I think Garruk Wildspeaker is totally underrated in modern. The card is comparable to elspeth, ajani and chandra at 4 cmc.
It shouldn't be a 2 ticket card.
Well, it's closer to 4.5 tickets than 2 tickets. Also, it's been printed five times. And, really, is it that comparable? There's not a lot of lists with Chandra out there (I checked the two PEs from 1/26 and there were 0 copies of it in the Top 16 of those tournaments), so not sure where that comparison comes from. Ajani and Elspeth are 1 to 2-of finishers in Tier 1 decks (RWU or Jund splashing for basically just Ajani), but they were printed in sets that were opened much less than Garruk.
Not even getting in to what the cards do (I'd argue that Garruk -- which relies on a creature heavy board in a format full of efficient removal -- is not comparable to Ajani and Elspeth, who are win conditions on their own), but just looking at their printings and popularity in top decks, and I'd Garruk's price is pretty spot on, if not even a little high (the MTG Goldfish graphs do show a recent spike from the monogreen deck).
If nacatl gets unbanned there are no really strong specs. There's basically kird ape. I think nacatl was printed too much for you to make a lot tix off it. You have to buy hundreds of them to make your bankroll move.
Is it possible Domri Rade might be played in a Modern Zoo deck if Nactal is unbanned? Maybe I am just being optimistic, but it'd be nice if there was at least one mythic from RtR block that made a splash in Modern...
I think Garruk Wildspeaker is totally underrated in modern. The card is comparable to elspeth, ajani and chandra at 4 cmc.
It shouldn't be a 2 ticket card.
They're only comparable in that they cost 4 mana. Garruk Wildspeaker is a much narrower card, and like Drew said it was printed a bunch of times on mtgo which lowered the price.
Elspeth and Ajani can go into a variety of midrange or control decks. Where are Garruk can only go into ramp strategies or sometimes BG rock decks that want a mediocre 4 drop.
Ajani replaced bloodbraid elf in jund for a while. You didn't see Garruk do anything close to that.
Is it possible Domri Rade might be played in a Modern Zoo deck if Nactal is unbanned? Maybe I am just being optimistic, but it'd be nice if there was at least one mythic from RtR block that made a splash in Modern...
I was talking to some of my friends who are zoo aficionados and they said putting domri or snapcaster in your nacatl deck is a trap. You should just play all 1s and 2s with wild nacatl. And you splash white for path, boros charm, and maybe lightning helix. You should be trying to kill your opponent as fast as you can with your 1 mana 3/3s (experiment one is a 1 mana 3/3), and not durdling around with domri or trying to do cute things with snapcaster.
But that said, you don't think Kibler is going to try to play domri and nacatl together? You don't think the CFB guys are going to try to rebuild that nacatl snapcaster deck (counter cat) at pro tour RTR?
The problem you get with putting domri in your creature deck, instead of just cheaper creatures, is that you're an underdog to tempo twin. Tempo twin is just going to pick you apart and combo you out, blow you out with a blood moon, or beat you down with pestermites and burn, or even batterskull. They have clique or spellskite to stop your removal, they can bounce your hate permanents like torpor orb, or they can just drop a blood moon on you.
So I think the successful decks are going to be the aggressive ones that try to race the combo decks. Although Kibler is an anomaly and does well with his own green creature decks.
As for RTR block mythics that get played in modern, there's sphinx's revelation and voice of resurgence.
In other words, it's exactly the same deck he's been messing around with for the past six months. It's a tron deck with no deck filtering or tutors (seriously, none of the green ramp decks seem to be able to answer the questions "what can you do that is more powerful than turn 3 karn? And can you do it more consistently?"). It's a deck with thirty seven mana sources, 4 expensive goblin pikers, three copies of a planeswalker whose main purpose is to make you more mana and 9 gas cards, one of which gives you even more lands. In his own words "The main weakness of the deck is the all-ramp no-fat draw, but that is just an archetype weakness. I'm okay with it.", he leaves out the "I drew my fat but my opponent also drew a discard/counterspell and left me with eleventy billion mana and nothing to do with it except play 1/1s".
If he's actually caused a price spike on primal command, this might not be a bad time to sell out, the deck looks like hot garbage.
Thank you for the clear, on-the-point analysis. I agree this deck just looks awful, especially when compared to what Tron does (and the inherent resiliency Tron has to the draws you described that this deck lacks).
