To be honest, it didn't go great. There are a lot of powerful pro-white cards and green removal just sucks so I wind up not having any answer for a lot of creatures that hit the table. Also, as much as Populate feels great when you get it tacked onto another effect, I feel like I keep running into situations where I don't have a good token to copy or where people remove/bounce my token in reponse and it's a pretty bad blow-out. Having played BW Tokens two rotations ago and Junk Tokens last rotation, this just feels so weak in comparison. We are really missing Lingering Souls and planeswalkers and anthem effects that existed prior to this rotation.
I am going to tweak some more and try to see what I can do. I was considering splashing black for better removal via Putrefy/Abrupt Decay/Doom Blade and Golgari Charm and maybe for some card draw. Tossing in 4 Overgrown Tombs and some white/black duals along with Cartiyad should make that a pretty trivial.
Aes Sedai, At this point your responses just look like you're trolling.
The last several pages of this thread are mostly garbage honestly and I think you've all made your points. Why don't we continue to actually play decks and post results with and without Satyr and let the results and actual events speak for themselves instead of having an un-winnable argument that seems to be getting personal.
...but the Firedrinkers I ordered got lost in the mail so I had to work around it. I still think I'd prefer to have them in the MD. Fortunately it wasn't disastrous.
Sideboard is still a work in progress. The most useful cards out of there were Weird, Peak Eruption and Mortars. The rest I think could flux... I'd like to put at least a couple Chandra's in.
No Kessig Wolf Run seems like a big oversight. It's a win condition in itself, especially on some of the creatures you've. Strangleroot Geist can get a huge pump and head in twice, taking out two blockers and putting damage to the face. Savageborn Hydra becomes way more potent with some extra power and trample. Etc...
Hey guys. Before the last rotation I had run an GR Undying deck that also had 4 Blasphemous Acts and ran a bunch of resilient creatures with Undying, Regeneration or Indestructibility in order to survive the sweeper (Strangleroot Geist, Wolfir Silverheart, Predator Ooze, etc). I have been testing a newer iteration of the deck recently. The biggest issue I had with it was that Reckoner is such a common card to run into, you wind up doing 13 to your own face trying to wipe the board when your opponent has one out. I thought about it a bit and figured if I can't beat them, maybe I should join them? After a bit of testing here is where I am at at the moment:
I guess the idea here is that there are two win conditions:
(1) A midrangey-aggressive deck with a lot of resilient creatures along with various ways to provide them with evasion.
(2) A "combo" deck where if you draw a Reckoner or two along with a Blasphemous Act you can just dome them for 13 (or 26 or 39).
Considering the lack of threads for a deck of this style, I was hoping to get some feedback and/or ideas from you guys. I feel like there may be some cards I am not thinking about or better ways to deal with fixing that I have not considered. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
Undying Evil seems interesting. Hitting a Restoration Angel or Tusk with it seems pretty brutal in terms of value. The downside of course is that you have to leave mana up for it and it does nothing for your tokens and is useless against Detention Sphere/O-Ring/Sever, etc. I honestly think I'd rather run another two bodies instead of the two of them but it's cool to see something different.
Match 1 - VS Naya Zoo aggro. Lost game 1. Sided in more removal and two Centaur Healers in place of my Disciples. Won the next 2 due to him having slower starts and me having pretty reasonable starts and being able to get to cast one or multiple AoS's.
Match 2 - VS Bant Biomancer Midrange. I think this could have gone either way, we were both grindy, long game midrange decks. Both games I was able to ramp to AoS pretty fast, disrupt his Biomancers and draw a ton off cards of DoB and he scooped both games once things got out of hand. My new term for Disciple of Bolas'ing a Thragtusk is "Living the Dream". It does feel pretty awesome.
Match 3 - VS Esper Control (very, very casual version). He was running a very incomplete and casual version of esper control. Both games weren't much of an issue. G2 I was in a situation where I had all 3 AoS's in my deck on the board or in the graveyard along with Unburial Rites in the yard and there was basically no way I could lose.
