Dredge is likely the most resilient, as it is getting Nether Spirit and has persisted the years with and without Golgari Grave-Troll. The only card I could see getting banned in the deck is Creeping Chill, but that wouldn’t kil the archetype, just make it less explosive.
Titan is cool but hard to play. I’d say wait to see where goblins ends up after horizons and decide from there.
The only bad matchup (I can think of) where blood moon doesn't do much is Storm...
If you are looking at RG Loam, Storm isn't a bad matchup for the list. Our creature disruption can mess with their costreducers well, which makes them have to go hard mode most of the time. Scavenging Ooze is really important against that deck, and is one of the most critical cards to include in the current metagame. Game 1 it is still likely storm favored as you need these pieces to do well, but it's only 60/40 at best.
The allure of the loam archetype is that you can shift to different color combinations to fit the metagame. The best versions against noninteration are Jund and Temur, Jund with hand disruption and edicts, Temur with countermagic. RG is very limited in its disruption, but Blood Moon works to fill a possible slot. Let me know how it does.
-Arboreal Grazer is great on turn 1/2, but absolutely garbage afterwards. His highs are really high, but the lows... . Still not sure about if I want him or not, so far I lean to a slight "no", but definitely needs more testing.
-Trade Routes: *droll*, want a third one if possible
Manabase: Need 2 Blast Zones in there, the U lands were no problem, want a 7th Fetchland though.
Greetings,
Kathal
I've found grazer to be a less than stellar card to say the least. The tempo lost from being on the draw is pretty well solved by big removal spells like Lightning Axe though, and that's what has been doing me wonders recently. I had been freaking out about losing on the draw, but after reading a few theory articles on the topic of tempo advantage, my recent list's removal package has been pretty stellar in smoothing out a lost die roll.
I feel like all interactive decks in modern have to play this polarized game plan of "Do I have this card that really matters in this matchup?" Most of the matchups you faced last week seemed to be that way. The Amulet matchup is pretty good - that is, if you can line up Ghost Quarter against their Simic Growth Chamber and other bounce lands, or if you can kill their Azusa. I'm leaning more and more heavily on Ghost Quarter, as it is a land that is necessary in a lot of matchups in modern, and can be turned into colored mana if need be for the cost of a land. I feel like we need to run 3 of them.
I just finished finals so all my time is going into the new primer. I'm gonna leave out the new cards for now as we need to test them still, but it should be up by this Wednesday. Cheers.
Scapeshift and Ad Nauseum are rough. If you are expecting Scapeshift to be big in your meta, Beast Within and Tectonic Edge are both good options on top of Alpine Moon. After a Scapeshift, your opponent gets their 6 mountains, you can Beast Within one to make the rest of the triggers fizzle. Same thing would happen with Tectonic Edge, but since it's on board, it's a little harder to catch your opponent with it (as they can just go get 7 mountains instead).
If you have a combo heavy metagame, RG is likely too narrow. Jund has hand disruption as you mentioned, but Temur with counterspells and Naya with KOTR, Repel the Abominable and Stony Silence are all possible options. All that will be covered in the primer.
This archetype is very cool because once you get all the lands, you can make slight changes to the deck colors to adapt in any metagame, from Lightning Helix and Timely Reinforcements for a burn heavy meta, to Swan's Song and Spell Pierce in Temur to counter any spellbased combo deck. The combo can be slot into a variety of shells which gives a lot of flexibility.
BTW I am very sad on the spoilers of the "Canopy" lands. Horizon Canopy still needs you to get to turn 6 to do "Loam-Crack-Loam" and deal 10 damage, and it seems to me that these take up the possibility of the cycling lands that would be in that slot. Who knows, that Astral Slide psuedo-reprint may say otherwise, but I'm kinda bummed.
With our current cycling lands, I have now had many opportunities where I could cycle multiple times in one turn to draw into threats, whereas the canopy lands would only let you play and crack one per turn. You don't want to be dealing a lot of damage to yourself in loam against aggro decks, so you don't really want to play them out as mana sources either. It might be bad news bears for us.
