I also like spellbomb a lot. But I also love rakdos charm and want to try some of those. Spellbomb, surgical and charm is is too much so i might cut a spellbomb but not because its a bad card!
I have recently been playing Vengevine in addition to Mardu, and I have to say that a mix of Surgical, Spellbomb and Anger of the Gods is often more effective against the deck than leyline.
I have 4 Nature's Claim in the board for Leyline, but Surgical is a real beating.
I have recently been playing Vengevine in addition to Mardu, and I have to say that a mix of Surgical, Spellbomb and Anger of the Gods is often more effective against the deck than leyline.
I have 4 Nature's Claim in the board for Leyline, but Surgical is a real beating.
What in your experience has been most devastating for your as a surgical target? Bridge or Vengevine I am assuming?
Bridge should be priority number one for sure, Vengevine second. It should be noted as well that most decks only run one basic mountain, so if you can stall long enough to land a blood moon, they can end up with a load of stitcher's suppliers and gravecrawlers in hand with nothing to do.
Has anyone taken a look at Gerry Thompson's SCG article? He talks about removing Blood Moon altogether. Does this seem reasonable to you? What kind of meta would this type of mardu pyro be better suited against?
There are definitely times when blood moon is not optimal in the meta and I have played Mardu without moons before. Based on the speed of the format at the moment, I can definitely see the benefit of removing the moons for cards that impact the board in a more meaningful way.
Minor question -- what were you planning to do with 3x Surgical Extraction vs Tron? My impression was that this card is mostly dead without Molten Rain / Fulminator to set up the Tron land extraction. You could extract a threat like O-Stone or Wurmcoil but unless they have another copy in hand you're mostly just paying 2 life and going down a card to fuel Pyro / Reveler. Given that you won both of your games with a few points of reach even Bolt or Brutality seem better than Surgical here, no?
If you bring in surgical against tron, then the best use is to extract one tron land and use the tempo to win before they naturally cast a threat. their threats are very diverse, so one surgical on a threat wont do much. Also trying to prevent them from assembling tron by extracting their cantrips or land searching engines is not the best use, since tron is very consistant by assembling tron.
This a video of Jeff hoogland playing a league with mardu. He is playing 3 copies of blood moon I believe. Jeff makes the case that Mardu is a prison style deck that needs blood moon to help lock out the opponent. I tend to agree with Jeff’s line of thinking on this one. We need blood moon to help us slow the game down so we can grind our opponents out.
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Little angel, go away come again some other day the Devil has my ear today I'll never hear a word you say. He promised I would find a little solace and some peace of mind. Whatever. just as long as I don't feel so desperate and ravenous.
I don't particularly agree with that. I view Mardu as being more a proactive control deck. Its not a prizon deck just because it jams a bunch of BM in there. And BM is not a guarantee to lock out the opponent. BM is a card that can grant free wins, but doesn't contribute to the main strategy of Mardu imo. Otherwise we would run 4 copies of it.
Hoogland specifically says that one of the appeals of the deck is that it can play as a proactive midrange deck or as a prison deck depending on whether the matchup calls for it and the deck is built right - specifically talking about the lists with Ensnaring Bridge in the board.
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Well, I can saw a woman in two, but you won't wanna look in the box when I'm through.
When I said I tend to agree with Jeff, what I meant was I don’t advocate cutting back on blood moon. Mardu isn’t a prison deck in the sense that it uses blood moon and chalice of the void like the r/w sun and moon deck. GerryT has written about cutting back on blood moon and Jeff had 3. Very interesting to see two magic professionals going in different directions and getting good results.
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Little angel, go away come again some other day the Devil has my ear today I'll never hear a word you say. He promised I would find a little solace and some peace of mind. Whatever. just as long as I don't feel so desperate and ravenous.
I'm thinking about trying out a version of the list without moons and without mainboard planeswalkers, instead playing 2x Monastery Mentor and 2x Lightning Helix (in addition to the Brutalities).
A couple of reasons: I think Mentor fits our plan far better than Rabblemaster, who is essentially just a 3 drop dumb aggro creature. Mentor can build a profitable defensive board state and can also turn the screws quickly when required. Lightning Helix gives us more non creature reach to help us push through against stalled boards and keeps our life total healthy against humans/ burn/ bridgevine etc. Removing the moons from the equation opens up these useful white cards to the conversation.
In short, this deck needs to evolve with the times or it will quickly get left behind in the format. We no longer have the edge against humans that we once did and control has become a lot tougher since 4x Terminus became the standard. This deck has always struggled for pressure and I have been feeling that recently more than I have over the last year. Mentor and Helix may end up not being the answer, but I think that we collectively need to start getting more innovative.