Match 4 - VS R/B Aggro/Midrange Vampires. This deck absolutely RAPED me. Killed me way too fast to let me ramp to AoS and everything is flying so it just went over top of even multiple Thragtusks and Smiters. Nighthawk, Aristocrat, Nocturnus, Knight of Infamy, etc. Just absolutely demolished. The only thing I can think of that could have been in my board to salvage this matchup would be sweepers. It already has me considering putting Planar Cleansing or Terminus in the board... I got to six mana both times but didn't manage to hit seven to play AoS so it would have been really relevant.
Thoughts:
It feels wrong to play B/W midrange without any Lingering Souls but they seem to be the most under-performing card by far. I think I may replace them with Centaur Healers to try and shore up the aggro matchup. I also want to move some sweepers into the board to deal with slightly slower aggro in the air like I ran into tonight because I simply had NO way to deal with it.
Orzhov Charm is pretty disappointing. It seems like it should be solid, two mana for an instant speed removal spell that can hit anything but the drawback is really bad. I had to remove a Thundermaw Hellkite vs Naya and just HOPE that he didn't have another one or any way to smack me for another 5 or I'd be dead. It's too risky of a card with so many aggressive, hastey creatures running around. My heart can't take the stress. I think I may change that SB spot to some other removal like Ultimate Price or more Severs. I want to move more Garruk's into the SB as well... I'm still not very sure I want him in the maindeck. Disciple is fine for the card advantage already and I just bring Garruk in for other really grindy midrange matchups or control. I do not want him in my deck anytime someone is going to hit me even remotely fast.
Anyhow I've been playing this because my local meta at my local shop is very, very skewed towards midrange decks and this is pretty great at fighting any deck that gives me time to set up and doesn't sweeper the board. It definitely worked well and it can be very powerful.
Lastly, it's kind of hard to show people how ridiculous DoB can be in midrange vs midrange matchups until they've seen it in person. You play one, sac a Thragtusk. You resto angel it, sac a Loxodon Smiter. Resto angel it again and sac another large creature and you are at 40 life and have dug through half your deck. Sac'ing a creature sounds crappy but when you draw 4-5 and keep drawing more Smiters and Thragtusks and have 12+ mana available to just keep casting them, it hardly matters. It's totally relevant to realize that it can sometimes be a 4 mana 2/1 that does nothing else but in matchups that let you abuse it it's absurd. You basically can't lose once you get things rolling, he helps this deck get a ton of momentum. Again, it only works in matchups where you have the time and space to set things up but when trying to specifically hose the midrange matchup, it works very well.
I consider Disciple of Bolas unplayable, but Rakdos return is in the sideboard for now, probably putting it in for Lingering Souls mainboard.
I've been running Disciple as a two-of and finding that when he resolves a few turns into the game it's basically an enormous momentum swing. Sac'ing a Loxodon Smiter is very relevant and sac'ing a Thragtusk is living the dream. Can you elaborate on why you think it is unplayable?
I realize it is a little bit less predictable and has a bigger range from high to low but what other options do we have for card advantage? It seems worth the variance when in certain situations he will put you so far ahead that you basically win on the spot. He's like a Sphinxes Revelation or Bonfire in that respect.
I like Underworld Connections but I've been keeping it in the board to swap with Disciples against control matchups where the life loss and BB cost aren't as big of a deal. I think it'd be a bad card in the MD though, I don't want to playing that against aggro G1 until I can side it out.
So what does everyone feel is the worst matchup for this deck right now? I would say the decks I don't look forward to playing are Esper Control and Jund. Jund wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for Olivia. I playtested two matches against a Jund deck today in my limited time at the LGS trading for stuff, and once Olivia hit the field, it was over unless I saw removal. I didn't get to sideboard, so I would hope it would get better if I had moved my Murders and Orzhov Charms in. Granted 2 matches isn't enough, and usually I end up beating Jund, but I didn't get to test out my new Wolf Run tech as I never drew either of the 2 Wolf Runs I have. Drawing them would have probably sealed the game a few turns before Olivia came out.
