I think playing green is a trap. Red I think is where we want to be. And if you're not playing sactum of ugin then you're not building this deck correctly. The way I have won with this deck more then ever is to loop elder deep fiends till they can't deal with it anymore. And returns.
I think playing green is a trap. Red I think is where we want to be. And if you're not playing sactum of ugin then you're not building this deck correctly. The way I have won with this deck more then ever is to loop elder deep fiends till they can't deal with it anymore. And returns.
Will you share your decklist? I am open to running Sanctum, but having the right colors is important, so I can't add too many Sanctums for fear of diluting color availability.
I like green in the deck. Is it the right direction? Not sure. Constrictor shuts down Copter and allows me to dump any card. Grapple fills the yard early and allows me to get back a key creature late. Traverse mana fixes early and grabs finishers late. Red offers flexible removal and good early game card filtering. So while red may help me early game, green helps me more late game IMO.
I've been sticking to green because Noose Constrictor has been absurdly good for me and Traverse the Ulvenwald is a broken card in this deck. It's hard to lose games you have Noose Constrictor, Prized Amalgam, and either Haunted Dead or Scrapheap in the opener and Traverse can tutor for any of those pretty quickly adding a lot of redundancy in explosive draws. I had a game where I had 17 power in play 4th turn with 2 Amalgams and tutoring 2 more up, discarding 2 to Constrictor and 2 more to Haunted Dead. Ishkana is a great board stabilizer and Decimator of the Provinces just steals games you have no business winning. Cathartic Reunion is a powerful card, but not as good as Noose Constrictor and I actually think the rest of the supporting red cards are weaker than the green.
was the main deck I was running tonight for a local 3 rounder at my lgs and it did work, I dropped one game to one of the better players in my area. so round 1 I played against monoblue engulf the shore deck, didn't really expect it but wasn't too worried, he didn't know that metallurgic summonings oracle made engulf the shore kinda useless together. its a cast trigger so it will make the token then the spell will resolve so he bounces his 4/4 but anyway he made some tokens I laughed and flew overhead with my copters then looped elder deep's basically timewalking him. was a really easy matchup and his counters did actually nothing.
round 2 I played against b/g delirium and he was tilted hard, so it was kinda a fun game to play. he didn't understand at all how prized amalgam worked at all or elder deeps cast triggers or returns cast triggers, or any cast triggers to be completely honest. game 1 he did nothing but got me down to 4 with a grim flayer (missing so many of is triggers and playing badly with evolving wilds and flayer) I finally drew a black land and reanimated a haunted dead and elder deeped him, then grabbed another elder deep fiend with sanctum. in game 2 he was ahead for most of it, I was holding a distended mindbender that I had brought in from my sideboard. I was at around 7-9 life and he transgressed me turn 4, I scooped because I didn't want him to know I had mindbenders in. and game 3 I had a god hand, played mountain and neonate turn 1, turn 2 attacked for one on his end of mainphase 2 I used neonate to put a haunted dead in the yard, reanimated haunted dead by discarding a prized amalgam and scraphead scrounger, bringing my amalgam back on his end step. (for those of you that don't know, you have to announce that you are returning haunted dead back at end of mainphase 2 so he can come back swinging next turn just fyi, and yes you get priority before any phase change) I untapped and slammed turn 3 mindbender took a spider and a grasp, then drew into elder deep and tapped in down for rest of the game, after I played the second elder deep that game he actually slammed his cards down on the table and walked outside. (i understand get tilted when someone is being a dick, or when your having a bad day, but seriously this is a game, we play to have fun, if you see anyone ever getting mad about lose, you should try to talk to them about it because getting mad because you lost a game for a hobby you love just imo isn't okay)
round 3 i played against b/w control. this player hasn't played anything but b/w control since Gideon came out so he knows the deck, imo its not a very strong deck anymore with the invention of copter (no pun intended) but anyway.
game 1 I kept a 3 land hand with copter elder deep and a reunion, i played turn 3 reunion discarding the second copter I had drawn and drew 3 lands....... next turn i drew a voice discarding a land and drew 2 more................... it was a pretty easy win for him even though i casted 4 elder deeps, literally hard casted them.
