Hey guys, I've been looking at D&T decks for a while now, but there are quite a few different variations. I've mostly seen Mono W, Mono White Eldrazi, and BW Eldrazi. I am sure I've missed some different variations. Currently mono white is most accessible to me and noticed this most recent list:
I was wondering if this is a good starting point for someone who is new to D&T, or would you recommend another starting point with the deck?
Thanks.
It's a great starting point. It comes down to your personal preference, and possibly the meta that you're playing in, as this archetype is meta-sensitive. And you can always acquire the cards for the other variants later on. They're quite similar, really.
Sorry for getting back to you so late. What do you mean by the deck is meta-sensitive? Do you mean there are certain metas where playing the deck would be a terrible or that the deck is playable regardless of meta but the player has to be self conscious of the meta and change things around to fit the given meta?
I just want to pop in and say, “Welcome” to all the new participants in the forum. This is a very good time to be investing in Modern: DNT. The deck is well positioned and poised to improve month over month with little to no concerns of bannable cards.
Also, thank you to all the veteran players keeping great dialogue moving and answering questions that come up.
To all: don’t forget that the primer has a section titled, “Leonin’s Library” And contains amazing resources as well. Private message me if there is a need for an update.
And finally, while I’m not commenting a ton, I’m always here and willing to help! Private messages or a hit up on twitter usually gets the quickest responses from me.
I just want to pop in and say, “Welcome” to all the new participants in the forum. This is a very good time to be investing in Modern: DNT. The deck is well positioned and poised to improve month over month with little to no concerns of bannable cards.
Greets Catmix
1. Thanks for the welcome. Son's a DnT legacy hardcore so he loves playing BW DnT as an alternative to his main modern decks (etron, grixis ds, affinity, burn etc) when he longs for a break from the usual use of T1 decks -- emotion drives him back to scare up a build for events. Also responsible for influencing the 4x mirran crusader builds for Legacy DNT in mtgthesource during NZ's representationals last year. Of the current build of modern DnT I remember the following notes from him:
- Lack of 1 drops ergo "mother of runes style" value is the only reason why modern DnT is not quite tier 1, and thraben inspector is the baseline. Wayfarer's maybe. Tried Kytheon once but card draw beat snowball effect. 4x Judge's familiar for legacy is taking a bit of a new direction (compared to 4x mirran) but they have jitte's swords and batterskulls so nowadays we devote any prayers of new cards for modern DnT to the unbanning of SFM (LOL!)
- 22 lands is too low (both formats), 23 is a must. He really hated fetchlands and prefered caves due to addition of colourless for eldrazi displacer
- didn't like restoration angel: same argument with palace jailer: 4 on vial loses value and caverns are already overtaxed with existing creature arrays (sometimes he goes mono white DnT modern)
2. Getting agreement from him concerning well placement in current meta. Format currently has good answers against non-creature spell not that so against creature based decks. Vials add to explosiveness (so there is no need to depend on them)
3. No concerns of bannable cards : amen. Phil the "DnT man" at thraben university had a podcast talking about legacy DnT, but I believe most of it applies here as well. It's a long podcast where part of it covers the history of DnT in legacy, but ultimately it comes down to this: DnT's components are actually terrible cards individually, but when put together (and if put together) form quite a strangling prison that feeds on the format's best ( http://www.thrabenuniversity.com/?p=1414 ) . My english is not my first language so I'm clumsy paraphrasing this, but this applies very much so to modern as well. e.g. how many of our DnT cards are actually actively used in other T1 modern decks? Maybe TKS for the temple build. Aether vial for humans. Some BW lands for abzan (currently T2). In legacy DnT's litmus test (especially in a GP) is surviving against other T2 to Tdev decks so that they can feed on T1 blue decks at the top brackets. In modern DnT nearly the same applies: having these seldom-used/come-together cards survive all other decks in this subforum before taking on T1 decks. LOL I make DnT sound like a parasite in the meta but so what? That's what Death and Taxes are really all about in real life anyway.
