[Deck] GW Survival

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Originally Posted by slayjay

ah, btw, your opponent in the first round was sebastian ehmke, a friend of mine, who played is second legacy tournament ever...I thik that is why his iona said "green"

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Well, that explains it indeed! :smile:

Thanks for the feedback and grats! I can only repeat myself in stating how much fun it is to play the deck and how strong the deck is.

I just came back from the tournament and played the same MD list as yesterday with some minor changes in the SB.
I played it to a 4-2 result today with one VERY unlucky loss against Rock.dec where I established the Iona lock in game 3 naming white (since I knew he plays Sword+Vindicate), I also know he plays Innocent Blood but I still have a Hierarch in play... so everything seems fine until he untaps drops Engineered Plague naming human - thus killing Hierarch - then plays Innocent Blood to get rid of Iona. The game then proceeds and I drop Kitchen Finks while he establishes Goyf+Grunt on his side. Since I´m already on ten or so I have to chump block with Finks. He then proceeds to drop another Plague naming Ouphe!! Meanwhile I had drawn into another Survival and was kind of relieved as I still had the Spore Frog loop in my deck to stop his beats. So I search up Frog+Genesis and guess what´s his next play!?.... Yeah right, his third Plague naming "Frog".... :rolleyes: Ok, that game was so random.... I was really frustrated afterwards.... I mean Plague!? WTF! But in this case it was obv good for him he brought them in....
Well the other loss was against ANT and that although I established 1st turn Mother 2nd turn Teeg in game two.... he just had double bounce and comboed me out with IGG.... despite me being able to remove two of his graveyard cards in response via Faerie Macabre.... he had an absolute sick draw against that configuration of mine.... but well that happens I guess....
My wins were against Loam, CB-Top, Faerie.dec (with Tombstalker, Firespout, Bitterblossom and Terminate,guess you know which list I mean) and Tempo Thresh.
After my success with the list yesterday a friend of mine wanted to play the deck aswell for today so we played nearly the same 75 cards. He however made it to a very decent 4th place playing the deck to 5-1 record!! I think he´ll write a report himself so I won´t add anything to that here. [Edit: ok he already did at the sime time as I am posting this... so just go ahead and read...^^]

A few things we discussed throughout the tournament so far:

Both of us sideboarded Genesis EVERY single match, so did I yesterday. The card definetly deserves a MD slot. Same goes for Kitchen Finks No.4 that card is just sooo good. I will probably go and cut the 2 Elspeth for those two. And would also want the Spore Frog maindeck as well as one copy of Gaddock Teeg to survival him if needed.
I agree to your statement about Krosan Grip, Tao. I played a third one today and would never want to go below that number because its so flexible and strong.
I really am convinced by Spore Frog though and would never play without him. I don´t understand why you would want to play without him. A third Jitte is much weaker compared to the flexibility Spore Frog offers. Your argument that Jitte is strong vs. Tribal, Dredge and Zoo doesn´t stand the direct comparison with the Frog. Frog is a house against Dredge by itsself!! I mean you can sac him for free removing bridges AND prevent a full swing of his - and that available one turn one. Compared to that you could possibly be dead already against Dredge before Jitte gets even online..... Of course Jitte is also good vs. Dredge IF you get the time to activate it. But in that matchup the first goal is to make it that far, thus every early disruption is needed - not to speak from the "FrogLoop" in lategames. Same goes I think for Tribal decks. The only exeptance may be Zoo because here Jitte´s 3rd ability to gain life also shines vs. their burn spells. Nevertheless I would wnat the Frog here, too- be it to buy time or to cut them from their combat damgage route totaly. Plus Frog combined with Mother is really sick! They can´t even burn it eot to get a possible swing! I personally like the card a lot and thus would even want to find a maindeck slot. Maybe I will even go and cut the Sylvan Librarys for one Teeg+Frog main. But this is uo to more testing with the deck since I really didn´t play the Library too often.... although in games where I had it, it was really golden every single time.

I bought some Loyal Retainers and am going to bid or trade for some Mother of runes. Going over all of the decklists and tournament reports I was curious as to how strong wasteland is for this deck.

I love wasteland and pack them in a bunch of decks I use, however, looking at this WG deck I am curious as to how strong it is in practice.

A) No mana relevant spells (daze, spell pierce)
B) No recurring wasteland (loam, crucible)
C) No random tech (extirpate, etc)
D) No other LD (stifle, sinkhole, etc)

What caught my attention was that most lists were running 3, causing me to evaluate their overall impact. KotR can do some tricks with wasteland, that is true. My thoughts once I play the deck is that the two colors with minimal or no investment for double white allows the deck to simply use wasteland because doing so does not inhibit the overall consistency of getting both colors online and in sufficient quantities.

