So I'm guessing cards that generate triggers during the Draw step aren't good includes? Ie., Howling Mine and variants?Quote from Stairc »As stated in the article, the auction step [replaces the draw step.
Well, the reason I asked is that if you don't combine the graveyards, then the dredge player gets to mill the single library solely into his own 'yard, meaning he is the only one who reaps any advantages from linear synergies of graveyard based effects like Threshold etc., etc.That sounds like a neat series of house-rules to make dredge cards more interesting in this format. It’s a lot of added rules to put in just to make one ability work, so for the official version I probably wouldn’t include it, but you should give it a try and let us know how it plays. You can do all sorts of cool things with house rules.
So basically you're saying tribes didn't fit well with your design goal of favoring highly diverse creature p/t totals, so as to allow a player on the ropes to find a blocker to "recover" with? I see what you're saying.Oddly, tribal often doesn’t work that well in our block because in MTG tribal tends to be designed to power up an army of a lot of little creatures. Goblin tribal is very hard to work in for that reason, though a block that was full of lots of tribes would probably have a lot of creatures about the same size and would likely work well. We’ve tried to work in a subtle amount of beast tribal, since beasts are a very diverse tribe with lots of sizes, but MTG doesn’t have many tribal cards that work perfectly for our existing auction block.
Agreed! Same for me. I have a knack for memorization and recall of cards and while many of my friends are in fact much better MtG players than me, few of them have my recall, and they all gave up on Mental Magic when it was clear that the playing field was ridiculously tilted in my favor. Still hoping someday I'll find someone else with thousands of cards rattling around in their brain from a misspent youth and can actually try out Mental Magic for real!Unfortunately, the skill gap in actually playing it between someone that’s prepped and someone that hasn’t is very punishing. Makes it difficult to find a good game, and actual gameplay often results in frustration (as because there’s always a way out, almost everything is an on-board trick you feel frustrated for not being able to remember). I’ve had a lot more fun preparing to play the format than actually playing it.
1. Try to put every Ensoul on a DS Citadel. This dodges both Anger AND Disperse (animated DS Citadel is not a "nonland" permanent thus cannot be targeted by Disperse).
2. Bring in Stubborn Denials and once you get an Ensoul active, try to use Stubborn to stop Tutelage. Yes, even if this means losing your 5/5 to a Disperse you believe they're holding. You can always make more dudes, you cannot afford to let Tutelage resolve. If you can't stop Tutelage, try to Stub a Cruise or other big draw. You'd be surprised how often U/R taps all out, even a lowly Force Spike can do work. Their mana is tight.
3. Bring in Annuls, which also counter Tutelage.
4. You're not running Annuls? What are you, crazy?
5. Run Annuls. Crushing against a lot of big cards in Standard right now, including Courser, Hangarback, everything in Constellation, everything in the mirror, plus Tutelage.
6. Other than that I dunno. Run Thopter Engineer so you can at least get hasty punches in before you get wiped by Anger? Not much else to say.
7. Desperation play: Learn from the Past? Hilarious to just reset mill. It will only give you 2, 3 turns tops before they mill you out again though, so you need to resolve this on top of having a clock out. Just a thought.
Edit: 8. Revoker. If you board them, bring them in. A double-revoker hand is just horrific for them. Name Tutelage with the first and Anger with the second. Even a single Revoker is nasty, though a singleton should name Anger.
This. I was struggling to make Ensoul work as a deck prior to Origins by using Cloudform, Lightform, etc., etc. It sucked miserably. I couldn't get anything to work. The stuff from Origins, particularly Hangarback, give the deck the gas it needs to succeed. But it is still fundamentally an Ensoul / Shrapnel Blast deck. Those are how this deck closes out most of its victorious game ones. Losing that = losing the deck. You may be able to build some other sort of robots list but it won't really be this deck; it will deserve its own thread as a different deck altogether.
