Could Garruk Wildspeaker work in this deck? I'm not gonna spend 30€ a piece on Chandras, so if he could be a budget replacement. If you have Utopia Sprawl and Arbor Elf on turn 2, you can cast Garruk AND a Stone Rain/Blood Moon. His other abilities aren't bad either.
Chandra ToD is legit and it's certainly unfortunate that she's being played all over the Standard metagame. I picked up my one-of when they were ~$18 and even that seemed excessive at the time, so I'm in no hurry to shell out for additional copies until either the Standard game shifts away from her or she rotates. I haven't experimented with Wildspeaker, but Garruk, Primal Hunter has performed well for me in the past along with Nissa, Vital Force. ToD is the real deal, but unless you're planning on competing at a GP/PTQ then you can manage without her. Ideally, I'd run two copies of ToD alongside a single GPH, but you can fill those slots with any of the other walkers that show up in ponza tourney lists or just boost up your copies of Stormbreath/Wurcoil/etc. I don't like to run more than two Inferno Titan, but I'd have no problem playing a full set of Stormbreath if I had the slots to fill. With the "new" legends rule being retroactively applied to Planeswalkers with the release of Ixalan, I've been considering the possibility of running multiple versions of Chandra; just haven't had the time to look into it much and determine what/if anything would be worth of testing.
Few remarks :
- I haven't yet the 3 of Chandra ToD, soon maybe, I ll wait
- 0 beast within : Why? I thought it would fit well in a GDD~ shell
- 10 fetches : Not too painful in the end? I get the point of cleaning deck tho.
- Any thoughts about Abrade main deck / sb ?
Chandra TOD, like so many of us said, is good. But there are other viable budget alternatives.
I still don' know when to use beast within properly and not used to giving an opponent a 3/3 but it is a good card. More testing from my side needed. It's competing with abrade for a place in the deck. I don't run abrade as there are more dredge players than affinity in my meta so I'm playing with the numbers with angers over abrade and hoping for the best. If Rock or humans company takes off, then beast within should be better. Ponza got a problem with removing any X/5 or bigger toughness creatures.
I'm trying more fetch as I'm rather talented in drawing 5 basic forests for my first 5 lands.... Double red is needed to function consistently for my deck list. I may go back to 8 fetches if this doesn't work out.
PPTQ tomorrow. I have added a temple garden to my main, and dropped a fetch. My sideboard now has triple RIP, double stony and an eidolon of rhetoric.
White splash gets a trial by fire.
Good luck bud. Hope the splash works out!
For Chandra tod, even post rotation I doubt she drops below 20$. She's that good. There are many games that she allows you to win that no other walker can. Garruk isn't a budget option since he does something entirely different. Play flamecaller if you want a budget friendly one.
Went 4-0
Bye 0-0
Skred Red 2-0
Griselbrand Reanimator 2-1
UW Control 2-0
Didn't see Dragonlord Atarka once so no further testing there. I really liked my mixed removal package.
Let's assume you decided to keep experimenting with D.Lord Atarka; would you see any merit in running some number of cavern of souls naming dragon? I'm curious if it would benefit a build that includes 4x Stormbreath in addition to some number of Chameleon Colossus? I'm aware of the obvious Blood Moon non-bo, but it's some tech I've been mulling over lately.
These guys do modern Mondays and focus on a particular deck every week. They try but don't always have it play against t1 decks and try to include good and bad matchups. Tomorrow the featured deck is ponza. Tune in at 7pm central or catch the rebroadcast if interested.
I went 3-3 at the PPTQ. The temple garden cost me several games, and the extra raw power of the white SB cards didn't make up for it. If not for the garden I go 4-2 easy.
Matchups
Round 1 0-2 loss to Bant knightfall (AGAIN!!!) with vizier combo in it. Game 2 drew 2 RIPS but never had a fetch or sprawl and died to a knight.
