"Nahiri Zoo" QB Decklist & Videos (~150 points per hour)

watman

I have everything except Olivia, what would be the good replacements?
I have the following big bang creatures at my disposal:
Wolf of Devil's Breach, Felidar Sovereign, Coldnight Castigator
Bruna, Gideon's Phalanx, Pia & Kiran, Ayli, Barrage Tyrant, Embermaw Hellion, Hanweir Garrison, Relic Seeker, Kyrtheon's Irregulars, Mina & Denn, Abbot of Keral Keep, Drogskol Cavalry, Hanweir Militia Captain, Dusk Stalker
Nearly all uncommon creatures, out of useful ones I'm missing Mad Prophet

Would you consider adding Devil's Playground instead of one of the small dudes (Steward, Bushwalker, Rambler or Oath)?

If you could also check my deck proposal (viewtopic.php?p=579083#p579083) and suggest anything, I'd be grateful ;]

Splizwarf

Watman, Yunnn can probably give you a better answer, but given that list I'd suggest Wolf of Devil's Breach or Relic Seeker for Olivia substitutes. Felidar Sovereign would be good as well but the Vigilance makes it situational to cast. Try all three and see what works for your playstyle.

I am also missing a few cards from Yunnn's decklist, but aside from Smite vs. Inner Struggle I think mine runs at least as well. The Zoo is a chainsaw. The only thing it's missing is a Hixus solution, which gets me every so often. Volcanic Rambler is good fun but, uh... not really a targeted response.

Here's my version:
Olivia, Mobilized for War
Smite the Monstrous (I don't have Inner Struggle, because friggin' RNG lol ugh)
Lantern Scout (Lone Rider is an interesting suggestion, but won't Lifelink the big beaters)
Serene Steward
Uncaged Fury
Sanctifier of Souls
Volcanic Rambler
Iroas's Champion
Scourge Wolf (or Selfless Spirit, for a shot at **** spirit ribbons)
Geier Reach Bandit

I deal with the Smite pre-charge problem by loading it second behind a weenie. Usually I can get what I need from the spillover.

No Shrine as per Yunnn's explanation.

Oath of Gideon is out because, while it does work hilariously with a full hand and Olivia, a) ideally I never have even close to a full hand, and b) oh god I hate sitting through the animations (ok, it's less bad than it used to be but still). Iroas's Champion is the substitute, although obviously not a cost-based decision. Iroas's with a Stoneforge on it will chew up a lot of things; any time there's nothing to chew, it's doing double damage. I really don't like the Berserker aspect, but it's still useful enough to keep in.

Reckless Bushwacker is out because there's only one ally in the deck (yes, Oath would make that two, but it's staying out). Also, I just don't like Bushwacker, heh. Scourge Wolf is the substitute, and it's pretty great. It's cheap, survivable (First Strike), and gets Double Strike during Red Delirium; in my mind it's Iroas's Champion without the Berserker downside, for half the cost, that sometimes it only hits once. I seem to hit Red Delirium decently often.

I don't have Avaricious Dragon. Geier Reach Bandit is the substitute, and holy moly it's absurd. When it's Transformed, Harbinger will multiply the Transformed side's numbers. A lucky draw of two Bandits and Uncaged Fury will sometimes end a match on turn 3. I don't feel like I'm missing anything by not having the Dragon available.

Geier Reach Bandit is nuts in this deck; if you have one, throw it in. It's really fun.

span_argoman

watman wrote:

I have everything except Olivia, what would be the good replacements?
I have the following big bang creatures at my disposal:
Wolf of Devil's Breach, Felidar Sovereign, Coldnight Castigator
Bruna, Gideon's Phalanx, Pia & Kiran, Ayli, Barrage Tyrant, Embermaw Hellion, Hanweir Garrison, Relic Seeker, Kyrtheon's Irregulars, Mina & Denn, Abbot of Keral Keep, Drogskol Cavalry, Hanweir Militia Captain, Dusk Stalker
Nearly all uncommon creatures, out of useful ones I'm missing Mad Prophet

Would you consider adding Devil's Playground instead of one of the small dudes (Steward, Bushwalker, Rambler or Oath)?

If you could also check my deck proposal (viewtopic.php?p=579083#p579083) and suggest anything, I'd be grateful ;]

While waiting for yunnnn to reply, here's my input. Olivia plays the role of a big creature as well as life gain to keep the deck running for long periods on end. The big creatures enable the use of Nahiri's third ability so you can still run with one less big creature as long as you stick to cards which are comparable in stats and mana cost to the other creatures in the deck.

