Interesting question. Well, we know there's approx 350,000 ABUR duals, and a set is worth about $1,000, so that's $350,000,000 right there. There's about 15,000 of each piece of power, and a set is worth maybe 15 grand, so that's another 225,000,000. So we're at a half-billion dollars in JUST duals and power. These are obviously very rough numbers, as we all know many of these cards are lost, damaged, or destroyed, making the numbers lower, but on the other hand alpha/beta/misprint/graded cards are worth a lot more, making the numbers higher. So let's just say a half-billion.
It's probably fair to say there are more than the above 350k of most valuable cards. If we say that there are at least 500 total cards that are worth at least $10, and each of those has at least 1 million copies... that'd be 5 billion as a floor. Realistically it's probably a lot higher... a lot of cards are worth WAY more than $10, and then there are foils, foreign foils, ect that have extreme prices ($1 million will buy you about 400 russian foil futuresight tarmogoyfs).
Given all that, I think it's fair to say the order of magnitude of the market value of all MTG cards is probably between 10 and 100 billion dollars.
Sup guys, lately my meta is full of fast decks, I wonder if a no 3-drop list could be better suited to play against that? A few more 1-2 drops and few less lands.
If anyone here plays/played a list with no 3 drops can you share your experiencies?
It may find a place in more toolbox nature decks since it enables you to play lots of silver bullets that you can search with it but doubt it will see much play in top tier decks.
It's a Tarmogoyf that flips Delver, triggers Pyromancer, and can be Snapcastered. And when it doesn't do that, it turns into a land drop while still triggering everything.
It can be good in the right shell but in most decks (midrange and delver) I'd rather play another threat, removal, discard or counter than this. I don't think these decks want a tutor but decks with more 1 of's might want it.
I think of this as a different kind of tutor... early game it's pretty mediocre, so it's not an automatic 4-of for bullets like most tutors. That said, I could see a deck like Junk running 2 copies. They could probably shave a land and run a 1-of spicy bomb. Something like grave titan or baneslayer angel. Probably also run a singleton shriekmaw. So now you've got a card that's a land early game, removal or a tarmogoyf mid-game, and a titan late game. Would also occasionally come in handy for grabbing a copy of scavenging ooze or a rhino. Seems decent, and junk shouldn't have any trouble getting to 4 card types by the time it wants to tutor for a bomb anyway.
You make sure that you have at least 40 green dorks and then some sort of finisher.
Traverse the Ulvenwald real power is going to be the toolbox effect it gives. Being able to play a bunch of one ofs and being able to tutor them up in the late game is going to be great. It just depends on whether modern has enough creatures that hate on important modern strategies.
I have to agree that traverse the ulvenwald looks pretty good. Once you hit the magic 4 card types, it highly resembles a green sun's zenith that can search for non-green.
Other options might include golgari charm (regen is relevant vs. supreme verdict and can be a crazy combat trick, and -1/-1 will occasionally help you) and celestial purge (hits a ton of stuff still).
One issue that I always have when tweaking this deck is working out the number of 1-ofs I should have. I feel like if I have too many I am risking some of the deck's consistency. How many one-ofs do you guys play?
My 1-ofs are Rites+target obviously, also 1 GGT and 1 Stinkweed Imp. After some time I wanted a 2nd big dredger to go with as problems with actually seeing Rites became really annoying. Reasoning for that balance between GGT and Imp are those : Imp is actually castable. And for some extent good - recurrable flying deathtouch blocker is pretty neat. GGT is not as impressive if you cast him in a deck full of Squees and Bloodghasts that don't like staying in GY, but 6 after the magic word "Dredge" is generally better than 5.
Shocklands are obviously 1-ofs and all utility lands like Mutavault or Vault of Archangel are usually 1-ofs too.
Deck can accept 1-ofs pretty well thanks to the mechanic of Dredge itself. It allows you to reuse cards but they are not really good in multiples, as you are dredging once-per-turn anyway.
MU-specific cards like Gnaw to the Bone that belong to sideboard are easily dredgeable, meaning you can see them more often. Frees SB slots and it feels pretty good.
@Burn matchup
I have severe problems with this MU and my personal opinion is that Burn is a very powerful deck in general, not just against Loam. Very fast, very consistent and has good options both maindeck and sideboard. Perhaps way too good.
You try to mount an offense and they ignore you, going face. We are not this fast.
You try to play some control game and find yourself way too slow once again.
It's just not working. At least for me. Sideboard options are hardly solving it because Burn can beat lifegain pretty easily.
