Kich867
01-28-2012, 04:31 AM
Disclaimer-- This post is very long, and very broad. The goal is to narrow it down severely. It is intentionally broad because it includes many ideas for a U/G Archetype. If it was not very long, it would encompass multiple threads per deck idea and I don't want to flood the forum with new threads.
I also understand that I'm not the best deck builder and any deck lists given were made as starting points for discussion to get across an idea.
Hello all. Since..pretty much the beginning of magic, Green has been my favorite color, it is both in magic and in real life. Blue a close second. I've even found U/G decks to be very, very enticing, but my problem thus far is they almost always require some third color. I don't want that.
I want a blue green deck. Offhand the only thing I can think of is Madness, which is, from my experience, generally quite bad. The card disadvantage you run into is crippling and you're without a hand within 3 turns, if they're not dead, you are, they're frequently not dead.
Madness feels... somewhat out of the question, the creatures aren't good enough and it's susceptible to graveyard hate.
I'm questioning the possibility of a "goodstuff.dec" u/g deck, it just doesn't seem good enough.
I've lately been thinking (after playing a lot of U/R delver) that I just want to play what I want to play. And at heart, what I've always wanted to play was a U/G deck.
So I'm calling upon the brain trust of the source to aid me in compiling either generally useful cards that don't immediately jump to mind (Brainstorm, Goyf, GSZ, etc are all quite standard) or powerful U/G card interactions that I may not have thought of, or, just input in general to the discussion of a U/G deck. What I don't want to hear is "Don't play this, you need to splash a third" or other generally negative comments--the point is to try to discover the best possible deck(s) using those two colors exclusively.
To start off, I've concluded that "Green Good Stuff + Blue Good Stuff = UG Good Stuff.dec" doesn't really work. It lacks synergy, removal, and in my opinion a coherent plan. The two colors are on other sides of the spectrum from each other (although Wizards feels compelled to give blue absurdly awesome aggressive creatures recently while giving green no means to play a controlling role), so much so that there is no middle-ground that connects the two colors. It needs that white, or red, or black, in order to achieve a competitive "Goodstuff.dec" status where the cards from G and U are supported by a third color and made stronger.
That leaves us with a predicament where goodstuff isn't what is going to fly, listing off the 5 best blue cards and the 5 best green cards aren't going to make a good deck. So we have to go farther, dig deeper. I compiled a list of U/G archetypes, as many as I could think of, and made starting lists for several of them with a pros/cons list to accompany it. It's 4:30am however, and this writing is taking a toll on my sleep time, so I can't finish them all today.
I would love your input.
U/G Weenie:
//Creatures: 16
4x Delver of Secrets
3x Mindshrieker
4x Nimble Mongoose
4x Tarmogoyf
1x Emrakul, The Aeon's Torn
//Spells: 22
4x Brainstorm
4x Worldly Tutor
4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell
3x Spell Pierce
3x Spell Snare
//Lands: 22
4x Tropical Island
4x Wasteland
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Flooded Strand
2x Verdant Catacombs
3x Forest
3x Island
I feel this is somewhat viable via creatures with some avoidance or natural protection. It also involves a combat trick in which you swing with Mindshrieker, Worldly Tutor emrakul to the top of your deck, mill him and hit for 16 while refreshing your graveyard into your library. However, there is a lack of synergy with Nimble Mongoose here, but I think that can be overlooked as a 16 damage swing is frequently game ending. Most people hit themselves to 16 off of fetch lands or some other means anyways.
The interesting thing here is that you can actually do this 3 mana repetition as many times as you have 3 mana + worldly tutor available, so if it hits late game and you have 6 mana open, it's entirely possible to hit someone for 31 damage via 2 worldly tutors.
Pros:
Will probably blow people out game one.
Worldly Tutor isn't a one-trick pony and can be used to fetch any creature EOT.
The deck curves out low and gives a ton of protection.
Potential third turn win: Delver turn 1, shrieker turn 2 + delver flip, Swing tutor mill for 19 damage turn 3.
Inherently resistant to mill strategies (not terribly relevant).
Cons:
No other creatures benefit from the worldly tutor combat trick.
Nimble Mongoose becomes much weaker of a choice, may find something else.
May rely to heavily on the Mindshrieker trick to kill people.
Has no removal (may not need it with avoidance).
-----------------------------------
U/G Landstill: (Should Jace be included in this?)
