It can be really good, but I'd play with Dryad Arbor if you aren't already, because you don't want it to be useless. My bro played a singleton Hymn to Tourach to chain into after sacrificing Veteran Explorer to intent, but again, mostly a combo card.Originally Posted by Vacrix
Diabolic Intent has been in there since the beginning, and it is bound to stay there. Started off with 3 of them, but reduced the number to 2 since I'm running 3 sensei's.Has anyone tested Diabolic Intent? I'm playing it in a different list currently and its a beast.. but in this deck it would basically be a Demonic Tutor. It would allow you to find Deed when you really need it, or whatever else you need to adapt to the opponent's strategy. Playing it maindeck especially would mean that your post-board hate becomes that much stronger when you can tutor it up at will.
They are a nice addition to GSZ, due to the fact they can look up non-green creatures like Sun Titan or a postboard Peacekeeper. The additional cost of saccing a creature also helped out versus counter, like cabal therapy.
Sure, here the list... When I build it I make it to play against the unfair decks.
// Lands
3 Forest
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
1 Savannah
3 Bayou
2 Plains
2 Swamp
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Scrubland
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Dryad Arbor
// Creatures
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Eternal Witness
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Grave Titan
1 Sun Titan
1 Wickerbough Elder
1 Spike Feeder
// Spells
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Enlightened Tutor
3 Thoughtseize
2 Maelstrom Pulse
// Sideboard
1 Spike Feeder
2 Duress
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Path to Exile
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Gaddock Teeg
BUG fit with a deck tech? Awesome. I'm still a bit confused by hornet queen, but it doesn't seem the worst.
I played in a small legacy 11 man tournament today. I went a lousy 2-2.
//vs MUD (0-2)
G1: I mull to 5 with one land in hand. I cabal therapy him naming STP and see he is playing mud he has 2 Metalworkers, Lightning Greaves, City of Traitors, Mox Diamond, Darksteel Citadel, and Lodestone Golem. He draws wasteland plays Mox Diamond and greaves pitching Darksteel Citadel. I fetch for dryad arbor and cast Cabal Therapy getting rid of metal worker since I have Swords in hand. He plays City of Traitors Lodestone golem. I play fetch and swords his Golem. Then he taps city of traitors plays ancient tomb then casts Kudotha Forgemaster fetches for Sundering Titan and basically armageddons me.
G2: I keep a great hand. 2 Cabal Therapy, Veteran Explorer, Top, 2 fetch lands, and Kitchen finks. I turn 1 fetch swamp Cabal Therapy Metalworker. He revels 1 Metalwokrer, 2 chalice of the Void, 2 grim monolith and 2 lightning greaves and a Wurmcoil. Turn 1 Chalice for 1 and I get slaughter by Wurmcoil. Drew deed and and recurring nightmare but I was at 6 when I finally drew my 3rd land. Kitchen finks saved me a few turns and I popped deed the turn after but I couldn't catch up to Wurmcoil with Lightning Greaves.
Match: 0-1
//vs UR Dever (2-1)
G1. We go back and forth, he gets me down to 5. I cast Thragtusk, pod him into Sun Titan Brining back Kitchen finks and go to 12. He hits me for 2 with grim lavamancer. Then top decks fire blast and double fireblasts me and hits me for 2 with lavamancer.
G2. He spends most of his burn killing my Strangleroot Geists and Kitchen finks. But he gets me down to 8 with double flipped delver on the board. His had is empty and hits me for 6 while he is at 8. I cast Thragtusk and Phyrexian Metamorph it to gain 10.
G3. He plays island pass. I play turn 1 Carpet of flowers, then cabal therapy naming fire blasts taking 2 out of his hand (hand down to 4. Brainstorm, 2 Chain lightning and Scalding Tarn). He fetches mountain double Chain Lightning me on his turn. I use mana from Carpet of flowers to cast Veteran Explorer sac Explorer to Phyrexian Tower and cast Thragtusk turn 2. He scoops.
Matches: 1-1
//vs RUG Delver (1-2)
G1 I mull down to 5 and get stuck with the 2 lands in my starting hand until turn 6. I race him down to 6 with Double Strangleroot geists, but then he lands Tarmogoyf and I can't get through.
G2. I get an early Veteran Explorer Cabal Therapy to ramp into Birthing Pod then into Academy Rector. I get Thragktusk and deed. He steels my Thragtusk with Gilded Drake then I play Thrun swords Thragtusk and deed the board next turn for 2 and Thrun goes for the win.
