Doesn’t work well with Arbor Elf, and probably just worse than Leyline of Abundance, though perhaps it can be played alongside it.
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LEGACY: Soldier Stompy WW // Blue Stompy UU // Fit Variants BGRW // Sol Land Brews BGRUWC MODERN: Pure Pili-ness GU // Red Devotion RR // Green Devotion Variants GRWUG // U/G Emerge CGU // Lots and Lots of Brews BGRUWC
On Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy:
I tested him in a Kiki-Jiki "Twin Pseudo-Pod" variant (and a teeny bit in an older Leyline-Freed From the Real build) and, while he demands blue mana somewhat strongly and he's vulnerable to creature removal, he's quite good anyway. Notably, his activated ability lets you cheat in creatures even if your only big mana sources are planeswalkers and Nykthos. He's hilarious in Tooth and Nail builds because he hits Emrakul deceptively often.
On Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy:
I tested him in a Kiki-Jiki "Twin Pseudo-Pod" variant (and a teeny bit in an older Leyline-Freed From the Real build) and, while he demands blue mana somewhat strongly and he's vulnerable to creature removal, he's quite good anyway. Notably, his activated ability lets you cheat in creatures even if your only big mana sources are planeswalkers and Nykthos. He's hilarious in Tooth and Nail builds because he hits Emrakul deceptively often.
The idea of using him in an Emrakul deck is an interesting one. He is both a ramp and a win-con. Definitely a build around card; but could be a situation where we don't have to warp the deck too much to support him.
P.S. SOOOOO many streamers have been playing Green Devotion lately. All of them appear to be the Karn build (makes sense given how good of a card it is in big mana decks...) but its nice to see such big names in Modern streaming our deck!
Haven't posted on MTGS in a long time. Hell, I haven't really contributed to any online community lately. Since I'm stuck inside and can't get any kind of Magic fix though, I figured I'd chime in and present my thoughts on the new set for whatever that happens to be worth.
First and foremost, I'm fairly convinced that Tooth and Nail is a dead card now. Ikoria just released a smattering of new cards that all threaten to do the same thing as Tooth and Nail, only better, so there seems to be little reason to pursue ramping into Tooth and Nail at this point. I'm not sure which card has the most merit yet since I haven't gotten the chance to actually sit down and test any of them, but their applicability on paper is plain as day. One or more of these cards will just straight up be better.
Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast — This is a Polymorph that you can ramp into. Polymorph has always been a powerful card, but the setup required to get Polymorph to work has always made the card seemingly unviable. You have to be able to build a reasonable deck without any creatures, save one or two for Polymorph itself. Then, you have to be able to produce a creature somehow, be it either a creature token or a card that can somehow turn itself into a creature, like man-lands for example. Finally, you have to cast and resolve Polymorph. If the opponent kills the creature in response, the spell fizzles, and you get nothing.
While Lukka doesn't address that last issue, he does make enormous ground on the other two. Because Lukka always cascades upwards, if your deck only contains creatures with the same converted mana cost save for one of them, Lukka will always find that one target 100% of the time. This allows you to build a Polymorph deck with actual creature cards, and mana dorks are seemingly perfect for this; they increase the speed by which you can cast Lukka while simultaneously being the targets that Lukka needs. Not to mention, without Lukka, mana dorks are still independently going to be useful on their own. They'll ramp you into whatever other valuable cards make up the rest of your curve.
Now, that isn't to say that Lukka isn't without his faults. Generally speaking, Lukka's other two abilities suck. If you're only playing 1-drops, you don't particularly care if you exile any for you to cast later, but you would care a great deal if you happened to remove the only remaining card that's eligible for Lukka's -2 ability. As such, Lukka's first ability can be a significant liability. His ultimate, in turn, is also sucks. If all you intend to do is cheat a spaghetti monster into play, not only will you not activate his first ability to generate loyalty in the first place, but you also won't have much of any power on the battlefield with which to capitalize off of Lukka's third ability even if you could activate it. Lukka also costs more than his Polymorph counterparts at five instead of four.
On another note, I do think it's worth mentioning that Lukka can activate his minus ability back to back. Say the Emrakul you pull out with Lukka gets bounced by T3feri. Next turn, you can activate Lukka's minus ability again and pull out another Emrakul, provided you have another copy anyway.
