Well would it be good to run a couple copies of Disciple of Phenax if you were expecting a lot of Esper Control? A 1/3 isn't that much of a threat yet it is another body. But more importantly, it comes with another discard spell that can hit anything from BBoV to Elspeth, to Sphinx's Rev.
Lifebane Zombie in MD is just so wrong. And no Pack Rat? Come on, the card is too good.
I'm not building for the current meta, I've built the deck to where I think it will need to be.
My prediction for top decks in the new meta.
Mono Black Control/Devotion
Red Deck Wins (green or white splash)
Mono Blue Devotion
Green Red Monsters
Esper Control
Mono Black gets so many tools, and is already the top deck, so it is pretty obvious this deck is staying up top. That means we will be playing even more mirrors at high level tournaments, which means we will need to begin to skew our deck towards beating Mono Black. I think we can all agree that every good Mono Black deck will play some number of Drown in Sorrow, and Bile Blight in the mainboard. Those both get rid of Pack Rat and 2 or 1 other rats respectively. I definitely want to run a minimum of 2 copies of Drown in Sorrow, making my own Pack Rats quite a bit worse. I think saying that Pack Rat is "too good" in Mono Black is clearly not accurate anymore. Lifebane Zombie is going to have a lot of targets in with all the Big Green Red stompy decks pushing their way to the top tables. I'm sure 4 copies is wrong now, but at the beginning of a new format, I try to keep most cards in sets of 4 to minimize variance. Then once I get a reasonable number of games in, I start cutting back for other more valuable cards. This said, I do agree that 4 copies is wrong in the mainboard, and probably at least 2 of those should be Nightveil Specter. People are still going to be playing Pack Rats in the mainboard for the time being, and I'm just going to be next leveling them by not running my own Rats as targets for these two new powerful kill spells. This will make my deck more streamlined against them, and will give them more dead cards.
I see Mono Red with a splash of green being a top deck at least in the beginning. They now have plenty of good burn spells to throw at their opponent's face, and lots of good early creatures and tempo. Not a deck to ignore.
Mono Blue Devotion has been taking over some tournaments lately. This is where Drown in Sorrow will really shine. Dropping this on turn 3 or 4 will end the game very quickly. I want 4 against this deck.
Green Red Monsters runs Elvish Mystic, Scavenging Ooze, Boon Satyrs, and Xenagos can make a stream of 2/2s. I want a nice clean cut way to deal with all of that. Bile Blight helps a lot in the Xenagos situation, but Drown in Sorrow takes out multiple threats.
And finally we have Esper Control. Clearly Drown in Sorrow and Bile Blight are pretty dead here.
I am looking forward to splashing red but I think running 4 drown MD is a mistake. That's a SB card for most. Also gild isn't going to make the cut. I would also add a couple mortars and at least one more erebos. Why no nightveil
Specter?
4 Drown in Sorrow MD may be wrong, but 3 is probably the right number. I'll cut back when I'm sure I don't need that 4th copy. I very much don't think DiS is a mostly SB card, as I stated above.
Why do you think a singleton unrestricted kill spell for 4 mana isn't going to make the cut. With so many decks running large indestructible creatures, it is a good card to have available. Another Mortars is probably needed somewhere in the board. I don't know about adding another Erebos. It may become necessary if we see a significant rise of Esper Control. That said, I already have the Zombies mainboard along with a Mortars, that should be plenty to deal with BBoV, leaving Thoughtseize for other important spells.
And yes, I'll probably be adding Nightveil Specters to the mainboard over some number of Lifebane Zombies. But right now, I'm testing the Zombies out.
Just now I've been trying to figure out an SB for the deck once BNG comes in, and it's quite a tight spot.
Duress should still be in the SB, and IMO as a 4-of. Raping control's hand is the best path to victory against them, you want as much 1-mana discard/peek spells as you can.
Lifebane Zombie should stay, at least as a 3-of. Green creatures will still be played, and I'm predicting more white creatures, so it's still a very relevant card.
I'm also for still keeping 4 copies of Devour Flesh in the 75, and with Bile Blight entering the MD common sense says you cut some Devour Flesh and move them to the side - 2 seems to be the common number whenever I ask other MBD players.
That's 9 slots taken, meaning 6 slots have to go to some combination of:
Of the 4, I'm partial towards Doom Blade and Drown in Sorrow. Doom Blade will help against decks like R/G monsters and WW, especially since they get creatures that are out of Bile Blight range (Courser of Kruphix and Brimaz are good examples). I'm seeing Drown at 2-3 copies as well.
