EE is pretty cool, but the problem is that I can never use it for more than 2, which misses most of the most popular EDH cards. If I was able to make a third color of mana, it would be a lot better. It is awesome against tokens, but right now the only tokens deck I commonly see is Prossh, which would just sac all the tokens for benefit anyway. I don't think Tombstone Stairwell would work very well for me since I don't run that many creatures, and the cumulative upkeep gets very costly pretty quickly. Also, the fact that you get the last usage out of it is a little bit annoying. I have used Karn before in other decks, but this deck doesn't really play artifacts with a high enough CMC to become effective creatures. He is cool as a backup Sydri in that deck, but I'm not a fan of him here. Vedalken Orrery and Shimmer Myr could be useful to let me recur and cast my bauble / spellbomb type cards on opponents' turns, but overall I don't think they do enough. O-Naginata is on my short list of things I need to get for this deck. Giving Glissa +3 power and trample for such a low cost likely turns her from a 7-hit kill into a 4-hit kill or better, depending on what other equipment I have out.
The cards I'm looking at trying out right now are: Grisly Salvage, Lotus Cobra, O-Naginata, Spiritmonger, and Forbidden Orchard. Do you guys agree that all of these cards are worth testing, and if so, any suggestions on what cards should be cut? Moriok Replica is a card that has been suggested, but I would like to replace that with another draw effect if I do cut it, perhaps Moonlight Bargain?
I can vouch for O-Naginata. I just recently added it to my Glissa deck and every time it's out she starts hitting very hard.
Grisly Salvage looks like it could work, certainly worth testing.
Forbidden Orchard is nice. Helps with a T3 Glissa and gives your opponents guys to block with. Also enables Mindslaver lock if you ever want to do that.
Birds of Paradise - It does enable a T2 Glissa and could hold a sword, but it seems pretty weak in your list.
Disciple of Bolas - As you mentioned you are pretty low on creatures, I'm not sure how often you'd want to sac the ones you have out. Plus you have a lot of low power utility guys, so I could see Disciple drawing only 2-3 a lot.
Nylea, God of the Hunt - You don't have a ton of colored permanents to turn her on with. Glissa loves trample, but I feel you have enough equipment to grant trample/protection that you don't really need her.
Birthing Pod - Certainly an amazing card, I'm just not sure it's doing as much in this deck as it does in the more typical GB reanimator decks.
As for your card draw, what about Erebos, God of the Dead? You have lifegain from Loxodon Warhammer, SoWaP, Deathrite, Scavenging Ooze, and Wurmcoil Engine. Plus stopping opponent's from gaining life is never bad.
I can vouch for O-Naginata. I just recently added it to my Glissa deck and every time it's out she starts hitting very hard.
Grisly Salvage looks like it could work, certainly worth testing.
Forbidden Orchard is nice. Helps with a T3 Glissa and gives your opponents guys to block with. Also enables Mindslaver lock if you ever want to do that.
So it seems like you agree with at least trying out all of these. The most questionable one is definitely Grisly Salvage, but the rest seem to be really good options. Now for the cuts.
As for cuts, I was wondering about these:
Birds of Paradise - It does enable a T2 Glissa and could hold a sword, but it seems pretty weak in your list.
Disciple of Bolas - As you mentioned you are pretty low on creatures, I'm not sure how often you'd want to sac the ones you have out. Plus you have a lot of low power utility guys, so I could see Disciple drawing only 2-3 a lot.
Nylea, God of the Hunt - You don't have a ton of colored permanents to turn her on with. Glissa loves trample, but I feel you have enough equipment to grant trample/protection that you don't really need her.
Birthing Pod - Certainly an amazing card, I'm just not sure it's doing as much in this deck as it does in the more typical GB reanimator decks.
As for your card draw, what about Erebos, God of the Dead? You have lifegain from Loxodon Warhammer, SoWaP, Deathrite, Scavenging Ooze, and Wurmcoil Engine. Plus stopping opponent's from gaining life is never bad.
I really like Nylea, God of the Hunt and Birds of Paradise, so I am strongly leaning towards keeping those, but I am definitely willing to cut Disciple of Bolas, and I may have to find myself cutting Birthing Pod again. Even though it's on my favorite cards, I always seem to run too low on the ETB value creatures to be able to support it well enough.
Erebos seems pretty good for draw, since he's basically just a better version of Greed, being Indestructible, preventing opponents from gaining life, and with the potential to become a huge beater. This is a card that I am considering alongside Necropotence and Moonlight Bargain. Ultimately I will probably just end up choosing Necropotence since it's probably the single most powerful card drawing effect ever.
