Hi all,

This is my second deck list post today, It's a one card combo deck. I was going to call it Egan Druid ala Brian Kelly but I'll just keep it to the more elegant name.

Druid is a deck that wins in the 3 minutes of sideboarding between games 1 & 2.

Without further a do here's the list. I'll talk about it a little afterwards.

Spells:

Artifacts

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Saphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet

Enchantments

1 Sylvan Library

Planeswalkers

1 Jace, The Mind Scuptor

Instants

4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
2 Mental Misstep
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Dig Through Time
1 Gush

Sorceries

1 Time Walk
1 Ponder
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Gitaxian Probe
3 Preordain
3 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Demonic Tutor

The Combo
4 Hermit Druid
2 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return
2 Narcomoeba
1 Deep Analysis
1 Laboratory Maniac

Lands
1 Library of Alexandria
2 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn

Sideboard

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Omniscience
4 Show and Tell
3 Griselbrand
4 Hurkyl's Recall

It's a list that in theory has been around for years but haven't seen any body make it.

Here hows it works, Activate Hermit druid,mill your deck, Dread return the Maniac, protecting it with Cabal Therapies and cast a cantrip or flash back deep Analysis and win.

My first build of this list was a crazy turn 1 win with Angers and and a Flame-Kin win but it had about 15 combo cards and was terrible if the opponent had a force. I've managed to get the combo part down to the least number of cards possible to still have a resilient win if you draw some of the pieces, (you can cabal them into the graveyard if needed).

The real fun starts in game 2, your opponent will bring in all their dredge hate and you completely transform out of the Druid plan into Show & Tell which makes their 7/8 hate cards dead, affects their mulligan decisions and lets them waste time playing their graveyard hate that does nothing.

I played against one Stax opponont who game 2 went hellbent playing out all this graveyard hate after a mull to six which did nothing.

I am going to go out on a limb and say I think this is just a better deck than Oath of Druids, very similar in that you both want to resolve a 1G spell, but this is a one card combo that is able to transform away from any hate.

One note in playing the deck, you HAVE to transform game 2 unless you think the Druid strategy is better and you lost game one without them seeing the combo but ideally you transform.

I was playing against a Blood Moon deck where they had a Null Rod and Blood Moon in play game one so I had a zero win percentage, however i played on for a few turns and discarded some of the combo to handsize to make sure the opponent saw it so for game 2 they'd bring in their hate.

So in some ways this is a sideboard deck and you do win a lot of matches in the 3 minutes of sideboarding between games.

I'm again really interested in your feedback good or bad. Somebody said to me yesterday that they don't play Vintage because it's a stale, with all the cards in the history of the game at your disposal, it's never stale.

I'm glad I finally got to post my 2 pet projects up here, would have preferred to play them at a tournament first but unfortunately that's not going to happen.

Any Questions let me know.

All the best

John Egan

@j-b-e how do you flash back dread return with only 2 narcomoeba?

You have the Druid and you have the Cabals with 2 bridges so you can actually get up to six zombies if needed.

The third warm body is the Hermit Druid.

@john-cox but sometimes you'll draw the narc and pitch it FOW or what not, you never dread return Hermit druid Narc Narc you pretty much always want to clear the way with Cabals first. I've played the list over a 100 times and I'm pretty sure the numbers are correct. You want the least amount as to minimize drawing dead cards but still be able to win when you activate the Druid.

I suppose it is marginally more compact to have lab man and deep analysis, but it also costs mana, why not run the kill from "oops all spells" of Angel of Glory's Rise > Lab man + Azami, Lady of Scrolls. It is one more card, but it also helps protect against another removal spell, and the lack of any mana is non-trivial.

@garbageaggro

never thought of that, very interesting.

The extra card is a pain and it gives you 2 extra dead draws, Deep Analysis isn't a fully dead draw because you can cast it but it could well turn out you're way is a slightly better way of executing the combo.

@garbageaggro this also reanimates all the hermit druids for extra therapy action if necessary.

@garbageaggro Actually an even better way is to have the Angel of Glory's Rise Lab man and Snapcaster, Then you don't have an extra dead card and the snap casts the Git probe in your yard. In fact I think that is probably the way to do it. Big advantage to this is snap is most certainly not a dead draw.