Seeing as how yunnnn specifically mentioned in his video that mid-range creatures don't fit, that rules out Hanweir Garrison, Hanweir Militia Captain, Abbot of Keral Keep, Mina & Denn, Kytheon's Irregulars, Relic Seeker, Ayli, Drogskol Cavalry and Wolf of Devil's Breach. Embermaw Hellion while nice for damage doesn't synergise with the third ability and also has Berserker which is a downside in this deck. Dust Stalker disappears without another colourless creature on the board and so isn't suitable. Gideon's Phalanx is too expensive for too little benefit and doesn't synergise with the third ability.

Barrage Tyrant is a suitable big creature option. Felidar Sovereign is a suitable small creature option with Life Link too. You don't really need the big creatures so Felidar Sovereign could be the ideal option. Goldnight Castigator is another suitable big creature option but be prepared to take more damage with it and without Olivia in your deck. So you may not be able to run it for extended periods like the original deck can.

Splizwarf wrote:

Reckless Bushwacker is out because there's only one ally in the deck (yes, Oath would make that two, but it's staying out). Also, I just don't like Bushwacker, heh. Scourge Wolf is the substitute, and it's pretty great. It's cheap, survivable (First Strike), and gets Double Strike during Red Delirium; in my mind it's Iroas's Champion without the Berserker downside, for half the cost, that sometimes it only hits once. I seem to hit Red Delirium decently often.

Reckless Bushwhacker is there for the mass haste and +1/+0 upon summon. That allows your other newly summoned creatures to attack immediately, helping you to speed up the deck. Scourge Wolf is nice when its effect triggers but the absolute gain is likely to be less than Reckless Bushwhacker. If you manage to hit any other creature in the deck with the Bushwhacker Haste, that's already at least 2 rounds of Delirium for Scourge Wolf to catch up (damage from hasted Bushwhacker and the other creature).

yunnnn

watman wrote:

I have everything except Olivia, what would be the good replacements?
I have the following big bang creatures at my disposal:
Felidar Sovereign, Coldnight Castigator

These are the ones I like. Felidar is Life gain, Goldnight is a huge beater for cheap. They actually synergize well together because one will gain you life while the other potentially loses it. Creatures like Abbot take too much effort to cast; compare it with rambler (which is 1 less power for almost a whole turn's worth of mana), and you'll see why Rambler is better for this deck.

Would you consider adding Devil's Playground instead of one of the small dudes (Steward, Bushwalker, Rambler or
Oath)?
Devil's playground is better than oath if you dont have other allies to rally. Otherwise, I really prefer the lifelink combo of allies.

If you could also check my deck proposal (viewtopic.php?p=579083#p579083) and suggest anything, I'd be grateful ;]

This looks like a solid start. You should just play it more and start making swaps as you feel comfortable. The best part of this deck is being able to make minor swaps to suit your playstyle without messing up the general strategy.

Reckless Bushwhacker is there for the mass haste and +1/+0 upon summon. That allows your other newly summoned creatures to attack immediately, helping you to speed up the deck. Scourge Wolf is nice when its effect triggers but the absolute gain is likely to be less than Reckless Bushwhacker.

Scourge Wolf suffers from the 1 mana too much club, as 8 is effectively 1 more turn than 7. He is great in **** event, but I think he is too slow in QB.
As for Bushwhacker, I'm a huge fan of it being an ally (for the lifelinker ally), as well as hasting all your other creatures. In the videos, I show how casting order becomes important because you want to drop him last, and he can provide tons of value if you combo him with a good rambler. His only downside is that his buffing effects take some amount of seconds to animate.


I have a lot of deck theory, so if people are interested, we can start up some threads in the Decks subforum. I'm a big fan of coming up with great deck ideas and interesting synergies, and I really feel like this game could use a stronger deckbuilding and theorycraft community. Some ideas:
1. Reclaim in kiora, and her unobvious god-combo.
2. Ob Nox decks and how to build them (ranking kill spells and utility spells).
3. The same treatment of Koth QB that Nahiri got here (I'm not a huge fan of Koth's inconsistency without Fevered Visions, so I don't play him that much)
4. I also feel like the individual PW threads are like a black hole for discussion. It is very hard to bring out new ideas, and i rarely click into those threads to read new things. Each PW's stats should be put somewhere else (Like octal's beta page), and we should have a clean Deck forum for only discussion.

glggwp

i tried this deck in the last qb and it worked!

yunnnn

Since there are a lot of individual card questions, I will post a tier list for creatures that are good for this deck (I'll add it to the first post), with a bit of explanation.