Emergent Ultimatum — This is Tooth and Nail, but for seven mana instead of nine. Granted, the color requirements are certainly more difficult, but seven mana is also substantially easier to get to than nine. Not to mention, even if you didn't have the right combination of colors to cast this at seven mana, you almost assuredly would by the time you hit nine. Anywho, here are some piles I cooked up:
Any two card combo will work here in place of Kiki-Jiki and Resto Angel; they just need the capacity to deal damage on their own. If the opponent chooses Worldfire and either one of the other cards, you cast Worldfire first, exiling everything, then put your creature onto the battlefield. At that point, there's nothing the opponent can draw on their next turn that can possibly kill you, and you attack them for lethal next turn. The only vulnerability here is if the opponent controls something very unusual like Thragtusk since that ability triggers when the card leaves the battlefield rather than when it dies. Of course, if the opponent opts for the two-card combo, you can just proceed to go infinite and kill them with that. There will be times when the opponent has an out to that though and can stop your combo with whatever interaction they happen to have in their hand.
How ironic that Tooth and Nail itself is a combo piece here. The opponent can't give you both Omniscience and Enter the Infinite together since that would be suicide, so they have to give you one of those two plus Tooth and Nail instead. Tooth and Nail, of course, lets you win with either setup, no entwine required. If the opponent gives you Omniscience, you choose to find two creatures with Tooth and Nail and then cast them for free afterwards. If the opponent gives you Enter the Infinite, you draw your library and then have Tooth and Nail put two creatures from your hand onto the battlefield. What sucks about this three-card pile is that Tooth and Nail also requires you to play an additional two-card combo somewhere else in your deck, so there are a lot of slots occupied by otherwise dead cards; you won't realistically ever hardcast an Omniscience across the course of a game.
Baby's first combo actually works pretty well here. If the opponent chooses to put both Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond onto the battlefield, they die from the two-card combo. If they go for Enduring Ideal plus one of the other two cards instead, Emergent Ultimatum will shuffle the third card back into your library, and Enduring Ideal will pull it right back out, so there's no way for the opponent to stop you from getting your combo. The downside here is that you still need a way to either gain life or to make the opponent lose life, so if you don't have any way to do that already then the opponent will have ample opportunity to turn the game around.
The reason why Leyline of Abundance sucks (and the reason why I have never bothered giving it the time of day) is because it lacks redundancy, and it doesn't play well with other ramp cards. If you play Leyline, that means you're not playing the best ramp spells in Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl, and you are playing objectively worse mana dorks instead. That wouldn't be so bad if you had other cards that could support said dorks, but with Leyline as your only supporting card you instead run into the issue where every game you don't draw a Leyline is one where you're operating as a worse ramp deck than you could otherwise be. Worse yet, drawing Leyline outside of your opening hand is also terrible since there's no opportunity to play the card before turn 3 at which point you should be slamming haymakers. Hell, if all of that wasn't bad enough, Leyline is still problematic even when you do begin the game with it since, if the opponent is able to kill whatever dork you happen to play turn one, they effectively two-for-one you because now your Leyline isn't doing anything until you play and untap a second dork.
With the printing of Kinnan, Leyline of Abundance gets a lot better, as you now have additional redundancy which ensures you won't be that "same ramp deck but worse" in the instances where you don't draw a Leyline. And because Kinnan only costs two, he's easy to weave into turns, enabling lines like:
Land —> Cast Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, tap Hierarch, Llanowar Tribe, and your third land to activate Kinnan
What makes Kinnan so crazy is that he's a powerful ramp spell with an insane win condition stapled onto him. Paying seven mana to effectively cast Summoning Trap is absurd. It can be done at instant speed, and it skirts around countermagic because the creature is put straight into play. You don't even need to play with otherwise uncastable creatures like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to make this guy good. It may just be that finding six mana or seven mana threats that you would otherwise be able to cast is better than trying to high-roll some unplayable Eldrazi. And as long as Kinnan is in play, this can be done turn after turn. It's repeatable! That's way better than Leyline's weaksauce "spend my entire turn to put a +1/+1 counter on each of my three creatures." A repeatable, instant-speed, uncounterable, cost-efficient way to win the game that comes attached to an otherwise playable ramp spell is about the best thing a ramp deck could hope to ask for.
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WUBRGMr. Bones' Wild RideGRBUW Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
Hey arrogantAxolotl, excellent write-up on the new stuff. While I'm not a fan of polymorph style decks, Kinnan definitely piques my interest. With your lines of play in mind, I think I'll begin brewing up something with him.
