Check the latest post for the latest build the deck is a rogue deck, I'm playing it in junior leagues and it's evolving and getting sigificant (in terms of optimization) tweakes all the time.
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I've been trying to get various black/red themes and mechanics to work for me in standard, but all the powerful strategies seem to have been seen through, and all the not-so-powerful ones are not worth investing tickets in. So almost by accident I hit upon a seemingly novel and ridiculous concept. I can't test it properly in an actual league yet, but it's been depressingly effective in the tourney practice room so far.
I'm not really settled on the sideboard, in part because I'm not all that settled on the main deck. I spend the last two weeks gradually buying up all the black and red stuff in standard (still missing a few things, but surprisingly few), and almost by accident hit upon the kinda-sorta main card in this silly deck, but it's a long story of how the deck came to be, and writing it might help me figure out how to make it a better deck.
The deck came about this way - Aether Hub (and having money for fancy lands) seems to be making it easy for everybody to splash (and sideboard) turn 2 answers for Smuggler's Copter. This mostly means that seemingly everyone is running Harnessed Lightning. This kicks a lot of red and red/black strats in the face because it just so happens that most of those kinda-sorta rely on the two drop not getting killed every time. Also Thraben Inspector is everywhere, which limits the effectiveness of possible 1cc creatures. I'd love to play Unlicenced Disintegration , but if I can't play Bomat Courrier because of the inspector (and the omnipresent Fragmentize and Natural State), and the copter because of the meta, I have to look for my stuff elsewhere.
So I decided to play Harnessed Lightning. It's a great card - for any deck but a red one. Any other deck generates energy more easily, needs energy less, has something smart to do with the energy, while the red deck simply needs a 2cc instant answer for the enemy copter/grim flayer/whathaveyou on the draw and is stuck with the lightning. So I decided to play the damned thing and ditch the copter, because it was getting blown up all the time losing me tempo and board position. One problem with running the lightning, though, is that the red/black decks are extremely finicky about their mana base. Fitting Aether Hub into a serious friendly-color pair deck is much more difficult than fitting it into an enemy color pair one, in this meta, due to how much more early game friendly the enemy dual lands are. But if you go lightning, you go hub, and then the deck can't be be properly RB but rather mostly red with a black splash. Since red seems to have a seemingly better energy game, and a much simpler mono-game, I went with red.
Having played a ton of RB variants over the last few weeks I figured out that it's a really lousy meta for trying to play most dudes at all. That's really the bane of red and red-black, they have some fine-looking small dudes, but everybody packs either 8-16 removal (post board at least), mythic dudes which outclass them, or they combo you out too fast.
One of the dudes which was silly enough to play was Lathnu Hellion , which I've seen played against me, bought up because they were cheap, and decided to try since it tied into the whole energy thing. I figured if there was nothing to cast Harnessed Lightning on I could just dump it into hellion upkeep, surprise the other guy. I also added Thriving Grubs - they're not good by any stretch of the imagination, and in most situations they'd be be a complete waste of space (and ussually ARE a complete waste of energy), but hey - it's one more turn for the hellion, it's 2 more power for the lightning, and it could even be mana fixing with the hub. And I've had a game where I killed a guy with them in two swings after having played three cards total, which can happen in this deck.
So that's the lame-o energy package, a red burn which doesn't go to the head without shennanigans, a big red dude that can be chumped until it dies on it's own, and a small red dude who's good for not much, but as opposed to most other red things you don't mind it getting blasted by the other guy which means a lot in this format. I suppose there's the pinger but he looks awfully junky even for this deck.
Then I went and put in the main card of the deck, the ever-so-stupid Triskaidekaphobia. I've discovered it by complete accident the day before. I bought them for next to nothing while padding out a random trade, decided that nuking a dude for 13 with one card looks silly enough to try, tried it, and, well, it nuked people for 13 with just one card.
If I wanted to go overly-enthusiastic about it, I could testify that I played Thriving Grubs, attacked with them next turn while giving them the boost, hit for 3, next turn played a Harnessed Lightning just for the energy, attacked with the grubs for 4, next turn played Triskaidekaphobia, passed the turn, and won on my upkeep after having played 3 cards. One of them gave one guy +1/+1 for two mana and did nothing else. But I have to list out the rest of the deck first.
I added Incendiary Flow , Collective Defiance and Thermo-Alchemist as ways to manipulate the enemy life total directly, because I've also won games where I just poked the other guy once or twice with something or the other, hit him with the burn and played the phobia FTW. If I were a bit more happy with how the artifact shell works out in the current standard, I'd obviously run Unlicenced Disintegration . If I were confident enough about packaging Insolent Neonate , Key to the City and Fiery Temper, there'd be very lolsy wins to be had with that. There's something to be said about Night Market Lookout and Smuggler's Copter, too, in a phobia deck, if I was confident enough with being more black. The artifact shell, especially with the key, also opens up the possibility of Scrapheap Scrounger and Ovalchase Daredeveil as cards to easily discard and easily recur, if one so wanted. It's also worth noting that Collective Defiance "discard your stuff, draw new stuff" thing actually works in this deck as opposed to most others, because it's a way to ditch redundant copies of Triskaidekaphobia. So if there's a way to make use of the Ovalchase Daredevil at all, it's that - use him as discard filler first and grindy nuisance later in a RB artifacts shell.
Anyway, I added a random Diabolic Tutor. It's a bit silly because there's too few black sources realistically, so it'll probably go out, but on the other hand it's a fifth phobia... or a burn, why not, I've tutored for Incendiary Flow for a turn 6 win.
Goblin Dark Dwellers kinda ended up with too few spells to flash back, but still - folks are basing entire decks around playing Torrential Gerhulk, which, while obviously stronger, often ends up doing exactly the same thing as these guys. I suppose the deck could use / end up using something like Collective Brutality (damned pricey) or Transgress the Mind mainboard (both for them and the Thermo-Alchemist), or if the energy thing falls through possibly move to a more artifacty shell and run Unlicenced Disintegration, but I'd probably still most rather have the goblins topping the curve. In a stunning bit of junky nonsense, if there was a reasonable enough way to help hit 5 mana naturally enough while also having something to flash back, I'd even give Spontaneous Artist a shot as hasting the goblins out.
Sin Prodder I just threw in. I wanted something completely randomly thrown in because I knew I'd need to make adjustments, and he should probably be Insolent Neonate, as the neonate sets up the nuts and stupid sequence of 1) Poke with menace neonate for 1 dmg, 2) Incendiary Flow, 3) Collective Defiance, 4) Triskaidekaphobia 5) UR DED. Or alternatively some clever way of getting the enemy lifegain out of the way.
Or it should be Lightning Weaver to help against the enemy turning your own phobia against you (they have their turn 5 to get YOUR life to 13). If the deck was more black Night Market Lookout would possibly help with this rather well, too, as it's early beats which also pad out your life. A rather good safeguard against being at 13 at the wrong time, I've found, is Sinister Concoction, which I'd run if could get the mana base to behave well enough to be properly black-red. The problem there is that it can't be flashed back with the Goblin Dark-Dwellers, that it essentially takes up the same deck space as Harnessed Lightning, but on the other hand it sure screws with any Emrakul plans the enemy might have while at the same time letting you get off 13 life in response to the Phobia trigger it the other guy puts you there.
Anyway, the deck can win the tradish way of cheap dudes & burn, it can win the non-tradish way of wtfpwn with just burn or a mix of stuff.
Keep in mind that you can kill yourself with your own phobia, and that there are ways for the other guys to dodge it. Lifegain, throwing their burn at themselves, and simply attacking you to make you kill yourself instead all works. But still - there are decks which can't do anything about it (and decks which can don't always have the requisite tools on-hand), and I've even found that just having the other guy ticking down from something they can't just move off the board is surprisingly fine. It's the stupid format, you see, there's way better 3-4-5 mana threats to play, but they're dudes and eat removal so they might as well not be there at all.
Anyway, the deck still needs to decide what it wants to be in a few places, but I think it can end up being a contender. Just based on how completely unfair and wtf it feels 3 out of 4 times Triskaidekaphobia comes down and the other guy has to scoop up because this card just said that they lose.
If you've taken the time to check the writeup up, what are your thoughts? If you can take it seriously, what would you do with it, what would you sideboard?
Now I have trouble deciding on whether (and exactly how) to add:
- Tormenting Voice / Chatartic Reunion , one of which I kinda-sorta really have to have in there to help draw lands and filter out extra copies of Triskaidekaphobia.
- Transgress the Mind because i'd probably be siding it in often anyway, but it's black.
- Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I really like because being able to calibrate the ammount of damage - at instant speed - should be rather good in this deck.
I only have space for 5 cards right now, which is a bummer, because I kinda want all those things in the deck, or at least 7-8 of them total, and I'm not sure what's safe to cut down to 3 copies. Especially if I'm adding the card filtering, because it makes redundant copies just recycle. Hmmmm.
Also, I suppose that even if I don't have the whole sideboard worked out, I do need some kind of standard plan for siding out Triskaidekaphobia, and also standard "on the play"/"on the draw" sort of tweak.
Went with Tormenting Voice instead of Chatartic Reunion because it's easier to play off the top of the library / flashback with gobbos. Moved the alchemist to the sideboard and the idea is to move him and transgress in instead of Triskaidekaphobia and whatever else depending on what I think the other guy will sideboard.
Seems to be beating up the random brews in tourney practice, I whish I could try it against more serious decks without having to pay money to do so. Lujo2016 on Mtgo if someone with a serious deck for some reaso wats to be playing against this.
After some testing, I concluded that Sin Prodder is deffinitely out, and so is the Diabolic Tutor.
Why? Sin prodder = nice card
It's a nice card, true, but it didn't feel right for the deck. I had a feeling that giving the enemy any input over what gets or doesn't get drawn is a bad idea in this particular deck, and also, I felt stupid for even trying to play it with Triskaidekaphobia. I mean, if you're trying to get the enemy to precisely 13 life in game one, why give him a way out of it by letting him burn himself with Sin Prodder?
It might be a sneaky thing to sideboard Sin Prodder in place of Tiskaidekaphobia in game two.
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EDIT:
Aaaaaand, apparently people are routinely running Fragmentize and various green artifact/enchantment hate mainboard now. Probably because of that marvel nonsense. Four matches in a row! So if everyone red is running Harnessed Lightning, and if everyone white is running Fragmentize, and everyone green is running one of their three or so different things, and this seems to be the case, than I guess I'm more likely to run into trouble running this than not, and switching to copter or an artifact shell is also suicidal.
I think I'll keep the grubs around for the sideboard, though, simply to have a small dude to side in vs. control. I did 2-1 a UW flash deck, but I whished I had another small poker besides the neonate. Seeing how nicely hellion hastes it's way into damage, I'm beiginning to consider adding Speedway Fanatic to the deck. Despite having no vehicles, in fact, partly specifically because I have no vehicles. His haste is a largely underrated thing, as it lets him get in there for some damage. I don't necessarily want him in the main deck, otherwise I would not have taken the grubs out, but I wish all the "I run Fragmentize main" crew can take a good look at him and keep their junk in their deck, while I board my silly enchantment out.
