Often times on streams, effects that involve tokens are signaled or noted or mentioned verbally and the game will continue while the judge or table spotter fetches the appropriate token from a binder or whatever.
Hey all, I was thinking in matches against artifacts, why don't we use dispossess in the SB? It's faster that slaughter games and get the job done.
I don't see why an extraction effect is necessary and/or better than Shattering Spree in the deck with red fast mana. If you want to extract something from like KCI specifically, don't waste your sideboard slots and just mull to a faster hand. If you're talking about Affinity, whats the point of extracting anything when they kill you with whats on the board in their first 10 cards or so. Also, any extraction effect that isn't Surgical or perhaps Extirpate is likely too slow, too narrow, or too clunky. Or all three.
Friendly reminder that Stirrings is SUPER busted and remains a laughable contradiction with Preordain.
Ancient Stirrings is fine. I am becoming increasingly convinced that Preordain should be unbanned, though.
Totally fine with this. There are just no good reasons for one being unbanned and the other being banned at this point.
Abzan in the T8 would be sweet. Affinity would be fine, unless it's Hardened Scales with Stirrings in which case I will be even more annoyed than I am now.
That's silly. Preordain finds any card. Ancient stirrings does not. Similar cards, sure, but very different in application.
I would personally enjoy Preordain and Ponder being unbanned, but to equate them to Stirrings is disingenuous and avoiding specifics. And I will remind all of you that Ban lists are meant to deal with specific things, not specific things and all things like them.
Broad generalizations are the foundation for the constant, petulant, and unrelenting ban talks. WOTC has said that the format is currently fine and therefore I see no reason at this time to throw rhetoric on the internet suggesting otherwise. It's just people (LOUDLY) expressing preferences at this point.
Why not use a "State of Modern" thread to, you know, actually discuss or dissect meta decks and ways to combat them instead of incessantly speculating about bans? This thread continues, for years now, to actually produce anything productive. Like, no one here is like "I think Bontu's Reckoning is better/worse against Humans compared to Verdict/Anger/Pulse because reasons" or "While that might be good against Humans, what about Hollow One? Which card is good and reasonable against both decks and how many to run given an expected set of decks at my Local/PPTQ?"
If I am understanding this correctly, you are using Griselbrands draw 7 to dredge 4 Golgari Brown Scales and 1 Dakmor Salvage (Dredge 10 cards total, 2 at a time) in order to loop 2 Blightsteel Colossus and Phantasmorgians, for a total +1 life and +1 Phantasmorgian in hand.
To clarify:
Step 1: Put Griselbrand into play and activate his ability.
Step 2: Activate the Draw 7, Dredge 4-7 cards, 4 of which are Golgari Brownscales, and draw the remainder.
Step 3: Activate Phantasmorgian in the GY, discard 4 Golgari Brownscales + 1 Phantasmgorian
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 until there are no cards in the deck.
Step 5: Somehow resolve 2 Blightsteel Colossus shuffle triggers and an Emrakul's shuffle trigger to not lose by decking yourself by Griselbrand's ability and not lose the ability to loop after resolving Emrakul's shuffle trigger.
However, you are not allowed to dredge more cards than are left in your library and you are not allowed to resolve abilities in the middle of other abilities.
You cannot dredge 2 if you have zero cards left in the library.
You cannot resolve any triggers in the middle of Griselbrand's Draw 7 ability.
Therefore, your loop involves dredging 10 cards, 2 at a time, and putting 2 back in the deck. So with only 2 Blightsteel in the deck you could not dredge 10 cards, 2 at a time because the Blightsteel shuffle clause cannot be resolved until after you have finished resolving the Griselbrand draw 7 ability in it's entirety.
Now, you mention a bit about Emrakul shuffling. Where exactly in the loop can you resolve Emrakul's shuffle trigger without putting the 1 necessary Phantasamorgian in the graveyard back into the deck to continue the loop? You cannot put a Phantasmorgian ability on the stack to put 1 Phantasm and 5 dredgers in the yard in response to the Emrakul trigger, because the the Phantasm ability will resolve first, putting all the things you want in in the yard back into your deck if you let Emrakul resolve OR you will run out of cards in deck with the Emrakul trigger on the stack, which is not a loop, as I've shown above. You also cannot have Emrakul resolve in the middle of Griselbrand's ability.
I do not believe the this loop to be possible, as you've described it.
Specifically this bit -
"I then have 2 blightsteel colossus and phantasmagorian in hand, i use the ability of phantasmagorian again discarding the two blightseel and phantasmagorian, the blightsteels colossus are shuffled in library, i resolve, phantasmagorian is back in hand.
we then are back to the Initial state..."