With the deck getting Bile Blight which is still strong in the mirror, is there still a need for Dark Betrayal? The most notable difference is that Betrayal kills Desecration Demon while one Bile Blight does not. If this happens then SB'ing for the mirror could be shaken up quite a bit - would you leave DD in knowing that you're less likely to see the 1-mana instant that kills it?
And then there's Erebos whom we play mainly for the lifegain shutdown.
--
Moving to another topic:Is it time to cut down on Pack Rat in the main? It's been something I've been asked lately, and I'm not so sure yet. Some people are saying that it's time to go back down to 2/3 with our new cards hurting it as well (Bile Blight). What do you guys think?
Nice to see another Arch in here.
I think you're right on the money for most of these topics.
Duress is extremely necessary against control as discard spells are our best weapons against them.
I also foresee more Green and White creatures seeing play, thus why I have skewed my mainboard to deal with those decks.
While I hate to admit it, Devour Flesh is still fairly necessary I think. I'm gonna try and see how I do without the full 4 copies like many in here, but I may end up adding 1-2 in the future.
Drown in Sorrow is my stand out card for our deck in this set. This card allows us to stop playing the midrange game, and to commit fully as a control deck, hence my lack of Pack Rat. I want creatures that are powerful bombs that immediately affect the board, if not that, then they need to create card advantage.
Doom Blade may also become a staple in the deck. Splashing red though, allows us to play Dreadbore, which is better in almost all situations save haste creatures, and not having the red mana available.
I think Erebos can be cut back on, until we see more Esper Control running a ton of Sphinx's Rev, and 3-4 BBoV.
And Finally Dark Betrayal. I think this card should be kept to a minimum in the deck. 0-2 is my number unless we see Mono Black completely take over the meta in the way Faeries, Jund, or Caw-Blade did.
I haven't participated on these forums in a while, and have just been playtesting with a smaller group since I moved out of SoCal. If I'm wrong on any of the points I have made here, please anyone, feel free to correct me. These are just my predictions going forward.
Chain Gary pretty much. When it hits you have 2-3 turns max to win. If you run ratchet bomb(which is awesome btw) then you can buy an extra turn by popping the tokens.
Enter Drown in Sorrow or Bile Blight
Why is nobody discussing new builds for the set that launches in a few days?
I've been doing some testing with my brother a bit, and I've completely dropped pack rat. This is what I've been working with as a starting point for the new meta so far. Who else is incorporating the new set?
I am thinking that with the printing of Drown in Sorrow, Bile Blight, Temple of Malice, Mogis, and to a lesser extent, Sanguimancy, that we can move towards a more reactive control deck, less reliant on creatures. I very much like splashing red now.
As one of the major proponents for Mono Black Control decks on these forums in the past, I figured I'd add my advice to this thread.
To clear everyone up, some people in here don't understand what Mono Black means, and some people don't understand what Control means. If you are building an aggro deck, there is a thread for that. If you are building a Mostly Black Control deck, there are also threads for those decks. If you're building a Mostly Black Aggro-Control deck, there will be a thread for that deck as well in the next couple weeks (I'm developing something pretty awesome that has been testing right up there with all the M14 Tier 1 decks).
No offense to the thread creator, but the title of this thread is very misleading. You built an Orzhov Control/Crypt Ghast Ramp deck, not a Mono Black deck. I would suggest changing the thread's title to reflect that.
Now I don't really feel that many of the decks in this thread will actually be competitive, and I'm not saying that the following list is actually a great or tested list; but this is what a Mono Black Control deck should look like with Standard cards plus M14. I have worked with this list for a long while, but gave up on it when Reanimator and Esper Control were dominating the format pretty heavily. Now may be a time for a resurgence with some of the great new tools available. That said, with mana fixing this good, it is almost certainly better to splash a color for added flexibility and the capability to deal with varied threats.
This deck features a mainboard that stops aggro in their tracks, and has enough card advantage and plays slow enough to beat most of the Midrange decks. There is virtually zero sideboarding versus Aggro and most Midrange decks. Appetite and Duress can come in against Jund especially if you're expecting Rakdos's Return, Sire of Insanity, or Garruks.
The deck would have a lot of difficulty beating Reanimator decks game 1, which is one reason to have Crypt Incursion mainboard (bonus for being okay against Aggro). Sideboarding brings in the other 2 Crypt Incursions and Appetites for Lilianas and a Curse.