//Spells: 29
4x Brainstorm
4x Explore
2x Exploration
2x Life from the Loam
4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell
3x Spell Snare
1x Dispel
1x Spell Pierce
2x Treasure Hunt
2x Crop Rotation
//Enchantments: 7
4x Standstill
3x Drop of Honey
//Lands: 24
2x Wasteland
1x Maze of Ith
1x Halimar Depths
2x Faerie Conclave
2x Treetop Village
4x Mishra's Factory
4x Tropical Island
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Forest
1x Island
This would be something along my take on a blue green landstill deck. I noticed most of them were U/W/g or B/U/g with little emphasis on the green it seemed. The gist should be obvious here: get a lot of lands down, Drop of Honey and Counterspells keep the board occupied while you beat them with lands and take advantage of standstill. Drop of Honey is a powerful card in that it actually gets around Shroud, Protection from Green, even Progenitus' Protection from Everything -should- be avoided given that the creatures aren't targeted, they just die based on a criteria per turn.
Drop of Honey may not be fast enough, people may stop playing creatures to let it fizzle, but in the time they're not dropping creatures, I'm finding another Drop to play when they have 2-3 creatures on the board and most importantly they stopped dropping creatures.
I genuinely believe this is a stronger, more consistent strategy than the previous one, but I would like to hear other's opinions about it and talk about it.
Pros:
Drop of Honey is completely one-sided.
Lots of protection.
Lots of synergy between standstill and man lands.
Plenty of card draw / selection.
Acceleration
Flexible
Land recursion engine
Cons:
Could get hosed by U/R Delver via Price of Progress.
Fast aggro / Combo may be an issue but I honestly have no idea, I would have to playtest it.
A lot of lands that come into play tapped or don't tap for mana may cause issues.
----------------------------------------------------
U/G Vengevine Madness:
//Creatures: 20
4x Vengevine
4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
2x Aquamoeba
3x Waterfront Bouncer
3x Wonder
//Spells: 18
4x Brainstorm
4x Careful Study
4x Force of Will
2x Circular Logic
3x Spell Pierce
1x Roar of the Wurm
//Enchantments: 4
4x Standstill
//Lands: 18
4x Tropical Island
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Flooded Strand
2x Verdant Catacombs
3x Island
3x Forest
With 15 discard outlets, you have many setups towards your goal. Push yourself into a favorable board position early, drop the standstill to weather the card disadvantage and keep you fueled. Waterfront Bouncer combat tricks to get through / trigger vengevines.
-------------------------------------------------------------
U/G Midrange: Seems too janky. I don't see Tarmogoyf + Thrun + some other stuff and counters working effectively. Then again, Thrun is the honey badger of magic and casually rolls d20's to check whether he gives a fuck. He usually doesn't.
U/G Superfriends: Possibility, but doesn't seem particularly strong given the lack of targeted removal.
U/G Gro: Entirely possible, but I feel the only two worthwhile creatures that "Grow" (afaik) are Quirion Dryad and Tarmogoyf in just U/G. Blue has an absurd amount of cantrips to grow the hell out of Dryad's with counters to keep them alive, but 8 creatures isn't enough. Nimble Mongoose could find a spot here as well. Bant I think is a better option here though. Knight is a big deal.
U/G Ramp: This in theory sounds..ok? But I don't know what one would be ramping into. The reason this sounds ok to me is the fundamental principle that often times decks, especially right now, simply can't deal with "Big Fucking Creature #3" on the table. I've seen incredibly tuned, fast decks get chump blocked and held off by quite frankly--fucking terrible decks--until the late game when that 8/8 Trample hit the table and the StP's couldn't be found to survive the 2 turn clock you were just put on. Those decks usually lose, but I feel that those lose because they're often like "Janky Mono Green Old Standard" decks, but if a lot more thought and fine tuning was put into it, then a U/G Ramp deck that could reliably hit ~6 mana and not die actually sounds..completely alright. Especially right now where U/R Delver and RUG Tempo decks are fairly rampant. So maybe later I can develop a list for this, I just need to find the time and compile a list of powerful, realistically hard-casted big creatures that could be played in a ramp deck.
Nic Fit already shows us that this sort of deck is possible, so there is definitely potential here. Tomorrow afternoon, or if someone feels the urge to so kindly assist me in this endeavor, I'll compile a nice list of powerful creatures. Frost Titan comes to mind as a creature that I always thought was highly underrated given that he spell pierces everything thrown at him and has is own incredibly powerful evasion via stun-tapping.
