General Fight Club

[Grillo_Parlante]

The main appeal of fertile ground is that you don't need a forest for it, which can be a big deal if you aren't running shocks, or abu lands. It can be played with less of a forest commitment, and comes out more consistently as a result.

It will be interesting to see how the strenghs of sprawl compare with those of fertile ground, however. I feel better about the switch after reading your guys reaponses.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, that's a good point - I was making the assumption that everyone here is on the same boat with double fetches, along with shocks and duals, but you're right that Sprawl gets a lot worse with any other manabase.

 

[safra]

Speaking of two-mana ramp dudes, though:

 

[ahadabans]

Sakura is still solid. I didn't like rattleclaw but I've really soured on morph so ymmv.

 

[RavebornMuse]

Caryatid all day every day
I'd rather run Lotus Cobra or Gyre Sage as a potentially-aggressive option instead of Rattleclaw, and I despise Sakura-Tribe.

 

[Aoret]

Lotus Cobra 4 prez

 

[Suicufnoc]

Lotus Cobra WootWoot.
I'm not running it right now for some reason?

 

[Eric Chan]

For creature-based two-drop ramp options, I maintain that this guy is still The Best

 

[Aoret]

I feel like people like WoR because it's tricky and because nostalgia. Speaking as a scrub who started playing magic approximately two seconds ago, I find the design clunky (do I use dice to count down from five or up to five? is there a consensus?) and I dislike the degree to which the card stymies aggro.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, it's certainly not the most elegantly designed card, between the non-standard counters and the fact that you have to remember if you've used it. The real reason I like it, though, over similar cards like Sylvan Caryatid and Overgrown Battlement, is that you can cast spells and block, in addition to it having 'haste'. I would say it stymies aggro less than something like Wall of Omens or Augur of Bolas, as it still costs you a card, and can never kill an attacker. With the lack of removal available in the colour, sometimes you need to throw green a bone so that midrange and control decks can stand a fighting chance!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The most important question about wall of roots is how you win between turns with it.

 

[ahadabans]

Wall of Roots is great. It ramps and blocks. You don't have to choose.

 

[Aoret]

Hmmm I see your point there Eric. I dislike both of the other cards you mentioned as well, so maybe I'm just coming at this from a different angle than some of you guys. Green midrange doesn't really seem to struggle in my playgroup. I don't see much green control, but that's more of an intentional decision; I used to run mostly sorcery ramp until somebody here wrote a few pretty convincing paragraphs about creature based ramp being more fun and interactive.

I actually really do like non-creature ramp and sweepers in green control, but as mentioned I was swayed by some arguments against using it. I don't really like the middle ground of creature based ramp that shits on aggro by itself, particularly stuff like Sylvan Caryatid that also has frigging hexproof. As an aggro player, I'd rather play against the guy packing sweepers and rampant growths than the guy packing Caryatids, because at least I can make decisions about how much to commit to the board.

I don't actually have a good reason in my head for why I'm okay with a card like Wall of Omens but not Wall of Roots. Design elegance is probably part of it, but I think I'm applying a bit of color pie -ism in my opinion there. To those of you guys who dislike non-creature ramp but do favor assorted walls ramp, I'd be very interested to hear your rationale. It's possible this is just a difference in playgroups/preferences, but I'm really curious about whether I'm missing something.

edit:

Wall of Roots is great. It ramps and blocks. You don't have to choose.

To me this reads as a "this card is higher power level, ergo better!" argument. Do we not rail against that here? And do we not also tout decision density and tension as being things that deepen games? I'm kinda going HAM here with my wall of roots hate... I'm not trying to say you guys are idiots for liking it, but I don't usually disagree with much of what is said on these forums so I guess I may as well play devil's advocate for once, given that I do feel strongly about the card.

 

[ahadabans]

I may be in the minority, but I think wall of roots is elegant. Maybe the -0/-1 isn't (just use -1/-1 counters - doesn't actually matter), but the idea that it gets smaller as you use it IMO works very well mechanically. And again, it both blocks and ramps. Aggro has options against it though, they can use a burn spell (and it's not even a 2 for 1). Or they can ignore it and let it reduce their early damage output (knowing it will essentially kill itself later in the game).

I'm not sure what more you could ask for from a card like this. Sylvan Caryatid is more of a damage output check since it has hexproof. Which is fine, but honestly it's a useless blocker against everything except hard aggro. It's really just a ramp creature that your opponent can't easily get rid of. But there are more reliable options for that (like Sakura or just farseek type cards). I've never even been tempted to run Sylvan Caryatid honestly. I don't think it brings anything interesting to the table.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Here is my take on rampers from over the course of three cubes trying to balance midrange archetypes:

1. Spell Based Ramp: Completly non-interactive in cube due to a lack of counters, discard, and land destruction. Despite being a terrible top deck, the ability to essentially cast a non-disruptable ramp piece and color fixer was enough of an incentive for people to just hemorrhage tempo in the early game and let ETBs and planeswalkers recoup what they had lost in the midgame. I found them to be pretty boring as they don't have any metagame relationship with any other part of the cube, making them purely part of the good stuff ladder.

