This card is actually pretty darn good. It's a 5/5 for 4 which will be pretty good imo in an environment where the top end for most decks stops at zealous conscripts/thundermaw hellkite/thragtusk instead of titans (yeah, tusk is good against this card, but then this flashes back and just gets your other guy over the 3/3). The real reason why this card is good is because you don't need to build around it for it to be useful, it will either serve as a 5/5 beater which is decent but unexciting or it will pump a guy for +5/+5, which is also fine. However, even that doesn't sound too good, but the fact that this card has play to it makes up for its slight clunkiness, since it will be good in just about any late-game situation and will always have "play" to it and just give you more options.
Jeez, that's the oldest trick in the book that you fell for. "Oh, whoops, I didn't realize you had this block available... :(" is overused and when people say that to me I'm less inclined to block because it's pretty obvious he said that for a reason. Now, Patrick Chapin's "all my legal targets gain fear" is closer to the verbal trickery that the OP seems to be talking about, but that's still clearly ok, both morally and legally.
I still have problems with board states of 6 or more creatures, but I am still improving.
If you don't like board states with a lot of creatures in play, try playing more limited. It's one thing to draft an insane deck and beat the crap out of everybody, but for me the most rewarding drafts are the ones where you manage to 3-0 simply by dropping creature after creature and using your combat tricks more effectively than your opponents. But yeah, limited really teaches you when and where to race, pass with no attacks, double block their fatty, or bluff the combat trick or removal spell you don't have.
As for the topic of this thread, I've basically played everything at this point. My experience in the combo department is not the most extensive, I guess, but that's mostly because I know there will be certain games I will lose that are completely out of my control, and these games occur more frequently when playing combo than any other archetype. I suppose I'm best at playing control (and limited) since those are the decks that tend to interact the most with their opponents, but I'm also perfectly comfortable jamming goblin guides down my opponent's throat.
Hm, well a large portion of the power of baneslayer, oona, and demon (although demon is significantly weaker than the other two imo) comes from the fact that they do not lock you into a single strategy. They are excellent in midrange and control decks, fine as reanimator targets if your cube supports that, and good in ramp decks. Heck, I've even played baneslayer in an aggro deck before! (So many good red and black aggro cards came through me in pack 2 in that draft, but I already had the soltari bros and spectral procession at that point so I wanted to stay nearly mono-white, plus I didn't have any geddons so I could hit 5 more easily.)
Wolfir Silverheart, on the other hand, is not too great in control, ramp, or reanimator, and not always what midrange wants. He is a 5-drop that is very good at dealing damage in an aggressive midrange deck, but he's not the best in a hardcore aggro deck with a low curve, and he's not too great either in a midrange deck because he doesn't help you too much against aggro (too slow, not enough of an impact) or against control (again, kind of slow, no guarantee that you'll be able to bond easily, pretty easily answered) unless you've already shredded their hand with discard or something. Essentially, he forces you to play a large number of creatures and a large number of mana sources, which is what severely limits his power.
He will probably be amazing against midrange or controlling red decks because they will have few ways to deal with and 8/8 in addition to another huge creature. However, he does need a fairly specific deck in order to work ideally (cheap creatures that you want to attack with but not the 1-drop special since you also need 5 mana sources), which is why he will become more of a niche card than a staple, in my opinion.
Primeval Titan + valakut would not be the problem in modern. I would be far more concerned about valakut and Scapeshift, Prismatic Omen or no. I don't think it would be anything the format wouldn't be able to adapt to and deal with, but it would just force decks to be built differently and it would probably be too strong and too consistent for WOTC's tastes.
Basically, just resolve curse of Misfortunes, then ride it to victory. To me, the 5 mana is actually pretty low considering the effect it would have on the battlefield. Drop it then next turn, you get a free ride to victory depending on your opponent..
Playing control? Tutor up Curse of Echoes, they can no longer counter your spells essentially, and any time they play a draw spell, you get to draw as well.
Playing aggro // Weenie? Tutor up Curse of death's hold. Then when you need to go in for the kill, Grab Curse of Thirst followed by a Curse of Bloodletting. It's not particularly fast, but it doesn't really matter since you should already have complete control of the game at that point, and there really isn't a lot an opponent would be able to do about it either, unless they were playing maindeck enchantment hate.
Yeah, this card is basically enduring ideal on a curse. However, echoes, misfortune, thirst, and death's hold are the only real curses, so basically all you're finding is an answer to 1/1s, a way to maybe copy a spell or two, and a super slow win-con -- you can't just get solitary confinement into form of the dragon and win. Now, this does "only" cost 5 mana to drop, as opposed to 7, so it's got that going for it, and it gives ub an answer to moorland haunt as well as a million copies of inkmoth nexus that's not dead in other places, so that's nice as well, but it seems kind of slow for its effect.
