Has anyone considered a Zoo build with Raze? I’m wondering if Arcanist + Raze can give a hyper efficient deck like Zoo an edge by keeping opponents off enough mana to go wide. That was always Zoo’s soft spot. Nacatl and Reclaimer give the deck two 1cc 3/x creatures for the beats. W6 let’s you recycle lands for Raze.
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Elvish Reclaimer
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dreadhorde Arcanist
4 Wrenn and Six
4 Raze
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Sylvan Library
2 something else decent
20 lands, including Wastelands
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DHA can't normally cast Become Immense and the +6 doesn't help cast anything else in the GY. What's the interaction, just getting double Immense for +12/+12 to trample FTW?
Scale Up is beatdown, but again doesn't help cast anything and can't be doubled.
StP is a good cut. Zoo never ran it. Lifegain hurts.
Crack the Earth forces you to sacrifice a permanent on the recast too AND lets the opponent choose.
Raze doesn't require a sacrifice on the recast and chooses a target. (Edit: Nevermind, it does. Still you get to choose the target.)
Maybe something like this
//Creatures: 22
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Elvish Reclaimer
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dreadhorde Arcanist
2 Knight of the Reliquary
//Planeswalkers: 4
4 Wrenn and Six
//Spells: 13
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Raze
1 Become Immense
//Lands: 21
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Windswept Heath
3 Arid Mesa
2 Taiga
2 Savannah
2 Plateau
1 Karakas
//Sideboard: 15
3 Veil of Summer
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
2 Cindervines
1 Destructive Revelry
1 Sylvan Library
Last edited by FTW; 08-23-2019 at 06:04 PM.
I am pretty sure Raze still requires the sacrifice on the recast as its part of its casting cost.
I would run more heavy red/white with Steppe Lynx and Flagstones of Trokair.
If you cast a card “without paying its mana cost,” you can’t choose to cast it for any alternative costs. You can, however, pay additional costs. If the card has any mandatory additional costs, such as that of Spark Harvest, you must pay those to cast the card.
joshman54321 is right, you're losing a land on each cast, Dreadhorde or otherwise
I think a good card for those flex slots would be something 1cc to deal with artifacts or enchantments, but mostly for artifacts to prevent opponents from building a game around artifact mana. Reckless Airstrike or Natures Claim seem decent.
Nature's Claim is good a good CMC, but FTW is right, giving them life is giving them an extra turn.
If it's specifically artifact mana source, Meltdown is a good card for that.
Meltdown can only hit cmc 0 artifacts off of Dreadhorde though. Dreadhorde really needs to be able to hit for value. Smelt would probably be best, maybe jam a couple Qasali Pridemage as well.
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I think Smelt might be terrible, specifically because of Chalice on 1. If you go that route, I'd likely favor Shatter Spree because it can actually kill a Chalice on 1, even though it will cost you more mana to do it.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Yeah the reason I specifically went for 2cc effects (Cindervines) is because you need answers to Chalice @ 1. Cindervines also has value against Miracles and Storm as burn, helping shore up other matchups that Zoo hates, so it seems like an efficient use of SB space. (1-of Destructive Revelry was a hedge against them using Revoker on Cindervines, while still accomplishing the whole kill+burn thing, but Shattering Spree is probably better).
Smelt seems terrible. Nature's Claim lifegain hurts. Fragmentize is a card? But beating Chalice is important.
I think Cindervines is a hugely good sideboard card, since you can "set it and forget it" when facing junk like Blood Moon or Chalices.
But, I was just thinking along the lines of synergies with Arcanist. But indeed, especially given my local meta, if I am playing RGx, I am likely putting at least one Cindervines in the 75, minimum.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Cindervines seems pretty great. Not having as much synergy with Dreadhorde sucks, but it's fine. I'd rather play some more objectively powerful cards that are less synergistic than get completely hosed by being all in on one plan
Dreadhorde synergies are cool, but it also dies to everything so we don't need to build the entire deck around it. URx decks can protect it, but this deck just wants to beat down as fast as possible, and if it dies it dies.
I think Scale Up isn't as good as it looks. Since it's a sorcery, for anything 2/1 or bigger it's worse than Might of Old Krosa (and worse than Giant Growth for 3/1 or bigger), especially when you consider that multiples don't stack. It really only stands out on 1/xs like Dreadhorde Arcanist or Blighted Agent.
On crack the Earth v Raze:
Crack has a lot more upside because you can use wasteland to hit the lands you want to Target, and crack can take care of spells cast off one lands. (Especially when combined with wasteland) it also is only requires a sacrifice on resolution, unlike raze's additional cost making it better against countermaguc and the like. Finally, sacrifice isn't destroy for things like darksteel citadels and marit leges.
Raze targets. Which, uh, might be worth all that but it's not a clear cut situation. I recommend at least testing crack before writing it off.
Crack the Earth vs Raze:
Crack CAN hit permanents like Blood Moon or Aether Vial or Chrome Mox or Marit Lage, but that's a big hypothetical. Remember the opponent gets to choose. It's like cards like Dash Hopes and Breaking Point and Browbeat. Both modes sound good on paper, but opponent will always pick the one that's least good for you in that game state, and they end up underperforming. With Crack they're not picking Marit Lage unless they control 0 other permanents. They will always pick their least useful permanent. Most often that could be an uncracked fetch, a land that would die to Wasteland anyway, or the weakest creature.
They may sacrifice their nonbasic land instead of the basic to be Wasteland-proof, while Raze can complement Wasteland to strip them off an entire color with surgical precision.
Crack's main advantages are being better against countermagic and not giving the opponent time to respond between your choice of sacrifice and his (Raze is bad against an active Wasteland). It deserves testing for that. But I wouldn't count on it as good permanent removal. If it's removing nonland permanents, either they're less important or you're in a win-more position.
Maybe start with 2 Crack + 2 Raze and then see which one is more useful.
Weathered Wayfarer seems sweet here. Using it in response to your own raze seems cool.
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