With all of that information, and I am not trying not to break the rule of "no deck lists in the main forum," I would like your opinion: Am I going overboard with my dedication to mana, lands and acceleration? Should I also add Caged Sun and Magus of the Coffer?
My typical game plan is to ramp and draw cards early. Then I try to follow up with a Wrath/Damnation effect if needed to keep some of the early heat off me and also play some graveyard hate in order to hinder a large variety of common infinite combos which utilize the graveyard at some point to go off. That typicslly keeps me alove through the fisrt 6 turns or so. After that, with a hand full of cards and a nice mana pool to draw from, I try to play threats/win conditions and take over the game.
That is how I was taught to play magic well. Especially kitchen table multiplayer where agressive burn decks aren't viable. Tournament play is a whole other beast into and of itself.
I just wanted to let you know what I was doing and get feedback from the community. My commander is normally Ghoulcaller Gisa, though it used to be Kagemaro, First to Suffer. Kagemaro is still in the 99 card deck. I love making a zombie token army as a win condition, but Kagemaro is nasty too.
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"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
Your land count seems a little low for my tastes but for a mono-colored deck with that many mana rocks it should be fine. Especially with access to lots of draw & tutors which I assume you are also running. I've noticed Brian Weissman runs a similar land count & upwards of 20 mana rocks in the decks featured on his YouTube videos. The mana rocks seem to make up for any missed land drops. And keeping a lower land count prevents flooding when it really matters.
Magus of the Coffers feels like a borderline win-more card. I would replace Gauntlet of Power with Caged Sun but not run both. No sense in giving your opponent's lands a boost.
I never used the old mulligan rule. I always mulled like normal... shuffle and take one less.
It isn't deck list time, but Pilgrim's Eye works really well in my deck because it dies to skullclamp for value, the flying helps as I can equip it with Lashwrithe/Nightmare Lash, and Nim Deathmantle allows me to sacrifice it for profit and reuse the ETB trigger to fetch swamps several times. Those shuffle effect work well with Scroll Rack as well. Pilgrim's Eye has really done a lot for my deck. Liliana's shade is similar but without flying. As I said, my Commander is Ghoulcaller Gisa, so I can pump it, sacrifice it for a pile of zombies, and potentially get it back. I have even won three games because I was able to create infinite black mana, make infinte pumps and infinite zombies off of it. Not to mention that as a four drop that gets a land, it sets me up to play my five drop commander. I love those two cards even though they aren't "ramp."
You are right about Magus, which is why he was cut shortly after I got the SWORN TO DARKNESS Commander 2015 deck. I kept wanting to put him back in... but he is very "meh." Once I get a Caged Sun, I will add it. In my play group, Gauntlet of Power has only helped my oppoents three times over the last 9 months, but only working with basics was a draw back for sure.
I agree that Bane of progress would be a real set back. Thankfully it hasn't been yet. I figure that os just part of the game, and because I run 16 forms of card draw and tutors combined (more or less), I can recover from it alright.
I do laugh when I play turn 2 mana rock, turn 3 double mana rock, turn four card draw burst to set up a turn five with lots of mana and 7 or 8 cards in hand. Now the game has really started.
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"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
Whether a certain amount of ramp is overkill depends on the curve of the deck and its capacity to draw cards. Mono B has some of the best card draw options in the format with Sign in Blood, Night's Whisper, Read the Bones and maybe even, if you're feeling adventurous and excited about Rule 4's downfall, Painful Truths. Maxing out on these small value cards makes it a lot harder to flood out so if you're running them it's safer to play a ton of rocks.
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You would never guess, at the terrifying sight of the man, that Hunding was as charming a companion as one could wish for.
