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  • posted a message on [Primer] Gx Tron
    If anything would be cut for oath of nissa it would be relic of progenitus. I currently run 2 relics main and am considering testing oath of nissa in their place. They are definitely worse than stirrings but the added consistency might be worth it. Also I don't think I have the guts to cut emrakul for newlamog. Emrakul is my ultimate game plan against twin in games 2 and 3. Turtle up with nature's claim and rending volley and wait until I hit 15 mana. Removing her makes a hard matchup even more difficult IMO. It might be worth it though if you don't expect a lot of twin/control decks.
    Posted in: Big Mana
  • posted a message on [Primer] Assault Loam
    Quote from Blitkun »
    @Blarge:

    Very interesting list - reminds me of some tests I did last year, adding Assault-Loam-Retrace package in a traditional Jund shell. This idea surely seems a lot better now, with Tasigur, Vortex and whatnot. Good report on your part - congratulations for the performance!

    Have you considered trimming the Countryside Crushers? I play a straight RG list and have been testing 2 or 3 at a time, and even though they steal games sometimes, in certain contexts they are far too underwhelming. The removal package looks amazing there, and surely adds a ton of consistency to the deck.

    About some card choices, what are your thoughts on maindecking Raven's Crime and a couple of Young Pyromancers for value? And what of Smallpox? Hooting Mandrills?
    Your manabase looks solid - back when I was testing (again, with Assault) I had a ton of trouble with it, but seems that you managed to find a good point for the red mana generation.


    Crusher has been hit or miss for me as well but I think it's a necessary evil in the deck. It reloads the GY after an early tasigur/angler and keeps you drawing gas if you're looking for loam/removal. Most of the time my opponents kill it immediately or they lose to it. If I had tarmogoyf i'd test it in crusher's spot but I'm not dropping that kind of money.

    I was maindecking raven's crime until recently. I switched them out for the two Kolaghan's Command. I just feel like the value of the card fluctuates between matchups too much to make it maindeckable in my build plus I wanted a way to get back milled creatures. It's terrible against aggro decks and griselshoal but great against twin and grixis control so I put it in the SB. I've been very happy with the switch to Kommand. I've never really thought about young pyromancer but it seems better in a deck that plays seismic assualt since you can use your mana on other things but molten vortex locks up my mana once I get it going. I think the delve creatures and crusher are better alternate win cons.

    Hooting Mandrills IMO is just a worse version of tasigur/angler especially since I have kessig wolf run to push damage through. A turn 2 mandrills doesn't matchup well against a turn 2 tasigur vs. grixis or a tarmogoyf vs. jund. If I was playing straight r/g I'd play it though.

    This decklist can't really support smallpox. I rarely want BB until turn 4-5 and the deck is super mana hungry with molten vortex instead of seismic assault. If I were to play a smallpox deck I'd play Raphael Levy's Loam Pox deck (which I did for a little while a few months ago).
    Posted in: Midrange
  • posted a message on [Primer] Assault Loam
    Quote from Fiddlyr »
    Nice report. Did you find tension between your Delve guys exiling cards you wanted in the Yard? (lands and/or Loams). I had occasional awkward moments playing Delve guys, but I was trying to power them out asap; are the Delve guys intended to be played later in the game for you?

    I've had a lot of luck playing Commune with the Gods to find my Vortex/Loams, though I am playing more creatures. You really only have 12 hits for it, 16 if you count the Loams. If you tick up the creature count for any reason you might consider Commune.


    I didn't have too much trouble using the delve creatures. I occasionally have to exile down to 1 or 2 lands left for loam instead of 3 but it's worth the trade off of a turn 2 tasigur. Turn 2 anglers for 1 mana are even possible if you fetchland into looting discarding loam then on turn 2 dredge loam and fetchland again.
    Posted in: Midrange
  • posted a message on [Primer] Assault Loam
    Just wanted to do a quick PPTQ report. Went 4-2 with a brew that's a bit different than some of the stuff posted here lately. Ended up 10th out of 38. I did not play seismic assault relying on Molten vortex only.

    Link to deck @ TappedOut.net

    RD 1 Vs. Grixis Twin (WIN)
    Game 1 I kill a couple of his exarchs and he can't find a Twin. I kill him with a really big crusher. Game 2 I make him discard about 5 cards with Raven's Crime and take away them game.

    RD 2 Vs. Grixis Delver (WIN)
    Game 1 and 2 kind of blend together but I used molten vortex/loam to kill a pile of delver's, tasigurs, and gurmag anlers.

