Hermit Druid with Green Sun's Zenith- viable?

[Eastman]

So one of my pet decks for awhile has been Hermit Druid.  You might recall my "hermit blaster" thread from awhile back.  The druid effect is one of the most powerful in vintage - a 2 mana 1-card combo that wins the game the next turn.  The problems have always been finding that combo card early enough (since you lose long games due to a diluted deck filled with combo enablers), and graveyard hate.    

 Anyway the spoilers for MBS have promised us a sweet new card for hermit druid that helps the first problem a great deal.  




With Green Sun's Zenith, we can now effectively run 8 hermit druids--doubling the threat density in the deck.  The additional G to cast it is affordable.  Compare Green Sun's Zenith to a popular alternative -- living wish.  Living wish costs 2 to cast + 2 for druid = 4.  So it costs an extra mana, which is very important.  Far more problematic though is that living wish requries you to run a hermit druid in your sideboard, reducing by 25% the chance of drawing one in your opening hand.  Thus, living wish as a way of getting hermit druid into play is in part counterproductive and costs more than GSD.  I have no doubt that Green Sun's Zenith is a superior choice.  Moreover, I think it will be an autoinclude in hermit druid lists moving forward.  

Here are the combo elements of the deck, including Green Sun's Zenith:

4 Hermit Druid
4 Green Sun's Dawn
1 Sutured Ghoul
1 Dragon Breath
1 Lord of Extinction (you can also run 4 tarmogoyf if you want to build it into a BUG fish shell, I haven't cared for it in testing)
3-4 Narcomoeba

As I explained in the prior thread:

2.  How the combo works

The combo works so that, if you activate hermit druid, you win that turn.
1.  Activate hermit druid during your first main phase
2.  Mill your entire library, putting into play up to 4 Narcomoebas (and you need to bring in at least 2)
3.  Sacrifice Narcos/Hermit to Cabal Therapy EITHER (a) your opponent, to get any counters out of their hand OR (b) yourself, to drop any combo pieces you drew into the yard
4.  Sacrifice Narcos/Hermit to Dread Return a Sutured Ghoul.  Remove Lord of Extinction to Sutured Ghoul, and attach Dragon Breath.  You now have a hasty trampling dude with power and toughness both at around 40-70.  
5.  Attack with super gigantic sutured ghoul lord of extinction hybrid fatty dude

As you can see, this is very fast and simple.  If you mull to three, and those three cards are land, mox, hermit druid, then you are going to have a turn 2 win.  Hermit Druid is a 1-card combo for 2 mana, which is practically unheard of.  

The presence of DSC in the deck buys you a turn if anything goes wrong, gives you an alternate win (in addition to hard-casting an enormous lord of extinction), and makes sure you have the auto-win against an un-suspecting painter/grindstone type.

The other problem with druid is yet to be solved- how do you deal with graveyard hate?  I think the need to keep it off the table requries that we run hermit druid in a control shell with a lot of disruption, and bounce to push the hate off the table when you want to go off.  I am no where near a tuned list yet, but here is what I have come up with for starters:


TENTATIVE GSZ HERMIT 1.0
12 Disruption
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection (in addition to protecting the combo misd allows you to leverage otherwise dead narcomoebas and effectively reduce the card disadvantage created by the combo pieces)
4 Duress Effects
2 Cabal Therapy

5 Draw/Bounce
2 Repeal
3 Preordain

9 Win Next Turn
4 Hermit Druid
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Tinker

9 Dead Combo Draws
1 Blightseel Collossus (Having a colossus in the deck, in addition to helping against graveyard hate, allows you to survive a draw step after activating druid which has numerous advantages)
1 Sutured Ghoul
1 Dragon Breath
1 Lord of Extinction
1 Dread Return
4 Narcomoeba  (this could be 3, or the fourth could be a bridge from below, I have always gone back and forth.  Fourth would be bridge but I want to be able to pitch it if I draw it)

5 Restricted Goodies
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

20 Mana Sources (Again this is untuned, just working off the old list)
5 Moxen  (not so sure if I should be running off color moxen in this list, we may be better with more colored sources)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
4 Polluted Delta
2 City of Brass
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Dryad Arbor (this can be tutored into play for G with Green Sun's Zenith, which is a neat trick that should be useful)
1 Pendelhaven


Anyways I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.  The last thread got pretty interesting/creative.  One question is whether I should make room for a utility package.  Are there effective green creature answers to the common graveyard hate that could be used in concert with GSZ to make the deck more resilient?  

[AmbivalentDuck]

With zero copies of Dread Return in the deck, I have to question its ability to execute its game plan. 

I also question the utility of Repeal over Nature's Claim since your primary concern is grave hate.  It's not like 4 life affects your game plan of attacking with a 40/40-ish hasty, trampling beater.

[Wagner]

With zero copies of Dread Return in the deck, I have to question its ability to execute its game plan. 

I also question the utility of Repeal over Nature's Claim since your primary concern is grave hate.  It's not like 4 life affects your game plan of attacking with a 40/40-ish hasty, trampling beater.

1 Sutured Ghoul
1 Dragon Breath

[Eastman]

Edited to correct the oversight.

As far as repeal, the reason I am wary of cards like Nature's Claim in the maindeck is that they further dilute the deck--they are more dead draws in a deck that already has too many.  Repeal on the other hand cycles, hits everything Nature's Claim does, and can take out creature based hate as well which is nice.    

[emidln]

Edited to correct the oversight.

As far as repeal, the reason I am wary of cards like Nature's Claim in the maindeck is that they further dilute the deck--they are more dead draws in a deck that already has too many.  Repeal on the other hand cycles, hits everything Nature's Claim does, and can take out creature based hate as well which is nice.    

Repeal and Nature's Claim both fail to deal with Chalice @ 1. I'd honestly rather have Echoing Truth in this deck.

Also, doesn't this deck really want Elvish Spirit Guide? It can let you duress + cast your druid turn 1 and it helps a lot against sphere effects given your limited manabase.

[Troy_Costisick]

Edited to correct the oversight.

As far as repeal, the reason I am wary of cards like Nature's Claim in the maindeck is that they further dilute the deck--they are more dead draws in a deck that already has too many.  Repeal on the other hand cycles, hits everything Nature's Claim does, and can take out creature based hate as well which is nice.    

Repeal and Nature's Claim both fail to deal with Chalice @ 1. I'd honestly rather have Echoing Truth in this deck.

If they play Chalice at 1 instead of 2, I think that would be great.  I don't see how Chalice at 1 would hurt this deck in any way.

[ELD]

Far more problematic though is that living wish requries you to run a hermit druid in your sideboard, reducing by 25% the chance of drawing one in your opening hand.

The odds of drawing a 4 of in your opening 7 is 40%.  The odds of drawing a 3 of is 32%.  Not sure if your thinking reflects these numbers.  Basically, in the opening 7, a 4x list will draw Hermit 5 times to every 4 times a 3x list does. 

On a related note, I'd be interested to see how many games get blown out with spot removal. 
Ex:  You draw 1x Narco.  You activate Hermit Druid and reveal only 2x Narco.  They repeal one of your mans, and you don't have 3x bodies for Dread Return.

[Eastman]

Far more problematic though is that living wish requries you to run a hermit druid in your sideboard, reducing by 25% the chance of drawing one in your opening hand.

On a related note, I'd be interested to see how many games get blown out with spot removal.  
Ex:  You draw 1x Narco.  You activate Hermit Druid and reveal only 2x Narco.  They repeal one of your mans, and you don't have 3x bodies for Dread Return.

Well you can cast the 1X Narco that you drew, either this turn or next depending on the mana availability.  But this is part of the reason I am running 4 Narco right now.  

I should also add that this is why the deck runs a dozen permission spells.  Against control if you haven't duressed them yet and don't have FoW, you don't have to activate hermit druid the second he goes online.  In the example you gave I would probably play the narco before even activating Druid unless they had a ton of mana out or something. 

