I've been unable to test much, but after a bit of discussion and a single FNM, the format seems a bit fast for what I was doing.
This is the new build, not sure how it'll play though, but I thought an update would be great, so here it goes.
This is more a burn deck now than it was before, it definitely needs tuning since it needed a drastic change.
In my limited testing it worked great against some decks, but if I never drew Key to the City I would do nothing for most of the game.
The trouble is having creatures to use the Key's unblockable ability, which makes me wonder if R/W or R/B/W would be better for the manlands alone to utilize the unblockable part of Key.
Certainly this deck needs more playing, but it definitely packs a wallop with the core cards.
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The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
Before I begin, this is not exactly a traditional control deck, there is a lot of combat in this deck. The creatures often come at instant speed and/or with enter the battlefield effects. The deck doesn't run any planeswalkers (at the moment) but there is room for them, the engine is the key, the Key to the City. In order to fully utilize the key, the early game involves the use of madness to keep the decks value and find your other cards. It's actually a decent play to have only two lands, key, and then discard a card to draw two the next turn and find that missing land that you needed. They key is a real engine, and it just gets better as the game goes on, enabling you to attack unblocked as well as turn unused two mana into an extra card per turn, and finally it always enables instant speed madness creatures to block as a good defensive tool. The key ties the deck together, its name is really fitting actually.
So as a control build, the deck can run quite a bit of cheap removal so long as you have a card to discard for the key, and the mana to tap to draw the extra card a turn. The question, is how do you support this build more. I've tried Chandra, Kalitas, Distended Mindbender in particular was very good for hand disruption alongside Harsh Scrutiny. Probably the hardest matchups I've had are versus planeswalkers, Nahiri's Wrath should completely resolve that matchup as they often come in multiples. The card advantage is only limited to being able to hold a card to discard by the end of your opponents turn.
How to support his core, well, I've considered a lot of cards, I've tried a lot of cards...
Probably my strongest four drop has been Distended Mindbender, being able to EOT turn 3 a guy into play, key to make him attack unblocked to kill a gideon planeswalker, and then emerge into play Mindbender to take my opponents hand apart has been incredibly overbearing to opponents on the other side of the table. Some of my considered cards have been based around that turn three madness play to make just that more consistent. Having an instant 4 power blocker that early, as well as a cheaper unblockable guy who deals real damage unblocked every turn is also what I've been doing with this list. For awhile I desperately tried to jam Chandra, but I didn't find her useful when I wanted to sometimes empty my hand and mana into the key. Brutality and Scrutiny played well with the hand disruption in the early game but overall didn't make nearly as much of a difference as mindbender due to their limitations and the variations of matchups that mindbender could influence. Noxious Gearhulk seemed at best a sideboard card against midrange, Lightning Axe was mainboard but got sided out versus the large amount of control decks, Essence Extraction is currently in my sideboard for aggro, but quickly loses value in the face of Gideon Emblems and Always watching. Incendiary Flow is too slow and doesn't catch enough recursive creatures. From Under the Floorboards has not been tried out yet, but I am wondering about its ability to finish a game as a 1 of with the madness cost. Gissa's Bidding sounds like it could be decent but not support the Mindbender Plan, and Twins of Maurer Estate look like good blockers with enough CMC to make emerge costs easy. Kozilek's Return seemed okay but didn't really get fired often enough.
I'm not really sure what I want in this deck currently, the core by itself works VERY well, which means a lot more power rather than synergy can be jammed into this list providing those cards are doing something just as good or better than what I am currently doing.
I was considering gearing it more towards a triage midrange deck with Abundant Maw, Alms of the Vein, and Incendiary Flow, allowing the deck to drain life and go for the throat with unblockably enabled creatures with Key and Skysovereign.
These are my thoughts, this is my deck, the lands and sideboard are untuned and I work like 60 hours a week so I can't really play it, but I really believe in it.
Try it.
Tell me what you think.
Hating specific cards is going to impact people like yourself regardless of the amount of time they're in the cardpool.
Suggesting that people are going to be more willing to play the game if those cards remain in the game for less time is sort of the opposite of what the game is supposed to do, draw you in.
If a game exists for you to wish that parts of it were not in there, that should lead you and others to play other games right? Or design a better game by your standards.
We all have access to the same card pools when it comes to game balance, and if winning is the only way to have fun, then by that logic, the best chance to have fun is to play the cards we hate and yet some how think are the best (which is a depressing mindset to have I think.)
Sometimes you just have to enjoy being the underdog, or enjoy taking apart the meta with strategy.
I personally enjoy playing against the meta on a level where I make the best cards bad and bad cards good, its what keeps me in this game.
I think when I just tried to jam only what I wanted to play, I hated cards. I hated Thragtusk in its day, because I loved to play mono red at the time.
Fairness is not fun, what is fun in game design is the unknown strength of different strategies.
Being able to explore a game, study it, understand it, and compete with others doing that is what makes a game legendary.
This is why games like street fighter 3, chess, starcraft, and modern format exist, because they're an endless puzzle with the hardest opponents all trying to master the same game.
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The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
If I had to be really mathematical about it, I would identify the most effective decks that were recently played in the top 32 of the biggest tournament of the year (the Pro Tour.)
Then I would identify which cards in those decks are valuable, and see which ones will last the longest in the standard format.
Finally, I would determine which proven effective cards would be worth purchasing for my first magic deck to play over a longer period of time, therefore giving me the maximum amount of time to learn without spending more money, and therefore maximizing my likelyhood of learning the game on a competitive level and finally therefore enjoying the game for what it is, a competitive mind game.
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The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
I see it from both angles, on the faster rotation, people would get bored of the card pool on the tournament level and feel like it would take forever to get to the next standard format.
However, with faster rotations people also spent more money on cards, in addition, and this is the most important point I think, players wouldn't have enough time to truly figure out the standard format and have really meaningful games over a longer period of time.
Certainly in the past we've had dominating cards, but WOTC usually takes care to create cards and synergies that can play against them.
I think the enjoyment of the game requires time to develop a finely tuned meta, and I think that goes for all competitive games in general.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
Basically, if you have these three on the field, you can essentially play a creature, and then pay X to get X 2/2's.
If you have any multiples, you can get up to 5/5s, you can generate a ton of energy, the most limiting thing is making the army due to the mana constraints, but its quite an interesting/fun design that pairs well with some of the affinity cards like Metalwork Colossus and Aethersquall Ancient.
Added all of the neat colorless lands, the artifact support creatures, added a 1 drop artifact creature for defense due to the speed of the format as the deck likely can't survive it as it is.
Added Dynavolt Tower for a non-engine type of energy consumption artifact even though its basically no good without the engine overproducing creatures....
Stoneforge Masterwork is simply in there because the deck aims to make a servo army.
This would probably be better as a blue variation of the deck, I feel like these three main cards would be best with a lot of mana really, so I wonder if Ghirapur Orrery might be warranted due to the mana constraints, Panharmonicon doesn't work quite as well as it depends on Decoction Module. Maybe the army generation effect is good enough defense to allow for Westvale Abbey to be a good win con as well, we'll see.
Thoughts?
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The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
The thing about this deck archetype that doesn't seem to fit for me is that there isn't anything particularly powerful about the energy cards, they all are self supportive, and you can certainly funnel them into something other than themselves, but perhaps the most powerful energy card is Aetherworks Marvel, the aggro cards at best keep getting bigger, but even then, most of them require a difficult task to generate passive energy.
I think in the aggro theme, the above poster is correct to use the Electrostatic Pummeler, as it is one of the three most powerful effects in R/G energy, the others being the Bristleback Hydra and the Voltaic Brawler.
If I had to throw in something constructive on this, I'd say, jam Electrostatic Pumeler, maybe 12 pump spells and Bedlam Reveler so you don't run out of gas going for the throat of your opponent.
I prefer more low cmc haste creatures paired with pump spells, but again, energy cards right? At least these pumps protect/trample so you're going to get through easy.
Occasionally pummeler will make the team go IN
Occasionally you'll have them close, draw a 2 mana 3/4, cast, and draw what you need, maybe?
Depends on the deck, what would be used at that CMC, is the deck aggro, is it midrange, how does she fit.
I think Chandra may be more narrow than people realize, if she is meant to + on the turn she can enter, than you need things that cost 1R or RR
if not, then to best optimize her without using tempo for that + (being completely dynamically used) you'd need something that cost 7 and to be good in a goldfish situation, otherwise she's just removal and card advantage, which is great by the way, but for full effectiveness she needs to also have full usability.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
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This is the new build, not sure how it'll play though, but I thought an update would be great, so here it goes.
4 Bloodhall Priest
4 Bedlam Reveler
Spells (24)
4 Cathartic Reunion
4 Fiery Temper
4 Alms of the Vein
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Incendiary Flow
4 Avacyn's Judgment
4 Key to the City
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Lands
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
4 Smoldering Marsh
1 Cinder Barrens
12 Mountain
This is more a burn deck now than it was before, it definitely needs tuning since it needed a drastic change.
In my limited testing it worked great against some decks, but if I never drew Key to the City I would do nothing for most of the game.