- Does NOT work like you think it does. You would have 2 Blightsteel in your previously 0 card deck and would die next time you activate Griselbrand by decking yourself or you would lose the ability to loop by allowing Emraku's ability to resolve because there is no way for you to both resolve Emrakul's ability and afterwards have a Phantasmorgian + Dredgers in your graveyard. Again, you cannot stop mid Draw 7 to allow things to shuffle back in your deck.
I have had a problem as of lately. I just feel so lost in Modern. I don't know what deck I should be playing. I have been trying to play a numerous number of decks and haven't stuck with 1 recently. I want a deck that can give me the certain win percentage that I'm accustomed to.
And I can't leverage play skill to win matchups that are just horrible. I can make them closer matchups, but just a few poor draws keep it from happening. Maybe I've been bouncing around too much? Maybe I haven't given many decks their due? I figured I could leverage my play skill with a deck with many decisions to win.
Part of the reason that I bring up this thread is that I feel that Bogles is well positioned right now, but friends of mine don't think I can leverage my play skill here.
So, what do you think about the ramblings here?
"Leveraging playskill" and "best deck" are not synonymous, and is often a trap that you see high level magic players fall into.
"Among top players, the most common bias I see is one against linear strategies. The rationalization is that linear decks are too straightforward and don't offer the pilot enough opportunity to outmaneuver their opponents, an aspect of the game that is valuable to top players. If two decks are relatively equal otherwise, then choosing the more decision-intensive one makes sense, but too often I see this line used to justify playing a weaker deck. The player will convince themselves that the two decks are relatively equal when they aren't so they can play the deck they'd rather play, because demonstrating their play skill is important to them, perhaps as or more important than winning matches of Magic."
It's a fallacy to think there are two categories of decks, those with many decisions trees and those without. Every deck has decisions that are impactful to the game you are playing, whether it's something as complex as proper land and cantrip sequencing or as simple as "Which card do I Thoughtseize?" (Hint: the one you can't answer).
I have been playing modern since 2011, before PT Philadelphia even. I have owned many different decks over the years: Twin, Storm, Affinity, Living End, Birthing Pod, Kiki Pod, Zoo, Merfolk, Infect, Dredge, Elves, Scapeshift, Titanshift, Blue Moon, Dredge, Amulet (with and without Summer Bloom), Burn, Gifts Storm, Eldrazi Tron, Griselbrand, Hollow One and more.
These days I only own Gifts Storm, Amulet, and Affinity. And I can take apart my legacy decks to play Modern Griselbrand and Dredge. And I finally feel like I need to purchase no new decks for this format.
Going in to Modern, back in 2011, I knew that I liked two kinds of decks - Combo decks and super hard permission decks. I actually hadn't played Standard at the time since... 2009ish? Mirrodin-Kamigawa-Ravnica-Timespiral-Lorwyn was the span of standards I played. I quit when Alara came out. In that time frame, I played standard Ravager Affinity, Heartbeat, Dragonstorm, Dredge, Aussie Storm, Dralnu/Mystical Teachings Control, Reveillark Combo and Faeries. But I knew what kind of decks I liked going in.
You too, FoodChainBro, likely know what kind of decks you like and have had success with. My advice, is find a few of those decks and play them. Don't psyche yourself out thinking you can leverage your skill any more or any less in any deck versus any other deck. That's simply not a true statement.
B) Here's what most people miss. The deck plays Cabal Ritual as one of it's main engine cards which requires getting to threshold. The margins of hitting threshold on Turn 3 (which is when you want to go off) is razor thin even with Probe. Without Probe, getting to Threshold on time is actually hard. It's forcing the deck to go slower to hit critical mana to Ad Naus. As a lover of ANT, I'm playing TES for the time being until we can get the engine going again. Not having Probe has been a big hit in practice even if it doesn't seem like it in theory. I really think Rain of Filth is going to become mandatory for the engine if Cabal Ritual remains part of the package which in turn will make it a more all-in combo deck. And if you're going that route, then you might as well play the better engine that can have a plan B in TES.
ANT played Cabal Ritual before Probe even existed and will continue to play it now that it's gone because its the 2nd best black ritual. Is it slightly worse? Sure, but it's not like Cabal Ritual was being propped up by Probe and it's not like banning Probe means reevaluating Cabal Ritual. That's such a silly thing of you to suggest.
