I've runned the deck in a 10 proxy tournament, and I've lost to a stax deck in quaterfinals, mostly due to my mistakes (I've won the guy 2-0 prior in the tournament). The deck is realy good, and it's only realy horrible matchup is oath. Even maindeck naturalizes and emerald charmes sb are not enough to fight it.

Jitte is 2 slow for the deck, by the time you start using it you are usualy dead or locked or near anything of those two situations. I was running skyshroud elite because I needed speed, something that rancor perhaps acomplishes best in the deck.

Regarding pilar, I think it is a great addition maindeck, but most of all you have to look at it as a metagame choice. For ex., running in an enviorment with much oath pillar is not so good, against most aggro builds it can be good and bad and it usualy shines only in an enviorment polluted with a pletora of different tendrils.decs.

I'll try to test out the deck a little bit more about the comment. The thing that ithches me most at this time is what is the second burn of choice? Chain lightning - I think not for being sorcery. Perhaps seal of fire, magma jet or incinerate. Need help, plz.

Hi there to everybody, nice discussion about my favorite deck. I've managed to win two T1 tournaments (small local with lot of proxies, that means lot of tendril combo decks where around), and to place gigh in other 2. The tournaments had an average of 15 to 20 players each, so I'm talking about small tournaments, but the deck is still the same.

I've started to toy with r/g back in '96 when a standard r/g build had erhnam djins and nevinyrall's disk in it. The fastest combo deck at that time was cadaverous bloom, and you could easily fight it with emerald charm. Later I started to play with the survival/bazzar/rootwala-madness mechanism, since people started to play lots of keeper decks. Nimble moongoose was my major beatstick at that time, imune to anything except balance or disk.

My current version is very similiar to the one posted above, with the slight diference that I run null rods in sb, and I use man lands as aditional beaf to hit my opponent on the head. The strongest new adition to my deck was rot maze. I don't have enough words to tell you how strong this card can be. It stops ug from exploding in my face, gives me at least 1 turn more against oath, stops TPS or any other tendril based deck on killing me turn 1 or 2, gives me time to find an answer against belcher, etc.

In some previous discussions on mana drain there was a strong debate if you should run fetchalnds or land grant in this deck. Run fetchlands. Revealing a hand to your opponent is never good, and I've lost a few games by trying to land grant on turn 1, only to C it getting contered by my opponent. Here goes my current deck version:

//NAME: Critters
//            Creatures : 23
        4 Gorilla Shaman
        4 Grim Lavamancer
        4 Kird Ape
        4 Skyshroud Elite
        3 River Boa
        4 Elvish Spirit Guide
//            Utility spells: 7
        3 Naturalize
        4 Root Maze
//            Additional damage: 8
        4 Rancor
        4 Lightning Bolt
//            Mana: 17
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mountain
        1 Forest
        4 Wooded Foothills
        4 Taiga
        4 Treetop Village
//            LD: 5
        4 Wasteland
        1 Strip Mine
SB:  3 Pyrostatic Pillar
SB:  3 Artifact Mutation
SB:  3 Null Rod
SB:  3 Emerald Charm
SB:  3 Red Elemental Blast

The one card I'm realy not sure about is wild mongrel. I must admit it looks realy good on paper, but curently I'm playing skyshroud elites, and most of the times they are 2/3 the same moment they start pouncing my opponent on the head. If I would try to sneak a mongrel and a fourth naturalize, I think they would have to hit the bench. Also, I think there is a must about playing 4 gorila shamans, not having 4 of the best weenie hoser in this format is just bad. Also, I realy like null rod as a toy against combo and slaver deck.

I don't remeber craw wurms, but I do remember juzams, moats, serra angels, serendib efreet and so on. I must say I liked the enviorment of the old days.

There has been a discussion on this forum (twice) about classic r/g aggro decks. I don't want to reopen that discussion, so if you care - read those posts, if you don't - well, then don't.

All I'm saying is that players, especialy the good ones, won't bother about taking a r/g rootmaze deck to a big event. They will play anything that made T8 in one of the last big event. So, we shall have the next field:

80% of the field will be one of the Tier 1 decks. Most of the good player will belong in this pool.
10% of the field will be a tier 2 deck. Average and bad players tend to play tier 2 decks.
10% of the field will be rogue. Some of those players will be good players with new combo decks, because good players like to play with themselves (you can understand this as you wish). Mostly, rogue players are realy bad players or beginers.

