Thoughts on the new green cards now that spoiler season is over:
Nyx Lotus - A much worse version of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. What makes Nykthos so powerful two main things: a low deckbuilding cost and the fact that it's nearly impossible to disrupt as a land. Turning it into a 4 mana artifact makes it vulnerable to naturalize and shatter effects and takes an entire turn to cast while still coming in tapped. I would honestly run karametra's acolyte over Lotus, since it dodges some key cards that Lotus loses to like Abrade, adds 1 to devotion, can be tutored with creature tutors like Primal Command and Summoner's Pact AND can get haste through secondary effects like Temur Ascendancy and Xenagos, God of Revels to tap immediately.
Nylea, Keen-Eyed - An overall better version of our favorite Goddess Nylea, God of the Hunt. 3 Mana to draw a creature or surveil noncreatures away is far better than 4 mana for a paltry +2/+2 and reducing the cost of creature works well with both the activated ability and our deck's main gameplan of playing expensive, big dumb creatures. Losing 1 power and the ability to grant trample is mostly irrelevant since 5/6 indestructible is still massive and most of our large creatures have trample or other evasion anyways i.e. Steel Leaf Champion.
Nylea's intervention - 3 mana for Sylvan Scrying and 1 more mana for two of them is a strong effect but I don't think this is the deck for it. Any deck that wants to grab nonbasics would much rather run Primeval Titan, since it adds devotion, dominates the board AND puts the lands directly into play rather than your hand. The second mode rarely comes up and is mostly overkill unless you're playing against spirits. This card works far better in Scapeshift or Titan decks than here. Unless some mad genius manages to make some kind of hybrid between green devotion and TitanShift decks that isn't strictly worse than a stock list.
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove - The beautiful baby of Prismatic Omen and Courser of Kruphix. Let's get the obvious comparison out of the way. Courser of Kruphix is not a worse version of this card. There are several important differences: Dryad does not draw you cards like Courser does, nor does it let you scry with fetchlands. It also doesn't gain you life or add as much to devotion, which seems more important than most are giving it credit for. On the plus side, this card both ramps you (if you can keep your hand full of lands) and fixes your mana. One important interaction to note: if you play this card after a Blood Moon has been played, it neutralizes its effects on your lands. If Blood Moon enters after Dryad has been played, Blood Moon neutralizes Dryad's effect and turns your nonbasics into mountains with no other abilities. If I were to pick 3 potential decks for this card it would be: TitanShift decks, the potential DevotionShift hybrid I mentioned above, and the new and improved constellation decks that are bound to start popping up once the set releases. Speaking of constellation...
Setessan Champion - Our new best payoff for constellation decks. My main problem with previous versions of this deck was the fact that it relied too heavily on Eidolon of Blossoms, which was strong but didn't really effect the battlefield and was vulnerable to nearly every piece of removal in the format. Champion works as an almost better version of Tireless Tracker in this deck, given that it requires no extra mana to draw cards and grow the Champ and dodges most red removal after a single trigger. I think this card could singlehandedly make constellation a real deck rather than a gimmick, not to mention the other payoffs we got for the archetype in this set like Archon of Sun's Grace.
Once Upon a Time - Free spells are as broken as always. Card is an absolute house in this deck, for 3 main reasons: we love to dig for Nykthos/ Kessig Wolf Run, we rely heavily on turn 1 mana dorks and (most importantly in my opinion) we make enough mana that we don't mind hard-casting it if we draw it later in the game. Card is nuts, the only real question is how many copies to run in any given deck. I feel like 3 is the sweet spot, since anything more 2 copies lets us run 1 less land and still hit land drops consistently, so the 3rd copy is basically free if you already play 2 copies. The fact that this card has already been banned in 2 formats should speak for itself.
Veil of Summer - Our best sideboard card for our worse matchups. It's not even remotely close. Countering Thoughtseize, removal AND counterspells for a single mana would already be absurd. The fact that you also get a card is out of the deal is just stupid. Just like OUaT, the fact that it was already banned in standard and pioneer is all you really need to know.
