As a 2 year Kiki Pod player, I thought about this for a long time, and I actually concluded that Kiki Pod in it's current form works best with the currently used Misty Rainforest and Arid Mesa. Allow me to explain:
First of all, as few different kinds of fetchlands should be used, so as to maximise consistency across games. This is opposed to, for example, playing 3 of one kind, 2 of another, 2 of something else and 1 of a fourth kind. If the 4 card limit didn't exist, the best avenue would probably be 7-8 Windswept Heath (and simply exclude Steam Vents). With a maximum of 4 of the same land, we should do the next best thing, which is playing 4 of one and 3-4 of another.
All four colors need to be represented (as opposed to playing double green with Windswept Heath + Wooded Foothills for example). All fetchlands are five color lands in theory (or four color in this case), so doubling up on any color is unessesarily redundant. Too many Grove of the Burnwillows', and sometimes Fire-Lit Thickets, are played for stacking green or red to be a good idea, and having 7-8 white or blue fetchlands also isn't very necessary. Simply put, it's wrong to assume that since the distribution of mana costs in the deck is uneven, the fetchlands should therefore be proportionally uneven. This is traditionally true in Magic, but it isn't true with Fetchlands. The job of fetchlands is to have provide the player with maximum choice in what kind of land to fetch, especially in 4 or 5 color decks with double and triple symboled cards.
The two different kinds of fetchlands should compliment each other, rather than using the best possible one (Windswept Heath), and then using another for the "leftovers" (Scalding Tarn). The two most used colors, green and white, should be on separate fetchlands if multiple copies are being played (in other words, we shouldn't use Windswept Heath, because then we would need to use Scalding Tarn which isn't optimal for the deck).
Now we need to recognize that certain shocklands are fetched for more often and earlier in the game. Stomping Ground and Temple Garden are the most used because green is usually needed turn 1, and often followed up by white, while red needs to be stockpiled in case Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker needs to be casted from the hand.
It's big news that the original fetchlands are making a debut in modern, expect a lot of new decks to show up. Surprisingly however, after some thought, this isn't very big news for the Kiki Pod's manabase. With that said, it goes without saying that the modern metagame changes, and with it this deck. In the future, as the deck evolves, other fetchlands might be better, but for now 4 Misty Rainforest and 3-4 Arid Mesa are the best fetchlands to play.
If you for some reason want to play more than eight fetchlands, Windswept Heath would be the ninth.
TL;DR: The optimal combination of fetchlands for Kiki Pod as we know it is 4 Misty Rainforest, and 3-4 Arid Mesa.
Since KTK fetches will probably be the cheapest, I would recommend that players who are on a budget (and don't already own fetchlands) get Windswept Heath and Wooded Foothills. Your deck will be way heavier on green than it needs to be, but will cost quite a bit less.
Melira Pod actually wins over Kiki Pod more frequently due to better disruption in form of removal
It really doesn't. You can look at tournament reports over the course of the past year, the Kiki vs Melira matchup favors Kiki for being the less fair of the two decks. Kiki Pod is built to handle disruption as second nature.
Question, since it's been a while since I did any judging... What is the current solution if his decklist has 2 pilgrims and 4 archdruids, if he doesn't have the pilgrims?
How was the situation handled outside of the game loss?
Remove any cards from the deck that are illegal for the format or violate the maximum number allowed, fix any
failures to de-sideboard, restore any missing cards if they (or identical replacements) can be located, then alter the
decklist to reflect the remaining deck. If the remaining deck has too few cards, add basic lands of the player’s choice
to reach the minimum number. If the deck and decklist both violate a maximum cards restriction (usually too many
cards in a sideboard or more than four of a card), remove cards starting from the bottom of the appropriate section of
the list.
Being a much better aggro deck than ours, comboing off soon and not durdling around until you lose is important. There isn't much affinity in my local meta but if there was more I would run Kataki, War's Wage over Melira, Sylvok Outcast.
Here is my list. It changes often but this one is fairly polished. I have a few words on why I play mine different and why I think it should excel with some new tech.
I love Fire-Lit Thicket, much much more than Rugged Prairie. I will get to why in a moment. Filter lands have the glorious ability of making your shocklands tap for a third color. They are great mana fixing but running too many copies will screw you like Koopa mentioned. I have played at least 200-300 matches with this deck and I can say I have never wished I needed a Rugged Prairie instead of my Fire-Lit Thicket.
I don't run more than two Grove of the Burnwillows because I find myself locked into the aggro plan in many match-ups.
