Neither. Battalion cares about how many attackers you declare, which in your example is 2. Tajic never attacks, he just enters tapped and attacking. Battalion won't trigger. Sad but true.
I regularly win through Domri Ults :/ I guess I'm just not phased by Xenagod like you guys are. I just know they always have another haste creature and play with it in mind. I guess Xenagod is like a small castable Domri ult and that might catch people off guard, but I've gotten pretty good at micromanaging my fogs. I'm just not seeing the same threat you guys are I guess.
Mana Confluence is life payment and would not be doubled by Dictate of the Twin Gods, City of Brass would though. I still don't recommend it due to the whole life loss in a control deck seeming worse.
We have fogs though. How does Xenagos attack us from an angle we aren't already defending? I decided to forego Detention Sphere and the new Banishing Light due to its nonbo with Planar Cleansing. It's this same nonbo that makes me love it when they hit a Jace with it.
-On the topic of Keranos he is always doing something. Thassa is never drawing a card and I think a glorified Think Tank isn't worth the slot. Into the Wilds seems bad too. Keraos probably isn't good enough, but he certainly offers more card advantage than either of those 2. In fact it might become part of the core of my black deck plan. Keranos, counterspells, and Bow/Elixir. They have this bad tendency it let themselves get extremely low vs us and Keranos is an indestructible foil to that.
-Riot Control is a matter of not wanting to have too many 3 drop fogs, because you only start getting ahead when you can Fog+another spell in the same turn. It's not an iron-clad rule though, because I'm always thinking how helpful the life-gain and Stormbreath/Fanatic/Burn Spell countering is.
-Merciless can't get everything though. Planar Cleansing stops the Underworld Connections, the planeswalker, the creatures, and anything else I'm missing, all at the cost of being blanked by Boros Charm, and Gods. You only care about some gods anyways. Keranos, Purphoros, Mogis, and Phenax off the top of my head. I've found that making the opponent pick up all his threats and engines has just been better than Exiling some of them.
-The thing with Dissolve is that they can counter it back. If you aren't quite at the point where you can ignore a Sphinx's Revelation, a Stormbreath Dragon, or something else, Counteflux makes sure it won't resolve. The stretch for red is not very far if you focus your mana base, and it does have quite a few rewards. If there were a counterspell immune to discard I would play that first, but if we're gonna play a counterspell in our 5-color deck why not play the most un-answerable one?
I have been following this deck since BotG came out, and have been steadily modifying it as I could. As of now this is my list. A few points that I'll cover since my list differs some from those of the general consensus on here:
-I play some singleton gates, and yes it does make me weak to Ashiok and Nightveil Specter. The bright side is that with the advent of Dictate of Kruphix causing your UB opponent to just draw all his cards is a true possibility. Not a good answer but it's what I've got. Generally if you even suspect your opponent is on the exile plan you use Maze's End to find the singleton gates and hope you get through unscathed, but having a bit more legitimate plan B helps.
-Conversely, the ability to play a land untapped as necessary really, really helps against a lot of the field. Some turns we can afford to be a turn behind, and some turns you really need to get Verdict mana now, and thanks to Shocks you can.
-Jace over Kiora. Kiora draws 1 card and might ramp you. Jace looks 3 cards deep and has a good chance to draw you 2 cards unless you really need the 1. Kiora starts at 2, Jace starts at 4. Jace can survive against 2 creatures, whereas Kiora really just can't. I've just been much more impressed by Jace than Kiora and this comes from experience with both.
-4x Counterflux in the main is an odd choice, but it really does come in handy to be able to just say no to some cards. Gray Merchant (though good luck with all the hand control floating in black), and Sylvan Primordial being the 2 that are the most counter me or be set behind. Stormbreath Dragon and Gods also tend to meet their end at the hands of this counterspell. It is the end all be all for saying "NO" and I've slowly moved from 2 copies in the board to 4 copies in the main.
-In this standard most decks are winning through combat. 14 Fogs may seem like a lot, and sometimes it feels like it too, but once you drop all these random card draw spells and go all in on Dictate you really want to be drawing one ever other card or so. Which leads to my next point...
-Dictate of Kruphix is the real deal. It helps mitigate the effects of black's hand control, control's Revelation's and Jace's, GR's Domris and Coursers, and all the other little card advantage engines rolling around. Drawing two cards to your opponent's 1 is great, drawing 3 to your opponent's 2 less so, and the effect of their engines just diminishes over time.
