I know Hangarback walker is great. GREAT even. However, with the losses fast aggressive decks are sustaining, the "Big Eldrazi/Midrange" decks are likely to be prominent. Being able to go under those decks early and often is essential. Hangarback slows your deck down by a turn maybe, and that will easily be the difference versus these new age ramp decks that are going to flood standard.
You may be right and I may be running too many walkers but at worst it ends up a 2 mana colorless Doomed Traveler which with Ghostfire Blade, Dominator Drone, and Smothering Abomination I don't see how that's a bad thing.
Also after some gold fishing I'm going to try Vile Aggregate over Wasteland Strangler since its really hard for my deck to get the Strangler to trigger whereas Aggregate is always working.
If you are going aggro, I don't see how you can not have Ruination Guide standing at the center of the deck. Eldrazi Skyspawner is a card I would look pretty hard at. Ghirapur Gearcrafter sees a little play in artifact decks and Skyspawner is mostly better. Painful Truths is the best card draw available for 3+ color decks that include , which fits here.
There are a lot of good viable 3 drops that the guide has to fight with. Not saying its terrible but this deck feels really close to the zombie decks from innistrad and back then, while decent, Diregraf Captain could not hold a candle to the likes of Geralf's Messenger, Dreg Mangler, and Varolz, the Scar-Striped which has counterparts in this slot (or better, except varolz, that guy is weird). That said the captain didn't have an equipment or something that can poop out a bunch of 1/1 tokens.
That skyspawner is terrible. Artifact decks ran that because they didn't have better options. We do.
Painful Truths I cannot see how its better then Read the Bones in an aggro deck. I'd rather have the option scry 2 cards I look at 4 different cards instead of 3 random cards.
I played a lot of zombies back in innistrad and this is feeling like it so I'm going with what I learned. That being said this is a different beast in a different meta (don't have to worry about turn 4 Elesh Norns, just turn 6-7 Ulamogs) so I'm not going to shy away from trying anything to make this deck work! Except Eldrazi Skyspawner.
I'm also going to be building a deck like this. Its rakdos but I am considering adding a little bit of blue for Mist Intruder and Ruination Guide but I'm starting at this base:
The issue with venom is not that its not good...its that there are ALOT of good 2 drop slivers to run, and he is amazing if you run him with thorncaster.
Anyway I ran slivers for a bit and got rolled during innistrad/rtr with slivers but the new kids on the block made me take a second look. Here is my current brew:
My SB is currently under consideration. I'm thinking 2 megantic sliver and 2 constricting sliver in the SB.
Anyway as you can see my mana base needs some serious tweaking.
I feel with such a painful mana base syphon is required, not too mention its lifelink can steal games.
Bonescythe from previous playing is a much better finisher then all the other "finisher" slivers combined, megantic and battle slivers.
Thorncaster was in the list since I feel its an insanely powerful card, esp with the venom sliver but with the spoiling of the hivelord he got dropped in favor of it.
The one thing I'm worried about with my version is...Jace, architect of thought, hence the two banishing lights. He's basically the wall I cant get through if my predatory sliver bites the dust.
I have considered dropping Blur in favor of Belligerent Sliver. Loosing the haste could suck but getting more evasion is much needed.
I'm not a fan of leeching sliver but then again, I'm not running stirrings. I like Dylan's decklist so I may "borrow" it if mine ends up crashing and burning.
So am I the only one that thinks jace is aweful? Its a 4 mana mill/unsummon. How is this any good? I dont mean that elistly. I'm just saying that I cant see why people think thats good. at 4 mana you could gifts, much to the same result if not better.
I don't understand it either, I play combo/aggro.
My friend is the Control player and he says its utter garbage. I trust his judgement more then mine.
Hell, his ultimate isn't even close to AoT's, Yay for a 1 sided timetwister, what does that do you're topdeck? whoops. At least with AoT you grab your wincon and either your opponents fattiest fatty or his win con.
