Stop me if I'm wrong, but does Faith's Reward not also dodge Inquisition? Hmm?
Done! I'm sold. Fantastic card. You know if you're an eggs player if you saw Faith's Reward and said "Well that's going in"
Standard Mardu Midrange Modern 4 Colour Delver, Naya Midrange CommanderSidisi 1v1, Sliver Overlord, Intet the Dreamer, Mayael the Anima (shameless plug http://youtu.be/4zu4QRvGSo8)
Alright, so lets say your commander is Riku of Two Reflections. Combo commander, to be sure, but lets push this into the realm of absurd. You cast Palinchron and do your Riku thing to make infinite mana because we're going to need it. Forget about your extra Palinchron tokens. A million flying 4/5s is boring. So now you cast Enter the Infinite, because drawing your deck is important. Follow it up with a Obstinate Familiar because not decking yourself is equally important. Laboratory Maniac could work here too, but we're gonna go some more levels deep. Cast a Greater Good because we want a tasteful sac outlet. Follow this up with Parallel Lives, Doubling Season,Copy Enchantment, Clever Impersonator, Mycosynth Latice, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Copy Artifact giving you 6 double token effects. Here's where it gets fun now. Cast a Reef Worm. Sac it to greater good and get 256 Fish, which you sac to get 65,536 whales, which you sac to get 16,777,216 Krakens. Are we done yet? Nope! Cast Thromok the Insatiable, devouring all your krakens to make a 281,474,976,710,656/281,474,976,710,656 Thromok. Where do we go from here though? Let your opponent cast Death Mutation on him! Why, that's 7.20575940x10^16 tokens! Good thing we have Body Double to make another Thromok the Insatiable who will be a 5.19229686x10^33/5.19229686x10^33! Seems big enough, but not for us! Since we're red anyways, lets cast a Furnace of Rath, Dictate of the Twin Gods, and a Fire Servant! Now it's time to Fling your guy, dealing a spicy 4.15383749x10^34 damage to your opponent. To put that in perspective, there are an estimated 3x10^23 stars in the known universe. You dealt more damage than there are stars. That'll give your opponent something to think about. PROTIP: Dodge Spellskite decks
^ sooooo true. I did a double take when it was posted in the thread, beat my way to the spoiler page, and my jaw hit the floor. But, I'm still in favor of noxious revival as a 2of just because it protects us in a pinch, and can destroy reanimator (which happens to be a bad matchup) by bouncing their iona or griselbrand to the top of their library in response to goryo's vengeance. Maybe it'll just become a SB card against control...
The thing is, 4 sunrise 4 faith's reward seems like the exact setup we were all looking for. I've been testing today, non-stop, the different possibilities this card provides. Everything I've put it in has increased the consistency of the deck. Nothing I've put it in has increased the speed yet. I'm still working on that...
I almost think the name of the card is a light jab at sunrise decks from the WOTC.
FizzleMage: Play 4 Sunrise and 4 Faith's Reward. As soon as you get to 4 mana you are going to win from the explosion of cards; there is very little chance of fizzling like in older versions.
Don't worry about not being able to get maximum value from Sunrise/Reward. By playing the maximum allowed amount of each, you're trading less cards drawn per Sunrise in exchange for increased frequency of Sunrising, so everything kind of balances out. I'd gladly take more Sunrises, as it means you can combo off earlier and have to go in blind less often. If you have excess mana but not enough eggs, Reshape for Conjurer's Bauble (or any other 1 mana egg) will put everything back in balance again.
I modified the KCI build to incorporate Reward. Some things I wish to point out:
1) I use 3 KCI only. You never want to draw more than one. Before Reward I played a Gargadon build with only 3 Gargadons; any more sac outlets was asking for trouble. I feel that KCI is just a supplement to Lotus Bloom; you can combo off Lotus Bloom just fine. If you have KCI in play, it just makes the combo easier.
2) The same goes for Darksteel Citadel - it's nice to have an artifact to sacrifice to KCI or Reshape, but I want to be able to hit UU consistently to Reshape in the first place. I replaced one with a Mox Opal, which, like Citadel, is an artifact, but it can actually produce colored mana.
3) I cut Ichor Wellspring completely! Shocking. I feel that with so many Sunrises, Ichor Wellspring just feels like a win-more to me. On a per-mana basis, it draws as many cards as the one-mana eggs, with the drawback that it can't sacrifice itself. Before Reward this was arguable, as if you were forced to go in blind the extra card drawn when Wellspring ETBed might just have drawn you a Sunrise. That was when we had only 6 Sunrises in the deck. Now we have 8, and the most expensive costs 4 mana. If you have to go in blind, chances are the next Sunrise is nearer the top than when we only had 4 Sunrise + 2 Open.
So, modifications from Juggler's list:
-1 Noxious Revival
-1 KCI
-1 Darksteel Citadel
-2 Ichor Wellspring
-2 Open the Vaults
+1 Mox Opal
+2 Island
+4 Faith's Reward
Yes, +2 Island. If you miss a land drop while you have only Faith's Reward (4 mana vs Sunrise's 3) in hand, it's not going to be pretty. Sure, the deck has 2 Etherium Sculptor that kind of acts like a mana source, but Faith's Reward is unaffected by it.
Financial note: Faith's Reward is pre-selling at SCG for $2, which is slightly lower than Second Sunrise's ($2.50) average. Good time to buy?
I agree with you totally that this deck now needs to run more lands. However, I think if that happens, it needs a way to sac all of it's lands at one. It already happens a lot for me that I can Ghost Quarter lands and sac Darksteels but I still have 3 or 4 lands that are tapped. One card I may try to fit in as a 2 of is Mana Seism. If our land count goes up by even 1 or 2, having a means to sac out every land at once would be really valuable.
Standard Mardu Midrange Modern 4 Colour Delver, Naya Midrange CommanderSidisi 1v1, Sliver Overlord, Intet the Dreamer, Mayael the Anima (shameless plug http://youtu.be/4zu4QRvGSo8)
Alright, so lets say your commander is Riku of Two Reflections. Combo commander, to be sure, but lets push this into the realm of absurd. You cast Palinchron and do your Riku thing to make infinite mana because we're going to need it. Forget about your extra Palinchron tokens. A million flying 4/5s is boring. So now you cast Enter the Infinite, because drawing your deck is important. Follow it up with a Obstinate Familiar because not decking yourself is equally important. Laboratory Maniac could work here too, but we're gonna go some more levels deep. Cast a Greater Good because we want a tasteful sac outlet. Follow this up with Parallel Lives, Doubling Season,Copy Enchantment, Clever Impersonator, Mycosynth Latice, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Copy Artifact giving you 6 double token effects. Here's where it gets fun now. Cast a Reef Worm. Sac it to greater good and get 256 Fish, which you sac to get 65,536 whales, which you sac to get 16,777,216 Krakens. Are we done yet? Nope! Cast Thromok the Insatiable, devouring all your krakens to make a 281,474,976,710,656/281,474,976,710,656 Thromok. Where do we go from here though? Let your opponent cast Death Mutation on him! Why, that's 7.20575940x10^16 tokens! Good thing we have Body Double to make another Thromok the Insatiable who will be a 5.19229686x10^33/5.19229686x10^33! Seems big enough, but not for us! Since we're red anyways, lets cast a Furnace of Rath, Dictate of the Twin Gods, and a Fire Servant! Now it's time to Fling your guy, dealing a spicy 4.15383749x10^34 damage to your opponent. To put that in perspective, there are an estimated 3x10^23 stars in the known universe. You dealt more damage than there are stars. That'll give your opponent something to think about. PROTIP: Dodge Spellskite decks
I don't agree that Faith's Reward should push out Noxious Revival as Revival is still needed for protecting against Surgical Extraction, and it allows us recur things from our gy such as Reshape.
Clutch ended up being way to clunky to use. Maybe in RtR they'll print a mono-blue 4cmc transmute spell.
6 Sunrise Spells would probably be enough, if you keep a complement of Revivals hanging out there. Faith's Reward is just so much better than OtV, it's not even funny.
Seeing that card made me go. Oh. Wow. Eggs fanatics are going to freak out with joy.
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Un autre con brandit le drapeau de la nouvelle économie. Agitant sa criminelle thérapie, l'abruti prophá¨te s'en va guerrir le monde de ses maux ! Mais la misá¨re n'a que faire de cette médecine á dose homeopathétique, Il n'y a d'autre cure que l'ablation du liberal-fascisme qui nous ronge. - Amanda Woodward, Un Autre Con
I've tested a few different setups and 4 sunrise, 4 faiths, 2 noxious has been the most solid for me so far. You also can't forget that control exists. It's one of the reasons the legacy lists used to run 4 mystical tutor, 4 sunrise, 4 reclaim. If Jund bins your KCI or your sunrise, and you have to dig for another, those 2 revivals are worth their weight in gold.
And as far as lands go, I'm pretty much sticking to 17-18 + opal. Any more and you'll start cutting too many eggs. And I still run a full 4 citadels. The great thing about faith is it lets you go off with only needing a single source capable of producing white. That's proven pretty ridiculous so far... You can play it tighter on mana production and afford what comes up easier.
I agree with you totally that this deck now needs to run more lands. However, I think if that happens, it needs a way to sac all of it's lands at one. It already happens a lot for me that I can Ghost Quarter lands and sac Darksteels but I still have 3 or 4 lands that are tapped. One card I may try to fit in as a 2 of is Mana Seism. If our land count goes up by even 1 or 2, having a means to sac out every land at once would be really valuable.
If you have KCI out, you should have no problems regarding mana. In the past I played Gargadon because it could produce 1UU for Drift of Phantasms, whereas getting 2WWUU for Drift + Sunrise in the KCI build was too taxing after the first Sunrise, when I had few untapped Islands. Now we have Reward, which KCI can easily cast since it only needs 1 white mana. There's not a lot of reason to play any other variant.
It's not necessary to have something to sacrifice your lands. KCI will generate all the mana you need. You don't have to squeeze out every advantage you can get before Sunrising; you just need to make sure that you have enough resources to get your next Sunrise and cast it.
Boros means no Reshape, which is disastrous. I've tried using Lotus Cobra in a non-blue build and it doesn't work. The one thing you do get is Trash for Treasure, but this means that you need your Blooms in the graveyard instead of in the deck.
Speaking of lands, I don't play any fetches now because I don't want to miss land drops. I've gone from 4 Terrarion/3 Elsewhere Flask to 3/4, because the extra Flask is helpful in drawing lands pre-Sunrise. And because my deck has no Open the Vaults now, I can't just crack Terrarions willy-nilly.
I've been playing the KCI build more, and think that Ichor Wellspring is superior to Terrarion.
If you don't have a sacrifice outlet, then Wellspring and Terrarion just draw you one card each. For that one more mana, Wellspring draws pre-, rather than post-Sunrise, which helps you find more ingredients. It can help you with something as simple as drawing your 3rd land. Furthermore, Terrarion can't be activated the turn it enters the battlefield.
If you have a sacrifice outlet (KCI/Reshape), Ichor Wellspring draws you one extra card per Sunrise compared to Terrarion, for the low price of 1 mana. You just have to sacrifice it once and you're miles ahead of any advantage you could have generated with Terrarion.
Wellspring is almost like having 2 eggs in 1 card. When you draw one with KCI out, you might as well have just drawn 2 cards.
Having the right mix of 2 mana and 1 mana eggs is also a good thing if you follow the Sligh principle of spending as much mana per turn as possible. With the old deck, sometimes I'd draw a 2 land, 3 1-mana egg hand, then either miss my 3rd land drop, or make 3 lands but have 2 unused mana on T3 (owing in no small part to the dearth of 2-mana eggs). If that hand was 2 land, 2 1-mana egg, 1 2-mana egg, I'd be able to cast the 2-mana egg T2 and draw one more card, increasing the chances of making 3 lands, or, if that has already been accomplished, spending all 3 mana on T3 on, say, Bauble + Flask, or Bauble + Star + Sphere.
I've gone and replaced all my Terrarions with Wellsprings. 1x Terrarion might work as a Reshape target when you have KCI out, but that's assuming you don't want to fetch Chromatic Star.
A boros build will not work because Reshape is far too valuable that you cannot get rid of blue in the deck. Faith's Reward is making me so excited! Can't wait to get my hands on it! This card can almost double our consistency so I say let's get crazy trying to quicken the kill, I'll be testing almost anything I can think of in the next few days (still going with my Riddlesmith build though).
Terrarion has its place as a setup card for sunrise. It pulls double duty in terms of mana-fixing. I ran at least 3 terrarion, and at least 2 plains for that reason. Now with faith's reward in the deck, I'm not sure that's AS important, but the sunrise count hasn't changed. Even 1 wellspring is plenty of extra draw for the deck, especially as a target to feed to reshape pre-KCI, and as a target to reshape for post-KCI. I'd say running a minimum of 2 in the faith build seems important, but more than that depends on what else is going on in the list. The deck with only sunrise needed around 4-6 ETB draw effects for land-digging purposes, and a maximum of 7 cards that recur only under KCI, as well as 2 mana eggs being good at 6 to make sure we drop it turn 2. With faith, I guess that would have to come down to 3-5 and 6 and still 6 2cc eggs instead. Maybe the answer is 3 wellspring, 2 terrarion, 3 flask with a 4 faith 4 sunrise set. I've been testing with the larger base and 18 lands, and have been pretty happy.
^yeah, that's correct. I COULD see more land added in, but this brings up another issue...
So 2cc eggs are great mana sinks in early turns, and give us much appreciated digging. The problem is that, if we want to make the deck "faster", they'll end up having to take a hike. 2nd turn 2cc egg is great if you are going off turn 4, but not so good if you were planning to go off turn 3. For a turn 3 combo, you wanted to either reshape on turn 2, or be able to throw out a KCI with your lands + mox/sculptor the turn you go off (turn 2 sculptor + 2 eggs into a turn 3 KCI is a pretty legit play, and will by and large let you combo right there and then).
Non-KCIs turn 3 combos are usually based on just having the brass to combo off of 2 eggs and the right mix of lands + early reshape, and even flask can just get in the way in that gameplan (though turn 2 flask turn 3 reshape is still possible, but the mana is low enough to bleed us out if you only have flask and one other egg to start). With Faith, we might be fine running only 1cc eggs + cantrips. That is one of the lists I've been testing (sleight + serum 4/3) for non-kci, both a zero flask and 4 flask and keeping track of what happens over a number of fishes. I haven't come away with any real results yet though, too early to tell with all the other consistency issues to iron out first.
edit - the point being that if we add more land, the 2cc eggs may no longer be necessary for ensuring land drops. And the virtual threshold on the number of eggs required before attempting to go off would be decreased a bit with more sunrises in the deck to recur the eggs you do have.
edge of autumn + KCI?
3 misty?
locket in kci!? Not sculptor? I've had no problems with him being a creature, and he just comes out against jund and BWtokens/control anyway. That discussion is about ...10 or more pages back i think.
only 3 reshape?
a forest? What for?
Also, Gigadrowse doesn't stop MBT, and it doesn't look like there's anything in that sideboard to stop extraction effects. Not seeing any of those on MTGO? Defense Grid is tutorable hate against blue.
Tormod's Crypt/Grafdigger's cage is also superior to Nihil Spellbomb in every way, given that you won't have black mana floating unless you're going off the same turn-in which case you either fizzle or win.
Nihil Spellbomb cantrips pre-combo, though. There may be a chance I prematurely pop a Chromatic Star, and there may be a chance I stick a Swamp in my list.
I still do not believe Tormod's Crypt should be played over Nihil Spellbomb. It costs 0 mana, but it can never cantrip in a million years and it needs to be gone in order to have an effect, and Sunny Side Up needs all the consistency it can get. I was jumping in joy when Wizards revealed Nihil Spellbomb, as it is nearly the perfect graveyard hate rock for Sunny Side Up.
One of the downsides of the old deck was that it durdled a lot - you spend the first 3-4 turns just laying eggs (pun intended), then crack them all on T4. With more 2-mana eggs, you get to draw more cards, which opens up much more options. It's kind of hard to explain, but just imagine that UR Storm players only had Ideas Unbound and Meditate to work with (no Serum Visions/Sleight of Hand) and you might have a rough idea of how much durdling was involved.
There is no place for Edge of Autumn in this deck now that you can play KCI with no repercussions (specifically, color issues). KCI does basically everything Edge does (generate mana and draw cards - just sac Stars/Wellsprings) and makes mana BEFORE Sunrise, which is another plus.
WRT cantrips, I'm not sold yet. If you sac Wellspring even once (not hard to do with 7-8 sac outlets) it draws you 2 cards. Which is stronger, 1 mana: draw 1, dig 2 or 2 mana: draw 2 and free Reshape? That's not even counting the cards that Wellspring draws every time you sac & Sunrise it back.
How about Spreading Seas or Abundant Growth?
Unfortunately they're not artifact, so we can't neither search by Reshape nor sacrifice by KCI, but I suppose we should use them instead of 1 or 2 Elsewhere flasks.
actually, that's a rather interesting idea. I'm not sure on the merits of it in terms of versatility, but here's how it would work:
cast it on a land, draw a card, tap for mana, then ghost quarter away the land. It'll come back to enchant another land, and draw a card after a sunrise. The blue one theoretically could be used for disrupting the opponent, but with blue and black being our biggest issues in the first place, I think it's the wrong bone for this dog. On the other hand, the green one is 1cc and draws a card on ETB, gets recurred in the same way as the blue one, and can be played on a citadel which can still be sacced for mana. The efficiency of the card at 1cc is almost strictly better than flask. For one thing, you can throw it on a land to find your 2nd land instead of throwing a flask to find your 3rd. It "could" make certain hands more keepable. However...
It's green, and therefore would become awkward with sculptor and reshape. You'd have to lose the plains and run 3-4 forests to get close to what you need to cast it consistently the way you would flask, and even then, it will always conflict more than flask would. If you have forests but no growth, you'll have a difficult time getting blue for sculptor and reshape before the combo turn. If you have growth but no forests, it's the same deal, making it a 2-card combo here.
And the other 2 strikes against it, being a non-artifact in KCI builds - like you said - and not having a real target (no ghost quarter or darksteel citadel on the field), are concerns which are relevant to this decks consistency.
However, it's an interesting toy, and worth some testing to see if stacks up in either build.
Standard Mardu Midrange Modern 4 Colour Delver, Naya Midrange CommanderSidisi 1v1, Sliver Overlord, Intet the Dreamer, Mayael the Anima (shameless plug http://youtu.be/4zu4QRvGSo8)
Alright, so lets say your commander is Riku of Two Reflections. Combo commander, to be sure, but lets push this into the realm of absurd. You cast Palinchron and do your Riku thing to make infinite mana because we're going to need it. Forget about your extra Palinchron tokens. A million flying 4/5s is boring. So now you cast Enter the Infinite, because drawing your deck is important. Follow it up with a Obstinate Familiar because not decking yourself is equally important. Laboratory Maniac could work here too, but we're gonna go some more levels deep. Cast a Greater Good because we want a tasteful sac outlet. Follow this up with Parallel Lives, Doubling Season,Copy Enchantment, Clever Impersonator, Mycosynth Latice, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Copy Artifact giving you 6 double token effects. Here's where it gets fun now. Cast a Reef Worm. Sac it to greater good and get 256 Fish, which you sac to get 65,536 whales, which you sac to get 16,777,216 Krakens. Are we done yet? Nope! Cast Thromok the Insatiable, devouring all your krakens to make a 281,474,976,710,656/281,474,976,710,656 Thromok. Where do we go from here though? Let your opponent cast Death Mutation on him! Why, that's 7.20575940x10^16 tokens! Good thing we have Body Double to make another Thromok the Insatiable who will be a 5.19229686x10^33/5.19229686x10^33! Seems big enough, but not for us! Since we're red anyways, lets cast a Furnace of Rath, Dictate of the Twin Gods, and a Fire Servant! Now it's time to Fling your guy, dealing a spicy 4.15383749x10^34 damage to your opponent. To put that in perspective, there are an estimated 3x10^23 stars in the known universe. You dealt more damage than there are stars. That'll give your opponent something to think about. PROTIP: Dodge Spellskite decks
Hmm, not sure if this has been mentioned, but with Faith's Reward, could Tezzeret, The Seeker warrant being a one-of? Being able to -4 him then get him back seems very powerful.
Also, could Mitotic Manipulation also be included, doesnt seem too expensive, and is easier to cast than Wargate, although not being garunteed as Lotus Bloom does push it back, we're almost garunteed to be getting an egg, or Ghost Quarter
Just my $0.02, will be testing with the release of M13
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Currently Playing: WUModern Second Sunrise Wizard's Ruined Me WUBModern Teachings <- Current Favourite WUBRGPauper Cube
It's green, and therefore would become awkward with sculptor and reshape.
Yeah, I realized this.I run with no forest,so I can't cast Abundant Growth except for during combo.I use them in order to cast it after starting combo,so that I use only 2 Abundant Growths.To begin with,I found it because I felt difficulty to cast Elsewhere Flasks during sunrise combo.
In the first place,I don't use KCI for some reasons.
First,KCI is 4 mana.I think it is difficult for us to cast it in early turn.
Of course,KCI gives us great advantages ―we can draw cards without paying cost of Elsewhere Flask or Ichor Wellspring.
But we have to pay 4 mana.I can't but feel heaviness when we confront high speed decks―Splinter twins or URstorm,Mono Red or Tron.
Second,I think we depend on KCI too much when we adopt it.Ichor Wellspring or Terrarion are prime examples.I don't like them because they are exist solely due to the presence of KCI.
Third,the presence of anti-artifact cards,e.g.Pithing Needle,Ancient GrudgeorSteel Sabotage.Of course Grudge and Sabotage doesn't matter―we can sacrifice what we want to sacrifice during they are on stack.But we have to start combo in turn that we cast KCI. And how about Pithing Needle? We have little way to deal with it.
For these reasons,I don't use KCI,Ichor Wellspring,Terrarion and Mox Opal.
Instead of them,I use Elsewhere flask,Edge of Autumn,Chromatic Sphere,Chromatic Star,and 1 or 2 Abundant Growths so as to draw.I realized KCI's explosive power.But I think it's an aniquilacion(it means overkill in Spanish.)
P.S. There may be some wrong Englsih in my sentence,because I have just begun to study English.Please do forgive me.
Done! I'm sold. Fantastic card. You know if you're an eggs player if you saw Faith's Reward and said "Well that's going in"
Standard Mardu Midrange
Modern 4 Colour Delver, Naya Midrange
CommanderSidisi 1v1, Sliver Overlord, Intet the Dreamer, Mayael the Anima (shameless plug http://youtu.be/4zu4QRvGSo8)
The thing is, 4 sunrise 4 faith's reward seems like the exact setup we were all looking for. I've been testing today, non-stop, the different possibilities this card provides. Everything I've put it in has increased the consistency of the deck. Nothing I've put it in has increased the speed yet. I'm still working on that...
I almost think the name of the card is a light jab at sunrise decks from the WOTC.
http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/spam/ <---- kills spam, fyi.
Don't worry about not being able to get maximum value from Sunrise/Reward. By playing the maximum allowed amount of each, you're trading less cards drawn per Sunrise in exchange for increased frequency of Sunrising, so everything kind of balances out. I'd gladly take more Sunrises, as it means you can combo off earlier and have to go in blind less often. If you have excess mana but not enough eggs, Reshape for Conjurer's Bauble (or any other 1 mana egg) will put everything back in balance again.
I modified the KCI build to incorporate Reward. Some things I wish to point out:
1) I use 3 KCI only. You never want to draw more than one. Before Reward I played a Gargadon build with only 3 Gargadons; any more sac outlets was asking for trouble. I feel that KCI is just a supplement to Lotus Bloom; you can combo off Lotus Bloom just fine. If you have KCI in play, it just makes the combo easier.
2) The same goes for Darksteel Citadel - it's nice to have an artifact to sacrifice to KCI or Reshape, but I want to be able to hit UU consistently to Reshape in the first place. I replaced one with a Mox Opal, which, like Citadel, is an artifact, but it can actually produce colored mana.
3) I cut Ichor Wellspring completely! Shocking. I feel that with so many Sunrises, Ichor Wellspring just feels like a win-more to me. On a per-mana basis, it draws as many cards as the one-mana eggs, with the drawback that it can't sacrifice itself. Before Reward this was arguable, as if you were forced to go in blind the extra card drawn when Wellspring ETBed might just have drawn you a Sunrise. That was when we had only 6 Sunrises in the deck. Now we have 8, and the most expensive costs 4 mana. If you have to go in blind, chances are the next Sunrise is nearer the top than when we only had 4 Sunrise + 2 Open.
So, modifications from Juggler's list:
-1 Noxious Revival
-1 KCI
-1 Darksteel Citadel
-2 Ichor Wellspring
-2 Open the Vaults
+1 Mox Opal
+2 Island
+4 Faith's Reward
Yes, +2 Island. If you miss a land drop while you have only Faith's Reward (4 mana vs Sunrise's 3) in hand, it's not going to be pretty. Sure, the deck has 2 Etherium Sculptor that kind of acts like a mana source, but Faith's Reward is unaffected by it.
Financial note: Faith's Reward is pre-selling at SCG for $2, which is slightly lower than Second Sunrise's ($2.50) average. Good time to buy?
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
I agree with you totally that this deck now needs to run more lands. However, I think if that happens, it needs a way to sac all of it's lands at one. It already happens a lot for me that I can Ghost Quarter lands and sac Darksteels but I still have 3 or 4 lands that are tapped. One card I may try to fit in as a 2 of is Mana Seism. If our land count goes up by even 1 or 2, having a means to sac out every land at once would be really valuable.
I also think that between Mana Seism, Faithless Looting and Greater Gargadon, a Boros build should be viable
Standard Mardu Midrange
Modern 4 Colour Delver, Naya Midrange
CommanderSidisi 1v1, Sliver Overlord, Intet the Dreamer, Mayael the Anima (shameless plug http://youtu.be/4zu4QRvGSo8)
6 Sunrise Spells would probably be enough, if you keep a complement of Revivals hanging out there. Faith's Reward is just so much better than OtV, it's not even funny.
Seeing that card made me go. Oh. Wow. Eggs fanatics are going to freak out with joy.
And as far as lands go, I'm pretty much sticking to 17-18 + opal. Any more and you'll start cutting too many eggs. And I still run a full 4 citadels. The great thing about faith is it lets you go off with only needing a single source capable of producing white. That's proven pretty ridiculous so far... You can play it tighter on mana production and afford what comes up easier.
http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/spam/ <---- kills spam, fyi.
If you have KCI out, you should have no problems regarding mana. In the past I played Gargadon because it could produce 1UU for Drift of Phantasms, whereas getting 2WWUU for Drift + Sunrise in the KCI build was too taxing after the first Sunrise, when I had few untapped Islands. Now we have Reward, which KCI can easily cast since it only needs 1 white mana. There's not a lot of reason to play any other variant.
It's not necessary to have something to sacrifice your lands. KCI will generate all the mana you need. You don't have to squeeze out every advantage you can get before Sunrising; you just need to make sure that you have enough resources to get your next Sunrise and cast it.
Boros means no Reshape, which is disastrous. I've tried using Lotus Cobra in a non-blue build and it doesn't work. The one thing you do get is Trash for Treasure, but this means that you need your Blooms in the graveyard instead of in the deck.
Speaking of lands, I don't play any fetches now because I don't want to miss land drops. I've gone from 4 Terrarion/3 Elsewhere Flask to 3/4, because the extra Flask is helpful in drawing lands pre-Sunrise. And because my deck has no Open the Vaults now, I can't just crack Terrarions willy-nilly.
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Big Johnny.
If you don't have a sacrifice outlet, then Wellspring and Terrarion just draw you one card each. For that one more mana, Wellspring draws pre-, rather than post-Sunrise, which helps you find more ingredients. It can help you with something as simple as drawing your 3rd land. Furthermore, Terrarion can't be activated the turn it enters the battlefield.
If you have a sacrifice outlet (KCI/Reshape), Ichor Wellspring draws you one extra card per Sunrise compared to Terrarion, for the low price of 1 mana. You just have to sacrifice it once and you're miles ahead of any advantage you could have generated with Terrarion.
Wellspring is almost like having 2 eggs in 1 card. When you draw one with KCI out, you might as well have just drawn 2 cards.
Having the right mix of 2 mana and 1 mana eggs is also a good thing if you follow the Sligh principle of spending as much mana per turn as possible. With the old deck, sometimes I'd draw a 2 land, 3 1-mana egg hand, then either miss my 3rd land drop, or make 3 lands but have 2 unused mana on T3 (owing in no small part to the dearth of 2-mana eggs). If that hand was 2 land, 2 1-mana egg, 1 2-mana egg, I'd be able to cast the 2-mana egg T2 and draw one more card, increasing the chances of making 3 lands, or, if that has already been accomplished, spending all 3 mana on T3 on, say, Bauble + Flask, or Bauble + Star + Sphere.
I've gone and replaced all my Terrarions with Wellsprings. 1x Terrarion might work as a Reshape target when you have KCI out, but that's assuming you don't want to fetch Chromatic Star.
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Big Johnny.
RIP Eggs
My Trade Thread
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So 2cc eggs are great mana sinks in early turns, and give us much appreciated digging. The problem is that, if we want to make the deck "faster", they'll end up having to take a hike. 2nd turn 2cc egg is great if you are going off turn 4, but not so good if you were planning to go off turn 3. For a turn 3 combo, you wanted to either reshape on turn 2, or be able to throw out a KCI with your lands + mox/sculptor the turn you go off (turn 2 sculptor + 2 eggs into a turn 3 KCI is a pretty legit play, and will by and large let you combo right there and then).
Non-KCIs turn 3 combos are usually based on just having the brass to combo off of 2 eggs and the right mix of lands + early reshape, and even flask can just get in the way in that gameplan (though turn 2 flask turn 3 reshape is still possible, but the mana is low enough to bleed us out if you only have flask and one other egg to start). With Faith, we might be fine running only 1cc eggs + cantrips. That is one of the lists I've been testing (sleight + serum 4/3) for non-kci, both a zero flask and 4 flask and keeping track of what happens over a number of fishes. I haven't come away with any real results yet though, too early to tell with all the other consistency issues to iron out first.
edit - the point being that if we add more land, the 2cc eggs may no longer be necessary for ensuring land drops. And the virtual threshold on the number of eggs required before attempting to go off would be decreased a bit with more sunrises in the deck to recur the eggs you do have.
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edge of autumn + KCI?
3 misty?
locket in kci!? Not sculptor? I've had no problems with him being a creature, and he just comes out against jund and BWtokens/control anyway. That discussion is about ...10 or more pages back i think.
only 3 reshape?
a forest? What for?
Also, Gigadrowse doesn't stop MBT, and it doesn't look like there's anything in that sideboard to stop extraction effects. Not seeing any of those on MTGO? Defense Grid is tutorable hate against blue.
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Grafdigger's Cage is fun, though. Interestingly, it also keeps hate bears like Thalia/Canonist/Knight of the Reliquary in the graveyard if you insist on comboing off with Second Sunrise and you killed them with Pyrite Spellbomb or something the turn you comboed off.
I still do not believe Tormod's Crypt should be played over Nihil Spellbomb. It costs 0 mana, but it can never cantrip in a million years and it needs to be gone in order to have an effect, and Sunny Side Up needs all the consistency it can get. I was jumping in joy when Wizards revealed Nihil Spellbomb, as it is nearly the perfect graveyard hate rock for Sunny Side Up.
There is no place for Edge of Autumn in this deck now that you can play KCI with no repercussions (specifically, color issues). KCI does basically everything Edge does (generate mana and draw cards - just sac Stars/Wellsprings) and makes mana BEFORE Sunrise, which is another plus.
WRT cantrips, I'm not sold yet. If you sac Wellspring even once (not hard to do with 7-8 sac outlets) it draws you 2 cards. Which is stronger, 1 mana: draw 1, dig 2 or 2 mana: draw 2 and free Reshape? That's not even counting the cards that Wellspring draws every time you sac & Sunrise it back.
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Big Johnny.
Unfortunately they're not artifact, so we can't neither search by Reshape nor sacrifice by KCI, but I suppose we should use them instead of 1 or 2 Elsewhere flasks.
cast it on a land, draw a card, tap for mana, then ghost quarter away the land. It'll come back to enchant another land, and draw a card after a sunrise. The blue one theoretically could be used for disrupting the opponent, but with blue and black being our biggest issues in the first place, I think it's the wrong bone for this dog. On the other hand, the green one is 1cc and draws a card on ETB, gets recurred in the same way as the blue one, and can be played on a citadel which can still be sacced for mana. The efficiency of the card at 1cc is almost strictly better than flask. For one thing, you can throw it on a land to find your 2nd land instead of throwing a flask to find your 3rd. It "could" make certain hands more keepable. However...
It's green, and therefore would become awkward with sculptor and reshape. You'd have to lose the plains and run 3-4 forests to get close to what you need to cast it consistently the way you would flask, and even then, it will always conflict more than flask would. If you have forests but no growth, you'll have a difficult time getting blue for sculptor and reshape before the combo turn. If you have growth but no forests, it's the same deal, making it a 2-card combo here.
And the other 2 strikes against it, being a non-artifact in KCI builds - like you said - and not having a real target (no ghost quarter or darksteel citadel on the field), are concerns which are relevant to this decks consistency.
However, it's an interesting toy, and worth some testing to see if stacks up in either build.
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2 Mountain
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Reshape
4 Faith's Reward
4 Second Sunrise
2 Open the Vaults
2 Faithless Looting
1 Mana Seism
1 Explore
1 Banefire
3 Krark-Clan Ironworks
3 Chromatic Sphere
3 Lotus Bloom
2 Ichor Wellspring
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Mox Opal
4 Terrarion
4 Conjurer's Bauble
4 Chromatic Star
Standard Mardu Midrange
Modern 4 Colour Delver, Naya Midrange
CommanderSidisi 1v1, Sliver Overlord, Intet the Dreamer, Mayael the Anima (shameless plug http://youtu.be/4zu4QRvGSo8)
Also, could Mitotic Manipulation also be included, doesnt seem too expensive, and is easier to cast than Wargate, although not being garunteed as Lotus Bloom does push it back, we're almost garunteed to be getting an egg, or Ghost Quarter
Just my $0.02, will be testing with the release of M13
WUModern Second SunriseWizard's Ruined MeWUBModern Teachings <- Current Favourite
WUBRGPauper Cube
Currently Building:
R Modern Burn
All hail Grand Comrade Storm Crow!
Yeah, I realized this.I run with no forest,so I can't cast Abundant Growth except for during combo.I use them in order to cast it after starting combo,so that I use only 2 Abundant Growths.To begin with,I found it because I felt difficulty to cast Elsewhere Flasks during sunrise combo.
In the first place,I don't use KCI for some reasons.
First,KCI is 4 mana.I think it is difficult for us to cast it in early turn.
Of course,KCI gives us great advantages ―we can draw cards without paying cost of Elsewhere Flask or Ichor Wellspring.
But we have to pay 4 mana.I can't but feel heaviness when we confront high speed decks―Splinter twins or URstorm,Mono Red or Tron.
Second,I think we depend on KCI too much when we adopt it.Ichor Wellspring or Terrarion are prime examples.I don't like them because they are exist solely due to the presence of KCI.
Third,the presence of anti-artifact cards,e.g.Pithing Needle,Ancient GrudgeorSteel Sabotage.Of course Grudge and Sabotage doesn't matter―we can sacrifice what we want to sacrifice during they are on stack.But we have to start combo in turn that we cast KCI. And how about Pithing Needle? We have little way to deal with it.
For these reasons,I don't use KCI,Ichor Wellspring,Terrarion and Mox Opal.
Instead of them,I use Elsewhere flask,Edge of Autumn,Chromatic Sphere,Chromatic Star,and 1 or 2 Abundant Growths so as to draw.I realized KCI's explosive power.But I think it's an aniquilacion(it means overkill in Spanish.)
P.S. There may be some wrong Englsih in my sentence,because I have just begun to study English.Please do forgive me.