There may be something with monogreen Nyxthos/untapping lands in Modern (sort of like the monogreen deck in standard, which uses big Garruk for card advantage -- not a combo deck, but just a solid deck that incidentally uses Nyxthos), but I think try to making a combo deck with just a flood of mana sources and Genesis Wave is probably not the way to go.
Either way, for the purposes of a speculation forum, I agree that if anyone has bought in to these cards, now is the time to sell them -- based on current information, this deck does not seem likely to perform well at a major event.
Did Twoo jus steal that deck from Mj or is he the "original" creator?
Woo was playing a green ramp deck before nykthos was printed. He caused a spike on vernal blooms.
So i'm not sure you can say who the original creator is. People were brewing decks with nykthos when the card was spoiled. But I guess you can say MJ popularized the nykthos version.
Thank you for the clear, on-the-point analysis. I agree this deck just looks awful, especially when compared to what Tron does (and the inherent resiliency Tron has to the draws you described that this deck lacks).
There may be something with monogreen Nyxthos/untapping lands in Modern (sort of like the monogreen deck in standard, which uses big Garruk for card advantage -- not a combo deck, but just a solid deck that incidentally uses Nyxthos), but I think try to making a combo deck with just a flood of mana sources and Genesis Wave is probably not the way to go.
Either way, for the purposes of a speculation forum, I agree that if anyone has bought in to these cards, now is the time to sell them -- based on current information, this deck does not seem likely to perform well at a major event.
The thing with nykthos vs tron, is that nykthos can win the game on turn 4 with damage, where as tron doesn't technically win with turn 3 karn.
No pros have posted tweaked decklists for nykthos. Some pro tour team could tune the crap out of the deck and make it tier 1-2. I would not write off these decks till the PT (which MJ himself has said on Twitter). Though these decks are weak to bolt + Thoughtseize, so they don't have the greatest jund match up, which is a strike against them.
wow all the primal commands have sold out. i got them at 3 and then flipped them at 4 a while back. oh well, anyone who got any recently must have lucked out.
A lot of the pros agree with this, that UWx and mono B will continue to be the best decks.
Though it does have a hidden gem of a spec. People are going to try the aggressive red decks or GW decks, so the GW cards and the BR and RG gods will randomly do well in a tournament. Then those cards will drop back down in price as people realize those archetypes aren't quite that good. The GW cards are pretty low at the moment. It's harder to predict when the 2 gods will be at a low point.
A lot of the pros agree with this, that UWx and mono B will continue to be the best decks.
Though it does have a hidden gem of a spec. People are going to try the aggressive red decks or GW decks, so the GW cards and the BR and RG gods will randomly do well in a tournament. Then those cards will drop back down in price as people realize those archetypes aren't quite that good. The GW cards are pretty low at the moment. It's harder to predict when the 2 gods will be at a low point.
I think, in general, if any of these gods dip as low as Heliod or Nylea did that they are good buys. I think the pendulum is swinging around on these -- at first, people were hyped and doing crazy things like buying out Trotsanis and Rubblebelt Raiders on pure speculation. Then, when spoiled, they were a disappointment when they weren't as obviously as powerful as the THS gods and none of them slot in to currently existing decks (except Xengogs in the R/G Monsters deck). However, I think they will end up in niche decks as 1-to-2 ofs.
They're not cards to build decks around like Thassa or Purphoros were, but I think they will show up in decks over the next eighteen months. There will be the standard release time price inflation, but, after that, if their prices crash hard because everyone is still playing monoblack, monoblue, and U/W/x, then I think buying them in the 2-3 ticket range is a good speculation.
A lot of the pros agree with this, that UWx and mono B will continue to be the best decks.
Though it does have a hidden gem of a spec. People are going to try the aggressive red decks or GW decks, so the GW cards and the BR and RG gods will randomly do well in a tournament. Then those cards will drop back down in price as people realize those archetypes aren't quite that good. The GW cards are pretty low at the moment. It's harder to predict when the 2 gods will be at a low point.
