[Deck] Domain Zoo

[94teen]

Yixlid Jailor would be a better choice the Wretch imo. It's easier to cast, and doesn't need mana sunk into it to wreck important decks (Survival, Breakfast, Ichorid, Life of the Loam.decs... really it is probably arguable MD material if you don't rely on the Gy and are in a meta that does).

Honestly I could see it being a better easier to cast answer than Meddling Mage, really the only combo it doesn't answer well is Storm, but at 2cc Mage isn't a phenomenal answer either alot of the time.

Just an idea

I completely missed the Jailer because I searched for cards that removed things from the graveyard instead of just shutting it down. I think that this is my favorite answer, in theory. Only testing will show if it's fast enough though. We may, albeit grudgingly, have to play Leyline, but I much prefer Jailor because it's Leyline on a stick (essentially).

[Phantom]

@Phantom: When you run 20 lands, is a 4C manabase significantly less disruptable than a 5C one?

It has certainly been my finding in my many years of playing magic that the less colors you run, the less disruptable your manabase is. You might think that the drop from 5 to 4 is insignificant, but I have found differently (unless you're running all rainbow lands I suppose).

Running 20 lands, 10 of which are fetches will often leave you in the position of having 2 lands for your first few turns. When you are running 4 colors, this is no problem. When you are running 5, it is (or can be). Also, if you ramp up to four lands in the midgame, four colors can leave you immune to the single wasteland (by fetching say, 2 Taigas and 2 Tundras). Five color decks have to reach five exact duals to double up on every color and leave them immune to a Waste. With the amount of decks packing Waste and Stifle packages these days, I don't find these numbers to be insignificant.

Now I'm not arguing against THIS deck cutting to four colors solely on that hypothesis. Most of my reasoning came from the fact that I don't think five colors gives him that much more than four. I don't think highly of the domain cards, and five color zoo decks have never faired well in Legacy (to my knowledge).

[Kronicler]

While I don't have that much experience with this type of deck, there are a few things that seem apparent to me that I would like to throw into this discussion.

1) Duress seems realllly good in the format right now as gobos is on the decline. The (arguably) 3 best decks, Breakfast, Thresh, and Landstill all hate it. I would definately run 4.

2) Teeg is flippin rediculous and you should run 3 of him MD no matter what. He takes away your opponents FOWs, kills combo dead, stops humility, EE, Chalice, all things you hate to see.

3) Yixlid Jailer rapes a lot of the format right now too. Breakfast, Ichorid, any decks with loam (think some Landstill builds or 43land.dec), etc.

With these things in mind my list would look something like this:

20 Lands

4 Confidant
4 Kird Ape
3 Teeg
4 Fanatic
4 Goyf
3 Jailer

4 Bolt
4 Chain
4 Duress
6 Open Slots

While this version lacks some of the blistering speed of previous versions, it makes up for that with incredible utility and disruptive power. In the last few slots you can put 2 Seal of Fire and 2 Tarfire (the new Goblin Shock) if you want to pump Goyf a bit more, or you can add Jitte, Lightning Helix, perhaps more Discard in Cabal Therapy, etc. Lots of posibilities. Regardless though, you should rape Ichorid and probably have pretty positive matchups against Breakfast and Landstill. I'm not exactly sure bout the Thresh matchup but it looks pretty solid. Those facts alone really encourage development of this deck.

Kronicler

[Ewokslayer]

1) Duress seems realllly good in the format right now as gobos is on the decline. The (arguably) 3 best decks, Breakfast, Thresh, and Landstill all hate it. I would definately run 4.

Breakfast revolves around an entirely creature based combo. Why does it hate Duress?

[Kronicler]

Meh, that is true. I guess you can nab their tutors or draw but then can always just use that stuff in response.

That doesn't necessarily matter anymore though, because of a new card that is (supposedly) coming out of lorwyn:

"Neo Duress"
Sorcery
Target opponent reveals his or her hand. Choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life.

Now you can take Breakfast's combo pieces or Thresh's Goyfs or Gobos' gobos, etc! What an incredible card.

