I have to disagree with you on your last point here. I am running a 4x Herder, 3x Reality Smasher, 1x Oblivion Sower and 1x Ulamog. I respectfully disagree that we don't need the top end. There will be long grindy games where you simply win because you are either topdecking gas or you get enough lands to turn on Eye of Ugin and they just can't answer Ulamog. Even in games where they CAN answer him, he 2 for 1's and you can still keep searching up threats every turn. This is also where I've needed multiple Reality Smashers. I ran into quite a few games where they'd kill the first 2 and I wanted 1 more. The haste and trample is extremely relevant at times where 4/5 with 3 1/1 upside just isn't. Bear in mind that on an empty board, Reality Smasher does 10 damage by the time Blight Herder does 7.
It's just a play style choice. I'm willing to give up almost all of the late game inevitability just to play more cheap reactive cards so that I don't die early on; Blight Herder and TKS beats are how I get most of my wins, typically. Like I keep saying, I'm playing the deck because I think it's the best midrange deck, and I've found that calibrating the threat density, especially at the top end, to match that of BGx is approximately right, and they typically play 4 Goyfs and a couple flex cards as primary threats, so that's what I'm doing (4 Herders and a couple "flex Smashers"). I don't think it's right or wrong the way you're doing it, just different.
Went to a little 5-rounder last night just to try out a few exotic choices. Beat Storm, Elves, UW control (?!), lost to Burn and Tron, so no surprises there. Observations:
- My goodness, is Eldrazi Displacer bad. Basically was wishing it was anything else every time I drew it.
- What to play in the Displacer slot? In my version of the deck that eschews all the top end, I think Liliana of the Veil may be a consideration again, since once you get to 5, you're actually pretty OK throwing away lands. Activating Eye is just not that important here. I think I was wrong about this a few pages go. 1 would be a nice high-impact singleton, probably can't run more than 2 at most, and even that's probably also a bad idea just because BB is so hard.
- Still not feeling like I want more than 2 Reality Smasher, except maybe against Tron, but even then it could be a trap because Herder closes out nearly as fast (5+5+5 is very close to 7+7).
I love Spatial Contortion. The card is great removal and today it won me a game against scapeshift when I could boost my Reality Smasher to 8 for lethal. Still testing that with Warping Wail as 1-ofs, and I think contortion may win that fight. I really recommend that people try it.
I don't like Lili because of BB and because we actually don't want to discard lands most of the time. We're not like Jund or Abzan - most of the time, we are unhappy if we only have 3 land.
Eldrazi Displacer has a 3 butt--allowing to to chump bears and trade with, say, Nacatl--and a powerful and versatile ability that synergizes with both Strangler and TKS. Just saying. It's a lot worse vs. Bolt, though.
I'm not excited by the opportunity to trade Displacer with Nacatl (which Strangler also does, by the way), but it seems like it's a nice Spellskite-like effect that can attack. I can see one in the maindeck. Have you liked it?
I joined the forum few minutes ago.
after a long stop a decided to sweep the dust off my "formerly-know-melira pod" and to build this BW eldrazi which looks really fresh to me ( My town meta is full of jund/tron/abzan/burn...always the same decks, kinda boring )
We all agree that the build is in the beta phase but I would like to ask your opinion about "strangler": in almost the 90% of my tests it was just a 3 mana 3/2, with a very short life.
Since this deck is a midrange and it doesn't dig as much as tron does, for example, wouldn't be better to play matter reshaper instead?
It comes down turn 2-3, while we never play strangler that early, thus we can pressure form turn 2-3 but above all we chump block ( goblin guide, monastery swiftspear, wild nactl etc. ) and we put in play permaments ( lands included) or draw.
I know it's randomic but frankly "strangler" didn't impress me that much...
what do you think?
PS: sorry in advance for my poor english
Everyone hates Strangler, but when you get to trigger the ability, it is amazing, especially in our worst matchups. Reshaper doesn't always give you value, especially with so many decks playing Path to Exile nowadays. Also, the colorless <> mana is hard to get on curve unless you increase the number of <> sources, which can be tough. But I agree, Strangler is the worst card. I just don't know what to put in its place.
@iostream
Excellent results. Congrats! You didn't face a lot of aggro decks but how was your test results against Burn and Affinity without Maps and Sower? Is 3 Rest for the Weary enough to pull you through? I find Burn a tougher match up than Affinity as they just go all in to the dome whereas you can slow down Affinity with Spirit Tokens and Ghost Quarter to their Nexus. I have a lot of Burn in my meta so I am looking to add Timely Reinforcements as well. However I feel Rest is so much better being an instant but Timely can provide additional blockers.
I like the direction you are going by making the deck more midrange than ramp by cutting Sower and Map. I split Herder and Smasher at 3 each because during grindy games, it's harder to remove Smasher as they need to spend two cards to do so. This synergizes well with our disruption from TKS and IoK/TS.
Your manabase looks good. Although I'm not really a fan of Shambling Vent from my testing and with Sorin acting as a second Vault, I find much less use for Vent. Congrats again on your finish!
I find this version of the deck does much better versus Affinity and Burn than the version with Sowers and Maps. For one, neither Sower nor Map really helps you stabilize in the early turns, which is what really matters, and not running either in and of itself is helpful. Second, maindeck Disfigure is fantastic against both of them, which is actually why I was running them in the first place, as my meta was overrun with Burn and Affinity (although I ironically never faced it yesterday despite both these decks being everywhere in the room). Being able to double-up on removal in a single turn is a common path to victory since such a play buys so much tempo, and Disfigure does a great job enabling that. I would say both of these matchups are slightly to moderately unfavorable pre-board, and they become solidly favorable postboard, to the point that I think the matchup is close to even (for Burn) and slightly favorable (for Affinity). Versus Burn, it is hard to lose if you get to resolve even one Rest for the Weary with any kind of board presence to back it up. Versus Affinity, we have a ton of high-impact cards in the sideboard in addition to the 4 maindeck Souls, which are terrific. I like where this deck is positioned versus both of those.