I recently have cut Golgari Keyrune for Gilded Lotus, lotus is maybe slower but the return is the same and it is stronger late game.
I like Keyrune for the added utility beyond just ramping. The ability for it to become a deathtouch blocker provides an awesome deterrent to attacks, especially since it will just trade and then come back if I have Glissa in play. It can also pick up some equipment and go on the offensive if I am really short on creatures to use said equipment otherwise.
I've also been considering adding Bow of Nylea. I happened to pull a foil one at the BNG prerelease, so I figured this was a great time to consider adding it in. The main benefit I see from it is the ability to give my attacking creatures deathtouch, which works extremely nicely with trample to get a lot of extra damage through. It can also gain life if I am worried about paying too much into a card like Necropotence, it can add +1/+1 counters to Glissa to help me finish people off more quickly, and the 2 damage to a flyer kills off a few relevant things, the obvious one being Kaalia of the Vast. Thoughts?
EE is pretty cool, but the problem is that I can never use it for more than 2, which misses most of the most popular EDH cards. If I was able to make a third color of mana, it would be a lot better. It is awesome against tokens, but right now the only tokens deck I commonly see is Prossh, which would just sac all the tokens for benefit anyway.
The list of commonly played cards with CMC 2 or less is pretty large. You can force SDT from the table, kill Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Survival, Rest in Peace (which makes its inclusion worthwhile on it's own), mana critters and utility dorks.
I don't think Tombstone Stairwell would work very well for me since I don't run that many creatures, and the cumulative upkeep gets very costly pretty quickly. Also, the fact that you get the last usage out of it is a little bit annoying.
You get creatures every turn. And you don't play it for the tokens, but for the Glissa triggers.
Have you thought about using Enlarge? I think it's pretty under the radar right now. I run GB, and have thought about Glissa, but haven't tested this at all. Seems 10/10 first strike deathtouch trample commander damage would be pretty much the nuts. Ooh, or Revenge of the Hunted.
Have you thought about using Enlarge? I think it's pretty under the radar right now. I run GB, and have thought about Glissa, but haven't tested this at all. Seems 10/10 first strike deathtouch trample commander damage would be pretty much the nuts. Ooh, or Revenge of the Hunted.
I like Revenge of the Hunted better than Enlarge, since it acts as a one sided board wipe if played on Glissa, and it can be cast with Miracle for just one mana. Enlarge is pretty expensive for nothing but a pump, and seems like it would be pretty dead if I don't have Glissa on the board. I think I would probably end up choosing something like Hunter's Prowess over either of them though, since it still grants a sizeable buff and trample, while also having the massive upside of drawing me up to 6 cards. The sorcery speed hurts it somewhat, so I don't know if I would run any of them. For the same amount of mana, I can play and equip a Sword, which not only gives a permanent buff, but also gives Glissa protection from two colors and adds two additional abilities whenever she connects, which should be every time with First Strike, Deathtouch, Protections, and often Trample as well.
With the Sylvan Primordial banning, I think I will swap him for Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, and while I'm at it I think I will add Sheoldred, Whispering One as well since she seems awesome for getting Glissa triggers and reanimating my own stuff as well for even more value. Both Trample and Swampwalk can be very relevant evasions in a deck with as much equipment as mine has.
Do people consider mindslaver to be a two card combo? I always thought it was quite fair just because it costs 10 mana to pull off and only targets one player at a time.
My list has a self mill/graveyard/sacrifice subtheme. I abuse gravecrawler+sac outlet and play mortivore, nighthowler and bonehoard alongside survival and a few other things. It's hard to walk the line between combo and synergy, because I don't want to make the list OP in a somewhat casual play group.
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YMTC: We need a spikey red enchantment. My creations:
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Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
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Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Mindslaver has always been a "fun" card for our playgroup. It's not degenerate exactly for the reasons that you mentioned.
Just for discussion, I don't play Mortivore and such creatures in my build because I have a huge focus on exiling graveyards. Also, I only run around 12 creatures, so Mortivore and the others, ideally, wouldn't get big enough.
It's a solid card for a Glissa list, and I could see trying to find a spot for it somewhere, but ulimately I like it much less than Executioner's Capsule, which lets me choose any non-black creature without having to worry about Glissa dying. I think I like the utility of Ulvenwald Tracker and Arena better as well. It's right there with Thornbite Staff and Viridian Longbow as cards that have nice synergy with Glissa and are almost good enough, but that I'm not running right now.
Do people consider mindslaver to be a two card combo? I always thought it was quite fair just because it costs 10 mana to pull off and only targets one player at a time.
