What have you tested this against if you dont mind me asking?
I also wanted to ask you your opinion on desecration demon? He seems good in B or GB but in GBW I feel like there would be better options, but his big evasive body might be good? What have you in your tests seen with him?
Same with the 1x devour flesh? Is it good?
And how has vraska treated you? I feel like 5 mana vindicate is too slow
Mono Red Aggro - matchup feels slightly unfavourable depending on the build (I'm not seeing striker, jackal pump, or enough mortars in a lot of builds - those cards are key). A lot depends on whether they get a burning tree explosion or not.
RWU Control - matchup feels in my favour. Loxodon is a big man, and sometimes they simply can't remove reaper or blood baron. Thoughtseize is obviously key here. Collectors and duress from the board but not much else. You want to keep your threat density high.
BG(w) - I haven't tested a true mirror yet but one of my friends/teammates is all excited for a new version of reanimator. So far it's in my favour. We play a lot of the same cards except he's more vulnerable to disruption and doesn't curve out as well.
RG aggro - Like mono red, sometimes they just get draws. Most of the time, though, they are just like a turn slower and that feels good with this deck. Plus lifebane becomes extra amazing.
WG aggro - Lacks reds explosive draws and reach. Voice doesn't bother me and I have my own undercosted three and four drops. Baron becomes ridic in this matchup. Fleeceman Lion going super saiyan can def. be a problem, so I've started valueing him higher on my removal priority than a watchwolf normally would be.
That's all the decks I've tried it against so far. Some more than others - I've played the junk reanimate and red matches into the ground but would like more practice against control and selesnya decks. I'd also like to test against the Black/Blue control I see popping up in places and some of the jund lists. Obviously things are not optimised yet.
re: demon. He is amazing at neutral, amazing when you're ahead, and very good when you are behind with a high life total. Topdeck when you're facing lethal he is obviously none good. A few awkward loses aside, so far I have been super impressed with him, especially against control or powered out early with caryatid against other guys.
re: devour flesh - this could be any removal card. I threw it in because I've had so many hexproof nightmares in the past that I feel naked without a sac effect. Also sometimes you can weirdly eat your own demon for like 7 life. This is probably just a variance tweak.
re: Vraska - I've loved her so far. Against dudes she tends to be a 187 and a damage shield, which is fine. Sometimes though she has blockers and gets to tick up or comes down into an empty board. While threatening them with the assassin plan is cute, I generally prefer to simply have an extra destroy effect every other turn depending on game state. Oh! And also in two games she was a maindeck answer to surprise maindeck burning earths, which infuriated my opponent (to be fair I still lost one of those games but would have lost much quicker without Vraska). I am going to try Elspeth in some tests over Vraska and see if I miss her.
edit: I'm seeing a lot of putrefy in people's lists. Can I ask why? Your abrupt decays hit hammer, spear, keyrunes, and pithing needles. Is it to prevent regen? On what? Troll is a good card, but he's not worth a slot. Probably I am forgetting something. I'm favouring hero's downfall to also deal with planeswalkers since we don't lightning bolt type effects.
Charm against Burning Earth, tokens, and can hit whip,spear, bow or whatever
Sin Collector and Duress against control, obviously. This deck has a great curve and extremely beefy creatures for cost, the plan after boards simply becomes to disrupt a few crucial turns and get in there. Trying to be too clever and bring too many things in here will just end with the control player outdrawing you.
Lifebane zombie because he's amazing against so many things right now. But I'm too nervous to play 3 main. Exiling a blood baron or an angel of serenity or a world eater is gorgeous. plus he has evasion and can punch for 3 or trade with something.
Gaze of granite - I'm unsure about this, honestly. Against red this can just be too slow and voice of resurgance decks are so resilient to sweepers. I'm considering switching this to Fiendslayer Paladin because sometimes the red deck just gets a lot of power on the board off of a burning-tree.
Dark- replace doomblade against black guys
Heresy - Really nice against voice. Can also take care of fiendslayer, the white god, detention spheres, spear, etc.
- archangel
- chronicler of heroes
+ warrior's lesson
Your lifegain and counter placement isn't really consistent enough to justify these. You're pretty much just running all the best creatures in the colours, so might as well just draw more of them when you get in.
So now I have a dilemma, which creature for the 2cc spot?
Voice or Scavenging Ooze?
I feel like the format is going to be aggro heavy to begin. A lot of lightning strike and maybe shocks are going to bin creatures and red/green guys are going to smack at life totals.
With that in mind, what is each card actually likely to do? Not in magic christmas land, but in most games.