But I should emphasize that outside of the sideboard, I've found that mulliganing rather aggressively versus these decks is crucial - i.e. don't keep hands without early interaction. If you don't have a way to interact in the first two turns, it is almost always a mulligan. Relic doesn't count. I think many people lose by keeping hands that would be perfectly fine against most decks, but are a half-turn to a full turn slow versus Burn/Affinity. This is all they need to kill you. In general, people aren't mulliganing enough - do it! The scry rule is awesome. I think that the new mulligan rule is so good that most players could probably even double their mulligan frequency and still not be overshooting the theoretical optimum by that much. In testing, I have won many games against Burn and Affinity (and other aggro decks, for that matter) on 5 or 6 cards.
As for Shambling Vent, I'm not married to it, but I could see it going one way or the other. I'm not sure yet. Sorin covers some of Shambling Vent's utility, but a card that gets to be both a land and a threat is uniquely powerful since it saves you slots in your deck. Without it, I worry the deck becomes a little threat-light. Vent also strains opposing Ghost Quarters, which is nice.
I made top 4 at a 59 person SCG IQ in NJ with BW Eldrazi. I went 4-0-2 in the Swiss, won the quarterfinals, and lost in the semifinals.
Congrats!
Have you found 11 colorless sources enough for 4 TKS and 2 Smasher?
I'm not iostream but I think 11 is good enough since you will be curving to TKS and RS at turns 3-4. Only time you can cast TKS earlier is turn 2 with Eye and Temple.
Karsten would say 11 is aggressive, but I thought it was sufficient, if just barely so. In an ideal world, I would like another source of <>, but I don't know how to squeeze it in, so I probably won't mess with it.
Terrific play report, thanks and congratulations! I too have cut Sower (down to 1 in my case) and am debating Ulamog in the main because I side him out so often.
I notice you didn't mention Vent one way or the other; any times the CIPT was a real blow? Any late-game saves?
My sweepers include a mix of Damnation and Engineered Explosives and I consider having a fair number of them essential for the fast-n-wide decks like Elves and baby Zoo etc. I've also gone to a 2/2 split on Rest for the Weary and Timely Reinforcements to shore up both those matches and the Burn match.
Oblivion Ring and Sorin both look really good, but there are only 75 slots in this deck, and any cut has real consequences. Right now I have a 1-of Eldrazi Displacer that is a flex slot.
Thanks! Vent was fine, but low impact today. I activated it only rarely, but on the other hand I didn't really play the matchups where he is supposed to shine the most. I think the jury is still out, but I have a positive opinion of it. CIPT wasn't a gigantic deal in my experience.
As for sweepers, EE and All is Dust are both good, and I would rather play Damnation than Flaying Tendrils' for sure. All the options have drawbacks, that's all. What the deck really wants is Anger of the Gods or Toxic Deluge - just some 3cmc thing that doesn't kill most of our own stuff.
I made top 4 at a 59 person SCG IQ in NJ with BW Eldrazi. I went 4-0-2 in the Swiss, won the quarterfinals, and lost in the semifinals. First, a decklist and some preliminary remarks:
As I've mentioned before, I'd like to build BW Eldrazi in such a way that it can play a decent game of Magic even when it doesn't find Eye or Temple. That means playing a lower curve like I've done. I only run 2 Smasher because (a) he's just a dumb beater, you don't need too many, and (b) it's too hard on the mana running 8 5-drops. Herder is just way, way better than Smasher overall, so you're definitely not shaving him. Lowering the curve has the highly-desirable side effect of enabling you to completely cut Expedition Map and Oblivion Sower, both of which are horrible cards in a midrange strategy. I am quite certain that doing this is correct. Ulamog is still OK as a get-out-of-jail-free kind of card, since you're naturally good at making the game go long, and then it becomes a nice Eye target that you can cast without the aid of Oblivion Sower. Ulamog got sided out a lot since I played a fair number of quick decks, and it's possible that he should be cut for another cheap interactive spell.
A few notes about nonconventional choices, for those of you who have not been following my ramblings: Sorin, Solemn Visitor was an experimental card today as a second Vault effect that isn't a land, and he was worth his weight in gold, singlehandedly winning me my quarterfinal match. I think he is a perfect one-of. Oblivion Ring was also great all day long, playing a key role in my win-and-in, but of course you must be mindful of the concentration of Abrupt Decay decks. I am tempted to run a second, but this is almost certainly a really dangerous and reckless idea. Disfigure was a metagame choice since the mid-Atlantic region is pretty heavy on little aggro decks, and it was serviceable but not fantastic. I can easily see these being some other removal option like Doom Blade or Dismember. Finally, 1 Urborg: why just one? Answer: Eye + Urborg doesn't matter as much since you're just trying to get to 5, not 6. You don't need Urborg to turn Eye into Workshop. Saving 1 mana is enough to reliably cast the 5 drops. It is just better to have a fourth basic since you often run out of Path/GQ targets with just 3.
Here are match descriptions, hopefully with minimal errors. Sorry if there are errors, since I'm reconstructing from my memory/notes, both of which are imperfect.
