[Deck] Zoo

I ended up going 3-2 at the 5k, playing 4 out of 5 bad matchups. I played Belcher, Show and Tell Combo, Dredge, Lands, and Red Death. My deck performed well and i think i have an optimal list finally. My deck played amazingly, but you can't help it when your opponent is playing a deck Zoo can't beat. I am satisfied. Here is the list:

4x Wooded Foothills
4x Arid Mesa
3x Windswept Heath
3x Taiga
3x Plateau
2x Savannah
1x Plains
1x Mountain
1x Forest

4x Wild Nacatl
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Qasali Pridemage
3x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Grim Lavamancer
2x Figure of Destiny

4x Lightning Bolt
4x Lightning Helix
4x Path to Exile
3x Chain Lightning
2x Sylvan Library
2x Umezawa's Jitte

Sideboard:
3x Krosan Grip
2x Tormod's Crypt
2x Relic of Progenitus
2x Faerie Macabre <----MVP
2x Price of Progress
2x Pyroclasm

Some things about the deck. RUN FUCKING JITTE! You won't regret it at all. The only matchup i would take it out is ANT, and that's about it. It has insane usage against other decks. The sideboard is very very good. I would find room for some combo hate, but i don't think it's worth in a deck without reliable ways to draw maybe 2-4 hate cards against a deck that goes off in the first 2 turns. I ran 6 pieces of grave hate due to the number of Reanimator decks there. I ran into none, but other grave based decks still got fucked. I think the list is perfect in my eyes in terms of consistency and efficiency.

I don't wanna bring up the Woolly Thoctar argument up again, but i will say this: I would have beaten Show and Tell Combo had i been able to put a Thoctar into play instead of a KOTR. The extra 4 points would have headshotted him. But hey that is just one story. I still might throw him in as a 1of though.

I tested the Stoneforge Mystic package as well, and it's pretty damn good. It's just mana entensive so i would suggest 21 to the players wanting to run Stoneforge. Lavamancer + Basilisk Collar fucks shit up.


And my deck is all foil with the exception of my Knights because i just added em so i didn't think to get foils when i had the chance, and Goyfs because i refuse to pay that much money. But my fetches and Jittes are foil, and so is everything else. The stuff that isn't foil is Beta/original set

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Originally Posted by Loxodon Baileyarch

I ended up going 3-2 at the 5k, playing 4 out of 5 bad matchups. I played Belcher, Show and Tell Combo, Dredge, Lands, and Red Death. My deck performed well and i think i have an optimal list finally. My deck played amazingly, but you can't help it when your opponent is playing a deck Zoo can't beat. I am satisfied. Here is the list:

4x Wild Nacatl
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Qasali Pridemage
3x Knight of the Reliquary
3x Grim Lavamancer
2x Figure of Destiny

I don't wanna bring up the Woolly Thoctar argument up again, but i will say this: I would have beaten Show and Tell Combo had i been able to put a Thoctar into play instead of a KOTR. The extra 4 points would have headshotted him. But hey that is just one story. I still might throw him in as a 1of though.

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I wonder if you name Ichorid or Red Death the 4th bad matchup but both seem to be pretty manageable. Nevertheless, running into 3 bad matchups is not a fun time.

As you mentioned the short of 4 damage, could it be the consequence of lacking a turn1 creature? You play 9 1cc creatures, lower than the average 11. The slightly higher curve might help your opponents stabilising unless they are tempo decks as well. Not to say your decklist is bad, but the matchups you played (3 combos, 1 control, 1 tempo) were just adverse to your more mid-range focused build.

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Originally Posted by tsabo_tavoc

I wonder if you name Ichorid or Red Death the 4th bad matchup but both seem to be pretty manageable. Nevertheless, running into 3 bad matchups is not a fun time.

As you mentioned the short of 4 damage, could it be the consequence of lacking a turn1 creature? You play 9 1cc creatures, lower than the average 11. The slightly higher curve might help your opponents stabilising unless they are tempo decks as well. Not to say your decklist is bad, but the matchups you played (3 combos, 1 control, 1 tempo) were just adverse to your more mid-range focused build.

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It was LED Ichorid, so yes it was a bad matchup, because he jizzed all over my face on turn two doing stupid dredging shit.
And the game i did lose i had Nacatl and FoD in play as well. It's just hard to race Progenitus/Emerakul

Lox- pics plz! there's not nearly enough pimp zoo pics floating around.

General format comments: Reanimator is a pretty poopy matchup, and the format in general is becoming more populated with unfair decks. As a result we have to become more disruptive while still maintaining our aggro aspect, which can be awkward. Embrace the mainboard gaddock teeg! He protects your answers to Iona and Sphinx from Force of Will, and can snatch game 1's from most of our bad matchups, which is more and more of the format recently.

Knight of the Reliquary + Karakas is a halfway decent answer to Iona and now the Eureka/Show and Tell/Sneak Attack Eldrazi decks and Marit Lage randomly, though Karakas almost definitely needs to stay in the s.b.

Lightning Helix is questionable over Chain Lightning right now I think, being better against Zoo (which is seeing a decline in popularity) and sometimes ANT, and being worse against our bad matchups like Goblins Reanimator and New Horizons, and being shut down by Iona on white. New Horizons is a pretty bad matchup in general, I think the only thing that would really make it halfway decent is having a manageable number of Jotun Grunts available, although he takes a some change in your maindeck to fit in, also Relic of Progenitus is halfway decent against them.

Kird Ape/Loam Lion over Steppe Lynx is sketchy right now, Lynx being better to race with and to try to kill Iona with a burn spell, but Ape/Lion being entirely better against Goblins. I'd say that Ape/Lion might be a better choice as well for their consistency against the slew of Stoneforge Mystic aggro/control decks, although Lynx's added power can help a lot. Hungrylikealion's sideboard Engineered Explosives can be very good against Stoneforge decks as well.

Answers to Iona:
-Fast damage and them not resolving Sphinx afterwards.
-Fireblast + 3 damage from random other source.
-basilisk collar + grim lavamancer
-Karakas (obv)
-Leonin Bola (!!!) tutorable with Stoneforge, also taps Sphinx if equipped to a white creature! I HAVE NOT TESTED THIS YET :D
-Vines of Vastwood (can be good against Sphinx as well if cast on a Loam Lion/Lynx, but is generally a worse maindeck choice)

I think I'm going to test out a faster version of zoo with Jotun Grunts, Reckless Charges, and Gaddock Teegs main and see how it does against the current meta.

@oneiros76: I am gonna post it soon when i get the time and when i find a good camera don't worry. I've been working on the damn deck since GP:Chicago last year.

And i used to run maindeck Gaddock Teeg because there used to be alot of Dreadstill and it shuts down Explosives and Force of Will, but the deck faded out. Plus having 2 means i might not draw it reliably and sometimes it's just a bear ya know?

Lox- Yeah, same with me with the pimping it out since the last gp!

I felt the same way about Teeg for a while and would just board him, but at this point with the metagame the way it is and the percentage that you'll face a deck that he'll be great in first game being fairly high, and since there's usually like a jitte or basilisk collar (or reckless charge in some builds) he's not totally useless g1 against the other decks.

Useful against: dredge, reanimator, new horizons, force/elspeth/engineered explosives decks, ANT/belcher, natural order, Eureka (@_@)
Bad against: zoo, goblins, gw/ stoneforge midrange, rock, survival, merfolk

Oddly enough my teammate Brian ran a very similar list, hit similarly awful matchups (Belcher, ANT, Reanimator, Dredge, Lands, Merfolk), and absolutely hated Jitte all day.

I'm not an enormous Jitte fan in this deck (I say as I just got through raving about how wonderful it was in my Merfolk sideboard). I think running 15+ removal spells along with 3-4 Lavamancers covers removal, Lightning Helix covers lifegain, and Path/having bigger creatures than them covers the need to grow your own guys. So LB, where'd Jitte help you the most in Atlanta?

He also didn't run any basics on the theory that basics make the deck worse against Wasteland, which I strangely agree with in a vacuum. With 2 duals, a Wasteland shuts you off a color. With a dual and a basic, a Wasteland shuts you off 2 colors. He struggled with Lands as a result, though, due to the basics helping more against recurring Wastelands.

Umezawa's Jitte is great at making crappy guys threatening. Zoo's creatures are already threatening, therefore Jitte is not necessary. There exists no deck with creatures that can battle in combat with Zoo's except other Zoo decks.

@oneiros76: Yeah you're right with Teeg but i guess I'm not used to my guys being a 2/2 or something. I just wish there was faster answers to answer combo pretty much, but i guess that's what ya get for playing Zoo.

@Tacosnape: I see maindeck Jitte like i see maindeck Jace, if you play em when you're ahead then it assures your victory. For me it helped me beat Belcher when they ETW for 12 dudes, and it won me both the games that i won against him. And it helped me race Progenitus against Show and Tell, which is also another bad matchup. I think the card is just amazing. I've also beaten Reanimator by equipping a Lavamancer and ramping Jitte up to 12 counters, also ensuring my victory when my loss was inevitable. I wouldn't cut the card and i found room to make a second copy in the maindeck by cutting a Chain Lightning. It also just beats almost every other deck in the format besides combo, when left unchecked.

@HAVEHEART: Have you ever faced down a Goyf with Zoo before? The task is daunting, especially when you're facing down a Goyf cast by a blue player. It also helps kill a fuckton other troublesome creatures that the opponent won't necessarily block with.

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Originally Posted by Loxodon Baileyarch

Some things about the deck. RUN FUCKING JITTE! You won't regret it at all. The only matchup i would take it out is ANT, and that's about it. It has insane usage against other decks.

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What about it did you find useful? Was it winning a game that you were going to win anyway? Could you give some specific examples?

I used to run a singleton Jitte main and it was never bad. It usually just guaranteed a game win. I've since cut if for Teegs in the main since I find that it actually prevents what we really dislike seeing, things like Natural Order, Engineered Explosives, and tons more. I also like the fact thats it's very good counter bait. It almost always draws out Force of Will, unless they have a removal spell, in which case, it draws removal away from my beaters. And it can still beat for 2.

However, Teeg is certainly bad in a couple matchups, and that brings me to my next point: the Sideboard. Here's my list.

MD

4 Wild Nacatl
4 Kird Ape
3 Grim Lavamancer
2 Gaddock Teeg
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Qasali Pridemage
2 Knight of the Reliquary

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Path to Exile
3 Lightning Helix
2 Sylvan Library

4 Wooded Foothills
3 Windswept Heath
3 Arid Mesa
2 Taiga
3 Plateau
1 Savannah
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains

SB

1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Faerie Macabre
3 Pyroblast
2 Krosan Grip
2 Wing Shards
2 Engineered Explosives

Any comments?
I absolutely love Macabre. It shines in the Reanimator matchup but is also useful against Dredge, which I've found to a decent matchup anyway. I'm unsure of the 2 Wing Shards and 2 Explosives however. Shards is good against random aggro, Reanimator, and Progenitus and Explosives is a catch-all. I'd like to playtest but I've got finals...does anyone have any experience they'd be willing to share?

@supachai: Read my last post bro. I give specific examples about how Jitte is amazing and how it dug me out of unwinnable situations.
Also i don't think REB or Wing Shards is necessary at all. Reanimator is most of the time gonna call white, and REB is overkill in matchups you should already be raping.

Haha. I swear that post was not there when I made my mine. >>

Anyway. For the Belcher game, Teeg would have stopped them from comboing out in the first place. Unless they were able to do so on turn 1, in which case you'd probably lose even with Jitte. And against Reanimator, when you equipped your Lavamancer with Jitte how exactly did you get counters? You realize it says combat damage....I'd imagine Lavamancer doesn't do much attacking or blocking.

I do agree that Jitte is good and helping you stay ahead and racing fatties. I originally had 2 in my sideboard and I think I'll add them back. I think there's certain metagames where maindeck Teeg is better and others where Jitte is superior.

Regarding my sideboard. I don't think Iona is actually the scariest of the Reanimator targets against us. And Shards can still get rid of anything else they attack with. Perhaps you're right though. I'll probably be cutting those for the Jittes for now. As for Red Blast, it's another out to things like Counterbalance and kills annoying War Monks. I feel that I'd rather secure the 50-50 matchups than try to beat something like combo that would require so much sideboard space just to even it...not even probably.

Anyway, I'll probably go:
-2 Wing Shards
-1 Pyroblast
+1 Krosan Grip
+2 Umezawa's Jitte

@supachai: I had a counter on it already and i got an attack in with Lavamancer before the reanimation shenanigans began again. I had already traded a Nacatl for Iona by pumping with Jitte so i was in a good position to attack. It got to the point to where i would either kill what he had brought back or headshot him, his choice.

I just think Wing Shard isnt' that good. If i was looking for a fatty hoser, i would look up Reprisal or something of that nature. 3 mana is already steep enough ya know?

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Originally Posted by Loxodon Baileyarch

I just think Wing Shard isnt' that good. If i was looking for a fatty hoser, i would look up Reprisal or something of that nature. 3 mana is already steep enough ya know?

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Reprisal doesn't really do anything that Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares couldn't. The best fatty hoser in color is Tariff, which takes care of all Reanimation/Natural Order shenanigans. However, it doesn't address Iona on white.

Well back to the Shards again, it's not just a fatty hoser. It's crowd control. Stuff like Reprisal and Tariff are very limited in what they can do. Reprisal is targeted and Tariff is card disadvantage and sorcery speed. What I really like about Shards is if they played a spell, I can get a 2 or even 3 for 1. I can also just Bolt an attacker, play Shards, and stop a potential three attackers. Card advantage is key.

Mirri's Guile


Is there a reason we this is not used over Library? It can dig deeper and is cheaper on mana. I'm guessing the reason is Library can draw cards if we need them.

That's exactly the reason. And Library digs deeper than Mirri's Guile.

Exactly. Library's power to me lies in the ability to draw 2 extra cards right away, then see three new cards next turn. That is, you've gained 1 card advantage, but more importantly have seen 6 cards in three turns.

Wing Shards should be cut for Stp at this point, Reanimator names white if they're doing well anyway so you might as well have a removal slot that can be used against Goblins Zoo etc, unless you're worried about Emrakul and Progenitus. I'd say Shards is better against Bant decks but worse against almost everything else. @supachai card advantage is key, but its harder to take advantage of Shards when you're being wastelanded /ported, or just can't play the spell in general.

I would rather have oblivion ring then swords to plowshares. Specially with Show and Tell geting more played.