[Deck] Cephalid Breakfast

[xsockmonkeyx]

I only own 3 Goyfs, and I've been using 1 Grunt in place of the fourth. Which works nicely with the creature tutors.

If you had the 4th Goyf would you play it? If so, would you drop the Grunt?

[MattH]

If you had the 4th Goyf would you play it? If so, would you drop the Grunt?

Yes, and yes. But Grunt is not a bad substitute at all. I could almost see sideboarding them, if the deck didn't have eight million good SB options already.

[Pinder]

Thing is, once you've dumped your entire library into your graveyard, according to most lists, Goyf becomes a 6/7 (possibly larger if they print some decent Tribal stuff in Lorwyn), so the total power of Ghoul removing 4 goyfs is 24. With 4 Grunt, you only get 16. Is this ever an issue?

[DarkAkuma]

Not Realy. After milling, and saccing creatures to Cabals and Dread Return, you have 3 Narcomebas, 4 Illusionists, 4 Nomads, and 1 Shamen that can also be removed. So counting the 4 Grunts and all those, your Ghoul can be as big as a 28/29. So even in a worst case senerio like haveing 2 grunts in your hand, and needing to direct both Therapys at your opponent, Ghoul will still be a 20/21.

So as far as removeing creatures for Ghoul is concerned, haveing Tarmogoyf over Grunt is pointless. But thats just when thinking about Ghoul. If you need to go agro on your opponant, goyf still probly beats of Grunt since he gets bigger. But some things in grunts favor are that hes just as vulnerable to the ever popular swords, but he also weakens the REALY popular goyf's on the other side of the table.

Also, a realy small consideration is that say your opponant mages or extracts your Dread Return, you can mill and stack your deck using Grunt's drawback. Probly not the most useful things, but when it acctualy comes up its kind of fun.

[Pinder]

Not Realy. After milling, and saccing creatures to Cabals and Dread Return, you have 3 Narcomebas, 4 Illusionists, 4 Nomads, and 1 Shamen that can also be removed. So counting the 4 Grunts and all those, your Ghoul can be as big as a 28/29. So even in a worst case senerio like haveing 2 grunts in your hand, and needing to direct both Therapys at your opponent, Ghoul will still be a 20/21.

Right, I didn't consider that this deck has other creatures in it.

Also, a realy small consideration is that say your opponant mages or extracts your Dread Return, you can mill and stack your deck using goyfs drawback. Probly not the most useful things, but when it acctualy comes up its kind of fun.

I'm assuming that you meant Grunt there, but that is a really nifty trick. Not sure it warrants Grunt over Tarmogoyf, but nifty all the same.

Of course, one advantage of Grunt over Goyf (aside from availability) is, now that it's been judged that Ghoul's ability checks constantly (as does Goyf's), once your Ghoul gets big he stays that way even if they have some sort of Crypt shenanigans going on in the early game.

[DarkAkuma]

Right, I didn't consider that this deck has other creatures in it.



I'm assuming that you meant Grunt there, but that is a really nifty trick. Not sure it warrants Grunt over Tarmogoyf, but nifty all the same.

Of course, one advantage of Grunt over Goyf (aside from availability) is, now that it's been judged that Ghoul's ability checks constantly (as does Goyf's), once your Ghoul gets big he stays that way even if they have some sort of Crypt shenanigans going on in the early game.

Oops. Edited it. I did mean grunt of corse.

And yea. I forgot about that with goyf-ghoul since it recently came to light. Deffinantly another good reason you may want to play Grunt instead of/in addition to goyf.

[calosso]

Oops. Edited it. I did mean grunt of corse.

And yea. I forgot about that with goyf-ghoul since it recently came to light. Deffinantly another good reason you may want to play Grunt instead of/in addition to goyf.

Grunt does absolutely nothing against breakfast except attack for 4 about twice.

[Shriekmaw]

There is no reason why you should be playing Jotun Grunt in breakfast at all. If you don't have any Tarmogoyf's then I suggest you go out and get some. They shouldn't be that hard to find since the set is fairly new and easy to get ahold of.

It's funny how many times the players in Syracuse have actually won games when we went beatdown with Tarmogoyf's.