Voice probably blocks twice or blocks and eats removal. The token will rarely be bigger than 1/1 or 2/2. This is still pretty good, as blocking twice is still pretty great. However rampager is a thing.
Ooze early is worse than voice against aggro. It eats removal or trades with a creature. This is okay but not exciting. Ooze mid to late, however, is great. We gain some much needed life AND it won't be too hard to grow him out of burn range (other than like mortars, which is a lot).
Both are very good against control. Voice probably gets the nod against blue based controls as their counters give you dudes, and ooze is probably better against black based controls, as all the guys they've binned can be eaten when you top the ooze late. Both are pretty awful against control with white, as they'll probably just be exiled, but whatever. Dies to removal happens.
Against midrange both are situational and not great. I think I like ooze more for the lifegain and possible growth since most midrange will just let you have the 2/2 voice and fly over it/attack into it and then probably you just have a 1/1 or 2/2 token and caryatid they'll be happy to attack into again with a gorgon or something. Against mid there will usually at least be a lot of ooze food in the bin.
I think I give the nod to ooze but I'm less and less wanting to ever cast either on two. Caryatid is just so cute.
Man I hope that the hate for this card is prevalent so I can pick up my playset cheaply and get a few free wins against post-Theros RDW with Legion Loyalist by dropping a turn two Caryatid.
Right? I am so completely fine with people not knowing how to assess red creatures, since I plan on playing caryatid decks.
"By today's standard, a 2/1 just isn't good enough!"
1) He's not a 2/1. He's a red 2/1. That is so very different.
2) He's able to attack into/trade with x/3 guys for a cost red players can easily afford and a life cost they don't care about. That is enormous.
The card is strong, the question is whether the format is open to a RDW deck or not.
There are some very neat cards with great flavour, art, etc. I'm just listing the ones I think are the "best" in that I can see myself actually putting them in decks in the nearish future.
1) Reaper of the Wilds - A stop sign against aggro and a problem against control if you can untap with her. Plus gorgons!
2) Elspeth - blowout. three is a lot of dudes. If she activates twice the game should pretty much shift.
3) Xenagos - hey domri! high five! Hey wait, aren't red and green not supposed to be great at card advantage? lolsmash
4) Firedrinker Satyr - Jackal Pump is amazing if the format is even remotely slow. This into chainwalker is a devestating, must-answer opening.
5) Warrior's Lesson - It's conditional and can be stopped by removal, but the number of times this card will draw two for one mana seems pretty good.
6) Sylvan Caryatid - Looked much better before Firedrinker was spoiled, but still probably the best early play to slow down aggro and speed up your drops for a midrange deck
7) Hero's demise - staple. Does things in one colour that we normally look to multicolour to do. Makes murder look pretty bad.
8) Mark of mutiny - Sideboard staple
9) Chained to the rocks - not quite the swords to plowshares/path to exile that some are making it out to be - but still pretty great.
10) Whip of Erabos - I am not a fan of reanimator strategies. This makes me want to play a reanimator deck.
I think those are the ten I'm most excited about right now. Also extremely hype to see thoughtseize and magma jet back, but I limited the above to new cards.
Man, who knew that Lifebane Zombie was such a beating against a black-based deck with a total of three white creatures that aren't Smiters? Who knew that a midrange deck would "crumble" against a 1-for-1 hand disruption spell? I mean, this guy obviously knows something we don't know, since he's trying to play a control deck with no sweeper and no Revelations.
Well, the zombie could still get the smiters because he exiles the card. Plus the oozes.
I mean, it's definately a card...but like, every deck has some cards. Most are pretty good.
But the joke is on him because obvs I'm going to thoughtseize his thoughtseize and his deck crumbles to that. Also, my dad can beat up his dad.
Yeah...my UB control runs Thoughtseize and Lifebane Zombie and your deck crumbles to those cards. As it is now, I don't see any deck that's going to "dominate". Every deck has weaknesses. I know my control deck is pretty weak to certain cards and even with Hero's Downfall, resolved PW'ers are still too difficult for my liking. I think we might end up with a traditional format for a little bit. Aggro > Control > Midrange > Aggro.
You have cards that do things?!? Me too! We should hang out.
Answers for pretty much everything, just high median card quality, and against some decks, would have the ability to cast "must-answer" problems turn after turn.
Aggro, for example, needs an answer to Reaper. And then they need an answer to Baron. And this is probably after they've had to figure ways around caryatid and smiter. And then vraska comes down and takes their best whatever and sticks around to threaten more.
Control, on the other hand, has to be afraid of smiters and turn three demons. If they tap out to deal with that, they might see Baron, who is extremely difficult to remove. And thoughtseize and duress. etc.
