[Deck] Survivatog?

[FoolofaTook]

This is a first attempt at a very old idea melded with Survival to make it more predictable. It's a little bit inconsistent at the moment and needs to find some draw somewhere but I thought I'd post it to see if anybody had ideas.

Survivatog, an Infinite Atog/Life Gain engine in a semi-aggro shell.

Creatures (20)

4x Bird of Paradise
4x Shield Sphere
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Street Wraith
2x Atog
2x Eternal Witness

Disruption (13)

4x Cabal Therapy
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Hide//Seek
2x Engineered Explosives

Tutor/Engine (9)

4x Survival of the Fittest
3x Enlightened Tutor
2x Enduring Renewal

Mana (18 + 4 Birds)

4x Chrome Mox
4x Windswept Heath
2x Wooded Foothills
3x Savannah
1x Bayou
1x Taiga
1x Plateau
1x Plains
1x Forest

The basic premise is to play as a normal aggro deck for a few turns before casting or flashing back a Cabal Therapy and comboing out with Enduring Renewal - Atog - Shield Sphere. The keys are to find Survival, then Enduring Renewal. It's a little bit inconsistent at the moment but not so inconsistent that it's hopeless.

Card choices at the moment:

Creatures

Birds of Paradise are absolutely necessary, since the deck is 4 color (shudder) and there's no good way to include black in the mana base aside from the lone Bayou. Shield Sphere is the best possible artifact creature for the deck because it costs nothing to cast making it a non-limiter for the combo, blocks even a fairly large early creature at least once while surviving and works well with Cabal Therapy in the early game. Tarmogoyf is, well, Tarmogoyf and is a magnet for Swords to Plowshares or alternately sometimes an accidental win. I also get very strange looks when I sac a Goyf to flashback a Cabal Therapy but I have won at least one game doing that. Street Wraith does two things: it's fodder for Survival and it also let's me Enlightened Tutor for a combo piece (or mana in the case of Chrome Mox) on my turn and then pull it off the top. I'm not sold on it as an inclusion in the deck but it has not hurt me much except when I am looking at two in the opening hand and not sure if I should mulligan or not. Atog is the heart of the deck and the eventual win plan in most cases. Against other decks that are trying to hurt me I just want to combo him out for infinite life off of their plow or mine. The only thing that really impedes him is Moat and that's why Hide//Seek is in the deck. Eternal Witness is to get stuff back out of the yard when control has been particularly efficient. I tried Oath of Ghouls in this role but it caused mana inefficiencies and does not work with Survival. It also couldn't bring back my non-creature combo pieces.

Disruption

Cabal Therapy is to interfere with combo and control a bit but mainly to protect the combo when it happens. I've considered Xantid Swarm for the role but for the moment I'm staying with Therapy because it gives me a very occasional broken opening off of Chrome Mox, Shield Sphere and a Therapy, particularly when I know what I am playing against. Swords to Plowshares is just great removal and it's also a combo piece. Hide//Seek is a controversial inclusion in the list, however it potentially does so many things for the deck that it's hard to replace. It removes opposing Counterbalances on turn 2 after they cast it and have to use the trigger blindly, it removes Moat, it removes Humility, it searches the opponent's deck for Extirpate and Tormod's Crypt and removes them from the game, it even occasionally allows the deck to reset Enduring Renewal when a combo attempt has failed and put it back in the deck instead of in the yard. Engineered Explosives would be Pernicious Deed except for the number of non-land permanents the deck generally has in play. It's an acceptable second option and sweeps tokens when necessary.

Tutor/Engine

Survival of the Fittest is the main engine piece, searching for Atog, Shield Sphere or Eternal Witness, depending on what is needed. It's also a magnet for counters and enchantment removal and so it serves a secondary purpose of clearing the way for the eventual combo. Enduring Renewal is the combo piece that allows for infinite results. Against many decks it's a very risky play without Cabal Therapy in hand or in the yard. Originally I was looking at Oath of Ghouls to get around the no creature draw drawback but I ran into major consistency problems and had to replace it with Eternal Witness. Enlightened Tutor can go get Chrome Mox, Shield Sphere, Engineered Explosives, Survival of the Fittest and Enduring Renewal and as such it is an excellent multi-purpose tutor.

Mana Base

The mana base is very consistent for what the deck needs. I have considered adding Elvish Spirit Guides to the mix and may yet do that but I'm not sure what would come out for them. The Birds of Paradise are absolutely necessary given Enduring Renewal's WW2 casting cost, both in terms of speed and in terms of meeting the color requirement. Street Wraiths are probably what would come out and I'm not sure that's a positive switch at this point. I am looking at the option.

I have not put together a sideboard for the deck yet because I'm still working out major kinks in the main deck play. The decks I'm having real trouble against are mainly other faster combo decks and dedicated counter control. The matchups against Threshold and Goblins are not great but I can see where to improve things to make them better.

Removing black entirely from the deck with Xantid Swarms replacing Cabal Therapy, Krosan Grip replacing Hide//Seek and Elvish Spirit Guides coming in for Street Wraith probably improves things against dedicated control and Threshold but also probably makes things much worse against fast combo.

Anyway that's the rough list. If anybody has ideas I'd love the hear them.

[Nydaeli]

Let me start by saying I love this combo. One of my first decks was some pile with Blasting Station/Enduring Renewal/abunchofcrapcreatures. Lots of semi-casual fun to be had here.

You should run Academy Rector as a singleton to fetch Enduring Renewal. You can sac it to Therapy. Miren could be useful as a random sac outlet for Rector/Tog/Ravager, though it hurts your already-stretched manabase. Which brings me to my next point...

Do you really need the red splash? I'd think Arcbound Ravager would be almost as good as Atog, and Hide/Seek could be replaced--I'd recommend a tutorable creature like Harmonic Sliver in its place.

Also, add in more of the usual Survival paraphernalia. Squee at the very least.

[FoolofaTook]

Let me start by saying I love this combo. One of my first decks was some pile with Blasting Station/Enduring Renewal/abunchofcrapcreatures. Lots of semi-casual fun to be had here.

You should run Academy Rector as a singleton to fetch Enduring Renewal. You can sac it to Therapy. Miren could be useful as a random sac outlet for Rector/Tog/Ravager, though it hurts your already-stretched manabase. Which brings me to my next point...

Do you really need the red splash? I'd think Arcbound Ravager would be almost as good as Atog, and Hide/Seek could be replaced--I'd recommend a tutorable creature like Harmonic Sliver in its place.

Also, add in more of the usual Survival paraphernalia. Squee at the very least.

I like the idea of adding Academy Rector for one of the Enduring Renewals and Miren maybe for a Street Wraith, preserving the the 20 creature load I want. Arcbound Ravager would be tutorable two ways instead of one, trading that off for being more vulnerable to mid-combo removal. Not 100% sure about that one, I'll have to look at it. Harmonic Sliver is a possibility. It doesn't have the ability to go remove something pre-emptively though nor can it protect Survival or ER. I'd have to think about it. The mana base is wider than I think is reasonable and I go back and forth between removing black and expanding it and the base. Squee is in somehow. Not sure how but then again the Street Wraiths have never been securely in.

Thanks for the input.

Editing: the Academy Rector is going to go in for a Street Wraith I think. It occurred to me that I'm going to have to land Enduring Renewal before I get to actually use the Cabal Therapy (right?) and that's going to make it a risky play. Need another one in the deck just in case.