Round 1: 2-0 win versus 8-Rack
This is a relatively good matchup for Eldrazi just like it was for Jund. In game 1, he aggressively tried to mana screw me with turn 2 Smallpox, but I had a land-heavy draw and just naturally played out my threats a turn later than I would have otherwise. He drew the wrong mix of removal and discard and couldn't answer all of my threats, and with no board presence of his own, he just died. Oblivion Ring was helpful here to remove a pesky Ensnaring Bridge. In game 2, he mulled to 5 and again lacked enough interaction to meaningfully limit my threats.
Round 2: 2-0 win versus UWR Control
This is another decent matchup for Eldrazi. Game 1 I had a discard heavy draw that ultimately allowed me to play Thought-Knot into Blight Herder safely, which was enough to put the game away. In game 2, I led with an early discard spell into Lingering Souls into flashback Souls. One token drew a removal spell. A few turns later, I cast a Thought-Knot into his two-card hand, and he had land + Path. He Pathed the Seer with the discard trigger on the stack, and his draw was… Detention Sphere! That was lucky. The Souls ended up getting there.
Round 3: 2-0 win versus Naya Company
In game 1, he mulliganned to 6, kept on top, and led with land go. I turn 1 Thoughtseized a Collected Company, seeing two Loxodon Smiters, a Ghost Quarter, and a Path. I followed up with Relic, making sure to activate every turn to keep any potential Goyfs under control, and then he missed his third land drop. A Thought-Knot the following turn later saw that he drew two Goyfs off the top, so Relic was really good here. I took a Loxodon Smiter, and the follow up of Blight Herder was too powerful for his weak Goyfs to control. Post-sideboard, I had All is Dust in my opener and a bunch of Sol lands. He had an early Stony Silence, which was irrelevant to me since I just didn't have a Relic in the opener, and I played Wasteland Strangler. He followed up with Knight of the Reliquary, which quickly grew to 4/4, and I countered with Reality Smasher, which immediately got in for 5. The following turn, with mana open, I attacked with both Strangler and Smasher into his Knight, thinking I could Disfigure the Knight if it blocked the Strangler, but a Path on the Smasher resulted in a Loxodon Smiter being flashed into the battlefield. I let the Smiter eat the Strangler even though I had the Disfigure since I didn't want to two-for-one myself just for a vanilla 4/4. Post-combat, I played a Seer, which stripped a crucial Crumble to Dust from his hand. On his turn, he swung with both creatures, I didn't block, and then he dumped the rest of his hand onto the battlefield, playing a land and a Noble Hierarch. The followup All is Dust was a 4-for-1, leaving him with no non-land permanents and no cards in hand, effectively ending the game on the spot.
Round 4: Win 2-1 versus RG Tron
Game 1 I had the nuts, curving discard into multiple Seers. He got Tron online, but had nothing to cast since his eggs bricked. Game 2, I had Ghost Quarter + Surgical in my opener, and I got so excited when he played T1 Urza's Mine that I just went for it in my first turn. That set me behind quite a bit tempo-wise, and with a flurry of eggs and dig spells, he just curved out his fatties naturally, ending in an Ulamog decking me. Never, ever do that GQ+Surgical play on turn 1; it was awful, and I feel bad for having done that. I should have just waited until the last second so that I could set up some kind of board presence. In game 3, I had turn 2 TKS with Temple + Eye, but when I led with Temple, he GQ'd immediately, which set him behind on tempo, as he could only play an egg on his turn 2. I played T3 Thought-Knot off of Eye + two lands, which took a Karn, leaving two Wurmcoils, an Oblivion Stone, and lands. The following turn, I attacked with TKS to bring him to 16, played Urborg, and cast a post-combat Lingering Souls. He went digging with eggs a bit more and passed back. I then topdecked a Temple, and then cast Smasher the following turn to bring him to 5, and then played a post-combat Stony Silence to turn off Oblivion Stone and an Inquisition to rip Sylvan Scrying from his hand. That was a good turn. However, he topdecked the last Tron piece the following turn despite my efforts, and played Wurmcoil Engine in an attempt to stabilize. My follow-up of Oblivion Ring, however, cleared the way to victory. Sometimes you just have it all.
Round 5 and 6: ID, 8th seed.
Quarterfinals: Win 2-1 versus Merfolk
I kept a sketchy 2-lander game 1 on the draw, which got punished by double Spreading Seas. In game 2, I mulled a one-lander to 6 and bottomed a redundant fatty. Thankfully, he had a slow start with T2 Harbinger of the Tides as his first play, and I curved Flaying Tendrils into Thought-Knot (taking Master of Waves) into Reality Smasher. He countered with Kira, Merrow Reejerey, and Mutavault. I swung for 9 and he didn't block, taking him to 11. Then he slammed Master of Waves on his turn to make 4 2/1 Elementals. I topdecked a second Thought-Knot, cast it, and attacked with Smasher to bring him to 6, leaving behind two Ghost Quarters and two Thought-Knots. The following turn, he went for the alpha strike, which resulted in his Mutavault, Reejerey, and Master all dying (along with all the Elementals) for 10 damage, which wasn't enough to kill me – I am not sure what he was thinking here, perhaps he simply miscalculated, but this of course directly caused his defeat despite a valiant effort from a flashed in Harbinger of the Tides to buy a turn. In game 3, I was able to gum up the board with a bunch of Souls tokens, Thought-Knot, and a pair of unprocessed Blight Herders. He had Kira and a large collection of fish, and neither of us could really attack profitably into the other. Topdeck Sorin, however, completely broke the symmetry of the board, and his +1 directly led to the concession, as all his blocks were awful and I was going to gain more than 20 life.