game 2 he was behind on lands which i knew about from a transgress. he didn't do much other then played a lilly which i killed pretty fast with a copter. then once he got out of his mana problems I had 3 elder deeps (i had two sanctums out) which was basically 3 time walks.
game 3 for all the marbles. he was on the play and my hand was extremely aggressive, i had 3 lands 2 scapeheaps a prized and a haunted dead. i drew a copter and played it turn 2 he played a turn 3 lilly and i played a scrapheap and used it to crew my copter to take lilly down a bit, and i played a neonate, he played transgress the mind. i knew he would take the prized so i discarded it to neonate and drew into another scrapheap! he took haunted dead, i untapped and drew gryff i killed lilly then played gryff emerging the scrapheap, drew a card and searched for an elder deep with sanctum. but i didn't have a second blue land. (he didn't know i didn't have it, i only had 1 out but the gryff drew me the island so if your playing gryff always remember to draw the card first then decide to search with sanctum. if you trigger the stack in the way you want with sanctum on the bottom and gryff's ability on the top it will work to your advantage more often then other way.) i ended up just casting elder deep fiend on his upkeep and he scooped.
what i have learned, cryptbreaker does almost nothing and i almost always side him out. gryff is only there to block copter and emergency koz return flash backer. red really gives it more card selection then green does. i get to choose exactly what goes to the yard instead of having to get lucky and hope i get enough in there. i think next time i play I'm going to cut cryptbreaker and play 2 more reunions. and re do my sideboard because it was a mess today.
so round 1 I played against monoblue engulf the shore deck, didn't really expect it but wasn't too worried, he didn't know that metallurgic summonings oracle made engulf the shore kinda useless together. its a cast trigger so it will make the token then the spell will resolve so he bounces his 4/4 but anyway he made some tokens I laughed and flew overhead with my copters then looped elder deep's basically timewalking him. was a really easy matchup and his counters did actually nothing.
You played against an experienced player. The deck did well, which is good to know, but it doesn't test the deck.
round 2 I played against b/g delirium and he was tilted hard, so it was kinda a fun game to play. he didn't understand at all how prized amalgam worked at all or elder deeps cast triggers or returns cast triggers, or any cast triggers to be completely honest. game 1 he did nothing but got me down to 4 with a grim flayer (missing so many of is triggers and playing badly with evolving wilds and flayer) I finally drew a black land and reanimated a haunted dead and elder deeped him, then grabbed another elder deep fiend with sanctum. in game 2 he was ahead for most of it, I was holding a distended mindbender that I had brought in from my sideboard. I was at around 7-9 life and he transgressed me turn 4, I scooped because I didn't want him to know I had mindbenders in. and game 3 I had a god hand, played mountain and neonate turn 1, turn 2 attacked for one on his end of mainphase 2 I used neonate to put a haunted dead in the yard, reanimated haunted dead by discarding a prized amalgam and scraphead scrounger, bringing my amalgam back on his end step. (for those of you that don't know, you have to announce that you are returning haunted dead back at end of mainphase 2 so he can come back swinging next turn just fyi, and yes you get priority before any phase change) I untapped and slammed turn 3 mindbender took a spider and a grasp, then drew into elder deep and tapped in down for rest of the game, after I played the second elder deep that game he actually slammed his cards down on the table and walked outside. (i understand get tilted when someone is being a dick, or when your having a bad day, but seriously this is a game, we play to have fun, if you see anyone ever getting mad about lose, you should try to talk to them about it because getting mad because you lost a game for a hobby you love just imo isn't okay)
round 3 i played against b/w control. this player hasn't played anything but b/w control since Gideon came out so he knows the deck, imo its not a very strong deck anymore with the invention of copter (no pun intended) but anyway.
game 1 I kept a 3 land hand with copter elder deep and a reunion, i played turn 3 reunion discarding the second copter I had drawn and drew 3 lands....... next turn i drew a voice discarding a land and drew 2 more................... it was a pretty easy win for him even though i casted 4 elder deeps, literally hard casted them.
