Let's Break Greater Gargadon

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Ephraim

Guest
The first time that I tried to break Greater Gargadon, I attempted to use saprolings to speed it up. The result wasn't all that great because it turns out that I had better things to do with the saprolings than feed them to a suspended gargadon.

My new idea is to use cards with Vanishing/Fading that are going to be sacrificed anyway. I think I am going to aim for a red, white, and blue deck. Keldon Marauders, Lavacore Elemental, Aven Riftwatcher, Maelstrom Djinn, Cloudskate, and Reality Acid all seem like good cards to pair up with Greater Gargadon. There are enough spells with Vanishing or Suspend that it may be worthwhile to include Jhoira's Timebug or Timebender.

I don't have a specific deck in mind yet. I've listed too many cards to use every last one of them. It's possible that this deck would be better, for example, just as a red and blue deck, since white adds only Aven Riftwatcher. Cloudskate may be limited in its utility, since it doesn't interact with Jhoira's Timebug or Timebender. The deck probably also needs some added utility in the form of Rift Bolt. (In this regard, keeping white would provide access to Disenchant, which would probably be useful.)
 
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Ransac

CPA Trash Man
I like the synergy that your deck is capable of, especially Jhoira. Wow... Suspend the Gargadon with Jhoira. By that time of the game, you can sac everything and have the Gargadon by turn 4 or so.


That's awesome.


Ransac, cpa trash man
 
D

DarthFerret

Guest
If you are still interested in using token critters, I have found that Squirrels tend to be one of the fastest building in terms of numbers of creatures in play of all the various token creature types...
 
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Ephraim

Guest
Ransac, I am not actually using Jhoira of the Ghitu. I had considered it but Greater Gargadon is the only card in the deck worth suspending. Jhoira is a good card, but I don't think that it's the right choice for this deck.

Mooseman, thank you for pointing out Mogg War Marshall to me. Just because a competitive, tournament winning deck has used it doesn't mean that I can't as well. (I am sure that my deck will deviate in other ways, enough to remain casual.)

Roughly speaking, I think that the bones of this deck will look something like this:
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Mogg War Marshall
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Rift Bolt
3 Wild Cantor
2 Lavacore Elemental

2 Maelstrom Djinn
3 Timebender
4 Reality Acid

3 Aven Riftwatcher
3 Disenchant

I could also explore some cute options, such as Diamond Kaleidoscope. I haven't left much room in here for mana fixing. That card is a trifle pricey, but it serves double duty since, if I do not need the mana, I can sacrifice the token creatures to Greater Gargadon.
 
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Ephraim

Guest
Ransac said:
Well..... I'M gonna make a Greater Gargadon/Jhoira deck, then!!!!


Ranasc, cpa trash man
Click to expand...
Be forewarned, any deck featuring Jhoira is probably going to end up focused more on Jhoira than on any other card in the deck. She's too big of a commitment not to build around her. That said, I recommend Aeon Chronicler.
 
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Ransac

CPA Trash Man
Detritivore, Chronicler, and the Gargadon all will be prime suspects for the deck. :D


Ransac, cpa trash man
 
Mooseman

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
Ephraim said:
Mooseman, thank you for pointing out Mogg War Marshall to me. Just because a competitive, tournament winning deck has used it doesn't mean that I can't as well. (I am sure that my deck will deviate in other ways, enough to remain casual.)
Click to expand...
I mentioned the tournament to show how good, both cards are. I think the mogg will be faster than squirrels in the early game.

Ransac: Jhoira of the Ghitu is cool.
 
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Nightstalkers

Guest
Eh... I've been forbidden to use the Gargadon before it was even released due to an unsettling deck that combined basically me crapping out milliions of tokens to dump out large amounts of Gargadon fat onto the board.
 
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Ephraim

Guest
Timbender has turned out to be a champ, as has Mogg War Marshall. Aven Riftwatcher, on the other hand, is a chump. Disenchant is only nominally playable and I have Reality Acid besides, so I think that I am going to cut white out of the deck altogether. I get brutalized by Wrath of God, so I think that I'm going to add Cancel or Rune Snag after I get rid of white.

I am using Chromatic Star instead of Wild Cantor. Getting to draw a card even when I feed the Star to a suspended Greater Gargadon has been reliably useful. I need to get my hands on a fourth Greater Gargadon, that's for certain. Currently, I am running 3 Lavacore Elemental, but I don't this deck wants any of them. I'd like to replace one of them with a fourth Timebender, one with a fourth Greater Gargadon, and the last one with some card-drawing. I don't think that I can go wrong with Think Twice.

I am thinking of playing this at FNM this week. At present, I am using Seal of Fire instead of Rift Bolt (In a pinch, I can sacrifice a Seal of Fire to remove a time counter from a suspended Greater Gargadon.) I think, however, that it may be wise to use Martyr of Ashes instead, just to give me some play against Bridge from Below.
 
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Ephraim

Guest
Looking more carefully at my cards, I have opted to remove Reality Acid from this deck. Greater Gargadon specifies that you must sacrifice an artifact, creature, or land to remove a time counter from it. I thought that you could also sacrifice enchantments, but you can't. I replaced it with Martyr of Ashes, so I now have 4 Martyr and 4 Seal of Fire in the deck.

I also intend to take Maelstrom Djinn out. It's not bad, but it just hasn't performed as well as I would have liked. I will probably replace the two copies in the deck with a fourth Greater Gargadon and a third Cancel.
 
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Ephraim

Guest
Sure. This is the list that I intend to play at Friday Night Magic tonight:

Creatures (20)
4 Martyr of Ashes
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Timebender

Spells (16)
3 Chromatic Star
4 Seal of Fire
4 Rune Snag
3 Cancel
2 Think Twice

Land (24)
1 Shivan Reef
1 Steam Vents
3 Izzet Boilerworks
9 Mountain
10 Island

***

I have to buy the fourth Greater Gargadon tonight. If they're too expensive, I'll run 3 Greater Gargadon and 3 Think Twice instead.
 
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Ephraim

Guest
Terrible. Absolutely wretched. I don't think that I won a single game. On the upside, it was monstrously funny to HARDCAST Greater Gargadon only to have my opponent cast Mana Tithe to counter it. (I was losing that game no matter what.)

The fact of the matter is, I don't have enough disruption or board control to seriously handle a fast, aggressive deck. Control decks have several turns to find an answer to Greater Gargadon, which is usually trivial to deal with. They also have ample defense to handle a few, small goblins and they can absorb the five damage that one will typically get out of Keldon Marauders. Furthermore, because I have very few genuinely threatening business spells, it wasn't hard for control players to save counterspells for Greater Gargadon. The synergies that I built into the deck with Timbender never materialized. I got to play Timebender a couple of times, but it was consistently destroyed before I had any opportunity to turn it face-up to the benefit of Keldon Marauders or Greater Gargadon.

On a happier note, Martyr of Ashes was pretty good, but I think I'd need to increase the density of red cards to make it really good. It has a lot of potential. Seal of Fire was also strong. My inability to handle large, flying creatures, however, turned out to be my downfall in at least one game.

In total, I don't think that this deck/archetype is going to earn me any wins, even in FNM. It'll make another fine addition to my collection of purely casual, decks, however, along with the Biorythm deck and Fungusfire. Once it rotates out of standard, I'll feel comfortable replacing Seal of Fire with Pyrite Spellbomb, which should be a marginal improvement.
 
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