Tested a bit over lunch against and Eldrazi deck and I think it confirms my suspicions that we may want to play a more aggressive build instead of so many counters. I'm thinking of cutting the Clash of Wills to start. Really what this deck wants is something like Simic Charm, one of my favorite cards to cast in Modern. Every mode on that card is totally relevant with our gameplan. Womp womp.
So I played against my friend last night, who played this http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=101079 list (good ol' fashioned G/R Eldrazi Ramp), and we played several matches. I won the first match only because he wasn't drawing into anything good, all the other matches I got wrecked.
It felt horrible to counter the ramp spells while also trying to worry about Kozilek's Return, Chandra, Flamecaller, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, and World Breaker. Countering World Breaker felt horrible because he still gets the cast trigger from it AND he can recur it from the graveyard, which he always had the mana for, and the same can be said when he casted Ulamog. Jaddi Offshoot was also another pain in the butt card, especially when he can drop two lands a turn around turn 3.
He didn't get the sideboard for it so I don't know how well I would have done post-sideboard against the deck. When sideboarding, I found myself wanting to get rid of all of the bounce spells I had (I built the older version of the list where it has 4x Disperse and 4x Compelling Deterrence). Clash of Wills for 1 was hilarious and felt amazing whenever he would tap out.
I think my mistake was completely underestimating how important the ramp spells are in the deck he played and that I need to counter them as soon as I see them so he can't ramp into whatever and try to attack as much as I can before he gets a Kozilek's Return and/or gains too much life off of Jaddi Offshoot.
I see that a new list has been put up and might go out and buy the cards I need today or soon and see how that fares.
Sorry, but copying Ulamog a second time does absolutely 0. You create a legend that annihilates itself, and the exile 2 permanents happens on cast, not on entry. You also wouldn't care to Mockery their Ulamog. He'll attack anyway, you block, and mill 20.
I want Mirror Mockery to be a good card, but there just aren't enough cases where it's useful. Casting it on a Bounding Krasis and then being unable to attack is bad. Casting it and then having the opponent kill that creature is very bad. Having the card and not having a Bounding Krasis or similar to put it on is bad. These bads outweigh the occasional good.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Current Awesome Deck: UWAll-In GiftsWU Consistent, Resiliant, and way overpowered, making multiple 4/4s per turn.
GB Electric Dreams BG Deal 20 in one shot, or discard their hand?
GWUFree Stuff MidrangeUWG Slowly bury the opponent with more threats and answers than they can handle.
Still working on the spells I want to swap out, but I'm thinking the Surrak, the Hunt Caller suggestion above is fantastic. He has a lot of synergy with us being able to put power on the board at our opponents EOT and giving himself haste to apply pressure out of nowhere. I used to do a similar thing with Boon Satyr and him in a GW deck and Bounding Krasis in RUG. Example is we flash Bounding Krasis, tap their blocker untap and haste Surrak. Or something really stupid...if we can get a turn 2 Duskwatch Recruiter to flip on the play (maybe our opponent plays a tap land on 2 and has no 2 drop) Duskwatch flips and we haste Surrak on turn 3. As I'm tweaking it, I'm finding that maybe the all in on flash spells just isn't powerful enough and we need to find our synergies elsewhere.
With Surrak's inclusion I'll probably add one more land and go up to 25 since our curve is getting a bit higher, and we're also incentivized to pitch lands to Pack Guardian. Speaking of, EOT flash Pack Guardian, pitch a land, get a 2/2 Wolf, untap haste Surrak seems powerful too. That's 11 power on the board that we can immediately attack with that our opponent wasn't accounting for. Sounds good in theory, need to put it to the test now.
Oh crud, I forgot about the legend rule haha. Oversight on my part but I do know that the exile two permanents are a cast trigger and not an ETB effect.
So I challenged my friend again today. Unfortunately, he still did not buy the sideboard/proxied it so I still don't know how the deck will do against G/R ramp after sideboarding.
