Best Hermit Druid Kill?
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I have a pet deck that involves me decking my self with Hermit Druid and winning with my graveyard. The current Kill is Laboratory Maniac and Gitaxian Probe.
Does anyone know of a better win condition with your entire deck in the graveyard? You will usually have at least 1 creature out and the deck plays a Snapcaster Mage. Cards that can help are Memorys journey and Unearth / Reanimate .
The goal is to win for less than 3 mana and use the fewest cards.
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@john-cox I mean both Oops, All Spells in legacy is a hermit druid deck. the best kill is now with the new dom card Garnathe Bloodflame returning X amount of spirit guides and a wild cantor and labmaniac using streetwraith to cycle for the win.
I think the only kills involve dread return and some way to win off that. Could past in flames into yawgwill into SoLoMoxen into a burning wish storm kill but thats very mana intensive and seems more susceptible to Mental Misstep and co.
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@bleedth3sky said in Best Hermit Druid Kill?:
@john-cox I mean both Oops, All Spells in legacy is a hermit druid deck. the best kill is now with the new dom card Garnathe Bloodflame returning X amount of spirit guides and a wild cantor and labmaniac using streetwraith to cycle for the win.
I was doing almost the same thing, except with reanimate targeting Angel of Glory's Rise getting laboratory maniac out and Snapcaster mage targeting probe.
As far as the Yawgmoth's will/pastinflames kill goes, it's traditionally been done with a Yawgmoth's will and lotus put on top of your deck with memorys journey and then drawn with deep analysis. I like the reanimate kill better.
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There are numerous kills via Dread Return. If the goal is to have the fewest cards you'd want to run: a single copy of either Acorn Havarst / Lingering Souls instead of Narcomoebas / Bridges to set up the Dread Return then go into one of the 3 cards combos: Angel+Maniac+A human draw source is 3 cards. Saheeli+Saheeli+Sun Titan is 3 cards. In total, this takes up 5 slots e.g.:
1x Lingering Souls
1x Dread Return
2x Saheeli
1x Sun Titan
If you want your combo pieces to be more functional, and/or resilient there are certainly some potentially better options for the setup.
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I know literal nothing about this deck, and I'm ignoring the part about 3 or less mana, but is there any interaction with Sneak Attack that has ever... idk, done anything?
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@vaughnbros
I would love to hear about more resilient wins. I think we are at the limit of compactness.
@Topical_Island
This isn't really the deck for sneak attack. The deck lacks big mana and big dudes.
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@vaughnbros isn't the problem of angel it loses to swords hard where as garna returning a street wraith lets you win soon as lab man hits the boards instead of hoping no swords. lab man resolves you street wraith in response to a kill spell. run multiple street wraiths to make it redundant and thin your deck. also street wraith doesn't get hit by misstep or flusterstorm if they have multiple counters and spirit guides mean null rod stony is useless and thorn doesnt matter.
Edit: you can also cast garna off rituals which is much harder with angel in case you draw it. That has to be worth something as well as then you dont have to cabal yourself to have a dread return taget
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In my experience, most opponents will use their removal on the Hermit Druid pre-pre-activation (and they should).
Lady Azami gets around the Swords problem as you get 1 draw for every human wizard in your deck (guaranteed at least 2 for maniac and herself).
You could also play a Sylvan Safekeeper for his shroud ability if removal is a major worry. He functions as on-curve protection for Hermit Druid as well. Grand Abolisher woupd prevent them from interacting with you at all. Or something like Meddling Mage, Thalia, ect. that can soft lock them out of removal.
Garna requires additional slots for the Street Wraiths / Spirit Guides and isnt necessarilly more reliable as everything needed to go to your graveyard that turn.
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I think it helps for me to first define different reliabilities.
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Pre-Activation Reliability
The set of conditions required to win prior to activating your Hermit Druid. -
Post-Activation Reliability
The set of conditions required to win after activating your Hermit Druid. -
Post-Board Reliability
How well the combination works against opposing graveyard hate.
If we look at the reliability for the concise 5 card strategies:
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This requires all 5 cards involved in the combo to be in your graveyard, library, or in play. Additionally, you need 1GB for Hermit Druid+Lingering Souls. Id say thats fairly reliable.
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This requires that your opponent cant counterspell your Lingering Souls / Dread Return, or remove your Druid in response to activation (thus reducing your max creature count to 2). This is slightly less reliable as now any interaction your opponent may have means you need one more card in hand to win (counterspells).
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This combo doesnt work under any graveyard hate.
Overall Id say this is one of the less reliable ways to win, but at only 5 cards you have more room to make the conditions work.
The Garna combo instead of Angel still has all the same problems for 2 and 3 as the deck still needs to resolve Dread Return. The other two are different though
- All cards in the combo need to be in your library, or hand. Id say this is unreliable, especially in a long game.
The reliability of 2 can be improved via some minor adjustment of cards/strategy with the real key here being resolution of your Dread Return.
- You can add extra conditions to 1. That is, more conditions to combo, such as counterspells in hand, or additional creatures in play. This could also just be having, say, a copy of animate dead in hand, and extra mana.
- You can add additional cards to your combo. Specifically, Cabal Therapy+Narcomoeba + Bridge from Below. This allows you to sweep your opponents hand before Dread Returning.
- A backup plan. A copy of Memory's Journey for instance can help you recover after a failed attempt for one Green mana.
Dread return is always going to have limitations against graveyard hate though.
A Yawgmoth's Will plan, for instance, could avoid Containment Priest, but would be more mana intensive, 2GGB, and requires a draw step.
Stratetically, you can switch up it up and just need a Maniac in play with your Hermit Druid.
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