7th Place @ SCG Modern Classic Atlanta
Apr 30, 2017
Archetype: W/R Prison by Dariusz Szylman
Came to post this. This matches pretty closely with my draft list on Page 57 (no Ajani; adding new Gideon). Cast Out made the list; which the more I think on (and the more I draft Amonkhet) the more I think it is a good fit.
I'm leaning towards moving the leylines back to the sideboard, and shifting into Cast Out. I'll be able to run new Gideon at FNM this coming Friday.
I'm particularly facinated by Boil in the sideboard. Maybe this is the solution to merfolk as we were discussing? also the choice of rest in peace despite the Emrakul nahiri discard non-bo. i've moved my Laylines to the side since DSJ seems to be a little less played at the moment in my meta. anyone else finding this?
Walked> Isn't 4 Rugged Prairie a bit too much? I hate to get them without having a coloured mana. Or when facing some random land-destruction cards that kill our basics so that we just have colorless.
Have you tried playing around with maybe 1-2 Inspiring Vantage?
Your list looks alot like mine, and I like it alot!
I'm also eager to try out the new Cast Out instead of O-Ring/Banishing Light. It seems really good.
I'm also playing my Leylines in the sideboard, but it seems people here have different experiences of how much duty they do us in the mainboard.
Walked> Isn't 4 Rugged Prairie a bit too much? I hate to get them without having a coloured mana. Or when facing some random land-destruction cards that kill our basics so that we just have colorless.
Have you tried playing around with maybe 1-2 Inspiring Vantage?
Your list looks alot like mine, and I like it alot!
I'm also eager to try out the new Cast Out instead of O-Ring/Banishing Light. It seems really good.
I'm also playing my Leylines in the sideboard, but it seems people here have different experiences of how much duty they do us in the mainboard.
No; I like 4 Rugged Prairie. It's a painless way to get on-color mana, and its extremely rare that it color screws me. When we land the blood moon it becomes a mountain anyways. The reason I want that instead of a fastland like Vantage is post-moon it comes in tapped (and shocks similarly come in tapped or cost us life). I find with virtually all of our sources being colored, the Rugged Prairie as a 4-of doesn't hurt anything.
(Personal opinion at least; obviously there are corner cases and times when someone is going to spreading seas screw us; but its rather rare)
Post moon it only comes in tapped if you have too many lands ^^ It's rules still apply, even when Blood Moon is out, as it's a entering state
On another note... back on the thoughts about including Heart of Kiran in the deck, but not in the maindeck.
Thinking out loud, our opponents will notice what we play during the first match, and most probably will board out their creature-removal (especially Paths etc. when they see us maindecking Chalices and not having any creatures). So I'm thinking about having 2 Heart of Kiran in my board, to increase my number of wincons in certain matchups... how do you guys feel about it?
It can't be used against decks that use alot of artifacts though, cuz then I'd rather board in my 4 Stony Silences, and that completely shuts down our Vehicle-ability. But I feel that maybe the surprise element of not just winning with Emrakul and/or Chandra could increase our win-percentage against some sideboards that our opponents think is smart against us
Heading to the last GPT this sunday, before going to GP Copenhagen in the end of this month.
I'm coming back with an update after this sunday on how it went.
Didn't go well at all today, after practicing with the deck nonstop since thursday, and with the results on the GPT I've made some changes... but more on that later.
I went 3-3 in total:
1-2 vs Merfolk. This matchup was pretty hard. I was very dependant on Anger of the Gods and Wrath showing up, which they did not. Also, Chalice does pretty much nothing against Cavern of Souls so... Blue is pretty hard for us, so I really tried finding 2 Boil before the GPT, but only found myself one. And that one, well it didn't show up.
2-0 vs Infect. Well, this matchup is pretty much the same as Death's Shadow for me (they don't like Blood Moon, they definately don't like to sacrifice their attacking creatures and they really hate Chalice on 1). Nothing much to say here to be honest, it was a walk in the park.
1-2 vs Burn. This is one of my best matchups, seriously. But my deck was completely messed up this time. Just drew lands, flodded each game and barely lost even the first game when chalice was on 1. I mulliganed several times game 2 and 3 to get something else than lands
1-2 vs Monoblue Control. Some kind of homebrew with Clique, Snapcasters, Cryptic, lots of counters, delver and Thing in the Ice. Won one very close game with my Gideon of the Trials, but the other two just went downhill. He bounced, countered and killed 3 of my Nahiris the last game with an amazing amount of on-spot responses to everything I tried to play. I was actually impressed it was that good
2-0 vs Affinity. Been playing this matchup pretty much, so I knew how to handle it. Chalice and Stony Silence together goes a long way, and match 2 i took 7 of his guys with an Anger of the Gods turn 3. Stablizing on 7 life and turning the match from there with my planeswalkers.
2-0 vs Minotaur Tribal. A really cool homebrew that I noticed wasn't that planned. He was playing BR and tried the new Minotaur lord with some old one from Theros, in a package of discard, Fatal push and some burn spells. Afterwards I got to see his deck, and gave him a few advices that he seemed to have missed (Get 3-4 Mutavaults, play Boros Reckoner and get yourself a playset of Boros Charms so you can protect your dudes from Anger/boardwipes and/or at the same time have more burn-spells)
This is the new, updated version I'm trying out post GPT, finding myself never wanting more than 4 lands I dropped down to 22 lands, and really loving how good the new Cast Out that Walked told me about is working out, i upped it to a whole playset. The cycling is so cheap for us it's a really flexible card to have multiples of. Also gonna try 2 Sun Droplets in the Board against early aggro to give me time to get my sweepers and stabilize my life.
What do you guys think? How have your weekend exploits with your own brews been? I'm curious!
Tried playing Helix from the start, several months ago, but it's garbage in the current meta.. And I have no plan of playing it in my opponents face so.
How do people with Helixes even handle all the Goyfs and Death's Shadow crawling about? Anger handles everything with 3 toughness, why include another removal for X/3 creatures then?
Journey has actually been really awesome against several things but perhaps i don't need it with 4 Cast Out, so I'll see about changing them to something useful
As I said, the flooding is real with this deck, especially with 4 Simian Spirit Guides, 4 cyclers and 4 temple I never miss them.
For several weeks i always get my 4 lands, only to keep looting away land after land with Nahiri.
I have yet to find a moment where I dont get mana to play Gideon if I want to, as he is also a 3-drop (with anger and blood moon) there are alot of different plays we can do on turn 2-3, depending on the matchup. Blood moon as fast as posdible isnt always the best play
Heading to the last GPT this sunday, before going to GP Copenhagen in the end of this month.
I'm coming back with an update after this sunday on how it went.
Mostly because I've been adjusting away from RW Prison lately. The rise of UW Control and Storm has made this a tricky deck to run successfully lately. It's not terrible, but I'm not running it on MTGO much lately. In paper UW Control and Storm are less of a thing (at least around here).
I'm waffling on this for SCG Baltimore later this month; I feel like it could fall flat.
Do any of you find that playing against CoCo decks feels like a struggle? I didn't drop a single match Sunday in the central pa eternal league until I played against Naya Coco and I felt like I was constantly behind.
Presumably you are on the RW Planeswalkers build with no bridge. He fits ok in there, but he dies to your own sweepers and switches on removal. It is certainly a consideration, other than that you have no way to beat toolbox combos abusing the graveyard without maindecking rest in peace. Even then there are toolboxes that don't need the bin- devoted druid, kiki etc.
Suppression Field is much better at nerfing those decks, its less fragile and stops fetchlands and seers et al rather than simply punishing them, but it can't be run in PW based prisons, which is a shame.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
I'm not sure I agree about the Mentor against the new creature-toolbox deck.
As we don't have any aggressive cards that are dealing them any early game damage, they will just ping our little dude for 2 damage, and go nuts with their combo afterwards, without losing much more than a few lifepoints.
I'm finding my Linvala better than ever against this kind of deck, and It works wonders against many other decks too... And when playing 4 Simian Spirit Guides (and Chandra, that ramps) we can even deploy it earlier than turn 4 in several matches.
I'm even thinking about getting another one for the sideboard, so I'll have 2.
Another thought is to start including the Aven Mindcensor (that's getting dirt-cheap now as It's been reprinted) as the deck above makes alot of searches to usually find it's pieces (they play alot of fetches and Chord of calling). It's also a great card against many other decks.
I know how SF works. It stops the seer, kiki or whatever, unless they pay two. Ditto Ballista. It also does not die to damage, as it is an enchantment.
The answer by Bladewing is correct- activated abilities have colons between cost:effect.
Only mana abilities escape, and they are things that make mana (but don't target- if it were Modern legal DRS would be stopped by it despite its resolved ability making mana).
Persist is triggered. Melira is a static ability, but Seer and Kiki are activated.
Generally in order to stop said decks the Fields etc slow them down and enable you to deal with the men on board, they won't lock them unless you start wiping their mana concurrently- but that is a different deck.
Private Mod Note
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
Ey, people! How have your lists been working out lately?
Have you been playing anything Drmarkb? Still on the good ol' landkill/stax plan?
GP Copenhagen is barely 2 weeks away, and I'm heading there with my RW Deck, but it seems that many of our flock has abandoned our ship because of the blue uprising.
I'm really interested in hearing how you think our deck is doing in the current meta... as my own experiences are quite shaped by the decks people are playing here in Sweden.
Tiers are just a measurement of how much a deck is played in a meta, not how good it is.