We played three sets of 3. I won all three of them, mostly 2/1'ing. Duskwatch Recruiter//Krallenhorde Howler was exactly what the deck needed. Being able to flash in usually two creatures (or one if you don't want to flip Krallenhorde Howler back into Duskwatch Recruiter just yet) while Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and World Breaker's cast abilities on the stack felt amazing. Surrak, the Hunt Caller performed amazingly as well. I often found myself being able to trigger his ferocious ability on the turn I played him. A lot of the creatures in the deck now don't die to Kozilek's Return. There were times where he was able to ramp out due to a lack of counter spells in my hand but it didn't really matter because I was able to swing with more creatures than he could block. Elemental Uprising was a big help in pushing for damage.
Unfortunately, after sideboarding, I was not able to test to see how well Altered Ego would do. It kind of felt bad when I had it in my hand. I often found myself thinking that I'd rather push for as much damage as I can before he can ramp up to a World Breaker or an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Sideboarding against the deck, I would usually bring in all my copies of Negate and Altered Ego. I found myself getting rid of two Disperses and three Dimensional Infiltrators. I'm not to sure if I sideboarded correctly against the deck though.
All in all, I feel like the deck performs a lot better against the ramp deck with the beefier creatures.
I would like to see how this deck fares against other standard decks in the format. I got a little taste of B/W Eldrazi challenging a new friend that I made at my LGS. I attacked into his Matter Reshaper, only to hit another one from it's ability. When that died, he got an Eldrazi Displacer and he kept bouncing my creatures and Declaration in Stoneing them. I lost horribly against the deck. It was a fun game though.
Tested against a ramp list over lunch today and went 3-1. Was pretty happy with how the list played overall. Duskwatch Recruiter has been overperforming for me and allowing the deck to do some pretty disgusting things. With 3 mana and Krallenhorde Howler, EOT flash and tap with Bounding Krasis and flash Rattlechains. Untap, draw, haste Surrak, the Hunt Caller. We have the ability to go from a seemingly innocuous board to applying a lot of pressure very quickly now. I only drew Titanic Growth once and it pushed lethal through, but still haven't formed an opinion about the card. I may replace it with Turn to Frog as our pseudo removal spell.
Edit: Also, the Tapped Out link in my sig can give you some idea of the sideboard right now. I'm changing it all the time as I think about the different matchups, so its a little more fluid there.
After some more testing, I went back to some of the cards I cut. Elemental Uprising and Titanic Growth just basically sat in my hand when testing against more of the metagame. I was super happy with Turn to Frog in the mainboard though. It was great at surprising opponents when I had an empty board, could flash a threat, block, and Turn to Frog and win in combat. I still haven't lived the dream of playing Turn to Frog on an opponents creature that is fighting with Dromoka's Command or on an Ormendahl, Profane Prince, but looking forward to it.
I've also mainboarded 2 Lambholt Pacifist as another aggressive 2-drop that we can flip easily. Not sure on the last 2 SB slots yet, but here's an updated list:
If I can make a couple of suggestions. Well, 1 suggestion and then a suggestion after that, lol.
So I think, since you have a fair amount of wolves/werewolves in the deck Howlpack Resurgence would be a great card in the deck. It fits your flash theme while simultaneously pumping your attackers and giving trample. That's pulling some serious duty!
So I saw today that MTGGoldfish did one of their Instant Deck Techs on a not-so-budget version of our deck. I know that this is the budget forum but maybe we could gain some ideas as to what we could try in this deck in terms of the cheaper cards. Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucYBKPhqZDM
So I saw today that MTGGoldfish did one of their Instant Deck Techs on a not-so-budget version of our deck. I know that this is the budget forum but maybe we could gain some ideas as to what we could try in this deck in terms of the cheaper cards. Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucYBKPhqZDM
I like the mainboard Negate idea – I can definitely get behind that.
Because he's running Collected Company, I feel like he can get away with running a different set of creatures than we can. For instance, I'm not so sure we'd want to be playing Eldrazi Skyspawner or Sidisi's Faithful. I may be wrong, but my gut says its better to hit those off CoCo EOT than straight up casting them in our deck.
