I hatched up a list taking what I've liked from Woo's version and brought it a little more towards what we've been working on up until now. Knocked down the number of enchantments a bit (I feel his list is pure overkill in this department), cut the Voyaging Satyrs in half, and went down to 3 Primal Commands. Then brought in 3 Geists, and 3 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss. I really like Mwonvuli Acid-Moss here. On the play you have the potential for a T2 LD that is brutal. I hit that play twice in so far. The additional ramp doesn't hurt any either.
I have gone 5-0 so far with it so far in the Tournament Practice area, and it has been mostly carefree along the way. I only decided to start taking detailed match notes half way, and the matches I did note are kind of poor, but I'll try to go into better detail in the future. My first FOUR matches I went 2-0. I'm still holding onto the singleton Primeval Titan, but to be honest it feels completely useless. It hasn't made a difference to me once playing this style of list yet. I'm looking for a means to add a couple Predator Ooze back into the list, and Prime Time might be one of the cards to go. I don't like too many changes too quickly though, so I'm gonna keep riding on what I have now and see what appears for weakness. I'm certain a fair degree of luck has gone into this run, but I like what I see so far.
So you aren't running any kind of tutor for Nykthos now?
I'm quite interested in your list, would you share it here? And how important is acidmoss's ramp? Considered playing Bramblecrush over it for more versility?
I like Primeval Titan in this type of deck as a one of because you can primal command to get it, then it will fetch up your utility land of choice plus that color. I think that we could choose either Kessig Wolf Run or Gavony Township for this, depending on which color you splash.
Alternatively I was thinking of Nylea, God of the Hunt instead of the Primeval Titan. She kinda functions as our own Kessig Wolf Run, just in creature form (hopefully), that is indestructible....
May I ask for how much time you've been testing your list?
Because we in this thread here tested and tweaked it for several months now and (please someone correct me if this is wrong) all consider Primetime a core card of the deck, that's a staple for of. Being able to cast him on turn 3 is just to good to not play him. He makes a lot of pressure and if dealt with, still leaves you the tools to make every small mana dork a real thread.
I consider it as way to slow if you first need to tutor Titan up, next turn play him and another turn to be able to use his lands.
Also Kessig Wolf Run is just way better than Township. I mean yeah refreshing your Finks is nice but it's quite bad for your Geists. And in comparison to Kessig, Township is just way to slow.
And if you hope Nylea could honestly replace Kessig, well she'll probably always be a creature, which is nice but 4 mana for a +2/+2 is just two expensive. Compare it with Kessig and let's say you have 8 mana open. Would mean 6 damage more with Kessig and only 4 with Nylea. And now imagine you only have 7 open. 5 with Kessig but only 2 with Nylea. Or 10 mana, 8 damage with Kessig, but well still 4 with Nylea.
I think back when Theros came in almost everyone of us tested Nylea. No one is playing her anywhere in his 75 now.
Would you mind to show us your list? I'd really like to see it, because I have the feeling we could help to improve it.
I have a three day weekend to which I want to test this deck extensively. I'm using the non-wave aggro version, although I do have four waves. I play on MTGO, can anyone give a me must have for the sideboard?
On a sidenote, have any of you wave folks thought about using Autumn's Veil" target="blank">Autumn's Veil in the board for cards like cryptic command?
I haven't and I don't plan to because in my experience the deck is quite good positioned against almost every control deck. And Autumn's Veil wouldn't help against the (in my opinion) worst part of CCommand which is tapping all our creatures.
If you want to play hate against them, I consider Summoner's Trap to be way better. Or Thrun.
Matches against really experienced players can be tough, though but most often they just don't realize that we have enough card draw and creatures that need to be 2-for-1ed that we still have really good chances in Long game.
A Scavening Ooze to ruin Snappis day can be quite helpful though (I even maindeck one).
All in all, there are plenty of other cards for your SB that are more effective and less situational.
