Hymn to Tourach isn't legal on MTGO (was never printed as a common online) hence why no one plays it. Don't cut Chittering Rats, that's one of the best cards in the deck. Liliana's Specter is okay but you don't want to be playing it with Cuombajj Witches since they work poorly together.
Cards I would cut from the maindeck include Pestilence and/or Tendrils. Neither are that necessary game 1 but they're good sideboard cards. You have Gary to gain life so I wouldn't be that concerned about losing that benefit. Alternatively you could put the 4th Cuombajj Witches in the sideboard since there's many matchups where they're not that great. I'm not sure that 2 Font of Return is really necessary either. I tend to roll with a single Grim Harvest or Death Denied when I play the deck.
I think the idea is that it "draws" 3 for "4". Death Denied is comparable but more flexible at the cost of 1 addtional cmc the turn you play it to "draw" 3. If you draw more its better, if you draw less its flexibility is value. I don't know. Font may just be a budget option.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The following link is an invitation to join Pucatrade (card trading service though similar to TCGPLayer). If you follow the link then it awards me with tokens to exchange for actual cards. Thanks! https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
I've been running some Pauper Leagues since we've entered Eldrazi Winter, and I've been going with Mono-Black Control. Can anyone tell me if the RUG Tron matchup is bad, or am I just playing it wrong? I've ran into the deck about 4-5 times over a couple of leagues and I've lost to it every time.
How's the matches against normal mbc,delver, or green stompy with the b/r deck?
Against Stompy...Lighting Bolt outclasses Disfigure so there's that. You also have way more maindeck discard to hopefully deal with Rancor and that is a very real thing IMO. Against MBC, you have MORE reach and more main deck discard which is always good in the control mirror. Same vs. Delver, the main deck discard really helps. All in all, I would say Stompy is better but the others are the same but with different advantages/disadvantages in the main.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The following link is an invitation to join Pucatrade (card trading service though similar to TCGPLayer). If you follow the link then it awards me with tokens to exchange for actual cards. Thanks! https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
What do you guys think about Rathi Trapper? I've been using it to tap down enemy anglers, geists, atogs, and to get blockers out of the way. It's been working nicely. Admittedly though, I have not faced mono white yet.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
They call me Hank Hill because I bring the pro-pain.
So this decks weakness is burn? How does it fare against delver and affinity?
I don't know that I would say Burn is a weakness. Maybe game 1 but you side out Sign In Bloods for Duress/Wrench Mind. Game 2 usually goes much better. The deck has a lot of life gain in the form of Gary, Tendrils, Corrupt.
Against Delver/Delver Angler I'd say its 50/50 and totally depends on draw and who is on the play. If Delver can get out ahead of you with a creature on the board and a counter in hand, they can usually outrun your removal. The opposite is also equally likely.
Affinity is the same. Sometimes you can stay ahead of them on removal. You can also just lock them out by gaining so much life they can't "combo off". Other times they play more threats than you have removal.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The following link is an invitation to join Pucatrade (card trading service though similar to TCGPLayer). If you follow the link then it awards me with tokens to exchange for actual cards. Thanks! https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
So this decks weakness is burn? How does it fare against delver and affinity?
In fact, played and built correctly quite a few decks.
Burn I think is one of them, game 1 is almost allways a win because gary is a slow way of gaining life (by turn 5 you are going to be dead more often than you think) and as long as you leave an instant burn in order to kill their creature when they target themself with a Tendrils, Burn is ahead. In SB games, MBC can add some discard spells to go with Chittering/Liliana and it´s going to be harder for Burn but if they draw gas, they will win.
Illusory Tricks is built to ruin MBC. It has lots of creatures, especially some of them with CA like Mulldrifter/The Morph one or hard to deal with like Stormbound and Counterspells/Bounce to blank your removal.
Control decks (Tron/Teachings/MUC,etc) mainly if they don´t use creatures at all. Game 1 MBC will have lots of dead cards and blue has better CA. Period.
I believe those decks (to name a few) have at least more than a 50/50 chance to win against MBC, specially Illuspry.
Playing both with and against this deck, it's weaknesses and strengths are very simple. Any deck that relies on creatures without ETB abilities to win such as Affinity, Delver, or EyeCandy will be relatively easy for MBC to beat. Any deck that relies on win conditions other than creatures, or draws more cards than MBC, or goes over the top in terms of power will be difficult for MBC to beat. Think Burn, Jeskai, Tron, or Teachings. MBC is pretty much just a collection of various removal spells, 2/2 creatures that provide 2-for-1 advantage, and powerful spells such as Gary, Angler, and Corrupt to win the game. So any creature deck is an easy win for MBC.
However, one reason why I stopped playing Teachings is because I found competent MBC opponents sideboarded very competently against me. They would Duress my counters, enabling them to resolve land destruction on my Dimir Aqueducts which was a huge tempo play, then Chittering Rats a card away preventing me from drawing a land. As MBC is a popular deck, this happened several times. Teachings could adapt by cutting the Dimir Aqeuduct and running Envelop in the sideboard, but otherwise MBC is a very difficult deck to sideboard against. If you do run MBC I recommend a playset of Duress and LD as that is a pretty effective combo against the decks MBC doesn't want to face, namely Tron and Teachings. Generally, games 2 and 3 are more favorable for MBC as MBC can sideboard in effective cards against many matches but there are relatively few sideboard cards that hose MBC. Stormbound Geist is one of them, but MBC has effective ways to answer that answer. Most of the best sideboard cards are anti-red, anti-blue, or anti-affinity so having a deck that is relatively impervious to sideboard hate is helpful.
I started playing Jeskai, which has a favorable MBC match because all of their creatures have ETB abilities, and they have more card advantage than MBC. I don't really like playing MBC personally. It's just a collection of removal, rats, and garys which is effective but linear. Still I respect it's place in the metagame.
Oh, you think the losers' bracket is your ally, but you merely adopted the scrub tier. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t 4-0 an FNM until I was already a man; by then, it was nothing to me but an extra pack to sell for store credit!
A rogue mono-blue tempo deck with Illusions instead of Delvers. I haven't seen the deck played in Pauper League but it did well in the Pauper Gauntlet. I have no experience playing with or against the deck, so I am not an expert, I just know that it exists.
After playing several games and documenting the results, I came to the conclusion that I've totally overestimated MBC. There are much, much better deck choices out there. The thing about MBC is that it will just lose to CA. It's that simple. It's really good against creature based strategies, but when the opponent just draws an insane amount of cards, it will lose.
The following link is an invitation to join Pucatrade (card trading service though similar to TCGPLayer). If you follow the link then it awards me with tokens to exchange for actual cards. Thanks! https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
When playing with a new strange list, try the following:
On any turn, a few times in a round after untap your cards, said to your oponent ¨... im at my upkeep step¨
Then look at your hand, check up the board, check your life points notes, if required check both graveyards and/or point your finger like you were counting damage.
Wait a few seconds and look as you were thinking a play... all of this in your upkeep step...
Then say.... hmmm nop nop... Ill draw...
REd Modern Goblins GREEn Modern Stompy BlaCkPauper Mid-Range REdBlUEWHitEModern Jeskai Delver REd EDH Krenko
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
I always thought the "staples" of witches/oubliette were way too pricey for pauper so I made a MBC deck for under 2 tix. Thoughts/comments/criticism welcome.
If you really want to go pauper proper, go Rats. Maybe something like this (the sideboard is a bit dodgy and you can adjust it and run 2 Gurmag Angler main in place of 2 Augur of Skulls if you want to finish opponents off a little faster, but the deck is all hate and very cheap.)
EDIT:
There are a lot of Ux Control and Tron decks at my local weekly event (Dimir Teachers and UW Acid Trip), so I am actually going to try the rats build above, though I might put a couple of Cuombajj Witches in the main because of the Delver and Elves decks.
I feel like the Rats build is much stronger against control despite the lack of Gary the Travelling Insurance Salesman because it maximizes hand control plus removal, rather than board presence plus removal. Removal is fairly terrible against Teachers and Acid Trip and our light removal is bad against Tron and board presence + drain is not easy to achieve against them. If you can attack their hands, however, you can really weaken them and stop them from getting so far ahead that they always effectively have 5-7 cards in hand.
What do you think of splitting Ravenous Rats with Liliana's Specter 1/2? Is the difference between cmc2 and cmc3 more than flying 2/1 vs. vanilla 1/1?
Gurmag Angler might not be a good sideboard decision, but I like it in the mirror with all that return from the graveyard action to get through Gary.
