I have one to add: Know your combat tricks and direct damage cards. It's okay to trade a guy for Giant Growth sometimes, and sometimes you're gonna lose to a Lava Axe you haven't seen yet. But a big jump in skill level is being prepared for what your opponent might have.. this is similar to the poker tenet, "Play your opponent's hand, not your own."
For example, in M14, if your opponent passes the turn with WW up, suspect Celestial Flare. Sometimes the right move is to still play into it: good players bluff, and you won't want them to still have that when you drop your finisher.
Also, bluff yourself. Passing with Celestial flare mana up always gives you value. Just today someone let me eat one of their creatures to play around a celestial flare I did not have.
There are fewer bluffable cards in the format than usual, I feel, but flare is a big obvious one and if you can get some edge from bluffing seakite, NOBODY is attacking with a bear into four open mana from a blue player.
21 lands is a lot more forgiving than 20, and here the extra is a third Tar Pit so it doesn't feel too bad. (I cut a creature and run 16 of them, as my extra land is also a threat to replace it.) Having the option to crack a Scalding Tarn to fetch a basic Mountain is something I've liked, even thought it increases the "bad with Cryptic Command" count to three. 4 Darkslick Shores may be too many, as I know I'm only on 7 fetches in a Deathrite Shaman deck, but you do your most important work in the early game and playing an untapped Darkslick Shores feels really good- it makes each of your main colors and with no drawback. Having the full set of Shores helps you avoid taking too much damage against beatdown while still being able to play your spells.
I would not run Blackcleave Cliffs in a list close to the original, since land slots are really tight and lands that don't make U or interact with fetches don't really appeal to me. However, I would definitely consider them in Grixis variants running 0 or 1 Cryptic Commands, or with early drops like Grim Lavamancer or Goblin Guide, for the same reason that I like Darkslick Shores.
I do agree that darkslick is the MVP of the manabase and I think going to 21 lands is sadly a necessity. Even in the games where you "flood" you tend to use all of your mana every turn – deathrites and tar pits and flashing stuff back. It is necessary to cut a permanent as you have, because our delver % is already low. I wouldn’t go for the mountain but I understand the appeal. It’s only fetchable by Scalding tarn. As for the 7 fetches, how does deathrite perform with only 7? I find having him as a BoP for the first few turns is absolutely crucial.
I’m trying to figure out a way to either get Delver to flip more often, or cut it and add Goyfs. Scavenging Ooze would need a smoother manabase I think. Any ideas?
- I find this too, the deck is very competitive for mana. You will rarely not tap all your land every turn. I have found that eschewing spells for deathrite activations is often correct. I win more with the deck now that I try to adopt a burn philosophy in many situations and just try to count to 20 rather than advancing the board.
To follow this up the funny thing about the deck is that you often feel like you won _by accident_, like they have two 5/6 goyfs which you cryptic into double bolt into tar pit for the win. Or they drop karn and you somehow get exactsies with deathrite plus two bobs plus EOT snapcaster + bolt. I find that if I just try to WIN, somehow, I am more successful than if I try to dominate the game. Let them do what they want, and win anyway.
I had a game (albeit against a rogue deck) where I killed my opponent from 15 by going bolt, snapcaster bolt, chump with snapcaster to stay alive, untap, bolt bolt tar pit. That's the deck's style I think.
I just had a terrible night with the Zac Hill deck so I figured I would share some of its problems.
Game 1 vs U/W Tron I won 2-0. This variant does very well against these types of decks with everything he did being countered or discarded.
Game 2 vs B/W/R Burn 0-2. This was a rough matchup - because of the the amount of fetches and shocks we need to run the deck. I held bob in my hand game 1 at 6 life. Post SB I still didnt stand a chance.
Game 3 vs R/W/G Zoo aggro variant. very few of the cards we have in this variant kill their creatures outside of lightning bolt and their bloodrush guy is rough. I won one game because he drew 5 lands in a row but he still got me below 10 life. Loxodon Smiter can't be countered.
