[Deck] Zoo

Stoneforge Mystic is to Umezawa's Jitte what Grim Lavamancer was to Cursed Scroll IMO, you definitely want between 1 and 4 in the deck and that depends on how far you want to push Umezawa's Jitte as the center piece of your mid-game. Personally I run 4 Mystic and 2 Jitte and I just steam roll past turn 4.

If you guys haven't tried Mother of Runes in the 1 drop spot you really should, she is such a counter/removal magnet and if she sticks, she gives you so much control over the board.

Regardless, I really like dropping Ape/Lion and white being a more central color than red, you really get to abuse Horizon Canopy at like 3 or even 4x and you don't need to curve to 3 for Thoctar or Knight.

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Originally Posted by Loxodon Baileyarch

I top 8ed a local tourney with a new updated version of the deck recently. I wanted to try some new cards, and different numbers of cards. Here is my list:

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Not to be THAT guy, but how can it be updated if it looks strictly inferior? River Boa doesn't really belong in this deck. I ran this list to a split in the t8 of a tourney this weekend, slight difference from Richard Bland's GP T8. +1 Helix, -1 Path

Maindeck:

Creatures
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Kird Ape
2 Knight Of The Reliquary
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl

Enchantments
1 Sylvan Library

Instants
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Lightning Helix
4 Path To Exile

Legendary Creatures
2 Gaddock Teeg

Sorceries
4 Chain Lightning

Basic Lands
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains

Lands
4 Arid Mesa
3 Plateau
1 Savannah
2 Taiga
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard:
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Krosan Grip
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Faerie Macabre
3 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Gaddock Teeg


Rd1G1: Canadian Thresh- Just kept playing creatures getting in damage here and there and eventually burned him out.
Rd1G2: Same thing happens. Brought in a couple of Jittes for 2 chain lightning to make sure my guys would always be bigger than his but never saw them. This deck is so stupidly consistent.

Rd2G1: Enchantress- Not sure if I am suppose to win this match up or not. I get in some quick damage and he has to keep replacing his confinements with new ones so in between I just burn him out.
Rd2G2: He gets a bad draw and just roll him. Krosan Grip comes in for paths and gets his confinement when I deal him lethal.

Rd3G1: Faeries- Same thing that happens in 1.x, I go first and run him over.
Rd3G2: He goes first and beats me. We both run out of threats and must have taken like 12 damage from a spellstutter sprite. I get him to 2 on my turn but he kills me the next at 1 life.
Rd3G3: He both get stuck on 2 lands but I have creatures and end it quickly.

Rd4G1: Aluren- This is my friend and I am the only 3-0 due to a ton of draws. I am not sure I can get in if I scoop him into t4 so we play. Somehow my tiebreakers were awful. Game 1 he never sees aluren and I just creature and burn him out.
Rd4G2: Grips, Teegs and Mindbreak Traps come in for 4 lightning helix, a kird ape, and something else I think. He gets Aluren going on turn 6 and I have him at 2 life.
Rd4G3: I get him down quickly, and he has aluren in hand but no gas. He is at 7, so I mancer his only blocker, then swing goyf and put him at 3. I then proceed to Lightning Bolt him, but leave it on the stack to check on my other opponents. It turns out all 3 of them won and my tiebreakers are now infy high, so I scoop to my friend with Lethal on the stack.


Top 4 is Zoo, Aluren, MBC, and Enchantress

I get my friend again in the semis and just steam roll him in 2 games. Basically same as Rd4G1 both times.

The MBC beats Enchantress. After some talking he offers a split so I get Moat and $60 and he takes the Tabernacle. I am plenty happy getting an extra $60 since I could never beat that MBC deck.


Right now I am looking at ANT, Reanimator, Zoo, Enchantress, or 43Land for GP Columbus. So we will see what happens. Any questions feel free to ask me. I think I have a good understanding of the deck.

Yesterday I made top 8 at a tournament with 62 people. I also played Richard Bland's version with-1 chain lightning, + 1 lightning helix. His list plays excellent. During playtesting I found his list being very consistent. Unfortunately I don't have any notes for a report.

Round 1: ANT, 2-1 (good player but his deck crapped out on him)
Round 2: Homebrew deck with prodical socerer kind of creatures and standstill, 2-1
Round 3: Countertop, draw, due to lack of time
Round 4: Goblins, 2-1
Round 5: Band, 2-1
Round 6: id for top 8
Top 8: mirror match, 0-2

Richard's sideboard was very good.I woudn't change a card.

I went 6-1-2 at the SCG Indy this weekend, finishing in 21st.

