It’s definitely disproportionately underrepresented in drafts. Of course it always comes down to my own dissatisfaction with how unresolved the pairing is. The lands stuff deck and oath deck are great. It’s figuring out the two other archetypes that operate on different axes from the other guilds in a graveyard cube. You’re right that it’s against the grain in that context, and I feel like there is just a lot of untapped potential in the guild that’s waiting to be unlocked. I want it to be a breath of fresh air when so many other guilds are just recycling the graveyard ad infinitum. It just needs to be intuitive and considered.
Card/Deck The Selesnya Conclave (GW)
- Thread starter ravnic
- Start date
It’s definitely disproportionately underrepresented in drafts. Of course it always comes down to my own dissatisfaction with how unresolved the pairing is. The lands stuff deck and oath deck are great. It’s figuring out the two other archetypes that operate on different axes from the other guilds in a graveyard cube. You’re right that it’s against the grain in that context, and I feel like there is just a lot of untapped potential in the guild that’s waiting to be unlocked. I want it to be a breath of fresh air when so many other guilds are just recycling the graveyard ad infinitum. It just needs to be intuitive and considered.
Could it be a token GY theme?
These are essentially flashback tokens. Pretty simple but they each have their specificity making it less boring than normal tokens. Maybe Lingering Souls and Dread Summons for an abzan splash.
Here we have tokens that care about what is in your GY. Different direction and might not be as universally good.
The Selesnya payoff card I like is Glare of Subdual for tokens as really good disruption (offensive and defensive).
Another theme I really like is just creature combos inside WG. This guild has so many:
, , , , , , , ,
Add a sac outlet and you have a ton of 3 card combos with most of these. Plus they are good cards by themselves that also have synergy with a ton of other cards. You can give it more or less consistency with (or without) Birthing Pod, Evolutionary Leap, Militia Bugler, Green Sun's Zenith, Chord of Calling, Recruiter of the Guard, Congregation at Dawn, Eladamri's Call.
I realize that none of these are exactly what you are looking for: a card that signals a certain archetype, but I just feel that WG doesn't have many/any. But as Sigh said, I find it doesn't really need any!
These are essentially flashback tokens. Pretty simple but they each have their specificity making it less boring than normal tokens. Maybe Lingering Souls and Dread Summons for an abzan splash.
Here we have tokens that care about what is in your GY. Different direction and might not be as universally good.
The Selesnya payoff card I like is Glare of Subdual for tokens as really good disruption (offensive and defensive).
Another theme I really like is just creature combos inside WG. This guild has so many:
, , , , , , , , Add a sac outlet and you have a ton of 3 card combos with most of these. Plus they are good cards by themselves that also have synergy with a ton of other cards. You can give it more or less consistency with (or without) Birthing Pod, Evolutionary Leap, Militia Bugler, Green Sun's Zenith, Chord of Calling, Recruiter of the Guard, Congregation at Dawn, Eladamri's Call.
I realize that none of these are exactly what you are looking for: a card that signals a certain archetype, but I just feel that WG doesn't have many/any. But as Sigh said, I find it doesn't really need any!
Dom Harvey
Contributor
These three threads give some answers to the last question
Archetypes I like in WG:
+1/+1 Counters: Green is always the core for this deck but white is the best supporting colour as it offers the best mass pump in Mikaeus, the Lunarch and Gavony Township as well as all of the Ajanis, Citadel Siege, Grateful Apparition, and some narrow but busted support cards in Together Forever and Look at Me, I'm R&D (hard to overstate how good this is in this deck). One of my favourite decks in any colour pair but for your purposes it's hard to tie this into the graveyard
Reanimation: White has strong but specific reanimator cards in Loyal Retainers, Renegade Rallier, Sevinne's Reclamation, Teshar, Replenish, Reveillark/Vesperlark, as well as general but more expensive effects like Karmic Guide/Miraculous Recovery. White is awful at filling the graveyard (and most other things!) but green is pretty good at it
Creature shuffling/combo: Green has a lot of Gather the Pack/Grapple with the Past/Winding Way effects that are staples for a graveyard Cube/package as they let you find specific cards while also giving the incidental benefits that you gain in that context from filling the graveyard. White is a good colour to pair with these as it offers important effects stapled to creatures like sweepers (False Prophet/Realm-Cloaked Giant) and reanimation (see above)
Some decks from my Cube that may give food for thought:
WGb Replenish Reclamation from CubeTutor.com
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WG GPG from CubeTutor.com
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WGr Weird Lands from CubeTutor.com
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Did a remote draft over the weekend. Going in, I remembered this thread and Selesyna without a splash has historically been a rare color-combination for us. I gave it a go and ended up having a great time. I think like Sigh said, there's enough cool stuff in Selesnya to have a spread of basic pieces in place and let it come together however.