Some kind of U/G Mavericky thing: (Megaman?)
a maverick-esque approach may be the best way to accomplish this (even though you won't have a way to execute land tricks without knight), and i have a feeling that'd end up looking like a U/G ***** list with a GSZ toolbox, but that doesn't really sound horrible. here's what i came up with on a first try:
3 noble hierarch
1 birds of paradise
1 dryad arbor
3-4 tarmogoyf
2 snapcaster mage
2-3 vendilion clique
1-2 trygon predator
1 scavenging ooze
1 scryb ranger
1 thrun, the last troll
4 green sun's zenith
4 brainstorm
3 force of will
3 spell snare
4 stifle
3 dismember
0-1 temporal spring
4 misty rainforest
2 windswept heath
1 scalding tarn
4 tropical island
4 forest
3 island
4 wasteland
something like that? the lack of removal feels really bad, but i'm sure you can sideboard cards that make up for that in the trouble match-ups. i'm a little iffy about dismember hitting you a little too hard though, and it sort of turns me off to the idea. even decks with "lots of removal" only run something like "4x lightning bolts" or "4x stp..." so, maybe dismember isn't terrible.
quick sideboard like:
1 force of will
2 krosan grip
1-2 tormod's crypt
2 phyrexian metamorph
2 surgical extraction
3 natural order
1 progenitus
2-3 jace, the mind sculptor
--I really enjoyed this list. Dismember was something that escaped me while thinking about this, but overall, I really enjoy this list. Spymaster may be a solid inclusion as a 1-of green sun target. This deck looks very strong, to be honest. This is essentially what I was going to post up so if it's cool I'll quote you instead. I like the ranges as well. Stifle may not be necessary, but it's a powerful card, especially since this deck plans on going into the late game, stifles on fetches or early Stoneforges can be game-winning. I'm on board with it but I can see that slot being something else, like even main-deck jaces or something.
This may be viable, but a lack of removal may force it to not work. On the flip side, you have -some- (few probably) combat tricks, Trygon Predator is absurd against stoneforge decks which could prove useful, so there's options there. The lack of removal is compensated with the inclusion of counterspells and great card selection consistency. Essentially a group of cheap efficient beaters + useful toolbox creatures to take control. Like I said, this doesn't sound terrible and I could see it being entirely doable, I'll have to fiddle with this later, too late right now.
So in ending, with what I've posted here do you feel there is a definitively stronger archetype than others (I certainly posted what I believed to be a stronger build but I'm interested in the opinions of others)? Is there something I perhaps missed here as an archetype? Do you have any experience trying some of these out and can give input on any strengths or weaknesses that one couldn't evaluate just by looking at a decklist?
I also understand that I'm not the best deck builder and any deck lists given were made as starting points for discussion to get across an idea.
Hello all. Since..pretty much the beginning of magic, Green has been my favorite color, it is both in magic and in real life. Blue a close second. I've even found U/G decks to be very, very enticing, but my problem thus far is they almost always require some third color. I don't want that.
I want a blue green deck. Offhand the only thing I can think of is Madness, which is, from my experience, generally quite bad. The card disadvantage you run into is crippling and you're without a hand within 3 turns, if they're not dead, you are, they're frequently not dead.
Madness feels... somewhat out of the question, the creatures aren't good enough and it's susceptible to graveyard hate.
I'm questioning the possibility of a "goodstuff.dec" u/g deck, it just doesn't seem good enough.
I've lately been thinking (after playing a lot of U/R delver) that I just want to play what I want to play. And at heart, what I've always wanted to play was a U/G deck.
So I'm calling upon the brain trust of the source to aid me in compiling either generally useful cards that don't immediately jump to mind (Brainstorm, Goyf, GSZ, etc are all quite standard) or powerful U/G card interactions that I may not have thought of, or, just input in general to the discussion of a U/G deck. What I don't want to hear is "Don't play this, you need to splash a third" or other generally negative comments--the point is to try to discover the best possible deck(s) using those two colors exclusively.
To start off, I've concluded that "Green Good Stuff + Blue Good Stuff = UG Good Stuff.dec" doesn't really work. It lacks synergy, removal, and in my opinion a coherent plan. The two colors are on other sides of the spectrum from each other (although Wizards feels compelled to give blue absurdly awesome aggressive creatures recently while giving green no means to play a controlling role), so much so that there is no middle-ground that connects the two colors. It needs that white, or red, or black, in order to achieve a competitive "Goodstuff.dec" status where the cards from G and U are supported by a third color and made stronger.
That leaves us with a predicament where goodstuff isn't what is going to fly, listing off the 5 best blue cards and the 5 best green cards aren't going to make a good deck. So we have to go farther, dig deeper. I compiled a list of U/G archetypes, as many as I could think of, and made starting lists for several of them with a pros/cons list to accompany it. It's 4:30am however, and this writing is taking a toll on my sleep time, so I can't finish them all today.
