After Invasion, people have been posting various 3-color aggro decks and have been labelling them as Zoo.
Now, I always felt Zoo was defined by the draw 7s, and these suck and suck more with Necro out of the format. With post-Invasion builds focusing on beatdown or flexibility, I think they should be called Gun or Deuce (maybe Jank, but that's white-weenie based).
Now, the question is, which colors should be used, and which should be that third (or fourth) splash color?
An important part of the question is the reevaluation of the creature mix.
On the weenie end, do we focus on a red core that starts with Jackal Pup? How good is Savannah Lions given the rest of the white options?
On the mid-range creature end, I think most aren't favoring 4-cc plays like Erhnam Djinn and possibly Phyrexian Scuta. Now, which is the 2002 3-mana pick? I've seen a lot of Call of the Herd edging out Serendib Efreet even in decks with blue, for example. Nothing broken, but very solid.
It's such an open-ended question that I don't think anyone has tried to determine even the optimal colors, and no one's tried to really talk about it either.
To get you thinking, here's a rough list of options:
Red--Jackal Pup, burn, Wheel of Fortune, red anti-control options
Blue--power, Serendib Efreet, maybe Standstill, but not counters since I'm thinking aggro and not aggro-control
Green--various creatures from Boa and Mongoose to Call of the Herd, various utility creatures from Granger Guildmage to Druid Lyrist, Rancor, Regrowth, Land Grant, Choke, plus Kird Ape and Hull Breach
Black--Duress, black restricted selection, Scuta and Negator, Diabolic and Chainer's Edict
White--Savannah Lions, maybe Mother of Runes, Swords to Plowshares, Disenchant variants, sideboard options such as Honorable Passage
As much as I like duress, I think black is by far the most out of flavor, yet retains some of the most abusable cards in the game.
Additionally, those who truely own the P9 in real life will more likely play control. One who would play zoo varient most likely will have a wide open extended format card pool with some type 1 toys.
In a face to face tournament the only 'Zoo' I expect to face is a 3-Duece variant (Kird Ape, Lions, Skyshroud Elite, Burn, and Rancor), a PT Junk rip off (Duress, Negator, Lions, Rancor, Boa's?), or a Patriot deck (Dibs, Lions, Mages, and whatever else was in JP's afterbirth).
Truth be told that these decks have a very low mana curve and benefit least from moxen so will mostl ikely run Null Rods or Winter Orbs. They really dont NEED the power to run.
A P9 filled deck can run larger creatures, such as Djinns, Calls, and Dibs. They will run more along the old traditions of draw 7's as they will have twister. They will want Red for shamans, bolts and wheel. Blue would be required for Twister, Dibs, windfall, ancestral, and the powerful-for-zoo time walk.
I would expect the third primary color would flexable. Maybe green for regrowth, sylvan, Calls, and mongoose. Could be white, for Swords, Lions, and multicolor stuff like Meddling Mage. Lastly, I'd expect black for duress, negators, tutors, and yawgmoths will.
Anyway thats my 2 cents, and observations.
Sidenote: I use a 3-Duece with Null Rods as a test deck, as I feel that is the best option.
I think when making these decks, you have to decide first whther you want to play white, black or neither. White, unless it's your splash color, will usally mean you want to run Savannah Lions and Meddling Mages, which both require significant amounts of W, as you want to play them early on. Same with Duress in black. Keep in mind that in a scrubby metagame (All T1 tournaments except NG or online) white is essential, becasue since you generally don't run high power creatures, you need StP in the board if nothing else, or you will get _creamed_ when the 8 yr-old who can't spell mana curve runs you over with his brother's Fires deck.
Dibs in general are good for one reason, that being they fly. The damage sucks against aggro decks, becuae a lot of times the dibs have to sit and block, but you're losing life the whole time anyway. Unless you expect to see Moat often, I'd probably try to run green for Call as much as possible.
