I can't watch the video at work -- do the videos make any case for running Abbot over Pyromancer?
I've always been unimpressed with Abbot outside of decks that can maximize the odds of a useful flip with an ultra low-curve and deck manipulation like serum visions. Here, if feeding Butcher is a major end goal I would have expected Pyro to outperform Abbot.
Edit: also hasn't Collective Brutality generally stolen a couple slots from Helix in Mardu's interaction suite?
I think the closest points of comparison are Young Pyromancer and Bitterblossom.
T2 Young Pyromancer can have 1-3 tokens ready when Butcher is ready to attack T4, and he himself can be a sacrifice if needed.
Bitter Blossom will make 2 flying tokens and ping you for 2 life. Hidden stockpile -- if you have the fetches! -- will also make 2 tokens, trading the life ping for no flying and a stricter casting cost (that might end up shocking you, anyways). Both Blossom and Stockpile are difficult to remove.
I think that as long as you're building your deck with enough cheap spells (which Mardu excels at) Young Pyro technically has the highest reward ceiling.
If Stockpile's sacrifice to scry ability were free I'd be *very* interested in it for an Aristocrats build, but as it is I find it "ok". What do you think?
To be fair, pushing damage through with a grounded 2/1 to activate an ability is a lot harder than pushing through damage with a flying 2/1 to activate an ability.
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EDIT: I did some more investigation of Metallic Mimic's interaction with CoCo and someone pointed me to Mimic's Gatherer notes:
-Creatures of the chosen type that enter the battlefield at the same time as Metallic Mimic won't enter with an additional +1/+1 counter.
-Even though Metallic Mimic is a Shapeshifter, other Shapeshifter creatures you control wont get a +1/+1 counter unless you chose Shapeshifter as Metallic Mimic entered the battlefield. If you do, that creature must be entering the battlefield as a Shapeshifter to get a +1/+1 counter. It wont get a +1/+1 counter if it enters the battlefield as a copy of a non-Shapeshifter creature.
Apparently since Mimic's ability is a replacement effect instead of a triggered ability like Lieutenant's, it doesn't activate until Mimic is completely on the battlefield. That's too bad, really, and makes the card significantly weaker in a CoCo build.
Skyship Plunderer also seems a lot better with Mimic than without it due to the greater likelihood that Plunderer's ability will be relevant – with Mimic a bit weaker than I realized the new house of cards is wobbling a bit...
If X/1s are going to be a problem is it worth reconsidering black for Zealous Persecution, Orzhov Pontiff, and/or Golgari Charm?
Another option is Emerge Unscathed, a versatile and efficient protection spell, to get your best beater through for two turns. Or blank removal. Not as good as Brave the Elements but it's an option.
And I've been thinking about trying a list without BTE, too.
For 2BR Falkenrath Aristocrat gives you a hasty flying 4/1 beater that's at or above curve and can grow without paying any mana by saccing your team, while also being indestructible.
Yahenni, Undying Partisan is 2B for a hasty, grounded 2/2. It's damage potential starts below curve, and you have to have a kill spell on hand just to get its stats back on curve. And even if you killed a handful of opposing creatures, it can still be chump-blocked.
Yes, there might be a scenario where you cast T3 Yahenni, then T4 Damnation, and you get a 7/7 Yahenni or something. But this is still pretty slow and since Yehenni's Legendary and most decks don't run more than 3 sweepers this interaction isn't going to come up frequently enough to build around anyways. As a whole the card probably isn't good enough for Modern, he's not a good beater like Falkenrath Aristocrat nor is he an efficient cheap sac outlet like Viscera Seer.
With that said Fatal Push, Collective Brutality, and Smuggler's Copter have been very good to the deck recently, so it's not all bad
It's all about evasion. The search for naturally evasive humans has lead many of us to four or five color decks with mana requirements that are too tight to squeeze in any utility lands. At that point you lose out on one of the best reasons to run KotR. But what if we look at it the other way and build around KotR?
The Knightfall decks don't have to build with humans so they can compliment KotR's grounded muscle (in color) with evasive, interactive, or high value cards like Spell Queller, Vendilion Clique, Voice of Resurgence, and so forth. As a result the deck as a whole is reasonably well rounded. If you start with KotR and just pile even more grounded, relatively "dumb" beatstick humans around it like Champion, Lieutenant, Anafenza etc. the result won't really be as versatile or powerful as Knightfall IMO.
In short, KotR isn't a bad card but it does lack evasion and needs to be built around. For these reasons many have found it suboptimal in Human lists.
For anyone that's curious, we are considering options for the last couple flex spots in our 4C builds. Ideally they would offer some assistance against board wipes, boost our clock speed, and/or deal with troublesome permanents.
