Koth? Seriously?

Kyokudai

Probably see a lot of Koth simply because he came into rotation so a lot of people are playing him.  It is certainly true with me.

I actually find him a different flavor of challenge.  Mine is still low level since I am using runes for other walkers currently.  You really really have to prioritize red then PW gems.  Anything else is incidental unless it's a cascade gamble for a red.  Other walkers you can see a double or triple cascade outside of your walker colors and it is okay to take that over an on-color match.  Not this guy!  I find that a good change of pace.  It also feels like strategic use of the lvl 1 ability is awesome.  You don't always hit it (at lvl 1 anyway where you only destroy 3).  If you have a red 3 match, you save the ability for the next round where you may not have a 3 naturally.

For my deck slots I keep standard decks in them, so my Koth in TG is standard.  (That and I don't have some of the splashy cards you mention like Olivia and pig?)  Were it not for Koth, I never would have built that Neheb deck (which is fun btw!).

Maybe at levels in the 30s and 60s he's just annoying, but where I am it's a good change of pace.

shteev

Sirchombli said:

Is koth really this big of a menace? I've almost always felt he was overrated. Since he was the first fancy walker I scooped up, I've gotten a lot of games in with him. He's not all that amazing, he's just really splashy. Sure the Olivia, ulrich, pig thing is rough to deal with, but they're chained to the top of their library for the rest of the game and all you have to do to beat that start is play out a couple removal spells. You get a lot of weird brews from both players, too. Building a strong koth deck isn't quite as simple as stuffing a bunch of big, dumb animals into your deck and pushing start. I think that you just have to build your decks with him in mind. Walkers like ob nix and jace 2 shouldn't have problems with him at all.

Koth is too inconsistent for me to play, but I probably have more losses to Koth in QB than any other planeswalker... he needs to get very lucky to crush me, but he CAN get lucky in a way that no other PW can. Plus, when I'm in QB, I'm always playing a fast and less consistent deck myself, so he's a little more threatening to me.

ElfNeedsFood

Unlike Ob or cycling or other intricate combination decks, Koth is mostly straightforward so the AI mostly gets it right (other than pershaps some  unintelligent use of things like Uncaged Fury), so it allows the AI to run relatively stronger with Koth than these other decks. Even blindly hitting his first ability mostly works for the AI. Nahiri tends to be similarly easy for the AI to run reasonably...

wickedwitch74

Yes, he is a menace.

His mana gain is huge, and in Training Grounds it is a problem. Here is my original post:

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/686506#Comment_686506

Training Grounds, in its current iteration, is a terrible place to build/test decks.

I have stopped trying to test new, standard builds, because I inevitably get pitted against an optimized, Legacy Koth. I mean, he comes up as my opponent 50-60% of the time, which is just wrong.

Because of this, there is no real variety to Training Grounds, and there is little chance to "test" a standard deck in a meaningful way.

It's not Quick Battle, but Training Grounds could be super-fun and a very rich event with just a little tweaking.

How about a simple toggle between Standard and Legacy? How about a toggle to play Pauper and use only common cards? Add a toggle to force cards only from Innistrad's two sets. It would be a very small change, seeing that they already have deckbuilding enforcement in place.

Re-vamp the rewards to accommodate all these new modes, and voila... it'd be very cool.

RhysMarkov

ElfNeedsFood said:

Unlike Ob or cycling or other intricate combination decks, Koth is mostly straightforward so the AI mostly gets it right (other than pershaps some  unintelligent use of things like Uncaged Fury), so it allows the AI to run relatively stronger with Koth than these other decks. Even blindly hitting his first ability mostly works for the AI. Nahiri tends to be similarly easy for the AI to run reasonably...

This is actually a really good point, from the whole fewer moving parts = easier for the AO to do its job point of view.

morgue427

koth i have found is usually just deny red to him much as you can. keeping the board static has worked well for me but then again i run koth for tg for the reasons everyone else does, fast wins to get the money lol. No trifecta of nasties at least just olivia but all the others abbot and vocanic just to cause cascades.

wereotter

morgue427 said:

koth i have found is usually just deny red to him much as you can. keeping the board static has worked well for me but then again i run koth for tg for the reasons everyone else does, fast wins to get the money lol. No trifecta of nasties at least just olivia but all the others abbot and vocanic just to cause cascades.

Broken as Olivia is, it turns all your creatures into nasties.

ElfNeedsFood

wereotter said:

Broken as Olivia is, it turns all your creatures into nasties.

Even more than the little piggy does...

morgue427

oh i know lol just doesnt get the hate that war pig does, and i am happy to try to cast after so they give me life while killing

Grenade110

Koth is not much of a problem for me. I generally do TG with Nissa1 deck headlined by Zendikar Incarnate and Samut. I also run Shefet Monitor, Wild Instincts, Dissenter's Deliverance, Animist Awakening, Sandwurm Convergence, Nissa's Pilgrimage, Brawler's Plate, and Cartouche of Strength. Purely standard deck that can severely outrace Koth. My hardest matches have been other Nissa1 decks similar to my build. 

I do have Koth and will occasionally run him in TG but his deck ramps into Combustible Gearhulk and runs a fair amount of cycling cards. It is also Standard.

[Deleted User]

I'm so bored of watching Koth reliably dump a whole hand of mythics into the board, slaying all my creatures and basically winning the game by turn 3

morgue427

have some that do that but i have been noticing a lot more that just have ehh creatures in them too