Grenzo, Dungeon Warden - The Slot Machine of Value

[snowfox54119]

Young Necromancer 4B
Creature - Human Warlock (Uncommon)

When ~ enters the battlefield, you may exile two cards from your graveyard. If you do, return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

"Who needs imaginary friends when you could have dead friends?"

2/3

at last!! a playable creature for grenzo has arrived, we havent had a new one since forever. this one looks promising, is not an autoinclude, but i can see this one in the 99. i works similarly to whisper, but this one looks better in general. is a bad "first flip" but as long as you have a creature and two cards in the gy this card is powerful. late game with a full one this card is a second chance at anything,

edit: i think that is also better than Phyrexian Delver, same cmc, 1 less power, 1 more toughness... sure, this one requires you to exile 2 cards, but is also a may and doesnt kill you

Agreed! I'm glad we're finally getting at least one exciting new toy to play with. I definitely hope there's more to be had this set. I'll do a full review once the entire set is spoiled.

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

Yes the little Liliana cosplay is a great new addition. I'm also very excited to get my hands on

Underworld Hermit 4BB
When _ ETB, create a number of 1/1 green Squirrel creature tokens equal to your devotion to black.
"Some souls yearn to escape death. Others are content to feed the wildlife"
3/3

The squirrels may feel a little awkward in this very black/red deck, but my friend Whisper, Blood Liturgist said you can use them to complete rituals and a buddy of hers is a professional Viscera Seer and said their intestines are just made for predicting the future.

[XamIllustration]

Yes the little Liliana cosplay is a great new addition. I'm also very excited to get my hands on

Underworld Hermit 4BB
When _ ETB, create a number of 1/1 green Squirrel creature tokens equal to your devotion to black.
"Some souls yearn to escape death. Others are content to feed the wildlife"
3/3

The squirrels may feel a little awkward in this very black/red deck, but my friend Whisper, Blood Liturgist said you can use them to complete rituals and a buddy of hers is a professional Viscera Seer and said their intestines are just made for predicting the future.

I actually wish it was a green version. I have a squirrel deck with Chulane as the commander. 🤨

Anyway, good news. There are now dual indestructible artifact lands from MH2!! But it does comes in play tapped.

[Arkren]

i think that the hermit needs to be compared with Siege-Gang Commander and Sling-Gang Lieutenant. in cmc is worse since it cost 6 mana, but casting it is not really a problem, the next issue is that power3... 3 is still in the realm but we cant deny that power2 is better... there is also the fact that this one doesnt have any interaction, the other two cards have a way to sacrifice goblins that can be important.

on the other hand, this card if flipped is at least going to make 3 tokens, and probably more, i think that 5 tokens average is not asking for much, and there are times were is going to make like 10. with something like ashnod altar that is gg right there. (but then again, being good with ashnod altar is easy for almost any card)

so... i dont know, probably? i think that siege gang and sling gang are better, but if you already have those two and want more effects like that this one is an easy inclusion.

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

I've got a question for my fellow dungeon keepers.
With Modern Horizons2 on the... well... horizon, i'm planning to finally buy the 5 enemy fetchlands being reprinted there.
Now since the London mulligan arrived i usually abuse it regularly to stack the bottom of my deck and find a good starting hand. I often mull down to 4 cards in hand. When i decide to play more fetchlands (right now i play 3 of them) i will surely find myself in the situation where i have some good cards under my library and don't want to crack the fetch to keep it that way.
Do you use the mulligan rule in the same way?
Have you encountered the fetch problem?
Am i a bad person for abusing the mulligan rule? (Well, i dont care )

[Arkren]

im going to try to make my list of possibles for grenzo now that i think that all the cards are out.

Breya's Apprentice two bodies... maybe the effect is relevant, is also a sacrifice outlet... not really good enough to enter the main list, but it goes with the theme enough to talk about it

Diamond Lion this card combos very hard with grenzo. i think that this is an autoinclude, if you can start with sol ring into this on turn1 and drop a land on turn 2 we are speaking grenzo plus 2 flips already. it loops like a champ with a lot of things, it even discards our hand so that we can use the dead high cost cards more easily.... MVP

Ornithopter of Paradise i do run both coloured myrs in my list, this card is simply better.