I don't know how god Call is personally, as I am waiting for the price to drop because I refuse to spend 15-20.00 per card for a card that's _in-print_, but I have recieved nothing but good opinions from others who have tried them. Blastoderm is still a posibility for those who like to run towards the high end of the curve, but that basically neccesitates a full set of moxen.
One thing I should note: Windfall is _bad_ in Zoo. And I know I'm not al one in this observation, so I won't blame thisg on my stupid topdecking ability (or lack thereof)
I don't think Jackal Pup is all that great. If you have to be reduced to playing Sligh's creatures, why play dual lands?
Kird Ape is my first choice for a red one drop.
Standstill is iffy, I liked it at first, but with more play, it keeps coming to the top of my deck in situations where I'd rather see something that deals damage. Topdecking Standstill after your opponent Balances is not cool.
One card that I really want to try in a Zooish deck is Zur's Wierding, which in combination with Duress and Meddling Mage could really work nicely as a sort of Void or Geddon. As your threats are generally redundant, and you'll often have board control and be ahead in life, I think it could work pretty well. Gorilla Shaman might be neccesary at some point though, otherwise Zuran Orb could be bad.
Anyway, I've tried many color combinations, and I think it will depend a lot on what you want the deck to do. Duress, Negator, and Mage are sweet against control, but suxx0rs against bad red decks.
And in case you are wondering, the color mixes I'm concetrating on trying to get working now are U/W/B/r or U/W/G/r.
Multi colored agressive decks aren't that good any more because they have to deal with Back to Basics, Bloodmoon and Price of Progess as well as Wastelands. This is hard to do with out counterspells and enchantment removal and those things detract from the whole point of an agressive deck to reduce the opponents life total to zero as quickly as possible. So many good cards have been printed that single and dual colored agressive decks are optimal.
If one did want to make a Zoo deck Red Blue White probably are the best colors giving you red blast, seal of cleansing and aura fracture as well as sacred ground to deal with all the non basic land hate. You can run counters or Honorable Passage to deal with Price of Progess.
Green does have the very nice Call of the Herd. On that note I need one more Foil Call of the Herd.
Most of the time Nature's Wrath Stompy or Slompy variants will beat any Zoo type Variant. The shear speed is amazing and symetric draw 7s are not that good when Stompy empties their hand almost immediately. Sligh even beats Zoo with Price of Progress and Wastelands.
I agree most people who have all the power 9 play control
I've always found the essence of Zoo to be trademarked by draw-7's and burn to supplement efficient (and sometimes fat) creatures.
When working working with Zoo (which I've been attempting to do on my own, lately) I start with Red and Blue as base colors, for Power, Wheel, Lightning Bolt, Fire/Ice, Jackal Pup, (Gorilla Shaman), and Serendib. Browbeat, from Judgment, shows a whole hell of a lot of promise in my testing as of yet.
I've built and tested U/R/W, U/R/B, and U/R/G. I find White to be the most effective third color, as Meddling Mages have saved my ass more times than I care to count. Disenchant-effects are also muy helpful, and the anti-red sideboard options are absolutely necessary - Zoo gets beaten like a red-headed stepchild to Sligh game 1. I've also tested Tithe as a mana smoother, but have elected to show it to the door because it doesn't actually *do* anything.
U/R/B gives tutor-power and Yawgmoth's extreme broken silliness, but it's efficient one-drops (Sarcomancy, Carnophage) make it a bit too suicide-ish after pain from lands (City or painlands, I actually prefer painlands as they can tap for colorless later on) and Serendibs.
U/R/G is second to U/R/W - Land Grant is definitely powerful in this style of deck. Kird Ape is a sext beast, and you cannot disregard the power of the Sylvan Library (only one). River Boa isn't an automatic fit because you don't want to have to leave mana untapped after dropping it on the first/second turn. Rancor is a nice touch, but it requires lots'o'creatures (or an active Mishra's Factory & a source of G) to be used most effectively.
If I were to go 4-color, it would be U/R/g/w; just because of the splash power of Land Grant.
My vote would be for Green over White in Zoo, unless you *really* need Balance. Lions aren't necessary any more with Pups.
Green gives you a Rancor or 2, Land Grant if that's your style, and a River Boa or 2. Boa gets by Morphling and laughs at Juzam/Negator.
As others have stated, to me it doesn't resemble Zoo, unless your playing with power and Wheel. So R/U have to be in there. Green is worth it for Call and Regrowth. White is primarily for Disenchant effects. Black is honestly the color I think you can do without the easiest (not that there aren't cards that help, tutors specifically, but...).
For creatures, I think people focus too much on one drops for Zoo. Your playing with all the Moxen presumably, creatures that are C1 (one colored, one colorless) are plenty suitable for Zoo decks, and you have a reasonable chance to get them turn 1.
To me, the best Zoo creatures (not utility guys)are (in no particular order): Blurred Mongoose, Dib, River Boa, Call, Kird Ape and (maybe, I'm trying to find a good build for him) Mystic Enforcer. I personally don't like Meddling Mage much for Zoo. I doesn't seem I ever have enough of them in play at any one time to make a big difference, and the worst part is UW casting cost. Anything in a Zoo deck that costs more than one colored mana should be seriously examined. The two good things Moxen do for Zoo is speed of course, but they're essentially colorless sources. Trying to get two specific colors in Zoo blows, IMO.
Mattb definitely has it right, although I don't think kird ape can really be counted as one of the best creatures for zoo. Savannah lions or even jackal pups are better unless you play with a very high # of forests. I've ditched the 1-drops altogether except for gorilla shamans.
I am personally a fan of removing both RED and black from Zoo and going U/G/w. Here's why: Burn's only useful anymore as removal, and not shots to the dome unless in quantity such as Sligh. 8-12 spells really doesn't cut it for me, since without stacking my hand with a Sylvan or other such chicanery I'll draw one or two burn spells and wish wholeheartedly that it was another creature or a power spell.
Without the burn component, the Draw-7s also go away. Now, you have a choice: go with more defense of your own creatures through counterspells or simply more creatures to kill them before they off them all. I chose the former when I created the U/G/w Aggro-Control deck... but the mana base in that one is so terrible it's a wonder that I wasn't shot ;). Zoo in the traditional form is obsolete, and even adding in newer toys such as Call of the Herd will not save it. It's time for a fundamental rebuild of the entire archetype if Zoo's going to be anywhere near viability again.
I agree that real Zoo decks are not viable anymore. The mana base is just too shaky and an aggro deck cannot afford to wait five turns for the right color mana like Keeper. ONE early wasteland can completely screw a Zoo deck to the point where they cant recover in time. Remember that ppl used to play Zoo becuase there just werent enough good critters in each color to play one or two colors, that time has passed and so has Zoo's time to shine. Its sad for me cuz its the deck that first got me interested in T1 but i think the environment has sped up too much for it to be effective.
Just give us 4 Black Vises, and we'll see what those draw-7's can really do.
Are we discussing "zoo-ish" decks (specifically using draw7s or burn or both), or just multicolored aggro in general?
If it's the latter, I've seen a very nice-looking U/W/G deck around here that runs Geddons, CotH, Gush, and cheap countermagic (think Disrupt) that showed some promise. I also have put a lot of time into a B/g deck that's a misture of PT Junk and Rock from extended. It's only two colors, however, and before I go on an extended rant about its stengths and weaknesses, I'd like to make sure it belongs here.
I think a new agro deck could be done with green base and either blue or red. You could trade some speed for resistance to abyss. Maybe use the mongoose, and factories. Then some calls for card advantage. Then you could use either winds of change or tolarian winds to accelerate you to threshold to pump the nimble mongoose and dump calls and maybe even roars in the grave. It seems a bit slower than stompy, but if you are abyss proof and have some card advantage you can afford to be a bit slower. It might fare decently well against agro as well by virtue of larger, or unboltable creatures.
A untested first draft might look like
Mana
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 City of Brass
6 Forest
4 Tropical Island
4 Yavimaya Coast
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Windfall
4 Tolarian Winds
4 Serendib Efreet
4 River Boa
4 Roar of the Wurm
4 Call of the Herd
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Blurred Mongoose
I'm sure the agro experts will see immediate improvements to be made. But I think new agro decks need to try something like this. Agro strategy’s are now, be fast enough to kill before abyss hits, or be disruptive enough so it doesn’t. Both of these stratagems have been done about as well as they can be in stompy and suicide black. A new agro deck needs a new strategy. The one this deck takes is to be resistant enough so that a lot of the anti creature measures like burn, fire ice, and abyss just miss this deck’s creatures.
I am not an agro expert so I am positive this deck is not optimal or even close. But there might be something to be gained from thinking about other agro plans..
I've been working a little bit on multi-colored aggro. This is just a draft with almost no testing other than goldfish and a little bit of casual play. I figured to fix mana problems by running mainly one and two mana spells. I decided to go R/W/u because it offers the best mix of utility and cheap creatures.
Here is a decklist. More likely than not, very untuned, but it's possible that it could incite a good idea in someone.
4 Savannah Lions
4 Jackal Pup
4 Rootwater Thief
4 Phyrexian War Beast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Force Spike
4 Mana Leak
4 Standstill
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Tundra
4 Volcanic Island
2 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
First thing you might notice is the relatively low mana count. I've made the deck to only need one or two lands, and as long as I have one of the twelve 5 color lands I'm fine. I don't want to use Moxen since it just gives me more mana that's vunerable to hate.
I'm looking for a card drawer better than Standstill. I haven't actually tried them at all yet, however; I used Peek in casual play. It was helpful a lot, but I doubt it's too useful in competitive play.
The creature mix might also look unorthodox. The one-drops should be self explanatory. The Thieves make an effort to take out hosers like The Abyss before they are tutored for, and the War Beasts are my attempt to have at least some resilence against other aggro decks.
Force Spike and Mana Leak are the best cheap counterspells I could think of. They help keep stuff like Powder Keg off the table. I'm considering Miscalculation over Force Spike.
Again, very little testing done, but it was at least halfway decent in that little bit of testing. It might give people some good ideas.
Quote:Force Spike and Mana Leak are the best cheap counterspells I could think of. They help keep stuff like Powder Keg off the table. I'm considering Miscalculation over Force Spike.
Any chance that Funker could be the much needed Zoo-like deck everyone is looking for?
I think my zoo deck is the much-needed zoo deck everyone is looking for ;-)
Quote:Any chance that Funker could be the much needed Zoo-like deck everyone is looking for?
I think Zoo can still be a pretty decent deck; at least the creatures are good enough to do so. My basic creature mix would be:
2 River Boa
3 Blurred Mongoose
3 Serendib Efreet
4 Call of the Herd.
Those creatures take advantage of the fact you're playing Moxen, offer a little color diversity, potential card advantage and have some flyers.
The biggest obstacle to good Zoo decks are the burn cards. Rarely does a burn card have to be countered, which allows control to save its counters to stop your card draw, then Zoo loses. What can we do to improve the burn cards? I think, burn in Zoo should be judged differently than in Sligh. In Sligh, its all about efficiency, 3 damage/1 mana, etc. In Zoo, theoretically you have more mana, so it should be about card efficiency, not damage ratio. I'm not saying flush Lightning Bolt, its no good, what I am saying is maybe an X spell or two would be good in Zoo. The card I'm thinking of specifically is Flaming Gambit:
Torment Uncommon
XR
Instant
Flaming Gambit deals X damage to target player. That player may choose a creature he or she controls and have Flaming Gambit deal that damage to it instead.
