I think Volcanic Fallout is better than Pyroclasm if you're on Reckoner. Also, since you are running a more "all-in" Skred list, I'd consider testing the Demigods in your list as your big finisher. Maybe cut the Relics and add another Roast mainboard since Goyfs will then be harder to deal with. 1-2 Faithless Looting/Tormenting Voice maybe.
Yeah I've considered Volcanic too, but think the difference in cmc is more important than instant speed and uncountrability against affinity, infect and the like as Blood Moons and Bolts fixes manlands. Can only confirm the better fit through testing I suppose, I'll try out both in time.
SSG and 4 blood moons is hardly "all-in", there's no FoW in modern. Either I get down a turn 1-2 Moon or 2-3 Koth and win fairly easy from here, or the game play out in normal manner. Hardcasting an ape late isn't too bad either as it usually eats removal or protect the walkers.
I won't ever touch Demigod in skred as it's only better than Stormbreath when you get the trigger, and I'm not willing to depend on drawing discard spells and deny popping relics.
My main concern is that I'm approaching the meta wrong, and if Reckoner is good enough nowadays. Haven't really played him a lot earlier.
Just finished a League with this. 2-3 record. Demigod was bad. I almost lost matchups that were easy before, IE, Grixis variants. I lost to taking turns, Elves, and Abzan. The deck felt entirely weaker, but I did go a bit overboard with the Demigods and cutting of Relics.
Boros Reckoner only felt powerful in 1 single game for me. I think the cards probably fine, but I don't think it's better than Eternal Scourge.
Simian Spirit Guide was fine. Playing a Moon on turn 2 was obviously pretty sweet, but other than that, the card just seems weaker in every way.
Yeh I cut my simians drawing one late just pissed me off and outta of like 50 goldfished hands I found it useful once to t2 something out that I wouldn't have got out otherwise. Maybe just variance but out of my goldfishes drawing it "later" just felt really bad against the majority of scenarios I could think of. I am still new to the deck, I always goldfish a ton of hands before a big tourney with a new deck just to see how certain scenarios play out. It also speeds up my thinking during the matches so I am not annoying my opponent to much lol.
As far as arguments against it, I'll explain my reservations after the 10 or so matches I've tested with it. It introduces moving parts into the picture and it's a dead card in a lot of situations. Your list of cards that interact with it isn't as long as you think. P&K usually die on sight, so you can't count on them for Crew 3, and you have to admit that crewing it with a dragon is a stretch. Perhaps more importantly is that sacrificing a loyalty counter from Koth to crew it isn't a trivial cost. His ult comes so quickly that in my opinion it's a big decision whether you should pop one for an unguaranteed 4 damage, or hold out another turn or two for the game-winning move.
However as I wrote earlier, the times it worked, it worked really well. I liked using it with Scourge and Chandra for sure. I'll test it some more. I'm willing to be convinced of it, since I would love to find a place for the card in Modern.
I've actually never met any pro red creatures, so didn't even consider it. Don't think it'll be an issue, but I might end up playing scourges and more removal instead of Reckoners anyway.
Random question, did anyone ever try Abbot of Keral Keep in this deck? With all the non-creature spells it'll always swing for 3, and it can snag an extra card later.
I've actually never met any pro red creatures, so didn't even consider it. Don't think it'll be an issue, but I might end up playing scourges and more removal instead of Reckoners anyway.
Random question, did anyone ever try Abbot of Keral Keep in this deck? With all the non-creature spells it'll always swing for 3, and it can snag an extra card later.
Let's do some rough estimations with it. I'm gonna use my current deck's CMC as an example. Its average CMC currently comes in below 2.7, so it should bre pretty typical of most all varients of Skred.
What turn are we playing her? Obviously not turns 1-2. Turn three really doesn't do much good either. So let's run this in 2 scenarios, T5 and some turn on which we have 7 mana available which I'll just call T7.
On T5, if we stay in the habit of waiting to play lands after we cast her, 80% of my deck are "castable" hits. This includes lands that we get to play and filter through. But not all these are going to be cards we necessary want to cast (eg a sweeper or a Skred with no target). So lets say a quarter of those draws are going to be active when we hit them. That works out to be hits 65% of the time, not bad.
