Seems like this deck wants to be BW tokens. I think if it is to be successful, you need to take notes from the good BW lists and tweak things to include your combos (basically, Teysa). Thoughtseize and/or IoK are a must. This definitely seems like an interesting deck, but I wonder if Spectral Procession could be useful here.
But the aristocrats deck being outlined here just seems like a bad tokens deck. That was my argument
It's not a bad token deck, it's another deck. The main differences are that The Aristocrats decks are more resilient vs sweepers and also feature more tricks/synergies. Human centric versions are also stronger against counterspells because of cavern of souls.
I think this archetype is really cool. I think its main problem right now is you guys are running bad cards to try and pump up the "flavor" of the deck. Here's a general gameplay guideline, spanning separate archetypes, that I think might help us: Play dudes that force your opponent to answer them or lose. Doomed traveler is one mana for two sacs, but he doesn't do anything after those sacs, and we dont have anything super valuable to sac him for. Even the aristocrat is a glorified wall in many cases (in my experience). She's a sac outlet, but this deck doesn't do anything valuable enough to warrant bad cards purely so we can sac our dudes for mediocre effects.
That said, I think we're close to something viable. FuneralOfGod's list was getting there, but I think the sac outlet / "dude I play just so I can sac them" is still bringing us down. Here's what I would play:
Sideboard for this deck is extremely meta dependant, you can take some cues from WB token lists online, but in general we play threatening dudes that typically have giant targets on their forehead, who force our opponents to answer them, and then we punish them for doing so. Late game we have enormous indestructible fliers, the opponent is likely low/out of removal, and we have amassed huge card advantage through bob, tokens through pyromancer / necromancer, and have tons of removal of our own to clear the way. The curve is a little high for bob, hence the helixes to offset it a little, but he synergizes just way too well with the deck not to play.
The worst part about this direction is we can't call the deck "the aristocrats" anymore, which was a hilarious name. Ill probably keep doing it anyways.
My main questions:
- I really really want to find room for Orzhof Pontiff. He is so good with pyromancer/necromancer tokens, is human, etc etc. However, I cut a lot of our sac outlets, so its harder to get him dead early, and he's not so great until you can sac him instant speed / the turn he hits for a double effect. So I don't know.
- Lyzolda, the Blood Witch? Slow, easy to kill, hugely powerful if she gets going. Maybe too gimmicky, maybe not?
- Young Pyromancer is such a powerful creature and screams to be included in this deck. The trouble with her is you end up having to up your instant/sorcery count to make her useful, which can lower your creature count for necromancer / aristrocrat / Teysa. Lingering Souls is a way to help with this balance, but it's still a pretty delicate equation. I think the payoff is potentially worth it if we get it right. Do you?
I think this archetype is really cool. I think its main problem right now is you guys are running bad cards to try and pump up the "flavor" of the deck. Here's a general gameplay guideline, spanning separate archetypes, that I think might help us: Play dudes that force your opponent to answer them or lose. Doomed traveler is one mana for two sacs, but he doesn't do anything after those sacs, and we dont have anything super valuable to sac him for. Even the aristocrat is a glorified wall in many cases (in my experience). She's a sac outlet, but this deck doesn't do anything valuable enough to warrant bad cards purely so we can sac our dudes for mediocre effects.
That said, I think we're close to something viable. FuneralOfGod's list was getting there, but I think the sac outlet / "dude I play just so I can sac them" is still bringing us down. Here's what I would play:
Sideboard for this deck is extremely meta dependant, you can take some cues from WB token lists online, but in general we play threatening dudes that typically have giant targets on their forehead, who force our opponents to answer them, and then we punish them for doing so. Late game we have enormous indestructible fliers, the opponent is likely low/out of removal, and we have amassed huge card advantage through bob, tokens through pyromancer / necromancer, and have tons of removal of our own to clear the way. The curve is a little high for bob, hence the helixes to offset it a little, but he synergizes just way too well with the deck not to play.
The worst part about this direction is we can't call the deck "the aristocrats" anymore, which was a hilarious name. Ill probably keep doing it anyways.
My main questions:
- I really really want to find room for Orzhof Pontiff. He is so good with pyromancer/necromancer tokens, is human, etc etc. However, I cut a lot of our sac outlets, so its harder to get him dead early, and he's not so great until you can sac him instant speed / the turn he hits for a double effect. So I don't know.
