I just wanted to say that you inspired me to build a bird deck and I've been using the Soulcatcher package you described. Maybe it's just me, but Thrummingbird hasn't felt incredibly helpful to me... just letting my birds die seems to work well enough. I've found that Soulcatcher gets insta-killed fairly often, which is ok because he usually ends of fueling my other birds through Soulcatchers' Aerie.
The trick to the Thrummingbird is to get more counter producing cards than just the Aerie in the deck. I've done this by adding Ajani (once you start getting counters and vigilance on all your birds, lookout), the Umezawa Jitte (Thrummingbird can proliferate on it too, don't forget), and -- I've tried this too -- Kangee with the Aven Mimeomancer. That being said, although the Thrummingbird can add feather tokens to Kangee, I think it is a bit slow overall.
The Mimeomancer is a very good option even without Kangee, however. It can basically make Tarmogoyfs into straight up 3/1 fliers that you can deal with, and it can also dispose of even bigger things like Emrakul. It can also make you other birds bigger in a pinch.
Where is a one-off Commander Eesha? We need a bird general. And Karakas can bounce him if you need it.
Finally, I play Suntail Hawk in my deck just so I can potentially get a one-drop down for speed. That new bird might replace it in my deck, but I don't like having no one-drops in the deck....maybe an aether vial.
EDIT: Also, while this would entail building something completely different than Angry Birds, I've also been exploring the idea of putting together a different deck that still makes use of the Sky Hussar/Island Sanctuary engine. I'll share if I come up with anything significant.
I'd take a look at my old flying deck that I posted several pages back if you want to abuse the island sanctuary synergy. If I'd thought of it, I probably would have used it there, too. t
The new bird has some potential. I think it might be decent as a control-esque finisher.
Murdox, I would be interested in seeing your list with Thrumming Bird and counters if you don't mind sharing it with the world. It always sounded good in my head, but I could never get it to work as well as I would've liked.
I don't have a lot of time at the moment to comment on the posts above, though I want to when I get the chance. However, I wanted to go ahead and post my updated list.
I've known it for awhile but seriously, if you have the money for them, Jittes should be in this deck. They are amazing and can win you games.
Recently, I've haven't had a lot of free time for MtG but I did have a chance to play a couple games on Cockatrice.
I played against a great player running Affinity who actually knew what this deck was and had seen it here on MTGS. We had an awesome match. He got me down to 1 life on turn three and then I proceeded to win off the back of Jitte which helped me remove critical creatures off his field. It was a crazy game and there's honestly no reason I should have won had it not been for the Jitte.
My deck was definitely outclassed in this match-up but I baited out his counters and then when I felt safe, dropped Island Sanctuary. From there, I beat him down to four life at which point he'd StP'd my Stormscape and Sky Hussar. I had no cards in hand and he had a couple Swords, Mom, a couple Stoneforge Mystics, Jitte, and Batterskull on the field.
I asked him if he had any fliers or enchantment removal in his deck and he said not in his mainboard. That was game and I won with nothing but lands and Sanctuary on the field because he could not get around Sanctuary and he was going to draw out and lose.
It's worth asking your opponent if they have any fliers, island walkers or enchantment removal in the mainboard on the first game, after dropping Sanctuary, because some decks aren't packing answers to Sanctuary. If that's the case a resolved Sanctuary is an auto win for you.
Anyways, the deck is shaping up nicely. Post sideboard, I know games will be a lot tougher and I'm still working on a SB to deal with that. Either way, I feel like this deck is shaping up and I'm thinking after a bit more testing, it might be about time to write up a full primer for this deck.
Got more to say but right now I've got work. Lemme know what your thoughts are!
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EDIT: Murdox, I like that you are thinking outside of the box and I've taken some time to think about your suggestions. Here are my thoughts.
Thrummingbird is nice and I'm not saying it wouldn't work well in a list packing Aerie and Jitte's and so forth. However, the problem I see with Thrummingbird and cards that would benefit from him is that none of those cards are really good on their own, except for Jitte. If you drop a Thrummingbird, he's only useful if you also have another card in play with a counter on it. Otherwise, he's a vanilla 1/1 flier for two. And then, of course, you've got to keep Thrummingbird alive for at least one turn to use his ability which can be difficult to do in Legacy because there's so much removal being used. Outside of Thrummingbird, I personally found Soulcatcher's Aerie to be too slow to really merit a couple slots in the deck, IMHO. So while the synergy between Thrummingbird and co is cute, I don't think it's really powerful enough for the Legacy format. If anyone posts good results with a bird deck using Thrummingbird successfully, then maybe I'll take a second look, though.
The Angry Birds deck has a lot of really nice synergies which add extra strength to the deck but what we really need are cards that pull their own weight; we need cards that are good on their own. Sky Hussar is good IF there are two creatures on your field. Cloudreach is good IF there's another bird on the field. Stormscape's good IF you've got cards in your hand that benefit from the lower casting cost. On the other hand, Squadron Hawk is pretty much always a good play, Pride of the Clouds is good, Aven Mindcensor is decent on its own, etc.
The more I've thought about it, though, the more I'm thinking Aven Mimeomancer might really be a decent bird to consider. He helps us get in more damage which is the one struggle I really see with this deck (games tend to go long) and he also makes birdie chumping more valid when Sanctuary is not out because he forces the opponent to lose good creatures if they attack. Unfortunately, I don't think he deals with threats like Tarmogoyf like you think he does. Here's one of the rulings on him:
Quote from "Oracle Text" »
It will not overwrite effects that modify power or toughness (whether from a static ability, counters, or a resolved spell or ability), nor will it overwrite effects that set power and toughness which come into existence after the ability resolves.
Anyways, thanks for the suggestion. I'm thinking about replacing my Stonecloakers with him and giving him a test run.
