So I'm currently rocking some Chief of the Foundrys and Foundry Inspectors as my 3-drops, and I used to run Phyrexian Metamorph as well. What are some other fun 3-drop creature choices that people have found useful for MUD/Stax?
I've been running Null MUD/Terra Nova in some form or other for a while. Previous two iterations were a more straight-forward Terra Nova list based in part on this deck (using MTGStocks because MTGTop8 is down) before the restrictions of Chalice of the Void and Lodestone Golem, and then a Rage Extractor/Slash Panther build which worked for a little while. The current version ended up unintentionally similar to this deck.
I really dislike vehicles. I just can't see them being good in MUD; this is, mind you, a choice and not a misunderstanding of actually how good they are in MUD. That said, if you are successful with them, then there is plenty of reason to have them in the deck.
The only change I would make to the deck is to remove the 2 Chief of the Foundry and putting in 2 Foundry Inspector. I think it's more effective to have cheaper creatures rather than +1 / +1. The second suggestion I would make is trying to use Inventors' Fair. I think the card is absolutely bananas in MUD.
That's all I have. I like deck, well, because, I'm a MUD player as well and like seeing preferential variation.
I have mixed feelings with them. Fleetwheel Cruiser is sometimes a better Slash Panther, and sometimes a game-winning threat. Skysovereign is mostly just fantastic in my current not-really-existent meta.
Really? I figured that the +1/+1 is generally going to happen at least twice, and therefore can be pretty solid on a creature that can go head to head with most of the field. But I can test a version without it as well. I think the Foundry Inspectors definitely are pretty solid. I considered Inventors' Fair, though I'm not sure how well it slots in. Maybe as a 1-of.
In my tool-box list of MUD I used two Inventors' Fair. I think it would be fine as a one of. The life gain is inconsequential at times, but sometimes not. I'm going looking for my list now. I wonder if it's the one I posted here.
Here is the toolbox list. I'm going to see whether I can find the piece of paper I wrote my trawler list on...
Pardon the comment, but I wanted to chime in and offer some constructive critisism when I saw the deck list. As a shop pilot, I feel like this list is being pulled in 3 different places at once. I've played shops since 2006, and got back into the Northeast Vintage scene after a 4 year abscence in 2014.
Your deck has a lot of tensions, and they are most likely the reason you are experiencing mixed results. Aggro ravager decks lean on Arcbound Ravager for Dack protection, and is the main driver in Shop lists becoming more aggro on the Shop spectrum. Yes a revoker can shut off Dack, but it is at its best at shutting off artifact acceleration. Ravager keeps Dack from stealing blockers and fast mana, which is why it has been so widely adopted. Being how your list doesn't run them or Walking Ballista or Triskelion, there will be times a list like this will just lose to Dack Fayden. There are ways to build a successful shops list without Ravagers, but aggro shops is not the way to do it.
As for the cards you do have in this list, they are creating tensions that pull you in lots of different directions. Null Rod is an excellent card post restriction, but plays very poorly with vehicles, especially the skyship. Without Chalice and Lodestone, there is not enough density of spheres naturally draw your way into locking an opponent out of the game permenantly. Therefore, sphere effects need to be used as time walks, and you need to create effective tempo plays to close out the game. A card like Null Rod slows the game down to buy your spheres more time to do their job. It is your time walk in the right situation, but keeps Fleetwheel and Skyship from pressing the tempo advantage the lock pieces give and converting that time into a win. Shops aggro is NOT a control deck, and has a to take advantage of its window to win before Dack, Mentor or Oath can take over the game.
Your creature slots have to synergize with your lock pieces (and for the sake of discussion, we will be including vehicles as creatures). I agree with the 14 core lock pieces (4x sphere, 4x thorn, 4x wire, 1 chalice, 1 3-Ball) but past that, you need to see whats affected by the other stuff in the deck. Null Rods do synergize with Foundry Inspector and Fleetwheel ironically, but Rod mitigates the advantages of running fleetwheel. The trample damage on fleetwheel is necessary for killing Dack in one swing, so thats one tension.