You know, other then his shut down of 1/X's and drawing cards. Thats all.
I just noticed the new Convoke text as well. I don't think there's a functional difference between old and new wording (reducing the cost vs paying for the cost)
See above with Myr Superion. Old reminder text says reduces. New text says you tapping the creature to help cast the spell, not reduce the cost. That's actually a fairly big difference.
So I've tried asking everyone I know, whether friends, fellow players at FNM stores, wow guildmates, and family (which is odd because I am sure they saw it too) but I have the memory of a couple of scenes from a movie when I was a child. Its been bugging me for years and so, finally, I turn to the internet. IMDB doesn't seem to be helping or I have the wrong actor.
Anywho, the movie I believe had the story that the earth had lost part of its atmosphere that kept out most of the sun's radiation so while humans can be outside, they can't be for very long.
The main protagonist's parents genetically engineered him to have similar plant cells so he was the only one who could be outside for long periods of time.
Flash forward, the other scene I remember is him (late teens-mid twenties) skinny dipping with a blond during the day out in a pool (....no comment) and she ended up getting severely burned from the sun which he took inside and treated her burns with, either his abilities(?) or medicine I don't remember.
The last few scenes I remember are the house of the parents are quarantined in one of those bug bomb house covers near the end of the movie. The main antagonist (whom I believe is Dan Hedaya) is paranoidly hygienic and allergenic, enters the house in a hazmat suit only to find it has come to life in a rather gross, slimy, fungus/plant like state and is confronted by what appears to be the parent(s) turned into spores(?) and as he is fleeing the house it comes to life and rips his suit off him leaving him full rear nude (....no comment again) and then the house absorbs him into the floor.
Now with that bizzare description I've tried everything, most people seem to think its an old twilight zone/outer limits episode BUT I know it was in color, it was longer then most of those episodes, and if it did feature Dan Hedaya it was before Alien: Resurrection.
I understand that maybe this may be a tall order to ask but I can't find anything on it myself.
Yes, I can remember a skinny dipping blond and bare man butt but not the name. Mock away
I saw someone mention Crypt Ghast is still in standard with it for a bit. I know I have a lot of fun in EDH when I Ghast into Debt to the deathless. That might work finally?
My ONLY complaint about painland reprints is.....No Karplusan Forest or sulfurous Springs for my aggro decks. Guess I'm still stuck playing scry lands in aggro decks.
Yeah, looks like these abilities will be effects that were too good with the sliver density of M14. My predictions:
Blue: Combat damage draw (Curiosity)
Black: Deathtouch
Red: ??
Green: ETB Destroy noncreature non land permanent.
They have been careful not to give black Death touch but at this point it makes sense.
The blue already exists in the form of Synapse Sliver and while I don't think that they won't reuse that (the stuff they re-used was combat tricks mostly) It feels highly unlikely.
I could wish till I'm blue in the face that the green gives hexproof (even if it was a 1/1 for 7) but I doubt it will EVER happen, crystalline is nearly busted with just shroud.
Red could see the return of something like Two-Headed Sliver or perhaps something that pings when it comes into play? Maybe even Goblin Fireslinger type effect.
I don't know whether this land will make Slivers at least a tier 2 in Standard until M14 rotates out, but fact is that they have now 8 Rainbow lands available
I did fairly decent when I just had cavern, checks, and shocks. I kept it mostly naya (RWG) with blue for gale and SB had syphon but the 8 Rainbow lands miiight make it. I'll def have to give it a whirl again.
I hope the uncommons and Mythic (which everyone seems to skipped over on that sentence) are sweet though. Hopefully not too awesome because as it is I cant fit all the ones I want in my edh deck.
I hope its restriction keeps the price down, I need 1 for my foil sliver edh deck (not likely to happen, its slivers and EDH). *EDIT: wierd, it looks like they removed the line of text about any new slivers coming in m15*
Oh yea, I am happy they went back to the old art for slivers even though I was not frothing with rage over the m14 ones. Some of them actually looked pretty cool.
