Just thinking we could use more undying so throw in x4 young wolf

imsully2 wrote:Just thinking we could use more undying so throw in x4 young wolf

Check!

I think we need some removal and sacrifice all in one. 3x Barter in Blood

NullParameter wrote:I think we need some removal and sacrifice all in one. 3x Barter in Blood

Done!

I've tacked on 2x Predatory Rampage to give all those ooze and wolf tokens some added bite.

What's next? We're only 5-6 cards from getting to the narrowing down phase, then to the mana... although, looking at the leaked RTR cards, just about all the strategies people are used to running are about to get blown to hell... hah.

For anyone who wants a good look at what's coming:

http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/returntoravnica/cig

I'm gonna give us a bit more expensive creatures to work with, plus giving us a whole load of evasion if things really go off well. 2x Champion of Lambholt

Check!

TyWooOneTime wrote:I've tacked on 2x Predatory Rampage to give all those ooze and wolf tokens some added bite.

What's next? We're only 5-6 cards from getting to the narrowing down phase, then to the mana... although, looking at the leaked RTR cards, just about all the strategies people are used to running are about to get blown to hell... hah.

For anyone who wants a good look at what's coming:

http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/returntoravnica/cig

I'm liking Korozda Guildmage for post rotation in this deck, just saying

imsully2 wrote:I'm liking Korozda Guildmage for post rotation in this deck, just saying

I'm also a big fan of Death's Presence, although it is a bit expensive.

Hrm.... not sure how we could/should add those here... any thought on what you want to use as a placeholder? I can put a note at the bottom to denote what the placeholders are.

TyWooOneTime wrote:Hrm.... not sure how we could/should add those here... any thought on what you want to use as a placeholder? I can put a note at the bottom to denote what the placeholders are.

I'm not suggestions that we add them now, it was just a little side discussion. If you want, you can put them into the notes on the deck as a reminder for later, but I think we should build an actual working deck for right now.

Gotcha. Notes updated.

Corpsejack Menace will also be SICK. Double the +1/+1 counters your creatures would receive? Yes please. Pair that with Increasing Savagery or even Bond Beetles or Timberland Guide with Roaring Primadox... yeah... Golgari might have a chance here.

Any other moves?

I'm adding 2x more Champion of Lambholt to the mix, as it will just be nuts with all those ooze tokens coming and going.

That will put us at 49 cards, so we need like 2-3 more and then we'll figure out the mana and try to narrow it down to work.

I know I haven't been contributing much here, mainly because I don't know much about what's available in Standard, but I do know that where you sacrifice nontoken creatures, Reassembling Skeleton is a must...even if it does cycle out in the next rotation. Maybe something else will come in the next block that fills the void, but yeah, it needs to be there as long as possible. I'd say 4 of them...can always cut back the numbers if needed later :P

Reassembling Skeleton. Done. That puts us over 50 cards, so it's time to figure out the mana.

I'm proposing we should have the following:

4x Woodland Cemetery
2x Grim Backwoods
9x Swamp
9x Forest

That puts 24 lands, meaning we need to ween down some cards... but I'm open to reducing that number to 22 or even 20 if that's what it comes to.

I think we can probably knock it down a few lands, simply because we have a fair amount of ramp with our mana dorks and a lot of our creatures are very low mana cost, but probably no lower than 22 lands, because we do have a lot of high cost enchantments.

If we're going to weed something out, I'd say that the Fogs can probably go, because they almost go against our end goal. We essentially want our creatures to die, so blocking a big attack and killing most of our stuff off isn't a huge deal.

NullParameter wrote:I think we can probably knock it down a few lands, simply because we have a fair amount of ramp with our mana dorks and a lot of our creatures are very low mana cost, but probably no lower than 22 lands, because we do have a lot of high cost enchantments.

If we're going to weed something out, I'd say that the Fogs can probably go, because they almost go against our end goal. We essentially want our creatures to die, so blocking a big attack and killing most of our stuff off isn't a huge deal.

Agreed

Done.

Fog = Gone and I've dropped one Forest and one Swamp.

Still sitting 11 high... This is going to cost some critters...

Note that I think we should keep at least 3x Champion of Lambholt as that's one clear win condition (pending we don't just overrun them with creatures). They also work so well with the Gutter Grime.

Should we try to make it rotation safe? That could buy us some space. (But on a side note, I LOVE the thought of Reassembling Skeleton in here... I hope they give us another creature with the mechanic that it actually goes to the graveyard and can be brought back).

Yep, I agree that we can probably cut one Champion of Lambholt. And if we did want to make it rotation safe, then we'd have to cut both the Reassembling Skeletons and Birds of Paradise (although, most people thing that is coming back). I don't really think that we want to cut too many creatures though, personally. And sadly, at the moment, there isn't really any good mana ramp creature to replace the BoPs if they aren't reprinted in RTR.

If I had to pick some other stuff, I'd say that Predatory Rampage isn't going to do us a whole lot of good, because a lot of our creature are very small, and even then, your opponent still gets to choose how to block, so they could block in a way that the fewest number of creatures die, and then we don't really benefit from it all that much.

And while Exquisite Blood is an awesome card, I think that we have a few too many very expensive enchantments, and this one doesn't specifically build on the theme that we have going.

