Hello everyone, first time poster here. I just wanted to share my experience of me successfully wrecking my local FNM earlier this evening. It all started with a Dimir brew I had in mind. I really wanted to build around Quicken + Thoughtseize.
Our FNM turnout tonight was rather small with only three rounds of standard. I 3-0'd, playing against:
Round 1 - Some weird Grixis Control deck with Ashiok. I Pack Ratted him out game one, and game two on the draw kept: Swamp, 3 Duress, 1 Thoughtseize, 1 Negate, and 1 Pack Rat. I drew lands and swiftly ripped his hand apart, into double Pack Rat.
Round 2 - I played a very good friend of mine who was on Mono Black. He got me game 1, but my sideboard cards + Jace, Architect of Thought essentially won me games two and three. Game two I won through Pack Rat, and game three was won off the back of Aetherling. Epic games considering he had double Underworld Connections game three and flooded so hard.
Round 3 - Another good friend of mine, who was on U/W Control with Elixir. I steam-rolled him 2-0. My deck has a very good matchup against U/W control, especially post-board where you just cut the removal and bring in more hand disruption and counters.
Annddd that's my deck friends. Any feedback is welcome. This was honestly one of the first times I've successfully brought a brew to FNM and did well with it, so I was pretty excited about the deck, also considering the stiff competition I played against. Oh yeah, I won a sick Banisher Priest promo.
Haha thank you! I'm not really convinced Whelming Wave is actually any good, considering I never brought it in. I figured it could be decent against G/R or G/W strategies, but I haven't tested much against those.
Seems like a solid deck and I think the only way to make good changes is to practice with it more. Have no idea how any control deck would lose to pack rat between Supreme Verdict and Bile Blight, seems like you're just asking to get blown out since you have very few cards that generate card advantage.
Everything else I like. A control deck with 4 Thoughtseize and 4 Hero's Downfall and 4 Mutavault is very stable and effective against virtually every deck. I actually really like Dimir Charm since it nabs Mutavaults, Pack Rats, Master of Waves, and Nightveil Spectre. Countering a sorcery seems far too situational, but I do like disrupting the top of their library.
Think Psychic Strike is solid. You lose the scry but I imagine its much easier to get blue/black than blue/blue and the mill can screw up scrying from their lands.
The quicken into thoughtseize seems like it can be effective, just remember your opponent has priority to play a spell on their turn before you can steal their play, unless you do it during their upkeep before their draw.
Honestly I like the look of whelming Wave, can often be much better than a timewalk against G/R monsters or mono blue devotion.
This deck looks like it is positioned well against a lot of the field, good job.
Thanks a lot IronPlushy! I did test with it a little against Mono Black and U/W and it seems to beat both of those matchups pretty easily. I haven't tested against any Green based decks or any Mono U, so I don't know too much about those matchups.
The changes I've considered making involve cutting a Quicken for another piece of 2cmc removal. Whether it's Bile Blight, another Devour Flesh, or Ultimate Price remains to be seen.
I also think I want some amount of Gainsay on the sideboard, but I'd need more testing to determine the exact numbers. I'll probably start with one, and tweak from there.
Even though the deck started off with Quicken being the focus of the deck, I've actually found that it's one of the weaker cards in the deck, being good against Control only. Thoughts on this anyone?
I think I'll start with cutting 1 Quicken to add an Ultimate Price and see how it goes from there...
Can easily cut two Quickens and still be in good form. No one is going to give you good advice for your removal suite because Ultimate Price, Bile Blight, and Devour Flesh answer very different threats, not to mention Doomblade.
Devour flesh is a great card against Blood Baron Decks or mono black that can only stick one creature at a time
Bile Blight is great against many decks like mono-blue, pack rats, mutavaults, aggro maybe, but double black might not be consistent on turn 2.
Ultimate Price is strong against Monster decks, Desecration Demon, mono blue, but misses nightveil spectre, blood baron, mutavault
Doom blade misses multiple relevant threats but hits mutavault, not exactly a great pic
Since we seem to be of the same game plan, I'll put my list up for (probable) criticism. I'm sure a lot of people are going to tell me it's terrible. I'm actually brewing it to beat the local meta, which has recently fallen into mass of B/x weenie decks. I've only had minimal time for development, so it's still very much a work in progress. Looking to clean it up over the next week here.
I'm going for a tempo route. Land a Wight or Rat on turn 2 and then hope to protect it with counter magic and removal. If I can't land a critter early, I try to buy time until I hit 5 land (this is important, so 24 lands despite the low curve) and then can drop either and protect. Wight just gets bigger naturally while I actively disrupt my opponent, and I can always pitch cards to Pack Rat at EoT if I didn't need to use my mana for counters or removal. That's the general game plan anyway.
