Old Stick Fingers ramp? (Decklist Up)

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Dunadain
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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

So I was looking at Crypt of Agadeem today, it looks like a sweet card and I can't help but feel like it should be on Cabal Coffers level of power, but, in reality, it's not, and it's not even really close.

But I think you could make a dedicated ramp deck with Old Stickfingers around it:
  • Green gives you access to land tutors to grab Crypt of Agadeem and the copy lands (Vesuva and Thespian's Stage
  • Green gives you access to a bunch of untap land effects
  • Assuming you only run black creatures. Old stick fingers is a predictable way to get creatures in the yard
  • While a big dumb beatsick with no keywords isn't going to win any games, green has a bunch of cards like Greater Good, and Momentous Fall to cash in that big booty for more cards.
So yeah, put creatures in the yard, ramp like a madman and win with a big dumb X spell, kinda gimmicky, and I usually roll my eyes when someone plays Torment of Hailfire but I've subjected my playgroup to worse and it's more interesting to me than running only one creature and using Old Stickfingers as a bad entomb for some gross reanimation target.

I do worry about splash damage, most decks are running at least a little gravehate, and the two most popular options, Bojuka Bog and Scavenger Grounds are practically impossible to interact with, especially in golgari, so we'll just have to suffer if that happens.

My question for y'all is what should the actual creatures we run be? I've already decide to strictly run black creatures to make sure Old Stickfingers is consistent, but I seen three possible ways to take the actual creatures we are running.
  • Aristocrats: only run creatures that do something useful in the yard, like Tenacious Underdog, Clattering Augur, etc. I like this option because it turns Old Stickfingers into a pseudo draw X spell.
  • Reanimator sub theme; Run big creatures that are worth reanimating, I like this option because it turns Living Death into another wincon.
  • Just good creatures: Ignore the creatures that go to your graveyard until you draw something like Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt or Volrath's Stronghold. The least interesting option, but unlike the other two, it means you don't have to worry about drawing cards you'd rather get thrown in the yard.
A third option, of course is to run a mix of the three, but I think that would be a mistake, if you have a reanimator subtheme, and you mill a bunch of Reassembling Skeletons while you have a Reanimate in hand, your gonna feel real stupid.

I think I want the consistency of choosing only one of these options, but I'm not sure which. I'm currently leaning towards aristocrats. What do y'all think?
Last edited by Dunadain 1 year ago, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

I dunno man, I'd go all creatures + sol ring + mortal combat + primal surge. X spells don't have a whole lot of synergy with a creature dense strategy. Limiting yourself to only black creatures also seems unpleasant.

Another idea is to go heavy on unearth, disturb, and other self-recurring dudes and then use Crypt to power out a massive finishing move. So tactic one I guess.

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Post by Mookie » 1 year ago

Personally, I'd probably lean towards Living Death / reanimation shenanigans, with a subtheme of using Eternal Witness and similar cards for toolboxing. If you have a wide variety of creatures in your graveyard, then any recursion goes up in value and flexibility significantly. I don't hate the idea of running stuff like Reassembling Skeleton that works out of the graveyard, but I don't think Old Stickfingers provides enough support for an aristocrats strategy, so I'd lean towards recursive cards that are useful on their own (i.e. Tenacious Underdog over Nether Traitor).

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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

TheAmericanSpirit wrote:
1 year ago
I dunno man, I'd go all creatures + sol ring + mortal combat + primal surge. X spells don't have a whole lot of synergy with a creature dense strategy. Limiting yourself to only black creatures also seems unpleasant.
What do you mean? X spells are usually in creature dense strategies. Heck Genesis wave is pretty much exclusive to creature dense strategies.

Also, thing about Old Stickfingers is that you don't need to be super dense on creatures and just pray you mill them over, honestly I think you could get away with ~10 (that would be very aggressive though) in fact, you don't want to go too dense because the fewer creatures in your deck, the higher quality you're graveyard will be. So definite no on Primal Surge.

And yeah, I'm thinking cards like Rakshasa Debaser.

Also, mono black creatures isn't really a big deal, mono black decks run only black cards just fine (and we can run gold cards like Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. And are non-creature cards can be green.


But I forgot about Mortal Combat, that's a good one.
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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

Mookie wrote:
1 year ago
Personally, I'd probably lean towards Living Death / reanimation shenanigans, with a subtheme of using Eternal Witness and similar cards for toolboxing. If you have a wide variety of creatures in your graveyard, then any recursion goes up in value and flexibility significantly. I don't hate the idea of running stuff like Reassembling Skeleton that works out of the graveyard, but I don't think Old Stickfingers provides enough support for an aristocrats strategy, so I'd lean towards recursive cards that are useful on their own (i.e. Tenacious Underdog over Nether Traitor).
So I started being full aristocrats, and I'm starting to think you are right, especially because I found the cards Eerie Soultender and Soul of Innistrad.

I think there's a real deck with both directions.

Also, Eternal Witness is green, so in this deck I'd take Gloomshrieker, Acolyte of Affliction, Baloth Null, Golgari Findbroker, and/or Pharika's Mender instead, but it's the same idea.
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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

Alright, so I decided to go the aristocrats only theme, but I might try again with some more recursion options and some good creatures, missing out on Disciple of Bolas and Grist, the Hunger Tide hurts.

Here's the list I came up with:
Decklist

Commander (1)

Approximate Total Cost:

As you can see, the deck is actually pretty creature light. I mean, 22 is a lot of creatures, but for a creature centric deck it's on the lower end. But I think this is the way to go, if you have Crypt of Agadeem out with all 22 creatures in your yard, then I think you're doing fine, and since Old Stickfingers will always grab the same number of creatures there is no need to hit some critical density. At only 22 creatures, however, I'm pretty sure Mortal Combat would be a mistake, but I'll watch how many creatures actually do end up in the yard then I'll decide.

I especially want to call out Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, Stickfingers can mill him over, he can recur himself, then he can sacrifice Old Stickfingers to blast our opponents. I just really like the idea of having a recurring wincon that we can dig for with our commander. We might be running a little light on actual swamps and forests, but that can be changed later and we run a bunch of land tutors so I think it'll be fine.

Otherwise, I was impressed by how many options there were for recursive creatures, we've got spot removal in Polukranos, Unchained, and sort of in Pharika's Spawn.
We have board wipes in Elvish Dreadlord/Archfiend of Sorrows/Necroplasm.
We have card draw in Tenacious Underdog and Clattering Augur.
Several big booties between Death Tyrant, Ebondeath, Dracolich, Scourge of Nel Toth.
And we can tutor for any of these with Corpse Connoisseur.

Finally, Undead Gladiator is a neat little trick to discard creatures we don't want in our hand, like Filth, and replace them with a new card off the top.
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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

So I played three games and won 2 of them.

Game one I had a bunch of creatures in the 'yard and the dragon player meant we were all at low life totals, so Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord ate my commander and killed everyone.

Game 2 I actually managed to put every creature in my deck into my yard. Next turn I had Crypt of Agadeem, Vesuva, and Candelabra of Tawnos, so I made 60 something black mana, but I only had enough green to cast and activate Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord once which wouldn't have killed the table, so instead I escaped Woe Strider and then repeatedly played Tenacious Underdog to scry and draw digging deeper and deeper into my deck till I finally found Vampiric Tutor, I tutored Torment of Hailfire to the top of my deck, cast and sacked Tenacious Underdog one more time, and blasted the table.

Game 3 I just died to aggro dragons, lol, I didn't even get anything interesting started.

So yeah, pretty cool and the lines using Woe Strider and Tenacious Underdog were actually really fun. Sucks that any GY hate sends you to the Stone Age, so probably not resilient enough to keep my interest.

To be honest, while Crypt of Agadeem is at it's best here, Cabal Coffers is probably still a better plan, you still have game if you're yard gets yeeted, it becomes net positive much earlier (4 creatures in a GY is a harder ask than you might imagine), and while Crypt of Agadeem prbably has a higher ceiling, at that point, you should have plenty of mana. That would also mean you could play mono green creatures.
All cards are bad if you try hard enough.

Important decks: Ebondeath, Dracolich, Emiel, The Blessed, Phelddagriff
Other: Ruhan, Zask, Kellan, Liesa, Galadriel, Orca, Sauron, Thantis, Rukarumel, Sisay, Stickfingers, Safana, Thantis, Dihada

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