The trouble is having creatures to use the Key's unblockable ability, which makes me wonder if R/W or R/B/W would be better for the manlands alone to utilize the unblockable part of Key.
Certainly this deck needs more playing, but it definitely packs a wallop with the core cards.
This is the core of the design
4 Bloodmad Vampire
4 Bloodhall Priest
4 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4 Key to the City
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Fiery Temper
3 Nahiri's Wrath
4 Transgress the Mind
4 Lost Legacy
So as a control build, the deck can run quite a bit of cheap removal so long as you have a card to discard for the key, and the mana to tap to draw the extra card a turn. The question, is how do you support this build more. I've tried Chandra, Kalitas, Distended Mindbender in particular was very good for hand disruption alongside Harsh Scrutiny. Probably the hardest matchups I've had are versus planeswalkers, Nahiri's Wrath should completely resolve that matchup as they often come in multiples. The card advantage is only limited to being able to hold a card to discard by the end of your opponents turn.
How to support his core, well, I've considered a lot of cards, I've tried a lot of cards...
Probably my strongest four drop has been Distended Mindbender, being able to EOT turn 3 a guy into play, key to make him attack unblocked to kill a gideon planeswalker, and then emerge into play Mindbender to take my opponents hand apart has been incredibly overbearing to opponents on the other side of the table. Some of my considered cards have been based around that turn three madness play to make just that more consistent. Having an instant 4 power blocker that early, as well as a cheaper unblockable guy who deals real damage unblocked every turn is also what I've been doing with this list. For awhile I desperately tried to jam Chandra, but I didn't find her useful when I wanted to sometimes empty my hand and mana into the key. Brutality and Scrutiny played well with the hand disruption in the early game but overall didn't make nearly as much of a difference as mindbender due to their limitations and the variations of matchups that mindbender could influence. Noxious Gearhulk seemed at best a sideboard card against midrange, Lightning Axe was mainboard but got sided out versus the large amount of control decks, Essence Extraction is currently in my sideboard for aggro, but quickly loses value in the face of Gideon Emblems and Always watching. Incendiary Flow is too slow and doesn't catch enough recursive creatures. From Under the Floorboards has not been tried out yet, but I am wondering about its ability to finish a game as a 1 of with the madness cost. Gissa's Bidding sounds like it could be decent but not support the Mindbender Plan, and Twins of Maurer Estate look like good blockers with enough CMC to make emerge costs easy. Kozilek's Return seemed okay but didn't really get fired often enough.
I'm not really sure what I want in this deck currently, the core by itself works VERY well, which means a lot more power rather than synergy can be jammed into this list providing those cards are doing something just as good or better than what I am currently doing.
I was considering gearing it more towards a triage midrange deck with Abundant Maw, Alms of the Vein, and Incendiary Flow, allowing the deck to drain life and go for the throat with unblockably enabled creatures with Key and Skysovereign.
These are my thoughts, this is my deck, the lands and sideboard are untuned and I work like 60 hours a week so I can't really play it, but I really believe in it.
Try it.
Tell me what you think.
Suggesting that people are going to be more willing to play the game if those cards remain in the game for less time is sort of the opposite of what the game is supposed to do, draw you in.
If a game exists for you to wish that parts of it were not in there, that should lead you and others to play other games right? Or design a better game by your standards.
We all have access to the same card pools when it comes to game balance, and if winning is the only way to have fun, then by that logic, the best chance to have fun is to play the cards we hate and yet some how think are the best (which is a depressing mindset to have I think.)
Sometimes you just have to enjoy being the underdog, or enjoy taking apart the meta with strategy.
I personally enjoy playing against the meta on a level where I make the best cards bad and bad cards good, its what keeps me in this game.
I think when I just tried to jam only what I wanted to play, I hated cards. I hated Thragtusk in its day, because I loved to play mono red at the time.
Fairness is not fun, what is fun in game design is the unknown strength of different strategies.
Being able to explore a game, study it, understand it, and compete with others doing that is what makes a game legendary.
This is why games like street fighter 3, chess, starcraft, and modern format exist, because they're an endless puzzle with the hardest opponents all trying to master the same game.
Then I would identify which cards in those decks are valuable, and see which ones will last the longest in the standard format.
Finally, I would determine which proven effective cards would be worth purchasing for my first magic deck to play over a longer period of time, therefore giving me the maximum amount of time to learn without spending more money, and therefore maximizing my likelyhood of learning the game on a competitive level and finally therefore enjoying the game for what it is, a competitive mind game.
