I think I'd have to agree with kahmos...sure, rabblemaster is great when unanswered, but most of the time, he's falling down to 2cmc's removal, bile blight, lightning strike and the more frustrating wildslash/magma spray lol.
Yet all these things also kill Vaultbreaker. There just aren't many decks depending upon main deck sorcery speed removal such that dash is of greater value that overall card power. Sure, decks that lean hard on Drown in Sorrow are great vs Rabblemaster and terrible vs. Vaultbreaker, but that is why Vaultbreaker is a better sideboard option.
In this build Chandra is much better than Outpost Siege. The +1 on Chandra when you are playing aggressive creatures is very powerful. She is pretty tough too, so leaving her unprotected is often not as big a liability, particularly when you are forcing your opponent to keep everyone on defense.
Gratz, I played a devotion list almost identical to this the week before game day and came 4th, I was going to and maybe should of played it game day but sligh was first and second that day so I switched to that. While testing on xmage me and you played a great close match which my sligh list won so convinced me to go sligh rather than devotion lol.. went 3-2 on the day, both losses where to flooding which is annoying and now I wish I played devotion:)
My devotion list started with mardu scout, I may try the swiftspears.
Hah, small world. Yes, the deck matches up poorly against Sligh and if Sligh and Warriors continue to grow in popularity, this deck will suffer double. First because it has a tough time with those decks and second because the hate for those decks impacts this one negatively as well. If Sligh is that popular, this is probably not a great choice, but you could run Anger of the Gods in the board, although that would be awkward at best.
Swiftspear is great, however, I would advise that you add it and not cut the Scout. The deck isn't completely dependent on the early game, but you really want to have board presence by the end of your second turn. 12 one and two drops combined ensures that this happens in the vast majority of games. You cannot reliably go toe-to-toe with the green decks in the mid game, so you have to get an early lead. Sure, a turn 12 Swiftspear feels super lame, but with Prowess and haste, it can still do some work. None of the other one drops available have the potential, in my opinion, which is why the split is 4 1 CMC and 8 2 CMC cards.
EDIT
Just found out that my deck helped the young woman I loaned it to win the evening Game Day as well. So all-in-all not a bad showing.
R1 - beat G/B constellation 2-1. Glad I kept the Shatter in the board for this event. Interesting games. Tasigur is annoying, but unless they turbo him out, he just gets flown over. And if they do turbo him out, the Whip is less useful. The deck really made me work for the wins. As always, lifegain is a problem.
R2 - beat Abzan midrange 2-1. Chandra was boss. As with most recent Abzan lists, this one had ditched Caryatid. allowing me to generate consistent early pressure. And from the Department of the Obvious, double Eidolon of the Great Revel is really good against a deck built around efficient removal. Tough match up post board; I was never able to get much devotion, but 0'ing Chandra gave me the power to get more threats and got me the win. Sorin is really tough to beat and I am glad this build had only 1 in the 75.
R3 - Sultai Ramp 2-0. Basically ramp to Ugin or Villainous Wealth. Mana dorks and Frontier Siege were the usual suspects but this one also had Kruphix, God of Horizons to max the value out of the mana. Games weren't close. He got mana screwed game one, I hit the perfect curve game two, he lacked removal, I landed a Fanatic of Mogis for 8 and then, surviving a scare from Feed the Clan, was able to finish him off.
R4 - R/W Aggro 2-0. Game one, on the play, always a step faster. Game two, he had to mull to 5 and although he looked like he was going to make a game of it, the initial resource disparity put me quickly in the driver's seat. I feel like this is a pretty easy match up as the main reason to run white is Chain to the Rocks and my deck presents very few good targets for that spell. So ends up being close to a mirror match with them having worse mana.
The Ugin mat is really sweet. I left my deck at the store with one of the employees to run at their evening event. If she takes home the mat, I am going to nickname the deck Ugin slayer. As usual, had fun and got to meet some good people.
Surprised to see that no one else has moved in on this particular style of deck. The deck is fun and rewarding to play. 11-2 at last two events isn't bad either.
I am going to Game Day with my son. The promo card is a way for us to remember the time we spend together. We have a special section of our binder for all the promo and prerelease cards. Playability doesn't define value for everyone.
I was fortunate enough to win KTK Game Day and will be thrilled if I can pull off a repeat but know that is unlikely. Even after playing in "higher level" events, Game Day is still a thrill for me. You never know what kind of deck you will face and the games are almost always really good.