Nissa, Who Shakes the World - Another great card for our deck. Doubling forest mana basically just doubles our mana since 17+ of our lands are forests. Works great with Leyline of abundance, since animated lands now produce 3 mana instead of 2. My only real gripe with the card is that you can't stack counters on the same land, so it's easy to over extend into an Anger of the Gods or Supreme Verdict. But this is mitigated by the fact that the +1 is a "may" ability. Just be careful to not animate all your lands.
Well guys, it's been fun lurking here and occasionally discussing deck lists but I think this is the end of my modern magic career. I just went up to my LGS to get my playset of Llanowar Tribe and opened up my magic bag to find that my modern deck had been stolen. I turned the entire backpack and store inside out looking for it but to no avail. I know it's not at my house because I only goldfish my lists by using TappedOut.net to avoid wear-and-tear on my cards. My deckbox also contained all the D20s and D6s I've been collecting since I started playing magic back in Theros, so my only conclusion can be that I took out the box to use my dice at the War of the Spark prerelease and someone decided to help themselves to my deck when I turned my back.
This is now twice that this has happened at that store, first with my Commander deck several years ago and now with the modern deck I spent years collecting cards for. I simply don't have the money to spend on rebuilding the deck from scratch with what little remains in my trade binder. It's been quite the ride the past couple of years but I can't bring myself to invest more money and emotional energy in this game if my cards are just going to get periodically stolen.
I'll definitely swing by every once in a while to lurk or theory craft around my favorite green cards but this is goodbye for now. I'll always look back on my years playing this game fondly. Until then, keep your Primal Commands looped and your Nykthos's untapped. May RNGesus smile upon you and remember to always play to your outs. Magic my seem like a fickle mistress at times but if there's one thing I've learned from this game over the years it's that there's no point in getting frustrated at the parts of the game that you can't control. Just do the best with the information you have and your win rate will thank you for it in the long run.
That's 55 cards. I'm not certain about the exact numbers on everything yet. At least, not aside from the core cards anyway. It's possible this deck wants 21 or 23 land instead of 22, or maybe it wants 7 total 6-drops instead of 8. I won't know any of those things until I get a sense for the deck heuristically. But generally speaking, I'm pretty happy with where the numbers are at.
As for the remaining five cards, there's a lot that could fill that space. Birds of Paradise, Voyaging Satyr, Harmonize, Primal Command, and Primeval Titan are all different things I'm considering, though I am starting to learn towards Birds. I'm open to suggestions.
As of now, I've also been pleased with the three Madcap Experiment and two Platinum Emperion my deck is currently playing, but I'm not sure if those five cards are the best way to use my remaining space. Several of my opponents have mistakenly sideboarded Grafdigger's Cage against Tooth and Nail thinking that would stop it only to actually have Madcap Experiment (and I suppose now possibly Woodland Bellower) inadvertently hit in the crossfire, so incentivizing my opponents to bring those in even more may not be something I want to encourage. Not to mention I find myself siding out the package enough of the time to perhaps retire it there completely.
Nice to see another Tooth and Nail player posting here. I frequently visit here to check up on other people's lists but rarely post, as Tooth and Nail is hardly ever discussed so I feel like I don't have much to contribute to the current discussion. My pre-Horizons list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-05-16-temur-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559744262. It was a hyper focused T&N list with a Command/E witness loop backup plan. The sideboard mainly consisted of silver bullets for primal command, bolts for aggro decks, and additional ramp redundancy for racing other combo decks like storm. I had come to the same conclusion that you had about Garruk and only really ran him as worse copies of Kiora, Master of Depths that would occasionally steal me a game on the off-chance that I had lots of mana dorks but no ramp payoff.
After seeing Llanowar Tribe I knew that I needed to revamp the deck as its basically addition copies of Overgrowth, which has always secretly been T&N's best card. My new test list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-horizons-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559745177. Tribe means that getting to 3 mana on turn 2 is actually important in most games (whereas it only mattered before if you had managed to draw overgrowth), so I've added a copy of Birds of Paradise and after many test games I would highly recommend that you also run at least 1 copy somewhere in your list, as landing a tribe on 2 all but guarantees that you can play a 6 drop on turn 3.
As for other cards to fill your remaining 4 slots I would highly recommend 3 copies of Primal Command and an additional copy of Eternal Witness. Primal Command will allow you to tutor up creatures with CMC of greater than 3, effectively giving you more threat redundancy while allowing you to dodge the effects of cards like Grafdigger's Cage. It will also allow you to diversify your threats by running a larger variety of bombs without reducing deck consistency (i.e. you can cut 1 Bellower for 1 Primeval Titan while still being able to get Bellower when you need it). This also gives the deck a strong Plan B in games where you don't draw T&N by Time-Walking your opponent with Primal Command/Eternal Witness loops (in my experience most opponents concede after you tutor up the 2nd Eternal Witness). Finally, Primal command lets you run sliver bullets in the sideboard without having to worry about "over-sideboarding" and diluting your deck's main T&N game plan. This means you can have single copies of cards like Elderscale Wurm and Hornet Queen for Aggro and Midrange matchups respectively.
On a related note, I really appreciate your writeup on 6-drops. Vraska, Relic Seeker is a card I had never really considered before but it definitely seems like the kind of card that this deck wants. T&N has needed a threat that also interacts with the opponent when needed for a while and I had never really considered a black splash for big Vraska until your writeup. It's nice to know that there are green mages out there still innovating in this archetype.
Nullhide Ferox seems like a great beater for Mono-Green Stompy. The fact that you get to cheat if out against K-command and Lil improves the Jund matchup and the only non-creature spell the deck runs even semi-consistently is Aspect of Hydra. So if they try to turn off the hexproof to kill it mid-combat they could just straight up die
Match 3: 0-2 vs. Mono-Green Tron
Game 1 I got crushed. I almost took game two after getting milled to 3 cards by Ulamog but I drew a forest instead of the Garruk I needed to draw to take the game.
Match 4: 1-2 vs. W/U Control
Game 1 I had mana but no payoff. I lost when Azor hit the table. Game 2 I locked him at 3 lands with Eternal Witness + Primal Command. Game 3 he grabbed my Kiora’s Follwer with Spell Queller and killed me with it while countering every spell I played.
Final Thoughts: Hornet queen and lightning bolt were absolute all-stars against humans. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be bringing in the bolts against storm to kill Baral and Electromancer. Thoughts? I’m thinking about getting some Autumn’s Veil for my sideboard. Has anyone had any good experience with that card?
-The singleton Garruk was actually because I could only find one copy to play before the event. I was planning on playing 2 but the Thragtusk that took his place was surprisingly solid and Kiora is generally just a better Garruk in this deck anyways. The 1 of Primeval Titan was some experimentation on my part. I figured that +1 satyr and +1 witness would be better consistency for my ramp package and primal command soft lock, respectively. As I mentioned in my final thoughts, I’m planning on cutting both for two more titans for greater threat density if I can’t get the tooth and nail to go off.
-I only had trouble with blue mana in one game against the ponza deck I played on Monday but primal command and Acidic Slime fixed that problem pretty easily. Obviously, my mana base would ideally have Misty Rainforests instead of Windswept Heaths so I could fetch a basic island but I currently don’t have the funds for the playset and blood moon decks are pretty rare in my area so I’m not too concerned about it right now.
- Kiora’s follower has been great for me actually. The extra 1 power makes it more threatening in the early game and the ability to untap your creatures as well as your lands if the need arises has proven handy on more that one occasion.
Yo, long-time lurker here, I just recently managed to put together my first tooth and nail deck and took it to my LGS’s modern Monday event. Figure I’d post the results here and hopefully get some feedback from the community on my favorite deck. (List: https://www.mtgsalvation.com/decks/4620-tooth-and-nail)
I went 2-2, not bad for my first modern event, especially considering that one of those losses was on the back of a double mana screw. Here are the results:
Match 1: 2-1 vs G/R Ponza
Felt pretty good about this matchup. The games went more or less how you would expect them to. First match I out-ramped his land destruction and soft locked him with eternal witness + primal command.