G3. I get stuck on 3 mana and every turn he bounces my Kitchen finks until he draws a counter and kills me with Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf.
Matches: 1-2
//vs Zombies (2-1)
G1. He gets Turn 1 Gravecrawler, turn 2 Tidehollow Sculler then turn 3 Goblin Bombardment. He basically wipes out all my creatures with gravecrawler/Bombardment. I draw any removal fast enough.
G2. I mull to 5 with and get a turn 2 Academy rector with Phyrexian Tower out. I eventually get Curse of Death hold on him and now he can't cast anything.
G3. I play turn 3 deed and he holds off from playing to many spells. I leave it on the table while I filter through my library with top and fetch lands until I get Curse of Death Hold.
Matches: 2-2
//Decklist:
Lands: 21
4x Forest
2x Plains
2x Swamps
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Windswept Heath
2x Bayou
1x Scrubland
1x Savanna
2x Phyrexian Tower
1x Cabal Therapy
Creatures: 18
4x Veteran Explorer
3x Strangleroot Geist
1x Qasali Pridemage
2x Kitchen Finks
1x Eternal Witness
2x Academy Rector
1x Phyrexian Metamoprh
1x Sigarda
1x Thragtusk
1x Sun Titan
1x Grave Titan
Spells: 21
4x Swords to Plowshares
2x Pernicious Deed
2x Birthing Pod
1x Recurring Nightmare
4x Green Sun's Zenith
3x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Cabal Therapy
1x Phyrexian Arena
My SB was thrown together because I couldn't find everything. I need more enchantments to get with Rector, just haven't acquired the ones I want yet.
Sounds pretty interesting, link?
Either Caffrey dropped or he's 3-3. I've tried hornet queen and it was not needed. The first thing I would do would be -1 hornet queen, +1 thrun. The FOW in the SB is neat, but it means the MD needs to run ponder instead of the much more powerful SDT. I am pretty sure 3 Jace, 1 empath + 6/6/7 drops is more top end than any vet deck needs. I'm happy that Caffrey brought bug vet and hopefully he comes out of the tournament with ideas on how to improve the bug version.
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/..._with_mic.html
Strangleroot Geist looks pretty dope. In a list like that, I'd probably want to run Innocent Blood just because you'll have plenty of creatures to sac with x3 Geist and x4 GSZ.
Luck is a residue of design.
I'm an aspiring Psychedelic Trance musician. Please feel free to enjoy my sense of life:
http://soundcloud.com/vacrix
Expect me or die. I play SI.
Okay -- as usual, I'm going to work from the end backwards. This is probably going to be a pretty hefty dreadnought of a post.
@Caffrey's list: I gave Caffrey the original BUG list from some arbitrarily large number of pages ago, with Fact or Fictions, Nightmare looping Oracles/strixes etc. He's really local to me....just a few hours down the road from me. He was disheartened with Legacy due to the prevalence of Sneak/Show, and since the original BUG list was designed with that in mind, I gave it to him as in hope of re-energizing him, if you will. Well, he started grinding it on MODO, and he's been having a blast with it. He's been streaming it on Twitch.tv a lot as well...look for mchainmail on twitch.tv and you'll find a bunch of streams of him playing it.
He definitely made a lot of changes from the original list to better suit his playstyle and, I suspect, the MODO meta. I've tried to argue him back into running Extirpate over Nihil Spellbomb repeatedly, but he likes the bomb better =/ I have no idea what the correct number of Force of Wills is for a deck like this. My gut tells me that 3 is probably actually correct. 4 feels too much, and at 2 you can just never see them quick enough vs combo, which is where you really want to see them. I'd probably consider something like 3 Force/2 Flusterstorm for a countersuite...with any additional desired counters being Negates.
Hornet Queen is interesting. I initially argued against it as well, but he has a very valid point on behalf of the queen: it stabilizes. Usually, for the blue list, by the time it has reached god-tier mana (6+ drops), the opponent has a lot of board presence, or you're low on life, or whatnot. Thragtusk helps with this, but having a Green Sun-able god-drop that immediately stabilizes the board is a valid reason to run the Queen. I don't think that I would even consider Queen in any build except the blue one, but for that build, I dunno.
Trimming out the Facts is probably fine. While resolving a Fact or Fiction just feels amazing, it's -probably- too much. Jace, Brainstorm, and the value 2-drops are probably fine. I think that with a number of Forces less than 4, Ponder can and should safely be Top instead. Top being a better card than Ponder is another reason for less than 4 Forces IMO.
