This is a thread for the discussion of and development of the "TokenWalkers", better known as "Junk Walkers", archetype. The deck uses the card advantage provided by a wide variety of Planeswalkers backed up by protection in the form of board control to establish an overwhelming amount of card advantage that the opponent simply can not keep up with.
TokenWalkers or Junk Walkers?
"Junk Walkers" is the name given to this deck by David Palmer who piloted a list to 2nd place at StarCityGames Open Dallas on the weekend of March 10th. I am not a pro and have not top 8'ed with this deck, but I am also dedicating this thread to the development of what I truly believe to be a legitimate and competitive variant on Palmer's list that I have been working on on my own for a few weeks, which I have taken to calling "TokenWalkers".
While playing many of the same cards, TokenWalkers differs from David Palmer's take on the deck in a few ways. Firstly, it functions like a token deck, hence the name, but not in the traditional sense. It takes advantage of the spell lands from Innistrad and Dark Ascension - Gavony Township, Vault of the Archangel and Grim Backwoods and uses tokens as a resource for card advantage. It is actually less dependent on Planeswalkers, and will suffer less from drawing multiples of the same Legendary permanents. Junkwalkers has very poor matchups against fast aggro decks, where the card advantage engine of the Walkers is too slow to start up. TokenWalkers alleviates this issue slightly, but still can't quite boast a favorable matchup against these decks.
Garruk Relentless plays a very important role. While Sorin, Lord of Innistrad is generally a better token engine, there is one thing that Sorin can never do - be in play twice at once. Having a Garruk in play beside a Sorin and pumping out 2/2 Wolves alongside Lifelinking 1/1 Vampires builds a very powerful board position very quickly, especially if Sorin can safely -2 and pump your board permanently. In addition, Green adds access to the very powerful spell lands, Gavony Township and the less appreciated Grim Backwoods.
You will be making a lot of tokens, and you will be forced to chump them very often. That's partly their purpose, so there's no shame in throwing your little Garruk Wolves under that Thrun, the Last Troll charging at you. You will be chumping without trading a lot, and this land allows you to take advantage of this. In addition, it allows for neat tricks with your Wurmcoil Engines when your opponent tries to exile or bounce them.
This little guy gets a lot of love, so he's not as surprising to see here, but he does seem to bulge out the 4 drop spot a bit. Realistically, dropping a Sorin or Garruk on turn 4 is almost never going to be the right play, as most often your board will consist of two Spirit Tokens at best. Dropping a Solemn first can buy you time to draw a Day of Judgment or to throw some presence onto the board. Aside from ramping into 6 for an early Wurmcoil against aggro as well as providing a much needed and essentially free chump, he also allows us to run those nifty spell lands by color fixing our 3 color deck when have to open with one or two colorless lands and are short on a color. We want at least one Green source, at least two White sources and at least two Black sources, and Solemn is just the man for the job.
Definitely the strangest card in the list, I feel it is at least as good as Tezzeret's Gambit for three simple reasons - it is instant, costs 1 less and doesn't cost you any life. It is very easy to have a spare token that is being chumped anyways to sac, and unlike many spells of its kind, it can't get countered by the creature you intend to sacrifice being killed because it is a cost. I urge you to playtest this before dismissing it - I have rarely if ever had one stuck in my hand because of not having anything to sac. It also fills the same role as Grim Backwoods for much cheaper. That being said, I feel that Tezzeret's Gambit is perfectly viable and potentially flat out better than Altar's Reap because of the very relevant Proliferation. For now I am happy with my Altar's Reaps, but that may change in the future.
Yep, no Tragic Slip here. I feel that the Slip does not belong here because we can not reliably cast it turn 1. We do have some easy ways to enable Morbid, but I feel as if there is no benefit to running it in this deck over the easier to use and just as versatile Go for the Throat and Dismember.
I think to best answer your "Why run green at all?" Question, you can answer with "Turn 3 Garruk or Sorin." I run 4 Rampant Growth and a couple Sphere of the Sun's because of the power of a turn 3 Garruk or Sorin.
I tried the list with Growths and Spheres for a bit and I just find them to be not worth it because of how poor of a topdeck they are. They are good turn 2 and only turn 2, and I feel as if they don't fit into this deck's gameplan very well.
