"but we can be f*cked so hard" by dredge i assume?
i totally agree, anger and relics dominate them, but we HAVE to see them or they just do to us what they do to jund.
i ran GDD in tandem with sarkhan for a long time, there was rarely a time where i wouldnt gladly swap a GDD in my hand for a sarkhan.
he CAN die to creatures, but he usually kills them first, or we do. like, this is the skred thread right? we run 12+ spot removal (not counting sarkhan/GDD) and 3-7 sweepers.
you don't even need the board to be clear. hell, ive had countless games where i just let their snapcaster attack sarkhan even when i had removal in hand, sarkhan would kill them before snap could kill sarkhan. he can do 16 damage if all you're worrying about is 2 power and they don't burn him.
GDD's biggest strength IMO was reinforcing our LD strategy, or just giving us scry. recasting those always felt very good. but imo it's not enough to give hm the edge here.
ignoring the countless other advantages sarkhan has over GDD, the big deal-breaker between GDD and sarkhan for me is sarkhan has haste. if i need an evasive flametounge kavu, both can do it. if i need a *****ty stormbreath, he can also do that but GDD can't.
GDD lacks the explosive potential that our deck loves. it's why i cut PnK, t-break, GDD, b-skull, and more. i'd run thundermaw over GDD, immediate damage is crucial. my biggest problem with reckoner is his lack of haste, fortunately, he makes up for it by way of turning our skreds into sMORC's dreams made reality.
@Grublo
fanatic of mogis's main problem is that he's only really good whith high deotion (obviously) which tends to mean you're already doing fine. IE, he's a win-more.
call me crazy, but i always saw GDD as a worse sarkhan the dragonspeaker.
both can act like removal attached to a threat.
but sarkhan can haste your opponent's face on an empty board and save the removal for later.
GDD can hit "value spells" but we dont run enough for this to happen terribly reliably, especially considering our MB relics.
and even when we do, it's usually something like a magma jet or molten rain whitch doesnt hold a candle to stuff like k-command.
both have 4 power and evasion
both are vulnerable to multiple burn spells (sarkhan more-so if you open with his -3, but even then, it's a 2 for 1 still)
but sarkhan is immune to any and all "destroy" spells that cant target planeswalkers.
and while sarkhan's ult is actually worthless 99% of the time, you dont HAVE to use it, and there's still that 1%.
i've won 2 games with it! that's more than 1!
i wouldn't say it's our toughest matchup, we have good top-decks and can go around a bridge.
but our LD plan doesn't work and we really are at the mercy of our top-decks, scrying sheets is probably our saving grace here.
it's a rare deck that tends to get dropped into the losers bracket early even if it does show up. so i wouldnt worry too much about it. afterall, im not running any akroma, angel of fury's just because i lose to U-tron once every month and a half.
I can fully agree with this, haste is surprisingly important to us.
A huge part of the deck is being able to spend 1-2 turns cashing in all our grinded out card advantage into straight explosiveness.
Can't tell you how many people I've 20 to zeroed off an EoT burn dump > untap, drop a 4/x haste and alpha-strike. Maybe skred a reckoner too.
I know that's alot, but there's alotta creature decks these days. And I like keeping angers in the side as they tend to be less versatile and a non-Bo with reckoner.
But MB angers is perfectly fine too, especially considering the aforementioned plethora of creature decks running around.
I recently switched back to reckoner from regent, my biggest problem with regent (and p&k) is the 4cmc. It kinda makes the ideal play sequence awkward.
I don't think it's that big a deal variance wise.
If they path him then we can drop a t4 stormbreath against a deck with white removal after going 1 for 1.
If they bolt him then we bolt our opponent and 1 for 1 them.
Or
We kill one of their creatures off the redirect and we just 2 for 1 them.
Or he gets decayed or something, still 1 for 1, they get a tempo advantage here but it tends to be moderate.
In any case, that may be the decay we wanted to bait out for our moon to survive. Or maybe we just wanted to mess up their mana that turn.
Like those are our worst case scenarios. Seems fine.
In any case.
