Ghired, Conclave Exile - Triple Dipping Naya Lards

[Rumpy5897]

Thanks for the various thoughts, sorry for not responding in a timely manner. I'm still gestating the rock-paper-scissors protection/pump piece dilemma and didn't really have anything smart to say. Stalwart Pathlighter is nearly superior to Frontline Medic due to not requiring a swing to confer the benefit, leaning into the tempo vs. resilience musings from earlier. I like your thoughts on Clever Concealment - I've held up five "mana" for a Selfless Spirit Chord in the past, and this is actually cheaper.

MOM-wise, we gotta talk about sieges. It's not everyday that you get a new card type to evaluate.

Ghired is pretty well equipped to run sieges. The deck is not lightning fast at its aggro, but it can generate an incremental board presence and is happy to use some of the mid-game damage on battles.

• Invasion of Ikoria is the prime consideration, and could be argued to be the best of all the battles in a vacuum. The card is not as good as Finale of Devastation, with various shortcomings including:
  • Only reaching Kiki in terms of copiers.
  • Staying on the battlefield, not allowing for the potential Eternal Witness-mediated slow setup.
  • In fact, not reaching Eternal Witness at all is a thing.
  The card's main competition is Green Sun's Zenith, which can't even reach Kiki and hides itself in the library. However, the fact GSZ costs a single mana more than the creature allows for superior sequencing - bust out Gruul Chungus a turn after Ghired, no questions asked.
• Invasion of Gobakhan is the next best siege, and offers a rather tempting backside with some pump and protective shenanigans. The pump is not going to drastically change things in the current configuration of the build though, and the protective shenanigans can be more reliably accessed elsewhere.

There's a surprisingly bountiful selection of other MOM stuff to talk about as well:

• In a somewhat contentious move, another option enters the rock-paper-scissors of the protection/pump. Tribute to the World Tree is an Elemental Bond that pumps small things by 2 instead. Ghired is a small thing. This would confer a Skyhunter Strike Force-tier survival pump to the fragile commander while offering card draw, something that is not to be underestimated. The GGG looked scary on paper, but I went goldfishing and it's fine most of the time. I've since deleted the numbers from the scratch pad I jotted them down in, but I want to say that 80-90% of the hands I pulled up were able to cough up the mana ahead of Ghired? The green-centric skew of the ramp options coupled with the chiselled land base are no joke. I think it's probably correct to run this thing, but whether Beastmaster Ascension is the cut is a different matter. Maybe Greater Good as I like retaining the Rhinos to help carry out the beatsticks' plans later?
• Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink would be going into the deck in a heartbeat if he had haste. That second ability would be ridiculous for cheesing stalled-out games where the deck got to overdraw and overramp but never quite closed out. The fact the copying costs two mana may lead to some clunky game states, but it is attack trigger friendly and not quite as aggressively telegraphed as Bramble Sovereign was. Plus if the post-Ghired turn is used to durdle for value, the odds of having seven mana for a cheap piece of beef into a copy go up. The sorcery clause on the ability feels a bit mean. The guy is a sensible include, and might chew out one of the lower tier copiers.
• Mirror-Style Master's floor is pathetic - a six-drop copier that does not grant an attack trigger, and then has to venture into combat to confer the benefit again. Things start to get cool as you consider other possible layers of what may be going on. Kalonian Hydras auto-copy themselves. The handful of equipment in the list (Blade of Selves and Lightning Greaves) count as modifications. Whipping this out after some Vigor-mediated counters appear, copying a bunch of stuff. A cute synergy with Tribute to the World Tree, but the affected creatures would be tiny. Heck, backup itself works quite nicely with being copied, as the token can deposit the ability somewhere else and get extra copies of the effect. This is kind of balanced out in this particular case as the ability is an attack trigger, not yielding immediate payoff from doing a Ghired populate of the Master token. There are a ton of ways to reap further benefit and the card is a riot. If I move away from attack trigger beef, this thing is going in immediately.
• Nesting Dovehawk reminds us of "gains" versus "has". You need to have the "has" wording of token creation for the freshly populated copy to be able to go into combat, a criteria that only Kiki, Mirage Phalanx and Twinflame fulfil. Only about half the copiers working properly with this is not great. To compensate, getting a copy of the Dovehawk leads to a sluggish exponential expansion akin to Ghired rocking Helm of the Host in the days of yore. Looking at this card reminds me to cough up for a Mondrak
• Given the slightly superior copy response of backup, I was hoping for some cool tech. Master is the coolest tech by a landslide, but Conclave Sledge-Captain is kind of amusing on paper. Stack all the backups on a single Rhino, watch it get silly with the Captain copied. However, this is quite easy to block out of relevance, and not particularly quick/efficient. Emergent Woodwurm is cute and offers nice dig depth, but feels a bit excessive at seven mana.
• Ghalta and Mavren are sublimely winmore, costing seven mana and practically boiling down to an extra Ghired trigger. The card reads very scary though, what with the seven mana 12/12 trampler with versatile upside.

