[Deck] GW Survival

[worsel]

@spirit of the wretch

I would like to try your deck... can you please post your sideboard?

[spirit of the wretch]

Current SB:


3 Faerie Macabre
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Pyroblasts
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Karakas
1 Path to Exile
1 Maze of Ith
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Loyal Retainers

[lorddotm]

Current SB:


1 Loyal Retainers

Isn't it painful playing with a 100 dollar sideboard card?

[MSC]

It doesn't matter, what that card costs. It's just, that the Retainers/Iona isn't good against every Deck, but having less Dead Cards and more Speed is.
It's still great against certain Decks and is therefore deserves the Sideboard-Slots...


My Sideboard is a little different, as I'm still running Mindcensors Main...

2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
3 Faerie Macabre
1 Genesis
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Gaddock Teeg
2 Meddling Mage
1 Tropical Island

[Muela]

@MSC Wow at those MM in SB When do you side them in? can you play them consistently with your BoP/NH and that tropical?

[MSC]

They are obvisly for the Combo-Matchups. This includes Decks like Show and Tell, Thopter-Foundry or Enchantress, where this Deck needs some Time to find and shut the Deal with Iona...

Casting them is no Problem: 8 Fetchlands, and 5 NH/Bird to find that Blue Mana is more than enough.

[Muela]

What do you think about Emrakul as a better option against enchantress and as a second/main genesis as well?

[MSC]

I'd like the Idea, but there are to few Decks, where Emrakul is better than Iona. Sidebard-Space is very Limited. I'm allready missing a second Teeg...

Genesis Main is something I wouldn't play. The Idea is, to be as independent from Survial as possible and to have a fast clock without it. And a 5-Mana 4/4 doesn't fit in either of the Plans.
General that "I throw a Goyf at you every Round"-Plan is good enough to Win with an active Survival. The few Matchups (like Enchantress), where it doesn't, I have plenty of Sideboard Options.

[Muela]

I agree with you about Genesis in the main. I didn't explain myself properly; by "second/main genesis" I meant replacing genesis with emrakul.

I see some good points in that change, but my biggest worry is that emrakul-recycle only works with an active survival, unlike genesis...

Regarding Iona, I see that Iona/Retainers totally deserve the slots in SB.

[ChrisElrod]

I wrote a brief tournament report on here, but then closed firefox before posting so it was lost.
The primary point was/is to demonstrate how many games were won without survival-a good half, which is a lot, considering you should draw survival in at least half your games.
The metagame where I played is currently very lacking in combo; I heard one guy normally takes dream halls, but that day he ran some non-combo deck.

I lost round 1, but after that I was undefeated, ending with a 6-1 record, splitting the final (which would have been against UG madness survival). Only two of my 6 wins didn't end 2-0:
Round 1:
1-2 loss against morph.dec
To clarify, this isn't someone's random budget deck; this is the only legacy deck the player uses at all recently, and he has an 1820 rating currently, so it certainly isn't bad, even if it isn't an established deck.
The deck runs 4 fathom seers, 4 vesuvan dopplegangers, 4 dark confidants, 4 fow, 4 knight of the reliquary, 4 pulse, jiites, and some other random stuff.
I lost games 1 and 3, both due to mulliganing extremely mana-light hands into mana flood. While I pile shuffled, I still feel like bad shuffling on my part was to blame.
Round 2:
2-1 win vs burn.
Lost game 1; boarded in iona which won me games 2 and 3.
Round 3:
2-0 vs mono-U merfolk
Game 1 I didn't use survival; game 2 I may have; don't remember.
Round 4:
2-0 vs GWB junk; I was told the pilot had consistently been placing with that deck in recent weeks.
As a note, I didn't get survival g1, and only at the very end of a fairly long g2. He did board in 3 extirpate and 2 other gy hate which he never saw (which would've helped; a hard casted and recurring exalted vengevine went on the offense through the entire game).
Round 5:
2-0 vs enchantress; I got lucky, and he kept a bad hand, so I managed to steal game 1. I was told enchantress was swarming the meta (apparently it was; at least 4 or 5 enchantress players showed up), so my sideboard had a decent bit of hate. Didn't use survival g2.
--cut to top 8--
Round 6/quarter final
2-1 vs (different) enchantress. G1 I had survival and a fast hand, but he used mainboard pithing needle, and did what enchantress does.
G2, had a turn 2 and turn 3 knight, while his mana base was almost entirely non-basic. I crushed him.
G3, the boarded in retainers+iona+emrakul won it.
Round 7/semifinal
2-0 vs merfolk. G1 I had survival, g2 he was badly manascrewed.
Round 8-split the final.

Roughly half the games I won were without the help of survival; with a resolved survival the deck was extremely explosive and powerful.
Other than having huge trouble against combo, I think this deck appears exceptionally strong. If a good sideboard plan against it can be developed, I feel like this deck can be hugely successful. It has enough power and consistency so that I don't think it really needs and sideboard hate for many of the creature decks that jostle for board presence, but I haven't tested against zoo or goblins yet. I have to echo that it feels like a buy against non black-splash merfolk.
Or maybe I just like it so much because it uses a lot of my very favorite cards (survival, knight, and mom in particular).

