Since you're working towards a combo finish, it's very common to have one or more combo pieces in hand while you wait on finding the things you need to kick it off. Casting Shattered Perception is going to put those in the graveyard. Having to choose to cast this and losing a Nourshing Shoal or Goryo's Vengeance is not where you want to be.
It's a better fit in a dredge-oriented sort of deck, where you don't care what's in your hand, and drawing extra cards just enables dredge.
This is the list i've been playing.
So yeah, with only 2 Rituals, I wouldn't wan't to drop Manamorphose, but that's part of the argument; That we would rather be running 4 Rituals over Manamorphose anyways. The Rituals give you more Splice cards, more ramp for Breach, and a more consistent combo turn- Where Manamorphose isn't really doing anything except opening up the Goryo combo line if you have no floating mana, which is completely unnecessary anyways.
Another reason to drop Morphose, is that we would rather be comboing out at instant speed anyway. That's one of the major draws to this deck, and an advantage it has over other combos. The Ritual-Morphose-Looting-Gory line is sorcery speed, which is a major downside.
This is one of the reasons I've always been a big proponent of keeping a single Lightning Axe in the main. In addition to killing Scavenging Oozes and the like, it enables an instant speed discard outlet that can turn on a Goryo's mid combo.
The other minor benefit to keeping in a Manamorphose or two is that they they're sometimes the only green card you've got in hand to kick start a combo with a shoal. Especially if you're baiting out a likely (or known) counter at end step. Not wasting a wurm on that makes fizzling out a bit less likely.
Not keeping them is certainly a legitimate option, though.
Of those, Rally the Ancestors doesn't help unless you've also got some form of sacrifice outlet and 13 mana, so that's effectively out. Of the rest, Makeshift Mannequin is the only one I think is even remotely playable in this deck, and even then, barely so, as you'd likely need at least 5 mana to use it effectively (1 for a faithless or similar, and 4 to cast MM itself).
Additionally, the following can be used if you've put the wurm into play already, such as via Through the Breach and it is dying either to the Breach trigger or to a non-exile removal spell like Terminate:
Some of these are slightly more playable overall in modern, but less playable in this deck, as they all basically become 3 card combos with Wurm, Breach, and whichever spell, requiring you to either have 6+ mana available or be able to breach at end step and then untap and cast whichever reanimation spell you were going to use at your end step. I do admit that my janky combo player instincts want to find a way to make Cauldron Haze or Graceful Reprieve fit in the deck to get extra value out of Wurms and even Terminated Griselbrands, but realistically the deck doesn't have slots for that, and Path to Exile is the kind of a thing in Modern, along with bounce spells like Vapor Snag, and these spells do nothing in those cases.
I'm sort of new to the party, has anyone experimented with adding footsteps of the goryo for redundancy, either SB or MB?
My pact of negations feel like garbage in my meta, and using footsteps on a worldspine feels like straight gas (and can happen as early as turn 2). In the burn matchup we could remove whispers or copies of through the breach (which are sloowwwwww) and be able to more consistently get 5/5's or grisel on the board to start pressuring that tiny life total of theirs.
Just as a note, you'll almost never be able to use Footsteps on a Worldspine Wurm. It'll never be in your graveyard, unless someone casts Trickbind to stop the shuffle trigger.
It does work on Griselbrand or Borborygmos, however 3 mana instead of 2 is a pretty big deal, given you're already leaning on your SSGs to combo out. Not being able to attack is also a pretty big drawback, as that's 7 less cards you can draw and a significantly higher chance of bricking mid-combo. Finally, unlike breach, it doesn't splice onto Nourishing Shoal to help fight counters, nor does it let you beat a resolved copy of the most common and powerful graveyard hate cards like Leyline of the Void, Grafdigger's Cage, or Rest in Peace.
Footsteps is an interesting card, but it works much better in a deck like Hulk Footsteps, where resolving it basically leads to an instant win without needing the storm-esque combo that this deck does.
To the people wondering about the Shoal/Wurm/Borborygmos package and proposing possible replacements:
I've been playing Griselbrand Reanimator variants as my main Modern deck for almost 2 years now. I started with the RB Fury version, played with Grixis Fury for a while, then explored a bunch of different versions including using the Goryo/Griselbrand combo in both DredgeVine and Delver shells, trying to shore up the problematic match ups.
In my experience, the classic Red/Black and Grixis Fury variants have a number of big problems. One, they absolutely require an attack step to win. They can't go off, in entirety, at instant speed, and any sort of removal, bounce, or tap spell prevents you from winning. Two, they suffer in the face of counterspells, especially if the opponent has more than 2 or 3 in the course of the game. Finally, if they are stopped prior to combo via either one or two, they have a very difficult time rebuilding for another go.
With decks like Twin and Grixis Control being among the most common and consistent decks in the format, it gives the traditional Emrakul/Fury based variants a lot of rather unfavorable matchups. Twin has tap down effects in Exarch, Pestermite, and some post-board Cryptics, plus counters. Grixis Control has ridiculous number of counters, and even more Cryptics. On top of all that, you've got a somewhat of a crapshoot matchup against aggressive linear damage decks like Burn and Affinity, because you will often be too low in life to activate Griselbrand enough for a reliable win, if you can't go off in the first few turns.
By contrast, the Shoal version fixes, or at least improves, a lot of these qualities. Splice onto Arcane gives you the chances to power through counterspell walls. Nourishing Shoal in particular also gives you time against linear aggro decks and reduces the chance of fizzling once you start to go off. Borborygmos Enraged gives you a win con that does not require attacking and can operate entirely at instant speed to take advantage of the opponent tapping out, mitigating the effect of bounce, removal, and tap down effects and even counters to some extent. Even Worldspine Wurm on a breach at least leaves behind tokens against many forms of removal.
The downside to the Shoal version is that it's still not the most consistent deck around, and the shell is large and filled with subtly interlocking parts. Tinkering with it too much removes the very parts you need to make it work. Removing too many green spells (Borborygmos, Manamorphose, etc) means your Shoals become far less good for powering through counters and gaining life. Too few and you'll actually start to fizzle entirely a lot more often. Ditto the removing the fast mana. Replacing Borborygmos with something like Lightning Storm also means you can no longer go off at instant speed, and if your Storm is countered, you have no way to recover it on future turns, unlike Borby who can usually be reanimated from the grave again to complete the combo. Even replacing your fatties with Emrakul or Atarka puts you back to relying on an attack step to win.
