[Deck]Grow-a-Tog

[atwa2002]

Hello,

This is my first post here, and I'm dutch, so please don't start picking on me because of any mistakes I might make (in content and language).

I have made the following deck:

Mana::
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Bayou

1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault

Creatures:
4 Quirion Dryad
3 Psychatog

Disruption:
4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
3 Misdirection
2 Duress
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Mind Twist

Draw:
4 Brainstorm
4 Night's Wisper
3 Serum Visions
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gush

Tutoring:
3 Cunning Wish
2 Merchant Scroll
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor

Other:
1 Fastbond
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Sideboard:
4 Hydroblast
3 Stifle
2 Rend Flesh
2 Naturalize
1 Cremate
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Berserk
1 Rebuild

The deck is based on the build by Stephen Menendian and Paul Mastriano on starcitygames http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=4552.

The idea is to play an early dryad, pump it by playing a lot of non-green spells and deliver some massive beatdown.
If you lose steam during the midgame, you can play a Psychatog and beat your opponent to dead (psychatog + Beserk is really cool).
If you are really lucky you can combo out with Fastbond, Gush and Yawgmoth's Will.

This deck plays pretty good, but when playing tournaments, I always happen to run out of steam (even with a Psychatog).

Can somebody help me tuning my deck?

In the Netherlands are no proxi-tournaments held and I am a poor student, so I don't have acces to power and drains.

Thanks for your time,

Niels

[Grand Inquisitor]

Your deck looks fine.  The components of an old school aggressive dryad based attack are there.  However, I find that adapting old GAT simply doesn't work anymore since...

1) Combo is faster and more resilient.  Control can't simply rely on FoW and a fast kill.

2) Workshop has gained a number of new tricks (titan, chalice, trinisphere, duplicant) which all make your job harder.  Your sideboard space has been crimped to the point of having to choose between workshop and other matchups.

3) The power of every deck has been raised.  GAT must also play combo.


Depending on your metagame you can dodge or hedge against the first two.

However, the third point means that you have to devote more slots in your deck to 'combo-ing' your opponent.  This means spells which win you the game not just because they help your overall strategy, but because they are outright broken.

I realize the list you posted is unpowered, but I feel that GAT needs regrowth, tinker, ancestral and time walk in order to compete against top decks.

As far as your list in a low power environment, I would take the deck into a more aggressive stance (daze & hidden gibbons), or a more defensive stance (isochron scepter, AK's, and adding red).

Just my 2 cents.

[atwa2002]

Thanks for your help.

I just don't understand where tinker fits. I have played regrowth and it was oke, but nothing more than that, often it was just a dead card.

Where proxies are allowed, i usualy proxi ancestral, time walk and 3 moxen, but buying then is imposible until I gratuate.

Can anyone please advaise my if my draw-engine is oke? I have tried Ak, but I think Night's Wisper is a lot better.

[Covetous]

In a deck without mana drain, night's whisper is definitely better than intuition/ak.  Without intuition, AK is relatively weak anyway, so in your deck, night's whisper is better.  One problem that you may run into is that GAT really needs power to run like it should.  Turn 1 Dryad is what you strive for, and without moxen x5 that's less common.  Tinker-->Darksteel Colossus is what GI was referring to.  I'm not sure if Tinker-->memory jar would be decent or not but it's interesting.  I personally would suggest running 4x duress, 4x counterspell, rather than mind twist and 3x misdirection.  Running some mis-D's is good, but I'm not sure if 3 is necessary when targeted spells that affect you are relatively low (not absent of course).  Also, without Drain, FoF is too expensive despite its brokenness.  Merchant scroll can be good, but may not be as strong as you need--it's nice to pump dryads but it's slow and you don't have a lot of really good targets.  I'm not sure about how good Fastbond still is in GAT.  When you had 4 gush, it was insane, but with 1 gush and 0 daze I'm just not sure.  Also, you may not need 3 togs--1 or 2 should be enough for that secondary kill condition.  Hope this helps.