@zcowan Completely agree with Wrench Mind, I've seen lists run 4x. It's one of our best cards unless there are artifact decks running around.
Delirium Skeins is great against control. But hang onto it for a while. Make sure it's card advantage in your favor (don't 4-for-3 yourself!)
Smallpox is OK but it's never card advantage. We will never get a relevant creature so it's not the best.
The problem with Asylum Visitor is that your opponent will rarely be empty handed, but you're still probably be drawing two with it which is good.
I wouldn't overload on FoR or Ghost Quarter or whatever. We want all 4 Mutavaults and 4 Urborg can only pull you so far. Almost all your mana needs are colored. I could see 2 Strip Mine effects, 4 muta, 4 urborg in a 24 land deck.
I would cut the dismember in the UW match up. Probably cut all the Pushes. You have Brutality and Liliana if you need to kill a Snap. If they are hitting with Collonades you have probably lost or they are getting desperate and you've won. Plus you can keep a few Pox in. It's unlikely, but if you can keep them at 4 mana you're doing pretty well.
Don't bring in Leyline. It's not worth it. It really only shuts off Snapcaster but you just spent a card (or two!) to make 4 of their cards worse. They still get a 2/1 and you don't get anything. I think you just have to hope to discard the Snapcaster.
Id go
+3 Delirium Skeins
+3 Asylum Visitor
+1 Nezumi Shortfang
+1 Leyline
-2 Smallpox
-3 Fatal Push
-2 Ensnaring Bridge
-1 Rack
Im not high on Visitor or Nezumi but they are better than removal
Generally I side out 2 rack effects vs Control but you have a lot of bad cards main for this matchup. Funeral Charm helps with this, its always ok and it doesnt feel bad to leave it main after side.
Relic is a nice card to have in side, worst case it cantrips for two and often it provides value for 'free'
Teferi and Azcanta are biggest offenders in this matchup, I think Leyline is justified because it also helps vs Snapcaster
Delirium should be good. You want to play it empty handed to discard 2-3 cards. Collateral damage to white Leyline but Im not sure they play it nowadays
I think you want to play atleast 3 Wrench Minds, 8Rack got worse, we need to fight all this card advantage around
I think Field of Ruin is our next best choice after conventional lands but I dont know if it worth to cut Swamp. Definitely Im not cutting Urborg or Mutavault. It can be a nice option in side, mainly if Tron is big in your meta.
hi! first time posting here, would assassin's trophy make a G splash a viable option? the deck got weaker after the redirection rule but with this new card we now have a catch all instant removal.
I think 8 Rack cares much about card advantage. Path wasnt good and this can be mediocre too. Though there are green splashes already and this can be used as universal answer to problematic cards (Tron lands, Leyline, Chalice, Planeswalkers, Aszcanta), worth trying.
I've talked about this in other places so sorry if you've read this before but I am not a fan of Trophy in 8rack:
Trophy is a super powerful card that can answer any threat. But we already have a universal answer in Thoughtseize (it can't hit lands but we can pack other cards for land hate if we really need it). Toughtseize also works much better with our game plan of emptying our opponents hand at half the mana. But I'll stop talking about Thoughtseize since it isn't the obvious cut for Trophy.
But what would we actually cut? Our options include Wrench Mind, Smallpox, and Collective Brutality since we really can't raise the curve too much. Trophy is a 1-for-(almost)1. All of these three cards are 2-for-2s or better. We could have a conversation about how often Collective Brutality is actually a 2-for-2 or 3-for-3 but the reason to put it in the deck is to 2-for-2. This isn't exactly card advantage like @Timba said but it's attrition. The ideal scenario is that both players are empty handed and we have a rack or two out.
So the problem with Trophy is that it requires a lot of mana (yes, 2 is a lot of mana for this deck. We always take the draw so it's like a turn 3 play, we are behind on mana for most of the game) AND it ramps our opponent (now we are down even further on mana. And your opponent gets to cast their cards rather than them getting discarded). This is another reason why smallpox is so powerful. If we can make our opponent stumble on lands that means there are more cards we can make them discard and fewer threats we need to deal with on the board.
