cEDH Gitrog Companion Primer

The Gitrog Monster

This decklist and accompanying sub-primer is a companion piece to my cEDH The Gitrog Monster primer The Gitfrog Monster. This sub-primer will be referencing my Gitrog Monster cEDH Library document that has complete walk-through's on not only the main combo, but a host of other interactions you may come across while playing the deck as well - so be prepared when I reference specific sections when discussing the inner workings of the deck (you can also print it if you feel it helps, too). If you have any additional questions or suggestions, I encourage you to visit The Gitrog Monster Discord for all additional help and resources.

Recent Changes: Swapped 1x Swamp with Cabal Pit. Swapped Manglehorn with Reclamation Sage. Swapped Geth's Verdict with Ebony Charm. Notes: With the advent of Sushi/Fish Hulk, our place (and every non-Flash Hulk deck) gets heavily pressured in the meta. These changes do not answer the immediate concerns in regards with Hulk -they answer some older complaints. There will be more changes soon, this are just the first and most obvious to make, with future ones specifically regarding our place in the meta. Happy frogging!

Gaea's Blessing

Gaea's Blessing

The first significant change is the replacement of Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre with Gaea's Blessing. This is done for three reasons: An out to effects like Anafenza, the Foremost, being a better topdeck (since it cantrips for only two mana), and to reduce risk and increase the value of Ad Nauseams in situations where you cannot combo. This comes at the cost of the two 'forbidden tutors' in Tainted Pact and Plunge into Darkness - costing you speed in favor of resiliency. In order to utilize the Anafenza out, please read the section "The 20 Easy Steps."

Instant-Speed Black Outlet

Geth's Verdict

The second biggest change is the addition of Geth's Verdict, which allows us to go off at instant speed without any available green mana, an activated Emergence Zone, or from even more specialized boardstates (such as "Unable to Remove Chains at Instant Speed Win" mentioned in the Documentation). Ebony Charm is the go-to replacement for this slot should you find the normal removal usage of Verdict to not be very good since it can act as instant speed grave-hate. This is a significant distinction from the mainline decklist in that we are sacrificing card-slot quality for resiliency.

Card Slot Changes:

Collector Ouphe

Collector Ouphe

Collector Ouphe is a Green Sun's Zenith-able Null Rod that you can Culling the Weak and is a creature for Gaea's Cradle. Its very powerful in the right meta and usually at least decent in the majority of them. If you find it goes above and beyond what you expected I suggest finding room among the meta slots in the "Meta Considerations" section below for Null Rod too. Otherwise, if it doesn't feel like its pulling its weight, cut it (using the same section to aid you to decide what replaces it).

Mindblade Render

Mindblade Render

Mindblade Render is an additional Dark Confidant effect to help you grind value in order to not only make up for the card slot losses attributed to the core deck changes, but also to grind through and beat interaction. This slot can be replaced by Oakhame Adversary under the conditions that you can consistently cast it for 2 mana and a Najeela, the Blade-Blossom player isn't present at the table when you play.

Ramunap Excavator

Ramunap Excavator

Ramunap Excavator is a Green Sun's Zenith-able Crucible of Worlds that you can Culling the Weak and is a creature for Gaea's Cradle. This is a very powerful value effect considering that I would run a Crucible of Worlds in this slot even if Ramunap didn't exist. I wouldn't consider cutting or replacing this card at all in this shell.

Basic Forest

Forest

An additional land was added since we intend to win even in the face of a longer game.

Notable Cut: Noose Constrictor

Noose Constrictor

Noose Constrictor was cut since we already have one green creature outlet to get with Green Sun's Zenith. The redundant outlet is important to the more aggressive combo focused mainline decklist that utilizes double titans, but here we need the card slots and its not entirely necessary. I chose to keep Wild Mongrel over the Constrictor because it can dodge removal akin to Slaughter Pact, but this is likely very marginal so the choice is up to you which you value more in the end.