Edit - Completely missed the eternal witness. As I started pulling out the cards to build the deck she stared me right back in the face.

@Venice/ Snief: Congratulations to the good finishes. I am glad someone picked the deck up and played it in a tournament because it is much stronger than it might look like on the first view. Overall only four losses in 17 games sounds certainly like a good performance.

First of all I want to mention one point regarding SBing. I side out the Iona/Retainer's combo against blue decks like Merfolk, Countertop or Canadian because it gets pretty tough postboard to get Survival online. They will wait with Snares and Forces for the Survival and also probably bring in Yard/Enchantment hate and double its effectivity if you draw Iona or Retainer's. So I try to keep Survival's "rat's tail" as short as possible in these games and would much rather keep Elspeth in than the Combo.

That said here are my thoughts to Spore Frog / Genesis:

Against aggressive decks Genesis itself is too slow, you are better off playing Goyfs and Finks via Squee and getting Iona as soon as you see an opening. Against Combo it is dead and against Staxx 3 Pridemages + 1 Witness should be enough to destroy all their relevants stuff. That leaves only control in which it matters.
Adding Spore Frog to Genesis in the main deck is great against Elves and Ichorid. With Reanimator and Progenitus decks there are two new decks against which Frog does also a good job. Against everything else the problem is that you spend 4 Mana / turn with the engine while they keep expanding their board forcing you to use the engine every turn. So unless you do counter damage to finish the game quickly Canadian, Countertop, Merfolk and Goblins will eventually find a solution and overwhelm you in one or two strikes (while against Zoo chaining Finks is certainly better for 4 Mana).

So imo Genesis deserves a spot only in either a heavy Landstill/ITF Meta or in combination with Frog if you know many people play Reanimator, Ichorid and / or Elves. SBing Frog and Genesis might be useful though, because it does a decent job against the decks mentioned above and also Genesis can act as a 2nd Squee if you get Crypted.

@conboy31: Yes, that's right. Your mana base is pretty solid and can take good use of one colorless Mana and Wastelands are the best use for this, by giving you some free wins against screwed opponent's or by buying time. Also, if you untap with a Wasteland in play and an active KotR you can almost be sure to screw your opponent off of one color.

My experience against blue decks so far says that they are pretty even or matchups in our favour. The threat density was so high that I had never problems resolving a Survival and so I wouldn´t side out Iona.

I went about 2-10 vs 43 lands today preboard. It is quite the uphill battle. What appears to be the main way to win is
A) mull into survival
B) go for the quickest Iona on green you can
C) if you get ported, get as many nobles on the board and pray they don't find tabernacle.

Postboard the win numbers go up quite a bit with: 3 crypts, 1 macabre,runed halo, krosan grip, harmonic sliver.

After testing like 15-20 games against Merfolk I would say its 60-40 in our favour either preboard and postboard. Multiple Kitchen Finks, MoR and big guys like Goyf and Knight win the game in the long run, Iona naming blue is gg obv. Today or tomorrow i´ll test vs loam, let you know the results.

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Originally Posted by Snief

After testing like 15-20 games against Merfolk I would say its 60-40 in our favour either preboard and postboard. Multiple Kitchen Finks, MoR and big guys like Goyf and Knight win the game in the long run, Iona naming blue is gg obv. Today or tomorrow i´ll test vs loam, let you know the results.

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I'm afraid Relic of Prog could give us troubles since all our big beaters and our main engine feel bad about the little artifact.
What's your impression? Isn't it hurt the deck too much after sideboard?

Maybe I have just faced bad pilots, but I never felt that 43 lands is a bad matchup preboard. Sure, it is a very good deck and loosing games to them is normal, but not over 80% in their favor as you claim.

Sorry for stating the obvious, but as against any recurring wasteland deck most crucial is to fetch basics. We have a lot of them, so lets get as many as possible. Now, the turning point for me in games against lands was whether I was able to quickly destroy manabonds/exploration. Once they are limited to one land a turn they aren't nearly as dangerous.

If I have survival out ports are hardly a problem. You can always activate survival in response to them tapping your land. If I have Hierarchs/Birds out Tabernacle isn't that much of a problem too, because you can pay for upkeep with mana from lands, that would get tapped anyway. In this matchup we can ride far with 2 mana a turn.

As you have also stated - Iona is game against them.

As far as mulling into Survival is concerned - I think that 1st turn Hierarch is more important than turn 2 Survival here.

My experience comes from playing BGW variant, but GW should only be stronger against 43 lands. The major black cards we play - discard and spot removal creatures, aren't particulary useful against lands. On the other hand - GW runs more Pridemages, more creatures and wastelands to slow them down.

Just my few noob thoughts, but hey - the creator of the thread, Tao, is exactly the person to ask about 43lands matchup...