- Lyzolda, the Blood Witch? Slow, easy to kill, hugely powerful if she gets going. Maybe too gimmicky, maybe not?
- Young Pyromancer is such a powerful creature and screams to be included in this deck. The trouble with her is you end up having to up your instant/sorcery count to make her useful, which can lower your creature count for necromancer / aristrocrat / Teysa. Lingering Souls is a way to help with this balance, but it's still a pretty delicate equation. I think the payoff is potentially worth it if we get it right. Do you?
- What do you all think?
I think you are going against the complete synergy the classic Aristocrat decks have. Sure Doomed Traveler isnt a "good" card but it is in this deck.
This list that you posted has way too many Teysa's in it. You will hardly be able to use her without sacing a relevant creature. The only white creatures you even have in this deck is her and lingering souls...
Same goes with Necromancer. It is a good card but will hardly ever be relevant. In this list. I still think people are not seeing how good the combination with Blood Artist, Lingering Souls, Cartel Aristocrat, ect ect.
Blood Artist is too good not to play in these decks. Therefore you need the all the sac outlets.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it appears you ignored everything about my post except the list.
I explicitly explained that while Doomed Traveler is synergistic with this deck, It's effect is still incredibly weak. If he does exactly what you want him to and is perfectly timed and played, he's ok. He ends up being like, a 2/2 zombie (assuming you are playing necromancer) and 1/1 flier, assuming you have at least two perfect other dudes on the board. That's fine, but he's bad on his own, and none of the other guys I play are (with the arguable exception of pyromancer, but she synergizes with a third of the deck, so I think that's fine).
Teysa isn't there to necessarily sac a ton of creatures. Lingering souls is awesome with her, but her second ability is incredible, and with three of them (very purposeful), all the tokens made by one can then be used by the next if needed. Maybe 3 is too many but in this list its 3 or 0 because as you said, there's not a ton of white dudes (except for the ones she makes herself), and so they complement each other really well.
And literally every single creature I play is a human, how the heck is necromancer irrelevant? He says "every time a nontoken-creature dies in your deck, which is nearly a third of your entire deck, you get a bear". That's powerful. You don't need tons of gimmicky ****ty tokens and saccers that only work together in order to make him work. That's the whole point. All your cards are solid without being bad on their own, and the deck idea of constantly refilling your board as they kill your must-answers is still intact, along with a nearly-unanswerable endgame aristocrat utilizing any tokens left behind a goyf or something.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it appears you ignored everything about my post except the list.
I explicitly explained that while Doomed Traveler is synergistic with this deck, It's effect is still incredibly weak. If he does exactly what you want him to and is perfectly timed and played, he's ok. He ends up being like, a 2/2 zombie (assuming you are playing necromancer) and 1/1 flier, assuming you have at least two perfect other dudes on the board. That's fine, but he's bad on his own, and none of the other guys I play are (with the arguable exception of pyromancer, but she synergizes with a third of the deck, so I think that's fine).
Teysa isn't there to necessarily sac a ton of creatures. Lingering souls is awesome with her, but her second ability is incredible, and with three of them (very purposeful), all the tokens made by one can then be used by the next if needed. Maybe 3 is too many but in this list its 3 or 0 because as you said, there's not a ton of white dudes (except for the ones she makes herself), and so they complement each other really well.
And literally every single creature I play is a human, how the heck is necromancer irrelevant? He says "every time a nontoken-creature dies in your deck, which is nearly a third of your entire deck, you get a bear". That's powerful. You don't need tons of gimmicky ****ty tokens and saccers that only work together in order to make him work. That's the whole point. All your cards are solid without being bad on their own, and the deck idea of constantly refilling your board as they kill your must-answers is still intact, along with a nearly-unanswerable endgame aristocrat utilizing any tokens left behind a goyf or something.
Not all of your creatures are good on their own.
Tesya is terrible by herself, Necromancer is bad by itself. Pyromanncer you need spells for it to be good, and when it does make tokens you cant use those tokens with Teysa. The fact that youre playing Pyromancer makes you play way more Spells than usual making your Necromancer worse. Its like 2 halves of different decks.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it appears you ignored everything about my post except the list.