[vassago]

Can we have Sharrum and POssessed Portal in here? I love infinite zombie tokens....

[AmbivalentDuck]

Can we have Sharrum and POssessed Portal in here? I love infinite zombie tokens....

I thought about suggesting that, but I couldn't get a reasonable package below 4 cards.  Also, it's vulnerable to effects the deck presently ignores.

[RecklessEmbermage]

Also, doesn't this deck really want Elvish Spirit Guide? It can let you duress + cast your druid turn 1 and it helps a lot against sphere effects given your limited manabase.

Second this. With a set of spirit guides in the deck, you can replace the big lhurgoyf with just 3 (or even 2, if you like living on the edge) goyfs, to have a defense/secondary win-con. You can also play ESG in a pinch. Maybe you need to flashback an early therapy or something.

Maybe -1 pendelhaven -2 off-colored moxen -3 narcomoeba -1 lord of extinction -1 misdirection +4 ESG +2 Tarmogoyf +2 bridge from below?

Bridges over moebas to pump goyf. You only need 4 creatures on the board to avoid being blown out by most random removal. With this package, you can flashback therapy twice to get there and you always have a back-up creature. One downside by doing this is the inability to flashback therapy before activating druid, to nail ravenous trap or faerie macabre. However if you do that, it's because you already have atleast two creatures on the board (you can't sacrifice druid at this point), which means you'll end up with enough zombie tokens to go off anyway. It's a little bit risky, but the deck is tight for space. After removing two ESGs from the game, ghoul hits for 20.

If you cut one of each dual and exchange them with fetches, you get one more source of each color while reducing the impact of opposing wastes.

[Troy_Costisick]

Are Bloodghasts out of the question?

[RecklessEmbermage]

Are Bloodghasts out of the question?

They take up the same number of slots as narcomoebas and are far less reliable. Dredge puts cards in the graveyard every turn till it wins, while this puts the whole deck in the yard and wins the same turn. There's just no window of opportunity to reuse bloodghast.

[TheShop]

I love this idea, the deck looks strong.  Thoughts:

Therapy is sooo strong here because there are very few cards that stop you from blowing them out and you can sac the hermit. +2?  Also note that you can therapy your own cards into the yard in a bind.

imperial seal should be here if it already isn't, much stronger than preordain.

I havent seen Lord of Extinction yet, this helps alleviate my biggest problem with the deck- dead creature cards.

Finally, props on fitting tinker in here.  The deck always needed a backup and tinker is so much better than goyf.  Also, you are 100% spot on regarding the 1 more draw step without dying thing.

Edit: when I tested this deck in 2008 my favorite part was that opposing players often lead with DURESS. It is really cool when they can see the hermit in your hand and are then tapped down and usually powerless to stop him from kicking their ass back to the stone-age. In testing, I was Duressed nearly 50% of all game openings and still won.  Finally, a situation where ostracize is actually better...lolz

[xouman]

Autum's veil anyone? I'm not sure it gets over duress/misdirection, but may be interesting in the sideboard. What about adding a manland in order to help in case you need more creatures? they are more useful before activating the combo.

[median]

just throwing this out there,
What about a walking disenchant like qasali pridemage, or harmonic sliver as a zenith target?

[rmn]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there's a rules issue here: A Lord of Extinction that is in the graveyard has power/toughness 0/0.  So removing it to Sutured Ghoul is not a good idea.  The reminder text on Sutured Ghoul itself supports this.

[Daenyth]

You would have been correct in the past, but the rules have changed since then. Characteristic-setting abilities now function in every zone.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Here's a better kill: Sharuum, Spellweaver Helix, and Preator's Counsel.  Counsel + the remaining Cabal Therapies and Black Lotus is an infinite loop of Time Walk effects.  Blightsteel (when in your hand) is your Therapy target.

This takes you to only one truly dead card main.