Who knows, maybe that Sin Prodder in the side too?
I have some vague feeling like I want the deck would want to be R/G/b more than just R/b, for those mana elves who use energy and the RG 4/3 guy. Idk where I would fit them, and again, the mana base would be silly (although not completely ridiculous as the GB dual from kaladesh is kinda manageable play wise, but IDK about price-wise). Hmmm.
I have to say, I saw Triskaidekaphobia and thought "what?" However, it's a much better card than it used to be since there are no pain lands anymore. It's probably a card that deserves a lot more attention.
I'm wondering if blue would be a better color than red though. As you say, Fragmatize, Root Out, etc are running wild. Having the ability to go to Negate/Dispel/Ceremonious Rejection (I know rejection doesn't counter those spells, but it's very useful with all the artifacts, eldrazi and devoid spells out there).
I have to say, I saw Triskaidekaphobia and thought "what?" However, it's a much better card than it used to be since there are no pain lands anymore. It's probably a card that deserves a lot more attention.
Oh, I went "what?" myself But then I remembered that there aren't many commonly played lands that lose life, and, well, "Suspend 1, 3B: Other guy drops dead" reads fine. You can get into trouble still, and people get creative about dodging it, but it's a huge, cheap nuke masquerading as a alternate win condition.
I'm wondering if blue would be a better color than red though. As you say, Fragmatize, Root Out, etc are running wild. Having the ability to go to Negate/Dispel/Ceremonious Rejection (I know rejection doesn't counter those spells, but it's very useful with all the artifacts, eldrazi and devoid spells out there).
I can see the logic behind it, but I'm not overly confident. The deck works because it's a burn or more precisely a combo-burn deck. It does it's 7-ish damage by turn 4, slaps down Triskaidekaphobia and wins on untap, or by casting Chandra's Pyrohelix in response to the trigger to adjust it at the last moment.
It usually wins in the nick of time, too, so you can't exactly keep mana open for a counterspell - if the other guy hits you with enchantment removal, you're most likely dead anyway. That's why I called it "You Lose!", the other guy is doing everything right, curving out, whathave you, and you seem to be doing some random nonsense, attack for 1 with a neonate, then throw Incendiary Flow at him, then cast a Collective Defiance at his head instead of at his dude, even sacrifice the neonate for no obvious reason, he's clearly playing against a noob here, or you've attacked him with Speedway Fanatic and you didn't draw your vehicle, he's doing fine - and then you play this dipsh**t card and... he's dead.
But I'm not sure protecting the card would save you in most cases, you kinda have to combo out really quickly and most of your moves are geared to be doing that. Speed is surprisingly the thing, which is why I kinda-sorta feel Green for a mana boost might be the ticket.
However, regardless of whether the other guy died or happened to have a mainboard answer, you can just side the thing out, and tune the deck to be a nastier burn deck for games 2-3, and quite often the other guy will have dead cards which are meant to deal with enchantments / artifacts (and you've got none, you're a burn deck), or creatures (and all the ones you've got have haste, or flash stuff back, or sacrifice to filter, etc, and if they hit once they've done their job, you're a burn deck).
Or you can not side it out at all.
EDIT: But Red has the most direct ad non-interactive way of getting someone down to 13 before turn 4, can also manipulate their life with their own card, and also use their life manipulation card as removal if needed. Also, drawing a card to discard Fiery Temper to do 3 dmg for 1 mana is VERY good in a deck which is trying to manipulate life AND draw it's combo piece. I'm even contemplating using Alms of the Vein for the same reason.
Now it's something I want to build and test.
Be my guest, but I'd suggest that if you've got the components and/or spare change to give the R/b variant a bunch of whirls in the test room first, to get the feel of why it works when it works and how much of a burn/combo deck it really is. I have a feeling that trying to make it another way will cause frustration and possibly misevaluation of the power of Triskaidekaphobia.
I'm not sure anything but red has the necassary capability of altering the enemy life total directly and precisely.
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I'm planning to bite the bullet and put my money where my mouth is tonight, and see how this does in a league. My hopes aren't too high, because I'm not sure I've put the deck together in the best possible way, and one of the more conventional aggro packages with a splash for Trishaidekaphobia might be way better, but I'd find it very lolsy if this managed to win 3 matches out of 5.
League went 2 - 3 , but I'm not really disappointed with the deck, to be honest. It's still a bit unrefined and I should've tested it more before trying a league.
Insolent Neonate - Don't attempt to make this kind of deck without this guy, all I'll say. Gets in for damage, triggers madness, draws a card. Lathnu Hellion - It's a ridiculous card, truly. Triskaidekaphobia - It did what it does. Fiery Temper - Kills copters, discards for neonate and Haunting Voice when looking for lands, 100% great. Chandra's Pyrohelix - I regretted not having 1 more even in the sideboard. Being able to do 1 or 2 at instant speed is "comboey" with the phobia, and it also gets rid of more things than I though. Thermo-Alchemist - I think I'll switch to them in the main deck, if for no other reason then because Thraben Inspectors can't chip away at you by attacking into them.
Cards I'm meh with:
Speedway Fanatic - It does what it does quite well, hit face for 2 for 1-2-3 turns, which is cool, but there's too many Thraben Inspector and Glint-Nest Crane around. He should have been in the sideboard, I think. Tormenting Voice - It didn't show up as often as I would have liked. Incendiary Flow - Well, the fast kills with the phobia work much better with it, but it's painful to have to play it in copter meta. Collective Defiance - Should be better than it is, and I've had bad luck with redraws, but this card keeps me wishing I had some kind of mana accelerant.
I never even saw:
Sinister Concoction - As I didn't play against anything that looked really top-heavy in a way where this would help, I didn't board it. Transgress the Mind - I'm not sure this thing is the right thing for this deck. Goblin Dark-Dwellers - Never showed up, would've been fine if they did. I was flooded quite often.[/quote]
I'm very annoyed with:
Harnessed Lightning - Playing this in a red deck, and in a red burn deck in particular, is unbearably godawful. I need a cheep instant answer to copter, and this card is a lot better than Lightning Axe so I'm stuck with it, and to add salt to the wound, I can't replace one with the 4th Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I really want because of Triskaidekaphobia, as that doesn't kill too many things. And Incendiary Flow is a sorcery. And Collective Defiance costs more and is a sorcery.
As lame as it may sound one of the two biggest reasons for the lousy performance was mana screw and mana flood, but specifically mana screw. Just so you guys don't think I'm whining for no reason, I have 24 lands, and I had to mulligan every other match due to not having any or only 1 land in my hand, and I started quite a few matches with only one land rather than mulligan to 4. Games where I wasn't screwed I was flooded, sometimes astoundingly so (and one time understandably so). It's a wonder, in fact, that I won as many games as I did. Also, just so you know I'm only reporting and not whining - the other reason the deck performed badly is that I made grotesque misplays and misclicks which would be completely shameful to admit. Like passing my first turn by accident - TWICE. Let's just say that having insomnia and passing the time by playing magic with an entry fee isn't a good idea. The stupid thing is that I pretty much made just one mistake too many, out of probably 20, and if I didn't I would've at least made my battle point back for another go. Shame.
On to the coverage of my disaster, which is actually interesting:
Game 1: Mulligan to 5, then made a game losing mistake (didn't note what) which let the other guy untap with the reservoir. So basically thrown game which would've been won. (Only notes on this game)
Game 2: Didn't tilt, sided everything but the concoctions, took out 1 Neonate, 3 fanatic, 4 Harnessed Lightning, 4 Triskaidekaphobia. Burned him out the old fashioned way before he could do anything.
Game 3: Absurd flood. With 4 lands out, on the draw, I Cycled 7 lands through various means and drew 8 lands. That is one neonate who discarded a land to draw a land, then one tormenting voice discarding a land which drew 2 lands, then I cast collective defiance to discard 2 lands, drew two lands, then AGAIN collective defiance and AGAIN drew two lands. Then I had four full turns where the other guy was at 2 life, which was amazing considering that this wasn't a drawn out game and I managed 18 damage despite a huge flood, and I kept drawing just lands three turns in a row with Transgress the Mind as the last useless card. Well, I should've not made that mistake in game 1 I suppose.
SCORE: 1 - 2
ROUND 2: UW Flash
Game 1: Mull to 6, then made a very stupid mistake of throwing Harnessed Lightning at the Thraben Inspector instead of waiting for the inevitable copter to show up. The game went on for a while, mind you, but I really should not have done that. In my defense, what he played to crew the copter was Selfless Spirit so the lightning would not have killed the copter, but it would have killed the spirit, and in any case I screwed it up.
This match made me realize that I should be playing Thermo-Alchemist main deck because the Thraben Inspectors are basically unkillable (because are you really going to try to kill them with something?), and they add up to kill you even if you deal with everything else. I also wonder whether Brazen Scourge, which can actually attack into the little sh**s and do a decent Lathnu Hellion impression isn't an undiscovered metagame gem. Or if there really insn't any point to playing anything but white?
Game 2: Took out fanatics and lathnu helliions, put in dark dwellers, 3 Thermo-Alchemist and 1 Collective Defiance
He tapped out on turn 3, my turn 4 I put down the phobia and in my upkeep pinked him down to 13 to kill him. You don't have an answer and I don't mulligan or get screwed - you lose.
Game 3: Mull to 5 (first only 1 land and no neonate or haunting voice, then no land, then 1 land with neonate at 5). Wasn't going terribly but he sided Rattlechains and Aether Flux. I actually dealt with his gideon rather easily (strangely enough this deck has an ok time with Gideon because the neonate can kinda always sneak in for 1 and then you can ussually redirect something to kill him). The problem was that his defensive flashing spirits kept saving his dudes, so by the time we both ran out of cards in hand, I also ran out of life and he didn't.
I played against some guy a few days ago, who played GU spirits with the copter and he was very annoying and impressed me. I think that'd be a nasty ole deck to play, probably even with Triskadekaphobia splashed to make it easier to kill the other guy if someone want's a "You lose!" take in blue. Idk, just an idea.
Result: 1 - 2 again, more of a true loss, but still - the game where I didn't have to mulligan I won handily.
Total: 2 - 4
GAME 3: RB Eldrazi aggro of some kind, not too threatening.
Game 1 - Poor guy got screwed on lands a bit because his first 2 were Foreboding Ruins with nothing to reveal. I was flooded like mad - on the draw I saw exactly three cards which weren't lands - total. In 6 turns. A Lathnu Hellion, Harnessed Lightning and Triskaidekaphobia. I won. Swung twice with the hellion, plopped the phobia turn 4, gave him one life with it on turn 5, and used the lightning to save my mad self because he played Reckless Bushwacker and had enough to get me to 13 the turn I was supposed to give us both a life.
Game 2 - I misclicked auto-yield on turn 1 passing my turn, on the draw. Then I played a mountain first instead of the Forboding Ruins which time walked me for another turn. Still, won, killed him with just burn, alchemists and hellions. Had two "discard 2 lands - draw 2 lands" situations with Collective Defiance again. I know that my draw would have been even worse if I didn't have the cards to suck those lands out but it's still a bit -.- . On the other hand, the other guy had some 1cc eldrazi which ingests and he never hit lands, so this helped me to just draw lands.