I explicitly explained that while Doomed Traveler is synergistic with this deck, It's effect is still incredibly weak. If he does exactly what you want him to and is perfectly timed and played, he's ok. He ends up being like, a 2/2 zombie (assuming you are playing necromancer) and 1/1 flier, assuming you have at least two perfect other dudes on the board. That's fine, but he's bad on his own, and none of the other guys I play are (with the arguable exception of pyromancer, but she synergizes with a third of the deck, so I think that's fine).
Teysa isn't there to necessarily sac a ton of creatures. Lingering souls is awesome with her, but her second ability is incredible, and with three of them (very purposeful), all the tokens made by one can then be used by the next if needed. Maybe 3 is too many but in this list its 3 or 0 because as you said, there's not a ton of white dudes (except for the ones she makes herself), and so they complement each other really well.
And literally every single creature I play is a human, how the heck is necromancer irrelevant? He says "every time a nontoken-creature dies in your deck, which is nearly a third of your entire deck, you get a bear". That's powerful. You don't need tons of gimmicky ****ty tokens and saccers that only work together in order to make him work. That's the whole point. All your cards are solid without being bad on their own, and the deck idea of constantly refilling your board as they kill your must-answers is still intact, along with a nearly-unanswerable endgame aristocrat utilizing any tokens left behind a goyf or something.
Honestly if you want to play creatures that are good on their own i'd play another deck. The whole point of aristocrats is synergy. A sac outlet is very bad if you sac creatures that are better then what you get from the sacrifice. It seems your deck wants to have every creature in it stick around, save pyro tokens, and they have no synergy with teysa/necromancer. I'm pretty sure you could make a decent deck in those colors with young pyromancer and falkenrath aristocrat. If you just played better threats/value creatures instead of teysa and necromancers (like figure of destiny, grim lavamancer, tidehollow sculler, kitchen finks, etc) your deck would improve by a lot.
One way to sum up the philosophy of this deck - it's like Affinity but instead of using artifact spells as the synergistic element, it uses sacrifice. Affinity cards are all crap by itself, but when it has a good board state going, those individual cards become stellar. This is the Aristocrats philosophy too. If the deck becomes a GoodStuff.dec deck, then there's no point playing it, might as well play Jund.
One way to sum up the philosophy of this deck - it's like Affinity but instead of using artifact spells as the synergistic element, it uses sacrifice. Affinity cards are all crap by itself, but when it has a good board state going, those individual cards become stellar. This is the Aristocrats philosophy too. If the deck becomes a GoodStuff.dec deck, then there's no point playing it, might as well play Jund.
I agree. A deck like this thrives off synergy, and resilient creatures like both aristocrats, also little advantages like Lingering Souls, and Blood Artist.
I think there are a few maindeck cards in Modern that this deck needs to find solutions for to make itself viable:
- Electrolyze in UWR
- Firespout/Pyroclasm in Scapeshift, RG Tron, UWR. There's also the new Theros card Anger of the Gods that may seem some play in the future as it's good against Melira Pod.
- Path to Exile (against Falkenrath) in almost all white decks and Dismember. This might put a limit on the protect the MVP style of play.
Sideboard hosers:
- Elesh Norn in UW Tron, other Gifts decks. I guess this deck can play Aven Mindcensor for that.
- Orzhov Pontiff in Pod decks. Aven is good here too I guess unless they top deck it.
- Board wipes from all white decks. Uhm... Boros Charm? Hahaha.
- Just like in Standard, Izzet Staticaster is a beast against this deck and is starting to show up in KikiPod sideboards. Nothing much we can do here, some guys will die before the caster eats a bolt. I guess Blood Artist for value would be good?
I love how this archetype from Standard is attracting attention to be ported to Modern, let's all get our deck brewing engines started!
I also noticed that the deck in the Primer post isn't 60 cards...
I goldfished the deck in the original post anyway and realized that the deck just isn't very fast. It goldfishes a turn 5 kill and that's one turn too slow in this format for a creature based non-combo-kill deck. There also aren't enough disruptive spells and due to its lack of speed, if it plays against a deck like Scapeshift, I don't see it winning game 1's at all.
I think there are a few maindeck cards in Modern that this deck needs to find solutions for to make itself viable:
- Electrolyze in UWR
- Firespout/Pyroclasm in Scapeshift, RG Tron, UWR. There's also the new Theros card Anger of the Gods that may seem some play in the future as it's good against Melira Pod.
- Path to Exile (against Falkenrath) in almost all white decks and Dismember. This might put a limit on the protect the MVP style of play.