OK, thanks, I wasn't aware of this! I scanned the card and apparently assumed I saw it saying "target" for each of the types, in which case they'd have had to choose separate targets. But you're right, per Oracle rulings, they can choose a Maggot or Courser as both enchantment and creature. Worst case scenario, they get to keep an enchantment, a creature, and a planeswalker and leave us with only one enchantment-creature. This basically means TA removes one more permanent than I thought it did.
That definitely makes it stronger than I realized, but still nowhere near as powerful as BtN since it's sorcery speed. They can't swing immediately with whatever they get back, which gives us time to untap and begin refilling our board. Ideally we played an Eidolon on t3 and, if it lived, every enchantment after that cost zero cards, so we should have a few things in our hand to restock with. This doesn't mean I'd totally laugh off TA - if I catch it in their hand with Maggot I'll definitely take it. But it's still a mostly fair wrath. Slightly better against us than End Hostilities, but definitely can be recovered from.
Well, I dunno, in my LGS constellation is apparently drawing some hate. Abzan aggro decks seem to be packing 2-3 minimum, one mono-green Nykthos guy was running four. I was blown out in one game by an opponent who cast it in response to my Maggot t3, then just started looping it repeatedly with Den Protectors. He cast that same BtN two more times on me by the end. Pretty miserable!
I suppose the level of fear you should have for BtN is dictated by the meta you expect. Which I why I say you shouldn't try to beat the card, just metagame it. I'm probably going to retire Constellation for a week or two in hopes of BtN being dropped from some sideboards, then bring it back. That, or switch to W/G with four Sigils to try to maximize my odds against the card.
BtN is a much bigger threat since they can cast it on your end step and immediately untap and swing into you with the team they get back from your removals. Not to mention it being one-sided. It's often game over on the spot and gives you very little time to recover unless you were way ahead. It's a primary reason to run Sigil since BtN doesn't kill Angels.
You beat Tragic Arrogance the same way you beat any normal wrath. Play Eidolon and then give zero sh*ts about creatures being blown up that cost you zero cards. Play enough guys to put a decent clock on them and sit back with a loaded hand ready to refill the board after they wrath. Easy.
Back to Nature is a far, far bigger problem.
That sound workable? Or is turn 5 just way too late? I'm thinking that with backup from Thoughtseizes and Maggots, we could pull the first tutelage, then later on use another disruption piece to pull a Negate to force the Orbs through.
P.S. I had forgotten about Dromoka's Command's "prevent damage" mode. Wow, that card becomes the be-all end-all sideboard card against U/R! Plus you can have your starting Herald fight a Jace to death and swing in for 3.
Seriously shaking my head in bemusement that WotC printed something as crazy as Dromoka's Command. What DOESN'T that thing do??
Against U/R I am definitely keeping Fate Unraveler, probably going up to a third in replacement of the Dragonlord Dromoka I was boarding. No one seems to be running the simic fog tutelage in my area any more. Unraveller lives through Anger so all they have to remove it with is Whelming Wave or whatever, and maybe a Roast or two. Seems good. Thoughtseizes and Maggots threaten to take Tutelages and Courser and Sigil / Starfield can beat down.
Against mono-red I am sticking with the Rams, but thinking of adding in Silkwraps. They would also be useful against GW Aggro with its damnable endless Lions and Wardens rushing me early, plus it's a great answer to Hangarback. Not sure what to cut for it though.
Against Heroic I am torn. I won my match last week but only by dumb luck (got a hand with lots of disruption, dumped all his creatures, he never drew another in time). Going to stick with this aspect but I think I need more. Silkwrap could help, but it's unlikely to hit. Languish seems better but of course it kills my own stuff too. Drown in Sorrow is just too slow to kill their guys before they grow, and Bile Blight can be prevented with protection effects. Bleagh. Should I just not worry about Heroic, write it off as a bad matchup, and focus on strengthening against the decks I have a reasonable chance to beat?
Finally, I am considering cutting Mystics. I love the ramping but with the growth in Anger of the Gods in my LGS they've gotten worse to the point of near unplayability. I'm thinking of replacing them with a 2/2 split of Frontier Siege and Silkwrap main. Dropping the Mystics also allows me to swap two more painlands for Sandsteppe Citadels to improve color reliability at very little cost, since my only natural t1 play will be Thoughtseize. With those changes, and the sideboard changes I'm considering, the deck would look like this:
4 Forest
2 Llanowar Wastes
2 Plains
4 Sandsteppe Citadel
4 Temple of Malady
3 Temple of Plenty
1 Temple of Silence
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Windswept Heath
Creatures (23)
4 Brain Maggot
3 Courser of Kruphix
3 Doomwake Giant
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
4 Herald of the Pantheon
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
4 Banishing Light
2 Frontier Siege
3 Kruphix's Insight
2 Sigil of the Empty Throne
3 Silkwrap
1 Starfield of Nyx
2 Thoughtseize
2 Boon Satyr
1 Doomwake Giant
1 Dromoka's Command
3 Fate Unraveler
1 Garruk, Apex Predator
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Infinite Obliteration
3 Nyx-Fleece Ram
2 Thoughtseize
Thoughts?
Relying on TS to stop BtN is taking a pretty big risk. As has been pointed out, BtN is an instant so they can just cast in response. You need to catch them with it in hand AND without mana open / or with you not having a decent enough board to be worth wiping yet. That's a bit of a tall order. If it were a "regular" wrath like Crux or End Hostilities I'd say TS is a fine answer, but not here. I'm not saying side TS out - by all means, run it and pray - but it's not a reliable protection.
This. With Eidolon you can minimize your loss, Sigil tokens live through it, and Pharika lives through it and can generate snakes with any guys it kills. There are ways to recover from it - but it's still a pretty big beating.
I answered that. The response to BtN is to metagame it. If Constellation gets big you might want to switch decks for a while until the hate dies down. Eventually it has to. If enough people quit playing Constellation, eventually people will drop BtN from their boards because it's deadweight if Constellation isn't a common matchup. This is the same way Dredge works in Legacy vs. graveyard hate like Crypt or Relic. Narrow hate cards are usually too hard to beat by just trying to brute-force against them. The best strategy for maximizing your win/loss is to just dodge the hate and play something else for a while. Maybe not the advice you're looking for if this is the only deck you have but it's the best EV play in my opinion.
If you really, really want to beat BtN you could try Stain the Mind. But that seems a bit clunky to me. BtN isn't the only hate card that's good against us and what if you guess wrong? There really is no good card-for-card answer to BtN. WotC basically designed it intentionally as a Constellation killer, and that is what it is.
Both those cards are mutual wipes. The solution is the same as any wrath: don't overextend. Play as many permanents as you need to keep the opponent under pressure. Our steady stream of Thoughtseizes and Maggots means if they draw a Wrath they don't dare hold it, they need to use it immediately if they can reap any advantage from it, or risk losing it. This is in fact the primary reason to run black, even moreso than access to Doomwake. With an Eidolon online every permanent replaces itself and thus is zero loss against these wraths.
Oh, and avoid running out multiple Heralds unless your opponent is red and you doubt they have Anger of the Gods. Doubling lifegain from two Heralds could be useful in that situation. Against every other deck it's just begging to get your teeth kicked in (Drown, Bile Blight, enemy Doomwake, etc., etc.). The double discount is not worth getting blown out.
Also, infinite oblit can only exile creature cards, it can't nab any wrath effect in standard except Doomwake, Polukranos, and that big demon dude no one plays.
BtN is a much bigger problem than those other wraths, because it's one-sided, cheap, and instant. But it's also extremely narrow. Opponents who overcommit to BtN in their boards and then don't face Constellation in an event will be tempted to cut it... so it's just a meta call. Play Constellation for a while, then retire it for a while to dodge the hate, then bring it back, etc., etc. This is simple metagaming. Cheap but narrow hosers just have to be played around in this way. Imagine if WotC hadn't printed BtN! This deck would be all but unstoppable and would be the most hated on deck in the format.