It's getting to the point where it's almost unbelievable, but I am currently 9/0/1 with this list at my relatively large lgs (60+ people for FNMs most weeks, and some real good players). I haven't lost since the last update, and only drew vs a slow UW player. I'm gonna quickly go over some of the differences between this and the other lists.
Young Pyromancer vs Tarmogoyf - With all the gy hate in the meta, having a threat that doesn't die to a Relic of Progenitus or Rest in Peace is really good. I won multiple games last night vs control and BG Rock because of the bodies pyromancer created essentially on etb (think of Peezy more as a 3+ drop with spells attached). It's a more resilient threat and it goes wide around many strategies in the metagame, while giving you fight against graveyard hate post-board.
Satyr Wayfinder and Commune with the Gods have similar effects, but the difference is that Satyr Wayfinder is a tempo positive play. On the play, a turn 2 Commune is great as it sets you up nicely and you still have a tempo advantage since you played first. On the draw, it doesn't add anything to your board, at times setting you behind the curve if all you get is another two drop or a second three drop other than Seismic Assault. I've found that more than 2 commune is clunky as you never want it in your hand on the draw, though it is an all star off the top in a grindfest.
Meanwhile, Wayfinder comes down, finds a land which is important to smooth out your draws or find Ghost Quarter against Tron or Amulet, chumps to buy time, and is able to chip in for points of damage. In my control games, Wayfinder consistently dealt 4-6 points of damage before my opponent had to use a removal spell on it (feelsgoodman) which sets them up to be burned out of the game with a few lands + Seismic Assault or Lightning Bolt. 4 Wayfinder is probably too much, I was testing them here as a playset but they are definitely a valid creature for this archetype.
TL;DR on commune, on the draw, it's too ineffective unless it is guaranteed to find Seismic Assault, so I'm only running 1 in this list.
Finally, an update on Living Twister. This card overperformed for me, and I honestly wanted to draw it more often. I still wouldn't play more than two as in multiples this card is basically a vanilla 2/5, but it was a good blocker vs Hollow One, it was a backup Seismic Assault vs Jund, and its Trade Routes ability allowed me to bounce Sheltered Thicket and cycle it to draw cards. The card seems great, and I'd like to explain some of the math behind the card.
When you think about Living Twister, you want to think about your mana in groups of 3. 1 mana to bounce a land, two mana to discard it. If you have 9 mana, you can pay 3 mana 3 times to deal 6 damage. Then, next turn you will have 6 mana. You can now pay 3 mana two times to deal 4 damage. The next turn you will have 4 mana, and can continue the process.
You should try to bounce lands and discard them at the same time since bouncing lands is essentially free. That way you have more options to cast spells you may draw or discard lands you may draw. This allows you to deal a bunch of direct damage even when you have a Rest in Peace in play to win the game.
Other tricks you can do using Living Twister: to protect your manlands from removal spells or Field of Ruin, you can bounce them to your hand, just make sure you leave up green mana, and if your opponent does it while you are moving to combat, you can tap the manland to bounce itself; bounce cycle lands to be able to cycle them and draw cards; if you have the three cards Countryside Crusher, Tireless Tracker, and Living Twister on the battlefield, even though Crusher makes you unable to draw lands, you can bounce your own lands to make clues to draw cards and keep the value going; ...
I have detailled match notes with interactions, so if you want to hear how I played around Surgical Extraction in situations or used by sideboarding to minimize the effect of Leyline of the Void, let me know. I've already wrote that section in the primer which should be ready next week.
I'm satisfied with this iteration of the RG deck and am going to focus on Naya next with Modern Horizons on the... horizon, but I am still curious to see what other lists look like.