Sideboard hosers:
- Elesh Norn in UW Tron, other Gifts decks. I guess this deck can play Aven Mindcensor for that.
- Orzhov Pontiff in Pod decks. Aven is good here too I guess unless they top deck it.
- Board wipes from all white decks. Uhm... Boros Charm? Hahaha.
- Just like in Standard, Izzet Staticaster is a beast against this deck and is starting to show up in KikiPod sideboards. Nothing much we can do here, some guys will die before the caster eats a bolt. I guess Blood Artist for value would be good?
I think this deck needs to be able to achieve 3 basic goals to be viable in Modern.
1) Be fast. It has to goldfish turn 4 kills consistently like all the other good aggro decks in Modern.
2) It has to be disruptive to combo decks that go off in turn 4. Thoughtseize and Inquisition seems like the cards to achieve this to some degree.
3) While achieving point #1, also able to play an effective mid-range game when need be. Affinity has found a way to do this, this deck has to do the same while retaining that killer goldfish.
I love how this archetype from Standard is attracting attention to be ported to Modern, let's all get our deck brewing engines started!
First off as a Kiki Pod player, I think most of us are playing Staticaster in the main. At least I am.
I think this deck can probably do a turn 4 kill if it s a god draw, and the opponent shocked themselves enough. Combo shouldnt be to hard of a matchup with all the targeted discard, and we can easily play Liliana out of the SB.
It will have a fairly good mid game with Falkenrath, and lingering souls.
I am not sure how you think affinity has a good mid to late game, if they dont win by turn 4 or 5 at the latest they probably will lose.
It seems like I am very much in the minority here, but let me explain my thinking. I agree that this is a synergy deck, and if it's not, then you should just play junk. However, affinity synergy causes their cards that are "otherwise bad" to become 3 mana protection from everythings, 2 mana equips that give +10+0, 1 mana draw 2, etc. The "otherwise bad" cards we are playing in some of our lists do not become that good no matter how much we build our deck around them, save possiblyFalkenrath Aristocrat and maybe necromancer (not sure about him). I was simply trying to keep our synergy while adding disruption and trimming cards that, while enhancing the synergy, were never going to be good enough to let this deck be tier.
For example, people really like playing Cartel Aristocrat because it's a sac outlet. However, even given ultimited sacs, he's a 2/2 bear protection from one thing at a time (and never artifacts). That's not even that good. There's nothing in this deck that WANTS to be sacced (save possibly doomed traveler but then you're just playing suntail hawk), it's just that we have a lot of cards that making saccing something lower cost than it is for other decks. I just feel like it's not a strong enough synergy to play cards that simply enhance that "we can sac creatures if we want and it doesn't hurt us" if we're not actually doing something really powerful with it (which, atm, we unarguably are not). We're currently kind of a combo deck who's combo doesn't kill and an aggro deck that's a turn or two too slow. We need to find something we can do better than everyone else and go for that, because otherwise we're forever stuck in no-man's-land. My opinions is that we can make that 'virtual card advantage' - every card you play serves multiple purposes and has multiple 'phases'. It comes back a couple times as a token, or as a +1/+1 counter, or creates a token when it hits play, or draws you a bunch of cards, or whatever. This CA enables you to play a decent amount of 1-for-1 disruption, as well, because you have more 'cards' than your opponent so trading 1for1 is winning.
This was a little rambling, but just to summarize, I'm on your side, I want the deck to be good, but we need to take it in a direction that makes it better than the competition rather than trying to be a bad aggro combo deck that doesn't do anything, because that's just not viable in the current modern metagame.
I originally tried to port over the concept of standard version of the deck but I often felt that it was too slow and easily disruptable. I have been brewing humans for a while now, and although the deck has drifted from it's original concept, I have been quite happy at where it's at right now. It's really a Human deck with a Token Subtheme
Here's what I'm testing so far:
Townsfolk
Humans (15)
4x Champion of the Parish
3x Grim Lavamancer
4x Dark Confidant
4x Young Pyromancer
Non-Creature Spells (23)
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Inquisition of Kozelik
4x Gather the Townsfolk
4x Path to Exile
4x Lingering Souls
2x Zealous Persecution
1x Boros Charm
Sideboard (15)
2x Boros Charm
2x Thoughtseize
2x Stony Silence
2x Sowing Salts
4x Leyline of Sanctity
2x Tempest of Light
1x Sword of War and Peace
The deck usually handles it's own against combo quite well with all the creature (8) and hand (6) removal. I originally had Xathrid Necromancer in here, but I felt I couldn't take as much as an advantage as I could with his ability. I decided that I prefer the Reactive approach to mass removal with the protection of the 3 boros charms (1md 2sb).
