Im really liking the red list: seems the strongest splash to me.
I have big concerns with the white splash: one of our issues is topdecks, and legacy pox gets around this by making sure the opponent doesnt have the lands to cast their topdecks. I know path is amazing removal, but it just seems like giving them MORE lands wont be the best idea when we want to limit top-deck usefulness.
Hey Guys in an effort to help w/ correct plays and determine how to build the deck to maximize power i would like to take a poll on what the "nut draw is"
This is something i haven't seen discussed. So please list the 2 best T1,T2,T3 plays and i will tally the votes in this post
Against an unknown deck:
the problem with this question is that our deck is so extremely reactive, and can have very different game plans against different decks.
For me, though, I'm happiest with a hand thats 2-3 land, 2 thoughtsieze/iok/crime, 1 wrench mind, removal/bridge/lili/rat, and maybe 1 other thing (usually a rack). Flexible, and should be able to carry out the main goal of the deck.
Guys, why isn't this deck running Nyxathid? It seems, worst case scenario it's like a 2/2 when it comes down, but it can potentially be a 7/7 for 3 mana..
Part of our strength is we blank their removal (with packrat as a special case because if they dont have removal immediately (which we can make sure they dont) then they'll never be able to stop the swarm).
it could be worth it though. Transform a bit away from the racks into a more aggressive strategy. Biggest problem with nyxathid then I think is that most decks can chump block it for days.
With burn, they empty their hand really fast, and NEED to do so to win usually. I've found luck with dropping as many racks as possible as early as possible (while also using some discard to help out). When you're doing 6 or 9 damage a turn and they can only do 3 - 6 depending on their field and topdecks, you can race if you have the right openings
Its an awful card. Cards that leave your opponent with choices that change the effect that much are bad. With cards like raven's crime we dont care what they discard. Vexing devil is usually 4 to the face for R, no matter what they choose, so it's usually pretty good, and is still hotly debated. Dash Hopes will always be what we dont want. If their spell doesnt matter, then hoary, we countered a spell that doesnt matter. if the spell is 'counter or die', then guess what? we're dead.
Part of me wants to try Waste Not in a build with Master of the Feast instead of Bridge, so it's good the entire game while negating the downside of Master. It's probably inconsistent but eh, it should be tested.
This seems a bit loose. You end up running 2 cards that are pretty much only good with the other one on the table. Also, given our gameplan, it seems like Master is the worst possible card for us to play: we WANT their hand empty, and I'm not so sure we have the gas to make them discard 2 cards every single turn.
as for the burn stuff: crap. I was hoping to avoid having to avoid more investment in the deck after the lilianas. But if we start seeing more leyline and burn, the white splash may be exactly what we need. Enchantment destruction and replacing our removal with paths doesnt seem like an awful idea.
Sorry to double post, it doesn't seem to want to let me edit via mobile. Instead of using mists, what about just using smallpox as a replacement as I'm working up the set?
You need the mists as a repeatable discard engine. The most important part of lili for this deck is that she can +1 every single turn.
Oh dear lord please do not suggest Scepter of Fugue to anyone. That card is horrid. Nezumi Shortfang or Necrogen Mists would be better, and Nezumi is horrid here too. I am having hard time understanding the problem. Is this correct?:
-Bridge is out, rack is out
-8Rack player's hand is empty, opponent is sitting on 3+ cards
-????
If that is the correct situation the problem is you have no engine operating. See above post for list of engines.
i think the problem trying to be articulated is that our engines only hit a card at a time: if we have a crime/dakmore loop theyll be discarding every turn, but we wont net a decrease in cards until they play stuff. I was seeing this problem too with my more budget list (ubtill I started running Lili/mists (im still working on the playset of lili)). Its not a huge deal: you just sometimes need 2 engines running at once.
An opponent holding his cards is time walking you, but I get what you are saying. We have several reliable engines to get their hand empty. Liliana is one of course. The dakmor loop is another, and pressure from the rat / mutavault beat down is another.