Merfolk matchup: Relic is very good against us in G1, but Relic, Jitte and Standstill are their only relevant cards and we have Pridemages that are good against these. Sniping Relic with Qasali Pridemage is not a bad play even if it might feel bad at that point. I've won without a resolved Survival or Jitte against a solid opponent who drew three times from Standstills.
Every card we run is good against them while they have lots of mediocre and bad cards that will lose them the attrition war. MoR shines probably more than in any other matchup because you can use her aggressively in combat without having to fear removal, she even stops their Jitte if we didn't draw our own Jitte or a Pridemage. Goyf, Finks and KotR outclass their creatures by far (thus negating any card advantage they might get by Standstill), Swords are great to snipe Lords. And should we get Jitte or Survival online the game is over. The matchup is at least 60-40 for GW.
The matchups against Merfolk, Zoo and Canadian are all very positive and the main reason to play this deck.


43 land is really bad in G1. I haven't tested this deck against 43 so far but from all I know trying to play against it with other Survival decks it is no fun. All Nonbasics are useless and Ports hurt even more. They won't let you get into the game and by the time you finally have established a Mana base they will have already developed the board too far. Even Iona is not game because Maze of Ith will prevent her from attacking and unless she came down really early you might still get overwhelmed.

But I guess being 2-colored, the low mana curve, the Iona Combo, Hierarch, Pridemages to snipe their Exploration or Manabond and KotR give us much better chances against 43-land than most Survival decks would have. It is also important that G2 and G3 get much better because of the yard hate.

You shouldn't be worried about losing to 43 land. That deck is designed to crush creature decks and loses even more against Combo than we do and also loses every time their Zoo opponent draws PoP (or when someone plays a moon effect or B2B).

Crow, I agree with much of what you said, save the likelihood of winning the matchup.

I fetched out every basic I had in the deck (5) as I needed them. I sat on fetches if I didn't need the lands at that moment.
I attmpted to pridemage any relevant enchantment on their board.

The problem was that so much of our deck is irrelevant agaisnt them.

Try to rush them, he would find tabernacle. Try to slow down and get wasted and ported into oblivion. I would love to be wrong and increase my winning % to near what you are able to achieve. Maybe it was the lands player pilot we each used?
Regardless, post board went in my favor extremely well. Resolving 1 crypt and one Macabre vs lands is usually GG for this WG survival deck.

edit- Once I have landed Iona I have been able to win every game vs 43 lands preboard (the few games I won). Survival was able to get iona, which means next turn it gets KotR. Meanwhile their engine is shut off. Knight gets 3 consecutive wastelands which will take care of lands mazes.

Evidently Loyal Retainers is quite difficult to find.

How much is the card worth right now? The price is difficult to
estimate because they are not for sale on any websites I have
looked at this morning.

edit(Just looked at ebay, the price should be
less than the current buy it now set at 80 for one of the auctions)

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Stoneforge Mystic 1W
Creature - Kor Artificer (rare)

When Stoneforge Mystic Enters the Battlefield, you may search your library for an equipment card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If you do, shuffle your library.
1W, tap: Put an Equipment card from your hand onto the battlefield.

1/2

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Survival can fetch Jitte.
Also, without Survival this guy seems to be descent 'cause Jitte is always good.
What do you think?

I have been playing this deck quite a bit these last few days. Sometimes I would imagine what creature that does not exist that I wished was in my deck.
The most desirable creature I wish this deck could get would be one with some sort of 187 cipt. The second would be a W/G hybrid of the Duergar Hedge-Mage cycle that was never printed. The third would be a creature that finds Jitte, somewhat like this one. I wish it did not have the tap ability and instead had a stronger body, or some other feature. It will be worth throwing in a single copy and see what happens.

I wonder if after taking into account counter spells, yard hate, and artifact destruction the 2 jitte builds will turn into 1 jitte + stoneforge mystic.

There is a GW creature that does what Duergar Hedge-Mage does. It's called Harmonic Sliver. For White creature based creature kill look at Intrepid Hero.

EDIT: Oh, and if 43lands is really a problem, has anyone tried Tsabo's Web? Or Cornered Market or Primal Order?

I play 43 Lands and was reading this and if there's any cards in G/W that I would not want to see it would be Wheel of Sun and Moon and Ground Seal.

Wheel of Sun and Moon would be the prime choice since it has the added benefit of hosing Dredge pretty hard.

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Originally Posted by morgan_coke

There is a GW creature that does what Duergar Hedge-Mage does. It's called Harmonic Sliver. For White creature based creature kill look at Intrepid Hero.

EDIT: Oh, and if 43lands is really a problem, has anyone tried Tsabo's Web? Or Cornered Market or Primal Order?