[FoolofaTook]

Ok, try two with red removed and Arcbound Ravagers replacing Atogs. I'm still not sure I like the idea because it gives up the primary anti-Goblin and Empty the Warrens response in Pyroclasm from the sideboard but I can see where the manabase is much tighter without red so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Creatures (24)

2x Arcbound Ravager
4x Shield Sphere
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Academy Rector
2x Eternal Witness
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
1x Harmonic Sliver
1x Squee, Goblin Nabob

Disruption (10)

4x Cabal Therapy
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Pernicious Deed

Tutor (7)

4x Survival
3x Enlightened Tutor

Engine (3)

2x Enduring Renewal
1x Miren, the Moaning Well

Mana (16 + 4 Elvish Spirit Guides + 4 Birds of Paradise + Miren)

4x Chrome Mox
4x Windswept Heath
4x Savannah
2x Bayou
1x Plains
1x Forest

Basically the same concept as above: find Survival, start playing out Goyfs to draw defenses out and then pick a turn and combo out with the Arcbound Ravager/Enduring Renewal/Shield Sphere combo. The deck uses tutor effects extensively to find what it is looking for. I'm considering 4 Enlightened Tutors but for the moment I replaced 1 with a Pernicious Deed despite the number of non-land permanents the deck puts in play early on.

I'm not sold on the Academy Rectors, however the idea put forward above is too strong not to look at it. I'm still concerned about timing effects, since Cabal Therapy is supposed to precede Enduring Renewal and sacing an Academy Rector for Cabal Therapy wouldn't produce that effect unless I'm reading the stack wrong somehow.

I'm going to test this against Goblins today just to see how dead it is before the sideboard. The old version with red was about 30/70 game 1 between the Shield Spheres and Goyfs. Of all things an Atog actually stands down Lackey if you're on the play. Playing out an Arcbound Ravager early and sacing a Chrome Mox to him is I guess the alternative here.

[Jaynel]

Why not Carrion Feeder over Ravager? It's another sacrifice outlet for Academy Rector.

[FoolofaTook]

Why not Carrion Feeder over Ravager? It's another sacrifice outlet for Academy Rector.

Carrion Feeder seems to have some limitations within the deck theme that Arcbound Ravager doesn't. It can't standoff a creature if you're deploying in the later game and actually need the turn to go for the kill. It's black, which is a color the deck is not happy to support two of in a turn, although it could be imprinted on a Chrome Mox to allow a Cabal Therapy. It gets blocked by creatures with Prot Black, although we don't really see all that many of those.

Maybe including one of these alongside a Ravager would make the deck more resilient. I'll definitely think about it.

I'm still working on the Academy Rector concept trying to figure out if it strengthens the deck or weakens it. Not sure yet.

[THEchubbymuffin]

Why would you cut red? Anger would be really good. Haste creatures are just good. Also Brawn could be put in to add trample.

[FoolofaTook]

Why would you cut red? Anger would be really good. Haste creatures are just good. Also Brawn could be put in to add trample.

I'm very uncomfortable with 4C decks to start with, given that I believe they allow for too many mismatches against fast decks that deny the initial mana drop, and that I find them to be problematic to mulligan over many rounds. Throw in the fact that red was only in the deck for Atogs, which I've been convinced are somewhat inferior to Arcbound Ravager in the theme, and for Hide//Seek which I considered to be a flexible but not powerful card, and it seems like a reasonable move to cut red.

I look at black and red as the two potential splash colors in the deck and really only one of them is going to fit well. Black, for Cabal Therapy (and probably Engineered Plague and Extirpate in the sideboard), seems like a better splash than red given that Arcbound Ravager easily slides in for Atog and Pernicious Deed, Harmonic Sliver and Engineered Explosives can cover much of the functionality of Hide while Extirpate covers much of the functionality of Seek.

If I could find a white, red or green replacement for Cabal Therapy as a protector and disrupter I might go a different direction. Xantid Swarm just doesn't do the disruption job against combo early on and Orim's Chant is a mistake in the theme in my opinion.

[Iranon]

Quite a lot of cards that do little apart from allowing a combo...

wouldn't it be easier to have a Kiki-Jiki+Sky Hussar/Pestermite combo facilitated by a Karmig Guide? More compact, all pieces fetchable with Survival... I've been quite satisfied with that route.

If you retain the deck concept, I would definitely go for Ravager for the infinity+1 creature, because it means your whole kill is fetchable by Enlightened Tutor without the need to use Survival (Needel?).

[FoolofaTook]

Quite a lot of cards that do little apart from allowing a combo...

wouldn't it be easier to have a Kiki-Jiki+Sky Hussar/Pestermite combo facilitated by a Karmig Guide? More compact, all pieces fetchable with Survival... I've been quite satisfied with that route.

