I've been thinking lately that WotC is going to remove 8th-9th Ed from Modern, and the introduction of "Blood Moon Lite" in Blood Sun only adds to that case.
My theory is that, as the Modern card pool grows, cards like Blood Moon, Tron lands, Ensnaring Bridge, Choke, Boil, etc., have more of a Legacy feel to them: extremely powerful effects for low cost that require specific answers and/or make the game essentially unplayable for your opponent once resolved. Which makes sense, because most of those cards were designed in the early 90's, and are really only in Modern because they sneaked in with the new borders at the time.
Let's assume for a second this is true, and our favorite 3-mana Enchantment is going the way of the Dodo; there are still options, albeit less-efficient ones. You could just swap out your BM's for Magus of the Moon and call it a day. Magus fits bill for our needs, as well as WotC's modern card-design guidelines of pushing creatures, and although it is an extremely powerful effect, it's strapped to a 2/2 body that is easily answered with most 1-mana creature removal. Unfortunately, it doesn't play well with our sweepers either, so I probably wouldn't even play it maindeck, relegating it to the sideboard for matchups where I don't need Anger of the Gods anyways.
However, in this hypothetical scenario where WotC removes an entire set or two from the card pool, that also means no more Tron, so the only fast-mana lands we'd need to really worry about(to my knowledge as of writing this, feel free to correct me) are Eldrazi Temple and, what, the Karoo/Bounce-lands? When we no longer have to worry about shutting off a whopping 12-16 lands(4 of each Tron land, plus 4 Eldrazi Temple) that produce 2 or more mana, running land-destruction like Molten Rain becomes a lot more viable in the maindeck, and Crumble to Dust warrants a slot or two in the sideboard.
Then, of course, there's the notion that without Blood Moon in the card pool, why bother with playing our beloved Mono-Red Control at all? Before you reach for your torches and pitchforks, I'm not suggesting we ditch it altogether, but rather explore splashing another color. True, Skred itself becomes less effective once we start playing non-basics, but I don't think we'd really need it once Terminate or Path to Exile get thrown into the mix. True, Terminate costs an extra mana(heaven forbid!), and Path ramps the opponent, but both give us early answers to classic problem cards like Tarmogoyf or Reality Smasher, and one of them can deal with something we, as Red mages, have always had difficulty answering: Indestructible creatures. Granted, there's not a lot of those seeing play right now(our own Hazoret aside), but you never know.
In fact, the inclusion of either Black or White to our Skred shell allows us to cut maindeck Relic of Progenitus altogether, and opens up a whopping 4 slots for us to play around with. Look at why we run maindeck Relics in the first place: it makes an early Tarmogoyf easier to deal with, adds a little bit of card draw/consistency, and gives us some maindeck value versus Delve creatures, Snapcaster decks, and the occasional combo deck that utilizes it's graveyard. As I mentioned before, both Black and White give us removal for Goyf, Black has plenty of card draw options, and both have great graveyard-hate sideboard options in Nihil Spellbomb or Rest in Peace. Personally, I've been itching to get some value out of my own 'yard as of late, but that's a non-bo with the Relics so it's always been more of a fantasy than reality. I'd love nothing more than to play a Goblin Dark-Dwellers and re-cast Molten Rain from my 'yard, or to use Kolaghan's Command on my opponent's end-step to get back a Fulminator Mage and use it to blow up another man-land.
Plus, let's not forget that there are plenty of non-basics with the Mountain sub-type in the Modern card pool now, so Koth is still certainly a viable strategy. If we don't have to worry about Blood Moon shutting off our splash color, and we cut out Skred, we really only need to run a handful of basic lands anyways, and mostly just as Path/Ghost Quarter insurance/value.
Here's just some stuff I've been spitballing as to what I'd change:
Black Splash:
-4 Skred
-4 Relic of Progenitus
-3 Blood Moon
-3 Stormbreath Dragon
White Splash:
-4 Skred
-4 Relic of Progenitus
-3 Blood Moon
-3 Stormbreath Dragon
-2 Eternal Scourge
-1 Lightning Bolt
+4 Path to Exile
+3 Molten Rain
+3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
+2 Lightning Helix
+3 Boros Reckoner
+2 Dire Fleet Daredevil
(Side Note: I love Stormbreath Dragon, but I'm just taking them out as an example to experiment with other 5-drops that utilize our graveyard.)
