Grafdigger's Cage versus Green Sun's Zenith

[Guli]

I have come to the conclusion that most modern beat down decks have two ways of handling some control issues. I find it pretty logical mono white builds put Cage maindeck. But when you splash in green, the colour that is the very reason to splash in the first place, the addition of maindeck Cage does not sound that logical anymore. Both Cage and Zenith answer similar strategies. A couple of examples,

Green Sun's Zenith gets Ooze, a card that can win game 1 versus dredge. You do need to lay down some pressure early on to make it work but that is what GW beats does with Thalia, Wasteland, Mental Misstep, Swords to Plowshares, ...
Cage is pretty obvious, but comparison to GSZ it suffers much more from hate. My intend here is not to compare, I am trying to show that both cards CAN answer a specific match up.

Tinker is another threat that Cage stops, but so does GSZ. GSZ can get Thornscape Apprentice. I guess the decks that run Cage maindeck, mono white versions, also run Relic-Warder as additional hate. But then again, GW also has several answers like STP, GSZ>thornscape, Aven, and some versions Arbiter and Metamorph. Again, let's not compare too much, the main point is that both cards deal with the Tinker win condition.

Another good example is Oath of Druids. GSZ can get a pridemage while Cage prevents the Emrakul from entering.


My question here is, doesn't GSZ just answer all the things that Cage is answering? The exception is Y Will. But since Stony and Thalia are printed, that problem card is pretty much covered.

I realize that Cage is cheaper and pro active. And also, Cage > Zenith, which might be a good reason to run Cage instead. Still, I feel like GSZ gives me much more outs and options and game. And I like that feeling and when you play  a lot of games, GSZ feels like you have more interaction, more connection with your deck and game plan. And more winning chances..

What would you prefer?

[BC]

GSZ is a significantly higher mana commitment than Cage.  GSZ also requires you to run several green creatures that may or may not be useful if you draw them naturally (see Thornscape Apprentice).  Perhaps most importantly, GSZ does not answer Yawg Will to any meaningful degree unless you run Loaming Shaman or something.  GSZ for Ooze will not necessarily beat Dredge either, again due to the high mana commitment and the speed of Dredge.  Finally, GSZ only fits in one deck while Cage can fit in literally any deck.

[TheWhiteDragon]

GSZ is a great utility card, but it really is awful as a fast answer.  If you have a thalia, noble, or whatever in play and your opponent responds with an oath, you can gsz for thornscape, but it will be too late...tidespout, demon, maniac, hasty bsc/emakrul...you'll be toast first.  A 1 mana answer is an answer with speed, that can be played proactively (or reactively in the case of oath).  It also stops snapcasters, yawgwills, welders, etc.  No WAY you race dredge with GsZ->ooze.  I rarely even win with turn 1 tinker->bsc vs dredge...no way you can get 3 mana, untap, then eat their grave with enough green mana to be relevant.  Yes, you have wastelands and such as well, but if you always have ALL your answers in hand, do you really need GSZ anyway?  And plow/mistep are not answers vs dredge unless you are fighting hate that would kill your cage.

GSZ is not acceptable as an answer to these cases.  On occassion, you may get a lucky situation where the card you fetch can control things, but more often than not you'd wish you had cage instead.

[Blue Lotus]

GSZ is very powerful. GSZ - > Ooze is a decent way to lessen the impact of yawgmoth's will. Cage, I have found, is a terrible way to stop to will because of how easy cage is to answer and, once answered leaves the yard intact.

GW Beats was (and still is) very strong against oath due to the pressure on mana + several maindeck answers to enchantments. Cage is unneeded there.

I prefer GSZ to cage in dealing with tinker. Getting a thornscape in response to a tinker is an option (though requires a chump block). Grafdigger is useless in the face of a resolved tinker.

And of course there is the fact that Cage is no bueno in multiples and GSZ is muy bueno.

However, GSZ to ooze is in no way an answer to dredge g1. If you are expecting lots and lots of dredge, I would main cages. Otherwise, I would run the classic seven cards in the SB to beat dredge (possibly including one wild cantor as anti-bridge gsz tech). GSZ makes gw beats a much more powerful, flexible and consistant deck than one with cage.

[bax]

I believe that GSZ is much stronger in Legacy and probably too slow for Vintage.  I believe that for the exact same reasons why i think that Scryb Ranger is too slow in Vintage.