Stratus Dancer seems interesting though, I kind of forgot that card existed. I could definitely see experimenting with that in the main and side, depending on how much you like cards like Lambholt Pacifist, Disperse and Turn to Frog in this list.
Harbinger of the Tides is interesting too. It's a great CoCo hit for sure. I kind of see Disperse taking that slot because its easier to cast and I can always cast it for 2. Plus, I'm not sure that the extra body it comes with is necessarily needed since the budget version has moved towards bigger creatures like Surrak and Pack Guardian.
Those are just my thoughts – take them with a grain of salt, especially from a guy who's running Turn to Frog mainboard.
Turn to Frog is great. Of course Im the guy who ran Polymorphist's Jest when it was around. Nothing says fun like turning dragons or demons or angels into frogs.
I wrote my review of this deck on my thread. The main thing I would argue for is Void Grafter. I like your Disperses fine, but would switch Clash to some Negate and some 3 mana counters.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Current Awesome Deck: UWAll-In GiftsWU Consistent, Resiliant, and way overpowered, making multiple 4/4s per turn.
GB Electric Dreams BG Deal 20 in one shot, or discard their hand?
GWUFree Stuff MidrangeUWG Slowly bury the opponent with more threats and answers than they can handle.
So I think, since you have a fair amount of wolves/werewolves in the deck Howlpack Resurgence would be a great card in the deck. It fits your flash theme while simultaneously pumping your attackers and giving trample. That's pulling some serious duty!
I've thought about it recently but wasn't sure I was running enough Werewolves to take advantage of it. I might be interesting as a singleton, making Pack Guardian, Krallenhorde Howler and Lambholt Butcher pack a serious punch.
Well, it works with wolves and werewolves, and you have 10 in the deck. If you change out your finisher with what I suggested, or even Cult of the Waxing Moon you could be looking at even more wolves and werewolves that would benefit from Howlpack.
Turn to Frog is great. I've only used it once so far because I have not ran into situations where I needed to use it and I kind of wanted to keep it a secret from my friend because turning his Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger into a 1/1 frog is hilarious haha. I was thinking about running Void Shatter's instead of Scatter to the Winds because while Kozilek's Return doesn't get a lot of our creatures upon the first cast, it did always wipe my entire board upon the cast trigger of Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and World Breaker. It also prevents them from getting World Breaker back from the graveyard.
I took a pass at this. I don't have much on flash creatures, but am using werewolves instead. The idea being, drop 2 or 3 creatures and then sit back with instants and keep the board clear of threats. Priced it and this list runs about $65, but a good chunk is land, and that's not a bad investment.
So, this deck is just a thought. Duskwatch Recruiter and Vessel of Nascency are for digging through the deck. Neglected Heirloom is mostly because it gives another 1 drop that can deal damage. The instants I picked for this set, are mostly to clear the way to get blockers through. They could be anything really though. Burn package, Counterspell package, you name it. I'd probably avoid a bounce package just because there's quite a few good ETB creatures in play right now.
The last choice I made was Geier Reach Bandit/Vildin-Pack Alpha. I went back and forth between that and Breakneck Rider/Neck Breaker. I think overall, I like Neck Breaker more, since he'd be another trample anthem, but I feel like that double red is much harder to swing with the mana base.
I took a pass at this. I don't have much on flash creatures, but am using werewolves instead. The idea being, drop 2 or 3 creatures and then sit back with instants and keep the board clear of threats. Priced it and this list runs about $65, but a good chunk is land, and that's not a bad investment.
So, this deck is just a thought. Duskwatch Recruiter and Vessel of Nascency are for digging through the deck. Neglected Heirloom is mostly because it gives another 1 drop that can deal damage. The instants I picked for this set, are mostly to clear the way to get blockers through. They could be anything really though. Burn package, Counterspell package, you name it. I'd probably avoid a bounce package just because there's quite a few good ETB creatures in play right now.
