I notice you run a few of the specters. Have you ever tried Needle Specter? Smaller body initially, but a better discard effect.
It's a stronger discard effect, but it's not really that important. Typically, if you can get a Specter turned on, discarding 1 is enough. It won't typically survive long, though. I feel like if I added another of these kinds of cards, it'd be Liliana's Reaver for the discard and token making as well as a strong body.
It's worth considering. Hart has saved me a few times from being color screwed, even without having the counter on it, but 6 mana over 2 turns for that is a lot.
gargadon and inquisition are upgrades of your cards.
The odds that hart may have a +1/+1 and you sacrifice it, and it comes back, and ... are hardly that determinant. On the other hand, with the new Mulligan rule, you'll need more manas (lands)
For some reason I feel like I took out Connoisseur already but forgot to update the list. I'll have to check when I get home.
Blackmail is basically a place holder for IoK. I don't have an IoK right now, and I do not believe it's actually worth $13. I also think it is likely to be reprinted very soon (like, in Oath), and the price will plummet then. I also like Blackmail, personally. I demolished someone by having a Blackmail on T1 after they mulliganed. Blackmail can eat a land, while few other discard spells can.
I'm already at 38 lands plus 2 Talismans with a curve heavily skewed towards 3 and away from 4 with few 5s or more. I'm not sure 41 mana sources is really that necessary with a low curve. I used to be at 36 lands and 2 Talismans.
I may put Ulcerate in Vendetta's spot and find something else for Gargadon.
I also like the 2 counter-drakes a lot, along with Voidmage Prodigy. The only one I don't like is the 3UU Spiketail Drake because it's so expensive.
I'm not sure what to drop from my list for the Gargadon.
If you want to replace something thats the same mana cost I'd replace eithor Vendetta (non black clause can suck), Serum Visions (drawing after you fix the cards is MUCH better) or Blackmail (Your opponent will always hide best stuff you). If you want to keep all your 1 drops then maybe drop another sac outlet, having to many becomes redundant since you only need one on board at a time. I dropped Bloodflow Connoisseur because sometimes a 1/1 for 3 mana is underwhelming. A 2/2 would have been much better. You could also look at your mana curve and find out if any cost is bloated, then cut the worst thing of that cost.
I'll think about Vendetta. I like having the 4 cantrips that I have, and Blackmail is basically just waiting to become IoK some day.
Kor Firewalker is a sideboard card only. You only bring Kor Firewalker in for the mirror, and in the mirror I drop green and play RW games 2 and 3.
It's true that you don't always get 2 white quickly, but if you land Firewalker you will probably win and the 6 lost life won't matter. I personally play 11 fetches, 3 Foundry, 2 Ground, 3 Mountain. My fetches aren't all red, unfortunately, with 3 Heaths until Zen fetches are affordable whenever they reprint them.
This is the current version. I've gotten a Dark Confidant and a Bitterblossom as of late. I played some the other day and did well. I got a lot of use out of Hypnotic Specter and friends, and they're here to stay. If you like Gargadon, I'm open to putting him back in. The odds of losing 10 are small.
My concern right now however is what you are saying about councils judgement. It cannot remove multiple copies of a card unless your opponent is incompetent. Are you maybe thinking of something different?
Yes it can, and it is clearly said on the card. You name the card and if there is 3-4 copies on the board, you exile all of them.
Here's the card text: "Starting with you, each player votes for a nonland permanent you don't control. Exile each permanent with the most votes or tied for most votes".
I stumbled across here after running into this deck on Cockatrice and noticed this comment. If I have 100 goblin tokens on the battlefield, and you vote for one of them, and I vote for another one of them, only 2 of them are exiled. Each of those 100 goblin tokens is a different permanent, and 98 of them were voted for 0 times and won't be exiled. It would say something like the text of Detention Sphere if it applied to all nonland permanents with a chosen name.
I'm slightly new to modern, and finally made the plunge into burn about the time DTK came out. I'm obsessive with building a 75 that both feels right and plays most effectively, so I have a few questions on deck building choices.
