Blightsteel is a cool idea but makes the 'combo' take 3 turns.
Turn 1 play pila-pala (summoning sickness).
Turn 2 make a ton of mana pod pila-pala to treasure mage then find and play Blightsteel (summoning sickness).
Turn 3 attack with Blightsteel.
As it is right now the Pila-Pala combo is 2 turn.
Turn 1 Play pila-pala (summoning sickness).
Turn 2 make a ton of mana pod to treasure mage then find and play Memnarch and take everything.
The non-haste of the Memnarch is already slow, giving them a another turn to react just doesn't seem at all what the deck wants. Plus the 'combo' is the backup plan, the core of the deck is an aggro deck with pod to help us get there. As far as hard casting, Wurmcoil is 1/2 the mana, does a good job of being a fatty and is castable off a Chief Engineer when we don't have Grand Architect online.
Has anyone tried to run a singleton of Skaab Ruinator? Seems like a card a lot of decks would have issues with.
The problem I can see with Skaab Ruinator is that we're almost never going to be albe to cast him on turn three. Although being able to pod into him might be nice there will be too may times where he rots in your hand and when you do pod into him he's only rarely going better than just podding out grand architect.
another combo you could jam in here without adding pili-pala/memnarch (which aren't the greatest cards by themselves) is the Teferi + knowledge pool lock. Teferi isn't terrible in the 5cmc slot, but unfortunately Knowledge pool doens't really do anything by itself
Blightsteel is a cool idea but makes the 'combo' take 3 turns.
Turn 1 play pila-pala (summoning sickness).
Turn 2 make a ton of mana pod pila-pala to treasure mage then find and play Blightsteel (summoning sickness).
Turn 3 attack with Blightsteel.
As it is right now the Pila-Pala combo is 2 turn.
Turn 1 Play pila-pala (summoning sickness).
Turn 2 make a ton of mana pod to treasure mage then find and play Memnarch and take everything.
The non-haste of the Memnarch is already slow, giving them a another turn to react just doesn't seem at all what the deck wants. Plus the 'combo' is the backup plan, the core of the deck is an aggro deck with pod to help us get there. As far as hard casting, Wurmcoil is 1/2 the mana, does a good job of being a fatty and is castable off a Chief Engineer when we don't have Grand Architect online.
If you are controlling a Grand Architect, the summoning sickness will not affect the Pili-Pala, you just need to pay to make it a blue creature and generate infinite mana. Any of both abilities is affected by summoning sickness.
You can't use Pili-Pala's untap ability if he's summoning sick.
I really like the slaver-lock out of the sideboard. That won me a handful of games against GW hatebears and I would have brought it in against Tron if I had remembered. The sideboard, as a whole, is underconstruction, though. I do like the extra shackles against jund, other pods, hatebears, etc. and I think the lodestone golem is insane vs storm.
I have tested it against Burn, GR Tron, and GW Hatebears and I thought I would share my findings with you.
The Burn matchup is pretty even we played 4 matches. I won two and my opponent won two. I don't have much to say about the match up other than a lot of our creatures don't die to bolt, which is nice. Also, Master of Waves is awesome.
The GR Tron matchup is hard. You can easily rush them with a good hand, and close out the game before they have had a chance to assemble their hand and lands. Also, Emrakul, the Aeons torn is surprisingly beatable, especially with Master of Waves + tokens. Pyroclasm is a lot less useful than one would imagine against us, seeing as a load of our creatures (1) have 3 toughness, and (2) we have a sweet lord. The main problem with the matchup is Oblivion Stone. This hurts so bad, as I'm sure you are aware, and leaves us with an empty board.
The GW Hatebears matchup is also pretty even. They have a significant amount of hate for artifacts but we are significantly less artifact heavy that deck like affinity so we can still pull out wins. The only problem that they really present is their search hosers (leonin arbiter, aven mindcensor, etc.) as these cards make pod sad. While certainly not game-ending, these effects definitely can be devastating.
The five drop slot is the thing that is giving me the most trouble. I have sort of messed around with crazy things like ixidron or precursor golem. I really liked precursor golem in that slot as 9 power for 5 mana is pretty awesome. Yes, it dies to bolt and such but once you pod away the original Golem, you are left with 2 3/3 tokens, and whatever you pod into. I think Teferi is technically the best option for this slot though. It just eats control players, but I would like to keep testing with a precursor golem.
been testing this deck fairly often online lately, I really love some of the synergies and the rogue factor that this deck presents. (also am a pretty blue mage)
This is the list I'm currently testing. I found that the games where you play as a random mono-blue creature aggro deck were the difficult ones to win, so I'm playing with serum visions and a fabricate to maximize the chances of doing things on the critical turns 3/4.
I really like coiling oracle here. How has that worked out for you?
Can you explain the one-of myr superion? Having one stranded in your hand is a feel bad, but as a one of, it makes it hard to get consistently. Do you pod for it?
I get that not having pod is a huge bummer, but fabricate seems so bad and such a loss of tempo.
How does the Mulldrifter perform? Have you tried Teferi?
No need for apologies! Questioning choices is the best way to refine decks.
Coiling oracle is very good in my opinion for a few reasons. Firstly, it adds another way to be podding on turn 3. With 8 turn 1 scry/rearrange effects you can often have your turn 2 oracle intentionally finding a land in order to play and activate pod on turn 3. Secondly, as a birthing pod deck I feel like having effects that generate you advantage as you move up the chain is pretty necessary. Previously this slot was augury owl but I think this card is just a bit better.
Myr Superion at two was too often a fairly useless card in hand, and it's not particularly useful in the pod to master of waves lines which is probably the deck's best play. Of course you can always pod to it if you want an instant threat. I don't see how having two in the deck makes it much more useful, it could be that I'm undervaluing the card.
Fabricate is indeed a bad card, I'm not exactly sold on it yet as it was a recent addition. In theory I do like the option of grabbing pod/shackles/skite/batterskull in the specifically relevant matchups, especially considering how much the deck struggles without its power cards.
Haven't tried teferi yet, mulldrifter is decent but there is probably a better 5-drop to play. I do believe that you need something in the 5 slot though.
No need for apologies! Questioning choices is the best way to refine decks.
Coiling oracle is very good in my opinion for a few reasons. Firstly, it adds another way to be podding on turn 3. With 8 turn 1 scry/rearrange effects you can often have your turn 2 oracle intentionally finding a land in order to play and activate pod on turn 3. Secondly, as a birthing pod deck I feel like having effects that generate you advantage as you move up the chain is pretty necessary. Previously this slot was augury owl but I think this card is just a bit better.
Myr Superion at two was too often a fairly useless card in hand, and it's not particularly useful in the pod to master of waves lines which is probably the deck's best play. Of course you can always pod to it if you want an instant threat. I don't see how having two in the deck makes it much more useful, it could be that I'm undervaluing the card.
Haven't tried teferi yet, mulldrifter is decent but there is probably a better 5-drop to play. I do believe that you need something in the 5 slot though.
I'd like to weigh in that I agree with alot of these card choices, I really like coiling oracle in place of augyry owl, unlike owl it's raw card advantage which is super important, most fair decks seem to just spend their removal early to kill all of our dorky little creatures (like they do against other versions of pod), coiling oracle makes that plan much less effective. Plus with sages most of the time it's a 2cmc wood elves that adds blue devotion, it makes our starts more explosive but doesn't really cost us anything.
As for 5-drops, we really need wizards to print something for us, I've been searching for something worth playing over mulldrifter for ages but thus far everything seems win-more. I play Mulldrifter because divination isn't the literal worst thing in the world and we really only want to play/pod into our 5-drop when we're behind, master of waves/grand architect+weenies will win us the game with very little support otherwise.
I played against Burn again yesterday and I think it is actually harder match than I originally thought. We burn ourselves with pod quite a bit, effectively giving them free spells, we just have to race them or slam a wurmcoil or batterskull early. I also played against modern merfolk, which, while niche, is an almost un-winnable matchup.
What are your opinions on a main-board mindslaver lock. I run two academy ruins main, and a singleton mindslaver in the board. I brought this in against GW Hatebears, mainly because I just wanted to get the lock, but I'm not sure what decks it is good against.
I have also been trying to find a card that can put dead draws from the hand back into the library. We don't have brainstorm so we can't do so that easily but what about see beyond? Its really the only card that will accomplish this task but its not very good. I just wanted to run it by you guys.
I think I will relegate the slaverlock to the board. I currently have no batterskulls main because you can't into them or treasure mage them. I don't have a proper sideboard yet, but I don't know if I will want the BSkulls in it or not (I probably do). They are really good especially against jund and burn. I have 2 Spellskites main and one in the sideboard.
As to the dead draws, I consider myr superions dead if I have no board. I have periodically had myr superions stranded in my hand. Other than that the draws are all fairly live. I like the sage of epityrs more than thassa. Her ability doesn't seem like it would help that much. I have forgone the temples because I think it is important for all of our lands to come into play untapped.