Full disclaimer: son's a little young to articulate/post so I'm just consolidating the above based off our chats/debrief.
Hey everyone,
So far I've been feeling really good about this deck although I definitely need to continue to work on thinking through the more complicated lines available with this deck (there's quite a few tricks you can pull off when combining Flicker and Displacer that I'm watching on streams). I also went back on the thread to see what people thought regarding MU like humans or those who are flooding the board. I was trying to see whether people thought wrath effects like Settle the Wreckage or more tax effects like Ghostly Prison was preferred in the SB?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks: UWAzorius Titan ControlUW BWOrzhov ControlBW
This deck always brings out the best in opponents.
I can understand why some people are fed up with this deck on MTGO. On some days during European daytime, every fourth or fifth opponent I get matched up with for Tournament Practice is piloting some variant of the deck. This is not an exaggeration. I can only speculate about the reasons why, but as the majority of my opponents' Death and Taxes decks are mono white, my suspicion is that budget considerations play a role in it. Which is fine, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't help in making the games less repetitive from an opponent's perspective.
And that's the second issue I have with the deck. Death and Taxes is very consistent at what it does, more so than many other decks in the format. But on the flip side, it tries to pull off the same tricks over and over again. As I have played a mind boggling number of matches against Death and Taxes, I have already seen just about every trick the deck has up its sleeve against my preferred type of deck many times. I have long since figured out how to play around Leonin Arbiter as good as I can. I can almost smell Flickerwisp or Restoration Angel before they get flashed in. I have learned how to sideboard in a way that blunts attempts at locking me out of my third color for the most part. I could go on. But in the end, the attrition based nature of Death and Taxes and the deck's consistency in sticking to its plan result in a lot of repetitive lines of play on both sides. My feeling is that I have learned what I could learn from the many games I played against Death and Taxes.
So, at least from my observation (which, I concede, is very subjective), there appears to be a large gap between the popularity of Death and Taxes in the Tournament Practice section on MTGO and the actual presence of the deck on the top tables in tournaments. It's a good deck and I'm glad I had the opportunity to practice against it extensively, but I'm at a point at which I would much rather practice against newer decks like 5C Humans or archetypes that play a wider range of cards like Jeskai Control. This means that when I see a Turn 2 Thalia off Ancient Ziggurat and Seachrome Coast, I get excited, whereas a Thalia off any combination of plains and Concealed Courtyard often makes me cringe. While the typical Humans deck is probably even more linear than the typical Death and Taxes deck, it is fresher and more interesting for me to practice against, just because I haven't practiced against it several dozen times already. The same is true for Merfolk, which tends to be a much harder matchup for my decks than Death and Taxes because of island walk. My win percentage against Death and Taxes is about 50%, probably a little better, while my win percentage against Humans and Merfolk is considerably below 50%. Thus, I'm pretty sure that I don't "rage quit" when I'm unwilling to play a third, fourth or even fifth match against Death and Taxes on the same afternoon.
Now, I'm kindly asking you not to flame me. I'm just trying to explain the situation based on my personal experience. Maybe the presence of Death and Taxes decks is not as high during other times of the day. Yes, there are days where I don't face the deck at all. I'm not stating that the deck makes up 20% of the decks in the Tournament Practice section on MTGO all the time, but it certainly does on some days. Maybe Europeans love the deck more than Americans or are less willing to spend over 250 tix on a Modern deck. Maybe I'm just very unlucky when it comes to matchups. I don't know. But what I know is that Death and Taxes is by far the most prominent archetype I have faced in the Tournament Section of MTGO in the course of over a year. Even though I'm not one of the opponents who has been quoted or exposed on a screenshot in this thread, I can understand the frustration of having to play against the same deck archetype over and over again.