Semifinals: Loss 0-2 versus Little Kid Abzan
I was again on the draw, and I had no plays before turn 3 in my hand. He went Hierarch, Smiter, Rhino, Rhino. Oh well. In game 2, he had Souls and Township online before I could go over him, and Township eventually ended up taking over the game. Sorin gave me a glimmer of hope here, but my deck was not providing any additional support, and I soon died to a horde of constantly-growing value creatures. I notably had almost no relevant sideboard cards for this matchup.
Overall, I would say the list felt great. I never wanted Oblivion Sower or Expedition Map, and I am likely never going to play either of those cards in this archetype ever again. As for improvements, Flaying Tendrils was kind of bad, and I keep going back and forth on whether or not Ulamog belongs, since his effect is really unique, but I think it's a solid 75, all things considered. I would happily run this back, with the aim of squeezing another card or two in the SB for “big wide decks” like Little Kid and Merfolk. Right now, I feel quite underprepared for those matchups, but I don't know what can be done about it. All the sweepers in these colors are horrible in various ways – this deck would kill for Toxic Deluge.
I'm glad someone else has been having success with a build that's tilting towards what I was trying to argue for a few pages back. I've had some nice results in testing playing super fair by cutting Oblivion Sower altogether. Oblivion Ring is a great idea, and helps us further the analogy between Jund/Abzan that I was trying to make before. It's like our Maelstrom Pulse and it doesn't suck now that Abrupt Decay is even worse than it used to be. For reference, what I've been running is:
My land base is still a lot safer and more conservative than most people's lists, and I'm kind of tired of arguing about that, so take it or leave it, but as far as the spells are concerned, here are a few observations I've had:
1) Turn 1 discard is still really important. You can't exactly treat TKS as counting towards your discard. TKS's effect is terrific, but you need enough early disruption in the first few turns of the game to survive, and TKS is sometimes too late. I don't like cutting these down to make room for Thought-Knot.
2) Spellskite into Thought-Knot is often extremely backbreaking. Spellskite is really well positioned now that Infect and Burn are on the uptick with Twin's demise, so I think it's right to maindeck these.
3) You just don't need Oblivion Sower or Expedition Map in this deck to get to Ulamog. This deck is so good at playing the fair midrange game even without Temple or Eye that you just reliably get to enough land drops + Blight Herder tokens to make Ulamog happen. I can't emphasize this enough given how bad Expedition Map is as a late game topdeck.
4) Blood Moon does not cripple this deck because everything is just inherently castable and I run 4 fetches. Spreading Seas on a Temple or Eye is far from impactful. I've won through triple Spreading Seas in testing.
I realy like Matter Reshaper in a deck like this one.
Someone mentioned before in this thread that a 3/2 that replaces himself when dies is just meh. And it is in a vaccum, but this deck just destroys the opponent if you survive the first turns (except against combo, wich includes tron) and MR is a great tool for that. You can play him proactively without worrying about losing value (unlike Strangler in an empty board) and you can chump block with him "gaining" some life and a card and posibly killing a creature. And unlike decks that try to race, a Path directed to him is a big new for us: is the same as a lightning bolt with us revealing a land with his ability and it means a Path less against our big dudes.
Matter Reshaper text is "When Matter Reshaper dies..." not when he leaves the battlefield. If Matter Reshaper gets exiled, he will not have his card drawing ability trigger.
He's saying that if it gets Pathed, it's kind of the same as it getting Bolted and revealing a land off of its trigger. Except of course, the land comes into play tapped in the first scenario.
I would consider Matter Reshaper as Stranglers 5-8 if you're going to play any copies. The processing trigger of Strangler is the #1 most useful thing that helps the most with "just surviving" so if you feel like you need more of that, I don't think it makes sense to cut Strangler for Reshaper.
Here is some theorycraft relevant to all the recent posts about the quality of various cards like Expedition Map, Oblivion Sower, and Shambling Vent. Basically, what I want to say is that the quality of these cards depends on how hard you're trying to midrange versus how hard you're trying to ramp.
To illustrate: people don't really like running Expedition Map because it's so tempo-negative, but they have to because otherwise it's too easy for their hand to get jammed with cards they can't cast. This is particularly bad for 6-drops like Oblivion Sower, because even with one sol land, you will very often miss your fifth land drop and thereby be unable to cast it.
Before Thought-Knot Seer was printed, trying to go "low enough" to get around this was hopeless because there just weren't enough cheap Eldrazi worth running, but I think now we can actually try. Just don't run Oblivion Sower or Reality Smasher. The curve ends at 4 Blight Herder, and everything else is cheaper. You can run an Ulamog as an Eye target because it's actually good as a random save-my-ass card, but otherwise, don't bother. The deck I've been testing with some success is
With this creature suite, you don't have to play Map because you can actually hope to play a fair, interactive game of Magic even if you fail to draw Eye of Ugin or Eldrazi Temple early on. This deck is completely giving up on the pre-OGW builds' total late game inevitability in exchange for extremely consistent, smooth games where you don't just die early on because you drew too many 5 and 6 drops. You can be more aggressive versus decks like Tron with the Reality Smasher in the sideboard.
Shambling Vent is key in this kind of setup because it's another cheap threat, and the fact that it helps with fixing our already-shaky mana makes it worth the poor rate. People who complain about the stats sucking aren't "midranging hard enough" - any random threat will finish the game once you've grinded your opponent out in the midgame. People forget that Jund never actually had to run 5/8's to close out games, and neither do we. Again, this idea is trading off late game inevitability for a more consistent and resilient early/midgame. Obviously, Vent will disappoint you if you're committed to Sower + Ulamog.
