I guess not. Forget about psychoanalysis. Don't pursue a career in anything that requires your brain to burn calories.
/whoosh
You know what, vogler has a point. let's just focus on the deck.
If we're talking splash for the deck and getting to the endgame (presumably swarming the board and having 1 or 2 anthems online) I felt attracted to green over red. A couple of things pulled me here, the first being the Standard GW Tokens staple, Nissa, Voice of Zendikar, and the second being access to sweet removals like Abrupt Decay and Maelstrom pulse. Like how Jund curves from Inqui, Bob, Lily, we can do Inqui, Intangible, Nissa.
In the early game, she can start churning out tokens which get buffed by our anthems, and in the lategame she can buff whatever army we've already got.
Finally we can move on to something more useful to the forum.
If we splash green for merely Abrupt Decay or Maelstrom Pulse, we basically become a bad Abzan deck as these spells are in the least dominant colors Black and Green. I don't even use Terminate in my Mardu build because to cast it consistently I would have to dilute the mana base further. The greatest reasons for green splash is to increase the deck's speed with counters (Nissa + Gavony Township) and mana ramp (birds of paradise, noble). I've tested this GWb deck by Matt Nass and it is definitely a good deck. However, you lose out on discard spells which means whatever proactive strategy you're using needs to be as good as your opponent's since you lack interaction. And actually with this build, it is ill-advised to run a lot of removals like Abrupt Decay and Maelstrom Pulse which become available.
You would probably need 4 Selfless Spirits (side) with this type of deck, as you have no protection against boardwipes at all. It has a stronger end game so it definitely performs better against the Midrange archetype where you don't need discard spells anyways. Against other archetypes, I can't say whether it performs better than BW Tokens. It's definitely a faster deck but when your opponent has a stronger proactive strategy, it's going to be worse. 4 Gavony of Township means you can't afford to cast black consistently and you also lack the vigilance from Intangible Virtue (at least it is not recommend with 10 mana dorks).
In case you missed the warnings issued for flaming earlier: Keep it constructive, and keep it on-topic.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Well I'm happy 😊 4-0'd Wednesday night competitive modern at my LGS and got $54 credit for my trouble. Drew rather good matchups which helped.
Jund (2-0)
Martyr Proc (2-0)
Affinity (2-1)
Junk (2-1)
Your list has a few noticeable issues, first off I'm gonna assume the Islands are actually Plains as you have nothing that needs blue. Your lands in general need work as there is no need to run 12 WB lands plus 2 Vent. You're going to be much better off running 8 Wx fetchlands. 5 walkers isn't a major issue but Sculler is pretty lackluster now a days. I'd definitely suggest Bitterblossom but you don't need both it and Raise the Alarm so instead I'd cut Sculler and add in 2 more instant speed removal (Murderous Cut and something else), a 4th Spectral Procession, and move a Zealous main. Sideboard could use some work as well but the main is where you should focus for now.
The fetchlands im treing to trade into, or ill go get them in the store soon. Are 4 lands that come in play tapped not a bit slow? As to the sideboard what do yll suggest for an unknown meta?
You can't run 5 four-mana cards in this meta. If you draw even multiple copies of them, your opening hand becomes almost unplayable against most decks. I recommend cutting it to 3. Elspeth is decent with Raise the Alarm but she doesn't do much that Gideon doesn't do better.
I don't recommend Hallowed Moonlight as it's a very reactive spell, requiring you to have the mana up. Considering the sorcery speed nature of the deck, it's not the best hate we have against Company/ Dredge decks. For those, I recommend Flaying Tendrils and more graveyard hate like Nihil Spellbomb.
I know a lot of people run Blessed Alliance in the sideboard but it's too low impact for what it is. It 'can' be good against decks like Eldrazi/Infect and it's additional hate against Burn but you are already running a ton of hate for those decks. Our weak match-ups are the combo decks. With the exception of Tron, we can pad our percentage against these decks with cards like Selfless Spirit, Runed Halo, and Liliana of the Veil.
Stony silence has applications against Tron and Lantern Control but considering you are already running 3 Zealous Persecutions with a deck already greatly favored against Affinity, you don't need additional Affinity hate so consider that into account.
And I forgot to mention that having 1 artifact/enchantment hate is really important. There are a ton of good hate against the token archetype (e.g ensnaring bridge, worship, engineered explosives, etc.). Sundering Growth is decent.
So I played the original Modern Event Deck (as is) for fun a pile of times and holy hell I am hooked now. I was gonna do Norin Sisters but I think mission 1 is Tokens. I looked around and noticed 2 VERY interesting variants. First is Polymorph Tokens (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=13714&d=280796&f=MO) which seems interesting as hell. Basically gum up the board and play Emrakul off a token. The second was Mirror Tokens playing Mirrorweave which also seems really good (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=11605&d=266044&f=MO for an example). Mirrorweave seems really good sideboard, not sure it's validity main board. Then again, to be fair, we're playing Tokens so we like a good challenge.
Also: any thought about counter magic? Mana Tithe for example. How do we survive Anger? With the Modern Event Deck it was Tidehollow Sculler. Otherwise I assume it's IoK or Thoughtseize.
So I saw a post a few pages back about trying to fit in Read the Bones into the deck to help with emptying our hands on turn 5 so I was thinking; I really like read the bones but at 3cmc it competes for a really thick slot in our deck so I figured I would try to fit in Night's Whisper. Which has always been one of my favorite cards since it was printed in Fifth Dawn. I managed to fit three copies in and I must say; I really enjoy it. I've been testing this list on Cockatrice for a few days now and the Whispers are very good. They've helped me out attrition people even more, helped in the late game AND helped me keep some otherwise bad mulligans. I took out my maindecked Auriok Champions and my Elspeth Tirel since I cut the deck down to 23 lands 5cmc is pretty tough to hit some games; as much as I enjoy her. So far I must say that I really enjoy the main decked card draw, I also dropped from 3-3 split on Thoughtseizes and Inqusisitions down to 4-2 to help with the life loss from Night's Whisper
Also, in playing Death and Taxes I've found that Declaration in Stone is very good against Dredge so the 1-of SB copy has been pretty useful for that matchup.
Mirrorweave and Zealous Persecution make for a blow-out but one copy of Mirroweave makes it unreliable. If ZP isn't good in the match-up on it's own, it's a bad strategy.
Mirrorweave can also have offensive value but that depends on your opponent having a quality creature and you having enough creatures of your own to take advantage of it. You could run something like Hero of Bladehold, but it would still be a very unreliable strategy.
Mirroweave might be fun and it might be worth a try, but, in general, it seems to be a somewhat unreliable strategy.
Polymorph is probably even more unreliable. If you draw Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, it's over and those four copies of Polymorph are dead. Two lands that make U are cutting it pretty close too. The Hallowed Fountain is easily fetch-able, but the Island isn't. If the Fountain gets milled or Ghost Quartered, it might be tough.
Still, it might be fun enough to give it a try if you already has a copy of the Big Guy. I can't imaging a play set of Polymorph is going to set you back very much.
Regarding your deck DKbonnes, Anguished Unmaking is probably better main-deck; that gives you an out for just about everything. Things like Worship are no longer an auto-loss. Perhaps your-mileage-may-vary, but I don't really see Collective Brutality as good here; the only thing that can be semi-profitably pitched is Lingering Souls and I would still prefer to have four tokens myself. If the -2/-2 isn't good, Collective Brutality is a bad card. You've got three -2/-2 effects main-deck, that will feel really badly in many situations.
Eight token makers - not counting Plainswalkers - seems low. Twelve is the usual number. Bitterblossom seems more popular than Raise the Alarm these days, but you should strongly consider at least three copies of one of them.
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar can be an immediate, indestructible anthem. That probably gives him the edge over Elspeth, Knight-Errant. Elspeth shines when you have something big to benefit from the jump.
@pzbw7z Collective Brutality is actually absurdly good even if you only end up using one mode. Regularly though I'll tack on the Lose 2 Gain 2 mode if I have an extra Bitterblossom/Land in hand. It's also a great way to dump Thoughtseize vs Burn game 1. I'm running 2 main and have seriously thought of adding a 3rd copy sideboard.
Also I definitely concur that 12 token producers minimum is right, I run 13 myself cause of a Timely main.
So besides 4x Raise the Alarm, 4x Lingering Souls and 4x Spectral Procession I should be running more token producers, or am I reading some thing wrong?
Nope that's right, 12-14 Token sources is about right.
Some playtesting with it a few years led some to conclude that it didn't stick often enough. Since people hold their removal against us, myth realized let them use it with impunity upon activation.
What makes Gideon a good card here is that it evades and is indestructible
Some playtesting with it a few years led some to conclude that it didn't stick often enough. Since people hold their removal against us, myth realized let them use it with impunity upon activation.
What makes Gideon a good card here is that it evades and is indestructible
Yep, plus it's sorta a weird card to use imho.
On another note went 7-1 this week over 2 events, and just found out 2 more people in my local meta have finished UG Infect so I've had to shift my deck again to deal with that as up to 20-25% (4/16-20) of the FNM and weekly Competitive event meta could be UG Infect now. Ugh...
Some playtesting with it a few years led some to conclude that it didn't stick often enough. Since people hold their removal against us, myth realized let them use it with impunity upon activation.
What makes Gideon a good card here is that it evades and is indestructible
Yep, plus it's sorta a weird card to use imho.
On another note went 7-1 this week over 2 events, and just found out 2 more people in my local meta have finished UG Infect so I've had to shift my deck again to deal with that as up to 20-25% (4/16-20) of the FNM and weekly Competitive event meta could be UG Infect now. Ugh...
I find Zealous Persecution to be very good against infect, if you were looking for suggestions, also pretty good against affinity.
Some playtesting with it a few years led some to conclude that it didn't stick often enough. Since people hold their removal against us, myth realized let them use it with impunity upon activation.
What makes Gideon a good card here is that it evades and is indestructible
Yep, plus it's sorta a weird card to use imho.
On another note went 7-1 this week over 2 events, and just found out 2 more people in my local meta have finished UG Infect so I've had to shift my deck again to deal with that as up to 20-25% (4/16-20) of the FNM and weekly Competitive event meta could be UG Infect now. Ugh...
I find Zealous Persecution to be very good against infect, if you were looking for suggestions, also pretty good against affinity.
Yep it's already main, also Tokens is pretty good against Affinity in general LOL sorta feel sorry for them when I take them down game 1 without even trying. They're so used to that free win game 1 that it sorta throws them off sometimes losing to a deck less than half their speed like it's no big deal. I cut Stony #3 and AU from my board to add Fragmentize and Blessed Alliance, and I'm going to be cutting my mainboard Timely as it has been entirely unnecessary to put another Blessed Alliance in. Should be pretty good then between 4 IoK, 2 TS, 4 Path, 2 Brutality, Alliance, Smother, Cut, EE, and ZP main plus Alliance and Flaying Tendrils side.
Before I continue, is this the right goal of the discussion?
RIP: GWU Midrange (2012-2013) | GWR Ally (2014-2016)
Finally we can move on to something more useful to the forum.
If we splash green for merely Abrupt Decay or Maelstrom Pulse, we basically become a bad Abzan deck as these spells are in the least dominant colors Black and Green. I don't even use Terminate in my Mardu build because to cast it consistently I would have to dilute the mana base further. The greatest reasons for green splash is to increase the deck's speed with counters (Nissa + Gavony Township) and mana ramp (birds of paradise, noble). I've tested this GWb deck by Matt Nass and it is definitely a good deck. However, you lose out on discard spells which means whatever proactive strategy you're using needs to be as good as your opponent's since you lack interaction. And actually with this build, it is ill-advised to run a lot of removals like Abrupt Decay and Maelstrom Pulse which become available.
You would probably need 4 Selfless Spirits (side) with this type of deck, as you have no protection against boardwipes at all. It has a stronger end game so it definitely performs better against the Midrange archetype where you don't need discard spells anyways. Against other archetypes, I can't say whether it performs better than BW Tokens. It's definitely a faster deck but when your opponent has a stronger proactive strategy, it's going to be worse. 4 Gavony of Township means you can't afford to cast black consistently and you also lack the vigilance from Intangible Virtue (at least it is not recommend with 10 mana dorks).
In case you missed the warnings issued for flaming earlier: Keep it constructive, and keep it on-topic.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Jund (2-0)
Martyr Proc (2-0)
Affinity (2-1)
Junk (2-1)
A couple Stony Silence or other artifact hate for Affinity is probably a good idea.
You can't run 5 four-mana cards in this meta. If you draw even multiple copies of them, your opening hand becomes almost unplayable against most decks. I recommend cutting it to 3. Elspeth is decent with Raise the Alarm but she doesn't do much that Gideon doesn't do better.
I don't recommend Hallowed Moonlight as it's a very reactive spell, requiring you to have the mana up. Considering the sorcery speed nature of the deck, it's not the best hate we have against Company/ Dredge decks. For those, I recommend Flaying Tendrils and more graveyard hate like Nihil Spellbomb.
I know a lot of people run Blessed Alliance in the sideboard but it's too low impact for what it is. It 'can' be good against decks like Eldrazi/Infect and it's additional hate against Burn but you are already running a ton of hate for those decks. Our weak match-ups are the combo decks. With the exception of Tron, we can pad our percentage against these decks with cards like Selfless Spirit, Runed Halo, and Liliana of the Veil.
