I am enjoying dark dwellers in my build. I run a bob less version
Im not saying he is bad, rather the opposite. You need to build your deck with him in mind and that could work perfectly fine. Only downside is the 4/4 body, feels a bit meh, especially when you play a GBx deck and you bounce with goyfs.
Ayli is becoming a kind of pet card to me as well and I think she does a fare job on the board because of deathtouch. She is no goyf, but she trades with anything with added utility which is neat.
How has he worked for you and what does your list look like?
I don't think this list is in stone but this has been working for me.SB is kinda ehh atm
Hey guys I went to a local modern tournament a few days ago with a total showing of 12 people + 4 rounds, ended up going 2-2, losing to infect and bogles and taking a win from lantern control and burn (also did some Game 1 testing against a grixis delver deck), this is what I ended up bringing:
Match 1: I make quick work of his guides and eidolon of great revels and stabilize with soulfire + helix, and grind him down to topdeck mode while I'm in buyback mode with soulfire while sporting a bolt+ path in hand; he scoops soon after.
Match 2: He has an explosive start while I end up flooding out pretty bad, I was only able to cast 3 spells that game...
Match 3: I keep an extremely risky hand (6 lands and a helix) but with some help from 2 of my temples I end filtering what I don't need and draw nothing but action the whole way through. I have him dead on board with Gideon and Bladehold together (I attacked for 5 earlier, and he fetched agressively), but he made a misplay that cost him the game ( he could have played boros charm plus skull crack, but because he played a creature earlier in the turn, he screwed up his mana and couldn't do both....
side in- 1 purge, 1 anger side out: 2 thoughtseize
Round 2: Infect, 1-2
Match 1: I end up getting all of the removal and discard that I needed, and am able to wrap things up relatively quickly with gideon + soul beats.
Match 2: I'm one turn away from wrapping things up ( got him down to 3 with an all out attack with souls, but it turned out that he had another become immense (he used one before to save a creature from dying to bolt), and was able to hit me exactly for lethal next turn...
Match 3: I made the huge mistake of tapping out to put out a gideon to make a 2/2; I had 2 souls and a hand with bolt, path, and terminate, while he had an inkmoth and a glistener elf out, he won by topdecking a blessing and had groundswell + become immense in hand.
Side in- 2 extracts Side out- 2 helix
Round 3: Lantern, 2-1
Match 1: He had his playset of ensnaring bridge out, had an active academy ruins, his set of pithing needles to deactivate soulfire, murder king, and chandra, and on top of it used surgical extraction on my kolaghan's command + souls.... I guess I should call it an accomplishment that I even got him down to 2.
Match 2: I start the game off right by topdecking a stony silence turn 2 (which goes unanswered for the rest of the game) but I still have to play around bridge, so I end up having to rely on murder king, firebrand, and my burn spells to get damage through, finishing him off by firebrand's -2 w/ helix. Crackling doom was great for taking spellskites off the table while dealing damage, hide//seek was able to get around welding jar shenanigans, and rest in peace was able to nullify academy ruins + codex shredder (in case stony silence got destroyed)
Match 3: This is by far the quickest and easiest game out of the bunch, since I was able to command his 1st bridge away and extracted the rest of them away on turn 3. Since his deck doesn't have many other ways to deal with creatures attacking, I whoop his ass pretty handily.
Side in- 2 hide//seek, 2 extract, 2 stony, 2 RIP, 2 fulminator Side out- 6 discard, 4 path
Round 4: Bogles, 1-2
These matches literally boiled down to whether or not I had crackling doom; the one time I did I was able to stabilize quickly and take over from there, but the other times where I didn't the games finished up very quickly (although extracting his coronet did buy me a few turns)
As for the grixis delver deck I played a few games against, I felt that my deck was overall favored by 60-40, partly because he didn't have cryptic commands (plus his spell snares were in the side), however he did have forked bolt main deck which was rather efficient at dealing w/ multiple souls. I ended up winning 3 of the 4 matches (unfortunately I wasn't able to take notes); painful truths and pia + kiran were the MVP's in this match up, and soulfire was able to keep my life total stable; even in the late game I would have (and most of the time keep) on average an 8+ lead on life, making painful truths that much better.