game 2 he was behind on lands which i knew about from a transgress. he didn't do much other then played a lilly which i killed pretty fast with a copter. then once he got out of his mana problems I had 3 elder deeps (i had two sanctums out) which was basically 3 time walks.
game 3 for all the marbles. he was on the play and my hand was extremely aggressive, i had 3 lands 2 scapeheaps a prized and a haunted dead. i drew a copter and played it turn 2 he played a turn 3 lilly and i played a scrapheap and used it to crew my copter to take lilly down a bit, and i played a neonate, he played transgress the mind. i knew he would take the prized so i discarded it to neonate and drew into another scrapheap! he took haunted dead, i untapped and drew gryff i killed lilly then played gryff emerging the scrapheap, drew a card and searched for an elder deep with sanctum. but i didn't have a second blue land. (he didn't know i didn't have it, i only had 1 out but the gryff drew me the island so if your playing gryff always remember to draw the card first then decide to search with sanctum. if you trigger the stack in the way you want with sanctum on the bottom and gryff's ability on the top it will work to your advantage more often then other way.) i ended up just casting elder deep fiend on his upkeep and he scooped.
what i have learned, cryptbreaker does almost nothing and i almost always side him out. gryff is only there to block copter and emergency koz return flash backer. red really gives it more card selection then green does. i get to choose exactly what goes to the yard instead of having to get lucky and hope i get enough in there. i think next time i play I'm going to cut cryptbreaker and play 2 more reunions. and re do my sideboard because it was a mess today.
I disagree that red gives you more card selection. Red allows you to hard cast Kozilek's Return, which in some match-ups can be valuable to do on T3. Many decks that go wide, however, can easily be out of K-return range by T3, so I don't put a lot of stock in that option. K-return is really better out of the yard, as 5 damage to the board is much harder to survive, and you don't need red for that and can do it by T4. Red also gives you Cathartic Reunion, Insolent Neonate, and Tormenting Voice and access to cards like Lightning Axe and other red removal spells. Reunion/Voice allow you to pitch what you want, but rely on you having cards in hand. A topdecked Voice/Reunion is a dead card. Insolent Neonate is a great T1 play for this deck, but Noose Constrictor allows for Copter blocks, can survive K-Return, and can pitch multiple cards as needed or desired. The only advantage Neonate offers is that he replaces the card you pitched (which is valuable, but does it outweigh Constrictor?).
Let's consider the options that green bring to the table. Grapple with the Past puts four cards to yard (including itself), as opposed to the 2/3 of Voice/Reunion. It doesn't cycle cards from your hand, but it does allow you to get back any land or creature. This means you can get back that Sanctum you sacrificed to continue your timewalks. Or you can get back the Deep-Fiend you milled or that died or you sacced to another Deep-Fiend. It also works at instant speed, which allows you to hold up mana for removal (post-board) or other shenanigans like GY recursion (they pass turn, you hold priority main phase, Grapple and hit the creature you need like Amalgam or Dead or Scrounger, then activate to recur). It also works much better late game, as your GY will be full with all the right things, making it an excellent late game topdeck. Traverse the Ulvenwald is also really good in this deck. It acts as land sources, just like Evolving Wilds, so it smooths out your early land draws. It acts as a late game "let me go find a Deep-Fiend to start my timewalk cycle." There is no guesswork here. You get exactly what you need. Maybe you need the right creature to pitch to Constrictor to get all the Amalgams from your yard.
I think there are definitely merits to both, but I'm not sold on red being the best color yet.
Oh wait you can cast k return?.... I only ever pitch it and flash it back with elderdeep.... Haha that's how you deal with all the cars, specially when you can set up plays with neonate, such as using neonate discarding haunted dead reanimating haunted dead discarding return and then casting elder deep with emerge from haunted dead. 5 mana 2 blue 1 black not very hard to do.
And I usually cast k return only when I have to, like to rid the board my turn so they can crew in response.
Did a little bit of testing last night, but only against two different decks.