A full list of changes can be gotten by using the !diff command in the Discord's #bolas channel.

Dredge Chaining: The Great Conspiracy Against Judges

Behold! The Magnum Opus of Non-Deterministic Kills: The Cleanup Step!

Everything in this section is a monument to the cruelty in man's heart. Nothing here is shortcutable. And none of it is deterministic or guaranteed - but the chances that you ever entirely whiff and incur the Four Horsemen ruling are so low they might as well be nonexistent. In a real tournament setting, you'd be forced to play this out, essentially jailing your pod into eternal damnation until they die - or the round timer ends. This garden of sadism has been brought to you by the cruel and unusual mind of Noobzaurs. Enjoy.

The End Step Sculpt

One fascinating interaction of The Gitrog Monster is when you have 8 or more cards in your hand by the end of your turn. When you reach the final step of the end phase, the cleanup step, you must discard down to the maximum handsize limit (7) among other things. If, at this step, you discard a land, you will generate a draw trigger thanks to our lovely frog commander, and must draw a card, going back up to 8 cards in hand. Now the cleanup step repeats indefinitely until it gets to complete without any interruptions, such as from these triggers, so you will have to discard a card again - and if its a land, you must repeat this process once more. You see where I'm going with this? Let's say that land is Dakmor Salvage and you dredge it for the draw trigger generated. You now have turned the very laws and rules of the game into your discard outlet! The problem is that this process doesn't draw the library since you must always go back down to 7 cards each new cleanup step. It is also very Four Horsemen-y in the sense that you're not guaranteed to ever get any particular card via sculpting your hand this way, however if you keep changing the composition of your hand in between each shuffle (or draw trigger) then you won't run afoul of that slow play ruling.

Dredge Chaining

This is a method developed by Noobzaurs to cast one, or multiple spells in between each cleanup step without going below 8 cards in hand. This can be useful to cast any rituals you may get in this process, or cards that can setup the top of your library like Vampiric Tutor for the next draw, as well as cast protection such as Veil of Summer. In the most extreme cases, it can be used to repeatedly attempt to assemble the combo through any amount of countermagic - such as repeatedly casting Oblivion Crown. The process goes as follows:

  1. Discard, dredge, and sculpt your hand in the cleanup step until there is at least one other dredger in the graveyard
  2. Continue until you also hit a land off of Dakmor's dredge 2 to generate an additional draw trigger
  3. Dredge the other dredger in the yard
  4. Hopefully it hits a land in its dredge too, letting you repeat this process for any remaining dredgers in the yard
  5. Draw a card off of the final trigger when there are no more dredgers in your yard

You should now have 10+ cards in hand, allowing you to cast one or multiple spells without going below 8 cards in hand.

Should your playgroup leave this unchecked, then there is nothing stopping you from instantly winning the game just by having Gitrog on board and 8 cards in hand - one of which being Dakmor. Ask your playgroup if they can let the cleanup step sculpt your hand into whatever you please from your library. If they say yes (which they probably shouldn't), God help them all.

When It's Reasonable to Do This

Now, how can we use this reliably without inciting profanities and leaving nearby judges weeping in its wake? Basically, just don't do it unless you're only missing one card, usually namely Oblivion Crown or Crop Rotation for Emergence Zone. This means you have to have at least a few mana open, or one mana open with a Dark Ritual or something similar in hand. With everything assembled but that one part, its really easy to find some way to go find the missing piece, either by drawing it directly or finding a relevant tutor like Vampiric Tutor or Mausoleum Secrets.

An Introduction

This is one of the calling cards of Gaea's Blessing builds moving forward. I developed the 20 Easy Steps in order to make the functional usage of the infamous 60 Easy Steps developed by Noobzaurs reasonable to use. Namely, that is, combo'ing without an Eldrazi Titan, or through an Anafenza, the Foremost. The entire thing is in the Document I mentioned at the beginning of this primer under "The 20 Easy Steps". I will just be going over the basics here. Namely, the thing I'm going into most depth with is drawing the library with only Gaea's Blessing and no Eldrazi Titan.