The other tension is with the curve of your deck is in the slot choices surrounding Foundry Inspector. FI is a card thats not as effective against blue decks (which will comprise more than half the field at an event). It is there to aid the Shop mirror and to somewhat help with smoothing draws. FI is at its best when the strategy you take is to "go over the top". Its BEST when it helps to pump out things on the higher end of the curve, like wurmcoil engine, trike, etc. It is at its WORST when played alongside things you can already pay for, as it then essentially is just a textless 3/2 creature. The problem here is that porcelain legionaire and chief of the foundry are voth easily castable cards. They can all be reasonably played around 80% of the time with you opening hand turn 1, and often time through a thorn turn 1 without the aid of FI. They also only genrally require only 1 land to be played. Running them makes FI less effective in your list.
In my opinion, you need to decide if you want to play aggro or not. If you do, drop the rod and play ravager, or put it in the board and bring in ravager, as you gain more by not running it than by playing it.
You cut yourself off from Ravager, Walking Ballista, and Hangarback Walker by running Rod, and these are great in all your matchups. Ravager is damage evasion in shops, and because you cant sphere lock your opponwnt reliably, you need to deal him/her 20 to win. Hangarback is a shops mirror breaker and can play damage control if an opponent resolves a dack, JVP, Jace 2.0 or mentor. Both Hangarback and ballista play very will with ravager and can combine with ravager and shorten the turn clock faster under sphere for your opponent.
Once youve decided on that, you need to decide if you want to play vehicles or not. If so, cut the chaff and play them. They give you a very fast clock at the expense of making you softer vs rod. If not, then decide how you want to address the shops mirror: do you want to go big or small? If you go big, your winning by outclassing your opponent's threats. Your going to drop wurmcoils, have bigger Walking Ballistas, bigger hangarback walkers, and/or play trikes. Your FIs will mitigate mana screw and help insulate you from Wasteland effects. If you go small, you are playing under this strategy and looking to maximize damage output in the shortest amount of time. You will be playing Chief of the foundry, steel overseer and maybe include some number of Porcelain Legionaires. Your going to beat your opponents with 4/3 revokers, 4/4 Mishra's factories, and with Arcbound ravagers, balkistas, and hangerbacks that continue to grow larger every turn via steel overseer before the opponent can stabilize. You will be softer to a turn 1 null rod, but any rod after turn 3 is basically useless, as you have the damage on board to close out a game.
You need to decide on an angle of attack and go for the juggular with shops.
Lastly, i believe you mentioned that your deck came from an "imaginary meta". As I said before, I took a 4 year abscence from the tournament scene. However, I didnt walk away from Vintage. While I was laying down roots and starting a family, I had proxied a vintage gauntlet. I would play solitaire (and sometimes invite friends over to play) and see how hand played out, how they drew, and gain an understanding for how they developed in the early turns of the game. I did this for 4 1/2 years. When I got back into Vintage in 2014, I made top 8 in my very first tournament back, a February 1K at Top Deck Games. I knew what the meta was and took an old conventional shops list that I thought was well positioned. I lost to friends who I was unfortunate enought to get paired against round 1, and 2-0ed the rest of my matches into the top 8. If you dont get tye chance to play often, proxy up a gauntlet of the top performing archetypes and see how the cards and hands interact with each other. Its a great way to gain a lot of insight, and literally a great way to learn to pilot certain decks, like storm. I speak from experience... it kepts me sharp. I also took in a lot if content on vintage, listening to podcasts, watching the VSL (until it got terrible) and reading articles from vintage websites. I looked up Winning daily lists and top 8s of premiere events at MTGTop8.com to see what flex slots people were using in certain archetypes to try and understand the reason for the individual slot changes. I even wrote an article here on my tournament at Vintage Worlds 2015 to share that experience and info with my fellow vintage players. Theres a lot to gain if you look hard enough.
Pardon the comment, but I wanted to chime in and offer some constructive critisism when I saw the deck list. As a shop pilot, I feel like this list is being pulled in 3 different places at once. I've played shops since 2006, and got back into the Northeast Vintage scene after a 4 year absence in 2014.