You are obviously pushing the limits here for low land and high ramp count. Does it work? How often do you have access to too much/not enough mana? Maxing out the cheap ramp and cheap draw is definitely the way to go, the trick is balancing the two. I was never successful at running less than 35 lands, no matter how much ramp. Still need to make your land drops since your mana costs are probably pretty black heavy and if you are going coffers rout, you sure want your swamps. My feeling is to stick with the cheap ramp like 0-2 cc rocks and the best of the rituals and let your land base handle the big mana part of your game. Taking a turn to play a caged sun or a gauntlet of power is pretty lame when it gets blown up and can't be easily recurred, especially during the first few turns when you are trying to get set up.
Another way to look at the land count is that if you are drawing a ton, using a combination of the cheap one-offs mentioned above and skullclamp /necropotence big draw, you are pretty much never going to flood out, you are just seeing so many cards. On the other hand, if 70% of your deck is land or rocks, maybe you are at risk of... "rocking out"?
I run a big black mana deck with him at the helm. The great thing is, Geth is the deck. He's an enormous mana sink and gives you access to everybody else's juicy creatures and artifacts, once your opponents get sizable graveyards, you probably won't even be playing your hand anymore.
I do however run 38 lands + rocks & doublers. And be sure to have that chromatic lantern!
As for other cards besides big mana, I run a suite of discard, mill, sac outlets, removal options
How much use do you get out of the mana? I have a mono-black deck with Chainer, Dementia Master at the helm and he can make use of every bit of mana I can generate. I could also see this working for Geth, Lord of the Vault, or Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief. I think you might want to keep a tally of how often you find yourself with lots of mana and not much to do with it, then consider changing the deck.
Sounds like a good setup. Typically, if you're playing a non-green combo deck, you want to run a relatively large pile of mana rocks ranging from 0 to 3 CMC to allow for more explosive openings. I have a fairly similar setup for all of my decks (Zur runs 31 lands and 46 total mana sources for example). It's the mark of a sturdy deck. The strongest decks in the format run suspiciously low land counts with high numbers of alternative sources. Keep doing what you're doing.
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"Instead of building a fast car to win the race, you fill the race track with manure and drive your tractor to victory.
That is stax."
~cmv_lawyer, 2016
That's my friend's Ob-Nixilis deck. Monoblack with a super effective artifact mana suite. There's 37 land, but it needs landfall and several of them don't generate mana at all. Really good artifact hate can put a serious damper on his plan. Note the Guardian Beast as keeper of the rocks.
The most important thing is whether or not your land base works for you. My monoblack Erebos deck runs 39 or 40 land and almost all are basics with just a few rocks and doublers. Draw and filtering can help you make all your land drops which is really important too. Most of my decks are probably half or close to it dedicated to mana production/ramp, some are more.
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With all of that information, and I am not trying not to break the rule of "no deck lists in the main forum," I would like your opinion: Am I going overboard with my dedication to mana, lands and acceleration? Should I also add Caged Sun and Magus of the Coffer?
My typical game plan is to ramp and draw cards early. Then I try to follow up with a Wrath/Damnation effect if needed to keep some of the early heat off me and also play some graveyard hate in order to hinder a large variety of common infinite combos which utilize the graveyard at some point to go off. That typicslly keeps me alove through the fisrt 6 turns or so. After that, with a hand full of cards and a nice mana pool to draw from, I try to play threats/win conditions and take over the game.
That is how I was taught to play magic well. Especially kitchen table multiplayer where agressive burn decks aren't viable. Tournament play is a whole other beast into and of itself.
I just wanted to let you know what I was doing and get feedback from the community. My commander is normally Ghoulcaller Gisa, though it used to be Kagemaro, First to Suffer. Kagemaro is still in the 99 card deck. I love making a zombie token army as a win condition, but Kagemaro is nasty too.
Magus of the Coffers feels like a borderline win-more card. I would replace Gauntlet of Power with Caged Sun but not run both. No sense in giving your opponent's lands a boost.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
I never used the old mulligan rule. I always mulled like normal... shuffle and take one less.
