[PRIMER] Oozing

[Raystar]

Oozing - A primer
(v1.1 by Raystar. Thanks to Pandaman and the crew on The Source for all the development work on the deck and to Jamis for having started it all)

Revision History

v1.0 (May 2015): Primer created and posted
v1.1 (December 2015): updated current sideboard to take in account the fading of Omnitell.





1. A bit of background

As soon as Necrotic Ooze went out of the printing press somebody was clever enough to identify the interaction of its ability with a Phyrexian Devourer and a Triskelion in the graveyard. The first successful iteration of a deck containing the combo was a UB list including some permission and Personal Tutor/Lim Dul’s Vault; the deck worked but it was extremely reliant on Buried Alive+a reanimation spell and had a limited draw capacity. The appearance in the meta of specialised graveyard hate and stronger tempo strategies eclipsed the Ooze combo approach for a while until WotC decided to give us his Highness of drawing: Griselbrand. Mimicking other broken approaches to the usage of the black demon, the Ooze combo became a more “all in” deck that is capable of insanely fast kills or to grind an opponent until a window opens to combo.
When the deck is on its “fast” strategy it resembles Tin Fins but it doesn’t need to go through an attack phase to close the game, it draws a bunch of cards and assembles the ooze combo through producing 4 or 5 mana (at least 2 of which B). In other situations it just sits there waiting for an Ooze to land and trick the opponent into different combo paths. A more detailed description of the combo arsenal is included in another section of this Primer.

A link to the old thread for the ooze combo (pre Griselbrand) is below:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...highlight=Ooze

A report of a successful tournament placement with the old Ooze list:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...n-Ann-Arbor-MI

A link to the development thread that brought us to the current iteration of the deck:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...p?25614-Oozing

This primer is meant to continue to be a “living” document, we hope that, with the help of the Community, Oozing will thrive and evolve. A lot of the primer is still a “work in progress” and it will stay like that while additional content is added.

Please browse through the full thread if you want to keep up to date with recent changes. I'll be posting the most updated list in the primer, but big reviews of the primer will certainly lag behind

2. Anatomy of a graveyard feeding monster

As many other combo decks, Oozing is built upon four main spell pools: the combo itself, a card drawing and selection engine, a disruption package and resources to produce fast mana.

2.1. Fuelling the Engine

After many iterations of the deck, the most commonly utilized mana producing package has the following structure:

15 Lands
5 Artifact accelerants
4 Ritual effects

A typical implementation of those is:

3 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
2 Swamp
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Verdant Catacombs

1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal

4 Dark Ritual

Pre-sideboarding (more on that later) the deck only makes use of B and U mana, the Bayous are there to support sideboarding options and are utilised in G1 as if they were “weaker” Swamps. The number of lands has gone up and down for a while until it has stabilised to the current core of 15. At the moment the G splash is seen as essential to battle many forms of hate (more on that in the description of sideboarding options) and it is considered a foundation of the mana core of the deck.

The mana base is pretty stable and the deck can function on a minimum of 1 land mana but it is built to work steadily between 2-3 land mana.

The fetches pool suggested above can be additionally refined by replacing 2 of the Verdant Catacombs with a Marsh Flat and a Bloodstained Mire to be fractionally more resistant to denial strategies.

Acceleration comes in the form of Lotus Petal and Dark Ritual. The deck uses acceleration in both the initial setup strategy (drawing) and the combo finishing. It is important to play the acceleration resources as tight as possible during the setup phase to make sure that the finishing combo can be fuelled immediately. That is where the Chrome Mox comes in: it acts as Lotus Petal number 5 after a significant piece of the deck has been drawn and stabilises the combo deployment.

2.2. Making life less easy for the Opponent

During its evolution, Oozing has employed different disruption packages to support its strategies. The current approach is similar to the one used by ANT/TES/Tin Fins: one mana targeted discard to check the opponent hand and get rid of road blockers. For a long time the disruption package has been something along the lines of:

3 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtseize

The 6 discard effects insured that some form of disruption was present at the start of a game. Cabal Therapy has an additional interaction with Griselbrand by making sure that when the demon gets on the board through Shallow Grave it goes back to the graveyard instead of being exiled at end of turn. This is true also for the other pieces of the combo and it’s not too uncommon to burn a reanimation spell on a combo piece (Triskelion is especially useful) to provide utility and have it return to the graveyard after having performed additional disruption.