-Planar Cleansing is an odd choice I'll admit, but it's become a bit of a posterboy for me. It just wipes out your opponent's devotion no questions asked. Boros Charm destroys you, but, hopefully, you learn to see those coming. It's also a nonbo with Dictate now that that's in the list, but generally if you resolve a Cleansing after a few turns under Dictate(s), you have a pretty sculpted hand. Cyclonic Rift has been staring at me wondering why I don't use him instead and I have tried it a few times. It just doesn't suit me I guess, everytime I had it I wished it were a Cleansing.
-Keranos is just a 5th Dictate/Alt Wincon/cool card. He's in testing right now.
-The sideboard is based on answering the cards we can't answer in the main and shoring up the really super fast aggro deck matchups. Negates and Swan Song Help with Control in general and problem cards such as Rakdos's Return and Ashiok specifically. Anger and the last Verdict piss on the aggro decks cheerios when Planar Cleansing is too slow. Cyclonic Rift is a random catch-all, Revoke and Deicide help against Pithing Needle and Gods when Planar Cleansing falls short.
Notice that Krenko mentions an Azorius Hussar, a good sign that the guilds are still in full swing though I am aware that it is still inconclusive evidence.
It's multiplicative. You would double the 1 damage to 2 then double again to 4 then double again to 8 and finally for the last Gisela to 16. The inverse is true in that 16 points or less (due to the rounding up clause) is reduced to 1 point of damage to you.
This a mill deck I have yet to see in the Standard Deck Creation forums and it comes from hours of trying to make Skaab Ruinator work. The basic idea is to cast a turn 3 Ruinator or to set up for it at a later date. The major problem I was seeing with Skaab Ruinator in my Smallpox Decks was that he would run out of fuel eventually, and any control deck worth their salt had the ability to reach eventually. And at that point I've just milled myself for them.
Then I saw Misthollow Griffin, it was the kind of inevitabilty I needed. It was the endless corpses my Skaab tended to need but could not find. But then we reached the logical problem of what to do with them if they ended up in my hand. And I thought, how bad could it be if I just cast them, and it turned out that although undesirable it was what my deck was going to do anyways, I mean how else do you remove them from exile. That and they flew so they did end up making decent attackers and blockers, but again subpar for what most people would use.
The next issue was how else I could abuse these griffins, I mean they just durdle there in my graveyard if i can't exile them, and waiting on a Ruinator to do it could prove disastrous, so I added Moorland Haunt, and things started to look up. Now I would mill my creatures and I would always hove a use for them. They wouldn't just sit there waiting to get exiled, I was actively using my graveyard as it filled, which weakened the impact of graveyard hate considerably.
But then I had to ask myself, "How much value is a Spirit token with no boosts whatsoever?" and it was depressingly low. When I had 2/3 tokens I wanted my opponent to be in a tight situation, but he could sit there and Huntmaster his way out or whatever he pleased. The point is that until you've made enough spirits that a board wipe hurts severely 1/1 spirits just don't get there. At least not unless you give them +2/+0. Rally the Peasants has proven to do great things for me by increasing my clock many turns and coming out of nowhere to cause wins I shouldn't have gotten.
So to touch on the cards I didn't speak about above. The 8 skaabs all have the honor of being creatures that mill me. That means that they give me stuff when they enter the battlefield, the mill, and when they die, their corpse, very useful. Silverblade Paladin's main use is to make my Ruinator hit like a semi-truck. It also makes Griffins intimidating and works well with Restoration Angel, who does a good job of untapping tapped attackers, blinking a mill-skaab to will me more, and being very tricksy. The beauty of the above 2 is that they are creatures so I can mill at will with minimal bad effects.
You have Dream Twist, which gives me something to do turn 1 and is also quite cheap, and Feeling of Dread, which can get me out of sticky situations/help me win. The mana base is pretty good.
The sideboard is creatures and spells with flashback so that milling them doesn't hurt me considerably, although I am starting to look at Ratchet Bomb as a token sweeper due to the lack of a good flashback one. Revoke Existance is likewise an effect I can't get with flashback. Jace just seems good against control as usual and thats the end of the story.
I have yet to test vs Delver but that looks to be a trainwreck. Are there cards I'm overlooking for the matchup or is it just a deck that eats a deck like mine for breakfast?
But he put the doesn't untap ability with the Level-Up ability which always carries over (otherwise Levers wouldn't really work), So he needs to either make a level 0 or make it not do anything til level 1.
