I largely feel this article's main goal was just to promote the concept of Sligh itself, and Goblin Guide.
Frankly, it's just a bad card... no matter how many attempts are made to justify it.
I also feel that Child of Night and Vampire Nighthawk weren't all that properly addressed. Sans First Strike, it's 2-power for 2 mana which often forces a block or answer to be wasted on it (and the First Strike options in 2-mana for cost :symb::symb:, whereas CoN is a much easier :1mana::symb:). Nighthawk is like that, but much more dangerous.
Author expresses the notion and concept that Sligh doesn't care about its own life total. That's great, but there is someone who DOES care about your life total, and that's the person across the table. That 2-power isn't getting any bigger by clinging to "Lifelink doesn't belong in Sligh"... I could only see creatures likely to generate direct card advantage as being worth the slot, and those creatures are all costing :symb::symb:.
Frankly, Sligh as a concept is probably better expressed in Black or Black/X in this environment. Red has more of the burn, but not the only burn game in town.
In short, I feel this deck wastes BOTH Black and Red in something that probably sounded good in one's head and looked good on paper, but really doesn't hold up when it gets looked at later. or is the way to go with this deck.
1-mana answer to tons of attempts at removal (including mass-burn), can utterly punish an opponent's combat phase, and can even allow an army to just sweep clean through unblocked. Only functions for White decks but between this, Harm's Way, and Path to Exile... White's 1-mana tricks are just obscene.
Lost Kithin and Forge-Tender... picked up some replacements for both.
...there's NO actual substantiation, yet there's "no doubt" about enemy fetches coming out of nowhere and making no sense... being in this set.
Lots of cards or cycles have potential Landfall interactions.
For all you know, we could get: Wonky Plains
Land
:symtap:, Return Wonky Plains to its owner's hand: Search your library for a Plains and put it onto the Battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
Better Landfall interactions even. So don't just assume MaRo's vague comments automatically mean something really arbitrary which makes NO sense with this monocolored block like enemy-pair fetchlands.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would certainly be utterly stupid with respect to set design.
While not strong enough in the current standard environment, this base you have posted is a good start. We will have to see what Zendikar brings us and what other decks will be competitive post rotation. IF MBC is viable, Sorin will be a part of it.
That list is awful. Bad cards are bad. Nightmare and Mind Rot should NOT see play. Lilliana, Sorin, and Consume Spirit should be the high-cost end of the deck, everything else should participate lower on the curve.
Sideboard should be teched to deal with varying deck types (Deathmark, Duress, etc). Lands should include Gargoyle Castle to dispose of Stag, and Fleshbag Marauder may be sideboard worthy in such cases.
Mainboard should be solid cards like:
[deck]4 Child of Night
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Vampire Nocturnus
4 Sign in Blood
4 Doom Blade
4 Tendrils of Corruption
3 Lilliana Vess
3 Sorin Markhov
3 Consume Spirit[/card]
im sorry, but if you are playing agianst a red deck, and you have a turn 1 noble/bird. the smart thing for them is it kill it right away. if they dont, then congrats on winning against someone who doesnt understand the current threat on the table.
So wasting Lightning Bolt on Birds instead of Rafiq/Jenara... is a GOOD play? What do they do to answer the REAL threat then?
Let the manadorks stay in play, keep the threats off the board and you'll win... that's how Bant should be played against imo.
also, your 8 mana dorks are an extension of your manabase, and you have to run multiple forests for it to be worth it. this being said, if you dont draw into more land to play your threats, then you have to play more mana dorks to get the mana. this in itself is overextending. sure, you can play a ponder or two to smoothen your draws, but if you are stuck with a forest and plains after a fallout, you will have a hard time recovering. also, ponder and sage owl do not produce mana, so the hardly count towards a decks manabase.
Cards that dig for essential lands don't count towards the manabase...? So is that like saying cards like Borderland Ranger don't count as manasmoothing?
with the build i run, i dont overextend. im what the people in the business call a conservative player. if you had 4 mana that can produce any color your deck needed, and had a war monk in play with no opposing creatures. having a hand with rafiq and cryptic, what are you going to do? play the rafiq, or save it for the counter?
It depends on many factors...
- the opponent's deck
- opponent's cards in hand
- cards opponent has used so far
- opponent's mana colors/quantity
- life totals
Either answer I gave, in your case, would result in you coming up with a way it is "wrong", therefore I'm not going to allow that. There are situations where either play is preferable.
in most cases, you will choose the counter. thats the difference with Tempo builds and Full-on Aggro. all you can do in full on aggo is play threat after threat. where, Tempo keep your current threats alive, and keeps theirs in the graveyard.
Using words like "Tempo" to describe your deck does not inherantly validate your deck or opinions. We disagree and that is fine, but I recommend skipping on trying to be fancy with deck labels to sound smarter.