The funny thing is that Trophy will create a feedback loop. So if you play Trophy it will probably feel great. You'll say "look how many threats I need Trophy to deal with, this feels great!" but had you played smallpox your opponent would be landing fewer threats throughout the game.
So that's my take on Trophy in 8rack. This isn't to say that Trophy is a bad card, it's a great card in the right deck. But the current build of mono black 8rack is not the right deck. A deck that is already GB with goyfs will probably like this card since they have a bit more closing power but I've never played that version so I really can't comment.
to timba and old bag o bones, many thanks for sharing your thoughts regarding the card, i've really missed the card advantage aspect when evaluating the card, thank you!
Hmmm, this card is interesting. It's probably not worth it over Raven's Crime because it doesn't have Retrace, but it's nice to see some more solid one-mana discard spells being printed.
Vicious Rumors might have some utility against burn perhaps? I often find those games turn into a race with rack effects vs. top decked burn spells. That two life swing plus the one less card in hand for the burn player could go a long way. I don't see it being main boardable though and don't know what could be cut from the sideboard. Maybe a copy or two of delirium skeins since it also gets around Leylines?
hi guys! im still new to 8 rack and would like to ask your expertise to evaluate vampire hexmage as a sideboard card, i'm looking for a sideboard answer to chalice of the void and i got 2 candidates which are ratchet bomb and vampire hexmage. i'm leaning towards ratchet bomb since it can also answer lingering souls token. but i'd still like to ask for your opinion and what are the problematic planeswalker that 8rack encounters for vampire hexmage to have a shot as a sideboard.
Forget please chalice. It was 2% metashare last time i looked. If you ever face them so it happens...go on and waste no time frightening about in this meta
Further to that, I find Ratchet Bomb is a fantastic sideboard piece in almost any deck and definitely answers a lot of problem cards. Especially when we are mono black and lacking a lot of removal options in our color.
To answer your second question, I don't find Planeswalkers are generally a big problem for us. Most are 4 cost or higher (we aren't really worried about a mirror Liliana of the Veil) which gives us lots of time to force opponents to pitch them from their hand and/or keep them off of the necessary mana with Smallpox effects.
Forget please chalice. It was 2% metashare last time i looked. If you ever face them so it happens...go on and waste no time frightening about in this meta
thanks mtgthewary! but i'm playing in a small LGS, there's a mono u-tron playing there in which he had a chalice in the sideboard and experienced it first hand hehehe! it's my first time playing there, the decks i saw were: mono u tron / bw tokens / stompy / burn. since there's a token deck i might go with ratchet bomb. i need to play multiple events there until i can figure out the meta.
@Blue_Dragoon89, thanks! yeah i think ratchet bomb is great i'm playing the mono black 8rack but a budget version (without the lotv)
Vampire Hexmage isn't a usual inclusion but may be worth it. Our worst match ups: Tron and UWx both use planeswalkers to accrue advantage that we can't keep up with. So having a way to destroy them is pretty important. Making them discard their planeswalkers is a good option in the early game but we don't have enough land disruption or a fast enough clock to keep Tron or UWx off the mana they need to play their walkers given they top deck them later in the game. It's not a terrible sideboard option since it shores up at least 2 really bad match ups but Chalice decks (which like someone else said isn't a popular strategy).
Ratchet Bomb is a more standard inclusion in the sideboard and it can be good. It cleans up tokens and it isn't terrible when you start ticking it up to 1 or 2. But it's often too slow if that's your plan so it's really only useful for tokens and chalice.
So the question becomes: what do we want help against: PWs or tokens? We have Bridge and Bontu's for Tokens and we don't have anything for PWs. So you need to decide if 1 or 2 Hexmages in the board really helps your UWx and Tron match ups enough to consider inclusion, or if an extra token board wipe will seal the match up.
Vampire Hexmage isn't a usual inclusion but may be worth it. Our worst match ups: Tron and UWx both use planeswalkers to accrue advantage that we can't keep up with. So having a way to destroy them is pretty important. Making them discard their planeswalkers is a good option in the early game but we don't have enough land disruption or a fast enough clock to keep Tron or UWx off the mana they need to play their walkers given they top deck them later in the game. It's not a terrible sideboard option since it shores up at least 2 really bad match ups but Chalice decks (which like someone else said isn't a popular strategy).
