Hi,

We like your deck! Maybe it could be even more scary by making the following additions:

• Mycoloth: one of the best token generators ever; synergizes very well with most of your deck.
• Parallel Lives: double your tokens.
• Torbran, Thane of Red Fell: works well with your commander as well as a number of permanents in your deck that deal damage based on things coming into play or dying.
• Shamanic Revelation: fits very well in a token deck; great potential life-gain too.
• Harvest Season: one of the best filter cards ever for token decks. Attack with your tokens, and tutor a basic land for each one that survives in the post-combat main phase.

We're not sure what to remove for any of these suggestions; your selection is pretty good already.

Regards,

Mrs. and Mr. NV_1980

NV_1980

Thank you for the suggestions!

As you said, it's difficult to slot them in, however with a few recent additions of new mana dorks, I find that I can cut a land. Kher Keep, while a fun card, is the least effective card in the deck. Cutting it for a powerhouse like Mycoloth adds a very powerful punch that works really well with Hardened Scales, Doubling Season, Grumgully, Purphoros, and Ulasht.

This deck looks great! So part of this deck's purpose is to create saprolings and get death triggers? Go see my aggressive saproling farming deck, Ghave, Guru of Aggressive Population

Could you please break down the end game combo please? Sorry I’m relatively new and I was curious. This deck looks really awesome!

Ye

Yarok WarSpaniel

Thank you! I've had a lot of fun building this deck.

The main goal of this deck is to ramp, throw out many tokens, mana dorks, and strong utility creatures like Scavenging Ooze, Runic Armasaur and Scab-Clan Berserker, then either use Green Sun's Zenith/Finale of Devastation to bring in, or cast, Craterhoof Behemoth, in order to win the game. Alternatively, Garruk Wildspeaker can use his ultimate to Overrun the board, and Chandra's Ignition targeting a massive Ulasht is devastating. As a tertiary method, smashing face with a Kessig Wolf Run is always an option.

Krenko, Mob Boss + Impact Tremors and/or Purphoros, God of the Forge is equally brutal.

The final alternate combo, which can be assembled via Gamble, GSZ, and Finale, consists of a few roles, filled by various cards, and executes as such:

1) The first piece we need is Ulasht, the Hate Seed, our Commander,

2) Ivy Lane Denizen, which allows the combo to go infinite,

3) a source of reoccurring mana in Ashnod's Altar or Phyrexian Altar, and

4) either Purphoros, God of the Forge, Impact Tremors, or Goblin Sharpshooter for the kill-condition.

The way it works is when Ulasht removes a +1/+1 counter to make a Saproling token, Ivy Lane Denizen puts the counter back onto Ulasht. You then sacrifice the token to one of the Altars, use that mana to make another token, and repeat the process. Each time you complete this loop, either Impact Tremors or Purphoros will deal damage to each opponent, or Goblin Sharpshooter will untap and you can ping an enemy for 1 damage. Repeat this loop until you win!

^^^

I'll update the deck description with this more detailed explanation.

ok, nice deck though!

Thank you for the quick response! I have a couple other questions though. If you cast Ulasht, the Hate Seed controlling mood other creatures, would he die as a state based action? Also, if he were equipped with Lightning Greaves, would you still be able to put counters onto him with Ivy Lane Denzien? I’m sorry for the extra questions.

Yes

WarSpaniel

Yes, if you control no other creatures and Ulasht enters the battlefield, it will have no +1/+1 counters on it and will die after resolution.

Lightning Greaves grants Shroud, which prevents targeting. Ivy Lane Denizen needs to target a creature to place counters on it, so Greaves would prevent that if they were equipped to Ulasht. Equip them to Denizen before beginning the combo, and everything will work fine.

Thank you for your quick response. Is this deck a lot of fun to play? Also do you draw a lot of hate from your playgroup?

It is a lot of fun to play! You develop a board presence early, but it consists almost entirely of mana dorks and tokens, minus a few utility things like Scavenging Ooze and Eternal Witness. The only time it ever seems to draw any hate is when you have Doubling Season, Purphoros, God of the Forge, or Krenko, Mob Boss on the battlefield. But if you plan it right, with mana and protection available, these hate-drawing cards will usually quickly win you the game.

Overall pretty tight list.

I would suggest slimming it down further by cutting some of higher CMC cards that are a bit too cute/situational in my opinion, such as:

• Goblin Ringleader - your goblin package is not big enough to warrant including this effect at 4CMC. In many cases it might only provide 1 or even no cards.
• One of the 3CMC removal options. You're running Beast Within, Reclamation Sage and Krosan Grip. I think that's too much removal at too high CMC.
• Wood Elves. This ramps you from 3 to 5. I think that's too slow. The non-basic forests you can fetch with this are not terribly impactful either.
• Mycoloth / Tendershoot Dryad- 5CMC cards that often do not do much the turn they are played. I would cut at least one of them, maybe both. They're just not impactful enough.
• Champion of Lambholt - I pesonally think this card is overrated. Even if you manage to get 5-6 tokens into play, it's just a big beater without evasion.