Just played a game against this nivmagus elemental/kiln fiend combo deck.
Was able to race them and win 2 games on turn 3. It just feels so great to Tooth and Nail for two Craterhoofs in turn three. Doesn't happen, often i know, but I had to share this:D
This deck is so broken if it's undisrupted. And it's just way more fun to play than any of those infect, burn, fast win decks.
Intersting. I just decided to cut my two Growths and give it a try without them. They just feel kinda like wasted potencial if your only splashing red for Kessig and some SB stuff. But since I played Coiling Oracle in my first few NGD lists i gotta say that Visionary often feels like it just doesn't do enough. It's a bit sad that there's nothing else that blue has to offer for us.
But i was playing with the idea of splashing white for some sideboard cards anyway. Stony Silence and Rest in Peace are just damn good.
Probably gonna test that with the Growths back in afterwards.
this seems solid, but isnt primacrux just a better finisher in alot of games? resolving him most likely means GG against any non white deck, primeval doesnt.
Hmm I don't really think so.
Imagine casting Crux turn 4 (you'll have 6 mana turn 4 quite often) and have already a devotion of 5. That would make Crux 11/11 trample. It has to survive a turn then you get to beat with it.
The thing about Titan is you get value as early as he hits the board. Modern still is a format full of spotremoval and besides Bolt there are still a lot of cards that can deal with both Titan and Crux (PtE, Maelstrom Pulse etc.).But even if Titan gets killed you can still tutor for Nykthos and most often Kessig Wolf Run.
If Titan dies, well you still have 5 Devotion, Nykthos, a bunch of other mana and Kessig to turn every of your creatures into a relevant thread.
If Crux dies, well then you got no value at all.
If Titan survives and attacks, he'll be able to deal about the same damage as Crux can if you pump him with Kessig. And you get even more lands for the attack.
On the other hand i gotta say that Kessig sucks up your mana but Crux would just let you play more creatures in the turn of attack and get bigger only by doing that.
But if the question is whos the better finisher, being able to play creatures in the turn you'll win anyway is not really important:D
Early on Big Garruk was discussed, it seemed mostly for the Lead the Stampede effect, but I think the outcome was that for 6 mana we could do better. Only running one Craterhoof Behemoth, I don't think I would often have a Big Garruk in hand and a Craterhoof and only have 6 mana, but I suppose it does happen...
I hate to bring anything from Woo's article up, but what is everyone's thoughts on maindecking Acidic Slime? I run 1 in the sideboard (others might as well, who knows) but I do not use Mwonvuli Beast Tracker so I would have to use Primal Command to tutor it up. Would it be worthwhile running less resilient 3 CMC creatures (Mwonvuli) in order to add some MD'ed Slimes (ideally, turn 2 Mwonvuli to turn 3 Slime)?
I played with it as a one of for quite some time now. I like it like that because there are boardstates it just comes up really handy (Ensnaring Bridge and the like). It's nice to be able to attack with it in combination with Kessig and it stoppes Goyf from hitting you for one or two turns quite often. And These turn make a huge difference with this deck.
But I gotta say that I don't play Primal Command in most of my list.
I tried it. And I tried again. And again.
I don't know, it just feels like a card that can do everything but nothing really good to me.
I'm settled on 2 Pacts + Slime + Scavenging Ooze at the moment.
Not mention that this also offers a few nice SB Silver Bullets like Thrun (which Command does too, I know, but Pact usually let's the creature hit the battlefield a turn earlier).
I'm opening this back up now after handing out 3 infractions and a warning. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have also contacted Lantern and requested that he card himself for calling Travis a "DUMB ASS". Flaming, whether from mods or anyone else for any reason, is not tolerated on this site. Please keep things civil and keep the discussion on track.
Thank you. It's just childish what is going on here.
Has Garruk, Caller of Beasts been considered instead/with PeT?