I went to FNM tonight and went 3-1
Jeskai nahiri - loss 0/2
. saw twice as much land as I did spells. I'm not exagerating, I counted. Then I got stuck on 3 mana despite jets and relics *ech*
Abzan reanimator - win 2/0
. 4 MB relics, 2 MB moons, 2 SB moons. I walked across the finish line both games on their backs
Infect - win 2/0
. My SB isn't exactly where I want it to be ATM, but as a happy accident, that means I get to run 9 sweepers post boarding, plus 2 ratchet bombs. Moons and relics are also good here ofc. Walk in the park.
RG titan shift - win 2/0
. He didn't run emrakuls, so I didn't have anything to worry about when behind a moon. Again, a casual walk across the finish line.
Not bad, but I'd say that probably is too many sweepers MB. Move the angers to the SB.
I'd also highly recommend trying to squeeze in 3-4 magma jets, they're phenomenal. Smoothing out land drops, tucking irrelevant/redundant hate cards like moons, digging for answers or threats. I'm never dissatisfied to be holding one in hand.
Maybe -1 stormbreath, -1 koth, -2 roast (or just ship the roasts to the SB), +4 jet.
I've been saying this for a long time (since the old thread) and ofc completely agree.
We want to establish complete control of the board, or at the very least, create a stalemate to hide a PW behind.
This is why p-n'-k, reckoner, and scourge are so good, they just gum up the board incredibly well.
But going T1 relic/removal > T2 ramp > T3 koth, will often leave him more vulnerable than we'd like.
T1 relic/removal > T2 removal(or SSG moon) > T3 blocker > T4 koth, is just so much stronger.
Personally I don't like running the SSG's either, but that's mainly personal taste. But my reasoning is that I don't like topdecking him later on in the game, and he's more oft than not gonna be card disadvantage.
The nice thing about mind stone is that it can cycle in the late game, but when it just provides inferior lines early, what's the point?
Sure, it can allow us to accelerate our clock vs things like scapeshift, but rabblemaster already does a better job, and he pairs better with SSG.
If your running a more top-heavy list with wurmcoils, godos, 4+ 5cmc threats, and an ugin or something. Then it makes some sense. But the strength of 2cmc rocks is their ability to pump out 4cmc threats on T3, and again, that just isn't what we really want to be doing.
In any case, I'd argue such a deck is simply too top-heavy to begin with.
Most of what kozileks return kills are things that come out of the SB or affinity.
Personally I haven't had much issue dealing with pro red creatures. Mouth of ronom chews em up before they can end the game most of the time.
And for people who run them, eternal scourge can stonewall pro red creatures and a stormbreath usually just outraces them.
Personally I prefer ratchet bomb to return, despite how slow ratchet bomb can be. It's a nice answer to the few things affinity can use to beat us, like ensoul artifact on a Darksteel citadel, or cranial plating on something resilient. Ratchet bomb also helps vs boggles and can kill other pro red things.
In reckoner lists, I'd say run mainly (if not exclusively) volcanic fallout in the MB. In MU's where we DO want sweepers it'll do the job just fine, in MU's where we don't it can still shock your opponent's face, and it doesn't kill your reckoner in the process.
Then put a buncha angers in the SB for dredge, coco, n' *****.
I'm not a huge fan of clasm as it's niche is against hyper aggro like affinity. Our other sweepers more than accomplish the same goals here considering our robust removal suite we naturally pack will easily get us to T3 with most of our life in tact.
I am One_Man_Party and I have built Skred because ultimately I had blood moons with the amount of red cards I have I built this mono-red devotion deck and with the suggestions of local players told me to run Skred over the devotion deck. Luckily for me, I had built enough store credit at one of the local game stores I was able to not only purchase 22 Snow-Covered Mountain but also at another local game store to have purchased 2 Scrying Sheets. I played the deck on Friday July 29th at FNM with actually moderate success against the following: GR Valakut and Naya Burn that of which the decks I won my matches while the losses were against Taxing Eldrazi and Bant Eldrazi. Now flash forward to this past Monday Night Magic August 1st, I went 3-0-1 where my match wins were against Taxing Eldrazi, Jund, GR Devotion, and my last round opponent was nice enough to intentionally draw so that the prizing was benefited both of us gaining an amount of store credit. The list I am currently running now I called Skred Dragons and here is the list as follows:
Welcome to the mono-red master race! Glad to hear you've been having good results!
