This is a cooperative build between Tryno & ISBPathfinder.
From when Squee, the Immortal was spoiled, we were trying to figure out if there was a way to abuse and build him. It took a while to come up with a build concept that seemed like it would work but here we are and yes, it definitely seems to work. This deck functions like a combo (non infinties) deck with a secondary goal to control the game long enough to go off. Both of us prefer to not build for infinite combo and while you could build for infinites most of them are infinites that could go in any red deck and don't seem to be all that squee focused.
This build has a handful of concepts behind the build. Our focuses tend to be:
Looking at our objectives above, you can see our goal is really to chain gun Squee. Getting up to mana, reducing the cost per cast, and making him entering and leaving play matter is really the goal of this deck. Once you get spinning up its not unheard of to be able to loop squee on the upper end of 10+ times in a turn. In my meta this deck is known as the Squee Cannon.
Cloud Key -> Honor-Worn Shaku It is true that both could be run but I still think there is a diminishing return on an over abundance of cost reducers since we really only need one at a time. There is an advantage to Honor-Worn Shaku in that it can be used for mana for artifacts still and really should be at least a Worn Powerstone level artifact here with the possibility to be a cost reducer as well for looping squee. Great call from imdehaven.
5/19/18:
Hoarding Dragon -> Tormenting Voice: There was the question of how much we wanted any one artifact. Paying five mana and needing a sac outlet when we won't really be abusing creatures is a little awkward. Instead we wanted to move some cheap filter into the list and see if it helps move the list along.
Heirloom Blade -> Wild Guess: The blade proved to be kind of a lot of mana to play and then equip each time. There is some value to it but it is fairly specific in what it gets and we only have so many goblins in the list.
Godo, Bandit Warlord -> Cathartic Reunion: Godo was in here almost 100% to get skullclamp and we just were not sure that we could justify the cost to get just that one card. There are a few others like Sword of the Animist but by the time you get to 6 mana to cast godo it looks less appealing to pay 6 mana to go get it.
Vedalken Orrery -> Pirate's Pillage: Sometimes having mass flash / haste is huge. This list just did not seem to care as much as some of the other mono red projects we had done previously and giving up a card to have flash seems a little risky given how much hate it brings down on itself. I love Orrery but its a question of if it pulls the weight of the hate it brings to itself and in this list I was not sure that it would justify a card drawn. The fact that Pirate's Pillage costs 3R instead of RR like Wild Guess is actually an advantage as it means we can filter colorless mana and or store mana between turns. I think its one of the cooler filters of late and I want to give it a shot.
Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician -> Azor's Gateway: Ib is really cool and there are a lot of things where landing Ib can end the game for you. My problem was more that every time I drew him he was bad. He seems like a goblin that you tutor for when he is right and any other time I saw him he was just something that rotted in hand. There totally are times where you might be sitting on a boardstate where resolving him and his tokens ends the game I just had a hard time making room for him right now given that it was a very specific setup for him to work out.
Goblin Welder -> Faithless Looting: Most of our artifacts are good but they are value over time artifacts. Some of them are better than others but the welder is slow and a big target. I found him to be slow and rather reactive in this list where I tend to like him more when there are proactive things I want to be doing with him. The way I was trying to use him here made it a question of if something like Daretti, Scrap Savant.
Knollspine Dragon -> Bontu's Monument: Knollspine was just so expensive to cast and very winmore in that he usually seemed good if the deck was doing good. Bontu's Monument should act like another Impact Tremmors with the difference being its interaction with tokens to which we only have Krenko and Siege Gang left in the list that make tokens. Overall I think it should be a similar effect and the little bit of lifegain on the monument might make a difference.
Expedition Map -> Aetherflux Reservoir: I just found that there was not as much utility to the landbase as I wanted to play the map. When I run the map I generally want there to be a high priority land like a big mana land or something to speed me into action faster and I am not convinced that there is a nonbasic we need enough to run the map. Nykthos is probably the biggest hit we have and even when I was doing well this last week it was never tapping for more than like 6 I think at its highest. I think there is room to play sort of a Squee storm based plan with the Reservoir. We don't have much to recover life and the ability to fire up a bunch of lifegain and then fire the cannon off to kill players is a real thing for this deck.
Helm of Possession -> Scrabbling Claws: Overall, we had some concerns with how much mana it was for the helm as well to use it. Beyond that we need something to sac and something to sac the creature we steal to because most of my experiences with this card is that it gets answered the turn it gets played. We have lots of goblin sac outlets but lots of those won't transfer all that well to a card like this. Scrabbling Claws is a cheap cantrip that also serves an important role.
Golden Guardian -> Thermopod: I love Golden Guardian and I think its a really cool card. That said, the fact that our creatures are small means we need a small creature to fight and kill and then a sac outlet to throw it to. Its an interesting card but this might not be the best list for it. Thermopod seems a bit expensive to cast but its an effect I find myself wanting more of.
Divergent Transformations -> Tuktuk Scrapper: when we brought in the transformations I thought that I would want to use it on squee more than it turned out I did. We run a lot of funky little goblins that sometimes need the right timing. Overall I just found myself not that impressed with it. Tuktuk Scrapper might not seem huge but we have a ton of ways to tutor for it which I think I am more interested in than the ability to value shatter multiple artifacts.
City of Shadows -> Scavenger Grounds: I drew and had some issues with the city. Early in the game I had other things I was trying to do and city requires a lot of attention to bring up to speed. The turn you play it you can't get any mana out of it and given we are not really a token deck it has the problem that every time you use it you need to cast another creature (probably squee). The amount of negative tempo it has is actually sort of staggering when I actually had it in hand I found I could never play it over another land. The one time I got it early I also happened to have Squee equipped up with a Sword of the Animist and the additional cost to re equip to trigger my land there was just not going to happen. I had thought that City would be better early but I found that its just overall too much negative tempo without a commander like Derevi, Empyrial Tactician who can untap it to use it multiple times in a turn. I was a bit surprised that there really seemed to be very little graveyard dependence that I had with hits deck so adding Scavenger Grounds takes up very little room in the list but it gives me an emergency answer to graveyard abuse.
Mountain -> Flamekin Village: I think there is a little bit of wiggle room to toy with some different land configs. The village does ETB tapped but it still gives red and we have three creatures (Goblin Sharpshooter, Krenko, Mob Boss, and Moggcatcher) that care about haste. I noticed in some situations I was hesitant to play them without haste or flash. I think its a small concession to make this swap as the ETB tapped doesn't hurt me much as I don't have much of it and being a nonbasic land only matters slightly on 2/3 of the mana doublers.
5/29/18:
Tuktuk Scrapper -> Shard Phoenix I saw the scrapper a few times and while yes, there are artifacts that need to die, I seemed to never be able to cast it instead of wheeling it for something else and it was never appropriate for me to tutor the card. There are artifacts that need to die, the problem is partially that the way in which we win is so rarely reliant on an artifact going away. Grafdigger's Cage is one of very few artifacts I could name that would be a big problem for this deck to get past but I see it so rarely (essentially never) that I would have a hard time making room for an answer until and unless someone started countering me with it.
Reforge the Soul -> Chandra, Flamecaller I had a slow start one game and I had to spend most of my turn casting Reforge the Soul not as a miracle and it was literally.... the slowest and worst feeling I had. Chandra, Flamecaller feels a little better in that if I am behind and getting trained by my opponents I can cast her as a psudo sweeper. The fact that she is a little versatile between sweeper and draw / filter seems nice.
Blasting Station -> Blasphemous Act Blasting Station was one of my lower tier sac outlets and I found that maybe I didn't need it. Its still a decent card I just felt it was lower tier for me in my needs right now and the tempo of Blasphemous Act seems great as I can sweep the board for cheap and keep moving.
Faithless Looting -> Ensnaring Bridge - I do like Faithless Looting but it is technically card disadvantage in favor of filter. I need more ways to slow the game down and Ensnaring Bridge seems like a great way to do that. There is still some concern about the bridge conflicting with Door of Destinies or to a lesser degree Homura, Human Ascendant but I would say 95% of the time the way this deck does its damage and kills people is not through means of combat damage.
1 Mountain -> Thawing Glaciers I realized that I need to just keep hitting my land drops as the game goes on and Thawing seems like a good way to do that. It seems like I often have some trouble hitting lands when it gets to 5+ sometimes just due to not drawing enough cards and I think the value of thawing will be good. I like how in an opening hand I can use T1 and T2 on it and still land squee on curve. It just gives me another means of stretching my value for this deck which tends to be more of a mid - late game combo that requires a bunch of mana to work.
6/1/18:
Krenko, Mob Boss -> Thaumatic Compass - I noticed a continued trend that I always felt that Krenko was too slow for the list. Really I don't run haste or flash for the most part and without having either of those I have not wanted it most every time I have drawn this card. I don't really have a lot of ways to boost my goblin count either so it really came down to a question of if I could opening hand it or not which every time I saw it I found I had better things to do. Thaumatic Compass can be handy in that when it flips, it flips to be ramp and a potential removal tool. The cost to use the maze effect seems very affordable. I tried out Mysifying Maze even though it never made the list my issue was constantly the fact that the cost to use it was too high given how many threats constantly come my direction.
Moggcatcher -> Vance's Blasting Cannons moggcatcher has the same issue as Krenko in being that he is something that people should panic remove and I don't have much to haste / flash to enable him to the point that he feels like a good play. Vance's Blasting Cannons is a card that made a very early list of ours for squee but we cut it not knowing if we could chain cast well enough. I like that if its drawn early its card advantage and as it makes it later it turns into ramp / removal. Being that we repeat cast squee as part of what we do I think we have the consistancy to flip this like I want. It seems like a really cool card and I would love to see what it can do.
Shard Phoenix -> Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - so, really I love everything about ugin other than his cost. Everything else about him seems like what I want for my removal suite. His flexibility and the fact that he often stays in play after you use him the first turn as a sweeper is the reason I am running him over All is Dust. We are also cutting a lot of the creatures in this change so our colorless effects are a bit higher with this change and things like Managorger Hydra make me want to just punt it through the window when I am playing squee.
Siege-Gang Commander -> Inspiring Statuary I have seen siege gang show up in my hand a few times now and I have yet to cast it. Given that we often use squee as blast fodder it seems like the bodies to block and clog up the field is kind of covered to some extent by squee already. The cost to play and use the gang in a turn is kind of high as well not to mention that its 2 mana to do 2 damage which feels a little so so on top of the cost to cast them upfront. I just have not been finding myself liking the gang that much right now. Inspiring Statuary seems interesting to me because so few of our artifacts actually tap to do things so this seems like a potential to provide quite a bit of mana in a turn. I want to try this out at least but its also possible that something like Thran Dynamo might be a little more stable but I want to test this out and see how it runs. I can think of a lot of games where I sit with 2-4 artifacts in play and need to cast some sort of squee enabler before looping squee.
Kher Keep -> Thespian's Stage Kher Keep has been..... not really what I need given that most of the time that a token might do anything I can loop suqee for less mana than the keep. I want to try out the stage in part because it can still copy basic lands in a pinch but there is the remote chance that I copy Lost Vale which is non legendary. There is also the chance that I copy someone else's Nykthos or Coffers if an Urborg is in play.
Flamekin Village -> Mountain being that we are cutting a lot of our things that would have cared about haste, we are also moving to a basic land which has the potential to double off a mana doubler. It also removes an ETB tapped land which is probably not the end of the world for a control / combo list but I guess every little bit of efficiency I will take.