@Tasighoul, while I can see your point on the frustrations of playing a certain archetype repetitively and growing frustrated at the lack of variance, I will say on my part, I play extensively on MTGO. The matchups I face consistently are in this order: Tron, Eldrazitron, Jeskai Control, Storm, Death Shadow, Azban,Dredge, Shift, and Company decks. I think I may have played two D&T deck in the past three weeks. Now, this could be due to time of day, random luck, or whatever, so take that with a grain of salt. During the summer and early fall I saw a lot of D&T but I really haven't faced it much lately to be honest. And yes the deck is consistent and has it's trademark tricks, but how many decks can you say that for (Storm, UR Breach, Tron, Shift, Vizier/Druid Combo, etc.). All these decks play basically the same way every time I play them. I love seeing new decks and archetypes spring up, like Humans (which is just a sweet, sweet deck), but when looking at MTGO, especially in tournament practice settings, very rarely will you see anything outside the top decks because that is what they are playing to win competitively. As much as I hate a turn 3 Tron, I'm growing used to playing it at this point and seeing it at least 35% percent of the time, if not more. There was a day I literally played 5 Tron MU back to back. By the fourth time, I was sick of playing that deck, however I didn't get mad at the player and belittle them for playing the deck. I actually messaged the guy and politely told him that I apologize but I've faced his deck multiple times in a row and needed to practice against a different archetype. He understood and we ended the game amicably. That is the issue we're talking about here. It has nothing to do with variance or deck design. It's about being a basic, decent human being. Just because I play a deck you've seen a lot or don't like, doesn't give me the right to talk trash to you during a friendly game or make you feel bad for playing it. For all the talk about Magic being an open and friendly community, I've encountered many instances where I've played UW Control or D&T and a turn 1 Colonnade or Turn 2 Arbiter led to a rage quit and hostile language thrown my way. While I'm sure you're not one of those people, I don't think there's any excuse of the rude behavior of others. If there's a deck you've played too many times or don't enjoy the game play, move on. But don't think it's okay to just be blatantly salty and disrespectful towards other people to make yourself feel better.
Sorry if that was just a long rant, but it's a subject that has gnawed at me recently when it comes to the game online. Hope you guys are having fun playing the game!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks: UWAzorius Titan ControlUW BWOrzhov ControlBW
Even though I'm not one of the opponents who has been quoted or exposed on a screenshot in this thread, I can understand the frustration of having to play against the same deck archetype over and over again.
There's a difference between leaving a match because you don't want to play against your opponents deck and flaming your opponent in chat before abruptly quitting.
People need to chill out, respect other people's choices and just play the game. If no-one played Humans just because it wasn't tier 1, then it would never had been innovated into the exciting new tier 1 deck that it is now. Further to that, brewing is still a thing and should be encouraged. I've had brews get 4-1 and 3-2, I've not 5-0d with even a tier 1 deck yet because I'm just not that good a player yet. Then I've had self-righteous nobs just quit after Thoughtseizing me just because they don't see Humans, or GDS whatever. Brewing and nurturing lower tiered decks needs to be encouraged.
By the way, budget has nothing to do with why I enjoy playing this deck...
Just went 2-3 in my first league with this deck. Anyone want to guess what was my most faced MU?...
2-0 vs UR Breach
2-1 vs G Tron
1-2 vs EldraziTron
1-2 vs UG Merfolk
1-2 vs U Tron
In case everyone was wondering, after joking around and explaining to my opponents that I've faced Tron a disgusting amount of times, we actually were able to have a really fun game and had an actual nice conversation. No rage quits. I'm good with leaving the salt at the dinner table :). And btw, can I say that Blood Sun was a huuuuge mistake by WOTC? I managed to win despite having it happen to me, but man is it brutal! It really hurts decks that even try to make Tron fair. Arbiter may be the only way we dont get hosed if we get him down early enough.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks: UWAzorius Titan ControlUW BWOrzhov ControlBW
@Spiderspace
Hi, I am very interested in knowing more about the deck with which spiderspace did 5-2 in a modern challenge recently. Could you explain the reasoning behind the sideboard and their particular matchup? Thank you for the information.