Second game he got an arbor elf + sprawl opener and kept me on two lands the whole game. Third game I got the arbor elf + sprawl opener and proceeded to beat him down with thragtusk + Xenagos. Pretty straightforward stuff.
Match 2: 2-1 vs Gifts storm
Game one I got the nut draw and killed him with turn three tooth and nail.
Game two he kept my early ramp in check with bolts and bought enough time with an early Empty the warrens to kill me turn 6 with Electromancer and Baral on board.
Game three was a little more interesting. I had a slow start thanks to a two land opener but two Thragtusks gave me enough early game to keep me alive and kill him with a seven mana tooth and nail since I already had Emrakul + Xenagos in hand.
Match 3: 1-2 vs Abzan
These were definitely my toughest games of the night. All my opening hands were one landers that got picked apart by double Thoughtsieze/Inquisition. Game one I had enough redundancy to fight through the discard and beat down with Primeval Titan + Wolf run for the kill.
Game two I just got picked apart with triple discard and never fully stabilized before he could kill me with his full playset of Tarmogoyfs.
Game three was the worst of the night. I kept a one lander with 2 arbor elfs and a utopia sprawl and he double thoughtsiezed and then Maelstrom Pulsed my elfs. I never drew any more mana the rest of the game.
Match 4: 0-2 vs Living End
Game 1 was pretty rough. I only got two creatures on board before he Living ended me and killed me in two turns.
This matchup has to be one of Tooth and Nail’s worst. They can kill any board that we set up in the early game and they are the only deck in modern that can counter our combo by instant-speeding a Living End to make us sacrifice Emrakul. I managed to get down an early Thragtusk to protect angainst Living end but Archfiend of Ifnir and Double Horror of the Broken Lands after a Living End cleared my blockers and gave him the one-turn kill right before I could Tooth and Nail him for game.
Final Thoughts: Living End and G/B/x matchups are probably our worst in the format. Living end kills your early board and can counter our combo and G/B/x decks can pick apart our hand with discard and then beat us down with Tarmogoyfs. Hornet Queen was an absolute monster out of the board against midrange decks. I’m thinking about cutting a Voyaging Satyr and moving 1 Eternal Witness from the mainboard to the sideboard to make room for two more Primeval Titans. That card just does so much for the deck. It gives us more threat density, it ramps us toward tooth and nail, and sometimes it just wins us the game by grabbing Nykthos and Kessig Wolf Run. The only other change I would consider making to the main deck would be to cut a Forest for a Boseiju to make sure our tooth and nail resolved against control decks. As for the sideboard, cutting the satyrs and two lighting bolts for +1 Ooze, +1 Acidic Slime, +1 Kitchen Finks and the 4th Eternal witness seems like the way to go. What do you guys think? Feel free to give me feedback on the deck or ask me more about specific matchups. Thanks for the read!
Edit: Typos
Also, do y'all think it might be better to simply switch to Temur for this style of ramp? Blue would give me access to cards like pieces of the puzzle which would help me both mill faster and dig for copies of splendid reclamation. Just something to consider.
I've been testing online with a reclamation ramp list that has been surprisingly consistent. Feel free to give suggestions, particularly on the sideboard, where I'm a bit lost as to what to include.
As you may notice, I'm a bit top heavy, with 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and 2 Emrakul, the Promised End. Let me just say that Splendid Reclamation ramps ridiculously fast. In this deck, a turn 5 Ula or Emy is actually quite common, often resulting in an insta-concede from my opponent. Simularly, going from G/R to G/B/r may seem like an unusual choice. I would testify before a court of law that going heavy black was the best choice I made while constructing this deck. Getting to play maindeck Languish has been nothing short of a godsend vs. humans and the like, while The Gitrog Monster, Hissing Quagmire and Ishkanah, Grafwidow activations let me grind with the best of 'em.
