I'm making a thing of necroing threads about Masques. In retrospect Masques was pretty great and full Masques block limited is a barrel of fun. The difference between Masques/Nemesis/Prophecy and Masques/Masques/Masques is huge in favor of the full block, but the full block is one of the coolest draft formats you'll ever see.
Also, the level to which Prophecy is underrated, especially as a limited set, is absurd. It's one of the best limited sets ever.
Old topic I know, but most folks seem to have a strange idea of Masques draft, especially full block. Rebels aren't the only deck in there at all, and whether they're stronger than RB mercenaries in full MSQ/NEM/PCY is rather debatable. The main theme of the block is alternate casting costs (Spellshapers, recruiters, pitch spells, sacrificing lands...)
For Mercenaries, and thus black, the key cards (besides the excellent removal like Snuff Out and Vendetta) are:
Agent of Shauku who is a tutorable 1 mana = 1 damage machine if you don't mind sacrificing lands, and you don't. Also makes all your chaffy looking cheap black dudes trade up. Key black card and once you understand it it changes how Masques block works for you. Bog Glider recruits cheap fodder for no mana cost, which is rather excellent, also flies. Mishapen Fiend recruitable flier. Spineless Thug recruitable bear. Rathi Intimidator and the guy who comes in and does 3 damage to both players and then recruits for 3 from Nemesis. Cateran Persuader and Rampart Crawler are also useable.
The main thing to remember is that with Agent of Shauku on the table each of your dudes has "1B, sac a land: +2/+0 until EoT". And both the agent and the dudes are reliably recruitable for cheap. Also, even your non-mercenaries can be pumped by the agent.
Mogg Toady (because you can often crank out more dudes than anyone else, especially with Bog Glider and if you score Moggcatcher you can crank these out) Spur Grappler (quite a little beater, especially with Flaming Sword) Blaster Mage (there are very annoying walls in Masques)
And you try to have some spellshaper pingers (there are 2 red ones and 1 black one) handy to snipe protection critters. Ways to close the game if the oponent manages to stabilize a board stall are copious (Highway Robber, Despoil, Shock Troops, Flame Rift, Insubordination, you name it, whatever gets the final few points in if you feel like you need it).
That's the essence of it, and it can kill in 5 or so turns. Masques block has a lot of rares and artifacts powered down to the point of useless, but its problem was more that it wasn't appealing to casual players than anything. How "cubeable" this is is debatable, as you want cards in multiples, but that's a really important archetype in Masques block draft, and also possibly the strongest one overall.
What you really want to be doing with the U/R deck is casting a turn two red looting spell, turn three reanimate with an amalgam, and then hold up mana while you apply pressure. Getting aggressive with EDF can win games but it can also get you blown out. I don't do the upkeep emerge tapdown unless I have to or I'm pretty sure the opponent can't respond effectively. Otherwise I usually emerge in response to removal. You can either emerge through the target to blank the spell or emerge through the partner zombie/amalgam so you can reanimate both efficiently.
This was actually handy advice. The unintuitive, yet completely obvious in hindsight, thing about the deck that it's very lousy when it comes to card advantage. I even knew this and wanted to warn folks it mulligans horribly (Folks, it mulligans horribly! You're likely better off filling up your hand to 8 and dicsarding a scab than mulling down to 5!). However this really means you have to try to get as much mileage out of the emerge as possible, meaning use it in response to removal. But you still have to read the opponent and really make the upkeep plays happen when they must. Skill intensive, I have to say.
Still, just Lightning Axe and the turn 2 red discard is just too much of a luck based plan for a deck which, as I said, mulligans horribly. Not just "What if I don't draw it?", but also "What if I don't draw anything I want to discard?" (Really, this happens quite often, especially post sideboard. You only really want to discard either of the two scabs, the rest are either ok, or just cycling.) I did a league just now with 3 Magistrates and 2 Neonates and they do help things out. The Magistrates help out with Amalgams, and for a deck which kinda relies on drawing amalgams there's just too many games where I don't see any (I've noted at least 4 where I've drawn over half my deck and not seen 1).
I'll look into a copy or two of Nahiri's Wrath I think. The deck has issues with early onslaughts AND wants to liberally discard stuff with inflated mana cost. Doesn't do much to help with the copter, but ought to work wonders against Gideon, and there's a lot of cycling in the deck anyway.
Also, what exactly do you guys side Fevered Visions against? Aggro seems like it'd be nonsense, and there's plenty of it around, combo seems like it'd be suicide (on the draw you have to have 3 untapped mana and a counter ASAP or you're just dead). I can't really think of too many decks where I'd go and say "Great, I have fevered visions, that's what I'll side to mess him up!". I'm asking because I could use the sideboard slots to shore up against things that are beating me up.
Obviously the opponent can affect your game plan but Lightning Axe and the back half of K-return take care of most things. If you've been applying pressure the EDF tap down can deal with stuff that damage doesn't kill. If you don't have pressure and they have the whole Selfless Spirit/Avacyn package rolling then you're probably going to have a bad time. They do have to set up the invulnerability before you decide on the K-return trigger so sometimes you can run them out of them if you have enough Eldrazi.
The main problem are the cip-tapped lands, really, the deck (no Familiar version) is stupidly slow when it needs to react to things (needs setup to even cast anything, everything comes into play tapped), and when you get stuck with the CiP tapped lands at the wrong moment, you just can't tapdance around the removal. I did actually kill a Mardu Vehicles guy by stablilizing at 3 and 1 life respectively and pulling shennanigans with the squids, the potential power is deffinitely there, it's just that the deck trips itself up rather often and there's gotta be a way to make it more stable. I feel like it's somehow very vulnerable to the copter, probably because my previous deck just packed Harnessed Lightning and Fiery Temper and the gameplan involved turn 2 or 3 being reserved just for dealing with the copter by design. Fiery Temper just doesn't sit right with me in this deck, somehow. Avacyn, funnily enough, tends to regularly eat the Lightning Axe in response to her trigger for blowouts, because by the time she hits I'm likely not stuck fiddling with the setup.
Chaining Deep-Fiends is so good that I think it justifies the full play set of Sanctums by itself. The hidden value of the Wretched Gryff is that it lets you pop the sanctum and summon the kraken.
Oh, I'm deffinitely sold on this. I'm getting the hang of the octopus and DA PLAYS are epic and spectacular, I have to say. I'm still on 2 sanctums but I'll deffinitely bump asap.
The Fumarole is nice for slamming the door shut after you clear the board. In general five land total is where you want to be as it lets you reanimate and emerge a deep fiend all in one go. Note that the net cost for reanimate -> emerge is the same for either stitchwing.
Yep, I played a bunch today and paid attention to the board in terms of "would having the fumarole instead of the lake help me now" and there were a bunch of situations where it would. The most common type of situation is not so much after a wipe but when having a dude out would cost you a card you don't have and you've tapped the other guy down with the Octopus. This comes up a LOT vs. Marvel and other combo, where I'm seemingly always those 3-4 damage short for some reason and have to make mad plays and gamble when if I had a fumarole it'd kill the other guy. Pricy, but I have to get them.
The deck can be very swingy but I would give the CFB list a few tries before making tweaks.
Yeah, I'll definitely give the list a whirl, I'm curious if the Familiar helps vs. aggro.
I've also learned one more thing - I have no idea how to beat combo without siding in 8 counters. For the league I went with 2 Spell Shrivel and 2 Negate main deck and the same in the board, because there's nothing else I can do, and it actually worked because I lucked out and drew them a lot (like 6 or 7 out of total 8). Paradoxicaly, the counters tend to also work against some of the aggro, as you kinda just have to counter their removal or they'll wipe you off the board. The deck feels like it should have a game vs. combo, but it doesn't without boarding in a ton of counters, because you need setup to do anything (play dudes, do damage) and the other guy needs setup to instantly kill you. You're only an aggro deck if you luck out with the amalgams, and the only thing oyur guys have going for them is evasion, which they don't have vs. Iskhanah, the little guy loses combat to Pilgrims Eye (really, also your own Kozilek's Return ). Really, whether you'll be able to apply any pressure at all vs. a goldfish is completely random with this deck, probably even more so for folks who don't run one drops. The decks I lost to were the panharmonicon value deck (1-2) and an Aetherworks Marvel one (2-0).
At least in my RB build, Insolent Neonate has been fantastic and my most aggressive draws involve that enabling a turn 2 Haunted Dead activation. Menace is very live on your 1 drop allowing it to attack late into the game and worst case, it basicly replaces itself while enabling madness and graveyard shenanigans. I am considering bumping it up to 4, but I'm not sure what I'd cut. I like the 2/2 Bomat/Crytpbreaker split because they are both powerful, but in different ways and both get worse in multiples while they work great if you get 1 of each. Bomat also brings it up to 11 artifacts for Unlisenced Disintegration.
Isolent Neonate is up there with Thraben Inspector in terms of how great he is. He can also deal a boatload of damage, it's true. I'm considering 2 copies of Bomat for the UR version, but the chance of him swiping Amalgams and then getting them permanently lost is horrifying.
I went with the original tourney list because the other one looked somewhat thrown together for an article rather than with thought behind it. Where I'm at and what I've learned:
The original 3rd place tourney deck had the plan of supporting endless zombies with Fevered Visions and was probably (somewhat correctly) predicting a field full of draw-go control. This is what the deck preys upon in a most obvious and brain-dead way. The zombies are not "played" but rather etb via abilities, which sidesteps counters, and the amalgams are plainly daft against some of the removal. So if the enemy is UR whatever or anything truly slow and clunky, the deck generally works. If it's anything which relies desperately on an artifact like Marvel, Reservoir or whatever, you sideboard counters and you prey on that too. Discarding via red spells lets you discard in a way which dodges counterspells (part of a cost), which is, in fact, the only real pro of it, but it kinda makes you better at what you're allready good at (and techincally it's the only thing the deck is really, truly good at).
However, the field online isn't remotely full of draw go, but seems to be the opposite, and I walked into 3 beatings in a row vs. RG energy aggro and BG midrange. They both have better dudes, playing Fevered Visions vs. them seems to be impossible, and they're not really afraid of Kozilek's Return. Folks over at the RG thread talk about Longtusk Cub being disposable and taking it out - you just can't get it out of the way and the real threats start showing up too fast, while your zombies are coming into play tapped. The BG guy just stalls until it draws either Noxious Gearhulk or Emrakul or Liliana and you get the picture. Gearhulk on Octopus just ends the match unless you have a crafty way of getting it out of the way, which is why I have all the Unsubstantiates in there. Scratch that, the deck is also vulnerable to Declaration in Stone on the amalagms, and you don't really want to be using the Octopus as a response to stuff because if you do there's nothing to push you through blockers or shut down the other guy.
Also, both stitchwings feel so inferior to Haunted Dead it's not even funny. The little guy has very little toughness, while the big guy costs 3, which isn't nearly as fast as the aggro decks demand you to be. Highland Lake is what I play in place of Wandering Fumarole for budget reasons, but I've literally lost games on turn 1 which I would have won otherwise because it comes into play tapped (would be the sem for Fumarole). Also, the deck is highly unlikely to be able to get mana for the Fumarole, because of dumping all the cards into scab reanimation. It's a great card and all that, and I bet I'd be doing better if I coughed up the money for them because of that one game where I get to activate it and it means something, but I'd still be paying money for something that will far more often screw me over due to mandatory CiP tapped. IDK if going Aether Hub is actually viable, because you do need a reliable UU for the octopus and you constantly need colored mana AND there's Sanctum of Ugin (the OG build only ran 2, I'm frankly terrified of running more due to mana screw potential).
If your reanimation costs three mana it WILL trip you up and make you lose tempo, which you don't rally have against anything with aggressive dudes. The damned thing looks great, but if a non-headache grixis manabase was possible I think it'd be best for the deck to run 4X Stitchwing Skab 4X Haunted Dead and then maybe 2X Advanced Stitchwing.
Elder Deep Fiend is great when it's great but not that great, in fact, not even with Kozilek's Return. Harnessed Lightning in many decks just kills it in response to the tapdown, and instead of being a large monster it just ends up being a chump-blocker to some powered up 20/20 RG thing. It's only big when they throw Noxious Gearhulk lifegain at it.
IDK if the version you guys have been running is superior. I'm not happy with the red discard, to be perfectly honest, because what tends to happen is that I have to play ASAP it because I can't wait or I'll die, but I don't have anything in hand that needs discarding, but then I draw stuff that needs discarding with it. I mean, it's good for filtering cards, that it is, but games where I start with Minister of Inquiries tend to work out waaaaay better for me. In fact, I've played against some Sultai full-on self-mill variant (Minister, Hourglass thingy, Grapple with the Past) which makes this deck look like a complete joke. You don't really want to be discarding things, because if you get any 1 of the self-reanimators in the grave, you'll easily discard whatever you want, and getting the amalgam into the grave directly is much better than drawing him, so self-mill is practically card draw.
All in all - too many "ifs". There's probably a rather good Grixis version which makes use of all the best components of the three decks. I don't think Voldaren Pariah even needs madness, honestly, I think you just need it in the zombie deck to be cast for 5 mana and flipped to wrath the other guy. The octopus just isn't getting it done for me. It's effect is temporary, it takes sacrificing something to put it into play, and this actually sets you back 2 cards (to get a mediocre at best card back)
For this deck, I'm beginning to think you could serious win games by chaining Contingency Plan which get you Unsubstantiates in hand and zombies in the yard. In fact, the only obvious advantage of the red discard is that it's uncounterable and doesn't actually cost you a card. But it's possible that Contingency Plan is just straight up better for zombies.
I'll have to try the version with the Filigree Familiar. I'm not sure about 4 Hipogriffs, though.
With kozilek's return we currently have one of the best sweepers in the history of magic.
The other sweepers are fine, there is no problem with sweepers in the current metagame.
Err, not really. Kozilek's Return hardcast is nothing special and answers just about no threats in standard adequately. Triggered from the graveyard it's rather good, but that takes a very specific kind of deck. Also, it costs so much that you can put together a semi-competitive modern deck for the price of a playset and getting both it and a manabase for a deck that would run it (and possibly also the eldrazi to trigger it) just price whatever the deck is out of most people's hands. Also competes for money with Planeswalkers which simply go into any deck at all and do the same thing in every deck.
As for other sweepers currently available, they either don't hit even 3 toughness or suck against Selfless Spirit who's in every white deck anyway and white is probably half or more of the overall meta, so yeah, there might as well be no sweepers for all practical purposes. Kozilek's Return can't sidestep Selfless Spirit, either, so pouring mad cash into it is lunacy and it also might as well not exist, either, since every time someone plays it and it does something that simply means they got lucky with not playing someone with white (odds are not that high of that) or got lucky not playing a semi-instant-kill combo (odds are not high for that either) OR not playing against gearhulk (odds get much lower still) and they also got lucky that the white/x guy they're playing against didn't have Selfless Spirit on board to make do not much.
The thing is, UW Flash isn't even that good of a tempo deck. It's just a fundementally bad deck. It doesn't really have many cards that are capable of winning the game (Copter, Gideon and Avacyn's flipped form, but that's it). Beyond that, you've got, what, a bunch of 1/2s and 2/3s and no card advantage.
The thing with that is that, when you get down to it, almost no deck in standard right now is anything more than a vehicle for mythics or one signature card, with the exception of BG delirium which is a vehicle for multiple mythics. I've dealt upwards of 10 damage per game with Insolent Neonate and been dealt upwards of 10 damage per game by Thraben Inspector, as far as what can win the game is concerned. The thing with UW flash is that it's really, really good at preventing whatever your particular strategy is from winning, and beating you up with literally whatever is at hand OR the game takes long enough for them to draw one of their "pay cash, win at magic" nonsense cards. Like Gideon. I've just seen the following advice be given as a reply to "Why my deck isn't working, I have everything but Gideon" - "That's your problem, you need Gideon". And Gideon doesn't really sinergize with anything in the deck, the same advice can be given for mono W Humans, RW Humans, RW Vehicles, UW Flash, Mardu whatever - pay about 150 tix before you even consider bothering. I don't see decklists so much as stuff to put in a deck along with Gideon.
