If you just need a big stupid guy that doesn't roll over to a bolt, isn't Thrun a tad more durable? Sure, being able to eat a guy every now and then might be relevant, but so is shroud and regeneration...
They're both cards that serve similar roles. I like the prospect of the potential 2-for-1/getting stupid huge from Polukranos over Thrun's virtual card advantage/resilience, but there's no reason I can't try them both out in the slot.
Anyone got a positive matchup against affinity? I'm like 6-2 against it, can't seem to find reliable way of beating it.
6-2 as in 6 losses or 6 wins? I'm used to people going wins-losses when using that format.
In any case, I've had very good results vs affinity every time I've played it. As of recently, I played it 2 times each in 2 GPTs over the last few weeks, for a total of 4 rounds, going 2-1, 2-1, 2-0, 2-0 against them. Of the 2 games I lost, the first was pretty much your typical affinity nut hand, he played out his whole hand which inlcuded an inkmoth. I held up abrupt decay to not die to Cranial plating, but without a pod or chord wasn't able to do much with my board state. He played a ravager and sac'd his board to put counters on his inkmoth, and swung for the rest of the infect. The other game I lost was a punt by me, he got me for 5 infect on turn 2 on the play, I played a melira on my turn 2 and foolishly tapped my BoP, and then he dispatched my melira and swung for more infect. Had I been able to block, I think I could have had a pretty decent shot of winning that one.
Anyway, sideboards vary but I run 2 paths and 1 slaughter pact in the board, I bring them both in. I also bring in kataki and harmonic sliver. I take out shriekmaw, seer, ranger, and 2 voice. Ideally we want to pod or chord into kataki obviously. We have 5 instant speed removal spells, 3 of which work on manlands. We also have pridemage and sliver to deal with problematic artifacts. Linvala is also very good against them, and so is spellskite. Finks podded to redcap gives us 4 valuable life and lets us kill one of their guys pretty much every time, if they have ravager or overseer I'd rather pod into linvala first though. Pontiff can usually wipe their board. Melira protects us from infect. Archangel is usually our finisher, one hit from her and shes out of blast range, and usually by the time we get her, setting up spikefeeder is only a turn or 2 away anyway.
I've found the post board games very good for us, with the extra removal, and so many of our creatures doing something really relevant in the matchup (melira stops infect, quasali kills stuff, finks helps us stabilize, skite blocks champion and steals modular, linvala shuts off ravager and overseer, pontiff kills nearly all their creatures, harmonic sliver kills stuff, kataki is a huge beating, witness gets our hate back, revielark does too) that he really only lose to the unbeatable hands like turn 1 bunch of guys + overseer/cranial plating, and even then a path or abrupt decay gets us out of that jam most of the time. Usually just set up the hate first, usually kataki, linvala, melira when appropriate, then snipe down problems with pridemage/sliver/decay and either win through beat down or combo off with archangel.
Don't forget to pay for your pod if you have kataki out.
In this heavy budget version the deck will work in a sense that you will learn how to play with pod and bunch of 1ofs in your deck. You will lose games to variance though (more than is healthy for a deck that is supposed to be T1).
Not having chords and running only 3 pods means you won't be always able to get the creature you need (which also means you will be stuck with bunch of donothings in play)
Voices are heavy meta call. If you don't have a lot of UW(R) decks in your area, you will probably be fine without them.
What bothers me the most is your manabase. 8 painlads in 3colored deck that needs all its colors on regular basis means you will be in a world of hurt. Not having manadork 5-7 also could hurt you, but not sure about it. How has been the manabase for you? Imo replace the painlands with shocks and since you will have a lot lands with basic types, you could also just add some checklands (Woodland cemetery etc).
Options for mana dork are: Arbor elf (with all the shocks he makes pretty darn good Birds impression), Avacyn's pilgrim, Sylvan Caryatid (which would probably require some work on the pod chain)
6-2 as in 6 losses or 6 wins? I'm used to people going wins-losses when using that format.