On T7, we definitely don't want to hit a land, we're generally looking for a closer or a stabilizer at this point. True, if we do hit a land it acts as a filter, but I'm just going to ignore that for the sake of this estimation, as it doesn't really change the board state that turn. That's about a 23% chance of hitting something of value, pretty piss poor.
So she's an odd card. Clrealy she has no value T1-2, and her value T7+ is greatly diminished, so we'd like to have her in our hands for T4-T6 plays to maximize her value. The problem with that is we have better stuff to cast on these turns. Ideally, we've been annoying the opponent with creature and graveard removal up to this point and now we want to land some of our haymakers. The chance of me casting her on these T4-6 versus say a Koth or a Strombreath is basically nothing. I could see some arguments if your playing an opponent that you know has a counter, but even then there most likely gonna let you resolve her and see what flips.
As a creature, shes pretty mediocre. Even if you consider her a 3/2 all of the time, she's basically active to all of our opponents removal which had few targets prior.
IMO shes definitely one of those trap cards which looks playable at first glance but falls apart upon closer inspection.
I see no problem playing a 2/1 prowess turn 2? Won't get full value but presents a respectable amount of early pressure, I believe. If it eats a bolt/path/push that's a perfectly fine 1:1
I see no problem playing a 2/1 prowess turn 2? Won't get full value but presents a respectable amount of early pressure, I believe. If it eats a bolt/path/push that's a perfectly fine 1:1
I'd 100% rather have a spellskite or mana rock on T2.
edit: the rationale behind this is that Skred is not in the business of early pressure. It's a control/midrange deck at its heart. burn/zoo variants are what you want to play if you're looking for early, not a conditional 3/2 for 2.
Not gonna post a Regionals report tonight, maybe tomorrow. Long story short, I started off 5-0, then lost 2 rounds, won 1 round, and lost my last round. Lost to Soul Sisters, Eldrazi Tron, and Affinity. I managed to beat GriselShoal, which was nice. Still, pretty mad that I lost to Soul Sisters and Affinity.
If my 1-of Volcanic Fallout had been a Kozileks Return like I intended this morning, I would have top 8'ed. I showed up late to the event and had to scribble my list down super fast and didn't have time to buy/borrow cards before the player meeting. Bummed, but still happy for 32nd for the $50. I think Skred is super strong right now.
Congrats Jasper! I also enjoyed success today, taking down my LGS's Saturday event. I was technically 4-1, but the opponent I lost to gave me the win because he couldn't stay for the whole event, so I went 5-0 for first! It looks like we're picking up steam as an archetype, and I'm excited to see how far we can go.
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The issue with Firedrinker is it hurts us. Sure it's a one drop, but it kills us in the process. Rabblemaster can take over games if left unanswered, something the Satyr can't do.
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I took this to a 176 player event yesterday. My final record ended up being 5 Wins 3 losses. I lost my win and in, in round 7 so a pretty decent performance.
Round 1 U/R prowess, Thing in the Ice. Standard List with peak instead of probe. He saved his creatures a lot with mutagenic growth's when I would skred for 2 lots of misplays on my part in this match. This match is likely in our a favor by quite a bit. I won in 3 games.
Round 2 A guy on a brew (AMC's the walking skred). It had some skred elements like koth except he was running simians and a bunch of rituals to cheat out t1 and 2 big plays. This is a favored match up for us I think. He did things like T1 Koth, but I just bolted it down then killed it with my own koth activation on t4. I lost game 1 to a koth ultimate, ensnaring bridge, chalice on 1. Games 2 and 3 seemed to be heavily in my favor.
Round 3 Storm with peaks. He won game 1 on T4 doing storm things with grapeshot. Games 2 and 3 he had land problems trying to play around blood moon and I kept all his creatures dead so he couldn't get the 1 reduction in casting costs he really needed.
Round 4 Affinity. I won in 2 games he got me 2 life game 1 and 7 poison counters, but I stalled his attacks with blood moon and Pia and Kiran and then kothed him out. Game 2 very similar I saw no sideboard cards but the maindeck is just so strong in this match up. 4-0 at this point and feeling pretty good about my matches.