Seeker is what helps me win versus a lot of the aggro decks out there. It also helps to have a 2 drop for when you want to be the aggressor.
I have found both of these to be true. It is an amazingly high variance card. There are times that you can ride an early Seeker and couple of key spells to an insurmountable advantage. There are other times that he is an off curve vanilla bear with zero meaningful impact. Part of the difficulty I had with Mardu was, compared to Abzan, the two drop spot is very weak. A Deathdealer, Fleecemane or Heir of the Wilds always has impact, no matter when it is drawn or played. Mardu lacks a two drop that scales well to the late game and, as a result, just punts certain games away even when you have what otherwise looks like a reasonable draw.
If anyone has found a way around this, I would appreciate hearing it. I would like to get back into the Mardu fold. I have tried Tymaret and tokens, and while it worked in some match ups, it suffered the same issue as Seeker - low impact in too many games.
309 at the Atlantic Regionals. The gaming was fun, but the logistics were rather poor. There was a couple incidents of conflicting information given and gaming started over an hour behind schedule. Furthermore, the facilities were grossly inadequate for the number of attendees. 309 competitors plus staff and just 3 toilets for each sex. The building was an abandoned Wal-Mart that apparently hadn't had the heat on for quite some time, with everyone noting how cold it was inside (it was below freezing outside).
That said, it was a lot of fun and (cue vitriolic meta-game discussion thread-jack) I played all 9 rounds and never faced the same deck twice, which, as a mostly casual player really adds to my overall enjoyment. I hope that SCG follows up with participants, takes their suggestions and works to improve the event as I think it has real potential.
Losses were to 4 color Soul of Theros that just had way too much lifelink and I had no way to interact with a creature that size or the graveyard; then to Abzan Aggro where we traded resources and he got a little more value than me out of a couple of his spells, earning him the victory. Overall, the event was fun (although quite poorly managed if I am honest) and I had a lot of interesting matches. I need more practice with the sideboard, but thankfully, the deck shouldn't sideboard heavily very often.
Mardu Scout was like Lightning Bolt with buyback for R in a lot of matches. So good. Eidolon of the Great Revel was an excellent way to constrict the opponent's options. In a great match against Mardu, I had my opponent to 2 but he had cleared my board of everything except Outpost Siege on Kahns mode. He had four cards in hand and I none, when I resolved an Eidolon. He let me know after the match concluded that three of his four cards cost three or less. He could do nothing, having his Butcher of the Horde sit on defense while I got two chances per turn to draw burn. Which I did.
The deck is a lot of fun to play (the most important thing for me as I am not a particularly serious player) and takes a lot of thought. You have to really weigh the risks of casting each permanent because the chances of winning without some devotion enabled power is not that high. Sure, sometimes you come out fast and burn them out, other times you just Phoenix them to death, but most of the time the deck needs all the different angles of attack to pull off the win. In terms of damage, I often get (approximately) 25% from early creatures, 25% from late creatures, 25% from devotion enabled power and 25% from burn. Knowing when a certain part of the plan isn't going to pull its fair share or when one can be expected to over perform will absolutely make a difference in your win/loss percentage.
The sideboard needs work, but I am pretty happy with the result all things considered. I will be happy to answer any questions or talk about match ups if anyone is interested.
I haven't played this deck with the FRF additions, but in the KTK versions I tried, Bile Blight was a must. Handles token strategies that can cause you real headaches with ease and makes a the big dumb animal into a pussycat 1/2 that dies to anything it blocks.
If token decks do well, Bile Blight, Drown in Sorrow and Anger of the Gods will show up in greater quantities. At that Brimaz will shine. But until then, your analysis of the power differential makes sense to me.
Ride Down is a very effective card for this deck in my experience. There is nearly always a situation where you will be facing an attack that is only marginally profitable; Ride Down flips those situations completely.
I like the deck but would suggest that you see if you can add Herald of Torment. Against Caryatid/Courser decks that gum up the ground, Herald lets you keep up the pressure with an early, hard hitting flier. Later in the game, the bestow ability also lets your early ground guys who have been stonewalled be relevant again. Often if you bestow Herald on a token, that token will have to be a target for spot removal, and that puts you ahead. Obviously, a flying Rabblemaster with +3/+3 is just go clean fun as well.
I have tested a little Flamewake Phonenix and while he often does very good work, I am not sure I have the right build for the card. It feels like it would be at home as the top end of a fast deck, but then the Ferocious trigger won't happen. It is probably just that I haven't found the right home for it yet, but I am not sure it cleanly slots into an existing deck.