Round 2 0-2 loss to red white humans. An aggro humans deck with blood moon, lightning helix and boros charm. Temple garden cost me game 2 single handedly
Round 3 2-0 win vs Grixis deaths shadow (rip helped)
Round 4 2-1 win vs Eldrazi Tron (stony helped)
Round 5 1-2 loss to deaths shadow (Temple garden somewhat cost me game 3)
Round 6 2-0 win vs Boros Burn
What can I say? I hate me some Bant company. F**k that deck.
I went 3-3 at the PPTQ. The temple garden cost me several games, and the extra raw power of the white SB cards didn't make up for it. If not for the garden I go 4-2 easy.
Matchups
Round 1 0-2 loss to Bant knightfall (AGAIN!!!) with vizier combo in it. Game 2 drew 2 RIPS but never had a fetch or sprawl and died to a knight.
Round 2 0-2 loss to red white humans. An aggro humans deck with blood moon, lightning helix and boros charm. Temple garden cost me game 2 single handedly
Round 3 2-0 win vs Grixis deaths shadow (rip helped)
Round 4 2-1 win vs Eldrazi Tron (stony helped)
Round 5 1-2 loss to deaths shadow (Temple garden somewhat cost me game 3)
Round 6 2-0 win vs Boros Burn
What can I say? I hate me some Bant company. F**k that deck.
Damn son. Can you go into more details on how the garden caused the losses?
You running Abrades at all? Feel like they would help in the bant matchup.
Wish you had played affinity though. Would have been a good judge on whether or not the white splash is truly worth it.
Hello all. New to the deck, not the format as I have piloted Living End to a lot of local tournament success. However, I wanted to expand my Modern range to another deck that was able to take advantage of other metas so that when LE is bad I can still have a successful event.
I chose Ponza because:
1.) Fulminator Mage is a card I love and though some of my LE brothers and sisters have eschewed him for other cards, I still think the LD subtheme is what gives the deck it's sticking power. And I have no reservations about winning through mana denial. Bring on the salt.
2.) I played two Blood Moons in my sideboard for the last 2 PPTQs and sided it in 10 of 12 matches. My choices were alter Living End to be a Blood Moon deck or play a deck where Bloon Moon is part of Plan A.
3.) The deck is still a rogue deck, as I love free wins from playing against people with minimal experience. Someone played the deck against me, and while I won, I was extremely lucky as I had no idea how to beat the deck and was still confused after Game 3. I am not the end all be all of Modern, but that happens to me very rarely, even with fringe decks since I'm such a fan of rogue strategies and I consume a lot of content. And isn't graveyard based, so it's a good change of pace that will cross up anyone trying to shark me and my typical deck.
4.) I own all the relevant fetches and many staples, meaning my price to get into the deck was quite minimal for Modern.
5.) The deck is a great balance between a strong baseline of must includes with the flexibility to tweak the flex spots to answer a known meta. I loved this about LE, as I played some pet cards which through some curveballs at players who have moderate experience against the deck.
After reading this thread and watching half a dozen videos, I've built this list and would like some feedback. Taking it to a meta where we have a very good mix of decks (GDS, Bant Eldrazi, Storm, Affinity, Boggles, Grixis/Esper/Jeskai control, TitanShift, Burn, B/W Tokens Blue Steel, etc).
@Joban8: I wouldn't because we have no way of finding it a 1 of stands more chance of hurting us than helping. Besides I feel the control matchup is favorable anyway.
@Weakatchu: I haven't tried it but I've been thinking about the blue splash. I already run Mistys and if I ever go back to a 4 GDD list then I will for sure give it a full try. I'm not super optimistic about it, and think it will likely be ok, but not quite good enough in the end. I've been thinking about running my Blue Moon list based around this though. What other blue would be worth running in Ponza?
@KenCarson: I too came from LivingEnd for about the same reasons. I like a lot of the choices you made in building the deck. Trinisphere should not be underrated. I personally ended up cutting it a meta choice but it's waiting in the wings. One note about your deck is that most people here go up to 22 lands then they cut Birds.
Hi, the more I read this topic, the more I see Abrade in some list, but I can't understand in wich case it's better than Lightning Bolt??
very simple : artifacts. it's a hedge. burn to the face is not really this deck's game plan. having abrade main helps hedge a matchup in which bolt is so much worse. killing a vial is also big game. card is super versatile. dead in very few matchups.
birds are awful. don't play them.
