Hello ecryone one. Just one question, what does Bomat courier does for us? It seems very weak.
1: it's a one drop. Even with its bad body, relevant one drops are always at a premium
2: It's an artifact. We want to have an artifact at all times for Nerd Ape and Disintigration
3: Refills our hand. If you get it out on turn 1, it will usually get at least 2 cards before it can't attack freely anymore. With the madness effects and general low cost of our deck, it can be pretty easy to empty our hand. Getting a couple cards off of Bomat once its time is up is sometimes game winning. Besides, this format can get grindy andw e don't have many ways to keep up on card advantage.
4: Madness synergy. We run Temper, sometimes Bloodhall, have Scrounger than can be played from the graveyard and some builds have even more madness going on. Good discard outlets are always nice to have
5: Not a dead topdeck. While the courier itself is bad, you can swing it in and sac it before blocks to get an extra card when you're hellbent. Not as solid as a clue, but still has its merits.
Obviously it's not a blowout card, but it serves a purpose.
I recently picked up the deck and while I hardly consider myself a great MtG player, I figured I'd share my thoughts. I played to a 2-2 finished last night. Current Deck is as follows:
If you are curious of any different choices, it is due to not having the cards for a full on netdeck. Yes I'm unoriginal, but I didn't have cards and wanted to get back into the game. Sue me.
Matchups
2-1 UB Eldrazi
A newer player running a brew. The idea was to use ingest cards to fuel Wasteland Stranglers (and Mirrorpool them) and run 26 lands so he could awaken Ruinous Paths. I only lost the first round because I couldn't find black mana and drew many black cards. A recurring theme I had, I need more swamps.
0-2 GR Energy
Round one I had a solid curve and he didn't really do much until a turn 4 Hydra. He sung on turn 5 and I did no blocking because, while I was aware of pumps, I figured the truly degenerate stuff was only with the pummeler. I was wrong. 20-0. Second game I mulled to 5 and found his pressure with removal spells as best I could but eventually he pulled a second hydra (transgressed the first) and I realized I was going to lose the race even if I didn't need a creature back each turn to block it. This feels like the worst matchup simply because of the hydra and our lack of interaction with it.
1-2 UBR control
First game I drew 14 lands despite using Key to the city and Bomats to draw a lot of cards. I was able to stay relevant with recurring scrapheap scrounger but in the end it was a pretty obvious outcome. Second game I barely managed to get there with a bit of burn at the end and the final game he had more removal than I had creatures. Essence Extraction is a rough card to beat.
2-0 BUG Midrange
He had walkers, Noxious Gearhulks and That 4 mana 2/3 that lets you steal a card from the opponent. He constantly milled his walkers and got more value out of my own stolen cards than he did out of his own deck. Felt like he was fighting his luck more than me.
Overall I felt like the deck was lacking something. A lot of the time I was trying to think of what card I wanted to draw and realizing that I had very few truly impactful cards. I feel like our ability to push damage is slow in exchange for the ability to go grindier with all of the removal, card selection and recursion through scrounger, but then we lack the actual power cards to compensate for the long game. All of our cards are decent, but they only work well if we can get the tempo on our side with a good curve which feels unreliable with 8 1 drops.
Pia felt...like a card that holds together a deck, but in a bad way. I'm pretty sure this one is mostly due to my own poor draws, but Pia herself presents very little threat. She turns on our Artifacts matter effects, gives us multiple bodies (one of which has evasion) and gives us a sink for extra mana...but none of these are hugely impactful effects. Artifact activation can be done in many ways in our deck, so that's not a big factor. The two bodies are nice, but they are small and unimpactful. For comparison, let's look at PKN from the old RB dragons list. PKN was strong there because with Kolaghan, the bodies and synergize and snowball out games. We don't have any effects like that and so the bodies contribute little. Heck, I never got any use out of Pia's body because the enemy would always have either a bigger creature or a sweeper by turn 3. Finally, her abilities are nice to have, but is 2 mana firebreathing really where we want to be? Overall she's helpful, but definitely a card I want to replace...unless we make Bushwhacker a thing, then she's going to be a very strong part of the package.
Key to the City was the real breakout card of the evening. We have madness and some graveyard recursion, so we always have something worth tossing away to get free unblockable effects. When I was out of fuel, Key gave me tons of free draws to get to what I needed to win. It's a card that looks mediocre but gives us the edge we need to turn games that look lost into wins. Basically it's what Pia wants to be.
As for the sideboard, I'm not familiar enough with the standard environment to make too many calls here. I'd consider adding To the Slaughter to deal with Hydras, but that's about it.
For the future, I want to either get more aggressive or get more midranged. The deck feels like it's on the cusp of being really good, but we're missing that last piece. Then again, one FNM with bad draws is hardly empirical evidence, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Except for Key to the City. That thing could very easily be the best card in the deck. Unless you abandon the madness effects, you want to run the Key.
There may get some results due to simply being unexpected, but I would still say they are bad. As removal, they are inefficient. As game ending burn, 5 mana 5 damage might be just enough at times, but I can guarantee you will find more situations where you have one of them in hand and wish you had something better than you will be glad to have the finishing spell. It's the same reason we generally don't run Exquisite Firecraft anymore, the situations where the extra versatility of going face are simply not common enough to be worth the extra mana they cost.
