Yes it is. But this card (as well as Warleader's Call and, to a extent Leyline of the Guildpact) also creates a situation in Standard (specially in Bo1 where this deck, while it will be a rare encounter, but when you encounter it, most of the time you can be unprepared for it since most decks rarely have Enchantment Removal that can actually prevent them to set up prepared in the Deck) since this format is really lacking in efficient Enchantment Removal (specially after rotation since the most efficient ones we have are Farewell and Destroy Evil) where we have very powerful enchantments and not that many efficient ways to counter them with out going into abusing Boardwipes (which are supposed game ending pieces rather than spells that you can abuse all the time)
Thumbnails never miss! I played PvZ for years! Love that game so much so I'm glad to see a deck theme about it! Appreciate you tons, Luca! You're the best!!!!
I dropped a aftermath analyst and a rubblebelt maverick for two callous spellswords to push through stalled board states. This deck is so much fun! Always love your decks lvd.
Match 3 is a great example of how to beat control. Playing out that extra dreamthief scared them into playing lockdown too early which led to a win! Great gameplay as always
I think tear asunder could be a cool addition as a response to temporary lockdown/layline binding and maybe a spot removal depending on a matchup. Maybe as a pivot to diabolic intent or urborg reposession because you don't really wanna cut creatures for this deck
I was already wondering when Insidious Roots deck was coming. I made a rather similar deck to this one, splashing red, to get thrillseeker and cauldron. It's pretty fun to just play half your deck in one turn and then just fling plants in someone's face!
I have built at day one a deck with insidious roots and it is very similar. The problem is that without the enchantment there s no way to win a single game. I do not thinked to the tutor, great addition that i ll try immediately
Yeah I think the tutor is necessary. All of the games in this video start with Roots in the opening draw (except the last game, it was the first draw), so this video looks way more consistent than the deck really is.
I played a Sultai Insidious Roots style deck in the MKM Constructed event and had a ton of fun with it. Curious Cadaver was a really solid way of getting repeatable "leaves the graveyard" triggers. Especially with Chalk Outline to immediately get a fresh clue and a detective token and Projektor Inspector to immediately loot the Cadaver back into the graveyard.
of all these Roots decks this seems like the most consistent. i jsut won a game against a very gracious opponent who let me attack in for 900+ damage. very fun build.
As a blue/white control player, this is my fav deck to play against for sure... Nothing is as satisfying as watching your opponent perform cool graveyard interactions resulting in massive tokens on turn 3 or 4... only for me to untap and cast Temporary Lockdown.
I love how every version of this deck I’ve seen is different. PowerDragon did an Abzan version. I’ve seen Sultai and Golgori versions as well. The plant token being able to tap thanks to Tyvar is sick.
Excellent explanations and video game play. I have seen a few versions of this and lost to the variant with skyfisher spider in it. Very cool, going to make a fool around with this one! :)
This plus Titans Nest from Ikoria can be some fun shenanigans because of how Nest is worded. Each card exiled triggers roots which can lead to some... overgrown board states
Yes! Finally an interesting black deck that is not only about kids who want to destroy everything and in the end the only thing they destroy is the fun of the game.
long time lurker i played many iterations in this deck and tried alot of different approaches i really like a bit more of high end. My best results have been with one or two copie of illicit masquerade keep 4 mana up from plants or what not and you instantly win the game on oppo's turn. I was pleasantly surprised it actually trigggers on plant tokens as well. I didnt try urborg yet interesting addition
I could've been missing something here but it seems like in match 4 the opponent probably better off chumping w/ evangelist, bat comes in, that's 1 damage, and now they've got 2 flyer so at least 2 guaranteed damage, they'd only need to put another creature in play to win
I added red to include the Bitter Reunion enchantment, it is great to fill the field with huge plants but the job must be finished with a single hit because if the opponent is given the opportunity with a temporary lockdown or a Path to Peril it ends the fun.
I've been working on a deck that I ended up giving the exact same name for explorer, very much leaning into the zombies theme with relentless dead and diregraf colossus!
I've been trying to build this myself, stuck in squirming emergence because it returns permanents to the battlefield and also some flying bosses in the new vein ripper which made destructive boardwipes more risky and allowed me to be a bit more aggro with attacking since there's less downside to dead plants. The deck mills enough that you can normally cheese it out really quickly. I need to try it with ashnod's harvester and undead butler though. The flying weakness and weakness to big boardwipes is a major issue I wish I had a better solution to than crossed fingers though.
I'm usually not a fan of token decks except for Delina, Wild Mage's nonsense in Brawl, but this one I'm definitely giving it a try once I get my hands on all copies of Insidious Roots 👀
Very powerful! Been thinking if an Abzan version of this deck with botanical brawler might work as well 🤔. A shame it isn't a plant itself. Maybe I'll try that anyway...
I tried this deck in Arena against Mythic players and my win rate was only about 20%. As some commenters have noted, if you don't get the enchantment early on there's not much chance of wining.
That’s the problem with a lot of RU-vid decks. They don’t post when the deck doesn’t go off but it’s pretty nuts when it does go off so it’s a great RU-vid video. I saw another video from this guy revolving around rot priest that had the same problem. Building my own rot priest decks I already knew that deck would have the same problems. If you don’t draw rot priest the deck never gets going. I think he did have some tutors in that deck to be fair though.
I built a whole deck around self milling all my creatures, then exiling my own graveyard with Insidious Roots on the field to get like 20 triggers… only to find out Insidious Roots doesn’t work like that lol. Needless to say I was heartbroken.
Annihilation Glare feels pretty needed for some removal. Also, Pile On isnt' too bad. What about Armored Scrapgorger instead of the Analyst? And the plants get too big not to have trample. What about the Kodama of the West Tree? With all the plants having counters you get auto trample on all of them!
Match 4 against red white, basically impossible to plan for but if you kept diabolical intent on top and drew it with dreamthief you I believe could have tutored for the last Repossession in the deck and gained a net 1 extra life, 3 if you repossessed the repossession but I'm not sure you had the plants for it. Such a cool deck with so many cool lines, I would have lost that game turns ago
Roots reads like a rare holy shit. Deck looks super fun but theres no way in hell Id play this in paper, looks like a nightmare to manage your boardstate by hand.
Curious if there was any consideration for mosswood knight? A solid aggressive body that self recurs out of the grave for card advantage counds great for this deck. Maybe its a little more mideange than this list aims for idk
Is there anything you can play as a 1 or 2 of that can deal with problematic Artifacts/Enchantments? Lockdown and Warleader's Call both would have been nice to be able to remove, and you went through a good chunk of your deck. Something you don't mind milling that you could get back? Might be nice to have a couple of Silver Bullet type cards if you can use them.
As a commander player I saw Insidious Roots and just thought of tortured existence. It goes infinite with any creature haste enabler (like Tyvar) but I assume that enchantment just doesn't exist in Arena.
I has just finished building a mycotirant deck for a friend, as a gift, when I saw this. I'm talking I literally finished boxing it and I saw the spoiler. If I knew, I would had waited. Cause plants may not grow the tirant, but half of the time the 1/1s that can't block are kinda useless. Turning them into manadorks? Shit could hit the fan too quickly. I'll try getting it for him now
I remember a previous Tyvar deck that used Cankerbloom, is there room for that in this deck? Enchantment removal for temporary lockdown/that boros enchantment, too bad it’s a fungus not a plant..
Sucks to miss that attack with the 15 power plant. Obviously this is hindsight but they wouldn’t have had enough mana to cast both creatures because they would have one less convoke for the knight
What ate your thoughts on splashing white for something like Lunarch Veteran? I feel like gaining life is nice with all the token makers, plus it can be brought back with the ability
For the moment, most people i see playing insidious roots are playing the same "self mill" + graveyard package. The probleme for me is that this cards are quiet bad if you dont draw the root/ it get destroyed. I went a slightly diffenrent way, which is to embrace "golgari goodstuff" while forcing the root gameplay a little : I have 4 underdogs, 4 dreadknights, 4 conscrit cultist (the 2/1 skelteton for 1). I play mostly fair golgari aggro/midrange, but when the game gets grindy and settle down, i put down my roots, and start making plants. I also have 6 other slots for other "synergy cards", for the moment It still loses to attraxa very often and any time you face sunfall early and farewell later makes you cry, but appart from that you have golgari goodstuff (so draw, nice stated creatures, immortality, destroy creat) with big beefy plants token.
Tried to keep the curve low, so didn't try it. Might be a good sideboard option to deal with the Flying problem. Unlikely to gain us too much life when we're actively emptying our own graveyard.
Tried out this deck, first 5 games didn't draw roots, game 6 I had it in my opening hand but it instantly got blown up by a tear asunder. This deck is so bad it doesn't even fall in fun meme category.
This build is streamlined to turbo the dredge effect. Could be useful if you're going slightly control build, but Underdog itself does nothing etb unless you blitz them.
Very interesting deck, but I'm sure I'd never draw roots, If I played It. Or worse, I'd draw It after exhausting ALL My resources trying to survive, and It would be a Dead draw. Hahaha
