IMO this is the worst off mindslaver lock of the two.
I prefer
Tezzeret +animating Mindslaver + mimic vat.
But that's just because I see prototype portal as pure card disadvantage if it gets busted, which it normally will be......and it's a dead card if you're not even doing the combo. Nobody likes dead cards.
I just felt I should throw that out there. It's a fun combo when it does work anyways.
This isn't a T1 deck but it's really fun and can surprise T1 decks on occasion if you have a good starting hand. Kuldotha Phoenix is the primary win condition most of the time (whether you beat them into submission with liquimetal coating, or not); it's a really tough card to deal with if you don't have a way to exile it. It's easy enough to win without liquimetal coating, so I don't really see a need to search for it, and the deck isn't as contingent on that one card as some would have you believe (assuming you're building right).
I'm somewhat surprised that people are suggesting only 1 mimic vat (if any). Personally I run 3 and wouldn't go below 2 (unless opposing deck required me to). Being able to wipe the board with slag and then take my pick of the litter is awesome. It also combos well with your artifact destruction creatures. It's not uncommon for me to get both mimic vat and LC out, board wipe, and then kill at least one permanent every turn.
I've swapped Inferno Titan for Primeval before, and then ran Devil's Play. I've swapped him for Thrun, The Last Troll too (especially when running against blue), as well as an extra Wurmcoil. Infect is not necessary if you don't want (I currently don't run infect, but am considering swapping a manic for one).
As the other person said, this isn't first and foremost a liquimetal deck. Really it's beats with phoenix's and bears with a good removal/control suite in a good environment for such things (blowing up swords and artifacts even with liquimetal is always the easiest of jobs) so it's more accurately a tempo-aggro deck than anything.
Which puts cards such as mimic vat in weird positions, in most games it's not your job to be doing that kind of thing and wasting 3 mana initially is really rough on the tempo. You either are wasting a turn not dropping more dudes to punch in the face or not putting up another blocker while you hold off the aggro decks.
But against any kind of slower match up mimic vat can definitely be beast. Except that doesn't seem to be most of the meta right now. That's my main problem considering delver makes up what like 45% of the meta?
Oh and one of the funnest tricks I've ever had with mimic vat was in a deck designed to get infinite mindlsavers (tezzy+animate+slaver+mimic) pre innistrad.
EOT make a wurmcoil token (you get to keep it), swing with a 6/6 wurmcoil token with an untapped mimic vat, Phyrexiacore/throne the token and get free 3/3's in play.......still have an untapped mimic vat to make a wurmcoil if necessary.
I won quite a few games by swinging in with 4 3/3's and 2 6/6s by just rinse wash and repeating.
Also about the tier of this deck: It doesn't have the raw POWER of tier one decks. The most impressive thing it does is destroy lands for really cheap for above tier 1 costs but on the average it's a pretty utility deck. You always have a lot of options between how to destroy things, how to bring things back, what you can copy, and etc. I'd feel more comfortable playing this deck than most decks simply because I know I can potentially handle anything (dungrove and undying are the exceptions here) despite the lack of raw power.
Edit:
Oh now that we can discuss it there's only two things of note for my list I've noticed from DA. Evolving wilds will be welcome for deck thinning (you can never have enough), and the new devil I'm thinking might be pretty cute with manic vandals. That's all that caught my attention tho'. :< Increasing vengeance is a little cute but too cute.
I don't know about you guys but metamorphs, Wurmcoils, and Kuldotha was all I ever needed to win. Didn't need to toy with planeswalkers or mimic vats cause it either had no presence or was strict win more. Metamorphic gave a lot of answers I didn't have (hexprooooof) and kuldotha was deadly with (7 mana 8 flying haste post board wipe was deadly)
Etc. Etc. Haven't been fiscally able to play but I would suggest at least 4 slag 2-3+ gunshot to deal with delved decks that flood the meta.
Something like this mayhaps I think. It's obviously untested and I haven't really been playing much but you basically have 2 free, 3 1 mana answers to delvers turn 1 and 5 small board wipes for the token strategies which anything with a delver was previously a very toss up match. It still might be light on the answers but I like the looks of it.