2. Enchantment Based Ramp: I like these quite a bit better, as they at least interact with enchantment themes and untappers. There is also some decision making that goes into which land you enchant, which humorously results in occastional misplays. These also are disruptable by a wider range of spells, making any enchantment removal better, as well as bounce that can hit lands. Thumbs up so far.

3. Elves: I found these to be pretty bad in cube (for the most part: noble hierarch is excellent) as they were far too disruptable. A ramp deck without its rampers isn't very impressive. Thumbs down.

4. High Defense Rampers: Don't really like these at all for the reasons skrap mentioned. If i'm going to run them, there must be some sort of interesting relationship within the cube: defender matters, or chord of calling with wall of roots. I'm not sure if these are worse for aggro or if wall of blossoms is, but they are both pretty bad, just in different ways. Caryadid's hexproof looks miserable, but at least its just a three toughness blocker for aggro, and the hexproof does help address fragility issues. The 4-5 toughness on wall of roots and overgrown battlement is much rougher.

5. Aggressive Stat. Rampers: Can't really comment here because my green sections were never that aggressive. Lotus cobra was basically just another elf, and he never made it into any of my lower power environments. Don't really like the morph on rattleclaw in cube.

6. Untappers. My favorite right now, but they only have a home in a bouncelands format i.m.o.

Of those choices I probably would have gone sakura-tribe elder because its a cheap creature that fogs for a turn and adds a body to the yard. I find that those sorts of incidental ways to add creatures to the yard (ambush viper is another great one) are really helpful for green based decks running some number of cards that care about the graveyard.

 

[ahadabans]

To me this reads as a "this card is higher power level, ergo better!" argument. Do we not rail against that here? And do we not also tout decision density and tension as being things that deepen games? I'm kinda going HAM here with my wall of roots hate... I'm not trying to say you guys are idiots for liking it, but I don't usually disagree with much of what is said on these forums so I guess I may as well play devil's advocate for once, given that I do feel strongly about the card.

I'm a huge advocate of running lower power meta's. In fact, my cube is probably lower powered than most cubes on Riptide. Wall of Roots is not overpowered. IMO, it's goldilocks. If you are making a ramp deck, it does just enough. It doesn't roll over to aggro but it also doesn't shut aggro out. It's exactly what I want for that type of deck. Maybe I like Wall of Roots more than I should, but to me me it's the number one 2 mana green ramp creature and I'd cut everything else before I removed it.

Here is my take on rampers from over the course of three cubes trying to balance midrange archetypes:
3. Elves: I found these to be pretty bad in cube (for the most part: noble hierarch is excellent) as they were far too disruptable. A ramp deck without its rampers isn't very impressive. Thumbs down.

Wow. Really? To me, this is the best category by far.

Birds of Paradise is still one of the best (if not THE best) move you can make as a green mage on T1. Either they can answer it or you have tons of options on T2. Llanowar Elves and company is a very fine alternative because having 3 mana on T2 is so much more impactful than 4 mana on T3 IMO. There's a bigger gap between 3 drops and 2 drops than there is between 4 drops and 3 drops. Again, IMO.

And if my opponent uses a precious removal spell to kill my 1 mana elf? OK. My deck sucks if that loses me the game. I can't think of a deck I have built in the last year where I'm not happy to see my opponent using their removal on my one drops. Sure, I'd rather they have no removal at all, but if they are going to be packing I hope they use it on my cheapest assets.

 

[Aoret]

I fall somewhere in between the Grillo and ahadabans camps on birds/elves. On the one hand, I agree they're incredibly disruptable. On the other, that disruption is interaction so I kinda feel like it's a good thing, and I do like playing with them. In particular I dig Hierarch and Deathrite Shaman (although the latter is a bit more than just a ramp guy).

I'm kinda interested in buffing enchantment synergies and green ramp/sweeper control with enchantment ramp instead of some of my mana dorks, mostly for the reasons Grillo listed. No way I'm giving up my deathrites though. My only problem with them is that if you include too many in your 360, you start seeing a lot of nongreen black decks taking them, which feels kinda wrong to me.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

One thing that I left out of my analysis was that one of the reasons I disliked the elves, was that there was a density issue with them. Because so many of them are bad top decks, I wanted to have a mass of them in the draft to facilitate those t1->t2 plays where you ramp into a 3 drop.

This meant that my green 1-2 drop sections became warped away from aggressive strategies, and had a lot of these purely ramp mana dorks in them, which I feel was bad for those cubes overall. In the first (power max) cube, I was also running them alongside the spell rampers, and a lot of dudes were of the opinion that it was better to just cast the more consistent kodama's reach for their mana needs than cast llanowar elves, which can than just be bolted. Don't know if thats right or not, but thats what they were doing, and it resulted in the elves being overshadowed in that environment.