1) I know its an age old question, so I'll try to be more specific about it: Is Atarkas command worth the life lost for the initial shocks/fetches used? If you're playing Naya, 95% of your opening plays are going to be dropping you down to 14 as you fetch and shock for your 3 colors. Combining this with Eidolon, and I just feel you're really pressured in a lot of games where you should just be able to rattle off burn spells.
2) Flex spots, what's most effective? I've seen lists with Helix, Firecraft, Shard Volly, and different amounts of Searing Blaze. Is Helix more desirable since it helps with splashing for Atarka's? Is Firecraft worth 3 mana? I hate Shard Volly for its land sacrifice cause forcing it to be a later game card, am I just wrong about it?
3) Molten Rain, yay or nay? I see it popping up everywhere but 3 mana for 2 damage in matchups were already favored in (except maybe Abzan) seems unneeded.
4) Relic of Progenitus, did the card fall out of favor or is it just outclassed now?
5) 19 or 20 lands. How much of a difference does it make, especially when trying to get all 3 colors.
I would post my current list but I'm not sure how to do so on mobile. It's essentially a stock Naya list, no Commands. I'm tempted to try to work Atarka's back in, but killing myself with Eidolons and shocks because of it has made me skeptical, especially since the meta feels very aggressive right now.
1. Absolutely. Skullcrack is just an anti-hate card. Atarka's Command gives you the possibility of T3 wins. Dropping to 14 isn't that frequent, because you're more likely to have either white or green in your opener than you are to have both. Against the mirror, you drop green because you need Kor Firewalker.
2. I usually play 3 blaze, 2 helix, 2 skullcrack, and 2 grim lavamancer. I quit playing Shard Volley a while ago, because multiples are awful. At most you'd play 1. As others describe above, Firecraft is probably also only 1-of because it's so expensive.
3. You want this kind of card against Jund, and probably only on the play so you can block them out of a color. I don't play any of them currently.
4. If you see a lot of Dredge, it's worth playing. Using it to nerf Goyfs is ok, but you don't really need to do it. You can often bide your time against those, chumping it once if necessary. I like Deflecting Palm against Goyfs/Tasigurs, because it also hoses Wurmcoil, Emrakul, Griselbrand, Infect, and Affinity.
5. Others have said 20 because of the uptick in Merfolk and their Spreading Seas. I'm playing 19.
Can we also stop basing deck decisions on individual results rather than mathematical ones? 'It works for me' is the worst argument I've heard on this thread, and it's detrimental to player and deck growth.
That would be ideal, wouldn't it? But, alas, people will irrationally cling to that card that did that thing that one time, because they tend to ignore where that card failed for them. Confirmation bias is real.
Swiftspear is fantastic. I don't know what I was doing before they were in the list. They can come out against decks that clutter up the ground (jund, bug midrange) if you have better stuff in the board to bring in. They play very well with rift bolt and will occasionally be 4/5s or 5/6s.
They also lend themselves to opponents miscalculating combat math because they either forget what size swiftspear is (often with rift bolt as it happens in upkeep). Most importantly you DO NOT have to announce your prowess triggers; you absolutely have to correctly answer if they ask about the size. However, you do not have to announce the size until it becomes relevant to the game state (i.e. combat damage). Also, bluffing additional pumps leads to no blocks and bad blocks.
All of these things without giving your opponents extra lands. She's amazing. I'd run 8 and cut goblin guide if I could.
I'll play them, then.
From playing Modern Burn I became aware that prowess triggers haven't been missed until you're asked about the size. I even educated a guy at Modern Monday this week who thought he'd missed his prowess triggers on her. I even ran afoul with a terrible Cockatrice moderator (as if there's only one of them) whose pet peeve was people not manually ticking up prowess on a creature as it happens and therefore refused to punish a belligerent player who couldn't handle the fact that I refused to tick prowess up manually and could say "it's a 3/4" when we got to damage.
