Friendly neighborhood spike dropping by to say that Voltron is bad and so are Uril and Bruna k bai.
Edit: To not seem like I'm trolling, I'll also say that Zur and Narset are very good "Voltron" generals because they do stuff besides just turn sideways AND don't require you to play cards from your hand and so generate card advantage. Uril is better than Bruna, but both are far out-classed and in my opinion, obsolete. My Shu Yun deck uses Shu as a win condition but is really just a control deck (shh don't tell anyone )
The manabase and ramp package should explain why that deck is bad on their own without any explanation from me. No control elements, no way to draw cards. It's basically all-in on putting a bunch of pants on things and crossing your fingers.
I get that it's budget but it could still include more than a 10% chance of Bruna dropping before turn 6, and maybe some likelihood of hitting your land drops and colors. Practically no fixing at all.
Meh.
Might as well look at the deck before you make false criticisms.
Mana ramp package doesn't matter and has never affected me. I can tutor much of it if I need to and Thada Adel, Acquisitor lets me steal mana rocks. Also, look at my commander. Enchantment cards attach for free. 25/67 non land cards are enchantments. Believe me, mana is the least of my issues game to game.
Friendly neighborhood spike dropping by to say that Voltron is bad and so are Uril and Bruna k bai.
Edit: To not seem like I'm trolling, I'll also say that Zur and Narset are very good "Voltron" generals because they do stuff besides just turn sideways AND don't require you to play cards from your hand and so generate card advantage. Uril is better than Bruna, but both are far out-classed and in my opinion, obsolete. My Shu Yun deck uses Shu as a win condition but is really just a control deck (shh don't tell anyone )
I would love to play against you with my deck. You ever make trips up to Alaska?
Ramp is important when your general costs 6.fixing is important when your general had 3 pips.
Your control and draw elements largely depend on having bruna on the field already or are very expensive.
Where are your instant speed answers to combos? Where is your mana base? You're too land light to reliably hit your first six land drops.
Your deck requires you hitting your first six drops on time with almost no help. You need to be running 40 lands to do that most of the time.
**
Assuming you start the game with 3 lands in hand and 6 draw steps until turn 6, you need to draw a land 50% of the time to hit your 6th land drop on time. The odds of that are not great with only 30/92 cards left in your deck as lands. If you one ramp spell capable of actually accelerating you before the 5th land drop (Sol ring) and figure out the distant chance of you grabbing gilded lotus AND hitting your first 5 land drops...eh.
Your chances of making your land drops are very bad. I'd guess if you started with 3 lands you'd hit your drops about 2/3rds of the time, approximately. With 4 lands, in your opener you'd get it most of the time but the odds are highly against you getting 4 lands in your opening hand.
Because your control elements are miserably bad and your curve is likewise miserable, you're probably dead before you've set up lightning greaves and cast bruna on turn 7 or whatever your missed land drops allow.
LOL @ Imperial Seal being 'one of the best'. Mostly because 1) it telegraphs my move next turn, and 2) just watch the reanimator player direct one of his mill spells my way. Vamp Tutor avoids the worst of that by being an instant, but in Portal World, there are no instants.
LOL @ Beseech the Queen over Imperial Seal. 3 mana vs 1, reveal vs not, card choice restriction vs 2 life. It doesn't telegraph anything because the opponent doesn't know what you tutored for. However, yes, it does put it into your hand vs top of your deck. I'll concede that. However, I doubt theres ton of reanimator decks running around to make us mill the card we tutored for or even try to waste a self-mill on an opponent. My point was that black has a great tutor suite by itself. As I mentioned they are adjuncts to demonic and vampiric tutor, not replacements and most certainly not the best tutors in the game. Black has a wide variety of tutor spells and isn't hurt by not running blue/white.
EDH:ShatterStax, Only The Strong Survive
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir Mono-U Control
Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath
Sen Triplets
Mizzix of the Izmagnus
Derevi Stax
VolThrun
Marchesa, The Black Rose
Olivia Voldaren, Vampire Tribal
LOL @ Imperial Seal being 'one of the best'. Mostly because 1) it telegraphs my move next turn, and 2) just watch the reanimator player direct one of his mill spells my way. Vamp Tutor avoids the worst of that by being an instant, but in Portal World, there are no instants.
Beseech the Queen is really far down the list as far as black tutors go. On the other hand, I would personally put Imperial Seal at the #3 spot behind Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor, although the price on the card makes running it prohibitively expensive for many people (it's the only reason I don't run it). I wouldn't run Beseech in any deck except one that was trying to stretch for every black tutor available in order to hit the same combo at ludicrous speed every game... and in a deck like that, Beseech would probably search for Demonic Tutor half the time thanks to the limitation on the CMC of what you can grab.
