How to Make Quirion Dryad Big Really Fast

July 19, 2012 | Posted by Dee

Quirion Dryad is one of those cards that can be really good in the right circumstances. First, you need a lot of cheap spells to grow the creature quickly. Those spells should also be good on their own because you won’t draw Quirion Dryad every game.

Second, among those cheap spells, you need ones that can find other cheap spells so you can chain them together and put a bunch of +1/+1 counters on Quirion Dryad on the same turn.

Fortunately, the card pool is Standard meets both of these requirements.

You can’t get any cheaper than zero mana with the Phyrexian mana spells like Gitaxian Probe and Gut Shot.

Ponder, Thought Scour, and Gitaxian Probe are cheap card draw spells that can find other more spells to trigger Quirion Dryad. You can chain them together and have a big turn with the M13 creature.

For example, let’s say you have a 1/1 Quirion Dryad on the board from the last turn but you only have three mana and one card, Ponder. You cast Ponder and see Thought Scour, Gitaxian Probe, and a land. You order the cards this way (Gitaxian Probe, Thought Scour, and land) and choose not to shuffle.

You draw Gitaxian Probe and cast it for one mana to draw Thought Scour. You cast Thought Scour and draw a Gut Shot. You cast Gut Shot to kill something.

These plays will turn Quirion Dryad into a 5/5 creature and you can attack with it this turn. Growing it from 1/1 to 5/5 is pretty sweet, considering you only had one Ponder to begin with. Imagine if you had more than one spell.

Snapcaster Mage performs a similar role as the card draw spells. It doesn’t find other cheap spells. It actually has a better effect. It allows you to recast the cheap spells in your graveyard. For example, casting Snapcaster Mage and flashing back Gut Shot puts two +1/+1 counters on Quirion Dryad.

That’s really good because you only spend one card, two mana, and two life.

Here’s a Blue/Green (UG) deck that makes use of all the cards I mentioned.

UG Quirion Dryad
Creatures (15)
Spells (25)
Lands (20)
Sideboard (15)

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I found this deck on Starcitygames. Todd Anderson wrote about it last week. I changed the sideboard by adding more counterspells because in my testing, the deck needed more anti-control cards.

My sideboard changes are:

-1 Dissipate
-2 Mutagenic Growth
-1 Cavern of Souls

+4 Negate

Negate seems better than Dissipate because it’s cheaper and most of the spells you want to counter are noncreatures. Also, Cavern of Souls is a popular card.

The best spells for triggering Quirion Dryad are mostly instants or sorceries so it makes sense to add Delver of Secrets and Talrand, Sky Summoner to the deck. These two creatures have a lot of synergy with instants and sorceries.

Cavern of Souls is a nice touch. It provides decent mana fixing because Delver, Snapcaster, and Talrand are all Wizards.

In the sideboard, Phantasmal Image is mainly there to fight Geist of Saint Traft. Thragtusk is good against Zombies and control decks.

The counterspells give you a lot of ammunition against control. Mental Misstep is the perfect card to fight Vapor Snag and Gut Shot.

Sleep is an interesting reprint in M13. It seems good against green decks with a lot of creatures like Red/Green (RG) Aggro and Naya Aggro. These decks can flood the board with a bunch of blockers and Sleep taps them all so you can alpha strike, not once but twice.

Filed Under Standard 

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6 Responses to “How to Make Quirion Dryad Big Really Fast”

  1. Drinne on July 21st, 2012 12:29 pm

    Played this deck at FNM last night but I think I’m going to have to play a different version, this seems tuned mostly for humans and Delver decks and my local meta wasn’t running anything like that at all mostly reanimator or graveyard strategies and almost no 1/1 lots of 2/2 or better. I also had no answers for midgame Planeswalkers and the dryads have to stick to grow.

    It would be great in a different meta, talrand worked very well when he stuck.

  2. Dee on July 21st, 2012 1:31 pm

    Yeah, this deck is a lot better when you have creatures to kill with Gut Shot.

    With that kind of metagame, I think I would play regular Blue/White (UW) Delver with counterspells (like Mana Leak, Dissipate, and Negate) instead of Gut Shots.

  3. Mark on July 24th, 2012 1:40 pm

    If I replaced talrand with huntmaster. How would the mana look? Gutshot under performs my meta and I want to replace it with pillars and pair of bonfires

  4. Dee on July 26th, 2012 6:26 pm

    I would try something like this:

    5 Island
    3 Sulfur Falls
    3 Hinterland Harbor
    3 Evolving Wilds
    3 Copperline Gorge
    1 Mountain
    1 Forest
    1 Cavern of Souls

    It’s hard to fit in more Cavern of Souls because you need more colored mana for noncreature spells. Also, Quirion Dryad is not a Human like the other creatures and it is in a secondary color instead of the main color, blue.

  5. François on September 1st, 2012 3:27 pm

    The Meta at my local store is composed of three main archtypes, infect deck, uw delver and monoblack zombies.

    I’ve used your list as a base for my deck. Here are my changes:

    Creatures: (17)

    4 Augur of Bolas
    4 delvers
    4 Driads
    2 Snapcasters
    3 Tarland, Sky summoner

    The 4 Augur of Bolas bring some wanted “3″ bodies to block early zombies and infect creatures, while they still contribute to add some spells to hand. The interaction with ponder is another nice addition to the deck, as the creature give a way to Mill unwanted cards. Giving a reason for not using thought scour…

    Spells: (23)

    2 Apostle’s Blessing
    4 Fleeting Distraction
    4 Gut shot
    2 Mana Leak
    2 Mental Misstep
    1 Negate
    4 Ponder
    4 Vapor Snag

    The Apostle’s blessing, beside the fact of protecting the driad with colerless mana, give a way to finish staled games with a boosted driad.

    The 4 fleeting distraction may seems odd, but are a nice welcomed “prevent” when blocking with the Augur of Bolas.

    -save one poison counter on early infect bashing
    -give a way to block Gerald’s messenger and the 3|3 splicer token with the Augur of Bolas
    -Give a way for Delver to attack even with the presence of 2 lingering souls tokens.

    Lands: 20

    4 hinterland harbor
    3 ghost quarter
    4 forests
    9 islands

    Some version of this deck put less forest, but a second turn driad is someting you want to create to gain the advantage in the early stage of the game. Something that the evolving wilds dont give…

    The 3 ghost quarter are more orianted on the meta on my store against the infect deck…

    Thank you and see ya!

  6. Dee on September 1st, 2012 7:10 pm

    @ François

    Thanks for sharing your deck especially the reasoning for your card choices. It’s helpful!