Round 5 Titanshift. Game 1 I blood mooned on 3 he had no main deck answers, I literally could not find a threat for about 15 turns and died to Sakura Tribe Elders pinging my life away. I had killed off 3 primetimes and had a ratchet bomb on 6 for the last one but I could not find a threat. I activated scrying sheets in this match up with a blood moon out ( I am new to the deck). A guy playing beside me not against me called the judge, my opponent didn't care because I did not pull a land. Judge assigned me a infraction and made me shuffle my deck. It was a koth on top that I looked at. This was really disappointing as it would have meant the win for me I think. Just a sidenote it really pisses me off when players call judge on games they aren't playing in. I made a mistake no question but the player that called judge should have told us then left it up to my opponent to call judge if he so desired. Anyways game 2 I win on the back on heavy threats and a misplay by my opponent he could have scape shifted and wiped my koth off, instead he prime timed. I minuses koth for like 13 mana in total and stormbreath dragon then monstrous then bolt for a swing of 16 dmg for the win. Game 3 I got blood moon out again then crumbled his valakut's and ghost quarted one. We went to turns where he won on turn 3 or 4. A really close match I would say we are slightly unflavoured in this match up.
Round 6 G/W Tron. A good variant of tron for us to playing against I think. I won in 3 games my opponent seemed really tilted hitting the top of his deck and swearing a fair bit. Game one he wrecked me with natural tron into wurmcoil into ulamog. I won game 2 on the back of molten rain. Game 3 my opponent mulled to like 5 then never played a threat and died on t6 or 7. I had a great hand game 3 with a crumble to dust a mind stone 2 lands koth and stormbreath. He did warping wail my crumble to give himself a chance.
Round 7 Grixis Control. My win in and in match. I was happy to play this match up for win and in to top 8. Game 1 lost a close match I got mana leaked a lot. Game 2 I won on a resolved pia and kiran on t3. Game 3 was a long match where I decided to save up my threat and try to overload his counters. It sort of worked was very close I had a rabblemaster and a pia and kiran on board but my opponent found or had damnation and cleared it. We played back and forth a lot top decking but he won it on the back of pia and kiran himself.
Round 8 G/B deaths shroud. Lost in 2 games I had no idea what he was playing, he resolved ob nixils both games on t5, game 1 he had a lily, ob nox, and garruk out on t5 ot 6 then death shrouded for 4 and just ruined my board as I only had creatures out. I had lost a lot of my drive to win after losing the win and in.
I ended 31st got my money back. I had a lot of fun playing this deck and it seems quite powerful even in my unexperienced hands.
But what if we're forced to block or the Tron player has a large creature? Truthfully, against Ad Naus it's hard for Satyr to kill us, but against Esper it can easily. We have to assume a few things for Satyr to work.
1) We have a removal spell in hand, specifically a Bolt and preferably Skred. Despite a total of 8 copies, there is no way to guarantee we have one of those in our hand
2) The Esper player doesn't have counter magic/ doesn't have the mana available. Even if we have the removal spell, if the Esper player has counter magic up they can counter our removal spell. While there is no way to guarantee they have it, if they do we're in trouble.
3) They don't have removal. In response to pump, they Path/Fatal Push and we took 2 damage for no reason.
Truth be told, we don't even need that much help against Esper. We are already incredibly favored in control matchups as is, and I wouldn't even board in Rabblemaster against control because we don't need it. Against Tron, things get way harder. If they have any of their creatures except for Spellskite, Satyr can't do anything against them. We can't even block because we still take the full damage! I've won with Rabblemaster because it simply takes over games, even though Rabblemaster also doesn't interact favorably with their creatures. It takes 5 turns with an unanswered Rabblemaster to win. This is a long time, but that number decreases easily with our other threats. Of course, this is assuming we have more threats and disruption in our hand, but the large difference here is we run more threats than instant speed removal, so it is safer to assume that we have threats in hand than to assume we have removal. I have beaten Tron and Ad Nauseum plenty of times with Rabblemaster to know that it is worth it. Truth be told, Rabblemaster is much better with SSG as a way to ramp out faster, but I've won with a Rabblemaster that was cast on turn 3 before, if followed by disruption and threats. Furthermore, aside from Esper, we are discussing bad matchups. No single card will win us these matchups (even Blood Moon isn't an instant win against Tron), but some cards make them easier. Will Rabblemaster always win you the game? No, but neither will Satyr. We have to figure out which is the better of the two.
