This is just a slight plus, but half the competitive decks running white or black already have stuff like Whip of Erebos and Blood Baron.
Also if you pair alms beast with Erebos God of the Dead (totally usable in your deck) you could negate it further.
But in general against aggro you don't care if they gain 2 life at a time, he'll just sit there and block. Against control they more often than not don't have creatures to block and it'll be a 3 - 4 turn clocks unless they use removal.
Green is probably the only color that gets big enough fast enough that the lifelink clause is a huge disadvantage.
This is the midrange list I've been playtesting with decent results against everything except decks with counterspells. Against aggro its essentially a race to 4 mana and one of your fat 6/6s. Against control its all about the grey merchant combo. The Sin Collectors and Lifebanes zombies have been all stars. I'm not sure about the number of Thoughtseizes I want in the mainboard yet, but probably 1 or 2. I'll probably swap out the renounce the guilds for some other things too since I haven't seen Baron as often.
I might swap out the whole Grey Merchant/ Enchant suite for lower curved more aggressive creatures to eat removal and trade.
In terms of efficiency for mana and reach I think Orzhov is second to none right now.
I would advocate for having enough burn/counters spells in the sideboard to make this deck creatureless. Esper control-esq is going to be at least 10% of the matchup for the forseeable future (to push out stuff like mono blue) and if you can mindgame them out of the 25% of their deck thats removal its a huge advantage.
I think if you get 20 games + in cockatrice against a diverse set of decks its a pretty good testing ground. A month ago I thought it was all luck that I won 9/10 games on Cockatrice with mono blue as a fun concept tempo deck and 2 weeks later you see people sweeping tournaments with it.
I would not be surprised if a deck with a creatureless sideboard plan swept the next tournament.
As a monoblue player I absolutely hate Esper Control right now. If they draw a thoughtseize by turn 3 and I don't have a counterspell for it, I lose more often than not since they see my combo pieces and strategy.
They also outgrind me once they get to 4 mana and can wrath.
My only defense right now is that quick aggro decks like RDW and Gruul completely shut down esper right now in all rounds except when they get their perfect T4 wrath and are pushing it to the fringe of the metagame.
I guess it means in general its still a pretty healthy standard....
Grixis and Esper have been the hardest matchups for me while piloting the blue aggro/tempo deck.
Thoughtseize, Counterspells and Board Wipes are enemies #1, #2, and #3. My variant of the deck is much more afraid of control than aggro, so I side in a full suite of Negates and Dispels replacing out Claustrophobias (especialy in Esper decks, alot of them are virtually creatureless).
At the end of the day it comes down to largely a game of luck of when and what people draw. I still haven't found a decent answer to supreme verdict: if you go all in your get board wiped if they draw it or they can grind you with singleton removals to prevent losing. Once a 7 mana Sphinxs Revelation or aetherling resolves its gg.
Most of these mid to late games against control I've only won because of Thassa's scry ability made me mana flood much less than the opponent.
Before this weekend I would've highly recommended mono blue with 3 Thassas and 0 or 1 Master of waves for a budget around $80. I won 8 games in a row on cockatrice with a variant 2 weeks ago. Unfortunately all their card pieces have doubled in price since that top place finish...
Right now I'd say mono red or green is probably the way to go.
I'm shocked at how low the counterspell count was. It seems like cavern is truly neutering all of them except Negate.
Also with Thragtusk at close to 50% why isn't Slaughter Games played more calling it? Nothing else except conditionally a Snapcaster Mage comes close to generating value anywhere near Thragtusk right now and pre-board removal seems like one of the best choices.
Jund Aggro with Vexing Devil + Varolz is definitely a real thing. Other marginal stuff I've seen with Varolz are strangleroot geist, spike jester, and dredge mangler. I've even seen some builds with gravecrawler to infinitely regen Varolz. If Putrefy didn't get released at the same time, Varolz would be damn hard to get rid of.
Overall I think straight up Naya or Gruul blitz builds are still faster, but since Varolz makes everything so big it might give the blitz decks some trouble.
One central problem with Roaring primadox is you have to burn mana to recast creatures every turn.
The other problem is creature removal is always infinitely common and you can get wrathed.
In my opinion Conjurer's Closet is just flat out better against most decks.
I also like farseek more than heartless summoning as ramp. See the other LD closet thread posted linked in an earlier post for full details on an R/G build.
I had a ton of fun and won both the DGM pre-release and the first dgm-gtc-rtr draft at my shop building decks around guildgates.
In particular Hold the Gates was stellar and outperformed even Aurelia and Voice of Resurgence as a bomb. Granted limited isn't standard, but bottom up rogue strategies are one of the few ways budget decks can become semi-competitive.
