Cobra Cards Player Community ~ View topic - Drink the Kool-Aid (Casual)

LotR TCG Wiki

→ Card Sets:

All

→ Forums:

TLHH

Cobra Cards Player Community Forum Index

Forum index » Magic: The Gathering » MTG Strategy Article Contest

Author

Message

Rate this article!

5 (Best)

[ 1 ] 33%

[ 0 ] 0%

1 (Worst)

[ 0 ] 0%

Total Votes : 3

BrianBoitano

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 3:43 pm

Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 124 Location: Houston, TX

--- description ---
The Golgari Guild embraces both uses for creatures: in life, and in death. This deck best utilizes Bloodbond March with creatures with come-into-play or sacrificing abilities, and Cloudstone Curio.
--- end description ---

As any good Johnny will know, any card with "whenever" in the text is just begging to be abused. Few "infinite" combos can be made without this crucial word, and so when trying to come up with an exciting deck, that is what I search for. This time around, Bloodbond March caught my eye, along with Cloudstone Curio. When Bloodbond March triggers, the reanimated creature can trigger the Curio popping the first back into your hand. Add a sacrificing engine and you can set up a nice block-sacrifice-recover shield that can stall aggro and give you nice sacrifice/coming into play abilities at the same time. Add Savra, Queen of the Golgari and Golgari Germination, and you’ve got lots of things going for you!

Version 2, version 1 cards in parentheses:
Drink the Kook-Aid (T2 casual sacrificing deck)

Lands {20}
6 Forest
6 Swamp
4 Overgrown Tomb (2 forest, 2 swamp)
4 Llanowar Wastes (2 forest, 2 swamp)

Creatures {26}
4 Thoughtpicker Witch
4 Plagued Rusalka
4 Carven Caryatid
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Wild Cantor
4 Dark Confidant (4 Llanowar Elves)
2 Void Maw (2 Savra, Queen of the Golgari)

Other Spells {14}
4 Bloodbond March
4 Cloudstone Curio
4 Golgari Germination
2 Putrefy

Sideboard
4 Naturalize
2 Putrefy
4 Crime / Punishment
2 Life from the Loam
3 Defense Grid

Playing the deck

Step 1: Stall
There are 16 1-drop creatures in this deck, so there’s a good chance you can have a chump blocker out there early. With Wild Cantor, a turn 2 Caryatid can buy you a lot of time. Sakura-Tribe Elder is one of the best chump blockers out there, so if you don’t have Caryatids go with this. It is important early in the game to not play two of the same creature, it’ll actually hurt you later on. Remember that if you have a Thoughtpicker Witch or Plagued Rusalka out, chump blocking isn’t such a bad thing.

Step 2: Set-up
Once you have a nice mana base, there are 4 different cards you will want to play, each under different circumstances:
Golgari Germination:
If you have a Thoughtpicker Witch and another 1-drop, go for it. Great shield and awesome card disruption.
Bloodbond March:
If you have two of the same creature card, one in your hand and one in play or in the graveyard, especially if they have coming-into-play effects, this should be your choice.
Cloudstone Curio:
If you have a creature in play and a creature in your hand that both have coming-into-play effects, or one has a CIP effect and the other is cheap, play this.
Savra, Queen of the Golgari:
Only once you have a nice sacrificing engine, such as the Thoughtpicker Witch-Golgari Germination or the Bloodbond March-pair creatures should you play her.

Step 3: Kill
With Cloudstone Curio and Bloodbond March out, you are almost unstoppable. If you have 2x Wild Cantor, you have "infinite" sacrificing*-- add a Savra or Golgari Germination and that means lots of life or lots of saprolings. 2x any other creature is still damn impressive, as each turn you get a CIP, a blocker, and a sacrifice all in one! Lots of tech.

Card Choices
Sakura-Tribe Elder: It is a very difficult choice between this and Wood Elves. Wood Elves give you an untapped forest, but are more expensive and have a 1/1 body. The STE has a 2/1, costs 1 less, and can get either Swamp or Forest, but it comes into play tapped. Most people are going with STE, and for good reason. It helps our curve, and is a better blocker. The only instance Wood Elves are superior to Sakura-Tribe Elder is when you have Cloudstone Curio but no Bloodbond March, but this isn’t worth it.

