Defend against Gaea’s Revenge

Aquilen

I rarely lose in events, maybe 3 out of 70 games. But almost every game that I lose has more or less the same circumstances. Which are, I’m playing red (Koth) and the other player is playing green and get’s a Gaea’s Revenge on the field pretty early. I’ve tried to counter this by adding Haunted Cloak into the deck. I still need a bit of luck to draw the right cards and get color matches to be able to stop Gaea’s Revenge. Do you have any thoughts how to prepare better for this scenario? I had an idea to add Cobblebrute but besides being able to stop RC and defend against Gaea’s Revenge it’s a pretty useless card.

Morphis

Gaea's revenge is my #1 enemy.
I have it but usually do not run it.

The main problem is that if your opponent lucky cascades into it in the first couple of rounds it is most likely game over.

Most mass removal cost a lot.
Also you are not guaranteed to have one in the opening hand or in the very first couple draws.
Any later than that is too late probably cause of the 16 attack and haste.

So far the only real answer I found is from beyond.
It costs only 9 mana and can slowly kill it while you gain mana.
The mana gain helps setting other answers for it if something happens to your support in the meantime.

Gideon ally can also use his first skill to gain survive a couple more turns and with enough luck even kill it.

Tilikum

I'm not sure if they changed this or not but Hixus, Prison Warden has bailed me out a few times against Gaea's Revenge. Pun intended...
Just keep a Swift Reckoning handy for when too many white gems start creeping near the support or if you know your opponent's deck has support removal.

As far as Koth goes, heres some cards that will at least affect Gaea's Revenge.

Red

Colorless

Aquilen

Does is work on Gaea’s? With hexproof and all.

I’ve found that it’s usually my red decks that have a hard time coping. Probably because red has less defenders but also less means of interfering with the opponents hand and mana draw

Tilikum

I was just editing my post to add some red cards. Unfortunately they're mostly mythic and don't full on destroy him.

Theros

Goldnight Castigate is red's gae. very stong in a koth deck and only cost 8. easy to stack.

jimilinho_

Best way to deal with it with koth is with berserkers.

Whether that's just using his second ability or cards like Embermaw Hellion/ scab-clan berserker.

Obviously Revenge is an insanely good card and sometimes you just lose to it and there's not much you can do!

Aquilen

Jimilinho, I think you nailed it! Offense is the best defense in this case. I’ve gone thinking about it the wrong way. Thanx!

HomeRn

Aquilen wrote:

Jimilinho, I think you nailed it! Offense is the best defense in this case. I’ve gone thinking about it the wrong way. Thanx!

Yeah, defenders in general are universally under powered at the current moment. Mostly because their mana costs are too much in most cases. Reach is a much better version of defender right now considering it blocks anything - except menance unless you have a second creature with reach/defender - and you usually get better stat lines with creatures having reach instead of straight defender!

Barrelrolla

It's just retardedly strong.
Even with some mass damage spells or defenders, it's still a 16/9 with trample :O GL! It's one of the cards I hate seeing the most.

Morphis

Barrelrolla wrote:

It's just retardedly strong.
Even with some mass damage spells or defenders, it's still a 16/9 with trample :O GL! It's one of the cards I hate seeing the most.

It does not have trample(thank god).
It does have haste

tm00

I think 3 of my four losses with ob nixilis were due to early revenges, ended up adding more defenders to buy time.

Barrelrolla

Morphis wrote:

Barrelrolla wrote:

It's just retardedly strong.
Even with some mass damage spells or defenders, it's still a 16/9 with trample :O GL! It's one of the cards I hate seeing the most.

It does not have trample(thank god).
It does have haste

Oh yeah, my bad. Still

HunMike

Aligned hedron network works wonders for me. It proved to be far more useful than i thought first, altough i put it in from sheer desperation. Still needs another removal to solve the treat, but it can gain a turn for me in itself for 3 mana so even Koth can cast it in one turn. And yea, it works just as good against the RC too

Underestimating haunted cloak and this card was my biggest mistake in the game so far. Costed me at least a dozen matches 'til i realised that.

Last week, when i got soul swallower i started to wonder if i should use it. It's pretty bad when you are leading, but when in trouble, a 6/6 for 10 mana which is going to be getting buffs while i'm at a disadvantage doesn't seem a bad deal to me. Still, it's a little hard to pair green with mana shortage

Dodecapod

As others have mentioned, berserkers seem like a much more reliable way to handle Gaea's Revenge in red, not just because of excessively high mana costs for blockers in general, but also because removal is extremely efficient right now compared to targetable creatures, so spending extra mana for an ability that doesn't instantly affect the board can often be costly or even counterproductive if, for example, Prism Array or Exert Influence might be played in the next few turns to complement GR.

One nice trick that Koth can use without otherwise weakening his deck is to pair Embermaw Hellion with Reckless Bushwhacker on the same turn; both cards are individually playable in their own rights, and together deal just enough to kill GR for about the same mana cost, while leaving a small haste attacker behind to regain momentum afterwards. In other matchups, both cards are much more active than most blockers or mass removal (Tyrant of Valakut being one of the few exceptions), so they don't compromise Koth's typical strength of overwhelming a random opponent before they can gather enough mana to answer his threats and play their own.

Also, unlike Aligned Hedron Network and a removal spell, 2 mass removal spells or abilities, or (most) large creatures and Haunted Cloak, this combination maintains card parity, which can be crucial for red in the absence of draw engines like Fevered Visions or Jori En, Ruin Diver, since most other colors have better access to some form of ongoing card advantage in a long game, and none more so than blue and green. Then again, it's not as though all of these answers are mutually exclusive, so if GR is a big enough problem, it's entirely possible to use multiple avenues for removing it before it winds up costing the game.

Of course, against Runaway Carriage, berserkers tend to turn from a strength into a liability and other methods will be more effective, so as always there's a tradeoff between optimizing a given deck against different kinds of potentially problematic situations (e.g. playing actively will give the AI less time to use all of their cards and eventually expose any weaknesses in a deck, whereas playing defensively will usually handle a few expected threats more consistently than trying to race damage before those threats can be played, Seasons Past loops notwithstanding).

Anyway, good luck finding a workable solution for your deck; no question Gaea's Revenge is one of the most powerful "fair" threats in the game right now (i.e. strong, but not prone to inducing consistent, realistic 1-2 turn kills off of a large cascade), so it's something every event deck needs to be prepared for these days, and can often be very challenging to defend against in the early turns.

Barrelrolla

From the Olivia thread I learned that all you have to do is include some remove spells and you'll be fine. The card is totally balanced.