[Deck] Nic Fit (GBx Explorer Zenith Control)

[eq.firemind]

So does anyone tested Garruk, Primal Hunter?

I did a little and man, that was impressive!
Even make 3/3, draw 3 and continue to be pain in opponent's ass is more than nice for in this deck.

For the moment I'm drifting between straight BG (completely neglects Moons and Wastes) and BGw for Swords to Plowshares. The obvious replace for StP is Innocent Blood since it enables Explorer. My current list:

1 Phyrexian Tower
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
2 Bayou
11 duals and basics to cover mana requirements

4 Veteran Explorer
3 Wall of Blossoms
4 Eternal Witness
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Scavenging Ooze

3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Swords to Plowshares/3 Innocent Blood 1 Dismember
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Tendrils of Despair
2 Hymn to Tourach
2 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Pernicious Deed
2 Garruk, Primal Hunter
2 Karn Liberated

I opted to go for raw power of high-cmc cards rather than engines.

Even though I run Garruk 2.0, Wall of Blossoms performs better than Tarmogoyf.
KotR were here to help Garruk, but they don't fit well in the deck since we actually want to see many lands which means that additional fetchlands are just unnecessary. And with only 8 fetches KotR is not that impressive.

In search for solution I found Scavenging Ooze. With amount of (green) mana this deck can produce cleaning graveyard becomes easy. And best part is that the card is not bad in tribal and Zoo MU (where other GY-hate cards are meh to useless). In early game you will try to keep the board clean of cats/fish/goblins while setup mana. Then you stabilized board and established mana, just drop Ooze and consume everything you killed earlier (your own Explorers too). This play nets you nice amount of life and big dude that will eat up opposing Goyfs and KotR.

Now the discard part. I started with 2 Hymns (mainly for card advantage, not for disruption), wanted to fit 3rd but finding place was hard. At the same time I wanted to replace one Therapy with something else. So I went through all low-costed green and black sacrifice outlets and found Tendrils of Despair. It does what I wanted from both Hymn and Therapy (card advantage and uncounterable 1-mana sac outlet). So in 6 cards I have 4 extracheap sac outlets, 3 CA cards and 3 turn 1 cards, which is quite spacewise. Oh, and "discard 2" is soo sweet when you're chaining it with Witness!

So that's it. Thoughts?

[Philipp2293]

Good to see this thread upped.

Interesting find in tendrils of despair. Why is there no Volraths Stronghold in your list? I really like that you incorporate SDT.

So far Garruk has been pretty nice in testing. Lately I've been working on on 2 different 4C builds, one without white, one without blue. Been trying to incorporate the Punishing Fire engine, the non white 4C build failed, it wasn't all that bad, but too cute.

Currently I'm toying with GBwr build, loaded heavily with removal, and Garruk and Sun Titan as the bombs. The verdict is still out on this one, may report back if its half decent.

[Tao]

I am also still working on this. Quite a lot. I like your list very much. Good to see someone going a similar direction with this. Scavenging Ooze is a great idea. It fixes lifegain and Graveyard removal which can both be very important to win the long games and not easy to include in the main deck without having to draw bad cards in 2/3 of the matchups. That plus the randomly won games against Reanimator and Dredge if you luck it on turn 2.
Garruk is as good as you say. Growing while making tokens is just awesome and his tokens are three times the size of Elspeth tokens and his other abilities are far more useful in a control deck.
Like I said your list looks really good and well thought of. I would like to know how your Sideboard looks though. Mine is currently

SB: 4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
SB: 3 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 2 [ARC] Shriekmaw
SB: 2 [US] Duress
SB: 1 [TO] Llawan, Cephalid Empress
SB: 1 [TO] Chainer's Edict
SB: 1 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
SB: 1 [OD] Innocent Blood

but that is in a blue version with Gifts. Extirpate is not popular among good players but it was clearly the best SB card. Gets rid of Reanimator targets with card advantage, gets Loam for good and it is good against Dredge in a Deed deck.