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I use a harmonic sliver in the sb, it is close to what I meant by the Hedge but not exactly. Talking strickly, the Hedge can 2-1, talking abstractly if they printed a w/g version it might have 2 different abilities.

Intrepid Hero does not solve the annoyance of swarms and thieving Sower's but good call on the card!
Lands was not an issue post board using most of the dredge hate on 43 lands.

I don't think Gree-White should dare to complain about Disenchant effects on a creature because Pridemage is by far the best Disenchant creature in the game.

I really like the idea of Wheel of Sun and Moon. It seems stronger against Dredge than Crypt because it is not a 1-shot so they can't slowdredge to force you to blow it up and Needle also does not work - they lose unless they win with what is on the table or have bounce. Enchanting yourself also gives you a nice out against Painter-Combo if that should be relevant. On the other hand it is much slower and does not undo what they already did with their yard. It also can't hit Squee and Genesis in the Survival Mirror. Not sure about this slot.

To sum up the discussion I tried to make a MD and SB list of what is agreed on to be in every version for every meta. The untouchable core of the deck imo looks like this:

21 Lands

4 [FNM] Mother of Runes
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [CFX] Knight of the Reliquary
2 [ARB] Qasali Pridemage

1 [SHM] Kitchen Finks
1 [FD] Eternal Witness
1 [MM] Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 [ZEN] Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 [P3] Loyal Retainers

4 [U] Swords to Plowshares
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest

MoR + Hierarch as 1-Drops are essential for the curve, having them makes every opening hand better. StoP, Goyf and Survival are No-Brainers. KotR is clearly the best 3 drop the deck has. Does everyone agree with this?

52 cards means that 8 slots can be filled with

- a 3rd or 4th Pridemage
- 1-3 Umezawa's Jitte
- Enlightened Tutor
- Sylvan Library
- Elspeth, Knight Errant
- more Kitchen Finks
- a 3rd Horizon Canopy
- 1-3 Gaddock Teegs.


Now to the SB:

I think every version should Postboard have access to:

- 4 Kitchen Finks (Zoo, Tribal, Canadian)
- 3 Umezawa's Jitte (or 2 Jitte + Tutor) (Zoo, Tribal, Dredge)
- 1 Faerie Macabre + 2-3 additional Yard Hate effects (Dredge, Survival, Loam, Reanimator)
- 3 Teeg, 1 Ethersworn Canonist and 1 Glowrider (Combo, mix it up in case of Echoing Truth)
- 3 Krosan Grip (Counterbalance, Staxx)

Additional options are
- Elspeth (dodges Graveyard hate, awesome against Control and against Rock type decks (dodges Removal, gives Evasion))
- Genesis (great with Faerie Macabre, good against Control, can Combo with Spore Frog)
- Spore Frog (I personally don't like it, but some people are dead set on him and without a doubt awesome against Dredge)

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Originally Posted by venice

I just came back from the tournament and played the same MD list as yesterday with some minor changes in the SB.
I played it to a 4-2 result today with one VERY unlucky loss against Rock.dec where I established the Iona lock in game 3 naming white (since I knew he plays Sword+Vindicate), I also know he plays Innocent Blood but I still have a Hierarch in play... so everything seems fine until he untaps drops Engineered Plague naming human - thus killing Hierarch - then plays Innocent Blood to get rid of Iona. The game then proceeds and I drop Kitchen Finks while he establishes Goyf+Grunt on his side. Since I´m already on ten or so I have to chump block with Finks. He then proceeds to drop another Plague naming Ouphe!! Meanwhile I had drawn into another Survival and was kind of relieved as I still had the Spore Frog loop in my deck to stop his beats. So I search up Frog+Genesis and guess what´s his next play!?.... Yeah right, his third Plague naming "Frog".... :rolleyes: Ok, that game was so random.... I was really frustrated afterwards.... I mean Plague!? WTF! But in this case it was obv good for him he brought them in....

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I also boarded Plague against 2 BantGuys. It's simply good. Not only does Plague on human kill your Hierarch, it also kills Loyal Retainers. And for your list. Mother of Runes is also Human. Seems like there were a lot of Survival Decks in Hassloch. :)

Just arrived after winning a GPT for Madrid with this Deck (finals I played mirror against 'venice'^^) :)
Today I tried a version with 1 Teeg main and he sure won me the game preboard against Dredge. 2nd game won Spore Frog on his own.

The summary of Tao looks right to me, but just to complete the list, here some cards to consider:

-Harmonic Sliver (to make 3/1 split Pridemage/Harmonic)
-Children of Korlis (vs Combo like ANT, but also Dredge)
- True Believer (sometimes game winner, sometimes dead)

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Originally Posted by Snief

Just arrived after winning a GPT for Madrid with this Deck (finals I played mirror against 'venice'^^) :)

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Gratz to both of you! Great job.