I love the deck, btw. I have been crushing Delver and Elves and every other creature deck, but I can't seem to get past Tron, Teachings and Acid Trip.
Against certain decks, Gurmag Angler combined with Pestilence is a major problem. I include at least one copy of each because this combination, on the occasion it arises, can single-handedly secure the game.
It seems so. However, I do not seem to have much luck with Mono B Control.
What's your list?
Also we may be at a point that there has been enough new stuff that a mono-color control isn't able to cover all the different angles of play. There is no denying the power of "Gary", but, there are other lines of play that monoblack can take. Old school MBC was built around hand control more than recent versions that are heavy removal and "Gary" bombs. It will depend on what you have available, but, maybe the version of MBC your running is not optimal vs the field? Hard to say. What's your list and what problems are you having?. Personally I'm a fan of slower decks running gainlands that support their main color and some key sideboard options that you can't really get if you play monocolor.
At one point I played a silly MBC deck using the b/r and b/u borderposts to up my black count for Gary, but, then I also ran some red and blue options in the sideboard..............and it did much better than expected.
Its surprisingly versatile. The large amount of mana means never screwed. The cycle lands help flooding. You have 12 main board draw effects, not counting the cycle lands, to dig through the deck. Die Young/Live Fast are an experiment right now as a way to get another "unconditional" kill spell. Its always at LEAST as good as Disfigure for 1 more mana and occasionally much better.
I love Midnight Scavengers. Its able to grab more card draw (Rager), hand disruption (Rats), or just more blockers/aggression (Other Rats) and acts as a source of card advantage. If they aren't dealt with then Melding them is a nice bonus and presents a very real threat that can't easily be chumped. It also has haste which means it swings that turn, also something Angler can't do.
So far I've only played against other rogue brews but I've crushed them in a pretty unfair manner. The deck just draws so many dang cards. I would say the one major weakness is that the deck loses a ton of life to itself. I would make sure to have some pretty easy life gain in the board for Burn. Against creature based aggro all the removal is usually enough to stabilize then win.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The following link is an invitation to join Pucatrade (card trading service though similar to TCGPLayer). If you follow the link then it awards me with tokens to exchange for actual cards. Thanks! https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
I'd play Read the Bones and Grasp of Darkness over the whole Live Fast/Die Young thing. Rate and Scavenger also seem to conflict with the whole Devotion play of "Gary."
I'd play Read the Bones and Grasp of Darkness over the whole Live Fast/Die Young thing. Rate and Scavenger also seem to conflict with the whole Devotion play of "Gary."
Live/Die can combine together to hit things bigger than Grasp can hit on its own.
Scavenger can help Gary because he can fetch dead Chittering Rats and Phyrexian Ragers in the absence of Graf Rats to reestablish some devotion. Also, they kind of operate as Gary 5-7 because it can drop difficult to block damage onto the field.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The following link is an invitation to join Pucatrade (card trading service though similar to TCGPLayer). If you follow the link then it awards me with tokens to exchange for actual cards. Thanks! https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I think the idea is that it "draws" 3 for "4". Death Denied is comparable but more flexible at the cost of 1 addtional cmc the turn you play it to "draw" 3. If you draw more its better, if you draw less its flexibility is value. I don't know. Font may just be a budget option.
https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
Against Stompy...Lighting Bolt outclasses Disfigure so there's that. You also have way more maindeck discard to hopefully deal with Rancor and that is a very real thing IMO. Against MBC, you have MORE reach and more main deck discard which is always good in the control mirror. Same vs. Delver, the main deck discard really helps. All in all, I would say Stompy is better but the others are the same but with different advantages/disadvantages in the main.
https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
I don't know that I would say Burn is a weakness. Maybe game 1 but you side out Sign In Bloods for Duress/Wrench Mind. Game 2 usually goes much better. The deck has a lot of life gain in the form of Gary, Tendrils, Corrupt.
Against Delver/Delver Angler I'd say its 50/50 and totally depends on draw and who is on the play. If Delver can get out ahead of you with a creature on the board and a counter in hand, they can usually outrun your removal. The opposite is also equally likely.
Affinity is the same. Sometimes you can stay ahead of them on removal. You can also just lock them out by gaining so much life they can't "combo off". Other times they play more threats than you have removal.
https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
In fact, played and built correctly quite a few decks.