Finally, I realize that all this talk of adding another color and removing Skred isn't really Skred Red, but it still utilizes the same basic shell. Of course, this is all hypothetical anyways, assuming that Blood Moon is banned and we are forced to turn to more traditional means of screwing with our opponent's manabase. What do you guys think? Will we have to say goodbye to one of our staple cards, only to be filled with nostalgia whenever we play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild(a "Blood Moon" comes up every so often in that game lol)? Or am I just making a big deal over nothing?
Sorry for the wall of text haha. I'm going to write a similar article about this over at TopDeckProductions.com soon, and this was kind of my opportunity to write a rough draft.
I doubt they are going to remove entire sets from modern. The player backlash from blood moon players and Tron players would be pretty large. Many decks run blood moon in the side for more than just tron.
Blood moon still fits the design philosophy of the NWO in that nonbasics are to be considered a drawback. Without blood moon in the format, there is nothing that punishes greedy Mana bases.
I tend to agree. Blood Moon is the only thing holding the Eldrazi-Tron and related menaces in check. Blood Sun actually empowered them more. Unless Wizards wants Eldrazi-Tron and Storm to be the only decks in the format, they're not touching Blood Moon.
I also think it unlike that they'll rotate out 8E and 9E. They're contemporaneous with Mirrodin and the like. But if they did, well, the format would warp in other terrible ways.
That said, the format probably only has 3-5 years left. But that's a long time in Magic.
I doubt they are going to remove entire sets from modern. The player backlash from blood moon players and Tron players would be pretty large. Many decks run blood moon in the side for more than just tron.
Blood moon still fits the design philosophy of the NWO in that nonbasics are to be considered a drawback. Without blood moon in the format, there is nothing that punishes greedy Mana bases.
Nothing that punishes greedy mana bases? Stone Rain, Molten Rain, Fulminator Mage, Ghost Quarter, Spreading Seas, etc.? Not to mention Magus of the Moon, which is just a Blood Moon on a body.
@lord_darkview you say that Blood Moon is the only thing holding Eldrazi-Tron and stuff in check, but in this hypothetical scenario, both BM and the Tron lands would be gone, so that's a non-issue. All the other stuff in 8E/9E aside, if WotC was to ban Blood Moon, they would definitely take the Tron lands with it.
I will admit the one thing that deters my "Blood Moon banning" theory is that they keep reprinting the card in the X-Masters sets, but on the other hand, the last time Ensnaring Bridge and the Tron lands were printed was in 8/9E. Not counting the Masterpieces version of the bridge, mind you.
It's interesting, but needing to actually have enough generic mana to cast the spell is a problem. It's similar to Abbot in that way.
Oddly enough, people said the same thing about Snapcaster Mage, and we all know how that worked out.
I'm definitely looking forward to trying out 2 in the main. It's not a random card like Abbot so you can wait til you have the mana or see something you want to cast in their yard. Personally, I'm looking forward to finally getting to cast Serum Visions lol
I also think it unlike that they'll rotate out 8E and 9E. They're contemporaneous with Mirrodin and the like. But if they did, well, the format would warp in other terrible ways.
That said, the format probably only has 3-5 years left. But that's a long time in Magic.
Agreed with this. I don't think there's much reason to believe 8th / 9th will be removed from the format. Blood Moon, Choke, Bridge, and Worship may all be miserable to play against, but they have relatively small meta shares. Tron Lands are the only truly problematic cards, and even those tend to have ebbs and flows.
Seems more likely they'll introduce a new Post Modern format instead. When that happens, we can chat about Skred / Big Red's viability (I suspect it'll be a solid archetype).
I'd imagine a post-modern format wouldn't include coldsnap. so we lose our draw-engine and our best removal spell. thus any future 'big red' would more likely than not either take the form of AiR or would involve some HEAVY splashes into white or black (probably black)
I also think it unlike that they'll rotate out 8E and 9E. They're contemporaneous with Mirrodin and the like. But if they did, well, the format would warp in other terrible ways.
That said, the format probably only has 3-5 years left. But that's a long time in Magic.
