Are you sure? If you cast Reward first and Sunrise last, Sunrise resolves first and returns the Crypt to your opponent's side.
Sunrise first, Reward second:
Sunrise (last to resolve)
Crypt
Reward (first to resolve)
Reward resolves - eggs return, Crypt does not
Crypt resolves - exiles Reward
*Crack everything again*
Sunrise resolves - eggs + Crypt return
Net result: 2 cycles
Reward first, Sunrise second:
Reward (last to resolve)
Crypt
Sunrise (first to resolve)
Sunrise resolves - eggs + Crypt return
1) Do nothing - Reward has no effect
2) Crack eggs - opponent Crypts on the stack:
Reward
Crypt
Cracked eggs
Crypt
Net result: 1 cycle OR you lose all your eggs.
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- izzetmage
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Member for 12 years, 9 months, and 3 days
Last active Wed, Jan, 8 2020 11:38:36
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Under old mulligan rules, if I decide to mull to 6, shuffle my library and (unknown to me) the top of my library is 6 cards followed by a Chancellor, I'll draw the first 6. Then if I decide to keep, I'll scry 1 and see the Chancellor which I can't use.
Under new mulligan rules, if the exact same thing happens including the order of the cards, I'll draw 7 cards including the Chancellor. Then I can put a non-Chancellor card on the bottom and start the game with the Chancellor effect, which would not have been available under the old mulligan rules.
G1 keeps a mull to 6 with turn 2 kill. Gets IoKed T1 and dies.
G2 keeps a mull to 6 with no lands and a Leyline of Sanctity. Stalls until turn 7, gets Griselbrand out, loses it to Assassin's Trophy but draws 14 cards. Plays Rider, loses it to Trophy again, GG.
R2 vs Burn
G1 mulls to 5 with all pieces for the combo except 2 lands, desperation Shoals his Rider away, dies anyway.
G2 mulls to 5 with 2 lands and Evolution. Down to 10 life and forced to combo out on turn 4 (opp had Eidolon in play). Pact to get Rider and shuffle away a revealed Leyline (8), didn't hit the land that he needed, died. It's unlikely he would have won even if he had hit a land, given he would be down to 6 after casting Evolution, and would have died to 2 burn spells or a Path.
R3 vs Elves
G1 mulls to 6 with all pieces except a land. Draws the land and T2 kills.
G2 mulls to 6 with Pact and Neoform but no lands. Never draws a land, dies.
G3 keeps a 7 with turn 2 kill. Gets the kill.
R4 vs 8 Rack
G1 mulls to 6 with all pieces except a second green card to pitch to Rider. Gets hit by a bunch of discard but pieces together the win on turn 10. His opponent made a mistake by taking Noxious Revival instead of Wild Cantor with discard; NR is deader since it screw you out of new draws.
G2 mulls to 4 with Leyline, Pact and no lands. Liliana comes down and locks the game away.
G3 mulls to 6, missing Rider/Pact. Topdecks Rider (clutch moment #1), spends Manamorphose to filter SSG into green and draws a green card without which he doesn't have enough to pitch to Rider (clutch moment #2). Gets the kill.
R5 vs U Tron
G1 keeps a 7 missing Neoform/Evolution. Fails to draw it and tries Rider beatdown. Eventually draws Neoform, goes for it, gets stopped by a counterspell and dies to Karn + Lattice lock.
G2 keeps a mull to 5 missing land and Rider/Pact. Dies uneventfully.
Mulliganing with the deck is very easy though: figure out how many cards you are from comboing off (you need Rider/Pact, Neoform/Evolution, and mana to cast it), and if the number is 2 or more, mull. If you're missing 2 lands then maybe you keep anyway, although this is usually followed with you questioning your life choices when you fail to draw even a second land. If you're down to 5 then just keep whatever you're dealt; yes, you might need to hit perfect draws to win, but going down to 4 hurts all the more because Rider costs two cards in hand.
Overall his record is what I expect of the deck: despite the turn 2 kills, it's very weak to disruption and loses to itself sometimes, like mulliganing to death or not drawing Shoal (which didn't happen in his games but has in mine).
I guess the big question now is, if the deck is an inconsistent pile but has random turn 1/2 kills, is it going to get banned? We've had decks that match this description (Cheeri0s, Blistercoil Weird) and they haven't been banned. Infect has turn 2 kills and is actually playable, but hasn't gotten anything banned other than Blazing Shoal (which happened like 100 years ago) and Probe (which fell on DS Zoo and UR Kiln Fiend too).