@vannatar
I did mean a couple in SB. I understand the deck is likely to get banned, but that doesn’t change hedging for the deck in the short term. My post was still reactionary and I don’t think 2 needles will be able to stop the combo of the deck as the op does board in answers anyway. Without the London mulligan the deck hasn’t been doing as well so I don’t even think it is necessary.
As far as my stance goes with Faithless Looting vs Magmatic Insight, the problem I’ve found with insight in testing is that you discard before you draw. The expectation sometimes with Insight is that you will discard a land and draw another. Well, even if you are playing 32 lands, you will have occasions when you don’t. Looting lets you draw first, and either discard blank cards like Flame Jab, excess lands to Loam back, and in some cases, discard “good cards” but let’s you craft a gameplan since you have all the information first. Even if Looting didn’t have flashback in this deck, I think it would still be played over Insight for this reason.
Now this deck is your typical midrange deck, and I prefer to build my midrange decks with more cheap threats than card advantage, so I think having 4 Looting and trying even 3 Insight on top of it is too much, but you can definitely try it out. I’m finishing writing matchups for the primer (kinda busy with senior finals but it’s coming.). Hopefully that acts as an FAQ to start more discussions.
I’ll post my updated RG list later today. 5/0/1 at FNM last week and 3/1 at MNM.
I found also that Engineered Explosives is the best SB option for this deck. I'm in on it in almost every game.
Explosives may be the most important tech for this deck especially for Bogles, but is versatile for many other reasons too.
Speaking of necessary tech, we may want to consider running Pithing Needle for the NeoBrand menace going around... as a two-of it wouldn't take up too much space plus it counts as additional hate for various decks, Vial in tribal strategies, PWs against Jund or Control, etc.
I went 4-0 split at my last modern tournament on monday with Living Twister.
For RG, the twister gives you exactly what you need vs control in the long game. 6 mana twister off the top with Seismic Assault lets you dome your opponent for 12 over two turns, basically giving the deck a combo finish. Before, I was struggling to fill the last two slots of the deck with creatures like Bedlam Reveler and Huntmaster of the Fells as inevitability, but nothing seemed to fill the role great. Twister gives you a way to win without Loam, pushing down the number of Loams you need to play, and lets you win on the battlefield and not scoop to graveyard hate. Twister is good in the deck, but I wouldn't run more than 2.
While Twister is great in the RG lists, I'm not sure it is necessary in all the other color combinations. RG doesn't have a card like Dark Confidant to gain a ton of card advantage and inevitability, and the fact you need to have a large number of green sources to use twister effectively doesn't help. Naya may like it as the ability to transform and play Rest in Peace postboard is great. Jund, Temur, and 4C builds probably would rather have better threats.
PS: Haven't been posting lately because I've been busy building an updated primer. Currently writing matchups for all flavors of RGX Loam. Hopefully the new primer can get some new eyes on the deck.
Edit: Neglected to mention just the inevitability Living Twister gives to the deck. In RG this is very much needed, with the extra tools in the other colors, not so much.
I made this deck looking for a budget strategy I could build into. I had the manabase, some of the creatures, and the sideboard shell already, so I just wanted to add some more budget options to be able to play a different style than I usually play.
I wouldn’t want to play this budget version to fight all the decks of the meta and spike FNMs, like most budget decks it is a starting point that can win sure but really is to either learn a format / about magic in general or is something that can ve built into something better over time.
To @AmicDeep’s point, I think Aether Vial would be great, but in this budget list I just wanted to have a solid curve of synergistic creatures that could grind out midrange or other tribal aggressive strategies (I’ve had good results vs humans with this list.).
To answer the question “When is this deck better then Elfball?”, Elfball relies on their Lords heavily to be on the battlefield when they swing for lots of damage. With Bramblewood Paragon and Metallic Mimic, our creature will keep their counters which keeps the threats safer from spot removal. With a Paragon and something like Dwynen’s Elite, you make 5 power with trample which is resilient from Bolt. With Growth-Chamber Guardian you search for another, so for 4 mana turn 4 you make 6 power with more gas in hand.
