Isn't Hammer of Purphoros just the better fires?
Card/Deck Making Gruul do more than stompy, or make stompy Gruul more interesting?
- Thread starter Rasmus Källqvist
- Start date
Probably. I don't know how often the +2/+2 eot comes up but it feels like hammer does the job good enough and leaves a multicolor slot open
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
1CC is harder to achieve than 1CD though, unless you're playing monocolor, so there's that. Hammer has incidental cross-synergies with Golem tribal though! 
And is cute with life from the loam My point was that, is it worth running as a straight gruul card? Hammer can go in like, WR midrange as well.
My point was that, is it worth running as a straight gruul card? Hammer can go in like, WR midrange as well.
Hm, what other gruul cards would you rum before running this though? I guess it's fine and probably powerful, I just find it really uninteresting. It gives fatties haste and can threaten to blow up the proportions of an alpha strike?
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I like hammer as well: late game mana sinks are nice.
The multi-color cards seem to push towards strategies revolving around midrange creatures and:
Tier A
1. Haste
2. Ramp
3. Wide Aggro/Overrun
Tier B
4. Control
5. Grindy Cards
The control elements are very light, but would work in a low power environment I bet. Their is also some light overlap with lands, with cards like stormbind (that can also control the board a bit), though that card was designed more to give creature decks inevitability.
So I kind of imagine:
1. A deck that floods the board with small mana rampers/threats and than uses overrun effects to end the game.
2. A deck that ramps out large threats and than makes sure they connect via haste effects. Varies somewhere between feeling like a creature focused burn deck or an aggro-combo deck.
3. At lower power, a grindy control/midrange deck using cards like stormbind and savage twister to control the board. Maybe skew towards lands with life from the loam and seismic assault. Maybe run some other graveyard interactions as well (cycling seems good).
4. A solid midrange value deck, that takes elements from the above.
The multi-color cards seem to push towards strategies revolving around midrange creatures and:
Tier A
1. Haste
2. Ramp
3. Wide Aggro/Overrun
Tier B
4. Control
5. Grindy Cards
The control elements are very light, but would work in a low power environment I bet. Their is also some light overlap with lands, with cards like stormbind (that can also control the board a bit), though that card was designed more to give creature decks inevitability.
So I kind of imagine:
1. A deck that floods the board with small mana rampers/threats and than uses overrun effects to end the game.
2. A deck that ramps out large threats and than makes sure they connect via haste effects. Varies somewhere between feeling like a creature focused burn deck or an aggro-combo deck.
3. At lower power, a grindy control/midrange deck using cards like stormbind and savage twister to control the board. Maybe skew towards lands with life from the loam and seismic assault. Maybe run some other graveyard interactions as well (cycling seems good).
4. A solid midrange value deck, that takes elements from the above.
Im not sure that building a 2 colour theme based on the (usually) 3 or 4 gold cards is the way to go. Feels a bit disproportionate. I know they help build signals but...
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I agree. Its just a thought exercise to provide some direction on where WOTC has been pushing the color pair. When you are actually building that part of your cube, you won't want a disproportionately large gruul section to carry the color combination.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I never had any luck with fires, back then or now. Maybe my enviornment is wrong for it, but I feel like that card was better when creatures were worse, and saproling burst/blastoderm were ligitimatly good creatures.
Lightning mauler seems like a better fires than fires ever was
Lightning mauler seems like a better fires than fires ever was
Haste and wide aggro crossover!
7 pages to this thread and still feel as miserable as ever re gruul.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Yeah, its looking pretty grim. Sadly, a lot of color pairing flavor comes from the ravinca sets, and gruul was always the big dumb guild that hated artifacts.
Do any gruul cards really jump out to anyone as something they want to play? I just love bloodrush, and am content with ghor-clan rampager and zhur-taa swine. That and huntmaster of the fells really make me want to play the color pair.
Do any gruul cards really jump out to anyone as something they want to play? I just love bloodrush, and am content with ghor-clan rampager and zhur-taa swine. That and huntmaster of the fells really make me want to play the color pair.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I would add Stormbind and Raging Ravine to that list of cards. Firespout is also really good. Oh, and Bloodbraid Elf of course.
Yeah, I think the crux of the problem with this colour pair is that the best Gruul gold cards fall into either of the two categories of a) Sweet Zoo Cards, or b) Sweet Generic Midrange Cards.
These are great, to be sure, but having them be the strongest gold cards makes it harder to support some of the themes we're discussing in this thread, which go off the beaten path of "fast hasty aggro" and "value midrange creatures". RG lacks good build-arounds for other archetypes; those cards tend to be mono-red and mono-green, which in turn makes it harder as a cube designer to show your drafters that a particular archetype is being pushed in Gruul.
These are great, to be sure, but having them be the strongest gold cards makes it harder to support some of the themes we're discussing in this thread, which go off the beaten path of "fast hasty aggro" and "value midrange creatures". RG lacks good build-arounds for other archetypes; those cards tend to be mono-red and mono-green, which in turn makes it harder as a cube designer to show your drafters that a particular archetype is being pushed in Gruul.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Oh oh oh! This one is also totally sweet!
Edit: And this one is secretly really good at pushing damage through (and saving a creature the first time, and forcing bad blocks while it's in the yard).
Edit: And this one is secretly really good at pushing damage through (and saving a creature the first time, and forcing bad blocks while it's in the yard).
Maybe by the end of it all really it's just wizards that are really really uncreative with gruul to begin with? Like it's this well defined thing and it never deviates
The way I see it, is that GR is the chunky aggressive creatures (Monsters) and probably always will be. If you don't like it, it will be difficult to do it differently, because they will be designed to be big aggressive dudes.
I personally like it, and of course the colours work very well when building towards a Wildfire deck.
I personally like it, and of course the colours work very well when building towards a Wildfire deck.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Don't give up yet, there is the chance that mega-ferocious, or whatever its called, saves the day.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Well, as long as they put it on things like Coalition Relic Elf, I'm not complaining.
mega-ferocious and morphidable, it's just perfect.
So I went back to the first page, and I think we discounted a few things there too early. Rasmus and Alfonso had some excellent starting posts.
I think a reasonable approach to Gruul could be your variety of:
40% Potatoes & Steak / One Two Punch Knock Out
Novice / lazier drafters know the tried and true approach is still available to them.
20% Ion-Grafted Counters
plus incidentally (just pulling from my current cube)
20% Landfall
Plus aforementioned Vinelasher Kudzu and various ramps spells. This section could use a couple more red cards.
20% Tasteful Storm / Spells & Tokens Matter
There is a ton of strategic overlap here from which you can pick and choose. In particular, double strike, empty the warrens, volt charge, ion storm, and harrow are fun build-arounds that fit in rather nicely and make Gruul somewhat interesting.
I think a reasonable approach to Gruul could be your variety of:
40% Potatoes & Steak / One Two Punch Knock Out
Novice / lazier drafters know the tried and true approach is still available to them.
20% Ion-Grafted Counters
plus incidentally (just pulling from my current cube)
20% Landfall
Plus aforementioned Vinelasher Kudzu and various ramps spells. This section could use a couple more red cards.
20% Tasteful Storm / Spells & Tokens Matter
There is a ton of strategic overlap here from which you can pick and choose. In particular, double strike, empty the warrens, volt charge, ion storm, and harrow are fun build-arounds that fit in rather nicely and make Gruul somewhat interesting.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Even here though, gruul breaks your heart. The zoo and big zoo cards are fine but than you get:
1. R/G ion storm, a deck whose strategic plan is to build up an early powerful aggro presence, and than whittles it away to cast overpriced shocks.
2. Landfall, a deck that is better in G/W, due to the existance of knight of the reliquary, steppe lynx, and only a mediocre red card as a gruul incentive.
3. Spells/tokens/storm: decks that are all grossly better in other color combinations.
1. R/G ion storm, a deck whose strategic plan is to build up an early powerful aggro presence, and than whittles it away to cast overpriced shocks.
2. Landfall, a deck that is better in G/W, due to the existance of knight of the reliquary, steppe lynx, and only a mediocre red card as a gruul incentive.
3. Spells/tokens/storm: decks that are all grossly better in other color combinations.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
So...after watching Fires beat jund, (did not think that was ever going to happen), it made me think maybe we are missing something about this fires deck. The idea behind it is to run ramp + fires + creatures that are decent on their own, but substantially better with fires (e.g blastoderm becomes 20 damage). Have we been missing that latter component?
Creature power creep has been so steady, that I would imagine most of us just run straight value guys (thragtusk I am looking at you) that don't really benefit substantially from effects like fires of yavimaya.
Creature power creep has been so steady, that I would imagine most of us just run straight value guys (thragtusk I am looking at you) that don't really benefit substantially from effects like fires of yavimaya.