As of late, learning from what the Storm combo crew has developed, a slightly different approach has emerged:

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy

A smaller disruption core that also doubles as a card handling engine. The issue with Oozing is that the price for the added flexibility it has is payed by having a larger combo supporting core, this prevents us from being able to run the same amount of cantrips available in the Storm based decks. The Probe/Therapy approach is a compromise between an heavy disruption package and a bigger cards drawing/selection engine.

2.3. Cards, cards, cards!

In order to be able to fuel its fast combo strategy, Oozing tries to force a quickly reanimated Griselbrand on the battlefield. This is (generally and preferably) obtained through the Entomb+Shallow Grave combo and it is not uncommonly performed during the first turn of the game. An hastily reanimated Griselbrand guarantees 21 cards and it is generally game over. Oozing doesn’t provide the same cards drawing cycle that Tin Fins allows through Children of Korlis but it possesses enough combo density to generally close the game on the spot. The way the combo flows, after a Griselbrand reanimation, can follow different paths depending of the drawn cards and the game state, we will discuss some of the options in the combo related section.

As usual for combo decks, the main strategy is also based on powerful cards selection and filtering:

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe


As previously discussed Gitaxian Probe doubles as support for the disruption package minimising the impact of the big size of the combo engine. Unfortunately there hasn’t been (as of yet) many successful attempts at adding Preordain without watering down the combo density, ideally 2 more cantrips would glue the deck even more than it is right now…it is one of the possible development lines of the current shell.

2.4. Comboooooooooooo

As you probably know the main combo kill of the deck is performed with Necrotic Ooze on the battlefield and Triskelion+Phyrexian Devourer in the graveyard. The Ooze activates the Devourer ability gaining +1/+1 counters and then uses the ability offered by Triskelion to throw them to the opponent under the form of damage. There are other ways to get a combo kill with the deck but first a look to the combo content of the deck:

3 Necrotic Ooze
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Triskelion
1 Putrid Imp

4 Entomb
3 Buried Alive

4 Shallow Grave
2 Reanimate

The presence of Putrid Imp is due to the need to be able to discard combo pieces left in hand, the Imp can be in the battlefield or in the graveyard with an active Ooze to perform its duties. An additional role of the Imp, albeit diminished by having the current list to only run a single Griselbrand is to act as an additional entomb effect from the hand.

A quick list of possible combo effects include:

• Cast Entomb after blockers have been declared against an attacking Ooze to obtain an unexpected kill or get rid of an unwanted enemy blocker.
• Cast Buried Alive when a Ooze is on the battlefield for an immediate combo kill
• Cast Entomb twice with a Ooze on the battlefield for an immediate combo kill
• Cast Buried Alive and a reanimation spell

There are a ton of possible occasional interactions offered by the combo pieces, from drawing with a Ooze through an entombed Griselbrand to using abilities of creatures in the opponent graveyard. Please note that the deck can also discard and reanimate creatures owned by the opponent adding disruption to the game.

Some of the combo kills are more or less suited to be employed during specific matchups, a more detailed explanation of their relevance will be given in the matchup analysis section.

The full combo cycle generally goes along the following lines:

• Griselbrand is placed in the graveyard. This normally happens through the use of Entomb or by being discarded from the hand (through self-directed discard or by going to the discard phase)
• Griselbrand is reanimated to the battlefield. This can happen through Shallow Grave or Reanimate. In case of a Shallow Grave reanimation, Griselbrand comes into play with haste and is able to attack immediately granting an additional pool of cards to be used during the second phase of the combo. If Reanimate is used, then Griselbrand won’t generally be able to generate immediate card advantage and the rest of the combo will usually happen during the following turn.
• With the cards obtained through Griselbrand’s ability, the deck generates the 4 to 6 mana needed to kill the opponent. The cards to look for to close the game are any form of “reaction start” mana (dropping a land for the turn, Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox), some ritual effect if required, and the spell pieces needed ( Buried Alive, a reanimation spell, Necrotic Ooze)