Final notes: Unfortunately the only match up where Firebrand made an appearance was in the lantern match up, and while I was happier to have her instead of Pyromaster in that matchup, I still think Pyromaster is most likely the better choice overall for her 0 ability going forward, but I’ll test her out some more before I can make a decision on whether to keep her or not. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, however, was amazing; there wasn’t a time where I was unhappy to draw into him. I’m definitely adding another one in the main board. Tymaret, the Murder King, did a little better than I thought he would, but I still think he’s missing something to make him more viable; being able to sac creatures for extra damage or self- recursion is decent, but if he was able to target creatures and/or had a relevant ability (ie. Deathtouch/lifelink) I feel he would be a great choice, but sadly he doesn’t. As for hero of bladehold, I have mixed feelings on her at the moment; she’s a bit awkward when your opponent has something like tasigur, but she’s perfect when the board is clear and in topdeck mode. She also synergizes very well with Gideon, and looks like a great target for Narihi’s ultimate, so for now I’ll keep her in.
Everything I've heard about Pack Rat suggests that it's too slow to actually work in Modern. Discard, tokens, and minor life gain can slow the game down a lot but I'm not sure it's slow enough for Pack Rat.
I could be totally wrong, though! It seems to want to be built around a bit more, i.e. running mutavault and another playset of Rats. Discarding Asylum Visitor to Pack Rats and playing him via Madness could be decent, so you might replace the Abbots with Visitors. Anyways that would make the Rats better although I'm not sure that the deck would necessarily be better than one without Rats.
Anyone with some Pack Rat experience got some perspective?
Everything I've heard about Pack Rat suggests that it's too slow to actually work in Modern. Discard, tokens, and minor life gain can slow the game down a lot but I'm not sure it's slow enough for Pack Rat.
I could be totally wrong, though! It seems to want to be built around a bit more, i.e. running mutavault and another playset of Rats. Discarding Asylum Visitor to Pack Rats and playing him via Madness could be decent, so you might replace the Abbots with Visitors. Anyways that would make the Rats better although I'm not sure that the deck would necessarily be better than one without Rats.
Anyone with some Pack Rat experience got some perspective?
Pack rat is great in mono-black decks, or black/blue, but otherwise green has better creatures, and red/white are just more inclined to take other routes to victory (not reliant on a slow vulnerable creature that eats your cards)
Abbey doesn't seem good unless you've got a set of souls, a set of bitterblossom, and maybe even something like Sorin, LoI.
Otherwise, we don't have tons of fodder we want to sacrifice. On top of that, it all still dies to path, which is very unfortunate.
Everything I've heard about Pack Rat suggests that it's too slow to actually work in Modern. Discard, tokens, and minor life gain can slow the game down a lot but I'm not sure it's slow enough for Pack Rat.
I could be totally wrong, though! It seems to want to be built around a bit more, i.e. running mutavault and another playset of Rats. Discarding Asylum Visitor to Pack Rats and playing him via Madness could be decent, so you might replace the Abbots with Visitors. Anyways that would make the Rats better although I'm not sure that the deck would necessarily be better than one without Rats.
Anyone with some Pack Rat experience got some perspective?
How many Visitor do you think i should use? 2 or 3?
@ TheAller Its a good starting point to begin testing with. Try this list and decide for yourself which cards work and which don't. I won't mislead to something you might not want to get to, so I suggest you try this build and look at your test results by yourself.
But here are just some notes:
As for the experience most people have here is that Abbot is kinda mediocre and many people would be happy to replace him, but on the other hand there are also people who like him. I would have a closer look at him during your testing.
Fulminator Mage as a one of might not be impactful enough, so I would also keep an eye on him.
Overall I guess you will find, like many people here, that we lack the ability to close games down early, we just don't have the kinda pressure Jund or Abzan has. So some people are trying Butcher of the Horde as a one or two of in the list, for some well needed pressure.