The sideboard is in the most Flux. I found that Maze's End decks are hard for me to disrupt (can't counter their lands, can't make them discard em either, removal becomes dead), and my opponent suggested a few cards. I went for Ashiok since it's pretty good against creature based decks as well. Pithing Needle might get a slot as well. At this point I definitely need to play more games with the deck so I can find the holes and fill them in. I've definitely got flex spots to work with there.
I wish there was some utility land I could make good use of. Mutavault is pretty much the only thing that comes to mind, but I can't afford the set right now.
The only concern I have with your deck is the control match up. Sure Wight is pretty good against creature based decks, but is essentially a dead card against control. Being that it's one of your two win conditions, I just don't like how unreliable he can be. Aetherling gets the job done in about every matchup I've ever played.
Yeah, Wight is pretty bad against Control. I'm gearing the main deck for all these aggro creature decks in my meta. The sideboard will likely get loaded up for the control matches. Maybe a 1-2 Aetherling will get a spot there as well.
SInce your deck is controllish, you really wana use Cyclonic Rift, especially if u have blue. Much much much better than whelming wave, and overload hits things like enchantments too.
In DolZero's deck, Architect of Thought just seems like he would totally shut down weenie strategies. Wring Flesh Just seems like a god awful card and should be essence scatter or a two mana removal spell. Find it odd you're using grisly transformation, since it seems extremely underwhelming, especially against these B/x decks you speak of. Basically a turn 3 play that does extremely little.
I would think between the ashioks, any jaces you add, 4 thoughtseize, 4 duress, 4 hero's downfall, 2 dispel that you could easily run over control decks.
Jace AOT is good vs weenie but a shut down is a bit off. One of the big factors is that he's lopsidedly mainboarded against weenies. Jace AOT is strong in general but it is one of the last things he wants to do against them. For example, a fortify against turn 4 Jace is a big kick in the pants. Rather, we're talking about a guy that's maining 4 drown in sorrow and 4 bile blight. This of course leaves a different sort of problem, having a lot of far less awesome removal against midrange.
Wring flesh is indeed bad.
If you want to look at something to fight maze's end and have some more win cons, Jace memory adept is fine. Milling out their gates does the job. And you're running wight anyway.
Another thing to note is that a control/tempo deck needs to get ahead somewhere. So it all comes back to card advantage. For a person running wight, one cheapo option is pilfered plans. But do keep in mind that you're going to be leaving blind spots open for which you can be countered... if you you do, run quicken as well.
There is that mutation card I can't remember the name of... UB target creature gets +X/-X where X is the number of cards in your hand better than Wring Flesh.
I am definitely got to find room for cyclonic rift in my deck somewhere.. I am pretty sick of losing to enchantments like gods and their weapons.
My friends keep telling me to try out a one of Opportunity, which I think would be fine. I could either cut another Quicken for it, but I'm not sure I want to. I may cut 1 Divination or 1 Dimir Charm. Let me know what you guys think.
I wouldn't say "strictly". If your opponents scrys, keeps it on top and then plays something for you to counter you've just negated 2 of his cards. While I feel like that's a narrow situation and I would personally play dissolve over psychic strike... it does have it's uses. It's kind of like saying Nullify is strictly better than essence scatter.
@DoLZero - how does your deck not just fold to Blood Baron of Vizkopa? Seems like a resolved baron on turn 4 or 5 would just be game. I run a Jund list with Rakdos's Return that seems like it would annihilate this deck. It's removal heavy (abrupt decay, blade, bile blight etc...) and doesn't run Reaper so it seems like it would matchup great against yours, especially with RR. I won my last FNM and Gameday with it.
@OP - I would set it like this,
-2 Psychic Strike
+2 Dissolve
Deck manipulation seems a million times better than milling two measly cards from your opponent. I get that maybe you hit a creature and make your Wight bigger but it just isn't worth running a full set of a weaker (and more mana constrictive) card. If you want to get creatures in the yard I would seriously look at a MB Codex Shredder. Against any deck with Courser of Kruphix it's insane. Plus it's just great as a nephalia drownyard imitator and a single card Scry-lockdown. "Keep it on top" "Shred It" I run one in all of my control decks and they are awesome, nobody see's it coming and they always sideboard in dead cards to beat it.
- Whelming Wave
+ Cyclonic Rift
The format isn't very creature heavy (R/G monsters is about it) so bouncing opposing Underworld Connections seems great for you.