Additionally building the deck around GSZ it means that you are accepting that you need more mana and more turns to develop your full strategy and you are moving towards building a midrange deck.
This is not a bad thing, but it needs to be supported by counters that allow you to get to the mid game ! I would see the GSZ much better fit in a Zenith BANT deck than in GW.

[Guli]

GSZ is a significantly higher mana commitment than Cage.  GSZ also requires you to run several green creatures that may or may not be useful if you draw them naturally (see Thornscape Apprentice).  Perhaps most importantly, GSZ does not answer Yawg Will to any meaningful degree unless you run Loaming Shaman or something.  GSZ for Ooze will not necessarily beat Dredge either, again due to the high mana commitment and the speed of Dredge.  Finally, GSZ only fits in one deck while Cage can fit in literally any deck.

Ooze is good against Y Will. I overlooked that in my initial post. Sure, GSZ needs mana, but you are naturally running noble and should run scryb ranger.

I believe that GSZ is much stronger in Legacy and probably too slow for Vintage.  I believe that for the exact same reasons why i think that Scryb Ranger is too slow in Vintage.

Additionally building the deck around GSZ it means that you are accepting that you need more mana and more turns to develop your full strategy and you are moving towards building a midrange deck.
This is not a bad thing, but it needs to be supported by counters that allow you to get to the mid game ! I would see the GSZ much better fit in a Zenith BANT deck than in GW.

Ranger is extremely powerful in GW beats with some bears that have tap utility or need mana to activate (Thorn, Ooze, Noble). I tested it extensively and wrote about my observations in several threads. You still don't believe me, time to test them out for yourself... You need to understand the role of the card, it is not about speed, it is about control. Besides, it IS an accelerant a lot of times... like euhm Lotus Cobra for example, if left unchecked, you just play out your hand.

Turn 1 Noble pass is not developing your mana base and seting up strong turn 2 and turn 3 plays? What I do is use Thalia, Stony, Aven, Missteps, Wastelands early on to disrupt the opponent. Depending on my hand I sometimes get a Dryad or Noble early on with GSZ but that is usually not how things go. After the initial disruption you get in whatever you think is cutting them off from recovering. That can be Ooze, Thorn, Teeg, Pridemage (Will, Tinker, TV, Jace, Gush, Tendrils...) it depends on what you have what they already played etc... You aren't getting Thorn when you have Aven against a blue deck with Tinker. If their grave looks juicy for a big Will or Snapcaster you get your Ooze. These are the obvious lines, it can be more complex and hard.

GSZ is a great utility card, but it really is awful as a fast answer.  If you have a thalia, noble, or whatever in play and your opponent responds with an oath, you can gsz for thornscape, but it will be too late...tidespout, demon, maniac, hasty bsc/emakrul...you'll be toast first.  A 1 mana answer is an answer with speed, that can be played proactively (or reactively in the case of oath).  It also stops snapcasters, yawgwills, welders, etc.  No WAY you race dredge with GsZ->ooze.  I rarely even win with turn 1 tinker->bsc vs dredge...no way you can get 3 mana, untap, then eat their grave with enough green mana to be relevant.  Yes, you have wastelands and such as well, but if you always have ALL your answers in hand, do you really need GSZ anyway?  And plow/mistep are not answers vs dredge unless you are fighting hate that would kill your cage.
GSZ is not acceptable as an answer to these cases.  On occassion, you may get a lucky situation where the card you fetch can control things, but more often than not you'd wish you had cage instead.

You get pridemage vs Oath. Lot's of them

I don't know how many times you played GW beats verses dredge, but GW can really stall for a while with Thalia and Wastelands in game 1. If you happen to find mana and buy A LITTLE time, that GSZ> Ooze will take the game. You do need some luck, a mox for example and a wasteland to gain a little tempo. Also, if they lose bazaar and don't get a lot dredgers, this can mean you get that small window. I would not dream of beating a broken dredge hand, but who does anyway g1..

I also noticed that GSZ enables me to keep hands I ordinarily could not keep. This is because of GSZ>Dryad or Noble.

And I do think GSZ has more than 1 home. Midrange Bant Zenith is not a beatdown deck and usually runs 1 or 2 GSZ. That being said, GW Ranger beats is not a classical beatdown deck either. I would call it midrange beatdown.

[TheWhiteDragon]

You get pridemage vs Oath. Lot's of them

I don't know how many times you played GW beats verses dredge, but GW can really stall for a while with Thalia and Wastelands in game 1. If you happen to find mana and buy A LITTLE time, that GSZ> Ooze will take the game. You do need some luck, a mox for example and a wasteland to gain a little tempo. Also, if they lose bazaar and don't get a lot dredgers, this can mean you get that small window. I would not dream of beating a broken dredge hand, but who does anyway g1..