I'm not a fan of the white cards. It seems like its set up to beat humans or hollow one, but firespout has always been more than enough to beat humans for me, and I'd rather just be fast against hollow one than morph into a wrath deck. Kabira crossroads also just seems like a worse fountain. Porphyry nodes seems exceptionally bad, given that most of our creatures are often the ones with the least power, 1/1 snakes and 1/2 azuas and 0/1 plants, that we have to play to get the engine moving while their 2/2 humans or 4/4 hollow ones get to beat on us for free.
Thought Scour has the potential to make Gifts Ungiven worse. That doesn't seem good.
Faithless Looting is not a 1 card for 1 card cantrip. It's a 3 cards for 2 cards cantrip, making it very suspect in a deck that needs a critical mass of cards.
A bit against the grain, but I was feeling nostalgic for my old Dredge deck which was the first Dredge deck ever made (RAV-TSP Standard) and after researching standard decklists and extended decklists, I pieced something together that might interest you folks looking for different flavor.
What you lose: Fireball, Faithless Looting
What you gain: Insane grind potential with Rusalka and Bridge.
I've been trying different cards in the Dream Twist slot, notably that landfall crab and Thoughtscour. This deck feels more like an Ichorid deck than the current red Dredge deck, where you create massive board states. I'm not saying it's necessarily better (or worse)and it's certainly not finely tuned, but I thought I would share a different take, and maybe spark some discussion because the current list has been basically the same for a year and a half or so.
I've had a good amount of success with the deck. Whereas the red version plops some Amalgams into play once or twice and hopes to close with Conflagrate (or the unearth dude or flash back card or whatever), I believe that to be very one trick pony-esque. This build is more set up to generate insurmountable board states, and actually abuse Bridge/Rusalka/Ghast/Amalgam in a way that the red build cannot, because you can cheat out your things more than once or twice per game. Just something I thought I'd share.
I do miss Dread Return though. I wish there was more of a Legacy or Vintage scene around me so I could play Dredge there.
Edit: I complete forgot about the split card. I will give that a few runs soon. 2nd image will be what I test next.
Hexproof effects are medium against burn. The tend to bring in some combination of Revelry/Path/Deflecting Palm to deal with this deck, which can take care of things like Sigarda. On the same note, things like Thragtusk or Obstinate Baloth are medium-bad against burn as well. They sniff it out and Skullcrack it. The actual best cards against burn are Radiant Fountain + Bouncelands and Courser of Kruphix.
Different parts of the color pie interact in different ways. It's like the flavor text of Null Rod: sometimes something doing nothing is actually doing something; or in the case of certain keywords, answering something.
Right. There exists a scenario where Null Rod has a function, an interactivity value, but that scenario is not independent of other cards or outside a game.
It has no interactivity value in a vacuum.
So not interacting is interaction???
That seems incredibly backwards and counter to the entire discussion here.
Just because that blanks opponents cards (by design) it is entirely context based. In another match up that delve fatty still dies, nothing to do with how it is individually so it's interaction levels never change.
If you think this reeks of elitism then I suggest you reread the last 3 pages because this is not about strength or whining about decks you lose to. It's about working out how interactive a deck is (ignoring context eg bolt 80%+ going to face).
There is no interaction without context. A card requires a scenario to function. A card outside of a game does nothing.
Trying to assign a numerical value to a deck based on interactivity is really an effort in futility. Say my opponent has Bolt and Push in hand. His interactive score is +2. I play a Hollow One, which is interacting with the Bolt and Push in my opponent's hand by negating their usefulness. Does this make Hollow One's interactive score +2 for me then? Perhaps -2 for my opponent? You can't assign numbers to this type of value gained in an "This card can target X things" kind of way.
Playing a card that effectively blanks your opponents cards is interaction. I am using one card in my deck to negate X cards in my opponents deck. Lightning Bolt does the same thing to Wild Nacatl, playing one card to negate an opponents card. My Primeval Titan makes all my Jund opponent's creatures bad. Is Primeval Titan +18 or so interactivity?
However,
The whole discussion smells like veiled "my midrange/control pile lost to the faster/bigger/more explosive pile and I need to quantify my rage/disappointment somewhere on the internet but people don't like outright whining" and I don't feel like there is any value for anyone to be gained by re-re-re-re-retreading the feelsbads of midrange/control players any further.
Why are their feelings given such recognition? Where are the Affinity players complaining about Pyroclasm effects or the Scapeshift players complaining about counterspell effects? The whole conversation reeks of bias and entitlement.
I don't see why an extraction effect is necessary and/or better than Shattering Spree in the deck with red fast mana. If you want to extract something from like KCI specifically, don't waste your sideboard slots and just mull to a faster hand. If you're talking about Affinity, whats the point of extracting anything when they kill you with whats on the board in their first 10 cards or so. Also, any extraction effect that isn't Surgical or perhaps Extirpate is likely too slow, too narrow, or too clunky. Or all three.