I haven't yet, and I don't plan on testing it as long as my 6 cmc spot stays occupied with 4 Titans.
Try him out if you want to, the fuel he offers could be quite good but Titan together with Kessig offers a win in the next turn if undisrupted and that sounds quite good to me if I'm spending 6 mana on a spell.
Also Titan is tutorable with Pact (a thing that sometimes really annoys me with small garruk, he's not tutorable with Pact).
Hi guys,
I am going to talk about different topic - neither the most popular topics about certain decklists/cards nor about a guy who thinks he invented this deck.
All this time I feel like the title of this deck and topic is clumsy. I think we should come up with new name, for example like GG.dec. Maybe someone has better example, what you guys think?
Well 'mono' is maybe not quite correct because as I see it most lists here splash at least for red, maybe even for white.
I call it Nykthos Green Devotion, because that sums up what this deck is, doesn't it?
Now that Woo has advertised the deck, tons of people are going to start playing his version of it. These people, in droves, get enough good matchups in premier/daily events...They'll do well and he'll look like a genius.
NinjaBearDelver did the same thing. I do like that all the big online stores are sold out of Gen Waves and Primal Commands though, that is neat.
Well that's exactly the intend of his post. isn't it?
He wants to get the fame for creating the deck.
Although that is kinda annoying for me, I'd still like to see some NGD decks doing some tournament results.
I don't think his list is optimal, but i consider it better then the most other lists that showed up.
All in all more diversity in the format is always good and i really like the fact that we play almost no cards that are widespread modern staples just because of their power but try to synergize more.
Everyone abandons everything we've tested on this thread because of this?
Yeah, sounds about right...
I think the explanation for seeing that many posts about new deck directions like LD in the last pages is that most People came here because they like to brew and saw potencial in the deck.
Now we're at the point were you don't discover new cards or interactions that offer sometihing better than we already have. And that is quite unsatisfying because we would now need to start with the really hard work which is testing, testing and more testing to finetune the deck.
At least that's how I feel sometimes:D (finding the perfect mana base is way less fun then start a complete new attempt on playing a LD subtheme...)
So with testing I have got my mainboard pretty sown up. This deck does extremely well vs a lot of the meta. Its explosive, and can win as early as turn 3 (though you need a nut draw for that to happen. Most of the time however it wins on turn 4 or 5.
The cool thing about it is that it does not solely rely on Devotion, even though Devotion makes the deck explosive in the early game. The deck has 15 maindeck haste creatures, 12 of which have a form of recursion. This allows you to trade efficiently with aggro decks, while at the same time forcing your opponent to exile your threats.
Everything in the deck has to be answered which allows you to go to work with Primeval Titan later in the game.
Decks I do however have a problem with is Splinter Twin, (not the Kiki pod version but the old fashion U/R version.
Also a interesting list, may I ask why you play '8' Llanorwar Elves over Arbor Elf + Utopia Sprawls? I mean you even play Voyaging Satyr which would synergize quite nice with Sprawls. Or do you think you need more creature spells for Vengevine? Also why only 2 Garruk and 3 Titans?
Do you feel ok without any carddraw?
Who doesn't look at the downsides when testing? The only potential downside is the fact that it is not a Forest. I removed Boseiju from the main deck and put it in the side to make room for Inkmoth Nexus, so I haven't lost any Forest access. I've been doing a lot of testing with different land configurations, and am actually currently running 22 lands to accommodate more utility in my land base. So I am probably running just as many Forests as anyone else on a 20-21 land deck. The question for me isn't if I'm consistently drawing Forests enough. If I whiff on a Forest draw I wasn't going to hit any better without Inkmoth. The question is whether I'm overdrawing on lands now. Which I haven't seen as a big issue at this point.
