Fetch lands, perhaps, should have cost more life to use. 1 life is a small amount to pay to retrieve a dual land or shock land.
The main concern when the fetches were created was that they artificially lengthened gameplay by introducing increased shuffling. The life loss has never been an issue, afaik, and in Modern, it's really quite okay. If you're willing to go to 15 on Turn 1 just so you can find your dual land and Thoughtseize, more power to you.
You just made my RDW deck's job so much easier. Bless you shocklands, bless you.
I never liked needle drop. It was occasionally the finishing blow to a 3/4 Tarmogoyf, but I'd rather just have a real spell. If you really want to just run a 56 card deck, there's always Street Wraith.
1. A zoo player asking to know which is the best zoo deck so that he can play it.
2. A non zoo player asking to know which is the best zoo deck so that he can playtest against it.
As much as your full post made me chuckle, I felt like answering this question.
#1 is simply the most popular zoo deck, the one that he will encounter the most often. #1 is your stereotypical zoo deck, with no weird shenaniganry or off-the-wall maindecks like Ancient Grudge or something.
#2 is the zoo deck that will actually do the best, and will be tuned to fight the current metagame at a specific event. #2 will vary from tournament to tournament, but if you're looking for a baseline, #1 is what you want.
And I wish I could help OP, bt I can't. I play Burn, so every other deck in the format looks sort of similar. There's this difficulty in telling the difference between the charred corpse of a Welshman and the charred corpse of a Russian.
Retired Teneb because I got bored with it. It was a really solid deck, and I had tons of fun with it, but I played it back when Rofellos was legal. My best friend ran a Rofellos deck, and I'd become hyper-tuned to fight it. When Rofellos got banned, I just didn't feel like putting the energy into making it a normal deck that didn't need to be able to kill a 2/1 at any moment in time, sometimes two to three times on the stack.
Azami got retired because it was hyper competitive and hyper linear. People eventually just refused to play against it. I sidegraded to Edric, which is just as competitive, but wins in ways that don't involve a massive combo out.
The list I posted on the last page has the best chance of getting summoning. Ponder increases the chances of getting it turn 2. Architect is summoning 5-8 because the deck runs 20 artifact creatures. Casting superion has not been a problem at all and he is pretty goyf-like when you can cast him reliably.
Wurmcoil Engines have been real good for me. With 4 wurmcoils (plus 4 treasure mages to get them and 4 metamorphs to copy them) and 4 spellskites, the mono red match is pretty good. Control has not been to bad either due to the lack of day of judgements in their lists and the speed of my deck. On the play, they can't counter turn 2 summoning and mana leak quickly becomes inneffective for them when your creatures cost 2 less and you can tap all your creatures for mana (with architect).
This has mostly been my experience as well, but I was still having a lot of problem with the control matchup. Added in a tiny white splash (some seachromes, isolated chapels, and two Plains) so that I could start abusing Unburial Rites. Combine it with Buried Ruin and I have a fairly solid recursive engine to fight the long game.
Still looking for a way to deal with sworded-up Inkmoths though. Ghost Quarter exists, but it would be the death of my mana base...
Edit: Also, the green splash in the Architect build did not work out at all. Tried adding frost titans and going for a pseudo-mana-denial strategy (akin to what RUG used to do with Lotus Cobras) but ended up suffering from mana issues harder than my opponents. Still definitely do-able if you're not running Architect though.
Of course its not like U/B control decks ran 4-6 hand disruption spells last season is it, coz I mean, that's just card disadvantage right...O_o
U/B control was a very different deck that had very different discard spells. The power of Inquisition of Kozilek taking equally powerful 1-drops (such as Goblin Guide, Steppe Lynx, etc) could not be understated. We don't have any truly powerful 1-drops in this format besides Reckless Waif.
There's just not any turn 1 pressure in this format, and even if there was, the discard spells we have access to are mostly underwhelming at buying us time to get to turn 4. I'd rather just run Doom Blade or Dismember.
(And technically it's not card disadvantage; you're trading 1-for-1. It's tempo disadvantage, because you're spending mana and your main phase to initiate the trade.)
Despise is not tempo. It's actually a tempo loss for you, since you spend a card and a mana and a turn to get their card.
It can be a tempo play if they're sitting on a shaky hand and were relying on hitting some t2/t3 threat, or a mana dork, in order to make the hand playable.
This is the list I'll be testing over the next few days. The mana base is something I literally just threw together, so we'll see how that works out. I really miss Buried Ruin, but there's no way to run it with a 3 color mana base. We'll see how it works out.