Thnx, I always like people who are so gentle to civilize us savages.

gg - good game?

Seems to me that nobody is talking about root maze. This card is just 2 good against any form of control and storm combo decks. I've been playing aggro for a while, and I've been winning for a while. It seems to me that all we need is a good player that will post a good result on a major tourney, and then sudenly everybody will start talking that aggro is viable.

It is just sad what Internet did to deckbuilding  

Sure, I usualy hung on mtg-league, always willing to play a game or two.

Regarding the dilema, I usualy side out all the direct damage and lavamancers against tps and trow in null rods and pyro pilars. So, after sb, my deck hate is next:

4xgorila shaman
4xroot maze
3xpyrostatic pillar
3xnull rod

I don't sb pyroblast. They are just not good enough against tps. Btw, there is another card that helps me against the matchup: wasteland (and, of course, strip mine). Not the best of matchups, but winnable.

Always willing to proove you wrong about it, my experience is a bit different, but then, it is always possible that I played against awfull TPS players.

I've played nimble moongose for about a yaer and something, managed to get into T8 of big T1 tournaments, and it was great in those days when keeper was strong, and when Abyss and STP was common. Today it is useless, and I prefer playing grim's to them. If you want to run moongooses, you must switch to a diferent deck that uses bazar of bagdad and madness creatures as food...but, wait, in that deck moongose is also bad.

Well, no moongose for the moment then, at least until welder doesn't leave the town.

I used to play silvan library in my old deck version, and I can give some good comments about it. First, sylvan library is great against any kind of control deck if you manage to play it. I never regreted taking 16 damage to draw 4 more cards for the match, and sometimes, when my opponents played swords, I managed to draw 5 cards.

It was also good against old combo decks, since they didn't have the tendency to kill you round 1-2, and all of them had some element of control inside. On the other side, I recall loosing badly to pandemask and similiar decks at that time, and I think that library is just 2 slow to fight workshop/storm based combo decks. Today, you need beef/disruption if you want to win the match.

Instant isn't here to control, but to be able to do things before your turn and having a second chance if you hit mana drain/force of will. Hull breach is just 2 slow for a deck that is supposed to be as fast as a classic aggro deck can be.

You realy don't need naturalize against workshop, but artifact mutation is great against this matchup.

Chain is OK, but having a burn with instant speed helps you out from some situation (for ex. tangle wire).

By my opinion, loosing to dragon is a very rare thing. Naturalize + rot maze are very good against dragon, it was just bad luck.

Personaly, I think that the version posted was good but just not good enough. I've eliminated incinerates out from the deck since they are just not good enough to make the cut. I found that playing naturalizes maindeck is a better option than to play ankh (altought ankh wins you some matches).

Against any kind of workshop decks, burn and wastelands are your best friend, and artifact mutation = game over. If you have an entire set of root mazes, naturalizes, gorila shamans and artifact mutations, especialy if you play null rod in your sb (btw, I found yesterday that null rod is great against kobolds if you ever find yourself playing against them), then playing against artifact based decks is usualy in your favor. Mulliganing to one in your oppening hand is a good choice in that matchup.

I tried, even tried using black for demonic tutor. It slows you down since you don't cast nothing for the turn, altought time walk sometimes can be great. I disliked it since drawing a tropical (I used tropical as my dual lands) in my opening hand was realy bad most of the times.

I think I'll answer for most of the guys that are discussing around this topic:

Fetchlands puts cards in your graveyard. Dead creatures and burn also. Wasteland and strip mine also. You want a creature that says "kill a welder any time that you need to kill it", or "give me the extra punch I need to kill my opponent trough akroma", and this is what grim is for. Sometimes, it is a good card to slip past an opponents hard defense, but his main purpose is to mutilate welder and creature based decks (he is also great against madness, and madness is a nightmare matchup for rg decks)..

Gorila has a diferent purpose in this deck. Naturalize is ment to fight fat artifacts such as trinisphere and oath. Gorila is here to fight moxes and low cc artifacts. He trully shines under root maze since your opponent doesn't get the chance to use his 0 mana artifact's before they get blown away. You almost always want to draw a gorila round 1.

You don't want to draw multiple root maze, but drawing one in your oppening hand will increase your chance to win, especialy against workshops or combo decks. I would never play less than 4 of them, altought drawing 2 of them isn't good.