I was running a stone forge mystic + equipment package, and was not using weathered wayfarers. Retainers was in the board; I think my list was overall pretty standard.
As a final note, I was running the full 4 vengevines, and found them quite respectable without survival. Especially when alongside a total of 8 exalted dudes (hiearachs, pridemages). It is a four drop your opponent may actually be hesitant to trade a goyf for.

[Muradin]

Played the Zoo Survival build made by team SPOD to a 5-0 in our local tournament with 32 players today. I played the maindeck suggested by Stefan Czolk: -2 Kitchen Finks, - 1 Stingscourger, + 3 Grim Lavamancer.

Dreadstill 2-1
Gwb Vengevine Rock 2-0
Aggro Bant 2-0
R Goblins 2-1
Rb Goblins 2-0

The deck performed very well and was a blast to play even though my sideboard was a total mess due to me not having any Loyal Retainers or other cards required here. Grim lavamancer was strong in this field as he was essential to my wins against the creature decks.

[Rigero]

Played the Zoo Survival build made by team SPOD to a 5-0 in our local tournament with 32 players today. I played the maindeck suggested by Stefan Czolk: -2 Kitchen Finks, - 1 Stingscourger, + 3 Grim Lavamancer.

Dreadstill 2-1
Gwb Vengevine Rock 2-0
Aggro Bant 2-0
R Goblins 2-1
Rb Goblins 2-0

The deck performed very well and was a blast to play even though my sideboard was a total mess due to me not having any Loyal Retainers or other cards required here. Grim lavamancer was strong in this field as he was essential to my wins against the creature decks.

Hi,

has this Survival-Zoo.dec anything to do with GW -Survival anymore? I mean you cut the mothers, the finks and so on... maybe we should start a new thread for the Survival Zoo deck.

Anyway congratulation to your result.


I played in a 22 Player Tournament today too, going 4-0-1 first place.

List:

// Lands
3 Wasteland
2 Tropical Island
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
1 Plains
3 Savannah
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Tundra
1 Horizon Canopy

// Creatures
2 Basking Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Wonder
2 Qasali Pridemage
4 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Trygon Predator
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Fauna Shaman
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Loyal Retainers
4 Mother of Runes

// Spells
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Swords to Plowshares

// Sideboard
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Gaddock Teeg
3 Spell Pierce
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Krosan Grip
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Children of Korlis
1 Meddling Mage


Round 1: UGR- Fearies 2-0
Round 2: Bant Aggro 2-0
Round 3: Zoo 2-0
Round 4: Belcher 2-1 yeah this time my hate was good enough to win this!
Round 5: Dreadge 1-1-1 We played and go into the turns. at least i would have won this if we had two more turns.

The Deck performed quite well and i still don't see any need for additional Path in the Sideboard.

[Tao]

I'm glad to see that the deck places so well. It is strong and fun to play.

I think the Naya lists do belong in this thread. They are well thought of. All they do is to trade a bit mana consistency and explosiveness with Survival for speed and slightly higher card quality. But unlike with that Lumberjack deck their game plan is overall still the same as of traditional GW. And it would suck if there were like 10 different threads on this site for every deviation of the deck.

I think Children of Korlis might really deserve a SB slot. I always thought of it as a bad Teeg/Canonist vs. Tendrils Combo. But Children have other uses too: It is cool to have a sacrifice creature vs. Dredge, especially one that gains a bit life back, but Spore Frog is just not flexible enough and the other sac creatures don't fit into the deck. With Finks being played less the deck might have serious problems vs. burn decks. Children also help in that matchup.

[Valdez]

Well GW Survival has also won the monthly tourneys in Iserlohn(?) and Bochum (5-0/10-1 like my last list -1 Wasteland, -1 Forest + 1 Krakas, +1 BoP) today too, so it seems, like it has won any tourney played ingermany today... ;)

[evanmartyr]

Children definitely deserve a slot, it's a versatile enough answer against decks that can combo out that it ends up being a Time Walk (or better) against most of them, and it's one of your few reasonable stall cards against Belcher.

The lists containing blue definitely deserve to be here. The main difference between this and the UG Madness/Survival decks is that these do not run a significant number of blue cards, as they have no intention of supporting Force of Will. Rigero's list has what, 2 blue cards in the main? One of which isn't even intended to be cast.

[venice]

Played the Zoo Survival build made by team SPOD to a 5-0 in our local tournament with 32 players today. I played the maindeck suggested by Stefan Czolk: -2 Kitchen Finks, - 1 Stingscourger, + 3 Grim Lavamancer.

Grats to you!

After testing the GWr list for some games I came to the conclusion aswell, that Grim Lavamancer definitely needs to be added to the list; since it supports the overall gameplan much better than Kitchen Finks does. To be honest: I wonder why it got removed from the "original" list, which Clemens played, anyways - it´s one main reason to make a red splash, imo.
Besides that, I also changed SoFaI (which I find being FAR to clunky in this particular list) for 1 Basilisk Collar, since it´s obv nuts combined with our little Lava friend. And to increase the chance of getting those two together, I also did -1 Qasali +1 Stoneforge Mystic.

