Garth one-eye, maybe? [brainstorming]
Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2021 3:00 pm
I'm always reticent to take on a 5c commander, but I do kinda like Garth One-Eye and, more importantly, he's not getting hugely overplayed on EDHrec compared to other commanders (chatterfang...*rolls eyes*). In fact he's all the way back in 7th place, which I wouldn't have expected considering the hype around him. He makes black lotuses, and he's just barely ahead of Zabaz, for crying out loud, and all the modular creatures suck except for ones named "arcbound ravager".
Anyway, the thing I like about Garth, having not played him, is that he kinda does everything. He can kill any artifact, enchantment, or nonblack creature. He draws and recurs cards. He makes beatsticks. He even ramps. What a fella.
So with all that in the CZ, what should the actual DECK do?
I don't think there's a lot of obvious synergies with the cards he casts - probably some gross time warp obnoxiousness could be done with regrowth, but that's not a direction I'm interested in going. For the most part I think the cards speak for themselves. It's more about filling in the gaps, and making sure Garth is a reliable engine for the things he can do.
-Garth protection. None of his spells save him from a simple Terminate, so anything to grant shroud/hexproof/indestructible, or anything to recur him, seems crucial to prevent him getting priced out. If we want to rely on him for the functions he provides, we have to provide that reliability.
-Garth enhancement. In a similar vein, being able to cast more than one spell a turn is also useful in ensuring Garth value flows. Bit of a drag if we sit on braingeyser value only to be forced to use a terror to block a combo and waste the other mana. So untaps are great, haste is great, and ways to blink him are great to reset his spells. Could also do spell copying, spell triggers, or dragon synergies, though I'm not sure it's worth it. Seems a bit win-more.
-Counterspells. This fits into protection as well, and lets us interact with things on the stack, plus an emergency answer when Garth is unavailable. Especially high utility with Garth doing his Nin, the Pain Artist impression to draw us tons of cards.
-Ramp. The earlier Garth comes down, the sooner we get value. Obviously he can provide some degree of future ramp past that point with lotuses, but he needs to be on the field first. Stuff like Kodama's Reach is obviously great in that respect to ramp to 5 cleanly.
-Wipes. Garth can kill single target stuff, but big boards are not his forte. Stuff like Duneblast seems especially effective, but even cards like Divine Reckoning could be great when he can pick off the remaining creatures if they're a problem.
-Well, except black creatures. We probably want some answers for black creatures just in case, and for nonblack creatures when Garth is offline.
Those are the main sorts of cards that come to mind for me. This seems like a fairly straightforward control deck that replaces draw and most of its targeted removal with ramp/protection/enhancement effects for Garth. Personally the part that seems like the most fun to me is the sweet EOT shivan dragons. I kinda want to get my hands on some of them to use as tokens - too bad the alpha ones are outrageously expensive.
Anyway, the thing I like about Garth, having not played him, is that he kinda does everything. He can kill any artifact, enchantment, or nonblack creature. He draws and recurs cards. He makes beatsticks. He even ramps. What a fella.
So with all that in the CZ, what should the actual DECK do?
I don't think there's a lot of obvious synergies with the cards he casts - probably some gross time warp obnoxiousness could be done with regrowth, but that's not a direction I'm interested in going. For the most part I think the cards speak for themselves. It's more about filling in the gaps, and making sure Garth is a reliable engine for the things he can do.
-Garth protection. None of his spells save him from a simple Terminate, so anything to grant shroud/hexproof/indestructible, or anything to recur him, seems crucial to prevent him getting priced out. If we want to rely on him for the functions he provides, we have to provide that reliability.
-Garth enhancement. In a similar vein, being able to cast more than one spell a turn is also useful in ensuring Garth value flows. Bit of a drag if we sit on braingeyser value only to be forced to use a terror to block a combo and waste the other mana. So untaps are great, haste is great, and ways to blink him are great to reset his spells. Could also do spell copying, spell triggers, or dragon synergies, though I'm not sure it's worth it. Seems a bit win-more.
-Counterspells. This fits into protection as well, and lets us interact with things on the stack, plus an emergency answer when Garth is unavailable. Especially high utility with Garth doing his Nin, the Pain Artist impression to draw us tons of cards.
-Ramp. The earlier Garth comes down, the sooner we get value. Obviously he can provide some degree of future ramp past that point with lotuses, but he needs to be on the field first. Stuff like Kodama's Reach is obviously great in that respect to ramp to 5 cleanly.
-Wipes. Garth can kill single target stuff, but big boards are not his forte. Stuff like Duneblast seems especially effective, but even cards like Divine Reckoning could be great when he can pick off the remaining creatures if they're a problem.
-Well, except black creatures. We probably want some answers for black creatures just in case, and for nonblack creatures when Garth is offline.
Those are the main sorts of cards that come to mind for me. This seems like a fairly straightforward control deck that replaces draw and most of its targeted removal with ramp/protection/enhancement effects for Garth. Personally the part that seems like the most fun to me is the sweet EOT shivan dragons. I kinda want to get my hands on some of them to use as tokens - too bad the alpha ones are outrageously expensive.