You still have to play at least 25 lands in this deck, and my decklist has 26. After all, even though you're running 7 Ancient Tomb, you're still trying to cast 5 drops off of natural land drops. BW Tokens runs 26, so it's not ridiculous or unheard of. Anyway, making land drops is itself awesome because you have stuff to do with your mana, even with your 6th and 7th land drops. Guaranteeing that you can just naturally Ulamog is sweet. Getting to flash back Lingering Souls alongside casting a freshly drawn Blight Herder is amazing. And so on.
Playing this ultra-fair midrange game is better than just playing Jund/Abzan, because your threat quality is so much better, and you still have the powerful nut draw of TKS into Herder which I'm sure everyone has enjoyed in testing. Also, no one is gunning for it yet, especially in paper. No one is going to give up sideboard space for a deck with literally zero IRL results in weeks 1 or 2 of the new format. Similarly, it is true that this just flat out loses every Eldrazi mirror but it's going to be a negligible part of the metagame early on. When/if Eldrazi becomes recognized as a "real deck", then this version of the deck will become bad.
This version of the deck might already be bad, who knows? But I've liked the consistency so far, and I suggest you at least test it!
Thats so false. As with any 3 color mana base, there is an opportunity cost of running more of your third color. While casting TKS on curve is nice, Id much rather have T1 IoK and T3 Souls in the dark. Those are just better cards in the vast majority of matchups. If I lose consistency with being able to cast some worse cards, fine, but Im not cutting consistency of casting the best cards in the deck and my entire sideboard in order to hit curved out smashers. Not worth it at all.
Caves of Koilos makes white mana and black mana and colorless mana, so cutting some other things for that makes you have more sources of everything, not fewer. You get to cast everything on time when you run a mana base like what I've proposed. Just count out the sources and compare against Karsten's table. The tradeoff is that it's a little more painful sometimes. But that's not the same as just being straight up unable to cast things.
Yeah, cutting purge when everyone is expecting tron is "unambiguously wrong."
I never said cutting Purge was obviously right, just that your mana was obviously bad.
We can have a separate discussion about Celestial Purge if you'd like: everyone knows Blood Moon is basically mediocre against Tron, so just because that's on the uptick doesn't mean everyone is rushing to Blood Moon as fast as they can. More to the point, what red decks exist now in the format that want to just jam Blood Moon? URx is basically garbage now, we slam Grishoalbrand regardless of whether or not they get to cast Bloom, Burn doesn't run them because they already destroy big mana, Naya Zoo itself has incredibly greedy mana, and Jund usually gets it sideboarded against them, so I doubt that they want it, especially now that Bloom is also gone. There just isn't a tier 1 deck that can run a pile of Blood Moons. Maybe Affinity, but they don't run it 100% of the time, and my board overloads on robots hate anyway.
Anyway, if you're going to get mad when people point out potential problems with your ideas, why even bother sharing them online?
Herder produces colorless and I run 4. Truly have never had an issue finding SOME colorless source, especially with maps. If I cut them, I may move to some caves, but I can't really see how those are any better than fetches and shocks.
They're better because they make all 3 "colors". Herder makes tokens, but only after you've missed your chance to cast TKS and/or Smasher on curve. Getting the sources right is really just a matter of probability and statistics, cf. Karsten's article that keeps getting posted, so it's pretty much umambiguously wrong to be running only 7 colorless lands with your decklist.
- My goodness, is Eldrazi Displacer bad. Basically was wishing it was anything else every time I drew it.
- What to play in the Displacer slot? In my version of the deck that eschews all the top end, I think Liliana of the Veil may be a consideration again, since once you get to 5, you're actually pretty OK throwing away lands. Activating Eye is just not that important here. I think I was wrong about this a few pages go. 1 would be a nice high-impact singleton, probably can't run more than 2 at most, and even that's probably also a bad idea just because BB is so hard.
- Still not feeling like I want more than 2 Reality Smasher, except maybe against Tron, but even then it could be a trap because Herder closes out nearly as fast (5+5+5 is very close to 7+7).
I find this version of the deck does much better versus Affinity and Burn than the version with Sowers and Maps. For one, neither Sower nor Map really helps you stabilize in the early turns, which is what really matters, and not running either in and of itself is helpful. Second, maindeck Disfigure is fantastic against both of them, which is actually why I was running them in the first place, as my meta was overrun with Burn and Affinity (although I ironically never faced it yesterday despite both these decks being everywhere in the room). Being able to double-up on removal in a single turn is a common path to victory since such a play buys so much tempo, and Disfigure does a great job enabling that. I would say both of these matchups are slightly to moderately unfavorable pre-board, and they become solidly favorable postboard, to the point that I think the matchup is close to even (for Burn) and slightly favorable (for Affinity). Versus Burn, it is hard to lose if you get to resolve even one Rest for the Weary with any kind of board presence to back it up. Versus Affinity, we have a ton of high-impact cards in the sideboard in addition to the 4 maindeck Souls, which are terrific. I like where this deck is positioned versus both of those.
But I should emphasize that outside of the sideboard, I've found that mulliganing rather aggressively versus these decks is crucial - i.e. don't keep hands without early interaction. If you don't have a way to interact in the first two turns, it is almost always a mulligan. Relic doesn't count. I think many people lose by keeping hands that would be perfectly fine against most decks, but are a half-turn to a full turn slow versus Burn/Affinity. This is all they need to kill you. In general, people aren't mulliganing enough - do it! The scry rule is awesome. I think that the new mulligan rule is so good that most players could probably even double their mulligan frequency and still not be overshooting the theoretical optimum by that much. In testing, I have won many games against Burn and Affinity (and other aggro decks, for that matter) on 5 or 6 cards.