I would love your input.
U/G Weenie:
//Creatures: 16
4x Delver of Secrets
3x Mindshrieker
4x Nimble Mongoose
4x Tarmogoyf
1x Emrakul, The Aeon's Torn
//Spells: 22
4x Brainstorm
4x Worldly Tutor
4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell
3x Spell Pierce
3x Spell Snare
//Lands: 22
4x Tropical Island
4x Wasteland
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Flooded Strand
2x Verdant Catacombs
3x Forest
3x Island
I feel this is somewhat viable via creatures with some avoidance or natural protection. It also involves a combat trick in which you swing with Mindshrieker, Worldly Tutor emrakul to the top of your deck, mill him and hit for 16 while refreshing your graveyard into your library. However, there is a lack of synergy with Nimble Mongoose here, but I think that can be overlooked as a 16 damage swing is frequently game ending. Most people hit themselves to 16 off of fetch lands or some other means anyways.
The interesting thing here is that you can actually do this 3 mana repetition as many times as you have 3 mana + worldly tutor available, so if it hits late game and you have 6 mana open, it's entirely possible to hit someone for 31 damage via 2 worldly tutors.
Pros:
Will probably blow people out game one.
Worldly Tutor isn't a one-trick pony and can be used to fetch any creature EOT.
The deck curves out low and gives a ton of protection.
Potential third turn win: Delver turn 1, shrieker turn 2 + delver flip, Swing tutor mill for 19 damage turn 3.
Inherently resistant to mill strategies (not terribly relevant).
Cons:
No other creatures benefit from the worldly tutor combat trick.
Nimble Mongoose becomes much weaker of a choice, may find something else.
May rely to heavily on the Mindshrieker trick to kill people.
Has no removal (may not need it with avoidance).
-----------------------------------
U/G Landstill: (Should Jace be included in this?)
//Spells: 29
4x Brainstorm
4x Explore
2x Exploration
2x Life from the Loam
4x Force of Will
4x Counterspell
3x Spell Snare
1x Dispel
1x Spell Pierce
2x Treasure Hunt
2x Crop Rotation
//Enchantments: 7
4x Standstill
3x Drop of Honey
//Lands: 24
2x Wasteland
1x Maze of Ith
1x Halimar Depths
2x Faerie Conclave
2x Treetop Village
4x Mishra's Factory
4x Tropical Island
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Forest
1x Island
This would be something along my take on a blue green landstill deck. I noticed most of them were U/W/g or B/U/g with little emphasis on the green it seemed. The gist should be obvious here: get a lot of lands down, Drop of Honey and Counterspells keep the board occupied while you beat them with lands and take advantage of standstill. Drop of Honey is a powerful card in that it actually gets around Shroud, Protection from Green, even Progenitus' Protection from Everything -should- be avoided given that the creatures aren't targeted, they just die based on a criteria per turn.
Drop of Honey may not be fast enough, people may stop playing creatures to let it fizzle, but in the time they're not dropping creatures, I'm finding another Drop to play when they have 2-3 creatures on the board and most importantly they stopped dropping creatures.
I genuinely believe this is a stronger, more consistent strategy than the previous one, but I would like to hear other's opinions about it and talk about it.
Pros:
Drop of Honey is completely one-sided.
Lots of protection.
Lots of synergy between standstill and man lands.
Plenty of card draw / selection.
Acceleration
Flexible
Land recursion engine
Cons:
Could get hosed by U/R Delver via Price of Progress.
Fast aggro / Combo may be an issue but I honestly have no idea, I would have to playtest it.
A lot of lands that come into play tapped or don't tap for mana may cause issues.
----------------------------------------------------
U/G Vengevine Madness:
//Creatures: 20
4x Vengevine
4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
2x Aquamoeba
3x Waterfront Bouncer
3x Wonder
//Spells: 18
4x Brainstorm
4x Careful Study
4x Force of Will
2x Circular Logic
3x Spell Pierce
1x Roar of the Wurm
//Enchantments: 4
4x Standstill
//Lands: 18
4x Tropical Island
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Flooded Strand
2x Verdant Catacombs
3x Island
3x Forest
With 15 discard outlets, you have many setups towards your goal. Push yourself into a favorable board position early, drop the standstill to weather the card disadvantage and keep you fueled. Waterfront Bouncer combat tricks to get through / trigger vengevines.
