I just want to thank you guys for this deck, which has appeared to me as I despaired of finding anything truly cool in Modern. Suits me to a T.
No/few creatures? Check: I can cheekily include them after sideboard, and the Crane doesn't count (and my, what an all star!)
Prison deck? Check
Takes forever to conclude a round? Check
Actually not that expensive? Check
Exploits Modern's insistence to ban good cantrips? Check
People think it's really hard to play? Check
Really is hard to play? Check
Welcome to the fold, Lantern Control, join your elder Legacy brothers Lands and Storm in my collection.
If you really don't want to regret the purchase, testing out candidate decks is probably the only way to reliably avoid that possibility.
Merfolk is indeed very good right now, better than it has been for a long time. It's not all peaches and sunshine, of course, but it does function more or less as it's always meant to: exploiting plentiful islands to put a big, unblockable army into the red zone.
Green isn't seen as necessary anymore, being only used mostly for three different cards: Abrupt Decay, Carpet of Flowers, and Xantid Swarm. Each of these cards is good and has some potential use, but it was really only Decay's uniquely uncounterable property and its necessity against Counterbalance that made it ubiquitous. Once you've got green in the deck, Carpet and Swarm open up and were often used on that basis.
Carpet really shines against decks with a lot of taxing permission, Pierce and Daze, but there's not so much RUG Delver any longer. Grixis is more common and uses discard. Carpet is helpful there too, in that it can make up for a discarded ritual, but this effect isn't really worth splashing for by itself when the straight Duress/Therapy and basic lands should be fine for the matchup.
Xantid Swarm was also a card folks brought in for Miracles, and it still has a bunch of value against decks with a sort of "mono counterspell' plan. IE, Landstill, new Miracles, Sneaky Show, etc. Since discard is also fine for these, however, they are quite fine to play instead of the insects and don't involve any contortion of the manabase.
Keeping the manabase as lean and streamlined as possible pays a lot of dividends that aren't always immediately obvious when looking at the deck.
Well, there are trade-offs with Engineered Explosives: the most basic of them being that with the blue in the deck contributing to a more controlling build with this super removal spell, you're necessarily putting the combo a bit to the background and not slamming 20/20s as quickly or as often as you otherwise would be. There are matchups where the most reliable path to victory is making the 20/20 as soon as possible, like UR Delver.
As for results, it's a bit of a wash, with both forms of the deck performing well in the current metagame.
I don't see how shuffling could be a problem with this deck, I mean really: the deck demands one truly thorough shuffle at the start of the game. This is a rare and wonderful blessing in the game and a feature shared by a small number of decks. Legacy Dredge is the only one I can think of that requires the same rate of 1 shuffle per game. You guys sound like you've never piloted turns that go like: "Fetch for Savannah.... Green Sun's Zenith.... Stoneforge Mystic... activate Knight of the Reliquary..." and while I'll admit that 4 shuffles per turn is an extreme example and would have been shortcut IRL when it happened, it is rare to get through a single turn of Maverick without shuffling.
All of the 2+-of lands are either initial mana sources, payoff cards for Loam which you never want to be without, or combo pieces in case you want//need to jam Marit Lage ASAP.
What's crazy is the 4 Port 4 GQ 4 Wasteland. How did that go?
I think a Deathblade deck is where you want to be in this meta. You've got Forces, discards, and DRS against those combo decks: plus DRS lifegain can supplement Stoneforge Mystical Batterskull action.
After sideboard it only gets a lot better, your options in Esper blow their countermeasures out of the water: not that you'll need much of anything else, just some more GY hate vs. Dredge/Oops.
Indeed, the Counterbalance trigger CMC consideration is not at all trivial, but I struggle to find a good CMC 3 besides Blood Moon for the effect: the Moon is dead a lot of the time, or else it would damage my own manabase (by turning off my fetches or sticking me with only one white source). It would be great to have another CMC 3. I'm thinking Oblivion Ring, but that's icky, and Detention Sphere gets Pyroblasted too much.
I also feel pretty confident that 1 Blood Moon is the right number in a deck that sports 1-2 Enlightened Tutors along with all the other library manipulation. Many games have a window of 2-3 turns where Blood Moon would straight up win, after that it's just good, and after that it's not worth playing anymore.