My list has a self mill/graveyard/sacrifice subtheme. I abuse gravecrawler+sac outlet and play mortivore, nighthowler and bonehoard alongside survival and a few other things. It's hard to walk the line between combo and synergy, because I don't want to make the list OP in a somewhat casual play group.
I don't think Mindslaver is nearly as bad as actual two card infinites that just straight-up win the game, but a lot of people probably would not enjoy being Mindslaver locked for several consecutive turns. If it gets down to a 1 on 1 match, then the combo will just end the game. As for graveyard sheanigans, I have played a few decks based on creature recursion in the not-so-distant past, so I'm trying to keep most of those elements out of this deck, unless they're just too good to pass up.
Mindslaver has always been a "fun" card for our playgroup. It's not degenerate exactly for the reasons that you mentioned.
Just for discussion, I don't play Mortivore and such creatures in my build because I have a huge focus on exiling graveyards. Also, I only run around 12 creatures, so Mortivore and the others, ideally, wouldn't get big enough.
My build doesn't have a huge focus on exiling graveyards, but I do run my share of graveyard hate, and I am trying to stay away from playing a lot of creature recursion and such, instead focusing on Glissa's artifact recursion ability.
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Just put in an order to pick up a few of the things I still need for this deck, mainly Marsh Flats, Lotus Cobra, and Spirtmonger. I also picked up a Graveborn Muse to add in place of Disciple of Bolas. It seems like it would work nicely with stuff like Glissa and Grave Titan to draw some additional cards, and I'm trying to cut down on the ETB effects, especially with the banning of Sylvan Primordial, so that I can run Torpor Orb as an awesome foil to the ETB decks that are pretty commonly seen in my playgroup. I've already picked up O-Naginata and Grisly Salvage to try out as well, once I figure out what I want to take out.
If you add Graveborn Muse, Titan and Praetors, perhaps you could try Strionic Resonator. It doesn't go so well with Torpor Orb though...
Your cut of Rune-Scarred Demon triggered something in my head: I tried RSD a while when I ran Deathrender. I don't like to pay full CMC for my cards, and Deathrender has a nice side-effect that it keeps people from playing sweepers. In that aspect it's better than Nim Deathmantle, which forces you to keep mana open. It's nice to recur a creature with Glissa and plop it on the table for free. It's also very good with Strionic Resonator. I wouldn't know what to cut though, but it's a nice trick you can keep in the back of your head for future deck tuning.
Perhaps you want to try Burnished Hart instead of Wood Elves.
If you add Graveborn Muse, Titan and Praetors, perhaps you could try Strionic Resonator. It doesn't go so well with Torpor Orb though...
Your cut of Rune-Scarred Demon triggered something in my head: I tried RSD a while when I ran Deathrender. I don't like to pay full CMC for my cards, and Deathrender has a nice side-effect that it keeps people from playing sweepers. In that aspect it's better than Nim Deathmantle, which forces you to keep mana open. It's nice to recur a creature with Glissa and plop it on the table for free. It's also very good with Strionic Resonator. I wouldn't know what to cut though, but it's a nice trick you can keep in the back of your head for future deck tuning.
Perhaps you want to try Burnished Hart instead of Wood Elves.
I'm not a huge fan of Strionic Resonator outside of an ETB focused deck, and I'm actually trying to stay away from ETB for the most part with this deck. There are some cards, like Eternal Witness, which are just too good to pass up, but otherwise I don't want to run a lot of ETB creatures. I actually think Rings of Brighthearth might be better in my deck, having awesome synergy with cards like Birthing Pod, Trading Post, and Fetchlands. Deathrender feels a bit expensive to use for me. 4 mana to cast and then 2 to equip, and then I still have to rely on the equipped creature dying to get the trigger. It doesn't have great synergy with Glissa either, since she only triggers when opponents' creatures go to the graveyard. I also don't really have a lot of high CMC creatures to really take advantage of it multiple times, rather than just casting the creatures. I guess it could be cool with a sac outlet to put things into play at instant speed, but again, that's not really the kind of thing this deck does. Lastly, on Burnished Hart, I agree he would be pretty good with Glissa since he can be recurred a bunch of times and he provides some nice ramp. However, He's quite a bit more costly to use than Wood Elves, since you need 6 mana to play and activate him, and he puts both lands into play tapped, whereas Wood Elves costs only 3 and can get a land untapped, making it cost effectively only 2 mana. The biggest upside of making a change like that would be to reduce the number of ETB creatures by one so that I could feel a little more comfortable running Torpor Orb.
