Holy crap! Why didn't we think of this? Also, I didn't get a chance to watch any of the coverage... Can anyone enlighten me to the reasoning for this deck's success? Was it just a super unprepared meta or is this deck really broken? Seems to me like it's VERY similar to Affinity.
My God, I totally haven't been paying attention to Magic for the last couple of weeks and literally LOL'd at the Top8 results. I, for one, will be selling into the hype for my Eyes, Urborgs, and Temples. Maybe even Smasher and TKS. By the way, what is the best place to unload cards when selling into hype like this? Ebay?
Local Facebook groups. Smart sells right now.
I'm not sure how viable that will be, but I will give it a shot. If what is the second best option?
My God, I totally haven't been paying attention to Magic for the last couple of weeks and literally LOL'd at the Top8 results. I, for one, will be selling into the hype for my Eyes, Urborgs, and Temples. Maybe even Smasher and TKS. By the way, what is the best place to unload cards when selling into hype like this? Ebay?
How the heck is this deck not putting up more results now that it actually got BETTER with the new set? It was already a strong deck and it got an insane creature in TKS. Yet it has disappeared from MODO results, and nobody put any Eldrazi in the top-16 of the most recent SCG Modern Classic.
If there isn't a single copy of any kind of Eldrazi deck in the top-16 of the upcoming Pro Tour, I will be really surprised at what happened to this deck.
My guess is that everyone is saving their tech for the Pro Tour.
Theoretically you could double Herder into Smasher as well. I do think we want to be running more than 2 Smashers... perhaps it is worth it to run a 3/3 Smasher/Strangler Split, keep 4 Herders and 2 Sowers?
Reading all the stuff people are writing up here on taking on the Eldrazi decks is making it apparent that folks don't realize there are multiple different Eldrazi decks out right now and the way to handle each of them is a bit different. Mono-B eldrazi is a far different beast from BW, and BR has the most potential of all of them once people learn how to pilot it.
The fact is, Eldrazi is a very skill intensive deck. It survives by virtue of the deck pilot knowing what is threatening from the other opponent and pre-emptively removing that threat via Thoughtseize, Duress, and Inquisition of Kozilek, then using Extirpate or surgical extraction to pull the rest out from the deck. This makes match ups that have opponents go wide a complete pain for the deck to handle, where as anyone that has to sideboard in answers is going to do poorly (especially with Thought-knot seer on the rise).
So how to fight eldrazi? Don't depend on the graveyard and go wide. Man I hope Shadows over Innistrad saves golgari decks.
I tend to disagree. The strength of the deck is that the cards are naturally good against a lot of decks, while there is not much you can do against the small aggro decks.
It's actually not the eldrazi that make it skill intensive. Pretty much anything that does targeted hand manipulation requires more forethought than reactionary measures, because you have at least some certainty that the opponent wants something in play if he plays it on a given turn, where as dealing with something in an opponents hand requires knowing what the other player may play if you were in their shoes. With all listings running 4x Inquisition of Kozilek and a mix of duress, thoughtseize, and Thought-knot seer, that's a lot of targeted discard.
Yeah, most Eldrazi builds are running a bare minimum of 8 discard spells (TKS/IoK)... some as many as 10. There is a good chance you will get some sort of discard turns 1, 2, and 3. This is why Leyline of Sanctity is good against them because unless they are on BW, there isn't much they can do against it. Also value based aggro decks like Burn, Elves, and Zoo are hard to deal with because often times it doesn't matter what you make them discard as their top decks will almost always be better. For instance, with Elves, making them discard one of their mana dorks T1 won't do much especially on the draw. You could get lucky and hit an Ezuri and 3-1 one them with extraction but much more typically they have a bunch of 1CMC elves with a land and CoCo/Chord/Lead. Granted you could take Chord or Lead and attempt to slow them down that way, but it is still overwhelming most of the time.
Going wide is the best option unless your wincon is dependent on a single card. Affinity and Infect aren't that bad with Mono B (in fact, Infect is almost favorable). With Affinity they are vulnerable to discard backed up by a clock especially since a typical opening hand is going to have at least one threat in it (Plating, Ravager, or Overseer... Champion is pretty bad for them in this matchup). Couple that with 4xGQ and maybe a TechEdge you can slow them down enough to develop a board. It is still a favorable matchup for Affinity because sometimes they are too fast, but it is not unwinnable.
Blight Herder is quite possibly the best card in the Processors deck. It puts 7 power on the board, it ramps (enabling a turn four Ulamog if you get Eye + Urborg + Temple, Eye + x2 Temple, or x3 Temple), it clogs up the ground. Personally, I could never see cutting it.
I still can't agree with this 100%. It isn't a great early draw or a good top deck. If you are unable to process anything it just becomes a vanilla 4/5. I would rather run 4x Smasher which is almost always going to be a better top deck in the early game and run 2-3 Herder for midgame and ramp. I agree Sower can be cut down to 2 or less.
Smasher isn't "Always" better. Blight Herder gets you something on Cast where Smasher only is good once it resolves. It's a big enough difference to make Blight Herder the better card. Plus, I have had no problems getting things to process.
Sure, but in a top deck war typically Smasher is going to get you more. Personally I'm almost always happy to see Smasher throughout the game and that is not the case for Herder. I think the easiest cut is Sower though since he is really just there to ramp to Ulamog and nothing more. Plus he's mostly useless without Urborg in play...
Blight Herder is quite possibly the best card in the Processors deck. It puts 7 power on the board, it ramps (enabling a turn four Ulamog if you get Eye + Urborg + Temple, Eye + x2 Temple, or x3 Temple), it clogs up the ground. Personally, I could never see cutting it.
I still can't agree with this 100%. It isn't a great early draw or a good top deck. If you are unable to process anything it just becomes a vanilla 4/5. I would rather run 4x Smasher which is almost always going to be a better top deck in the early game and run 2-3 Herder for midgame and ramp. I agree Sower can be cut down to 2 or less.
Has anyone been messing around with Reality Smasher? I still like it better than 3-4 Sowers/Herders in each list since they will allow us to race a little better. I am thinking a split of something like this is in order:
4 Smasher, 4 Strangler, 3 TKS, 2/3 Herder, 2 Sower, 1/2 Ulamog? I think Smasher is a much better 5 (3) drop than Herder especially in the early game since we are not necessarily trying to ramp to Ulamog all the time. Smasher is usually coming down as a 5/5 for 3CMC and forces some sort of response that turn be it trading with a Goyf, 3-1ing them with Path (or 2-1 with some other removal), or simply dealing 5 damage the turn it comes out. I like Herder but there are times when all I really need is a beater or I can't process anything that makes him a dead draw. Smasher is a good top deck most of the time and is always doing something the turn he comes out.
To be honest, I am a little confused as to why more people aren't using him more.
I'm looking at my mana base and wondering if Mage-Ring Network Finally has a home or not. Our first ever colorless storage land and I think it gets overlooked in some regards, but I'm not sure it works in Bx Processors as much as some other kind of Eldrazi build. I'd love these storage lands a lot more if it was tap X lands and store X mana instead of having to do it one point at a time. And I do mean tap X lands, and not X mana as that would just break the card outright.
Bx Eldrazi seems to have the most flexibility for utility lands out of any major deck I've seen since so many utility lands are either Colorless mana producers or just outright replace a basic. I'm not sold on using Graven Cairns over pain lands like Caves of Koilos or Sulfurous Springs, though. The former requires having a swamp or Urborg in play just to get at the colored mana vs eating one point of damage to get a colored. That and with so many people cutting expedition map they really can't afford to be so dependent on what few colored lands they can afford.
I think the idea was to run both the painlands and something like Cairns in decks that splash so you can generate both colorless and colored mana at a whim if needed. FWIW, I really like the idea of that in the BW/BR decks but not in the mono B decks. The not sure why anyone would run Cairns over painlands if they aren't splashing Red.
Going wide is the best option unless your wincon is dependent on a single card. Affinity and Infect aren't that bad with Mono B (in fact, Infect is almost favorable). With Affinity they are vulnerable to discard backed up by a clock especially since a typical opening hand is going to have at least one threat in it (Plating, Ravager, or Overseer... Champion is pretty bad for them in this matchup). Couple that with 4xGQ and maybe a TechEdge you can slow them down enough to develop a board. It is still a favorable matchup for Affinity because sometimes they are too fast, but it is not unwinnable.
I just think people are underestimating Smasher.
4 Smasher, 4 Strangler, 3 TKS, 2/3 Herder, 2 Sower, 1/2 Ulamog? I think Smasher is a much better 5 (3) drop than Herder especially in the early game since we are not necessarily trying to ramp to Ulamog all the time. Smasher is usually coming down as a 5/5 for 3CMC and forces some sort of response that turn be it trading with a Goyf, 3-1ing them with Path (or 2-1 with some other removal), or simply dealing 5 damage the turn it comes out. I like Herder but there are times when all I really need is a beater or I can't process anything that makes him a dead draw. Smasher is a good top deck most of the time and is always doing something the turn he comes out.
To be honest, I am a little confused as to why more people aren't using him more.