Sword of Light and Shadow is pretty nice but I really like Jitte's here. If you were to throw some of these swords into my list, what would you suggest removing? My logic here, is that Jitte is amazing in this list and running more than 4 equipment cards seems like a bad idea. Thoughts?
I have to be honest, I'm not a fan of either Commander Eesha or Suntail Hawk. Eesha's protection from creatures is nice but a 2/4 for 4 mana seems underpowered for a guy that will most likely only see play in the mid to late game. Suntail Hawk, is aggressively priced but vulnerable to MM and too vanilla to be worth running IMHO. He's really a card you don't want to see in anything other than the first few turns. Afterwards he becomes a dead draw.
Anyways, I've been play testing more recently and the deck's doing well. It's pretty slow to get the damage in in some games, however, and I think Mindshrieker might be just what we need for that. He's also powerful enough to merit being countered and that gives us another card to bait out counterspells so we can get Sanctuary down. If he sticks, he screws up Brainstorms and Ponders, and he has the potential to get huge and avoid being burned out. I wish he were white but he isn't. If he was white I'd readily swap my Cloudreach Cavalry for him. Seeing as he isn't, swapping out Cloudreach becomes an issue because then I'm cutting the number of useful cards Stormscape Familiar gives us a discount on.
As it stands, Stormscape and Stonecloaker are probably the two cards most likely to go in this list. They aren't bad cards but the more I playtest, the more I feel they are probably the least crucial cards in the deck right now. I'm gonna try swapping Stormscape for Mindshrieker and see how things play out. Can't wait for Innistrad to finally be released!
EDIT: Weltkrieg, how's your control list going? Have you worked on it at all? Also, I wanted to say I took a second look at your flying deck and I think I might try to revamp it with a couple newer creatures and Sanctuary and see how it fairs. =)
Alright! I know this is a double post but I should be good with the mods since it's been a few days and I definitely have something significant to add to the thread. I bolded the most exciting things for those who don't want to read this whole post.
I've done enough play testing online to come to the conclusion that the current Angry Birds list is mostly solid and is ready for its debut in the tournament world. I'll be taking it with me to my local game store this Saturday to compete and will most definitely be posting my results on here afterward. I'm pretty excited as piloting this deck will be a nice change of pace for me since I typically play combo (The Four Horsemen) in tournaments.
I've made a couple adjustments to the list and below is what I will likely be piloting.
We'll see how that goes. If anyone has any suggestions on other/better SB cards I should be running, lemme know.
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In other news, I'm still constantly play testing and trying out different innovations and build ideas for Angry Birds. Something I've thought about recently is, what's stopping us from shoving the Stoneforge Mystic package in here?
Nothing really. So I gave it a shot, swapping out 4x Kor Skyfisher for 4x Mystics and changing the 4x Jitte to 2x Batterskull, 1x Jitte, 1x Quietus Spike (in an evasive deck this can end the game quick!). It play tested fairly well so I want to test it further. My only qualms about it is that it doesn't really fit the theme of the deck and the decrease in fliers weakens Pride of the Clouds. But really, the deck performed fine.
And for kicks, I also whipped up a quick Counter Birds list that follows:
I didn't test it but I think it could be a pretty fun variation.
Anyways, the other exciting thing I have to say is that I am currently in the process of writing a full primer for Angry Birds. I'm about 1/4th to 1/3rd of the way finished with it and can't wait to put it up here. Hopefully I will have some fair tournament results to backup my belief that Angry Birds can be competitive. =)
I just wanted to say that I have been reading this forum for a little bit, And, I have been wanting to break into Legacy for a while, but I don't have a big budget. I understand that this is not a "dirt cheap" budget build, but it looks interesting, and competative. I am new to the Legacy scene, and whenever I ask anyone what a decent budget deck is, the reply is usually "Elves, RDW, or Affinity". While I like speed decks as much as the next guy, I am not a fan of the "all in or bust" style of RWD, and I have played Elves and Affinity back in the day. This looks new and interesting, so I thank you for sharing your innovation. I would like to try building this deck, and I always loved Island Sanctuary. Thank you, and I look forward to reading your primer.
I've gone through the cards to build it, but haven't had time to test. Grad school and 12 hour days at work pretty well have my time taken care of. I am looking forward to the primer and happy to know that one of my favorite decklists was helpful.
Otherwise, I might point out that the soulcatcher's aerie aren't the greatest cards main for you, but after a couple of grim lavamancer activations, or a bolt or two, that makes one heck of an anti spot removal card! It doesn't do much to white removal, but it does a number on red, basically. It is however, a meta dependent call. If you see a lot of burn lists, I'd probably consider it!
Loki, thanks for your comments! Yeah, the goal is to make this a budget, competitive alternative to the usual.
Weltkrieg, I know the feeling. Between work and prepping for grad school, myself, I haven't had as much time for MtG myself. Soulcatcher's Aerie is a very interesting SB option. I'll keep that in mind. Haven't been to a tourny at the local scene for awhile now so I really need to see what it's like, at this point, to really get my SB down pat.
Anyways, sorry to everyone for going AWOL for awhile. A bunch of life stuff came up unexpectedly and I had to put stuff on hold. Unfortunately, this also meant that I didn't make it to the tournament. Hopefully i'll be able to get to that soon. The primer is still on its way still too.
PS: Haven't seen my meta yet but I'm expecting the format has sped up some since the banning of MM. Not sure yet how that will effect this deck, but this deck is definitely more of a slow build mid-range deck so it might need some retooling to compete with fast aggro. Not sure yet, though.
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Force of Will is kind of like duct tape. Stick it in a deck and it will fix all your problems.
What would a game of Magic between Harry Potter and Voldemort look like?
ive been playing this deck as a joke for a very long time... its always fun... and is crazily RESILIANT>> has both recurring hawks(welkin / squadron).. that you can shuffle under with mistveil!!
then the HAVEN makes the sanctuary and aerie totally retarded if left unanswered...
Hey! Yeah, life has been crazy for me still these past few weeks but I finally got a chance to spend some time on Angry Birds last night. I'm experimenting with a new list that runs both Island Sanctuary and Meekstone and also has Mindshrieker. But it is purely theoretical at this point.
I'm hoping to get a friend to come over and playtest soon so I'll let you know how that goes. Also, there hasn't been any progress on the primer lately but it will get done. Maybe I'll work on that some tonight. =)
EDIT: The primer is up, though not completed! Please tell me what you think. Also, I'll be running Angry Birds in a tourny this Saturday. Finally! I'll be piloting the last stable build, minus the Mystic Gates (due to short notice), and I'm crossing my fingers that I'll at least go 2-2 on this first run. We'll see! =)
Hm, this deck looks pretty interesting. I haven't played Legacy in years (and when I did, it was on MWS) and don't have the budget to enter the format with a top tier deck. This looks like a pretty cheap, fun, potentially competitive deck, so I'm going to build it and see how it does (I play exclusively on MTGO).
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Top 8 of SCG Invitational, Las Vegas, NV, Dec 13-15, 2013
Top 8 of SCG Invitational, Somerset, NJ, Aug 28-30, 2015
Winner of SCG Worcester Team Sealed Open with Gerard Fabiano and Curtis Sheu, September 28, 2013
I enjoyed reading the Primer. I definately am interested now seeing a build that can be had for around $70. But, I was wondering something: You mentioned Opposition as a 'maybe'. I remember Squirrell Opposition was killer, back in the day. Could something like that work here, between the Sky Husser and the Squadron Hawks? Adding the Meekstone, like you said might help with the speed, and that would allow even one or two fliers to beat face...right??
Well I'd just like to start by thanking everyone for their compliments. I really appreciate it and am honored! I will continue to work on the primer as I find time for it.
TsunaHan, that is probably one of the more interesting suggestions I've heard in awhile. It hadn't even crossed my mind to splash another color (other than green, possibly). You will have to let me know how Curse of Stalked Prey works out. If you can keep it on the field long enough, I could definitely see it paying for itself in damage.
My first inclination, however, is that splashing a third color necessitates an expensive mana base to really be consistent. By that, I mean fetch lands and original duals. That's far from being budget, though. Have you had a chance to playtest your list? Are you getting set back turns by not having the right color mana available to you?
That said, I think Lightning Bolt is one brilliant reason to consider splashing red. It's still a great removal card but it also helps speed up the clock against your opponent when you don't need it to remove a threat. That extra versatility is nice.
Other than that, I'd maybe drop the singleton Meddling Mage from the mainboard and possibly the Mimeomancer too. Perhaps this could be room for more burn like Riftbolt?
Bizkit Overlord, hope you like piloting the deck. You will have to let me know how it fares for you. If you're not ready to sink the cash into getting the cards, Cockatrice provides an excellent avenue for testing decks against others for free. Just Google it if you decide to go that route.
Loki Sukaido, the $70 list is nothing to laugh at and is still pretty good, IMHO. The Jittes really help to control the board, in my opinion, so you may want to use some alternative to them (check the list below for an idea). Perhaps the Meekstone that has been mentioned? I'd be interested to see Opposition at work but I'm not sure what an optimal list would look like. Squirrel Opposition was mean because it was able to generate lots of tokens to completely lock down the opponent. We're not really doing that here, though Battlescreech and Spectral Procession might be worth looking at. I'd love to see it work, my only fear is that it would take too many turns to set up and take advantage of.
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Here's where I really see the direction of the deck going, for me at least. We want to be able to compete with faster decks and that means doing either one of two things better. Either we need to pump out birds faster or we need to start slowing our opponent down sooner. The ideas I have at the moment involve throwing in either AEther Vial or Meekstone. Vial's not really friendly on the budget so I hesitate to go that route but it does deserve some consideration because it would help us play more birds per turn while also protecting our birds from counterspells. Meekstone makes for a great one-drop as well because it means the real back breaking creatures only get to swing at us once. Right now, I'm leaning towards Meekstone, partially because it fits the soft-lock theme the deck already has going on, partially because it's cheaper and partially because Meekstone isn't a card that's run much in Legacy and opponents might not really know what to do with it when it lands.
If I were going to adjust the $70 build, I'd probably change it to look like this:
The only reason I haven't posted this up yet on the primer is because I don't feel like I've done enough actual testing of a list like this to justify it.
What I can say is that the extra land in the above list is going to help your consistency over running just 18 lands. After enough games, I have decided that 19 just feels right. Meekstone is in here and will hopefully compensate for the lack of Jitte. Kor Skyfisher has been swapped for Beacon Hawk to minimize Meekstone's drawback on our big guys. I don't think it's too much trouble though because you often only need to swing once, maybe twice, with Pride of the Clouds to seal the game.
Well, certaily my list is very suboptimal and I don't have the money/time to test it severely by now. But this list owns my Soul Sisters deck very hard(only winable when I put de Martyr/Ascendant combo onboard), but so far, Curse of Stalked Prey + Island Sanctuary have worked very well together. the 1R cost of the Curse helps a lot.
With Painlands only, you can somehow play this deck since Augury Own + Preordain are very good to find what you need. And bolt it's great too. Overall, red gives you reach, which is very very useful when you have a lot of 1/1 birds.
Bizkit Overlord, hope you like piloting the deck. You will have to let me know how it fares for you. If you're not ready to sink the cash into getting the cards, Cockatrice provides an excellent avenue for testing decks against others for free. Just Google it if you decide to go that route.