I didn't think of chalice of the void as a sideboard card. That seems insane, especially because we can sometimes land a chalice on 3 (note: I can't think of a reason why we would need to, but hey!). What do you think about a trinket mage package? He can grab Chalice, Relic of Progenitus, pithing needle, potentially an Expedition Map (this is for the pili-pala infinite mana into eldrazi combo. I don't personally like this combo, but it could be there)
The thing is Treasure Mage is not dead outside the combo, he's often used to fetch a wurmcoil, and memnarch is often castable with Grand Architect as a 4/5, which is actually difficult for a lot of decks to deal with. I like that Ambassador adds devotion but I really dont think this deck is after more 1/3's, Ambassador also can't beat eldraz, decks running eldrazi are some of the matchups where we lean on the combo the most. The best part of the memnarch combo is that all of the pieces have a non-zero amount of utility outside of the combo (the worst being pili-pala but just dumping your hand turn 3 is still nice), I think that while ambassidor takes up one less slot it's still less playable than memnarch + trinket mage. By all means try it but I just don't think it's very good.
I see no reason to avoid playing 4 Pila-Pala.
Turn 2 Pila-Pala allows for turn 3 overtaking the board if you have a pod and a Grand Architect.
But even if you don't have a pod having Treasure Mage or Memnarch in your hand also allows you to overtake the board.
If you don't have an Architect but a pod and another 2CC creature you have the 6 mana required to play your pond and exchange the
2CC creature for an architect.
Even if you aren't using Pila-Pala for your combo if they are played turn 2 simply dropping another land means that you have a turn 3 Wurmcoil.
When it comes to having a 5cc drop I think Thragtusk is good. I think he's much better than Mulldrifter or Sphinx's Disciple. It only needs one green mana and we already have green mana.
Reclamation Sage also looks worthy of consideration. Given the amount of wizards in the deck Patron Wizard might also be nice.
I don't see the point of Mindslaver as sideboard tech. Memnarch should be better in every matchup.
Misc it's worth noting that Academy Ruins together with the Memnarch combo wins the game against an opponent with infinitive life.
The reason not to play 4 Pili-Pala is the card is TERRIBLE on its own. A 1/1 flyer for 2 with no relevant abilities is laughable in Modern, and it doesn't help that going turn 2 Pili-Pala turn 3 Grand Architect doesn't even generate infinite mana until turn 4 because you need a blue mana to make Pili-Pala blue.
Where are you getting this idea that Pili-Pala generates mana on its own? It's ability actually loses mana by using it, it just lets you filter Architect mana into real mana.
Patron Wizard is not Modern legal. If he was, we would probably be playing him.
That's a really cool line of play and while it does "die to removal" so does the Twin combo and for this deck the Pala combo isn't the focus of the deck.
Hey guys, I am going to a modern FNM event tonight. I thought I would show you all my list for this evening. I decided to try the white splash for Reveillark. It also gives access to a Meddling Mage out of the board. I have tested this version a little against GR Tron. The meddling mage helps to stop the flow of tears from our faces. I just don't know if that is the best plan against tron. I normally board in an extra revoker, pithing needle, mindslaver, and the mages. The question is do we want to focus on fighting their karns and o-stones, or do we want to just race them. My current board plan slows the deck down.
It was still brutal. I faced two GR Tron decks and a weird 5 color chord of calling deck. The tron matches went as you might have expected. I didn't have any commandeers, so that was that. The glen elendra and sowers were good and the v. shackles were terrible. Meddling mages are a nice silver bullet against many different decks. I found I was usually naming o stone and karn, but occasionally naming expedition map. I think splashing red for blood moon/magus would make this matchup way, way better. I saw the reveillark quite infrequently and found it to be underperforming. When I did pod it out, I had to wait until the next turn to pod it again and get the trigger.
This deck could totally be a thing with collected company. Change from Mono blue to UG company hits every part of the combo for infinite mana with pilla pala and is just straight value otherwise. The only cards it wouldn't hit are Master of Waves and w/e wincon we want, probably Memnarch or Wurmcoil but it does hit Treasure Mage which hits those.
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In the yard: RUG Delver, Kiki-Chord, Grixis Twin, Mardu Control, Smallpox, Jeskai Control, Jeskai Delver, Assault Loam, Elves, Deathcloud, Eggs, Storm
Turn 1 play pila-pala (summoning sickness).
Turn 2 make a ton of mana pod pila-pala to treasure mage then find and play Blightsteel (summoning sickness).
Turn 3 attack with Blightsteel.
As it is right now the Pila-Pala combo is 2 turn.
Turn 1 Play pila-pala (summoning sickness).
