So, I was wrapping up the final touches to my article, on Green/Black Death Cloud in Extended, earlier this week. It was nearing midnight, and I was almost ready to ship to Craig. Before I did, I clicked onto the StarCityGames.com homepage to check out the new articles.
Hmm, what’s this by Marijn Lybaert?
…
Awkward. It seems Marijn is One Step Ahead this week.
Nevertheless, after a brief retooling of my article (having read Marijn’s take on the archetype), I believe that I have a few fresh things to say. While I agree with a lot of Marijn’s comments, I have a few tricks and tips of my own. The timing of the pieces was a definite bad beat, but these things happen, especially as the large events draw near.
Here’s my take on Green/Black Midrange in the current Extended metagame. With the Grand Prix only days away, you can bet there are plenty of people looking to build a deck that beats the big three: Elves, Faeries, and Zoo. I think that this build has that chance:
Creatures (11)
Lands (27)
Spells (22)
- 2 Death Cloud
- 4 Life from the Loam
- 3 Putrefy
- 3 Damnation
- 2 Slaughter Pact
- 4 Thoughtseize
- 3 Raven's Crime
- 1 Worm Harvest
Sideboard
With your plentiful removal and life gain, Zoo decks are usually an easy matchup. Elves is similarly weak to Damnation, in addition to Raven’s Crime and Darkblast. While Faeries is certainly the hardest matchup of the three, Choke and Darkblast make it very manageable. If they don’t have an answer to your Loam engine in their sideboard, you are favored overall.
Most of the Death Cloud lists are similar, but mine has a few things that set it apart. The Loam engine is the best part of the deck, although several players choose to play without it. Instead, they have things like Garruk, which are only good in certain matchups (and Marijn agrees). Loam gives you a real plan against Faeries, which is far more important to me than having Garruks against the mirror match, which is really about Loam anyway, not Death Cloud.
Without Garruk, a turbo Cloud isn’t often an option. Because of that, you want to draw Cloud less often. I like the Death Clouds, but I never feel as if you have to cast them to win the game. They are a very Cruel Ultimaum-esque card, in that they are supposed to win the game the turn you cast them, but sometimes you don’t have Loam, or killing your own lands sets you back too much and they recover faster than you do.
Gifts Ungiven seems like a natural inclusion to a Loam-based deck, but I believe that is wrong in the current environment. Gifts no longer ensures that you win the long game, as it once did with Genesis. Instead, you are forced to tutor up four spells and hope you have enough copies in your deck to ensure you get the right answer to the question your opposing is posing.
In addition to all that, Gifts is simply too slow. You cannot skip a turn early in this format. Against aggressive decks, you use Loam and the cycling lands when you have nothing else to do with your extra one or two mana, but rarely do you have a chance to cast Gifts. Honestly, I would rather play with Diabolic Tutor in this format than Gifts Ungiven.
Some would use Gifts to reduce the number of things they have to play, such as cutting down on the Raven’s Crime count, but why would you want to do that? In most matchups, I want access to Raven’s Crime as soon as possible, but not when it would cost me four mana to find it. Giftsing for your single copy of Life from the Loam, only to get it Vendilion Cliqued away, is a tragedy that should never occur. In this case, playing more copies of the card is actually beneficial.
Even Marijn only plays with two copies of Gifts Ungiven in his list, so it seems as if he agrees somewhat.
My choice of removal is fairly standard, although not nearly enough people play with Slaughter Pact. It’s a great trick in this format, as most people forget it exists. Why wouldn’t you Fatal Frenzy your Atog when your opponent is tapped out? Why wouldn’t you move in on Jitte?
Crime/Punishment and Engineered Explosives are both solid additions to Damnation, although they are used as spot removal too often for my taste. In the majority of cases, I would rather have Putrefy or Slaughter Pact. Not playing Damnation at all is ludicrous, as you need them against decks like Affinity, or for when Zoo draws different casting cost threats.
Max McCall (and Marijn) argued that Engineered Explosives is faster than Damnation, but that isn’t really the case if Zoo plays a one-drop and then a two-drop, as opposed to triple one-drops. No self-respecting player would make that play these days (unless they had nothing else of course), as Explosives is everywhere. If Zoo plays that two-drop, you are definitely going to want that Damnation. There are still decks like Affinity or AIR where you would rather have the old standby as well.
Kitchen Finks and Ravenous Baloths aren’t great beaters in this format, but they are necessary to beat Zoo and burn decks. You need good blockers that give you virtual card advantage, otherwise Zoo can make you Damnation away their threats one by one. They will most likely win that type of fight.
Tarmogoyf is a great blocker, but that is basically all he does. Baloth and Finks do that job much better, and Baloth won’t turn traitor in the face of a Sower (unless you let it, I suppose, but why would you?). You would much rather have utility guys in his spot.
The lack of Goyf also means a lack of two-drops, so Spell Snare is close to useless against you. As a Faeries player, I was siding all of them out if I had enough cards to bring in. I was also more than happy to see Death Cloud players with Goyfs in their decks.