I think what he's saying is that lili is our only way of making them dump more than one card at a time: say we have an afflition on board and they have 3 cards in hand at end of their turn and we are in top-deck mode: how do me make them ditch 2?
Hi guys. I'm primarily a legacy player but we are having our first modern tourney soon. I've been testing a legacy version of 8Rack and testing showed great potential. I wanted your thoughts on a modern version of my deck. Any suggestions are appreciated:
// Deck: 8Rack Pox (60)
without knowing your meta:
-4 abrupt (there arent many threats you NEED to destroy: thats what bridge is for. for when you do, use mono-black: our mana base is one of our strong points: we actually start with 20 life. (unless thoughtsieze but still)
-2 loam (doesnt do much: isnt gas, isnt a kill, isnt protection. good with ravens crime but otherwise crap)
-4 smallpox (i know it looks juicy but it often under-performs)
+4 packrat (people have been really liking this recently for its ANSWER NOW pressure and ability to fix crappy top-decks while digging for a final puzzle-piece. unanswered it can also just take over a game: if you clear the way with targeted discard, land it, and dont have much other gas in hand, you can easily make a massive army)
+4 thoughtsieze (best discard in the game, and our mana doesnt hurt us)
+2 victim of night or dismember to taste (i prefer dismember as it kills muta and visceraseer)
other options rather than packrat:
Wastenot: can provide gas and incrimental advantage and an utterly explosive turn 3. but also an awful topdeck. This one is VERY controversial
bitterblossom: recently replaced by packrat (and thank god for those of us on a budget). Produces a ton of flying dudes, and we dont take damage from our lands so we can tough it out often. The tokens are tiny so they can swing under a bridge (draw - swing - play).
on your lands:
-1 bog (you really want them to be untapped. Dakmor is alowable because of the amazing synergy with ravens crime. you play it as a land only in extreme circumstances)
-3 tomb (as you no longer need green)
-4 catacombs (see above)
+6 swamp
+1 urborg
+1 utility land
For the utility lands (this is GQ and whatever): rather meta dependet, but with the rat build many have been having success with, youll want mutavault. A split between those and GQ may be fine if you're expecting a ton of tron, or think you'll be facing shaky manabases. Dont go above the number of urborgs though: you need t1 B t2 BB
as for the sideboard:
Without knowing particular meta, its hard to make recommendations. but in general things youd want to consider:
graffdigger's cage for pod
Surgical Extraction (gets rid of a ton of pesky things after the first IoK/ Thoughtsieze)
Darkblast is liked by many: hits affinity hard, kills pod/junk/jund mana dorks
leyline of sanctity if youre expecting burn
pithing needle for tron i guess?
Round 4 2:1 vs Sebastian playing Rock: Game 1: This was a really close game. He played a goyf, i killed it with Slaughter Pact. I stuck a bridge, he took it down with Abrupt Decay and from that point on we were racing with him having a Bob and a Treetop Village and me 2 Shriekin Afflictions . Really a bad situation for me with the Bob, but in the end it won me the game. I was at 4, dead next turn and he was at 2. Bob drew an Ooze and he was dead. Lucky me. Boarding: I boarded in my Dark Blasts and some Bile Blights to deal with his creatures. I took out smallpox, 1 rack and i don't remember what else. Game 2: In game 2 i lost and again made a really stupid mistake. I didn't remove his oozen even though i could. I had 2 raven's crimes in the graveyard, retraced one discarding a swamp and he just removed it with ooze. Cost me a turn which really hurt. I don't know if i would have won otherwise (i doubt it) but these mistakes man...bah. Game 3: This game went excellent. The deck did what it's supposed to do, i managed to pick out his threats early on, answer his creatures with Dark Blasts and Bile Blights and my Lilli and won still being at 13 life.
Round 4 game 2, are you saying he removed a crime AFTER you discarded a swamp to retrace it? because I'm pretty sure that's not a legal play: at that point you're already in the process of casting it, and he doesnt get priority until it actually goes on the stack , at which point it isnt in your graveyard. He would have had to have eaten it before you cast it at all.