CMC 4 also deserves some consideration, I think, and I've taken to playing my Moat in the MD. It's often game-winning. Other times it's dead.
I think it's time to dumpster-dive the old Landstill and Countertop archives for a good CMC 3 enchantment/artifact.
I got to jam a bunch of games today and wound up with a few ideas.
First, I think I went too far in the colorless land direction. 3 Nykthos and 1 Westvale Abbey, 4 out of my 19 lands, caused several mulligans that would not otherwise have been necessary. I also don't think those lands are necessary any more. Take the Shrine for example. I activated it a lot a few times today and won those games... but would I have won them anyway? How much mana can be made just via the elves themselves if devotion exists to Shrine for a lot of mana, and how is that not enough? The card may be win more, and I'll try the deck at 1 copy. As for Westvale Abbey, it did win me one game against Tron, but I might have been winning that game anyway. While the 9/7 demon is nice, a lot of decks can deal with it, and is it really that much nicer than the 5 dudes I sacrificed to bring it out? Not so much.
The sideboard card that I tried on suggestion from you folks on this thread, Golgari Charm, has proven itself a thousand times over. It's so crazy what this card can do. It's a counter to sweepers that is also itself a sweeper, usually one-sided! And it kills enchantments! All in one card! In one game against Affinity, Golgari Charm 3-for-1ed his army of two Inkmoth Nexus and that battlecry thing (doing no damage to my own Lorded army), and in the next game it stuffed a Whipflare (take that, one-sided sweeper, I'LL BE THE ONE CASTING THOSE THANK YOU VERY MUCH). Against my next opponent, in one game Golgari Charm stuffed his Anger of the Gods... and in the next it blew up his Worship.
If a close, personal friend of mine wanted to play Legacy on an extreme budget and asked my advice, I'd make what might be a controversial suggestion.
Buy a big set of Chinese fakes (if you can figure out where), write an "F" on the back of them with a sharpie (so they don't get traded someday for someone's real cards), and slide them into some sleeves. Try Dragon Shields because as the panes get scratched and discolored with age it'll become all but impossible to distinguish between these and the genuine article. Build whatever you want and still have enough cash left over to go to Starbucks.
Would that be wrong?
Suspension issued for promotion of illegal activity.
- Teia
The only thing universally agreed upon in the Elves thread is thast Elves is an awesome deck and you should definitely play it.
As for the GW/GB thing, both styles have their proponents and diehard fans. GB Elves tends toward Lead and CoCo, GW toward Chords and CoCo. Eldritch Evolution doesn't really have a home yet, but this is a work in progress, and some people have been enjoying Sylvan Messenger.
I personally am not very serious about Modern at all, and I only play it when Legacy isn't available. Naturally, I play Elves, the deck that Miracles has pretty much squashed in my format of choice.
The matchups that I fear the most as a GB Elves player are Infect, Abzan CoCo, and Tron in that order. Infect is super hard for GB to deal with. They have a faster clock by 1+ turns, and they are naturally resistant to removal and discard. GW has a better time of it here due to Spellskite and Melira tutoring. Abzan CoCo is similar, but more vulnerable to GY hate and discard. They are also a little slower, so racing is more feasible. Tron is rough because of all the sweepers, but decks playing Leads and Golgari Charms (for regeneration) can get through this.
The matchups that I personally look forward to the most are Merfolk and Delver, and tempo strategies generally. They need to spend mana to stick a clock, and we plunk down a mana dork or three in the hole this creates. Then the elves spill out Affinity style, and they are stuck trying to Lightning Bolt and Mana Leak, but without being able to keep parity on mana production this is a gradually losing proposition. Before long, Delvers or what have you are being left back to block, and hole opens up for CoCo or Lead. Resolving this spell ends the game. Postboard, they don't have sweepers because this would kill their own dudes, so the game plays out similarly.
Yeah, it's probably a good time to pick up the card. Modern playables can generally hold a $5 tag, and the day someone wins a tournament with a silly combo utilizing a just-printed creature the price will rise to $10 and stay there unless it's banned. No such combo exists at this time.
Maybe I'll pick up a few copies and get on the Anafenza hype train myself.