It's not that modifications can't work. It's just there's a pretty big burden of proof if you strip out large chunks of the deck to make room for pet cards or alternatives. I certainly tinker enough. But despite that, I keep coming back to the base Shoal version with only a few card difference here and there.
I did a 107 person PPTQ at Mox Boardinghouse in Bellevue, WA. Ended up 5-2 for 12th place. Running a mostly standard list with a Dragonlord Atarka and a Lightning Axe in place of Manamorphose 3 and 4. Sideboard had 3 Firespouts (awesome all day), 3 Blood Moon, Boseiju, 3 Pact of Negation (useless all day), a pair of Inquisition, and a few one-ofs, mostly anti-Affinity.
I'll skip match by match, as the wins were largely uninteresting (Goryo/Breach! Draw a lot! Fling Lands! Opponents scowl!). Rounds 2 through 6 I didn't lose a game, beating Amulet Bloom, Tribal Zoo, Merfolk, RG Tron, and Abzan CC.
The two losses were both to eventual T8 competitors.
Round 1, lost to classic Junk when G2 he had triple discard in the first 3 turns, and then game 3 he had path, which led to a fizzled combo (and using up most my shoals), and then top decked discard stopped my chance for a follow up win. There was one minor play mistake I made that I realized several hours later that might have won me the game, but might not have. He ended up 5-0-2 in the Swiss and 4th or 5th seed, I believe.
Round 7, we were both at 15 points at 5-1, in 9th and 10th, so could not draw due to breakers. He won with Scapeshift, mostly due to ridiculous amounts of counters (5 casts of Remand in one game, 3 or 4 in the other, plus a Cryptic or two each game). Game 1 I was a little mana light with Breach in hand. In game 2 he Remanded Blood Moon on turn 3, 4, and 5. Both games he went off on around turn 6 or 7 and had enough lands to double Valakut so my Shoal+Wurm in hand was not enough to save me. There really wasn't anything I could do in this game, except maybe have mulligan'd more aggressively for at T2/T3 win or T2 Blood Moon. He ended up 3rd seed at 6-1.
Only 1 turn 2 kill in 7 rounds, against the CC Abzan deck in game 1. A good number of turn 3s, though.
Other memorable highlights include killing the RG player in game 2 with a Sundering Titan on the stack after playing through 3 Relics, beating the Tribal Zoo player with a lethal Lightning Helix on the stack, and killing a pair of Merfolk Lords with a Goryo'd Atarka against Fish.
What are you proposing to take out to fit in those cards?
The Shoal version is pretty tight. You can't remove too many green cards or you won't be able to Shoal reliably. You can't remove to many of the draw spells, or you won't have anything to pitch to Zombie infestation or be able to assemble your combo. There's not a lot of room to cut lands. You need a minimum number of Manamorphose, Desperate Ritual, and Simian Spirit Guides to go off once you start to combo.
By most reckoning there's only at most 2 flex slots in the deck, maybe 3 or 4 if you're willing to cut down to 1 each of Ritual and Manamorphose and risk the combo fizzling because you don't draw them when you need them.
I did try Infestation a few times, but it was in a Dredgevine shell with the addition of Goryo's and Griselbrand, rather than the full on combo version that is the Shoal deck. The deck worked moderately well, but lacks both the explosive instant speed combo finish of the Shoal version and the same degree of being able to play through counters via arcane splicing shenanigans. In return, though, it did extremely well in the long game. But since I last played that version, Modern as a whole has only gotten faster, and the presence of "cheap" large beaters like Tasigur and Angler have made the Dredgevine plan of Gravecrawlers, Bloodghasts, and even Vengevines a lot less compelling.
Sorry, I was unclear. I understand what the Manamorphose does. What I don't understand is how those functions are even remotely comparable to the utility you get from +2 Voice. The deck seems to benefit much more from a 2-2 split than an 0-4 one.
My experience over the past 3 or 4 months with the Shoal variant is that green cards are quite critical. If you drop below about 10 non-shoal green cards, you run a very significant risk of not having one in hand to pitch to a shoal when you need to splice onto it to play around counterspells or jumpstart the combo kill via splicing Desperate Ritual. It's without a doubt the worst card in the deck most of the time, but the worst case is that it cycles for "free", which isn't horrible, and if the card you're looking at replacing it with is not green, it increases your chances of fizzling, especially if your opponent has put some early damage on you. I'm currently at 2, but both of the cards I replaced it with are green (Dragonlord Atarka and Noxious Revival), keeping my green count at 14 total.
My other experience is that the first Tormenting Voice is pretty good. The second one gets much worse, and by the third one I'm usually hating myself for even having more than 2 in the deck. That's usually because by the time I want to cast a second, my hand looks something like 1-2 combo initiating pieces (Goryo, Breach, Wurm), 1 or 2 of a critical mid-combo piece I can't afford to discard (Ritual, SSG, Manamorphose), and Tormenting Voice. There's nothing left I remotely want to discard, and if I wait another turn, I may or may not get something to discard, but I definitely won't be going off this turn. I'm currently at 4 Night's Whisper, 1 Tormenting Voice.
As far as Revival itself? I'm kind of mixed. I've never had a game where it actually saved me, but have had some where if I'd drawn the 1 of it would have (mostly by rescuing a Goryo after hand disruption, though on a few occasions, rescuing a ritual or shoal I'd been forced to cast or discard previously). I have used it in the role of pitching to Shoal a number of times, where having a 2nd Tormenting Voice would have probably been a busted combo attempt.
1) How is the grixis delver matchup? How is the jund matchup? I feel the shoal version with abrupt decay and access to inquisition must be quite a bit stronger.
Delver in any form is a mediocre to bad matchup, depending on how heavy they are on counters and if they can get an early delver flipped. If they devote the early game to aggro and don't leave up counters, you're generally faster than they are. If they don't have early pressure, they generally don't have enough counters to outlast your attempts. But if they can drop a T1 Delver and flip it on 2, you will often run out of time before they run out of remands, mana leaks, and spell snares.
Counters are generally the biggest weakness of any variant of this deck, and while the shoal version can fight through them given time, delver doesn't usually give you a lot, unlike pure control or control/combo decks like UWR or Twin.