Plagued Rusalka: Festering Gobling is probably better in some circumstances, as its ability works even when you’re tapped out, but he doesn’t give a sacrificing ability in and of himself. He also can’t take advantage of the Germination tokens, so the Rusalka is in. Maybe the new black Martyr will be worth it? We know the Red, White and Blue ones (Happy 4th!), and if the black one is around that power level he will probably be better.

Match-ups:
Aggro: chump block until you get a Germination or Caryatid in, after that you should be fine.

Ghost Husk: Chump block, hope you get a Putrefy or Savra out quickly enough to keep their creature count low. Long game, you will have the advantage with Germination.
Sideboarding: -2 Plagued Rusalka, +2 Putrefy

Zoo: More chump blocking! This is basically the strategy against all decks that will attack you, and it’s not that bad a strategy with all of the bonuses you get for sacrificing.

*infinite sacrificing explained:
One Cantor in play or in graveyard, one in hand. Bloodbond March and Cloudstone Curio in play. If the one Cantor is in play, sacrifice him for mana. Play the other Cantor, using Bloodbond March to get the original one back. Curio triggers on both, but ignore the first one. On the second Curio trigger, return the second Cantor to your hand. Sacrifice the one in play to get mana to play the second, repeat. Again, this isn’t useful unless you have a Golgari Germination or Savra, or if you want to actually use the first Curio trigger.

Last edited by BrianBoitano on Sun Jul 30, 2006 1:20 am; edited 8 times in total

Felipe Musco

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 12:42 am

Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

I simply LOVED this combo! Kind of hard to set up, but REALLY nice once it’s out! I just don’t like the idea of using Savra, I think she’s kind of weak. Maybe you could switch her out for Fallen Angel or Nantuko Husk. See, if you can sacrifice creatures like crazy, your Golgari Germination will most likely provide you with A LOT of tokens, and even if you can’t get the whole "infinte token engine" combo out, you may still be able to win with those kinds of finishers. Yeah, I know, "this is supposed to be a casual deck, blah, blah, blah, ect...", but I’m posting this idea anyway, for 3 reasons:
1- If you posted the idea here, it’s because you WANTED some feedback and opinions on it, I believe, and not simply a nice grade;
2- I HATE it when no one replies to my Articles, even if it’s to condemn me for trying to use Booby trap in a deck (La_Sin_Grail,anyone? Wink

);
3- I have a motto, that you guys will probably get tired or reading, eventually: I don’t see a reason why some decks "can’t be played". I mean, you always see some rogue decks ’round good positions on tournaments, simply because nobody was actually expecting someone to play it. I did pretty well in Regionals (considering I built the deck the night before it) with an LD deck, for exactly that reason.
Well, hope you liked the ideas, I sure liked the deck!
PS: Following my motto, please, post a SB to it! Even you you don’t consider the deck playable, SBs ARE, IMO, part of the deck.

I don't like YOU.

BrianBoitano

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 12:30 pm

Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 124 Location: Houston, TX

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I agree on all fronts. I want opinions on this deck, I want replies, and I want it to get better.
It is pretty difficult to get the combo completely set up, but the thing that made me actually build this deck is that every part of the combo has great use in the game! Cloudstone Curio is awesome for Carven Caryatid, Bloodbond March is great to stall with repeatable blockers, generate generous mana or land advantage with Cantors or Elders, and in a pinch work removal with Plagued Rusalka. It’s true that Fallen Angel and Nantuko Husk are better than Savra if I also have Germination out to feed them, but Savra serves as a win condition on her own. With the Curio-March-2x Cantor combo, I have infinite sacrificing, but nothing to do with it. Savra means infinite life, Germination means infinite tokens. If I replace Savra with the Husk or Angel, I’ve reduced the number of things I can do with the combo, and that destabalizes the deck. As an added bonus, Savra is my only answer to Worship, which is sometimes a problem in my casual metagame.
Eh, I guess I’ll throw together a Sideboard, if I HAVE to *sigh* Razz

BrianBoitano

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:12 pm

Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 124 Location: Houston, TX

Hey guys, I’m kinda not feeling the love here...
I have the only two (recent) unrated articles. I can understand Hunted Necroplasm not getting that good a rating, but I’d still like feedback or even a less-than-average rating is better than silence.
My only point is, I spend the time and I show enough respect to comment on other peoples’ articles, I’d like the same from you guys Wink

"Not again" -Hans
Hello kind Sir or Madam, I am a polite sig virus. Please put me into your fine and dandy signature so that I might continue to replicate. Thank you for your time.

