I'm jumping on board the colorless EDH train tomorrow for the first time with new Kozilek.
It's been a few months since I've played EDH at my LGS. Seems like it was fairly casual last time, but not sure how it plays now.
Looking forward to coming back here over the weekend for some advice based on my first read of the current meta.
Let me know how it plays for you. Don't be afraid to mulligan aggressively for ramp with this deck as it recovers really well assuming you can get the ramp start you want.
Definitely noted. I'm going in tempered expectations and expect to get whooped. Most of the current deck is stuff I just had sitting around (decklist). I didn't want to start heavily spending/trading for upgrades until I knew the exact power level necessary for the store.
There are a couple things on my mind heading into tomorrow I can discuss now:
1) Tokens. Last time I played at this store, there were a fair number of token decks running around. Have you ever considered Engineered Explosives to go along with things like Ugin and All is Dust? Any other options?
2) Nevinyrral's Disk. I see this come up in a lot of deck lists, but it feels like it can just as easily destroy your own plans since it takes out your mana artifacts. Do you play this, and, if so, what's the right way to do it?
Definitely noted. I'm going in tempered expectations and expect to get whooped. Most of the current deck is stuff I just had sitting around (decklist). I didn't want to start heavily spending/trading for upgrades until I knew the exact power level necessary for the store.
There are a couple things on my mind heading into tomorrow I can discuss now:
1) Tokens. Last time I played at this store, there were a fair number of token decks running around. Have you ever considered Engineered Explosives to go along with things like Ugin and All is Dust? Any other options?
2) Nevinyrral's Disk. I see this come up in a lot of deck lists, but it feels like it can just as easily destroy your own plans since it takes out your mana artifacts. Do you play this, and, if so, what's the right way to do it?
Tokens - there are a lot of ways you can counter tokens. Some of the question is how versatile some of these cards are though. Something Like Ratchet Bomb is great in that it can claw its way up to destroying something other than tokens where as Engineered Explosives will be a lot more dedicated to just answering tokens here. Depending on how much dedicated spots you want to give to it you can go deeper in hating on them but thats a bit of a personal call on how you are feeling about it. I guess my advice would be not to go too deep into dedicating $30 cards to something until you see how much of a problem it is for you. If you have an explosives on hand and no use for it and need to fill spots then feel free but I wouldn't go out and buy one without testing out the meta first for something that feels a bit niche like Engineered Explosives.
Nevinyrral's Disk - the card is slow and generally needs to be played before a big problem arises. I don't like it because the chance of backfire of it seems high not to mention in a lot of cases you don't want to destroy all the artifacts because you are almost always going to have more invested on that front than your opponents. I am personally not a big fan of disk unless its in a deck that has a lot of dedicated untap effects or can flash it into play at the end of turn (like say Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage).
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():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Awesome, thanks. Both of those make a ton of sense and feel like my gut thoughts on those topics.
I think the thing that was holding me up on Disk was wondering if there was some unexpected scenario I hadn't considered. For example, maybe people were playing it late in the game after either dropping an indestructible creature and/or floating a ton of mana to allow for an immediate re-cast of Kozilek. But if those aren't common avenues of success, I'm all for not playing a card that hurts me as much as everyone else.
The biggest thing I learned is that the deck is woefully vulnerable to fliers.
My first match was also against two token decks. That was rough.
I heard another table where a dude was stealing everyone's creatures. That would have been bad, too, as I have no Homeward Path or similar effect.
There was a Rashmi-Omniscience deck running around, as well.
But the big one I actually played against was a Brago deck that was pimped out for competitive play.
I was actually able to keep pace with him, playing Kozilek into Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to keep him from assembling his combo pieces.
It was nice to see the deck competing with something at that level.
Not particularly sure about anything else at the store tonight (maybe a goblins deck).
In the end, I'm not particularly sure where I want to go next.
I need to do something to help control the flying threats and the exposure to go-wide token decks (one was thopters, which avoided my board wipes).
Haven't had time to think yet, but if you have any top-of-the-mind suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
The biggest thing I learned is that the deck is woefully vulnerable to fliers.
My first match was also against two token decks. That was rough.
I heard another table where a dude was stealing everyone's creatures. That would have been bad, too, as I have no Homeward Path or similar effect.
There was a Rashmi-Omniscience deck running around, as well.
But the big one I actually played against was a Brago deck that was pimped out for competitive play.
I was actually able to keep pace with him, playing Kozilek into Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to keep him from assembling his combo pieces.
