All of you who are talking about play style and skill are completely going about this question the wrong way in determining the difficulty of playing a deck. It's not about either of those thing. If you want to gauge the difficulty of a deck, you don't talk about people with pre-established play styles and skils. You talk about people with no play style/skills. I guarantee if I take 100 people who are complete newbies when it comes to Magic, and give them each a Pod deck and a burn deck, 100 out of 100 will learn how to play the burn deck faster and more efficiently than they will the pod deck given equal amounts of time with both decks. The Pod deck is inherently a more difficult deck to play.
Is it correct that I can use Gigadrowse at the end of opponents' upkeep to "drain" their lands since the pools dump between phases?
Depends on the deck. I feel it's better to do it EOT against control, they generally don't play anything on their turn anyways, and it gives you the possibility of tapping down the land they play that turn if you have the mana to do so.
I can dig people's opinions on Remand. I've gone back and forth on the card personally. I like it a lot in this deck. I would completely agree that the card is not ideal against burn and zoo. 8 Rack is an interesting matchup. I haven't personally played it, but it does look like a rough one. Especially with the mines. They would fuel them as well as us (so although we aren't taking as much damage, they keep us from building up fuel).
I think with it being modern you just take what you can get and I like Remand in the counter spot more than anything else. In certain metas you would definitely be able to swap it for various other cards and get away with it (:
Played the 8-rack matchup at my LGS recently, it's rough, but not as rough as you'd think. The main thing is to land a card draw engine (Dictate, Mikokoro, Jace) and then just play as many time warps as possible, which will build your hand up enough to be out of Rack/Affliction range, and if you don't manage to go completely off, you'll hopefully manage to snag a cryptic/gigadrowse to hold off any Bitterblossom tokens on the field.
After sideboard, I'd say the biggest threat the deck has is Surgical Extraction, which can be a huge pain if it snags a time warp effect. Personally running Chalice of the Voidin SB for that, but that's me.
Ohran Viper and Shadowmage Infiltrator haven't panned out in modern, not sure if trample and double strike on a red body is going to be the difference in making a 1/3 CA creature worthwhile.
Stony just to shut down Elixir is a weak strategy IMO. If we've gone off we can bounce it with Cryptic / Boomerang when it's time to crack the Elixir.
I will side in 4 Boomerang on the play against basically anything not based on 1-drops, so they come in against Tron.
At this point I would be fine cutting Swan Song for Lab Maniac. Please note that I only play paper Magic, don't assume right off the bat I'm on MTGO. Time is still an issue but not as much as online.
Is this the deck with the most wincons?
Thassa beatdown
Jace milling opponent
Lab Maniac self-mill
Opponent rage quit
Not necessarily in that order.
The more annoying sideboard card to deal with is Rest in Peace. I like Lab Maniac in the side, as when they're siding in their grave hate and siding out their creature hate, you're siding your creature win con that doesn't care about their grave hate.
I would probably bring it in against Burn and name Lava Spike or Bump in the Night (nothing that can target a creature, thus making dead draws). I might bring it in against Melira Pod, naming Murderous Redcap. Possibly name Liliana of the Veil against BGx, 8Rack, etc...
Honestly, I am not 100% sold on the card. I'm trying it out in place of Worship just to see how it goes.
Can't name Goblin with Runed Halo. Runed Halo doesn't protect against tokens, due to the fact it reads "Name a card", of which tokens aren't cards.
I had a similar mono black deck made up that used a bunch of extraction cards, discard, and kill spells, and used Sorin Markov and a single Neverending Torment as win conditions.
If you just want to hit people who use fetchlands, I'd rather pay two less and play Psychogenic Probe. As others have said, there are a lot of better ways to deal with Scapeshift.
I actually think this deck hits on all points. Ghostly Prison and Sphere taxes midrange and aggro decks with Runed Halo and Oblivion Ring stopping extra threats, Suppression Field taxes a lot of decks - like - A LOT, so much that it doesn't see play itself in a lot of white decks because they tax themselves, Leyline of Sanctity deals with a lot of combo decks and Mill (I actually did go up against Mill, it was pretty interesting with Wheel of Sun and Moon enchanting myself), and Wheel of Sun and Moon/Rest in Peace handles the graveyard strategies that are popping back up now that DRS is away.