I think most are already obvious from watching the breakdown in the video, but it should serve as a good way to think about card selection in this deck.

madwren

yunnnn wrote:

4. I also feel like the individual PW threads are like a black hole for discussion. It is very hard to bring out new ideas, and i rarely click into those threads to read new things. Each PW's stats should be put somewhere else (Like octal's beta page), and we should have a clean Deck forum for only discussion.

Seconding this. I don't even bother going into those threads anymore, and even if you believe in extreme organization, having 15 of them pinned defeats the entire purpose of pinning in the first place.

yunnnn

I just put up a tier list with reviews for about 40 creatures (third section in the top post, viewtopic.php?f=31&t=55061#p600989). Feel free to angrily discuss my scores! (Sigarda and Angelic Captain got the same score, I'm sure that'll piss somebody off)

Keep in mind that it's all in context of Nahiri Zoo, so cards that are normally good but don't work well in Nahiri will be rated lower.

I also purposely didn't rate every mythic, because they are typically all 4s or 5s and aren't that interesting. Ullrich, GRB: You'd play them if you had them, and you already know that. Instead, I focused more on uncommons and rares that I assumed most players will have.

Just remember that the most important thing is that the deck includes a distribution of cheap beaters along with a couple of finishers. If you play only big honking monsters and no cheap beaters, then this deck will be horrible (and vice versa):
1 Uncaged Fury
1-2 Removal Spells
2-3 Big Finishers
4-5 Cheap beaters

Have fun!

Reaganstorme

yunnnn wrote:

I have a lot of deck theory, so if people are interested, we can start up some threads in the Decks subforum. I'm a big fan of coming up with great deck ideas and interesting synergies, and I really feel like this game could use a stronger deckbuilding and theorycraft community. Some ideas:
1. Reclaim in kiora, and her unobvious god-combo.
2. Ob Nox decks and how to build them (ranking kill spells and utility spells).
3. The same treatment of Koth QB that Nahiri got here (I'm not a huge fan of Koth's inconsistency without Fevered Visions, so I don't play him that much)
4. I also feel like the individual PW threads are like a black hole for discussion. It is very hard to bring out new ideas, and i rarely click into those threads to read new things. Each PW's stats should be put somewhere else (Like octal's beta page), and we should have a clean Deck forum for only discussion.

I'd love to see more of these types of discussions. Its partly why I created the "Care and Feeding of..." threads, to discuss certain aspects of deck theory that relate to more than just one planeswalker.

babar3355

Enjoyed the post man... I am most interested in how you hack the game to give you nothing but 82 life Chandra as an opponent

I typically load my QB with Olivia, Akum, Piggy, Valakut, etc. I think I will try your method where I use more small pump beaters rather than building a more rounded deck.

I would argue some of your star conclusions though. Namely, any card that causes a lot of animations slows you down. So piggy is in that camp but his buffs are huge. Something like oath of Gideon just doesn't go fast enough, especially if they are taking on Olivia buffs. Would much rather a scout or steward to drop in that slot and not have a big time lag for animations. Just my 2c.

Patavian

Just picked up Nahiri today. Question for the experts.

How does this conversation change when you factor Deploy the Gatewatch? I have some good big beaters and DtG (no Olivia though, missed out on that).

Current Deck:

Creatures:
Gisela
Decimator
Avaracious Dragon
Kozilek

Spells:
Inner Struggle
Magmatic Insight
Deploy the Gatewatch

Supports:
Mirrorpool
Corrupted Grafstone
Harness the Storm

KragHavok

Here is my Workin' Man's Zoo - no Olivia and only two mythics

Creatures:
Always play:
Geier Reach Bandit - 6/5 with haste and a nasty 12/11 transform (that auto transforms GRB!) for 12 mana. This is my Olivia lite.
Lone Rider - this is my Lantern Scout substitute which benefits greatly from Stoneforge (instant transform) and it's only 4 mana.
Serene Steward - 4/4 for 6 mana is solid and synergizes well with LR.
Reckless Bushwhacker - 4/3 with haste for 7 mana. Nice as a second summon since it adds haste and +1 might.
Sanctifier of Souls - 5/6 for 7 mana with bonus +1/+1 for creature adds. Makes occasional 1/1 spirit.
Volcanic Rambler - 5/3 for 8 mana. Mostly handy for cascade generation.
Conditional play:
Goldnight Castigator - 8/16 hasted flier for 8 mana. Nice to get out early or to hold in reserve if double damage is a concern.
Lathnu Hellion - 6/6 with haste for 10 mana. Kind of a homeless man's Akoum Firebird. Major downside is that it is destroyed if there are no energized gems on the board. Not such a big deal in a zoo deck.

Spells:
Inner Struggle - kill when necessary.
Uncaged Fury - Finish Him!

