You're right; probably in my first ten-matches session I was lucky because now I've lost 4 matches in a row.
Doubling season finally is gone out but It was quite useless (probably is too situational ), so I want to remove it.

I'd like to substituite 2xDoubling season with: 2xTectonic Rift or 2xBolt of Kerasnos or 2xDemolish and remove 1xGenesis Hydra to make room for 1xVengevine.

Thanks for your Gruul deck, it's seems very solid and I'll give it a try fro sure.

Now I've balanced a lot try to focusing on few aspects; with this build I have a great results among different decks (16w/4l at now) with only a little trouble againts decks heavily based on lifegain mechanism.

Feed the beast
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It's incredible how few cards have litteraly trasformed the pace/efficiency of this deck.
The key adjustments are:

-from 2x to 4x of Titanic Growth that increases the tactical opportunities when on the battlefield are deployed cards like Kiln Field or Satyr Hoplite and grants a great "surprise factor" due to its instant property

-adding 1xVengevine and confirming 1xStormbreath Dragon: with their Haste, I can accelerate a lot the pressure on my opponent; therefore I've returned Venegevine from graveyard many times due to the high percentage of mana-cheap creatures in my deck

-adding a Wrecking Orge. Its bloodrush effect is astonishing in this deck, especially on a already pumped Kiln Fiend, and it' a tricky move complicated to foresee by the opponent

-adding 2xPortent Of Betrayal for 3 reasons: 1 - it triggers the Kiln Fiend Effect; 2 - It removes a opponent blocker, making room for my buffed Kiln Fiend's attack; 3 - It increases the overall damage that I can inflict to my opponent adding the power of the removed blocker and very often this a decisive/crucial step in the match

-mantaining 2xJade Mage; albeit it's out of theme, its ability is useful to obtain a body for a buff spell or to mantain the battlefield presence

The ideal match is:
1T - Satyr hoplite
2T - Kiln Fiend
3T - Advocate of the beast
4T - Marauding Maulhorn (or Primal Huntbeast)
5T - Enlarge on Kiln Fiend
6T - Portent of Betrayal + Titanic Growth on Kiln Fiend

Let's try this deck and let me know!

EDIT: after 35 games with this build --> 24W/11L

I've mucked around with the DLC trying to build something with Devour and Doubling Season in Jund or Naya, and hated the result. Finally, I've dropped the third color and went two color, and the deck finally worked. The idea is pretty simple: spawn a bunch of 1/1s, optionally drop the Season, devour, profit. Use the Hydra to look for the Season or Beastmaster Ascension or Ogre Battledriver (which comes into play before the Hydra does, so it will buttkick the Hydra towards the enemy the same turn, therefore it makes sense to cast Hydras before combat). Occasional sudden wins!

Savage Lands are there so you can pay the Resounding Thunder cycle cost, and it helped to win a couple of games. I think maybe put in a single Swamp that is fetchable by Cultivate? This needs more playtesting, as most games end without needing to cycle a Thunder.

I'm not sold on Viashino so I'd cut them to go to 24 land. Other than that, the deck looks pretty damn solid. A single basic swamp shouldn't hurt your mana too much, and it would be nice to have access to it, but I don't think it's essential.

I'm on a kick right now to create tribal decks. Mostly just for fun but I'd like to be competitive too. Any suggestions on improvement are welcome. I originally had Enlarge in here but I swapped in Hunter's Prowess because this build doesn't have any card draw in it and...no cats allowed.

Inb4 Nebula comes in and scolds you for not putting this in the Gruul thread.

[COMMENT REDACTED]

Yeah, sorry about that. Didn't realize where I was posting. Would a mod kindly move this to the Gruul thread. Thanks

Done and dusted. Have a good day.

I guess I'll be the first to post a post-expansion gruul list. Here's a manaramp deck featuring banefire and resounding thunder:



Here we have the only two really good removal spells in the entire cardpool: ground assault and anger; plus all the manaramping; plus all the best stuff to ramp into (genesis hydra above all) - in other words i think the deck is great and doesn't seem to need a third color (which could be easily added thanks to cultivate).

A few notes:

- I'm staying away from the whole elvish visionary / satyr wayfinder pile that these decks tend to play to fill the 2-drop slots. Instead I'm using the elvish pioneer to skip a 2 mana play entirely, hopefully playing a cultivate on turn 2 which allows me to play a 5-drop on turn 3. With 27 lands, 22 of which are basics, and 4 cultivates, the pioneer will ramp very consistently, although it is certainly a bad draw in the late game

- I splash black to cycle the resounding thunders, I really enjoy playing that card in my izzet counterburn deck and it fits perfectly here

- hunter's prowess is a crazy card draw spell that has a weakness against... less cards than you would imagine: vapor snag, voyage's end and reprisal - but in practice the opponent can't really afford to leave mana up for the whole game to play around a card of which I have only 2 copies. And keep in mind that in this deck I can cast it as early as turn 3 - in which case it will be targeting an elvish pioneer as a 5 mana draw 4

- I don't like darksteel ingot, since I went the elvish pioneer route and I need to have a lot of lands in the deck, adding the ingots on top of that seems like an excess of mana sources

- it may seem weird that I play nylea's disciple even though it looks like a worse card than grazing gladehart; but the only matchup where I really need the lifegain is goblins, and having a creature that survives shock seems valuable there

- it's possible that I should play terra stomper; I haven't played a lot against counterspell-based decks but it seems to me that the 2 genesis hydras and the kozilek should be enough

- warstorm surge is a hard to remove, non-creature win condition, much better than obelisk of alara in this deck. Dropping one with the genesis ability is particularly strong, since the hydra will enter the battlefield after the surge, triggering it (similarly, when you drop garruk's packleader you can immediately draw a card off it)

I don't think Surge is necessary, I'd rather see the other two Resounding Thunders in here. Other than that I'd say cut the Soul of Zendikar for the third Pelakka Wurm and cut one Banefire to get the third Packleader.

Looks pretty solid all around. I'm not a fan of the Pioneers myself, but if you like them then they should be fine.

I fear that without the surge I would be too weak to decks that are piles of vapor snags and arrests.
On the other hand I like the idea of adding packleaders and resounding thunders; I also agree that soul of zendikar is a bit weak, it's mostly in here for blocking fliers but maybe that's not really as necessary as I think.

Surge is nice in certain matchups but you don't need both copies. Cutting back to one is feasible because of your Genesis Hydras.

After playing the deck even more, I'll say that elvish pioneer is the real deal.

Exploration was available in the ramp deck last year, and I chose not to play it (like most people) for two main reasons: it needs to be paired with card drawing or you'll start missing land drops before you actually get to play your bombs (and that deck had only 1 harmonize), and you only had two copies which means that it was not worth warping the deck (for example, raising the land count) in the assumption that you'd have one in your opening hand.

But here we have the most powerful card drawing spell in the game (seriously, hunter's prowess is insane), and 4 copies of an "exploration" (admittedly single-use) that can also block!

With that in mind, I updated the list above with a few changes; most notably added two lands to get to 27, while the amount of card drawing has also increased with the third packleader and third resounding thunder.
I chopped the stormbreath dragon ( ), one banefire, one warstorm surge, and the soul of Zendikar.

Put the Dragon back in, there's no way the 27th land is better.

The 27th land has to stay, those elves need it to do their pioneering. The dragon is a nice manasink but it seemed to me that I was often using it just as a blocker, and at doing that it's worse than the other creatures i have.

Cutting Stormbreath for a land to make your Pioneers better just seems insane.

I appreciated and used your suggestions, as you may have noticed, but the effect that pioneers have on you land drops is something that requires a bit of playtesting to appreciate.

Playing a pioneer means that you'll run out of lands to play one turn earlier. This deck doesn't want to miss land drops, and for that purpose, 1 pioneer in hand = 1 less land in hand. Basically in that sense having 4 pioneers in the deck is equivalent to having 4 less lands.

Now I could replace the pioneers with visionaries and that would completely change the landcount math; or I could replace them with wayfinders and it would change it even more. I chose to play with pioneers because they do spectacular things, even though they make the deck a bit less consistent and lower the density of threats.

To be fair, I didn't say it was insane but rather that it seems insane.

Actually, you just spelled out the reason I don't like Pioneers at all; they put you down a card in hand and you risk missing land drops earlier potentially negating their initial usefulness. But I do concede that hitting five-drops on T3 is amazing so perhaps you shouldn't be cutting five-drops but rather something else for that land.

Banefire?

Gave this deck some time tonight. It's ridiculously fun and I've had some great success. Never played with Hydra before but it is clutch in this deck. Replaced the Viashinos with one Swamp and one Forest though.