Ratchet Bomb is a more standard inclusion in the sideboard and it can be good. It cleans up tokens and it isn't terrible when you start ticking it up to 1 or 2. But it's often too slow if that's your plan so it's really only useful for tokens and chalice.
So the question becomes: what do we want help against: PWs or tokens? We have Bridge and Bontu's for Tokens and we don't have anything for PWs. So you need to decide if 1 or 2 Hexmages in the board really helps your UWx and Tron match ups enough to consider inclusion, or if an extra token board wipe will seal the match up.
I was unaware that these were so problematic. The number of established/pro tier archetypes in my playgroup is pretty well represented but I don't actually ever run against these two specific decks. Disregard my earlier dismissal of the Hexmage.
Planeswalkers are a common problem for any Black based midrange / control deck. The back bone of our deck, and many similar decks, is the turn 1 discard spell like Thoughtseize and removal like Fatal Push. So our deck is hyper efficient 1-for-1s and keeping up with "draw a card every turn" or "exile a permanent every turn" is tough to combat.
You're right that Thoughtseize deals with the early game planeswalker but it doesn't help against the Jace that got scried to the top with a Serum Visions or a Karn that was found with Ancient Stirrings.
So in a meta of Tron / UWx / Humans, black midrange just isn't as powerful as it once was.
To preface what I'm about to write, I feel that it would be good to describe my experiences piloting 8rack in the past, and the issues that I found with the deck.
The largest issue that I found piloting 8rack was that we need certain things to come together in order for the deck to function as imagined. We need sufficient discard to not only disrupt the opponent, but to be able to make our Rack effects actually deal the necessary damage. Otherwise, the opponent can just play slow and hold cards, racing our ability to topdeck answers to their threat. We also need to draw sufficient lands to manage to cast everything. But, unless we have Raven's Crime or Liliana, every land we draw is going to be another card that the opponent doesn't have to discard. We also need to draw sufficient Rack effects to race the opponent. But every Rack effect we draw is not going to be a discard effect, and will again be parity for the opponent to hold cards.
So what 8rack needs are cards that break this parity. Thus, the value of cards like Wrench Mind and Smallpox, where each of those spells can remove multiples of the opponents. The problem with these cards is that they are not guaranteed to give us that break in parity. The opponent may be able to just discard an artifact, or to play around Smallpox to make it hit both players equally. Collective Brutality also helps break this parity, allowing us to transform otherwise dead lands or unneeded cards into what we need at that time. Again, though, there is no guarantee here. This is also one of the big reasons why, in the past, people tried dipping into colors like red for cards like Blightning. We need that two-for-one.
I was looking at ways to break this parity, and a card that jumped out to me is Experimental Frenzy. There are two big issues that I see though. The first is the converted mana cost, and the second is that it forces us into another color. Now, being forced into another color isn't so bad. Manabases can be built around this, and worse hurdles have been overcome. As for the converted mana cost, I found it very rare that we didn't get a fourth land drop during a game. So it is possible to include it, but could it be really worth it?
What it does for us, though, is allows us to break the parity. We can now just play discard spell after removal after Rack effect. Our curve lets us easily play many cards per turn with Frenzy. Even when we get cards stuck in hand, we can still use those for pitching to Collective Brutality or Raven's Crime. It essentially cranks the deck into a sort of "turbo-mode". I think that there could be a real use for this card in the deck, but it would require some testing.
You're correct that the card the deck is missing is a perfect two-for-one like Hymn to Tourach (even if it didn't say "random" it would be amazing). Currently, it's tough to keep up with our opponents even if they don't have a source of card advantage and if they land, say, a planeswalker that draws a card each turn we quickly start to fall behind. This is why the common wisdom is "always take the draw" because we need to keep our opponent's hand as empty as possible and them drawing an extra card on their turn 1 can pose a real problem.