Additionally, let's not forget that we can always test Satyr. If you do try him out, let us know how it goes so we can properly analyze the card. Theory amd practice are two very different things, and unless we have both we cannot make a well informed decision.
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My opinion on Firedrinker is he is a bad goblin guide or swiftspear I mean really why not just play either of those? The and then what do you board out for your tron match ups to have room for 4 more creatures? I'm going to take my molten rains, crumble to dust, and artifact removal above any creature first so that's 7 board outs already then I bring in two rabblemasters just to increase my threat density. Rabble does 1 dmg first turn its out, 6 dmg 2nd turn its out, 8 dmg third turn its out. Lets do some math just to think about it differently. firedrinker is 0 dmg turn 1, 2 dmg turn 2 (3)bracketed number is if cost is paid and you do nothing else that turn. turn 3 2(3), Turn 4 2(3), Turn 5 2(3). So basically if you do nothing else until turn 5 firedrinker does 12. If you play a rabble master turn 3 is does 1 dmg, then 6 dmg turn 4, then 8 dmg turn 5, with an investment of 3 mana that's 15 dmg by turn 5. Firedrinker has done 12 damage and required 9 mana to do it and its cost you life. The math pretty much speaks for itself Firedrinker is just a bad magic card, unless your drafting then it seems amazing.
TURN 7 KILLS
Firedrinker Satyr
Koth (Ramped) - Beatdown or Ult
Pia and Kiran Nalaar (Ramped)
Stormbreath Dragon (Ramped)
TURN 10 KILLS
A lonely Goblin Guide
For simplicity's sake, I'm assuming hitting every land drop for the guys that take mana to pump up. "Ramped" means played a turn early via SSG or Mind Stone. Also that this is in a vacuum with no other spells being cast. Obviously there are many permutations where we can speed things up by Bolting their face with spare mana, or playing another threat on top of what's there.
Because many of the above options rely on land drops or ramp, that puts Goblin Rabblemaster as the most practical choice for ease of use and consistency.
If I made a mistake or people want to see other options laid out visually, let me know.
kargan dragonlord is another turn 6 kill in the same vein as FoD. but you only need 2 (R-producing) lands to make it happen. SSG makes it a t5 kill with only 2 lands. additionally, if you are lucky enough to hit all your land drops up until t5, a bolt will kill that turn w/o needing an SSG.
kargan + all land drops + koth is also a t5 kill.
a 3-land dragonlord puts out 15 damage by turn 5, same as goblin rabblemaster. but a 4-land dragonlord puts out 17 damage by turn 5, which is lethal against most decks.
as an added bonus, an 8/8 flampler can contest the board pretty well.
rabblemaster is still probably the better pick for two reasons, it goes wide by itself, & it requires no additional investment beyond its casting cost.
but the main point is this, how does firedrinker satyr even begin to compare to dragonlord? let alone the rabblemaster.
Despite the math and Rabblemaster being better, I'm fantasizing about drawing Lightning Berserker with 12 lands in play.
Has anybody else noticed a stark lack of Fatal Pushes? I haven't seen them outside of playtest games on Cockatrice. Perhaps our Mountains are fine after all?
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I was never really concerned about fatal push, all-night ever does is just make our other threats better to begin with.
Also why are we playing firedrinker and goblin guide? What have I missed? These cards seem terrible compared to Rabblemaster who is just better in every scenario. He requires no investment compared to firedrinker (or dragonlord) and isn't a garbage clock in a vacuum like goblin guide. You can play your other threats onncurve and literally gain an extra turn or two on your clock which is the main reason I support the card to begin with.
SSG and 4 blood moons is hardly "all-in", there's no FoW in modern. Either I get down a turn 1-2 Moon or 2-3 Koth and win fairly easy from here, or the game play out in normal manner. Hardcasting an ape late isn't too bad either as it usually eats removal or protect the walkers.
I won't ever touch Demigod in skred as it's only better than Stormbreath when you get the trigger, and I'm not willing to depend on drawing discard spells and deny popping relics.
My main concern is that I'm approaching the meta wrong, and if Reckoner is good enough nowadays. Haven't really played him a lot earlier.