Felipe Musco

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:25 pm

Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

I’m actually trying to give you some feedback on this one for DAYS, now, but everything I seem to think of tends to disrupt the deck’s strategy...
I’m still working on it, though. Is it ok if I alter the cards to more expensive versions, or the deck should be budget?

I don't like YOU.

BrianBoitano

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 11:24 am

Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 124 Location: Houston, TX

Generally, I won’t play a more expensive version in real life, as I’m trying to keep my Magic budget down, but by all means for the sake of argument I’m willing to listen to anything. Suggesting shocklands would be kind of obvious, as (practically) any multicolor deck can benefit from them, so for all intents and purposes you can count 2 forests and 2 swamps in the decklist as Overgrown Tombs.
So, bottom line is budget for me playing, but for discussion here the sky’s the limit! Very Happy

Thanks, by the way, for commenting Homage

Last edited by BrianBoitano on Thu Jul 20, 2006 6:10 pm; edited 1 time in total"Not again" -Hans
Hello kind Sir or Madam, I am a polite sig virus. Please put me into your fine and dandy signature so that I might continue to replicate. Thank you for your time.

La_Sin_Grail

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 12:35 pm

Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland

Hm.... let’s see here. I think you need less 1-drops around here. Looks like you’re playing... well a lot. To my estimation, you’d be better off using things like scatter the seeds etc. Also, putrefy owns all, I’d play four copies.

Felipe Musco

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:32 pm

Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

And of course, since the deck is two-colored, Not only Overgrown Tombs, but Llanowar Wastes, too, since you don’t really need the Forest os Swamp sobtype. Also, Birds over Llanowars. But all of this is pretty obvious.
Ithink this deck’s missing something like Phyrexian Arena or Dark Confidant. As it is right now, I’ve played it in Apprentice, and it tends to simply play out all your hand very quickly and run out of fuel, thus having to resort to topdecking. I’d suggest dropping some of the one-drops, too, and MAYBE the combo asks too much of the deck. It SURE is nice, though! Razz

But maybe it takes just too much space for a 1-on-1 game. It could be fine with a suitable two-headed partner, though. I also think Fallen Angel or Nantuko Husk could be nice. Or maybe the new Void Maw.

I don't like YOU.

BrianBoitano

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:33 pm

Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 124 Location: Houston, TX

The reason I have so many 1-drops is that when you get the engine out, it’s worth it to be able to:
1) Play 1-drop, Bloodbond March gets you the rest from the grave, return the original 1-drop to your hand with Cloudstone Curio
2) Use sacrificing abilities (Thoughtpicker Witch, Plagued Rusalka), which also requires 2-3 mana
3) Play 1-drop again, repeat 2)-3) if possible
As you can see, once this deck gets going, it rewards you a lot for your 1-drops, as they are the most efficient way of utilizing Bloodbond March in this deck. Sadly, Scatter the Seeds has no recursion possibilities in this deck, so playing it provides a temporary (good, but still temporary) boost in creatures that a 1-drop makes more sense.
Hmm, you’re right on Putrefy, though. Been trying to fit more in since the beginning, but the problem is, if you don’t run 4x of every creature then your Bloodbond March is not running at peak efficiency! I’d rather have 4x every creature and remove a whole creature (maybe Llanowar Elves?) than to reduce one to 2x. With that in mind, what’s your suggestion for removing for more Putrefy?

"Not again" -Hans
Hello kind Sir or Madam, I am a polite sig virus. Please put me into your fine and dandy signature so that I might continue to replicate. Thank you for your time.

Felipe Musco

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:43 pm

Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 2434 Location: Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

As I said before, the deck’s rather slow to get the combo out, so unless you accelerate your drawing rate, you’ll eventually pile up a lot of mana, so having, let’s say, 2 drops or even 3 drops instead of 1 wouldn’t hurt THATmuch. And I believe Grailwas suggesting, say, cutting 4 1 drops, tops. Also, with bloodbond march out, you build mana insanely due to Sakura-Tribe Elder... I’ve done it almost every game. The problem is, that mana just sits there...

I don't like YOU.

Forum index » Magic: The Gathering » MTG Strategy Article Contest

All times are UTC - 4

Page 1 of 3 [29 Posts]

Goto page: 1, 2, 3 Next