I've felt for a while that in Modern she's better than Guide and maybe tied with Eidolon for best creature in the deck. She's just so explosive.
He was talking about jund on the draw. Also your failing to address the underlying point. nacatl decks place better than decks with 1 lavamancer. Do we tell people they are wrong for running only one lavamancer? That was the crux of the post which you failed to answer. It does place consistently better than some non-nacatl lists. Really what we should be doing is deriding people for running one grim lavamancer. Yet everyone seems to hate nacatl.
If I recall, I was talking about Jund when you are on the draw. Jund plays a T1 fetch, sees your Nacatl, fetches tapped, kills Nacatl later. The result? They are down 1 life, not 3. You're down 4-6, because they're going to wait until after you fetch your Foundry before they kill it. Lavamancer doesn't cost 4-6 life to play. Lavamancer doesn't care if they have a Tasigur or Goyf to get damage in. Nacatl doesn't help us when we're in top deck mode. There is nothing wrong with playing 2 Lavamancers in the deck.
First off that is a load of rubbish, nacatl hits for 3 or more in most of my games. Even with 4 bolts they are going to have it less than 50 percent of the time, if you terminate my nacatl I am fine with that. Also, I was at SCG milwaukee, the nacatl list got one land game 1 on the draw and flooded out game 2. Which happens in any game of magic. How I do know that? I was the nacatl list, but it is hard to beat twin your mana screwed then mana flooded.
Look, it's not my fault that you've never done a careful analysis of how much damage Nacatl actually does and tried to compare it in any meaningful way to the cards you took out for it (things like Helix). Nacatl doesn't hit for 3 or more in most of your games. That's confirmation bias. Nacatl probably hits for an average damage of less than 2. But, for argument's sake, let's say you're right and Nacatl hits for 3 "most of the time". Most of the time is satisfied by 51%, with zero covering the other 49%. That means that expected value of your Nacatl is 1.53 damage. That's abysmal. To get to an EV of 2, it has to hit for 3 2/3 of the time, which is still far short of your assertion that it is equivalent to a Lightning Bolt. All the while it cost you 4-6 to play it.
Good for you that you're the 1 of 10 Burn lists that played Nacatl (far short of your assertion that it's 35%). Nacatl isn't worth playing and you did well with a suboptimal list.
Bottom line: Naya Burn performs better than Nacatl Burn. All of the pre-testing analysis of Nacatl Burn points to it being worse. All of the data points to Nacatl Burn being worse.
@curby: I wasn't planning on playing full playsets of either, with some Searing Bloods out of the sideboard.
@Squee: I've dabbled in Legacy Burn on Cockatrice some and enjoyed it. I love Fireblast and I can't wait until I get PoPs.
I think I'll initially have a deck something like this simply because it's what I have right now. I'll try getting Vexing Shushers soon. My main worry right now is that it may take time to get PoPs on pucatrade, though I'll have the points by the weekend. Everything else is either in the mail or I already have it.
Does Swiftspear excel in Legacy as well? I could drop Blaze and 1 Grim and play 4 of those.
It's a stronger discard effect, but it's not really that important. Typically, if you can get a Specter turned on, discarding 1 is enough. It won't typically survive long, though. I feel like if I added another of these kinds of cards, it'd be Liliana's Reaver for the discard and token making as well as a strong body.
Edit: I was remembering wrong. New changes:
-Bloodflow Connoisseur
-Vendetta
+Greater Gargadon
+Ulcerate
For some reason I feel like I took out Connoisseur already but forgot to update the list. I'll have to check when I get home.
Blackmail is basically a place holder for IoK. I don't have an IoK right now, and I do not believe it's actually worth $13. I also think it is likely to be reprinted very soon (like, in Oath), and the price will plummet then. I also like Blackmail, personally. I demolished someone by having a Blackmail on T1 after they mulliganed. Blackmail can eat a land, while few other discard spells can.
