MTG Salvation

Managed to locate the other 2 SCG Invitational Qualifier Top 8 Runaway Arclight decks!

Quote from Doomfall19 »

Another 5-0 was posted today. This time it has a playset of Needle Drop and Rift Bolt and drops Runaway Steam-Kin completely. Going for the burn plan. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/competitive-modern-constructed-league-2018-10-23#none

That Modern Constructed League also has a more traditional list with 2 Gut Shot and 3 Lava Spike but only the usual set of 12 creatures (i.e. no Monastery Swiftspear).

I see this deck leans on the combo more, but how much does it really need 8 infinite mana sink creatures? The Vizier Druid decks I've seen consistently stick to 4-6 only. I'd imagine your backup plan taking an unnecessarily large hit because of this.

Also, just like with Vizier Druid decks, I suspect Duskwatch Recruiter should have the highest count; it does have the lowest activation cost among all the infinite mana sink creatures in the deck that can generate CA.

Featuring three Guilds of Ravnica cards in Arclight Phoenix, Runaway Steam-Kin, and Risk Factor, this deck has 5-0'd two MTGO Competitive Modern Constructed Leagues:



Obviously, there are several places where this build can be optimized. Note how much these two lists disagree and where they believe the flex slots are.

So I tried building a version on Cockatrice:

And I found that this deck can outrace Affinity. Affinity.

Even given my neophyte piloting skills, this deck is capable of some viciously fast starts (although it may be less consistent than BridgeVine).

Runaway Steam-Kin is the guy you want to untap with on Turn 3, the mana generator and beatstick you close to always want to see. It's the biggest removal magnet in the deck--Hardened Scales Robots won significantly more often whenever it Walking Ballista'd the Steam-Kin ASAP--but thanks to the mana it makes, you can string together 10 or more spells in a single turn by Turn 5.

Arclight Phoenix is part of your most busted starts and your semi-resilient late-game--a good opener often involves Turn 1 Faithless Looting into dumping an Arclight. Against decks without fliers, it also turns Risk Factor into a Draw 3 at fairly high life totals (7 life for 1 Arclight, 10 life for 2 Arclights, etc.). And in a deck that can string together 10 spells in a turn on Turns 4-5, of course you can pull these guys out of the graveyard on Turns 2-3.

Cards like Bedlam Reveler end up being the gas that keeps the red instants and sorceries flowing. Risk Factor doesn't end up being gas that often if your opponent knows what's up, especially since this deck can be slow at actually dealing damage in the first 2 turns.

I don't know whether the best strategy is to aim burn at their face or their best creatures. This deck can effectively combo off mid-game, though, which makes me think that killing powerful creatures might be the better way to go.

I suspect the version with fewer rituals is the better one, but which build do you think is best, and how much of the Modern metagame do you think this deck can rip up? Keep in mind that this deck is vulnerable to Damping Sphere, Eidolon of Rhetoric....

Quote from Decadent_Creed »

Quote from Dawnk41 »

How about we all agree that it’s 1.5 cards? As the second card can be literally anything, like a dead land draw.

Does that dead land draw count as one card or .5 of a card for deck building purposes? Asking for a friend.

The dead land draw counts as one card for card disadvantage and presumably deck building purposes. Hoarding lands for Tireless Tracker is the same deal--you need to hoard a card just to make another card good, especially one you haven't drawn yet.

I was thinking about my Jund removal, and I'm seeing more and more reason to replace all my Terminates, Abrupt Decays, and Maelstrom Pulses with a full playset of Assassin's Trophys.

From my experience, Path to Exile's drawback didn't matter most of the time (I suspect it mattered 10% of the time or less--white-splashing decks can often withstand a free mid-game ramp spell for the opponent), and Assassin's Trophy's drawback is pretty similar.

Assassin's Trophy hits lands, costs BG, and is an instant. In comparison, Terminate cannot hit non-creatures but costs BR instead (which might save your butt if you draw it late against a Blood Moon deck) and ignores regeneration (which is relevant only against Elves). Abrupt Decay cannot hit lands and cannot hit stuff that's 4 cmc or more but cannot be countered (which is more relevant--cue Spirits being unable to pseudo-redirect it with Mausoleum Wanderer, Merfolk being unable to tax it with Cursecatcher, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner being unable to stop the first one, U/x decks being unable to use counterspells to stop it, and Chalice of the Void on 2 being unable to stop it as a bonus). Maelstrom Pulse cannot hit lands, costs 1BG, and is a sorcery but can hit stuff with the same name (which is dandy against Empty the Warrens, Lingering Souls, Secure the Wastes, and Bridge from Below Zombie tokens but bites in BGx Midrange mirrors).

But eh, I like being able to hit Goblin Electromancer, Primeval Titan, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria--especially while they're tapped out--and Tron lands with the same card.

And if ramping opponents early-game is too unsavoury, there's always Bolt and Fatal Push.

IMO, unless the number of Thought-Knot Seers in the format plunges to 0, a split is always optimal, even if you play only 4 targeted discard spells. (OK, fine, play TKS or Tidehollow Sculler yourself and I'll give you a pass because both of them can nab anything Thoughtseize can get.) TKS is probably the most common 4+-cmc card that can be played on Turn 2 (thanks, Eldrazi Temple), thus giving you incentive to eliminate it ASAP.

It does feel like the life loss increasingly hurts, though, and the rise of aggro is making targeted discard less useful, anyway. I always split in favour of Inquisition of Kozilek (e.g. 4 IoK-2 TS) (OK, fine, except in Death's Shadow decks), but I dropped a targeted discard spell from my test Jund list recently and I actually haven't regretted it yet.

Quote from lucasbpc »

It is much worse than it seems. You can play around it much more easily than Containment Priest and even Hallowed Moonlight, you can fake-out a vial activation and put nothing into play to make the opponent sacrifice it, and it does not stop Sneak Attack at all, at best delays it for a turn.

This person is right--the Sneak Attack player can activate it once, force the sac in response, then activate it one more time in response to the sac and cheat out his/her fatty anyway.

People sitting in baskets on others seems commonplace to me. I've already seen a similar arrangement on the Digimon Tuwarmon.

Wow, these Elves look East Asian. Even the Elves in the background look East Asian.

(I'm Chinese-Canadian.)

Quote from Silver_Spellthief »

Love that doubling season actually gets a reprint after all this time.

But that is absolutely the worst art the card has ever had based on flavor. What about this is seasonal or growth/abundance based at all?

It's a sports arena. Playing sports have seasons. There are 2 ("double") statues at the entrance. I thought the picture was cute.

"Double your entertainment this year! Twice the competitors, twice the fun! All starting this season at Valor's Reach!"

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Well that is some power hopefully other guilds get some good stuff as well lol.

I find it funny though that this is just fine for GB...but a 2 CMC unconditional counter is simply too good and just isn't fair.

Given that they've been on such a "the opponent searches for a basic land and puts it into play" kick lately (Field of Ruin, Old-Growth Dryad, and now this) I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the near future they print a 2-mana unconditional counterspell that has the opponent search out a basic land.

Quote from AUTUMNTWILIGHT »

Lol its doesn't even say nonland permanents apparently the rules don't apply for Golgari lol.

Thats what pushed it to 'omg what' levels.

The only thing I'll complain about is that we just got Breya two years ago. Do we really need a third artifact centered commander precon?

Oh and I guess
Card Type
Card Type
Card Type
Zone!
Is weird.

Chromium gets got by a 1/X flying blocker + a kill spell.

Quote from Melkor »

well then.......will the Tron haters PLEASE SHUT UP NOW??? Does THIS do the trick?

Nature's Claim

Nah.

This is actually kind of interesting as it's not "bad" in multiples. Shuts off Tron, Valakut, Creature lands, Eldrazi lands, Fetch lands (but i can't see how you'd want to name fetch lands with this). This may also be a safety valve for something that's coming into standard in the near future. Maybe some functional reprints of cards like Lotus Vale/Scorched Ruins.

Edit: Flavor text by Tamiyo. Hey, look at that.

Would you really play Bolas over another copy of Kolaghan's Command in a Grixis deck? Command has the same discard mode, but is cheaper and more flexible. If you use it to bring back and cast a Tasigur, the Golden Fang, you've spent 4 mana for a discard and a 4/5 mana sink. That's pretty close to 4 mana for a discard and a 4/4 flying mana sink.

I think the floor on Bolas is about the same as Command, but the ceiling on Command is a lot higher due to its multiple modes.

Quote from Watchwolf »

Were the OG elder dragons not all planeswalkers?

No, they all were powerful enough to rival a planeswalker, but only Ugin and Bolas are actually Planeswalkers proper.

I find this relevant so I'm going to post it up. It is from old G-Squintz himself, Gavin Verhey.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/creating-global-series-jiang-yanggu-mu-yanling-2018-06-07

Here are some very telling quotes. If you can't decipher the corporate speak, I will summarize after each.

However, one very, very important element to us was not to fracture the competitive scene. Having Chinese Standard and European or North American Standard look very different would not be good for the game, because it creates discordant information and doesn't allow information and decklists from one place to transfer over to the other. And that's not even factoring in pieces like Magic Online!

Okay, pretty much face value on this.

So, Play Design was very careful to make sure that the cards were balanced so that none of them were cards for Constructed. We're always careful with Planeswalker Decks, but especially here we wanted to be even more careful than normal.

Translation: We nerfed these cards bigly so that no one will ever want or need to use them in Constructed. Planeswalker Decks always suck hard but we designed this one to be even worse than usual.

After all, the most important aspect of these decks is that they teach you how to play. And if it's clear that cards you get in your booster packs are often stronger than these cards, that's actually okay: it's a great pathway to upgrade your deck when you're new. In fact, we've found that when most new players put cards into their deck they actually tend to weaken their deck because they are still learning about deck building! Having some cards that you can obviously take out can be very helpful.

Translation: Again these decks suck hard. Any rube can figure out that a $3.99 MSRP booster pack has more power and playability in it than these $19.99 MSRP constructed Nerf Decks. But that is okay to take advantage of a newb's general dumbness. We put in total chaff that even the biggest idiot can figure out needs to be removed to make these remotely competitively playable.

Even though technically the Standard card pools between China and elsewhere will be different, it should be nearly unnoticeable at the competitive level. We know this is important to players, and we were very careful with how we handled the cards in this set. If, for some reason, an interaction breaks that sets Chinese Standard on a different course than the rest of the world, then we will talk about if any action needs to be taken—but we have very high confidence that should not be the case.

Even though we are purposely creating disharmony of product, this crap is so dang bad that it will never show up in a competitive deck. When we use "very careful" we really mean nerfed hard. If for some reason any of this trash makes its way into competitive Standard in China, we will bring down the ban-hammer. But we are pretty confident that this steaming offal won't make us do that.

So…..

Artwork for the most part is great. Some very beautiful cards here. I give it an A.
Playability gets an F-
Monetary Value I'd say D+

And yes, I bet I've opened up a can of worms.

I'm curious as to how these 2 became a duo