Like I mentioned ISB, I finally decided to make this deck myself, with some alterations to fit my meta/playstyle better...
Just wondering, since my other mono-B deck has difficulties with enchantments/artifacts, I noticed that you don't have many ways to remove those, besides Karn... Do you just not have problems with them, or do you just happen to get Karn always to remove them?
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Also modgaming Bur setups is kind of treading down a dark path
I see you went with a little more of a hand stax build to yours. It should work out but you might have to rely a bit harder on Toshiro to give the flashback is my only concern with that tactic as a heavy push.
Argentum Armor looks very questionable to me just because its really sort of a crazy amount of mana to drop and use. Something like Spine of Ish Sah might not have the potential to really run away with a game but its also a lot harder to tamper with and draws a lot less hate.
I also am not sure what to think of Uba Mask offhand. It seems like it could be ok if there are a lot of people abusing card draw in your meta but it makes it so that your spells dont naturally fall into the graveyard either so it pushes you to just cast things as you exile them which seems a little counter productive for a deck based around instants.
EDIT: sorry, super late deckchange edit. I will probably bump the thread when I can with this as its awkward to just drop in a day after a post with dechchange edits.
Man, I've been playing a proxied version of this deck, and it seems 90% of the time i'm just some black removal/reanimater deck. I can never get Tohsiro to really stick around.
Man, I've been playing a proxied version of this deck, and it seems 90% of the time i'm just some black removal/reanimater deck. I can never get Tohsiro to really stick around.
Toshiro is sort of fragile. I tend to slide him into play more in the midrange of the game where in a wrath I might be able to pick up some value off of him or where I can bluff or have answers regardless. Its hard to say what he does on a regular basis as he can generate value but it comes down to what is in your bin already to determine that. Some games, I dont cast him much and some games he gets me tons of free value. Unfortunately, it is still in a nutshell MBC / Reanimator. I really like the unique feel of a lot of the instants in here but if you cant get Toshiro in ever then you are better off running more of a goodstuff MBC commander like Chainer. I really like the small utility of things like Cremate being more like Think Twice though. Toshiro doesn't have a huge impact on the game which is good and bad as I find that I dont get a lot of people targeting him because he is a bit more subtle in general. One of his bigger cool things is just that you can cast him and cascade through a few kill spells which I really enjoy having the ability to do.
I also pushed these changes into my list this weekend and got some playtime with these in the list. I was very happy with the versatility change of Beseech the Queen since I really didn't have any way to abuse Expedition Map in here. I got to tutor for an early Phyrexian Arena which just smoothed out my early game a bit.
DECK CHANGES:
Expedition Map -> Beseech the Queen these cards cost me the same amount of mana but Beseech can get a wider variety of cards so I feel like it might just open this tutor up rather than keeping it to just the landbase. If I had more things that interacted with the map then I think its likely that it would be more powerful but I dont really run artifact recursion or Trinket Mage type stuff to make artifacts stronger than a sorcery. They both take three mana total to go off so I guess the upside to the map is if is in my opening hand I can spin it off and move on sooner. There is also the extremely small advantage of Map being a permanent for things like Chaos Warp / Warp World.
Exsanguinate -> Death Cloud I usually get just way too greedy with Exsanguinate and it usually ends up getting wheeled it seems lol. I feel like Death Cloud is something I really need to test and it feels like I could try replacing Exsanguinate for it. What I like about the cloud is that it acts as an answer to hands and boards in one shot. If I manage to ramp well it could also deal with opponents landbases or at least bring them back into check. Its something that I enjoyed when someone else cast one in the 3-4 range the other day and so I felt like I might enjoy testing it for a bit.
I probably wouldn't because its just a little too small of scale I think. Most of the mill I run is larger scale or serves additional purposes where as this guy is just sort of a random beater with a small scale mill.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I haven't played Toshiro too much of late in part because I had been neglecting other decks so I had to sort of push things arround. Still, there has been a card bugging me for a while now that I have wanted to cut just sort of never getting around to it though.
