Oops all rules nightmares (Gitrog Primer)

Commander / EDH* BG (Golgari) Combo Competitive

ChaoticShadows42

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bazaar of Baghdad HP
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Cabal Pit
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x City of Traitors
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dakmor Salvage
• 1x Emergence Zone
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 2x Forest
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Lake of the Dead
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Artifact (8)

• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Sol Ring

Creature (18)

• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Elvish Spirit Guide
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Golgari Grave-Troll
• 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Noose Constrictor
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Putrid Imp
• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x Riftsweeper
• 1x Sylvan Safekeeper
• 1x Wall of Roots

Sorcery (13)

• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Duress
• 1x Finale of Devastation
• 1x Gaea's Blessing
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Praetor's Grasp
• 1x Sylvan Scrying
• 1x Sylvan Tutor
• 1x Thoughtseize
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Commander (1)

Instant (17)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Autumn's Veil
• 1x Cabal Ritual
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Culling the Weak
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Force of Vigor
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Rain of Filth
• 1x Summoner's Pact
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Veil of Summer
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Exploration
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Oblivion Crown
• 1x Squandered Resources
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Wild Growth

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Why Play The Gitrog Monster

This is a deck which has been in development for a while and many people have added their input. The reason you would want to play this deck are because you enjoy mildly convoluted combos, and flirting with the rules of the game. many times you will be using specific interactions with rules to further your game plan. keeping this in mind you will need to do a large amount of research before playing this deck.

You will not enjoy this deck if you want to have clear cut routes to victory, and if you don't enjoy being focused down in any given table. With all that in mind, lets get started.

Basic Wincon

What we are trying to do once we have the boardstate of the gitog monster, a discard outlet, and Dakmor Salvage in our hand, we will use Dakmor Salvage, and the discard outlet to dredge through our entire deck, slowly triggering The Gitrog Monster as we go, creating draw trigers. the we hit a shuffle effect and keep going after we shuffle to get enough draw triggers to draw the deck. then you use Dark Ritual to make infinite black, and crop totate a land that taps for 2 green to get infinite green, then use Sunscorched Desert and crop rotation to kill. If the pod you are in will accept this and concede, then congratulations, you just won. but if they wont then you have to get dirty and actually kill them. This is where things get fun.

How to kill Them (the basic way)

Drawing your Deck

Once you have Dakmor Salvage in hand, and The Gitrog Monster on the field with a discard outlet, like Putrid Imp, start by looping Dakmor Salvage by discarding it to the outlet you have on the field, which will create a trigger from The Gitrog Monster, which you replace with the Dakmor Salvage's dredge ability, returning it to your hand. The outcome of this basic loop is that you end up with 2 more cards in your graveyard. If one of them is a land card The Gitrog Monster will trigger again and leave you another draw trigger on the stack. leave this trigger where it is and keep doing this until you hit a shuffle effect, like Kozilek,Butcher of Truth. Then allow the effect to resolve before and draw effects. no the stack looks like a bunch of draws and all the cards shuffled into your library. repeat this process until you have enough draw triggers on the stack to draw the entire deck. Once this happens, allow the shuffle trigger to resolve one more time and then draw until you have no more cards in library. if you ended up making extra triggers, just discard Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and allow the shuffle trigger to resolve then draw him. keep doing this until the stack is empty.

Infinite Black Mana

Once you have the entire deck in your hand, you can start doing a loop with Dakmor Salvage, any land card, Dark Ritual, and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. First you discard the land, then you discard Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. this creates 2 triggers, one for a draw off of The Gitrog Monster, and one to shuffle in the graveyard for Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. you order the triggers so that the draw triger resolves last. You then allow the shuffle trigger to resolve, and then with the draw trigger on the stack, you discard and dredge Dakmor Salvage. This will turn over Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, and your land. You stack the triggers the same as the first time, draw on bottom, shuffle on top. allow the shuffle to resolve. Now discard and dredge Dakmor Salvage one more time and before the shuffle trigger resolves, cast dark ritual, then allow all three draw triggers you made before to resolve, drawing Dark Ritual, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, and the land you are looping with. the result of this first loop is to turn one black mana into some large number of your choosing.

Infinite Green Mana

Now that you have infinite black mana, discard Kozilek, Butcher of Truth to your discard outlet, and allow the shuffle triger to resolve. With this done you can exile Elvish Spirit Guide for one green mana and cast Crop Rotation sacrificing any of the lands you have in play. This should trigger The Gitrog Monster, and allow the triger to resolve and draw Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. Now with Crop Rotation on the stack, discard Kozilek, Butcher of Truth again and allow him to shuffle in. then discard Twilight Mire and draw Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and then discard him again, shuffling him and Twilight Mire into your library. at this point you allow Crop Rotation to resolve and put Twilight Mire into play. tap Twilight Mire filtering one black into two green. then start the loop again, but instead of sacrificing a random land to Crop Rotation, sacrifice Twilight Mire. then draw Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, discard him again to shuffle both cards in and then just allow Crop Rotation to resolve because we already have it in the deck to search for.