Thanks for posting that. I haven’t got to test Kinnan much; but I got two online; so I may have to invest in a few more
In my early testing with both new Planeswalkers...they are SUPER powerful. 5-CMC is tough (our sweet spot has always been four)...but I bit the billet and added Simian Spirit Guide.
I don’t know if a prison version for Lucca would be better; but even as straight up fair cards they are incredible
Hi guys. I'm a T&N veteran - several years and thousands of matches played. Once my LGS closed because of COVID-19 I decided to go online. I moved from Xmage to MTGO. I hate the fact I had to buy my deck a second time but the community and atmosphere is great there. Currently I'm in the process of creating a Tooth & Nail guide. I will post it somewhere in about 2-3 weeks and let you know.
First and foremost, I'm fairly convinced that Tooth and Nail is a dead card now. Ikoria just released a smattering of new cards that all threaten to do the same thing as Tooth and Nail, only better, so there seems to be little reason to pursue ramping into Tooth and Nail at this point.
Also, arrogantAxolotl has already mentioned some 3 card piles to go withEmergent Ulitmatum are there any others ?
There are others. The piles I posted earlier were just the most compact ones I managed to cook up. If you wanted, you could certainly build a pile like:
Pile 1: Omniscience + Enter the Infinite
This is just a death sentence. Barring something like Narset, the opponent can't give you this pile.
Pile 2: Omniscience + Dark Petition
If the opponent gives you this pile, you can use the Dark Petition to find Enter the Infinite since Emergent Ultimatum shuffles the third card back into your library. From there, you can cast Enter the Infinite for free with your Omniscience, and that leads you back to pile 1.
Pile 3: Enter the Infinite + Dark Petition
Provided you have spell mastery (you'll only need one other instant or sorcery to get there since you get to cast Enter the Infinite before Dark Petition if you want), you draw your deck and add BBB to your mana pool. What can you do with BBB? Well, if you convert it to blue, you can win the game off Thassa's Oracle, but to do that you'll need to play something like Ashiok followed by two Mox Amber.
To make a good pile for Emergent Ultimatum, you need to find a combination of cards that kills the opponent no matter what they choose. It needs to use as few cards as possible to prevent clogging your deck with dead cards, and it needs to kill the opponent immediately; you don't want to give them a chance to fight back. Furthermore, you want each card in the pile to be useful on its own since there's no sense in playing dead cards if you don't have to. To top it all off, it would really help if all of these cards were in colors you already wanted to play, so you don't have to stretch yourself thin playing OmniDoor ThragFire. All of these stipulations really narrow down the number of viable possibilities. After all, if you're going through the trouble of casting Emergent Ultimatum, you don't want to create a pile that will always result in something akin to a slightly cheaper Omniscience when you could instead be winning the game outright. Take this pile for instance:
This one's not too bad. The cards are significantly less expensive than something like Enter the Infinite, and they're (mostly) in the same color. The problem with this pile is that it's vulnerable to several different axes of attack. For one, Wound Reflection gives the opponent an opportunity to figure something out as it won't kill them until the end of the turn. Sure, they don't get to untap, but if they already have mana available, that could spell trouble. An opponent could, for instance, destroy your enchantment with an Assassin's Trophy. They could also gain additional life with something like a food token provided they don't lose any additional life that turn. Hell, if they have more than 20 life, this combo can't even kill them; the opponent just straight up lives. Leyline of Sanctity gets through this as well.
Having said all of this, I do want to mention that I'm far from exhausting every viable combo. In fact, I'm sure someone somewhere will probably think of something better than I have. I haven't even mentioned how Emergent Ultimatum gets a lot worse if you're relying on one combo piece to be in your deck and then you mill it or draw it or whatever. Still, the payoff is tantalizing enough to warrant exploring, and I'm going to mess around with the card to see what I can learn whenever I next get the chance.
I have been trying out Huntmaster of the Fells as a one of in a pact list, it’s really good vs tribal decks Humans/Eldrazi/Merfolk. These decks run little to no removal the longer Huntmaster stays in play the better it gets.
Sorry Kireek1, I haven't been paying attention to this forum for a bit. Discord server can be found at https://discord.gg/CVQBJBk but we've been very quiet lately. Feel free to get a discussion going in there.
I think it’s funny that Ari Lax and others are saying “We were all so dumb for missing abundant growth for all these years...”. We weren’t! I’ve been playing it for years... and I remember Michael Majors discussing how good it was years ago.