The deck is incredibly cheap on MTGO, with the most expensive card being Mystic Gate at ~$2.75. I was able to assemble it last night for ~20-25 tickets to bots plus $8 to MTGO Traders for the final few cards I couldn't find.
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Top 8 of SCG Invitational, Las Vegas, NV, Dec 13-15, 2013
Top 8 of SCG Invitational, Somerset, NJ, Aug 28-30, 2015
Winner of SCG Worcester Team Sealed Open with Gerard Fabiano and Curtis Sheu, September 28, 2013
TsunaHan, glad to hear it is working well. If you can, I'd look at some of the other duals and multi-color lands out there and try to swap out the pain lands.
I almost never want to have pain lands in a deck that's meant to play into the mid and late game. The addition of burn, I'm sure, speeds up the clock but this is still a deck that plays longer games on the whole.
Bizkit, wow that is really cheap. How's it playing for you? Have you had a chance to use it? It faired pretty well in the pre-MM banning meta, in my experience. I'm getting ready to head out for a tournament and today will be my first look at the new meta so we'll see how it goes. I'm hoping to get good ideas on how to adjust the list to compete.
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Force of Will is kind of like duct tape. Stick it in a deck and it will fix all your problems.
What would a game of Magic between Harry Potter and Voldemort look like?
The way I understand it, while the Haunt might be useful, it doesn't produce colored mana, and we want to have the ability to eith threaten Counterspell T2, or have the mana for forecast...
I agree with Loki. Moorland Haunt is an interesting card and could potentially be useful in the mid to late game if several of our birds have died but I just don't think it's competitive.
The fact that it can't produce either of the two colors we need to play our cards hurts its viability, IMHO. I've tried to keep the mana base fairly simple with still a fair amount basic lands to avoid getting screwed by decks packing Wasteland. If I did opt to run a few other specialty lands, I'd probably lean towards Seaside Haven because card advantage will generally be better than a 1/1 flier, even in this deck.
Anyways, I have had no luck getting to a tournament. Me and my buddy drove an hour to get to our typical Legacy tourny place only to find out that they went out of business. Called up a buddy of mine to get the location of another place I knew did Legacy tournaments only to find out that they went out of business last month too. The only other place I know of that holds Legacy tournies here in the Phx area holds them Sunday afternoons which conflicts with my schedule. I know I'm needlessly ranting but it sucks. -.-
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Force of Will is kind of like duct tape. Stick it in a deck and it will fix all your problems.
What would a game of Magic between Harry Potter and Voldemort look like?
@ Madcat: So, how is the budget build coming? I really am interested in trying it out. Sadly, I'd have to proxie virtually every card. So, I'm wondering if it's worth the effort to get the cards for this?
Loki Sukaido, I haven't had a lot of free time so I've been primarily testing the regular build, not the budget build. Here's my results so far. I'll tie in what I've seen to how I imagine the budget build would perform at the bottom of this post.
BTW, I was not a fan of the Meekstone list in testing at all. For me there were a lot of problems. Beacon Hawk was not the nice 2/3 that Kor Skyfisher is. Mindshrieker was not consistent (as I assumed it wouldn't be) but also did not offer enough big hits for the mana it asks to be sunk into it. Meekstone wasn't bad but wasn't really the 'saves the day' card that it needed to be and the drawback of cutting three creatures from the list was noticeable, IMHO. Angry Birds thrives on consistently drawing expendable creatures that can be cast every turn.
So I went back to the current "tried and true" list and since I haven't been able to get to any tournaments recently, I've been trying to test it against a spread of Tier 1 decks. Because of my limited amount of time, I've been focused on testing against a variety of decks as opposed to playing twenty games against just one or two decks. Also, no side boards have been used for either sides in these games. Consider this preliminary testing against the big boys.
I have actually piloted Angry Birds against Zoo in the past so I had some experience here. I did manage to win two of the three games but I'd say this is a tough match. Zoo is faster and packs heaps and heaps of removal. This match up is even at best and probably slightly in favor of Zoo in pre-sideboard games.
I went two and one against Blue Zoo as well. However, Blue Zoo packs more counterspells and less removal and generally doesn't feel quite as aggressive as regular Zoo. All in all, I feel like Angry Birds has the advantage against Blue Zoo in the pre-sideboard games.
Birds eat Merfolk for breakfast. I've also had experience with this match up in the past and while the Merfolk list I tested against is a little dated (but still solid), I can tell that Angry Birds has a pretty strong match up against it. Merfolk doesn't pack enough control to stop the relentless birds coming down each turn and it doesn't pack enough threats to keep up.
This was an abysmal match up for Birds. U/B Control quickly locked me out of doing anything relevant for the rest of the game and then powered through wins with Tombstalker, Jace, or Creeping Tar Pit. I'm wondering what I can do to improve this match up. Even though I only played three games against it, I could tell losing would be a trend.
All said and done, I'm pretty happy right now. I played against decks that cost twice as much or more as Birds and had a respectable level of success.
These matches yielded some very interesting information. First, in not even one of the games above was Island Sanctuary ever really useful or necessary. In many situations it was the wrong card to play and would have hurt me more than help me. As much as I love the card and as much as I've felt it useful in the past, for the above matches, it simply was not helpful. Coincidence? I'm not sure. I also continue to dislike Aven Mindcensor and feel like he should be replaced. I just don't know what to swap him out for yet. Also, Umezawa's Jitte was a game winner. There were a couple games where it really changed the tide and won me a game that might otherwise have been lost.
That said, I think the budget Angry Birds list is good but won't have as good of odds against Tier 1 decks. If Tier 1 decks are all you see, then I'd recommend forking a little extra over to get those cards. Angry Birds still costs hundreds less than your typical, competitive deck. That said, I think the list is solid at it's core. My suggestion? Take a look at your local meta and tweak it to compete well against what you see!
I appreciate the insight. Just a few questions, though... #1, the "tried and true" list...is that the one you have on page 1? Were there any tweaks that could be made? And #2...there was the mention of Curse of Stalked Prey. Intitially, the thoughts were to make the deck 3 colors. But, do you think there is any merrit in looking at some sort of R/W Bird build, or even G/W? Or even strictly monowhite? I understand that Sky Husser and Pride of Clouds are so good in U/W, and, I am not an expert or anything, but are they really what make the deck tick? Theorectically, you could simply play a set of each of those with ANY cheap evasive fliers...uh oh, I just had a thought...I know this is not the place to talk about it, but do you think something could be done with Pegasai? Or Banding? I was just thinking of cheap, evasive alternatives and I remembered Mesa Pegasus...anyway, thanks again, and sorry about the questions and ramblings.
curse of stalked prey might work in a thrummingbird/ soul catcher's aerie build, but I doubt it's necessary. You're weakening your mana base to add removal you don't need, etc. Red/white could work, but what makes blue/white work so well is, in fact, the protection of island sanctuary while you build up your army and don't lose card advantage to the hussar engine. Pride of the clouds is more late game inevitability. Frankly, a red/white list would need to be much more aggressive. If I were going to go that route, you could work with an aggressive strategy, but I would base it on fliers and tokens, such as spectral procession, and maybe even include rage forger.
Mono white fliers is a strategy, a variant of white weenie, but you need a lot of other ways to make it good, really. You need lots of them, and you lose the card draw (though realistically, I probably would run 3 sky hussars and just use them for draw, with maybe a single fetchable island in case I actually wanted to cast one).
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Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
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The trick to the Thrummingbird is to get more counter producing cards than just the Aerie in the deck. I've done this by adding Ajani (once you start getting counters and vigilance on all your birds, lookout), the Umezawa Jitte (Thrummingbird can proliferate on it too, don't forget), and -- I've tried this too -- Kangee with the Aven Mimeomancer. That being said, although the Thrummingbird can add feather tokens to Kangee, I think it is a bit slow overall.
The Mimeomancer is a very good option even without Kangee, however. It can basically make Tarmogoyfs into straight up 3/1 fliers that you can deal with, and it can also dispose of even bigger things like Emrakul. It can also make you other birds bigger in a pinch.
Sword of Light and Shadow or Mistveil Plains is a nice way to get some birds back in your deck as you may be chump blocking.
Where is a one-off Commander Eesha? We need a bird general. And Karakas can bounce him if you need it.
Finally, I play Suntail Hawk in my deck just so I can potentially get a one-drop down for speed. That new bird might replace it in my deck, but I don't like having no one-drops in the deck....maybe an aether vial.
I'd take a look at my old flying deck that I posted several pages back if you want to abuse the island sanctuary synergy. If I'd thought of it, I probably would have used it there, too. t
The new bird has some potential. I think it might be decent as a control-esque finisher.
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
Jitte is now official. =)
4x Augury Owl
3x Aven Mindcensor
4x Cloudreach Cavalry
4x Pride of the Clouds
3x Sky Hussar
4x Squadron Hawk
2x Stonecloaker
3x Stormscape Familiar
4x Glacial Fortress
4x Island
10x Plains
Instant (7)
3x Path to Exile
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Island Sanctuary
Artifact (4)
4x Umezawa's Jitte
I've known it for awhile but seriously, if you have the money for them, Jittes should be in this deck. They are amazing and can win you games.
Recently, I've haven't had a lot of free time for MtG but I did have a chance to play a couple games on Cockatrice.
I played against a great player running Affinity who actually knew what this deck was and had seen it here on MTGS. We had an awesome match. He got me down to 1 life on turn three and then I proceeded to win off the back of Jitte which helped me remove critical creatures off his field. It was a crazy game and there's honestly no reason I should have won had it not been for the Jitte.
Then today, I played against a WUR Stoneforge deck packing Stoneforge Mystic and co., Force of Will, Daze, Stifle, Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Grim Lavamancer and more.
My deck was definitely outclassed in this match-up but I baited out his counters and then when I felt safe, dropped Island Sanctuary. From there, I beat him down to four life at which point he'd StP'd my Stormscape and Sky Hussar. I had no cards in hand and he had a couple Swords, Mom, a couple Stoneforge Mystics, Jitte, and Batterskull on the field.
I asked him if he had any fliers or enchantment removal in his deck and he said not in his mainboard. That was game and I won with nothing but lands and Sanctuary on the field because he could not get around Sanctuary and he was going to draw out and lose.
It's worth asking your opponent if they have any fliers, island walkers or enchantment removal in the mainboard on the first game, after dropping Sanctuary, because some decks aren't packing answers to Sanctuary. If that's the case a resolved Sanctuary is an auto win for you.
Anyways, the deck is shaping up nicely. Post sideboard, I know games will be a lot tougher and I'm still working on a SB to deal with that. Either way, I feel like this deck is shaping up and I'm thinking after a bit more testing, it might be about time to write up a full primer for this deck.
Got more to say but right now I've got work. Lemme know what your thoughts are!
-----------------------------
EDIT: Murdox, I like that you are thinking outside of the box and I've taken some time to think about your suggestions. Here are my thoughts.
Thrummingbird is nice and I'm not saying it wouldn't work well in a list packing Aerie and Jitte's and so forth. However, the problem I see with Thrummingbird and cards that would benefit from him is that none of those cards are really good on their own, except for Jitte. If you drop a Thrummingbird, he's only useful if you also have another card in play with a counter on it. Otherwise, he's a vanilla 1/1 flier for two. And then, of course, you've got to keep Thrummingbird alive for at least one turn to use his ability which can be difficult to do in Legacy because there's so much removal being used. Outside of Thrummingbird, I personally found Soulcatcher's Aerie to be too slow to really merit a couple slots in the deck, IMHO. So while the synergy between Thrummingbird and co is cute, I don't think it's really powerful enough for the Legacy format. If anyone posts good results with a bird deck using Thrummingbird successfully, then maybe I'll take a second look, though.
