counters to stop it from happening. I brought the crypt rats back everyturn as well as gained life back with the brownscales.
Cycle could be a good mechanic for us to use to gain some card advantage because this deck can be slow sometime. Draw a card for 2 black mana is also something that should be looked into because it can help us get to our removal or more TE or land.
How do you guys feel about the guild gates?
I'm personally using Festercreep in my sideboard right now because I recently sold my Crypt Rats and wasn't wanting to buy more due to money concerns. Festercreep has definitely been solid for me so I can only assume Crypt Rats are the same or better. Also helps give you a miser's fireball if you need to finish the game.
Cycling is definitely something you should test out! The amount of CA it gives you is deceptively surprising from giving you more dredge to finding lands to simply giving you something to do with your mana.
Guild gates are beautiful. I love them. Gives me access to black mana as well as green mana. When my deck only wants one or two green sources on the field, something like that is a godsend. To be perfectly honest, it was the reason I came back to this deck during RtR.
Dead dog is the name of the deck it had when it was still popular back in the day. The name comes from vampire hounds and wild mongrel being the stars of the deck at the time and being the deck's win condition.
To beat post, you have to be as aggressive as possible. Use three mana land destruction and try to deal as much damage as possible. alternatively, add discard and try and out attrition your opponent. reoccurring augur of skulls is backbreaking to a deck trying so hard to set up. Try to limit the opponents card advantage as much as possible and force them to answer everything you've got.
Come join us in the Dead Dog thread made, like, earlier today!
Also, as someone who's been playing Dead Dog for a long time, you want to be able to win without TE. If your deck cannot function without it, you have a fairly inconsistent deck.
I'm actually a huge Dead Dog player on MTGO right now. Been trying to perfect my deck before taking it into dailies. In fact, I was right about to make a thread because I felt like I had a deck that could match up to the rest of the field.
So the deck hasn't really been touched in the past couple of years right? Most of the current decklists out right now don't account for the current meta, the new cards, or the new possibilities.
Something that I've come to realize about this deck is that cycling is awesome. It's literally what helped push the deck to unplayable to actually playable in my mind. It gives the deck:
1) A way to dig for Tortured Existence and lands.
2) An early use for mana.
3) An early creature (assuming AoW or MC) in the graveyard to trade with Tortured Existence.
4) The ability to turn tortured existence into BB: Discard a creature, draw a card.
5) A way to start dredging at instant speed outside of your draw step in the late game.
I have one of each AoW and MC simply to confuse the opponent. As far as I know, I haven't seen any other Dead Dog list to utilize cycling. I liked it so much with the AoW and MC that I added the cycling lands to the deck to give the deck something to do when mana is plentiful. Krosan Tusker helps do these things while also being able to help draw you into more mana. The deck is mana hungry and sometimes you just want to draw lands. It also provides a nice, large beater that the deck otherwise lacks.
You may be looking at my list and be going Traitorous Instinct? What? Well, let me tell you. The card is the real deal. I've had many board states where Vampire Hounds or any other big beater couldn't get through. Having a card that grants unblockable from the graveyard is something that one shouldn't ignore. The hounds grow to a kill range out of nowhere. Putrid Leech dealing 10 unblockable points of damage between two turns is nothing to sneeze at. Having access to a flashback-able fireball is literally killer. Dredging only helps tutor this deck's fireball.
Didn't see this on the spoiler page. Found it on Starcitygames' facebook page!
Glaring Spotlight 1
Artifact
Creatures your opponents control with hexproof can be the targets of spells and abilities you control as though they didn't have hexproof.
3, sacrifice ~: Creatures you control gain hexproof until end of turn and are unblockable this turn.
Rakdos seems insane for limited and a lot of Spike players like limited formats, so I'm not sure what the big complaint is. Just because the ability is super unimpressive (Like how Exalted was when it was first released) doesn't mean it's a bad ability. In fact, I think it's quite insane when dealing with large numbers of super aggressive dudes.
Instead of looking and learning through all of the cards, I highly suggest going to ChannelFireball and watching their draft caps of the MTGO cube. It's a really good way to get for the "feel" of a cube format while learning what cards are there and what's good and not.