I´m very curious about your sideboard and boarding strategy, especially against Dreadstill. Since Stefan´s list doesn´t run any Krosan Grips, that matchup appears to be tough. (though, I know facing Dreadstill is usually about who´s playing the list, but still...)

[Muradin]

The guy playing the Dreadstill seemed to be unexperienced with it. However he was a savage cheater all the time trying to do things like: Brainstorm, Brainstorm, go, and I was like, well yeah, put back 4 cards first of all. Furthermore he tried to play cards he couldn't play all the time (like Goyf with Volcanic + Wasteland) and always "forgot" to lose life from his FoW + Fetches. He definitely sucked at playing the deck, even with all of this cheating.

My boarding here was:

-4 Lightning Bolt
+2 Krosan Grip
+2 ReB

Pretty easy, but as I stated earlier, my board was not tweaked at all and was totally overloading on combo hate.

To tell the truth, while the deck was definitely solid all day long, I have already come to the conclusion that the standard Gw Survival deck discussed in this thread has proven to be way stronger and I'll be playing this deck with some minor tweaks next time:

http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=37842

[Rune]

@Rigero

Congrats on finish. I like your list, but there are a few things that don't seem right to me.

-21 lands don't seem enough for this deck since it's so mana-hungry, has Wastelands it wants to use aggressively and it doesn't play Brainstorm.
-Is it really worth playing 2 Rootwallas just so you can get Vengevines at instant speed? (I'm guessing this is why you have 2)

I really like the blue splash. Spell Pierce, Wonder and Meddling Mage are great cards to have access to. You could also add a Clone to your sideboard since this deck, like many others, has problems dealing with a fast Natural Order.

[Rigero]

@Rigero

Congrats on finish. I like your list, but there are a few things that don't seem right to me.

-21 lands don't seem enough for this deck since it's so mana-hungry, has Wastelands it wants to use aggressively and it doesn't play Brainstorm.
-Is it really worth playing 2 Rootwallas just so you can get Vengevines at instant speed? (I'm guessing this is why you have 2)

I really like the blue splash. Spell Pierce, Wonder and Meddling Mage are great cards to have access to. You could also add a Clone to your sideboard since this deck, like many others, has problems dealing with a fast Natural Order.

21 lands is the lower end i know, it works fine but i think an additional Land would be better (this would be the 4th Savannah or a second horizon canopy). Wastelands are always good. I've tried to play without but killing the manabase with Knight and shutting down utility lands like Academy Ruins is just too good and needed, at least in my tournamentenvironment.

Brainstorm: I testet Brainstorm but i think they aren't needed in this list, cause they are not aggressive enough and most of the time you just don't want to play them. You want to play some guys for the mana and first turn BS is most of the time just bad play and leads to keep a hand instead of taing a mulligan. Addionaly i don't have the 4 Slots or anything to cut for them.

Two Rootwallas: I don't only play them for instant VV. I just want a second option when there was a boardsweeper. If firespout or perish hits the board with two or three VV on it and everything just goes to the grave, without squee we need to much time to set up the combo again cause we need to draw two creatures. Rootwallas are one reason why we can play without squee afterall otherwise we won't do enough cardadvantage from survival of the fittest.

Clone could be an option in the sideboard if you are expecting many natural order decks, but with survival on board and vengevine the deck we can race a progentius, especialy with wonder(which is the reason for me to splash blue).

[Rune]

21 lands is the lower end i know, it works fine but i think an additional Land would be better (this would be the 4th Savannah or a second horizon canopy). Wastelands are always good. I've tried to play without but killing the manabase with Knight and shutting down utility lands like Academy Ruins is just too good and needed, at least in my tournamentenvironment.

Brainstorm: I testet Brainstorm but i think they aren't needed in this list, cause they are not aggressive enough and most of the time you just don't want to play them. You want to play some guys for the mana and first turn BS is most of the time just bad play and leads to keep a hand instead of taing a mulligan. Addionaly i don't have the 4 Slots or anything to cut for them.

Two Rootwallas: I don't only play them for instant VV. I just want a second option when there was a boardsweeper. If firespout or perish hits the board with two or three VV on it and everything just goes to the grave, without squee we need to much time to set up the combo again cause we need to draw two creatures. Rootwallas are one reason why we can play without squee afterall otherwise we won't do enough cardadvantage from survival of the fittest.

Clone could be an option in the sideboard if you are expecting many natural order decks, but with survival on board and vengevine the deck we can race a progentius, especialy with wonder(which is the reason for me to splash blue).

Maybe I didn't express myself clearly, but I just said that your land count seemed low for a deck that requires a lot of mana and at the same time does not play Brainstorm , I didn't suggest you should play it (just think the land count should be upped, that's all). :}

I agree that you can often race Prog, but the MU vs Bant NoProg seems like a coin flip, mostly because of they have the hydra, and Clone can somewhat improve it. For both players, Noble Hierarch seems like a key card in this matchup, strangely enough.