Agreed with this. I don't think there's much reason to believe 8th / 9th will be removed from the format. Blood Moon, Choke, Bridge, and Worship may all be miserable to play against, but they have relatively small meta shares. Tron Lands are the only truly problematic cards, and even those tend to have ebbs and flows.
Seems more likely they'll introduce a new Post Modern format instead. When that happens, we can chat about Skred / Big Red's viability (I suspect it'll be a solid archetype).
I think the most likely case is the new format comes several years after MtG Arena, and is based only on sets introduced after that point. They're probably going to be taking a hatchet to the rules to make the program play well, and with it will require a lot of retemplating and errata. Setting a breakpoint there will minimize the hassle from dealing with pre-Arena paradigms.
Just a hunch, but I don't think a deck in that environment will look anything like what we do. Losing the Snow-basis, Koth, and Blood Moon makes us look a lot more generic.
Cheers Fool and Darkview. To clarify, I guess I don't mean that Skred Red will be a player in Post-Modern. Rather, I think that Big Red will be a solid archetype, because WotC has been pretty interested in exploring that design space over the past few years.
Hi all! I am going to be playing Skred Red for the first time this weekend at GP Indy side events (hoping to get in two Modern events with it this weekend). It feels like the deck is well-positioned in the current meta, mostly even-to-favorable matchups and few bad ones. I'll do a tournament report after the weekend, just thought I'd share the list and see if you guys have any thoughts.
It's close to a stock list, but there are a couple interesting decisions. I moved the 2 Goblin Rabblemaster from the sideboard into the main since I think it is good in some of Skred Red's less good matchups (UW Control and Storm come to mind). The freed up sideboard slots are filled by Ensnaring Bridge which I find to be very strong right now.
I am not sure about Spitebellows vs. Roast, maybe you guys have an opinion on that. I know the merits of Spitebellows, just not sure they're worth paying 1 mana extra for.
Here's the promised tournament report. Overall, I went 3-3. Definitely need to put in some more reps with the deck, I faced 5 favorable matchups and I had tech for the last one, definitely believe I could've gone 5-1. As for the deck, I haven't really formed an opinion on Rabblemaster in the main, but Ensnaring Bridge is definitely very strong right now, I sided it in all 6 matches and it won me a lot of games.
Round 1: Infect (L 1-2)
G1: Won the die roll, I kept a hand with Anger, Mind Stone, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, which I think is reasonable, but it had no single-target removal. I Angered away the first creature he played but didn't draw any removal for the second one and he had more than 10 on turn 4.
SB: + Blood Moon, + 3 Molten Rain, + Kozilek's Return, + 3 Ensnaring Bridge, - 4 Relic of Progenitus, -1 Spitebellows, -1 Koth of the Hammer, -1 Stormbreath Dragon
G2: Removed the Glistener Elf, got out a Blood Moon and an Ensnaring Bridge to have enough time to make a Koth emblem.
G3: I kept a hand with a Bolt, 2 Skreds and 2 Angers, but he had 4 creatures in his opener so we traded 1 for 1 for the first few turns. I got out a Bridge and a Blood Moon. I was short on lands, but I felt pretty safe because I had two removal spells in hand. And then I made two misplays which cost me the game. First one was I drew Molten Rain and I destroyed his Forest to take him off green, instead of the Inkmoth Nexus. Second one was I had 6 lands and drew and played Stormbreath Dragon. I still had both Skred and Bolt in hand, so I could only cast one, except I could've used Chandra for mana. So I got punished when he had Nature's Claim for the Blood Moon and then could attack with the Nexus for lethal with Become Immense growing it in response to Skred.
Round 2: Temur Midrange (W 2-0)
G1: He conceded really early to a turn 3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar and then a second one on turn 5 after I killed his Tarmogoyf with Spitebellows.
SB: +Blood Moon, +3 Molten Rain, +3 Ensnaring Bridge, -3 Anger of the Gods, -2 Goblin Rabblemaster, -2 Stormbreath Dragon
G2: He played very conservatively around Relic and didn't play out his Tarmogoyfs or Snapcaster Mages, until late in the game when he played Snap and responded to the Relic activation with a second Snap. He sideboarded in a Garruk Relentless which was beating me down with wolves until I drew a Bridge. Eventually, I Blood Mooned and Molten Rained his only forest, stranding all 3 Tarmogoyfs in his hand and killed him with Thopter tokens.