3 Reactive Midrange decks.
1 Aggresive Midrange deck.
1 Aggro deck.
1 Ramp deck.
2 Combo decks.
That's silly. Preordain finds any card. Ancient stirrings does not. Similar cards, sure, but very different in application.
I would personally enjoy Preordain and Ponder being unbanned, but to equate them to Stirrings is disingenuous and avoiding specifics. And I will remind all of you that Ban lists are meant to deal with specific things, not specific things and all things like them.
Broad generalizations are the foundation for the constant, petulant, and unrelenting ban talks. WOTC has said that the format is currently fine and therefore I see no reason at this time to throw rhetoric on the internet suggesting otherwise. It's just people (LOUDLY) expressing preferences at this point.
Why not use a "State of Modern" thread to, you know, actually discuss or dissect meta decks and ways to combat them instead of incessantly speculating about bans? This thread continues, for years now, to actually produce anything productive. Like, no one here is like "I think Bontu's Reckoning is better/worse against Humans compared to Verdict/Anger/Pulse because reasons" or "While that might be good against Humans, what about Hollow One? Which card is good and reasonable against both decks and how many to run given an expected set of decks at my Local/PPTQ?"
This thread is useless.
To clarify:
Step 1: Put Griselbrand into play and activate his ability.
Step 2: Activate the Draw 7, Dredge 4-7 cards, 4 of which are Golgari Brownscales, and draw the remainder.
Step 3: Activate Phantasmorgian in the GY, discard 4 Golgari Brownscales + 1 Phantasmgorian
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 until there are no cards in the deck.
Step 5: Somehow resolve 2 Blightsteel Colossus shuffle triggers and an Emrakul's shuffle trigger to not lose by decking yourself by Griselbrand's ability and not lose the ability to loop after resolving Emrakul's shuffle trigger.
However, you are not allowed to dredge more cards than are left in your library and you are not allowed to resolve abilities in the middle of other abilities.
You cannot dredge 2 if you have zero cards left in the library.
You cannot resolve any triggers in the middle of Griselbrand's Draw 7 ability.
Therefore, your loop involves dredging 10 cards, 2 at a time, and putting 2 back in the deck. So with only 2 Blightsteel in the deck you could not dredge 10 cards, 2 at a time because the Blightsteel shuffle clause cannot be resolved until after you have finished resolving the Griselbrand draw 7 ability in it's entirety.
Now, you mention a bit about Emrakul shuffling. Where exactly in the loop can you resolve Emrakul's shuffle trigger without putting the 1 necessary Phantasamorgian in the graveyard back into the deck to continue the loop? You cannot put a Phantasmorgian ability on the stack to put 1 Phantasm and 5 dredgers in the yard in response to the Emrakul trigger, because the the Phantasm ability will resolve first, putting all the things you want in in the yard back into your deck if you let Emrakul resolve OR you will run out of cards in deck with the Emrakul trigger on the stack, which is not a loop, as I've shown above. You also cannot have Emrakul resolve in the middle of Griselbrand's ability.
I do not believe the this loop to be possible, as you've described it.
Specifically this bit -
"I then have 2 blightsteel colossus and phantasmagorian in hand, i use the ability of phantasmagorian again discarding the two blightseel and phantasmagorian, the blightsteels colossus are shuffled in library, i resolve, phantasmagorian is back in hand.
we then are back to the Initial state..."
- Does NOT work like you think it does. You would have 2 Blightsteel in your previously 0 card deck and would die next time you activate Griselbrand by decking yourself or you would lose the ability to loop by allowing Emraku's ability to resolve because there is no way for you to both resolve Emrakul's ability and afterwards have a Phantasmorgian + Dredgers in your graveyard. Again, you cannot stop mid Draw 7 to allow things to shuffle back in your deck.
"Leveraging playskill" and "best deck" are not synonymous, and is often a trap that you see high level magic players fall into.
Ross Merriam sums it up nicely here: http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/37361_Tron-What-Took-You-So-Long.html
"Among top players, the most common bias I see is one against linear strategies. The rationalization is that linear decks are too straightforward and don't offer the pilot enough opportunity to outmaneuver their opponents, an aspect of the game that is valuable to top players. If two decks are relatively equal otherwise, then choosing the more decision-intensive one makes sense, but too often I see this line used to justify playing a weaker deck. The player will convince themselves that the two decks are relatively equal when they aren't so they can play the deck they'd rather play, because demonstrating their play skill is important to them, perhaps as or more important than winning matches of Magic."