@Spiderspace
Hi, I am very interested in knowing more about the deck with which spiderspace did 5-2 in a modern challenge recently. Could you explain the reasoning behind the sideboard and their particular matchup? Thank you for the information.
Hey y'all, I've been playing modern DnT proxied and on free programs for a bit now (the monowhite version to be exact) and I'm considering finally buying into it. I'd like to hear some input on my first list. Apologies for any incorrect formatting as Im on my phone
Bearscape, love the deck and I love the spice with Gelid shackles. My biggest issue is sideboard Stony silences. I know a lot of people love the tech and don’t care that it shuts off the vials I’ve found that it can hurt us a lot as well. Especially since you are going the smuggler’s copter and thraben inspector Route. That’s three cards, including vial, that Stony turns off. Personally if I’m running that many artifacts I usually run One Stony and then 1-2 kataki, War’s wage. It still murders affinity and you can usually pay one or two mana a turn and be fine.
The second is have you looked at selfless spirit as a 2-3 of in the main? Usually taking out an Inspector and/or a Thalia is worth being able to play around board wipes and is also a cheap flier which puts in a lot of damage.
Otherwise love the list and I might have to try out the shackles myself
Hey y'all, I've been playing modern DnT proxied and on free programs for a bit now (the monowhite version to be exact) and I'm considering finally buying into it. I'd like to hear some input on my first list. Apologies for any incorrect formatting as Im on my phone
I noticed that recently people are playing Kozilek's Return, which makes me wonder if Mark of Asylum couldn't be better (than BFT) in the actual metagame. But I think your list is pretty solid. Tell us about how Gelid Shackles is working for you. I tested just once and found it just ok back then. Edit: Actually, it was good in just especific game that I can't remember which was.
My reasoning with Stony Silence is that I expect to take out thraben inspector against the decks where I want stony (affinity and tron). I have been uncertain of smugglers copter however, so perhaps I will run selfless spirit over copter to validate the sideboard stonies a bit more.
The Gelid Shackles spice is not my own, I saw it in a DnT list and liked how it answers both manadorks and huge fatties. However I also kind of want to fit in oblivion ring, which would probably go in over thr shackles, so Im not 100% certain yet.
@Rolfgang I suppose that 6~7 leaves at least 1~2 slots to play it and I found it worthy to grindy games where strip mines aren't. But it's arguable though. @Bearscape yeah, I saw that list too, a few weeks ago. I just want to know everybody else's experiences with that in other matches
Sorry for getting back to you so late. What do you mean by the deck is meta-sensitive? Do you mean there are certain metas where playing the deck would be a terrible or that the deck is playable regardless of meta but the player has to be self conscious of the meta and change things around to fit the given meta?
Thanks.
Also, thank you to all the veteran players keeping great dialogue moving and answering questions that come up.
To all: don’t forget that the primer has a section titled, “Leonin’s Library” And contains amazing resources as well. Private message me if there is a need for an update.
And finally, while I’m not commenting a ton, I’m always here and willing to help! Private messages or a hit up on twitter usually gets the quickest responses from me.
Much love, fam!
-Catmix
WWModern Death And Taxes (w/ Militia Bugler) (JUL '19)
GWModern Maverick (JUL '19)
WBCatmix on Twitch!
WWCatmix on Youtube
Greets Catmix
1. Thanks for the welcome. Son's a DnT legacy hardcore so he loves playing BW DnT as an alternative to his main modern decks (etron, grixis ds, affinity, burn etc) when he longs for a break from the usual use of T1 decks -- emotion drives him back to scare up a build for events. Also responsible for influencing the 4x mirran crusader builds for Legacy DNT in mtgthesource during NZ's representationals last year. Of the current build of modern DnT I remember the following notes from him:
- Lack of 1 drops ergo "mother of runes style" value is the only reason why modern DnT is not quite tier 1, and thraben inspector is the baseline. Wayfarer's maybe. Tried Kytheon once but card draw beat snowball effect. 4x Judge's familiar for legacy is taking a bit of a new direction (compared to 4x mirran) but they have jitte's swords and batterskulls so nowadays we devote any prayers of new cards for modern DnT to the unbanning of SFM (LOL!)
- 22 lands is too low (both formats), 23 is a must. He really hated fetchlands and prefered caves due to addition of colourless for eldrazi displacer
- didn't like restoration angel: same argument with palace jailer: 4 on vial loses value and caverns are already overtaxed with existing creature arrays (sometimes he goes mono white DnT modern)
2. Getting agreement from him concerning well placement in current meta. Format currently has good answers against non-creature spell not that so against creature based decks. Vials add to explosiveness (so there is no need to depend on them)
3. No concerns of bannable cards : amen. Phil the "DnT man" at thraben university had a podcast talking about legacy DnT, but I believe most of it applies here as well. It's a long podcast where part of it covers the history of DnT in legacy, but ultimately it comes down to this: DnT's components are actually terrible cards individually, but when put together (and if put together) form quite a strangling prison that feeds on the format's best ( http://www.thrabenuniversity.com/?p=1414 ) . My english is not my first language so I'm clumsy paraphrasing this, but this applies very much so to modern as well. e.g. how many of our DnT cards are actually actively used in other T1 modern decks? Maybe TKS for the temple build. Aether vial for humans. Some BW lands for abzan (currently T2). In legacy DnT's litmus test (especially in a GP) is surviving against other T2 to Tdev decks so that they can feed on T1 blue decks at the top brackets. In modern DnT nearly the same applies: having these seldom-used/come-together cards survive all other decks in this subforum before taking on T1 decks. LOL I make DnT sound like a parasite in the meta but so what? That's what Death and Taxes are really all about in real life anyway.
Full disclaimer: son's a little young to articulate/post so I'm just consolidating the above based off our chats/debrief.
Till the next time, have fun!
So far I've been feeling really good about this deck although I definitely need to continue to work on thinking through the more complicated lines available with this deck (there's quite a few tricks you can pull off when combining Flicker and Displacer that I'm watching on streams). I also went back on the thread to see what people thought regarding MU like humans or those who are flooding the board. I was trying to see whether people thought wrath effects like Settle the Wreckage or more tax effects like Ghostly Prison was preferred in the SB?
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
And that's the second issue I have with the deck. Death and Taxes is very consistent at what it does, more so than many other decks in the format. But on the flip side, it tries to pull off the same tricks over and over again. As I have played a mind boggling number of matches against Death and Taxes, I have already seen just about every trick the deck has up its sleeve against my preferred type of deck many times. I have long since figured out how to play around Leonin Arbiter as good as I can. I can almost smell Flickerwisp or Restoration Angel before they get flashed in. I have learned how to sideboard in a way that blunts attempts at locking me out of my third color for the most part. I could go on. But in the end, the attrition based nature of Death and Taxes and the deck's consistency in sticking to its plan result in a lot of repetitive lines of play on both sides. My feeling is that I have learned what I could learn from the many games I played against Death and Taxes.
So, at least from my observation (which, I concede, is very subjective), there appears to be a large gap between the popularity of Death and Taxes in the Tournament Practice section on MTGO and the actual presence of the deck on the top tables in tournaments. It's a good deck and I'm glad I had the opportunity to practice against it extensively, but I'm at a point at which I would much rather practice against newer decks like 5C Humans or archetypes that play a wider range of cards like Jeskai Control. This means that when I see a Turn 2 Thalia off Ancient Ziggurat and Seachrome Coast, I get excited, whereas a Thalia off any combination of plains and Concealed Courtyard often makes me cringe. While the typical Humans deck is probably even more linear than the typical Death and Taxes deck, it is fresher and more interesting for me to practice against, just because I haven't practiced against it several dozen times already. The same is true for Merfolk, which tends to be a much harder matchup for my decks than Death and Taxes because of island walk. My win percentage against Death and Taxes is about 50%, probably a little better, while my win percentage against Humans and Merfolk is considerably below 50%. Thus, I'm pretty sure that I don't "rage quit" when I'm unwilling to play a third, fourth or even fifth match against Death and Taxes on the same afternoon.
Now, I'm kindly asking you not to flame me. I'm just trying to explain the situation based on my personal experience. Maybe the presence of Death and Taxes decks is not as high during other times of the day. Yes, there are days where I don't face the deck at all. I'm not stating that the deck makes up 20% of the decks in the Tournament Practice section on MTGO all the time, but it certainly does on some days. Maybe Europeans love the deck more than Americans or are less willing to spend over 250 tix on a Modern deck. Maybe I'm just very unlucky when it comes to matchups. I don't know. But what I know is that Death and Taxes is by far the most prominent archetype I have faced in the Tournament Section of MTGO in the course of over a year. Even though I'm not one of the opponents who has been quoted or exposed on a screenshot in this thread, I can understand the frustration of having to play against the same deck archetype over and over again.
Sorry if that was just a long rant, but it's a subject that has gnawed at me recently when it comes to the game online. Hope you guys are having fun playing the game!
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
There's a difference between leaving a match because you don't want to play against your opponents deck and flaming your opponent in chat before abruptly quitting.
By the way, budget has nothing to do with why I enjoy playing this deck...
2-0 vs UR Breach
2-1 vs G Tron
1-2 vs EldraziTron
1-2 vs UG Merfolk
1-2 vs U Tron
In case everyone was wondering, after joking around and explaining to my opponents that I've faced Tron a disgusting amount of times, we actually were able to have a really fun game and had an actual nice conversation. No rage quits. I'm good with leaving the salt at the dinner table :). And btw, can I say that Blood Sun was a huuuuge mistake by WOTC? I managed to win despite having it happen to me, but man is it brutal! It really hurts decks that even try to make Tron fair. Arbiter may be the only way we dont get hosed if we get him down early enough.
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
Hi, I am very interested in knowing more about the deck with which spiderspace did 5-2 in a modern challenge recently. Could you explain the reasoning behind the sideboard and their particular matchup? Thank you for the information.
Have a good day everyone!
4 tectonic edge
2 fields of ruin
4 horizon canopy
1 eiganjo castle
8 snow-covered plains
4 path to exile
4 aether vial
2 smuggler's copter
4 leonin arbiter
4 thalia, guardian of thraben
4 flickerwisp
4 blade splicer
2 eldrazi displacer
2 thalia, heretic cathar
3 restoration angel
4 relic of progenitus
3 stony silence
3 burrenton forgetender
2 eidolon of rhethoric
2 gelid shackles
1 gideon, ally of zendikar
The second is have you looked at selfless spirit as a 2-3 of in the main? Usually taking out an Inspector and/or a Thalia is worth being able to play around board wipes and is also a cheap flier which puts in a lot of damage.
Otherwise love the list and I might have to try out the shackles myself
I noticed that recently people are playing Kozilek's Return, which makes me wonder if Mark of Asylum couldn't be better (than BFT) in the actual metagame. But I think your list is pretty solid. Tell us about how Gelid Shackles is working for you. I tested just once and found it just ok back then.
Edit: Actually, it was good in just especific game that I can't remember which was.
It certainly is an interesting card that can do a lot of work for us, but is it worth over a LD-land? As I'm guessing you are playing a one-off?
The Gelid Shackles spice is not my own, I saw it in a DnT list and liked how it answers both manadorks and huge fatties. However I also kind of want to fit in oblivion ring, which would probably go in over thr shackles, so Im not 100% certain yet.
@Bearscape yeah, I saw that list too, a few weeks ago. I just want to know everybody else's experiences with that in other matches