With the rise of KCI, I'm wondering if surgical extraction is a good SB card. But we really have no meaningful interaction with KCI, and as you may have already experienced there is no board state they cannot blow up once they start their engine. Splash damage is it helps with big mana matchups by being able to surgical/ghost quarter.
Yeah, this card is great for us. People are saying it's worse than blood moon, but we can't play blood moon. I think it's existence will push tron back down to ladder. People are saying that its fixing will help tron get the colored mana they need for nature's claim. I have never seen tron not get the colored mana it needs, and there's no such thing as a good sb hate card that doesn't get trumped by their anti-hate card. You play cards for the possibility of the opponent not answering, or making them stumble long enough to get a real advantage. As a lover of artifacts and tezzeret, I can sadly recall of many many (many) games that stony silence ended where I didn't see my 2-3 copies of enchantment removal.
I think I'll start off playing a few for tron/valakut - but I'm interested in seeing if amulet of safekeeping can help the valakut matchup with a whir for it in response to a scapeshift/titan.
I've loved that card for a long time, and I think it could really shut down control decks in a way that we desperately need. It also prevents a player from loading up on a bunch of pieces they need to dismantle our board-state and pouncing at the worst possible second.
I lost another g3 int he finals to a shatterstorm. It is a bit of a bummer in the local meta that people will just waste a sidebaord slot on you once they fear your deck.
I went and bought a Declaration of Naught right away, and I think I'm gonna sleeve up a few counterspells. Probably a negate and metallic rebuke.
I have been underwhelmed with defense grid, anyone else feeling that? Maybe I'm just not using it correctly, but I whirred for it against my cryptic opponent and the game just went to the point that he had enough lands to do whatever he wanted. Right now I have shaved a jar main for an aether grid from the side... for me it's just always good. I also took out the defense grid and in their places I'm playing a possessed portal and for the other slot I might try a jester's cap but I feel some metallic rebukes might be better for my blue heavy meta.
@Decadent_Command A lot of hands are keepable in the deck, some zero/one drops land opal will be how most of your hands look. That's usually keepable. Where you don't want to keep is if your hand has no action cards like inventors' fair/exp map/tolaria west/whir of invention/bridge/tezzeret /// but that is a lot of cards, you'll usually have one of them. The deck needs critical mass and doesn't mulligan well, so be stingy. Also don't play your tolaria wests too early, they are not a land unless it's a horrific emergency. They are tutors.
The game has three distinct phases, getting to a win con is your last priority. Phase one is getting the right killswitch down (bridge or withcbane orb depending on opponent) then phase two is protecting your killswitch (jars/spellskites/paddeem) and cutting off your opponents' alternate wincons like planeswalker ults, walking ballistas, hazorets etc phase three if they haven't been smart and scooped yet is to offer to tell them what the win con is for concession, if they don't concede you can usually just play draw go until you find your wincon which is easy with baubles and shuffle effects and additional draws with bottled cloister.
When in doubt watch Susurrus play a bunch of matches, you'll start to figure out the deck's tempo.
Blue Red Prison aka "The Grindfather" has started posting solid results on MTGO. Developed by a group of friends, the main creator is @susurrus_mtg and a notable contributor/pilot is @mis4tune. It is one of the most complex, powerful and rewarding decks to pilot in Modern. I'll start this thread in hopes that they take it over, but for now they are primarily streaming the deck on Twitch with the aforementioned handles.
The first question everyone asks is "why not play lantern?" The deck has a lot of similar card choices as lantern control, but is fundamentally different. While both decks are interested in slowing the game down, lantern is interested in controlling the tops of both decks while UR prison is interested in proactively cutting off the lines your opponent has to escape the lock. On an emotional level, if you don't enjoy playing against a person having an utterly bad time playing magic but still want to play a prison deck - this is the best option. Since your opponent is allowed to see all of the cards in their deck yet they are aware that their time is running out: it makes them alert and involved - often playing some of the most fun and challenging magic they will ever play.
Second question "BUT THIS DECK FORGOT WIN CONDITIONS LOL LOL LOL!"
cool.
not a question.
Hopefully you are reading this because you thought "... but this deck is winning, and I don't understand how - let me do some research to see if there's something I'm not seeing before making an utterly useless comment out loud to real humans." - if this is you, bravo. Welcome to the Nebuchadnezzar.
While being an incredibly powerful engine in setting up complete locks with his -x ability, his ultimate wins quite a few games as well. Though you are usually behind a bridge, if you have a bottled cloister in play you can have many cards in your hand during your turn allowing an unexpected army of 5/5s to attack your unsuspecting opponent.