Just see how it goes.
I didn't say play butcher in place of Lingering Souls. Souls is one of our best cards, you don't wanna ever play less than 4. Yes, you are right, we can apply pressure by throwing our burn spells to the face, but if your main strategy will be this, you are effectively playing a inconsistent burn deck. Plus, there are cards like Leyline of Sanctity going around, which hoses pretty badly.
I'll show you my deck in order to give you some impression on what I meant:
Butcher is actually not quite mediocre. Think about it like this: Opponents sometimes damage themselves by fetching and shocking, so they happen to sit around 15-17 life lets say. You, as you have many burn spells in your deck, are sitting on 2 of them lets say, thats 6 dmg. If you manage to attack with a pair of spirit tokens and dropping a butcher turn 4, then sacrificing a token to give him haste, you have a 2 turn clock there. Butcher is not the best creature in general, but as we happen to have Lingering souls he often represents a 2-3 turn clock, since we have that burn spell support. I can't actually imagine a faster clock we would be able to represent, since we don't have creatures like goyf.
Personally, I wouldn't run any of them. I'm playing B/R midrange with a white splash for sb for quite a long time and did a lot of testing. The best 2 drops we have access are Bob, Abbot and Nantuko Shade (I have 21 B sources). He is ok early, good mid and Incredibly strong late in top deck mode. The deck has amazing top decks with Abbot and Nantuko. I'm currently gathering everything to make the switch to Mardu but I am not certain yet as Nantuko is so powerful. Once in top deck mode, he often swing for 6-7 or even 8 damage, not many 2 drop can achieve this.
In a vacuum, butcher is still a 5/4 flier, which admittedly is not the best, but it gets work done. He can oneshot a majority of planeswalkers, and he takes about 3 turns to kill a player (between burn spells, and land damage, 15 damage is about as much as you need.), and he can be given haste and lifelink.
I would consider playing sin prodder if I wanted to switch off bob and play gurmag angler/tombstalker, but you have to look at sin prodder as more of a "at the beginning of your upkeep, mill 1, target opponent loses 2 life." Because on average, thats all it is. But its usually worse than that, given that they can choose.
True, Prodder and Bob seem incompatible 'cause they require a different mana curve.
But Rob and Visitor do seem very compatible together. Less life loss from Bob than from Visitor and 1 more point of power is a more aggressive direction, the same direction as Rob puts you.
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Bring back Transmute as a U/B mechanic and take your mill back to the depths of hell where it came from!
So since we now the latest banning announcement (Eye of Ugin banned, Sword of the Meek + Ancestral Vision unbanned) Do you guys think that we see our deck being more played now or does the meta propably shift twoards us a bit? With Eye of Ugin being banned, our Tron matchup is gonna be an edge better at least. I don't know how to feel about the unbannings though. For starters, we could use Sword of the Meek for ourself, but I probably don't think so. What do you think about it?
Cards like Anguished Unmaking and PTE seem counter productive with Kalitas. I think he's more of a Jund/Grix card.
I think Asylum Visitor will not proc as often as you think it will. And only 1 toughness means it can't attack into virtually anything. How much play does Blood Scrivener see? And the Visitor is only marginally better.
Anyway I think more control decks will emerge after the unbans. Jeskai Control, Grixis Control and so forth. We need to improve our MU against blue based control decks.
I personally fear the most that more Thopther Foundry + Sword of the Meek decks will emerge, thus people will play more SB cards like Night of Soul's Betrayal, Izzet Staticaster and cheap sweeper in general, which is just deadly for us, since we basically only have X/1 creatures. Therefore, if that happens, we will be more often attacked on our weakness. Also, Asylum Visitor might not be good enough in this meta, although I kinda like him, but he still doesn't solve the issue of being a weak creature in terms of toughness.
Ancestral seems pretty good vs us, for decks with it a potentially silly sideboard card could be wasteland strangler. Might be too cute, but in those matchups he represents a solid 3 for 1 (creature, kill, counter).