    RD 3 Vs. Jund (WIN)
    Game 1 he floods out and I kill all his creatures. Game 2 I stick a turn 1 vortex that kills his turn 2 bob and he never hits a third land drop until it's too late.

    RD 4 Vs. Grixis Delver (LOSS)
    Game 1 I make a greedy faithless looting play and discard a land that I should have used to kill a delver. I end up having to use my third land drop to kill a flipped delver after a bolt gets countered. I never make my third land drop. Game 2 I get crushed underneath an angler after I managed to kill the first one.

    Rd 5 Vs. Infect (LOSS)
    This was a really frustrating loss as during Game 3 I have a turn 1 vortex on the play along with a bolt and some other removal. I kill a bunch of his creatures including a skite and wild defiance and eventually we draw go for a bit without me able to find a loam. Eventually he finds a second spellskite and wild defiance and he kills me the old fashioned way.

    Rd 6 Vs. Abzan Company (WIN)
    After round 5 the top 8 was locked in so all we weren't really playing for much. I get an early vortex/loam both games and eventually kill all his creatures will beating in with tasigur and crusher. He never plays a company either game.

    Overall I was very pleased with the deck and my meta-game assessment. I expected a lot of creature decks and grixis decks and was not disappointed. Only a handful of combo decks showed up including 3 griselshoal (2 of which made top 8). I think all the decks I played against were good matchups and my losses were do to misplays and not being able to find life from the loam. I believe magmatic insight and molten vortex have made this style of deck consistent enough to enter tier 2 with the right deck list. Only changes I would make at this point would be to cut a copperline gorge for a second raging ravine and I'm still not sure if maelstrom pulse is needed although it is the only answer the deck has to Leyline of the void


    Posted in: Midrange
  • posted a message on GWx Vizier Company
    I've been reading that people believe jund is a good matchup but I've found it to be entirely the opposite. I've been playtesting with my friend and I've won maybe %25 of the games pre-board. Between Lavamancer, scooze, bolt, Olivia and hand disruption I never seem to get off the ground. I generally can manage to kill either 1 lavamancer or scooze and a second one lands that I can't deal with and an olivia eventually seals the game. Can someone give me tips on how to navigate the matchup? I'm running a stock list with spike/angel.
    Posted in: Combo
  • posted a message on [Primer] Gx Tron
    Just picked up this deck last month and have been having a lot of fun playing it after switching from mono blue tron. Thought I'd recap a small (8 man) weekly LGS modern event from last night where I played and beat twin 3 times in a row.

    1st Twin player - Game 1: I win the die roll land a Karn on turn 3 and he has no response so I exile one of his lands. He has no bolt for the Karn and scoops shortly afterword. Game 2: He can't find a fourth land and I eventually land another Karn.

    2nd Twin player - Game 1: I end up getting stuck with three pyroclasms in my hand with no red sources and get comboed on turn 6 instead of 4 only because he needed a second red source. Game 2: I can't really remember what happened game 2 besides a slaughter games for his twins and I eventually landed emrakul. Game 3: This game goes super long and I eventually win by slaughter gaming again while beating down with wurmcoils while all my opponent has is a sower of temptation stealing my spellskite and a dispel in hand.

    3rd Twin player: Game 1: He appeared to have a bad hand and conceded after I landed an Ugin on turn 5 with mana leak protection. Game 2: The game goes relatively long but I cannot assemble tron and eventually die to a turn one lavamancer that dealt me about 12 damage and a deciever exarch. game 3: I slaughter games him on turn 4 and he rage concedes.

    Overall, I believe the twin players all sideboarded wrong and it worked to my benefit. They all sided out bolts and went full on on the combo which I believe is a mistake considering the amount of interaction we have available post board. Also slaughter games was much better than I anticipated even though I had read in this thread that it is too slow for the matchup.

    In the top four I played obliterator rock and handily beat him game one. Game two: I ended up with only one forest in play on turn 5 after getting fulminatored twice and tec edged once. I still manged to win that game after my opponet was stuck on two lands for a couple to turns after using his tec edge and I reassembled tron in three turns, got an ugin out that killed his bob (which he pulsed the next turn) followed by a karn which exiled one of his lands. He conceded after he drew for the turn and didn't find a land. Last round is against the twin player I beat round 3 and we split without playing.
    Posted in: Big Mana
  • posted a message on [[Competitive]] (Duel Commander) Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
    The best card against geist is probably volcanic fallout. There's not much they can do about it unless geist is suited up. A good geist player will always play around edicts and wraths. My list is very creature light (not a survial of the fittest build probably only shares half the cards in the lists you guys posted) and I have a very hard time against geist (easily my worst matchup by far) but I just added in volcanic fallout so hopefully that will help a little bit. If you can kill geist twice you have a very good shot at winning.
    Posted in: 1 vs 1 Commander
  • posted a message on [[Competitive]] (Duel Commander) Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
    Quote from Mordecai »
    Hi

    I like your list.