[Pinder]

Grunt does absolutely nothing against breakfast except attack for 4 about twice.

Because Tarmogoyf does so much against Breakfast?

I'm not saying that Goyf is bad here, I'm just pointing out that there are some advantages to using Grunts if you don't have/can't get a hold of Goyfs.

[Sigar]

If you don't have any Tarmogoyf's then I suggest you go out and get some. They shouldn't be that hard to find since the set is fairly new and easy to get ahold of.

You are kidding right? Yes, you can find them, but you have to pay the BIG bucks.

[Wallace]

There is no reason why you should be playing Jotun Grunt in breakfast at all. If you don't have any Tarmogoyf's then I suggest you go out and get some. They shouldn't be that hard to find since the set is fairly new and easy to get ahold of.

It's funny how many times the players in Syracuse have actually won games when we went beatdown with Tarmogoyf's.

I lost twice to Breakfast at the DLD this weekend and both time was to the Tarm not the combo! Get Ghoyf's

[kicks_422]

Has anyone tried fitting in the Dreadnought-Stifle combo here? Dreadnought works with the Ghoul kill anyway, and Stifle is always a great card which could help against some of the hate, and makes a Dreadnought back-up plan viable since you won't always get a Vial in play.

Just throwing out some ideas. I'm still pretty sore about trading away my set of Tarmogoyfs for a set of Xantid Swarm and roughly $2, so I'm trying to find replacements for Goyf in every deck that uses him.

[Wallace]

Has anyone tried fitting in the Dreadnought-Stifle combo here? Dreadnought works with the Ghoul kill anyway, and Stifle is always a great card which could help against some of the hate, and makes a Dreadnought back-up plan viable since you won't always get a Vial in play.

Just throwing out some ideas. I'm still pretty sore about trading away my set of Tarmogoyfs for a set of Xantid Swarm and roughly $2, so I'm trying to find replacements for Goyf in every deck that uses him.

Good luck with that

This type of post is unacceptable in the DTB Forum. Please see the forum rules. ~Nightmare

[DarkAkuma]

I won several games going the beatdown route with Grunts at my local weekly 20 man tourny. So what?

These arguments for running pure goyf over 1-4 grunts are horrable.

In vegas, Goyf's instantly went to $20-$25, and EVERYONE wanted/wants 4. Some people even want 8. And no-one wants to trade them away. So their in no way "easy to get" unless you buy like 200 packs or fork over a c-note on ebay. Grunts however are WAYYYYY easier to get 4 of, dont weaken the deck that much, and add more options.

I'm still not saying run 4 Grunts instead of 4 goyfs. But Grunts shouldnt be dissmissed that easy.

[calosso]

Has anyone tried fitting in the Dreadnought-Stifle combo here? Dreadnought works with the Ghoul kill anyway, and Stifle is always a great card which could help against some of the hate, and makes a Dreadnought back-up plan viable since you won't always get a Vial in play.

Just throwing out some ideas. I'm still pretty sore about trading away my set of Tarmogoyfs for a set of Xantid Swarm and roughly $2, so I'm trying to find replacements for Goyf in every deck that uses him.

in the original version it ran 2 dreadnaughts, and you could tutor both of them up and have to resolve 1 and the in response vial in the other dreadnaught to keep the other alive. Obviously goyf is a stronger alternative bad.

People Grunt sucks, pay 15 dollars for goyf and start winning games.

[someone_unimportant]

Heh, Goyf for 15 dollars, riiiiight. Dunno about where you live, but in my neck of the woods goyfs go for $25. It seems to me that Grunt is a fine alternative. They get shot by the same removal, and while maybe grunt is less permanent, people have been running suboptimal decks for decades due to availabiltiy. I've seen plenty of people play Shocklands before Duals before, and I equate this to roughly the same thing.

[mikekelley]

Would people try to play this without the right dual lands?

No.

So why try to play it without the right creatures?

Harden up, people. I used to bitch about money but I got set straight- this isn't the place to bitch about money, if you want to be competitive in the format you have to throw down the bills.

[diffy]

Goyf... Grunt...

I do believe that Tarmogoyf is the better beatdown/manplan for this deck... and it's always nice to have an alternative when your combo fizled or you're facing to much hate, but you do have to say that there are some pros for the Grunt too... and you also have to acknowledge that creature combat is a very weak way to win if you don't build your deck around it (I mean now like everybody should be able to handle some assortment of Tarmogoyfs and 1/1s).

First of all, i actually had to check and this deck only splashes green for the Goyf and Worldly Tutor, both strong components to the deck, but you'd be sure to find a replacement for them and replace Goyf with Grunt and just cut green altogether and go Uwb with a stronger Mana Base.

Taking Mr. Nightmare's last list from the article you could go something like:

-3 Tropical Island
-4 Tarmogyof
-3 Worldly Tutor
+1 Tundra
+2 Underground Sea
+4 Jötun Grunt
+1 Lim-Dul's Vault (Worldly Tutor replacement)
+1 Portent/Ponder or even Grim Tutor* (Worldly Tutor replacement)
+1 Abeyance (The deck gets slower so you want more protection)

In the Sideboard you could go:

-3 Pernicious Deed
-3 Krosan Grip
-1 Abeyance
+4 Dark Confidant
+3 Engineered Explosives

Sacrifising your Creatures in play to Dread Return and Cabal Therapy would still give you the theoretic possibility to make your Ghoul a:

4* 4/4 = 16/16 (4 Jötun Grunt)
11* 1/1 = 27/27 (4 Nomad en-kor, 3 Narcomoeba, 4 Cephalid Illusionist)
1* 1/2 = 28/29 (1 Shaman en-kor)

Which still should be about enough to win most of your Legacy matches.

So please, everybody just stop flaming/bashing around on people who don't want to invest into Tarmogoyfs or just can't get hold of them... which isn't that easy because in my environment as an example although Tarmogoyfs are on the market for around 15€ (20.69$) people don't want to sell them and only trade them against some of the old dual lands... I can tell you it was hard as hell to get my second playset even with about 16-20 Goyfs floating around because:
Goyfless Breakfast is a possibility! and should maybe even be looked into more deeply than my first rough suggestion...

Some food for thought for the people who want to continue investigating into that direction:

You'd probably want to add in a huge more protection turning the archetype into a Combo Control deck like Aluren because you take away a lot of speed and ease to assemble the combo.
Possible inclusions for this direction would be Counterbalance/Sensei's Divining Top or Intuition with more Cabal Therapies and Duresses.
If you go the Intuition route, you'd probably want to cut the Combo Pieces down to 3 each (1 Nomads en-kor, 1 Shaman en-kor, 1 Shuko, 3 Cephalid Illusionist) making room for 3 Intuitions. You now could cut the Aether Vials (you arn't looking to be fast and protected from counters anymore) to add 2 Abeyances and 2 Duresses.
Now to make everyone happy, you'd just have to find room for Counter/Top.. I'm going to come back to that later probably if someone is interested.

Oh yeah, I forgott to mention the largest pro of cutting green and adding CounterTop... You can call your deck Balanced Breakfast. Awesome!

So far, I hope that I could make myself clear enough which isn't obvious as a non natural speaker and being half asleep.

*Wait a sec, didn't I talk about budget just right now? Uhm... basically that suggestion is for the people looking for a way to innovate onto the archetype. If budget is of concern for you, just stick with Portent/Ponder

[TheRock]

You can almost effortlessly play this deck with painlands and Gemstone Mines as long as you keep Force of Will intact. Aggro isn't that big of a concern anyway.

You would lose Daze unless you did run a few duals and fetches, but not having Daze isn't the end of the world. Heck, you could always just go back to running Kiki, Hussar, and Guide since they cost even less money than Grunts and just run a different bounce spell to stop Needle.

This "Tarmogoyf is WOWOOOWOWOWOW" stuff is really getting annoying. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, then don't - just learn how to build decks with what you can get.

[xsockmonkeyx]

You can almost effortlessly play this deck with painlands and Gemstone Mines as long as you keep Force of Will intact. Aggro isn't that big of a concern anyway.

You would lose Daze unless you did run a few duals and fetches, but not having Daze isn't the end of the world. Heck, you could always just go back to running Kiki, Hussar, and Guide since they cost even less than Grunts and just run a different bounce spell to stop Needle.

You would also lose Brainstorm/Fetch which is also really nice.