Kronicler

[94teen]

It has certainly been my finding in my many years of playing magic that the less colors you run, the less disruptable your manabase is. You might think that the drop from 5 to 4 is insignificant, but I have found differently (unless you're running all rainbow lands I suppose).

Running 20 lands, 10 of which are fetches will often leave you in the position of having 2 lands for your first few turns. When you are running 4 colors, this is no problem. When you are running 5, it is (or can be). Also, if you ramp up to four lands in the midgame, four colors can leave you immune to the single wasteland (by fetching say, 2 Taigas and 2 Tundras). Five color decks have to reach five exact duals to double up on every color and leave them immune to a Waste. With the amount of decks packing Waste and Stifle packages these days, I don't find these numbers to be insignificant.

Now I'm not arguing against THIS deck cutting to four colors solely on that hypothesis. Most of my reasoning came from the fact that I don't think five colors gives him that much more than four. I don't think highly of the domain cards, and five color zoo decks have never faired well in Legacy (to my knowledge).

I agree with you completely on this. However, because the metagame is so full of wasteland and stifle, the reaction is going to be to play more basics to prevent mana-screw. Because of this, fewer wastelands will get played, and this deck will be slightly more viable.

I can't say the same about stifle until storm combo dies down some. Because of that, I think the deck may want to tweak the number of fetches and duals to be less vulnerable to stifle.

Regardless, I recognize this as a purely metagame deck. Your build is definitely more stable in a general metagame, and I don't deny that domain cards make this deck much more prone to mana screw via wasteland and stifle. However, it'll take a little more than the mana base being vulnerable to wasteland in order to convince me this is inferior to the build you suggested.


Back on topic:

There's a lot of cards that I'd like to fit into the main/side, but don't really have the space to. Does anyone think that they can help balance the number of these cards in the main and sideboard?

Gaddock Teeg
Meddling Mage
Dark Confidant
Yixlid Jailer

All of these provide the deck with a little more to push it over the top, whether that be through disruption or pure card advantage. I think that Meddling Mage is definitely sideboard material because Gaddock Teeg is more potent, but that could just be because Gaddock requires less skill (Meddling Mage requires that you know the metagame, and that you can make an informed decision about what cards you don't want to see).

However, I think that a mixture of Gaddock Teeg and Yixlid Jailer should kill most combo decks, while Gaddock also provides more general hate against most combo and control (Fact or Fiction, Wrath, Moat, EtW, Tendrils, Belcher, etc). I like Confidant, but I'm not sure if it's powerful enough to merit space in the maindeck next to these cards. It's entirely possible that Confidant just isn't good enough, though I've been loving the card advantage it provides, it's not entirely necessary.

I'd like to hear some other opinions about these cards.

[from Cairo]

3 [Yixlid] Jailer + perhaps more Discard in Cabal Therapy

= weak combo.

You could board one of the two though and just SB accordingly. I really think that if there is the "neo-Duress" being printed, I would rather run that and Yixlid main and run regular Duress in the SB for added discard versus combo and control.

[94teen]

Alright, so...I did some testing with this list against threshold:

Lands
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta

1 Savannah
2 Taiga
1 Plateau
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Badlands
1 Bayou
1 Scrubland

Creatures (24)
4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Boros Swiftblade
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Meddling Mage
2 Dark Confidant

Spells (16)
4 Tribal Flames
4 Gaea's Might
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
1 Fireblast

Sideboard (15)
Undecided

Alright, this match seemed really split down the middle. If you get a fast enough start, you're golden. But if they get an early mongoose, you have a lot of trouble dealing with it. Goyf is difficult to deal with, because by the time you have enough burn to get rid of it, they've found more relevant threats, and so your only hope is to bolt it and then shoot it with a fanatic or some such before it gets to be too big.

Their counters don't really matter very much, but they can be frustrating. YOu have a lot of cards that they need to deal with, and sometimes you can just force them to give up so much card advantage and tempo from using their free counters that the last threat you manage to sneak through (usually a swiftblade for me) manages to finish them off.