As for Shambling Vent, I'm not married to it, but I could see it going one way or the other. I'm not sure yet. Sorin covers some of Shambling Vent's utility, but a card that gets to be both a land and a threat is uniquely powerful since it saves you slots in your deck. Without it, I worry the deck becomes a little threat-light. Vent also strains opposing Ghost Quarters, which is nice.
Karsten would say 11 is aggressive, but I thought it was sufficient, if just barely so. In an ideal world, I would like another source of <>, but I don't know how to squeeze it in, so I probably won't mess with it.
As for sweepers, EE and All is Dust are both good, and I would rather play Damnation than Flaying Tendrils' for sure. All the options have drawbacks, that's all. What the deck really wants is Anger of the Gods or Toxic Deluge - just some 3cmc thing that doesn't kill most of our own stuff.
2 Eye of Ugin
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Marsh Flats
2 Swamp
2 Plains
1 Godless Shrine
4 Caves of Koilos
2 Shambling Vent
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Vault of the Archangel
3 Wasteland Strangler
4 Lingering Souls
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Blight Herder
2 Reality Smasher
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
4 Path to Exile
2 Disfigure
1 Oblivion Ring
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
3 Rest for the Weary
3 Stony Silence
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Disenchant
1 All is Dust
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Spellskite
As I've mentioned before, I'd like to build BW Eldrazi in such a way that it can play a decent game of Magic even when it doesn't find Eye or Temple. That means playing a lower curve like I've done. I only run 2 Smasher because (a) he's just a dumb beater, you don't need too many, and (b) it's too hard on the mana running 8 5-drops. Herder is just way, way better than Smasher overall, so you're definitely not shaving him. Lowering the curve has the highly-desirable side effect of enabling you to completely cut Expedition Map and Oblivion Sower, both of which are horrible cards in a midrange strategy. I am quite certain that doing this is correct. Ulamog is still OK as a get-out-of-jail-free kind of card, since you're naturally good at making the game go long, and then it becomes a nice Eye target that you can cast without the aid of Oblivion Sower. Ulamog got sided out a lot since I played a fair number of quick decks, and it's possible that he should be cut for another cheap interactive spell.
A few notes about nonconventional choices, for those of you who have not been following my ramblings: Sorin, Solemn Visitor was an experimental card today as a second Vault effect that isn't a land, and he was worth his weight in gold, singlehandedly winning me my quarterfinal match. I think he is a perfect one-of. Oblivion Ring was also great all day long, playing a key role in my win-and-in, but of course you must be mindful of the concentration of Abrupt Decay decks. I am tempted to run a second, but this is almost certainly a really dangerous and reckless idea. Disfigure was a metagame choice since the mid-Atlantic region is pretty heavy on little aggro decks, and it was serviceable but not fantastic. I can easily see these being some other removal option like Doom Blade or Dismember. Finally, 1 Urborg: why just one? Answer: Eye + Urborg doesn't matter as much since you're just trying to get to 5, not 6. You don't need Urborg to turn Eye into Workshop. Saving 1 mana is enough to reliably cast the 5 drops. It is just better to have a fourth basic since you often run out of Path/GQ targets with just 3.
Here are match descriptions, hopefully with minimal errors. Sorry if there are errors, since I'm reconstructing from my memory/notes, both of which are imperfect.
Round 1: 2-0 win versus 8-Rack
This is a relatively good matchup for Eldrazi just like it was for Jund. In game 1, he aggressively tried to mana screw me with turn 2 Smallpox, but I had a land-heavy draw and just naturally played out my threats a turn later than I would have otherwise. He drew the wrong mix of removal and discard and couldn't answer all of my threats, and with no board presence of his own, he just died. Oblivion Ring was helpful here to remove a pesky Ensnaring Bridge. In game 2, he mulled to 5 and again lacked enough interaction to meaningfully limit my threats.
Round 2: 2-0 win versus UWR Control
This is another decent matchup for Eldrazi. Game 1 I had a discard heavy draw that ultimately allowed me to play Thought-Knot into Blight Herder safely, which was enough to put the game away. In game 2, I led with an early discard spell into Lingering Souls into flashback Souls. One token drew a removal spell. A few turns later, I cast a Thought-Knot into his two-card hand, and he had land + Path. He Pathed the Seer with the discard trigger on the stack, and his draw was… Detention Sphere! That was lucky. The Souls ended up getting there.
Round 3: 2-0 win versus Naya Company
In game 1, he mulliganned to 6, kept on top, and led with land go. I turn 1 Thoughtseized a Collected Company, seeing two Loxodon Smiters, a Ghost Quarter, and a Path. I followed up with Relic, making sure to activate every turn to keep any potential Goyfs under control, and then he missed his third land drop. A Thought-Knot the following turn later saw that he drew two Goyfs off the top, so Relic was really good here. I took a Loxodon Smiter, and the follow up of Blight Herder was too powerful for his weak Goyfs to control. Post-sideboard, I had All is Dust in my opener and a bunch of Sol lands. He had an early Stony Silence, which was irrelevant to me since I just didn't have a Relic in the opener, and I played Wasteland Strangler. He followed up with Knight of the Reliquary, which quickly grew to 4/4, and I countered with Reality Smasher, which immediately got in for 5. The following turn, with mana open, I attacked with both Strangler and Smasher into his Knight, thinking I could Disfigure the Knight if it blocked the Strangler, but a Path on the Smasher resulted in a Loxodon Smiter being flashed into the battlefield. I let the Smiter eat the Strangler even though I had the Disfigure since I didn't want to two-for-one myself just for a vanilla 4/4. Post-combat, I played a Seer, which stripped a crucial Crumble to Dust from his hand. On his turn, he swung with both creatures, I didn't block, and then he dumped the rest of his hand onto the battlefield, playing a land and a Noble Hierarch. The followup All is Dust was a 4-for-1, leaving him with no non-land permanents and no cards in hand, effectively ending the game on the spot.
Round 4: Win 2-1 versus RG Tron
Game 1 I had the nuts, curving discard into multiple Seers. He got Tron online, but had nothing to cast since his eggs bricked. Game 2, I had Ghost Quarter + Surgical in my opener, and I got so excited when he played T1 Urza's Mine that I just went for it in my first turn. That set me behind quite a bit tempo-wise, and with a flurry of eggs and dig spells, he just curved out his fatties naturally, ending in an Ulamog decking me. Never, ever do that GQ+Surgical play on turn 1; it was awful, and I feel bad for having done that. I should have just waited until the last second so that I could set up some kind of board presence. In game 3, I had turn 2 TKS with Temple + Eye, but when I led with Temple, he GQ'd immediately, which set him behind on tempo, as he could only play an egg on his turn 2. I played T3 Thought-Knot off of Eye + two lands, which took a Karn, leaving two Wurmcoils, an Oblivion Stone, and lands. The following turn, I attacked with TKS to bring him to 16, played Urborg, and cast a post-combat Lingering Souls. He went digging with eggs a bit more and passed back. I then topdecked a Temple, and then cast Smasher the following turn to bring him to 5, and then played a post-combat Stony Silence to turn off Oblivion Stone and an Inquisition to rip Sylvan Scrying from his hand. That was a good turn. However, he topdecked the last Tron piece the following turn despite my efforts, and played Wurmcoil Engine in an attempt to stabilize. My follow-up of Oblivion Ring, however, cleared the way to victory. Sometimes you just have it all.
Round 5 and 6: ID, 8th seed.
Quarterfinals: Win 2-1 versus Merfolk
I kept a sketchy 2-lander game 1 on the draw, which got punished by double Spreading Seas. In game 2, I mulled a one-lander to 6 and bottomed a redundant fatty. Thankfully, he had a slow start with T2 Harbinger of the Tides as his first play, and I curved Flaying Tendrils into Thought-Knot (taking Master of Waves) into Reality Smasher. He countered with Kira, Merrow Reejerey, and Mutavault. I swung for 9 and he didn't block, taking him to 11. Then he slammed Master of Waves on his turn to make 4 2/1 Elementals. I topdecked a second Thought-Knot, cast it, and attacked with Smasher to bring him to 6, leaving behind two Ghost Quarters and two Thought-Knots. The following turn, he went for the alpha strike, which resulted in his Mutavault, Reejerey, and Master all dying (along with all the Elementals) for 10 damage, which wasn't enough to kill me – I am not sure what he was thinking here, perhaps he simply miscalculated, but this of course directly caused his defeat despite a valiant effort from a flashed in Harbinger of the Tides to buy a turn. In game 3, I was able to gum up the board with a bunch of Souls tokens, Thought-Knot, and a pair of unprocessed Blight Herders. He had Kira and a large collection of fish, and neither of us could really attack profitably into the other. Topdeck Sorin, however, completely broke the symmetry of the board, and his +1 directly led to the concession, as all his blocks were awful and I was going to gain more than 20 life.
Semifinals: Loss 0-2 versus Little Kid Abzan
I was again on the draw, and I had no plays before turn 3 in my hand. He went Hierarch, Smiter, Rhino, Rhino. Oh well. In game 2, he had Souls and Township online before I could go over him, and Township eventually ended up taking over the game. Sorin gave me a glimmer of hope here, but my deck was not providing any additional support, and I soon died to a horde of constantly-growing value creatures. I notably had almost no relevant sideboard cards for this matchup.
Overall, I would say the list felt great. I never wanted Oblivion Sower or Expedition Map, and I am likely never going to play either of those cards in this archetype ever again. As for improvements, Flaying Tendrils was kind of bad, and I keep going back and forth on whether or not Ulamog belongs, since his effect is really unique, but I think it's a solid 75, all things considered. I would happily run this back, with the aim of squeezing another card or two in the SB for “big wide decks” like Little Kid and Merfolk. Right now, I feel quite underprepared for those matchups, but I don't know what can be done about it. All the sweepers in these colors are horrible in various ways – this deck would kill for Toxic Deluge.
Thanks for reading!
I'm glad someone else has been having success with a build that's tilting towards what I was trying to argue for a few pages back. I've had some nice results in testing playing super fair by cutting Oblivion Sower altogether. Oblivion Ring is a great idea, and helps us further the analogy between Jund/Abzan that I was trying to make before. It's like our Maelstrom Pulse and it doesn't suck now that Abrupt Decay is even worse than it used to be. For reference, what I've been running is:
4 Eldrazi Temple
2 Eye of Ugin
2 Urborg, Tomb to Yawgmoth
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Marsh Flats
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Godless Shrine
2 Shambling Vent
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Vault of the Archangel
Creatures (19)
4 Lingering Souls
4 Wasteland Strangler
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Blight Herder
2 Spellskite
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
4 Relic of Progenitus
4 Path to Exile
2 Disfigure
1 Oblivion Ring
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Stony Silence
2 Reality Smasher
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Disenchant
1 Damnation
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ghost Quarter
My land base is still a lot safer and more conservative than most people's lists, and I'm kind of tired of arguing about that, so take it or leave it, but as far as the spells are concerned, here are a few observations I've had:
1) Turn 1 discard is still really important. You can't exactly treat TKS as counting towards your discard. TKS's effect is terrific, but you need enough early disruption in the first few turns of the game to survive, and TKS is sometimes too late. I don't like cutting these down to make room for Thought-Knot.