The price of the card in question doesn't have to be the thing, though. RG Hydra is cheap - but if they have Bristling Hydra, they win, if they don't they don't. Aetherworks Marvel deck doesn't even exist because of the mythic (although you're not really competitive unless you dish out for Iskanah and Emrakul) but because of the Vessel of Nascency being a decent-language-fails-to-describe-how-good-of-a-tutor-it-is for it and Woodveawers Puzzleknot being oddly good at buying people turns. There's a great RU reanimator, but the catch is that if you don't have Kozilek's Return, don't even bother, the deck can't beat a goldfish (put Kozilek's Return in and it places 3. at a big professional tourney). The zombie reanimator decks are mostly also - either you hit your nuts draw, or you don't really do anything. There's a billion BR builds around - I sold mine because it didn't have 3 Chandra's and 2 Kalitas in the sideboard which I have to assume how the deck ends up "working" for people. Had everything else inlcuding thc copter and everything needed for all sorts of builds - but if you don't have the big $$ stuff that can go into any deck, you can crash and burn in a firendly league. The UR control with the Torrential Gearhulk at least have the decency to run actual card draw with the intent of finding their "one thing" and lands to play it, but still, it's just some counters, some burn and some card draw with a few guys and man lands and the signature card. There's a big bunch of decks not being "competitive" because whoever plays Liliana against them just wins. Which kinda means that any black "deck" can lose game 1 horribly due to being a lousy pile piloted by a dingus and win games 2 and 3 because the dingus payed 120$ and drew his investment. Or a deck can draw it's stupid money card all day one day and seem great, and literally go 0-5 the next because it didn't draw it's silly card.
What wins it for UW flash, and many other decks, is Selfless Spirit, which is another, "don't bother playing without" card for white decks, but is deceptively strong in this deck in particular. Folks tend to be dissapointed with him but they tend to not see it from the other guy's point of view. The new simplified "regenerate" mechanic is probably easier to understand to new players, but it's orders of magnitude more powerful than anything similar before it was. Really, it is, it just happens that white got it without it's price being adjusted for the fact. The difference between it and "regenerate" is easy to demonstrate with even seemingly harmless little things - you attack with a 4/4 into my board with a copter on it, and have a Harnessed Lightning in hand - I activate the copter - you don't want to either be blocked or let me loot, so you blast him with the lightining - I play Built to Last - Your Harnessed Lightning failed AND you'r 4/4 is getting it AND my copter is still indistructible until EoT. The board situations you can set up with Selfless Spirit can be completely ridiculous, and if I'd ban a card in the current standard other than Vessel of Nascency it's him.
If you banned the Vessel GB delirium would kinda fall appart and so would Aetherworks Marvel. They're both very, very stupid decks.
And as for UW flash you can't not play into their cards. UW flash cards are meant to stall you around and prevent you from winning until they draw whatever their silly thing is. If you try to not play into their moves, they don't care, they want you to sit there not doing anything. More mana on the board for them to cast whatever with Spell Queller Backup, more time to protect their measly weenies with Selfless Spirit so you can't hope to 1-for-x them, and more time to loot with the copter which helps them do what they want - find their 30$ mythic or ridiculous answer to what you're doing and either stabilize or "play card - win game". It just happens that all their stalling effects come with creatures attached, so they can also quickly add up the damage. It all reminds me of Faeries to an almost sickening degree, especially the UW spirit variant with Rattlechains, except somehow even worse.
And the card which never gets mentioned is also Linvala, the Preserver. They stall, get mana for her, play her, she undoes everything you've done before. In order to lessen her impact you're kinda supposed to... not do damage. Or not have more creatures than the other guy. Yay! There's been this assumption that if something costs more than 4 mana it's supposed to win the game on the spot and the combination of eithe blue spirits, Thraben Inspector, Selfless Spirit, Smuggler's Copter, Spell Queller, Reflector Mage and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, with some choicy spells, make it kinda trivial to get there. It even looks like an aggro or tempo deck, until you realize that it isn't, really.
Copter can win games, it's true, but it's highly overrated and certainly isn't for every deck. Activating it into removal, unless there's a Selfless Spirit on board or you're running Built to Last (which noone is) or Blossoming Defense (Which also isn't played in decks which run the copter) sets you back pretty hard. Running good copter removal also means you've got good removal that kills most of everything else, so if there was a point to banning it it would be to maybe stop every single 2 drop ever from eating removal because everyone's packing. But Thraben Inspector, Selfless Spirit and Vessel of Nascency are what actually rules the format. The first one maeks a lot of creatures which would otherwise mean something not mean anything and smooths out draws / crews vehicles / is always there for mass pump for too many decks, the second makes it impossibly difficult to kills stuff or answer threats and the third wasn't really meant to effectively read "1GG: Draw 4 Cards and make delirium trivial" or "1GG: Tutor up a semi-guaranteed free Emrakul on turn 4", because it would not have been a common.
Other than the planeswalkers, which are and have always been just a design mistake the marketing latched onto for some reason. It seems like people love to believe Planeswalkers are legit and enjoy playing them, but people always like to play unfair sillyness and people like it when their money lets them win games. IDK how MtG can compete as a serious E-Sport this way, though, which seems to be what the planeswalker pushing menagerial types seem to want and think is the way to go. The "bare minimum" entry barrier is just way too high. I remember when you could put together a tier 1 standard deck for less money than it took to buy the 4 pain lands it needed. The guy who had the pain lands won every tourney in our community because his mana was just infinitely more reliable in the mirror, but the price of being obviously competitive was about 10 or more times lower. Rosewater said it a bunch, if your theme isn't at common, it's not your theme, and this actually applies. If what you absolutely need to compete is planeswalkers, and they're all mythic, and you need them in the same quantities as you'd need a common, then you're making a card that's supposed to be as widely avaliable as a common cost so much to buy individually that a person can get 2 good board games for the price of a playset of one standard-season worthy card. It's a bit much, honestly.
What also isn't helping standard is the policy of making every must-have answer that actually answers the commonly played stuff a rare or a mythic.
Is there some catch to how everyone seems to have a playset of Gideon or Liliana?
I've been playing around with this some more and the results are dissappointing in a particularly dissappointing way.
Triskaidekaphobia itself is fine, if you draw the right hand (Meaning some combination of Insolent Neonate or Chandra's Pyrohelix + some combination of Incendiary Flow , Collective Defiance and Fiery Temper). It's not at all unreasonable to out-combo most other combo decks in the formats, including Aetherworks Marvel and Hydra decks, and people I've played against were often either impressed or disgusted at how well it all works when it works and how close and hairy the games can get.
Even sideboarding against Triskaidekaphobia doesn't necessarily help - I can board out the phobia in advance, and then the other guy is playing against a burn deck with dead cards in their deck, and this isn't where most of them want to be, so even those matchups are winnable.
However, being a combo deck and/or a burn deck, it's really, horribly, terribly awful against counterspells and control in general. It just feels like all the possible card advantage available in the format is in other colors, and there's so much quality removal everywhere that running dudes at all seems like a terrible idea if you're red. And can make the deck slow, plodding and often aimless on a non-Triskaidekaphobia hand, like it doesn't achieve enough fast enough. And if you run too many dudes, you don't have the burn, and you certainly can't compete with white and green in general dude size and quality.
But if you don't run dudes, you get run over by most of the aggro. RB copter stuff is the least problematic, but can escape the phobia via burn to it's own face. Anything with white in it is going to have Always Watching , Gideon and Fragmentize just to name a few things, and just so many dudes that there's no way to burn them all. And there's no red dudes to actually run, Lathnu Hellion is an undercosted burn spell that can be chumped by Thraben Inspector. Akoum Firebird is also a burn spell, too fragile too vulnerable to getting exiled. The only creature that seems remotely reasonable is Mirrorwing Dragon , but the problem with him is that the guys who let you live to 5 mana don't have dudes on board when they throw stuff at him, and the guys who would lose all their dudes if they target him have allready killed you by this point, or have enchantments that kill him. I'm a bit weirded out that the RG guys who run Larger than Life and other such things don't run him, though, they could get him out earlier.
And the deck just gets completely run over by zombies. They are just absurdly good at beating a burn deck (they clock you faster and you can't kill their dudes off fast enough or thoroughly enough). I bought into 4 friendly leagues after having had a steady 3-2 record with an indication that I could have had 4-0 or even 5-0 at any time, and then I just ran into so many zombies this weekend that I ended up going 2-3, 2-3, 2-3, 1-4. I went and bought most of a zombies deck after that, as it looked so brutal, but when I tried it it only seemed to work against control, because control generally couldn't keep up with them (Although I AM missing a few crucial things).
I think that in order to improve the deck I'll really need to add blue to it or something. And that needs proper 3 colors. I've got the manabase already, and I'm trying out a build with just Anticipate in. I also got my hands on 2 Collective Brutality, and the funny thing is that Chandra's Pyrohelix is essetially VERY core in this deck due to being an instant (if you played it a bunch you'd see what I mean) and this is competing for deck slots with either it or Incendiary Flow. Ad it can't replace either because despite it's flexibility it doesn't do what those cards do. And as opposed to the extraction it doesn't hit artifacts, but it does hit enemy burn/lifegain which could be used to lower their life total, and it does hit the enchantment removal, it hits counterspells which mess any combo deck up and it hitting card draw might also prove handy. And you can turn land into a dead Thraben Inspector which is nice. The life swing is a bit of a problem, as it might occasionally put me back up to or over 13. Also, I've managed to eliminate being screwed by going with 25 lands. It sounds insane at first but then, I'm running Collective Defiance and Insolent Neonate, was running Tormenting Voice , changed it to Anticipate and now there's also Collective Brutality to make those lands into effects if I don't need them on board. Plus, the deck is deadly if it hits it's early turns right, staring at an instantly unbeatable hand and not being able to draw your 3rd or 4th land despite multiple card draw effects is seriously painful. I was often enough flooded even with 23 lands. Plus it seems to help with having a basic land in hand for Foreboding Ruins.
I think I ought to try Goblin Dark-Dwellers again, now that I've upped the land count. I was having trouble hitting my 4th or 5th land in time before. But they just eat removal, that's their problem. You can't really make a proper GDD deck without having so few dudes that the other guy is almost certain to have removal in hand when you play them. I'm not exactly sure this is still the case now that I have Collective Brutality, but I tried with Avacyn's Judgement and Ravenous Bloodseeker and the Bloodseeker kept just eating removal. Seriously, there's like, 5 or so non-white creatures (which aren't just ETB spells with a body tacked onto it) that are worth playing at all ATM. I think most decks out there routinely have more removal than I have creatures post-board, and white decks seem to have more removal than I have dudes, and more dudes than I have removal at the same time.
I think trying to play red without Radiant Flames in this meta is insane, doesn't matter what your combo/plan is. I also have a feeling I'll dish out what I'll feel like too much money for a playset of Pyroclasm and discover that it doesn't help me at all. UW will just counter it all the time or go amblem on Gideon, Zombies will laugh at it, RW will get it's guys too fat for it to do anything or flash Avacyn, UR doesn't have any creatures, it doesn't hit the Copter or Fleetwheel Cruiser or man-lands or planeswalkers, BR has Scrapheap Scrounger and Bloodhall Priest who dodge it, and it kills my own Thermo-Alchemists unless I cast it for full effect... which I have to because it seems to not really kill anything for less than the full effect. But there seems to be no other way to generate card advantage in red and I'm getting run over by madly aggro dudes, so maybe the fact that I can reliably go Chandra's Pyrohelix on Selfless Spirit will work out for me? If I mean to continue pursuing this deck I have to try.
And the last thought for now - Consuming Sinkhole. Yes, it looks very stupid until you realize that most folks seem to put down a horsey first thing they do with Gideon, and then this reads as "3R: Get rid of Gideon", which is generally rather nice to be able to do. What it also does, in this deck in particular, is do damage at instant speed, which is madningly crucial as a ton of games are decided in response to a Triskaidekaphobia trigger. A lot of those 2-3 league disasters would have been nice self-sustaining 3-2 at least if in just one out of several games per league I had an instant in my hand instead of Collective Defiance or Incendiary Flow. Really. Flame Lash would have been so good that even this is playable. I'll be looking at the Aether Revolt spoiler looking for instant-speed burn more than I'll be looking for anything else.
More loot for Triskadekaphobia.dck! Went 3 - 2 in the next league with the deck being mostly the same except I replaced Furyblade Vampire with Hanweir Garrison to see what happens. I wasn't overly impressed with the Garrison in this particular deck, it eats removal, doesn't fit in with the combo too well, and I mishandled it, too. It's a great card, it just hasn't worked out. I think I'll try Gibbering Fiend next if I decide to not give the Garrison more time.
The sideboard finally included 4X Galvanic Bombardment, which I have to say came in quite handy even alongside 4 Haressed Lightning and all. That's probably gonna stay that way.
The matches were interesting, too:
RD1 G1 I was on the draw against Aetherworks Marvel. I had the nuts draw for a Triskaidekaphobia kill, but I made a misstep which made me one turn slower. HE didn't make a misstep and he actually got Emrakul down, but I still ended up being faster with my ridiculous card. His is literally 500 times more expensive, mine was literally faster, lol. G2 I saw 4 cards and 10 lands in the first 14 cards, unfortunately the phobia wasn't one of them. He had nothing too, he just played a single Iskhanah and attacked me 4 times, more or less. Third game I just beat him down quickly, and here the Garrison was fine, but it ended up doing the same damage as a Hellion would, and the misstep which almost cost me game one was being too eager to play it instead of being disciplined and going straight to the combo.
2 - 1
RD2 - GB Delirium. G1 I mulled to 5 (on land 2 times), got stuck on 2 lands with a perfect Triska kill just staring at me from the hand, not to mention 3 Fiery Temper while he beat me down with a copter. It took him forever, too, if I had the third land to kill his copter I would have easily won as soon as the 4th showed up, really. G2 He does stuff, I have the exact same hand as G1 except I have land, he has the most expesive deck in standard, planeswalkers, 20 dollar 2 drops, mythic everything, you name it - I play my dirt cheap hand and hes dead as if it's all shoebox cardboard. G3 - We both curve out, he plays something, I kill it, he plays something, I kill it, but unfortunately his curve ends in a Verdurous Gearhulk which I've got nothing on. Still - he would've diead from the phobia next turn. Shame, soooo close.
1 - 2
RD3 was against UB Zombies, which I just didn't have enough experience playing against, and I didn't read his cards carefully so he ended up dodging a nut-draw Triska kill (If I just read the damned Cryptbreaker I would have killed him on the spot). In G2 he won fair and square, and I made a serious mistake, again with the Garrison. Thing was that I haven't tried the Garrison well enough, so I wasn't fully aware that Chandra's Pyrohelix can lolpwn dudes who opportunistically block the tokens when they attack (this is rather good, makes me want to keep the Garrison in there). It would have bought me some time at least, although probably not enough of it to win.
Btw, Chandra's Pyrohelix sucks in Kaladesh Draft, that's true, but uses for it just keep cropping up for me like mad in constructed. At least in this deck.
0 - 2
RD4 - RW Reanimator (Refurbish + Red discard + gearhulks). G1 I'm flooded but he can't draw a Refurbish. He draws Madcap Experiment and scores a white gearhulk in one ping, I kll it with Harnessed Lightning. I play my A-game and outmaouver him to a Triskaidekaphobia kill thought a Call the Bloodline and a Sinister Concoction. Phfiew. G2 - I get him to 1 life he topdecks Linvala and wins. I sacrifice 2 Neonates in respose and draw lands because ofc I do. G3 - He had a turn 4 refurbish. I burned him to a crisp in response to it with the help of Thermo-Alchemist. I mean, this is a dead-serious burn deck I've got here, there just happens to be a card which hits the other guy for 13 which is well worth splashing.
