Genesis wave IS the best card to make Heartbeat work, once you wave, you get more lands, you almost always wave into Eternal Witnesses (allowing you to loop untaps via Early Harvest, or get back any non-permanent card waved into). You'll frequently wave into more heartbeats netting you more mana off the lands you waved into, and from there you just loop untaps. The way Wave works is actually very similar to how Mind's Desire works, except instead of looping tons of spells right after another, you instead just need a lot of mana, which Heartbeat obviously generates in large doses.
Hrm.
I'm actually not entirely sure what I think about Genesis Wave. On one end I think it could work pretty well, on the other I'm just not sure how well the clock will work with it.
Though, I'm very much not a fan of your manabase. But that's partially because every Heartbeat I've played, it's always been "pure," and even with the UG fetch it doesn't seem worth it. To a degree you just don't really want the deck-thinning, since you generally want to hit 5 land.
I'm not entirely sure what makes people focus so hard on Heartbeat of the Spring. Just had some guy on MTGO Meddling Mage it after I sided out all of my Repeal for Defense Grid's(even more awkward, this was right after I landed a Grid, so Heartbeat was kind of a card he should've wanted to land).
Long story short though, I just got to 4 Forest 5 Island 1 Mountain, recurred enough to get a Weird Harvest for 4 off to get driftx2 and witnessx2, got another Harvest off of drift #1 and got a Cloudstone Curio off of Drift #2 and went infinite on him.
All of this after game 1 turn 4 Heartbeat>pass on him, only for him to (mostly) tap out and then tap out completely on my draw step to Clique the Weird Harvest I had in hand away(to hilariously give me a Blue Sun's Zenith), with my hand consisting of an Early Harvest, Drift and an Eternal Witness and me having 5 land down. tl;dr: I did 3 Harvests, BSZ'd myself for 12 to pick up my last bit of fuel with all 5 land untapped, won the game.
Felt kind of bad for him, though. He's playing some flavor of the month Snapcaster control/aggro mix and here I come along and 2-0 him with a combo deck.
It did at least remind me why I loved playing Heartbeat-style decks, though. The control matchup is fantastically fun, and almost always tipped in your favor, which is so contrary to most normal combo decks.
Anyway, I'll mess around with getting a Genesis Wave list drafted.
Like I said, I really don't like your mana base. I'm also kind of really iffy on Venser/Coiling Oracle/Wood Elves. Yeah sure, Wood Elves is a permanent to grab off of Wave but the card feels meh. I've also always disliked Oracle for how random it is, especially since I sort of consider it in an accel slot.
Venser seems neat and all that, and to an extent I can kind of see him necessary if you don't have Curio and need to bounce Drift, otherwise he seems more like bonus fluff. I can't see running more than 1 of him either way, though.
Also, primary reason why I'm running Invoke the Firemind as a win condition(and will probably remain doing so) is because it's just so much easier to do the Curio cycle on MTGO "enough" to kill them with an Invoke compared to killing them with a BSZ. On paper I'll probably test and weigh my options on the whole thing.
(And realistically, Invoke would become Venser or whatever, they both serve the dual-purpose of getting around things like Meddling Mage/Nevermore, Venser having an added bonus of getting around Leyline/Ivory Mask effects; but that's not really anything Repeal recursion couldn't solve)
I'm actually not entirely sure what I think about Genesis Wave. On one end I think it could work pretty well, on the other I'm just not sure how well the clock will work with it.
Though, I'm very much not a fan of your manabase. But that's partially because every Heartbeat I've played, it's always been "pure," and even with the UG fetch it doesn't seem worth it. To a degree you just don't really want the deck-thinning, since you generally want to hit 5 land.
I'm not entirely sure what makes people focus so hard on Heartbeat of the Spring. Just had some guy on MTGO Meddling Mage it after I sided out all of my Repeal for Defense Grid's(even more awkward, this was right after I landed a Grid, so Heartbeat was kind of a card he should've wanted to land).
