MTG Salvation

This is my R/G Deathtouch deck of doom! I've just finished a major overhaul of the deck. I've cut 10 cards and even changed generals from Livonya Silone to Marhault Elsdragon. The deck has the themes of deathtouch and rampage. Cards with a () beside them will be cut and replaced by wishlist stuff.




Changelog


Wishlist:


Anyway, feel free to give suggestions, thanks in advance!

Perhaps adding trample will help make it difficult to block? Rancor, Dragon Breath, Dragon Fangs , Nylea, God of the Hunt may be useful. The Dragon cycle works wonders in a deck with high CMC. Rancor is just a pain to deal with. You also have a great deal of creatures at 5CMC. Aether Vial will be super useful if you can get it that high!

Wow, I just looked at my 5 cc creatures and I think it's too many! I had never noticed that before somehow, even after typing out the list with cmc. I need to cut at least three of those and give the deck some more ramp / removal.

In my first game with the deck, I made a mistake and picked the hornet queen with my Mwonvuli Beast Tracker when I should
have gotten Acidic Slime instead. To be fair, it was a 1v1 match since no one really showed up for EDH day and the deck wasn't built for it, but I found myself
really short on creature removal and graveyard hate. Ended up one mana short of playing the queen and he got some creature sacrifice to kill any of my creatures combo going and I'd had it! Anyway, the deck feels a little bit unfocused. Seems to be a dash of voltron, infect, and deathtouch. I think I need more victory conditions overall, or at least more focus.

Hey there Palnar, here to return the favor and critique your list! As you have stated, the deck does lack some focus and I'm hoping these suggestions will help you streamline the deck to head in one direction. I won't list a whole new deck, but I'll try to give you a skeleton of sorts to work with so you can take the deck in a more streamlined direction.

I noticed a lot of creatures in your list contain the rampage mechanic, which will take off if you can force blocks. I think the deck having Livonya at the head is unique enough, so why not go all the way and go with a rampage theme? You mentioned you like older cards, so I'm going to try to suggest cards that are a little older and are still helpful to your game plan.

Craw Giant and Teeka's Dragon are some other creatures with large rampage numbers that can get big in a hurry. I would suggest swapping them out for Malignus because of the lack of Fling effects you have in the deck and Viashivan Dragon because it's not that great.

Since the deck is creature focused and you're in Gruul colors, I'd advise using haste enablers to get your rampagers running when they hit the ground. Fervor is a good start, but more enablers will add some consistency to the deck. Anger is an older option that grants global haste like Fervor, but needs to be in a graveyard to work, which won't be too hard by throwing Nemesis Mask or Lure on it. In addition to that, you could try In the Web of War or Ogre Battledriver for a power boost on top of your soon-to-be large creatures in addition to haste, and finally Hammer of Purphoros to throw away excess land late game and make them into beaters. I'd suggest cutting Magistrate's Veto and Gruul War Chant because you now want creatures to block, Bellowing Tanglewurm because it only hits half of your colors, and War Cadence because using it means you have less mana to play around with for casting creatures and what not.

In addition to the Mask and Lure mentioned above, Tempting Licid is something you should consider and is one of my personal favorite options for this type of effect. If the enchanted creature should die, you can in response turn it into a creature again before combat damage is dealt and move it to another creature later!

Since you like the theme of infect, adding forced blocks makes it that much stronger and less degenerate, because not everyone likes losing to 10 poison counters. Triumph of the Hordes gives all of your creatures infect and trample and Viridian Corrupter destroys a problem artifact upon ETB. Wither is another mechanic you could add to your arsenal. Witherscale Wurm is basically a 9/9 for 6 with no drawbacks if you have a trample enabler on the field, Tower Above is a neat trick that also forces a block, Stigma Lasher would be an excellent addition to any creature based deck by shutting down life gain, and you can use Hateflayer to shoot out opposing creatures during combat. Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions as for what to cut for these cards, but if you wanted to add more of that effect to the deck those are what I would recommend.


Hopefully you will find these suggestions helpful in bringing focus to your deck. It's definitely something that's out of the ordinary, and that's never a bad thing. I'd also like to ask if you think that 35 lands is enough for the deck? I never feel safe going below 36, and I always start at 37 when building decks, so I'd like to know what you think!

Hey man, thanks for the detailed reply! I really appreciate the insight and help with the deck's focus and suggestions.

After reading your post, I've decided to give the deck some tough love that it needs. You made me realize that I really shouldn't do both "must block" and "cannot block." They really do work poorly together and it's almost like the deck is fighting itself. So, that means cutting all the enchantments that mess up blocking.
raging river
magistrate's veto
war cadence
gruul war chant
stand or fall all cut.

There were also some ineffective creatures as well. If they were just big creatures
with no abilities, they got the axe. I also wanted to lower the curve a bit and the deck
had too many 5 drops.
Bellowing Tanglewurm
Malignus
Shivan Wurm
Viashivan Dragon
Rubblehulk all cut

Stonewood Invocation has also been less than impressive. It's getting the cut. Ghor-Clan Rampager seems better than it for the versatility.

So that's 11 cuts- Here's what I'm planning on adding:
Anger -Good Suggestion!
Wasteland Viper - Nice cheap surprise, versatile, solid blocker.
Deadly Recluse - Another cheap blocker, helps against fliers, lowers my curve
Tempting Licid - Awesome suggestion, I don't think I played when this creature came out
so I didn't know about it. Fits right in the deck, I was really looking for more lure effects.
Nightshade Peddler - Lowers my curve, he makes my non-deathtouch even meaner and really helps my rampagers.
Tangle Angler - Another must block, can slowly wear down annoying or indestructible blockers.
Hammer of Purphoros - Another great suggestion, can't believe I didn't think of it! Except for the red mana and artifact vulnerability, prettymuch an upgrade over fervor.
Viridian corrupter - The deck already needs more artifact removal, good call.
Nylea, God of the hunt - Prettymuch far superior to gruul war plow, will replace it when I get one. Bonus that I already use her bow, fits the flavor of the deck.
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Cards I'm considering-
Satyr Piper- dies to anything but could be a useful effect.
Irresistible Prey - cheap, useful cantrip
rancor - always useful, I'm actually short on these right now though
hateflayer - seems very cool and flavorful, but not sure if I want to add another 7 drop.
blightwidow - possibly better than deadly recluse?
Swarmyard - With the changes I'm making, the deck has a fair amount of insects and spiders.
Phyrexian Swarmlord - Seems quite powerful, possibly too powerful?
Triumph of the Hordes - This also looks awesome, also possibly too powerful? Seems like a fog effect or I win type card.
Domri Rade - Depending on my creature count after these major changes, he might be worth including. Should be pretty easy to defend with all the deathtouch I have going on
Bonfire of the damned - Can be a big blowout, I'm a bit short on removal.

Craw Giant has a bit too many green mana symbols in it for my taste for a 6/4. Teeka's Dragon is very cool and I like the oldschool flavor. However, I'm worried she'll be a 9 drop that dies to any type of creature or artifact removal and I really don't run much hexproof in the deck. It's also a bit of a non-bow with my flying hate subtheme- Whirlwind and Windstorm.

Regarding your question about land, so far it hasn't been a problem. I just got in another game tonight and I actually flooded out quite badly. By the end I was up to 14 lands with only one ramp spell early on. When the precons are released, I'm going to throw a sol ring and probably a homeward path in here as well. So far, 35 has been ok but only more games will tell.

And finally, the other problem that I've discovered with this deck is with the general. So far, Livonya has been horribly ineffective in every game. She dies very often and is both expensive to cast both mana wise and color cost wise. The only card I have dedicated to her is Obsidian Battle-Axe. I don't have the hexproof to be a true voltron. Also, she only hits for 4 and lacks haste. So I have to hit an opponent 6 times with her unbuffed. It's still 4x with the battle axe equipped. Tonight she died to a wrath effect as well as an overloaded mizzium mortars For 10 mana, she wasn't even worth casting the rest of the game! So, I'm strongly considering dropping her as my general. I prefer the deathtouch theme over the paper thin voltron theme. I'm thinking of replacing her with Marhault Elsdragon. He's already in the deck so I just move him up to general and free up a spot while also dropping the battle axe. He still costs 6, but he has more toughness and an ability that is relevant to the deck (although rampage 1 is pretty awful.) He also costs 1 less colored mana to cast. He's a low profile threat and is still from Legends. Other options include Sunastian Falconer (although I'm really not a ramp deck) or Ruric Thar, the Unbowed. Ruric is clearly the most powerful by far, but it would raise my threat level by a ton and I'd need to retool the deck to drop a lot of my spells etc. I think for now I'll play a few games as Marhault Elsdragon and see how it goes, but I'm open to suggestions.