I'm on board with droppping Exquisite Blood and Predatory Rampage if others are on board. My only reservations are that they are both quite useful.

Exquisite lets you actually gain a boatload of life off Killing Wave, such that the opponent either has to pay to keep the creature and you gain, or they drop the creature and that's just dandy too.

Predatory Rampage is as close as we can get to Overrun in a post-rotation world that I'm aware of... which would be nice to make all those ooze tokens that much more dangerous.

Do we want to move to full post-rotation format? If we're going that way, we could build in cards that will be pulled for RTR cards (i.e. Corpsejack Menace - which also rocks undying creatures and gives them two +1/+1 counters).

Predatory Rampage doesn't give trample, so as long as they have a few creatures to chump block with, it isn't really all that useful.

Another option for an Overrun effect, plus giving everything trample, is Craterhoof Behemoth. Or Garruk Relentless (flipped). A few Rancors would also do the trick. And Revenge of the Hunted makes them block only one creature, so essentially lets everything else though with ease. So I think we have some other options if that is the effect we're looking for.

Also, relinking the deck here, so I don't have to keep going back to the first page. Deck: http://deckbox.org/sets/221643

Predatory Rampage is going and Champion of Lambholt will be dropped to 3x to add 1x Craterhoof Behemoth - for those late game situations where other strategies have failed and you just need to overrun them.

I've gone ahead and dropped the BOPs, and Reassembling Skeletons to make it post-rotation. I also dropped one Exquisite Blood so now we're sitting at 60 cards.

So I guess the question now is, thoughts on the deck?

Even if we drop the BoPs, I think we need to replace it, at least partially, with something else that provides ramp, otherwise we're going to be way too slow in getting to our actual end-game (any of the expensive enchantments, preferably multiple of them). I'm not sure that there is much to help us out for ramp at the moment though, without knowing the full RTR list (which will hopefully include BoP).

I know the Gate to Golgari dual land will be a good option too, as it's a common dual land.

But for ramping, Arbor Elf is about all we have outside of Farseek or Avacyn's Pilgrim which sadly doesn't even provide a color that helps...

I do know that if we're waiting for rotation, there are a LOT of other options... I mean Vraska the Unseen is going to be put in EVERY G/B deck in standard... Jarad too (since we're sacrificing stuff). Corpsejack Menace would double the power up from undying too... and that's three cards from the third of the set that's been leaked.

Any more updates that we were going to make to the deck? Just curious since everybody had gone quiet for some time now.

And ugh, Woodland Cemetery just jumped up to $11-12. I can't decide if I should try to get the last one I need for a playset now so that I can play this deck, or if they'll end up dropping in price later on. If anybody has one that they want to trade, I'm open for negotiations. :)

I would dig around to see if you can get one for $7 online (they're out there) as apparently they're going through the roof now that everyone has made a mess in their pants thinking about Vraska, the Unseen. It's a shame too, because 95% of the Golgari decks being posted on TappedOut are a joke where someone just put 4x of each leaked card and nothing else.

For the build-pass-build deck... my sense is we were at 60 cards, so it SHOULD be good to go. Sadly the input has tapered off but I'm all for trying to figure out whether it'd do any good.

As a side note, I'd think a few Parallel Lives could always help the deck. Why not get 2x or 4x the ooze/wolf tokens?

TyWooOneTime wrote:I would dig around to see if you can get one for $7 online (they're out there) as apparently they're going through the roof now that everyone has made a mess in their pants thinking about Vraska, the Unseen.

I'm going to be laughing really hard when people realize that Vraska, the Unseen isn't even going to be competitively playable in an environment with Oblivion Ring and the new planeswalker kill card, not to mention that she's 5cmc and doesn't even make an impact until several turns after she hits the board, and I doubt it'll be uncommon for someone to just hold a bonfire/magmaquake until she ultimates, then laughs hysterically, she's a very fun card, without a doubt and I'll be trying to get one for my Ghave deck, until she gets banned in EDH (which could happen very realistically) but not until her price plummets to about where Tibalt's sitting at right now, on a side note, I don't think that she should be included in our deck, unless they re-print doubling season, in which case all bets are off and she's going to be an absolute bomb, but I hope for the sake of standard that they don't reprint Season, no matter how much I want a playset

I look at Vraska as being a total 1x of in a Golgari deck because, who knows, you might get lucky. If nothing else it gives you one more possible way to win (however unlikely it may be). But you can tell everyone is all pumped about her, Woodland Cemetery has more than doubled in price in the last week or so since she was leaked.

I'm also not seeing all the excitement about Slitherhead. Best case scenario he's a chump blocker and a Hunger of the Howlpack (mind you, the non-morbid version). I'd rather put hungers into a deck with the full knowledge that Golgari operate on creatures dying regularly. Combine that with Corpsejack Menace and, well, that's +6/+6 for one mana.

Or, more importantly, I think undying is the elephant in the room that somehow all the kids at TappedOut are forgetting. If you double the counters, why not roll with that? Give all your creatures an extra life and power them up significantly when they die? Yes please. Even sacking a Strangleroot Geist with Jarad can count for five of the opponent's life without a Menace on the board.

Anyway, all that whatnot aside, are there other thoughts on the deck? I don't know that it will hold up once RTR drops (not that it would before hand ;) ). I'd say if you want to run it Null, give it a shot and let us know how we all did.