How's that top-end treating you? I'd say you could stand to slim down on your 5+ drops, maybe squeeze some 4cmc walkers in there like koth and Chandra (price permitting ofc, idk your budget)
I'd also recommend moving some of your MB blood moons to the SB. But that's more of a meta call, and you seem to be finding yourself across the table from eldrazi lists pretty frequently. Still, I'd say 3 moons would be more than enough.
And as far as your firewild borderposts are concerned, is that just a holdover from the devotion list? If you really want to run mana rocks, I'd suggest mind stone. Or even coldsteel heart. But personally, I'm a fan of addition by subtraction in this deck, so I run molten rains over rocks. But my curve isn't as steep so that may not be for you.
i totally agree, anger and relics dominate them, but we HAVE to see them or they just do to us what they do to jund.
he CAN die to creatures, but he usually kills them first, or we do. like, this is the skred thread right? we run 12+ spot removal (not counting sarkhan/GDD) and 3-7 sweepers.
you don't even need the board to be clear. hell, ive had countless games where i just let their snapcaster attack sarkhan even when i had removal in hand, sarkhan would kill them before snap could kill sarkhan. he can do 16 damage if all you're worrying about is 2 power and they don't burn him.
GDD's biggest strength IMO was reinforcing our LD strategy, or just giving us scry. recasting those always felt very good. but imo it's not enough to give hm the edge here.
ignoring the countless other advantages sarkhan has over GDD, the big deal-breaker between GDD and sarkhan for me is sarkhan has haste. if i need an evasive flametounge kavu, both can do it. if i need a *****ty stormbreath, he can also do that but GDD can't.
GDD lacks the explosive potential that our deck loves. it's why i cut PnK, t-break, GDD, b-skull, and more. i'd run thundermaw over GDD, immediate damage is crucial. my biggest problem with reckoner is his lack of haste, fortunately, he makes up for it by way of turning our skreds into sMORC's dreams made reality.
@Grublo
fanatic of mogis's main problem is that he's only really good whith high deotion (obviously) which tends to mean you're already doing fine. IE, he's a win-more.
both can act like removal attached to a threat.
but sarkhan can haste your opponent's face on an empty board and save the removal for later.
GDD can hit "value spells" but we dont run enough for this to happen terribly reliably, especially considering our MB relics.
and even when we do, it's usually something like a magma jet or molten rain whitch doesnt hold a candle to stuff like k-command.
both have 4 power and evasion
both are vulnerable to multiple burn spells (sarkhan more-so if you open with his -3, but even then, it's a 2 for 1 still)
but sarkhan is immune to any and all "destroy" spells that cant target planeswalkers.
and while sarkhan's ult is actually worthless 99% of the time, you dont HAVE to use it, and there's still that 1%.
i've won 2 games with it! that's more than 1!
but our LD plan doesn't work and we really are at the mercy of our top-decks, scrying sheets is probably our saving grace here.
it's a rare deck that tends to get dropped into the losers bracket early even if it does show up. so i wouldnt worry too much about it. afterall, im not running any akroma, angel of fury's just because i lose to U-tron once every month and a half.
A huge part of the deck is being able to spend 1-2 turns cashing in all our grinded out card advantage into straight explosiveness.
Can't tell you how many people I've 20 to zeroed off an EoT burn dump > untap, drop a 4/x haste and alpha-strike. Maybe skred a reckoner too.
I know that's alot, but there's alotta creature decks these days. And I like keeping angers in the side as they tend to be less versatile and a non-Bo with reckoner.
But MB angers is perfectly fine too, especially considering the aforementioned plethora of creature decks running around.
I don't think it's that big a deal variance wise.
If they path him then we can drop a t4 stormbreath against a deck with white removal after going 1 for 1.
If they bolt him then we bolt our opponent and 1 for 1 them.
Or
We kill one of their creatures off the redirect and we just 2 for 1 them.