Mutagenic Growth ((G/P)) "Free" way to always protect one creature from Anger/Bolt or pump for attack
Vapor Snag (U) Cheap, pings 1 life but creatures only
Void Snare (U) Cheap, hits all nonland permanents Sorcery speed, too slow
--
Echoing Truth (1U) Expensive, hits all nonland permanents, occasional upside vs Lingering Souls or aggro decks with 2x creature
Into the Roil (1U) Expensive, but can kick to draw another card. Best topdeck.
Simic Charm (GU) Most mana intensive but very flexible. Pumps for attack or to shield one creature from Anger, protects multiple things from Electrolyze, bounces a creature.
Heroic Intervention (1G) Fool-proof sweeper / spot-removal protection, indestructibility could double as a combat trick
Boros Charm (WR) Complete sweeper protection, PW soft-removal, double-strike if we hit 5/5+, 4 dmg reach finish
Sigil Blessing (GW) Could be good against red sweepers and a good attack pump
--
Beast Within (2G) Most expensive, deals with anything. Our Champions might block the 3/3.
Detention Sphere (1UW) Also deals with anything. No 3/3 to contend with but it's sorcery speed.
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My guess is that there's a reason Merfolk and Jeskai Aggro play Vapor Snag maindeck over Echoing Truths and that if you're looking for bounce effects I wouldn't be surprised to see it shake out as the best with testing. Those decks have just as much trouble with most of those permanents you mentioned and their clocks aren't so much faster, but at one mana Snag's so much easier to squeeze into your proactive tempo plan, or leave up to play reactively. In short, Mana efficiency probably trumps target flexibility, and 1 CMC is where we have the most space in our curve right now.
No bolts? Interesting. What's your thought process so far?
In testing so far I admit that I've underestimated Metallic Mimic. Atm I had basically swapped the Mimics in over BTE. Since Mimic was a bad topdeck I wanted to keep as many good ones as I could, thus choosing to keep Brawler over BTE. Against Elves last night (using non-updated Human list) I needed every piece of removal I could find so I was reluctant to cut the Bolts and/or Helices when I was looking at the list today.
Maulfist is worth considering because she has trample, can pump your team (potentially twice) even if bolted, and has a slightly better base body than the existing options. They're all pretty close in power level for the deck, though.
@Headminerve: You've probably already noticed this: with Mimic being a better T2 play than BTE, BTE is more commonly getting pushed back to T3. Because BTE can't chain into Rider or Skyknight, I've currently replaced Skyknight with Maulfist Revolutionary and things have gotten a bit smoother mana-wise, albeit slightly less interactive.
It loses most of its value if you don't have it down T2 and it's a worthless topdeck (and subsequently mediocre CoCo hit). In a deck without any filtering, already running such lousy topdecks as Champion, Hierarch, Auriok, etc. we need to be really careful about adding more bad topdecks and sequence-specific plays IMO. I guess that might make Jace's filtering more attractive, though.
If you needed space I think you could maybe shave a Thraben Inspector. It's a great card but 16x one-drops is a lot, and it's the point on your curve that gives you the least value with CoCo or Rallier's ability.
I've always been unimpressed with Abbot outside of decks that can maximize the odds of a useful flip with an ultra low-curve and deck manipulation like serum visions. Here, if feeding Butcher is a major end goal I would have expected Pyro to outperform Abbot.
Edit: also hasn't Collective Brutality generally stolen a couple slots from Helix in Mardu's interaction suite?
T2 Young Pyromancer can have 1-3 tokens ready when Butcher is ready to attack T4, and he himself can be a sacrifice if needed.
Bitter Blossom will make 2 flying tokens and ping you for 2 life. Hidden stockpile -- if you have the fetches! -- will also make 2 tokens, trading the life ping for no flying and a stricter casting cost (that might end up shocking you, anyways). Both Blossom and Stockpile are difficult to remove.
I think that as long as you're building your deck with enough cheap spells (which Mardu excels at) Young Pyro technically has the highest reward ceiling.
If Stockpile's sacrifice to scry ability were free I'd be *very* interested in it for an Aristocrats build, but as it is I find it "ok". What do you think?
--------
EDIT: I did some more investigation of Metallic Mimic's interaction with CoCo and someone pointed me to Mimic's Gatherer notes:
-Creatures of the chosen type that enter the battlefield at the same time as Metallic Mimic won't enter with an additional +1/+1 counter.
-Even though Metallic Mimic is a Shapeshifter, other Shapeshifter creatures you control wont get a +1/+1 counter unless you chose Shapeshifter as Metallic Mimic entered the battlefield. If you do, that creature must be entering the battlefield as a Shapeshifter to get a +1/+1 counter. It wont get a +1/+1 counter if it enters the battlefield as a copy of a non-Shapeshifter creature.
