You don't need to be that scared of Blood Moon; multiple mana dorks + playing and activating Pod for colourless makes Blood Moon not as strong as it could be against Pod compared to other greedy 3-colour decks. Just a Disenchant effect and maybe an extra Redcap for the Skred Red guy should be good, maybe Burrenton Forge-Tender also. Adding cards you can't reasonably cast otherwise is going way too deep.
You do, however, need some kind of card advantage/selection/something, especially with having the Melira combo and not Archangel. Just the four Pods is too little with so many 1-ofs. Pull some of the less-good creatures (which for Pod includes non-CA-generating Tarmogoyf) for Chords, or switch some of the removal out for Abzan Charm; without that you'll die to inconsistency too often, and that's the worst.
Other than that, seems like a pretty decent start to get a feel for the deck. I think starting like this is the best way to go, because then you get better practical knowledge of what works and what doesn't and what to change to fit you better, rather than taking a 'winning' list and beat your head against it until you've learned how to play it properly, at which time the deck will likely have evolved a little and technology updated.
What do you think about the Theros guy that grants hexproof as an alternative to Leyline, Aegis of the Gods I think it is? Burn can deal with him but they still use a bolt to do so which is often times good enough. 8 Rack struggles a bit more. I've played True Believer as a budget Leyline in the past (but not in Pod), and it worked ok.
I think Aegis looks really solid against 8Rack - very similar to Kataki against Affinity or Thalia against Storm, in that you need it early but it throws up such a big roadblock that unless its dealt with right away you can usually win - and if you had it in your sideboard, you'd probably also put it in against Burn. But I've never had the chance to play against 8Rack, and from what I understand it doesn't have all that many people playing it; don't know why, it looks like a pretty strong deck. Probably has something to do with how it wrecks aggro, and the Modern metagame as a whole has already done that.
There's two reasons you don't see Leylines in the sideboard all that much. The first is that, for them to be effective (ie. to do stuff against discard and burn), you need all four of them, and that takes up a lot of room. The other, that compounds the first reason, is that there's no match-up that Leyline of Sanctity can improve where no other card can. It hurts Burn, but so does chaining Kitchen Finks into Restoration Angel/Siege Rhino. It stops Liliana from making you sac important guys, but so does having mana dorks. It's not so great against the combo decks, because they tend to side in some form of bounce or Disenchant to deal with hate permanents, but the generic answers Pod already runs - Thoughtseize and Abrupt Decay - tend to work pretty well.
They're all pretty horrible, unless you like lots of Grey Ogres and Fugitive Wizards.
Master of the Hunt and Nature's Blessing aren't too awful, but you've gotta kinda jump through some hoops to get much out of them. They're a bit better than the standard overcosted creature, though.
The art was so much stranger in the 2000s. Lorwyn and Kamigawa both have completely bizarre creatures that are unlike anything you'd see in a fantasy game. I don't think MTG should return to that, necessarily.
That's only because most fantasy games take their inspiration from Tolkien and not Celtic or Japanese mythology, respectively.
It's worth noting that emblems and tokens have a rarity system too, based on the lowest rarity of card that requires the emblem/token. Since all emblems come from planeswalkers, they're 'mythic' in the token slot, and don't get opened all that often compared to, say, goblin or soldier tokens, which are 'common' and in many expansions.
Hello guys. I have an angel version of pod and lately I've been having problems with delver. I just cannot stop delver/swiftspear turn one. All my spells are countered after turn one and it's really a miracle when I can resolve Finks or pod turn three. And with all fetches/shocklands/thoughtseizes I have a really low hp pool to work with. After game one I side out thoughtseizes for Lingering souls. Also, I side in Thrun and second pontiff. And still, I cannot do much against damage and counters they putting on me.
More Abrupt Decay should solve this problem. Max out on them if you have to, it's not like it's a bad card in other matchups. Trim out the higher parts of your curve (perhaps instead of the discard - this can keep them off early counters and, more importantly, their ability to refill their hand with Treasure Cruise) and bring in cheap hatebears in addition to Souls, and try to force them to have multiple counters at once for your threats. They can't stop everything, so if you can manage to stick any 2-for-1 creature or Thrun, you stand a good chance of getting stable.
