Made top 8 at the IQ today, going undefeated in the swiss. Top 8 had 6 favorable matches, one bad.....guess what I got paired against....mono green Tron. Look at the top 8 of this IQ when it gets published and tell me if there was a deck you'd rather play less than the one I did
@Stickballruss. do you feel 2 Spree's or needed in the sideboard or would you possibly feel a 1/1 spree abrade is manageable? also you expressed dislike in the Whirlyboi would you think adding up to the 2nd cage is a proper replcement for him given the surge of graveyard based decks coming ot the forefront right now?.
With the rise of kci and how prevalent affinity is when playing paper magic, I like two spree. I was originally on the 1/1 spree/abrade plan until kci showed up. Now 2 spree until wizards does something about kci....if they ever do.
Yeah, I was thinking 2nd cage myself. It's my least used sidebaord card, but it's the one you need the most in the matches where you need it ...Coco, bant spirits, dredge, and elves are all really hard and the cage helps so much in those matches.
What sort of match-ups does Sarkhan come out? Does he? I was thinking maybe against aggro zoo style, but then he helps you find the bridge or sweeper you need. I'm in with 2, almost had to buy a foil for like $35 - forget that - but I got my 2. Anyway, I'm writing up some sideboard stuff and that general question came to mind...
I take at least one out vs burn. Basically, in the matches where you die by spending three mana and not doing anything. Burn and infect come to mind.
Russ, why not dire fleet daredevil? If the Jund opponent runs out fatal push or abrupt decay daredevil is a 3-4 mana answer for goyf that leaves behind a body that can block Bloodbraid Elf.
Also 4-0 in a 40 person FNM last night! Tournament reporter coming in soon!
If Dire Fleet was good in other matches, I'd say yes, 100%. Problem is that it's just too narrow. What else is it good against? remember, we are not going to cards advantage in this deck, so the incremental advantage we get doesn't really matter here. If you can give me three decks it's amazing vs, I'm in.
Long time reader, first time poster. Love the deck!
I have a question. Post board do you think our artifacts need more protection? Artifact/enchantment removal is in most sideboards in modern and getting a bridge removed, or another artifact, can just be game for the opponent against me.
Do you think either Spellskite, Welding jar, Buried Ruin or amy other cards could help the deck be more resistant to removal?
Thanks in advance.
I almost always bring in a spellskite for this exact reason. it's also stops ravager's modular ability, EVERYTHING from bogles and infect, and can absorn both parts of K-command. It also makes bolts, helixes, right bolts, o-ring, d-sphere, laughably bad. of those you mentioned, skite is the one you want. I run one in the board.
I’ve been looking at all these amazing finishes with the deck and looking at other lists that are knocking down tournaments and I’ve been wondering; are our bad matchups preventing this deck from being great?
We have even/good/great matchups against so much of the playing field, but our bad matchups seem SO bad.
Russ is stressing out about Goyf in Jund, I keep getting rolled over by people who can’t let go of E-Tron, and decks like Grishoalbrand and BlueMoon also seem very unfavorable.
I’ve also wondered how this deck can get published so many times while still straddling the line between under-the-radar and fringe. Even when it does get a nod in articles from the pros it never seems like it’s acknowledged as the real deal.
Do any of the Tier 1 decks (KCI, Humans, Hollow One, Jeskai, Jund, Affinity, etc.) have matchups as ‘unwinnable’ as ours, and if not, is that why everyone still seems kind of deaf to Pyro Prison? They can’t even remember the name...
Not trying to be dramatic; I’m tragically insecure, especially when it comes to Modern. I’m proud to be waving this flag, and I would never let anyone say this is a bad deck.
It just concerns me that if a bad matchup meets us in the Top-8 we’re just not gonna make 1st.
Thoughts? Comfort? Reassurance?
1. This deck is EXTREMELY hard to play. It takes a lot of practice and attention to detail to play this type of strategy.
2. Jund is hard because all their removal can hit EVERYTHING we play. Nothing is safe when you play against jund. So, when nothing is safe and they play 6/7 dudes, that's a problem.
3. Eldrazi Tron is the same thing, but different. they just don't care about our lock pieces. lots of ways to get that one colorless mana, chalice sucks, and they can win from behind a bridge as easily as we can.