Smallpox and Collective Brutality are similar in that neither really generates card advantage. We are spending Brutality plus a card from our hand to kill a creature and discard a spell. That's a 2-for-2. We cast Pox and we are probably discarding a card and sacrificing a land and only breaking parity in the "creature" department so that's a 3-for-3. These cards are still great in the deck because we need to get their hand empty asap but they aren't creating card advantage. So really, our main sources of card advantage are Liliana (after a few turns if things work out for us) and Wrench Mind.
If we include Experimental Frenzy we see a lot more cards and it doesn't mess with Raven's Crime or Collective Brutality. These are all good things, but what match ups does it really help against? There aren't many decks in modern that actively try to keep a full hand because full hands rarely matter in modern. What matters is board presence. 8rack capitalizes on this because the best way to create a board presence is to dump your hand onto the battlefield. Many decks are also playing Ensnaring Bridge to try to cheese out wins against the creature decks. But against these decks, card advantage generally doesn't help us. We could draw 2 more thoughtseizes and 2 more wrench minds and have the mana to cast them all but if the humans opponent has 1 card left in hand none of that mattered.
The decks that care about having a full hand are UWx control and that's about it right now. So yes, Experimental Frenzy seems like a fine sideboard card if you expect the game to go long. It's also a fine card against midrange decks that decide to just stop playing spells because they have a threat and need to race our racks. We already have cards that help in these match ups in mono black (and really, that 3-5 life you spend setting up a two color mana base often comes into play when racing so it's not trivial to splash). Against UWx we have Delirium Skeins which isn't perfect but it often empties their hand, then we just need to win before the planeswalker top-deck. Against midrange we have Pack Rat which is a must answer threat that can use up a lot of our opponent's resources so that we can win with either racks or rats. Again, this card isn't perfect but it's what's worked for me. Frenzy is a card worth testing, but as a sideboard 1 or 2-of, not a maindeck curve topper and I will explain why I think that:
Frenzy costs too much: 4 mana is a lot in this deck. Often playing 4 liliana and 2 Bridge feels like a high curve already. And both of those cards immediately affect the game. 4 mana is not trivial and often we want that fourth land to go towards a Raven's Crime, especially in the match ups Frenzy would be good in. We play a high land count to enable Raven's Crime and Smallpox, not to reliably play 4 drops.
Frenzy is a 4 mana do nothing: on turn 4 we often still have a couple cards in hand ready to destroy a creature / discard a bunch of cards. Rarely can we take a turn off, and a crucial turn at that, to play this. Remember that we always take the draw so we are almost always behind. All of our cards at 2 mana and above help us close the tempo gap, This creates an even bigger gap. There are many 4 mana cards that "just win the game" but that's not what we need, we are worried about tempo at every stage in the game.
Frenzy isn't good in many match ups: as I've detailed above, Frenzy is good when our opponent has lots of cards, but in match ups where our opponent quickly empties their hand (this is a lot of decks in the format) we can't spend the mana to play this becuase we are so far behind. We need to spend mana on more relevant interaction.
So I think Frenzy is a fine card and it does help in some situations, but it's too narrow to be a maindeck card in my opinion.
I didn't test with a sideboard, just wanted to see how it would work out. I included eight fetches to keep spells on top when I would hit a land clump. I also included a single Overgrown Tomb, expecting that being able to fetch for green could be good for sideboard options. White may be better, though. It worked exactly as I imagined it would, just chaining discard/Racks/removal/etc. Raven's Crime and Collective Brutality made great use of cards drawn that I couldn't play.
Man experimental frenzy looks amazing! I use to run a R/B rack deck a-long time ago, IOK into wrench mind into Blighting will just end games. I ran pack rat main board since thats the whole reason I wanted to build a deck that could support it in modern. I think its time to put the rack/rat deck back together with a 2 or 3 of EF. Portland GP is coming up and its the first time it has ever been modern. I also never knew about fall, my build was all about 2 for 1. Running 3 main board sweepers to just hose peoples threats that did make it on the board.
I didn't test with a sideboard, just wanted to see how it would work out. I included eight fetches to keep spells on top when I would hit a land clump. I also included a single Overgrown Tomb, expecting that being able to fetch for green could be good for sideboard options. White may be better, though. It worked exactly as I imagined it would, just chaining discard/Racks/removal/etc. Raven's Crime and Collective Brutality made great use of cards drawn that I couldn't play.
