Angry Ghoul - a vintage version

[Kholdestare]

Hi there,

I was browsing old deck archetypes and tried to tune them into (semi-)viable vintage decks. I finally came to this:

Angry Ghoul

3x Hermit Druid
3x Narcomoeba
1x Sutured Ghoul
1x Dread Return
1x Dragon Breath
1x Bridge from Below

2x Cabal Therapy
4x Thoughtseize

4x Aether Vial
4x Vexing Shusher

4x Wild Cantor
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Tarmogoyf

4x Living Wish

1x Ancient Grudge

4x Wooded Foothills
3x Windswept Heath
1x Taiga
4x Bayou
1x Forest

5x Mox
1x Black Lotus
1x Lotus Petal

Sideboard
1x Hermit Druid
1x Tarmogoyf
1x Ingot Chewer
1x Yixlid Jailer
1x Bazaar of Baghdad

2x Cabal Therapy
4x Duress
4x Bitter Ordeal

The basic plan is to fetch your lonely Forest, resolve a Hermit Druid and activate it.
You mill your whole library and put the Narcomoebas into play.
Then you Cabal Therapy your opponent once or twice to get rid of counters. Bridge from Below replaces sacced creatures here.
Then Dread Return gets Sutured Ghoul into play, you put Dragon Breath on it, remove Tarmogoyfs, Mongrels etc. for the ghoul and swing for the win.

Some notes on specific cards:

Cabal Therapy - Use this one wisely. You might want to therapy yourself after activating the hermit to put combo pieces into your yard. It builds up gravestorm quite nicely after sideboarding (see below).

Bridge from Below - This is not always needed. I tested versions of this deck without it but found it to be too useful and synergistic to cut it. It shines when you can't get enough moebas into play while comboing due to having them in hand. With bridge you can combo with druid + 2 creatures and double therapy protection. Being able to double therapy becomes even more improtant when you are holding combo parts iin hand.
Since there is no turning back after activating the druid (empty library), you have to make sure that you win now.

Aether Vial - This card is core to the deck. Short of land - mox - hermit one of the best plays you usually make on turn one is land - vial. It helps to get your druid (and other critters) past counters and accelerates nicely with wild cantor.
Furthermore it provides protection vs Wasteland, which can get painful in a deck without basics.

Wild Cantor - Again this one protects you from wastes. It is a nice turn one drop vs spheres.dec and enables a 2nd turn Thoughtseize - Hermit Druid play. Builds up gravestorm g2 and 3 vs storm.dec (see below).

Wild Mongrel - This one gets combo pieces in the yard where they belong. Additionally it teams up along with goyfs and shushers to go into the red zone, when comboing seems impossible.

Tarmogoyf - Goyfs and mongrels constitute the heart of your plan b - going aggro.
It should be noted that Tarmogoyf is checking its p/t even in the graveyard. So it is a useful creature for the ghoul to devour (even if the printed cardtext on Sutured Ghoul says otherwise).

Ancient Grudge - It seems to be random as a 1-of. However it tends to be randomly good (guess this is the defintion of randomness ) I guess this is a wild card slot. I'm leaning to replacing it with the 4th Windswept Heath.

Basic Forest - I understand that this can randomly wreck your plans when comboing. Most of the time however you fetch before comboing, so there is no real drawback.
Having a solid turn one wasteland-proof basic forest and a permanent mana source to activate your druid is quite strong.

Cards that I did not include:

Lion's Eye Diamond - Living Wish + Diamond is occasionally nice. Furthermore it discards combo pieces. I fount it dead too often. So it got cut.

Crimson Wisps - I wanted a way to haste my Hermit Druids. However I realized this was win more. Nevertheless Crimson Wisps is not bad in the deck since it almost always at least cycles itself.

Cephalid Illusionist + Lightning Greaves + Shuko (or en-Kors) - At first I tinkered with a "Cephalid Breakfast/Angry Ghoul"-hybrid list but fount it too clunky. It was quite fun to play actually and very fast but also very inconsistent.

Summoner's Pact - I really wish to find a way that makes this one viable as a core card to fetch Hermit Druid. I cannot find a way, maybe somebody else can.


Let's explain the sideboard choices:

I think the wish targets are self-explanatory. A brief note on Yixlid Jailer. It's there to help against Ichorid but also completely shuts off your combo since you have no means to get rid of it. Maybe this should be replaced with Faerie Macabre.
Duress, therapies and Bitter Ordeal come in against storm combo and oath or whenever you fear massive graveyard hate.
I feel that storm is the worst matchup for this Angry Ghoul pile. You can occasionally race them game 1 (a.k.a. the "Land-Mox-Druid-Hand") but you usually don't. Post-board your plan is to resolve Bitter Ordeal asap. Most of the time your gravestorm should range between 1 and 3 between fetches, therapies and cantors.