4. Those other decks have a better overall strategy than we do. They have bad matches, but those bad matches are not as bad as our bad matches.
This deck generates power from playing super powerful effects ahead of curve. It doesn't do a good job with card selection and can lose to itself if you draw lock pieces in a match where they're useless. How many games are lost because you keep a two bridge hand, think your great, then the opponent goes Urza's mine, Expedition map....you just took a mulligan to 5 and didn't even realize it. Or how about when you power out a blood moon on the fitst turn, then your opponent plays a land, burning inquiry, and puts a 4/4 in play. You spend three cards and literally did nothing to help win that game.
That's the negative and it's enough to drive people away from this deck. It doesn't have a fast clock most of the time, It's lock pieces are sometimes irrelevant, and there's very little way to generate any sort of card selection to try to find the right cards for the right match. Thats why the "pros" don't pick this up.
And it's their loss. This deck is busted once you learn to play it right. There are a lot of decks that just fold to a turn one/two blood moon. turn one rabblemaster wins games on it's own. Sarkhan fixes the problem of drawing bridges vs control or drawing that 2nd blood moon. Chalice stops a lot of what's happening in modern today. As long as you identify your role correctly, you'll be good. Of the decks you mentioned, Jund is the only one that I don't want to see across from me. I'm good with facing everything else. And hollow-one/humans, and tron help keep jund at bay. I'm leaving jund to those decks. Would it be nice to be able to deal with Goyf? Absolutely. But I'm not willing to make major concessions to be able to win vs jund when no matter what we do, jund is still going to be a bad match. We are better off just trying to dodge jund altogether and if we get paired up against it, do our best, take out lumps, and move on.
I find that the matches where I bring cage in, I sometimes side OUT the chalices. dredge and Coco come to mind. Cage in, chalice out...
Games two/three vs hollow-one, I've saving chalice for two, so cage still works there as well. Vs bridgevine, chalice on zero could be a thing or it could come out completely. That deck is so fast, there's a chance that chalice isn't fast enough, even on Zero if your on the draw. there's a real chance yo are looking at 3+ 2/2 creatures before you get to take your turn. Brutal. That said, I have played it three times with my list and I'm 3-0 vs it.
I loved Trash Dragons last night and I'm down with running it again. I'm competing in an IQ on saturday, so I have to practice my list until then, but after that, well, no rules! That burn match was nuts and we needed some REALLY tight play to make it our alive. I thought we were dead at least 4 times during that last game. I still don't know how we won....nor how that Humans player beat me!! ARGHAddsfdfkjgfndsjndsjkf vkjdf;nvkjds;f ladkj;vn!!!!!!!
Think I'm gpoing back to 2 cage. Chainwhirler was good for me while it lasted, but Sarkhan is just better and his 15 minutes of fame is up. If the format changes to more of a lingering souls/mardu pyromancer type meta, chainwhirler could come back, but not at this moment.
Almost got the 15-0 but lost to the luckiest of luckiest human's player I've ever seen. don't beleive me, then go check the replay. It was past midnight last night, so I forgot to upload it to YouTube, but it should still be on twitch. I'll upload it to youtube tonight.
So, 14-1 with Pyro Prison, using the same 60 maindeck as Dev above and what's been posted twice on the MTGO decklist pages. Some Observations:
The maindeck is as close to perfect as we can get. every card has been stellar and Sarkhan has been amazing. I think two is the correct number, as there are many decks right now that are so fast, if you take a turn off to cast Sarkhan, you might not get to untap. Koth has been mediocre, but I find him to be a necessity. you have an 80% chance to draw a bridge before Koth, which are good odds. Plus, he's the fastest planeswalker in the game to ultimate. Literally, turn one, turn two, ultimate. Opponent needs to deal with Koth IMMEDIAETLY, or the emblem wrecks face.
Sidebaord, I'm going to change something....Chainwhirler is coming out completely. I think wither a 2nd cage or a third Anger is the way to go. I haven't decided yet. Anger is better vs affinity, mardu pyromancer, and humans. Cage us better vs collected company and hollow-one. Although different, they do similar work vs. vengevine and dredge. So, I don't know which I am going to play. I feel like all you need to do is draw one and games can swing wildly in your favor, leading me to play 2 cage and 2 anger, but I'm undecided on that. Curious to hear thought on this. @ cage and 2 anger or 1 cage and 3 anger. Or do we leave the chainwhirler in there?
Tried Trash Dragons last night too and that was a blast to play. going all-in with zero interaction takes balls of steel, but with a name like RayStack, do you expect anything else? Hands were terrible and we limped our way to a 3-2 finish and got out money back. I feel like the deck is much more explosive than what we saw last night and I'm willing to give it another try. The last of interaction was a minor concern, but it worked. Trash Dragons puts so many must answer things in play, that the opponent has a hard time setting up his plan because he's dealing with yours. I couldn't see this working vs a control or combo deck, which is one of the matches we lost to. UW control faced some of our best draws can cards and handled them with ease. I think I'm going to experiment with that list some more and see if I can find a way to make trash dragons work. I might have to go back to the bridge-less version, play the full set of Sarkhans. No, not Todd Steven's Skred Dragons list, were still using blood moons and rituals and chalices. But if our dragons can kill stuff, it might work. Wouls still run slagstorm maindeck because vs tron and control, anger is just a dead card....but I guess we can filter it away with Sarkhan. gonna have to brew. I'm thinking 4 Sarkhan, 4 Glorybringer, Hazoret....yeah, this could work....
I love Slagging for the win - even more when the OP reads it and then begins the typical scoop em' up starting with all 17ish mountains they have sitting on the field.
I like the Abrade-Slag swap. Abrade is certainly one of my favorite cards, but I guess I can let one go for a Slag type effect. I think I'm going to add an Anger in the board instead of a Slag to respect the 4/3's with Haste. The four Abrades seems a bit much in the moment - there's certainly better options. I'm thinking about switching my main Sweltering to a Slag instead b/c we now have Sarkhan to help filter, so maybe the additional 3 burn to the face is more value than a cycle. I'm going to be working with the following 75 heading in to a very densely packed MTG weekend.
So, this deck had an 80% win rate BEFORE I entered the fray? Crap, and I thought I was just that good!
Ray, that was amazing. During my undefeated run in Philly earlier this year, EXACT SAME THING happened. Opponent gained infinite life with the same cast of characters you mentioned and I ultimated koth the following turn. I killed EVERYTHING and we played draw go for the rest of the round until time expired and we drew. I had 8 more cards than my opponent. If there was 5 more minutes on the clock, I would have decked her, 100%
That's because he's new to the deck and doesn't realize just how good slagstorm is. and after you kill yourself with it, it's hard to be like....this card is awesome!!
Pia and kiran might work. Creating three bodies vs a deck that has all one for one removal is good. Actually, dare i say, is siege gang commander worth mentioning? You did serious work with it at the Titanuim 1K and it might not be the hero we want, but the hero we need right now. Could also just be better than koth in this current meta.
He made some interesting points about Hazoret being good vs Jund. I’d always just written it off as bad vs Liliana of the veil.deck but i guess hazoret does blank every other removal spell and blocks goyfs all day.
Jund matchup is still horrendous though, i dont know what else we can do about that.
The real problem is goyf. Vs mardu pyromancer, which is like jund, we take out all the lock pieces (moons and bridges) and go right to the face with eidolons, hazorets and soft lock pieces like spellskite and chalices. Vs jund, theres a creature called Tarmogoyf. This is usually a 5/6 or bigger, which is much taller than bedlam reveler. His height is a real problem for us. also, all their removal hits our bridges, so you can't expect to hide behind those.
So, how do we deal with goyf? Temporary solution is scavager grounds. there's also that red delve burn spell...what's it called....Harvest Pyre. that can deal with goyf, but it's extremely narrow. I wish we had something else, like the ability to steal it, attack with this, and then get rid of it. If only grab the reins wasn't so expensive to entwine....
Does anybody else have a good answer to goyf? Do we need to bring back ratchet bomb? That also dies to all of Jund's spells. it's too often out of chandra's range and we don't do enough damage where stealing it and attacking will win us enough games to warrent bringing it in. Come on, there's got to be a way to deal with goyf.
For the record, every time I am trying to deal with goyf and cannot because of it's size, I realize why it's a $100 card. It's got Protection from Red removal spells built into it.
With the rise of kci and how prevalent affinity is when playing paper magic, I like two spree. I was originally on the 1/1 spree/abrade plan until kci showed up. Now 2 spree until wizards does something about kci....if they ever do.
Yeah, I was thinking 2nd cage myself. It's my least used sidebaord card, but it's the one you need the most in the matches where you need it ...Coco, bant spirits, dredge, and elves are all really hard and the cage helps so much in those matches.
I take at least one out vs burn. Basically, in the matches where you die by spending three mana and not doing anything. Burn and infect come to mind.
If Dire Fleet was good in other matches, I'd say yes, 100%. Problem is that it's just too narrow. What else is it good against? remember, we are not going to cards advantage in this deck, so the incremental advantage we get doesn't really matter here. If you can give me three decks it's amazing vs, I'm in.
I almost always bring in a spellskite for this exact reason. it's also stops ravager's modular ability, EVERYTHING from bogles and infect, and can absorn both parts of K-command. It also makes bolts, helixes, right bolts, o-ring, d-sphere, laughably bad. of those you mentioned, skite is the one you want. I run one in the board.
1. This deck is EXTREMELY hard to play. It takes a lot of practice and attention to detail to play this type of strategy.
2. Jund is hard because all their removal can hit EVERYTHING we play. Nothing is safe when you play against jund. So, when nothing is safe and they play 6/7 dudes, that's a problem.
3. Eldrazi Tron is the same thing, but different. they just don't care about our lock pieces. lots of ways to get that one colorless mana, chalice sucks, and they can win from behind a bridge as easily as we can.
4. Those other decks have a better overall strategy than we do. They have bad matches, but those bad matches are not as bad as our bad matches.
This deck generates power from playing super powerful effects ahead of curve. It doesn't do a good job with card selection and can lose to itself if you draw lock pieces in a match where they're useless. How many games are lost because you keep a two bridge hand, think your great, then the opponent goes Urza's mine, Expedition map....you just took a mulligan to 5 and didn't even realize it. Or how about when you power out a blood moon on the fitst turn, then your opponent plays a land, burning inquiry, and puts a 4/4 in play. You spend three cards and literally did nothing to help win that game.
That's the negative and it's enough to drive people away from this deck. It doesn't have a fast clock most of the time, It's lock pieces are sometimes irrelevant, and there's very little way to generate any sort of card selection to try to find the right cards for the right match. Thats why the "pros" don't pick this up.
And it's their loss. This deck is busted once you learn to play it right. There are a lot of decks that just fold to a turn one/two blood moon. turn one rabblemaster wins games on it's own. Sarkhan fixes the problem of drawing bridges vs control or drawing that 2nd blood moon. Chalice stops a lot of what's happening in modern today. As long as you identify your role correctly, you'll be good. Of the decks you mentioned, Jund is the only one that I don't want to see across from me. I'm good with facing everything else. And hollow-one/humans, and tron help keep jund at bay. I'm leaving jund to those decks. Would it be nice to be able to deal with Goyf? Absolutely. But I'm not willing to make major concessions to be able to win vs jund when no matter what we do, jund is still going to be a bad match. We are better off just trying to dodge jund altogether and if we get paired up against it, do our best, take out lumps, and move on.
Russ
Games two/three vs hollow-one, I've saving chalice for two, so cage still works there as well. Vs bridgevine, chalice on zero could be a thing or it could come out completely. That deck is so fast, there's a chance that chalice isn't fast enough, even on Zero if your on the draw. there's a real chance yo are looking at 3+ 2/2 creatures before you get to take your turn. Brutal. That said, I have played it three times with my list and I'm 3-0 vs it.
I loved Trash Dragons last night and I'm down with running it again. I'm competing in an IQ on saturday, so I have to practice my list until then, but after that, well, no rules! That burn match was nuts and we needed some REALLY tight play to make it our alive. I thought we were dead at least 4 times during that last game. I still don't know how we won....nor how that Humans player beat me!! ARGHAddsfdfkjgfndsjndsjkf vkjdf;nvkjds;f ladkj;vn!!!!!!!
Think I'm gpoing back to 2 cage. Chainwhirler was good for me while it lasted, but Sarkhan is just better and his 15 minutes of fame is up. If the format changes to more of a lingering souls/mardu pyromancer type meta, chainwhirler could come back, but not at this moment.
So, 14-1 with Pyro Prison, using the same 60 maindeck as Dev above and what's been posted twice on the MTGO decklist pages. Some Observations:
The maindeck is as close to perfect as we can get. every card has been stellar and Sarkhan has been amazing. I think two is the correct number, as there are many decks right now that are so fast, if you take a turn off to cast Sarkhan, you might not get to untap. Koth has been mediocre, but I find him to be a necessity. you have an 80% chance to draw a bridge before Koth, which are good odds. Plus, he's the fastest planeswalker in the game to ultimate. Literally, turn one, turn two, ultimate. Opponent needs to deal with Koth IMMEDIAETLY, or the emblem wrecks face.
Sidebaord, I'm going to change something....Chainwhirler is coming out completely. I think wither a 2nd cage or a third Anger is the way to go. I haven't decided yet. Anger is better vs affinity, mardu pyromancer, and humans. Cage us better vs collected company and hollow-one. Although different, they do similar work vs. vengevine and dredge. So, I don't know which I am going to play. I feel like all you need to do is draw one and games can swing wildly in your favor, leading me to play 2 cage and 2 anger, but I'm undecided on that. Curious to hear thought on this. @ cage and 2 anger or 1 cage and 3 anger. Or do we leave the chainwhirler in there?
Tried Trash Dragons last night too and that was a blast to play. going all-in with zero interaction takes balls of steel, but with a name like RayStack, do you expect anything else? Hands were terrible and we limped our way to a 3-2 finish and got out money back. I feel like the deck is much more explosive than what we saw last night and I'm willing to give it another try. The last of interaction was a minor concern, but it worked. Trash Dragons puts so many must answer things in play, that the opponent has a hard time setting up his plan because he's dealing with yours. I couldn't see this working vs a control or combo deck, which is one of the matches we lost to. UW control faced some of our best draws can cards and handled them with ease. I think I'm going to experiment with that list some more and see if I can find a way to make trash dragons work. I might have to go back to the bridge-less version, play the full set of Sarkhans. No, not Todd Steven's Skred Dragons list, were still using blood moons and rituals and chalices. But if our dragons can kill stuff, it might work. Wouls still run slagstorm maindeck because vs tron and control, anger is just a dead card....but I guess we can filter it away with Sarkhan. gonna have to brew. I'm thinking 4 Sarkhan, 4 Glorybringer, Hazoret....yeah, this could work....
You're missing 4 cards from the main deck....2 abrade and 2 slagstorm.
Ray, that was amazing. During my undefeated run in Philly earlier this year, EXACT SAME THING happened. Opponent gained infinite life with the same cast of characters you mentioned and I ultimated koth the following turn. I killed EVERYTHING and we played draw go for the rest of the round until time expired and we drew. I had 8 more cards than my opponent. If there was 5 more minutes on the clock, I would have decked her, 100%
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/competitive-modern-constructed-league-2018-08-07
Pia and kiran might work. Creating three bodies vs a deck that has all one for one removal is good. Actually, dare i say, is siege gang commander worth mentioning? You did serious work with it at the Titanuim 1K and it might not be the hero we want, but the hero we need right now. Could also just be better than koth in this current meta.
The real problem is goyf. Vs mardu pyromancer, which is like jund, we take out all the lock pieces (moons and bridges) and go right to the face with eidolons, hazorets and soft lock pieces like spellskite and chalices. Vs jund, theres a creature called Tarmogoyf. This is usually a 5/6 or bigger, which is much taller than bedlam reveler. His height is a real problem for us. also, all their removal hits our bridges, so you can't expect to hide behind those.
So, how do we deal with goyf? Temporary solution is scavager grounds. there's also that red delve burn spell...what's it called....Harvest Pyre. that can deal with goyf, but it's extremely narrow. I wish we had something else, like the ability to steal it, attack with this, and then get rid of it. If only grab the reins wasn't so expensive to entwine....
Does anybody else have a good answer to goyf? Do we need to bring back ratchet bomb? That also dies to all of Jund's spells. it's too often out of chandra's range and we don't do enough damage where stealing it and attacking will win us enough games to warrent bringing it in. Come on, there's got to be a way to deal with goyf.
For the record, every time I am trying to deal with goyf and cannot because of it's size, I realize why it's a $100 card. It's got Protection from Red removal spells built into it.