I dropped after Game 3
All in all this version has problems
-the mana base is too greedy: 20 lands is too few and the amount of life we pay for shocks and fetches makes us uber weak against any aggro/burn
-too much snapcaster without enough mana to take full advantage. Opposing deathrite shamans make this even worse.
-Deathrite shaman is okay (winning one game) but often he was a 1/2 mana dork - rarely had enough mana to ping and stay active against opposing threats.
- cryptic command is good, often had mana issues and couldn't play it when I needed it most.
Only drew bob twcei out of all the games. I am sure this was part of the failure...
Well to be fair you ran into the problem matchups in two of the three games. Looking at the top archetypes only burn and Gruul are serious issues, with the others being fair to positive matchups in my experience.
I've been testing this variant continually and I've made some changes to improve those matchups while maintaining our advantages: Stuff like a terminate maindeck to handle goyf, an extra spell snare sideboard for goyf and the 2cc burn spells, maelstrom pulse maindeck to kill whatever you want, and agony warp sideboard which is basically a lightning helix against aggro. Currently I'm trying 3x liliana in the main as an experiment because I love the card. She dominates games but I've yet to test her against aggro — seems reasonable. Burn cannot afford to let her live more than a turn since they need all their cards, and aggro can't let her edict twice so she's sort of a helix.
Obviously it would be hard to turn those matchups favorable but you win your fair share considering its the deck's absolute nightmare matchup.
To address the concerns you highlighted:
- Yes, the manabase is really greedy and it makes it hard in some games to come back because you're at 6 or something with a bob and can't afford to get more of your own lands! I don't usually have a problem with land amount or color, but you have to take a decent amount of damage to get there. As was just posted above an extra scars dual might help here. I have been experimenting with 2 tar pit since they're a roadblock in the early game and you usually only want one, replacing it with another fetchable red source. I might cut that for a blackcleave cliffs or maybe a sulfur falls. I might add a 21st land, perhaps a basic. What
- This is interesting, after playing the deck for a while I tend not to miss land drops too often. You really rip through the deck. I'm curious to hear if you continue to find this if you decide to play the deck more. One thing about snapcaster in this shell is that I believe he's intended to be a turn 2 play after holding up counter magic a fair amount of the time. I have had some success with this method, especially against tron where he'll get 4-6 damage in.
- I find this too, the deck is very competitive for mana. You will rarely not tap all your land every turn. I have found that eschewing spells for deathrite activations is often correct. I win more with the deck now that I try to adopt a burn philosophy in many situations and just try to count to 20 rather than advancing the board.
- Yes, it's tricky to make sure you can play cryptic t4 which is when it has max blowout potential. In the zac hill list there are only 2 lands which don't make blue, IIRC, so it's typically a matter of just getting to 4 land which I talked about a bit above.
Anyway the deck definitely has problems, it's not tier 1. I'm not sure what it would take to get there. But I do find it much more successful the more I play, and I'm still discovering its quirks as I go.
Any thoughts on Blood Scrivener in this deck? It would work well with a lot of cantrips - I understand our build would have to evolve quite a bit to incorporate this card but it could be like having 8 bobs in one deck. I see potential in this card.
In the Zac Hill variant you don't run out of cards that much. You sort of float at 3 or 4 even without a bob, since you're 2-for-1ing them all the time. I bet in the burn variant you run out of cards far more easily and can spend burn to get there if necessary.
I would try Magma Jet - if you don't use mana for countermagic then you can shoot something down or do 2 to the dome and possible set up your next 2 turns. Also great to use with Snapcaster early game. Vendilion clique works best at the end of opponent's draw step so not ideal at EOT after not using mana for countering stuff... I think Clique is necessary for this deck anyhow for beats and disruption.
Yep I think this sounds great. I do kind of want more 1cc instants because I find myself unable to use all my mana sometimes with all the 2cc spells in the deck. But magma jet is basically perfect esp. since I'm running delver.