I'll join in the series of Game Day reports with my own run. The good news? I came in 2nd! The bad? I went overall 4/3, Toronto was -30 something today so nobody wanted to go I guess.
Game 1: 2-0 vs. Mardu control
Not much to say here. He was playing a slow build that ran walls of resurgence. It was nice of him to turn my Draconic roars into land destruction. I kept to the standard of Dash kolaghan on turn 5 for an absurd damage swing and won that way.
Game 2: 1-2 vs. Rally
I have never played against rally, even when I was on the Mardu dragons plan so I didn't know the proper way to engage the deck. Ordinarily that wouldn't have meant much because dragons fly over and get the kill pretty easily. Unfortunately, Reflector Mage can be retrieved off of Rally and Collected Company. My dragons were bounced back to hand 4-5 times in game 1 alone. I simply couldn't generate enough aggression to finish him off through all the bounce effects.
Game 3: 2-0 vs. Goblins
game 1 he kept 4 mountains in hand and kept drawing more. I had removal for his one creature. Game two was more of a game with him curving out pretty hard. I was able to match him creature for creature though with Hordeling Outburst and trade for value until my flyers pushed him out of the game.
Game 4: 0-2 vs. Not-Rally
His deck was rally but not running the rally combo, he just called it aristocrats. It was the same style of game as round 2, I couldn't find my dragons and so I couldn't generate the aggro I needed to win. I couldn't control his board because I didn't know how to fight threats that WANT to die. Luckily we both agreed beforehand to draw so we could guarantee top 8
Top 8
Quarters: 2-0 vs. Mardu control
He just had bad draws. He said his game 1 hand shouldn't have been kept and despite the strong hand of 2 soulfire radiant flames and flaying tentacles, I had removal for both soulfires, duress for flaying and dragons after the radiant. He didn't draw enough threats to match me. He spent the next few hours complaining to his friend about it. He also ruined a bunch of my sleeves by shuffling really hard (granted these sleeves are over 2 years old but they're my first sleeves. They have sentimental value damn it!)
Semis: 2-0 vs. Brood Monitor Combo
I don't remember much about these games. His deck played a lot like an aristocrats deck but with the combo as the finisher instead of rally. I mainly remember the final game was won with a Forerunner, 5 goblins a thunderbreak and kolaghan alpha striking and making my opponent go bug eyed at suddenly way too much damage.
Finals: 1-2 vs. Mardu green
game one he conceded on turn 3 because he was stuck on 2 lands and I curved out aggresively. The next two games can be summed as by Whats-her-name from Game of Thrones shouting "WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS!?!" a lot. TO be a bit more detailed, I curved out well with my 2-3 drops but when he was always able to eventually sweep up with Radiant Flames and bury my in Siege Rhinos. I was never able to find the removal I needed and he transgressed away anything I had that could fight back.
Summarizing thoughts
I made a couple changes from my last list, mainly replacing the Dragon Fodders with Forerunners of Slaughter and replacing a Phoenix with Drana, since I've had one sitting uselessly in my binder since BfZ prerelease and wanted to try her out. I also made some changes to my sideboard but I don't think I saw a single sideboard card all day aside from Cranial Archive which proceeded to never be worth casting.
Forerunner I didn't see a lot of in the first few matches (I seem to always have trouble hitting any number of my 13 1-2 drops) but once he started showing up in my opening hands he was really good. Sometimes he'd just trade, which I was perfectly fine with, but generally he'd get at least one hit in, sometimes more. Even with Hangarback as a jump into thopter token, I can't think of any scenario I was in where Hangarback would've gotten more value than Forerunner. If you can't afford/don't want Hangarbacks, Forerunner is definitely worth running. It may even be a better card, I just can't say that concretely without any practice on Hangarback.
The one of Drana was weird in that despite being a one of, I saw it nearly every game and oh my GOD did it overperform. People almost never had the removal spell for her immediately (and when they did it was something like Crackling doom that we'd MUCH rather hit a 3 drop than out Dragons) and so she was able to get at least 1 pump almost every time she was cast. That was usually the point where she got hit by an abzan charm, but she always had at least one friend to buff up. If she stuck around for a second swing, that was generally lethal. It was kind of like having a 3 mana Kolaghan at times. On defense she also managed to hold up to snuff. In a format where people have a lot of 2 toughness creatures, nobody wants to attack into a first striker. Obviously her biggest weakness is that she can't bring you back into a game where you're already on the back foot, but this deck doesn't have a lot of cards for that anyway. I'm not sure I'd want to run her in place of all my phoenixes, the recurring threat on them can really add up, but she's definitely worth trying out.
As for my failed games, I'm not sure whether I can just attribute them to bad draws or if they highlighted some ways to tweak the deck further. Our removal is strong, but I feel like we just don't have what we need to deal with the classic Siege Rhino aside from try and ignore it. I miss the glory days of RtR where we could just Doomblade anything we didn't like. Can we have 2 mana hard removal again? I miss it.
