Dude, Sorins ulti costs 7, he comes into play with 4 counters so you would need !! 4 !! proliferates to combo out. Seems a bit much to me. Anyways - besides Sorin this could work nice.
You could use 2x Contagion Engine and some serious dedication to seeing it work one game in 50.
For the original deck, I would run some DoJ. Most of your gameplan is walkers, so it seems like a good fit. I'd also add Contagion Clasp for some point removal/reusable proliferate.
I use Dragon Wings and Dragon Shadow in Wrexial, and they're pretty great. Makes him effectively unblockable (as long as no one is running flying artifacts in R, G, or W) as soon as he hits play. The rest aren't bad either, especially if you can trigger them off the general.
Trickster is actually kind of a beast in my meta due to the abundance of VVine decks. It's frequently a 5/5 or a 6/6 (between squawks, Trinket Mage, fetches, and Fauna Shaman) within a couple turns of hitting the field. It's very much a meta call, though. I've also sided them out against control more than once.
Architect in my build isn't for ramping out a massive creature early. It's there as a small boost, largely so I can leave counter mana up when I do want to play a finisher, or as a lord if I need to go aggro. I do agree that he needs more support to be good, though. This isn't intended for anything past FNM.
I'm trying some alongside Wurmcoil in an Architect build (1 main, 2 side) for some threat diversity. So far I've been unimpressed. I only board them in against elves, and that's more for the flying then the wipe. The MB one comes out against almost everything.
Thada is one I still need to try. I like that she's a merfolk, and control is prevalent enough around here that I might be able to steal Wurmcoil with some regularity. The trick is that my meta is about 45% control and 45% VVine, and she's useless against the VVine decks.
I'm also considering upping the Wurmcoil count, simply because they're so dominating in most of my matchups. Maybe for a Spell Pierce or something.
On an unrelated note, great story about the VVine decks. I managed to strip all the vines and Gideons out of my opponent's deck, countered his Jaces, his Venser, his masticore, and his titan, and had 2 tec edges on the field while he had 3 lands. Then I couldn't find a single threat and took 16 off of shaman beats, one swing at a time.
I've been following this thread for a while, and I'm playing a much more controlling version of this deck than most people here (almost Ub control), but I've got a couple observations.
- Kraken Hatchling is pretty awful. It's being played to stop fast aggro, but most aggro isn't going to care when playing mono-U. Without any kind of wrath effect, there's no danger to them overextending and just running over your hatchling. It helps most if they get a slow start, and you should be able to capitalize on that anyways.
- If you're trying to play a ramp deck where you curve out into a big turn 3 artifact threat, you're in the wrong colors. G does it better and more reliably. Think about how many ramp decks hit T3 Primeval Titan on a pretty regular basis. Think about how often you've gotten a perfect curve into T3 Wurmcoil. Unless you've had some extraordinarily lucky hands, the G deck's numbers just blow yours away.
- You won't always draw Architect. This has been pointed out a couple of times before, but the decklists don't reflect it. If there's no Architect on the table, a lot of these are just stacks of big finishers praying that they'll live through the early game. You need cards that can stand on their own that improve when Architect comes out.
Because I'm saying all this, I'm going to post my list so everyone can tear it apart and tell me how awful it is. I'm not claiming that my list is the best (or even very good), or that it's even the right way to take the deck, or that it even belongs in this thread, but it's something other "pray for a perfect curve into Wurmcoil."
Whenever I am building a deck I always shop the internet for ideas. Then I add those ideas to my own and create a homebrew. For example...I was shopping for a Mono Black EDH deck. I ran into thisOb Nixilis, the Fallen. I quickly made changes and slowly but surely I altered the deck to my liking.
While I wouldn't call the above Net-decking...I did shop ideas. For the most part I would imagine that most people build decks this way.
This makes a lot of sense. I've been playing off and on for over a decade, and I still find interesting stuff I've never heard of before on a regular basis while browsing the forums. That's significantly different from a direct copy of someone else's deck.
Taking an EDH deck off the net and playing it makes no sense to me. I get it for every other format, but in EDH it seems like it goes against the spirit of the thing.
Grand Melee is another one that forces attacks. Bottomless Pit is a nice discard one, but you need to be able to play around it. Heat Stroke is a good combat one, but it sounds like you won't be running enough creatures to take advantage of it. No Mercy is an obvious punishment card. Price of Glory kind of fits your bomby enchantment requirement. Burning Sands punishes creature heavy decks pretty hard. Tectonic Instability Definitely affects how your opponents play. Hand to Hand can screw people up during combat. Repercussion might fit. Total War is a more interesting way to force attacks. Contamination is more than a little disruptive, but hurts you quite a bit too. Death Pits of Rath is a fun one. Endless Whispers gives you many creatures, but hurts the effectiveness of board wipes. Painful Quandary sounds like something you might like. Season of the Witch forces attacks. Tainted Aether is good if you're creature light.