Not everyone plays white, and people won't play white just in order to counter this combo the best way...and IF the combo sees play, people will play things to counter it, including the ones I mentioned. It doesn't have to be a huge spike in play like you said, I said that people will tend to shift towards weapons which hurt us in addition, which is overall a slight negative aspect for us concerning the unbanning.
Nevertheless, I am feeling alright about the announcements, Eldrazi has been weakened, which is obviously good for us, and Tron has been weakened, which is also great for us.
@DemannicTheOrc Unless the strangler gets countered himself But it would be hilarious watching this 3 for 1 be happening.
The issue is that decks with visions don't tend to play a lot of creatures early.
Also, cockatrice has had SoI up for over a week now. I've been playing with visitor. I understand the skepticism, but he's not bad. He's a lot better than scriniver and pain seer.
Considering we have white as well as kommand maindeck, I'm not worried about thoptersword. Its the -1/-1 hate that hurts us. That being said, anguished unmaking answers the permanent effects, and I don't think the sweepers (golgari charm, zealous persecution, etc) are to be worried about.
We can play gideon (for the emblem) or our own persecutions if push comes to shove.
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I don't think this list is in stone but this has been working for me.SB is kinda ehh atm
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/394953#paper
2 Arid Mesa
2 Marsh Flats
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Temple of Malice
1 Temple of Triumph
2 Shambling Vent
1 Clifftop Retreat
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Blood Crypt
2 Godless Shrine
1 Mountain
2 Plains
1 Swamp
6 Creatures
3 Soulfire Grand Master
1 Tymaret, the Murder King
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
1 Hero of Bladehold
30 Non-Creatures
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
2 Terminate
2 Lightning Helix
2 Crackling Doom
2 Kolaghan's Command
2 Painful Truths
4 Lingering Souls
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Chandra, the Firebrand
1 Wrath of God
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Celestial Purge
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest in Peace
2 Hide//Seek
2 Surgical Extraction
Round 1: Burn, 2-1
Match 1: I make quick work of his guides and eidolon of great revels and stabilize with soulfire + helix, and grind him down to topdeck mode while I'm in buyback mode with soulfire while sporting a bolt+ path in hand; he scoops soon after.
Match 2: He has an explosive start while I end up flooding out pretty bad, I was only able to cast 3 spells that game...
Match 3: I keep an extremely risky hand (6 lands and a helix) but with some help from 2 of my temples I end filtering what I don't need and draw nothing but action the whole way through. I have him dead on board with Gideon and Bladehold together (I attacked for 5 earlier, and he fetched agressively), but he made a misplay that cost him the game ( he could have played boros charm plus skull crack, but because he played a creature earlier in the turn, he screwed up his mana and couldn't do both....
side in- 1 purge, 1 anger side out: 2 thoughtseize
Round 2: Infect, 1-2
Match 1: I end up getting all of the removal and discard that I needed, and am able to wrap things up relatively quickly with gideon + soul beats.
Match 2: I'm one turn away from wrapping things up ( got him down to 3 with an all out attack with souls, but it turned out that he had another become immense (he used one before to save a creature from dying to bolt), and was able to hit me exactly for lethal next turn...
Match 3: I made the huge mistake of tapping out to put out a gideon to make a 2/2; I had 2 souls and a hand with bolt, path, and terminate, while he had an inkmoth and a glistener elf out, he won by topdecking a blessing and had groundswell + become immense in hand.
Side in- 2 extracts Side out- 2 helix
Round 3: Lantern, 2-1
Match 1: He had his playset of ensnaring bridge out, had an active academy ruins, his set of pithing needles to deactivate soulfire, murder king, and chandra, and on top of it used surgical extraction on my kolaghan's command + souls.... I guess I should call it an accomplishment that I even got him down to 2.