I can say with some certainty right now that Inkmoth Nexus is winning me games I otherwise would have lost in my current list, which has remained steady for the past 3 or 4 days now other than this small modification. What I'm looking to determine is whether or not going up to 22 lands is affecting my ability to establish a solid board presence fast enough to ramp into end game position. I was a little disappointed with my draws at 20 lands, so really the question I'm looking to come to an answer for is whether or not I want to run 21 or 22, and if I do decide to go to 21, which utility land offers me more advantage in that position.
I understand that this is not a change to the list the improves our poor matches, but as other players become more and more familiar with our deck and how to disrupt it, I like having another angle of attack in sending some infect damage over the top with Inkmoth.
I'm really sorry if something i wrote could have sounded offensive to you. I see now that you put well more thoughts in that decision than I thought.
I tested my land base for quite some time, too. Currently with 21 lands, only 5colorless, but also backed up with 2 Abundant Growth which works quite well to smooth out some draws (but makes me want to splash another color:D).
Maybe I should give the 22 lands another chance, too.
How many fetches do you play with them? And do you Play Geists, Baloths or Predator Oozes? (If yes, how many?)
One of my friends runs living end, on game 2/3 I choose to go second and just spend my first turn (maybe 2, if my creatures suck) drawing and discarding. In the grand scheme of things, letting them get 1/2 turns ahead doesn't kill us if they have to reanimate our Primeval Titan. We can easily catch up to them if they decide to just try and out-agro us.
This doesn't always work out, cause sometimes they can get 6 creatures in the yard before going off. But if you wave for 10, you can always just choose not to play half of your creatures so that they still got some pressure on them to deal with what you did wave in but they still can't Living End profitably.
Give it a try if you know someone who runs the deck.
Interesting idea:D
Problem is that you have to choose to go secong before you see your cards and if you don't hit a Titan or a Behemoth I think you're pretty screwed:D
Living End - Favorable Match Up for variant with 4 Primal Command, Primeval Titan into Bojuka Bog is also a really strong answer.. overall it's not such an hard match up.
Hate Bears - Bad Match Up because he will eventually end up locking us away from our win condition. Aven Mindcensor screw big time with Primeval and Tooth and Nail not to forget Primal Command.
Storm - We lack interaction.. I haven't play tested against this deck but I feel it's a bad one
Goryo' Vengeance - I playtested against this deck and I won every game with ease. It's a good match up.
Amulet of Vigor - They have no interaction against us. I am afraid of reverse pact but otherwise it's okay.
^ I am real tired atm I might have screw up big time! ^^'
The thing with how we sideboard etc. Is that it really depend on your main deck and variant you run.. I use the core idea as a reference and if the core idea can beat a certain deck than I consider the deck Favorable against it.
==
Cloudthresher He was mentioned a couple (20+) pages ago but I don't feel he is needed.. except if your local is filled with Token.
Oblivion Stone?
i played against living end yesterday and i don't think it's as easy as you say.
I'm on the draw and feel quite safe with 3 forests, arbor elf, Sprawl, Command and some other card. In my T3 (where I could have played Command) he has only one creature in his graveyard, so I don't play it. At end of mmy turn he cycles 3 (or even 4 not sure) creatures, plays cascade spell his turn...couldnt overcome his army fast enough (he beast withined my Titan, too).
If they know how to play the deck living end is not an easy matchup and the land destruction they play doesn't make it easier.
I'd say in a deck with some tutors Cloudthresher would be also a good sideboard card against affinity, provoked he destroys all the hopters, Inkmoths, Blinkmoths and Vault Skirges. Or with other words all the stuff we really have problems with. Because as I see it our problem are quite often not the Cranial Platings but the evasive creatures that get equipped with it. We would block an equipped memnite, ravager or overseer all day long until we have enough boardstate to take over the game.
I'm gonna try him as a one of in my SB.
So you aren't running any kind of tutor for Nykthos now?
I'm quite interested in your list, would you share it here? And how important is acidmoss's ramp? Considered playing Bramblecrush over it for more versility?