Young Pyromancer and Dark Confidant need to be answered or your opponents will lose, simple as that. YP generates so much CA with cards like Lingering Souls and Gather the townsfolk.
How good are you finding Champion? I can't help but think that cutting the champions and maybe a lavamancer for some more disruption (MD thoughtseizes, Lightning Helix, maybe a planeswalker (liliana, elspeth, ajani, I dunno) ) would be more consistant. He's a little bit of an odd man out in your current list.
I also noticed that the deck in the Primer post isn't 60 cards...
Huh. Don't know how that happened, I'll go update it now. Also I was going to grab a black white list from one of you guys to post on the OP but it might be a bit as I would like to test them first. If anyone has a list that they are sure is the best possible version of a B/W Aristocrats deck feel free to PM it to me, but otherwise I'll update the post with another decklist when I can.
How good are you finding Champion? I can't help but think that cutting the champions and maybe a lavamancer for some more disruption (MD thoughtseizes, Lightning Helix, maybe a planeswalker (liliana, elspeth, ajani, I dunno) ) would be more consistant. He's a little bit of an odd man out in your current list.
I think I'm a fan of the Champion overall, except in one game my opponent kept blinking my champion with fiend hunter, which made him really terrible. He has pulled his weight time and time again, especially with gather the townsfolk. However, I COULD try a list without him, which would degrade the human subtheme to a pointless effort resulting in the removal of gather the townsfolk as well. In addition, I would cut the Caverns as well.
If I did indeed remove him, this deck would then become a Dega Tokens deck. This leads me to go down the root of:
Gotta be careful of procession + confidant. I also don't know if you play quite enough tokens to make virtue playable, since you can't really run procession. Id do maybe:
Or something like that. Maybe Helixes. Going too tokeny means you're a bad W(x) token deck, imo. No point in trying to enter an archtype that's already pretty peaked.
I've been trying to put together a competitive aristocrat deck, when my friend Heretix pointed me to this thread. It seems to me that focusing too much on the sacrificial theme makes you really soft to combo and aggressive decks in general, and even decks like jund can grind you out no problem.
I think a more aggressive and disruptive deck is in order. I would suggest cutting cartel aristocrat as she's pretty bad when matched up against any tier 1 deck. I think a deck similar to jund but packing more punch and reach is a perfect fit for falkenrath aristocrat. Here's the deck I have put together:
I've been trying to put together a competitive aristocrat deck, when my friend Heretix pointed me to this thread. It seems to me that focusing too much on the sacrificial theme makes you really soft to combo and aggressive decks in general, and even decks like jund can grind you out no problem.
I think a more aggressive and disruptive deck is in order. I would suggest cutting cartel aristocrat as she's pretty bad when matched up against any tier 1 deck. I think a deck similar to jund but packing more punch and reach is a perfect fit for falkenrath aristocrat. Here's the deck I have put together:
Looks good but I would try -1 Inquisition, -1 Aristocrat for 2 Boros Charms. Honestly think you don't need 4 Aristocrats. Seeing and getting one to stick should be easy enough and this ups the spell count too. It's great for combat tricks, gives you the extra reach late game and the potential of a huge blow out with an Aristocrat in play.
A sword could work in the deck too, as you would pretty much always have a body to hold it.
This is not Aristocrats anymore. Its BW Tokens just like you said. Therefore this is not what people are talking about.
Draft My Cube!
Not the list that I have posted:
Deck
4 Blood Artist
4 Cartel Aristocrat
4 Dark Confidant
1 Teysa, Orzhov Scion
3 Falkenrath Aristocrat
3 Doomed Travel
3 Skirsdag High Preist
4 Lingering Souls
3 Path to Exile
3 Lighting Bolt
2 Thought Seize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
2 Blood Crypt
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Godless Shrine
2 Swamp
2 Plains
2 Isolated Chapel
2 Dragonskull Summit
1 Clifftop Retreat
It's not a bad token deck, it's another deck. The main differences are that The Aristocrats decks are more resilient vs sweepers and also feature more tricks/synergies. Human centric versions are also stronger against counterspells because of cavern of souls.