You can also just cast the Green Sun's Zeniths to pad your library.  That removes any dependence on Blightsteel.  Also note that having ANY unrestricted sorcery in your hand removes dependence on having enough Cabal Therapies in your grave.


I'm going to try to describe the minimal PROTECTED combo:
1. Druid everything into grave.
2. 3-4 Narcs in play.
2a. Sac the 4th Narc to Cabal Therapy away any FoW, etc.
3. Dread return Sharuum (or Sun Titan?) bringing back Spellweaver Helix imprinting Cabal Therapy and Praetor's Counsel.
4. Flashback the third and last "necessary" Therapy.  Your graveyard (deck) is now in your hand.
5. Play out all Moxen and Black Lotus.  
6. Steel Sabotage Helix back into your hand
7. Cast Time Walk.
8. Cast Green Sun's Zenith (X=0) and Force of Will it.
9. Recast Helix imprinting Time Walk and Zenith.
---You now have infinite turns and your deck in your hand.

The only things required for this not presently in the build are a singleton Steel Sabotage and a third Cabal Therapy.  If you have a Preordain in hand, you're actually capable of just imprinting a Preordain and Praetor's Council, then generating infinite Time Walks in a single turn.

Also, even with 4x Steel Sabotage the "brown" matchup is terrible because we can't run any basics.

[Stormanimagus]

What about this as the combo:

1 Sharuum the Hegemon
1 Time Vault
1 Myr Welder
1 Dragon Breath

That is 4 cards but they are all pretty cheap and guarantee victory. Only issue there is vulnerability to Null Rod, but that is solvable with Ancient Grudge no?

EDIT: Oops, Dragon Breath doesn't work. my bad.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Instead of Sharuum, you could use any of the Legacy Necrotic Ooze combos.  The problem is that the footprint increases by a card.

[Eastman]

Yah I have looked at the ooze combos and can't find a way the extra card is worth it.  I am open to being convinced otherwise/creative solutions.

@sharuum combo. I have to admit it is very creative. But doesn't it add vulnerabilities to chalice and sphere that the ghoul kill lacks?  With ghoul, you don't care about chalice. As I understand it chalice would shut down your ability to play the second part of the sharuum version. Moreover with ghoul, you only need to pay for spheres once-on dread return, so it is not hard to win through a few spheres. With the sharuum version it seems like each of several spells would have to pay the spheres, something that would likely not be possible.

A final point on the dead cards, lord of extinction isn't so dead-it is a big fat body for 5. So ghoul and return are the only truly dead cards. On the other hand sharuum, helix, and counsel all seem pretty weak/dead.

[Stormanimagus]

Yah I have looked at the ooze combos and can't find a way the extra card is worth it.  I am open to being convinced otherwise/creative solutions.

@sharuum combo. I have to admit it is very creative. But doesn't it add vulnerabilities to chalice and sphere that the ghoul kill lacks?  With ghoul, you don't care about chalice. As I understand it chalice would shut down your ability to play the second part of the sharuum version. Moreover with ghoul, you only need to pay for spheres once-on dread return, so it is not hard to win through a few spheres. With the sharuum version it seems like each of several spells would have to pay the spheres, something that would likely not be possible.

A final point on the dead cards, lord of extinction isn't so dead-it is a big fat body for 5. So ghoul and return are the only truly dead cards. On the other hand sharuum, helix, and counsel all seem pretty weak/dead.

All good points. I think that the only knock on Ghoul is that it would lose to things that hose attackers (Ensnaring Bridge, Creature Removal at instant speed). Then again, a whole slew of things hose the Sharuum combo too and EVERYTHING that hoses GY's hoses this deck.

[Purple Hat]

on the graveyard point, if you switched to esg's instead of off color moxen you could MD null rod to knock out crypts and relics and generally piss people off by being a deck with a legit turn 2-3 clock that runs null rod.

you can get around the workshop weakness by running mostly fetches and just running enough land to have an extra one to pay the activation cost.

