Given that, has anyone seen a deck that sort of centralized around these?
My friend Paul was working on a deck, but otherwise I haven't seen too much about it.
On paper it would seem like the colors would do well: they each offer strong mono and multi-colored control spells. Given that, they only get better with that trio: Snapcaster gives you another go, Confidant keeps your hand full of them, and Goyf gets a muffin top with dumping instants and sorceries in the graveyard.
I'm not asking for tier 1 stuff here, I'm just curious if people have seen or played decks based around this and what they have to say.
I have seen a few decks like this, and generally beat them pretty easily.
I think the problem is that, because there aren't as many alternative duel lands and the speed with which you need all 3 colors, you need to run a fetch-shock heavy manabase which will often deal 3-8 damage to you over the course of the game. Combine that with Dark Confidant, and you're trivially easy prey for any Boros, fast Affinity or Zoo, or Storm Combo decks you might come across.
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Here's what I've been testing
I've had very mixed results with it. I went 4-2 at a 61 person tournament Saturday. 0-3 in a Daily and 0-2 in a PTQ Sunday. 6-0 in 8 mans and 2-2 in a Daily today.
I would say yes it's viable, but probably not with Dark Confidant in it.
I have seen a few decks like this, and generally beat them pretty easily.
I think the problem is that, because there aren't as many alternative duel lands and the speed with which you need all 3 colors, you need to run a fetch-shock heavy manabase which will often deal 3-8 damage to you over the course of the game. Combine that with Dark Confidant, and you're trivially easy prey for any Boros, fast Affinity or Zoo, or Storm Combo decks you might come across.
Fixing the manabase wouldn't be all that hard. Obviously you would run a few shocks, but you don't have to be "heavy" on the shocks, as you would realistically play a hybrid shockland, manland, basic, and m10 dual hybrid system.
I think overall it would be a good deck, but the biggest thing to keep in mind are the fact that Snapcaster & Bob need at least to a certain degree, need to be built around. Bob would limit you to playing very few (if any) cards costing more than 3-4 mana, and also would require you have some means of gaining life. Snapcaster would require a ton of efficient spells as well, and while Snapcaster is obviously good, you're probably better off playing him with red or white, since lightning bolt, path to exile, along with other obvious blue spells are the best ways to make use of his overall efficiency.
I think the most important aspect of playing a deck like this is that you respect the meta. Traditionally, you would probably be very strong against any combo deck with a deck like this, but playing against decks like Affinity, Martyr, Jund, Burn, and Zoo is where you need to have a lot of resilience.
If control and combo rises, Dark Thresh will rise. They've got the clock with Goyf and Delver of Secrets, they've got the gas in Bob, they've got the artillery in Tiago, and they've got the disruptive meat in Vendilion Clique. They've also got the disruption in targeted discard, counterspells, and targeted removal.
Sometimes Storm beats you, but this deck should not keel over to Storm continuously on Game 1.
My reservation here is that this would basically be a modern GAT, but without a broken draw/filter engine. In other words, it would be very draw dependent, reliant on Dark Confidant, and in serious danger of being outmatched by other decks following the same strategy (Fast Fae decks, Bant, etc.). It would have plenty of power and resilience, but I would guess it would have trouble with faster aggro decks, trouble with its mana, and trouble managing its life total without White.
It could work, but it would be very dependent on the metagame and would need a lot of fine-tuning.
I didn't mean to be discouraging, I'm just trying to point out a potentially dangerous flaw.
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I would cut the Dark Confidants for either Oona's Prowler or more permission. Creature base of Delver, Goyf, Snappy, Clique, and Tombstalkers seem pretty strong. Then you run tempo packages. Vapor Snag, Discard, Countermagic. Then it just becomes UB w/ Goyf...lol.
BUG Tempo or UB Delver w/ Goyf or whatever you want to call it will probably become an archetype eventually. The individual cards are just so powerful.
I've probably said this 100 times by now. Bob is not good in Modern. With Zoo, Storm, and UR Delver in the forefront of the meta, you can average 10 points of damage by T4 from your opponent if unanswered. Then you will often take 3-4 points from fetch/shockland damage. Do you think Bob is good now? Hoping to hit land after land w/ him is bad magic. Period. He excels in Legacy cause cards like StP, Mox Diamond, SfM, etc are play with him. Low cost and life gain from Jitte/SoLaS can offset his damage.
