I know in the primer you said that Bazaar and Chains are very important but if because of budget restraints those two cards are not feasible, is this deck
still competitive vs top tier decks like zur or grixis storm? What would be the best replacements for these two cards? I plan to make this deck depending your answers, I was going to buy into edric tomorrow but this has really caught my eye and I have almost everything in gb colors. Thank you very much for your time.
I'm basically in the same boat, I love the idea of this deck but without BoB, Chains, or LED the deck does seem like it would lose a lot of power. Not sure what the list would look like as more of a midrange deck.
Bazaar is pretty important for the turbo version; I probably would go with a more midrange route without it. Other than that, the cards mentioned above are all super replaceable if you don't have them. Dark Confidant could be Scroll Rack, Chains could be any other discard outlet, and LED should probably be another piece of ramp or a land.
Hi! Thanks for coming to read about my take on The Gitrog Monster. Obviously, strategy will be the focus of our discussion today, but before we start, I'm going to talk about myself, my history in EDH, and this deck's history. For those of you who couldn't care less and want to get to the meat, go ahead and close this spoiler and start off.
First things first, my name is Razzliox, and I've been playing EDH for about six years now, but I've only been really playing for about half of that. When I say "really playing," I mean playing decks to their full potential, picking strategies based primarily on their competitive component rather than pet preferences or soft rules. (That means that for those of you who refuse to include turn-three kills or infinite combos in your decks, you may be sorely disappointed with this thread.) I moderate /r/EDH, a community of around 35k subscribers, as well as /r/CompetitiveEDH, with nearly 10k.
My first real deck was Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. This was a graveyard midrange combo deck that could play an explosive combo roll. Jarad, whose primer can be found in my signature, was a real powerhouse when I first made him, but unfortunately I feel I no longer have the success with him I used to. That is one of the many reasons I decided to create this deck. Since then, I have had great success with one other deck, Sidisi, Undead Vizier mono-black storm (again, there is a link in my signature). This deck is, in a way, a combination of my first two - Jarad is present in the raw power of Golgari, whereas Sidisi is represented in the powerful quick kills provided by black's Dark Ritual effects combined with Ad Nauseam.
When The Gitrog Monster was first spoiled, I was very excited. A fellow moderator organized a community brew, and we spent about 4 hours in voice chat discussing the best way to build it and creating a list. They elected me to test the deck that night, and I joined a Cockatrice room against three opponents with what was at the time considered tier one decks. On my third turn, I sacrificed all my lands to Rain of Filth on turn three to try and combo off, but my opponent had a Force of Will. It took me awhile, but ultimately using Life from the Loam in combination with my commander I was able to rebuild my manabase. After about an hour, I did manage to go off, but it took me another 45 minutes to kill them! (You can read the recap post here.) I was instantly hooked, and I've been tweaking it ever since.
I certainly can't take all the credit for this creative and innovative list. Special thanks to MTGS users DTrain and bobthefunny for their input, as well as reddit users JimWolfie and ShaperSavant.
Why Play the Deck?
First things first, let's talk pros and cons. You will enjoy this deck if:
You enjoy a deck that rewards your piloting skill. This build of TGM is more difficult to play than any other deck I’ve spent a significant amount of time with, and the deck is actually pretty bad until you have a decent amount of experience with it. Between complicated Doomsday lines, all-in risky plays where you “might just draw the combo” like Rain of Filth, and convoluted dredge chains, things get complicated quickly.
You enjoy wonky combos. Our actual kill-con is very silly, but in my opinion is still elegant and the most compact way to play the deck.
You think that your commander should be an integral part of the deck. Not only is The Gitrog Monster part of our only win-condition, it's also our most powerful engine for drawing cards and ramping. This deck leans hard on its commander.
Your meta is full of midrange decks that will try and out-value you. When not disrupted, this deck will be ending games on turns three to five.
On the other hand, this deck might not be your cup of tea if:
You are new to the format, or you are unwilling to put in the time to learn to play a deck properly. Again, the deck takes practice.
You want a straight, stable line to victory. Many times, the best play is to risk it, when you have only a 70% chance of winning. If you're a conservative player, this deck will challenge your intuitions.
You often play against tax effects, gravehate, and hatebears. These effects will be the bane of your existence.
You don't enjoy explaining things to people who have never seen this combo. Our combo can get quite complicated when we are pushed for resources, and especially when Skirge Familiar has been exiled from the deck.
Your playgroup doesn't allow proxies and you don't want to spend a lot of cash. Unfortunately, there is a huge power level difference between this deck with vs without Bazaar of Baghdad. Maxing out on fetchlands is also important, and you will want access to all the fast mana like Mox Diamond, Grim Monolith, and Lion's Eye Diamond.
What's the big deal with this frog dude anyway?
The most important thing that our commander does for us is provide us with a very clean and compact combo. With any discard outlet such as Wild Mongrel and with Dakmor Salvage in hand, we will be able to put two cards from our library into our graveyard. Combined with our commander's ability, as well as a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth anywhere in the deck, we will be able to draw our entire deck and win from there. This will be explained in detail below.
Froggy does more than combo, though. Making your fetchlands cantrip, Exploration on a stick, and having seriously insane interaction with Bazaar of Baghdad makes our commander a card advantage engine to be reckoned with. The card-drawing ability also turns our dredge cards into potential sources of card advantage. The upkeep trigger looks like a downside, but we'll be drawing so many cards that we'll be replacing our lands faster than they get sacrificed.
Strategy
Let's talk gameplay. The majority of the time you're playing, you will be searching for the fastest line to victory, so the most important thing for you to know is exactly how the combo works. With that in mind... Finishing the Game
The only way this deck wins the game is with Dakmor combo. The combo requires our commander in play, Dakmor Salvage in hand, and a discard outlet such as Putrid Imp. We discard Dakmor, get a draw trigger, and dredge Dakmor back to our hand. We mill two cards, and if we hit a land, we get a draw trigger. We're now at the same position we were in the beginning of the loop, except that we've milled two cards and potentially put a draw trigger onto the stack.
We can repeat the loop, playing around Faerie Macabre and similar effects by discarding Dakmor before the “draw a card” trigger resolves. This ensures Gaea’s Blessing never has a chance to enter our hand. Eventually, we dredge into either Kozilek or Gaea's Blessing. At that point, we’ll have to let the shuffle resolve before continuing the combo - again, to play around instant-speed gravehate effects.
By the time we’re done, Putrid Imp will have
300 instances of Flying.
By continuing the loop, we will generate an arbitrarily large amount of “draw a card” triggers. From here, we will want to produce arbitrarily large amounts of black mana. We can proceed to allow some of our triggers to resolve, drawing our deck. Then we discard Kozilek, shuffle up, and draw our deck again. (If at this point we are disrupted by Faerie Macabre, we should be able to beat it with Noxious Revival. To ensure this is always an option, we’ll need to make sure never to discard the Kozilek while Blessing is in our hand and Noxious is not.) At this point, there should still be an arbitrarily large number of “draw a card” triggers on the stack.
We have now reached a point where we need to generate infinite black mana. At sorcery speed, this is as simple as putting Skirge Familiar in play, but at instant-speed we’ll need to do better. (For the sake of explanatory narrative, let’s assume Necromancy is in exile, meaning no instant-speed Skirge Familiar.) It’s as simple as casting Dark Ritual, discarding Kozilek, and drawing them back. By looping rituals like this, we can generate infinite black mana.
We can also loop cards at sorcery-speed without having infinite draw on the stack. This is actually our most simple kill method - looping Praetor’s Grasp. After we’ve generated infinite black mana, we can clear the stack of draw triggers by repeatedly discarding Kozilek and drawing it. Looping cards at sorcery speed is only slightly more convoluted. First, we cast Grasp. Then we cycle two lands, putting four “draw a card” triggers on the stack. Then we discard Kozilek, shuffling those four cards into our library, and draw them again! From here, we do something fun like infinitely reanimate our opponent’s Triskelion... or just loop it forever and steal every card in their deck.