Legacy: Death'n'Taxes
2 Scrying Sheets
4 Skred
4 Koth of the Hammer
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Magma Jet
4 Blood Moon
2 Tormenting Voice
3 Volcanic Fallout
4 Demigod of Revenge
1 Roast
4 Boros Reckoner
4 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Shattering Spree
2 Goblin Rabblemaster
3 Dragon's Claw
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Roast
1 Pithing Needle
1 Shatterstorm
Just finished a League with this. 2-3 record. Demigod was bad. I almost lost matchups that were easy before, IE, Grixis variants. I lost to taking turns, Elves, and Abzan. The deck felt entirely weaker, but I did go a bit overboard with the Demigods and cutting of Relics.
Boros Reckoner only felt powerful in 1 single game for me. I think the cards probably fine, but I don't think it's better than Eternal Scourge.
Simian Spirit Guide was fine. Playing a Moon on turn 2 was obviously pretty sweet, but other than that, the card just seems weaker in every way.
As far as arguments against it, I'll explain my reservations after the 10 or so matches I've tested with it. It introduces moving parts into the picture and it's a dead card in a lot of situations. Your list of cards that interact with it isn't as long as you think. P&K usually die on sight, so you can't count on them for Crew 3, and you have to admit that crewing it with a dragon is a stretch. Perhaps more importantly is that sacrificing a loyalty counter from Koth to crew it isn't a trivial cost. His ult comes so quickly that in my opinion it's a big decision whether you should pop one for an unguaranteed 4 damage, or hold out another turn or two for the game-winning move.
However as I wrote earlier, the times it worked, it worked really well. I liked using it with Scourge and Chandra for sure. I'll test it some more. I'm willing to be convinced of it, since I would love to find a place for the card in Modern.
Random question, did anyone ever try Abbot of Keral Keep in this deck? With all the non-creature spells it'll always swing for 3, and it can snag an extra card later.
Legacy: Death'n'Taxes
Let's do some rough estimations with it. I'm gonna use my current deck's CMC as an example. Its average CMC currently comes in below 2.7, so it should bre pretty typical of most all varients of Skred.
What turn are we playing her? Obviously not turns 1-2. Turn three really doesn't do much good either. So let's run this in 2 scenarios, T5 and some turn on which we have 7 mana available which I'll just call T7.
On T5, if we stay in the habit of waiting to play lands after we cast her, 80% of my deck are "castable" hits. This includes lands that we get to play and filter through. But not all these are going to be cards we necessary want to cast (eg a sweeper or a Skred with no target). So lets say a quarter of those draws are going to be active when we hit them. That works out to be hits 65% of the time, not bad.
On T7, we definitely don't want to hit a land, we're generally looking for a closer or a stabilizer at this point. True, if we do hit a land it acts as a filter, but I'm just going to ignore that for the sake of this estimation, as it doesn't really change the board state that turn. That's about a 23% chance of hitting something of value, pretty piss poor.
So she's an odd card. Clrealy she has no value T1-2, and her value T7+ is greatly diminished, so we'd like to have her in our hands for T4-T6 plays to maximize her value. The problem with that is we have better stuff to cast on these turns. Ideally, we've been annoying the opponent with creature and graveard removal up to this point and now we want to land some of our haymakers. The chance of me casting her on these T4-6 versus say a Koth or a Strombreath is basically nothing. I could see some arguments if your playing an opponent that you know has a counter, but even then there most likely gonna let you resolve her and see what flips.
As a creature, shes pretty mediocre. Even if you consider her a 3/2 all of the time, she's basically active to all of our opponents removal which had few targets prior.
IMO shes definitely one of those trap cards which looks playable at first glance but falls apart upon closer inspection.
Legacy: Death'n'Taxes
I'd 100% rather have a spellskite or mana rock on T2.
edit: the rationale behind this is that Skred is not in the business of early pressure. It's a control/midrange deck at its heart. burn/zoo variants are what you want to play if you're looking for early, not a conditional 3/2 for 2.
If my 1-of Volcanic Fallout had been a Kozileks Return like I intended this morning, I would have top 8'ed. I showed up late to the event and had to scribble my list down super fast and didn't have time to buy/borrow cards before the player meeting. Bummed, but still happy for 32nd for the $50. I think Skred is super strong right now.