It was nice to see the deck competing with something at that level.
Not particularly sure about anything else at the store tonight (maybe a goblins deck).
In the end, I'm not particularly sure where I want to go next.
I need to do something to help control the flying threats and the exposure to go-wide token decks (one was thopters, which avoided my board wipes).
Haven't had time to think yet, but if you have any top-of-the-mind suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
Theft - There is a lot of spot removal so ideally a sac outlet or spot removal so you can recast him. If you are talking about some sort of HEAVY theft problems, then you will need to tutor up Homeward Path. Lots of the spot removal though is in options of cards that can be cast beforehand and used later so try to get one of these cards in before he is stolen so they can't counter it later.
Tokens - you can go further into trample, flying, or even things like Crawlspace if you want. I think there is definately room to go deeper and its just a question of how much of a problem you find it. There are a lot of equipment options I really didn't delve into as well which I think can give you some solid evasion if needed. The hard part is in a lot of cases you are going to have to juggle evasion or defense with a lot of them. There are tons of options you can use to try to blow up, stop them from attacking you, or get past them but I think a lot of the remaining options focus on one of those things rather than multiple.
Flyers - you can look further into Icy Manipulator type of effects such as Puppet Strings and I am sure there are probably tons of others as well. In a lot of cases I try to just be in play far before them and then ask if they really want to try to race me lol. Many flying commanders are still something like 3-5 turn clocks naturally so if you can be in play quickly most people won't want to start that first attack on you because I just turn their way. I like Icy Manipulator more though due to its diversity of targeting as well as its cheap cost to activate.
The best advice I can give you though is try to be faster into play. When I was playing this deck a lot I was probably averaging something like a turn 4-6 Kozilek often being in the 4-5 and once being as fast as turn 3. Lots of the other ideas of how do you beat archetype X can come down to the question of can you get in fast and just attack someone to death before they can be a problem for you. Its not always something you can pull off but this deck can turn over a HELL of a lot of resources very quickly. If you end up playing this type of deck more my suggestion is to watch how fast you get him into play and ask yourself if the hand you kept was good enough. Being fast into play is often around very aggressive mulligans aiming for ramp and lands as an opening hand.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
The best advice I can give you though is try to be faster into play. When I was playing this deck a lot I was probably averaging something like a turn 4-6 Kozilek often being in the 4-5 and once being as fast as turn 3. Lots of the other ideas of how do you beat archetype X can come down to the question of can you get in fast and just attack someone to death before they can be a problem for you. Its not always something you can pull off but this deck can turn over a HELL of a lot of resources very quickly. If you end up playing this type of deck more my suggestion is to watch how fast you get him into play and ask yourself if the hand you kept was good enough. Being fast into play is often around very aggressive mulligans aiming for ramp and lands as an opening hand.
This makes total sense, and it's consistent with what I saw in that Brago matchup. Brago was down on T3 and Kozi was down on T5 (after getting FoW'd on T4), which allowed me to make his life hell for the rest of the game. If I had been down a turn or two later, things would have been completely flipped. The problem I had with the tokens guys is that they saw Kozilek hit the battlefield, looked at each other, looked at me, and basically agreed to just run me over. I was saved by one of them having colored tokens (board wipe), but the other guy was just too wide for me to kill fast enough while also dealing with this Brago dude who could literally lock down everyone with multiple combos. He eventually just went around me.
After thinking on it for a while, I wondered if life gain was the answer. I had plenty of pure evasion with Rogue's Passage and Prowler's Helm. My inclination was to swap out the Kitesail (which is useless against a dozen fliers) and replace it with Loxodon Warhammer for trample and life gain. That doesn't feel like a aggressive re-tooling (I probably won't play 2x tokens decks very often), but still relevant against a lot of matchups.
I had an unexpected conversation with some people tonight. We were chatting about Distortion vs Butcher, and I mentioned that I read around a lot online and saw opinions stating that Annihilator was a disliked mechanic. To a man, everyone there said they hated having their stuff countered by Distortion way more than having their stuff Annihilated. So I'm thinking of playing Butcher next week instead.
I had an unexpected conversation with some people tonight. We were chatting about Distortion vs Butcher, and I mentioned that I read around a lot online and saw opinions stating that Annihilator was a disliked mechanic. To a man, everyone there said they hated having their stuff countered by Distortion way more than having their stuff Annihilated. So I'm thinking of playing Butcher next week instead.
:-?
lol thats interesting. I assume the deck has been doing at least decently if people are complaining about it to you. Its possible that you might want to check your ramp package moving to Annihilate Kozi just because there is more of a diminishing return given the fixed draw number and not as much to do with it after Kozi is in play. Let me know how it goes.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 had an unexpected conversation with some people tonight. We were chatting about Distortion vs Butcher, and I mentioned that I read around a lot online and saw opinions stating that Annihilator was a disliked mechanic. To a man, everyone there said they hated having their stuff countered by Distortion way more than having their stuff Annihilated. So I'm thinking of playing Butcher next week instead.
:-?
lol thats interesting. I assume the deck has been doing at least decently if people are complaining about it to you. Its possible that you might want to check your ramp package moving to Annihilate Kozi just because there is more of a diminishing return given the fixed draw number and not as much to do with it after Kozi is in play. Let me know how it goes.
I haven't won any events, but Distortion normally comes down on T5 and then I'm sort of the power police for which ever deck is trying to get out in front.
I think that's what they are referring to when they talk about the annoyance of getting countered.
The main thing keeping me from winning these matches is that I'm playing 4-man pods every time.
I simply cannot take everyone out before someone takes me down.
So I'm cautiously optimistic that they are saying they are okay with Annihilator. It should make me more competitive with what I already have in place.
Otherwise, I was going to have to make some overhauls. There are just so many go-wide tokens decks. It's awful for my current deck list.
I haven't won any events, but Distortion normally comes down on T5 and then I'm sort of the power police for which ever deck is trying to get out in front.
I think that's what they are referring to when they talk about the annoyance of getting countered.
The main thing keeping me from winning these matches is that I'm playing 4-man pods every time.
I simply cannot take everyone out before someone takes me down.
So I'm cautiously optimistic that they are saying they are okay with Annihilator. It should make me more competitive with what I already have in place.
Otherwise, I was going to have to make some overhauls. There are just so many go-wide tokens decks. It's awful for my current deck list.
ISBPatherfinder, anything in the lastest set that strikes your fancy?
Most sets don't have a whole lot of interesting colorless cards. Being it was a multicolored set even the colorless cards seemed to focus on multicolored things so no most of the ravnica stuff has been underwhelming for colorless.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Definitely noted. I'm going in tempered expectations and expect to get whooped. Most of the current deck is stuff I just had sitting around (decklist). I didn't want to start heavily spending/trading for upgrades until I knew the exact power level necessary for the store.
There are a couple things on my mind heading into tomorrow I can discuss now:
1) Tokens. Last time I played at this store, there were a fair number of token decks running around. Have you ever considered Engineered Explosives to go along with things like Ugin and All is Dust? Any other options?
2) Nevinyrral's Disk. I see this come up in a lot of deck lists, but it feels like it can just as easily destroy your own plans since it takes out your mana artifacts. Do you play this, and, if so, what's the right way to do it?
Tokens - there are a lot of ways you can counter tokens. Some of the question is how versatile some of these cards are though. Something Like Ratchet Bomb is great in that it can claw its way up to destroying something other than tokens where as Engineered Explosives will be a lot more dedicated to just answering tokens here. Depending on how much dedicated spots you want to give to it you can go deeper in hating on them but thats a bit of a personal call on how you are feeling about it. I guess my advice would be not to go too deep into dedicating $30 cards to something until you see how much of a problem it is for you. If you have an explosives on hand and no use for it and need to fill spots then feel free but I wouldn't go out and buy one without testing out the meta first for something that feels a bit niche like Engineered Explosives.
Nevinyrral's Disk - the card is slow and generally needs to be played before a big problem arises. I don't like it because the chance of backfire of it seems high not to mention in a lot of cases you don't want to destroy all the artifacts because you are almost always going to have more invested on that front than your opponents. I am personally not a big fan of disk unless its in a deck that has a lot of dedicated untap effects or can flash it into play at the end of turn (like say Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage).
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[Modern] Allies
I think the thing that was holding me up on Disk was wondering if there was some unexpected scenario I hadn't considered. For example, maybe people were playing it late in the game after either dropping an indestructible creature and/or floating a ton of mana to allow for an immediate re-cast of Kozilek. But if those aren't common avenues of success, I'm all for not playing a card that hurts me as much as everyone else.
The biggest thing I learned is that the deck is woefully vulnerable to fliers.
My first match was also against two token decks. That was rough.
I heard another table where a dude was stealing everyone's creatures. That would have been bad, too, as I have no Homeward Path or similar effect.
There was a Rashmi-Omniscience deck running around, as well.