Flashback XRR
That's just one idea for the burn, I'm interested to hear others' opinions.
Alternatively, can we build a Zoo deck that actually gets the Draw-7s to resolve? Orrim's Chant, Abeyance, Red Blast, Overmaster, are any of these cards worth it to try to see your spells resolve?
This is an excellent conversation starter by Rakso, thanks man!
And its good enough to bring me to come back and discuss my T1 roots, here in Zoo. I used to pretty much only post on Zoo topics, because that was the only area in which I had expertise.
There are basically two different Zoo decks out there. Ones in a fully powered environment, and ones that aren't.
Mystic Enforcer might sound great at first, and if the environment is packed with control decks that rely on The Abyss, it works. But in a more power-lite (r) environment, it probably doesn't have the same impact.
As far as 7-card drawers, I think Twister and Wheel are really the only remaining viable options. They used to be so vital that Jar and Spiral saw heavy use, but now, even Windfall has fallen by the side. Fact or Fiction might have a spot, though.
As for colors, it has long been a strength of Zoo that colors have less impact than card choices. While I prefer a more aggresive strategy with U/G/R, others really like black or white. Sarcomancy and Carnophage are certainly in the flavor of Zoo.
Zoo wins through creatures and diversified damage sources, like Stormbind, Cursed Scroll, Burn, and so forth. Zoo also combines the most powerful aggresive cards in its colors. So, Rakso has asked, what is the ideal combination?
I really like green in the modern environment, especially post-Odyssey. G/U can heavily lean into threshold monsters like Nimble Mongoose and Werebear. Toss in Fact or Fiction, Windfall (to get cards in the 'yard) and so forth, and you can easily gain TH as soon as you have need. Or, if you choose to go in a more traditional route, Call of the Herd, Skyshroud Elite, River Boa, Blurred Mongoose, Spellbane Centaur, Llanowar Knight and Gaea's Skyfolk all have serious potential, depending on the power level of our environment.
But Erhnam and company do not make the cut any longer. 3 power for three mana is fine, but 4 for 4 is not good enough.
I also agree with Matt that red has become more of a liability than a benefit. Jackal Pups are not as good as any one of ten or so alternatives. What red does offer are the disruptive creatures like Shaman and Miner, Wheel of Fortune, and good anti-control sideboard options.
I like Blue for all of the classic reasons. Timetwister, Ancestral Recall, Fact or Fiction all provide your Zoo deck with the best card drawing in Type One. Add in Serendib Efreet, and Time Walk, and you get a solid blue contingent.
So I personally play a U/G/r Zoo deck.
But I do not want to disparage white or black, because each have very valuable offerings. Both have excellent one drops. Its just that they feel a little too controllish for my tastes.
Maybe, in the end, Rakso's question can only be answered by taste.
Thoughts.
-Anxiety
I personally think the Funker's threat-light. You only have the Dragons, two Masticores, and... unless I'm mistaken, those are the big threats in the deck. To pay the price for this, your mana is terribly vulnerable to non-basic hate and you can't pump out threat after threat against decks like Stompy that have 20+ creatures to smash with. Funker's got a great auto-win potential, and therefore is good, but it's definitely inconsistent. It's not Zoo's successor by any means.
I just don't see why red's useful anymore in Zoo. You get inferior creatures (Pup < Lions and Nimble Mongoose, even), one draw-7 (Wheel) and burn, which has less staying power than you might think. Black's also really out of flavor for the deck, so you leave yourself with U/G/W for multi-colored aggro decks. I'm going to rework the mana base on the deck I posted awhile back and relist it, since it shows major promise.
i think that that judgement card browbeat is made for zoo. it can capitalize on the damage if they take it, and are likley to be able to deal at least 5 damage with the drawn cards. 5 damage is nothing to scoff at even if life doesn't matter in type 1. perhaps it could be aggro's fact or fiction.... it's certianly a good reason to keep red in zoo.
