Decklist: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/qijT0MA0hEizDrtBepJJEQ
Introduction:
Party on, Wayne.
Party on, Garth.
Welcome to the Garth One-Eye primer. As far as I know I’m one of a very select few who have been brewing up Garth to try and hang in the CEDH scene. There’s no discord server that I’m aware of, and I brew him almost entirely in isolation, having played against almost zero other Garth decks in CEDH. I first started playing him early 2022, and have been grinding him almost exclusively for just over a year now. I enjoy playing him as my main CEDH squeeze, as a fun midrange deck with multiple redundancies outside the wins prominent with just Garth himself. He’s one of the most flexible decks I’ve played, which is my primary reason for stanning him so hard.
He even pilots my 5c Snow Tribal deck in casual EDH, so you know I play him more than fucking enough.
So, where do we get started? Well, my first “Primer” was about a single page, and mostly consisted of jokes. I might post it at the bottom of this one for laughs. The OG name of my unique brew of Garth is “Garth Loves Puss.” An homage to my childhood cat of the same name, and also to the fact that Garth goes infinite with the card Displacer Kitten VERY easily. Hell, I’ll tell the full story of Puss, AKA “River Ghost” at the tail end of this, to give you some catharsis, perhaps. I’d like to think he’s haunting this deck to do well, somewhere out there in ghost cat purgatory.
Fair warning, I haven’t read those novels from the 90s, so for all I know Garth could be a huge dickhead. I just stan the card, not the character.
Anywho, let’s talk about deck philosophy first.
Deck Philosophy:
Now, I despise getting all hoity toity like some folks do about their deck philosophies. Magic is math at the root. A card game designed by a Math Major to be played by children. People taking magic too seriously is one of my minor pet peeves.
I echo Richard Garfield’s mindset 100%. And yet, I’ve been playing magic on and off since I got my first tupperware box of cards from an abandoned storage locker via my Gram in the 90s. I mostly jam EDH, CEDH, and Modern, which means a lot of my core philosophies come from analyzing tempo and game speed. I firmly believe that if you want to become a better Magic player, you need to focus on the core resources of card advantage and mana resource management first and foremost.
You can always tell a bad player by watching people direct their answers and threats – if they’re ignoring somebody with a billion mana and/or a billion cards in hand, they probably suck at the game.
After you play enough magic, you ultimately come to realize that the best decks are just 5c piles that do a couple of neat things, especially in EDH. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard No Ban List (NBL) EDH can have that problem in terms of meta variety. But after two decades on and off of Magic, I do have a rep as a Rainbow player for a reason.
Now, Garth isn’t just another 5c pile. He’s the ultimate toolbox of archaic cards, and there are two reasons why I think this deck is both hilarious and also fun to play:
- You have the option to kill your opponents with infinite-infinite Shivan Dragons.
- Your core loop involves making infinite Black Lotuses for infinite mana, breaking the most famous Magic card of all time.
If you don’t think those two things are fucking metal as hell, you have no respect for the history of the game, and secondly, fuck you.
That being said…
Let’s stop for a moment and consider why I might ignore the dozens of people telling me to quit playing Garth and to jam Kenrith instead. It’s not that Kenrith isn’t dope, but my other Rainbow bae Golos has been unjustly banned by that villain Sheldon… And Rebel already has my poor boy Jeggy in her grasp.
So outside of despising royalty, Garth provides a solid lynchpin for all the things we might need to do in a game. And he gives us 7 spells in one, all of which are still relevant to this very day despite being rather ancient cards from the 90s:
- Black Lotus – 3 Free Mana will always be sick. Infinite Mana fuels Infinite Garth activations.
- Shivan Dragon – The OG beater – but the real broken thing isn’t the infinite number of Shivan Dragons you can make… It’s the firebreathing that lets you make infinitely BIG numbers of Shivan Dragons.
- Braingeyser – At a glance, this might seem like bad draw. But when you realize you can Braingeyser yourself for your deck into hand and cast a Thassa’s Oracle to win the game, or offensively kill opponents with it… Well, now you’re thinking with portals.
- Regrowth – You know that Dockside that got countered and sent to Graveyard? Why not spend two mana and try to recast it? Who the hell needs Noxious Revival with this stapled to your commander?
- Disenchant – Enchantments and Artifacts are always a threat. Being able to blow up Rule of Law effects and valuable combo pieces at instant speed? Well, who doesn’t like to be a threat?
- Terror – I have to be honest, there are better OG removal pieces than Terror. It doesn’t hit artifact creatures or black creatures. But the upside is an instant speed removal spell for two mana, which is still great when you want to hold something up to fuck with people.
- Garth – A 5/5 Beater for 5 would be egregious by 90’s standards, but you’d be surprised at how often somebody slaps a Phyrexian Revoker or Cursed Totem and flat out ruins my day. Never discount Garth beats, especially with two Exalted triggers lurking in the deck.
Because that’s the true value of Garth, isn’t it? Sisay is good because she gets any legendary you want. Golos nabs any land and plays things for free. But only Garth and Kenrith ultimately give us the value of choice, which is why multimodal spells that adapt to multiple situations are so powerful in the first place.
And everybody and their mother plays Kenrith. already.
Wouldn’t you much rather just beat people to death with Shivan Dragons and avoid all that political nonsense?
5c piles will always be near and dear to my heart, but Garth One-Eye is the first CEDH deck I’ve built on spite alone. Purely to shut the people up who have been telling me he sucks for the past year. From my cohosts on The Brewery, to the folks over on the CEDH Subreddit Discord…
Garth is really fucking good, and y’all need to capitulate already.
That being said, Garth by himself is a little tough to justify for CEDH. But one very special little cat is what really helps this deck shine, alongside a little bit of hasty speed.
Because that’s the true power of Garth over Kenrith – as where Kenrith grinds for value or wins via infinite mana enablers, Garth just wants a little bit of haste, and his BFF Displacer Kitten on the board.
That’s all.
Your core formula for the deck is thus:
Garth, One-Eye + Haste + Displacer Kitten = Win.
The minute Garth gains haste? He can tap for a Black Lotus. Which triggers Displacer Kitten. Which flickers Garth.
And then you do it all again! An infinite number of times.
From there, you have access to those spells I listed up above.
‘Tis the most quintessential of Magic: The Gathering plays. Make infinite Black Lotuses, then use the mana to murder people with hasty Shivan Dragons or Braingeysers.
If you really want to toy with your food or prove a point? Regrowth a bunch of times to bring back everything in your graveyard, sans any need for Memetic Betrayal. Or blow up their entire board with Disenchant and Terror, to truly rub it in.
As this is a deck designed by a cartoon supervillain, OF COURSE it’s going to be degenerate as fuck.
If you had to sum Garth One-Eye up? He’s a midrange deck with a ton of flexibility. You can either lean on your cheaper, quicker lines to race against turbo naus decks, or lean on the deck’s combat strategies (Edit: Sorry homies, see my Najeela list for better beats) to grind for damage and value under stax. I think that’s what I enjoy most about him, there are so many redundancies in my brew that you always feel like there’s an out, even when things look grim. (Edit: Although a caveat to that, I’ve recently focused in on some of my lines and have removed some of my favorite wincons. I’ll cross out irrelevant lines as needed.)
So now that we’ve explained the core loop and philosophy of the deck, let’s move on to the good old fashioned combos in regards to what each provides, shall we?
Mana Generation:
Garth needs infinite mana to truly do his truest degenerate work. That means that in a 5c shell, you can choose any infinite mana package you like, insofar as it creates rainbow mana. I tend to have a few favorites, but the greatest things about the deck that makes it somewhat different from Kenrith or Sisay, is that you can lean on multiple lines and combos to get where you need to go. As where Kenrith lines just jam infinite mana as soon as possible and go for broke, Garth can finesse a little better.
We talked about Garth and Displacer Kitten with haste already, so let’s brief the easy to spot infinite mana lines in my brew first:
Dockside Extortionist + Barrin, Master Wizard OR Emiel the Blessed.
There’s a reason I think Breach, Dockside, and Thassa’s Oracle should be banned. This deck runs two of them as a way of sorta proving that point. Dockside is your first creature tutor most of the time, simply due to how much artifact mana acceleration the current meta abuses.
So let’s talk about the specific mana you need to make all of this work.
Dockside Extortionist + Barrin, Master Wizard: You need five mana to land them both, and then an additional 2 mana plus a sacrificed permanent (usually a third treasure) to bounce Dockside to hand, where you can cast it again an infinite number of times. Barrin gives the advantage of being cheaper to cast than the unicorn, and he can be used offensively to bounce all of your opponents creatures when you successfully assemble the combo. The downside is that “sacrifice a permanent” cost, which has in the past required me to sacrifice lands or creatures to keep going and assemble the full combo. You need the initial 5 mana to land them both, often as a one-two line, and then another four mana minimum to successfully bounce and recast the dockside if you’re not rich in treasures. (Edit: Barrin got cut, I’m only on Emiel now.)
Dockside Extortionist + Emiel, The Blessed: Emiel is a bit of a sidegrade to Barrin in some ways. At first, the 4 mana casting cost and 3 mana ability might seem overcosted at 7 mana total, even if you’re reducing that overall cost with a Dockside Extortionist first. But the ability being stapled to Emiel as a flicker rather than a loop requiring a recasting of Dockside allows you to still go infinite under Rule of Law effects. And it also means you can play around with it at instant speed. I have often cracked all my treasures in response to an opponent’s Dockside, only to flicker Dockside for infinite mana after the enemy Dockside has whiffed.
The next two lines are pretty unique, and often lead to winning the game more so than just generating infinite mana.
Lion’s Eye Diamond + Underworld Breach: The classic infinite mana loop to cast your whole graveyard. Add a little Brain Freeze to win the game by milling yourself and casting a Thassa’s Oracle, and simultaneously mill out your opponents. This has been around for years, but only recently made it back into the deck after some advice from Joking101 prior to Garth’s last tournament. (Edit: I cut the Breach lines as I got annoyed with drawing dead pieces of that combo. Sev’s Rec or Brain Freeze without the rest of the cards is ALWAYS feelsbad. I know some people will crucify me for it, but fuck ’em. I have a play preference, so sue me. Edit2: Breach is too good, had to add it back in with the Garth Regrowth synergies.)
Najeela, the Blade Blossom + Derevi, Empyrial Tactician: If you’re assembling infinite mana by swinging with enough Najeela warriors to trigger infinite mana from Derevi, you should also be winning the game with Najeela’s ability… But I feel like I have to include it just for prosperity. (Edit: I was really pained about these cuts, and am going to build my own Najeela brew soon to scratch this itch. [Edit2: It’s on my Moxfield…])
Emiel the Blessed + Bloom Tender + Haste + 4 Differently Colored Permanents/Garth: This one slips my mind sometimes, but hasty Bloom Tenders can do some fun stuff with flicker effects for infinite mana of multiple colors. Add a Garth for a game-win and/or sick value.
Displacer Kitten + Teferi, Time Raveler + Mana Positive Rock (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc.): This one is kinda tricky because it tends to only make infinite colorless mana using a Sol Ring or Mana Crypt or Mana Vault or such. But it also locks out your opponents from being able to interact with each other, protecting your enemies’ combos… (Edit: T3feri lost me too many games by protecting other people’s wins. While the Displacer Kitten lines and the unlocking of Garth’s Sorceries to instant speed are neat, I cut him as a result.)
Next up are the strong synergies.
Displacer Kitten + Mana Rocks: Displacer Kitten flickers, and initiates a flicker from casting mana rocks. There are lots of ways to go mana positive on things by jamming some mana rocks in certain orders. With tutor chains, you can often dig much deeper than you initially thought you could due to each instant and sorcery generating more mana.
Displacer Kitten + Mana Dorks + Haste: Again, this is a chance for you to get ahead on some mana if you sequence it right. Bloom Tender can make these lines go a bit crazy. And tutor chains also can do some silly things. The lines are pretty neat via Displacer Kitten.
Displacer Kitten + Dockside Extortionist + Non-Creature Spells: Dockside will always do work, and getting multiple free ETBs with him will always be a feel-good moment. It’s not as good as Dockside + Emiel, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Displacer Kitten + Derevi, Empyrial Tactician: You never truly value free untaps for both mana and quasi-vigilance until you truly get to abuse it. Even more fun to be had with a tappable Garth on board! Lots of folks have implored me to cut Najeela and Derevi from this deck, but Derevi keeps having such fun little interactions with other combo pieces that I highly doubt that will happen anytime soon. (Edit: Sadly, Derevi and Najeela got cut.)
Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler + Mana Dorks: It might only be quasi-haste, but it’s more than enough for Garth and Mana Dorks – providing lots of avenues with the uptick untap for degenerate lines.
There are some other good little lines in the deck, but I’ll let you play it and find them for yourselves!
Next, let’s talk about winning the game.
Winning The Game:
With 3-4 unique lines, it’s not hard to win the game with this deck. Even better, many of the lines overlap or have multiple pieces to ensure that you can win the game regardless of specific pieces. So let’s crack right into it, shall we?
Hermit Druid + Thassa’s Oracle: One of the fastest core win-lines of the deck, as my brew of Garth runs 0 basics. Does it suck when you get Blood Mooned every once in a while? Sure does. But being able to win the game for 5 mana, in a deck that can provide the Hermit Druid haste? I’ll take that trade any day. This deck also runs multiple haste enablers for the Garth/Kitten lines, which has the benefits of juicing Hermit Druid even more. (Edit: Hermit Druid, while great in this list, requires some support cards in Dread Return and the like to function well. Unfortunately he just drew too much hate and ended up eating too much removal to justify him.)
There are some other caveats to the Hermit Druid + Thassa’s Oracle Line.
Hermit Druid + Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler OR Reanimate OR Dread Return OR Sevinne’s Reclamation OR Finale of Devastation: These cards are why you can get away with jamming a Hermit Druid and then just going for it. If you have three creatures on the battlefield, you can cast Dread Return. If you have 5 mana, Sevinne’s. If you have Tyvar on the battlefield, or for three mana, his downtick grabs Thassa back to the battlefield without a sweat. Reanimate is reanimate. Your Hermit Druids being dropped will often make people think you have a Thassa’s Oracle in hand, when you’re relying on these four cards instead. Take note that I’m greedy and don’t run Narcomoeba in my deck due to the high number of creatures in the list. (Edit: Dread Return and Finale have been cut, although I’m really missing them in the past few weeks.)
Thassa’s Oracle + Demonic Consultation OR Tainted Pact: The classics. Thassa’s Oracle is another ban-worthy card for being one of the most egregious two card combo-pieces around. But because we like winning with Garth, we run these lines to double down on our Hermit Druid and abuse our ETB game through cards like Spellseeker and the like.Thassa’s Oracle + Divining Witch: I literally didn’t know this witch was a card until doing some midnight brainstorming with my cohost Gruger from The Brewery. The nice thing about it is that similar to Hermit Druid, since this deck runs haste enablers, you can win from underneath Rule of Law Effects across two turns, or snap win with Thassa’s for 4 mana and a discarded card. (Edit: I cut the Divining Witch for the same Hermit Druid problems described above.)
Divining Witch + Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler OR Divining Witch + Haste + Flicker: Divining Witch is a neat card that allows you to win the game in certain situations, provided you’re lucky. A single activation naming Thassa’s Oracle plus any form of untapping allows you to win the game for 6 mana and two discarded cards, as does haste and flickering the Divining Witch for the same result.
Garth One-Eye + Displacer Kitten + Haste: We’ve talked about this one in the primer, but the real wins here are with Braingeyser or Infinite Infinite Shivan Dragons. The key reason for including it here is that if you’re Braingeysering yourself, you’ll probably want to cast Thassa’s Oracle. The two haste outlets currently in the deck are Anger – designed to be pitched to Entomb, Survival of the Fittest, or Red Entomb (Gamble) as well as Tyvar, which is Garth’s new BFF.
