It’s an interesting card for us but I’m trying to envisage which matchups we want this effect and whether or not the effect does what we need, especially being sorcery speed.
I feel like it’s a real consideration for the Eldrazi matchup where it gets round Reality Smasher’s targeting restrictions but it still gives your opponent the option to keep any Displacers/TKS they have. You’d need to follow this wipe up with a targeted removal to get rid of whatever they keep. At this point we may as well wrath the board? I guess we get to keep up to 4 tokens though...
This should also work well against merfolk. Against other go-wides like elves and affinity... I don’t think this works, at least not as well as Zealous Persecution, correct me if I’m wrong.
Keeping the tokens is nice to envision, though I only have a budget version atm and haven't played it in ages, so I can't comment on the current, general meta. I could see it as a SB option for Eldrazi, as you said, but I'm not sure. It might have better luck in a Frontier token brew.
Apologies for the double post, but I was curious what you guys thought of running Auriok Champion in the main deck? I do it and she's been very good now that cards like Death's Shadow and Fatal Push are popular. Obviously pulling her out of match ups that don't matter (like Merfolk).
Apologies for the double post, but I was curious what you guys thought of running Auriok Champion in the main deck? I do it and she's been very good now that cards like Death's Shadow and Fatal Push are popular. Obviously pulling her out of match ups that don't matter (like Merfolk).
With the new art, I guess I can't call her Captain Underpants anymore, but her stock raises and falls. She was considered almost core for a while and then fell out of popularity. She's a fine card to have access to somewhere in one's 75.
I have seen the videos. The guy plays the deck quite nicely, with not a lot of mistakes. He was giving legions landing a try. He ended up vey happy about them, but I am not so sure I got the same conclusions from his matches.
Yeah, it didn’t come up much in the league. Overall it seemed pretty okay but not that impressive. This is the second modern challenge he’s top 8’d where basilisk collar was an all star. I’ve struggled to come up with a place for it in my sideboard but I’m definitly going to cut something to squeeze one in.
yeah. That piece of sidetech feels really impressive in his builds. I am also trying to find a spot for them. Probably will replace one of my blessed alliances.
I have seen the videos. The guy plays the deck quite nicely, with not a lot of mistakes. He was giving legions landing a try. He ended up vey happy about them, but I am not so sure I got the same conclusions from his matches.
Five colorless lands! FIVE! And three comes-into-play-tapped lands. Wow. It doesn't look good to me.
I play 4 colorless lands and 3 taplands myself. They work amazing. GQ is just an amazing card. Seriously. Also, the only reason why people dont play more of these is spectral procession, but honestly casting it turn 4 is not the end of the world, mainly when you 90% of the time want to spend the first turns interacting and disrupting your opponent, due to the heavy fast-deck meta.
I really recommend people to open your minds regarding a more colorless manabase. I have won 3/4 last games against tron, while keeping the good performance against the rest of the matches. The inclusion of GQ has improved my deck a lot (also true that I run a control shell).
About the vents, yes they come tapped, but they are amazing in the game state where we usually end up: topdeck mode. I could see myself cutting 1 in favour of some shefet dunes or something like that, but so far I am really happy.
I'm going to continue playing this deck in future LGS tournaments. If possible, I'd like to have a little feedback on my list.
- The manabase. Is there something to improve on? I'm thinking 23 lands is fine for an aggressive build. The Windbrisk Heights will be included at the moment, but may be changed later if I feel they are making the deck weaker. Shambling Vents seems too slow. Is 4 Godless shrine too many?
- I'm thinking of adding another Sorin, Solemn Visitor. Not sure what I should drop for him. Is 2 Secure the Wastes too many? Dropping Elspeth would be the meta choice, but she's been awesome every time I played her, so I'm not certain.
- Fatal push. Everyone is running it in every deck that has black. But i'm not so sure about adding it. I already have a set of Path to Exile. Not sure if adding more removal is worth it. Zealous persecution always performs and often enough work as removals simultaneously if the opponent blocks your walking tokens. Scary creatures like some Eldrazi, Wurmcoil and Bogles don't get hit by push anyway.
Folks have generally run six or seven removal cards. Zealous Persecution is great when it works but it's not really removal. If you are winning with a more aggressive approach, then fine but generally, nearly everyone is going to tell you to run some copies of Fatal Push. Path to Exile can fix your opponents mana issues sometimes. It's a really bad thing in some match-ups.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant is a fine card of long-standing. There's no reason to feel badly about running her. Sorin, Solemn Visitor is generally considered the best fit for the deck.
I think I'll keep the Elspeth for now. I'm leaning towards removing one Secure the Wastes and adding the second Sorin, Solemn Visitor. My only concern with having 4 walkers is increasing the chances of having two of them in my hand before turn 3/4 which I feel is kind of bad.