I ran an Esper list with Spheres/Solemn/Pristines and just didn't find them worth it. Even with Tezz in the build... I just can't see any valuable reason to run G in a PW build yet.
I'm not sure I feel that diluting the quantity of PWs is the best avenue. Playtesting with 15 seemed good: the times that you ended up stuck with 2 in your hand wasn't always a disaster - you can very often -2 your PW for something relevant and drop another copy.
I do agree 100% with adding a singleton elesh norn. As a win-con, she's one of the best in the format, and especially strong right now (an aggro meta with moorland haunt decks).
I do like the idea of ramping somehow (spheres, rampant growths, solemns) but didn't really like dropping other parts of the deck. I think better might be to tweak the removal suite to let you get your walkers online.
25 lands, 15 walkers, 5 dudes (elesh + 4 souls), 3 utility (gambit) and 12 removal seems like a good starting point. Going less than 12 removal seems dangerous to get walkers online.
I'm not sure how this decks beats RDW. Every game was a blowout. Skites? Batterskulls? Tree of Redemptions?
Regarding Green: I do really like green in the build. Beast within is a great catch-all, a singleton seems fine. Garruk is excellent, and having the option of gavony seems ok, although I went with 2 vaults main.
I moved Karn to the sideboard and replaced 2 Naturalize with 2 Ray of Revelation which was suggested by Palmer in his decktech (http://starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_junkwalkers_with_dav.html). Rays will help greatly vs Humans or Token decks that are running multiple anthems and also answer annoying O-rings which are honestly the only truly effective removal opponents have against us. Anything else can be handled by our own O-rings.
I switched to playing 3 copies of Nihil Spellbomb instead of Surgical Extraction. Spellbombs will take care of what's in the gy, and allows us to draw cards. I know vs Zombies the extractions are probably more useful, but the spellbombs aren't terrible and having an extra way to draw cards is nice.
I dropped Tezzeret's Gambit from the mainboard. Kyle addresses this in his article. The deck has an awkward curve and only 25 lands. Rampant growth gives the deck a turn 2 play that doubles as color fixing and powering out your 4cmc walkers on t3. As stated previously, a t3 Day, Garruk or Sorin is pretty powerful. Also, the games that I saw Palmer lose were mostly the result of not hitting enough mana fast enough to play his cards. Gambit is nice, don't get me wrong, but it's most useful if you already have walkers on board. Growth helps you get them on board faster. I do understand that Growth is a poor top deck, but Liliana plays to that.
I didn't touch the removal suite as I feel it pretty much covers the board.
One consideration I am thinking of is adding Enslave to the sideboard for the wolf run matchup. Palmer stated that he felt wolf run wasn't a very strong match up for him. Enslave could help change that. They drop a Prime-time or any other titan, you enslave it and continue on. Now they have to deal with your walkers + their own titan. If I were to fit this into the board, I would most likely replace the Life's Finale with it.
There seems to be 2 different styles of decks being discussed here: token-centric and walker-centric decks. Is this thread devoted to both or only one? And with the Superfriends thread running around, the deck doesn't have to be exclusively the same colors to invoke discussion, as they have similar gameplans.
There seems to be 2 different styles of decks being discussed here: token-centric and walker-centric decks. Is this thread devoted to both or only one? And with the Superfriends thread running around, the deck doesn't have to be exclusively the same colors to invoke discussion, as they have similar gameplans.
The decks are very very similar and can easily be considered of the same archetype, in fact I think it would be silly to have two separate threads based on the amount of walkers being ran when the lists are ~80% identical.
There seems to be 2 different styles of decks being discussed here: token-centric and walker-centric decks. Is this thread devoted to both or only one? And with the Superfriends thread running around, the deck doesn't have to be exclusively the same colors to invoke discussion, as they have similar gameplans.
This thread seems to have been started based of the JunkWalker deck used by David Palmer in the recent SCG Open in Dallas/Ft. Worth. The thread creator decided to rename the deck to TokenWalkers (which I don't personally agree with, but whatever). I would say that this thread is devoted to discussion related to the JunkWalker build and not to just any general super friends or token theme.
The deck in all fairness is almost identical to the one that David used at the SCG Open, however my version uses ramp to power out the PW's. I also decided to make the deck more midrangy, where I ramp into said PW, then control the game from there with the likes of DoJ, O-ring and Gideon.
I plan on building the deck in the next few days, so I'll try and keep you all posted as to how I do.