Am I missing something when it comes to the Husk+Whirler Combo? The Primer says that it's 10 unblockable damage but it seems like it would actually be 8. If you have a Husk out and play a Whirler, getting two thopter tokens you can make the husk unblockable then sac both the tokens and the rogue for 3 total husk triggers, giving it +6/+6 to the initial 2/2 body meaning 8 total damage right?
I can see how groundbreaker isn't that good but I fail to see how Timbermare is a "half dollar rare" when it taps down you opponents entire board and hits for 5 (and however much else power you have on board) for the measly cost of 4 mana. It seems like a strong card but if discussing a potential finisher isn't "something useful" then I'll move on to other subjects. As far as bad matchups go I can see how boggles is bad for us but I fail to see why affinity is a bad matchup when we have access to sideboard card like reclamation sage and Creeping corrosion.
Nyx Lotus - A much worse version of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. What makes Nykthos so powerful two main things: a low deckbuilding cost and the fact that it's nearly impossible to disrupt as a land. Turning it into a 4 mana artifact makes it vulnerable to naturalize and shatter effects and takes an entire turn to cast while still coming in tapped. I would honestly run karametra's acolyte over Lotus, since it dodges some key cards that Lotus loses to like Abrade, adds 1 to devotion, can be tutored with creature tutors like Primal Command and Summoner's Pact AND can get haste through secondary effects like Temur Ascendancy and Xenagos, God of Revels to tap immediately.
Nylea, Keen-Eyed - An overall better version of our favorite Goddess Nylea, God of the Hunt. 3 Mana to draw a creature or surveil noncreatures away is far better than 4 mana for a paltry +2/+2 and reducing the cost of creature works well with both the activated ability and our deck's main gameplan of playing expensive, big dumb creatures. Losing 1 power and the ability to grant trample is mostly irrelevant since 5/6 indestructible is still massive and most of our large creatures have trample or other evasion anyways i.e. Steel Leaf Champion.
Nylea's intervention - 3 mana for Sylvan Scrying and 1 more mana for two of them is a strong effect but I don't think this is the deck for it. Any deck that wants to grab nonbasics would much rather run Primeval Titan, since it adds devotion, dominates the board AND puts the lands directly into play rather than your hand. The second mode rarely comes up and is mostly overkill unless you're playing against spirits. This card works far better in Scapeshift or Titan decks than here. Unless some mad genius manages to make some kind of hybrid between green devotion and TitanShift decks that isn't strictly worse than a stock list.
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove - The beautiful baby of Prismatic Omen and Courser of Kruphix. Let's get the obvious comparison out of the way. Courser of Kruphix is not a worse version of this card. There are several important differences: Dryad does not draw you cards like Courser does, nor does it let you scry with fetchlands. It also doesn't gain you life or add as much to devotion, which seems more important than most are giving it credit for. On the plus side, this card both ramps you (if you can keep your hand full of lands) and fixes your mana. One important interaction to note: if you play this card after a Blood Moon has been played, it neutralizes its effects on your lands. If Blood Moon enters after Dryad has been played, Blood Moon neutralizes Dryad's effect and turns your nonbasics into mountains with no other abilities. If I were to pick 3 potential decks for this card it would be: TitanShift decks, the potential DevotionShift hybrid I mentioned above, and the new and improved constellation decks that are bound to start popping up once the set releases. Speaking of constellation...
Setessan Champion - Our new best payoff for constellation decks. My main problem with previous versions of this deck was the fact that it relied too heavily on Eidolon of Blossoms, which was strong but didn't really effect the battlefield and was vulnerable to nearly every piece of removal in the format. Champion works as an almost better version of Tireless Tracker in this deck, given that it requires no extra mana to draw cards and grow the Champ and dodges most red removal after a single trigger. I think this card could singlehandedly make constellation a real deck rather than a gimmick, not to mention the other payoffs we got for the archetype in this set like Archon of Sun's Grace.