RESULT: 2 - 0 , but my deck was rather clearly stronger.
Total: 4 - 4
ROUND 4: Mardu Vehicles
Game 1: I had a great hand and would have likely won it, but I missclick auto-yielded my 1st turn away and threw it away.
Game 2: Draw! My fault again, if I just played a collective defiance before I played Triskaidekaphobia I would have won it. This way he happened to have 1 damage to put me on 13 (Thraben Inspector on the board) and I stupidly and sleepily thought I'd block it with Thermo-Alchemist, but Thermo-Alchemist ate a Harnessed Lightning and I overthought myself and though he'd be running only Unlicenced Disintegration which would have put me below 13. If I waited a turn for him to attack me with his copter (or killed the damned inspector) I would have easily won.
Game 3: Mull to 6, then only saw my second land at turn 4. He wasn't doing too good either, as he has only his dorks which activate when there's an artifact on board but no artifact. He drew his haste no-pilot vehicle and hit me for 12 in one turn, although to be fair I might have missplayed it, but wth.
RESULT: 0-2-1 but if I wasn't an idiot it would have been 1-2
TOTAL: 4-6-1
ROUND 5: UB... something, I didn't really get to see what (spirits I think), because
Game 1: I didn't have to mulligan and he conceded turn 3 as his lands were coming into play tapped, and my neonate, speedy and hellion were coming at him.
Game 2: Turn 3 Hellion, turn 4 Triskaidekaphobia, turn 5 upkeep Fiery Temper at him, win.
RESULT: 2 - 0
TOTAL: 6 - 6 - 1
So the guys I beat I beat 2 - 0 (granted they weren't the most powerful decks), and the guys I didn't beat I kinda threw matches away on very stupid mistakes, had to mulligan at least to 6 all the time and didn't feel so outclassed as I thought I would. First round I should have won for sure, and fourth round I threw one game away before I got to even play it with a nuts hand.
I'll do more testing and tweak the build a bit, and try it again possibly after some tweaks. The mulliganing is bugging me out, something isn't right. I have enough lands in the deck to be madly flooded every other game, yet more than every other game I have to mulligan at least once. Which isn't what you're really looking to do in a burn deck, honestly.
I also need... I think I need Weaver of Lightning in my sideboard and I'm a doofus that it's not there already. Possibly even mainboard instead of Harnessed Lightning, now there's a thought. And I also need a strategy for dealing with Thraben Inspector. Kozilek's Return is that strategy, obviously, but it costs too much money. Biting Rain off of Neonate? Hmmmm.
I have to try, against serious opponents, Lightning Axe in place of Harnessed Lightning, with Biting Rain in the board. I know a few decks which would get completely messed up by having those two played at them, if 4 mana isn't too late. Too many things about it are problematic, though.
A-HAH! Glorious victory! Well, more like less of a screwup, but I did score a nice Invention Hangarback Walker out of a treasure chest, and made my league points back for more making people lose
The sideboard was a complete mess, and I had no actual sideboarding plan. I ran Gheistblast main in the practice room (where I'm at something like 20 match wins to maybe a few losses), and I very much liked the idea of it letting me effectively flashback something for grindier games. Burn loves it's card-draw, what can I say, but I never sort of found the spot for it. Weaver of Lightning also makes a ton of sense, but I also didn't have any idea what to take out for him, exactly. Thermo-Alchemist was standardly great, and Structural Distortion looks great but the problem is that Copter needs to be taken out sooner, and Pyrohelix took care of Needle Spires a few times, so even when I had it I never played it. Having said that I think that might have been matchup related.
I've probably tried every single red 2 drop, and Furyblade Vampire is just lovely. I didn't draw her very often, but she drew removal like a boss, stopped oncoming Thraben Inspectors (really I bet you more games are decided by that card pinging you than any other in standard) and can attack into them. And in case she has a clear path, she turns everything into a Lightning Bolt and turns Fiery Temper into 2 Lightning Bolts. I need to learn to get more out of her, she's good.
Gibbering Fiend is also rather workable, since killing someone with the phobia often requires a ping, and his EtB ping can be that ping.
The tourney result this time was 2 - 1, 2 - 0, 1 - 2, 2 - 0, 0 - 2, for a 3 - 2 in matches, although one whole match was lost due to a missclick. The report is:
G2: He had a VERY explosive start (basically 5 dudes on board by turn three, and I mis-sideboarded completely by taking out the cheaper burn.
G3: I managed to stop the aggro with the cheap burn I boarded back in, and I got lucky - he didn't draw any of his mass pump, which is obviously good for me, but on the other hand I drew 5 straight lands, then used 2 desciples, drew a land and tormenting voice, and then drew a land and a burn to finish him off.
TOTAL: 2 - 1
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R2: GBR Artifact Aggro (2 - 0)
G1: Got lucky with the cointoss. I played Neonate and Furyblade Vampire and he conceded. Probably a riky hand which didn't pan out or a misclick.
G2: I won with Triskadekaiphobia lifegain tickig the guy back up after he used Fiery Temper to get off 13 to save himself, and he got me quite low with Built to Smash and such. It came down to who draws what and he didn't draw enough damage before he ticked back up to 13.
TOTAL: 4 - 1
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RD3: UW Flash (1 - 2)
I've been playing these a lot in the practice room, people play them and have the cheek to whine about MY cards being ridiculous. I've honestly had a guy go: "You got lucky" at me after dropping to Triskaidekaphobia even though he dropped Gideon. I told him my deck is not very vulnerable to Gideon but he insisted. Played Gideon, I played my thing, I won, he lost. One of the biggest pleasures in life, and I've been playing this game for, well, for about as long as it has existed, anyway, one thing never changes. Beating up rich people who slap wads of money on the table every time they tap mana or play a land, beating them with a 0,01 junk rare never ever grows old. Except Triskaidekaphobia isn't a junk rare, it's power level depends on the metagame.
This wasn't the guy, though, and this one I lost to, by my own mistake.
G1: He drew Avacyn with Always Watching on board. In theory I could deal with it, in practice I could't topdeck what I needed. The other guy topdecked Avacyn mind you, and he was in burn range, so I lost. Strog card, Avacyn.
G2: Mull to 5, still only one land - but I still burned the guy out the old fashioned way.
G3: More or less I had a turn 3 Furyblade Vampire on the play, ready to attack for free 4 damage with no problem to discard a redundant Triskaidekaphobia and a firey temper to just murder the guy. I mislclick and don't attack. A long time down the road, he's at 2 life, so I would have even burned him out, and I topdeck 4 lands instead of any burn at all. He doesn't have any burn but he kills me with Vestvale Abbey tokens which he can't make any more of, because it costs life.
My own damned fault, should've been a match win. Also - Vestvale Abbey is annoying.
TOTAL: 5 - 3
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RD4: UBW Flash ( 2 - 0 )
G1: Burned him out, plain and simple. Even fried his Avacyn with Harnessed Lightning.
G2: I was stuck on 3 lands for so long that a single Thraben Disciple took me down below 10 life. And everything I had cost at least 2 mana. Then I finally drew a Fiery Temper, madnessed it off of discarding EoT becuase I had 8 cards in hand, and played Chandra's Pyrohelix in respose to Selfless Spirit activation. The other guy just conceded a short while later. (I would have won because I had more than enough burn left in my hand).
TOTAL: 7 - 3
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R5: WR Humans ( 0 - 2 )
This guy was more explosive and simply lucked out with his draw. I think I actually have all the cards in that deck apart from Thalia if he doesn't play planeswalkers. Also, I don't know what this deck loses to (apart from radom Triskaidekaphobia). I actually looked at my crummy sideboard and scratched my head trying to figure out what could even BE there in my colors to make any difference.
G1: He ran me over. I traded card for card until I couldn't aymore.
G2: I almost had him on Triskaidekaphobia, but Hanweir Garrison is one heckuva card.
Not much to say, RW humans - they're everywhere and I need to learn to side against them better. This deck can probably beat them on the play, or some versions of them, but it's a kind of strange combo deck which can simply combo out against anyone. How to beat them when they have their ideal draw, in these colors, I'm not sure I know.
Now if I can cash that Walker in I'm curious what can I get for it Apparently not much o.O But still, who cares, I won a rare blingy thingy using Triskaidekaphobia , lol!
If anyone's reading this - that thing is worth 30 bucks IRL, I get that stuff is cheaper online, but the bots I'm running into seem to be complete cheapskates. Anyone know where to sell a Masterwork Hangarback Walker for a reasonable ammount of tix?
More loot for Triskadekaphobia.dck! Went 3 - 2 in the next league with the deck being mostly the same except I replaced Furyblade Vampire with Hanweir Garrison to see what happens. I wasn't overly impressed with the Garrison in this particular deck, it eats removal, doesn't fit in with the combo too well, and I mishandled it, too. It's a great card, it just hasn't worked out. I think I'll try Gibbering Fiend next if I decide to not give the Garrison more time.
The sideboard finally included 4X Galvanic Bombardment, which I have to say came in quite handy even alongside 4 Haressed Lightning and all. That's probably gonna stay that way.
The matches were interesting, too:
RD1 G1 I was on the draw against Aetherworks Marvel. I had the nuts draw for a Triskaidekaphobia kill, but I made a misstep which made me one turn slower. HE didn't make a misstep and he actually got Emrakul down, but I still ended up being faster with my ridiculous card. His is literally 500 times more expensive, mine was literally faster, lol. G2 I saw 4 cards and 10 lands in the first 14 cards, unfortunately the phobia wasn't one of them. He had nothing too, he just played a single Iskhanah and attacked me 4 times, more or less. Third game I just beat him down quickly, and here the Garrison was fine, but it ended up doing the same damage as a Hellion would, and the misstep which almost cost me game one was being too eager to play it instead of being disciplined and going straight to the combo.
2 - 1
RD2 - GB Delirium. G1 I mulled to 5 (on land 2 times), got stuck on 2 lands with a perfect Triska kill just staring at me from the hand, not to mention 3 Fiery Temper while he beat me down with a copter. It took him forever, too, if I had the third land to kill his copter I would have easily won as soon as the 4th showed up, really. G2 He does stuff, I have the exact same hand as G1 except I have land, he has the most expesive deck in standard, planeswalkers, 20 dollar 2 drops, mythic everything, you name it - I play my dirt cheap hand and hes dead as if it's all shoebox cardboard. G3 - We both curve out, he plays something, I kill it, he plays something, I kill it, but unfortunately his curve ends in a Verdurous Gearhulk which I've got nothing on. Still - he would've diead from the phobia next turn. Shame, soooo close.
1 - 2
RD3 was against UB Zombies, which I just didn't have enough experience playing against, and I didn't read his cards carefully so he ended up dodging a nut-draw Triska kill (If I just read the damned Cryptbreaker I would have killed him on the spot). In G2 he won fair and square, and I made a serious mistake, again with the Garrison. Thing was that I haven't tried the Garrison well enough, so I wasn't fully aware that Chandra's Pyrohelix can lolpwn dudes who opportunistically block the tokens when they attack (this is rather good, makes me want to keep the Garrison in there). It would have bought me some time at least, although probably not enough of it to win.