Obviously it's supposed to be 2-6, brainfarted a bit
Anyway, what you are describing is pretty much my gameplan against affinity. I'm running Dismembers instead of Paths, but that works pretty much the same and I also bring in Burrenton, because I've been defeated by Whipflare on more than one occasion.
So I'm pretty sure this is the list I'm taking to GP MN. I'm anyone have any thoughts? I'm set on the Thune combo, so that's staying. Things I'm thinking about are cutting the second ooze for another Thrun, since I seem to be having problems with UWR, but ooze is really good vs a wide variety of decks, so I'm hesitating. My tron matchup is really, really bad (isn't everyones?), I was thinking Mindcensor somewhere since that also works vs Scapeshift and random Gifts Ungiven decks, but I don't know if I really care that much. I've tested against scapeshift and the matchup seemed pretty good, with lifegain from finks, and skite causing each trigger to only deal 2 instead of 3, they need quite a bit of land to get there.
So any thoughts/discussion would be sweet, I'd love to hear it.
We get DESTROYED by uwr control there must be away to beat them
I have pretty good matches against American Control. I play 3 Wall of Roots main and it makes a big difference against Anger of the Gods. I side in +3 Lingering Souls, +1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, +1 Aven Mindcensor and +1 Thrun, the Last Troll.
We get DESTROYED by uwr control there must be away to beat them
I have pretty good matches against American Control. I play 3 Wall of Roots main and it makes a big difference against Anger of the Gods. I side in +3 Lingering Souls, +1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, +1 Aven Mindcensor and +1 Thrun, the Last Troll.
Can you post a list? I'm interested to see what you've cut for the extra 2 WoR, as well as 3 slots for LS in the board.
We get DESTROYED by uwr control there must be away to beat them
The matchup is nowhere near as bad as you are making it sound. Yes, it is tough, games are usually very grindy and you have to play really tight to win, but it's playable. Sometimes they get good draw and don't let you do anything, sometimes you get good draw and ridicule their permission, but that's the way of magic.
nice I tried this sideboard with sucess;
2 thrun, the last troll
1 harmonic sliver
1 scooze
1 kataki,wars wage
4 thought size
1 entomber exarch
1 sin collector
2 path
2 slaughter pact
The thrun was AMAZING I just thoughtsiezed porphyr nodes from my opponents hand and slammed thrun against uwr control= game, thanks for the advice witinhalf.... now as harrod said TRON is rough. why does pod never have an answer to tron in there 75? do we just admit defeat against them? im sure it can be tweaked to do better vs tron any ideas?
Is Archangel + Spike Feeder totally accepted now for Melira Pod? I'm a little bit ambivalent between 2 Voice, 1 Redcap, 1 Archangel, 1 Spike, and just 3 Voice, 2 Redcap (the old style).
Also, what do you guys think about mainboard Thrun as in LSV's deck list?
If I remember correctly, LSV admitted after the pro tour that the main deck Thrun was not very good. I haven't seen it in many main decks myself, and I probably wouldn't want to play it there either.
It will probably always be OK, but not exciting in most matchups, and I think that the main 60 is just too tight to have cards like Thrun that don't really pull their weight (ie. a combo card, silver bullet, etc.)
Is Archangel + Spike Feeder totally accepted now for Melira Pod? I'm a little bit ambivalent between 2 Voice, 1 Redcap, 1 Archangel, 1 Spike, and just 3 Voice, 2 Redcap (the old style).
Also, what do you guys think about mainboard Thrun as in LSV's deck list?
Since the last GP, Archangel Spike has actually slightly fallen out of favour. Some of the Top 8 Melira Pod lists there had no Archangel Spike and packed Linvala Shriekmaw instead. MTGO players tend to copy successful lists like the Top 8 ones.
Thrun's probably fine maindeck because he's efficient enough and he's good against grindy decks (which I keep facing on Cockatrice). He has stiff competition in the 4-drop slots, though.
Feeder + archangel is kinda tricky. Some players run it and love it, some players can't make it work, some players hate that they have to run spike feeder, ...