Or he gets decayed or something, still 1 for 1, they get a tempo advantage here but it tends to be moderate.
In any case, that may be the decay we wanted to bait out for our moon to survive. Or maybe we just wanted to mess up their mana that turn.
Like those are our worst case scenarios. Seems fine.
In any case.
I went to FNM tonight and went 3-1
Jeskai nahiri - loss 0/2
. saw twice as much land as I did spells. I'm not exagerating, I counted. Then I got stuck on 3 mana despite jets and relics *ech*
Abzan reanimator - win 2/0
. 4 MB relics, 2 MB moons, 2 SB moons. I walked across the finish line both games on their backs
Infect - win 2/0
. My SB isn't exactly where I want it to be ATM, but as a happy accident, that means I get to run 9 sweepers post boarding, plus 2 ratchet bombs. Moons and relics are also good here ofc. Walk in the park.
RG titan shift - win 2/0
. He didn't run emrakuls, so I didn't have anything to worry about when behind a moon. Again, a casual walk across the finish line.
I'd also highly recommend trying to squeeze in 3-4 magma jets, they're phenomenal. Smoothing out land drops, tucking irrelevant/redundant hate cards like moons, digging for answers or threats. I'm never dissatisfied to be holding one in hand.
Maybe -1 stormbreath, -1 koth, -2 roast (or just ship the roasts to the SB), +4 jet.
Outside of that it looks preeeeetty good.
We want to establish complete control of the board, or at the very least, create a stalemate to hide a PW behind.
This is why p-n'-k, reckoner, and scourge are so good, they just gum up the board incredibly well.
But going T1 relic/removal > T2 ramp > T3 koth, will often leave him more vulnerable than we'd like.
T1 relic/removal > T2 removal(or SSG moon) > T3 blocker > T4 koth, is just so much stronger.
Personally I don't like running the SSG's either, but that's mainly personal taste. But my reasoning is that I don't like topdecking him later on in the game, and he's more oft than not gonna be card disadvantage.
The nice thing about mind stone is that it can cycle in the late game, but when it just provides inferior lines early, what's the point?
Sure, it can allow us to accelerate our clock vs things like scapeshift, but rabblemaster already does a better job, and he pairs better with SSG.
If your running a more top-heavy list with wurmcoils, godos, 4+ 5cmc threats, and an ugin or something. Then it makes some sense. But the strength of 2cmc rocks is their ability to pump out 4cmc threats on T3, and again, that just isn't what we really want to be doing.
In any case, I'd argue such a deck is simply too top-heavy to begin with.
Personally I haven't had much issue dealing with pro red creatures. Mouth of ronom chews em up before they can end the game most of the time.
And for people who run them, eternal scourge can stonewall pro red creatures and a stormbreath usually just outraces them.
Personally I prefer ratchet bomb to return, despite how slow ratchet bomb can be. It's a nice answer to the few things affinity can use to beat us, like ensoul artifact on a Darksteel citadel, or cranial plating on something resilient. Ratchet bomb also helps vs boggles and can kill other pro red things.
Then put a buncha angers in the SB for dredge, coco, n' *****.
I'm not a huge fan of clasm as it's niche is against hyper aggro like affinity. Our other sweepers more than accomplish the same goals here considering our robust removal suite we naturally pack will easily get us to T3 with most of our life in tact.
Welcome to the mono-red master race! Glad to hear you've been having good results!
How's that top-end treating you? I'd say you could stand to slim down on your 5+ drops, maybe squeeze some 4cmc walkers in there like koth and Chandra (price permitting ofc, idk your budget)
I'd also recommend moving some of your MB blood moons to the SB. But that's more of a meta call, and you seem to be finding yourself across the table from eldrazi lists pretty frequently. Still, I'd say 3 moons would be more than enough.
And as far as your firewild borderposts are concerned, is that just a holdover from the devotion list? If you really want to run mana rocks, I'd suggest mind stone. Or even coldsteel heart. But personally, I'm a fan of addition by subtraction in this deck, so I run molten rains over rocks. But my curve isn't as steep so that may not be for you.
Just some suggestions, good luck in the future!