So you are aware, if your opponent chooses to discard a card every turn to prevent 2 of the damage from Oona, it's the same card advantage as Bob. If not, you are punching with a 3/1 from T3 on. Seems legit.
Take if from most Jund players (like myself). Forget Bob, he's only going to be good in some sort of BW Weenie deck (ala Deadguy Ale).
I've probably said this 100 times by now. Bob is not good in Modern. With Zoo, Storm, and UR Delver in the forefront of the meta, you can average 10 points of damage by T4 from your opponent if unanswered. Then you will often take 3-4 points from fetch/shockland damage. Do you think Bob is good now? Hoping to hit land after land w/ him is bad magic. Period. He excels in Legacy cause cards like StP, Mox Diamond, SfM, etc are play with him. Low cost and life gain from Jitte/SoLaS can offset his damage.
So you are aware, if your opponent chooses to discard a card every turn to prevent 2 of the damage from Oona, it's the same card advantage as Bob. If not, you are punching with a 3/1 from T3 on. Seems legit.
Take if from most Jund players (like myself). Forget Bob, he's only going to be good in some sort of BW Weenie deck (ala Deadguy Ale).
I disagree with everything.
For me confidant is in the top3 best creatures in the format.
Not to get a flame warning, but you are playing bad Modern. I see Dark Confidant being used in BW Soul Sisters when Sorin comes out, because of the abuse of life gain. Modern is too self abusive and too fast for him to be that good. Sure some games are going to be golden where you hit Land/1CC spells on each reveal, but other games you will take 8-9 life loss over 3 turns and it costs you the game. Without reliable life gain (outside of Soul Sisters), he's too much of a reliability for Modern play.
All right, let's find the chances that Bob flips at least 8 damage in 3 turns in a boring Jund deck. For the sake of argument, let's assume all you naturally draw is lands.
This is my Jund deck I test against myself in Cockatrice, for example (sans sideboard):
I play fewer Lilianas than the Modern Daily and PTQ guys do, but I compensate with more Blightnings. Otherwise, I think my list looks fairly typical (though you can argue against my non-inclusion of Rise//Fall and Thrun).
Assume your starting hand is Goyf, Goyf, Bob, Thoughtseize, and 3 lands (total cmc = 7), you're on the draw, and you topdeck two lands before you play Bob. The average cmc of your remaining cards is now approx. 1.415--your Bob flip is barely worse than Phyrexian Arena.
Here are all the ways you can flip 8+ damage in 3 turns with Bob with my decklist, assuming you only draw lands:
8 damage
4 cmc, 4 cmc, 0 cmc: ~0.521% chance (4/51 x 3/49 x 17/47 x 3)
4 cmc, 3 cmc, 1 cmc: ~2.207% chance (4/51 x 12/49 x 9/47 x 6)
4 cmc, 2 cmc, 2 cmc: ~0.429% chance (4/51 x 7/49 x 6/47 x 3)
3 cmc, 3 cmc, 2 cmc: ~2.370% chance (12/51 x 11/49 x 7/47 x 3)
9 damage
4 cmc, 4 cmc, 1 cmc: ~0.276% chance (4/51 x 3/49 x 9/47 x 3)
4 cmc, 3 cmc, 2 cmc: ~1.716% chance (4/51 x 12/49 x 7/47 x 6)
3 cmc, 3 cmc, 3 cmc: ~1.124% chance (12/51 x 11/49 x 10/47 x 1)
10 damage
4 cmc, 4 cmc, 2 cmc: ~0.215% chance (4/51 x 3/49 x 7/47 x 3)
4 cmc, 3 cmc, 3 cmc: ~1.359% chance (4/51 x 12/49 x 11/47 x 3)
11+ damage
4 cmc, 4 cmc, 3 cmc: ~0.368% chance (4/51 x 3/49 x 12/47 x 3)
4 cmc, 4 cmc, 4 cmc: ~0.020% chance (4/51 x 3/49 x 2/47 x 1)
We add all those chances up to get a...~10.605% chance that Bob screws Team Jund to the tune of 8+ damage over 3 turns with a semi-pessimistic assumption about the natural draws. (I really hope I didn't get the math wrong.)
Real life is probably kinder to Jund than this, although slightly more than 10% is a relatively high chance that Bob really hurts.