I disagree with cutting Nightmare and Kokusho in the blue list, since the blue list is very built around that as a plan. The blue list has 3 plans: Jace, Kokopuffs, and Grave Titan-punch. I mean sometimes E-Wit beatdown happens, but that isn't really a plan. Caff's list has Jace, Grave Titan-punch, and achievement unlocked: cast hornet queen in legacy. IMO, Kokopuffs is a much better plan than Queen. But, Caffrey is right that the blue list does definitely want something that can stabilize a board on resolution. Perhaps the Sphinx should be cut for something that achieves that goal. The only comparable creature that I can think of is Deranged Hermit, though, and that guy is ass. I will note the countrerpoint though -- Caff's testing was all done via MODO, which JUST got Thragtusk a few days ago. It's entirely possible that Kokopuffs can go back in, and that Thragtusk is sufficient stabilization.
@CRich: MUD is a shitty matchup for this deck in general. Also, g2 he had 8 cards in hand with no land? Lucky, I guess. Since your version runs more swords, I feel like naming Grim Monolith g2 would have been better than Metalworker. You could make an argument for naming Chalice of the Void on the play as well, but the problem there is that we actually circumvent Chalice pretty well. We just Zenith for Explorer through it, and we can still flashback Therapy to sac him (even if it doesn't do anything).
All I can say about round two is Thragtusk is pretty much the greatest card that could have possibly been printed for this deck. It does literally everything.
Did you have an Explorer or a Carpet in your opener vs Thresh game 3? Sometimes they get countered and it sucks, but I generally try to not keep a hand vs RUG without either an Explorer or a Carpet. You need the mana boost too much to get around their disruption. Like, Carpet of Flowers invalidates all of their counters except for Force....upwards of 8 cards in their deck that are completely dead. Pretty much same with Explorer, except he can also serve as a Moat.
Deed and Curse are better than the Zombie deck. Nough said.
What's the Cabal Therapy in your mana base supposed to be? Guessing Arbor? 21 lands including 2 Towers and an Arbor is really, really low, and it doesn't surprise me that you had mana problems. I'd strongly consider upping that by two lands...probably a Bayou and a Savannah, to smooth out your colors a bit more. Looking at your list, I would advise trimming the Metamorph and a Finks....Metamorph seems pretty poor maindeck (although I can definitely see him sb as a Pod target for reanimator/Sneak). The 2nd Finks is good with Pod, but with the full 4 GSZs and 2 Pods, I think you have enough tutoring to find the singleton. You don't need the lifegain as much because you have Thragtusk now. Your number one priority vs something like u/r delver or RUG is to set up Nightmare Tusk. Once you get that going, you aren't going to lose.
What enchantments do you want that you don't have yet, out of curiosity? I'm guessing Faith's Fetters is one of them, since a removal option is something that's missing from your toolbox.
@Nova: Why Spike Feeder over something like Finks? Also, no Thragtusk? I like the Engineered Explosives in the board -- seems like that would be a good help vs Belcher (t1 E.T. t2 play for 0, crack, kill all the gobbos). The full 4 Leyline of Sanctity definitely would annoy Belcher and other Storm-ish decks. I feel like your list is a little short on land as well, and it also looks a little threat-light. Why no Primeval Titan, since you're running Stronghold/Tower? I would think that getting that online would be better than Grave Titan for your list. It'd also be GSZ-able, which would be good -- you aren't running Empath to go-between GSZ->nongreen Titans. Otherwise, seems good =)
@Diabolic Intent: I'm currently testing a one-of Intent in my floater spot (was previously Wood Elves, which was passable but could be better [infinitely better with Bosk or in the Valakut version]). I haven't had much time to test the past few days, so I can't really give my opinion on it yet. On paper it looks amazing, and it's something that I've actually wanted to test for months now, but I have just never actually done it. I think that if Intent doesn't work out how I want, I'll be running the 4th Green Sun's Zenith for the foreseeable future. I do like the ability of Intent to find anything, though.
@Starscream: There should be a Gifts build in the experimental section of the primer. That's the one I've been working on. The biggest problem with that particular Gifts list at least is that it requires perfect play to maximize its potential. It's kind of like one of those stereotypical weapons in games and anime that is incredibly powerful, but takes skill beyond most mortals to actually use effectively. Like, in testing, when I actually hit on the exact right line at the exact right time, it blows pretty much anything away. Getting everything down perfectly at this point is more of a matter of blind luck for me though, sadly...I think I would need to spend a few years piloting the Gifts list before I could actually unlock its full potential. It's good, but it's stupid hard.