Burn I think is one of them, game 1 is almost allways a win because gary is a slow way of gaining life (by turn 5 you are going to be dead more often than you think) and as long as you leave an instant burn in order to kill their creature when they target themself with a Tendrils, Burn is ahead. In SB games, MBC can add some discard spells to go with Chittering/Liliana and it´s going to be harder for Burn but if they draw gas, they will win.
Illusory Tricks is built to ruin MBC. It has lots of creatures, especially some of them with CA like Mulldrifter/The Morph one or hard to deal with like Stormbound and Counterspells/Bounce to blank your removal.
Control decks (Tron/Teachings/MUC,etc) mainly if they don´t use creatures at all. Game 1 MBC will have lots of dead cards and blue has better CA. Period.
I believe those decks (to name a few) have at least more than a 50/50 chance to win against MBC, specially Illuspry.
However, one reason why I stopped playing Teachings is because I found competent MBC opponents sideboarded very competently against me. They would Duress my counters, enabling them to resolve land destruction on my Dimir Aqueducts which was a huge tempo play, then Chittering Rats a card away preventing me from drawing a land. As MBC is a popular deck, this happened several times. Teachings could adapt by cutting the Dimir Aqeuduct and running Envelop in the sideboard, but otherwise MBC is a very difficult deck to sideboard against. If you do run MBC I recommend a playset of Duress and LD as that is a pretty effective combo against the decks MBC doesn't want to face, namely Tron and Teachings. Generally, games 2 and 3 are more favorable for MBC as MBC can sideboard in effective cards against many matches but there are relatively few sideboard cards that hose MBC. Stormbound Geist is one of them, but MBC has effective ways to answer that answer. Most of the best sideboard cards are anti-red, anti-blue, or anti-affinity so having a deck that is relatively impervious to sideboard hate is helpful.
I started playing Jeskai, which has a favorable MBC match because all of their creatures have ETB abilities, and they have more card advantage than MBC. I don't really like playing MBC personally. It's just a collection of removal, rats, and garys which is effective but linear. Still I respect it's place in the metagame.
What is this?
1 Quicksand
4 Krovikan Mist
4 Dream Stalker
4 Cloudfin Raptor
2 Phantasmal Bear
3 Fathom Seer
3 Spire Golem
2 Stormbound Geist
1 Mulldrifter
4 Vapor Snag
4 Preordain
2 Piracy Charm
2 Deprive
2 Bonesplitter
2 Stormbound Geist
4 Hydroblast
2 Coral Net
2 Curse of Chains
3 Mulldrifter
2 Serrated Arrows
A rogue mono-blue tempo deck with Illusions instead of Delvers. I haven't seen the deck played in Pauper League but it did well in the Pauper Gauntlet. I have no experience playing with or against the deck, so I am not an expert, I just know that it exists.
That was kind of why I tried to move more towards a B/R version with Lightning Bolt, Blightning, and Okiba-Gang Shinobi.
https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/alexullman-041216-value-and-devotion/
3 Cuombajj Witches
4 Dauthi Slayer
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
3 Gurmag Angler
4 Sign in Blood
4 Disfigure
4 Victim of Night
4 Duress
4 Corrupt
22 Swamps
3 Ravenous Rats
4 Geth's Verdict
4 Contaminated Ground
4 Funeral Charm
The sideboard is planed to go more control in case of TRON, the Cuombajj Witches and the Disfigure are there to kill Delver of Secrets.
On any turn, a few times in a round after untap your cards, said to your oponent ¨... im at my upkeep step¨
Then look at your hand, check up the board, check your life points notes, if required check both graveyards and/or point your finger like you were counting damage.
Wait a few seconds and look as you were thinking a play... all of this in your upkeep step...
Then say.... hmmm nop nop... Ill draw...
REd Modern Goblins
GREEn Modern Stompy
BlaCkPauper Mid-Range
REd BlUE WHitEModern Jeskai Delver
REd EDH Krenko
1 Barren Moor
21 Swamp
Removal
4 Dead Weight
3 Victim of Night
3 Geth's Verdict
4 Tendrils of Corruption
Creatures
4 Ravenous Rats
1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
4 Phyrexian Rager
2 Cadaver Imp
3 Liliana's Specter
1 Liliana's Shade
2 Sign in Blood
2 Read the Bones
Finishers
1 Corrupt
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
3 Undying Evil
1 Font of Return
3 Duress
2 Shrivel
1 Geth's Verdict
3 Choking Sands
2 Gurmag Angler
2 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
2 Cuombajj Witches
3 Augur of Skulls
3 Crypt Rats
3 Ravenous Rats
4 Chittering Rats
4 Phyrexian Rager
Spells 16
4 Chainer's Edict
4 Sign in Blood
2 Unearth
2 Disfigure
2 Duress
2 Victim of Night
17 Swamp
2 Bojuka Bog
4 Barren Moor
4 Choking Sands
2 Font of Return
2 Gurmag Angler
2 Tendrils of Corruption
2 Corrupt
1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
1 Cuombajj Witches
1 Duress
EDIT:
There are a lot of Ux Control and Tron decks at my local weekly event (Dimir Teachers and UW Acid Trip), so I am actually going to try the rats build above, though I might put a couple of Cuombajj Witches in the main because of the Delver and Elves decks.
I feel like the Rats build is much stronger against control despite the lack of Gary the Travelling Insurance Salesman because it maximizes hand control plus removal, rather than board presence plus removal. Removal is fairly terrible against Teachers and Acid Trip and our light removal is bad against Tron and board presence + drain is not easy to achieve against them. If you can attack their hands, however, you can really weaken them and stop them from getting so far ahead that they always effectively have 5-7 cards in hand.
What do you think of splitting Ravenous Rats with Liliana's Specter 1/2? Is the difference between cmc2 and cmc3 more than flying 2/1 vs. vanilla 1/1?
Gurmag Angler might not be a good sideboard decision, but I like it in the mirror with all that return from the graveyard action to get through Gary.
I love the deck, btw. I have been crushing Delver and Elves and every other creature deck, but I can't seem to get past Tron, Teachings and Acid Trip.
Tempo
Modern
Eldrazi and Staxes
Whir Prison
Legacy
5c Humans
DnT
"I'm a lead farmer... !" Quote ruined due to policy.
What's your list?
Also we may be at a point that there has been enough new stuff that a mono-color control isn't able to cover all the different angles of play. There is no denying the power of "Gary", but, there are other lines of play that monoblack can take. Old school MBC was built around hand control more than recent versions that are heavy removal and "Gary" bombs. It will depend on what you have available, but, maybe the version of MBC your running is not optimal vs the field? Hard to say. What's your list and what problems are you having?. Personally I'm a fan of slower decks running gainlands that support their main color and some key sideboard options that you can't really get if you play monocolor.
At one point I played a silly MBC deck using the b/r and b/u borderposts to up my black count for Gary, but, then I also ran some red and blue options in the sideboard..............and it did much better than expected.
4x Graf Rats
4x Phyrexian Rager
4x Chittering Rats
3x Midnight Scavengers
4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
4x Die young
4x Sign in Blood
4x Victim of Night
4x Live Fast
1x Corrupt
4x Barren Moor
1x Bojuka Bog
19x Swamp
Its surprisingly versatile. The large amount of mana means never screwed. The cycle lands help flooding. You have 12 main board draw effects, not counting the cycle lands, to dig through the deck. Die Young/Live Fast are an experiment right now as a way to get another "unconditional" kill spell. Its always at LEAST as good as Disfigure for 1 more mana and occasionally much better.
I love Midnight Scavengers. Its able to grab more card draw (Rager), hand disruption (Rats), or just more blockers/aggression (Other Rats) and acts as a source of card advantage. If they aren't dealt with then Melding them is a nice bonus and presents a very real threat that can't easily be chumped. It also has haste which means it swings that turn, also something Angler can't do.
So far I've only played against other rogue brews but I've crushed them in a pretty unfair manner. The deck just draws so many dang cards. I would say the one major weakness is that the deck loses a ton of life to itself. I would make sure to have some pretty easy life gain in the board for Burn. Against creature based aggro all the removal is usually enough to stabilize then win.
https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097
Live/Die can combine together to hit things bigger than Grasp can hit on its own.
Scavenger can help Gary because he can fetch dead Chittering Rats and Phyrexian Ragers in the absence of Graf Rats to reestablish some devotion. Also, they kind of operate as Gary 5-7 because it can drop difficult to block damage onto the field.
https://pucatrade.com/invite/gift/86097