+1 Bile Blight
+2 Underworld Connections
This will give you another card to help shore up your admittedly weak Pack Rat defense and Underworld Connections is too good not to be running, especially for a control deck that wants card advantage. Plus diversifying your impactful cards (enchantments, creatures, sorceries, instants etc....) makes a better post-board game.
"If fetch lands are reprinted I really believe they will be in allied colors (aka Onslaught fetches). If the fetch lands are reprinted you better believe that we'll all be fetching up basics. This would lead me to believe that the set after THS may have a reprint as the temples can't be fetched but it's pure speculation." - posted 03/22/2014 proved correct during Khans spoiler season.
"The set releases for fall 2015 (Blood, Sweat and Tears) and fall 2016 (Lock, Stock and Barrel). One or both of those 2 blocks (I'm betting) are going to contain either Fetch reprints or (more likely) Filter reprints. Filter lands still need a reprint. They are getting pretty high up there and it's been longer than ZEN so it makes a little more sense that Filter lands would see print earlier that fetches." - posted 03/22/2014 proved incorrect about filters coming earlier than fetches, still pending on filters in Origins block.
I went for Wring Flesh because I wanted a 1 mana removal spell, most specifically to answer t1 Elvish Mystic, but it can be useful against other stuff. I've definitely messed up some combat math with it more than once. I wish there was something better, but there really isn't. Maybe Viper's Kiss, but it's really meh. When I mentioned the card to a friend he said he thought it was really good, so maybe it's just a matter of the local meta.
I do like Cyclonic Rift. I will probably find room for a 1 of somewhere.
Grisly Transformation was filler for the sideboard until I found out what decks I have trouble against and what I need to make room for. It was never meant to be boarded in for B/x decks, but I've already replaced it anyway.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa is a big reason why I'm running Far // Away. It's really my only answer for that card, but I am thinking it will be unlikely for them to resolve one. Same goes for Rakdos's Return.
Right now my main deck is geared towards kicking the crap out of aggro decks, and it does decent against most midrange decks as well. I've got the sideboard loaded with tons of stuff to bring in against control match ups, which as far as I knew is not a very popular archtype in my area. I still have a few more days to play test before I finalize a list for the Standard tournament. Here is the current iteration of the deck.
I mostly agree that Dissolve is better than Psychic Strike and I am down for the 2/2 split, so I'll be testing that.
I also agree with the - Whelming Wave and + Cyclonic Rift switch. Fairly basic switch that broadens my sideboard game compared to the very narrow Wave...
My Decklist:
2 Aetherling
4 Jace, Architect of Thought
4 Thoughtseize
4 Quicken
4 Divination
4 Hero's Downfall
4 Psychic Strike
2 Far // Away
1 Devour Flesh
1 Syncopate
1 Dimir Charm
4 Watery Grave
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Mutavault
7 Sawmp
6 Island
3 Lifebane Zombie
2 Negate
2 Bile Blight
1 Ultimate Price
1 Devour Flesh
1 Pithing Needle
1 Dark Betrayal
1 Whelming Wave
Our FNM turnout tonight was rather small with only three rounds of standard. I 3-0'd, playing against:
Round 1 - Some weird Grixis Control deck with Ashiok. I Pack Ratted him out game one, and game two on the draw kept: Swamp, 3 Duress, 1 Thoughtseize, 1 Negate, and 1 Pack Rat. I drew lands and swiftly ripped his hand apart, into double Pack Rat.
Round 2 - I played a very good friend of mine who was on Mono Black. He got me game 1, but my sideboard cards + Jace, Architect of Thought essentially won me games two and three. Game two I won through Pack Rat, and game three was won off the back of Aetherling. Epic games considering he had double Underworld Connections game three and flooded so hard.
Round 3 - Another good friend of mine, who was on U/W Control with Elixir. I steam-rolled him 2-0. My deck has a very good matchup against U/W control, especially post-board where you just cut the removal and bring in more hand disruption and counters.
Annddd that's my deck friends. Any feedback is welcome. This was honestly one of the first times I've successfully brought a brew to FNM and did well with it, so I was pretty excited about the deck, also considering the stiff competition I played against. Oh yeah, I won a sick Banisher Priest promo.
Peace
dimir charm worth it? or would you prefer having bile blight in the main.
Sounds like the grixis guy was playing a deck very similar to mine
You do have the problem of also not being great against pack rat with not a lot of 2 cmc removal.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Everything else I like. A control deck with 4 Thoughtseize and 4 Hero's Downfall and 4 Mutavault is very stable and effective against virtually every deck. I actually really like Dimir Charm since it nabs Mutavaults, Pack Rats, Master of Waves, and Nightveil Spectre. Countering a sorcery seems far too situational, but I do like disrupting the top of their library.