Basically, if there was an abyss (in curse form) this deck would be absolutely sick, but unfortunately there isn't, so the deck is probably close to trash than treasure for a while.
The fact that you aren't forced to play horrible cards like you are in every other format because of the large cardpool, so basically the power inherent in the format.
Figure of destiny? If you're willing to reconfigure your manabase a little (I'd cut the breeding pool (probably for another sacred foundry) if you add figures, although you should probably be doing that anyway if you're going to play bushwhacker). Elvish hexhunter is a sideboard option (although I don't think it's a very good one) and burrenton forge-tender is actually a pretty good board choice if you're expecting a lot of mono-red or firespout control in the meta.
You have to shuffle your library when Em hits the yard. So you'll only have a 16/16.
No, you can retain priority with the emrakul trigger on the stack and activate the mindshrieker again, so you'll have a 31/31 flier. I'm not saying it's a good combo, but it does work. Getting BBE --> matchup specific card --> witness seems pretty good, but kind of slow. The biggest strike against the card imo is the fact that it's a nonbo with fetchlands, so you have to heavily adjust your manabase to compensate for that, meaning that it doesn't really go into knight of the reliquary decks, which is probably just a better GW 3-drop in the first place.
Really? Every time I played it at the prerelease it was awesome and either killed their big threat or swung the race in my favor just enough for me to get there. Then again, I guess that the lifegain was especially relevant in a durdley green deck like mine (I was really low on fliers and so ended up winning a lot of games by just racing their team with 7/7s) and I did have geistflame, corpse lunge, and some other removal that was better at clearing out small creatures. This card seems like you want to play it in either a very controlling deck with a lot of two-for-ones like geistflame, rolling temblor, and think twice so you can use it as real removal once you've trading evenly on their other creatures, or you will want to play it in your aggressive deck since that way you can just use it on their first creature to keep getting in there (especially since many of the token makers don't come online until the midgame), and if it happens to kill something bigger, well, mise I guess. Also do note its anti-synergy with the white pacifism/tapper that only get non-humans, since this can potentially allow them to sacrifice their only non-human (in the case of the tapper) on enchanted creature (in the case of the pacifism). It's kind of hard to play around in a lot of situations if you don't have many ways to make tokens (since killing an attacker or blocker and gaining life to boot can be a huge swing, as I found out), and it is an uncommon, so it will just win games from time to time because not many players will even think to play around it. I'm not saying I would first pick it out of a good pack, but it is really good both with and against aggressive draws.
Mulch was pretty sweet for me, but I guess I was playing 3 colors with a geistflame, 2 harvest pyre, a corpse lunge, a sever the bloodline, a kessig wolf run, and a kessig cagebreakers. They let me cheat a bit on land in my 3 color deck while preventing werewolves from flipping and turning on all these graveyard-based cards. One card that was surprisingly underwhelming were the morbid spiders I was playing (I had 2 of them). They were good if you were the beatdown and your opponent wanted to aggressively trade creatures, but in general the morbid creatures are kind of weak when you're on the back foot, especially since a 2/4 spider is kind of underwhelming when your opponent has any kind of equipment in play.
Actually, I do all three. I've played the exact 75 of a list that did well recently at a large tournament, I've tweaked a deck I know well over the course of several months, I've moved chairs on the deck of the titanic, and I've also brewed stuff completely from scratch. I don't really think it's correct to pigeonhole people into builders/tweakers/netdeckers, since many of the strategies involved in each of them can be applied to other ones as well. For example, sometimes you know just what the hole in the legacy metagame is -- nobody is playing enough spot removal (this is just an example, don't troll me, etc etc). However, you've brewed some lists and they just aren't as effective as a stock zoo or maverick deck. Therefore, you play zoo or maverick that weekend. Yes you netdecked, but you didn't just mindlessly copy the first 75 that appeared on your computer screen after a quick trip to googleland. At other times, sometimes you will "netdeck" a sideboard plan for your sweet new combo deck (such as transforming into show and tell for games two and three) that you saw while looking at the reanimator thread on this site. Just because you're playing a homebrew or a netdeck doesn't necessarily mean that you chose to do so without considering other factors -- sometimes you brew a ton and you realize that nothing can get an overall favorable matchup against UB control, so since the tournament is in two days you decide to just find a list that did well recently and play it yourself. Sure, it's interesting to know how many people do each of the things described in the OP, but what I find is more important to one's success and growth as a player is learning why you would do each of these, and understanding the reasoning behind each of the cards you're playing instead of justsaying "well LSV is playing it so it must be good" or "duress is supposed to help my combo matchup" or "my friend told me it was his super secret tech" or "it's been in all the winning daily lists so you've just gotta play it."
So your argument is "for an already positive matchup, we should run a worse card"
The situations where you get a relevant two-for-one aren't going to show up as much as you would think.
You're going to be able to cast Ice a lot too, even with just diamonds.