GW
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The game plan was to bounce and replay creatures to recycle ETBs. It felt especially intricate when there was way to generate bursts of mana, ala Oracle of Mul Daya, Devoted Druid, and Earthcraft. In those games I was playing and replaying several creatures a turn - the velocity was super high. Since the deck was board-based, all my matches were interactive too. Had a fun one where I blinked Palace Jailer over and over to remove the opponents board, but they had Sac Outlet + Phyrexian Metamorph + Phyrexian Reclamation to copy Jailer, become the monarch and get everything back every turn. I wish there was a version of blue spell-based combo that built up resources out on the board in this way (instead of in hand) so that more interaction could happen out in the open beyond duress and taxes.
Also had some fun post-board games against mono-red where I sided in:
and bounced Kitchen Finks over and over to survive their Gauntlet of Might fireball + tokens.
Just here to dump some thoughts so I can organize them.
So I thinking about a different take on white, I realized that white has a lot of combos who's pieces are actually perfectly viable on their own. Moreover, green complements white really well with additional pieces and versatile tutors.
A few remarks:
1. This is a high powered archetype. The combos are infinite and end the game on the spot for most of them.
2. Interaction is key to keep the combos in check. Spot removal, cheap discard and counters as well as graveyard hate are all efficient in doing so.
3. This is for groups with experienced players. The rules aren't obvious, you have to stack your triggers and build your deck in such a way as to maximize the combo, yet have a plan B.
The goal here is for the combo pieces to be non-poisonous and support different themes. For this thought experiment I want white to be part of every combo, so I am not including some obvious cards (like Melira, Sylvok Outcast).
In addition to the combos, we have some very good tutors in both white and green. These guys can make your combos more or less viable depending on how many you choose to include.
Resiliency
What happens when people interact with you? You try again!
, , , , ,
These cards allow you to bounce back after disruption and tie nicely into a GY theme or a Pod deck.
Cross pollination
So one of the premises of this post was that the cards are supposed to be versatile. I really think this is the strength of this archetype as these pieces fit just as well in combo decks as grindy ones. Here are the theme intersections.
Sacrifice: Birthing Pod, Fiend Artisan, Luminous Broodmoth, the Persist guys.
Black and red are generally seen as the sacrifice decks, but here these guys provide a bunch of value allowing you to double up on sacrifice outlets and death triggers.
The other big upside in my eyes is that the Persist guys are hybrid or colorless, Fiend Artisan is also hybrid and Pod can be played almost as a colorless card (or with a very light green splash). This means you can end up in a lot of color combinations making it a solid Tetra archetype.
I want to note that your sacrifice outlets are key to making the deck work. White and green don't have any worth noting (free and repeatable), but black and red do. So you can force the deck to be 2+ colors by omitting colorless sacrifice outlets.
Carrion Feeder is amazing at bridging different themes, as is Woe Strider. Goblin Bombardment is also solid in go wide decks and Falkenrath Aristocrat is a fine beater by itself.
Black also contributes to the persist side of things if you want to open the archetype completely to another color with Murderous Redcap, Putrid Goblin and Puppeteer Clique.
+1/+1 counters: Anafenza, Kin-Tree SpiritGood-Fortune Unicorn, Archangel of Thune and Metallic Mimic are great enablers, while the Persist guys, Triskelion, Walking Ballista and Spike Feeder are great payoffs (ok the Spike dude being great is a stretch, but I mentioned grindy decks and he fits the theme! He can also do some nice things with Hardened Scales).
TrainmasterGT posted a great thread about green, +1/+1 counters and artifacts and Dom Harvey posted a sweet one on +1/+1 counters in general.