As for putting the tutored card on top of your library... do you not run card draw...? Hell, even just Greed or Erebos gets you the tutored card immediately at negligible additional cost if you're actually concerned about mill.
Beseech the Queen is really far down the list as far as black tutors go. On the other hand, I would personally put Imperial Seal at the #3 spot behind Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor, although the price on the card makes running it prohibitively expensive for many people (it's the only reason I don't run it). I wouldn't run Beseech in any deck except one that was trying to stretch for every black tutor available in order to hit the same combo at ludicrous speed every game... and in a deck like that, Beseech would probably search for Demonic Tutor half the time thanks to the limitation on the CMC of what you can grab.
Beseech the Queen is a mid-tier black tutor that works well in slower metas as a fifth or sixth tutor. I would not put Imperial Seal as the #3 tutor outside of hard combo that needs another way to search on the first turn - the combination of Sorcery speed and top-of-deck is to restrictive to make it effective. Grim Tutor is superior for most decks.
Edit: To stay on topic, the provided deck list is terrible. To be effective with this type of deck, you need to be able to cast Bruna, Light of Alabasterevery game by turn five (at the latest); you need to have at least six or seven control elements - counters and creature / permanent removal; you need to have an alternate win condition. The list lacks the first two, and your alternate wins are poor.
If the deck actually has the stated 100% win rate over multiple games, your play group is either incredibly incompetent, or deliberately letting you win every game for some reason.
LOL @ Imperial Seal being 'one of the best'. Mostly because 1) it telegraphs my move next turn, and 2) just watch the reanimator player direct one of his mill spells my way. Vamp Tutor avoids the worst of that by being an instant, but in Portal World, there are no instants.
LOL @ Beseech the Queen over Imperial Seal. 3 mana vs 1, reveal vs not, card choice restriction vs 2 life. It doesn't telegraph anything because the opponent doesn't know what you tutored for. However, yes, it does put it into your hand vs top of your deck. I'll concede that. However, I doubt theres ton of reanimator decks running around to make us mill the card we tutored for or even try to waste a self-mill on an opponent. My point was that black has a great tutor suite by itself. As I mentioned they are adjuncts to demonic and vampiric tutor, not replacements and most certainly not the best tutors in the game. Black has a wide variety of tutor spells and isn't hurt by not running blue/white.
Top card of library. That's a vulnerable spot. You only use topdeck tutors just before you draw a card.
(And nearly every deck in EDH uses some degree of graveyard shenanigans.)
And my point was just how *****ty Imperial Seal is. I would pick anything over a sorcery-speed topdeck tutor.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I would love to play against you with my deck. You ever make trips up to Alaska?
Man, I wish I could just drive around and play EDH with people. That would really broaden my perspective of the format and be a lot of fun. I think in your case I might have to play one of my casual decks, which is good because I don't get to play them nearly as often.
I always struggle with lists like this. How do they deal with heavy control decks with so few cards that deal with counters (Grand aBolisher and Cavern of Souls)? What about constant boardwipes (umbras)? Seems like there are too few ways to deal with things like this. I realize the deck is meant to be fast but a well prepared opponent would probably be able to give you a really hard time.
They're usually banking on dropping a land wipe in a dominant position, and I guess they're just going to keep plugging at that plan.
I've played a lot of voltron decks myself and they're invariably not super resilient, just the way it goes. The strongest way to actually win with it is to pick a general who's a strong control finisher and control the board. The second strongest is to be super, super fast - Uril is through virtue of his ability to get crazy huge potentialy pretty fast, but I think he's significantly worse than Shu Yun at that overall.
I don't think of what are basically combo enablers like Zur or Narset as voltron decks personally.
I feel like he's not really a voltron style general as far as equipping / enchanting him goes he's more if a blue based draw go tempo type deal. Very good in 1v1 drop him or Serra ascendant spam counterspells and pop an armegeddon.
After having thought it over a lot (following some discussion in an Ojutai thread) I really don't think Geist is strong enough to be considered for voltron anymore. His 3 mana bear statline with no evasion and his completely irrelevant ability are hard to justify in an age of hexproof hate.
I can't see building a deck around him that doesn't have to be mostly Azorius control, at which point a stronger finisher like Bruna seems a little better to me.
I could be totally wrong of course, but I had the itch to play Geist for quite some time (love the art and flavor of the card) but just can't make it work in my head.