Killing People

Now that we have infinite black and green mana. we can do the same Crop Rotation loops we did before but replace Twilight Mire with Sunscorched Desert, using the damage enter the battle field trigger to kill all opponents.

Killing people if Kozilek Gets exiled

Sometimes people have removal for Kozilek, Butcher of Truth before you are comboing, or they decide to exile him when you are digging for Dakmor Salvage and you dont have any way to feasibly save him. Or you are playing against anaphensa, the formost and she exiles all the creatures from your deck. This is where the second shuffle effect i run comes into play.

Drawing the Deck

This part is reasonably similar, but instead of using both of your shuffle effects, you are only using geae's blessing. This makes you far less resilient to graveyard hate, but it can be done. keep milling untill you have alot of draw triggers on the stack. If the group you are playing with wont let you shortcut this then I'm sorry you are out of luck, because I'm Pretty sure this isn't tournament shortcut-able, but you can keep going because it is deterministic. just make as many draw triggers as your mind can handle and call it hopefully good enough. Once you have done that you get to draw your deck, then with all the other draw triggers on the stack, you have to do scary things. like kill The Gitrog Monster yourself. This is because i cant figure out how to loop without doing it.

Infinite life and black mana

First discard geae's blessing, then cast Noxious Revival paying 2 life for the cost, and put geae's blessing back on top of the library. then discard enough cards to allow threshold to trigger on Cabal Ritual. If Twilight Mire is not on the field, make sure it is one of these cards. this will allow you to cast Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual to turn B into BBBBBB. Using this mana cast Oblivion Crown on whatever target you want. then cast Nature's Claim targeting the Oblivion Crown. Now your mana pool has -G,BBBB and 2 life up. now cast crop rotation targeting a random land, or Twilight Mire , if it is on the field already. Then, with Crop Rotation on the stack. cast Entomb targeting geae's blessing. Allow the shuffle to resolve, and then allow Crop Rotation to resolve, bringing Twilight Mire onto the battle field, and tap it to turn B into GG. With all of this done, allow enough draw triggers to resolve to empty your library. This loops end state is BB and 2 life.

Infinite Green Mana

With this loop you can use your life as a resource, since you have enough to spare from the last loop. You basicly do the last loop without doing the Oblivion Crown and Nature's Claim shenanigans. this makes the loop output BBBB G and 2 life lost. but this will make infinite green mana for the final kill loop.

**Killing People (again)

Now that we have infinite green mana. we can loop Sunscorched Desert, instead of Twilight Mire this will take away the ability to make mana but we will just kill people with the etb so i don't think it matters.

Getting to The win

Not every game has the components to win in the opening hand, or tutors to simple get there. So here are some tips i can think of to help get there if you are getting stuck.

Tutor Targets

dredger and tutor

so since we have a 2 card wincon, we normally need 2 tutors to get there, or a tutor and one of the pieces already in hand. Some Simple things are if you have a dredger, a tutor and a land in hand with The Gitrog Monster on the field. using the tutor to go get the discard outler, and using the discard outlet to discard the dredger then the land to make a draw to replace with dredge. If you hit a land of the dredge, gitrog will trigger again, and you discard the dredger in response and keep going until you hit Dakmor Salvage or run out of draws and fissle. I dont know the exact math on the succes rate of this with different numbers of redraws, but it works often enough for me to include it. if you do know. please let me know so i can include it and give you credit.

One Tutor and ramp

there will be many hands you keep that will have a lot of ramp and only one tutor. in these hands, ad nauseum is your best friend. My only advice on this is to practice alot and find what you have to hit to win. dont just go until you have like three life. only go as far as you need to be able to win. Another tip is if you can cast a discard outlet after the ad nauseum. all of the lands you hit redraw for free. which can help if you couldnt quite dig deep enough for a win. as a note ,be careful as we do run a titan in the list so he hurts.

alternatively you can tutor for Dakmor Salvage and use the end step ad an impromptu discard outlet. if you have 1 black open, you can just combo as normal, after using the end step to find a Dark Ritual and an Oblivion Crown. note that in order for this to work you need to have 8 cards in hand so be careful on how many turns it will take to get back up after ramping to gitrog. This loop is also far more dangerous as it leaves your titan more vulnerable than the loops with an actual outlet. if you 1 green you have to do the end step loops until you can find a crop rotation, then get a black land and go from there. if you have no mana. i feel very bad for you because your win path is elvish spirit guide into the other wins. so you better have alot of time on your hands to non-deterministic tutor cards.

Long game with lots of stax

Some of these happen and it is best for the gitrog to change to a more grindy play style. this means that cards like Ramunap Excavator and Dark Confidant become worth tutoring for. Another card which is an incredible engine in this deck is Life from the Loam. this allows you to just jam advantage in ways most decks cant deal with. if it gets countered you can just bring it back. if you run out of lands gitrog will eat some and you can do it again.

Other Tips and Tricks

This is just a section i will continue to add to as i play and remember things

Date added	6 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 56 - 0 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.77
Tokens	Spirit 1/1 C