A few things I noticed in this matchup: I might like a couple more one drops, just because I tended to get a lot of hands that would've been really, really good...if I'd had a one drop. You'll get lots of hands that have Meddling Mage, Tarmogoyf, Jitte, Lightning Bolt, 3 lands. In my mind, that'd be an amazing hand if you had a Fanatic or KApe to start things off. There's more than enough pressure to put the opponent on a short clock.

Another comment: I think we can lose one or two duals to add a basic land or two. This'll help stabilize the deck a little bit in case of wasteland. The extended version of this deck is usually primarily W/R or G/R, but this is mainly R with splashes for all your efficient beaters. You like to have lots of colors, but don't need them as much as other decks, as most of your 1 drops and business spells are primarily red. You do need other colors, but I'd be happy to fit a basic mountain in the deck.

Gaea's Might is really strong when you're fighting Tarmogoyfs, it's great as a burn spell, it's one of the strongest cards in your deck...sometimes... Other times it just sits in your hand, and you can't really find anything to do with it. It's really strong, but I'm not sure if it's a 4 of.

Similarly, Swiftblade is amazing..when he stays on the board. If he gets in one swing while wearing a Jitte, you've given yourself a really good chance of winning the game. However, it comes into play with a big target on its head. Maybe it's useful for drawing away burn and such, but when you play it you're just asking for a 2-for-1 when you try to give it a Jitte or a Gaea's Might.

I like Dark Confidant, but I'm not sure how well it fits into this shell. I'm thinking that the best thing to do might be to drop red and focus on G/B/U/W Fish of some sort like Phantom was saying.

This deck does have lots of explosive power, but if you don't manage to do something with it quickly, you fizzle out and get destroyed. Combo decks do what this tries to do, but do it better, methinks.

Any comments on this? I think that a 4 Color fish deck could easy be built, and be stronger than this because it can support FoW and discard as well as Aether Vial.

[Phantom]

Well, I'm glad you're coming around. The deck is good, it will just never be great in its current form.

I'm wondering now if 5 color zoo is possible with Vial, some rainbow lands, and maybe some Mox Diamonds. I'm not sure. I'll think about it though.

If you're going 4 colors, I can't imagine red being the right cut. Red gives Zoo some precious reach. You will lose every control matchup because they will stabilize at low life and you're toast. Also, Kird Ape and Mogg Fanatic are two of the best creatures at your disposal. I honestly think green and red are the two colors you shouldn't even think about cutting.

I'm surprised you found Confidant so sub par. You should win any game where he lives more than two turns. If you did though, it seems clear that you should drop black as that's all the black you were running. I wonder if Shadowmage Infiltrator would be too slow? He's nuts with a Jitte or just as a burn drawing machine.

I would really advise against FoW. There aren't enough quality blue cards for zoo to support it, so you would have to run cantrips and you would just end up with Thresh or Fish, god forbid.

I'm not sure how to feel about Vial. I hate eating up spots in an active deck with passive cards, and we don't really have much to do with the mana that we save (like counter things or a waste/port suite).

I'm thinking 3 Rancor and 3 Jitte is a nice pump package for one and two casting cost weenies. The Rancors allow your Goyfs, Watchwolfs, and others to deal with opposing Goyfs.

I'll take a shot at a no black, no red and 5 color build if they'll help you test (i'll leave the 20 lands and sideboard up to others):

WUGB Zoo

Creatures
4 Kird Ape
2 Skyshroud Elite
3 Isamaru
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Gaddock Teeg
3 Meddling Mage
3 Watchwolf

Spells
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix (could be swords if fatties are a problem)
3 Rancor
3 Jitte


WGUB Zoo
Creatures
4 Carnophage
4 Skyshroud Elite
3 Isamaru
4 Watchwolf
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Gaddock Teeg
4 Meddling Mage

Spells
4 Duress or Cabal Therapy
4 StP
3 Rancor
3 Jitte


5 Color Zoo

Creatures
4 Kird Ape
4 Skyshroud Elite
3 Isamaru
4 Watchwolf
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Gaddock Teeg
4 Dark Confidant

Spells
4 Bolt
4 Vial
3 Rancor
3 Jitte

[94teen]

See, we're still taking the deck different directions, even when we agree. I think that the deck needs to be a little slower, focusing more on disruption. More like Fish than zoo. The colors I feel most like could be dropped are white and green, but those give us Gaddock Teeg after rotation. Granted, we could just splash for him, but that brings up mana base issues again.