3 angers are a necessity. this deck struggles vs little guys. bant/humans/affinity. hits a lot of the weaker matchups.
Despite the fact that he's an awful topdeck I fell the deck incredibly slow when you don't have your dork on turn 1 , according to @Noct I went up to 22 lands after some tests (adding Sheltered Thicket to mitigate flooding) but I still don't like a start without an accelarator on turn 1 ( It fell like I should mull every hand without it..)
it really depends on the matchup and also whether on the play or draw. I've been on 22 lands for some time (you can see me advocating the chance a few pages back, with the thicket). the deck is obviously better with a one drop in opener, but it's not the end of the world without one. it doesn't stop making birds a bad top deck. it just doesn't do enough regardless. it's kind of like the folks who are still playing kwr...
They've basically promised that they will never print 3cmc LD ever again so no chance we'll see something even better.
Wheel helps our opponents get back in the game more than it helps us win. I get that you're looking for steam, but I don't think this is it.
I've been toying with the idea of 22 lands and 2 birds, with the intent to usually cut them for sideboard cards. Be faster when you don't know what's up and hit harder once you do. Haven't run it yet because I'm trying something new every week.
I went 3-3 at the PPTQ. The temple garden cost me several games, and the extra raw power of the white SB cards didn't make up for it. If not for the garden I go 4-2 easy.
Matchups
Round 1 0-2 loss to Bant knightfall (AGAIN!!!) with vizier combo in it. Game 2 drew 2 RIPS but never had a fetch or sprawl and died to a knight.
Round 2 0-2 loss to red white humans. An aggro humans deck with blood moon, lightning helix and boros charm. Temple garden cost me game 2 single handedly
Round 3 2-0 win vs Grixis deaths shadow (rip helped)
Round 4 2-1 win vs Eldrazi Tron (stony helped)
Round 5 1-2 loss to deaths shadow (Temple garden somewhat cost me game 3)
Round 6 2-0 win vs Boros Burn
What can I say? I hate me some Bant company. F**k that deck.
Damn son. Can you go into more details on how the garden caused the losses?
You running Abrades at all? Feel like they would help in the bant matchup.
Wish you had played affinity though. Would have been a good judge on whether or not the white splash is truly worth it.
Overall, sounds like not to me.
Game 2 of round 1 I died with 2 Rest in peace in hand when I couldn't fetch or sprawl for white. If I had 2 relics I would have been fighting a 2/2 knight, not a 6/6
Game 2 of round 2 vs Red white I couldn't cast a goblin dark dwellers to anger his board because I had drawn my Temple garden, rather than a fetch or Foothills
Then later in the game, I didn't emblem a chandra because I had 1 uncastable card in hand (Molten rain) And it turns out the next card would have been Dark dwellers. So a chandra emblem if I had 2 red cources would have delt 15 in 2 turns and been very very lethal
Game 3 of round 5 I again didn't have double red because of temple garden. This meant I couldn't anger away a pair of young pyros and about 6 tokens n turn 5
I went 3-3 at the PPTQ. The temple garden cost me several games, and the extra raw power of the white SB cards didn't make up for it. If not for the garden I go 4-2 easy.
Matchups
Round 1 0-2 loss to Bant knightfall (AGAIN!!!) with vizier combo in it. Game 2 drew 2 RIPS but never had a fetch or sprawl and died to a knight.
Round 2 0-2 loss to red white humans. An aggro humans deck with blood moon, lightning helix and boros charm. Temple garden cost me game 2 single handedly
Round 3 2-0 win vs Grixis deaths shadow (rip helped)
Round 4 2-1 win vs Eldrazi Tron (stony helped)
Round 5 1-2 loss to deaths shadow (Temple garden somewhat cost me game 3)
Round 6 2-0 win vs Boros Burn
What can I say? I hate me some Bant company. F**k that deck.
Damn son. Can you go into more details on how the garden caused the losses?
You running Abrades at all? Feel like they would help in the bant matchup.