First, the list:

Mono Red Aggro with Green and White Splash suggested by Richard Franklin on 2010-3-14 as a potential deck for Legacy
by Richard Franklin
//Lands
4 Arid Mesa
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Plateau
2 Taiga
1 Savannah
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Treetop Village

//Creatures
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Ranger of Eos

//Spells
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Chain Lightning
3 Sylvan Library
2 Fireblast

//Sideboard
3 Krosan Grip
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Choke
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Price of Progress
2 Gaddock Teeg
1 Ranger of Eos

Up until the morning-of, I was playing a 9-fetchland configuration, with Kird Ape instead of Lynx, and 2 Treetop and 2 Horizon Canopy. After talking it over with my friends, I decided I wanted to be a little faster, so I switched to this. Aside from the Rangers, pretty standard. The Rangers are bonkers against the mirror, Merfolk, CounterTop, and control decks.

Matchups:

Round 1: 2-0 against CounterTop-Progenitus 1-0
Round 2: 1-1-1 against Lands 1-0-1
Round 3: 2-1 against CounterTop-Progenitus 2-0-1
Round 4: 1-2 against Reanimator with Protean Hulk 2-1-1
Round 5: 1-1-1 against Lands 2-1-2
Round 6: 2-0 against Eva Green 3-1-2
Round 7: 2-1 against Landstill 4-1-2
Round 8: 2-0 against Zoo 5-1-2
Round 9: 2-0 against CounterTop-Progenitus 6-1-2

I felt the deck was pretty good. The SB was probably wrong - in hindsight, I wanted another Faerie Macabre and Price of Progress.

The matches against Lands could very easily have turned out in my favor, as I had about 5 straight turns in game three in each match where I was trying to find any of 18 cards (14 red sources, 1 PoP, 3 Faerie Macabre) in the first match, and

I wanted another Treetop, but, since I changed the deck the morning of the tournament, I couldn't figure out a good way to fit it in. I really dislike playing more than 21 land, but I think going up to 22 land with 2 Treetops might be okay.

How have Ranger of Eos been working out for you? Been thinking of testing it out as well.

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Originally Posted by KrzyMoose

I felt the deck was pretty good. The SB was probably wrong - in hindsight, I wanted another Faerie Macabre and Price of Progress.

The matches against Lands could very easily have turned out in my favor, as I had about 5 straight turns in game three in each match where I was trying to find any of 18 cards (14 red sources, 1 PoP, 3 Faerie Macabre) in the first match, and

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Faerie Macabre hosed Reanimator all day.

Good job Rich.

-Mike

@stu55: I clearly said that i ran River Boa because i had a random JapFoil version. It was more of a last minute thing, guy. And for me, running half those cards is an updated version for me.

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Originally Posted by stu55

... I could never beat that MBC deck.


Right now I am looking at ANT, Reanimator, Zoo, Enchantress, or 43Land for GP Columbus. So we will see what happens. Any questions feel free to ask me. I think I have a good understanding of the deck.

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Hey, it's the Enchantress player that lost to the MBC (and you, ha). To be honest, I think the MBC player just decided to build something that would steamroll the majority of the meta game, and I'm rethinking the advantages and disadvantages of MBC since I have most of the cards. Even with Iona around, you have a lot of defense with Duress, Hymn, etc. Hand disruption really rapes a lot of decks, regardless of their potential answers. It was a very clever deck, at least for that day.

Re: ANT, Reanimator... They are great decks to be sure, but I see they are getting hated-out and there is quite a bit of luck involved with getting good draws. Not that our tournament is great proof of this since it was so small, but the ANT and Reanimator players there went 0-2 against other typical legacy decks that weren't even that bad of matchups.

I think Zoo is consistently the "best" deck and there aren't too many decks out there that will be auto-losses with it. There are numerous opening hands that are workable, whereas the other decks you mentioned will have to mulligan to get some of their key cards. With Legacy games pretty much being decided by turn 3/4, mulliganing can REALLY matter. That's a big reason why Zoo is so damn good, even with its bad matchup to combo.

I loooovvve Enchantress, but I'm not so sure it would do well in a huge tournament. I'm not sure how many there were to begin with, but even in the top 64 of GP Madrid, there were no Enchantress players in sight.

Everyone at Indy was paranoid about Reanimator, hence, bad day for the hoards of Reanimator players.

I'd like to add a quick quibble with the mini primers on page 113. Zoo originally referred to Scott John's Zoo deck from the early days of Magic that worked off of efficient beaters like Kird Ape and Serendib Efreet combined with burn and cheap hand refilling mechanics like Ancestral and the draw-7's. The deck, much like modern iterations, used burn to clear a path for blockers and as late game reach. The term Zoo was not used again until the Legacy split from Vintage a few years back when David Hernandez coined the term San Diego Zoo to refer to a deck that Chris Montero and myself designed in the wake of the split. That's where the name of the modern deck comes from, otherwise it would probably just be called Naya Sligh or Naya Aggro, much like Bant Survival or Jund Aggro.

That having been said, I think that the true precursor to this deck is a R/G aggro deck from before the split designed to beat U/W Landstill called Zilla Stompy, designed by Godzilla (I don't know what Zilla's real name is). Unlike either previous Zoo style, modern Naya Zoo does not run any card advantage engines (Zoo had draw, SD Zoo had Isochron Scepter) and it emphasizes speed over creature quality and combat tricks. Granted Steppe Lynx and Figure both have combat tricks but they're based around making the creatures more aggressive, rather than an offensive and defensive utility.

Has anyone tested out Nullrod in the board. Shuts down Top, shakles in counterbalance decks. But more importanly turns off Lions Eye Diamond, Chrom Mox, Mox Diamond and Lotus Petal for ant and the other storm decks.

My apologies on any historical inaccuracies in my proto-primer. I guess you could call me somewhat new-school, and my first introductions to Zoo, while being R/G/U, came long after the days of the primacy of Ancestral Recall and such. Otherwise, I grew up in a world where zoo was already R/G/something and mostly aggro rather than card-advantage focuses, so I suppose my research didn't go deep enough (by which mostly it was asking my friends who played the deck way back in the day for info). No harm done, and I'll change it in mine as needed. Thanks for the heads up.

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Originally Posted by Whit3 Ghost

This is in response to a discussion I had with Alix Hatfield about the possibility of running blue and playing a cantrip package to smooth out the deck's midgame draws. I came up with this a while ago and think that the inclusion of 6 draw spells might be worth testing.

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Any updates on the blue splash?

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

Any updates on the blue splash?

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Why /u when you could just push Sylvan Library or Magma Jet to 4x?

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Why /u when you could just push Sylvan Library or Magma Jet to 4x?

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It's more innovative and it's something that I think is worth exploring. Otherwise we can all just play the same 75 card list and never make any progress.

Blue gives you more consistency in your draws via Brainstorm/Ponder effects and their synergy with fetchlands, at the cost of a weaker mana base. Sylvan Library gives you slower card quality advantage, and the possibility of card advantage by trading life (after the initial -1 to get cast the Library); Jet gives you very minimal card selection and is an inefficient burn spell. They replicate some of what blue would give you, of course, but they're definitely not the same thing. Whether or not the splash is worth it, I don't know, but I'm asking how the results in testing have been.

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

It's more innovative and it's something that I think is worth exploring. Otherwise we can all just play the same 75 card list and never make any progress.

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Change doesn't necessary mean progress.

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Originally Posted by Nelis

Change doesn't necessary mean progress.

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That is obvious. What is also obvious is that not changing the list at all ensures that there is no progress to be made.

The blue splash might be great; it might suck. I just want to know the results of his testing, not reminders that Magma Jet scrys for two or whatever.

If you really wanted to smooth draws (in the most consistent deck in Legacy), you could do it without going off color by adding SDT. You've got plenty of shuffling with fetches and KotR and neither Brainstorm or Ponder actually draws extra cards anyway. But honestly, the deck doesn't want to be adding things like that. BGW Junk is much better at playing the utility game. Zoo is at its best when it's playing out a threat every turn and overwhelming opponent's defenses. Slow the deck down by watering down the mana and diluting the primary strategy significantly with 6-8 off strategy cards and all you're going to do is make the deck worse.

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

That is obvious. What is also obvious is that not changing the list at all ensures that there is no progress to be made.

The blue splash might be great; it might suck. I just want to know the results of his testing, not reminders that Magma Jet scrys for two or whatever.

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I think we can safely say that it sucks because otherwise we would've heard by now how great it is. Besides there was this guy a while back who made a zoo deck with blue although it was more of a zoo deck with counter spells. Anyway I played it once and never again afterward because the manabase was too vulnerable. Some things are just a waste testing especially when there are alternatives on color. That's obvious.

What Im trying to say actually is that a lot of times I have the feeling that a lot of people are trying to be innovative just because of being innovative. If you know what I mean.

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Originally Posted by Loxodon Baileyarch

@stu55: I clearly said that i ran River Boa because i had a random JapFoil version. It was more of a last minute thing, guy. And for me, running half those cards is an updated version for me.

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I just wouldn't recommend playing a card because "you have a foil jap version" of it...Kind of takes away from any serious discussion on the deck...



Anywho..are there any cards that will help against the MBC matchup?