If you retain the deck concept, I would definitely go for Ravager for the infinity+1 creature, because it means your whole kill is fetchable by Enlightened Tutor without the need to use Survival (Needel?).

The combo you list seems to be about as clunky as the Enduring Renewal makes this deck. I could be off on that having never played it but I see having to cast Karmic Guide at some point as pretty necessary.

What I'm finding with the deck so far is that Enduring Renewal really is the tipping piece in it and I'm never 100% sure which way things are going to tip when I play it, even when I Therapy beforehand. I win a lot of the games where I try to combo off but I've had losses come out of nowhere also. I had somebody top deck Threads of Disloyalty and take an infinite ravager and that made me stew a bit.

The real problem with the concept so far is that once the opponent knows what to expect they can adapt to it and start turning vulnerabilities into strengths. The deck itself has trouble dealing with an opponent who has foreknowledge of what the trap is.

I'm toying with making the combo a side piece in an otherwise Rock-like shell. In that case I'd need to go down to one Enduring Renewal, probably ditch the birds and put in more black duals, go to no more than two Shield Sphere and start putting in better cheap aggro creatures to replace the birds and spheres. I might even ditch the Chrome Moxes at that point and go with 2 or 3 Pernicious Deeds.

[Pienterekaak]

I had somebody top deck Threads of Disloyalty and take an infinite ravager and that made me stew a bit.

sac ravager to itself, it gets returned to your hand? thats the reason i liked the proposal of ravager. its also immune for remove from game couse of its sac ability. so you can combo again next turn (or with enough mana, the same turn)

[FoolofaTook]

sac ravager to itself, it gets returned to your hand? thats the reason i liked the proposal of ravager. its also immune for remove from game couse of its sac ability. so you can combo again next turn (or with enough mana, the same turn)

Very nice, and I completely missed that. You're right it's really idiot-proof for the combo if only the idiot figures it out. :)

Threads of Disloyalty and to a lesser extent Vedalken Shackles have been a weakness and now should not matter much, although Vedalken Shackles will still need to be dealt with before the Ravager comes into play.

The way the combo has been playing out most of the time is that I put out a ravager on turn x-1 and if it survives to the next turn I flashback a therapy off of a bird or goyf (in standoffs) or shield sphere if I have two in hand and then play Enduring Renewal if I like what I see. This makes the ravager able to attack the turn it grows and cuts down the overall mana needed considerably. Obviously the ability to sac the ravager to itself, which is something I completely no-brained, makes the sequence even more resilient since I can put the ravager in the graveyard if they plow it on turn x-1 and get it back with Eternal Witness down the road.

Thanks for the input.

[FoolofaTook]

This has mutated a fair amount based on input from people above and a few ideas I had along the way and it currently looks like this:

Infinite Ravager Suite (9)

2x Arcbound Ravager
4x Shield Sphere
2x Enduring Renewal
1x Miren, the Moaning Well

Other Beaters (6)

4x Tarmogoyf
1x Doran, the Siege Tower
1x Mystic Enforcer

Tutor/Card Advantage (10)

4x Survival of the Fittest
3x Enlightened Tutor
2x Eternal Witness
1x Squee, Goblin Nabob

Disruption/Removal (11)

4x Cabal Therapy
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Pernicious Deed
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Harmonic Sliver

Mana (24)

4x Birds of Paradise
4x Chrome Mox
4x Windswept Heath
4x Bayou
4x Savannah
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Swamp

This is playing much better than the Survivatog above. Going to 3 colors really helps the mana base and having the ravagers effectively immune to Threads of Disloyalty is a huge difference.

Card notes different from above:

Infinite Ravager Suite

Arcbound Ravager is the perfect creature for the theme. As others have pointed out his ability to remove himself from the board when necessary is extraordinarily controlling. It allows the deployment of a powerful weapon alongside the ability to guarantee it is not used against you. Shield Sphere has so many uses in the deck that I'm starting to think it is the key to the whole strategy. It sacs to Cabal Therapy easily and painlessly, blocks an early creature, stands as a major wall with Doran in play and is a simple choice to Survival into something needed when you have to. I almost always keep hands that have a Shield Sphere in them at the start.

