Kiki Pod has never really been as strong as Melira Pod. It was flavour of the month for a while but that's about it.
The biggest thing was UWR rising to dominance. You see, Kiki Pod, at least the second iteration of it that I played, banked really hard on the combo happening. It didn't play generally good creatures, it was just reliant on the combo. The original one had Kitchen Finks, but then CFB came along and said "Finks really doesn't do anything", and they were right. You never won from Finks, it was just a good card for Pod. So they removed it and added in cards like Deceiver Exarch and Phantasmal Image. And then you had this glass-cannon combo deck that required two pieces. It was considerably hard to pull off against a deck like UWR with tons of removal for you.
Eventually Kiki Pod just started fading back into obscurity. It's still a fine deck and has some success here and there but it's not at the level Melira Pod is. It doesn't have all the same options and isn't as flexible. Yeah, more recent versions play cards like Finks and Redcap to trend away from the combo version, but it's still heavily reliant on the combo happening.
Right now I think it's like tier 1.5. I think Affinity, Melira Pod, Jund, BG Rock, Twin, and UWR are all better than it. Now you're deciding to play a deck that you accept is worse than others and realize you should just play a better deck. If you really enjoy the deck and don't want to play at the PT it's fine, but otherwise I'd recommend to play something else.
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- darksteel88
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Member for 12 years, 1 month, and 27 days
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Nov 24, 2013
darksteel88 posted a message on Scrolls is brokenSo after they reset the Scrolls ranking I have steadily been going up. I've only lost a couple of games, and honestly, the majority of the games you lose are to poor draws on your part.Posted in: darksteel88 Blog
I remember one game in particular that I lost, I had almost no Growth and it was stupid. When I scooped I'd played probably one Growth card the entire game. Yeah. Those are the games you lose, when the RNG just screws you over and you draw the wrong cards. His deck was also well suited to beat me, being really fast aggro and having haste creatures. Funny enough though, we played each other again next game and I crushed him.
I've gotten up to a 1600 rating now and I'm in the top 50. Here's a pic for proof: http://i.imgur.com/xPzizJT.jpg
I have a feeling that if I'm playing against actual Scrolls pros, the deck will flop on itself. But as the ratings fluctuate over the next few days/weeks and correct themselves, the deck still seems good.
Mojan has talked about indirectly nerfing this deck, by limiting the number of cards you can draw in a turn. I really hope they don't, I like playing with myself (pun intended). It makes people mad that I don't interact with them, and that's, well, delicious. Let me feast on your delicious tears as you cry to mom about how I beat you fair and square.
I think some number of Pothers is potentially good. Someone cast Binding Root on my Golem, making it so it can't move. That was annoying as hell. But I suppose it's not back breaking. Pothers let me win faster but in reality, every non-Growth deck should have adequate answers to kill it on any given turn, meaning it won't live anyways. I do still think that I want to try some other cards out though.
Rigged seems good. I can rig any structure and trade their unit for it, stemming the early game. I'm not sure how good it makes things or whatnot but it doesn't seem awful. It costs only 1 and it does everything I need early game.
I'm also not convinced with Decimation. I rarely cast it for the -1 ability, only to kill an idol. Sometimes I get value in that it kills the row so my Golem can move, but that's a minor consequence when I have Burns and Kabonks to kill the memorials anyways. It seems largely useless outside the fact that it turns a 6-turn clock into a 3-turn clock. It's possible that we lose too fast and I have to just cut it.
Still, it's cool the deck is working. I'm also glad I can post here without fear of people seeing anything. I don't want them to know until I'm like number 1 on the ladder and go "well gee, look at what I have". I think when I get to rank 1, I'm taking a screenshot and putting it, along with the deck, up on a site. -
Nov 22, 2013
darksteel88 posted a message on Scrolls is brokenOkay they reset the rankings on Scrolls and I got up to an 800 Rating in like 9 games or something. This deck is pretty good.Posted in: darksteel88 Blog
The deck does have some flaws:
1. Consistency. If you draw poorly early, you can lose. Literally drawing 0 memorial openers without any Summons will lose you the game. You can lose off the opening hand or drawing poorly, so it's somewhat of a gamble there.
2. Fast aggro. If they can kill you before you get to critical mass, it's hard. You rely really heavily on the first End of Reason you cast to wipe the board, and if it's lacklustre you're screwed.
3. One-shotting idols. Even though we basically do the same, they can do it against us. Someone once went Frost Gale into Loyal Darkling into Rat King into Necrogeddon. Two damage to my idol, then 9 power hitting it. I won the game but it was insanely close. Necrogeddon is a really scary card.
This deck makes people mad. I enjoy that. I enjoy watching someone say "damn wtf is this it's stupid". I get a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside. I know, I'm a jerk. But hey, deal with it.