The Angry Birds deck has a lot of really nice synergies which add extra strength to the deck but what we really need are cards that pull their own weight; we need cards that are good on their own. Sky Hussar is good IF there are two creatures on your field. Cloudreach is good IF there's another bird on the field. Stormscape's good IF you've got cards in your hand that benefit from the lower casting cost. On the other hand, Squadron Hawk is pretty much always a good play, Pride of the Clouds is good, Aven Mindcensor is decent on its own, etc.
The more I've thought about it, though, the more I'm thinking Aven Mimeomancer might really be a decent bird to consider. He helps us get in more damage which is the one struggle I really see with this deck (games tend to go long) and he also makes birdie chumping more valid when Sanctuary is not out because he forces the opponent to lose good creatures if they attack. Unfortunately, I don't think he deals with threats like Tarmogoyf like you think he does. Here's one of the rulings on him:
Anyways, thanks for the suggestion. I'm thinking about replacing my Stonecloakers with him and giving him a test run.
Sword of Light and Shadow is pretty nice but I really like Jitte's here. If you were to throw some of these swords into my list, what would you suggest removing? My logic here, is that Jitte is amazing in this list and running more than 4 equipment cards seems like a bad idea. Thoughts?
I have to be honest, I'm not a fan of either Commander Eesha or Suntail Hawk. Eesha's protection from creatures is nice but a 2/4 for 4 mana seems underpowered for a guy that will most likely only see play in the mid to late game. Suntail Hawk, is aggressively priced but vulnerable to MM and too vanilla to be worth running IMHO. He's really a card you don't want to see in anything other than the first few turns. Afterwards he becomes a dead draw.
Anyways, I've been play testing more recently and the deck's doing well. It's pretty slow to get the damage in in some games, however, and I think Mindshrieker might be just what we need for that. He's also powerful enough to merit being countered and that gives us another card to bait out counterspells so we can get Sanctuary down. If he sticks, he screws up Brainstorms and Ponders, and he has the potential to get huge and avoid being burned out. I wish he were white but he isn't. If he was white I'd readily swap my Cloudreach Cavalry for him. Seeing as he isn't, swapping out Cloudreach becomes an issue because then I'm cutting the number of useful cards Stormscape Familiar gives us a discount on.
As it stands, Stormscape and Stonecloaker are probably the two cards most likely to go in this list. They aren't bad cards but the more I playtest, the more I feel they are probably the least crucial cards in the deck right now. I'm gonna try swapping Stormscape for Mindshrieker and see how things play out. Can't wait for Innistrad to finally be released!
EDIT: Weltkrieg, how's your control list going? Have you worked on it at all? Also, I wanted to say I took a second look at your flying deck and I think I might try to revamp it with a couple newer creatures and Sanctuary and see how it fairs. =)
BGSpanish InquisitionGB
GFood Chain ElvesG
WUAngry BirdsUW
BUThe Four Horsemen (RIP)UB
I've done enough play testing online to come to the conclusion that the current Angry Birds list is mostly solid and is ready for its debut in the tournament world. I'll be taking it with me to my local game store this Saturday to compete and will most definitely be posting my results on here afterward. I'm pretty excited as piloting this deck will be a nice change of pace for me since I typically play combo (The Four Horsemen) in tournaments.
I've made a couple adjustments to the list and below is what I will likely be piloting.
4x Augury Owl
1x Aven Mimeomancer
3x Aven Mindcensor
4x Kor Skyfisher
4x Pride of the Clouds
3x Sky Hussar
4x Squadron Hawk
3x Stormscape Familiar
4x Glacial Fortress
5x Island
10x Plains
Instant (7)
3x Path to Exile
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Island Sanctuary
Artifact (4)
4x Umezawa's Jitte
Cloudreach Cavalry was dropped in favor of Kor Skyfisher because Skyfisher is less fragile. The two Stonecloaker were also removed for an extra Island and one Aven Mimeomancer.
I'm still undecided on the sideboard but it will probably look something like this:
We'll see how that goes. If anyone has any suggestions on other/better SB cards I should be running, lemme know.
------------------------------------------
In other news, I'm still constantly play testing and trying out different innovations and build ideas for Angry Birds. Something I've thought about recently is, what's stopping us from shoving the Stoneforge Mystic package in here?
Nothing really. So I gave it a shot, swapping out 4x Kor Skyfisher for 4x Mystics and changing the 4x Jitte to 2x Batterskull, 1x Jitte, 1x Quietus Spike (in an evasive deck this can end the game quick!). It play tested fairly well so I want to test it further. My only qualms about it is that it doesn't really fit the theme of the deck and the decrease in fliers weakens Pride of the Clouds. But really, the deck performed fine.
And for kicks, I also whipped up a quick Counter Birds list that follows:
4x Glacial Fortress
4x Island
4x Island Sanctuary
4x Kor Skyfisher
4x Mana Tithe
10x Plains
3x Pride of the Clouds
3x Sky Hussar
4x Spellstutter Sprite
4x Spiketail Hatchling
4x Squadron Hawk
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Umezawa's Jitte
I didn't test it but I think it could be a pretty fun variation.
Anyways, the other exciting thing I have to say is that I am currently in the process of writing a full primer for Angry Birds. I'm about 1/4th to 1/3rd of the way finished with it and can't wait to put it up here. Hopefully I will have some fair tournament results to backup my belief that Angry Birds can be competitive. =)
BGSpanish InquisitionGB
GFood Chain ElvesG
WUAngry BirdsUW
BUThe Four Horsemen (RIP)UB
Otherwise, I might point out that the soulcatcher's aerie aren't the greatest cards main for you, but after a couple of grim lavamancer activations, or a bolt or two, that makes one heck of an anti spot removal card! It doesn't do much to white removal, but it does a number on red, basically. It is however, a meta dependent call. If you see a lot of burn lists, I'd probably consider it!
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
Weltkrieg, I know the feeling. Between work and prepping for grad school, myself, I haven't had as much time for MtG myself. Soulcatcher's Aerie is a very interesting SB option. I'll keep that in mind. Haven't been to a tourny at the local scene for awhile now so I really need to see what it's like, at this point, to really get my SB down pat.
Anyways, sorry to everyone for going AWOL for awhile. A bunch of life stuff came up unexpectedly and I had to put stuff on hold. Unfortunately, this also meant that I didn't make it to the tournament. Hopefully i'll be able to get to that soon. The primer is still on its way still too.
PS: Haven't seen my meta yet but I'm expecting the format has sped up some since the banning of MM. Not sure yet how that will effect this deck, but this deck is definitely more of a slow build mid-range deck so it might need some retooling to compete with fast aggro. Not sure yet, though.
BGSpanish InquisitionGB
GFood Chain ElvesG
WUAngry BirdsUW
BUThe Four Horsemen (RIP)UB
then the HAVEN makes the sanctuary and aerie totally retarded if left unanswered...
4x suntail hawk
4x aven squire
4x Pride of the Clouds
4x soulcatcher
3x squadron hawk
3x welkin hawk
2x battle screech
4x Spectral Procession
Enchantment (7)
4x soulcatcher's aerie
3x Island Sanctuary
Instant (5)
1x gaze of justice
1x Path to Exile
3x Swords to Plowshares
3x Mistveil Plains
3x Seaside Haven
4x Glacial Fortress
4x Seachrome Coast
6x Plains
1x island
YUMA, AZ
I'm hoping to get a friend to come over and playtest soon so I'll let you know how that goes. Also, there hasn't been any progress on the primer lately but it will get done. Maybe I'll work on that some tonight. =)
EDIT: The primer is up, though not completed! Please tell me what you think. Also, I'll be running Angry Birds in a tourny this Saturday. Finally! I'll be piloting the last stable build, minus the Mystic Gates (due to short notice), and I'm crossing my fingers that I'll at least go 2-2 on this first run. We'll see! =)
BGSpanish InquisitionGB
GFood Chain ElvesG
WUAngry BirdsUW
BUThe Four Horsemen (RIP)UB
edit: Build my fist Angry Birds deck, with the R splash:
5 Plains
5 Island
2 Mountain
3 Battlefield Forge
3 Adarkar Wastes
2 Shivan Reef
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Augury Owl
4 Pride of the Clouds
3 Beacon Hawk
3 Skyknight Legionnaire
3 Sky Hussar
1 Meddling Mage
1 Aven Mimeomancer
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Swords to Plowshares
Enchantments 7
4 Island Sanctuary
3 Curse of Stalked Prey
Sorceries 3
3 Preordain
No money for Jitte
I'm liking the deck a lot so far. Good job with the Primer sir!
Top 8 of SCG Invitational, Las Vegas, NV, Dec 13-15, 2013
Top 8 of SCG Invitational, Somerset, NJ, Aug 28-30, 2015
Winner of SCG Worcester Team Sealed Open with Gerard Fabiano and Curtis Sheu, September 28, 2013
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TsunaHan, that is probably one of the more interesting suggestions I've heard in awhile. It hadn't even crossed my mind to splash another color (other than green, possibly). You will have to let me know how Curse of Stalked Prey works out. If you can keep it on the field long enough, I could definitely see it paying for itself in damage.
My first inclination, however, is that splashing a third color necessitates an expensive mana base to really be consistent. By that, I mean fetch lands and original duals. That's far from being budget, though. Have you had a chance to playtest your list? Are you getting set back turns by not having the right color mana available to you?
That said, I think Lightning Bolt is one brilliant reason to consider splashing red. It's still a great removal card but it also helps speed up the clock against your opponent when you don't need it to remove a threat. That extra versatility is nice.
Other than that, I'd maybe drop the singleton Meddling Mage from the mainboard and possibly the Mimeomancer too. Perhaps this could be room for more burn like Riftbolt?
Bizkit Overlord, hope you like piloting the deck. You will have to let me know how it fares for you. If you're not ready to sink the cash into getting the cards, Cockatrice provides an excellent avenue for testing decks against others for free. Just Google it if you decide to go that route.
Loki Sukaido, the $70 list is nothing to laugh at and is still pretty good, IMHO. The Jittes really help to control the board, in my opinion, so you may want to use some alternative to them (check the list below for an idea). Perhaps the Meekstone that has been mentioned? I'd be interested to see Opposition at work but I'm not sure what an optimal list would look like. Squirrel Opposition was mean because it was able to generate lots of tokens to completely lock down the opponent. We're not really doing that here, though Battlescreech and Spectral Procession might be worth looking at. I'd love to see it work, my only fear is that it would take too many turns to set up and take advantage of.
-------------------------------------
Here's where I really see the direction of the deck going, for me at least. We want to be able to compete with faster decks and that means doing either one of two things better. Either we need to pump out birds faster or we need to start slowing our opponent down sooner. The ideas I have at the moment involve throwing in either AEther Vial or Meekstone. Vial's not really friendly on the budget so I hesitate to go that route but it does deserve some consideration because it would help us play more birds per turn while also protecting our birds from counterspells. Meekstone makes for a great one-drop as well because it means the real back breaking creatures only get to swing at us once. Right now, I'm leaning towards Meekstone, partially because it fits the soft-lock theme the deck already has going on, partially because it's cheaper and partially because Meekstone isn't a card that's run much in Legacy and opponents might not really know what to do with it when it lands.
