I would argue that this is too many check lands. I would be very hard=pressed to run more than two in a three color deck. It sets yourself up for more combinations of tapped land on T1.
You're right probably, but without tarns it's quite awkward because you need red sources that come into play untapped on turns 2-4 to make up for not being able to fetch a basic mountain and right now the meta is full of decks that can punish you for shocking yourself too many times.
I geuss you could run a cascade bluffs in it's place which would give you an alternative untaped red source but I find filter lands to be largely underwhelming, I think the sulfur falls is better than a filter land still.
On a slightly different note:
Could you help me out with my mana base a bit, especially under the restriction of no Zen fetches (i am waiting for EMA since i believe them to see a reprint there)?
The mana base i am using currently feels a bit iffy, thats generally the place thats the hardest for me to build since i come from years of playing mono U merfolk where such issues did not exist
I dont think that the mystic gate is worth running, it's fine for casting cryptics and verdicts but with 25 lands and only 1 utility land I dont think you should have much trouble. You also may not need the 3rd steam vents if you run a few sulfur fallls. Realistically you are only running a red splash for removal and nahiri and with no cards with double red I think you could easily get away with just the 2 vents, that may need testing though. Clifftop retreat isn't as good as the blue check lands, with the blue checklands you are able to fetch a turn 1 basic island to suspend AV and follow it up with a checkland to hold up turn 2 disruption with retreat you are forced into bolting yourself turn 1 if you want 2 mana on turn 2.
I think that you want a slightly higher count of untapped red sources because you dont have access to fetching the red basic, meaning you are down 5 untapped red sources vs. regular mana bases, assuming you are trying to avoid shocking yourself.
If you want to run the 3rd steam vents you should probably just cut the 3rd sulfur falls, I don't think you get the luxury of running the 3rd basic island without tarns but that shouldn't matter too much because with nahiri you are quite a bit more proactive than the old hard-control decks and you probably fold to random late-game blood moons a whole lot less.
Narset has first strike, she won't trade with the rhino.
Your thoughts on hooglands list are pretty similar to mine. I think 2 cryptics is enough though. Also don't know if I want all 4 planeswalkers.
Cliques or more counterspells might be better.
I mostly agree with you but I think that an argument can be made for playing 1 cryptic too, especially as playing some number of nahiri helps dig to find it, besides seeing multiples is so painful if we aren't miles ahead. Realistically we arent relying on the card advantage of cryptic very much with 3+ planeswalkers and 3-4 AV, it's mostly about utility.
I do think there is a really big difference between 1 cryptic and 0 though and I'm pretty sure that we really need to play the atleast first one, so many games it completely swings a game in our favor or is our only path to victory.
Having said that I would start at 2 and work form there.
3 nahiri + 1 emrakul seems close to ideal, below 3 I think that drawing emrakul without an active nahiri will be a real cost, and 4 just seems like too much.
I would even use Leyline over Sanctimony because it's better for my opponent for not do anything. Leyline is also good against fringe decks, like Storm and 8rack.
Flashfreeze is a great counterspell, which, if you have the choice, should put in your sideboard instead of Negate.
leyline is actually pretty bad against storm, if they 'combo off' they'll just echoing truth the leyline before grapeshotting you for 100, they side an echoing truth every game 2, it very rarely stops them from winning. Besides that, storm tends to cut a grapeshot (if they run two) and bring in one or two empty the warrens in anticipation of us cutting our wraths, which we tend to do. I wouldn't even bother siding in leyline against storm if I had one in my board.
Flashfreeze is fine, it's pretty good actually but I really wouldn't suggest cutting a negate for it, negate is good in so many matchups, I bring it in against: junk, burn, delver, twin, titan just to name a few off the top of my head. I think that you want some number of really versatile answers in your board for times when you have a lot of dead cards, negate fills that role perfectly.
Hey guys, I've been a fan of this style of deck since I started playing magic (mazes end 4 lyf) and I was looking to start running this deck at local tournaments. This is what I've settled on as a starting point after reading the primer and most of this thread.
I was going for a more straight forward build with a few snaps and a clique as my wincon. What do you think of that list as a starting point for someone new to the archetype? Should I be running a more tempo-oriented or combo focused build?
