Greater Gargadon

Creature — Beast

Suspend 10-(Red)

Sacrifice an artifact, creature, or land: Remove a time counter from Greater Gargadon. Play this ability only if Greater Gargadon is suspended.

Discussion (50)

Omniscience_is_life on Opposition Agent needs a preemptive …

2 months ago

I would argue it homogenizes rather than diversifies--it's just another copy of Mana Crypt to some strategies, and a serious barrier to entry for many people. and I would also argue that two, even three-color decks could seriously consider running the Lotus (I'm speaking from perhaps a more casual standpoint). Here's the playpattern, the example being my Atla Palani, Nest Tender deck: T1--Mountain, suspend Greater Gargadon, pass. T2--Plains, Jeweled Lotus, crack it for Green, tap out and cast my commander. T3--Forest, activate my commander for an egg, cast Worldly Tutor for an Avacyn, Angel of Hope or something equally scary, sac the egg, and put her into play... and I'll remind you again, on turn three. And that's THREE color. AND I NEED TO PAY HOW MUCH MONEY TO DO THAT AGAIN??

Flooremoji on Modern Foretold

4 months ago

I would strongly reccomend cutting a couple of Blood Moons for Greater Gargadon. Moon isn't the kind of card that you want multiples of, dosen't impact the board, and gives your opponents some time to find basics or just cast red spells. Gargadon provides an additional finisher while also destroying their lands which is usually more impactful.

Buffstu on Garna Combo

6 months ago

Basic Deck Goals

Establish a early game board

This deck is not going to be the fastest out the gate lets get that clear right away and nor is it going to be drawing nervous glances around the table early on as you turn your vast army sideways, but what Basic this can do is put some ever so slight pressure on someone who has decided to play creature-less or is just playing mana dorks as this deck does run a few token creators and can get some beats in on an unprepared opponent...But lets be real most of the time early game we are gonna try and get into a stable mid game, try and not look like the weakest or the strongest at the table and start setting up some of engine pieces and mana to begin looping for value. This means finding sac outlets, mana reducers, mana rocks and draw cards are gonna be part of this phase of the game.

Basic Looping in the midgame

Now once we have enough mana and/or mana reducers to play something from our hand and Garna with a sac out let we are in business next stop value town, we play the card from hand and Sac it then play Garna, responding to Garna's ETB by sac'ing her while her ability is on the stack, then Garna's ETB will resolve and put back to hand both the first card you played from hand ( and any other cards that hit your graveyard this turn) and Garna and that is a basic loop ( What I will refer to as Looping). So now the question is what is the point of all of this Looping?

The Point of Looping (Hint its Value!)

Here is were I will explain what we can do with the basic loop premise to gain value: Is the creature we are casting from hand a token generator? like Weaponcraft Enthusiast or Goblin Instigator or even Doomed Dissenter if we can keep looping these cards then we will end up with more and more tokens to play with.

Is the creature we are Looping creating mana via treasures or Eldrazi Scions? Dire Fleet Hoarder,Wily Goblin,Carrier Thrall then everytime we loop we are building a stockpile of mana for our future turns.

How about more cards? Dusk Legion Zealot,Phyrexian Rager

But we can get more than just value from the creature we are sac'ing oh much much more, how about value from the sac outlet it self? Viscera Seer Start scrying through your deck for your combo pieces ThermopodAshnod's Altar Help you generate more mana for more cards to be cast from hand for multiple card loops Carrion Feeder Keep adding +1/+1's to make a threat that needs to be dealt with before it spirals out of control Spawning Pit why not add more tokens to this to create a potential army of 2/2's that can snap into existence at instant speed? Greater Gargadon How about ticking down a clock to a 9/7 coming to smash your enemies into small digestible pieces?

You think we are done with what value we can get from Looping? not even close, what about other effects that occur when they see cards getting sac'd for greater good of value? Zulaport Cutthroat,Falkenrath Noble,Syr Konrad, the Grim This will start putting pressure on opponent's life totals whenever you sac a creature, or cast in the case of Bontu's and special mention to Syr Konrad as he also does damage when they go back to hand from your yard...oooh that value.