I am interested in buying into this deck as my start into modern. Do you think that's a good choice? What kind of deck list do you guys think is a good choice at the moment, could you give me a link? All help is appreciated!
EDIT: Are there any videos you know of, that explain the deck and display some gameplay?
It's a good deck in that it's one of the best in the format, and its flexibility and adaptability means it will likely remain that way. But it's not a cheap buy-in - not as rough as Jund, but up there - and there is a long period of learning all the things the deck can do. Pod has more variety of cards than any other deck in Modern (Gifts-based decks come close, but many of their 1-ofs are essentially functional reprints of each other) and you need to have a pretty good memory for remembering all of the fiddly interactions with Spellskite and exactly how haunt works and...
If you're willing to stick with it, though, Pod is a solid choice. There's not really a "best list", which is both a plus and a minus, as you can tailor much of the deck to fit your meta and playstyle, but there is a pretty well-accepted core of how to build things (23~ lands, 8~ mana dorks, 4 Pods, 2-3 Chords, a good curve of value creatures, discard/spot removal main if there's room). Right now the wise thing in general seems like it would be not cutting extra Kitchen Finks and trying out Siege Rhino because of how insanely popular Burn is, and having Ethersworn Canonist ready in case of the new fancy Jeskai Ascendancy deck.
I think the Modern meta as a whole is prime for a fatty with trample to come rolling over all those Snapcasters and spirit tokens and whatever other junk gets in the way while shrugging off Lightning Bolt and Abrupt Decay. The real question is if Pod is willing to give up a space for what's essentially a really big Kitchen Finks. If your local meta is full of Burn (and I imagine a lot of them could be, and I'm to understand that there's almost nothing but Burn on MTGO sometimes) then I could see Siege Rhino crowding out a couple of the more specialised 4-drops.
Anafenza seems way too narrow, though. We already have real graveyard hate cards; it's not like Scavenging Ooze is small if it's doing its job.
Thank you very much for your suggestions! Though I do have a couple questions once again;
Since I suggested the thing about dropping Ranger, I should clarify: I meant if you shifted to the Angel combo, you could also not run Ranger of Eos. Melira still benefits significantly, since if you have a Finks/Redcap and a Pod out, Ranger gets you Viscera Seer and a dork to Pod into Melira. Fetching mana dorks to upgrade them into Voices ~ Finks ~ etc. is okay but there's a lot of excellent 4-drops that provide more immediate impact once they hit the board; without the option to get double Hierarch or as the stepping stone to finish your combo Ranger of Eos doesn't look as good as, say, Siege Rhino or Phyrexian Metamorph or [your favourite 4-drop here].
If you see so much Infect, have a second Orzhov Pontiff in your sideboard instead. They have to either waste their pump spells to keep their creatures (good) or let their team die (also good), and they can't use Apostle's Blessing like they can against targeted removal.
It's one option to drop the Melira combo and add Chords; you could also take out the Angel pieces for them. I'm a big proponent for Chord of Calling, so my list ends up being extremely creature-heavy with more variety in the CMC 2 and 3 slots; you can go in the completely opposite direction, but then you're running more creatures that are good in a wider variety of circumstances (ie. no Wall of Roots, Qasali Pridemage over Reclamation Sage, etc.) and less pinpoint answers. Whatever way you configure your non-creature spells, though, it's very important to change your creatures to match; small alterations in a deck with such a deep toolbox have big effects. I'd suggest playing with what you have/settle on before making any real major changes, that way you can get a feel of what direction suits your playstyle best.
It's kinda win-more-ish, and awkward in the Pod chain. If it gave you a card when it died too, maybe, but Pod's already been able to run guys like Elvish Visionary and Wall of Omens forever and it hasn't.
There are a couple things I am unable to get right away such as zendikar fetches, noble Hierarchs, and a spellskite, however in my non-experienced mind it looks like it will perform pretty well. Is there something I'm missing or not seeing though? How can I make it slightly better?