I did some playtesting, and I found what I think to be one of the greatest silver bullets in the mainboard right now. Scavenging Ooze is a monster. A late game Scavenging Ooze will just rip apart Jund, Melira Pod, Living End and any other graveyard based decks while gaining you a decent amount of life. This is why I run Fire-Lit Thicket over Rugged Prairie, because you need as many green sources as possible to use this card as best as possible. It can be removed fairly easily, but it doesn't die without a fight and will at least do it's real job of graveyard hate. If possible, try to have green sources up along with targets when this thing hits the board. Getting him out of bolt range is a cakewalk and should be a priority.
I don't run any Domri Rade because I just don't feel it works with the decks plan like Chord of Calling does. Being able to get a silver bullet at instant speed is a crippling play to your opponent. It works extremely well when you run 3-4 Wall of Roots, being worth GG towards casting it. Few things hurt more than cheating in a Ethersworn Canonist in response to the Cascade trigger vs. Living End.
What rarity do you guys think kitchen finks will be reprinted at? Just curous on everybody's thoughts.
Rare, but all my friends are betting uncommon. I think they underestimated finks when they made it uncommon, and any creature with multiple effects is likely to sit at rare.
I'm going to miss you all! Best of luck for whatever deck you wonderful gentlemen decide to take on next.
First of all, as few different kinds of fetchlands should be used, so as to maximise consistency across games. This is opposed to, for example, playing 3 of one kind, 2 of another, 2 of something else and 1 of a fourth kind. If the 4 card limit didn't exist, the best avenue would probably be 7-8 Windswept Heath (and simply exclude Steam Vents). With a maximum of 4 of the same land, we should do the next best thing, which is playing 4 of one and 3-4 of another.
All four colors need to be represented (as opposed to playing double green with Windswept Heath + Wooded Foothills for example). All fetchlands are five color lands in theory (or four color in this case), so doubling up on any color is unessesarily redundant. Too many Grove of the Burnwillows', and sometimes Fire-Lit Thickets, are played for stacking green or red to be a good idea, and having 7-8 white or blue fetchlands also isn't very necessary. Simply put, it's wrong to assume that since the distribution of mana costs in the deck is uneven, the fetchlands should therefore be proportionally uneven. This is traditionally true in Magic, but it isn't true with Fetchlands. The job of fetchlands is to have provide the player with maximum choice in what kind of land to fetch, especially in 4 or 5 color decks with double and triple symboled cards.
The two different kinds of fetchlands should compliment each other, rather than using the best possible one (Windswept Heath), and then using another for the "leftovers" (Scalding Tarn). The two most used colors, green and white, should be on separate fetchlands if multiple copies are being played (in other words, we shouldn't use Windswept Heath, because then we would need to use Scalding Tarn which isn't optimal for the deck).
There are then two possibilities, Misty Rainforest + Arid Mesa, or Wooded Foothills + Flooded Strand.
Now we need to recognize that certain shocklands are fetched for more often and earlier in the game. Stomping Ground and Temple Garden are the most used because green is usually needed turn 1, and often followed up by white, while red needs to be stockpiled in case Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker needs to be casted from the hand.
Since both Misty Rainforest and Arid Mesa can each fetch for Stomping Ground and Temple Garden, whereas Flooded Strand cannot fetch for Stomping Ground, Misty Rainforest + Arid Mesa is the better pair.
It's big news that the original fetchlands are making a debut in modern, expect a lot of new decks to show up. Surprisingly however, after some thought, this isn't very big news for the Kiki Pod's manabase. With that said, it goes without saying that the modern metagame changes, and with it this deck. In the future, as the deck evolves, other fetchlands might be better, but for now 4 Misty Rainforest and 3-4 Arid Mesa are the best fetchlands to play.
If you for some reason want to play more than eight fetchlands, Windswept Heath would be the ninth.
TL;DR: The optimal combination of fetchlands for Kiki Pod as we know it is 4 Misty Rainforest, and 3-4 Arid Mesa.
Since KTK fetches will probably be the cheapest, I would recommend that players who are on a budget (and don't already own fetchlands) get Windswept Heath and Wooded Foothills. Your deck will be way heavier on green than it needs to be, but will cost quite a bit less.
I would argue that Melira Pod actually is a grinder list due to the fact that Kiki Pod plays more silver bullets.
It really doesn't. You can look at tournament reports over the course of the past year, the Kiki vs Melira matchup favors Kiki for being the less fair of the two decks. Kiki Pod is built to handle disruption as second nature.
Grand Prix Richmond Top 8Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
3 Chord of Calling
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Noble Hierarch
3 Wall of Roots
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Spellskite
2 Voice of Resurgence
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Eternal Witness
1 Deceiver Exarch
4 Restoration Angel
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Zealous Conscripts
3 Arid Mesa
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Stomping Ground
1 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Plains
1 Forest
2 Gavony Township
1 Shatterstorm
1 Fiery Justice
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Avalanche Riders
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Thragtusk
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
3 Path to Exile
2 Negate
2 Combust
Not that it matters since he won anyway, but I think he misplayed in game 1.
His board state was a Birthing Pod, a Linvala, Keeper of Silence, a Noble Hierarch and 4 lands. He had a Restoration Angel in his hand among other cards. I expected him to sacrifice Linvala, Keeper of Silence to the Birthing Pod, paying 1 mana and 2 life, and find Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. With Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and only 3 mana available, he could copy the Noble Hierarch, giving him four mana to cast Restoration Angel and combo off. Assuming a Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker was in the library, that play would have been possible (someone might want to double-check).
What happened is he passed the turn doing no action and played Restoration Angel during combat to block. He eventually lost game 1.
Remove any cards from the deck that are illegal for the format or violate the maximum number allowed, fix any
failures to de-sideboard, restore any missing cards if they (or identical replacements) can be located, then alter the
decklist to reflect the remaining deck. If the remaining deck has too few cards, add basic lands of the player’s choice
to reach the minimum number. If the deck and decklist both violate a maximum cards restriction (usually too many
cards in a sideboard or more than four of a card), remove cards starting from the bottom of the appropriate section of
the list.
I don't think that is possible.
-1 Spellskite
-1 Linvala
-1 Voice
-1 Ooze
+3 Path
+1 Kataki
If I didn't have Kataki (which I chose not to in my local meta), I would bring in Thrun instead.
Tribal is not a super type. Read about types here.
Being a much better aggro deck than ours, comboing off soon and not durdling around until you lose is important. There isn't much affinity in my local meta but if there was more I would run Kataki, War's Wage over Melira, Sylvok Outcast.
Mana acceleration:
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Noble Hierarch
4 Wall of Roots
Combo peices:
3 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
2 Deceiver Exarch
3 Restoration Angel
1 Zealous Conscripts
1 Phantasmal Image
Creature sustinance:
3 Kitchen Finks
1 Murderous Redcap
Silver bullets:
1 Spellskite
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Voice of Resurgence
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Izzet Staticaster
Spells (7)
Creature finders:
4 Birthing Pod
3 Chord of Calling
Lands (23)
Fetchlands:
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Arid Mesa
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Mountain
1 Forest
Non-basic lands:
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Razorverge Thicket
1 Gavony Township
Creature removal:
3 Path to Exile
Land removal:
1 Avalanche Riders
2 Sowing Salt
Disruption:
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
2 Negate
Hatebears:
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
Fairer creatures:
1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
I love Fire-Lit Thicket, much much more than Rugged Prairie. I will get to why in a moment. Filter lands have the glorious ability of making your shocklands tap for a third color. They are great mana fixing but running too many copies will screw you like Koopa mentioned. I have played at least 200-300 matches with this deck and I can say I have never wished I needed a Rugged Prairie instead of my Fire-Lit Thicket.
I don't run more than two Grove of the Burnwillows because I find myself locked into the aggro plan in many match-ups.
I did some playtesting, and I found what I think to be one of the greatest silver bullets in the mainboard right now. Scavenging Ooze is a monster. A late game Scavenging Ooze will just rip apart Jund, Melira Pod, Living End and any other graveyard based decks while gaining you a decent amount of life. This is why I run Fire-Lit Thicket over Rugged Prairie, because you need as many green sources as possible to use this card as best as possible. It can be removed fairly easily, but it doesn't die without a fight and will at least do it's real job of graveyard hate. If possible, try to have green sources up along with targets when this thing hits the board. Getting him out of bolt range is a cakewalk and should be a priority.
I don't run any Domri Rade because I just don't feel it works with the decks plan like Chord of Calling does. Being able to get a silver bullet at instant speed is a crippling play to your opponent. It works extremely well when you run 3-4 Wall of Roots, being worth GG towards casting it. Few things hurt more than cheating in a Ethersworn Canonist in response to the Cascade trigger vs. Living End.
I could go on for hours about the deck really.
Rare, but all my friends are betting uncommon. I think they underestimated finks when they made it uncommon, and any creature with multiple effects is likely to sit at rare.