2) On cockatrice in my short time testing, it seems counters wreck me and so do paths. If I cannot win in the first few turns against control I get wrecked. How do I fix this? Whats the key to a late game with this deck? Even infect can fair well in the late game.
Counters are hard, as mentioned, to fight through. For shoal, this usually means surviving long enough to be able to play a Breach or Shoal (preferably spliced) at their end step to draw out the counter, then untapping and doing it again. The other option is to go off in response to them finally tapping out to do something. Eventually they're going to need to put pressure on the table, and the shoal version's ability to go off at mostly instant speed (or completely instant if you're running a Lightning Axe or other instant speed discard outlet like Funeral Charm, Kolaghan's Command, or similar) can shine here. Oh, you want to put your Keranos in play? Okay, here we go.
Paths (and other hard removal like terminate) are much easier to play around, especially for the shoal version. You can actually win with a Path on the stack, if all goes well. The key thing for dealing with removal is that if you think they have it, attack first.
You want to force them to have to use the removal and then be able to react to it by drawing 7, rather than have them react to the draw with removal. If they can react to you, that's 7 cards you don't have in hand before the removal resolves, which may have been the ones you needed to continue the combo chain. And depending on how deep you dig before you fizzle, you may prevent yourself from going off in the future.
For non-shoal versions, the usual answer is just to give up on that attempt and draw enough to ensure you'll be able to go off with an Emrakul, since that's immune to most removal.
3) Would you keep a hand of 2 faithless looting, 1 nights torment, 1 goryo, 3 lands?
I would. You've got at least 5 looks for Griselbrand (1 or 2 draws, 4 cards from 2 Faithless) by the end of turn 2, and can untap on 3 and get 3 more (draw + 2 from whisper), letting you flash back faithless on turn 4 to ditch a reanimation target if you find one. If the Goryo's were anything else, I would probably not keep, though. Unless it were a Breach, and one of the three draw/filter spells was instead an SSG. If your opening 7 doesn't have at least one actual combo piece, I'd be really hard pressed to keep, unless literally everything else in hand was a dig spell plus 2 or 3 lands.
The changes (compared with my last list) are: -2 Manamorphose, -4 lands, -1 Summoner's Pact, -1 TTB, +2 Noxious Revival, +4 Temple, +2 Tormenting Voices
Reasons:
-The Pact was great, but I didn't needed it that often and it felt often as a win-more, exception was the win against Amulet Bloom, where he went for Hive Mind and I killed him with double pact (his and mine).
-I never liked the Manamorphose that much, but they are a necessary evil. Since I know I can go down to 2, I searched for a replacement and I found them in Noxious Revival. They offer some great utility against Discard, Counters and can help in the Grisel combo turns (e.g. you don't draw Shoals -> get back one via Revival, use it as Ramp with Ritual, ...). Also it allows us to play better around graveyard hate, which doesn't exile everything (especially Grafdigger's Cage), since you can get back Grisel and use your breach than. I went from 1 to 2, so far I don't look back.
-The Manabase change was long overdue. The Scrylands offer another turn 1 play and help to set up you draws. I have to test more with them (and with the current Manabase configuration), if I have to change something.
-The TTB cut may look strange, but often I found myself in a position where TTB was just to slow. To compensate the cut I added another 2 draw spells (Tormenting Voices) so that I have more outs of finding a cheat spell. I play the fourth copy in the SB, so that I have against BGx the full playset again (Worldspine Wurm is so good against them). I have to test this more, since this is a pretty significant change, before I can give you my final opinion on this.
General thoughts: I think, I can cut another land (go down to 18), when I add another draw spell. The problem is, that I don't want to play another Tormenting Voice, since it can get pretty awkward with discard part (and Remand says hi). Any ideas?
That's an interesting set of changes. I'm not sure I could go down to 18 land. I feel I lose to mana issues more than anything, even more often than my opponent having every counterspell ever (and I play in meta that's rife with Mono-U tron and Twin). I suppose the Temples offset that a little, but I also feel that tends to push us back a half turn or so. Lands that come in tapped are just so damn bad if your only hope in a match is to go off on 3 or 4 at latest before they can establish some sort of overwhelming board presence or control via counters and hand disruption.
I do like the use of Noxious Revival. I'll have to try that in my flex slots. I've been relatively happy with my 1-of Dragonlord Atarka, as it's a perfect pitch to Shoal, and still works with both Breach and Goryo's. I also remain a big fan of a singleton Lightning Axe, both as interaction and as a way to combo off completely at instant speed.
As far as other card draw, there's not a lot of good options without changing up your mana base. Wild Guess has the same drawback as Tormenting Voice and is harder on mana. Sign in Blood and Read the Bones work as actual card advantage like Night's Whisper, but are harder to cast if you're trying to skate on land drops. And not being dredge, this deck doesn't want Dangerous Wager, Desperate Ravings, Goblin Lore, or the like. All the other good options want U to cast, and that way lies the Grixis version of the deck.
Without the manamorphose, you don't have the option to turn your red mana into black. That shuts off any lines that require reanimating Borbor from the bin, and locks you in to having a the Borbor and a Breach in hand *and* being able to get up to at least 4 mana to splice the Breach onto a Shoal or getting to 5 mana to cast in naturally. Both are possible, but discard into Goryo's path usually has a lot less requirements. This means you may need to delay going off for a turn (to have an extra black producing land untapped) or fizzling (because you can't get the complete Breach version combo in hand before you run out of life/shoals).
Going to a 2/2 split of Manamorphose and Decay would be about as low as I'd be willing to go.
Can anyone post a "stock" non-Shoal list? I'm looking to build it once MM2 drops prices. Thanks in advance.
Kathal's primer in the first post of the thread has solid stock versions of all the major variants, including the classic Kahleya version, which is probably the most streamlined non-Shoal version though it's also probably weakest to hate. Caleb Durward's been playing with variations that have heavier hand disruption to avoid hate. The first post also has links to his article.
The 4+4/4+4 formula is something I originally encountered as a term in Legacy, mostly in reference to the Sneak'n'Show archetype.
Kathal has the right of the concept. Basically, if your 2 card combo only works with 1 particular card, plus 1 particular card, then if you've got nothing to tutor those up, the combo is too inconsistent to work reliably. You just won't draw both halves of the combo often enough to be able to win games. With only 4 copies of a card, your chance of seeing it in your opening 7 are around 40%. If you have two independent cards you need, that means you'll have both in your opening hand only around 15% of the time, which is not very good odds.
However, if you have 2 cards which can function as half the combo, you now have 8 total cards that work that way, and chances are now high enough that the deck could be considered potentially reliable enough to win games. For Sneak'n'Show, you've got both Show and Tell and Sneak Attack as your way to cheat large creatures into play, and on the other side, you've got both Griselbrand and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. So if there's a second card that works "well enough" for one half, that's 8 effective copies of a card, and you have about a 65% chance of seeing 1 or more of those cards. And for a 2 card combo, a combined chance of seeing both halves of the combo of around 40%. Those odds start to be good enough to play as a serious deck.
In this deck, depending on the version the creature package is usually similar to Sneak and Show, (or, in the Shoal version, we're on Worldspine Wurm and Borborygmos Enraged as the "+4" for either Breach or Shoal), and Goryo's Vengeance + Through the Breach as our cheat cards. We're a bit less consistent, because Vengeance and Breach don't work exactly alike (Goryo's works from the graveyard, Breach, from the hand), but for Modern it's generally "good enough".
This is the same reason Modern Twin decks usually run 4 Deceiver Exarch, plus some number of Pestermite, and 4 Splinter Twin, plus some number of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. If the Twin deck is all in on the combo, they may run 3 or even 4 of the second card, while the versions that are more control oriented may only run 1 or 2 extras. The control versions often run other threats like Vendillion Clique and Snapcaster Mage plus counters and answers to slow the game down, while the combo versions will usually run more spells to dig through their library, in order to increase the chance of drawing into the combo. For this deck, our looting spells are also generally our dig spells.
You'll generally need 2 mana sources, preferably lands, but if you've got 1 land and a Simian Spirit Guide, and the rest of your hand is perfect, that's keepable. 1 mana source is a no go, unless it's a red land and you've got at least 2 Faithless Looting and things you're willing to discard to ensure you're going to hit your 2nd land between turn 1 and 2 lootings. 1 land and 2 SSG might be keepable, if you have something like Faithless Looting and Tormenting Voice. Most deck variants only have around 20 lands, so your odds of drawing into a land without looting are comparatively low, and your lands are also going to be relatively high priority for pitching to those looting effects to keep combo pieces in hand. Keep that in mind if you're planning on an early Breach or Looting into Vengeance.
If you've got a Goryo's Vengeance, you'll want a pitch effect (Faithless, Voices, Lightning Axe, etc), or to be on the draw with a good reanimation target like Griselbrand and a Goryo's already in hand (so you can draw then discard, then reanimate on turn 3 at latest). If you have Goryo's and a target, but no pitch effect, weigh how many turns it's going to take you to get up to 8 in hand to discard. If it's more than 3 or 4, ship the hand. Goryo's and a looting card is much better to keep, as any target or further lootings all enable your hand.
If you've got a Through the Breach, you'll want at least 1 form of fast mana and possibly a Nourishing Shoal to splice it onto if you're playing the shoal variant. A breach on turn 5 is generally not good enough versus any of the linear aggro decks in the format like Affinity, Infect, or Burn, and probably not good enough versus any combo decks like Twin or Scapeshift. If you're playing a variant with more interaction (such as Durward's RB variant with lots of discard, or a Grixis version with lots of Lightning Axes and Izzet Charms) to clear early drops for time, you can keep a hand that goes a little longer.
Be wary of having too many looting effects. Faithless and Izzet Charm are net card disadvantage when cast from hand and Faithless is only neutral when flashed back. Tormenting Voice is card neutral. Only Night's Whisper in most decks is any sort of card advantage. If you've got a hand that's 3 or 4 land, 2 Faithless, and a Voice, it's really hard to tell what that's going to turn into. It could be perfect, it could be crap.
Also don't forget those discards are not optional. If your hand is 3 good cards and Faithless, when you cast Faithless to draw 2 if they're both good you're going to have to pick 2 of those 5 good cards to discard. Nothing hurts more than having to pitch something like an SSG or Desperate Ritual and then fizzling when you go off because you didn't draw into more.
I tend to err on the side of the mulligan in when I have too many looting cards. Better a strong 5 or 6 than a soft 7 that only might turn into a strong 5 or 6 after you've spent 3 cards and 4 mana on it. Because for me, it inevitably turns into a crappy 5 on turn 3, after spending all my good early dig cards.
Beyond that, like any regular combo deck that relies on the 4+4/4+4 type formula, you want as many combo pieces as you can get, or draw/discard effects like Faithless/Voice/Izzet Charm to get to them as you can. If you're on the shoal version, remember that Shoals are basically dead in hand unless you've also got a Wurm or at least a Manamorphose or spare Borborygmos to pitch to it. If you're on Fury of the Horde, that's also dead in hand unless you've also got the full combo. Soul Spikes are a little more flexible. Manamorphose, redundant copies of Breach or Vengeance, Desperate Ritual, any lands beyond 3 or 4, those are all effectively dead cards unless your hand can already go off. Worldspine Wurms are mostly dead unless you've got a Shoal or Breach (though they can serve as discard fodder for Looting/Voice as they'll at least shuffle back in). If you've got more than 2 dead cards, strongly consider mulliganing, especially if you don't have a looting effect.
This is ultimately a fast combo deck. If your hand of 6 or 7 doesn't actively do anything by turn 4, you probably should mulligan. Once you hit 5 you have to start putting up with sloppier hands. In those cases looting effects are better than dead cards, with a slight priority on Faithless, just because you get to draw before choosing what to discard.
In theory, you can actually kill on T1, with the ideal hand/draw.
You need to start with Simian Spirit Guide and a Faithless Looting, and then to have or draw into the following four cards: an untapped land that makes black, a second Guide, a Goryo's Vengeance and Griselbrand. Optionally, you can use a Manamorphose with any untapped land, instead of an untapped black land.
Basic outline is the same as nonja mentioned. Turn 1, exile SSG for the Looting, discarding the Griselbrand. Then play your land, exile the second SSG, use manamophose if necessary, and play Goryo's.
