Return is actually a better card than you might think, with convoke, it'll usually only cost you around the 2-3 mana to return what you want. Tokens and Cartel Aristocrat are especially good at helping pay for it. Alot of our creatures arent very good removal targets (tokens, fodder like traveler, cartel aristocrat) but blood artists are usually killed as soon as they hit the board. Return brings them back, as well as any fodder that was previously sacked (Voice, Mogg, Traveler, etc). Obviously this applies to Rally as well but in the right list Return can cost less mana and generate greater value.
If youre running junk colors Id suggest trying Satyr Wayfinder. It grabs lands to fix your mana in the early game, dumps creatures for rally (and Lingering Souls), and when reanimated it can help you dig for Gavony Township. Its not as good if you arent running a decent amount of the reanimation spells (Return to the Ranks and Rally the Ancestors) but i feel that the junk colors give you the best resources available to go on that plan as most of what you want to be running in junk are 1-2 drops.
Theres a list Sam Black posted last year that I used as the starting point for my junk list (adding rally of course) and so far its been testing very well. The deck is very explosive. The only problem postboard is that you are more weak to grave-hate but i feel this is mostly covered by the fact that you can run both Qasali Pridemage and Abrupt Decay out of the board.
Hello, Ive been following this thread for awhile and would now like to contribute. The aristocrats has always been an intriguing deck to me, it was the first deck i wanted to build when i started playing magic towards the end of rsvnica block. I didnt have the chance to play it in standard though and have had dreams of making it work in modern ever since (ive even played the Mardu zombie bombardment deck in legacy as it has a similar feel).
I personally prefer the Mardu colors as i love Falkenrath Aristocrat (Mogg War Marshall seems pretty good as well). Despite this my current build has been in Abzan colors as I felt the sideboard strength (Qasali Pridemage in particular) and the utility of Abrupt Decay were stronger than what Mardu had to offer. Seeing footballs success with the Mardu colors kinda makes me want to give them another shot though. My list is running both Rally and Return to the Ranks and I was wondering if anyone in this forum had tested a list running return?
Another thing I was wondering is if anyone had tested Humble Defector in their mardu lists instead of confidant (or perhaps supplementing)?
Other than that i would also suggest tuning your mono black deck for the aggro matchup. In the mainboard make sure to run Nightveil Specter over Lifebane Zombie as it trades favorably with more of their creatures and maybe take out some Underworld Connections mainboard for more removal. In the sideboard Id suggest maxing out on Drown in Sorrow, maybe put in additional Bile Blights and Doom Blades (or whatever one for one removal fits the matchup best).
im pretty sure Confluence will see play in decks that want multiple sol lands. Dredge will definitely play it over tarnished citadel. Its good because of its redundancy with City of Brass. Perhaps even a five color deck could see play?
IxidorVersionTwo why do you say we have a good Jund matchup? Ive played alot against my friends Jund deck and post-board its brutal. He usually mulligans to some form of grave hate and with 2 grafdiggers cage and 2 surgical extractions coming in in addition to the 4 deathrite shamans and 4 thoughtsieze (which arent grave hate but do timewalk us) I usually have trouble fighting through all the hate. I play the blue version btw. I really enjoy playing dredge but im unsure whether or not to run blue. The idea of running a fearless list is appealing in some ways, being able to side in more specific cards like ashen rider, as well as the added consistency mainboard, but i really hate the idea that the deck just straight up scoops to RiP or Cage
On a side note i do really like chancellor of the annex, it helps take away the drawback of going second
[quote from="mikej" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/543227-current-modern-banlist-discussion?comment=1194"]
When 62.5% of the top eight run the same card, then yes, thats exactly what I want.
Any well informed, NEUTRAL player with no objective bias towards or against birthing pod IE, they aren't running birthing pod or facing it will tell you, it is too good.
Their is nothing unique about 5 out of the 8 top players running 4 of the same card...
For the record I run 4 birthing pods, 2 splinter twins and 2 kiki-jiki's atm and my personal opinion is if you can't beat em, join em.
A) Infinite Solitaire Combos that ignore the board are anti-fun, and bad game design, you won't see such a concept ever exist in Hearthstone.
B) Splashable easily abused cards with little to no drawbacks should not exist in a competitive games.