I've been somewhat intrigued by the BR prowess lists on MTGO lately. Takes a more aggressive slant with swiftspear and kiln fiend while keeping the core disruptive package. I'm still not sure if it's really a thing or just working bc it's caught folks off guard.
I don't like ditching white though. Loosing kambal, souls, and wear/tear seems risky.
Kiln Fiend is just not good enough for Modern. Especially when the format's most popular deck runs Thalia (the taxing makes it hard to get effective buffs on the fiend and the first strike means she can always block it profitably.
Can someone post the newest list Gerry Thompson has posted on sag premium? I would like to know what he took in for the additional slots in the main and if he still sticks to the land destruction sideboard plan.
The gist of the article is that the format's speeding up and one way to keep up is by running the full 8x 1-drop discard spells and 2x Rabblemaster in the main. Gerry feels that Moon is too slow / fragile right now and suggests SB Molten Rains instead.
I'm thinking about trying out a version of the list without moons and without mainboard planeswalkers, instead playing 2x Monastery Mentor and 2x Lightning Helix (in addition to the Brutalities).
A couple of reasons: I think Mentor fits our plan far better than Rabblemaster, who is essentially just a 3 drop dumb aggro creature. Mentor can build a profitable defensive board state and can also turn the screws quickly when required. Lightning Helix gives us more non creature reach to help us push through against stalled boards and keeps our life total healthy against humans/ burn/ bridgevine etc.
I adore Monastery Mentor but I'm not convinced that Mentor deserves a spot over Rabblemaster in the 75. The short answer is that Mentor's still just too slow and resource-hungry.
White mana availability is only half the problem with Mentor, the other issue being that Mentor is 3 CMC and requires a steady stream of cheap (ideally free) cantrips to consistently perform well -- think turbo-xerox build like Jeskai Ascension Storm or Mox Mentor. We do have Looting and a bunch of 1 CMC interactive spells, but by the time we would cast Mentor (T4?) we've typically emptied a lot of those cheap spells and are looking to refuel with Reveler or flashback Looting.
I've found that the deck already excels at disrupting the opponent and then setting up a defensive board presence. The biggest issue is that Mardu can fail to close the game out before the opponent can dig their way out of your initial disruption. That's where Rabblemaster fits in as a consistent ~3 turn clock that requires zero investment and comes with few strings attached. Mentor requires 4+ spells in hand to keep up with Rabblemaster, and if your hand isn't stocked you're going to be at a big disadvantage against combo decks, Tron, and potentially others.
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In terms of additional mainboard threats I'm currently happy with Hazoret. I've been tuning a moonless Mardu build for a few weeks and took it out last night to a ~20 person local event:
R1 vs Grixis Shadow G1 I had the opponent pegged on UW Control from their last several months of play and kept a hand without hard removal. They cleared my board and swung in with TBR'd Shadow for lethal.
G2 was similar, I mulled down but couldn't get a hand with Bridge or hard removal but kept one with Thoughtseize, Kommand, Souls, and Nahiri aiming to grind. Took Tasigur with Seize and saw a hand full of cantrips. Got two spirits out but opponent ended up drawing into multiple Shadows and Kozilek's Return to clear my board and swing in for lethal before I could stabilize with Nahiri. 0-2.
R2 vs Burn Super close games. Mainboard Brutality and Helix were very helpful as you can expect and heavier white wasn’t a problem for life loss during mana fetching. Got sloppy G1 and swung with all spirits allowing opponent to fade a Goblin Guide off the top for lethal. Tightened up my play G2/3. Hazoret won game 3, dealing 12 damage in two turns before they could find the last burn spell for lethal. The matchup felt more favored than traditional Mardu G1 and about the same postboard, giving a small but appreciable improvement overall. 2-1.
R3 vs Jeskai Control
I was initially worried about the lack of Moon here. Turned out to not be an issue, as the full 8 discard spells and increased threats really helped get under the opponent and the matchup felt pretty easy. 2-0.
R4 vs Scapeshift
G1 Mulled to a bad 4 and had a non game
G2 Kept a 5 with 2x Inquisition and Looting, stripped their hand but didn't draw into a threat fast enough to prevent them from killing me ~T7 with natural Valakut. 0-2.
So how did the lack of Blood Moon affect me? It would theoretically be at least OK on the play vs Grixis Shadow and Burn while being great vs Jeskai and Scapeshift. In practice, mainboard Helix was better than MB Moon vs Burn, and the additional discard / threats offset the loss of Moon vs Jeskai. Against Grixis Shadow I was under enough early pressure backed up by Stubborn Denial that I'm not sure I would've gotten Moon down early enough to make a difference. Finally, against Scapeshift it would've helped quite a bit, but the matchup is relatively poor even with Moon so I'm not sure the game would've gone differently. In summary, even with these all being traditionally good matchups for Moon I'm not sure that I missed it so far.
Despite the 2-2 finish I will keep testing this approach as it seems promising to me. Having 31 spells in the main felt awesome with Reveler. I will say that even if you are unconvinced on cutting Moon running 8 discard spells and 1-2 additional threats in the main is where I want to be right now.
I like 2 LtLH alongside 2 Rabblemaster in the main atm, no Blood Moon. Alternatively you could run 1 Hazoret and 1 Manamorphose instead of rabblemasters to have faster revelers.
Cutting Blood Moon in the current meta makes total sense to me. The only matchups where I am interested in it are vs. Mono G Tron and Valakut.
Stony Silence is better than Blood Moon vs Tron anyways. I wasn't interested in running Stony before since we already have lots of artifact destruction and Affinity was a good matchup, but with Affinity's move to Hardened Scales and the rise of KCI over Storm I think it makes sense to adopt 3x Stony SB as standard. But yes, as you saw in my report cutting Moon vs Valakut hurts. I think I'm just going to settle for that being a poorer matchup.
Now, if you want to reliably cast Stony on T2 you need 13+ white sources, which means reworking the mana a bit. Once you've cut the Moons and reworked your mana to reliably hit white T2, Path and Helix start to look pretty reasonable.
I've been testing a list with 3 helix and 3 path to exile for the last couple days. No moons or walkers in the 75 and it feels pretty good so far.
Casting reveler has been smoother than ever and having more cards that trigger pyro has been nice as well.
On the topic of mana (and I don't know how to make the clean looking list presentations) 4 sources of white has been sufficient.
Currently using 4 cliffs, 4 mire, 4 Marsh flats, 2 foundry, 1 blood crypt, 1 godless shrine, 2 mountain, 1 swamp and 1 plains.
Edit: as far as path's nonbo with land destruction, I've basically given up on fighting over lands. I rarely see valakut decks and Tron is absolutely miserable even with land destruction so I doubt I'm negatively impacting myself that much in reality.
Against skred dragons, I side out fatal pushes, blood moons and collective brutality. I may trim a bedlam reveler also. I usually side in ensnaring bridges, hazoret and molten rains. I think it’s a pretty close match up. Chandra, new sarkhan and all the dragons can be tough to get through. A friend of mine plays the deck and he boards in anger of the gods and Relic of Progenitus. He may also side in molten rains. I can’t remember off the top of my head.
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Little angel, go away come again some other day the Devil has my ear today I'll never hear a word you say. He promised I would find a little solace and some peace of mind. Whatever. just as long as I don't feel so desperate and ravenous.
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I have 4 Nature's Claim in the board for Leyline, but Surgical is a real beating.
What in your experience has been most devastating for your as a surgical target? Bridge or Vengevine I am assuming?
Minor question -- what were you planning to do with 3x Surgical Extraction vs Tron? My impression was that this card is mostly dead without Molten Rain / Fulminator to set up the Tron land extraction. You could extract a threat like O-Stone or Wurmcoil but unless they have another copy in hand you're mostly just paying 2 life and going down a card to fuel Pyro / Reveler. Given that you won both of your games with a few points of reach even Bolt or Brutality seem better than Surgical here, no?
This a video of Jeff hoogland playing a league with mardu. He is playing 3 copies of blood moon I believe. Jeff makes the case that Mardu is a prison style deck that needs blood moon to help lock out the opponent. I tend to agree with Jeff’s line of thinking on this one. We need blood moon to help us slow the game down so we can grind our opponents out.
A couple of reasons: I think Mentor fits our plan far better than Rabblemaster, who is essentially just a 3 drop dumb aggro creature. Mentor can build a profitable defensive board state and can also turn the screws quickly when required. Lightning Helix gives us more non creature reach to help us push through against stalled boards and keeps our life total healthy against humans/ burn/ bridgevine etc. Removing the moons from the equation opens up these useful white cards to the conversation.
In short, this deck needs to evolve with the times or it will quickly get left behind in the format. We no longer have the edge against humans that we once did and control has become a lot tougher since 4x Terminus became the standard. This deck has always struggled for pressure and I have been feeling that recently more than I have over the last year. Mentor and Helix may end up not being the answer, but I think that we collectively need to start getting more innovative.
I don't like ditching white though. Loosing kambal, souls, and wear/tear seems risky.
B/G Rock BG | Jund BGR | Mardu Pyromancer BRW | Ponza RG | Burn RW
I adore Monastery Mentor but I'm not convinced that Mentor deserves a spot over Rabblemaster in the 75. The short answer is that Mentor's still just too slow and resource-hungry.
I've found that the deck already excels at disrupting the opponent and then setting up a defensive board presence. The biggest issue is that Mardu can fail to close the game out before the opponent can dig their way out of your initial disruption. That's where Rabblemaster fits in as a consistent ~3 turn clock that requires zero investment and comes with few strings attached. Mentor requires 4+ spells in hand to keep up with Rabblemaster, and if your hand isn't stocked you're going to be at a big disadvantage against combo decks, Tron, and potentially others.
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In terms of additional mainboard threats I'm currently happy with Hazoret. I've been tuning a moonless Mardu build for a few weeks and took it out last night to a ~20 person local event:
4x Young Pyromancer
4x Bedlam Reveler
1x Hazoret the Fervent
Instant (11)
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Path to Exile
2x Lightning Helix
3x Kolaghan's Command
Sorcery (20)
4x Faithless Looting
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Thoughtseize
2x Collective Brutality
2x Dreadbore
4x Lingering Souls
4x Arid Mesa
4x Bloodstained Mire
2x Blood Crypt
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Godless Shrine
3x Blackcleave Cliffs
2x Inspiring Vantage
1x Mountain
1x Plains
1x Swamp
3x Surgical Extraction
1x Wear
3x Stony Silence
2x Ensnaring Bridge
2x Engineered Explosives
2x Goblin Rabblemaster
1x Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1x Nahiri, the Harbinger
G1 I had the opponent pegged on UW Control from their last several months of play and kept a hand without hard removal. They cleared my board and swung in with TBR'd Shadow for lethal.
G2 was similar, I mulled down but couldn't get a hand with Bridge or hard removal but kept one with Thoughtseize, Kommand, Souls, and Nahiri aiming to grind. Took Tasigur with Seize and saw a hand full of cantrips. Got two spirits out but opponent ended up drawing into multiple Shadows and Kozilek's Return to clear my board and swing in for lethal before I could stabilize with Nahiri. 0-2.
R2 vs Burn
Super close games. Mainboard Brutality and Helix were very helpful as you can expect and heavier white wasn’t a problem for life loss during mana fetching. Got sloppy G1 and swung with all spirits allowing opponent to fade a Goblin Guide off the top for lethal. Tightened up my play G2/3. Hazoret won game 3, dealing 12 damage in two turns before they could find the last burn spell for lethal. The matchup felt more favored than traditional Mardu G1 and about the same postboard, giving a small but appreciable improvement overall. 2-1.
R3 vs Jeskai Control
I was initially worried about the lack of Moon here. Turned out to not be an issue, as the full 8 discard spells and increased threats really helped get under the opponent and the matchup felt pretty easy. 2-0.
R4 vs Scapeshift
G1 Mulled to a bad 4 and had a non game
G2 Kept a 5 with 2x Inquisition and Looting, stripped their hand but didn't draw into a threat fast enough to prevent them from killing me ~T7 with natural Valakut. 0-2.
So how did the lack of Blood Moon affect me? It would theoretically be at least OK on the play vs Grixis Shadow and Burn while being great vs Jeskai and Scapeshift. In practice, mainboard Helix was better than MB Moon vs Burn, and the additional discard / threats offset the loss of Moon vs Jeskai. Against Grixis Shadow I was under enough early pressure backed up by Stubborn Denial that I'm not sure I would've gotten Moon down early enough to make a difference. Finally, against Scapeshift it would've helped quite a bit, but the matchup is relatively poor even with Moon so I'm not sure the game would've gone differently. In summary, even with these all being traditionally good matchups for Moon I'm not sure that I missed it so far.
Despite the 2-2 finish I will keep testing this approach as it seems promising to me. Having 31 spells in the main felt awesome with Reveler. I will say that even if you are unconvinced on cutting Moon running 8 discard spells and 1-2 additional threats in the main is where I want to be right now.
Now, if you want to reliably cast Stony on T2 you need 13+ white sources, which means reworking the mana a bit. Once you've cut the Moons and reworked your mana to reliably hit white T2, Path and Helix start to look pretty reasonable.
Casting reveler has been smoother than ever and having more cards that trigger pyro has been nice as well.
On the topic of mana (and I don't know how to make the clean looking list presentations) 4 sources of white has been sufficient.
Currently using 4 cliffs, 4 mire, 4 Marsh flats, 2 foundry, 1 blood crypt, 1 godless shrine, 2 mountain, 1 swamp and 1 plains.
Edit: as far as path's nonbo with land destruction, I've basically given up on fighting over lands. I rarely see valakut decks and Tron is absolutely miserable even with land destruction so I doubt I'm negatively impacting myself that much in reality.