Warcaller just synergizes well to add +2/+2 to your team that already has been pumped by your other lords. It’s a beatdown deck which modern doesn’t have a lot of, but the amount of value and bodies you get out of your creatures + trample from Paragon is enough to grind through opponents and beat every fair deck in modern. Sideboard disruption would be needed to help vs Phoenix and Dredge, but if someone wanted to play a beatdown deck, I think this list would be more than just a good option.
I tested Jadelight over Tireless Tracker for a couple weeks and didn't like how it played. That being said, it may have not been the right spot for it so I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be good in a better position.
This deck looks sweet! I like your curve; it seems like the deck functions, if not yet performs which are the first two steps to building a good deck.
I'd like to see some maindeck disruption to destroy creatures or other problematic permanents. While Dash Hopes is a fun card, people will gladly pay the 5 life if it means they can get a huge threat on the board like Tarmogoyf. There are a lot of options you can play such as Fatal Push, Path to Exile, and Anguished Unmaking (which may be good since you are gaining life) and I think adding some of these could help you fight against some of the really strong decks of the format.
Secondly, I see you mentioned Bontu's Monument but it is not in the deck itself. I think it would work well in your strategy, as it would add that Myr Retriever combo you mentioned to the deck. As is, the Retriever plus one of your extort creatures and Heartless Summoning would let you tap all the white or black mana you have to drain your opponent for "X", which is good, but it would make me want to cut the Retriever if that was all it accomplished. I'd like to see you cut a Pontiff of Blight or Dead Revels for 2 copies of the Monument, Pontiff because it is kind of expensive for modern and Dead Revels because it isn't an amazing card.
If you are looking for better card advantage than Dead Revels, Night's Whisper works pretty well in your deck because of your life gain, and I think more copies of Altar's Reap could be good too, seeing as you have creatures like Gravecrawler that return from your graveyard. In fact, I'd advise playing Costly Plunder instead of Altar's Reap because it does the same thing with more options, allowing you to sacrifice a Bontu's Monument or Nihil Spellbomb out of the sideboard if needed.
Lavamancer is a great card in the deck that hasn't seen a lot of play recently. The only thing about Vortex is I'd advise playing more lands to be able to activate it efficiently, even upwards of 25. Statistically, the least lands a deck needs to activate vortex consistently is 31 (~80% to get 4 lands turn 2), so playing 24 often leads to heartbreak. That's how I initially tested Vortex before doing the Hypergeometric Distribution and I was disappointed. If you only need to discard one land turn 2 though against something like infect, 25-26 should be fine.
Cards you already own: don't have much cards as I recently restarted played on paper... but I don't plan entering a tournament tomorrow, so it's ok to buy the cards little by little.
Colors you like to play: As colors I always favored mostly White and Green but I'm really ok playing other colors too
Style you like to play: creature based combo, aggro, midrange, tempo, ramp and rogue... but mostly midrange and rogue (I prefer playing something more unique then a top tier deck)
Level you want to play at, or aim to build up to: mostly casual, fnm or small local tournament (city with population of 40.000)
Thank you so much in advance for your answers... I'm struggling so much to find a deck I like to play but it's still good
Not to plug my own deck or anything but I think you would like RGx AssaultLoam. It's a midrange deck that is rogue that I have been putting up solid results with. It has good matchups against most of the modern metagame right now, especially Phoenix due to its recurring disruption. You can find out more information about it on the primer on here, though it's pretty out of date.
Titan is cool but hard to play. I’d say wait to see where goblins ends up after horizons and decide from there.
Postboard we have more ways to deal with the gameplan of storm, which pushes it slightly into our favor. Just make sure to bring in either Anger of the Gods or Engineered Explosives to deal with Empty the Warrens.
The allure of the loam archetype is that you can shift to different color combinations to fit the metagame. The best versions against noninteration are Jund and Temur, Jund with hand disruption and edicts, Temur with countermagic. RG is very limited in its disruption, but Blood Moon works to fill a possible slot. Let me know how it does.
I've found grazer to be a less than stellar card to say the least. The tempo lost from being on the draw is pretty well solved by big removal spells like Lightning Axe though, and that's what has been doing me wonders recently. I had been freaking out about losing on the draw, but after reading a few theory articles on the topic of tempo advantage, my recent list's removal package has been pretty stellar in smoothing out a lost die roll.
I feel like all interactive decks in modern have to play this polarized game plan of "Do I have this card that really matters in this matchup?" Most of the matchups you faced last week seemed to be that way. The Amulet matchup is pretty good - that is, if you can line up Ghost Quarter against their Simic Growth Chamber and other bounce lands, or if you can kill their Azusa. I'm leaning more and more heavily on Ghost Quarter, as it is a land that is necessary in a lot of matchups in modern, and can be turned into colored mana if need be for the cost of a land. I feel like we need to run 3 of them.
I just finished finals so all my time is going into the new primer. I'm gonna leave out the new cards for now as we need to test them still, but it should be up by this Wednesday. Cheers.
If you have a combo heavy metagame, RG is likely too narrow. Jund has hand disruption as you mentioned, but Temur with counterspells and Naya with KOTR, Repel the Abominable and Stony Silence are all possible options. All that will be covered in the primer.
This archetype is very cool because once you get all the lands, you can make slight changes to the deck colors to adapt in any metagame, from Lightning Helix and Timely Reinforcements for a burn heavy meta, to Swan's Song and Spell Pierce in Temur to counter any spellbased combo deck. The combo can be slot into a variety of shells which gives a lot of flexibility.
With our current cycling lands, I have now had many opportunities where I could cycle multiple times in one turn to draw into threats, whereas the canopy lands would only let you play and crack one per turn. You don't want to be dealing a lot of damage to yourself in loam against aggro decks, so you don't really want to play them out as mana sources either. It might be bad news bears for us.
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Flame Jab
2 Dismember
1 Flame Slash
1 Lightning Axe
1 Conflagrate
4 Satyr Wayfinder
3 Young Pyromancer
3 Life from the Loam
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Commune with the Gods
4 Countryside Crusher
2 Living Twister
Lands: 23
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Stomping Ground
5 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
3 Rootbound Crag
3 Sheltered Thicket
3 Ghost Quarter
1 Raging Ravine
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Gnaw to the Bone
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Alpine Moon
1 Beast Within
1 Nature's Claim
1 Cindervines
2 Tormod's Crypt
Young Pyromancer vs Tarmogoyf - With all the gy hate in the meta, having a threat that doesn't die to a Relic of Progenitus or Rest in Peace is really good. I won multiple games last night vs control and BG Rock because of the bodies pyromancer created essentially on etb (think of Peezy more as a 3+ drop with spells attached). It's a more resilient threat and it goes wide around many strategies in the metagame, while giving you fight against graveyard hate post-board.
Satyr Wayfinder and Commune with the Gods have similar effects, but the difference is that Satyr Wayfinder is a tempo positive play. On the play, a turn 2 Commune is great as it sets you up nicely and you still have a tempo advantage since you played first. On the draw, it doesn't add anything to your board, at times setting you behind the curve if all you get is another two drop or a second three drop other than Seismic Assault. I've found that more than 2 commune is clunky as you never want it in your hand on the draw, though it is an all star off the top in a grindfest.
Meanwhile, Wayfinder comes down, finds a land which is important to smooth out your draws or find Ghost Quarter against Tron or Amulet, chumps to buy time, and is able to chip in for points of damage. In my control games, Wayfinder consistently dealt 4-6 points of damage before my opponent had to use a removal spell on it (feelsgoodman) which sets them up to be burned out of the game with a few lands + Seismic Assault or Lightning Bolt. 4 Wayfinder is probably too much, I was testing them here as a playset but they are definitely a valid creature for this archetype.