DECK CHANGE:
Lashwrithe -> Mind's Eye too often the Lashwrithe just hasn't mattered enough. I have however on occasion wished for more draw so it seems like a reasonable exchange to drop the situational Lashwrithe for more draw. I did enjoy pairing Lashwrithe with Altar of Dementia to mill people to death but that has been sort of scarce to happen of late and more often I have been disappointed to see the Lashwrithe when drawn.
I see you went with a little more of a hand stax build to yours. It should work out but you might have to rely a bit harder on Toshiro to give the flashback is my only concern with that tactic as a heavy push.
Argentum Armor looks very questionable to me just because its really sort of a crazy amount of mana to drop and use. Something like Spine of Ish Sah might not have the potential to really run away with a game but its also a lot harder to tamper with and draws a lot less hate.
I also am not sure what to think of Uba Mask offhand. It seems like it could be ok if there are a lot of people abusing card draw in your meta but it makes it so that your spells dont naturally fall into the graveyard either so it pushes you to just cast things as you exile them which seems a little counter productive for a deck based around instants.
EDIT: sorry, super late deckchange edit. I will probably bump the thread when I can with this as its awkward to just drop in a day after a post with dechchange edits.
EDIT 2: bumping the changes to the next post.
Hmm. Interesting suggestions, I have to keep them in mind. Also, what usually has been your wincon when playing with Toshiro?
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Also modgaming Bur setups is kind of treading down a dark path
Chainer, Dementia Master (really with anything. If you can get him set up by hitting hands as well its just fantastic because people have to topdeck for answers then meaning you probably just win with him)
Geth, Lord of the Vault he can run away with value potentially and the option of milling someone out is something that can actually happen in here since I do run a bit of supplimental mill. Set him up with some coffers or something and its gross.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel + rezing. Its easy to get this in the 5-7 hit range and if you look at looping him with some rez bad things happen very quickly.
Kokusho, the Evening Star + rezing. Very similar to gary but actually probably a little worse since I dont stack a lot of sac outlets.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief it might seem odd but I have spent several turns just killing creatures and connecting for 10 with her. I once set up a loop with her using Corpse Dance + Altar of Dementia to rez her at my opponents end of turn, then eat their creatures in play, hit them for 10, then sac and mill them for 10. I think that one actually ended up being a mill victory though.
I have toyed with the idea of adding some cards like Crypt Rats / Thrashing Wumpus as well to the list as they have worked really well in my Obzedat list. My issue there though is that I dont have as much sustaining lifegain here as I do there so it seems like it could be an issue still to bring those in. Generally speaking I win via setting up rez loops though or just draining my opponents of life.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Silence the Believers is worth taking a look at from the new stuff. Sadly, it is an exile removal but the fact that it is instant speed with a potential to scale to potentially several targets in one cast has me sort of looking at it a bit closer. The downside being that exile removal can be a problem from the perspective that it doesn't trigger Toshiro and I cant rez the target but I see some good potential in it. Its something that I might toy with but I just figured I would mention that its sort of pinging on my radar as something of a somewhat potential card for this deck. Its possible I might take out one of my one situational sweepers for it such as Consume the Meek since the recent addition of Bile Blight still takes out tokens.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Well, just a small change but I wanted to try something out.
DECK CHANGE:
Slaughter -> Silence the Believers Slaughter has some issues with it and I really hate nonblack targeting limitations as they can be really pesky. I really want to get some testing in with silence as well and see how that pans out. It exiles which can be unfortunate but I like that it scales in its targeting in a single cast.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Personally, I think that Ad Nauseam is a one trick pony style of deck.
It certainly can be. I think I took that to an extreme here. There's other uses for the card - I've seen it used to great effect as a "oops I win" in Zur and Oona can play it in a more resilient way. This list shows an example.
It is also very expensive to build it correctly since it usually involves including like every tutor in print and moxes and such for a one trick pony deck.
It is expensive. Zur's going to be expensive for other reasons and both Oona and Syggnauseam are expensive. I just checked the price of Syggnauseam on TCGplayer and it's ~2125 dollars.
