I believe that is the same as before: too slow and folds to graveyard hate. I would love to see someone break the meta with a Loam engine, but I don't think it can be done with the current state of the meta.
That is 58 cards (I don't have a 4th Lili, that's why the singleton Last Hope). I've been pondering about the last two, here are some options that I'm currently considering:
Hi there, I just posted this on /r/Legacy, but thought to ask here as well, since MTGSalvation has been always a fantastic source of information for my Modern play.
Our Modern play-group is looking to -very- slowly move over to Legacy, and I could really use some advice. If this kind of post is not allowed here, please accept my apologies and feel free to remove it.
First some background in case you are interested in where we are coming from and where we would like to go: we all started to play a long, long time ago (about when Tempest was released), then life got in our way, we had to drop the game, sold our old cards, you get the drill.
Fast forward a few years, we picked back up the game again, and after some time we have now all of the Modern staples.
Even though we are all grown up adults with a full-time job, we just cannot (and by cannot, I really mean cannot) afford to buy into Legacy just like that. We live in Argentina were Magic is already a very, very expensive hobby so buying, say, dual lands is an absurd amount of money (to put things in perspective, the average monthly income around here is about U$S 600~750, and that barely covers rent, food, bills, and whatnot).
One important thing to consider is that where we live there is absolutely no Legacy scene. None whatsoever. So, this is just purely for playing between us.
Now, the question is: if we can already build any Modern deck, how should we go about transitioning to Legacy, provided that we cannot buy Legacy staples all at once, and we want to keep it proxie free (casual play)?
If I had the money I would totally play 4C Loam (as I've been trying to do on Modern for a while), but I would have to sell my car, my guitar, and maybe two kidneys for that. But if I have to guess, probably the easiest and cheapest transitions are D&T, Death Shadow, and Burn.
I would really appreciate any suggestions and comments you may have. Thanks a bunch and sorry for my English!
TL;DR: we are on a budget, but we can acquire the cards over time, no need to be competitive since there are no tournaments around, using our Modern decks to transition to Legacy, proxie free.
I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, since I haven't played with Mardu Pyromancer as of yet: have anyone tried Dark Confidant over Bedlam Reveler?
Out of ignorance, I would say that the Reveler provides a bigger body, instant card advantage, and prowess triggers. On the other hand, Bob brings constant card advantage, it comes into play a lot earlier and is not dependent of the graveyard.
You can check Caleb's blog for info about his sideboarding plan.
His notes about PA:
The more interesting change though is the reintroduction of Pyromancer Ascension. The cards removed to make way for these were the 2nd Gigadrowse and 2nd Shattering Spree. First I will talk about what was removed as we have been quite happy with two of both for a while now. As for Shattering Spree we have a good mathup against affinity already and Engineered Explosives helps fill the gap of having a second piece of artifact hate. The second Gigadrowse though is still quite great for the plan that we were using for control with waiting until we can tap them out and go off. But with the addition of Pyromancer Ascension we now have another axis to attack control so we can shave down on cards for the matchup. Plus we only really like to board in a single copy of Gigadrowse in non control matchups anyway.
Now to address the reason that Pyromncer Ascension was selected for the board is that it is effectively another enabler, like the bears, but can only be hit by a couple pieces of interaction that they have instead of just anything that can handle a creature. Now since our main deck is not perfectly configured for turning the Ascension on with almost all cards being maxed out on copies, we will really only want it when we are in a slower grindy matchup. One thing to also note is that pieces basically requires one to board in the 4 pieces to create a more consistent engine so they can in general be looked at as a package. This is due to the above mentioned non optimized main deck so we can put lots of things in the graveyard to turn it on mid game reliably.
In many grindy matchups we will see a fair amount of graveyard hate, which is why we usually bring in pieces anyway, so it may seem a bit counter intuitive to want Ascension but it is still quite good in the face of all graveyard hate besides ones that eliminate the concept of us having a graveyard, such as Rest in Piece or Leyline of the Void. This is mainly due to Ascension not having an intervening if clause (like Valakut) so even if the card in graveyard is removed Ascension still gets a counter. Another thing to note is that in all situations where Ascension is boarded in it will serve a similar role to the medallion bears but can be jammed with basic impunity with the upside of creating a subgame similar to how Empty does. Also treat the Ascension as similar to bears in that its importance to sculpting our game plan is very situational and should just be set out to achieve, like we did with gigadrowse before in control matchups.
It's more a Scry 1 effect than anything else. Its activation cost is quite too high to be flipped effectively. Of course, that doesn't mean that you should never activate it.
I ended up casting 3 Serum Visions, 3 Sleight of Hand, 2 Opt, and 2 Manamorphose and all I found were rituals. I'm not mathematician, but the odds of that happening must be really low.
Anyways, even though I lost the game, I had fun with my opponent who was as astonished as me that I drew nothing.
1 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
2 Treetop Village
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Scavenging Ooze
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Fatal Push
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Terminate
- A single Abrupt Decay (multi-purpose removal)
- A second Terminate (hits Hollow One, Gurmag Angler, and other big threads)
- A third Fatal Push
- A fourth Lightning Bolt
- A single Collective Brutallity (drains, Duress-like effect, mediocre removal)
- 25th land
- A singleton Grim Lavamancer
My meta consists more or less of Burn, ETron, Mardu Pyromancer, Affinity, Storm, and Jeskai Control.
What do you guys suggest as my starting point? Thanks!
It was posted here.
Far from ideal, but it's a start.
Our Modern play-group is looking to -very- slowly move over to Legacy, and I could really use some advice. If this kind of post is not allowed here, please accept my apologies and feel free to remove it.
First some background in case you are interested in where we are coming from and where we would like to go: we all started to play a long, long time ago (about when Tempest was released), then life got in our way, we had to drop the game, sold our old cards, you get the drill.
Fast forward a few years, we picked back up the game again, and after some time we have now all of the Modern staples.
Even though we are all grown up adults with a full-time job, we just cannot (and by cannot, I really mean cannot) afford to buy into Legacy just like that. We live in Argentina were Magic is already a very, very expensive hobby so buying, say, dual lands is an absurd amount of money (to put things in perspective, the average monthly income around here is about U$S 600~750, and that barely covers rent, food, bills, and whatnot).
One important thing to consider is that where we live there is absolutely no Legacy scene. None whatsoever. So, this is just purely for playing between us.
Now, the question is: if we can already build any Modern deck, how should we go about transitioning to Legacy, provided that we cannot buy Legacy staples all at once, and we want to keep it proxie free (casual play)?
If I had the money I would totally play 4C Loam (as I've been trying to do on Modern for a while), but I would have to sell my car, my guitar, and maybe two kidneys for that. But if I have to guess, probably the easiest and cheapest transitions are D&T, Death Shadow, and Burn.
I would really appreciate any suggestions and comments you may have. Thanks a bunch and sorry for my English!
TL;DR: we are on a budget, but we can acquire the cards over time, no need to be competitive since there are no tournaments around, using our Modern decks to transition to Legacy, proxie free.
There are some... weird choices. A list running Noble Hierarch, another with with Grim Flayer and Goblin Dark-Dwellers, another one with maindeck Thrun, the Last Troll, Tireless Tracker, Eternal Witness and Mishra's Bauble
Thoughts?
Out of ignorance, I would say that the Reveler provides a bigger body, instant card advantage, and prowess triggers. On the other hand, Bob brings constant card advantage, it comes into play a lot earlier and is not dependent of the graveyard.
Thanks!
2 Blood Crypt
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Graven Cairns
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Fatal Push
1 Flame Jab
4 Faithless Looting
4 Life from the Loam
3 Seismic Assault
2 Molten Vortex
3 Raven's Crime
3 Liliana of the Veil
I would like to include Lingering Souls in the main, but I'm not quite sure what to take out. I think Souls + Flayer is great synergy.
Any thoughts?
On mobile, will try to edit and add the list.
Edit:
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Dark Confidant
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Collective Brutality
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Thoughtseize
3 Fatal Push
2 Kolaghan's Command
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Terminate
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Treetop Village
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Collective Brutality
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Damnation
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
3 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Rakdos Charm
His notes about PA:
I ended up casting 3 Serum Visions, 3 Sleight of Hand, 2 Opt, and 2 Manamorphose and all I found were rituals. I'm not mathematician, but the odds of that happening must be really low.
Anyways, even though I lost the game, I had fun with my opponent who was as astonished as me that I drew nothing.