Thanks for the advice! I have decided to go without the cryptic commands especially since I forgot that rise // fall counts as a Cmc of 4. I think I like spell snare in that spot for things like goyf, confidant, various spells in tron, and so much more. This also frees up 2 spots in the SB for 2 more magma jets I think.
Thoughts?
@ tfu. Please let us know how everything is working out as you get more into it. I have reported on some of my success with this play style in past posts. Unfortunately a lot of the more pricey cards are really important to the deck. Try it out on cockatrice
Oh, and in general the deck is really sweet. I have never played a deck of this complexity and interactivity. I am testing at a low win rate compared to my previous deck (RDW) but I'm positive it's down to pilot error (I've been losing the mirror for instance) and I believe the claim that the deck has an outstanding shell.
The one change I'm considering would be something else to do during their turn if I leave up counter mana and they just pass — considering thought scour and izzet charm but both are underwhelming. I'm trying 2x vendilion clique main, maybe that will be enough.
Thanks for the advice! I have decided to go without the cryptic commands especially since I forgot that rise // fall counts as a Cmc of 4. I think I like spell snare in that spot for things like goyf, confidant, various spells in tron, and so much more. This also frees up 2 spots in the SB for 2 more magma jets I think.
Thoughts?
@ tfu. Please let us know how everything is working out as you get more into it. I have reported on some of my success with this play style in past posts. Unfortunately a lot of the more pricey cards are really important to the deck. Try it out on cockatrice
I have been putting this all together on MODO since I wasn't aware of simple cockatrice options these days! How are you testing?
I haven't found 3x cryptic to be a big deal with the confidants. That particular interaction happens rarely enough and it's only 4. They are the card I am most happy to have in the deck, I wouldn't cut them. I find that that's when this variant "pulls away" — turn 4 or 5, you counter/draw, they have an empty board with maybe 1 threat left in hand while you have 4 cards of gas. They wonder how this happened
Then being able to snapcaster them late in the game is just unfair.
However in your burn-centric variant I think I might prefer to just never get to 6 lands and bringing back vexing devil is important.
I'm testing the Zac Hill list barring a few cards I haven't found a good price on yet. The cryptics are not too much of a problem for casting, you really rip through your deck. I do think I'd prefer a magma jet in the slot he has for pillar of flame — functionally similar but fixes our topdecks.
It's far too intricate a deck for me to pilot well at the moment, I have to get a bunch of games in to make any real decisions. I'm going to just try to stick it out with the decisions Hill made, which I assume to be well-considered, until I feel my playskill is sufficient to make calls about it.
The article does break down the deck into "core" and "non-core" components, and he explains what is truly indispensable, so I think there is a lot of license to tweak the deck for your meta and play style.
I can't make it to any Modern events for a while, and I've been more focused on my Legacy decks lately anyway, so I figured I may as well put up what I have for you guys to work with if you want.
Sulfur Elemental looks superior!
I have a few questions about your list.
1) How do you find having 3 colors of 1-drop (deathrite, delver, guide). How do you find guide in general in this shell
2) How is shadow of doubt performing? It seems like a reasonable 2-for-1 much of the time.
3) Your list seems pretty tuned to creature matchups, how are you faring vs. combo and control?
Spirit tokens definitely suck but they can be dealt with in a variety of ways g2. We have access to a variety of cards that do well here including cards like electrickery and surgical extraction. Also remand deals with the flashback quite nicely since the spell is countered and exiled and you draw a card... Luckily my meta has very few decks that run spirit token factories.
Have you tried Izzet Staticaster in that role? It seems like it would provide insane value vs a lot of decks — sort of like electrolyze but with more blowout potential.
I'm going to put together a list based on this thread and the Zach Hill deck from a few weeks ago and see how it does.
I love this concept. Compared to traditional jund we get counters, snapcaster, and a flying beater in exchange for a ground beater or two and maelstrom pulse. This seems like a strong trade.
I feel like sedraxis specter is tough to justify in a format of lingering souls and loxodon smiters.
