Griselsands

[Cue The Gravitas]

Hello friends. It is time to present my latest creation to the masses. This deck does some very broken things, and I would not be surprised to see Griselbrand banned as a result. It is modeled after an old Standard deck with the same modus operandi - get Bargain into play, draw your deck and win.

Without further ado, Griselsands.

4x Enlightened Tutor
2x Celestial Dawn
3x Scent of Jasmine
3x Martyr of Sands
4x Skirge Familiar
4x Griselbrand
4x Show and Tell
2x Tendrils of Agony
4x Orim's Chant
4x Brainstorm
4x Dark Ritual
4x Lotus Petal
4x Marsh Flats
2x Flooded Strand
2x Polluted Delta
4x Scrubland
2x Tundra
2x Underground Sea
2x Ancient Tomb

Obviously the idea is to get Celestial Dawn, Griselbrand, and Skirge familiar into play. You then proceed to use Martyr of Sands to gain massive amounts of life, draw a bunch of cards, and discard cards to Skirge Familiar to generate mana. You can use this mana to cast more lifegain spells, draw more cards, make more mana, et cetera, until you culminate with a grand finale of lethal Tendrils.

You have plenty of time to set up, as you can double as a lifegain/Turbofog deck until you are ready to go off, boosting your life with Martyr and Scent of Jasmine and blanking attacks with kicked Orim's Chant.

[Kich867]

Hello friends. It is time to present my latest creation to the masses. This deck does some very broken things, and I would not be surprised to see Griselbrand banned as a result. It is modeled after an old Standard deck with the same modus operandi - get Bargain into play, draw your deck and win.

Without further ado, Griselsands.

4x Enlightened Tutor
2x Celestial Dawn
3x Scent of Jasmine
3x Martyr of Sands
4x Skirge Familiar
4x Griselbrand
4x Show and Tell
2x Tendrils of Agony
4x Orim's Chant
4x Brainstorm
4x Dark Ritual
4x Lotus Petal
4x Marsh Flats
2x Flooded Strand
2x Polluted Delta
4x Scrubland
2x Tundra
2x Underground Sea
2x Ancient Tomb

Obviously the idea is to get Celestial Dawn, Griselbrand, and Skirge familiar into play. You then proceed to use Martyr of Sands to gain massive amounts of life, draw a bunch of cards, and discard cards to Skirge Familiar to generate mana. You can use this mana to cast more lifegain spells, draw more cards, make more mana, et cetera, until you culminate with a grand finale of lethal Tendrils.

You have plenty of time to set up, as you can double as a lifegain/Turbofog deck until you are ready to go off, boosting your life with Martyr and Scent of Jasmine and blanking attacks with kicked Orim's Chant.

Tagged cards for you, deck looks interesting.

[Darkenslight]

Is there any room for Reanimate or Animate Dead as a backup to S'n'T?

[Roman Candle]

I wonder if Nourishing Shoal plus Progenitus or Autochthon Wurm might go well in here. You already play Show and Tell so you can sneak the fatty into play, and shoal is a zero-mana engine for Griselbrand.

It seems fitting for a variety of reasons, actually.

EDIT: Actually, at that point, you could probably play Nefarious Lich as an alternate win condition.

[majikal]

Dark Ritual should probably be something else. Celestial Dawn doesn't make them produce white mana, so you can only spend it as colorless mana.

[klaus]

Three card combos are kind of meh imo, cause it takes too much time / resources to set them up.

[majikal]

Actually now that I think of it, Skirge Familiar doesn't work with Celestial Dawn either. What you really want is Painter's Servant. And then you can play a single Grindstone as an alternate win condition.

[daPaule]

Actually now that I think of it, Skirge Familiar doesn't work with Celestial Dawn either. What you really want is Painter's Servant. And then you can play a single Grindstone as an alternate win condition.

True that, but Painter doesn't generate Mana. So back to step1 :wink:

[optml]

I like the idea; actually, I'm still shocked that they didn't include a clause on Griselbrand that means he cant be reanimated, or at least the necropotence disadvantage in which you can't amass cards during your main phase... He seems like a 1st turn win for a dedicated reanimate deck, using some intelligent combination of cards.

At the moment, it seems a little difficult to get the win con in a single turn? And if not, then you leave your stuff undefended while you wait for a turn. If I understand it right, you need 3 mana for S&T to get Grisel in, 5 mana for Skirge, and 3 mana for celestial... That's 11 mana and 4 cards with no protection, unless you throw in a 5th card and more mana for orim's chant. That's a bit mental in my opinion.

But, using this deck as a shell, I would definitely lose the celestial dawn package. It seems slow and clunky. It also frees up slots to make the deck more reliable, with an alternative win condition (perhaps drawing on some of the previous comments?)

Also, I like the reanimate theme; perhaps throw a couple of exhumes in and / or animate deads?

It may be worth using city of traitors instead of tomb's as the life loss directly affects the number of cards you can draw with Grisel?

It may be worth putting in some disruption, as at the moment I don't see how you stop a single counterspell on a S&T putting a spanner in the works. (perhaps using orim's chant, but that does push up the card count, as mentioned earlier).