I think the sole offender is actually thoughtsieze. I understand that they wanted to reprint it for modern, but I wish they had done so in a core set so it'd only be OP in standard for a year. He makes a big deal about doom blade, but doom blade isn't even that highly played (even if it weren't for mono black, there's plenty of black or Bx creatures that'd see play eg. obzedat, xanthrid necromancer) and two standard seasons ago we had both doom blade and go for the throat without any major issues. Standard can handle two mana terrors, it probably can't handle one mana unconditional discard imo.
I think the sole offender is actually thoughtsieze. I understand that they wanted to reprint it for modern, but I wish they had done so in a core set so it'd only be OP in standard for a year. He makes a big deal about doom blade, but doom blade isn't even that highly played (even if it weren't for mono black, there's plenty of black or Bx creatures that'd see play eg. obzedat, xanthrid necromancer) and two standard seasons ago we had both doom blade and go for the throat without any major issues. Standard can handle two mana terrors, it probably can't handle one mana unconditional discard imo.
Right, or, alternatively, underpower black enough so that it doesn't have much going for it besides Thoughtseize (which may happen after RtR rotates -- monoblack as it exists won't be a deck anymore, and it doesn't have a shell of a deck in current THS block like some other archtypes do).
I think the sole offender is actually thoughtsieze. I understand that they wanted to reprint it for modern, but I wish they had done so in a core set so it'd only be OP in standard for a year. He makes a big deal about doom blade, but doom blade isn't even that highly played (even if it weren't for mono black, there's plenty of black or Bx creatures that'd see play eg. obzedat, xanthrid necromancer) and two standard seasons ago we had both doom blade and go for the throat without any major issues. Standard can handle two mana terrors, it probably can't handle one mana unconditional discard imo.
He goes on to say much more about TS and how Doom Blade can still spur a dynamic meta, whereas TS really can't. He is actually defending Doom Blade over cards like TS.
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"Until you have lived as a statue, do not talk to me of pigeons."
—Karn, silver golem
Right, or, alternatively, underpower black enough so that it doesn't have much going for it besides Thoughtseize (which may happen after RtR rotates -- monoblack as it exists won't be a deck anymore, and it doesn't have a shell of a deck in current THS block like some other archtypes do).
Not sure why you say that, mono black has been the second most common archetype in THS block constructed after GR monsters for most of the meta's lifecycle (graph here). The deck is built on the back of TS, downfall, and gary but there's enough othe powerful black cards to make you want to play it (whip, god, agent of fates, overlord) and that'll only increase as more are printed.
He goes on to say much more about TS and how Doom Blade can still spur a dynamic meta, whereas TS really can't. He is actually defending Doom Blade over cards like TS.
I did read the whole thing, and that's not how I read the article. He was making an unfavourable comparison between the removal in the previous set, which he said encouraged diversity, and Doom blade which he said doesn't. He said that the error of judgment in printing doom blade was small compared to TS, but that it was still an error (which I would disagree with). He also, very incorrectly, lumped the two 3-mana removal spells (downfall and detention sphere) in among his list of cards which don't care about what your opponent is playing, ie just generally good cards. That couldnt' be further from the truth, you are making a big statement just by including a 3 mana spot removal spell in your deck (particularly if it's at sorcery speed!). Remember how bad Putrefy was in jund last season, and detention sphere was frequently down to a 1-2 of, and that's because 3 mana spot removal is generally pretty bad agaist weenie aggro. In RTR block too, detention sphere fluctuated around in popularity a huge amount, it was cut heavily when rakdos and jund aggro were a thing, but came back to popularity when you needed the exiling ability against voice/rootborn defences and lotleth troll/varolz. Both of those cards are VERY much statements about your expected matchups.
I don't mind his argument overall, but I think the problem is far narrower than he tries to suggest it is, and at the end of the day basically comes down to TS. Drown in sorrow is very likely to exacerbate the problem though imo.
Not sure why you say that, mono black has been the second most common archetype in THS block constructed after GR monsters for most of the meta's lifecycle (graph here). The deck is built on the back of TS, downfall, and gary but there's enough othe powerful black cards to make you want to play it (whip, god, agent of fates, overlord) and that'll only increase as more are printed.
To be fair, that's 10% of the meta --Thoughtseize wouldn't be nearly as oppressive if it was only in 10% of decks of standard (and it's Naya, at over 60% that is the top deck, not G/R Monsters). With a more streamlined standard, the Naya deck (which is basically just a "good" stuff deck with Elspeth, Xengogs, Dragon, and Polukranos) will probably get split up in to a few different archtypes and may portend a healthier meta than what exists right now. Indeed, this Theros block meta is a good example of an environment where Thoughtseize is not oppressive.
I guess my main point is that monoblack is so good in standard right now because its finishers (especially Pack Rat -- games that go Turn 1 Thoughtseize, Turn 2 Pack Rat are very hard to lose) are so powerful, and that complements Thoguhtseize. The current monoblack deck in standard loses everything except Gray Merchant, Thoughtseize, and Hero's Downfall, so it seems possible (though, of course, predicting what three more sets will bring is impossible) that Thoughtseize will be less oppressive in standard in the future.
With that said, I agree this article is a bit ridiculous in that Doom Blade is not too good for any meta and three mana removal spells (especially one which is sorcery speed) are also not breaking anything. And with all said above, I agree it would have made more sense to put Thoughtseize in a core set.
As someone who's been high on the rogue decks containing ATL/Purphoros/Elspeth bandwagon since Theros, this thing looked interesting and I started playing around with it. Archangel is terrible though, completely win-more and 75% of the time she eats a Chained/Mortars/Downfall/Doomblade etc without impacting the board. I looked for a better 5 drop that could also count for WW........Scion of Vitu-Ghazi.
Holy crap is this card good right now.
I know this has been mentioned as a sleeper on and off since it came out, but given the fact that this card is absolutely amazing against Mono B, I've seen it pop up a bit more in the GW VoR builds that are becoming more frequent, and the potential for a legitimate W devotion deck to pop up after Brimaz comes out, it might be worth looking into. Its .05 right now.
I'm going to run this in some DEs this week and see how it does. The list absolutely bricks Mono B hard, and is very good against UW, especially after you ditch the dead removal cards after SB.
Scion would also be strong with the new GW god. The question is: is it strong enough to shake up standard.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
I grabbed a couple sets of Stoneforge Mystic, albeit slightly late (@14 a set) a couple days ago. Right now it's sitting at 5.79, the highest it's been since it was standard legal. The price correction in the paper market seemed inevitable but I wonder how much father can/will Stoneforge climb online. I mean, the current disparity between the paper and online version just seems far too large. Am I totally off base here?
Also, some talk about Walk the Aeons on reddit/twitter. Subsequently, it spiked in paper a bit. Seems obscure.
I know this has been mentioned as a sleeper on and off since it came out, but given the fact that this card is absolutely amazing against Mono B, I've seen it pop up a bit more in the GW VoR builds that are becoming more frequent, and the potential for a legitimate W devotion deck to pop up after Brimaz comes out, it might be worth looking into. Its .05 right now.
I'm going to run this in some DEs this week and see how it does. The list absolutely bricks Mono B hard, and is very good against UW, especially after you ditch the dead removal cards after SB.
Yeah, Mono B definitely doesn't like this card. At it's worst the rate is decent but at it's best you're populating VoR token, Wurms tokens and etc. I think there's potential.
I grabbed a couple sets of Stoneforge Mystic, albeit slightly late (@14 a set) a couple days ago. Right now it's sitting at 5.79, the highest it's been since it was standard legal. The price correction in the paper market seemed inevitable but I wonder how much father can/will Stoneforge climb online. I mean, the current disparity between the paper and online version just seems far too large. Am I totally off base here?
The price was super low because no one played legacy on mtgo. Then in the past 6 months people started streaming it and legacy became really popular. Then the UWR delver deck took off in the past 3 months which made stoneforge's popularity skyrocket.
It's also lower in price compared to paper because of the theme deck. You can still buy it in the store and it came out ~3 years ago.
Now that everyone is aware of these price spikes and everyone wants to speculate, who knows what'll happen to the price.
Also it could get unbanned in modern, so there's that too.
The price was super low because no one played legacy on mtgo. Then in the past 6 months people started streaming it and legacy became really popular. Then the UWR delver deck took off in the past 3 months which made stoneforge's popularity skyrocket.
It's also lower in price compared to paper because of the theme deck. You can still buy it in the store and it came out ~3 years ago.
Now that everyone is aware of these price spikes and everyone wants to speculate, who knows what'll happen to the price.
Also it could get unbanned in modern, so there's that too.