The vexing devil + rise/fall plan is cute. This is a fancy burn deck that can deal 10+ in a turn pretty fast, so they kind of need to burn removal on him, and they'll need their removal for our beaters.
I'm wondering about the lack of Liliana in some of these lists — is this just so we can be faster and more tempo-based than resource-denial based?
Unlike the others here, MY opinion is that the Modern Burn should be played RB. It is way more consistant, not near as suicidal as the RBW one and enables you one of the best sideboard options besides Rakdos Charm: Blood Moon.
Because apparently you would like to play RW, I'll just comment a few of your card choices:
1. Spark Elemental: By having access to 3 colors, you shouldn't play this dude, even in mono-red burn it is a bad choice. You almost everytime have to get him out on your first turn, which should be reserved for Goblin Guide. Later on he just gets blocked and is a terrible, terrible topdeck. Please cut this.
2. Hellspark Elemental: As I mentioned above, the three-color version aims to be a bit more faster than the BR one, so try to stick to this. While Hellspark can be a mana sink and gets a little bit more value out of your card, it is way too slow for this kind of build.
3. Grim Lavamancer:Being the second best red creature ever printed, every red deck where this is legal should run at least 3 of it. It seems like contradictory to what I said about Hellspark Elemental but this is just at first glance. Lavaboy helps you clear out little mana dorks that must be killed without wasting your precious burn spells. The fetchlands you play also provide a great synergy with it. Please run 3 or 4.
4. Slagstorm and Volcanic Fallout: This is if everything sideboard material. Don't waste your slots on this one. Imagine playing against storm (is this still a thing) or second sunrise. It is sad enough that you have Searing Blaze (which is a MD must-be nevertheless), and then you got 2 other dead cards. Cut them.
5. Teetering Peaks : This is just the wrong deck to run those. While in creature heavy decks, they provide a little pepper, here it is mostly just a mountain that ETB tapped, which is always, always, ALWAYS a Bad thing. We want speed... pure speed and taplands are just like driving formula 1 with the handbreak on.
6.Bump in the Night : A wise saying about red decks goes something like this: This is the concept of burn. Now because we cant have to have this, we are looking for cards that are nearly as good as the Bolt. We got Lava Spike and Rift Bolt but we also got Bump in the Night which is essentially a Lava Spike just in Black. Therefore I highly recommend running B in this Deck to gain extra speed.
7. Sideboard: For the Sideboard I just say that stick to what seems to be the general consensus here. Take a playset Rakdos Charm, some Ensnaring Bridge against aggro creatures, some Shattering Spree against Affy, godlike Blood Moon and maybe some Torpor Orb and you'll be fine.
And one last thing: every red or burn player has his or her own distinct playstyle, playtest as much as you can and keep up getting better
Thank you for the advice! I did try the more traditional BR and BRw versions with Bump, lavamancers, ensnaring bridge, and so on, but I never approached the level of success I've been having with this kind of setup. I was not sideboarding blood moon, though.
The thing about the elementals and teetering peaks is that of course they're underwhelming on their own but as a package they are really powerful. Peaks becomes a mountain that says "draw a shock" which is just amazing. I find that they really don't end up blocked that much... but of course they do sometimes, and it sucks, so maybe I'm overestimating them. I wonder what other people who have run this kind of package think.
As for the sweepers, the MODO meta seems to be littered with hexproof and weenie decks, and they're really good in those matchups. They're inefficient burn vs. the decks you mentioned but they still do damage which makes me feel like they're never actually dead.
That said I think I'm going to try a more traditional BR list. You emphasize blood moon: is it important enough that you'd consider it maindeck? It does seem great.
I'm really intrigued by this list, I've played around with similar stuff but never went for the counter/removal package as you have done. Can you comment on matchups, what's feeling good, etc? The bad matchups for pure burn are soul sisters, UWR, and Pod. How does this perform against them?
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Also, bluff yourself. Passing with Celestial flare mana up always gives you value. Just today someone let me eat one of their creatures to play around a celestial flare I did not have.
