Like the last deck template, this is an incomplete idea. In the description below I'll include my thoughts on what is core and what I've added to complete the list. This list like the last one aims to have removal fast enough to slow or stop Atarka Red while being able to fight well against Azban Midrange, the two expected common decks in the meta. This is a design template that I've been thinking about a lot.
^ this is the core I have thus far, minus lands
The core thinking here is that it's very easy to cast Reality Shift on turn two, and then use the exiled target to cast Wasteland Strangler on turn three to get an advantage in tempo, or to hold removal and follow up turn 4 with Ulamog's Nullifier, either way, putting yourself ahead and starting a beat down.
Some of the ideas I've had are running more hand filtering ala Duress or Despise leaving my opponent to walk into some counterspells as well as the removal suite. If the deck was effective enough, I could run a couple one drops to chip at the opponent, the choices would be: Salvage Drone, Sludge Crawler, Fathom Feeder, and Mist Intruder. Obviously I wouldn't run all of these, but at any amount I could also run Ghostfire Blade as they're all technically colorless, but I feel like anything too heavy beyond one mana would be saturating the deck itself when I want to get those sweet 2 for 1's in the processor creatures. Blue black finishers are tough to choose from, if I play on a curve I'd have to choose cards 6 mana and above. While the eldrazi cards are obvious, we have selections in the u/b colors that opponents may be less prepared for, such as Silumgar, the Drifting Death, Dragonlord Silumgar, Sire of Stagnation, and when running Eldrazi Tokens you get a cool synergy with Ruthless Deathfang. I feel like running Sire of Stagnation is very good with Oblivion Sower as you may end up taking even more lands than you normally would have. The colorless options are Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Void Winnower, Breaker of Armies, and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Running those cards allows you to take advantage of the new lands that support heavy expensive colorless strategies, Sanctum of Ugin and Shrine of the Forsaken Gods. Considering all of these options, which do you go with? If you go control, you can definitely be greedier with mana, but we also have the blighted lands to use for extra removal, we could easily go to 26 lands knowing we can pop a land to force an opponent to sacrifice a creature or draw two cards, or even create three 1/1's at instant speed, if we get really greedy we could go esper and get the 2/3 lifelinker manland. There is a lot to consider here and I don't know which direction is best with this template, but for sure I think Reality Shift and Wasteland Strangler together answers a lot of creatures that are coming at us right now.
Please tell me what you think.
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The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
Like the last deck template, this is an incomplete idea. In the description below I'll include my thoughts on what is core and what I've added to complete the list. This list like the last one aims to have removal fast enough to slow or stop Atarka Red while being able to fight well against Azban Midrange, the two expected common decks in the meta. This is a design template that I've been thinking about a lot.
^ this is the core I have thus far, minus lands
The core thinking here is that it's very easy to cast Reality Shift on turn two, and then use the exiled target to cast Wasteland Strangler on turn three to get an advantage in tempo, or to hold removal and follow up turn 4 with Ulamog's Nullifier, either way, putting yourself ahead and starting a beat down.
Some of the ideas I've had are running more hand filtering ala Duress or Despise leaving my opponent to walk into some counterspells as well as the removal suite. If the deck was effective enough, I could run a couple one drops to chip at the opponent, the choices would be: Salvage Drone, Sludge Crawler, Fathom Feeder, and Mist Intruder. Obviously I wouldn't run all of these, but at any amount I could also run Ghostfire Blade as they're all technically colorless, but I feel like anything too heavy beyond one mana would be saturating the deck itself when I want to get those sweet 2 for 1's in the processor creatures. Blue black finishers are tough to choose from, if I play on a curve I'd have to choose cards 6 mana and above. While the eldrazi cards are obvious, we have selections in the u/b colors that opponents may be less prepared for, such as Silumgar, the Drifting Death, Dragonlord Silumgar, Sire of Stagnation, and when running Eldrazi Tokens you get a cool synergy with Ruthless Deathfang. I feel like running Sire of Stagnation is very good with Oblivion Sower as you may end up taking even more lands than you normally would have. The colorless options are Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Void Winnower, Breaker of Armies, and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Running those cards allows you to take advantage of the new lands that support heavy expensive colorless strategies, Sanctum of Ugin and Shrine of the Forsaken Gods. Considering all of these options, which do you go with? If you go control, you can definitely be greedier with mana, but we also have the blighted lands to use for extra removal, we could easily go to 26 lands knowing we can pop a land to force an opponent to sacrifice a creature or draw two cards, or even create three 1/1's at instant speed, if we get really greedy we could go esper and get the 2/3 lifelinker manland. There is a lot to consider here and I don't know which direction is best with this template, but for sure I think Reality Shift and Wasteland Strangler together answers a lot of creatures that are coming at us right now.