The deck has so many possible routes, it is hard to find the best one. When I was testing with P Fire in a different deck t didn't do enough, even Merfolk could get around it often with 2 Lords in play. But that was before Stoneforge was everywhere. Against the Mother of Runes / Noble Hierarch / Stoneforge deck it should be great and it kills Jace.

Like I said I am currently still playing with a BUG version. Sensei's Divining Top is nice but Brainstorm is a better card. "4 Brainstorm" offers sufficient libaray manipulation for a much lower cost. On top of that you get a few Jace TMS and Gifts Ungiven which are both very strong and synergetic with the rest of the deck. So before you play a 2 color version because you can survive without Swords I would try the blue splash, the mana base can support it and GB has no comparable cards.

[Philipp2293]

What is your current MD? Still the latest list or do you have an updated version with Garruk?

My main intention behing playing Punishing Fire was that it's good at killing Jace's, while being decent against swarm aggro/Maverick/Stoneforge. So far I couldn't get it to work. (At least not in Explorer builds, I have a Naya Control build right now, but that is so far off the roots of this that it would need another thread).

[Arianrhod]

I've been working on this deck pretty intensively since the thread stopped getting posts -- now I see that it actually did get a few more. Tendrils of Despair is indeed an interesting find -- I'm not sure about room constraints, but it does seem like a worthwhile card to know about, at the very least.

I took the following version of the deck to SCG Open Pitt -- I'll give as much of a report here as I can remember. I was the driver, and it was almost 4 hours one way, so my day was capped by a lot of driving which I'm hoping didn't erase too many details of my wins and losses. I'll tell you now that I went 4-4, so don't expect glory.

[deck]
4x Veteran Explorer
3x Kitchen Finks
2x Eternal Witness
1x Fleshbag Marauder
1x Glissa, the Traitor
2x Academy Rector
2x Sun Titan
1x Yosei, the Morning Star

4x Cabal Therapy
2x Thoughtseize

3x Gifts Ungiven
3x Swords to Plowshares
1x Path to Exile

1x Executioner's Capsule

2x Garruk, Primal Hunter

3x Pernicious Deed
1x Debtors' Knell
1x Oblivion Ring
1x Recurring Nightmare

1x Dryad Arbor

2x Phyrexian Tower
1x Volrath's Stronghold
2x Bayou
1x Scrubland
1x Savannah
1x Tropical Island
3x Forest
2x Swamp
2x Plains
1x Island
3x Verdant Catacombs
3x Windswept Heath

//Sideboard
3x Natural Order
1x Progenitus
3x Enlightened Tutor
1x Wheel of Sun and Moon
1x Null Rod
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Chains of Mephistopheles
1x Choke
1x Circle of Protection: Red
1x Innocent Blood
1x Diabolic Edict
[/deck]

Now, for the report:

Round 1: Ed with TES.

He leads off an Underground Sea into an EoT Brainstorm, then sits on one land for a few turns while I build a board presence. Eventually he starts playing Moxen and rituals, but he messes up his ritual mana and comments that he forgot he had another card in hand, so he has to pass the turn to me. A few turns later I Therapy him, naming Infernal Tutor, and he has to pitch two of them. Finks and Garruk token beatdown gets there.

I don't remember my exact sideboarding, but I know that I leave the Swords in for lifegain vs exact storm count, and I brought in 3x Tutor, 1x Chains, 1x Null Rod. Path and Ex. Cap were for sure boarded out.

G2 I get out Null Rod, which he Burnings for a Shattering Spree and kills. He then Ad Nauseums down to 6 or so and kills me in one shot.

G3 I mull to 4 looking for a either a Tutor or a discard spell, and don't find one. He Empties for 12 tokens on turn two or three, and although I have the mana to drop a Deed and get back in the game, I don't find a Deed, and start off at 0-1.

