Warsail Marauder
1U
Creature - Human Pirate
Flying
Whenever Warsail Marauder attacks, target creature defending player controls loses all abilities and has a base power and toughness of 0/1 until end of turn.
I think expanding to some off tribal creatures is fine so long as they're very high impact creatures, and they don't need the Mana based changed to accommodate them. Spellskite seems fine to me, since it can slot in fairly easily and helps in a lot of situations. It's also fun to watch burn players struggle with how to deal with it.
Duelist is interesting but I'm not terribly sure about it. Would you put it in the main or side and what would you take out for it?
How are you using the phantasmals? Are they just being used as a wild card in effect? Such as just copying good stuff, such as mantis rider copies 5 & 6, or are you saving them for specific scenarios?
Also how often do you copy your stuff as opposed to your opponents?
I think either running disenchant or Natural state might have to be our answer to torpor orb. Potentially blood moon as well, but we'd either need to float the Mana or have a noble.
The problem is if people play Hushwing gryff or Tocatli honor guard since we have few non-etb ways of dealing with creatures. We also can't freeboot them.
So funny story about being killed by your own Bob. Had my modern fnm last night, and I did actually manage to die from my own Bob. The game was very atypical though. I ended up with a truly outrageous board state but was blocked due to being hit by cryptic command for six straight turns in a row. I had an 8/8 lieutenant at the end and Bob himself was a 6/5.
But anyways I wanted to discuss a different card. I know Daxos of Meletis is in the first post, but I wanted to restart the discussion on him. He seems pretty relevant to a lot of our needs:
*Extra cards
*Life gain to offset both Bob and horizons
*Gets under big creatures such as goyfs, eldrazi, rhinos, etc
*Removes opponents potential draws
*Can possibly net us removal/reach spells we lack
As well as the fact that we can utilize all of our lands to cast the exiled card. Even ziggurat can be used if it's a creature.
He does have some short comings though. He doesn't have any immediate impact the turn he comes down. Can still get chumped by Mana dorks and the like. He's also a three cost and might have trouble fitting in without taking another three drop out.
While Bob gets removed often, does he get picked over other threats that are also in play? In a vacuum our opponent would use their removal on whatever threat happens to be there. So the question is while Bob is a threat is he more threatening than our other pieces?
For example say you're playing abzan and you have one path in hand, a 2/3 goyf in play, and are at 7 life. Your opponent has a mantis rider, Bob, and no cards in hand. Which one do you path?
The Bob may draw a noble or a Lord to help accelerate the clock, but right now the mantis rider will kill you in 3 turns. Giving you only two more turns to draw an answer if you path Bob. Leaving Bob alone also doesn't guarantee that they will draw another threat before you can stabilize.
Another problem with Bob is that he dies to every type of removal in the format (with the caveat of color specific removal). He even dies to Liliana the last Hope's +1. Most of our other threats can potentially get past some form of removal. Champ, and lieu can out grow bolt and electrolyze, mantis can't be hit by push without revolt, mirrian crusader dodges a lot of things, meddling Mage and kitesail have proactive disruption. So vulnerability could also be a contributing factor to why he might not live to get his full usefulness.
One last point is that he's just plain slow. Yes you can flash him in at your opponents end step, but he still only gets you a single card per turn cycle max. Compared to the other examples that m_witte has provided that can potentially get more cards in a turn. I don't particularly like grim haruspex for the same reason I don't like xathrid necromancer, but they do share a similar advantage in that they can have big payoffs.
Mentor however is actually really interesting. I wasn't a big fan at first but while thinking about this post I've actually really taken a shine to the card, especially in these grindy matchups. In longer games you tend to end up with a decent amount of Mana lying around. Most of our top decks will be around 2-3 cost so being able to afford the draw tax shouldn't be too difficult. And as m_witte pointed out it plays very well with vials. It also makes them less of a dead draw. Since you can not only vial in to save Mana, but you can also get instant speed draw. The potential to chain multiple draws and/or drawing cards the turn it comes down, to me at least, makes this more appealing than Bob. The cost of mentor should also matter less, especially if we were already planning to slow roll Bob. I might actually try a few of these and see how it goes.
I still like shapers sanctuary, but I will concede that reworking the Mana base to get it in, is more trouble than it's worth.