1. Just because Pod placed well recently doesnt mean it comprises 50+% of every top 8
2. Birthing Pod is not "easily splashable" if thats what you are implying with point A, it must be built around.
3. Pod isnt a solitaire combo either, it can be interacted with with creature removal, hand disruption (if it hasnt hit the board yet), artifact destruction (though i realize this is not usually something people mainboard), and of course counterspells (again assuming it hasnt hit the board). The fact that you can interact with its combo with creature removal in addition to the usual things that hate on combo is my biggest point here considering most decks run some form of it
4. I definitely agree with mikej on the yugioh thing, I used to play yugioh competitively and after awhile it certainly felt like the banlist was more often to push new product than ban a degenerate deck (though sometimes they needed to happen as well), and i certainly wouldnt want Modern to become like that. I could be wrong about whether or not birthing pod is a deck too broken or consistent for modern but I do believe that if it got banned people would only be jumping on banning whichever deck takes its place as the (perceived) most powerful deck of the format.
Control exists in modern as much it exists in legacy.
When your playing a non-rotating format like modern that has multiple archetypes and decks to compete with control struggles.
Im going to have to disagree with your first statement. There are much more control decks in legacy compared to Modern. Off the top of my head theres Stoneblade (which has several variants), Miracles, Tezzeret, Pox; in Modern its pretty much just UWR.
Ive been playing mono B devotion since it became a thing and i must say that the U/W control matchup isnt very difficult, you just have to be careful to not overextend while still keeping them on a decent clock. 2 rats (or one with mutavault), a specter, demon; all of these are threats they must answer quickly or risk losing control of the game. Thoughtseize (and duress from the board) allow you to snipe the threats most relevant to your game plan and give you an idea of how the first few turns will play out. Pack rat is not entirely useless, I cant tell you how many times a top decked pack rat has won me games vs U/W control. Sphinxs rev can be difficult to deal with and if they can chain enough of them together youve probably lost but ive also seen alot of times where they dont draw an answer to my board with the 6 or so cards they get off of it.
As for B/W control Ive had positive results against that deck as well. Blood Baron and Obzedat are not as explosive as Gary and cant turn the game over if they are already behind (Ive actually raced an opponent who had both a baron and obzedat on board). The scariest thing about b/w imo is the revoke existence they bring from the board. Losing Underworld Connections or Erebos is very painful as they are cards that give you the gas you need to grind out the late game. Both of these cards can also be taken out by U/W but they run significantly less threats compared to B/W.
Something i would recommend to other MBD players is a singleton Nykthos and Whip of Erebos. They are both cards that give the deck an extra push in those grindy games without hurting it much in other situations (Ive only lost to mana screw involving nykthos once but there are many times the ability to do more things in one turn has come in handy)
Im not sure why people are defending DRS so strongly, it is extremely powerful.
It ramps, mana fixes, hoses cards that use the graveyard, gains life, deals damage and breaks stalled board states all by itself for one mana. Also (though this is more relevant in legacy where everyone is trying to kill True Name) it has 2 toughness
Im unsure how i feel about the bitterblossom unban, and all of my negative feelings towards it stem from it ridiculous pricetag which is now 80$.
Was hoping for a black DoJ, but thisll do nicely. Fast Aggro is imo the hardest matchup for mono-B and this should help greatly against weenie decks. Unfortunately against boros midrange it only hits BTE and Ash zealot.
As for eternal formats, I doubt this will see legacy play as Toxic Deluge is more flexible for the same CMC. Not sure about modern, what (currently existing) deck would want it?
Im curious as to how this deck handles affinity. I recently went 2-2 in my locals losing to affinity and scapeshift. Scapeshift I felt could have been ammended by a better sidedeck on my part but when facing affinity I got completely hosed by.
Game 1 i lost on t4 to an inkmoth nexus with 7 +1 counters on it. I had a wurmcoil engine out but i couldnt block due to it being flying and infect effectively shutting down my lifegain.
Game 2 I lost on t4 again but this time to an arcbound ravager equipped with cranial plating and backed up by a welding jar. I had the option on turn 3-4 to pyroclasm but was hoping to survive and pull out karn t5. Even if i had, hed have sacked all the artifacts that would die to pyro and +ed ravager out of kill range. And even if i had the natures claims i sided in the welding jar wouldve prevented me from destroying anything.
The whole match felt pretty painful. Im not sure if my opponent got very lucky or if this is normal. which if it is, im wondering how to approach this deck. Even in a best case scenario pulling a t3 karn or wurmcoil (a very rare occurence for me, unless im doing something wrong here) it could still potentially be an uphill battle with them dropping their whole hand t1-2
Theres a list Sam Black posted last year that I used as the starting point for my junk list (adding rally of course) and so far its been testing very well. The deck is very explosive. The only problem postboard is that you are more weak to grave-hate but i feel this is mostly covered by the fact that you can run both Qasali Pridemage and Abrupt Decay out of the board.