I feel like burn is just going to be a crap matchup no matter what. leyline of sanctity is probably the only thing that would make it decent, but probably still not worth the slots since it's uncastable.
I'm growing bored with Kiki-Chord and Merfolk, so I think I am going to start building this deck. The biggest issue I have been having is coming up with a reliable mana base. I don't have access to the original Zendikar Fetches, but have sets of all the KTK Fetches. What split of Fetches and Shocks would be good if I wanted to run 23 lands and have a color breakdown of 45% green, 45% white, and 10% black? I will also plan on running 4 Hierarch and 3 Birds.
Thanks in advance!!!
until you can get zen fetches, I'd probably run 4 windswept heath, 2-4 wooded foothills, no more than 1 flooded strand, and skip the basic swamp. You'll want Turn 1 green source as often as possible, so prioritize fetching forests. I could see an argument for 4 birds/3 hierarch since black is still important and the 4th bird will help vs. blood moon.
Another option if you've got them lying around is pillar of the paruns or ancient ziggurat. I wouldn't run more than 1 of each, but that could take 1-2 fetch slots.
It's got to be Eye of Ugin. That card was designed with only expensive eldrazi in mind. Given that they're willing to print CMC 2 and 3 eldrazi going forward it generates insane amounts of mana when multiple cheap eldrazi spells are cast in a turn (something that couldn't previously be done with just 10-drops).
Agreed. Up until now, eye just meant you could cast a spaghetti monster for 13 instead of 15. This is fine because 1) If you can hard-cast a 13cc spell it should be able to win on the spot anyway, 2) you can't run a bunch of spaghetti monsters in your deck, and 3) tron has to be extremely focused on assembling a 3-card combo to get there.
With eldrazi now having casting costs in the 2-6 range, eye jumps to a level of mana acceleration greater even than sol ring, the moxen, mana crypt, and arguably even black lotus (since it's reusable). Add to that the high power level for converted CC of several of the new eldrazi and it explains why the deck is so insane. Sure, temple is a sol land and with such high-power bodies eldrazi would likely still be a deck in modern with just temple, it'd probably be acceptable, since without it's insane speed its weaknesses (such as almost no removal) will become relevant. Mimic is probably also ok when you can only cast 1 on turn 1 and it's probably not going to copy anything too crazy for a couple turns.
As for eye "killing" tron, I just don't agree. In my experience, tron wins most of its games by slamming turn 3 karn or turn 3 wurmcoil. By the time they get around to searching up their 1-of eye, activating it, and dropping a spaghetti monster the next turn, it really just meant they won faster. If I were a tron player, I think I'd just cut the eye, the emrakul, and maybe 1 other card and run 2-3 copies of the new ulamog.
Ignore the mana base, it's from an old list. Basically this gives us a 3rd path to victory: Zombie horde, conflagarate, or slam an Iona/Elesh norn. Griselbrand is the obvious 3rd choice, though more for his lifelink than card draw. I wish there was a good reanimator target with both haste and lifelink. 3 stinkweed because infestation is literally the only card you don't want in the grave. I kind of wonder if 4 rites is overkill... could probably cut one. Thoughts?
I think I'm going to come back to this deck for awhile, as I've done well with it and I've been getting crushed at FNM lately playing other stuff. Anyway, I've been thinking about ways to spice the deck up a bit, and I've got 3 cards I'd like to try out:
1) Gideon Jura: Seems a reasonable 1-of. It's hard to interact with and can break a stalled board wide open. 5 mana is hardly a challenge for this deck, and a finisher that can kill dudes or break a stalemate seems awesome.
2) Brave the elements: Every dude in our deck is white except ooze. This can save a guy from spot removal, push through some damage in a stalemate, let you kill an attacking bomb with a swarm, fog an opponent. Again seems like a stalemate breaker, which this deck occasionally needs. Again, I'd just do a 1-of.
3) Abzan charm: Looks like others already found this one. Exiling or drawing 2 both seem great, and even the counters could be relevant.
Anyway, this is my planned 1st draft. I'm putting the discard in the board.
It has been mentioned that Curse of Death's Hold will stop Viscera Seer in the combo, but keep an eye out for the Melira + Anafenza + Murderous Redcap combo. This is another way to combo off for infinite +1/+1 counters and it doesn't require a sac outlet.
Help me understand this combo, please. The only combo I see is using murderous redcap to do damage to itself, creating a loop where every time it dies, it comes back and triggers Anafenza, kin-tree spirit. However, the bolster mechanic says to add a +1/+1 counter to a creature you control with the least toughness. Since redcap will always enter the battlefield as a 2/2, won't you run into a situation where once all of your creatures (except redcap) have a toughness of at least 3, you'd be forced by the mechanic to put the counter on redcap... at that point the recap can still kill itself but every time it will come back as a 2/2, so the infinite combo would be irrelevant.