I like the Athreos idea! Also don't forget Pharika, she lives through BtN quite nicely and can quickly begin returning your dead guys as deathtouch snakes if you need blockers or constellation triggers. I think I will try to get my hands on an Athreos. However, he's useless against Ugin or P-Vault, so I wouldn't over-rely on him. One-of would be fine as a hedge.
I feel Ascendancy just doesn't do enough for its cost. It can't be discounted by Herald, is unlikely to give more than one or two creatures +1/+1 counters, is a terrible recur off Starfield, and the spirits don't synergize with enchantments AND have the same primary flaw as our angel tokens: inability to stop Stormbreath Dragon.
I have also tested Frontier Siege and it just doesn't work. It sounds like it should, right? t2 Herald -> t3 siege (Khans), t3 2nd main cast Courser (GG plus Herald discount), play land off the top... Living the dream. But in testing that happened almost never. Meanwhile the double-green was not frequently very helpful. It could get Doomwake online a bit earlier but ONLY if you had t2 Herald, and that only happens in only a little bit over 1/3 of games. If you don't have a ramp by t2, then you can't do Frontier until t4, which means you can't accelerate Sigil or Doomwake at all. I would much rather run Elvish Mystic because it provides a redundant way to accelerate into Courser, Banishing Light, and other useful early plays, while *also* helping to accelerate the big stuff. It's a worse late topdeck, but then, it's nice to have a guy that lives through BtN. Plus late topped Mystics can chump and convert into snakes with Pharika. I might be able to see changing some of them to Caryatids but really, t1 Mystic -> t2 Courser is an even better play in this aggro heavy meta than most t2 herald plays, if you ask me. T1 mystic -> t2 herald -> t3 Doomwake also becomes a (rare) possibility, which neither Caryatid nor Siege can provide.
Saw that deck at FNM Friday and it was just scary how fast it milled. It lacked much defense except Anger of the Gods, but it put the opponent on a surprisingly fast clock once Tutelage came down.
In the current environment, is anyone concerned that the green-based fog version is just not as good as the Izzet Turbomill?
I agree. That's why I like Unraveller more than Dragonlord Dromoka. The U/R deck isn't relying on fogs so it's not as vulnerable to Dromoka. But both versions bite the dust really hard to Fate Unraveller. If you can resolve it against the Simic version (which you can do as early as t3 with ramp) they basically have no way to remove it as long as you don't do something stupid and swing it into an Aetherspouts. They might have Reality Shift out of the board though, depends if you had any creatures g1 that were real threats to them. Thoughtseize can clear the way to protect the Unraveller. They might still bring in Orbs of Warding against you but probably not.
Vs. R/U it's actually better since that deck is all in on "plan draw lots of cards". Only question is whether they can remove it as they have access to red for burn.
Maggot is worth its weight in gold. I generally don't cut it even against red, I tend to cut Eidolon first. Maggot is great because it can get the enemy off their curve. Even if you take a removal, you can still gum up their curve by forcing them to use another removal to get that removal back, and every removal they spend on a Maggot is a removal they can't spend on a Courser or Ram. Basically if I take a Wild Slash with Maggot and they have to use a bigger removal on the Maggot to get their Slash back, then I just gained tempo on them since normally they should be able to kill my Maggot at a mana advantage of one. If their plan for t3 is Rabblemaster I can just take their Rabblemaster to prevent it for a turn. They have to untap and waste a turn burning the Maggot, meaning Rabblemaster won't land until t4 by which time Doomwake is only a turn away. In the control matchup Maggot is for taking their bombs or best removal. In the aggro matchup Maggot is for disrupting their curve and forcing them to play at our speed.
Yeah, that's the thing, Silkwrap is great against so many common creatures but terrible at the specific bomb creatures (mostly Dragons) that give us fits. Really I think I'll just go with more Downfalls. They're unlimited plus they can kill a planeswalker. The extra mana is worth it. That or possibly Utter End, though that's a bit expensive for a removal from this deck.