I'm not about to hold posting here against you; the sub needs more activity and I welcome the critique. Northeast Vintage in 2014? Hmm... I might have met you around when you got back in if you played in the Catskills at all. If you stayed in the city, then never mind.
Your deck has a lot of tensions, and they are most likely the reason you are experiencing mixed results. Aggro ravager decks lean on Arcbound Ravager for Dack protection, and is the main driver in Shop lists becoming more aggro on the Shop spectrum. Yes a revoker can shut off Dack, but it is at its best at shutting off artifact acceleration. Ravager keeps Dack from stealing blockers and fast mana, which is why it has been so widely adopted. Being how your list doesn't run them or Walking Ballista or Triskelion, there will be times a list like this will just lose to Dack Fayden. There are ways to build a successful shops list without Ravagers, but aggro shops is not the way to do it.
Yeah, I wasn't sure how well I did at adapting it. I looked some at MtGTop8 lists, and was trying to avoid Null Rod issues, beyond the Vehicle interaction, which was still bugging me. The Vehicles were mostly a good way to replace the creature side of Lodestone Golem, and I haven't seen many games in Cockatrice or IRL testing in which Null Rod became a problem for me with them (maybe 1).
As for the cards you do have in this list, they are creating tensions that pull you in lots of different directions. Null Rod is an excellent card post restriction, but plays very poorly with vehicles, especially the skyship. Without Chalice and Lodestone, there is not enough density of spheres naturally draw your way into locking an opponent out of the game permanently. Therefore, sphere effects need to be used as time walks, and you need to create effective tempo plays to close out the game. A card like Null Rod slows the game down to buy your spheres more time to do their job. It is your time walk in the right situation, but keeps Fleetwheel and Skyship from pressing the tempo advantage the lock pieces give and converting that time into a win. Shops aggro is NOT a control deck, and has a to take advantage of its window to win before Dack, Mentor or Oath can take over the game.
I could see siding the Rods, though the original point when I made the deck was kinda making a statement by running Terra Nova with Rods mainboard. I think adapting to a Vehicle Aggro main plan makes more sense, though.
The other tension is with the curve of your deck is in the slot choices surrounding Foundry Inspector. FI is a card thats not as effective against blue decks (which will comprise more than half the field at an event). It is there to aid the Shop mirror and to somewhat help with smoothing draws. FI is at its best when the strategy you take is to "go over the top". Its BEST when it helps to pump out things on the higher end of the curve, like wurmcoil engine, trike, etc. It is at its WORST when played alongside things you can already pay for, as it then essentially is just a textless 3/2 creature. The problem here is that porcelain legionaire and chief of the foundry are voth easily castable cards. They can all be reasonably played around 80% of the time with you opening hand turn 1, and often time through a thorn turn 1 without the aid of FI. They also only genrally require only 1 land to be played. Running them makes FI less effective in your list.
I could certainly see cutting the Legionnaire straight out. Both the Legionnaire and the Chief were partially to deal with creatures like Thalia, but the tension is certainly there.
In my opinion, you need to decide if you want to play aggro or not. If you do, drop the rod and play ravager, or put it in the board and bring in ravager, as you gain more by not running it than by playing it.
I'll think about it. I'm not sure if I completely agree that Aggro necessitates Ravager, but I'm definitely thinking of siding the Rods either way.
Once youve decided on that, you need to decide if you want to play vehicles or not. If so, cut the chaff and play them. They give you a very fast clock at the expense of making you softer vs rod. If not, then decide how you want to address the shops mirror: do you want to go big or small? If you go big, your winning by outclassing your opponent's threats. Your going to drop wurmcoils, have bigger Walking Ballistas, bigger hangarback walkers, and/or play trikes. Your FIs will mitigate mana screw and help insulate you from Wasteland effects. If you go small, you are playing under this strategy and looking to maximize damage output in the shortest amount of time. You will be playing Chief of the foundry, steel overseer and maybe include some number of Porcelain Legionaires. Your going to beat your opponents with 4/3 revokers, 4/4 Mishra's factories, and with Arcbound ravagers, ballistas, and hangarbacks that continue to grow larger every turn via steel overseer before the opponent can stabilize. You will be softer to a turn 1 null rod, but any rod after turn 3 is basically useless, as you have the damage on board to close out a game.