I dont really know how much "fun" there is in such a build really as it sounds sort of boring to me since the whole deck design is so focused on the design of Ad Nauseam.
Depends on how you like combo. To be honest, I got tired of it as far as Sygg goes. It's too "all-in" and not as resilient as the other decks like that, for instance Hermit Druid. Oona can still be fun, IMO.
I dont much enjoy combo but Ad Nauseam in particular is just so focused on going off that I think its harder to really execute in some way other than going off with Ad Nauseam. I would personally probably go with the other black option over doing a mono black Ad Nauseam build in part because I sort of get the feeling that if you are going to go that direction anyways, going into UBX is going to be the direction you want to be going anyways.
Definitely - even if you go for the ANT deck, you'll probably want some blue. Probably a lot of blue, actually.
Otherwise, I've never liked the card outside of those contexts where you can abuse it.
I also just ran my own list through deckstats and came back with a 3.65 average mana per card breakdown. That should be about the assumed damage per card drawn with Ad Nauseam if I were to add it to the list and its a little heavy for the cost per card. Ideally I like it when running a bit of a lower curve. Even with all the instants in this list I run plenty of expensive to drop things. I just get the feeling that Ad Nauseam in this list wouldn't work well and its often best when designed around.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I just get the feeling that Ad Nauseam in this list wouldn't work well and its often best when designed around.
Not necessarily designed around, but at least be prepared to use it in situations where you win with it. It's just not that good of a draw spell on its own, IMO. (generally)
Zur, The Enchanter, Phyrexian Unlife, Ad Nauseam isn't something you design a deck around, but when you happen to draw Ad Nauseam, you can just tutor for the other piece with Zur.
I had some fairly fun games at the GP this weekend. You know its a good game when a Tsabo's Decree for goats is a game winning play lol.
I have drawn Silence the Believers a few times now. It has its pros and cons all in all. I like that I can expand it overall as it gives it a little more versatility but at the same time the fact that it exiles is sort of a bummer. I did also use Death Cloud as sort of an Exsanguinate effect to kill off three players as I cast it for 20 and floated enough mana through to recast Toshiro as well. He almost closed out the game on his own before my opponent stabilized but I still ended up winning that one with the decree.
I still need to toy with the list a bit more but I enjoy doing so.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Just out of interest: What's your opinion of Word of Command in Toshiro, provided you happened to have one not in use...?
I will admit that I have not used it before. My biggest concern is that opponents can dump mana into land abilities or just cast spells in response to it so it seems to me like one of the stronger options to do with the card is just to tap down the blue control player. It seems like a meta game or deck dependent style of card where I think it is very cool but it would definitely vary in impact from game to game based on who you were playing against.
One of the most impactful things you might pull off might just be tapping the blue player out before you want to play something big. I dont know if that is strong enough though to warrant inclusion though. Like I said though, I am just sort of theory crafting on the card though. I haven't actually played or seen it played before.
I just wanted to mention sort of an epic part of a game I had this weekend. I ended up with a somewhat epic opening hand.
From there I drew some hate from the Sigarda player. After taking his first hit he tried doing a Silverblade Paladin and hitting me. I hit the Paladin with a kill spell and used Necromancy on Stinkweed Imp at instant speed to jump in a deathtouch blocker. It was quite a fun time for me as I couldn't actually draw the dang imp due to necro not being a draw effect lol. I ended up winning that game much later thanks in part to a gary for 11 that was a topdeck draw into off of a cremate lol.
I managed to hit my all time highest Gary ever last night for 19 devotion (11 of which I picked up that turn). The deck is doing well but with more testing a few things have been standing out as a bit odd. So, I guess here is a few more changes to things.
DECK CHANGES:
Dark Impostor -> Crypt Rats I really like the rats as another wrath + life extort on opponents. The fact that its on a one time use stick is interesting here since I have so much rez. I dont know if this will turn out better or worse than just adding Pestilence though. I have had a lot of success with these type of tactics in my Obzedat deck and while I am borrowing some similar tactics I just want to dabble for now and see how things go. The imposter has felt less necessary since adding All is Dust and the new Silence the Believers has further made me feel like the imposter is just a big mana hog. With more exile in the list these days I feel like I can put the Imposter behind me for a while and try other things.
Sudden Spoiling -> Diabolic Intent spoiling while being a cool card has been sort of a blank too often for me. Its usually a fog in a lot of situations but I haven't found myself wanting it often enough. I am going to cut it for now and see how my removal is sitting without it. I was a little hesitant to add the Intent but my ability to have a creature to sacrifice to it seems a bit more reliable than I had originally thought. I am going to bring it in here and see how things go with more testing. I managed to get a Japanese or Chinese (I cant quite tell) foil copy so I am sort of dying to play with that one.
Consume the Meek -> Baleful Force consume is a very expensive and very situational card. It is great against token tactics but too often I have drawn it and had it matter too little. I like the card but its situational nature kind of kills it a bit. I am sort of surprised that I haven't tried the baleful force in here (or really at all) before. It seems like a good solid creature that should get some testing in. Its going to draw some attention but this deck has enough rez that its probably fine.
Overall, these changes do push my curve up a little bit in some ways. The imposter was really sort of a 9 drop though where as I would be willing to drop the rats in with 2-3 spare mana which I like the change of. I feel like the rats also sort of replace consume as a token defense as well so we will see how that goes. The baleful seems very promising as a potential new draw engine. Our ability to keep specific creatures in play is fairly good with all of the rez so we will see how that goes.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Just asking, how have you dealt with RiP/Leyline of the Void? Those effects really hurt Toshiro, and both of the forementioned cards are quite normal in my meta (aka if they play the right colours, they have at least one of them)... I noticed that your only enchantment-removal is Karn.
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Quote from Prophylaxis »
Also modgaming Bur setups is kind of treading down a dark path
Just asking, how have you dealt with RiP/Leyline of the Void? Those effects really hurt Toshiro, and both of the forementioned cards are quite normal in my meta (aka if they play the right colours, they have at least one of them)... I noticed that your only enchantment-removal is Karn.
Not that this is a complete answer but he is also running All is Dust and Oblivion Stone. Also hi ISB! Been a while. We seem to do this a lot, as I also have a Toshiro deck I've been playing around with a lot.
One bad trick I've been trying to deal with cards such as these is to run [card]Elixir of Immortality/card] but I don't think this is a really good option since it'll only save your precious spells once.
Honestly I find that the best solution is to just know your weaknesses. Just as an aggro deck shouldn't overextend into a wrath, this deck can't "overextend" by filling it's graveyard too quickly. And if you're going to dump a bunch of cards in there, have one of those backups planned with something like Stinkweed Imp to refill once you've been hit.
Just asking, how have you dealt with RiP/Leyline of the Void? Those effects really hurt Toshiro, and both of the forementioned cards are quite normal in my meta (aka if they play the right colours, they have at least one of them)... I noticed that your only enchantment-removal is Karn.
RIP is the wosrt of the bunch to see to be honest. I dont have to play against it much myself but its a rough ride when you do have to play against it. As g1yph mentioned, I also have All is Dust and Oblivion Stone. I usually just prioritize removing these effects as quickly when possible and try to tutor into answering them. They hurt but so long as they dont just stay in play all game I think they are just a setback. Adding additional tutors to fetch them is an option and just focus on means to restock the graveyard to follow them up. I was actually about to add one more means of dealing with these sort of things but I dont know how well it will actually work as I have only seen it played once myself but I suppose this leads sort of into some decklist changes:
DECK CHANGE:
Mimic Vat -> Umezawa's Jitte mimic vat just keeps looking to be a trap to me. I prefer it the most in creature heavy sacrifice based decks and the time to go active is just still a bit too high for my likes here. My creature count is also not stellar so in general I just haven't had the luck I want with it. Umezawa's Jitte is coming in for two big reasons 1) The flavor police called and demanded I add Umezawa's weapon to my Toshiro Umezawa deck and 2) it seems like it should be a nice setup for triggering Toshiro's abilities without spending cards to do so. The fact that I could just remove a counter or two to kill something insignificant gives me on demand removal to the deck to get the flashbacks rolling. It seems like it should be a really cool card for enabling without requiring me to drop resources sometimes to trigger the flashbacks at the times I need and want them to execute. There are a lot of spells that can be executed just whenever needed but there are also a lot that need to be timed specifically and it seems like this card should help me on that front and the fact that I dont even have to tap mana in to use the charges to get things rolling seems really solid to me.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief -> Eye of Doom Drana just doesnt work that often. The situations where I have been ok with her have been mostly situations where I have tons of mana but nothing to do with it. She is also a bit frail and I think people tend to over-react to her. Eye of Doom I have seen played exactly once now by someone playing a mostly stock commander deck but it was somehow amazing lol. I looked at this list and we dont have that many things that would be big targets. Most of the list is lands, instants, and creatures. It gives that extra out to deal with artifacts / enchantments and I like that it gives the option to just nuke someone who is running away with the game.
False Cure -> Tainted Strike I like false cure but in a lot of means it felt like a heavy meta choice and some games I was in it was absolutely a blank card to draw. It reminds me a bit of a Fog effect in that you have to sit on it forever until exactly the right time occurs. I think its really cool but I just dont see it working often enough for me. I had heard others trying out Tainted Strike so I want to try my luck with it. I feel like this is mostly just moving one narrow situational kill effect for another but I want to do it in part just for testing purposes. I want to see how often I can surprise kill people and it seems like a means to try to do that.
"in consideration" list - it was fairly out of date in general. I am working on bringing this thread up to be a primer and felt that I would probably incorporate a lot of the information that was in there in a card options list when I get to doing that. I made the in consideration list a long while back and it was fairly out of date.
I have been putting some time into the primer info for this page. I am in toying with the card options section right now and came across something I found amusing.
I just thought I would mention it for those who like doing a bit more combo. It feels really cool and flavorful moreso than the goodstuff combos. Anywho, the primer is coming along but I guess it just depends on how much free time I end up with as for when it will get done.
Just wondering, since my other mono-B deck has difficulties with enchantments/artifacts, I noticed that you don't have many ways to remove those, besides Karn... Do you just not have problems with them, or do you just happen to get Karn always to remove them?
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/userblogs/bur/32412-edh-toshiro-umezawa
I linked you to this, since this all is inspired by your deck...
Argentum Armor looks very questionable to me just because its really sort of a crazy amount of mana to drop and use. Something like Spine of Ish Sah might not have the potential to really run away with a game but its also a lot harder to tamper with and draws a lot less hate.
I also am not sure what to think of Uba Mask offhand. It seems like it could be ok if there are a lot of people abusing card draw in your meta but it makes it so that your spells dont naturally fall into the graveyard either so it pushes you to just cast things as you exile them which seems a little counter productive for a deck based around instants.
EDIT: sorry, super late deckchange edit. I will probably bump the thread when I can with this as its awkward to just drop in a day after a post with dechchange edits.
EDIT 2: bumping the changes to the next post.
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Toshiro is sort of fragile. I tend to slide him into play more in the midrange of the game where in a wrath I might be able to pick up some value off of him or where I can bluff or have answers regardless. Its hard to say what he does on a regular basis as he can generate value but it comes down to what is in your bin already to determine that. Some games, I dont cast him much and some games he gets me tons of free value. Unfortunately, it is still in a nutshell MBC / Reanimator. I really like the unique feel of a lot of the instants in here but if you cant get Toshiro in ever then you are better off running more of a goodstuff MBC commander like Chainer. I really like the small utility of things like Cremate being more like Think Twice though. Toshiro doesn't have a huge impact on the game which is good and bad as I find that I dont get a lot of people targeting him because he is a bit more subtle in general. One of his bigger cool things is just that you can cast him and cascade through a few kill spells which I really enjoy having the ability to do.
I also pushed these changes into my list this weekend and got some playtime with these in the list. I was very happy with the versatility change of Beseech the Queen since I really didn't have any way to abuse Expedition Map in here. I got to tutor for an early Phyrexian Arena which just smoothed out my early game a bit.
DECK CHANGES:
Expedition Map -> Beseech the Queen these cards cost me the same amount of mana but Beseech can get a wider variety of cards so I feel like it might just open this tutor up rather than keeping it to just the landbase. If I had more things that interacted with the map then I think its likely that it would be more powerful but I dont really run artifact recursion or Trinket Mage type stuff to make artifacts stronger than a sorcery. They both take three mana total to go off so I guess the upside to the map is if is in my opening hand I can spin it off and move on sooner. There is also the extremely small advantage of Map being a permanent for things like Chaos Warp / Warp World.
Exsanguinate -> Death Cloud I usually get just way too greedy with Exsanguinate and it usually ends up getting wheeled it seems lol. I feel like Death Cloud is something I really need to test and it feels like I could try replacing Exsanguinate for it. What I like about the cloud is that it acts as an answer to hands and boards in one shot. If I manage to ramp well it could also deal with opponents landbases or at least bring them back into check. Its something that I enjoyed when someone else cast one in the 3-4 range the other day and so I felt like I might enjoy testing it for a bit.
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I probably wouldn't because its just a little too small of scale I think. Most of the mill I run is larger scale or serves additional purposes where as this guy is just sort of a random beater with a small scale mill.
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DECK CHANGE:
Lashwrithe -> Mind's Eye too often the Lashwrithe just hasn't mattered enough. I have however on occasion wished for more draw so it seems like a reasonable exchange to drop the situational Lashwrithe for more draw. I did enjoy pairing Lashwrithe with Altar of Dementia to mill people to death but that has been sort of scarce to happen of late and more often I have been disappointed to see the Lashwrithe when drawn.
I haven't gotten to draw Death Cloud yet but the inclusion of Beseech the Queen has already felt really nice.
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Hmm. Interesting suggestions, I have to keep them in mind. Also, what usually has been your wincon when playing with Toshiro?
Geth, Lord of the Vault he can run away with value potentially and the option of milling someone out is something that can actually happen in here since I do run a bit of supplimental mill. Set him up with some coffers or something and its gross.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel + rezing. Its easy to get this in the 5-7 hit range and if you look at looping him with some rez bad things happen very quickly.
Kokusho, the Evening Star + rezing. Very similar to gary but actually probably a little worse since I dont stack a lot of sac outlets.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief it might seem odd but I have spent several turns just killing creatures and connecting for 10 with her. I once set up a loop with her using Corpse Dance + Altar of Dementia to rez her at my opponents end of turn, then eat their creatures in play, hit them for 10, then sac and mill them for 10. I think that one actually ended up being a mill victory though.
I have toyed with the idea of adding some cards like Crypt Rats / Thrashing Wumpus as well to the list as they have worked really well in my Obzedat list. My issue there though is that I dont have as much sustaining lifegain here as I do there so it seems like it could be an issue still to bring those in. Generally speaking I win via setting up rez loops though or just draining my opponents of life.
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DECK CHANGE:
Slaughter -> Silence the Believers Slaughter has some issues with it and I really hate nonblack targeting limitations as they can be really pesky. I really want to get some testing in with silence as well and see how that pans out. It exiles which can be unfortunate but I like that it scales in its targeting in a single cast.
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It certainly can be. I think I took that to an extreme here. There's other uses for the card - I've seen it used to great effect as a "oops I win" in Zur and Oona can play it in a more resilient way. This list shows an example.
It is expensive. Zur's going to be expensive for other reasons and both Oona and Syggnauseam are expensive. I just checked the price of Syggnauseam on TCGplayer and it's ~2125 dollars.
Depends on how you like combo. To be honest, I got tired of it as far as Sygg goes. It's too "all-in" and not as resilient as the other decks like that, for instance Hermit Druid. Oona can still be fun, IMO.
Definitely - even if you go for the ANT deck, you'll probably want some blue. Probably a lot of blue, actually.
Otherwise, I've never liked the card outside of those contexts where you can abuse it.
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Not necessarily designed around, but at least be prepared to use it in situations where you win with it. It's just not that good of a draw spell on its own, IMO. (generally)
Zur, The Enchanter, Phyrexian Unlife, Ad Nauseam isn't something you design a deck around, but when you happen to draw Ad Nauseam, you can just tutor for the other piece with Zur.
I have drawn Silence the Believers a few times now. It has its pros and cons all in all. I like that I can expand it overall as it gives it a little more versatility but at the same time the fact that it exiles is sort of a bummer. I did also use Death Cloud as sort of an Exsanguinate effect to kill off three players as I cast it for 20 and floated enough mana through to recast Toshiro as well. He almost closed out the game on his own before my opponent stabilized but I still ended up winning that one with the decree.
I still need to toy with the list a bit more but I enjoy doing so.
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[Modern] Allies
I will admit that I have not used it before. My biggest concern is that opponents can dump mana into land abilities or just cast spells in response to it so it seems to me like one of the stronger options to do with the card is just to tap down the blue control player. It seems like a meta game or deck dependent style of card where I think it is very cool but it would definitely vary in impact from game to game based on who you were playing against.
One of the most impactful things you might pull off might just be tapping the blue player out before you want to play something big. I dont know if that is strong enough though to warrant inclusion though. Like I said though, I am just sort of theory crafting on the card though. I haven't actually played or seen it played before.
I just wanted to mention sort of an epic part of a game I had this weekend. I ended up with a somewhat epic opening hand.
T1: Sol Ring
T2: Solemn
T3: Necro
From there I drew some hate from the Sigarda player. After taking his first hit he tried doing a Silverblade Paladin and hitting me. I hit the Paladin with a kill spell and used Necromancy on Stinkweed Imp at instant speed to jump in a deathtouch blocker. It was quite a fun time for me as I couldn't actually draw the dang imp due to necro not being a draw effect lol. I ended up winning that game much later thanks in part to a gary for 11 that was a topdeck draw into off of a cremate lol.
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[Modern] Allies
DECK CHANGES:
Dark Impostor -> Crypt Rats I really like the rats as another wrath + life extort on opponents. The fact that its on a one time use stick is interesting here since I have so much rez. I dont know if this will turn out better or worse than just adding Pestilence though. I have had a lot of success with these type of tactics in my Obzedat deck and while I am borrowing some similar tactics I just want to dabble for now and see how things go. The imposter has felt less necessary since adding All is Dust and the new Silence the Believers has further made me feel like the imposter is just a big mana hog. With more exile in the list these days I feel like I can put the Imposter behind me for a while and try other things.
Sudden Spoiling -> Diabolic Intent spoiling while being a cool card has been sort of a blank too often for me. Its usually a fog in a lot of situations but I haven't found myself wanting it often enough. I am going to cut it for now and see how my removal is sitting without it. I was a little hesitant to add the Intent but my ability to have a creature to sacrifice to it seems a bit more reliable than I had originally thought. I am going to bring it in here and see how things go with more testing. I managed to get a Japanese or Chinese (I cant quite tell) foil copy so I am sort of dying to play with that one.
Consume the Meek -> Baleful Force consume is a very expensive and very situational card. It is great against token tactics but too often I have drawn it and had it matter too little. I like the card but its situational nature kind of kills it a bit. I am sort of surprised that I haven't tried the baleful force in here (or really at all) before. It seems like a good solid creature that should get some testing in. Its going to draw some attention but this deck has enough rez that its probably fine.
Overall, these changes do push my curve up a little bit in some ways. The imposter was really sort of a 9 drop though where as I would be willing to drop the rats in with 2-3 spare mana which I like the change of. I feel like the rats also sort of replace consume as a token defense as well so we will see how that goes. The baleful seems very promising as a potential new draw engine. Our ability to keep specific creatures in play is fairly good with all of the rez so we will see how that goes.
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[Modern] Allies
Not that this is a complete answer but he is also running All is Dust and Oblivion Stone. Also hi ISB! Been a while. We seem to do this a lot, as I also have a Toshiro deck I've been playing around with a lot.
One bad trick I've been trying to deal with cards such as these is to run [card]Elixir of Immortality/card] but I don't think this is a really good option since it'll only save your precious spells once.