If you want more redundancy in your combos, Rhythm of the Wild is good in RG decks (combo or not) and can set up a small +1/+1 subtheme in red (see here for ideas).
Life gain: Archangel of Thune and Heliod, Sun-Crowned are good enough on their own that they can spawn a subtheme for life gain. Some payoffs like Bolas's Citadel are fun and also play well with the sacrifice theme above. The Blood Artist type cards trigger them many times and once again go with sacrifice.
If you are still here thanks for reading my ramblings. As I mentioned, this was an attempt to sort things out for myself, hopefully it helped you too!
So I thinking about a different take on white, I realized that white has a lot of combos who's pieces are actually perfectly viable on their own. Moreover, green complements white really well with additional pieces and versatile tutors.
A few remarks:
1. This is a high powered archetype. The combos are infinite and end the game on the spot for most of them.
2. Interaction is key to keep the combos in check. Spot removal, cheap discard and counters as well as graveyard hate are all efficient in doing so.
3. This is for groups with experienced players. The rules aren't obvious, you have to stack your triggers and build your deck in such a way as to maximize the combo, yet have a plan B.
The goal here is for the combo pieces to be non-poisonous and support different themes. For this thought experiment I want white to be part of every combo, so I am not including some obvious cards (like Melira, Sylvok Outcast).
Persist combo (+sac outlet)
Archangel of Thune combo (+sac outlet)
Heliod combo
Saffi Eriksdotter combo (+sac outlet)
Lark combo (+sac outlet)
Devoted Druid combo
I'm less keen on the last 2 combos because they are too narrow (Vizier is purely a combo card) or one of the pieces is mediocre (Karmic Guide is slow, fragile and expensive for a higher power cube).
That being said, the Vizier is a nice sign post for the archetype if your players know what to look for and for all my Karmic Guide bashing, it is still a sweet and fun card. So maybe there is merit to playing them too.
Archangel of Thune combo (+sac outlet)
Heliod combo
Saffi Eriksdotter combo (+sac outlet)
Lark combo (+sac outlet)
Devoted Druid combo
I'm less keen on the last 2 combos because they are too narrow (Vizier is purely a combo card) or one of the pieces is mediocre (Karmic Guide is slow, fragile and expensive for a higher power cube).
That being said, the Vizier is a nice sign post for the archetype if your players know what to look for and for all my Karmic Guide bashing, it is still a sweet and fun card. So maybe there is merit to playing them too.
In addition to the combos, we have some very good tutors in both white and green. These guys can make your combos more or less viable depending on how many you choose to include.
Resiliency
What happens when people interact with you? You try again!
, , , , , These cards allow you to bounce back after disruption and tie nicely into a GY theme or a Pod deck.
Cross pollination
So one of the premises of this post was that the cards are supposed to be versatile. I really think this is the strength of this archetype as these pieces fit just as well in combo decks as grindy ones. Here are the theme intersections.
Sacrifice: Birthing Pod, Fiend Artisan, Luminous Broodmoth, the Persist guys.
Black and red are generally seen as the sacrifice decks, but here these guys provide a bunch of value allowing you to double up on sacrifice outlets and death triggers.
The other big upside in my eyes is that the Persist guys are hybrid or colorless, Fiend Artisan is also hybrid and Pod can be played almost as a colorless card (or with a very light green splash). This means you can end up in a lot of color combinations making it a solid Tetra archetype.
I want to note that your sacrifice outlets are key to making the deck work. White and green don't have any worth noting (free and repeatable), but black and red do. So you can force the deck to be 2+ colors by omitting colorless sacrifice outlets.
Carrion Feeder is amazing at bridging different themes, as is Woe Strider. Goblin Bombardment is also solid in go wide decks and Falkenrath Aristocrat is a fine beater by itself.
Black also contributes to the persist side of things if you want to open the archetype completely to another color with Murderous Redcap, Putrid Goblin and Puppeteer Clique.
+1/+1 counters: Anafenza, Kin-Tree SpiritGood-Fortune Unicorn, Archangel of Thune and Metallic Mimic are great enablers, while the Persist guys, Triskelion, Walking Ballista and Spike Feeder are great payoffs (ok the Spike dude being great is a stretch, but I mentioned grindy decks and he fits the theme! He can also do some nice things with Hardened Scales).