I've been running a modified version of Ashton Dragon's list, which you can look at here. (Main changes were cutting hellkite/blightsteel and adding Bloodgift Demons; also found room for Consecrated Sphinxes and adapted the board to my local meta.)
The ability to consistently drop Wurmcoil Engine on turn 4 (and several times on turn 3) won me almost all of my games. Dropping Superions on turn 2 until I could stick a bigger threat was also a game-changer.
I only ran into one problem, and that was control. Was thinking about testing out Frost Titans (the main problem I ran into was Snapcaster and Dismember just stalling for ages.) Has anyone had great success with them? Or does anyone have other advice for facing control? Obviously Mindslaver is spectacular, especially with the ability to recur it, but besides that.
How are people feeling about Solemn? I thought he'd be amazing, but most of the time he was just okay. If I had Summoning or Architect, he was unnecessary. If I didn't have either, he sort of helped me play the control game, but with the redundancy of Summoning, Architect, and Ponder, I didn't really have that problem more than once. He just felt like filler, and I'm thinking about cutting him for Phyrexian Rager.
I also think we need a certain small amount of interactivity. 6-8 cards feels about right (which in my colors means Mana Leaks and Doom Blade/GFtT/Dismember) with more options in the board. I'm also looking around for answers to noncreature permanents - I had a White Weenie deck drop Nevermore naming Wurmcoil, which cut me down to trying to win with my 2 sphinxes/2 bloodgifts. Ratchet Bomb out of the side is okay (and hilarious if you have problems with the humans deck - flipped cards have CMC 0) but it left quite a bit to be desired.
The green splash is looking better and better - acidic slimes, emissaries, and some solid board options. I'll have to give it a shot at my next FNM.
Saying that it is banned makes as much sense as saying that Umezawa's Jitte is banned in the Shards-Innistrad Standard
I wish Shards/Zen were still legal in Standard. Bloodbraid into...I don't even know?
Anyway. The "but 9 mana is SO MUCH MANA" argument doesn't hold a whole lot of weight in a multiplayer environment, especially when the power level of discard/counters in multiplayer is taken into account (and their subsequent absence from the format).
T&N will probably get banned within the next year or two. The ability to assemble two-card locks off of one card is exactly why Gifts is banned (though obviously Gifts is much stronger).
yah, i thought it wasn't that long ago. and lol at misstep. but isn't jace banned in extended? if he is, you would be incorrect, as misstep is legal in standard.
also... misstep shouldn't be banned in modern. along with preordain, vision, GSZ, and a few others. but oh well. i guess that talk isn't for this thread.
On October 1st, Jace will be banned in Extended and Modern only. (As he'll have rotated out of Standard.) Misstep will be banned in Extended, Modern, and Legacy.
More on topic, would it be possible to add deck tags inside the spoilers? Would make things look neater. Great project tom; hope you keep it up!
PM me if you are interested in helping. one guy already has/is, and until the metagame gets re-established there's not much to do besides put in the ones that were un-effected by the ban list. and there isn't to many, plus the other guy has agreed to work on some. i will mostly need helpers in about 2 weeks from now.
yah, i'm not trying to be mean to cardfather. i'm just getting across that that's what "work in progress means".
also, idk about the announcement. i hadn't seen it before yesterday night; i'm not sure when they put it out there.
The B&R list was updated today, September 20th. Changes go into effect on October 1st. (Fun note: When these bans go into effect, Mental Misstep will be banned in more formats than Jace, the Mind Sculptor.)
The main concern when the fetches were created was that they artificially lengthened gameplay by introducing increased shuffling. The life loss has never been an issue, afaik, and in Modern, it's really quite okay. If you're willing to go to 15 on Turn 1 just so you can find your dual land and Thoughtseize, more power to you.
You just made my RDW deck's job so much easier. Bless you shocklands, bless you.
As much as your full post made me chuckle, I felt like answering this question.
#1 is simply the most popular zoo deck, the one that he will encounter the most often. #1 is your stereotypical zoo deck, with no weird shenaniganry or off-the-wall maindecks like Ancient Grudge or something.
#2 is the zoo deck that will actually do the best, and will be tuned to fight the current metagame at a specific event. #2 will vary from tournament to tournament, but if you're looking for a baseline, #1 is what you want.
And I wish I could help OP, bt I can't. I play Burn, so every other deck in the format looks sort of similar. There's this difficulty in telling the difference between the charred corpse of a Welshman and the charred corpse of a Russian.
Azami got retired because it was hyper competitive and hyper linear. People eventually just refused to play against it. I sidegraded to Edric, which is just as competitive, but wins in ways that don't involve a massive combo out.