2 - 1
RD5 - BR Aggro (Kaladesh Artifact flavor). The deck which I have in it's entirety but have spurned it for this one, lol. G1) He goes first and has a better hand, he wins. G2) I go first and beat him with my better hand. G3) We have a glorious slugfest of threats and answers, but he started out with a mulligan and too afgressively and I was more cautions and ultimatly had more card draw and better answers to his stuff and I won. I literally used the technique which everyone used against me and why I swapped to this in the first place - he played more dudes and I played more removal, and dudes who aren't Thraben Inspector or Insolent Neonate just eat removal.
2 - 1
Worse track record than yesterday overall, but there were some seriously badass individual game wins. Taking out the Aetherworks Marvel guy was great, giving a decent game to the GB delirium was also great, beating a RB non-mirror was totally great, and I don't even know how the hell I managed to beat the Reanimator guy. The Zombie guy was both a good, patient player and my play was shamefuly bad. I'm still optimistic, and getting further ahead with understanding and tweaking the deck It'll be ready for the "competitive" league when it manages to win itself enough tix to enter. Then I see if it can beat actual spikes.
And I got a modest bit of loot, 4 tickets worth. Happened to be just enough for 3 GU Kaladesh lands, and some sweet blue spirits this one guy beat me up with a week ago in the practice room. I've been picking up pieces of that deck with every trade but with the Triskadekaphobia loot from yesterday and today - I think I finally got it I'm also more-or-less just a Thalia and Declaration in Stone playset away from a modest no-planeswalker WR Humans. All it takes is not screwing up next time and winning that 4th match.
And I thought I was crazy for going no-copter, no Unlicenced Disintegration RB in this meta.
I'm also completely furious Flame Lash isn't on MTGO. Is it ever going to BE on MTGO?
A-HAH! Glorious victory! Well, more like less of a screwup, but I did score a nice Invention Hangarback Walker out of a treasure chest, and made my league points back for more making people lose
The sideboard was a complete mess, and I had no actual sideboarding plan. I ran Gheistblast main in the practice room (where I'm at something like 20 match wins to maybe a few losses), and I very much liked the idea of it letting me effectively flashback something for grindier games. Burn loves it's card-draw, what can I say, but I never sort of found the spot for it. Weaver of Lightning also makes a ton of sense, but I also didn't have any idea what to take out for him, exactly. Thermo-Alchemist was standardly great, and Structural Distortion looks great but the problem is that Copter needs to be taken out sooner, and Pyrohelix took care of Needle Spires a few times, so even when I had it I never played it. Having said that I think that might have been matchup related.
I've probably tried every single red 2 drop, and Furyblade Vampire is just lovely. I didn't draw her very often, but she drew removal like a boss, stopped oncoming Thraben Inspectors (really I bet you more games are decided by that card pinging you than any other in standard) and can attack into them. And in case she has a clear path, she turns everything into a Lightning Bolt and turns Fiery Temper into 2 Lightning Bolts. I need to learn to get more out of her, she's good.
Gibbering Fiend is also rather workable, since killing someone with the phobia often requires a ping, and his EtB ping can be that ping.
The tourney result this time was 2 - 1, 2 - 0, 1 - 2, 2 - 0, 0 - 2, for a 3 - 2 in matches, although one whole match was lost due to a missclick. The report is:
G2: He had a VERY explosive start (basically 5 dudes on board by turn three, and I mis-sideboarded completely by taking out the cheaper burn.
G3: I managed to stop the aggro with the cheap burn I boarded back in, and I got lucky - he didn't draw any of his mass pump, which is obviously good for me, but on the other hand I drew 5 straight lands, then used 2 desciples, drew a land and tormenting voice, and then drew a land and a burn to finish him off.
TOTAL: 2 - 1
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R2: GBR Artifact Aggro (2 - 0)
G1: Got lucky with the cointoss. I played Neonate and Furyblade Vampire and he conceded. Probably a riky hand which didn't pan out or a misclick.
G2: I won with Triskadekaiphobia lifegain tickig the guy back up after he used Fiery Temper to get off 13 to save himself, and he got me quite low with Built to Smash and such. It came down to who draws what and he didn't draw enough damage before he ticked back up to 13.
TOTAL: 4 - 1
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RD3: UW Flash (1 - 2)
I've been playing these a lot in the practice room, people play them and have the cheek to whine about MY cards being ridiculous. I've honestly had a guy go: "You got lucky" at me after dropping to Triskaidekaphobia even though he dropped Gideon. I told him my deck is not very vulnerable to Gideon but he insisted. Played Gideon, I played my thing, I won, he lost. One of the biggest pleasures in life, and I've been playing this game for, well, for about as long as it has existed, anyway, one thing never changes. Beating up rich people who slap wads of money on the table every time they tap mana or play a land, beating them with a 0,01 junk rare never ever grows old. Except Triskaidekaphobia isn't a junk rare, it's power level depends on the metagame.
This wasn't the guy, though, and this one I lost to, by my own mistake.
G1: He drew Avacyn with Always Watching on board. In theory I could deal with it, in practice I could't topdeck what I needed. The other guy topdecked Avacyn mind you, and he was in burn range, so I lost. Strog card, Avacyn.
G2: Mull to 5, still only one land - but I still burned the guy out the old fashioned way.
G3: More or less I had a turn 3 Furyblade Vampire on the play, ready to attack for free 4 damage with no problem to discard a redundant Triskaidekaphobia and a firey temper to just murder the guy. I mislclick and don't attack. A long time down the road, he's at 2 life, so I would have even burned him out, and I topdeck 4 lands instead of any burn at all. He doesn't have any burn but he kills me with Vestvale Abbey tokens which he can't make any more of, because it costs life.
My own damned fault, should've been a match win. Also - Vestvale Abbey is annoying.
TOTAL: 5 - 3
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RD4: UBW Flash ( 2 - 0 )
G1: Burned him out, plain and simple. Even fried his Avacyn with Harnessed Lightning.
G2: I was stuck on 3 lands for so long that a single Thraben Disciple took me down below 10 life. And everything I had cost at least 2 mana. Then I finally drew a Fiery Temper, madnessed it off of discarding EoT becuase I had 8 cards in hand, and played Chandra's Pyrohelix in respose to Selfless Spirit activation. The other guy just conceded a short while later. (I would have won because I had more than enough burn left in my hand).
TOTAL: 7 - 3
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R5: WR Humans ( 0 - 2 )
This guy was more explosive and simply lucked out with his draw. I think I actually have all the cards in that deck apart from Thalia if he doesn't play planeswalkers. Also, I don't know what this deck loses to (apart from radom Triskaidekaphobia). I actually looked at my crummy sideboard and scratched my head trying to figure out what could even BE there in my colors to make any difference.
G1: He ran me over. I traded card for card until I couldn't aymore.
G2: I almost had him on Triskaidekaphobia, but Hanweir Garrison is one heckuva card.
Not much to say, RW humans - they're everywhere and I need to learn to side against them better. This deck can probably beat them on the play, or some versions of them, but it's a kind of strange combo deck which can simply combo out against anyone. How to beat them when they have their ideal draw, in these colors, I'm not sure I know.
Now if I can cash that Walker in I'm curious what can I get for it Apparently not much o.O But still, who cares, I won a rare blingy thingy using Triskaidekaphobia , lol!
If anyone's reading this - that thing is worth 30 bucks IRL, I get that stuff is cheaper online, but the bots I'm running into seem to be complete cheapskates. Anyone know where to sell a Masterwork Hangarback Walker for a reasonable ammount of tix?
League went 2 - 3 , but I'm not really disappointed with the deck, to be honest. It's still a bit unrefined and I should've tested it more before trying a league.
Insolent Neonate - Don't attempt to make this kind of deck without this guy, all I'll say. Gets in for damage, triggers madness, draws a card. Lathnu Hellion - It's a ridiculous card, truly. Triskaidekaphobia - It did what it does. Fiery Temper - Kills copters, discards for neonate and Haunting Voice when looking for lands, 100% great. Chandra's Pyrohelix - I regretted not having 1 more even in the sideboard. Being able to do 1 or 2 at instant speed is "comboey" with the phobia, and it also gets rid of more things than I though. Thermo-Alchemist - I think I'll switch to them in the main deck, if for no other reason then because Thraben Inspectors can't chip away at you by attacking into them.
Cards I'm meh with:
Speedway Fanatic - It does what it does quite well, hit face for 2 for 1-2-3 turns, which is cool, but there's too many Thraben Inspector and Glint-Nest Crane around. He should have been in the sideboard, I think. Tormenting Voice - It didn't show up as often as I would have liked. Incendiary Flow - Well, the fast kills with the phobia work much better with it, but it's painful to have to play it in copter meta. Collective Defiance - Should be better than it is, and I've had bad luck with redraws, but this card keeps me wishing I had some kind of mana accelerant.
I never even saw:
Sinister Concoction - As I didn't play against anything that looked really top-heavy in a way where this would help, I didn't board it. Transgress the Mind - I'm not sure this thing is the right thing for this deck. Goblin Dark-Dwellers - Never showed up, would've been fine if they did. I was flooded quite often.[/quote]
I'm very annoyed with:
Harnessed Lightning - Playing this in a red deck, and in a red burn deck in particular, is unbearably godawful. I need a cheep instant answer to copter, and this card is a lot better than Lightning Axe so I'm stuck with it, and to add salt to the wound, I can't replace one with the 4th Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I really want because of Triskaidekaphobia, as that doesn't kill too many things. And Incendiary Flow is a sorcery. And Collective Defiance costs more and is a sorcery.
As lame as it may sound one of the two biggest reasons for the lousy performance was mana screw and mana flood, but specifically mana screw. Just so you guys don't think I'm whining for no reason, I have 24 lands, and I had to mulligan every other match due to not having any or only 1 land in my hand, and I started quite a few matches with only one land rather than mulligan to 4. Games where I wasn't screwed I was flooded, sometimes astoundingly so (and one time understandably so). It's a wonder, in fact, that I won as many games as I did. Also, just so you know I'm only reporting and not whining - the other reason the deck performed badly is that I made grotesque misplays and misclicks which would be completely shameful to admit. Like passing my first turn by accident - TWICE. Let's just say that having insomnia and passing the time by playing magic with an entry fee isn't a good idea. The stupid thing is that I pretty much made just one mistake too many, out of probably 20, and if I didn't I would've at least made my battle point back for another go. Shame.
On to the coverage of my disaster, which is actually interesting:
Game 1: Mulligan to 5, then made a game losing mistake (didn't note what) which let the other guy untap with the reservoir. So basically thrown game which would've been won. (Only notes on this game)
Game 2: Didn't tilt, sided everything but the concoctions, took out 1 Neonate, 3 fanatic, 4 Harnessed Lightning, 4 Triskaidekaphobia. Burned him out the old fashioned way before he could do anything.
Game 3: Absurd flood. With 4 lands out, on the draw, I Cycled 7 lands through various means and drew 8 lands. That is one neonate who discarded a land to draw a land, then one tormenting voice discarding a land which drew 2 lands, then I cast collective defiance to discard 2 lands, drew two lands, then AGAIN collective defiance and AGAIN drew two lands. Then I had four full turns where the other guy was at 2 life, which was amazing considering that this wasn't a drawn out game and I managed 18 damage despite a huge flood, and I kept drawing just lands three turns in a row with Transgress the Mind as the last useless card. Well, I should've not made that mistake in game 1 I suppose.
SCORE: 1 - 2
ROUND 2: UW Flash
Game 1: Mull to 6, then made a very stupid mistake of throwing Harnessed Lightning at the Thraben Inspector instead of waiting for the inevitable copter to show up. The game went on for a while, mind you, but I really should not have done that. In my defense, what he played to crew the copter was Selfless Spirit so the lightning would not have killed the copter, but it would have killed the spirit, and in any case I screwed it up.
This match made me realize that I should be playing Thermo-Alchemist main deck because the Thraben Inspectors are basically unkillable (because are you really going to try to kill them with something?), and they add up to kill you even if you deal with everything else. I also wonder whether Brazen Scourge, which can actually attack into the little sh**s and do a decent Lathnu Hellion impression isn't an undiscovered metagame gem. Or if there really insn't any point to playing anything but white?
Game 2: Took out fanatics and lathnu helliions, put in dark dwellers, 3 Thermo-Alchemist and 1 Collective Defiance
He tapped out on turn 3, my turn 4 I put down the phobia and in my upkeep pinked him down to 13 to kill him. You don't have an answer and I don't mulligan or get screwed - you lose.
Game 3: Mull to 5 (first only 1 land and no neonate or haunting voice, then no land, then 1 land with neonate at 5). Wasn't going terribly but he sided Rattlechains and Aether Flux. I actually dealt with his gideon rather easily (strangely enough this deck has an ok time with Gideon because the neonate can kinda always sneak in for 1 and then you can ussually redirect something to kill him). The problem was that his defensive flashing spirits kept saving his dudes, so by the time we both ran out of cards in hand, I also ran out of life and he didn't.
I played against some guy a few days ago, who played GU spirits with the copter and he was very annoying and impressed me. I think that'd be a nasty ole deck to play, probably even with Triskadekaphobia splashed to make it easier to kill the other guy if someone want's a "You lose!" take in blue. Idk, just an idea.
Result: 1 - 2 again, more of a true loss, but still - the game where I didn't have to mulligan I won handily.
Total: 2 - 4
GAME 3: RB Eldrazi aggro of some kind, not too threatening.
Game 1 - Poor guy got screwed on lands a bit because his first 2 were Foreboding Ruins with nothing to reveal. I was flooded like mad - on the draw I saw exactly three cards which weren't lands - total. In 6 turns. A Lathnu Hellion, Harnessed Lightning and Triskaidekaphobia. I won. Swung twice with the hellion, plopped the phobia turn 4, gave him one life with it on turn 5, and used the lightning to save my mad self because he played Reckless Bushwacker and had enough to get me to 13 the turn I was supposed to give us both a life.
Game 2 - I misclicked auto-yield on turn 1 passing my turn, on the draw. Then I played a mountain first instead of the Forboding Ruins which time walked me for another turn. Still, won, killed him with just burn, alchemists and hellions. Had two "discard 2 lands - draw 2 lands" situations with Collective Defiance again. I know that my draw would have been even worse if I didn't have the cards to suck those lands out but it's still a bit -.- . On the other hand, the other guy had some 1cc eldrazi which ingests and he never hit lands, so this helped me to just draw lands.
RESULT: 2 - 0 , but my deck was rather clearly stronger.
Total: 4 - 4
ROUND 4: Mardu Vehicles
Game 1: I had a great hand and would have likely won it, but I missclick auto-yielded my 1st turn away and threw it away.
Game 2: Draw! My fault again, if I just played a collective defiance before I played Triskaidekaphobia I would have won it. This way he happened to have 1 damage to put me on 13 (Thraben Inspector on the board) and I stupidly and sleepily thought I'd block it with Thermo-Alchemist, but Thermo-Alchemist ate a Harnessed Lightning and I overthought myself and though he'd be running only Unlicenced Disintegration which would have put me below 13. If I waited a turn for him to attack me with his copter (or killed the damned inspector) I would have easily won.
Game 3: Mull to 6, then only saw my second land at turn 4. He wasn't doing too good either, as he has only his dorks which activate when there's an artifact on board but no artifact. He drew his haste no-pilot vehicle and hit me for 12 in one turn, although to be fair I might have missplayed it, but wth.