The deck in all fairness is almost identical to the one that David used at the SCG Open, however my version uses ramp to power out the PW's. I also decided to make the deck more midrangy, where I ramp into said PW, then control the game from there with the likes of DoJ, O-ring and Gideon.
I plan on building the deck in the next few days, so I'll try and keep you all posted as to how I do.
Not a fan of the birds. I would consider Sphere of the Suns instead. I'm curious how well altar's reap works for you. Please let me know what your thoughts are on it in general? On using it as a 4-of? And on replacing Tragic Slip with it?
Not a fan of the birds. I would consider Sphere of the Suns instead. I'm curious how well altar's reap works for you. Please let me know what your thoughts are on it in general? On using it as a 4-of? And on replacing Tragic Slip with it?
Tragic Slip while nice, is hard to cast when needed to reliably, I'd rather have card draw. I will update you more as testing progresses.
Playing with birds also allows me to run out a turn 3 gideon if that so happens to be the case. I'm also running rampant growth at the 2 slot, so having another 2 cmc card that also ramps(and is slower), doesn't appeal to me as much. However, I see your point, being that I'm running 12 taplands, and only 4 forests(12 green sources) along with evolving wilds, it could be hard to get a turn 1 birds. I may just test sphere to see how it goes.
to me it would feel harder to cast your WW walkers than the first turn G, aside from the birds ( which will likely die ) you seem to only have 9 sources of W mana only one of which is fetchable, consider two plains IMO.
if you want to ramp i would agree with the spheres. they are harder to get rid of and when you DOJ you won't lose it.
Tragic slip is i agree hard to cast in morbid on turn 1-3 for -13(without sphere or ramp)but that isnt the point, i went down from 4 to 2 and included 2x doomblade instead. I left the two because late game its a great topdeck for wolfrun, cheap and kills inkmoth early game it kills ramp and X/1's and yes i use it on the doomed traveler. nothing worse than UW humans losing tempo for that t2 2 damage.
It sucks in the UB zombie matchup but thats what the sideboard is for, the deck is strong vs zombies anyway.
early damage. gives something to play t2, however i think i would rather still have sphere instead of hoping for something to block ( because they won't )
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early damage. gives something to play t2, however i think i would rather still have sphere instead of hoping for something to block ( because they won't )
Exactly my point. This is why even wolf run doesn't play more than 1 bird, and only because they also play GSZ. Rampant Growth is your go to ramp spell atm, after that is Sphere of the Suns. IMO, this isn't a ramp deck so you don't want to water this list down with too much ramp; however, a 4-of rampant growth will help you mana fix early and can also catapult you into strong t3-t4 plays. On top of that, it helps when you get land light draws thus reducing the necessity to mulligan. This is why I chose to replace Tezz Gambit with it. Gambit is obv a better late game top deck once I've got a couple PWs on board, but sometimes that doesn't happen, and against a lot of aggro, the last thing you wanna be doing on t3 is paying 2 life to draw 2 cards.
Just my 2 cents.
On the topic of Tragic Slip, sure you aren't gonna be able to get the morbid on t1-3, but that's not the point. In the early game you use it to kill their accelerators, or their 1 and 2 drops. The late game is when you want it for the morbid to kill titans and the like. It also deals with inkmoth, and that is something not to be understated.
I've been playing GWB token friends for about 2 weeks now. As my build plays mainly token producing plainswalkers I have a full playset of Intangible Virtue. Something about giving your plainswalkers the ability to protect themselves and still allow your tokens to attack and block while getting buffed... it's really really good.
I'm not sure how this decks beats RDW. Every game was a blowout. Skites? Batterskulls? Tree of Redemptions?
I'm running a set of Blade Splicers and the 2 bodies for 3 mana seem to clog up the field nicely (plus with an IV the golem can survive a slagstorm). Turn after drop a Sorin and start making life gaining tokens. Then land Elspeth and/or vault of the archangel for additional life gain (though try to keep +'ing your PW's to keep them out of burn range). During this time feel free to drop a DOJ and clear the board if it is a profitable exchange. If you can stabilize early, your life gaining should keep you ahead of the burn.
Could you show us your deck list with intangible virtue?