So I ended up cutting some of the more expensive cards to add more cards that play around with activated abilities or are just really efficient. Recurrable Torpor Orb will be amazing in my playgroup since there are so many ETB based decks, and I'm not running much ETB myself. Rings of Brighthearth should be nuts in this deck with the amount of strong activated abilities that I am running. Cobra gives me a lot of mana early on, especially with all of the fetches I am running. And Spiritmonger is just an awesome creature that dominates in combat and loves to fight other creatures through Arena or Ulvenwald Tracker, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite cards in this deck. I'm still looking to fit in one more efficient creature removal spell. Probably either Dismember or Snuff Out, though I am leaning towards Dismember since it kills Kaalia of the Vast.
This deck has been playing extremely well lately. The sheer card quality is so high that I always feel like I have a ton of options for what I want to do, and plenty of answers to nearly any situation. Sweeping the board is usually extremely profitable with Glissa online because I get so much value from returning all my artifacts to my hand, but sometimes she dies enough that I find myself not wanting to pay 7 or 9 mana for her. The only way around this that I can really think of is to make her indestructible, but the only efficient way I can see to do that would be Darksteel Plate, which may or may not be good enough to include. I really like the combo of Glissa, Plate, and O-Stone giving me a recurring board wipe every turn at instant speed, but outside of that it seems pretty mediocre since Glissa's combination of First Strike and Deathtouch, combined with protections from Swords and Swiftfoot Boots, keeps her safe from combat and most removal.
Added Dryad Arbor and Cabal Coffers. I'd like to squeeze one more land into the deck somewhere since a few of the lands, like Coffers, Arena, and Dryad Arbor, aren't great at producing mana, particularly if they are played early on. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth helps solve this problem, but I think just having the 37th land would further ensure the consistency of the land base. I'm not really sure what card I would want to cut though. Anyone have suggestions?
Added Dryad Arbor and Cabal Coffers. I'd like to squeeze one more land into the deck somewhere since a few of the lands, like Coffers, Arena, and Dryad Arbor, aren't great at producing mana, particularly if they are played early on. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth helps solve this problem, but I think just having the 37th land would further ensure the consistency of the land base. I'm not really sure what card I would want to cut though. Anyone have suggestions?
Moriok Replica, Garruk Relentless and Birthing Pod got me itching. How good has pod been for you? Looking at the list it looks kind of difficult for you to get a good chain going because you don't have that many creatures that benefit from dying or entering the battlefield. Moriok Replica seems kind of weak, I would probably autoswap it to Erebos. Garruk Relentless seems kind of weak to me, I'd probably play Garruk, Primal Hunter. Primal Hunter's second ability seems a lot better, especially in EDH.
Added Dryad Arbor and Cabal Coffers. I'd like to squeeze one more land into the deck somewhere since a few of the lands, like Coffers, Arena, and Dryad Arbor, aren't great at producing mana, particularly if they are played early on. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth helps solve this problem, but I think just having the 37th land would further ensure the consistency of the land base. I'm not really sure what card I would want to cut though. Anyone have suggestions?
Moriok Replica, Garruk Relentless and Birthing Pod got me itching. How good has pod been for you? Looking at the list it looks kind of difficult for you to get a good chain going because you don't have that many creatures that benefit from dying or entering the battlefield. Moriok Replica seems kind of weak, I would probably autoswap it to Erebos. Garruk Relentless seems kind of weak to me, I'd probably play Garruk, Primal Hunter. Primal Hunter's second ability seems a lot better, especially in EDH.
The thing with Moriok Replica is that it's actually more efficient than Erebos in both mana and life for the majority of uses:
Erebos's indestructibility is not hugely relevant since Replica is going to be going to the graveyard and coming back quite often anyway. The biggest weakness of Replica when compared to Erebos is his vulnerability to graveyard hate, which would probably be the main reason to switch them. Alternatively, I could just run Necropotence, which is far more efficient than either one in both mana and life, but requires me to wait until end of turn to actually get the cards into my hand, and also makes me skip my draw step. The triple black mana cost can be annoying, but I think this deck has the support to be able to cast it on turn 5 or 6 consistently, when it is most needed, if not on turn 3.
As for Garruk and Birthing Pod, I have actually found them both to be incredible value engines. Garruk is especially nice with tokens, allowing you to turn them into whatever creatures you need right now. This is really nice since my two biggest hitters (Wurmcoil Engine and Grave Titan) both produce tokens which can be used for future sacrifices. He's relatively easy to flip since there will usually be some smallish utility creatures to target, and if the board is empty, he can just start making 2/2 wolves to fill up your side. If push comes to shove, he can make a wolf and then fight it himself to transform. Pod behaves similarly. While it doesn't let me find any creature I want, it does put the creature directly into play, which saves me a lot of mana that I can then use to activate abilities or cast more spells. I have very strong creatures at every point in the curve, so Pod can always find me what I need most within a couple turns. Both of these effects are just insane when copied with Rings of Brighthearth, and they get amazing value when sacrificing artifact creatures that can be easily recurred, such as Solemn Simulacrum.