Oh wow congrats on that list. It's surprisingly really solid looking with it's permission style of playing and ability to control the board really well. I definitely am going to borrow your idea and try it out a little bit.
Best I can offer is just give a reference to my own ancient grudge deck.
There are a couple of ideas for kuldotha builds floating around on here. One of them being a R/B list that goes for sacing critters for benefits like morbid and infernal plunge.
The 5/5 demon one is the only morbid card interesting for that list and if I'd play around it I'd throw it in a psuedo necrotic ooze package for the utility and ability to keep popping 5/5's.
But that's me, and I don't like the idea of it.
With the kuldotha + cursed you could at least drop a hawk and a memnite turn 1 and a curse and pretty much have the game set with your 2/2 memnite and 3/3 flying hawk on turn 2.
The lack of ornithopters really hurts tho'. Le sad.
I'm not really planning on playing considering I still lack a job or whatever, and hardly felt that this little thought should go into something such as the red deck wins competitive forum...... and I don't see a quite match as far as lists go.
Honestly I just wanted to see what someone's thoughts on this.
Now I don't frequent the boards often lately but I haven't seen any lists that try and use the kuldotha builds with curse of stalked prey. Curse is a kind of meh card but the ability to swing for 3 turn 2 and for 6 turn 3 with an ideal hand would be a little close to the insane end.
Ofcourse I thought about going more of a token theme when putting the ideal together but it just would work better as I posted I believe. Sad doomed travelers and shrines are sad.
Tl;DR Kuldotha decks + Cursed of Stalked Prey, anybody tried this/does it work? Win-more much? I'm not really an aggro player myself so this is just the ugliest for me to build.
I mean one of the top decks to beat right now is WRR. Wolf run ramp. Wolf-run RAMP. RAMP.
Lol.
Besides turboland was about just ramping up with either 'free' turns of oracle mul-daya and explore or actual free turns via time warp. The lack of explore and time warp and lotus cobra make this play style just not quite the same anymore.
But as I said, you can still play ramp. Primeval Titans are good I heard.
Vat in this deck? I didn't think it could support it but I may be just stupid.....
I'm a big lover of vats and wurmcoils after all. Nothing like eot wurmcoil, then on your turn making a wurmcoil and swinging for 12 deathtouch lifelink then double saccing and keeping 4 3/3's untapped.
It almost felt like cheating every time.
The gorges have never been a problem for me on the flipside.
Anyways I'll try this out later just because of my fondness of wurmcoils. Maybe add some sad robots.
Still cracks me up, budget lists for this deck. Maybe I'm too jaded from the lack of 40$ planeswalkers in the list haha.
Anyways yes I cut a land too, as he did in the budget list and even went more ichor less myco. Which is suitable because myco still feels necessary for smoothing out sometimes. Anyways for my list I'm going to go something like
-1buried ruin
+2-3 Phyrexias core
Try out that mana base
And -2/3 metamorph
+2/3 perilous Myr
Hopefully that serves neato for the aggro mu.
I'll work on sideboards too.
Also, out of curiosity and friendliness, how long you been playing mallrat?
-2 devil's play (big mana investment, I know it goes well with both walkers but the pre-requesit of having to have a walker in play smells like a bad card that's going to lose you games when it's in your hand)
maybe -1 a shrine or something,
+slagstorms~
They work wonders on opening up the field for koth and chandra, will keep you alive (you're not really going the creature route) and are always awesome in pairs whether for killing titans or players.
I just see them being a bigger player in the mainboard than the sideboard.
I'm not really the best sideboarder in the world but I can say that the most problematic cards I've seen so far have all been
Hero of Bladehold
Oring
Dungrove Elder
...interestingly enough spellskite is a big pain in the ass too. Haven't played a lot of games against that.
But really the only decks that are a -real- problem, and by that I mean consistantly will smash your face in g1 with my list in like a 7-3 ratio, are really aggressive aggro (redundancy!) decks like mono red and sometimes MBI.
I've dealt with plenty of token strategies, repeated oring on kuldotha phoenix is a pain in the ass. It's the Hero of bladehold I always have the hardest time answering and always swings in for the big. I've dealt with u/b, they don't like kuldotha phoenix at all. Solar flare is kind of a silly game playing against but has the same problem area Birthing pod has, which never should be a problem, unless you let them get an elesh norn or sheoldred in play.....which is pretty insane trying to answer if you don't have a liquimetal + artifact removal and play.
Racing wolfrun on the ld is always a risk considering this isn't a dedicated ld deck, it's more of a matter of picking your battles with those decks. Racing out a dungrove is usually the most annoying part in this mu because wurmcoils always battle the titans and leave me feeling like I'm winning.
But yeah, unless you get a good amount of slagstorms, aggro can usually be a really rough matchup with my decklist having my earliest creature a 3 drop. I've debated even on toying with the list in order to see if I can keep it as effective but not so prone to the aggros.
/rant~
Oh and I feel I should note:
Tommy Luke commented back on his own decklist on the tcgplayer site repeatedly and answered a lot of questions from random players. His losing games and biggest gripe on the deck was the land flood.
-1 darksteel relix
-3 civilized scholar
-4 any lands
+4 inkmoth nexus
+4 merfolk looter
looter hits the board faster, which is important, and inkmoth survives better than any other artifact which is crucial for a truly reliable kuldotha metalcraft. Oh and boneyeard wurm is fun.
I had a janky list for the luls a while ago something like.
It was a lot of fun but completely not competitive. My friend pitched to me a few cards that weren't on the list that were really good ideas but I forgot about them because I found a just as fun and more competitive deck to toy around with by then.
I just don't know what to say for the first list however.
I feel it just needs mulch and galvanic blast to work. Etched champion has always tasted ugly in my mouth and considering you plan on burning with scrapyard salvo and slag fiend you think a shrine of burning rage would be an auto-include especially with the metalcraft for kuldotha and the fact it goes into the yard. Then Bonehoard feels a little random as well.
I suggest re-evaluating the list and concentrating on either the most effective way to fill up your graveyard or the most effective way to make those burn spells add up to 20.
I prefer
Tezzeret +animating Mindslaver + mimic vat.
But that's just because I see prototype portal as pure card disadvantage if it gets busted, which it normally will be......and it's a dead card if you're not even doing the combo. Nobody likes dead cards.
I just felt I should throw that out there. It's a fun combo when it does work anyways.
As the other person said, this isn't first and foremost a liquimetal deck. Really it's beats with phoenix's and bears with a good removal/control suite in a good environment for such things (blowing up swords and artifacts even with liquimetal is always the easiest of jobs) so it's more accurately a tempo-aggro deck than anything.
Which puts cards such as mimic vat in weird positions, in most games it's not your job to be doing that kind of thing and wasting 3 mana initially is really rough on the tempo. You either are wasting a turn not dropping more dudes to punch in the face or not putting up another blocker while you hold off the aggro decks.
But against any kind of slower match up mimic vat can definitely be beast. Except that doesn't seem to be most of the meta right now. That's my main problem considering delver makes up what like 45% of the meta?
Oh and one of the funnest tricks I've ever had with mimic vat was in a deck designed to get infinite mindlsavers (tezzy+animate+slaver+mimic) pre innistrad.
EOT make a wurmcoil token (you get to keep it), swing with a 6/6 wurmcoil token with an untapped mimic vat, Phyrexiacore/throne the token and get free 3/3's in play.......still have an untapped mimic vat to make a wurmcoil if necessary.
I won quite a few games by swinging in with 4 3/3's and 2 6/6s by just rinse wash and repeating.
Also about the tier of this deck: It doesn't have the raw POWER of tier one decks. The most impressive thing it does is destroy lands for really cheap for above tier 1 costs but on the average it's a pretty utility deck. You always have a lot of options between how to destroy things, how to bring things back, what you can copy, and etc. I'd feel more comfortable playing this deck than most decks simply because I know I can potentially handle anything (dungrove and undying are the exceptions here) despite the lack of raw power.
