Flourishing Defenses deserves mention because of your 2 main combo creatures based on -1/-1 counters, even if the CMC might be too high.

One pretty good card in a Necrotic Ooze deck is Elvish Aberration . Yes, it has a high CMC but you're not going to be using it as a creature, just graveyard fodder. Forestcycle him asap so your Ooze can tap for some mana. (Also, Pili-Pala for the untap and mana and Orochi Leafcaller for the mana filter ain't half bad if you wanna open yourself up to more colors.)

I made an EDH deck based on Necrotic Ooze with Savra as the commander and it does pretty well in my playgroup. Take a look if you want some suggestions.

Glad to see someone else brewing up an idea similar to mine! This is the version that I brewed up today :Dhttp://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/15-08-14-necrotic-ooze/

Thinking of sleeving up this deck after putting Hatebears to bed. Any tips on playing the list (I think I'm going to have to goldfish a ton just to get a feel for the combo).

Why do you run Maelstrom Pulse over Abrupt Decay in the main? At instant speed the Decay surely does more?

How do you find the Twin matchup?

llamaza Thanks for your interest in the deck! My tip is don't sacrifice survivability for speed. This deck has a lot of inevitability. Thus far, I have found the most efficient order to set up the combo to be:

1. Get a Devoted Druid on the field. Because it can send itself to the graveyard at a moments notice, ramps mana, and combos with a Quillspike or Necrotic Ooze on the battlefield, it is best to cast the druid and wait until an appropriate moment to send it to the graveyard. The only times you want this guy in the graveyard are when you want to wipe their board with the Grim Poppet combo, Necrotic Ooze needs to untap itself, or in response to this guy being exiled in some way from the battlefield.

2. After that, what you get next is dependent on what the field looks like. If you are pressured, the next card to the grave should be Grim Poppet so you can have access to the boardwipe combo. If it looks like you have time, send Thornling to the graveyard.
   

3. Quillspike should be the last piece you send to the graveyard, unless it was sent there to search up one of the previous pieces of the combo. This is due to it having the weakest stand-alone ability.
   

Some general tips:

• Fauna Shaman is the strongest turn 2 play you have most of the time due to how efficiently it sets up the combos.
  

• It is important to understand the various ways Necrotic Ooze can protect itself and their costs. The cheapest (being free) is the combo between Devoted Druid and Quillspike allowing the ooze to survive lethal damage. Intermediately (costing G), we have Thornling allowing it to become indestructible and survive lethal damage and "destroy" effects. On the high end (costing 2B, tap, and a discard) we have Pack Rat allowing the ooze to create a copy of itself. This dodges everything except boardwipes, with the most notable being exile effects and Prison Term effects.

• Tree of Redemption is a very power card, yet is in the SB due to only being useful in certain matchups. You will want to bring it in against the faster decks like Burn, Storm, or other decks that go for your life in ways other than attacking. Once you get the ooze's p/t arbitrarily large, swap its toughness with your life total. From there, finish setting up your combo and win.

Regarding Maelstrom Pulse , my local meta has a good number of token decks running around. Overall, you are probably right that Abrupt Decay will do more work there.

Regarding the Twin matchup, it becomes a race to see who can combo off first. You need to balance your time and judge when it will be best to disrupt their combo or advance yours. I suggest setting up the Devoted Druid /Grim Poppet combo first as it allows you to negate their combo and gives you all the time in the world to finish setting up the rest of yours. Slaughter Pact is also very powerful against this deck because you can use it even if you are tapped out and I recomend holding it until they try to combo off. After SB, bring in Tree of Redemption as another way to negate their combo. As they have to stop creating tokens at some point and then attack, you can use this combo to bring your life up to a safe range each turn.

You should know, this deck is still a work in progress. I'm currently toying with a slightly different version, that I can share with you if you'd like to see it. I'd love to get your thoughts on the deck after playing it, be sure to let me know how everything goes.

Thanks for the info.

Will only be playing it in a couple weeks, but going to see what thoughts I can conjur in the meantime.

One thing I've noticed in goldfishing is that it's difficult to assemble all the pieces - do you have the same issue? What is the plan B for not getting the cards you need?

llamaza Plan B is aggro via Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord , Pack Rat , and Lotleth Troll . If you aren't getting combo pieces or Fauna Shaman , then you either have some combination of these and kill spells.

Your strategy should consist of using resilient creatures/planeswalkers such as Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord , Pack Rat , Lotleth Troll , Liliana of the Veil , and Vraska the Unseen to survive until you are in a position where you can combo off or quickly assemble the combo. This usually involves waiting until you see a Fauna Shaman or discarding combo pieces to the creatures and planeswalkers listed above in order to either survive longer or win the game through aggro.

You can also apply pressure with Quillspike and Devoted Druid on the field together. Thornling is also a decent threat on its own.

Caes not sure if you saw this list from the SCG newsletter: Goryo's Ooze

A very different direction, but gold-fishing and theory-crafting suggests some insanely quick plays.

Love this. +1

Really love this. +1. But anyway, I think you cut back a little too much on creatures. Playtesting this, I find myself mulling a lot with hands like Abrupt Decay , Abrupt Decay , Thoughtseize , Quillspike , Liliana of the Veil and two lands. The hand is mildly keepable, but its too draw-dependant for me. You really want to have Fauna Shaman and another creature or at least two combo pieces in your opener. For that, I would go -1 Vraska the Unseen , -2 Maelstrom Pulse , and -1 Inquisition of Kozilek for +2 Devoted Druid and +2 Quillspike .

brcap Thanks for the support, I'm glad you like it!

365things That makes sense. However, due to how powerful turn one hand disruption can be in a 4 turn format, and due to Quillspike being one of the least useful combo pieces in a void (espicially now that Kitchen Finks has moved to the sideboard) I think I'll start with -1 Vraska the Unseen , and -2 Maelstrom Pulse for +2 Devoted Druid and +1 Quillspike and see how that goes. Thanks for the support and suggestions!

There's really a lot of possibility for ooze decks. They're actually pretty similar to some other tier 1 decks. This version seems to be like Jund, with all the removal and such. I think that it is to Jund like Splinter Twin is to u/r control, where one can combo off and the other can't, but in essence they're the same. Another possibility is a more Pod-like deck, with Chord of Calling over something like Liliana of the Veil and playing maindeck one-ofs with Birthing Pod . Both seem very viable. I'm relatively new to modern so I'm not sure, but I think the deck's solid as it is right now.

365things That's a fairly accurate analysis. I personally feel that this deck closer to a combo version of the B/G Rock decks that grew in popularity not too long ago before fading away somewhat. When I first built this deck, I started with Birthing Pod s in it, but the fact that I got no additional value for podding my creatures beyond Kitchen Finks resulted in pod being too slow in this deck.

Have you considered including Vengevine in this deck? A lot of the cards synergize very well with it, and you have enough cheap creatures that it could be worth your while. Similarly, Gravecrawler is powerful in this discard-based shell.

Scratch that, too few zombies. Try Bloodghast or Bloodsoaked Champion instead.

The-Xellos. Here's another great ooze deck for inspiration.

Thanks MindAblaze!, that made my day (and I'm having a rough one).

The-Xellos If you're trying to make a Necrotic Ooze deck, I know a lot more combo's than just the ones in this deck. Let me know if you want to discuss any.

MindAblaze! and Caes, thanks for the heads up. I ordered some cards over the weekend (for the ooze deck and merfolk deck). When doing the deck Liliana of the Veil was a lot more then i was looking to spend on top of all the other cards i needed so skipped her for now. I think after this shipment comes in i'll be switching to Magic Online (cheaper cards). On top of that I spent a ton this weekend on the new skylanders game for my daughter, so this thing call "money" is gone.

Would love to hear some more from you Caes, I love comboing things in decks instead of the burn or just attack with creatures.

Awesome deck! +! up vote from me.

Have you considered putting Chromatic Lantern or Fertile Ground ? Especially with FG,since it gives double mana could help speed things along

Necrotic Ooze with Pack Rat? * high fives

If you have [Pack Rat] in your graveyard and [Necrotic Ooze] on the battlefield and use [Pack Rat]'s ability, doesn't that make another [Pack Rat], instead of another [Necrotic Ooze]?

OpenFire * high fives * I even made my own Necrotic Ooze tokens!

bobtoll Nope, it makes another Necrotic Ooze. For reference, here is the ruling that explains why:

"If an activated ability of a card in a graveyard references the card it's printed on by name, treat Necrotic Ooze's version of that ability as though it referenced Necrotic Ooze by name instead. For example, if Cudgel Troll (which says "G: Regenerate Cudgel Troll") is in a graveyard, Necrotic Ooze has the ability "G: Regenerate Necrotic Ooze."

That comes from the gatherer page for necrotic ooze.

awesome

I love Necrotic Ooze decks, but I like to try and splash a third color in them. Red is good for faithless looting and haste-granting effects, but blue is great for hedron crab and prognostic sphinx, if you want hexproof.

Rakdont I think I am pretty adamant on this staying , but I have definately been considering a seperate, Grixis Necrotic Ooze deck involving Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker.