If i wanted to play quality removal i'd just play path to exile in that slot obviously. I'm kind of tired of repeating myself with dark salvation. You can go back pages from before the amonkhet hype to see why dark salvation is good.
As for fleshbag marauder the reason to play it over geth's verdict is the fact that it is a zombie. It triggers all your zombie stuff but is also a free 3/1 body when you sac gravecrawler, geralf's messenger or relentless dead with an extra black mana. It can also be re-usued with relentless dead. I've creature-locked a few opponents with these two creatures, a sac outlet and 6 mana, or sometimes just block with dead pay 3 get marauder back to clean up the field.
I'm also brewing full aristocrats on this deck. Trying to incorporate a Bridge from Below package since we have access to exile removal in Path to Exile and Time to Reflect that can hopefully keep it running. Though graveyard hate is on the rise and it might be too cute. Rotting Rats lets us discard it easily and also gives us a good Plague Belcher target and the unearth gives us another Wayward Servant trigger to go with the hand disruption. Liking Aether Vial so far for powering out the hand and just leaving it set for 2 cmc unless mana screwed. I think I might need more sac outlets though since getting to topdeck mode without one on the field just leaves the deck with no gas to go off. Blood Scrivener seems ok but sometimes you get manaflooded and have no way to get hellbent to get the extra card. Agreed that the deck really needs a Carrion Feeder print in Modern.
My initial though on bridge from below is it requires too much setup for it to work. Typically it is seen in dredge decks because you mill it from "naturally" playing the deck. I could be wrong though and i'd love it if you could test it to see how good it is!
Re: Fleshbag Maruader - It is a very good card, and I usually keep at least a pair in the sideboard. I actually haven't re-evaluated it since the printing of the new zombies, but if Dread Wanderer is good (which I think it will be in the aggressively slanted shells) then I'm probably going to get around to testing out Marauder in the main again.
With the popularity that this thread has picked up lately, and the fact that the OP hasn't posted in this thread in a long time, and didn't put a lot of effort (compared to primers) into the first post, I think it would be great if we had a primer!
Re: Fleshbag Maruader - It is a very good card, and I usually keep at least a pair in the sideboard. I actually haven't re-evaluated it since the printing of the new zombies, but if Dread Wanderer is good (which I think it will be in the aggressively slanted shells) then I'm probably going to get around to testing out Marauder in the main again.
With the popularity that this thread has picked up lately, and the fact that the OP hasn't posted in this thread in a long time, and didn't put a lot of effort (compared to primers) into the first post, I think it would be great if we had a primer!
I made a U/B primer when Innistrad 2 happened, but I play on and off so it didn't get the curation or love it needs.
And I was thinking of ways to tweak it a bit. I feel like actually -casting- Bloodghast just feels outright bad, and we don't have many ways to discard him, only 3 Cryptbreakers, one Liliana of the Veil and two Collective Brutalitys. The other thing I felt it lacked was a bit of early-game aggression.
So it got me wondering, how about Smuggler's Copter? Between Mutavault, Gravecrawler and Bloodghast, odds are we can keep it crewed as needed. A 3/3 flier for 2 is very solid beatdown and it gives us a lot of early-game aggression and late-game reach. But most importantly, it's constantly looting. Sifting through our deck is already a cool advantage and allows us to fish for answers, but if we draw something else and then discard Gravecrawler or Bloodghast, it's value town. Even discarding a zombie just to bring it back later with Relentless Dead is setting us ahead.
Pros:
-Early game beats
-Flying
-Looting
-It gives reanimated Gravecrawlers and Bloodghasts pseudo-haste
-Dodges Wraths of all kind.
Cons:
-Not a zombie (But in this deck the only zombie interactions are Relentless Dead and Gravecrawler, so we can probably do without).
-Not a creature (We can keep it crewed, but if we fail to do so at some point, having a copter just sitting there feels super bad).
-Kolaghans command is a brutal 2-for-1, seriously.
Smuggler's copter has been a staple in mono-b zombies lists pre amonkhet and has been discussed before in this thread. I think it is still fine but not needed anymore with all the new zombies we got.
Plague Belcher is really reliant on you having a sac outlet. I think the best possible zombiecrats build would have to be a BUG list with Collected Company since our best aristocrat effects are at CMC3 with Plague Belcher and Diregraf Captain.
That'd give us access to Prized Amalgam as well if we find a way to put him into the 'yard. It'd be an interesting list to cook up if someone here wants to give it a shot.
This card has come up a lot since it's reveal, and people do try it out from time to time. Personally I just want more permanent solutions for two mana. The discard is appealing, but without a choice it's just meh.
Tribal lists almost always pack a minimum of 26+ creatures in an effort to maximize tribal synergies and overcome spot removal with high threat density, and for our curve we're talking about 21-22 lands, leaving us with a maximum of 12 slots for non-zombie spells. IMO because Zombies aren't necessarily the fastest or most disruptive tribe they need the support of efficient spells to throw off the opponent long enough to build a good board state. If you want to start cutting into your interaction suite or your creature suite to pack in more (relatively) "do-nothing" milling / looting effects you need to come to a list that compensates that tempo loss with consistently degenerate plays. It has to be a fast as modern's linear strategies and gather steam faster than most graveyard hate strategies can come online -- Dredge is enjoying a nice resurgence, and with it comes splash hate. Can any graveyard list regularly goldfish by T4? Can it deal with graveyard hate cards once they've hit the board?
All of this is to say that I think we really need either (A) Zombie versions of Satyr Wayfinder and Bloodghast in order to pack milling/looting effects and recursion into our creature suite while still having enough room to run a competent interaction suite OR (B) more Tidehollow Sculler tier interactive zombies to free up room from the interaction suite for more mill effects before this type of strategy starts to become viable. It's easy to imagine synergistic interactions but packing it into a functional list is much harder. I would love to be wrong about this, though. Let me know if you find a list that works in practice.
Smugglers Copter is great, gives us some much needed flying capability. I like having access to at least 1, sometimes 2 but it is hard to find the room.
Compelling Deterance is not an impressive card imo. It's Disperse with a minor upside sometimes. I personally prefer Echoing Truth because a lot of the time it will bounce multiple blockers out of the way, and deals with tokens en masse. I actually like vapor snag in this slot as well just because of Mana effeciency and the fact that most times it is a creature that we are bouncing anyways.
Gurmag Angler is criminally underrepresented imo. I can usually only find room for 1 copy though (because my second delve slot goes to a Tasigur), even though I run the full 4 thought scour. But now with Plague Belcher, it's possible that 1 Gurmag is correct anyways because Belcher is pretty beefy and has menace.
jayjayhooks, what is your full list? I would be very interested in seeing a tuned list running Thoughtscour to better assess what sort of payoff it's generating.
The idea here would be a list that is a hybrid aristocrats/beatdown. With both Plague Belcher and Diregraf Captain acting as the drain part, and using Viscera Seer as our sac outlet. Prized Amalgam here feels a bit too cute, since we have to discard him with Liliana/Cryptbreaker/Brutality for him to be worth it. But once we start recurring him with drain effects on the field we can close the game quickly. Collected Company allows us to quickly populate the board, and drop those 3-drops in quick succession to make the most use of our drain effects. This deck has the advantage over the usual aristocrats list that our drain outlets are also great on the beatdown plan. But it suffers from the lack of lifegain and the fact that our recursion and drain is mostly happening later on in the game. This is merely an initial list trying to make use of these effects, your thoughts?.
jayjayhooks, what is your full list? I would be very interested in seeing a tuned list running Thoughtscour to better assess what sort of payoff it's generating.
My list is far from tuned, and I could only present you with a pre-amonkhet list because my preorders haven't even shipped yet lol. But here's what I was running pre-amonkhet.
The Thought Scour is enabling Gurmag, Tasigur, Snapcaster and Liliana, The last Hope (Edit: in addition to running 1 less land as well - I think without the cantrips 22 lands is probably correct). The Snappy and Lilly become very tool box-esque with Thought Scour. You might notice the list is 4 cards short, those are the flex slots in which I bounce back forth between the fourth Liliana, The last Hope a third 1cmc Discard spell, a second Snapcaster Mage, a second Smuggler's Copter, a second Gurmag Angler, a Lingering Souls, a Cryptbreaker, and an Orzhov Charm. The Lingering Souls is one of my favourites because it makes Thought Scour and Lilly better, but the mana base is not well suited for it and I have had it trapped in my hand on more than one occasion.
The list is tempo/aggressively slanted and doesn't look to capitalize on the Zombie tribe as much as most other lists do. The zombie synergies are mostly there to add some attrition value to keep pace with mid-range and control decks; which it does well. Once my Dread Wanderers and Plague Belchers arrive ill be looking to make the following changes to start.
This list kind of evolved from the max drain list i posted some time ago. It is trying to get the most out of the 12 one drop at our disposal, with minimal interaction and maximum reach. The 3 colors aren't an issue, consider that cavern casts all the splash color zombies and the splashes are minimal. I just think diregraf captain is the best and most synergistic lord we can play.
This list features 8 hand disruption and 8 removal cards, half of which are tribal themed. This is trying to take advanatage of all the zombie tribal removal/discard we can play. Having all that tribal disruption available to us may be what makes zombies different from other tribes.
No plague belcher because after a bunch of goldfishing i'm just not sure how good he is...
Thoughts?
EDIT: in my opinion all the deck is missing right now is a quality zombie sac outlet with cmc 2 or 1. We still have the set after amonkhet to maybe get one!
This list kind of evolved from the max drain list i posted some time ago. It is trying to get the most out of the 12 one drop at our disposal, with minimal interaction and maximum reach. The 3 colors aren't an issue, consider that cavern casts all the splash color zombies and the splashes are minimal. I just think diregraf captain is the best and most synergistic lord we can play.
This list features 8 hand disruption and 8 removal cards, half of which are tribal themed. This is trying to take advanatage of all the zombie tribal removal/discard we can play. Having all that tribal disruption available to us may be what makes zombies different from other tribes.
No plague belcher because after a bunch of goldfishing i'm just not sure how good he is...
Thoughts?
EDIT: in my opinion all the deck is missing right now is a quality zombie sac outlet with cmc 2 or 1. We still have the set after amonkhet to maybe get one!
I agree, we got our fill of 2cmc zombies, all wee need now is a zombie sac outlet! I wouldn't be suprised to see another 1cmc white mummy come out of the next set (hopefully better than Fan Bearer, and hopefully a sac outlet!).
I think Plague Belcher will perform much better in actual games than goldfish... in goldfish you don't really want to give up creatures for free, but when there are actual creatures with stats at 2/3 or better, you're going to be much happier drawing into a 5/4 menace for 3cmc.
"It is trying to get the most out of the 12 one drop at our disposal, with minimal interaction and maximum reach." In response to that statement specifically, I just want to point out that I feel Diregraf Ghoul is a superior 1 drop to Cryptbreaker, and I'm aware that is probably an unpopular opinion. But since you are playing lords and trying to curve and be a little more aggressive with this list, I don't think you should discount it entirely. It is also my opinion that 4 is almost certainly the wrong number of cryptbreaker to be playing, as the 2nd-4th copy isn't a particularly welcoming draw unless you are really flooded, and even then there is tension between playing the lands to activate multiple cryptbreakers in a turn vs keeping lands in hand in order to have discard fodder. I wouldn't recommend more than 3, and I usually only run 1 if at all.
In that particular build diregraf ghoul might better yes, i'll consider it.
I will give belcher a try in my future real game testing for sure, but it just seems like a 3cmc card that is bad alone AND has a drawback sometimes might not be all that exciting but we'll see. I really hope it is good but i am skeptical.
As for other builds 4x is definitely the right number of cryptbreakers. You want to maximize getting one in your opener so that you can curve out. You want extra because in grindy matchups it is a prime target, and is very fragile. In other cases you can just discard useless second cryptbreaker to the first, so having multiple is never really an issue.
[quote from="Ace1 »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/549966-modern-zombies?comment=434"]
"It is trying to get the most out of the 12 one drop at our disposal, with minimal interaction and maximum reach." In response to that statement specifically, I just want to point out that I feel Diregraf Ghoul is a superior 1 drop to Cryptbreaker, and I'm aware that is probably an unpopular opinion. But since you are playing lords and trying to curve and be a little more aggressive with this list, I don't think you should discount it entirely. It is also my opinion that 4 is almost certainly the wrong number of cryptbreaker to be playing, as the 2nd-4th copy isn't a particularly welcoming draw unless you are really flooded, and even then there is tension between playing the lands to activate multiple cryptbreakers in a turn vs keeping lands in hand in order to have discard fodder. I wouldn't recommend more than 3, and I usually only run 1 if at all.
I agree with this. In all the games I've played, I think there's only been one or two times where I wish Cryptbreaker wasn't literally any other card in the deck, and I am only running one copy of it. It's a terrible early play because every other creature is faster, and it's bad late game because it reeks of Win-More. One time, though, against Death's shadow it was helpful and drew into a removal spell.
This card has come up a lot since it's reveal, and people do try it out from time to time. Personally I just want more permanent solutions for two mana. The discard is appealing, but without a choice it's just meh.
Yeah I'm saying with the discard package and LOTV, Compelling Deterrence becomes a targeted removal spell.
Justifying multiple copies because you can pitch them to each other is not really great. It means that multiple copies are essentially Walking Corpse with a drawback of being a token.
I've tested Cryptbreaker a lot as well, and I still disagree. It never felt good to me in grindy matches either, I mean... being able to draw a card is sweet, but if the Cryptbreaker itself was a bigger threat (say a gurmag angler, or soon to be plague belcher, or even a removal spell) you could probably break through the stalemate. And if you weren't at a stalemate (read:board stall) in said grindy match, then having 3 zombies attacking is better than having three zombies tap to draw you a card, in which case Cryptbreakers meek stats would be better served as just about any other card in the deck.
The only time I've ever been happy with Cryptbreaker is when I'm flooding, it's been good then. Almost any other time I draw it, I wish it was anything else.
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3 Path of Exile
enchantments: 2
2 Bridge from Below
artifacts: 4
4 Aether Vial
creatures: 30
4 Cryptbreaker
4 Gravecrawler
2 Viscera Seer
4 Wayward Servant
2 Relentless Dead
3 Rotting Rats
3 Tidehollow Sculler
2 Cartel Aristocrat
2 Geralf's Messenger
4 Plague Belcher
10 Swamp
3 Plains
3 Godless shrine
4 Marsh Flats
1 Urborg, tomb of Yawgmoth
With the popularity that this thread has picked up lately, and the fact that the OP hasn't posted in this thread in a long time, and didn't put a lot of effort (compared to primers) into the first post, I think it would be great if we had a primer!
I made a U/B primer when Innistrad 2 happened, but I play on and off so it didn't get the curation or love it needs.
And I was thinking of ways to tweak it a bit. I feel like actually -casting- Bloodghast just feels outright bad, and we don't have many ways to discard him, only 3 Cryptbreakers, one Liliana of the Veil and two Collective Brutalitys. The other thing I felt it lacked was a bit of early-game aggression.
So it got me wondering, how about Smuggler's Copter? Between Mutavault, Gravecrawler and Bloodghast, odds are we can keep it crewed as needed. A 3/3 flier for 2 is very solid beatdown and it gives us a lot of early-game aggression and late-game reach. But most importantly, it's constantly looting. Sifting through our deck is already a cool advantage and allows us to fish for answers, but if we draw something else and then discard Gravecrawler or Bloodghast, it's value town. Even discarding a zombie just to bring it back later with Relentless Dead is setting us ahead.
Pros:
-Early game beats
-Flying
-Looting
-It gives reanimated Gravecrawlers and Bloodghasts pseudo-haste
-Dodges Wraths of all kind.
Cons:
-Not a zombie (But in this deck the only zombie interactions are Relentless Dead and Gravecrawler, so we can probably do without).
-Not a creature (We can keep it crewed, but if we fail to do so at some point, having a copter just sitting there feels super bad).
-Kolaghans command is a brutal 2-for-1, seriously.
Being already in black, gives us access to Smallpox,IoK,Thoughtseize, LOTV package to get them hellbent.
Early on, it provides tempo advantage and allows us to swing through or disrupt. Later on, it becomes an instant destroy target nonland permanent.
That'd give us access to Prized Amalgam as well if we find a way to put him into the 'yard. It'd be an interesting list to cook up if someone here wants to give it a shot.
Tribal lists almost always pack a minimum of 26+ creatures in an effort to maximize tribal synergies and overcome spot removal with high threat density, and for our curve we're talking about 21-22 lands, leaving us with a maximum of 12 slots for non-zombie spells. IMO because Zombies aren't necessarily the fastest or most disruptive tribe they need the support of efficient spells to throw off the opponent long enough to build a good board state. If you want to start cutting into your interaction suite or your creature suite to pack in more (relatively) "do-nothing" milling / looting effects you need to come to a list that compensates that tempo loss with consistently degenerate plays. It has to be a fast as modern's linear strategies and gather steam faster than most graveyard hate strategies can come online -- Dredge is enjoying a nice resurgence, and with it comes splash hate. Can any graveyard list regularly goldfish by T4? Can it deal with graveyard hate cards once they've hit the board?
All of this is to say that I think we really need either (A) Zombie versions of Satyr Wayfinder and Bloodghast in order to pack milling/looting effects and recursion into our creature suite while still having enough room to run a competent interaction suite OR (B) more Tidehollow Sculler tier interactive zombies to free up room from the interaction suite for more mill effects before this type of strategy starts to become viable. It's easy to imagine synergistic interactions but packing it into a functional list is much harder. I would love to be wrong about this, though. Let me know if you find a list that works in practice.
Compelling Deterance is not an impressive card imo. It's Disperse with a minor upside sometimes. I personally prefer Echoing Truth because a lot of the time it will bounce multiple blockers out of the way, and deals with tokens en masse. I actually like vapor snag in this slot as well just because of Mana effeciency and the fact that most times it is a creature that we are bouncing anyways.
Gurmag Angler is criminally underrepresented imo. I can usually only find room for 1 copy though (because my second delve slot goes to a Tasigur), even though I run the full 4 thought scour. But now with Plague Belcher, it's possible that 1 Gurmag is correct anyways because Belcher is pretty beefy and has menace.
4 Cryptbreaker
4 Relentless Dead
3 Diregraf Captain
3 Plague Belcher
3 Prized Amalgam
4 Viscera Seer
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Thoughtseize
3 Fatal Push
2 Collective Brutality
4 Polluted Delta
3 Watery Grave
3 Overgrown Tomb
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Drowned Catacombs
2 Woodland Cementery
2 Swamp
1 Island
1 Forest
The idea here would be a list that is a hybrid aristocrats/beatdown. With both Plague Belcher and Diregraf Captain acting as the drain part, and using Viscera Seer as our sac outlet. Prized Amalgam here feels a bit too cute, since we have to discard him with Liliana/Cryptbreaker/Brutality for him to be worth it. But once we start recurring him with drain effects on the field we can close the game quickly. Collected Company allows us to quickly populate the board, and drop those 3-drops in quick succession to make the most use of our drain effects. This deck has the advantage over the usual aristocrats list that our drain outlets are also great on the beatdown plan. But it suffers from the lack of lifegain and the fact that our recursion and drain is mostly happening later on in the game. This is merely an initial list trying to make use of these effects, your thoughts?.
My list is far from tuned, and I could only present you with a pre-amonkhet list because my preorders haven't even shipped yet lol. But here's what I was running pre-amonkhet.
4 Gravecrawler
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Relentless Dead
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Gurmag Angler
4 Thought Scour
2 Thoughtseize
4 fatal push
2 Dispel
1 Echoing truth
Noncreature Permanent (4)
3 Liliana, The last hope
1 Smuggler's Copter
3 Darkslick Shores
4 Polluted Delta
4 Marsh Flats
1 Watery Grave
3 Godless Shrine
2 Cavern of Souls
3 Swamp
1 Hallowed Fountain
The Thought Scour is enabling Gurmag, Tasigur, Snapcaster and Liliana, The last Hope (Edit: in addition to running 1 less land as well - I think without the cantrips 22 lands is probably correct). The Snappy and Lilly become very tool box-esque with Thought Scour. You might notice the list is 4 cards short, those are the flex slots in which I bounce back forth between the fourth Liliana, The last Hope a third 1cmc Discard spell, a second Snapcaster Mage, a second Smuggler's Copter, a second Gurmag Angler, a Lingering Souls, a Cryptbreaker, and an Orzhov Charm. The Lingering Souls is one of my favourites because it makes Thought Scour and Lilly better, but the mana base is not well suited for it and I have had it trapped in my hand on more than one occasion.
The list is tempo/aggressively slanted and doesn't look to capitalize on the Zombie tribe as much as most other lists do. The zombie synergies are mostly there to add some attrition value to keep pace with mid-range and control decks; which it does well. Once my Dread Wanderers and Plague Belchers arrive ill be looking to make the following changes to start.
- 4 Diregraf Ghoul + 4 Dread Wanderer
- 1 Relentless Dead, -2 Flex + 3 Plague Belcher
From there I'll be looking forward to testing main deck Fleshbag Marauder, as I think it gets better with Dread Wanderer in addition to Gravecrawler.
4 fatal push
Sorceries: 4
4 inquisition of kozilek
creatures: 30
4 dread wanderer
4 cryptbreaker
4 gravecrawler
4 relentless dead
4 wayward servant
2 bloodthrone vampire
4 diregraf captain
4 geralf's messenger
4 cavern of souls
6 swamp
2 watery grave
2 godless shrine
4 polluted delta
4 bloodstained mire
This list kind of evolved from the max drain list i posted some time ago. It is trying to get the most out of the 12 one drop at our disposal, with minimal interaction and maximum reach. The 3 colors aren't an issue, consider that cavern casts all the splash color zombies and the splashes are minimal. I just think diregraf captain is the best and most synergistic lord we can play.
At the opposite spectrum:
4 gravecrawler
4 cryptbreaker
2 viscera seer
4 relentless dead
4 wayward servant
4 tidehollow sculler
4 geralf's messenger
2 fleshbag marauder
4 inquisition of kozilek
2 dark salvation
instants: 4
4 fatal push
lands: 22
4 bloodstained mire
2 polluted delta
6 swamp
2 godless shrine
4 concealed courtyard
4 cavern of souls
This list features 8 hand disruption and 8 removal cards, half of which are tribal themed. This is trying to take advanatage of all the zombie tribal removal/discard we can play. Having all that tribal disruption available to us may be what makes zombies different from other tribes.
No plague belcher because after a bunch of goldfishing i'm just not sure how good he is...
Thoughts?
EDIT: in my opinion all the deck is missing right now is a quality zombie sac outlet with cmc 2 or 1. We still have the set after amonkhet to maybe get one!
I agree, we got our fill of 2cmc zombies, all wee need now is a zombie sac outlet! I wouldn't be suprised to see another 1cmc white mummy come out of the next set (hopefully better than Fan Bearer, and hopefully a sac outlet!).
I think Plague Belcher will perform much better in actual games than goldfish... in goldfish you don't really want to give up creatures for free, but when there are actual creatures with stats at 2/3 or better, you're going to be much happier drawing into a 5/4 menace for 3cmc.
"It is trying to get the most out of the 12 one drop at our disposal, with minimal interaction and maximum reach." In response to that statement specifically, I just want to point out that I feel Diregraf Ghoul is a superior 1 drop to Cryptbreaker, and I'm aware that is probably an unpopular opinion. But since you are playing lords and trying to curve and be a little more aggressive with this list, I don't think you should discount it entirely. It is also my opinion that 4 is almost certainly the wrong number of cryptbreaker to be playing, as the 2nd-4th copy isn't a particularly welcoming draw unless you are really flooded, and even then there is tension between playing the lands to activate multiple cryptbreakers in a turn vs keeping lands in hand in order to have discard fodder. I wouldn't recommend more than 3, and I usually only run 1 if at all.
I will give belcher a try in my future real game testing for sure, but it just seems like a 3cmc card that is bad alone AND has a drawback sometimes might not be all that exciting but we'll see. I really hope it is good but i am skeptical.
As for other builds 4x is definitely the right number of cryptbreakers. You want to maximize getting one in your opener so that you can curve out. You want extra because in grindy matchups it is a prime target, and is very fragile. In other cases you can just discard useless second cryptbreaker to the first, so having multiple is never really an issue.
I agree with this. In all the games I've played, I think there's only been one or two times where I wish Cryptbreaker wasn't literally any other card in the deck, and I am only running one copy of it. It's a terrible early play because every other creature is faster, and it's bad late game because it reeks of Win-More. One time, though, against Death's shadow it was helpful and drew into a removal spell.
Yeah I'm saying with the discard package and LOTV, Compelling Deterrence becomes a targeted removal spell.
I've tested Cryptbreaker a lot as well, and I still disagree. It never felt good to me in grindy matches either, I mean... being able to draw a card is sweet, but if the Cryptbreaker itself was a bigger threat (say a gurmag angler, or soon to be plague belcher, or even a removal spell) you could probably break through the stalemate. And if you weren't at a stalemate (read:board stall) in said grindy match, then having 3 zombies attacking is better than having three zombies tap to draw you a card, in which case Cryptbreakers meek stats would be better served as just about any other card in the deck.
The only time I've ever been happy with Cryptbreaker is when I'm flooding, it's been good then. Almost any other time I draw it, I wish it was anything else.