Ah, okay, that definitely puts a cap on the WWK versions ceiling. There's realistically no way it could ever exceed 10 correct?
It'll break 10tix if it gets unbanned in modern, but yeah otherwise 10 tix is probably the cap for a while.
The things that'll cause it to go up is the Legacy GP in Paris (which is in 2 weeks). So now is a prime time to play legacy on mtgo (i'm assuming that's why it spiked).
If there's a legacy MOCS soon it should increase the price.
Or if the prominent streamers stream stoneforge decks It should go up more.
I don't know if GP Paris will get it to 10 tix in 2 weeks. I think it's more of a long term spec.
It shouldn't be a 2 ticket card.
Well, it's closer to 4.5 tickets than 2 tickets. Also, it's been printed five times. And, really, is it that comparable? There's not a lot of lists with Chandra out there (I checked the two PEs from 1/26 and there were 0 copies of it in the Top 16 of those tournaments), so not sure where that comparison comes from. Ajani and Elspeth are 1 to 2-of finishers in Tier 1 decks (RWU or Jund splashing for basically just Ajani), but they were printed in sets that were opened much less than Garruk.
Not even getting in to what the cards do (I'd argue that Garruk -- which relies on a creature heavy board in a format full of efficient removal -- is not comparable to Ajani and Elspeth, who are win conditions on their own), but just looking at their printings and popularity in top decks, and I'd Garruk's price is pretty spot on, if not even a little high (the MTG Goldfish graphs do show a recent spike from the monogreen deck).
Is it possible Domri Rade might be played in a Modern Zoo deck if Nactal is unbanned? Maybe I am just being optimistic, but it'd be nice if there was at least one mythic from RtR block that made a splash in Modern...
They're only comparable in that they cost 4 mana. Garruk Wildspeaker is a much narrower card, and like Drew said it was printed a bunch of times on mtgo which lowered the price.
Elspeth and Ajani can go into a variety of midrange or control decks. Where are Garruk can only go into ramp strategies or sometimes BG rock decks that want a mediocre 4 drop.
Ajani replaced bloodbraid elf in jund for a while. You didn't see Garruk do anything close to that.
I was talking to some of my friends who are zoo aficionados and they said putting domri or snapcaster in your nacatl deck is a trap. You should just play all 1s and 2s with wild nacatl. And you splash white for path, boros charm, and maybe lightning helix. You should be trying to kill your opponent as fast as you can with your 1 mana 3/3s (experiment one is a 1 mana 3/3), and not durdling around with domri or trying to do cute things with snapcaster.
But that said, you don't think Kibler is going to try to play domri and nacatl together? You don't think the CFB guys are going to try to rebuild that nacatl snapcaster deck (counter cat) at pro tour RTR?
The problem you get with putting domri in your creature deck, instead of just cheaper creatures, is that you're an underdog to tempo twin. Tempo twin is just going to pick you apart and combo you out, blow you out with a blood moon, or beat you down with pestermites and burn, or even batterskull. They have clique or spellskite to stop your removal, they can bounce your hate permanents like torpor orb, or they can just drop a blood moon on you.
So I think the successful decks are going to be the aggressive ones that try to race the combo decks. Although Kibler is an anomaly and does well with his own green creature decks.
As for RTR block mythics that get played in modern, there's sphinx's revelation and voice of resurgence.
Thank you for the clear, on-the-point analysis. I agree this deck just looks awful, especially when compared to what Tron does (and the inherent resiliency Tron has to the draws you described that this deck lacks).
There may be something with monogreen Nyxthos/untapping lands in Modern (sort of like the monogreen deck in standard, which uses big Garruk for card advantage -- not a combo deck, but just a solid deck that incidentally uses Nyxthos), but I think try to making a combo deck with just a flood of mana sources and Genesis Wave is probably not the way to go.
Either way, for the purposes of a speculation forum, I agree that if anyone has bought in to these cards, now is the time to sell them -- based on current information, this deck does not seem likely to perform well at a major event.
Woo was playing a green ramp deck before nykthos was printed. He caused a spike on vernal blooms.
So i'm not sure you can say who the original creator is. People were brewing decks with nykthos when the card was spoiled. But I guess you can say MJ popularized the nykthos version.
The thing with nykthos vs tron, is that nykthos can win the game on turn 4 with damage, where as tron doesn't technically win with turn 3 karn.
No pros have posted tweaked decklists for nykthos. Some pro tour team could tune the crap out of the deck and make it tier 1-2. I would not write off these decks till the PT (which MJ himself has said on Twitter). Though these decks are weak to bolt + Thoughtseize, so they don't have the greatest jund match up, which is a strike against them.
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27810_Reflections-From-Baltimore.html
A lot of the pros agree with this, that UWx and mono B will continue to be the best decks.
Though it does have a hidden gem of a spec. People are going to try the aggressive red decks or GW decks, so the GW cards and the BR and RG gods will randomly do well in a tournament. Then those cards will drop back down in price as people realize those archetypes aren't quite that good. The GW cards are pretty low at the moment. It's harder to predict when the 2 gods will be at a low point.
I think, in general, if any of these gods dip as low as Heliod or Nylea did that they are good buys. I think the pendulum is swinging around on these -- at first, people were hyped and doing crazy things like buying out Trotsanis and Rubblebelt Raiders on pure speculation. Then, when spoiled, they were a disappointment when they weren't as obviously as powerful as the THS gods and none of them slot in to currently existing decks (except Xengogs in the R/G Monsters deck). However, I think they will end up in niche decks as 1-to-2 ofs.
They're not cards to build decks around like Thassa or Purphoros were, but I think they will show up in decks over the next eighteen months. There will be the standard release time price inflation, but, after that, if their prices crash hard because everyone is still playing monoblack, monoblue, and U/W/x, then I think buying them in the 2-3 ticket range is a good speculation.
I think the sole offender is actually thoughtsieze. I understand that they wanted to reprint it for modern, but I wish they had done so in a core set so it'd only be OP in standard for a year. He makes a big deal about doom blade, but doom blade isn't even that highly played (even if it weren't for mono black, there's plenty of black or Bx creatures that'd see play eg. obzedat, xanthrid necromancer) and two standard seasons ago we had both doom blade and go for the throat without any major issues. Standard can handle two mana terrors, it probably can't handle one mana unconditional discard imo.
Right, or, alternatively, underpower black enough so that it doesn't have much going for it besides Thoughtseize (which may happen after RtR rotates -- monoblack as it exists won't be a deck anymore, and it doesn't have a shell of a deck in current THS block like some other archtypes do).
He goes on to say much more about TS and how Doom Blade can still spur a dynamic meta, whereas TS really can't. He is actually defending Doom Blade over cards like TS.
—Karn, silver golem
Not sure why you say that, mono black has been the second most common archetype in THS block constructed after GR monsters for most of the meta's lifecycle (graph here). The deck is built on the back of TS, downfall, and gary but there's enough othe powerful black cards to make you want to play it (whip, god, agent of fates, overlord) and that'll only increase as more are printed.
I did read the whole thing, and that's not how I read the article. He was making an unfavourable comparison between the removal in the previous set, which he said encouraged diversity, and Doom blade which he said doesn't. He said that the error of judgment in printing doom blade was small compared to TS, but that it was still an error (which I would disagree with). He also, very incorrectly, lumped the two 3-mana removal spells (downfall and detention sphere) in among his list of cards which don't care about what your opponent is playing, ie just generally good cards. That couldnt' be further from the truth, you are making a big statement just by including a 3 mana spot removal spell in your deck (particularly if it's at sorcery speed!). Remember how bad Putrefy was in jund last season, and detention sphere was frequently down to a 1-2 of, and that's because 3 mana spot removal is generally pretty bad agaist weenie aggro. In RTR block too, detention sphere fluctuated around in popularity a huge amount, it was cut heavily when rakdos and jund aggro were a thing, but came back to popularity when you needed the exiling ability against voice/rootborn defences and lotleth troll/varolz. Both of those cards are VERY much statements about your expected matchups.
I don't mind his argument overall, but I think the problem is far narrower than he tries to suggest it is, and at the end of the day basically comes down to TS. Drown in sorrow is very likely to exacerbate the problem though imo.
To be fair, that's 10% of the meta --Thoughtseize wouldn't be nearly as oppressive if it was only in 10% of decks of standard (and it's Naya, at over 60% that is the top deck, not G/R Monsters). With a more streamlined standard, the Naya deck (which is basically just a "good" stuff deck with Elspeth, Xengogs, Dragon, and Polukranos) will probably get split up in to a few different archtypes and may portend a healthier meta than what exists right now. Indeed, this Theros block meta is a good example of an environment where Thoughtseize is not oppressive.