Najeela, The Blade Blossom + Derevi, Empyrial Tactician: With Najeela and 4 other warriors, usually generated by Najeela herself, Derevi allows you to untap 5 mana sources, sometimes the same ones, and use Najeela’s ability to go infinite with combats and warriors insofar as you have some clean attacks. People have been telling me to cut it, but honestly I love being able to just swap game plans under a staxxed out board to roll over people with combat wincons, especially since our non-creature combos are so weak to ROL effects. (Edit: RIP Najeela + Derevi.)
Displacer Kitten + Teferi, Time Raveler + Mana Positive Rock: I’ve taken this Teferi in and out of the list constantly since I built it, because it allows your opponents to combo off without your other enemies being able to interact. Be VERY careful of that, playing the Teferi only as a last resort or when you intend to win. However, with a single mana positive mana rock it goes infinite, allowing you to draw your deck and generate infinite mana at the same time. Not bad for 8 mana and 3 cards. Add a Thassa’s Oracle or Laboratory Maniac or such to win the game from there. (Edit: Teferi got cut, as per above.)
Intuition Piles: There are numerous piles you can use to win the game with Intuition. The classic no-win choices of Brain Freeze and Lion’s Eye Diamond, alongside Underworld Breach and Sevinne’s Reclamation comes to mind. But you can also provide some no-win Hermit Druid lines as well, with Reanimate, Tyvar, and Hermit Druid for instance. Add haste for even more pressure. If your main lines have been exiled or squashed somehow, you can even go for Displacer Kitten or Najeela lines with reanimation choices. (Edit: Breach lines got cut due to being dead cards far too often. Edit2: Breach lines are coming in and out as I play with different packages.)
Neoform: Never underestimate the value of an unanswered Neoform. It allows you to jam Thassa’s Oracle or Hermit Druid off a 1 mana dork, or complete a Dockside-Barrin-Emiel combo frequently. I’m tempted to run the three mana equivalent, but two green and three mana is kinda meh. (Edit: I’m on and off Neoform and Eldritch Evolution between other card advantage and tutors.)
Alrighty, we’re almost there, so let’s get to the next piece.
Card Advantage + Tutors:
Your big pieces here are the suite of blue-esque draw effects like Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, and Esper Sentinel. The deck will soon run Faerie Mastermind as well once it becomes legal. In addition to these, one of my pet cards I’m testing right now is Toski. Not only does the deck run enough dorks to usually choose card draw or mana, Najeela and Derevi have a heyday with this cute little card draw squirrel. Indestructibility ensures a reliable blocker the turn you land him, even! (Edit: I’m gonna build a separate Najeela list to abuse Toski, I think. [Edit2: Done, see my Moxfield.])
Other than the standard card draw suite, the deck is heavy on creature tutoring, and uses tutors to assemble most of the deck’s lines. Your first tutor targets are usually Dockside, followed by an Emiel or Barrin, or a Hermit Druid to threaten an early win if nobody has interaction. I usually lean on Thassa’s Oracle pretty hard in this deck, as sometimes you’ll have some weird tutor lines, and Thassa is often easiest to build your hand around.
Another thing to consider is discarding Anger – either via an Entomb, or by pitching it to Survival of the Fittest or Ledger Shredder. If you have the opportunity to double Survival, consider grabbing an anger and immediately pitching it to activate again to get haste online. Haste helps the deck go brrr in a lot of ways, be it speedier mana neutral dorks or extra combat damage.
Sometimes you will have no options other than a fat Braingeyser off Garth to refill your hand – people love to counter these, so make sure you have an Abolisher or countermagic to ensure they go off and give you access to playing the longer game.
Your Stax + Control Suite:
Garth often finds himself chasing Turbo Naus decks, while handily grinding around light stax. Thus, there are a few auto-include stax pieces to try and shut your opponents off due to being asymmetrical effects. This is a midrange deck, not a stax list, so if you prefer more staxxy or reactive magic, just tweak the stax or countermagic options to your liking.
Drannith Magistrate: Against some turbo naus decks, a guaranteed T1 or T2 Drannith will stop them completely in their tracks, allowing you to midrange grind your way to victory! Works great against Winota, Najeela, Kinnan, or any other commander-reliant deck.
Opposition Agent: Shutting off your opponent’s tutors, much less flashing it in and stealing them is always sick value. As much as I want to cut Dark Ritual from this deck for more juice, Oppo and Ad Nauseam lines have me pausing on that.Dauthi Voidwalker: Mostly a value engine, but it does stop enemy Hermit Druid or Entomb lines! (Edit: Two black mana is harder in a 5c rainbow list than you’d expect. Dauthi got cut.)
Toxic Deluge OR Fire Covenant OR Culling Ritual: These are inclusions largely because of how many Winota, Najeela, and other similar snowball stax decks I run into in my particular meta. If your local meta is nothing but go-fast turbo naus players, you might be able to cut these for more targeted removal or more countermagic. (Edit: The deck is off Assassin’s Trophy, and back on Abrupt Decay for the uncounterability, even if it’s a narrower piece of removal. [Edit2: Deck is back on both Abrupt Decay, Cylconic Rift, AND Assassin’s Trophy in addition to Toxic Deluge and Fire Covenant as sweepers.)
Countermagic: The deck is on a lot of free countermagic right now. This is largely to stop other combo players, or to protect your own combos if you weren’t able to land a Silence effect first. Try to use them conservatively due to the low number in the deck compared to more blue-heavy decks.
Silence Effects: The deck is running a lot of them, and I’m considering finding a slot for Myrel for an ADDITIONAL piece. Being able to combo off on your turn without having to worry about countermagic or removal helps this deck run a lot smoother. Land it before you combo or accrue value if you can! They’re a little more reliable than the anti-counter effects like Vexing Shusher or the like, as they deal with removal as well as counter-magic.
How To Play Garth One-Eye:
The speed at which you play Garth will often be decided by your matchups. The deck can TRY to roll as fast as Turbo Naus decks, but at heart it’s truly a midrange deck and wants the game to push a little bit slower if possible. You’ll often find yourself holding up what little countermagic and removal you have for the other black players at the table – Usually for Ad Nauseams and Thassa Consult attempts. Garth tends to love having one mild stax deck to shut out the fast combo decks so it can slide into the sweet spot around the stax pieces with the lines that work best. Having 2-3 different win lines allows you to play on that edge of reactivity, and pivot your combos around what you have happen at the table. You can’t quite race against Turbo Naus, and you can’t play through multiple stax players in the same pod easily, so balancing back and forth between those two extremes is where the deck does best.
One small gripe I have with Garth, is that his core line favors Braingeysering yourself to play Thassa’s Oracle with your deck in hand as backup. Choosing to kill your opponents with Infinite Shivan Dragons, my kill of choice, is objectively a worse line due to having more moving parts and room for error. Which is kind of the crux of Garth in general – he offers you choice more than anything else, and you will often find yourself selecting certain lines for the wrong moment based on unknown information like countermagic or stax pieces.
There ARE a few CEDH cards that will fuck your day up entirely, and I would like to take the time to mark them for you, especially in the event you play against a lot of Mono-Red fast combo or white stax:
Torpor Orb + Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines + Hushbringer + Hushwing Gryff, etc: Your deck is so full of ETB effects it hurts. From Dockside to the suite of ETB Creature Tutors, your deck wants multiple ETBs if it can get them, which these say NO to.
Blood Moon + Magus of the Moon + Back to Basics: You’re a Hermit Druid Deck. In 5c no less! This means that unless you can race out your mana dorks and rocks quickly enough, a Blood Moon will stop you in your tracks, and there isn’t enough red support in my brew of the deck to get around it outside of maybe Breach Lines. It’s pretty rare that I get blood mooned these days, but as an OG Skred Modern player, trust me – you need to respect a Blood Moon.
Rule of Law + Deafening Silence, etc: Rule of Law Effects will force you to pivot towards one of two specific lines – Hermit Druid + Thassa’s Oracle, and the suite of reanimate effects that can be cast after resolving a Hermit Druid on a turn prior. Deafening Silence is an exception, as your creature combo lines are fine through it. Otherwise, you’ll have to swap to either removing the Rule of Law effect, or if your Hermit Druid is already exiled, swap to Najeela/Derevi for a non-cast combat win. The enormity of stax in my current meta, especially due to commanders like Winota and Jetmir, have me keeping the Najeela/Derevi for these sorts of situations. (Edit: Najeela + Derevi got cut.)