Turn 2 make a ton of mana pod to treasure mage then find and play Memnarch and take everything.
The non-haste of the Memnarch is already slow, giving them a another turn to react just doesn't seem at all what the deck wants. Plus the 'combo' is the backup plan, the core of the deck is an aggro deck with pod to help us get there. As far as hard casting, Wurmcoil is 1/2 the mana, does a good job of being a fatty and is castable off a Chief Engineer when we don't have Grand Architect online.
The problem I can see with Skaab Ruinator is that we're almost never going to be albe to cast him on turn three. Although being able to pod into him might be nice there will be too may times where he rots in your hand and when you do pod into him he's only rarely going better than just podding out grand architect.
You can't use Pili-Pala's untap ability if he's summoning sick.
I have been playing a version of this deck for a week now because it looks like so much fun (it is).
3x Chief Engineer
1x Glen Elendra Archmage
4x Grand Architect
4x Judge's Familiar
1x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
2x Master of Waves
1x Memnarch
2x Myr Superion
1x Pestermite
2x Phantasmal Image
1x Pili-Pala
4x Sage of Epityr
1x Sower of Temptation
2x Spellskite
1x Treasure Mage
1x Wurmcoil Engine
13x Island
2x Academy Ruins
4x Polluted Delta
4x Birthing Pod
1x Vedalken Shackles
1x Echoing Truth
1x Mindslaver
1x Vedalken Shackles
3x spell pierce
1x Lodestone Golem
2x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Sower of Temptation
1x Tidebinder Mage
I really like the slaver-lock out of the sideboard. That won me a handful of games against GW hatebears and I would have brought it in against Tron if I had remembered. The sideboard, as a whole, is underconstruction, though. I do like the extra shackles against jund, other pods, hatebears, etc. and I think the lodestone golem is insane vs storm.
I have tested it against Burn, GR Tron, and GW Hatebears and I thought I would share my findings with you.
The Burn matchup is pretty even we played 4 matches. I won two and my opponent won two. I don't have much to say about the match up other than a lot of our creatures don't die to bolt, which is nice. Also, Master of Waves is awesome.
The GR Tron matchup is hard. You can easily rush them with a good hand, and close out the game before they have had a chance to assemble their hand and lands. Also, Emrakul, the Aeons torn is surprisingly beatable, especially with Master of Waves + tokens. Pyroclasm is a lot less useful than one would imagine against us, seeing as a load of our creatures (1) have 3 toughness, and (2) we have a sweet lord. The main problem with the matchup is Oblivion Stone. This hurts so bad, as I'm sure you are aware, and leaves us with an empty board.
The GW Hatebears matchup is also pretty even. They have a significant amount of hate for artifacts but we are significantly less artifact heavy that deck like affinity so we can still pull out wins. The only problem that they really present is their search hosers (leonin arbiter, aven mindcensor, etc.) as these cards make pod sad. While certainly not game-ending, these effects definitely can be devastating.
Questions? Thoughts? Comments?
4 Sage of Epityr
2 Chief Engineer
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Myr Superion
2 Spellskite
2 Coiling Oracle
4 Grand Architect
1 Pestermite
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
2 Master of Waves
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Mulldrifter
1 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Birthing Pod
2 Vedalken Shackles
1 Fabricate
4 Serum Visions
4 Misty Rainforest
14 Island
2 Breeding Pool
2 Scalding Tarn
been testing this deck fairly often online lately, I really love some of the synergies and the rogue factor that this deck presents. (also am a pretty blue mage)
This is the list I'm currently testing. I found that the games where you play as a random mono-blue creature aggro deck were the difficult ones to win, so I'm playing with serum visions and a fabricate to maximize the chances of doing things on the critical turns 3/4.
I really like coiling oracle here. How has that worked out for you?
Can you explain the one-of myr superion? Having one stranded in your hand is a feel bad, but as a one of, it makes it hard to get consistently. Do you pod for it?
I get that not having pod is a huge bummer, but fabricate seems so bad and such a loss of tempo.
How does the Mulldrifter perform? Have you tried Teferi?
Coiling oracle is very good in my opinion for a few reasons. Firstly, it adds another way to be podding on turn 3. With 8 turn 1 scry/rearrange effects you can often have your turn 2 oracle intentionally finding a land in order to play and activate pod on turn 3. Secondly, as a birthing pod deck I feel like having effects that generate you advantage as you move up the chain is pretty necessary. Previously this slot was augury owl but I think this card is just a bit better.