Also, I'll remove 1-2 Godless Shrine for plains. 7 fetchlands seems enough. Especially after adding Legion's Landing I don't feel like i HAVE to inquisition/thoughtseize turn 1 so having a few more lands that don't produce black shouldn't be a drawback. The deck is pretty light on black mana.
I agree that Shambling Vent should be better than Windbrisk Heights if the game goes long. It's also better in the bitterblossom build. However, I see almost no use for it during the first 4-5 turns, and by that time the game could already be decided. With my aggro plan the extra card from Windbrisk, usually at turn 4, helps me finish the game with a mid-fight anthem or another Spectral Procession or even a planeswalker. I don't really see how using vents would be effective instead of playing another spell unless it's a lategame topdeck situation where the deck is already decent.
I could play around with 2 Fatal push, I'm just running out of things to cut for them though. I want to run at least 2 Zealous persecution so that leaves me with one more card I need to remove from the deck. Maybe a thoughtseize, not sure.
Three Plainswalkers does seem right.
Six fetches used to be about the norm before everyone jumped on the Fatal Push bandwagon. Eight or nine is pretty standard now. If you don't run any copies of Push, then yes, seven is fine.
Shambling Vents make mana; that's their primary purpose. They do that better than Windbrisk Heights for this deck. Vents' man-land ability will often prove useful and their lifelink can be a game-saver; Heights will often cause pain and suffering by binning useful cards. At least that was my experience with them.
If you are trying a more aggressive deck strategy, gideon should be your man. Sorin helps in racing situations, where the lifegain nerfs opponents attacks. I dont know about elspeth. I would probably prefer Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. His +1 has lifelink, and I see a permanent +1/+0 in all our creatures better than a punctual pump to a creature that probably already flies. Also the ultimate seems more relevant (humans, merfolk, eldrazi...). You could try to go 2 Gideon, 1 Sorin, SV, and 1 Sorin, LoI. 23 with legions shuold do it for you. You could ramp into a t3 gideon, which would be nuts. WH make more sense in a more aggressive shell, because you are more likely to have 3 creatures soon.
I would go down Elspeth, 1 Secure, and 1/2 Zealous for another gideon, Sorin, LoI, and 1/2 Fatal pushes. Give it a try and let me know.
Has anyone tried Settle the wreckage as a SB card? It seems good against any creature deck.
I haven't used it yet, but I have one in my SB. I like how it sounds on paper since more and more modern decks are running fewer basic lands (looking at you humans). But I'll have to actually use it to get a clear consensus.
Has anyone tried Settle the wreckage as a SB card? It seems good against any creature deck.
Slaughter the Strong is also going to be very good against a lot of the same decks that Settle the wreckage is, and it can be cast at least a turn sooner. If the cards line up, you could potentially make a play like:
I dont think slaughter the strong is good against elves, humans, and other small creature decks (elves only become immense with ezuri, which is not at sorcery speed). They will be able to save 2-3 creatures most of the time, which is not what we need. We have one of the most wrath-resilient decks in modern (only dredge comes to my mind now), so we must use whole wrath effects, because we will recover stronger and faster.
Death and taxes would probably like a card like this, because they can save some buddies but, for us, there is no creature more important than the previous one (we are a very communist deck). If you want a 3cmc wrath, Bontu's last reckoning would be the best option for me. I would imagine a wrath-curve like:
There is one potentially significant difference between the two curves though. You might only have 3 land on turn 4 rather than the four required to cast *** / DoJ/ Damnation.
Regarding Bontu's Last Reckoning, I don't think the tempo loss is worth it for us. I would rather have Slaughter, Wrath of God, etc. over Bontu's in B/W Tokens. I have friends who are running Bontu's in Abzan, but the tempo loss seems less significant for them.
The 4th land issue is true. But you could easily stall a couple turns by chumpblocking. I also see the tempo loss with Bontu, which is why we dont see this card in our sb very often.
As a side-note, a very brief summary of my last FNM. I went 2-2, playing not very good and with some bad luck. Some days, it just doesnt happen.
Round 1: 0-2 against Eldrazi&taxes: This matchup seems very difficult: thalias, displacer, arbiter shenanigans... Just couldnt stand a chance. Also I got stuck on 3 lands for most of both games...
Round2: 0-2 against ad nauseam: Game one, could not find any black mana and when I finally could, I ****ed up by playing TS first and Inquisition second. He countered my TS and then my IoK could not take his Ad Nauseam. Silly mistake. G2 I controlled his hand perfectly and he topdecked Unlife the turn before he was dead, and then Ad Nauseam after that. The guy even apologized...
Round 3: 2-0 BW eldrazi. BB and TS won the match. Not even a ratched bomb could stop the stream of tokens.
Round 4: 2-0 Infect: This matchup is extremely easy, as long as you find some disruption. Only worry about unblockable stuff and it is game.
Not happy at all with how I played out, need to practice against taxes, and play more focused in general. First FNM of the year, hopefully we will get better. Didnt have a chance to use my 1-of basilisk collar out of the SB, but I brought it in in every match except ad nauseam.
Pretty good? Come one, Grixis Shadow is a ridiculously good matchup for us. It might actually be our best matchup. For comparison, in the infamously biased Tokens vs. Affinity matchup, my record is 32 wins, 12 losses. Against Grixis Shadow, my record is 28 wins, 2 losses.
As much as I like Grixis Shadow (and it is easily of my favorite decks to pilot), virtually every aspect of the pairing of these decks against one another favors BW Tokens. I'll start with the major points:
1) We can chump block their creatures forever; meanwhile, they can't block the vast majority of ours (anything from Lingering Souls, Bitterblossom, or Spectral Procession).
2) Our spot removal hurts their board state and game plan significantly. Theirs is next to useless against us.
3) Our disruption spells hurt them more than theirs hurt us. All of ours can hit the most valuable cards they have for this matchup: Snapcaster, Kholigan's, Stubborn Denial-- early game, even pulling their Serum Visions or Thought Scour can be a strong play. Postboard, we usually like to take cards like Tendrils, Lili TLH, or Battle Rage if they have any. Meanwhile, the most valuable thing they can pull is Bitterblossom, but guess what: it's one of about a dozen token producers we run, up to four of which create tokens every turn (BB), and four of which can be played twice (LS). We have so much built-in redundancy that it generally does not hurt us very much. Taking our Intangible Virtue buys them time, but little else. Moreover, it's not entirely infrequent they will be forced to take a Lingering Souls or Start//Finish, and that's just easier access to more tokens/removal for us.
4) Some Tokens builds run cards that are a nightmare for them to deal with, like the Liliana OTV, or Ghost Quarters, which can be used to take them off of a color. If one can manage to take them off of Blue or Black, that's usually game over.
There's not even much need to sideboard in this matchup, but moving in Nihil Spellbomb is relevant here because it totally devalues their Snapcasters, K-Commands, and Delve creatures. It's yet another card we can run that can wreck them while requiring minimal resources on our part. If you're running RiP in your sideboard, that goes in too. It hurts them a LOT more than it hurts us.
Keeping the tokens is nice to envision, though I only have a budget version atm and haven't played it in ages, so I can't comment on the current, general meta. I could see it as a SB option for Eldrazi, as you said, but I'm not sure. It might have better luck in a Frontier token brew.
I like it, but I feel like I'd rather just pay the extra mana to cast something like Settle the Wreckage
WBTokensWB
WBTokensWB
With the new art, I guess I can't call her Captain Underpants anymore, but her stock raises and falls. She was considered almost core for a while and then fell out of popularity. She's a fine card to have access to somewhere in one's 75.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
I have seen the videos. The guy plays the deck quite nicely, with not a lot of mistakes. He was giving legions landing a try. He ended up vey happy about them, but I am not so sure I got the same conclusions from his matches.
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
Five colorless lands! FIVE! And three comes-into-play-tapped lands. Wow. It doesn't look good to me.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
I really recommend people to open your minds regarding a more colorless manabase. I have won 3/4 last games against tron, while keeping the good performance against the rest of the matches. The inclusion of GQ has improved my deck a lot (also true that I run a control shell).
About the vents, yes they come tapped, but they are amazing in the game state where we usually end up: topdeck mode. I could see myself cutting 1 in favour of some shefet dunes or something like that, but so far I am really happy.
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
Four Godless Shrines is too many; two should be enough. Shambling Vent is generally considered better than Windbrisk Heights. I share that view.
Folks have generally run six or seven removal cards. Zealous Persecution is great when it works but it's not really removal. If you are winning with a more aggressive approach, then fine but generally, nearly everyone is going to tell you to run some copies of Fatal Push. Path to Exile can fix your opponents mana issues sometimes. It's a really bad thing in some match-ups.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant is a fine card of long-standing. There's no reason to feel badly about running her. Sorin, Solemn Visitor is generally considered the best fit for the deck.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
Three Plainswalkers does seem right.
Six fetches used to be about the norm before everyone jumped on the Fatal Push bandwagon. Eight or nine is pretty standard now. If you don't run any copies of Push, then yes, seven is fine.
Shambling Vents make mana; that's their primary purpose. They do that better than Windbrisk Heights for this deck. Vents' man-land ability will often prove useful and their lifelink can be a game-saver; Heights will often cause pain and suffering by binning useful cards. At least that was my experience with them.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
I would go down Elspeth, 1 Secure, and 1/2 Zealous for another gideon, Sorin, LoI, and 1/2 Fatal pushes. Give it a try and let me know.
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
I haven't used it yet, but I have one in my SB. I like how it sounds on paper since more and more modern decks are running fewer basic lands (looking at you humans). But I'll have to actually use it to get a clear consensus.
WBTokensWB
Slaughter the Strong is also going to be very good against a lot of the same decks that Settle the wreckage is, and it can be cast at least a turn sooner. If the cards line up, you could potentially make a play like:
T1: Disruption
T2: Bitterblosson
T3: Lingering Souls
T4: Slaughter the Strong
T5: Intangible + Flashback Souls
which would be absolutely devastating against Elves, Merfolk, Humans, Bogles, DraziTron, Death's Shadow, etc.
BW BW Tokens
BUW Esper Shadow
BUR Grixis Shadow
Death and taxes would probably like a card like this, because they can save some buddies but, for us, there is no creature more important than the previous one (we are a very communist deck). If you want a 3cmc wrath, Bontu's last reckoning would be the best option for me. I would imagine a wrath-curve like:
T1: Disruption
T2: Bitterblosson
T3: Lingering Souls (chump chump)
T4: Wrath of God/Damnation
T5: Intangible + Flashback Souls
This curve is just essentially identical and we would be reaching turn 5 with 6 flying/vigilance power while oponent might have just dumped his hand already. With Slaughter the Strong, they could still have thalia, guardian of thraben, elvish archdruid, any noble hierarch or birds of paradise they had played... I really dont see that mucho of a benefit.
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
Regarding Bontu's Last Reckoning, I don't think the tempo loss is worth it for us. I would rather have Slaughter, Wrath of God, etc. over Bontu's in B/W Tokens. I have friends who are running Bontu's in Abzan, but the tempo loss seems less significant for them.
BW BW Tokens
BUW Esper Shadow
BUR Grixis Shadow
As a side-note, a very brief summary of my last FNM. I went 2-2, playing not very good and with some bad luck. Some days, it just doesnt happen.
Round 1: 0-2 against Eldrazi&taxes: This matchup seems very difficult: thalias, displacer, arbiter shenanigans... Just couldnt stand a chance. Also I got stuck on 3 lands for most of both games...
Round2: 0-2 against ad nauseam: Game one, could not find any black mana and when I finally could, I ****ed up by playing TS first and Inquisition second. He countered my TS and then my IoK could not take his Ad Nauseam. Silly mistake. G2 I controlled his hand perfectly and he topdecked Unlife the turn before he was dead, and then Ad Nauseam after that. The guy even apologized...
Round 3: 2-0 BW eldrazi. BB and TS won the match. Not even a ratched bomb could stop the stream of tokens.
Round 4: 2-0 Infect: This matchup is extremely easy, as long as you find some disruption. Only worry about unblockable stuff and it is game.
Not happy at all with how I played out, need to practice against taxes, and play more focused in general. First FNM of the year, hopefully we will get better. Didnt have a chance to use my 1-of basilisk collar out of the SB, but I brought it in in every match except ad nauseam.
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
As much as I like Grixis Shadow (and it is easily of my favorite decks to pilot), virtually every aspect of the pairing of these decks against one another favors BW Tokens. I'll start with the major points:
1) We can chump block their creatures forever; meanwhile, they can't block the vast majority of ours (anything from Lingering Souls, Bitterblossom, or Spectral Procession).
2) Our spot removal hurts their board state and game plan significantly. Theirs is next to useless against us.
3) Our disruption spells hurt them more than theirs hurt us. All of ours can hit the most valuable cards they have for this matchup: Snapcaster, Kholigan's, Stubborn Denial-- early game, even pulling their Serum Visions or Thought Scour can be a strong play. Postboard, we usually like to take cards like Tendrils, Lili TLH, or Battle Rage if they have any. Meanwhile, the most valuable thing they can pull is Bitterblossom, but guess what: it's one of about a dozen token producers we run, up to four of which create tokens every turn (BB), and four of which can be played twice (LS). We have so much built-in redundancy that it generally does not hurt us very much. Taking our Intangible Virtue buys them time, but little else. Moreover, it's not entirely infrequent they will be forced to take a Lingering Souls or Start//Finish, and that's just easier access to more tokens/removal for us.
4) Some Tokens builds run cards that are a nightmare for them to deal with, like the Liliana OTV, or Ghost Quarters, which can be used to take them off of a color. If one can manage to take them off of Blue or Black, that's usually game over.
There's not even much need to sideboard in this matchup, but moving in Nihil Spellbomb is relevant here because it totally devalues their Snapcasters, K-Commands, and Delve creatures. It's yet another card we can run that can wreck them while requiring minimal resources on our part. If you're running RiP in your sideboard, that goes in too. It hurts them a LOT more than it hurts us.
BW BW Tokens
BUW Esper Shadow
BUR Grixis Shadow