Think Psychic Strike is solid. You lose the scry but I imagine its much easier to get blue/black than blue/blue and the mill can screw up scrying from their lands.
The quicken into thoughtseize seems like it can be effective, just remember your opponent has priority to play a spell on their turn before you can steal their play, unless you do it during their upkeep before their draw.
Honestly I like the look of whelming Wave, can often be much better than a timewalk against G/R monsters or mono blue devotion.
This deck looks like it is positioned well against a lot of the field, good job.
The changes I've considered making involve cutting a Quicken for another piece of 2cmc removal. Whether it's Bile Blight, another Devour Flesh, or Ultimate Price remains to be seen.
I also think I want some amount of Gainsay on the sideboard, but I'd need more testing to determine the exact numbers. I'll probably start with one, and tweak from there.
Thanks for all the positive feedback!
Even though the deck started off with Quicken being the focus of the deck, I've actually found that it's one of the weaker cards in the deck, being good against Control only. Thoughts on this anyone?
I think I'll start with cutting 1 Quicken to add an Ultimate Price and see how it goes from there...
Feedback always welcome! Thanks guys!
Devour flesh is a great card against Blood Baron Decks or mono black that can only stick one creature at a time
Bile Blight is great against many decks like mono-blue, pack rats, mutavaults, aggro maybe, but double black might not be consistent on turn 2.
Ultimate Price is strong against Monster decks, Desecration Demon, mono blue, but misses nightveil spectre, blood baron, mutavault
Doom blade misses multiple relevant threats but hits mutavault, not exactly a great pic
4 Wight of Precinct Six
4 Pack Rat
Other Spells: 28
4 Drown in Sorrow
4 Thoughtseize
4 Bile Blight
4 Psychic Strike
4 Dissolve
3 Syncopate
2 Far // Away
2 Wring Flesh
1 Read the Bones
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Watery Grave
7 Island
9 Swamp
2 Duress
2 Dispel
2 Grisly Transformation
3 Lifebane Zombie
2 Hero's Downfall
3 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
1 Ultimate Price
I'm going for a tempo route. Land a Wight or Rat on turn 2 and then hope to protect it with counter magic and removal. If I can't land a critter early, I try to buy time until I hit 5 land (this is important, so 24 lands despite the low curve) and then can drop either and protect. Wight just gets bigger naturally while I actively disrupt my opponent, and I can always pitch cards to Pack Rat at EoT if I didn't need to use my mana for counters or removal. That's the general game plan anyway.
The sideboard is in the most Flux. I found that Maze's End decks are hard for me to disrupt (can't counter their lands, can't make them discard em either, removal becomes dead), and my opponent suggested a few cards. I went for Ashiok since it's pretty good against creature based decks as well. Pithing Needle might get a slot as well. At this point I definitely need to play more games with the deck so I can find the holes and fill them in. I've definitely got flex spots to work with there.
I wish there was some utility land I could make good use of. Mutavault is pretty much the only thing that comes to mind, but I can't afford the set right now.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
2 Aetherling
4 Jace, Architect of Thought
4 Thoughtseize
3 Quicken
4 Divination
4 Hero's Downfall
4 Psychic Strike
2 Far // Away
1 Devour Flesh
1 Syncopate
1 Dimir Charm
1 Ultimate Price
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Mutavault
7 Sawmp
6 Island
3 Duress
3 Lifebane Zombie
2 Negate
2 Bile Blight
1 Ultimate Price
1 Devour Flesh
1 Pithing Needle
1 Dark Betrayal
1 Whelming Wave
Only changes, - 1 Quicken, + 1 Ultimate Price.
Lemme know what ya'll think.
I would think between the ashioks, any jaces you add, 4 thoughtseize, 4 duress, 4 hero's downfall, 2 dispel that you could easily run over control decks.
Wring flesh is indeed bad.
If you want to look at something to fight maze's end and have some more win cons, Jace memory adept is fine. Milling out their gates does the job. And you're running wight anyway.
Another thing to note is that a control/tempo deck needs to get ahead somewhere. So it all comes back to card advantage. For a person running wight, one cheapo option is pilfered plans. But do keep in mind that you're going to be leaving blind spots open for which you can be countered... if you you do, run quicken as well.
I am definitely got to find room for cyclonic rift in my deck somewhere.. I am pretty sick of losing to enchantments like gods and their weapons.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Dissolve is strictly better.