Beating disruption
The combo is disrupted by any kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, as well as by gravehate. However, it does have built-in protection. If our opponent casts a kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, for each extra land in our hand (or any other cantrip), we can simply draw another card continue going off. This means if there are four lands in our hand, we can hypothetically beat four removal spells. This really shouldn’t ever happen though as our opponents will be removing the discard outlet in response to the frog, or vice versa.
Remember: Deathrite Shaman does not have a mana ability.
You can respond if they try to exile your Dakmor.
As for gravehate, we have a few more tricks. If you're responding to something like Tormod's Crypt with the Dakmor salvage in the graveyard, the above trick works to pull it out of the graveyard. If the graveyard has some indispensable cards such as Kozilek, Riftsweeper or Necromancy, we always have the option to continue dredging in response to the exile until we hit another shuffle effect (either Koz or Blessing).
Since we’re playing two shuffle effects, there would need to be three cases of instant-speed graveyard exile, like a Scavenging Ooze with three open mana, to disrupt the combo. The first activation would exile our Kozilek, the second would exile the Blessing that hit the yard in response. But since the Blessing trigger resolves before the first Ooze activation, the Koz is still protected unless they have a third activation active. However, if the Blessing hits the yard first, this can occasionally put us in the awkward situation of having only Gaea’s Blessing as a shuffle effect. You can make infinite draw triggers easily without Koz in the deck, but once you draw your deck, you’ll be unable to put simply discard Blessing and get a shuffle, therefore clearing the stack. This potential problem introduces us to a new skill we will have to acquire!
Instant-speed Exile Protection
Very often, we will have to use cards in our exile zone to combo off. This commonly happens because one of our combo pieces is exiled. To do this, we will loop Riftsweeper at instant speed. First, it is important that we already have infinite draw triggers on the stack, and infinite black mana. (This can be achieved without Kozilek using the above methods.) At this point, we will discard Riftsweeper, and reanimate it with Necromancy. If Kozilek is in exile, it will have to be our first Riftsweeper target. Finally, we will sacrifice Riftsweeper to Culling the Weak, discard Koz, shuffle up, and draw the cards back, to be at the beginning of the loop!
This process can be repeated infinitely! Most commonly, it’s used to retrieve exiled combo pieces. If you’re feeling extra spicy, you can use it to return your opponcnts’ exiled combo pieces and win with those. More importantly, the loop can be used to produce infinite green mana at instant speed with Elvish Spirit Guide.
“But Razzliox! Why would you need to produce infinite green mana at instant speed? So far, every card you’ve talked about is black!” Glad you asked! Sometimes, we win the game outside of our main phase, meaning we can’t rely on looping Praetor’s Grasp. In such a scenario, we’ll need to take a few extra steps to kill our opponent.
Instant-speed Kill
After generating infinite black and green mana, and still with infinite draw triggers on the stack, we’re going to loop Rath’s Edge infinitely to kill all of or opponents. At this point, it’s usually easier to perform the combo with our commander off the board, so we’ll start off by Culling it.
Should exile have remained the “gone forever” zone?
Probably. But that’s not my fault.
So it’s just like the Riftsweeper loop: First we discard Arbor, then we Necromancy it and sacrifice it. Instead of sacrificing to Culling the Weak, however, we’re going to use Crop Rotation. With Rotation on the stack, we can discard Rath’s Edge and Kozilek, resolve Rotation, and tutor Rath’s Edge. Finally, we’ll re-draw our deck, discard Koz again, and re-draw Koz and Edge, which puts us back at the beginning of the loop.
How often do we actually win at instant speed? Outside of the cornercase of our opponent wheeling us into our combo piece, why would we be able to assemble it at instant speed? Well, it’s actually quite common - possibly more common than the main phase kill is the infamous cleanup phase kill. It’s easier to disrupt, but it has the advantage of being a one-card combo with our commander - no discard outlet needed.
Cleanup Step Kill
If we have more than seven cards at the end of our turn, we can use our cleanup step as our "discard outlet." Discarding Dakmor as our eighth card will produce a “draw a card” trigger, which causes priority to be passed around. We'll replace the draw by dredging Dakmor, and then if we dredge into a land, we'll draw another card. After the stack clears, we will receive another cleanup step and be forced to discard down to seven again. (Rule 514.3: "Normally, no player receives priority during the cleanup step, so no spells can be cast and no abilities can be activated. However, this rule is subject to the following exception. At this point, the game checks to see if any state-based actions would be performed and/or any triggered abilities are waiting to be put onto the stack, including those that trigger at the beginning of the next cleanup step. If so, those state-based actions are performed, then those triggered abilities are put on the stack, then the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities. Once the stack is empty and all players pass in succession, another cleanup step begins.")
By repeating this loop, we’re going to be drawing through our deck just like normal! The only problem is that we have to discard down to seven each iteration. What we need to do here is sculpt our hand - continue flipping through our deck until we have Necromancy and Skirge Familiar in our hand. (If we don’t have any open mana, we can filter to Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation, and Dark Ritual. Remember - between cleanup steps, your mana pool empties, so the Dark Ritual must be cast in the same phase as Necromancy!) Skirge Familiar produces infinite black mana, which turns into infinite green mana, and finally lethal through Rath’s Edge.
The problem with the cleanup phase is that it opens us up to gravehate and instant-speed removal. Without a discard outlet in play, a simple Faerie Macabre exiles our Salvage and we lose the game. While the cleanup phase is a powerful way to assemble the combo, it’s also very all-in. Thankfully, there are two other easy ways to assemble the combo.
Chaining Dredgers into Combo
A lot of the time, we won't have the land tutor for Dakmor, but we will have a discard outlet and Gitrog. Thankfully, we can almost always win with another dredge card, provided you have a cantrip. Let's say Stinkweed Imp is in the graveyard, with a Wild Mongrel in play. If we play our cantrip effect and dredge our imp, we're pretty darn likely to hit a land in our top five, netting another draw trigger. In response to the new draw trigger, we can discard the dredger again and continue the loop. Once we hit a bigger dredger, in this case Golgari Grave-Troll, we can dredge with that instead.
I ran a program to determine some probabilities about whether we are more likely to "whiff" (meaning not hit a land on our dredge) on all our dredge pieces - that is, Golgari Grave-Troll (dredge 6), Stinkweed Imp (dredge 5), and Life from the Loam (dredge 3). For the simulation, I assumed that there were 88 cards remaining in our library, 30 of which were lands (including one Dakmor Salvage). With no extra lands in our hand, dredging for 6 gives us a 58% chance, and dredging for 5 gives us a 43% percent chance. However, if we have just one land in our hand - meaning that one "whiff" is forgiven - our numbers boost to dredging 6 at 89%, and dredging 5 at 79%. Finally, if we have enough mana to cast Life from the Loam and get 3 free resets, we have a 75% chance of hitting Dakmor before we whiff!
Doomsday
What, more combo lines? Yes, more combo lines! Doomsday is traditionally used in Laboratory Maniac decks, and to my knowledge this is the first deck other than Grenzo, Dungeon Warden to use Doomsday in this format without blue! Doomsday is the easiest way to assemble our entire combo besides the cleanup phase kill.
You’ll want to know a few different lines. The first thing to realize is that we need five specific cards in the deck to win. To kill our opponents, we’ll need a discard outlet, Dakmor Salvage, Kozilek, a ritual effect we can loop to produce infinite black mana, and Praetor’s Grasp. Since Doomsday only searches for five cards, this means that our options will be extremely limited. However, we can fit one extra non-essential card into the pile if our discard outlet is Skirge Familiar, allowing us to eschew the ritual effect. With that in mind, our best piles are as follows:
Rain of Filth Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant Rain of Filth Putrid Imp Dakmor Salvage Praetor’s Grasp Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This pile assumes you have some sort of ritual effect in your hand, but either Grasp or Koz can be in your hand instead (in which case you put Lotus Petal in the pile). It requires the one cantrip to open, one black mana, and two lands in play.
Lake of the Dead Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant Lake of the Dead Putrid Imp Dakmor Salvage Praetor’s Grasp Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
The Lake Pile is open to the same modification as the Rain Pile. If you have a ritual effect (or Koz, or Grasp) in your hand when Doomsday resolves, you have no need for Skirge Familiar. All this line requires is one open land drop and two swamps, but it works with no mana in pool!
Three Cantrips Pile Putrid Imp Lotus Petal Dakmor Salvage Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Praetor’s Grasp
This pile requires one cantrip to open the pile, one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage, and one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage. Our third cantrip can be a land in hand, which we can then discard to Putrid Imp to draw Salvage. Regardless, we’ll have to find some way of putting a land into our graveyard so that looping Dakmor Salvage is actually card advantage.
Because the deck was too simple without it
Two Cantrips Pile Putrid Imp Dakmor Salvage Lotus Petal Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Praetor’s Grasp
The only difference between this pile and the first is the placing of Lotus Petal. By putting it under Dakmor Salvage, we eliminate the requirement for for a third cantrip, which we make up for by assuming we already have one black mana for Putrid Imp.
One Cantrip Pile Barren Moor Skirge Familiar Dakmor Salvage Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Praetor’s Grasp
After resolving Doomsday, six mana can often be hard to generate, but this is the only pile I have found that requires only one cantrip that works with no lands in play. It should be noted that Barren Moor may be replaced with Bazaar of Baghdad; doing so requires an open land drop and some cards in hand, but reduced the cost of the pile by one mana.
One Cantrip Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant Barren Moor Dakmor Salvage Putrid Imp Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Praetor’s Grasp
This line assumes you have Lotus Petal or some similar effect in your hand, giving us a little more room in the pile. This pile’s mana constraints are dependent on what ritual it is. Assuming it is Petal, all that is needed is one black mana, because the Petal will pay to cycle Barren Moor. If it is a ritual effect, we will have to be conscious that we have enough mana to re-cast the ritual after beginning the Dakmor loop. In this pile as well, Barren Moor may be substituted with Bazaar of Baghdad.
Laboratory Maniac Pile Barren Moor Crop Rotation Praetor’s Grasp Lion’s Eye Diamond Bazaar of Baghdad
This line is one of the most fun! It requires that one of your opponents has Laboratory Maniac in their library. Simply cycle Barren Moor to draw two cards, rotate a land away for Bazaar (drawing LED), use LED to cast Laboratory Maniac, and tap Bazaar! Unfortunately this requires five mana, so is only a hair less expensive than the One Cantrip pile, but hey, you never know!
Gameplay Mulliganning and Opening Turns
When you’re looking at an opening hand, there are three things to evaluate. The first thing is determining how quickly your hand will be able to resolve a The Gitrog Monster. The second thing is determining how powerful your turns will be after that, assuming our Froggy friend sticks around. The third thing is identifying the presence or lack of a backup plan should he be removed.
In general, the formula is something like this. If we can cast Frog on turn two or three and you have land drops to follow it up, the hand is probably keepable. If we can cast Frog on turn four or five but you have some other business going on in case it gets countered, the hand is probably keepable. If we have Sylvan Library or Necropotence, the hand is probably keepable. Even if we just have some sort of land-sac engine - say an Exploration with Life from the Loam and a cycle land, for example - that’ll do.
The other thing to look out for in an opening hand is a quick Ad Nauseam. A hand with three lands, a Demonic Tutor, and a Dark Ritual is very attractive. We can tutor for Ad Naus on turn two, hold Ad Naus for your opponent's end step on turn three, and turn four, untap and probably win the game.
Lotta text for "Draw two cards, then discard three cards."
Midgame
Except for early Ad Naus games, we'll almost always want to jam Froggy into play. If this means tutoring Cavern of Souls over Bazaar of Baghdad, so be it - Bazaar's not that good without Frog anyway. After this, our main goal is to make sure we're taking full advantage of his abilities. Froggy is a Phyrexian Arena that makes your fetchalnds cantrip, your cycle lands draw 2, and your dredges now read "Any time you would draw a card, you may instead mill X and draw a card." All of this comes with an Exploration tacked on. Our focus at this point is going to be using mana efficiently and hitting all our land drops. Missing land drops, even our extra land drops, can really hurt when we're sacrificing a land every upkeep. We'll want to find some sort of way to make sure we continue hitting those land drops, ideally in the form of Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam.
Loam is significantly better thanks to its combo potential, since it makes dredging into Dakmor pretty easy. Loam also has an incredibly powerful synergy with the cycle lands, meaning we can dredge multiple times per turn. If we draw a discard outlet with Loam and Gitrog in play, we have a good chance of winning either that turn or the next by dredging into our combo. During this phase of the game, we should be filling our hand and ramping, and preparing for a combo turn.
If for some reason, we can't stick Gitrog in the early game, our best bet is Bazaar of Baghdad. Strictly speaking, Bazaar is not a draw engine, but it provides virtual card advantage and lets us discard dredgers. Since the deck plays so many cards that aren't terribly useful when you're not comboing, we'll occasionally be stuck with something like Gaea's Blessing or Riftsweeper. Bazaar converts these cards into live draws at a 2/3 ratio, drawing us into the ramp spells / rituals needed to recast our commander. Once we have Bazaar and Frog in play together, Bazaar does function as a card advantage engine.
Imagine the following scenario: We tap Bazaar of Baghdad with our commander in play. For our first draw, we dredge a Stinkweed Imp, and that hits a land, as well as flipping over Life from the Loam. For our second draw, we dredge Loam, and that hits a land too. Finally, we have to discard three cards, so we discard our two dredgers and, you guessed it, a land. Gitrog cares about whether the lands were put into the graveyard at the same time (not during the resolution of the same ability), so he'll trigger three times. Our first draws, however, will once again give us free dredges, since we just discarded our dredges to Bazaar!
On a turn we think might be the combo turn, we will probably want to sacrifice Bazaar to Gitrog in our upkeep. This is primarily to preserve your mana-tapping lands, whose full value cannot be realized until our main phase. Sometimes, we will be casting Loam on our combo turn, in which case we can replay the Bazaar to get two Bazaar activations on the same turn. There are lots of ways to get multiple Bazaar activations in one turn, including Petrified Field, Life from the Loam, or simply shuffling Bazaar back in with Kozilek and tutoring for it again.
Speaking of Life from the Loam, it is our second most important mid-game card (after Bazaar). Usually, it takes a few turns to set up the combo, but its power is undeniable. To get a Loam engine going, we're going to need a land that draws a card - meaning a cycle land, or (if you have Frog in play) any land that sacrifices itself, like Petrified Field or a fetchland. We'll use the drawland to dredge Loam so we are able to cast it multiple times in a turn. If we don't have Gitrog already, we need to put him in play. Dredging Loam will fill our grave and draw us a bunch of cards. At some point, we'll be able to either dredge into Bazaar and Loam it to play, or dredge directly into Dakmor.
As mentioned in the above supersection, Life from the Loam can also very easily dredge into Dakmor combo if you have the discard outlet. The more lands in your hand (meaning the more times you can cast Loam) the more sure it is that you won't whiff. Three lands gives a 75% certainty, and six lands gives you an impressive 98% certainty. If you have other dredgers, those numbers skyrocket.
Using Bazaar of Baghdad or Life from the Loam in conjunction with our commander is the easiest way to assemble an end-step kill. These engines also produce massive amounts of card advantage, virtually guaranteeing that we'll have the requisite eight cards in hand, allowing us to take multiple cleanup phases. However, sometimes we won't be able to close out the game before it goes long, usually due to hatebears. That requires us to enter the endgame.
Endgame
For a deck that spends most of its time worrying about the first six turns, we have a great late-game. Turns out, if we can stick Gitrog in play, he's a card advantage engine that won't quit. Really, our late-game looks a lot like our mid-game, so there's not much to say - we just keep building more and more resources. Make sure you don't get too much of your deck in the graveyard such that you can't combo, and keep playing lands and drawing cards. It sounds tricksy, but don't be afraid to Praetor's Grasp for an opponent's win-condition if for whatever reason you can't get combo online.
Don't forget about Strip Mine either. We rarely pull it out when we're in the mid-game, since we're still trying to win. In the end game, often we'll need to grind a few turns for advantage before pulling it out. With an Exploration effect or two running and a way to recur Strip Mine from the grave, we can destroy our opponents' manabases faster than they can rebuild them. This is often necessary when for some reason we can't stick Froggy.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this goes to show that Froggy is a new contender for top meta slot. I believe the deck is far more powerful than has been recognized, and I aim to change that. Now that you know the ins and outs of the coolest deck in the metagame... go build it!
Removed :
1x Boreal Druid
1x Chains of Mephistopheles
1x Eternal Witness
1x Geth's Verdict
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Noose Constrictor
1x Tranquil Thicket
1x Traverse the Ulvenwald
Added:
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Darkblast
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Harrow
1x Nature's Claim
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Priest of Titania
1x Rath's Edge
1x Scroll Rack
1x Wild Mongrel
Removing bad cads and getting used to the deck, as well as importing the Rath's Edge package for instant-speed kills.
Removed Beast Within, Darkblast, and Phyrexian Tower; added Priest of Titania, Doomsday, and Diabolic Intent. Wanted to be faster
A Mono-Black deck can still remove Winnower, the same can't be said of Iona.
Firstly, the point wasn't that Void Winnower is unbeatable or doesn't die to anything, but that he comes with intrinsic protection that is at least as strong if not even stronger than Iona's. Secondly, Iona is beatable too, even by a mono-color deck of the declared color, with popular colorless EDH removal spells like All is Dust, Duplicant, Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk, and so on (not counting everyone else at the table playing removal of other colors).
The point is that Iona and Winnower are directly comparable. I can't see any strong, objective reason for banning one without banning the other, and beyond the visceral long-time dislike of her I can't figure out why people are piling all the hate on Iona specifically rather than Void Winnower (or other big, strong, soft-locking, game-ending reanimator targets).
Iona is definitely a step up from Void Winnower. I play Jarad, a GB reanimator deck, and I would swap VW for Iona in a second if I could. I do think they are comparable and fill the same roll in the deck, but Iona is much stronger than VW.
Glad to finally see this up. I would like to see more detail on the "midrange plan," you talk about it a lot but don't give many specific examples of interactions you should be playing towards. I'd also like to see more about the dragon toolbox.
It took me a long time, but some discussion in this thread combined with other articles and discussion in the Banlist Thread compelled me to write this article.
As you can see, I'm trying Twin combos as my kill-con. It's pretty easy to Food Chain into them since there's so much redundancy, and having something like Twin on Glen Elendra is pretty good. Am I missing anything important?
As you can see, I'm trying Twin combos as my kill-con. It's pretty easy to Food Chain into them since there's so much redundancy, and having something like Twin on Glen Elendra is pretty good. Am I missing anything important?
Another thing about Eldritch Evolution - it's a ten-mana "win the game" if you have Jarad in play. Sacrifice Jarad to EE, put him in the graveyard, and tutor Phyrexian Devourer. Return Jarad to your hand by saccing a Forest and a Swamp and recast him! You can cheat on mana by using reanimates instead of recasting him. Alternatively, if Phyrexian Devourer is in your GY, find Necrotic Ooze (which is able to be found of smaller creatures too).
I'm personally very excited for Eldrazi Evolution. I think it's going to be a great card for the deck. My list is just a little bit different than Razz's list (maybe 80% same?), so I'm running a lot of dorks and utility guys like Mindslicer as well...let me tell you how much I am dying to cast Eldrazi Evolution, sac Mindslicer, find Devourer, everybody discards their hands, win. Very, very excited for that.
First of all, it's Eldritch Evolution. Second of all, the card is nuts. It turns Jarad into a Bane of Progress or a Massacre Wurm. It finishes two-card creature combos very easily. It sacs Mindslicer as a cost that can't be responded to a la Phyrexian Tower and lets me find Devourer or something similar when I do.
Razz, I'd like to hear more about Ohran Viper. I occasionally pass it in my binder and remember how good it was in that Standard format, but not gonna lie, it seems particularly lackluster in cEDH. I'd assume it's a relatively good rattlesnake card, no pun intended, but that would feel super lackluster attacking with it, especially when I know it will die in the combat; the vast majority of the time, I don't particularly care what creatures my opponents have, and anything they have that I really want gone they're not going to block with, anyway. So I'd like to hear your analysis of the card and what makes it so good that we'll all be playing it in 6 months
OK, so in my mind, when I want to assess a card-advantage permanent, my go-to comparison is Phryexian Arena. This card is similar to Phyrexian Arena in many ways - it draws one extra card a turn for three mana. There are some pros and cons: If all of my opponents have a creature with power 3 or greater that is a bad trade for me, then it turns offline. I find this to be a rather unlikely scenario - most decks don't even want to get rid of a mana dork to stop me from drawing a card once. On the other hand, it makes Green Sun's Zenith for three a real thing, it can be sacrificed to many of the things in my deck that need creatures - Natural Order, Pattern of Rebirth, Dread Return, etc., it can be a deathtouch blocker when I value that effect more than a card, and it doesn't lose life. Dying to boardwipes is rather irrelevant since in my meta a Bane of Progress is more likely than a Wrath, especially since I play Bane myself. It's also easier to cast on turn two since I play lots of mana dorks that only tap for G, not B, and only one dork that only taps for B and not G. Generally, there will be at least one opponent who isn't in a position to make a favorable block, so it's pretty much always online.
So this weekend I'm attending GP Sydney. If I scrub out on day 1 I plan to play the Commander Bounty event on day 2. I'll be running my Meren combo list heavily inspired by this thread. The list is below and I'd love feedback/suggestions to consider before the event.
Note: I run Meren as the commander over Jarad for two reasons. First, I like being able to tutor Jarad with Tooth and Nail when it's time to go off. Second, I like Meren more as a commander when dealt poor hands. For the time being I'm not willing to change commander but understand why others would disagree with my decision.
How often do you have 12 mana plus a Tooth and Nail in hand without already having Jarad in play? If you do have Jarad in play, you can just tutor Phyrexian Devourer with Tooth and go off. If they somehow manage to destroy Jarad, you can use Necrotic Ooze as a second Jarad since it inherits his fling ability.
Some of your ramp seems pretty slow, especially Wood Elves, Viridian Emissary, and Devoted Druid. It's astonishing to me that you're not playing Carpet of Flowers. If there's just one Island, your Carpet is like a manadork with haste. In pod side events, you want to look out for other top-tier decks. Usually at least 50% of the people you play in a given day will be absolute trash, so you want to keep your eye out for the few who aren't. Popular decks at events like these include Sharuum, Wanderer, Karador, Tasigur, etc. Use lots of gravehate - Faerie Macabre is probably the best gravehate in this format given that its tutorable so easily off things like Survival of the Fittest.
I didn't like Chrome Mox at first either, but after testing it's pretty convincing. I suggest you test it. The card disadvantage looks really unappealing, but the tempo is just insane. How is Boreal Druid? I've been eyeing it for awhile, but I'm scared of the colorless. As for replacing Ohran Viper, probably a land? I've been meaning to up my land count to 31 or maybe 32.
Eldritch Evolution looks insane. Sorcery 1GG As an additional cost sacrifice a creature, then search your library for a creature CMC X or less where X is two plus the sacrificed creature's cost. So I turn Jarad into Bane of Progress or Massacre Wurm, or I can play Guardian of Murasa and I can sac Jarad to get that and recast the Eldritch Evolution. That's a six-mana "Sac Jarad (or another other four-drop creature, get Baleful Force/Terastodon/Woodfall Primus." Oops, as kvothe noted it exiles itself upon resolution. I can still find decent combo pieces though.
Significantly less exciting is Crop Sygil.
Crop Sigil G
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may mill 1.
Delerium - 2G, Sacrifice: Return target creature and/or land to my hand. Activate this ability only if you have four or more card types in your graveyard.
Considering it probably will turn on delerium, it seems playable. It has cute play with lots of the cards in my deck - Scroll Rack, Worldly/Vampiric Tutor, Sylvan Library, etc. On the other hand the limited regrowth is kind of disappointing.
Splendid Reclamation looks real interesting. 3G Sorcery Return all land cards from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. It will usually ramp for at least one but has potential to be far more. It would be fighting with the slot of Frontier Siege which is honestly hard to beat.
Grim Flayer will be tested and probably won't make the cut. Creature GB
Trample.
Whenever Grim Flayer deals combat damage to a player, look at the top three cards of your library. Put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest back on top of your library in any order.
Delirium - Grim Flayers gets +2/+2 as long as there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard
GSZ for two has a new target I guess?
I play Noose Constrictor in its place.
Bazaar is pretty important for the turbo version; I probably would go with a more midrange route without it. Other than that, the cards mentioned above are all super replaceable if you don't have them. Dark Confidant could be Scroll Rack, Chains could be any other discard outlet, and LED should probably be another piece of ramp or a land.
Thoughts?
I'm converting this into MTGS form and will put it in the OP.
Hi! Thanks for coming to read about my take on The Gitrog Monster. Obviously, strategy will be the focus of our discussion today, but before we start, I'm going to talk about myself, my history in EDH, and this deck's history. For those of you who couldn't care less and want to get to the meat, go ahead and close this spoiler and start off.
First things first, my name is Razzliox, and I've been playing EDH for about six years now, but I've only been really playing for about half of that. When I say "really playing," I mean playing decks to their full potential, picking strategies based primarily on their competitive component rather than pet preferences or soft rules. (That means that for those of you who refuse to include turn-three kills or infinite combos in your decks, you may be sorely disappointed with this thread.) I moderate /r/EDH, a community of around 35k subscribers, as well as /r/CompetitiveEDH, with nearly 10k.
My first real deck was Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. This was a graveyard midrange combo deck that could play an explosive combo roll. Jarad, whose primer can be found in my signature, was a real powerhouse when I first made him, but unfortunately I feel I no longer have the success with him I used to. That is one of the many reasons I decided to create this deck. Since then, I have had great success with one other deck, Sidisi, Undead Vizier mono-black storm (again, there is a link in my signature). This deck is, in a way, a combination of my first two - Jarad is present in the raw power of Golgari, whereas Sidisi is represented in the powerful quick kills provided by black's Dark Ritual effects combined with Ad Nauseam.
When The Gitrog Monster was first spoiled, I was very excited. A fellow moderator organized a community brew, and we spent about 4 hours in voice chat discussing the best way to build it and creating a list. They elected me to test the deck that night, and I joined a Cockatrice room against three opponents with what was at the time considered tier one decks. On my third turn, I sacrificed all my lands to Rain of Filth on turn three to try and combo off, but my opponent had a Force of Will. It took me awhile, but ultimately using Life from the Loam in combination with my commander I was able to rebuild my manabase. After about an hour, I did manage to go off, but it took me another 45 minutes to kill them! (You can read the recap post here.) I was instantly hooked, and I've been tweaking it ever since.
I certainly can't take all the credit for this creative and innovative list. Special thanks to MTGS users DTrain and bobthefunny for their input, as well as reddit users JimWolfie and ShaperSavant.
First things first, let's talk pros and cons. You will enjoy this deck if:
The most important thing that our commander does for us is provide us with a very clean and compact combo. With any discard outlet such as Wild Mongrel and with Dakmor Salvage in hand, we will be able to put two cards from our library into our graveyard. Combined with our commander's ability, as well as a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth anywhere in the deck, we will be able to draw our entire deck and win from there. This will be explained in detail below.
Froggy does more than combo, though. Making your fetchlands cantrip, Exploration on a stick, and having seriously insane interaction with Bazaar of Baghdad makes our commander a card advantage engine to be reckoned with. The card-drawing ability also turns our dredge cards into potential sources of card advantage. The upkeep trigger looks like a downside, but we'll be drawing so many cards that we'll be replacing our lands faster than they get sacrificed.
1x The Gitrog Monster
//Land (36)
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Barren Moor
1x Bayou
1x Bazaar of Baghdad
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Cabal Pit
1x Cavern of Souls
1x City of Brass
1x City of Traitors
1x Command Beacon
1x Command Tower
1x Dakmor Salvage
1x Dryad Arbor
2x Forest
1x Gemstone Caverns
1x Lake of the Dead
1x Llanowar Wastes
1x Mana Confluence
1x Marsh Flats
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Petrified Field
1x Polluted Delta
1x Polluted Mire
1x Rath's Edge
1x Slippery Karst
1x Strip Mine
2x Swamp
1x Twilight Mire
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Woodland Cemetery
1x Arbor Elf
1x Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Dark Confidant
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Elves of Deep Shadow
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Elvish Spirit Guide
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Golgari Grave-Troll
1x Hermit Druid
1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Lotus Cobra
1x Priest of Titania
1x Putrid Imp
1x Riftsweeper
1x Skirge Familiar
1x Stinkweed Imp
1x Sylvan Safekeeper
1x Wild Mongrel
//Artifact (11)
1x Chrome Mox
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Expedition Map
1x Grim Monolith
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mox Diamond
1x Scroll Rack
1x Sol Ring
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Diabolic Intent
1x Doomsday
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Life from the Loam
1x Praetor's Grasp
1x Sylvan Scrying
//Instant (14)
1x Abrupt Decay
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Cabal Ritual
1x Crop Rotation
1x Culling the Weak
1x Dark Ritual
1x Entomb
1x Harrow
1x Nature's Claim
1x Noxious Revival
1x Rain of Filth
1x Realms Uncharted
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Worldly Tutor
//Enchantment (9)
1x Burgeoning
1x Carpet of Flowers
1x City of Solitude
1x Exploration
1x Necromancy
1x Necropotence
1x Oblivion Crown
1x Squandered Resources
1x Sylvan Library
Strategy
Let's talk gameplay. The majority of the time you're playing, you will be searching for the fastest line to victory, so the most important thing for you to know is exactly how the combo works. With that in mind...
Finishing the Game
The only way this deck wins the game is with Dakmor combo. The combo requires our commander in play, Dakmor Salvage in hand, and a discard outlet such as Putrid Imp. We discard Dakmor, get a draw trigger, and dredge Dakmor back to our hand. We mill two cards, and if we hit a land, we get a draw trigger. We're now at the same position we were in the beginning of the loop, except that we've milled two cards and potentially put a draw trigger onto the stack.
We can repeat the loop, playing around Faerie Macabre and similar effects by discarding Dakmor before the “draw a card” trigger resolves. This ensures Gaea’s Blessing never has a chance to enter our hand. Eventually, we dredge into either Kozilek or Gaea's Blessing. At that point, we’ll have to let the shuffle resolve before continuing the combo - again, to play around instant-speed gravehate effects.
300 instances of Flying.
We have now reached a point where we need to generate infinite black mana. At sorcery speed, this is as simple as putting Skirge Familiar in play, but at instant-speed we’ll need to do better. (For the sake of explanatory narrative, let’s assume Necromancy is in exile, meaning no instant-speed Skirge Familiar.) It’s as simple as casting Dark Ritual, discarding Kozilek, and drawing them back. By looping rituals like this, we can generate infinite black mana.
We can also loop cards at sorcery-speed without having infinite draw on the stack. This is actually our most simple kill method - looping Praetor’s Grasp. After we’ve generated infinite black mana, we can clear the stack of draw triggers by repeatedly discarding Kozilek and drawing it. Looping cards at sorcery speed is only slightly more convoluted. First, we cast Grasp. Then we cycle two lands, putting four “draw a card” triggers on the stack. Then we discard Kozilek, shuffling those four cards into our library, and draw them again! From here, we do something fun like infinitely reanimate our opponent’s Triskelion... or just loop it forever and steal every card in their deck.
Beating disruption
The combo is disrupted by any kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, as well as by gravehate. However, it does have built-in protection. If our opponent casts a kill spell targeting our commander or our discard outlet, for each extra land in our hand (or any other cantrip), we can simply draw another card continue going off. This means if there are four lands in our hand, we can hypothetically beat four removal spells. This really shouldn’t ever happen though as our opponents will be removing the discard outlet in response to the frog, or vice versa.
You can respond if they try to exile your Dakmor.
Since we’re playing two shuffle effects, there would need to be three cases of instant-speed graveyard exile, like a Scavenging Ooze with three open mana, to disrupt the combo. The first activation would exile our Kozilek, the second would exile the Blessing that hit the yard in response. But since the Blessing trigger resolves before the first Ooze activation, the Koz is still protected unless they have a third activation active. However, if the Blessing hits the yard first, this can occasionally put us in the awkward situation of having only Gaea’s Blessing as a shuffle effect. You can make infinite draw triggers easily without Koz in the deck, but once you draw your deck, you’ll be unable to put simply discard Blessing and get a shuffle, therefore clearing the stack. This potential problem introduces us to a new skill we will have to acquire!
Instant-speed Exile Protection
Very often, we will have to use cards in our exile zone to combo off. This commonly happens because one of our combo pieces is exiled. To do this, we will loop Riftsweeper at instant speed. First, it is important that we already have infinite draw triggers on the stack, and infinite black mana. (This can be achieved without Kozilek using the above methods.) At this point, we will discard Riftsweeper, and reanimate it with Necromancy. If Kozilek is in exile, it will have to be our first Riftsweeper target. Finally, we will sacrifice Riftsweeper to Culling the Weak, discard Koz, shuffle up, and draw the cards back, to be at the beginning of the loop!
This process can be repeated infinitely! Most commonly, it’s used to retrieve exiled combo pieces. If you’re feeling extra spicy, you can use it to return your opponcnts’ exiled combo pieces and win with those. More importantly, the loop can be used to produce infinite green mana at instant speed with Elvish Spirit Guide.
“But Razzliox! Why would you need to produce infinite green mana at instant speed? So far, every card you’ve talked about is black!” Glad you asked! Sometimes, we win the game outside of our main phase, meaning we can’t rely on looping Praetor’s Grasp. In such a scenario, we’ll need to take a few extra steps to kill our opponent.
Instant-speed Kill
After generating infinite black and green mana, and still with infinite draw triggers on the stack, we’re going to loop Rath’s Edge infinitely to kill all of or opponents. At this point, it’s usually easier to perform the combo with our commander off the board, so we’ll start off by Culling it.
Probably. But that’s not my fault.
How often do we actually win at instant speed? Outside of the cornercase of our opponent wheeling us into our combo piece, why would we be able to assemble it at instant speed? Well, it’s actually quite common - possibly more common than the main phase kill is the infamous cleanup phase kill. It’s easier to disrupt, but it has the advantage of being a one-card combo with our commander - no discard outlet needed.
Cleanup Step Kill
If we have more than seven cards at the end of our turn, we can use our cleanup step as our "discard outlet." Discarding Dakmor as our eighth card will produce a “draw a card” trigger, which causes priority to be passed around. We'll replace the draw by dredging Dakmor, and then if we dredge into a land, we'll draw another card. After the stack clears, we will receive another cleanup step and be forced to discard down to seven again. (Rule 514.3: "Normally, no player receives priority during the cleanup step, so no spells can be cast and no abilities can be activated. However, this rule is subject to the following exception. At this point, the game checks to see if any state-based actions would be performed and/or any triggered abilities are waiting to be put onto the stack, including those that trigger at the beginning of the next cleanup step. If so, those state-based actions are performed, then those triggered abilities are put on the stack, then the active player gets priority. Players may cast spells and activate abilities. Once the stack is empty and all players pass in succession, another cleanup step begins.")
By repeating this loop, we’re going to be drawing through our deck just like normal! The only problem is that we have to discard down to seven each iteration. What we need to do here is sculpt our hand - continue flipping through our deck until we have Necromancy and Skirge Familiar in our hand. (If we don’t have any open mana, we can filter to Elvish Spirit Guide, Crop Rotation, and Dark Ritual. Remember - between cleanup steps, your mana pool empties, so the Dark Ritual must be cast in the same phase as Necromancy!) Skirge Familiar produces infinite black mana, which turns into infinite green mana, and finally lethal through Rath’s Edge.
The problem with the cleanup phase is that it opens us up to gravehate and instant-speed removal. Without a discard outlet in play, a simple Faerie Macabre exiles our Salvage and we lose the game. While the cleanup phase is a powerful way to assemble the combo, it’s also very all-in. Thankfully, there are two other easy ways to assemble the combo.
Chaining Dredgers into Combo
A lot of the time, we won't have the land tutor for Dakmor, but we will have a discard outlet and Gitrog. Thankfully, we can almost always win with another dredge card, provided you have a cantrip. Let's say Stinkweed Imp is in the graveyard, with a Wild Mongrel in play. If we play our cantrip effect and dredge our imp, we're pretty darn likely to hit a land in our top five, netting another draw trigger. In response to the new draw trigger, we can discard the dredger again and continue the loop. Once we hit a bigger dredger, in this case Golgari Grave-Troll, we can dredge with that instead.
I ran a program to determine some probabilities about whether we are more likely to "whiff" (meaning not hit a land on our dredge) on all our dredge pieces - that is, Golgari Grave-Troll (dredge 6), Stinkweed Imp (dredge 5), and Life from the Loam (dredge 3). For the simulation, I assumed that there were 88 cards remaining in our library, 30 of which were lands (including one Dakmor Salvage). With no extra lands in our hand, dredging for 6 gives us a 58% chance, and dredging for 5 gives us a 43% percent chance. However, if we have just one land in our hand - meaning that one "whiff" is forgiven - our numbers boost to dredging 6 at 89%, and dredging 5 at 79%. Finally, if we have enough mana to cast Life from the Loam and get 3 free resets, we have a 75% chance of hitting Dakmor before we whiff!
Doomsday
What, more combo lines? Yes, more combo lines! Doomsday is traditionally used in Laboratory Maniac decks, and to my knowledge this is the first deck other than Grenzo, Dungeon Warden to use Doomsday in this format without blue! Doomsday is the easiest way to assemble our entire combo besides the cleanup phase kill.
You’ll want to know a few different lines. The first thing to realize is that we need five specific cards in the deck to win. To kill our opponents, we’ll need a discard outlet, Dakmor Salvage, Kozilek, a ritual effect we can loop to produce infinite black mana, and Praetor’s Grasp. Since Doomsday only searches for five cards, this means that our options will be extremely limited. However, we can fit one extra non-essential card into the pile if our discard outlet is Skirge Familiar, allowing us to eschew the ritual effect. With that in mind, our best piles are as follows:
Rain of Filth Pile
Rain of Filth
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This is our go-to pile. It requires nothing other than 1B in pool and four lands (or one additional mana for each missing land). In this pile and in any other with Rain of Filth, it may be replaced by Squandered Resources for an additional green mana.
Rain of Filth Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Rain of Filth
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This pile assumes you have some sort of ritual effect in your hand, but either Grasp or Koz can be in your hand instead (in which case you put Lotus Petal in the pile). It requires the one cantrip to open, one black mana, and two lands in play.
Lake of the Dead Pile
Lake of the Dead
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
This pile works like the Rain of Filth pile, except instead of casting Rain of Filth, you have to play Lake of the Dead and sacrifice swamps. That means it costs a low low low one generic mana, but you have to have a land drop open.
Lake of the Dead Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Lake of the Dead
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Praetor’s Grasp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
The Lake Pile is open to the same modification as the Rain Pile. If you have a ritual effect (or Koz, or Grasp) in your hand when Doomsday resolves, you have no need for Skirge Familiar. All this line requires is one open land drop and two swamps, but it works with no mana in pool!
Three Cantrips Pile
Putrid Imp
Lotus Petal
Dakmor Salvage
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
This pile requires one cantrip to open the pile, one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage, and one cantrip to draw into Dakmor Salvage. Our third cantrip can be a land in hand, which we can then discard to Putrid Imp to draw Salvage. Regardless, we’ll have to find some way of putting a land into our graveyard so that looping Dakmor Salvage is actually card advantage.
Two Cantrips Pile
Putrid Imp
Dakmor Salvage
Lotus Petal
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
The only difference between this pile and the first is the placing of Lotus Petal. By putting it under Dakmor Salvage, we eliminate the requirement for for a third cantrip, which we make up for by assuming we already have one black mana for Putrid Imp.
One Cantrip Pile
Barren Moor
Skirge Familiar
Dakmor Salvage
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
After resolving Doomsday, six mana can often be hard to generate, but this is the only pile I have found that requires only one cantrip that works with no lands in play. It should be noted that Barren Moor may be replaced with Bazaar of Baghdad; doing so requires an open land drop and some cards in hand, but reduced the cost of the pile by one mana.
One Cantrip Pile; Combo Card in Hand Variant
Barren Moor
Dakmor Salvage
Putrid Imp
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Praetor’s Grasp
This line assumes you have Lotus Petal or some similar effect in your hand, giving us a little more room in the pile. This pile’s mana constraints are dependent on what ritual it is. Assuming it is Petal, all that is needed is one black mana, because the Petal will pay to cycle Barren Moor. If it is a ritual effect, we will have to be conscious that we have enough mana to re-cast the ritual after beginning the Dakmor loop. In this pile as well, Barren Moor may be substituted with Bazaar of Baghdad.
Laboratory Maniac Pile
Barren Moor
Crop Rotation
Praetor’s Grasp
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Bazaar of Baghdad
This line is one of the most fun! It requires that one of your opponents has Laboratory Maniac in their library. Simply cycle Barren Moor to draw two cards, rotate a land away for Bazaar (drawing LED), use LED to cast Laboratory Maniac, and tap Bazaar! Unfortunately this requires five mana, so is only a hair less expensive than the One Cantrip pile, but hey, you never know!
Gameplay
Mulliganning and Opening Turns
When you’re looking at an opening hand, there are three things to evaluate. The first thing is determining how quickly your hand will be able to resolve a The Gitrog Monster. The second thing is determining how powerful your turns will be after that, assuming our Froggy friend sticks around. The third thing is identifying the presence or lack of a backup plan should he be removed.
In general, the formula is something like this. If we can cast Frog on turn two or three and you have land drops to follow it up, the hand is probably keepable. If we can cast Frog on turn four or five but you have some other business going on in case it gets countered, the hand is probably keepable. If we have Sylvan Library or Necropotence, the hand is probably keepable. Even if we just have some sort of land-sac engine - say an Exploration with Life from the Loam and a cycle land, for example - that’ll do.
The other thing to look out for in an opening hand is a quick Ad Nauseam. A hand with three lands, a Demonic Tutor, and a Dark Ritual is very attractive. We can tutor for Ad Naus on turn two, hold Ad Naus for your opponent's end step on turn three, and turn four, untap and probably win the game.
Except for early Ad Naus games, we'll almost always want to jam Froggy into play. If this means tutoring Cavern of Souls over Bazaar of Baghdad, so be it - Bazaar's not that good without Frog anyway. After this, our main goal is to make sure we're taking full advantage of his abilities. Froggy is a Phyrexian Arena that makes your fetchalnds cantrip, your cycle lands draw 2, and your dredges now read "Any time you would draw a card, you may instead mill X and draw a card." All of this comes with an Exploration tacked on. Our focus at this point is going to be using mana efficiently and hitting all our land drops. Missing land drops, even our extra land drops, can really hurt when we're sacrificing a land every upkeep. We'll want to find some sort of way to make sure we continue hitting those land drops, ideally in the form of Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam.
Loam is significantly better thanks to its combo potential, since it makes dredging into Dakmor pretty easy. Loam also has an incredibly powerful synergy with the cycle lands, meaning we can dredge multiple times per turn. If we draw a discard outlet with Loam and Gitrog in play, we have a good chance of winning either that turn or the next by dredging into our combo. During this phase of the game, we should be filling our hand and ramping, and preparing for a combo turn.
If for some reason, we can't stick Gitrog in the early game, our best bet is Bazaar of Baghdad. Strictly speaking, Bazaar is not a draw engine, but it provides virtual card advantage and lets us discard dredgers. Since the deck plays so many cards that aren't terribly useful when you're not comboing, we'll occasionally be stuck with something like Gaea's Blessing or Riftsweeper. Bazaar converts these cards into live draws at a 2/3 ratio, drawing us into the ramp spells / rituals needed to recast our commander. Once we have Bazaar and Frog in play together, Bazaar does function as a card advantage engine.
Imagine the following scenario: We tap Bazaar of Baghdad with our commander in play. For our first draw, we dredge a Stinkweed Imp, and that hits a land, as well as flipping over Life from the Loam. For our second draw, we dredge Loam, and that hits a land too. Finally, we have to discard three cards, so we discard our two dredgers and, you guessed it, a land. Gitrog cares about whether the lands were put into the graveyard at the same time (not during the resolution of the same ability), so he'll trigger three times. Our first draws, however, will once again give us free dredges, since we just discarded our dredges to Bazaar!
On a turn we think might be the combo turn, we will probably want to sacrifice Bazaar to Gitrog in our upkeep. This is primarily to preserve your mana-tapping lands, whose full value cannot be realized until our main phase. Sometimes, we will be casting Loam on our combo turn, in which case we can replay the Bazaar to get two Bazaar activations on the same turn. There are lots of ways to get multiple Bazaar activations in one turn, including Petrified Field, Life from the Loam, or simply shuffling Bazaar back in with Kozilek and tutoring for it again.
Speaking of Life from the Loam, it is our second most important mid-game card (after Bazaar). Usually, it takes a few turns to set up the combo, but its power is undeniable. To get a Loam engine going, we're going to need a land that draws a card - meaning a cycle land, or (if you have Frog in play) any land that sacrifices itself, like Petrified Field or a fetchland. We'll use the drawland to dredge Loam so we are able to cast it multiple times in a turn. If we don't have Gitrog already, we need to put him in play. Dredging Loam will fill our grave and draw us a bunch of cards. At some point, we'll be able to either dredge into Bazaar and Loam it to play, or dredge directly into Dakmor.
As mentioned in the above supersection, Life from the Loam can also very easily dredge into Dakmor combo if you have the discard outlet. The more lands in your hand (meaning the more times you can cast Loam) the more sure it is that you won't whiff. Three lands gives a 75% certainty, and six lands gives you an impressive 98% certainty. If you have other dredgers, those numbers skyrocket.
Using Bazaar of Baghdad or Life from the Loam in conjunction with our commander is the easiest way to assemble an end-step kill. These engines also produce massive amounts of card advantage, virtually guaranteeing that we'll have the requisite eight cards in hand, allowing us to take multiple cleanup phases. However, sometimes we won't be able to close out the game before it goes long, usually due to hatebears. That requires us to enter the endgame.
Endgame
For a deck that spends most of its time worrying about the first six turns, we have a great late-game. Turns out, if we can stick Gitrog in play, he's a card advantage engine that won't quit. Really, our late-game looks a lot like our mid-game, so there's not much to say - we just keep building more and more resources. Make sure you don't get too much of your deck in the graveyard such that you can't combo, and keep playing lands and drawing cards. It sounds tricksy, but don't be afraid to Praetor's Grasp for an opponent's win-condition if for whatever reason you can't get combo online.
Don't forget about Strip Mine either. We rarely pull it out when we're in the mid-game, since we're still trying to win. In the end game, often we'll need to grind a few turns for advantage before pulling it out. With an Exploration effect or two running and a way to recur Strip Mine from the grave, we can destroy our opponents' manabases faster than they can rebuild them. This is often necessary when for some reason we can't stick Froggy.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this goes to show that Froggy is a new contender for top meta slot. I believe the deck is far more powerful than has been recognized, and I aim to change that. Now that you know the ins and outs of the coolest deck in the metagame... go build it!
Removed :
1x Boreal Druid
1x Chains of Mephistopheles
1x Eternal Witness
1x Geth's Verdict
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Noose Constrictor
1x Tranquil Thicket
1x Traverse the Ulvenwald
Added:
1x Blooming Marsh
1x Darkblast
1x Gaea's Blessing
1x Harrow
1x Nature's Claim
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Priest of Titania
1x Rath's Edge
1x Scroll Rack
1x Wild Mongrel
Removing bad cads and getting used to the deck, as well as importing the Rath's Edge package for instant-speed kills.
Removed Beast Within, Darkblast, and Phyrexian Tower; added Priest of Titania, Doomsday, and Diabolic Intent. Wanted to be faster
Iona is definitely a step up from Void Winnower. I play Jarad, a GB reanimator deck, and I would swap VW for Iona in a second if I could. I do think they are comparable and fill the same roll in the deck, but Iona is much stronger than VW.
http://www.5colorcombo.com/draft/2016/09/07/edh-banlist-observations.html
I am interested in any feedback you guys might have.
1x Maelstrom Wanderer
//Land (36)
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Arid Mesa
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Breeding Pool
1x City of Brass
1x Command Tower
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Flooded Strand
7x Forest
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Grove of the Burnwillows
4x Island
1x Karplusan Forest
1x Mana Confluence
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
1x Polluted Delta
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Shivan Reef
1x Stomping Ground
1x Taiga
1x Tropical Island
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Volcanic Island
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Yavimaya Coast
//Artifact (6)
1x Birthing Pod
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Scroll Rack
1x Sol Ring
1x Arbor Elf
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Bloom Tender
1x Bounding Krasis
1x Consecrated Sphinx
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Eternal Witness
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Glen Elendra Archmage
1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Misthollow Griffin
1x Orcish Lumberjack
1x Phantasmal Image
1x Priest of Titania
1x Rattleclaw Mystic
1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
1x Shaman of Forgotten Ways
1x Somberwald Sage
1x Sylvan Caryatid
1x Treasonous Ogre
1x Wood Elves
1x Zealous Conscripts
//Instant (8)
1x Brainstorm
1x Crop Rotation
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Long-Term Plans
1x Mana Drain
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Nature's Claim
1x Worldly Tutor
1x Garruk Wildspeaker
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1x Karn Liberated
//Sorcery (16)
1x Blatant Thievery
1x Bribery
1x Farseek
1x Jokulhaups
1x Nature's Lore
1x Personal Tutor
1x Ponder
1x Ranger's Path
1x Search for Tomorrow
1x Skyshroud Claim
1x Sylvan Tutor
1x Temporal Mastery
1x Three Visits
1x Time Warp
1x Tooth and Nail
1x Walk the Aeons
//Enchantment (7)
1x Carpet of Flowers
1x Exploration
1x Food Chain
1x Frontier Siege
1x Mystic Remora
1x Rhystic Study
1x Splinter Twin
As you can see, I'm trying Twin combos as my kill-con. It's pretty easy to Food Chain into them since there's so much redundancy, and having something like Twin on Glen Elendra is pretty good. Am I missing anything important?
1x Maelstrom Wanderer
//Land (36)
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Arid Mesa
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Breeding Pool
1x City of Brass
1x Command Tower
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Flooded Strand
7x Forest
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Grove of the Burnwillows
4x Island
1x Karplusan Forest
1x Mana Confluence
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
1x Polluted Delta
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Shivan Reef
1x Stomping Ground
1x Taiga
1x Tropical Island
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Volcanic Island
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Yavimaya Coast
//Artifact (6)
1x Birthing Pod
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Scroll Rack
1x Sol Ring
1x Arbor Elf
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Bloom Tender
1x Bounding Krasis
1x Consecrated Sphinx
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Eternal Witness
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Glen Elendra Archmage
1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Misthollow Griffin
1x Orcish Lumberjack
1x Phantasmal Image
1x Priest of Titania
1x Rattleclaw Mystic
1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
1x Shaman of Forgotten Ways
1x Somberwald Sage
1x Sylvan Caryatid
1x Treasonous Ogre
1x Wood Elves
1x Zealous Conscripts
//Instant (8)
1x Brainstorm
1x Crop Rotation
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Long-Term Plans
1x Mana Drain
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Nature's Claim
1x Worldly Tutor
1x Garruk Wildspeaker
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1x Karn Liberated
//Sorcery (16)
1x Blatant Thievery
1x Bribery
1x Farseek
1x Jokulhaups
1x Nature's Lore
1x Personal Tutor
1x Ponder
1x Ranger's Path
1x Search for Tomorrow
1x Skyshroud Claim
1x Sylvan Tutor
1x Temporal Mastery
1x Three Visits
1x Time Warp
1x Tooth and Nail
1x Walk the Aeons
//Enchantment (7)
1x Carpet of Flowers
1x Exploration
1x Food Chain
1x Frontier Siege
1x Mystic Remora
1x Rhystic Study
1x Splinter Twin
As you can see, I'm trying Twin combos as my kill-con. It's pretty easy to Food Chain into them since there's so much redundancy, and having something like Twin on Glen Elendra is pretty good. Am I missing anything important?
Seriously this card is nutty.
First of all, it's Eldritch Evolution. Second of all, the card is nuts. It turns Jarad into a Bane of Progress or a Massacre Wurm. It finishes two-card creature combos very easily. It sacs Mindslicer as a cost that can't be responded to a la Phyrexian Tower and lets me find Devourer or something similar when I do.
OK, so in my mind, when I want to assess a card-advantage permanent, my go-to comparison is Phryexian Arena. This card is similar to Phyrexian Arena in many ways - it draws one extra card a turn for three mana. There are some pros and cons: If all of my opponents have a creature with power 3 or greater that is a bad trade for me, then it turns offline. I find this to be a rather unlikely scenario - most decks don't even want to get rid of a mana dork to stop me from drawing a card once. On the other hand, it makes Green Sun's Zenith for three a real thing, it can be sacrificed to many of the things in my deck that need creatures - Natural Order, Pattern of Rebirth, Dread Return, etc., it can be a deathtouch blocker when I value that effect more than a card, and it doesn't lose life. Dying to boardwipes is rather irrelevant since in my meta a Bane of Progress is more likely than a Wrath, especially since I play Bane myself. It's also easier to cast on turn two since I play lots of mana dorks that only tap for G, not B, and only one dork that only taps for B and not G. Generally, there will be at least one opponent who isn't in a position to make a favorable block, so it's pretty much always online.
How often do you have 12 mana plus a Tooth and Nail in hand without already having Jarad in play? If you do have Jarad in play, you can just tutor Phyrexian Devourer with Tooth and go off. If they somehow manage to destroy Jarad, you can use Necrotic Ooze as a second Jarad since it inherits his fling ability.
Some of your ramp seems pretty slow, especially Wood Elves, Viridian Emissary, and Devoted Druid. It's astonishing to me that you're not playing Carpet of Flowers. If there's just one Island, your Carpet is like a manadork with haste. In pod side events, you want to look out for other top-tier decks. Usually at least 50% of the people you play in a given day will be absolute trash, so you want to keep your eye out for the few who aren't. Popular decks at events like these include Sharuum, Wanderer, Karador, Tasigur, etc. Use lots of gravehate - Faerie Macabre is probably the best gravehate in this format given that its tutorable so easily off things like Survival of the Fittest.
Good luck!
or I can play Guardian of Murasa and I can sac Jarad to get that and recast the Eldritch Evolution. That's a six-mana "Sac Jarad (or another other four-drop creature, get Baleful Force/Terastodon/Woodfall Primus."Oops, as kvothe noted it exiles itself upon resolution. I can still find decent combo pieces though.Significantly less exciting is Crop Sygil.
Crop Sigil G
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may mill 1.
Delerium - 2G, Sacrifice: Return target creature and/or land to my hand. Activate this ability only if you have four or more card types in your graveyard.
Considering it probably will turn on delerium, it seems playable. It has cute play with lots of the cards in my deck - Scroll Rack, Worldly/Vampiric Tutor, Sylvan Library, etc. On the other hand the limited regrowth is kind of disappointing.
Splendid Reclamation looks real interesting. 3G Sorcery Return all land cards from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. It will usually ramp for at least one but has potential to be far more. It would be fighting with the slot of Frontier Siege which is honestly hard to beat.
Grim Flayer will be tested and probably won't make the cut. Creature GB
Trample.
Whenever Grim Flayer deals combat damage to a player, look at the top three cards of your library. Put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest back on top of your library in any order.
Delirium - Grim Flayers gets +2/+2 as long as there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard
GSZ for two has a new target I guess?