Any thoughts on Manglehorn over rec sage? Is there an enchantment that really hurts you? Making fast mana come into play tapped is pretty sweet.

Eidolon and rule of law are too damaging in my opinion.

What about Walking Ballista? Any consideration as a win con? I know you have talked about lines with Hornet Sting but seems like WB would be easier to find if that was the out you needed.

Sivartus We talked about walking ballista in the comments above.

Since I know it will come up...

I am of the opinion that it is not useable, it is only good if we already have a big critter out, same reason we don't run omnath.

Still, I could be wrong, what do you guys think?

Yeah unless there's some super sweet interaction I'm not aware of, by the time you can afford to cast this guy, you probably could have been winning through other means. I would much more likely consider running Multani, Maro-Sorcerer or Realm Seekers before the uber dino (we actually did use to run realm seekers in an early iteration of the deck).

Are you sure the dino is not worth running, or at least testing, asm? I mean, ThrunTheTroll628 is comparing it to Omnath, Locus of Mana, but I dont think we can compare them. Omnath requires some free mana to be big, while this does not. Let's compare a boardstate where we have enough power on the table to make this guy cost 2 (so we have a total of 10 power on the table, 2 coming from Selvala and 8 from other sources). Let's say we also have 3 mana available only (enough to cast Omnath). If we cast Omnath, we are left with nothing in our pool, so Omnath would not be bigger, and we could not generate more mana. If we use 2 to cast Uber Dino, we are almost sure to draw a card form selvala, and we are left with one mana to activate her ability and generate 12 more mana.

Now, you said that at the moment you could cast this, you would already have another fatty or another way to win the game. From my testing, I have been able to reliably cast it on T3/4, using buffs on Selvala and other creatures I had around. Dorks, even if they are small, help a lot to cast it, contributing for kind of two mana. Cards like Invigorate and other that can buff for a large amount are really helpful to allow this to be cast really early on.

I am pretty sure this deserves some testing...? Might even be good...?

New to the thread - sorry if these were addressed earlier in the discussion..

Why Somberwald Stag? Other than Beast Within infinite

Why Fierce Empath? To get Woodland Bellower - is he that integral?

Why not Thousand-Year Elixir? too slow?

Thanks!

thegigibeast I'd never be opposed to testing anything - it's the best way to come to your own conclusions. But in the scenario's you proposed, you're talking about using an invigorate and a precious Selvala tap to cast the Dino. In general we are using our fatties as rituals, not as the payoff. The payoff has to be a gas spell, compact wincon like mantle or staff, or a tutor to untap and keep going. This won't always happen of course, but we should position ourselves as well as possible to go that route. In comp games, dino is just going to get Gilded Drake'd, Snap'd, Pongified, or Swords to Plow'd 9 times out of 10.

dcoffinStag is tutorable remmoval and one of the few things that can Linvala. Empath is a flex slot but Great Oak Guardian or Bellower are the two important targets. Both get you a fatty + untap effect. Thousand year elixir is a bit too slow as you mentioned, but is a reasonable include. People at times have used Lightning Greaves, with mixed success. Most of us have found Crossroads enough (in terms of rebuilding with haste).

thegigibeast I am of the opinion that most cards "merit testing" but I'm not too hopeful about Ghalta and when I have the time to test cards I will be testing other cards (like finally forming an opinion of the Vitalize/Paradox Engine debate).

If you are more optimistic than it would be a great help to us if you would do some testing and post what you discover.

Also, is there anyway I can help get the primer updated. I got into this deck when someone recommended it on the Gigibeast's tier list. Since then I have seen selvala go from T3 on his list to T1.5. it's also become my main competitive deck, but after so many changes the primer is outdated and probably a little confusing to people that haven't been around since the beginning.

Ya - this is probably reasonable. I'll talk to asm about updating it in the next few weeks.

tw0handt0uch

In the scenario I described, I am not using Selvalas mana to cast the dino, I am using two of the three mana to cast it, then the last one to tap Selvala and then generate 12 more mana that we can use for whatever other card we have in our hands. Also, because of the high power of the dino, we are almost sure to draw a card from Selvala, which can be anything we tutored with Worldly Tutor, for example.

And you said it could be easily pathed or removed... as all the other fatties in the deck? I mean, Phyrexian Dreadnought is the closest card I think to be compared in the deck in terms of mana cost/payout mana, and if I play against Selvala and I see it I will always try to remove it. Dino is even better if he sticks, having trample, so it could be like plan Z if everything goes wrong...

I will definitely take the time to test it. As I said above, I tested it a little bit yesterday and was able to consistently cast it turn 3/4 and have one spare mana to activate Selvala on the same turn, leading to a win with what I had in hands.

I will test it again today and report here though, but I personally think it might be a good idea (as a background for myself I am playing Yisan as my main comp since SS released his decklist, and built brostorm like two months ago since I like mono-G in comp)

I just noticed this, please tell me if this was overlooked or just not good enough to include green warden.

One of them requires no less than 3 creatures in play, the other requires 20 mana, but between the 2 of them (and the fact that I bet other people can find some more) I feel like Greenwarden of Murasa should be added in, or at least tested.

Bonus (since I can't edit): It can be grabbed off of Fierce Empath witch HAS to be usefull sometimes... (I think).

dang it - those green warden lines don't works since you have to sack green warden before Natural order goes to the GY.