This has mostly been my experience as well, but I was still having a lot of problem with the control matchup. Added in a tiny white splash (some seachromes, isolated chapels, and two Plains) so that I could start abusing Unburial Rites. Combine it with Buried Ruin and I have a fairly solid recursive engine to fight the long game.
Still looking for a way to deal with sworded-up Inkmoths though. Ghost Quarter exists, but it would be the death of my mana base...
Edit: Also, the green splash in the Architect build did not work out at all. Tried adding frost titans and going for a pseudo-mana-denial strategy (akin to what RUG used to do with Lotus Cobras) but ended up suffering from mana issues harder than my opponents. Still definitely do-able if you're not running Architect though.
U/B control was a very different deck that had very different discard spells. The power of Inquisition of Kozilek taking equally powerful 1-drops (such as Goblin Guide, Steppe Lynx, etc) could not be understated. We don't have any truly powerful 1-drops in this format besides Reckless Waif.
There's just not any turn 1 pressure in this format, and even if there was, the discard spells we have access to are mostly underwhelming at buying us time to get to turn 4. I'd rather just run Doom Blade or Dismember.
(And technically it's not card disadvantage; you're trading 1-for-1. It's tempo disadvantage, because you're spending mana and your main phase to initiate the trade.)
It can be a tempo play if they're sitting on a shaky hand and were relying on hitting some t2/t3 threat, or a mana dork, in order to make the hand playable.
3x Myr Superion
3x Treasure Mage
4x Grand Architect
2x Phyrexian Metamorph
3x Solemn Simulacrum
4x Wurmcoil Engine
3x Acidic Slime
2x Bloodgift Demon
2x Viridian Emissary
4x Ponder
4x Mana Leak
3x Heartless Summoning
Land(23)
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Hinterland Harbor
4x Woodland Cemetery
4x Drowned Catacomb
3x Island
2x Swamp
2x Forest
3x Spellskite
3x Dismember
2x Go for the Throat
3x Beast Within
2x Black Sun's Zenith
1x Consecrated Sphinx
1x Mindslaver
This is the list I'll be testing over the next few days. The mana base is something I literally just threw together, so we'll see how that works out. I really miss Buried Ruin, but there's no way to run it with a 3 color mana base. We'll see how it works out.
The ability to consistently drop Wurmcoil Engine on turn 4 (and several times on turn 3) won me almost all of my games. Dropping Superions on turn 2 until I could stick a bigger threat was also a game-changer.
I only ran into one problem, and that was control. Was thinking about testing out Frost Titans (the main problem I ran into was Snapcaster and Dismember just stalling for ages.) Has anyone had great success with them? Or does anyone have other advice for facing control? Obviously Mindslaver is spectacular, especially with the ability to recur it, but besides that.
How are people feeling about Solemn? I thought he'd be amazing, but most of the time he was just okay. If I had Summoning or Architect, he was unnecessary. If I didn't have either, he sort of helped me play the control game, but with the redundancy of Summoning, Architect, and Ponder, I didn't really have that problem more than once. He just felt like filler, and I'm thinking about cutting him for Phyrexian Rager.
I also think we need a certain small amount of interactivity. 6-8 cards feels about right (which in my colors means Mana Leaks and Doom Blade/GFtT/Dismember) with more options in the board. I'm also looking around for answers to noncreature permanents - I had a White Weenie deck drop Nevermore naming Wurmcoil, which cut me down to trying to win with my 2 sphinxes/2 bloodgifts. Ratchet Bomb out of the side is okay (and hilarious if you have problems with the humans deck - flipped cards have CMC 0) but it left quite a bit to be desired.
The green splash is looking better and better - acidic slimes, emissaries, and some solid board options. I'll have to give it a shot at my next FNM.
I wish Shards/Zen were still legal in Standard. Bloodbraid into...I don't even know?
Anyway. The "but 9 mana is SO MUCH MANA" argument doesn't hold a whole lot of weight in a multiplayer environment, especially when the power level of discard/counters in multiplayer is taken into account (and their subsequent absence from the format).
T&N will probably get banned within the next year or two. The ability to assemble two-card locks off of one card is exactly why Gifts is banned (though obviously Gifts is much stronger).
You sac 3 creatures to get 3 tokens. You're running a net 0 on tokens.
Edit: Majorly nath'd.
On October 1st, Jace will be banned in Extended and Modern only. (As he'll have rotated out of Standard.) Misstep will be banned in Extended, Modern, and Legacy.
More on topic, would it be possible to add deck tags inside the spoilers? Would make things look neater. Great project tom; hope you keep it up!
The B&R list was updated today, September 20th. Changes go into effect on October 1st. (Fun note: When these bans go into effect, Mental Misstep will be banned in more formats than Jace, the Mind Sculptor.)