Card/Deck Making Gruul do more than stompy, or make stompy Gruul more interesting?

[Grillo_Parlante]

So lets see...



to suppot a steal/sac theme




To support aggro combo. Still not sure instant speed double strike enablers are a good idea. The problem I have with prophetic flamespeaker as a gruul card, is you want to run him in a low CC deck to get value of off his triggers.

Than we have R/G rampy haste where gruul manipulates its spot on the curve. What ties the R/G morph theme together?

In unreleated news, when I looked at the comments for wrecking ogre, I found this:

Editor: You're one of our more...unusual...applicants, Mr. Ogre. And you feel qualified to serve as the paper's architecture critic?

Wrecking Ogre: (straightens glasses) Well, if I may tout my credentials in an overt manner, I have examined schools of design and building methods across a multitude of planes of existence. I'm versed in what you might call "New New International". That's something of a joke we have at the Gruul Academy, heh.

Editor: I see. Let's try a sample of your talents. (shows Wrecking Ogre picture of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao). Tell me what you think of this building.

Wrecking Ogre: Hmmm (strokes chin thoughtfully), the curves are daring, evocative of Gehry's style, but not borrowing too heavily from the past. The atriums are a brilliant contrivance, and the building compliments its surroundings beautifully without getting lost. Truly, a stunning- wait, are those titanium panels?

Editor: Umm, yeah, I believe the Guggenheim has titanium panels.

Wrecking Ogre: ...TITANIUM PANELS GET SMASHED NOW! SMAAAASH! (starts bashing walls with oversized morning star and club) OVERDONE AND CLICHED! OGRE BASH BUILDING INTO RUBBLE! RAAAAARRRGH! (stomps out of building through new hole in wall)

Editor: (sighs) Next applicant.

Actual lol

 

[Lucre]

Man surrak into silverheart sounds like a great time.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Be honest, nobody is gonna play blastminer face down if they can help it.

 

[Lucre]

man losing to a wrecking ogre sounds about as fun as losing to a hasted silverheart.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Ok, so I'm resurrecting this to just throw an idea out there now that I've gotten my eyes open for lower power and more combo oriented decks. The idea is that in an environment where there's a bunch of graveyard enablers already there you could draft a controlly GR build by grinding away at either the board or your opponents life by loaning up lands and, with burning vengeance, get up to 3 lighting bolts from your loams.

 

[Modin]

 

[GenericZero]

I can dig it. What other cards can help flesh out this theme, though? I think the green token flashbacks are a must, but what else do we have?

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I looked into the burning vengeance decks from innistrad and honestly it almost feels like it needs to be UR by necessity, because a huge part of the self mill and flashback comes from blue, but I feel like there could be some bleed with gruul if we want to have a burnin vengeance deck that can go into more directions.


One strong contender for that to be an incidental deck in a cube that supports this could be burning vengeance and worm harvest? This keeps with the theme of discarding and reusing lands for value. In a format with bounce lands getting to 5 mana and having lands over even seems like a thing that could show relatively often. If we have a format where you can get to big mana, maybe borborygmos can help glue it together in the gold section?

 

[Turillazzo]

I actually think the strongest Burning Vengeance role-player is Gravecrawler. Probably the only reason to keep it over Bloodsoaked Champion, too.

 

[ahadabans]

I agree on Burning Vengeance. Very recently, I built a deck with gravecrawler, Haakon and Nameless Inversion. And while that was pretty great once it got online, it was not all that easy to do. Unless you have a ton of graveyard synergies (see the Innistrad Cube list that Grillo posted), I really don't think Burning Vengeance is worth a slot in most cubes. I've since pulled it.

Worm Harvest is another one of those cards that just really doesn't feel like it's worth the payoff. I made a dredge deck and tried to build around Worm Harvest. Even BCS, it was only just OK. Getting 7-8 1/1 tokens is cool. Don't get me wrong. But I had to dredge half my library to get that. And when I can just reanimate a fatty or mill my opponent for much less effort or delve a tombstalker or something. Why am I bothering with a bunch of 1/1 tokens again? I ended up pulling that card too.

I really had high hopes for both cards, but they really are too much work for too little payout unless you are running something pretty low power or a graveyard centric cube where both cards can add incidental value instead of being build arounds. My 2 cents.

