B/g Gamekeeper (Control)

[Hanni]

Whelp... I know I had a thread for this deck on here a long time ago, but I can't find it. I even google searched with "gamekeeper hanni mtgthesource" which almost always finds my old threads, and nope. Not there. So I'll start a new one.

Anyway, what rejuvenated my interest in this deck, was reading through about 10 pages of the Nic Fit thread. This deck is actually pretty similar to that deck. I mean, it's a B/g deck with a similar control core; spot removals, Deeds, discard, that sorta thing.

I actually like this deck alot better than Nic Fit. Instead of durdling around with overcosted fair creatures, this deck puts Emrakul into play instead, and for less mana. The deck still runs just as many control options as Nic Fit, if not more.

Anyway, let me first pop off a list, and then I'll do some more 'splainin:

B/g Gamekeeper

// Lands (24)
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
2 [ZEN] Marsh Flats
2 [ON] Windswept Heath
4 [R] Bayou
6 [UNH] Swamp
1 [UNH] Forest
1 [US] Phyrexian Tower
4 [4E] Mishra's Factory

// Creatures (4)
3 [UD] Gamekeeper
1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

// Spells (32)
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
4 [JU] Living Wish
4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
4 [JU] Cabal Therapy
4 [FE] Hymn to Tourach (3)
4 [OD] Innocent Blood
2 [OD] Ghastly Demise
2 [ISD] Liliana of the Veil
4 [AP] Pernicious Deed

// Sideboard (15)
SB: 1 [US] Phyrexian Tower
SB: 1 [UD] Gamekeeper
SB: 1 [MBS] Thrun, the Last Troll
SB: 1 [SHM] Kitchen Finks
SB: 1 [LRW] Shriekmaw
SB: 1 [ALA] Fleshbag Marauder
SB: 1 [EVE] Wickerbough Elder
SB: 1 [TE] Wasteland
SB: 1 [WWK] Bojuka Bog
SB: 2 [SOM] Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 4 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse

The deck is your typical black and green control deck in most ways. Discard, spot removal, and Pernicious Deed are the control elements being utilized in here. I'm going heavier on the discard because I'm also a combo deck.

Gamekeeper is the decks namesake for a reason. This deck aims to drop a Gamekeeper, sac it, which then puts an Emrakul into play. The decks control elements double over as sac outlets, which is beautiful synergy. Cabal Therapy and Phyrexian Tower can be used after Gamekeeper resolves but before passing priority, ignoring Swords to Plowshares. If the deck hits another Gamekeeper during the chain, the deck will usually have "dredged" another Therapy in the yard, allowing the deck to sac the new one to continue the chain until Emrakul is found. The deck has several ways to get an Emrakul back in the library if it's drawn; my favorite being Liliana. Top helps prevent that from happening.

Living Wish is fantastic in this deck, tutoring for my win con (either piece, Gamekeeper or Tower), as well as creature removal, artifact/enchantment removal, and an alternate win con vs blue control/Jace TMS (Thrun).

I originally had 30 something singletons in my sideboard for the Wish board, and then trimmed it down. Alot of options were good, but ultimately seemed unecessary, considering 95% of the time I'm going for Gamekeeper/Tower for the combo win. I can make a list of cards that I cut at a later time, if anyone wishes me to.

I considered Smallpox and Wasteland for the maindeck, as well as Tabernacle in the sideboard, but ultimately decided against it. Wasteland's pretty good, but no lands are actually problematic for me, and I can race enemy manlands pretty easily. Cutting the opponent off of color sources is nice, but that sets me back a land drop, and I really want to ramp to 4 mana to cast Gamekeeper. I also wanted to maintain my colored sources; as a control deck, I want my manabase to be as stable as possible. Mishra's Factories are alot better for me for several reasons. First of all, Jace TMS is a very commonly played card, which happens to foil my Emrakul plan. Factories put pressure on Jace. Secondly, it gives me another angle of attack, should I need a backup plan.

Thanks for reading.

[fallenphoenix]

I actually like this deck alot better than Nic Fit. Instead of durdling around with overcosted fair creatures, this deck puts Emrakul into play instead, and for less mana. The deck still runs just as many control options as Nic Fit, if not more.

But it is susceptible to graveyard-hate, even if it has outs against most of the common options.

Sure, you could win with 2/2s, but how realistic is that against non-combo decks?