Long story short though, I just got to 4 Forest 5 Island 1 Mountain, recurred enough to get a Weird Harvest for 4 off to get driftx2 and witnessx2, got another Harvest off of drift #1 and got a Cloudstone Curio off of Drift #2 and went infinite on him.
All of this after game 1 turn 4 Heartbeat>pass on him, only for him to (mostly) tap out and then tap out completely on my draw step to Clique the Weird Harvest I had in hand away(to hilariously give me a Blue Sun's Zenith), with my hand consisting of an Early Harvest, Drift and an Eternal Witness and me having 5 land down. tl;dr: I did 3 Harvests, BSZ'd myself for 12 to pick up my last bit of fuel with all 5 land untapped, won the game.
Felt kind of bad for him, though. He's playing some flavor of the month Snapcaster control/aggro mix and here I come along and 2-0 him with a combo deck.
It did at least remind me why I loved playing Heartbeat-style decks, though. The control matchup is fantastically fun, and almost always tipped in your favor, which is so contrary to most normal combo decks.
Anyway, I'll mess around with getting a Genesis Wave list drafted.
Like I said, I really don't like your mana base. I'm also kind of really iffy on Venser/Coiling Oracle/Wood Elves. Yeah sure, Wood Elves is a permanent to grab off of Wave but the card feels meh. I've also always disliked Oracle for how random it is, especially since I sort of consider it in an accel slot.
Venser seems neat and all that, and to an extent I can kind of see him necessary if you don't have Curio and need to bounce Drift, otherwise he seems more like bonus fluff. I can't see running more than 1 of him either way, though.
Also, primary reason why I'm running Invoke the Firemind as a win condition(and will probably remain doing so) is because it's just so much easier to do the Curio cycle on MTGO "enough" to kill them with an Invoke compared to killing them with a BSZ. On paper I'll probably test and weigh my options on the whole thing.
(And realistically, Invoke would become Venser or whatever, they both serve the dual-purpose of getting around things like Meddling Mage/Nevermore, Venser having an added bonus of getting around Leyline/Ivory Mask effects; but that's not really anything Repeal recursion couldn't solve)
blah blah blah
Well, fair enough, it's not old standard any more, so that's why I went in the new direction. The 1x Breeding pool isn't *great*, but it's better than randomly getting color screwed with fetchlands in play. Second, while getting lands here is nice, you really don't want a ton off a wave, (just enough to get an untap) so fetches work well here. Venser is entirely necessary in here since he effectively makes any opponent hatebears irrelevant. EOT, you can cast Venser to bounce a pridemage, or get rid of a canonist, meddling mage, or whatever else would cause you a problem. But more than that, he'll buy you a few turns against aggro decks via bouncing goyfs, and at certain times, will buy you an immense amount of time off curio shenanigans even without heartbeat in play.
All I can say, is draw up the list I put on cockatrice or MTGO, give it a few test runs and see how it runs for you. Just keep in mind, all 5 combo pieces are tutorable via Drift, and most of the time, you'll find yourself tutoring drift for Eternal Witness, to buy back drift to tutor for another target.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find me online - I'm on Cockatrice * Tag - Badd B - Or on MTGO - Tag - Cbus05
I'll be perfectly honest: I haven't played with this deck at all in a few weeks, and that's why I haven't been posting. I moved Teferis to the maindeck, cut the combo, and turned it into a control deck.
Everyone knows that good luck and good game are such insincere terms that any man who does not connect his right hook with the offender's jaw on the very utterance of such a phrase is no man I would consider as such.
All I can say, is draw up the list I put on cockatrice or MTGO, give it a few test runs and see how it runs for you. Just keep in mind, all 5 combo pieces are tutorable via Drift, and most of the time, you'll find yourself tutoring drift for Eternal Witness, to buy back drift to tutor for another target.
I'll definitely be trying something with it later. One thing I constantly found was wanting some method of getting a Weird Harvest out of Drift of Phantasms(which made me go up from running 2 of Weird Harvest to running 3), which for all intents and purpose, pretty much is exactly what Genesis Wave is, just on a less selective approach and more... "Structured combo" as opposed to 2 card combo like how I went.