Round 3: Abzan with Eldritch Evolutions (W 2-1)
G1: I cleared the board with Anger on turn 3 and then played a Koth on turn 4 and a Pia and Kiran Nalaar on turn 5 and didn't see anything else from him.
SB: (Based on what I saw, I sideboarded for Value Company) + 3 Ensnaring Bridge, + Blood Moon, + 3 Molten Rain, + 1 Kozilek's Return, - 2 Goblin Rabblemaster, - 4 Relic of Progenitus, - Spitebellows, - Koth of the Hammer
G2: Eldritch Evolution into Sigarda, Host of Herons that I couldn't answer.
SB: -1 Kozilek's Return, + Koth of the Hammer
G3: T3 Anger to clear Hierarch and Birds. Got out a Chandra and then next turn, plussed for mana and played double Molten Rain to leave my opponent on 2 mana and I won pretty quickly after that.
Round 4: Bant Eldrazi (W 2-1)
G1: Opponent kept a one-lander with a Hierarch and a Bird, I turn 3 Angered and they were stuck on 2 lands.
SB: + 3 Ensnaring Bridge, + 3 Molten Rain, + Blood Moon, -4 Relic of Progenitus, -2 Goblin Rabblemaster (I forgot to take notes after this game and I don't recall what the last card out was)
G2: Opponent goes T1 Hierarch, T2 Displacer, T3 Displacer. I cast Anger and they Stubborn Denial into T4 Reality Smasher.
G3: I get out an Ensnaring Bridge to buy time to ultimate Koth.
Round 5: Esper Gifts (L 0-2)
G1: Collective Brutality takes a Bolt, Thoughtseize takes a Blood Moon. I have a Relic out so he Gifts for value. He plays a Lingering Souls, which I prevent the flashback on with the Relic, but it means I don't want to play Koth and then Koth got Thoughtseized away anyways. Eventually, he just casts an Obzedat, Ghost Council. My only answer was to cast a Spitebellows as a creature and block, which left only my Pia and Kiran Nalaar as a target for the LtB trigger, which felt bad. He has Unburial Rites and I lose to Obzedat.
SB (not really sure how to board this MU): + 2 Ensnaring Bridge, + 3 Molten Rain, + 1 Blood Moon, - 2 Eternal Scourge, -1 Spitebellows, - 2 Goblin Rabblemaster, -1 Stormbreath Dragon
G2: He plays Collective Brutality, discarding Obzedat. In response to Relic activation, he has Goryo's Vengeance. My only answer is double Bolt but he has a Countersquall. He plays a Runed Halo, naming Snow-Covered Mountain, which I thought was clever, though it wasn't relevant.
Round 6: Eldrazi Tron (L 1-2)
G1: He has turn 3 Karn. I play out two more turns, using my entire hand to get rid of it, but I can't answer the rest of the board.
SB: +3 Ensnaring Bridge, +1 Blood Moon, +3 Molten Rain, -4 Relic of Progenitus, -3 Anger of the Gods, -1 Stormbreath Dragon
G2: He goes for the Eldrazi Temples and has a decent start, but I get out an Ensnaring Bridge into P+K. Couple attacks from the Thopters and then a couple P+K activations does it. I never find a Blood Moon and he does eventually assemble Tron, so I am dead if he ever draws Karn, but he doesn't.
G3: Okay, this one was pretty degenerate. He keeps a hand with two pieces of Tron and no Map. I keep a 6 with Bridge. After that, we played about 25 turns. There was a Spyglass naming Koth and a Chalice on 1 (which countered 3 Bolts and 4 Skreds I had to play to keep him from attacking). I couldn't find a single live draw and he was clocking me with a Walking Ballista pinging me for 2 a turn. He does figure out that he can ping a Thought-Knot Seer to force me to draw on his turn to get in an attack for 5. We go to extra turns. He finally draws the third piece of Tron (he couldn't play Maps because of the Chalice) and adds 5 counters to Ballista and then the next turn, I topdeck a Blood Moon to stay alive. On his last turn of extras, he has to draw a land to get to 12 mana to have exact lethal and does.
Is it actually a bad matchup now? I haven't played it in a long time, but I suspect it would be because of Blessed Alliance and the fact that we're running less stormbreathes than we used to.
Kingavarice seemed to allude it was. I was more being sarcastic. I rather disagree, and think UW is a pretty good matchup. Blood Moon and any supplemental mana denial hit them pretty hard, and we usually pack a dozen or more threats that amount to "must answer" while also resisting some of their best answers.
UW Control is a very good matchup. Geist is annoying, but because they tend to play more X/3's these days I actually like leaving an Anger or two in the main postboard. The gameplan is still the same: get to four mana, start playing threats until one sticks and ride it to victory. As for Ensnaring Bridges, I've been playing three in my board for a while and love them. If you want them cheaply, look around online for stores who have damaged copies and ask for scans. Not every damaged card is torn up, and some establishments are far more conservative in their gradings than others. As long as there isn't anything that would allow you to distinguish the card through a sleeve, you should be fine to play it in a tournament. I know for a fact that ChannelFireball is a safe bet for buying damaged cards, and they will provide scans at your request and even label them so you can pick which one you want if you mention the picture ID and label. I own a Badlands CFB labeled as damaged and it's closer to moderately played, maybe heavily if you wanted to err on the conservative side.
I started playing Wurmcoil Engine, and I wonder why I ever doubted it. It's such a powerhouse that it makes me wonder why I would ever want to play Batterskull outside of a Burn-heavy metagame (Vigilance and lifelink is pretty rough for them).
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My theory is that, as the Modern card pool grows, cards like Blood Moon, Tron lands, Ensnaring Bridge, Choke, Boil, etc., have more of a Legacy feel to them: extremely powerful effects for low cost that require specific answers and/or make the game essentially unplayable for your opponent once resolved. Which makes sense, because most of those cards were designed in the early 90's, and are really only in Modern because they sneaked in with the new borders at the time.
Let's assume for a second this is true, and our favorite 3-mana Enchantment is going the way of the Dodo; there are still options, albeit less-efficient ones. You could just swap out your BM's for Magus of the Moon and call it a day. Magus fits bill for our needs, as well as WotC's modern card-design guidelines of pushing creatures, and although it is an extremely powerful effect, it's strapped to a 2/2 body that is easily answered with most 1-mana creature removal. Unfortunately, it doesn't play well with our sweepers either, so I probably wouldn't even play it maindeck, relegating it to the sideboard for matchups where I don't need Anger of the Gods anyways.
However, in this hypothetical scenario where WotC removes an entire set or two from the card pool, that also means no more Tron, so the only fast-mana lands we'd need to really worry about(to my knowledge as of writing this, feel free to correct me) are Eldrazi Temple and, what, the Karoo/Bounce-lands? When we no longer have to worry about shutting off a whopping 12-16 lands(4 of each Tron land, plus 4 Eldrazi Temple) that produce 2 or more mana, running land-destruction like Molten Rain becomes a lot more viable in the maindeck, and Crumble to Dust warrants a slot or two in the sideboard.
Then, of course, there's the notion that without Blood Moon in the card pool, why bother with playing our beloved Mono-Red Control at all? Before you reach for your torches and pitchforks, I'm not suggesting we ditch it altogether, but rather explore splashing another color. True, Skred itself becomes less effective once we start playing non-basics, but I don't think we'd really need it once Terminate or Path to Exile get thrown into the mix. True, Terminate costs an extra mana(heaven forbid!), and Path ramps the opponent, but both give us early answers to classic problem cards like Tarmogoyf or Reality Smasher, and one of them can deal with something we, as Red mages, have always had difficulty answering: Indestructible creatures. Granted, there's not a lot of those seeing play right now(our own Hazoret aside), but you never know.
In fact, the inclusion of either Black or White to our Skred shell allows us to cut maindeck Relic of Progenitus altogether, and opens up a whopping 4 slots for us to play around with. Look at why we run maindeck Relics in the first place: it makes an early Tarmogoyf easier to deal with, adds a little bit of card draw/consistency, and gives us some maindeck value versus Delve creatures, Snapcaster decks, and the occasional combo deck that utilizes it's graveyard. As I mentioned before, both Black and White give us removal for Goyf, Black has plenty of card draw options, and both have great graveyard-hate sideboard options in Nihil Spellbomb or Rest in Peace. Personally, I've been itching to get some value out of my own 'yard as of late, but that's a non-bo with the Relics so it's always been more of a fantasy than reality. I'd love nothing more than to play a Goblin Dark-Dwellers and re-cast Molten Rain from my 'yard, or to use Kolaghan's Command on my opponent's end-step to get back a Fulminator Mage and use it to blow up another man-land.
Plus, let's not forget that there are plenty of non-basics with the Mountain sub-type in the Modern card pool now, so Koth is still certainly a viable strategy. If we don't have to worry about Blood Moon shutting off our splash color, and we cut out Skred, we really only need to run a handful of basic lands anyways, and mostly just as Path/Ghost Quarter insurance/value.
Here's just some stuff I've been spitballing as to what I'd change:
Black Splash:
-4 Skred
-4 Relic of Progenitus
-3 Blood Moon
-3 Stormbreath Dragon
+4 Terminate/Dreadbore
+3 Demigod of Revenge
+3 Tormenting Voice
+2 Fulminator Mage
+2 Kolaghan's Command
White Splash:
-4 Skred
-4 Relic of Progenitus
-3 Blood Moon
-3 Stormbreath Dragon
-2 Eternal Scourge
-1 Lightning Bolt
+4 Path to Exile
+3 Molten Rain
+3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
+2 Lightning Helix
+3 Boros Reckoner
+2 Dire Fleet Daredevil
(Side Note: I love Stormbreath Dragon, but I'm just taking them out as an example to experiment with other 5-drops that utilize our graveyard.)
Finally, I realize that all this talk of adding another color and removing Skred isn't really Skred Red, but it still utilizes the same basic shell. Of course, this is all hypothetical anyways, assuming that Blood Moon is banned and we are forced to turn to more traditional means of screwing with our opponent's manabase. What do you guys think? Will we have to say goodbye to one of our staple cards, only to be filled with nostalgia whenever we play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild(a "Blood Moon" comes up every so often in that game lol)? Or am I just making a big deal over nothing?
Sorry for the wall of text haha. I'm going to write a similar article about this over at TopDeckProductions.com soon, and this was kind of my opportunity to write a rough draft.
Blood moon still fits the design philosophy of the NWO in that nonbasics are to be considered a drawback. Without blood moon in the format, there is nothing that punishes greedy Mana bases.
I also think it unlike that they'll rotate out 8E and 9E. They're contemporaneous with Mirrodin and the like. But if they did, well, the format would warp in other terrible ways.
That said, the format probably only has 3-5 years left. But that's a long time in Magic.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
Nothing that punishes greedy mana bases? Stone Rain, Molten Rain, Fulminator Mage, Ghost Quarter, Spreading Seas, etc.? Not to mention Magus of the Moon, which is just a Blood Moon on a body.
@lord_darkview you say that Blood Moon is the only thing holding Eldrazi-Tron and stuff in check, but in this hypothetical scenario, both BM and the Tron lands would be gone, so that's a non-issue. All the other stuff in 8E/9E aside, if WotC was to ban Blood Moon, they would definitely take the Tron lands with it.
I will admit the one thing that deters my "Blood Moon banning" theory is that they keep reprinting the card in the X-Masters sets, but on the other hand, the last time Ensnaring Bridge and the Tron lands were printed was in 8/9E. Not counting the Masterpieces version of the bridge, mind you.
Oddly enough, people said the same thing about Snapcaster Mage, and we all know how that worked out.
I'm definitely looking forward to trying out 2 in the main. It's not a random card like Abbot so you can wait til you have the mana or see something you want to cast in their yard. Personally, I'm looking forward to finally getting to cast Serum Visions lol
A critical distinction to keep in mind is that Snapcaster has Flash. Flash is way better than First Strike, in general.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
Definitely, but First Strike is still really good on a 2/1. Just look at Thalia.
Anyways, I think we can all agree that Snap is better/has broader utility, but this card certainly has it's uses.
Agreed with this. I don't think there's much reason to believe 8th / 9th will be removed from the format. Blood Moon, Choke, Bridge, and Worship may all be miserable to play against, but they have relatively small meta shares. Tron Lands are the only truly problematic cards, and even those tend to have ebbs and flows.
Seems more likely they'll introduce a new Post Modern format instead. When that happens, we can chat about Skred / Big Red's viability (I suspect it'll be a solid archetype).