- Deceiver Exarch + Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- Madcap Experiment + Platinum Emperion
- Through the Breach + Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
- Jace, Wielder of Mysteries + Leveler
What's going to show up next? Ral, Storm Conduit + Twincast?The proper way to build a combo deck, especially one that plays blue, is with cantrips. Hundreds of successful combo decks over the years have done this, and by the wayside are thousands more unsuccessful ones that died because they couldn't or wouldn't. Cantrips (in this case Serum Visions) vastly increase the range of keepable hands - any hand that's 1 card away from comboing off and has a castable cantrip in it is pretty much always a keep. If you don't play cantrips, then you're gambling on
1) the card that you played in place of the cantrip being the 1 card that you need to combo off (here's a hint: if the card you need is Rider, Pact, Neoform or Evolution, it will never be, otherwise we'd already be playing more of those), or
2) the next X cards of your library having what you need, where X is the amount of draw steps you have before your opponent kills you (instead of the next X cards with a scry 2 thrown in), or
3) mulliganing the hand in the hope of improving it (and given the initial hand was 1 card away, your mulligan has to be 0 cards away for it to be considered an improvement).
Wurm does one job, but it does it well. It does in one Shoal what Rider, Chancellor or Borborygmos would take two to accomplish. Given that there are only four Shoals in the deck, that's a huge deal, especially when a Shoal might have been consumed to cheat out Rider. Again, finding stuff to pitch to Shoal is never the problem, finding Shoal itself is, and when you make one Shoal count for two, you have a lot more room to find the next one.
Playing Dryad Arbor is just begging to lose more game 1s by opening yourself up to Bolt or Push, cards which normally wouldn't stop a Arbor-less build. This is all rather ironic given that you start your second paragraph espousing the ideal of not letting your opponent interact with you.
These numbers are pointless without specifying who starts the game on the play, what turn the 2 other green cards have to be gotten by, and any other practical considerations that are ignored in pursuit of them (such as mulligans, number of lands, presence of Neoform/Evolution in hand, and cantrips). Ignoring all practical considerations, I can guarantee a 100% rate of cheating Rider out when I draw it by playing a deck with 56 other green cards. That is how useless numbers are without the fine print.
People are reporting T1, T2 kills on MTGO. Here's the thing: hearing lots of reports of T1 kills just means people are playing lots of games with Neoform. Which is to be expected, since it's a shiny new card. It doesn't tell you anything about how consistently those kills happen.
That said, while I don't think the deck is broken, it fits a criterion for, shall we say, objectionable. Namely, the "turn one: make a huge play. If you can beat it, you win; if not, I win" gameplay that has been stated as not something the designers want to encourage in Modern.
If you literally won as soon as you casted Neoform or Evolution on Rider then the deck would be too broken, but as it stands now, you still have to play the purely luck-based subgame of "will I draw my Shoals". That's both a good and bad thing: good because the subgame has the effect of tanking the deck's win rate compared to a hypothetical world where resolving Neoform/Evo is an immediate win, bad because that drop in win rate is in the hands of luck, not skill.
The deck works with 16 Mountains so any splash has little cost, you just have to put fastlands, fetches and shocks in your deck. I think white might be better for removing enchantments though, since Nature's Claim gives them life (hurting your H1/Adept aggro plan) while Wear // Tear and Fragmentize don't.
Chancellor is great in the best-case scenario of you having everything you need in your opener except a second mana source. In that case, if it were a second land instead, you can still combo off the same, just on turn 2 instead of turn 1. When you're missing more than just a second mana source, Chancellor is terrible. Most lists are only playing four cantrips that they can spend the mana on. As for the argument that it pitches to Shoal, I rarely have issues pitching cards with high enough CMCs to Shoal, given 4 Wurms, 4 Pacts, and 3 Riders minus the one that was sacrificed. The hard part is drawing into Shoal itself.
Manamorphose is a free card only if you have something to spend the 2 mana that it generates on. If you don't, it costs you 2 mana to draw a card, making it worse than a simple cantrip like Dissenter's Deliverance. As for fixing mana for Neoform or Evolution, maybe the solution is to not put three basic Islands in your deck in the hopes of chasing turn 1 Chancellor pipe dreams. Most lists are sensibly playing at most two nonblue sources (which restricts the combinations of lands that can't cast Neoform to just 1) and one nongreen source (which means Evolution is always castable on any 3 lands).
Additionally, the deck is really soft to counters and discard: discard because you need a whole 4 cards to even begin the combo (Rider, Neoform/Evolution and 2 green cards to pitch) and it's tough to maintain that many cards in hand when your opponent is IoK/TS/Lili +1ing you left and right; counters because you sac as an additional cost so if they counter your Neoform/Evolution you're out a whole four cards. (Unlike, say, Goryo's Vengeance or Through the Breach where if they counter it you're only out one card, and you can power through counters by simply drawing more Vengeances/Breaches than they have counterspells).