@MarcWizard, that's a very innovative idea putting all the silver bullets as well as the Chords into the sideboard, running the 4 Leads and CoCos in the MD.
Honestly, I like this Anafenza idea. I'm tempted to put some white in for this and the other critters. So far I've been GB to da bone, baby {flashes dark elf gang signs}. Not that I play much Modern. I just came into a Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, so who can blame me?
I randomly won an 8-man tournament today despite never even having seen Modern Dredge before and getting paired against it in the final round. Living End was my round 1 opponent, so it seems the GY decks are a huge thing in my area.
Played against the aforementioned Living End, Jeskai Delver, and Modern Dredge. The highlights:
vs. Living End: G3 I'm on the draw and my hand is nutty fast. By T3 it's all on the table: 2 mana dorks, 2 Nettle Sentinels, 2 Heritage Druids, 1 Archdruid, and an Eternal Witness. Three lands (one of which is a Shrine), and my only card is a Collected Company (which I had just used Eternal Witness to get back). I hold up mana for it and pass the turn.
Opponent, facing this heap of militant elves about to bash his face back to the Stone Age, cascades. I add mana, put my dudes in the graveyard, and CoCo at end of phase putting a Scavenging Ooze and Elvish Archdruid. Opponent attacks with his pretty meager dudes. I draw an Elite, play it and pass. When the opponent attacks, I make a huge Ooze but don't block, fearing a trick or something and the Ooze is made of gold, strong enough to win by itself almost. Opponent, in desperation, cascades again to kill it. Fortunately I hadn't exiled anything important, and apparently he'd forgotten about the Witness in my GY saved for just such a contingency. Opponent scoops when he sees the Witness.
vs. Jeskai Delver: Honestly I just won the die roll, got a mana dork down, and steamrolled him while he cantripped desperately for answers. That was G1. G2 involved 3 Nettle Sentinels, 2 Heritage, 2 Llanowar Elves, and CoCos that I never needed to cast.
vs. Dredge: these games were so fun that I'm sad there were only two of them. G1 I win the roll and make a few elves while he stocks his graveyard in a rather threatening manner. I get an Archdruid down and present lethal next turn if CoCo reveals any two creatures at all, so I hold up mana for it and pass. Mr. Scary throws some kind of flashbacked X damage board wipe at me, 2 damage declared on my Archdruid and 1 on each of my innocent little elves. I fine the CoCo, it gives me a Lord, and the opponent concedes.
G2 was more or less the same thing on a grander scale. This time we both had pretty threatening armies (mine threatening lethal in 1-2 swings, his in 2-3) and he casts his fire magic again. This time he's more careful, assigning 4 damage to my Archdruid and 1 to my innocent little elves. I fire off my CoCo, getting an Eternal Witness and a Scavenging Ooze, and Golgari Charm to regenerate my army. Opponent concedes.
It was a fun day.
Honestly, I'm not sure what I would have boarded out even if I were playing Chords. Most of the time I took out my Leads, since I was playing against combo decks and didn't think I'd have time for them.
As far as tier control decks go, Miracles is in a class by itself. Bans are extremely unlikely given that they haven't already happened.
Shardless isn't a true control deck in the same sense of the words, though I would contend that Lands is. Tezzeret is cool and interesting but not in the same class as these two. UR Landstill had a small amount of interesting success when Treasure Cruise was a thing. That's a card, by the way, which did suddenly make Shardless worse.
It's a great deck that a lot of people get really into. It should certainly be examined.
No/few creatures? Check: I can cheekily include them after sideboard, and the Crane doesn't count (and my, what an all star!)
Prison deck? Check
Takes forever to conclude a round? Check
Actually not that expensive? Check
Exploits Modern's insistence to ban good cantrips? Check
People think it's really hard to play? Check
Really is hard to play? Check
Welcome to the fold, Lantern Control, join your elder Legacy brothers Lands and Storm in my collection.
Merfolk is indeed very good right now, better than it has been for a long time. It's not all peaches and sunshine, of course, but it does function more or less as it's always meant to: exploiting plentiful islands to put a big, unblockable army into the red zone.