If you were to animate an equipment (say with Karn, Silver Golem) you could maybe even would want to put a +1/+1 counter on the animated artifact. However +1/+1 counters only modify the permanent they are on, and not any permanents the permanent is attached to.
@ Jubokko/jadencamelot: So get some Slagstorm/Whipflare maindeck. Also has your experience with Blasphemous Act is that it's never cheap enough to run over Slagstorm/Whipflare?
The first thing you'll notice is a lack of non-red spells, this was to make the Shrines really good. Basically you cast a bunch of red filtering and burning spells, and stumble onto a win. The deck uses the "engines" (not sure if I'm using the term right so bear with me).
First and foremost is Burning Vengeance obviously. As you filter your spells with Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings you burn their pants off. Oh and your actual burn gets even "burn-ier."
Next you have Shrine of Burning Rage. Play it turn 2 for the usual oops I win sort of games, with the bonus of being sped up by my flurry of red filter spells on top of my already decent burn that flashes back and most of your cards are worth 2 counters halving an already efficient clock.
Finally you have the card I'm most excited about: Chandra's Phoenix. She is a joy to discard to your filter spells, comes back as you burn them. It's like Squee, Goblin Nabob and Vengevine wrapped up together, the perfect card for the deck. The best part is that killing them with it is still a viable plan, I mean the phoenix never stops coming back between 8 flashback burn spells and Incinerate.
The first thing you must notice is that you are resilient to counterspells, because most of your spells have flashback. This is good because you are not a control deck and you can't afford to sit there waiting to kill them slowly. Your goal is to land in order of importance a Burning Vengeance, Shrine of Burning Rage, or a Chandra's Phoenix. Basically you should only end the turn with mana untapped if you have plans for your opponents turn, because you are a BURN deck not a CONTROL deck, and waiting around can cause you to lose.
Some other explanations:
Snapcaster is in such small number because he only cheapens Flashback/flashes back Incinerate/flashes back a sideboard spell, which is not worth 4 slots in this deck.
Incinerate is just something I wanted to toss in because 3 is a solid number for 2 mana, as strange as that may seem, and the deck felt like it needed a good 2-drop burn spell and this is what we had.
The sideboard is a random pile, some Titans against guys who side out removal, some planeswalkers cause I like them (yeah that ain't gonna last), random board wipes/tempo spells. Standard fare really.
Yes 25 lands, its a good number when you have 4 Faithless Looting so that you never get manascrewed ever. I mean ever. EVER.
So yeah any other questions just ask I would love to make this deck even better without weakening the 3 engines.
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-Riot Control is a matter of not wanting to have too many 3 drop fogs, because you only start getting ahead when you can Fog+another spell in the same turn. It's not an iron-clad rule though, because I'm always thinking how helpful the life-gain and Stormbreath/Fanatic/Burn Spell countering is.
-Merciless can't get everything though. Planar Cleansing stops the Underworld Connections, the planeswalker, the creatures, and anything else I'm missing, all at the cost of being blanked by Boros Charm, and Gods. You only care about some gods anyways. Keranos, Purphoros, Mogis, and Phenax off the top of my head. I've found that making the opponent pick up all his threats and engines has just been better than Exiling some of them.
-The thing with Dissolve is that they can counter it back. If you aren't quite at the point where you can ignore a Sphinx's Revelation, a Stormbreath Dragon, or something else, Counteflux makes sure it won't resolve. The stretch for red is not very far if you focus your mana base, and it does have quite a few rewards. If there were a counterspell immune to discard I would play that first, but if we're gonna play a counterspell in our 5-color deck why not play the most un-answerable one?
-I play some singleton gates, and yes it does make me weak to Ashiok and Nightveil Specter. The bright side is that with the advent of Dictate of Kruphix causing your UB opponent to just draw all his cards is a true possibility. Not a good answer but it's what I've got. Generally if you even suspect your opponent is on the exile plan you use Maze's End to find the singleton gates and hope you get through unscathed, but having a bit more legitimate plan B helps.
-Conversely, the ability to play a land untapped as necessary really, really helps against a lot of the field. Some turns we can afford to be a turn behind, and some turns you really need to get Verdict mana now, and thanks to Shocks you can.
-Jace over Kiora. Kiora draws 1 card and might ramp you. Jace looks 3 cards deep and has a good chance to draw you 2 cards unless you really need the 1. Kiora starts at 2, Jace starts at 4. Jace can survive against 2 creatures, whereas Kiora really just can't. I've just been much more impressed by Jace than Kiora and this comes from experience with both.