Yeah, that's basically my argument. I know we should already crush merfolk (and I do), but that doesn't necessarily mean that having more cards that are good against them is a bad thing. I know that you won't get 2-for-1s very often with the card, and mostly it'll just be better against merfolk or maybe shoot my opponent for an extra damage or two, but I also think the situations where you'll want to play ice and have the mana to do so will come up as often as you think. Honestly I don't think the NO RUG matchup is bad enough to justify running either card, since I prefer things like choke that have application in a greater variety of matchups, but I think that if I did want an effect like that I'd go for arc trail.
Sure, I guess you can play ice off moxen and birds, and it is an instant, but I still think arc trail is better in this deck (if we played blue cards and force, then it would be a completely different ballgame) because of the potential to kill a lord + silvergill adept/cursecatcher, tidehollow sculler/mirran crusader/stoneforge mystic + bob/faerie token, mystic + vendilion clique, etc. Most of these situations aren't all that common, but the potential to completely blow out a merfolk player seems huge. I remember one time when a friend and I got bored of testing extended matchups (yes, it was new extended...) and just ran jund against merfolk, where you basically hoped to draw all 3 arc trails so one would resolve. I know it's not quality testing or anything, but I was just trying to point out that arc trail seems increasingly sweet in a metagame where one of the most popular decks plays 1/2s and 3/1s and another one plays 2/2s that make your 2/1s bigger.
If you don't like board states with a lot of creatures in play, try playing more limited. It's one thing to draft an insane deck and beat the crap out of everybody, but for me the most rewarding drafts are the ones where you manage to 3-0 simply by dropping creature after creature and using your combat tricks more effectively than your opponents. But yeah, limited really teaches you when and where to race, pass with no attacks, double block their fatty, or bluff the combat trick or removal spell you don't have.
As for the topic of this thread, I've basically played everything at this point. My experience in the combo department is not the most extensive, I guess, but that's mostly because I know there will be certain games I will lose that are completely out of my control, and these games occur more frequently when playing combo than any other archetype. I suppose I'm best at playing control (and limited) since those are the decks that tend to interact the most with their opponents, but I'm also perfectly comfortable jamming goblin guides down my opponent's throat.
Wolfir Silverheart, on the other hand, is not too great in control, ramp, or reanimator, and not always what midrange wants. He is a 5-drop that is very good at dealing damage in an aggressive midrange deck, but he's not the best in a hardcore aggro deck with a low curve, and he's not too great either in a midrange deck because he doesn't help you too much against aggro (too slow, not enough of an impact) or against control (again, kind of slow, no guarantee that you'll be able to bond easily, pretty easily answered) unless you've already shredded their hand with discard or something. Essentially, he forces you to play a large number of creatures and a large number of mana sources, which is what severely limits his power.
He will probably be amazing against midrange or controlling red decks because they will have few ways to deal with and 8/8 in addition to another huge creature. However, he does need a fairly specific deck in order to work ideally (cheap creatures that you want to attack with but not the 1-drop special since you also need 5 mana sources), which is why he will become more of a niche card than a staple, in my opinion.
Yeah, this card is basically enduring ideal on a curse. However, echoes, misfortune, thirst, and death's hold are the only real curses, so basically all you're finding is an answer to 1/1s, a way to maybe copy a spell or two, and a super slow win-con -- you can't just get solitary confinement into form of the dragon and win. Now, this does "only" cost 5 mana to drop, as opposed to 7, so it's got that going for it, and it gives ub an answer to moorland haunt as well as a million copies of inkmoth nexus that's not dead in other places, so that's nice as well, but it seems kind of slow for its effect.
Basically, if there was an abyss (in curse form) this deck would be absolutely sick, but unfortunately there isn't, so the deck is probably close to trash than treasure for a while.
Lightning Bolt, duh.
Time Walk. Need I say more?
No, you can retain priority with the emrakul trigger on the stack and activate the mindshrieker again, so you'll have a 31/31 flier. I'm not saying it's a good combo, but it does work. Getting BBE --> matchup specific card --> witness seems pretty good, but kind of slow. The biggest strike against the card imo is the fact that it's a nonbo with fetchlands, so you have to heavily adjust your manabase to compensate for that, meaning that it doesn't really go into knight of the reliquary decks, which is probably just a better GW 3-drop in the first place.
Yeah, that's basically my argument. I know we should already crush merfolk (and I do), but that doesn't necessarily mean that having more cards that are good against them is a bad thing. I know that you won't get 2-for-1s very often with the card, and mostly it'll just be better against merfolk or maybe shoot my opponent for an extra damage or two, but I also think the situations where you'll want to play ice and have the mana to do so will come up as often as you think. Honestly I don't think the NO RUG matchup is bad enough to justify running either card, since I prefer things like choke that have application in a greater variety of matchups, but I think that if I did want an effect like that I'd go for arc trail.