Sorry, I wasn't particularly eloquent with how I described it. I ment to say that as long as we play a threat in a removal heavy match our opponent is going to attempt to remove it before we gain some sort of benefit from it. Now we have plenty of threats such as Bob, but there are others such as mayor, meddling Mage, and mantis rider. All of these cards are threats and our opponent is going to try to stop us from gaining an advantage by using his removal in (generally) a one for one trade. The thing about these threats is that while they are all threats they are different types of threats.
Bob brings the threat of card advantage, but as a creature in a removal heavy match up it's rare he will live to be able to generate his advantage as he has little protection. However there are other ways to get card advantage without being open to removal.
And the big piece I missed out of my original post was linking shapers sanctuary to Bob. They both are a threat in terms of card advantage. However shapers has the caveat of not being a creature and thus getting around our opponents removal. It also has the added benefit of making our opponents removal significantly worse. While it doesn't give our creatures hard protection, it itself has a bit of protection against our opponents removal, as enchantment hate is fairly rare right now. Especially in the matches with significant amounts of removal, such as GDS, BGx, and UWx control. Burn is another one however they generally run destructive revelry. It would be unlikely they would board that in against a creature based aggro deck.
Hopefully I made it a bit clearer. Although maybe I missed the original point I was going for as well. This is what happens when you try to post at work and you're trying to type it up over the course of a number of breaks.
The problem I have running Bob in those removal heavy match ups is that he generally just gets, well, removed. I know having a lightning rod for removal isn't necessarily the worst thing, but at the same time if we drew something other than Bob, that would be the target being removed instead. In either case our opponent is using their removal spell and we're losing a card without gaining any card advantage from it.
I like shapers sanctuary not because it protects are creatures, but because it makes our opponents spells less efficient. They go from trading one for one to essentially being minus one card while we effectively maintain parity. Thats a bit of an oversimplified explanation, since we lose a specific card. However on a pure card-to-card level it works.
The problem with shapers sanctuary is that it is significantly hard for us to cast than any human option. In order to reliably cast it turn one we need 14 green sources, and both Noble and reflecting pool won't work turn one. Beyond turn one it becomes easier but then it runs the risk of being disrupted. I think it's definitely worth looking into though.
M_witte, and headminerve, thanks for the links, and write up respectively. They definitely helped out quite a bit. Unfortunately I scrubbed out and went 2-2. I definitely felt like I had a good fighting chance in all of my matches though, and managed to go at least 1-2 in my two losses. My matches were abzan (1-2), bant eldrazi (2-1), eldrazi Tron (1-2), and GDS (2-0).
One problem I ran into though was what do you do when you freebooter someone and they have three kill spells? For example say you have freebooter and meddling Mage, and your opponent has push, path, and engineered explosives. Assuming it's turn two and your opponent isn't screwed on Mana, what do you take with kitesail and what do you name with mage, or is there just no way out?
Finally got the deck put together and I've got my first tournament with the deck tonight. Was wondering if anyone had a fairly comprehensive guide for what to name for meddling Mage depending on the match up. A hierarchical list would be quite helpful!
I know for storm naming, grapeshot game one is almost a free win. Almost since most are main boarding bolt now, but what about in other match ups where they have less of a clear win con? Match ups like GDS, burn, or uwr control. Also match ups where they might be able to get their threats out before mage, like affinity.
The one problem I see for this deck is for when people start sb against it and start using torpor orb and card like it such as Hushwing gryff and tocatli honor guard. Most of our cards rely upon ETBs, including a lot of our answer cards.
Warsail Marauder
1U
Creature - Human Pirate
Flying
Whenever Warsail Marauder attacks, target creature defending player controls loses all abilities and has a base power and toughness of 0/1 until end of turn.
2/1
Duelist is interesting but I'm not terribly sure about it. Would you put it in the main or side and what would you take out for it?
http://www.mattling.com/2017/11/modern-humans-sideboard-guide.html?m=1
Also how often do you copy your stuff as opposed to your opponents?
The problem is if people play Hushwing gryff or Tocatli honor guard since we have few non-etb ways of dealing with creatures. We also can't freeboot them.
But anyways I wanted to discuss a different card. I know Daxos of Meletis is in the first post, but I wanted to restart the discussion on him. He seems pretty relevant to a lot of our needs:
*Extra cards
*Life gain to offset both Bob and horizons
*Gets under big creatures such as goyfs, eldrazi, rhinos, etc
*Removes opponents potential draws
*Can possibly net us removal/reach spells we lack
As well as the fact that we can utilize all of our lands to cast the exiled card. Even ziggurat can be used if it's a creature.