6/17/18:
Impact Tremors -> Gate to the Afterlife I do like impact tremmors but my concern is often that its impact is such that it needs to live for somewhat of a long time for me to feel it pays off so the impact is slow to add up and often it needs to live a long time or be added onto another card for it to add up. Gate to the Afterlife is really really strong filter and the bit of lifegain. The difference to me is that Gate can stall and get me to a stronger card while Impact Tremmors needs to live a long time and or be combined with another effect.
Inspiring Statuary -> Mana Geyser I am just trying out a few ramp options. I think the potential of the burst of mana with Geyser could be strong for a big play turn.
Wild Guess -> Outpost Siege I have had some conflicting results with Outpost Siege in the past but I can actually see both sides of it being potentially appropriate in here. The draw seems a bit better than the pings but I want to test it at least.
6/20/18:
Tormenting Voice -> Chain Reaction I wanted to pick up another wrath effect and it seems like right now Chain Reaction might be more appropriate from the standpoint of casting cost and effect. I just need to slow people down more and I am not seeing the wraths I run quite frequent enough right now. I have been noticing with my cheap filter that often they are not quite good enough in that a lot of my deck has the same kind of function and I don't gain benefit from my graveyard much with this deck.
Interesting concept! Seems like Mana Echoes is something you might want to be doing. Pair it with Gemstone Array and a couple goblins and you got all the red mana you'd ever need.
Interesting concept! Seems like Mana Echoes is something you might want to be doing. Pair it with Gemstone Array and a couple goblins and you got all the red mana you'd ever need.
So when we were first making the list I mentioned Mana Echoes as a consideration but we determined that it didn't fit well for the following reasons:
1. It would push the deck towards combo, which is done better in other colors and we don't want to pursue
2. You need mana upfront to 'cheapen' spells
3. You need other goblins to generate mana
4. There are cheaper cost reducers
5. There are cost reducers that do more for the mana cost
Gemstone Array also wouldn't fit as it increases mana costs instead of reducing and most of the mana generated is colored. So beside pairing it with Mana Echoes, it would be a dead card.
Sadly, the two together is brittle. It requires a sac outlet, and at least 5 other goblins (ignoring mana producing sac outlets) to be fully infinite. Add that to the fact you need to add a win condition for the infinite to do anything means you need a minimum of 5 cards in total (Win condition + Ashnod's Altar + Siege-Gang Commander + Mana Echoes + Gemstone Array) to win at sorcery speed. Overall, it is just brittle.
There is also the question of what the combo pieces do for the deck outside of the combo as sometimes you just need your combo pieces to do something for you. Mana Echoes can be decent in that it could help cast artifacts and or more expensive cards like Vicious Shadows but we don't have a lot of colorless mana dumps. It can serve as a cost reduction effect of sorts but it only provides colorless. Overall, its probably an ok card and it probably could make the list on its own merit but I still felt it required some build up and it still seems a little challenging to get all that much value out of its colorless mana as the deck is now. Gemstone Array on the other hand..... is not a very good card outside of setting up that combo.
There is also the question of why to include that combo specifically. The Array is not very good outside of assembling both cards (an artifact and an enchantment can be challenging to get together) where as instead you could run Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combos which would be much easier to tutor for as well as being generally more universally useful. Kiki + Lightning Crafter for example are both goblin tutorable and only require a sac outlet to go infinite.
So, in part I guess if you are going to go infinite I guess the biggest question is what combos you do want to run. I am not really keen on playing mono red as a combo deck because in my mind if you are playing combo then why should your opponents not also do the same? Your ability to interact with an opposing combo deck is just not going to be so great so I would rather instead not go infinite and win via attrition tactics. That is just my own take on things though.
I am still kind of kicking around the idea of Bontu's Monument & Oketra's Monument for the list. My overall goal is to generate value on casting squee and I see room for both effects still. I made sure to add them to my order for cards for this deck and I think I might be able to squeeze them in. Bontu's Monument is a little less effective than Impact Tremors in that it does not trigger on tokens. Oketra's Monument has the downside that the tokens are not goblin or red so the tokens probably miss out on a lot of the buffing but.... it might still give several tokens / turn.
I will agree that Gemstone Array is some fringe-situationally-useful jank. The Mana Echoes still seems legit. I didn't get the impression the deck was going for infinites and I think you are running enough goblins and sac outlets to get value from the enchantment. I see the deck is light on the mana rocks but maybe something like Honor-Worn Shaku would get some good mileage.
I will agree that Gemstone Array is some fringe-situationally-useful jank. The Mana Echoes still seems legit. I didn't get the impression the deck was going for infinites and I think you are running enough goblins and sac outlets to get value from the enchantment. I see the deck is light on the mana rocks but maybe something like Honor-Worn Shaku would get some good mileage.
I think there are still several concerns with Mana Echoes. The list as it stands has 14 other goblins but only three of them produce tokens and Ib Halfheart is really only a token maker in an all in situation or a situation that resolving the tokens will end the game. It counts other creatures with the same type so when Squee hits play I need to have other goblins for it to produce mana. Assuming that I have 1-2 other goblins then its probably just a worse cost reducer in that it costs 4 mana and is situational to essentially cost reduce for squee. If you have 3+ other goblins it probably is stronger than a cost reduction effect except for the fact that it costs RR to cast and needs setup so it may be slower still.
Overall, my concern is how much mana it costs, the setup it requires, as well as the question of where to dump excess mana to. If I had more mana dumps I think it would be more appropriate but I just see it as this questionable card that seems to require more setup and its return is also probably wasted assuming I am making a bunch of mana with it.
Honor-Worn Shaku - thats a good call I totally overlooked that that may be really nice here. It is probably actually better than Cloud Key in retrospect. The number of cost reduction effects is something that can be overdone so its been tricky to say exactly how many to run. Squee costs 1RR so colorless mana and colorless mana reduction only go so far for the goal here. I do think that Honor-Worn Shaku is a good catch though and I will have to try to pick up a copy. Offhand I think replacing Cloud Key might be the most appropriate.
The overall mana stones.... well we have cost reduction and mana doublers as well as land ramp. I would not say that it has a low count but a lot of what is being run is a bit non traditional. Overall though there is a good 15+ effects that cost reduce, double mana production, or ramp lands.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I only mentioned the mana rocks because Squee's new toy has got to be Paradox Engine. I know that card combos with everything.. Anyways, you bring up a good point about colorless mana reducers. Maybe a Mycosynth Lattice could help. You can throw in a Krark-Clan Ironworks
and Genesis Chamberfor good measure. The Welder would appreciate it and your opponents will love Vandalblast and Shattering Spree (when you put them in).
Cloud Key -> Honor-Worn Shaku It is true that both could be run but I still think there is a diminishing return on an over abundance of cost reducers since we really only need one at a time. There is an advantage to Honor-Worn Shaku in that it can be used for mana for artifacts still and really should be at least a Worn Powerstone level artifact here with the possibility to be a cost reducer as well for looping squee. Great call from imdehaven.
I only mentioned the mana rocks because Squee's new toy has got to be Paradox Engine. I know that card combos with everything.. Anyways, you bring up a good point about colorless mana reducers. Maybe a Mycosynth Lattice could help. You can throw in a Krark-Clan Ironworks
and Genesis Chamberfor good measure. The Welder would appreciate it and your opponents will love Vandalblast and Shattering Spree (when you put them in).
Paradox Engine - it was a thing I did consider but there are still some problems with it. You really need something that produces RR at the least or you get into a more complex situation where you need Skirk Prospector or Phyrexian Altar. Ultimately the colorless mana return possibilities of the engine did not seem to appeal all that much circling back to questioning if we have all that much for mana dumps other than casting Squee which is red mana intensive. Gilded Lotus was one of the few colored mana stone that I felt was all that good here as most every other I could come up with only gives a single mana per tap and really did not feel like it was all that good in this list in comparison. Our goal was also not to build for infinities so it came back to an issue where we did not actually feel that Gilded Lotus was great in the list and it was one of the few stones we actually wanted for the engine (assuming we did want to combo). If you use a bunch of colorless mana with the engine you need a colorless mana dump that potentially draws you cards so that you can draw to more action or you run out of the ability to untap.
Mycosynth Lattice - its both bold, interesting, and terrifying. My issue is that its such a risky card that I almost never want to cast it unless there is a followup behind it that ends the game on the spot. I am not saying I would not play Vandalblast or Shattering Spree but I don't love the idea of including them as some sort of crazy MLD effect. It gets back to just the kind of social deck that we are aiming for and while I am fine casting those spells I would not want to pair it with the Lattice. Lattice is really interesting from the perspective of squee but its important to keep in mind that cost reduction effects can still only strip the 1 on squee even with this in play. It is true that you could use a cost reduction effect + Honor-Worn Shaku with this card but I think its still a very bold and risky card that probably needs a lot of setup to do much.
Krark-Clan Ironworks - I did consider it and its more likely you are referring to it in relation to Mycosynth Lattice. I think that outside of the situation of pairing it with Mycosynth Lattice it seems a little weak. Most of the artifacts in the list are ones I am trying to stick for an over time effect. In my mind it circles back to the question of if you want to infinite combo and then there is the question of how good and how much mana those two cards together cost as well as both being artifacts (hard to tutor).
Genesis Chamber - It was in the consideration list. I am aware of the fondness of this card for Norin the Wary players and we almost ran Norin ourselves except that we did not feel we had quite enough ETB triggers that hit him to justify him. Given that we are more of a cast based deck especially for noncreatures I felt that Oketra's Monument was stronger (and its still in consideration with me). The only upside I can really see of Genesis Chamber over Oketra's Monument is specifically if we include Norin the Wary. The monument does not give opponents tokens and the only real downside being that it costs one more to cast.
Vandalblast and Shattering Spree - both are good cards and may be worth considering for this list. Generally for mono red my preference is towards the spree just due to its challenge to counterspell. I generally try to build in such a way that pushes proactive interaction heavier from the get go and then I shift and add more removal and balance things out a little more after I get to test things. Part of this is just so that I can see what is working and in what means before I worry about stopping my opponents. This helps me figure out if a deck concept can possibly work before I worry about balancing it too much. It also gives me a little more room to test and see what is working and what is not before balancing things out. It is also relevant to mention that these effects while powerful are very specific in what they interact with which can sometimes be a problem. I could instead include something like Ugin, All is Dust, Oblivion Stone, or some sort of creature sweeper / removal instead. I don't disagree that these cards are powerful but what if you topdeck one of these cards while facing down an Elesh Norn. I am not trying to belittle this removal or any other with this statement I am just saying that in some ways it lacks flexability and it assumes that opponents artifacts are what will be the problem. It is easier for me to make room for Fiery Confluence in a sense because it has more flexibility in what it can do even if it can only destroy three artifacts at the most, generally speaking anything beyond the third target is going to be not really that big of a concern in my opinion.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I figured if you went the Paradox Engine route you'd drop the reducers in favor of red rocks. I do think your current list is more reliable and efficient for what you are trying to do, given red has little in the ways of artifact tutoring.
You bring up a fair, and very true, point about the Lattice. I was mistaken on it's effect with the reducers. It certainly is a risky card, but i have found it somewhat deters sweepers like Shatterstorm or variants. Given the points you've made, not including it is probably the right choice.
On removal, I jam as much as I can afford into my decks. The cheaper the better. I know there will be bigger targets than artifacts over the course of a game but we are limited with our interactivity here... Unless we get creative!
Lastly, all those sac outlets are screaming for an Insurrection. Maybe could even invite Thermopod to the party.
Lastly, all those sac outlets are screaming for an Insurrection. Maybe could even invite Thermopod to the party.
So we actually did talk about Insurrection a little bit, I do think it fits in the deck fairly well. We might need to take a look at what could be cut for it at the moment. I think we might have to cut something like Helm of Possession for it though. Insurrection is a win condition that combines with our sacrifice effects well and Helm of Possession allows us control and the ability to steal a creature that generates value. ISBPathfinder and I will need to talk more on that one.
I did not know that card existed. With how much I have been whining about lacking colored mana from our sources, Thermopod looks somewhat decent. I am pretty concerned by his mana cost combined with the fact he is a creature though. We will need to mull that one over a bit as well.
I know the slug is expensive, especially compared to the prospector. But he's also a 4/3 and another warstorm surge, impact tremors, Purphoros proc. He might be worth it if stealing opponents creatures become a theme. How has playtesting gone?
I figured if you went the Paradox Engine route you'd drop the reducers in favor of red rocks. I do think your current list is more reliable and efficient for what you are trying to do, given red has little in the ways of artifact tutoring.
You bring up a fair, and very true, point about the Lattice. I was mistaken on it's effect with the reducers. It certainly is a risky card, but i have found it somewhat deters sweepers like Shatterstorm or variants. Given the points you've made, not including it is probably the right choice.
On removal, I jam as much as I can afford into my decks. The cheaper the better. I know there will be bigger targets than artifacts over the course of a game but we are limited with our interactivity here... Unless we get creative!
Lastly, all those sac outlets are screaming for an Insurrection. Maybe could even invite Thermopod to the party.
Insurrection - yea I should probably work it in. There is some concern still in how many of the sac outlets work on any creature type rather than "sacrifice a goblin". It looks like about half of my sac outlets as it stands are goblin based sac and that means that 3 of our sac outlets in the deck could take a swarm of opponents creatures and grind them up. Its also an expensive card to cast. I think for now I might wait to get more testing before I really give it more consideration one way or another. I considered swapping it in for Helm of Possession after reading your comment but I think I still have some concern with how few of our sac outlets can turn this into a wrath yet.
Thermopod - wow I did not know that was a card lol. I still have concerns with the fact that its kind of expensive and its creature stat line really suck for a 5 drop but..... its a desirable effect for this deck. I suppose I should make room for it and at least test it.
I know the slug is expensive, especially compared to the prospector. But he's also a 4/3 and another warstorm surge, impact tremors, Purphoros proc. He might be worth it if stealing opponents creatures become a theme. How has playtesting gone?
Right now I managed to get two poor test games in. I drove an two hours round trip on Friday to try to play and found out the hard way that the store that used to do commander is closing and they decided with them closing they no longer wanted to stay open late enough for people to play on Fridays. On the upside though I found out that a store closer to me just opened like a week ago so I am going to try to go and get some better testing this Wednesday.
The two poor games of testing I did today were 1v1 games vs a newer player with a casual budget Prossh deck. I guess I can give kind of a rundown on the two games. It more resembled me goldfishing than anything.
Game Highlights:
Game 1:
I curved Squee into play and followed it up with Goblin Warchief & Goblin Chirurgeon the turn after. I had four lands in my opening hand and proceeded to never again draw a land (in 8+ turns). I played Heirloom Blade and buffed Squee to do some beat downs. Both of us stalled on land drops and my opponent gave up after several turns of beat down squee.
This game felt like I probably needed more shuffling. I shuffled up a bit better and gave it another test.
Right now, I guess I don't have much for feedback yet as my test games were in a 1v1 against a somewhat casual deck but ultimately I still felt it was an ok test of goldfishing. I really liked the goblin package and the Goblin Recruiter + Goblin Ringleader combo seemed fun especially with Skirk Prospector & Goblin Warchief feeling like it gives me some options. The games I had so far really were not good tests for a lot of reasons but I am hoping that I can get some better feedback this week when I get a chance to play some multiplayer (ideally against people with some better decks for testing purposes).
Right now though Heirloom Blade, Helm of Possession, and Vedalken Orrery are all on a list of cards I am a little uncertain of. I want to make a few adjustments but I don't really have them nailed down right now. I also need to do more testing to really figure out what I need. Offhand from the little bit of testing I did I wanted more card advantage. I will wait to get more testing later this week to make changes and hopefully put in an order.
EDIT: Tryno and I talked for a good bit last night and we came up with a list of cards we thought might be on our short list of cards that could possibly be replaced (the result of this discussion was made into a list under the decklist in the OP). I think there may still be some really good gems we have overlooked as well but for now we might also look into some of the cheap hand fixing cards like Tormenting Voice and such. The number of high mana cost cards we have in the list is also concerning to me so we may try to address that moving forward. I should get more testing in in a few days at which point I hope to have some better feedback and try to make some changes.
OOOOOOOOK, so I got to go and play three games of squee last night. Before that though, Tryno and I have been discussing over the last few days some concerns towards some of the weaker includes in the deck and the merit of running some filter like Wild Guess and such over some of the weaker includes. While these cards have no card advantage to them, they let us manipulate and control our hands some in ways that are useful. Early in a game we could move 6+ drops in favor of more early game. Later in the game we could move lands, or duplicate cost reducers / sac outlets to be other cards. For the most part I really only need about one sac outlet and one cost reducer in play at a time given the concern of being swept so its possible for those effects to build up and or sit stagnant in my hand. Having more filter lets us control that a bit better but I think we need to keep our counts up for now to make sure we have access to those effects still.
From here it gets a little foggy. I have some ramp being Burnished Hart and I draw Wayfarer's Bauble as well and I try to resolve them in the next few turns. Xenagos plays a T5 Kalonian Hydra and we just have no answers for it. 2-3 turns later we all die to the hydra beat downs. I did manage to get a Mystifying Maze online and save myself one turn but then Swiftfoot Boots put me down the next turn.
So, I guess this showed that fast aggro can suck. It is possible that creature removal might have been able to keep me alive but this is assuming I would have found it in time. Both of the hydras gave sort of an inevitable problem threat given their trample and continuous scaling up. The fact that it was a 3 player game also put me at a disadvantage in that there were less players and aggressive decks.
This game...... was kind of ridiculous and dumb for me. I did play a game of Teshar between this game and the previous game of squee which I did win via a T1 Serra Ascendant and some shenanigans that made me 25 flying spirits at instant speed. That said.... Karlov seemed to want to kill me lol.
T1: Karlov plays Authority of the Consuls. I play a land and pass.
T2: Karlov plays his commander whom immediately becomes a 4/4. I play a land and pass.
T3: Karlov plays Soul Warden & Blood Artist turning his commander into a 10/10 and hits me. I play Squee who comes in tapped due to Authority of the Consuls. Everyone plays a creature this turn suping Karlov up. Xenagos plays Reclimation Sage killing Authority of the Consuls (after my turn on their turn 4).
T4: Karlov swings and kills me. I literally played 3 lands and squee whom came in tapped and then died... he was just shy of being able to one shot Yedris at the time and Xenegos got a T2 creature in play.
So.... honestly Karlov got a dumb start and decided to screw me over bad. I can't really say much about that. From there Yidris had spot removal for Karlov which he did 2-3 times which seemed to start immediately after I died. The game went on for another 45 minutes to hour and Karlov eventually won via life siphoning.
From here there the game went slowly. I kept attacking with squee to get free lands while GAAIV counterspelled most things. I ended up eating 2x Arcane Denial (snapcastered it back) and some sort of negate like effect. My Mind's Eye, Burning Vengeance, and some other card I cant recall got countered. I did manage to keep Hazoret's Monument and Phyrexian Altar.
When at last GAAIV tapped out to steal Yedris' commander and play some things I pushed and resolved The Immortal Sun + Stalking Vengeance. GAAIV cloned my Stalking Vengeance and seemed to tap out again doing things.
On my next turn I took GAAIV from the mid 30s to 2 life leaving squee up at the end (Squee was R to cast thanks to two cost reducers + Phyrexian Altar and was a 3/2). GAAIV tried to use Angel of Condemnation to exile my Stalking Vengeance until it left play and I killed them in response with squee.
Breya, Etherium Shaper finally got his commander into play. He had played Ashnod's Altar a few turns earlier and used Goblin Welder to swap one of his artifacts in for his Sword of the Meek before rezing it back in off his commander. Yidris got his commander back from GAAIV when they died and he hooked him up with Helm of the Host which let him attack me for something like 15 and do a bunch of cascade shenanigans. He managed to get a Chaos Warp and he turned my Stalking Vengeance into a Cloud Key (I still have not gotten its replacement yet).
I got Flayer of the Hatebound and used it to chaingun my opponents threats. Breya had the option to sac out his entire board to try to kill Flayer the two times but he instead opted to keep his Skullclamp + Ashnod's Altar as everything else died. Breya did kill the Flayer once though and Yedris killed it the second time on his turn.
I ended up wrapping the game up in the next few turns with Impact Tremors. I ended up playing like 3-4 things that were all going to end them in the last turn and they did not have a way to stop them from killing them.
Overall, the game two was something I will just sort of dismiss. In game one I guess removal could have been good but most of the red removal would have had to been timed just right to matter. Game three was great and I would say the MVP of game three was some combination of Hazoret's Monument and Phyrexian Altar. I did not mention it but I probably filtered at least 20 or more cards with Hazoret's Monument through the course of the game.
Tryno put together some changes but I think I will talk with him a little more as well as run over them too before I finalize them. We are adding a lot more filtering to the list because there was a big disparity between the better cards and some of the weaker ones. There is a list of change log that tryno identified in the OP for now but I want to discuss a few more cards a little yet before we lock them in.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
So, I got some testing in earlier this week and I did some talking to Tryno (he still does not have his cards with him since he moved) about how it was playing for me. There were a large number of things I wanted to change but the big thing was that I wanted to focus more on the cards that are working well for the deck. Some cards like Tormenting Voice for instance might not seem like a lot but they are flexible in that you can throw away big expensive cards early on or filter away lands later. They are cheap to cast and let you be more flexible with your hand. I am not entirely sure they are the way to go but moving forward I wanted to try to push some of the cards out that felt like they were not great even in ideal situations and push more for what seems like it will work and push to draw into those cards.
Ideally if we could we would run some better draw effects but outside of wheels red has these sort of filtering effects and then you are into colorless artifact card advantage. I think I still have room to investigate and look into artifacts deeper but offhand the card advantage artifacts I have feel about right.
Some of the focus moving forward is to come up with more situations where with fewer cards we can accomplish more things. Some concerns we had was that while some of the cards we had could be good, they required many more cards to be combined for that situation to arise.
Deck Change:
Hoarding Dragon -> Tormenting Voice: There was the question of how much we wanted any one artifact. Paying five mana and needing a sac outlet when we won't really be abusing creatures is a little awkward. Instead we wanted to move some cheap filter into the list and see if it helps move the list along.
Heirloom Blade -> Wild Guess: The blade proved to be kind of a lot of mana to play and then equip each time. There is some value to it but it is fairly specific in what it gets and we only have so many goblins in the list.
Godo, Bandit Warlord -> Cathartic Reunion: Godo was in here almost 100% to get skullclamp and we just were not sure that we could justify the cost to get just that one card. There are a few others like Sword of the Animist but by the time you get to 6 mana to cast godo it looks less appealing to pay 6 mana to go get it.
Vedalken Orrery -> Pirate's Pillage: Sometimes having mass flash / haste is huge. This list just did not seem to care as much as some of the other mono red projects we had done previously and giving up a card to have flash seems a little risky given how much hate it brings down on itself. I love Orrery but its a question of if it pulls the weight of the hate it brings to itself and in this list I was not sure that it would justify a card drawn. The fact that Pirate's Pillage costs 3R instead of RR like Wild Guess is actually an advantage as it means we can filter colorless mana and or store mana between turns. I think its one of the cooler filters of late and I want to give it a shot.
Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician -> Azor's Gateway: Ib is really cool and there are a lot of things where landing Ib can end the game for you. My problem was more that every time I drew him he was bad. He seems like a goblin that you tutor for when he is right and any other time I saw him he was just something that rotted in hand. There totally are times where you might be sitting on a boardstate where resolving him and his tokens ends the game I just had a hard time making room for him right now given that it was a very specific setup for him to work out.
Goblin Welder -> Faithless Looting: Most of our artifacts are good but they are value over time artifacts. Some of them are better than others but the welder is slow and a big target. I found him to be slow and rather reactive in this list where I tend to like him more when there are proactive things I want to be doing with him. The way I was trying to use him here made it a question of if something like Daretti, Scrap Savant.
Knollspine Dragon -> Bontu's Monument: Knollspine was just so expensive to cast and very winmore in that he usually seemed good if the deck was doing good. Bontu's Monument should act like another Impact Tremmors with the difference being its interaction with tokens to which we only have Krenko and Siege Gang left in the list that make tokens. Overall I think it should be a similar effect and the little bit of lifegain on the monument might make a difference.
Expedition Map -> Aetherflux Reservoir: I just found that there was not as much utility to the landbase as I wanted to play the map. When I run the map I generally want there to be a high priority land like a big mana land or something to speed me into action faster and I am not convinced that there is a nonbasic we need enough to run the map. Nykthos is probably the biggest hit we have and even when I was doing well this last week it was never tapping for more than like 6 I think at its highest. I think there is room to play sort of a Squee storm based plan with the Reservoir. We don't have much to recover life and the ability to fire up a bunch of lifegain and then fire the cannon off to kill players is a real thing for this deck.
Helm of Possession -> Scrabbling Claws: Overall, we had some concerns with how much mana it was for the helm as well to use it. Beyond that we need something to sac and something to sac the creature we steal to because most of my experiences with this card is that it gets answered the turn it gets played. We have lots of goblin sac outlets but lots of those won't transfer all that well to a card like this. Scrabbling Claws is a cheap cantrip that also serves an important role.
Golden Guardian -> Thermopod: I love Golden Guardian and I think its a really cool card. That said, the fact that our creatures are small means we need a small creature to fight and kill and then a sac outlet to throw it to. Its an interesting card but this might not be the best list for it. Thermopod seems a bit expensive to cast but its an effect I find myself wanting more of.
Divergent Transformations -> Tuktuk Scrapper: when we brought in the transformations I thought that I would want to use it on squee more than it turned out I did. We run a lot of funky little goblins that sometimes need the right timing. Overall I just found myself not that impressed with it. Tuktuk Scrapper might not seem huge but we have a ton of ways to tutor for it which I think I am more interested in than the ability to value shatter multiple artifacts.
City of Shadows -> Scavenger Grounds: I drew and had some issues with the city. Early in the game I had other things I was trying to do and city requires a lot of attention to bring up to speed. The turn you play it you can't get any mana out of it and given we are not really a token deck it has the problem that every time you use it you need to cast another creature (probably squee). The amount of negative tempo it has is actually sort of staggering when I actually had it in hand I found I could never play it over another land. The one time I got it early I also happened to have Squee equipped up with a Sword of the Animist and the additional cost to re equip to trigger my land there was just not going to happen. I had thought that City would be better early but I found that its just overall too much negative tempo without a commander like Derevi, Empyrial Tactician who can untap it to use it multiple times in a turn. I was a bit surprised that there really seemed to be very little graveyard dependence that I had with hits deck so adding Scavenger Grounds takes up very little room in the list but it gives me an emergency answer to graveyard abuse.
Mountain -> Flamekin Village: I think there is a little bit of wiggle room to toy with some different land configs. The village does ETB tapped but it still gives red and we have three creatures (Goblin Sharpshooter, Krenko, Mob Boss, and Moggcatcher) that care about haste. I noticed in some situations I was hesitant to play them without haste or flash. I think its a small concession to make this swap as the ETB tapped doesn't hurt me much as I don't have much of it and being a nonbasic land only matters slightly on 2/3 of the mana doublers.
So, there it is I guess. That is a bunch of changes that we made. I still need to get in a bunch of testing to see how things are working out. I will try to get at least one good length game again this next week for this deck. We want to toy with some of the filtering effects and we considered a lot of things we could delve into along these lines as well. For now though the filter is a hope to move the deck along towards cards we need at that point in time. Our sac outlets and cost reducers for example both have a diminishing return beyond the first with some being better than others but still we often don't want to play more than one at a time due to issues with sweepers. Filtering out surplus and or digging for what we need can help with this.
We probably have more room to consider other options too in filtering. We considered some others like Smuggler's Copter but there was the concern of how long it may take to start filtering cards with it given that it will be summoning sick and if you don't curve it in early it might feel clunky. I think there is room to dig deeper into some cycling / filter as well which we will try to do a bit deeper when we can.
Gemstone Array also wouldn't fit as it increases mana costs instead of reducing and most of the mana generated is colored. So beside pairing it with Mana Echoes, it would be a dead card.
Gemstone Array also pairs with Ashnod's Altar to be a second Phyrexian Altar.
My Squee list is more combo-oriented, and I've been running Gemstone Array in it. Even without a second card to let the Array get me closer to infinite, I've also found it useful for dumping spare colorless mana from utility lands, or if my mana is (3 * N + 2) and I don't have a cost reducer in play yet.
Gemstone Array also pairs with Ashnod's Altar to be a second Phyrexian Altar.
My Squee list is more combo-oriented, and I've been running Gemstone Array in it. Even without a second card to let the Array get me closer to infinite, I've also found it useful for dumping spare colorless mana from utility lands, or if my mana is (3 * N + 2) and I don't have a cost reducer in play yet.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Things have been a bit crazy of late. I would love to see your list if you have a digital version somewhere.
Gemstone Array it still has a problem that it becomes useful very narrowly. If you want to play combo it makes a lot more sense to justify it with things like Ashnod's making it useful but I think that if you are not willing to go infinite it is still probably not great.
So, I managed to play my list a little more but the testing was ultimately a little odd in that it was a 3 player game where one player had to leave mid game. Overall I don't think I got a lot of great data from my testing but it became more and more apparent that this deck is a combo based deck (even if we are not going infinite) and that my opponents should be hitting me for damage where they can. I need to bolster my ability to live longer through means of wraths, lifelink, things to protect me and or stall the game out. Without having more stalls I have to rely on verbal judo to convince them to not 3v1 me and I think a better long term strategy will be me finding ways in which to protect myself. The first few games took them by surprise but as they realize what I am up to they have been hitting me more and more and its becoming harder to stall for time with just throwing Squee under the bus as they just train in one after the other on my face lol.
This will be a gradual change and to be honest I think there are a lot of ways in which I can stall for time and I plan to explore a few of them but for now I figured I wanted to try a few creature based wraths to see how they do for stalling.
DECK CHANGES:
Tuktuk Scrapper -> Shard Phoenix I saw the scrapper a few times and while yes, there are artifacts that need to die, I seemed to never be able to cast it instead of wheeling it for something else and it was never appropriate for me to tutor the card. There are artifacts that need to die, the problem is partially that the way in which we win is so rarely reliant on an artifact going away. Grafdigger's Cage is one of very few artifacts I could name that would be a big problem for this deck to get past but I see it so rarely (essentially never) that I would have a hard time making room for an answer until and unless someone started countering me with it.
Reforge the Soul -> Chandra, Flamecaller I had a slow start one game and I had to spend most of my turn casting Reforge the Soul not as a miracle and it was literally.... the slowest and worst feeling I had. Chandra, Flamecaller feels a little better in that if I am behind and getting trained by my opponents I can cast her as a psudo sweeper. The fact that she is a little versatile between sweeper and draw / filter seems nice.
Blasting Station -> Blasphemous Act Blasting Station was one of my lower tier sac outlets and I found that maybe I didn't need it. Its still a decent card I just felt it was lower tier for me in my needs right now and the tempo of Blasphemous Act seems great as I can sweep the board for cheap and keep moving.
Faithless Looting -> Ensnaring Bridge - I do like Faithless Looting but it is technically card disadvantage in favor of filter. I need more ways to slow the game down and Ensnaring Bridge seems like a great way to do that. There is still some concern about the bridge conflicting with Door of Destinies or to a lesser degree Homura, Human Ascendant but I would say 95% of the time the way this deck does its damage and kills people is not through means of combat damage.
1 Mountain -> Thawing Glaciers I realized that I need to just keep hitting my land drops as the game goes on and Thawing seems like a good way to do that. It seems like I often have some trouble hitting lands when it gets to 5+ sometimes just due to not drawing enough cards and I think the value of thawing will be good. I like how in an opening hand I can use T1 and T2 on it and still land squee on curve. It just gives me another means of stretching my value for this deck which tends to be more of a mid - late game combo that requires a bunch of mana to work.
These changes were almost all aimed at increasing the amount of stall we get for this deck. Buying more time means that we have more time to set up and go off. When looking at wraths I also think that Chain Reaction and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon are on the table as others I may also consider but I think when it comes to slowing the game down and dying slower there is a lot of angles to looking at how to stall beyond just wraths. Tryno should get his cards soon (he claims) so hopefully he can help me with some testing then.
Private Mod Note
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Gemstone Array also pairs with Ashnod's Altar to be a second Phyrexian Altar.
My Squee list is more combo-oriented, and I've been running Gemstone Array in it. Even without a second card to let the Array get me closer to infinite, I've also found it useful for dumping spare colorless mana from utility lands, or if my mana is (3 * N + 2) and I don't have a cost reducer in play yet.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Things have been a bit crazy of late. I would love to see your list if you have a digital version somewhere.
Gemstone Array it still has a problem that it becomes useful very narrowly. If you want to play combo it makes a lot more sense to justify it with things like Ashnod's making it useful but I think that if you are not willing to go infinite it is still probably not great.
I would try to swap something else in for Helm of Awakening if I were you. I do like that it works for everything but the concern is that it gives its effect to opponents too. Honor-Worn Shaku seems like it might be decent. I just got my copy this last week so I am hoping to see how it works out.
Hissing Iguanar also seems a little questionable given its a little fragile and it only hits players. Burning Vengeance is cheap to pick up and while it won't see most creatures die I think the objective we are aiming for is moving squee repeatedly and for that I think the enchantment is a better pick up. It also can hit creatures so I think that is an improvement.
Battle Hymn seems out of place here given I don't see any token strategies. It might give you a small boost to your mana but its one time and I don't see it likely being a big boost.
Mana Dorks feel a little out of place to be honest. I just feel like there are better ways to get more mana especially given that most of what we do needs to spin up something to make looping squee effective and then to spin him up multiple times. In general if my objective is to get to a high amount of mana I usually don't rely on dorks which tend to be more of a way to tempo into 4-6 mana plays better. At least when I am playing I am often aiming more for the 10+ mana plays with my list.