I said "play eternal" but I'm not 100% sure. I think it could be an awesome format, but could also be a bad format. All non-RL cards minus the legacy banned list is the starting point, but I think a handful of other cards would have to be banned to make the format not terrible. There are really only 3 I can think of off the top of my head:
wasteland: I love wasteland in legacy, I love pox, I love LD. With shocks, I really think it would be too good. show and tell: I truly think if you get rid of this and LED (which would already be gone), you've prettymuch eliminated the need for FOW to police the format, which goes a long way toward making blue less necessary, without actually making blue less good. brainstorm: This card with fetches just makes blue insane. Let's keep ponder, keep preordain, keep FOW, and let brainstorm go.
I agree with others that likely something from burn might have to go. I don't know what it would be... I hate the idea of axing price of progress. Maybe fireblast?
Another possible noble hierarch replacement is utopia sprawl. I plan on using it, partly for budget reasons, but also because it's harder to kill and enables some things dorks don't (turn 1 land, bird, turn 2 land, utopia sprawl on untapped land + loxodon, turn 3 land, rhino + path). You just have to make sure you pick the right color and run more forests.
I'd go sunpetal grove over canopy vista... IMO the fast lands are over-rated and I'd rather have check lands anyway. You can almost always play a shock or basic turn 1 and once you've done that, sunpetal grove is effectively savannah.
For voice, pridemage is reasonable. Also consider tidehollow sculler. I wouldn't run 4, but it has it's uses.
Ok, here's a WAY out-there thought as a lili replacement. I'd probably go as a 1-of: Go old-school and play icy manipulator! It's pseudo-LD on an empty board and then turns into removal if they play something.
I'm guessing the reason that Liliana is underperforming at the moment is that she kind of runs counter to what you are doing with the landkill. You don't really care if the opponent has to discard a card if they have a full hand and are locked out from casting anything. However she is probably the best card in the list against opponents that can run off of very low mana or combo out on you. Her permanent ability to edict away that small creature that will otherwise mess with you because you keep drawing land or landkill and that's not the issue is a real strength. Her ability to force the opponent to maintain a lower card count after the initial wave of landkill is probably very strong against combo.
It'll be interesting to see what your opinion of her is after you take the list to a big meta where you aren't seeing a relatively small selection of opponents. In most pox lists she's the all-star the opponent hates seeing land on the table opposite them.
I love the concept of your list btw. Landkill is under explored and in the right mix and the right meta can be very good. It has the problem of a lot of dead draws at times and it has to deal with the reality that some lists can run off of a low enough mana base that no lock is safe and there's no way to gain inevitability. This makes long drawn out sequences where you can't find a win-con for your life really frustrating at times.
I've played the archetype for twenty-plus years now and while I don't think it is possible to make it tier 1 at this point, due to random blank runs where you can't draw the thing you need, I think it is a lot of fun to play and it can absolutely shock some very high power lists in the process.
While lili is amazing in legacy pox (as you say, I generally find if I can untap with her on the board I've probably won the game), I've found her way worse in modern pox. The problem is vs. aggro and even midrange she is usually an expensive edict; you need at minimum 1 and preferably 2 turns of +1 ability to get a 2nd edict, and they can just discard their dead removal. Meanwhile, you don't always have cards you can profitably discard because you need to save your own removal for the dudes they're going to topdeck and immediately cast. Since we lack hymn to tourach and sinkhole/wasteland as well as cursed scroll, modern pox isn't a race to empty both your hands like it is in legacy. It's the same problem vs. combo... in modern, a lot of combo is creature-based, so they don't really have to combo out if they can just beat face instead, and again without the fast discard their hand probably isn't empty yet.
Lili does shine vs. control, but only if you can slam her turn 3 and they don't have an answer. The problem there is there isn't a lot of control and modern and what control there is tends to run flash creatures and negate out of the board. If I don't get lucky turn 3, Lili just eats a negate, cryptic command, or detention sphere or they go end-of-turn flash in snapcaster mage/vendilion clique/resoration angel and kill her.
Glad to hear from another pox player... just be aware modern pox plays entirely differently from legacy pox.
It's probably fair to say there are more than the above 350k of most valuable cards. If we say that there are at least 500 total cards that are worth at least $10, and each of those has at least 1 million copies... that'd be 5 billion as a floor. Realistically it's probably a lot higher... a lot of cards are worth WAY more than $10, and then there are foils, foreign foils, ect that have extreme prices ($1 million will buy you about 400 russian foil futuresight tarmogoyfs).
