[Deck Idea] Forest & Creatures

[Maveric78f]

As green becomes more and more impressive, as red is beginning to be abandonned in favor for blue and as wasteland becomes more and more played, I had the idea to play a deck that would rely most of all on green creatures and on forests that could be bounced as a cost with quirion ranger.

As you know, green is not viable by its own because it has no response to combo, that's why a splash is needed and the best anti-combo splash seems to be white nowadays.

Lands (10) :
2 dryad arbour
2 windswept heath
2 wooded foothills
3 savannah
1 forests

Mana Creatures (18) :
4 quirion rangers
2 Scryb ranger
4 birds
2 llanowar
2 fyndhorn
4 ESG

Stompy creatures (15) :
4 Tarmogoyf (course)
3 Iwamori
4 Loxodon hierarch
4 Troll Ascetic

Boosts (8) :
4 umezawa's jitte
4 rancor

Utilities (8) :
4 Land grant
4 STP

SB :
4 pithing needle
4 chant
3 abeyance
4 vials

This deck obviously is very sensible to everything red : pyroclasm, fire/ice, sharpshooter (who plays this in this metagame ?), lightning rift. But it's more and more rare. As well for heavy control cards such as humility, disk, wrath or damnation, they see very little play. Deed is a bit more present, but it will fail in removing big creatures in early game and hierarch can save our tribe.

The deck has not been tested yet and I'm sure it's far from being optimized, but the concept looks promising to me, as it would probably overwhelm every threshold deck.

[HdH_Cthulhu]

hmm I think you should run 4 Fyndhorn and 2 Birds, 4 Berserk and maybe one Cardel

[thefreakaccident]

If it were me to make a rude comment on this thread, I would've been banned already.

So, to the deck... it looks like 9LS with a white splash for swords?

You don't have enough stuff to make tarmogoyf huge (I saw land, creature, and 1 set of inst and sorcery)... that doesn't seem like much for a deck without draw. Why run white in an aggressive style deck? Wouldn't you want red for removal/reach?

My oppinion..

[414448]

Edge of Autumn is nice with Goyf.

[Jaynel]

With so many untappers and acceleration, have you considered Spectral Force? He'll go toe-to-toe with enemy Goyfs and live. He can consistantly be cast on turn 3.

[DragoFireheart]

Might I suggest Rogue Elephants? They are big beaters for a somewhat cheap cost and it seems you have the mana accel to over-come their weakness.

[Maveric78f]

Ideas about making tarmogoyf huge :
> I'm not going to make the mistake to pump up my enemy's tarmogoyfs. I don't need to have a big tarmogoyf myself. I have enough fatties and boosts. Tarmogoyf, even in a non designed deck remains a very good creature.

Ideas about sacrificing my lands/forests :
> my goal is to abuse mana with 1 or 2 of them only into play. I don't want to sacrifice them.

My idea is everything but a stompy deck. Berserk is a very bad idea for instance.

Actually, I'm not sure for the splash or even the orientation to give to the deck. The main idea would be to run a lot of mana producing creatures (like elves and birds) (8), a lot of rangers (quirion and scryb) (6/8) and my lands would be is small number being only be forests (duals, dryad arbor and 1 forest) (8/10) or fetches (3/4) and land grant (4). It leaves rooms for 26/31 other cards.

After some tests vial looks really huge in this deck : first turn land+vial, then land grant for dryad. End of opponent turn dryad through vial. Second turn : vial for quirion ranger. I have virtually 4 mana available and still 4 or 5 cards in hand (depending on the first player to play). It's also very cool to dodge land disruption or daze by vialing into a ranger.

Going well with this kind of build, are surely :
- umezawa jitte, in order to enhance my small bodies (or buddies)
- winter orb
- kudzu
- opposition
- cabal therapy
- oversold cemetery
- exploration
- survival of the fittest
- spectral force
- natural order
- huge draw spells like Fact or Fiction

I don't know well which direction to take right now. The white version looked quite weak I admit. Actually it was good against tarmothresh but nothing else. A Gub version could be good.

[Maveric78f]

After some tests, it happens that this list behaves very well in a non burning meta (means no burning spells from fire/ice to pyroclasm), not gobelins too. The last main threat for you is combo, another red deck. Thresh, and what so ever blue based control or aggro/control look favorable. Perish is also a nightmare but it's not so often seen these last months because every aggro or aggro/control deck plays tarmogoyf and even sometimes control plays tarmogoyf.

The kills are 3 : opposition, tarmogoyf and vinelasher.

Winter orb found it's place MD as a game breaker by itself and even more with opposition into play.

Fact or Fiction has been preferred to brainstorm because I have allways better things to do in the first 2/3 turns than playing brainstorm and fact or fiction provides the draw that is missing. Standstill in its place may be studied too. It's good against red deck and could be a good SB option.

Daze is played also MD and did not really convince me for the moment. It gives protection, once the opposition lock into play but it's quite weak actually because I don't need daze to get back my lands in hand. I'm trying to find something else in it's place. Maybe simply play 8 draw spells.

I almost allways enter krosan grip post side because explosives, deeds, primordium seals, needles, engineered plague or counterbalance are very likely to show up in game 2.

Needles are also devoted to deal with deeds and explosives as well as cutting the vials (I side them out in this case) or calm down belcher.

Echoing truth is often enough to deal with needle on opposition because once opposition in play, my opponent can't play spells with more than 1 CC and I may daze the 1CC ones. That's a problem if I cut daze. But if I cut it for standstill for instance, it's not really a problem.

And seedtime is maybe just overkill, but it's so good...

