Personally I think that she's more a midrange card, since the question I find myself asking is "were you ever going to play Huntmaster of the Fells in this deck?"
She fills a very similar niche to Huntmaster, with some tweaks to differentiate the two. She's a supporter as opposed to a haymaker.
Bonfire of the Damned is good against WB Tokens, mostly. That's a Tier 3 deck at most, though.
At least until you hit that awkward boardstate where they've deployed Burrenton Forge-Tender from the side.
But when you and your opponent are both trying to go wide, Bonfire tends to be pretty good for its asymmetric damage swinging the combat step in your favor.
It's mostly a card for when you're angling the Sligh style of "early critter damage supported by removal -> lategame burn to the dome" wherein the classic curve of that deck happened to include space for manasinks like X-cost Earthquakes and Fireballs (Sligh was very obsessed about maximizing mana usage like that). By the time of Zoo as we know it I believe that particular quirk was long weeded out of the gene pool, but there was a time when that was a design call.
so besides all teh Ban-talking i come up here with another idea for teh 1-Drop Zoo's.
Everyone is running Atarka's Commandnowadays, but has Goblin Bushwhacker been tested?
Goblin Bushwhacker is ok if you're trying to play the last-ditch go-wider game and need to alpha strike ASAP. IMO it's best played alongside Ranger of Eos and last I recall Ranger hasn't been relevant in Zoo for a while, and that's even before Collected Company became a thing.
I think that unless you start looking into Boros configurations for 1drop Sligh-esque piles (Boros Bushwhacker was a Standard archetype in its time, fwiw), the fact that you've got Green means you should just go with Atarka's, simply because Atarka's Command can do more things.
But I can't help but think that there's an evolutionary dead end trying to fuel E1 given the existing card pool and what can be expected of future sets, that the best you're going to get with 1cmc stuff is at minimum having the full Zoo Crew of Lion, Ape and Nacatl there to buff E1 to 3/3 and apparently that won't cut it.
I'm spinning ideas around in my head as to how I can be left with egg on my face for saying that. Most recent one is Nimble Mongoose sneaks into Shadows Over Innistrad.
I don't think Oath of the Gatewatch is going to support a Small Zoo strat, not if it continues the chunky feel of post-RoE Zendikar, so I'd give up on the dream for a a year or two.
I spend way too much time digging around for Ranger of Eos targets as is, I think I'd know when it's time for a Small Zoo list to shine, and that's not happening unless someone pulled a dumb and OK'd a powerhouse weenie thinking that in a Standard of fatasses it'd do nothing... or if I should really just convert my Boros into Naya and see where it goes on the weenie express train.
Also Lantern I hope you aren't overhyping Kideon because I broke down for a singleton myself thinking that surely it combos with Ranger of Eos and Goblin Bushwhacker /jankdecktangents
Playing new gideon to "honor" our dudes is a bad idea. at 4 mana I wanna win the game, not counter a slight card. Thats still why knight is better. her damage flys. gideon is chumped all day. and spewing out 2/2s isnt good either. At that point all go with xenagos because its haste.
New land cycle is worse for us. we need mana right away, then fetch for basics. Wrong order for these lands. But the fact other decks can now lose less life off lands hurts us more than it helps us.
There's more the subtle issue that is how the slowduals sorta encourage lines of play that are functionally equivalent to playing around Blood Moon effects.
If they catch on, I think CoCo into Magus of the Moon might start to fall apart. But that's admittedly theorycraft on my part. I doubt there'll be enough durdledecks that would make use of slowduals, not for a while at least.
Kinda new rule of thumb that the pros have been talking about. No Creatures swing after turn 4. You should not be casting creatures after turn 2, beacuse they get blocked after that.
sorry, I don't get it. Care to explain?
Everything gets brickwalled or answered way too well by that point in the game.
In a world of zombie fish and big-butt creatures, for the sake of an easy mental picture just imagine your opponent can cheat in a Grave Titan on turn 4 rather consistently. You're looking at that kind of uphill battle.
711.4a. While a double-faced card is outside the game, in a zone other than the battlefield, or on the battlefield with its front face up, it has only the characteristics of its front face.
**Knowing wizards though, there will be some "specific" ruling to these cards, and they'll just hit the graveyard as walkers haha~~~ -sigh-
Yep. They don't feed goyf unless there is a rule change. Interesting. That limits him more than I hoped.
Yeah the front card (and the top half in the case of Kamigawa block's flip cards, from what I've gathered; not that it matters when the Ascendant cycle, the only cycle relevant to this thought experiment, is totally unplayable...) is the only detail that matters when it's not out on the battlefield and transformed. Otherwise you could be doing silly cheatstep things like Collected Company into, I dunno, Withengar Unbound due to transformed cards defaulting to CMC of zero (itself kinda a stupid quirk of MTG rules engineering regarding mana costless cards but eh what can you do?).
On a tangent, I really want the return trip to Zendikar to have Kird Apes. I'm not quite satisfied with the reprint options for it, and his colorshifted partner Loam Lion was in Worldwake. Laugh all you want, but paying the extra dollar for the black border Modern frame adds up after a while.
Best to post your list when wanting advice on cards. You could be missing cards that should be in deck that people won't mention because usually in 1 drop build
Personally I'd go
-4 Sunblade Elf. It's outdone by just about every other 1drop you could be playing, and the pump ability just comes out too slow to make it worthwhile.