Well, note that my deck fluctuates pretty often (mainly land and PW's). I've found in testing against U/x control that slamming PW after PW will eventually exhaust their supply of counters. With that in mind I will be trying out a singleton creeping renaissance to bring back all of the PW's that were countered/killed (assuming not dissipated). That being said, my build looks like:
yeah, I am running 61 cards (I always build with 61, lolz). I'm running 4 utility land, and no townships. Sorin's emblem fulfills the roll of that card (less the defense pumps). I'm testing Grim backwoods for some card draw (complimenting big Garruk).
Let me know if you have questions about any of my other card selections
Of all of the JunkWalkers I've seen, yours seems to be the most solid and reliable.
Have you considered Viridian Emissary in place of Rampant Growth? It's slightly less terrible of a topdeck late game, and it's an early blocker against Humans and Zombies. Of course, there are lots of times where it just doesn't ramp at all, and that kind of sucks.
I'm not a huge fan of Enslave: best case scenario, sure, you get to attack with their titan the following turn, and that puts them in a rough spot. Worst case scenario, they just cast Beast Within on Enslave, and now you're in a world of hurt. At least Life's Finale pulls the other three Primetimes out of their deck.
Of all of the JunkWalkers I've seen, yours seems to be the most solid and reliable.
Have you considered Viridian Emissary in place of Rampant Growth? It's slightly less terrible of a topdeck late game, and it's an early blocker against Humans and Zombies. Of course, there are lots of times where it just doesn't ramp at all, and that kind of sucks.
I'm not a huge fan of Enslave: best case scenario, sure, you get to attack with their titan the following turn, and that puts them in a rough spot. Worst case scenario, they just cast Beast Within on Enslave, and now you're in a world of hurt. At least Life's Finale pulls the other three Primetimes out of their deck.
I did do some testing last night. I tested the B/G/W version and honestly I felt like it was too clunky and the green splash for garruk and beast within just wasn't worth it. I really don't like that Garruk is just make a 2/2 or kill a dude and then make 1/1s.
That being said, I made some changes, removed the green entirely and ran a B/W walker list and immediately saw improvements in both power and consistency.
For ref, here is where my list is currently sitting:
This list runs so much smoother. I'm never missing colors, the pristine talismans allow me to ramp a little and helps vs spirit tokens. I was just finding that the Green didn't really offer enough to warrant the consistency issues that it was presenting.
Cellar, that's what I've found to. I like your Esper list quite a bit. Cramming another color in just feels totally awkward IMO. Garruks awesome, but 3-color is just much smoother.
Cellar, that's what I've found to. I like your Esper list quite a bit. Cramming another color in just feels totally awkward IMO. Garruks awesome, but 3-color is just much smoother.
It's only 2 colors (unless you count the 2-of Tezz Gambit with a Phyrexian cost as actually being blue :P).
But yes, basically after playing a few rounds with the junk deck I came to this conclusion: I'm essentially splashing green for Garruk. The 1-of beast within is fairly trivial and green doesn't offer much in the sideboard that white and black don't have alternatives for. Therefore, in order to justify the inevitable burden of mana inconsistency Garruk himself would need to be a game-changing play. What i was finding is that Garruk was actually quite mediocre. I never felt like when I played Garruk that the game swung largely in my favor. Based on that, I cut him and the green out and tightened up the list.
Adding in the 3 creatures gave my deck another angle to attack from. The list is definitely a little top heavy, but the addition of pristine talisman has helped in that area as well. I can usually rely on my removal and lingering souls to get me to the late game where my titans and planeswalkers can take over the board.
The main reason to not remove green is Garruk and Grim Backwoods. I really don't understand why people don't use that land. It wins me games off of the cards that I get from it.
Pristine talisman is an idea also, but as I'm playing the Junk version, Viridian Emissary thins my deck and ramps out the colors that I need. Tomorrow will be my first tournament with the deck, but I'm expecting results.
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:symw::symb::symg:Super Token Friends:symw::symb::symg: :symb::symr::symg:Wolf Run Jund :symb::symr::symg:
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Banner by ArtificerAndy
Intro
This is a thread for the discussion of and development of the "TokenWalkers", better known as "Junk Walkers", archetype. The deck uses the card advantage provided by a wide variety of Planeswalkers backed up by protection in the form of board control to establish an overwhelming amount of card advantage that the opponent simply can not keep up with.
TokenWalkers or Junk Walkers?