Once Upon a Time - Free spells are as broken as always. Card is an absolute house in this deck, for 3 main reasons: we love to dig for Nykthos/ Kessig Wolf Run, we rely heavily on turn 1 mana dorks and (most importantly in my opinion) we make enough mana that we don't mind hard-casting it if we draw it later in the game. Card is nuts, the only real question is how many copies to run in any given deck. I feel like 3 is the sweet spot, since anything more 2 copies lets us run 1 less land and still hit land drops consistently, so the 3rd copy is basically free if you already play 2 copies. The fact that this card has already been banned in 2 formats should speak for itself.
Veil of Summer - Our best sideboard card for our worse matchups. It's not even remotely close. Countering Thoughtseize, removal AND counterspells for a single mana would already be absurd. The fact that you also get a card is out of the deal is just stupid. Just like OUaT, the fact that it was already banned in standard and pioneer is all you really need to know.
Nissa, Who Shakes the World - Another great card for our deck. Doubling forest mana basically just doubles our mana since 17+ of our lands are forests. Works great with Leyline of abundance, since animated lands now produce 3 mana instead of 2. My only real gripe with the card is that you can't stack counters on the same land, so it's easy to over extend into an Anger of the Gods or Supreme Verdict. But this is mitigated by the fact that the +1 is a "may" ability. Just be careful to not animate all your lands.
This is now twice that this has happened at that store, first with my Commander deck several years ago and now with the modern deck I spent years collecting cards for. I simply don't have the money to spend on rebuilding the deck from scratch with what little remains in my trade binder. It's been quite the ride the past couple of years but I can't bring myself to invest more money and emotional energy in this game if my cards are just going to get periodically stolen.
I'll definitely swing by every once in a while to lurk or theory craft around my favorite green cards but this is goodbye for now. I'll always look back on my years playing this game fondly. Until then, keep your Primal Commands looped and your Nykthos's untapped. May RNGesus smile upon you and remember to always play to your outs. Magic my seem like a fickle mistress at times but if there's one thing I've learned from this game over the years it's that there's no point in getting frustrated at the parts of the game that you can't control. Just do the best with the information you have and your win rate will thank you for it in the long run.
Nice to see another Tooth and Nail player posting here. I frequently visit here to check up on other people's lists but rarely post, as Tooth and Nail is hardly ever discussed so I feel like I don't have much to contribute to the current discussion. My pre-Horizons list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-05-16-temur-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559744262. It was a hyper focused T&N list with a Command/E witness loop backup plan. The sideboard mainly consisted of silver bullets for primal command, bolts for aggro decks, and additional ramp redundancy for racing other combo decks like storm. I had come to the same conclusion that you had about Garruk and only really ran him as worse copies of Kiora, Master of Depths that would occasionally steal me a game on the off-chance that I had lots of mana dorks but no ramp payoff.
After seeing Llanowar Tribe I knew that I needed to revamp the deck as its basically addition copies of Overgrowth, which has always secretly been T&N's best card. My new test list is here http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/modern-horizons-tooth-and-nail/?cb=1559745177. Tribe means that getting to 3 mana on turn 2 is actually important in most games (whereas it only mattered before if you had managed to draw overgrowth), so I've added a copy of Birds of Paradise and after many test games I would highly recommend that you also run at least 1 copy somewhere in your list, as landing a tribe on 2 all but guarantees that you can play a 6 drop on turn 3.
As for other cards to fill your remaining 4 slots I would highly recommend 3 copies of Primal Command and an additional copy of Eternal Witness. Primal Command will allow you to tutor up creatures with CMC of greater than 3, effectively giving you more threat redundancy while allowing you to dodge the effects of cards like Grafdigger's Cage. It will also allow you to diversify your threats by running a larger variety of bombs without reducing deck consistency (i.e. you can cut 1 Bellower for 1 Primeval Titan while still being able to get Bellower when you need it). This also gives the deck a strong Plan B in games where you don't draw T&N by Time-Walking your opponent with Primal Command/Eternal Witness loops (in my experience most opponents concede after you tutor up the 2nd Eternal Witness). Finally, Primal command lets you run sliver bullets in the sideboard without having to worry about "over-sideboarding" and diluting your deck's main T&N game plan. This means you can have single copies of cards like Elderscale Wurm and Hornet Queen for Aggro and Midrange matchups respectively.