Archangel is house which can (and will) win you many many games on its own. Untapping with it usually means game. This is really worth noting, as having an out like this in your deck is pretty important in Modern. I'd definitely recommend running the combo if you are newer to the deck, as this makes running the deck quite a bit easier. In many situations you just jam Angel and are done with it whereas without it, you'd have to create complicated lines of play to get you the win. Being able to get some free wins is really important if you are aiming for a top in long tournament (it both boosts your morale and saves you a lot of mental energy for the important moments).
She also works as Melira impersonation with Finks and Seer, and if you also manage to land Redcap, it works exactly like the Melira combo.
Spike feeder is kinda clunky and underwhelming (read: horrible), but it can reset persist creature or gain some life against burn, so it's far from being completely useless outside of the combo (having another 4 life in main means you don't have to run baloth in sideboard btw).
Thrun maindeck can only be justified as a meta call. In vacuum he's terrible and you'd much rather have another redcap or resto angel, which I'm trying to incorporate to my list right now.
Spike Feeder is a powerful card. It does combo, combat tricks, gives unexpected life, does persist resets, protects creatures from burn and doesn't get exiled to Anger; I'm a huge fan.
I really dislike Spike Feeder but I think it's worth running. With Scavenging Ooze, Archangel of Thune gains a lot of power, and if you already want to Archangel I don't think it's too much of a sacrifice to run Spike Feeder even if it's the worst card in the deck from a power perspective.
That said, I'm a big fan of 2 Redcaps. Lately I've been trying to set up situations any chance I get to Redcap and Gavony in response to the trigger. It boosts the cards power so much but even on it's own Redcap is almost always a 3 for 1 or better. I really can't justify cutting them below 2.
What do people think of Murmuring Bosk? 2 Overgrown Tomb is pretty standard but I'm thinking about replacing one with a Bosk. There's plenty of situations where we EoT fetch which reduces the downside of coming in tapped and having a land that taps for all three colors is nice. There's plenty of situations in earlier turns where having that extra color fixing is good.
The only downside I can think of is that Bosk means you really want to run 4 Misty over the 2 Misty/2 Marsh split which means you're really giving up any chance of running a basic Plains.
What do people think of Murmuring Bosk? 2 Overgrown Tomb is pretty standard but I'm thinking about replacing one with a Bosk. There's plenty of situations where we EoT fetch which reduces the downside of coming in tapped and having a land that taps for all three colors is nice. There's plenty of situations in earlier turns where having that extra color fixing is good.
The only downside I can think of is that Bosk means you really want to run 4 Misty over the 2 Misty/2 Marsh split which means you're really giving up any chance of running a basic Plains.
I don't like Murmuring Bosk in no-Treefolk decks. You'll never fetch for it while you're playing stuff on curve (such as Turn 1 Dork, Turn 2 Pod), and hands like Dork-Pod-Voice-Finks-Township-Township-Bosk are hugely slow compared to a version of that hand with Overgrown Tomb instead of Bosk.
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Erebos B | Ghost Council WB | Grimgrin UB | Jhoira UR
Jor Kadeen RW | Melek UR | Mimeoplasm GUB | Rasputin WU
Savra BG | Sisay GW | Teneb BGW | Thada Adel U | Wort BR
I draft and play EDH. If a Standard player can't understand who a card is for, it's probably for me.
I also write things about good films.
6-2 as in 6 losses or 6 wins? I'm used to people going wins-losses when using that format.
In any case, I've had very good results vs affinity every time I've played it. As of recently, I played it 2 times each in 2 GPTs over the last few weeks, for a total of 4 rounds, going 2-1, 2-1, 2-0, 2-0 against them. Of the 2 games I lost, the first was pretty much your typical affinity nut hand, he played out his whole hand which inlcuded an inkmoth. I held up abrupt decay to not die to Cranial plating, but without a pod or chord wasn't able to do much with my board state. He played a ravager and sac'd his board to put counters on his inkmoth, and swung for the rest of the infect. The other game I lost was a punt by me, he got me for 5 infect on turn 2 on the play, I played a melira on my turn 2 and foolishly tapped my BoP, and then he dispatched my melira and swung for more infect. Had I been able to block, I think I could have had a pretty decent shot of winning that one.