"Junk Walkers" is the name given to this deck by David Palmer who piloted a list to 2nd place at StarCityGames Open Dallas on the weekend of March 10th. I am not a pro and have not top 8'ed with this deck, but I am also dedicating this thread to the development of what I truly believe to be a legitimate and competitive variant on Palmer's list that I have been working on on my own for a few weeks, which I have taken to calling "TokenWalkers".
David Palmer's Top 8 List
Deck Tech: Junkwalkerswith David Palmer
2 Elspeth Tirel
3 Garruk Relentless
3 Gideon Jura
1 Karn Liberated
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Enchantments - 2
2 Oblivion Ring
Instants - 7
1 Beast Within
1 Dismember
1 Go for the Throat
4 Tragic Slip
4 Day of Judgment
4 Lingering Souls
3 Tezzeret's Gambit
Lands - 25
1 Forest
4 Plains
4 Swamp
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Woodland Cemetery
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Spellskite
2 Curse of Death's Hold
2 Autumn's Veil
2 Naturalize
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Life's Finale
2 Ghost Quarter
TokenWalkers
While playing many of the same cards, TokenWalkers differs from David Palmer's take on the deck in a few ways. Firstly, it functions like a token deck, hence the name, but not in the traditional sense. It takes advantage of the spell lands from Innistrad and Dark Ascension - Gavony Township, Vault of the Archangel and Grim Backwoods and uses tokens as a resource for card advantage. It is actually less dependent on Planeswalkers, and will suffer less from drawing multiples of the same Legendary permanents. Junkwalkers has very poor matchups against fast aggro decks, where the card advantage engine of the Walkers is too slow to start up. TokenWalkers alleviates this issue slightly, but still can't quite boast a favorable matchup against these decks.
4 Solemn Simulacrum
2 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Grave Titan
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobyte
Planeswalkers - 7
2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2 Garruk Relentess
2 Elspeth Tirel
1 Gideon Jura
Instants - 9
4 Altar's Reap
3 Go for the Throat
2 Dismember
1 Beast Within
4 Lingering Souls
3 Day of Judgment
Enchantments - 3
3 Oblivion Ring
Land - 25
5 Plains
4 Swamp
1 Forest
4 Isolated Chapel
3 Sunpetal Grove
2 Woodland Cemetery
3 Evolving Wilds
1 Gavony Township
1 Grim Backwoods
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Day of Judgment
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Tragic Slip
4 Timely Reinforcements
4 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Naturalize
Card Choices
"Why run Green at all?"
Garruk Relentless plays a very important role. While Sorin, Lord of Innistrad is generally a better token engine, there is one thing that Sorin can never do - be in play twice at once. Having a Garruk in play beside a Sorin and pumping out 2/2 Wolves alongside Lifelinking 1/1 Vampires builds a very powerful board position very quickly, especially if Sorin can safely -2 and pump your board permanently. In addition, Green adds access to the very powerful spell lands, Gavony Township and the less appreciated Grim Backwoods.
Grim Backwoods
You will be making a lot of tokens, and you will be forced to chump them very often. That's partly their purpose, so there's no shame in throwing your little Garruk Wolves under that Thrun, the Last Troll charging at you. You will be chumping without trading a lot, and this land allows you to take advantage of this. In addition, it allows for neat tricks with your Wurmcoil Engines when your opponent tries to exile or bounce them.
Solemn Simulacrum
This little guy gets a lot of love, so he's not as surprising to see here, but he does seem to bulge out the 4 drop spot a bit. Realistically, dropping a Sorin or Garruk on turn 4 is almost never going to be the right play, as most often your board will consist of two Spirit Tokens at best. Dropping a Solemn first can buy you time to draw a Day of Judgment or to throw some presence onto the board. Aside from ramping into 6 for an early Wurmcoil against aggro as well as providing a much needed and essentially free chump, he also allows us to run those nifty spell lands by color fixing our 3 color deck when have to open with one or two colorless lands and are short on a color. We want at least one Green source, at least two White sources and at least two Black sources, and Solemn is just the man for the job.
Altar's Reap
Definitely the strangest card in the list, I feel it is at least as good as Tezzeret's Gambit for three simple reasons - it is instant, costs 1 less and doesn't cost you any life. It is very easy to have a spare token that is being chumped anyways to sac, and unlike many spells of its kind, it can't get countered by the creature you intend to sacrifice being killed because it is a cost. I urge you to playtest this before dismissing it - I have rarely if ever had one stuck in my hand because of not having anything to sac. It also fills the same role as Grim Backwoods for much cheaper. That being said, I feel that Tezzeret's Gambit is perfectly viable and potentially flat out better than Altar's Reap because of the very relevant Proliferation. For now I am happy with my Altar's Reaps, but that may change in the future.
Go for the Throat and Dismember
Yep, no Tragic Slip here. I feel that the Slip does not belong here because we can not reliably cast it turn 1. We do have some easy ways to enable Morbid, but I feel as if there is no benefit to running it in this deck over the easier to use and just as versatile Go for the Throat and Dismember.
MTGS egos at their finest.
Thoughts on proxies:
I do agree 100% with adding a singleton elesh norn. As a win-con, she's one of the best in the format, and especially strong right now (an aggro meta with moorland haunt decks).
I do like the idea of ramping somehow (spheres, rampant growths, solemns) but didn't really like dropping other parts of the deck. I think better might be to tweak the removal suite to let you get your walkers online.
25 lands, 15 walkers, 5 dudes (elesh + 4 souls), 3 utility (gambit) and 12 removal seems like a good starting point. Going less than 12 removal seems dangerous to get walkers online.
I'm not sure how this decks beats RDW. Every game was a blowout. Skites? Batterskulls? Tree of Redemptions?
Just some thoughts.
3 Gideon Jura
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Garruk Relentless
3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2 Elspeth Tirel
Spells
4 Rampant Growth
4 Lingering Souls
4 Day of Judgment
4 Tragic Slip
1 Dismember
1 Beast Within
1 Go for the Throat
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Forest
4 Plains
4 Swamp
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Woodland Cemetery
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Sunpetal Grove
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Karn, Liberated
1 Life's Finale
2 Ray of Revelation
2 Autumn's Veil
2 Spellskite
3 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Curse of Death's Hold
My list is based off of Palmer's 75 with changes made based on suggestions from Palmer and from Kyle Boggemes in his article on tcgplayer (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10347).
I moved Karn to the sideboard and replaced 2 Naturalize with 2 Ray of Revelation which was suggested by Palmer in his decktech (http://starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_junkwalkers_with_dav.html). Rays will help greatly vs Humans or Token decks that are running multiple anthems and also answer annoying O-rings which are honestly the only truly effective removal opponents have against us. Anything else can be handled by our own O-rings.
I switched to playing 3 copies of Nihil Spellbomb instead of Surgical Extraction. Spellbombs will take care of what's in the gy, and allows us to draw cards. I know vs Zombies the extractions are probably more useful, but the spellbombs aren't terrible and having an extra way to draw cards is nice.
I dropped Tezzeret's Gambit from the mainboard. Kyle addresses this in his article. The deck has an awkward curve and only 25 lands. Rampant growth gives the deck a turn 2 play that doubles as color fixing and powering out your 4cmc walkers on t3. As stated previously, a t3 Day, Garruk or Sorin is pretty powerful. Also, the games that I saw Palmer lose were mostly the result of not hitting enough mana fast enough to play his cards. Gambit is nice, don't get me wrong, but it's most useful if you already have walkers on board. Growth helps you get them on board faster. I do understand that Growth is a poor top deck, but Liliana plays to that.
I didn't touch the removal suite as I feel it pretty much covers the board.
One consideration I am thinking of is adding Enslave to the sideboard for the wolf run matchup. Palmer stated that he felt wolf run wasn't a very strong match up for him. Enslave could help change that. They drop a Prime-time or any other titan, you enslave it and continue on. Now they have to deal with your walkers + their own titan. If I were to fit this into the board, I would most likely replace the Life's Finale with it.
I will update after testing.
:symu::symw::symr: UWR Superfriends
The decks are very very similar and can easily be considered of the same archetype, in fact I think it would be silly to have two separate threads based on the amount of walkers being ran when the lists are ~80% identical.
This thread seems to have been started based of the JunkWalker deck used by David Palmer in the recent SCG Open in Dallas/Ft. Worth. The thread creator decided to rename the deck to TokenWalkers (which I don't personally agree with, but whatever). I would say that this thread is devoted to discussion related to the JunkWalker build and not to just any general super friends or token theme.
1 Elspeth Tirel
1 Garruk Relentless
3 Gideon Jura
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
4 Altar's Reap
1 Beast Within
3 Day of Judgment
1 Go for the Throat
4 Lingering Souls
3 Oblivion Ring
4 Rampant Growth
4 Forest
4 Isolated Chapel
1 Plains
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Swamp
4 Woodland Cemetery
3 Celestial Purge
2 Curse of Death's Hold
3 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Ray of Revelation
1 Revoke Existence
2 Sever the Bloodline
1 Surgical Extraction
The deck in all fairness is almost identical to the one that David used at the SCG Open, however my version uses ramp to power out the PW's. I also decided to make the deck more midrangy, where I ramp into said PW, then control the game from there with the likes of DoJ, O-ring and Gideon.
I plan on building the deck in the next few days, so I'll try and keep you all posted as to how I do.
(246-174-26)
Not a fan of the birds. I would consider Sphere of the Suns instead. I'm curious how well altar's reap works for you. Please let me know what your thoughts are on it in general? On using it as a 4-of? And on replacing Tragic Slip with it?
Tragic Slip while nice, is hard to cast when needed to reliably, I'd rather have card draw. I will update you more as testing progresses.
Playing with birds also allows me to run out a turn 3 gideon if that so happens to be the case. I'm also running rampant growth at the 2 slot, so having another 2 cmc card that also ramps(and is slower), doesn't appeal to me as much. However, I see your point, being that I'm running 12 taplands, and only 4 forests(12 green sources) along with evolving wilds, it could be hard to get a turn 1 birds. I may just test sphere to see how it goes.
(246-174-26)
if you want to ramp i would agree with the spheres. they are harder to get rid of and when you DOJ you won't lose it.
Tragic slip is i agree hard to cast in morbid on turn 1-3 for -13(without sphere or ramp)but that isnt the point, i went down from 4 to 2 and included 2x doomblade instead. I left the two because late game its a great topdeck for wolfrun, cheap and kills inkmoth early game it kills ramp and X/1's and yes i use it on the doomed traveler. nothing worse than UW humans losing tempo for that t2 2 damage.
It sucks in the UB zombie matchup but thats what the sideboard is for, the deck is strong vs zombies anyway.
RWGNaya AggroGWR
UBZombiesUB
BBBFNM Mono-Black ControlBBB
(246-174-26)
RWGNaya AggroGWR
UBZombiesUB
BBBFNM Mono-Black ControlBBB
Exactly my point. This is why even wolf run doesn't play more than 1 bird, and only because they also play GSZ. Rampant Growth is your go to ramp spell atm, after that is Sphere of the Suns. IMO, this isn't a ramp deck so you don't want to water this list down with too much ramp; however, a 4-of rampant growth will help you mana fix early and can also catapult you into strong t3-t4 plays. On top of that, it helps when you get land light draws thus reducing the necessity to mulligan. This is why I chose to replace Tezz Gambit with it. Gambit is obv a better late game top deck once I've got a couple PWs on board, but sometimes that doesn't happen, and against a lot of aggro, the last thing you wanna be doing on t3 is paying 2 life to draw 2 cards.
Just my 2 cents.
On the topic of Tragic Slip, sure you aren't gonna be able to get the morbid on t1-3, but that's not the point. In the early game you use it to kill their accelerators, or their 1 and 2 drops. The late game is when you want it for the morbid to kill titans and the like. It also deals with inkmoth, and that is something not to be understated.
I've been playing GWB token friends for about 2 weeks now. As my build plays mainly token producing plainswalkers I have a full playset of Intangible Virtue. Something about giving your plainswalkers the ability to protect themselves and still allow your tokens to attack and block while getting buffed... it's really really good.
I'm running a set of Blade Splicers and the 2 bodies for 3 mana seem to clog up the field nicely (plus with an IV the golem can survive a slagstorm). Turn after drop a Sorin and start making life gaining tokens. Then land Elspeth and/or vault of the archangel for additional life gain (though try to keep +'ing your PW's to keep them out of burn range). During this time feel free to drop a DOJ and clear the board if it is a profitable exchange. If you can stabilize early, your life gaining should keep you ahead of the burn.
EDH:▼
(links to 3D generals)
Playing: Designing:
Retired:
Well, note that my deck fluctuates pretty often (mainly land and PW's). I've found in testing against U/x control that slamming PW after PW will eventually exhaust their supply of counters. With that in mind I will be trying out a singleton creeping renaissance to bring back all of the PW's that were countered/killed (assuming not dissipated). That being said, my build looks like:
3x Garruk Relentless
3x Sonin, Lord of Innistrad
3x Elspeth Tirel
1x Karn Liberated
1x Garruk Primal Hunter
Creatures
4x Blade Splicer
Enchantments
4x Intangible Virtue
3x Oblivion Ring
Instants/Sorceries
3x Tragic Slip
4x Lingering Souls
3x Day of Judgement
1x Creeping Renaissance
1x Forest
4x Plains
2x Swamp
4x Sunpetal Grove
3x Isolated Chapel
3x Woodland Cemetary
3x Vault of the Archangels
1x Grim Backwoods
4x Evolving Wilds
3x Naturalize
1x Sun Titan
3x Timely Reinforcements
3x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Curse of Death's Hold
3x Celestial Purge
yeah, I am running 61 cards (I always build with 61, lolz). I'm running 4 utility land, and no townships. Sorin's emblem fulfills the roll of that card (less the defense pumps). I'm testing Grim backwoods for some card draw (complimenting big Garruk).
Let me know if you have questions about any of my other card selections
EDH:▼
(links to 3D generals)
Playing: Designing:
Retired:
Of all of the JunkWalkers I've seen, yours seems to be the most solid and reliable.
Have you considered Viridian Emissary in place of Rampant Growth? It's slightly less terrible of a topdeck late game, and it's an early blocker against Humans and Zombies. Of course, there are lots of times where it just doesn't ramp at all, and that kind of sucks.
I'm not a huge fan of Enslave: best case scenario, sure, you get to attack with their titan the following turn, and that puts them in a rough spot. Worst case scenario, they just cast Beast Within on Enslave, and now you're in a world of hurt. At least Life's Finale pulls the other three Primetimes out of their deck.
I did do some testing last night. I tested the B/G/W version and honestly I felt like it was too clunky and the green splash for garruk and beast within just wasn't worth it. I really don't like that Garruk is just make a 2/2 or kill a dude and then make 1/1s.
That being said, I made some changes, removed the green entirely and ran a B/W walker list and immediately saw improvements in both power and consistency.
For ref, here is where my list is currently sitting:
Planeswalkers (11)
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2 Gideon Jura
2 Elspeth Tirel
1 Karn Liberated
Creatures (3)
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
2 Grave Titan
Spells (21)
4 Tragic Slip
1 Dismember
1 Go for the Throat
3 Day of Judgment
2 Oblivion Ring
3 Pristine Talisman
2 Tezzeret's Gambit
4 Lingering Souls
1 Curse of Death's Hold
10 Swamp
6 Plains
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Isolated Chapel
1 Vault of the Archangel
3 Celestial Purge
2 Timely Reinforcements
1 Batterskull
1 Divine Offering
2 Revoke Existence
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Curse of Death's Hold
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Life's Finale
This list runs so much smoother. I'm never missing colors, the pristine talismans allow me to ramp a little and helps vs spirit tokens. I was just finding that the Green didn't really offer enough to warrant the consistency issues that it was presenting.
It's only 2 colors (unless you count the 2-of Tezz Gambit with a Phyrexian cost as actually being blue :P).
But yes, basically after playing a few rounds with the junk deck I came to this conclusion: I'm essentially splashing green for Garruk. The 1-of beast within is fairly trivial and green doesn't offer much in the sideboard that white and black don't have alternatives for. Therefore, in order to justify the inevitable burden of mana inconsistency Garruk himself would need to be a game-changing play. What i was finding is that Garruk was actually quite mediocre. I never felt like when I played Garruk that the game swung largely in my favor. Based on that, I cut him and the green out and tightened up the list.
Adding in the 3 creatures gave my deck another angle to attack from. The list is definitely a little top heavy, but the addition of pristine talisman has helped in that area as well. I can usually rely on my removal and lingering souls to get me to the late game where my titans and planeswalkers can take over the board.
Pristine talisman is an idea also, but as I'm playing the Junk version, Viridian Emissary thins my deck and ramps out the colors that I need. Tomorrow will be my first tournament with the deck, but I'm expecting results.
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