What deck are you playing against that has drown, anger, end hostilities, perilous vault and crux of fate? your opponent is most likely only going to have 1 of those sweepers. There's also the fact that your opponent has to actually have the sweeper on turn 3 in order to blow you out. We're an aggro deck, having lands like temple's come into play tapped sounds like aids when all you want to turn is curve from turn 1 to turn 4 and kill them as fast as possible. Also taking damage from playing your lands and thoughtseize is just going to make you lose to something like boss sligh. If the metagame allows you to play pains lands, fetch lands and mana confluence without caring about decks that are faster then you by all means hedge more against the drown / anger's.
You appear to have misread what I wrote. It isn't that one deck has all those sweepers, but all those sweepers do see significant play across the meta. Right now, most of the mid range decks have the ability to transform into control decks after sideboarding. Yes, they have to have the sweeper for it to get you, but they also often have access to a lot of one-for-one removal.
I never advocated for adding scry lands to this deck. Not sure why that was mentioned.
Yes, with the painlands and confluence, the three color Mardu aggro deck will lose to anything faster than it and, in fact, to many decks that are the same speed since it hastens its own demise so effectively. No deck has it all. What I do know is that with token strategies being popular, many of the cards that are good against them work very well against traditional creature based aggro like Mono-black aggro, B/W warriors, and Mono-red. This is why the mini-sweepers are such popular sideboard options; they are solid answers to a big chunk of decks. In my meta, Abzan Aggro will have two or more Drown in Sorrow in the sideboard and likely the full compliment of Bile Blight in the 75. Abzan Midrange typically packs 6 or more sweeper/mini-sweeper effects in the 75, then four Bile Blight and some other removal.
I am not saying I have the answer but I am relatively confident that I know the problem these aggro decks face. You can and will win the majority of your game 1s, but best of three is another story unless you have a good plan for the hate cards.
I have run a somewhat similar deck with 24 lands. With just two Thoughtseize and 4 Seeker of the Way main, I think you can look at adding more temples, which will help with flood/screw issues. You aren't running Chained to the rocks, so don't need the basic mountain for that reason like many Mardu decks. I would try -2 Plains, -1 Swamp, -1 Mountain, +2 Temple of Silence, +1 Temple of Malice. Yes, there are cases where this can hurt you, but I think it would be a net positive.
For reference, here is what I ran (and I wasn't 100% happy with the mana base):
I put a high priority on early black for Bile Blight because of all the token decks. Went 4-2 with minimal testing at an IQ, and would take out one Mana Confluence for another Temple of Malice and maybe even look at pulling a basic for another temple. Also, I'd go go double Chandra and put Sarkhan in the binder.
With FRF release coming, I have been messing with the new Flamewake Phoenix. The RR on three is a massive PITA if I want to be sure to have reliable access to Bile Blight in the main and Drown in Sorrow out of the sideboard.
Yet all these things also kill Vaultbreaker. There just aren't many decks depending upon main deck sorcery speed removal such that dash is of greater value that overall card power. Sure, decks that lean hard on Drown in Sorrow are great vs Rabblemaster and terrible vs. Vaultbreaker, but that is why Vaultbreaker is a better sideboard option.
20 Mountain
3 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Creatures: 25
2 Ashcloud Phoenix
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
3 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Flamewake Phoenix
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Mardu Scout
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Crater's Claws
4 Lightning Strike
4 Stoke the Flames
Planeswalkers: 2
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
2 Hammer of Purphoros
1 Harness by Force
2 Outpost Siege
2 Peak Eruption
3 Scouring Sands
3 Searing Blood
2 Shatter
In this build Chandra is much better than Outpost Siege. The +1 on Chandra when you are playing aggressive creatures is very powerful. She is pretty tough too, so leaving her unprotected is often not as big a liability, particularly when you are forcing your opponent to keep everyone on defense.
Hah, small world. Yes, the deck matches up poorly against Sligh and if Sligh and Warriors continue to grow in popularity, this deck will suffer double. First because it has a tough time with those decks and second because the hate for those decks impacts this one negatively as well. If Sligh is that popular, this is probably not a great choice, but you could run Anger of the Gods in the board, although that would be awkward at best.