RESULT: 0-2-1 but if I wasn't an idiot it would have been 1-2
TOTAL: 4-6-1
ROUND 5: UB... something, I didn't really get to see what (spirits I think), because
Game 1: I didn't have to mulligan and he conceded turn 3 as his lands were coming into play tapped, and my neonate, speedy and hellion were coming at him.
Game 2: Turn 3 Hellion, turn 4 Triskaidekaphobia, turn 5 upkeep Fiery Temper at him, win.
RESULT: 2 - 0
TOTAL: 6 - 6 - 1
So the guys I beat I beat 2 - 0 (granted they weren't the most powerful decks), and the guys I didn't beat I kinda threw matches away on very stupid mistakes, had to mulligan at least to 6 all the time and didn't feel so outclassed as I thought I would. First round I should have won for sure, and fourth round I threw one game away before I got to even play it with a nuts hand.
I'll do more testing and tweak the build a bit, and try it again possibly after some tweaks. The mulliganing is bugging me out, something isn't right. I have enough lands in the deck to be madly flooded every other game, yet more than every other game I have to mulligan at least once. Which isn't what you're really looking to do in a burn deck, honestly.
I also need... I think I need Weaver of Lightning in my sideboard and I'm a doofus that it's not there already. Possibly even mainboard instead of Harnessed Lightning, now there's a thought. And I also need a strategy for dealing with Thraben Inspector. Kozilek's Return is that strategy, obviously, but it costs too much money. Biting Rain off of Neonate? Hmmmm.
I have to try, against serious opponents, Lightning Axe in place of Harnessed Lightning, with Biting Rain in the board. I know a few decks which would get completely messed up by having those two played at them, if 4 mana isn't too late. Too many things about it are problematic, though.
I have to say, I saw Triskaidekaphobia and thought "what?" However, it's a much better card than it used to be since there are no pain lands anymore. It's probably a card that deserves a lot more attention.
Oh, I went "what?" myself But then I remembered that there aren't many commonly played lands that lose life, and, well, "Suspend 1, 3B: Other guy drops dead" reads fine. You can get into trouble still, and people get creative about dodging it, but it's a huge, cheap nuke masquerading as a alternate win condition.
I'm wondering if blue would be a better color than red though. As you say, Fragmatize, Root Out, etc are running wild. Having the ability to go to Negate/Dispel/Ceremonious Rejection (I know rejection doesn't counter those spells, but it's very useful with all the artifacts, eldrazi and devoid spells out there).
I can see the logic behind it, but I'm not overly confident. The deck works because it's a burn or more precisely a combo-burn deck. It does it's 7-ish damage by turn 4, slaps down Triskaidekaphobia and wins on untap, or by casting Chandra's Pyrohelix in response to the trigger to adjust it at the last moment.
It usually wins in the nick of time, too, so you can't exactly keep mana open for a counterspell - if the other guy hits you with enchantment removal, you're most likely dead anyway. That's why I called it "You Lose!", the other guy is doing everything right, curving out, whathave you, and you seem to be doing some random nonsense, attack for 1 with a neonate, then throw Incendiary Flow at him, then cast a Collective Defiance at his head instead of at his dude, even sacrifice the neonate for no obvious reason, he's clearly playing against a noob here, or you've attacked him with Speedway Fanatic and you didn't draw your vehicle, he's doing fine - and then you play this dipsh**t card and... he's dead.
But I'm not sure protecting the card would save you in most cases, you kinda have to combo out really quickly and most of your moves are geared to be doing that. Speed is surprisingly the thing, which is why I kinda-sorta feel Green for a mana boost might be the ticket.
However, regardless of whether the other guy died or happened to have a mainboard answer, you can just side the thing out, and tune the deck to be a nastier burn deck for games 2-3, and quite often the other guy will have dead cards which are meant to deal with enchantments / artifacts (and you've got none, you're a burn deck), or creatures (and all the ones you've got have haste, or flash stuff back, or sacrifice to filter, etc, and if they hit once they've done their job, you're a burn deck).
Or you can not side it out at all.
EDIT: But Red has the most direct ad non-interactive way of getting someone down to 13 before turn 4, can also manipulate their life with their own card, and also use their life manipulation card as removal if needed. Also, drawing a card to discard Fiery Temper to do 3 dmg for 1 mana is VERY good in a deck which is trying to manipulate life AND draw it's combo piece. I'm even contemplating using Alms of the Vein for the same reason.
Now it's something I want to build and test.
Be my guest, but I'd suggest that if you've got the components and/or spare change to give the R/b variant a bunch of whirls in the test room first, to get the feel of why it works when it works and how much of a burn/combo deck it really is. I have a feeling that trying to make it another way will cause frustration and possibly misevaluation of the power of Triskaidekaphobia.
I'm not sure anything but red has the necassary capability of altering the enemy life total directly and precisely.
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I'm planning to bite the bullet and put my money where my mouth is tonight, and see how this does in a league. My hopes aren't too high, because I'm not sure I've put the deck together in the best possible way, and one of the more conventional aggro packages with a splash for Trishaidekaphobia might be way better, but I'd find it very lolsy if this managed to win 3 matches out of 5.
After some testing, I concluded that Sin Prodder is deffinitely out, and so is the Diabolic Tutor.
Why? Sin prodder = nice card
It's a nice card, true, but it didn't feel right for the deck. I had a feeling that giving the enemy any input over what gets or doesn't get drawn is a bad idea in this particular deck, and also, I felt stupid for even trying to play it with Triskaidekaphobia. I mean, if you're trying to get the enemy to precisely 13 life in game one, why give him a way out of it by letting him burn himself with Sin Prodder?
It might be a sneaky thing to sideboard Sin Prodder in place of Tiskaidekaphobia in game two.
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EDIT:
Aaaaaand, apparently people are routinely running Fragmentize and various green artifact/enchantment hate mainboard now. Probably because of that marvel nonsense. Four matches in a row! So if everyone red is running Harnessed Lightning, and if everyone white is running Fragmentize, and everyone green is running one of their three or so different things, and this seems to be the case, than I guess I'm more likely to run into trouble running this than not, and switching to copter or an artifact shell is also suicidal.
I think I'll keep the grubs around for the sideboard, though, simply to have a small dude to side in vs. control. I did 2-1 a UW flash deck, but I whished I had another small poker besides the neonate. Seeing how nicely hellion hastes it's way into damage, I'm beiginning to consider adding Speedway Fanatic to the deck. Despite having no vehicles, in fact, partly specifically because I have no vehicles. His haste is a largely underrated thing, as it lets him get in there for some damage. I don't necessarily want him in the main deck, otherwise I would not have taken the grubs out, but I wish all the "I run Fragmentize main" crew can take a good look at him and keep their junk in their deck, while I board my silly enchantment out.
Who knows, maybe that Sin Prodder in the side too?
I have some vague feeling like I want the deck would want to be R/G/b more than just R/b, for those mana elves who use energy and the RG 4/3 guy. Idk where I would fit them, and again, the mana base would be silly (although not completely ridiculous as the GB dual from kaladesh is kinda manageable play wise, but IDK about price-wise). Hmmm.
Check the latest post for the latest build the deck is a rogue deck, I'm playing it in junior leagues and it's evolving and getting sigificant (in terms of optimization) tweakes all the time.
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I've been trying to get various black/red themes and mechanics to work for me in standard, but all the powerful strategies seem to have been seen through, and all the not-so-powerful ones are not worth investing tickets in. So almost by accident I hit upon a seemingly novel and ridiculous concept. I can't test it properly in an actual league yet, but it's been depressingly effective in the tourney practice room so far.
I'm not really settled on the sideboard, in part because I'm not all that settled on the main deck. I spend the last two weeks gradually buying up all the black and red stuff in standard (still missing a few things, but surprisingly few), and almost by accident hit upon the kinda-sorta main card in this silly deck, but it's a long story of how the deck came to be, and writing it might help me figure out how to make it a better deck.
The deck came about this way - Aether Hub (and having money for fancy lands) seems to be making it easy for everybody to splash (and sideboard) turn 2 answers for Smuggler's Copter. This mostly means that seemingly everyone is running Harnessed Lightning. This kicks a lot of red and red/black strats in the face because it just so happens that most of those kinda-sorta rely on the two drop not getting killed every time. Also Thraben Inspector is everywhere, which limits the effectiveness of possible 1cc creatures. I'd love to play Unlicenced Disintegration , but if I can't play Bomat Courrier because of the inspector (and the omnipresent Fragmentize and Natural State), and the copter because of the meta, I have to look for my stuff elsewhere.
So I decided to play Harnessed Lightning. It's a great card - for any deck but a red one. Any other deck generates energy more easily, needs energy less, has something smart to do with the energy, while the red deck simply needs a 2cc instant answer for the enemy copter/grim flayer/whathaveyou on the draw and is stuck with the lightning. So I decided to play the damned thing and ditch the copter, because it was getting blown up all the time losing me tempo and board position. One problem with running the lightning, though, is that the red/black decks are extremely finicky about their mana base. Fitting Aether Hub into a serious friendly-color pair deck is much more difficult than fitting it into an enemy color pair one, in this meta, due to how much more early game friendly the enemy dual lands are. But if you go lightning, you go hub, and then the deck can't be be properly RB but rather mostly red with a black splash. Since red seems to have a seemingly better energy game, and a much simpler mono-game, I went with red.
Having played a ton of RB variants over the last few weeks I figured out that it's a really lousy meta for trying to play most dudes at all. That's really the bane of red and red-black, they have some fine-looking small dudes, but everybody packs either 8-16 removal (post board at least), mythic dudes which outclass them, or they combo you out too fast.
One of the dudes which was silly enough to play was Lathnu Hellion , which I've seen played against me, bought up because they were cheap, and decided to try since it tied into the whole energy thing. I figured if there was nothing to cast Harnessed Lightning on I could just dump it into hellion upkeep, surprise the other guy. I also added Thriving Grubs - they're not good by any stretch of the imagination, and in most situations they'd be be a complete waste of space (and ussually ARE a complete waste of energy), but hey - it's one more turn for the hellion, it's 2 more power for the lightning, and it could even be mana fixing with the hub. And I've had a game where I killed a guy with them in two swings after having played three cards total, which can happen in this deck.
So that's the lame-o energy package, a red burn which doesn't go to the head without shennanigans, a big red dude that can be chumped until it dies on it's own, and a small red dude who's good for not much, but as opposed to most other red things you don't mind it getting blasted by the other guy which means a lot in this format. I suppose there's the pinger but he looks awfully junky even for this deck.
Then I went and put in the main card of the deck, the ever-so-stupid Triskaidekaphobia. I've discovered it by complete accident the day before. I bought them for next to nothing while padding out a random trade, decided that nuking a dude for 13 with one card looks silly enough to try, tried it, and, well, it nuked people for 13 with just one card.
If I wanted to go overly-enthusiastic about it, I could testify that I played Thriving Grubs, attacked with them next turn while giving them the boost, hit for 3, next turn played a Harnessed Lightning just for the energy, attacked with the grubs for 4, next turn played Triskaidekaphobia, passed the turn, and won on my upkeep after having played 3 cards. One of them gave one guy +1/+1 for two mana and did nothing else. But I have to list out the rest of the deck first.
I added Incendiary Flow , Collective Defiance and Thermo-Alchemist as ways to manipulate the enemy life total directly, because I've also won games where I just poked the other guy once or twice with something or the other, hit him with the burn and played the phobia FTW. If I were a bit more happy with how the artifact shell works out in the current standard, I'd obviously run Unlicenced Disintegration . If I were confident enough about packaging Insolent Neonate , Key to the City and Fiery Temper, there'd be very lolsy wins to be had with that. There's something to be said about Night Market Lookout and Smuggler's Copter, too, in a phobia deck, if I was confident enough with being more black. The artifact shell, especially with the key, also opens up the possibility of Scrapheap Scrounger and Ovalchase Daredeveil as cards to easily discard and easily recur, if one so wanted. It's also worth noting that Collective Defiance "discard your stuff, draw new stuff" thing actually works in this deck as opposed to most others, because it's a way to ditch redundant copies of Triskaidekaphobia. So if there's a way to make use of the Ovalchase Daredevil at all, it's that - use him as discard filler first and grindy nuisance later in a RB artifacts shell.
Anyway, I added a random Diabolic Tutor. It's a bit silly because there's too few black sources realistically, so it'll probably go out, but on the other hand it's a fifth phobia... or a burn, why not, I've tutored for Incendiary Flow for a turn 6 win.
Goblin Dark Dwellers kinda ended up with too few spells to flash back, but still - folks are basing entire decks around playing Torrential Gerhulk, which, while obviously stronger, often ends up doing exactly the same thing as these guys. I suppose the deck could use / end up using something like Collective Brutality (damned pricey) or Transgress the Mind mainboard (both for them and the Thermo-Alchemist), or if the energy thing falls through possibly move to a more artifacty shell and run Unlicenced Disintegration, but I'd probably still most rather have the goblins topping the curve. In a stunning bit of junky nonsense, if there was a reasonable enough way to help hit 5 mana naturally enough while also having something to flash back, I'd even give Spontaneous Artist a shot as hasting the goblins out.
Sin Prodder I just threw in. I wanted something completely randomly thrown in because I knew I'd need to make adjustments, and he should probably be Insolent Neonate, as the neonate sets up the nuts and stupid sequence of 1) Poke with menace neonate for 1 dmg, 2) Incendiary Flow, 3) Collective Defiance, 4) Triskaidekaphobia 5) UR DED. Or alternatively some clever way of getting the enemy lifegain out of the way.
Or it should be Lightning Weaver to help against the enemy turning your own phobia against you (they have their turn 5 to get YOUR life to 13). If the deck was more black Night Market Lookout would possibly help with this rather well, too, as it's early beats which also pad out your life. A rather good safeguard against being at 13 at the wrong time, I've found, is Sinister Concoction, which I'd run if could get the mana base to behave well enough to be properly black-red. The problem there is that it can't be flashed back with the Goblin Dark-Dwellers, that it essentially takes up the same deck space as Harnessed Lightning, but on the other hand it sure screws with any Emrakul plans the enemy might have while at the same time letting you get off 13 life in response to the Phobia trigger it the other guy puts you there.
Anyway, the deck can win the tradish way of cheap dudes & burn, it can win the non-tradish way of wtfpwn with just burn or a mix of stuff.
Keep in mind that you can kill yourself with your own phobia, and that there are ways for the other guys to dodge it. Lifegain, throwing their burn at themselves, and simply attacking you to make you kill yourself instead all works. But still - there are decks which can't do anything about it (and decks which can don't always have the requisite tools on-hand), and I've even found that just having the other guy ticking down from something they can't just move off the board is surprisingly fine. It's the stupid format, you see, there's way better 3-4-5 mana threats to play, but they're dudes and eat removal so they might as well not be there at all.
Anyway, the deck still needs to decide what it wants to be in a few places, but I think it can end up being a contender. Just based on how completely unfair and wtf it feels 3 out of 4 times Triskaidekaphobia comes down and the other guy has to scoop up because this card just said that they lose.
If you've taken the time to check the writeup up, what are your thoughts? If you can take it seriously, what would you do with it, what would you sideboard?
Now I have trouble deciding on whether (and exactly how) to add:
- Tormenting Voice / Chatartic Reunion , one of which I kinda-sorta really have to have in there to help draw lands and filter out extra copies of Triskaidekaphobia.
- Transgress the Mind because i'd probably be siding it in often anyway, but it's black.
- Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I really like because being able to calibrate the ammount of damage - at instant speed - should be rather good in this deck.
I only have space for 5 cards right now, which is a bummer, because I kinda want all those things in the deck, or at least 7-8 of them total, and I'm not sure what's safe to cut down to 3 copies. Especially if I'm adding the card filtering, because it makes redundant copies just recycle. Hmmmm.
Also, I suppose that even if I don't have the whole sideboard worked out, I do need some kind of standard plan for siding out Triskaidekaphobia, and also standard "on the play"/"on the draw" sort of tweak.
Went with Tormenting Voice instead of Chatartic Reunion because it's easier to play off the top of the library / flashback with gobbos. Moved the alchemist to the sideboard and the idea is to move him and transgress in instead of Triskaidekaphobia and whatever else depending on what I think the other guy will sideboard.
Seems to be beating up the random brews in tourney practice, I whish I could try it against more serious decks without having to pay money to do so. Lujo2016 on Mtgo if someone with a serious deck for some reaso wats to be playing against this.
On a quick and stupid note - this deck has a very easy time setting up a kill with Triskaidekaphobia. There's random lifegain here and there but one poke from a 1 drop and two hits for three and whoops - the other guy's dead. Any copter deck can do it in this meta, but this one is likely to run Bomat Courier and/or Insolent Neonate, who poke for that important 1 somewhat easily, and this decks can run the Unlicenced Desintegration and the Collective Defiance for board control, which is nice. The funny thing is that the lousy 1 drop is likely to get that one poke in while the 2-X drops are likely to eat removal and the games can get so grindy that even if it doesn't kill the other guy just ticking him lower into burn range is probably fine-ish. Also, this deck can run the Sinister Concoction, too, so the other guy doesn't trick you.
I mean I just had an Aetherworks marvel guy narrowly dodge it with his lifegain thingy, if the marvel hadn't turned exactly that over, he'd have dropped from me having played 3 cards.
Also, the level to which Prophecy is underrated, especially as a limited set, is absurd. It's one of the best limited sets ever.
For Mercenaries, and thus black, the key cards (besides the excellent removal like Snuff Out and Vendetta) are:
Agent of Shauku who is a tutorable 1 mana = 1 damage machine if you don't mind sacrificing lands, and you don't. Also makes all your chaffy looking cheap black dudes trade up. Key black card and once you understand it it changes how Masques block works for you.
Bog Glider recruits cheap fodder for no mana cost, which is rather excellent, also flies.
Mishapen Fiend recruitable flier.
Spineless Thug recruitable bear.
Rathi Intimidator and the guy who comes in and does 3 damage to both players and then recruits for 3 from Nemesis. Cateran Persuader and Rampart Crawler are also useable.
The main thing to remember is that with Agent of Shauku on the table each of your dudes has "1B, sac a land: +2/+0 until EoT". And both the agent and the dudes are reliably recruitable for cheap. Also, even your non-mercenaries can be pumped by the agent.
You combine this with excellent red removal (Seal of Fire, Rhystic Lightning, Lunge, just to name a few), the impossibly effective Flaming Sword and use some of the following:
Mogg Toady (because you can often crank out more dudes than anyone else, especially with Bog Glider and if you score Moggcatcher you can crank these out)
Spur Grappler (quite a little beater, especially with Flaming Sword)
Blaster Mage (there are very annoying walls in Masques)
And you try to have some spellshaper pingers (there are 2 red ones and 1 black one) handy to snipe protection critters. Ways to close the game if the oponent manages to stabilize a board stall are copious (Highway Robber, Despoil, Shock Troops, Flame Rift, Insubordination, you name it, whatever gets the final few points in if you feel like you need it).
That's the essence of it, and it can kill in 5 or so turns. Masques block has a lot of rares and artifacts powered down to the point of useless, but its problem was more that it wasn't appealing to casual players than anything. How "cubeable" this is is debatable, as you want cards in multiples, but that's a really important archetype in Masques block draft, and also possibly the strongest one overall.
This was actually handy advice. The unintuitive, yet completely obvious in hindsight, thing about the deck that it's very lousy when it comes to card advantage. I even knew this and wanted to warn folks it mulligans horribly (Folks, it mulligans horribly! You're likely better off filling up your hand to 8 and dicsarding a scab than mulling down to 5!). However this really means you have to try to get as much mileage out of the emerge as possible, meaning use it in response to removal. But you still have to read the opponent and really make the upkeep plays happen when they must. Skill intensive, I have to say.
Still, just Lightning Axe and the turn 2 red discard is just too much of a luck based plan for a deck which, as I said, mulligans horribly. Not just "What if I don't draw it?", but also "What if I don't draw anything I want to discard?" (Really, this happens quite often, especially post sideboard. You only really want to discard either of the two scabs, the rest are either ok, or just cycling.) I did a league just now with 3 Magistrates and 2 Neonates and they do help things out. The Magistrates help out with Amalgams, and for a deck which kinda relies on drawing amalgams there's just too many games where I don't see any (I've noted at least 4 where I've drawn over half my deck and not seen 1).
I'll look into a copy or two of Nahiri's Wrath I think. The deck has issues with early onslaughts AND wants to liberally discard stuff with inflated mana cost. Doesn't do much to help with the copter, but ought to work wonders against Gideon, and there's a lot of cycling in the deck anyway.
Also, what exactly do you guys side Fevered Visions against? Aggro seems like it'd be nonsense, and there's plenty of it around, combo seems like it'd be suicide (on the draw you have to have 3 untapped mana and a counter ASAP or you're just dead). I can't really think of too many decks where I'd go and say "Great, I have fevered visions, that's what I'll side to mess him up!". I'm asking because I could use the sideboard slots to shore up against things that are beating me up.
The main problem are the cip-tapped lands, really, the deck (no Familiar version) is stupidly slow when it needs to react to things (needs setup to even cast anything, everything comes into play tapped), and when you get stuck with the CiP tapped lands at the wrong moment, you just can't tapdance around the removal. I did actually kill a Mardu Vehicles guy by stablilizing at 3 and 1 life respectively and pulling shennanigans with the squids, the potential power is deffinitely there, it's just that the deck trips itself up rather often and there's gotta be a way to make it more stable. I feel like it's somehow very vulnerable to the copter, probably because my previous deck just packed Harnessed Lightning and Fiery Temper and the gameplan involved turn 2 or 3 being reserved just for dealing with the copter by design. Fiery Temper just doesn't sit right with me in this deck, somehow. Avacyn, funnily enough, tends to regularly eat the Lightning Axe in response to her trigger for blowouts, because by the time she hits I'm likely not stuck fiddling with the setup.
Oh, I'm deffinitely sold on this. I'm getting the hang of the octopus and DA PLAYS are epic and spectacular, I have to say. I'm still on 2 sanctums but I'll deffinitely bump asap.
Yep, I played a bunch today and paid attention to the board in terms of "would having the fumarole instead of the lake help me now" and there were a bunch of situations where it would. The most common type of situation is not so much after a wipe but when having a dude out would cost you a card you don't have and you've tapped the other guy down with the Octopus. This comes up a LOT vs. Marvel and other combo, where I'm seemingly always those 3-4 damage short for some reason and have to make mad plays and gamble when if I had a fumarole it'd kill the other guy. Pricy, but I have to get them.
Yeah, I'll definitely give the list a whirl, I'm curious if the Familiar helps vs. aggro.
I've also learned one more thing - I have no idea how to beat combo without siding in 8 counters. For the league I went with 2 Spell Shrivel and 2 Negate main deck and the same in the board, because there's nothing else I can do, and it actually worked because I lucked out and drew them a lot (like 6 or 7 out of total 8). Paradoxicaly, the counters tend to also work against some of the aggro, as you kinda just have to counter their removal or they'll wipe you off the board. The deck feels like it should have a game vs. combo, but it doesn't without boarding in a ton of counters, because you need setup to do anything (play dudes, do damage) and the other guy needs setup to instantly kill you. You're only an aggro deck if you luck out with the amalgams, and the only thing oyur guys have going for them is evasion, which they don't have vs. Iskhanah, the little guy loses combat to Pilgrims Eye (really, also your own Kozilek's Return ). Really, whether you'll be able to apply any pressure at all vs. a goldfish is completely random with this deck, probably even more so for folks who don't run one drops. The decks I lost to were the panharmonicon value deck (1-2) and an Aetherworks Marvel one (2-0).
Isolent Neonate is up there with Thraben Inspector in terms of how great he is. He can also deal a boatload of damage, it's true. I'm considering 2 copies of Bomat for the UR version, but the chance of him swiping Amalgams and then getting them permanently lost is horrifying.
6 Mountain
7 Island
4 Spirebluff Canal
4 Highland Lake
Zombies
4 Stitchwing Skaab
4 Advanced Stitchwing
4 Prized Amalgam
Emerge
2 Sanctum of Ugin
4 Elder Deep-Fiend
3 Kozilek's Return
4 Minister of Inquiries
1 Contingency Plan
4 Cathartic Reunion
2 Tormenting Voice
3 Lightning Axe
Other
3 Unsubstantiate
1 Fevered Visions
4 Ceremonious Rejection
3 Fevered Visions
4 Galvanic Bombardment
1 Unsubstantiate
2 Weaver of Lightning
The original 3rd place tourney deck had the plan of supporting endless zombies with Fevered Visions and was probably (somewhat correctly) predicting a field full of draw-go control. This is what the deck preys upon in a most obvious and brain-dead way. The zombies are not "played" but rather etb via abilities, which sidesteps counters, and the amalgams are plainly daft against some of the removal. So if the enemy is UR whatever or anything truly slow and clunky, the deck generally works. If it's anything which relies desperately on an artifact like Marvel, Reservoir or whatever, you sideboard counters and you prey on that too. Discarding via red spells lets you discard in a way which dodges counterspells (part of a cost), which is, in fact, the only real pro of it, but it kinda makes you better at what you're allready good at (and techincally it's the only thing the deck is really, truly good at).
However, the field online isn't remotely full of draw go, but seems to be the opposite, and I walked into 3 beatings in a row vs. RG energy aggro and BG midrange. They both have better dudes, playing Fevered Visions vs. them seems to be impossible, and they're not really afraid of Kozilek's Return. Folks over at the RG thread talk about Longtusk Cub being disposable and taking it out - you just can't get it out of the way and the real threats start showing up too fast, while your zombies are coming into play tapped. The BG guy just stalls until it draws either Noxious Gearhulk or Emrakul or Liliana and you get the picture. Gearhulk on Octopus just ends the match unless you have a crafty way of getting it out of the way, which is why I have all the Unsubstantiates in there. Scratch that, the deck is also vulnerable to Declaration in Stone on the amalagms, and you don't really want to be using the Octopus as a response to stuff because if you do there's nothing to push you through blockers or shut down the other guy.
Also, both stitchwings feel so inferior to Haunted Dead it's not even funny. The little guy has very little toughness, while the big guy costs 3, which isn't nearly as fast as the aggro decks demand you to be. Highland Lake is what I play in place of Wandering Fumarole for budget reasons, but I've literally lost games on turn 1 which I would have won otherwise because it comes into play tapped (would be the sem for Fumarole). Also, the deck is highly unlikely to be able to get mana for the Fumarole, because of dumping all the cards into scab reanimation. It's a great card and all that, and I bet I'd be doing better if I coughed up the money for them because of that one game where I get to activate it and it means something, but I'd still be paying money for something that will far more often screw me over due to mandatory CiP tapped. IDK if going Aether Hub is actually viable, because you do need a reliable UU for the octopus and you constantly need colored mana AND there's Sanctum of Ugin (the OG build only ran 2, I'm frankly terrified of running more due to mana screw potential).
If your reanimation costs three mana it WILL trip you up and make you lose tempo, which you don't rally have against anything with aggressive dudes. The damned thing looks great, but if a non-headache grixis manabase was possible I think it'd be best for the deck to run 4X Stitchwing Skab 4X Haunted Dead and then maybe 2X Advanced Stitchwing.
Elder Deep Fiend is great when it's great but not that great, in fact, not even with Kozilek's Return. Harnessed Lightning in many decks just kills it in response to the tapdown, and instead of being a large monster it just ends up being a chump-blocker to some powered up 20/20 RG thing. It's only big when they throw Noxious Gearhulk lifegain at it.
IDK if the version you guys have been running is superior. I'm not happy with the red discard, to be perfectly honest, because what tends to happen is that I have to play ASAP it because I can't wait or I'll die, but I don't have anything in hand that needs discarding, but then I draw stuff that needs discarding with it. I mean, it's good for filtering cards, that it is, but games where I start with Minister of Inquiries tend to work out waaaaay better for me. In fact, I've played against some Sultai full-on self-mill variant (Minister, Hourglass thingy, Grapple with the Past) which makes this deck look like a complete joke. You don't really want to be discarding things, because if you get any 1 of the self-reanimators in the grave, you'll easily discard whatever you want, and getting the amalgam into the grave directly is much better than drawing him, so self-mill is practically card draw.
All in all - too many "ifs". There's probably a rather good Grixis version which makes use of all the best components of the three decks. I don't think Voldaren Pariah even needs madness, honestly, I think you just need it in the zombie deck to be cast for 5 mana and flipped to wrath the other guy. The octopus just isn't getting it done for me. It's effect is temporary, it takes sacrificing something to put it into play, and this actually sets you back 2 cards (to get a mediocre at best card back)
For this deck, I'm beginning to think you could serious win games by chaining Contingency Plan which get you Unsubstantiates in hand and zombies in the yard. In fact, the only obvious advantage of the red discard is that it's uncounterable and doesn't actually cost you a card. But it's possible that Contingency Plan is just straight up better for zombies.
I'll have to try the version with the Filigree Familiar. I'm not sure about 4 Hipogriffs, though.
Err, not really. Kozilek's Return hardcast is nothing special and answers just about no threats in standard adequately. Triggered from the graveyard it's rather good, but that takes a very specific kind of deck. Also, it costs so much that you can put together a semi-competitive modern deck for the price of a playset and getting both it and a manabase for a deck that would run it (and possibly also the eldrazi to trigger it) just price whatever the deck is out of most people's hands. Also competes for money with Planeswalkers which simply go into any deck at all and do the same thing in every deck.
As for other sweepers currently available, they either don't hit even 3 toughness or suck against Selfless Spirit who's in every white deck anyway and white is probably half or more of the overall meta, so yeah, there might as well be no sweepers for all practical purposes. Kozilek's Return can't sidestep Selfless Spirit, either, so pouring mad cash into it is lunacy and it also might as well not exist, either, since every time someone plays it and it does something that simply means they got lucky with not playing someone with white (odds are not that high of that) or got lucky not playing a semi-instant-kill combo (odds are not high for that either) OR not playing against gearhulk (odds get much lower still) and they also got lucky that the white/x guy they're playing against didn't have Selfless Spirit on board to make do not much.
So yeah.
The thing with that is that, when you get down to it, almost no deck in standard right now is anything more than a vehicle for mythics or one signature card, with the exception of BG delirium which is a vehicle for multiple mythics. I've dealt upwards of 10 damage per game with Insolent Neonate and been dealt upwards of 10 damage per game by Thraben Inspector, as far as what can win the game is concerned. The thing with UW flash is that it's really, really good at preventing whatever your particular strategy is from winning, and beating you up with literally whatever is at hand OR the game takes long enough for them to draw one of their "pay cash, win at magic" nonsense cards. Like Gideon. I've just seen the following advice be given as a reply to "Why my deck isn't working, I have everything but Gideon" - "That's your problem, you need Gideon". And Gideon doesn't really sinergize with anything in the deck, the same advice can be given for mono W Humans, RW Humans, RW Vehicles, UW Flash, Mardu whatever - pay about 150 tix before you even consider bothering. I don't see decklists so much as stuff to put in a deck along with Gideon.
The price of the card in question doesn't have to be the thing, though. RG Hydra is cheap - but if they have Bristling Hydra, they win, if they don't they don't. Aetherworks Marvel deck doesn't even exist because of the mythic (although you're not really competitive unless you dish out for Iskanah and Emrakul) but because of the Vessel of Nascency being a decent-language-fails-to-describe-how-good-of-a-tutor-it-is for it and Woodveawers Puzzleknot being oddly good at buying people turns. There's a great RU reanimator, but the catch is that if you don't have Kozilek's Return, don't even bother, the deck can't beat a goldfish (put Kozilek's Return in and it places 3. at a big professional tourney). The zombie reanimator decks are mostly also - either you hit your nuts draw, or you don't really do anything. There's a billion BR builds around - I sold mine because it didn't have 3 Chandra's and 2 Kalitas in the sideboard which I have to assume how the deck ends up "working" for people. Had everything else inlcuding thc copter and everything needed for all sorts of builds - but if you don't have the big $$ stuff that can go into any deck, you can crash and burn in a firendly league. The UR control with the Torrential Gearhulk at least have the decency to run actual card draw with the intent of finding their "one thing" and lands to play it, but still, it's just some counters, some burn and some card draw with a few guys and man lands and the signature card. There's a big bunch of decks not being "competitive" because whoever plays Liliana against them just wins. Which kinda means that any black "deck" can lose game 1 horribly due to being a lousy pile piloted by a dingus and win games 2 and 3 because the dingus payed 120$ and drew his investment. Or a deck can draw it's stupid money card all day one day and seem great, and literally go 0-5 the next because it didn't draw it's silly card.
What wins it for UW flash, and many other decks, is Selfless Spirit, which is another, "don't bother playing without" card for white decks, but is deceptively strong in this deck in particular. Folks tend to be dissapointed with him but they tend to not see it from the other guy's point of view. The new simplified "regenerate" mechanic is probably easier to understand to new players, but it's orders of magnitude more powerful than anything similar before it was. Really, it is, it just happens that white got it without it's price being adjusted for the fact. The difference between it and "regenerate" is easy to demonstrate with even seemingly harmless little things - you attack with a 4/4 into my board with a copter on it, and have a Harnessed Lightning in hand - I activate the copter - you don't want to either be blocked or let me loot, so you blast him with the lightining - I play Built to Last - Your Harnessed Lightning failed AND you'r 4/4 is getting it AND my copter is still indistructible until EoT. The board situations you can set up with Selfless Spirit can be completely ridiculous, and if I'd ban a card in the current standard other than Vessel of Nascency it's him.
If you banned the Vessel GB delirium would kinda fall appart and so would Aetherworks Marvel. They're both very, very stupid decks.
And as for UW flash you can't not play into their cards. UW flash cards are meant to stall you around and prevent you from winning until they draw whatever their silly thing is. If you try to not play into their moves, they don't care, they want you to sit there not doing anything. More mana on the board for them to cast whatever with Spell Queller Backup, more time to protect their measly weenies with Selfless Spirit so you can't hope to 1-for-x them, and more time to loot with the copter which helps them do what they want - find their 30$ mythic or ridiculous answer to what you're doing and either stabilize or "play card - win game". It just happens that all their stalling effects come with creatures attached, so they can also quickly add up the damage. It all reminds me of Faeries to an almost sickening degree, especially the UW spirit variant with Rattlechains, except somehow even worse.
And the card which never gets mentioned is also Linvala, the Preserver. They stall, get mana for her, play her, she undoes everything you've done before. In order to lessen her impact you're kinda supposed to... not do damage. Or not have more creatures than the other guy. Yay! There's been this assumption that if something costs more than 4 mana it's supposed to win the game on the spot and the combination of eithe blue spirits, Thraben Inspector, Selfless Spirit, Smuggler's Copter, Spell Queller, Reflector Mage and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, with some choicy spells, make it kinda trivial to get there. It even looks like an aggro or tempo deck, until you realize that it isn't, really.
Copter can win games, it's true, but it's highly overrated and certainly isn't for every deck. Activating it into removal, unless there's a Selfless Spirit on board or you're running Built to Last (which noone is) or Blossoming Defense (Which also isn't played in decks which run the copter) sets you back pretty hard. Running good copter removal also means you've got good removal that kills most of everything else, so if there was a point to banning it it would be to maybe stop every single 2 drop ever from eating removal because everyone's packing. But Thraben Inspector, Selfless Spirit and Vessel of Nascency are what actually rules the format. The first one maeks a lot of creatures which would otherwise mean something not mean anything and smooths out draws / crews vehicles / is always there for mass pump for too many decks, the second makes it impossibly difficult to kills stuff or answer threats and the third wasn't really meant to effectively read "1GG: Draw 4 Cards and make delirium trivial" or "1GG: Tutor up a semi-guaranteed free Emrakul on turn 4", because it would not have been a common.
Other than the planeswalkers, which are and have always been just a design mistake the marketing latched onto for some reason. It seems like people love to believe Planeswalkers are legit and enjoy playing them, but people always like to play unfair sillyness and people like it when their money lets them win games. IDK how MtG can compete as a serious E-Sport this way, though, which seems to be what the planeswalker pushing menagerial types seem to want and think is the way to go. The "bare minimum" entry barrier is just way too high. I remember when you could put together a tier 1 standard deck for less money than it took to buy the 4 pain lands it needed. The guy who had the pain lands won every tourney in our community because his mana was just infinitely more reliable in the mirror, but the price of being obviously competitive was about 10 or more times lower. Rosewater said it a bunch, if your theme isn't at common, it's not your theme, and this actually applies. If what you absolutely need to compete is planeswalkers, and they're all mythic, and you need them in the same quantities as you'd need a common, then you're making a card that's supposed to be as widely avaliable as a common cost so much to buy individually that a person can get 2 good board games for the price of a playset of one standard-season worthy card. It's a bit much, honestly.
What also isn't helping standard is the policy of making every must-have answer that actually answers the commonly played stuff a rare or a mythic.
Is there some catch to how everyone seems to have a playset of Gideon or Liliana?
Triskaidekaphobia itself is fine, if you draw the right hand (Meaning some combination of Insolent Neonate or Chandra's Pyrohelix + some combination of Incendiary Flow , Collective Defiance and Fiery Temper). It's not at all unreasonable to out-combo most other combo decks in the formats, including Aetherworks Marvel and Hydra decks, and people I've played against were often either impressed or disgusted at how well it all works when it works and how close and hairy the games can get.
Even sideboarding against Triskaidekaphobia doesn't necessarily help - I can board out the phobia in advance, and then the other guy is playing against a burn deck with dead cards in their deck, and this isn't where most of them want to be, so even those matchups are winnable.
However, being a combo deck and/or a burn deck, it's really, horribly, terribly awful against counterspells and control in general. It just feels like all the possible card advantage available in the format is in other colors, and there's so much quality removal everywhere that running dudes at all seems like a terrible idea if you're red. And can make the deck slow, plodding and often aimless on a non-Triskaidekaphobia hand, like it doesn't achieve enough fast enough. And if you run too many dudes, you don't have the burn, and you certainly can't compete with white and green in general dude size and quality.
But if you don't run dudes, you get run over by most of the aggro. RB copter stuff is the least problematic, but can escape the phobia via burn to it's own face. Anything with white in it is going to have Always Watching , Gideon and Fragmentize just to name a few things, and just so many dudes that there's no way to burn them all. And there's no red dudes to actually run, Lathnu Hellion is an undercosted burn spell that can be chumped by Thraben Inspector. Akoum Firebird is also a burn spell, too fragile too vulnerable to getting exiled. The only creature that seems remotely reasonable is Mirrorwing Dragon , but the problem with him is that the guys who let you live to 5 mana don't have dudes on board when they throw stuff at him, and the guys who would lose all their dudes if they target him have allready killed you by this point, or have enchantments that kill him. I'm a bit weirded out that the RG guys who run Larger than Life and other such things don't run him, though, they could get him out earlier.
And the deck just gets completely run over by zombies. They are just absurdly good at beating a burn deck (they clock you faster and you can't kill their dudes off fast enough or thoroughly enough). I bought into 4 friendly leagues after having had a steady 3-2 record with an indication that I could have had 4-0 or even 5-0 at any time, and then I just ran into so many zombies this weekend that I ended up going 2-3, 2-3, 2-3, 1-4. I went and bought most of a zombies deck after that, as it looked so brutal, but when I tried it it only seemed to work against control, because control generally couldn't keep up with them (Although I AM missing a few crucial things).
I think that in order to improve the deck I'll really need to add blue to it or something. And that needs proper 3 colors. I've got the manabase already, and I'm trying out a build with just Anticipate in. I also got my hands on 2 Collective Brutality, and the funny thing is that Chandra's Pyrohelix is essetially VERY core in this deck due to being an instant (if you played it a bunch you'd see what I mean) and this is competing for deck slots with either it or Incendiary Flow. Ad it can't replace either because despite it's flexibility it doesn't do what those cards do. And as opposed to the extraction it doesn't hit artifacts, but it does hit enemy burn/lifegain which could be used to lower their life total, and it does hit the enchantment removal, it hits counterspells which mess any combo deck up and it hitting card draw might also prove handy. And you can turn land into a dead Thraben Inspector which is nice. The life swing is a bit of a problem, as it might occasionally put me back up to or over 13. Also, I've managed to eliminate being screwed by going with 25 lands. It sounds insane at first but then, I'm running Collective Defiance and Insolent Neonate, was running Tormenting Voice , changed it to Anticipate and now there's also Collective Brutality to make those lands into effects if I don't need them on board. Plus, the deck is deadly if it hits it's early turns right, staring at an instantly unbeatable hand and not being able to draw your 3rd or 4th land despite multiple card draw effects is seriously painful. I was often enough flooded even with 23 lands. Plus it seems to help with having a basic land in hand for Foreboding Ruins.
I think I ought to try Goblin Dark-Dwellers again, now that I've upped the land count. I was having trouble hitting my 4th or 5th land in time before. But they just eat removal, that's their problem. You can't really make a proper GDD deck without having so few dudes that the other guy is almost certain to have removal in hand when you play them. I'm not exactly sure this is still the case now that I have Collective Brutality, but I tried with Avacyn's Judgement and Ravenous Bloodseeker and the Bloodseeker kept just eating removal. Seriously, there's like, 5 or so non-white creatures (which aren't just ETB spells with a body tacked onto it) that are worth playing at all ATM. I think most decks out there routinely have more removal than I have creatures post-board, and white decks seem to have more removal than I have dudes, and more dudes than I have removal at the same time.
I think trying to play red without Radiant Flames in this meta is insane, doesn't matter what your combo/plan is. I also have a feeling I'll dish out what I'll feel like too much money for a playset of Pyroclasm and discover that it doesn't help me at all. UW will just counter it all the time or go amblem on Gideon, Zombies will laugh at it, RW will get it's guys too fat for it to do anything or flash Avacyn, UR doesn't have any creatures, it doesn't hit the Copter or Fleetwheel Cruiser or man-lands or planeswalkers, BR has Scrapheap Scrounger and Bloodhall Priest who dodge it, and it kills my own Thermo-Alchemists unless I cast it for full effect... which I have to because it seems to not really kill anything for less than the full effect. But there seems to be no other way to generate card advantage in red and I'm getting run over by madly aggro dudes, so maybe the fact that I can reliably go Chandra's Pyrohelix on Selfless Spirit will work out for me? If I mean to continue pursuing this deck I have to try.
And the last thought for now - Consuming Sinkhole. Yes, it looks very stupid until you realize that most folks seem to put down a horsey first thing they do with Gideon, and then this reads as "3R: Get rid of Gideon", which is generally rather nice to be able to do. What it also does, in this deck in particular, is do damage at instant speed, which is madningly crucial as a ton of games are decided in response to a Triskaidekaphobia trigger. A lot of those 2-3 league disasters would have been nice self-sustaining 3-2 at least if in just one out of several games per league I had an instant in my hand instead of Collective Defiance or Incendiary Flow. Really. Flame Lash would have been so good that even this is playable. I'll be looking at the Aether Revolt spoiler looking for instant-speed burn more than I'll be looking for anything else.
The sideboard finally included 4X Galvanic Bombardment, which I have to say came in quite handy even alongside 4 Haressed Lightning and all. That's probably gonna stay that way.
The matches were interesting, too:
2 - 1
RD2 - GB Delirium. G1 I mulled to 5 (on land 2 times), got stuck on 2 lands with a perfect Triska kill just staring at me from the hand, not to mention 3 Fiery Temper while he beat me down with a copter. It took him forever, too, if I had the third land to kill his copter I would have easily won as soon as the 4th showed up, really. G2 He does stuff, I have the exact same hand as G1 except I have land, he has the most expesive deck in standard, planeswalkers, 20 dollar 2 drops, mythic everything, you name it - I play my dirt cheap hand and hes dead as if it's all shoebox cardboard. G3 - We both curve out, he plays something, I kill it, he plays something, I kill it, but unfortunately his curve ends in a Verdurous Gearhulk which I've got nothing on. Still - he would've diead from the phobia next turn. Shame, soooo close.
1 - 2
RD3 was against UB Zombies, which I just didn't have enough experience playing against, and I didn't read his cards carefully so he ended up dodging a nut-draw Triska kill (If I just read the damned Cryptbreaker I would have killed him on the spot). In G2 he won fair and square, and I made a serious mistake, again with the Garrison. Thing was that I haven't tried the Garrison well enough, so I wasn't fully aware that Chandra's Pyrohelix can lolpwn dudes who opportunistically block the tokens when they attack (this is rather good, makes me want to keep the Garrison in there). It would have bought me some time at least, although probably not enough of it to win.
Btw, Chandra's Pyrohelix sucks in Kaladesh Draft, that's true, but uses for it just keep cropping up for me like mad in constructed. At least in this deck.
0 - 2
RD4 - RW Reanimator (Refurbish + Red discard + gearhulks). G1 I'm flooded but he can't draw a Refurbish. He draws Madcap Experiment and scores a white gearhulk in one ping, I kll it with Harnessed Lightning. I play my A-game and outmaouver him to a Triskaidekaphobia kill thought a Call the Bloodline and a Sinister Concoction. Phfiew. G2 - I get him to 1 life he topdecks Linvala and wins. I sacrifice 2 Neonates in respose and draw lands because ofc I do. G3 - He had a turn 4 refurbish. I burned him to a crisp in response to it with the help of Thermo-Alchemist. I mean, this is a dead-serious burn deck I've got here, there just happens to be a card which hits the other guy for 13 which is well worth splashing.
2 - 1
RD5 - BR Aggro (Kaladesh Artifact flavor). The deck which I have in it's entirety but have spurned it for this one, lol. G1) He goes first and has a better hand, he wins. G2) I go first and beat him with my better hand. G3) We have a glorious slugfest of threats and answers, but he started out with a mulligan and too afgressively and I was more cautions and ultimatly had more card draw and better answers to his stuff and I won. I literally used the technique which everyone used against me and why I swapped to this in the first place - he played more dudes and I played more removal, and dudes who aren't Thraben Inspector or Insolent Neonate just eat removal.
2 - 1
Worse track record than yesterday overall, but there were some seriously badass individual game wins. Taking out the Aetherworks Marvel guy was great, giving a decent game to the GB delirium was also great, beating a RB non-mirror was totally great, and I don't even know how the hell I managed to beat the Reanimator guy. The Zombie guy was both a good, patient player and my play was shamefuly bad. I'm still optimistic, and getting further ahead with understanding and tweaking the deck
And I got a modest bit of loot, 4 tickets worth. Happened to be just enough for 3 GU Kaladesh lands, and some sweet blue spirits this one guy beat me up with a week ago in the practice room. I've been picking up pieces of that deck with every trade but with the Triskadekaphobia loot from yesterday and today - I think I finally got it
And I thought I was crazy for going no-copter, no Unlicenced Disintegration RB in this meta.
I'm also completely furious Flame Lash isn't on MTGO. Is it ever going to BE on MTGO?
The deck, this time was:
4 Aether Hub
4 Forboding Ruins
14 Mountain
1 Swamp
Creatures
4 Insolent Neonate
3 Furyblade Vampire
4 Lathnu Hellion
4 Triskaidekaphobia
Spells
3 Tormenting Voice
4 Fiery Temper
4 Chandra's Pyrohelix
4 Incendiary Flow
3 Collective Defiance
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Thermo-Alchemist
1 Collective Defiance
3 Gheistblast
4 Weaver of Lightning
3 Structural Distortion
Which means one less land, one more Chandra's Pyrohelix and Speedway Fanatic out, Furyblade Vampire in.
The sideboard was a complete mess, and I had no actual sideboarding plan. I ran Gheistblast main in the practice room (where I'm at something like 20 match wins to maybe a few losses), and I very much liked the idea of it letting me effectively flashback something for grindier games. Burn loves it's card-draw, what can I say, but I never sort of found the spot for it. Weaver of Lightning also makes a ton of sense, but I also didn't have any idea what to take out for him, exactly. Thermo-Alchemist was standardly great, and Structural Distortion looks great but the problem is that Copter needs to be taken out sooner, and Pyrohelix took care of Needle Spires a few times, so even when I had it I never played it. Having said that I think that might have been matchup related.
I've probably tried every single red 2 drop, and Furyblade Vampire is just lovely. I didn't draw her very often, but she drew removal like a boss, stopped oncoming Thraben Inspectors (really I bet you more games are decided by that card pinging you than any other in standard) and can attack into them. And in case she has a clear path, she turns everything into a Lightning Bolt and turns Fiery Temper into 2 Lightning Bolts. I need to learn to get more out of her, she's good.
Gibbering Fiend is also rather workable, since killing someone with the phobia often requires a ping, and his EtB ping can be that ping.
The tourney result this time was 2 - 1, 2 - 0, 1 - 2, 2 - 0, 0 - 2, for a 3 - 2 in matches, although one whole match was lost due to a missclick. The report is:
R1: WR Humans (2 - 1)
G1: I was flooded but I killed the guy with two Lathnu Hellion hits and Triskaidekaphobia.
G2: He had a VERY explosive start (basically 5 dudes on board by turn three, and I mis-sideboarded completely by taking out the cheaper burn.
G3: I managed to stop the aggro with the cheap burn I boarded back in, and I got lucky - he didn't draw any of his mass pump, which is obviously good for me, but on the other hand I drew 5 straight lands, then used 2 desciples, drew a land and tormenting voice, and then drew a land and a burn to finish him off.
TOTAL: 2 - 1
--
R2: GBR Artifact Aggro (2 - 0)
G1: Got lucky with the cointoss. I played Neonate and Furyblade Vampire and he conceded. Probably a riky hand which didn't pan out or a misclick.
G2: I won with Triskadekaiphobia lifegain tickig the guy back up after he used Fiery Temper to get off 13 to save himself, and he got me quite low with Built to Smash and such. It came down to who draws what and he didn't draw enough damage before he ticked back up to 13.
TOTAL: 4 - 1
--
RD3: UW Flash (1 - 2)
I've been playing these a lot in the practice room, people play them and have the cheek to whine about MY cards being ridiculous. I've honestly had a guy go: "You got lucky" at me after dropping to Triskaidekaphobia even though he dropped Gideon. I told him my deck is not very vulnerable to Gideon but he insisted. Played Gideon, I played my thing, I won, he lost. One of the biggest pleasures in life, and I've been playing this game for, well, for about as long as it has existed, anyway, one thing never changes. Beating up rich people who slap wads of money on the table every time they tap mana or play a land, beating them with a 0,01 junk rare never ever grows old. Except Triskaidekaphobia isn't a junk rare, it's power level depends on the metagame.
This wasn't the guy, though, and this one I lost to, by my own mistake.
G1: He drew Avacyn with Always Watching on board. In theory I could deal with it, in practice I could't topdeck what I needed. The other guy topdecked Avacyn mind you, and he was in burn range, so I lost. Strog card, Avacyn.
G2: Mull to 5, still only one land - but I still burned the guy out the old fashioned way.
G3: More or less I had a turn 3 Furyblade Vampire on the play, ready to attack for free 4 damage with no problem to discard a redundant Triskaidekaphobia and a firey temper to just murder the guy. I mislclick and don't attack. A long time down the road, he's at 2 life, so I would have even burned him out, and I topdeck 4 lands instead of any burn at all. He doesn't have any burn but he kills me with Vestvale Abbey tokens which he can't make any more of, because it costs life.
My own damned fault, should've been a match win. Also - Vestvale Abbey is annoying.
TOTAL: 5 - 3
--
RD4: UBW Flash ( 2 - 0 )
G1: Burned him out, plain and simple. Even fried his Avacyn with Harnessed Lightning.
G2: I was stuck on 3 lands for so long that a single Thraben Disciple took me down below 10 life. And everything I had cost at least 2 mana. Then I finally drew a Fiery Temper, madnessed it off of discarding EoT becuase I had 8 cards in hand, and played Chandra's Pyrohelix in respose to Selfless Spirit activation. The other guy just conceded a short while later. (I would have won because I had more than enough burn left in my hand).
TOTAL: 7 - 3
--
R5: WR Humans ( 0 - 2 )
This guy was more explosive and simply lucked out with his draw. I think I actually have all the cards in that deck apart from Thalia if he doesn't play planeswalkers. Also, I don't know what this deck loses to (apart from radom Triskaidekaphobia). I actually looked at my crummy sideboard and scratched my head trying to figure out what could even BE there in my colors to make any difference.
G1: He ran me over. I traded card for card until I couldn't aymore.
G2: I almost had him on Triskaidekaphobia, but Hanweir Garrison is one heckuva card.
Not much to say, RW humans - they're everywhere and I need to learn to side against them better. This deck can probably beat them on the play, or some versions of them, but it's a kind of strange combo deck which can simply combo out against anyone. How to beat them when they have their ideal draw, in these colors, I'm not sure I know.
Now if I can cash that Walker in I'm curious what can I get for it
If anyone's reading this - that thing is worth 30 bucks IRL, I get that stuff is cheaper online, but the bots I'm running into seem to be complete cheapskates. Anyone know where to sell a Masterwork Hangarback Walker for a reasonable ammount of tix?
The deck I used was:
4 Aether Hub
4 Forboding Ruins
16 Mountain
Creatures
4 Insolent Neonate
3 Speedway Fanatic
4 Lathnu Hellion
4 Triskaidekaphobia
Spells
3 Tormenting Voice
4 Fiery Temper
3 Chandra's Pyrohelix
4 Incendiary Flow
3 Collective Defiance
4 Harnessed Lightning
3 Sinister Concoction
4 Transgress the Mind
4 Thermo-Alchemist
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Collective Defiance
Insolent Neonate - Don't attempt to make this kind of deck without this guy, all I'll say. Gets in for damage, triggers madness, draws a card.
Lathnu Hellion - It's a ridiculous card, truly.
Triskaidekaphobia - It did what it does.
Fiery Temper - Kills copters, discards for neonate and Haunting Voice when looking for lands, 100% great.
Chandra's Pyrohelix - I regretted not having 1 more even in the sideboard. Being able to do 1 or 2 at instant speed is "comboey" with the phobia, and it also gets rid of more things than I though.
Thermo-Alchemist - I think I'll switch to them in the main deck, if for no other reason then because Thraben Inspectors can't chip away at you by attacking into them.
Cards I'm meh with:
Speedway Fanatic - It does what it does quite well, hit face for 2 for 1-2-3 turns, which is cool, but there's too many Thraben Inspector and Glint-Nest Crane around. He should have been in the sideboard, I think.
Tormenting Voice - It didn't show up as often as I would have liked.
Incendiary Flow - Well, the fast kills with the phobia work much better with it, but it's painful to have to play it in copter meta.
Collective Defiance - Should be better than it is, and I've had bad luck with redraws, but this card keeps me wishing I had some kind of mana accelerant.
I never even saw:
Sinister Concoction - As I didn't play against anything that looked really top-heavy in a way where this would help, I didn't board it.
Transgress the Mind - I'm not sure this thing is the right thing for this deck.
Goblin Dark-Dwellers - Never showed up, would've been fine if they did. I was flooded quite often.[/quote]
I'm very annoyed with:
Harnessed Lightning - Playing this in a red deck, and in a red burn deck in particular, is unbearably godawful. I need a cheep instant answer to copter, and this card is a lot better than Lightning Axe so I'm stuck with it, and to add salt to the wound, I can't replace one with the 4th Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I really want because of Triskaidekaphobia, as that doesn't kill too many things. And Incendiary Flow is a sorcery. And Collective Defiance costs more and is a sorcery.
As lame as it may sound one of the two biggest reasons for the lousy performance was mana screw and mana flood, but specifically mana screw. Just so you guys don't think I'm whining for no reason, I have 24 lands, and I had to mulligan every other match due to not having any or only 1 land in my hand, and I started quite a few matches with only one land rather than mulligan to 4. Games where I wasn't screwed I was flooded, sometimes astoundingly so (and one time understandably so). It's a wonder, in fact, that I won as many games as I did. Also, just so you know I'm only reporting and not whining - the other reason the deck performed badly is that I made grotesque misplays and misclicks which would be completely shameful to admit. Like passing my first turn by accident - TWICE. Let's just say that having insomnia and passing the time by playing magic with an entry fee isn't a good idea. The stupid thing is that I pretty much made just one mistake too many, out of probably 20, and if I didn't I would've at least made my battle point back for another go. Shame.
On to the coverage of my disaster, which is actually interesting:
ROUND 1: UB Metalwork Colossus / Aetherflux Reservoir
Game 1: Mulligan to 5, then made a game losing mistake (didn't note what) which let the other guy untap with the reservoir. So basically thrown game which would've been won. (Only notes on this game)
Game 2: Didn't tilt, sided everything but the concoctions, took out 1 Neonate, 3 fanatic, 4 Harnessed Lightning, 4 Triskaidekaphobia. Burned him out the old fashioned way before he could do anything.
Game 3: Absurd flood. With 4 lands out, on the draw, I Cycled 7 lands through various means and drew 8 lands. That is one neonate who discarded a land to draw a land, then one tormenting voice discarding a land which drew 2 lands, then I cast collective defiance to discard 2 lands, drew two lands, then AGAIN collective defiance and AGAIN drew two lands. Then I had four full turns where the other guy was at 2 life, which was amazing considering that this wasn't a drawn out game and I managed 18 damage despite a huge flood, and I kept drawing just lands three turns in a row with Transgress the Mind as the last useless card. Well, I should've not made that mistake in game 1 I suppose.
SCORE: 1 - 2
ROUND 2: UW Flash
Game 1: Mull to 6, then made a very stupid mistake of throwing Harnessed Lightning at the Thraben Inspector instead of waiting for the inevitable copter to show up. The game went on for a while, mind you, but I really should not have done that. In my defense, what he played to crew the copter was Selfless Spirit so the lightning would not have killed the copter, but it would have killed the spirit, and in any case I screwed it up.
This match made me realize that I should be playing Thermo-Alchemist main deck because the Thraben Inspectors are basically unkillable (because are you really going to try to kill them with something?), and they add up to kill you even if you deal with everything else. I also wonder whether Brazen Scourge, which can actually attack into the little sh**s and do a decent Lathnu Hellion impression isn't an undiscovered metagame gem. Or if there really insn't any point to playing anything but white?
Game 2: Took out fanatics and lathnu helliions, put in dark dwellers, 3 Thermo-Alchemist and 1 Collective Defiance
He tapped out on turn 3, my turn 4 I put down the phobia and in my upkeep pinked him down to 13 to kill him. You don't have an answer and I don't mulligan or get screwed - you lose.
Game 3: Mull to 5 (first only 1 land and no neonate or haunting voice, then no land, then 1 land with neonate at 5). Wasn't going terribly but he sided Rattlechains and Aether Flux. I actually dealt with his gideon rather easily (strangely enough this deck has an ok time with Gideon because the neonate can kinda always sneak in for 1 and then you can ussually redirect something to kill him). The problem was that his defensive flashing spirits kept saving his dudes, so by the time we both ran out of cards in hand, I also ran out of life and he didn't.
I played against some guy a few days ago, who played GU spirits with the copter and he was very annoying and impressed me. I think that'd be a nasty ole deck to play, probably even with Triskadekaphobia splashed to make it easier to kill the other guy if someone want's a "You lose!" take in blue. Idk, just an idea.
Result: 1 - 2 again, more of a true loss, but still - the game where I didn't have to mulligan I won handily.
Total: 2 - 4
GAME 3: RB Eldrazi aggro of some kind, not too threatening.
Game 1 - Poor guy got screwed on lands a bit because his first 2 were Foreboding Ruins with nothing to reveal. I was flooded like mad - on the draw I saw exactly three cards which weren't lands - total. In 6 turns. A Lathnu Hellion, Harnessed Lightning and Triskaidekaphobia. I won. Swung twice with the hellion, plopped the phobia turn 4, gave him one life with it on turn 5, and used the lightning to save my mad self because he played Reckless Bushwacker and had enough to get me to 13 the turn I was supposed to give us both a life.
Game 2 - I misclicked auto-yield on turn 1 passing my turn, on the draw. Then I played a mountain first instead of the Forboding Ruins which time walked me for another turn. Still, won, killed him with just burn, alchemists and hellions. Had two "discard 2 lands - draw 2 lands" situations with Collective Defiance again. I know that my draw would have been even worse if I didn't have the cards to suck those lands out but it's still a bit -.- . On the other hand, the other guy had some 1cc eldrazi which ingests and he never hit lands, so this helped me to just draw lands.
RESULT: 2 - 0 , but my deck was rather clearly stronger.
Total: 4 - 4
ROUND 4: Mardu Vehicles
Game 1: I had a great hand and would have likely won it, but I missclick auto-yielded my 1st turn away and threw it away.
Game 2: Draw! My fault again, if I just played a collective defiance before I played Triskaidekaphobia I would have won it. This way he happened to have 1 damage to put me on 13 (Thraben Inspector on the board) and I stupidly and sleepily thought I'd block it with Thermo-Alchemist, but Thermo-Alchemist ate a Harnessed Lightning and I overthought myself and though he'd be running only Unlicenced Disintegration which would have put me below 13. If I waited a turn for him to attack me with his copter (or killed the damned inspector) I would have easily won.
Game 3: Mull to 6, then only saw my second land at turn 4. He wasn't doing too good either, as he has only his dorks which activate when there's an artifact on board but no artifact. He drew his haste no-pilot vehicle and hit me for 12 in one turn, although to be fair I might have missplayed it, but wth.
RESULT: 0-2-1 but if I wasn't an idiot it would have been 1-2
TOTAL: 4-6-1
ROUND 5: UB... something, I didn't really get to see what (spirits I think), because
Game 1: I didn't have to mulligan and he conceded turn 3 as his lands were coming into play tapped, and my neonate, speedy and hellion were coming at him.
Game 2: Turn 3 Hellion, turn 4 Triskaidekaphobia, turn 5 upkeep Fiery Temper at him, win.
RESULT: 2 - 0
TOTAL: 6 - 6 - 1
So the guys I beat I beat 2 - 0 (granted they weren't the most powerful decks), and the guys I didn't beat I kinda threw matches away on very stupid mistakes, had to mulligan at least to 6 all the time and didn't feel so outclassed as I thought I would. First round I should have won for sure, and fourth round I threw one game away before I got to even play it with a nuts hand.
I'll do more testing and tweak the build a bit, and try it again possibly after some tweaks. The mulliganing is bugging me out, something isn't right. I have enough lands in the deck to be madly flooded every other game, yet more than every other game I have to mulligan at least once. Which isn't what you're really looking to do in a burn deck, honestly.
I also need... I think I need Weaver of Lightning in my sideboard and I'm a doofus that it's not there already. Possibly even mainboard instead of Harnessed Lightning, now there's a thought. And I also need a strategy for dealing with Thraben Inspector. Kozilek's Return is that strategy, obviously, but it costs too much money. Biting Rain off of Neonate? Hmmmm.