I personally prefer the Mardu colors as i love Falkenrath Aristocrat (Mogg War Marshall seems pretty good as well). Despite this my current build has been in Abzan colors as I felt the sideboard strength (Qasali Pridemage in particular) and the utility of Abrupt Decay were stronger than what Mardu had to offer. Seeing footballs success with the Mardu colors kinda makes me want to give them another shot though. My list is running both Rally and Return to the Ranks and I was wondering if anyone in this forum had tested a list running return?
Another thing I was wondering is if anyone had tested Humble Defector in their mardu lists instead of confidant (or perhaps supplementing)?
Other than that i would also suggest tuning your mono black deck for the aggro matchup. In the mainboard make sure to run Nightveil Specter over Lifebane Zombie as it trades favorably with more of their creatures and maybe take out some Underworld Connections mainboard for more removal. In the sideboard Id suggest maxing out on Drown in Sorrow, maybe put in additional Bile Blights and Doom Blades (or whatever one for one removal fits the matchup best).
My bad, I knew that but it slipped my mind. what i mean is multiple rainbow lands
On a side note i do really like chancellor of the annex, it helps take away the drawback of going second
1. Just because Pod placed well recently doesnt mean it comprises 50+% of every top 8
2. Birthing Pod is not "easily splashable" if thats what you are implying with point A, it must be built around.
3. Pod isnt a solitaire combo either, it can be interacted with with creature removal, hand disruption (if it hasnt hit the board yet), artifact destruction (though i realize this is not usually something people mainboard), and of course counterspells (again assuming it hasnt hit the board). The fact that you can interact with its combo with creature removal in addition to the usual things that hate on combo is my biggest point here considering most decks run some form of it
4. I definitely agree with mikej on the yugioh thing, I used to play yugioh competitively and after awhile it certainly felt like the banlist was more often to push new product than ban a degenerate deck (though sometimes they needed to happen as well), and i certainly wouldnt want Modern to become like that. I could be wrong about whether or not birthing pod is a deck too broken or consistent for modern but I do believe that if it got banned people would only be jumping on banning whichever deck takes its place as the (perceived) most powerful deck of the format.
Im going to have to disagree with your first statement. There are much more control decks in legacy compared to Modern. Off the top of my head theres Stoneblade (which has several variants), Miracles, Tezzeret, Pox; in Modern its pretty much just UWR.
As for B/W control Ive had positive results against that deck as well. Blood Baron and Obzedat are not as explosive as Gary and cant turn the game over if they are already behind (Ive actually raced an opponent who had both a baron and obzedat on board). The scariest thing about b/w imo is the revoke existence they bring from the board. Losing Underworld Connections or Erebos is very painful as they are cards that give you the gas you need to grind out the late game. Both of these cards can also be taken out by U/W but they run significantly less threats compared to B/W.
Something i would recommend to other MBD players is a singleton Nykthos and Whip of Erebos. They are both cards that give the deck an extra push in those grindy games without hurting it much in other situations (Ive only lost to mana screw involving nykthos once but there are many times the ability to do more things in one turn has come in handy)
It ramps, mana fixes, hoses cards that use the graveyard, gains life, deals damage and breaks stalled board states all by itself for one mana. Also (though this is more relevant in legacy where everyone is trying to kill True Name) it has 2 toughness
Im unsure how i feel about the bitterblossom unban, and all of my negative feelings towards it stem from it ridiculous pricetag which is now 80$.
As for eternal formats, I doubt this will see legacy play as Toxic Deluge is more flexible for the same CMC. Not sure about modern, what (currently existing) deck would want it?
xathrid necromancer + gift of immortality = recurring zombie tokens
Game 1 i lost on t4 to an inkmoth nexus with 7 +1 counters on it. I had a wurmcoil engine out but i couldnt block due to it being flying and infect effectively shutting down my lifegain.
Game 2 I lost on t4 again but this time to an arcbound ravager equipped with cranial plating and backed up by a welding jar. I had the option on turn 3-4 to pyroclasm but was hoping to survive and pull out karn t5. Even if i had, hed have sacked all the artifacts that would die to pyro and +ed ravager out of kill range. And even if i had the natures claims i sided in the welding jar wouldve prevented me from destroying anything.
The whole match felt pretty painful. Im not sure if my opponent got very lucky or if this is normal. which if it is, im wondering how to approach this deck. Even in a best case scenario pulling a t3 karn or wurmcoil (a very rare occurence for me, unless im doing something wrong here) it could still potentially be an uphill battle with them dropping their whole hand t1-2