Control matchups game 1 will be almost impossible, but that archetype is almost nonexistent right now. Game 2 and 3, the deck switches gears to a much more aggressive midrange deck with must answer creatures and plenty of disruption to slow the Control decks. Also, most control decks will side out some number of kill spells for more counterspells and Jaces. This deck brings in pretty much the entire sideboard save for Crypt Incursion. Hold your Appetites for turn 6 right before the opponent drops down their Aetherling. Once he lands, we probably don't have enough ways to actually kill him. The post board gameplan is to play early discard and Liliana discarding, followed up closely by the aggressive creatures.
Problem cards for this deck:
Aetherling
Obzedat
Planeswalkers
Rakdos's Return
Sire of Insanity
Note: With Mutilate in your deck, you need a minimum of 75% swamps in order to utilize it effectively. -2/-2 for 2BB is not a good sweeper. Below 75% swamps, you are probably already splashing colors that have more wrath spells that would be more efficient than Mutilate.
I was under the impression that Twin decks stomp all over Elves. They have adequate creature kill spells mainboard, good blockers with Exarch, spellskite and Resto Angel, a large number of counterspells, and post board side in a bunch of Slagstorms/sweepers. Seems to be a very bad matchup. Am I mistaken in my evaluation of the matchup?
I doubt the special lands are worth it, I only run basic's, shock lands, and fetch lands, Arbor Elf is my best mana dork, special lands affect consistency of Arbor Elf, I'd rather have Arbor Elf as consistent as Llanowar Elves.
How do you guys expect to beat control or blue based combo strategies without Cavern of Souls?
It's only useful when you draw Beck. That doesn't happen all the time. Without Beck it's arguably worse than even a basic Forest, since Arbor Elf doesn't untap it, and it gives your opponent a token.
Don't discount the token - sure, you say you have lords, but your opponent has removal for your lords. You block the token with a 2/2 mana dork, then your opponent Bolts your lord and you lose the mana dork. Oops. If you choose not to block and take the damage - well, why aren't you playing Breeding Pool instead?
I didn't say play Orchard over Breeding Pool. Why not play with both? In my testing with the deck, the token just hasn't been a big deal at all. I generally will play the Orchard as my last land on turn 3 or 4, in anticipation of casting either a combo Beck or just a Value Beck. I think that making Beck the best it can be is something that we should focus on, rather than just making the deck into a mediocre midrange/aggro deck. That sort of gameplan should be the backup, not the primary. For instance, isn't Dryad Arbor a great card to play as a 1-of with Beck and Fetches. Being able to fetch it on a Beck turn gives some added stability to the combo. Having that in addition to tapping the Orchard gives a significantly greater amount of reliability to comboing off. I mean giving the deck a chance to combo out on turn 3 is a good thing right?
Also, I have a feeling Arbor Elf should get phased out with the new Elvish Mystic in M14. Not relying on a land to be untapped seems much better to me.
Basically what I'm getting at is that this new wave of midrange/aggro elf decks haven't been having much if any success as of late, so why keep trying to force the deck in a direction that it isn't well suited for? I mean if you really want to play a midrange style deck, why not just run Kitchen Finks and Tarmogoyf? I thought this was the Combo Elves thread.
Why does everyone here rule out Forbidden Orchard? Taps for U or G, and gives us an extra draw off of Beck and doesn't deal us damage like 10th Ed lands, Shocks, etc. Also, a 1/1 isn't a big deal for Elves if we're going for a combo, and we have lords to buff our guys up anyways.
The ability to cast this and follow it with a Doom Blade is actually just fine IMO. If only there was Infest. LoB killing their biggest guy followed by Infest wiping the rest would be very good against aggressive or even midrange decks. Sadly no Infest, and while Shrivel is decent, it won't do much in a meta full of x/2 x/3 and x/4's. How about LoB followed by Liliana of the Veil? That's a pretty solid play on turn 5. You don't even have to cast a 3 mana spell, as chaining this into a 2 mana spell is just fine as well.
This will still see some play as a 1-2 of in Mostly Black Control decks. Mark my words.
People are considering this color bleed? Black was the first color to have ritual effects. It is about time that we get to see an actually powerful spell to help combat all of the powerful creatures in standard. Maybe this is the beginning of a swing of the pendulum away from creatures being the best, back to spells being the best. This is assuming that the spell only costs 2BB.
Wow, seeing the card spoiler having the Witch at Uncommon and only costing 2B made me sit up in my chair. But then seeing the real thing at Rare and 3B makes it completely unplayable in competitive standard and extremely difficult to assemble the combo in limited. Say you get both the Cauldron and the new Festering Goblin down before the witch on turn 4, you still can't even activate anything until at least turn 5! In most games in standard, the victor is already decided by turn 5. A cheeky little drain 4 and kill something 4 toughness or less is a pretty weak combo.
Why couldn't they have just saved a couple card slots and given us Tendrils of Corruption? Tendrils is a swamp heavy spell that costs 4 CMC, kills a 4 toughness creature and gains 4 life when cast with 4 swamps turn 4.
This is a big swing and a miss from Wizards IMO. Cool flavor for sure, but bad execution. That said, the Newt will still see some amount of standard play since it can kill 2 toughness creatures that it has blocked.
40,000 packs, 1:8 is a mythic. That's 5,000 mythics opened. 1:15 is a Tarmogoyf, that's 375 Tarmogoyfs opened.
1:9 packs is a foil rare, 1:8 of those is mythic (1:72). That's roughly 600 foil mythics opened. 1:15 is a tarmogoyf, which is 20 foil goyfs opened.
I don't see that making too large a dent in prices. With 4,000 people in attendance, roughly 1:11 will get one, and 1:44 will be able to muster together a play set.
Yeah, I know the odds. The math isn't hard.
Do you know what ratio of people at the GP that already have their playsets of Goyf? No. Neither do I. But I can guess that a fair amount do. I know that of my group that is going, more than half of the guys already have at least 1 playset of everything they would possibly need for modern.
And if you actually read my post, you would have noticed that I said that I expect a drop as high as 5%. Do you really believe that the cards won't even drop that much?
So today, on Cascade Games Blog, Tim announced that they have enough packs for somewhere above 6000 people for the main event. My earlier extremely conservative estimation of a GP of only 2K players allowed for a minimum of 15,326 packs, or 639 boxes. This new number allows us to much more accurately estimate how much actual product will be there.
Lets keep the estimation at just under 6000, since the post stated over 6000 is the limit. I'll use 5900. That would mean that they have at least 35400 packs for just the main event. Add in the other MM events:
2304 Sealed side
576 Draft side
446 Modern Mini Masters
That ends up at an awesome 38726 packs of Modern Masters, or 1614 boxes. Add in the boxes and packs for prizes and Day 2 Main Event Draft, and you're looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 40000 packs of cards.
I'd say that's a significantly better number than most people were assuming from the beginning. I think there will be a LOT more product out there after Vegas than people think. Prices WILL fall more than they have already. I even expect Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant to drop a little more in price, perhaps as much as 5%.
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And this here is why the original wording of Mesmeric Fiend was better than the "fixed" version.
To answer your question, yes, it does go back to the person's hand.
I'm not building for the current meta, I've built the deck to where I think it will need to be.
My prediction for top decks in the new meta.
Mono Black Control/Devotion
Red Deck Wins (green or white splash)
Mono Blue Devotion
Green Red Monsters
Esper Control
Mono Black gets so many tools, and is already the top deck, so it is pretty obvious this deck is staying up top. That means we will be playing even more mirrors at high level tournaments, which means we will need to begin to skew our deck towards beating Mono Black. I think we can all agree that every good Mono Black deck will play some number of Drown in Sorrow, and Bile Blight in the mainboard. Those both get rid of Pack Rat and 2 or 1 other rats respectively. I definitely want to run a minimum of 2 copies of Drown in Sorrow, making my own Pack Rats quite a bit worse. I think saying that Pack Rat is "too good" in Mono Black is clearly not accurate anymore. Lifebane Zombie is going to have a lot of targets in with all the Big Green Red stompy decks pushing their way to the top tables. I'm sure 4 copies is wrong now, but at the beginning of a new format, I try to keep most cards in sets of 4 to minimize variance. Then once I get a reasonable number of games in, I start cutting back for other more valuable cards. This said, I do agree that 4 copies is wrong in the mainboard, and probably at least 2 of those should be Nightveil Specter. People are still going to be playing Pack Rats in the mainboard for the time being, and I'm just going to be next leveling them by not running my own Rats as targets for these two new powerful kill spells. This will make my deck more streamlined against them, and will give them more dead cards.
I see Mono Red with a splash of green being a top deck at least in the beginning. They now have plenty of good burn spells to throw at their opponent's face, and lots of good early creatures and tempo. Not a deck to ignore.