The only real issue I've had handling the deck is:
1) Opening hands matter A LOT. Since we don't draw as frequent as other decks so and since a lot of cards are very dependent on which deck we are playing against, we kind of need luck on our side when we decide to keep a hand. Keeping the wrong hand can be the difference between a T3 Ghostly Prison and a scoop.
2) Because the maindeck is really broad as we like to have answers to many different decks, we sometimes have useless cards in the mainboard. We don't need Priveleged Position or Rest in Peace against Zoo, and etc.
3) There are decks that are very under-the-radar that outright kill us if we give them the chance, like Eternal Ruse. Counter decks realy hinder how fast we get out answers, and sometimes the right colored Tron deck can wipe us out with Sundering Titan or Emrakul (if it gets out early enough).
Other than that, if we just focus on many of the T1 or T2 decks, we can get a lot of wins based on which cards we play. The sideboard can consist of anything your heart desires; I just play Open the Vaults as a way to fight against Back to Nature and Tempest of Light.
I'll be testing this deck again over the weekend against Fae and Zoo and see if we can race those decks. I'll be trying out a myriad of cards mentioned int he last 2 pages. Hopefully after that I can finally get around to updating the first post.
I personally think the deck attacks the meta in a very interesting way. With some more support cards, this deck can probably sidestep a lot of people and win a daily or two before people start playing hate against it. There are many 1-card answers to many tier 1 decks that it's laughable.
This deck can really use:
1) A better draw engine than Howling Mine/Augury Adept. Adept is too slow and it's bad without Favor of the Mighty, and Howling Mine is often times good for our opponent.
2) Speed. If we can find a way to cut down the cost of enchantments or accelerate faster along side Nykthos, then we can get there. I was really hoping that Hero of Iroas said "Enchantment spells you cast cost 1 less" but alas, it was not meant to be.
3) Better opening hands. Maybe a 4th Idyllic Tutor is how we get there? It is slow but it can substitute cards we are looking for. But at 3 mana, it just feels too slow.
I haven't had extensive playtests against zoo, but the two games I did play against it, I managed to win both games. Getting an early Suppression field really hurts their mana base as they rely so heavily on fetchlands and if you can follow up with a ghostly prison, you should be able to wall them long enough to build enough of a prison to put the game in your favor. Mind you, as I'm running Journey to nowhere and Magus of the Tabernacle, I have the extra creature hate to put the matchup more in my favor.
Not a fan of tutor. I've cut one from my deck for another sphere of safety, the search can be good sometimes when you're really in a bind, but there were too many times that it just felt way too slow to be effective.
wow. nothing like being a huge dick. so my budget is low because i want to use 2 sunpetal groves? i have every other card in this deck and can't find 1x horizon canopy and 1x wooded bastion at any LGS. but thank you for your positive feedback. really makes me want to stay on this forum with people like you helping.
In that situation, Sunpetal grove is a decent budget replacement.
Also, reading comprehension, your budget isn't too low because you want to use 2 Sunpetal groves, your budget would be too low because of the hypothetical situation of trying to use them as a replacement for Temple garden.
4) GW Hatebears. (If you're reading this, Kyle, I could only guess where you got some of your card choices from >.<) He had a little closer to average list, without vials. Plays EE main & Chalices in the board. And I digressed a bit about the Chalices... he said he plays it for 1 a lot and board out his paths... But I'm thinking, you play Arbiters, why would you board out your paths ever? It's too good to get pure value out of them against a lot of creature decks, even UWR, you don't have any other removal, and as importantly, if you play Chalices, Aether Vial seems to be a really good card for not just having dead cards in your hand. Either way, Game 1 he won with better creatures on the play, and I had a very slow hand. Game 2, I got the nuts, Bird, SoWaP, Turn 3, In for a billion. Game ended like that. Game 3, he mulls to 5, he drops worship. I have a Hierarch with double SoWaP, gaining life, he has a Thrun. I play two worships. I start aggressively pathing and ghost quartering everything, and his paths and GQ's always result in me shuffling, and failing to find. Why? I wanted to ensure that I would have enough cards to, on the draw, be able to deck him if it came to it. We had around 25 minutes left in round when I was actually concerned about that. He searched, used his Horizon Canopies. I just sat, waited, and then all in a turn, dropped a bunch of creatures with him at one, found a pridemage, and ate his Worship, and that was that.