It's a fallacy to think there are two categories of decks, those with many decisions trees and those without. Every deck has decisions that are impactful to the game you are playing, whether it's something as complex as proper land and cantrip sequencing or as simple as "Which card do I Thoughtseize?" (Hint: the one you can't answer).
I have been playing modern since 2011, before PT Philadelphia even. I have owned many different decks over the years: Twin, Storm, Affinity, Living End, Birthing Pod, Kiki Pod, Zoo, Merfolk, Infect, Dredge, Elves, Scapeshift, Titanshift, Blue Moon, Dredge, Amulet (with and without Summer Bloom), Burn, Gifts Storm, Eldrazi Tron, Griselbrand, Hollow One and more.
These days I only own Gifts Storm, Amulet, and Affinity. And I can take apart my legacy decks to play Modern Griselbrand and Dredge. And I finally feel like I need to purchase no new decks for this format.
Going in to Modern, back in 2011, I knew that I liked two kinds of decks - Combo decks and super hard permission decks. I actually hadn't played Standard at the time since... 2009ish? Mirrodin-Kamigawa-Ravnica-Timespiral-Lorwyn was the span of standards I played. I quit when Alara came out. In that time frame, I played standard Ravager Affinity, Heartbeat, Dragonstorm, Dredge, Aussie Storm, Dralnu/Mystical Teachings Control, Reveillark Combo and Faeries. But I knew what kind of decks I liked going in.
You too, FoodChainBro, likely know what kind of decks you like and have had success with. My advice, is find a few of those decks and play them. Don't psyche yourself out thinking you can leverage your skill any more or any less in any deck versus any other deck. That's simply not a true statement.
ANT played Cabal Ritual before Probe even existed and will continue to play it now that it's gone because its the 2nd best black ritual. Is it slightly worse? Sure, but it's not like Cabal Ritual was being propped up by Probe and it's not like banning Probe means reevaluating Cabal Ritual. That's such a silly thing of you to suggest.
Faithless Looting is not a 1 card for 1 card cantrip. It's a 3 cards for 2 cards cantrip, making it very suspect in a deck that needs a critical mass of cards.
What you lose: Fireball, Faithless Looting
What you gain: Insane grind potential with Rusalka and Bridge.
I've been trying different cards in the Dream Twist slot, notably that landfall crab and Thoughtscour. This deck feels more like an Ichorid deck than the current red Dredge deck, where you create massive board states. I'm not saying it's necessarily better (or worse)and it's certainly not finely tuned, but I thought I would share a different take, and maybe spark some discussion because the current list has been basically the same for a year and a half or so.
I've had a good amount of success with the deck. Whereas the red version plops some Amalgams into play once or twice and hopes to close with Conflagrate (or the unearth dude or flash back card or whatever), I believe that to be very one trick pony-esque. This build is more set up to generate insurmountable board states, and actually abuse Bridge/Rusalka/Ghast/Amalgam in a way that the red build cannot, because you can cheat out your things more than once or twice per game. Just something I thought I'd share.
I do miss Dread Return though. I wish there was more of a Legacy or Vintage scene around me so I could play Dredge there.
Edit: I complete forgot about the split card. I will give that a few runs soon. 2nd image will be what I test next.
Right. There exists a scenario where Null Rod has a function, an interactivity value, but that scenario is not independent of other cards or outside a game.
It has no interactivity value in a vacuum.
There is no interaction without context. A card requires a scenario to function. A card outside of a game does nothing.
Trying to assign a numerical value to a deck based on interactivity is really an effort in futility. Say my opponent has Bolt and Push in hand. His interactive score is +2. I play a Hollow One, which is interacting with the Bolt and Push in my opponent's hand by negating their usefulness. Does this make Hollow One's interactive score +2 for me then? Perhaps -2 for my opponent? You can't assign numbers to this type of value gained in an "This card can target X things" kind of way.
Playing a card that effectively blanks your opponents cards is interaction. I am using one card in my deck to negate X cards in my opponents deck. Lightning Bolt does the same thing to Wild Nacatl, playing one card to negate an opponents card. My Primeval Titan makes all my Jund opponent's creatures bad. Is Primeval Titan +18 or so interactivity?
However,
The whole discussion smells like veiled "my midrange/control pile lost to the faster/bigger/more explosive pile and I need to quantify my rage/disappointment somewhere on the internet but people don't like outright whining" and I don't feel like there is any value for anyone to be gained by re-re-re-re-retreading the feelsbads of midrange/control players any further.
Why are their feelings given such recognition? Where are the Affinity players complaining about Pyroclasm effects or the Scapeshift players complaining about counterspell effects? The whole conversation reeks of bias and entitlement.