Match 2: I start the game off right by topdecking a stony silence turn 2 (which goes unanswered for the rest of the game) but I still have to play around bridge, so I end up having to rely on murder king, firebrand, and my burn spells to get damage through, finishing him off by firebrand's -2 w/ helix. Crackling doom was great for taking spellskites off the table while dealing damage, hide//seek was able to get around welding jar shenanigans, and rest in peace was able to nullify academy ruins + codex shredder (in case stony silence got destroyed)
Match 3: This is by far the quickest and easiest game out of the bunch, since I was able to command his 1st bridge away and extracted the rest of them away on turn 3. Since his deck doesn't have many other ways to deal with creatures attacking, I whoop his ass pretty handily.
Side in- 2 hide//seek, 2 extract, 2 stony, 2 RIP, 2 fulminator Side out- 6 discard, 4 path
Round 4: Bogles, 1-2
These matches literally boiled down to whether or not I had crackling doom; the one time I did I was able to stabilize quickly and take over from there, but the other times where I didn't the games finished up very quickly (although extracting his coronet did buy me a few turns)
As for the grixis delver deck I played a few games against, I felt that my deck was overall favored by 60-40, partly because he didn't have cryptic commands (plus his spell snares were in the side), however he did have forked bolt main deck which was rather efficient at dealing w/ multiple souls. I ended up winning 3 of the 4 matches (unfortunately I wasn't able to take notes); painful truths and pia + kiran were the MVP's in this match up, and soulfire was able to keep my life total stable; even in the late game I would have (and most of the time keep) on average an 8+ lead on life, making painful truths that much better.
Final notes: Unfortunately the only match up where Firebrand made an appearance was in the lantern match up, and while I was happier to have her instead of Pyromaster in that matchup, I still think Pyromaster is most likely the better choice overall for her 0 ability going forward, but I’ll test her out some more before I can make a decision on whether to keep her or not. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, however, was amazing; there wasn’t a time where I was unhappy to draw into him. I’m definitely adding another one in the main board. Tymaret, the Murder King, did a little better than I thought he would, but I still think he’s missing something to make him more viable; being able to sac creatures for extra damage or self- recursion is decent, but if he was able to target creatures and/or had a relevant ability (ie. Deathtouch/lifelink) I feel he would be a great choice, but sadly he doesn’t. As for hero of bladehold, I have mixed feelings on her at the moment; she’s a bit awkward when your opponent has something like tasigur, but she’s perfect when the board is clear and in topdeck mode. She also synergizes very well with Gideon, and looks like a great target for Narihi’s ultimate, so for now I’ll keep her in.
It has discard, Liliana of the Veil, Dark Confidant, Terminate, Abbot of Keral Keep, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, Lightning Bolt, Kolaghan's Command etc.
Which of the two should i run out of: Pack Rat or Goblin Rabblemaster?
Rabble is much more aggressive but the Rat can take games in late game topdeck mode
However, Rat is much more resilient than Rabblemaster
But Pack Rat also needs you to put in resources (mana and cards), while with rabblemaster you can use your mana killing blockers instead.
Here are my lists for pack rat and rabblemaster versions:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/23-03-16-br-midrange/
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/br-midrange-v2-1/
Thanks
I could be totally wrong, though! It seems to want to be built around a bit more, i.e. running mutavault and another playset of Rats. Discarding Asylum Visitor to Pack Rats and playing him via Madness could be decent, so you might replace the Abbots with Visitors. Anyways that would make the Rats better although I'm not sure that the deck would necessarily be better than one without Rats.
Anyone with some Pack Rat experience got some perspective?
Tempo
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Pack rat is great in mono-black decks, or black/blue, but otherwise green has better creatures, and red/white are just more inclined to take other routes to victory (not reliant on a slow vulnerable creature that eats your cards)
Abbey doesn't seem good unless you've got a set of souls, a set of bitterblossom, and maybe even something like Sorin, LoI.
Otherwise, we don't have tons of fodder we want to sacrifice. On top of that, it all still dies to path, which is very unfortunate.
How many Visitor do you think i should use? 2 or 3?
But here are just some notes:
As for the experience most people have here is that Abbot is kinda mediocre and many people would be happy to replace him, but on the other hand there are also people who like him. I would have a closer look at him during your testing.
Fulminator Mage as a one of might not be impactful enough, so I would also keep an eye on him.