Mono Blue Devotion has been taking over some tournaments lately. This is where Drown in Sorrow will really shine. Dropping this on turn 3 or 4 will end the game very quickly. I want 4 against this deck.
Green Red Monsters runs Elvish Mystic, Scavenging Ooze, Boon Satyrs, and Xenagos can make a stream of 2/2s. I want a nice clean cut way to deal with all of that. Bile Blight helps a lot in the Xenagos situation, but Drown in Sorrow takes out multiple threats.
And finally we have Esper Control. Clearly Drown in Sorrow and Bile Blight are pretty dead here.
As for some of the other cards in question.
4 Drown in Sorrow MD may be wrong, but 3 is probably the right number. I'll cut back when I'm sure I don't need that 4th copy. I very much don't think DiS is a mostly SB card, as I stated above.
Why do you think a singleton unrestricted kill spell for 4 mana isn't going to make the cut. With so many decks running large indestructible creatures, it is a good card to have available. Another Mortars is probably needed somewhere in the board. I don't know about adding another Erebos. It may become necessary if we see a significant rise of Esper Control. That said, I already have the Zombies mainboard along with a Mortars, that should be plenty to deal with BBoV, leaving Thoughtseize for other important spells.
And yes, I'll probably be adding Nightveil Specters to the mainboard over some number of Lifebane Zombies. But right now, I'm testing the Zombies out.
Nice to see another Arch in here.
I think you're right on the money for most of these topics.
Duress is extremely necessary against control as discard spells are our best weapons against them.
I also foresee more Green and White creatures seeing play, thus why I have skewed my mainboard to deal with those decks.
While I hate to admit it, Devour Flesh is still fairly necessary I think. I'm gonna try and see how I do without the full 4 copies like many in here, but I may end up adding 1-2 in the future.
Drown in Sorrow is my stand out card for our deck in this set. This card allows us to stop playing the midrange game, and to commit fully as a control deck, hence my lack of Pack Rat. I want creatures that are powerful bombs that immediately affect the board, if not that, then they need to create card advantage.
Doom Blade may also become a staple in the deck. Splashing red though, allows us to play Dreadbore, which is better in almost all situations save haste creatures, and not having the red mana available.
I think Erebos can be cut back on, until we see more Esper Control running a ton of Sphinx's Rev, and 3-4 BBoV.
And Finally Dark Betrayal. I think this card should be kept to a minimum in the deck. 0-2 is my number unless we see Mono Black completely take over the meta in the way Faeries, Jund, or Caw-Blade did.
I haven't participated on these forums in a while, and have just been playtesting with a smaller group since I moved out of SoCal. If I'm wrong on any of the points I have made here, please anyone, feel free to correct me. These are just my predictions going forward.
Enter Drown in Sorrow or Bile Blight
Why is nobody discussing new builds for the set that launches in a few days?
I've been doing some testing with my brother a bit, and I've completely dropped pack rat. This is what I've been working with as a starting point for the new meta so far. Who else is incorporating the new set?
Anybody feel the same?
To clear everyone up, some people in here don't understand what Mono Black means, and some people don't understand what Control means. If you are building an aggro deck, there is a thread for that. If you are building a Mostly Black Control deck, there are also threads for those decks. If you're building a Mostly Black Aggro-Control deck, there will be a thread for that deck as well in the next couple weeks (I'm developing something pretty awesome that has been testing right up there with all the M14 Tier 1 decks).
No offense to the thread creator, but the title of this thread is very misleading. You built an Orzhov Control/Crypt Ghast Ramp deck, not a Mono Black deck. I would suggest changing the thread's title to reflect that.
Now I don't really feel that many of the decks in this thread will actually be competitive, and I'm not saying that the following list is actually a great or tested list; but this is what a Mono Black Control deck should look like with Standard cards plus M14. I have worked with this list for a long while, but gave up on it when Reanimator and Esper Control were dominating the format pretty heavily. Now may be a time for a resurgence with some of the great new tools available. That said, with mana fixing this good, it is almost certainly better to splash a color for added flexibility and the capability to deal with varied threats.
3x Mutavault
22x Swamp
Creatures: 8
4x Lifebane Zombie
4x Vampire Nighthawk
Instants: 9
2x Tragic Slip
2x Crypt Incursion
2x Devour Flesh
3x Doom Blade
1x Liturgy of Blood
4x Mutilate
4x Sign in Blood
Enchantments: 4
2x Curse of Death's Hold
2x Underworld Connections
Artifacts: 2
2x Staff of Nin
Planeswalkers: 3
3x Liliana of the Veil
2x Appetite for Brains
2x Crypt Incursion
4x Desecration Demon
3x Duress
4x Geralf's Messenger
This deck features a mainboard that stops aggro in their tracks, and has enough card advantage and plays slow enough to beat most of the Midrange decks. There is virtually zero sideboarding versus Aggro and most Midrange decks. Appetite and Duress can come in against Jund especially if you're expecting Rakdos's Return, Sire of Insanity, or Garruks.
