Isn't that 3 mana instant speed B removal that says sac a guy and gain life a non-premium card?

I've been trying to get these achievement hunting builds to be viable against real people and decided to go all in on Nemesis and Spiders:

0 (0): None

1 (4): 4x Elvish Pioneer

2 (8): 4x Elvish Visionary, 4x Satyr Wayfinder

3 (8): 4x Necromancer's Assisstant, 4x Cultivate

4 (0): None

5 (9): 1x Shadowborn Demon, 3x Rescue from the Underworld, 2x Arbor Colossus, 3x Spider Spawning

6+ (8): 2x Rune-Scarred Demon, 1x Griselbrand, 3x Nemesis of Mortals, 2x Pelakka Wurm

Lands: 8 Swamp, 15x Forest

Random notes:

- NO GUILDGATES. They are total nonbos with Elvish Pioneer and Cultivate. You don't even need black mana until turn 3 (if you need it at all) which is why I have it skewed so heavily. In this deck, Cultivate might as well read "get 2 Swamps". 23 was the sweetspot for me. Any higher and you gotta start removing threats/enablers, and any lower...well, we all know how wonderful getting land-cut is.

- No removal outside of Shadowborn (and a Monstrous Colossus for fliers) sadly. There's simply no room. The goal with a deck like this is to brute force your way to victory with an army of spiders or value-giants. This is a deck that WANTS to chump block with it's early drops (well, you want to save at least one dude if you have Rescue in hand). Pelakka also lets you recover from an early beating.

- There's also simply no room for stuff like Bloodghast and Vengevine, and even if there were I wouldn't want to run them. You WANT stuff in the grave unless you're Rescuing something huge. Ghasts can't even block and the 1-of Vine is pretty mediocre when compared to what the deck wants to be doing (making lots of spiders or big monsters)

- Treasured Find: It works in reverse, right? One man's treasure is another man's trash? It's just so incredibly clunky and inefficient AND putting stuff like that in a deck like this means you have to cut creatures (you're gonna cut Rescues, Cultivates, and Spawnings for this!?!?) which defeats the purpose of the shell

- I obviously used this build to do the Nemesis, Shadowborn, and 20 Creatures in your Grave achievements

Questions?

Here are my thoughts:

land - I don't know If I'll scew it that much, you still have necromancer's assistant as an early drop, and griselbrand that cost 4 blacks. I did get mana screwed sometimes, so I will probably go with 14 forests, 9 swamps, 1 guildgate, 4 cultivates, this deck needs a lot of lands to work with.
bloodghast - auto exclude - why do I need this creature in a non aggro deck that can't clear the path for it, if it is in your hand it needs 2 swamps to cast which is quite painful, actually...you have no reason to cast it anyway.
vengevine - at least it can block, and fill an hole in the curve (specially if you don't draw cultivate), it doesn't do much, and I can see removing it.
Reclamation sage - you have rune-scarred demon, treasured find, rescue from the underworld (that can use his ETB again and again) - I don't see a reason not to run it as 1-of to give you an option against enchantments and artifacts.
Treasured Find - the usual stuff it brings me is rescue from the underworld. cultivate when I'm land screwed. reclamation sage against enchantments and so on...It is ok, I might cut it to 1-of.
spider spawning - it is usually awesome, my line of thought is that when it is awesome, it will probably be in your graveyard, and you can cast it flashback or fetch it with treasured find, or you can bring it with rune-scarred demon. I guess it is too often awesome, so 3-of it is, I wouldn't add the 4th even if I could.
soul of zendikar - What is so mythic about this creature? paying 5 mana for a 3/3 beast is meh even if he didn't exile itself from the graveyard.
nemesis of mortals - even if, and it is a big if, I paid 4 forests for a 10/10 non trampler, it still doesn't do that much...it will be chumped all day long.
Shadowborn Demon - as your only removals, it might be the best card in here - just to be clear, you sacrifice your weenies if you don't already have 6 creatures in your graveyard, which is actually a benefit.
pelakka Wurm, Rune-Scarred demon - amazing with rescue from the underworld.


so my mix with mobius build will be:

[1v1] "Starter"
A library for the Golgari 2015 deck (Demon's Growth)
60 Cards. 36 nonlands (25 creatures, 11 spells). 24 Lands (9 14; 1 other).
Land
-- 1x Golgari Guildgate
cost  
-- 4x Elvish Pioneer
cost  
-- 4x Elvish Visionary
-- 4x Satyr Wayfinder
-- 1x Treasured Find
cost  
-- 4x Necromancer's Assistant
-- 1x Reclamation Sage
-- 4x Cultivate
cost  
-- 1x Shadowborn Demon
-- 3x Rescue from the underworld
-- 3x Spider Spawning
cost  
-- 1x Nemesis of Mortals
cost  
-- 3x Pelakka Wurm
-- 2x Rune-Scarred Demon
cost  
-- 1x Griselbrand

It's the first ability of Soul of Zendikar that makes it a Mythic Rare. Being able to repeatably drop 3/3 beast tokens can be a huge bonus. It may not be great in DotP, but it can really shine in a format like EDH.

Golgari is open

Mobius, you're my hero. I was just thinking this morning about picking colours based on what gets me the most achievements right off the bat. That's awesome that you are making an attempt.

Well, I didn't really start building it with the achievements specifically in mind, but as you can see it functions quite nicely in getting those three. Out of the 10 or so decks I've worked on so far, this is one of the three I feel good about taking out into the wild against other people, whether they have premiums or not. With the limited removal in the meta, this deck is a machine. I'd even be bold enough to say this could compete in the 2013 removal-fest meta.

You're not going to get that win with 20 creatures in the grave though without stalling on purpose. You'll win (I'd say 99.6% of the time or something) FAR before that.

I've only made one tweak to the original list I posted so far: -1 Forest, +1 Pelakka Wurm

22 is a tad greedy, sure, but Cultivate gets you to the magic 5 spot to start casting Rescues, Colossuses, and the front-end of Spider (and you can T2 a Cultivate off Pioneer)...and Wayfinder (and to a lesser degree, Visionary) get you through the deck faster for more lands.

I wouldn't fault anyone for sticking with the original 23-land build though.

Here's what my deck will probably look like by the end.

DECK: Dredge Midrange

4 x Dead Weight
4 x Satyr Wayfinder
2 x Treasured Find
4 x Liliana's Specter
4 x Necromancer’s Assistant
3 x Tribute to Hunger
4 x Gravedigger
2 x Graveborn Muse
1 x Vengevine
3 x Rescue from the Underworld
1 x Shadowborn Demon
2 x Genesis Hydra
1 x Soul of Zendikar

4 x Golgari Guildgate
13 x Swamp
8 x Forest


Still not sure I like Ulcerate, it fights a spot for dead weight. I can get Dead weight off the hydra, but it plays worse with Tribute to Hunger. Not sure how much the life loss will matter.

EDIT: Going with Dead Weight

Okay, this will/should be my last update for this color-combination.

0 (0): None

1 (4): 4x Elvish Pioneer

2 (8): 4x Satyr Wayfinder, 4x Elvish Visionary

3 (8): 4x Necromancer's Assisstant, 4x Cultivate

4 (0): None

5 (9): 1x Shadowborn Demon, 3x Rescue from the Underworld, 2x Arbor Colossus, 3x Spider Spawning

6+ (8): 2x Rune-Scarred Demon, 3x Nemesis of Mortals, 3x Pelakka Wurm

Lands (23): 15x Forest, 8x Swamp

- The big thing is to be disciplined with your mulligans. Obviously the dream is 3 Land, Pioneer, Cultivate. Barring that, anything with Visionaries or Wayfinders and 3 Land are good (I would be very wary of keeping a 2-lander)

- The Griseldad is out. Sometimes you have to man up and sacrifice a little power for consistency. He is extremely difficult to get out barring Rescue (which isn't the most reliable thing given the inherent randomness of self-mill...it's not Unburial Rites). Hard-casting your big stuff is pretty common, and now there are only 5 6+ drops (Nemesis doesn't count if you're doing it right).

- NO GUILDGATES. They are total nonbos with Elvish Pioneer and Cultivate. You don't even need black mana until turn 3 (if you need it at all) which is why I have it skewed so heavily.