RG Energy:
This is the type of deck where going with red makes a lot of sense. I got steamrolled every game. It didn't help that I was flooding out most games, so I've cut one land from the deck as well, down to 23. He seemed to get the nut draws every game, winning by T4/T5, but he said that the deck is very consistent and can repeatedly do that. K-return helped some, but he dropped a Hydra and swung for more than lethal next turn. I do have removal sideboard, and we didn't play any sideboard games, so the post-side games might have been better, but it was pretty ugly regardless.
UW Control:
We played a number of games, pre- and post-side. I won the first one, but he had to mull to 5 to get the right number of lands, and even then it was close. He won the rest. Basically, Torrential Gearhulk in a control shell is really, really good. Also, Summary Dismissal against Haunted Dead GY trigger is a super feel bad, as you get nothing for discarding the two cards. He only had two in the deck (one main, one board), but with Gearhulk, he effectively had four. I could play around it some, but he could play around my GY shenanigans too, making sure he had mana up for the right things. I have Lost Legacy in my board, and I even used it against Dismissal profitably, but the Gearhulks overpowered me. Some if it was due to variance. For example, the last game we played, I went through about a third of my deck and didn't see a single Prized Amalgam. Also, Descend Upon the Sinful wrecks this deck too.
My take-aways. First, I will try the Grixis version, as I feel aggro is probably more of a thing between RW Vehicles, RW humans, RG Energy, and I'm sure there are others. Second, it would be awesome if there were a good sac outlet that I use in response to things like Descend, Stasis Snare, or other exile removal spells, that would be a good sideboard addition. Anyone have suggestions? Third, my iteration of the deck durdles hard. I can't get the GY theme going. I think the deck needs something like Perpetual Timepiece to get consistent GY filling. There were games I couldn't get a Scrapheap Scrounger and had to wait for two cards in hand for Haunted Dead. Or not getting one single Prized Amalgam. Seriously. That sucks.
For reference, here was the decklist I was running:
I don't think green is where you want to be anymore. Traverse and Grapple are great cards, but they are the payoff rather than the enablers. Vessel is the best enabler in green, and that card feels glacially slow in this format. Red's looting effects do exactly what you want - fill your graveyard with specific cards and give you cards back that you can later pitch to Haunted Dead.
I don't think the mana can support Sanctum of Ugin. Chaining EDF is great, but it feels like a luxury more than anything else. I've lost far more games to mana than I have because I lacked Eldrazi.
I don't like Neonate much, but it feels necessary in order to support Copter.
I disagree with your decision on not playing neonate. Because neonate is actually the best 1 drop in the deck. First of all it sets up easy turn 3 mindbender/edf second it saves the important part of your hand from transgress, thier it enables scrapheap, giving you and easy exile target, 4th crews copter. It does everything you want from a 1 drop and diesnt strain your mana because the grixis deck is a u/r deck splashing black. With that said the number of draw spells you play opens you up to Sanctum. I haven't ever had mana problems, I realibly hit my curve while be an aggressive edf deck.
I disagree with your decision on not playing neonate. Because neonate is actually the best 1 drop in the deck. First of all it sets up easy turn 3 mindbender/edf second it saves the important part of your hand from transgress, thier it enables scrapheap, giving you and easy exile target, 4th crews copter. It does everything you want from a 1 drop and diesnt strain your mana because the grixis deck is a u/r deck splashing black. With that said the number of draw spells you play opens you up to Sanctum. I haven't ever had mana problems, I realibly hit my curve while be an aggressive edf deck.
I am playing Neonate. I agree that it's necessary; I just haven't liked the card much.
I've been playing Gerry T's mainboard, for reference:
What do you guys think about heir of falkenrath ? Does similar things as Noose Constrictor without needing to dip into green. It's only a 1 time discard, so that is a draw back, but flying is much better than reach. I think I like Heir better than Key to the City or Perpetual Timepiece, I see that GerryT dropped those in favour of more Minister of Inquiries, but he just doesn't do a lot imo, other than fly copter.
What do you guys think about heir of falkenrath ? Does similar things as Noose Constrictor without needing to dip into green. It's only a 1 time discard, so that is a draw back, but flying is much better than reach. I think I like Heir better than Key to the City or Perpetual Timepiece, I see that GerryT dropped those in favour of more Minister of Inquiries, but he just doesn't do a lot imo, other than fly copter.
Minister represent 6 cards in your graveyard by himself. More if you have other energy lying around.
Yea, I understand that. I just meant that doesn't seem like enough value. However I think I was wrong. After messing with the manabase a bit to include 4 Aether hub, the minister definitely pulls his weight. The math suggests that each activation gives you 60% to hit one or more graveyard synergy cards.
I still think Heir of Falkenrath could be good, but the list feels pretty tight. I'm playing the same list as GerryT now, but moved the mana base around for less tap lands and to include 3 copies of sanctum of ugin. Seems greedy, but it hits all of the necessary requirements for color if you assume aetherhub is a tri-colour land, and that has been my experience so far. You can usually only afford 1 activation odf each minister, but it still feels right.
I love heir honestly didn't think about it, it's another 2 drop that is extremely aggressive and applied pressure quick. I think if you play heir you don't play all 4 edf
Here's a take on the deck from the pro tour. They cut black in favor of Stitchwing, which essentially does what Haunted dead does without messing around with 3 colours. I personally think having a few black sources for hard casting Amalgam wouldn't hurt the mana base too much, but I like the idea over all. It also allows for using creature lands, which is an upside.
Here's a take on the deck from the pro tour. They cut black in favor of Stitchwing, which essentially does what Haunted dead does without messing around with 3 colours. I personally think having a few black sources for hard casting Amalgam wouldn't hurt the mana base too much, but I like the idea over all. It also allows for using creature lands, which is an upside.
I love this list too. It's very lean and easy on the mana base (and cheaper in cost!) while it's basically doing the same thing. I'd play a singleton swamp with maybe 1-2 evolving wilds just so we can cast amalgam if needed. How's the Aetherworks match up? Game 1 seems like it can be very tough without counter spell.
Does anyone think that the wretched gryffs are under performing? I guess they block copter profitably but generally we go wide so the evasion is less relevant. They're great in sanctum lists because they replace themselves and tutor edf up, but they die if we use them with kozilek's return.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
That is not dead which may eternal lie, and with strange Aeons even death may die.
They are just for redundancy. They trigger Kozilek's return and sanctum, a lot of lists are dropping to 1 Gryff. And they don't die to Kozilek's return because the return will trigger before the Gryff hits the battlefield. It only dies if it is already in play, which isn't a big deal IMO.
The scroungers are also underperforming for me, a lot of lists have dropped to 3, i'm at 2 and considering going to 1 alongside 4 Haunted Dead and 4 Stitchwing Skaab. It leads to way more busted draws, especially in lists with Minister of Inquiries, which I still like.
I feel like 25 lands is correct, we are pitching so many cards to the graveyard synergies that flooding out isn't really an issue, it's more important to have the right colours and access to Sanctum of Ugin.
The only cards I'm really wavering on is the 4th copies of Smuggler's Copter and Stitchwing Skaab. One of them could be a 2nd Wretched Gryff, sometimes you just need to find a pay off card when you can't stock up the graveyard with Amalgams. The 8th copy of Stitchwing/haunted dead feels pretty redundant as you usually only need 1 copy of either to get the ball rolling, but it seems very important to the deck so it's hard to justify cutting. But I almost always wish the second one was another pay-off card.
Sideboard seems tough, we can't really dilute the deck too much in any match-ups so I'm looking for some advice. I'm thinking of putting a few black sources on the board in order to transition into Distended Mind bender and Liliana from the board. Here's what an early version might look like
Will you share your decklist? I am open to running Sanctum, but having the right colors is important, so I can't add too many Sanctums for fear of diluting color availability.
I like green in the deck. Is it the right direction? Not sure. Constrictor shuts down Copter and allows me to dump any card. Grapple fills the yard early and allows me to get back a key creature late. Traverse mana fixes early and grabs finishers late. Red offers flexible removal and good early game card filtering. So while red may help me early game, green helps me more late game IMO.