The deck would have a lot of difficulty beating Reanimator decks game 1, which is one reason to have Crypt Incursion mainboard (bonus for being okay against Aggro). Sideboarding brings in the other 2 Crypt Incursions and Appetites for Lilianas and a Curse.
Control matchups game 1 will be almost impossible, but that archetype is almost nonexistent right now. Game 2 and 3, the deck switches gears to a much more aggressive midrange deck with must answer creatures and plenty of disruption to slow the Control decks. Also, most control decks will side out some number of kill spells for more counterspells and Jaces. This deck brings in pretty much the entire sideboard save for Crypt Incursion. Hold your Appetites for turn 6 right before the opponent drops down their Aetherling. Once he lands, we probably don't have enough ways to actually kill him. The post board gameplan is to play early discard and Liliana discarding, followed up closely by the aggressive creatures.
Problem cards for this deck:
Aetherling
Obzedat
Planeswalkers
Rakdos's Return
Sire of Insanity
Note: With Mutilate in your deck, you need a minimum of 75% swamps in order to utilize it effectively. -2/-2 for 2BB is not a good sweeper. Below 75% swamps, you are probably already splashing colors that have more wrath spells that would be more efficient than Mutilate.
How do you guys expect to beat control or blue based combo strategies without Cavern of Souls?
I didn't say play Orchard over Breeding Pool. Why not play with both? In my testing with the deck, the token just hasn't been a big deal at all. I generally will play the Orchard as my last land on turn 3 or 4, in anticipation of casting either a combo Beck or just a Value Beck. I think that making Beck the best it can be is something that we should focus on, rather than just making the deck into a mediocre midrange/aggro deck. That sort of gameplan should be the backup, not the primary. For instance, isn't Dryad Arbor a great card to play as a 1-of with Beck and Fetches. Being able to fetch it on a Beck turn gives some added stability to the combo. Having that in addition to tapping the Orchard gives a significantly greater amount of reliability to comboing off. I mean giving the deck a chance to combo out on turn 3 is a good thing right?
Also, I have a feeling Arbor Elf should get phased out with the new Elvish Mystic in M14. Not relying on a land to be untapped seems much better to me.
Basically what I'm getting at is that this new wave of midrange/aggro elf decks haven't been having much if any success as of late, so why keep trying to force the deck in a direction that it isn't well suited for? I mean if you really want to play a midrange style deck, why not just run Kitchen Finks and Tarmogoyf? I thought this was the Combo Elves thread.
This will still see some play as a 1-2 of in Mostly Black Control decks. Mark my words.
Why couldn't they have just saved a couple card slots and given us Tendrils of Corruption? Tendrils is a swamp heavy spell that costs 4 CMC, kills a 4 toughness creature and gains 4 life when cast with 4 swamps turn 4.
This is a big swing and a miss from Wizards IMO. Cool flavor for sure, but bad execution. That said, the Newt will still see some amount of standard play since it can kill 2 toughness creatures that it has blocked.
Yeah, I know the odds. The math isn't hard.
Do you know what ratio of people at the GP that already have their playsets of Goyf? No. Neither do I. But I can guess that a fair amount do. I know that of my group that is going, more than half of the guys already have at least 1 playset of everything they would possibly need for modern.
And if you actually read my post, you would have noticed that I said that I expect a drop as high as 5%. Do you really believe that the cards won't even drop that much?
Lets keep the estimation at just under 6000, since the post stated over 6000 is the limit. I'll use 5900. That would mean that they have at least 35400 packs for just the main event. Add in the other MM events:
2304 Sealed side
576 Draft side
446 Modern Mini Masters
That ends up at an awesome 38726 packs of Modern Masters, or 1614 boxes. Add in the boxes and packs for prizes and Day 2 Main Event Draft, and you're looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 40000 packs of cards.
I'd say that's a significantly better number than most people were assuming from the beginning. I think there will be a LOT more product out there after Vegas than people think. Prices WILL fall more than they have already. I even expect Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant to drop a little more in price, perhaps as much as 5%.