I think the most overlooked strength of the deck is that you don't have to combo off immediately after cheating in Griselbrand. Again, Vengeance/Breach are different (worse in this regard) because Griselbrand would die at the end of the turn*. You can win games just with a huge flying lifelinker, like how Bogles does it. The other great thing about waiting is that you get to untap your lands and play one more, allowing you to eliminate the third failure mode of not being able to draw Lightning Storm by casting cantrips to get your library size right. Of course waiting is not always an option, especially if you got your Rider with Pact and don't have enough lands to pay for it, or if they force your hand with Path/Assassin's Trophy, so that's when you get to spin the "will I draw enough Shoals and Wurms" wheel.
I don't think the deck is that broken because it does lose to itself (sometimes) and disruption (often). I do believe that it can spike events like any other inconsistent combo deck though.
*On the other hand, Vengeance/Breach grant haste, so the first 7 is free. That significantly lowers the chance of fizzling. Though in Neoform's case, if they don't have an answer for Griselbrand, you can just wait one turn for summoning sickness to clear and attack, with similar results.
4 Temple of Mystery
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Breeding Pool
2 Forest
1 Island
4 Allosaurus Rider
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Neoform
4 Eldritch Evolution
2 Griselbrand
4 Nourishing Shoal
4 Autochthon Wurm
4 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Lightning Storm
1 Noxious Revival
Cantrips
4 Serum Visions
4 Dissenter's Deliverance
- Lightning Storm vs Borborygmos Enraged as the wincon: I prefer LS since you risk drawing into Borb and being unable to Neoform/Evolution into it. Also you don't need Manamorphose to cast LS off SSG. Finally LS is an instant, so you don't have to combo off immediately - sometimes a huge flying lifelinker that can't be killed by Bolt or Push is enough to win the game, as Bogles has shown - you can just attack repeatedly with Griselbrand until they force you to pull the trigger on combiong off. One good thing about this deck compared to Grishoalbrand is that your Griselbrand doesn't die at the end of the turn.
- Temple of Mystery: There are two good reasons to play this card. One, it gives you some form of card selection in a deck that severely lacks it (Grishoalbrand is in a similar boat and plays the BR Temple). Two, it gives you extra lands to pitch to LS, which can be relevant if you fetch a lot, don't manage to draw your entire library, or if your opponent is casting Life from the Loam. You count these as spells, so 20 lands total is fine (not too much) when 16 of those are non-Temples.
- Chancellor of the Tangle: This card is not necessary. If it's in your opener and you draw the nuts it's amazing, otherwise it's dead weight that can be replaced by any other green card.
- Manamorphose: Also not necessary when your wincon is LS. I mean sure, it cycles, but unless you draw into the card that you need to combo off, what are you going to spend the mana that you just generated on? The other situation it's useful is when you already drew two SSGs and Wurm, and just Noxious Revivaled a Shoal on top, but that is situational.
- Serum Visions: Do people ever learn that decks become much better when you cut the all-in stuff and play cantrips? First there was the old Amulet decks that had to choose between SSG and SV (the good lists went with SV), and then there were Phoenix decks that had to choose between blue for SV or staying in mono-red. Play this card, you're in Simic colors anyway.
- Dissenter's Deliverance. This is basically a cantrip most of the time, but when the situation calls for it, it becomes a lock piece remover. Better than Opt since it's green.
I haven't thought too hard about the SB yet, but I definitely want Echoing Truth as a catch-all and either Guttural Response or Autumn's Veil (those are better than Pact because green) against counterspells. Maindeck Dissenter's Deliverance frees up space in the SB.edit: going with Autumn's Veil to beat Dovin's Veto.
It's better than Wheel because as you mentioned Wheel lets your opponent benefit from LE. Also, AV is cheaper to suspend. Never thought I'd see the day when I'm playing AV in an aggro deck
edit: just want to add that AV is always a net +1 whether it's casted via ED or Finale. ED is easy to see: you start with 2 cards (ED+AV) and end up with 3, so it's +1. For Finale, consider looting it with Neonate, then flashing it back with Finale: you start with 3 cards (Neonate, AV, Finale) and end up with 4 (1 from Neonate, 3 from AV), so it's also +1.
In my goldfishing the deck has been very consistent. I know everyone says it about any deck that they've just brewed up, but trust me when I say I'm not being biased here. The cantrip count kind of speaks for itself. You can get a turn 1/2 Hollow One reliably without random discard screwing you over, and Neonate helps because it can "store" a discard for turn 2. Not having to play SSG is also a liberating feeling.