The thing is Treasure Mage is not dead outside the combo, he's often used to fetch a wurmcoil, and memnarch is often castable with Grand Architect as a 4/5, which is actually difficult for a lot of decks to deal with. I like that Ambassador adds devotion but I really dont think this deck is after more 1/3's, Ambassador also can't beat eldraz, decks running eldrazi are some of the matchups where we lean on the combo the most. The best part of the memnarch combo is that all of the pieces have a non-zero amount of utility outside of the combo (the worst being pili-pala but just dumping your hand turn 3 is still nice), I think that while ambassidor takes up one less slot it's still less playable than memnarch + trinket mage. By all means try it but I just don't think it's very good.
No need for apologies! Questioning choices is the best way to refine decks.
Coiling oracle is very good in my opinion for a few reasons. Firstly, it adds another way to be podding on turn 3. With 8 turn 1 scry/rearrange effects you can often have your turn 2 oracle intentionally finding a land in order to play and activate pod on turn 3. Secondly, as a birthing pod deck I feel like having effects that generate you advantage as you move up the chain is pretty necessary. Previously this slot was augury owl but I think this card is just a bit better.
Myr Superion at two was too often a fairly useless card in hand, and it's not particularly useful in the pod to master of waves lines which is probably the deck's best play. Of course you can always pod to it if you want an instant threat. I don't see how having two in the deck makes it much more useful, it could be that I'm undervaluing the card.
Haven't tried teferi yet, mulldrifter is decent but there is probably a better 5-drop to play. I do believe that you need something in the 5 slot though.
I'd like to weigh in that I agree with alot of these card choices, I really like coiling oracle in place of augyry owl, unlike owl it's raw card advantage which is super important, most fair decks seem to just spend their removal early to kill all of our dorky little creatures (like they do against other versions of pod), coiling oracle makes that plan much less effective. Plus with sages most of the time it's a 2cmc wood elves that adds blue devotion, it makes our starts more explosive but doesn't really cost us anything.
As for 5-drops, we really need wizards to print something for us, I've been searching for something worth playing over mulldrifter for ages but thus far everything seems win-more. I play Mulldrifter because divination isn't the literal worst thing in the world and we really only want to play/pod into our 5-drop when we're behind, master of waves/grand architect+weenies will win us the game with very little support otherwise.
Has anyone tried to run a singleton of Skaab Ruinator? Seems like a card a lot of decks would have issues with.
The problem I can see with Skaab Ruinator is that we're almost never going to be albe to cast him on turn three. Although being able to pod into him might be nice there will be too may times where he rots in your hand and when you do pod into him he's only rarely going better than just podding out grand architect.
The other downside with the memnarch combo is that if you end up loosing pila pila to birthing pod you do break the combo and may not still guarantee the win.
In my little testing thus far, it's not too much of an issue, we generate infinite mana, try to go for memnarch and if they counter/deal with it we just play out our hand. I mean, if we cant stick memnarch then the combo isn't going to be game-ending, or particularly good but I dont think there's any real way to add resilience besides either redundant pieces or running eternal witness/mry retriever which have both been pretty lackluster thus far. The combo probably isn't necessary, the deck at it's best is primarily on an aggro/beatdown plan but being able to win on the spot against unsuspecting/hellbent opponents gives us free wins, it's also a win condition that actually works when the combat step isn't going to cut it, which happens often enough in my experience.
I'm going to continue to run the combo but I wouldn't fault anyone for cutting it.
Yeah I could actually see including Pili-Pala, Treasure Mage, and Memnarch in the deck as it is a pretty compact package, and most of the cards aren't embarassing on their own (expect Pili-Pala...). I'm not a huge fan of how the combo doesn't have "haste", but it seems like a reasonable option.
Yeah, that's the biggest downside I've come accross, the lack of "I win on the spot".
I have found that most people seem to see pili-pala as the threatening card and tend to waste their removal on it (honestly, it tends to act as a free spellskite most of the time) but some of the players at my lgs arent particularly bright. I like the combo so far but I haven't really spent too much time testing it (other than a 2-2 performance at my local modern night).
I actually really like the idea of running a Keranos, God of Storms in the sideboard against sweeper-heavy decks (such as UW control). The most common way for the opponent to deal with it is Celestial Purge, and there is next to no chance that is coming in against us. The decks that can REALLY blunt your early aggression are also generally the ones who have a very hard time with a resolved Keranos.
I think if I were to go for the Kiki combo version, I would run 1 Kiki and 2 Restos, as well as possibly a Reveillark, and I would cut a Breeding Pool and an Island for two Hallowed Fountains. I would also want to up the count of Augury Owls to get as many blue 2 drops as possible to more consistently be able to combo quickly. I think this would have to come at the expense of some number of Chief Engineer, Myr Superion, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, and perhaps non-tutorable cards like Vedalken Shackles or Batterskull. Also obviously the Pestermites would switch to Deceiver Exarchs. I actually really like how Restoration Angel gets a lot of value in the deck from things like Sage of Epityr and Augury Owl, making it very good on its own in addition to with the combo. Reveillark is also very good here by being able to return every single creature in the deck.