2) Spellskite into Thought-Knot is often extremely backbreaking. Spellskite is really well positioned now that Infect and Burn are on the uptick with Twin's demise, so I think it's right to maindeck these.
3) You just don't need Oblivion Sower or Expedition Map in this deck to get to Ulamog. This deck is so good at playing the fair midrange game even without Temple or Eye that you just reliably get to enough land drops + Blight Herder tokens to make Ulamog happen. I can't emphasize this enough given how bad Expedition Map is as a late game topdeck.
4) Blood Moon does not cripple this deck because everything is just inherently castable and I run 4 fetches. Spreading Seas on a Temple or Eye is far from impactful. I've won through triple Spreading Seas in testing.
I would consider Matter Reshaper as Stranglers 5-8 if you're going to play any copies. The processing trigger of Strangler is the #1 most useful thing that helps the most with "just surviving" so if you feel like you need more of that, I don't think it makes sense to cut Strangler for Reshaper.
To illustrate: people don't really like running Expedition Map because it's so tempo-negative, but they have to because otherwise it's too easy for their hand to get jammed with cards they can't cast. This is particularly bad for 6-drops like Oblivion Sower, because even with one sol land, you will very often miss your fifth land drop and thereby be unable to cast it.
Before Thought-Knot Seer was printed, trying to go "low enough" to get around this was hopeless because there just weren't enough cheap Eldrazi worth running, but I think now we can actually try. Just don't run Oblivion Sower or Reality Smasher. The curve ends at 4 Blight Herder, and everything else is cheaper. You can run an Ulamog as an Eye target because it's actually good as a random save-my-ass card, but otherwise, don't bother. The deck I've been testing with some success is
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Eye of Ugin
2 Urborg, Tomb to Yawgmoth
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Marsh Flats
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Godless Shrine
2 Shambling Vent
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Vault of the Archangel
Creatures (19)
4 Lingering Souls
4 Wasteland Strangler
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Blight Herder
2 Spellskite
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
4 Relic of Progenitus
4 Path to Exile
2 Disfigure
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Stony Silence
2 Reality Smasher
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Disenchant
1 Damnation
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ghost Quarter
With this creature suite, you don't have to play Map because you can actually hope to play a fair, interactive game of Magic even if you fail to draw Eye of Ugin or Eldrazi Temple early on. This deck is completely giving up on the pre-OGW builds' total late game inevitability in exchange for extremely consistent, smooth games where you don't just die early on because you drew too many 5 and 6 drops. You can be more aggressive versus decks like Tron with the Reality Smasher in the sideboard.
Shambling Vent is key in this kind of setup because it's another cheap threat, and the fact that it helps with fixing our already-shaky mana makes it worth the poor rate. People who complain about the stats sucking aren't "midranging hard enough" - any random threat will finish the game once you've grinded your opponent out in the midgame. People forget that Jund never actually had to run 5/8's to close out games, and neither do we. Again, this idea is trading off late game inevitability for a more consistent and resilient early/midgame. Obviously, Vent will disappoint you if you're committed to Sower + Ulamog.
You still have to play at least 25 lands in this deck, and my decklist has 26. After all, even though you're running 7 Ancient Tomb, you're still trying to cast 5 drops off of natural land drops. BW Tokens runs 26, so it's not ridiculous or unheard of. Anyway, making land drops is itself awesome because you have stuff to do with your mana, even with your 6th and 7th land drops. Guaranteeing that you can just naturally Ulamog is sweet. Getting to flash back Lingering Souls alongside casting a freshly drawn Blight Herder is amazing. And so on.
Playing this ultra-fair midrange game is better than just playing Jund/Abzan, because your threat quality is so much better, and you still have the powerful nut draw of TKS into Herder which I'm sure everyone has enjoyed in testing. Also, no one is gunning for it yet, especially in paper. No one is going to give up sideboard space for a deck with literally zero IRL results in weeks 1 or 2 of the new format. Similarly, it is true that this just flat out loses every Eldrazi mirror but it's going to be a negligible part of the metagame early on. When/if Eldrazi becomes recognized as a "real deck", then this version of the deck will become bad.
This version of the deck might already be bad, who knows? But I've liked the consistency so far, and I suggest you at least test it!
Caves of Koilos makes white mana and black mana and colorless mana, so cutting some other things for that makes you have more sources of everything, not fewer. You get to cast everything on time when you run a mana base like what I've proposed. Just count out the sources and compare against Karsten's table. The tradeoff is that it's a little more painful sometimes. But that's not the same as just being straight up unable to cast things.
I never said cutting Purge was obviously right, just that your mana was obviously bad.
We can have a separate discussion about Celestial Purge if you'd like: everyone knows Blood Moon is basically mediocre against Tron, so just because that's on the uptick doesn't mean everyone is rushing to Blood Moon as fast as they can. More to the point, what red decks exist now in the format that want to just jam Blood Moon? URx is basically garbage now, we slam Grishoalbrand regardless of whether or not they get to cast Bloom, Burn doesn't run them because they already destroy big mana, Naya Zoo itself has incredibly greedy mana, and Jund usually gets it sideboarded against them, so I doubt that they want it, especially now that Bloom is also gone. There just isn't a tier 1 deck that can run a pile of Blood Moons. Maybe Affinity, but they don't run it 100% of the time, and my board overloads on robots hate anyway.
Anyway, if you're going to get mad when people point out potential problems with your ideas, why even bother sharing them online?