Given all that, I think it's fair to say the order of magnitude of the market value of all MTG cards is probably between 10 and 100 billion dollars.
I was thinking about vault skirge as a 1-drop. Evasion + lifelink seems pretty good.
I think of this as a different kind of tutor... early game it's pretty mediocre, so it's not an automatic 4-of for bullets like most tutors. That said, I could see a deck like Junk running 2 copies. They could probably shave a land and run a 1-of spicy bomb. Something like grave titan or baneslayer angel. Probably also run a singleton shriekmaw. So now you've got a card that's a land early game, removal or a tarmogoyf mid-game, and a titan late game. Would also occasionally come in handy for grabbing a copy of scavenging ooze or a rhino. Seems decent, and junk shouldn't have any trouble getting to 4 card types by the time it wants to tutor for a bomb anyway.
I have to agree that traverse the ulvenwald looks pretty good. Once you hit the magic 4 card types, it highly resembles a green sun's zenith that can search for non-green.
nature's claim is another good anti-blood moon card. It also happens to kill inkmoth nexus, blinkmoth nexus, eidolon of the great revel, cranial plating, tidehollow sculler, and other randomness. There's also the new card that hits only CC 3 or less.
Other options might include golgari charm (regen is relevant vs. supreme verdict and can be a crazy combat trick, and -1/-1 will occasionally help you) and celestial purge (hits a ton of stuff still).
I feel like burn is just going to be a crap matchup no matter what. leyline of sanctity is probably the only thing that would make it decent, but probably still not worth the slots since it's uncastable.
until you can get zen fetches, I'd probably run 4 windswept heath, 2-4 wooded foothills, no more than 1 flooded strand, and skip the basic swamp. You'll want Turn 1 green source as often as possible, so prioritize fetching forests. I could see an argument for 4 birds/3 hierarch since black is still important and the 4th bird will help vs. blood moon.
Another option if you've got them lying around is pillar of the paruns or ancient ziggurat. I wouldn't run more than 1 of each, but that could take 1-2 fetch slots.
Agreed. Up until now, eye just meant you could cast a spaghetti monster for 13 instead of 15. This is fine because 1) If you can hard-cast a 13cc spell it should be able to win on the spot anyway, 2) you can't run a bunch of spaghetti monsters in your deck, and 3) tron has to be extremely focused on assembling a 3-card combo to get there.
With eldrazi now having casting costs in the 2-6 range, eye jumps to a level of mana acceleration greater even than sol ring, the moxen, mana crypt, and arguably even black lotus (since it's reusable). Add to that the high power level for converted CC of several of the new eldrazi and it explains why the deck is so insane. Sure, temple is a sol land and with such high-power bodies eldrazi would likely still be a deck in modern with just temple, it'd probably be acceptable, since without it's insane speed its weaknesses (such as almost no removal) will become relevant. Mimic is probably also ok when you can only cast 1 on turn 1 and it's probably not going to copy anything too crazy for a couple turns.
As for eye "killing" tron, I just don't agree. In my experience, tron wins most of its games by slamming turn 3 karn or turn 3 wurmcoil. By the time they get around to searching up their 1-of eye, activating it, and dropping a spaghetti monster the next turn, it really just meant they won faster. If I were a tron player, I think I'd just cut the eye, the emrakul, and maybe 1 other card and run 2-3 copies of the new ulamog.
2 elesh norn, grand cenobite
2 iona, shield of emeria
2 darkblast
1 raven's crime
4 faithless looting
4 bloodghast
4 squee, goblin nabob
4 zombie infestation
3 stinkweed imp
3 conflagarate
2 vengeful pharaoh
4 marsh flats
4 verdant catacombs
2 blood crypt
2 overgrown tomb
1 godless shrine
3 dragonskull summit
1 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
2 swamp
1 forest
1 plains
2 ghost quarter
Ignore the mana base, it's from an old list. Basically this gives us a 3rd path to victory: Zombie horde, conflagarate, or slam an Iona/Elesh norn. Griselbrand is the obvious 3rd choice, though more for his lifelink than card draw. I wish there was a good reanimator target with both haste and lifelink. 3 stinkweed because infestation is literally the only card you don't want in the grave. I kind of wonder if 4 rites is overkill... could probably cut one. Thoughts?
1) Gideon Jura: Seems a reasonable 1-of. It's hard to interact with and can break a stalled board wide open. 5 mana is hardly a challenge for this deck, and a finisher that can kill dudes or break a stalemate seems awesome.