Swiftspear is great, however, I would advise that you add it and not cut the Scout. The deck isn't completely dependent on the early game, but you really want to have board presence by the end of your second turn. 12 one and two drops combined ensures that this happens in the vast majority of games. You cannot reliably go toe-to-toe with the green decks in the mid game, so you have to get an early lead. Sure, a turn 12 Swiftspear feels super lame, but with Prowess and haste, it can still do some work. None of the other one drops available have the potential, in my opinion, which is why the split is 4 1 CMC and 8 2 CMC cards.
EDIT
Just found out that my deck helped the young woman I loaned it to win the evening Game Day as well. So all-in-all not a bad showing.
20 Mountain
3 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Creatures: 25
2 Ashcloud Phoenix
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
3 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Flamewake Phoenix
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Mardu Scout
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Crater's Claws
4 Lightning Strike
4 Stoke the Flames
Planeswalkers: 2
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
2 Hammer of Purphoros
1 Harness by Force
2 Outpost Siege
2 Peak Eruption
3 Scouring Sands
3 Searing Blood
2 Shatter
R1 - beat G/B constellation 2-1. Glad I kept the Shatter in the board for this event. Interesting games. Tasigur is annoying, but unless they turbo him out, he just gets flown over. And if they do turbo him out, the Whip is less useful. The deck really made me work for the wins. As always, lifegain is a problem.
R2 - beat Abzan midrange 2-1. Chandra was boss. As with most recent Abzan lists, this one had ditched Caryatid. allowing me to generate consistent early pressure. And from the Department of the Obvious, double Eidolon of the Great Revel is really good against a deck built around efficient removal. Tough match up post board; I was never able to get much devotion, but 0'ing Chandra gave me the power to get more threats and got me the win. Sorin is really tough to beat and I am glad this build had only 1 in the 75.
R3 - Sultai Ramp 2-0. Basically ramp to Ugin or Villainous Wealth. Mana dorks and Frontier Siege were the usual suspects but this one also had Kruphix, God of Horizons to max the value out of the mana. Games weren't close. He got mana screwed game one, I hit the perfect curve game two, he lacked removal, I landed a Fanatic of Mogis for 8 and then, surviving a scare from Feed the Clan, was able to finish him off.
R4 - R/W Aggro 2-0. Game one, on the play, always a step faster. Game two, he had to mull to 5 and although he looked like he was going to make a game of it, the initial resource disparity put me quickly in the driver's seat. I feel like this is a pretty easy match up as the main reason to run white is Chain to the Rocks and my deck presents very few good targets for that spell. So ends up being close to a mirror match with them having worse mana.
The Ugin mat is really sweet. I left my deck at the store with one of the employees to run at their evening event. If she takes home the mat, I am going to nickname the deck Ugin slayer. As usual, had fun and got to meet some good people.
Surprised to see that no one else has moved in on this particular style of deck. The deck is fun and rewarding to play. 11-2 at last two events isn't bad either.
I was fortunate enough to win KTK Game Day and will be thrilled if I can pull off a repeat but know that is unlikely. Even after playing in "higher level" events, Game Day is still a thrill for me. You never know what kind of deck you will face and the games are almost always really good.
I have found both of these to be true. It is an amazingly high variance card. There are times that you can ride an early Seeker and couple of key spells to an insurmountable advantage. There are other times that he is an off curve vanilla bear with zero meaningful impact. Part of the difficulty I had with Mardu was, compared to Abzan, the two drop spot is very weak. A Deathdealer, Fleecemane or Heir of the Wilds always has impact, no matter when it is drawn or played. Mardu lacks a two drop that scales well to the late game and, as a result, just punts certain games away even when you have what otherwise looks like a reasonable draw.
If anyone has found a way around this, I would appreciate hearing it. I would like to get back into the Mardu fold. I have tried Tymaret and tokens, and while it worked in some match ups, it suffered the same issue as Seeker - low impact in too many games.
That said, it was a lot of fun and (cue vitriolic meta-game discussion thread-jack) I played all 9 rounds and never faced the same deck twice, which, as a mostly casual player really adds to my overall enjoyment. I hope that SCG follows up with participants, takes their suggestions and works to improve the event as I think it has real potential.