-4x Counterflux in the main is an odd choice, but it really does come in handy to be able to just say no to some cards. Gray Merchant (though good luck with all the hand control floating in black), and Sylvan Primordial being the 2 that are the most counter me or be set behind. Stormbreath Dragon and Gods also tend to meet their end at the hands of this counterspell. It is the end all be all for saying "NO" and I've slowly moved from 2 copies in the board to 4 copies in the main.
-In this standard most decks are winning through combat. 14 Fogs may seem like a lot, and sometimes it feels like it too, but once you drop all these random card draw spells and go all in on Dictate you really want to be drawing one ever other card or so. Which leads to my next point...
-Dictate of Kruphix is the real deal. It helps mitigate the effects of black's hand control, control's Revelation's and Jace's, GR's Domris and Coursers, and all the other little card advantage engines rolling around. Drawing two cards to your opponent's 1 is great, drawing 3 to your opponent's 2 less so, and the effect of their engines just diminishes over time.
-Planar Cleansing is an odd choice I'll admit, but it's become a bit of a posterboy for me. It just wipes out your opponent's devotion no questions asked. Boros Charm destroys you, but, hopefully, you learn to see those coming. It's also a nonbo with Dictate now that that's in the list, but generally if you resolve a Cleansing after a few turns under Dictate(s), you have a pretty sculpted hand. Cyclonic Rift has been staring at me wondering why I don't use him instead and I have tried it a few times. It just doesn't suit me I guess, everytime I had it I wished it were a Cleansing.
-Keranos is just a 5th Dictate/Alt Wincon/cool card. He's in testing right now.
-The sideboard is based on answering the cards we can't answer in the main and shoring up the really super fast aggro deck matchups. Negates and Swan Song Help with Control in general and problem cards such as Rakdos's Return and Ashiok specifically. Anger and the last Verdict piss on the aggro decks cheerios when Planar Cleansing is too slow. Cyclonic Rift is a random catch-all, Revoke and Deicide help against Pithing Needle and Gods when Planar Cleansing falls short.
1 Rakdos Guildgate
1 Golgari Guildgate
3 Azorius Guildgate
1 Selesnya Guildgate
1 Simic Guildgate
4 Temple Garden
2 Izzet Guildgate
1 Orzhov Guildgate
4 Maze's End
2 Gruul Guildgate
1 Dimir Guildgate
2 Boros Guildgate
1 Hallowed Fountain
3 Steam Vents
3 Supreme Verdict
3 Jace, Architect of Thought
4 Dictate of Kruphix
1 Keranos, God of Storms
4 Fog
3 Riot Control
4 Druid's Deliverance
3 Defend the Hearth
1 Elixir of Immortality
4 Counterflux
4 Negate
2 Cyclonic Rift
1 Supreme Verdict
2 Revoke Existence
3 Anger of the Gods
1 Bow of Nylea
1 Deicide
1 Swan Song
I think I'm making real progress, but I want to hear your guys' opinions, so tell me what you think.
Then I saw Misthollow Griffin, it was the kind of inevitabilty I needed. It was the endless corpses my Skaab tended to need but could not find. But then we reached the logical problem of what to do with them if they ended up in my hand. And I thought, how bad could it be if I just cast them, and it turned out that although undesirable it was what my deck was going to do anyways, I mean how else do you remove them from exile. That and they flew so they did end up making decent attackers and blockers, but again subpar for what most people would use.
The next issue was how else I could abuse these griffins, I mean they just durdle there in my graveyard if i can't exile them, and waiting on a Ruinator to do it could prove disastrous, so I added Moorland Haunt, and things started to look up. Now I would mill my creatures and I would always hove a use for them. They wouldn't just sit there waiting to get exiled, I was actively using my graveyard as it filled, which weakened the impact of graveyard hate considerably.
But then I had to ask myself, "How much value is a Spirit token with no boosts whatsoever?" and it was depressingly low. When I had 2/3 tokens I wanted my opponent to be in a tight situation, but he could sit there and Huntmaster his way out or whatever he pleased. The point is that until you've made enough spirits that a board wipe hurts severely 1/1 spirits just don't get there. At least not unless you give them +2/+0. Rally the Peasants has proven to do great things for me by increasing my clock many turns and coming out of nowhere to cause wins I shouldn't have gotten.