Well, there are some other things that I could say about the deck but i think this is already long enough and can be discussed.
I would appreciate any advice how I can fit Summoner's Pact into this deck and maybe a viable draw engine. For example should Dark Confidant replace some Mongrels? Let me hear!

thx for reading

[Lurker101]

I really like Angry Ghoul and this is a cool decklist but I can't see it being better than Ichorid or Oath.

[Implacable]

Yeah.  Specifically, if two win conditions costs 1G and have a 1-turn resolution-to-victory time, why is the one without the extensive draw engine + counterspell suite better?

[the boogie man]

This takes the same amount of timer and mana, but doesn't need orchard.

[Kholdestare]

I don't want to say this is necessarily better than Ichorid or Oath but it certainly has potential.

Regarding Oath:
As boogie man said, Hermit Druid is a one card combo that wins the game.
Also Hermit Druid wins a turn faster than Oath (sans Time Walk or tidespout comboing).
Playing Oath means not playing creatures. This is a drawback. Should your opponent shut down your oath plan it gets very hard to win.

Regarding Ichorid:
Ichorid is even more so than Oath an all-in approach. With Angry Ghoul you do have a decent man plan as a backup strategy.

Nevertheless I do see this deck needs a way to draw cards and lacks disruption. After some more testing I cut back on some fancy cards and added cards that I feel just "do" more. Here's a revised list (changes are bold):

Angry Ghoul 1.1

3x Hermit Druid
3x Narcomoeba
1x Sutured Ghoul
1x Dread Return
1x Dragon Breath
1x Bridge from Below

3x Cabal Therapy
4x Thoughtseize
4x Duress

4x Aether Vial

2x Wild Mongrel
4x Dark Confidant
3x Tarmogoyf

4x Living Wish
1x Demonic Tutor

4x Wooded Foothills
4x Windswept Heath
1x Taiga
4x Bayou
1x Badlands

5x Mox
1x Black Lotus
1x Lotus Petal

Sideboard
1x Hermit Druid
1x Tarmogoyf
1x Ingot Chewer
1x Faerie Macabre
1x Bazaar of Baghdad

4x Leyline of the Void
3x Bitter Ordeal
2x Ancient Gudge

1x Forest

Some explanations:

Vexing Shusher seems unneeded with so many discard spells.
The basic Forest went to the side. It randomly cost me games. Now I only bring it in when I see wastes in g1.
Cabal Therapy as a 3-of means, when you combo you do not care about combo pieces in your grip. They certainly will go the grave.
Therefore I cut back Mongrels. They are still good as aggro beasts though.
Wild Cantor was just a neat little trick. Totally dead in the mid and late game. In come Dark Confidants.

[Mantis]

What about this?

creature [14]
1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Hermit Druid
4 Narcomoeba
1 Sutured Ghoul
4 Tarmogoyf

instant [14]
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
3 Daze
1 Echoing Truth
4 Force of Will
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Misdirection
1 Vampiric Tutor

sorcery [8]
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Careful Study
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Dread Return
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker

enchantment [1]
1 Dragon Breath

artifact [7]
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire

land [16]
3 Flooded Strand
4 Forbidden Orchard
3 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea

Sideboard:
2 Empyrial Archangel
2 Extirpate
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Thoughtseize
4 Oath of Druids
1 Tropical Island

This version runs a lot less crappy cards like Wild Cantor or Wild Mongrel. I could see this version being decent however especially thanks to the sideboard which allows you to dodge creature hate.

[Kholdestare]

I like your blue approach, mantis. What seems to be a hassle though are the md orchards. They directly interfere with your mainboard plan b, which is attacking with goyfs. I fear that the spirit tokens will buy your opponent more than enough time to do whatever they want. The goyfs seem to fulfill no other purpose than pumping your ghoul.
You could cut them altogether along with DSC and run maybe 2x Inkwell Leviathan + 3x good card.
That however would morph the deck even more into a one-trick pony. I don't know if this is the right thing to do.

Still though, I like it blue This might be a way to go.

[the boogie man]

If you wanted to keep blue out, you could run progenitus and natural order, and that would be similar. you could even run hellkite overlord.

[Blue Lotus]

You cannot remove DSC to Sutured Ghoul, or Tarmogoyf for that matter (for any effect).  Tinker/Titan is probably the way to go.  And maybe 1x Phyrexian Dreadnought /4x Stifle.

[Mantis]

I like your blue approach, mantis. What seems to be a hassle though are the md orchards. They directly interfere with your mainboard plan b, which is attacking with goyfs. I fear that the spirit tokens will buy your opponent more than enough time to do whatever they want. The goyfs seem to fulfill no other purpose than pumping your ghoul.
You could cut them altogether along with DSC and run maybe 2x Inkwell Leviathan + 3x good card.
That however would morph the deck even more into a one-trick pony. I don't know if this is the right thing to do.

Still though, I like it blue This might be a way to go.

I just took this deck off Deckcheck so I shouldn't take credit for the list.
The Orchards are there for the Oath sideboard and I mean the Goyfs make a fine plan B I guess. Remember that they pump the Ghoul too while in GY. I see your issues with Orchard and Goyf but my advice is to test and it see how often it comes up as it might just be that it doesn't come up all that often. Furthermore they can act as Moats against aggro decks. I think having a plan B is really important in this deck, you just absolutely need to have one. Like you said, a one trick pony doesn't seem right. That means the deck can basically be stopped by one Tormod's Crypt.

The postboard Oath approach is just awesome, they board in dead cards against you and you laugh. Make sure your opponent knows you play Angry Ghoul if you plan on sideboarding into Oath for game 2 even if they didn't see the combo because that means they will board into Leylines and Tormods Crypts which will just be dead.

[Kholdestare]

@blue lotus
You might want to check out this link: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=33966.msg482300
Since the rules change you actually are able to use Tarmogoyf and Sutured Ghoul in a meaningful way.

DSC of course won't be in your grave at all, so you cannot feed the ghoul with him. However it buys you an additional turn after milling your library, for what it's worth.

@mantis
I see a problem here. Should your opponent see you playing an orchard in g1 (and he surely will when you reveal your milled library), he knows that you probably plan on some transitional oath sb thing. That would make your opponent guess if you transform or not. However he surely won't sb completely wrong.

[Blue Lotus]

OK thanks for pointing that out.  I was like people RTFC its right on there!

You wight want to try Eternal Witness -> Will or Krosan Reclamation -> Will  The latter takes an extra turn (but still no slower than the fastest Oath builds), but you don't have to worry about having ANY combo cards in your hand at all.  A downside is the continuing Mana investment (1G for Hermit, 1GG to activate and flashback KR, 2B for Will in consecutive turns)

Storming out with Will makes you not worry about instant speed bounce/creature removal (something Dragon and Oath do have to deal with). 

Also 1x Krosan Reclamation/ 1x Will/ 1x Tendrils takes up a lot less space than Dread Return, Dragon Breath, 3-4x Narcomeoba, Ghoul, and creatures to pump ghoul.  Of course, it lacks the aggro back up plan.  But Aggro-combo decks have never been resoundingly successful in Vintage

[Negator13]

What about this?

creature [14]
1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Hermit Druid
4 Narcomoeba
1 Sutured Ghoul
4 Tarmogoyf

instant [14]
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
3 Daze
1 Echoing Truth
4 Force of Will
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Misdirection
1 Vampiric Tutor

sorcery [8]
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Careful Study
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Dread Return
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker

enchantment [1]
1 Dragon Breath

artifact [7]
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire

land [16]
3 Flooded Strand
4 Forbidden Orchard
3 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea

Sideboard:
2 Empyrial Archangel
2 Extirpate
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Thoughtseize
4 Oath of Druids
1 Tropical Island

This version runs a lot less crappy cards like Wild Cantor or Wild Mongrel. I could see this version being decent however especially thanks to the sideboard which allows you to dodge creature hate.

Did you get this from the 2nd place finish in Madrid or did they take your build to 2nd?

[Purple Hat]

@blue lotus
You might want to check out this link: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=33966.msg482300
Since the rules change you actually are able to use Tarmogoyf and Sutured Ghoul in a meaningful way.

DSC of course won't be in your grave at all, so you cannot feed the ghoul with him. However it buys you an additional turn after milling your library, for what it's worth.

@mantis
I see a problem here. Should your opponent see you playing an orchard in g1 (and he surely will when you reveal your milled library), he knows that you probably plan on some transitional oath sb thing. That would make your opponent guess if you transform or not. However he surely won't sb completely wrong.

the simple solution to this is to just play a true 5 color manabase and drop daze.  that way it looks like you're just looking for a few more 5 color lands to fill out your deck.  After you play 4 gemstone mine, 4 city of brass the choices become kinda limited and orchards start looking pretty good/normal in your deck.  Your opponent might think about oath, but it wouldn't be quite so obvious and you can always just shuffle in 15 cards, then take out 15 cards and let your opponent guess what the heck you're doing.

[Mantis]

Did you get this from the 2nd place finish in Madrid or did they take your build to 2nd?

I took it off deckcheck.net like I said. Can't remember which tourney it was and I'm too lazy to look it up again, but I remember it was a pretty big tournament and it was in either Italy or Spain so Madrid is probably a safe bet.

[Negator13]

Oh, my bad then, I didn't see your subsequent post.