Oh baby. I can just imagine flashing in the Triangle with Shimmer Myr and using it on the Obliterator when mister ramp-and-stomp drops his Craterhoof Behemoth. Many tears will be drunk that day.
And for flavor fun Constant Mists. Works well with Crucible/life from the loam
Your mentioning of Jarad's Orders particularly intrigues me. It's a card that I use to great effect in my Mimeoplasm deck, but it didn't seem too great in this deck to me. I'm only running 4 artifact creatures, so tutoring a creature to the graveyard is often not that useful for me, and 4 mana is a lot to just search for a creature and put it into your hand. Care to offer any insight as to how you typically use it?
Making the deck competitive is tough for a number of reasons but I do have some suggestions. You don't have draw 7s (well Memory Jar I guess) so very explosive ramp isn't as good for you. You don't have mass LD so fast board presence + LD isn't going to work. No combo means you can't build "oops I win". Given all this I would recommend a Stax build that looks to grind out wins. Desolation, Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, maybe Static Orb, Exploration, Braids, Cabal Minion & Smokestack would be my starting point. Contamination lock is an option then dependent on you mana rocks you also have Ritual of Subdual and Infernal Darkness.
Making the deck competitive is tough for a number of reasons but I do have some suggestions. You don't have draw 7s (well Memory Jar I guess) so very explosive ramp isn't as good for you. You don't have mass LD so fast board presence + LD isn't going to work. No combo means you can't build "oops I win". Given all this I would recommend a Stax build that looks to grind out wins. Desolation, Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, maybe Static Orb, Exploration, Braids, Cabal Minion & Smokestack would be my starting point. Contamination lock is an option then dependent on you mana rocks you also have Ritual of Subdual and Infernal Darkness.
I might be able to run a little bit of LD or a combo, since it seems my group is potentially warming up to it a little. My friend build a Radha deck that runs Wildfire, Tectonic Break, Kedlon Firebombers, and Ember Swallower, and another player has a Momir Vig deck with a couple of infinite combos. I have also considered going the stax route, but I don't really know how to build a stax deck and I've never played one before. All the cards you mentioned seem good, but I feel like I would need more than just that to turn it into a full-on stax deck.
EE is pretty cool, but the problem is that I can never use it for more than 2, which misses most of the most popular EDH cards. If I was able to make a third color of mana, it would be a lot better. It is awesome against tokens, but right now the only tokens deck I commonly see is Prossh, which would just sac all the tokens for benefit anyway. I don't think Tombstone Stairwell would work very well for me since I don't run that many creatures, and the cumulative upkeep gets very costly pretty quickly. Also, the fact that you get the last usage out of it is a little bit annoying. I have used Karn before in other decks, but this deck doesn't really play artifacts with a high enough CMC to become effective creatures. He is cool as a backup Sydri in that deck, but I'm not a fan of him here. Vedalken Orrery and Shimmer Myr could be useful to let me recur and cast my bauble / spellbomb type cards on opponents' turns, but overall I don't think they do enough. O-Naginata is on my short list of things I need to get for this deck. Giving Glissa +3 power and trample for such a low cost likely turns her from a 7-hit kill into a 4-hit kill or better, depending on what other equipment I have out.
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Grisly Salvage looks like it could work, certainly worth testing.
Forbidden Orchard is nice. Helps with a T3 Glissa and gives your opponents guys to block with. Also enables Mindslaver lock if you ever want to do that.
Lotus Cobra and Spritmonger are strong cards, so they should be fine.
As for cuts, I was wondering about these:
Birds of Paradise - It does enable a T2 Glissa and could hold a sword, but it seems pretty weak in your list.
Disciple of Bolas - As you mentioned you are pretty low on creatures, I'm not sure how often you'd want to sac the ones you have out. Plus you have a lot of low power utility guys, so I could see Disciple drawing only 2-3 a lot.
Nylea, God of the Hunt - You don't have a ton of colored permanents to turn her on with. Glissa loves trample, but I feel you have enough equipment to grant trample/protection that you don't really need her.
Birthing Pod - Certainly an amazing card, I'm just not sure it's doing as much in this deck as it does in the more typical GB reanimator decks.