Please tell me what you think.
Since you used a card (reality shift) to give them a permanent, destroying it with wasteland strangler is neither card advantage nor a tempo swing. And it forces you to have reality shift be a mediocre/dead card until strangler shows up. Also, I don't think any deck can efficiently run Ulamog'S nullifier. It will often be a vanilla flyier.
I have a deck similar to what you are thinking but with a few more colors. I'll post it tonight when I get home from work. Basically I think adding red is free and gives you some strong choices.
Conclusion? You have 3 options to enable processing (possibly mixing them)
1) UB Ingest aggro. Play a bunch of terrible commons to Ingest early so that you can hit process triggers on turns 1-3. I wish Block Constructed was a thing because this could work in Block Constructed, but it won't work in Standard.
2) Bx Surgical Extraction.dec. This strategy is inherently full of card disadvantage, but if you play 4 Duress plus other discard and effects that let you see their hand and you have REALLY good meta knowledge and ability to read people, you can hypothetically always hit a card in hand with Infinite Obliteration and friends, netting at least 1-for-1 while also exiling something and ripping out key pieces of their deck. Then you'll have cards in exile to enable processing. But again, this strategy is generally too high variance.
3) Esper Control. There are a number of exile spells you would play anyway in Esper Control: Utter End, Stasis Snare, maybe Spell Shrivel. Too bad Dissolve rotated, but there are still some options. Then you might as well play a few Ulamog's Nullifier as an additional counterspell + clock. Maybe the 4U guy that returns a spell to hand too, for added grind (and it survives Languish while blocking Siege Rhino, so seems good).
I definitely like the instant speed response ability with Jeskai Barricade and Ulamog's Nullifier, or EOT bounce strangler to kill a priority target like Jace.
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The red mage lives by the variance and dies by the variance. May the variance be with you, always.
Ive been playing this since release. You can run a ton of exile and still really cant get away with more than a couple processors. The Nulifier has been the best in my testing, but I have the Strangler in the board for aggro matchups. Even then I only have 3 of each, because they are so bad in multiples unless the opponent is delving a ton.
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"It's like some kind of Voltron... made of elephants??"
I think that turn 1 ingest creature is crucial in making the ulamog's nullifier at least become a potent threat, plus the infinite obliteration exiling key win condition in some decks.
Dispel mainly is for protecting your small creatures from opponent's removal spells and key spells which are instant.
Ghostfire Blade helps power up your somewhat tiny processors which happens to be colorless creatures too.
Reality shift is our main answer for Commander General Jura, opposing hangarback's plus other problematic bigger creatures, you can actually target your own small creature to make a 2/2 colorless that can be equipped with the blade, at least an option when you want to counter swing the turn after an opponent attack.
Would really appreciate any ideas/opinion about it. =)
I really wish I could find a way to run Thopter Spy Network but I don't know how I'd keep it on. That's the win con I want to use... Otherwise I'm stuck with slowly whittling away with my few creatures or an awakened land. Seems rough. I'd rather play it a bit like tempo-fae and stick a spy network and counter/kill everything else, letting thopters fill the sky...
4 Wasteland Strangler
4 Ulamog's Nullifier
4 Blight Herder
4 Reality Shift
3 Transgress the Mind
2 Ultimate Price
2 Horribly Awry
^ this is the core I have thus far, minus lands
The core thinking here is that it's very easy to cast Reality Shift on turn two, and then use the exiled target to cast Wasteland Strangler on turn three to get an advantage in tempo, or to hold removal and follow up turn 4 with Ulamog's Nullifier, either way, putting yourself ahead and starting a beat down.
Some of the ideas I've had are running more hand filtering ala Duress or Despise leaving my opponent to walk into some counterspells as well as the removal suite. If the deck was effective enough, I could run a couple one drops to chip at the opponent, the choices would be: Salvage Drone, Sludge Crawler, Fathom Feeder, and Mist Intruder. Obviously I wouldn't run all of these, but at any amount I could also run Ghostfire Blade as they're all technically colorless, but I feel like anything too heavy beyond one mana would be saturating the deck itself when I want to get those sweet 2 for 1's in the processor creatures. Blue black finishers are tough to choose from, if I play on a curve I'd have to choose cards 6 mana and above. While the eldrazi cards are obvious, we have selections in the u/b colors that opponents may be less prepared for, such as Silumgar, the Drifting Death, Dragonlord Silumgar, Sire of Stagnation, and when running Eldrazi Tokens you get a cool synergy with Ruthless Deathfang. I feel like running Sire of Stagnation is very good with Oblivion Sower as you may end up taking even more lands than you normally would have. The colorless options are Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Void Winnower, Breaker of Armies, and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Running those cards allows you to take advantage of the new lands that support heavy expensive colorless strategies, Sanctum of Ugin and Shrine of the Forsaken Gods. Considering all of these options, which do you go with? If you go control, you can definitely be greedier with mana, but we also have the blighted lands to use for extra removal, we could easily go to 26 lands knowing we can pop a land to force an opponent to sacrifice a creature or draw two cards, or even create three 1/1's at instant speed, if we get really greedy we could go esper and get the 2/3 lifelinker manland. There is a lot to consider here and I don't know which direction is best with this template, but for sure I think Reality Shift and Wasteland Strangler together answers a lot of creatures that are coming at us right now.
Please tell me what you think.
Since you used a card (reality shift) to give them a permanent, destroying it with wasteland strangler is neither card advantage nor a tempo swing. And it forces you to have reality shift be a mediocre/dead card until strangler shows up. Also, I don't think any deck can efficiently run Ulamog'S nullifier. It will often be a vanilla flyier.
Conclusion? You have 3 options to enable processing (possibly mixing them)
1) UB Ingest aggro. Play a bunch of terrible commons to Ingest early so that you can hit process triggers on turns 1-3. I wish Block Constructed was a thing because this could work in Block Constructed, but it won't work in Standard.
2) Bx Surgical Extraction.dec. This strategy is inherently full of card disadvantage, but if you play 4 Duress plus other discard and effects that let you see their hand and you have REALLY good meta knowledge and ability to read people, you can hypothetically always hit a card in hand with Infinite Obliteration and friends, netting at least 1-for-1 while also exiling something and ripping out key pieces of their deck. Then you'll have cards in exile to enable processing. But again, this strategy is generally too high variance.
3) Esper Control. There are a number of exile spells you would play anyway in Esper Control: Utter End, Stasis Snare, maybe Spell Shrivel. Too bad Dissolve rotated, but there are still some options. Then you might as well play a few Ulamog's Nullifier as an additional counterspell + clock. Maybe the 4U guy that returns a spell to hand too, for added grind (and it survives Languish while blocking Siege Rhino, so seems good).
Credit goes to Brofoux for the Sig pic.
Current Modern Deck
Black Licorice
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11006564#post11006564
4 fathom feeder
4 ulamog's nullifier
4 salvage drone
2 wasteland strangler
2 dominator drone
3 murderous cut
2 reality shift
2 infinite obliteration
4 dispel
2 transgress the mind
4 flooded strand
4 sunken hollow
5 island
6 swamp
I think that turn 1 ingest creature is crucial in making the ulamog's nullifier at least become a potent threat, plus the infinite obliteration exiling key win condition in some decks.
Dispel mainly is for protecting your small creatures from opponent's removal spells and key spells which are instant.
Ghostfire Blade helps power up your somewhat tiny processors which happens to be colorless creatures too.
Reality shift is our main answer for Commander General Jura, opposing hangarback's plus other problematic bigger creatures, you can actually target your own small creature to make a 2/2 colorless that can be equipped with the blade, at least an option when you want to counter swing the turn after an opponent attack.
Would really appreciate any ideas/opinion about it. =)
1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4x Salvage Drone
Flash Creatures (5)
2x Silumgar Sorcerer
3x Ulamog's Nullifier
Instant (25)
3x Brutal Expulsion
3x Dig Through Time
2x Dispel
4x Fiery Impulse
4x Horribly Awry
1x Kolaghan's Command
2x Reality Shift
3x Scatter to the Winds
3x Spell Shrivel
3x Bloodstained Mire
3x Flooded Strand
8x Island
1x Mountain
4x Polluted Delta
2x Smoldering Marsh
3x Sunken Hollow
1x Swamp
2x Fathom Feeder
1x Pearl Lake Ancient
2x Rending Volley
2x Silumgar, the Drifting Death
2x Transgress the Mind
2x Wasteland Strangler
4x Wild Slash
I really wish I could find a way to run Thopter Spy Network but I don't know how I'd keep it on. That's the win con I want to use... Otherwise I'm stuck with slowly whittling away with my few creatures or an awakened land. Seems rough. I'd rather play it a bit like tempo-fae and stick a spy network and counter/kill everything else, letting thopters fill the sky...