I also noticed that GSZ enables me to keep hands I ordinarily could not keep. This is because of GSZ>Dryad or Noble.

And I do think GSZ has more than 1 home. Midrange Bant Zenith is not a beatdown deck and usually runs 1 or 2 GSZ. That being said, GW Ranger beats is not a classical beatdown deck either. I would call it midrange beatdown.

I play GUW mostly, not just GW.  With nobles being run anyway, and trygon being in print, I see no reason not to run U in some part.  Ancestral and Walk are just too good in fish to pass up as well.  My GUW version runs flusterstorms (which CAN win the important counter wars in a single card) and a pair of snapcasters (extra ancestral, walk, plows, flusters - and hurkyls, claims, etc after sb).  Also, Scryb ranger protects my tropicals (I actually credit you with this innovation - kudos), so the splash of U is never a hinderance.

At the moment, I run 1 GSZ.  It adds some versatility, but it clashes with the gaddocks, which I feel in a gush/jace/FoW world is a higher priority.  In any event, I don't feel GSZ is in the same stratosphere as cage.  1 mana to shut down oath/dredge is really nice.  3 mana to get pridemage + 1 to activate is NOT going to be fast enough vs oath.  Likewise, 3 mana + several G to stop dredge will not be fast enough.  I don't know which dredge builds you are facing, but I typically get blown out before my second land drop.  I can see how wastes/thalias are a stall tactic, but I'm not sure if it's enough. 

My build takes a drastically different approach.  I have a single strip and no wastes, with 3 stony silence.  I don't play mana denial because I found that many games I'd open with green or white criters (or GW critters, blue aside) and open with forest/wasteland/wasteland or something equal, forcing more mulligans.  Sometimes a waste was great, killing a bazaar or shop, but then sometimes it was just colorless mana vs basics, fetches, or hands where my opponents had extra lands and the waste activation lost me tempo rather than gained it.  The times it become colorless mana when I was staring at a hand of gaddocks, pridemages, selkies, and plows (or something similar) was just too often for me to be comfortable with.  Mana denial can be good, but many decks now run a ton of 1cc spells, and you depend a bit on luck that they won't have/draw extra mana sources to make your waste worth it...shops and bazaar being the obvious exceptions.  To be fair, i even have 2 wastes in my sb to bring in with the other hate vs dredge/shops.  Overall though, I prefer consistent colored mana to develop my lock through creatures and silences, not through strip effects.

[Guli]

My build takes a drastically different approach.  I have a single strip and no wastes, with 3 stony silence.  I don't play mana denial because I found that many games I'd open with green or white criters (or GW critters, blue aside) and open with forest/wasteland/wasteland or something equal, forcing more mulligans.  Sometimes a waste was great, killing a bazaar or shop, but then sometimes it was just colorless mana vs basics, fetches, or hands where my opponents had extra lands and the waste activation lost me tempo rather than gained it.  The times it become colorless mana when I was staring at a hand of gaddocks, pridemages, selkies, and plows (or something similar) was just too often for me to be comfortable with.  Mana denial can be good, but many decks now run a ton of 1cc spells, and you depend a bit on luck that they won't have/draw extra mana sources to make your waste worth it...shops and bazaar being the obvious exceptions.  To be fair, i even have 2 wastes in my sb to bring in with the other hate vs dredge/shops.  Overall though, I prefer consistent colored mana to develop my lock through creatures and silences, not through strip effects.

hmmmm, questionable, but interesting. Opting to develop a nice smooth mana base at the cost of dropping wasteland disruption. In this kind of builds I would think Vexing Susher could be oké because there is no way to prevent them from easily getting   .

Thalia, Stony and Kataki are powerful mana denial cards and more. Still the strength of these cards increases WITH wasteland presence. Turn 1 noble into turn 2 Wasteland, 2 drop is a powerful line. If you are not going for mana denial, then I don't see Thalia being as good as she could be. Same goes for Kataki.

Also don't forget about lands like Mishra, Library of Alex, Maze of Ith, Tabernacle, Dark Depths, etc...

Frankly, one of the strengths of Ranger and Noble is that you can basically cast everything quickly WHILE you can wasteland them. All this being said, it does intrigue me.

Maybe in such a deck (without wastelands) a couple Choke would be card that could replace wastelands (one big strip effect :p). Ranger can still bounce your own Tropical islands.