And you're right, it isn't t2 anymore. But honestly, the lists I was running before trying to "build a better mouse trap" with the deck before felt a bit more inconsistent/not as "grand" as the memories I had with the t2 version of the deck, so I went back and pretty much copied the bulk of my t2 list and made room for Gifts Ungiven and the Eternal Witness/Cloudstone Curio combo. And it's honestly feeling a lot more proper than the lists I had up before.
Two things I'm liking about this iteration:
1. It's got enough dudes to swamp the ground to relieve at least a little pressure against aggro(with the exception of Affinity for the most part, which have evasion and/or Fling).
2. It can go "oops" and go infinite pretty often.
I think my largest gripe is that Farhaven Elf is 3cc and doesn't play too well with letting you transmute drift turn 3 for a turn 4 win.
Sideboard for the deck will also look pretty wonky. It doesn't have the other versions primary support of x4 Muddle, so no toolbox there. The SB will probably have to play something stupid too like x1 Teferi x1 Dosan, etc. though, I guess Defense Grid can still be on the table. I've taken a liking to Early Frost, though, which also helps against other combo decks just because you can Time Walk them with it.
Past in Flames has been fairly amazing for me. You have to play the deck in different ways because I see a ton of Ghost Quarters on MTGO; it becomes really awkward to set up Past in Flames if they have one out. I really like being red anyway because it gives me Firespout and Ancient Grudge.
Praetor's Counsel I think might actually be mediocre. I was just using Past in Flames to set up Praetor's Counsel when that's clearly overkill. It seems pretty rare that you can cast Past in Flames and not just be able to win. So Praetor's Counsel is just a Past in Flames that you can't tutor up and have to draw.
Heartbeat Combo was literally my favorite deck of all time. I was just thinking about how it sucks that it will never live on in Legacy, and I've been looking for a Modern deck to play during PTQ season.
A few questions for the deck. What do you guys suggest for an alternate win-condition, other than Blue Sun's Zenith. (I agree with whoever said that BSZ is literally the best option to win, especially with Martyr-Proc gaining infinite life.) Emrakul hard-casted seems like the best option, but, is there something else?
Also, how well would a Boseiju, Who Shelters All fit into the deck? It protects your Gifts, Early Harvests, BSZs, etc.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
snapcaster works well in a pile with PiF and 2 business spells, but once you start adding in additional revival effects, you might as well forego the PiF plan and just use revive, noxious, reclaim, recollect, witness and some cantrips. And if going that direction, you could do what some of the rav standard heartbeat decks did and do loaming shaman + shuffle effects + Xdraw spells and maybe summer bloom, as the rav standard HB deck DID go off on turn 4 a good amount of the time even with slow tutors, but I think the PiF package is stronger and more stable (and also faster, as 1 gifts can set up the win).
In case I didn't tell you, I don't care about your opinion I just want your facts. And not the facts that make you seem smart. I want the ones that are actual facts.
Emrakul takes up more slots, and is therefore worse, than Blue Sun's Zenith. Because of how good Blue Sun's Zenith is, you want as many Islands as possible. It also makes the second Mountain less important, because you don't have to win with Past in Flames. I am wondering if you need it at all. It's obviously sweet if you have a Mountain because you can just throw it in a Gifts stack, but I wonder if Gifts for Heartbeat, Early Harvest, USZ, Drift of Phantasms isn't enough.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Magic Level 3 Judge
Southern United States Regional Coordinator
Haven't worked on this since before the banning of nacatl and fire, so no sb yet, but basically the idea is to use heartbeat/early harvest to set up a large genesis wave, leading to Cloudstone Curio shenanigans (infinite board bounce with venser, infinite turns with emrakul, or infinite mana for a lethal BSZ). I think I'm gonna test Coiling Oracle in Wood Elves' place, but other than that, the list was generally consistent and resilient.
huh, i actually like that a lot better than gifts or PiF. I'm gonna test that out. Witnessing back non perms off of a genesis wave seems pretty legit. It'd suck to flip 2+ drift without curio around...
huh, i actually like that a lot better than gifts or PiF. I'm gonna test that out. Witnessing back non perms off of a genesis wave seems pretty legit. It'd suck to flip 2+ drift without curio around...
You always have the option to let drift go to the gy instead of putting it into play. Most games its actually better to let it go to the gy, since getting it back with witness lets you transmute for anything you need
The ability to just go "oops, I'm infinite" is pretty stellar.
tbh the PiF build is a really interesting direction to go with the deck and is pretty nice. Sort of makes me want to pick the deck back up again since I've almost always been playing Heartbeat whenever it's legal to. I'm just worried about how fragile it might be.
huh, i actually like that a lot better than gifts or PiF. I'm gonna test that out. Witnessing back non perms off of a genesis wave seems pretty legit. It'd suck to flip 2+ drift without curio around...
Genesis Wave typically wins on the spot when you resolve it in this deck, or sometimes via just waving into the singleton Emrakul.
Even if you wave into a bunch of Drifts, you can either do what SPC said and let one of them go to the yard if you want to use a Witness to buy it back. I more frequently wave into a Venser or Cloudstone Curio, which typically allows me to just use the bounce trigger and set up more infinite combos with Early Harvest, Cloudstone Curio, and a Witness.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find me online - I'm on Cockatrice * Tag - Badd B - Or on MTGO - Tag - Cbus05
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hrm.
I'm actually not entirely sure what I think about Genesis Wave. On one end I think it could work pretty well, on the other I'm just not sure how well the clock will work with it.
Though, I'm very much not a fan of your manabase. But that's partially because every Heartbeat I've played, it's always been "pure," and even with the UG fetch it doesn't seem worth it. To a degree you just don't really want the deck-thinning, since you generally want to hit 5 land.
Anyway; current list:
12 Forest
9 Island
1 Mountain
Recursion/Redundency
4 Drift of Phantasms
2 Eternal Witness
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Revive
4 Muddle the Mixture
Accel
3 Kodama's Reach
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Cloudstone Curio
4 Heartbeat of Spring
4 Early Harvest
3 Weird Harvest
Win Condition
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Invoke the Firemind
Meta slot
3 Repeal
1 Krosan Grip
3 Spell Snare
1 Wipe Away
2 Research/Development
2 Carven Caryatid
1 Echoing Truth
1 Savage Twister
4 Early Frost
I'm not entirely sure what makes people focus so hard on Heartbeat of the Spring. Just had some guy on MTGO Meddling Mage it after I sided out all of my Repeal for Defense Grid's(even more awkward, this was right after I landed a Grid, so Heartbeat was kind of a card he should've wanted to land).
Long story short though, I just got to 4 Forest 5 Island 1 Mountain, recurred enough to get a Weird Harvest for 4 off to get driftx2 and witnessx2, got another Harvest off of drift #1 and got a Cloudstone Curio off of Drift #2 and went infinite on him.
All of this after game 1 turn 4 Heartbeat>pass on him, only for him to (mostly) tap out and then tap out completely on my draw step to Clique the Weird Harvest I had in hand away(to hilariously give me a Blue Sun's Zenith), with my hand consisting of an Early Harvest, Drift and an Eternal Witness and me having 5 land down. tl;dr: I did 3 Harvests, BSZ'd myself for 12 to pick up my last bit of fuel with all 5 land untapped, won the game.
Felt kind of bad for him, though. He's playing some flavor of the month Snapcaster control/aggro mix and here I come along and 2-0 him with a combo deck.
It did at least remind me why I loved playing Heartbeat-style decks, though. The control matchup is fantastically fun, and almost always tipped in your favor, which is so contrary to most normal combo decks.
Anyway, I'll mess around with getting a Genesis Wave list drafted.
Like I said, I really don't like your mana base. I'm also kind of really iffy on Venser/Coiling Oracle/Wood Elves. Yeah sure, Wood Elves is a permanent to grab off of Wave but the card feels meh. I've also always disliked Oracle for how random it is, especially since I sort of consider it in an accel slot.
Venser seems neat and all that, and to an extent I can kind of see him necessary if you don't have Curio and need to bounce Drift, otherwise he seems more like bonus fluff. I can't see running more than 1 of him either way, though.
Also, primary reason why I'm running Invoke the Firemind as a win condition(and will probably remain doing so) is because it's just so much easier to do the Curio cycle on MTGO "enough" to kill them with an Invoke compared to killing them with a BSZ. On paper I'll probably test and weigh my options on the whole thing.
(And realistically, Invoke would become Venser or whatever, they both serve the dual-purpose of getting around things like Meddling Mage/Nevermore, Venser having an added bonus of getting around Leyline/Ivory Mask effects; but that's not really anything Repeal recursion couldn't solve)
blah blah blah
But I can keep an open mind, and I hope I haven't come off as rude.
Well, fair enough, it's not old standard any more, so that's why I went in the new direction. The 1x Breeding pool isn't *great*, but it's better than randomly getting color screwed with fetchlands in play. Second, while getting lands here is nice, you really don't want a ton off a wave, (just enough to get an untap) so fetches work well here. Venser is entirely necessary in here since he effectively makes any opponent hatebears irrelevant. EOT, you can cast Venser to bounce a pridemage, or get rid of a canonist, meddling mage, or whatever else would cause you a problem. But more than that, he'll buy you a few turns against aggro decks via bouncing goyfs, and at certain times, will buy you an immense amount of time off curio shenanigans even without heartbeat in play.
All I can say, is draw up the list I put on cockatrice or MTGO, give it a few test runs and see how it runs for you. Just keep in mind, all 5 combo pieces are tutorable via Drift, and most of the time, you'll find yourself tutoring drift for Eternal Witness, to buy back drift to tutor for another target.
- To my youngest sister when she was 6.
I'll definitely be trying something with it later. One thing I constantly found was wanting some method of getting a Weird Harvest out of Drift of Phantasms(which made me go up from running 2 of Weird Harvest to running 3), which for all intents and purpose, pretty much is exactly what Genesis Wave is, just on a less selective approach and more... "Structured combo" as opposed to 2 card combo like how I went.
And you're right, it isn't t2 anymore. But honestly, the lists I was running before trying to "build a better mouse trap" with the deck before felt a bit more inconsistent/not as "grand" as the memories I had with the t2 version of the deck, so I went back and pretty much copied the bulk of my t2 list and made room for Gifts Ungiven and the Eternal Witness/Cloudstone Curio combo. And it's honestly feeling a lot more proper than the lists I had up before.
-edit-
12 Forest
9 Island
1 Mountain
Dudes/Wave fuel
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
4 Eternal Witness
4 Elvish Visionary
3 Mulldrifter
4 Farhaven Elf
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
Combo/Redundancy
2 Cloudstone Curio
3 Genesis Wave
4 Heartbeat of Spring
4 Early Harvest
4 Drift of Phantasms
1 Invoke the Firemind
Two things I'm liking about this iteration:
1. It's got enough dudes to swamp the ground to relieve at least a little pressure against aggro(with the exception of Affinity for the most part, which have evasion and/or Fling).
2. It can go "oops" and go infinite pretty often.
I think my largest gripe is that Farhaven Elf is 3cc and doesn't play too well with letting you transmute drift turn 3 for a turn 4 win.
Sideboard for the deck will also look pretty wonky. It doesn't have the other versions primary support of x4 Muddle, so no toolbox there. The SB will probably have to play something stupid too like x1 Teferi x1 Dosan, etc. though, I guess Defense Grid can still be on the table. I've taken a liking to Early Frost, though, which also helps against other combo decks just because you can Time Walk them with it.
Blah blah blah.
Reclaim seems better than Eternal Witness.
Foresee seems better than Jace.
I can't decide whether I want the Past in Flames/Reclaim/Noxious Revival package.
Southern United States Regional Coordinator
For example, my pre-combo turn Gifts pile would be Heartbeat of Spring-Early Harvest-Drift of Phantasms-Noxious Revival, while my mid-combo Gifts pile would be Blue Sun's Zenith-Praetor's Counsel-Eternal Witness-Revive. That pile guarantees both USZ and Praetor's Counsel, and Reclaim effects cannot substitute in this case.
