I think the new Gideon is intended to combo with the Platinum Angel reprint. And speaking of reprints, I just noticed that Scribe of the Mindful is a cheaper to cast functional reprint of Archaeomancer which I think is rather telling considering that one of the new Gods is Kefnet the Mindful.
And while we are on the subject, does anyone think that the new blue mana God Kefnet the Mindful would possibly be worth running for "Cruel Control" modern constructed?
Gideon of the Trials doesn't combo at all with Platinum Angel. The angel is in no way playable outside of MAYBE mono-u Tron, and was only reprinted as a Masterpiece. A little nitpick is that the Scribe is not a functional reprint, they do similar things but are definitely different. I think Kefnet is better as a sideboard card, as it can do almost nothing early game and the ability is very expensive. Against control, the card seems great though. It's main weakness is Path to Exile.
We don't not often have 7 cards in hand, Esper Control can run this god better if at all.
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Level 1 Judge
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
I am a little confused how these could be said that they are not intended to be combos or are functional reprints? Its obvious that at least wizards of the coast is implying such. In the case of Gideon and the Angel they have the synastry to be a combo and the Scribe basically has the function and purpose of archaeomancer.
Granted, there are differences. Archaeomancer has an enter the battlefield effect which probably has the most synastry itself with blue decks implementing red and white meanwhile and Scribe of the Mindful is obviously intended to work with a mostly black mana deck improvising red and blue with the sacrifice ability. Other than that, they are the same exact function which means a functional reprint. Thats what a functional reprint is and slight differences doesn't mean that they didn't copy-paste on their end and went, "ummm lets change this to fit our color theme this print block." Its obvious thats what went on here in making this card.
Gideon and the Angel, wizards probably made this Gideon thinking people would be bit by the nostalgia of having those same effects. Of course, we have not seen all of the cards yet and its possible that wizards might reprint some cards or have made similar ones like Master Transmuter or Darksteel Forge to fit into the next standard environment. At least something is up at least.
The card Kefnet the Mindful itself, I think the only way it could be played in modern constructed is together with Tamiyo, the Moon Sage mainboarded together with cards that increase hand size. Other than that, its not going to help you when you need lands and they are shuffled entirely into the back of your deck somewhere. Its probably going to mana screw you more if ever you even manage to get it out on the board in the first place.
That's interesting ... I wonder if this card Cruel Reality in combination is going to make Dark Intimations more playable?
Edit: it looks more and more like wizards wants grixis to be the deck that kills planeswalkers and creatures which is good since white and green both have exile and enchantment destruction while grixis doesn't.
That's interesting ... I wonder if this card Cruel Reality in combination is going to make Dark Intimations more playable?
Edit: it looks more and more like wizards wants grixis to be the deck that kills planeswalkers and creatures which is good since white and green both have exile and enchantment destruction while grixis doesn't.
I don't see how the two cards are related...
Grixis will be defined by the combination of its colors, not the identity of its color pie. Grixis will be able to do blue red and black things in general. Our archetype is more important to define our identity.
We have not seen whether or not yet Cruel Ultimatum is getting a reprint becoming standard legal, but my implication was more along the line that it looks like they are splitting what Cruel Ultimatum would do into multiple cards and that makes me wonder whether or not that is a good thing for Cruel Control in general. Sometimes less is more.
So over the past 24 or so hours since my last post, I got to playing around with my deck and the new Kefnet the Mindful card, and I discovered how he could be used in a modern Cruel Control deck.
Basically you would have to tailor your deck around playing all 4 of these cards together:
You can use Jhoira of the Ghitu to cheat Omniscience into play for 2 mana after casting her through the suspend mechanic, meanwhileTamiyo, the Moon Sage gives you unlimited hand size and no cards go to graveyard, back to hand when you flip her ultimate.
After you flip the Tamiyo, the Moon Sage ultimate and/or along with Omniscience on the board, you can tap all of your land cards and get extra cards each turn with Kefnet the Mindful and/or you'll have enough cards in hand to attack.
This is my decklist which I have been experimenting with over the past day or so:
You know that the masterpiece series cards aren't automatically all standard legal, right? Also there's more holes in that combo strategy of yours than there are in a slice of swiss cheese, as usual. I'll stick to playing efficient threats and disruption spells than another complicated Dlanze combo, thanks.
Actually haven't been playing much Cruel recently though. Last games I had with it were pretty subpar and I'm planning on bringing Rakdos Burn to GP Vegas, so it's been a few weeks since I've last touched the good ol' UBR. Has anyone else come up any new tech recently that might spice the build up? Anything new from Amonkhet yet that will change anything?
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-Modern- UUBBBRR Cruel Control BRG BRgBurn BR URStorm
-Commander- B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired] GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
Not yet, but it does look promising that wizards is powering up spells again.
There is still a lot of graveyard hate so combos are not going to work out for us lol
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Level 1 Judge
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
@Dlanze Your "combo" version of this deck is trying to get together 4 different 1-ofs that are all extremely slow (you have no tutors in your list!), wait till turn 8 for Omniscience, and then ultimate Tamiyo somehow. Kefnet doesn't even work will this at all, you are better off casting Cruel Ultimatum a bajillion times when you have the combo together. It seems very clunky and unusable, and it almost an entirely different deck. It is also incredibly easy to disrupt, with a simple lightning bolt to kill your Joira before you suspend the Omniscience. This simply will not work in any competitive manner.
During my own play testing, all the removal in main and sideboard I have is sufficient to win the game on their own without that combo. Having the combo only adds an extra win condition; its not that crippling to yourself and the CMC is sitting right at 3 even though Omniscience is 10 mana, so it should be ok speedwise. The deck itself is capable of delaying the game enough to cast Omniscience without the suspend ability of Jhoira of the Ghitu.
However, the deck itself is actually faster than using Jhoira of the Ghitu's suspend ability for anything other than casting Omniscience; for example, in most games you'll get lands and mana faster than than you can get out Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker with Jhoira of the Ghitu ability, so you might as well just wait to cast him with actual lands unless you want the lands free for tapping for some reason.
If one would flip Tamiyo, the Moon Sage's ultimate in a game and also would have Omniscience on the board with having any card which could be cast from the hand that effects your opponents life total (and they can give no answers) you have automatically won the game at that point.
Dlanze, Cruel Control as a deck has ZERO space for these stupid combos when it's trying to grind the damn game out. We've done this song and dance with you 900 ******* times and it's gotten way past old. You come up with a stupid combo, we tell you why it's bad or why it won't work, you ***** on us for doing so or ignore everything we say entirely, spout on about ethics and synastry (which is something to do with Astrological Signs from what I looked up? Are you sure you don't mean to use the word "Synergy"?) and the way wizards intends for things to be used even though nobody's enforcing any of that, spout off about how the anti-Dlanze illuminati is out to discredit your combos, find out for yourself that your combos are garbage and never work, and leave for weeks.
All it takes for this combo to crumble is to take out one of the pieces. Tamiyo takes 4 turns to go off, Jhoira dies to everything, Omniscience is a 10 mana spell that does nothing if you have nothing to cast and is only good in Commander or in the Narset Reanimator shell, and doing all of this just to get a 3 mana 5/5 that dies to path to function correctly is inefficient beyond words.
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-Modern- UUBBBRR Cruel Control BRG BRgBurn BR URStorm
-Commander- B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired] GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
You know, instead of looking like a terribly overcritical human being overreacting to the contents of a deck in a card game, you could just say that this new bolas set has spoiled too many jank cards so far for any competitive players tastes which appears to be true.
But I do believe this blue mana God is at least less janky than the red one spoiled.
And taking that it seems that I am the only one looking for ways to use these new cards, even though they are probably not that useful is sad considering that people would rather overreact than do anything constructive with what might be there.
But as far as my purpose for posting these 4 cards for discussion, I still ascertain that so far the blue God is the most useful out of the other jank spoiled and that this is the best way I could find to use the blue God in our deck.
Whether or not it is a good idea or not is an individual choice, regardless of debate.
Oh my god, you ******* imbecile, we told you it was too janky to work the first ******* time and you just ignored us. Maybe if you weren't a dense ******* moron with an "I'm right, you're wrong" complex, people wouldn't snap at you for derailing the ******* thread for the BILLIONTH. *******. TIME. with jank **** combos that only exist to make janky cards work.
I'm done here until you're gone, this thread's going to go nowhere as long as you're here thread*****ting. I swear to **** EVERY time I check back in just to see if anything new has come up for this deck that I want to do well competitively, you're here spewing out some stupid combo. Pull your head out of your ******* ass, Dlanze.
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Warning for Flaming ~Lantern
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
-Modern- UUBBBRR Cruel Control BRG BRgBurn BR URStorm
-Commander- B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired] GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
This overreaction is strictly worse than anything I could ever suggest. I would suggest maybe using a bit more blue in real life to think before you post and avoid looking strictly worse than your human potential. My 2 cents.
The thread was actually bringing in a lot of helpful insight until Dlanze showed back up. I can say that some of his ideas are interesting (still bad IMO), but it really does completely derail any reasonable discussion about COMPETITIVE Cruel Control. Competitive is the key word here. Almost all of your ideas will NOT work in the established meta. Keeping this thread on topic should be a no brainer. It has helped me and many other people find a fun and crazy deck to play and enjoy competitively. Lets keep it that way.
All I am going to say in my defense is that when aether revolt came out, people were thinking that Dark Intimations would be a card we could use in our deck, until people playtested it and it turned out to be jank. Now here is a card people assume is jank, you do anything showing that it is useful using at least 90 percent of cards that are already suggested in this primer as the engine ... and thats bad?
Thats a bit of a double standard, but I appreciate the reasonable response even though you made an attempt to single me out.
Thanks Dlanze. I understand the affect playtesting cards can have with sifting out the jank (for the record, I'm still playing Dark Intimations in the sideboard) but what you were putting forth is inherently non-competitive. You simply CANNOT assume that you can and will draw all 4 of your engine cards with no tutors to go off. By all means, if you find that it is fun go for it. Tell us how you do. I for one would be fascinated if it ends up working. My suggestion would be to either play some tutors or increase the amount of your engine cards. But I wouldn't post anything about it until you have a significant amount of testing done with it. That is the only way to know if it is good or not. I do not believe that what I am saying is a double standard, but if you think that is a fair assessment that is fine by me.
You are completely missing a critical point I have been making all along. You can win with the decklist outright without drawing any of those 4 cards and none of them have a negative effect when you do draw them. You just play them towards the end of the game.
Stop overreacting and start looking at the fact that the rest of the deck is competitive enough to chose to play these cards if one wanted.
Gideon of the Trials doesn't combo at all with Platinum Angel. The angel is in no way playable outside of MAYBE mono-u Tron, and was only reprinted as a Masterpiece. A little nitpick is that the Scribe is not a functional reprint, they do similar things but are definitely different. I think Kefnet is better as a sideboard card, as it can do almost nothing early game and the ability is very expensive. Against control, the card seems great though. It's main weakness is Path to Exile.
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
I am a little confused how these could be said that they are not intended to be combos or are functional reprints? Its obvious that at least wizards of the coast is implying such. In the case of Gideon and the Angel they have the synastry to be a combo and the Scribe basically has the function and purpose of archaeomancer.
Granted, there are differences. Archaeomancer has an enter the battlefield effect which probably has the most synastry itself with blue decks implementing red and white meanwhile and Scribe of the Mindful is obviously intended to work with a mostly black mana deck improvising red and blue with the sacrifice ability. Other than that, they are the same exact function which means a functional reprint. Thats what a functional reprint is and slight differences doesn't mean that they didn't copy-paste on their end and went, "ummm lets change this to fit our color theme this print block." Its obvious thats what went on here in making this card.
Gideon and the Angel, wizards probably made this Gideon thinking people would be bit by the nostalgia of having those same effects. Of course, we have not seen all of the cards yet and its possible that wizards might reprint some cards or have made similar ones like Master Transmuter or Darksteel Forge to fit into the next standard environment. At least something is up at least.
The card Kefnet the Mindful itself, I think the only way it could be played in modern constructed is together with Tamiyo, the Moon Sage mainboarded together with cards that increase hand size. Other than that, its not going to help you when you need lands and they are shuffled entirely into the back of your deck somewhere. Its probably going to mana screw you more if ever you even manage to get it out on the board in the first place.
Edit: Liliana, Death's Majesty could make a constructed grixis deck implementing Gifts Ungiven more playable along with Scribe of the Mindful.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
Edit: it looks more and more like wizards wants grixis to be the deck that kills planeswalkers and creatures which is good since white and green both have exile and enchantment destruction while grixis doesn't.
Grixis will be defined by the combination of its colors, not the identity of its color pie. Grixis will be able to do blue red and black things in general. Our archetype is more important to define our identity.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
Basically you would have to tailor your deck around playing all 4 of these cards together:
You can use Jhoira of the Ghitu to cheat Omniscience into play for 2 mana after casting her through the suspend mechanic, meanwhileTamiyo, the Moon Sage gives you unlimited hand size and no cards go to graveyard, back to hand when you flip her ultimate.
After you flip the Tamiyo, the Moon Sage ultimate and/or along with Omniscience on the board, you can tap all of your land cards and get extra cards each turn with Kefnet the Mindful and/or you'll have enough cards in hand to attack.
This is my decklist which I have been experimenting with over the past day or so:
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Island
1x Mountain
4x Polluted Delta
1x Reflecting Pool
4x Smoldering Marsh
1x Steam Vents
2x Sulfur Falls
4x Sunken Hollow
1x Swamp
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Planeswalker (3)
1x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
1x Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1x Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
Instant (12)
3x Cryptic Command
1x Fatal Push
2x Kolaghan's Command
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Terminate
2x Anger of the Gods
2x Cruel Ultimatum
2x Damnation
2x Dreadbore
4x Serum Visions
Artifact (3)
1x Chromatic Lantern
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Pithing Needle
Creature (5)
1x Jhoira of the Ghitu
1x Kefnet the Mindful
2x Snapcaster Mage
1x Torrential Gearhulk
Enchantment (1)
1x Omniscience
2x Collective Brutality
2x Dispel
2x Duress
1x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Izzet Staticaster
2x Kiora's Dismissal
2x To the Slaughter
2x Vandalblast
Actually haven't been playing much Cruel recently though. Last games I had with it were pretty subpar and I'm planning on bringing Rakdos Burn to GP Vegas, so it's been a few weeks since I've last touched the good ol' UBR. Has anyone else come up any new tech recently that might spice the build up? Anything new from Amonkhet yet that will change anything?
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
There is still a lot of graveyard hate so combos are not going to work out for us lol
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
During my own play testing, all the removal in main and sideboard I have is sufficient to win the game on their own without that combo. Having the combo only adds an extra win condition; its not that crippling to yourself and the CMC is sitting right at 3 even though Omniscience is 10 mana, so it should be ok speedwise. The deck itself is capable of delaying the game enough to cast Omniscience without the suspend ability of Jhoira of the Ghitu.
However, the deck itself is actually faster than using Jhoira of the Ghitu's suspend ability for anything other than casting Omniscience; for example, in most games you'll get lands and mana faster than than you can get out Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker with Jhoira of the Ghitu ability, so you might as well just wait to cast him with actual lands unless you want the lands free for tapping for some reason.
If one would flip Tamiyo, the Moon Sage's ultimate in a game and also would have Omniscience on the board with having any card which could be cast from the hand that effects your opponents life total (and they can give no answers) you have automatically won the game at that point.
All it takes for this combo to crumble is to take out one of the pieces. Tamiyo takes 4 turns to go off, Jhoira dies to everything, Omniscience is a 10 mana spell that does nothing if you have nothing to cast and is only good in Commander or in the Narset Reanimator shell, and doing all of this just to get a 3 mana 5/5 that dies to path to function correctly is inefficient beyond words.
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
But I do believe this blue mana God is at least less janky than the red one spoiled.
And taking that it seems that I am the only one looking for ways to use these new cards, even though they are probably not that useful is sad considering that people would rather overreact than do anything constructive with what might be there.
But as far as my purpose for posting these 4 cards for discussion, I still ascertain that so far the blue God is the most useful out of the other jank spoiled and that this is the best way I could find to use the blue God in our deck.
Whether or not it is a good idea or not is an individual choice, regardless of debate.
I'm done here until you're gone, this thread's going to go nowhere as long as you're here thread*****ting. I swear to **** EVERY time I check back in just to see if anything new has come up for this deck that I want to do well competitively, you're here spewing out some stupid combo. Pull your head out of your ******* ass, Dlanze.
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
Thats a bit of a double standard, but I appreciate the reasonable response even though you made an attempt to single me out.
Stop overreacting and start looking at the fact that the rest of the deck is competitive enough to chose to play these cards if one wanted.