Small Aggro seems better suited to the format at the moment, but I'll consider my options. I do really like dropping a wurmcoil.
Lastly, I believe you mentioned that your deck came from an "imaginary meta". As I said before, I took a 4 year absence from the tournament scene. However, I didn't walk away from Vintage. While I was laying down roots and starting a family, I had proxied a vintage gauntlet. I would play solitaire (and sometimes invite friends over to play) and see how hand played out, how they drew, and gain an understanding for how they developed in the early turns of the game. I did this for 4 1/2 years. When I got back into Vintage in 2014, I made top 8 in my very first tournament back, a February 1K at Top Deck Games. I knew what the meta was and took an old conventional shops list that I thought was well positioned. I lost to friends who I was unfortunate enough to get paired against round 1, and 2-0ed the rest of my matches into the top 8. If you don't get the chance to play often, proxy up a gauntlet of the top performing archetypes and see how the cards and hands interact with each other. Its a great way to gain a lot of insight, and literally a great way to learn to pilot certain decks, like storm. I speak from experience... it kept me sharp. I also took in a lot if content on vintage, listening to podcasts, watching the VSL (until it got terrible) and reading articles from vintage websites. I looked up Winning daily lists and top 8s of premiere events at MTGTop8.com to see what flex slots people were using in certain archetypes to try and understand the reason for the individual slot changes. I even wrote an article here on my tournament at Vintage Worlds 2015 to share that experience and info with my fellow vintage players. Theres a lot to gain if you look hard enough.
Yeah, I've tried to keep up playing on Cockatrice and occasionally in person when I have the chance. I playtest against basically any deck that way too, though I was having some specific trouble against Weenies, hence considering retooling, beyond the fact that my deck had been out of date in terms of new toys. Thanks for the advice!
I dont play on vovkatrice often, but I do test on there occasionally. My handle is StudpuppyNY. If you ever see me on there, feel free to hit me up for a game or watch... i play vintage exclusively on there.
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One of Affinitites poster kids Master of Etherium (but of course you need blue).
Metalworker can be insane.
Skill Borrower is a bit niche but you can use strange combinations with things like Staff of Domination (this also fits into your 3cmc qualification).
Cathodian can have solid utility, but I would consider it lackluster.
Cultivator Caravan can give you colored mana and be activated with a Factory or some such.
Could also do work against Marit Lage...
Reasonable suggestions. Not running blue, but I could see some of the colorless ones being considerations.
I considered the Trawler. Unfortunately, I'm not running Ravager, so it's much less abusable... That said, it is a good card.
Lol. My current list is:
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
4 Tangle Wire
2 Null Rod
1 Chalice of the Void
3 Fleetwheel Cruiser
1 Mana Crypt
1 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
1 Lodestone Golem
4 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Foundry Inspector
3 Porcelain Legionnaire
2 Chief of the Foundry
Lands (18):
4 Wasteland
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Mishra's Workshop
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Crucible of Worlds
2 Pithing Needle
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Triskelion
1 Karakas
I've been running Null MUD/Terra Nova in some form or other for a while. Previous two iterations were a more straight-forward Terra Nova list based in part on this deck (using MTGStocks because MTGTop8 is down) before the restrictions of Chalice of the Void and Lodestone Golem, and then a Rage Extractor/Slash Panther build which worked for a little while. The current version ended up unintentionally similar to this deck.
The only change I would make to the deck is to remove the 2 Chief of the Foundry and putting in 2 Foundry Inspector. I think it's more effective to have cheaper creatures rather than +1 / +1. The second suggestion I would make is trying to use Inventors' Fair. I think the card is absolutely bananas in MUD.
That's all I have. I like deck, well, because, I'm a MUD player as well and like seeing preferential variation.
Really? I figured that the +1/+1 is generally going to happen at least twice, and therefore can be pretty solid on a creature that can go head to head with most of the field. But I can test a version without it as well. I think the Foundry Inspectors definitely are pretty solid. I considered Inventors' Fair, though I'm not sure how well it slots in. Maybe as a 1-of.
Here is the toolbox list. I'm going to see whether I can find the piece of paper I wrote my trawler list on...
Pardon the comment, but I wanted to chime in and offer some constructive critisism when I saw the deck list. As a shop pilot, I feel like this list is being pulled in 3 different places at once. I've played shops since 2006, and got back into the Northeast Vintage scene after a 4 year abscence in 2014.
Your deck has a lot of tensions, and they are most likely the reason you are experiencing mixed results. Aggro ravager decks lean on Arcbound Ravager for Dack protection, and is the main driver in Shop lists becoming more aggro on the Shop spectrum. Yes a revoker can shut off Dack, but it is at its best at shutting off artifact acceleration. Ravager keeps Dack from stealing blockers and fast mana, which is why it has been so widely adopted. Being how your list doesn't run them or Walking Ballista or Triskelion, there will be times a list like this will just lose to Dack Fayden. There are ways to build a successful shops list without Ravagers, but aggro shops is not the way to do it.
As for the cards you do have in this list, they are creating tensions that pull you in lots of different directions. Null Rod is an excellent card post restriction, but plays very poorly with vehicles, especially the skyship. Without Chalice and Lodestone, there is not enough density of spheres naturally draw your way into locking an opponent out of the game permenantly. Therefore, sphere effects need to be used as time walks, and you need to create effective tempo plays to close out the game. A card like Null Rod slows the game down to buy your spheres more time to do their job. It is your time walk in the right situation, but keeps Fleetwheel and Skyship from pressing the tempo advantage the lock pieces give and converting that time into a win. Shops aggro is NOT a control deck, and has a to take advantage of its window to win before Dack, Mentor or Oath can take over the game.
Your creature slots have to synergize with your lock pieces (and for the sake of discussion, we will be including vehicles as creatures). I agree with the 14 core lock pieces (4x sphere, 4x thorn, 4x wire, 1 chalice, 1 3-Ball) but past that, you need to see whats affected by the other stuff in the deck. Null Rods do synergize with Foundry Inspector and Fleetwheel ironically, but Rod mitigates the advantages of running fleetwheel. The trample damage on fleetwheel is necessary for killing Dack in one swing, so thats one tension.
The other tension is with the curve of your deck is in the slot choices surrounding Foundry Inspector. FI is a card thats not as effective against blue decks (which will comprise more than half the field at an event). It is there to aid the Shop mirror and to somewhat help with smoothing draws. FI is at its best when the strategy you take is to "go over the top". Its BEST when it helps to pump out things on the higher end of the curve, like wurmcoil engine, trike, etc. It is at its WORST when played alongside things you can already pay for, as it then essentially is just a textless 3/2 creature. The problem here is that porcelain legionaire and chief of the foundry are voth easily castable cards. They can all be reasonably played around 80% of the time with you opening hand turn 1, and often time through a thorn turn 1 without the aid of FI. They also only genrally require only 1 land to be played. Running them makes FI less effective in your list.
In my opinion, you need to decide if you want to play aggro or not. If you do, drop the rod and play ravager, or put it in the board and bring in ravager, as you gain more by not running it than by playing it.
You cut yourself off from Ravager, Walking Ballista, and Hangarback Walker by running Rod, and these are great in all your matchups. Ravager is damage evasion in shops, and because you cant sphere lock your opponwnt reliably, you need to deal him/her 20 to win. Hangarback is a shops mirror breaker and can play damage control if an opponent resolves a dack, JVP, Jace 2.0 or mentor. Both Hangarback and ballista play very will with ravager and can combine with ravager and shorten the turn clock faster under sphere for your opponent.
Once youve decided on that, you need to decide if you want to play vehicles or not. If so, cut the chaff and play them. They give you a very fast clock at the expense of making you softer vs rod. If not, then decide how you want to address the shops mirror: do you want to go big or small? If you go big, your winning by outclassing your opponent's threats. Your going to drop wurmcoils, have bigger Walking Ballistas, bigger hangarback walkers, and/or play trikes. Your FIs will mitigate mana screw and help insulate you from Wasteland effects. If you go small, you are playing under this strategy and looking to maximize damage output in the shortest amount of time. You will be playing Chief of the foundry, steel overseer and maybe include some number of Porcelain Legionaires. Your going to beat your opponents with 4/3 revokers, 4/4 Mishra's factories, and with Arcbound ravagers, balkistas, and hangerbacks that continue to grow larger every turn via steel overseer before the opponent can stabilize. You will be softer to a turn 1 null rod, but any rod after turn 3 is basically useless, as you have the damage on board to close out a game.
You need to decide on an angle of attack and go for the juggular with shops.
Lastly, i believe you mentioned that your deck came from an "imaginary meta". As I said before, I took a 4 year abscence from the tournament scene. However, I didnt walk away from Vintage. While I was laying down roots and starting a family, I had proxied a vintage gauntlet. I would play solitaire (and sometimes invite friends over to play) and see how hand played out, how they drew, and gain an understanding for how they developed in the early turns of the game. I did this for 4 1/2 years. When I got back into Vintage in 2014, I made top 8 in my very first tournament back, a February 1K at Top Deck Games. I knew what the meta was and took an old conventional shops list that I thought was well positioned. I lost to friends who I was unfortunate enought to get paired against round 1, and 2-0ed the rest of my matches into the top 8. If you dont get tye chance to play often, proxy up a gauntlet of the top performing archetypes and see how the cards and hands interact with each other. Its a great way to gain a lot of insight, and literally a great way to learn to pilot certain decks, like storm. I speak from experience... it kepts me sharp. I also took in a lot if content on vintage, listening to podcasts, watching the VSL (until it got terrible) and reading articles from vintage websites. I looked up Winning daily lists and top 8s of premiere events at MTGTop8.com to see what flex slots people were using in certain archetypes to try and understand the reason for the individual slot changes. I even wrote an article here on my tournament at Vintage Worlds 2015 to share that experience and info with my fellow vintage players. Theres a lot to gain if you look hard enough.
Blue: teaching Magic players manners since 1995Shops: Teaching blue players manners since 2009
I'm not about to hold posting here against you; the sub needs more activity and I welcome the critique. Northeast Vintage in 2014? Hmm... I might have met you around when you got back in if you played in the Catskills at all. If you stayed in the city, then never mind.
Yeah, I wasn't sure how well I did at adapting it. I looked some at MtGTop8 lists, and was trying to avoid Null Rod issues, beyond the Vehicle interaction, which was still bugging me. The Vehicles were mostly a good way to replace the creature side of Lodestone Golem, and I haven't seen many games in Cockatrice or IRL testing in which Null Rod became a problem for me with them (maybe 1).
I could see siding the Rods, though the original point when I made the deck was kinda making a statement by running Terra Nova with Rods mainboard. I think adapting to a Vehicle Aggro main plan makes more sense, though.
I could certainly see cutting the Legionnaire straight out. Both the Legionnaire and the Chief were partially to deal with creatures like Thalia, but the tension is certainly there.
I'll think about it. I'm not sure if I completely agree that Aggro necessitates Ravager, but I'm definitely thinking of siding the Rods either way.
Small Aggro seems better suited to the format at the moment, but I'll consider my options. I do really like dropping a wurmcoil.
Yeah, I've tried to keep up playing on Cockatrice and occasionally in person when I have the chance. I playtest against basically any deck that way too, though I was having some specific trouble against Weenies, hence considering retooling, beyond the fact that my deck had been out of date in terms of new toys. Thanks for the advice!
Blue: teaching Magic players manners since 1995Shops: Teaching blue players manners since 2009