This looks interesting. I didnt play it and my initial thoughts are we want to play 4 Lilianas, 4 Ravens Crime not only because they are must have in traditional build but also they have synergy with "you cant play cards from your hand". Another thought we want something with flashback and jump-start but seems there nothing playable (Faithless Looting?) So Id replace one removal and probably Thoughtseize with Liliana and RC and replaced 1-2 lands with Urborg (life, revolt and shuffle convenience) and maybe some mana sink land. Blightning seems not needed while we arent even full on Wrench Minds. Also maybe 4 Experimental Frenzy is not optimal and 2-3 is better. Pack Rat can be also good because mana sink and absense of Smallpox. Im going to test it online, too bad Experimental Frenzy already jumped from jank rare and Blackcleave Cliffs are on the peak now.
Delirium Skeins is great against control. But hang onto it for a while. Make sure it's card advantage in your favor (don't 4-for-3 yourself!)
Smallpox is OK but it's never card advantage. We will never get a relevant creature so it's not the best.
The problem with Asylum Visitor is that your opponent will rarely be empty handed, but you're still probably be drawing two with it which is good.
I wouldn't overload on FoR or Ghost Quarter or whatever. We want all 4 Mutavaults and 4 Urborg can only pull you so far. Almost all your mana needs are colored. I could see 2 Strip Mine effects, 4 muta, 4 urborg in a 24 land deck.
I would cut the dismember in the UW match up. Probably cut all the Pushes. You have Brutality and Liliana if you need to kill a Snap. If they are hitting with Collonades you have probably lost or they are getting desperate and you've won. Plus you can keep a few Pox in. It's unlikely, but if you can keep them at 4 mana you're doing pretty well.
Don't bring in Leyline. It's not worth it. It really only shuts off Snapcaster but you just spent a card (or two!) to make 4 of their cards worse. They still get a 2/1 and you don't get anything. I think you just have to hope to discard the Snapcaster.
+3 Delirium Skeins
+3 Asylum Visitor
+1 Nezumi Shortfang
+1 Leyline
-2 Smallpox
-3 Fatal Push
-2 Ensnaring Bridge
-1 Rack
Im not high on Visitor or Nezumi but they are better than removal
Generally I side out 2 rack effects vs Control but you have a lot of bad cards main for this matchup. Funeral Charm helps with this, its always ok and it doesnt feel bad to leave it main after side.
Relic is a nice card to have in side, worst case it cantrips for two and often it provides value for 'free'
Teferi and Azcanta are biggest offenders in this matchup, I think Leyline is justified because it also helps vs Snapcaster
Delirium should be good. You want to play it empty handed to discard 2-3 cards. Collateral damage to white Leyline but Im not sure they play it nowadays
I think you want to play atleast 3 Wrench Minds, 8Rack got worse, we need to fight all this card advantage around
I think Field of Ruin is our next best choice after conventional lands but I dont know if it worth to cut Swamp. Definitely Im not cutting Urborg or Mutavault. It can be a nice option in side, mainly if Tron is big in your meta.
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
Trophy is a super powerful card that can answer any threat. But we already have a universal answer in Thoughtseize (it can't hit lands but we can pack other cards for land hate if we really need it). Toughtseize also works much better with our game plan of emptying our opponents hand at half the mana. But I'll stop talking about Thoughtseize since it isn't the obvious cut for Trophy.
But what would we actually cut? Our options include Wrench Mind, Smallpox, and Collective Brutality since we really can't raise the curve too much. Trophy is a 1-for-(almost)1. All of these three cards are 2-for-2s or better. We could have a conversation about how often Collective Brutality is actually a 2-for-2 or 3-for-3 but the reason to put it in the deck is to 2-for-2. This isn't exactly card advantage like @Timba said but it's attrition. The ideal scenario is that both players are empty handed and we have a rack or two out.
So the problem with Trophy is that it requires a lot of mana (yes, 2 is a lot of mana for this deck. We always take the draw so it's like a turn 3 play, we are behind on mana for most of the game) AND it ramps our opponent (now we are down even further on mana. And your opponent gets to cast their cards rather than them getting discarded). This is another reason why smallpox is so powerful. If we can make our opponent stumble on lands that means there are more cards we can make them discard and fewer threats we need to deal with on the board.
The funny thing is that Trophy will create a feedback loop. So if you play Trophy it will probably feel great. You'll say "look how many threats I need Trophy to deal with, this feels great!" but had you played smallpox your opponent would be landing fewer threats throughout the game.
So that's my take on Trophy in 8rack. This isn't to say that Trophy is a bad card, it's a great card in the right deck. But the current build of mono black 8rack is not the right deck. A deck that is already GB with goyfs will probably like this card since they have a bit more closing power but I've never played that version so I really can't comment.
To answer your second question, I don't find Planeswalkers are generally a big problem for us. Most are 4 cost or higher (we aren't really worried about a mirror Liliana of the Veil) which gives us lots of time to force opponents to pitch them from their hand and/or keep them off of the necessary mana with Smallpox effects.
thanks mtgthewary! but i'm playing in a small LGS, there's a mono u-tron playing there in which he had a chalice in the sideboard and experienced it first hand hehehe! it's my first time playing there, the decks i saw were: mono u tron / bw tokens / stompy / burn. since there's a token deck i might go with ratchet bomb. i need to play multiple events there until i can figure out the meta.
@Blue_Dragoon89, thanks! yeah i think ratchet bomb is great i'm playing the mono black 8rack but a budget version (without the lotv)
Ratchet Bomb is a more standard inclusion in the sideboard and it can be good. It cleans up tokens and it isn't terrible when you start ticking it up to 1 or 2. But it's often too slow if that's your plan so it's really only useful for tokens and chalice.
So the question becomes: what do we want help against: PWs or tokens? We have Bridge and Bontu's for Tokens and we don't have anything for PWs. So you need to decide if 1 or 2 Hexmages in the board really helps your UWx and Tron match ups enough to consider inclusion, or if an extra token board wipe will seal the match up.
I was unaware that these were so problematic. The number of established/pro tier archetypes in my playgroup is pretty well represented but I don't actually ever run against these two specific decks. Disregard my earlier dismissal of the Hexmage.
You're right that Thoughtseize deals with the early game planeswalker but it doesn't help against the Jace that got scried to the top with a Serum Visions or a Karn that was found with Ancient Stirrings.
So in a meta of Tron / UWx / Humans, black midrange just isn't as powerful as it once was.
The largest issue that I found piloting 8rack was that we need certain things to come together in order for the deck to function as imagined. We need sufficient discard to not only disrupt the opponent, but to be able to make our Rack effects actually deal the necessary damage. Otherwise, the opponent can just play slow and hold cards, racing our ability to topdeck answers to their threat. We also need to draw sufficient lands to manage to cast everything. But, unless we have Raven's Crime or Liliana, every land we draw is going to be another card that the opponent doesn't have to discard. We also need to draw sufficient Rack effects to race the opponent. But every Rack effect we draw is not going to be a discard effect, and will again be parity for the opponent to hold cards.
So what 8rack needs are cards that break this parity. Thus, the value of cards like Wrench Mind and Smallpox, where each of those spells can remove multiples of the opponents. The problem with these cards is that they are not guaranteed to give us that break in parity. The opponent may be able to just discard an artifact, or to play around Smallpox to make it hit both players equally. Collective Brutality also helps break this parity, allowing us to transform otherwise dead lands or unneeded cards into what we need at that time. Again, though, there is no guarantee here. This is also one of the big reasons why, in the past, people tried dipping into colors like red for cards like Blightning. We need that two-for-one.
I was looking at ways to break this parity, and a card that jumped out to me is Experimental Frenzy. There are two big issues that I see though. The first is the converted mana cost, and the second is that it forces us into another color. Now, being forced into another color isn't so bad. Manabases can be built around this, and worse hurdles have been overcome. As for the converted mana cost, I found it very rare that we didn't get a fourth land drop during a game. So it is possible to include it, but could it be really worth it?