4x Hallowed Fountain
4x Temple of Enlightenment
11x Plains
3x Island
Creatures
4x Dryad Militant
4x Soldier of the Pantheon
4x Judge's Familiar
4x Imposing Sovereign
3x Precinct Captain
4x Banisher Priest
4x Lyev Skyknight
4x Brave the Elements
Enchantments
4x Detention Sphere
Legendary Enchantment Artifacts
3x Spear of Heliod
3x Negate
4x Arrest
3x Gainsay
2x Levina of the Tenth
3x God's Willing
@DoLZero - how does your deck not just fold to Blood Baron of Vizkopa? Seems like a resolved baron on turn 4 or 5 would just be game. I run a Jund list with Rakdos's Return that seems like it would annihilate this deck. It's removal heavy (abrupt decay, blade, bile blight etc...) and doesn't run Reaper so it seems like it would matchup great against yours, especially with RR. I won my last FNM and Gameday with it.
@OP - I would set it like this,
-2 Psychic Strike
+2 Dissolve
Deck manipulation seems a million times better than milling two measly cards from your opponent. I get that maybe you hit a creature and make your Wight bigger but it just isn't worth running a full set of a weaker (and more mana constrictive) card. If you want to get creatures in the yard I would seriously look at a MB Codex Shredder. Against any deck with Courser of Kruphix it's insane. Plus it's just great as a nephalia drownyard imitator and a single card Scry-lockdown. "Keep it on top" "Shred It" I run one in all of my control decks and they are awesome, nobody see's it coming and they always sideboard in dead cards to beat it.
- Whelming Wave
+ Cyclonic Rift
The format isn't very creature heavy (R/G monsters is about it) so bouncing opposing Underworld Connections seems great for you.
-1 Quicken
-2 Divination
+1 Bile Blight
+2 Underworld Connections
This will give you another card to help shore up your admittedly weak Pack Rat defense and Underworld Connections is too good not to be running, especially for a control deck that wants card advantage. Plus diversifying your impactful cards (enchantments, creatures, sorceries, instants etc....) makes a better post-board game.
"The set releases for fall 2015 (Blood, Sweat and Tears) and fall 2016 (Lock, Stock and Barrel). One or both of those 2 blocks (I'm betting) are going to contain either Fetch reprints or (more likely) Filter reprints. Filter lands still need a reprint. They are getting pretty high up there and it's been longer than ZEN so it makes a little more sense that Filter lands would see print earlier that fetches." - posted 03/22/2014 proved incorrect about filters coming earlier than fetches, still pending on filters in Origins block.
It is definitely not strictly better for reasons already mentioned in this thread. UU in a two color deck is more difficult to achieve than UB.
Her Shop on Etsy
THS-KTK: Rabble Red
RTR-THS: Dega Midrange
INN-RTR: Boros Humans
SOM-INN: B/u Control
Modern: Mono-Black Infect
I do like Cyclonic Rift. I will probably find room for a 1 of somewhere.
Grisly Transformation was filler for the sideboard until I found out what decks I have trouble against and what I need to make room for. It was never meant to be boarded in for B/x decks, but I've already replaced it anyway.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa is a big reason why I'm running Far // Away. It's really my only answer for that card, but I am thinking it will be unlikely for them to resolve one. Same goes for Rakdos's Return.
Right now my main deck is geared towards kicking the crap out of aggro decks, and it does decent against most midrange decks as well. I've got the sideboard loaded with tons of stuff to bring in against control match ups, which as far as I knew is not a very popular archtype in my area. I still have a few more days to play test before I finalize a list for the Standard tournament. Here is the current iteration of the deck.
4 Wight of Precinct Six
4 Pack Rat
Spells: 26
4 Drown in Sorrow
4 Thoughtseize
4 Psychic Strike
4 Dissolve
3 Syncopate
3 Bile Blight
2 Wring Flesh
2 Far // Away
1 Read the Bones
1 Hero's Downfall
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Watery Grave
7 Island
9 Swamp
3 Dispel
2 Lifebane Zombie
2 Hero's Downfall
3 Duress
1 Ultimate Price
3 Pithing Needle
1 Bile Blight
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
I mostly agree that Dissolve is better than Psychic Strike and I am down for the 2/2 split, so I'll be testing that.
I also agree with the - Whelming Wave and + Cyclonic Rift switch. Fairly basic switch that broadens my sideboard game compared to the very narrow Wave...
Annndd... I pretty much agree with the 2/2 split of Divination and Underworld Connections as well. The Bile Blight main seems reasonable too, as it will shore up my Pack Rat/Mutavault matchup, or any other creature matchup.
Thank you for the help TheSloth, I definitely respect the logic behind your proposed tweaks.