The last choice I made was Geier Reach Bandit/Vildin-Pack Alpha. I went back and forth between that and Breakneck Rider/Neck Breaker. I think overall, I like Neck Breaker more, since he'd be another trample anthem, but I feel like that double red is much harder to swing with the mana base.
This looks super interesting actually, I dig it. How's it been running for you?
I ran it against a few decks. It did well. I feel it might need the counterspell package instead though. I'm not sure how I feel about that though. To go that route, you really need to be bigger than the weenie decks. I'm not sure if a single anthem is enough to make that happen. It'll take some testing.
I'm thinking about testing Kiora, Master of the Depths in this deck but I don't know what to cut for it. Any ideas or is there any point in putting her in this deck?
I own a list similar to this on paper, but instead of the Pack Guardians and the counterspells I'm running Collected Company and Sylvan Advocate. Those are the two cards to look at when looking to upgrade.
On MODO I don't have the resources to replicate my paper list.
This list stomps all over control and mid-range mirrors, but seems to have a little problem with aggro decks, especially ones with evasion like Insolent Neonate and Heir to the Night and seems prone to being overrun by weenies. What's a good sideboard plain against these annoying aggro decks? I run extra Stratus Dancers and Negates for the control matchups and I feel "pre-boarded" against the midrange mirrors, so what sort of cards should I be looking for against aggro? Jaddi Offshoot? Pulse of Murasa? The main problem I see is that they have 1 drops, so our draw go approach is useless.
I love that this list can beat up all the control decks by playing on their endstep and forcing them to tap out on their turn so you can setup a massive Surrak alpha-strike. I might replace a Pack Guardian with the third Surrak. I was thinking of a red splash for Eldrazi Obligator for the added explosiveness which is what this deck loves. I'm playing 25 lands to insure that I curve out from two to four and Lumbering Falls being my "five".
It felt horrible to counter the ramp spells while also trying to worry about Kozilek's Return, Chandra, Flamecaller, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, and World Breaker. Countering World Breaker felt horrible because he still gets the cast trigger from it AND he can recur it from the graveyard, which he always had the mana for, and the same can be said when he casted Ulamog. Jaddi Offshoot was also another pain in the butt card, especially when he can drop two lands a turn around turn 3.
He didn't get the sideboard for it so I don't know how well I would have done post-sideboard against the deck. When sideboarding, I found myself wanting to get rid of all of the bounce spells I had (I built the older version of the list where it has 4x Disperse and 4x Compelling Deterrence). Clash of Wills for 1 was hilarious and felt amazing whenever he would tap out.
I think my mistake was completely underestimating how important the ramp spells are in the deck he played and that I need to counter them as soon as I see them so he can't ramp into whatever and try to attack as much as I can before he gets a Kozilek's Return and/or gains too much life off of Jaddi Offshoot.
I see that a new list has been put up and might go out and buy the cards I need today or soon and see how that fares.
I want Mirror Mockery to be a good card, but there just aren't enough cases where it's useful. Casting it on a Bounding Krasis and then being unable to attack is bad. Casting it and then having the opponent kill that creature is very bad. Having the card and not having a Bounding Krasis or similar to put it on is bad. These bads outweigh the occasional good.
GB Electric Dreams BG Deal 20 in one shot, or discard their hand?
GWU Free Stuff Midrange UWG Slowly bury the opponent with more threats and answers than they can handle.
My greatest hits:
GURFate Reforged Temur Ascendancy COMBORUG
GUDragons of Tarkir Whisperwood Forever UG
With Surrak's inclusion I'll probably add one more land and go up to 25 since our curve is getting a bit higher, and we're also incentivized to pitch lands to Pack Guardian. Speaking of, EOT flash Pack Guardian, pitch a land, get a 2/2 Wolf, untap haste Surrak seems powerful too. That's 11 power on the board that we can immediately attack with that our opponent wasn't accounting for. Sounds good in theory, need to put it to the test now.