Here is my list :

// Lands (13)
4 [FUT] Dryad Arbor
4 [R] Tropical Island
1 [IA] Forest (2)
2 [ON] Wooded Foothills
2 [ON] Windswept Heath

// Creatures (23 + 4 dryads)
3 [RAV] Vinelasher Kudzu
4 [TSP] Scryb Ranger
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [4E] Birds of Paradise
2 [7E] Llanowar Elves
2 [IA] Fyndhorn Elves
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf

// Spells (24)
4 [B] Winter Orb
4 [IN] Fact or Fiction
4 [MM] Land Grant
4 [NE] Daze
4 [UD] Opposition
4 [DS] AEther Vial

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 4 [JU] Seedtime
SB: 4 [DS] Echoing Truth
SB: 3 [SOK] Pithing Needle

[Vimes]

In a deck where storm is not a factor, isn't Land Grant worse than fetchlands?

Think about it. In order to put a Forest into play, Land Grant costs one card, one land drop, and lets your opponent look at your hand. Fetchlands costs one card, one land drop, and one life to do the exact same thing.

What's more important? One life, or the information your opponent gets from looking at your hand?

[Zilla]

In a deck where storm is not a factor, isn't Land Grant worse than fetchlands?
Land Grant is a sorcery which will pump Tarmogoyf, which I assume is the reasoning for its inclusion here. I'm still not sure it's better than fetchlands though, because your opponent is very likely to play a sorcery for you anyway.

[Maveric78f]

Playing card types in order to pump up the tarmogoyf has never been my strategy, as you are almost as likely to pump up your opponent's tarmogoyf in such a metagame. I will even go further: except gob (but tarmogoyf has no use to be bigger than 2/3 against gob), there is no deck in legacy not playing sorceries AND not playing goyf.

At the beginning, land grant was played because it enables a first turn vial on dryad arbor if you have a hand with 1 land, a vial and a land grant. But in a metagame with so many FoW, it's stupid to keep hands with no land and a land grant. I finally decided to remove them and play fetches instead of them.

My list has dramatically changed, and I'm still not sure that it won't dramatically change in a near future again because a lot of splashes look interesting.

By the way Fact or fiction and Fecundity are auto-include in that deck.

I am still far from chosing my game plan now. I built several prototypes of decks that I will describe later. In all my decks, 4*birds, 4*quirion ranger, 4*tropical island, 6*fetch, 4*vial, 4*opposition, 4*winter orb, 4*tarmogoyf, 3*FoF and 3*fecundity are auto-include. Sometimes, I wonder if Tamogoyf belongs to the deck, but this creature is such overpowered that it is a need to be able to at least face it.

A combo proof build :
// Lands (14)
1 [9E] Forest (1)
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
4 [R] Tropical Island
1 [FUT] Dryad Arbor
3 [ON] Wooded Foothills
2 [B] Bayou

// Creatures (24 + 2 arbors)
3 [DIS] Coiling Oracle
4 [TSB] Wall of Roots
4 [8E] Birds of Paradise
3 [TSP] Sage of Epityr
2 [DIS] Trygon Predator
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf

// Spells (22)
4 [UD] Opposition
4 [5E] Winter Orb
4 [DS] AEther Vial
3 [US] Fecundity
4 [JU] Cabal Therapy
3 Fact of Fiction

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [DIS] Spell Snare
SB: 4 [SC] Stifle
SB: 4 [AL] Force of Will
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip

Against combo, opposition, fecundity and winter orb should be removed in favor to snare, stifle and FoW.

I have also a build with natural order kill for game 2 (3 natural order + 1 SSS + 1 Nishoba in SB), it dodges needle in a perfect way. The main deck is slightly different because I don't need anymore 20+ blue cards post SB. But the main idea is the same

And finally, I have a version playing spectral force*3 MD and the full "ranger toolbox (6*elves, 4*birds, 4*dryad arbor, 8*rangers) it's clearly the most powerful deck in itself with a lot of synergies but it's such an autoloss against combo, that I fear to play it.

// Lands (15)
3 [ON] Wooded Foothills
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
4 [R] Tropical Island
1 [9E] Forest (1)
4 [FUT] Dryad Arbor

// Creatures (25)
4 [TSP] Scryb Ranger
3 [A] Llanowar Elves
3 [IA] Fyndhorn Elves
3 [TSP] Spectral Force
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [8E] Birds of Paradise
4 [VI] Quirion Ranger

// Spells (20)
4 [US] Fecundity
4 [IN] Fact or Fiction
4 [5E] Winter Orb
4 [UD] Opposition
4 [DS] AEther Vial

// Sideboard to be defined.

[Maveric78f]

That protean hulk/natural order deck made me want to necro that thread. the first idea was to make abuse of the rangers, but I'm not sure now that this strategy is good enough to play that many weak 1/1. I want to give opposition/natural order shell a try without those weak 1/1.

// Lands: 16
4 Tropical Island
1 Breeding Pool
1 Forest
2 Island
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Windswept Heath

// Blue Creatures (10)
4 [DIS] Coiling Oracle
4 [TSP] Sage of Epityr
1 [DIS] Simic Sky Swallower
1 [TE] Sliver Queen

// Blue common Spells (12)
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [NE] Daze
4 [AL] Force of Will

Green Creatures (12)
4 [TSB] Wall of Roots
4 [8E] Birds of Paradise
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf

// Spells (10)
3 [UD] Opposition
3 [TE] Natural Order
4 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte

// Sideboard 15
SB: 3 [DIS] Trygon Predator
SB: 4 [TE] Propaganda
SB: 4 [SC] Stifle
SB: 4 [5E] Winter Orb