Against other midrange I guess it's just a haymaker fest.
I'm a much bigger fan of multicolour blocks than monocolour blocks, and I took too much GD history and mythology in undergrad to be too, too excited for the theme. BUT I'm in a place where I can finally start playing some magic again, which means I'm bonkers excited for ANY new set. Seeing a few old faves like thoughtseize and magma jet in the spoilers helps.
Threads like this are always started by people who don't draft very often. Rarities play a huge part in that format. Far more than they do constructed.
You've got the wrong end of the stick there, a little. Your point is valid in that obviously we can't have insane cards filling the lower rarities because limited would quickly become a cesspool of insanity. That said, rarity (especially for staple cards like utility, removal, and mana fixing) does quite matter to constructed players. If everyone in a format HAS to play four of a card, that card goes way up in value. The rarer it was to begin with, the more insane the price gets. In limited, my price is always three packs (or a starter plus two or whatever the format is). Depending on staple rarities in a format/season my constructed costs can quickly become ridiculous, especially if I plan on switching decks or piloting multiple archetypes.
edit: re the "paint by numbers" argument above - I agree with you. A lot of the cards are pretty boring. Although I've gotta say, rolling your eyes and thinking "obviously" about what a mechanic does is actually kind of a good thing in a way. Isn't Maro just, like, obsessed with that kind of intuitive feel? That the cards naturally kind of make sense?
Although, gotta say. Makes sense and fun to play aren't always the same thing.
Ooze is going to be much less relevant without graveyard based strategies or flashback cards/Snapcaster Mage. Plus you don't have many dudes that will be hitting the bin early. With no graveyard stuff to hate on 4 is most definately too many, as you never want more than one. I wouldn't consider more than 2.
The Lion is an early big blocker vs aggro (brickwalls most 1 and 2 drops) and a threat that demands an answer vs. control and leads the curve (while still being relevant, a turn 2 Ooze is pretty unexciting) while being relevant late.
You're not wrong; the lion is pretty good. But on two I feel like I want to play caryatid or removal. And then I want a smiter or a desecration demon or a reaper. I don't really want to drop the lion OR the ooze until mid game and at that point, with all of our removal and with aggro so very popular, the lifegain on ooze and lower cost to grow him makes him the more attractive option to me, especially with Jund coloured decks looking to get value out of their graveyard with cerebus. Also, I don't think reanimate or graveyard shennanigans are dead, just mutated, which makes me like ooze again.
To me it feels like I probably won't play lion not because it's not good - it's quite strong - it's just not what I'm going to want to play most times I'm able to cast him in this deck.
Edit: Jeezy Pete. Jackal Pup with pump...Jackal Pump! Red has a lot of hands that probably just win before this deck gets going. Wring flesh? Come on spoilers, give us an aggresive sweeper
This is probably too greedy without solid fetch in the format. Also I guess burning earth is a card and red aggro is a deck.
Your list is super fun, though. I'd just be scared to run it.
Mono Red Aggro - matchup feels slightly unfavourable depending on the build (I'm not seeing striker, jackal pump, or enough mortars in a lot of builds - those cards are key). A lot depends on whether they get a burning tree explosion or not.
RWU Control - matchup feels in my favour. Loxodon is a big man, and sometimes they simply can't remove reaper or blood baron. Thoughtseize is obviously key here. Collectors and duress from the board but not much else. You want to keep your threat density high.
BG(w) - I haven't tested a true mirror yet but one of my friends/teammates is all excited for a new version of reanimator. So far it's in my favour. We play a lot of the same cards except he's more vulnerable to disruption and doesn't curve out as well.
RG aggro - Like mono red, sometimes they just get draws. Most of the time, though, they are just like a turn slower and that feels good with this deck. Plus lifebane becomes extra amazing.
WG aggro - Lacks reds explosive draws and reach. Voice doesn't bother me and I have my own undercosted three and four drops. Baron becomes ridic in this matchup. Fleeceman Lion going super saiyan can def. be a problem, so I've started valueing him higher on my removal priority than a watchwolf normally would be.