Creatures

Doran, the Siege Tower is a very interesting add in the deck. He makes the Shield Speres temporarily large and much more effective in the mid-game. Often they get to sit there as a 6/6 while Doran is attacking and never lose strength because people can't afford to throw away a Mongoose, Mishra's or other 5 toughness or less critter to diminish them. Birds of Paradise also get to fly for 1 damage when he's on the board. Harmonic Sliver was a great suggestion and he works very well in the deck. He's the perfect anti-Moat device. Squee, Goblin Nabob is huge card advantage and was a great suggestion as well. Mystic Enforcer gives the deck a good sized flyer late and he can stand down a Tombstalker to buy time.

Disruption

Pernicious Deed is just too good a sweeper not to have one of in the deck alongside three Enlightened Tutors. It's anti-synergy with Birds of Paradise and Chrome Mox is real but it also saves me in any number of situations where the Birds and moxen are a very reasonable trade-off for another turn or two to win.

Cards considered but not used

Academy Rector is a wonderful device for getting an enchantment into play against control in most circumstances. He falls short here for a couple of reasons: first, the deck really does not want to play Enduring Renewal before it has Cabal Therapied looking for pitfalls and traps. This means that sacing a Academy Rector to flashback Cabal Therapy is not as effective as it otherwise might be. If I put Enduring Renewal in play and the opponent is holding a counterspell to stop a Shield Sphere from landing I'm effectively game over most of the time. Second, he's really expensive to put the effect in play and has very little utility otherwise. I'm looking at a slightly different version of the deck that might have use for him though.

Disciple of the Vault is an instant kill of another type that unfortunately is just too unwieldy to deploy because it does not in and of itself allow you to sacrifice an artifact. That means you deploy it alongside Arcbound Ravager instead of in place of it and that's just win more for a larger investment 99% of the time.

Street Wraith bit the dust because it's effect was just not good enough to make it an include in the deck. I seem to have Street Wraiths in a lot of decks when I initially throw them together and they always get removed for something better in the testing process. They make a great blank to throw in a deck at the start knowing you will remove them as it comes together.

Harmonize. I really want a good argument to use 2 of these in the deck. Unfortunately given that they are not tutorable they're not making the cut right now. It's impossible to take a creature out for them given that the deck sits at 20 at the moment, which is a bare minimum for what I'm trying to do with Survival of the Fittest and Cabal Therapy, and it's really hard to remove disruption or other tutor effects for them. I have considered putting 2 or 3 in the sideboard but it's hard to see that turning into an advantage either. Somebody make a good case for putting these in.

The Sideboard is still a work in progress. I initially wanted to go with a secondary suite to swap the Infinite Ravager Suite out for and went with 3 Mishra's Factory, 3 Nantuko Monastery and 2 Crucible of Worlds. There would also have been 3x Wasteland available in that scenario although not necessarily going in as a suite. I saw that as a great option against blue-based control and Landstill variants in particular. The problem? It's graveyard based just like the first suite so it gets killed by the same hate. Not going to work.

The only pieces I know are going to be in the sideboard at the moment are 4x Leyline of the Void. I'm resisting the urge to put in 3x Krosan Grip and trying to find other solutions that work well against artifacts and enchantments. I'm also resisting the urge to double up on the Pernicious Deeds, Engineered Explosives (may happen anyway on this one) and Harmonic Slivers. I like sideboards that are unpredictable and cause matchup problems for a retuned opponent. Engineered Plague may or may not get in at this point. The matchup with goblins went from about 25-30% win game 1 to more like 35-40% with the inclusion of Pernicious Deed, Doran and Mystic Enforcer. I'm maybe going to be willing to accept a bad goblins matchup overall, as long as it's not hopeless, in exchange for a better matchup against dedicated control and graveyard based combo. We'll see.

As above any input would be welcome.