TL;DR on commune, on the draw, it's too ineffective unless it is guaranteed to find Seismic Assault, so I'm only running 1 in this list.
Finally, an update on Living Twister. This card overperformed for me, and I honestly wanted to draw it more often. I still wouldn't play more than two as in multiples this card is basically a vanilla 2/5, but it was a good blocker vs Hollow One, it was a backup Seismic Assault vs Jund, and its Trade Routes ability allowed me to bounce Sheltered Thicket and cycle it to draw cards. The card seems great, and I'd like to explain some of the math behind the card.
When you think about Living Twister, you want to think about your mana in groups of 3. 1 mana to bounce a land, two mana to discard it. If you have 9 mana, you can pay 3 mana 3 times to deal 6 damage. Then, next turn you will have 6 mana. You can now pay 3 mana two times to deal 4 damage. The next turn you will have 4 mana, and can continue the process.
You should try to bounce lands and discard them at the same time since bouncing lands is essentially free. That way you have more options to cast spells you may draw or discard lands you may draw. This allows you to deal a bunch of direct damage even when you have a Rest in Peace in play to win the game.
Other tricks you can do using Living Twister: to protect your manlands from removal spells or Field of Ruin, you can bounce them to your hand, just make sure you leave up green mana, and if your opponent does it while you are moving to combat, you can tap the manland to bounce itself; bounce cycle lands to be able to cycle them and draw cards; if you have the three cards Countryside Crusher, Tireless Tracker, and Living Twister on the battlefield, even though Crusher makes you unable to draw lands, you can bounce your own lands to make clues to draw cards and keep the value going; ...
I have detailled match notes with interactions, so if you want to hear how I played around Surgical Extraction in situations or used by sideboarding to minimize the effect of Leyline of the Void, let me know. I've already wrote that section in the primer which should be ready next week.
I'm satisfied with this iteration of the RG deck and am going to focus on Naya next with Modern Horizons on the... horizon, but I am still curious to see what other lists look like.
I did mean a couple in SB. I understand the deck is likely to get banned, but that doesn’t change hedging for the deck in the short term. My post was still reactionary and I don’t think 2 needles will be able to stop the combo of the deck as the op does board in answers anyway. Without the London mulligan the deck hasn’t been doing as well so I don’t even think it is necessary.
As far as my stance goes with Faithless Looting vs Magmatic Insight, the problem I’ve found with insight in testing is that you discard before you draw. The expectation sometimes with Insight is that you will discard a land and draw another. Well, even if you are playing 32 lands, you will have occasions when you don’t. Looting lets you draw first, and either discard blank cards like Flame Jab, excess lands to Loam back, and in some cases, discard “good cards” but let’s you craft a gameplan since you have all the information first. Even if Looting didn’t have flashback in this deck, I think it would still be played over Insight for this reason.
Now this deck is your typical midrange deck, and I prefer to build my midrange decks with more cheap threats than card advantage, so I think having 4 Looting and trying even 3 Insight on top of it is too much, but you can definitely try it out. I’m finishing writing matchups for the primer (kinda busy with senior finals but it’s coming.). Hopefully that acts as an FAQ to start more discussions.
I’ll post my updated RG list later today. 5/0/1 at FNM last week and 3/1 at MNM.
Speaking of necessary tech, we may want to consider running Pithing Needle for the NeoBrand menace going around... as a two-of it wouldn't take up too much space plus it counts as additional hate for various decks, Vial in tribal strategies, PWs against Jund or Control, etc.
For RG, the twister gives you exactly what you need vs control in the long game. 6 mana twister off the top with Seismic Assault lets you dome your opponent for 12 over two turns, basically giving the deck a combo finish. Before, I was struggling to fill the last two slots of the deck with creatures like Bedlam Reveler and Huntmaster of the Fells as inevitability, but nothing seemed to fill the role great. Twister gives you a way to win without Loam, pushing down the number of Loams you need to play, and lets you win on the battlefield and not scoop to graveyard hate. Twister is good in the deck, but I wouldn't run more than 2.