But the big one I actually played against was a Brago deck that was pimped out for competitive play.
I was actually able to keep pace with him, playing Kozilek into Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to keep him from assembling his combo pieces.
It was nice to see the deck competing with something at that level.
Not particularly sure about anything else at the store tonight (maybe a goblins deck).
In the end, I'm not particularly sure where I want to go next.
I need to do something to help control the flying threats and the exposure to go-wide token decks (one was thopters, which avoided my board wipes).
Haven't had time to think yet, but if you have any top-of-the-mind suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
Theft - There is a lot of spot removal so ideally a sac outlet or spot removal so you can recast him. If you are talking about some sort of HEAVY theft problems, then you will need to tutor up Homeward Path. Lots of the spot removal though is in options of cards that can be cast beforehand and used later so try to get one of these cards in before he is stolen so they can't counter it later.
Tokens - you can go further into trample, flying, or even things like Crawlspace if you want. I think there is definately room to go deeper and its just a question of how much of a problem you find it. There are a lot of equipment options I really didn't delve into as well which I think can give you some solid evasion if needed. The hard part is in a lot of cases you are going to have to juggle evasion or defense with a lot of them. There are tons of options you can use to try to blow up, stop them from attacking you, or get past them but I think a lot of the remaining options focus on one of those things rather than multiple.
Flyers - you can look further into Icy Manipulator type of effects such as Puppet Strings and I am sure there are probably tons of others as well. In a lot of cases I try to just be in play far before them and then ask if they really want to try to race me lol. Many flying commanders are still something like 3-5 turn clocks naturally so if you can be in play quickly most people won't want to start that first attack on you because I just turn their way. I like Icy Manipulator more though due to its diversity of targeting as well as its cheap cost to activate.
The best advice I can give you though is try to be faster into play. When I was playing this deck a lot I was probably averaging something like a turn 4-6 Kozilek often being in the 4-5 and once being as fast as turn 3. Lots of the other ideas of how do you beat archetype X can come down to the question of can you get in fast and just attack someone to death before they can be a problem for you. Its not always something you can pull off but this deck can turn over a HELL of a lot of resources very quickly. If you end up playing this type of deck more my suggestion is to watch how fast you get him into play and ask yourself if the hand you kept was good enough. Being fast into play is often around very aggressive mulligans aiming for ramp and lands as an opening hand.
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[Modern] Allies
This makes total sense, and it's consistent with what I saw in that Brago matchup. Brago was down on T3 and Kozi was down on T5 (after getting FoW'd on T4), which allowed me to make his life hell for the rest of the game. If I had been down a turn or two later, things would have been completely flipped. The problem I had with the tokens guys is that they saw Kozilek hit the battlefield, looked at each other, looked at me, and basically agreed to just run me over. I was saved by one of them having colored tokens (board wipe), but the other guy was just too wide for me to kill fast enough while also dealing with this Brago dude who could literally lock down everyone with multiple combos. He eventually just went around me.
After thinking on it for a while, I wondered if life gain was the answer. I had plenty of pure evasion with Rogue's Passage and Prowler's Helm. My inclination was to swap out the Kitesail (which is useless against a dozen fliers) and replace it with Loxodon Warhammer for trample and life gain. That doesn't feel like a aggressive re-tooling (I probably won't play 2x tokens decks very often), but still relevant against a lot of matchups.
:-?
lol thats interesting. I assume the deck has been doing at least decently if people are complaining about it to you. Its possible that you might want to check your ramp package moving to Annihilate Kozi just because there is more of a diminishing return given the fixed draw number and not as much to do with it after Kozi is in play. Let me know how it goes.
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[Modern] Allies
I haven't won any events, but Distortion normally comes down on T5 and then I'm sort of the power police for which ever deck is trying to get out in front.
I think that's what they are referring to when they talk about the annoyance of getting countered.
The main thing keeping me from winning these matches is that I'm playing 4-man pods every time.
I simply cannot take everyone out before someone takes me down.
So I'm cautiously optimistic that they are saying they are okay with Annihilator. It should make me more competitive with what I already have in place.
Otherwise, I was going to have to make some overhauls. There are just so many go-wide tokens decks. It's awful for my current deck list.
Hummmmm ok well let me know how it goes.
Most sets don't have a whole lot of interesting colorless cards. Being it was a multicolored set even the colorless cards seemed to focus on multicolored things so no most of the ravnica stuff has been underwhelming for colorless.
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[Modern] Allies