That's all the decks I've tried it against so far. Some more than others - I've played the junk reanimate and red matches into the ground but would like more practice against control and selesnya decks. I'd also like to test against the Black/Blue control I see popping up in places and some of the jund lists. Obviously things are not optimised yet.
re: demon. He is amazing at neutral, amazing when you're ahead, and very good when you are behind with a high life total. Topdeck when you're facing lethal he is obviously none good. A few awkward loses aside, so far I have been super impressed with him, especially against control or powered out early with caryatid against other guys.
re: devour flesh - this could be any removal card. I threw it in because I've had so many hexproof nightmares in the past that I feel naked without a sac effect. Also sometimes you can weirdly eat your own demon for like 7 life. This is probably just a variance tweak.
re: Vraska - I've loved her so far. Against dudes she tends to be a 187 and a damage shield, which is fine. Sometimes though she has blockers and gets to tick up or comes down into an empty board. While threatening them with the assassin plan is cute, I generally prefer to simply have an extra destroy effect every other turn depending on game state. Oh! And also in two games she was a maindeck answer to surprise maindeck burning earths, which infuriated my opponent (to be fair I still lost one of those games but would have lost much quicker without Vraska). I am going to try Elspeth in some tests over Vraska and see if I miss her.
edit: I'm seeing a lot of putrefy in people's lists. Can I ask why? Your abrupt decays hit hammer, spear, keyrunes, and pithing needles. Is it to prevent regen? On what? Troll is a good card, but he's not worth a slot. Probably I am forgetting something. I'm favouring hero's downfall to also deal with planeswalkers since we don't lightning bolt type effects.
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Temple Garden
4 Godless Shrine
4 Temple of Silence
4 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Plains
Creatures (21)
4x Sylvan Caryatid
4x Loxodon Smiter
3x Reaper of the Wild
3x Blood Baron of Viskopa
2x Scavenging Ooze
3x Desecration Demon
2x Lifebane Zombie
4x Abrupt Decay
2x Doomblade
4x Thoughtseize
2x Hero's Downfall
1x Devour Flesh
2x Vraska, the Unseen
3x Golgari Charm
1x Lifebane Zombie
3x Sin Collector
2x Duress
2x Gaze of Granite
2x Dark Betrayal
2x Glare of Heresy
Thoughts on sideboard:
Charm against Burning Earth, tokens, and can hit whip,spear, bow or whatever
Sin Collector and Duress against control, obviously. This deck has a great curve and extremely beefy creatures for cost, the plan after boards simply becomes to disrupt a few crucial turns and get in there. Trying to be too clever and bring too many things in here will just end with the control player outdrawing you.
Lifebane zombie because he's amazing against so many things right now. But I'm too nervous to play 3 main. Exiling a blood baron or an angel of serenity or a world eater is gorgeous. plus he has evasion and can punch for 3 or trade with something.
Gaze of granite - I'm unsure about this, honestly. Against red this can just be too slow and voice of resurgance decks are so resilient to sweepers. I'm considering switching this to Fiendslayer Paladin because sometimes the red deck just gets a lot of power on the board off of a burning-tree.
Dark- replace doomblade against black guys
Heresy - Really nice against voice. Can also take care of fiendslayer, the white god, detention spheres, spear, etc.
- archangel
- chronicler of heroes
+ warrior's lesson
Your lifegain and counter placement isn't really consistent enough to justify these. You're pretty much just running all the best creatures in the colours, so might as well just draw more of them when you get in.
Ranger's guile in the board.
I feel like the format is going to be aggro heavy to begin. A lot of lightning strike and maybe shocks are going to bin creatures and red/green guys are going to smack at life totals.
With that in mind, what is each card actually likely to do? Not in magic christmas land, but in most games.
Voice probably blocks twice or blocks and eats removal. The token will rarely be bigger than 1/1 or 2/2. This is still pretty good, as blocking twice is still pretty great. However rampager is a thing.
Ooze early is worse than voice against aggro. It eats removal or trades with a creature. This is okay but not exciting. Ooze mid to late, however, is great. We gain some much needed life AND it won't be too hard to grow him out of burn range (other than like mortars, which is a lot).
Both are very good against control. Voice probably gets the nod against blue based controls as their counters give you dudes, and ooze is probably better against black based controls, as all the guys they've binned can be eaten when you top the ooze late. Both are pretty awful against control with white, as they'll probably just be exiled, but whatever. Dies to removal happens.
Against midrange both are situational and not great. I think I like ooze more for the lifegain and possible growth since most midrange will just let you have the 2/2 voice and fly over it/attack into it and then probably you just have a 1/1 or 2/2 token and caryatid they'll be happy to attack into again with a gorgon or something. Against mid there will usually at least be a lot of ooze food in the bin.
I think I give the nod to ooze but I'm less and less wanting to ever cast either on two. Caryatid is just so cute.
Right? I am so completely fine with people not knowing how to assess red creatures, since I plan on playing caryatid decks.
"By today's standard, a 2/1 just isn't good enough!"
1) He's not a 2/1. He's a red 2/1. That is so very different.