There are fewer bluffable cards in the format than usual, I feel, but flare is a big obvious one and if you can get some edge from bluffing seakite, NOBODY is attacking with a bear into four open mana from a blue player.
I do agree that darkslick is the MVP of the manabase and I think going to 21 lands is sadly a necessity. Even in the games where you "flood" you tend to use all of your mana every turn – deathrites and tar pits and flashing stuff back. It is necessary to cut a permanent as you have, because our delver % is already low. I wouldn’t go for the mountain but I understand the appeal. It’s only fetchable by Scalding tarn. As for the 7 fetches, how does deathrite perform with only 7? I find having him as a BoP for the first few turns is absolutely crucial.
I’m trying to figure out a way to either get Delver to flip more often, or cut it and add Goyfs. Scavenging Ooze would need a smoother manabase I think. Any ideas?
To follow this up the funny thing about the deck is that you often feel like you won _by accident_, like they have two 5/6 goyfs which you cryptic into double bolt into tar pit for the win. Or they drop karn and you somehow get exactsies with deathrite plus two bobs plus EOT snapcaster + bolt. I find that if I just try to WIN, somehow, I am more successful than if I try to dominate the game. Let them do what they want, and win anyway.
I had a game (albeit against a rogue deck) where I killed my opponent from 15 by going bolt, snapcaster bolt, chump with snapcaster to stay alive, untap, bolt bolt tar pit. That's the deck's style I think.
Well to be fair you ran into the problem matchups in two of the three games. Looking at the top archetypes only burn and Gruul are serious issues, with the others being fair to positive matchups in my experience.
I've been testing this variant continually and I've made some changes to improve those matchups while maintaining our advantages: Stuff like a terminate maindeck to handle goyf, an extra spell snare sideboard for goyf and the 2cc burn spells, maelstrom pulse maindeck to kill whatever you want, and agony warp sideboard which is basically a lightning helix against aggro. Currently I'm trying 3x liliana in the main as an experiment because I love the card. She dominates games but I've yet to test her against aggro — seems reasonable. Burn cannot afford to let her live more than a turn since they need all their cards, and aggro can't let her edict twice so she's sort of a helix.
Obviously it would be hard to turn those matchups favorable but you win your fair share considering its the deck's absolute nightmare matchup.
To address the concerns you highlighted:
- Yes, the manabase is really greedy and it makes it hard in some games to come back because you're at 6 or something with a bob and can't afford to get more of your own lands! I don't usually have a problem with land amount or color, but you have to take a decent amount of damage to get there. As was just posted above an extra scars dual might help here. I have been experimenting with 2 tar pit since they're a roadblock in the early game and you usually only want one, replacing it with another fetchable red source. I might cut that for a blackcleave cliffs or maybe a sulfur falls. I might add a 21st land, perhaps a basic. What
- This is interesting, after playing the deck for a while I tend not to miss land drops too often. You really rip through the deck. I'm curious to hear if you continue to find this if you decide to play the deck more. One thing about snapcaster in this shell is that I believe he's intended to be a turn 2 play after holding up counter magic a fair amount of the time. I have had some success with this method, especially against tron where he'll get 4-6 damage in.
- I find this too, the deck is very competitive for mana. You will rarely not tap all your land every turn. I have found that eschewing spells for deathrite activations is often correct. I win more with the deck now that I try to adopt a burn philosophy in many situations and just try to count to 20 rather than advancing the board.
- Yes, it's tricky to make sure you can play cryptic t4 which is when it has max blowout potential. In the zac hill list there are only 2 lands which don't make blue, IIRC, so it's typically a matter of just getting to 4 land which I talked about a bit above.
Anyway the deck definitely has problems, it's not tier 1. I'm not sure what it would take to get there. But I do find it much more successful the more I play, and I'm still discovering its quirks as I go.
In the Zac Hill variant you don't run out of cards that much. You sort of float at 3 or 4 even without a bob, since you're 2-for-1ing them all the time. I bet in the burn variant you run out of cards far more easily and can spend burn to get there if necessary.