On a related note, I really appreciate your writeup on 6-drops. Vraska, Relic Seeker is a card I had never really considered before but it definitely seems like the kind of card that this deck wants. T&N has needed a threat that also interacts with the opponent when needed for a while and I had never really considered a black splash for big Vraska until your writeup. It's nice to know that there are green mages out there still innovating in this archetype.
Match 1: 2-1 vs. Gifts Storm
Pretty standard combo v combo games here. Only thing of note was my opponent getting land screwed in game 3.
Sideboard: -1 Acidic Slime, -1 Hornet queen, -1 Scavenging Ooze, -2 Eternal Witness, +3 Thragtusk, +2 Voyaging Satyr
Match 2: 2-1 vs. Humans
I got crushed game one and games two and three were real nail-biters but I eked out the win.
Sideboard: -1 Scavenging Ooze, -1 Acidic Slime, -3 Eternal Witness, -1 Tooth and Nail, -1 Kiora, +1 Thragtusk, +2 Courser, +4 Lightning Bolt
Match 3: 0-2 vs. Mono-Green Tron
Game 1 I got crushed. I almost took game two after getting milled to 3 cards by Ulamog but I drew a forest instead of the Garruk I needed to draw to take the game.
Sideboard: -1 Scavenging Ooze, -1 Eternal Witness, +2 Voyaging Satyr
Match 4: 1-2 vs. W/U Control
Game 1 I had mana but no payoff. I lost when Azor hit the table. Game 2 I locked him at 3 lands with Eternal Witness + Primal Command. Game 3 he grabbed my Kiora’s Follwer with Spell Queller and killed me with it while countering every spell I played.
Final Thoughts: Hornet queen and lightning bolt were absolute all-stars against humans. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be bringing in the bolts against storm to kill Baral and Electromancer. Thoughts? I’m thinking about getting some Autumn’s Veil for my sideboard. Has anyone had any good experience with that card?
-I only had trouble with blue mana in one game against the ponza deck I played on Monday but primal command and Acidic Slime fixed that problem pretty easily. Obviously, my mana base would ideally have Misty Rainforests instead of Windswept Heaths so I could fetch a basic island but I currently don’t have the funds for the playset and blood moon decks are pretty rare in my area so I’m not too concerned about it right now.
- Kiora’s follower has been great for me actually. The extra 1 power makes it more threatening in the early game and the ability to untap your creatures as well as your lands if the need arises has proven handy on more that one occasion.
I went 2-2, not bad for my first modern event, especially considering that one of those losses was on the back of a double mana screw. Here are the results:
Match 1: 2-1 vs G/R Ponza
Felt pretty good about this matchup. The games went more or less how you would expect them to. First match I out-ramped his land destruction and soft locked him with eternal witness + primal command.
Sideboard: -2 Kiora’s Follower, -1 Ooze, -1 Tooth and Nail, -1 Kiora, +2 Voyaging Satyr, +3 Thragtusk
Second game he got an arbor elf + sprawl opener and kept me on two lands the whole game. Third game I got the arbor elf + sprawl opener and proceeded to beat him down with thragtusk + Xenagos. Pretty straightforward stuff.
Match 2: 2-1 vs Gifts storm
Game one I got the nut draw and killed him with turn three tooth and nail.
Sideboard: -1 Acidic Slime, -2 Eternal Witness, +3 Thragtusk
Game two he kept my early ramp in check with bolts and bought enough time with an early Empty the warrens to kill me turn 6 with Electromancer and Baral on board.
Game three was a little more interesting. I had a slow start thanks to a two land opener but two Thragtusks gave me enough early game to keep me alive and kill him with a seven mana tooth and nail since I already had Emrakul + Xenagos in hand.
