Any time a land taps for more than 1 mana it catches my eye. Cloudpost is already banned, the tron lands support their own entire arctype, and even the karoos have an amulet of vigor fueled combo.
Any time a land taps for more than 1 mana it catches my eye. Cloudpost is already banned, the tron lands support their own entire arctype, and even the karoos have an amulet of vigor fueled combo.
Where and how do you think this card will see play?
What existing arctypes can this land enhance, do you think it is it possible for Nykthos to support/create its own arctype?
the only decks i could see it going in would be dork ramp, Merfolk, and some kind of mono black creature deck.
in dork ramp you spam so many 1 CMC cards. plus your objective is ramping so it fits.
in merfolk your playing a lot of cheap creatures all the lords are double blue.
in mono black you have so many creatures cost multiple black mana that Nykthnos will get big really fast.
overall i dont expect it to change things too much like the other cards. between the fact that it doesnt ramp until turn 3 at best, and that it is permanent dependent for that effect i just dont see it being consistent enough.
This card is exciting. It's felt like it's pulling very subtly into a more mono color strength for modern as opposed to the splash happy mana bases we have now.
As for me, I'm finding that everytime I draw this guy in Mono Black it feels like so much win. Even seeing doubles has me start pining for the lone Consume Spirit, and even considering upping the number of them. I'm not 100% sure where else this guy could fit, but devotion is looking scary easy to rack up for mono black.
Edit: To add to what the last poster mentioned, it does require consistency. I'm not 100% sure banking on creature decks is where this wants to be. Planeswalker's seem to be my biggest assets in reguards to the land, They are followed closely bloodghast and then enchantments.
When playing aggro this is only active once you are ahead, at which point the extra mana isn't what I would call necessary since you don't want to completely over extend and get whiped out by a wrath... then the land doesn't produce enough mana to vomit the rest of your hand back onto the field. It does however, work for over the top spells and abilities. Monstrous being a good example from a standard point of view. Something that's been sitting at the back my mind is Vampire Aggro in Modern. Needing a low land count to help ensure vampire nocturnus is turned on and Kalastria Highborn needing spare mana incase of a wrath effect makes this spell seem really useful. My only concern here is the severe lack of 2/x for 1cmc vampires. Maybe there is a deck here, but it wouldn't be competitive I don't think without redundancy at that spot.
Elf Combo has been slowly gaining more cards to push it over the top. Both DMZ and M14 each gave a contribution, and now I believe Nykthos will also slot into the deck as a pseudo-Gaea's Cradle.
Some day, elves will be tier 1 in Modern, and that is the day that I will finally be forced to quit Magic.
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To me, Elves seems like the easiest fit. It already makes a ton of dudes, and already needs a lot of mana It also generally wins very quickly after getting all the mana.
My next thought, however, is some that this might enable some sort of MBC, urborg makes it tap for black, and the color is known for the number of mana symbols in its cards. The problem is that I dont know if there are enough good permanents that work in the same deck. Though my money is on some sort of Lilana based attrition deck. Geralf's messenger/phyrexian etchings/hex parasite seems pretty imba together with this land, however.
For whatever reason, I cant seem to get my mind away from leylines with this card. each leyline in your opener adds 2 free devotion (remember everything after 3 devotion is mana positive) and partially offsets the disadvantage of having multiple leylines in your opener. Right now, the most promising leylines are the white ones, sanctity stops discard/burn and meek could pump a token army
Looking at Legacy to decks that can abuse this effect and want this effect we have Elves and Enchantress, since I have yet to see a playable enchantress list in Modern, I think it fits in elves
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Modern:
Paper: WUR Waffle Control, RG and U Tron
MTGO: U Tron, BRG Living End, B Infect
Testing Modern on MTGO and helping to craft decks on a Budget I stream!
The goblin tribal is missing nearly all the good cards available to the Legacy version. I haven't tested this, but 4x Nykthos might enable a goblin-happy player to cast more 3-5 CMC goblin "bombs" early enough to be useful.
I think elves is the easiest to slot this into, but I dont think it is the best. That honor will probably go to whatever deck can still draw enough cards to be consisten, but also use enough mana to make it worth while.
