Skaab Goliath

Creature — Zombie Giant

As an additional cost to cast this spell, exile two creature cards from your graveyard.

Trample (This creature can deal excess combat damage to defending player or planeswalker while attacking.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (22)

Optimator on Giant's Deck

3 years ago

It looks like the spoilers that I put the non-Boros giant suggestions aren't working. So weird. I'll try to reconstruct what I suggested.

So I know you had your heart set on Brion as your commander, but I wanted to list all the good giants with , and in their colors, as there are a bunch that are excellent. Brion doesn't bring much to the giant-tribal table other than a small-ish lifelinking Giant body and occasional face-damage. You may want to use Iroas, God of Victory or Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas as your commander if you're dead-set on staying Boros colors. If the idea of fully exploring Giants in Magic's history is the goal, and being the most Giant-y deck, having more colors or all five colors will give you a greater creature spread and significantly help with the deck's function.

Arbor Colossus - great rate! Worth considering

Beanstalk Giant - ramp AND a giant body! Worth considering

Earthshaker Giant - Worth considering

Garenbrig Paladin - playable, but probably wouldn't make the cut in a five-color deck

Gorm the Great - interesting choice, and nice at four mana, but probably not worth a slot

Marshdrinker Giant - odd removal piece.

Nylea's Colossus - good effect even without a ton of enchantment support. Worth considering

Outland Colossus - Worth considering

Rampart Smasher - watch out, Knights! Probably wouldn't make the cut

Skyshroud Troll - Regeneration is always nice, but the stats aren't great

Sunder Shaman - fucking awesome giant. One of the best reasons to consider running Green cards. Can't recommend enough.

Swarmborn Giant - kinda a weird one, but interesting nonetheless

Towering Titan - potentially awesome! Worth considering

Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath - fucking incredible. Pretend you're terrorizing standard! That pricetag though :(

Valleymaker - very interesting utility. Potentially worth considering, but might not make the cut in a five-color deck.

Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig - Absolutely stellar Giant. three on-color might be hard to swing in a five-color deck, although any deck would probably lean Green due to ramp and utility. Very much worth considering.

Frost Titan - outstanding giant. One excellent reason to run Blue. Highly recommended, like all the titans. Too bad Prime-Time is banned! (Primeval Titan)

Galecaster Colossus - extremely strong Giant. better in Wizard-tribal decks, but is still really good on its own.

Oloro, Ageless Ascetic - A real powerhouse. Highly recommended

Ruhan of the Fomori - Another excellent giant. Highly recommended

Skaab Goliath - Pretty decent. Might not make the cut in 5-color but worth considering]

Thryx, the Sudden Storm - Incredible! Ramp AND a flying body. A perfect reason to run Blue. Highly recommended

Bartel Runeaxe - this is a giant. Probably only worth running for the memes. Expensive too. A piece of Giant Magic history though.

Doomwake Giant - Pretty decent even without Enchantment support--lots of one-toughness support creatures out there.

Erebos's Titan - slightly recursive threat. Decent

Grave Titan - an utter powerhouse. One of the best giants. Highly recommended

Grixis Slavedriver - decent for a common. Probably not quite worth a slot.

Helldozer - pretty good! Three on-color might be hard but the payoff is huuuge.

Knight of the Last Breath - leaving behind blockers is pretty good. (Mana)-expensive though.

Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger - Pretend you're terrorizing Standard!! Incredible Giant, but expensive.

Necrosavant - recursive creature, but you probably don't want to be sacrificing giants

Nightfire Giant - could be decent utility. Not the strongest giant but worth looking at

Tithebearer Giant - good for a common I suppose!

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So as you can see, there are a bunch of fantastic Giants outside of Red and White colors. The stand-outs on a budget are:

Arbor Colossus - Beanstalk Giant - Earthshaker Giant - Outland Colossus - Sunder Shaman - Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig - Frost Titan - Ruhan of the Fomori - Thryx, the Sudden Storm - Helldozer

I should have a Frost Titan, Arbor Colossus, and Outland Colossus for trade.

---

Once you have the deck for a while, snagging Grave Titan - Oloro, Ageless Ascetic - Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger - Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath- Towering Titan as upgrades would be well-worth it.

Icbrgr on Basic Simic

5 years ago

Llanowar Reborn as a one of might be nice in your mana base. Plaxcaster Frogling always seems to work well with simic counter/evolve brews and is worth considering over Skaab Goliath.

Icbrgr on

6 years ago

To piggy back on my warning about self mill mana becomes problematic... So staying mono blue really helps and keeping low CMC spells is critical... My Skaab Goliath has honestly only been successfully cast like twice...but otherwise I think a lot of your creatures you mentioned are actually pretty good... Send me a link on my wall when you have a deck list and I'd love to help you (I won't push Laboratory Maniac I promise :p)

Icbrgr on The best cards not worth …

6 years ago

Skaab Ruinator does require a lot of dedication with running heavy creatures and the typical blue supporting spells like Serum Visions/Mana Leak/Disperse just dont pan out/not worth it from my experience. Self mill creatures and spells like Jace's Archivist/Mesmeric Orb basically just give you far more draw/casting fuel to overcome any spot removal and bounce. It is definitely vulnerable to exile and graveyard hate.... Alternative win conditions are a must with things like Laboratory Maniac and Mindshrieker and Skaab Goliath.

It's far from being broken/perfect however I seldom see people fully committed to a suicide mill deck.

JararoNatsu on

7 years ago

Hmm...

I don't particularly like Returned Phalanx. In an aggressive Zombie deck like this, you don't really want Defender unless it's something like Corpse Blockade, which may actually be decent as a 2-of or so here.

Don't forget that you still want to get Zombies into your graveyard so you can actually cast Skaab Goliath (and because it's a bit difficult to cast, keep it at like... a 3-of?). Carrion Feeder and Plague Belcher from the new set may help with that. I see a lot of decks like this use Grimgrin, Corpse-Born and sometimes Blood Artist, and Grimgrin may be a better option than Goliath. Something to consider.

I don't know how much of a budget you have, but Gravecrawler is a fun Zombie to have. Unless they're exiled they just keep coming back. Unbreathing Horde is fun too.

Would Smallpox work here? Maybe. Just maybe. Regardless you may want some removal here. Tragic Slip could work, as could Bone Splinters.

Trying to think of other things here... there's a lot of things that one can do with Zombies. I'm a Control junkie so my Zombie token decks both have a lot of control, which means that I'm not altogether versed in aggro decks. I would suggest looking at other decks, seeing what they've got going on, and go from there. Your deck is definitely coming together, so keep working on it XD

JararoNatsu on

7 years ago

Keep in mind that Curse of Shallow Graves is not Modern-legal.

It seems like you want this deck to be rather aggressive. I would at the least suggest Vile Rebirth and Moan of the Unhallowed (Gisa's Bidding works similarly) to get your army started early. Having Army of the Damned as a 4-of is not a good idea, as you may flood your opening hand with them. Having it at a 2 or 3-of and having lower-CMC cards that generate tokens would be helpful.

There's a bit of a contradiction going on in your creature base. You want to have Zombies in the graveyard to cast Skaab Goliath and boost Diregraf Colossus, and yet your creatures hold several incentives for the opponent to NOT kill or block them, or they can't be blocked at all (I am looking specifically at Vedalken Ghoul and Rancid Rats here, and I can never talk smack about Diregraf Captain because I love it too much). If you want to set up Goliath/Colossus, you may want to find different creatures or get some cards that send your own cards to the graveyard (the latter can be rather expensive, though).

Also, I feel like Skinrender would be a really good card to have in this deck, as would both Butcher Ghoul and Carrion Feeder (can also get creatures into your graveyard).

Hope this helps!

englishmuffin9 on Bring out your dead! (Scarab God EDH)

7 years ago

What do you think about Relentless Skaabs, Skaab Goliath and Geralf's Messenger?

darleen on Slow and Painful.

7 years ago

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