Nothing too Earth shattering here, but it does show that the deck is not dependent upon Olivia to be fast and effective. I just got Nahiri and this deck is fast. I had been testing this setup with Ajani Vengeant to get used to the mechanics of the deck and it was a decent setup even with his very different PW abilities. This deck tends to spam Stoneforge early and often and Harbinger only pops out about every 5th match or so.

The biggest drawback is the loss of the almost guaranteed healing from Olivia, but the Lone Rider tends to get big just often enough to keep the healing pot use low.

Kohlrah

Patavian wrote:

Just picked up Nahiri today. Question for the experts.

How does this conversation change when you factor Deploy the Gatewatch? I have some good big beaters and DtG (no Olivia though, missed out on that).

Current Deck:

Creatures:
Gisela
Decimator
Avaracious Dragon
Kozilek

Spells:
Inner Struggle
Magmatic Insight
Deploy the Gatewatch

Supports:
Mirrorpool
Corrupted Grafstone
Harness the Storm

I have lots of experience with the OP's deck list as well as my own with Deploy the Gatewatch.

My current list is:

Creatures:
Archangel Avacyn
Gisela, the Broken Blade
Olivia, mobilized for war

Spells:
Demolish*
Deploy the Gatewatch
Unlicensed disintegration

Supports:
Battlefield Forge
Corrupted Grafstone
Fertile thicket
Molten vortex

*demolish can be replaced for any burn spell, but I like it for the rare Hixus, Prison Warden and Starfield of Nyx+Silverstrike decks. Exquisite Firecraft being a solid start.

My experience with Unlicensed Disintegration, or any other removal spell in its place, has been underwhelming. This could be another card replaced with more burn because Archangel Avacyn and the life gained form Gisela and Olivia generally offset the need for any removal.

My game win times are about 90 to 180 seconds. So, approximately as much points as the OP's deck list. However, the Deploy the Gatewatch list is much easier to play since you don't have to worry too much about sorting your hand.

My suggestions for your list would be to cut Avaricious Dragon, Harness the Storm, Mirrorpool and Magmatic Insight for loyalty generating supports, an Uncaged Fury and/or Ondu's Rising to save from using those precious potions over a long period.

Kohlrah

Patavian wrote:

Just picked up Nahiri today. Question for the experts.

How does this conversation change when you factor Deploy the Gatewatch? I have some good big beaters and DtG (no Olivia though, missed out on that).

Current Deck:

Creatures:
Gisela
Decimator
Avaracious Dragon
Kozilek

Spells:
Inner Struggle
Magmatic Insight
Deploy the Gatewatch

Supports:
Mirrorpool
Corrupted Grafstone
Harness the Storm

Or how about a hybrid of the two decks. I just threw this together with your cards in mind, I wonder how it would perform:

Creatures:
Decimator of the Provinces
Gisela, the Broken Blade

Spells:
Allied Reinforcements
Deploy the Gatewatch
Devil's Playground
Inner Struggle/Exquisite Firecraft

Supports:
Battlefield Forge
Corrupted Grafstone
Fertile Thicket
Oath of Gideon

Hmmm... Uncaged Fury would not be a good idea since berserker from the Decimator would cancel the double strike out, unless it's played after Decimator wipes their board... Interesting, but I imagine inconsistent. Something that could be tried in place of inner Struggle/Exquisite Firecraft I suppose. It just seems like the Uncaged Fury would need too many other things to line up properly to be effective with this list.

EDIT: On second thought, Kozilek + Uncaged Fury would be better than Decimator + removal. I was mixing Kozilek and Ulamog up in my mind. Kozilek in this list sounds like a very quick kill.

cogito

What is with this 4/3 from kaladesh that fabricates 2 for 6? Together with the Lone rider top.

Mainloop25

cogito wrote:

What is with this 4/3 from kaladesh that fabricates 2 for 6? Together with the Lone rider top.

Best uncommon in the set, I'd say.

cogito

First round Lone rider for 4 and second round the fabricate guy -> Power 3 to transform

KragHavok

That's a great addition to my deck!. Thanks for bringing him up.

It's Visionary Augmenter BTW.

Yvendros

This deck is really fast, I appreciate it.

Question about two cards:

Kozilek's Return, useful? to take care of the small pesky stuff? I know it won't be returning with any eldrazi...

Zada, Hedron Grinder. i know his buff is temporary, but hit him with doublestrike. he becomes 10/10, and your other creatures get bigger too...?

Nothguorb

It's maddening...I just bought Nahiri, but I can't for the life of me seem to draw Uncaged Fury even after a big box . With that one card my zoo would be set.