I don't know; I mean I've made him work for a while now, though he has shifted towards the combination of Voltron and draw-go control. I still win the large majority of games I play with him even in this "age of hexproof hate" of which you speak...
Also, yeah, there's some hate out there, but most of it kinda sucks. I mean, Arcane Lighthouse is okay, but it doesn't really seem worth it for most serious decks.
The one that burns me the most is Archetype of Lamedurance. In every frigging green deck.
..and constantly tutored for if you happen to be running a hexproof dude.
Also, might just be my meta but people run a lot of stuff that deals with hexproof dudes in my group - sweepers of various sorts, etc.
I'm not sayin' Geist can't be OK, I just think he's going to naturally drift toward being a control finisher (and worse than many other control finisher options in Blue - Ojutai and Bruna in particular).
Top card of library. That's a vulnerable spot. You only use topdeck tutors just before you draw a card.
And...? Black has more than plenty of ways to draw a card.
I don't like having to use two cards to do what I can do with one card. Suddenly that means drawing another card. If I'm doing this for a combo, I'm now drawing at least three cards.
The only reason people play Imperial Seal is to show off their money. I mean, yeah, I play D-Tutor, but it avoids the sorcery-speed topdeck issues.
BTW, other things your opponents could do include saving a counter for that card, Armageddon, Rule of Law, and focus all their attacks on you. For the white answers, players might even avoid countering it when they would normally. Especially with my playgroup which knows "Okay, he tutored something, if we don't do something before he can cast it, it's game over."
Private Mod Note
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
and I guess they're just going to keep plugging at that plan.
That's what I mean. It just doesn't seem to work if you're playing people who are willing to change up their strategies/decks. I know, I've tried. I'd love it if my Uril deck was all about speed and gave little to no regard to what the other guy was doing. As of now it's filled with cards like Silence, Autumn's Veil, Tajuru Preserver, Vexing Shusher, Umbra Mystic, etc. to deal with the myriad ways people have come up with to stop him.
Bear Umbra using Aggravated Assault gives you infinite combat steps if you can keep doing damage. Hellkite Chargeris also on color for you so he can combo with it as well, in case of Runed Halo on your general.
Incorrect, Bear Umbra untaps the lands when it swings so with Aggravated Assault it is infinite combats. I've run it in my Uril deck, but to be honest most of the time you will not get it off if you are in a playgroup with skilled players, mostly because people really like to hate on Bear Umbra (for some strange reason )
I ran rafiq as my 1 voltron general. I won't say he's the best, but getting a turn 4 kill isn't out of the realm of possibility. Most people are aware of what a Rafiq deck can do though so he gets hated on a bit. He doesn't take too much to work, which is why I like him. Sure, he likes to die, but killing people with birds of paradise and noble heirarch isn't that rare when you have cards like sublime archangel and finest hour, and all the normal recursion stuff with reveillarks and eternal witness to go for a long game.
He's not as good in multiplayer, for obvious reasons, but I've still gotten my fair share of table kills with him. It's really about leveraging the raw power of individual cards - sure, I've got mana dorks, card draw, and counterspells, but I've also got the normal haymakers like consecrated sphinx, JTMS, deadeye navigator, stuff that allows me to go wide when Rafiq inevitably dies 6 times, though obviously just jamming rafiq into a table with 5 other players is pretty much the worst thing you can do.
My least favorite voltron general is Skithyrx. Seriously, he's just boring. The person wants to play a 10 life game in one that's normally 21 or 40, and that's pretty lame. Even without cards like hatred or unspeakable symbol, matchups against him are very one-dimensional. Two different players got hated out of our playgroup this year for playing him, which is funny, while we welcome people who play uril or derevi.
Skittles, much like Bruna, is best played as a control deck that finishes with Skittles. Aggro skittles is super un-fun, but MBC is a pretty fun deck all in all. Though people are not usually big fans of death cloud it's no worse than armageddon in reality.
Works now
Edit: To not seem like I'm trolling, I'll also say that Zur and Narset are very good "Voltron" generals because they do stuff besides just turn sideways AND don't require you to play cards from your hand and so generate card advantage. Uril is better than Bruna, but both are far out-classed and in my opinion, obsolete. My Shu Yun deck uses Shu as a win condition but is really just a control deck (shh don't tell anyone )
cEDH: [G(U/R) Animar] - [(U/B)(G/W) Redless Wheels] - [(G/U)(W/B) Redless Pod] - [(B/G)W Ghave Metapod]
Might as well look at the deck before you make false criticisms.
No control elements? Archon of the Triumvirate Grand Abolisher Sphere of Safety Corrupted Conscience Angelic Arbiter Silent Arbiter Render Silent
No way to draw cards? Righteous Authority Unquestioned Authority Sage's Reverie Read the Runes This is also offset by the 10 tutors I have in the deck.
Mana ramp package doesn't matter and has never affected me. I can tutor much of it if I need to and Thada Adel, Acquisitor lets me steal mana rocks. Also, look at my commander. Enchantment cards attach for free. 25/67 non land cards are enchantments. Believe me, mana is the least of my issues game to game.
Meh indeed.
I would love to play against you with my deck. You ever make trips up to Alaska?
Your control and draw elements largely depend on having bruna on the field already or are very expensive.
Where are your instant speed answers to combos? Where is your mana base? You're too land light to reliably hit your first six land drops.
Your deck requires you hitting your first six drops on time with almost no help. You need to be running 40 lands to do that most of the time.
**
Assuming you start the game with 3 lands in hand and 6 draw steps until turn 6, you need to draw a land 50% of the time to hit your 6th land drop on time. The odds of that are not great with only 30/92 cards left in your deck as lands. If you one ramp spell capable of actually accelerating you before the 5th land drop (Sol ring) and figure out the distant chance of you grabbing gilded lotus AND hitting your first 5 land drops...eh.
Your chances of making your land drops are very bad. I'd guess if you started with 3 lands you'd hit your drops about 2/3rds of the time, approximately. With 4 lands, in your opener you'd get it most of the time but the odds are highly against you getting 4 lands in your opening hand.
Because your control elements are miserably bad and your curve is likewise miserable, you're probably dead before you've set up lightning greaves and cast bruna on turn 7 or whatever your missed land drops allow.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
LOL @ Beseech the Queen over Imperial Seal. 3 mana vs 1, reveal vs not, card choice restriction vs 2 life. It doesn't telegraph anything because the opponent doesn't know what you tutored for. However, yes, it does put it into your hand vs top of your deck. I'll concede that. However, I doubt theres ton of reanimator decks running around to make us mill the card we tutored for or even try to waste a self-mill on an opponent. My point was that black has a great tutor suite by itself. As I mentioned they are adjuncts to demonic and vampiric tutor, not replacements and most certainly not the best tutors in the game. Black has a wide variety of tutor spells and isn't hurt by not running blue/white.
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir Mono-U Control
Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath
Sen Triplets
Mizzix of the Izmagnus
Derevi Stax
VolThrun
Marchesa, The Black Rose
Olivia Voldaren, Vampire Tribal
Modern: Fish, JUND/Junk
--------
RIP Twin
Beseech the Queen is really far down the list as far as black tutors go. On the other hand, I would personally put Imperial Seal at the #3 spot behind Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor, although the price on the card makes running it prohibitively expensive for many people (it's the only reason I don't run it). I wouldn't run Beseech in any deck except one that was trying to stretch for every black tutor available in order to hit the same combo at ludicrous speed every game... and in a deck like that, Beseech would probably search for Demonic Tutor half the time thanks to the limitation on the CMC of what you can grab.
As for putting the tutored card on top of your library... do you not run card draw...? Hell, even just Greed or Erebos gets you the tutored card immediately at negligible additional cost if you're actually concerned about mill.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
+
Hatred
If you want to look outside the box! There you go! Black blue control throw some equipment on the ship
I actually love the art and thought of ship with equipment to make it hit harder. You'll def not be targeted for playing this deck.
EDH/Commander: Karn silver golem (foiled), Narset combo, Maelstrom Wanderer random goodies, Nekusar grixis draw stuff, freyalise, Gissa Zombies!, marchesa obliterate,
Prosh just wins!,
--- Will WOTC just visit Cybertron already! ----
Beseech the Queen is a mid-tier black tutor that works well in slower metas as a fifth or sixth tutor. I would not put Imperial Seal as the #3 tutor outside of hard combo that needs another way to search on the first turn - the combination of Sorcery speed and top-of-deck is to restrictive to make it effective. Grim Tutor is superior for most decks.
Edit: To stay on topic, the provided deck list is terrible. To be effective with this type of deck, you need to be able to cast Bruna, Light of Alabaster every game by turn five (at the latest); you need to have at least six or seven control elements - counters and creature / permanent removal; you need to have an alternate win condition. The list lacks the first two, and your alternate wins are poor.
If the deck actually has the stated 100% win rate over multiple games, your play group is either incredibly incompetent, or deliberately letting you win every game for some reason.
