[Deck] Zoo

[Svenyboy]

Well, I think in your Metagame are 4 Path to Exile definitely better than 2. And I dont think you need Tin Street Hooligan, too. Ok, Hooligan is against Loam good but against Merfolk its very bad because it isnt important to handle the Vial, your matchup is very good. And what does Hooligan against Bant? Random Jitte?

[Skeggi]

Sven Dijt, Top 8 with Naya Zoo at GP Madrid says: 'Wasteland was MVP all day".

[hungryLIKEALION]

I played a Zoo build with wasteland some time last year and was basically told to GTFO the thread...

[Nelis]

It has been on my mind as well. I think I have actually mentioned it somewhere on this site.

Let's say we want to run Wastelands what would a list look like? Should Wasteland be included in the manabase (so 20/21 lands including wasteland) or should it be seen as an extra disruption card and replace a nonland card. And do we want to play 4 or is it better running less like 2 or 3?

[Skeggi]

Why not take Sven's list to start with:

60 cards
4 Arid Mesa
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
2 Plateau
2 Savannah
2 Taiga
3 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
23 lands

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

2 Chain Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
3 Swords to Plowshares
11 other spells

Sideboard
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Krosan Grip
3 Mindbreak Trap
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Wasteland
15 sideboard cards

He said he'd cut to two Wastelands though, 3 was a bit much.

[Nelis]

Jesus i'd seen the list but didn't realize he had them in the main as well.

By the looks of it he added 3 wasteland in favor of removal/sylvan library.

EDIT: another interesting thing about the list is that white and green are his main colors.

[aldaryn]

In a Zoo list focused on white with 3-4 Knight of the Reliquary, I can't help but suggest playing 1 Karakas. Against reanimator you can bounce Sphinx, Iona, Blazing Archon, etc.

[tpnp]

I was unaware that Karakas could bounce Sphinx and Blazing Archon...

*checks card*

Nope, still can't.

Having said that, it's still interesting because you can hit Iona. That alone might warrant an inclusion.

[Maveric78f]

You'll call me crazy but has anyone tried Violent Outburst in zoo?

[hungryLIKEALION]

No, but I'm not sure why you would want to.

[Svenyboy]

Has anyone tested Sarkhan Vol? It is really good. I play this list atm:

3 Grim Lavamancer
4 Kird Ape
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Lightning Helix
4 Path to Exile
4 Chain Lightning
2 Sylvan Library
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sarkhan Vol
4 Arid Mesa
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Horizon Canopy
4 Plateau
1 Savannah
4 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains

This list is very explosive. Furthermore you have a better Bant Aggro/Countertop matchup becuase you play Jitte and Vol. At the moment I like 4 Helix but I havent a free slot for the fourth.What do you think about it. I tested it against a lot of decks and Sarkhan Vol is good against every deck (ok, it isnt good against Burn and something like White Weenie). The only problem what I see is that it is difficult to cast espessially against Thresh and Loam. But I think against Thresh Jitte wins alone and Loam is very slow and you havent got any problems with this tier 2 deck.
Comments to Sarkhan Vol?

[Rizso]

For a 4cc dropp i rather use Ranger of Eos, Bloodbraidlf Elf or Elspeth.

[Loxodon Baileyarch]

WASTELAND STILL SUCKS IN ZOO! Jeez.

[Eldariel]

Tossed together Wasted Zoo in the spirit of Sven's list, but with less dumb one-drops and more burn:

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
1 [M10] Plains (1)
1 [M10] Forest (1)
1 [M10] Mountain (1)
3 [R] Taiga
2 [ON] Windswept Heath
4 [ON] Wooded Foothills
2 [FUT] Horizon Canopy
2 [R] Plateau
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
3 [TE] Wasteland

// Creatures
4 [ARB] Qasali Pridemage
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [TO] Grim Lavamancer
3 [CFX] Knight of the Reliquary
2 [9E] Kird Ape
4 [ALA] Wild Nacatl
2 [LRW] Gaddock Teeg

// Spells
2 [5E] Sylvan Library
2 [DD2] Fireblast
3 [CFX] Path to Exile
3 [LG] Chain Lightning
4 [M10] Lightning Bolt

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [LRW] Gaddock Teeg
SB: 1 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 3 [EX] Price of Progress
SB: 1 [CFX] Volcanic Fallout
SB: 2 [8E] Choke
SB: 2 [4E] Red Elemental Blast
SB: 3 [ZEN] Mindbreak Trap
SB: 2 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist

Of course, Wastelands present the obvious conundrum that Path to Exile is pretty huge a nonbo with them, while StP is not at all concurrent with the deck's own gameplan. Something has to give here, but I think you aren't really forced to use PtE that early and can generally afford to keep it back until you can remodel the opponent's face. Of course, StP is a consideration-worthy card too even if it's superficially at odds with the "deal 20"-gameplan. It's historically worked just fine; it still might.

Knight+Waste is as solid as ever and Knight still goes nice with Horizon Canopy (I never cared much for Savannahs since the scenarios where I fetched it were really fringe while the ability to pop Canopy for a card both, turbocharges KoR for a filtering engine, and enables leveraging manaflood hands), and it just so happens an aggressive beatdown deck is able to make quite the nice use of keeping the game at 1-2 lands; who knew?!

With how big ANT is now, I don't think you can win ignoring it or with the "4 Hope//Pray"-plan very consistently anymore, which provoked me to try Sven's approach (coupled with the SB REBs that mostly blast Counterbalances but happen to fuck up ANT's setup/bounce just fine too), and while I was skeptical, combined with your clock and the added mana disruption from Wastelands, it actually gives you decent game pre- and post-board.


I'm sure someone will point out how Gaddock Teeg and Fireblast are a nombo, but just like PtE and Waste, that isn't really that big a problem since generally, in MUs where you want Teeg, they'll either remove him or lose and it's easy enough to turn him into a roadkill as long as both sides have creatures. Most importantly, Fireblasts give another means of winning the ANT MU by just burning them too low to AN efficiently over the first two turns.

So...yeah, that's the initial experiences anyways. I'll be testing it more, to be sure. But given how damn obvious Wastes In Red Deck is, I'm kinda surprised it took a GP Top 8 to really bring it into limelight. I mean, Zoo certainly operates better at lower landcounts than most of the format and greatly prefers keeping opponent's broken cards out of the equation. I didn't find the mana consistency too big an issue since you still have 20 colored lands, and with only two Fireblasts, finding Mountains for them is practically never an issue.

One thing I absolutely disagree with Sven's list is lacking Price of Progress in his 75. That's one of the best cards in the deck against much of the field, and the addition of Wastes frankly doesn't change that since if you can keep a deck usually high on mana down on mana well enough to make Price inefficient, you should win anyways. That and Lands is apparently a rather big deck and there's very little one can do against it without Price. Of course, not having gravehate is completely unacceptable too and there should be some Crypts in the SB, but I have yet to work out where exactly.

Also, I still like Sylvan Library and the insane advantage it provides in a large number of MUs way too much to not include two.

[Skeggi]

WASTELAND STILL SUCKS IN ZOO! Jeez.

If you look at the quarter final match where he lost to Reanimate, you see Wasteland was very, very good. Muller really had to luck out to pull out the two wins, unfortunately for Sven, he did. But it might as well have been 2-0 for Sven. Because of Wasteland.

I also advised Sven against running Wastelands. Thankfully he's a wise man and doesn't listen to me

[Loxodon Baileyarch]

If you look at the quarter final match where he lost to Reanimate, you see Wasteland was very, very good. Muller really had to luck out to pull out the two wins, unfortunately for Sven, he did. But it might as well have been 2-0 for Sven. Because of Wasteland.

I also advised Sven against running Wastelands. Thankfully he's a wise man and doesn't listen to me

I mean if it works for others then sure. I've just NEVER had luck with Wasteland or Canopy with the deck. I won several tournaments with Zoo, but i don't think a Wasteland in my opener is what i wanna see ya know? And i would think that you would have to bump the mana base up to 21 or 22 with more Knights for it to as effective as you want it to be.

I still hold that i don't think it's a good card for Zoo, but hey people run what they want. I'm just here to advise.

[Eldariel]

Sven played 23 lands including 3 Wastelands; I think you need about 20 lands to get your colored mana requirements right, so it does present an opportunity cost of having extra lands in the deck. On the flipside, it makes supporting higher CC creatures much easier and improves the match-ups against a large variety of archetypes (including the traditionally most difficult combo MU). It's also more in line with the historically successful red decks (generally playing 23-24 lands including 4 Waste and occasionally Ports too), which suggests to me it's on the right tracks. Though of course, we don't run Cursed Scroll and thus have less use for all that extra mana. Really, it comes down to whether you want two more spells in the deck or not. I like Knight of Reliquary quite a bit anyways given how huge it is, beating decks that can't remove it handily. Hell, I've had Knight big enough to give Phyrexian Dreadnought a pause.

[Svenyboy]

Can anyone help me? Why play a lot of players Knight and Lavamancer in the same deck? I mean it is an antisynergie. I have many problems with that cards. For example:
Turn 1: Fetch, Lavamancer, GO.
Turn 2: Fetch, Lavamancer attack or shoot? Normally I shoot but I had the Knight in my hand and if i would remove my fetchlands for lavaamncer knight would be very small. What is the right play? Why anyone plays Lavamancer and knight in the same build?
Thanks

[Rizso]

I play with 3 Grim Lavamancers 2 Knight of the Reliquary. For myself i focusing my Grim Lavamancers to remove none- landcards first. Most of my grim aktivations goes to creatures and then when opponent got lower life the some actiavations goes to the face but still blockers and such. I find Knight way better then the Woolly Thoctar, way bigger. Knight can also give the lavamancers a couple of extra activaction when needed. I dont see them that much antisynergy as thought they could see.

[Genericcactus]

What do you guys think of the list that top 8ed at the Starcitygames open this past weekend? Treetop village? 24 lands?