Which decks are you worried about Damping Sphere out of? Humans and Hardened Scales play it but they are already awful matchups so it doesn't make a big difference there Sometimes UWx will have it but it's not a huge deal, if you're playing Mind Stones anyway. Most of the cards in the deck cost less than 5 mana so yeah it's not a big deal. Also Ratchet Bomb can kill it.
This is where I'm at currently with the deck. The key card that I glossed over initially was Ensnaring Bridge. Not intuitively good for us but actually stops a lot of relevant things - Awoken Horror, Primeval Titan and Death's Shadow in particular. And I've also even been able to stop smaller creatures as well. Emptying our hand is not as difficult as you might think, especially when you consider London allows us better 6 and 5 card hands. Mull to a 5 of t3 Tron and Great Creator, fetch Bridge. Not bad at all.
This list seems pretty reasonable against the field, though further testing and tweaking of numbers/slots is certainly required.
Alright, I'm gonna sound a little schizophrenic here but I think I found a Great Creator build that solves a lot of the problems I was talking about before. I'll do a write-up when I get some time or maybe just hold out and see if my 5-0 list gets posted in the Tuesday dump first
Played another couple leagues with it today and it didn't do a ton. I like the card and still want to test it but on the other hand it's hard to find room for it. I'm still pretty sold on 5 Forest as control continues to be very popular online, and at least so far, I don't see Zone being better than Sanctum.
It feels strong. I killed some spirits, boggles, a Death's Shadow, and even a JTMS with it. The fact that you can "ratchet" up to your preferred CMC all in one turn, assuming you have the mana, is really strong. And obviously the fact that the 1 counter it comes in with kills such a wide variety of things already. I'll definitely continue to test it.
Alright, I wasn't planning on testing Great Creator after my initial assessment of the card but community interest has been so strong that I thought I should give it a spin to be sure.
I played this list for 2 leagues - 8 card wishboard which is all I could justify without cutting into essential sideboard cards too much. It felt fine. Some matchups felt better, but more felt worse. I'm gonna go through the top 10 decks in the format and look at how the matchups change with this configuration.
Dredge first of all gets significantly worse because you're shaving grave-hate cards overall and mostly relying on Great Creator to tutor one up, on turn 3 at the earliest. This is not going to be good enough most of the time.
Grixis Shadow - the Great Creators looked pretty silly here, especially when I had to cut my 2nd and 3rd Dismembers, 3rd Relic and 3rd and 4th Thragtusks to make room for the package.
Phoenix - losing grave-hate and Dismembers, gaining...?
Amulet - worse because you shave TKS and cut Surgicals.
UWx and BGx - I think you improve a bit against UW but not much against BGx because they can pressure him so easily, compared to the 3rd and 4th Thragtusks which impact the board immediately and in a big way.
Burn - probably a minor improvement because fetching up something like Witchbane Orb game 1 is great, but you also might just die first/anyway, plus again, cutting Thragtusks hurts.
Humans - maybe a minor improvement because you effectively have 6 O-Stones, but this matchup is already great.
There are only 2 matchups where I would say Great Creator offers a significant improvement - the Tron mirror and Hardened Scales. Not coincidentally, these are the only 2 matchups where GC's static ability matters on its own. In the mirror, it becomes our second best turn-3 Tron play after Karn Liberated with the ability to fetch a Spyglass to shut off their potential Karn Liberated, and obviously why the static ability is good requires no explanation.
For Scales, again, 1-sided Stony Silence is strong, especially when you consider it shuts down their Darksteel Citadels as well, but it can be slow and they can still just attack and kill Karn.
I will mention decks like Titan Shift, Boggles, and Infect - yeah, getting Witchbane or Spellskite game 1 against these decks is great, but they're also each less than 2% of the metagame.
Now of course, this anaylsis is just based on the list I posted, and certainly you could play different cards and improve a particular matchup - having access to Torpor Orb against Amulet for example. But then you have to cut something and lose that edge in a different matchup.
People may suggest playing fewer copies of Great Creator. I'm skeptical about this as well because as you decrease his numbers, obviously you're less likely to draw him and so that makes it even harder to justify having all those narrow 1-ofs in your sideboard.
A note on Mycosynth Lattice - our deck does not need this card. It's a fun alternate win-con (that I actually found pretty hard to protect), but we already have plenty of things to end the game with that don't require putting 2 pieces together.
So in summary, I think Karn, the Great Creator is a very interesting card, a very versatile card and a very fun card. But does it improve Mono Green Tron against the field? I'm standing by my initial assessment with an emphatic no.
Right, right. I actually edited that caveat in afterwards but I guess I was right the first time Now that I think of it I probably have been across from Veil and Last Hope at the same time, and there is that mono Gideons deck. Not something you see often in Modern though, for sure.
Haha, no, I haven't tried it yet, hence my questions. But after seeing that newer report I can see its strength now. I did read most of your articles the first time I picked the deck up but obviously didn't remember everything. I'll have to do another once-over. I've been crushing in MTGO leagues with the deck since London came online though. I hope the new rule sticks.
Okay, I see what you're saying for the most part. I'm definitely on board with the killing x-1s mode - it's the planeswalkers I'm still a bit curious about. It seems good against Teferi, Liliana and Chandra because they will often "start" at 1 against us, but it seems mediocre against Jace, no? Unless we're teaming it with a Blinkmoth or something. And is it really worth a card to ping Karn down to 2 against Tron? I noticed in your Worcester report you had access to Shot but didn't bring it in against UW or Tron.
Hey, thanks for the article. I'm wondering about the Gut Shot. You said you want one to be able to randomly hit planeswalkers. How often does that actually come up/which planeswalkers are you targeting with it? Seems kinda narrow to me.
So I'm thinking Karn, the Great Creator has the potential to breathe new life into Eldrazi Tron. @Tituba9 brought this up and we had a solid brainstorming session around it. Pic attached of what I got to as an early iteration. Just pretend 4 of those Karn, Scion of Urza are Karn, the Great Creator. This deck is really low to the ground and the 3 Mind Stones help us accelerate out our Karns, which gives us fast access to our juicy wishboard. We have a smorgasbord of cards that give us game in ways we've never had preboard before. Grab Torpor Orb against Humans or Primeval Titan decks, Crucible of Worlds or Wurmcoil Engine against BGx, Relic against Dredge or Phoenix, Needle for Tron/Control, Basilisk Collar against Burn or any time we have Endbringer online, etc, etc.
All this utility is great but of course there's also the massive power play of Great Creator + Mycosynth Lattice which completely shuts off all our opponents' lands and activated abilities on any other cards. After that, you can +1 on the Lattice and make a 6/6 to attack or block with. Also, with Lattice active, Scion of Urza makes massive tokens, but you can't lock them out with Creator at the same time due to the legend rule.
Great Creator itself is also a 1-sided maindeck Stony Silence which will surely swing games against Hardened Scales, Affinity, and even Tron, all of which are tough matchups.
The +1 ability has some interesting applications - not just killing 0-mana artifacts like Welding Jar or Mox Opal, but turning other problematic ones (think Amulet of Vigor, Ensnaring Bridge, Sorcerous Spyglass) into creatures and allowing us to remove them with a Ballista or Dismember! Pretty cool stuff.
Scavenger Grounds goes up in value as in the utility land slot because Great Creator can re-buy cards we've exiled.
Obviously this is just an early iteration so nothing is set in stone here. I'm not particularly convinced Trinisphere deserves a slot. It might just be better as a Grafdigger's Cage or something else entirely. Culling Scales is an interesting niche card against the prison decks, for example.
Would love to hear other peoples' thoughts on this.
Having tested the card on and off for about 6 months now, I've come to the point where I'm confident it doesn't deserve any slots in the deck. This is what I've believed all along, and I only continued trying it just because I felt a sense of entitlement insofar as winning the midrange matchup, as this has been the case for so long. In any event, Thragtusk is a much better card against the field, and I think if you're playing 4 with a Crucible of Worlds for example, the BG matchup is basically 50/50. And beyond that matchup, there are no Tier 1 or maybe even Tier 2 decks (depending on how you measure it) that you really want Tarmogoyf against, and particularly not over Thought-Knot Seer, which is usually cut to make room for it. It's simply a narrow card against the field that only gives you a leg up in a matchup that is already quite close, so it's just not a logical choice in an open meta. It's smarter to just accept that the BG matchup isn't easy now and take your points against the field elsewhere.
Surgical is good but not really an "upgrade" to Cage, if that's what you mean, because they're usually fighting for the same slots. They both just hedge against different things - Surgical has applications against Primeval Titan decks and the mirror while being worse against Dredge, whereas Cage is better against Dredge and does work against Counters Company and Elves. Of course you can play a split of both if it suits you.
@k0no: My post is not a dismissal of the idea of running the card entirely or shutting down the idea of testing. I'm asking the thread how it is good, after offering a hypothetical, brainstorming it myself and coming to the conclusion that it isn't. Obviously it's possible that a good configuration exists, or that there may be one in the future. I never said anything to the contrary, only that I don't think that is the case. If you think you can make it work, by all means, show us how.
This is where I'm at currently with the deck. The key card that I glossed over initially was Ensnaring Bridge. Not intuitively good for us but actually stops a lot of relevant things - Awoken Horror, Primeval Titan and Death's Shadow in particular. And I've also even been able to stop smaller creatures as well. Emptying our hand is not as difficult as you might think, especially when you consider London allows us better 6 and 5 card hands. Mull to a 5 of t3 Tron and Great Creator, fetch Bridge. Not bad at all.
This list seems pretty reasonable against the field, though further testing and tweaking of numbers/slots is certainly required.
I played this list for 2 leagues - 8 card wishboard which is all I could justify without cutting into essential sideboard cards too much. It felt fine. Some matchups felt better, but more felt worse. I'm gonna go through the top 10 decks in the format and look at how the matchups change with this configuration.