As for your card draw, what about Erebos, God of the Dead? You have lifegain from Loxodon Warhammer, SoWaP, Deathrite, Scavenging Ooze, and Wurmcoil Engine. Plus stopping opponent's from gaining life is never bad.
EDH Decks
BGGlissa, the TraitorGB
URTibor and LumiaRU
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticBUW
UBSygg, River CutthroatBU
RGXenagos, God of RevelsGR
UGVorel of the Hull CladeGU
GBSavra, Queen of the GolgariBG
URGMaelstrom WandererGRU
So it seems like you agree with at least trying out all of these. The most questionable one is definitely Grisly Salvage, but the rest seem to be really good options. Now for the cuts.
I really like Nylea, God of the Hunt and Birds of Paradise, so I am strongly leaning towards keeping those, but I am definitely willing to cut Disciple of Bolas, and I may have to find myself cutting Birthing Pod again. Even though it's on my favorite cards, I always seem to run too low on the ETB value creatures to be able to support it well enough.
Erebos seems pretty good for draw, since he's basically just a better version of Greed, being Indestructible, preventing opponents from gaining life, and with the potential to become a huge beater. This is a card that I am considering alongside Necropotence and Moonlight Bargain. Ultimately I will probably just end up choosing Necropotence since it's probably the single most powerful card drawing effect ever.
I like Keyrune for the added utility beyond just ramping. The ability for it to become a deathtouch blocker provides an awesome deterrent to attacks, especially since it will just trade and then come back if I have Glissa in play. It can also pick up some equipment and go on the offensive if I am really short on creatures to use said equipment otherwise.
I've also been considering adding Bow of Nylea. I happened to pull a foil one at the BNG prerelease, so I figured this was a great time to consider adding it in. The main benefit I see from it is the ability to give my attacking creatures deathtouch, which works extremely nicely with trample to get a lot of extra damage through. It can also gain life if I am worried about paying too much into a card like Necropotence, it can add +1/+1 counters to Glissa to help me finish people off more quickly, and the 2 damage to a flyer kills off a few relevant things, the obvious one being Kaalia of the Vast. Thoughts?
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
The list of commonly played cards with CMC 2 or less is pretty large. You can force SDT from the table, kill Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Survival, Rest in Peace (which makes its inclusion worthwhile on it's own), mana critters and utility dorks.
You get creatures every turn. And you don't play it for the tokens, but for the Glissa triggers.
Use it to kill opponent's non-creature artifacts to get Glissa triggers, and let equipment drop like its hot.
I like Revenge of the Hunted better than Enlarge, since it acts as a one sided board wipe if played on Glissa, and it can be cast with Miracle for just one mana. Enlarge is pretty expensive for nothing but a pump, and seems like it would be pretty dead if I don't have Glissa on the board. I think I would probably end up choosing something like Hunter's Prowess over either of them though, since it still grants a sizeable buff and trample, while also having the massive upside of drawing me up to 6 cards. The sorcery speed hurts it somewhat, so I don't know if I would run any of them. For the same amount of mana, I can play and equip a Sword, which not only gives a permanent buff, but also gives Glissa protection from two colors and adds two additional abilities whenever she connects, which should be every time with First Strike, Deathtouch, Protections, and often Trample as well.
With the Sylvan Primordial banning, I think I will swap him for Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, and while I'm at it I think I will add Sheoldred, Whispering One as well since she seems awesome for getting Glissa triggers and reanimating my own stuff as well for even more value. Both Trample and Swampwalk can be very relevant evasions in a deck with as much equipment as mine has.
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
My list has a self mill/graveyard/sacrifice subtheme. I abuse gravecrawler+sac outlet and play mortivore, nighthowler and bonehoard alongside survival and a few other things. It's hard to walk the line between combo and synergy, because I don't want to make the list OP in a somewhat casual play group.
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Fires Rf Salvation
Just for discussion, I don't play Mortivore and such creatures in my build because I have a huge focus on exiling graveyards. Also, I only run around 12 creatures, so Mortivore and the others, ideally, wouldn't get big enough.
It's a solid card for a Glissa list, and I could see trying to find a spot for it somewhere, but ulimately I like it much less than Executioner's Capsule, which lets me choose any non-black creature without having to worry about Glissa dying. I think I like the utility of Ulvenwald Tracker and Arena better as well. It's right there with Thornbite Staff and Viridian Longbow as cards that have nice synergy with Glissa and are almost good enough, but that I'm not running right now.