Against aggro, though, the increased chances of hitting Terminates, Bolts, Maelstrom Pulses, and Lilianas have to be valuable, though. Smack a Goyf with Terminate on Turn 3 and you may have saved yourself upwards of 6 damage over the game right there.
Not to mention how valuable Bob is in drawing your real MVPs in match-ups like Exarch Twin. You need to hit what you sided in fast, and having more chances with Bob is excellent when Twin has no clock otherwise.
That's the problem with Bob. You don't attack or block with him. Btw your math is horribly scewed. You have to take number of cards with CMC >2 and divide that by the # of cards for each reveal. Then your looking at the amount of damage your taking from fetches/shocks. While Bob is without a doubt a Top 5 creature of all time, he's too much of a danger zone in Modern.
Vs Zoo: If he lives to T3, they are already swinging with dudes and burning you. Goyfs will smash face on table. You'll die fast
Vs Storm: you give them a free storm or 2
Vs Melira/Soul Sister: they don't care and will still combo off.
That's the problem with Bob. You don't attack or block with him. Btw your math is horribly scewed. You have to take number of cards with CMC >2 and divide that by the # of cards for each reveal. Then your looking at the amount of damage your taking from fetches/shocks. While Bob is without a doubt a Top 5 creature of all time, he's too much of a danger zone in Modern.
Vs Zoo: If he lives to T3, they are already swinging with dudes and burning you. Goyfs will smash face on table. You'll die fast
Vs Storm: you give them a free storm or 2
Vs Melira/Soul Sister: they don't care and will still combo off.
Against control and combo, I sure as heck attack with Bob. Similar reasoning is why Tidehollow Sculler is such a beating against combo--you just exiled the best card in their hand, they often don't pack removal, and now they're being beaten up by a Grizzly Bears while they try to repair their hand. Against UR Storm, the card exiling is a big deal.
Beating combo up with your efficient draw engine is just brutal.
Yes, Bob doesn't really get you discard fast in Jund. However, in decks like UB Tempo, the counterspell(s) Bob draws against UR Storm can save your butt far more than the Storm the opponent no longer has to create can erase.
Likewise, Melira Pod doesn't always get the combo nuts draw--it rarely does, in my experience, as it sacrifices combo pieces for more expensive tutoring--and Bob is likely to draw you into the Melira-removing spells you need to stop the combo. (You'll also have to fight through some Kitchen Finks and whatever fatties like Reveillark and Sun Titan they eventually get, though.)
I would sooner run phyrexian arena in any BUG tempo list, and that's assuming aggro lists suddenly stop being good. Affinity and Zoo force most decks to maindeck so much removal and counter/disruption that a BUG tempo list is either never going to have bob live to draw them cards, or simply lose all other board presence and be forced to take unnecessary damage over the course of the match.
If ancestral vision gets unbanned, then maybe bob goes back in. But not right now, not even close.
What the hell is everyone here talking about? Have you not seen Jund? It's one of the best decks in Modern (second best I believe, data wise). What makes that deck work? Goyf and Bob. The deck could very easily have blue for Snappy instead of red for Bloodbraid and it would function just fine. You're a little more prone to permanents but you have a great counter suite, Serum Visions, Delver, and potentially V Clique.
While Bob isn't the best against aggro because of his ability to lose it for you, he is one of if not THE sickest card against control.
Control isn't a top tier deck. And Jund is not good cause of Bob and Goyf, it's good because it's the best Shard for attacking an opponents Board and Hand. Blightning, Rise/Fall, Maelstrom Pulse, Smother, Thoughtseize. Then you add in efficient BEATERS in Goyf, Bloodbraid, Thrinax, Leech. That's what makes Jund Good.
Can we drop the Jund talk, lest this thread deteriorate into a pissing contest over whether or not to run Bob in it?
The thread is intended to be about BUG having any chance of being competitive.
Agreed. Bob does belong in jund. He's to good not to play. Simply board him out against aggro.
On topic I do like him with goyf and snappy. The first thing to come to mind was Lotus Cobra to help fix the manabase. If anything you could make a combination of two colors and splash the other. I like BG splash U. This kind of BUG list would have a lot less mana issues if it was two colors splashing a third. Then go from there.
Dark Thresh is actually more UB splashing G for Goyf. (UB Tempo has probably seen more success because of its more consistent mana base, but I am convinced that Dark Thresh is just as powerful.)