For example, if you know the opponent is unlikely to have a counter/kill in hand... going for the 16-point swing in life totals may very well be prudent. Cryptic can be saved to bounce/tap an opposing blocker on the following turn if you need to get in a fatal blow.
There are times when slow-rolling is better, and there are times when it is not.
For example, if you had Baneslayer Angel instead of War Monk, and the opponent was at 11 or 12... it might be worth it to drop Rafiq and attempt a fatal swing, forcing them to immediately use any answer they have.
If it was Jenara, instead of War Monk, that brings a whole other situation.
And there's even MORE variables in play with my build with Sage Owl and Ponder letting me know what's coming and the order it is coming in. If I know I'm drawing another Rafiq next turn, playing this 1st Rafiq is entirely reasonable as a play.
You seem to speak down to me and want to keep a very closed mind... so no matter how often you want to use words like "Tempo" to try to validate your opinion, those traits make it difficult to extend you credibility.
I am testing many things, experimenting with both the manabase and sideboard tools. If you want to criticize, please keep it constructive rather than jerking your own chain.
no mainboard removal? not running Mimic/Infiltrator just cuz they rotate in like a month? 4x a Legendary that doesnt make a immediate impact on the game? (Jenara)
sorry if im being over critical, but you need to be running the best of what you can while you can. Sage Owl as your only 2 drop is risky, especially with an inconsistant manabase. you will not always get your bird or noble on turn 1, and even if you do, volcanic fallout ruins your manabase since you have to rely on your creatures to play things. i understand if you were ramping up to something, but you arent.
also, 4 elspeth is way too many. the most i run of any given planeswalker in any deck is no more than 3, for risk of drawing it too often. having Rafiq as a 4 of is okay, since he has such a huge target on his head, he rarely last longer than a turn, so i think of him as a 4 casting cost sorcery that has a possibility to deal 12 dmg to a player (mimic in play). its a disruptable metaphoric burn spell, but it wins games.
since your version doesnt have mimic/infiltrator, then trying to get a rafiq on turn 3 isnt really useful. the best you can do is 8 dmg in the air (jenara) if she doesnt get lightning bolted first or having rafiq die before you declare your attack. or having your war monk get blocked, and you gain 4.
also, in my experience, Infiltrator is amazing against the Fae, and Kithkin matchups.
Your criticism of the manabase runs into the problem that I have not 8 (Hierarch and Bird), but 16 (Sage Owl and Ponder) means of improving color consistency, as well as draw consistency.
Fallout hits no earlier than turn 3 for many decks... which doesn't concern me to be honest. If I'm losing 3 creatures to Fallout, it's my fault for OVEREXTENDING into it, 2 creatures is an acceptable loss if 1 of them is a Sage Owl. (Still better than half the deck being Fallout-bait like Infiltrator and Mimic builds.) I have honestly never cared about any Fallout dropped.
Your criticism of Jenara runs into similar problems, people underrate her. You say "Lightning Bolt", I say "one less aimed at Rafiq" or "They better do it before I have :1mana::symw: open". She's evasive and a potential game-ender on her own, and she gives you things to do with spare mana.
And that is rather the point of my build... War Monk is solid, Jenara, Rafiq, Elspeth, AND Baneslayer all demand immediate answers, all of which can prove game-ending on their own. It's simple and straightforward... drop threat after threat and never stop.
Legendary-ness is a moot point. They either answer the threat, or they lose (in general). 1 Elspeth may get dropped for 1 more land, I'm tweaking the manabase since it's still experimental to say the least.
I see no reason not to play 4, and this is the perfect card for Red to compliment either Chandra, and Banefire. I can definitely see a new kind of Red with a solid mid and late game from this.
Frankly, it's just a bad card... no matter how many attempts are made to justify it.
I also feel that Child of Night and Vampire Nighthawk weren't all that properly addressed. Sans First Strike, it's 2-power for 2 mana which often forces a block or answer to be wasted on it (and the First Strike options in 2-mana for
Author expresses the notion and concept that Sligh doesn't care about its own life total. That's great, but there is someone who DOES care about your life total, and that's the person across the table. That 2-power isn't getting any bigger by clinging to "Lifelink doesn't belong in Sligh"... I could only see creatures likely to generate direct card advantage as being worth the slot, and those creatures are all costing :symb::symb:.
Frankly, Sligh as a concept is probably better expressed in Black or Black/X in this environment. Red has more of the burn, but not the only burn game in town.
In short, I feel this deck wastes BOTH Black and Red in something that probably sounded good in one's head and looked good on paper, but really doesn't hold up when it gets looked at later.
TBH, I think there's just a better case for White in general...
1 Brave the Elements
1 Path to Exile
2 Celestial Purge
2 White Knight
4 Day of Judgment
1-mana answer to tons of attempts at removal (including mass-burn), can utterly punish an opponent's combat phase, and can even allow an army to just sweep clean through unblocked. Only functions for White decks but between this, Harm's Way, and Path to Exile... White's 1-mana tricks are just obscene.