I think the most likely case is the new format comes several years after MtG Arena, and is based only on sets introduced after that point. They're probably going to be taking a hatchet to the rules to make the program play well, and with it will require a lot of retemplating and errata. Setting a breakpoint there will minimize the hassle from dealing with pre-Arena paradigms.
Just a hunch, but I don't think a deck in that environment will look anything like what we do. Losing the Snow-basis, Koth, and Blood Moon makes us look a lot more generic.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
Return of Jaya Ballard soon (hopefully).
Big Storychanging event incoming (to hopefully killing the gatewatch?)
-> New Ice Age // Coldsnap confirmed!
(It's that easy
flowers shall grow
and I am in them
and that is eternity."
20 Snow-Covered Mountain
2 Scrying Sheets
Creature (10)
2 Eternal Scourge
2 Goblin Rabblemaster
1 Hazoret the Fervent
2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
1 Spitebellows
2 Stormbreath Dragon
4 Mind Stone
4 Relic of Progenitus
Instant (8)
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Skred
Sorcery (3)
3 Anger of the Gods
Enchantment (3)
3 Blood Moon
Planeswalker (6)
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 Koth of the Hammer
3 Dragon's Claw
3 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Blood Moon
2 Ricochet Trap
3 Molten Rain
2 Shattering Spree
1 Kozilek's Return
It's close to a stock list, but there are a couple interesting decisions. I moved the 2 Goblin Rabblemaster from the sideboard into the main since I think it is good in some of Skred Red's less good matchups (UW Control and Storm come to mind). The freed up sideboard slots are filled by Ensnaring Bridge which I find to be very strong right now.
I am not sure about Spitebellows vs. Roast, maybe you guys have an opinion on that. I know the merits of Spitebellows, just not sure they're worth paying 1 mana extra for.
Judge Tower: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/80859
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
Round 1: Infect (L 1-2)
G1: Won the die roll, I kept a hand with Anger, Mind Stone, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, which I think is reasonable, but it had no single-target removal. I Angered away the first creature he played but didn't draw any removal for the second one and he had more than 10 on turn 4.
SB: + Blood Moon, + 3 Molten Rain, + Kozilek's Return, + 3 Ensnaring Bridge, - 4 Relic of Progenitus, -1 Spitebellows, -1 Koth of the Hammer, -1 Stormbreath Dragon
G2: Removed the Glistener Elf, got out a Blood Moon and an Ensnaring Bridge to have enough time to make a Koth emblem.
G3: I kept a hand with a Bolt, 2 Skreds and 2 Angers, but he had 4 creatures in his opener so we traded 1 for 1 for the first few turns. I got out a Bridge and a Blood Moon. I was short on lands, but I felt pretty safe because I had two removal spells in hand. And then I made two misplays which cost me the game. First one was I drew Molten Rain and I destroyed his Forest to take him off green, instead of the Inkmoth Nexus. Second one was I had 6 lands and drew and played Stormbreath Dragon. I still had both Skred and Bolt in hand, so I could only cast one, except I could've used Chandra for mana. So I got punished when he had Nature's Claim for the Blood Moon and then could attack with the Nexus for lethal with Become Immense growing it in response to Skred.
Round 2: Temur Midrange (W 2-0)
G1: He conceded really early to a turn 3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar and then a second one on turn 5 after I killed his Tarmogoyf with Spitebellows.
SB: +Blood Moon, +3 Molten Rain, +3 Ensnaring Bridge, -3 Anger of the Gods, -2 Goblin Rabblemaster, -2 Stormbreath Dragon
G2: He played very conservatively around Relic and didn't play out his Tarmogoyfs or Snapcaster Mages, until late in the game when he played Snap and responded to the Relic activation with a second Snap. He sideboarded in a Garruk Relentless which was beating me down with wolves until I drew a Bridge. Eventually, I Blood Mooned and Molten Rained his only forest, stranding all 3 Tarmogoyfs in his hand and killed him with Thopter tokens.
Round 3: Abzan with Eldritch Evolutions (W 2-1)
G1: I cleared the board with Anger on turn 3 and then played a Koth on turn 4 and a Pia and Kiran Nalaar on turn 5 and didn't see anything else from him.