Most of the time, you're spamming Bob, Tiago, targeted discard, counterspells, targeted removal, and perhaps Delver and V. Clique. Green is only really used for Goyf (and artifact/enchantment hate in the board).
Dark Thresh is actually more UB splashing G for Goyf. (UB Tempo has probably seen more success because of its more consistent mana base, but I am convinced that Dark Thresh is just as powerful.)
Most of the time, you're spamming Bob, Tiago, targeted discard, counterspells, targeted removal, and perhaps Delver and V. Clique. Green is only really used for Goyf (and artifact/enchantment hate in the board).
Sounds pretty good to me. I like creeping tarpit for manlands for this as well.
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Tarmogoyf
Snapcaster Mage
Dark Confidant
Given that, has anyone seen a deck that sort of centralized around these?
My friend Paul was working on a deck, but otherwise I haven't seen too much about it.
On paper it would seem like the colors would do well: they each offer strong mono and multi-colored control spells. Given that, they only get better with that trio: Snapcaster gives you another go, Confidant keeps your hand full of them, and Goyf gets a muffin top with dumping instants and sorceries in the graveyard.
I'm not asking for tier 1 stuff here, I'm just curious if people have seen or played decks based around this and what they have to say.
Want to be a better Magic player? Read the rulings forum and check out the comprehensive rules!
I think the problem is that, because there aren't as many alternative duel lands and the speed with which you need all 3 colors, you need to run a fetch-shock heavy manabase which will often deal 3-8 damage to you over the course of the game. Combine that with Dark Confidant, and you're trivially easy prey for any Boros, fast Affinity or Zoo, or Storm Combo decks you might come across.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I've had very mixed results with it. I went 4-2 at a 61 person tournament Saturday. 0-3 in a Daily and 0-2 in a PTQ Sunday. 6-0 in 8 mans and 2-2 in a Daily today.
I would say yes it's viable, but probably not with Dark Confidant in it.
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Tombstalker
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Cryptic Command
2 Damnation
2 Doom Blade
2 Go for the Throat
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Mana Leak
1 Slaughter Pact
2 Smother
3 Spell Snare
1 Thoughtseize
2 Breeding Pool
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Drowned Catacomb
1 Forest
1 Hinterland Harbor
3 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Damnation
2 Echoing Truth
1 HurkylS Recall
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Natures Claim
3 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
1 Thoughtseize
Fixing the manabase wouldn't be all that hard. Obviously you would run a few shocks, but you don't have to be "heavy" on the shocks, as you would realistically play a hybrid shockland, manland, basic, and m10 dual hybrid system.
I think overall it would be a good deck, but the biggest thing to keep in mind are the fact that Snapcaster & Bob need at least to a certain degree, need to be built around. Bob would limit you to playing very few (if any) cards costing more than 3-4 mana, and also would require you have some means of gaining life. Snapcaster would require a ton of efficient spells as well, and while Snapcaster is obviously good, you're probably better off playing him with red or white, since lightning bolt, path to exile, along with other obvious blue spells are the best ways to make use of his overall efficiency.
I think the most important aspect of playing a deck like this is that you respect the meta. Traditionally, you would probably be very strong against any combo deck with a deck like this, but playing against decks like Affinity, Martyr, Jund, Burn, and Zoo is where you need to have a lot of resilience.
Sometimes Storm beats you, but this deck should not keel over to Storm continuously on Game 1.
The aggro match-ups are tough, but I personally believe they're beatable with the right sideboard. Try Deathmark, Threads of Disloyalty, Engineered Explosives, and Vedalken Shackles.
Deck does die to RDW, though. It's forced to play the control role and fails. But it does a dang fine job being the control deck against combo.
It could work, but it would be very dependent on the metagame and would need a lot of fine-tuning.
I didn't mean to be discouraging, I'm just trying to point out a potentially dangerous flaw.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=519290
L1 Judge
So you are aware, if your opponent chooses to discard a card every turn to prevent 2 of the damage from Oona, it's the same card advantage as Bob. If not, you are punching with a 3/1 from T3 on. Seems legit.
Take if from most Jund players (like myself). Forget Bob, he's only going to be good in some sort of BW Weenie deck (ala Deadguy Ale).
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=519290
I disagree with everything.
For me confidant is in the top3 best creatures in the format.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=519290
This is my Jund deck I test against myself in Cockatrice, for example (sans sideboard):
1 Treetop Village
1 Raging Ravine
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Kessig Wolf Run
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Arid Mesa
2 Stomping Ground
3 Overgrown Tomb
3 Blood Crypt
2 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
4 Dark Confidant
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Kitchen Finks
Spells
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Terminate
3 Blightning
2 Liliana of the Veil
I play fewer Lilianas than the Modern Daily and PTQ guys do, but I compensate with more Blightnings. Otherwise, I think my list looks fairly typical (though you can argue against my non-inclusion of Rise//Fall and Thrun).
Assume your starting hand is Goyf, Goyf, Bob, Thoughtseize, and 3 lands (total cmc = 7), you're on the draw, and you topdeck two lands before you play Bob. The average cmc of your remaining cards is now approx. 1.415--your Bob flip is barely worse than Phyrexian Arena.
Here are all the ways you can flip 8+ damage in 3 turns with Bob with my decklist, assuming you only draw lands:
8 damage
9 damage
10 damage
11+ damage
We add all those chances up to get a...~10.605% chance that Bob screws Team Jund to the tune of 8+ damage over 3 turns with a semi-pessimistic assumption about the natural draws. (I really hope I didn't get the math wrong.)
Real life is probably kinder to Jund than this, although slightly more than 10% is a relatively high chance that Bob really hurts.
Against aggro, though, the increased chances of hitting Terminates, Bolts, Maelstrom Pulses, and Lilianas have to be valuable, though. Smack a Goyf with Terminate on Turn 3 and you may have saved yourself upwards of 6 damage over the game right there.
Not to mention how valuable Bob is in drawing your real MVPs in match-ups like Exarch Twin. You need to hit what you sided in fast, and having more chances with Bob is excellent when Twin has no clock otherwise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Assume you've managed to drain your opponent's hand with Oona's Prowler and/or s/he's letting you hit with a 3/1 flier on Turn 2. Guess what? Prowler dies to Vendilion Clique, Spellstutter Sprite, Squadron Hawk, Vault Skirge, Inkmoth Nexus, Insectile Aberration, Moorland Haunt tokens, Coralhelm Commander, Celestial Colonnade, and more. That's because you want to get value out of it by swinging with it in combat. Play conservatively with Bob and he's guaranteed card advantage every turn. Bob basically dies to removal and that's it.
Vs Zoo: If he lives to T3, they are already swinging with dudes and burning you. Goyfs will smash face on table. You'll die fast
Vs Storm: you give them a free storm or 2
Vs Melira/Soul Sister: they don't care and will still combo off.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=519290
Against control and combo, I sure as heck attack with Bob. Similar reasoning is why Tidehollow Sculler is such a beating against combo--you just exiled the best card in their hand, they often don't pack removal, and now they're being beaten up by a Grizzly Bears while they try to repair their hand. Against UR Storm, the card exiling is a big deal.
Beating combo up with your efficient draw engine is just brutal.
Yes, Bob doesn't really get you discard fast in Jund. However, in decks like UB Tempo, the counterspell(s) Bob draws against UR Storm can save your butt far more than the Storm the opponent no longer has to create can erase.
Likewise, Melira Pod doesn't always get the combo nuts draw--it rarely does, in my experience, as it sacrifices combo pieces for more expensive tutoring--and Bob is likely to draw you into the Melira-removing spells you need to stop the combo. (You'll also have to fight through some Kitchen Finks and whatever fatties like Reveillark and Sun Titan they eventually get, though.)
If ancestral vision gets unbanned, then maybe bob goes back in. But not right now, not even close.
While Bob isn't the best against aggro because of his ability to lose it for you, he is one of if not THE sickest card against control.
L1 Judge
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=519290
The thread is intended to be about BUG having any chance of being competitive.
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Agreed. Bob does belong in jund. He's to good not to play. Simply board him out against aggro.
On topic I do like him with goyf and snappy. The first thing to come to mind was Lotus Cobra to help fix the manabase. If anything you could make a combination of two colors and splash the other. I like BG splash U. This kind of BUG list would have a lot less mana issues if it was two colors splashing a third. Then go from there.
Most of the time, you're spamming Bob, Tiago, targeted discard, counterspells, targeted removal, and perhaps Delver and V. Clique. Green is only really used for Goyf (and artifact/enchantment hate in the board).
Sounds pretty good to me. I like creeping tarpit for manlands for this as well.