If you get the average CMC closer to ~2 you could probably drop one or two lands. I especially dislike Mossfire Valley, which cannot generate mana on its own and Sheltering Thicket, which comes into play tapped.

Cards I think you should definitely be running:

• Glimpse of Nature - very cheap - realistically, the floor is a cantrip, the ceiling is a blow-out
• Oakhame Adversary - most pods will have opponents playing green, making this reliable card draw at 2CMC
• Nature's Claim - aggressively costed, flexible

Cards you should consider:

• Other fetchlands, especially the ones that can find forests. You could then include Sensei's Divining Top so you can shuffle away the chaff.
• Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon. Gruul needs all the help it can get and these effects will generally hurt your opponents more than they do you.
• Birthing Pod - even if you don't include support for it, this is a great card that can
• Null Rod / Collector Ouphe. You have a few artifacts, but are not too reliant on them for ramp since you have dorks and ramp enchantments, so I think these will be a net positive. If you decide to run Birthing Pod, I wouldn't include these.
• Caustic Caterpillar - I feel this is just better than Rec sage in a deck without elf tribal support
• Splinter Twin - a much simpler alternate win with Goblin Sharpshooter
• Carpet of Flowers - any blue players in your meta? Then this should come in.

Sorry, I noticed I didn't finish my Birthing Pod sentence. Even without a combo package, I feel BP is versatile enough to play for value, especially since you have creatures at CMC 1-5. If you end up cutting both 5CMC cards you might not want to use it.

muse99

Thank you very much for the suggestions! They are all very strong. A few of the changes, though, like adding in the Blood Pod lines, would make this deck play like a weaker version of my current Marath cEDH deck: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/01-10-19-wrath-of-marath/

Some suggestions I will definitely be making, though:

Changing out Reclamation Sage for Caustic Caterpillar is stellar.

I agree with your assessment of Wood Elves, and Glimpse of Nature would fit perfectly there.

Mycoloth I have waffled back and forth on, originally it was Siege-Gang Commander, but I think Oakhame Adversary (Grob) would be perfect in that spot.

As much as I love Krosan Grip and Beast Within, I feel one may have to go the same way that it did in Marath: cut for Nature's Claim.

As for Splinter Twin, it is great, but really hard to reliably tutor for without White. And Goblin Ringleader is in the list because of Goblin Recruiter. Recruiter is very easy to tutor for, and is a super-reliable source of cards. Any Goblin pile that Recruiter searches up is topped by Ringleader, who then draws the rest of the Goblins you put on top. It's the reason Recruiter is banned in Legacy, and provides that same gas-laden card draw here.

Also, Champion of Lambholt is generally just generally a beatstick, but it does indeed have evasion in the form of not being able to be blocked by creatures with lower power than her. She also grants this evasion to all of your cretaures. She might get cut for Collector Ouphe, going to mull that one today, but she is strong.

Glad to be of help and I can understand your retort. Also feel you're making smart decisions based on my feedback.

• I get the sentiment that tutoring for Twin is hard without white.
• I agree with your rationale for not including BP. You want some diversity in lines/wincons you're playing. That's fair.
• I also understand your reasoning for wanting to test Champion of Lambholt further to see just how impactful it is in practice. Overall I think Collector Ouphe is the better card if you don't include BP, but that also has to do with how prevalent artifacts are in my meta.

As for the ringleader-recruiter interaction - I must admit I missed it and wasn't familiar with it. I guess look at legacy ban lists more frequently! Happy to come out of this with having learned something new :D

All the best with your deck. Looks like a really solid deck in Gruul, which isn't easy to accomplish.

muse99

Thank you so much for the suggestions and advice. In trying to make a "casual" deck to have something for my non-cEDH friends, I ultimately had some hold-overs from previous iterations. I need to remind myself that casual can still be high-power. I made a bunch of changes that will pay off nicely and are already smoothing out playtesting.

Cuts:

Krosan Grip

Wood Elves

Mycoloth

Fecundity

Doubling Season

Sheltered Thicket

Mossfire Valley

Additions:

Nature's Claim

Glimpse of Nature

Oakhame Adversary

Magus of the Moon

Collector Ouphe

Windswept Heath

Bloodstained Mire

The only spot I'm really testing at this point is Champion of Lambholt, but I'm giving her a chance for now. Again, thank you very much.

Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.

I tried my best to avoid including this card, but it is just too good. Wheel of Fortune is the best card draw available to Red, and if it is available to you, it is something that really needs to be included. I love Champion of Lambholt, but it is what it is: a pet card. Pet cards just never seem to work out, and I have never been sad casting Wheel, where Champion is magnet-removal in the first-degree.

Welcome back, Wheel.