I decided to post the list simply because I want to have evidence I was playing it first. When people start playing it too or people claim who the inventor was, well, you saw it here first.
Without further ado, here is the list:
3 Desert Memorial
3 Woodland Memorial
3 Law Memorial
3 Tribal Memorial
3 Sand Pact Memorial
3 Stone Pact Memorial
3 Summons
3 Eye of Eagle
3 Kabonk
2 Pother
3 Heritage
3 Imperial Resources
3 Burn
3 Sister of the Fox
3 Fertile Soil
1 Faith BLessing
1 Solemn Giant
1 Decimation
3 End of Reason
Basically the deck is a combo deck. You cast Memorials to get stupid amounts of resources and then draw 30 cards in a turn and cast just as many spells. End of Reason being able to sac Memorials means you can effectively Wrath with them. The rest is a ton of draw spells in various combinations.
Your win condition is Solemn Giant + Decimation. You can, for the measly cost of 10, cast and cd the Solemn Giant to 0, dealing a straight eight to an idol. Then you Decimation and it's done. If you end of Reason with Giant in play, doesn't die. The Decimation isn't necessary but attacking 6 times with Giant is inefficient. Decimation proved to be the best card choice for a second win condition since it can kill dudes as well.
Going forward I want to try cutting Pother. Maybe I can add something like Pushback and Tickbomb? I almost never cast Pother and I'd like to have more utility. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Flusterstorm is the best Storm answer around if what you want to do is counter them going off. I feel like that's probably wrong in Modern. Flusterstorm is a Legacy staple because Storm tends to go off much earlier and with less of a guarantee. In Modern when you're playing ways to just infinitely chain stuff like with Pyromancer's Ascension or Baral/Electromancer, this card loses effectiveness. An opponent realistically could just go off again. That being said, Flusterstorm is still an okay answer in some other matchups so there's a bit of a trade off. I would guess people won't play Flusterstorm but it's worth keeping in mind.
Winds of Abandon seems pretty cool. It's very similar to Settle the Wreckage with some minor differences. For one, your opponent doesn't have to attack so you can clear off some other stuff. Secondly you can cast it for two mana so it's not dead if you don't have the mana. I think it might be better than a sideboard Settle the Wreckage.
Rebuild is much like Hurkyl's Recall except it costs one more and can cycle. I think it's bad because if you're boarding in Hurkyl's Recall then you don't have any reason to cycle it. Against a deck like Affinity this card is so powerful that you'd be fine just casting it 10/10 times.
Not sure what I would want to fetch with this but any card that says search your library for an artifact seems like there's potential. Not something I'm excited about but something that I'd keep in the back of my mind.
Prohibit doesn't seem amazing but who knows. There are plenty of decks where this is just Counterspell and the fact that it scales a bit is nice. I'm guessing that if you run the numbers it won't make sense, but counters with unique conditions at reasonable prices are, like Tribute Mage, things to take a look at.
I think generally MH doesn't add much for this deck. If anything I'd be more excited about people trying new decks and your ability to play this into a generic field knowing we have a great average matchup and game against basically anything.
Sword, Nacatl, Ancestral, and Bitterblossom all did absolutely nothing. Sword, Ancestral, and Bitterblossom all started on the banlist because they were scared from other formats. Nacatl got on there after they had one tournament with Zoo painfully dominant while nobody prepped Modern, and the offender (Punishing Fire) got banned at the same time. All of these cards came off and did absolutely nothing.
Jace and BBE both came off to revitalize archetypes, but haven't had a significant enough long-term impact. Jace just isn't seeing the play some people thought (it was never going to break the format), and sees play in some UWx control builds typically alongside Teferi. Recently Jund players have gone over to BG anyway, so they're perfectly fine without BBE. Both of them are fine cards seeing regular play, but not altering the landscape of the format in any significant way.
Valakut creates archetypes, and whether they're tier 1 or not, they're still recognizable decks that people respect. And to top that, Valakut has basically always been in something since it's been around, whether it's RUG Scapeshift, RG Scapeshift, or Titanshift. It's also a fairly different archetype than a lot of other things so it adds another dimension to the format.
With imperfect mana, you have to make tradeoffs for your cards. If you want to splash a colour, it hurts you consistency or your life. There are meaningful consequences, and there's meant to be meaningful consequences. Take, for example, GB decks before we got Fatal Push. Often, they would play red or white because they just couldn't deal with the fact they had bad removal. They'd play cards like Victim of Night because they had to, not because they thought it was good. You'd splash white because white just happened to have Path, or a card like Lingering Souls.
What happens when decks just start splashing answers to problematic situations? Let me just splash some life gain. Blue deck having trouble with creatures? Let me just play Path because it's free.