Btw, Chandra's Pyrohelix sucks in Kaladesh Draft, that's true, but uses for it just keep cropping up for me like mad in constructed. At least in this deck.
0 - 2
RD4 - RW Reanimator (Refurbish + Red discard + gearhulks). G1 I'm flooded but he can't draw a Refurbish. He draws Madcap Experiment and scores a white gearhulk in one ping, I kll it with Harnessed Lightning. I play my A-game and outmaouver him to a Triskaidekaphobia kill thought a Call the Bloodline and a Sinister Concoction. Phfiew. G2 - I get him to 1 life he topdecks Linvala and wins. I sacrifice 2 Neonates in respose and draw lands because ofc I do. G3 - He had a turn 4 refurbish. I burned him to a crisp in response to it with the help of Thermo-Alchemist. I mean, this is a dead-serious burn deck I've got here, there just happens to be a card which hits the other guy for 13 which is well worth splashing.
2 - 1
RD5 - BR Aggro (Kaladesh Artifact flavor). The deck which I have in it's entirety but have spurned it for this one, lol. G1) He goes first and has a better hand, he wins. G2) I go first and beat him with my better hand. G3) We have a glorious slugfest of threats and answers, but he started out with a mulligan and too afgressively and I was more cautions and ultimatly had more card draw and better answers to his stuff and I won. I literally used the technique which everyone used against me and why I swapped to this in the first place - he played more dudes and I played more removal, and dudes who aren't Thraben Inspector or Insolent Neonate just eat removal.
2 - 1
Worse track record than yesterday overall, but there were some seriously badass individual game wins. Taking out the Aetherworks Marvel guy was great, giving a decent game to the GB delirium was also great, beating a RB non-mirror was totally great, and I don't even know how the hell I managed to beat the Reanimator guy. The Zombie guy was both a good, patient player and my play was shamefuly bad. I'm still optimistic, and getting further ahead with understanding and tweaking the deck It'll be ready for the "competitive" league when it manages to win itself enough tix to enter. Then I see if it can beat actual spikes.
And I got a modest bit of loot, 4 tickets worth. Happened to be just enough for 3 GU Kaladesh lands, and some sweet blue spirits this one guy beat me up with a week ago in the practice room. I've been picking up pieces of that deck with every trade but with the Triskadekaphobia loot from yesterday and today - I think I finally got it I'm also more-or-less just a Thalia and Declaration in Stone playset away from a modest no-planeswalker WR Humans. All it takes is not screwing up next time and winning that 4th match.
And I thought I was crazy for going no-copter, no Unlicenced Disintegration RB in this meta.
I'm also completely furious Flame Lash isn't on MTGO. Is it ever going to BE on MTGO?
I've been playing around with this some more and the results are dissappointing in a particularly dissappointing way.
Triskaidekaphobia itself is fine, if you draw the right hand (Meaning some combination of Insolent Neonate or Chandra's Pyrohelix + some combination of Incendiary Flow , Collective Defiance and Fiery Temper). It's not at all unreasonable to out-combo most other combo decks in the formats, including Aetherworks Marvel and Hydra decks, and people I've played against were often either impressed or disgusted at how well it all works when it works and how close and hairy the games can get.
Even sideboarding against Triskaidekaphobia doesn't necessarily help - I can board out the phobia in advance, and then the other guy is playing against a burn deck with dead cards in their deck, and this isn't where most of them want to be, so even those matchups are winnable.
However, being a combo deck and/or a burn deck, it's really, horribly, terribly awful against counterspells and control in general. It just feels like all the possible card advantage available in the format is in other colors, and there's so much quality removal everywhere that running dudes at all seems like a terrible idea if you're red. And can make the deck slow, plodding and often aimless on a non-Triskaidekaphobia hand, like it doesn't achieve enough fast enough. And if you run too many dudes, you don't have the burn, and you certainly can't compete with white and green in general dude size and quality.
But if you don't run dudes, you get run over by most of the aggro. RB copter stuff is the least problematic, but can escape the phobia via burn to it's own face. Anything with white in it is going to have Always Watching , Gideon and Fragmentize just to name a few things, and just so many dudes that there's no way to burn them all. And there's no red dudes to actually run, Lathnu Hellion is an undercosted burn spell that can be chumped by Thraben Inspector. Akoum Firebird is also a burn spell, too fragile too vulnerable to getting exiled. The only creature that seems remotely reasonable is Mirrorwing Dragon , but the problem with him is that the guys who let you live to 5 mana don't have dudes on board when they throw stuff at him, and the guys who would lose all their dudes if they target him have allready killed you by this point, or have enchantments that kill him. I'm a bit weirded out that the RG guys who run Larger than Life and other such things don't run him, though, they could get him out earlier.
And the deck just gets completely run over by zombies. They are just absurdly good at beating a burn deck (they clock you faster and you can't kill their dudes off fast enough or thoroughly enough). I bought into 4 friendly leagues after having had a steady 3-2 record with an indication that I could have had 4-0 or even 5-0 at any time, and then I just ran into so many zombies this weekend that I ended up going 2-3, 2-3, 2-3, 1-4. I went and bought most of a zombies deck after that, as it looked so brutal, but when I tried it it only seemed to work against control, because control generally couldn't keep up with them (Although I AM missing a few crucial things).
I think that in order to improve the deck I'll really need to add blue to it or something. And that needs proper 3 colors. I've got the manabase already, and I'm trying out a build with just Anticipate in. I also got my hands on 2 Collective Brutality, and the funny thing is that Chandra's Pyrohelix is essetially VERY core in this deck due to being an instant (if you played it a bunch you'd see what I mean) and this is competing for deck slots with either it or Incendiary Flow. Ad it can't replace either because despite it's flexibility it doesn't do what those cards do. And as opposed to the extraction it doesn't hit artifacts, but it does hit enemy burn/lifegain which could be used to lower their life total, and it does hit the enchantment removal, it hits counterspells which mess any combo deck up and it hitting card draw might also prove handy. And you can turn land into a dead Thraben Inspector which is nice. The life swing is a bit of a problem, as it might occasionally put me back up to or over 13. Also, I've managed to eliminate being screwed by going with 25 lands. It sounds insane at first but then, I'm running Collective Defiance and Insolent Neonate, was running Tormenting Voice , changed it to Anticipate and now there's also Collective Brutality to make those lands into effects if I don't need them on board. Plus, the deck is deadly if it hits it's early turns right, staring at an instantly unbeatable hand and not being able to draw your 3rd or 4th land despite multiple card draw effects is seriously painful. I was often enough flooded even with 23 lands. Plus it seems to help with having a basic land in hand for Foreboding Ruins.
I think I ought to try Goblin Dark-Dwellers again, now that I've upped the land count. I was having trouble hitting my 4th or 5th land in time before. But they just eat removal, that's their problem. You can't really make a proper GDD deck without having so few dudes that the other guy is almost certain to have removal in hand when you play them. I'm not exactly sure this is still the case now that I have Collective Brutality, but I tried with Avacyn's Judgement and Ravenous Bloodseeker and the Bloodseeker kept just eating removal. Seriously, there's like, 5 or so non-white creatures (which aren't just ETB spells with a body tacked onto it) that are worth playing at all ATM. I think most decks out there routinely have more removal than I have creatures post-board, and white decks seem to have more removal than I have dudes, and more dudes than I have removal at the same time.
I think trying to play red without Radiant Flames in this meta is insane, doesn't matter what your combo/plan is. I also have a feeling I'll dish out what I'll feel like too much money for a playset of Pyroclasm and discover that it doesn't help me at all. UW will just counter it all the time or go amblem on Gideon, Zombies will laugh at it, RW will get it's guys too fat for it to do anything or flash Avacyn, UR doesn't have any creatures, it doesn't hit the Copter or Fleetwheel Cruiser or man-lands or planeswalkers, BR has Scrapheap Scrounger and Bloodhall Priest who dodge it, and it kills my own Thermo-Alchemists unless I cast it for full effect... which I have to because it seems to not really kill anything for less than the full effect. But there seems to be no other way to generate card advantage in red and I'm getting run over by madly aggro dudes, so maybe the fact that I can reliably go Chandra's Pyrohelix on Selfless Spirit will work out for me? If I mean to continue pursuing this deck I have to try.
And the last thought for now - Consuming Sinkhole. Yes, it looks very stupid until you realize that most folks seem to put down a horsey first thing they do with Gideon, and then this reads as "3R: Get rid of Gideon", which is generally rather nice to be able to do. What it also does, in this deck in particular, is do damage at instant speed, which is madningly crucial as a ton of games are decided in response to a Triskaidekaphobia trigger. A lot of those 2-3 league disasters would have been nice self-sustaining 3-2 at least if in just one out of several games per league I had an instant in my hand instead of Collective Defiance or Incendiary Flow. Really. Flame Lash would have been so good that even this is playable. I'll be looking at the Aether Revolt spoiler looking for instant-speed burn more than I'll be looking for anything else.
It seems you could take a page out of Zombie's playbook. Since they are similarly good against control/countermagic, you could steal some of their creatures to help at least against control. Vehicles are similarly good against control decks. I have a RB aggro deck and I might slap Trisk on it just to see what happens. I'll see about playing some games and seeing what happens. It's madness based, so they might not mesh together all that great, but it'll be a starting point and let me know where to go from there.
Edit - Ok, here's what I've come up with. I started with an aggro deck I already had, and does fairly well. It's vamp/Madness based with some resiliency tacked on in the form of Scrapheap Scrounger and Prized Amalgam. I didn't lose much of the deck and was able to staple on 3 copies of Triskaidekaphobia. For the sake of time, I used my app and goldfished some hands playing through some that only had or were able to draw Trisk by turn 4 on the play (top 10 cards). So, right away, I was able to identify an easy 7 dmg: 2 power 1 drop, 3 power 2 drop. If I don't land on the 1 drop, I haven't really decided how I want to proceed with deck building if have to go with a 2 drop. I'm thinking the easiest way to go will be 2 attacks with a 3 power 2 drop, and then burn for 1, so that's where I'll start. Here's the list I'll begin with.
I chose Reaver Drone over Nerd Ape because it always attacks for 2 on turn 2, whereas Apprentice would be very conditional considering my only 7 artifacts.
The plan will be act as a low to the ground aggro deck. If Trisk is in the opening hand or in the top few cards, then I'll shoot for the quick 7 damage. I'll try to test sometime over the next few days and see what I come back with.
So, I've been playing a few games and it's fun. The deck is such a fun out of nowhere kill when you're playing turn 4 Triskaidekaphobia. Dealing 7 is super easy, especially with either of those 2 strategies I posted above, then on turn 4 it's like "you have 1 untap to answer" lol. Trisk not on turn 4 is less impressive. At that point I've either done too much damage, or they've got a ton of blockers and aside from a small amount of burn, I'm not going to move their life total fast enough. It is however good against decks that use cards like Ishkanah, Grafwidow to clog the board.
I feel like because of the games, the strategy should be go to 4 and hope you can get it early, maybe focus on the Turn 1 2-power/Turn 2 3-power strategy, and then us cards to loot through your deck and try to find Trisk. Basically the all in strategy. OR, drop down to 1 or 2 copies, and just take the occasional free win while playing a weenie aggro strategy.
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I've been trying to get various black/red themes and mechanics to work for me in standard, but all the powerful strategies seem to have been seen through, and all the not-so-powerful ones are not worth investing tickets in. So almost by accident I hit upon a seemingly novel and ridiculous concept. I can't test it properly in an actual league yet, but it's been depressingly effective in the tourney practice room so far.
The deck is this:
4 Aether Hub
4 Foreboding Ruins
4 Looming Spires
12 Mountain
4 Thermo-Alchemist
4 Thriving Grubs
4 Sin Prodder
4 Lathnu Hellion
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Incendiary Flow
4 Collective Defiance
4 Triskaidekaphobia
1 Diabolic Tutor
I'm not really settled on the sideboard, in part because I'm not all that settled on the main deck. I spend the last two weeks gradually buying up all the black and red stuff in standard (still missing a few things, but surprisingly few), and almost by accident hit upon the kinda-sorta main card in this silly deck, but it's a long story of how the deck came to be, and writing it might help me figure out how to make it a better deck.
So I decided to play Harnessed Lightning. It's a great card - for any deck but a red one. Any other deck generates energy more easily, needs energy less, has something smart to do with the energy, while the red deck simply needs a 2cc instant answer for the enemy copter/grim flayer/whathaveyou on the draw and is stuck with the lightning. So I decided to play the damned thing and ditch the copter, because it was getting blown up all the time losing me tempo and board position. One problem with running the lightning, though, is that the red/black decks are extremely finicky about their mana base. Fitting Aether Hub into a serious friendly-color pair deck is much more difficult than fitting it into an enemy color pair one, in this meta, due to how much more early game friendly the enemy dual lands are. But if you go lightning, you go hub, and then the deck can't be be properly RB but rather mostly red with a black splash. Since red seems to have a seemingly better energy game, and a much simpler mono-game, I went with red.
Having played a ton of RB variants over the last few weeks I figured out that it's a really lousy meta for trying to play most dudes at all. That's really the bane of red and red-black, they have some fine-looking small dudes, but everybody packs either 8-16 removal (post board at least), mythic dudes which outclass them, or they combo you out too fast.
One of the dudes which was silly enough to play was Lathnu Hellion , which I've seen played against me, bought up because they were cheap, and decided to try since it tied into the whole energy thing. I figured if there was nothing to cast Harnessed Lightning on I could just dump it into hellion upkeep, surprise the other guy. I also added Thriving Grubs - they're not good by any stretch of the imagination, and in most situations they'd be be a complete waste of space (and ussually ARE a complete waste of energy), but hey - it's one more turn for the hellion, it's 2 more power for the lightning, and it could even be mana fixing with the hub. And I've had a game where I killed a guy with them in two swings after having played three cards total, which can happen in this deck.
So that's the lame-o energy package, a red burn which doesn't go to the head without shennanigans, a big red dude that can be chumped until it dies on it's own, and a small red dude who's good for not much, but as opposed to most other red things you don't mind it getting blasted by the other guy which means a lot in this format. I suppose there's the pinger but he looks awfully junky even for this deck.
Then I went and put in the main card of the deck, the ever-so-stupid Triskaidekaphobia. I've discovered it by complete accident the day before. I bought them for next to nothing while padding out a random trade, decided that nuking a dude for 13 with one card looks silly enough to try, tried it, and, well, it nuked people for 13 with just one card.
If I wanted to go overly-enthusiastic about it, I could testify that I played Thriving Grubs, attacked with them next turn while giving them the boost, hit for 3, next turn played a Harnessed Lightning just for the energy, attacked with the grubs for 4, next turn played Triskaidekaphobia, passed the turn, and won on my upkeep after having played 3 cards. One of them gave one guy +1/+1 for two mana and did nothing else. But I have to list out the rest of the deck first.
I added Incendiary Flow , Collective Defiance and Thermo-Alchemist as ways to manipulate the enemy life total directly, because I've also won games where I just poked the other guy once or twice with something or the other, hit him with the burn and played the phobia FTW. If I were a bit more happy with how the artifact shell works out in the current standard, I'd obviously run Unlicenced Disintegration . If I were confident enough about packaging Insolent Neonate , Key to the City and Fiery Temper, there'd be very lolsy wins to be had with that. There's something to be said about Night Market Lookout and Smuggler's Copter, too, in a phobia deck, if I was confident enough with being more black. The artifact shell, especially with the key, also opens up the possibility of Scrapheap Scrounger and Ovalchase Daredeveil as cards to easily discard and easily recur, if one so wanted. It's also worth noting that Collective Defiance "discard your stuff, draw new stuff" thing actually works in this deck as opposed to most others, because it's a way to ditch redundant copies of Triskaidekaphobia. So if there's a way to make use of the Ovalchase Daredevil at all, it's that - use him as discard filler first and grindy nuisance later in a RB artifacts shell.
Anyway, I added a random Diabolic Tutor. It's a bit silly because there's too few black sources realistically, so it'll probably go out, but on the other hand it's a fifth phobia... or a burn, why not, I've tutored for Incendiary Flow for a turn 6 win.
Goblin Dark Dwellers kinda ended up with too few spells to flash back, but still - folks are basing entire decks around playing Torrential Gerhulk, which, while obviously stronger, often ends up doing exactly the same thing as these guys. I suppose the deck could use / end up using something like Collective Brutality (damned pricey) or Transgress the Mind mainboard (both for them and the Thermo-Alchemist), or if the energy thing falls through possibly move to a more artifacty shell and run Unlicenced Disintegration, but I'd probably still most rather have the goblins topping the curve. In a stunning bit of junky nonsense, if there was a reasonable enough way to help hit 5 mana naturally enough while also having something to flash back, I'd even give Spontaneous Artist a shot as hasting the goblins out.
Sin Prodder I just threw in. I wanted something completely randomly thrown in because I knew I'd need to make adjustments, and he should probably be Insolent Neonate, as the neonate sets up the nuts and stupid sequence of 1) Poke with menace neonate for 1 dmg, 2) Incendiary Flow, 3) Collective Defiance, 4) Triskaidekaphobia 5) UR DED. Or alternatively some clever way of getting the enemy lifegain out of the way.
Or it should be Lightning Weaver to help against the enemy turning your own phobia against you (they have their turn 5 to get YOUR life to 13). If the deck was more black Night Market Lookout would possibly help with this rather well, too, as it's early beats which also pad out your life. A rather good safeguard against being at 13 at the wrong time, I've found, is Sinister Concoction, which I'd run if could get the mana base to behave well enough to be properly black-red. The problem there is that it can't be flashed back with the Goblin Dark-Dwellers, that it essentially takes up the same deck space as Harnessed Lightning, but on the other hand it sure screws with any Emrakul plans the enemy might have while at the same time letting you get off 13 life in response to the Phobia trigger it the other guy puts you there.
Anyway, the deck can win the tradish way of cheap dudes & burn, it can win the non-tradish way of wtfpwn with just burn or a mix of stuff.
Keep in mind that you can kill yourself with your own phobia, and that there are ways for the other guys to dodge it. Lifegain, throwing their burn at themselves, and simply attacking you to make you kill yourself instead all works. But still - there are decks which can't do anything about it (and decks which can don't always have the requisite tools on-hand), and I've even found that just having the other guy ticking down from something they can't just move off the board is surprisingly fine. It's the stupid format, you see, there's way better 3-4-5 mana threats to play, but they're dudes and eat removal so they might as well not be there at all.
Anyway, the deck still needs to decide what it wants to be in a few places, but I think it can end up being a contender. Just based on how completely unfair and wtf it feels 3 out of 4 times Triskaidekaphobia comes down and the other guy has to scoop up because this card just said that they lose.
If you've taken the time to check the writeup up, what are your thoughts? If you can take it seriously, what would you do with it, what would you sideboard?
-- Later that day:
After some testing, I concluded that Sin Prodder is deffinitely out, and so is the Diabolic Tutor.
Now I have trouble deciding on whether (and exactly how) to add:
- Tormenting Voice / Chatartic Reunion , one of which I kinda-sorta really have to have in there to help draw lands and filter out extra copies of Triskaidekaphobia.
- Transgress the Mind because i'd probably be siding it in often anyway, but it's black.
- Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I really like because being able to calibrate the ammount of damage - at instant speed - should be rather good in this deck.
I only have space for 5 cards right now, which is a bummer, because I kinda want all those things in the deck, or at least 7-8 of them total, and I'm not sure what's safe to cut down to 3 copies. Especially if I'm adding the card filtering, because it makes redundant copies just recycle. Hmmmm.
Also, I suppose that even if I don't have the whole sideboard worked out, I do need some kind of standard plan for siding out Triskaidekaphobia, and also standard "on the play"/"on the draw" sort of tweak.
EDIT: Updated Deck
4 Aether Hub
4 Foreboding Ruins
3 Looming Spires
13 Mountain
Creatures
4 Insolent Neonate
3 Thriving Grubs
3 Lathnu Hellion
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Chandra's Pyrohelix
4 Incendiary Flow
4 Collective Defiance
3 Tormenting Voice
4 Triskaidekaphobia
4 Thermo-Alchemist
4 Transgress the Mind
Out: -1 Looming Spires +1 Mountain / -4 Sin Prodder +4 Insolent Neonate / -1 Lathnu Hellion -1 Thriving Grubs -1 Diabolic Tutor +3 Tormenting Voice.
Went with Tormenting Voice instead of Chatartic Reunion because it's easier to play off the top of the library / flashback with gobbos. Moved the alchemist to the sideboard and the idea is to move him and transgress in instead of Triskaidekaphobia and whatever else depending on what I think the other guy will sideboard.
Seems to be beating up the random brews in tourney practice, I whish I could try it against more serious decks without having to pay money to do so. Lujo2016 on Mtgo if someone with a serious deck for some reaso wats to be playing against this.
Why? Sin prodder = nice card
It's a nice card, true, but it didn't feel right for the deck. I had a feeling that giving the enemy any input over what gets or doesn't get drawn is a bad idea in this particular deck, and also, I felt stupid for even trying to play it with Triskaidekaphobia. I mean, if you're trying to get the enemy to precisely 13 life in game one, why give him a way out of it by letting him burn himself with Sin Prodder?
It might be a sneaky thing to sideboard Sin Prodder in place of Tiskaidekaphobia in game two.
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EDIT:
Aaaaaand, apparently people are routinely running Fragmentize and various green artifact/enchantment hate mainboard now. Probably because of that marvel nonsense. Four matches in a row! So if everyone red is running Harnessed Lightning, and if everyone white is running Fragmentize, and everyone green is running one of their three or so different things, and this seems to be the case, than I guess I'm more likely to run into trouble running this than not, and switching to copter or an artifact shell is also suicidal.