Eternal Witness is a trap similar to Gifts Ungiven. She is effectively a situational tutor, but that is exactly what I don’t want in my deck. As I said earlier, the Loam engine eats up all your spare mana, so you don’t have any left over to be casting Regrowths. I would rather just have a real spell every single time, as the 2/1 body is largely irrelevant in this format.
I run 27 lands because I always want to cycle my lands, I want to be able to Crime my opponent without hindering my own development, and I even have some utility lands. Mutavault is especially good with Baloth. Ghost Quarter is mainly for Riptide Laboratory, but is also decent against opposing Mutavaults and great against Affinity. Treetop Village is a possibility, but I much prefer Mutavault instead.
Golgari Rot Farm is far too slow for this format, and rather than rely on it to gain us card advantage and ensure land drops, we have Life from the Loam, so we no longer need Karoos. I’ve seen some lists incorporate Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, mostly to help cast Raven’s Crime over and over, but Twilight Mire does that job much better, and also casts your double-Green animals.
I prefer to run Polluted Deltas as my Black fetchlands, as I can easily bluff that I am playing a Blue deck in the first few turns. There isn’t much merit to this, although I don’t see any reason to not run that setup. You could make arguments for splitting them because of Pithing Needle, but I think the misdirection is going to be more valuable on average.
I could see wanting some Chrome Moxes, although in practice they never really work out how you want them to. With a high land count, you don’t usually have any spells you want to throw away besides extra Raven’s Crimes. The acceleration isn’t completely necessary in this format, so I would advocate not running them yourself. However, if you need to see for yourself, I wouldn’t blame you.
Gavin Verhey ran 28 lands in his version, but that seems like overdoing it. Most lists run 26, but I wasn’t happy with 26 in the matches that I played, so I decided to add one.
Let’s have a look at the matchups…
Faeries
As I said earlier, your matchup against the Fae hinges on Life from the Loam. Remember to play around Vendilion Clique by dredging during your main phase with a cycle land, as they will never get priority. If you get your engine up and running while they don’t have significant pressure, you should be winning.
I found myself having to Crime their hand away before I dealt with their threats, as a couple of counterspells would put them over the top. This is kind of dangerous when they have an Ancestral Vision looming, as it will take too much time to Crime their hand away twice. At that point, you might just have to focus on killing their threats and hope they don’t have enough permission to stop you.
Post board, Darkblast is amazing, as they will have a very difficult time attempting to fight through it. Choke is your nail in the coffin. When I first started testing the matchup, it seemed as if Cloud was a huge favorite, as I always had Loam and Choke. I decided that I didn’t need Choke, but then I started losing. It turned out that Choke was the result of most of my wins, as otherwise they could still fight through my removal with Riptide Laboratory, Mutavault, and Glen Elendra Archmage, basically all the cards that require a hefty mana investment every turn.
Some other players run Persecute instead, but that doesn’t really solve the problem. Your first priority should be finding Loam (I even considered running some Shred Memories to emphasize how serious I am). Don’t be afraid to mulligan “do nothing” hands against Faeries, unless they have a decent amount of cyclers or disruption. Even if you mulligan to five cards, Loam will recoup those in no time.
After that, you are outdrawing them by a hefty margin while they are trying to beat you down. Your second priority should be finding a Darkblast to halt their offense. I tried cutting a Darkblast, but found that it was also integral to my success.
At this point, they should only be able to beat you with a full grip of counters, or a huge tempo advantage provided by Archmage or Umezawa’s Jitte. For this reason, I considered splashing some Ancient Grudges, but you need the Seals to fight Sulfuric Vortex, so I played the inferior Disenchant (for this matchup anyway).
+4 Darkblast, +3 Choke, +2 Extirpate, +1 Worm Harvest
-3 Damnation, -3 Ravenous Baloth, -4 Kitchen Finks
I only bring in two of the three Extirpates as they aren’t entirely necessary, but I definitely like not having to deal with any further Archmages. Extirpating anything else out of their deck isn’t vital to your success or anything, so I really only want to draw one, and only if I know they have Archmages.
The Baloths and Finks don’t block, and you don’t use them to actually kill your opponent in this matchup, as eventually the card advantage provided by Loam with run them over. At that point, you just Worm Harvest them out. I prefer to bring in a second copy when I’m siding out the animals so that I can find it in a sufficient amount of time.
If you are truly worried about Jitte, you can bring in a few Seals, either for Extirpates, Putrefys, or Slaughter Pacts.
All in all, a favorable matchup, but your game 1 isn’t great. If Darkblast wasn’t so narrow, you could fix help your game 1s by including some of them maindeck, but I don’t like them against the majority of the field. Play fast, play tight, and you will win more often than not.
For those Faerie players looking to beat Death Cloud, you should probably have a few copies of Relic of Progenitus in your sideboard. It seems like the best way to fight Loam, while also just cycling if nothing important is going on. I even used it to great effect against some Dredge decks.
