Why do you have two Time Walks?
Gracias, sorry about that.
Anyway. I think Null Rod would be really good in here if you were to adjust your mana base a bit (ie cut the off color moxen); it would give you more speed over decks running full power.
Fastbond could be useful, giving you a chance to speed ahead and it may even mean you can use Gush.
Really good looking deck though!
Good Luck.
netherspirit
I've always liked Null Rod in this style of deck, but currently, the idea of adding more small blue spells seems more appealing than a mana denial strategy, especially given the current meta. If I were going to use Null Rod, I'd play three of them and all five Strip effects (like I said, all or nothing). However, to accomplish this, I'd be cutting artifact mana due to obvious lack of synergy, and I think the speed it grants is too valuable to lose.
Still, I wouldn't mind trying a few games with +3 Null Rod and all five strips as a sort of alternate version; I'll let you know how it turns out if I do.
wow this is an extremely clever list! in fact, if flash gets restricted, i may end up testing with this.
Thanks!
I actually like your list a lot, and who knows what could have happened if you you didn't scoop to your buddy. I think you could improve your a lot of your matchups by taking out the regrowth, the rancors and adding in pithing needles. You would be surprised what a fast clock, strip effects and needle naming fetches can do to a lot of decks. Plus against Salvagers it can name EE.
Pithing Needle actually seems like a cool idea; it's an inexpensive answer to a lot of things that give this deck trouble (such as the aforementioned Explosives). At the very least, it could probably be a legitimate Wasteland replacement. I'll check it out.
Thank you very much.
Do you have enough pitches to FoW to justify its inclusion? How set on the disruption engine are you?
Maybe you could sub out the FoW's for drains? That would help get goyf on the board faster, though the two blue could be tough. Maybe mana leak even. I guess I only count 17 pitches to FoW (not counting Timewalk and Ancestral). That seems like bare minimum, but if it's working for you than nevermind.
Have double blue up is pretty difficult, and it is even less likely that either of those mana sources would be untapped on an opponent's turn. Force of Will is pretty much always okay (and even so, it seems awfully necessary), though if I end up with Force + Force + blue card in hand, I'll generally pitch one Force to the other because I don't count on seeing an additional blue card to make the second FoW useful.
I actually tried Mana Leak in the beginning, but even then it was rare that I had the resources to make use of it (that's okay, though, Tarmogoyf is the green Duress). By turn three, Leak may be decent.
I like daze against stax, and I see that it helped you pull out the win, but with your pretty fragile mana base against opponents running waste/strip/blood moon, what is your strategy? Having to return an island to your hand against stax and having only 1 basic seems pretty difficult.
The deck is actually somewhat mana-source-heavy for an aggro deck, and thus far, Stax has been fairly race-able; if you can get down a high-power creature (or two) early, it alone can be enough. Tangle Wire is pretty dangerous, though, and a Moon towards the beginning of a game is difficult to deal with, so if this becomes more prevalent, the mana may require some adjusting.
The street wraiths are just plain awesome, nice inclusion with that. One of the better decklists I've seen lately!
Thank you very much.
The main problem with this deck right now, is as you said yourself, why play this over GAT? GAT's men are larger, GAT draws cards way faster and they got more disruption..
I think the rancor's should become 1 tutor/1 berserk or something similar....or just cut for more draw or disruption.
/Zeus
After some thought, I've managed to come up with a few reasons.
- As far as I can tell, GAT is the only deck in the history of Magic to run five creatures and still be called "aggro" (though "aggro-control" is pretty fitting). This deck is not very similar to Gro-a-Tog in the sense that it plans on playing multiple small creatures on the first few turns defended by free or cheap spells, and in my opinion, it's actually much more comparable to Fish (though a lack of pro-active elements like mana denial and a seemingly different intent separate it from the archetype).
- Partially due to the above, the deck seems to have a better game against Stax and matchups that are traditionally difficult for GAT.
It certainly isn't better than GAT (though I haven't given up), but I think it can excel in areas where GAT might have some trouble. This is to be continued, however.
--
So far, I’ve made one change, which is as follows:
- 1 Wasteland
+ 1 Gush
That means I’ve got one Wasteland that seems pretty random, and so this is what I’d like to test in the future
- 1 Wasteland
- 2 Rancor
+ 3 Serum Visions
Like I said before, I’ve kinda’ been wanting more small blue spells, especially ones that draw cards, and Serum Visions is useful for growing both Dryad and Tarmogoyf (sorcery), though I’m open to any suggestions regarding an alternative.
Unfortunately, school has just started, so I’ll have a little less time to devote to the deck, but I will keep it up as best I can.
Thank you all very much for your input, and I’d be happy to hear any more thoughts you may have.