Most of the time your hand lends itself to the early H1/Adept aggro plan and you go for the combo only when they've dealt with the initial threat.
4 Spirebluff Canal
1 Steam Vents
4 Bloodstained Mire
Cyclers/looters
4 Street Wraith
4 Desert Cerodon
4 Monstrous Carabid
4 Faithless Looting
4 Insolent Neonate
4 Flameblade Adept
4 Hollow One
Combo cards
4 Electrodominance
4 Finale of Promise
4 Living End
4 Ancestral Vision
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Axe
1 Anger of the Gods
4 Ingot Chewer
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Guttural Response
So this deck has two ways to win: 1) stick a H1/Adept early and aggro them out, or 2) cycle some creatures, cheat out LE and beat them with overwhelming force. Plan 1 can lead into plan 2 if they kill your beaters with non-exile/tuck removal. Plan 2 can also be done very quickly as an imitation of plan 1 by cycling/looting two creatures and casting Electrodominance/Finale on turn 2.
The pre-Finale build had this annoying problem of running out of cards in hand very quickly because it played Looting, Neonate and SSG, all of which were negative CA. Finale solves this problem by turning a discarded LE/AV into a live card. Also, both Finale and Electrodominance cost 2 mana, so SSG is no longer needed.
Finale provides another interesting post-SB plan: you can board into Bolt and Flame Slash, board out LEs, and transform into a weird Jeskai-like deck with tons of spot removal and Finale as your version of Snapcaster Mage.
Blast Zone
4
Finale of Promise
Finale of Devastation
3
Narset, Parter of Veils
Liliana's Triumph
Dovin's Veto
Teferi, Time Raveler
Ashiok, Dream Render
Karn, the Great Creator
2
Contentious Plan
Finale of Revelation
Bolas's Citadel
Dreadhorde Arcanist
Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin
Angrath's Rampage
Domri, Anarch of Bolas
Neoform
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
Emergence Zone
1
The rest
Opinions on specific cards:
2) You've just searched up and played Mycosynth Lattice, and his static is winning you the game.
3) You've just used him as a colorless Mastermind's Acquisition to get some artifact lock piece against your opponent.
1) depends on what your opponent is playing, 2) costs a lot of mana, and 3) costs a lot of mana too. 4 mana to tutor an artifact in the worst case is not a great rate. There are prison decks that use Whir of Invention to tutor for lock pieces, sure, but those decks are built with cheap artifacts to pay for Whir as well as to keep their hands empty if the lock piece is Ensnaring Bridge.
Most of the PWs are basically enchantments that can be attacked (aren't they all?). Those that have an ability that cantrips (i.e. the blue ones) are better.
As always, data includes MTGO 5-0s which are not chosen at random, so take the numbers with a pinch of salt.
Tithe Taker: 4
Benthic Biomancer: 17
Pteramander: 39
Sphinx of Foresight: 0
Cry of the Carnarium: 3
Drill Bit: 0
Pestilent Spirit: 0
Spawn of Mayhem: 4
Electrodominance: 19
Immolation Shaman: 0
Light up the Stage: 69
Rix Maadi Reveler: 1
Skewer the Critics: 108
Growth-Chamber Guardian: 0
Incubation Druid: 0
Rampage of the Clans: 2
Wilderness Reclamation: 6
Absorb: 37
Bedevil: 2
Biomancer's Familiar: 0
Deputy of Detention: 126
Dovin, Grand Arbiter: 0
Emergency Powers: 0
Growth Spiral: 9
Gruul Spellbreaker: 4
Judith, the Scourge Diva: 3
Kaya, Orzhov Usurper: 33
Lavinia, Azorius Renegade: 4
Prime Speaker Vannifar: 8
Rhythm of the Wild: 7
Incubation//Incongruity: 1
It's time again for the quarterly "hits and misses from the previous set", brought to you by yours truly.
The big winners were Skewer the Critics, Deputy of Detention, and Light Up the Stage. Deputy has seen play in the two premier Aether Vial decks (Humans and Spirits), while the red spells have been a godsend for Burn and mono-red Phoenix. While Light up the Stage has seen plenty of play, at GPs the Light decks have been outclassed by their counterparts - Light Burn by traditional Boros and mono-red Phoenix by Izzet Phoenix. Eidolon of the Great Revel punishes opponents for cantripping to find their action; playing Light up the Stage in the same deck is hanging yourself with your own rope. Mono-red Phoenix is less consistent than Izzet Phoenix due to the lack of Serum Visions.