He would be realy good if keeper emerges again as a tier 1 deck. At the moment, he is slow and his non-targetable efect doesn't helps against anything since oath will outrace you, workshop will trample over you with colossus and combo will combo out before you get the chance to play it. He is only good if you have an enviorment with many deck packing targetaple removal spells (especialy stp's) maindeck, since troll truly shines against those deck. He would be also great a year ago when abyss was used as a creature removal, but this days he is just too slow.

Immolation is a realy bad idea. You have only 8 creatues that immolation can target and, besides goblin welder (and perhaps a random nantuko shade), it's a dead card. I would swamp it with a burn/creature/whatever any time.

I've swithced to dwarven blastminers MD, since they do a great job against most of the decks and they realy work great under root maze.

Theoreticaly, we have a good contender for T1 tourney's.

In praxis, we have a deck that looses to oath and to combo most of the times, usualy have 0 chances pre-sb and slight chances post sb. On the other hand, it does very well with any form of slaver/workshop and/or control decks due to it's speed and disruption.

Root maze solved at least some og my problems of fighting tendril's based combo. Null rod does it's job also fine since it shuts down all the moxes and other artifact mana producers, and usualy I found it as a very good tool to fight combo matchups (it definetly isn't bad or underpowered as people sugested).

Oath is still a problem. I've tryed many things: I tryed playing md naturalizes, but found them sub-optimal. A 2cc spell that only kills an artifact is bad for such an agressive deck. I've tried crop rotation main with maze of ith sb, but they are still not enough, since he usualy summons his beast, and then I manage to stop one from beating me, but the others just kills me. Most of my victory was due to their inexperience, since many oath players sided platinum angel against me, and I was more than happy to kill him with burn.

Ankh helps a little bit more, since it can do some damage, and sometimes you can outrace him. But the most usefull tool against oath was root maze and wastelands. They usualy stopped my opponent from developing a fast board position, and when he was finaly able to summon something, my critters would usualy kill him.

Results with my decklist: tournament won, flawless victory.

As said, agressiveness is the key, this is why I would always stick to esg and lots of small beaters. Root maze was realy great, ankh was also good, sb was also good.

Cedars are bd and they just don't fit in the idea behind the deck. Treetop is great since early in game it is mana, late in game it's a beatstick.

I've been testing the deck lately, and I must say that I have some quite interesting conclusions. First, at the end I switched back to ankh of mishra's. After several matches they turned out quite good, so I decided to stick with them.

My final decklist is next:

//NAME: Critters
//    Creatures : 24
        4 Gorilla Shaman
        4 Grim Lavamancer
        4 Kird Ape
        4 Skyshroud Elite
        3 River Boa
        4 Elvish Spirit Guide
//    Utility spells: 10
        4 Root Maze
        3 Ankh of Mishra
//    Additional damage: 8
        4 Rancor
        4 Lightning Bolt
//    Mana: 13
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mountain
        1 Forest
        4 Wooded Foothills
        4 Taiga
        4 Treetop Village
//    LD: 5
        4 Wasteland
        1 Strip Mine
SB:  3 Artifact Mutation
SB:  4 Red Elemental Blast
SB:  4 Null Rod
SB:  4 Naturalize

I wouldn't change this decklist for nothing, perhaps null rod's can be switched with pyrostatic pillar, but in my opinion null rod is more versatile. I played against several decks, winning most of them (including oath of druids decks). This deck can beat both combo and control.

Yep, I think you're right (especialy since root maze is autowin vs dr4gon, so I don't fear it).

Don't you think they are just a little bit 2 much with lavamncers, bolts and shocks? I know you dislike welder, but I think that aditional lavamancer/gibon/elite would suit your deck better than fanatics.

Regarding ankh, seems we have a diferent experience with it. Against what gauntlet did you run ankh, and against wich deck it was best (and against wich it didn't work)?

Also, you're running trolls that I always found a litle bit 2 slow, how do they work for you and when do you usualy drop them in game?

True, but I've lost some games to that scenario since he just takes out my lands, I'm unable to cast anything under trini, he keeps me under 3 mana and he kills me with something. I have to play something prior to playng ankh, or I have to draw a treetop village, otherwise I found myself in a situation with ankh on board, trini lock and no treath.

I think I'll try magma jet once more. This deck has realy turned out as a great deck. I think it would be interesting if somebody would try it at a major T1 event. Btw, lately I've been thinking of tormod's crypt as a card to use in my sb to stop y's will nonsense. What is your experience with the card?