I have to try, against serious opponents, Lightning Axe in place of Harnessed Lightning, with Biting Rain in the board. I know a few decks which would get completely messed up by having those two played at them, if 4 mana isn't too late. Too many things about it are problematic, though.
Oh, I went "what?" myself
I can see the logic behind it, but I'm not overly confident. The deck works because it's a burn or more precisely a combo-burn deck. It does it's 7-ish damage by turn 4, slaps down Triskaidekaphobia and wins on untap, or by casting Chandra's Pyrohelix in response to the trigger to adjust it at the last moment.
It usually wins in the nick of time, too, so you can't exactly keep mana open for a counterspell - if the other guy hits you with enchantment removal, you're most likely dead anyway. That's why I called it "You Lose!", the other guy is doing everything right, curving out, whathave you, and you seem to be doing some random nonsense, attack for 1 with a neonate, then throw Incendiary Flow at him, then cast a Collective Defiance at his head instead of at his dude, even sacrifice the neonate for no obvious reason, he's clearly playing against a noob here, or you've attacked him with Speedway Fanatic and you didn't draw your vehicle, he's doing fine - and then you play this dipsh**t card and... he's dead.
But I'm not sure protecting the card would save you in most cases, you kinda have to combo out really quickly and most of your moves are geared to be doing that. Speed is surprisingly the thing, which is why I kinda-sorta feel Green for a mana boost might be the ticket.
However, regardless of whether the other guy died or happened to have a mainboard answer, you can just side the thing out, and tune the deck to be a nastier burn deck for games 2-3, and quite often the other guy will have dead cards which are meant to deal with enchantments / artifacts (and you've got none, you're a burn deck), or creatures (and all the ones you've got have haste, or flash stuff back, or sacrifice to filter, etc, and if they hit once they've done their job, you're a burn deck).
Or you can not side it out at all.
EDIT: But Red has the most direct ad non-interactive way of getting someone down to 13 before turn 4, can also manipulate their life with their own card, and also use their life manipulation card as removal if needed. Also, drawing a card to discard Fiery Temper to do 3 dmg for 1 mana is VERY good in a deck which is trying to manipulate life AND draw it's combo piece. I'm even contemplating using Alms of the Vein for the same reason.
Be my guest, but I'd suggest that if you've got the components and/or spare change to give the R/b variant a bunch of whirls in the test room first, to get the feel of why it works when it works and how much of a burn/combo deck it really is. I have a feeling that trying to make it another way will cause frustration and possibly misevaluation of the power of Triskaidekaphobia.
I'm not sure anything but red has the necassary capability of altering the enemy life total directly and precisely.
---
I'm planning to bite the bullet and put my money where my mouth is tonight, and see how this does in a league. My hopes aren't too high, because I'm not sure I've put the deck together in the best possible way, and one of the more conventional aggro packages with a splash for Trishaidekaphobia might be way better, but I'd find it very lolsy if this managed to win 3 matches out of 5.
It's a nice card, true, but it didn't feel right for the deck. I had a feeling that giving the enemy any input over what gets or doesn't get drawn is a bad idea in this particular deck, and also, I felt stupid for even trying to play it with Triskaidekaphobia. I mean, if you're trying to get the enemy to precisely 13 life in game one, why give him a way out of it by letting him burn himself with Sin Prodder?
It might be a sneaky thing to sideboard Sin Prodder in place of Tiskaidekaphobia in game two.
---
EDIT:
Aaaaaand, apparently people are routinely running Fragmentize and various green artifact/enchantment hate mainboard now. Probably because of that marvel nonsense. Four matches in a row! So if everyone red is running Harnessed Lightning, and if everyone white is running Fragmentize, and everyone green is running one of their three or so different things, and this seems to be the case, than I guess I'm more likely to run into trouble running this than not, and switching to copter or an artifact shell is also suicidal.
I switched things up a little in the deck, lowered Chandra's Pyrohelix to 3 , removed all 3X Thriving Grubs, took all the Looming Spires out, too, and put 1X Lathnu Hellion in and 4 Fiery Temper - for sinergy with Haunting Voice and Insolent Neonate and also to have another thing that both burns to the face and can hit copter.
I think I'll keep the grubs around for the sideboard, though, simply to have a small dude to side in vs. control. I did 2-1 a UW flash deck, but I whished I had another small poker besides the neonate. Seeing how nicely hellion hastes it's way into damage, I'm beiginning to consider adding Speedway Fanatic to the deck. Despite having no vehicles, in fact, partly specifically because I have no vehicles. His haste is a largely underrated thing, as it lets him get in there for some damage. I don't necessarily want him in the main deck, otherwise I would not have taken the grubs out, but I wish all the "I run Fragmentize main" crew can take a good look at him and keep their junk in their deck, while I board my silly enchantment out.
Who knows, maybe that Sin Prodder in the side too?
I have some vague feeling like I want the deck would want to be R/G/b more than just R/b, for those mana elves who use energy and the RG 4/3 guy. Idk where I would fit them, and again, the mana base would be silly (although not completely ridiculous as the GB dual from kaladesh is kinda manageable play wise, but IDK about price-wise). Hmmm.
--
I've been trying to get various black/red themes and mechanics to work for me in standard, but all the powerful strategies seem to have been seen through, and all the not-so-powerful ones are not worth investing tickets in. So almost by accident I hit upon a seemingly novel and ridiculous concept. I can't test it properly in an actual league yet, but it's been depressingly effective in the tourney practice room so far.
The deck is this:
4 Aether Hub
4 Foreboding Ruins
4 Looming Spires
12 Mountain
4 Thermo-Alchemist
4 Thriving Grubs
4 Sin Prodder
4 Lathnu Hellion
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Incendiary Flow
4 Collective Defiance
4 Triskaidekaphobia
1 Diabolic Tutor
I'm not really settled on the sideboard, in part because I'm not all that settled on the main deck. I spend the last two weeks gradually buying up all the black and red stuff in standard (still missing a few things, but surprisingly few), and almost by accident hit upon the kinda-sorta main card in this silly deck, but it's a long story of how the deck came to be, and writing it might help me figure out how to make it a better deck.
So I decided to play Harnessed Lightning. It's a great card - for any deck but a red one. Any other deck generates energy more easily, needs energy less, has something smart to do with the energy, while the red deck simply needs a 2cc instant answer for the enemy copter/grim flayer/whathaveyou on the draw and is stuck with the lightning. So I decided to play the damned thing and ditch the copter, because it was getting blown up all the time losing me tempo and board position. One problem with running the lightning, though, is that the red/black decks are extremely finicky about their mana base. Fitting Aether Hub into a serious friendly-color pair deck is much more difficult than fitting it into an enemy color pair one, in this meta, due to how much more early game friendly the enemy dual lands are. But if you go lightning, you go hub, and then the deck can't be be properly RB but rather mostly red with a black splash. Since red seems to have a seemingly better energy game, and a much simpler mono-game, I went with red.
Having played a ton of RB variants over the last few weeks I figured out that it's a really lousy meta for trying to play most dudes at all. That's really the bane of red and red-black, they have some fine-looking small dudes, but everybody packs either 8-16 removal (post board at least), mythic dudes which outclass them, or they combo you out too fast.
One of the dudes which was silly enough to play was Lathnu Hellion , which I've seen played against me, bought up because they were cheap, and decided to try since it tied into the whole energy thing. I figured if there was nothing to cast Harnessed Lightning on I could just dump it into hellion upkeep, surprise the other guy. I also added Thriving Grubs - they're not good by any stretch of the imagination, and in most situations they'd be be a complete waste of space (and ussually ARE a complete waste of energy), but hey - it's one more turn for the hellion, it's 2 more power for the lightning, and it could even be mana fixing with the hub. And I've had a game where I killed a guy with them in two swings after having played three cards total, which can happen in this deck.
So that's the lame-o energy package, a red burn which doesn't go to the head without shennanigans, a big red dude that can be chumped until it dies on it's own, and a small red dude who's good for not much, but as opposed to most other red things you don't mind it getting blasted by the other guy which means a lot in this format. I suppose there's the pinger but he looks awfully junky even for this deck.
Then I went and put in the main card of the deck, the ever-so-stupid Triskaidekaphobia. I've discovered it by complete accident the day before. I bought them for next to nothing while padding out a random trade, decided that nuking a dude for 13 with one card looks silly enough to try, tried it, and, well, it nuked people for 13 with just one card.
If I wanted to go overly-enthusiastic about it, I could testify that I played Thriving Grubs, attacked with them next turn while giving them the boost, hit for 3, next turn played a Harnessed Lightning just for the energy, attacked with the grubs for 4, next turn played Triskaidekaphobia, passed the turn, and won on my upkeep after having played 3 cards. One of them gave one guy +1/+1 for two mana and did nothing else. But I have to list out the rest of the deck first.
I added Incendiary Flow , Collective Defiance and Thermo-Alchemist as ways to manipulate the enemy life total directly, because I've also won games where I just poked the other guy once or twice with something or the other, hit him with the burn and played the phobia FTW. If I were a bit more happy with how the artifact shell works out in the current standard, I'd obviously run Unlicenced Disintegration . If I were confident enough about packaging Insolent Neonate , Key to the City and Fiery Temper, there'd be very lolsy wins to be had with that. There's something to be said about Night Market Lookout and Smuggler's Copter, too, in a phobia deck, if I was confident enough with being more black. The artifact shell, especially with the key, also opens up the possibility of Scrapheap Scrounger and Ovalchase Daredeveil as cards to easily discard and easily recur, if one so wanted. It's also worth noting that Collective Defiance "discard your stuff, draw new stuff" thing actually works in this deck as opposed to most others, because it's a way to ditch redundant copies of Triskaidekaphobia. So if there's a way to make use of the Ovalchase Daredevil at all, it's that - use him as discard filler first and grindy nuisance later in a RB artifacts shell.
Anyway, I added a random Diabolic Tutor. It's a bit silly because there's too few black sources realistically, so it'll probably go out, but on the other hand it's a fifth phobia... or a burn, why not, I've tutored for Incendiary Flow for a turn 6 win.
Goblin Dark Dwellers kinda ended up with too few spells to flash back, but still - folks are basing entire decks around playing Torrential Gerhulk, which, while obviously stronger, often ends up doing exactly the same thing as these guys. I suppose the deck could use / end up using something like Collective Brutality (damned pricey) or Transgress the Mind mainboard (both for them and the Thermo-Alchemist), or if the energy thing falls through possibly move to a more artifacty shell and run Unlicenced Disintegration, but I'd probably still most rather have the goblins topping the curve. In a stunning bit of junky nonsense, if there was a reasonable enough way to help hit 5 mana naturally enough while also having something to flash back, I'd even give Spontaneous Artist a shot as hasting the goblins out.
Sin Prodder I just threw in. I wanted something completely randomly thrown in because I knew I'd need to make adjustments, and he should probably be Insolent Neonate, as the neonate sets up the nuts and stupid sequence of 1) Poke with menace neonate for 1 dmg, 2) Incendiary Flow, 3) Collective Defiance, 4) Triskaidekaphobia 5) UR DED. Or alternatively some clever way of getting the enemy lifegain out of the way.
Or it should be Lightning Weaver to help against the enemy turning your own phobia against you (they have their turn 5 to get YOUR life to 13). If the deck was more black Night Market Lookout would possibly help with this rather well, too, as it's early beats which also pad out your life. A rather good safeguard against being at 13 at the wrong time, I've found, is Sinister Concoction, which I'd run if could get the mana base to behave well enough to be properly black-red. The problem there is that it can't be flashed back with the Goblin Dark-Dwellers, that it essentially takes up the same deck space as Harnessed Lightning, but on the other hand it sure screws with any Emrakul plans the enemy might have while at the same time letting you get off 13 life in response to the Phobia trigger it the other guy puts you there.
Anyway, the deck can win the tradish way of cheap dudes & burn, it can win the non-tradish way of wtfpwn with just burn or a mix of stuff.
Keep in mind that you can kill yourself with your own phobia, and that there are ways for the other guys to dodge it. Lifegain, throwing their burn at themselves, and simply attacking you to make you kill yourself instead all works. But still - there are decks which can't do anything about it (and decks which can don't always have the requisite tools on-hand), and I've even found that just having the other guy ticking down from something they can't just move off the board is surprisingly fine. It's the stupid format, you see, there's way better 3-4-5 mana threats to play, but they're dudes and eat removal so they might as well not be there at all.
Anyway, the deck still needs to decide what it wants to be in a few places, but I think it can end up being a contender. Just based on how completely unfair and wtf it feels 3 out of 4 times Triskaidekaphobia comes down and the other guy has to scoop up because this card just said that they lose.
If you've taken the time to check the writeup up, what are your thoughts? If you can take it seriously, what would you do with it, what would you sideboard?
-- Later that day:
After some testing, I concluded that Sin Prodder is deffinitely out, and so is the Diabolic Tutor.
Now I have trouble deciding on whether (and exactly how) to add:
- Tormenting Voice / Chatartic Reunion , one of which I kinda-sorta really have to have in there to help draw lands and filter out extra copies of Triskaidekaphobia.
- Transgress the Mind because i'd probably be siding it in often anyway, but it's black.
- Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I really like because being able to calibrate the ammount of damage - at instant speed - should be rather good in this deck.
I only have space for 5 cards right now, which is a bummer, because I kinda want all those things in the deck, or at least 7-8 of them total, and I'm not sure what's safe to cut down to 3 copies. Especially if I'm adding the card filtering, because it makes redundant copies just recycle. Hmmmm.
Also, I suppose that even if I don't have the whole sideboard worked out, I do need some kind of standard plan for siding out Triskaidekaphobia, and also standard "on the play"/"on the draw" sort of tweak.
EDIT: Updated Deck
4 Aether Hub
4 Foreboding Ruins
3 Looming Spires
13 Mountain
Creatures
4 Insolent Neonate
3 Thriving Grubs
3 Lathnu Hellion
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Chandra's Pyrohelix
4 Incendiary Flow
4 Collective Defiance
3 Tormenting Voice
4 Triskaidekaphobia
4 Thermo-Alchemist
4 Transgress the Mind
Out: -1 Looming Spires +1 Mountain / -4 Sin Prodder +4 Insolent Neonate / -1 Lathnu Hellion -1 Thriving Grubs -1 Diabolic Tutor +3 Tormenting Voice.
Went with Tormenting Voice instead of Chatartic Reunion because it's easier to play off the top of the library / flashback with gobbos. Moved the alchemist to the sideboard and the idea is to move him and transgress in instead of Triskaidekaphobia and whatever else depending on what I think the other guy will sideboard.
Seems to be beating up the random brews in tourney practice, I whish I could try it against more serious decks without having to pay money to do so. Lujo2016 on Mtgo if someone with a serious deck for some reaso wats to be playing against this.
On a quick and stupid note - this deck has a very easy time setting up a kill with Triskaidekaphobia. There's random lifegain here and there but one poke from a 1 drop and two hits for three and whoops - the other guy's dead. Any copter deck can do it in this meta, but this one is likely to run Bomat Courier and/or Insolent Neonate, who poke for that important 1 somewhat easily, and this decks can run the Unlicenced Desintegration and the Collective Defiance for board control, which is nice. The funny thing is that the lousy 1 drop is likely to get that one poke in while the 2-X drops are likely to eat removal and the games can get so grindy that even if it doesn't kill the other guy just ticking him lower into burn range is probably fine-ish. Also, this deck can run the Sinister Concoction, too, so the other guy doesn't trick you.
I mean I just had an Aetherworks marvel guy narrowly dodge it with his lifegain thingy, if the marvel hadn't turned exactly that over, he'd have dropped from me having played 3 cards.