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Doesn’t work well with Arbor Elf, and probably just worse than Leyline of Abundance, though perhaps it can be played alongside it.
MODERN: Pure Pili-ness GU // Red Devotion RR // Green Devotion Variants GRWUG // U/G Emerge CGU // Lots and Lots of Brews BGRUWC
Problem with those builds is that they didn't work well if your opener doesn't have a leyline. This might be a fix.
If I were to use Fiend Artisan to sac a Woodfall Primus, grabbing a Restoration Angel, would primus be back on the battlefield when the angel's ETB resolves?
Thanks
I tested him in a Kiki-Jiki "Twin Pseudo-Pod" variant (and a teeny bit in an older Leyline-Freed From the Real build) and, while he demands blue mana somewhat strongly and he's vulnerable to creature removal, he's quite good anyway. Notably, his activated ability lets you cheat in creatures even if your only big mana sources are planeswalkers and Nykthos. He's hilarious in Tooth and Nail builds because he hits Emrakul deceptively often.
Yes, Woodfall Primus would be back from Persist by the time Restoration Angel ETB. Have fun getting 2 Primus triggers from that!
Yes! The Woodfall would come back in with a counter, get bounced, and come back as a "new" Primus
The idea of using him in an Emrakul deck is an interesting one. He is both a ramp and a win-con. Definitely a build around card; but could be a situation where we don't have to warp the deck too much to support him.
P.S. SOOOOO many streamers have been playing Green Devotion lately. All of them appear to be the Karn build (makes sense given how good of a card it is in big mana decks...) but its nice to see such big names in Modern streaming our deck!
First and foremost, I'm fairly convinced that Tooth and Nail is a dead card now. Ikoria just released a smattering of new cards that all threaten to do the same thing as Tooth and Nail, only better, so there seems to be little reason to pursue ramping into Tooth and Nail at this point. I'm not sure which card has the most merit yet since I haven't gotten the chance to actually sit down and test any of them, but their applicability on paper is plain as day. One or more of these cards will just straight up be better.
Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast — This is a Polymorph that you can ramp into. Polymorph has always been a powerful card, but the setup required to get Polymorph to work has always made the card seemingly unviable. You have to be able to build a reasonable deck without any creatures, save one or two for Polymorph itself. Then, you have to be able to produce a creature somehow, be it either a creature token or a card that can somehow turn itself into a creature, like man-lands for example. Finally, you have to cast and resolve Polymorph. If the opponent kills the creature in response, the spell fizzles, and you get nothing.
While Lukka doesn't address that last issue, he does make enormous ground on the other two. Because Lukka always cascades upwards, if your deck only contains creatures with the same converted mana cost save for one of them, Lukka will always find that one target 100% of the time. This allows you to build a Polymorph deck with actual creature cards, and mana dorks are seemingly perfect for this; they increase the speed by which you can cast Lukka while simultaneously being the targets that Lukka needs. Not to mention, without Lukka, mana dorks are still independently going to be useful on their own. They'll ramp you into whatever other valuable cards make up the rest of your curve.
Now, that isn't to say that Lukka isn't without his faults. Generally speaking, Lukka's other two abilities suck. If you're only playing 1-drops, you don't particularly care if you exile any for you to cast later, but you would care a great deal if you happened to remove the only remaining card that's eligible for Lukka's -2 ability. As such, Lukka's first ability can be a significant liability. His ultimate, in turn, is also sucks. If all you intend to do is cheat a spaghetti monster into play, not only will you not activate his first ability to generate loyalty in the first place, but you also won't have much of any power on the battlefield with which to capitalize off of Lukka's third ability even if you could activate it. Lukka also costs more than his Polymorph counterparts at five instead of four.
On another note, I do think it's worth mentioning that Lukka can activate his minus ability back to back. Say the Emrakul you pull out with Lukka gets bounced by T3feri. Next turn, you can activate Lukka's minus ability again and pull out another Emrakul, provided you have another copy anyway.
Emergent Ultimatum — This is Tooth and Nail, but for seven mana instead of nine. Granted, the color requirements are certainly more difficult, but seven mana is also substantially easier to get to than nine. Not to mention, even if you didn't have the right combination of colors to cast this at seven mana, you almost assuredly would by the time you hit nine. Anywho, here are some piles I cooked up:
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy — On the surface, this might not look like a replacement for Tooth and Nail, but it most assuredly is.
The reason why Leyline of Abundance sucks (and the reason why I have never bothered giving it the time of day) is because it lacks redundancy, and it doesn't play well with other ramp cards. If you play Leyline, that means you're not playing the best ramp spells in Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl, and you are playing objectively worse mana dorks instead. That wouldn't be so bad if you had other cards that could support said dorks, but with Leyline as your only supporting card you instead run into the issue where every game you don't draw a Leyline is one where you're operating as a worse ramp deck than you could otherwise be. Worse yet, drawing Leyline outside of your opening hand is also terrible since there's no opportunity to play the card before turn 3 at which point you should be slamming haymakers. Hell, if all of that wasn't bad enough, Leyline is still problematic even when you do begin the game with it since, if the opponent is able to kill whatever dork you happen to play turn one, they effectively two-for-one you because now your Leyline isn't doing anything until you play and untap a second dork.
With the printing of Kinnan, Leyline of Abundance gets a lot better, as you now have additional redundancy which ensures you won't be that "same ramp deck but worse" in the instances where you don't draw a Leyline. And because Kinnan only costs two, he's easy to weave into turns, enabling lines like:
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
This is a really interesting thought...I doubt it; but it would be fun to try!
Thanks for posting that. I haven’t got to test Kinnan much; but I got two online; so I may have to invest in a few more
In my early testing with both new Planeswalkers...they are SUPER powerful. 5-CMC is tough (our sweet spot has always been four)...but I bit the billet and added Simian Spirit Guide.
I don’t know if a prison version for Lucca would be better; but even as straight up fair cards they are incredible
You wot mate? Talking shiet about T&N, huh? The Timmy Senior in his propeller hat is about to teach you a lesson. Take this:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/2968721#paper
Decent start considering I started playing on MTGO just 2 weeks ago. Be patient. Guide is on the way.
Also, arrogantAxolotl has already mentioned some 3 card piles to go withEmergent Ulitmatum are there any others ?
This is just a death sentence. Barring something like Narset, the opponent can't give you this pile.
Pile 2: Omniscience + Dark Petition
If the opponent gives you this pile, you can use the Dark Petition to find Enter the Infinite since Emergent Ultimatum shuffles the third card back into your library. From there, you can cast Enter the Infinite for free with your Omniscience, and that leads you back to pile 1.
Pile 3: Enter the Infinite + Dark Petition
Provided you have spell mastery (you'll only need one other instant or sorcery to get there since you get to cast Enter the Infinite before Dark Petition if you want), you draw your deck and add BBB to your mana pool. What can you do with BBB? Well, if you convert it to blue, you can win the game off Thassa's Oracle, but to do that you'll need to play something like Ashiok followed by two Mox Amber.
Pile 3 illustrates the problem that many Emergent Ultimatum piles have. Are you going to play Omniscience, Enter the Infinite, Dark Petition, Emergent Ultimatum, Thassa's Oracle, Ashiok, Dream Render, and Mox Amber all in the same deck? Probably not. And if you're not playing all those cards, Emergent Ultimatum effectively just becomes a less expensive Enter the Infinite that sometimes fizzles because the opponent controls an Ashiok or something.
To make a good pile for Emergent Ultimatum, you need to find a combination of cards that kills the opponent no matter what they choose. It needs to use as few cards as possible to prevent clogging your deck with dead cards, and it needs to kill the opponent immediately; you don't want to give them a chance to fight back. Furthermore, you want each card in the pile to be useful on its own since there's no sense in playing dead cards if you don't have to. To top it all off, it would really help if all of these cards were in colors you already wanted to play, so you don't have to stretch yourself thin playing OmniDoor ThragFire. All of these stipulations really narrow down the number of viable possibilities. After all, if you're going through the trouble of casting Emergent Ultimatum, you don't want to create a pile that will always result in something akin to a slightly cheaper Omniscience when you could instead be winning the game outright. Take this pile for instance:
Having said all of this, I do want to mention that I'm far from exhausting every viable combo. In fact, I'm sure someone somewhere will probably think of something better than I have. I haven't even mentioned how Emergent Ultimatum gets a lot worse if you're relying on one combo piece to be in your deck and then you mill it or draw it or whatever. Still, the payoff is tantalizing enough to warrant exploring, and I'm going to mess around with the card to see what I can learn whenever I next get the chance.
EDIT: I spaced out and forgot Emergent Ultimatum only let's you find monocolored cards. Replace Revival // Revenge in the above combo with Fraying Omnipotence, and it checks out.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!