I don't think Fetid Heath is necessary. I think it would be better as a Wooded Bastion (is that the G/W filter?). Gut feeling, but I see more awkward g/w costs than b/w ones, and Urborg. But that's all irrelevant, as it will probably become a Verdant Catacombs somewhere down the line.
Knight of the Reliquary is just a big vanilla without utility lands beyond Township, and you don't even really have the fetches to make her that. Free slot in your sideboard here. You'll never need to bring in the second Melira, either. There's minimal value to running both combos; you could drop the Melira part and Ranger of Eos (unimpressive without Hierarchs) and put the Thoughtseizes main/make room for more Chords.
Also, more Chords. The M15 ones are wicked cheap compared to what they were. Without Spellskite as protection, being able to sneak in combo pieces at the end of your opponent's turn becomes even more critical. I know people are down on Chord a little, especially the Angel Pod players who have a harder time using it for their combo pieces, but it's awesome to get those early hatebears and you can always find a spot to annoy permission control players by threatening to untap with an extra Voice or Finks on your side. This more than anything else is where you'll feel the difference between a refined and unrefined list, especially when you don't have a Birthing Pod in play: without additional ways of ensuring you draw what you need at the time, you're more at the mercy of your topdecks, and with a deck full of 1-ofs it's easy to see it'll trip you up eventually. I'd almost go so far as to say you should put in a couple of copies of something like Commune with Nature, Grisly Salvage, or Enshrined Memories (goin' deep!) to get some more selection over the creatures you can cast.
On another topic: Melira/Angel needs a Lifelink/etb relevant effect creature. There are very few, one notably being Nearheath Pilgrim, a card I was fond of in its standard environment, but not so relevant in modern. A good card could cost WB 2/1 Lifelink etb: pur target creature in a gy on top of its owner deck. But that's mostly daydreaming.
...Why? The lifegain from Kitchen Finks, Archangel of Thune, and Obstinate Baloth G2&3 isn't enough? Lifelink is sort of a win-more ability for Constructed Magic, anyway, since if you were free to swing with your lifelink creature you were probably in a good position to begin with; better to keep the lifegain to for-certain EtB effects.
So a few weeks back I was talking about graveyard hate and Loaming Shaman was suggested. I finally picked it up a few days ago and got to thinking about it's implications against Delve. Scavenging Ooze is a pretty poor way to try and beat Treasure Cruise since it's more for pinpoint hate. One application of Loaming Shaman is that it can wipe out an opponents Delve fuel. What do people think? We even get a couple of rebuys with pod by podding it into Entomber Exarch and replaying it and then podding it into a Restoration Angel to blink the Exarch to replay it again.
Could be relevant if you run up against a brew that's all in on Delve, but it seems most people are being pretty cautious about it. It's not a bad thing to do, anyway, if your opponent seems to be putting more cards in the bin than usual and has Islands.
Flips off Burn like a boss. I remember when Boros just could not do anything about Congregation at Dawn putting three elephants on top of your library.
Regenerate is not a terrible ability in Modern, either. Are there any widely-played cards that go around it aside from Path and the occasional Wrath of God? Like, Hierarch takes one for the rest of your team at a hefty cost of 6, which is kinda unreasonable, but I've been thinking a lot about how Lotleth Troll could be a big pain in the ass, given enough food and one Swamp always untapped.
I don't think there's much point in talking about how different Melira and Angel Pod are in terms of what's in the deck beyond the combo pieces; it's not like you can't run Thoughtseize main in Melira or multiple Finks in Angel, for example. Pod is an exceptionally flexible deck -- there is a shortlist of cards you need somewhere in your 75, but what's MB and what's SB changes the deck drastically, as does choosing to run two of a traditional singleton or only three of a 4-of -- and getting boxed into thinking of the two variants as strictly different from each other is ungoodthink, imo.