Lost Kithin and Forge-Tender... picked up some replacements for both.
Archive Trap
Burning Inquiry
Swerve
As sideboard options. Giving you a neat mill and disruption trick could be very cool, and make for a very good game against control.
Sad I won't snag any Scrublands, but happy as hell not to have to deal with the price and supply issue... this is utter madness.
Blue has better things to do... like the "mill 13 for :0mana:".
And it pretty much seals my decision to quit Magic. Too pricey and problematic trying to play competitively.
...there's NO actual substantiation, yet there's "no doubt" about enemy fetches coming out of nowhere and making no sense... being in this set.
Lots of cards or cycles have potential Landfall interactions.
For all you know, we could get:
Wonky Plains
Land
:symtap:, Return Wonky Plains to its owner's hand: Search your library for a Plains and put it onto the Battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
Better Landfall interactions even. So don't just assume MaRo's vague comments automatically mean something really arbitrary which makes NO sense with this monocolored block like enemy-pair fetchlands.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would certainly be utterly stupid with respect to set design.
I can safely say this will be a fairly high power-level set.
That list is awful. Bad cards are bad. Nightmare and Mind Rot should NOT see play. Lilliana, Sorin, and Consume Spirit should be the high-cost end of the deck, everything else should participate lower on the curve.
Sideboard should be teched to deal with varying deck types (Deathmark, Duress, etc). Lands should include Gargoyle Castle to dispose of Stag, and Fleshbag Marauder may be sideboard worthy in such cases.
Mainboard should be solid cards like:
[deck]4 Child of Night
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Vampire Nocturnus
4 Sign in Blood
4 Doom Blade
4 Tendrils of Corruption
3 Lilliana Vess
3 Sorin Markhov
3 Consume Spirit[/card]
Let the manadorks stay in play, keep the threats off the board and you'll win... that's how Bant should be played against imo.
Cards that dig for essential lands don't count towards the manabase...? So is that like saying cards like Borderland Ranger don't count as manasmoothing?
It depends on many factors...
- the opponent's deck
- opponent's cards in hand
- cards opponent has used so far
- opponent's mana colors/quantity
- life totals
Either answer I gave, in your case, would result in you coming up with a way it is "wrong", therefore I'm not going to allow that. There are situations where either play is preferable.
Using words like "Tempo" to describe your deck does not inherantly validate your deck or opinions. We disagree and that is fine, but I recommend skipping on trying to be fancy with deck labels to sound smarter.
For example, if you know the opponent is unlikely to have a counter/kill in hand... going for the 16-point swing in life totals may very well be prudent. Cryptic can be saved to bounce/tap an opposing blocker on the following turn if you need to get in a fatal blow.
There are times when slow-rolling is better, and there are times when it is not.
For example, if you had Baneslayer Angel instead of War Monk, and the opponent was at 11 or 12... it might be worth it to drop Rafiq and attempt a fatal swing, forcing them to immediately use any answer they have.
If it was Jenara, instead of War Monk, that brings a whole other situation.
And there's even MORE variables in play with my build with Sage Owl and Ponder letting me know what's coming and the order it is coming in. If I know I'm drawing another Rafiq next turn, playing this 1st Rafiq is entirely reasonable as a play.
You seem to speak down to me and want to keep a very closed mind... so no matter how often you want to use words like "Tempo" to try to validate your opinion, those traits make it difficult to extend you credibility.
I am testing many things, experimenting with both the manabase and sideboard tools. If you want to criticize, please keep it constructive rather than jerking your own chain.
"Creatures you control are Indestructible."
And the shuffle-into-library-whenever-put-into-graveyard-from-anywhere clause.
Fallout hits no earlier than turn 3 for many decks... which doesn't concern me to be honest. If I'm losing 3 creatures to Fallout, it's my fault for OVEREXTENDING into it, 2 creatures is an acceptable loss if 1 of them is a Sage Owl. (Still better than half the deck being Fallout-bait like Infiltrator and Mimic builds.) I have honestly never cared about any Fallout dropped.
Your criticism of Jenara runs into similar problems, people underrate her. You say "Lightning Bolt", I say "one less aimed at Rafiq" or "They better do it before I have :1mana::symw: open". She's evasive and a potential game-ender on her own, and she gives you things to do with spare mana.
And that is rather the point of my build... War Monk is solid, Jenara, Rafiq, Elspeth, AND Baneslayer all demand immediate answers, all of which can prove game-ending on their own. It's simple and straightforward... drop threat after threat and never stop.
Legendary-ness is a moot point. They either answer the threat, or they lose (in general). 1 Elspeth may get dropped for 1 more land, I'm tweaking the manabase since it's still experimental to say the least.
Wonder how it will stack up against Sorin...