Round 2: Mix Cox with Blue Zoo

If there's one thing this deck can do well, it's squash zoo with a holy vengeance. He shows me Nacatls and Jaces while shuffling, so I know ahead of time that he's on blue zoo. As a result, my turn one Therapy hits a Goyf, revealing Qasali, Grim, Bolt, Misty, and Heath. A few Explorers go off, and I get out a Titan. He double bolts it, and then I get out a Witness to get back Titan, and play Titan on the same turn. They circle-jerk each for a few more turns courtesy of a sac outlet, and he scoops.

I brought in Natural Order for this, since I won g1 with some graveyard shenanigans and that often means hate post-board.

He leads with a fetch for a Tropical Island into a Noble Hierarch. Now, g1 he'd gone out of his way to avoid fetching blue, and since Hierarch makes blue, I knew that he had to have a reason. So I therapy'd him, naming Jace, and got a hit, revealing Swords, Qasali, Wooded x2, and Grim. He dropped Qasali and tried to swing in, but I swords'd it before exalted. Then Natural Order happened, and his life total goes 20->10->dead.

Round 3: Kevin with Deadguy

After commenting on the mirror match of Kevins, we shuffle up.

G1: I mull to 5. This game was ridiculous, with the life totals and information panels from this game alone taking up almost a full page in my notebook. Therapies happened, multiple Bobs happened, tons of removal and all 3 deeds from me, and Durward and Bertoncini flanking us and being entertained by some of my card choices all contributed to this game. I know that g1 he had discarded a Sun Titan out of my hand, and then I had Witnesses it back -- only to have him sick rips a Thoughtseize and take it again. Beyond that, it was a hell of a game, and I think it left my opponent a little scared, as he commented that he was going to be pretty worried if I kept 7. Luckily for him, he didn't have to worry about that.

I have no idea what I sideboarded here. I know I brought in the Edict and Blood, because Deadguy doesn't have so many guys that it can afford to lose many of them. I may have brought in NO just for the additional Threat density, but I don't see a Progenitus kill on my notes, so I dunno.

G2 I also mulled to 5. Whee. My life total never went anywhere but up this game, courtesy of some Finks being annoying as only Finks can be. He had some minor mana issues, as he only had one white source and an Elsepth in hand -- it wasn't really enough to hinder him too much, though. This game ended with a Yosei lock, and a can't win Gifts pile on the way there.

G3 I mull to 6, and I really, really should have mulled to 5. But, after mulling to 5 twice already, I didn't want to, and I suffered the consequences. He had t2 Stoneforge into Batterskull, into pooping out Sword of Body and Mind from his hand, into horrible, horrible death. It was a shame that after two really good games, the match had to end that way, but that's what I get.

Round 4: Dennis with Team America

I was a little bitter from the last round at this point, and I'm fairly sure that I tilted a bit here.

G1 He missteps my Explorer t1, and then plays a Ponder off of a Sea fetched from a Verdant -- this tells me TA, since Bug control doesn't run Ponder. I Therapy, naming Tombstalker -- unfortunately, he has a Clique instead. I drop a Finks and we proceed to beat the crap out of each other for a few turns. Then he eventually removes the Finks and drops a Stalker, and it ends pretty quickly from there.

I bring in the standard anti-blue package, with Choke, Chains, and E.T. (also Wheel of Sun and Moon for Stalker and Goyf shrinkage), and I think I brought in both of the Edict effects as well, due to the deck's low creature count.

G2 He Cliques me, and I E.T. in response, which he then Brainstorms and Forces. A few Hymns, a Jace, and a Stalker later, I'm dead.

Round 5: Justin with GW Cats

At this point, I'm 1-3 and I want to regain some sense of dignity on the day. One of our car is still live, so I stay in and decide to see what I can do.