Wish you had played affinity though. Would have been a good judge on whether or not the white splash is truly worth it.
Overall, sounds like not to me.
Game 2 of round 1 I died with 2 Rest in peace in hand when I couldn't fetch or sprawl for white. If I had 2 relics I would have been fighting a 2/2 knight, not a 6/6
Game 2 of round 2 vs Red white I couldn't cast a goblin dark dwellers to anger his board because I had drawn my Temple garden, rather than a fetch or Foothills
Then later in the game, I didn't emblem a chandra because I had 1 uncastable card in hand (Molten rain) And it turns out the next card would have been Dark dwellers. So a chandra emblem if I had 2 red cources would have delt 15 in 2 turns and been very very lethal
Game 3 of round 5 I again didn't have double red because of temple garden. This meant I couldn't anger away a pair of young pyros and about 6 tokens n turn 5
maybe the correct land is actually sacred foundry and not temple? seems like your build would have been better suited for that.
What's the benefit of playing Anger of the Gods over Sweltering Suns? Is it a big advantage to exile the creatures against some decks? I think the cycling is good when boardwipes are useless.
With the new trend of 2-3 Chandra, Torch of Defiance main deck, could we consider playing Boom // Bust ?
1 - With a fetch land, on turn 3, it s just like a good old Stone Rain
2 - With an actual threat on board, the Geddon effect could be nail in the coffin ?
3 - The Chandra allows up to ramp quite fast to BustGeddon, and she can win alone when all lands are gone
I know it can backfire quite hard sometimes, and it's not anymore a combo with GDD.
Thanks guys
The deck has enough land D. Your strategy is to stop them from playing magic long enough to kill them. GDD just doesn't do that very well and is a non-bo with Boom//Bust. I never really liked that build. 5 mana 4/4 that might allow you to just play a land d spell from the grave has never been my gravy. Just don't think it's powerful enough. Funny enough, when GDD was at its best was when it could bring back Crackling Doom in that old standard format.
Blowing up all your own lands is generally a death knell. Your curve is higher than a lot of the decks out there and opponents tend to be able to recover more quickly than you will.
Chandra is the deck's best win condition, no doubt about that. Everything else you do distracts your opponents from her getting to ultimate. Your goal should be to get there no matter what. Once that happens, every elf you top deck is 5 dmg to their faces. Which is great. Won't be able to do that if you blow up all your lands though...
What's the benefit of playing Anger of the Gods over Sweltering Suns? Is it a big advantage to exile the creatures against some decks? I think the cycling is good when boardwipes are useless.
AotG is not a maindeck card. It's not a card you'll want to cycle when you bring it in the relevant matches. And yes, exile is super important for stuff like Finks, voice, etc.
The advantage of the cycling is marginal for this deck since you wouldn't bring that card in anyways unless you wanted to ensure you saw it early. I haven't found that it's tangible enough to make the switch.
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4x Arbor Elf
2x Birds of Paradise
1x Dragonlord Atarka
2x Goblin Dark-Dwellers
2x Inferno Titan
3x Stormbreath Dragon
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
Instants & Sorceries(13)
1x Beast Within
1x Lightning Bolt
2x Mizzium Mortars
4x Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
4x Stone Rain
1x Sweltering Suns
1x Chandra, Flamecaller
2x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4x Blood Moon
4x Utopia Sprawl
Land (21)
1x Cinder Glade
9x Forest
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
2x Stomping Ground
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Anger of the Gods
1x Boil
1x Choke
2x Faerie Macabre
2x Fracturing Gust
3x Kitchen Finks
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Thragtusk
2x Thrun, the Last Troll
Went 4-0
Bye 0-0
Skred Red 2-0
Griselbrand Reanimator 2-1
UW Control 2-0
Didn't see Dragonlord Atarka once so no further testing there. I really liked my mixed removal package.
Link to Discord server where anybody from MTGS can keep up with thread topics while everything is being sorted out with the new site.
Chandra TOD, like so many of us said, is good. But there are other viable budget alternatives.
I still don' know when to use beast within properly and not used to giving an opponent a 3/3 but it is a good card. More testing from my side needed. It's competing with abrade for a place in the deck. I don't run abrade as there are more dredge players than affinity in my meta so I'm playing with the numbers with angers over abrade and hoping for the best. If Rock or humans company takes off, then beast within should be better. Ponza got a problem with removing any X/5 or bigger toughness creatures.
I'm trying more fetch as I'm rather talented in drawing 5 basic forests for my first 5 lands.... Double red is needed to function consistently for my deck list. I may go back to 8 fetches if this doesn't work out.
White splash gets a trial by fire.
Good luck bud. Hope the splash works out!
For Chandra tod, even post rotation I doubt she drops below 20$. She's that good. There are many games that she allows you to win that no other walker can. Garruk isn't a budget option since he does something entirely different. Play flamecaller if you want a budget friendly one.
Still hate birds in the deck lol
Let's assume you decided to keep experimenting with D.Lord Atarka; would you see any merit in running some number of cavern of souls naming dragon? I'm curious if it would benefit a build that includes 4x Stormbreath in addition to some number of Chameleon Colossus? I'm aware of the obvious Blood Moon non-bo, but it's some tech I've been mulling over lately.
Link to Discord server where anybody from MTGS can keep up with thread topics while everything is being sorted out with the new site.
https://m.twitch.tv/darkhound54/profile
Matchups
Round 1 0-2 loss to Bant knightfall (AGAIN!!!) with vizier combo in it. Game 2 drew 2 RIPS but never had a fetch or sprawl and died to a knight.
Round 2 0-2 loss to red white humans. An aggro humans deck with blood moon, lightning helix and boros charm. Temple garden cost me game 2 single handedly
Round 3 2-0 win vs Grixis deaths shadow (rip helped)
Round 4 2-1 win vs Eldrazi Tron (stony helped)
Round 5 1-2 loss to deaths shadow (Temple garden somewhat cost me game 3)
Round 6 2-0 win vs Boros Burn
What can I say? I hate me some Bant company. F**k that deck.
Damn son. Can you go into more details on how the garden caused the losses?
You running Abrades at all? Feel like they would help in the bant matchup.
Wish you had played affinity though. Would have been a good judge on whether or not the white splash is truly worth it.
Overall, sounds like not to me.
I chose Ponza because:
1.) Fulminator Mage is a card I love and though some of my LE brothers and sisters have eschewed him for other cards, I still think the LD subtheme is what gives the deck it's sticking power. And I have no reservations about winning through mana denial. Bring on the salt.
2.) I played two Blood Moons in my sideboard for the last 2 PPTQs and sided it in 10 of 12 matches. My choices were alter Living End to be a Blood Moon deck or play a deck where Bloon Moon is part of Plan A.
3.) The deck is still a rogue deck, as I love free wins from playing against people with minimal experience. Someone played the deck against me, and while I won, I was extremely lucky as I had no idea how to beat the deck and was still confused after Game 3. I am not the end all be all of Modern, but that happens to me very rarely, even with fringe decks since I'm such a fan of rogue strategies and I consume a lot of content. And isn't graveyard based, so it's a good change of pace that will cross up anyone trying to shark me and my typical deck.
4.) I own all the relevant fetches and many staples, meaning my price to get into the deck was quite minimal for Modern.
5.) The deck is a great balance between a strong baseline of must includes with the flexibility to tweak the flex spots to answer a known meta. I loved this about LE, as I played some pet cards which through some curveballs at players who have moderate experience against the deck.
After reading this thread and watching half a dozen videos, I've built this list and would like some feedback. Taking it to a meta where we have a very good mix of decks (GDS, Bant Eldrazi, Storm, Affinity, Boggles, Grixis/Esper/Jeskai control, TitanShift, Burn, B/W Tokens Blue Steel, etc).
Here is what I put together:
4x Arbor Elf
2x Inferno Titan
3x Stormbreath Dragon
1x Thragtusk
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
Spells
1x Abrade
1x Beast Within
1x Anger of the Gods
3x Bonfire of the Damned
4x Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1x Primal Command
4x Stone Rain
4x Blood Moon
4x Utopia Sprawl
3x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2x Trinisphere
1x Cinder Glade
9x Forest
1x Mountain
2x Stomping Ground
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Ancient Grudge
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Boil
2x Chameleon Colossus
1x Chandra, Flamecaller
2x Fracturing Gust
2x Obstinate Baloth
2x Relic of Progenitus
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Trinisphere
I also have GDD and some one-ofs that I might try if any of the decks start showing up in more multiples, but for now I'm liking this configuration.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
@Weakatchu: I haven't tried it but I've been thinking about the blue splash. I already run Mistys and if I ever go back to a 4 GDD list then I will for sure give it a full try. I'm not super optimistic about it, and think it will likely be ok, but not quite good enough in the end. I've been thinking about running my Blue Moon list based around this though. What other blue would be worth running in Ponza?
@KenCarson: I too came from LivingEnd for about the same reasons. I like a lot of the choices you made in building the deck. Trinisphere should not be underrated. I personally ended up cutting it a meta choice but it's waiting in the wings. One note about your deck is that most people here go up to 22 lands then they cut Birds.
very simple : artifacts. it's a hedge. burn to the face is not really this deck's game plan. having abrade main helps hedge a matchup in which bolt is so much worse. killing a vial is also big game. card is super versatile. dead in very few matchups.
birds are awful. don't play them.
3 angers are a necessity. this deck struggles vs little guys. bant/humans/affinity. hits a lot of the weaker matchups.
it really depends on the matchup and also whether on the play or draw. I've been on 22 lands for some time (you can see me advocating the chance a few pages back, with the thicket). the deck is obviously better with a one drop in opener, but it's not the end of the world without one. it doesn't stop making birds a bad top deck. it just doesn't do enough regardless. it's kind of like the folks who are still playing kwr...
Wheel helps our opponents get back in the game more than it helps us win. I get that you're looking for steam, but I don't think this is it.
I've been toying with the idea of 22 lands and 2 birds, with the intent to usually cut them for sideboard cards. Be faster when you don't know what's up and hit harder once you do. Haven't run it yet because I'm trying something new every week.
Game 2 of round 1 I died with 2 Rest in peace in hand when I couldn't fetch or sprawl for white. If I had 2 relics I would have been fighting a 2/2 knight, not a 6/6
Game 2 of round 2 vs Red white I couldn't cast a goblin dark dwellers to anger his board because I had drawn my Temple garden, rather than a fetch or Foothills
Then later in the game, I didn't emblem a chandra because I had 1 uncastable card in hand (Molten rain) And it turns out the next card would have been Dark dwellers. So a chandra emblem if I had 2 red cources would have delt 15 in 2 turns and been very very lethal
Game 3 of round 5 I again didn't have double red because of temple garden. This meant I couldn't anger away a pair of young pyros and about 6 tokens n turn 5
maybe the correct land is actually sacred foundry and not temple? seems like your build would have been better suited for that.
The deck has enough land D. Your strategy is to stop them from playing magic long enough to kill them. GDD just doesn't do that very well and is a non-bo with Boom//Bust. I never really liked that build. 5 mana 4/4 that might allow you to just play a land d spell from the grave has never been my gravy. Just don't think it's powerful enough. Funny enough, when GDD was at its best was when it could bring back Crackling Doom in that old standard format.
Blowing up all your own lands is generally a death knell. Your curve is higher than a lot of the decks out there and opponents tend to be able to recover more quickly than you will.
Chandra is the deck's best win condition, no doubt about that. Everything else you do distracts your opponents from her getting to ultimate. Your goal should be to get there no matter what. Once that happens, every elf you top deck is 5 dmg to their faces. Which is great. Won't be able to do that if you blow up all your lands though...
AotG is not a maindeck card. It's not a card you'll want to cycle when you bring it in the relevant matches. And yes, exile is super important for stuff like Finks, voice, etc.
The advantage of the cycling is marginal for this deck since you wouldn't bring that card in anyways unless you wanted to ensure you saw it early. I haven't found that it's tangible enough to make the switch.