Underworld Hermit a worse siege gang or sling-gang, but is still good enough to enter the list in my opinion. cards with these effects are often the cards that you want to see when desperate fliping in response to something, maybe you need blockers, maybe you need aristocrat triggers, maybe you need sacrifices to ashnod altar...

Young Necromancer is probably better than other gy recursion that we usually see on grenzo lists but not by a lot.

these are all the creatures... i havent seem any other type of card that i like... except the new artifact dual land Drossforge Bridge, not spectacular, but if the list you are running is using Goblin Welder you need to put this land in the list... at the very least, this land is better than Cinder Barrens or Urborg Volcano and others likes these because is indestructible

[XamIllustration]

@Arken I am not so sure about Diamond Lion, maybe that's just me not always liking to discard my hand, but the others do make sense. But hey, I can see the potential of Diamond Lion as a quick way to get Anger in the graveyard and other artifacts for Goblin Welder to bring in play.

Breya's Apprentice can work with Marionette Master to ping any targets and gives you flying blockers. I have tried the Untap online, and I noticed that I don't have a chance against flyers, especially with a infect flyer.

Young Necromancer is great as you may have some land flips that can be cannon fodders for the exiling part. Drossforge Bridge can be a great option to have, as it is Vault of Whispers and Great Furnace combined as one artifact card with indestructible with a downside.

I have managed to get my deck together finally. testing it soon once I have them sleeved. I have updated my land base a little. I have slotted in Foreboding Ruins and Tainted Peak, they are not that bad, but they help abit with the land base to speed it up a little. I am still keeping Syr Konrad, the Grim, I have Sling-Gang Lieutenant as a "sideboard" for Syr Konrad. I have decided not to have Thornbite Staff in my deck as I want to lower the amount of combos. That's where Syr Konrad got slotted in.

My decklist: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/grenzo- ... n-to-luck/

Itching to have a prison break with my deck... My friends, unfortunately have been sick this week (not covid, thank goodness) and have to stay home till they have to get better. Winter has hit us hard here in South Africa. So I have to wait another week.

[manugl84]

Not sure if someone posted it first, but I think Vile entomber is another new juicy card for the deck. Better than Corpse connoisseur IMHO, because you can bin your best artifact to be reanimated later with Goblin welder or Goblin engineer.

What do you think?

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

Not sure if someone posted it first, but I think Vile entomber is another new juicy card for the deck. Better than Corpse connoisseur IMHO, because you can bin your best artifact to be reanimated later with Goblin welder or Goblin engineer.

What do you think?

Yes it is a great card. Not without risk because you are clearly signaling what you're trying to do and your opponents could react by removing your graveyard, but it's a risk i will be taking. I have cut the connoisseur from my list but will at least test this one as we have many ways to recur cards from the yard. And it comes in OG border too :-D

[demonicpic]

Holy sh-t this deck is so much fun to play! So many combo lines, so many ways to win, and it's a puzzle to figure out the best line each time. This list is gold, thank you so much for posting it!

[ElevatorDreams]

Really looking forward to seeing what changes Modern Horizons 2 brings. Young Necromancer, Ornithopter of Paradise, Vile Entomber, and Underworld Hermit are all possibles.

[snowfox54119]

Sorry for the delay in the review of MH 2, everyone. Anatomy has been sucking all of my time the past few weeks. All that to say, here's the official review of MH2:

• Young Necromancer - I'll be testing out replacing Whisper, Blood Liturgist with this card. I believe this one's criteria is easily met (with 2 bad flips) and can happen immediately without relying on haste support. Granted, Whisper is more of a long-term threat, so I've gone back and forth between the two and will be testing if I like YN as much as I like Whisper.
• Vile Entomberr - I already removed Corpse Connoisseur and don't feel the need to add this one either.
• Underworld Hermit - I'm not a big fan of token generators for tokens' sake. Usually, my token generators need to have some additional benefit along with it. Both of our goblin generators have built-in outlets, Marionette Master has a win-con built into herself, and Emrakul's Hatcher provides more mana. So I think I'll pass on this one since his tokens alone won't be very useful unless other outlets are available.
• Ornithopter of Paradise - Just a better Myr, so an easy replacement for one of the two we run.
• Diamond Lion - While it's super attractive, I fear the following scenario will happen all too often: You crack Diamond Lion. In response (because opponent can respond before you get the mana), opponent removes Grenzo. Now you have no cards and 3 mana...not ideal.
• Urza's Saga - The only other card that I could see easily taking another land slot. Its ideal use would be to power out a Sol Ring or Mana Crypt on turn 3. But it can also find your Tel-Jilad Stylus in a pinch. I think it's worth replacing one of our lands for, so we'll see how it fares in my continued testing with it.

I apologize once again for the delay and that this might not have been as drastic of changes as you were suspecting. All of the above cards are good and worth running if they fit your particular playstyle. But for the main list, I think we'll just be swapping in Young Necromancer, Ornithopter of Paradise and Urza's Saga and moving on.

As always, let me know if I missed something.

Have a great rest of your weekend, fellow dungeoneers!

[zKtu]

Sorry for the delay in the review of MH 2, everyone. Anatomy has been sucking all of my time the past few weeks. All that to say, here's the official review of MH2:

• Young Necromancer - I'll be testing out replacing Whisper, Blood Liturgist with this card. I believe this one's criteria is easily met (with 2 bad flips) and can happen immediately without relying on haste support. Granted, Whisper is more of a long-term threat, so I've gone back and forth between the two and will be testing if I like YN as much as I like Whisper.
• Vile Entomberr - I already removed Corpse Connoisseur and don't feel the need to add this one either.
• Underworld Hermit - I'm not a big fan of token generators for tokens' sake. Usually, my token generators need to have some additional benefit along with it. Both of our goblin generators have built-in outlets, Marionette Master has a win-con built into herself, and Emrakul's Hatcher provides more mana. So I think I'll pass on this one since his tokens alone won't be very useful unless other outlets are available.
• Ornithopter of Paradise - Just a better Myr, so an easy replacement for one of the two we run.
• Diamond Lion - While it's super attractive, I fear the following scenario will happen all too often: You crack Diamond Lion. In response (because opponent can respond before you get the mana), opponent removes Grenzo. Now you have no cards and 3 mana...not ideal.
• Urza's Saga - The only other card that I could see easily taking another land slot. Its ideal use would be to power out a Sol Ring or Mana Crypt on turn 3. But it can also find your Tel-Jilad Stylus in a pinch. I think it's worth replacing one of our lands for, so we'll see how it fares in my continued testing with it.

I apologize once again for the delay and that this might not have been as drastic of changes as you were suspecting. All of the above cards are good and worth running if they fit your particular playstyle. But for the main list, I think we'll just be swapping in Young Necromancer, Ornithopter of Paradise and Urza's Saga and moving on.

As always, let me know if I missed something.

Have a great rest of your weekend, fellow dungeoneers!

Hi Snowfox, thank you for this,

I've been playing with your deck quite a lot and also tried some of MH2 cards. Agree with the assessment above but I have some comments. let me know what you think:

- Diamond Lion - Your scenario never happened to me so far. I usually activate Grenzo at the end step of the previous player's turn, so I can activate the lion at my upkeep. As the deck plays a lot with the graveyard, having an additional way to put your hand there while giving you mana and without being a dead flip (eg. lion's eye diamond) makes this card viable imo

- [*]Vile Entomber - You don't mention this one but I found it a really nice addition. I replaced [*]Goblin Settler , I'm prioritising more and more the combos and the ways to achieve them. Every time I flipped the settler, it didn't make any difference. Ok I blow up a land... unless it flips early on in the game and maybe sets back one of our opponents, it doesn't put me closer to closing the game. Also people get pretty salty when you blow up their lands, so they make you the target from then on and Grenzo relies on politics and people looking at you as a non-threat. The advantage of Entomber is that he can adapt quite well to different scenarios, making the deck more consistent. Is Goblin Welder in play? Get one of the combo artifacts. Is Epitaph Golem in play? Get one of your combo pieces. How about Anger? and now everything has Haste.

Other notes:

- [*]Thornbite Staff Of the countless games I've made, I've never won with the Thornbite Staff combo. Apart from being a dead flip, usually other players panic when they see it in play. Nobody panics with Goblin Sharpshooter but they do when they see the staff (they also panic with Zealous Conscripts or Kiki Jiki), so it gets destroyed pretty quickly. I've been testing [*]Yahenni, Undying Partisan as it is another sac outlet for consistency with the big plus of surviving board wipes and being incredibly difficult to remove. the fact that it gets +1+1 if an opponent creature dies adds the benefit of people avoiding using board wipes as they are afraid of making him too big to deal with.

- I haven't seen anything too exciting in the new D&D set, maybe [*]Plundering Barbarian but I don't think it is enough to make the deck.

Let me know please what you think!

[XamIllustration]

Maybe use Thornbite Staff is a bait, so you can do a different combo, sometimes it's better to switch and bait with this deck. If one combo is out and attention is on it, work towards another as a back-up plan... Just in case they missed the other combo pieces while they frantically trying to sort out Thornbite Staff.

Sorry for the delay in the review of MH 2, everyone. Anatomy has been sucking all of my time the past few weeks. All that to say, here's the official review of MH2:

• Young Necromancer - I'll be testing out replacing Whisper, Blood Liturgist with this card. I believe this one's criteria is easily met (with 2 bad flips) and can happen immediately without relying on haste support. Granted, Whisper is more of a long-term threat, so I've gone back and forth between the two and will be testing if I like YN as much as I like Whisper.
• Vile Entomberr - I already removed Corpse Connoisseur and don't feel the need to add this one either.
• Underworld Hermit - I'm not a big fan of token generators for tokens' sake. Usually, my token generators need to have some additional benefit along with it. Both of our goblin generators have built-in outlets, Marionette Master has a win-con built into herself, and Emrakul's Hatcher provides more mana. So I think I'll pass on this one since his tokens alone won't be very useful unless other outlets are available.
• Ornithopter of Paradise - Just a better Myr, so an easy replacement for one of the two we run.
• Diamond Lion - While it's super attractive, I fear the following scenario will happen all too often: You crack Diamond Lion. In response (because opponent can respond before you get the mana), opponent removes Grenzo. Now you have no cards and 3 mana...not ideal.
• Urza's Saga - The only other card that I could see easily taking another land slot. Its ideal use would be to power out a Sol Ring or Mana Crypt on turn 3. But it can also find your Tel-Jilad Stylus in a pinch. I think it's worth replacing one of our lands for, so we'll see how it fares in my continued testing with it.

I apologize once again for the delay and that this might not have been as drastic of changes as you were suspecting. All of the above cards are good and worth running if they fit your particular playstyle. But for the main list, I think we'll just be swapping in Young Necromancer, Ornithopter of Paradise and Urza's Saga and moving on.

As always, let me know if I missed something.

Have a great rest of your weekend, fellow dungeoneers!

Hi Snowfox, thank you for this,

I've been playing with your deck quite a lot and also tried some of MH2 cards. Agree with the assessment above but I have some comments. let me know what you think:

- Diamond Lion - Your scenario never happened to me so far. I usually activate Grenzo at the end step of the previous player's turn, so I can activate the lion at my upkeep. As the deck plays a lot with the graveyard, having an additional way to put your hand there while giving you mana and without being a dead flip (eg. lion's eye diamond) makes this card viable imo

- [*]Vile Entomber - You don't mention this one but I found it a really nice addition. I replaced [*]Goblin Settler , I'm prioritising more and more the combos and the ways to achieve them. Every time I flipped the settler, it didn't make any difference. Ok I blow up a land... unless it flips early on in the game and maybe sets back one of our opponents, it doesn't put me closer to closing the game. Also people get pretty salty when you blow up their lands, so they make you the target from then on and Grenzo relies on politics and people looking at you as a non-threat. The advantage of Entomber is that he can adapt quite well to different scenarios, making the deck more consistent. Is Goblin Welder in play? Get one of the combo artifacts. Is Epitaph Golem in play? Get one of your combo pieces. How about Anger? and now everything has Haste.

Other notes:

- [*]Thornbite Staff Of the countless games I've made, I've never won with the Thornbite Staff combo. Apart from being a dead flip, usually other players panic when they see it in play. Nobody panics with Goblin Sharpshooter but they do when they see the staff (they also panic with Zealous Conscripts or Kiki Jiki), so it gets destroyed pretty quickly. I've been testing [*]Yahenni, Undying Partisan as it is another sac outlet for consistency with the big plus of surviving board wipes and being incredibly difficult to remove. the fact that it gets +1+1 if an opponent creature dies adds the benefit of people avoiding using board wipes as they are afraid of making him too big to deal with.

- I haven't seen anything too exciting in the new D&D set, maybe [*]Plundering Barbarian but I don't think it is enough to make the deck.

Let me know please what you think!

[zKtu]

this is a great point!! I Didn't think about it that way... I think you're right! This way they think they just shut down the deck and focus on someone else.

Great point!!

[zKtu]

With the most recent spoilers here are other cards I spotted that could be interesting:

Hobgoblin Bandit Lord In a goblin heavy build
Xorn I think this synergises extremely well with Dockside Extortionist and Pitiless Plunderer. With plunderer on the battlefield every time you sac a creature you create 3 treasure tokens, its brutal! I also like the fact that CMC wise its cheap enough that even if it is in your hand you can hard cast it. Unfortunately the 3 power means that we can't find it with imperial recruiter and being an elemental goblin matron won't find it either. so you do need to be lucky and flip it. I think this is the most exciting card I've seen so far in the D&D set for this deck
Delina, Wild Mage I liked the card because again I immediately thought of some cool targets in the deck: Workhorse (we do dmg and create 4 mana for 2 more grenzo flips), Dockside extortionist, Pitiless Plunderer... priests giving 3 mana.. there are a ton of cool targets that can be used with this card. oh and it also creates treasure tokens. cool!

[XamIllustration]

The problem with it, is that you have to attack with her... This deck is not much of an attack focus deck, apart from the Kiki-Zealous combo to attack for the kill. Apparently there's a combo with her. Haven't looked it up.

Delina, Wild Mage I liked the card because again I immediately thought of some cool targets in the deck: Workhorse (we do dmg and create 4 mana for 2 more grenzo flips), Dockside extortionist, Pitiless Plunderer... priests giving 3 mana.. there are a ton of cool targets that can be used with this card. oh and it also creates treasure tokens. cool!

[zKtu]

definitely, so far I think Xorn has a lot more potential but Delina might work too. you can copy a token creators if you desperately need more mana (siege gang commander + altar) or mana dorks (workhorse, dockside) or remove something (meteor golem, Duplicant, Chupacabra, ...). It adds more dimension to the deck.

Its a matter of testing it out and see if it works

[Outcryqq]

With the most recent spoilers here are other cards I spotted that could be interesting:

Hobgoblin Bandit Lord In a goblin heavy build
Xorn I think this synergises extremely well with Dockside Extortionist and Pitiless Plunderer. With plunderer on the battlefield every time you sac a creature you create 3 treasure tokens, its brutal! I also like the fact that CMC wise its cheap enough that even if it is in your hand you can hard cast it. Unfortunately the 3 power means that we can't find it with imperial recruiter and being an elemental goblin matron won't find it either. so you do need to be lucky and flip it. I think this is the most exciting card I've seen so far in the D&D set for this deck
Delina, Wild Mage I liked the card because again I immediately thought of some cool targets in the deck: Workhorse (we do dmg and create 4 mana for 2 more grenzo flips), Dockside extortionist, Pitiless Plunderer... priests giving 3 mana.. there are a ton of cool targets that can be used with this card. oh and it also creates treasure tokens. cool!

FYI, when you add bold and underline inside the card tag, it disables autocard (cannot hover over the card to see it).

My issue with Xorn is that it only interacts with two cards that I'd consider using at this time in this deck (Dockside Extortionist and Pitiless Plunderer. The chances of any particular game having one of those out, THEN flipped Xorn, it pretty low. Otherwise, Xorn just takes up a slot as a generic 3/2 creature. I prefer my slots to be useful in most/all circumstances. If I leaned a lot more into treasures, then maybe Xorn would work out for me better.

Delina, Wild Mage is mediocre for me. For a more aggressive, less combo-centric deck, the trigger is pretty good, and usually relevant; however, it requires Delina to attack. So to get mileage out of Delina, you need to 1) flip her with Grenzo having 3+ power (or hard cast Delina, ew), 2) have another creature attacking, and 3) you'll want to copied creature to have some ETB, since the token is going away at end step. Again, I like my slots to be used with cards that are useful under most/all circumstances, and this is again too many hoops for me to want to jump through.

[ElevatorDreams]

Maybe we swap Urza's Saga for Homeward Path and Ornithopter for Iron Myr?

[Gribbet]

How do you guys feel about Fury? It doesn't go to face, but being able to divide the damage seems good.

[zKtu]

I think its a great idea, I'm going to try it out.

there are a lot of 4 toughness creatures that can lock Grenzo out like Dauthi Voidwalked (3/2) or Drannith Magistrate (1/3)

I personally included Ravenous Chupacabra for this specific reason as having only 1 creature removal with Meteor Golem is not nearly enough with the randomness of the deck.

Really like it!

[Outcryqq]

I think its a great idea, I'm going to try it out.

there are a lot of 4 toughness creatures that can lock Grenzo out like Dauthi Voidwalked (3/2) or Drannith Magistrate (1/3)

I personally included Ravenous Chupacabra for this specific reason as having only 1 creature removal with Meteor Golem is not nearly enough with the randomness of the deck.

Really like it!

Just a small nitpick, but Dauthi Voidwalker does nothing to this deck, unless you're relying on things already in the yard. There's actually a spot in the OP's primer FAQ about graveyard hate and Grenzo's ability, showing that the ability goes through graveyard hate like Rest in Peace and Leyline of the Void. I don't think the reasoning that the Grenzo ability gets around those two would be any different for voidwalker - they use the same wording as the other two.

[zKtu]

ah yes, I'm glad you've mentioned it. I went back and read the primer. I'm wondering that Grafdigger's Cage will still shut down Grenzo, right?

On the Dauthi Voidwalker the only nuance is the creature sacrifice. You need a sac outlet for most of the combos in the deck, if a Dauthi is out, you cannot sacrifice your creatues.


Edit: Plus if you flip, you might be exiling some of the artifact combo pieces..

[XamIllustration]

Hello all. I have managed to play my version of this deck, and it did very well.

In the first game two weeks ago, I managed to play it and won with the Kiki-Jiki-Zealous attack combo.

The week after that I decided that I will only use the Kiki-Jiki combo if necessary, I felt that every time I do the combo, it's too easy and it did feel like a cheap way to win. Our meta group believes that a game-ending combo is necessary if the game is taking too long. We are very casual with a competitive streak of fun/silliness.

So I won in a different way with the Kiki combo by using it to make billions of tokens and sac it to Asnod's Altar to make infinite mana to and then sac Murderous Redcap for the loop with Epitaph Golem and Grenzo for the silliness. This way, I felt like I won in an interesting way that the typical combo-ness that everybody and I do.

I would say that the deck is very resilient and easy to get hang of it. It is really a puzzle deck with certain cards to solve certain solutions.