100 Games with Historic ponza

Since the release of mystical archives, I've been playing historic gruul land destruction almost exclusively. 

I always loved modern and since I got back to magic in late 2020, thanks to arena, I 've been trying to mimic modern decks in historic and even though this often leads to meme decks, I found this latest meme deck quite fun to play! Oh, and it got me to mythic twice quite easily.

 

In this post I dumped some notes and thoughts I had while playing the deck.

The deck development

It took me two month and 21 versions to get to this list, the first version was a silly bunch of land destruction cards and big threats, it also featured cards i thought were amazing in the list such as field of ruin + crucible of worlds and gnottvold slumbermound, but i found to be too slow for the meta.

Every iteration brought me closer to a midrange gruul deck with ramps and some land disruption.

The current list

Maindeck

4 Llanowar Elves

4 Wolfwillow Haven

2 Scavenging Ooze

4 Bonecrusher Giant

2 Klothys, God of Destiny

4 Stone Rain

4 Goblin Ruinblaster

3 Questing Beast

3 Glorybringer

3 Chandra, Torch of Defiance

4 Abundant Harvest

1 Valakut Awakening

2 Rootbound Crag

4 Stomping Ground

4 Cragcrown Pathway

6 Forest

6 Mountain

Sideboard

3 Anger of the Gods

2 Grafdigger's Cage

2 Shifting Ceratops

1 Soul Sear

2 Garruk's Harbinger

2 Cindervines

2 Fry

1 Roiling Vortex

Card choices

Mana dorks

Why haven and not gilded goose? because haven doesn't die to fatal push / shock etc... You really want to play ahead of the curve. Plus, post side wolfwillow haven does not die to anger of the gods.

Land Destruction

Stone rain is the reason the deck exists, ruinblaster is similar but with legs, also it has haste, another theme of the deck.

Other spells

4x Abundant harvest, it is a shortcut to cards we need, even if it doesn't draw something useful, it will remove useless cards from the top of your deck: if you are in the middle-late game with a blank hand and need a play, you can cast it for "nonland" and it will remove any land on the top of your deck. 

Creatures

Bonecrusher is just too versatile not to be played, I've seen people play stone rain decks with Gruul Spellbreaker but the current list is not an aggro deck, and if you want to play aggressive, just play regular gruul.

Questing beast does a lot of things we want: it forces the opponent to find a solution quickly, it attacks and it can block right away. It doesn't die to eliminate and cannot be grabbed by claim the firstborn. It has haste so it has the chance to attack narset and teferi (while hitting the opponent) before dying to wrath.

Glorybringer is our top of the curve, a flying removal, with haste that we often play on turn 4 if not 3.

Scavenging ooze is still relevant in the meta, I no longer see kroxa everywhere, but it keeps gearhulks in check.

Klothys, great early play, can remove escape cards from the graveyard, it will usually win games against arcanist and control decks.

Planeswalkers

Chandra, Torch of defiance: one of my favourite planeswalker ever: removal, ramp, card advantage, I'm not playing 4 only because of the legend ruling. Against control a T3 chandra can be very good.

I used to play 1x Vivien (5 cmc), but i replaced her with a 3rd chandra. Before Vivien i played 1 primal command, which was often a slow card...

Sideboard

2x Grafdigger cage, i'm not sure 2 is still the correct amount of gy hate and maybe the new relic of the progenitus is better

3x anger of the gods, aggro decks will not care about your land disruption plan

2x Fry, to fry teferi, narset, angels bishops and so on.

2x Cindervines, useful against artifacts and spell intensive decks

2x Shifting ceratops: against any blue deck

2x Garruk's harbinger: against black decks

1x Soul sear: extra help against creatures and/or planeswalker

1x Roiling vortex: damn angel decks

Matchups: Aggro

According to untapped.gg my worst matchup are Mono white / GW angels and GW company. It's not really surprising, they don't care about land disruption, they swarm and their creature's toughness is >= 4. 

If the angel deck can trigger a couple bishops, it's often GG, if gw company resolves a couple company and exile your questing beast or chandra, it's often GG. That's why I have 2 fry in the sideboard.

In these matchups i often bring in Roiling vortex (against angels) , soul sear, fry, anger of the gods and board out 4 stone rain and 4 ruinblaster.

Mono black aggro is another unfavored matchup, their small creatures can come back from the graveyard, while their bigger threats are hard to kill for us, phyrexian obliterator is often gg..

Gruul aggro is a bit less unfavored since post side we have proper tools to deal with their creatures, again we board out land destruction and board in anger of the gods, harbinger, soul sear

Matchups: Control

Usually these are favored matchups, imho the best control decks at the moment are jeskai, blue-white, dimir  in that order. 

These decks need mana and our land disruption plan is the way to go, then hasty creatures that don't die from helix. Against UWx keep in mind that an unanswered teferi is often gg.

Magma opus decks are less problematic.. they need a lot of mana and some control cards are exchanged for gearhulks, magma opus and mizzix mastery.

These decks usually have a hard time removing klothys, so try to force one to the battlefield (and keep it not a creature)

Here shifting ceratops and fry are good post side options, as well as soul sear.