Anyway, sideboards vary but I run 2 paths and 1 slaughter pact in the board, I bring them both in. I also bring in kataki and harmonic sliver. I take out shriekmaw, seer, ranger, and 2 voice. Ideally we want to pod or chord into kataki obviously. We have 5 instant speed removal spells, 3 of which work on manlands. We also have pridemage and sliver to deal with problematic artifacts. Linvala is also very good against them, and so is spellskite. Finks podded to redcap gives us 4 valuable life and lets us kill one of their guys pretty much every time, if they have ravager or overseer I'd rather pod into linvala first though. Pontiff can usually wipe their board. Melira protects us from infect. Archangel is usually our finisher, one hit from her and shes out of blast range, and usually by the time we get her, setting up spikefeeder is only a turn or 2 away anyway.
I've found the post board games very good for us, with the extra removal, and so many of our creatures doing something really relevant in the matchup (melira stops infect, quasali kills stuff, finks helps us stabilize, skite blocks champion and steals modular, linvala shuts off ravager and overseer, pontiff kills nearly all their creatures, harmonic sliver kills stuff, kataki is a huge beating, witness gets our hate back, revielark does too) that he really only lose to the unbeatable hands like turn 1 bunch of guys + overseer/cranial plating, and even then a path or abrupt decay gets us out of that jam most of the time. Usually just set up the hate first, usually kataki, linvala, melira when appropriate, then snipe down problems with pridemage/sliver/decay and either win through beat down or combo off with archangel.
Don't forget to pay for your pod if you have kataki out.
Not having chords and running only 3 pods means you won't be always able to get the creature you need (which also means you will be stuck with bunch of donothings in play)
Voices are heavy meta call. If you don't have a lot of UW(R) decks in your area, you will probably be fine without them.
What bothers me the most is your manabase. 8 painlads in 3colored deck that needs all its colors on regular basis means you will be in a world of hurt. Not having manadork 5-7 also could hurt you, but not sure about it. How has been the manabase for you? Imo replace the painlands with shocks and since you will have a lot lands with basic types, you could also just add some checklands (Woodland cemetery etc).
Options for mana dork are: Arbor elf (with all the shocks he makes pretty darn good Birds impression), Avacyn's pilgrim, Sylvan Caryatid (which would probably require some work on the pod chain)
Obviously it's supposed to be 2-6, brainfarted a bit
Anyway, what you are describing is pretty much my gameplan against affinity. I'm running Dismembers instead of Paths, but that works pretty much the same and I also bring in Burrenton, because I've been defeated by Whipflare on more than one occasion.
So any thoughts/discussion would be sweet, I'd love to hear it.
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Razorverge Thicket
3 Gavony Township
3 Forest
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Temple Garden
1 Swamp
1 Godless Shrine
Spells (5)
3 Chord of Calling
2 Abrupt Decay
Artifacts(4)
4 Birthing Pod
Creatures (28)
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Noble Hierarch
2 Voice of Resurgence
1 Archangel of Thune
1 Eternal Witness
1 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Wall of Roots
1 Viscera Seer
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Reveillark
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Shriekmaw
1 Spellskite
1 Spike Feeder
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Entomber Exarch
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Thrun, The Last Troll
2 Path to Exile
1 Sin Collector
1 Slaughter Pact
4 Thoughtseize
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Harmonic Sliver
decks playing:
none
I have pretty good matches against American Control. I play 3 Wall of Roots main and it makes a big difference against Anger of the Gods. I side in +3 Lingering Souls, +1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, +1 Aven Mindcensor and +1 Thrun, the Last Troll.
Yes, I play Thalia over Canonist.
Eidolon of Rhetoric might be good.
Can you post a list? I'm interested to see what you've cut for the extra 2 WoR, as well as 3 slots for LS in the board.