As sugested porior, I've tried ankh (a little bit before than I was expecting to use it, but it is still ok). Altought it wasn't used in a tournament but more on a controled gauntlet of matches (so called playtesting), I've come up to some quite interesting conclusions.

First of all, ankh sucks. It realy sucks. I've managed to draw it in my hand every third game. The turn I dropped it into play I was forced not to drop one creature for the turn, wich in theory is OK since ankh will deal damage as it was a creature. Every sixth-seventh game I managed to drop it in my first round using usualy esg as mana acc. The games when I didn't manage to drop it in round 1 I usualy had the next scenario:

 - scenario 1 - ankh countered (sometimes with mana drain wich was as bad as possible)
 - scenario 2 - opponent takes 2-4 damage, combo kills me
 - scenario 3 - opponent play trinisphere, I kill myself with lands since he uses his wastelands to kill of my lands (humiliating), or I'm slowed so much down that I can't kill him before he drops a treath of his own and kills me before.

If one of those scenarios didn't happen, ankh was good. Ankh was also good if I managed somehow to drop ankh fast, and then waste/strip his lands away, forcing him to burn himself. Of course, drawing that card late in game is incredibly bad since it is a dead card late in game. The good thing about ankh - you know always 3 cards that you will sb out. My conclusion - if you can't play it round 1, don't play it (and most of the times you won't be able to play it round 1). It just isn't worth the slot.

Regarding fetchlands, I have good and bad situations. The good situations where the one when I didn't play foothills under root maze. The bad was when I played it under maze. Since having a maze in game is good, and having a uncounterable "get me a land that I want" is also ok, I will switch back to foothils altought the drawback of maze in game is much bigger than somebody would think.

I'm thinking about the last cards that will fill my empty slots. Incinerates are ok. Somebody sugested naturalizes, wich seems also ok. Viridian zealot, on the other hand, seems a little bit 2 slow for the deck he is suposed to fight (oath), altought in teory he seems quite good, especialy if played round 1. I think my deck runs enough creature, so I would prefer to have an aditional tool to fight the current metagame.

Well, I must say I c some big difference in the way we aproach the deck:

 - I play a land lighter version,
 - I play 3 more creatures,
 - I don't play crop rotation (altought it is nice to be able to fetch a strip sometimes, but in most of the cases it just isn't worth the slot - perhaps if I would run maze of ith in my sb)

First a note: I play rg since '96/'97 and I'm tunning the deck since then. The current version is the result of realy lots of testing, but as much as you test, you always miss a great card of wich somebody else thinks about (for ex. root maze). The land count is a result of lot of tweaking. Playing 19 lands, 2 moxes, esg's and lotus is the right choice by my opinion. You always get the fast draw, you mulligan rarely and you have a smaller risk to draw a land late in game (wich is just bad).

My deck is a little bit more aggressive (skyshroud elite is always good). I must also admit that the idea od playing dwarven miner sounds also good (dwarven blastminer even better), but it seems to me (as a better plan) to hit him with something that eats away his life (ankh), nullifies his moxes (null rod), eats his life and cripples combo (pyrostatic pillar), kills his artifact and gives you extra beef (artifact mutation), kill whatsoever (naturalize), etc. The plan behing rg is to kill your opponent as fast as possible, giving you the edge with some hosers (shaman, root maze, LD lands and ankh).

I'll run ankh in my next real tournament, and I'll switch to fetchlands instead of land grant. Sometimes it seems that testing the deck trough random appr matches doesn't give you the best result. My current results are, as you said, awkvard. I'll make your changes and then I'll c. My next tourney is 5.2., so I'll post some results afterwards with match analysis and the impact of the mentioned cards to my version deck.

Btw, how many ankh of mishra should I play in the deck? My current version runs 4 river boa and 2 ankh of mishra. Would it be better to run 3 ankh's and 3 boa's?

Regarding stormbind: it is a great card, but it is slow. I used to play it with a rg that used squee, rootwalas and survival (place 4 at http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=22 , lossing to Devos and pandemask in the semis's), and it was great at that time.  I took it out after combo started to be strong again (post storm age). It is just 2 slow to work against combo, and I realy don't think it deserves a slot in the sb.

I never stated that hands like this are not explosive, I just said that the chance to have those three cards in your oppening hand is rather small, so small that I would consider that situation irrelevant for any statisticaly relevant analysis. To quote myself, those hands happens never (or almost never).

I've tested ankh, and I have some other info about the card (Btw,thnx for the implication that I'm lying about my judgements, quite constructive). It can be good against non-combo non-aggro deck (read - control) if you manage somehow to slip it under a pletora of counterspells. I usualy don't. Most of the players don't counter my ape's (well, at least kird ape never gets countered), and they are quite surprised to c how fast their life can fall from 20 to 0 by little buggers.

ESG helps a lot since a first turn ankh spells havoc for any atog/keepr/cs deck, usualy hitting them for at least 10 damage for the game. It is an artifact, so most of the decks have some way to get rid of it. It costs 2 mana and that's good and bad. It is bad since most of the times I prefer to drop 2 treaths (for ex. kird ape and grim) round 2 instead of ankh. It is good because of chalice of the void. But, my final tought, except for CS most of the control matchups are in favor for rg, so giving something that fights them instead of something that gives you a chance against a bad matchup = bad idea. I would always play a null rod instead of ankh if I would play a 2 cc artifact.

Somebody stated that chalice is bad for this deck. It is. Under a chalice for 1 you can play only river boa's, am (or naturalize) and elvish spirit guides. I lost most of the games when an early chalice managed to resolve.
And to reiterate: Land Grant = BAD.
The thing I realy like about root maze is that it gives you time to fight the first mindslaver, since it comes into play tapped. I had this game when a guy managed to slave me regardless to the root maze, but he has to sweat alot to do it. His slaver comed into play tapped. That gave me time to shoot slaver (I didn't have no AM in hand, so nothing of it, but I had the opportunity). My chances to win a matchup against CS (wich is, btw, a very hard matchup by my experience to win) has increased, I'm still forced to fight an uphill battle, but I like my chances much more with root maze.

As stated before, I agree that land grant is worse than wooded foothills, but I will still continue to play it. Anybody who thinks diferently, swap the land grants with wooded foothils and you're set.

I would like that we keep on testing good cards. I've playtested ankh and, even if occasionaly good (especialy against any control deck), I've come to the next conclusion:

 - if you play creatures, most of your creatures will hit him for 2 points every rund anyway
 - it is incredible what it means that a juggernaut can kill you one round faster

Hands with ankh+root maze+shaman happens never. Price of progress is such a bad card. Altought it can hit your opponent for much, it usualy burn yourself for 6+ damage and it can't kill a welder. On the other hand, I've playtested artifact mutation and I must say that it is just insane. It has always a target: sometimes a mox, sometimes a manavault, sometimes (my favorite) a colossus.

Another thing: it is very interesting how root maze shuts your opponent for entering the "endless welder mindslaver turn". I must admit that I give more and more credit to this card for each day that I playtest with it.

My last version of the deck is this:

//NAME: Critters
// Creatures : 24
        4 Gorilla Shaman
        4 Grim Lavamancer
        4 Kird Ape
        4 Skyshroud Elite
        4 River Boa
        4 Elvish Spirit Guide
// Utility spells: 10
        4 Root Maze
        4 Land Grant
        2 Artifact Mutation
// Additional damage: 8
        4 Rancor
        4 Lightning Bolt
// Mana: 13
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mountain
        1 Forest
        4 Taiga
        4 Treetop Village
// LD: 5
        4 Wasteland
        1 Strip Mine
SB:  1 Artifact Mutation
SB:  2 Pyrostatic Pillar
SB:  4 Red Elemental Blast
SB:  4 Null Rod
SB:  4 Naturalize

Since 2 artifacts mutation came from the sb to maindeck, I decided to add 2 pyrostatic pillars in sb to have an additional tool to fight fast combo decks.

Fewer - true, but still lot, and more and more with each new big event.

Happens, but rogue wins also in extended and T2.

Workshop and storm. Lately T1 is all about netdecking (just look at the top 8's of the bigger events). I'm playing a r/g deck that can beat both of those and have a fair fight every game, but most of the comunity will have the urge to say "r/g is dead, aggro is dead, etc." despite they haven't tested a single match of storm or workshop vs. aggro. People tend to read articles on the net, copy/paste decks and think about themselves as they are playing the only viable choice in the format. Discarding a deck only because it isn't on the net is common sense today to most of the players.

The current state of mind is that the non-T1 players think about T1 as a format where you win or loose in round 1, they are convinced that trinisphere always resolves round 1 and that you don't have no more answer for it, etc. My experience is a little bit different, and by my opinion this whole debate isn't about should they ban or restrict some cards, but more about do we have enough experience to adapt to the format and to choose the right tools to fight in it. Storm and workshop? Great, play mono U or Stasis with stifle maindeck.