Carpet really shines against decks with a lot of taxing permission, Pierce and Daze, but there's not so much RUG Delver any longer. Grixis is more common and uses discard. Carpet is helpful there too, in that it can make up for a discarded ritual, but this effect isn't really worth splashing for by itself when the straight Duress/Therapy and basic lands should be fine for the matchup.
Xantid Swarm was also a card folks brought in for Miracles, and it still has a bunch of value against decks with a sort of "mono counterspell' plan. IE, Landstill, new Miracles, Sneaky Show, etc. Since discard is also fine for these, however, they are quite fine to play instead of the insects and don't involve any contortion of the manabase.
Keeping the manabase as lean and streamlined as possible pays a lot of dividends that aren't always immediately obvious when looking at the deck.
As for results, it's a bit of a wash, with both forms of the deck performing well in the current metagame.
@JNes, welcome to the bossest of all boss decks!
What's crazy is the 4 Port 4 GQ 4 Wasteland. How did that go?
I think a Deathblade deck is where you want to be in this meta. You've got Forces, discards, and DRS against those combo decks: plus DRS lifegain can supplement Stoneforge Mystical Batterskull action.
After sideboard it only gets a lot better, your options in Esper blow their countermeasures out of the water: not that you'll need much of anything else, just some more GY hate vs. Dredge/Oops.
Also this Brainstorm Show Mentorblade Miracles deck would probably be sweet:
http://www.thebrainstormshow.com/
episode 24
I also feel pretty confident that 1 Blood Moon is the right number in a deck that sports 1-2 Enlightened Tutors along with all the other library manipulation. Many games have a window of 2-3 turns where Blood Moon would straight up win, after that it's just good, and after that it's not worth playing anymore.
CMC 4 also deserves some consideration, I think, and I've taken to playing my Moat in the MD. It's often game-winning. Other times it's dead.
I think it's time to dumpster-dive the old Landstill and Countertop archives for a good CMC 3 enchantment/artifact.
First, I think I went too far in the colorless land direction. 3 Nykthos and 1 Westvale Abbey, 4 out of my 19 lands, caused several mulligans that would not otherwise have been necessary. I also don't think those lands are necessary any more. Take the Shrine for example. I activated it a lot a few times today and won those games... but would I have won them anyway? How much mana can be made just via the elves themselves if devotion exists to Shrine for a lot of mana, and how is that not enough? The card may be win more, and I'll try the deck at 1 copy. As for Westvale Abbey, it did win me one game against Tron, but I might have been winning that game anyway. While the 9/7 demon is nice, a lot of decks can deal with it, and is it really that much nicer than the 5 dudes I sacrificed to bring it out? Not so much.
The sideboard card that I tried on suggestion from you folks on this thread, Golgari Charm, has proven itself a thousand times over. It's so crazy what this card can do. It's a counter to sweepers that is also itself a sweeper, usually one-sided! And it kills enchantments! All in one card! In one game against Affinity, Golgari Charm 3-for-1ed his army of two Inkmoth Nexus and that battlecry thing (doing no damage to my own Lorded army), and in the next game it stuffed a Whipflare (take that, one-sided sweeper, I'LL BE THE ONE CASTING THOSE THANK YOU VERY MUCH). Against my next opponent, in one game Golgari Charm stuffed his Anger of the Gods... and in the next it blew up his Worship.
I'm going up to 3 next time.
Buy a big set of Chinese fakes (if you can figure out where), write an "F" on the back of them with a sharpie (so they don't get traded someday for someone's real cards), and slide them into some sleeves. Try Dragon Shields because as the panes get scratched and discolored with age it'll become all but impossible to distinguish between these and the genuine article. Build whatever you want and still have enough cash left over to go to Starbucks.
Would that be wrong?
Suspension issued for promotion of illegal activity.
- Teia
As for the GW/GB thing, both styles have their proponents and diehard fans. GB Elves tends toward Lead and CoCo, GW toward Chords and CoCo. Eldritch Evolution doesn't really have a home yet, but this is a work in progress, and some people have been enjoying Sylvan Messenger.
I personally am not very serious about Modern at all, and I only play it when Legacy isn't available. Naturally, I play Elves, the deck that Miracles has pretty much squashed in my format of choice.