Myr Superion at two was too often a fairly useless card in hand, and it's not particularly useful in the pod to master of waves lines which is probably the deck's best play. Of course you can always pod to it if you want an instant threat. I don't see how having two in the deck makes it much more useful, it could be that I'm undervaluing the card.
Fabricate is indeed a bad card, I'm not exactly sold on it yet as it was a recent addition. In theory I do like the option of grabbing pod/shackles/skite/batterskull in the specifically relevant matchups, especially considering how much the deck struggles without its power cards.
Haven't tried teferi yet, mulldrifter is decent but there is probably a better 5-drop to play. I do believe that you need something in the 5 slot though.
I'd like to weigh in that I agree with alot of these card choices, I really like coiling oracle in place of augyry owl, unlike owl it's raw card advantage which is super important, most fair decks seem to just spend their removal early to kill all of our dorky little creatures (like they do against other versions of pod), coiling oracle makes that plan much less effective. Plus with sages most of the time it's a 2cmc wood elves that adds blue devotion, it makes our starts more explosive but doesn't really cost us anything.
As for 5-drops, we really need wizards to print something for us, I've been searching for something worth playing over mulldrifter for ages but thus far everything seems win-more. I play Mulldrifter because divination isn't the literal worst thing in the world and we really only want to play/pod into our 5-drop when we're behind, master of waves/grand architect+weenies will win us the game with very little support otherwise.
What are your opinions on a main-board mindslaver lock. I run two academy ruins main, and a singleton mindslaver in the board. I brought this in against GW Hatebears, mainly because I just wanted to get the lock, but I'm not sure what decks it is good against.
I have also been trying to find a card that can put dead draws from the hand back into the library. We don't have brainstorm so we can't do so that easily but what about see beyond? Its really the only card that will accomplish this task but its not very good. I just wanted to run it by you guys.
As to the dead draws, I consider myr superions dead if I have no board. I have periodically had myr superions stranded in my hand. Other than that the draws are all fairly live. I like the sage of epityrs more than thassa. Her ability doesn't seem like it would help that much. I have forgone the temples because I think it is important for all of our lands to come into play untapped.
I didn't think of chalice of the void as a sideboard card. That seems insane, especially because we can sometimes land a chalice on 3 (note: I can't think of a reason why we would need to, but hey!). What do you think about a trinket mage package? He can grab Chalice, Relic of Progenitus, pithing needle, potentially an Expedition Map (this is for the pili-pala infinite mana into eldrazi combo. I don't personally like this combo, but it could be there)
The thing is Treasure Mage is not dead outside the combo, he's often used to fetch a wurmcoil, and memnarch is often castable with Grand Architect as a 4/5, which is actually difficult for a lot of decks to deal with. I like that Ambassador adds devotion but I really dont think this deck is after more 1/3's, Ambassador also can't beat eldraz, decks running eldrazi are some of the matchups where we lean on the combo the most. The best part of the memnarch combo is that all of the pieces have a non-zero amount of utility outside of the combo (the worst being pili-pala but just dumping your hand turn 3 is still nice), I think that while ambassidor takes up one less slot it's still less playable than memnarch + trinket mage. By all means try it but I just don't think it's very good.
The reason not to play 4 Pili-Pala is the card is TERRIBLE on its own. A 1/1 flyer for 2 with no relevant abilities is laughable in Modern, and it doesn't help that going turn 2 Pili-Pala turn 3 Grand Architect doesn't even generate infinite mana until turn 4 because you need a blue mana to make Pili-Pala blue.
Where are you getting this idea that Pili-Pala generates mana on its own? It's ability actually loses mana by using it, it just lets you filter Architect mana into real mana.
Patron Wizard is not Modern legal. If he was, we would probably be playing him.
3x Chief Engineer
3x Coiling Oracle
1x Glen Elendra Archmage
4x Grand Architect
2x Judge's Familiar
2x Master of Waves
1x Molten-Tail Masticore
2x Myr Superion
2x Phantasmal Image
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Reveillark
4x Sage of Epityr
1x Sower of Temptation
2x Spellskite
1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1x Treasure Mage
2x Wurmcoil Engine
Land (22)
2x Academy Ruins
4x Breeding Pool
4x Flooded Strand
1x Forest
1x Hallowed Fountain
8x Island
1x Plains
1x Scalding Tarn
4x Birthing Pod
1x Vedalken Shackles
1x Batterskull
2x Chalice of the Void
1x Lodestone Golem
2x Meddling Mage
1x Mindslaver
1x Phyrexian Revoker
2x Relic of Progenitus
1x Silent Arbiter
1x Spellskite
1x Trygon Predator
1x Vedalken Shackles
Any thoughts or suggestions?