I don't think Mindslaver is nearly as bad as actual two card infinites that just straight-up win the game, but a lot of people probably would not enjoy being Mindslaver locked for several consecutive turns. If it gets down to a 1 on 1 match, then the combo will just end the game. As for graveyard sheanigans, I have played a few decks based on creature recursion in the not-so-distant past, so I'm trying to keep most of those elements out of this deck, unless they're just too good to pass up.
My build doesn't have a huge focus on exiling graveyards, but I do run my share of graveyard hate, and I am trying to stay away from playing a lot of creature recursion and such, instead focusing on Glissa's artifact recursion ability.
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Just put in an order to pick up a few of the things I still need for this deck, mainly Marsh Flats, Lotus Cobra, and Spirtmonger. I also picked up a Graveborn Muse to add in place of Disciple of Bolas. It seems like it would work nicely with stuff like Glissa and Grave Titan to draw some additional cards, and I'm trying to cut down on the ETB effects, especially with the banning of Sylvan Primordial, so that I can run Torpor Orb as an awesome foil to the ETB decks that are pretty commonly seen in my playgroup. I've already picked up O-Naginata and Grisly Salvage to try out as well, once I figure out what I want to take out.
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Disciple of Bolas -> Graveborn Muse
Swamp -> Marsh Flats
City of Brass -> Forbidden Orchard
Sylvan Primordial -> Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
Rune-Scarred Demon -> Sheoldred, Whispering One
Still looking to add Lotus Cobra, O-Naginata, Torpor Orb and Spiritmonger.
Also thinking about Thran Dynamo and Gilded Lotus to potentially ramp a bit harder.
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Your cut of Rune-Scarred Demon triggered something in my head: I tried RSD a while when I ran Deathrender. I don't like to pay full CMC for my cards, and Deathrender has a nice side-effect that it keeps people from playing sweepers. In that aspect it's better than Nim Deathmantle, which forces you to keep mana open. It's nice to recur a creature with Glissa and plop it on the table for free. It's also very good with Strionic Resonator. I wouldn't know what to cut though, but it's a nice trick you can keep in the back of your head for future deck tuning.
Perhaps you want to try Burnished Hart instead of Wood Elves.
I'm not a huge fan of Strionic Resonator outside of an ETB focused deck, and I'm actually trying to stay away from ETB for the most part with this deck. There are some cards, like Eternal Witness, which are just too good to pass up, but otherwise I don't want to run a lot of ETB creatures. I actually think Rings of Brighthearth might be better in my deck, having awesome synergy with cards like Birthing Pod, Trading Post, and Fetchlands. Deathrender feels a bit expensive to use for me. 4 mana to cast and then 2 to equip, and then I still have to rely on the equipped creature dying to get the trigger. It doesn't have great synergy with Glissa either, since she only triggers when opponents' creatures go to the graveyard. I also don't really have a lot of high CMC creatures to really take advantage of it multiple times, rather than just casting the creatures. I guess it could be cool with a sac outlet to put things into play at instant speed, but again, that's not really the kind of thing this deck does. Lastly, on Burnished Hart, I agree he would be pretty good with Glissa since he can be recurred a bunch of times and he provides some nice ramp. However, He's quite a bit more costly to use than Wood Elves, since you need 6 mana to play and activate him, and he puts both lands into play tapped, whereas Wood Elves costs only 3 and can get a land untapped, making it cost effectively only 2 mana. The biggest upside of making a change like that would be to reduce the number of ETB creatures by one so that I could feel a little more comfortable running Torpor Orb.
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Sheoldred, Whispering One -> Torpor Orb
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger -> Spiritmonger
Gaze of Granite -> Rings of Brighthearth
So I ended up cutting some of the more expensive cards to add more cards that play around with activated abilities or are just really efficient. Recurrable Torpor Orb will be amazing in my playgroup since there are so many ETB based decks, and I'm not running much ETB myself. Rings of Brighthearth should be nuts in this deck with the amount of strong activated abilities that I am running. Cobra gives me a lot of mana early on, especially with all of the fetches I am running. And Spiritmonger is just an awesome creature that dominates in combat and loves to fight other creatures through Arena or Ulvenwald Tracker, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite cards in this deck. I'm still looking to fit in one more efficient creature removal spell. Probably either Dismember or Snuff Out, though I am leaning towards Dismember since it kills Kaalia of the Vast.
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Moriok Replica, Garruk Relentless and Birthing Pod got me itching. How good has pod been for you? Looking at the list it looks kind of difficult for you to get a good chain going because you don't have that many creatures that benefit from dying or entering the battlefield. Moriok Replica seems kind of weak, I would probably autoswap it to Erebos. Garruk Relentless seems kind of weak to me, I'd probably play Garruk, Primal Hunter. Primal Hunter's second ability seems a lot better, especially in EDH.