May I ask for how much time you've been testing your list?
Because we in this thread here tested and tweaked it for several months now and (please someone correct me if this is wrong) all consider Primetime a core card of the deck, that's a staple for of. Being able to cast him on turn 3 is just to good to not play him. He makes a lot of pressure and if dealt with, still leaves you the tools to make every small mana dork a real thread.
I consider it as way to slow if you first need to tutor Titan up, next turn play him and another turn to be able to use his lands.
Also Kessig Wolf Run is just way better than Township. I mean yeah refreshing your Finks is nice but it's quite bad for your Geists. And in comparison to Kessig, Township is just way to slow.
And if you hope Nylea could honestly replace Kessig, well she'll probably always be a creature, which is nice but 4 mana for a +2/+2 is just two expensive. Compare it with Kessig and let's say you have 8 mana open. Would mean 6 damage more with Kessig and only 4 with Nylea. And now imagine you only have 7 open. 5 with Kessig but only 2 with Nylea. Or 10 mana, 8 damage with Kessig, but well still 4 with Nylea.
I think back when Theros came in almost everyone of us tested Nylea. No one is playing her anywhere in his 75 now.
Would you mind to show us your list? I'd really like to see it, because I have the feeling we could help to improve it.
I haven't and I don't plan to because in my experience the deck is quite good positioned against almost every control deck. And Autumn's Veil wouldn't help against the (in my opinion) worst part of CCommand which is tapping all our creatures.
If you want to play hate against them, I consider Summoner's Trap to be way better. Or Thrun.
Matches against really experienced players can be tough, though but most often they just don't realize that we have enough card draw and creatures that need to be 2-for-1ed that we still have really good chances in Long game.
A Scavening Ooze to ruin Snappis day can be quite helpful though (I even maindeck one).
All in all, there are plenty of other cards for your SB that are more effective and less situational.
Was able to race them and win 2 games on turn 3. It just feels so great to Tooth and Nail for two Craterhoofs in turn three. Doesn't happen, often i know, but I had to share this:D
This deck is so broken if it's undisrupted. And it's just way more fun to play than any of those infect, burn, fast win decks.
Intersting. I just decided to cut my two Growths and give it a try without them. They just feel kinda like wasted potencial if your only splashing red for Kessig and some SB stuff. But since I played Coiling Oracle in my first few NGD lists i gotta say that Visionary often feels like it just doesn't do enough. It's a bit sad that there's nothing else that blue has to offer for us.
But i was playing with the idea of splashing white for some sideboard cards anyway. Stony Silence and Rest in Peace are just damn good.
Probably gonna test that with the Growths back in afterwards.
Hmm I don't really think so.
Imagine casting Crux turn 4 (you'll have 6 mana turn 4 quite often) and have already a devotion of 5. That would make Crux 11/11 trample. It has to survive a turn then you get to beat with it.
The thing about Titan is you get value as early as he hits the board. Modern still is a format full of spotremoval and besides Bolt there are still a lot of cards that can deal with both Titan and Crux (PtE, Maelstrom Pulse etc.).But even if Titan gets killed you can still tutor for Nykthos and most often Kessig Wolf Run.
If Titan dies, well you still have 5 Devotion, Nykthos, a bunch of other mana and Kessig to turn every of your creatures into a relevant thread.
If Crux dies, well then you got no value at all.
If Titan survives and attacks, he'll be able to deal about the same damage as Crux can if you pump him with Kessig. And you get even more lands for the attack.
On the other hand i gotta say that Kessig sucks up your mana but Crux would just let you play more creatures in the turn of attack and get bigger only by doing that.
But if the question is whos the better finisher, being able to play creatures in the turn you'll win anyway is not really important:D
I played with it as a one of for quite some time now. I like it like that because there are boardstates it just comes up really handy (Ensnaring Bridge and the like). It's nice to be able to attack with it in combination with Kessig and it stoppes Goyf from hitting you for one or two turns quite often. And These turn make a huge difference with this deck.