Match 3: 1-2 vs Abzan
These were definitely my toughest games of the night. All my opening hands were one landers that got picked apart by double Thoughtsieze/Inquisition. Game one I had enough redundancy to fight through the discard and beat down with Primeval Titan + Wolf run for the kill.
Sideboard: -1 Tooth and nail, -1 Acidic Slime, -1 Voyaging Satyr, +2 Thragtusk, +1 Hornet Queen
Game two I just got picked apart with triple discard and never fully stabilized before he could kill me with his full playset of Tarmogoyfs.
Game three was the worst of the night. I kept a one lander with 2 arbor elfs and a utopia sprawl and he double thoughtsiezed and then Maelstrom Pulsed my elfs. I never drew any more mana the rest of the game.
Match 4: 0-2 vs Living End
Game 1 was pretty rough. I only got two creatures on board before he Living ended me and killed me in two turns.
Sideboard: -1 Kiora, -1 Tooth and Nail, -1 Eternal witness, -1 Acidic Slime, +3 Thragtusk, +1 Scavenging Ooze
This matchup has to be one of Tooth and Nail’s worst. They can kill any board that we set up in the early game and they are the only deck in modern that can counter our combo by instant-speeding a Living End to make us sacrifice Emrakul. I managed to get down an early Thragtusk to protect angainst Living end but Archfiend of Ifnir and Double Horror of the Broken Lands after a Living End cleared my blockers and gave him the one-turn kill right before I could Tooth and Nail him for game.
Final Thoughts: Living End and G/B/x matchups are probably our worst in the format. Living end kills your early board and can counter our combo and G/B/x decks can pick apart our hand with discard and then beat us down with Tarmogoyfs. Hornet Queen was an absolute monster out of the board against midrange decks. I’m thinking about cutting a Voyaging Satyr and moving 1 Eternal Witness from the mainboard to the sideboard to make room for two more Primeval Titans. That card just does so much for the deck. It gives us more threat density, it ramps us toward tooth and nail, and sometimes it just wins us the game by grabbing Nykthos and Kessig Wolf Run. The only other change I would consider making to the main deck would be to cut a Forest for a Boseiju to make sure our tooth and nail resolved against control decks. As for the sideboard, cutting the satyrs and two lighting bolts for +1 Ooze, +1 Acidic Slime, +1 Kitchen Finks and the 4th Eternal witness seems like the way to go. What do you guys think? Feel free to give me feedback on the deck or ask me more about specific matchups. Thanks for the read!
Edit: Typos
1 Hedron Archive
Creatures (13)
1 Dragonlord Atarka
2 Emrakul, the Promised End
2 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
4 Sylvan Advocate
1 The Gitrog Monster
2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 World Breaker
Enchantment (4)
4 Vessel of Nascency
Instant (7)
4 Grapple with the Past
3 Kozilek's Return
Land (25)
1 Cinder Glade
2 Drownyard Temple
3 Evolving Wilds
8 Forest
2 Hissing Quagmire
4 Llanowar Wastes
1 Mountain
2 Sanctum of Ugin
2 Swamp
1 Gather the Pack
2 Languish
3 Nissa's Pilgrimage
4 Splendid Reclamation
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
1 Dragonlord Atarka
1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Languish
1 Mountain
2 Orbs of Warding
2 Radiant Flames
1 The Gitrog Monster
1 Tranverse the Ulvenwald
2 World Breaker
As you may notice, I'm a bit top heavy, with 2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and 2 Emrakul, the Promised End. Let me just say that Splendid Reclamation ramps ridiculously fast. In this deck, a turn 5 Ula or Emy is actually quite common, often resulting in an insta-concede from my opponent. Simularly, going from G/R to G/B/r may seem like an unusual choice. I would testify before a court of law that going heavy black was the best choice I made while constructing this deck. Getting to play maindeck Languish has been nothing short of a godsend vs. humans and the like, while The Gitrog Monster, Hissing Quagmire and Ishkanah, Grafwidow activations let me grind with the best of 'em.