I'm already at 38 lands plus 2 Talismans with a curve heavily skewed towards 3 and away from 4 with few 5s or more. I'm not sure 41 mana sources is really that necessary with a low curve. I used to be at 36 lands and 2 Talismans.
I may put Ulcerate in Vendetta's spot and find something else for Gargadon.
I also like the 2 counter-drakes a lot, along with Voidmage Prodigy. The only one I don't like is the 3UU Spiketail Drake because it's so expensive.
I'll think about Vendetta. I like having the 4 cantrips that I have, and Blackmail is basically just waiting to become IoK some day.
It's true that you don't always get 2 white quickly, but if you land Firewalker you will probably win and the 6 lost life won't matter. I personally play 11 fetches, 3 Foundry, 2 Ground, 3 Mountain. My fetches aren't all red, unfortunately, with 3 Heaths until Zen fetches are affordable whenever they reprint them.
1x Marchesa, the Black Rose
Creature (34)
1x Avalanche Riders
1x Baleful Strix
1x Blazing Specter
1x Bloodflow Connoisseur
1x Burnished Hart
1x Carrion Feeder
1x Dark Confidant
1x Drana, Liberator of Malakir
1x Fleshbag Marauder
1x Grim Haruspex
1x Hellhole Flailer
1x Hero of Oxid Ridge
1x Hypnotic Specter
1x Icefall Regent
1x Lightning Mauler
1x Merciless Executioner
1x Mulldrifter
1x Pain Seer
1x Ravenous Baboons
1x Reckless Reveler
1x Sage of Fables
1x Sedraxis Specter
1x Shadowmage Infiltrator
1x Solemn Simulacrum
1x Spiketail Drakeling
1x Spiketail Hatchling
1x Thalakos Deceiver
1x Thrummingbird
1x True-Name Nemesis
1x Venser, Shaper Savant
1x Vigean Graftmage
1x Viscera Seer
1x Voidmage Prodigy
1x Xathrid Necromancer
1x Blood Crypt
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Bojuka Bog
1x City of Brass
1x Command Tower
1x Crosis's Catacombs
1x Crumbling Necropolis
1x Darkwater Catacombs
1x Dragonskull Summit
1x Drowned Catacomb
1x Flooded Strand
1x Hall of the Bandit Lord
1x High Market
3x Island
1x Lavaclaw Reaches
1x Miren, the Moaning Well
3x Mountain
1x Mutavault
1x Opal Palace
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Polluted Delta
1x Reflecting Pool
1x Shadowblood Ridge
1x Shivan Reef
1x Smoldering Marsh
1x Steam Vents
1x Sulfurous Springs
1x Sunken Hollow
2x Swamp
1x Tarnished Citadel
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Watery Grave
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Bitterblossom
Instant (11)
1x Brainstorm
1x Chaos Warp
1x Crosis's Charm
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Fire Covenant
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Magmaquake
1x Starstorm
1x Terminate
1x Tragic Slip
1x Vendetta
Sorcery (11)
1x Blackmail
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Duress
1x Hymn to Tourach
1x Jokulhaups
1x Ponder
1x Preordain
1x Reanimate
1x Serum Visions
1x Thoughtseize
1x Toxic Deluge
Artifact (4)
1x Lightning Greaves
1x Skullclamp
1x Talisman of Dominance
1x Talisman of Indulgence
I had him in as a sac outlet and a finisher post-Jokulhaups.
I stumbled across here after running into this deck on Cockatrice and noticed this comment. If I have 100 goblin tokens on the battlefield, and you vote for one of them, and I vote for another one of them, only 2 of them are exiled. Each of those 100 goblin tokens is a different permanent, and 98 of them were voted for 0 times and won't be exiled. It would say something like the text of Detention Sphere if it applied to all nonland permanents with a chosen name.
1. Absolutely. Skullcrack is just an anti-hate card. Atarka's Command gives you the possibility of T3 wins. Dropping to 14 isn't that frequent, because you're more likely to have either white or green in your opener than you are to have both. Against the mirror, you drop green because you need Kor Firewalker.