Wasteland's pretty good, but no lands are actually problematic for me

Karakas? I heard that card sees some play :>


I handed that deck (almost identical list) to a pal for a tournament a while ago, and it just didn't do very well, because most decks were prepared to deal with
a) threats from graveyards
b) Emrakul

Also, just as far as deckbuilding is concerned, one Emrakul always bears the risk of drawing it without a way to get rid of it. You also only have Therapy to do so, that is, if you don't want to Hymn yourself and hope to randomly hit.
Upping the Eldrazi-count and/or adding Thoughtseize instead of Duress might mitigate that problem.
Adding another Emrakul also makes "fizzling" (i.e. hitting Gamekeeper with Gamekeeper with no way to sac it, notably before you hit another Therapy) less likely.

[Hanni]

But it is susceptible to graveyard-hate, even if it has outs against most of the common options.

By graveyard hate, you mean Leyline? Because the deck has more sac outlets than just 4 Cabal Therapy.

Sure, you could win with 2/2s, but how realistic is that against non-combo decks?

Well, when you're playing a resource denial deck that shrinks the opponent's hand down to zero cards and then wipes the board clean with Deed, I'd say realistic enough. Combine that with a Wish for Thrun, and you're in business. I've also considered running Gigapede instead of Thrun for the better synergy with Innocent Blood, but I still need to test that.

Karakas? I heard that card sees some play :>

Thanks for bringing that up, I totally forgot about that. Looks like I'm going to fit a Wasteland into my wishboard after all. I've been seeing alot less Karakas lately, for what it's worth.

I handed that deck (almost identical list) to a pal for a tournament a while ago, and it just didn't do very well, because most decks were prepared to deal with
a) threats from graveyards
b) Emrakul

Not sure how threats from graveyards is relevant, but I can understand if decks are prepared for Emrakul. The deck is pretty versatile at handling Emrakul hate though, what with all the discard and wishboard and whatnot.

Also, just as far as deckbuilding is concerned, one Emrakul always bears the risk of drawing it without a way to get rid of it. You also only have Therapy to do so, that is, if you don't want to Hymn yourself and hope to randomly hit.
Upping the Eldrazi-count and/or adding Thoughtseize instead of Duress might mitigate that problem.
Adding another Emrakul also makes "fizzling" (i.e. hitting Gamekeeper with Gamekeeper with no way to sac it, notably before you hit another Therapy) less likely.

Well, I do have 8 targetable discard spells and 2 Liliana, but maybe once in a while that could come up. I'd just wait to draw/Top into a discard spell, and then combo off. Might slow down the combo gameplan by alot, but the deck is built around a control shell afterall.

Wait... totally forgot that Duress only targets opponent's and not myself. Guess that means I'm going back to Thoughtseize. I originally had Seize in there, but dropped them to try and improve my aggressive aggro/Burn matchup. Oh well. I'll fix that right now.

The "fizzling" thing doesn't come up that often, since the deck usually has access to more sac outlets via "dredging" Therapy. If the opponent doesn't have an exile effect, I can always wait till next turn and hit it with a removal spell. I did consider going up to 2 Emrakul initially, but that's basically another wasted slot in a deck that's already pretty tight. I do see the benefits of running the second copy, though.

Made a few changes to my maindeck and sideboard. Thanks for the reminder/suggestions.

[fallenphoenix]

Not sure how threats from graveyards is relevant

Gamekeeper does not work when it is removed in response to it's triggered ability (or even before that, via Leyline).
Anything that works against Reanimator/Dredge/Loam works here, too, even Grafdigger's Cage.

[Hanni]

Why wouldn't it work if it's removed in response? It still enters the graveyard before getting Exiled, so the trigger should still get put on the stack... I don't see why it would work that way, but I'm not a rules guru. I'd definitely like to get clarification from that by cdr or someone though.

As far as Cage goes, I do run Deed, and Living Wish can nab Wickerbough Elder.

[Aggro_zombies]

Why wouldn't it work if it's removed in response? It still enters the graveyard before getting Exiled, so the trigger should still get put on the stack... I don't see why it would work that way, but I'm not a rules guru. I'd definitely like to get clarification from that by cdr or someone though.

As far as Cage goes, I do run Deed, and Living Wish can nab Wickerbough Elder.

Gamekeeper

The key part here is, "When Gamekeeper dies, you may exile it. If you do,...". If you don't - because, say, it already got exiled - the trigger won't have any effect.

EDIT: In order for it to work regardless of whether it got exiled, it would need to be worded similarly to the Phantom creatures from Judgement:

"When Gamekeeper dies, exile it. Reveal cards from the top..."

Even if you can't exile Gamekeeper, the remainder of that ability would still happen. That wording wouldn't dodge Leyline of the Void, though (since "dies" is shorthand for, "is put into the graveyard from the battlefield").

[fallenphoenix]

When Gamekeeper dies, you may exile it. If you do, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a creature card. Put that card onto the battlefield and put all other cards revealed this way into your graveyard.

If it has been exiled before it's ability resolves, you never get to exile it with it's own ability, because it's now a new object sitting peacefully in the exile-zone.
If you can't exile it anymore, you never get to reveal cards and flip over Emrakul.

Believe me, I've played Graham's several years ago, that's how it has always worked.

[Hanni]

If it has been exiled before it's ability resolves, you never get to exile it with it's own ability, because it's now a new object sitting peacefully in the exile-zone.
If you can't exile it anymore, you never get to reveal cards and flip over Emrakul.

Believe me, I've played Graham's several years ago, that's how it has always worked.

Ah okay, I see. Sorry for the confusion then. Either way, the graveyard hate issue isn't that big of a deal to me, since I can either rip it from their hand with discard, or wipe it away with Deed. This deck is a control deck, that just happens to have a combo-esque win condition. If I was going all in and running Rituals and Moxes, I'd be worried about it.

Again, tons of removal and sweepers with Factories + Thrun is a sufficient alternate way to win, as well. I may playtest with Gigapede in the board later.

[Michael Keller]

Old thread can be found here.

Nice to see someone trying to revitalize it. However, in today's Legacy (and especially with the evolution of graveyard hate), it's going to be a challenge. The combo win condition is always nice to have, but it's still not a guarantee with decks running Brainstorm. Also, you name a card upon resolution of the Gamekeeper's triggered ability, not right away with the Therapy as Gamekeeper's trigger must resolve first, so Extraction could be quite relevant at that precise moment. The deck has to have a perfect storm of things to go right for it to combo out, which is actually a bit harder than it looks.

I basically stopped trying to evolve the deck once graveyard hate became increasingly problematic and more elaborate over the years. But then again, who knows?

[Hanni]

Well, I didn't realize that graveyard hate actually affected the combo at all, and no one was responding to the trigger on MWS (shitty player pool I guess), so I wasn't aware of the weakness there. That kinda sucks, as this deck is actually really really good otherwise. With all of the SCM hype, Extractions are everywhere... *shrugs*

I still think the deck is very viable, though. The discard package clears out stuff like that. Albeit the opponent can topdeck out of it, it still seems okay. I mean, I'm not all in on a combo, I'm a control deck. I have plenty of time to play the control game until I feel comfortable to combo out. The only matchup where I don't have the time is against aggressive aggro (like Sligh), Burn, and combo, and I'm willing to accept a few bad matchups here and there. Against blue decks with SCM, there's always Thrun, and possibly Gigapede, in the wishboard.

EDIT: Oh, and thanks for the link. I think I had a thread for this deck too, in N&D somewhere, I'm not sure. But older reference material is always nice. Maybe a mod should merge this thread into the one you linked?

[Mr. Safety]

I'm just putting this out there, maybe you've already thought of it:

I wouldn't play 3 Gamekeepers. I'd play 1 Gamekeeper and 4x Green Sun's Zenith. This eliminates entirely the chance of revealing another Gamekeeper when you try to combo into an Emrakul. The real issue with that is the liability of a 5-mana combo...without any maindeck acceleration.

If you figure this out, I think you'll be well-positioned to have a pretty awesome deck here. The fact that you WANT the only creature you cast to be killed makes it pretty classy.

EDIT: I just re-read your primer and where it states that you will be counting on flashing back Therapies to deal with redundant Gamekeepers. My bad, sorry!

[smoky squirrel]

Karakas? I heard that card sees some play :>

Thanks for bringing that up, I totally forgot about that. Looks like I'm going to fit a Wasteland into my wishboard after all. I've been seeing alot less Karakas lately, for what it's worth.

Instead of (or in addition to) Wasteland, you can put Karakas in your wishboard. Defends you from opposing annoying legends. Since Karakas is legendary, it doubles as 'Destroy target Karakas'.

[boneclub24]

Instead of (or in addition to) Wasteland, you can put Karakas in your wishboard. Defends you from opposing annoying legends. Since Karakas is legendary, it doubles as 'Destroy target Karakas'.

You evil genius!

[Hanni]

Karakas can also bounce my Thrun before casting Innocent Blood, however relevant that would be. Good call, anyway. Karakas is a lot more useful for me in the wishboard than Wasteland.