I guess my main point is that monoblack is so good in standard right now because its finishers (especially Pack Rat -- games that go Turn 1 Thoughtseize, Turn 2 Pack Rat are very hard to lose) are so powerful, and that complements Thoguhtseize. The current monoblack deck in standard loses everything except Gray Merchant, Thoughtseize, and Hero's Downfall, so it seems possible (though, of course, predicting what three more sets will bring is impossible) that Thoughtseize will be less oppressive in standard in the future.
With that said, I agree this article is a bit ridiculous in that Doom Blade is not too good for any meta and three mana removal spells (especially one which is sorcery speed) are also not breaking anything. And with all said above, I agree it would have made more sense to put Thoughtseize in a core set.
As someone who's been high on the rogue decks containing ATL/Purphoros/Elspeth bandwagon since Theros, this thing looked interesting and I started playing around with it. Archangel is terrible though, completely win-more and 75% of the time she eats a Chained/Mortars/Downfall/Doomblade etc without impacting the board. I looked for a better 5 drop that could also count for WW........Scion of Vitu-Ghazi.
Holy crap is this card good right now.
I know this has been mentioned as a sleeper on and off since it came out, but given the fact that this card is absolutely amazing against Mono B, I've seen it pop up a bit more in the GW VoR builds that are becoming more frequent, and the potential for a legitimate W devotion deck to pop up after Brimaz comes out, it might be worth looking into. Its .05 right now.
I'm going to run this in some DEs this week and see how it does. The list absolutely bricks Mono B hard, and is very good against UW, especially after you ditch the dead removal cards after SB.
Standard:
RW Boros devotion/Purphoros combo
RGB Jund Midrange
Modern:
WB Martyr.proc
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152167587799518&set=a.10151076265089518.465853.48791589517&type=1&theater
Also, some talk about Walk the Aeons on reddit/twitter. Subsequently, it spiked in paper a bit. Seems obscure.
Yeah, Mono B definitely doesn't like this card. At it's worst the rate is decent but at it's best you're populating VoR token, Wurms tokens and etc. I think there's potential.
Evangel of Heliod costs one more and has a much smaller body.
At worst you're paying 6 mana for a 1/3 and two 1/1 Soldiers with Evangel.
At worst you're paying 5 mana for a 4/4 and two 1/1 flyers with Scion.
In the context of the deck Evangel may have more upside but Scion is on average is going to give you a much better return on your mana investment.
The price was super low because no one played legacy on mtgo. Then in the past 6 months people started streaming it and legacy became really popular. Then the UWR delver deck took off in the past 3 months which made stoneforge's popularity skyrocket.
It's also lower in price compared to paper because of the theme deck. You can still buy it in the store and it came out ~3 years ago.
Now that everyone is aware of these price spikes and everyone wants to speculate, who knows what'll happen to the price.
Also it could get unbanned in modern, so there's that too.
Ah, okay, that definitely puts a cap on the WWK versions ceiling. There's realistically no way it could ever exceed 10 correct?
The things that'll cause it to go up is the Legacy GP in Paris (which is in 2 weeks). So now is a prime time to play legacy on mtgo (i'm assuming that's why it spiked).
If there's a legacy MOCS soon it should increase the price.
Or if the prominent streamers stream stoneforge decks It should go up more.
I don't know if GP Paris will get it to 10 tix in 2 weeks. I think it's more of a long term spec.
That theme deck is so good I am always shocked cards like Vial go up. It`s such a good value.
Main Deck
60 cards
3 Flagstones of Trokair
3 Karakas
2 Mishra's Factory
14 Plains
22 lands
4 Benevolent Bodyguard
3 Ethersworn Canonist
4 Flickerwisp
3 Jötun Grunt
4 Mangara of Corondor
3 Serra Avenger
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Weathered Wayfarer
25 creatures
4 Æther Vial
1 Bonesplitter
3 Oblivion Ring
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
13 other spells
Sideboard
2 Aura of Silence
1 Ethersworn Canonist
4 Kor Firewalker
1 Oblivion Ring
4 Relic of Progenitus
3 Silence
15 sideboard cards