The manabase in my Rith token deck is almost entirely basic to take advantage of Perilous Forays (I know this doesn't need basic lands, just land types) and Earthcraft. Green can cover for a lot of fixing that you would normally get from nonbasics, and the deck isn't looking for much utility from its lands.
All Is Dust seems like an obvious one, but you didn't mention it. You'll also want draw/manipulation, because you're not in very strong tutor colors. That brings up a good question as well: how attached are you to your general?
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who can't decide which I like better. 50-50 split in the poll.
At the moment I'm running Duress, because the early threats that I would grab with Inquisition can be dealt with by either Doom Blade or Into the Roil (Ub Fish). It seems to be working for me, but I was curious to see what other people were doing.
Which of these is better in the current meta? IoK obviously fares better against the aggro decks floating around, but the ability to strip a planeswalker out of your opponent's hand is pretty nice too. I don't think either of them has a matchup where it would be completely dead. Both hit removal and counters, so that really doesn't make a difference.
You could use 2x Contagion Engine and some serious dedication to seeing it work one game in 50.
For the original deck, I would run some DoJ. Most of your gameplan is walkers, so it seems like a good fit. I'd also add Contagion Clasp for some point removal/reusable proliferate.
Architect in my build isn't for ramping out a massive creature early. It's there as a small boost, largely so I can leave counter mana up when I do want to play a finisher, or as a lord if I need to go aggro. I do agree that he needs more support to be good, though. This isn't intended for anything past FNM.
I'm also considering upping the Wurmcoil count, simply because they're so dominating in most of my matchups. Maybe for a Spell Pierce or something.
On an unrelated note, great story about the VVine decks. I managed to strip all the vines and Gideons out of my opponent's deck, countered his Jaces, his Venser, his masticore, and his titan, and had 2 tec edges on the field while he had 3 lands. Then I couldn't find a single threat and took 16 off of shaman beats, one swing at a time.
- Kraken Hatchling is pretty awful. It's being played to stop fast aggro, but most aggro isn't going to care when playing mono-U. Without any kind of wrath effect, there's no danger to them overextending and just running over your hatchling. It helps most if they get a slow start, and you should be able to capitalize on that anyways.
- If you're trying to play a ramp deck where you curve out into a big turn 3 artifact threat, you're in the wrong colors. G does it better and more reliably. Think about how many ramp decks hit T3 Primeval Titan on a pretty regular basis. Think about how often you've gotten a perfect curve into T3 Wurmcoil. Unless you've had some extraordinarily lucky hands, the G deck's numbers just blow yours away.
- You won't always draw Architect. This has been pointed out a couple of times before, but the decklists don't reflect it. If there's no Architect on the table, a lot of these are just stacks of big finishers praying that they'll live through the early game. You need cards that can stand on their own that improve when Architect comes out.
Because I'm saying all this, I'm going to post my list so everyone can tear it apart and tell me how awful it is. I'm not claiming that my list is the best (or even very good), or that it's even the right way to take the deck, or that it even belongs in this thread, but it's something other "pray for a perfect curve into Wurmcoil."
5 Island
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacombs
4 Creeping Tar Pits
4 Tectonic Edge
Creatures 15
4 Cosi's Trickster
4 Coralhelm Commander
4 Grand Architect
2 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Steel Hellkite
4 Duress
3 Doom Blade
4 Mana Leak
1 Stoic Rebuttal
1 Cancel
3 Spell Pierce
3 Into the Roil
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Steel Hellkite
2 Wurmcoil Engine
3 Memoricide
1 Doom Blade
4 Flashfreeze
3 Ratchet Bomb
This makes a lot of sense. I've been playing off and on for over a decade, and I still find interesting stuff I've never heard of before on a regular basis while browsing the forums. That's significantly different from a direct copy of someone else's deck.
Bottomless Pit is a nice discard one, but you need to be able to play around it.
Heat Stroke is a good combat one, but it sounds like you won't be running enough creatures to take advantage of it.
No Mercy is an obvious punishment card.
Price of Glory kind of fits your bomby enchantment requirement.
Burning Sands punishes creature heavy decks pretty hard.
Tectonic Instability Definitely affects how your opponents play.
Hand to Hand can screw people up during combat.
Repercussion might fit.
Total War is a more interesting way to force attacks.
Contamination is more than a little disruptive, but hurts you quite a bit too.
Death Pits of Rath is a fun one.
Endless Whispers gives you many creatures, but hurts the effectiveness of board wipes.
Painful Quandary sounds like something you might like.
Season of the Witch forces attacks.
Tainted Aether is good if you're creature light.
EDIT: nath'd. Stupid phone:
At the moment I'm running Duress, because the early threats that I would grab with Inquisition can be dealt with by either Doom Blade or Into the Roil (Ub Fish). It seems to be working for me, but I was curious to see what other people were doing.
Which of these is better in the current meta? IoK obviously fares better against the aggro decks floating around, but the ability to strip a planeswalker out of your opponent's hand is pretty nice too. I don't think either of them has a matchup where it would be completely dead. Both hit removal and counters, so that really doesn't make a difference.