Not sure anyone mentioned it, but Deep Forest Hermit could be good in devotion. A lot of value for 5 mana and great with Garruk ultimate and craterhoof. Kind of a mini Hornet Queen. I play Wolfbriar Elemental in my deck, and it’s amazing, and this card is quite similar, but better at 5 mana.
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LEGACY: Soldier Stompy WW // Blue Stompy UU // Fit Variants BGRW // Sol Land Brews BGRUWC MODERN: Pure Pili-ness GU // Red Devotion RR // Green Devotion Variants GRWUG // U/G Emerge CGU // Lots and Lots of Brews BGRUWC
That's 55 cards. I'm not certain about the exact numbers on everything yet. At least, not aside from the core cards anyway. It's possible this deck wants 21 or 23 land instead of 22, or maybe it wants 7 total 6-drops instead of 8. I won't know any of those things until I get a sense for the deck heuristically. But generally speaking, I'm pretty happy with where the numbers are at.
As for the remaining five cards, there's a lot that could fill that space. Birds of Paradise, Voyaging Satyr, Harmonize, Primal Command, and Primeval Titan are all different things I'm considering, though I am starting to learn towards Birds. I'm open to suggestions.
As of now, I've also been pleased with the three Madcap Experiment and two Platinum Emperion my deck is currently playing, but I'm not sure if those five cards are the best way to use my remaining space. Several of my opponents have mistakenly sideboarded Grafdigger's Cage against Tooth and Nail thinking that would stop it only to actually have Madcap Experiment (and I suppose now possibly Woodland Bellower) inadvertently hit in the crossfire, so incentivizing my opponents to bring those in even more may not be something I want to encourage. Not to mention I find myself siding out the package enough of the time to perhaps retire it there completely.
Nice to see another Tooth and Nail player posting here. I frequently visit here to check up on other people's lists but rarely post, as Tooth and Nail is hardly ever discussed so I feel like I don't have much to contribute to the current discussion. My pre-Horizons list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-05-16-temur-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559744262. It was a hyper focused T&N list with a Command/E witness loop backup plan. The sideboard mainly consisted of silver bullets for primal command, bolts for aggro decks, and additional ramp redundancy for racing other combo decks like storm. I had come to the same conclusion that you had about Garruk and only really ran him as worse copies of Kiora, Master of Depths that would occasionally steal me a game on the off-chance that I had lots of mana dorks but no ramp payoff.
After seeing Llanowar Tribe I knew that I needed to revamp the deck as its basically addition copies of Overgrowth, which has always secretly been T&N's best card. My new test list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-horizons-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559745177. Tribe means that getting to 3 mana on turn 2 is actually important in most games (whereas it only mattered before if you had managed to draw overgrowth), so I've added a copy of Birds of Paradise and after many test games I would highly recommend that you also run at least 1 copy somewhere in your list, as landing a tribe on 2 all but guarantees that you can play a 6 drop on turn 3.
As for other cards to fill your remaining 4 slots I would highly recommend 3 copies of Primal Command and an additional copy of Eternal Witness. Primal Command will allow you to tutor up creatures with CMC of greater than 3, effectively giving you more threat redundancy while allowing you to dodge the effects of cards like Grafdigger's Cage. It will also allow you to diversify your threats by running a larger variety of bombs without reducing deck consistency (i.e. you can cut 1 Bellower for 1 Primeval Titan while still being able to get Bellower when you need it). This also gives the deck a strong Plan B in games where you don't draw T&N by Time-Walking your opponent with Primal Command/Eternal Witness loops (in my experience most opponents concede after you tutor up the 2nd Eternal Witness). Finally, Primal command lets you run sliver bullets in the sideboard without having to worry about "over-sideboarding" and diluting your deck's main T&N game plan. This means you can have single copies of cards like Elderscale Wurm and Hornet Queen for Aggro and Midrange matchups respectively.
On a related note, I really appreciate your writeup on 6-drops. Vraska, Relic Seeker is a card I had never really considered before but it definitely seems like the kind of card that this deck wants. T&N has needed a threat that also interacts with the opponent when needed for a while and I had never really considered a black splash for big Vraska until your writeup. It's nice to know that there are green mages out there still innovating in this archetype.
So, I know I made a post about this a few days ago, but I've continued to put a lot of thought into what 6-drops I probably ought to be playing, and I was hoping maybe some of you might share your thoughts with me because I think I've made a breakthrough. Here's where I'm at right now:
Hydroid Krasis — This will be good no matter when I cast it, but it will never be the best card I could cast at any given point. My fear with Krasis is twofold. First, I'm worried that Krasis has a low degree of confidence. Sure, playing Krasis for X equals 4 is fine, but a 4/4 flying, trample won't win the game by itself. It's too slow, and something is going to stop it. And the two cards it draws aren't going to make a big difference either. I mean, yes, those two cards matter, but it's not like I'm going to find the support Krasis needs to run away with the game by drawing two additional cards. I'll likely just find more ramp, or lands, or anything else that isn't a haymaker. And while I can obviously spend more mana on Krasis to the point that I will be able to reliably follow it up, with that much mana I could probably also just win the game outright with some other card like Tooth and Nail.
My second concern is that Narset's recent popularity makes Krasis inopportune. Narset can come down before Krasis if the opponent is on the play, and while a resolved Krasis may be able to slay an opposing Narset to the benefit of future Krasi, not drawing any cards at all is rotten. I traditionally hate X spells, so maybe I'm biased, but I suspect other 6-drops possess a higher degree of confidence than Krasis does.
Primeval Titan — The Titan is good for obvious reasons. He finds two lands immediately, so in the event that he dies he still ramps me towards my top end. When he does survive though, the Titan provides a steady stream of lands in addition to a respectable clock. This is all clearly useful. He provides exactly what I want in a card without resilience by giving me something valuable the turn I play him in addition to something valuable every turn thereafter. Ideally, the Titan even finds some land that threatens the opponent in case they do happen to answer him. The obvious choices being Nykthos (to ramp into something even more dangerous) and Kessig Wolf Run (to provide a useful mana sink for when I have nothing else to cast), but man-lands like Raging Ravine can provide sizable threats of their own, and the innocuous Memorial to Folly can even return an answered Titan (made even easier to activate and immediately recast when paired with Nykthos).
My greatest fear is that Llanowar Tribe, despite making Titan easier than ever to cast on turn 3, will now also weaken Titan by reducing the number of utility lands I can afford to play alongside him. Granted, perhaps all I need are two. If two utility lands are enough to make Titan worthwhile, then that might also be few enough lands to not seriously decrease my chances of landing a turn 2 Tribe. Still, the fact that I might draw some utility lands prior to playing Titan means sometimes Titan won't find anything special. Sometimes he's just going to pull out some basics. Or shocks. That isn't the end of the world, mind you. As a matter of fact, another possibility is that maybe I don't need anything special at all to make Titan worthwhile. Maybe two lands of any kind are enough to still warrant his inclusion. Still, I seriously worry this isn't the case, that Explosive Vegetation isn't going to matter in the grand scheme of things, and that makes me want to look for other alternatives.
I'm also concerned that Nykthos and Kessig Wolf Run might not even be good enough and that neither are any of the other lands. If Titan is answered, perhaps by a sweeper (as sometimes he will be), if I don't have any kind of follow-up, Nykthos and Wolf Run won't do anything for me. To make Wolf Run worthwhile, what I usually need are multiple disposable creatures, and that's something ramp decks don't always have. Plus, Wolf Run may not even be fast enough. Unless I'm absolutely drowning in mana, even if I have both enough creatures in play and plenty of mana with which to activate it, Kessig Wolf Run will still probably take several turns to kill my opponent due to just how seldom I pressure my opponents outside of haymakers. (Raging Ravine suffers for that same reason even though it doesn't rely on having creatures in play.) And Nykthos, for all its strengths, still relies upon having both a significant board state and something expensive enough for me to use the mana on, or else I won't get any more mileage out of it than I would a basic Forest.
Vraska, Relic Seeker — I think this is the one. I think this is what I probably ought to be ramping into. When I first read Vraska, I was sort of nonplussed. She reads a lot like Ugin, the Ineffable and Ajani Unyielding. They have plus modes that generates value (be it a creature, a card, or both in the case of Ugin), minus modes that answer problematic permanents, and one other ability that may or may not matter. What I failed to notice though was just how much loyalty Vraska has compared to her counterparts. It's absolutely ridiculous. If I can land Vraska reliably as early as turn 3 where there probably aren't any significant on-board threats yet (especially if I'm on the play), I can safely make a 2/2 blocker and tick up Vraska to 8 loyalty. EIGHT LOYALTY. There's absolutely no way an opponent will be able to eat through that. And even if somehow an opponent could attack for that much, Vraska's minus ability ensures no one single creature will ever be able to threaten her because if something possibly could have she would have just blown it up first.
Strategically, I didn't think a value-generating, attrition style card was what I was looking for either. After all, these kinds of cards tend to be played as ways to take over the game once an opponent has safely stalled out after having traded 1-for-1 all game, not as some card advantage engine cheated into play early while the opponent still has resources at their disposal. Still, the more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea. In essence, she's just like Primeval Titan. She does something relevant the turn she comes into play (either by destroying any one problematic card and ramping a point or by developing a 2/2 on an otherwise empty board), and she continues to do something relevant every turn thereafter. Unlike the Titan though, Vraska is more resilient. Yes, she can be attacked, so she has weaknesses different than Titan, but for reasons I already explained above, both her plus ability and her minus ability make it so that killing Vraska by attacking her is almost impossible. And in the event an opponent somehow could kill Vraska by attacking her with on-board threats, I was probably so far behind that using her minus ability to keep me alive (and make a treasure) would have been safer than blocking with Titan anyway. It's just a lot easier to kill creatures unconditionally than it is to kill planeswalkers.
Now, hypothetically, Vraska's a slower clock. That may not be important considering how reliably I kill my opponent is ultimately what matters, and not the speed in which I kill them, but there's no hiding the fact that 2/2 menace pirates don't pack as much punch as a 6/6 trampler; they're going to take a while. And Titan, provided he both survives and finds Kessig Wolf Run, can probably end the game in two, maybe three turns after the turn he's played. In some cases, it may even be over as soon as the following turn. In practice though, I suspect Vraska will end the game much more reliably not only because of how hard she is to remove but also because of her ultimate. If Vraska lands on a board where the opponent cannot threaten her (perhaps because she came into play early and created a blocker before the opponent could deploy any significant threats), Vraska can set the opponent's life to 1 in as few as three activations. That wins the game two turns after she enters the battlefield, the same speed which I might expect an otherwise unanswered Titan to kill the opponent as a pair of 2/2 menace pirates are going to get the job done. Admittedly, opponents can delay Vraska's ultimate by presenting threats you're forced to destroy or by taking her down a few pegs, but Vraska forcing these sorts of lines from opponents seem all the more reason to want her.
It isn't all sunshine and rainbows though; Vraska does have some consequences. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Llanowar Tribe makes casting multicolor 6-drops on turn 3 difficult because I almost certainly need exactly a shockland (Overgrown Tomb in this case) to cast them. And while I can jam my deck full of fetchlands to accommodate that, not only does that tax my life additionally, but sometimes I'm not going to find one of those lands; sometimes I'm just going to find basics and/or utility lands in some combination if I happen to play them. This makes a multicolor card like Vraska less reliable than a monocolor card like Titan. Despite these consequences, I still believe Vraska is the preferable 6-drop. She's better on the defensive as she reacts to threats immediately, be they singular or in multitude, and she can answer cards Primeval Titan cannot otherwise touch. In addition, she can blow stuff up twice in a row if need be, and the treasure she creates, while temporary, isn't insignificant as it still ramps me towards my top end. The increased number of fetchlands needed to support her also has the unintended side effect of making Tireless Tracker better. On nearly every front, Vraska just seems like the better card with the possible exception that Primeval Titan appears to be better at killing planeswalkers.
Woodland Bellower — As stoked as I am about Vraska, Woodland Bellower is another card I'm paying close attention to. I think it might also be better than Titan. To state the obvious, Woodland Bellower's a 6/5. It doesn't have trample, so it's easier to block than Titan, but it's still almost as big. And instead of finding land cards, the Bellower creates a 3-drop. That makes it only as useful as whatever it happens to find. If what I want is more mana, I can always rocket myself from 6 to 9 by finding Llanowar Tribe, but there's a myriad of other 3-drops Woodland Bellower can dig for, so much so that I decided to make a list:
Now, I would clearly never want to play all of these. Hell, some of these I might never want to play ever. I just wrote down everything I saw with potential. And these are only the 3-drops. There are cheaper cards out there I'd still be likely to find (cards like Scavenging Ooze come to mind), but from this list, I think my favorites are Dauntless Escort, Eternal Witness, Knight of Autumn, Llanowar Tribe, and Tireless Tracker.
Dauntless Escort — Protects my Bellower and my mana dorks from wanton removal. That includes sweepers. His 3/3 body, while unimpressive, isn't irrelevant either as a 6/5 and 3/3 together still present a somewhat impressive clock. The biggest issue I have with Escort is that, if my opponent isn't interacting with me, he's just Centaur Courser, and Centaur Courser is a card I never want to draw. If I want to be able to find it though, that means I'll sometimes have to draw it. Of the five cards I listed, this is the one I'm least sure about, but what he does is both powerful and unique enough for me to give it some consideration.
Eternal Witness — Good for the reasons you expect. If I curve into Woodland Bellower turn 3, I don't want to search for Witness; I want to find some proactive 3-drop instead. Eternal Witness is already a card I like to play in absence of Bellower though (and in sparing quantities no less), so Bellower greatly benefits from being able to circumstantially find it. I suppose what I like most about Eternal Witness is that it can regrow a haymaker my opponent previously answered or discarded. In doing so, it addresses one of my fears with Primeval Titan by guaranteeing a backup threat in case my current threat is answered. It often won't do that when curved into, which is a shame, but providing insurance some of the time is still an enticing aspect.
Knight of Autumn — A great silver bullet, providing life, artifact and enchantment removal, and a sensible body all on one card. I think the Knight is preferable to a card like Reclamation Sage if only because having access to searchable life gain in the main deck without also having to dedicate an additional card slot to that effect is well worth the more difficult casting cost. Because the Knight is white though, that does mean having to include some support if I ever want to cast it naturally (and I will), but that's a trifle compared to what the rest of the card offers.
Llanowar Tribe — I think I've said enough about this card already. It's great in tandem with Bellower because it helps get Bellower into play quickly while also being useful target for when I play Bellower. It's also generic and prevalent enough to ensure that I always have something useful to fetch with Bellower in the event I don't need ramp (or any other effect for that matter).
Tireless Tracker — I've experimented with this lately to great success. Like Eternal Witness, Tireless Tracker is a card I already want to include in my deck independent of my choice to include Woodland Bellower, so the fact that Woodland Bellower can find it is just gravy. What's great about Tracker is that he provides both a substantial threat and card draw all for 3 mana. That way, if an opponent happens to answer him, that's okay. I still managed to get a few extra cards out of the deal with which to hopefully find a replacement threat. And in the event an opponent can't answer Tracker, he completely takes over the game. Obviously, the Tracker depends on making land drops, so there will be instances where Tracker isn't anything more than a vanilla 3/2, but those instances are sparse seeing as how I can usually hold back one land. And because this deck excels at making mana, paying the 2 to crack open clues isn't prohibitively expensive either.
Of the remaining cards, Rubblebelt Rioters is terrifying in that the Bellower makes it swing for 6 immediately. Some of the idiots are nothing to scoff at either. With a curve like Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Llanowar Tribe —> Woodland Bellower into Reverent Hunter, that's a 6/5 and an 8/8 on turn 3. Even the safer Steel Leaf Champion which doesn't depend on context presents a second body that's almost as big as the first. There may even be some merit to something like Heartwood Storyteller in the right matchup. Whatever the proper targets, I think there's a chance that developing one of these 3-drops and pressuring the opponent that way will have a higher degree of confidence than playing Primeval Titan and tutoring for the usual.
I agree with a lot of what was said here. I LOVE Woodland Bellower and Vraska in particular. I've played Vraska quite a bit (any black deck and/or any deck that doesn't support Karn Liberated) and I was never been disappointed casting her. With Vraska, just a few turns makes her a win-condition (as we can normally deal 1-damage). I have tried to play Woodland Bellower many times in my builds. I had a really fun build with Bellower, Devoted Druid and Elder of Laurels (as with enough creatures on board Elder+Devoted Druid creates infinite mana and/or an infinitely large Druid for a turn). It is also one of those cards that just gets better with time; and when I played him it was a good card to help build a board around (as it can grab the new Ouphe, Reclamation Sage, Loaming Shaman, etc.. I think if you are not playing Primeval Titan; you are right that these are your best answers.
You make a really good point about Narset as well. That can have a big effect on how we play "draw a card" permanents.
** PS **
I'm excited to hear more about your list. Looks like a really cool take on Devotion and I'd love to hear about your games.
Great discussion all around. I think Garruk is better in traditional devotion than in Tooth and Nail.
Tooth and Nail is really racing to get to 9 mana, and while Garruk is a super powerful ramp spell he might be outclassed by Kiora just on the basis of his cmc.
In other devotion lists we're playing more utility creatures, and dont have the big "I win" button at 9. Having the overrun available often leads to wins out of nowhere, even if that's not the decks plan A.
My latest iteration of the deck is optimized to flood the board and then overrun with either Garruk or Craterhoof as quickly as possible, and Garruk is easily the best card in the deck. It takes some building around to really get the most from him, though. You want a lot of bodies, and you dont want defenders. I'm using full sets of BTE, Elvish Visionary, and Summoner's Pact, along with three Wolfbriar Elemental and a Hornet Queen (as a pact target) to ensure I have a wide board. It's not unusual to play Garruk, untap two lands, use the mana to deploy a few beaters, and then overrun for the win on my next turn.
In related news, my favorite 6-drop is Wolfbriar Elemental, kicked twice
^^This
This sounds like a really well built Craterhoof Devotion Deck. Wolfbriar Elemental is that card I always forget and then play it and go "dang that is good" It is spectacular with Garruk and Craterhoof as well.
I think Devotion has a few ways to play...as long as we answer the questions:
1. How are we getting to our mana quickly?
2. What are we doing with that mana once we get it.
The best ways I've seen in my history with Devotion are:
1. Some form of "Combo"
2. Overrun
This is because Devotion by its very nature requires us to load the board with green permanents. This comes with significant downsides (both in terms of the ability of our opponent to interact with us and in terms of speed). So we have to turn that negative into a relatively quick positive. Thus far, the best ways I've seen are the above two (Overrun or Combo).
Overrun -
There really isn't a better way to do this than Craterhoof Behemoth. I've tried it a few ways; but in the end a few value creatures and one Craterhoof will do the job . Craterhoof in its own way is a "1-card combo" as it wins the game all by itself; but it is s little different in the sense that it does require a board and of course can be cast without the board being there. There are a few other ways to overrun (Garruk of course, Ezuri in elf decks, Overwhelming Stampede, etc.) but really nothing beats Craterhoof.
Combo -
There are a few ways to go about this. Be it Tooth and Nail, Karn/Lattice, Devoted Druid/Vizier, or even Witness/Command etc. Generally the "one card" combos tend to be best; but we have numerous options. Tooth and Nail at 9-mana, Karn at 10-mana, Witness/Command at 8-mana, etc...each have their own set of pros and cons. All of the options, however, make for a relatively simple game plan. Genesis Wave also tends to focus as a "combo" card as well (as most Wave decks are built in a way that once you cast your first Wave for X=6 or more you should be able to either chain/loop waves; or win from there). Really all of the decks are functioning with a "Plan A" of "get to X mana and cast my payoff/wincon".
In the end its actually quite simple. We spend our first 1-3 turns ramping to our end point and hopefully can cast our win-con by turn 3-4. While ramp decks in standard can tend to play a few dorks and play cards 1-2 turns early up the curve; Modern makes it very difficult to do that. Ramp in Modern tends to be ramp, ramp, win We are fortunate to have multiple win-conditions (Craterhoof, Tooth and Nail, Karn, Wave, etc.) all as "big mana" win cons...so our job really becomes (a) how do we get there, (b) how do we deal with interaction (i.e. resilience), and (c) what is the most effective plan B.