That said, I think we're close to something viable. FuneralOfGod's list was getting there, but I think the sac outlet / "dude I play just so I can sac them" is still bringing us down. Here's what I would play:
2 Swamp
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Blood Crypt
4 Marsh Flats
4 Arid Mesa
2 Plains
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Mountain
3 Godless Shrine
4 Young Pyromancer
3 Teysa, Orzhov Scion
3 Falkenrath Aristocrat
4 Xathrid Necromancer
4 Dark Confidant
// Spells
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Path to Exile
3 Lightning Helix
4 Lingering Souls
Sideboard for this deck is extremely meta dependant, you can take some cues from WB token lists online, but in general we play threatening dudes that typically have giant targets on their forehead, who force our opponents to answer them, and then we punish them for doing so. Late game we have enormous indestructible fliers, the opponent is likely low/out of removal, and we have amassed huge card advantage through bob, tokens through pyromancer / necromancer, and have tons of removal of our own to clear the way. The curve is a little high for bob, hence the helixes to offset it a little, but he synergizes just way too well with the deck not to play.
The worst part about this direction is we can't call the deck "the aristocrats" anymore, which was a hilarious name. Ill probably keep doing it anyways.
My main questions:
- I really really want to find room for Orzhof Pontiff. He is so good with pyromancer/necromancer tokens, is human, etc etc. However, I cut a lot of our sac outlets, so its harder to get him dead early, and he's not so great until you can sac him instant speed / the turn he hits for a double effect. So I don't know.
- Lyzolda, the Blood Witch? Slow, easy to kill, hugely powerful if she gets going. Maybe too gimmicky, maybe not?
- Young Pyromancer is such a powerful creature and screams to be included in this deck. The trouble with her is you end up having to up your instant/sorcery count to make her useful, which can lower your creature count for necromancer / aristrocrat / Teysa. Lingering Souls is a way to help with this balance, but it's still a pretty delicate equation. I think the payoff is potentially worth it if we get it right. Do you?
- What do you all think?
I think you are going against the complete synergy the classic Aristocrat decks have. Sure Doomed Traveler isnt a "good" card but it is in this deck.
This list that you posted has way too many Teysa's in it. You will hardly be able to use her without sacing a relevant creature. The only white creatures you even have in this deck is her and lingering souls...
Same goes with Necromancer. It is a good card but will hardly ever be relevant. In this list. I still think people are not seeing how good the combination with Blood Artist, Lingering Souls, Cartel Aristocrat, ect ect.
Blood Artist is too good not to play in these decks. Therefore you need the all the sac outlets.
I explicitly explained that while Doomed Traveler is synergistic with this deck, It's effect is still incredibly weak. If he does exactly what you want him to and is perfectly timed and played, he's ok. He ends up being like, a 2/2 zombie (assuming you are playing necromancer) and 1/1 flier, assuming you have at least two perfect other dudes on the board. That's fine, but he's bad on his own, and none of the other guys I play are (with the arguable exception of pyromancer, but she synergizes with a third of the deck, so I think that's fine).
Teysa isn't there to necessarily sac a ton of creatures. Lingering souls is awesome with her, but her second ability is incredible, and with three of them (very purposeful), all the tokens made by one can then be used by the next if needed. Maybe 3 is too many but in this list its 3 or 0 because as you said, there's not a ton of white dudes (except for the ones she makes herself), and so they complement each other really well.
And literally every single creature I play is a human, how the heck is necromancer irrelevant? He says "every time a nontoken-creature dies in your deck, which is nearly a third of your entire deck, you get a bear". That's powerful. You don't need tons of gimmicky ****ty tokens and saccers that only work together in order to make him work. That's the whole point. All your cards are solid without being bad on their own, and the deck idea of constantly refilling your board as they kill your must-answers is still intact, along with a nearly-unanswerable endgame aristocrat utilizing any tokens left behind a goyf or something.
Not all of your creatures are good on their own.
Tesya is terrible by herself, Necromancer is bad by itself. Pyromanncer you need spells for it to be good, and when it does make tokens you cant use those tokens with Teysa. The fact that youre playing Pyromancer makes you play way more Spells than usual making your Necromancer worse. Its like 2 halves of different decks.