We played three sets of 3. I won all three of them, mostly 2/1'ing. Duskwatch Recruiter//Krallenhorde Howler was exactly what the deck needed. Being able to flash in usually two creatures (or one if you don't want to flip Krallenhorde Howler back into Duskwatch Recruiter just yet) while Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and World Breaker's cast abilities on the stack felt amazing. Surrak, the Hunt Caller performed amazingly as well. I often found myself being able to trigger his ferocious ability on the turn I played him. A lot of the creatures in the deck now don't die to Kozilek's Return. There were times where he was able to ramp out due to a lack of counter spells in my hand but it didn't really matter because I was able to swing with more creatures than he could block. Elemental Uprising was a big help in pushing for damage.
Unfortunately, after sideboarding, I was not able to test to see how well Altered Ego would do. It kind of felt bad when I had it in my hand. I often found myself thinking that I'd rather push for as much damage as I can before he can ramp up to a World Breaker or an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Sideboarding against the deck, I would usually bring in all my copies of Negate and Altered Ego. I found myself getting rid of two Disperses and three Dimensional Infiltrators. I'm not to sure if I sideboarded correctly against the deck though.
All in all, I feel like the deck performs a lot better against the ramp deck with the beefier creatures.
I would like to see how this deck fares against other standard decks in the format. I got a little taste of B/W Eldrazi challenging a new friend that I made at my LGS. I attacked into his Matter Reshaper, only to hit another one from it's ability. When that died, he got an Eldrazi Displacer and he kept bouncing my creatures and Declaration in Stoneing them. I lost horribly against the deck. It was a fun game though.
Standard: Larkblue's Competitive Mono Red Aggro
4x Duskwatch Recruiter
4x Dimensional Infiltrator
4x Rattlechains
4x Bounding Krasis
3x Void Grafter
1x Silumgar Sorcerer
4x Pack Guardian
3x Surrak, the Hunt Caller
7x Forest
6x Island
4x Lumbering Falls
4x Woodland Stream
4x Yavimaya Coast
3x Elemental Uprising
3x Disperse
2x Titanic Growth
Standard: Larkblue's Competitive Mono Red Aggro
Edit: Also, the Tapped Out link in my sig can give you some idea of the sideboard right now. I'm changing it all the time as I think about the different matchups, so its a little more fluid there.
I've also mainboarded 2 Lambholt Pacifist as another aggressive 2-drop that we can flip easily. Not sure on the last 2 SB slots yet, but here's an updated list:
4x Duskwatch Recruiter
2x Lambholt Pacifist
4x Dimensional Infiltrator
4x Rattlechains
4x Bounding Krasis
4x Pack Guardian
3x Surrak, the Hunt Caller
7x Forest
6x Island
4x Lumbering Falls
4x Woodland Stream
4x Yavimaya Coast
Instant (10)
4x Clash of Wills
3x Disperse
3x Turn to Frog
3x Clip Wings
2x Displacement Wave
2x Natural State
2x Negate
2x Profaner of the Dead
2x Pulse of Murasa
1x ????
1x ????
So I think, since you have a fair amount of wolves/werewolves in the deck Howlpack Resurgence would be a great card in the deck. It fits your flash theme while simultaneously pumping your attackers and giving trample. That's pulling some serious duty!
And, if you decide to go with that card, I'd switch to Sage of Ancient Lore/Werewolf of Ancient Hunger as your finisher. That would make Howlpack even more effective.
I like the mainboard Negate idea – I can definitely get behind that.
Because he's running Collected Company, I feel like he can get away with running a different set of creatures than we can. For instance, I'm not so sure we'd want to be playing Eldrazi Skyspawner or Sidisi's Faithful. I may be wrong, but my gut says its better to hit those off CoCo EOT than straight up casting them in our deck.
Stratus Dancer seems interesting though, I kind of forgot that card existed. I could definitely see experimenting with that in the main and side, depending on how much you like cards like Lambholt Pacifist, Disperse and Turn to Frog in this list.
Harbinger of the Tides is interesting too. It's a great CoCo hit for sure. I kind of see Disperse taking that slot because its easier to cast and I can always cast it for 2. Plus, I'm not sure that the extra body it comes with is necessarily needed since the budget version has moved towards bigger creatures like Surrak and Pack Guardian.
Those are just my thoughts – take them with a grain of salt, especially from a guy who's running Turn to Frog mainboard.
I wrote my review of this deck on my thread. The main thing I would argue for is Void Grafter. I like your Disperses fine, but would switch Clash to some Negate and some 3 mana counters.
GB Electric Dreams BG Deal 20 in one shot, or discard their hand?
GWU Free Stuff Midrange UWG Slowly bury the opponent with more threats and answers than they can handle.
My greatest hits:
GURFate Reforged Temur Ascendancy COMBORUG
GUDragons of Tarkir Whisperwood Forever UG
I've thought about it recently but wasn't sure I was running enough Werewolves to take advantage of it. I might be interesting as a singleton, making Pack Guardian, Krallenhorde Howler and Lambholt Butcher pack a serious punch.
Cult of the Waxing Moon also has the benefit of generating wolves not just with werewolves turn, but other transform cards too. Like Uninvited Geist/Unimpeded Trespasser, Autumnal Gloom/Ancient of the Equinox and Thing in the Ice/Awoken Horror. I'm not saying these cards belong in the deck per se. Just stating a fact.
4 Duskwatch Recruiter
4 Lambholt Pacifist
4 Village Messenger
4 Geier Reach Bandit
Instants 12
4 Moonlight Hunt
4 Send to Sleep
4 Twin Bolt
4 Howlpack Resurgence
4 Vessel of Nascency
Artifacts 3
3 Neglected Heirloom
Lands 22
7 Forest
4 Game Trail
3 Mountain
4 Shivan Reef
4 Yavimaya Coast
So, this deck is just a thought. Duskwatch Recruiter and Vessel of Nascency are for digging through the deck. Neglected Heirloom is mostly because it gives another 1 drop that can deal damage. The instants I picked for this set, are mostly to clear the way to get blockers through. They could be anything really though. Burn package, Counterspell package, you name it. I'd probably avoid a bounce package just because there's quite a few good ETB creatures in play right now.
The last choice I made was Geier Reach Bandit/Vildin-Pack Alpha. I went back and forth between that and Breakneck Rider/Neck Breaker. I think overall, I like Neck Breaker more, since he'd be another trample anthem, but I feel like that double red is much harder to swing with the mana base.
This looks super interesting actually, I dig it. How's it been running for you?
At least it offers flexibility.
Land(25):
Yavimaya Coastx4
Lumbering Fallsx4
Islandx9
Forestx8
Creatures(30):
Dimensional Infiltratorx4
Duskwatch Recruiterx4
Lambholt Pacifistx4
Stratus Dancerx2
Stitched Manglerx3
Bounding Krasisx4
Void Grafterx4
Pack Guardianx3
Surrak, the Hunt Callerx2
Instants(5):
Negatex2
Scatter to the Windsx3
I own a list similar to this on paper, but instead of the Pack Guardians and the counterspells I'm running Collected Company and Sylvan Advocate. Those are the two cards to look at when looking to upgrade.
On MODO I don't have the resources to replicate my paper list.
This list stomps all over control and mid-range mirrors, but seems to have a little problem with aggro decks, especially ones with evasion like Insolent Neonate and Heir to the Night and seems prone to being overrun by weenies. What's a good sideboard plain against these annoying aggro decks? I run extra Stratus Dancers and Negates for the control matchups and I feel "pre-boarded" against the midrange mirrors, so what sort of cards should I be looking for against aggro? Jaddi Offshoot? Pulse of Murasa? The main problem I see is that they have 1 drops, so our draw go approach is useless.
I love that this list can beat up all the control decks by playing on their endstep and forcing them to tap out on their turn so you can setup a massive Surrak alpha-strike. I might replace a Pack Guardian with the third Surrak. I was thinking of a red splash for Eldrazi Obligator for the added explosiveness which is what this deck loves. I'm playing 25 lands to insure that I curve out from two to four and Lumbering Falls being my "five".