1 Caves of Koilos
4 Forest
3 Llanowar Wastes
2 Plains
2 Sandsteppe Citadel
4 Temple of Malady
3 Temple of Plenty
1 Temple of Silence
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Windswept Heath
Creatures (23)
4 Brain Maggot
3 Courser of Kruphix
3 Doomwake Giant
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Herald of the Pantheon
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
4 Banishing Light
1 Dromoka's Command
3 Kruphix's Insight
2 Sigil of the Empty Throne
1 Starfield of Nyx
2 Thoughtseize
2 Boon Satyr
1 Doomwake Giant
1 Dragonlord Dromoka
2 Fate Unraveler
1 Garruk, Apex Predator
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Infinite Obliteration
3 Nyx-Fleece Ram
2 Thoughtseize
1 Ultimate Price
First off, explanations of my changes from Villela's list. Firstly, I don't have the fourth Courser or Heath. Still looking to acquire them on a budget. Replaced the Heath with an additional W/G Temple and shifted a W/B temple to a painland to keep my ratio of ETB tapped lands from rising. I don't have 3 Starfields but honestly I wouldn't run more than two even if I did. I run one now and will add the second when I get my hands on it. Three is IMO overkill. The maindeck Command was never irrelevant (mostly used in +1/+1 + fight mode as removal) but I'd rather it become the second Starfield or the fourth Courser.
The sideboard is based on my LGS meta. Satyrs are for when I feel the need to speed up against faster decks, or as an answer to Ugin, who usually drops and has to -3 or -4 to clear my board; a flashed end step Satyr can immediately kill him and keep swinging. Apex Predator is an even better option vs. Ugin if you can manage to actually resolve it against a deck that gets to play Counterspell in Standard.
I can't remember all of my matchups in perfect detail. My only loss was to a friend who has never won a match against me in his life, and who I therefore was probably overconfident against. But he was borrowing a pretty strong W/G aggro build (Fleecemane and friends) and I also mana screwed like a champ so... Sometimes you get blown out by cards you're not prepared to face because no one's running them. Overrun effects are among that number. But he was also on a roll that night and sometimes a person is really playing their best and it's just "their night". Last night was his night and I was proud of him.
Two of my wins were against fairly minor decks. One was a R/G dragons ramp deck (Frontier Siege into things like Savage Ventmaw and Dragonlord Atarka). This I handled by just picking apart her hand and taking her fatties, then Doomwaking her Elves to deny her ramp and Banishing her Siege, then running her over with 2/2's. The other was a R/W aggro deck based around Renowned, more or less kitchen table quality. Apparently no burn in it so I just made sure to make profitable trades, grind advantage wherever possible, and eventually just ran her out of gas and cleaned up with whatever was left standing.
Next up was U/W Heroic, always a nightmare matchup for me. I hate that freaking deck. Game one I take by pure luck as he mana screws miserably having kept a terrible hand. Game two I get run over, despite boarding in my cheapest removal and all my hand disruption. Game three decides it and I take a questionable hand with thoughtseize, maggot, obliteration, and urborg. The hand proceeded to wreck him as I stripped each creature in his hand in ascending CMC order (I topdecked into a second Maggot) so he couldn't cast any, then Obliterated his Hoplites to reduce his chances of drawing more. By the time he managed to find and resolve a creature he was on 10 or so life facing an army so that was that. Definitely adding in the second Obliteration now!
Final match was Rakdos Dragons, pretty good player with a fast and aggressive build based around Thunderbreak Regent, Stormbreath Dragon, Kolaghan and her Command, burn, and hand disruption. We go back and forth in games 1 and 2, with hand disruption dominating each game (ie., who drew it first). In particular, game one ended with my having no answer for his Stormbreath Dragon, which, fun fact, angel tokens can't block.
Final thoughts / going forward from here:
The deck is just phenomenally grindy. I simply cannot imagine running it without black, after Doomwake and Maggot worked hand in hand to win so many matches for me. Doomwake in particular has a sick tendency to take over games, slow-rolling opponents by ensuring favorable combats turn after turn. Additional speed is nice but this is a deck that lives on turns 3 and 4 and is simply never going to outrace the fast decks in the format. I would rather be solidly midrange and focus on powerful synergies, and few things are more powerful than casting spells with "gain 1 life, draw a card, and -1/-1 your enemy's team" tacked on to each one.
Sigil underperformed and Starfield overperformed, so, definitely am confident on the eventual 2/2 split or even 2/1. I know I still want at least one sigil main because there are some games it just rules in.
I don't want to be too vulnerable to Stormbreath any more so I may add in more black-based removal. At the same time, though, I really felt the lack of Silkwraps against Heroic, when he tapped out for Battlewise Hoplite and I was holding Ultimate Price... ouch. But then, Silkwrap would have been worthless against Stormbreath while Ultimate Price could have handled it. Tough call. Not sure which to favor.
Thoughtseizes performed strongly and mono-red seems fairly rare in my area right now so I think I will move the third to main in place of the Command, at least for now. The third Ram might become another Infinite Obliteration or else another Downfall, not sure yet. Open to suggestions!
Loving this deck all over again.
I have to say your deck confuses but intrigues me. First off, which came first - the decision to drop Kruphix's Insight, or the decision to include so many non-enchantments? Ie., did you first start straying away from enchantments and then drop KI because it wasn't hitting 3 often enough, or did you drop KI for some other reason and then go "hey cool, that frees me to branch out"?
Secondly, a few choices are clever (like Sabertooth to reset constellation triggers) while others seem confusing (Sorin??). I notice your black is not so much a splash as a main color; in fact you'd be more aptly described as Rockstars (Golgari) splashing white for a few things. Is your preference for Bile Blight over Silkwrap based on anything specific?
A lot of elements of the deck seem extremely grindy. Whip and Pharika both look to play the long game. Boon Satyr instead seems geared towards a more aggressive approach. Is this just me or are you torn between deciding whether to go over the format or under it? If you're going for grindy, why side the Maggots? Finally, with only 21 enchantments, do you have a hard time making Constellation triggers hit? I'm always leery of dropping below 24 or so enchantments for fear of cards like Doomwake and Sigil becoming duds.
My understanding is the only ramp you need is Herald and Frontier Siege. But I could be wrong. In the Abzan build going t2 Herald -> t3 Siege, Courser -> t4 Doomwake is pretty strong. Main problem is the Herald dies all the time.
(It helps that Dark Deal isn't $10 apiece.
My only concern is, with only eight black sources, how are you reliably managing double black on turn 3 or 4 for Drown in Sorrow? It's a phenomenal spell for sweeping up either Elves or Rabblemaster and friends, but the double black just seems far too difficult to achieve at that early stage of play. How did this work out for you in practise? Did you ever draw one and wish it was another fog or an Aetherspouts? Did you consider paying an extra mana for double the killing power with Languish? And have you considered cutting the Fountains to add more dual lands in to make your mana less shaky? In a deck running Charm, Drown, Dictate, AND Downfall, your color demands seem to simply be far too intense to allow you to get away with running ANY lands that can't generate color.
Also, normally I'd say a fourth Cruise is overkill. But if you frequently had games where you could Dark Deal while leaving a blue open, I can see that the ability to Deal into a Cruise and promptly cast it could be very strong. Is this why you ran the fourth Cruise?
Finally, why Downfall over Murderous Cut? Your discard strategy fuels Cut so I have to assume you are concerned about Planeswalkers. Which ones, and why not let Negate handle them?
Edit: what about the possibility of hybridizing this deck with the Dark Deal deck by adding in Waste Not? Even without Dark Deal, the opponent will still be discarding pretty regularly once we have a couple Dictates out. I think we'd have to cut the Monastery Sieges but the idea seems like it could be good... anyone interested in testing this?