-2 Temple Garden +2 Arid Mesa or placeholder fetchland of your choosing. We're aiming to improve Steppe Lynx's ability to consistently see double landfall here so that it can be more than just an empty body that can carry a Ghor-Clan Rampager bloodrushing.
-1 Ghor-Clan Rampager. 4's a bit too many.
+3 Figure of Destiny. More color flexible than Warden of the First Tree, pretty much dances circles around Sunblade Elf in the growth department, just manage your R/W sources carefully and you'll have a little mini-Goyf of your own here.
+2 Grim Lavamancer. Personal preference of mine to put Grim Lavamancer in just about any deck that plays Red. Should really pull his weight in the face of Lingering Souls tokens.
Again though, that's just personal preference. If I meddled any further I'd end up warping your pile into a Naya pile gunning for card advantage off of Ranger of Eos.
She fills a very similar niche to Huntmaster, with some tweaks to differentiate the two. She's a supporter as opposed to a haymaker.
At least until you hit that awkward boardstate where they've deployed Burrenton Forge-Tender from the side.
But when you and your opponent are both trying to go wide, Bonfire tends to be pretty good for its asymmetric damage swinging the combat step in your favor.
It's mostly a card for when you're angling the Sligh style of "early critter damage supported by removal -> lategame burn to the dome" wherein the classic curve of that deck happened to include space for manasinks like X-cost Earthquakes and Fireballs (Sligh was very obsessed about maximizing mana usage like that). By the time of Zoo as we know it I believe that particular quirk was long weeded out of the gene pool, but there was a time when that was a design call.
Goblin Bushwhacker is ok if you're trying to play the last-ditch go-wider game and need to alpha strike ASAP. IMO it's best played alongside Ranger of Eos and last I recall Ranger hasn't been relevant in Zoo for a while, and that's even before Collected Company became a thing.
I think that unless you start looking into Boros configurations for 1drop Sligh-esque piles (Boros Bushwhacker was a Standard archetype in its time, fwiw), the fact that you've got Green means you should just go with Atarka's, simply because Atarka's Command can do more things.
You could not even begin to comprehend the level of garbage that card is.
The amount of salt I have over that card being what it is should justify adding a saltshaker emote to the smiley list.
But I can't help but think that there's an evolutionary dead end trying to fuel E1 given the existing card pool and what can be expected of future sets, that the best you're going to get with 1cmc stuff is at minimum having the full Zoo Crew of Lion, Ape and Nacatl there to buff E1 to 3/3 and apparently that won't cut it.
I'm spinning ideas around in my head as to how I can be left with egg on my face for saying that. Most recent one is Nimble Mongoose sneaks into Shadows Over Innistrad.
I spend way too much time digging around for Ranger of Eos targets as is, I think I'd know when it's time for a Small Zoo list to shine, and that's not happening unless someone pulled a dumb and OK'd a powerhouse weenie thinking that in a Standard of fatasses it'd do nothing... or if I should really just convert my Boros into Naya and see where it goes on the weenie express train.
Also Lantern I hope you aren't overhyping Kideon because I broke down for a singleton myself thinking that surely it combos with Ranger of Eos and Goblin Bushwhacker /jankdecktangents
There's more the subtle issue that is how the slowduals sorta encourage lines of play that are functionally equivalent to playing around Blood Moon effects.
If they catch on, I think CoCo into Magus of the Moon might start to fall apart. But that's admittedly theorycraft on my part. I doubt there'll be enough durdledecks that would make use of slowduals, not for a while at least.
Everything gets brickwalled or answered way too well by that point in the game.
In a world of zombie fish and big-butt creatures, for the sake of an easy mental picture just imagine your opponent can cheat in a Grave Titan on turn 4 rather consistently. You're looking at that kind of uphill battle.
Yeah the front card (and the top half in the case of Kamigawa block's flip cards, from what I've gathered; not that it matters when the Ascendant cycle, the only cycle relevant to this thought experiment, is totally unplayable...) is the only detail that matters when it's not out on the battlefield and transformed. Otherwise you could be doing silly cheatstep things like Collected Company into, I dunno, Withengar Unbound due to transformed cards defaulting to CMC of zero (itself kinda a stupid quirk of MTG rules engineering regarding mana costless cards but eh what can you do?).
On a tangent, I really want the return trip to Zendikar to have Kird Apes. I'm not quite satisfied with the reprint options for it, and his colorshifted partner Loam Lion was in Worldwake. Laugh all you want, but paying the extra dollar for the black border Modern frame adds up after a while.
What, you mean the Planeswalker side of the card that's never accounted for if/when Kytheon hits the grave?
Personally I'd go
-4 Sunblade Elf. It's outdone by just about every other 1drop you could be playing, and the pump ability just comes out too slow to make it worthwhile.
-2 Temple Garden +2 Arid Mesa or placeholder fetchland of your choosing. We're aiming to improve Steppe Lynx's ability to consistently see double landfall here so that it can be more than just an empty body that can carry a Ghor-Clan Rampager bloodrushing.
-1 Ghor-Clan Rampager. 4's a bit too many.
+3 Figure of Destiny. More color flexible than Warden of the First Tree, pretty much dances circles around Sunblade Elf in the growth department, just manage your R/W sources carefully and you'll have a little mini-Goyf of your own here.
+2 Grim Lavamancer. Personal preference of mine to put Grim Lavamancer in just about any deck that plays Red. Should really pull his weight in the face of Lingering Souls tokens.
Again though, that's just personal preference. If I meddled any further I'd end up warping your pile into a Naya pile gunning for card advantage off of Ranger of Eos.
Seconding request to see a list.