Assume the rest of the cards aren't of any consideration and there is no other green or black card in the pack worth taking.
Do you take one of the black cards hoping to table one of them or take the green card and ship the next few players into black? I've been faced with similar packs like this and I wanted to get your inputs on this.
There's a bunch of Auras that grant creatures a tap ability, but that one is the only one to have one itself.
Also, let me suggest Shepherd of Rot. As you are a zombie swarm style deck, Shepherd represents A LOT of unblockable damage. Between that and Gempalm Polluter, you'll have a lot of reach to kill other decks.
Tortured Existence is a color-intensive card though. It gets better the more black mana you have. Having a source that only produces green can hurt quite a bit when you want to "go off" with TE.
Easily replace. There is no need for a basic forest that enters the battlefield tapped when you have a guildgate.
There's Gempalm Polluter, but that's a BB cycler.
I personally don't like 4 TE, but that's just me. Three has always been the sweet spot for me, especially due to cycling and my deck simply not needing it as badly as some other versions.
Slaughterhorn doesn't seem too useful in my opinion. My main attackers can already be pumped by themselves and spending mana and a card doesn't seem great.
Traitor's Clutch is in there as a miser's win. There's been plenty of times where I've just been sitting on the board with a million creatures, but no good attacks. Clutch helps win out of nowhere.
I also found the Dogs to be really good against Affinity. Simply being able to trade for their dudes in the early game is so important as the longer the game goes the more likely you are to win.
And yes, only three tortured existences simply because drawing a second one is almost always your worst draw in the deck. Lands are always welcome when you have stuff going on because it'll help you do more things like Tortured Existence or simply playing dudes. Drawing creatures is always a good thing. I also have cycling in my list that helps me dig for the Tortured Existence in the early game if I don't have it. TE shouldn't be the sole focus of the deck in my opinion. It's a tool to help you win and an extremely powerful tool.
The deck I feel has two main lines of play. A super aggressive line where you aggro out with your Rootwallas, your Dogs and your zombie leeches while gaining incremental advantage with your raise dead effects and a more grindy line where you simply trade off as much as possible and out card-advantage your opponent, usually with some combination of Grave Scrabblers and Rootwallas and what-not. For me it really depends on what I draw for how I'll play out the game. Tortured Existence simply adds to the effectiveness of both lines.
My biggest problem with Golgari Rot Farm is that with so many taplands in my deck, I really don't want to lose tempo. Cycling lands, yes, hurt your tempo in the beginning, but allow you to do things later in the game when you're looking for a specific answer. After I hit my sweet spot on lands (somewhere between five or six) I'll be happy to cycle away those cards for more dredging or even a card draw.
Cycling dudes are so useful in accelerating your deck though. They're extremely relevant raise dead targets and will almost never be a dead card in your hand. So many blue decks in the meta will simply out CA you before you can set up your own engine. Being able to cycle repeatedly helps keep up with the blue decks, even if it's just a little bit. Krosan Tusker again is not in the deck as a 6/5. He's in the deck to draw cards and to get more lands. The fact that he's a 6/5 is only a bonus to his primary role. If he was a 0/0, I'd still probably run him because I'm able to get him back. I know what you mean by that you'll just play the dude you get back instead, but sometimes, you don't have anything to get back. My viewpoint comes from the early game where some decks will outrun you before you get started and the decks that have enough CA to outclass you by the time you are set up. Cycling helps put all the pieces together and gives you something to do with extra mana.
Also, I'd lik to point out where you said that when we start dredging, we don't hit land drops anymore. That right there is what I found to be the biggest problem with the deck. When cloudpost can do a million things with their CA and large quantities of mana, here we are with a toolbox of a million things, but only a couple of lands to use it with. There is never anything wrong with having more lands when you're trying to do a million things.