In general it isn't a play mistake to use a removal spell on a mana dork. Especially when you are running pyroclasm effects or forked bolts like I tend to do, because I like to have some token strategies in my cubes. Those spells become much better when there is another entire decktype they wreak, and blowing up mana dorks so the green deck can only sequence out one spell a turn is a beating.

If I had been more on the ball back then, I would have just been more selective with the elves I ran, picking only those that have some lategame utility as well as early game utility: noble hierarch, birds of paradise, deathrite shaman etc. Or maybe I would have been better off going with mana dorks that had more aggressive applications like lotus cobra: you can run that dude in a ramp deck, or you can put it in the sort of tempo-ramp decks I enjoy.

There are a few catagories I forgot to mention last night.

I left out eldrazi spawn:




The ramp method I wanted to like but always punished me with board stalls, because those green midrange players always wanted to durdle. Still, a lot of interesting relationships for decks even beyond ramp, with stuff like: lumberknot, goblin bushwhacker etc.


I also left out my favorite form of ramp. Familiars!



Because why should only green have all of the ramp fun?

 

[ahadabans]

Let me clarify as well because I agree with you Grillo... it is almost always the right play to kill a T1 mana elf (especially a BoP). But it's also a "damned if you do damned if you don't (though more damned if you don't) situation. And that's why a T1 BoP is so great. If you kill it, I've forced you to use a valuable removal spell to deal with a one drop. If you don't, that plays into my deck's strengths and put you in a bad board position. There is no good option to that play which is the very foundation to the classic Gx ramp deck (IMO anyway).

With a slightly higher density of removal (and your typical cube power level), I find the familiars are lackluster personally. I tried Nightscape Familiar on numerous occasions and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV and cut both. I was always a big fan of the arbiter too (from Ravnica block) - and you'll find posts of me defending it - but in cube he was never the same guy I remembered and I've since changed my tune on him. Herald of the Pantheon however has been very good so far in Enchantress and I think that's because this is a very pushed familiar (being a bear WCS and gaining life plus "ramping" as BCS in a deck I'm specifically trying to push).

Of the Eldrazi spawn, I ran only Nest Invader and that has since been removed in the token support purge. As my environment is heavy midrange, I found over supporting tokens did bad things to my meta. Tokens, in my experience, require either specific removal that hurts other decks more than tokens - i.e. sweepers and/or 2 for 1's - or it requires a higher removal density than I want to run. It's a strategy that has to be balanced by a strong aggro presence which I do not have, so others may not have the same issue.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, I think birds of paradise is fine to run: the evasion is nice with late game counter makers like gavony township etc. Its more running a bunch of llanowar elves clones that was a misstep on my part i.m.o. I really should have been more selective, but live and learn.

I also think we have a few interrelated but distinct concepts at work: spell velocity vs. ramp. Familiars can ramp, but they are more about facilitating spell velocity. Elves can facilitate spell velocity, but they are better at ramping. Kodama's reach does both.

I like more tempo focused formats, and a lot of times green players will want to design a deck where the payoff is being able to sequence out two copies of a normally clunky spell in a turn: say two three drops or a three and a four in a turn: in addition to having the benefits of ramping out an early threat. Blowing up a mana dork is big game because it puts them in a position where they may be stuck awkwardly running out one spell a turn, while under pressure. They might have all of the tools to win, but find themselves unable to deploy them at a fast enough rate. As a result, I tend not to hesistate too much about killing turn 1 mana dorks.

We actually have two distinct types of UG decks here that reflect this: one focused more on gushing out mana to facilitate a barrage of spells in a turn, and the other focused more on using mana bursts to ramp out large powerful threats. I had never really realized the distinction before, but its interesting.

 

[Modin]

Thanks for the replies, I've got another one:
vs
vs
vs

(It's about dudes that can attack through walls, also it's for a fantasy set so Boggart Brute being a bit boring isn't a problem)

 

[RavebornMuse]

Skarrgan, Stormblood, and Acolyte. I like how aggressive Skarrgan is and the typings are likely a lot more relevant. I ran two Stormbloods for a while (may go back) and I think he's the bee's knees. Aspirant may be easier to turn on but Stormblood's evasion is more often relevant, at least in my environ; War-Name tends to trade like any other x/2, whereas Stormblood may eat 2-3 dudes and scales more excitingly with a +1/+1 counter theme. Acolyte is obscenely good here (that 2 damage pre-combat strike is super crazy relevant soooo often), though I could see running both, if you wanted.

 

[blacksmithy]

This isn't a fair fight imo but i just wanted to post these cards next to each other:

I hate gurmag angler so much you guys. If anyone is running it instead of tasigur because tasi is too good or whatever, please take gurmag angler out of your cube and replace it with muckdraggers. You will thank me later i promise.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Gurmag Angler is much better than muckdraggers and its not even close.

Nerd anger flaring wildly out of control.

Not really, but neither should you take angler out of your cube in favor of muckdraggers.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I gotta say, it's kind of crazy how much people play Tombstalker with a reduction and no flying. Considering Tombstalker was getting precisely 0 play.