There are ways around leyline, and it's been discussed pretty heavily in the thread. Liliana still makes them discard, and now you have plenty of dead cards to feed to pack rat. Adding pack rat has given a strong response to leyline users. You could also change up your plan a bit and use something like Delirium Skeins, which hits you both but you'll have plenty to dump anyway (this isn't a popular choice since it's so particular of a reaction to one card, and 8rack with rats or bitterblossom has other options).
additionally, wasn't it mentioned earlier that leyline is sop rarely played it isn't worth devoting much effort to? Have a plan for it, but it doesnt need sideboard slots and especially not dedicated mainboard. If the meta changes it can be re-addressed, and if your particular meta has a lot of it then knowing what decks are playing it could give better angles then just knowing its there.
I've always liked Necroskitter. I'm gonna try it out soon, if only for fun.
Semi-off topic but:
if you kill a persisted finks with a necroskitter, it comes back under your control. if it then dies again it goes back to op's side, right?
back on topic, id think the nxyanthid would be better for us: almost always a 4/4 or 5/5 for 3, but often straight up a 7/7. hits with the best of the goyfs
Hypergeometric Calculator is what youre looking for to figure this out precisely (some simple math can do at the table, but were not playing so pure calcualtion is good).
Population Size : 60 (total cards in deck)
Number of Successes in Population : xx (number of lands in deck)
Sample Size : 7 (7 for opening hand, this is how many cards you've seen. 7 for turn 1 on the play 8 for turn 1 on the draw)
Number of success in sample : 3 (this is how many lands youre looking to get)
The calculation to look at is the "x >= 3" (or whatever your number of success in sample is) this is the chance of drawing 3 or MORE of those cards.
On the play Chance to get 3 lands on turn 3 :
21 lands -> 68%
22 lands -> 72%
23 lands -> 76%
24 lands -> 79%
On the Draw :
21 lands -> 76%
22 lands -> 80%
23 lands -> 83%
24 lands -> 86%
actually we get... 9 cards for play, 10 for draw: we have 3 turns until a third land matters.
Also, can you put up probabilities of more than 5 lands in the same amount of time? while we want the third land, we also dont want to flood. (or even just show for 3 <= x <= 5 or 4)
I have big concerns with the white splash: one of our issues is topdecks, and legacy pox gets around this by making sure the opponent doesnt have the lands to cast their topdecks. I know path is amazing removal, but it just seems like giving them MORE lands wont be the best idea when we want to limit top-deck usefulness.
the problem with this question is that our deck is so extremely reactive, and can have very different game plans against different decks.
For me, though, I'm happiest with a hand thats 2-3 land, 2 thoughtsieze/iok/crime, 1 wrench mind, removal/bridge/lili/rat, and maybe 1 other thing (usually a rack). Flexible, and should be able to carry out the main goal of the deck.
oh my god that looks amazing. Excited to try it out
Part of our strength is we blank their removal (with packrat as a special case because if they dont have removal immediately (which we can make sure they dont) then they'll never be able to stop the swarm).
it could be worth it though. Transform a bit away from the racks into a more aggressive strategy. Biggest problem with nyxathid then I think is that most decks can chump block it for days.
Its an awful card. Cards that leave your opponent with choices that change the effect that much are bad. With cards like raven's crime we dont care what they discard. Vexing devil is usually 4 to the face for R, no matter what they choose, so it's usually pretty good, and is still hotly debated. Dash Hopes will always be what we dont want. If their spell doesnt matter, then hoary, we countered a spell that doesnt matter. if the spell is 'counter or die', then guess what? we're dead.
This seems a bit loose. You end up running 2 cards that are pretty much only good with the other one on the table. Also, given our gameplan, it seems like Master is the worst possible card for us to play: we WANT their hand empty, and I'm not so sure we have the gas to make them discard 2 cards every single turn.
as for the burn stuff: crap. I was hoping to avoid having to avoid more investment in the deck after the lilianas. But if we start seeing more leyline and burn, the white splash may be exactly what we need. Enchantment destruction and replacing our removal with paths doesnt seem like an awful idea.