You may be right and I may be running too many walkers but at worst it ends up a 2 mana colorless Doomed Traveler which with Ghostfire Blade, Dominator Drone, and Smothering Abomination I don't see how that's a bad thing.
Also after some gold fishing I'm going to try Vile Aggregate over Wasteland Strangler since its really hard for my deck to get the Strangler to trigger whereas Aggregate is always working.
There are a lot of good viable 3 drops that the guide has to fight with. Not saying its terrible but this deck feels really close to the zombie decks from innistrad and back then, while decent, Diregraf Captain could not hold a candle to the likes of Geralf's Messenger, Dreg Mangler, and Varolz, the Scar-Striped which has counterparts in this slot (or better, except varolz, that guy is weird). That said the captain didn't have an equipment or something that can poop out a bunch of 1/1 tokens.
That skyspawner is terrible. Artifact decks ran that because they didn't have better options. We do.
Painful Truths I cannot see how its better then Read the Bones in an aggro deck. I'd rather have the option scry 2 cards I look at 4 different cards instead of 3 random cards.
I played a lot of zombies back in innistrad and this is feeling like it so I'm going with what I learned. That being said this is a different beast in a different meta (don't have to worry about turn 4 Elesh Norns, just turn 6-7 Ulamogs) so I'm not going to shy away from trying anything to make this deck work! Except Eldrazi Skyspawner.
5 Swamp
3 Mountain
4 Smoldering Marsh
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
1 Rogue's Passage
Creature 25
3 Endless One
4 Bloodsoaked Champion
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Forerunner of Slaughter
4 Dominator Drone
2 Wasteland Strangler
4 Smothering Abomination
3 Ghostfire Blade
3 Collateral Damage
3 Wild Slash
2 Titan's Presence
2 Transgress the Mind
2 Ruinous Path
1 Ghostfire Blade
2 Kologhan's Command
2 Roast
3 Dust Stalker
1 Crumble to Dust
2 Duress
2 Self-Inflicted wound
I'd like to go with 3 Wasteland Strangler but with only 4 sources of exile (honestly I'm not even going to rely on the ingest on the Dominator Drone) I can't really afford more.
I really like Endless One, Hangarback Walker, and Ghostfire Blade let me go late if required.
With the Smothering Abomination having stuff like Bloodsoaked Champion and Hangarback Walker to feed the card draw, also why I am running Collateral Damage.
I'll get to really playtest this Tuesday against friends so I'll find out how "decent" this rough draft is.
The issue with venom is not that its not good...its that there are ALOT of good 2 drop slivers to run, and he is amazing if you run him with thorncaster.
Anyway I ran slivers for a bit and got rolled during innistrad/rtr with slivers but the new kids on the block made me take a second look. Here is my current brew:
4 Sliver Hive
4 Mana Confluence
4 Mutavault
2 Stomping Ground
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Temple Garden
1 Watery Grave
1 Breeding Pool
1 Steam Vents
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Galerider Sliver
4 Striking Sliver
4 Predatory Sliver
4 Manaweft Sliver
4 Diffusion Sliver
4 Blur Sliver
4 Syphon Sliver
3 Bonescythe Sliver
2 Sliver Hivelord
3 Boros Charm
2 Banishing Light
My SB is currently under consideration. I'm thinking 2 megantic sliver and 2 constricting sliver in the SB.
Anyway as you can see my mana base needs some serious tweaking.
I feel with such a painful mana base syphon is required, not too mention its lifelink can steal games.
Bonescythe from previous playing is a much better finisher then all the other "finisher" slivers combined, megantic and battle slivers.
Thorncaster was in the list since I feel its an insanely powerful card, esp with the venom sliver but with the spoiling of the hivelord he got dropped in favor of it.
The one thing I'm worried about with my version is...Jace, architect of thought, hence the two banishing lights. He's basically the wall I cant get through if my predatory sliver bites the dust.
I have considered dropping Blur in favor of Belligerent Sliver. Loosing the haste could suck but getting more evasion is much needed.
I'm not a fan of leeching sliver but then again, I'm not running stirrings. I like Dylan's decklist so I may "borrow" it if mine ends up crashing and burning.
Also BOO POWER DOWNGRADE BOO ALL THE OTHER 5 COLOR SLIVERS WERE 7/7's. Okay, that was my only rant.
I don't understand it either, I play combo/aggro.
My friend is the Control player and he says its utter garbage. I trust his judgement more then mine.
Hell, his ultimate isn't even close to AoT's, Yay for a 1 sided timetwister, what does that do you're topdeck? whoops. At least with AoT you grab your wincon and either your opponents fattiest fatty or his win con.
You know, other then his shut down of 1/X's and drawing cards. Thats all.
According to the new reminder text, you are not reducing its cost to 0.
See above with Myr Superion. Old reminder text says reduces. New text says you tapping the creature to help cast the spell, not reduce the cost. That's actually a fairly big difference.
Does that even work with convoke? I mean, they are not actually tapping for mana.
Also, really? Affinity deck that uses this fool but no Mycosynth Golem? For shame.
Anywho, the movie I believe had the story that the earth had lost part of its atmosphere that kept out most of the sun's radiation so while humans can be outside, they can't be for very long.
The main protagonist's parents genetically engineered him to have similar plant cells so he was the only one who could be outside for long periods of time.
Flash forward, the other scene I remember is him (late teens-mid twenties) skinny dipping with a blond during the day out in a pool (....no comment) and she ended up getting severely burned from the sun which he took inside and treated her burns with, either his abilities(?) or medicine I don't remember.
The last few scenes I remember are the house of the parents are quarantined in one of those bug bomb house covers near the end of the movie. The main antagonist (whom I believe is Dan Hedaya) is paranoidly hygienic and allergenic, enters the house in a hazmat suit only to find it has come to life in a rather gross, slimy, fungus/plant like state and is confronted by what appears to be the parent(s) turned into spores(?) and as he is fleeing the house it comes to life and rips his suit off him leaving him full rear nude (....no comment again) and then the house absorbs him into the floor.
Now with that bizzare description I've tried everything, most people seem to think its an old twilight zone/outer limits episode BUT I know it was in color, it was longer then most of those episodes, and if it did feature Dan Hedaya it was before Alien: Resurrection.
I understand that maybe this may be a tall order to ask but I can't find anything on it myself.
Yes, I can remember a skinny dipping blond and bare man butt but not the name. Mock away
They have been careful not to give black Death touch but at this point it makes sense.
The blue already exists in the form of Synapse Sliver and while I don't think that they won't reuse that (the stuff they re-used was combat tricks mostly) It feels highly unlikely.
I could wish till I'm blue in the face that the green gives hexproof (even if it was a 1/1 for 7) but I doubt it will EVER happen, crystalline is nearly busted with just shroud.
Red could see the return of something like Two-Headed Sliver or perhaps something that pings when it comes into play? Maybe even Goblin Fireslinger type effect.
I did fairly decent when I just had cavern, checks, and shocks. I kept it mostly naya (RWG) with blue for gale and SB had syphon but the 8 Rainbow lands miiight make it. I'll def have to give it a whirl again.
I hope the uncommons and Mythic (which everyone seems to skipped over on that sentence) are sweet though. Hopefully not too awesome because as it is I cant fit all the ones I want in my edh deck.
I hope its restriction keeps the price down, I need 1 for my foil sliver edh deck (not likely to happen, its slivers and EDH). *EDIT: wierd, it looks like they removed the line of text about any new slivers coming in m15*
Oh yea, I am happy they went back to the old art for slivers even though I was not frothing with rage over the m14 ones. Some of them actually looked pretty cool.
So Nissa, Garruk, and Liliana huh. I guess we did have nicol bolas with chandra, jace, and liliana.