With DGM we get 5 efficient 2/4 power gatekeepers to help us grind as well as Maze's End as win con.
When designing a deck in this format I always envision 3 gauntlets it has to pass with non-pathetic win rates:
1) All out aggro, best embodied by Naya Blitz currently
2) Do nothing draw-go control, best embodied by Sphinx's Revelation + Supreme Verdict
3) Reanimator Strategies
Of those 3 decks, acidic slime is basically the only card in use that can stop maze's end from eeking out a win in 10 turns. The question then becomes: can a defensive guildgate based deck grind and trade efficiently to match the others?
The other cool thing about guildgates is that we're trading speed for versatility. Its actually totally feasible to play 5 color control with a 1 turn penalty.
I'll be brewing a defensive deck with a $30 or so budget, if anyone else has tested similar decks let me know.
Cut the reforge the souls down to 0 (or 1 if you want to have a surprise factor). you never want to have it in your opening hand or first draw since you can't cast it.
A $10 investment into 4x Ash Zealot will also make this deck way better. People will be much less likely to trade with it in combat. Also there's a reason mathematically most low curve aggro decks run 20 or 22 lands- any lower and your stuck with unplayable 1 land hands more often than you would like. Playing hope for land magic is not fun
Google Saito's gruul aggro list from when GTC first came out and use that as a starting point.
The stuffy doll's there for fun, so far I haven't run into a problem since its 1/60 cards, but I might up it to 2 or add in some other artifact. You only get the lock combo resolved in about 1/4 of your games anyways, the rest of the time its just a standard boros grind match.
Whats neat about possibility storm is the whole deck is build to take advantage of the symmetry effect. Notice there's 0 spells with X in it, the singleton pillar could potentially fetch a blasphemous act (at the cost of a 1/3 chance of an act fetching it instead), and all your instant burn spells are virtually interchangeable (the geistflame is no more.. it didnt do enough so just another spear).
Whats bad for me is opponents with thragtusk. Random 1 or 2 drop creature into thragtusk makes me really sad. However, its at the cost of making all of their spells random; for every arbor elf -> thragtusk there's a thragtusk -> avacyn's pilgrim.
The biggest weakness in this deck is still the fact that Curse of Exhaustion is virtually useless on its own. Since everything is an instant or has flash, its effect is trivial: very very rarely will an opponent cast more than 1 sorcery spell a turn naturally. The only time its actually done good is against aggro decks with Burn-Tree Emissary who can't combo off and certain control decks that like to cast alot of sorceries and draw alot of cards (fogdoor for example). In theory its supposed to stop snapcaster mage dead but Dryad Militant has just been much better at that job.
Melek is interesting but I'm convinced adding another color will make my combos even less consistent. Remember I'm already running 3 in this deck and thankfully all the pieces of the combos synergize or are usable on their own (except Curse of Exhaustion).
This deck still needs considerable work. So far I've decided to bump the guildgates from 2 to 4 since I was getting color screwed too much. Truefire Paladin is out and Geistflame is out. 2 O-rings are being mainboarded.
Also if you pair alms beast with Erebos God of the Dead (totally usable in your deck) you could negate it further.
But in general against aggro you don't care if they gain 2 life at a time, he'll just sit there and block. Against control they more often than not don't have creatures to block and it'll be a 3 - 4 turn clocks unless they use removal.
Green is probably the only color that gets big enough fast enough that the lifelink clause is a huge disadvantage.
4 Godless Shrine
4 Desecration Demon
4 Alms Beast
3 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
8 Swamp
8 Plains
2 Celestial Flare
4 Underworld Connections
4 Hero's Downfall
2 Merciless Eviction
3 Sin Collector
1 Whip of Erebos
2 Lifebane Zombie
3 Doom Blade
3 Ultimate Price
1 Pack Rat
This is the midrange list I've been playtesting with decent results against everything except decks with counterspells. Against aggro its essentially a race to 4 mana and one of your fat 6/6s. Against control its all about the grey merchant combo. The Sin Collectors and Lifebanes zombies have been all stars. I'm not sure about the number of Thoughtseizes I want in the mainboard yet, but probably 1 or 2. I'll probably swap out the renounce the guilds for some other things too since I haven't seen Baron as often.
I might swap out the whole Grey Merchant/ Enchant suite for lower curved more aggressive creatures to eat removal and trade.
In terms of efficiency for mana and reach I think Orzhov is second to none right now.
I would not be surprised if a deck with a creatureless sideboard plan swept the next tournament.