I switched things up a little in the deck, lowered Chandra's Pyrohelix to 3 , removed all 3X Thriving Grubs, took all the Looming Spires out, too, and put 1X Lathnu Hellion in and 4 Fiery Temper - for sinergy with Haunting Voice and Insolent Neonate and also to have another thing that both burns to the face and can hit copter.
I think I'll keep the grubs around for the sideboard, though, simply to have a small dude to side in vs. control. I did 2-1 a UW flash deck, but I whished I had another small poker besides the neonate. Seeing how nicely hellion hastes it's way into damage, I'm beiginning to consider adding Speedway Fanatic to the deck. Despite having no vehicles, in fact, partly specifically because I have no vehicles. His haste is a largely underrated thing, as it lets him get in there for some damage. I don't necessarily want him in the main deck, otherwise I would not have taken the grubs out, but I wish all the "I run Fragmentize main" crew can take a good look at him and keep their junk in their deck, while I board my silly enchantment out.
Who knows, maybe that Sin Prodder in the side too?
I have some vague feeling like I want the deck would want to be R/G/b more than just R/b, for those mana elves who use energy and the RG 4/3 guy. Idk where I would fit them, and again, the mana base would be silly (although not completely ridiculous as the GB dual from kaladesh is kinda manageable play wise, but IDK about price-wise). Hmmm.
I'm wondering if blue would be a better color than red though. As you say, Fragmatize, Root Out, etc are running wild. Having the ability to go to Negate/Dispel/Ceremonious Rejection (I know rejection doesn't counter those spells, but it's very useful with all the artifacts, eldrazi and devoid spells out there).
Now it's something I want to build and test.
Oh, I went "what?" myself But then I remembered that there aren't many commonly played lands that lose life, and, well, "Suspend 1, 3B: Other guy drops dead" reads fine. You can get into trouble still, and people get creative about dodging it, but it's a huge, cheap nuke masquerading as a alternate win condition.
I can see the logic behind it, but I'm not overly confident. The deck works because it's a burn or more precisely a combo-burn deck. It does it's 7-ish damage by turn 4, slaps down Triskaidekaphobia and wins on untap, or by casting Chandra's Pyrohelix in response to the trigger to adjust it at the last moment.
It usually wins in the nick of time, too, so you can't exactly keep mana open for a counterspell - if the other guy hits you with enchantment removal, you're most likely dead anyway. That's why I called it "You Lose!", the other guy is doing everything right, curving out, whathave you, and you seem to be doing some random nonsense, attack for 1 with a neonate, then throw Incendiary Flow at him, then cast a Collective Defiance at his head instead of at his dude, even sacrifice the neonate for no obvious reason, he's clearly playing against a noob here, or you've attacked him with Speedway Fanatic and you didn't draw your vehicle, he's doing fine - and then you play this dipsh**t card and... he's dead.
But I'm not sure protecting the card would save you in most cases, you kinda have to combo out really quickly and most of your moves are geared to be doing that. Speed is surprisingly the thing, which is why I kinda-sorta feel Green for a mana boost might be the ticket.
However, regardless of whether the other guy died or happened to have a mainboard answer, you can just side the thing out, and tune the deck to be a nastier burn deck for games 2-3, and quite often the other guy will have dead cards which are meant to deal with enchantments / artifacts (and you've got none, you're a burn deck), or creatures (and all the ones you've got have haste, or flash stuff back, or sacrifice to filter, etc, and if they hit once they've done their job, you're a burn deck).
Or you can not side it out at all.
EDIT: But Red has the most direct ad non-interactive way of getting someone down to 13 before turn 4, can also manipulate their life with their own card, and also use their life manipulation card as removal if needed. Also, drawing a card to discard Fiery Temper to do 3 dmg for 1 mana is VERY good in a deck which is trying to manipulate life AND draw it's combo piece. I'm even contemplating using Alms of the Vein for the same reason.
Be my guest, but I'd suggest that if you've got the components and/or spare change to give the R/b variant a bunch of whirls in the test room first, to get the feel of why it works when it works and how much of a burn/combo deck it really is. I have a feeling that trying to make it another way will cause frustration and possibly misevaluation of the power of Triskaidekaphobia.
I'm not sure anything but red has the necassary capability of altering the enemy life total directly and precisely.
---
I'm planning to bite the bullet and put my money where my mouth is tonight, and see how this does in a league. My hopes aren't too high, because I'm not sure I've put the deck together in the best possible way, and one of the more conventional aggro packages with a splash for Trishaidekaphobia might be way better, but I'd find it very lolsy if this managed to win 3 matches out of 5.
The deck I used was:
4 Aether Hub
4 Forboding Ruins
16 Mountain
Creatures
4 Insolent Neonate
3 Speedway Fanatic
4 Lathnu Hellion
4 Triskaidekaphobia
Spells
3 Tormenting Voice
4 Fiery Temper
3 Chandra's Pyrohelix
4 Incendiary Flow
3 Collective Defiance
4 Harnessed Lightning
3 Sinister Concoction
4 Transgress the Mind
4 Thermo-Alchemist
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Collective Defiance
Insolent Neonate - Don't attempt to make this kind of deck without this guy, all I'll say. Gets in for damage, triggers madness, draws a card.
Lathnu Hellion - It's a ridiculous card, truly.
Triskaidekaphobia - It did what it does.
Fiery Temper - Kills copters, discards for neonate and Haunting Voice when looking for lands, 100% great.
Chandra's Pyrohelix - I regretted not having 1 more even in the sideboard. Being able to do 1 or 2 at instant speed is "comboey" with the phobia, and it also gets rid of more things than I though.
Thermo-Alchemist - I think I'll switch to them in the main deck, if for no other reason then because Thraben Inspectors can't chip away at you by attacking into them.
Cards I'm meh with:
Speedway Fanatic - It does what it does quite well, hit face for 2 for 1-2-3 turns, which is cool, but there's too many Thraben Inspector and Glint-Nest Crane around. He should have been in the sideboard, I think.
Tormenting Voice - It didn't show up as often as I would have liked.
Incendiary Flow - Well, the fast kills with the phobia work much better with it, but it's painful to have to play it in copter meta.
Collective Defiance - Should be better than it is, and I've had bad luck with redraws, but this card keeps me wishing I had some kind of mana accelerant.
I never even saw:
Sinister Concoction - As I didn't play against anything that looked really top-heavy in a way where this would help, I didn't board it.
Transgress the Mind - I'm not sure this thing is the right thing for this deck.
Goblin Dark-Dwellers - Never showed up, would've been fine if they did. I was flooded quite often.[/quote]
I'm very annoyed with:
Harnessed Lightning - Playing this in a red deck, and in a red burn deck in particular, is unbearably godawful. I need a cheep instant answer to copter, and this card is a lot better than Lightning Axe so I'm stuck with it, and to add salt to the wound, I can't replace one with the 4th Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I really want because of Triskaidekaphobia, as that doesn't kill too many things. And Incendiary Flow is a sorcery. And Collective Defiance costs more and is a sorcery.
As lame as it may sound one of the two biggest reasons for the lousy performance was mana screw and mana flood, but specifically mana screw. Just so you guys don't think I'm whining for no reason, I have 24 lands, and I had to mulligan every other match due to not having any or only 1 land in my hand, and I started quite a few matches with only one land rather than mulligan to 4. Games where I wasn't screwed I was flooded, sometimes astoundingly so (and one time understandably so). It's a wonder, in fact, that I won as many games as I did. Also, just so you know I'm only reporting and not whining - the other reason the deck performed badly is that I made grotesque misplays and misclicks which would be completely shameful to admit. Like passing my first turn by accident - TWICE. Let's just say that having insomnia and passing the time by playing magic with an entry fee isn't a good idea. The stupid thing is that I pretty much made just one mistake too many, out of probably 20, and if I didn't I would've at least made my battle point back for another go. Shame.
On to the coverage of my disaster, which is actually interesting:
ROUND 1: UB Metalwork Colossus / Aetherflux Reservoir
Game 1: Mulligan to 5, then made a game losing mistake (didn't note what) which let the other guy untap with the reservoir. So basically thrown game which would've been won. (Only notes on this game)
Game 2: Didn't tilt, sided everything but the concoctions, took out 1 Neonate, 3 fanatic, 4 Harnessed Lightning, 4 Triskaidekaphobia. Burned him out the old fashioned way before he could do anything.
Game 3: Absurd flood. With 4 lands out, on the draw, I Cycled 7 lands through various means and drew 8 lands. That is one neonate who discarded a land to draw a land, then one tormenting voice discarding a land which drew 2 lands, then I cast collective defiance to discard 2 lands, drew two lands, then AGAIN collective defiance and AGAIN drew two lands. Then I had four full turns where the other guy was at 2 life, which was amazing considering that this wasn't a drawn out game and I managed 18 damage despite a huge flood, and I kept drawing just lands three turns in a row with Transgress the Mind as the last useless card. Well, I should've not made that mistake in game 1 I suppose.
SCORE: 1 - 2
ROUND 2: UW Flash
Game 1: Mull to 6, then made a very stupid mistake of throwing Harnessed Lightning at the Thraben Inspector instead of waiting for the inevitable copter to show up. The game went on for a while, mind you, but I really should not have done that. In my defense, what he played to crew the copter was Selfless Spirit so the lightning would not have killed the copter, but it would have killed the spirit, and in any case I screwed it up.
This match made me realize that I should be playing Thermo-Alchemist main deck because the Thraben Inspectors are basically unkillable (because are you really going to try to kill them with something?), and they add up to kill you even if you deal with everything else. I also wonder whether Brazen Scourge, which can actually attack into the little sh**s and do a decent Lathnu Hellion impression isn't an undiscovered metagame gem. Or if there really insn't any point to playing anything but white?
Game 2: Took out fanatics and lathnu helliions, put in dark dwellers, 3 Thermo-Alchemist and 1 Collective Defiance
He tapped out on turn 3, my turn 4 I put down the phobia and in my upkeep pinked him down to 13 to kill him. You don't have an answer and I don't mulligan or get screwed - you lose.
Game 3: Mull to 5 (first only 1 land and no neonate or haunting voice, then no land, then 1 land with neonate at 5). Wasn't going terribly but he sided Rattlechains and Aether Flux. I actually dealt with his gideon rather easily (strangely enough this deck has an ok time with Gideon because the neonate can kinda always sneak in for 1 and then you can ussually redirect something to kill him). The problem was that his defensive flashing spirits kept saving his dudes, so by the time we both ran out of cards in hand, I also ran out of life and he didn't.
I played against some guy a few days ago, who played GU spirits with the copter and he was very annoying and impressed me. I think that'd be a nasty ole deck to play, probably even with Triskadekaphobia splashed to make it easier to kill the other guy if someone want's a "You lose!" take in blue. Idk, just an idea.
Result: 1 - 2 again, more of a true loss, but still - the game where I didn't have to mulligan I won handily.
Total: 2 - 4
GAME 3: RB Eldrazi aggro of some kind, not too threatening.