He does have some short comings though. He doesn't have any immediate impact the turn he comes down. Can still get chumped by Mana dorks and the like. He's also a three cost and might have trouble fitting in without taking another three drop out.
For example say you're playing abzan and you have one path in hand, a 2/3 goyf in play, and are at 7 life. Your opponent has a mantis rider, Bob, and no cards in hand. Which one do you path?
The Bob may draw a noble or a Lord to help accelerate the clock, but right now the mantis rider will kill you in 3 turns. Giving you only two more turns to draw an answer if you path Bob. Leaving Bob alone also doesn't guarantee that they will draw another threat before you can stabilize.
Another problem with Bob is that he dies to every type of removal in the format (with the caveat of color specific removal). He even dies to Liliana the last Hope's +1. Most of our other threats can potentially get past some form of removal. Champ, and lieu can out grow bolt and electrolyze, mantis can't be hit by push without revolt, mirrian crusader dodges a lot of things, meddling Mage and kitesail have proactive disruption. So vulnerability could also be a contributing factor to why he might not live to get his full usefulness.
One last point is that he's just plain slow. Yes you can flash him in at your opponents end step, but he still only gets you a single card per turn cycle max. Compared to the other examples that m_witte has provided that can potentially get more cards in a turn. I don't particularly like grim haruspex for the same reason I don't like xathrid necromancer, but they do share a similar advantage in that they can have big payoffs.
Mentor however is actually really interesting. I wasn't a big fan at first but while thinking about this post I've actually really taken a shine to the card, especially in these grindy matchups. In longer games you tend to end up with a decent amount of Mana lying around. Most of our top decks will be around 2-3 cost so being able to afford the draw tax shouldn't be too difficult. And as m_witte pointed out it plays very well with vials. It also makes them less of a dead draw. Since you can not only vial in to save Mana, but you can also get instant speed draw. The potential to chain multiple draws and/or drawing cards the turn it comes down, to me at least, makes this more appealing than Bob. The cost of mentor should also matter less, especially if we were already planning to slow roll Bob. I might actually try a few of these and see how it goes.
I still like shapers sanctuary, but I will concede that reworking the Mana base to get it in, is more trouble than it's worth.
Also woo! For getting to tier 1!
Bob brings the threat of card advantage, but as a creature in a removal heavy match up it's rare he will live to be able to generate his advantage as he has little protection. However there are other ways to get card advantage without being open to removal.
And the big piece I missed out of my original post was linking shapers sanctuary to Bob. They both are a threat in terms of card advantage. However shapers has the caveat of not being a creature and thus getting around our opponents removal. It also has the added benefit of making our opponents removal significantly worse. While it doesn't give our creatures hard protection, it itself has a bit of protection against our opponents removal, as enchantment hate is fairly rare right now. Especially in the matches with significant amounts of removal, such as GDS, BGx, and UWx control. Burn is another one however they generally run destructive revelry. It would be unlikely they would board that in against a creature based aggro deck.
Hopefully I made it a bit clearer. Although maybe I missed the original point I was going for as well. This is what happens when you try to post at work and you're trying to type it up over the course of a number of breaks.
I like shapers sanctuary not because it protects are creatures, but because it makes our opponents spells less efficient. They go from trading one for one to essentially being minus one card while we effectively maintain parity. Thats a bit of an oversimplified explanation, since we lose a specific card. However on a pure card-to-card level it works.
The problem with shapers sanctuary is that it is significantly hard for us to cast than any human option. In order to reliably cast it turn one we need 14 green sources, and both Noble and reflecting pool won't work turn one. Beyond turn one it becomes easier but then it runs the risk of being disrupted. I think it's definitely worth looking into though.
One problem I ran into though was what do you do when you freebooter someone and they have three kill spells? For example say you have freebooter and meddling Mage, and your opponent has push, path, and engineered explosives. Assuming it's turn two and your opponent isn't screwed on Mana, what do you take with kitesail and what do you name with mage, or is there just no way out?
I know for storm naming, grapeshot game one is almost a free win. Almost since most are main boarding bolt now, but what about in other match ups where they have less of a clear win con? Match ups like GDS, burn, or uwr control. Also match ups where they might be able to get their threats out before mage, like affinity.