You want card draw? we got it,now its not as clean as blue draw and it does have a distinct smell of decomposing flesh but hey we will take it. Smothering AbominationGrim HaruspexMidnight Reaper even Hazoret's Monument as you do cast in a loop and remember all discard cards will be put back to hand via Garna's ETB.

Mana? Sifter of Skulls,Pitiless Plunderer we got you covered

Bigger is always better

You might be wondering with all this value being gained from sac'ing creatures what could we do to sac more of our own creatures per turn? I like your thinking and that's why we have multiple creatures that replace themselves mana wise. Cards like Priest of Gixor Priest of Urabrask or Cathodion even Overeager Apprentice and Bog Witch ( remember we will get the discarded card back via Garna's ETB) the fact that Garna gives haste also allows Basal Thrull and Generator Servant to be able to activate their abilities the turn they come down as long as you do it when Garna is in play and therefore you are probably doing it in response to her ETB as your about to sac her to get her to go to your hand.

What all this mana positive and mana neutral creature casts lets us do is frankly more of the same, play multiple creatures a turn to make multiple treasures or make multiple tokens or scry multiple times it all depends on the set up you have at the board at the time but the more creatures to sac the more effects, the more the merrier the bigger the better.

How do you win the game?

So its gotten to the later stages of the game, hopefully we find our selves in value town but how do we actually win? Well this deck has a few options for you to choose depending on what cards end up in your hand.

Deathrender

DeathrenderThis is the Big daddy of the combo's we have, so big in fact that Hoarding Dragon is here mainly just to get this card in our hand and to be honest so is Dimir House Guard. The combo starts like this: Deathrender on the field and attached to any creature, a sac outlet and enough mana to cast Garna we start by sac'ing the creature attached to Deathrender and then we put another creature from our hand onto it, repeat until all creatures are out of hand, then sac the last creature and flash in Garna in response to the deathrender trigger on the stack, and then respond to this by sac'ing Garna, now Garna's ability will be on the stack and resolve and get back every card that hit your graveyard this turn, including herself. Now resolve the Deathrenders ability and well now you have a full hand of creatures ready to be sac'ed so pick one of them to be attached and begin the deathrender sac fest all over again and this is an infinite loop since you can keep getting Garna's ETB from deathrender. An important thing to note is that when getting Garna to the battlefield via the Deathrender ability is to make sure there is allays at least one other creature in hand when you put Garna to the battlefeild, since the way the ability's will stack is that the deathrender ability will pull something out ( that being Garna in this case) then that will trigger any ETB's and we will respond to that by sac’ing Garna, this will trigger the deathrender trigger and this will occur BEFORE we can refill our hand with Garna's ETB, so we just need one creature in hand to be pulled onto Deathrender and then everything will go back to hand and we can keep sac'ing and looping infinity.

We now have an infinite loop going and this deck can use this in multiple ways to end the game. Refer to the infinite loops section to see all the options

The worse way to go infinite

You have seen the best now lets get on to the rest, another combo that has far more hoops for the same payoff. It begins with Zombie Infestation in play and at least 4 creature cards in hand, with a Pitiless Plunderer in play, and just a smidge of mana reduction in play, actually you need at least 3 total mana cost reduction for specifically Garna, oh and a sac outlet, got all that? good then lets gooo So now we discard all 4 creatures with zombie infestation, creating 2 zombie tokens, don't get too attached as we immediately sack them via our sac outlet and create a black and a red mana via Pitiless Plunderer now with a black and a red mana and our mana cost reducerd Garna is free to cast! so we play her and sac her as her ETB is on the stack and get all 4 creatures that we discarded and Garna back to hand to begin the Loop again.

Ending the game with Infinate Loops

So we have found yourself in an infinite loop via the methods above^^ how do we win?

Do we have Zulaport Cutthroat,Falkenrath Noble,Syr Konrad, the Grim any of these with an infinite loop will end the game

Do we instead haveDesecrated Tomb or any creature that creates tokens as part of our loop? make sure to end the loop with several millions tokens created and stop the loop with Garna in play, all your tokens now have haste.... Good game? This can also be done is a few other more janky ways using Spawning Pit and either Ashnod's AltarPitiless PlundererSifter of SkullsBlood PetCarrier Thrall and clever use sage of sac'ing for counters and then sac'ing for mana ( or just allays sac'ing for counters if Plunderer or Sifter are in play).