Moving down the list, we have Pteramander and two surprises. Pteramander goes into Izzet Phoenix, combining desirable attributes from Monastery Swiftspear (can be played on turn 1) and Bedlam Reveler (2 mana total for a big beater). Lately, Phoenix has been moving back to Snapcaster Mage and Pyromancer Ascension in the flex slots though.
The two surprises are...Absorb and Kaya, Orzhov Usurper! Despite both cards being released to lukewarm if not negative reception, Absorb has managed to find a way into some UW Control decks as a 1-of, and Kaya has been mainboarded in Esper and Lantern Control. I'm honestly quite surprised at Kaya; Faerie Macabre is not normally a playable card and neither is Isolate, but put them together on a 3-mana card that lets you use both effects more than once and...they are? Anyway, Ashiok from War of the Spark follows the same template (2 repeatable hate effects on a 3 mana walker), so if you want to look like a genius and/or speculate on cards, there's your pick.
Digging a bit deeper, we've got some good news and bad news. The good news is that Ravnica Allegiance spawned multiple new deck archetypes. Well done! The bad news is they could charitably be called tier 3. Nevertheless, it's instructive to look at these decks and find out why they're stuck in that rut.
Electrodominance: the shell for this deck is Electrodominance/As Foretold + Living End/Ancestral Vision. Casting Living End or Ancestral Vision gives you a huge amount of resources and, in Living End's case, can be enough to win the game shortly.
Where did it go wrong? The devil is in the details. You need to play cyclers to revive with Living End, and as a result you can't play actual cantrips with card selection, like Serum Visions. Secondly, Faithless Looting decks are pretty popular, and Living End is two-sided. They can play one creature to pressure you while discarding a few more to Looting so that they've still got a board if Living End hits.
Prime Speaker Vannifar: this Pod variant brought a lot of attention to itself (they always do - remember Evolutionary Leap and Eldritch Evolution?), along with a spike in Scryb Ranger's price. It had the same Bolt-proofness as Sai, Master Thopterist, but for a 4-drop meant for Modern play, it damn well have.
Where did it go wrong? Vannifar decks are a lot like Bubble Hulk decks:
1) you need to memorize a long sequence of tutor targets to search up
2) those targets are kind of bad, and you wouldn't play them in your deck if not for the fact that you need them for the kill
3) if any of those tutor targets is anywhere but in your library, tough titty. Sometimes if you draw one of the pieces you can hardcast it and combo off anyway. Other times that piece costs 5 or 6 mana.
And that 4 toughness? With the continued dominance of Phoenix, decks (including Phoenix itself) have been turning to Flame Slash to get rid of Thing in the Ice and Crackling Drake. Suddenly that 4 toughness doesn't seem so invincible.
The key lesson from Electrodominance and Vannifar is that the refrain "you win as soon as you resolve X/untap with X" is often not true on closer inspection. There's usually some kind of additional setup needed, like having certain cards in the graveyard or library, and that costs you percentage points.
Growth Spiral, Wilderness Reclamation: the terrors of BO1 Standard made it to Modern, where they continue to... make matches go to time
Wilderness Reclamation in Modern has the leg up against other midrange/control decks; the high density of 4-CMC cards (and Mystical Teachings' flashback) means you'll out-topdeck them every time, and all that ramp allows you to out-mana them every time.
Where did it go wrong? Well, aggro decks. Especially that pesky Burn which got another Bolt to add to its arsenal. The comparison to blue Scapeshift is apt as it traditionally has not been a good choice in an aggro-heavy meta.
As for flops, Humans is still sticking to Gaddock Teeg over Lavinia, Azorius Renegade in their SBs. Being a Human isn't all that matters (just ask Deputy of Detention). And there can be no bigger flop than Sphinx of Foresight, a card which posed us the question, "Would you play Mystic Speculation if it cost 0 mana?" And the answer was no, because scrying 3 doesn't make up for the fact that you're effectively 1 card down.
Specific example: let's say I have 3 lands, Viscera Seer, Doomed Traveler and a Spirit token on the battlefield. I've got three dudes in the graveyard and Return to the Ranks in hand. I can sac Traveler, make a token, then tap everything to Return for 4, bringing the dead Traveler and three dudes back. At the end of all that I've got seven bodies on the battlefield.
Now replace Doomed Traveler with Grim Initiate and the Spirit with a Zombie Army, what can I do? I can Return for 3 without saccing anything and end up with six bodies. Or, worse yet, I can sac my Zombie Army, then sac my Grim Initiate, Return for 3, and end up with five bodies.