SB: (Based on what I saw, I sideboarded for Value Company) + 3 Ensnaring Bridge, + Blood Moon, + 3 Molten Rain, + 1 Kozilek's Return, - 2 Goblin Rabblemaster, - 4 Relic of Progenitus, - Spitebellows, - Koth of the Hammer
G2: Eldritch Evolution into Sigarda, Host of Herons that I couldn't answer.
SB: -1 Kozilek's Return, + Koth of the Hammer
G3: T3 Anger to clear Hierarch and Birds. Got out a Chandra and then next turn, plussed for mana and played double Molten Rain to leave my opponent on 2 mana and I won pretty quickly after that.
Round 4: Bant Eldrazi (W 2-1)
G1: Opponent kept a one-lander with a Hierarch and a Bird, I turn 3 Angered and they were stuck on 2 lands.
SB: + 3 Ensnaring Bridge, + 3 Molten Rain, + Blood Moon, -4 Relic of Progenitus, -2 Goblin Rabblemaster (I forgot to take notes after this game and I don't recall what the last card out was)
G2: Opponent goes T1 Hierarch, T2 Displacer, T3 Displacer. I cast Anger and they Stubborn Denial into T4 Reality Smasher.
G3: I get out an Ensnaring Bridge to buy time to ultimate Koth.
Round 5: Esper Gifts (L 0-2)
G1: Collective Brutality takes a Bolt, Thoughtseize takes a Blood Moon. I have a Relic out so he Gifts for value. He plays a Lingering Souls, which I prevent the flashback on with the Relic, but it means I don't want to play Koth and then Koth got Thoughtseized away anyways. Eventually, he just casts an Obzedat, Ghost Council. My only answer was to cast a Spitebellows as a creature and block, which left only my Pia and Kiran Nalaar as a target for the LtB trigger, which felt bad. He has Unburial Rites and I lose to Obzedat.
SB (not really sure how to board this MU): + 2 Ensnaring Bridge, + 3 Molten Rain, + 1 Blood Moon, - 2 Eternal Scourge, -1 Spitebellows, - 2 Goblin Rabblemaster, -1 Stormbreath Dragon
G2: He plays Collective Brutality, discarding Obzedat. In response to Relic activation, he has Goryo's Vengeance. My only answer is double Bolt but he has a Countersquall. He plays a Runed Halo, naming Snow-Covered Mountain, which I thought was clever, though it wasn't relevant.
Round 6: Eldrazi Tron (L 1-2)
G1: He has turn 3 Karn. I play out two more turns, using my entire hand to get rid of it, but I can't answer the rest of the board.
SB: +3 Ensnaring Bridge, +1 Blood Moon, +3 Molten Rain, -4 Relic of Progenitus, -3 Anger of the Gods, -1 Stormbreath Dragon
G2: He goes for the Eldrazi Temples and has a decent start, but I get out an Ensnaring Bridge into P+K. Couple attacks from the Thopters and then a couple P+K activations does it. I never find a Blood Moon and he does eventually assemble Tron, so I am dead if he ever draws Karn, but he doesn't.
G3: Okay, this one was pretty degenerate. He keeps a hand with two pieces of Tron and no Map. I keep a 6 with Bridge. After that, we played about 25 turns. There was a Spyglass naming Koth and a Chalice on 1 (which countered 3 Bolts and 4 Skreds I had to play to keep him from attacking). I couldn't find a single live draw and he was clocking me with a Walking Ballista pinging me for 2 a turn. He does figure out that he can ping a Thought-Knot Seer to force me to draw on his turn to get in an attack for 5. We go to extra turns. He finally draws the third piece of Tron (he couldn't play Maps because of the Chalice) and adds 5 counters to Ballista and then the next turn, I topdeck a Blood Moon to stay alive. On his last turn of extras, he has to draw a land to get to 12 mana to have exact lethal and does.
Judge Tower: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/80859
Is it actually a bad matchup now? I haven't played it in a long time, but I suspect it would be because of Blessed Alliance and the fact that we're running less stormbreathes than we used to.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
I started playing Wurmcoil Engine, and I wonder why I ever doubted it. It's such a powerhouse that it makes me wonder why I would ever want to play Batterskull outside of a Burn-heavy metagame (Vigilance and lifelink is pretty rough for them).