In terms of my red splash, I put in 2 Blood Crypts, 2 Huntmasters, and 2 Wolf Runs. I really want to get a Sacred Foundry to put in for tomorrow. In goldfishing and in the couple matches I played, I didn't have a problem with my mana. Having Huntmaster as a two-of makes him less likely to clutter my hand without a red source. But, he's awesome. It's like combining the best of Naya and Jund into a ridiculous powerful deck. Like I said, Farseek is amazing. I wish I would be able to get to a GPT or something this weekend, but I'm going on a cruise Sunday for the next week. I would encourage a few of you to try splashing red for Wolf Run and possibly Huntmaster and see how you like it.
Just as a last example of the awesomeness of Huntmaster, I had him alone on the field against an opposing Thragtusk and Liliana. I passed turn, let Huntmaster flip marking two on his Thragtusk for a horrible trade with my wolf token if he was to attack, and in response to the damage trigger Abrupt Decay'd the Liliana. Felt so good. Combine this kind of shenanigan with an Obzedat coming in every turn...I feel like this is just too powerful.
That being said, Olivia can still take over if the board is clogged. Hate that card!
I had someone accelerated into a T3 Olivia vs me the other day and I just groaned and started hoping to draw one of the two Oblivion Rings I was maindecking. There was literally nothing else in my deck that could deal with her hitting the board that early. I usually run two O-Rings and two Abrupt Decays in the main but that situation is making me consider running one more piece of flexible spot removal in the MD, either Sever or Orzhov Charm or Murder or another O-Ring. I dunno yet. It was painful though and I seem to run into a lot of Jund.
http://brainstormbrewery.com/almost-getting-there-with-scion-of-vitu-ghazi-open-top-4/
10x Forest
9x Plains
1x Selesnya Guildgate
4x Temple Garden
Creatures (20):
4x Elvish Mystic
4x Sylvan Cartiyad
3x Loxodon Smiter
2x Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
4x Scion of Vitu-Ghazi
3x Armada Wurm
4x Call of the Conclave
4x Advent of the Wurm
3x Selesnya Charm
1x Trostani's Judgment
2x Collective Blessing
2x Spear of Heliod
1x Loxodon Smiter
2x Unflinching Courage
2x Rootborne Defenses
1x Ready//Willing
2x Pithing Needle
2x Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2x Windstorm
2x Glare of Heresy
1x Something Else
To be honest, it didn't go great. There are a lot of powerful pro-white cards and green removal just sucks so I wind up not having any answer for a lot of creatures that hit the table. Also, as much as Populate feels great when you get it tacked onto another effect, I feel like I keep running into situations where I don't have a good token to copy or where people remove/bounce my token in reponse and it's a pretty bad blow-out. Having played BW Tokens two rotations ago and Junk Tokens last rotation, this just feels so weak in comparison. We are really missing Lingering Souls and planeswalkers and anthem effects that existed prior to this rotation.
I am going to tweak some more and try to see what I can do. I was considering splashing black for better removal via Putrefy/Abrupt Decay/Doom Blade and Golgari Charm and maybe for some card draw. Tossing in 4 Overgrown Tombs and some white/black duals along with Cartiyad should make that a pretty trivial.
EDIT: Also, any thoughts on running Giant Adephage as a finisher?
-rujasu
The last several pages of this thread are mostly garbage honestly and I think you've all made your points. Why don't we continue to actually play decks and post results with and without Satyr and let the results and actual events speak for themselves instead of having an un-winnable argument that seems to be getting personal.
21x Mountain
Creatures (29):
4x Rakdos Cackler
3x Firefist Striker
2x Gore-House Chainwalker
4x Ash Zealot
4x Burning Tree Emissary
4x Boros Reckoner
4x Chandra's Phoenix
4x Fanatic of Mogis
4x Lightning Strike
4x Magma Jet
1x Shock
Other (1):
1x Hammer of Purphoros
4x Frostburn Weird
2x Peak Eruption
2x Burning Earth
1x Hammer of Purphoros
4x Mizzium Mortars
2x Act of Treason
I had actually intended to play:
-2 Gore-House Chainwalker
-1 Shock
-1 Magma Jet
+4 Firedrinker Satyr
...but the Firedrinkers I ordered got lost in the mail so I had to work around it. I still think I'd prefer to have them in the MD. Fortunately it wasn't disastrous.