Here's my list, heavily adapted for my metagame:
4 Faithless Looting
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Dismember
1 Lightning Axe
1 Flame Slash
2 Flame Jab
1 Conflagrate
Two Drops: 14
3 Young Pyromancer
3 Satyr Wayfinder
3 Scavenging Ooze
3 Life from the Loam
2 Commune with the Gods
4 Seismic Assault
3 Countryside Crusher
2 Living Twister
Lands: 23
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Stomping Ground
3 Sheltered Thicket
5 Mountain
1 Forest
3 Ghost Quarter
2 Rootbound Crag
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Raging Ravine
2 Alpine Moon
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Gnaw to the Bone
1 Pulse of Murasa
1 Nature’s Claim
1 Cindervines
1 Beast Within
PS: Haven't been posting lately because I've been busy building an updated primer. Currently writing matchups for all flavors of RGX Loam. Hopefully the new primer can get some new eyes on the deck.
Edit: Neglected to mention just the inevitability Living Twister gives to the deck. In RG this is very much needed, with the extra tools in the other colors, not so much.
I wouldn’t want to play this budget version to fight all the decks of the meta and spike FNMs, like most budget decks it is a starting point that can win sure but really is to either learn a format / about magic in general or is something that can ve built into something better over time.
To @AmicDeep’s point, I think Aether Vial would be great, but in this budget list I just wanted to have a solid curve of synergistic creatures that could grind out midrange or other tribal aggressive strategies (I’ve had good results vs humans with this list.).
To answer the question “When is this deck better then Elfball?”, Elfball relies on their Lords heavily to be on the battlefield when they swing for lots of damage. With Bramblewood Paragon and Metallic Mimic, our creature will keep their counters which keeps the threats safer from spot removal. With a Paragon and something like Dwynen’s Elite, you make 5 power with trample which is resilient from Bolt. With Growth-Chamber Guardian you search for another, so for 4 mana turn 4 you make 6 power with more gas in hand.
Warcaller just synergizes well to add +2/+2 to your team that already has been pumped by your other lords. It’s a beatdown deck which modern doesn’t have a lot of, but the amount of value and bodies you get out of your creatures + trample from Paragon is enough to grind through opponents and beat every fair deck in modern. Sideboard disruption would be needed to help vs Phoenix and Dredge, but if someone wanted to play a beatdown deck, I think this list would be more than just a good option.
I'd like to see some maindeck disruption to destroy creatures or other problematic permanents. While Dash Hopes is a fun card, people will gladly pay the 5 life if it means they can get a huge threat on the board like Tarmogoyf. There are a lot of options you can play such as Fatal Push, Path to Exile, and Anguished Unmaking (which may be good since you are gaining life) and I think adding some of these could help you fight against some of the really strong decks of the format.
Secondly, I see you mentioned Bontu's Monument but it is not in the deck itself. I think it would work well in your strategy, as it would add that Myr Retriever combo you mentioned to the deck. As is, the Retriever plus one of your extort creatures and Heartless Summoning would let you tap all the white or black mana you have to drain your opponent for "X", which is good, but it would make me want to cut the Retriever if that was all it accomplished. I'd like to see you cut a Pontiff of Blight or Dead Revels for 2 copies of the Monument, Pontiff because it is kind of expensive for modern and Dead Revels because it isn't an amazing card.
If you are looking for better card advantage than Dead Revels, Night's Whisper works pretty well in your deck because of your life gain, and I think more copies of Altar's Reap could be good too, seeing as you have creatures like Gravecrawler that return from your graveyard. In fact, I'd advise playing Costly Plunder instead of Altar's Reap because it does the same thing with more options, allowing you to sacrifice a Bontu's Monument or Nihil Spellbomb out of the sideboard if needed.
All in all, cool deck, and a great first build.
Thanks!