It isn't deck list time, but Pilgrim's Eye works really well in my deck because it dies to skullclamp for value, the flying helps as I can equip it with Lashwrithe/Nightmare Lash, and Nim Deathmantle allows me to sacrifice it for profit and reuse the ETB trigger to fetch swamps several times. Those shuffle effect work well with Scroll Rack as well. Pilgrim's Eye has really done a lot for my deck. Liliana's shade is similar but without flying. As I said, my Commander is Ghoulcaller Gisa, so I can pump it, sacrifice it for a pile of zombies, and potentially get it back. I have even won three games because I was able to create infinite black mana, make infinte pumps and infinite zombies off of it. Not to mention that as a four drop that gets a land, it sets me up to play my five drop commander. I love those two cards even though they aren't "ramp."
You are right about Magus, which is why he was cut shortly after I got the SWORN TO DARKNESS Commander 2015 deck. I kept wanting to put him back in... but he is very "meh." Once I get a Caged Sun, I will add it. In my play group, Gauntlet of Power has only helped my oppoents three times over the last 9 months, but only working with basics was a draw back for sure.
I agree that Bane of progress would be a real set back. Thankfully it hasn't been yet. I figure that os just part of the game, and because I run 16 forms of card draw and tutors combined (more or less), I can recover from it alright.
I do laugh when I play turn 2 mana rock, turn 3 double mana rock, turn four card draw burst to set up a turn five with lots of mana and 7 or 8 cards in hand. Now the game has really started.
Another way to look at the land count is that if you are drawing a ton, using a combination of the cheap one-offs mentioned above and skullclamp /necropotence big draw, you are pretty much never going to flood out, you are just seeing so many cards. On the other hand, if 70% of your deck is land or rocks, maybe you are at risk of... "rocking out"?
UGUPrime Speaker Seamonster RampUGU
WUGDerevi Does NothingWUG
RRRFeldon's Lovely LadiesRRR
I run a big black mana deck with him at the helm. The great thing is, Geth is the deck. He's an enormous mana sink and gives you access to everybody else's juicy creatures and artifacts, once your opponents get sizable graveyards, you probably won't even be playing your hand anymore.
I do however run 38 lands + rocks & doublers. And be sure to have that chromatic lantern!
As for other cards besides big mana, I run a suite of discard, mill, sac outlets, removal options
Life's Finale, Mesmeric Orb, Cabal Conditioning, Dark Deal, Ashnod's Altar & Phyrexian Altar, Ghastly Conscription, Mindslicer, Trepidation Blade (great on Geth with his intimidate, he only needs +1 to become a 3 hit general).
As for your artifacts getting wiped: Junk Diver and Arcbound Reclaimer can work, I'm sure there are others.
P
That is stax."
~cmv_lawyer, 2016
WUI Don't Mean to Brago, But... RWBI'll Kaalia Back Later GBWKaradora the Graveyard Explorer BRGLive Long and Prosshper
BGUMuscle Plasm URGImperial Animarch BGLemon Meren Pie GWStop Being Such a Sisay UTefearsome RGWMarath of the Titans
UBRNow Watch me Trai Trai RWBAleshstax GWUPrison Can Roon Your Life BRGrenzo: Your Doom UArcum's Asylum of Stax
BGFeel the Ground Croak GThe All New 2016 Yisan Wanderer URFo Rizzle Mah Mizzle UBRA Game of Marchess
That's my friend's Ob-Nixilis deck. Monoblack with a super effective artifact mana suite. There's 37 land, but it needs landfall and several of them don't generate mana at all. Really good artifact hate can put a serious damper on his plan. Note the Guardian Beast as keeper of the rocks.
The most important thing is whether or not your land base works for you. My monoblack Erebos deck runs 39 or 40 land and almost all are basics with just a few rocks and doublers. Draw and filtering can help you make all your land drops which is really important too. Most of my decks are probably half or close to it dedicated to mana production/ramp, some are more.