TrainmasterGT posted a great thread about green, +1/+1 counters and artifacts and Dom Harvey posted a sweet one on +1/+1 counters in general.
If you want more redundancy in your combos, Rhythm of the Wild is good in RG decks (combo or not) and can set up a small +1/+1 subtheme in red (see here for ideas).
Life gain: Archangel of Thune and Heliod, Sun-Crowned are good enough on their own that they can spawn a subtheme for life gain. Some payoffs like Bolas's Citadel are fun and also play well with the sacrifice theme above. The Blood Artist type cards trigger them many times and once again go with sacrifice.
If you are still here thanks for reading my ramblings. As I mentioned, this was an attempt to sort things out for myself, hopefully it helped you too!
i’ve been thinking for a while about a colorshifted cube where White/Green is the main graveyard guild... among other shifts ofc.
this combo list is some juicy inspiration. it’s stuff we’ve all run at least a couple pieces of at some point just because the cards themselves are mostly quite solid outside the combo.
this combo list is some juicy inspiration. it’s stuff we’ve all run at least a couple pieces of at some point just because the cards themselves are mostly quite solid outside the combo.
necro double post!
the more i dive headfirst into OP fixing the more i like this guild. just look at this lands micro archetype!
Which utility lands you use is totally up to you! I do a custom cycle of Threshold lands myself.
the more i dive headfirst into OP fixing the more i like this guild. just look at this lands micro archetype!
Which utility lands you use is totally up to you! I do a custom cycle of Threshold lands myself.
Yep. This is one of my favorite decks in my cube. I call it Tilling, because the sac/search for a land cards is much like turning soil on a farm
I talked through the archetype in the landfall thread here
I talked through the archetype in the landfall thread here
Does that make a deck that uses Courser of Kruphix, Oracle of Mul Daya, and other non-sac land ramp No Till?
my new favorite counters package is
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I did the pro move and cut Selesnya from my cube completely
My latest personal innovation in that color space has been integrating/flushing out the KDM archetype:
https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/earthcraft-cryptolith-rite-archetype.3510/
https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/earthcraft-cryptolith-rite-archetype.3510/
Selesnya "Dragons"
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(the GW deck for people that aren't named Icarus is some ambiguous +X/+X double strike/protection spells sludge)
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This has been maybe the only staple theme for Selesnya in my cube for the past few years.
Right now I am quite happy with a bunch of overlapping Selesnya themes in my cube. My guild choices reflect what I am doing pretty well, but nothing revolutionary:
Earthcraft style ramp
Humans
+1/+1 counters
Grindy midrange
Lands
It all sorts of blurs together nicely and your deck's direction depends on what you are feeling or what you've opened.
What I am on the lookout for in the future is:
Spells
With Monastery Mentor and Dragonsguard Elite in the cube, I would love additional prowess or instant/sorcery payoffs. Ideally a human with counters
Artifacts
White and artifacts meld beautifully in my cube, but I haven't gotten many GW artifact decks even though Green can flood the board with them. I think a signpost guild card would do the trick!
Discard
With Containment Construct and Currency Converter, discard decks start looking appealing in all color combinations! I've really liked Bazaar of Baghdad, Noose Constrictor and Wild Mongrel as discard enablers. I'd love for White to join in on the fun with something other than Seasoned Hallowblade. I guess The Restoration of Eiganjo works here too, but DFC, complexity bla bla bla.
Earthcraft style ramp
Humans
+1/+1 counters
Grindy midrange
Lands
It all sorts of blurs together nicely and your deck's direction depends on what you are feeling or what you've opened.
What I am on the lookout for in the future is:
Spells
With Monastery Mentor and Dragonsguard Elite in the cube, I would love additional prowess or instant/sorcery payoffs. Ideally a human with counters
Artifacts
White and artifacts meld beautifully in my cube, but I haven't gotten many GW artifact decks even though Green can flood the board with them. I think a signpost guild card would do the trick!
Discard
With Containment Construct and Currency Converter, discard decks start looking appealing in all color combinations! I've really liked Bazaar of Baghdad, Noose Constrictor and Wild Mongrel as discard enablers. I'd love for White to join in on the fun with something other than Seasoned Hallowblade. I guess The Restoration of Eiganjo works here too, but DFC, complexity bla bla bla.