The matchups that I fear the most as a GB Elves player are Infect, Abzan CoCo, and Tron in that order. Infect is super hard for GB to deal with. They have a faster clock by 1+ turns, and they are naturally resistant to removal and discard. GW has a better time of it here due to Spellskite and Melira tutoring. Abzan CoCo is similar, but more vulnerable to GY hate and discard. They are also a little slower, so racing is more feasible. Tron is rough because of all the sweepers, but decks playing Leads and Golgari Charms (for regeneration) can get through this.
The matchups that I personally look forward to the most are Merfolk and Delver, and tempo strategies generally. They need to spend mana to stick a clock, and we plunk down a mana dork or three in the hole this creates. Then the elves spill out Affinity style, and they are stuck trying to Lightning Bolt and Mana Leak, but without being able to keep parity on mana production this is a gradually losing proposition. Before long, Delvers or what have you are being left back to block, and hole opens up for CoCo or Lead. Resolving this spell ends the game. Postboard, they don't have sweepers because this would kill their own dudes, so the game plays out similarly.
Maybe I'll pick up a few copies and get on the Anafenza hype train myself.
Honestly, I like this Anafenza idea. I'm tempted to put some white in for this and the other critters. So far I've been GB to da bone, baby {flashes dark elf gang signs}. Not that I play much Modern. I just came into a Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, so who can blame me?
I randomly won an 8-man tournament today despite never even having seen Modern Dredge before and getting paired against it in the final round. Living End was my round 1 opponent, so it seems the GY decks are a huge thing in my area.
Played against the aforementioned Living End, Jeskai Delver, and Modern Dredge. The highlights:
vs. Living End: G3 I'm on the draw and my hand is nutty fast. By T3 it's all on the table: 2 mana dorks, 2 Nettle Sentinels, 2 Heritage Druids, 1 Archdruid, and an Eternal Witness. Three lands (one of which is a Shrine), and my only card is a Collected Company (which I had just used Eternal Witness to get back). I hold up mana for it and pass the turn.
Opponent, facing this heap of militant elves about to bash his face back to the Stone Age, cascades. I add mana, put my dudes in the graveyard, and CoCo at end of phase putting a Scavenging Ooze and Elvish Archdruid. Opponent attacks with his pretty meager dudes. I draw an Elite, play it and pass. When the opponent attacks, I make a huge Ooze but don't block, fearing a trick or something and the Ooze is made of gold, strong enough to win by itself almost. Opponent, in desperation, cascades again to kill it. Fortunately I hadn't exiled anything important, and apparently he'd forgotten about the Witness in my GY saved for just such a contingency. Opponent scoops when he sees the Witness.
vs. Jeskai Delver: Honestly I just won the die roll, got a mana dork down, and steamrolled him while he cantripped desperately for answers. That was G1. G2 involved 3 Nettle Sentinels, 2 Heritage, 2 Llanowar Elves, and CoCos that I never needed to cast.
vs. Dredge: these games were so fun that I'm sad there were only two of them. G1 I win the roll and make a few elves while he stocks his graveyard in a rather threatening manner. I get an Archdruid down and present lethal next turn if CoCo reveals any two creatures at all, so I hold up mana for it and pass. Mr. Scary throws some kind of flashbacked X damage board wipe at me, 2 damage declared on my Archdruid and 1 on each of my innocent little elves. I fine the CoCo, it gives me a Lord, and the opponent concedes.
G2 was more or less the same thing on a grander scale. This time we both had pretty threatening armies (mine threatening lethal in 1-2 swings, his in 2-3) and he casts his fire magic again. This time he's more careful, assigning 4 damage to my Archdruid and 1 to my innocent little elves. I fire off my CoCo, getting an Eternal Witness and a Scavenging Ooze, and Golgari Charm to regenerate my army. Opponent concedes.
It was a fun day.
Honestly, I'm not sure what I would have boarded out even if I were playing Chords. Most of the time I took out my Leads, since I was playing against combo decks and didn't think I'd have time for them.
Shardless isn't a true control deck in the same sense of the words, though I would contend that Lands is. Tezzeret is cool and interesting but not in the same class as these two. UR Landstill had a small amount of interesting success when Treasure Cruise was a thing. That's a card, by the way, which did suddenly make Shardless worse.
It's a great deck that a lot of people get really into. It should certainly be examined.