31 lands feels low. I always feel like I need more mana for squee. Its rare I would go so low on my land count as it would generally be a very low curve list that is probably running mana disruption or just really fast and small.
Haze of Rage - its a cool storm card but... you don't really seem to be a swarm deck.
Priest of Urabrask - I don't know what the objective here is. I guess you do have Panharmonicon in here but outside of that it seems narrow.
In general I guess it seems like you are ramping a lot in the 2-3 mana but only ramping one mana. While I won't claim that ramp is bad I question the fact that a lot of your ramp is for one mana. Most of the objective with squee is a question of how cheap you can make him per cast as well as how to abuse him on each cast (or at least how I play him that is my objective). It is not wrong to ramp mana but having a lot of cards that only add one more mana per card does seem concerning when you start looking to make 10+ mana plays where you might spend mana on an enabler and then move to try to get value from it in the same turn. You do have Mana Geyser which I don't run which is a great one shot mana value card but I would encourage some sort of gauntlets as well assuming your budget allows.
Battle Hymn seems out of place here given I don't see any token strategies. It might give you a small boost to your mana but its one time and I don't see it likely being a big boost. Haze of Rage - its a cool storm card but... you don't really seem to be a swarm deck.
Empty the Warrens is one of my storm payoffs, and those mana dorks and Iguanar have bodies where Burning Vengeance and Gauntlets don't. There have been plenty of times with this deck where I can't go infinite, but making a few dozen goblins, then pumping my goblins and mana dorks to swing, is effective.
Priest of Urabrask - I don't know what the objective here is. I guess you do have Panharmonicon in here but outside of that it seems narrow.
Priest is also mana-positive with any cost reducer in play. One reducer turns him into Pyretic Ritual with a body, two or more makes him a red Dark Ritual, and Panharmonicon doubles his effect.
Without any cost reducers or Panharmonicon, Priest is a free +1 storm count, and is capable of filtering colorless utility land mana.
In general I guess it seems like you are ramping a lot in the 2-3 mana but only ramping one mana. While I won't claim that ramp is bad I question the fact that a lot of your ramp is for one mana.
Important to me when designing this deck was ramping into colored mana. There are few enough sources of ramp that both get multiple mana and get colored mana.
I would encourage some sort of gauntlets as well assuming your budget allows.
I avoided mana doublers in this deck specifically because it was built at the same time as my Hakim, Loreweaver deck, which relies on mana doublers for its comboing (using Treachery or Palinchron)
I got another game of testing in this week and I had some suggestions and changes I wanted to push so I managed to get ahold of Tryno and we worked through them tonight so I guess I will get the list updated. I guess the important take away is that my meta has realized that I am essentially a late game combo deck and they are NOT leaving me alone lol. Its fairly normal for me to get 3v1ed essentially all game with this deck and I guess I was not anticipating this level of hostility when I was building this so due to this I have had to shift to a more defensive nature with more control effects in the list than I had thought I would. Given how they are playing against me I either need to go off sooner or find ways to stretch the games out longer and or defend myself from dying.
Game Highlight:
I won't go as in depth as I had in part because I waited to write this now and so its harder to recap everything. I was playing a four player ffa game with opponents being: Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder (mostly precon list), Edric, Spymaster of Trest (some sort of hug / control not terrifying flying men), and Xenagos, God of Revels. I believe Edric was first.
I had a bit of an odd opening hand so I slow rolled Dowsing Dagger because I only had three lands on turn two and I wanted to make sure I could use it on turn 4 as I anticipated Yidris probably being open given past games that I had seen his deck. I gave Edric the tokens because I assumed he would give reasons not to hit him. Xenagos curved a Managorger Hydra (oh joy this again).
T3 Squee, T4 equip Dowsing Dagger and attack Yidris with it. I miss my T4 land drop though. Edric does some ramping of lands a few turns in a row. Yidris plays Frenzied Fugue on Managorger Hydra and starts beating me up with it. Xenagos I think hits Yidris this turn with the hydra but I cant recall for sure. Xenagos does play several more threats though and their board is getting really scarry.
Around now I am looking at the board and seeing the potential to take 20+ in a turn already with it being like.... Turn 5. I am lucky though that I have drawn Ensnaring Bridge and so I slam it in trying to prevent a super fast murder of my face. I also get Hazoret's Monument set up and I had played Phyrexian Altar the turn before so I am getting set up and my hand size is something like 3-4 this turn.
From here, I stall for several turns as nobody has the answer to the bridge. I manage to hit Edric for his commander and 15 more damage using Flayer of the Hatebound + Goblin Sharpshooter with Squee costing R per cast with my setup. Edric panics and over the next two turns he bounces all of my creatures twice with the second one being an effect that bounced all creatures with toughness 4 or less (based on his islands) which kept all of Xenagos' board in place. Xenagos ends up drawing a card for each creature they control which gives them like another hand.
Xenagos snowballs the rest of the game the next turn.
So, the game went mostly well. The turn that I did I would have killed the table the next turn if I had been allowed to untap. I did keep a Shard Phoenix in my opening hand just to see kind of how it would go and I regretted how narrow it was in this matchup. I also wanted to push to have a little more control over a few more effects that I noticed when running it this week. I have a few changes though still given this week's games.
DECK CHANGES:
Krenko, Mob Boss -> Thaumatic Compass - I noticed a continued trend that I always felt that Krenko was too slow for the list. Really I don't run haste or flash for the most part and without having either of those I have not wanted it most every time I have drawn this card. I don't really have a lot of ways to boost my goblin count either so it really came down to a question of if I could opening hand it or not which every time I saw it I found I had better things to do. Thaumatic Compass can be handy in that when it flips, it flips to be ramp and a potential removal tool. The cost to use the maze effect seems very affordable. I tried out Mysifying Maze even though it never made the list my issue was constantly the fact that the cost to use it was too high given how many threats constantly come my direction.
Moggcatcher -> Vance's Blasting Cannons moggcatcher has the same issue as Krenko in being that he is something that people should panic remove and I don't have much to haste / flash to enable him to the point that he feels like a good play. Vance's Blasting Cannons is a card that made a very early list of ours for squee but we cut it not knowing if we could chain cast well enough. I like that if its drawn early its card advantage and as it makes it later it turns into ramp / removal. Being that we repeat cast squee as part of what we do I think we have the consistancy to flip this like I want. It seems like a really cool card and I would love to see what it can do.
Shard Phoenix -> Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - so, really I love everything about ugin other than his cost. Everything else about him seems like what I want for my removal suite. His flexibility and the fact that he often stays in play after you use him the first turn as a sweeper is the reason I am running him over All is Dust. We are also cutting a lot of the creatures in this change so our colorless effects are a bit higher with this change and things like Managorger Hydra make me want to just punt it through the window when I am playing squee.
Siege-Gang Commander -> Inspiring Statuary I have seen siege gang show up in my hand a few times now and I have yet to cast it. Given that we often use squee as blast fodder it seems like the bodies to block and clog up the field is kind of covered to some extent by squee already. The cost to play and use the gang in a turn is kind of high as well not to mention that its 2 mana to do 2 damage which feels a little so so on top of the cost to cast them upfront. I just have not been finding myself liking the gang that much right now. Inspiring Statuary seems interesting to me because so few of our artifacts actually tap to do things so this seems like a potential to provide quite a bit of mana in a turn. I want to try this out at least but its also possible that something like Thran Dynamo might be a little more stable but I want to test this out and see how it runs. I can think of a lot of games where I sit with 2-4 artifacts in play and need to cast some sort of squee enabler before looping squee.
Kher Keep -> Thespian's Stage Kher Keep has been..... not really what I need given that most of the time that a token might do anything I can loop suqee for less mana than the keep. I want to try out the stage in part because it can still copy basic lands in a pinch but there is the remote chance that I copy Lost Vale which is non legendary. There is also the chance that I copy someone else's Nykthos or Coffers if an Urborg is in play.
Flamekin Village -> Mountain being that we are cutting a lot of our things that would have cared about haste, we are also moving to a basic land which has the potential to double off a mana doubler. It also removes an ETB tapped land which is probably not the end of the world for a control / combo list but I guess every little bit of efficiency I will take.
I am looking forward to testing the new changes and seeing how things run. The move to more control has been a little gradual but I like the feel of the deck for sure.
I ended up getting to play three games last night. Given the number of games and the fact that I played this deck for a good three plus hours I would have a hard time detailing everything about them but I will try to give some brief summaries of each.
Game 1: 4 player game, I never found any draw so I kind of stalled out. I did manage to get 2x mana doublers but I had no follow up for them. I managed to Door of Destinies and put 11 counters on it the same turn I dropped it but I goofed hard and forgot to attack which could have killed 1-2 players that turn. Aura Shards dropped in and messed me up good. The game went super long and the lack of draw really sucked. In the end one player dropped a ton of fatties and then hit up Eldrazi Monument to kill us all in one turn.
Game 2: 3 player ffa, Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain went off on turn 4 and played their entire deck. We scooped something like 18 casts deep when it was obvious we were already dead.
Game 3: 3 player ffa, I managed to spin up my mana fairly quickly chaining cost reduction, a mana rock, and then chain two mana doublers. My opponents spin up fiarly quick though too and I get pushed to high 20s lifetotal quickly. One of my opponents has a creature that is directly causing the other to have difficulty blocking though so they start a bit of a rivalry between each other. I try to play Ensnaring Bridge to defend myself but it gets taken out immediately. It looks like 5c dragons is going to run us down and on the last turn I manage to play Stalking Vengeance and burn him down. I kept him at the point where I could sacrifice squee to kill him and he decided second place was good enough and he killed the other player with his swarm of dragons.
Of these games, I don't really fault the deck for not working game 2. Game one was still a good game and there is actually a decent chance I could have won but I forgot to attack the turn I played my Door of Destinies. I did manage to see a few newer additions to the deck and so I thought I would give some feedback:
Ensnaring Bridge - so far, it has been really strong defense every time I have seen it. The downside is when the person I am defending from has removal for it. It did die on the next player's turn this week but I did manage to stall someone for several turns a few weeks back. Its good, but it has the downside of being a temporary measure that is kind of an all or nothing defense. Inspiring Statuary - I did manage to get it in play and it did give me like 4 colorless mana yesterday. It did help me to cast enablers but I think it is also worth watching for three reasons 1) it only provides colorless mana, 2) the amount of mana it produces varries 3) it doesn't help casting other artifacts and its possible I already have a cost reducer for squee. I want to keep it in and do more testing but I am still not sure on it. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - I managed to get it last night and the problem I had was that The Ur-Dragon ramped out his commander and I had no way to interact with such a high cost with him.
I did have a few thoughts on a few other cards.
Gate to the Afterlife - I like that this has some lifegain + filtering to it. The filter is also really good as its always best case filtering. The number of tokens in this deck has really fallen off as well so this seems really spot on. One of my opponents last night happened to have played it against me last night in a Elenda, the Dusk Rose deck. It seems like a great card and I briefly brought it to the attention of Tryno today and he seemed to agree that we should make room for it.
Mana Geyser - I had been under the hope that this deck would focus more on continuous use of mana but it has been a little more apparent to me of late that there are turns where I need to resolve something to enable squee and then also cast squee a ton of times in the same turn. I am beginning to think that I want to bring Geyser into the list as its something I cut very early on assuming that I could set up and continuously abuse squee. Once I get close to doing silly things people tend to react poorly so having a turn of a ton of mana may be more relevant than I originally gave it credit for.