Honestly if you want to play creatures that are good on their own i'd play another deck. The whole point of aristocrats is synergy. A sac outlet is very bad if you sac creatures that are better then what you get from the sacrifice. It seems your deck wants to have every creature in it stick around, save pyro tokens, and they have no synergy with teysa/necromancer. I'm pretty sure you could make a decent deck in those colors with young pyromancer and falkenrath aristocrat. If you just played better threats/value creatures instead of teysa and necromancers (like figure of destiny, grim lavamancer, tidehollow sculler, kitchen finks, etc) your deck would improve by a lot.
Bant | U Tron | GW Hatebears | Death and Taxes | Scapeshift | UW Tron | UW Midrange
I agree. A deck like this thrives off synergy, and resilient creatures like both aristocrats, also little advantages like Lingering Souls, and Blood Artist.
- Electrolyze in UWR
- Firespout/Pyroclasm in Scapeshift, RG Tron, UWR. There's also the new Theros card Anger of the Gods that may seem some play in the future as it's good against Melira Pod.
- Path to Exile (against Falkenrath) in almost all white decks and Dismember. This might put a limit on the protect the MVP style of play.
Sideboard hosers:
- Elesh Norn in UW Tron, other Gifts decks. I guess this deck can play Aven Mindcensor for that.
- Orzhov Pontiff in Pod decks. Aven is good here too I guess unless they top deck it.
- Board wipes from all white decks. Uhm... Boros Charm? Hahaha.
- Just like in Standard, Izzet Staticaster is a beast against this deck and is starting to show up in KikiPod sideboards. Nothing much we can do here, some guys will die before the caster eats a bolt. I guess Blood Artist for value would be good?
I love how this archetype from Standard is attracting attention to be ported to Modern, let's all get our deck brewing engines started!
Bant | U Tron | GW Hatebears | Death and Taxes | Scapeshift | UW Tron | UW Midrange
I goldfished the deck in the original post anyway and realized that the deck just isn't very fast. It goldfishes a turn 5 kill and that's one turn too slow in this format for a creature based non-combo-kill deck. There also aren't enough disruptive spells and due to its lack of speed, if it plays against a deck like Scapeshift, I don't see it winning game 1's at all.
Bant | U Tron | GW Hatebears | Death and Taxes | Scapeshift | UW Tron | UW Midrange
First off as a Kiki Pod player, I think most of us are playing Staticaster in the main. At least I am.
I think this deck can probably do a turn 4 kill if it s a god draw, and the opponent shocked themselves enough. Combo shouldnt be to hard of a matchup with all the targeted discard, and we can easily play Liliana out of the SB.
It will have a fairly good mid game with Falkenrath, and lingering souls.
I am not sure how you think affinity has a good mid to late game, if they dont win by turn 4 or 5 at the latest they probably will lose.
For example, people really like playing Cartel Aristocrat because it's a sac outlet. However, even given ultimited sacs, he's a 2/2 bear protection from one thing at a time (and never artifacts). That's not even that good. There's nothing in this deck that WANTS to be sacced (save possibly doomed traveler but then you're just playing suntail hawk), it's just that we have a lot of cards that making saccing something lower cost than it is for other decks. I just feel like it's not a strong enough synergy to play cards that simply enhance that "we can sac creatures if we want and it doesn't hurt us" if we're not actually doing something really powerful with it (which, atm, we unarguably are not). We're currently kind of a combo deck who's combo doesn't kill and an aggro deck that's a turn or two too slow. We need to find something we can do better than everyone else and go for that, because otherwise we're forever stuck in no-man's-land. My opinions is that we can make that 'virtual card advantage' - every card you play serves multiple purposes and has multiple 'phases'. It comes back a couple times as a token, or as a +1/+1 counter, or creates a token when it hits play, or draws you a bunch of cards, or whatever. This CA enables you to play a decent amount of 1-for-1 disruption, as well, because you have more 'cards' than your opponent so trading 1for1 is winning.
This was a little rambling, but just to summarize, I'm on your side, I want the deck to be good, but we need to take it in a direction that makes it better than the competition rather than trying to be a bad aggro combo deck that doesn't do anything, because that's just not viable in the current modern metagame.