2 Scrying Sheet
20 Snows
1 Ghost quarter
Creature
3 Stormbreath Dragon
3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 Eternal Scourge
Artifact
4 Relic of Progenitus
4 Mind Stone
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Ratchet Bomb
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Skred
3 Anger of the gods
3 Blood Moon
Walkers
4 Koth the Hammer
1 Chandra, torch of Defiance
3 Molten Rain
2 Shattering Spree
1 Vandalblast
2 Dragon's claw
2 Spellskite
2 Rabblemasters
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Roast
1 Sudden Shock
I took this to a 176 player event yesterday. My final record ended up being 5 Wins 3 losses. I lost my win and in, in round 7 so a pretty decent performance.
Round 1 U/R prowess, Thing in the Ice. Standard List with peak instead of probe. He saved his creatures a lot with mutagenic growth's when I would skred for 2 lots of misplays on my part in this match. This match is likely in our a favor by quite a bit. I won in 3 games.
Round 2 A guy on a brew (AMC's the walking skred). It had some skred elements like koth except he was running simians and a bunch of rituals to cheat out t1 and 2 big plays. This is a favored match up for us I think. He did things like T1 Koth, but I just bolted it down then killed it with my own koth activation on t4. I lost game 1 to a koth ultimate, ensnaring bridge, chalice on 1. Games 2 and 3 seemed to be heavily in my favor.
Round 3 Storm with peaks. He won game 1 on T4 doing storm things with grapeshot. Games 2 and 3 he had land problems trying to play around blood moon and I kept all his creatures dead so he couldn't get the 1 reduction in casting costs he really needed.
Round 4 Affinity. I won in 2 games he got me 2 life game 1 and 7 poison counters, but I stalled his attacks with blood moon and Pia and Kiran and then kothed him out. Game 2 very similar I saw no sideboard cards but the maindeck is just so strong in this match up. 4-0 at this point and feeling pretty good about my matches.
Round 5 Titanshift. Game 1 I blood mooned on 3 he had no main deck answers, I literally could not find a threat for about 15 turns and died to Sakura Tribe Elders pinging my life away. I had killed off 3 primetimes and had a ratchet bomb on 6 for the last one but I could not find a threat. I activated scrying sheets in this match up with a blood moon out ( I am new to the deck). A guy playing beside me not against me called the judge, my opponent didn't care because I did not pull a land. Judge assigned me a infraction and made me shuffle my deck. It was a koth on top that I looked at. This was really disappointing as it would have meant the win for me I think. Just a sidenote it really pisses me off when players call judge on games they aren't playing in. I made a mistake no question but the player that called judge should have told us then left it up to my opponent to call judge if he so desired. Anyways game 2 I win on the back on heavy threats and a misplay by my opponent he could have scape shifted and wiped my koth off, instead he prime timed. I minuses koth for like 13 mana in total and stormbreath dragon then monstrous then bolt for a swing of 16 dmg for the win. Game 3 I got blood moon out again then crumbled his valakut's and ghost quarted one. We went to turns where he won on turn 3 or 4. A really close match I would say we are slightly unflavoured in this match up.
Round 6 G/W Tron. A good variant of tron for us to playing against I think. I won in 3 games my opponent seemed really tilted hitting the top of his deck and swearing a fair bit. Game one he wrecked me with natural tron into wurmcoil into ulamog. I won game 2 on the back of molten rain. Game 3 my opponent mulled to like 5 then never played a threat and died on t6 or 7. I had a great hand game 3 with a crumble to dust a mind stone 2 lands koth and stormbreath. He did warping wail my crumble to give himself a chance.
Round 7 Grixis Control. My win in and in match. I was happy to play this match up for win and in to top 8. Game 1 lost a close match I got mana leaked a lot. Game 2 I won on a resolved pia and kiran on t3. Game 3 was a long match where I decided to save up my threat and try to overload his counters. It sort of worked was very close I had a rabblemaster and a pia and kiran on board but my opponent found or had damnation and cleared it. We played back and forth a lot top decking but he won it on the back of pia and kiran himself.
Round 8 G/B deaths shroud. Lost in 2 games I had no idea what he was playing, he resolved ob nixils both games on t5, game 1 he had a lily, ob nox, and garruk out on t5 ot 6 then death shrouded for 4 and just ruined my board as I only had creatures out. I had lost a lot of my drive to win after losing the win and in.