Game 1 - Poor guy got screwed on lands a bit because his first 2 were Foreboding Ruins with nothing to reveal. I was flooded like mad - on the draw I saw exactly three cards which weren't lands - total. In 6 turns. A Lathnu Hellion, Harnessed Lightning and Triskaidekaphobia. I won. Swung twice with the hellion, plopped the phobia turn 4, gave him one life with it on turn 5, and used the lightning to save my mad self because he played Reckless Bushwacker and had enough to get me to 13 the turn I was supposed to give us both a life.
Game 2 - I misclicked auto-yield on turn 1 passing my turn, on the draw. Then I played a mountain first instead of the Forboding Ruins which time walked me for another turn. Still, won, killed him with just burn, alchemists and hellions. Had two "discard 2 lands - draw 2 lands" situations with Collective Defiance again. I know that my draw would have been even worse if I didn't have the cards to suck those lands out but it's still a bit -.- . On the other hand, the other guy had some 1cc eldrazi which ingests and he never hit lands, so this helped me to just draw lands.
RESULT: 2 - 0 , but my deck was rather clearly stronger.
Total: 4 - 4
ROUND 4: Mardu Vehicles
Game 1: I had a great hand and would have likely won it, but I missclick auto-yielded my 1st turn away and threw it away.
Game 2: Draw! My fault again, if I just played a collective defiance before I played Triskaidekaphobia I would have won it. This way he happened to have 1 damage to put me on 13 (Thraben Inspector on the board) and I stupidly and sleepily thought I'd block it with Thermo-Alchemist, but Thermo-Alchemist ate a Harnessed Lightning and I overthought myself and though he'd be running only Unlicenced Disintegration which would have put me below 13. If I waited a turn for him to attack me with his copter (or killed the damned inspector) I would have easily won.
Game 3: Mull to 6, then only saw my second land at turn 4. He wasn't doing too good either, as he has only his dorks which activate when there's an artifact on board but no artifact. He drew his haste no-pilot vehicle and hit me for 12 in one turn, although to be fair I might have missplayed it, but wth.
RESULT: 0-2-1 but if I wasn't an idiot it would have been 1-2
TOTAL: 4-6-1
ROUND 5: UB... something, I didn't really get to see what (spirits I think), because
Game 1: I didn't have to mulligan and he conceded turn 3 as his lands were coming into play tapped, and my neonate, speedy and hellion were coming at him.
Game 2: Turn 3 Hellion, turn 4 Triskaidekaphobia, turn 5 upkeep Fiery Temper at him, win.
RESULT: 2 - 0
TOTAL: 6 - 6 - 1
So the guys I beat I beat 2 - 0 (granted they weren't the most powerful decks), and the guys I didn't beat I kinda threw matches away on very stupid mistakes, had to mulligan at least to 6 all the time and didn't feel so outclassed as I thought I would. First round I should have won for sure, and fourth round I threw one game away before I got to even play it with a nuts hand.
I'll do more testing and tweak the build a bit, and try it again possibly after some tweaks. The mulliganing is bugging me out, something isn't right. I have enough lands in the deck to be madly flooded every other game, yet more than every other game I have to mulligan at least once. Which isn't what you're really looking to do in a burn deck, honestly.
I also need... I think I need Weaver of Lightning in my sideboard and I'm a doofus that it's not there already. Possibly even mainboard instead of Harnessed Lightning, now there's a thought. And I also need a strategy for dealing with Thraben Inspector. Kozilek's Return is that strategy, obviously, but it costs too much money. Biting Rain off of Neonate? Hmmmm.
I have to try, against serious opponents, Lightning Axe in place of Harnessed Lightning, with Biting Rain in the board. I know a few decks which would get completely messed up by having those two played at them, if 4 mana isn't too late. Too many things about it are problematic, though.
The deck, this time was:
4 Aether Hub
4 Forboding Ruins
14 Mountain
1 Swamp
Creatures
4 Insolent Neonate
3 Furyblade Vampire
4 Lathnu Hellion
4 Triskaidekaphobia
Spells
3 Tormenting Voice
4 Fiery Temper
4 Chandra's Pyrohelix
4 Incendiary Flow
3 Collective Defiance
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Thermo-Alchemist
1 Collective Defiance
3 Gheistblast
4 Weaver of Lightning
3 Structural Distortion
Which means one less land, one more Chandra's Pyrohelix and Speedway Fanatic out, Furyblade Vampire in.
The sideboard was a complete mess, and I had no actual sideboarding plan. I ran Gheistblast main in the practice room (where I'm at something like 20 match wins to maybe a few losses), and I very much liked the idea of it letting me effectively flashback something for grindier games. Burn loves it's card-draw, what can I say, but I never sort of found the spot for it. Weaver of Lightning also makes a ton of sense, but I also didn't have any idea what to take out for him, exactly. Thermo-Alchemist was standardly great, and Structural Distortion looks great but the problem is that Copter needs to be taken out sooner, and Pyrohelix took care of Needle Spires a few times, so even when I had it I never played it. Having said that I think that might have been matchup related.
I've probably tried every single red 2 drop, and Furyblade Vampire is just lovely. I didn't draw her very often, but she drew removal like a boss, stopped oncoming Thraben Inspectors (really I bet you more games are decided by that card pinging you than any other in standard) and can attack into them. And in case she has a clear path, she turns everything into a Lightning Bolt and turns Fiery Temper into 2 Lightning Bolts. I need to learn to get more out of her, she's good.
Gibbering Fiend is also rather workable, since killing someone with the phobia often requires a ping, and his EtB ping can be that ping.
The tourney result this time was 2 - 1, 2 - 0, 1 - 2, 2 - 0, 0 - 2, for a 3 - 2 in matches, although one whole match was lost due to a missclick. The report is:
R1: WR Humans (2 - 1)
G1: I was flooded but I killed the guy with two Lathnu Hellion hits and Triskaidekaphobia.
G2: He had a VERY explosive start (basically 5 dudes on board by turn three, and I mis-sideboarded completely by taking out the cheaper burn.
G3: I managed to stop the aggro with the cheap burn I boarded back in, and I got lucky - he didn't draw any of his mass pump, which is obviously good for me, but on the other hand I drew 5 straight lands, then used 2 desciples, drew a land and tormenting voice, and then drew a land and a burn to finish him off.
TOTAL: 2 - 1
--
R2: GBR Artifact Aggro (2 - 0)
G1: Got lucky with the cointoss. I played Neonate and Furyblade Vampire and he conceded. Probably a riky hand which didn't pan out or a misclick.
G2: I won with Triskadekaiphobia lifegain tickig the guy back up after he used Fiery Temper to get off 13 to save himself, and he got me quite low with Built to Smash and such. It came down to who draws what and he didn't draw enough damage before he ticked back up to 13.
TOTAL: 4 - 1
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RD3: UW Flash (1 - 2)
I've been playing these a lot in the practice room, people play them and have the cheek to whine about MY cards being ridiculous. I've honestly had a guy go: "You got lucky" at me after dropping to Triskaidekaphobia even though he dropped Gideon. I told him my deck is not very vulnerable to Gideon but he insisted. Played Gideon, I played my thing, I won, he lost. One of the biggest pleasures in life, and I've been playing this game for, well, for about as long as it has existed, anyway, one thing never changes. Beating up rich people who slap wads of money on the table every time they tap mana or play a land, beating them with a 0,01 junk rare never ever grows old. Except Triskaidekaphobia isn't a junk rare, it's power level depends on the metagame.
This wasn't the guy, though, and this one I lost to, by my own mistake.
G1: He drew Avacyn with Always Watching on board. In theory I could deal with it, in practice I could't topdeck what I needed. The other guy topdecked Avacyn mind you, and he was in burn range, so I lost. Strog card, Avacyn.
G2: Mull to 5, still only one land - but I still burned the guy out the old fashioned way.
G3: More or less I had a turn 3 Furyblade Vampire on the play, ready to attack for free 4 damage with no problem to discard a redundant Triskaidekaphobia and a firey temper to just murder the guy. I mislclick and don't attack. A long time down the road, he's at 2 life, so I would have even burned him out, and I topdeck 4 lands instead of any burn at all. He doesn't have any burn but he kills me with Vestvale Abbey tokens which he can't make any more of, because it costs life.
My own damned fault, should've been a match win. Also - Vestvale Abbey is annoying.
TOTAL: 5 - 3
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RD4: UBW Flash ( 2 - 0 )
G1: Burned him out, plain and simple. Even fried his Avacyn with Harnessed Lightning.
G2: I was stuck on 3 lands for so long that a single Thraben Disciple took me down below 10 life. And everything I had cost at least 2 mana. Then I finally drew a Fiery Temper, madnessed it off of discarding EoT becuase I had 8 cards in hand, and played Chandra's Pyrohelix in respose to Selfless Spirit activation. The other guy just conceded a short while later. (I would have won because I had more than enough burn left in my hand).
TOTAL: 7 - 3
--
R5: WR Humans ( 0 - 2 )
This guy was more explosive and simply lucked out with his draw. I think I actually have all the cards in that deck apart from Thalia if he doesn't play planeswalkers. Also, I don't know what this deck loses to (apart from radom Triskaidekaphobia). I actually looked at my crummy sideboard and scratched my head trying to figure out what could even BE there in my colors to make any difference.
G1: He ran me over. I traded card for card until I couldn't aymore.
G2: I almost had him on Triskaidekaphobia, but Hanweir Garrison is one heckuva card.
Not much to say, RW humans - they're everywhere and I need to learn to side against them better. This deck can probably beat them on the play, or some versions of them, but it's a kind of strange combo deck which can simply combo out against anyone. How to beat them when they have their ideal draw, in these colors, I'm not sure I know.
Now if I can cash that Walker in I'm curious what can I get for it Apparently not much o.O But still, who cares, I won a rare blingy thingy using Triskaidekaphobia , lol!
If anyone's reading this - that thing is worth 30 bucks IRL, I get that stuff is cheaper online, but the bots I'm running into seem to be complete cheapskates. Anyone know where to sell a Masterwork Hangarback Walker for a reasonable ammount of tix?
The sideboard finally included 4X Galvanic Bombardment, which I have to say came in quite handy even alongside 4 Haressed Lightning and all. That's probably gonna stay that way.
The matches were interesting, too:
2 - 1
RD2 - GB Delirium. G1 I mulled to 5 (on land 2 times), got stuck on 2 lands with a perfect Triska kill just staring at me from the hand, not to mention 3 Fiery Temper while he beat me down with a copter. It took him forever, too, if I had the third land to kill his copter I would have easily won as soon as the 4th showed up, really. G2 He does stuff, I have the exact same hand as G1 except I have land, he has the most expesive deck in standard, planeswalkers, 20 dollar 2 drops, mythic everything, you name it - I play my dirt cheap hand and hes dead as if it's all shoebox cardboard. G3 - We both curve out, he plays something, I kill it, he plays something, I kill it, but unfortunately his curve ends in a Verdurous Gearhulk which I've got nothing on. Still - he would've diead from the phobia next turn. Shame, soooo close.