Zoo
When I was playing Zoo, I found this matchup extremely difficult to win. However, they were playing cards like Garruk that were good against me but worse against the field. The Loam engine tends to slow down the Cloud deck as well. However, despite that, Zoo is still very favorable. You just have to draw the right part of your deck.
+1 Damnation
-1 Raven’s Crime
Thoughtseize is actually quite good here, as Zoo decks don’t have a lot of burn. A turn 1 Thoughtseize will take a key part of their mana curve, or a disruption tool they were planning on using against you. Either way, it can be a sick tempo play, and well worth the two life.
If they have a ton of Jittes, Oblivion Rings, and Scullers, you could bring in some Seals. If they have Dark Confidant or similarly small creatures, consider bringing in some Darkblasts, as Confidant will most likely be what they use to fight your mass removal. Either they try to bait out the Damnation with it, or sandbag it, hoping to use it to rebuild after you deal with their first wave. Either way, Darkblast takes the wind out of their sails. If you happen to hit the midgame unscathed, Darkblast and Loam will probably machine gun any non Goyf threat they play, so it might be worth a couple of slots.
Generally, Raven’s Crime is your weakest card against them, so you can cut the remainder of those, and then probably a Death Cloud or two if you are on the draw.
Overall, this is a favorable matchup, but not by much depending on what they have. Sulfuric Vortex, Tidehollow Sculler, Dark Confidant, and Thoughtseize are all very good against you.
Elves
You gotta love it when the best combo deck rolls over to a plethora of creature removal. Hopefully, you can Thoughtseize their hopes at comboing you out, while Damnation cleans up the rest. If they try to sandbag some threats, Crime their hand away before Wrathing.
+4 Darkblast, +1 Worm Harvest, +1 Damnation, +1 Extirpate
-3 Ravenous Baloth, -4 Kitchen Finks
Your creatures are terrible against them, as again, Loam is going to deliver the killing blow. I would rather have a single Extirpate to potentially cut off their shot of comboing you out rather than a beater.
You would probably wish you played against Elves every round.
Affinity
The robots are making a comeback, which is a great turn of events for Rock players. Damnation is incredible against their deck, as are the Seals in your sideboard.
+1 Damnation, +3 Seal of Primordium
-3 Raven’s Crime, -1 Death Cloud
You don’t have much time to be messing around with Raven’s Crime and Death Cloud can be awkward at times, so they get the axe. I almost never mind drawing a single Death Cloud, so one can stay in, although I could see an argument for keeping in a single Raven’s Crime instead.
Don’t get overconfident and keep bad hands, as that is about your only way to lose. Make sure your hand can stop a decent Affinity draw, and you should be fine.
Swans
It is too bad that this deck is on the decline due to Faeries’ dominance. Your deck is awesome against them. A lot of discard plus removal against a creature-based combo? Sign me up! Their deck is even less threatening than Elves, because they aren’t anywhere near as robust.
+3 Extirpate, +3 Choke, +1 Worm Harvest
-3 Damnation, -3 Ravenous Baloth, -1 Kitchen Finks
You could bring in Seals if you think they are still going to be on the Blood Moon plan game 2. It makes sense that they would be, as Moon could actually kold you if they get lucky enough, and it seems like they would rather have that out than not.
Note that Extirpate doesn’t do anything to stop the Swans combo, but is merely better than the random creatures, and could take out all their win conditions if they discard an excess combo piece to a Raven’s Crime.
Burn
This matchup hinges entirely on Sulfuric Vortex. Good burn decks should play four maindeck, as it is by far their best card, but thankfully some don’t. If they don’t draw an excess of Flames or Vortexes, your lifegain and Crimes should prevail, provided you can put them on a decent clock.
+3 Seal of Primordium, +4 Darkblast, +1 Worm Harvest
-3 Damnation, 3 Putrefy, -2 Slaughter Pact
Cloud stays in, despite dealing you damage, as it will cripple them beyond repair should you get enough time to cast it.
This matchup will most likely be a blowout one way or the other, depending on the other person’s draw, so hopefully you are able to mulligan into what you need.
All-In Red
Slaughter Pact is a tremendous help here, as an early Deus is one of your worst nightmares. If you expect a lot of this deck in your area, feel free to play another Pact or two, probably in place of Putrefys.
Just like against Burn, this matchup depends on the power of either player’s draw. In practice, I have beaten this deck far more often than I have lost to it, but it could certainly go either way if they drew better, or I drew worse.
+1 Damnation, +1 Worm Harvest
-2 Ravenous Baloth
The extra Damnation comes in to fight Empty the Warrens, while the Baloths get cut on account of being the worst card in the deck.
I think that Death Cloud is probably the fourth best deck in the format right now, and I expect it to represent at GP: LA. While I probably won’t be packing the Loams myself, don’t think that I didn’t heavily consider it.
Wish me luck!
GerryT