 

[blacksmithy]

This probably isn't very far off the classic stompy archetype, but I like to call this particular flavor of it "come and get your love." Also bleeds well into Naya, where you've got

Also also, Exalted and Heroic in general go nicely with this kind of theme.

 

[ahadabans]

For Gruul, I like fires (Surrak, the Hunt Caller is the man) and +1/+1 counters. Both have tested really well for me.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I really had high hopes for both cards, but they really are too much work for too little payout unless you are running something pretty low power or a graveyard centric cube where both cards can add incidental value instead of being build arounds. My 2 cents.

Running it in a low powered format was sort of the entire premise of it, I don't think it's worth bothering with mill strategies in the same format as thragtusk midrange and reanimator.

 

[ahadabans]

I agree on the Thragtusk midrange deck. It's way to efficient for the cube power level we are discussing. But you can run a flavor of "fair" reanimator where your targets are Kamigawa dragons and Necromancy is the cheapest reanimation effect. That flavor of re-animator works in a lower powered environment and it was the one I was referencing.

I'm running a pretty low powered list and based on my recent testing, even when Kukoshu is the best 6 drop in the cube, Worm Harvest is still too bogus to bother with. Burning Vengeance is better, but it was super narrow to the point where not even flashback.dec wanted it. It went in grave crawler/haakon combo deck and nothing else, which was adding another narrow card on top of an already fairly narrow archetype. So at least for me, it wasn't enough value.

The self mill deck I built is very competitive. It runs early enablers and speed bumps while trying to dump as much of your library into your graveyard as possible. Then you have dread return for utility creature sac reanimator, or just power out a delve dude (tombstalker/Tasigur), or Skaab Ruinator (which is a super fun card). This deck was an ideal scenario for Worm Harvest and while it was decent, every play above was more desirable and less narrow (even Skaab Ruinator goes in aether vial decks, pod or aggro decks where you expect to have tons of dudes in the yard by turn 5). Worm harvest goes in selfmill.dec and is option 5 in that list. In my experience anyway.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think with burning vengeance, you want to think of it less of "I want to run burning vengeance" and more of "I want to add a self-mill control deck whose control game is powered by the graveyard." You aren't likely to have the flashback density to support actual burning vengeance (or retrace or whatever other keyword). Thats probably want you want to do with the R/G deck (which is actually an intersting idea, green has a lot of ways to get land in hand, which would power worm harvest). Worm harvest btw was good here, and probably is insane with bouncelands.

You can also just go the value reanimator route if you wish.

The Gruul decks that have been competitive in the pincher deck so far, have revolved around cards like spikeshot elder and champion of lambholt, combining green's enchantments or artifact equipment with red's removal and draw suite.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think...I have it.

R/G Control Ramp



Green value land search weenies ramp, with red X spell based board sweepers, backed up by red card draw? The value land search guys are card advantage neutral if they get wiped out by red's sweepers, feed into a ramp plan (that red needs anways to fuel its sweepers), can chump block, or go on the offensive themselves.

 

[Laz]

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I think it's a pretty cool concept. Like Laz is saying (implying?) it goes pretty well into the land-theme we were talking about earlier? The question is what density of land-fetchers can be run at a regular power level? Does it become too slow? It does seem like a nice angle for the GR midrange decks to get more play and personality.

 

[Eric Chan]

This all really goes well with Wildfire!

 

[RavebornMuse]

I found Molten Vortex to be heartbreakingly underwhelming. It wants to be in a lands deck that doesn't want to play all their lands. I think Firebolt is probably the correct choice most of the time except in a much more durdlier format than mine, unfortunately.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Was that a matter of the card, the format or a lack of resources during the games you played it with? I haven't gotten a chance to play with it but I want to believe there is a fun deck with vortex and loam.

 

[RavebornMuse]

Was that a matter of the card, the format or a lack of resources during the games you played it with? I haven't gotten a chance to play with it but I want to believe there is a fun deck with vortex and loam.

I had a hard time with it because it wants to slot into a lands-heavy deck for value.

Remember, Firebolt does 2 damage for 1 mana, and then 2 more for 5. Vortex does 2 damage for each land, and has an activation cost. So you already need 2 cards (enchant+land) to get the effect of Firebolt, and then 3 to (kinda) outdo it (arguably). This is actually quite a demand, because you need to
1) draw into Vortex
2) draw into at least 2 lands you don't want to play
This leaves aggressive decks in a weird spot. More lands means less chance of drawing real cards, and worse, they're dead in your hand until you draw the Vortex. You could play them, but since you want to pitch them to close out the game/for lots of value, your curve needs to stay tight and you need more lands than you'd normally run to make it work, because you aren't really getting any value until you've pitched at least 2 lands. I tried it in a deck with 18 lands that was a low-curve control build (I also had some x spells and Stensia Bloodhall as well as the cheap removal), and I found I just would rather play lands and flash back Firebolt than durdle around with 4 lands out holding 2 for the inevitable Vortex play. If Vortex' pitch effect was free I might be more forgiving, but having a red activation cost just meant that it was even harder to play in my 2-colour (B/R) deck. It was a mess. I thought it'd be good value, but it just never really happened for me. I'd rather have less lands and a Firebolt if I'm wanting to win off a burn.

I'm sure someone with more patience for stats could run the math, but it's just a paradox outside of constructed; it wants more lands to be worth the slot, but less so you can use it in an aggressive build. I dunno man, I'd rather just leave the Loam jank to Titania + Fetches. This Vortex dream seems really "cute" to me. As I've said before, my format is pretty well-paced, but there's room to durdle here and there. I just don't think this is worth trying to durdle for.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

That is interesting, because I see it as a very go-big deck kind of card. Low-curve decks doesn't sound like those who would want to win through attrition? I can understand that it takes possibly too much work too get it above firebolt level, but maybe it slots better in a GR ramp deck than a RB aggro deck?

 

[RavebornMuse]

That is interesting, because I see it as a very go-big deck kind of card. Low-curve decks doesn't sound like those who would want to win through attrition? I can understand that it takes possibly too much work too get it above firebolt level, but maybe it slots better in a GR ramp deck than a RB aggro deck?

RB *control, hence my surprise! I mean the deck was all about trading spot removal and board wipes to grind my opponent out and then stick some tough closers, so I could afford all the land as either x-spell fodder or to hold to close out the turn I dropped Vortex. It felt like the best iteration of the possibility of Vortex outside of GR and then the MVP of that deck turned out to be Stensia Bloodhall as a total twist shocker ending.

You're right that it might do better in a GR ramp deck, I wouldn't disagree with that. But, on that note: doesn't everything do better with ramp shenanigans? Personally I feel like I'd rather stick to Titania G/W loam shenanigans with some G/R LD tie-in for cross-pollination, but maybe it could work. I just don't know if it's worth it. I'm big on janky plays (see: Mesmeric Orb), and even I don't see the appeal of using 4 mana to turn Cultivate into Rampant Growth + Shock, it's pretty niche. There's already so many decks in my cube that want to toy with Loam that I dunno if it needs pushed any more, either. If you brew something functional I'd love to see it, but I'm pessimistic.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I don't think we need to get too fancy, and the upcoming set might have a lot of toys to flesh things out more.

At this point, it would be a deck whose foundation is 2-3cc value creatures, which enable and are enabled by red damage based sweepers, and also which enable high CC finishers. I think the tools exist right now to at least provide a functioning shell at a variety of power levels*. That being said, there is some neat overlap with the lands themes we were brainstorming earlier.

*reflected below

The foundation cards would be these:




The math behind these cards is that they are essentially cantrip value creatures. Since they have already earned a card, any trade is card advantage, and if a sweeper kills them or they chump block, they don't represent card disadvantage.

You can trade them in chump blocks to buy time, or gum up the board, which creates an incentive for an opponent to play cards into a sweeper. Red has some good sweepers, but they tend to either be damage capped, or require an X payment. Using these creatures as small value dorks, gives the player tools to generate an advantage that plays into a mana intensive control package.

Their are other advantages too, for example you don't have the mana dork problem of them being wiped away and it being a disaster for the deck. Unlike spell based ramp, they are not a terrible topdeck, and they don't provide the same degree of ramp and color fixing that cards like kodama's reach allow. They also have potential in other decks too, as disposable value creatures.




The interaction with blashemous act seems especially cute.

Then how about some high impact ramp targets that either help control the board/act as finishers.





Even the red draw spells, synergize well with the value land search dorks




And than if you wanted to toss in the basic landfall package of titania and sylvan safekeeper, thats easy to do, and works well with stuff like knight of the reliquary.