Black has the best colorless to color filtering (urborg and the manaforge cinder come to mind) so maybe there is a control deck in there somewhere .... tron already uses expidition map to find lands, maybe MBC will too
Edit: as for goblins, maybe this makes siege gang commander/red leyline a thing
Black has the best colorless to color filtering (urborg and the manaforge cinder come to mind) so maybe there is a control deck in there somewhere .... tron already uses expidition map to find lands, maybe MBC will too
I'm sure somebody has tried to brew a B Tron deck before, but if you mimic the U Tron shell, you could use Blood Speaker to tutor up demons. However, that's vulnerable to interaction ("EoT I Bolt/Path your Speaker, GG"), and I think T5 Griselbrand is too unimpressive for Modern.
The deck more or less just stalled (and did a great job of it) until it could cast Iona or pseudo-lock someone with Emeria. I think I'm getting the standard and extended versions of the deck mixed up. Maybe it's time to take a second look at it.
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Some facts of magic:
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
It is an enchantment block. Creature decks are vulnerable to sweepers and that shuts down nyx. I would play with the idea of a semi-creatureless enchantment deck.
It is an enchantment block. Creature decks are vulnerable to sweepers and that shuts down nyx. I would play with the idea of a semi-creatureless enchantment deck.
We are talking about Modern, not standard, so it being an enchantment block doesn't matter. Also, you couldn't do that effectively in Standard due to the fact that there are no noncreature nonartifact global enchantments in Theros.
We are talking about Modern, not standard, so it being an enchantment block doesn't matter. Also, you couldn't do that effectively in Standard due to the fact that there are no noncreature nonartifact global enchantments in Theros.
I am talking about modern. What I meant about it being an enchantment block is that the card was meant to play around enchantments. Modern has a rather large selection of enchantments.
I'm sure somebody has tried to brew a B Tron deck before, but if you mimic the U Tron shell, you could use Blood Speaker to tutor up demons. However, that's vulnerable to interaction ("EoT I Bolt/Path your Speaker, GG"), and I think T5 Griselbrand is too unimpressive for Modern.
I did, simply replacing blue draw for black draw, counters with discard/removal and just used the "big mana" to cast karn/wurmcoil/emrakul
It wasn't consistent enough for my tastes.
This card wont work in the same vein as tron. It's not going to power out turn 3/4 karn or wurmcoil BUT it is significantly better considering the mana it powers out is black mana. Many of black's best bomby mana intesive cards require black mana. I.E. Consume Spirit and Sorin Markov. Don't let that dishearten anyone though... this card will be playable in modern.
From my testing, I believe that Nykthos is the final push that makes Combo Elves viable (or at least gets it out of Tier 3-4). It makes non-Beck // Call big mana plans a lot more viable (such as Summoner's Pact into Craterhoof Behemoth or Regal Force). It's like Elvish Archdruid if it had Haste, didn't die to creature removal, and counted some Elves twice (and some non-Elves at least once). Combo Elves may end up fusing with Aggro Elves, but I think it will see significant play post-Theros because of Nykthos.
Arena gets you 1 card a turn at 1 life.
Etchings on the first turn gets you 1 card (albiet later). Every turn after that it is significantly better than Arena. After about 2-3 turns it is better than Necropotence. Cumalative upkeep is managable and anyone who has experience playing with the card knows it's extremely rare to have to get rid of etchings because you can't pay for it. It does however have the risk of causing massive life loss. Hence the high risk, high reward.
While I appreciate decklists as much as the next guy, I also would like to keep this thread open/try to come up with uses other than just the easy and the obvious.
For example, what if we tried to use this with devotion to blue? Are the enough good permanates ala Spellstuttersprite/vendillon clique/snapcaster to make this a viable plan?
I think its interesting to note that though Nyk demands devotion to one color of permanates, we are still free to splash any number of colors for our spells ...
Dunno about blue, besides Merfolk with its 800 :symu::symu: lords but honestly they have nothing to actually do with all that mana. Other than Clique, the only decent blue permanents with double+ symbols is Venser and a bunch of 5+ CMC cards. I don't think that's a recipe for success with Nykthos.