One thing that I haven't put in yet that I want to is the loop of Eternal Witness and Unearth. Having an immortal blocker seems pretty solid, and Unearth would be solid by itself at pretty much any stage of the game.
@Phillipp: definitely interested. Are there Accumulated Knowledges? If there are, that would be absolutely glorious. IntuitionAK with Eternal Witness in an Explorer shell seems so dirty.
@Claymore: Teeg has a very serious problem in my estimation: he hurts us, too. Cranial and Memoricide, IMO, are more serious threats to combo decks than Teeg is. Teeg is solid in Maverick because they have Mother of Runes, so they can protect him. We don't have any such protection, and Teeg turns off the more powerful hate cards. I've won a lot of games vs combo decks just by resolving a Cranial Extraction. Most of legacy's combo decks literally cannot win without certain cards.
Hive Mind you're pretty much screwed. It's one of those decks that's an atrocious matchup. It is also one of those matchups where if you can resolve a Cranial Extraction before you die, you're pretty much golden. Naming Hive Mind is pretty much the greatest thing ever because it kolds soooooooo many cards in their deck. They still have Show and Tell -> Fatty, but our decks already have some natural answers to that built in due to Sneak/Show existing. I mean, there's gonna be games where they go t1 Show-> Hive Mind -> Pact -> death, but there's not much you can do about that anyway. Some times the combo deck just wins. But if you manage to live four or five turns vs them, you can start making their life hell really quickly.
Angel's Grace seems really, really narrow...too narrow to be useful IMO.
IMO Fleshbag is a trap where RUG is concerned, and it's useless vs Maverick. Maverick always has weenies around to sac instead of something that's a legit threat. Maverick is basically sweep or bust, unless you just have a sea of spot removal. As for RUG....RUG is kind of like Merfolk, actually. They tend to have "dude hands" and "spell hands." Sometimes they have the "half and half" hands, which is what we tend to die to proportionate to how many lands they have (if they have more then 2, we're probably fine. if they have 1, we're fucked). When they have spell hands, odds are that Fleshbag will just sit there in your hand without anything to do. It can't trade up off of something derpy and swing for 3 vs RUG, because it'll just get Fire'd/Forked Bolt'd/whatever. If they have a dude hand, it won't do anything because they'll have enough creatures such that the only thing you'll have accomplished is to get them closer to threshold. It can't really block, because of either the above reason or because Delver has wings. The fact that it can't be Pierced is nice, but at that point you could just play Innocent Blood (if they Pierce it, it costs the same, but Blood is usually better vs other decks).
The other issue is that it is untutorable. It can't be GSZ'd, and frankly it would be a terrible Pod target because you wouldn't be able to continue the chain later...it's self-ending. Garruk would work, but if you have a flipped Garruk vs RUG that you're actually getting to activate, you've already won the game and you can do better than Fleshbag.
Now, this is an excellent segway into something I've been meaning to suggest for consideration to the thread as a whole.
Lately there's been a bit of talk about Living Wish again. The main problem with Living Wish is that it takes up a ton of sideboard space, and there are definitely matchups where we need to use that sideboard heavily. There's a card that, again, grrr, is an EDH staple that most people forget for competitive legacy play: Eladamri's Call. It literally Demonics for any creature. That means it has the same strength as Living Wish insofar as it can get non-green creatures (Canonist, Rector, Baneslayer, Fleshbag, Yixlid, whatever). It's also an instant, which means you can set up something big the following turn by utilizing your opponent's endstep. It shares the weakness of Wish to Snare, but it doesn't take up sideboard room.
Now, the issue is obviously why run Call over Diabolic Intent, and there, I don't have much. Intent requires a dude to sac, which can sometimes be a problem (but is amazing early with Explorer), but Call is an instant, so you can do the setup with Call where you can't with Intent. Intent also gets -any- card, not much any creature, which can definitely matter. I'm not actually sure which one is better, but it's worth remembering that Call exists, and IMO I would run Call over Living Wish. Just some food for thought.
Hello Arian, the explantions are:
Spike feeder over finks is simple becouse with feeder I can get 4 life in the same turn (very good vs. RUG and Burn) and I can kill the feeder in response to an Bridge from bellow hit the grave and remove it.
I never think run Primeval titan and Empath just becouse I always (or most time) have enought time to find my wincon, but I will test them offcourse.
Thragtusk I dont think its really necessary becouse that I dont use it.