Modern: UW Spirits
creatures:
spells:
lands:
was the main deck I was running tonight for a local 3 rounder at my lgs and it did work, I dropped one game to one of the better players in my area. so round 1 I played against monoblue engulf the shore deck, didn't really expect it but wasn't too worried, he didn't know that metallurgic summonings oracle made engulf the shore kinda useless together. its a cast trigger so it will make the token then the spell will resolve so he bounces his 4/4 but anyway he made some tokens I laughed and flew overhead with my copters then looped elder deep's basically timewalking him. was a really easy matchup and his counters did actually nothing.
round 2 I played against b/g delirium and he was tilted hard, so it was kinda a fun game to play. he didn't understand at all how prized amalgam worked at all or elder deeps cast triggers or returns cast triggers, or any cast triggers to be completely honest. game 1 he did nothing but got me down to 4 with a grim flayer (missing so many of is triggers and playing badly with evolving wilds and flayer) I finally drew a black land and reanimated a haunted dead and elder deeped him, then grabbed another elder deep fiend with sanctum. in game 2 he was ahead for most of it, I was holding a distended mindbender that I had brought in from my sideboard. I was at around 7-9 life and he transgressed me turn 4, I scooped because I didn't want him to know I had mindbenders in. and game 3 I had a god hand, played mountain and neonate turn 1, turn 2 attacked for one on his end of mainphase 2 I used neonate to put a haunted dead in the yard, reanimated haunted dead by discarding a prized amalgam and scraphead scrounger, bringing my amalgam back on his end step. (for those of you that don't know, you have to announce that you are returning haunted dead back at end of mainphase 2 so he can come back swinging next turn just fyi, and yes you get priority before any phase change) I untapped and slammed turn 3 mindbender took a spider and a grasp, then drew into elder deep and tapped in down for rest of the game, after I played the second elder deep that game he actually slammed his cards down on the table and walked outside. (i understand get tilted when someone is being a dick, or when your having a bad day, but seriously this is a game, we play to have fun, if you see anyone ever getting mad about lose, you should try to talk to them about it because getting mad because you lost a game for a hobby you love just imo isn't okay)
round 3 i played against b/w control. this player hasn't played anything but b/w control since Gideon came out so he knows the deck, imo its not a very strong deck anymore with the invention of copter (no pun intended) but anyway.
game 1 I kept a 3 land hand with copter elder deep and a reunion, i played turn 3 reunion discarding the second copter I had drawn and drew 3 lands....... next turn i drew a voice discarding a land and drew 2 more................... it was a pretty easy win for him even though i casted 4 elder deeps, literally hard casted them.
game 2 he was behind on lands which i knew about from a transgress. he didn't do much other then played a lilly which i killed pretty fast with a copter. then once he got out of his mana problems I had 3 elder deeps (i had two sanctums out) which was basically 3 time walks.
game 3 for all the marbles. he was on the play and my hand was extremely aggressive, i had 3 lands 2 scapeheaps a prized and a haunted dead. i drew a copter and played it turn 2 he played a turn 3 lilly and i played a scrapheap and used it to crew my copter to take lilly down a bit, and i played a neonate, he played transgress the mind. i knew he would take the prized so i discarded it to neonate and drew into another scrapheap! he took haunted dead, i untapped and drew gryff i killed lilly then played gryff emerging the scrapheap, drew a card and searched for an elder deep with sanctum. but i didn't have a second blue land. (he didn't know i didn't have it, i only had 1 out but the gryff drew me the island so if your playing gryff always remember to draw the card first then decide to search with sanctum. if you trigger the stack in the way you want with sanctum on the bottom and gryff's ability on the top it will work to your advantage more often then other way.) i ended up just casting elder deep fiend on his upkeep and he scooped.
what i have learned, cryptbreaker does almost nothing and i almost always side him out. gryff is only there to block copter and emergency koz return flash backer. red really gives it more card selection then green does. i get to choose exactly what goes to the yard instead of having to get lucky and hope i get enough in there. i think next time i play I'm going to cut cryptbreaker and play 2 more reunions. and re do my sideboard because it was a mess today.
Put your decklist in the proper formatting for you.
