- 1classydude
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Feb 4, 20141classydude posted a message on Launch Giveaway!Clock of omens is an old favorite. There are a ton of great interactions to be had, and it often surpises you- especially in a commander deck where there are so many different things to stumble upon.Posted in: Announcements
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Bit late just reading some stuff in here, but this caught my eye. Why wouldn't he gain lifelink health? He controls the creature. Sure it's still general damage, but is there some reason he wouldn't gain the life that I'm missing?
I wasn't expecting it to just happen like that, but I certainly don't mind it.
I originally began looking at this as a way to play treasure cruise (started on a skeleton ship deck, currently here). Nicol Bolas has a lot of stuff you can do there, but I wanted something a little different. Vorosh and Crosis are currently at the top of my list. Vorosh gets me villainous wealth which is just perfect. And it would let me play some ramp cards which are a cheap way to power up. I'm currently leaning this way. Crosis brings red and fire and brimstone, which would be nice for inexpensive wrathing. If I go Vorosh there's still hellfire which is perfect (well, if the art had a dragon in it instead, then it would be perfect), and then maybe some other high cmc wonky wraths.
I'm not entirely sure what to do creature wise. I don't have many yet. I'm considering things like:
Right now I'm looking at thieves, sacrificial creatures, and minions (creature type). I'm not a huge fan of the idea of sticking a bunch of other dragons in. I like the creatures being his pawns.
Another element is the treasure. An ideal game would have vorosh attacking someone to end the game, and having a few diamonds and a handful of Gold artifacts on the battlefield. I feel like I could use more things here. Not many of these are permanents (and I like the idea of piling up my treasure).
sky diamond/moss diamond/charcoal diamond
signets?
Anything else dragon related as well, even reaching as far as 'evil' or 'selfish' (greed, harrow). Dragon blood, frost breath (okay, pretty weak..). Other things like hellfire that I may have missed. Frantic/obsessive search. Moonlight bargain, perilous vault. Stretching is okay, as long as I can envision the link. Considering the storage lands cuz it sorta feels like you're accumulating something (what are the on color ones? if the names fit I'd consider it).
The reason I'm posting this is because it's hard to find these cards. A lot of them don't make it into lists on here. I've been using thesaurus.com and running through it and gatherer trying to find things like gold wealth steal hoard.. So, anything that really fits well that I've missed? I'm sure I forgot some in making this, and I'm also sure there are some real gems to uncover somewhere...
Edit- Thieving magpie is decent. In my list for now. Also might use enslave. Big fan of chain of acid. Vorosh is a green dragon (both in cmc and art), he shoots acid, right? Seems good for an underpowered deck too. Might also slip acidic slime in there and pretend that's related. Could also play stream of acid. Pretty expensive and sorcery speed though. Hmm.
Death denied might help against monoblack so they can't finish off your hand later on (eating the good ones), but typically you just draw into more cyclers and you want them in the bin. Most matchups you keep churning for a while without needing an infusion. Might toss one in the side just cuz. Not like I don't have room to test things.
4 Street Wraith
2 Krosan Tusker
4 Architects of Will
2 Barkhide Mauler
4 Disciple of Malice
4 Monstrous Carabid
1 Viscera Dragger
2 Wild Dogs
Cyclers: Lands
3 Barren Moor
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Gnaw to the Bone
3 Evincar's Justice
Win:
4 Songs of the Damned
4 Drain Life
Other Lands:
4 Golgari Guildgate
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Forest
10 Swamp
1 Evincar's Justice
1 Viscera Dragger
2 Krosan Tusker
2 Doom Blade
3 Naturalize
Just what I initially tossed together. Cyclers themselves were pretty much 'hmm some of these and a few of those, yeah seems good' outside of the obvious includes. Wild dogs can hold off early if need be, especially if you can gnaw on upkeep if they don't trade him off. Typically cycling is better than hardcasting things. Rarely will a random dude kill someone I suspect. The primary gameplan is to cycle, cycle, cycle some more, gnaw to the bone or evincar's justice, cycle cyclecycleyclylclycle songs of the damned songs of the damned drain life you. You often get a fair deal of lands out, so multiples of drain life can just be shot at their face to make it a bit easier. If they gain a lot of life you might need to cast a couple guys at some point. Or just stall longer. Lands are just mashed together, but they seem fine so far. Might be tweaked. I could also see just putting justice in main, but I'll wait to make that decision til I play some more.