I think the problem with Zoo (other than Vise being gone) is that few good deckbuilders are devoting time to aggro. In general the mono-colored aggro decks are better because I think people aren't really thinking about, "What will going multi-colored give me?" past "I can run all these cool cards!".
I mean, since the card pool is so huge now you can take just about any janky-looking multicolored deck and do just about everything it's trying to do with one color--which makes it faster and invulnerable to hate.
So really, I think the problem is people are starting wrong. They're trying to build a multi-colored aggro deck by putting 6-12 burn, the power, and then wondering what critters thay want to use. Thinking in terms of, "I want to be able to do X, Y, and Z," and then just running the colors that support that is a better way to go.
For the record I very much like my R/G/u deck, so far--although it's just in the preliminary stages. I also think that Redman's B/U/W aggro-thing is really good. I've got a version (like 2 cards off I think) built on Apprentice.
--Matt
P.S. Being too afraid to play an otherwise solid as hell multi-colored creation because of hate cards is silly. POP can be beaten very easily if you're running white. White and red give you a good shot against B2B.
For me I identify zoo as a multicolor deck filled with good beatdown critters and the best broken spells avaliable (best broken spells... He he). I also see zoo as having a base color or two and some other colors as support.
A friend of mine plays a build that is base green. The he added red and blue as the secondary colors. He also uses black and white for brokenness. I realize the decklist may be a little outdated but the deck can be quite powerful. It is based on a more old school fat zoo type build. If I can get the decklist I will post it.
On a sidenote... I don't think that standstill or meddling mage or some of the other utility creatures are good in zoo. Adding those creatures makes it into a more aggro-controlish build. Zoo(once again in MY opinion) is more of a beatdown deck.
Phil (meatpipeline)
I would think that Call of the Herd would be pretty good in any type of zooish deck, be it in a threshold deck or not. In the more classical version, this is a no brainer, but in the threshold deck, you can throw it into your graveyard early in the game and still possibly have it to play with later. I dunno, just a thought. As for colors, I definitely see red and white at the back of the line, with blue and green in the front. Black might cut in once in a while. I'd think U/G/r is a good place to start.
The kill cards in funker are the 3-4 dragons, Karn, Colossus, and 3 Masticores. While the deck is vulnerable to non-basic hate the deck is becoming much more stable, especially post-Judgement when I will be able to remove the White in the maindeck in favor of burning wish (will make most matchups better game 1 except for Keeper). Removing the regrowth is also a possibility since I think u/b/r will be much more stable. While I will hate to see the regrowth go, it will make the deck more stable as a whole.
Quirion Dryad is the card that zoo needs to be looking at in my opinion.
Indeed, Q. Dryad seems very interesting
Personally, i beleive UGR to be the best combination: You get nice drawing, creatures, some burn... And honorable pasage is probably an excellent mid-game card.
Which brings me to my question: how good has Passage been in real testing?
I used the Dryad in the alpha version of my G/R/u zoo deck, but removed it in favor of more untargetables. They're cool and all, but a little more fun than practical sometimes.
Back to your earlier post though... Dryad isn't going to be that good in a "Zoo" deck you had sitting around, but if you start from something closer to the Extended Miracle Gro decks (leaving out Mystic Enforcer and probably white entirely) and add red and/or black for toys and better black 1-drops you may be getting somewhere.
Honorable passage? I thinky you mean Guided Passage.
In which case, it's neat, but it is a 3 mana sorrcery needing 3 different colors. If your deck is built to fully utilize it's advantages, I could see it being useful, but probably just not good enough. If it were an instant, or somehow less costly, I could see it making an appearance, but as it is, I feel it's good either as a token slot for individual tastes or to be used in a deck where it might be especially useful.
I'm going to try it in the R/G/U deck I'm building right now to try and take advantage of Zoo-like agressiveness to maximize the effectiveness of Zur's Weirding as a soft lock card, as it is a good way of putting cards into hand.