Note that Fallaji Wayfarer in DMC potentially adds to that archetype. GWx has several multicolor-matters cards or add some hybrid density to make the Wayfarer more attractive.
In my first cube I've tried to be cute with Selesnya with heavy-handed enchantment theme, and in the end found it workable, but a little boring. I could push it up a power level, but honestly just not feeling it. That's a big reason I switched to a whole new cube instead, because of damn Selesnya luring me into enchantment stuff, that influenced my whole design process.
So far, in my next iteration, the only Selesnya packages I found appealing are land tilling and aggro-combo berserkers. I've added loose tokens and counter themes, mostly self-containing or generically useful. Still, it bothers me to an unreasonable amount. I might just not like what white does as a color. Because I don't have this dissonance with Gruul.
That said, does anyone have experience with go tall / exalted / Voltron theme? I was pondering it for my first cube with auras package, but found it unsatisfying then, and switched to a more general enchantments theme.
I'm not considering bogles, as they are famously miserable to play against, and unblockable creatures also seem like a bullshit gotcha strategy.
I'll call it "champions". Idea that dinky dorks choose someone who will fight for them and go kick ass. But it still interacts with combat step and fair Magic gameplay.
Support creatures with exalted:
Getting more exalted triggers. Sublime Archangel might just be a Baneslayer, who doesn't care about your themes:
Strong equipment is dime a dozen for any power level ever. Good thing, that it allows opponent's counterplay via disenchant effects:
Numberless auras are also plenty to choose from. But have serious risk inherent to auras:
Mutate or bestow to circumvent it. Too many to name:
Big counters:
Protecting the champion has a lot of possible choices:
Specific payoffs I found unsatisfying before:
And new hotness from Marvel. I hate the the theming, but these made me remember about a possible archetype:
Our champion loves important keywords, namely trample, double strike, flying, vigilance. And honestly, most cards don't feel that focused or parasitic. In the end it's not about any specific combo, and I'm not suggesting running all of the above. But rather the idea to have gameplay as something very different from WG tokens.
It could have cross-synergies with double striking berserkers, heroic, +1/+1 counters, equipment.
The question is... Is it even fun or viable? Gameplay-wise, your inner Timmy just kinda attacks with a big thing each turn, not much to think about. On one hand, it's risky putting all your eggs in one basket. On the other hand, theme just might not be there. Many players could just put out a green fattie or a good equipment, and play normal goodstuff game without it conveying growing your own big boy, unless you beat them over the head with "attacks alone" signposts. I mean if your cube power level allows something like Colossal Dreadmaw, it's already kinda a game ender by itself.
I could not find much discussion about go tall archetypes, except Riptide's darlings double strike berserkers, which I decided to put into my next cube. Has anyone had success with go tall that's not about combo kills?
So far, in my next iteration, the only Selesnya packages I found appealing are land tilling and aggro-combo berserkers. I've added loose tokens and counter themes, mostly self-containing or generically useful. Still, it bothers me to an unreasonable amount. I might just not like what white does as a color. Because I don't have this dissonance with Gruul.
That said, does anyone have experience with go tall / exalted / Voltron theme? I was pondering it for my first cube with auras package, but found it unsatisfying then, and switched to a more general enchantments theme.
I'm not considering bogles, as they are famously miserable to play against, and unblockable creatures also seem like a bullshit gotcha strategy.
I'll call it "champions". Idea that dinky dorks choose someone who will fight for them and go kick ass. But it still interacts with combat step and fair Magic gameplay.
Support creatures with exalted:
Getting more exalted triggers. Sublime Archangel might just be a Baneslayer, who doesn't care about your themes:
Strong equipment is dime a dozen for any power level ever. Good thing, that it allows opponent's counterplay via disenchant effects:
Numberless auras are also plenty to choose from. But have serious risk inherent to auras:
Mutate or bestow to circumvent it. Too many to name:
Big counters:
Protecting the champion has a lot of possible choices:
Specific payoffs I found unsatisfying before:
And new hotness from Marvel. I hate the the theming, but these made me remember about a possible archetype:
Our champion loves important keywords, namely trample, double strike, flying, vigilance. And honestly, most cards don't feel that focused or parasitic. In the end it's not about any specific combo, and I'm not suggesting running all of the above. But rather the idea to have gameplay as something very different from WG tokens.
It could have cross-synergies with double striking berserkers, heroic, +1/+1 counters, equipment.
The question is... Is it even fun or viable? Gameplay-wise, your inner Timmy just kinda attacks with a big thing each turn, not much to think about. On one hand, it's risky putting all your eggs in one basket. On the other hand, theme just might not be there. Many players could just put out a green fattie or a good equipment, and play normal goodstuff game without it conveying growing your own big boy, unless you beat them over the head with "attacks alone" signposts. I mean if your cube power level allows something like Colossal Dreadmaw, it's already kinda a game ender by itself.
I could not find much discussion about go tall archetypes, except Riptide's darlings double strike berserkers, which I decided to put into my next cube. Has anyone had success with go tall that's not about combo kills?
I don't have a ton of experience with this go tall archetype outside of Berserkers, but what you are describing sounds like a token strategy that employs different payoffs than Overruns.
I like these two in go tall as Selesnya usually has a bunch of creatures/tokens.
If you have food, treasures or clues in green, you can pair that with some go tall payoffs in white/colorless.
You could have some keyword soup creatures that love to get buffed.
An extra combat is nice if you have a big beater. Retrace goes great with land tilling that you run.
Maybe your little guys clear the way for the bigger one?
Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but that's what I got
I like these two in go tall as Selesnya usually has a bunch of creatures/tokens.
If you have food, treasures or clues in green, you can pair that with some go tall payoffs in white/colorless.
You could have some keyword soup creatures that love to get buffed.
An extra combat is nice if you have a big beater. Retrace goes great with land tilling that you run.
Maybe your little guys clear the way for the bigger one?
Not the same, but a similar idea is convoke, where your dinky dorks recruit someone tougher to fight for them.
Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but that's what I got
Trying to make Selesnya's theme 'attacks alone' feels a little heavy handed, similar to what you described happening with enchantments.
I'm also a little thrown off by you saying you were let down by Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar, which is a known peasant all-star and real contributor to this kind of archetype. Cube is not commander, so when you set up a 4-1 for your opponent, they will happily take it, and we need some way to ensure our 'champion' drew cards / generated additional board prescence before they're ultimately removed.
That being said, I understand the difficulty in trying to give Selesnya some identity, and still think you can make it work; I just wouldn't diminish your card quality to make it happen, and wouldn't be afraid to seed some of the payoffs in different colors. Baird, Argivian Recruiter is a cool card because he turns go tall into go wide, but he's not in Selesnya. Squall, SeeD Mercenary is one of our best 'attacks alone' creatures but in Orzhov.
[[Voice of Victory]] and (unfortunately) the new Jennifer Walters // The Sensational She-Hulk are amazing in this archetype you're building, as they allow you to deploy your enchantment aura's without getting blown out, while also being good cards on their own.
Leveraging Ward on cards like [[Sheltered by Ghosts]] and the new Matt Murdock, Justice Seeker (basically a more 'fair' Luminarch Aspirant) also gives your board a little more resilience, which is important when you're going tall.
I would look into Ferocious (power 4 or greater) payoffs, as these synergize well with going tall, while also working in other decks that just want to play big creatures. High Score is a recent favorite of mine here, while not explicitly caring about power 4 or greater.
I'd also recommend taking a look at this search for 'power's matters', the big standouts being Jacked Rabbit and to a (much) lesser extent Termagant Swarm. These might be too strong for you, but get back to the idea of needing to convert that tall power into going wide as backup.
Like Nanonox suggested, keyword soup also plays well into these buffing archetypes. Abigale, Eloquent First-Year is a cool one as it can go in a bunch of different decks, and plays well with big dumb idiots.
Lastly I'd be amiss to not call out the Enlist mechanic, as it meets exactly what you're trying to do, but there are unfortunately not a lot of great options for it. Guardian of New Benalia does make a good 'champion' though, and I'm always trying to sing the praises of Benalish Knight-Counselor, which if you're proxying is really not hard to make work in paper.
otag:hate-flash
Theros used a lot of sorcery speed and overpriced removal to make it more reasonable to build a large threat out of multiple cards.
Theros used a lot of sorcery speed and overpriced removal to make it more reasonable to build a large threat out of multiple cards.