A Dying Wish
To Rise Again
Chainer, Dementia Master
Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
Top card of library. That's a vulnerable spot. You only use topdeck tutors just before you draw a card.
(And nearly every deck in EDH uses some degree of graveyard shenanigans.)
And my point was just how *****ty Imperial Seal is. I would pick anything over a sorcery-speed topdeck tutor.
On phasing:
I mean it depends what kind of deck you're playing I guess. Personally, I'm only ever casting it turn 1 which is amazing.
cEDH: [G(U/R) Animar] - [(U/B)(G/W) Redless Wheels] - [(G/U)(W/B) Redless Pod] - [(B/G)W Ghave Metapod]
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
I always struggle with lists like this. How do they deal with heavy control decks with so few cards that deal with counters (Grand aBolisher and Cavern of Souls)? What about constant boardwipes (umbras)? Seems like there are too few ways to deal with things like this. I realize the deck is meant to be fast but a well prepared opponent would probably be able to give you a really hard time.
I've played a lot of voltron decks myself and they're invariably not super resilient, just the way it goes. The strongest way to actually win with it is to pick a general who's a strong control finisher and control the board. The second strongest is to be super, super fast - Uril is through virtue of his ability to get crazy huge potentialy pretty fast, but I think he's significantly worse than Shu Yun at that overall.
I don't think of what are basically combo enablers like Zur or Narset as voltron decks personally.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Damia http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=410191
DDFT Legacyhttp://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=505247
Domain Zoo http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10212429#post10212429
I can't see building a deck around him that doesn't have to be mostly Azorius control, at which point a stronger finisher like Bruna seems a little better to me.
I could be totally wrong of course, but I had the itch to play Geist for quite some time (love the art and flavor of the card) but just can't make it work in my head.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Also, yeah, there's some hate out there, but most of it kinda sucks. I mean, Arcane Lighthouse is okay, but it doesn't really seem worth it for most serious decks.
..and constantly tutored for if you happen to be running a hexproof dude.
Also, might just be my meta but people run a lot of stuff that deals with hexproof dudes in my group - sweepers of various sorts, etc.
I'm not sayin' Geist can't be OK, I just think he's going to naturally drift toward being a control finisher (and worse than many other control finisher options in Blue - Ojutai and Bruna in particular).
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I don't like having to use two cards to do what I can do with one card. Suddenly that means drawing another card. If I'm doing this for a combo, I'm now drawing at least three cards.
The only reason people play Imperial Seal is to show off their money. I mean, yeah, I play D-Tutor, but it avoids the sorcery-speed topdeck issues.
BTW, other things your opponents could do include saving a counter for that card, Armageddon, Rule of Law, and focus all their attacks on you. For the white answers, players might even avoid countering it when they would normally. Especially with my playgroup which knows "Okay, he tutored something, if we don't do something before he can cast it, it's game over."
On phasing:
That's what I mean. It just doesn't seem to work if you're playing people who are willing to change up their strategies/decks. I know, I've tried. I'd love it if my Uril deck was all about speed and gave little to no regard to what the other guy was doing. As of now it's filled with cards like Silence, Autumn's Veil, Tajuru Preserver, Vexing Shusher, Umbra Mystic, etc. to deal with the myriad ways people have come up with to stop him.
UBBreya's Toybox (Competitive, Combo)WR
RGodzilla, King of the MonstersG
-Retired Decks-
UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
"Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me."
—Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Incorrect, Bear Umbra untaps the lands when it swings so with Aggravated Assault it is infinite combats. I've run it in my Uril deck, but to be honest most of the time you will not get it off if you are in a playgroup with skilled players, mostly because people really like to hate on Bear Umbra (for some strange reason )
X Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
RGW Uril, the Miststalker
G Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Modern:
R Red Deck Wins
He's not as good in multiplayer, for obvious reasons, but I've still gotten my fair share of table kills with him. It's really about leveraging the raw power of individual cards - sure, I've got mana dorks, card draw, and counterspells, but I've also got the normal haymakers like consecrated sphinx, JTMS, deadeye navigator, stuff that allows me to go wide when Rafiq inevitably dies 6 times, though obviously just jamming rafiq into a table with 5 other players is pretty much the worst thing you can do.
My least favorite voltron general is Skithyrx. Seriously, he's just boring. The person wants to play a 10 life game in one that's normally 21 or 40, and that's pretty lame. Even without cards like hatred or unspeakable symbol, matchups against him are very one-dimensional. Two different players got hated out of our playgroup this year for playing him, which is funny, while we welcome people who play uril or derevi.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall