3drinks wrote: ↑4 years ago
I'd play him in every
XG deck that I played, if I already owned one
Nah, he sucks. Depending on meta, he's often not even 4 power when you start swinging with him. Land is probable, but not guaranteed, especially if your meta is pretty budget (and if your meta is high powered, good luck winning with your derpy tarmo aggro deck lol). Sorceries and instants could go either way, but are more likely the higher powered the meta is, which is a double edged sword. creatures, artifacts and enchantments unlikely but possible. Planeswalker almost certainly not. If you're swinging for 3 on turn 3 I'd say you've gotten fairly lucky.
Anyway the reason he sucks isn't that he's going to get targeted, obviously, it's that he's just going to get outclassed really quickly by bigger creatures, and eventually get wiped, maybe sooner rather than later. In my experience, when you're trying to make straightforward, classic aggro work, the things that work best are low-cmc creatures with abilities that are relevant at all stages in the game, to ensure you have consistent value coming in, and creatures with haste and evasion to just keep chipping in for damage so you can keep the pressure on through blockers and wipes. Tarmogoyf does none of those things. And in a format where thoughtseize is pretty unlikely to be played, and fetches aren't even a guarantee, he really doesn't scale that quickly or reliably either.
He's just kind of...crap. The only time I'd consider him is if I cared really specifically about stat:cmc ratio for some reason, and ideally was playing some amount of dredge stuff.