Please note the following (not exhaustive) list of relevant effect:

• Once the combo starts it is only vulnerable to Extirpate. If there is suspicion that an opponent holds one in hand it is possible to stack a set amount of Devourer activations without passing priority between them (basically self responding to the activations). In the worst case (Extirpate hits Triskelion) the Ooze becomes an enormous monster very difficult to deal with.
• Creatures reanimated through Shallow Grave are exiled during the next end turn. A Cabal Therapy in the graveyard can prevent the exile effect allowing the creature to be reanimated again
• A Phyrexian Devourer stranded in hand can be cast and activated until it reaches 7 power and hence sacrificed to go to the graveyard and enable the combo

3. A look at similar strategies

3.1. Reanimator

Why play Oozing instead of Reanimator? It’s a good question that the people that developed the deck have asked themselves many times…Here you go with an attempt to answer the question in the most rational way possible, below you’ll find a list of reasons that in no way are meant to diminish the strength of Reanimator but only to give evidence to the relevant differences between the two decks.

• Oozing doesn’t obligatory need an attack phase to win a game
• Oozing generally wins on the spot once the combo is running
• Oozing is able to grind a victory against some of Reanimator worst matchups (BUG Delver as an example)
• Oozing is less weak to strategies that make use of Chalice of the Void

Depending on the meta, Reanimator’s ability to use a permission suite might be better than the combo oriented disruption package employed by Oozing. For example, in a meta infested by Storm based decks, Reanimator can have some advantage against Oozing. In general Reanimator is a bit weaker against counter-strategies attacking the graveyard and it is forced to use additional combo strategies to close a game (the presence of Show and Tell in many Reanimator lists is an example).

3.2. Tin Fins

Tin Fins and Oozing are extremely similar, the setup phase is basically the same and the fast combo route is generally executed at the same time. The real differences between the two decks are outlined below:

• Tin Fins combo is generally always happening during the span of one turn. Oozing instead may need to pass the turn to kill during the opponent's turn (typically during the upkeep) or wait for the following untap phase. In practice this is rarely an issue but there is a chance that the opponent could recover from the setup.
• Oozing is less weak to strategies that make use of Chalice of the Void
• Oozing has less dependence from available life points
• Oozing can follow alternate routes to victory

In a nutshell the two decks differ by offering a different route to the kill with Tin Fins being the most “stable” and Oozing the most resilient.


4. Sideboard strategy

The biggest threats to Oozing strategies come in four main forms:

• Graveyard disruption effects
• Permission/Hand disruption
• Taxing effects/Chalice effects
• Specific deck strategies

All of the above are represented in the current meta/DtBs and present specific hurdles that the deck aims to resolve with its general strategy and the sideboard. In general, Oozing, is capable to resist a single one of the effects above (except specific effects that are addressed by the sideboard). Multiple different forms of attack can of course become problematic and need to be circumvented by tailoring specific answers to decks posing the threats. During this section of the Primer we’ll try to address the categories above one by one and see if there is any way to accommodate answers to simultaneously occurring problems.

4.1. Graveyard disruption

There are two main forms of graveyard directed disruption:

• Permanent effects: generated by cards that continuously prevent the expected interaction with the graveyard. Common examples of card generating this type of effects are Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace and Grafdigger’s Cage
• One time effects: generated by cards that need some form of activation to disrupt the interaction with the graveyard. Very common examples are Deathrite Shaman, Tormod’s Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, Surgical Extraction and many others.

Oozing is surprising resistant to one time effects, especially during the comboing phase: the combo simply responds to the effect by reactivating the step at which the disruption was applied. During the setup phase there are various trick that can be applied to get a Griselbrand into play at instant speed depending on the state of the game. One time effects that require a creature to be tapped are specifically weaker, often giving the deck an additional turn to go off.

Permanent effect are more difficult to deal with and require specific answers. The most complex scenarios is when they present themselves in tandem with others. An example is a post-board game against Miracles when a Rest in Peace can be in play alongside an active Counterbalance. Oozing sideboard strategy needs to contain answers to a scenario of this type that are also useful to address other hate pieces.