Yep I think this sounds great. I do kind of want more 1cc instants because I find myself unable to use all my mana sometimes with all the 2cc spells in the deck. But magma jet is basically perfect esp. since I'm running delver.
Oh, and in general the deck is really sweet. I have never played a deck of this complexity and interactivity. I am testing at a low win rate compared to my previous deck (RDW) but I'm positive it's down to pilot error (I've been losing the mirror for instance) and I believe the claim that the deck has an outstanding shell.
The one change I'm considering would be something else to do during their turn if I leave up counter mana and they just pass — considering thought scour and izzet charm but both are underwhelming. I'm trying 2x vendilion clique main, maybe that will be enough.
I have been putting this all together on MODO since I wasn't aware of simple cockatrice options these days! How are you testing?
I haven't found 3x cryptic to be a big deal with the confidants. That particular interaction happens rarely enough and it's only 4. They are the card I am most happy to have in the deck, I wouldn't cut them. I find that that's when this variant "pulls away" — turn 4 or 5, you counter/draw, they have an empty board with maybe 1 threat left in hand while you have 4 cards of gas. They wonder how this happened
Then being able to snapcaster them late in the game is just unfair.
However in your burn-centric variant I think I might prefer to just never get to 6 lands and bringing back vexing devil is important.
I'm testing the Zac Hill list barring a few cards I haven't found a good price on yet. The cryptics are not too much of a problem for casting, you really rip through your deck. I do think I'd prefer a magma jet in the slot he has for pillar of flame — functionally similar but fixes our topdecks.
It's far too intricate a deck for me to pilot well at the moment, I have to get a bunch of games in to make any real decisions. I'm going to just try to stick it out with the decisions Hill made, which I assume to be well-considered, until I feel my playskill is sufficient to make calls about it.
The article does break down the deck into "core" and "non-core" components, and he explains what is truly indispensable, so I think there is a lot of license to tweak the deck for your meta and play style.
Sulfur Elemental looks superior!
I have a few questions about your list.
1) How do you find having 3 colors of 1-drop (deathrite, delver, guide). How do you find guide in general in this shell
2) How is shadow of doubt performing? It seems like a reasonable 2-for-1 much of the time.
3) Your list seems pretty tuned to creature matchups, how are you faring vs. combo and control?
Have you tried Izzet Staticaster in that role? It seems like it would provide insane value vs a lot of decks — sort of like electrolyze but with more blowout potential.
I'm going to put together a list based on this thread and the Zach Hill deck from a few weeks ago and see how it does.
Are people actively testing this? I wonder how bad a problem lingering souls is.
I feel like sedraxis specter is tough to justify in a format of lingering souls and loxodon smiters.
The vexing devil + rise/fall plan is cute. This is a fancy burn deck that can deal 10+ in a turn pretty fast, so they kind of need to burn removal on him, and they'll need their removal for our beaters.
I'm wondering about the lack of Liliana in some of these lists — is this just so we can be faster and more tempo-based than resource-denial based?
Thank you for the advice! I did try the more traditional BR and BRw versions with Bump, lavamancers, ensnaring bridge, and so on, but I never approached the level of success I've been having with this kind of setup. I was not sideboarding blood moon, though.
The thing about the elementals and teetering peaks is that of course they're underwhelming on their own but as a package they are really powerful. Peaks becomes a mountain that says "draw a shock" which is just amazing. I find that they really don't end up blocked that much... but of course they do sometimes, and it sucks, so maybe I'm overestimating them. I wonder what other people who have run this kind of package think.
As for the sweepers, the MODO meta seems to be littered with hexproof and weenie decks, and they're really good in those matchups. They're inefficient burn vs. the decks you mentioned but they still do damage which makes me feel like they're never actually dead.
That said I think I'm going to try a more traditional BR list. You emphasize blood moon: is it important enough that you'd consider it maindeck? It does seem great.