Apex of Power - I am not really sure given its cost but...... it gives the mana back, it could get cost reduced, and it could serve as draw. I am not as certain given how much it costs but I think its interesting at least.
Desecrated Tomb - the tokens have flying and we get one for every cast of squee. Squee can normally chump some ground attackers but flyers have been a pain in the ass. Its not that often that flyers have additional evasion so this could help defend me as well as give a small swarm of guys. I have on a few times considered Oketra's Monument but the biggest problem for me is that the tokens for the monument are really used for mostly the same things that chumping with squee can do. Having flying evasion is something that could help defend me fairly well.
I guess that is all I have for now. The Gate seems like something I have to order and make room for I just have to figure out how I manage to do that.
Well, Tryno is trying to get his deck together as well as find a playgroup. He finally got his cards back as before now he didn't even have them with him at his new location. In the meantime I am going to take a few liberties given he still isn't playing yet and while I have not run these by him they are the changes I want to implement for this week.
DECK CHANGES:
Impact Tremors -> Gate to the Afterlife I do like impact tremmors but my concern is often that its impact is such that it needs to live for somewhat of a long time for me to feel it pays off so the impact is slow to add up and often it needs to live a long time or be added onto another card for it to add up. Gate to the Afterlife is really really strong filter and the bit of lifegain. The difference to me is that Gate can stall and get me to a stronger card while Impact Tremors needs to live a long time and or be combined with another effect.
Inspiring Statuary -> Mana Geyser I am just trying out a few options. I think the potential of the burst of mana with Geyser could be strong for a big play turn.
Wild Guess -> Outpost Siege I have had some conflicting results with Outpost Siege in the past but I can actually see both sides of it being potentially appropriate in here. The draw seems a bit better than the pings but I want to test it at least.
Dark-Dweller Oracle looks potentially really nice too. I want to give that a test when Core 19 comes out. Getting card advantage in a goblin means there are more ways that it could be picked up in this list.
Goblin Trashmaster does look really good. I was at one point trying to make Tuktuk Scrapper work and so from that perspective, it looks way stronger than Tuktuk. There is a downside though in that you need a target to sacrifice squee to it so from a control and removal perspective it looks great but I also suspect that it will have some trouble as a long term looping sac outlet for Squee. The small goblin anthem though is also a nice welcome as there are a few effects that care about size not to mention occasionally being able to trade better with the buff.
Overall, you can bet your ass I am going to pick up and run a copy as soon as I can. I think its another very strong goblin inclusion and the fact that we can tutor it up and it can serve more purposes makes me far more fond of this than something like Shattering Spree.
I suspect that once Goblin Trashmaster + Dark-Dweller Oracle become available I might cut Goblin Chirurgeon. I still occasionally enjoy Chirurgeon but for the most part, its one of my weaker sac outlets in that what it gives me is fairly close to nothing as it really just protects itself. From the standpoint of card advantage its one that I have considered cutting for a bit now but I wanted to maintain my sac outlet count and the fact that it is more robust in that it can self protect is nice but I probably will end up cutting it as one of the two I change out for the other two new goblin sac outlets to come in.
Deck Change:
Tormenting Voice -> Chain Reaction I wanted to pick up another wrath effect and it seems like right now Chain Reaction might be more appropriate from the standpoint of casting cost and effect. I just need to slow people down more and I am not seeing the wraths I run quite frequent enough right now. I have been noticing with my cheap filter that often they are not quite good enough in that a lot of my deck has the same kind of function and I don't gain benefit from my graveyard much with this deck.
This is a cooperative build between Tryno & ISBPathfinder.
This build has a handful of concepts behind the build. Our focuses tend to be:
1x Squee, the Immortal
CREATURES (19)
1x Skirk Prospector
1x Dark-Dweller Oracle
1x Goblin Recruiter
1x Arms Dealer
1x Burnished Hart
1x Goblin Matron
1x Goblin Sharpshooter
1x Goblin Warchief
1x Imperial Recruiter
1x Goblin Ringleader
1x Goblin Trashmaster
1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
1x Solemn Simulacrum
1x Goblin Assassin
1x Neheb, the Eternal
1x Thermopod
1x Flayer of the Hatebound
1x Homura, Human Ascendant
1x Stalking Vengeance
ARTIFACT (27)
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Scrabbling Claws
1x Skullclamp
1x Sol Ring
1x Wayfarer's Bauble
1x Azor's Gateway
1x Dowsing Dagger
1x Gate to the Afterlife
1x Ruby Medallion
1x Sword of the Animist
1x Ashnod's Altar
1x Bontu's Monument
1x Desecrated Tomb
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Hazoret's Monument
1x Herald's Horn
1x Honor-Worn Shaku
1x Phyrexian Altar
1x Aetherflux Reservoir
1x Door of Destinies
1x Gauntlet of Might
1x Batterskull
1x Gauntlet of Power
1x Mind's Eye
1x Vanquisher's Banner
1x Caged Sun
1x The Immortal Sun
1x Goblin Bombardment
1x Burning Vengeance
1x Vance's Blasting Cannons
1x Warstorm Surge
1x Vicious Shadows
INSTANT (3)
1x Commune with Lava
1x Starstorm
1x Chaos Warp
SORCERY (5)
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Chain Reaction
1x Fiery Confluence
1x All is Dust
1x Blasphemous Act
PLANESWALKER (2)
1x Chandra, Flamecaller
1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
LAND (38)
1x Buried Ruin
1x High Market
1x Myriad Landscape
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Path of Ancestry
1x Scavenger Grounds
1x Strip Mine
1x Tectonic Edge
1x Thawing Glaciers
1x Thespian's Stage
1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
1x Winding Canyons
26x Mountain
5/10/18:
5/19/18:
5/29/18:
6/1/18:
6/17/18:
6/20/18:
1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1x Smuggler's Copter
Current EDH
Akroma W | Tymna and Bruse RBW
So when we were first making the list I mentioned Mana Echoes as a consideration but we determined that it didn't fit well for the following reasons:
1. It would push the deck towards combo, which is done better in other colors and we don't want to pursue
2. You need mana upfront to 'cheapen' spells
3. You need other goblins to generate mana
4. There are cheaper cost reducers
5. There are cost reducers that do more for the mana cost
Gemstone Array also wouldn't fit as it increases mana costs instead of reducing and most of the mana generated is colored. So beside pairing it with Mana Echoes, it would be a dead card.
Sadly, the two together is brittle. It requires a sac outlet, and at least 5 other goblins (ignoring mana producing sac outlets) to be fully infinite. Add that to the fact you need to add a win condition for the infinite to do anything means you need a minimum of 5 cards in total (Win condition + Ashnod's Altar + Siege-Gang Commander + Mana Echoes + Gemstone Array) to win at sorcery speed. Overall, it is just brittle.
Current EDH
Akroma W | Tymna and Bruse RBW
There is also the question of why to include that combo specifically. The Array is not very good outside of assembling both cards (an artifact and an enchantment can be challenging to get together) where as instead you could run Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combos which would be much easier to tutor for as well as being generally more universally useful. Kiki + Lightning Crafter for example are both goblin tutorable and only require a sac outlet to go infinite.
So, in part I guess if you are going to go infinite I guess the biggest question is what combos you do want to run. I am not really keen on playing mono red as a combo deck because in my mind if you are playing combo then why should your opponents not also do the same? Your ability to interact with an opposing combo deck is just not going to be so great so I would rather instead not go infinite and win via attrition tactics. That is just my own take on things though.
I am still kind of kicking around the idea of Bontu's Monument & Oketra's Monument for the list. My overall goal is to generate value on casting squee and I see room for both effects still. I made sure to add them to my order for cards for this deck and I think I might be able to squeeze them in. Bontu's Monument is a little less effective than Impact Tremors in that it does not trigger on tokens. Oketra's Monument has the downside that the tokens are not goblin or red so the tokens probably miss out on a lot of the buffing but.... it might still give several tokens / turn.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
I think there are still several concerns with Mana Echoes. The list as it stands has 14 other goblins but only three of them produce tokens and Ib Halfheart is really only a token maker in an all in situation or a situation that resolving the tokens will end the game. It counts other creatures with the same type so when Squee hits play I need to have other goblins for it to produce mana. Assuming that I have 1-2 other goblins then its probably just a worse cost reducer in that it costs 4 mana and is situational to essentially cost reduce for squee. If you have 3+ other goblins it probably is stronger than a cost reduction effect except for the fact that it costs RR to cast and needs setup so it may be slower still.
Overall, my concern is how much mana it costs, the setup it requires, as well as the question of where to dump excess mana to. If I had more mana dumps I think it would be more appropriate but I just see it as this questionable card that seems to require more setup and its return is also probably wasted assuming I am making a bunch of mana with it.
Honor-Worn Shaku - thats a good call I totally overlooked that that may be really nice here. It is probably actually better than Cloud Key in retrospect. The number of cost reduction effects is something that can be overdone so its been tricky to say exactly how many to run. Squee costs 1RR so colorless mana and colorless mana reduction only go so far for the goal here. I do think that Honor-Worn Shaku is a good catch though and I will have to try to pick up a copy. Offhand I think replacing Cloud Key might be the most appropriate.
The overall mana stones.... well we have cost reduction and mana doublers as well as land ramp. I would not say that it has a low count but a lot of what is being run is a bit non traditional. Overall though there is a good 15+ effects that cost reduce, double mana production, or ramp lands.
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[Modern] Allies
Current EDH
Akroma W | Tymna and Bruse RBW
and Genesis Chamberfor good measure. The Welder would appreciate it and your opponents will love Vandalblast and Shattering Spree (when you put them in).
I am going to go ahead and make that change.
DECK CHANGE:
Paradox Engine - it was a thing I did consider but there are still some problems with it. You really need something that produces RR at the least or you get into a more complex situation where you need Skirk Prospector or Phyrexian Altar. Ultimately the colorless mana return possibilities of the engine did not seem to appeal all that much circling back to questioning if we have all that much for mana dumps other than casting Squee which is red mana intensive. Gilded Lotus was one of the few colored mana stone that I felt was all that good here as most every other I could come up with only gives a single mana per tap and really did not feel like it was all that good in this list in comparison. Our goal was also not to build for infinities so it came back to an issue where we did not actually feel that Gilded Lotus was great in the list and it was one of the few stones we actually wanted for the engine (assuming we did want to combo). If you use a bunch of colorless mana with the engine you need a colorless mana dump that potentially draws you cards so that you can draw to more action or you run out of the ability to untap.
Mycosynth Lattice - its both bold, interesting, and terrifying. My issue is that its such a risky card that I almost never want to cast it unless there is a followup behind it that ends the game on the spot. I am not saying I would not play Vandalblast or Shattering Spree but I don't love the idea of including them as some sort of crazy MLD effect. It gets back to just the kind of social deck that we are aiming for and while I am fine casting those spells I would not want to pair it with the Lattice. Lattice is really interesting from the perspective of squee but its important to keep in mind that cost reduction effects can still only strip the 1 on squee even with this in play. It is true that you could use a cost reduction effect + Honor-Worn Shaku with this card but I think its still a very bold and risky card that probably needs a lot of setup to do much.