I boarded out Paths in that particular situation against UWR, it's not something I'd do in every situation where Chalice is somewhat viable. Against the particular matchup that I was talking about, the only creature I'd really want to path is something I can't target(Geist), and chalice seemed like a good card to blank a good amount of their removal. And I do have other removal, I have mainboard EEs :P.
Was actually my first time playing the deck and managed to go 3-2. Was just trialing a lot of different ideas(including chalice in side) in the deck and seeing what I liked and disliked. For those interested, I beat a bad Rakdos standard deck, zoo, and UWR midrange. Lost against G/W Hatebears, and against Pod, due to horrible draws, and a mulligan to 5 game 2.
Seems like the perfect situation for Affinity to show up with everyone seemingly so concerned with zoo/fae, and after not seeing it in the top 16 of Prague.
Have to agree with this. Besides you, not one person has mentioned affinity, and affinity always does best when it's on the verge of being forgotten.
Doran is the beat-stickiest 3-drop. And he lets your Goyfs kill other Goyfs. But some of the other best creatures for the colors are 2/1s, which kind of sucks with him.
Except he also lets their goyfs kill your goyfs too. He also makes your opponents Ornithopters into 0 mana 2/2 flyers
Played my version of this deck at a local tournament tonight. Still missing a few cards (Scrying sheets, and a single Runed Halo) from mainboard and I don't have sideboard fully put together, but I figured I had enough to give it a solid test go. Went 2-2 overall. Wins were against Tempo Twin and GW Hatebears, losses were to UWR Midrange and Jund. Geist of Saint Traft is really really good against us apparently :(.
Played the 8-rack matchup at my LGS recently, it's rough, but not as rough as you'd think. The main thing is to land a card draw engine (Dictate, Mikokoro, Jace) and then just play as many time warps as possible, which will build your hand up enough to be out of Rack/Affliction range, and if you don't manage to go completely off, you'll hopefully manage to snag a cryptic/gigadrowse to hold off any Bitterblossom tokens on the field.
After sideboard, I'd say the biggest threat the deck has is Surgical Extraction, which can be a huge pain if it snags a time warp effect. Personally running Chalice of the Voidin SB for that, but that's me.
The more annoying sideboard card to deal with is Rest in Peace. I like Lab Maniac in the side, as when they're siding in their grave hate and siding out their creature hate, you're siding your creature win con that doesn't care about their grave hate.
Can't name Goblin with Runed Halo. Runed Halo doesn't protect against tokens, due to the fact it reads "Name a card", of which tokens aren't cards.
I haven't had extensive playtests against zoo, but the two games I did play against it, I managed to win both games. Getting an early Suppression field really hurts their mana base as they rely so heavily on fetchlands and if you can follow up with a ghostly prison, you should be able to wall them long enough to build enough of a prison to put the game in your favor. Mind you, as I'm running Journey to nowhere and Magus of the Tabernacle, I have the extra creature hate to put the matchup more in my favor.
Not a fan of tutor. I've cut one from my deck for another sphere of safety, the search can be good sometimes when you're really in a bind, but there were too many times that it just felt way too slow to be effective.
Also, reading comprehension, your budget isn't too low because you want to use 2 Sunpetal groves, your budget would be too low because of the hypothetical situation of trying to use them as a replacement for Temple garden.
Was actually my first time playing the deck and managed to go 3-2. Was just trialing a lot of different ideas(including chalice in side) in the deck and seeing what I liked and disliked. For those interested, I beat a bad Rakdos standard deck, zoo, and UWR midrange. Lost against G/W Hatebears, and against Pod, due to horrible draws, and a mulligan to 5 game 2.
Have to agree with this. Besides you, not one person has mentioned affinity, and affinity always does best when it's on the verge of being forgotten.
Except he also lets their goyfs kill your goyfs too. He also makes your opponents Ornithopters into 0 mana 2/2 flyers