Final note: if you have thopter engineers to run instead of Hordeling Outburst, do it. I honestly can't think of any situation where I'd want the extra token vs. the flying body and the bigger body.
I'll post a full decklist later, I'm too sleepy to count my cards right now.
The problem with Bearer is that in order to use its edict ability we need a colourless source. Since R/B doesn't have a painland in its colours, so our only real colourless source right now is Haven of the Spirit Dragon, which we don't even run a full set of. We could try adding in some colourless sources to try and splash it, but almost all of our cards have a double colour cost already. The smoothness of our manabase is IMO one of our biggest strengths right now, I don't think Bearer is worth ruining that.
Alright, I may not be one of the more experienced people with the deck but more data never hurt anyone so I'll do my FNM report
Overall score 2-2
Round 1: 2-0 win Abzan Displacer combo
The deck was an abzan shell splashing colourless to run the Brood Monitor Displacer Cutthroat combo, as well as Thought-Knot Seers. He played Sylvan Advocate and Siege Rhino, to which I responded by pointing out that I have flying threats. Easy win both games.
Round 2: 2-0 win G/R Ramp
A slight variation on the normal ramp deck in that it ran fewer ramp spells in favour of adding in Sylvan Advocates and Titan's Presence (forget the name, 3 mana exile based on a revealed card's power). I also learned the hard way that Kozilek's return is in fact an instant, NOT a sorcery as I had originally thought. In the end it didn't matter all that much though. He tried to hold the ground with Thought-Knots an removal, but all the midrange cards slowed down his ramping enough for me to just fly over him.
Round 3: 0-2 loss B/W Control
This match up came largely down to the draws. Game 1 I mulliganed down to 6, thinking that a 1 lander with a super strong curve was going to be better than 5 cards. To be fair, I was right, only missing one land drop before I starting getting going on turn 3. Unfortunately, he had the dream hand, throwing down Gideon, Ob and Sorin throughout the game, having enough spare exile removals that he started using them on my tokens because I wasn't able to prevent anything else. Game 2 I boarded in Crux and Outpost siege along with duress to try and contain his token production and keep up with his walkers. I was able to get him down to 5 life, but he got out of dash Kolaghan range with a seeker, and then I proceeded to Outpost Siege a pile of land and all the other Kolaghans while he hit 3 Gideons.
Round 4: 1-2 loss G/R Ramp
Game one came down to a bad fetch decision. Thinking he was running a ramp deck similar to the first one, I decided to fetch a swamp to turn 1 Duress so I could threaten Roast on his next play. I then proceeded to never find any red mana beyond the first mountain in my hand. I then proceeded to draw every card in my deck with RR in it's mana cost. By the time I found more mountains, he was already chaining World Breakers to keep me off red mana. Game two I had the same choice of 1 red mana in hand an a fetch and chose to take turn 1 off, after which I proceeded with the standard curve of 2 drop 3 drop Thunderbreak Dash Kolaghan. He admitted the second game was much less fun than the first. Game 3 turned real grindy. He had a turn 1 Jaddi offshoot and I had sided out all my small removal in favour of things to try and combat his threats. That Jaddi Offshoot probably gained him 15ish life that game alone. I had a strong curve into all the usual threats (and had turn 3 Infinite Obliteration for the World Breakers) but in addition to all the lifegain from his ramp spells (since he was getting more land) he played 3 Nissa's renewals (for the uninformed, gain 7 play 3 lands, meaning 10 life apiece.) I was able to grind out surprisingly well since he had no removal for Kolaghan, but it turns out an Ulamog, a Kozilek and 3 Ugins is just too much for this deck to beat.
Afterthoughts: I'm not sure how much I'm qualified to say since this was my first outting with the deck, but if nothing else, I can definitely say it felt MUCH better than Mardu builds. My 2 drop slot may be a bit harder to fill, but the overall curve is so much smoother. I noticed I was tripped of 4 mana a bit mroe than I would like so I'll probably time Tom Ross's build's advice and swap something out for another Mountain. Ross took out the Flamewake, but I think I'll take a Hordeling Outburst/Thopter Engineer instead. The recurring flying threat just felt so much better than flooding the ground along with everyone else. My decision to try Dragon Fodder instead of something like Forerunner of Slaughter was also a poor plan. Going wide is strong against removal, but when everyone else is gumming up the board, the tokens just sit back helplessly most of the time unless I'm dashing a Kolaghan with them. That being said, I imagine a 3/2 that just gets blocked by a similar 2 drop or just as stonewalled by a Rhino feels even worse. I still think it's better than Fodder though, unless you guys have better ideas for the 2 drop slot (keeping in mind I'm unable to go with the standard Hangarback). Sarkhan also felt poor, because any time I could play him, I either could just Kolaghan for lethal or didn't have time to set up the walker, Kolaghan dashing simply being more effective. It's possible I simply didn't find any of his good matchups or just had bad timing with him, but I'm going to replace it with my recently acquired second PKN.
Sideboard-wise, I also want to get more aggressive possibilities in there. The first Ramp deck I fought didn't always find his threats because of his midrange cards, but in both cases the players consistently got to Ugin/Ulamog mana before I finished them, despite hand disruption. That being said, I'm not sure what else to really get in there. Maybe Pitiless horde? 5 power is nice, and even if we don't dash it, the downside is pretty irrelevant in these matchups since Big ramp threats kill us either way once they resolve, a few shocks to our face aren't going to speed them up very much.
Overall, I didn't feel like any of the matchups were too terrible, We match pace pretty well with Ramp decks and the B/W control deck match up mainly came down to him having really strong draws and my draws clunking out. Stassis Snare is pretty scary though since Kolaghan has no real protection against it, but I suppose we've been worried about that with Abzan Charm already. Also, do NOT side out the Draconic Roar against Ramp. They have Jaddis and they have a LOT of landfall triggers. Maybe I'm reacting too strongly to the blowout in that last game but my GOD that little blocker hosed me really hard.
Hello friends, I've been on Mardu Dragons for the past while and recently decided to try dropping the white to try and get the deck to be more aggressive. That being said, I'm pretty ignorant of all the match ups and strategies as of right now, especially since the loss of white means Aggressive decks become scarier since I don't have seekers/soulfires to gain life. Can anyone offer some tips or maybe critique my decklist? Here's what I have right now
As for card choices, I'm running Dragon Fodder as a replacement for Hangarback since I don't have any and my interpretation of that card's role here is to be a good efficient blocker against aggressive decks and/or the ability to go wide to deal damage, so Fodder seems a good replacement. The Sarkhan is also to replace a PKN I lack, plus it's a way to hit things in the air, which I seem rather light on. Hordeling is also here because I don't have the thopter engineers to go in that slot, which is a shame because they looked really strong in Tom Ross' deck. The 25 lands over 26 is a concession to the fact that In my Mardu version which had an even higher curve, I flooded out in almost every game and I simply ran out of gas before I could get anything done a lot of the time. I started trying to side out a land last week and noticed no real issues, so I figure it should be an okay tradeoff.
Overall, I'm a bit nervous about this list, since it doesn't seem to be much faster than what I had before but with less security against aggressive deck because I have no lifegain. I suppose all the goblin tokens can compensate for that to some extent. I'm also concerned about getting out tempo'd by Collected Company style decks, because I remember simply not having the resources to compete on a 1 for 1 basis with decks like that before. I kind of want to tune it to be more aggressive like the earlier versions that ran Swiftspear and Bloodsoaked champions, but I feel like that's a bad route to go right now, sicne I'll just get out valued by more aggressive decks like Atarka red. Any advice?
So I'm bored of all my things rotating out constantly in standard, so I'm making the transition. I should also mention that due to the apparently large amounts of combo decks in modern, I'd prefer something that can disrupt combo decks effectively. I don't like dying because my opponent happened to have his 2-3 card win con in his opening hand.
Cards:
I lack a understanding of the Modern Metagame so it's hard to answer this effectively. that said
3x Thoughtseize
4x Monastery Swiftspear
2x Anafenza, the Foremost
4x Bloodstained Mire
3x Polluted Delta
2x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Tasigur
maybe others, I don't know the modern scene very well.
Style:
Aggro, Tempo, favour having control elements but generally lack the patience to spend half the game digging for a wincon. Dislike Ramp. Favoured colours are (form favourite to least favourite) Red, Black/Blue, White, Green. That said, I've never experienced non-ramp non-abzan green decks, so I don't know if well.
Budget:
$200-$300 I'd say. Preferably cheaper is better.
Level:
FNM. I've never done anything at a higher level than that and have no intention of going bigger thus far.
So I've been jamming Mono Red Aggro since the beginning of KtK block. It was originally going to be something to tide me over until I found a deck I wanted to try out, but the combination of not having a big budget and the fact that all the Jeskai and Mardu matches meant that I've missed top 8 maybe twice since starting to roll with the deck have kept me on the same plan for the past several months. Now my local meta is shifting more towards Abzan, Sultai and G Devotion strategies, plus people run circle of flames and peak eruptions just to hate on my deck, so I think it's time for a change. I was getting bored of finishing 20 minutes before everyone else anyway.
Problem is I'm not exactly sure what to run. My winnings mean that I'm no longer on much of a budget, but I don't know what I want to build. My natural instinct is to therefore build something that has a strong chance of winning in my current meta. My current meta, as I previously said, now consists largely of all flavours of Abzan (Aggro, Control, Midrange, and attempts to combine them), Sidisi Whip, G/R Aggro/Ramp, and various brews and Aggro decks. The Sidisi and Abzan decks (mainly the aggressive ones, I think) always tend to be at the top of the leaderboards. As for what I have to build with, I basically have a smattering of pieces of all decks from various attempts to build a new deck and then going back to Mono-Red. I probably have the most of Sultai things, with Two Tasigurs, 3 Downfalls and a Playset of Charms, Digs and Deltas, but I have pieces of just about everything. I kind of want to stick to red because of all the goodies red is getting in the new DtK block (Dem Thunderbreak Regents) but I'm not really committed to any plan. I'm also probably going to ignore Jeskai and Temur, Jeskai because the new standard makes it REALLY expensive and Temur because I don't trust it's small removal suite in my current meta. Also, I absolutely refuse to play Courser/Caryatid decks. I find Green focused strategies of make mana and big things and try to overwhelm people to be rather boring. Also they are expensive and rotating soon. Can anyone help me out? Sorry if this isn't much info to go on, I can try to be mroe specific if it helps.
1: it's a one drop. Even with its bad body, relevant one drops are always at a premium
2: It's an artifact. We want to have an artifact at all times for Nerd Ape and Disintigration
3: Refills our hand. If you get it out on turn 1, it will usually get at least 2 cards before it can't attack freely anymore. With the madness effects and general low cost of our deck, it can be pretty easy to empty our hand. Getting a couple cards off of Bomat once its time is up is sometimes game winning. Besides, this format can get grindy andw e don't have many ways to keep up on card advantage.
4: Madness synergy. We run Temper, sometimes Bloodhall, have Scrounger than can be played from the graveyard and some builds have even more madness going on. Good discard outlets are always nice to have
5: Not a dead topdeck. While the courier itself is bad, you can swing it in and sac it before blocks to get an extra card when you're hellbent. Not as solid as a clue, but still has its merits.
Obviously it's not a blowout card, but it serves a purpose.
4 Bomat Courier
4 Inventor's Apprentice
3 Scrapheap Scrounger
1 Reckless Bushwhacker
3 Pia Nalaar
1 Dust Stalker
2 Bloodhall Priest
Vehicles
4 Smuggler's Copter
1 Fleetwheel Cruiser
2 Key to the City
Spells
3 Fiery Temper
4 Unlicensed Disintigration
4 Incendiary Flow
Land
10 Mountain
4 Smouldering Marsh
4 Aether Hub
5 Swamp
4 Lighting Weaver
3 Forerunner of Slaughter
2 Transgress the Mind
4 Galvanic Bombardment
2 Lightning Axe
If you are curious of any different choices, it is due to not having the cards for a full on netdeck. Yes I'm unoriginal, but I didn't have cards and wanted to get back into the game. Sue me.
Matchups
2-1 UB Eldrazi
A newer player running a brew. The idea was to use ingest cards to fuel Wasteland Stranglers (and Mirrorpool them) and run 26 lands so he could awaken Ruinous Paths. I only lost the first round because I couldn't find black mana and drew many black cards. A recurring theme I had, I need more swamps.
0-2 GR Energy
Round one I had a solid curve and he didn't really do much until a turn 4 Hydra. He sung on turn 5 and I did no blocking because, while I was aware of pumps, I figured the truly degenerate stuff was only with the pummeler. I was wrong. 20-0. Second game I mulled to 5 and found his pressure with removal spells as best I could but eventually he pulled a second hydra (transgressed the first) and I realized I was going to lose the race even if I didn't need a creature back each turn to block it. This feels like the worst matchup simply because of the hydra and our lack of interaction with it.
1-2 UBR control
First game I drew 14 lands despite using Key to the city and Bomats to draw a lot of cards. I was able to stay relevant with recurring scrapheap scrounger but in the end it was a pretty obvious outcome. Second game I barely managed to get there with a bit of burn at the end and the final game he had more removal than I had creatures. Essence Extraction is a rough card to beat.
2-0 BUG Midrange
He had walkers, Noxious Gearhulks and That 4 mana 2/3 that lets you steal a card from the opponent. He constantly milled his walkers and got more value out of my own stolen cards than he did out of his own deck. Felt like he was fighting his luck more than me.
Overall I felt like the deck was lacking something. A lot of the time I was trying to think of what card I wanted to draw and realizing that I had very few truly impactful cards. I feel like our ability to push damage is slow in exchange for the ability to go grindier with all of the removal, card selection and recursion through scrounger, but then we lack the actual power cards to compensate for the long game. All of our cards are decent, but they only work well if we can get the tempo on our side with a good curve which feels unreliable with 8 1 drops.
Pia felt...like a card that holds together a deck, but in a bad way. I'm pretty sure this one is mostly due to my own poor draws, but Pia herself presents very little threat. She turns on our Artifacts matter effects, gives us multiple bodies (one of which has evasion) and gives us a sink for extra mana...but none of these are hugely impactful effects. Artifact activation can be done in many ways in our deck, so that's not a big factor. The two bodies are nice, but they are small and unimpactful. For comparison, let's look at PKN from the old RB dragons list. PKN was strong there because with Kolaghan, the bodies and synergize and snowball out games. We don't have any effects like that and so the bodies contribute little. Heck, I never got any use out of Pia's body because the enemy would always have either a bigger creature or a sweeper by turn 3. Finally, her abilities are nice to have, but is 2 mana firebreathing really where we want to be? Overall she's helpful, but definitely a card I want to replace...unless we make Bushwhacker a thing, then she's going to be a very strong part of the package.
Key to the City was the real breakout card of the evening. We have madness and some graveyard recursion, so we always have something worth tossing away to get free unblockable effects. When I was out of fuel, Key gave me tons of free draws to get to what I needed to win. It's a card that looks mediocre but gives us the edge we need to turn games that look lost into wins. Basically it's what Pia wants to be.
As for the sideboard, I'm not familiar enough with the standard environment to make too many calls here. I'd consider adding To the Slaughter to deal with Hydras, but that's about it.
For the future, I want to either get more aggressive or get more midranged. The deck feels like it's on the cusp of being really good, but we're missing that last piece. Then again, one FNM with bad draws is hardly empirical evidence, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Except for Key to the City. That thing could very easily be the best card in the deck. Unless you abandon the madness effects, you want to run the Key.
Game 1: 2-0 vs. Mardu control
Not much to say here. He was playing a slow build that ran walls of resurgence. It was nice of him to turn my Draconic roars into land destruction. I kept to the standard of Dash kolaghan on turn 5 for an absurd damage swing and won that way.
Game 2: 1-2 vs. Rally
I have never played against rally, even when I was on the Mardu dragons plan so I didn't know the proper way to engage the deck. Ordinarily that wouldn't have meant much because dragons fly over and get the kill pretty easily. Unfortunately, Reflector Mage can be retrieved off of Rally and Collected Company. My dragons were bounced back to hand 4-5 times in game 1 alone. I simply couldn't generate enough aggression to finish him off through all the bounce effects.
Game 3: 2-0 vs. Goblins
game 1 he kept 4 mountains in hand and kept drawing more. I had removal for his one creature. Game two was more of a game with him curving out pretty hard. I was able to match him creature for creature though with Hordeling Outburst and trade for value until my flyers pushed him out of the game.
Game 4: 0-2 vs. Not-Rally
His deck was rally but not running the rally combo, he just called it aristocrats. It was the same style of game as round 2, I couldn't find my dragons and so I couldn't generate the aggro I needed to win. I couldn't control his board because I didn't know how to fight threats that WANT to die. Luckily we both agreed beforehand to draw so we could guarantee top 8
Top 8
Quarters: 2-0 vs. Mardu control
He just had bad draws. He said his game 1 hand shouldn't have been kept and despite the strong hand of 2 soulfire radiant flames and flaying tentacles, I had removal for both soulfires, duress for flaying and dragons after the radiant. He didn't draw enough threats to match me. He spent the next few hours complaining to his friend about it. He also ruined a bunch of my sleeves by shuffling really hard (granted these sleeves are over 2 years old but they're my first sleeves. They have sentimental value damn it!)
Semis: 2-0 vs. Brood Monitor Combo
I don't remember much about these games. His deck played a lot like an aristocrats deck but with the combo as the finisher instead of rally. I mainly remember the final game was won with a Forerunner, 5 goblins a thunderbreak and kolaghan alpha striking and making my opponent go bug eyed at suddenly way too much damage.
Finals: 1-2 vs. Mardu green
game one he conceded on turn 3 because he was stuck on 2 lands and I curved out aggresively. The next two games can be summed as by Whats-her-name from Game of Thrones shouting "WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS!?!" a lot. TO be a bit more detailed, I curved out well with my 2-3 drops but when he was always able to eventually sweep up with Radiant Flames and bury my in Siege Rhinos. I was never able to find the removal I needed and he transgressed away anything I had that could fight back.
Summarizing thoughts
I made a couple changes from my last list, mainly replacing the Dragon Fodders with Forerunners of Slaughter and replacing a Phoenix with Drana, since I've had one sitting uselessly in my binder since BfZ prerelease and wanted to try her out. I also made some changes to my sideboard but I don't think I saw a single sideboard card all day aside from Cranial Archive which proceeded to never be worth casting.
Forerunner I didn't see a lot of in the first few matches (I seem to always have trouble hitting any number of my 13 1-2 drops) but once he started showing up in my opening hands he was really good. Sometimes he'd just trade, which I was perfectly fine with, but generally he'd get at least one hit in, sometimes more. Even with Hangarback as a jump into thopter token, I can't think of any scenario I was in where Hangarback would've gotten more value than Forerunner. If you can't afford/don't want Hangarbacks, Forerunner is definitely worth running. It may even be a better card, I just can't say that concretely without any practice on Hangarback.
The one of Drana was weird in that despite being a one of, I saw it nearly every game and oh my GOD did it overperform. People almost never had the removal spell for her immediately (and when they did it was something like Crackling doom that we'd MUCH rather hit a 3 drop than out Dragons) and so she was able to get at least 1 pump almost every time she was cast. That was usually the point where she got hit by an abzan charm, but she always had at least one friend to buff up. If she stuck around for a second swing, that was generally lethal. It was kind of like having a 3 mana Kolaghan at times. On defense she also managed to hold up to snuff. In a format where people have a lot of 2 toughness creatures, nobody wants to attack into a first striker. Obviously her biggest weakness is that she can't bring you back into a game where you're already on the back foot, but this deck doesn't have a lot of cards for that anyway. I'm not sure I'd want to run her in place of all my phoenixes, the recurring threat on them can really add up, but she's definitely worth trying out.
As for my failed games, I'm not sure whether I can just attribute them to bad draws or if they highlighted some ways to tweak the deck further. Our removal is strong, but I feel like we just don't have what we need to deal with the classic Siege Rhino aside from try and ignore it. I miss the glory days of RtR where we could just Doomblade anything we didn't like. Can we have 2 mana hard removal again? I miss it.
Final note: if you have thopter engineers to run instead of Hordeling Outburst, do it. I honestly can't think of any situation where I'd want the extra token vs. the flying body and the bigger body.
I'll post a full decklist later, I'm too sleepy to count my cards right now.
The problem with Bearer is that in order to use its edict ability we need a colourless source. Since R/B doesn't have a painland in its colours, so our only real colourless source right now is Haven of the Spirit Dragon, which we don't even run a full set of. We could try adding in some colourless sources to try and splash it, but almost all of our cards have a double colour cost already. The smoothness of our manabase is IMO one of our biggest strengths right now, I don't think Bearer is worth ruining that.
Here, it was unchanged from the list I posted a few days ago.
Overall score 2-2
Round 1: 2-0 win Abzan Displacer combo
The deck was an abzan shell splashing colourless to run the Brood Monitor Displacer Cutthroat combo, as well as Thought-Knot Seers. He played Sylvan Advocate and Siege Rhino, to which I responded by pointing out that I have flying threats. Easy win both games.
Round 2: 2-0 win G/R Ramp
A slight variation on the normal ramp deck in that it ran fewer ramp spells in favour of adding in Sylvan Advocates and Titan's Presence (forget the name, 3 mana exile based on a revealed card's power). I also learned the hard way that Kozilek's return is in fact an instant, NOT a sorcery as I had originally thought. In the end it didn't matter all that much though. He tried to hold the ground with Thought-Knots an removal, but all the midrange cards slowed down his ramping enough for me to just fly over him.
Round 3: 0-2 loss B/W Control
This match up came largely down to the draws. Game 1 I mulliganed down to 6, thinking that a 1 lander with a super strong curve was going to be better than 5 cards. To be fair, I was right, only missing one land drop before I starting getting going on turn 3. Unfortunately, he had the dream hand, throwing down Gideon, Ob and Sorin throughout the game, having enough spare exile removals that he started using them on my tokens because I wasn't able to prevent anything else. Game 2 I boarded in Crux and Outpost siege along with duress to try and contain his token production and keep up with his walkers. I was able to get him down to 5 life, but he got out of dash Kolaghan range with a seeker, and then I proceeded to Outpost Siege a pile of land and all the other Kolaghans while he hit 3 Gideons.
Round 4: 1-2 loss G/R Ramp
Game one came down to a bad fetch decision. Thinking he was running a ramp deck similar to the first one, I decided to fetch a swamp to turn 1 Duress so I could threaten Roast on his next play. I then proceeded to never find any red mana beyond the first mountain in my hand. I then proceeded to draw every card in my deck with RR in it's mana cost. By the time I found more mountains, he was already chaining World Breakers to keep me off red mana. Game two I had the same choice of 1 red mana in hand an a fetch and chose to take turn 1 off, after which I proceeded with the standard curve of 2 drop 3 drop Thunderbreak Dash Kolaghan. He admitted the second game was much less fun than the first. Game 3 turned real grindy. He had a turn 1 Jaddi offshoot and I had sided out all my small removal in favour of things to try and combat his threats. That Jaddi Offshoot probably gained him 15ish life that game alone. I had a strong curve into all the usual threats (and had turn 3 Infinite Obliteration for the World Breakers) but in addition to all the lifegain from his ramp spells (since he was getting more land) he played 3 Nissa's renewals (for the uninformed, gain 7 play 3 lands, meaning 10 life apiece.) I was able to grind out surprisingly well since he had no removal for Kolaghan, but it turns out an Ulamog, a Kozilek and 3 Ugins is just too much for this deck to beat.
Afterthoughts: I'm not sure how much I'm qualified to say since this was my first outting with the deck, but if nothing else, I can definitely say it felt MUCH better than Mardu builds. My 2 drop slot may be a bit harder to fill, but the overall curve is so much smoother. I noticed I was tripped of 4 mana a bit mroe than I would like so I'll probably time Tom Ross's build's advice and swap something out for another Mountain. Ross took out the Flamewake, but I think I'll take a Hordeling Outburst/Thopter Engineer instead. The recurring flying threat just felt so much better than flooding the ground along with everyone else. My decision to try Dragon Fodder instead of something like Forerunner of Slaughter was also a poor plan. Going wide is strong against removal, but when everyone else is gumming up the board, the tokens just sit back helplessly most of the time unless I'm dashing a Kolaghan with them. That being said, I imagine a 3/2 that just gets blocked by a similar 2 drop or just as stonewalled by a Rhino feels even worse. I still think it's better than Fodder though, unless you guys have better ideas for the 2 drop slot (keeping in mind I'm unable to go with the standard Hangarback). Sarkhan also felt poor, because any time I could play him, I either could just Kolaghan for lethal or didn't have time to set up the walker, Kolaghan dashing simply being more effective. It's possible I simply didn't find any of his good matchups or just had bad timing with him, but I'm going to replace it with my recently acquired second PKN.
Sideboard-wise, I also want to get more aggressive possibilities in there. The first Ramp deck I fought didn't always find his threats because of his midrange cards, but in both cases the players consistently got to Ugin/Ulamog mana before I finished them, despite hand disruption. That being said, I'm not sure what else to really get in there. Maybe Pitiless horde? 5 power is nice, and even if we don't dash it, the downside is pretty irrelevant in these matchups since Big ramp threats kill us either way once they resolve, a few shocks to our face aren't going to speed them up very much.
Overall, I didn't feel like any of the matchups were too terrible, We match pace pretty well with Ramp decks and the B/W control deck match up mainly came down to him having really strong draws and my draws clunking out. Stassis Snare is pretty scary though since Kolaghan has no real protection against it, but I suppose we've been worried about that with Abzan Charm already. Also, do NOT side out the Draconic Roar against Ramp. They have Jaddis and they have a LOT of landfall triggers. Maybe I'm reacting too strongly to the blowout in that last game but my GOD that little blocker hosed me really hard.
4x Flamewake Phoenix
4x Thunderbreak Regent
1x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
4x Kolaghan, The Storm's Fury
Spells
1x Wild Slash
2x Fiery Impulse
2x Duress
3x Roast
4x Draconic Roar
4x Dragon Fodder
4x Hordeling Outburst
1x Murderous Cut
1x Sarkhan, The Dragonspeaker
4x Smouldering Marsh
4x Bloodstained Mire
3x Wooded Foothills
3x Polluted Delta
6x Mountain
1x Haven of the Spirit Dragon
4x Swamp
1x Complete Disregard
1x Self-Inflicted Wound
2x Radiant Flames
2x Crux of Fate
1x Infinite Obliteration
2x Duress
1x Roast
2x Foul Tongue Invocation
2x Outpost Siege
As for card choices, I'm running Dragon Fodder as a replacement for Hangarback since I don't have any and my interpretation of that card's role here is to be a good efficient blocker against aggressive decks and/or the ability to go wide to deal damage, so Fodder seems a good replacement. The Sarkhan is also to replace a PKN I lack, plus it's a way to hit things in the air, which I seem rather light on. Hordeling is also here because I don't have the thopter engineers to go in that slot, which is a shame because they looked really strong in Tom Ross' deck. The 25 lands over 26 is a concession to the fact that In my Mardu version which had an even higher curve, I flooded out in almost every game and I simply ran out of gas before I could get anything done a lot of the time. I started trying to side out a land last week and noticed no real issues, so I figure it should be an okay tradeoff.
Overall, I'm a bit nervous about this list, since it doesn't seem to be much faster than what I had before but with less security against aggressive deck because I have no lifegain. I suppose all the goblin tokens can compensate for that to some extent. I'm also concerned about getting out tempo'd by Collected Company style decks, because I remember simply not having the resources to compete on a 1 for 1 basis with decks like that before. I kind of want to tune it to be more aggressive like the earlier versions that ran Swiftspear and Bloodsoaked champions, but I feel like that's a bad route to go right now, sicne I'll just get out valued by more aggressive decks like Atarka red. Any advice?
Cards:
I lack a understanding of the Modern Metagame so it's hard to answer this effectively. that said
3x Thoughtseize
4x Monastery Swiftspear
2x Anafenza, the Foremost
4x Bloodstained Mire
3x Polluted Delta
2x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Tasigur
maybe others, I don't know the modern scene very well.
Style:
Aggro, Tempo, favour having control elements but generally lack the patience to spend half the game digging for a wincon. Dislike Ramp. Favoured colours are (form favourite to least favourite) Red, Black/Blue, White, Green. That said, I've never experienced non-ramp non-abzan green decks, so I don't know if well.
Budget:
$200-$300 I'd say. Preferably cheaper is better.
Level:
FNM. I've never done anything at a higher level than that and have no intention of going bigger thus far.
Problem is I'm not exactly sure what to run. My winnings mean that I'm no longer on much of a budget, but I don't know what I want to build. My natural instinct is to therefore build something that has a strong chance of winning in my current meta. My current meta, as I previously said, now consists largely of all flavours of Abzan (Aggro, Control, Midrange, and attempts to combine them), Sidisi Whip, G/R Aggro/Ramp, and various brews and Aggro decks. The Sidisi and Abzan decks (mainly the aggressive ones, I think) always tend to be at the top of the leaderboards. As for what I have to build with, I basically have a smattering of pieces of all decks from various attempts to build a new deck and then going back to Mono-Red. I probably have the most of Sultai things, with Two Tasigurs, 3 Downfalls and a Playset of Charms, Digs and Deltas, but I have pieces of just about everything. I kind of want to stick to red because of all the goodies red is getting in the new DtK block (Dem Thunderbreak Regents) but I'm not really committed to any plan. I'm also probably going to ignore Jeskai and Temur, Jeskai because the new standard makes it REALLY expensive and Temur because I don't trust it's small removal suite in my current meta. Also, I absolutely refuse to play Courser/Caryatid decks. I find Green focused strategies of make mana and big things and try to overwhelm people to be rather boring. Also they are expensive and rotating soon. Can anyone help me out? Sorry if this isn't much info to go on, I can try to be mroe specific if it helps.