In the RB or Grixis versions, you then generally attack, draw 21 cards, and hope that gets you either your Soul Spike or Fury of the Horde sequence in order to pitch 2 extra cards to either attack again or drain enough life in order to draw more cards to drain/attack again, until your opponent is dead.
The shoal version can also kill at this point, but the downside is that needing the 2nd SSG on turn 1 it makes going off a little harder, as you need to eventually draw both of the remaining 2 SSG in order to kickstart the Desperate Ritual chain needed to make enough mana to get a Borborygmos into play. If your SSG are too far down and your Shoals don't line up with your Wurms, you can actually fizzle.
As far as getting Borborygmos into play, the goal is to either cast Desperate Ritual or, better, splice it onto a Nourishing Shoal. In an early combo, almost every line starts with exiling 2 SSG, while later lines you may have extra untapped land. Splicing Ritual lets you then cast it again to get up to 4 mana. 4 mana lets you use Tormenting Voice instead of Faithless to discard Borborygmos, then Manamorphose into Goryos. 4 mana is also relevant because it actually opens the line of being able to splice Through the Breach onto another Shoal, which can be done at instant speed, unlike the Faithless/Voice route. Some people, including myself, have tried running a 1-of Lightning Axe or Funeral Charm as another source of instant speed discard, needing only 3 total mana (Manamorphose RR into BB, use a R or B for Axe/Charm, then the other B and 1 for Goryo's).
Splicing generally occurs in only 2 situations. First is when comboing out, as I described. The other is when you're up against a deck with heavy counter spells. Twin, UWR Control, some builds of Scapeshift, etc. In those cases you'll often sacrifice a Shoal (usually exiling something like Manamorphose and not Wurm) or a Desperate Ritual at their end step in order to splice on a Goryo's or Breach. They'll be forced to counter (and hopefully tap out), then you untap and cast the spell again. It basically lets you increase the effective number of reanimation spells.
On the very rare occasion, you may use splicing to cheat the mana cost on Through the Breach. You can Shoal, then splice Breach, to save 1 mana. And if you've got Rituals and/or SSG, that can lead to a turn 3 or even turn 2 Breach, which may put the game away before they have a chance to mount any opposition. I've Breached a Wurm early on more than one occasion, because hitting for 15 and leaving 15 power on board is usually a win. The downside to this sort of line is that you'll basically empty your hand, and if your kill fails due to a Path to Exile or Vapor Snag or surprise Pact of Negation, you will be in for a long slog to get back to another go, as you'll usually have spent almost every card in your hand.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Shattered Perception doesn't really fit in this deck.
Since you're working towards a combo finish, it's very common to have one or more combo pieces in hand while you wait on finding the things you need to kick it off. Casting Shattered Perception is going to put those in the graveyard. Having to choose to cast this and losing a Nourshing Shoal or Goryo's Vengeance is not where you want to be.
It's a better fit in a dredge-oriented sort of deck, where you don't care what's in your hand, and drawing extra cards just enables dredge.
This is one of the reasons I've always been a big proponent of keeping a single Lightning Axe in the main. In addition to killing Scavenging Oozes and the like, it enables an instant speed discard outlet that can turn on a Goryo's mid combo.
The other minor benefit to keeping in a Manamorphose or two is that they they're sometimes the only green card you've got in hand to kick start a combo with a shoal. Especially if you're baiting out a likely (or known) counter at end step. Not wasting a wurm on that makes fizzling out a bit less likely.
Not keeping them is certainly a legitimate option, though.
Of those, Rally the Ancestors doesn't help unless you've also got some form of sacrifice outlet and 13 mana, so that's effectively out. Of the rest, Makeshift Mannequin is the only one I think is even remotely playable in this deck, and even then, barely so, as you'd likely need at least 5 mana to use it effectively (1 for a faithless or similar, and 4 to cast MM itself).
Additionally, the following can be used if you've put the wurm into play already, such as via Through the Breach and it is dying either to the Breach trigger or to a non-exile removal spell like Terminate:
Some of these are slightly more playable overall in modern, but less playable in this deck, as they all basically become 3 card combos with Wurm, Breach, and whichever spell, requiring you to either have 6+ mana available or be able to breach at end step and then untap and cast whichever reanimation spell you were going to use at your end step. I do admit that my janky combo player instincts want to find a way to make Cauldron Haze or Graceful Reprieve fit in the deck to get extra value out of Wurms and even Terminated Griselbrands, but realistically the deck doesn't have slots for that, and Path to Exile is the kind of a thing in Modern, along with bounce spells like Vapor Snag, and these spells do nothing in those cases.
Just as a note, you'll almost never be able to use Footsteps on a Worldspine Wurm. It'll never be in your graveyard, unless someone casts Trickbind to stop the shuffle trigger.
It does work on Griselbrand or Borborygmos, however 3 mana instead of 2 is a pretty big deal, given you're already leaning on your SSGs to combo out. Not being able to attack is also a pretty big drawback, as that's 7 less cards you can draw and a significantly higher chance of bricking mid-combo. Finally, unlike breach, it doesn't splice onto Nourishing Shoal to help fight counters, nor does it let you beat a resolved copy of the most common and powerful graveyard hate cards like Leyline of the Void, Grafdigger's Cage, or Rest in Peace.
Footsteps is an interesting card, but it works much better in a deck like Hulk Footsteps, where resolving it basically leads to an instant win without needing the storm-esque combo that this deck does.
I've been playing Griselbrand Reanimator variants as my main Modern deck for almost 2 years now. I started with the RB Fury version, played with Grixis Fury for a while, then explored a bunch of different versions including using the Goryo/Griselbrand combo in both DredgeVine and Delver shells, trying to shore up the problematic match ups.
In my experience, the classic Red/Black and Grixis Fury variants have a number of big problems. One, they absolutely require an attack step to win. They can't go off, in entirety, at instant speed, and any sort of removal, bounce, or tap spell prevents you from winning. Two, they suffer in the face of counterspells, especially if the opponent has more than 2 or 3 in the course of the game. Finally, if they are stopped prior to combo via either one or two, they have a very difficult time rebuilding for another go.
With decks like Twin and Grixis Control being among the most common and consistent decks in the format, it gives the traditional Emrakul/Fury based variants a lot of rather unfavorable matchups. Twin has tap down effects in Exarch, Pestermite, and some post-board Cryptics, plus counters. Grixis Control has ridiculous number of counters, and even more Cryptics. On top of all that, you've got a somewhat of a crapshoot matchup against aggressive linear damage decks like Burn and Affinity, because you will often be too low in life to activate Griselbrand enough for a reliable win, if you can't go off in the first few turns.
By contrast, the Shoal version fixes, or at least improves, a lot of these qualities. Splice onto Arcane gives you the chances to power through counterspell walls. Nourishing Shoal in particular also gives you time against linear aggro decks and reduces the chance of fizzling once you start to go off. Borborygmos Enraged gives you a win con that does not require attacking and can operate entirely at instant speed to take advantage of the opponent tapping out, mitigating the effect of bounce, removal, and tap down effects and even counters to some extent. Even Worldspine Wurm on a breach at least leaves behind tokens against many forms of removal.
The downside to the Shoal version is that it's still not the most consistent deck around, and the shell is large and filled with subtly interlocking parts. Tinkering with it too much removes the very parts you need to make it work. Removing too many green spells (Borborygmos, Manamorphose, etc) means your Shoals become far less good for powering through counters and gaining life. Too few and you'll actually start to fizzle entirely a lot more often. Ditto the removing the fast mana. Replacing Borborygmos with something like Lightning Storm also means you can no longer go off at instant speed, and if your Storm is countered, you have no way to recover it on future turns, unlike Borby who can usually be reanimated from the grave again to complete the combo. Even replacing your fatties with Emrakul or Atarka puts you back to relying on an attack step to win.
It's not that modifications can't work. It's just there's a pretty big burden of proof if you strip out large chunks of the deck to make room for pet cards or alternatives. I certainly tinker enough. But despite that, I keep coming back to the base Shoal version with only a few card difference here and there.
I'll skip match by match, as the wins were largely uninteresting (Goryo/Breach! Draw a lot! Fling Lands! Opponents scowl!). Rounds 2 through 6 I didn't lose a game, beating Amulet Bloom, Tribal Zoo, Merfolk, RG Tron, and Abzan CC.
The two losses were both to eventual T8 competitors.
Round 1, lost to classic Junk when G2 he had triple discard in the first 3 turns, and then game 3 he had path, which led to a fizzled combo (and using up most my shoals), and then top decked discard stopped my chance for a follow up win. There was one minor play mistake I made that I realized several hours later that might have won me the game, but might not have. He ended up 5-0-2 in the Swiss and 4th or 5th seed, I believe.
Round 7, we were both at 15 points at 5-1, in 9th and 10th, so could not draw due to breakers. He won with Scapeshift, mostly due to ridiculous amounts of counters (5 casts of Remand in one game, 3 or 4 in the other, plus a Cryptic or two each game). Game 1 I was a little mana light with Breach in hand. In game 2 he Remanded Blood Moon on turn 3, 4, and 5. Both games he went off on around turn 6 or 7 and had enough lands to double Valakut so my Shoal+Wurm in hand was not enough to save me. There really wasn't anything I could do in this game, except maybe have mulligan'd more aggressively for at T2/T3 win or T2 Blood Moon. He ended up 3rd seed at 6-1.
Only 1 turn 2 kill in 7 rounds, against the CC Abzan deck in game 1. A good number of turn 3s, though.
Other memorable highlights include killing the RG player in game 2 with a Sundering Titan on the stack after playing through 3 Relics, beating the Tribal Zoo player with a lethal Lightning Helix on the stack, and killing a pair of Merfolk Lords with a Goryo'd Atarka against Fish.
What are you proposing to take out to fit in those cards?
The Shoal version is pretty tight. You can't remove too many green cards or you won't be able to Shoal reliably. You can't remove to many of the draw spells, or you won't have anything to pitch to Zombie infestation or be able to assemble your combo. There's not a lot of room to cut lands. You need a minimum number of Manamorphose, Desperate Ritual, and Simian Spirit Guides to go off once you start to combo.
By most reckoning there's only at most 2 flex slots in the deck, maybe 3 or 4 if you're willing to cut down to 1 each of Ritual and Manamorphose and risk the combo fizzling because you don't draw them when you need them.
I did try Infestation a few times, but it was in a Dredgevine shell with the addition of Goryo's and Griselbrand, rather than the full on combo version that is the Shoal deck. The deck worked moderately well, but lacks both the explosive instant speed combo finish of the Shoal version and the same degree of being able to play through counters via arcane splicing shenanigans. In return, though, it did extremely well in the long game. But since I last played that version, Modern as a whole has only gotten faster, and the presence of "cheap" large beaters like Tasigur and Angler have made the Dredgevine plan of Gravecrawlers, Bloodghasts, and even Vengevines a lot less compelling.
My experience over the past 3 or 4 months with the Shoal variant is that green cards are quite critical. If you drop below about 10 non-shoal green cards, you run a very significant risk of not having one in hand to pitch to a shoal when you need to splice onto it to play around counterspells or jumpstart the combo kill via splicing Desperate Ritual. It's without a doubt the worst card in the deck most of the time, but the worst case is that it cycles for "free", which isn't horrible, and if the card you're looking at replacing it with is not green, it increases your chances of fizzling, especially if your opponent has put some early damage on you. I'm currently at 2, but both of the cards I replaced it with are green (Dragonlord Atarka and Noxious Revival), keeping my green count at 14 total.
My other experience is that the first Tormenting Voice is pretty good. The second one gets much worse, and by the third one I'm usually hating myself for even having more than 2 in the deck. That's usually because by the time I want to cast a second, my hand looks something like 1-2 combo initiating pieces (Goryo, Breach, Wurm), 1 or 2 of a critical mid-combo piece I can't afford to discard (Ritual, SSG, Manamorphose), and Tormenting Voice. There's nothing left I remotely want to discard, and if I wait another turn, I may or may not get something to discard, but I definitely won't be going off this turn. I'm currently at 4 Night's Whisper, 1 Tormenting Voice.
As far as Revival itself? I'm kind of mixed. I've never had a game where it actually saved me, but have had some where if I'd drawn the 1 of it would have (mostly by rescuing a Goryo after hand disruption, though on a few occasions, rescuing a ritual or shoal I'd been forced to cast or discard previously). I have used it in the role of pitching to Shoal a number of times, where having a 2nd Tormenting Voice would have probably been a busted combo attempt.
Delver in any form is a mediocre to bad matchup, depending on how heavy they are on counters and if they can get an early delver flipped. If they devote the early game to aggro and don't leave up counters, you're generally faster than they are. If they don't have early pressure, they generally don't have enough counters to outlast your attempts. But if they can drop a T1 Delver and flip it on 2, you will often run out of time before they run out of remands, mana leaks, and spell snares.
Counters are generally the biggest weakness of any variant of this deck, and while the shoal version can fight through them given time, delver doesn't usually give you a lot, unlike pure control or control/combo decks like UWR or Twin.
Counters are hard, as mentioned, to fight through. For shoal, this usually means surviving long enough to be able to play a Breach or Shoal (preferably spliced) at their end step to draw out the counter, then untapping and doing it again. The other option is to go off in response to them finally tapping out to do something. Eventually they're going to need to put pressure on the table, and the shoal version's ability to go off at mostly instant speed (or completely instant if you're running a Lightning Axe or other instant speed discard outlet like Funeral Charm, Kolaghan's Command, or similar) can shine here. Oh, you want to put your Keranos in play? Okay, here we go.
Paths (and other hard removal like terminate) are much easier to play around, especially for the shoal version. You can actually win with a Path on the stack, if all goes well. The key thing for dealing with removal is that if you think they have it, attack first.
You want to force them to have to use the removal and then be able to react to it by drawing 7, rather than have them react to the draw with removal. If they can react to you, that's 7 cards you don't have in hand before the removal resolves, which may have been the ones you needed to continue the combo chain. And depending on how deep you dig before you fizzle, you may prevent yourself from going off in the future.
For non-shoal versions, the usual answer is just to give up on that attempt and draw enough to ensure you'll be able to go off with an Emrakul, since that's immune to most removal.
I would. You've got at least 5 looks for Griselbrand (1 or 2 draws, 4 cards from 2 Faithless) by the end of turn 2, and can untap on 3 and get 3 more (draw + 2 from whisper), letting you flash back faithless on turn 4 to ditch a reanimation target if you find one. If the Goryo's were anything else, I would probably not keep, though. Unless it were a Breach, and one of the three draw/filter spells was instead an SSG. If your opening 7 doesn't have at least one actual combo piece, I'd be really hard pressed to keep, unless literally everything else in hand was a dig spell plus 2 or 3 lands.
That's an interesting set of changes. I'm not sure I could go down to 18 land. I feel I lose to mana issues more than anything, even more often than my opponent having every counterspell ever (and I play in meta that's rife with Mono-U tron and Twin). I suppose the Temples offset that a little, but I also feel that tends to push us back a half turn or so. Lands that come in tapped are just so damn bad if your only hope in a match is to go off on 3 or 4 at latest before they can establish some sort of overwhelming board presence or control via counters and hand disruption.
I do like the use of Noxious Revival. I'll have to try that in my flex slots. I've been relatively happy with my 1-of Dragonlord Atarka, as it's a perfect pitch to Shoal, and still works with both Breach and Goryo's. I also remain a big fan of a singleton Lightning Axe, both as interaction and as a way to combo off completely at instant speed.
As far as other card draw, there's not a lot of good options without changing up your mana base. Wild Guess has the same drawback as Tormenting Voice and is harder on mana. Sign in Blood and Read the Bones work as actual card advantage like Night's Whisper, but are harder to cast if you're trying to skate on land drops. And not being dredge, this deck doesn't want Dangerous Wager, Desperate Ravings, Goblin Lore, or the like. All the other good options want U to cast, and that way lies the Grixis version of the deck.
Without the manamorphose, you don't have the option to turn your red mana into black. That shuts off any lines that require reanimating Borbor from the bin, and locks you in to having a the Borbor and a Breach in hand *and* being able to get up to at least 4 mana to splice the Breach onto a Shoal or getting to 5 mana to cast in naturally. Both are possible, but discard into Goryo's path usually has a lot less requirements. This means you may need to delay going off for a turn (to have an extra black producing land untapped) or fizzling (because you can't get the complete Breach version combo in hand before you run out of life/shoals).
Going to a 2/2 split of Manamorphose and Decay would be about as low as I'd be willing to go.
Kathal's primer in the first post of the thread has solid stock versions of all the major variants, including the classic Kahleya version, which is probably the most streamlined non-Shoal version though it's also probably weakest to hate. Caleb Durward's been playing with variations that have heavier hand disruption to avoid hate. The first post also has links to his article.
Kathal has the right of the concept. Basically, if your 2 card combo only works with 1 particular card, plus 1 particular card, then if you've got nothing to tutor those up, the combo is too inconsistent to work reliably. You just won't draw both halves of the combo often enough to be able to win games. With only 4 copies of a card, your chance of seeing it in your opening 7 are around 40%. If you have two independent cards you need, that means you'll have both in your opening hand only around 15% of the time, which is not very good odds.
However, if you have 2 cards which can function as half the combo, you now have 8 total cards that work that way, and chances are now high enough that the deck could be considered potentially reliable enough to win games. For Sneak'n'Show, you've got both Show and Tell and Sneak Attack as your way to cheat large creatures into play, and on the other side, you've got both Griselbrand and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. So if there's a second card that works "well enough" for one half, that's 8 effective copies of a card, and you have about a 65% chance of seeing 1 or more of those cards. And for a 2 card combo, a combined chance of seeing both halves of the combo of around 40%. Those odds start to be good enough to play as a serious deck.
In this deck, depending on the version the creature package is usually similar to Sneak and Show, (or, in the Shoal version, we're on Worldspine Wurm and Borborygmos Enraged as the "+4" for either Breach or Shoal), and Goryo's Vengeance + Through the Breach as our cheat cards. We're a bit less consistent, because Vengeance and Breach don't work exactly alike (Goryo's works from the graveyard, Breach, from the hand), but for Modern it's generally "good enough".
This is the same reason Modern Twin decks usually run 4 Deceiver Exarch, plus some number of Pestermite, and 4 Splinter Twin, plus some number of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. If the Twin deck is all in on the combo, they may run 3 or even 4 of the second card, while the versions that are more control oriented may only run 1 or 2 extras. The control versions often run other threats like Vendillion Clique and Snapcaster Mage plus counters and answers to slow the game down, while the combo versions will usually run more spells to dig through their library, in order to increase the chance of drawing into the combo. For this deck, our looting spells are also generally our dig spells.
If you've got a Goryo's Vengeance, you'll want a pitch effect (Faithless, Voices, Lightning Axe, etc), or to be on the draw with a good reanimation target like Griselbrand and a Goryo's already in hand (so you can draw then discard, then reanimate on turn 3 at latest). If you have Goryo's and a target, but no pitch effect, weigh how many turns it's going to take you to get up to 8 in hand to discard. If it's more than 3 or 4, ship the hand. Goryo's and a looting card is much better to keep, as any target or further lootings all enable your hand.
If you've got a Through the Breach, you'll want at least 1 form of fast mana and possibly a Nourishing Shoal to splice it onto if you're playing the shoal variant. A breach on turn 5 is generally not good enough versus any of the linear aggro decks in the format like Affinity, Infect, or Burn, and probably not good enough versus any combo decks like Twin or Scapeshift. If you're playing a variant with more interaction (such as Durward's RB variant with lots of discard, or a Grixis version with lots of Lightning Axes and Izzet Charms) to clear early drops for time, you can keep a hand that goes a little longer.
Be wary of having too many looting effects. Faithless and Izzet Charm are net card disadvantage when cast from hand and Faithless is only neutral when flashed back. Tormenting Voice is card neutral. Only Night's Whisper in most decks is any sort of card advantage. If you've got a hand that's 3 or 4 land, 2 Faithless, and a Voice, it's really hard to tell what that's going to turn into. It could be perfect, it could be crap.
Also don't forget those discards are not optional. If your hand is 3 good cards and Faithless, when you cast Faithless to draw 2 if they're both good you're going to have to pick 2 of those 5 good cards to discard. Nothing hurts more than having to pitch something like an SSG or Desperate Ritual and then fizzling when you go off because you didn't draw into more.
I tend to err on the side of the mulligan in when I have too many looting cards. Better a strong 5 or 6 than a soft 7 that only might turn into a strong 5 or 6 after you've spent 3 cards and 4 mana on it. Because for me, it inevitably turns into a crappy 5 on turn 3, after spending all my good early dig cards.
Beyond that, like any regular combo deck that relies on the 4+4/4+4 type formula, you want as many combo pieces as you can get, or draw/discard effects like Faithless/Voice/Izzet Charm to get to them as you can. If you're on the shoal version, remember that Shoals are basically dead in hand unless you've also got a Wurm or at least a Manamorphose or spare Borborygmos to pitch to it. If you're on Fury of the Horde, that's also dead in hand unless you've also got the full combo. Soul Spikes are a little more flexible. Manamorphose, redundant copies of Breach or Vengeance, Desperate Ritual, any lands beyond 3 or 4, those are all effectively dead cards unless your hand can already go off. Worldspine Wurms are mostly dead unless you've got a Shoal or Breach (though they can serve as discard fodder for Looting/Voice as they'll at least shuffle back in). If you've got more than 2 dead cards, strongly consider mulliganing, especially if you don't have a looting effect.
This is ultimately a fast combo deck. If your hand of 6 or 7 doesn't actively do anything by turn 4, you probably should mulligan. Once you hit 5 you have to start putting up with sloppier hands. In those cases looting effects are better than dead cards, with a slight priority on Faithless, just because you get to draw before choosing what to discard.
You need to start with Simian Spirit Guide and a Faithless Looting, and then to have or draw into the following four cards: an untapped land that makes black, a second Guide, a Goryo's Vengeance and Griselbrand. Optionally, you can use a Manamorphose with any untapped land, instead of an untapped black land.
Basic outline is the same as nonja mentioned. Turn 1, exile SSG for the Looting, discarding the Griselbrand. Then play your land, exile the second SSG, use manamophose if necessary, and play Goryo's.
In the RB or Grixis versions, you then generally attack, draw 21 cards, and hope that gets you either your Soul Spike or Fury of the Horde sequence in order to pitch 2 extra cards to either attack again or drain enough life in order to draw more cards to drain/attack again, until your opponent is dead.
The shoal version can also kill at this point, but the downside is that needing the 2nd SSG on turn 1 it makes going off a little harder, as you need to eventually draw both of the remaining 2 SSG in order to kickstart the Desperate Ritual chain needed to make enough mana to get a Borborygmos into play. If your SSG are too far down and your Shoals don't line up with your Wurms, you can actually fizzle.
As far as getting Borborygmos into play, the goal is to either cast Desperate Ritual or, better, splice it onto a Nourishing Shoal. In an early combo, almost every line starts with exiling 2 SSG, while later lines you may have extra untapped land. Splicing Ritual lets you then cast it again to get up to 4 mana. 4 mana lets you use Tormenting Voice instead of Faithless to discard Borborygmos, then Manamorphose into Goryos. 4 mana is also relevant because it actually opens the line of being able to splice Through the Breach onto another Shoal, which can be done at instant speed, unlike the Faithless/Voice route. Some people, including myself, have tried running a 1-of Lightning Axe or Funeral Charm as another source of instant speed discard, needing only 3 total mana (Manamorphose RR into BB, use a R or B for Axe/Charm, then the other B and 1 for Goryo's).
Splicing generally occurs in only 2 situations. First is when comboing out, as I described. The other is when you're up against a deck with heavy counter spells. Twin, UWR Control, some builds of Scapeshift, etc. In those cases you'll often sacrifice a Shoal (usually exiling something like Manamorphose and not Wurm) or a Desperate Ritual at their end step in order to splice on a Goryo's or Breach. They'll be forced to counter (and hopefully tap out), then you untap and cast the spell again. It basically lets you increase the effective number of reanimation spells.
On the very rare occasion, you may use splicing to cheat the mana cost on Through the Breach. You can Shoal, then splice Breach, to save 1 mana. And if you've got Rituals and/or SSG, that can lead to a turn 3 or even turn 2 Breach, which may put the game away before they have a chance to mount any opposition. I've Breached a Wurm early on more than one occasion, because hitting for 15 and leaving 15 power on board is usually a win. The downside to this sort of line is that you'll basically empty your hand, and if your kill fails due to a Path to Exile or Vapor Snag or surprise Pact of Negation, you will be in for a long slog to get back to another go, as you'll usually have spent almost every card in your hand.