After a significant amount of testing, a combination of direct removal and swiping effects have resulted the best approach and Oozing sideboard contains a number of Abrupt Decay and Reverent Silence. Both cards require the presence of G producing sources and are the reason why the land set includes 2 Bayou.

4.2. Permission/Discard

The deck is somewhat resilient to targeted discard (Brainstorm helps a lot there) and can even benefit from non targeted discard (Hymn to Tourach like) in some given situation. Permission, instead, is totally another matter. When coupled with other hate effects, permission, can really slow down the deck to a crawl and neutralise its power. This is a common weakness of combo and Oozing is affected by it. What Oozing brings to the field is the capacity to circumvent the hate aimed against spells by playing a Creature based combo strategy. Decks that pack “soft” or “situational” permission (Daze, Spell Pierce, Flusterstorm) alongside Force of Will may allow an Ooze to land unscathed after the field has been cleared with discard. At that point the density of the entombing effects included in Oozing is usually enough to overload the permission suite of many decks.

An exception to the above is presented by decks implementing a Sensei’s Divining Top+Counterbalance combo. In this cases Oozing makes use of its sideboard (in addition to being able to use casting costs out of the typical curve of a Top/Balance deck) through the adoption of the counter hate described in the previous section.

It is extremely good that these two problems are solved by the same set of spells from the sideboard, this makes for a compact set of solutions for a wide array of threats.

4.3. Prison Effects

As discussed for the graveyard based disruption, we can identify three main families of prison effects:

• Taxation effects
• Chalice of the Void like effects
• Meddling Mage and Phyrexian Revoker like effects

Taxation effects are not an enormous problem in singles (Oozing doesn’t need to line up a huge amount of spells like Storm based combo decks) but they can completely prevent the deck from functioning when present in multiples and if coupled with efficient denial. In this case the same set of spells aimed at permanent hate comes to the rescue, specifically Abrupt Decay.

Chalice effects are only partially effective against Oozing as the deck can operate above the usual “1” cost being loaded on Chalice of the Void. Chalice effects coupled with taxation can, in any case, prove to be extremely difficult to manage for Oozing and, out of the sideboard, Abrupt Decay is the usual superstar answer to them. In addition to removal, the Reanimate spells from the MD are generally replaced by Exhume from the sideboard.

Against creature based prison effects, in addition to the usual Abrupt Decay, Massacre comes out of the board. Massacre is especially good against the plethora of W based hate bears decks but is weak to the presence of Gaddock Teeg. For this reason Massacre is generally sided in together with some number of Abrupt Decay.

4.4. Specific decks strategies

There is a certain number of decks (typically combo decks) that can challenge the speed of Oozing or can create game states that are difficult for Oozing to resolve. The identified ones are listed below:

• Omnitell: the sideboard contains additional discard and (at least) one Iona, Shield of Emeria to cope with the speed plus permission packed by Omnitel. In addition Extraction effects (Surgical Extraction) can be employed to remove the enabler of the Omnitel strategy if discarded (Show and tell). Omnitell is fading from the meta and the SB has been reworked accordingly (December 2015)
• ANT/TES: additional discard+extraction coupled by the speed of the deck are generally enough
• Dredge: extraction effects coupled with Oozing speed makes the matchup playable
• Tempo decks: an additional Ooze allows to grind this matchup together with the omnipresent Abrupt Decay

In matchups where Iona, Shield of Emeria comes in from the side, a couple of the Shallow Grave spells in the main Deck are generally replaced by two Exhume from the sideboard.


5. Current lists

The list that seems to provide the best results in the current meta (December 2015) is the following:

Main Deck:

3 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
2 Swamp
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Verdant Catacombs

1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Entomb
3 Buried Alive
4 Shallow Grave
2 Reanimate

4 Cabal Therapy

1 Griselbrand
3 Necrotic Ooze
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Putrid Imp
1 Triskelion


Sideboard:

3 Abrupt Decay
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
2 Exhume
2 Ground Seal
2 Massacre
2 Reverent Silence
2 Carpet of Flowers