1 - 2
RD3 was against UB Zombies, which I just didn't have enough experience playing against, and I didn't read his cards carefully so he ended up dodging a nut-draw Triska kill (If I just read the damned Cryptbreaker I would have killed him on the spot). In G2 he won fair and square, and I made a serious mistake, again with the Garrison. Thing was that I haven't tried the Garrison well enough, so I wasn't fully aware that Chandra's Pyrohelix can lolpwn dudes who opportunistically block the tokens when they attack (this is rather good, makes me want to keep the Garrison in there). It would have bought me some time at least, although probably not enough of it to win.
Btw, Chandra's Pyrohelix sucks in Kaladesh Draft, that's true, but uses for it just keep cropping up for me like mad in constructed. At least in this deck.
0 - 2
RD4 - RW Reanimator (Refurbish + Red discard + gearhulks). G1 I'm flooded but he can't draw a Refurbish. He draws Madcap Experiment and scores a white gearhulk in one ping, I kll it with Harnessed Lightning. I play my A-game and outmaouver him to a Triskaidekaphobia kill thought a Call the Bloodline and a Sinister Concoction. Phfiew. G2 - I get him to 1 life he topdecks Linvala and wins. I sacrifice 2 Neonates in respose and draw lands because ofc I do. G3 - He had a turn 4 refurbish. I burned him to a crisp in response to it with the help of Thermo-Alchemist. I mean, this is a dead-serious burn deck I've got here, there just happens to be a card which hits the other guy for 13 which is well worth splashing.
2 - 1
RD5 - BR Aggro (Kaladesh Artifact flavor). The deck which I have in it's entirety but have spurned it for this one, lol. G1) He goes first and has a better hand, he wins. G2) I go first and beat him with my better hand. G3) We have a glorious slugfest of threats and answers, but he started out with a mulligan and too afgressively and I was more cautions and ultimatly had more card draw and better answers to his stuff and I won. I literally used the technique which everyone used against me and why I swapped to this in the first place - he played more dudes and I played more removal, and dudes who aren't Thraben Inspector or Insolent Neonate just eat removal.
2 - 1
Worse track record than yesterday overall, but there were some seriously badass individual game wins. Taking out the Aetherworks Marvel guy was great, giving a decent game to the GB delirium was also great, beating a RB non-mirror was totally great, and I don't even know how the hell I managed to beat the Reanimator guy. The Zombie guy was both a good, patient player and my play was shamefuly bad. I'm still optimistic, and getting further ahead with understanding and tweaking the deck It'll be ready for the "competitive" league when it manages to win itself enough tix to enter. Then I see if it can beat actual spikes.
And I got a modest bit of loot, 4 tickets worth. Happened to be just enough for 3 GU Kaladesh lands, and some sweet blue spirits this one guy beat me up with a week ago in the practice room. I've been picking up pieces of that deck with every trade but with the Triskadekaphobia loot from yesterday and today - I think I finally got it I'm also more-or-less just a Thalia and Declaration in Stone playset away from a modest no-planeswalker WR Humans. All it takes is not screwing up next time and winning that 4th match.
And I thought I was crazy for going no-copter, no Unlicenced Disintegration RB in this meta.
I'm also completely furious Flame Lash isn't on MTGO. Is it ever going to BE on MTGO?
Triskaidekaphobia itself is fine, if you draw the right hand (Meaning some combination of Insolent Neonate or Chandra's Pyrohelix + some combination of Incendiary Flow , Collective Defiance and Fiery Temper). It's not at all unreasonable to out-combo most other combo decks in the formats, including Aetherworks Marvel and Hydra decks, and people I've played against were often either impressed or disgusted at how well it all works when it works and how close and hairy the games can get.
Even sideboarding against Triskaidekaphobia doesn't necessarily help - I can board out the phobia in advance, and then the other guy is playing against a burn deck with dead cards in their deck, and this isn't where most of them want to be, so even those matchups are winnable.
However, being a combo deck and/or a burn deck, it's really, horribly, terribly awful against counterspells and control in general. It just feels like all the possible card advantage available in the format is in other colors, and there's so much quality removal everywhere that running dudes at all seems like a terrible idea if you're red. And can make the deck slow, plodding and often aimless on a non-Triskaidekaphobia hand, like it doesn't achieve enough fast enough. And if you run too many dudes, you don't have the burn, and you certainly can't compete with white and green in general dude size and quality.
But if you don't run dudes, you get run over by most of the aggro. RB copter stuff is the least problematic, but can escape the phobia via burn to it's own face. Anything with white in it is going to have Always Watching , Gideon and Fragmentize just to name a few things, and just so many dudes that there's no way to burn them all. And there's no red dudes to actually run, Lathnu Hellion is an undercosted burn spell that can be chumped by Thraben Inspector. Akoum Firebird is also a burn spell, too fragile too vulnerable to getting exiled. The only creature that seems remotely reasonable is Mirrorwing Dragon , but the problem with him is that the guys who let you live to 5 mana don't have dudes on board when they throw stuff at him, and the guys who would lose all their dudes if they target him have allready killed you by this point, or have enchantments that kill him. I'm a bit weirded out that the RG guys who run Larger than Life and other such things don't run him, though, they could get him out earlier.
And the deck just gets completely run over by zombies. They are just absurdly good at beating a burn deck (they clock you faster and you can't kill their dudes off fast enough or thoroughly enough). I bought into 4 friendly leagues after having had a steady 3-2 record with an indication that I could have had 4-0 or even 5-0 at any time, and then I just ran into so many zombies this weekend that I ended up going 2-3, 2-3, 2-3, 1-4. I went and bought most of a zombies deck after that, as it looked so brutal, but when I tried it it only seemed to work against control, because control generally couldn't keep up with them (Although I AM missing a few crucial things).
I think that in order to improve the deck I'll really need to add blue to it or something. And that needs proper 3 colors. I've got the manabase already, and I'm trying out a build with just Anticipate in. I also got my hands on 2 Collective Brutality, and the funny thing is that Chandra's Pyrohelix is essetially VERY core in this deck due to being an instant (if you played it a bunch you'd see what I mean) and this is competing for deck slots with either it or Incendiary Flow. Ad it can't replace either because despite it's flexibility it doesn't do what those cards do. And as opposed to the extraction it doesn't hit artifacts, but it does hit enemy burn/lifegain which could be used to lower their life total, and it does hit the enchantment removal, it hits counterspells which mess any combo deck up and it hitting card draw might also prove handy. And you can turn land into a dead Thraben Inspector which is nice. The life swing is a bit of a problem, as it might occasionally put me back up to or over 13. Also, I've managed to eliminate being screwed by going with 25 lands. It sounds insane at first but then, I'm running Collective Defiance and Insolent Neonate, was running Tormenting Voice , changed it to Anticipate and now there's also Collective Brutality to make those lands into effects if I don't need them on board. Plus, the deck is deadly if it hits it's early turns right, staring at an instantly unbeatable hand and not being able to draw your 3rd or 4th land despite multiple card draw effects is seriously painful. I was often enough flooded even with 23 lands. Plus it seems to help with having a basic land in hand for Foreboding Ruins.
I think I ought to try Goblin Dark-Dwellers again, now that I've upped the land count. I was having trouble hitting my 4th or 5th land in time before. But they just eat removal, that's their problem. You can't really make a proper GDD deck without having so few dudes that the other guy is almost certain to have removal in hand when you play them. I'm not exactly sure this is still the case now that I have Collective Brutality, but I tried with Avacyn's Judgement and Ravenous Bloodseeker and the Bloodseeker kept just eating removal. Seriously, there's like, 5 or so non-white creatures (which aren't just ETB spells with a body tacked onto it) that are worth playing at all ATM. I think most decks out there routinely have more removal than I have creatures post-board, and white decks seem to have more removal than I have dudes, and more dudes than I have removal at the same time.
I think trying to play red without Radiant Flames in this meta is insane, doesn't matter what your combo/plan is. I also have a feeling I'll dish out what I'll feel like too much money for a playset of Pyroclasm and discover that it doesn't help me at all. UW will just counter it all the time or go amblem on Gideon, Zombies will laugh at it, RW will get it's guys too fat for it to do anything or flash Avacyn, UR doesn't have any creatures, it doesn't hit the Copter or Fleetwheel Cruiser or man-lands or planeswalkers, BR has Scrapheap Scrounger and Bloodhall Priest who dodge it, and it kills my own Thermo-Alchemists unless I cast it for full effect... which I have to because it seems to not really kill anything for less than the full effect. But there seems to be no other way to generate card advantage in red and I'm getting run over by madly aggro dudes, so maybe the fact that I can reliably go Chandra's Pyrohelix on Selfless Spirit will work out for me? If I mean to continue pursuing this deck I have to try.
And the last thought for now - Consuming Sinkhole. Yes, it looks very stupid until you realize that most folks seem to put down a horsey first thing they do with Gideon, and then this reads as "3R: Get rid of Gideon", which is generally rather nice to be able to do. What it also does, in this deck in particular, is do damage at instant speed, which is madningly crucial as a ton of games are decided in response to a Triskaidekaphobia trigger. A lot of those 2-3 league disasters would have been nice self-sustaining 3-2 at least if in just one out of several games per league I had an instant in my hand instead of Collective Defiance or Incendiary Flow. Really. Flame Lash would have been so good that even this is playable. I'll be looking at the Aether Revolt spoiler looking for instant-speed burn more than I'll be looking for anything else.
Edit - Ok, here's what I've come up with. I started with an aggro deck I already had, and does fairly well. It's vamp/Madness based with some resiliency tacked on in the form of Scrapheap Scrounger and Prized Amalgam. I didn't lose much of the deck and was able to staple on 3 copies of Triskaidekaphobia. For the sake of time, I used my app and goldfished some hands playing through some that only had or were able to draw Trisk by turn 4 on the play (top 10 cards). So, right away, I was able to identify an easy 7 dmg: 2 power 1 drop, 3 power 2 drop. If I don't land on the 1 drop, I haven't really decided how I want to proceed with deck building if have to go with a 2 drop. I'm thinking the easiest way to go will be 2 attacks with a 3 power 2 drop, and then burn for 1, so that's where I'll start. Here's the list I'll begin with.
4 Falkenrath Gorger
3 Furyblade Vampire
4 Heir of Falkenrath
0 Heir to the Night
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Reaver Drone
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
3 Triskaidekaphobia
Artifacts 3
3 Smuggler's Copter
Instants 8
4 Chandra's Pyrohelix
4 Fiery Temper
Lands 23
3 Choked Estuary
4 Foreboding Ruins
6 Mountain
3 Spirebluff Canal
7 Swamp
I chose Reaver Drone over Nerd Ape because it always attacks for 2 on turn 2, whereas Apprentice would be very conditional considering my only 7 artifacts.
The plan will be act as a low to the ground aggro deck. If Trisk is in the opening hand or in the top few cards, then I'll shoot for the quick 7 damage. I'll try to test sometime over the next few days and see what I come back with.
I feel like because of the games, the strategy should be go to 4 and hope you can get it early, maybe focus on the Turn 1 2-power/Turn 2 3-power strategy, and then us cards to loot through your deck and try to find Trisk. Basically the all in strategy. OR, drop down to 1 or 2 copies, and just take the occasional free win while playing a weenie aggro strategy.