[Anusien]

Your best scenario is turn 4 Gamekeeper, turn 5 attack, right? (Surprised there isn't some creature in the wishboard just to enable the turn 3 Gamekeeper). That's... worse than Show and Tell, and a dedicated Show & Tell/Emrakul deck wouldn't be very good right now.

If you're going to play Gamekeeper, I think the only legitimate avenue of attack would be to play rituals to aggro out Gamekeeper on turn 2 and try to be attacking with Emrakul on turn 3.

Speaking of which, do you have a good reason not to run Brainstorm, Force of Will and Show and Tell instead of some of the clunkier pieces?

[Aggro_zombies]

Your best scenario is turn 4 Gamekeeper, turn 5 attack, right? (Surprised there isn't some creature in the wishboard just to enable the turn 3 Gamekeeper). That's... worse than Show and Tell, and a dedicated Show & Tell/Emrakul deck wouldn't be very good right now.

If you're going to play Gamekeeper, I think the only legitimate avenue of attack would be to play rituals to aggro out Gamekeeper on turn 2 and try to be attacking with Emrakul on turn 3.

Speaking of which, do you have a good reason not to run Brainstorm, Force of Will and Show and Tell instead of some of the clunkier pieces?

I agree here. It seems like blue would be the ideal color for this kind of "cheat a large thing into play" deck because Brainstorm and Preordain/Ponder smooth your draws out enormously.

As it stands, you're this awkward midrange mashup and you hope every game to not get the all-discard draw against the aggro decks or the all-board-control draw against the stack decks or some bad combination of the two against the midrange/aggro-control decks (and for the record, no, I don't think 4 Top is enough filtering for a deck like this). I also think you should cut the number of Gamekeepers in the main; it has to be depressing to Gamekeeper into another Gamekeeper, particularly if the first Gamekeeper was retrieved with Living Wish so you still have three in your deck.

In short, why durdle with this when you can durdle with Show and Tell, a deck not particularly good right now?

[GoblinSettler]

I agree here. It seems like blue would be the ideal color for this kind of "cheat a large thing into play" deck because Brainstorm and Preordain/Ponder smooth your draws out enormously.

As it stands, you're this awkward midrange mashup and you hope every game to not get the all-discard draw against the aggro decks or the all-board-control draw against the stack decks or some bad combination of the two against the midrange/aggro-control decks (and for the record, no, I don't think 4 Top is enough filtering for a deck like this). I also think you should cut the number of Gamekeepers in the main; it has to be depressing to Gamekeeper into another Gamekeeper, particularly if the first Gamekeeper was retrieved with Living Wish so you still have three in your deck.

In short, why durdle with this when you can durdle with Show and Tell, a deck not particularly good right now?

After finding a foil gamekeeper in someone's trade binder, I put together a similar deck. The list has varied over time. Starting out using the combo kill in a B/g Pox shell. Then moving to rituals, moxes, and explore to accelerate the combo. Finally playing Gamekeeper/Emrakul in a BUG control shell.

In my experience adding blue does not really help. It is usually durdle-more. There isn't enough room for cantrips, counters, board control, and the combo. All your answers have to line up just right.

Right now I am also liking staying two colors.

As far as why play this, style points? Gamekeeper is a cool interaction, in my opinion, and not widely known. You get to play other cool cards like Deed, Cabal Therapy, and Sylvan Library.

[Hanni]

Your best scenario is turn 4 Gamekeeper, turn 5 attack, right? (Surprised there isn't some creature in the wishboard just to enable the turn 3 Gamekeeper). That's... worse than Show and Tell, and a dedicated Show & Tell/Emrakul deck wouldn't be very good right now.

If you're going to play Gamekeeper, I think the only legitimate avenue of attack would be to play rituals to aggro out Gamekeeper on turn 2 and try to be attacking with Emrakul on turn 3.

Speaking of which, do you have a good reason not to run Brainstorm, Force of Will and Show and Tell instead of some of the clunkier pieces?

My best scenario is emptying my opponent's hand with discard, and then wiping their board away with Deed. This is a B/g Control deck that attacks the opponent with resource denial. It doesn't matter if the deck attacks with Emrakul on turn 5, or turn 8, so long as the opponent's hand is empty via discard/Liliana, and their board is empty via Deed/Liliana.

Attacking with Emrakul on turn 5 is worse than Show and Tell if you look at this deck like it's a combo-control deck instead of a control-combo deck, sure. Maybe that's why a dedicated Show and Tell deck isn't good right now?

Going all in on the combo in this deck is dumb, when Show and Tell is a better all in combo deck.