20 Mountain
3 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Creatures: 25
2 Ashcloud Phoenix
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
3 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Flamewake Phoenix
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Mardu Scout
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Crater's Claws
4 Lightning Strike
4 Stoke the Flames
Planeswalkers: 2
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
2 Hammer of Purphoros
1 Harness by Force
2 Outpost Siege
2 Peak Eruption
1 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
2 Scouring Sands
2 Searing Blood
2 Shatter
Losses were to 4 color Soul of Theros that just had way too much lifelink and I had no way to interact with a creature that size or the graveyard; then to Abzan Aggro where we traded resources and he got a little more value than me out of a couple of his spells, earning him the victory. Overall, the event was fun (although quite poorly managed if I am honest) and I had a lot of interesting matches. I need more practice with the sideboard, but thankfully, the deck shouldn't sideboard heavily very often.
Mardu Scout was like Lightning Bolt with buyback for R in a lot of matches. So good. Eidolon of the Great Revel was an excellent way to constrict the opponent's options. In a great match against Mardu, I had my opponent to 2 but he had cleared my board of everything except Outpost Siege on Kahns mode. He had four cards in hand and I none, when I resolved an Eidolon. He let me know after the match concluded that three of his four cards cost three or less. He could do nothing, having his Butcher of the Horde sit on defense while I got two chances per turn to draw burn. Which I did.
The deck is a lot of fun to play (the most important thing for me as I am not a particularly serious player) and takes a lot of thought. You have to really weigh the risks of casting each permanent because the chances of winning without some devotion enabled power is not that high. Sure, sometimes you come out fast and burn them out, other times you just Phoenix them to death, but most of the time the deck needs all the different angles of attack to pull off the win. In terms of damage, I often get (approximately) 25% from early creatures, 25% from late creatures, 25% from devotion enabled power and 25% from burn. Knowing when a certain part of the plan isn't going to pull its fair share or when one can be expected to over perform will absolutely make a difference in your win/loss percentage.
The sideboard needs work, but I am pretty happy with the result all things considered. I will be happy to answer any questions or talk about match ups if anyone is interested.
I have tested a little Flamewake Phonenix and while he often does very good work, I am not sure I have the right build for the card. It feels like it would be at home as the top end of a fast deck, but then the Ferocious trigger won't happen. It is probably just that I haven't found the right home for it yet, but I am not sure it cleanly slots into an existing deck.
You appear to have misread what I wrote. It isn't that one deck has all those sweepers, but all those sweepers do see significant play across the meta. Right now, most of the mid range decks have the ability to transform into control decks after sideboarding. Yes, they have to have the sweeper for it to get you, but they also often have access to a lot of one-for-one removal.
I never advocated for adding scry lands to this deck. Not sure why that was mentioned.
Yes, with the painlands and confluence, the three color Mardu aggro deck will lose to anything faster than it and, in fact, to many decks that are the same speed since it hastens its own demise so effectively. No deck has it all. What I do know is that with token strategies being popular, many of the cards that are good against them work very well against traditional creature based aggro like Mono-black aggro, B/W warriors, and Mono-red. This is why the mini-sweepers are such popular sideboard options; they are solid answers to a big chunk of decks. In my meta, Abzan Aggro will have two or more Drown in Sorrow in the sideboard and likely the full compliment of Bile Blight in the 75. Abzan Midrange typically packs 6 or more sweeper/mini-sweeper effects in the 75, then four Bile Blight and some other removal.
I am not saying I have the answer but I am relatively confident that I know the problem these aggro decks face. You can and will win the majority of your game 1s, but best of three is another story unless you have a good plan for the hate cards.
For reference, here is what I ran (and I wasn't 100% happy with the mana base):
1 Battlefield Forge
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Caves of Koilos
2 Mana Confluence
3 Mountain
4 Nomad Outpost
3 Plains
3 Swamp
1 Temple of Malice
1 Temple of Triumph
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Creatures: 20
2 Ashcloud Phoenix
4 Butcher of the Horde
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Herald of Torment
4 Hushwing Gryff
4 Seeker of the Way
2 Bile Blight
4 Crackling Doom
2 Mardu Charm
4 Thoughtseize
Planeswalkers: 4
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1 Bile Blight
2 Drown in Sorrow
2 Hero's Downfall
4 Erase
3 Glare of Heresy
2 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Utter End
I put a high priority on early black for Bile Blight because of all the token decks. Went 4-2 with minimal testing at an IQ, and would take out one Mana Confluence for another Temple of Malice and maybe even look at pulling a basic for another temple. Also, I'd go go double Chandra and put Sarkhan in the binder.
With FRF release coming, I have been messing with the new Flamewake Phoenix. The RR on three is a massive PITA if I want to be sure to have reliable access to Bile Blight in the main and Drown in Sorrow out of the sideboard.