By the time the game is won, your win con can be almost inconsequential. A totally locked out opponent getting rivulet/crucible takes about one minute to finish off.
Okay, not a card. But a very viable way to win a game. When an opponent sits and gets that slightly stupefied look on their face, offering to tell them your win condition in exchange for their concession usually gets the W in game one.
Can't beat that one card? Make it auto-countered! This card will cause you to think the most, because you have to balance the value of locking your opponent out of certain cards vs creating dead draws for you in the long game. Very powerful, use carefully.
A magical card. Empty your hand for bridge / draw extra cards during your turn. Incredible when the game is about to get slammed shut in your favor and can be whirred in on turn 3-4 to empty your hand under a bridge in an otherwise hopeless situation against a hyper aggressive deck.
This thing I love the most about the deck is the amount of access you have to your entire deck. One of your tutors can create a chain to get to essentially any card in your deck.
The non-secret glue of the deck. Incredible flexibility. Gets you any artifact in your deck at instant speed, some of which can be devastating for an unsuspecting foe.
With the deck you will enjoy a win in about 90% of your game ones. G2 you have to get emotionally prepared for all hell to break loose. There are a lot of very powerful cards that like to rain on an artifact parade. Expect your opponent to have a handful of ancient grudges - then stay calm, and you can win.
the innovator. answers a lot of questions during his matches and casually drops knowledge on some smaller interactions that are cool (like playing an engineered explosives for zero with a blue mana with a Thalia to make it enter with one sunburst counter. Brilliant stuff.)
Last but not least, Jody Keith was the first notable player to stream the deck/take it to an SCG event. There are a lot of great videos in his stream archives.
///////////// SUMMARY //////////////
Overall the deck is complex and rewarding to play. I hope to start this thread for the deck's creator to take over, and to start some dialogue with people who are curious about the deck, and for the small number of people playing it so we can keep each other informed as the deck changes to answer a shifting meta. Enjoy!
@Old_bag_o_bones I ran the deck for about a month, it won a Modern challenge a few months ago. It's a prison deck that relies on cutting off extremely fast wins and combo wins with its one drops, discard, relic, needle - then locks the game out with bridge and a walker.
Like many prison decks it seems like it's doing absolutely nothing most of the time, but you still come home with wins. The matchups usually devolve into a topdeck wars, which you're better set up to win via relic redraws, tez and search for Azcanta. I'd be interested to see what it does in this meta, but I think the RU prison deck is pretty much a masterpiece right now, so I would advise trying that out.
As for wincons, the opponent getting hopeless/restless and conceding is not uncommon - against good players they will make you grind it out, which is taxing.
The walkers deck the win cons are little tezzeret ultimate or big tez ultimate with a lilly ultimate on yourself to sacrifice your 5/5 bridges- surprisingly common. Walking ballista also wins a lot of games. You can draw, attack for one, pump it twice or thrice and ping them next turn to do it all over again.
The UR prison deck wins with ipnu rivulet/crucible and big tezzeret ultimate - sometimes ghirapur aether grid.
Grindy.
Both decks are extremely difficult to pilot, the planeswalkers deck is a little easier because as is well documented, sometimes lilly on three on the play just wins.
I'm interested in the card reshape. Seems like a worse whir but better than doing something crazy like playing a fabricate. I'm especially interested for the UR prison deck because the games you lose are the ones where you can't produce a search card. It's possible that it's far worse than just running a big tezzeret, because you don't have to sac an artifact and then he can just sit on the board grabbing you welding jars/baubles.
@the_nobodys It's important to note that modern will never be solved. If it's solved wizards will ban cards to unsolve it. Decks just float in and out of viability based on the meta and perceived meta. That's what I mean when I say UR prison is the best deck for a skilled pilot right now. Unfortunately all the streamers have continued to blow it up this week, and even on the last few streams fracturing gust and shattering spree/shatterstorm have started drifting into sideboards. That's bad news, but I think there's still a window to do good work with the deck.
The deck is favorable game one against most decks in the meta and g2 only really has a hard time against shattering spree which is a one or two of in SBs. That puts it int he lead for me. Maybe it's not the best deck for you @the_nobodys - that's cool. I would say the deck is very sub optimal in most player's hands, which is a good thing for making sure it doesn't become commonplace and push up shatterstorms.
@Catherine_Cook It's not a noobish question, it's a good one - the answer is not obvious. When the list got posted on here I knew it must have a wincon because it won five times (ha), and the decklist looked so random and different I felt there was a great craftsmen behind it - so I proxied the 75 and had my buddies come over with a gauntlet of decks to test against.
Man, the deck is so sweet in such a subtle way.
The first thing the deck has going for it is nobody knows how to play against it, and they make a lot of boneheaded moves in a blind panic that they are playing lantern. If the deck keeps doing well I don't think this will last long, but it's a thing for now.
As for the deck itself, it's designed to collapse your hand as quickly as possible while guaranteeing a board state that gives access to the various pieces you have that lock out your opponent's core strategy, secondary strategy, and then finally to overwhelm their answers to your locks with redundant protection, recursion and mana constriction.
Hearing that a deck's got two wincons makes people groan sometimes because they imagine these go-to-time-every-round scenarios. This deck doesn't do that at all. Because it is trying to restrict your opponent's options, generally after the first four turns you're dead or your opponent is stuck with no releavnt actions, which makes for a game that feels like its playing in fast forward. You can usually ruvulet your opponent in about 2 minutes, and getting the rivulet when it's time is easy with some combination of [exp map/tolaria west/crucible/academy ruins/inventors' fair]. Tezzeret's ultimate can attack through bridge with the help of bottled cloister getting your hand up to 5 during your turn. These instances may sound like corner cases, but the deck is so resilient that games play out amazingly consistently, and it's hard for your opponent to have enough interaction to keep you from getting whatever piece of the deck you need.
As with any prison or denial strategy it requires mental stamina and for you to have a deep knowledge of decklists, sometimes down to specific numbers of cards in a list. For example, I was getting crushed down by a fast start of hollow one, but I had stabilized behind a bridge and welding jar, instead of doing the obvious play of getting a sun droplet down to maintain my life total, I went after his stomping ground with a field of ruin, because I know there is only one green source in the deck to flashback grudge. He'd had the grudge in his hand and would have won when he untapped.
My biggest gripe with modern is that I want to interact, and I want to be able to have an interesting and unique boardstate, I like building a battlecruisers. This deck gives me that feeling in Modern, which hasn't been possible for some time.
All that being said, I love the deck, but it's not tier 1 yet. It's pretty heavily laden to try to keep up with tron, but after damping sphere comes out it will open up a few spots in the list which will make it more viable against the general field while not being an absolute dog to tron.
Yeah, this card is great for us. People are saying it's worse than blood moon, but we can't play blood moon. I think it's existence will push tron back down to ladder. People are saying that its fixing will help tron get the colored mana they need for nature's claim. I have never seen tron not get the colored mana it needs, and there's no such thing as a good sb hate card that doesn't get trumped by their anti-hate card. You play cards for the possibility of the opponent not answering, or making them stumble long enough to get a real advantage. As a lover of artifacts and tezzeret, I can sadly recall of many many (many) games that stony silence ended where I didn't see my 2-3 copies of enchantment removal.
I think I'll start off playing a few for tron/valakut - but I'm interested in seeing if amulet of safekeeping can help the valakut matchup with a whir for it in response to a scapeshift/titan.
Also great call on
Uba Mask
I've loved that card for a long time, and I think it could really shut down control decks in a way that we desperately need. It also prevents a player from loading up on a bunch of pieces they need to dismantle our board-state and pouncing at the worst possible second.
I went and bought a Declaration of Naught right away, and I think I'm gonna sleeve up a few counterspells. Probably a negate and metallic rebuke.
I have been underwhelmed with defense grid, anyone else feeling that? Maybe I'm just not using it correctly, but I whirred for it against my cryptic opponent and the game just went to the point that he had enough lands to do whatever he wanted. Right now I have shaved a jar main for an aether grid from the side... for me it's just always good. I also took out the defense grid and in their places I'm playing a possessed portal and for the other slot I might try a jester's cap but I feel some metallic rebukes might be better for my blue heavy meta.
The game has three distinct phases, getting to a win con is your last priority. Phase one is getting the right killswitch down (bridge or withcbane orb depending on opponent) then phase two is protecting your killswitch (jars/spellskites/paddeem) and cutting off your opponents' alternate wincons like planeswalker ults, walking ballistas, hazorets etc phase three if they haven't been smart and scooped yet is to offer to tell them what the win con is for concession, if they don't concede you can usually just play draw go until you find your wincon which is easy with baubles and shuffle effects and additional draws with bottled cloister.
When in doubt watch Susurrus play a bunch of matches, you'll start to figure out the deck's tempo.
Good luck!
Let me try to paraphrase for you:
"Fact based input helps a community grow and learn from each other. Opinion based input in an anonymous setting is relatively useless."
This is one of the basic tenets of rhetoric, but more important a basic tenet of being a human is don't be condescending. Let's play nice folks.
The Deck
1 Academy Ruins
1 Inventors' Fair
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Tectonic Edge
4 Tolaria West
1 Steam Vents
5 Island
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta
1 Ipnu Rivulet
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
Instants:
4 Whir of Invention
Artifacts:
4 Mox Opal
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Engineered Explosives
4 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Witchbane Orb
1 Bottled Cloister
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Expedition Map
3 Welding Jar
The first question everyone asks is "why not play lantern?" The deck has a lot of similar card choices as lantern control, but is fundamentally different. While both decks are interested in slowing the game down, lantern is interested in controlling the tops of both decks while UR prison is interested in proactively cutting off the lines your opponent has to escape the lock. On an emotional level, if you don't enjoy playing against a person having an utterly bad time playing magic but still want to play a prison deck - this is the best option. Since your opponent is allowed to see all of the cards in their deck yet they are aware that their time is running out: it makes them alert and involved - often playing some of the most fun and challenging magic they will ever play.
Second question "BUT THIS DECK FORGOT WIN CONDITIONS LOL LOL LOL!"
cool.
not a question.
Hopefully you are reading this because you thought "... but this deck is winning, and I don't understand how - let me do some research to see if there's something I'm not seeing before making an utterly useless comment out loud to real humans." - if this is you, bravo. Welcome to the Nebuchadnezzar.
/////////// THE WIN CONS ////////////
Tezzeret the Seeker
While being an incredibly powerful engine in setting up complete locks with his -x ability, his ultimate wins quite a few games as well. Though you are usually behind a bridge, if you have a bottled cloister in play you can have many cards in your hand during your turn allowing an unexpected army of 5/5s to attack your unsuspecting opponent.
Ipnu Rivulet
By the time the game is won, your win con can be almost inconsequential. A totally locked out opponent getting rivulet/crucible takes about one minute to finish off.
Ghirapur Aether Grid
Post sideboard vs. creaures and stony silence. Unexpected, very powerful on a board with 8 artifacts sitting on it.
Pyrite Spellbomb
A classic. Recur with academy ruins for a one sided pyrostatic pillar.
Concession
Okay, not a card. But a very viable way to win a game. When an opponent sits and gets that slightly stupefied look on their face, offering to tell them your win condition in exchange for their concession usually gets the W in game one.
//////////// THE LOCK PIECES //////////////
Ensnaring Bridge
Drop it and empty your hand. Simple.
Chalice of the Void
Can't beat that one card? Make it auto-countered! This card will cause you to think the most, because you have to balance the value of locking your opponent out of certain cards vs creating dead draws for you in the long game. Very powerful, use carefully.
Bottled Cloister
A magical card. Empty your hand for bridge / draw extra cards during your turn. Incredible when the game is about to get slammed shut in your favor and can be whirred in on turn 3-4 to empty your hand under a bridge in an otherwise hopeless situation against a hyper aggressive deck.
Crucible of Worlds
Create a ton of value with recursion of Inventors' Fair, keep your opponent seriously throttled by recurring tectonic edge and ghost quarter
//////////////// THE TUTORS //////////////////
This thing I love the most about the deck is the amount of access you have to your entire deck. One of your tutors can create a chain to get to essentially any card in your deck.
Expedition Map
the OG (original gangster) Fixes your colors, or gets you any of your lands that start generating card advantage
Tolaria West
The secret glue of the deck. Can get you any land or zero cmc spell - of which we are primarily comprised.
Whir of Invention
The non-secret glue of the deck. Incredible flexibility. Gets you any artifact in your deck at instant speed, some of which can be devastating for an unsuspecting foe.
///////////// SIDEBOARD ///////////////
1 Search for Azcanta
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
2 Ghirapur Aether Grid
1 Welding Jar
1 Torpor Orb
1 Dampening Sphere
4 Spellskite
1 Defense Grid
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
With the deck you will enjoy a win in about 90% of your game ones. G2 you have to get emotionally prepared for all hell to break loose. There are a lot of very powerful cards that like to rain on an artifact parade. Expect your opponent to have a handful of ancient grudges - then stay calm, and you can win.
lets go over the pieces.
spellskite
welding jar
ghirapur aether grid
Padeem, Consul of Innovation
For when hell breaks loose. Basically ancient grudge/stony silence are the go tos, so these are the contingency.
Search for Azcanta
A great card that's nearly good enough for maindeck. Good vs opposing control/prison/combo players
Tezzeret the Seeker
For control and other slower matchups, good to up the win con count vs stony silence/rest in peace decks.
Torpor Orb
Humans/Titanshift/Snapcasters/Reclamation Sages
Defense Grid
Good against blue decks
Sorcerous Spyglass
Sometimes you need a lot of needles. Planeswalkers/Pridemage/Devoted Druid/Walking Ballista/Fetch Lands/Oblivion Stone
//////////// WATCH SOME VIDS YA DUNGUS ///////////
www.twitch.tv/susurrus_mtg
the innovator. answers a lot of questions during his matches and casually drops knowledge on some smaller interactions that are cool (like playing an engineered explosives for zero with a blue mana with a Thalia to make it enter with one sunburst counter. Brilliant stuff.)
www.twitch.tv/mis4tune
https://www.youtube.com/user/Jeffhoogland
Plays the deck a lot, is forced to answer the same stupid questions about the deck over and over again. Is fun grumpy.
https://www.twitch.tv/nolagold
Last but not least, Jody Keith was the first notable player to stream the deck/take it to an SCG event. There are a lot of great videos in his stream archives.
///////////// SUMMARY //////////////
Overall the deck is complex and rewarding to play. I hope to start this thread for the deck's creator to take over, and to start some dialogue with people who are curious about the deck, and for the small number of people playing it so we can keep each other informed as the deck changes to answer a shifting meta. Enjoy!
Like many prison decks it seems like it's doing absolutely nothing most of the time, but you still come home with wins. The matchups usually devolve into a topdeck wars, which you're better set up to win via relic redraws, tez and search for Azcanta. I'd be interested to see what it does in this meta, but I think the RU prison deck is pretty much a masterpiece right now, so I would advise trying that out.
As for wincons, the opponent getting hopeless/restless and conceding is not uncommon - against good players they will make you grind it out, which is taxing.
The walkers deck the win cons are little tezzeret ultimate or big tez ultimate with a lilly ultimate on yourself to sacrifice your 5/5 bridges- surprisingly common. Walking ballista also wins a lot of games. You can draw, attack for one, pump it twice or thrice and ping them next turn to do it all over again.
The UR prison deck wins with ipnu rivulet/crucible and big tezzeret ultimate - sometimes ghirapur aether grid.
Grindy.
Both decks are extremely difficult to pilot, the planeswalkers deck is a little easier because as is well documented, sometimes lilly on three on the play just wins.
Have you guys tested Reshape before?
Man, the deck is so sweet in such a subtle way.
The first thing the deck has going for it is nobody knows how to play against it, and they make a lot of boneheaded moves in a blind panic that they are playing lantern. If the deck keeps doing well I don't think this will last long, but it's a thing for now.
As for the deck itself, it's designed to collapse your hand as quickly as possible while guaranteeing a board state that gives access to the various pieces you have that lock out your opponent's core strategy, secondary strategy, and then finally to overwhelm their answers to your locks with redundant protection, recursion and mana constriction.
Hearing that a deck's got two wincons makes people groan sometimes because they imagine these go-to-time-every-round scenarios. This deck doesn't do that at all. Because it is trying to restrict your opponent's options, generally after the first four turns you're dead or your opponent is stuck with no releavnt actions, which makes for a game that feels like its playing in fast forward. You can usually ruvulet your opponent in about 2 minutes, and getting the rivulet when it's time is easy with some combination of [exp map/tolaria west/crucible/academy ruins/inventors' fair]. Tezzeret's ultimate can attack through bridge with the help of bottled cloister getting your hand up to 5 during your turn. These instances may sound like corner cases, but the deck is so resilient that games play out amazingly consistently, and it's hard for your opponent to have enough interaction to keep you from getting whatever piece of the deck you need.
As with any prison or denial strategy it requires mental stamina and for you to have a deep knowledge of decklists, sometimes down to specific numbers of cards in a list. For example, I was getting crushed down by a fast start of hollow one, but I had stabilized behind a bridge and welding jar, instead of doing the obvious play of getting a sun droplet down to maintain my life total, I went after his stomping ground with a field of ruin, because I know there is only one green source in the deck to flashback grudge. He'd had the grudge in his hand and would have won when he untapped.
My biggest gripe with modern is that I want to interact, and I want to be able to have an interesting and unique boardstate, I like building a battlecruisers. This deck gives me that feeling in Modern, which hasn't been possible for some time.
All that being said, I love the deck, but it's not tier 1 yet. It's pretty heavily laden to try to keep up with tron, but after damping sphere comes out it will open up a few spots in the list which will make it more viable against the general field while not being an absolute dog to tron.