They also outgrind me once they get to 4 mana and can wrath.
My only defense right now is that quick aggro decks like RDW and Gruul completely shut down esper right now in all rounds except when they get their perfect T4 wrath and are pushing it to the fringe of the metagame.
I guess it means in general its still a pretty healthy standard....
Thoughtseize, Counterspells and Board Wipes are enemies #1, #2, and #3. My variant of the deck is much more afraid of control than aggro, so I side in a full suite of Negates and Dispels replacing out Claustrophobias (especialy in Esper decks, alot of them are virtually creatureless).
At the end of the day it comes down to largely a game of luck of when and what people draw. I still haven't found a decent answer to supreme verdict: if you go all in your get board wiped if they draw it or they can grind you with singleton removals to prevent losing. Once a 7 mana Sphinxs Revelation or aetherling resolves its gg.
Most of these mid to late games against control I've only won because of Thassa's scry ability made me mana flood much less than the opponent.
Right now I'd say mono red or green is probably the way to go.
Also with Thragtusk at close to 50% why isn't Slaughter Games played more calling it? Nothing else except conditionally a Snapcaster Mage comes close to generating value anywhere near Thragtusk right now and pre-board removal seems like one of the best choices.
Overall I think straight up Naya or Gruul blitz builds are still faster, but since Varolz makes everything so big it might give the blitz decks some trouble.
The other problem is creature removal is always infinitely common and you can get wrathed.
In my opinion Conjurer's Closet is just flat out better against most decks.
I also like farseek more than heartless summoning as ramp. See the other LD closet thread posted linked in an earlier post for full details on an R/G build.
In particular Hold the Gates was stellar and outperformed even Aurelia and Voice of Resurgence as a bomb. Granted limited isn't standard, but bottom up rogue strategies are one of the few ways budget decks can become semi-competitive.
With DGM we get 5 efficient 2/4 power gatekeepers to help us grind as well as Maze's End as win con.
When designing a deck in this format I always envision 3 gauntlets it has to pass with non-pathetic win rates:
1) All out aggro, best embodied by Naya Blitz currently
2) Do nothing draw-go control, best embodied by Sphinx's Revelation + Supreme Verdict
3) Reanimator Strategies
Of those 3 decks, acidic slime is basically the only card in use that can stop maze's end from eeking out a win in 10 turns. The question then becomes: can a defensive guildgate based deck grind and trade efficiently to match the others?
The other cool thing about guildgates is that we're trading speed for versatility. Its actually totally feasible to play 5 color control with a 1 turn penalty.
I'll be brewing a defensive deck with a $30 or so budget, if anyone else has tested similar decks let me know.
Exquisite Blood + Vizkopa Guildmage
Too bad Exquisite Blood is useless on its own...
A $10 investment into 4x Ash Zealot will also make this deck way better. People will be much less likely to trade with it in combat. Also there's a reason mathematically most low curve aggro decks run 20 or 22 lands- any lower and your stuck with unplayable 1 land hands more often than you would like. Playing hope for land magic is not fun
Google Saito's gruul aggro list from when GTC first came out and use that as a starting point.
Whats neat about possibility storm is the whole deck is build to take advantage of the symmetry effect. Notice there's 0 spells with X in it, the singleton pillar could potentially fetch a blasphemous act (at the cost of a 1/3 chance of an act fetching it instead), and all your instant burn spells are virtually interchangeable (the geistflame is no more.. it didnt do enough so just another spear).
Whats bad for me is opponents with thragtusk. Random 1 or 2 drop creature into thragtusk makes me really sad. However, its at the cost of making all of their spells random; for every arbor elf -> thragtusk there's a thragtusk -> avacyn's pilgrim.
The biggest weakness in this deck is still the fact that Curse of Exhaustion is virtually useless on its own. Since everything is an instant or has flash, its effect is trivial: very very rarely will an opponent cast more than 1 sorcery spell a turn naturally. The only time its actually done good is against aggro decks with Burn-Tree Emissary who can't combo off and certain control decks that like to cast alot of sorceries and draw alot of cards (fogdoor for example). In theory its supposed to stop snapcaster mage dead but Dryad Militant has just been much better at that job.
Melek is interesting but I'm convinced adding another color will make my combos even less consistent. Remember I'm already running 3 in this deck and thankfully all the pieces of the combos synergize or are usable on their own (except Curse of Exhaustion).
This deck still needs considerable work. So far I've decided to bump the guildgates from 2 to 4 since I was getting color screwed too much. Truefire Paladin is out and Geistflame is out. 2 O-rings are being mainboarded.