I ended 31st got my money back. I had a lot of fun playing this deck and it seems quite powerful even in my unexperienced hands.
1) We have a removal spell in hand, specifically a Bolt and preferably Skred. Despite a total of 8 copies, there is no way to guarantee we have one of those in our hand
2) The Esper player doesn't have counter magic/ doesn't have the mana available. Even if we have the removal spell, if the Esper player has counter magic up they can counter our removal spell. While there is no way to guarantee they have it, if they do we're in trouble.
3) They don't have removal. In response to pump, they Path/Fatal Push and we took 2 damage for no reason.
Truth be told, we don't even need that much help against Esper. We are already incredibly favored in control matchups as is, and I wouldn't even board in Rabblemaster against control because we don't need it. Against Tron, things get way harder. If they have any of their creatures except for Spellskite, Satyr can't do anything against them. We can't even block because we still take the full damage! I've won with Rabblemaster because it simply takes over games, even though Rabblemaster also doesn't interact favorably with their creatures. It takes 5 turns with an unanswered Rabblemaster to win. This is a long time, but that number decreases easily with our other threats. Of course, this is assuming we have more threats and disruption in our hand, but the large difference here is we run more threats than instant speed removal, so it is safer to assume that we have threats in hand than to assume we have removal. I have beaten Tron and Ad Nauseum plenty of times with Rabblemaster to know that it is worth it. Truth be told, Rabblemaster is much better with SSG as a way to ramp out faster, but I've won with a Rabblemaster that was cast on turn 3 before, if followed by disruption and threats. Furthermore, aside from Esper, we are discussing bad matchups. No single card will win us these matchups (even Blood Moon isn't an instant win against Tron), but some cards make them easier. Will Rabblemaster always win you the game? No, but neither will Satyr. We have to figure out which is the better of the two.
Additionally, let's not forget that we can always test Satyr. If you do try him out, let us know how it goes so we can properly analyze the card. Theory amd practice are two very different things, and unless we have both we cannot make a well informed decision.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NxFkHvJ9ix4biCOcTxOezR0q_F4dTMg5gmK0kYJdOSs/edit?usp=sharing
Here's the short version: Firedrinker Satyr sucks. Many more practical options exist.
TURN 6 KILLS
Goblin Rabblemaster
Figure of Destiny
Koth (Ramped) x2 - Beatdown
Lightning Berserker
TURN 7 KILLS
Firedrinker Satyr
Koth (Ramped) - Beatdown or Ult
Pia and Kiran Nalaar (Ramped)
Stormbreath Dragon (Ramped)
TURN 10 KILLS
A lonely Goblin Guide
For simplicity's sake, I'm assuming hitting every land drop for the guys that take mana to pump up. "Ramped" means played a turn early via SSG or Mind Stone. Also that this is in a vacuum with no other spells being cast. Obviously there are many permutations where we can speed things up by Bolting their face with spare mana, or playing another threat on top of what's there.
Because many of the above options rely on land drops or ramp, that puts Goblin Rabblemaster as the most practical choice for ease of use and consistency.
If I made a mistake or people want to see other options laid out visually, let me know.
kargan + all land drops + koth is also a t5 kill.
a 3-land dragonlord puts out 15 damage by turn 5, same as goblin rabblemaster. but a 4-land dragonlord puts out 17 damage by turn 5, which is lethal against most decks.
as an added bonus, an 8/8 flampler can contest the board pretty well.
rabblemaster is still probably the better pick for two reasons, it goes wide by itself, & it requires no additional investment beyond its casting cost.
but the main point is this, how does firedrinker satyr even begin to compare to dragonlord? let alone the rabblemaster.
Has anybody else noticed a stark lack of Fatal Pushes? I haven't seen them outside of playtest games on Cockatrice. Perhaps our Mountains are fine after all?
Also why are we playing firedrinker and goblin guide? What have I missed? These cards seem terrible compared to Rabblemaster who is just better in every scenario. He requires no investment compared to firedrinker (or dragonlord) and isn't a garbage clock in a vacuum like goblin guide. You can play your other threats onncurve and literally gain an extra turn or two on your clock which is the main reason I support the card to begin with.