Doesn't that lose to onboard removal? Something like ballista on 2, not super uncommon. That is one of the benefits of azami, you get to have a back up chance of winning.

@garbageaggro sure but that's pretty much the only onboard removal that can interact , I wouldn't think it's worth a dead draw but that just comes down to opinion. Game 1 vs aggro shops is tough anyway, wouldn't sacrifice a dead card to make one match up slightly better in a very specific situation

Just my 2 cents.

I played Hermit Druid in Dredge for about a year or so (I did a lot of testing with more "traditional" hermit druid lists like this one to draw inspiration). The best package there was definitely the Angel + Azami + Maniac because it avoided needing to have mana post return, and it could survive at least 1 copy of spot removal post combo (although with your creature configuration, you might struggle to overcome a well timed Swords during your post-Hermit Druid Cabal Therapy).

I'm not quite so sure about this sideboard transformation. You'd still have trouble overcoming a Containment Priest, and it really hurts the cohesiveness of the deck as the Show and Tell combo isn't really using anything from the main deck. In fact, Emrakul even prevents you from using the "double combo" boarding strategy that is exceptional against hard control decks and faster combo, like Dredge/Storm/Landstill/ect. I think the deck would benefit a lot from a combo that attacks from a different axes, or putting cards in the board that help you be a better control deck.

I would also drop the preordains and one therapy for green sun's zenith, I played a list for a while and the extra acceleration + warm body was nice and getting another 4 virtual hermits was nice too. The sideboard I used with that was show+tell/Natural order -> progenitus.

@john-cox I've tested it with the green suns I didn't like it it's a bit too expensive.

@vaughnbros

cheers for the feedback.

You never need to survive spot removal because your therapies take care of it. Activate the Druid, you have all the therapies in the yard then therapy your opponent as many times as is necessary so there is no well timed swords and if they have a swords they'll point it at the druid before you activate it.

Containment Priest is the only slight issue but you have Abrupt Decays & Show & Tell Omniscience which does a great job of overcoming it. The problem with a double combo strategy is that you then have to put anti graveyard hate cards into your sideboard, also that misses the main point, the benefit is that you make their graveyard hate dead so keeping your combo in doesn't really help anything.

I have tried several transformation packages and Show and Tell has proven to be the best, The deck is still very good post board.

But I have the benefit of having played this list a A LOT. however the Angel is a great angle I just didn't think of but stil not convinced of Azami over Snap.

The reason btw there is no snaps in the main of the list is because it's a graveyard related card and when you transform you want to get rid of all of them.

@j-b-e

The scenario where spot removal kills you is this (you have at least 1 bridge exiled/in hand or you've drawn a Narcomoeba reducing your total available creature count):

1. Activate Druid
2. Narcomoeba(s) hit the yard.
3. You Therapy.
4. Opponent hits either Druid or a Narcomoeba with Swords.
5. You now have less than 3 creatures and can't Dread Return.

@vaughnbros Yup that would kill you but I don't think you can build a deck for every possible scenario. In that scenario the correct play is to swords the druid before he can activate anyway, unless your opponent knows the exact configuration of your list and has probed to see you have a stranded bridge, it just can't be worth an extra dead card for something that would only happen due to your opponent playing incorrectly and not swordsing the druid before activation.

@j-b-e

You'd be surprised how many people will let you go through with a costly combo to try to end a game. I've definitely had it happen to me before so just a scenario to keep in mind. I've seen the same thing happens with Necro+Doomsday where some players will let the card resolve despite having an answer to it.

@vaughnbros
In your scenario, I think you still just have enough because you're getting 2 zombie tokens off each therapy so they need 2 swords.

@structuremole

Only if you have both bridges, and both Narcomoebas. Otherwise, you can never get back to 3 creatures after playing the Therapy.

Scenario 1 (1 Narc + 1 Druid+2 Bridge):
Sac Druid,
2 zombies on the stack,
they swords Narc,
Left with 2 Zombies.

Scenario 2 (2 Narc+Druid+1 Bridge):
Sac Druid,
2 Zombies on the stack,
They swords Narc,
Left with 1 Zombie + 1 Narc