Krark-Clan Ironworks - I did consider it and its more likely you are referring to it in relation to Mycosynth Lattice. I think that outside of the situation of pairing it with Mycosynth Lattice it seems a little weak. Most of the artifacts in the list are ones I am trying to stick for an over time effect. In my mind it circles back to the question of if you want to infinite combo and then there is the question of how good and how much mana those two cards together cost as well as both being artifacts (hard to tutor).
Genesis Chamber - It was in the consideration list. I am aware of the fondness of this card for Norin the Wary players and we almost ran Norin ourselves except that we did not feel we had quite enough ETB triggers that hit him to justify him. Given that we are more of a cast based deck especially for noncreatures I felt that Oketra's Monument was stronger (and its still in consideration with me). The only upside I can really see of Genesis Chamber over Oketra's Monument is specifically if we include Norin the Wary. The monument does not give opponents tokens and the only real downside being that it costs one more to cast.
Vandalblast and Shattering Spree - both are good cards and may be worth considering for this list. Generally for mono red my preference is towards the spree just due to its challenge to counterspell. I generally try to build in such a way that pushes proactive interaction heavier from the get go and then I shift and add more removal and balance things out a little more after I get to test things. Part of this is just so that I can see what is working and in what means before I worry about stopping my opponents. This helps me figure out if a deck concept can possibly work before I worry about balancing it too much. It also gives me a little more room to test and see what is working and what is not before balancing things out. It is also relevant to mention that these effects while powerful are very specific in what they interact with which can sometimes be a problem. I could instead include something like Ugin, All is Dust, Oblivion Stone, or some sort of creature sweeper / removal instead. I don't disagree that these cards are powerful but what if you topdeck one of these cards while facing down an Elesh Norn. I am not trying to belittle this removal or any other with this statement I am just saying that in some ways it lacks flexability and it assumes that opponents artifacts are what will be the problem. It is easier for me to make room for Fiery Confluence in a sense because it has more flexibility in what it can do even if it can only destroy three artifacts at the most, generally speaking anything beyond the third target is going to be not really that big of a concern in my opinion.
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[Modern] Allies
You bring up a fair, and very true, point about the Lattice. I was mistaken on it's effect with the reducers. It certainly is a risky card, but i have found it somewhat deters sweepers like Shatterstorm or variants. Given the points you've made, not including it is probably the right choice.
On removal, I jam as much as I can afford into my decks. The cheaper the better. I know there will be bigger targets than artifacts over the course of a game but we are limited with our interactivity here... Unless we get creative!
Lastly, all those sac outlets are screaming for an Insurrection. Maybe could even invite Thermopod to the party.
So we actually did talk about Insurrection a little bit, I do think it fits in the deck fairly well. We might need to take a look at what could be cut for it at the moment. I think we might have to cut something like Helm of Possession for it though. Insurrection is a win condition that combines with our sacrifice effects well and Helm of Possession allows us control and the ability to steal a creature that generates value. ISBPathfinder and I will need to talk more on that one.
I did not know that card existed. With how much I have been whining about lacking colored mana from our sources, Thermopod looks somewhat decent. I am pretty concerned by his mana cost combined with the fact he is a creature though. We will need to mull that one over a bit as well.
Current EDH
Akroma W | Tymna and Bruse RBW
Insurrection - yea I should probably work it in. There is some concern still in how many of the sac outlets work on any creature type rather than "sacrifice a goblin". It looks like about half of my sac outlets as it stands are goblin based sac and that means that 3 of our sac outlets in the deck could take a swarm of opponents creatures and grind them up. Its also an expensive card to cast. I think for now I might wait to get more testing before I really give it more consideration one way or another. I considered swapping it in for Helm of Possession after reading your comment but I think I still have some concern with how few of our sac outlets can turn this into a wrath yet.
Thermopod - wow I did not know that was a card lol. I still have concerns with the fact that its kind of expensive and its creature stat line really suck for a 5 drop but..... its a desirable effect for this deck. I suppose I should make room for it and at least test it.
Right now I managed to get two poor test games in. I drove an two hours round trip on Friday to try to play and found out the hard way that the store that used to do commander is closing and they decided with them closing they no longer wanted to stay open late enough for people to play on Fridays. On the upside though I found out that a store closer to me just opened like a week ago so I am going to try to go and get some better testing this Wednesday.
The two poor games of testing I did today were 1v1 games vs a newer player with a casual budget Prossh deck. I guess I can give kind of a rundown on the two games. It more resembled me goldfishing than anything.
Game Highlights:
Game 1:
I curved Squee into play and followed it up with Goblin Warchief & Goblin Chirurgeon the turn after. I had four lands in my opening hand and proceeded to never again draw a land (in 8+ turns). I played Heirloom Blade and buffed Squee to do some beat downs. Both of us stalled on land drops and my opponent gave up after several turns of beat down squee.
This game felt like I probably needed more shuffling. I shuffled up a bit better and gave it another test.
Game 2:
T3: Squee
T4: Purphoros, God of the Forge my opponent has a wall of blossoms to block me so I don't attack.
T5: Goblin Matron for Goblin Recruiter. Cast Goblin Recruiter stacking (Goblin Warchief, Skirk Prospector, Goblin Sharpshooter, Krenko, Mob Boss, Goblin Assassin) as I already have Goblin Ringleader in hand. I attack with Purphoros. My opponent casts his commander.
T6: Goblin Warchief, Goblin Ringleader (drawing the other 4 goblins). Attack again with Purphoros. My opponent casts Lignify on Purphoros and saves his tokens only hitting me for 5.
T7: Skirk Prospector, Goblin Sharpshooter, Krenko, Mob Boss. I kill all of my opponents tokens with sharpshooter, tap Krenko for 8 tokens and swing for something like 15. After the attack I sacrifice goblins to sharpshooter my opponent out.
Right now, I guess I don't have much for feedback yet as my test games were in a 1v1 against a somewhat casual deck but ultimately I still felt it was an ok test of goldfishing. I really liked the goblin package and the Goblin Recruiter + Goblin Ringleader combo seemed fun especially with Skirk Prospector & Goblin Warchief feeling like it gives me some options. The games I had so far really were not good tests for a lot of reasons but I am hoping that I can get some better feedback this week when I get a chance to play some multiplayer (ideally against people with some better decks for testing purposes).
Right now though Heirloom Blade, Helm of Possession, and Vedalken Orrery are all on a list of cards I am a little uncertain of. I want to make a few adjustments but I don't really have them nailed down right now. I also need to do more testing to really figure out what I need. Offhand from the little bit of testing I did I wanted more card advantage. I will wait to get more testing later this week to make changes and hopefully put in an order.
EDIT: Tryno and I talked for a good bit last night and we came up with a list of cards we thought might be on our short list of cards that could possibly be replaced (the result of this discussion was made into a list under the decklist in the OP). I think there may still be some really good gems we have overlooked as well but for now we might also look into some of the cheap hand fixing cards like Tormenting Voice and such. The number of high mana cost cards we have in the list is also concerning to me so we may try to address that moving forward. I should get more testing in in a few days at which point I hope to have some better feedback and try to make some changes.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Game 1: 3 player FFA game opponents playing Xenagos, God of Revels and Omnath, Locus of Rage. We rolled and I was going second.
T1: ETB tapped land
T2: Relic of Progenitus (cycling it to try to get another land over Impact Tremmors)
T3: Squee (Xenagos plays Managorger Hydra)
From here it gets a little foggy. I have some ramp being Burnished Hart and I draw Wayfarer's Bauble as well and I try to resolve them in the next few turns. Xenagos plays a T5 Kalonian Hydra and we just have no answers for it. 2-3 turns later we all die to the hydra beat downs. I did manage to get a Mystifying Maze online and save myself one turn but then Swiftfoot Boots put me down the next turn.
So, I guess this showed that fast aggro can suck. It is possible that creature removal might have been able to keep me alive but this is assuming I would have found it in time. Both of the hydras gave sort of an inevitable problem threat given their trample and continuous scaling up. The fact that it was a 3 player game also put me at a disadvantage in that there were less players and aggressive decks.
Game 2: opponents Xenagos, God of Revels, Karlov of the Ghost Council, and Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder (precon with a few modifications). I am last given the roll.
This game...... was kind of ridiculous and dumb for me. I did play a game of Teshar between this game and the previous game of squee which I did win via a T1 Serra Ascendant and some shenanigans that made me 25 flying spirits at instant speed. That said.... Karlov seemed to want to kill me lol.
T1: Karlov plays Authority of the Consuls. I play a land and pass.
T2: Karlov plays his commander whom immediately becomes a 4/4. I play a land and pass.
T3: Karlov plays Soul Warden & Blood Artist turning his commander into a 10/10 and hits me. I play Squee who comes in tapped due to Authority of the Consuls. Everyone plays a creature this turn suping Karlov up. Xenagos plays Reclimation Sage killing Authority of the Consuls (after my turn on their turn 4).
T4: Karlov swings and kills me. I literally played 3 lands and squee whom came in tapped and then died... he was just shy of being able to one shot Yedris at the time and Xenegos got a T2 creature in play.
So.... honestly Karlov got a dumb start and decided to screw me over bad. I can't really say much about that. From there Yidris had spot removal for Karlov which he did 2-3 times which seemed to start immediately after I died. The game went on for another 45 minutes to hour and Karlov eventually won via life siphoning.
Game 3: four player FFA opponents being Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (apparently some sort of countersepll heavy spellslinger), Breya, Etherium Shaper, and Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder (precon with a few modifications). I am last given the roll.
T1: Land, Wayfarer's Bauble
T2: Land, Pop Bauble
T3: Land, Squee. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV plays their commander which throws the other two opponents off of their commanders. Breya, Etherium Shaper has no lands apparently and stalls at four.
T4: Land, Sword of the Animist, equip and attack with squee.
From here there the game went slowly. I kept attacking with squee to get free lands while GAAIV counterspelled most things. I ended up eating 2x Arcane Denial (snapcastered it back) and some sort of negate like effect. My Mind's Eye, Burning Vengeance, and some other card I cant recall got countered. I did manage to keep Hazoret's Monument and Phyrexian Altar.
When at last GAAIV tapped out to steal Yedris' commander and play some things I pushed and resolved The Immortal Sun + Stalking Vengeance. GAAIV cloned my Stalking Vengeance and seemed to tap out again doing things.
On my next turn I took GAAIV from the mid 30s to 2 life leaving squee up at the end (Squee was R to cast thanks to two cost reducers + Phyrexian Altar and was a 3/2). GAAIV tried to use Angel of Condemnation to exile my Stalking Vengeance until it left play and I killed them in response with squee.
Breya, Etherium Shaper finally got his commander into play. He had played Ashnod's Altar a few turns earlier and used Goblin Welder to swap one of his artifacts in for his Sword of the Meek before rezing it back in off his commander. Yidris got his commander back from GAAIV when they died and he hooked him up with Helm of the Host which let him attack me for something like 15 and do a bunch of cascade shenanigans. He managed to get a Chaos Warp and he turned my Stalking Vengeance into a Cloud Key (I still have not gotten its replacement yet).
I got Flayer of the Hatebound and used it to chaingun my opponents threats. Breya had the option to sac out his entire board to try to kill Flayer the two times but he instead opted to keep his Skullclamp + Ashnod's Altar as everything else died. Breya did kill the Flayer once though and Yedris killed it the second time on his turn.
I ended up wrapping the game up in the next few turns with Impact Tremors. I ended up playing like 3-4 things that were all going to end them in the last turn and they did not have a way to stop them from killing them.
Overall, the game two was something I will just sort of dismiss. In game one I guess removal could have been good but most of the red removal would have had to been timed just right to matter. Game three was great and I would say the MVP of game three was some combination of Hazoret's Monument and Phyrexian Altar. I did not mention it but I probably filtered at least 20 or more cards with Hazoret's Monument through the course of the game.
Tryno put together some changes but I think I will talk with him a little more as well as run over them too before I finalize them. We are adding a lot more filtering to the list because there was a big disparity between the better cards and some of the weaker ones. There is a list of change log that tryno identified in the OP for now but I want to discuss a few more cards a little yet before we lock them in.
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Ideally if we could we would run some better draw effects but outside of wheels red has these sort of filtering effects and then you are into colorless artifact card advantage. I think I still have room to investigate and look into artifacts deeper but offhand the card advantage artifacts I have feel about right.
Some of the focus moving forward is to come up with more situations where with fewer cards we can accomplish more things. Some concerns we had was that while some of the cards we had could be good, they required many more cards to be combined for that situation to arise.
Deck Change:
So, there it is I guess. That is a bunch of changes that we made. I still need to get in a bunch of testing to see how things are working out. I will try to get at least one good length game again this next week for this deck. We want to toy with some of the filtering effects and we considered a lot of things we could delve into along these lines as well. For now though the filter is a hope to move the deck along towards cards we need at that point in time. Our sac outlets and cost reducers for example both have a diminishing return beyond the first with some being better than others but still we often don't want to play more than one at a time due to issues with sweepers. Filtering out surplus and or digging for what we need can help with this.
We probably have more room to consider other options too in filtering. We considered some others like Smuggler's Copter but there was the concern of how long it may take to start filtering cards with it given that it will be summoning sick and if you don't curve it in early it might feel clunky. I think there is room to dig deeper into some cycling / filter as well which we will try to do a bit deeper when we can.
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[Modern] Allies
My Squee list is more combo-oriented, and I've been running Gemstone Array in it. Even without a second card to let the Array get me closer to infinite, I've also found it useful for dumping spare colorless mana from utility lands, or if my mana is (3 * N + 2) and I don't have a cost reducer in play yet.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Things have been a bit crazy of late. I would love to see your list if you have a digital version somewhere.
Gemstone Array it still has a problem that it becomes useful very narrowly. If you want to play combo it makes a lot more sense to justify it with things like Ashnod's making it useful but I think that if you are not willing to go infinite it is still probably not great.
So, I managed to play my list a little more but the testing was ultimately a little odd in that it was a 3 player game where one player had to leave mid game. Overall I don't think I got a lot of great data from my testing but it became more and more apparent that this deck is a combo based deck (even if we are not going infinite) and that my opponents should be hitting me for damage where they can. I need to bolster my ability to live longer through means of wraths, lifelink, things to protect me and or stall the game out. Without having more stalls I have to rely on verbal judo to convince them to not 3v1 me and I think a better long term strategy will be me finding ways in which to protect myself. The first few games took them by surprise but as they realize what I am up to they have been hitting me more and more and its becoming harder to stall for time with just throwing Squee under the bus as they just train in one after the other on my face lol.
This will be a gradual change and to be honest I think there are a lot of ways in which I can stall for time and I plan to explore a few of them but for now I figured I wanted to try a few creature based wraths to see how they do for stalling.
DECK CHANGES:
These changes were almost all aimed at increasing the amount of stall we get for this deck. Buying more time means that we have more time to set up and go off. When looking at wraths I also think that Chain Reaction and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon are on the table as others I may also consider but I think when it comes to slowing the game down and dying slower there is a lot of angles to looking at how to stall beyond just wraths. Tryno should get his cards soon (he claims) so hopefully he can help me with some testing then.
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Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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In relation to your list:
In general I guess it seems like you are ramping a lot in the 2-3 mana but only ramping one mana. While I won't claim that ramp is bad I question the fact that a lot of your ramp is for one mana. Most of the objective with squee is a question of how cheap you can make him per cast as well as how to abuse him on each cast (or at least how I play him that is my objective). It is not wrong to ramp mana but having a lot of cards that only add one more mana per card does seem concerning when you start looking to make 10+ mana plays where you might spend mana on an enabler and then move to try to get value from it in the same turn. You do have Mana Geyser which I don't run which is a great one shot mana value card but I would encourage some sort of gauntlets as well assuming your budget allows.
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Priest is also mana-positive with any cost reducer in play. One reducer turns him into Pyretic Ritual with a body, two or more makes him a red Dark Ritual, and Panharmonicon doubles his effect.
Without any cost reducers or Panharmonicon, Priest is a free +1 storm count, and is capable of filtering colorless utility land mana.
Important to me when designing this deck was ramping into colored mana. There are few enough sources of ramp that both get multiple mana and get colored mana.
I avoided mana doublers in this deck specifically because it was built at the same time as my Hakim, Loreweaver deck, which relies on mana doublers for its comboing (using Treachery or Palinchron)
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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Game Highlight:
I won't go as in depth as I had in part because I waited to write this now and so its harder to recap everything. I was playing a four player ffa game with opponents being: Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder (mostly precon list), Edric, Spymaster of Trest (some sort of hug / control not terrifying flying men), and Xenagos, God of Revels. I believe Edric was first.
I had a bit of an odd opening hand so I slow rolled Dowsing Dagger because I only had three lands on turn two and I wanted to make sure I could use it on turn 4 as I anticipated Yidris probably being open given past games that I had seen his deck. I gave Edric the tokens because I assumed he would give reasons not to hit him. Xenagos curved a Managorger Hydra (oh joy this again).
T3 Squee, T4 equip Dowsing Dagger and attack Yidris with it. I miss my T4 land drop though. Edric does some ramping of lands a few turns in a row. Yidris plays Frenzied Fugue on Managorger Hydra and starts beating me up with it. Xenagos I think hits Yidris this turn with the hydra but I cant recall for sure. Xenagos does play several more threats though and their board is getting really scarry.
Around now I am looking at the board and seeing the potential to take 20+ in a turn already with it being like.... Turn 5. I am lucky though that I have drawn Ensnaring Bridge and so I slam it in trying to prevent a super fast murder of my face. I also get Hazoret's Monument set up and I had played Phyrexian Altar the turn before so I am getting set up and my hand size is something like 3-4 this turn.
From here, I stall for several turns as nobody has the answer to the bridge. I manage to hit Edric for his commander and 15 more damage using Flayer of the Hatebound + Goblin Sharpshooter with Squee costing R per cast with my setup. Edric panics and over the next two turns he bounces all of my creatures twice with the second one being an effect that bounced all creatures with toughness 4 or less (based on his islands) which kept all of Xenagos' board in place. Xenagos ends up drawing a card for each creature they control which gives them like another hand.
On my last turn I manage to set up Gauntlet of Power + Door of Destinies still having Hazoret's Monument and Phyrexian Altar as well as having set up Purpheros in my second to last turn. I push for 5 casts of squee this turn powering up my Door and getting ready to slam the Flayer of the Hatebound the next turn. Xenagos got a naturalize effect and smashes my ensnaring bridge pushing 40+ damage with trample via their commander buffing a 15/15 Managorger Hydra and Ghalta, Primal Hunger coming at me.
Xenagos snowballs the rest of the game the next turn.
So, the game went mostly well. The turn that I did I would have killed the table the next turn if I had been allowed to untap. I did keep a Shard Phoenix in my opening hand just to see kind of how it would go and I regretted how narrow it was in this matchup. I also wanted to push to have a little more control over a few more effects that I noticed when running it this week. I have a few changes though still given this week's games.
DECK CHANGES:
I am looking forward to testing the new changes and seeing how things run. The move to more control has been a little gradual but I like the feel of the deck for sure.
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[Modern] Allies
Game 1: 4 player game, I never found any draw so I kind of stalled out. I did manage to get 2x mana doublers but I had no follow up for them. I managed to Door of Destinies and put 11 counters on it the same turn I dropped it but I goofed hard and forgot to attack which could have killed 1-2 players that turn. Aura Shards dropped in and messed me up good. The game went super long and the lack of draw really sucked. In the end one player dropped a ton of fatties and then hit up Eldrazi Monument to kill us all in one turn.
Game 2: 3 player ffa, Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain went off on turn 4 and played their entire deck. We scooped something like 18 casts deep when it was obvious we were already dead.
Game 3: 3 player ffa, I managed to spin up my mana fairly quickly chaining cost reduction, a mana rock, and then chain two mana doublers. My opponents spin up fiarly quick though too and I get pushed to high 20s lifetotal quickly. One of my opponents has a creature that is directly causing the other to have difficulty blocking though so they start a bit of a rivalry between each other. I try to play Ensnaring Bridge to defend myself but it gets taken out immediately. It looks like 5c dragons is going to run us down and on the last turn I manage to play Stalking Vengeance and burn him down. I kept him at the point where I could sacrifice squee to kill him and he decided second place was good enough and he killed the other player with his swarm of dragons.
Of these games, I don't really fault the deck for not working game 2. Game one was still a good game and there is actually a decent chance I could have won but I forgot to attack the turn I played my Door of Destinies. I did manage to see a few newer additions to the deck and so I thought I would give some feedback:
Ensnaring Bridge - so far, it has been really strong defense every time I have seen it. The downside is when the person I am defending from has removal for it. It did die on the next player's turn this week but I did manage to stall someone for several turns a few weeks back. Its good, but it has the downside of being a temporary measure that is kind of an all or nothing defense.
Inspiring Statuary - I did manage to get it in play and it did give me like 4 colorless mana yesterday. It did help me to cast enablers but I think it is also worth watching for three reasons 1) it only provides colorless mana, 2) the amount of mana it produces varries 3) it doesn't help casting other artifacts and its possible I already have a cost reducer for squee. I want to keep it in and do more testing but I am still not sure on it.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - I managed to get it last night and the problem I had was that The Ur-Dragon ramped out his commander and I had no way to interact with such a high cost with him.
I did have a few thoughts on a few other cards.
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DECK CHANGES:
Dark-Dweller Oracle looks potentially really nice too. I want to give that a test when Core 19 comes out. Getting card advantage in a goblin means there are more ways that it could be picked up in this list.
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[Modern] Allies
Goblin Trashmaster does look really good. I was at one point trying to make Tuktuk Scrapper work and so from that perspective, it looks way stronger than Tuktuk. There is a downside though in that you need a target to sacrifice squee to it so from a control and removal perspective it looks great but I also suspect that it will have some trouble as a long term looping sac outlet for Squee. The small goblin anthem though is also a nice welcome as there are a few effects that care about size not to mention occasionally being able to trade better with the buff.
Overall, you can bet your ass I am going to pick up and run a copy as soon as I can. I think its another very strong goblin inclusion and the fact that we can tutor it up and it can serve more purposes makes me far more fond of this than something like Shattering Spree.
I suspect that once Goblin Trashmaster + Dark-Dweller Oracle become available I might cut Goblin Chirurgeon. I still occasionally enjoy Chirurgeon but for the most part, its one of my weaker sac outlets in that what it gives me is fairly close to nothing as it really just protects itself. From the standpoint of card advantage its one that I have considered cutting for a bit now but I wanted to maintain my sac outlet count and the fact that it is more robust in that it can self protect is nice but I probably will end up cutting it as one of the two I change out for the other two new goblin sac outlets to come in.
Deck Change:
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[Modern] Allies