Most versions of UWR kicking around atm are Flash or Geist and they run either a single anger of the gods or no sweeper at all. I have found the matchup fine (roughtly 50-50), if they manage to keep us off pod+dude, or just keep our creature count low enough then we struggle but with maindeck kira and spellskite we certainly can just beat face and ignore their removal and they cant really beat our most explosive starts, after siding clique and glen elendra as pod targets the matchup gets better to the point where I dont think keranos is necessary, dont get me wrong, keranos is a good card but they have a lot of games where they can just untap and kill us with resto+colonade beats. I think that if your meta has a lot of people running the hard-control versions with 2-3 maindeck wraths then keranos might be necessary (it's a nightmare to begin with).
My problem with the Kiki+resto plan is we start playing an inconsistent build of kiki-pod, kiki-pod is incredibly efficient as setting up the combo, we arent. Resto is good in the midrange/beatdown plan though, we have few etbs and flickering master would be game ending.
as a Pod deck I see no reason not to run 1 of pila pala if it produces results. 1 restoration angel and 1 kiki jiki either with no white/red or with white in the mana base and then you could play revilark is also solid. Two slots for potential turn 3 kills is worth IMO, would be much better if we had a brainstorm effect to shuffle away kiki if you draw him.
Having not played the deck yet what is the devotion like for master of waves? If it is strong enough is thasa as a 1 of strong? she can be poded into and if you run red then U/R god is possible and a power house.
The devotion plan is pretty good, Master usually produces 3-4 elementals and almost always represents a 1-2 turn clock, having protection from lightning bolt and abrupt is a strong upside. Having said that, I dont think thassa is very good, the scry 1 isn't really necessary once we have 3+ drops in play and if we ever make her a creature we're probably winning anyway. Her most useful mode is unblockable but I dont think that's worth having an otherwise dead card (can't be podded away, cant clone her if she's active, dead card onto an empty board). I ran her of a 1-of for a while and quickly moved her to the sideboard and even then I was only really siding her in vs. BGx decks, which is not a matchup I've been having trouble with.
We are far too aggressive for Keranos, we pay a lot life to pod and with grand architect we usually are able to close out games on turn 4-5 without disruption. We have usually died or have won by the time keranos is likely to be value (paying 5 mana for two lightning bolts is not where we want to be). I think wurmcoil engine or batterskull is probably better in matchups where we might want Keranos (being able to basically cast artifacts for free is a major selling point but they also represent a much better clock with similar resilience).
EDIT:
For reference this is the list I'm running right now:
I already run a trinket mage package in my sideboard so it costs me 4 slots, which is a lot but it also gives us a gameplan against storm, tron, adnauseam and other combo decks that we struggle to interact with.
The combo is simple, we play grand architect with any blue 1-drop in play, which is a very common board-state for this deck, tap them both to cast birthing pod, with the remaining 1 mana we pod our 1-drop into pili-pala, pass turn (because pili-pala has summoning sickness, if they remove pili-pala on their turn we're probably just happy they didn't remove architect). On the following turn we make infinite mana then pod pili-pala into trinket mage getting expedition map, cast and crack map getting eye of ugin, play eye of ugin, find emrakul and cast him, hopefully for the win.
Which seems much better, memnarch is not un-castable without the combo, treasure mage can fetch a wurmcoil or battlesphere if you run them and pilipala can filter grand architect mana to cast blue creatures. I wonder if the combo is main-deckable?
Did some testing, the azorius charm really isn't as good as it appears. The lifelink doesn't really do anything in our deck, putting a creature or man land second from the top doesn't buy a control deck enough time, I want it gone, and the draw a card isn't good for 2 mana. I like condemn more, it drops them permanently and kills of manlands.
I agree, azorius is bad in all modes, it's just *too* overcosted, the utility of being able to cycle is nice but I think I'd prefer just about any other removal spell.
You're right probably, but without tarns it's quite awkward because you need red sources that come into play untapped on turns 2-4 to make up for not being able to fetch a basic mountain and right now the meta is full of decks that can punish you for shocking yourself too many times.
I geuss you could run a cascade bluffs in it's place which would give you an alternative untaped red source but I find filter lands to be largely underwhelming, I think the sulfur falls is better than a filter land still.
I dont think that the mystic gate is worth running, it's fine for casting cryptics and verdicts but with 25 lands and only 1 utility land I dont think you should have much trouble. You also may not need the 3rd steam vents if you run a few sulfur fallls. Realistically you are only running a red splash for removal and nahiri and with no cards with double red I think you could easily get away with just the 2 vents, that may need testing though. Clifftop retreat isn't as good as the blue check lands, with the blue checklands you are able to fetch a turn 1 basic island to suspend AV and follow it up with a checkland to hold up turn 2 disruption with retreat you are forced into bolting yourself turn 1 if you want 2 mana on turn 2.
I think that you want a slightly higher count of untapped red sources because you dont have access to fetching the red basic, meaning you are down 5 untapped red sources vs. regular mana bases, assuming you are trying to avoid shocking yourself.
I would play something like:
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Island
1 Plains
3 Sulfur falls
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Desolate lighthouse/ Ghost Quarter/ Tec Edge
This gives you
22 Blue Sources
17 White Sources
14 Red Sources
If you want to run the 3rd steam vents you should probably just cut the 3rd sulfur falls, I don't think you get the luxury of running the 3rd basic island without tarns but that shouldn't matter too much because with nahiri you are quite a bit more proactive than the old hard-control decks and you probably fold to random late-game blood moons a whole lot less.
I mostly agree with you but I think that an argument can be made for playing 1 cryptic too, especially as playing some number of nahiri helps dig to find it, besides seeing multiples is so painful if we aren't miles ahead. Realistically we arent relying on the card advantage of cryptic very much with 3+ planeswalkers and 3-4 AV, it's mostly about utility.
I do think there is a really big difference between 1 cryptic and 0 though and I'm pretty sure that we really need to play the atleast first one, so many games it completely swings a game in our favor or is our only path to victory.
Having said that I would start at 2 and work form there.
3 nahiri + 1 emrakul seems close to ideal, below 3 I think that drawing emrakul without an active nahiri will be a real cost, and 4 just seems like too much.
leyline is actually pretty bad against storm, if they 'combo off' they'll just echoing truth the leyline before grapeshotting you for 100, they side an echoing truth every game 2, it very rarely stops them from winning. Besides that, storm tends to cut a grapeshot (if they run two) and bring in one or two empty the warrens in anticipation of us cutting our wraths, which we tend to do. I wouldn't even bother siding in leyline against storm if I had one in my board.
Flashfreeze is fine, it's pretty good actually but I really wouldn't suggest cutting a negate for it, negate is good in so many matchups, I bring it in against: junk, burn, delver, twin, titan just to name a few off the top of my head. I think that you want some number of really versatile answers in your board for times when you have a lot of dead cards, negate fills that role perfectly.
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Serum Visions
4 Cryptic Command
4 Remand
4 Exhaustion
4 Time Warp
4 Walk the Aeons
4 Howling Mine
21 Island
2 Mutavault
1 Reliquary Tower
I was going for a more straight forward build with a few snaps and a clique as my wincon. What do you think of that list as a starting point for someone new to the archetype? Should I be running a more tempo-oriented or combo focused build?
The thing is Treasure Mage is not dead outside the combo, he's often used to fetch a wurmcoil, and memnarch is often castable with Grand Architect as a 4/5, which is actually difficult for a lot of decks to deal with. I like that Ambassador adds devotion but I really dont think this deck is after more 1/3's, Ambassador also can't beat eldraz, decks running eldrazi are some of the matchups where we lean on the combo the most. The best part of the memnarch combo is that all of the pieces have a non-zero amount of utility outside of the combo (the worst being pili-pala but just dumping your hand turn 3 is still nice), I think that while ambassidor takes up one less slot it's still less playable than memnarch + trinket mage. By all means try it but I just don't think it's very good.
I'd like to weigh in that I agree with alot of these card choices, I really like coiling oracle in place of augyry owl, unlike owl it's raw card advantage which is super important, most fair decks seem to just spend their removal early to kill all of our dorky little creatures (like they do against other versions of pod), coiling oracle makes that plan much less effective. Plus with sages most of the time it's a 2cmc wood elves that adds blue devotion, it makes our starts more explosive but doesn't really cost us anything.
As for 5-drops, we really need wizards to print something for us, I've been searching for something worth playing over mulldrifter for ages but thus far everything seems win-more. I play Mulldrifter because divination isn't the literal worst thing in the world and we really only want to play/pod into our 5-drop when we're behind, master of waves/grand architect+weenies will win us the game with very little support otherwise.
The problem I can see with Skaab Ruinator is that we're almost never going to be albe to cast him on turn three. Although being able to pod into him might be nice there will be too may times where he rots in your hand and when you do pod into him he's only rarely going better than just podding out grand architect.
In my little testing thus far, it's not too much of an issue, we generate infinite mana, try to go for memnarch and if they counter/deal with it we just play out our hand. I mean, if we cant stick memnarch then the combo isn't going to be game-ending, or particularly good but I dont think there's any real way to add resilience besides either redundant pieces or running eternal witness/mry retriever which have both been pretty lackluster thus far. The combo probably isn't necessary, the deck at it's best is primarily on an aggro/beatdown plan but being able to win on the spot against unsuspecting/hellbent opponents gives us free wins, it's also a win condition that actually works when the combat step isn't going to cut it, which happens often enough in my experience.
I'm going to continue to run the combo but I wouldn't fault anyone for cutting it.
Yeah, that's the biggest downside I've come accross, the lack of "I win on the spot".
I have found that most people seem to see pili-pala as the threatening card and tend to waste their removal on it (honestly, it tends to act as a free spellskite most of the time) but some of the players at my lgs arent particularly bright. I like the combo so far but I haven't really spent too much time testing it (other than a 2-2 performance at my local modern night).
Most versions of UWR kicking around atm are Flash or Geist and they run either a single anger of the gods or no sweeper at all. I have found the matchup fine (roughtly 50-50), if they manage to keep us off pod+dude, or just keep our creature count low enough then we struggle but with maindeck kira and spellskite we certainly can just beat face and ignore their removal and they cant really beat our most explosive starts, after siding clique and glen elendra as pod targets the matchup gets better to the point where I dont think keranos is necessary, dont get me wrong, keranos is a good card but they have a lot of games where they can just untap and kill us with resto+colonade beats. I think that if your meta has a lot of people running the hard-control versions with 2-3 maindeck wraths then keranos might be necessary (it's a nightmare to begin with).
My problem with the Kiki+resto plan is we start playing an inconsistent build of kiki-pod, kiki-pod is incredibly efficient as setting up the combo, we arent. Resto is good in the midrange/beatdown plan though, we have few etbs and flickering master would be game ending.
The devotion plan is pretty good, Master usually produces 3-4 elementals and almost always represents a 1-2 turn clock, having protection from lightning bolt and abrupt is a strong upside. Having said that, I dont think thassa is very good, the scry 1 isn't really necessary once we have 3+ drops in play and if we ever make her a creature we're probably winning anyway. Her most useful mode is unblockable but I dont think that's worth having an otherwise dead card (can't be podded away, cant clone her if she's active, dead card onto an empty board). I ran her of a 1-of for a while and quickly moved her to the sideboard and even then I was only really siding her in vs. BGx decks, which is not a matchup I've been having trouble with.
We are far too aggressive for Keranos, we pay a lot life to pod and with grand architect we usually are able to close out games on turn 4-5 without disruption. We have usually died or have won by the time keranos is likely to be value (paying 5 mana for two lightning bolts is not where we want to be). I think wurmcoil engine or batterskull is probably better in matchups where we might want Keranos (being able to basically cast artifacts for free is a major selling point but they also represent a much better clock with similar resilience).
EDIT:
For reference this is the list I'm running right now:
We could start with something like:
I already run a trinket mage package in my sideboard so it costs me 4 slots, which is a lot but it also gives us a gameplan against storm, tron, adnauseam and other combo decks that we struggle to interact with.
The combo is simple, we play grand architect with any blue 1-drop in play, which is a very common board-state for this deck, tap them both to cast birthing pod, with the remaining 1 mana we pod our 1-drop into pili-pala, pass turn (because pili-pala has summoning sickness, if they remove pili-pala on their turn we're probably just happy they didn't remove architect). On the following turn we make infinite mana then pod pili-pala into trinket mage getting expedition map, cast and crack map getting eye of ugin, play eye of ugin, find emrakul and cast him, hopefully for the win.
EDIT:
Alternatively we could run:
Which seems much better, memnarch is not un-castable without the combo, treasure mage can fetch a wurmcoil or battlesphere if you run them and pilipala can filter grand architect mana to cast blue creatures. I wonder if the combo is main-deckable?
I agree, azorius is bad in all modes, it's just *too* overcosted, the utility of being able to cycle is nice but I think I'd prefer just about any other removal spell.