[AmbivalentDuck]

@sharuum combo. I have to admit it is very creative. But doesn't it add vulnerabilities to chalice and sphere that the ghoul kill lacks?  With ghoul, you don't care about chalice. As I understand it chalice would shut down your ability to play the second part of the sharuum version. Moreover with ghoul, you only need to pay for spheres once-on dread return, so it is not hard to win through a few spheres. With the sharuum version it seems like each of several spells would have to pay the spheres, something that would likely not be possible.

It adds no new vulnerabilites except to Chalice @ 8.  The only spells that have to resolve are Dread Return and Praetor's Counsel.  After that, you get your library in your hand and the opportunity to make a land drop with it.  With that, you can play an Island and cast Steel Sabotage on a Chalice @ 0 or 2.  Chalice @ 1 doesn't prevent the combo from going off and actually only limits you to 4 Time Walk turns and that's if and only if your all of your answers to Chalice have a CMC of 1.

[Eastman]

on the graveyard point, if you switched to esg's instead of off color moxen you could MD null rod to knock out crypts and relics and generally piss people off by being a deck with a legit turn 2-3 clock that runs null rod.

you can get around the workshop weakness by running mostly fetches and just running enough land to have an extra one to pay the activation cost.

Very good point actually.  I have tested with a build that used 3 tarmogoyfs instead of lord of extinction to feed the ghoul, ran ESGs instead of moxen, and MD'd null rod.  In response to GY hate I had a sort of BUG-fish game I could play.

I have no idea whether that approach is better than the more focused shell I have in the list above.  My approach in trying to develop this deck right now is to try tuning just one at a time, and then compare the two tuned builds.  Maybe that is a mistake. If someone else were to work on tuning a fishy version, I'd be all ears to it.  

In fact the fish approach might get a lot of help from GSZ, since it would be pretty easy to get several tarmogoyfs out and beat face with them.  

If I were to dive into testing the fish version, I would start as follows:

13 Disruption
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
3 Thoughtseize
2 Cabal Therapy
3 Null Rod

12 Legit Creatures
4 Hermit Druid
3 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Tarmogoyf
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Sylvan Safekeeper

6 Dead Combo
3 Narcomoeba
1 Dread Return
1 Sutured Ghoul
1 Dragon Breath

8 Draw/Tutor/Broke
3 Preordain
1 Brainstorm
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall

21 Manas
3 ESG
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
1 Dryad Arbor
13 Other Mana

Goyfs get removed as 5 power, so that's 15.  Then add 3 Narco+4 Druid+6 ESGs+3 Other Creatures, and you have 31 damage.  That is plenty to roll over most any defenders and/or kill with only two of the goyfs or in some other strange situation.  




@Duck.  I disagree with you on whether chalice is a problem for the sharuum version.  But suffice it to say that the sphere problem is more than enough reason for me to stick with sutured ghoul for now.  I might be wrong though.  

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there's a rules issue here: A Lord of Extinction that is in the graveyard has power/toughness 0/0.  So removing it to Sutured Ghoul is not a good idea.  The reminder text on Sutured Ghoul itself supports this.

Actually the relevant inquiry is the LoE's power/toughness when it is in the removed from game zone.  But as Daenyth rightly points out, the ghoul reminder text is no longer an accurate explanation of the rules governing sutured ghoul.  Gotta love this game. 

[AmbivalentDuck]

Well, the Goyfs are far from dead.  Honestly, the deck is probably much improved for that change.  I'm actually waffling about the Zeniths.  They simply weren't that strong in testing and even when I had the opportunity to Zenith for Dryad Arbor, it was very often a bad idea given one form of removal or another.

[Purple Hat]

how are you supporting force in that build?  am I missing something?  I count 14 blue cards including narcomoebas, but you can't pitch your narco's because you only run 3.

[median]

You can pitch one narc. Hermit is sac fodder for D return too.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Arbor has been consistently underwhelming for me.  Strongly consider replacing it with Mana Crypt since the latter enables easy turn 1 Zenith @ 2.