I also run Polukranos, and yeah, he does a lot of things that you don't realise you want to do until you have the option of putting him on the table. He's comically huge even without going monstrous, and there's lots of creatures with 1-2 toughness that are relevant past turn 4. I've been looking for more creatures with activated abilities, too: alternatives to hold mana open for at the stage in the game where you have one card left in hand and you don't have a Township online. When they read you wrong and you're holding back a Chord/Restoration Angel, it can be a complete blowout, and I want more chances to do that. Plus, when you're out of cards, being able to not just sink your mana into things, but to possibly put it into multiple things, isn't to be underestimated.
Decks that are colourless are rare, both in tournament and casual settings, and thus aren't especially representative of Magic decks in general; it's something that, like a creatureless or landless deck, is more a concept for an intermediate player than a beginner. Make some mono-coloured decks instead - you could probably make five 40-card decks for like $20, depending on where you bought your chaff commons/uncommons from, and you get the added built-in benefit of demonstrating what each colour is like.
You do, however, need some kind of card advantage/selection/something, especially with having the Melira combo and not Archangel. Just the four Pods is too little with so many 1-ofs. Pull some of the less-good creatures (which for Pod includes non-CA-generating Tarmogoyf) for Chords, or switch some of the removal out for Abzan Charm; without that you'll die to inconsistency too often, and that's the worst.
Other than that, seems like a pretty decent start to get a feel for the deck. I think starting like this is the best way to go, because then you get better practical knowledge of what works and what doesn't and what to change to fit you better, rather than taking a 'winning' list and beat your head against it until you've learned how to play it properly, at which time the deck will likely have evolved a little and technology updated.
I think Aegis looks really solid against 8Rack - very similar to Kataki against Affinity or Thalia against Storm, in that you need it early but it throws up such a big roadblock that unless its dealt with right away you can usually win - and if you had it in your sideboard, you'd probably also put it in against Burn. But I've never had the chance to play against 8Rack, and from what I understand it doesn't have all that many people playing it; don't know why, it looks like a pretty strong deck. Probably has something to do with how it wrecks aggro, and the Modern metagame as a whole has already done that.
Master of the Hunt and Nature's Blessing aren't too awful, but you've gotta kinda jump through some hoops to get much out of them. They're a bit better than the standard overcosted creature, though.
That's only because most fantasy games take their inspiration from Tolkien and not Celtic or Japanese mythology, respectively.
More Abrupt Decay should solve this problem. Max out on them if you have to, it's not like it's a bad card in other matchups. Trim out the higher parts of your curve (perhaps instead of the discard - this can keep them off early counters and, more importantly, their ability to refill their hand with Treasure Cruise) and bring in cheap hatebears in addition to Souls, and try to force them to have multiple counters at once for your threats. They can't stop everything, so if you can manage to stick any 2-for-1 creature or Thrun, you stand a good chance of getting stable.
It's a good deck in that it's one of the best in the format, and its flexibility and adaptability means it will likely remain that way. But it's not a cheap buy-in - not as rough as Jund, but up there - and there is a long period of learning all the things the deck can do. Pod has more variety of cards than any other deck in Modern (Gifts-based decks come close, but many of their 1-ofs are essentially functional reprints of each other) and you need to have a pretty good memory for remembering all of the fiddly interactions with Spellskite and exactly how haunt works and...
If you're willing to stick with it, though, Pod is a solid choice. There's not really a "best list", which is both a plus and a minus, as you can tailor much of the deck to fit your meta and playstyle, but there is a pretty well-accepted core of how to build things (23~ lands, 8~ mana dorks, 4 Pods, 2-3 Chords, a good curve of value creatures, discard/spot removal main if there's room). Right now the wise thing in general seems like it would be not cutting extra Kitchen Finks and trying out Siege Rhino because of how insanely popular Burn is, and having Ethersworn Canonist ready in case of the new fancy Jeskai Ascendancy deck.
Anafenza seems way too narrow, though. We already have real graveyard hate cards; it's not like Scavenging Ooze is small if it's doing its job.