Aven Mindcensor, Opposition Agent, etc: Garth needs a lot of tutors to run. Having them turned off sucks.
Sanctum Prelate: Prelate on 2 will hose almost all of your non-creature, non-Garth winlines. Remove it at all costs insofar as it isn’t holding down anybody else just as hard. Note – most of the spells played in CEDH are 2 CMC by and large. Your creature lines can still win through it, luckily!
Containment Priest: Scary for your Dockside + Emiel and Displacer Kitten lines, mostly.
Remember that Garth is a midrange deck first and foremost, as much as it feels like a balls to the walls combo deck sometimes with wins as early as T2 or T3. Try to avoid playing this 5c pile like a Grixis Ad Nauseam Turbo-Naus deck, and you should be okay! After all, I was able to Top 5 with it in PoD3, so I know it has chops.
I have to say, after over a year of playing him, Garth has been an absolute ton of fun to play, and because he’s so niche, you have that small benefit of people not knowing how he works still, which won’t last as an advantage forever.
Outro: Puss AKA River Ghost.
This deck’s original name is: “Garth Loves Puss.” Both an amusing joke as somebody on the ace spectrum, but also to honor my childhood pet. I’m more of a dog guy these days, but I tend to like all animals.
See, Puss, my old childhood cat, wasn’t just any cat.
Back in the 80s, my parents worked up in a logging camp near Bella Bella, halfway up the British Columbia coast. It’s harsh there, and they came back with dozens of stories about grizzlies and other wildlife.
But they also came back with a cat. Puss. AKA River Ghost. A little grey cat. This cat was legendary for his ferocity, and when I was a child he would battle anything and everything. Raccoons, other cats, it didn’t matter. He was wilder and tougher than even our Junkyard cat we got as preteens. But the real story is how he got adopted by my parents.
To be short and sweet: A first nations friend of theirs originally owned Puss, but apparently it kept biting and scratching his son.
Eventually, he got so frustrated, he tied it in a bag and threw it in the river to drown.
Puss showed up back on his doorstep the next day. Nobody knows how.
The River Ghost would come back down south with my parents as an adoptee, and joined our legion of pets throughout my life.
I guess the point of this little anecdote is that just like Garth One-Eye and Displacer Kitten, sometimes us weirdos just need the help of a pet or friend to get ahead. And sometimes we have to survive drowning to even get that far!
Have fun playing Garth, I hope he treats you as well as he’s treated me.
P.S. Huge props to Hammond (Joking101) and Gruger (Paulzors) for their help with the most recent brew of Garth, as it really doubled down on some of the better win lines and cut some excessive winlines (Najeela/Derevi) that were bloating the deck a bit. (Edit: I cut a lot of their suggestions for my own playstyle preferences and the metas I ran up against. Still appreciate their input!)
Old Primer:
Tutor Displacer Kitty and stick it on the battlefield somehow.
Get Garth out.
Get a haste enabler out.
Flicker Garth with Displacer Kitten via Black Lotus casts.
Make infinite Black Lotuses.
Use Garth + Infinite Black Lotus Mana to clear their board with Disenchants and Terrors, then kill them with Shivan Dragons or deck them with Braingeysers. (Killing people in CEDH with Shivan Dragon feels real good.)
Or just tutor for Thassa’s/Demon Consult (The Backup Redundancy Line) and win that way I guess.
Grab anything you need from GY with Regrowths first.
Ironically, Puss AKA “River Ghost” is the name of my childhood cat. (And as an ace spectrum person, I love alienating allosexuals with my multi-layered jokes.)
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Or go read free stuff at www.McRaeWrites.com
Pax.
OG: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/qijT0MA0hEizDrtBepJJEQ
Turbo Ad Naus Variant: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/QeiMg5KxvEqSgZKwbHwbng
Staxx Variant: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/tWUocz2HfkOCHtA-efQoOg
Midrange Variant: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/IKGSDozHBE-qSMzEOCK0rg