What it does for us, though, is allows us to break the parity. We can now just play discard spell after removal after Rack effect. Our curve lets us easily play many cards per turn with Frenzy. Even when we get cards stuck in hand, we can still use those for pitching to Collective Brutality or Raven's Crime. It essentially cranks the deck into a sort of "turbo-mode". I think that there could be a real use for this card in the deck, but it would require some testing.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
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Smallpox and Collective Brutality are similar in that neither really generates card advantage. We are spending Brutality plus a card from our hand to kill a creature and discard a spell. That's a 2-for-2. We cast Pox and we are probably discarding a card and sacrificing a land and only breaking parity in the "creature" department so that's a 3-for-3. These cards are still great in the deck because we need to get their hand empty asap but they aren't creating card advantage. So really, our main sources of card advantage are Liliana (after a few turns if things work out for us) and Wrench Mind.
If we include Experimental Frenzy we see a lot more cards and it doesn't mess with Raven's Crime or Collective Brutality. These are all good things, but what match ups does it really help against? There aren't many decks in modern that actively try to keep a full hand because full hands rarely matter in modern. What matters is board presence. 8rack capitalizes on this because the best way to create a board presence is to dump your hand onto the battlefield. Many decks are also playing Ensnaring Bridge to try to cheese out wins against the creature decks. But against these decks, card advantage generally doesn't help us. We could draw 2 more thoughtseizes and 2 more wrench minds and have the mana to cast them all but if the humans opponent has 1 card left in hand none of that mattered.
The decks that care about having a full hand are UWx control and that's about it right now. So yes, Experimental Frenzy seems like a fine sideboard card if you expect the game to go long. It's also a fine card against midrange decks that decide to just stop playing spells because they have a threat and need to race our racks. We already have cards that help in these match ups in mono black (and really, that 3-5 life you spend setting up a two color mana base often comes into play when racing so it's not trivial to splash). Against UWx we have Delirium Skeins which isn't perfect but it often empties their hand, then we just need to win before the planeswalker top-deck. Against midrange we have Pack Rat which is a must answer threat that can use up a lot of our opponent's resources so that we can win with either racks or rats. Again, this card isn't perfect but it's what's worked for me. Frenzy is a card worth testing, but as a sideboard 1 or 2-of, not a maindeck curve topper and I will explain why I think that:
Frenzy costs too much: 4 mana is a lot in this deck. Often playing 4 liliana and 2 Bridge feels like a high curve already. And both of those cards immediately affect the game. 4 mana is not trivial and often we want that fourth land to go towards a Raven's Crime, especially in the match ups Frenzy would be good in. We play a high land count to enable Raven's Crime and Smallpox, not to reliably play 4 drops.
Frenzy is a 4 mana do nothing: on turn 4 we often still have a couple cards in hand ready to destroy a creature / discard a bunch of cards. Rarely can we take a turn off, and a crucial turn at that, to play this. Remember that we always take the draw so we are almost always behind. All of our cards at 2 mana and above help us close the tempo gap, This creates an even bigger gap. There are many 4 mana cards that "just win the game" but that's not what we need, we are worried about tempo at every stage in the game.
Frenzy isn't good in many match ups: as I've detailed above, Frenzy is good when our opponent has lots of cards, but in match ups where our opponent quickly empties their hand (this is a lot of decks in the format) we can't spend the mana to play this becuase we are so far behind. We need to spend mana on more relevant interaction.
So I think Frenzy is a fine card and it does help in some situations, but it's too narrow to be a maindeck card in my opinion.
// 4 Artifact
4 The Rack
// 8 Enchantment
4 Shrieking Affliction
4 Experimental Frenzy
// 5 Instant
2 Dismember
3 Fatal Push
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Overgrown Tomb
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Blood Crypt
8 Swamp
3 Liliana of the Veil
// 17 Sorcery
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
4 Collective Brutality
3 Raven's Crime
3 Wrench Mind
I didn't test with a sideboard, just wanted to see how it would work out. I included eight fetches to keep spells on top when I would hit a land clump. I also included a single Overgrown Tomb, expecting that being able to fetch for green could be good for sideboard options. White may be better, though. It worked exactly as I imagined it would, just chaining discard/Racks/removal/etc. Raven's Crime and Collective Brutality made great use of cards drawn that I couldn't play.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!