The enviorment will adapt and we don't have to ban or restrict anything. This is why I love T1 so much.

I dislike the ankh idea, especialy with fetchlands. TPS and similiar have to play less spells to kill you with an ankh in play. I have started to think about playing artifact mutation/null rod/naturalize over incinerate lately. Those card are most commonly sb-ed, something around 90% of matches. Having a way to answer big fat artifacts early in the game can't be bad.

I must admit I'm not convinced about running fetchlands over land grant. I'm repeating, I was playing fetchlands at the begining, but afterwards land grant proved to be a superior choice. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'll do some othe testing and then I'll c.

Agro isn't dead. Look at the goblin deck of Marvin Riechers placed 4 in Karlsruhe 8.1. It is old school sligh as much as it can be. And it doesn't run a single piece of power. Most t8's have at least 1 food chain goblins wich is a combo deck, but sometimes it kills without the food chain.

By my opinion the current result of t8's is forced by a straightforward thinking that you should always play a net deck and never test a new thing. This is why there are so many workshop based deck, this is why there where so many gat's, this is why there will be a pletora of new decks in the future t8's wich will be copy pasted from a t8 decklist that won a major tournament.

Don't get me wrong, but you just made a mistake in your play. The right play would be foothills, sac foothils for whatever you need, esg root maze. What if root maze resolves? Basicaly you've just shutted down yourself for one round.

I have my point about why you should play land grant. I surely do think that foothills is a far more superior card than land grant: first, it can search for a basic mountain, a thing land grant can't do. Second, you can always keep it as a mechanism to avoid 1 turn of crucible/wasteland nonsense. Third, foothils is uncounterable. The loss of 1 life is so sporadic that it shouldn't even be considered.

On the other hand, your example of choice just showed us why is land grant, sometimes, better than foothills. I must admit that I've lost a game to land granting and having it countered by my opponent with a fow, but most of the time it worked just fine for me. Your play, if not meeted with a fow, would force you into a situation where you wouldn't be able to cast anything more the first round (since fetching under root maze brings a land tapped into play).

It seems to me that most of you talks about theory. I can't have enough bad words for a situation where I go land root maze round 1, and then I draw into my second land wich is a foothils. Which is a thing I've tested.

Here goes a random shufle and draw of 20 different hands. This are my results:

 - no lands hand with land grant : 1
 - 1 land hand with land grant : 1
 - 2 land hand with land grant : 2
 - 3 or more land hand with land grant : 3
 - hand without land grant with lands: 11
 - hand without land and without land grant : 2

So, you have a 5% chance you will hit a situation with land grant you don't want, 5% chance to hit a risky but good situation with land grant (1 land), 10 % situation you realy want with land grant (since tutoring and playing a land in round 2 is good), 15% possibility you will be stuck for it 2 long, 55% situation where you won't have any problems with land grant since you want draw one and 10% mana screw situations. So, by my opinion, the things that matters is that 15% of good situation versus 20% of bad situation, altought it is debatable how much would you prefer to have a fourth land in hand instead of land grant.

The situations where you won't be able to land grant round 2? Very rare, by my statistic it is one of 5 matches granted you have it in your hand. This decks is mana light. It has 14-15 lands without foothills, so most of the times I draw into 1 or 2 land. Drawing 3 lands as mentioned in your example is a very rare situation, and you usualy don't need 3 lands till round 4-5 when you will want to activate your village. Having a land grant countered is usualy a good thing, since most of the times I manage to drop my entire hand with 1 land + esg + random mox around round 3. Wasting a counter for a land grant and letting me slip a treath is always good for me.

Regarding magma jet. I like the idea of browsing trough my deck. I dislike the idea od giving 1 less damage to my opponent. I would like to discuss a little bit about the next possible burn choices:

magma jet
incinerate
chain lightning
fire/ice
seal of fire
shock

Since '97 my burn of choice is incinerate, but I'm not sure I realy need it anymore. The non-regeneration ability isn't needed anymore, no sedge trolls around the last 5-6 years.

I would also like to hear additional sugestions for sb. I board lately reb's very rarely, and I realy like the idea of playing with a pletora of artifact hate in my sb. Against combo, I think root maze, gorila shaman and null rod shoul be enough to fight it. I've also seen a dvarven miner in a deck. I must admit that I like the prospect of nuking opponents workshops, but I would like to hear some more suggestion about the little guy. I'm not quite sure he is fast enough to hold workshop decks.