Apparently since Mimic's ability is a replacement effect instead of a triggered ability like Lieutenant's, it doesn't activate until Mimic is completely on the battlefield. That's too bad, really, and makes the card significantly weaker in a CoCo build.
Skyship Plunderer also seems a lot better with Mimic than without it due to the greater likelihood that Plunderer's ability will be relevant – with Mimic a bit weaker than I realized the new house of cards is wobbling a bit...
Another option is Emerge Unscathed, a versatile and efficient protection spell, to get your best beater through for two turns. Or blank removal. Not as good as Brave the Elements but it's an option.
And I've been thinking about trying a list without BTE, too.
Yahenni, Undying Partisan is 2B for a hasty, grounded 2/2. It's damage potential starts below curve, and you have to have a kill spell on hand just to get its stats back on curve. And even if you killed a handful of opposing creatures, it can still be chump-blocked.
Yes, there might be a scenario where you cast T3 Yahenni, then T4 Damnation, and you get a 7/7 Yahenni or something. But this is still pretty slow and since Yehenni's Legendary and most decks don't run more than 3 sweepers this interaction isn't going to come up frequently enough to build around anyways. As a whole the card probably isn't good enough for Modern, he's not a good beater like Falkenrath Aristocrat nor is he an efficient cheap sac outlet like Viscera Seer.
With that said Fatal Push, Collective Brutality, and Smuggler's Copter have been very good to the deck recently, so it's not all bad
The Knightfall decks don't have to build with humans so they can compliment KotR's grounded muscle (in color) with evasive, interactive, or high value cards like Spell Queller, Vendilion Clique, Voice of Resurgence, and so forth. As a result the deck as a whole is reasonably well rounded. If you start with KotR and just pile even more grounded, relatively "dumb" beatstick humans around it like Champion, Lieutenant, Anafenza etc. the result won't really be as versatile or powerful as Knightfall IMO.
In short, KotR isn't a bad card but it does lack evasion and needs to be built around. For these reasons many have found it suboptimal in Human lists.
Mutagenic Growth ((G/P)) "Free" way to always protect one creature from Anger/Bolt or pump for attack
Blossoming Defense (G) Save one creature from almost anything and pump
Vapor Snag (U) Cheap, pings 1 life but creatures only
Void Snare (U) Cheap, hits all nonland permanentsSorcery speed, too slow--
Echoing Truth (1U) Expensive, hits all nonland permanents, occasional upside vs Lingering Souls or aggro decks with 2x creature
Into the Roil (1U) Expensive, but can kick to draw another card. Best topdeck.
Simic Charm (GU) Most mana intensive but very flexible. Pumps for attack or to shield one creature from Anger, protects multiple things from Electrolyze, bounces a creature.
Heroic Intervention (1G) Fool-proof sweeper / spot-removal protection, indestructibility could double as a combat trick
Boros Charm (WR) Complete sweeper protection, PW soft-removal, double-strike if we hit 5/5+, 4 dmg reach finish
Dromoka's Command (GW) Red sweeper protection, Answers Bloodmoon, situational spot removal, pump
Sigil Blessing (GW) Could be good against red sweepers and a good attack pump
--
Beast Within (2G) Most expensive, deals with anything. Our Champions might block the 3/3.
Detention Sphere (1UW) Also deals with anything. No 3/3 to contend with but it's sorcery speed.
-----------------
My guess is that there's a reason Merfolk and Jeskai Aggro play Vapor Snag maindeck over Echoing Truths and that if you're looking for bounce effects I wouldn't be surprised to see it shake out as the best with testing. Those decks have just as much trouble with most of those permanents you mentioned and their clocks aren't so much faster, but at one mana Snag's so much easier to squeeze into your proactive tempo plan, or leave up to play reactively. In short, Mana efficiency probably trumps target flexibility, and 1 CMC is where we have the most space in our curve right now.
In testing so far I admit that I've underestimated Metallic Mimic. Atm I had basically swapped the Mimics in over BTE. Since Mimic was a bad topdeck I wanted to keep as many good ones as I could, thus choosing to keep Brawler over BTE. Against Elves last night (using non-updated Human list) I needed every piece of removal I could find so I was reluctant to cut the Bolts and/or Helices when I was looking at the list today.
It loses most of its value if you don't have it down T2 and it's a worthless topdeck (and subsequently mediocre CoCo hit). In a deck without any filtering, already running such lousy topdecks as Champion, Hierarch, Auriok, etc. we need to be really careful about adding more bad topdecks and sequence-specific plays IMO. I guess that might make Jace's filtering more attractive, though.