You need the mists as a repeatable discard engine. The most important part of lili for this deck is that she can +1 every single turn.
i think the problem trying to be articulated is that our engines only hit a card at a time: if we have a crime/dakmore loop theyll be discarding every turn, but we wont net a decrease in cards until they play stuff. I was seeing this problem too with my more budget list (ubtill I started running Lili/mists (im still working on the playset of lili)). Its not a huge deal: you just sometimes need 2 engines running at once.
I think what he's saying is that lili is our only way of making them dump more than one card at a time: say we have an afflition on board and they have 3 cards in hand at end of their turn and we are in top-deck mode: how do me make them ditch 2?
without knowing your meta:
-4 abrupt (there arent many threats you NEED to destroy: thats what bridge is for. for when you do, use mono-black: our mana base is one of our strong points: we actually start with 20 life. (unless thoughtsieze but still)
-2 loam (doesnt do much: isnt gas, isnt a kill, isnt protection. good with ravens crime but otherwise crap)
-4 smallpox (i know it looks juicy but it often under-performs)
+4 packrat (people have been really liking this recently for its ANSWER NOW pressure and ability to fix crappy top-decks while digging for a final puzzle-piece. unanswered it can also just take over a game: if you clear the way with targeted discard, land it, and dont have much other gas in hand, you can easily make a massive army)
+4 thoughtsieze (best discard in the game, and our mana doesnt hurt us)
+2 victim of night or dismember to taste (i prefer dismember as it kills muta and visceraseer)
other options rather than packrat:
Wastenot: can provide gas and incrimental advantage and an utterly explosive turn 3. but also an awful topdeck. This one is VERY controversial
bitterblossom: recently replaced by packrat (and thank god for those of us on a budget). Produces a ton of flying dudes, and we dont take damage from our lands so we can tough it out often. The tokens are tiny so they can swing under a bridge (draw - swing - play).
on your lands:
-1 bog (you really want them to be untapped. Dakmor is alowable because of the amazing synergy with ravens crime. you play it as a land only in extreme circumstances)
-3 tomb (as you no longer need green)
-4 catacombs (see above)
+6 swamp
+1 urborg
+1 utility land
For the utility lands (this is GQ and whatever): rather meta dependet, but with the rat build many have been having success with, youll want mutavault. A split between those and GQ may be fine if you're expecting a ton of tron, or think you'll be facing shaky manabases. Dont go above the number of urborgs though: you need t1 B t2 BB
as for the sideboard:
Without knowing particular meta, its hard to make recommendations. but in general things youd want to consider:
graffdigger's cage for pod
Surgical Extraction (gets rid of a ton of pesky things after the first IoK/ Thoughtsieze)
Darkblast is liked by many: hits affinity hard, kills pod/junk/jund mana dorks
leyline of sanctity if youre expecting burn
pithing needle for tron i guess?
Round 4 game 2, are you saying he removed a crime AFTER you discarded a swamp to retrace it? because I'm pretty sure that's not a legal play: at that point you're already in the process of casting it, and he doesnt get priority until it actually goes on the stack , at which point it isnt in your graveyard. He would have had to have eaten it before you cast it at all.
additionally, wasn't it mentioned earlier that leyline is sop rarely played it isn't worth devoting much effort to? Have a plan for it, but it doesnt need sideboard slots and especially not dedicated mainboard. If the meta changes it can be re-addressed, and if your particular meta has a lot of it then knowing what decks are playing it could give better angles then just knowing its there.
Semi-off topic but:
if you kill a persisted finks with a necroskitter, it comes back under your control. if it then dies again it goes back to op's side, right?
back on topic, id think the nxyanthid would be better for us: almost always a 4/4 or 5/5 for 3, but often straight up a 7/7. hits with the best of the goyfs
actually we get... 9 cards for play, 10 for draw: we have 3 turns until a third land matters.
Also, can you put up probabilities of more than 5 lands in the same amount of time? while we want the third land, we also dont want to flood. (or even just show for 3 <= x <= 5 or 4)