2) Brave the elements: Every dude in our deck is white except ooze. This can save a guy from spot removal, push through some damage in a stalemate, let you kill an attacking bomb with a swarm, fog an opponent. Again seems like a stalemate breaker, which this deck occasionally needs. Again, I'd just do a 1-of.
3) Abzan charm: Looks like others already found this one. Exiling or drawing 2 both seem great, and even the counters could be relevant.
Anyway, this is my planned 1st draft. I'm putting the discard in the board.
2 qasali pridemage
3 kitchen finks
2 scavenging ooze
3 loxodon smiter
4 lingering souls
3 wilt-leaf liege
3 siege rhino
1 gideon jura
2 abrupt decay
2 abzan charm
3 utopia sprawl
3 birds of paradise
1 brave the elements
4 windswept heath
3 verdant catacombs
1 godless shrine
3 temple garden
2 stirring wildwood
2 gavony township
1 vault of the archangel
2 forest
1 plains
1 swamp
Help me understand this combo, please. The only combo I see is using murderous redcap to do damage to itself, creating a loop where every time it dies, it comes back and triggers Anafenza, kin-tree spirit. However, the bolster mechanic says to add a +1/+1 counter to a creature you control with the least toughness. Since redcap will always enter the battlefield as a 2/2, won't you run into a situation where once all of your creatures (except redcap) have a toughness of at least 3, you'd be forced by the mechanic to put the counter on redcap... at that point the recap can still kill itself but every time it will come back as a 2/2, so the infinite combo would be irrelevant.
Or is there something else I'm missing entirely?
wasteland: I love wasteland in legacy, I love pox, I love LD. With shocks, I really think it would be too good.
show and tell: I truly think if you get rid of this and LED (which would already be gone), you've prettymuch eliminated the need for FOW to police the format, which goes a long way toward making blue less necessary, without actually making blue less good.
brainstorm: This card with fetches just makes blue insane. Let's keep ponder, keep preordain, keep FOW, and let brainstorm go.
I agree with others that likely something from burn might have to go. I don't know what it would be... I hate the idea of axing price of progress. Maybe fireblast?
Another possible noble hierarch replacement is utopia sprawl. I plan on using it, partly for budget reasons, but also because it's harder to kill and enables some things dorks don't (turn 1 land, bird, turn 2 land, utopia sprawl on untapped land + loxodon, turn 3 land, rhino + path). You just have to make sure you pick the right color and run more forests.
There will never really be a verdant catacombs replacement, but you could run a different green fetch (wooded foothills). More risky but possibly viable budget replacements (I wouldn't run 4, but you could afford 1 or 2 of any of these) are ancient ziggurat, pillar of paruns, city of brass, and mana confluence.
If you can't afford abrupt decay, I'd just run something like doom blade/go for the throat/smother... most of the time you're gonna use it on a creature anyway.
I'd go sunpetal grove over canopy vista... IMO the fast lands are over-rated and I'd rather have check lands anyway. You can almost always play a shock or basic turn 1 and once you've done that, sunpetal grove is effectively savannah.
For voice, pridemage is reasonable. Also consider tidehollow sculler. I wouldn't run 4, but it has it's uses.
Wilt-leaf cavaliers seems reasonable.
Some other budget cards that are probably better than you might think include: Bant sureblade, naya hushblade, saffi eriksdotter, and watchwolf.
While lili is amazing in legacy pox (as you say, I generally find if I can untap with her on the board I've probably won the game), I've found her way worse in modern pox. The problem is vs. aggro and even midrange she is usually an expensive edict; you need at minimum 1 and preferably 2 turns of +1 ability to get a 2nd edict, and they can just discard their dead removal. Meanwhile, you don't always have cards you can profitably discard because you need to save your own removal for the dudes they're going to topdeck and immediately cast. Since we lack hymn to tourach and sinkhole/wasteland as well as cursed scroll, modern pox isn't a race to empty both your hands like it is in legacy. It's the same problem vs. combo... in modern, a lot of combo is creature-based, so they don't really have to combo out if they can just beat face instead, and again without the fast discard their hand probably isn't empty yet.
Lili does shine vs. control, but only if you can slam her turn 3 and they don't have an answer. The problem there is there isn't a lot of control and modern and what control there is tends to run flash creatures and negate out of the board. If I don't get lucky turn 3, Lili just eats a negate, cryptic command, or detention sphere or they go end-of-turn flash in snapcaster mage/vendilion clique/resoration angel and kill her.
Glad to hear from another pox player... just be aware modern pox plays entirely differently from legacy pox.