This is why Garruk tends to be really good in the decks he works in (as he functions both as part of the "Plan A" of the deck while also allowing for a Plan B. This is mostly true of Craterhoof Decks though...and I fully agree that Garruk does not need to be in every Devotion deck (just a great piece in those it is in). So I think that the argument for Garruk is what decks he really shines in (as he is a REALLY strong four drop...but you really want to get all of the use out of him (the untap and the threat of overrun). He fits in more decks than he doesn't...but I can understand when people play decks without him despite my preference for the card.
@arrogantAxolotl
You're right, I'm probably thinking about cases that won't really matter. I have some experience with Kessig Wolf Run but your impression was partly right, thought it was played as a mana sink and a trample enabler for the top end cards. Maybe I was too focused on the trample part but I still acknowledge that a deck like this need a good mana sink.
Hey everyone, I'm havn't played devotion in modern but I keep coming to this thread and check whats new. Now with Horizon coming out I might finally pick it up and felt it's only time to join the discussion.
With Llanowar Tribe being spoiled I was looking for big creatures to ramp into and found Primalcrux is that something that have been tested yet? If you go the Tooth and Nail route you have a big body backup in case something bad happend to Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and it's by itself not hard to cast. The drawback might be no protection from removals, but that might be fine if it helps us reach 9 right? If it stays it's most likely to be game the turn after.
How does devotion fight of hand disruption and handle card draw?
Not sure anyone mentioned it, but Deep Forest Hermit could be good in devotion. A lot of value for 5 mana and great with Garruk ultimate and craterhoof. Kind of a mini Hornet Queen. I play Wolfbriar Elemental in my deck, and it’s amazing, and this card is quite similar, but better at 5 mana.
Interesting thought...5-CMC is a good number; so I could see this as a mini-hornet.
Deep Forest Hermit + Cloudstone Curio + Cryptolith Rite + Fervor = all the squirrels. That's not good, of course, but it is hilarious.
@arrogantAxolotl, like you say, the beauty of Wolfbriar is that it scales. It's not the best option at exactly six, but it ranges from an embarrassing 4 drop to a game winner when you have all ramp and no other payoff. I do love Bellower as well, especially in lists with lots of tutors using creature silver bullets from the sideboard.
Re: Primalcrux... if you want this to work you really need to run ways to give it haste, and even then you're soft to decks with Path to Exile. I tried a bunch of ways to make it work, and its definitely crazy powerful and fun, but also suboptimal in modern. Casting Aspect of Hydra on that thing is one of my all-time favorite mtg memories, though.
@CurdBros, thanks for the kind words. Fully agree with your meta-analysis of how we make the deck tick. We have cards that ramp, and cards that win. I agree that overrun and combo are the premier ways to end the game.
There's room for more interactive, almost controlling builds, like your old Karn focused Walker build, or the mtggoldfish deck that was mostly built around the Primal Command/Eternal Witness loop, but in my experience that's a losing proposition in modern, at least in game 1. It seems impossible to have the right tools to slow down such a wide variety of fast goldfish-y decks. It was actually one of your comments about missing lethal overrun opportunities that led me down this path with the deck... I figured if we're building a winning board state by accident imagine what we could do on purpose
@ThorsHammer, I'd cut a couple of forests for two Birds of Paradise; having turn 1 ramp reliably is really important, and the deck plays much more consistently with 10 1-drop ramp spells. Its possible that 9 is the right number with the new mulligan rule, but I doubt it. Also, you should upgrade decimator to Craterhoof Behemoth as soon as your budget allows; it's both lower cmc and more bonkers. I'm not a huge fan of Harmoize; if it were my list I'd cut one and go up to the full set of Primal Command.
Edit to add one more quick note to the Primeval Titan discussion; Inkmoth Nexus is worth considering as a target that can give you lethal the next turn, if you grab it along with wolf run. I dont like having that many colorless sources, but it is another way to get the kill.
Not sure anyone mentioned it, but Deep Forest Hermit could be good in devotion. A lot of value for 5 mana and great with Garruk ultimate and craterhoof. Kind of a mini Hornet Queen. I play Wolfbriar Elemental in my deck, and it’s amazing, and this card is quite similar, but better at 5 mana.
For what it's worth, I think Deep Forest Hermit is a very powerful card, but at 5 mana it probably only belongs in decks that make going wide effective.
Nice to see another Tooth and Nail player posting here. I frequently visit here to check up on other people's lists but rarely post, as Tooth and Nail is hardly ever discussed so I feel like I don't have much to contribute to the current discussion. My pre-Horizons list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-05-16-temur-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559744262. It was a hyper focused T&N list with a Command/E witness loop backup plan. The sideboard mainly consisted of silver bullets for primal command, bolts for aggro decks, and additional ramp redundancy for racing other combo decks like storm.
Thanks for sharing your list. It looks a lot like where I started.
I had come to the same conclusion that you had about Garruk and only really ran him as worse copies of Kiora, Master of Depths that would occasionally steal me a game on the off-chance that I had lots of mana dorks but no ramp payoff.
After seeing Llanowar Tribe I knew that I needed to revamp the deck as its basically addition copies of Overgrowth, which has always secretly been T&N's best card. My new test list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-horizons-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559745177. Tribe means that getting to 3 mana on turn 2 is actually important in most games (whereas it only mattered before if you had managed to draw overgrowth), so I've added a copy of Birds of Paradise and after many test games I would highly recommend that you also run at least 1 copy somewhere in your list, as landing a tribe on 2 all but guarantees that you can play a 6 drop on turn 3.
My current Tooth and Nail list is actually playing 4 Arbor Elf, 4 Utopia Sprawl AND 4 Birds, so I suppose I'm already taking your advice (though I suppose my newest rendition ought to reflect this).
I think what led me to playing Birds was me getting sick of Voyaging Satyr. Costing 2 was always awkward because, if I didn't have a turn 1 play, I already wasn't ramping, which also means I don't have Utopia Sprawl to use with him. Then, on turn 2, I can play the Satyr, but unless I have Overgrowth on 3, Voyaging Satyr won't make me any more than 1 mana, and that's just atrocious. Sure, when I've got a decked out Forest, the Satyr is quite good. In fact, I think I liked him better than Garruk, being easier to cast and all. But Voyaging Satyr frequently disappointed me.
If what I wanted was ramp, it made more sense to increase my number of 1-drops. Turn 1 is the best time to play a ramp spell for so many reasons. It's at the very beginning of the game meaning not only will my opponent not be pressuring me yet, but I'll also be getting the maximum possible return on my card since I can extract value out of it every single turn it remains in play, and there's no possible way to play something sooner. Turn 1 is also the turn where I have the least useful things to do because I don't yet have any significant resources at my disposal, so I may as well capitalize off that fact by finding something productive to do at that time. After all, if I intended to ramp on 2 and do nothing on 1, I may as well just ramp on 1 instead. And in the event I draw multiple 1-drops, that's okay too. Playing additional 1-drops on 2 is fine. If anything, it ensures I don't stumble if my opponent does kill a 1-drop.
On a separate note, I spent a lot of time yesterday reading Frank Karsten's articles on multivariable hypergeometric distribution because I wanted to learn how to find the probability of starting with certain hands. After having crunched a few numbers, I now see why I intuitively made the transition from Satyr into Birds. From what I've seen so far, I'm getting the impression that playing anything less than 12 1-drops might be crazy. Playing 4 more 1-drops seems to dramatically increase the chances of making 3 mana turn 2 which, as you mentioned, is now more important than ever given the printing of Llanowar Tribe. I'm going to spend more time with the calculator and report my findings later.
It will also allow you to diversify your threats by running a larger variety of bombs without reducing deck consistency (i.e. you can cut 1 Bellower for 1 Primeval Titan while still being able to get Bellower when you need it).
This sounds like a perk; diversifying my 6-drops so I can Primal Command whichever one best fits my circumstances seems beneficial. I can foresee a few problems possibly arising as a result of this decision though.
First, my 6-drops won't probably all be creatures. That means Primal Command won't be able to find all of them, diminishing the point of diversifying my 6-drops in the first place.
Second, every 6-drop I play beyond the first is theoretically worse than the 6-drop before it. In practice, having "the right card" for any situation is usually better than having "the best card" for every situation even if "the best card" is better in a vacuum than "the right card" is, but that only holds true to an extent. If the quality of the 2nd best 6-drop and the 3rd best 6-drop (and so on and so forth) begins to drop dramatically after a certain point, then the consequences of playing independently weaker 6-drops may outweigh the benefits of having a diverse set of 6-drops with which to access. Now, I personally don't think this will be a problem. I think there are likely enough good 6-drops at the tippy top to ensure the quality doesn't take a serious dive once I reach the 3rd or 4th one. Even so, it is something worth paying attention to.
Third, there's a deckbuilding cost associated with playing certain 6-drops. For example, Primeval Titan requires I play enough utility lands to make his tutor ability useful beyond just finding basics. Woodland Bellower also requires I play enough 3-drops to consistently find. Those sorts of costs aren't insignificant, and won't necessarily always be compatible with one another either.
I'm not sure if these three concerns outweight the benefits of having a diverse set of 6-drops or not, but I thought I may as well point them out.
As for other cards to fill your remaining 4 slots I would highly recommend 3 copies of Primal Command and an additional copy of Eternal Witness. Primal Command will allow you to tutor up creatures with CMC of greater than 3, effectively giving you more threat redundancy while allowing you to dodge the effects of cards like Grafdigger's Cage.
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This also gives the deck a strong Plan B in games where you don't draw T&N by Time-Walking your opponent with Primal Command/Eternal Witness loops (in my experience most opponents concede after you tutor up the 2nd Eternal Witness). Finally, Primal command lets you run sliver bullets in the sideboard without having to worry about "over-sideboarding" and diluting your deck's main T&N game plan.
Earlier versions of my Tooth and Nail deck played four copies of Primal Command and three copies of Eternal Witness. During some of my first games ever, I actually drew a few nut draws leading to early Primal Command loops. Having that kind of power just felt awesome. Over time though, I began to realize just how little I ever wanted to draw Eternal Witness. Despite Command loops winning me games in spectacular fashion, it was also losing me games by creating dud hands. Eternal Witness just isn't a good proactive play, and I never want to see it in my opening hand because it frequently doesn't do anything; it's reliant upon my opponent putting valuable cards into my graveyard, and I won't always have valuable sorceries of my own to put there.
Once I made that observation, I started shaving copies, and now I'm down to three copies of Primal Command and one copy of Eternal Witness. Thus far, I'm happier with the results. Eternal Witness is a card that I always want access to, but it's also a card I never want to draw, so one copy seems like the most fitting number. That has the unfortunate side effect of not being able to loop opponents more than once, but after playtesting the new number I found myself never wanting to loop more than once anyway, so I'm okay with losing that privilege.
This means you can have single copies of cards like Elderscale Wurm and Hornet Queen for Aggro and Midrange matchups respectively.
It's funny you mention the Wurm. While building my very first rendition of Tooth and Nail months ago, I saw the card and thought it would make for some great sideboard tech. After playing it, I actually found it rather frustrating. At 7 mana, the card proved prohibitively expensive against aggro, and in one game in particular I learned its limitations extensively. Sitting smugly behind both an Elderscale Wurm and an Inferno Titan, I thought my game unloseable. My elven opponent just shrugged and cast Shaman of the Pack. The Wurm doesn't prevent life loss. Since then, I've replaced the Wurm with Madcap Experiment and Platinum Emperion.
What I liked most about Elderscale Wurm was that it helped me with my biggest problem. Because all I ever did was ramp, I would always fall behind on board and backpedal the entire game. By the time I had enough mana to cast something, I was frequently on death's door. That made it essential for my first relevant spell to get me back in the race. I tried a few different cards: Thragtusk, Dromoka, Elderscale Wurm. Absolutely nothing beat Platinum Emperion though. He just crushed it. And there's so much to like about him too!
For one, there's no deckbuilding cost to play him; Tooth and Nail doesn't want artifacts. For two, he can be cast off Madcap Experiment, making him much more reliable in aggro matchups. And if I open with Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Utopia Sprawl, Madcap Experiment, I can even land Platinum Emperion turn 2, and an 8/8 assailant turn 2 is no joke. In fact, I won so many games at my LGS last Friday solely off the back of Platinum Emperion alone. If he resolves, some decks just can't interact with him.
Another thing that's great about Platinum Emperion is that it isn't unreasonable to cast in Tooth and Nail either. 8 mana is very achievable, and can even happen turn 3 off of lines like Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Overgrowth —> Land or Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Overgrowth —> Utopia Sprawl. It's just such a great card. It truly has the right combination of attributes. If you've never tried it before, I'd highly recommend it.
On a related note, I really appreciate your writeup on 6-drops. Vraska, Relic Seeker is a card I had never really considered before but it definitely seems like the kind of card that this deck wants. T&N has needed a threat that also interacts with the opponent when needed for a while and I had never really considered a black splash for big Vraska until your writeup. It's nice to know that there are green mages out there still innovating in this archetype.
Aww, thank you man. I appreciate the kind words. I put a lot of effort into everything I write, so it's nice to see someone get some worth out of it.
Vraska wasn't a card I had ever considered either. I glossed over it so many times looking for the perfect 6-drop. Now that I've realized what it can do, I have high hopes for the card. I think it'll be exactly what the deck needs.
I agree with a lot of what was said here. I LOVE Woodland Bellower and Vraska in particular. I've played Vraska quite a bit (any black deck and/or any deck that doesn't support Karn Liberated) and I was never been disappointed casting her. With Vraska, just a few turns makes her a win-condition (as we can normally deal 1-damage).
Yeah, the fact the pirates have menace means it isn't likely the opponent will be able to block.
I'm pleased to hear your experiences with Vraska were positive ones. I know it's kind of an esoteric card, but I'm an iconoclast, and when I have good reasons to go against the grain, I tend to bet hard. My initially testing is backing me up so far, but we'll see how everything turns out in a few weeks time.
I have tried to play Woodland Bellower many times in my builds. I had a really fun build with Bellower, Devoted Druid and Elder of Laurels (as with enough creatures on board Elder+Devoted Druid creates infinite mana and/or an infinitely large Druid for a turn).
Huh. I didn't know that was a thing when I put Elder of Laurels on my list. Good to know.
It is also one of those cards that just gets better with time;
Man, I'm totally waiting for the day Wizards accidentally prints a fetchable clone or Flickerwisp variant. Altered Ego was so close to breaking Woodland Bellower. Soulherder would have also been amazing had it been green. End of turn, blink Woodland Bellower, get another 3-drop, and then continue to blink Woodland Bellower or whatever other card it found every turn thereafter. It's only a matter of time before something breaks Woodland Bellower.
and when I played him it was a good card to help build a board around (as it can grab the new Ouphe, Reclamation Sage, Loaming Shaman, etc..
Loaming Shaman might actually be better than I first thought. In a vacuum, Scavenging Ooze is almost certainly the better card, but if I need to disrupt a graveyard immediately, I can't cast Woodland Bellower into Scavenging Ooze without also having additional mana, and I might need a lot. On the other hand, Loaming Shaman solves that issue immediately. Perhaps it's worth considering over Scavenging Ooze for that reason.
I think Devotion has a few ways to play...as long as we answer the questions:
1. How are we getting to our mana quickly?
2. What are we doing with that mana once we get it.
The best ways I've seen in my history with Devotion are:
1. Some form of "Combo"
2. Overrun
This is because Devotion by its very nature requires us to load the board with green permanents. This comes with significant downsides (both in terms of the ability of our opponent to interact with us and in terms of speed). So we have to turn that negative into a relatively quick positive. Thus far, the best ways I've seen are the above two (Overrun or Combo).
Overrun -
There really isn't a better way to do this than Craterhoof Behemoth. I've tried it a few ways; but in the end a few value creatures and one Craterhoof will do the job . Craterhoof in its own way is a "1-card combo" as it wins the game all by itself; but it is s little different in the sense that it does require a board and of course can be cast without the board being there. There are a few other ways to overrun (Garruk of course, Ezuri in elf decks, Overwhelming Stampede, etc.) but really nothing beats Craterhoof.
Combo -
There are a few ways to go about this. Be it Tooth and Nail, Karn/Lattice, Devoted Druid/Vizier, or even Witness/Command etc. Generally the "one card" combos tend to be best; but we have numerous options. Tooth and Nail at 9-mana, Karn at 10-mana, Witness/Command at 8-mana, etc...each have their own set of pros and cons. All of the options, however, make for a relatively simple game plan. Genesis Wave also tends to focus as a "combo" card as well (as most Wave decks are built in a way that once you cast your first Wave for X=6 or more you should be able to either chain/loop waves; or win from there). Really all of the decks are functioning with a "Plan A" of "get to X mana and cast my payoff/wincon".
In the end its actually quite simple. We spend our first 1-3 turns ramping to our end point and hopefully can cast our win-con by turn 3-4. While ramp decks in standard can tend to play a few dorks and play cards 1-2 turns early up the curve; Modern makes it very difficult to do that. Ramp in Modern tends to be ramp, ramp, win We are fortunate to have multiple win-conditions (Craterhoof, Tooth and Nail, Karn, Wave, etc.) all as "big mana" win cons...so our job really becomes (a) how do we get there, (b) how do we deal with interaction (i.e. resilience), and (c) what is the most effective plan B.
This is why Garruk tends to be really good in the decks he works in (as he functions both as part of the "Plan A" of the deck while also allowing for a Plan B. This is mostly true of Craterhoof Decks though...and I fully agree that Garruk does not need to be in every Devotion deck (just a great piece in those it is in). So I think that the argument for Garruk is what decks he really shines in (as he is a REALLY strong four drop...but you really want to get all of the use out of him (the untap and the threat of overrun). He fits in more decks than he doesn't...but I can understand when people play decks without him despite my preference for the card.
Good Analysis.
From a strategic standpoint, I think combo kills are preferable to overruns because combo kills aren't predicated on having a board state (depending on the combo anyway). With overruns, I might have the mana, and I might have the overrun, but I might not have the boardstate necessary to end the game for one reason or another, perhaps due to interaction. That majorly sucks, and combo kills don't have that same stipulation. Obviously, either can work, but combo kills definitely have a leg up in that race.
Also, not to be a pedant, but are devotion decks really devotion decks? Like, aside from Nykthos, it doesn't seem like anyone cares about green mana symbols. I mean, there's the gods. Tooth and Nail plays Xenagos, but the fact he has devotion is mostly an afterthought. There are some other cards too I suppose. Karametra's Acolyte can make tons of mana. Nylea's Disciple might also have some utility. Past that, there really isn't anything. I don't know. Generally speaking, I never really hear about these cards. It seems like all anyone cares about is Nykthos, and that's it, so the whole devotion name feels like a misnomer.
On the subject of Nykthos, for as good as it is, it's only one card, and legendary at that. Breaking my back to support it by playing suboptimal cards I wouldn't otherwise be playing if they didn't have several green mana symbols attached (I'm looking at you, Wistful Selkie) seems like a poor way to go about ramping, especially considering I won't always have Nykthos, and even when I do I also won't always have a way to spend the mana it makes profitably. In addition, Nykthos relies on having a substantial board state, something I can't guarantee due to luck and due to the fact that my opponents will often interact with me.
Meanwhile, if I simply run Nykthos without caring about my devotion, provided I'm playing enough green permanents to support it (and I wouldn't include Nykthos if I wasn't), Nykthos will often make additional mana naturally without having to make any kind of deckbuilding concessions. Four green symbols is enough to net extra mana, and everything after that is gravy. Knowing that, it feels like maximizing Nykthos's effectiveness is more trouble than it's worth as doing so causes tons of complications, but not doing anything still reaps hefty benefits.
Here's one I'm tinkering with. I don't have All of the cards yet, but that's a good thing, as I'm sure it's missing a thing or two.
Any and all pointers are welcome. Light it up or praise it. Up to you. I'll learn from criticism no matter positive or negative
That's a good attitude to have. I like that you use Archidekt too. Here are three things I noticed:
1.) If you're in the market for Plated Crusher, you ought to play Carnage Tyrant instead. It's strictly an upgrade.
2.) You're not playing any copies of Overgrowth. Unless you have specific metagame reasons for not doing so, you should be jamming four of those suckers. Having extensively studied all of Magic's ramp spells for a guide I'm writing in Commander, I can confidently say that Overgrowth is one of the best, if not THE best 3 mana ramp spell ever printed. It's resilient, it refunds 2 mana immediately, something unheard of in other 3 mana ramp spells that tap for 2, and it improves the quality of all your land untapping effects. You seriously want this card.
3.) I know you said you don't have all the cards yet, so this may just be a budget thing, but to support cards like Kessig Wolf Run and Vraska, Relic Seeker, you really, really want shocklands and fetches to accompany them. At the moment, the only way you can even produce non-green mana is with Utopia Sprawl, and that's just horrendous, especially once you consider that you'll sometimes just want to name green with it to cast Llanowar Tribe on turn 2. You're just not always going to draw Utopia Sprawl, so you need additional sources of color if you want to support multicolored cards. If you had a couple shocklands, at least you could fetch those with Primeval Titan, but at the moment you can't even support Wolf Run with Primeval Titan alone. Either cut out all the multicolored cards or increase your number of nongreen sources substantially to support them.
to add one more quick note to the Primeval Titan discussion; Inkmoth Nexus is worth considering as a target that can give you lethal the next turn, if you grab it along with wolf run. I dont like having that many colorless sources, but it is another way to get the kill.
I think this is a bad idea. To make Inkmoth good, I'd need 1 mana to activate it, 2 mana to activate Wolf Run, 9 additional mana to sink into Wolf Run, and I've got to tap Wolf Run and Inkmoth itself. That's 14 mana from lands alone. If I delay my kill over two turns, I only need 9 which is a bit more reasonable, if still expensive, but none of that even takes blocking into consideration which makes Inkmoth even more costly to trample through. Also, if my opponent kills my Inkmoth, perhaps with a blocker, all of it was for naught. If I want a manland, I suspect Raging Ravine is the way to go.
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WUBRGMr. Bones' Wild RideGRBUW Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
I've been goldfishing an Unbound Flourishing version of the deck. I don't think my numbers are quite right yet, but it's been pretty fun casting some monstrous X spells. I've found it quite hard to balance the number of X spells to make use of them but not be stuck playing a bunch of x=2 spells. If anyone else has been trying to find a home for Unbound Flourishing in Modern, I'd love to hear your take.
Too bad they didn't print Wild Growth in Modern Horizons, that would be the ultimate jazz. I'm rocking a temur splashed Devotion list. Props to Domri, Anarch of Bolas, he does everything we want: protection against permission, pumps our dorks into attackers and removal for opp's creatures. Hydroid Krasis is awesome too, I might even switch the Genesis Wave for a second copy.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been playing around with hypergeometric distribution calculators to find the chances of starting with certain hands. One thing I learned is that, given a deck of 60 cards, if I want to maximize my chances of seeing exactly two or exactly three lands in my opening hand, then I need to play 21 lands. That gives me a 59.6% chance of finding the right combination of lands and spells. Why two or three land specifically? Because, in my experience, I've found those numbers work best. One land hands, while sometimes playable, commonly falter, and hands with four or more lands seldom possess the specific spells necessary to produce a victory. That makes two or three lands where I want to be. I don't mind drawing more lands across the course of the game. That's practically inevitable anyway. And when I do open with two lands, I'll almost certainly want to make a third land drop too, if not by turn 3 then at least by turn 4. Having two or three lands in my opening hand just ensures I won't stumble during the first couple turns of the game.
Now, if I had to pick a perfect number of lands to start in my hand, I would probably choose to open with two knowing full well that I don't need many lands to operate but that I can also still afford to (as well as expect to) draw more lands in the future. (On the play, a 60 card deck with 21 lands opening on two will draw one or more lands by their third turn 59.3% of the time. On the draw, this number increases to 74.4%.) Maximizing my chances of drawing exactly two lands doesn't seem worth it to me though. I'm most likely to draw exactly two lands when playing 17, and that will occur 33.9% of the time. This increases the chance of me drawing exactly two lands by an additional 2.6%, but it also increases the chance of me drawing no lands at all from 4% to 8.3%, more than doubling it. A 17 land deck also opens with exactly three lands 6.6% less often than a 21 land deck, and while three land hands aren't as preferable as two land hands, they aren't that much less preferable. The trade-offs aren't worth seeing hands with exactly two lands slightly more often. Thus, the 21 land choice.
Another sweet aspect about running 21 lands is that 60 card decks with 21 lands also have the highest chance to open with exactly one, two, OR three lands. Obviously, one land hands aren't what I'd call ideal (as I already mentioned above). Still, one land hands are probably preferable to four land hands, making one land hands the next best combination behind two land hands and three land hands. There's a lot to like about playing 21 lands. Having said all that, I'd like to share something else I learned. Consider the following 60 card deck:
What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least one land and at least one copy of either Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl? 62.1%
What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands and at least one copy of either Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl? 48.3%
What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands, at least one copy of either Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl, and at least one copy of either Llanowar Tribe or Overgrowth? 27.7%
What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands, at least one copy of either Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl, at least one copy of either Llanowar Tribe or Overgrowth, and at least one 6-drop? 14.2%
The differences here are pretty profound. By including four copies of Birds of Paradise, I raise the chance of starting with at least one land and one 1-drop from 62.1% to 77.2%. That's more than a 15% increase! In fact, the chance of assembling all of these hands increases by a substantial amount, with the most soulcrushing, game-ensuring hands occurring a little less than one out of every five games. I just find that phenomenal. And considering hands without 1-drops suck because there aren't any lines of play available turn 2 that can't already be made on turn 1 without the help of a 1-drop (barring sideboard cards), increasing the likelihood that my opening hand will contain 1-drops seems even more crucial. Hell, even when things go sour and my Birds immediately gets Bolted, playing more 1-drops still increases the probability that I'll have a replacement to play on turn 2, so that's another reason to want to play more. (I'm not a skilled enough as a statistician to be able to tell you how big of a difference that specifically makes though.)
Now, you might be thinking: arrogantAxolotl, this is terrific! Why not play even more 1-drops? That would make landing one on turn 1 even more likely! While true, the reason I shouldn't play more 1-drops is the same reason why I shouldn't play more 3-drops or more 6-drops; it's because each set of cards I include decreases in quality for each other set of cards of the same type that I choose to include before it. For example, take a look at the 1-drop ramp spells. There's quite a few in Modern, but the best at ramping appear to be Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl. Those are both amazing, and I can play eight of them total, but what if I want to play more 1-drops? Now I have to look for the next best 1-drop, and for this deck that's probably Birds of Paradise. Birds of Paradise, while still an amazing card, isn't as good as Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl, but it's still good enough for me to want to play it regardless. If I keep repeating this process though, I find myself having to pick from weaker and weaker cards. What's the next best 1-drop after Birds of Paradise? Noble Hierarch? Llanowar Elves? Whatever the card, it's noticeably worse to the point that even if I did want to play additional 1-drops, the dip in card quality offsets the benefit of playing more. This is especially true when it comes to the 3-drops. After Llanowar Tribe and Overgrowth, what's the next best 3-drop? Is it Somberwald Sage? Lotus Cobra? Greenweaver Druid? Whatever it is, it's substantially worse than both Llanowar Tribe and Overgrowth to the extent I wouldn't want to play it. The decrease in quality exceeds the benefit of playing additional 3-drops.
Even if I could include as many copies of any one kind of valuable card that I want (like, say, Relentless Rats for instance), there would still be a limit to how many copies I would want to play, and that's because what I ultimately care about isn't the quantity of any given card but the probability that my opening hand will contain the right assortment of cards I want. There's a specific ratio of lands and 1-drops and 3-drops that I want to draw in my opening hand, and while I can increase the chance I'll draw those kinds of cards by playing additional copies, after I reach a certain point playing extra copies won't significantly increase my chances of drawing them. This is because each copy of a card that I play increases the chance I will draw it by an amount less than the copy before it. For example, the 2nd 1-drop that I put in my deck increases the chance that I will draw a 1-drop less than the 1st 1-drop I put in my deck. The 3rd 1-drop I put in my deck increases the chance I will draw a 1-drop less than 2nd 1-drop I put in my deck. And so on and so forth. At a certain point, I'd be better off including cards of a different type because those cards would affect the probability of starting with a hand that I want by an amount greater than if I continued adding cards of the same kind as before.
Going back to the numbers above, you might be concerned (especially after I just hammered home how important it is to make 1-drops) that 37.9% of the time I won't make one of eight 1-drops and that 22.8% of the time I won't make one of twelve 1-drops. Albeit, this is somewhat mitigated by being on the draw (as sometimes I will be) since the odds of finding both a land and a 1-drop within my first 8 cards jumps from 62.1% to 68.5% if I'm playing eight 1-drops and from 77.2% to 82.9% if I'm playing twelve 1-drops. Still, if I draw a hand and it doesn't have any 1-drops, being on the draw won't make that hand not sketchy. 84.9% of the time that hand won't make a turn 1 play provided it has eight 1-drops. A deck with that hand and twelve 1-drops will miss its turn 1 play 77.4% of the time instead. There is some good news though. Mulligans, while they come at a price, significantly increase the chance of drawing a playable opener.
With the upcoming London mulligan, the chance of finding at least one land and at least one 1-drop in a 60 card deck with eight 1-drops goes from 62.1% to 85.6% after the first mulligan and from 85.6% to 94.6% after the second. Likewise, the chance of finding at least one land and at least one 1-drop in a 60 card deck with twelve 1-drops goes from 77.2% to 94.8% after the first mulligan and from 94.8% to 98.8% after the second. That's crazy consistent and all the more reason to play twelve total 1-drops. Hell, even the chance of drawing a "god hand" containing at least two lands, a 1-drop, a 3-drop, AND a 6-drop bumps from 18.9% to a whopping 34.2% provided you're playing twelve 1-drops. And if you're always willing to mull to five, those exact cards can be found 46.7% of the time. That's almost half!
The Karn deck is doing great! It really is a crazy good card. I will post a bunch of results this weekend; but it seems like one of the best things you can do in a big-mana deck in Modern right now.
I was only on 2-birds. I will probably go up to three given your data (and probably begrudgingly four )...I do think we are one of the decks that actually benefits from the London Mulligan rule more than most (give the importance of a 1-drop on turn one and curving right). It is gonna take some time for me to get to 4x bird I don't doubt your data at all. My gut keeps telling me I would top-deck too many of them late (I likely pay more attention to this as it is usually a close game when you remember this happening).
I have been trying Llanow Tribe in both of my devotion decks...but have really wanted to try Domri, Anarch of Bolas as well...so my creature-based deck may see some changes.
I have found myself siding in Primal Command a lot (so may end up moving it to the main board)...but having both gives you a real "control" feel. I'll post more about my results when I return and play a little this evening.
Really good work on that math, arrogantAxolotl. Thanks for sharing the numbers.
Is Oath of Nissa falling out of favor? I've liked having the extra card filter to smooth out draws that might've otherwise been too land-light or lacking a creature. I'll have to try changing those 4 slots to something else and see how my consistency changes.
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MODERN: Pure Pili-ness GU // Red Devotion RR // Green Devotion Variants GRWUG // U/G Emerge CGU // Lots and Lots of Brews BGRUWC
Nice to see another Tooth and Nail player posting here. I frequently visit here to check up on other people's lists but rarely post, as Tooth and Nail is hardly ever discussed so I feel like I don't have much to contribute to the current discussion. My pre-Horizons list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-05-16-temur-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559744262. It was a hyper focused T&N list with a Command/E witness loop backup plan. The sideboard mainly consisted of silver bullets for primal command, bolts for aggro decks, and additional ramp redundancy for racing other combo decks like storm. I had come to the same conclusion that you had about Garruk and only really ran him as worse copies of Kiora, Master of Depths that would occasionally steal me a game on the off-chance that I had lots of mana dorks but no ramp payoff.
After seeing Llanowar Tribe I knew that I needed to revamp the deck as its basically addition copies of Overgrowth, which has always secretly been T&N's best card. My new test list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-horizons-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559745177. Tribe means that getting to 3 mana on turn 2 is actually important in most games (whereas it only mattered before if you had managed to draw overgrowth), so I've added a copy of Birds of Paradise and after many test games I would highly recommend that you also run at least 1 copy somewhere in your list, as landing a tribe on 2 all but guarantees that you can play a 6 drop on turn 3.
As for other cards to fill your remaining 4 slots I would highly recommend 3 copies of Primal Command and an additional copy of Eternal Witness. Primal Command will allow you to tutor up creatures with CMC of greater than 3, effectively giving you more threat redundancy while allowing you to dodge the effects of cards like Grafdigger's Cage. It will also allow you to diversify your threats by running a larger variety of bombs without reducing deck consistency (i.e. you can cut 1 Bellower for 1 Primeval Titan while still being able to get Bellower when you need it). This also gives the deck a strong Plan B in games where you don't draw T&N by Time-Walking your opponent with Primal Command/Eternal Witness loops (in my experience most opponents concede after you tutor up the 2nd Eternal Witness). Finally, Primal command lets you run sliver bullets in the sideboard without having to worry about "over-sideboarding" and diluting your deck's main T&N game plan. This means you can have single copies of cards like Elderscale Wurm and Hornet Queen for Aggro and Midrange matchups respectively.
On a related note, I really appreciate your writeup on 6-drops. Vraska, Relic Seeker is a card I had never really considered before but it definitely seems like the kind of card that this deck wants. T&N has needed a threat that also interacts with the opponent when needed for a while and I had never really considered a black splash for big Vraska until your writeup. It's nice to know that there are green mages out there still innovating in this archetype.
I agree with a lot of what was said here. I LOVE Woodland Bellower and Vraska in particular. I've played Vraska quite a bit (any black deck and/or any deck that doesn't support Karn Liberated) and I was never been disappointed casting her. With Vraska, just a few turns makes her a win-condition (as we can normally deal 1-damage). I have tried to play Woodland Bellower many times in my builds. I had a really fun build with Bellower, Devoted Druid and Elder of Laurels (as with enough creatures on board Elder+Devoted Druid creates infinite mana and/or an infinitely large Druid for a turn). It is also one of those cards that just gets better with time; and when I played him it was a good card to help build a board around (as it can grab the new Ouphe, Reclamation Sage, Loaming Shaman, etc.. I think if you are not playing Primeval Titan; you are right that these are your best answers.
You make a really good point about Narset as well. That can have a big effect on how we play "draw a card" permanents.
** PS **
I'm excited to hear more about your list. Looks like a really cool take on Devotion and I'd love to hear about your games.
^^This
This sounds like a really well built Craterhoof Devotion Deck. Wolfbriar Elemental is that card I always forget and then play it and go "dang that is good"
I think Devotion has a few ways to play...as long as we answer the questions:
1. How are we getting to our mana quickly?
2. What are we doing with that mana once we get it.
The best ways I've seen in my history with Devotion are:
1. Some form of "Combo"
2. Overrun
This is because Devotion by its very nature requires us to load the board with green permanents. This comes with significant downsides (both in terms of the ability of our opponent to interact with us and in terms of speed). So we have to turn that negative into a relatively quick positive. Thus far, the best ways I've seen are the above two (Overrun or Combo).
Overrun -
There really isn't a better way to do this than Craterhoof Behemoth. I've tried it a few ways; but in the end a few value creatures and one Craterhoof will do the job
Combo -
There are a few ways to go about this. Be it Tooth and Nail, Karn/Lattice, Devoted Druid/Vizier, or even Witness/Command etc. Generally the "one card" combos tend to be best; but we have numerous options. Tooth and Nail at 9-mana, Karn at 10-mana, Witness/Command at 8-mana, etc...each have their own set of pros and cons. All of the options, however, make for a relatively simple game plan. Genesis Wave also tends to focus as a "combo" card as well (as most Wave decks are built in a way that once you cast your first Wave for X=6 or more you should be able to either chain/loop waves; or win from there). Really all of the decks are functioning with a "Plan A" of "get to X mana and cast my payoff/wincon".
In the end its actually quite simple. We spend our first 1-3 turns ramping to our end point and hopefully can cast our win-con by turn 3-4. While ramp decks in standard can tend to play a few dorks and play cards 1-2 turns early up the curve; Modern makes it very difficult to do that. Ramp in Modern tends to be ramp, ramp, win
This is why Garruk tends to be really good in the decks he works in (as he functions both as part of the "Plan A" of the deck while also allowing for a Plan B. This is mostly true of Craterhoof Decks though...and I fully agree that Garruk does not need to be in every Devotion deck (just a great piece in those it is in). So I think that the argument for Garruk is what decks he really shines in (as he is a REALLY strong four drop...but you really want to get all of the use out of him (the untap and the threat of overrun). He fits in more decks than he doesn't...but I can understand when people play decks without him despite my preference for the card.
You're right, I'm probably thinking about cases that won't really matter. I have some experience with Kessig Wolf Run but your impression was partly right, thought it was played as a mana sink and a trample enabler for the top end cards. Maybe I was too focused on the trample part but I still acknowledge that a deck like this need a good mana sink.
Hello and welcome!
Interesting thought...5-CMC is a good number; so I could see this as a mini-hornet.
Here's one I'm tinkering with. I don't have All of the cards yet, but that's a good thing, as I'm sure it's missing a thing or two.
Any and all pointers are welcome. Light it up or praise it. Up to you. I'll learn from criticism no matter positive or negative
@arrogantAxolotl, like you say, the beauty of Wolfbriar is that it scales. It's not the best option at exactly six, but it ranges from an embarrassing 4 drop to a game winner when you have all ramp and no other payoff. I do love Bellower as well, especially in lists with lots of tutors using creature silver bullets from the sideboard.
Re: Primalcrux... if you want this to work you really need to run ways to give it haste, and even then you're soft to decks with Path to Exile. I tried a bunch of ways to make it work, and its definitely crazy powerful and fun, but also suboptimal in modern. Casting Aspect of Hydra on that thing is one of my all-time favorite mtg memories, though.
@CurdBros, thanks for the kind words. Fully agree with your meta-analysis of how we make the deck tick. We have cards that ramp, and cards that win. I agree that overrun and combo are the premier ways to end the game.
There's room for more interactive, almost controlling builds, like your old Karn focused Walker build, or the mtggoldfish deck that was mostly built around the Primal Command/Eternal Witness loop, but in my experience that's a losing proposition in modern, at least in game 1. It seems impossible to have the right tools to slow down such a wide variety of fast goldfish-y decks. It was actually one of your comments about missing lethal overrun opportunities that led me down this path with the deck... I figured if we're building a winning board state by accident imagine what we could do on purpose
@ThorsHammer, I'd cut a couple of forests for two Birds of Paradise; having turn 1 ramp reliably is really important, and the deck plays much more consistently with 10 1-drop ramp spells. Its possible that 9 is the right number with the new mulligan rule, but I doubt it. Also, you should upgrade decimator to Craterhoof Behemoth as soon as your budget allows; it's both lower cmc and more bonkers. I'm not a huge fan of Harmoize; if it were my list I'd cut one and go up to the full set of Primal Command.
Edit to add one more quick note to the Primeval Titan discussion; Inkmoth Nexus is worth considering as a target that can give you lethal the next turn, if you grab it along with wolf run. I dont like having that many colorless sources, but it is another way to get the kill.
Thanks for sharing your list. It looks a lot like where I started.
Happy to know I'm not alone.
My current Tooth and Nail list is actually playing 4 Arbor Elf, 4 Utopia Sprawl AND 4 Birds, so I suppose I'm already taking your advice (though I suppose my newest rendition ought to reflect this).
I think what led me to playing Birds was me getting sick of Voyaging Satyr. Costing 2 was always awkward because, if I didn't have a turn 1 play, I already wasn't ramping, which also means I don't have Utopia Sprawl to use with him. Then, on turn 2, I can play the Satyr, but unless I have Overgrowth on 3, Voyaging Satyr won't make me any more than 1 mana, and that's just atrocious. Sure, when I've got a decked out Forest, the Satyr is quite good. In fact, I think I liked him better than Garruk, being easier to cast and all. But Voyaging Satyr frequently disappointed me.
If what I wanted was ramp, it made more sense to increase my number of 1-drops. Turn 1 is the best time to play a ramp spell for so many reasons. It's at the very beginning of the game meaning not only will my opponent not be pressuring me yet, but I'll also be getting the maximum possible return on my card since I can extract value out of it every single turn it remains in play, and there's no possible way to play something sooner. Turn 1 is also the turn where I have the least useful things to do because I don't yet have any significant resources at my disposal, so I may as well capitalize off that fact by finding something productive to do at that time. After all, if I intended to ramp on 2 and do nothing on 1, I may as well just ramp on 1 instead. And in the event I draw multiple 1-drops, that's okay too. Playing additional 1-drops on 2 is fine. If anything, it ensures I don't stumble if my opponent does kill a 1-drop.
On a separate note, I spent a lot of time yesterday reading Frank Karsten's articles on multivariable hypergeometric distribution because I wanted to learn how to find the probability of starting with certain hands. After having crunched a few numbers, I now see why I intuitively made the transition from Satyr into Birds. From what I've seen so far, I'm getting the impression that playing anything less than 12 1-drops might be crazy. Playing 4 more 1-drops seems to dramatically increase the chances of making 3 mana turn 2 which, as you mentioned, is now more important than ever given the printing of Llanowar Tribe. I'm going to spend more time with the calculator and report my findings later.
This sounds like a perk; diversifying my 6-drops so I can Primal Command whichever one best fits my circumstances seems beneficial. I can foresee a few problems possibly arising as a result of this decision though.
First, my 6-drops won't probably all be creatures. That means Primal Command won't be able to find all of them, diminishing the point of diversifying my 6-drops in the first place.
Second, every 6-drop I play beyond the first is theoretically worse than the 6-drop before it. In practice, having "the right card" for any situation is usually better than having "the best card" for every situation even if "the best card" is better in a vacuum than "the right card" is, but that only holds true to an extent. If the quality of the 2nd best 6-drop and the 3rd best 6-drop (and so on and so forth) begins to drop dramatically after a certain point, then the consequences of playing independently weaker 6-drops may outweigh the benefits of having a diverse set of 6-drops with which to access. Now, I personally don't think this will be a problem. I think there are likely enough good 6-drops at the tippy top to ensure the quality doesn't take a serious dive once I reach the 3rd or 4th one. Even so, it is something worth paying attention to.
Third, there's a deckbuilding cost associated with playing certain 6-drops. For example, Primeval Titan requires I play enough utility lands to make his tutor ability useful beyond just finding basics. Woodland Bellower also requires I play enough 3-drops to consistently find. Those sorts of costs aren't insignificant, and won't necessarily always be compatible with one another either.
I'm not sure if these three concerns outweight the benefits of having a diverse set of 6-drops or not, but I thought I may as well point them out.
Earlier versions of my Tooth and Nail deck played four copies of Primal Command and three copies of Eternal Witness. During some of my first games ever, I actually drew a few nut draws leading to early Primal Command loops. Having that kind of power just felt awesome. Over time though, I began to realize just how little I ever wanted to draw Eternal Witness. Despite Command loops winning me games in spectacular fashion, it was also losing me games by creating dud hands. Eternal Witness just isn't a good proactive play, and I never want to see it in my opening hand because it frequently doesn't do anything; it's reliant upon my opponent putting valuable cards into my graveyard, and I won't always have valuable sorceries of my own to put there.
Once I made that observation, I started shaving copies, and now I'm down to three copies of Primal Command and one copy of Eternal Witness. Thus far, I'm happier with the results. Eternal Witness is a card that I always want access to, but it's also a card I never want to draw, so one copy seems like the most fitting number. That has the unfortunate side effect of not being able to loop opponents more than once, but after playtesting the new number I found myself never wanting to loop more than once anyway, so I'm okay with losing that privilege.
It's funny you mention the Wurm. While building my very first rendition of Tooth and Nail months ago, I saw the card and thought it would make for some great sideboard tech. After playing it, I actually found it rather frustrating. At 7 mana, the card proved prohibitively expensive against aggro, and in one game in particular I learned its limitations extensively. Sitting smugly behind both an Elderscale Wurm and an Inferno Titan, I thought my game unloseable. My elven opponent just shrugged and cast Shaman of the Pack. The Wurm doesn't prevent life loss. Since then, I've replaced the Wurm with Madcap Experiment and Platinum Emperion.
What I liked most about Elderscale Wurm was that it helped me with my biggest problem. Because all I ever did was ramp, I would always fall behind on board and backpedal the entire game. By the time I had enough mana to cast something, I was frequently on death's door. That made it essential for my first relevant spell to get me back in the race. I tried a few different cards: Thragtusk, Dromoka, Elderscale Wurm. Absolutely nothing beat Platinum Emperion though. He just crushed it. And there's so much to like about him too!
For one, there's no deckbuilding cost to play him; Tooth and Nail doesn't want artifacts. For two, he can be cast off Madcap Experiment, making him much more reliable in aggro matchups. And if I open with Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Utopia Sprawl, Madcap Experiment, I can even land Platinum Emperion turn 2, and an 8/8 assailant turn 2 is no joke. In fact, I won so many games at my LGS last Friday solely off the back of Platinum Emperion alone. If he resolves, some decks just can't interact with him.
Another thing that's great about Platinum Emperion is that it isn't unreasonable to cast in Tooth and Nail either. 8 mana is very achievable, and can even happen turn 3 off of lines like Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Overgrowth —> Land or Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Overgrowth —> Utopia Sprawl. It's just such a great card. It truly has the right combination of attributes. If you've never tried it before, I'd highly recommend it.
Aww, thank you man. I appreciate the kind words. I put a lot of effort into everything I write, so it's nice to see someone get some worth out of it.
Vraska wasn't a card I had ever considered either. I glossed over it so many times looking for the perfect 6-drop. Now that I've realized what it can do, I have high hopes for the card. I think it'll be exactly what the deck needs.
Yeah, the fact the pirates have menace means it isn't likely the opponent will be able to block.
I'm pleased to hear your experiences with Vraska were positive ones. I know it's kind of an esoteric card, but I'm an iconoclast, and when I have good reasons to go against the grain, I tend to bet hard. My initially testing is backing me up so far, but we'll see how everything turns out in a few weeks time.
Huh. I didn't know that was a thing when I put Elder of Laurels on my list. Good to know.
Man, I'm totally waiting for the day Wizards accidentally prints a fetchable clone or Flickerwisp variant. Altered Ego was so close to breaking Woodland Bellower. Soulherder would have also been amazing had it been green. End of turn, blink Woodland Bellower, get another 3-drop, and then continue to blink Woodland Bellower or whatever other card it found every turn thereafter. It's only a matter of time before something breaks Woodland Bellower.
Loaming Shaman might actually be better than I first thought. In a vacuum, Scavenging Ooze is almost certainly the better card, but if I need to disrupt a graveyard immediately, I can't cast Woodland Bellower into Scavenging Ooze without also having additional mana, and I might need a lot. On the other hand, Loaming Shaman solves that issue immediately. Perhaps it's worth considering over Scavenging Ooze for that reason.
Glad for the vote of confidence.
I'll make sure to keep you up to date.
Good Analysis.
From a strategic standpoint, I think combo kills are preferable to overruns because combo kills aren't predicated on having a board state (depending on the combo anyway). With overruns, I might have the mana, and I might have the overrun, but I might not have the boardstate necessary to end the game for one reason or another, perhaps due to interaction. That majorly sucks, and combo kills don't have that same stipulation. Obviously, either can work, but combo kills definitely have a leg up in that race.
Also, not to be a pedant, but are devotion decks really devotion decks? Like, aside from Nykthos, it doesn't seem like anyone cares about green mana symbols. I mean, there's the gods. Tooth and Nail plays Xenagos, but the fact he has devotion is mostly an afterthought. There are some other cards too I suppose. Karametra's Acolyte can make tons of mana. Nylea's Disciple might also have some utility. Past that, there really isn't anything. I don't know. Generally speaking, I never really hear about these cards. It seems like all anyone cares about is Nykthos, and that's it, so the whole devotion name feels like a misnomer.
On the subject of Nykthos, for as good as it is, it's only one card, and legendary at that. Breaking my back to support it by playing suboptimal cards I wouldn't otherwise be playing if they didn't have several green mana symbols attached (I'm looking at you, Wistful Selkie) seems like a poor way to go about ramping, especially considering I won't always have Nykthos, and even when I do I also won't always have a way to spend the mana it makes profitably. In addition, Nykthos relies on having a substantial board state, something I can't guarantee due to luck and due to the fact that my opponents will often interact with me.
Meanwhile, if I simply run Nykthos without caring about my devotion, provided I'm playing enough green permanents to support it (and I wouldn't include Nykthos if I wasn't), Nykthos will often make additional mana naturally without having to make any kind of deckbuilding concessions. Four green symbols is enough to net extra mana, and everything after that is gravy. Knowing that, it feels like maximizing Nykthos's effectiveness is more trouble than it's worth as doing so causes tons of complications, but not doing anything still reaps hefty benefits.
That's a good attitude to have. I like that you use Archidekt too. Here are three things I noticed:
1.) If you're in the market for Plated Crusher, you ought to play Carnage Tyrant instead. It's strictly an upgrade.
2.) You're not playing any copies of Overgrowth. Unless you have specific metagame reasons for not doing so, you should be jamming four of those suckers. Having extensively studied all of Magic's ramp spells for a guide I'm writing in Commander, I can confidently say that Overgrowth is one of the best, if not THE best 3 mana ramp spell ever printed. It's resilient, it refunds 2 mana immediately, something unheard of in other 3 mana ramp spells that tap for 2, and it improves the quality of all your land untapping effects. You seriously want this card.
3.) I know you said you don't have all the cards yet, so this may just be a budget thing, but to support cards like Kessig Wolf Run and Vraska, Relic Seeker, you really, really want shocklands and fetches to accompany them. At the moment, the only way you can even produce non-green mana is with Utopia Sprawl, and that's just horrendous, especially once you consider that you'll sometimes just want to name green with it to cast Llanowar Tribe on turn 2. You're just not always going to draw Utopia Sprawl, so you need additional sources of color if you want to support multicolored cards. If you had a couple shocklands, at least you could fetch those with Primeval Titan, but at the moment you can't even support Wolf Run with Primeval Titan alone. Either cut out all the multicolored cards or increase your number of nongreen sources substantially to support them.
Good observation, and there are ways to enable haste in mono-green alone. Obviously, there's equipment like Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots, but Surrak, the Hunt Caller and Samut, Tyrant Smasher also work.
I think this is a bad idea. To make Inkmoth good, I'd need 1 mana to activate it, 2 mana to activate Wolf Run, 9 additional mana to sink into Wolf Run, and I've got to tap Wolf Run and Inkmoth itself. That's 14 mana from lands alone. If I delay my kill over two turns, I only need 9 which is a bit more reasonable, if still expensive, but none of that even takes blocking into consideration which makes Inkmoth even more costly to trample through. Also, if my opponent kills my Inkmoth, perhaps with a blocker, all of it was for naught. If I want a manland, I suspect Raging Ravine is the way to go.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Thanks for the advise!
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/unbound-devotion/?cb=1559870034
I'm also contemplating going to two primeval Titans and adding a terrastodon, or a couple eldrazi with devastator.
Yay? Nay?
The list:
6 Forest
2 Stomping Ground
2 Breeding Pool
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Kessig Wolf Run
4 Arbor Elf
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Kiora's Follower
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Steel Leaf Champion
2 Eternal Witness
2 Tireless Tracker
2 Primeval Titan
1 Hornet Queen
1 Hydroid Krasis
4 Utopia Sprawl
3 Overgrowth
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
2 Domri, Anarch of Bolas
2 Primal Command
1 Genesis Wave
2 Negate
2 Crumble to Dust
2 Dismember
2 Obstinate Baloth
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Creeping Corrosion
1 Thrashing Brontodon
1 Rhythm of the Wild
1 Firespout
As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been playing around with hypergeometric distribution calculators to find the chances of starting with certain hands. One thing I learned is that, given a deck of 60 cards, if I want to maximize my chances of seeing exactly two or exactly three lands in my opening hand, then I need to play 21 lands. That gives me a 59.6% chance of finding the right combination of lands and spells. Why two or three land specifically? Because, in my experience, I've found those numbers work best. One land hands, while sometimes playable, commonly falter, and hands with four or more lands seldom possess the specific spells necessary to produce a victory. That makes two or three lands where I want to be. I don't mind drawing more lands across the course of the game. That's practically inevitable anyway. And when I do open with two lands, I'll almost certainly want to make a third land drop too, if not by turn 3 then at least by turn 4. Having two or three lands in my opening hand just ensures I won't stumble during the first couple turns of the game.
Now, if I had to pick a perfect number of lands to start in my hand, I would probably choose to open with two knowing full well that I don't need many lands to operate but that I can also still afford to (as well as expect to) draw more lands in the future. (On the play, a 60 card deck with 21 lands opening on two will draw one or more lands by their third turn 59.3% of the time. On the draw, this number increases to 74.4%.) Maximizing my chances of drawing exactly two lands doesn't seem worth it to me though. I'm most likely to draw exactly two lands when playing 17, and that will occur 33.9% of the time. This increases the chance of me drawing exactly two lands by an additional 2.6%, but it also increases the chance of me drawing no lands at all from 4% to 8.3%, more than doubling it. A 17 land deck also opens with exactly three lands 6.6% less often than a 21 land deck, and while three land hands aren't as preferable as two land hands, they aren't that much less preferable. The trade-offs aren't worth seeing hands with exactly two lands slightly more often. Thus, the 21 land choice.
Another sweet aspect about running 21 lands is that 60 card decks with 21 lands also have the highest chance to open with exactly one, two, OR three lands. Obviously, one land hands aren't what I'd call ideal (as I already mentioned above). Still, one land hands are probably preferable to four land hands, making one land hands the next best combination behind two land hands and three land hands. There's a lot to like about playing 21 lands. Having said all that, I'd like to share something else I learned. Consider the following 60 card deck:
4 Arbor Elf
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Llanowar Tribe
4 Overgrowth
8 6-Drops
15 Other Cards
- What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least one land and at least one copy of either Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl? 62.1%
- What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands and at least one copy of either Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl? 48.3%
- What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands, at least one copy of either Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl, and at least one copy of either Llanowar Tribe or Overgrowth? 27.7%
- What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands, at least one copy of either Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl, at least one copy of either Llanowar Tribe or Overgrowth, and at least one 6-drop? 14.2%
Now compare that to the following 60 card deck:4 Arbor Elf
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Llanowar Tribe
4 Overgrowth
8 6-Drops
11 Other Cards
- What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least one land and at least one copy of either Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, or Birds of Paradise? 77.2%
- What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands and at least one copy of either Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, or Birds of Paradise? 61.1%
- What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands, at least one copy of either Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, or Birds of Paradise, and at least one copy of either Llanowar Tribe or Overgrowth? 35.8%
- What is the chance my opening hand will contain at least two lands, at least one copy of either Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, or Birds of Paradise, at least one copy of either Llanowar Tribe or Overgrowth, and at least one 6-drop? 18.9%
The differences here are pretty profound. By including four copies of Birds of Paradise, I raise the chance of starting with at least one land and one 1-drop from 62.1% to 77.2%. That's more than a 15% increase! In fact, the chance of assembling all of these hands increases by a substantial amount, with the most soulcrushing, game-ensuring hands occurring a little less than one out of every five games. I just find that phenomenal. And considering hands without 1-drops suck because there aren't any lines of play available turn 2 that can't already be made on turn 1 without the help of a 1-drop (barring sideboard cards), increasing the likelihood that my opening hand will contain 1-drops seems even more crucial. Hell, even when things go sour and my Birds immediately gets Bolted, playing more 1-drops still increases the probability that I'll have a replacement to play on turn 2, so that's another reason to want to play more. (I'm not a skilled enough as a statistician to be able to tell you how big of a difference that specifically makes though.)Now, you might be thinking: arrogantAxolotl, this is terrific! Why not play even more 1-drops? That would make landing one on turn 1 even more likely! While true, the reason I shouldn't play more 1-drops is the same reason why I shouldn't play more 3-drops or more 6-drops; it's because each set of cards I include decreases in quality for each other set of cards of the same type that I choose to include before it. For example, take a look at the 1-drop ramp spells. There's quite a few in Modern, but the best at ramping appear to be Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl. Those are both amazing, and I can play eight of them total, but what if I want to play more 1-drops? Now I have to look for the next best 1-drop, and for this deck that's probably Birds of Paradise. Birds of Paradise, while still an amazing card, isn't as good as Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl, but it's still good enough for me to want to play it regardless. If I keep repeating this process though, I find myself having to pick from weaker and weaker cards. What's the next best 1-drop after Birds of Paradise? Noble Hierarch? Llanowar Elves? Whatever the card, it's noticeably worse to the point that even if I did want to play additional 1-drops, the dip in card quality offsets the benefit of playing more. This is especially true when it comes to the 3-drops. After Llanowar Tribe and Overgrowth, what's the next best 3-drop? Is it Somberwald Sage? Lotus Cobra? Greenweaver Druid? Whatever it is, it's substantially worse than both Llanowar Tribe and Overgrowth to the extent I wouldn't want to play it. The decrease in quality exceeds the benefit of playing additional 3-drops.
Even if I could include as many copies of any one kind of valuable card that I want (like, say, Relentless Rats for instance), there would still be a limit to how many copies I would want to play, and that's because what I ultimately care about isn't the quantity of any given card but the probability that my opening hand will contain the right assortment of cards I want. There's a specific ratio of lands and 1-drops and 3-drops that I want to draw in my opening hand, and while I can increase the chance I'll draw those kinds of cards by playing additional copies, after I reach a certain point playing extra copies won't significantly increase my chances of drawing them. This is because each copy of a card that I play increases the chance I will draw it by an amount less than the copy before it. For example, the 2nd 1-drop that I put in my deck increases the chance that I will draw a 1-drop less than the 1st 1-drop I put in my deck. The 3rd 1-drop I put in my deck increases the chance I will draw a 1-drop less than 2nd 1-drop I put in my deck. And so on and so forth. At a certain point, I'd be better off including cards of a different type because those cards would affect the probability of starting with a hand that I want by an amount greater than if I continued adding cards of the same kind as before.
Going back to the numbers above, you might be concerned (especially after I just hammered home how important it is to make 1-drops) that 37.9% of the time I won't make one of eight 1-drops and that 22.8% of the time I won't make one of twelve 1-drops. Albeit, this is somewhat mitigated by being on the draw (as sometimes I will be) since the odds of finding both a land and a 1-drop within my first 8 cards jumps from 62.1% to 68.5% if I'm playing eight 1-drops and from 77.2% to 82.9% if I'm playing twelve 1-drops. Still, if I draw a hand and it doesn't have any 1-drops, being on the draw won't make that hand not sketchy. 84.9% of the time that hand won't make a turn 1 play provided it has eight 1-drops. A deck with that hand and twelve 1-drops will miss its turn 1 play 77.4% of the time instead. There is some good news though. Mulligans, while they come at a price, significantly increase the chance of drawing a playable opener.
With the upcoming London mulligan, the chance of finding at least one land and at least one 1-drop in a 60 card deck with eight 1-drops goes from 62.1% to 85.6% after the first mulligan and from 85.6% to 94.6% after the second. Likewise, the chance of finding at least one land and at least one 1-drop in a 60 card deck with twelve 1-drops goes from 77.2% to 94.8% after the first mulligan and from 94.8% to 98.8% after the second. That's crazy consistent and all the more reason to play twelve total 1-drops. Hell, even the chance of drawing a "god hand" containing at least two lands, a 1-drop, a 3-drop, AND a 6-drop bumps from 18.9% to a whopping 34.2% provided you're playing twelve 1-drops. And if you're always willing to mull to five, those exact cards can be found 46.7% of the time. That's almost half!
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
I was only on 2-birds. I will probably go up to three given your data (and probably begrudgingly four
I have been trying Llanow Tribe in both of my devotion decks...but have really wanted to try Domri, Anarch of Bolas as well...so my creature-based deck may see some changes.
I have found myself siding in Primal Command a lot (so may end up moving it to the main board)...but having both gives you a real "control" feel. I'll post more about my results when I return and play a little this evening.
Also, I wish Deep Forest Hermit could throw squirrels
Is Oath of Nissa falling out of favor? I've liked having the extra card filter to smooth out draws that might've otherwise been too land-light or lacking a creature. I'll have to try changing those 4 slots to something else and see how my consistency changes.