2) He's able to attack into/trade with x/3 guys for a cost red players can easily afford and a life cost they don't care about. That is enormous.
The card is strong, the question is whether the format is open to a RDW deck or not.
1) Reaper of the Wilds - A stop sign against aggro and a problem against control if you can untap with her. Plus gorgons!
2) Elspeth - blowout. three is a lot of dudes. If she activates twice the game should pretty much shift.
3) Xenagos - hey domri! high five! Hey wait, aren't red and green not supposed to be great at card advantage? lolsmash
4) Firedrinker Satyr - Jackal Pump is amazing if the format is even remotely slow. This into chainwalker is a devestating, must-answer opening.
5) Warrior's Lesson - It's conditional and can be stopped by removal, but the number of times this card will draw two for one mana seems pretty good.
6) Sylvan Caryatid - Looked much better before Firedrinker was spoiled, but still probably the best early play to slow down aggro and speed up your drops for a midrange deck
7) Hero's demise - staple. Does things in one colour that we normally look to multicolour to do. Makes murder look pretty bad.
8) Mark of mutiny - Sideboard staple
9) Chained to the rocks - not quite the swords to plowshares/path to exile that some are making it out to be - but still pretty great.
10) Whip of Erabos - I am not a fan of reanimator strategies. This makes me want to play a reanimator deck.
I think those are the ten I'm most excited about right now. Also extremely hype to see thoughtseize and magma jet back, but I limited the above to new cards.
Well, the zombie could still get the smiters because he exiles the card. Plus the oozes.
I mean, it's definately a card...but like, every deck has some cards. Most are pretty good.
But the joke is on him because obvs I'm going to thoughtseize his thoughtseize and his deck crumbles to that. Also, my dad can beat up his dad.
You have cards that do things?!? Me too! We should hang out.
4 Temple Garden
4 Godless Shrine
4 Temple of Silence
5 Swamp
2 Plains
3 Forest
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Loxodon Smiter
3 Desecration Demon
3 Reaper of the Wilds
3 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Duress
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Doom Blade
2 Hero's Demise
3 Vraska, the Unseen
3 Lifebane Zombie
2 Sin Collector
3 Golgari Charm
2 Gaze of Granite
2 Mark of Betrayal
2 Centaur Healer
1 Hero's Demise
Answers for pretty much everything, just high median card quality, and against some decks, would have the ability to cast "must-answer" problems turn after turn.
Aggro, for example, needs an answer to Reaper. And then they need an answer to Baron. And this is probably after they've had to figure ways around caryatid and smiter. And then vraska comes down and takes their best whatever and sticks around to threaten more.
Control, on the other hand, has to be afraid of smiters and turn three demons. If they tap out to deal with that, they might see Baron, who is extremely difficult to remove. And thoughtseize and duress. etc.
Against other midrange I guess it's just a haymaker fest.
You've got the wrong end of the stick there, a little. Your point is valid in that obviously we can't have insane cards filling the lower rarities because limited would quickly become a cesspool of insanity. That said, rarity (especially for staple cards like utility, removal, and mana fixing) does quite matter to constructed players. If everyone in a format HAS to play four of a card, that card goes way up in value. The rarer it was to begin with, the more insane the price gets. In limited, my price is always three packs (or a starter plus two or whatever the format is). Depending on staple rarities in a format/season my constructed costs can quickly become ridiculous, especially if I plan on switching decks or piloting multiple archetypes.
edit: re the "paint by numbers" argument above - I agree with you. A lot of the cards are pretty boring. Although I've gotta say, rolling your eyes and thinking "obviously" about what a mechanic does is actually kind of a good thing in a way. Isn't Maro just, like, obsessed with that kind of intuitive feel? That the cards naturally kind of make sense?
Although, gotta say. Makes sense and fun to play aren't always the same thing.
You're not wrong; the lion is pretty good. But on two I feel like I want to play caryatid or removal. And then I want a smiter or a desecration demon or a reaper. I don't really want to drop the lion OR the ooze until mid game and at that point, with all of our removal and with aggro so very popular, the lifegain on ooze and lower cost to grow him makes him the more attractive option to me, especially with Jund coloured decks looking to get value out of their graveyard with cerebus. Also, I don't think reanimate or graveyard shennanigans are dead, just mutated, which makes me like ooze again.
To me it feels like I probably won't play lion not because it's not good - it's quite strong - it's just not what I'm going to want to play most times I'm able to cast him in this deck.
Edit: Jeezy Pete. Jackal Pup with pump...Jackal Pump! Red has a lot of hands that probably just win before this deck gets going. Wring flesh? Come on spoilers, give us an aggresive sweeper