I hat it when I do that, once I made 80%-90% of a Mairsil the pretender combo deck using baby Jace before I saw they changed the ruling. I also made a Kaho, Minamo Historian deck that was supposed to combo with dramatic reversal, like isochron scepter. I should just give up on creative deckbuilding at this point (lol)

actually you could get the playlines to work if you tacked on an extra 10 mana to each:
1. grab ewit
2. sac exit for green warden
3. when you sack green warden to Natural order you grab ewit, (and ewit can grab natural order after it resolves)
ofc, at that point it isn't worth it... Thrun: 0 WotC: 9999999999

thegigibeast yeah I understood what you meant. I did some testing with it yesterday and I couldn't really cast it before turn 4 without tapping selvala. When I could, my hand was able to win anyway. I understand that what you are thinking of is as a sortof pseudo berserk, but you need a pretty nuts hand to land it on turn 3, and honestly even the turn 4 hands were abnormally good. If you have a 1/1 dork on board (this is already not thaat high of a chance), you still need 2 pump spells to cast him on turn 3, as 1 pump spell only brings you up to 7 power. If you have 2 pump spells, you need 4 green sources, assuming one of the pump spells is invigorate, because this is a play. If you aren't fortunate enough to have invigorate, then you need even more mana. Additionally, if you have 2 pump spells, you really don't need the dino. Maybe you'll have good experiences with the extra enormous creature, but I'm not seeing it - there's just too many conditions that need to be met for him to be castable. Mid combo, he can definitely be easily cast to keep you going, but I honestly don't run into that issue very often and there are many creatures that can already serve in that role.

ThrunTheTroll628 We actually did test some greenwarden lines prior to the primer being written, hence why you can see him in the maybeboard. However, we didn't find his lines to be particularly efficient, and he was more or less dead outside of those lines. He was actually best getting hit off a genesis wave to get back one of the binned spells.

asm, makes sense, thanks!

how often do other people cast Genesis Wave the not-infinite-mana way, I was playing and had fizzled out with 28 mana, I put it all in Genesis Wave hoping for the best and easily won, I felt a little foolish afterwards since it wasn't even close so, at what point do you think it's worth it to just cast a large Wave?

In my experience a gen wave of greater than 10 has a pretty good chamce of winning. This is one of the reasons i've always preferred a instil energy to some of the spell based untap effects - it hits off of a finite gwave. The limiting factor on the gwave is usually finding an untapper.

sounds legit, I might add instill back in my list

Yeah sometimes you whiff on smaller gwaves but usually it feels pretty good to me. It's about as close as we get to a mind's desire, and a good gwave feels pretty amazing.

To answer your question, I cast finite gwaves more often than infinite ones.

which is another reason I'm finding it hard to put Walking Ballista in the deck.. Can't Genesis Wave into it, can't Chord of Calling it.. by itself it's a sweet win condition with infinite mana, but then so are a number of other cards already in the deck

Me again. Maybe some will find me annoying with the dino, but I am here to report my results.

The other day, I was able to land the dino on turn 3 a lot of times but this actually was pretty nut, I was able to do it twice since (on 50 games tested). So that I can say is pretty sad for me. But about the turn 4... I have got some pretty interesting results and synergies.

For me, turn 4 was pretty consistant, more than what you describe asm. As I really like to cast Selvala early (turn two if possible), it means I have a source of ramp on board already. A lot of the times, it was a dork. Dorks can count for a pseudo 2 mana for the dino, which makes it easier to cast. Do not forget to count Dryad Arbor! A lot of the times I had GSZ + Arbor turn one, which adds up to pseudo 3 mana available for the dino. Adding Selvala on next turn makes for a pseudo 5, which will make the dino cost only on turn 3 for now. It may seem impossible to reach... But not with all the creatures and tutors already in the deck. Here are the things I was doing to cast it easier. The boardstate we will assume is one dork + Selvala + 4 lands (we are at the beginning of main phase of turn 4, we missed no land drop, a pretty ordinary boardstate, we would have 5 mana available, 4 from lands and one from dork):

• Cast another creature with a power of at least 5 that costs 4 or less (to keep one mana to activate our commander's ability). We have 3 (I was swapping one of them for the dino) others in the deck ranging from 2 to 3 CMC which would leave us with some spare mana, it should not be that hard. It will let us generate more mana to keep on going. It will generate from 4 to 7 more mana, which might be enough for a win on that turn if it was not possible with the mana you could generate.

• Grab it with Fierce Empath when we can cast it for two. It would be a great target for Fierce Empathif what we need to grab is a huge creature, because we can't grab our other big payout creatures with it. It would be the only one.

• Get it with Natural Order. I mean, for sure we could get any other fatty with it, but this one does not have the drawback of Phyrexian Dreadnought or all the others that eventually sacrifices themselves. I know people would answer it, like trying to Swords it or any other form of removal, but would'nt they do the same with any fatty that would hit the table? I mean, we can still answer with an activation of Selvala and get to draw a card, and one activation from it is enough.

Those are the main points I experienced during my test runs. I mean, I also had games where opponents could not answer and I was able to cast Berserkon him. I mean, that would happen only one game on 100, but it was an awesome play that I could not do with Phyrexian Dreadnoughtalone. I mean, personnaly I found my test runs worth it. I will do some more when I have more free time on my hands. What do you think about this asm?

If you reread my comment, it wasn't that turn 4 is not possible or consistent, but that you could have won with that board already without the dino. Secondly, your opponents letting you pass two turns (selvala on t2 and getting to still have her on turn 4) with selvala on board is highly suspect. I often even skip casting her on turn 2 because I know my opponents have removal and will wait for another good target to show up first to eat the removal.

In the case you described with playing a 2 mana 5/5, you can easily just pump the 5/5 and have plenty of mana to win with, without all the setup, and is a play you could make on turn 3 as well.

pretty much what asm said, though I had not thought of grabbing it with fierce empath... I don't think that's enough but I suppose I can start theorizing, maybe it will allow some play sequences that make him worthwhile... even if there are any, I am afraid he would probably still be dead the majority of the times we get him.