Edit:
Oh now that we can discuss it there's only two things of note for my list I've noticed from DA. Evolving wilds will be welcome for deck thinning (you can never have enough), and the new devil I'm thinking might be pretty cute with manic vandals. That's all that caught my attention tho'. :< Increasing vengeance is a little cute but too cute.
Etc. Etc. Haven't been fiscally able to play but I would suggest at least 4 slag 2-3+ gunshot to deal with delved decks that flood the meta.
Edit:
Something like
4x Copperline Gorge
1x Forest
4x Inkmoth Nexus
7x Mountain
4x Buried Ruin
4x Rootbound Crag
3x Ichor Wellspring
3x Mycosynth Wllspring
4x Kuldotha Phoenix
4x Manic Vandal
2x Wurmcoil Engine
2x Phyrexian Metamorph
3x Galvanic Blast
2x Gut shot
3x Slagstorm
2x Whiplfare
Something like this mayhaps I think. It's obviously untested and I haven't really been playing much but you basically have 2 free, 3 1 mana answers to delvers turn 1 and 5 small board wipes for the token strategies which anything with a delver was previously a very toss up match. It still might be light on the answers but I like the looks of it.
Spoiler:
Themanabasewillbealotmorefreeandlesschunkywithevolvingwildscomingintothepicturethowhichismuchappreciated.
Best I can offer is just give a reference to my own ancient grudge deck.
4x Copperline Gorge
1x Forest
4x Inkmoth Nexus
7x Mountain
4x Buried Ruin
4x Rootbound Crag
3x Ichor Wellspring
3x Mycosynth Wllspring
4x Kuldotha Phoenix
4x Manic Vandal
3x Wurmcoil Engine
3x Phyrexian Metamorph
4x Galvanic Blast
4x Slagstorm
Maybe something you hadn't thought of in there but I doubt. Kudos again. <3
The 5/5 demon one is the only morbid card interesting for that list and if I'd play around it I'd throw it in a psuedo necrotic ooze package for the utility and ability to keep popping 5/5's.
But that's me, and I don't like the idea of it.
With the kuldotha + cursed you could at least drop a hawk and a memnite turn 1 and a curse and pretty much have the game set with your 2/2 memnite and 3/3 flying hawk on turn 2.
The lack of ornithopters really hurts tho'. Le sad.
.....That really explains why you don't hear kuldotha at all.
Well, nevermind than. <3
Honestly I just wanted to see what someone's thoughts on this.
2x Mox Opal
4x Kuldotha Rebirth
4x memnite
4x Ornithopter
Now I don't frequent the boards often lately but I haven't seen any lists that try and use the kuldotha builds with curse of stalked prey. Curse is a kind of meh card but the ability to swing for 3 turn 2 and for 6 turn 3 with an ideal hand would be a little close to the insane end.
Ofcourse I thought about going more of a token theme when putting the ideal together but it just would work better as I posted I believe. Sad doomed travelers and shrines are sad.
Tl;DR Kuldotha decks + Cursed of Stalked Prey, anybody tried this/does it work? Win-more much? I'm not really an aggro player myself so this is just the ugliest for me to build.
I mean one of the top decks to beat right now is WRR. Wolf run ramp. Wolf-run RAMP. RAMP.
Lol.
Besides turboland was about just ramping up with either 'free' turns of oracle mul-daya and explore or actual free turns via time warp. The lack of explore and time warp and lotus cobra make this play style just not quite the same anymore.
But as I said, you can still play ramp. Primeval Titans are good I heard.
An american puresteel deck!?
You know what, I'm just johnny enough to want to try and make it work.
Why?!
Cause nothing would be as cool as eot geistflaming for 14 for 7 mana.
And because I've had worse ideas.
I'm a big lover of vats and wurmcoils after all. Nothing like eot wurmcoil, then on your turn making a wurmcoil and swinging for 12 deathtouch lifelink then double saccing and keeping 4 3/3's untapped.
It almost felt like cheating every time.
The gorges have never been a problem for me on the flipside.
Anyways I'll try this out later just because of my fondness of wurmcoils. Maybe add some sad robots.
Anyways yes I cut a land too, as he did in the budget list and even went more ichor less myco. Which is suitable because myco still feels necessary for smoothing out sometimes. Anyways for my list I'm going to go something like
-1buried ruin
+2-3 Phyrexias core
Try out that mana base
And -2/3 metamorph
+2/3 perilous Myr
Hopefully that serves neato for the aggro mu.
I'll work on sideboards too.
Also, out of curiosity and friendliness, how long you been playing mallrat?
-2 devil's play (big mana investment, I know it goes well with both walkers but the pre-requesit of having to have a walker in play smells like a bad card that's going to lose you games when it's in your hand)
maybe -1 a shrine or something,
+slagstorms~
They work wonders on opening up the field for koth and chandra, will keep you alive (you're not really going the creature route) and are always awesome in pairs whether for killing titans or players.
I just see them being a bigger player in the mainboard than the sideboard.
I'd do it, but that's me.
~Cosgrove reference~
Hero of Bladehold
Oring
Dungrove Elder
...interestingly enough spellskite is a big pain in the ass too. Haven't played a lot of games against that.
But really the only decks that are a -real- problem, and by that I mean consistantly will smash your face in g1 with my list in like a 7-3 ratio, are really aggressive aggro (redundancy!) decks like mono red and sometimes MBI.
I've dealt with plenty of token strategies, repeated oring on kuldotha phoenix is a pain in the ass. It's the Hero of bladehold I always have the hardest time answering and always swings in for the big. I've dealt with u/b, they don't like kuldotha phoenix at all. Solar flare is kind of a silly game playing against but has the same problem area Birthing pod has, which never should be a problem, unless you let them get an elesh norn or sheoldred in play.....which is pretty insane trying to answer if you don't have a liquimetal + artifact removal and play.
Racing wolfrun on the ld is always a risk considering this isn't a dedicated ld deck, it's more of a matter of picking your battles with those decks. Racing out a dungrove is usually the most annoying part in this mu because wurmcoils always battle the titans and leave me feeling like I'm winning.
But yeah, unless you get a good amount of slagstorms, aggro can usually be a really rough matchup with my decklist having my earliest creature a 3 drop. I've debated even on toying with the list in order to see if I can keep it as effective but not so prone to the aggros.
/rant~
Oh and I feel I should note:
Tommy Luke commented back on his own decklist on the tcgplayer site repeatedly and answered a lot of questions from random players. His losing games and biggest gripe on the deck was the land flood.
-1 darksteel relix
-3 civilized scholar
-4 any lands
+4 inkmoth nexus
+4 merfolk looter
looter hits the board faster, which is important, and inkmoth survives better than any other artifact which is crucial for a truly reliable kuldotha metalcraft. Oh and boneyeard wurm is fun.
I had a janky list for the luls a while ago something like.
2x Ambush Viper
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Boneyard Wurm
2x Civilized Scholar
3x Kessig Cagebreakers
4x Merfolk Looter
4x Splinterfright
3x Ghost Quarter
4x Hinterland Harbor
4x Island
4x Woodland Cemetery
3x Postmortem Lunge
3x Beast Within
4x Forbidden Alchemy
3x Garruk, Primal Hunter
It was a lot of fun but completely not competitive. My friend pitched to me a few cards that weren't on the list that were really good ideas but I forgot about them because I found a just as fun and more competitive deck to toy around with by then.
I just don't know what to say for the first list however.
I feel it just needs mulch and galvanic blast to work. Etched champion has always tasted ugly in my mouth and considering you plan on burning with scrapyard salvo and slag fiend you think a shrine of burning rage would be an auto-include especially with the metalcraft for kuldotha and the fact it goes into the yard. Then Bonehoard feels a little random as well.
I suggest re-evaluating the list and concentrating on either the most effective way to fill up your graveyard or the most effective way to make those burn spells add up to 20.