I've also played your version of the list amongst other versions (I love the archetype greatly and have been playing with it my entire pauper life. I've dabbled in UB lists, GWB lists, RGB lists and RB lists and found this one to be the most consistent) and found it to be too easily outclassed by other decks. I've also come to the conclusion that Golgari Brownscale should almost never be cast. It's fairly bad on the field and it's sole use is to be another dredge card that gains life. Stinkweed Imp as well is only okay on the field. I mean, I'll play them if I'm playing my defensive game, but if I'm trying to aggro out, they're better in my hand to fuel my dogs or other effects. I'd rather let my other dudes do the beatings.
I'm personally using Festercreep in my sideboard right now because I recently sold my Crypt Rats and wasn't wanting to buy more due to money concerns. Festercreep has definitely been solid for me so I can only assume Crypt Rats are the same or better. Also helps give you a miser's fireball if you need to finish the game.
Cycling is definitely something you should test out! The amount of CA it gives you is deceptively surprising from giving you more dredge to finding lands to simply giving you something to do with your mana.
Guild gates are beautiful. I love them. Gives me access to black mana as well as green mana. When my deck only wants one or two green sources on the field, something like that is a godsend. To be perfectly honest, it was the reason I came back to this deck during RtR.
To beat post, you have to be as aggressive as possible. Use three mana land destruction and try to deal as much damage as possible. alternatively, add discard and try and out attrition your opponent. reoccurring augur of skulls is backbreaking to a deck trying so hard to set up. Try to limit the opponents card advantage as much as possible and force them to answer everything you've got.
Also, as someone who's been playing Dead Dog for a long time, you want to be able to win without TE. If your deck cannot function without it, you have a fairly inconsistent deck.
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Golgari Brownscale
4 Basking Rootwalla
3 Wild Mongrel
3 Vampire Hounds
4 Grave Scrabbler
3 Tortured Existence
4 Fume Spitter
3 Putrid Leech
Utility:
2 Grisly Salvage
1 Architects of Will
1 Monstrous Carabid
1 Krosan Tusker
1 Traitor's Clutch
3 Barren Moor
4 Golgari Guildgate
1 Golgari Rot Farm
4 Forest
11 Swamp
So the deck hasn't really been touched in the past couple of years right? Most of the current decklists out right now don't account for the current meta, the new cards, or the new possibilities.
Something that I've come to realize about this deck is that cycling is awesome. It's literally what helped push the deck to unplayable to actually playable in my mind. It gives the deck:
1) A way to dig for Tortured Existence and lands.
2) An early use for mana.
3) An early creature (assuming AoW or MC) in the graveyard to trade with Tortured Existence.
4) The ability to turn tortured existence into BB: Discard a creature, draw a card.
5) A way to start dredging at instant speed outside of your draw step in the late game.
I have one of each AoW and MC simply to confuse the opponent. As far as I know, I haven't seen any other Dead Dog list to utilize cycling. I liked it so much with the AoW and MC that I added the cycling lands to the deck to give the deck something to do when mana is plentiful. Krosan Tusker helps do these things while also being able to help draw you into more mana. The deck is mana hungry and sometimes you just want to draw lands. It also provides a nice, large beater that the deck otherwise lacks.
You may be looking at my list and be going Traitorous Instinct? What? Well, let me tell you. The card is the real deal. I've had many board states where Vampire Hounds or any other big beater couldn't get through. Having a card that grants unblockable from the graveyard is something that one shouldn't ignore. The hounds grow to a kill range out of nowhere. Putrid Leech dealing 10 unblockable points of damage between two turns is nothing to sneeze at. Having access to a flashback-able fireball is literally killer. Dredging only helps tutor this deck's fireball.
Glaring Spotlight 1
Artifact
Creatures your opponents control with hexproof can be the targets of spells and abilities you control as though they didn't have hexproof.
3, sacrifice ~: Creatures you control gain hexproof until end of turn and are unblockable this turn.
1 Tragic Slip
1 Highborn Ghoul
1 Farbog Boneflinger
1 Fiend of the Shadows
1 Strangleroot Geist
Assume the rest of the cards aren't of any consideration and there is no other green or black card in the pack worth taking.
Do you take one of the black cards hoping to table one of them or take the green card and ship the next few players into black? I've been faced with similar packs like this and I wanted to get your inputs on this.