I think that black is strong because you get Therapy, Duress, the supposed neo-duress, and Hymn if you so choose. In addition, it gives you various beaters and great removal. For example, one of the keys to winning the thresh matchup as far as I could tell was 'Goyf advantage. If you could keep opposing 'Goyfs off the table, you could win before they stabilized. Smother is a great card in that respect, and while the 'Goyf craze is going on, I think it deserves sideboard space. Granted, black could easily be splashed in the sideboard where it's necessary because of the fetchland heavy manabase.

I do like both of your builds. They look pretty solid, and the only choices I'd really question are Skyshroud Elite and Jitte as a three of. two jittes has seemed like more than enough in my testing, and you'd be better served with a rancor or an armadillo cloak (probably rancor, but cloak does deserve a mention).

The five color build especially appeals to me the way you've built it. Getting rid of the reliance on domain lets you splash into the third and fourth colors (probably white and blue) less, because you can rely on vial a little more.

One card that I'm debating pretty heavily right now is Dimir Cutpurse. It seems like it'd be absolutely incredible if you could make it hit once or twice, but I'm not sure if it's worth the space. I do like creatures like Cutpurse and Shadowmage Infiltrator, but I think they would be better if you played the domain gimmick so you had ridiculous pump to help force them through.

So, with that said, I like the five color build quite a bit, and I think some variant of it could do really well. So...here's a quick attempt to doctor it up to suit my playstyle. This is a really rushed attempt so I can get back to work (stupid school work) but it could have a bit of potential. It's still a zoo deck, as I dont' want to get off topic by starting to talk about fish.

18/19 lands


4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
2 Isamaru
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
3 Gaddock Teeg
3 Watchwolf
1 Serra Avenger

4 Bolt
4 Vial
2 Jittes
2 Rancor
2 Smother
1 Lightning Helix

Sideboard:
3 Meddling Mage
3 Yixlid Jailor
1 Jitte
1 Smother
2 Lightning Helix
3 Cabal Therapy/Neo-Duress
2 Grim Lavamancer

So...some choices.

I feel a little more comfortable dropping to less than 20 lands because of Aether vial, and because this has a lower curve than previous incarnations I've attempted.

Skyshroud Elite relies too much on your opponent, and more often than not ends up being a vanilla 1/1 for too long before doing something relevant.

Smother gives you game against a lot of decks that you just wouldn't have otherwise. It kills 'Goyf, tog, Cephalid Illusionist, Piledriver, and all other manner of creatures that give you trouble. It's a good blanket answer to some of the best creatures in the format, and I think it deserves some maindeck space. If not, you board it out for Lightning Helix, and that's that.

IF you're playing Aether vial, there's almost no reason not to play the singleton Serra Avenger. It's terrible without vial, but I think it's good enough with vial to test running a singleton. If it's bad, it's bad, but it's worth a shot.

There's lots of good two drops in the board. I think those would typically come in for some combination of Avenger, Watchwolf, and Confidant. They aren't as quick of a clock, but they provide some much needed disruption against combo and control.


Lavamancer gives you much needed repeatable burn against decks that go to the long game, as well as repeatable removal against other aggro decks. It's not as fast a clock as Isamaru, but it's worth trying it out. It'll show up often enough to be useful, but typically won't show up when you don't need it. For matches where it's really good, there are additional copies in the board.

I like the creature base in this build. I feel like the only choice I would really question is the Avenger, but that's just for some testing.

The spells on the other hand...I really don't like Rancor all that much. I know that it's good, and I know that it doesn't cause card disadvantage, but...I just don't really like it. Testing may show that it's great, but I'm a little skeptical. I cut Jitte to 2 because it shows up often enough for me, but I still tend to draw multiple copies if I run three.