GB Vengevine [Hogaak Placeholder Thread]

[Hanni]

I am not convinced that 4x Faithless Looting is correct. I think it really shines on turns 3+, and I don't want to ever draw more than one. I really like 3x Faithless Looting, so that opens up a slot for Gamble if you're interested.

Here's another question: we accept that Lotleth Troll is a necessary part of the deck, but does it need to be maindeck? I have not had any issues finding a 1-mana discard outlet in about 30 games so far. I have had slower hands with Faithless Looting, but in those games I would rather Looting turn 1 than risk firing off a Petal/Troll into a Force (or Daze on the draw.) Could Troll be our sideboard beater in the mid-range matchups? Our enablers would be 4x Pimp/Tribe and 4x OUaT/Looting to find them or sculpt explosive t1-2's. I have the occasional hand where I play t1 Therapy into a t2 Troll, and that is much more resilient in the mid-rangey matchups, but it's definitely slower. I'm proposing that we find a way to shift Troll to the sideboard but actually play more of them, maybe even a full set. We could cut some number of the worst enabler in our deck given the matchup (Pimp or Tribe) and get a beefy trampler that dominates combat against non-StP decks. It slows us down, but we'll be going slower already, likely with more hand disruption. Post-board we don't necessarily need to play around hate with troll either; we can discard to make him beefy, even if we lose some value, and even Rootwalla still hits play (because Madness discards to exile, not the graveyard.)

So in the maindeck that frees up a couple slots to play around with, possibly to add silver bullets for Gamble or to add additional Stain the Mind.

Something like this:

13 Lands (I just can't cut to 12, sorry!)

4x Tribe/Pimp/Bloodghast/Vine/Hollow/Rootwalla/Amalgam
4x OUaT/Looting/Therapy/Petal
3x Stain the Mind

Sideboard (just a rough pass)
3x Force of Vigor
3x Lotleth Troll
2x Silent Gravestone
2x Firestorm
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Big Game Hunter
1x Thoughtseize

Additionally, if Stain the Mind isn't completely necessary in the maindeck it could be in the sideboard, opening up 3 slots for Daze (if we can somehow make this work I think it will bring a lot to the table.) EDIT: We could actually cut to 3x Looting and still cram in a maindeck Troll.

Faithless Looting is perfectly fine as a 4-of, because unlike Once Upon a Time, multiples (2) in the opening hand are castable without taking away from going off on turn 2. Drawing 3+ in an opener is obviously not what we want, but it's still serviceable. Once Upon a Time is a card you love to see in the opener, but you really don't want to see multiples. Having a 2nd copy isn't necessarily horrible, and they are usually fine to topdeck into (assuming we have the mana), but it's definitely better to run 4 Looting and 3 OUaT than it is the other way around.

I believe Lotleth Troll is necessary, but not every one is on the same page with me. The thing is though, you have to have an initial discard outlet creature before the rest of the deck does anything. Sometimes, you don't have a Cavern of Souls and the first one gets countered. Sometimes, the first one gets killed after a mediocre opener and we need another one to go off again in the midgame. I'd much rather have an initial discard outlet in the opener, and use OUaT to dig for a Hollow One or Vengevine. Keeping a hand with a OUaT without a discard outlet creature is much riskier than needing any other piece.

Lotleth Troll gives us a non-graveyard dependent large trample regenerate creature that is a powerhouse in a lot of matchups. More resilience to Chalice @ 1 is also really important. Maybe they could be trimmed to 1 copy, but I wouldn't cut them completely. I also don't think it's the sort of card you should run copies of in the sideboard. There are better cards that address matchups more significantly, and I already don't have the room for all of the cards I'd like to have (especially the 1-of Pithing Needle that I had to cut).

Stain the Mind is just way too good for me to not want to run in the maindeck. Most matchups have 1-2 cards that we care about, that Stain the Mind deals with. Even just being used as a discard spell against redundant fair matchups in tandem with Cabal Therapy, it's still a solid card. It's also castable in multiples in later turns without tapping impactful attackers by spending more actual mana to cast it. Obviously the first cast tapping down summoning sick attackers to cast it for 0-1 mana is busted, but it's not out of the realm to tap something like a Putrid Imp, Basking Rootwalla, and Bloodghast along with 2 lands to cast a 2nd copy on the following turn without reducing the amount of pressure we can apply too significantly.

I'm pretty happy with 59 out 60 cards in my maindeck, with a single flex slot that I'm not completely sure about, but I'm leaning extremely heavily towards Stain the Mind right now because of how powerful the effect is and the fact that I'd love to be able to cast one in almost every game.

Aside from wanting to fit the 1-of Pithing Needle back into the sideboard, I'm also 100% happy with those choices as well.

You're certainly welcome to tweak and playtest your list until you find a configuration you're comfortable with, and I've certainly tweaked mine around quite a bit myself, but I'm extremely satisfied with where I'm at right now.

EDIT: Maybe Tomik is the cut for Pithing Needle in my sideboard? Needle is worse than Tomik against Depths and Lands, but way more applicable in more matchups. It's strong in the Delver matchup to shut down Wasteland, great against D&T, can deal with activated hate like Tormod's Crypt, so on and so forth.

I like Tomik for its uncounterability with Cavern on human, but WW is still hard to cast. I like that it's a creature that can be found with OUaT, and a 2/3 flyer is a nice body, but 2cc could possibly be too slow even in the Depths/Lands matchups...

I think I'm going to swap Tomik to Pithing Needle, tbh.