Honestly I find that the best solution is to just know your weaknesses. Just as an aggro deck shouldn't overextend into a wrath, this deck can't "overextend" by filling it's graveyard too quickly. And if you're going to dump a bunch of cards in there, have one of those backups planned with something like Stinkweed Imp to refill once you've been hit.
That's my two cents.
Level 1 Judge
Also, what happened to your "in consideration" list ISB? I recall you had one but now I can't find it anywhere...
RIP is the wosrt of the bunch to see to be honest. I dont have to play against it much myself but its a rough ride when you do have to play against it. As g1yph mentioned, I also have All is Dust and Oblivion Stone. I usually just prioritize removing these effects as quickly when possible and try to tutor into answering them. They hurt but so long as they dont just stay in play all game I think they are just a setback. Adding additional tutors to fetch them is an option and just focus on means to restock the graveyard to follow them up. I was actually about to add one more means of dealing with these sort of things but I dont know how well it will actually work as I have only seen it played once myself but I suppose this leads sort of into some decklist changes:
DECK CHANGE:
Mimic Vat -> Umezawa's Jitte mimic vat just keeps looking to be a trap to me. I prefer it the most in creature heavy sacrifice based decks and the time to go active is just still a bit too high for my likes here. My creature count is also not stellar so in general I just haven't had the luck I want with it. Umezawa's Jitte is coming in for two big reasons 1) The flavor police called and demanded I add Umezawa's weapon to my Toshiro Umezawa deck and 2) it seems like it should be a nice setup for triggering Toshiro's abilities without spending cards to do so. The fact that I could just remove a counter or two to kill something insignificant gives me on demand removal to the deck to get the flashbacks rolling. It seems like it should be a really cool card for enabling without requiring me to drop resources sometimes to trigger the flashbacks at the times I need and want them to execute. There are a lot of spells that can be executed just whenever needed but there are also a lot that need to be timed specifically and it seems like this card should help me on that front and the fact that I dont even have to tap mana in to use the charges to get things rolling seems really solid to me.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief -> Eye of Doom Drana just doesnt work that often. The situations where I have been ok with her have been mostly situations where I have tons of mana but nothing to do with it. She is also a bit frail and I think people tend to over-react to her. Eye of Doom I have seen played exactly once now by someone playing a mostly stock commander deck but it was somehow amazing lol. I looked at this list and we dont have that many things that would be big targets. Most of the list is lands, instants, and creatures. It gives that extra out to deal with artifacts / enchantments and I like that it gives the option to just nuke someone who is running away with the game.
False Cure -> Tainted Strike I like false cure but in a lot of means it felt like a heavy meta choice and some games I was in it was absolutely a blank card to draw. It reminds me a bit of a Fog effect in that you have to sit on it forever until exactly the right time occurs. I think its really cool but I just dont see it working often enough for me. I had heard others trying out Tainted Strike so I want to try my luck with it. I feel like this is mostly just moving one narrow situational kill effect for another but I want to do it in part just for testing purposes. I want to see how often I can surprise kill people and it seems like a means to try to do that.
"in consideration" list - it was fairly out of date in general. I am working on bringing this thread up to be a primer and felt that I would probably incorporate a lot of the information that was in there in a card options list when I get to doing that. I made the in consideration list a long while back and it was fairly out of date.
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[Modern] Allies
I'll be hoping that I'll get to test my version more to get better idea of what works and what not.
Toshiro Umezawa + Oathkeeper, Takeno's Daisho + Altar of Dementia is an amusing mill cannon. Toshiro plus the Oathkeeper + any sac outlet goes infinite value off of whatever the sac outlet does. There is also room for work to get done with things like Blood Artist.
I just thought I would mention it for those who like doing a bit more combo. It feels really cool and flavorful moreso than the goodstuff combos. Anywho, the primer is coming along but I guess it just depends on how much free time I end up with as for when it will get done.
EDIT: NEW BANNER DANCE
My thanks to Heroes of the Planes Studios.
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[Modern] Allies