Echoing some of the previous mentioned thoughts in this thread, Vampire aggro came to mind. Bloodghast is bonkers with Nykthos, Kalastria Highborn is simply a really damn good tribal, and Vampire Nocturnus is triple-black. Highborn demands keeping mana open and protects from Wrath effects, not to mention Black has such an easy time keeping its hand full through permanents for the devotion count boost (Arena, Bob + Tutelage, Etchings if you wanna go the whole nine) to just keep vomiting stuff onto the field... Yeah, only one-drop with 2 power is Lacerator but Pulse Tracker is functionally similar to one and Viscera Seer is a good one-drop despite lacking it. *shrug*
And, well, just from what I've seen thus far in Standard I don't doubt Elves is pretty damn blazing with it.
While I appreciate decklists as much as the next guy, I also would like to keep this thread open/try to come up with uses other than just the easy and the obvious.
For example, what if we tried to use this with devotion to blue? Are the enough good permanates ala Spellstuttersprite/vendillon clique/snapcaster to make this a viable plan?
I think its interesting to note that though Nyk demands devotion to one color of permanates, we are still free to splash any number of colors for our spells ...
Their was a modern high tide deck not to long ago. this land might be enough to push it into viability.
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I see a great future ahead for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.
Where and how do you think this card will see play?
What existing arctypes can this land enhance, do you think it is it possible for Nykthos to support/create its own arctype?
the only decks i could see it going in would be dork ramp, Merfolk, and some kind of mono black creature deck.
in dork ramp you spam so many 1 CMC cards. plus your objective is ramping so it fits.
in merfolk your playing a lot of cheap creatures all the lords are double blue.
in mono black you have so many creatures cost multiple black mana that Nykthnos will get big really fast.
overall i dont expect it to change things too much like the other cards. between the fact that it doesnt ramp until turn 3 at best, and that it is permanent dependent for that effect i just dont see it being consistent enough.
As for me, I'm finding that everytime I draw this guy in Mono Black it feels like so much win. Even seeing doubles has me start pining for the lone Consume Spirit, and even considering upping the number of them. I'm not 100% sure where else this guy could fit, but devotion is looking scary easy to rack up for mono black.
Edit: To add to what the last poster mentioned, it does require consistency. I'm not 100% sure banking on creature decks is where this wants to be. Planeswalker's seem to be my biggest assets in reguards to the land, They are followed closely bloodghast and then enchantments.
When playing aggro this is only active once you are ahead, at which point the extra mana isn't what I would call necessary since you don't want to completely over extend and get whiped out by a wrath... then the land doesn't produce enough mana to vomit the rest of your hand back onto the field. It does however, work for over the top spells and abilities. Monstrous being a good example from a standard point of view. Something that's been sitting at the back my mind is Vampire Aggro in Modern. Needing a low land count to help ensure vampire nocturnus is turned on and Kalastria Highborn needing spare mana incase of a wrath effect makes this spell seem really useful. My only concern here is the severe lack of 2/x for 1cmc vampires. Maybe there is a deck here, but it wouldn't be competitive I don't think without redundancy at that spot.
This land seems too slow to play in any non combo deck. So it seems unlikely it'll find a place in other decks that are semi competitive.
Some day, elves will be tier 1 in Modern, and that is the day that I will finally be forced to quit Magic.
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
Quotes:
My next thought, however, is some that this might enable some sort of MBC, urborg makes it tap for black, and the color is known for the number of mana symbols in its cards. The problem is that I dont know if there are enough good permanents that work in the same deck. Though my money is on some sort of Lilana based attrition deck. Geralf's messenger/phyrexian etchings/hex parasite seems pretty imba together with this land, however.
For whatever reason, I cant seem to get my mind away from leylines with this card. each leyline in your opener adds 2 free devotion (remember everything after 3 devotion is mana positive) and partially offsets the disadvantage of having multiple leylines in your opener. Right now, the most promising leylines are the white ones, sanctity stops discard/burn and meek could pump a token army
Paper: WUR Waffle Control, RG and U Tron
MTGO: U Tron, BRG Living End, B Infect
Testing Modern on MTGO and helping to craft decks on a Budget
I stream!