Why would Chalice and Blood Moon be bad cards in the current meta, and why would Lightning Bolt be even remotely important?
1. Death's Shadow is currently 12% of the current meta. Chalice on 1 is amazing in this matchup, and so is Blood Moon, even if they play 1-2 Abrupt in Main.
2. Eldrazi Aggro is nearly 11%, here Chalice does pretty much nothing, but Blood Moon gives us time to handle the board with Anger and Wrath.
3. Affinity is still "Big" in the current meta, and here Chalice also makes a big difference.
4. Then we have UR Storm, Junk, Tron, Dredge, Creature Toolbox and Bant decks with collected company. Many of these decks we have at least a decent matchup against (Tron is hard, and the Creature Toolbox could be hard if we keep a bad hand).
I am still on Landkill first and foremst- RW planeswalker builds I would build with Bridge and Leyline main if I was actively going after that route. Modern output recently is very low,I have been doing fair chunks of Legacy in lieu. I like landkill because it is immune to a lot of meta shifts- it does best against cheat decks that try and kill you early thanks to SF and Chalice (every cheat decks normally cheats to a win with an activated ability repeatedly used, like lightning storm in Ad Nauseam or Seers in Melira or Bob Engraged/Grisselbrand in reanimator), and is strong vs non grindy aggro like hatebears and merfolk. Grindy BG-X matches can be boarded into and you always have a punchers chance if they have a greedy manabase. Its got a decent toolbox match too- those S fields and Magus really hurt them, unless they have infinite mana. Most decks run lands, so there is always a game, although Elves is hard.
I'm particularly facinated by Boil in the sideboard. Maybe this is the solution to merfolk as we were discussing? also the choice of rest in peace despite the Emrakul nahiri discard non-bo. i've moved my Laylines to the side since DSJ seems to be a little less played at the moment in my meta. anyone else finding this?
I think Rest in Peace is still a winner; the frequency it nonbos your Emrakul is pretty minor, and when it's good its great.
Have you tried playing around with maybe 1-2 Inspiring Vantage?
Your list looks alot like mine, and I like it alot!
I'm also eager to try out the new Cast Out instead of O-Ring/Banishing Light. It seems really good.
I'm also playing my Leylines in the sideboard, but it seems people here have different experiences of how much duty they do us in the mainboard.
No; I like 4 Rugged Prairie. It's a painless way to get on-color mana, and its extremely rare that it color screws me. When we land the blood moon it becomes a mountain anyways. The reason I want that instead of a fastland like Vantage is post-moon it comes in tapped (and shocks similarly come in tapped or cost us life). I find with virtually all of our sources being colored, the Rugged Prairie as a 4-of doesn't hurt anything.
(Personal opinion at least; obviously there are corner cases and times when someone is going to spreading seas screw us; but its rather rare)
On another note... back on the thoughts about including Heart of Kiran in the deck, but not in the maindeck.
Thinking out loud, our opponents will notice what we play during the first match, and most probably will board out their creature-removal (especially Paths etc. when they see us maindecking Chalices and not having any creatures). So I'm thinking about having 2 Heart of Kiran in my board, to increase my number of wincons in certain matchups... how do you guys feel about it?
It can't be used against decks that use alot of artifacts though, cuz then I'd rather board in my 4 Stony Silences, and that completely shuts down our Vehicle-ability. But I feel that maybe the surprise element of not just winning with Emrakul and/or Chandra could increase our win-percentage against some sideboards that our opponents think is smart against us
Heading to the last GPT this sunday, before going to GP Copenhagen in the end of this month.
I'm coming back with an update after this sunday on how it went.
I went 3-3 in total:
1-2 vs Merfolk. This matchup was pretty hard. I was very dependant on Anger of the Gods and Wrath showing up, which they did not. Also, Chalice does pretty much nothing against Cavern of Souls so... Blue is pretty hard for us, so I really tried finding 2 Boil before the GPT, but only found myself one. And that one, well it didn't show up.
2-0 vs Infect. Well, this matchup is pretty much the same as Death's Shadow for me (they don't like Blood Moon, they definately don't like to sacrifice their attacking creatures and they really hate Chalice on 1). Nothing much to say here to be honest, it was a walk in the park.
1-2 vs Burn. This is one of my best matchups, seriously. But my deck was completely messed up this time. Just drew lands, flodded each game and barely lost even the first game when chalice was on 1. I mulliganed several times game 2 and 3 to get something else than lands
1-2 vs Monoblue Control. Some kind of homebrew with Clique, Snapcasters, Cryptic, lots of counters, delver and Thing in the Ice. Won one very close game with my Gideon of the Trials, but the other two just went downhill. He bounced, countered and killed 3 of my Nahiris the last game with an amazing amount of on-spot responses to everything I tried to play. I was actually impressed it was that good
2-0 vs Affinity. Been playing this matchup pretty much, so I knew how to handle it. Chalice and Stony Silence together goes a long way, and match 2 i took 7 of his guys with an Anger of the Gods turn 3. Stablizing on 7 life and turning the match from there with my planeswalkers.
2-0 vs Minotaur Tribal. A really cool homebrew that I noticed wasn't that planned. He was playing BR and tried the new Minotaur lord with some old one from Theros, in a package of discard, Fatal push and some burn spells. Afterwards I got to see his deck, and gave him a few advices that he seemed to have missed (Get 3-4 Mutavaults, play Boros Reckoner and get yourself a playset of Boros Charms so you can protect your dudes from Anger/boardwipes and/or at the same time have more burn-spells)
This is the new, updated version I'm trying out post GPT, finding myself never wanting more than 4 lands I dropped down to 22 lands, and really loving how good the new Cast Out that Walked told me about is working out, i upped it to a whole playset. The cycling is so cheap for us it's a really flexible card to have multiples of. Also gonna try 2 Sun Droplets in the Board against early aggro to give me time to get my sweepers and stabilize my life.
What do you guys think? How have your weekend exploits with your own brews been? I'm curious!
How do people with Helixes even handle all the Goyfs and Death's Shadow crawling about? Anger handles everything with 3 toughness, why include another removal for X/3 creatures then?
Journey has actually been really awesome against several things but perhaps i don't need it with 4 Cast Out, so I'll see about changing them to something useful
As I said, the flooding is real with this deck, especially with 4 Simian Spirit Guides, 4 cyclers and 4 temple I never miss them.
For several weeks i always get my 4 lands, only to keep looting away land after land with Nahiri.
I have yet to find a moment where I dont get mana to play Gideon if I want to, as he is also a 3-drop (with anger and blood moon) there are alot of different plays we can do on turn 2-3, depending on the matchup. Blood moon as fast as posdible isnt always the best play
Mostly because I've been adjusting away from RW Prison lately. The rise of UW Control and Storm has made this a tricky deck to run successfully lately. It's not terrible, but I'm not running it on MTGO much lately. In paper UW Control and Storm are less of a thing (at least around here).
I'm waffling on this for SCG Baltimore later this month; I feel like it could fall flat.
Suppression Field is much better at nerfing those decks, its less fragile and stops fetchlands and seers et al rather than simply punishing them, but it can't be run in PW based prisons, which is a shame.
Viscera Seer's sac outlet is an activated ability, and will be hit by the Harsh Mentor.
As we don't have any aggressive cards that are dealing them any early game damage, they will just ping our little dude for 2 damage, and go nuts with their combo afterwards, without losing much more than a few lifepoints.
I'm finding my Linvala better than ever against this kind of deck, and It works wonders against many other decks too... And when playing 4 Simian Spirit Guides (and Chandra, that ramps) we can even deploy it earlier than turn 4 in several matches.
I'm even thinking about getting another one for the sideboard, so I'll have 2.
Another thought is to start including the Aven Mindcensor (that's getting dirt-cheap now as It's been reprinted) as the deck above makes alot of searches to usually find it's pieces (they play alot of fetches and Chord of calling). It's also a great card against many other decks.
The answer by Bladewing is correct- activated abilities have colons between cost:effect.
Only mana abilities escape, and they are things that make mana (but don't target- if it were Modern legal DRS would be stopped by it despite its resolved ability making mana).
Persist is triggered. Melira is a static ability, but Seer and Kiki are activated.
Generally in order to stop said decks the Fields etc slow them down and enable you to deal with the men on board, they won't lock them unless you start wiping their mana concurrently- but that is a different deck.
Have you been playing anything Drmarkb? Still on the good ol' landkill/stax plan?
GP Copenhagen is barely 2 weeks away, and I'm heading there with my RW Deck, but it seems that many of our flock has abandoned our ship because of the blue uprising.
I'm really interested in hearing how you think our deck is doing in the current meta... as my own experiences are quite shaped by the decks people are playing here in Sweden.
Why would Chalice and Blood Moon be bad cards in the current meta, and why would Lightning Bolt be even remotely important?
1. Death's Shadow is currently 12% of the current meta. Chalice on 1 is amazing in this matchup, and so is Blood Moon, even if they play 1-2 Abrupt in Main.
2. Eldrazi Aggro is nearly 11%, here Chalice does pretty much nothing, but Blood Moon gives us time to handle the board with Anger and Wrath.
3. Affinity is still "Big" in the current meta, and here Chalice also makes a big difference.
4. Then we have UR Storm, Junk, Tron, Dredge, Creature Toolbox and Bant decks with collected company. Many of these decks we have at least a decent matchup against (Tron is hard, and the Creature Toolbox could be hard if we keep a bad hand).