Here's what I'm testing so far:
Townsfolk
Humans (15)
4x Champion of the Parish
3x Grim Lavamancer
4x Dark Confidant
4x Young Pyromancer
Non-Creature Spells (23)
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Inquisition of Kozelik
4x Gather the Townsfolk
4x Path to Exile
4x Lingering Souls
2x Zealous Persecution
1x Boros Charm
Lands (22)
4x Marsh Flats
4x Arid Mesa
1x Scalding Tarn
2x Sacred Foundry
2x Godless Shrine
1x Bloodcrypt
3x Cavern of Souls
1x Vault of the Archangel
1x Blackcleave Cliffs
1x Plains
1x Swamp
1x Mountain
Sideboard (15)
2x Boros Charm
2x Thoughtseize
2x Stony Silence
2x Sowing Salts
4x Leyline of Sanctity
2x Tempest of Light
1x Sword of War and Peace
The deck usually handles it's own against combo quite well with all the creature (8) and hand (6) removal. I originally had Xathrid Necromancer in here, but I felt I couldn't take as much as an advantage as I could with his ability. I decided that I prefer the Reactive approach to mass removal with the protection of the 3 boros charms (1md 2sb).
Young Pyromancer and Dark Confidant need to be answered or your opponents will lose, simple as that. YP generates so much CA with cards like Lingering Souls and Gather the townsfolk.
Input would be greatly appreciated.
Huh. Don't know how that happened, I'll go update it now. Also I was going to grab a black white list from one of you guys to post on the OP but it might be a bit as I would like to test them first. If anyone has a list that they are sure is the best possible version of a B/W Aristocrats deck feel free to PM it to me, but otherwise I'll update the post with another decklist when I can.
I think I'm a fan of the Champion overall, except in one game my opponent kept blinking my champion with fiend hunter, which made him really terrible. He has pulled his weight time and time again, especially with gather the townsfolk. However, I COULD try a list without him, which would degrade the human subtheme to a pointless effort resulting in the removal of gather the townsfolk as well. In addition, I would cut the Caverns as well.
If I did indeed remove him, this deck would then become a Dega Tokens deck. This leads me to go down the root of:
+4x Spectral Procession
+4x Intangible Virtue
+4x Deathrite Shaman
-4x Champion of the Parish
-4x Gather the Townsfolk
-3x Grim Lavamancer
-1x Boros Charm
Not sure really, might need some help. But I'll have to test to see if this would be better than the human-theme.
-4 Champion
-3 Lavamancer
-4 Gather the Townsfolk
+4 Deathrite Shaman
+3 Tidehollow Sculler
+2 Thoughtseize
+1 Zealous Persecution
+1 Boros Charm
Or something like that. Maybe Helixes. Going too tokeny means you're a bad W(x) token deck, imo. No point in trying to enter an archtype that's already pretty peaked.
I've been trying to put together a competitive aristocrat deck, when my friend Heretix pointed me to this thread. It seems to me that focusing too much on the sacrificial theme makes you really soft to combo and aggressive decks in general, and even decks like jund can grind you out no problem.
I think a more aggressive and disruptive deck is in order. I would suggest cutting cartel aristocrat as she's pretty bad when matched up against any tier 1 deck. I think a deck similar to jund but packing more punch and reach is a perfect fit for falkenrath aristocrat. Here's the deck I have put together:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Blade Splicer
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
Spells:20
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Helix
2 Zealous Persecution
4 Lingering Souls
4 Arid Mesa
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Godless Shrine
4 Marsh Flats
1 Plains
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Swamp
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Thoughtseize
2 Combust
2 Stony Silence
1 Blightning
4 Fulminator Mage
1 Olivia Voldaren
2 Shatterstorm
Modern: Jund Legacy: RUG Delver EDH: Captain Sisay
Maybe vault of the archangel as a 1 of? It allows your tokens to trade up lategame or save you.
Modern: Jund Legacy: RUG Delver EDH: Captain Sisay
Have you got around to any testing? I love aristocrat and it seems like the best deck i have seen for her so far.
Might be a land high as well? 24 seems like quite a few with confidant+pretty low curve. But i may be wrong there
Looks good but I would try -1 Inquisition, -1 Aristocrat for 2 Boros Charms. Honestly think you don't need 4 Aristocrats. Seeing and getting one to stick should be easy enough and this ups the spell count too. It's great for combat tricks, gives you the extra reach late game and the potential of a huge blow out with an Aristocrat in play.
A sword could work in the deck too, as you would pretty much always have a body to hold it.