Since I suggested the thing about dropping Ranger, I should clarify: I meant if you shifted to the Angel combo, you could also not run Ranger of Eos. Melira still benefits significantly, since if you have a Finks/Redcap and a Pod out, Ranger gets you Viscera Seer and a dork to Pod into Melira. Fetching mana dorks to upgrade them into Voices ~ Finks ~ etc. is okay but there's a lot of excellent 4-drops that provide more immediate impact once they hit the board; without the option to get double Hierarch or as the stepping stone to finish your combo Ranger of Eos doesn't look as good as, say, Siege Rhino or Phyrexian Metamorph or [your favourite 4-drop here].
If you see so much Infect, have a second Orzhov Pontiff in your sideboard instead. They have to either waste their pump spells to keep their creatures (good) or let their team die (also good), and they can't use Apostle's Blessing like they can against targeted removal.
It's one option to drop the Melira combo and add Chords; you could also take out the Angel pieces for them. I'm a big proponent for Chord of Calling, so my list ends up being extremely creature-heavy with more variety in the CMC 2 and 3 slots; you can go in the completely opposite direction, but then you're running more creatures that are good in a wider variety of circumstances (ie. no Wall of Roots, Qasali Pridemage over Reclamation Sage, etc.) and less pinpoint answers. Whatever way you configure your non-creature spells, though, it's very important to change your creatures to match; small alterations in a deck with such a deep toolbox have big effects. I'd suggest playing with what you have/settle on before making any real major changes, that way you can get a feel of what direction suits your playstyle best.
It's kinda win-more-ish, and awkward in the Pod chain. If it gave you a card when it died too, maybe, but Pod's already been able to run guys like Elvish Visionary and Wall of Omens forever and it hasn't.
I don't think Fetid Heath is necessary. I think it would be better as a Wooded Bastion (is that the G/W filter?). Gut feeling, but I see more awkward g/w costs than b/w ones, and Urborg. But that's all irrelevant, as it will probably become a Verdant Catacombs somewhere down the line.
Knight of the Reliquary is just a big vanilla without utility lands beyond Township, and you don't even really have the fetches to make her that. Free slot in your sideboard here. You'll never need to bring in the second Melira, either. There's minimal value to running both combos; you could drop the Melira part and Ranger of Eos (unimpressive without Hierarchs) and put the Thoughtseizes main/make room for more Chords.
Also, more Chords. The M15 ones are wicked cheap compared to what they were. Without Spellskite as protection, being able to sneak in combo pieces at the end of your opponent's turn becomes even more critical. I know people are down on Chord a little, especially the Angel Pod players who have a harder time using it for their combo pieces, but it's awesome to get those early hatebears and you can always find a spot to annoy permission control players by threatening to untap with an extra Voice or Finks on your side. This more than anything else is where you'll feel the difference between a refined and unrefined list, especially when you don't have a Birthing Pod in play: without additional ways of ensuring you draw what you need at the time, you're more at the mercy of your topdecks, and with a deck full of 1-ofs it's easy to see it'll trip you up eventually. I'd almost go so far as to say you should put in a couple of copies of something like Commune with Nature, Grisly Salvage, or Enshrined Memories (goin' deep!) to get some more selection over the creatures you can cast.
...Why? The lifegain from Kitchen Finks, Archangel of Thune, and Obstinate Baloth G2&3 isn't enough? Lifelink is sort of a win-more ability for Constructed Magic, anyway, since if you were free to swing with your lifelink creature you were probably in a good position to begin with; better to keep the lifegain to for-certain EtB effects.
Could be relevant if you run up against a brew that's all in on Delve, but it seems most people are being pretty cautious about it. It's not a bad thing to do, anyway, if your opponent seems to be putting more cards in the bin than usual and has Islands.
Regenerate is not a terrible ability in Modern, either. Are there any widely-played cards that go around it aside from Path and the occasional Wrath of God? Like, Hierarch takes one for the rest of your team at a hefty cost of 6, which is kinda unreasonable, but I've been thinking a lot about how Lotleth Troll could be a big pain in the ass, given enough food and one Swamp always untapped.