2. I usually play 3 blaze, 2 helix, 2 skullcrack, and 2 grim lavamancer. I quit playing Shard Volley a while ago, because multiples are awful. At most you'd play 1. As others describe above, Firecraft is probably also only 1-of because it's so expensive.
3. You want this kind of card against Jund, and probably only on the play so you can block them out of a color. I don't play any of them currently.
4. If you see a lot of Dredge, it's worth playing. Using it to nerf Goyfs is ok, but you don't really need to do it. You can often bide your time against those, chumping it once if necessary. I like Deflecting Palm against Goyfs/Tasigurs, because it also hoses Wurmcoil, Emrakul, Griselbrand, Infect, and Affinity.
5. Others have said 20 because of the uptick in Merfolk and their Spreading Seas. I'm playing 19.
That would be ideal, wouldn't it? But, alas, people will irrationally cling to that card that did that thing that one time, because they tend to ignore where that card failed for them. Confirmation bias is real.
It's worth trying, I suppose.
I'll play them, then.
From playing Modern Burn I became aware that prowess triggers haven't been missed until you're asked about the size. I even educated a guy at Modern Monday this week who thought he'd missed his prowess triggers on her. I even ran afoul with a terrible Cockatrice moderator (as if there's only one of them) whose pet peeve was people not manually ticking up prowess on a creature as it happens and therefore refused to punish a belligerent player who couldn't handle the fact that I refused to tick prowess up manually and could say "it's a 3/4" when we got to damage.
I've felt for a while that in Modern she's better than Guide and maybe tied with Eidolon for best creature in the deck. She's just so explosive.
If I recall, I was talking about Jund when you are on the draw. Jund plays a T1 fetch, sees your Nacatl, fetches tapped, kills Nacatl later. The result? They are down 1 life, not 3. You're down 4-6, because they're going to wait until after you fetch your Foundry before they kill it. Lavamancer doesn't cost 4-6 life to play. Lavamancer doesn't care if they have a Tasigur or Goyf to get damage in. Nacatl doesn't help us when we're in top deck mode. There is nothing wrong with playing 2 Lavamancers in the deck.
Look, it's not my fault that you've never done a careful analysis of how much damage Nacatl actually does and tried to compare it in any meaningful way to the cards you took out for it (things like Helix). Nacatl doesn't hit for 3 or more in most of your games. That's confirmation bias. Nacatl probably hits for an average damage of less than 2. But, for argument's sake, let's say you're right and Nacatl hits for 3 "most of the time". Most of the time is satisfied by 51%, with zero covering the other 49%. That means that expected value of your Nacatl is 1.53 damage. That's abysmal. To get to an EV of 2, it has to hit for 3 2/3 of the time, which is still far short of your assertion that it is equivalent to a Lightning Bolt. All the while it cost you 4-6 to play it.
Good for you that you're the 1 of 10 Burn lists that played Nacatl (far short of your assertion that it's 35%). Nacatl isn't worth playing and you did well with a suboptimal list.
Bottom line: Naya Burn performs better than Nacatl Burn. All of the pre-testing analysis of Nacatl Burn points to it being worse. All of the data points to Nacatl Burn being worse.
@Squee: I've dabbled in Legacy Burn on Cockatrice some and enjoyed it. I love Fireblast and I can't wait until I get PoPs.
I think I'll initially have a deck something like this simply because it's what I have right now. I'll try getting Vexing Shushers soon. My main worry right now is that it may take time to get PoPs on pucatrade, though I'll have the points by the weekend. Everything else is either in the mail or I already have it.
Does Swiftspear excel in Legacy as well? I could drop Blaze and 1 Grim and play 4 of those.
4 Bloodstained Mire
12 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
Creatures
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
3 Grim Lavamancer
Spells
4 Chain Lightning
4 Fireblast
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Rift Bolt
3 Searing Blaze
2 Sulfuric Vortex
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Searing Blood
3 Smash to Smithereens
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Volcanic Fallout