In summary, more stuff joins Mondrak and the prior include musings. It's funny how redundancy creep has led to situations where I'm stuck wondering whether I want more token doublers and Elemental Bonds.

[Naota481]

Is the cut for mondrak determined iteration? 2cmc is great for curving but the ceiling is higher on mondrak no?

[yeti1069]

Pathlighter is probably better for conferring the benefit the turn it enters later in the game, rather than needing to attack, yeah.

Definitely want to get myself a copy of Concealment.

Invasion of Ikoria looks ok, but it's pulling probably 8-16 damage away from someone's face to knock it out, and then "super-trample" I'm always on the fence about. On the one hand, it gets damage through, but on the other, blockers get to jump in the way with impunity they might not have otherwise. If it's helping you on a lethal swing it's an upgrade, but otherwise it's often not. Now, it being a MAY ability is interesting, but I just don't know if I want to functionally give an opponent that much bonus life for the effect. Proud Wildbonder has existed for a while, and I haven't seen anyone playing or raving about it. Attaching it to a battlefield tutor ups the value for sure, but as you noted, the tutor comes with some restrictions. Personally, I think those restrictions are less significant here than those on GSZ (there are more valuable non-green creatures in the deck than there are non-human). On the whole, I'm pretty lackluster on Sieges. I'll have to see them in real play, but I feel myself bristling at the play pattern they call for.

The backside of Gobakhan is pretty good, but the front looks rather pointless for us/in commander.

Tribute looks great! I just don't know if I can consistently enough get to on turn 3 to include it, and then the list of creatures I care about getting the counters here is pretty small. Buffing Ghired is great. Buffing some of the utility creatures is ok. Helps them be a little more relevant after doing their thing.

Orthion looks decent. Mana cost, sorcery speed, and a tap...I think I would prefer Bramble most of the time, and I cut that because I so rarely had the 2 mana to activate it. The 9 mana ability here is awesome, but I don't often get to that level of mana here. Still, as a secondary upgrade ability, I could see it helping to tip this into playability.

Mirror-Style looks pretty bad without some adjustments to the deck to get more modified pieces in here. 6 mana is a lot without having a field of already modified bodies, especially for a 3/3. If you're less focused on attack triggers (as you say), I'd rather this as slightly higher than Mirage Phalanx--same CMC, has a lower P/T, but buffs the creature you want to copy +1/+1, and itself is slightly more valuable to copy--populate from Ghired is underwhelming in either case, but I'd rather give +1/+1 to a real attacker than have my copier swinging as a 4/4 instead of a 3/3. Both are basically vanilla creatures at that point otherwise.

Nesting Dovehawk looks VERY strong to me. It not giving the populated token haste is not good, but it can become a significant threat in its own right, and has evasion. It's not on the order of some of the big beef in terms of threat level scaling, but I can see it growing to 6/6 flyer rather quickly. Drop turn 4. Drop Ghired turn 5 (3/3), go to combat (4/4). Next turn, combat (5/5), Ghired trigger (6/6). It grows by +2/+2 per turn with just Ghired, but can go faster with other token makers. Also, it looks like a pretty solid copy target itself. Copies will beget more copies, and make all of them bigger. I think if you have a couple sources of mass haste this looks good.

I think Sledge-Captain, Woodwurm, and Ghalta are all too expensive for their impact. Woodwurm looked the most interesting to me, but the permanent coming in on attacking means we miss the window for a lot of our pieces to be relevant.

[EonAon]

Tribute is good, but I dont know what deck it will fit into. It certainly wont fit well into a tri color deck. Elemental Bond is much better to realistically hit more often than tribute would. Considering the testing Rumpy so far has done the card cant cast at 20% of the time, which even with pretty much all upside its tough to consider. Heck I'm not even certain it will work well in my Trostani deck.