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The thing with Moriok Replica is that it's actually more efficient than Erebos in both mana and life for the majority of uses:
Draw 2 cards: Replica (5 mana / 2 life), Erebos (8 mana, 4 life)
Draw 4 cards: Replica (10 mana / 4 life), Erebos (12 mana, 8 life)
Draw 6 cards: Replica (15 mana / 6 life), Erebos (16 mana, 12 life)
Draw 8 cards: Replica (20 mana / 8 life), Erebos (20 mana, 16 life)
Draw 10 cards: Replica (25 mana, 10 life), Erebos (24 mana, 20 life)
Erebos's indestructibility is not hugely relevant since Replica is going to be going to the graveyard and coming back quite often anyway. The biggest weakness of Replica when compared to Erebos is his vulnerability to graveyard hate, which would probably be the main reason to switch them. Alternatively, I could just run Necropotence, which is far more efficient than either one in both mana and life, but requires me to wait until end of turn to actually get the cards into my hand, and also makes me skip my draw step. The triple black mana cost can be annoying, but I think this deck has the support to be able to cast it on turn 5 or 6 consistently, when it is most needed, if not on turn 3.
As for Garruk and Birthing Pod, I have actually found them both to be incredible value engines. Garruk is especially nice with tokens, allowing you to turn them into whatever creatures you need right now. This is really nice since my two biggest hitters (Wurmcoil Engine and Grave Titan) both produce tokens which can be used for future sacrifices. He's relatively easy to flip since there will usually be some smallish utility creatures to target, and if the board is empty, he can just start making 2/2 wolves to fill up your side. If push comes to shove, he can make a wolf and then fight it himself to transform. Pod behaves similarly. While it doesn't let me find any creature I want, it does put the creature directly into play, which saves me a lot of mana that I can then use to activate abilities or cast more spells. I have very strong creatures at every point in the curve, so Pod can always find me what I need most within a couple turns. Both of these effects are just insane when copied with Rings of Brighthearth, and they get amazing value when sacrificing artifact creatures that can be easily recurred, such as Solemn Simulacrum.
Anyone have thoughts on Dismember vs Murder?
EDIT: I guess Hero's Downfall is strictly better than Murder, so compare that against Dismember instead.
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Other cards that I run:
Shimmer Myr
Harvester of souls
Soul of the Harvest
Mind stone
Jarad's Orders
Azusa, lost but seeking
Codex Shredder
Dreamstone Hedron
And for flavor fun Constant Mists. Works well with Crucible/life from the loam
BRGWTana and TymnaBRGW
RTeneb, the EternalR
UBRNekusar, Mind RazerUBR
Rakdos, Lord of Riots
BGWGhave, Guru of SporesBGW
Aurelia, the Warleader
BDrana, Kalastria BloodchiefB
WBROros, the AvengerWBR
Oh baby. I can just imagine flashing in the Triangle with Shimmer Myr and using it on the Obliterator when mister ramp-and-stomp drops his Craterhoof Behemoth. Many tears will be drunk that day.
Your mentioning of Jarad's Orders particularly intrigues me. It's a card that I use to great effect in my Mimeoplasm deck, but it didn't seem too great in this deck to me. I'm only running 4 artifact creatures, so tutoring a creature to the graveyard is often not that useful for me, and 4 mana is a lot to just search for a creature and put it into your hand. Care to offer any insight as to how you typically use it?
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Making the deck competitive is tough for a number of reasons but I do have some suggestions. You don't have draw 7s (well Memory Jar I guess) so very explosive ramp isn't as good for you. You don't have mass LD so fast board presence + LD isn't going to work. No combo means you can't build "oops I win". Given all this I would recommend a Stax build that looks to grind out wins. Desolation, Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, maybe Static Orb, Exploration, Braids, Cabal Minion & Smokestack would be my starting point. Contamination lock is an option then dependent on you mana rocks you also have Ritual of Subdual and Infernal Darkness.
I might be able to run a little bit of LD or a combo, since it seems my group is potentially warming up to it a little. My friend build a Radha deck that runs Wildfire, Tectonic Break, Kedlon Firebombers, and Ember Swallower, and another player has a Momir Vig deck with a couple of infinite combos. I have also considered going the stax route, but I don't really know how to build a stax deck and I've never played one before. All the cards you mentioned seem good, but I feel like I would need more than just that to turn it into a full-on stax deck.
GUB [Retired Primer] The Mimeoplasm BUG
Modern: UR Storm RU
Cube: WUBRG Pauper Cube GRBUW
Credit for the banner goes to DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios