The Mangara + Flicker engine is obviously incredibly powerful, but very slow. Once it's online, it's easy to gain a huge advantage, but it can take a while to set up.
Not sure about the two Anafenzas yet. I felt like I needed more 2 drops (10 to be precise), and there's so much flickering going on in this deck that I thought she must be the next best option after maxing out on Thalia and Arbiter. She combos with Finks and also has great synergy with Flickerwisp. There's sometimes tension if you have her plus one of your other two drops though, since you usually want to play each as early as possible.
I think the mana is getting sketchy now too. 9 colourless sources seems to put the deck in a kind of no-mans land between not having enough colourless to regularly have 1 by turn 4 for Displacer, and having too many colourless to support WW on turn 3. Not really sure how to solve this without upping the total land count.
I really like this list. It's very synergistic, and I've always thought that our biggest weakness is that we play dinky little creatures that get outclassed really easily. Anafenza helps in this regard, and sort of acts like an Honor of the Pure for everything we cast.
Has anyone tried Sun Titan as a one of for those late game grinds? I know he's off curve, but flicking him would bring back a bunch of dudes that died blocking those Gurmags and Tarmogoyfs. I want to try one, but hope that one of you done so already so I don't have to waste my time if he doesn't work.
Has anyone tried Sun Titan as a one of for those late game grinds? I know he's off curve, but flicking him would bring back a bunch of dudes that died blocking those Gurmags and Tarmogoyfs. I want to try one, but hope that one of you done so already so I don't have to waste my time if he doesn't work.
a six drop is insanely hard to cast in this deck die to the saving of labs etc...the highest I have gone was 5 cmc in the gw build with hierarchs fit either sigarda or baneslayer angel.
Hey guys,
I've been playing the mono-white version of death and taxes for a while now and was thinking of changing over to the white black version and trying it out. What would your suggestions be to pick up first aside from the land base, tidehollow scullers, and wasteland stranglers. Which I already have in my possession.
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"Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest heart."
"Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest heart."
Is it safe to assume that we're going to be looking at a fairly aggro/creature-based meta for the foreseeable future? I was hoping to drop the blink package in favor of SFM and Swords and more taxers, but now I'm thinking Splicer and especially Finks just got even more important than ever. Thoughts?
Very excited to start playing this deck, before I think it might have been a little underpowered, but I think that the synergy between tidehollow, wasteland strangler and flickerwisp will push the W/B version over the top and make it very strong. I think an argument could be made for mono white version with the new blink Eldrazi, but i think the W/B version is going to be the strongest.
I think the biggest question we need to answer is do you make room for dark confidant or not? And if you do, what do you cut? It doesn't really synergize with the rest of the deck but it's hard to argue how solid that card is. If we're able to disrupt our opponents mana and early game plan with sculler and strangler, plus have a steady stream of card advantage, I see it being very difficult for an opponent to catch up.
I am not surprised with the ban of Summer Bloom. Too much mana too fast even if it was not always consistent. Amulet decks have other options that will still allow consistent turn 4 or 5 wins.
I am surprised with Splinter Twin. The sorcery speed creature based combo dependent on a 4 mana aura basically defined the turn 4 Modern format. I have never played a twin deck, but have played against it with many different decks. It was always a very fun skill intensive match. I would have preferred they print some better twin hate than ban twin outright. It will be interesting to see how all the previous twin variants evolve.
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My Modern decks: Death and Taxes, Hatebears, Well Oiled Machine, Merfolk, Nyx Wave, Soul Sisters, Stompy, Matyr Proc, Naya Zoo, Robots (I refuse to call it affinity!), Bogles, Kiki Chord
People wont play Amulet any more. There will be a brew with extra Guides and Azusa taking the place of Bloom but it wont be anywhere near as popular.
Twin is just dead. It did define Modern in a lot of ways but so did Pod for a while and they banned that a year ago. I'm actually not a fan of this trend of banning the "best," deck each year in what is supposed to be an eternal format. Decks are expensive.
People wont play Amulet any more. There will be a brew with extra Guides and Azusa taking the place of Bloom but it wont be anywhere near as popular.
Twin is just dead. It did define Modern in a lot of ways but so did Pod for a while and they banned that a year ago. I'm actually not a fan of this trend of banning the "best," deck each year in what is supposed to be an eternal format. Decks are expensive.
I'm completely with you in that respect. Sure I only play tier 2 and 3 based decks, but I like a challenge and can't afford the really powerful tier one decks. Sure, before the bannings pod decks were beginning to take up too much of the metagame and maybe had to eventually be banned, but splinter twin is just a consistent turn 4 combo that can become control, or aggressive when the game calls for it. Personally I never had a problem with the deck and I thought that with the exception of the amulet deck which was winning way too consistently before turn 4 the rest of the format was perfectly fine. Hell, I would have been perfectly happy with a couple unbannings and no bannings at all. I certainly don't like the precedent that ban a piece of the best deck idea, because that is what it feels like right now.
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"Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest heart."
People wont play Amulet any more. There will be a brew with extra Guides and Azusa taking the place of Bloom but it wont be anywhere near as popular.
Twin is just dead. It did define Modern in a lot of ways but so did Pod for a while and they banned that a year ago. I'm actually not a fan of this trend of banning the "best," deck each year in what is supposed to be an eternal format. Decks are expensive.
I wouldn't completely write off Amulet decks. Pod morphed into the Abzan Company deck which is a solid tier 2 deck. I don't think Amulet decks will be gone forever. There are other ways to abuse Amulet with bounce lands to produce the mana needed to cast turn 3 or 4 titans and hive minds. We just won't see anymore of that turn 2 broken crap.
Twin still has a powerful control shell that is alive and well. Honestly, I probably lost more games to twin from the slow attrition and beat down than by the combo. Also, most games I did lose to the combo wasn't on turn 4 anyway. The same decks with kiki jiki could still be decent tier 2 decks. Time will tell.
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My Modern decks: Death and Taxes, Hatebears, Well Oiled Machine, Merfolk, Nyx Wave, Soul Sisters, Stompy, Matyr Proc, Naya Zoo, Robots (I refuse to call it affinity!), Bogles, Kiki Chord
People wont play Amulet any more. There will be a brew with extra Guides and Azusa taking the place of Bloom but it wont be anywhere near as popular.
Twin is just dead. It did define Modern in a lot of ways but so did Pod for a while and they banned that a year ago. I'm actually not a fan of this trend of banning the "best," deck each year in what is supposed to be an eternal format. Decks are expensive.
I wouldn't completely write off Amulet decks. Pod morphed into the Abzan Company deck which is a solid tier 2 deck. I don't think Amulet decks will be gone forever. There are other ways to abuse Amulet with bounce lands to produce the mana needed to cast turn 3 or 4 titans and hive minds. We just won't see anymore of that turn 2 broken crap.
Twin still has a powerful control shell that is alive and well. Honestly, I probably lost more games to twin from the slow attrition and beat down than by the combo. Also, most games I did lose to the combo wasn't on turn 4 anyway. The same decks with kiki jiki could still be decent tier 2 decks. Time will tell.
Amulet will be a fringe thing. People play Bubble Hulk, they play Living End, they play Pyromancer Storm, they play Ad Nauseum they play a lot of combo decks, Amulet will just be another one instead of something that shapes the meta. The only combo deck I think will have similar impact going forward is Grishoalbrand. Maybe Kiki-Chord as it's super consistent but I've got a feeling it wont as it's not on any radars in podcasts.
Twin decks are going to split down three paths. You'll see Temur decks that might shift to Scapeshift. Grixis Control will be big with Delve bombs as the more Tempo control of choice and Delver will come back as UR Aggro.
QQ for BW players, what is the right turn 1 play when your opener has inquisition and Aether Vial? I can see arguments for both but don't have all the cards in the bw deck so have never playtested.
hi all, i play a mono blue taking turns and this is a very bad match up for me, which cards are the best to side against death and taxes?
One issue is that the more cards you let them draw the more hate cards they are going to be able to throw into play to mess with you. You need some way to get ahead quickly, or catch up for cheap. Something like Devastation Tide, where you get to remove everything they have in play for 2 mana (3 if thalia is in play) but that messes with your side of the board too.
Well...I never expected that. Tier 1 is now only what GBx, burn, affinity, and tron? That should make metagaming it easier I guess and that is what we're best at...
Twin can move to kiki-jiki, mirror breaker but I don't think they will. It not only slows their clock, it makes them more susceptible to removal. Amulet is equally slowed down.
I actually really enjoyed twin and amulet MUs. I think they were quite possibly the two most skill intensive MUs out there.
So how do we change our deck going forward?
I can see mirran crusader earning a MD slot as well as aven mindcensor keeping his slot. I know he doesn't do work against amulet anymore, but I have a feeling we're gonna need him vs tron and perhaps against scapeshift coming back (with the twin player migration that way). Anything else?
I really like this list. It's very synergistic, and I've always thought that our biggest weakness is that we play dinky little creatures that get outclassed really easily. Anafenza helps in this regard, and sort of acts like an Honor of the Pure for everything we cast.
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
WDeath and TaxesW
RWGBurnGWR
I've been playing the mono-white version of death and taxes for a while now and was thinking of changing over to the white black version and trying it out. What would your suggestions be to pick up first aside from the land base, tidehollow scullers, and wasteland stranglers. Which I already have in my possession.
WDeath and TaxesW
RWGBurnGWR
Edit: in welcoming our affinity & tron overlords, hows about we cut vial and add SSG main deck along with a few copies of SS & Kataki?
URW PillowFort Stasis (costruction)
modern:
U
pauper:
UB Servitor Control
xenob8 : you know you are going to have a bad time when opponent starts with snow covered island
Is it safe to assume that we're going to be looking at a fairly aggro/creature-based meta for the foreseeable future? I was hoping to drop the blink package in favor of SFM and Swords and more taxers, but now I'm thinking Splicer and especially Finks just got even more important than ever. Thoughts?
Same. Always felt Bloom was a very strong matchup for us, and Twin matchups were among the most skill-intensive games I've played in Modern.
I think the biggest question we need to answer is do you make room for dark confidant or not? And if you do, what do you cut? It doesn't really synergize with the rest of the deck but it's hard to argue how solid that card is. If we're able to disrupt our opponents mana and early game plan with sculler and strangler, plus have a steady stream of card advantage, I see it being very difficult for an opponent to catch up.
I am surprised with Splinter Twin. The sorcery speed creature based combo dependent on a 4 mana aura basically defined the turn 4 Modern format. I have never played a twin deck, but have played against it with many different decks. It was always a very fun skill intensive match. I would have preferred they print some better twin hate than ban twin outright. It will be interesting to see how all the previous twin variants evolve.
Twin is just dead. It did define Modern in a lot of ways but so did Pod for a while and they banned that a year ago. I'm actually not a fan of this trend of banning the "best," deck each year in what is supposed to be an eternal format. Decks are expensive.
I'm completely with you in that respect. Sure I only play tier 2 and 3 based decks, but I like a challenge and can't afford the really powerful tier one decks. Sure, before the bannings pod decks were beginning to take up too much of the metagame and maybe had to eventually be banned, but splinter twin is just a consistent turn 4 combo that can become control, or aggressive when the game calls for it. Personally I never had a problem with the deck and I thought that with the exception of the amulet deck which was winning way too consistently before turn 4 the rest of the format was perfectly fine. Hell, I would have been perfectly happy with a couple unbannings and no bannings at all. I certainly don't like the precedent that ban a piece of the best deck idea, because that is what it feels like right now.
I wouldn't completely write off Amulet decks. Pod morphed into the Abzan Company deck which is a solid tier 2 deck. I don't think Amulet decks will be gone forever. There are other ways to abuse Amulet with bounce lands to produce the mana needed to cast turn 3 or 4 titans and hive minds. We just won't see anymore of that turn 2 broken crap.
Twin still has a powerful control shell that is alive and well. Honestly, I probably lost more games to twin from the slow attrition and beat down than by the combo. Also, most games I did lose to the combo wasn't on turn 4 anyway. The same decks with kiki jiki could still be decent tier 2 decks. Time will tell.
Amulet will be a fringe thing. People play Bubble Hulk, they play Living End, they play Pyromancer Storm, they play Ad Nauseum they play a lot of combo decks, Amulet will just be another one instead of something that shapes the meta. The only combo deck I think will have similar impact going forward is Grishoalbrand. Maybe Kiki-Chord as it's super consistent but I've got a feeling it wont as it's not on any radars in podcasts.
Twin decks are going to split down three paths. You'll see Temur decks that might shift to Scapeshift. Grixis Control will be big with Delve bombs as the more Tempo control of choice and Delver will come back as UR Aggro.
One issue is that the more cards you let them draw the more hate cards they are going to be able to throw into play to mess with you. You need some way to get ahead quickly, or catch up for cheap. Something like Devastation Tide, where you get to remove everything they have in play for 2 mana (3 if thalia is in play) but that messes with your side of the board too.
Twin can move to kiki-jiki, mirror breaker but I don't think they will. It not only slows their clock, it makes them more susceptible to removal. Amulet is equally slowed down.
I actually really enjoyed twin and amulet MUs. I think they were quite possibly the two most skill intensive MUs out there.
So how do we change our deck going forward?
I can see mirran crusader earning a MD slot as well as aven mindcensor keeping his slot. I know he doesn't do work against amulet anymore, but I have a feeling we're gonna need him vs tron and perhaps against scapeshift coming back (with the twin player migration that way). Anything else?
4 tectonic edge
4 ghost quarter
2 sea gate wreckage
2 horizon canopy
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Eiganjo Castle
9 Plains
8 non creature spells
4 Aether Vial
4 Path to Exile
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Selfless Spirit
2 Spellskite
1 Phyrexian Revoker
3 blade splicer
3 Eldrazi Displacer
2 Fiend Hunter
4 Flickerwisp
3 Restoration Angel
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Rest in Peace
2 Stony Silence
2 Ghostly Prison
1 Worship
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Sundering Growth
2 Plains
1 Forest
2 Razorverge Thicket
1 Temple Garden
2 Brushland
3 Horizon Canopy
4 Ghost Quarter
2 stirring wildwood
2 Gavony Township
1 tectonic edge
1 gemstone caverns
10 noncreature spells
4 Path to Exile
4 Aether Vial
2 Collected Company
28 creatures
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Leonin Arbiter
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Spellskite
1 Selfless Spirit
4 Flickerwisp
2 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
2 Courser of Kruphix
1 Eternal Witness
1 Eldrazi Displacer
2 Restoration Angel
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest in Peace
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Ghostly Prison
1 Worship
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Concealed Courtyard
2 Godless Shrine
1 Shambling Vent
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Vault of the Archangel
2 Plains
1 Gemstone Caverns
8 Noncreature Spells
4 Aether Vial
4 Path to Exile
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Leonin Arbiter
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Flickerwisp
4 Eldrazi Displacer
2 Spellskite
2 Selfless Spirit
3 Wasteland Strangler
4 Thought-Knot Seer
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Rest in Peace
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Sin Collector
2 Orzhov Pontiff
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Worship
3 Brushland
3 Eldrazi Temple
1 Forest
2 Gavony Township
1 Gemstone Caverns
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Plains
3 Razorverge Thicket
2 Stirring Wildwood
1 Temple Garden
10 noncreature spells
4 Aether Vial
2 Ancient Stirrings
4 Path to exile
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Leonin Arbiter
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Spellskite
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Eldrazi Displacer
4 Flickerwisp
1 Eternal Witness
4 Thought-knot seer
2 Reality Smasher
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest in Peace
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Blessed Alliance
1 Worship
1 Spellskite
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Seachrome Coast
1 Eiganjo Castle
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Moorland Haunt
2 Mutavault
1 Island
2 Plains
2 Horizon Canopy
1 adarkar wastes
1 flooded strand
9 noncreature spells
4 Aether Vial
4 Path to Exile
1 detention sphere
28 creatures
3 Spell Queller
3 Selfless Spirit
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 eldrazi displacer
3 Reflector Mage
4 Flickerwisp
2 Phyrexian Revoker
3 leonin arbiter
2 Venser, Shaper Savant
2 spellskite
2 Rest in Peace
2 stony silence
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 ghostly prison
2 burrenton forge-tender
2 Surgical Extraction
1 kira, great glass-spinner
1 blessed alliance