Hermit Druid Combo:
Black has the best colorless to color filtering (urborg and the manaforge cinder come to mind) so maybe there is a control deck in there somewhere .... tron already uses expidition map to find lands, maybe MBC will too
Edit: as for goblins, maybe this makes siege gang commander/red leyline a thing
4 Wall of omens
4 Lone missionary
4 Flickerwisp
4 Sun titan
4 Emeria, the sky ruin
The deck more or less just stalled (and did a great job of it) until it could cast Iona or pseudo-lock someone with Emeria. I think I'm getting the standard and extended versions of the deck mixed up. Maybe it's time to take a second look at it.
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
More facts of magic
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"
We are talking about Modern, not standard, so it being an enchantment block doesn't matter. Also, you couldn't do that effectively in Standard due to the fact that there are no noncreature nonartifact global enchantments in Theros.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I am talking about modern. What I meant about it being an enchantment block is that the card was meant to play around enchantments. Modern has a rather large selection of enchantments.
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"
I did, simply replacing blue draw for black draw, counters with discard/removal and just used the "big mana" to cast karn/wurmcoil/emrakul
It wasn't consistent enough for my tastes.
This card wont work in the same vein as tron. It's not going to power out turn 3/4 karn or wurmcoil BUT it is significantly better considering the mana it powers out is black mana. Many of black's best bomby mana intesive cards require black mana. I.E. Consume Spirit and Sorin Markov. Don't let that dishearten anyone though... this card will be playable in modern.
I also see Nykthos slotting in Pod and GW Hatebears, especially if they play mana sinks like Scavenging Ooze or Polukranos, World Eater.
Demigod of revenge, deity of scars, or divinity of pride are excellent devotion increasers
Mark my words, Khalni_Hydra.dec.
Go on...
Underworld Dealings is just bad. It's a worse Phyrexian Arena.
Phyrexian Etchings is a higher risk, higher reward Phyrexian Arena. There are times when it actually is better than Necropotence who is the grandaddy of them all.
Arena gets you 1 card a turn at 1 life.
Etchings on the first turn gets you 1 card (albiet later). Every turn after that it is significantly better than Arena. After about 2-3 turns it is better than Necropotence. Cumalative upkeep is managable and anyone who has experience playing with the card knows it's extremely rare to have to get rid of etchings because you can't pay for it. It does however have the risk of causing massive life loss. Hence the high risk, high reward.
So again please... go on...
Sure--here is my latest Combo Elves list:
2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Breeding Pool
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Temple Garden
2 Forest
Creatures
3 Llanowar Elves
2 Elvish Mystic
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Arbor Elf
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Regal Force
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1 Joraga Warcaller
4 Beck // Call
2 Chord of Calling
4 Summoner's Pact
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Polukranos, World Eater
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Viridian Zealot
2 Unified Will
2 Dismember
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Spellskite
Against Jund, I win with the (Pact into) Hoof plan the majority of the time, and that leads me to believe that Combo Elves will fuse with Aggro Elves.
For example, what if we tried to use this with devotion to blue? Are the enough good permanates ala Spellstuttersprite/vendillon clique/snapcaster to make this a viable plan?
I think its interesting to note that though Nyk demands devotion to one color of permanates, we are still free to splash any number of colors for our spells ...
Echoing some of the previous mentioned thoughts in this thread, Vampire aggro came to mind. Bloodghast is bonkers with Nykthos, Kalastria Highborn is simply a really damn good tribal, and Vampire Nocturnus is triple-black. Highborn demands keeping mana open and protects from Wrath effects, not to mention Black has such an easy time keeping its hand full through permanents for the devotion count boost (Arena, Bob + Tutelage, Etchings if you wanna go the whole nine) to just keep vomiting stuff onto the field... Yeah, only one-drop with 2 power is Lacerator but Pulse Tracker is functionally similar to one and Viscera Seer is a good one-drop despite lacking it. *shrug*
And, well, just from what I've seen thus far in Standard I don't doubt Elves is pretty damn blazing with it.
Their was a modern high tide deck not to long ago. this land might be enough to push it into viability.