SteelSentry on Best MTG stories

6 months ago

In an EDH pod, we were down to 3 people. The person to my left was playing Oloro and had a Mycosynth Lattice and a Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge which he had just plussed for 22, and the person to my right had a Nevinyrral's Disk. I ended up winning at 1 life, by suspending a Greater Gargadon forcing my opponent to crack the Disk. Even with a 9 power attacker, however, it took 6-7 turns to kill the Oloro artifact player with combat damage, and was a Gut Shot away from losing the entire time.

Tzefick on New Mechanic: Strategize

7 months ago

Had a rather lengthy reply that got gobbled up by timeout re-log, so I'll make it short:

Suggestion for revised wording of the mechanic:

Strategize - (Rather than cast this card from your hand, pay and exile it. At the beginning of your upkeep you may put a time counter on it and pay for each time counter on it. Otherwise cast it without paying its mana cost, copy it for each time counter on it.)

Works with non-permanents. Permanents would need a specific wording.

And don't make Boza's idea to count all time counters removed this turn, or you'll have a ball-and-chain in every suspend card to consider when designing for this mechanic. Something like Greater Gargadon can result in some crazy scenarios if you're not careful.

TheRheX on Marchesa, the Black Rose

8 months ago

The spoiler in my previous comment does not open for me so here ist the full rules text:

502.59a Suspend is a keyword that represents three abilities. The first is a static ability that functions while the card with suspend is in a player's hand. The second and third are triggered abilities that function in the removed-from-the-game zone. "Suspend N--[cost]" means "If you could play this card from your hand, you may pay [cost] and remove it from the game with N time counters on it. This is a special action that doesn't use the stack," and "At the beginning of your upkeep, if this card is suspended, remove a time counter from it," and "When the last time counter is removed from this card, if it's removed from the game, play it without paying its mana cost if able. If you can't, it remains removed from the game. If you play it this way and it's a creature, it gains haste until you lose control of it."

Since suspending Greater Gargadon does not use the stack it can't be countered by regular counterspells.

Since it is removed from the game while suspendet your opponents can't interact with it.

TheRheX on Marchesa, the Black Rose

8 months ago

Greater Gargadon has two major upsides that some players might not be aware of:

1) Opponents can't just counter it or destroy it like they could with Viscera Seer.

2) It comes into play with haste, so can immediately dish out damage and - if Marchesa ist out - get a counter while doing so.

That's bacause of the unique way Suspend works:

Suspend Rules Text: Show

502.59a Suspend is a keyword that represents three abilities. The first is a static ability that functions while the card with suspend is in a player's hand. The second and third are triggered abilities that function in the removed-from-the-game zone. "Suspend N--[cost]" means "If you could play this card from your hand, you may pay [cost] and remove it from the game with N time counters on it. This is a special action that doesn't use the stack," and "At the beginning of your upkeep, if this card is suspended, remove a time counter from it," and "When the last time counter is removed from this card, if it's removed from the game, play it without paying its mana cost if able. If you can't, it remains removed from the game. If you play it this way and it's a creature, it gains haste until you lose control of it."

So it's a 1 mana sac outlet that is "evasive" and doubles as a finisher.

That comes at the cost of no longer being able to be used as a sac outlet once the last suspend-counter has been removed.

In a value-oriented deck i would probably advise against it, but in this more combat-oriented version i grew to love it.

Magnanimous on Modern Dead Skred

8 months ago

First, please don't put just a cry for help, give us something to work with (I need help deciding between threats...).

I love this deck. One thing that confused me was the creatures. I think that generally you should be controlling and you should side into an aggressive deck with Goblin Rabblemaster against slower decks OR you should have late game bombs (like Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger), but Pia and Kiran Nalaar and Stormbreath Dragon are midrange creatures that don't fit into either category. I like control, so I'd try to put more control cards in their place, like Dreadbore (I'm scared of playing without good PW removal) or Thoughtseize. Alternatively, you could look for more proactive options that are resilient (I like Bloodghast). Otherwise, looks good.

A few combos in red that I like but aren't particularly competitive: Greater Gargadon + Ichor Wellspring/Bloodghast. Boom / Bust + Darksteel Citadel/Flagstones of Trokair (which can fetch your colors with a single Sacred Foundry or Godless Shrine in the deck).