Like I said I haven't played it a ton, but it worked as advertised in those matches. Maybe a little more bad feeling because those matchups weren't fair. Cycling so many times means you're going to draw into your real cards, and hopefully those are good enough to hold you over. I'm using justice obviously, but crypt rats would be good also. One rats cost more than like my entire deck (well than it cost me, i got a few street wraiths and some other crap for free). It counts as a creature and can nuke for a lot which can be a secondary finisher with gnaws, but justice is fine. Can't be killed or bounced and comes out early enough. Can be boughtback. *shrug*
I dunno how it performs against delver or mbc. I've just been playing in the for fun room (haven't seen pauper games elsewhere really, and even there there's only like one at a time.. hopefully people come play). Sometime I'll get matched up against them though and find out. Delver seems like it might be hard. Mbc might nuke your hand too far, though a lot of the time you have spare lands you can bear to lose. Any good sideboard cards for delver/mbc? My board is just random stuff I had at the moment (so basically starter kit stuff). Maybe a couple grave scrabblers? Delver might just counter anything that matters. You can gnaw if they tap out but that's not really their plan ever, and while damns are instants, drains aren't.
It's kinda slow, but you're always doing something. That something being cycling. I maybe should've played my guys more often as guys, but I feel like drawing is better if you aren't under too much pressure. More playtesting should tell. Disciples obviously have applications against white decks. Wraiths can get in against swamps. It's grindy, but ideally you can bypass nightmarish board stall combat. Cuz combat is pretty simple. They attack, you take damage. Removal cards are basically mulligans against the deck, which is nice.
This deck was just something I tossed together while goldfishing brews in cockatrice a while back (and that's where dredgelon comes from, I just mashed words together for a save file), but recently it inspired me to get an mtgo account (skjall1992 showed interest, thus renewing my own, and we traded messages here about the deck- I think he's since added red for faithless looting (and other things), but mine for now is my original concept). It cost me 3ish tix for the entire thing from scratch (my sideboard is in a very primitive state atm). I've been playing it on the for fun section; I was concerned my 2 evolving wilds would just draw quits, plus I'm very new to the program anyway (which has its quirks).
How It Works
There are two primary win conditions here. Lotleth troll and zombie infestation. You can use commune with the gods to find either or grisly salvage to find troll or more gas (or a land if desperate). Infestation will grow you an army of 2/2s over time to swarm over. Troll will give you a very fast clock that has regen and after a turn a sizable butt. Once you get your threat down, you can chain cast shambling shell every turn. Use him to block and or put a +1/+1 counter down, then dredge more fuel into the yard to bring back next turn. Example- turn 2 lotleth troll, turn 3 discard 2 eidolons, play shell, discard eidolons again, sac shell, attack for 7. Next turn, dredge, mill another eidolon, play shell, recur 3 eidolons and discard them all, swing for a potential of 11. That's a pretty solid start, but I've had even better ones as well.
Eidolons are slightly better than squee once your engine is going (you get freshly milled eidolons when you cast shell versus having to wait an upkeep, and you also can get them back twice in one turn though that isn't not common). Squee is gas without gold spells. Typically you have a gold spell or two and can dig into a shell, but a mixture seems good in case shell gets taken from your yard (don't let them exile it from play, remember to sac it). Grisly salvage can be used at instant speed to empty your yard, either for more pump or to protect your eidolons (if not your poor shell). You lose the fresh mill, but hey what can you do.
The decision points are what to play versus what to discard (especially with infestation which can discard anything), waiting or not for regen up with troll, whether to dredge shell or not (if you want more mill and shell versus already having a gold card and preferring a draw step), which between troll and infestation given the option, whether or not to hardcast eidolons (typically bad, though if desperate and not under pressure... or they are at 1-2 life, here comes entropic eidolon!), whether to sac shell or not (watch for combat tricks, burn protection, blocking, not saccing for the extra attacker without summoning sickness, not needing to sac because you dredged another shell), plus the normal situational stuff. There's more to it than that (sideboards for example, how to play with and against- I don't have a ton of experience here but you don't have to autolose to hate), but the ideal game is straight forward. If everything goes perfectly you spend several turns doing the same thing, churning out zombies or fattening one up. Fortunately this is still fun! Huge resilient zombie trolls are neat, almost as neat as amassing a great hoard of zombies. Who doesn't love that?