Sideboard is still a work in progress. The most useful cards out of there were Weird, Peak Eruption and Mortars. The rest I think could flux... I'd like to put at least a couple Chandra's in.
4x Stomping Ground
4x Rootbound Crag
4x Temple Garden
2x Gruul Guildgate
2x Kessig Wolf Run
6x Forest
2x Mountain
4x Arbor Elf
4x Young Wolf
4x Strangleroot Geist
4x Wolfir Avenger
4x Boros Reckoner
3x Hound of Griselbrand
1x Ghor-Clan Rampager
2x Vorapede
3x Searing Spear
3x Rancor
4x Blasphemous Act
Cards I have considered that aren't in here:
I guess the idea here is that there are two win conditions:
(1) A midrangey-aggressive deck with a lot of resilient creatures along with various ways to provide them with evasion.
(2) A "combo" deck where if you draw a Reckoner or two along with a Blasphemous Act you can just dome them for 13 (or 26 or 39).
Considering the lack of threads for a deck of this style, I was hoping to get some feedback and/or ideas from you guys. I feel like there may be some cards I am not thinking about or better ways to deal with fixing that I have not considered. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=496558
Here is the list you're referring to:
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=54110
1 Angel of Serenity
1 Armada Wurm
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
2 Centaur Healer
3 Loxodon Smiter
4 Restoration Angel
4 Thragtusk
Planeswalkers (2)
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Lands (24)
1 Gavony Township
3 Godless Shrine
3 Isolated Chapel
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
1 Vault of the Archangel
4 Woodland Cemetery
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Tragic Slip
2 Undying Evil
3 Farseek
3 Lingering Souls
2 Unburial Rites
2 Centaur Healer
3 Deathrite Shaman
2 Rhox Faithmender
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
2 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
2 Sever the Bloodline
Undying Evil seems interesting. Hitting a Restoration Angel or Tusk with it seems pretty brutal in terms of value. The downside of course is that you have to leave mana up for it and it does nothing for your tokens and is useless against Detention Sphere/O-Ring/Sever, etc. I honestly think I'd rather run another two bodies instead of the two of them but it's cool to see something different.
1x Gavony Township
1x Vault of the Archangel
6x Forest
4x Temple Garden
4x Sunpetal Grove
4x Overgrown Tomb
1x Woodland Cemetary
1x Godless Shrine
2x Isolated Chapel
Creatures (23):
4x Avacyn's Pilgrim
3x Arbor Elf
4x Loxodon Smiter
4x Restoration Angel
2x Disciple of Bolas
3x Thragtusk
3x Angel of Serenity
2x Lingering Souls
4x Farseek
3x Oblivion Ring
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Collective Blessing
1x Unburial Rites
1x Garruk Primal Hunter
2x Centaur Healer
2x Orzhov Charm
1x Sever the Bloodline
2x Selesnya Charm
2x Underworld Connections
2x Rootborn Defenses
2x Sigarda Host of Herons
Went 3-1 overall:
Match 1 - VS Naya Zoo aggro. Lost game 1. Sided in more removal and two Centaur Healers in place of my Disciples. Won the next 2 due to him having slower starts and me having pretty reasonable starts and being able to get to cast one or multiple AoS's.
Match 2 - VS Bant Biomancer Midrange. I think this could have gone either way, we were both grindy, long game midrange decks. Both games I was able to ramp to AoS pretty fast, disrupt his Biomancers and draw a ton off cards of DoB and he scooped both games once things got out of hand. My new term for Disciple of Bolas'ing a Thragtusk is "Living the Dream". It does feel pretty awesome.