DRS is kind of an interesting mana dork because it's only sometimes a mana dork. You need fetches you don't always have, but also you used the other modes as well in ways that made it not strictly a Birds or something. That was the format where we had tons of speedy decks like Affinity and Storm (before the ban of Seething Song), but also slow decks like Birthing Pod (where they would cut combo vs BGx).
It's worth noting the 25th land being a manland makes it not as bad for flooding, because it's basically a creature and not useless.
It's also worth pointing out some people definitely played 24 in Jund lists back when we had BBE and DRS. Yuuya top 8'd PT RTR with 4 4-drops and 7 3-drops playing 24 lands. Ochoa had the same configuration with 24, Willy Edel had 25 but had a slightly higher curve which included a 5th 4-drop in the main. I don't have any stats to properly back it up, I just went to some coverage data where I knew I could find some BBEs in Jund.
GRN unsurprisingly had nothing for us. Without gold cards in UW there wasn't really going to be anything. Maybe in the next set, but I never have high hopes for sets.
Teferi is actually quite good, been playing him in Jeskai Control. Being able to untap lands is much better than it sounds, especially when we might be able to untap 4 mana to EOT Gifts. I think Teferi is probably better in Jeskai because more interaction means more chances to keep him alive. Still, I think he does have some potential and I'd certainly play one copy until I was certain he wasn't good.
Mindslaver seems particularly bad right now because graveyard strategies are back. Storm is good again and Dredge has been putting up some impressive results since Creeping Chill got printed. So I'd be weary of dipping too far into the graveyard strategy. With people playing cards like Surgical, Cage, Relic, Leyline of the Void, Spellbomb, all of it's bad for that. Cut the combo, free up slots.
I think this is a pretty niche card, but I think it has some small amount of potential in the sideboard. Modern has a surprising number of 1 CMC cards, especially things you normally can't interact with like Aether Vial and Map. I would need to do a full breakdown of the format to see if this is worth playing, but my inclination is that it's worth considering.
The first ability isn't fantastic, it just sort of slows down your opponent a little bit. Good against Burn or BGx types of decks with Thoughtseize and Liliana. But what I'm more concerned about is the secondary effect. Neutering tokens can be good, and I've played cards in other decks that do it. I'm not saying this is a slam dunk of a card, but in the right environment, this card might appear in a sideboard.
Particularly good against Collected Company decks. The fact it costs 1 means you can fit it on the board at any time, and since those decks are typically very light on removal, you don't care that much. Merfolk would probably like this card for sideboards, us probably not as much. Even still, I could see CoCo going on a rise and wanting to play this. There's a similar creature that I'm not remembering, a white flier from a couple years back. I haven't ever wanted to play that, but I'm not sure if 1cmc changes my opinion.
This is definitely the highlight card of the set. Basically paying 1 more for a modal wrath that offers the ability to kill artifacts/enchantments on the second mode. My gut reaction is to not want to play this in the main, but sideboard one copy.
With this card, you're effectively asking whether slowing wrath by a turn is made up for the fact that in some cases, it does what wrath cannot. Instinctively, Wrath often needs to be cast as soon as you can. I have lost games where if I had cast wrath a turn earlier, I would have been fine. Turn 5 on the draw seems really slow, and I feel like I want to have the 4cmc wrath effects main. I do like the idea of this in the sideboard. I like more expensive wraths there, especially since you can optionally board it in when you see an opponent with a deck where the second mode is good.
I think there just aren't enough decks where this is good enough. It's fine against Lantern, KCI, Bogles, Affinity (though regular wrath is fine). These decks just aren't popular enough to support this card the way some people might think. Sometimes it will be good, but on average, it will probably just be a slightly worse wrath.
I also don't think Haven is that important. It's not the worst card I've ever seen or tested, but it's fine. I don't tend to need a second Ugin though, I can't tell you the last time I had to trade it. Now, I also don't know if I've gotten into situations where I've taken alternative lines because it would die. I would guess probably never. It's just almost always wrathing the board and then it's hard for opponents to come back. Even if it dies, killing everything is typically good enough to stabilize.
I may play the deck again sometime soon, but not enough to test Champion and make a decision about it. I took UWR for a spin last time.
Champion of Wits is really the only interesting card. I'm still not sure what I think about it, but it doesn't seem like the worst idea I've ever seen. The merit of it blocking has potential to offset the extra card. It is a bit awkward that you're trading card advantage for a small creature on board. On one hand, it does block, but it also does give your opponent opportunities to use otherwise dead removal spells. Eternalize is a nice mechanic though. I'm not convinced it is better, but it could end up like Wall of Omens, where it's better than Remand in some metas because it blocks. My gut tells me that the small size on this doesn't make it enough better than Thirst, but I've been wrong before.
I have warmed up a lot to Teferi having played with it/against it in various formats. The card untapping lands makes it so easy to play on 5 and leave up Remand / Path.
UR Storm:
Amulet:
KCI: