Essentially replacing green (Collected Company / Satyr Wayfinder) for blue self-mill (Glimpse the Unthinkable / Hedron Crab / Jace, Vryn's Prodigy) as a means of digging for the combo deeper and more efficiently... please visit the page for a full walkthrough of my thought process and comparison to the stock list. I'm far from the first person to think of something like this, but I haven't seen anything along these lines tuned and discussed here so I thought I'd get us started.
I know I've defended CoCo over graveyard strategies such as Grisly Salvage in the past but I think there's enough efficiency and synergy here with Glimpse / Hedron / Jace that it's worth another look.
In the face of mana mulliganing issues I would up your number of Fetches if possible, the stock lists runs 9. If you're on a budget restraint I would fill out the playset of Windswept Heaths at the absolute minimum.
You can run the deck on 6-7x Sac Outlets, the 3rd/4th Cartel Aristocrats are flexible IMO. Personally I would add two more Rally effects here.
With the amount of linear aggro around I think you could stand to run Finks in the main instead of the side.
I would also run a 3rd Path in the SB over Murderous Cut. We don't really want to delve our grave away, and the exile effect of Path is great.
How has Liliana performed for you in various matchups? I'm interested in as much data as you can give. I'm torn, on one hand she's a (potential) Rally effect stapled to a body, which makes her more compatible with CoCo. Best case scenario has her played off of CoCo, sac something, get a 2/2 zombie, return a 3-drop creature to the field immediately. That's a decent amount of potential value. On the other hand the BB casting cost is a little tight in a deck that wants to hit WW & GG, and even if you do cast her she really needs a sac outlet + fodder on hand to safely/quickly flip: it would feel really bad to pay 3 mana to see her get bolted without getting any value out.
[1] Can you tell me more about your decision to cut Saffi? You said the opponent would often just remove her -- in theory isn't this still drawing that removal away from other targets? She seems to be a good protection solution for a proactive tapout deck and has worked well enough in my testing so far such that I wanted to understand her limitations better.
[2] Have you thought about running the new Reflector Mage?
It seems like it could be another solid option for Fiend Hunter's slot. While it only bounces for up to two of your turns instead of indefinite exile, that may not be as bad as it sounds. The effective length of Fiend Hunter's exile is obviously determined by the time before the opponent removes him (short of sac'ing Hunter to Falkenrath immediately to perma-exile).
Conversely, even if Reflector Mage is killed immediately the bounce effect is irreversible, demanding that they at least lose tempo recasting the creature. At best it keeps two high value creatures in your opponent's hand, which is a lot of value. And, as someone else pointed out to me, in rare scenarios you can also follow up Reflector Mage with Meddling Mage to keep those cards in their hand indefinitely.
I think the choice between the two largely comes down to how much you want to play around Bolt. If they need to at least play a two mana spell to get their creature back from exile then that tempo loss is a bit more acceptable. If they do have good access to Bolt then Reflector gives you a higher amount of guaranteed minimum value. I suppose another option is that Reflector could slot over Skyknight as well.
EDIT
Oops, I was wrong about Reflector Mage, it's even better than I thought: killing the Mage does *not* allow the opponent to cast the creature again earlier as the bounce and subsequent play restriction are all a part of the same triggered ETB ability. So even if the opponent responds to the Mage's ETB ability with Bolt the full effect of the ability will occur. This reaffirms my feeling that it's probably better than Fiend Hunter in interactive matchups, at least. Imagine playing against Jund, bouncing Tarmogoyf T3 to get two free turns of attacks in, and keeping Gofy from attacking again until your opponent's T5, regardless of whatever bolts, terminates, abrupt decays they throw at Reflector Mage... With that said we're in an increasingly non-interactive linear meta, so take that for what it's worth.
Prowess decks run 12-16 creatures so even the highest creature counts are relatively low, and as a balancing trait prowess creatures are typically below curve on stats. For these reason I don't think you'll derive much value from Cloudfin Raptor or Anafenza. A number of those other suggestions have seen play, though.
Out of curiosity, do you think Slip Through Space helped you there significantly more than Distortion Strike would have? If unblockable is so clutch would a guaranteed two-turn unblockable +1/+0 not be better? In the exact scenario having two back-to-back Distortion Strikes wouldn't have stacked well and wouldn't have drawn you the bolt, I suppose, but otherwise I wonder how interchangeable they really are. I can certainly see advantages to both.
I'm still confused -- you don't want to run green for budget reasons so instead of $12 Windsweapt Heaths you run a playset of $24 Flagstones which can't actually fetch a plains unless the opponent destroys it for you?
IMO sell the Flagstones and you'll pay for a playset of both Windswept Heath and CoCo. I cannot overstate the value and consistency you get from Satyr and Coco together, they're crucial to making the infinite loop happen. Proxy the whole package if you are unconvinced, no need to let budget get in the way of at least testing to see how everything works.
Personally I would replace Grim with Lingering Souls. Geralf and Pawn are both just ok.
I've goldfished Cauldron Haze in place of Safehold Elite but I didn't feel like it added that much relative to its drop in CoCo consistency as a non-creature. I'd be curious to hear if anyone else has had success with it, though.
Once again it looks like the Eldrazi presence has been a little overhyped, which is great for us in terms of grave hate. With that said linear aggro swarm decks are everywhere. Have people updated their builds to reflect this in the last month? For reference my build is here.
I find myself siding out 1-2x Eternal Witness pretty frequently. Getting CoCo back to run successive T4, T5 CoCo is obviously tremendously high value regardless of whether it finds the infinite and can be backbreaking in grindier match ups but against aggro you're not guaranteed a T4 let alone a T5, so Witness can feel a little win-more.. So I'm on the fence about how many spots (if any) Witness deserves in the main right now.
I'm going to try running 2x -> 1x Eternal Witness and moving 1x Lingering Souls to the main, then bulking up on a third Stony Silence in the board. Other options are to go from 3x Safehold Elite, 2x Kitchen Finks to 2x Safehold Elite, 3x Kitchen Finks, at the risk of further devaluing Return to the Ranks. Finks is such an all-star against aggro even outside of the infinite that I could definitely see running 3x, but unfortunately it lacks reach. Is Affinity + Delver common enough that 1x or even 2x MB Lingering Souls is justified? Or would additional copies of Finks do enough against aggro while also keeping CoCo's hit rate up + acting as an infinite piece?
Alternatively has anyone had success stalling long enough to get Wrath of God online? The prevailing opinion seems to be to run Souls over Wrath but I need to do some more testing here.
I will be stress testing options against Affinity & Tron here in the next week, trying to fine tune the optimal board strategy for each. I'll try to report back soon.
I've always thought that Isochron Scepter looked like a fun brewing target – unlike other decks we get prowess trigger on cast, so it at least gives some temporary board effect up front, and it nicely compliments the deck's weakness of limited prowess fuel.
With that said the classical thinking has been that it sets you up to get blown out by Abrupt Decay or Kolaghan's Command (or Affinity splash-hate postboard) after you've invested in it. I think it could potentially work as a Game One Gimmick but I'd be careful and consider siding it out afterwards to dodge hate-based blowouts. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though!
Any particular reason you're running Orzhov instead of the default Abzan for Rallyfenza? 4x Collected Company and 4x Voyaging Satyr are instrumental to reliably assembling the infinite drain loop in a relevant time frame (turn 4, possibly 3). Even if the loop doesn't come together, though, they still provide a ton of value to the deck.
Without green IMO you're better off ditching the infinite loop (Anafenza, safehold, a couple rally copies) and running Tidehollow Sculler, Inquisition, Path, possibly Lingering Souls main board. The non-creature spells were cut down in the original rallyfenza deck to jive with CoCo and Satyr, but without that restriction here you could take advantage of those great Orzhov spells.
Teysa is cute but I've never been too impressed with her in practice. With that said, if you do want to keep her and build around her I'd consider running a second copy for consistency. Grim Haruspex has always been a little "win-more", and I'm not sure if I'm missing some kind of tech with Flagstones.
If you do want to go for a Rallyfenza approach I would honestly go back to Saffron's stock list and play that for a while before making changes. If you're curious my personal list is linked a couple posts up, too, and I'm happy to answer questions about it. Take care.
@the_falsehate: Yeah, I've been doing a decent chunk of building & testing.
I started with a custom Mardu Prowess build, evolved it and played it for several months before I decided blue cantrips were just too critical to leave out. I've since moved on to testing a variant of Chapin's Grixis Prowess against a gauntlet of Affinity, Merfolk, Jund, & Tron. It's been alright. Regarding the tension of being proactive vs reactive: my own experience is that if you get lucky with a Gitaxian Probe you'll know what's coming and are able to better choose when to leave mana up for a critical reactive play without sacrificing too much of your pressure... but that doesn't always come together. The games where I need to keep mana open (especially two for remand) I feel like a worse version of burn. I've had some explosive blowouts, double Swiftspear opener is the nuts as you all know.. but just as many games where I'm in top-decking mode, out of prowess fuel and pulling "air" off the top while my opponent catches up and takes control of the game. Or matches where I lose a threat to bolt and just fail to draw another fast enough to keep the pressure on. It felt like it was in an awkward no-man's land where it wasn't as fast as a proper aggro deck, and didn't have the longevity or depth of interaction that a traditional tempo list had.
With the release of Stormchaser Mage and the recent success of RUG Delver I've been going back to the drawing board, asking myself if there isn't a better way to build Prowess that is consistent, robust, and better handles the rising 2016 linear aggro meta. Building and testing will certainly help but I'm honestly unsure of where to even start so I'm asking myself (and now you) these core questions about the Prowess mechanic, resulting deck design, and the place of the deck in the meta to get a feel for that.
Hi all, I’ve read the primer and kept up with various Prowess developments, but forgive me as I haven’t had time to read all of the posts in this thread.
I really want to like Prowess-based decks. These Monks & Wizards have a quasi-tribal feel to them and more importantly the lists are all built around a central mechanic with design implications that ripple through the deck and create interesting micro-synergies.
However, after tons of hype, brewing, testing, reading, I’m still having a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around an optimal Prowess deck, as I can’t reconcile the underlying design tensions inherent to the Prowess mechanic and find a strong direction to hone in on.
Namely, that tension is between playing a proactive main phase to pump threats from below-curve to above-curve while also trying to play a reactive game and protect said threats. With prowess, holding mana back for counterspells limits our attack potential. Essentially we have to pause our clock to keep our threats safe. Since winning via tempo relies upon having a faster clock than your opponent, this strikes me as a serious fundamental conflict. On top of that, as others have pointed out, counterspells are unusable flips off of Abbot.
Another way to protect our threats is to run black for hand disruption. While black hand disruption is more compatible with the main-phase focus it’s not compatible with our game timeline, where we want to get a threat down first to establish the clock and then play prowess-triggering spells afterwards.
Lastly we can also ignore counterspells altogether, run mutagenic growth against bolt and bounce our own creatures with Snag in response to terminate etc, but at that point are we really getting the full interactive advantage that a tempo deck is meant to provide in comparison to other linear aggro strategies?
How do you reconcile this tension? Alternatively, am I unfairly emphasizing its importance?
Additionally, what strengths does Jeskai Prowess provide over a more traditional tempo deck like RUG Delver (Delver flip rate aside)? To me Prowess has the potential to be more explosive when it draws well and the opponent is light on removal, but it also comes with the cost of greater vulnerability and a shorter lifespan that's reliant on prowess fuel.
Also, I see CurdBros state that the Jeskai version is well positioned at the moment – my understanding was that tempo decks generally fold to aggro. What makes the difference here? Can anyone elaborate on this more, or point to any gameplay streams? When I look at the Primer's MB+SB I don’t see quite the amount of sweepers, 2-for-1s, life gain, and so forth that I’d expect for a positive matchup vs aggro.
Thank you for your input. I apologize if this has come up a lot, perhaps something further addressing these points could be appended to the primer if need be.
I gave up on Mardu Aristocrats for now and just put my 4x Falkenrath Aristocrats into a fun 5c Human build.
Maybe once Shadows over Innistrad drops we'll get enough new cards to cobble together a truly competitive Mardu build but until then I think Abzan Rally builds (especially Rallyfenza) are the way to go.
Thanks for the perspective. Would you mind posting your current list?
You've mentioned that the low-to-the-ground Myth Pox decks fold to aggro pre-board, but do well enough once sweepers are sided in. Is the game 2-3 performance vs Affinity & Co. good enough to get a reliable lock on the set, or would Currie's list which is "pre-boarded" with helix, finks, and wraths do better overall in the set in your estimation? Since linear aggro is *everywhere* right now my top priority is on getting a good aggro matchup, followed by disrupting big mana Tron & Eldrazi second.
Additionally, could you offer more guidance on when to run Drown in Sorrow vs. Anger of the Gods vs. Wrath of God? Thank you.
2) What decks are packing these pieces?
3) Are they targeted for a certain meta deck?
Shifting gears a little bit I wanted to present what I've been working on recently:
Esper RallyFenza (TappedOut)
Essentially replacing green (Collected Company / Satyr Wayfinder) for blue self-mill (Glimpse the Unthinkable / Hedron Crab / Jace, Vryn's Prodigy) as a means of digging for the combo deeper and more efficiently... please visit the page for a full walkthrough of my thought process and comparison to the stock list. I'm far from the first person to think of something like this, but I haven't seen anything along these lines tuned and discussed here so I thought I'd get us started.
I know I've defended CoCo over graveyard strategies such as Grisly Salvage in the past but I think there's enough efficiency and synergy here with Glimpse / Hedron / Jace that it's worth another look.
Let me know what you think...
You can run the deck on 6-7x Sac Outlets, the 3rd/4th Cartel Aristocrats are flexible IMO. Personally I would add two more Rally effects here.
With the amount of linear aggro around I think you could stand to run Finks in the main instead of the side.
I would also run a 3rd Path in the SB over Murderous Cut. We don't really want to delve our grave away, and the exile effect of Path is great.
How has Liliana performed for you in various matchups? I'm interested in as much data as you can give. I'm torn, on one hand she's a (potential) Rally effect stapled to a body, which makes her more compatible with CoCo. Best case scenario has her played off of CoCo, sac something, get a 2/2 zombie, return a 3-drop creature to the field immediately. That's a decent amount of potential value. On the other hand the BB casting cost is a little tight in a deck that wants to hit WW & GG, and even if you do cast her she really needs a sac outlet + fodder on hand to safely/quickly flip: it would feel really bad to pay 3 mana to see her get bolted without getting any value out.
[1] Can you tell me more about your decision to cut Saffi? You said the opponent would often just remove her -- in theory isn't this still drawing that removal away from other targets? She seems to be a good protection solution for a proactive tapout deck and has worked well enough in my testing so far such that I wanted to understand her limitations better.
[2] Have you thought about running the new Reflector Mage?
It seems like it could be another solid option for Fiend Hunter's slot. While it only bounces for up to two of your turns instead of indefinite exile, that may not be as bad as it sounds. The effective length of Fiend Hunter's exile is obviously determined by the time before the opponent removes him (short of sac'ing Hunter to Falkenrath immediately to perma-exile).
Conversely, even if Reflector Mage is killed immediately the bounce effect is irreversible, demanding that they at least lose tempo recasting the creature. At best it keeps two high value creatures in your opponent's hand, which is a lot of value. And, as someone else pointed out to me, in rare scenarios you can also follow up Reflector Mage with Meddling Mage to keep those cards in their hand indefinitely.
I think the choice between the two largely comes down to how much you want to play around Bolt. If they need to at least play a two mana spell to get their creature back from exile then that tempo loss is a bit more acceptable. If they do have good access to Bolt then Reflector gives you a higher amount of guaranteed minimum value. I suppose another option is that Reflector could slot over Skyknight as well.
EDIT
Oops, I was wrong about Reflector Mage, it's even better than I thought: killing the Mage does *not* allow the opponent to cast the creature again earlier as the bounce and subsequent play restriction are all a part of the same triggered ETB ability. So even if the opponent responds to the Mage's ETB ability with Bolt the full effect of the ability will occur. This reaffirms my feeling that it's probably better than Fiend Hunter in interactive matchups, at least. Imagine playing against Jund, bouncing Tarmogoyf T3 to get two free turns of attacks in, and keeping Gofy from attacking again until your opponent's T5, regardless of whatever bolts, terminates, abrupt decays they throw at Reflector Mage... With that said we're in an increasingly non-interactive linear meta, so take that for what it's worth.
Out of curiosity, do you think Slip Through Space helped you there significantly more than Distortion Strike would have? If unblockable is so clutch would a guaranteed two-turn unblockable +1/+0 not be better? In the exact scenario having two back-to-back Distortion Strikes wouldn't have stacked well and wouldn't have drawn you the bolt, I suppose, but otherwise I wonder how interchangeable they really are. I can certainly see advantages to both.
IMO sell the Flagstones and you'll pay for a playset of both Windswept Heath and CoCo. I cannot overstate the value and consistency you get from Satyr and Coco together, they're crucial to making the infinite loop happen. Proxy the whole package if you are unconvinced, no need to let budget get in the way of at least testing to see how everything works.
Personally I would replace Grim with Lingering Souls. Geralf and Pawn are both just ok.
Once again it looks like the Eldrazi presence has been a little overhyped, which is great for us in terms of grave hate. With that said linear aggro swarm decks are everywhere. Have people updated their builds to reflect this in the last month? For reference my build is here.
I find myself siding out 1-2x Eternal Witness pretty frequently. Getting CoCo back to run successive T4, T5 CoCo is obviously tremendously high value regardless of whether it finds the infinite and can be backbreaking in grindier match ups but against aggro you're not guaranteed a T4 let alone a T5, so Witness can feel a little win-more.. So I'm on the fence about how many spots (if any) Witness deserves in the main right now.
I'm going to try running 2x -> 1x Eternal Witness and moving 1x Lingering Souls to the main, then bulking up on a third Stony Silence in the board. Other options are to go from 3x Safehold Elite, 2x Kitchen Finks to 2x Safehold Elite, 3x Kitchen Finks, at the risk of further devaluing Return to the Ranks. Finks is such an all-star against aggro even outside of the infinite that I could definitely see running 3x, but unfortunately it lacks reach. Is Affinity + Delver common enough that 1x or even 2x MB Lingering Souls is justified? Or would additional copies of Finks do enough against aggro while also keeping CoCo's hit rate up + acting as an infinite piece?
Alternatively has anyone had success stalling long enough to get Wrath of God online? The prevailing opinion seems to be to run Souls over Wrath but I need to do some more testing here.
I will be stress testing options against Affinity & Tron here in the next week, trying to fine tune the optimal board strategy for each. I'll try to report back soon.
With that said the classical thinking has been that it sets you up to get blown out by Abrupt Decay or Kolaghan's Command (or Affinity splash-hate postboard) after you've invested in it. I think it could potentially work as a Game One Gimmick but I'd be careful and consider siding it out afterwards to dodge hate-based blowouts. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though!
Without green IMO you're better off ditching the infinite loop (Anafenza, safehold, a couple rally copies) and running Tidehollow Sculler, Inquisition, Path, possibly Lingering Souls main board. The non-creature spells were cut down in the original rallyfenza deck to jive with CoCo and Satyr, but without that restriction here you could take advantage of those great Orzhov spells.
Teysa is cute but I've never been too impressed with her in practice. With that said, if you do want to keep her and build around her I'd consider running a second copy for consistency. Grim Haruspex has always been a little "win-more", and I'm not sure if I'm missing some kind of tech with Flagstones.
If you do want to go for a Rallyfenza approach I would honestly go back to Saffron's stock list and play that for a while before making changes. If you're curious my personal list is linked a couple posts up, too, and I'm happy to answer questions about it. Take care.
I started with a custom Mardu Prowess build, evolved it and played it for several months before I decided blue cantrips were just too critical to leave out. I've since moved on to testing a variant of Chapin's Grixis Prowess against a gauntlet of Affinity, Merfolk, Jund, & Tron. It's been alright. Regarding the tension of being proactive vs reactive: my own experience is that if you get lucky with a Gitaxian Probe you'll know what's coming and are able to better choose when to leave mana up for a critical reactive play without sacrificing too much of your pressure... but that doesn't always come together. The games where I need to keep mana open (especially two for remand) I feel like a worse version of burn. I've had some explosive blowouts, double Swiftspear opener is the nuts as you all know.. but just as many games where I'm in top-decking mode, out of prowess fuel and pulling "air" off the top while my opponent catches up and takes control of the game. Or matches where I lose a threat to bolt and just fail to draw another fast enough to keep the pressure on. It felt like it was in an awkward no-man's land where it wasn't as fast as a proper aggro deck, and didn't have the longevity or depth of interaction that a traditional tempo list had.
With the release of Stormchaser Mage and the recent success of RUG Delver I've been going back to the drawing board, asking myself if there isn't a better way to build Prowess that is consistent, robust, and better handles the rising 2016 linear aggro meta. Building and testing will certainly help but I'm honestly unsure of where to even start so I'm asking myself (and now you) these core questions about the Prowess mechanic, resulting deck design, and the place of the deck in the meta to get a feel for that.
I really want to like Prowess-based decks. These Monks & Wizards have a quasi-tribal feel to them and more importantly the lists are all built around a central mechanic with design implications that ripple through the deck and create interesting micro-synergies.
However, after tons of hype, brewing, testing, reading, I’m still having a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around an optimal Prowess deck, as I can’t reconcile the underlying design tensions inherent to the Prowess mechanic and find a strong direction to hone in on.
Namely, that tension is between playing a proactive main phase to pump threats from below-curve to above-curve while also trying to play a reactive game and protect said threats. With prowess, holding mana back for counterspells limits our attack potential. Essentially we have to pause our clock to keep our threats safe. Since winning via tempo relies upon having a faster clock than your opponent, this strikes me as a serious fundamental conflict. On top of that, as others have pointed out, counterspells are unusable flips off of Abbot.
Another way to protect our threats is to run black for hand disruption. While black hand disruption is more compatible with the main-phase focus it’s not compatible with our game timeline, where we want to get a threat down first to establish the clock and then play prowess-triggering spells afterwards.
Lastly we can also ignore counterspells altogether, run mutagenic growth against bolt and bounce our own creatures with Snag in response to terminate etc, but at that point are we really getting the full interactive advantage that a tempo deck is meant to provide in comparison to other linear aggro strategies?
How do you reconcile this tension? Alternatively, am I unfairly emphasizing its importance?
Additionally, what strengths does Jeskai Prowess provide over a more traditional tempo deck like RUG Delver (Delver flip rate aside)? To me Prowess has the potential to be more explosive when it draws well and the opponent is light on removal, but it also comes with the cost of greater vulnerability and a shorter lifespan that's reliant on prowess fuel.
Also, I see CurdBros state that the Jeskai version is well positioned at the moment – my understanding was that tempo decks generally fold to aggro. What makes the difference here? Can anyone elaborate on this more, or point to any gameplay streams? When I look at the Primer's MB+SB I don’t see quite the amount of sweepers, 2-for-1s, life gain, and so forth that I’d expect for a positive matchup vs aggro.
Thank you for your input. I apologize if this has come up a lot, perhaps something further addressing these points could be appended to the primer if need be.
Maybe once Shadows over Innistrad drops we'll get enough new cards to cobble together a truly competitive Mardu build but until then I think Abzan Rally builds (especially Rallyfenza) are the way to go.
Good luck.
You've mentioned that the low-to-the-ground Myth Pox decks fold to aggro pre-board, but do well enough once sweepers are sided in. Is the game 2-3 performance vs Affinity & Co. good enough to get a reliable lock on the set, or would Currie's list which is "pre-boarded" with helix, finks, and wraths do better overall in the set in your estimation? Since linear aggro is *everywhere* right now my top priority is on getting a good aggro matchup, followed by disrupting big mana Tron & Eldrazi second.
Additionally, could you offer more guidance on when to run Drown in Sorrow vs. Anger of the Gods vs. Wrath of God? Thank you.