Stony silence has applications against Tron and Lantern Control but considering you are already running 3 Zealous Persecutions with a deck already greatly favored against Affinity, you don't need additional Affinity hate so consider that into account.
And I forgot to mention that having 1 artifact/enchantment hate is really important. There are a ton of good hate against the token archetype (e.g ensnaring bridge, worship, engineered explosives, etc.). Sundering Growth is decent.
Also: any thought about counter magic? Mana Tithe for example. How do we survive Anger? With the Modern Event Deck it was Tidehollow Sculler. Otherwise I assume it's IoK or Thoughtseize.
Also, in playing Death and Taxes I've found that Declaration in Stone is very good against Dredge so the 1-of SB copy has been pretty useful for that matchup.
4 Concealed Courtyard
1 Fetid Heath
2 Godless SHrine
4 Marsh Flats
3 Windswept Heath
2 Shambling Vent
1 Vault of the Archangel
2 Windbrisk Heights
3 Plains
1 Swamp
Instants - 7
4 Path to Exile
1 Smother
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Murderous Cut
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
3 Night's Whisper
Token Generators - 13
4 Bitterblossom
4 Lingering Souls
2 Timely Reinforcements
3 Spectral Procession
Enchantments - 4
4 Intangible Virtue
Planeswalker - 3
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Auriok Champion
2 Selfless Spirit
1 Hero of Bladehold
1 Pithing Needle
1 Declaration in Stone
2 Rest in Peace
1 Runed Halo
2 Stony Silence
1 Sundering Growth
1 Anguished Unmaking
1 Flaying Tendrils
My Art Page
Mirrorweave can also have offensive value but that depends on your opponent having a quality creature and you having enough creatures of your own to take advantage of it. You could run something like Hero of Bladehold, but it would still be a very unreliable strategy.
Mirroweave might be fun and it might be worth a try, but, in general, it seems to be a somewhat unreliable strategy.
Polymorph is probably even more unreliable. If you draw Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, it's over and those four copies of Polymorph are dead. Two lands that make U are cutting it pretty close too. The Hallowed Fountain is easily fetch-able, but the Island isn't. If the Fountain gets milled or Ghost Quartered, it might be tough.
Still, it might be fun enough to give it a try if you already has a copy of the Big Guy. I can't imaging a play set of Polymorph is going to set you back very much.
Regarding your deck DKbonnes, Anguished Unmaking is probably better main-deck; that gives you an out for just about everything. Things like Worship are no longer an auto-loss. Perhaps your-mileage-may-vary, but I don't really see Collective Brutality as good here; the only thing that can be semi-profitably pitched is Lingering Souls and I would still prefer to have four tokens myself. If the -2/-2 isn't good, Collective Brutality is a bad card. You've got three -2/-2 effects main-deck, that will feel really badly in many situations.
Eight token makers - not counting Plainswalkers - seems low. Twelve is the usual number. Bitterblossom seems more popular than Raise the Alarm these days, but you should strongly consider at least three copies of one of them.
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar can be an immediate, indestructible anthem. That probably gives him the edge over Elspeth, Knight-Errant. Elspeth shines when you have something big to benefit from the jump.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
Also I definitely concur that 12 token producers minimum is right, I run 13 myself cause of a Timely main.
Nope that's right, 12-14 Token sources is about right.
What makes Gideon a good card here is that it evades and is indestructible
Yep, plus it's sorta a weird card to use imho.
On another note went 7-1 this week over 2 events, and just found out 2 more people in my local meta have finished UG Infect so I've had to shift my deck again to deal with that as up to 20-25% (4/16-20) of the FNM and weekly Competitive event meta could be UG Infect now. Ugh...
I find Zealous Persecution to be very good against infect, if you were looking for suggestions, also pretty good against affinity.
Yep it's already main, also Tokens is pretty good against Affinity in general LOL sorta feel sorry for them when I take them down game 1 without even trying. They're so used to that free win game 1 that it sorta throws them off sometimes losing to a deck less than half their speed like it's no big deal. I cut Stony #3 and AU from my board to add Fragmentize and Blessed Alliance, and I'm going to be cutting my mainboard Timely as it has been entirely unnecessary to put another Blessed Alliance in. Should be pretty good then between 4 IoK, 2 TS, 4 Path, 2 Brutality, Alliance, Smother, Cut, EE, and ZP main plus Alliance and Flaying Tendrils side.