Survival
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I decided to try limiting myself to only 3 colors and see where that took me in some different builds. My first attempt was RUG. These are the results:
I only played one practice match vs Dredge (I won). This has a very interesting line in it where you can pitch Anger to grab Lumberjack, play it with haste and eat a Forest for GGG to use 3 more Survival activations (especially good if you cast him off Mox Ruby!) It only nets you 1 G mana (unless you had the Ruby) but it nets you and extra discard which could allow for an extra 4 damage!
I'll add other 3 color experimental versions later on!
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@wfain I was thinking about trimming colors also, but am more interested in getting rid of red. the splash is pretty light and seems mostly replaceable. Anger has been okay at rebuilding against control decks and in theory is a way to battle oath decks, but in practice it might not come up enough to be justified. Against control they can often interact with the GY with deathrite or rest in peace, or you just don't need that effect too much. Against oath you're probably just going to lose to a resolved Oath regardless and i'm more willing than most to just kinda punt that matchup.
the benefit of going without red would be that you have more stable mana against wastelands, easier decisions fetching, and another utility slot in the deck. I'd like to fit in another fast mana (spirit guide 2 most likely) and lean on kambal and thalia harder.
that RUG list looks real spicy though! lumberjack is a sweet card and is that edric hiding in the corner?? love it! I am real interested in hearing about all those 1-ofs and how they perform after more matches. Dack, Ooze, Scryb ranger, green sun all are real interesting. My fear is that giving up on the hatebears is going to really cost you against PO which seems to be everywhere.
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@kaluma I don’t really expect it to be better, just wanted to explore the options.
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@kaluma so if we remove Anger and Taiga (and Ingot Chewer from the board)- we add Savannah and Kambal to the main, and another Decay to the board? Maybe change Ruby to another ESG as well?
That makes us a little better vs Outcome and Storm in G1 and gives us another way to kill Cages, Priests, RiPs, Oaths, and Mentors. -
@wfain that is exactly what i'm going to try, except maybe nature's claim instead of decay.
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My reasoning for adding another trop vs savannah was for the shops matchup in which we most certainly want a back up blue source to cast energy flux right? Not to mention Wonder has been an allstar vs shops as well. No blue decks are running wastelands anymore except Bug fish/Bug Leo but we wouldn't want white vs them anyways.
Edit: I just like kambal in general as his life loss really helps with the beatdown plan regardless if they are on PO or Storm or not.
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I was just looking at the cards with Aftermath (I’d never seen them before) and I was thinking Driven//Despair might be a solid SB card against Outcome? I wonder if it would only matter in games we’re attacking for lethal anyway though?
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@wfain The best one is probably [[Failure (Failure/Comply)]] if you wanna go that route. It gives you a turn where the opponent can't cast PO/Tinker/Tendrils/Dread Return or whatever you're afraid of.
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@bleedth3sky I'm playing 2 savannah, 2 trop, 2 bayou, forest, cradle, 6 fetches, 2 spirit guides, 4 mox + lotus as the mana base right now for the red-less build. I agree having double blue is important with energy flux as your shops plan (and wonder as you said). and there are other annoying wasteland decks like landstill or BUG/ czech pile that also attack your lands, plus the fact that you spew lands with bazaar a lot of the time - redundancy is really nice. Also, i never really liked riftstone portal as it is too cute and situational as well as awkward against some SB cards you face.
played a couple leagues the last few days without anger and went 2-3 then 4-1. first league was all oath decks and managed to go 1-2 against them and all the games felt surprisingly close. lots of oaths on an empty board without orchard and then long drawn out games maneuvering around that. squee shined one game with bazaar. really though, even tho the games were close, it made it clear that a lot of things had to go right to even stay in the game. second league played combo, czech, eldrazi and shops twice. lost to montolio one match, but overall felt really good. I like most of what the deck is trying to do
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@kaluma one thing I’ve noticed if you don’t have Anger is it seems correct to board out most of all Hollow Ones against decks with Dack Fayden. Have you done this or not?
Does anyone else cut 1 or more Rootwala against shops? -
@kaluma I think oath is just gonna be one of those match ups where we need something to go right which I think is fair and not much we can do. I think we hope PO takes a hit in restrictions so we can dedicate more sb space to decays or containment priests.
I think this deck attacks at many different angles and is incredibly resilient. I won a game vs Grixis Thieves where t1 they had 2 leylines and a cage and I won off of Thalia and bob beats with stony silence killing their mana.
I think we have a great chance against any deck that wants to play a "fair" game of vintage and it's oath and storm type decks where we struggle.
If red is only really good against oath for anger I think it's better to focus more on making every other match up better.
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@wfain I've only ever cut one hollow one as them taking a single hollow one usually doesn't matter. I've found if they waste a turn stealing a hollow one I just survival out a wonder or more vines or attack and force a block; we can always get more vines back or end the chain with rootwalla into tasigur.
Edit: for shops no I like having as much pitch spells for bazaar as we want lands in hand and as chump blockers to buy turns if they start aggressive.
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My plan against dack decks (blue fair decks really) is +2 decay, +thalia, +chains, -1 hollow, -manglehorn, -2 others depending on what I suspect their plan is. Trimming Mana guys against wrath's, squee drs or goyf against RiP etc. Hollow one is too explosive and good as a bazaar threat / survival chain ender to cut too many even if it feels bad to have one stolen.
My shops plan has been +3 Stony, +2 energy flux, +nature's claim, +1 decay, -thalia, -2 kambal, -thorn, -chalice, -bob, -1 survival. The sideboard cards are real good. Survival is awkward to cast and can be revokered. The big idiots plan is actually ok without sb cards sometimes.
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Mox diamond works nice with hollow one and some other cards, just saying...
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@kaluma yeah, I usually cut a Survival and a Rootwala vs Shops since the Spheres are very good against both cards.
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@kaluma @wfain Survival Salad (called dredgevine) Got played my ross Merriam on SCG VS's Series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjtNcW3Rcw
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@bleedth3sky good video, thanks for sharing!! Showcasing the strengths of this deck: explosiveness, being a rogue strategy that is hard to board against, and how good this deck is when you forget that bazaar is not a spell and should count as your land drop (game 2, turn 1 was quite busted in part bc Ross played bazaar and then another land and spirit guide to play Bob haha). That matchup is often close, but Czech needs to have early countermagic and then cards to grind with. Force into Bob or ancestral is good, esp with drs backup. But even if they do, they still need to be able to answer the initial salvo from our end.
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@bleedth3sky nice! I added a comment on scg directing people to our thread.
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He also missed lethal by chucking Wonder to Survival and turning all sideways in the air when he got tropical in play.