Cya
@Arianrhod:
I was looking for any updates to the 3 color gifts lists being discussed a few weeks back. The one I tried had unearth and I was able to beat a BGw rock Nic Fit list with it. Also against ETW tokens you can wish for pulse, deed, witness, phyrexian tower for a kill with just 4 lands in play.
I'm still not sure what the main role of coiling oracle is. I get that it is a 2:1 semi-ramp agent, but why have 4 of them in the deck? Wouldn't having more bombs/planeswalkers be better suited? Also I don't always have UG on the second turn.
I've been running my list against a few friends that are on Merfolk, Goblins and Sneak and Show (and Show and Tell + Eureka) and the deck was holding it's own in matches. I need to get some testing in against RUG, Miracles, Maverick and Storm though. I've tuned the list a bit from the post a few pages back.
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Forest
3 Swamp
3 Bayou
2 Phyrexian Tower
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Eternal Witness
2 Coiling Oracle
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Fierce Empath
1 Boneshredder
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Grave Titan
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Innocent Blood
1 Unearth
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Recurring Nightmare
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Ghastly Demise
3 Sensei's Divining Top
Sideboard:
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Thoughtseize
2 Flusterstorm
1 Ghastly Demise
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Go for the Throat
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Krosan Grip
1 <Open>
I'd been trying some anti-GY hate in the 15th SB slot like Pithing Needle and Noxious Revival, but am thinking that just having an alternate bomb of some sort would be more beneficial. Or filling the slot with another disruption spell.
TPDMC
Cairo:
My list is similar. Why finks over Thragtusk, and how are the 2 p. towers working out?
Hey guys! Been lurking this thread the past week as I just started getting into this deck. Been testing online with it a good amount and I played twice this past week with solid results with a Junk build. First tournament went:
2-1 Goblins
2-1 URW Blade
2-0 Pox
And then just split for 1st against MUD although I wanted to play it out
Yesterday went:
2-0 RUG Delver
0-2 Burn (Don't think its a bad matchup, was about 1 turn from stabilizing both games)
2-0 Pox
1-0 UW Miracles (Kid was slow)
Top 4:
0-2 Reanimator
1-2 High Tide
I'm definitely pleased with the results so far, especially being new to the deck. I also know now that I've really got to strengthen the board for Show n Tell/ Reanimator decks along with combo decks (High tide plays every sunday at my store). Here is my list reference:
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Academy Rector
2 Eternal Witness
2 Grave Titan
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Thragtusk
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Recurring Nightmare
3 Swords to Plowshare
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Liliana, of the Viel
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Innocent Blood / Diabolic Intent (Can't decide!)
2 Bayou
1 Savannah
1 Scrubland
4 Forest
2 Plains
3 Swamp
3 Verdant Catacomb
3 Windswept Heath
1 Phyrexian Tower
Sideboard:
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Qasali Pridemage
3 Carpet of Flowers
3 Thoughtsieze
4 Extripate
1 Nihil Spellbomb
Really looking to work on the sideboard to adjust for those unfair decks. I really would like to pick up a Chains of Mephistopheles and run it with 2 Diabolic Intents as tutors but it will be hard to get my hands on. Aside from that I could surely use some suggestions for good cards against Reanimator and High Tide as they're really popular in my meta.
Finks comes online earlier. Against Burn and Zoo a 4 mana GSZ is preferable to a 6. Also it interacts with the Unearth plan.
The 2nd Tower hasn't clogged me in testing and hitting one of them interacts well with most of the deck.
TPDMC
I'd still run a 'Tusk, though -- he's an amazing beatdown, while giving you a lot of time to stabilize, and being resistant to removal. He also makes a pretty nutty engine with Nightmare. I mean, if you've got a lot of Zoo and UR Delver locally, then Finks is definitely right -- but I'd look into running both if I were you.
The 2nd Tower doesn't usually clog me either, in the Rector version. Granted I have more need of it there, but it's just so good to have a Tower...it opens up so many lines. It really sucks that the damn thing is legendary.
@Bradstone -- what are you struggling with vs High Tide specifically? 4 Extirpates, 2 Canonist, 3 Thoughtseize, 3 Carpet should be doing pretty good work. I'm guessing that you're getting too greedy with your Extirpate targets. Vs High Tide, if you can manage to knock out their big players that's great....removing their Cunning Wishes or Time Spirals is amazing. But more often than not, it's better to take their cantrips as they use them. If you remove their Brainstorms, Merchant Scrolls, Ponders, Preordains....stupid little shit like that rather than the big money spells, you make their Time Spirals significantly worse, and a lot of the time, all you need to do to beat High Tide is enhance their inherent vulnerability to RNG. If you've ever seen High Tide whiff on a Spiral, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You want to make that more likely to happen, and the best way to do that is to strip out their cantrips and tutors. Again, if you manage to nab their Spirals somehow, then you probably just win on the spot....but it usually isn't worth the effort.
Don't forget, too, that with Extirpate you can virtually Hymn their two best cards. If they Brainstorm in resp. to a Therapy or a Thoughtseize, Extirpate their Brainstorms on the spot once you're done with your discard spell. Whatever they hid on top goes away then.
You might want to consider the Cranial Extraction / Memoricide package. That allows you to use your Extirpates with literal 0 reservations, because Cranial/Mem can just take whatever you want (usually Time Spiral). They're also really good vs Sneak/Show, because you can name the enabler with your discard, and target the creatures with extractions. Works well.
@Starscream -- I like Oracle because it's a roadblock that happens to ramp you, or cantrip at worst. I also like Oracle because it forms a draw engine with Nightmare, although I think last I heard Qweerios had cut that from his version. I would describe its "purpose" as such: a backup ramp engine that forms a lategame card advantage engine.
But if you break down everything it does, as per my rant, you will see the following:
-) Ramps
-) Cantrips
-) Blocks
-) Sacrifices to flashback Therapy
-) Lategame, forms a draw engine with Nightmare
Baleful Strix is exactly the same, with the exception that instead of Ramps, you add Deathtouch to the Blocks line, meaning it can serve as alternatively removal and/or Moat, depending on your opponents personality. I prefer splitting Oracle and Strix (anywhere from 2/2 to 3/3 or anything in between), although Qweerios prefers the ramp of Oracle to the deathtouch of Strix. I usually agree except when there's a lot of Sneak around, although I do think that some number of Strix is probably correct.
Also, Spike Feeder because Dredge is interesting. I don't have a lot of Dredge locally, but that's definitely something that those of you who do should keep in mind. Good catch by Nova, there.
Thx Arian, its amazing against dredge!
But Im thinking play with BUG lists too
In manabase its ok play with:
4 verdant
4 Mysti Rainforest
2 Bayou
1 Usea
1 Tropical
Volrath
Tower
Basics
?
Cya
Arianrhod, I get what you're saying, but I'm wondering why there are 4 of them in the deck. Even when G/B used wall of blossoms, it only ran 1. So I guess my question is, why are 4 of them better in this deck than say one or two of them + two or three planeswalkers?
Well, the reason I was playing 4-6 Oracle/Strix combined is because I was running Nightmare, which made multiples actually useful. It's also nice to be able to just draw them natively without having to blow a GSZ on them -- however, at the same time, it's nice to have a "go-to" GSZ target that doesn't suck. Therapy -> Explorer/Therapy -> GSZ/Oracle -> ??? is a fairly common line of play. You can also nut out and do stuff like Therapy -> Explorer/Therapy -> Oracle/flip land -> Oracle -> ???, which is fun. Try not to get into the mindset of, "this is a better Wall of Blossoms." Rather, think of it like (after GSZ) "I'm playing 10 Veteran Explorers," considering an Oracle to be worth half an Explorer. That isn't quite true, of course, as Oracle is infinitely more valuable lategame because it can cantrip you into business when you need it.
Out of curiosity, have you tried running it with 4 Oracle/Strix, or is this based off of theory? Because looking at it on the page, it looks atrocious, I agree. Once you actually playing with Oracle, though, it's pretty amazing. It does everything the blue version wants to be doing. I still say I'd go 3 Oracle + 2 Strix, but that's just me. It's all about the value. Hell, Strix is often a 3-for-1 by itself. It draws a card, it kills a guy, and it fogs. I mean, I guess you could try like 4 Strix + 1 Oracle, because you can't GSZ for Strix, but the fact that Oracle puts the land into play is just savage.
If you have tried it, what don't you like about it? Does it feel too threat-light, or something?
I have tried it, but not extensively. I will keep trying it, but having 8-10 1/1's in the deck seems wrong to me. Also having to find UG so early kinda blows. My opponents were dropping real stuff, and I just had a 1/1 cantrip. I miss planeswalkers too.
Then again I am probably just playing the deck completely wrong. You would GSZ just for an oracle? I would think you'd hold it for at least a witness or an explorer/therapy
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