I'd be tempted to remove the white altogether (although this may not be the thread in which to discuss this then, so apologies), and use black / blue and a touch of green for shoal.

With that in mind, the amendments I would do would be...

e.g.
-4 Enlightened Tutor,
-2 Celestial Dawn,
-2 Tendrils of Agony,
-3 Scent of Jasmine,
-3 Martyr of Sands,
-4 Skirge Familiar
-4 Orim's Chant
-4 Dark Ritual
-2 Ancient Tombs

+4 nourishing shoal
+4 progenitus
+4 soul spike
+4 careful study
+4 animate dead
+4 distress (this can be used on grisel if needed, and I feel is an underused discard spell. It's basically thoughtseize but instead of paying phyrexian mana (i.e. 2 life) you pay a swamp instead.)
+4 city of traitors

This way, the plan is to get griselbrand into play (either s&t or reanimate). Then, activate ability as many times as possible, use nourishing shoal and soul spikes to draw the whole deck.

I've not decided the best way to win here though. Perhaps using lutus petals that will be drawn, play a single laboratory maniac, plop him down and draw for the win?

[DireLemming]

Cadaverous Bloom is a much better mana engine than Skirge. Green can than completely replace white, for protection we have Autumn's Veil, Xantid Swarm and Carpet of Flowers, there is also a ton of lifegaining and fog effects (Shoal + Progenitus probably being the best).

[Dia_Bot]

I've been testing a deck with a similar concept as soon as Gristelbrand was spoiled.


4 Show and Tell
4 Griselbrand
3 Tendrils of Agony
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Ritual
3 Skirge Familiar
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
4 Ponder
4 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will

4 Lotus Petal

3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Island
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta

The idea is to use ToA as your draw engine and at the same time as your win condition.
The decklist needs some tweaking but it think it has potential.

[Cue The Gravitas]

My god. After a long period of deliberation, I have discovered that Nourishing Shoal is a brilliant addition! I'm glad I thought of it. And I think I shall use Cadaverous Bloom to fuel my degeneracy instead of the fragile Skirge Familiar - garbage card!

Ha! You peons could never come up with something as ingenious as this!

And now I present Griselbloom!

4 Show and Tell
4 Griselbrand
4 Progenitus
4 Nourishing Shoal
4 Cadaverous Bloom
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Soul Spike
2 Ancient Tomb
2 Bayou
2 Island
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta

[lordofthepit]

Any relation to another user known as "C the G"?


I'm sorry. I don't follow you.

Just rearranging the letters...

[Cue The Gravitas]

Any relation to another user known as "C the G"?
I'm sorry. I don't follow you.

[Snap_Keep]

Hi Cavius

[EDIT] You're not even trying... Sorry this was a horrible and useless post. I just remember you from SCG and it's really easy to tell from your mannerisms and obvious name.

[evanmartyr]

Words of Worship requires only a single white mana and turns Griselbrand into a "draw your deck" type of engine, as well as allowing you to gain a LOT of life if you care to. Seems like an obvious route to go if you want to turn him into a combo win. Bonus is that it can be activated off Cadaverous Bloom, and there's plenty of fast mana type stuff in Black and Green.

I just feel like a deck that wants to consistently reanimate Griselbrand (or Show and Tell him into play) by turn two won't have the ability to consistently win with 14 more cards: any more than that and you risk relying on wacky one-shot lifegain stuff. Basically, improving step 1 (get Griselbrand into play) reduces your decks ability to complete step 2 (win then and there). Nourishing Shoal is a decent option, but if you're including plenty of fast mana it seems like Words of Worship making the win a near guarantee once it hits would be better than "just" getting another 7 or so cards.

So, BUwg, you don't need green for anything other than bloom and bloom can be cast off Lotus Petals, LEDs, or Spirit Guides, and you only need white for Words of Worship and that can be off the same.

Admittedly, I'm a bit too drunk to come up with a list in this vein that makes any sense, but Bloom + Words of Worship is just dumb, and if you run 4x of the "combo" pieces that set up the draw-your-deck scenario, the rest is just a matter of tweaking and making sure you have protection enough. I mean, shit, you could even ignore all this and go with Sneak Attack, since Sneak Attacking a Griselbrand into play means you have 7-14 more cards to Sneak Attack OTHER massive hasty stupid cards into play before you even bother attacking.

Actually, now that I think of Sneak Attack, wouldn't just a Sneak and Show deck that ran four Grislebrands be absurd? You would win THAT turn instead of the next, or something. EDIT: Words of War + Words of Worship may even be better than going the storm route, if you want to do a combo-type win and were taking advantage of Cad Bloom.

[GGoober]

HOLY SHIT Cavius is back! IBTL O_O

[Darkenslight]

Evan: you could probably skip the Words of War and just go for an infinite mana kill with Stroke of Genius.

[klaus]

My god. After a long period of deliberation, I have discovered that Nourishing Shoal is a brilliant addition! I'm glad I thought of it. [...]

Teh Great haz returned!
-
Nice detective job, lordofthepit.

[majikal]

Just rearranging the letters...
I noticed this too! I'm just waiting for the train wreck to begin. lol