Overall I guess you will find, like many people here, that we lack the ability to close games down early, we just don't have the kinda pressure Jund or Abzan has. So some people are trying Butcher of the Horde as a one or two of in the list, for some well needed pressure.
Just see how it goes.
I'll show you my deck in order to give you some impression on what I meant:
4x Bloodstained Mire
3x Marsh Flats
1x Godless Shrine
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Blood Crypt
2x Swamp
1x Mountain
1x Plains
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
4x Shambling Vent
1x Ghost Quarter
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Thoughtseize
2x Terminate
2x Lightning Helix
2x Kolaghan's Command
4x Lingering Souls
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Anguished Unmaking
4x Dark Confidant
2x Butcher of the Horde
2x Asylum Visitor
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Butcher is actually not quite mediocre. Think about it like this: Opponents sometimes damage themselves by fetching and shocking, so they happen to sit around 15-17 life lets say. You, as you have many burn spells in your deck, are sitting on 2 of them lets say, thats 6 dmg. If you manage to attack with a pair of spirit tokens and dropping a butcher turn 4, then sacrificing a token to give him haste, you have a 2 turn clock there. Butcher is not the best creature in general, but as we happen to have Lingering souls he often represents a 2-3 turn clock, since we have that burn spell support. I can't actually imagine a faster clock we would be able to represent, since we don't have creatures like goyf.
Personally, I wouldn't run any of them. I'm playing B/R midrange with a white splash for sb for quite a long time and did a lot of testing. The best 2 drops we have access are Bob, Abbot and Nantuko Shade (I have 21 B sources). He is ok early, good mid and Incredibly strong late in top deck mode. The deck has amazing top decks with Abbot and Nantuko. I'm currently gathering everything to make the switch to Mardu but I am not certain yet as Nantuko is so powerful. Once in top deck mode, he often swing for 6-7 or even 8 damage, not many 2 drop can achieve this.
I would consider playing sin prodder if I wanted to switch off bob and play gurmag angler/tombstalker, but you have to look at sin prodder as more of a "at the beginning of your upkeep, mill 1, target opponent loses 2 life." Because on average, thats all it is. But its usually worse than that, given that they can choose.
But Rob and Visitor do seem very compatible together. Less life loss from Bob than from Visitor and 1 more point of power is a more aggressive direction, the same direction as Rob puts you.
I think Asylum Visitor will not proc as often as you think it will. And only 1 toughness means it can't attack into virtually anything. How much play does Blood Scrivener see? And the Visitor is only marginally better.
Draft My Cube!
I personally fear the most that more Thopther Foundry + Sword of the Meek decks will emerge, thus people will play more SB cards like Night of Soul's Betrayal, Izzet Staticaster and cheap sweeper in general, which is just deadly for us, since we basically only have X/1 creatures. Therefore, if that happens, we will be more often attacked on our weakness. Also, Asylum Visitor might not be good enough in this meta, although I kinda like him, but he still doesn't solve the issue of being a weak creature in terms of toughness.
Modern: MartyrProc (Control/Prison) Check out my Primer!
Commander: Karador
Pauper: Ub Reanimator
Legacy: Young Frankenstein/Dredge/The Spanish Inquisition
Casual: 5Color Zendikar Combo
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Nevertheless, I am feeling alright about the announcements, Eldrazi has been weakened, which is obviously good for us, and Tron has been weakened, which is also great for us.
@DemannicTheOrc Unless the strangler gets countered himself But it would be hilarious watching this 3 for 1 be happening.
Also, cockatrice has had SoI up for over a week now. I've been playing with visitor. I understand the skepticism, but he's not bad. He's a lot better than scriniver and pain seer.
Considering we have white as well as kommand maindeck, I'm not worried about thoptersword. Its the -1/-1 hate that hurts us. That being said, anguished unmaking answers the permanent effects, and I don't think the sweepers (golgari charm, zealous persecution, etc) are to be worried about.
We can play gideon (for the emblem) or our own persecutions if push comes to shove.