I disagree that red gives you more card selection. Red allows you to hard cast Kozilek's Return, which in some match-ups can be valuable to do on T3. Many decks that go wide, however, can easily be out of K-return range by T3, so I don't put a lot of stock in that option. K-return is really better out of the yard, as 5 damage to the board is much harder to survive, and you don't need red for that and can do it by T4. Red also gives you Cathartic Reunion, Insolent Neonate, and Tormenting Voice and access to cards like Lightning Axe and other red removal spells. Reunion/Voice allow you to pitch what you want, but rely on you having cards in hand. A topdecked Voice/Reunion is a dead card. Insolent Neonate is a great T1 play for this deck, but Noose Constrictor allows for Copter blocks, can survive K-Return, and can pitch multiple cards as needed or desired. The only advantage Neonate offers is that he replaces the card you pitched (which is valuable, but does it outweigh Constrictor?).
Let's consider the options that green bring to the table. Grapple with the Past puts four cards to yard (including itself), as opposed to the 2/3 of Voice/Reunion. It doesn't cycle cards from your hand, but it does allow you to get back any land or creature. This means you can get back that Sanctum you sacrificed to continue your timewalks. Or you can get back the Deep-Fiend you milled or that died or you sacced to another Deep-Fiend. It also works at instant speed, which allows you to hold up mana for removal (post-board) or other shenanigans like GY recursion (they pass turn, you hold priority main phase, Grapple and hit the creature you need like Amalgam or Dead or Scrounger, then activate to recur). It also works much better late game, as your GY will be full with all the right things, making it an excellent late game topdeck. Traverse the Ulvenwald is also really good in this deck. It acts as land sources, just like Evolving Wilds, so it smooths out your early land draws. It acts as a late game "let me go find a Deep-Fiend to start my timewalk cycle." There is no guesswork here. You get exactly what you need. Maybe you need the right creature to pitch to Constrictor to get all the Amalgams from your yard.
I think there are definitely merits to both, but I'm not sold on red being the best color yet.
And I usually cast k return only when I have to, like to rid the board my turn so they can crew in response.
RG Energy:
This is the type of deck where going with red makes a lot of sense. I got steamrolled every game. It didn't help that I was flooding out most games, so I've cut one land from the deck as well, down to 23. He seemed to get the nut draws every game, winning by T4/T5, but he said that the deck is very consistent and can repeatedly do that. K-return helped some, but he dropped a Hydra and swung for more than lethal next turn. I do have removal sideboard, and we didn't play any sideboard games, so the post-side games might have been better, but it was pretty ugly regardless.
UW Control:
We played a number of games, pre- and post-side. I won the first one, but he had to mull to 5 to get the right number of lands, and even then it was close. He won the rest. Basically, Torrential Gearhulk in a control shell is really, really good. Also, Summary Dismissal against Haunted Dead GY trigger is a super feel bad, as you get nothing for discarding the two cards. He only had two in the deck (one main, one board), but with Gearhulk, he effectively had four. I could play around it some, but he could play around my GY shenanigans too, making sure he had mana up for the right things. I have Lost Legacy in my board, and I even used it against Dismissal profitably, but the Gearhulks overpowered me. Some if it was due to variance. For example, the last game we played, I went through about a third of my deck and didn't see a single Prized Amalgam. Also, Descend Upon the Sinful wrecks this deck too.
My take-aways. First, I will try the Grixis version, as I feel aggro is probably more of a thing between RW Vehicles, RW humans, RG Energy, and I'm sure there are others. Second, it would be awesome if there were a good sac outlet that I use in response to things like Descend, Stasis Snare, or other exile removal spells, that would be a good sideboard addition. Anyone have suggestions? Third, my iteration of the deck durdles hard. I can't get the GY theme going. I think the deck needs something like Perpetual Timepiece to get consistent GY filling. There were games I couldn't get a Scrapheap Scrounger and had to wait for two cards in hand for Haunted Dead. Or not getting one single Prized Amalgam. Seriously. That sucks.
For reference, here was the decklist I was running:
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
4 Noose Constrictor
4 Prized Amalgam
2 Wretched Gryff
4 Elder Deep-Fiend
4 Haunted Dead
Non-Creature Spells (16):
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Grapple with the Past
4 Kozilek's Return
4 Smuggler's Copter
1 Key to the City
4 Sunken Hollow
2 Blooming Marsh
2 Botanical Sanctum
3 Evolving Wilds
2 Lumbering Falls
2 Sanctum of Ugin
4 Swamp
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Mountain
Other couple of thoughts:
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
I am playing Neonate. I agree that it's necessary; I just haven't liked the card much.
I've been playing Gerry T's mainboard, for reference:
2 Aether Hub
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Island
3 Mountain
3 Smoldering Marsh
3 Spirebluff Canal
4 Sunken Hollow
1 Swamp
4 Elder Deep-Fiend
4 Haunted Dead
3 Insolent Neonate
4 Minister of Inquiries
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
2 Wretched Gryff
3 Kozilek's Return
Sorceries (4)
4 Cathartic Reunion
Artifacts (4)
4 Smuggler's Copter
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
Minister represent 6 cards in your graveyard by himself. More if you have other energy lying around.
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
I still think Heir of Falkenrath could be good, but the list feels pretty tight. I'm playing the same list as GerryT now, but moved the mana base around for less tap lands and to include 3 copies of sanctum of ugin. Seems greedy, but it hits all of the necessary requirements for color if you assume aetherhub is a tri-colour land, and that has been my experience so far. You can usually only afford 1 activation odf each minister, but it still feels right.
Here's what it looks like
5 Island
4 Aetherhub
4 Spirebluff Canal
3 Evolving Wilds
3 Sanctum of Ugin
2 Sunken Hollow
1 Smoldering Marsh
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
*Edited, too few black sources.
4 Elder Deep-Fiend
3 Wretched Gryff
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Advanced Stitchwing
4 Stitchwing Skaab
4 Kozilek's return
4 Cathartic reunion
2 Tormenting Voice
4 Lightning Axe
3 Fiery Temper
6 Mountain
4 Wandering Fumarole
4 Spirebluff Canal
3 Sanctum of Ugin
1 Geier reach sanitarium
6 ??
EDH: Borborygmos Enraged, Sedris, The Traitor King
60 Card: Grixis Delver, Living End, Shardless BUG, Ninjas
The scroungers are also underperforming for me, a lot of lists have dropped to 3, i'm at 2 and considering going to 1 alongside 4 Haunted Dead and 4 Stitchwing Skaab. It leads to way more busted draws, especially in lists with Minister of Inquiries, which I still like.
4 Minister of Inquiries
3 Insolent Neonate
4 Elder Deep-Fiend
1 Wretched Gryff
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Haunted Dead
4 Stitchwing Skaab
3 Kozilek's return
4 Cathartic reunion
4 Smuggler's Copter
Lands (25)
4 Aetherhub
3 Mountain
4 Swamp
4 Island
4 Spirebluff Canal
2 Sanctum of Ugin
2 Choked Estuary
2 Foreboding ruins
I feel like 25 lands is correct, we are pitching so many cards to the graveyard synergies that flooding out isn't really an issue, it's more important to have the right colours and access to Sanctum of Ugin.
The only cards I'm really wavering on is the 4th copies of Smuggler's Copter and Stitchwing Skaab. One of them could be a 2nd Wretched Gryff, sometimes you just need to find a pay off card when you can't stock up the graveyard with Amalgams. The 8th copy of Stitchwing/haunted dead feels pretty redundant as you usually only need 1 copy of either to get the ball rolling, but it seems very important to the deck so it's hard to justify cutting. But I almost always wish the second one was another pay-off card.
Sideboard seems tough, we can't really dilute the deck too much in any match-ups so I'm looking for some advice. I'm thinking of putting a few black sources on the board in order to transition into Distended Mind bender and Liliana from the board. Here's what an early version might look like
2 Liliana, the last hope
2 Ceremonious rejection
2 Dispel
2 Transgress the mind
1 Negate
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Swamp
2 Evolving Wilds