Match 3 - VS Esper Control (very, very casual version). He was running a very incomplete and casual version of esper control. Both games weren't much of an issue. G2 I was in a situation where I had all 3 AoS's in my deck on the board or in the graveyard along with Unburial Rites in the yard and there was basically no way I could lose.
Match 4 - VS R/B Aggro/Midrange Vampires. This deck absolutely RAPED me. Killed me way too fast to let me ramp to AoS and everything is flying so it just went over top of even multiple Thragtusks and Smiters. Nighthawk, Aristocrat, Nocturnus, Knight of Infamy, etc. Just absolutely demolished. The only thing I can think of that could have been in my board to salvage this matchup would be sweepers. It already has me considering putting Planar Cleansing or Terminus in the board... I got to six mana both times but didn't manage to hit seven to play AoS so it would have been really relevant.
Thoughts:
It feels wrong to play B/W midrange without any Lingering Souls but they seem to be the most under-performing card by far. I think I may replace them with Centaur Healers to try and shore up the aggro matchup. I also want to move some sweepers into the board to deal with slightly slower aggro in the air like I ran into tonight because I simply had NO way to deal with it.
Orzhov Charm is pretty disappointing. It seems like it should be solid, two mana for an instant speed removal spell that can hit anything but the drawback is really bad. I had to remove a Thundermaw Hellkite vs Naya and just HOPE that he didn't have another one or any way to smack me for another 5 or I'd be dead. It's too risky of a card with so many aggressive, hastey creatures running around. My heart can't take the stress. I think I may change that SB spot to some other removal like Ultimate Price or more Severs. I want to move more Garruk's into the SB as well... I'm still not very sure I want him in the maindeck. Disciple is fine for the card advantage already and I just bring Garruk in for other really grindy midrange matchups or control. I do not want him in my deck anytime someone is going to hit me even remotely fast.
Anyhow I've been playing this because my local meta at my local shop is very, very skewed towards midrange decks and this is pretty great at fighting any deck that gives me time to set up and doesn't sweeper the board. It definitely worked well and it can be very powerful.
Lastly, it's kind of hard to show people how ridiculous DoB can be in midrange vs midrange matchups until they've seen it in person. You play one, sac a Thragtusk. You resto angel it, sac a Loxodon Smiter. Resto angel it again and sac another large creature and you are at 40 life and have dug through half your deck. Sac'ing a creature sounds crappy but when you draw 4-5 and keep drawing more Smiters and Thragtusks and have 12+ mana available to just keep casting them, it hardly matters. It's totally relevant to realize that it can sometimes be a 4 mana 2/1 that does nothing else but in matchups that let you abuse it it's absurd. You basically can't lose once you get things rolling, he helps this deck get a ton of momentum. Again, it only works in matchups where you have the time and space to set things up but when trying to specifically hose the midrange matchup, it works very well.
I've been running Disciple as a two-of and finding that when he resolves a few turns into the game it's basically an enormous momentum swing. Sac'ing a Loxodon Smiter is very relevant and sac'ing a Thragtusk is living the dream. Can you elaborate on why you think it is unplayable?
I realize it is a little bit less predictable and has a bigger range from high to low but what other options do we have for card advantage? It seems worth the variance when in certain situations he will put you so far ahead that you basically win on the spot. He's like a Sphinxes Revelation or Bonfire in that respect.
I like Underworld Connections but I've been keeping it in the board to swap with Disciples against control matchups where the life loss and BB cost aren't as big of a deal. I think it'd be a bad card in the MD though, I don't want to playing that against aggro G1 until I can side it out.
I had someone accelerated into a T3 Olivia vs me the other day and I just groaned and started hoping to draw one of the two Oblivion Rings I was maindecking. There was literally nothing else in my deck that could deal with her hitting the board that early. I usually run two O-Rings and two Abrupt Decays in the main but that situation is making me consider running one more piece of flexible spot removal in the MD, either Sever or Orzhov Charm or Murder or another O-Ring. I dunno yet. It was painful though and I seem to run into a lot of Jund.