If I were going to adjust the $70 build, I'd probably change it to look like this:
4x Augury Owl
1x Aven Mimeomancer
3x Aven Mindcensor
4x Beacon Hawk
4x Pride of the Clouds
3x Sky Hussar
4x Squadron Hawk
3x Stormscape Familiar
4x Glacial Fortress
5x Island
10x Plains
Instant (7)
3x Path to Exile
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Island Sanctuary
Artifact (4)
4x Meekstone
The only reason I haven't posted this up yet on the primer is because I don't feel like I've done enough actual testing of a list like this to justify it.
What I can say is that the extra land in the above list is going to help your consistency over running just 18 lands. After enough games, I have decided that 19 just feels right. Meekstone is in here and will hopefully compensate for the lack of Jitte. Kor Skyfisher has been swapped for Beacon Hawk to minimize Meekstone's drawback on our big guys. I don't think it's too much trouble though because you often only need to swing once, maybe twice, with Pride of the Clouds to seal the game.
BGSpanish InquisitionGB
GFood Chain ElvesG
WUAngry BirdsUW
BUThe Four Horsemen (RIP)UB
With Painlands only, you can somehow play this deck since Augury Own + Preordain are very good to find what you need. And bolt it's great too. Overall, red gives you reach, which is very very useful when you have a lot of 1/1 birds.
The deck is incredibly cheap on MTGO, with the most expensive card being Mystic Gate at ~$2.75. I was able to assemble it last night for ~20-25 tickets to bots plus $8 to MTGO Traders for the final few cards I couldn't find.
Top 8 of SCG Invitational, Las Vegas, NV, Dec 13-15, 2013
Top 8 of SCG Invitational, Somerset, NJ, Aug 28-30, 2015
Winner of SCG Worcester Team Sealed Open with Gerard Fabiano and Curtis Sheu, September 28, 2013
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I almost never want to have pain lands in a deck that's meant to play into the mid and late game. The addition of burn, I'm sure, speeds up the clock but this is still a deck that plays longer games on the whole.
Bizkit, wow that is really cheap. How's it playing for you? Have you had a chance to use it? It faired pretty well in the pre-MM banning meta, in my experience. I'm getting ready to head out for a tournament and today will be my first look at the new meta so we'll see how it goes. I'm hoping to get good ideas on how to adjust the list to compete.
BGSpanish InquisitionGB
GFood Chain ElvesG
WUAngry BirdsUW
BUThe Four Horsemen (RIP)UB
Calvin and Hobbes
Cube Tutor
The fact that it can't produce either of the two colors we need to play our cards hurts its viability, IMHO. I've tried to keep the mana base fairly simple with still a fair amount basic lands to avoid getting screwed by decks packing Wasteland. If I did opt to run a few other specialty lands, I'd probably lean towards Seaside Haven because card advantage will generally be better than a 1/1 flier, even in this deck.
Anyways, I have had no luck getting to a tournament. Me and my buddy drove an hour to get to our typical Legacy tourny place only to find out that they went out of business. Called up a buddy of mine to get the location of another place I knew did Legacy tournaments only to find out that they went out of business last month too. The only other place I know of that holds Legacy tournies here in the Phx area holds them Sunday afternoons which conflicts with my schedule. I know I'm needlessly ranting but it sucks. -.-
BGSpanish InquisitionGB
GFood Chain ElvesG
WUAngry BirdsUW
BUThe Four Horsemen (RIP)UB
BTW, I was not a fan of the Meekstone list in testing at all. For me there were a lot of problems. Beacon Hawk was not the nice 2/3 that Kor Skyfisher is. Mindshrieker was not consistent (as I assumed it wouldn't be) but also did not offer enough big hits for the mana it asks to be sunk into it. Meekstone wasn't bad but wasn't really the 'saves the day' card that it needed to be and the drawback of cutting three creatures from the list was noticeable, IMHO. Angry Birds thrives on consistently drawing expendable creatures that can be cast every turn.
So I went back to the current "tried and true" list and since I haven't been able to get to any tournaments recently, I've been trying to test it against a spread of Tier 1 decks. Because of my limited amount of time, I've been focused on testing against a variety of decks as opposed to playing twenty games against just one or two decks. Also, no side boards have been used for either sides in these games. Consider this preliminary testing against the big boys.
Here's my results:
Zoo:
Blue Zoo:
Merfolk:
U/B Control:
All said and done, I'm pretty happy right now. I played against decks that cost twice as much or more as Birds and had a respectable level of success.
These matches yielded some very interesting information. First, in not even one of the games above was Island Sanctuary ever really useful or necessary. In many situations it was the wrong card to play and would have hurt me more than help me. As much as I love the card and as much as I've felt it useful in the past, for the above matches, it simply was not helpful. Coincidence? I'm not sure. I also continue to dislike Aven Mindcensor and feel like he should be replaced. I just don't know what to swap him out for yet. Also, Umezawa's Jitte was a game winner. There were a couple games where it really changed the tide and won me a game that might otherwise have been lost.
That said, I think the budget Angry Birds list is good but won't have as good of odds against Tier 1 decks. If Tier 1 decks are all you see, then I'd recommend forking a little extra over to get those cards. Angry Birds still costs hundreds less than your typical, competitive deck. That said, I think the list is solid at it's core. My suggestion? Take a look at your local meta and tweak it to compete well against what you see!
BGSpanish InquisitionGB
GFood Chain ElvesG
WUAngry BirdsUW
BUThe Four Horsemen (RIP)UB
Mono white fliers is a strategy, a variant of white weenie, but you need a lot of other ways to make it good, really. You need lots of them, and you lose the card draw (though realistically, I probably would run 3 sky hussars and just use them for draw, with maybe a single fetchable island in case I actually wanted to cast one).
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!