- No removal outside of Shadowborn (and a Monstrous Colossus for fliers) sadly. There's simply no room. The goal with a deck like this is to brute force your way to victory with an army of spiders or value-giants. This is a deck that WANTS to chump block with it's early drops (well, you want to save at least one dude if you have Rescue in hand). Pelakka also lets you recover from an early beating.

- There's also simply no room for stuff like Bloodghast and Vengevine, and even if there were I wouldn't want to run them. You WANT stuff in the grave unless you're Rescuing something huge. Ghasts can't even block and the 1-of Vine is pretty mediocre when compared to what the deck wants to be doing (making lots of spiders or big monsters)

- We have 10 non-creature spells, 7 of those do nothing if they hit the grave. You may think Treasured Find "solves" this problem, but including it in here would mean adding another spell that does nothing if it hits the grave. Sorry, it is hardly worth the effort.

- If you're an achievement hunter, you can get the Angelbane, Why Did It Have to be Snakes?, Death from Above, Second Life, Spellstorm, Not Again, Grateful Dead, and Rampant Growth cheevos with this build

- I wouldn't add a single premium card to this build even if I had access to it (I'll get those on the Xbone). I thought about Dead Reckoning for about 7.2 seconds, but naaaah.

- Finally, if you think I'm full of it, one of the great things about 2015 is that you can build this, set the AI to 'Walker, and play against it to see it in action. If I left out/was unclear on any explanations feel free to ask questions, or watch me on Twitch next week when this drops for the Xbone.

cultivate turn 3 -> turn 4 treasured find and cultivate is actually probably going to matter in 3+ color decks. That being said I agree it's not needed in golgari.

I personally think that the huge ground non trampling forest consuming creatures are meh, specially in a weenies meta - they will be chumped all day long. Sure, arbor colossus can kill a flying creature, but does it worth 11 mana?

If you have the lands. If not, it does worth 5 mana.

It's worth 11 mana over 2 turns possibly. That being said, I won't ever touch it.

Not liking (potential) 2-mana 5/5s (or (potential) 4-total mana 10/10s) because they can be chumped is a ridiculous reason on-par with "dies to removal" arguments.

Arbor Colossus also holds off just about every flying creature in the game before it needs to kill them, and when it kills one you're left with a 9/9. I mean, before you do any of that you're paying 5 for a 6/6 with Reach.

Well, assuming I made a ramp deck in this color, I would run 18 large creatures. That would include

2 terra stomper
2 genesis hydra
3 pelakka wurm
griselbrand
shadowborn demon and
2 rune-scarred demon

first.

After that, assuming I would stay with two colors, I would run arbor colossus next in a golgari ramp deck. The issue is that I would just never make a golgari ramp deck. I would go jund.


In the graveyard deck, I wouldn't run arbor colossus.

And I can't think of another golgari deck I would consider before expansions.

Thus I would not run it ever.



That being said, you are probably right about it being worth it and this is just my personal preferences.

I like Mobius' deckbuild, but I'm thinking of making both a small creatures graveyard deck (with Spider Spawning, Nemesis of Mortals and the 'number of creatures' pump spell) and a big creatures graveyard deck (with ramp, Rescue from the Underworld and Treasured Find).

How does Golgari beat that Minotaur deck in the 2nd plane?

I had a huge amount of trouble against Avacyn at the end of Innastrad. I tried exploring Innastrad afterwards and got wiped by the first spider encounter. I think these fights are manageable eventually but honestly, that minotaur fight in the 2nd plane seems nuts with this deck. Any tips?

I would try and unlock more packs in Innistrad if you are having issues. That and if you plan on buying premiums maybe a couple premium packs to get something better in the deck might make a difference. Other than that I haven't actually been able to play past Avacyn (although she was tough for me using and/or ) doing what I could for free on iPad. Someone who has done this minotaur fight might have some strategies to help you out. Playing on a lower difficulty just to get you past this one fight might help too. Good luck!

Purchase Premium Boosters = Beat everything.

Just kidding, but the premi boosters do help, a lot!

I'm humiliated in clarifying that I AM playing on Mage difficulty at this point and am still getting rolled over.

That's a great suggestion about going back to Innistrad Explore Node. I'll do that. So far I can't beat the spiders but i'm sure I'll figure that one out easier than the Minotaurs. Thanks guys!