I saw Wooded Bastion while he was shuffling, and put him on Elves as a result, figuring that the white would be for Mirror Entity. In retrospect, that was dumb, since the Bastion doesn't make green mana on its own, and Elves doesn't play enough lands to get away with a colorless land. I Therapy t1, naming Natural Order (in case I'm wrong on Elves), and see Jitte, Qasali Pridemage, Qasali Ambusher x2, and a Razorverge Thicket. Call me confused. Unfortunately, my hand was a little dodgy and I managed to die to Pridemage beats, after it was pumped by a Jitte and a Wilt-Leaf Liege (!!).

I know I brought in Natural Order, and I think that's it.

G2 sees him having a Bird into a Mirran Crusader into a Glorious Anthem--and hit you for 6 on turn 3. Ow. Spot removal happens, and a Gifts pile for control cards gets me in the game. A second Gifts turns into a Yosei lock, and we're on to 3.

G3 I look at my opening hand and see Explorer, Forest, Phyrexian Tower, and Garruk. I don't think I even looked at the other three cards. He does something inconsequential, and turn two Garruk happens. Garruk takes over the game as only Garruk can do, eventually summoning the Durp Brigade for 7 6/6 tokens, and my opponent packs it in.

Round 6: Chris with Team Italia

G1 here was another long slugfest against an opponent who had a turn 2 Bitterblossom. Frown. Tons of discard and removal keeps me off my threats, but my Therapies have ripped his hand open as well, including a Flashback to take two Bobs that I saw off a different name. I drop a Deed on turn 3 after seeing no Vindicate in hand, hoping to deal with the Blossom -- too bad he draws a Vindicate off the top. I get Garruk out, and proceed to start making Beasts to try to race him. He ignores Garruk and goes after me, getting me down to 9 while leaving behind a token to block. I have five land in play, and choose to draw 3 off Garruk, netting me a land drop and an Explorer, with a Therapy in my graveyard. I mainphase a Gifts, making a pile of Nightmare, Sun Titan, Witness, and Deed -- he looks at my mana and gives me Nightmare and Witness. I play my land, my explorer, sac my explorer, play Nightmare, sac the beast token to Nightmare back Sun Titan, getting back Deed. I wait till he takes one more damage from Blossom, and then blow up the tokens. Titan+Deed proceeds to completely lock him out of the game, and we're on to game two.

I bring in Natural Order, and the Edict/Blood duo, taking out Yosei and some of the graveyard cards, expecting graveyard hate.

G2 he fetches a bunch of times and empties my hand. As before, I focus on removing his threats, knowing that I can draw better than he can. He Extirpates a Garruk that he had Hymn'd away, and takes a bunch of damage from a Veteran Explorer that he just can't bring himself to Swords. He drops to 14, and then I rip a Natural Order off the top, which turns the innocuous Explorer into a 10/10 Hydra. He berates himself a little, since had seen the Orders from Extirpating and still didn't pull the trigger, but I suspect that it wouldn't have mattered. This matchup doesn't seem bad at all.

Round 7: Dan with Cephalid Breakfast

Not exactly a deck I expected to see. I'd recovered to 3-3 at this point, so I was feeling a bit better.

G1 I try to lead with a Thoughtseize, which he missteps. The next turn I Therapy him, and see an Illusionist, alongside a Spellskite, Force, Brainstorm, and Misty. After a bunch of digging and posturing, he eventually finds the other half of the combo and goes off with Mimeoplasm copying Redcap with counters equal to Lord of Extinction. Cute. to be fair, I lost game 1 -- he didn't win it. I had a deed on the table, and I foolishly tapped down for Garruk in an attempt to put a clock on him. I don't think he could have won if I'd just sat on that Deed.

I brought in the Wheel, along with Circle of Pro Red, assuming that the Mimeoplasm would copy the Redcap's color. I wasn't sure about it, but I figured that he probably wouldn't know if that worked either, and would have to speedbump there before going off.

G2 I hit Wheel, and I E.T. for CoP:Red. Unfortunately, he has a Krosan Grip for both of them, and proceeds to go off fairly easily from there, while I am unable to find a Witness or a Titan to get them back.

Round 8: Tony with Wish

Tony's one of my locals -- a good friend that was actually in my car for the day. He was also using my other legacy deck, which I had loaned him. It's a heavily modified BUG control deck that uses Living Wish and a 15-card Wishboard to attack the weak spots of every other legacy deck. I'm pretty proud of it, but apparently I'm the only one capable of playing it, since every time I loan it out, people do poorly with it.

G1 takes most of my notebook page, as we proceed to just haymaker the hell out of each other. I get out a Titan, and he proceeds to Wish for Gilded Drake and take it. I can't deal with my own Titan the next turn, and he proceeds to start Titan/Deeding me. Oh the irony. Eventually I get enough mana that I can blow up the world with Deed, and then he drops a Jace and fateseals me out of the game.

I board in E.T. + Choke and Chains, along with the Natural Order package -and- the Edict/Blood, taking out virtually all of my removal to do so.

I don't really remember g2, beyond that it was fairly uneventful. I had a couple Finks, and they got there.

G3 was a little strange. I naturally drew Choke, but he only had one island -- instead, he had 3 City of Brass, which proceeded to do a lot of damage to him. My life total went nowhere but up, although he eventually resolved a Jace. I tried to O-Ring it, which got countered, and then I played a Sun Titan and brought the O-Ring back. He killed the Titan with a Doom Blade, but I brought it back with a Witness, and they circle-jerked each other enough that he got buried under my recursive card advantage., ending my day at 4-4.

All in all, I have two comments on the deck.

1. When it doesn't feel like being a bitch and gives me hands I can keep, it's amazing.
2. This deck is better than I am.

I chalk 1. up with sheer variance -- any deck is susceptible to having to mulligan, and this one may be a little bit more so than most. At the same time, other decks run Brainstorm, which smooths out some of the variance -- people keep one or two landers all the time with Brainstorm, and frequently manage to get there. At the same time, sometimes they don't.

As for 2., I am firmly convinced that there is an amazing deck here. Even if it isn't exactly right at the moment, it feels powerful and very, very unfair. A bit more tweaking, and there'll be something. More to the point, though, I feel that I need a lot more experience with the deck in tournament situations. I made a fair number of mistakes that I shouldn't have looking back, but at the same time, they seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and only getting experience with the deck will fix that. This deck is HARD to play. It has more tricks that I can even see at the moment.

Glissa + Capsule was underwhelming all day. It was meant to be a package to add a little more recursive removal against things like Zoo and Fish. After Pitt, I can safely say that I don't need any help against Zoo at all. Glissa is a house when she hits, because she either gets removed immediately or completely stops you from being attacked, but beyond that, she's not worth a one-of spot without things to abuse. That said, the package may warrant consideration in the future depending on meta shifts. At the moment, definitely not worth it.

Anyone not running Dryad Arbor is doing it wrong. I'm just going to flat-out say that. As a fetch-able emergency Therapy sac to take something you NEED to get from their hand, or a way to trigger Recurring Nightmare out of nowhere, it's amazing. You can also fetch for it at the end of the turn and proceed to tap it for mana and then feed it to a Phryexian Tower for miniature boost in mana. I also successfully fetched into a blocker to kill a Dark Confidant. I would not run more than one, because it often sucks when it's in your hand, but there needs to be one in this deck, even if you aren't running Natural Order out of the board.

The sideboard is questionable for me. I used everything in it multiple times today except for the Ensnaring Bridge, which is going to become a Runed Halo. At the same time, I didn't like the feel of the Enlightened Tutor package. I love having the situational bullet enchantments, since they make Rector all the more amazing, but the Tutor part of the equation felt weak to me. Again, though, at the same time, they allow for speed against matchups where it's necessary. You need to find your Wheel of Sun and Moon against Dredge a lot faster than Rector can get it -- especially with two Rectors. Likewise with CoP: Red and Burn. I'm not going to change it for the moment, but I might mess with it in the future. The synergies with Sun Titan and Rector was just too much to ignore, even if they feel weak on their own. Besides, you can always bring in -just- the E.T.s against something like Goblins, Elves, or Merfolk as an additional way to find Pernicious Deed, which is nice.

[Koby]

Thank you for the report, it's very interesting to read your experience with the deck.

I'm working on putting the pieces together right now and tinker around with some of the different packages. What are some of your typical Gifts piles that you used to take control of the game?

[Tao]

@arian: Thanks for the report! I have the same thoughts. I am sure that a very high tier deck is somewhere in this but it is hard to play and build.
Your list seems a bit too wild. 4 colors with 22 lands including 3 colorless lands and 9 lands that produce only one colour. And only 6 fetchlands. I am sure that is the main reason for mulliganing too often.

Natural Order sounds like really good. We have a ton of sacrificable creatures, we have Therapy to clear the path and we need a reliable win condition. And we are weak against Progenitus. Am I missing something? Isn't this maindeck stuff at least in the blue versions with Brainstorm?

@Philipp: I don't have a good list atm that I am 10% behind so I didn't feel good posting it.

[Koby]

I was wondering if Birthing Pod would make a good fit into this deck? It seems busted getting an Academy Rector by sacing any of the 3-drops. Has anyone experimented with it yet?

[Philipp2293]

I did actually toy around with Birthing Pod, but couldn't figure out a perfect configuration yet.

But 3 drops - Explorer(/Solemn Simulacrum maybe?) -> Yosei -> Titan seems at least like a good starting point for such a chain.

Additional thought:

IMHO the deck is starting to do too many things. You can assemble stuff with Rector and Gifts, why not just go one route? This way you could either drop blue or white.

[Arianrhod]

@Tao -- NO main is something that I have considered a few times, but I like it better in the sideboard to answer graveyard hate after g1, so that people misboard. I suppose that you could have a limited graveyard package + NO main, but I think that it would cut down on the answers too much. I see this deck more as control with a combo finish than anything else.

It does seem a little wild on paper, I'll grant you, but in practice it's much less so. There's only three blue cards in the entire deck, which is a slight enough splash that it rarely ever causes problems. Additionally, with the Explorers, color fixing and hitting 6+ mana is not a problem at all. I did run a few more land at one point, but I flooded too much. Maybe with Brainstorm one could get away with it, but I don't see a Brainstorm-less version being able to run more than 22 or 23 at the absolute tops. The tower almost always has something to feed to it, so I don't really consider that truly colorless. The trick is that when I've been testing it locally, it hasn't mulliganed anywhere near as much as it did at Pitt. I've logged a pretty good number of hours with this deck, and it hadn't reacted like that yet -- I'm going to wait at least another couple of events before messing with the mana base to see if that would improve anything. Other than this weekend, it just hasn't been a problem at all.

@rukcus -- the Gifts piles are usually very situational. A few standard ones would be something like Nightmare + Yosei + Witness + Sun Titan for the kill, Swords + Path + Fleshbag + Witness for dealing with a problem creature, (postboard) Blood + Edict + Fleshbag + Witness for getting rid of an S&T Emrakul or NO/Prog. Titan + Witness + Therapy + Rector is another pile that I use fairly often, just to set up control of the game, as is Titan + Witness + Nightmare + Deed. Then consider specific answer cards, specific situations, and having certain cards in your hand, and everything can change -- if you have a Witness in hand, or an active Titan in play, for example, some of the Gifts piles you can make do absolutely degenerate things. In the future I'll try to note down some of the piles I make in specific situations, because that's one of the hardest parts of the whole deck. I know I didn't make the best piles every time I resolved Gifts this weekend, and that's just going to take time, I think. Could be interesting to look at, if nothing else.