    This is a big ask but could you do a card by card analysis.

    At the moment I'm wondering why you don't have rakdos signet.

    Also are there interactions im missing with the following cards:

    mistcutter hydra
    phyrexian revoker
    skin render
    thrun
    zealous conscripts
    jund charm

    Some seem a bit underpowered.

    Thanks.


    While I don't play a survival version of Prossh I can tell you that all of the creatures you listed are part of the survival package. Mistcutter and thrun vs. blue control, skin render vs. aggro and revoker for any pesky equipment or planeswalkers. Not %100 sure about the zealous conscripts as I didn't see a Kiki-Jiki in the list but it's a potential blowout vs. certain decks. Jund charm IMO is a great utility spell in a meta with a lot of aggro and graveyard decks which is why I assume it's in the list. If your meta is mostly control decks I wouldn't run it.
    Posted in: 1 vs 1 Commander
  • posted a message on [[Competitive]] (Duel Commander) Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
    It'll be hard to evaluate Treasonous Ogre for you without seeing your list as there's several variants of Prossh. In a vacuum though I don't really care for him. He costs too much mana and you can't really activate him more than 3-4 times against most decks. If I want a mana ramping 4 drop creature I'd much rather play Solemn Simulacrum or Oracle of Mul-Daya. If he had some sort of evasion I'd probably test him out though.

    On another note what are people's opinions on the new Garruk? I used to run Karn Liberated in my list and I think he's better than Karn.
    Posted in: 1 vs 1 Commander
  • posted a message on [[Duel Commander]] Ways to popularize Duel Commander in the USA
    If people really think deck techs/ recorded matches will help Hipster Whale and I could put something together (we're roomates). We have the cards to build and do deck techs/ vs. matches for: Geist, Prossh, Grislebrand, Jenara, Skitherix, Skullbriar, Gaddock Teeg, Karador, Damia, Nin, and Thalia (plus a few other's probably). Another person in our regular playgroup can build oloro conrol, GAIIV, Clique, Wydwen, and Thraximundar so we could have most of the top decks available if there's interest.
    Posted in: 1 vs 1 Commander
  • posted a message on [[Competitive]] (Duel Commander) Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
    After do some more thinking about the deck I ended up swapping lily and chandra back for karn and sorin and I swapped skeletal scrying, garruk relentless, and curse of predation for yavimaya elder, cultivate, and kodama's reach. I want to try out kodama and cultivate to see if the work out for me and yavimaya just seems like a better skeletal scrying.
    Posted in: 1 vs 1 Commander
  • posted a message on [[Competitive]] (Duel Commander) Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
    The curse of predation is actually a new addition for me. I wasn't running it before but after playing with the deck for a while I was found that I wanted another coat of arms like effect as I was having trouble finding one by turn 6. I haven't actually got to play it yet since it's a recent addition but shared animosity might be a better choice. Beastmaster has been great for me though. Even if a kobold manages to get killed It usually just triggers the next turn and I kill them anyways plus if forces them to use a removal spell on a token. Goblin bombardment has been okay for me. It's been very useful at times and has never been outright terrible. The meta I'm playing is fairly control heavy so I feel like I can afford to run underworld connections and skeletal scrying. If I knew I was going to be playing a lot more aggro decks I'd probably cut them for black sun's zenith and some other anti aggro card (edict maybe?).

    I found myself running out of cards with not a whole lot to do when I was first testing the deck and that's how both chandra and liliy dark realms got put in. I see them as 4 mana phyrexian arena's that don't cost you life and also have relevant second abilities. Chandra can stop a flying blocker when you want to go for the prossh kill and lilly can enable a prossh kill if you have urborg out or kill a creature. I was running karn liberated and sorin markov instead of them but It felt like both of them cost too much and came down too late and didn't impact the board enough. [card]Rakdos's return[/card has been treated me really well, I usually cast it on turn 4 for 3 cards.

    Sarkhan has been great. He works extremely well with any coat of arms effect and generally spooks my opponents as they have to deal with him or risk being one shot and his other two abilities are relevant. It feels great to drop him with prossh out. The land base is the way it is b/c I haven't gotten all my fetches and duals. When I get all those the only tap lands I plan to have are the three scry lands and lavaclaw reaches.

