Hey all. After receiving numerous suggestions and tips for my Gruul deck, I overhauled it. Now, I'm just looking for a bit of feedback on its newest incarnation.


The Creatures
4x Experiment One
4x Rakdos Cackler

Here we have the one-drop backbone for the deck. E1 gets pumped by every other creature in the deck, and Cackler is just all-around good.

3x Scavenging Ooze

This little guy is just all around great. Not too sure if I like him in here yet, but he's earned a spot so far.

4x Boon Satyr

3 for a flashy 4/2? Ok! 5 for a flashy +4/+2 that turns into a "free" creature? Even better!

4x Ghor-Clan Rampager

It's Gruul aggro, so we HAVE to have a nice little bit of combat trickery going on. +4/+4 and trample in the middle of a fight or just a 4/4 trampler. Either an excellent 2-cost pump, or a solid backbone at the 4 slot.

2x Stormbreath Dragon

Big finisher right here. I'm currently working on getting a pair, for now they're being replaced by Chaos Imps. I'm open to suggestions for other placeholders!

The Spells
4x Lightning Strike
3x Magma Jet

Just some removal/burn if needed. Magma Jet's Scry may come in useful for setting up Domri, but isn't a huge necessity.

3x Anger of the Gods

Board cleaner, easy for me to recover from given that I can pump a lot of the creatures in this deck to the point of survival, or just toss out some cheap new ones.

The Domri
3x Domri Rade

I know, go to four of him. I want to, and I most likely will, but I'm working with a limited budget for the next month or two. Removal, card advantage and a potential win-con, all for 3 measly mana.

The Land
7x Forest
9x Mountain
2x Gruul Guildgate
4x Stomping Ground


What I'm looking for here are tips to fine-tune the deck. My sideboard has answers for the probable enchantments and control issues this deck will see, and the mainboard is basically just a good old-fashioned face beating. Like I said, I'm on a bit of a budget, but I will be able to pick up new cards relatively soon.

I'm not keen on Xenagos, the Reveler as I believe he's overrated in aggro. Popping out tokens every turn just doesn't benefit this deck very much, and there's really nothing to ramp up to except the Stormbreaths.

So if I'm following you correctly, you have a Gruul aggro build that does NOT have 4x Burning-Tree Emissary feeding into 4x Firefist Striker? Because to be honest, you're leaving a LOT of power on the table without those.

Personally I'd consider sliding Scavenging Ooze to the SB as the above mentioned two-drops are far faster and more critical to the aggro plan.

2x Stormbreath Dragon is fine, but you'll likely want more quality three drops like Chandra's Phoenix or other things of that nature... remember, your goal is for that four damage from Stormbreath to finish them off. One possible three-drop to consider is Reverent Hunter - they still haven't caught on, but he's easily a 4/4 for three if you put down Exp One and then BTE into anything... that'll evolve the Exp AND essentially give you a Loxodon Smiter (which isn't half bad I hear these days).

Anger of the Gods is TERRIBLE for an aggro build. You're going to end up clearing your own side quite a bit only to watch your opponent play Brave the Elements or something to that effect. You might SB a few, but aside from that, you almost NEVER want this card in an aggro build. Mid-range, sure, but aggro? Not so much.

Xenagos isn't anything special for aggro, but Chandra, Pyromaster definitely pulls her own weight. Between the pinging and unblockable +1 and the card advantage you spit out with her +0, yeah, she might be worth playing at least 1x of in here.

As much as I despise net-decking, there is something to be said for it as the pros really have put in the time to sit and playtest decks over and over and over again. I would suggest looking into what the most successful Gruul aggro builds are at this weekend's tourneys and make some slight tweaks to your build to flesh out the low end of the curve with them as you still feel creature light for some reason (I would also say you don't need 7 burn spells, as you're probably going to want more creatures to increase the odds Domri hits AND to keep more of a pressuring board presense).

fanatic of mogis

Where can I find those results? I'm fairly new to competitive deckbuilding, and I'll mostly just be using this at FNM's.

How does replacing 3x Anger with 3x Reverent Hunter and 3x Magma Jet with 3x Chandra's Phoenix look? I'll figure out a way to make room for the lady of flame herself at some point, but those changes just sort of jumped out at me.

You can find competitive decklists at the following link:

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/standard_deck_hq.asp

Added in those Firefist Strikers, and holy wow. Cascading two BTE's and then a FFS on turn two was fun, and actually really effective.

Thanks for the link, by the way.

They're pretty good... but now you have to refine your game to know when to put everything on the board and pressure the opponent and when to turn it back a bit and play around things like Supreme Verdict.

To that end, I would actually suggest trying to find room to run 2x Hammer of Purphoros.

Would you suggest the activated ability as an option, or simply using the haste benefit? I'm leaning towards the latter, as the former seems to detract from other, more valuable, mana usage.

The hammer gives BOTH options as viable. In an aggro deck you really won't ever need more than 5 mana, so it lets you convert anything beyond that into 3/3 haste golems AND it lets you haste up the other creatures - think about recovering from a Supreme Verdict with BTE - Firefist and a Golem - all of them having haste lets you keep the pressure on.

I see your thinking on that. I'll definitely make some room for them. Everyone loves hasty golems.