Dredge first of all gets significantly worse because you're shaving grave-hate cards overall and mostly relying on Great Creator to tutor one up, on turn 3 at the earliest. This is not going to be good enough most of the time.
Grixis Shadow - the Great Creators looked pretty silly here, especially when I had to cut my 2nd and 3rd Dismembers, 3rd Relic and 3rd and 4th Thragtusks to make room for the package.
Phoenix - losing grave-hate and Dismembers, gaining...?
Amulet - worse because you shave TKS and cut Surgicals.
UWx and BGx - I think you improve a bit against UW but not much against BGx because they can pressure him so easily, compared to the 3rd and 4th Thragtusks which impact the board immediately and in a big way.
Burn - probably a minor improvement because fetching up something like Witchbane Orb game 1 is great, but you also might just die first/anyway, plus again, cutting Thragtusks hurts.
Humans - maybe a minor improvement because you effectively have 6 O-Stones, but this matchup is already great.
There are only 2 matchups where I would say Great Creator offers a significant improvement - the Tron mirror and Hardened Scales. Not coincidentally, these are the only 2 matchups where GC's static ability matters on its own. In the mirror, it becomes our second best turn-3 Tron play after Karn Liberated with the ability to fetch a Spyglass to shut off their potential Karn Liberated, and obviously why the static ability is good requires no explanation.
For Scales, again, 1-sided Stony Silence is strong, especially when you consider it shuts down their Darksteel Citadels as well, but it can be slow and they can still just attack and kill Karn.
I will mention decks like Titan Shift, Boggles, and Infect - yeah, getting Witchbane or Spellskite game 1 against these decks is great, but they're also each less than 2% of the metagame.
Now of course, this anaylsis is just based on the list I posted, and certainly you could play different cards and improve a particular matchup - having access to Torpor Orb against Amulet for example. But then you have to cut something and lose that edge in a different matchup.
People may suggest playing fewer copies of Great Creator. I'm skeptical about this as well because as you decrease his numbers, obviously you're less likely to draw him and so that makes it even harder to justify having all those narrow 1-ofs in your sideboard.
A note on Mycosynth Lattice - our deck does not need this card. It's a fun alternate win-con (that I actually found pretty hard to protect), but we already have plenty of things to end the game with that don't require putting 2 pieces together.
So in summary, I think Karn, the Great Creator is a very interesting card, a very versatile card and a very fun card. But does it improve Mono Green Tron against the field? I'm standing by my initial assessment with an emphatic no.
All this utility is great but of course there's also the massive power play of Great Creator + Mycosynth Lattice which completely shuts off all our opponents' lands and activated abilities on any other cards. After that, you can +1 on the Lattice and make a 6/6 to attack or block with. Also, with Lattice active, Scion of Urza makes massive tokens, but you can't lock them out with Creator at the same time due to the legend rule.
Great Creator itself is also a 1-sided maindeck Stony Silence which will surely swing games against Hardened Scales, Affinity, and even Tron, all of which are tough matchups.
The +1 ability has some interesting applications - not just killing 0-mana artifacts like Welding Jar or Mox Opal, but turning other problematic ones (think Amulet of Vigor, Ensnaring Bridge, Sorcerous Spyglass) into creatures and allowing us to remove them with a Ballista or Dismember! Pretty cool stuff.
Scavenger Grounds goes up in value as in the utility land slot because Great Creator can re-buy cards we've exiled.
Obviously this is just an early iteration so nothing is set in stone here. I'm not particularly convinced Trinisphere deserves a slot. It might just be better as a Grafdigger's Cage or something else entirely. Culling Scales is an interesting niche card against the prison decks, for example.
Would love to hear other peoples' thoughts on this.
Having tested the card on and off for about 6 months now, I've come to the point where I'm confident it doesn't deserve any slots in the deck. This is what I've believed all along, and I only continued trying it just because I felt a sense of entitlement insofar as winning the midrange matchup, as this has been the case for so long. In any event, Thragtusk is a much better card against the field, and I think if you're playing 4 with a Crucible of Worlds for example, the BG matchup is basically 50/50. And beyond that matchup, there are no Tier 1 or maybe even Tier 2 decks (depending on how you measure it) that you really want Tarmogoyf against, and particularly not over Thought-Knot Seer, which is usually cut to make room for it. It's simply a narrow card against the field that only gives you a leg up in a matchup that is already quite close, so it's just not a logical choice in an open meta. It's smarter to just accept that the BG matchup isn't easy now and take your points against the field elsewhere.
@k0no: My post is not a dismissal of the idea of running the card entirely or shutting down the idea of testing. I'm asking the thread how it is good, after offering a hypothetical, brainstorming it myself and coming to the conclusion that it isn't. Obviously it's possible that a good configuration exists, or that there may be one in the future. I never said anything to the contrary, only that I don't think that is the case. If you think you can make it work, by all means, show us how.