    So do you only use Xenagos and Coat of Arms as you "one shot" win with prossh? I'm very curious to see your list so I can compare and see if I want to make changes. Also, what turn are you generally looking to kill with prossh in your list? I'm looking to kill between turns 5-7 while from what you've been saying about your deck you might be a looking to kill a turn or two later.
    Posted in: 1 vs 1 Commander
  • posted a message on [[Competitive]] (Duel Commander) Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
    So I finally put a Prossh deck together and took it to my first tourny on Sat. It's a bit of a different list than when others have posted. It's a planeswalker midrange/controllish deck. The idea is to ramp on turn 2 play a 4 mana walker on turn 3, do what you need to prepare for prossh on turn 4 and then drop prossh on turn 5. The tournament I went to unfortunately was very small due to a couple factors (only 7 people) and I got a bye for 1 one the three rounds. I played against tempo geist and aggro/combo marath. The geist matchup was very close for games 2 and 3. On game three I got him down to one life but he was able to pull out the win on his last turn before we would have drawn. He was a much more experienced player than me and I'm still learning the deck so I probably could have pulled out the win if I had more experience. The marath games weren't close I just disrupted him by using discard and kill spells on his mana dorks until I dropped Prossh. We ended up playing about ~6 games for fun and I think he only won one of them.

    During playtesting by far the most difficult deck for me to play against was reanimator oloro. We played about 8 games and not a single one of them was close. Most of the time the game was soundly in his favor by turn 5. Anyways, I'd like to get some feedback on what you guys think about the deck and some tips on how you would play against certain archetypes. (NOTE: the mana base is a work in progress and I'm still in the process of gettting a three visits

    Support Creatures

    Ramp

    disruption

    card draw

    kill spells

    planeswalkers

    prossh cards

    lands

    5 snow-covered swamp
    3 snow-covered forest
    2 snow-covered mountain
    Posted in: 1 vs 1 Commander
  • posted a message on [[Competitive]] (Duel Commander) Prossh, Skyraider of Kher
    Quote from Feverous
    Hey, thanks for posting!

    I definitely think a midrange list can work with this deck, that's what I play after all with the food chain as an enabler/combo piece kind of on the side. Your list looked pretty good, although I did see a couple things I think you could look at:

    Domri Rade: I love this card, it's absurdly powerful and all that, but with the amount of removal R/B/G can run I don't think it's - ability is all that viable, and if you're only running 27 creatures I see his + ability whiffing a ton. I won't run him in a list with less than 35 creatures, and even that I feel is stretching it.

    Olivia Voldaren: Another card I tested that I found just altogether too slow. This is really good in a controlly/midrange list, your list seems more aggro/midrange

    Ogre Battledriver: This card basically required swings all the time as soon as anything dropped to make it useful, it only triggered oncem and it's a 4 drop. If it was a 3 drop enchantment I would probably run it, but I found it severely lacking when I played it.

    Sword of Fire and Ice: This is just unecessary IMO. The card draw you can get off this deck is absurd, and a 5 mana investment for 1 card and 2 damage just isn't worth it when you can drop a Skullmulcher and have an 8/8 and draw 6 cards.

    Terminate: Too 1 for 1, if you're going a straight 1 for 1 I think Sudden Death is infinitely superior, especially in the blue matchups.

    Damnation: Toxic Deluge is strictly better imo, if you own one.

    Suggested

    Krosan Grip: Answers everything. Just straight awesome, I can't think of a deck with G that doesn't run this.

    Wood Elves: I originally thought this too slow, but after playing it I've really come to value it, especially since it puts the land into play untapped, and specifies forest allowing you to get a shock/dual

    Sarkhan Vol: This is what I would put in that Battledrivers spot. I just think it's better, it's every turn if you want it, the steal effect is actually really strong, and his ultimate usually ends games, not a lot of decks are playing straight unconditional wrath effects now.

    Disciple of Bolas: Blue is the dominant color a lot of the time in this format and you need ways to beat it. Drowning it in your card advantage is the best way that I've found, and this guy does that pretty well. Drop prossh, next turn swing and sac kobolds for 11 damage, drop disciple and gain 11 life and draw 11 cards. It's pretty dumb lol.

    Just my thoughts, but I think the list you have as is is going to be pretty strong.


    Thanks for the feedback. I'll probably switch Olivia for disciple and Battledriver for Sarkhan. Yeah I wasn't sure about Domri since I didn't really know how many creatures would be enough to make him worthwhile. I'll swap him for wood elves. I'll probably still keep the sword of FaI though mostly b/c I just traded for it lol, but I'll swap it if I find something I really want to run instead.

    Also, what is your opinion on rakdos charm? I had it in my list for awhile but I kept cutting it for other stuff.
    Posted in: 1 vs 1 Commander
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