Taking out Glissa and the Capsule opens up one spot. This list was 61, because I wanted the 6th discard spell but didn't know what to take out, so I just ran with it. So, once it's back to 60, I'll have another bullet spot to work with. There's a huge number of options, so it's probably going to take a while -- especially since every single spot in a deck like this is so crucial.

[Solpugid]

Could that slot become retribution of the meek to handle NO/S&T creatures (plus goyf, tombstalker, knight) without having to deed the board first? Seems like your gifts piles can make sure it lands in your hand, and it would have helped in a lot of your matchups. In a pinch it can at least off your own yosei.

Your report was a lot of fun to read, I'll be interested to see how this deck develops.

[Arianrhod]

It could -- that's something I'm considering, but at this point I think the first thing I'm going to test is adding the 3rd Rector.

I had a random idea a few minutes ago, and I figured I'd store it here for posterity. I don't know the efficacy of this idea, especially since we can just board in NO, but we could reasonably sideboard the Hulk plan, I think. We have a lot of the same ways to sac creatures that they do, if not more, and with our Explorers for ramp, we could hardcast the Hulk fairly easily. I don't think that it's that good of an idea, but it may be there a hybridization between Explorer the card and the Hulk combo could work.

RE Birthing Pod: I think that there is a deck that could use Birthing Pod in Legacy that hasn't been found yet. At the same time, I don't think that this deck is it. It seems like it might use a lot of the same cards, admittedly -- Kitchen Finks springs immediately to mind as being busted with Pod, but I'm not sure that shoehorning it into here would necessarily be the best plan -- if you want to try that, you'd have to rebuild the deck from the ground up, I think.

[Koby]

I plan on doing so. I'm hoping that the artifact hate isn't rampant enough to allow it to work. Moreover, I'm hoping the deck is fast enough to make Birthing once (or maybe twice) would be enough to gain advantage and win.

It's a shame Bloodbraid Elf it's a EtB trigger ;)

[sco0ter]

I tried Birthing Pod. In my experience you need many creatures (as Survival did), like 22+, and more important a good curve. It's even hard to squeeze 4 Deeds in it. Maybe they aren't really needed. Probably Birthing Pod belongs into another deck, with more creatures and a good curve.

Here's an untested idea (maybe one could even run 4 Explorers and cut 2 drops). The old RGBSA and current T2 lists inspired me ;)

Tuktuk + Cabal Therapy actually seems quite nice on paper, too.


4 Birthing Pod

3 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtseize
3 Burning Wish

4 Birds of Paradise
2 Veteran Explorer

3 Viridian Emissary
3 Wall of Blossoms

1 Eternal Witness
1 Vithian Renegades
1 Big Game Hunter
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Tuktuk the Explorer

1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Entomber Exarch
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Vengevine

1 Shriekmaw
1 Indrik Stomphowler

1 Massacre Wurm
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One

4 Bayou
4 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
6 Forest
4 Verdant Catacombs

SB: 1 Firespout
SB: 1 Chainer's Edict
SB: 1 Cabal Therapy
SB: 1 Primal Command
SB: 1 Tsunami
SB: 1 Gleeful Sabotage
SB: 1 Memoricide
SB: 1 Deathmark
SB: 1 Pyroclasm
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 2 Magus of the Moon

[Brushwagg]

I like the idea of Pod, I was actually thinking about it today, but really should be a new thread.

@List:Where has KotR gone?? Not just for the beater slot but put a small land tool box in the deck. I've been running a Wasteland but, I'm going to try out Dust Bowl. Basically there to deal with the problem lands, but I will cut my opponent off a color or kill there only land if I can.

[waSP]

Is there a reason the blue builds are not running Jace? I've yet to draw him in testing, but it seems like he would be strong. Maybe not as strong as Karn, but...