Budget?
Very much so. I spent 3ish tix of my starting 5 putting this version together. I may use the rest in tweaking the sideboard, but that's still insanely cheap. In paper it's very cheap as well, as most cards are worth nothing. Squee is the only card worth anything iirc at about 1.50 each. If you want to keep it cheaper than a pack of sleeves, just play more eidolons. I don't think that's a sin. This is a huge selling point of the deck personally, but I really don't feel like I'm giving much up to budgetize it even. I'm going to be on the alert as far as mana issues and looking at budget options there, but it's playable as is. If nothing else it gives you some room to grow. If I make a paper version I may toss in lilianas (because they're laying around, not even sure if I want them mainboard though, at least side probably), my one abrupt (interaction, gold, instant, seems good...expensive :/), and whatever duals I have. So make sure you utilize your collection, there are things to consider adding.
4 Zombie Infestation
4 Lotleth Troll
Mill/Dig/Utility
4 Drown in Filth
4 Commune with the Gods
3 Grisly Salvage
Fuel
4 Entropic Eidolon
4 Verdant Eidolon
2 Enigma Eidolon
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Shambling Shell
Lands
10 Forest
11 Swamp
2 Evolving Wilds
3 Duress
4 Golgari Charm
2 Ranger's Guile
4 Tormod's Crypt
2 Putrefy
I drafted up a new version on a whim the other day and went out got mtgo and bought it. This is a very straight forward list:
A) lands are not great. It doesn't ruin you too often, but use whatever duals you have. You want both colors turn 2 often, and almost always by 3 (infestation is black, but you need to be casting gold spells). I think a couple evolvings is okay. Maybe even 3 or 4. One in the opening is good. It lets you fix, and the deck has NO main deck 1 drops. No life loss even, heh. Plus I'm running drown in filths, so bonus (compared to guildgates)
B) Numbers could be tweaked. I may alter mine over time. Like I said I've just been playing in the for fun duels (and winning basically every match..not sure that's really enough to change rooms though- a number of the players haven't seemed great so far (and I'm rusty)) Drown in filth hasn't been insane, but I haven't had much pressure on me (the one aggressive start I played against had 3 goblin guides, but infestation ate them up and he stalled out pretty bad).
C) The sideboard. I had duresses from the starter kit. I had guiles from the starter kit (I think that's where I got them.. in any case skjall initially had them in for path though I'm not sure he kept them or we need them, mostly I had spare slots so why not test it. I wanted golgari charms for rest in peace/leyline (regen can be decent vs pyroclasm/anger, -1 for decks with lots of little guys, and of course it's an instant speed gold card so there are tricks there). Crypts for other gy decks. Decays would be great, but are expensive. I think I may go back and add something that kills creatures at instant speed. Preferably gold... If not, just like doom blades or something. Twin could be hard (not that I'm playing against top tier decks atm). Charm could luck out on mites, plus duress, but I definitely could still see some instant speed reactive spell in the board at least.
So yeah, that's my deck right now. It does cool things and I haven't seen anyone else using this engine prior, so yeah there's some pride there (winning with it feels great no matter what the competition is :P). Will it win you anything? Outside of fairly casual games? I have no idea; I actually don't have that much experience with it. But I've won most if not all of the handful of games/matches I've played so far (and often quite easily), and skjall sounded like he was enjoying it. So hey, if you wanna play modern but only have a grimy 5 dollar bill, here you go!
I've looked at many other options for decks similar to this, but this one has some sweet things going on (aka I've dug through a *****load of cards (anything with graveyard, discard, every gold spell... but you can easily overlook things or just miss something with your search terms, so feel free to contribute). If you have your own take on it, have suggestions, or just wanna say something, welcome!
Edit- Well, another idea. I was thinking about discard against us, and while I think you can dig for a second win condition if needed, treasured find might be worth consideration from the side. It can get back win conditions, it can be used to get back another gold spell (even another milled treasured find), it could even grab a third land (milled or reuse a wilds). It may find it's way into the deck for a little test. Also added two putrefy to board for now. Could use some creeping corrosions. Hmm.