Also, I'd rather run heavy discard than countermagic. If my opponent has no countermagic or answers in hand/on board to stop Emrakul, that means they need to topdeck an answer or they lose. Sure, sometimes the opponent will topdeck an answer and my combo will fizzle. I still like those odds better than trying to push an Emrakul through with counter-backup when my opponent has a full grip of cards.

I agree here. It seems like blue would be the ideal color for this kind of "cheat a large thing into play" deck because Brainstorm and Preordain/Ponder smooth your draws out enormously.

As it stands, you're this awkward midrange mashup and you hope every game to not get the all-discard draw against the aggro decks or the all-board-control draw against the stack decks or some bad combination of the two against the midrange/aggro-control decks (and for the record, no, I don't think 4 Top is enough filtering for a deck like this). I also think you should cut the number of Gamekeepers in the main; it has to be depressing to Gamekeeper into another Gamekeeper, particularly if the first Gamekeeper was retrieved with Living Wish so you still have three in your deck.

I had considered going three colors for a light blue splash just for Brainstorm, but I'm not sure if it's worth it. The mana stability in just 2 colors is nice. I can definitely see the benefits of running Brainstorm though, don't get me wrong.

The deck is a B/g Control deck with a bunch of discard and a bunch of removal. It's not like that strategy is something new I just developed. The only difference is that instead of running some Tarmogoyf's or Knight of the Reliquary's in addition to my plan, I'm running Gamekeeper/Emrakul. Essentially, it's a combo finish inside a control deck. I still have the option of winning with aggro beats with maindeck Factory and sideboard Shriekmaw, Wickerbough, Kitchen Finks, and Thrun (primarily).

Also, I'm not just running 4 Top. I'm also running 4 Living Wish. If there is a particular problem on the board, the wishboard usually has an answer. If the problem isn't something that stops the Emrakul plan, just going straight into Gamekeeper/Emrakul is often the best answer.

If I draw discard and my opponent's hand is empty, then that should be a good thing for me, because I know if my opponent has an immediate answer to Emrakul or not. If I draw all my removal instead and my opponent isn't playing permanents, then I'll accept the bad draws in that case. The fact is, the deck is fairly redundant in its discard + removal, so it should be draw some of both. Don't underestimate how strong Top can be at making sure I draw the right disruption at the right time, either.

You may be right that I should fool around with the Gamekeeper and Emrakul numbers. Usually the deck can chain Gamekeepers into Therapies and keep going till it hits Emrakul, but the deck does still fizzle sometimes. The fizzle isn't too bad, since the deck can usually sac him the following turn, but that does give the opponent time to find an answer, and does open him up to Swords to Plowshares and such.

In short, why durdle with this when you can durdle with Show and Tell, a deck not particularly good right now?

Because B/g Control isn't a bad strategy right now. Gamekeeper is just my combo finish.

However, when I first put the deck up, I didn't realize it could be responded to with graveyard hate to completely fizzle the Gamekeeper. Not the biggest deal in the world, but it's another issue I didn't expect to have to deal with. The main selling point for me was the resiliency to Swords, with dedicated Emrakul hate being the only problems I would have to fight against. Graveyard hate complicates that.

Either way, I disagree with both you and Anusien about "going all-in on Emrakul" being a better gameplan.

[Mr. Safety]

You mentioned blue for Brainstorm (which I think would be a mistake, considering SDT is just fine in this deck) but what about ignoring Brainstorm...and using Intuition? Intuition for all three copies of Gamekeeper seems pretty good to me.

I risk a lot of crossover-tech with River Rock (B/G/u) by mentioning Intuition, but their control package is pretty hawt. Intuition, Raven's Crime, and Life from the Loam is a fairly compact package to include. You're looking at 5-6 cards depending on how many Intuitions you want to include. I may be a little biased because I am such a huge fan of Loam/Crime/Cycle lands ( <3 Life from the Loam), but it fits into an Intuition engine really well.

Just my opinion...with SDT, I think Brainstorm isn't worth splashing. Intuition makes a much better case for a blue splash, in my humble opinion.

[GrdiVrag]

Because he can't really put the singleton Emrakul on top of his library and shuffle it away with SDT? Sure, the straight B/g version has solutions for that problem in the form of Liliana and Cabal Therapy, but when you're adding blue, you're adding it because of Brainstorm. It just has the power to turn crappy hands into something useful.
Further on the blue splash, could Jace 2.0 be an option? Could additional digging + win condition + bounce along with Brainstorm justify weakening the manabase?