But I gotta say that I don't play Primal Command in most of my list.
I tried it. And I tried again. And again.
I don't know, it just feels like a card that can do everything but nothing really good to me.
I'm settled on 2 Pacts + Slime + Scavenging Ooze at the moment.
Not mention that this also offers a few nice SB Silver Bullets like Thrun (which Command does too, I know, but Pact usually let's the creature hit the battlefield a turn earlier).
Thank you. It's just childish what is going on here.
I haven't yet, and I don't plan on testing it as long as my 6 cmc spot stays occupied with 4 Titans.
Try him out if you want to, the fuel he offers could be quite good but Titan together with Kessig offers a win in the next turn if undisrupted and that sounds quite good to me if I'm spending 6 mana on a spell.
Also Titan is tutorable with Pact (a thing that sometimes really annoys me with small garruk, he's not tutorable with Pact).
Well 'mono' is maybe not quite correct because as I see it most lists here splash at least for red, maybe even for white.
I call it Nykthos Green Devotion, because that sums up what this deck is, doesn't it?
Well that's exactly the intend of his post. isn't it?
He wants to get the fame for creating the deck.
Although that is kinda annoying for me, I'd still like to see some NGD decks doing some tournament results.
I don't think his list is optimal, but i consider it better then the most other lists that showed up.
All in all more diversity in the format is always good and i really like the fact that we play almost no cards that are widespread modern staples just because of their power but try to synergize more.
I think the explanation for seeing that many posts about new deck directions like LD in the last pages is that most People came here because they like to brew and saw potencial in the deck.
Now we're at the point were you don't discover new cards or interactions that offer sometihing better than we already have. And that is quite unsatisfying because we would now need to start with the really hard work which is testing, testing and more testing to finetune the deck.
At least that's how I feel sometimes:D (finding the perfect mana base is way less fun then start a complete new attempt on playing a LD subtheme...)
Also a interesting list, may I ask why you play '8' Llanorwar Elves over Arbor Elf + Utopia Sprawls? I mean you even play Voyaging Satyr which would synergize quite nice with Sprawls. Or do you think you need more creature spells for Vengevine? Also why only 2 Garruk and 3 Titans?
Do you feel ok without any carddraw?
I'm really sorry if something i wrote could have sounded offensive to you. I see now that you put well more thoughts in that decision than I thought.
I tested my land base for quite some time, too. Currently with 21 lands, only 5colorless, but also backed up with 2 Abundant Growth which works quite well to smooth out some draws (but makes me want to splash another color:D).
Maybe I should give the 22 lands another chance, too.
How many fetches do you play with them? And do you Play Geists, Baloths or Predator Oozes? (If yes, how many?)
Interesting idea:D
Problem is that you have to choose to go secong before you see your cards and if you don't hit a Titan or a Behemoth I think you're pretty screwed:D
i played against living end yesterday and i don't think it's as easy as you say.
I'm on the draw and feel quite safe with 3 forests, arbor elf, Sprawl, Command and some other card. In my T3 (where I could have played Command) he has only one creature in his graveyard, so I don't play it. At end of mmy turn he cycles 3 (or even 4 not sure) creatures, plays cascade spell his turn...couldnt overcome his army fast enough (he beast withined my Titan, too).
If they know how to play the deck living end is not an easy matchup and the land destruction they play doesn't make it easier.
I'd say in a deck with some tutors Cloudthresher would be also a good sideboard card against affinity, provoked he destroys all the hopters, Inkmoths, Blinkmoths and Vault Skirges. Or with other words all the stuff we really have problems with. Because as I see it our problem are quite often not the Cranial Platings but the evasive creatures that get equipped with it. We would block an equipped memnite, ravager or overseer all day long until we have enough boardstate to take over the game.
I'm gonna try him as a one of in my SB.