What other matchups does Thalia come in?
The matchup is nowhere near as bad as you are making it sound. Yes, it is tough, games are usually very grindy and you have to play really tight to win, but it's playable. Sometimes they get good draw and don't let you do anything, sometimes you get good draw and ridicule their permission, but that's the way of magic.
RG Tron is close to a matchloss though.
4x Birds of Paradise
1x Eternal Witness
4x Kitchen Finks
1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1x Melira, Sylvok Outcast
2x Murderous Redcap
2x Noble Hierarch
1x Orzhov Pontiff
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Reveillark
2x Scavenging Ooze
1x Spellskite
1x Spike Feeder
2x Voice of Resurgence
3x Wall of Roots
4x Birthing Pod
3x Chord of Calling
1x Aven Mindcensor
2x Dismember
1x Entomber Exarch
1x Harmonic Sliver
3x Lingering Souls
1x Shriekmaw
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x Thoughtseize
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
Thalia comes in against Control, Storm, Burn, Rock, Affinity, Twin, Living End, Infect, and Scapeshift.
2 thrun, the last troll
1 harmonic sliver
1 scooze
1 kataki,wars wage
4 thought size
1 entomber exarch
1 sin collector
2 path
2 slaughter pact
The thrun was AMAZING I just thoughtsiezed porphyr nodes from my opponents hand and slammed thrun against uwr control= game, thanks for the advice witinhalf.... now as harrod said TRON is rough. why does pod never have an answer to tron in there 75? do we just admit defeat against them? im sure it can be tweaked to do better vs tron any ideas?
decks playing:
none
Also, what do you guys think about mainboard Thrun as in LSV's deck list?
It will probably always be OK, but not exciting in most matchups, and I think that the main 60 is just too tight to have cards like Thrun that don't really pull their weight (ie. a combo card, silver bullet, etc.)
Since the last GP, Archangel Spike has actually slightly fallen out of favour. Some of the Top 8 Melira Pod lists there had no Archangel Spike and packed Linvala Shriekmaw instead. MTGO players tend to copy successful lists like the Top 8 ones.
Thrun's probably fine maindeck because he's efficient enough and he's good against grindy decks (which I keep facing on Cockatrice). He has stiff competition in the 4-drop slots, though.
Archangel is house which can (and will) win you many many games on its own. Untapping with it usually means game. This is really worth noting, as having an out like this in your deck is pretty important in Modern. I'd definitely recommend running the combo if you are newer to the deck, as this makes running the deck quite a bit easier. In many situations you just jam Angel and are done with it whereas without it, you'd have to create complicated lines of play to get you the win. Being able to get some free wins is really important if you are aiming for a top in long tournament (it both boosts your morale and saves you a lot of mental energy for the important moments).
She also works as Melira impersonation with Finks and Seer, and if you also manage to land Redcap, it works exactly like the Melira combo.
Spike feeder is kinda clunky and underwhelming (read: horrible), but it can reset persist creature or gain some life against burn, so it's far from being completely useless outside of the combo (having another 4 life in main means you don't have to run baloth in sideboard btw).
Thrun maindeck can only be justified as a meta call. In vacuum he's terrible and you'd much rather have another redcap or resto angel, which I'm trying to incorporate to my list right now.
That said, I'm a big fan of 2 Redcaps. Lately I've been trying to set up situations any chance I get to Redcap and Gavony in response to the trigger. It boosts the cards power so much but even on it's own Redcap is almost always a 3 for 1 or better. I really can't justify cutting them below 2.
The only downside I can think of is that Bosk means you really want to run 4 Misty over the 2 Misty/2 Marsh split which means you're really giving up any chance of running a basic Plains.
I don't like Murmuring Bosk in no-Treefolk decks. You'll never fetch for it while you're playing stuff on curve (such as Turn 1 Dork, Turn 2 Pod), and hands like Dork-Pod-Voice-Finks-Township-Township-Bosk are hugely slow compared to a version of that hand with Overgrown Tomb instead of Bosk.