However, with faster rotations people also spent more money on cards, in addition, and this is the most important point I think, players wouldn't have enough time to truly figure out the standard format and have really meaningful games over a longer period of time.
Certainly in the past we've had dominating cards, but WOTC usually takes care to create cards and synergies that can play against them.
I think the enjoyment of the game requires time to develop a finely tuned meta, and I think that goes for all competitive games in general.
I'm wondering if Fumigate and Tidy Conclusion are really good choices as they can reset the game in a sense while leaving your engine on the board.
Here's the translated decklist
4 Thermo-Alchemist
4 Bedlam Reveler
Spells (28)
2 Lightning Axe
4 Fiery Temper
4 Alms of the Vein
4 Collective Brutality
3 Collective Defiance
4 Incendiary Flow
4 Tormenting Voice
3 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 Foreboding Ruins
4 Smoldering Marsh
4 Swamp
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
11 Mountain
2 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4 Goldnight Castigator
2 Weaver of Lightning
4 Galvanic Bombardment
1 Lightning Axe
1 Collective Defiance
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Burn, by Miyamoto Hiroya
I guess this makes the black inclusion obvious, I was already leaning towards Lightning Axe and Fiery Temper paired together for the copter.
The idea, green good stuff, landfall creatures and Splendid Reclamation!
4 Scythe Leopard
4 Jaddi Offshoot
4 Tireless Tracker
4 Undergrowth Champion
4 Guardian of the Great Conduit
3 Ulvenwald Hydra
4 Vessel of Nascency
4 Grapple with the Past
3 Splendid Reclamation
3 Nissa, Vital Force
23 Forest
This deck could have gone a few directions, here are some cards that were cut that could be included:
Basically, if you have these three on the field, you can essentially play a creature, and then pay X to get X 2/2's.
If you have any multiples, you can get up to 5/5s, you can generate a ton of energy, the most limiting thing is making the army due to the mana constraints, but its quite an interesting/fun design that pairs well with some of the affinity cards like Metalwork Colossus and Aethersquall Ancient.
4 Thraben Gargoyle
4 Foundry Inspector
4 Chief of the Foundry
4 Metalwork Colossus
Artifacts (20)
4 Animation Module
4 Decoction Module
4 Fabrication Module
4 Dynavolt Tower
4 Stoneforge Masterwork
4 Sequestered Stash
4 Sea Gate Wreckage
4 Westvale Abbey
4 Inventors' Fair
4 Ruins of Oran-Rief
4 Sanctum of Ugin
Added all of the neat colorless lands, the artifact support creatures, added a 1 drop artifact creature for defense due to the speed of the format as the deck likely can't survive it as it is.
Added Dynavolt Tower for a non-engine type of energy consumption artifact even though its basically no good without the engine overproducing creatures....
Stoneforge Masterwork is simply in there because the deck aims to make a servo army.
This would probably be better as a blue variation of the deck, I feel like these three main cards would be best with a lot of mana really, so I wonder if Ghirapur Orrery might be warranted due to the mana constraints, Panharmonicon doesn't work quite as well as it depends on Decoction Module. Maybe the army generation effect is good enough defense to allow for Westvale Abbey to be a good win con as well, we'll see.
Thoughts?
If you need answers to Smuggler's Copter, that's a good one.
I think in the aggro theme, the above poster is correct to use the Electrostatic Pummeler, as it is one of the three most powerful effects in R/G energy, the others being the Bristleback Hydra and the Voltaic Brawler.
If I had to throw in something constructive on this, I'd say, jam Electrostatic Pumeler, maybe 12 pump spells and Bedlam Reveler so you don't run out of gas going for the throat of your opponent.
Something like
4 Longtusk Cub
4 Voltaic Brawler
4 Electrostatic Pummeler
3 Bedlam Reveler
3 Bristling Hydra
3 Lathnu Hellion
4 Blossoming Defense
4 Larger Than Life
4 Built to Smash
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Aether Hub
8 Forest
4 Game Trail
4 Mountain
I prefer more low cmc haste creatures paired with pump spells, but again, energy cards right? At least these pumps protect/trample so you're going to get through easy.
Occasionally pummeler will make the team go IN
Occasionally you'll have them close, draw a 2 mana 3/4, cast, and draw what you need, maybe?
Neat pairing with Crumble to Dust, and he has a big butt.
I think Chandra may be more narrow than people realize, if she is meant to + on the turn she can enter, than you need things that cost 1R or RR
if not, then to best optimize her without using tempo for that + (being completely dynamically used) you'd need something that cost 7 and to be good in a goldfish situation, otherwise she's just removal and card advantage, which is great by the way, but for full effectiveness she needs to also have full usability.