So from there we came up with this list:
4 Misthollow Griffin
4 Skaab Ruinator
4 Armored Skaab
4 Restoration Angel
4 Silverblade Paladin
3 Phyrexian Metamorph
4 Screeching Skaab
Other Spells: 9
4 Dream Twist
2 Feeling of Dread
3 Rally the Peasants
5 Plains
7 Island
3 Sulfur Falls
1 Mountain
1 Evolving Wilds
3 Moorland Haunt
4 Glacial Fortress
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
3 Purify the Grave
2 Burning Oil
1 Jace, Memory Adept
4 Revoke Existence
4 *Some token Board wipe*
So to touch on the cards I didn't speak about above. The 8 skaabs all have the honor of being creatures that mill me. That means that they give me stuff when they enter the battlefield, the mill, and when they die, their corpse, very useful. Silverblade Paladin's main use is to make my Ruinator hit like a semi-truck. It also makes Griffins intimidating and works well with Restoration Angel, who does a good job of untapping tapped attackers, blinking a mill-skaab to will me more, and being very tricksy. The beauty of the above 2 is that they are creatures so I can mill at will with minimal bad effects.
You have Dream Twist, which gives me something to do turn 1 and is also quite cheap, and Feeling of Dread, which can get me out of sticky situations/help me win. The mana base is pretty good.
The sideboard is creatures and spells with flashback so that milling them doesn't hurt me considerably, although I am starting to look at Ratchet Bomb as a token sweeper due to the lack of a good flashback one. Revoke Existance is likewise an effect I can't get with flashback. Jace just seems good against control as usual and thats the end of the story.
I have yet to test vs Delver but that looks to be a trainwreck. Are there cards I'm overlooking for the matchup or is it just a deck that eats a deck like mine for breakfast?
Well either way comments are welcome.
4 Chandra's Phoenix
2 Snapcaster Mage
Other Spells: 29
4 Desperate Ravings
1 Ancient Grudge
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
4 Burning Vengeance
4 Devil's Play
4 Geistflame
4 Faithless Looting
4 Incinerate
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Evolving Wilds
1 Island
13 Mountain
1 Forest
2 Rootbound Crag
3 Ancient Grudge
1 Blasphemous Act
3 Slagstorm
3 Arc Trail
2 Inferno Titan
3 Chandra, the Firebrand
The first thing you'll notice is a lack of non-red spells, this was to make the Shrines really good. Basically you cast a bunch of red filtering and burning spells, and stumble onto a win. The deck uses the "engines" (not sure if I'm using the term right so bear with me).
First and foremost is Burning Vengeance obviously. As you filter your spells with Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings you burn their pants off. Oh and your actual burn gets even "burn-ier."
Next you have Shrine of Burning Rage. Play it turn 2 for the usual oops I win sort of games, with the bonus of being sped up by my flurry of red filter spells on top of my already decent burn that flashes back and most of your cards are worth 2 counters halving an already efficient clock.
Finally you have the card I'm most excited about: Chandra's Phoenix. She is a joy to discard to your filter spells, comes back as you burn them. It's like Squee, Goblin Nabob and Vengevine wrapped up together, the perfect card for the deck. The best part is that killing them with it is still a viable plan, I mean the phoenix never stops coming back between 8 flashback burn spells and Incinerate.
The first thing you must notice is that you are resilient to counterspells, because most of your spells have flashback. This is good because you are not a control deck and you can't afford to sit there waiting to kill them slowly. Your goal is to land in order of importance a Burning Vengeance, Shrine of Burning Rage, or a Chandra's Phoenix. Basically you should only end the turn with mana untapped if you have plans for your opponents turn, because you are a BURN deck not a CONTROL deck, and waiting around can cause you to lose.
Some other explanations:
Snapcaster is in such small number because he only cheapens Flashback/flashes back Incinerate/flashes back a sideboard spell, which is not worth 4 slots in this deck.
Incinerate is just something I wanted to toss in because 3 is a solid number for 2 mana, as strange as that may seem, and the deck felt like it needed a good 2-drop burn spell and this is what we had.
The sideboard is a random pile, some Titans against guys who side out removal, some planeswalkers cause I like them (yeah that ain't gonna last), random board wipes/tempo spells. Standard fare really.
Yes 25 lands, its a good number when you have 4 Faithless Looting so that you never get manascrewed ever. I mean ever. EVER.
So yeah any other questions just ask I would love to make this deck even better without weakening the 3 engines.