Piloting remains much the same.
During our initial draw, we are looking, at a minimum, for at least one of the following combinations:
- The most ideal is 3x Lands with at least one red and one green mana, 1x Birds of Paradise and 1x Farseek
- But 2x Land cards, one providing green, and at least 1x Birds of Paradise and 1x Farseek will do us good, too.
- The worst we can work with is 3x Land cards with one providing green mana and another providing red.
This will set us up for success in the early rounds.
We are hoping to drop a turn 3 Huntmaster of the Fells
or Thragtusk with either a Conjurer's Closet or Zealous Conscripts on turn 4 if we're lucky.
The remainder of our time playing in the mid-to-late game will vary from match to match.
Normally, we will attempt to be very agressive. We save our direct damage spells and buffs to clear away blockers and let our attackers through. We won't worry about being attacked, as Huntmaster of the Fells
& Thragtusk can keep us topped up on health quite efficiently, especially via closet bounces.
Save Zealous Conscripts for when our adversary has a creature worth taking. Heck, if we're playing a "best of 3" series, we'd prefer to not even cast a our Conscripts if we can win without them, and save them for the second match for a surprise. That being said, if we can get a massive blow for the kill by getting rid of a blocker, we go ahead and drop our Conscripts and steal the blocker.
With a Conjurer's Closet in play, at the end of the turn we bounce the stolen creature and then it becomes ours for the rest of the game or until it dies. All your toys are belong to us!
Direct damage spells help us deal with smaller agro creatures and blockers. Our damage engine is created by our creatures, not our damage spells. That said, if we can attack cleanly and we have some damage spells in hand to end the game or get it close, go ahead and let it all fly!
Our new addition of Champion of Lambholt allows us to do some neat stuff! Aside from being a creature that can get strong, our Closet encourages it to grow even faster. Using Conjurer's Closet on a Thragtusk creates a 3/3 Beast token when Thragtusk is exiled, that buffs our Champion of Lambholt to a 2/2, and when Thragtusk comes back down our Champion is now a 3/3. Hopefully, if our Champion lasts until our next attack phase, our creatures can't be blocked by 2/2's or 1/1's (so it's great against token decks). Dropping another Thrag, of course, makes her even better.
Of note, we've also added Collision / Colossus to the deck. Six damage to a flyer is pretty hefty, and very helpful for clearing blockers. Often even more helpful is the Colossus side of the card which we can use on a Champion of Lambholt when needed, which will often allow every one of our attackers through unscathed without any worry of blockers, and/or we could end up using it as a finisher card on a final attack.
Acidic Slimes help us control the board state of our opponent. Use them to get rid of anything giving our opponent an advantage, and then if we have a closet in play, we can keep the pressure on via removal recursion. They're obviously quite handy against an enchantment or artifact deck! Now, it may be cruel, but if our opponent is having mana issues, and we can ramp into an Acidic Slime early, we can go ahead and make our enemy's bad day even worse by destroying their land. Conjurer's Closet really ruins their day even further, and we can then proceed to walk our creatures in for an easy win. Even in the late game, keep an eye out for key lands your opponent is using for special abilities or if it happens to be the only source of a certain mana color, since our slime can get rid of them and keep our opponent from casting a double-color spell they seem to be holding. If we're facing a deck where Acidic Slime can get rid of a LOT of permanents, go ahead and sideboard in a couple more!
In this way, with recurring Slimes, Conscripts and direct damage, we can often quickly clear their side of the board and manage it in a Control Deck kind of manner.
If you find the games against your opponent are going longer and he/she is able to slow you down, consider sideboarding in Garruk's Packleader and Light Up the Stage for some card advantage.
Gruul's Closet is mostly a mid-range deck, but depending on your draws it can also behave like control, or even a token/life-gain deck. Enjoy