-------------------------------------------------------------
U/G Midrange: Seems too janky. I don't see Tarmogoyf + Thrun + some other stuff and counters working effectively. Then again, Thrun is the honey badger of magic and casually rolls d20's to check whether he gives a fuck. He usually doesn't.
U/G Superfriends: Possibility, but doesn't seem particularly strong given the lack of targeted removal.
U/G Gro: Entirely possible, but I feel the only two worthwhile creatures that "Grow" (afaik) are Quirion Dryad and Tarmogoyf in just U/G. Blue has an absurd amount of cantrips to grow the hell out of Dryad's with counters to keep them alive, but 8 creatures isn't enough. Nimble Mongoose could find a spot here as well. Bant I think is a better option here though. Knight is a big deal.
U/G Ramp: This in theory sounds..ok? But I don't know what one would be ramping into. The reason this sounds ok to me is the fundamental principle that often times decks, especially right now, simply can't deal with "Big Fucking Creature #3" on the table. I've seen incredibly tuned, fast decks get chump blocked and held off by quite frankly--fucking terrible decks--until the late game when that 8/8 Trample hit the table and the StP's couldn't be found to survive the 2 turn clock you were just put on. Those decks usually lose, but I feel that those lose because they're often like "Janky Mono Green Old Standard" decks, but if a lot more thought and fine tuning was put into it, then a U/G Ramp deck that could reliably hit ~6 mana and not die actually sounds..completely alright. Especially right now where U/R Delver and RUG Tempo decks are fairly rampant. So maybe later I can develop a list for this, I just need to find the time and compile a list of powerful, realistically hard-casted big creatures that could be played in a ramp deck.
Nic Fit already shows us that this sort of deck is possible, so there is definitely potential here. Tomorrow afternoon, or if someone feels the urge to so kindly assist me in this endeavor, I'll compile a nice list of powerful creatures. Frost Titan comes to mind as a creature that I always thought was highly underrated given that he spell pierces everything thrown at him and has is own incredibly powerful evasion via stun-tapping.
Some kind of U/G Mavericky thing: (Megaman?)
a maverick-esque approach may be the best way to accomplish this (even though you won't have a way to execute land tricks without knight), and i have a feeling that'd end up looking like a U/G ***** list with a GSZ toolbox, but that doesn't really sound horrible. here's what i came up with on a first try:
3 noble hierarch
1 birds of paradise
1 dryad arbor
3-4 tarmogoyf
2 snapcaster mage
2-3 vendilion clique
1-2 trygon predator
1 scavenging ooze
1 scryb ranger
1 thrun, the last troll
4 green sun's zenith
4 brainstorm
3 force of will
3 spell snare
4 stifle
3 dismember
0-1 temporal spring
4 misty rainforest
2 windswept heath
1 scalding tarn
4 tropical island
4 forest
3 island
4 wasteland
something like that? the lack of removal feels really bad, but i'm sure you can sideboard cards that make up for that in the trouble match-ups. i'm a little iffy about dismember hitting you a little too hard though, and it sort of turns me off to the idea. even decks with "lots of removal" only run something like "4x lightning bolts" or "4x stp..." so, maybe dismember isn't terrible.
quick sideboard like:
1 force of will
2 krosan grip
1-2 tormod's crypt
2 phyrexian metamorph
2 surgical extraction
3 natural order
1 progenitus
2-3 jace, the mind sculptor
--I really enjoyed this list. Dismember was something that escaped me while thinking about this, but overall, I really enjoy this list. Spymaster may be a solid inclusion as a 1-of green sun target. This deck looks very strong, to be honest. This is essentially what I was going to post up so if it's cool I'll quote you instead. I like the ranges as well. Stifle may not be necessary, but it's a powerful card, especially since this deck plans on going into the late game, stifles on fetches or early Stoneforges can be game-winning. I'm on board with it but I can see that slot being something else, like even main-deck jaces or something.
This may be viable, but a lack of removal may force it to not work. On the flip side, you have -some- (few probably) combat tricks, Trygon Predator is absurd against stoneforge decks which could prove useful, so there's options there. The lack of removal is compensated with the inclusion of counterspells and great card selection consistency. Essentially a group of cheap efficient beaters + useful toolbox creatures to take control. Like I said, this doesn't sound terrible and I could see it being entirely doable, I'll have to fiddle with this later, too late right now.
So in ending, with what I've posted here do you feel there is a definitively stronger archetype than others (I certainly posted what I believed to be a stronger build but I'm interested in the opinions of others)? Is there something I perhaps missed here as an archetype? Do you have any experience trying some of these out and can give input on any strengths or weaknesses that one couldn't evaluate just by looking at a decklist?