I wonder if Reclaim and Noxious Revival are just both slow and bad.
Southern United States Regional Coordinator
Such a logical and obvious point you've made, there.
Really though, Past in Flames seems perfectly plausible in a Time Warpy variant, not so much an all-in on one turn's mana version though.
Praetor's Counsel I think might actually be mediocre. I was just using Past in Flames to set up Praetor's Counsel when that's clearly overkill. It seems pretty rare that you can cast Past in Flames and not just be able to win. So Praetor's Counsel is just a Past in Flames that you can't tutor up and have to draw.
1 See Beyond
1 Past in Flames
2 Blue Sun's Zenith
4 Heartbeat of Spring
4 Early Harvest
3 Drift of Phantasms
4 Explore
4 Search for Tomorrows
4 Remand
1 Wipe Away
11 Forest
8 Island
1 Mountain
The See Beyond is pretty random. I am considering a second Mountain. Other than that, I really really like this list.
Southern United States Regional Coordinator
Heartbeat Combo was literally my favorite deck of all time. I was just thinking about how it sucks that it will never live on in Legacy, and I've been looking for a Modern deck to play during PTQ season.
A few questions for the deck. What do you guys suggest for an alternate win-condition, other than Blue Sun's Zenith. (I agree with whoever said that BSZ is literally the best option to win, especially with Martyr-Proc gaining infinite life.) Emrakul hard-casted seems like the best option, but, is there something else?
Also, how well would a Boseiju, Who Shelters All fit into the deck? It protects your Gifts, Early Harvests, BSZs, etc.
Except see beyond is snapcaster mage, and my lands are 11, 7, 2.
(the second mountain is worth it)
http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/spam/ <---- kills spam, fyi.
Answer always makes me reconsider.
Just the sheer power of archive trap is insane
legacy: Doomsday, Dredge, BUG (shard less and still)
modern: storm, woo dredge, U-tron
EDH: maelstrom wanderer, Gisela, krenko, lazav, sharrum, sheoldred/xiahou dun, norin the wary, Thrax, Mimeoplasm, GW legends
http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/spam/ <---- kills spam, fyi.
Cockatrice username: Blackcat77
Southern United States Regional Coordinator
3 Forest
7 Snow-Covered Forest
3 Island
5 Snow-Covered Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Wood Elves
4 Eternal Witness
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Drift of Phantasms
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
2 Cloudstone Curio
4 Early Harvest
4 Genesis Wave
2 Gifts Ungiven
4 Heartbeat of Spring
4 Sleight of Hand
Haven't worked on this since before the banning of nacatl and fire, so no sb yet, but basically the idea is to use heartbeat/early harvest to set up a large genesis wave, leading to Cloudstone Curio shenanigans (infinite board bounce with venser, infinite turns with emrakul, or infinite mana for a lethal BSZ). I think I'm gonna test Coiling Oracle in Wood Elves' place, but other than that, the list was generally consistent and resilient.
http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/spam/ <---- kills spam, fyi.
You always have the option to let drift go to the gy instead of putting it into play. Most games its actually better to let it go to the gy, since getting it back with witness lets you transmute for anything you need
Try -1 See Beyond +1 Reiterate.
The ability to just go "oops, I'm infinite" is pretty stellar.
tbh the PiF build is a really interesting direction to go with the deck and is pretty nice. Sort of makes me want to pick the deck back up again since I've almost always been playing Heartbeat whenever it's legal to. I'm just worried about how fragile it might be.
Genesis Wave typically wins on the spot when you resolve it in this deck, or sometimes via just waving into the singleton Emrakul.
Even if you wave into a bunch of Drifts, you can either do what SPC said and let one of them go to the yard if you want to use a Witness to buy it back. I more frequently wave into a Venser or Cloudstone Curio, which typically allows me to just use the bounce trigger and set up more infinite combos with Early Harvest, Cloudstone Curio, and a Witness.