So, I played four matches on Cockatrice tonight. I tested both Scavenging Ooze and Splinterfright, but don't know how significant four matches can be.
Let's get the obvious out of the way. Both are big bodies and generally survive Lightning Bolt and other burn. Both die to Path to Exile, can be countered by Mana Leak and Remand, etc. Both don't play well together. Fright gets bigger with more stuff in the graveyard, while Ooze gets bigger by limiting your graveyard.
I played against an aggro deck (Gruul custom of some sort)...the life gain with Ooze definitely came in handy and having other targets in my opponents yard helped keep my life total respectable. It also allowed for a gigantic creature that traded in a 3-1 block for him to survive. I'd probably prefer Ooze vs aggro decks.
Another game vs UWR Control, I was able to get an Ooze online early. I only got it to a 3/3, but I was able to eat all of my opponents targets for Snapcaster Mage. Keeping them off of targets seemed like the better play both games. In G2, I got it to a 6/6 eating my non recurring BoP and Trolls, so the four life was nice. It did get a Path to Exile, but UWR has so many answers, it was bound to happen. It also survived the T4 Anger of the Gods, making it a nice way to avoid being blown out by a prominent sweeper.
I played against a custom midrange deck that countered my Splinterfright in G2, so I couldn't get any info on it. The only time I could get a Fright online was against Twin and it wasn't effective at all. He combo'd me on T4 before I could finish setting myself up to go off.
All in all, having Troll 5 and 6 with Splinterfright is definitely appealing to me, but at three mana, seems kind of useless, especially if it gets countered, making us waste an entire turn. Whereas having Ooze getting countered still generally leaves us with a mana open to cast a 1 CMC creature. Scavenging Ooze is lower cost at the 2 CMC slot. The lifegain is very relevant against burn/aggro, which is nearly half the format. Everyone can argue mana intensiveness, but going past T7 leaves me generally with an empty hand and 5+ mana with nothing to do. I enjoyed eating useless cards and gaining life, while building a wall.
Greetings all again: I'm posting this between rounds at my FNM. Here's an update maybe someone will consider.
My best friend came into town. He is an amazing deck builder. We spent all day yesterday (nearly seven hours) at my local GS. He has a custom brew White Weenie / Knight / Combo deck that he's been playing and he went 8-0. Some opponents were solid while others just diddle dallied while he wiped the floor with them. Anyway, he watched me play a few matches against some good decks and just simply put some known facts I never considered.
1. Anything bigger than Vengevine is a waste in my deck aka Demigod of Revenge.
2. He said my deck is so inconsistent because it is so reliant on getting a Vine to my yard.
3. He said boot the Demigod, and change it for a faster win condition. Also, speed up the deck by interchanging Birds of Paradise with something that will put them on a faster clock.
With that being said, I went to: gatherer.wizards.com and did a search for Jund color creatures with CMC <= 3 with graveyard in their text. I got quite a few results, but haven't been able to narrow it down.
What is a good win condition that can meet the following requirements:
1. Faster than Demigod of Revenge aka CMC < 5
2. A beater that helps recur Vengevine. (Note: I don't run fetch lands & I hate Bloodghast since it doesn't trigger Vengevine)
3. Doesn't have to be enabler since I run Faithless Looting, Grisly Salvage & Lotleth Troll.
Note: I'm not exactly sure what would be considered a secondary win condition for a graveyard based deck.
But already our sideboard is so tight to actually fit in Fulminators and Deglamer... Unless we start cutting Ancient Grudge or shatterstorm which makes our deck weaker to Affinity.
Karn is usually OK as they -3 to exile, loyalty drops 3, we can still finish off with weenies or Lightning bolt. Its the Big WURM!
Well, if you notice that Wurmcoil Engine is a Artifact creature you must have some tricks for him in the Sideboard as long as you're using Nature's Claim, Deglamer, Ancient Grudge or something like that, but this only happens on G2, you must try to be fast to defeat Tron as fast as you can before they lock down the game.
The Deathtouch it's not a problem for us, our deck is Grave-based, but the +6 Lifelink will slow down our shenanigans!
Sideboard :
4 Slaughter Games: Insane against any combo. Can be played on turn 3 with birds. Bonus : you can see your opponent hand and deck.
3 Pithing Needle
2 Rakdos charm: Good against twin / anything that play with grave / affinity. A must I think.
2 Ancient Grudge: Against affinity and some grave removals.
2 Gnaw to the bone: Versus Burn / Blasts / ...
1 Raven's Crime: Want your discard tool quicklier? Against control and slow decks.
1 Life from the loam: It goes with the Crime.
I see that he's not playing Nature's Claim, for me it's 2+ at least.
I do aggre with you but since you're not playing Bloodghast you lose speed on the race, that's why we do play 4 of this buddy, they enter de bf for free and keep comming back every single turn.
You're playing only with 5 removals so Zoo can strike you back with their bodies and Scooze can blow our strategy away. I would consider Lightning Bolt, indeed.
I'm playing with 2 Tymaret, the Murder King it's a pretty solid kill condition at the late game and can avoid Ensnaring Bridge in a Rack field. (In this case you may need bloodghast).
Myself I was a bit absent in the thread this week, and that is because I had a cold streak recently in the Tournament Practice with many opponents having their hate all the time. I don't know whether it is the best to counter the hate, remove the hate, to ignore the hate, to play around the hate, or to modify my deck to make it less vulnerable to hate. Playing around hate or countering it slows me down so much that it defeats the purpose to play this fast deck, but getting hated out is also not that great. Perhaps I will modify the deck (again).
Well, if you consider the fact that the deck is basically grave based you should know that certainly the side in will be gravehate based.
You must look at your field and try to guess what card will slow down our strategy.
I play with 8-10 cards against grave hate and 5 combo hate at the sideboard, it's pretty solid!
Overall, the past few weeks at FNM's, I'm 9-6 with the relatively same build, just a few changes to the sideboard each week. Could use some tips from other players on my sideboard (changes perhaps, opinions mostly) and how you would sideboard my deck against aggro decks
Personally, I'd rather have smiters, or mirran crusaders before I would consider KotR. Especially with Elspeth as a 1 of in the deck. Knight is just too slow when usually we need to be swinging for the fences. Scooze can get just as big and in my experience, can get big quite a bit quicker out of the gate.
The usual response when KotR is brought up is that Arbiter tax impedes it too much, we don't utilize fetchlands, etc. That being said, I've never actually tried it so I'm interested in your experience. How are you using it that makes it the all-star?
While its true arbiter seems like it would tax KOTR it actually does not. Most of the time if I have both out i begin to pay 2 mana sacrificing one of those lands to fetch a Ghost Quarter and proceed to destroy my opponents lands which makes KOTR quite big extremely fast. Some matches got to the point where I had left my opponent with nothing but mana dorks and the fetches in his hands. Its also quite great for fetching Stirring Wildwood
Also the fact that there's a Horizon Canopy ,Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge usually get it quite beefy.
Well, i can't see KoTR becoming fat that fast. Arbiters can lock down his ability.
We have powerfull strikes like Loxodon Smiter with the same CMC and a trick against discards and counters,Liliana of the Veil is something we have to worry about.
This way Smiter seems much more like hate than KoTR, but KoTR may be an interesting test.
Is a 2 or 3 of Dryad Militant really out of the question? I know it's already been discussed a little bit (I discovered the search button and checked out all the posts where it had been mentioned), but I want to open the idea back up, or at least have someone soundly put it out of my mind if it actually just isn't worth it. There's the usual, "It gets fat from Wilt-Leaf Liege," but it also just seems so good against a number of decks! Would you cut off the top of the curve if you included it? How many are appropriate (I'd hate to draw a bunch)?
@Horseshoecrab: Aw... that's disheartening. Not necessarily the break from MtG, I get that. There's a lot of other things going on out there too. But the tourney. Sometimes it's just not there, I guess. I still think the deck is solid and extremely adaptable and can remain a solid deck for the long-haul.
Speaking of the long-haul, and this may sound like an odd question, but what direction will these bears go if Birthing Pod gets banned? I'd be interested in hearing some speculations. What would change? Would Arbiter slots free up? I'm curious.
Also, is blue too hard to splash for to include Geist of Saint Traft? I love the Worship route and that would give us some more hexproof synergism. He's legendary and that's applicable, and he hits like a ton of bricks. We all know that.
Thanks in advance for the input.
Well i think -4 Leonin Arbiter in GW is totally out of question.
They have sinergy with Path to Exile which is the best White removal besides they're powerfull with Ghost Quarter and this combo hurts most of the top decks of the format (see Twin, Zoo, Fae, Jund).
I think your Geist + Worship suggestion fits better in the UWx Taxes, but maybe not GW Hatebears.
Yea, i just bought a monou faeries, so i'm wondering if i could be competitive with it, but i aggre that he deck loses too much without the B, maybe i'll run some UR delver or something like that and let the other faeries at home.
I'm playing 3 Scooze + 1 Shambling Shell, but i didn't get any expressive results. =/
I was so afraid to get in Goyf again, i've been running from this cards for years.
I'm brazilian, i cannot buy a playset of goyf without selling most part of the best cards in my collection, here's like USD 410,00~420,00 each ;~
Anyone with another cheaper choice?!
Did you found that creature?!
Let us know more about it!
Well, if you notice that Wurmcoil Engine is a Artifact creature you must have some tricks for him in the Sideboard as long as you're using Nature's Claim, Deglamer, Ancient Grudge or something like that, but this only happens on G2, you must try to be fast to defeat Tron as fast as you can before they lock down the game.
The Deathtouch it's not a problem for us, our deck is Grave-based, but the +6 Lifelink will slow down our shenanigans!
For G1 i use 2 Terminate on MD to take away some trobles like Phyrexian Obliterator or Brimaz, King of Oreskos.
I see that he's not playing Nature's Claim, for me it's 2+ at least.
Btw, it's Raven's Crime really usefull!?
Long post mode [ON].
I do aggre with you but since you're not playing Bloodghast you lose speed on the race, that's why we do play 4 of this buddy, they enter de bf for free and keep comming back every single turn.
You're playing only with 5 removals so Zoo can strike you back with their bodies and Scooze can blow our strategy away. I would consider Lightning Bolt, indeed.
I'm playing with 2 Tymaret, the Murder King it's a pretty solid kill condition at the late game and can avoid Ensnaring Bridge in a Rack field. (In this case you may need bloodghast).
Well, if you consider the fact that the deck is basically grave based you should know that certainly the side in will be gravehate based.
You must look at your field and try to guess what card will slow down our strategy.
I play with 8-10 cards against grave hate and 5 combo hate at the sideboard, it's pretty solid!
Well, i think the deck already have enough enablers to do what it's designed to do.
We already have:
04x Grisly Salvage;
04x Faithless Looting (Maybe 8);
04x Lotleth Troll
It seems pretty enough for me.
There's a bunch of lists using blue and adding Hedron Crab and Fetchlands, what i particularly think it's a better choice than Glimpse.
Cheers
Don't you miss bloodghast at all?!
Anyone playing Talara's Battalion with BTE?
I forgot scooze =/
Well, i can't see KoTR becoming fat that fast. Arbiters can lock down his ability.
We have powerfull strikes like Loxodon Smiter with the same CMC and a trick against discards and counters,Liliana of the Veil is something we have to worry about.
This way Smiter seems much more like hate than KoTR, but KoTR may be an interesting test.
Well i think -4 Leonin Arbiter in GW is totally out of question.
They have sinergy with Path to Exile which is the best White removal besides they're powerfull with Ghost Quarter and this combo hurts most of the top decks of the format (see Twin, Zoo, Fae, Jund).
I think your Geist + Worship suggestion fits better in the UWx Taxes, but maybe not GW Hatebears.
Yea, i just bought a monou faeries, so i'm wondering if i could be competitive with it, but i aggre that he deck loses too much without the B, maybe i'll run some UR delver or something like that and let the other faeries at home.
@spellcheck
I'll look for it, thanks for the tips!