Nesting Dovehawk is something that really is the best out of ALL the populate and should really work well in Ghired since out of all the other populate cards its the only one that is useful at time of cast rather than locked behind a mana activation cost or a part of the next turn or just has excessive mana costs attached for minor to little gains. The fact that it buffs itself of the tokens created it itself creates or the tokes that your creating from other sources is great even if its own token isnt usable till the next turn

[yeti1069]

Couple quick notes from a game just now.

Went turn 4 Ghired (a little ramp), turn 6 Parallel Lives and Dockside Extortionist to make 10 treasures! That let me dump Ogre Battledriver and Ohran after combat (drew into them on attacks). Got wheeled into a Craterhoof Behemoth. Will note that there isn't another creature available that would have allowed me to knock out 2 of 3 players and put the last at 2 life. The goat would have, at best, given the team +6/+6 with my hand. Crater was +8/+8 along with 2 more power.

Dockside is some explosive mana generation that can be uniquely abused here along 2 axes: we can copy it (repeatedly if needed), and we have token doublers that can get more out of it.

[BasketChase]

How are we feeling about Arni Metalbrow? I think he'd be an undercosted Kodama of the East Tree, or even a straight upgrade to Sneak Attack in this kind of deck with the unique synergy this kind of effect has with our copied and populated creatures also copying the cmc of our copy targets. Also synergizes extremely well with the ETB utility of the new backup creatures. Also worth noting he doesn't have Kodama's stipulation of "if it wasn't put on the the battlefield with this ability" so you could drop a 5 drop off a 6 drop attacking and use his ability again off the 5 drop to sneak attack in a Mondrak, Glory Dominus or Iroas, God of Victory before Ghired triggers or blocks are declared.

[Naota481]

Githzerai Monk I was just made aware of this card and thought id throw it here for the discourse, i know your subjugator angel was cut long ago, but maybe its flashier cheaper cousin does work?

also +1 on nesting dovehawk, a cloned dovehawk does work, its a chain reaction of triggered ability goodness

[yeti1069]

Githzerai Monk I was just made aware of this card and thought id throw it here for the discourse, i know your subjugator angel was cut long ago, but maybe its flashier cheaper cousin does work?

also +1 on nesting dovehawk, a cloned dovehawk does work, its a chain reaction of triggered ability goodness

<==Schmendrick from Prosper discord.

[Rumpy5897]

Haven't piped up for a while as I'm still gestating the standard stuff. At one point I had the wild thought of switching the deck over to a 5-colour pile, as when a really good beefslab plus copier combination aligns it kinda feels like little else that happened before mattered. However, the number of pure GG when copied beefslabs is quite low, and if I was doing a hyper high impact copy pile I may as well just lean into Kiki infinites or whatever. It would be kinda neat to have Necropolis Regent, though it would be interesting to see if it would even survive in the current form of the list.

So there's a new set spoiled, and the highlight card is Nahiri's Resolve for the Rhino-centric build. Keep Ghired stashed away from harm and get an extra blink on him. Samut, Vizier of Naktamun is a narrow spin on Elemental Bond. Arni Metalbrow may be more of a thing in a goodstuffy deck than it is here - the density of attack triggers and bespoke copiers does not interact well with what this has to offer.

Some musings, mostly on points raised:

• I somehow missed Neyali, Suns' Vanguard a couple sets back. It's a pretty good combination of extra kick to copied creatures, along with some card advantage. A shoe-in in the Rhino build, and honestly may well be worth a slot in my take as well (though I am a bit tentative of the main two timing of the casts, which will not be perfect with unearthed copiers). Yet I didn't even mention it in the ONE note. Smooth
• Invasion of Ikoria // Zilortha, Apex of Ikoria's backside does not really matter. The vast majority of the card's appeal is the tutoring. I'm considering if I should carve out a slot, maybe take out an underperforming copier. The fact it just reaches Kiki is not that bad, right? But then there's the question of the two mana overhead, presented differently but just as pertinent in sequencing. Yet I somehow pull off Finale of Devastation and Chord of Calling and don't mind, so hell knows.
• Determined Iteration is an insightful Mondrak cut replacement suggestion and becomes the pencilled in option, if proportions are to be maintained.
• Once upon a time, I ran Savage Ventmaw in the deck. An insightful builder I'd talk my lists over with opined that there's no need for me to do so - "what will you even do with all this mana?" He was not wrong, and with time the play pattern of the deck further coagulated in a form where a beatstick comes out one turn and the next it gets copied and blasts in for a lot. It would take a lot of mana, along with haste, to reliably accelerate that by a turn. That's quite a lot of moving pieces. There have been a number of Dockside Extortionist scenarios in the thread by now, and notice how they're all quite a bit more generalist than my Angel of Destiny and what have you
• I took out Subjugator Angel as it was not sublimely impactful for its mana cost. Githzerai Monk is a superior version of this effect (thankfully I did not miss pointing this out during CLB discussion), though there's also the consideration of going even further back to roots and running Naya Charm instead. Maybe a single well-placed tapdown would be sufficient?
• I was going to make a pros/cons table for the various weaker copiers, along with Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink. I did about 20 goldfishes to test him out, and he worked well in about half of those cases - it sometimes takes a while to find a decent beefslab. And he's dismal as a topdeck into a board awaiting a copier, a situation I was not testing. Any time I drew one of the other copiers I was usually incentivised to go for them instead, which is not a good look. I'm sure something else will come along eventually, they seem to be exploring this space regularly.
• It's interesting that pretty much everyone is singing in unison that Nesting Dovehawk is great. My modularity maintenance sensibilities remember all the prior fallen populates, and the fact that Determined Iteration has been described as "funky" in a prior update post. This is definitely superior to prior takes like Cat Car. I guess the Rhino barrage may be worth it as a setup play if nothing better comes along.

So in summary more pondering. I still feel some tension in the current considered swaps - Tribute to the World Tree is more respectful of the Rhinos than Greater Good, but then Stalwart Pathlighter doesn't quite preserve the herd. Plus now there are more peripheral options to consider. It doesn't help that the deck runs fine as is, especially when compared to the weaker lists I tend to focus on these days.

[yeti1069]

I'm trying Dovehawk, and am going to cut Determined Iteration soon. Dovehawk is a body, which means it can get copied itself for scaling benefits, and can become a threat in its own right. DI, while inexpensive, feels like it just doesn't do enough--copying a rhino is very okay, but unless I have token doublers on the field, or something to turn that into card draw, it just doesn't feel impactful enough. ND might go the same route, but on paper it looks stronger, even without giving the token haste in exchange for it sticking around past EOT.

[yeti1069]

Further defense of Dockside...

Played Dockside for 9 treasures (turn 6 or 7 I think).
Cast Twinflame targeting Harmonic Prodigy, Eternal Witness, and Dockside.
Got back Twinflame, Path to Exile, Eladamri's Call, and Return of the Wild Speaker (used this to.draw on t5).
Attacked with Ghired for 3 Populate triggers.
Then did the same the following turn.

Realizing now that I think I could have had an infinite combo there, actually. Twinflame for 2 targets is 5 mana, but Dockside was making 9. Get that back with Witness (2nd target). That nets 4 mana per iteration. So, could do infinite mana, then tutor out and play every creature in the deck. Guess I missed that...

[Rumpy5897]

This is probably the best argument for Dockside Extortionist yet. Both Eternal Witness and Twinflame/Cabaretti Confluence are not going anywhere, and this enables a pretty decent cheeser infinite. I haven't found myself crutching on Aurelia combos for game ending, so I can probably be trusted with this in the 99

Come to think of it, maybe I can find space for more of the rock-paper-scissors protection pieces. Skyhunter Strike Force could be argued to confer a similar benefit to Thunderfoot Baloth at a fraction of the mana cost. I finally got my act together and got a lot of the putative pieces, including Nesting Dovehawk. This will hopefully motivate me to get some testing in and see how stuff performs.

[yeti1069]

I'd forgotten about Skyhunter! Need to acquire that and find a spot for it.

The other upshot of Dockside is that it's the best mana-producer to make copies of. In the past I've occasionally copied Wood Elves, but Dockside provides significantly more value when copied, generally.

[EonAon]

I......dont like the lieutenant mechanic. Yes there are some very decent spells with the mechanic and things like background can be useful, anything that states A requires that B to be in play to gain an effect when you get past certain CC in commander seems iffy. Especially when your talking about trying to have in play both a 5cc commander and a rando singleton that isnt bad but not great either. That and I'd go backgrounds first since while this deck likes to copy creatures all creatures are a bit more fragile than enchantments.

Flaming Fist
Tavern Brawler
Inspiring Leader
These would be the ones I'd suggest and even then they wouldn't be something I'd press hard for before any of the technical bits you need to put in first.

[yeti1069]

I......dont like the lieutenant mechanic. Yes there are some very decent spells with the mechanic and things like background can be useful, anything that states A requires that B to be in play to gain an effect when you get past certain CC in commander seems iffy. Especially when your talking about trying to have in play both a 5cc commander and a rando singleton that isnt bad but not great either. That and I'd go backgrounds first since while this deck likes to copy creatures all creatures are a bit more fragile than enchantments.

Flaming Fist
Tavern Brawler
Inspiring Leader
These would be the ones I'd suggest and even then they wouldn't be something I'd press hard for before any of the technical bits you need to put in first.

Was this a reply to a specific post or card?

I feel like Ghired already gets targeted for removal fairly often, and these would just make it much more valuable/obvious to remove him. In addition, these are pretty small effects here. Buffing Ghired for combat can help keep him alive, but doesn't otherwise do much, since he's still a 2/5. Turning him into a 4/7 means he trades a little less often. Doublestrike probably doesn't help at all. If anything, Ghired having an easily to block/hard to kill body means you can often swing into someone and just bounce off their blocker and maintain some diplomacy with someone at the table.

Further, spending 1 card to buff only Ghired when the deck wants to be going wide with more threatening cards feels like it misses the mark on where to apply buffs.

Tavern Brawler can be psuedo-draw, but the deck has a number of reactive spells that we don't want to exile with this, and some more expensive threats we may not be able to cast or properly sequence with this.

Thunderfoot Baloth (I assume this is what you're referring to?) is a pretty substantial buff to the whole team, and is fantastic when copied. Compare this to any of the backgrounds and what you end up with is this encourages players to remove Thunderfoot, while the backgrounds encourage players to remove Ghired, and while enchantments are harder to remove than creatures, if we're copying, it's often more difficult to remove 2+ creatures than it is to remove 1 enchantment outside of a board wipe, and we run some protection for that.

[Rumpy5897]

The Rhino Conservation Update

Okay, I mulled on the recent stuff enough, time to do some swaps!

The Rhino Conservation Update

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Out:

1 Beastmaster Ascension

1 Blade of Selves

1 Greater Good

1 Iroas, God of Victory

In:

1 Mondrak, Glory Dominus

1 Nesting Dovehawk

1 Tribute to the World Tree

1 Worldly Tutor

Approximate Total Cost:

Originally the swap list was even longer, with Thunderfoot Baloth displaced by Skyhunter Strike Force and Vigor making way for Stalwart Pathlighter, but I got some games in, drew the cards, and they didn't spark the reaction I was hoping for. This led me to refine the purpose of a protection piece in the deck - it's meant to not just ensure Ghired's combat survival, but also help out whatever he's populating in. Otherwise what was the point of the attack? Both Skyhunter and Pathlighter do nothing to help with that, and while they may cost half of what the current cards do, they just don't get this particular, rather important, job done. Funnily enough, most of the time if a populate needs help to survive, it's a Rhino. But as I've discovered time and time again in the thread before, with a stubbornness akin to Rick figuring out he cares about Morty, Rhinos are important. The sole beatstick that doesn't care about them in some capacity is Kalonian Hydra, everything else is happy to have a little Rhino swarm to help them out. The update ends up pursuing that direction to an extent.

One of the swaps is a relatively straight 1 for 1. It's a pretty simple question really, would I rather have Elemental Bond or Greater Good? The former. Oh look they printed a new one, if somewhat aggressively costed with its GGG, so in it goes. Greater Good is a solid card, it goes deep and finds the pieces, but at the cost of Rhino presence, subsequently impacting performance as discussed. It's great in the exact moment you're getting wiped, and otherwise not so much. It's so good on paper I didn't even notice myself not using it until a friend pointed it out. I've been keeping tabs ever since and I have indeed been quite light on activations.

Nebulous cut wise, Beastmaster Ascension is a slow protection piece that can take two, sometimes three combats to rev up. Yeah, it's an enchantment, so it lives through creature wipes. But slow support effects have historically done poorly in the deck and this is ultimately no exception. Blade of Selves has gone from copier dream to comparable fluke as the focus unwittingly became attack triggers due to their sheer power. The fact it can't kickstart a standalone Dopehawk swarm was the nail in its coffin. Iroas is just getting mogged from all angles in the current list - Reconnaissance and Dolmen Gate are both cheaper, and Saryth comes with a package of other utility which is actually surprisingly nice and relevant. While I'm removing two pieces of protection and adding none, the existing options are quite easy to tutor if need be.

And one of the new includes is a tutor, something I was hoping to avoid but which I feel will help with consistency a bit. Worldly Tutor is a known good card, so to nobody's surprise it's good here. The single mana overhead makes it easy to sequence, even on the relevant turn. Bonus points for using it to get Rionya and ratcheting up the count for that along the way. Six tutors is a bit more than I'd have hoped to have here, but this is a very modular deck and Invasion of Ikoria got me thinking about the package, ultimately going for a classic rather than a hot new option. Mondrak is a four-cost token doubler, which are good. Nesting Dovehawk went in as a speculative wildcard include, an easy cut in the future if something more pertinent comes out, but immediately wormed its way into my heart. The card is just so damn fun to play with, so much more so than it reads. Tracking the counter mountains as this gets copied and slowly explodes into a variably sized bird swarm is a blast. Just making some extra Rhinos for no effort at all is kind of relevant, especially when later on Boomgoat comes out and approves of the fat bird. It could be argued that it's a Rhino plan card, and it kind of is (particularly given the fact it cares about "gains" versus "has" on copiers), but the secondary game plan of growing swarm once copied nudges it over the edge. Apparently the combination of the timing of the populate with the fact that this is a creature is the winning combination. Thanks for getting me to actually try Dopehawk out, it's a blast.

While I sometimes feel uncomfortable with how everything and the kitchen sink a bunch of new designs are, it's actually kind of fun in practice to experience the gameplay choices they offer. I tactically walked into a Blasphemous Act because I chose to make 6-power and 12-power Gruul Chungus tokens rather than a single big one. I actually had the opportunity to deploy Jaxis in her non-blitzed mode when rebuilding, and realised there's no such thing as a flawless copier. Kiki doesn't allow you to point at legends, which disables both extra Rhino generation off Ghired and Aurelia combo applications. Rionya has a very strict timing window when the copying happens, nonboing with haste off Lightning Greaves for the original creature. Jaxis is sorcery speed, as future Kiki-likes are likely to be. Twinflame and Cabaretti Confluence are one-shot. Mirage Phalanx got some new life breathed into him by being a rare case of "has" haste, which works well with Dopehawk, but remains restricted by the ties of soulbond in terms of flexibility. Flameshadow Conjuring is a bit awkward, messing with the Ghired-beef-copy-BAM dynamic, but responds to Enlightened Tutor and is reasonable with attack triggers. And as I was musing on this, the guy recurred Blasph Act and wiped me again, though this time as collateral damage in the face of Toski spiralling wildly out of control. I could have protected Mondrak by sacrificing Lightning Greaves in addition to the doomed Jaxis, but I didn't realise I could do that. And if I did, would I have gone for it? Decisions!

I had Determined Iteration pencilled in as the Mondrak cut for a while, following a good suggestion in the thread, but ultimately gave the card a reprieve. It has one job - provide extra copies of copied beef, acting as a token doubler in that specific instance. And it does that. And it costs little. So it stays. The near-cuts from this time (Thunderfoot Baloth, Vigor) are some of the weaker slots in the list currently, but the new cool kids at half the cost don't quite do what they offer. We'll see what the future holds.

[yeti1069]

Interesting decisions here.

Dolmen I have yet to slot in, and I've liked Iroas for its facets beyond combat protection: menace making combat more favorable/more lethal to the defending player, difficulty in removing an indestructible enchantment, occasionally turning into a beatstick, and how easy it is to tutor for (any creature tutor or enchantment tutor can get it). Half the cost is very attractive, however.

Mondrak I'd been thinking about including when I pulled one, but Osgir got it instead, since it allowed that deck to go to 0 enchantments, it actively wanting the sacrifice option occasionally, and it finding Anointed Procession gets removed a LOT, whereas here, with layers of doubling/other token production, Ghired often has backup to removed pieces, or dodges removal entirely as it may be seen as being irrelevant. At some point, Mondrak will come in here (whenever I get around to proxying).

I have to pay attention to how often I have available before Ghired for Tribute.

I'm basically always happy to see Thunderfoot. I've had plenty of games end favorably thanks to having multiple copies of that. Skyhunter looks like a cheaper version that loses the trample, but that's not terrible since most of the relevant stuff has it already anyway. Not providing the buffs on defense hurts a bit, but at a discount of 50% that may be a reasonable trade-off. Vigor is clunky, but I can't see it going out for Stalwart. Vigor is so much more than combat protection, and Stalwart doesn't help anything copied in combat.

Have you been running Invasion? Do you ever swing at it?

I cut Determined Iteration for the time being. I just felt like making one additional token that doesn't stick around meant it's not quite getting there, but that may have been unfair.

[yeti1069]

On a gameplay note, do you tend to focus down one player at a time, or spread the pain around?

I feel like the best strategy is to beat down the most likely impediment to our gameplan, then focus fire the next, and so on, but it makes for some feel bads at a lot of tables. Then there's also the issue of the focused player either becoming difficult to keep swinging at, or their gaining support from the other players.

[Rumpy5897]

Iroas did nothing wrong, mind you. He just gets outperformed by other options in the list. All the points you raise are valid, but I prefer Saryth at the same MV and the cheap stuff puts on a good enough emulation while sequencing easier.

I remember when Mondrak came out, I was contemplating what the correct density of cheap token doublers is. I think the deck can support the suite that I've got in place now. Attack trigger beef loves to enter combat en masse, all the way down to Rhinos liking existing in multiples. It will be fine. Along similar grounds, Determined Iteration acts as a token doubler in the critical moment of already having a copied piece of beef, which is relatively likely to result in faster win cheesing. It's narrow, but it's also super cheap

I'll admit my list has a very strong mana base with the fetches and fetchables, and it's possible other builds will have more issues paying for it. However, given the density of dual lands, you'd hope something sensible can be pieced together on a more realistic budget. Filters would probably help a lot, and I'd almost certainly be running them if I wasn't on the fetch plan.

I'm still in two minds about Skyhunter Strike Force. I left it out for now due to not protecting the new spawn, and it also helps that Thunderfoot Baloth is a big beefy body by himself. I should give the Skyhunter a try again at some point, I drew it while I was busy going off with Dopehawk and a tokenised Ghired. So Thunderfoot wouldn't have shone there either.

I have no interest in Invasion of Ikoria. It's inferior to all the tutor options in the list, and reminded me that Worldly Tutor is a thing

While it's usually objectively correct to beeline a single person, I have a memory of a game from around 2016. I was on Daxos, and an opponent ramped up super quickly and was threatening huge hydras. I figured I need to slow him down a bit, so I pointed a Skybind flicker at his huge hydra. In response, I got it flung at my face and that was that. The game then went on for over two hours as I awkwardly slunk around the room, waiting for them to finish. As a result, I tend to want to spare others a similar fate and try to spread the damage around reasonably. One could argue there are political benefits to this, but if you're a threat to someone they'll blow removal on you anyway.

[BasketChase]

The coolest thing about Dopehawk is the ability to populate your token copies without sending the token you want to stick around bumbling into combat. Really makes a world of difference in those rare moments when you want to copy an itty-bitty utility creature like Harmonic Prodigy or Eternal Witness. Goldfished into a very silly boardstate with Rionya, Fire Dancer, dopehawk, and prodigy that quickly snowballed into an absurd amount of triggers for Rionya and Ghired that wouldn't have otherwise been possible without our fine feathered friend letting the prodigy copies stay home from combat.

[yeti1069]

While it's usually objectively correct to beeline a single person, I have a memory of a game from around 2016. I was on Daxos, and an opponent ramped up super quickly and was threatening huge hydras. I figured I need to slow him down a bit, so I pointed a Skybind flicker at his huge hydra. In response, I got it flung at my face and that was that. The game then went on for over two hours as I awkwardly slunk around the room, waiting for them to finish. As a result, I tend to want to spare others a similar fate and try to spread the damage around reasonably. One could argue there are political benefits to this, but if you're a threat to someone they'll blow removal on you anyway.

Yup. I spread it around game after game, but I often get punished for it (read: lose). The price to pay for fun.

[Rumpy5897]

New set, surprising amount of considerations!

• Ghired is the second most desirable of my decks (after Daxos) to park The One Ring in. The incremental draw will be appreciated whenever this shows up, the crackback shield will be appreciated if deployed late. I'm not a huge fan of how stupidly versatile and powerful (in a non-bleeding-edge setting) this card is. One could make a comparison to Neyali, Suns' Vanguard, which offers extra oomph rather than a shield, and more awkward card advantage due to the main two timing.
• The set explored "go deep, find creature" draw options. I like it in green, feels more flavourful than straight draw. Horn of the Mark is turned on by Ghired and the pre-packaged Rhino, and costs a paltry two colourless mana to set down. The question becomes how does this creature dig compare to straight draw in practice. This sort of effect would probably be particularly nice with a tutor in hand, fishing for either a beefslab or a copier and then using the tutor to fill in the gap. I think I'd rather have Idol of Oblivion as non-creature cards are also nice, but this probably merits a playtest at least. Radagast the Brown is a cool spin on the "play creature, get rewarded" draw which feels more appropriate than a straight draw option like Guardian Project, but is unfit for this deck - Ghired's creature types shut down retrieving every single copier in the list.
• Minas Tirith risks coming in tapped too often early to be worth it, but is another in a line of two attacker rewards, like the Horn mentioned earlier. Or Chivalric Alliance, a card I forgot to mention in the MOM set review that feels visibly overshadowed by Idol of Oblivion. We'll see where these designs take us,
• Gilraen, Dúnedain Protector is another repeatable blink, and probably merits a slot in rhino.dec due to doubling as a versatile protection piece for Ghired. Slow blinks are a hell of an answer to removal.
• Reprieve is another option for a bit of stack interaction, but I prefer Tibalt's Trickery to it here. Could be a thing in a broad permission-heavy meta, where the other reactive spells in the list fail to deal with wipes or counters.
• Cavern-Hoard Dragon is a Dockside at home, and at least it punches the face.
• Rising of the Day is technically a global haste outlet, plus a minor Ghired pump.

Speaking of global haste outlets actually, pokken mentioned Crashing Drawbridge during a chat, and for a moment I was completely smitten with the idea of the card in here. I got caught up in a rock-paper-scissors between Lightning Greaves, Fires of Yavimaya and Ogre Battledriver as haste sources, with the inspiration being Dopehawk's populate, and the Drawbridge seemed like a super elegant solution that brought the laser to the party. Mass haste, two colourless mana, the summoning sickness can be survived, and the lack of Greaves shroud actually has minor perks too. But then I realised that another part of the Greaves' charm is that they live through creature wipes, allowing for a quicker redeployment of stuff. Drawbridge perishes in said wipe. Bummer, the Greaves remain.

Ghired actually pulled a new record fast stupid the other day. Turn one Sol Ring into Lightning Greaves. Turn two Dopehawk, peck someone. Turn three Kalonian Hydra, peck the table some more. Turn four Twinflame which would have been even more ridiculous if the Greaves weren't blocking the Dopehawk from being copied as well, magical "has" wording means the Dopehawk populate token also comes with haste, blast the table with three hydras (two 32/32s and a 64/64), along with an 18/18 Dopehawk for good measure. I scooped out to an irate silence from the rest of the group and let them continue with their game I think this illustrates the power of the current direction pretty well, with Ghired as a support piece building up a Rhino swarm for card advantage and bonus attackers to help the beefslabs in most scenarios. A turn three win is definitely possible, but the deck falls just a bit short of a theoretical turn two god hand. Still, it's an interesting testament to how far the deck has come from its origins.

[Rumpy5897]

LTR Change

If in doubt, goldfish it.

LTR Change

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Out:

1 Tribute to the World Tree

In:

1 The One Ring

Approximate Total Cost:

Ghired is cool with trickle draw. The One Ring provides a steady stream of hands-off trickle draw, plus the aforementioned crackback shield. Elemental Bonds have always been welcome here, and this is like that but you don't even have to work for it and there's extra upside somehow. The ease with which this card slots into a disturbing percentage of decks, coupled with its cross-format presence and price tag, would not have me surprised if it ends up banned.

Tribute to the World Tree becomes one of the shortest lived cards in the deck, despite not having done anything wrong. The tall draw variants in the deck allow looking at more cards at a time, which is good at sculpting lines of play. I acknowledge the irony of mentioning this after cutting Greater Good to make room for Tribute, but as argued before Greater Good actually actively chews through the Rhinos for this benefit, which has its own problems. Life's Legacy is cheaper mana wise and actually puts us a full four cards up, so it has that going for it. Ultimately Elemental Bonds are the least good of the draw in terms of rate of return on options, and Tribute is the least good Elemental Bond because of the harsh casting cost. While rarely a problem in practice, the other ones are more flexible. If I decide to shuffle things around, it's good to know that I have a Bond variant ready to go whenever. Plus having the list in a spot where Bonds are the worst draw in it is a really good spot.

I also tested Horn of the Mark, and much to my surprise it wasn't even close at all. I guess I can't cheat the fact that Ghired is a modular deck with 23 creatures in the 99. I had a nontrivial fraction of misses, and even in the event of a hit I was rarely actually happy. Turns out that Elemental Bond drawing you into your next land drop without you explicitly asking it to is quite nice. I packed it in when I had to put a non-creature copier to the bottom while fishing for something to multiply Kalonian Hydra.

[MrWhite549]

Have you ever thought about adding Cream of the Crop I think it's a better Horn of the Mark. I run it in my Ghired, Conclave Exile deck. You can really start digging with the token doublers out.

[Naota481]

Doors of Durin (adding to the discourse)