[Arianrhod]

I've tried Jace in mine -- both big and little Jace. Little Jace was amusing because you can Titan it, which turns it into a Jace-machine gun and a card advantage engine. The problem is the UU mana cost. I can handle a single U for three Gifts Ungiven pretty easily -- more than that, though, and it gets dicey. You'd have to cut a color if you wanted Jace, for sure.

[Tao]

This is the list I am currently using. The Ooze and Natural Order idea were essential.
I re-added GSZ in favor of two Explorers. It is often just the same because most one landers are mulligans anyway so you can just GSZ him and have it be a much better card later in the game. Not sure if DSZ/Explorer split should be 3/2 or 2/3.
The Ooze makes GSZ flexible enough and with Natural Order it gets better anyway. Now it can get Mana, Life, Yard hate, Disenchant, Regrowth and threats.

Natural Order was very much worth it. Not sure if 2 or 3 is the correct number but 2 feels fine. It is a win condition but can't race anything so not that many are needed. With Gifts you can always tutor for it (Regrowth, Witness, Natural Order + X) so it is like playing 4 if you need it to win.


// Lands
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
3 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [B] Bayou
2 [B] Tropical Island
1 [B] Underground Sea
3 [B] Forest
2 [B] Swamp
1 [B] Island
1 [US] Phyrexian Tower
1 [FUT] Dryad Arbor

// Creatures
2 [WL] Veteran Explorer
3 [FD] Eternal Witness
3 [SH] Wall of Blossoms
1 [MBS] Thrun, the Last Troll
1 [ARC] Wickerbough Elder
1 [COM] Scavenging Ooze
1 [CFX] Progenitus
1 [SHM] Kitchen Finks

// Spells
4 [JU] Cabal Therapy
4 [IA] Brainstorm
3 [AP] Pernicious Deed
2 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
1 [NPH] Dismember
1 [OD] Innocent Blood
3 [MBS] Green Sun's Zenith
2 [JGC] Natural Order
2 [CHK] Gifts Ungiven
1 [B] Regrowth
1 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 [M12] Garruk, Primal Hunter

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
SB: 4 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 1 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
SB: 1 [US] Duress
SB: 1 [ARC] Wall of Roots
SB: 1 [ARC] Shriekmaw
SB: 1 [PLC] Damnation
SB: 1 [MBS] Go for the Throat
SB: 1 [M10] Doom Blade

[Arianrhod]

How's the Wall of Blossoms working out for you? I'd think about cutting that for the other 2 Explorers and probably either a 2nd Finks or another GSZ target -- I just don't know how good the Wall is going to be without having Sun Titan to rebuy it. Since you're much heavier blue, you probably won't be able to avoid having an Island against Fish, so they won't do much there. I guess they're good against Goblins and Zoo, but I'm skeptical elsewhere. Otherwise it looks good. Pretty different in style from mine, but definitely good. It's pretty neat how this archetype seemingly has a lot of sub-archetypes within it...almost like the old Survival decks.

For what it's worth, though, I do really disagree with cutting the 2 Explorers. I'm not sure if Blossoms is the right cut or not, but I'd really try to put them back in. Maybe the heavier blue version works a little differently, since you have Brainstorm, but for me, having multiple Explorers go off to thin my deck means that I will win almost every late-game topdeck war due to having so many fewer land in my deck. That's to say nothing of the nutty starts that Explorer + Tower or Therapy can lead to...I think having 4x Explorer is pretty mandatory. But by all means, try it and see how it goes.

[Tao]

My theory behind reducing Explorer: Explorer has high variance. There are hands and matchups in which I don't want him so it is good to have GSZ instead. A starting hand of 4 lands, Cabal Therapy and Maelstrom Pulse gets way better with GSZ than with Explorer as the 7th card for example.
And when I want him he is so incredibly awesome that he is easily worth 2 Mana so having a GSZ is ok then too.

Wall of Blossoms is good. Saves a removal or some life points and stabilizes your draws. Cycling is a useful ability in this type of decks. On top of that it has important synergy with Cabal Therapy and Natural Order.