Drawing the Library Without Kozilek

Requirements:

  • The normal combo assembled
  • Gaea's Blessing in the library
  • An even number of cards in library
  • Minimum of one open black mana (to a maximum necessary of 4)
  • Suggested: At 5 life or higher

Procedure:

  1. Repeatedly dredge Dakmor Salvage until you hit Gaea's Blessing, ignoring all draw triggers you accumulate until then
  2. Resolve the shuffle trigger
  3. Repeat the above process until you generate enough draw triggers to draw the library

If you have exactly enough draw triggers after resolving a shuffle to draw your library, do so and you're done. Otherwise draw your library until there are only 2 cards left, then:

If Neither Gaea's Blessing and Noxious Revival are in hand then skip to the second step below:

  1. Discard GB and Noxious Revival it to the top of the library
  2. Discard and dredge Dakmor, putting the top 2 cards into the graveyard

In response to shuffle trigger:

  • Discard X-3 if last card is a non-land, or
  • Discard X-2 if last card is a land, where X is the number of draw triggers left on the stack

Then you let the shuffle trigger resolve and draw your deck exactly.

I will be adding the drawing the deck method to the Document tonight or tomorrow, along with the Worst Case Scenario for this as well.

Once this is done you are now able to start the 20 Easy Steps and perform titanless loops to win the game. You can find that entire process in the Document. And before you ask, yes, I can actually perform all of this on the fly. It makes perfect sense when you understand what's going on and why. If you want help with this setup, please feel free to visit The Gitrog Monster Discord.

Flex Slots

Possible Additions

Interaction:

Grind:

Anti-Mirror Tech:

Plan B's:

Each of the first three cards is capable of generating an absurd amount of resources and even possibly comboing without Dakmor Salvage - however they need a ton of help getting there. Underrealm Lich in particularly is the most interesting of the bunch, capable of drawing large swaths of cards on its own and acting as a combo piece that can replace Dakmor Salvage even after drawing the library for establishing loops as well. Definitely worth looking into if people in your meta are hellbent on exiling Dakmor Salvage. You can find extensive information regarding the Lich in the Document mentioned at the start of the primer.

I get asked questions about these cards a lot, so I'm going to dedicate this section to all these cards we do not run and why.

Exploration

Cards I'm Currently Testing: Castle Locthwain

If you are interesting in this competitive Gitrog Monster list but lack the budget and cannot proxy? Have no fear! These lists are not only budget in nature, but offer a direct path of upgrading in their descriptions, card for card, organized not only by card type but more importantly order of preferred upgrades:


Budget cEDH Gitrog ($200)

Commander / EDH forgottenkane

SCORE: 6 | 1 COMMENT | 4497 VIEWS | IN 3 FOLDERS



Budget cEDH Gitrog ($500)

Commander / EDH forgottenkane

SCORE: 4 | 2689 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS



Budget cEDH Gitrog ($1000)

Commander / EDH forgottenkane

SCORE: 2 | 2366 VIEWS


Mind you, these are single-titan lists that use Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Gaea's Blessing for budgetary concerns.

Scryfall

MTGGoldfish

A huge thanks to Leptys, Noobzaurs, Kiebitzen, and the rest of The Git Frog Discord for guiding me on my frogging journey thus far. You're all incredible.

10/10/2019: Released.

02/05/2020: Swapped 1x Swamp with Cabal Pit. Swapped Manglehorn with Reclamation Sage. Swapped Geth's Verdict with Ebony Charm.

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Date added 4 years
Last updated 4 years
Exclude colors WUR
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

12 - 0 Mythic Rares

48 - 0 Rares

17 - 0 Uncommons

18 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 1.69
Folders Deck References, Gitrog, Git, Gitrog, Dredge Frog, Random Stuff, EDH, Gitrog
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