The Bust/Dark-Dwellers combo isn't everything. But it really makes a good comeback if you can't handle your opponents landdrop-rate.
I still think the list is solid, and hopefully something new could come to make it even better.
The thing is that SF makes it that the landkill-list can't really play Planeswalkers.. otherwise I'd definately try the new Gideon. But I still find suppression field soooo damn good together with Magus, Ghostly Prison and Landkill-cards, so I'm not sure at all I wanna change it.
Walked> Do we really need Leylines when dropping Chalice on 1 anyway? What are they gonna bolt our Gideon with? Helixes?
It depends.
Leyline dodges you on T1 discard which is huge in the meta right now; so on the draw its a huge upside. (Looking at MtgGoldfish data, Thoughtseize is played in 37% of decks; with an average count of 3; and Inquisition is in 24% of decks, with an average count of 3 as well. The chalice does you zero good if you cant keep it through discard. Chalice on T1 is a minimum two card combo; Leyline is a turn zero, one card bomb.
I'm not on Landkill rignt now; but I'm going to be running through all variants in some controlled testing environments against the Tier 1 meta as it sits. I think RW is positioned particularly well (barring any more major shakeup from Amonkhet).
I'll be running some variation of RW Prison in May at SCG Baltimore unless things shift dramatically.
edit: Let's look at this a little more: Death's Shadow Jund: 8-10 pieces of discard; 8 of which hit T1. You'd need to be on the play, and have SSG to get ahead of this. Leyline always stays ahead of that. It also stops Collective Brutality discard effects, them from looking at your library with Bauble, K-Command discard / damage. Chalice on 1 hits a lot, but it's harder to keep it live.
Burn: Cant complain about a T0 leyline here.
Eldrazi Tron: Chalice on 1 does (almost) nothing. Leyline stops Thought-Knot disruption at least.
Dredge: This one is tricky because they're not casting a lot; but a lot of their early game are 1 CMC cards. Anger of the Gods is the key card here anyways pre-SB.
Abzan: More discard. Lists seem to be running 5-7 pieces of T1 discard. Being on the draw stings. Leyline helps.
Affinity: Chalice on zero is decent early game. Leyline dodges Galvanic Blast at least. I can see the argument for both here.
There's still a lot of matchups to consider; but that's kinda where I'm coming from.
Lockdown has always had an awkward curve with nonbos between many of the strongest cards.
At 1 cmc, PtE doesn't work with Chalice or with any mana denial strategy. Lightning Bolt has an adequate replacement.
At 2 cmc, Suppression Field turns off Planeswalkers and Chalice is a turn too late. (I'll come back to that) Boom//Bust is powerful in combination with Flagstones but weak without.
At 3 cmc you've got tons of partial lock cards like Blood Moon, Ghostly Prison, Ensnaring Bridge, etc... They each have important limitations and none of them are threats.
It isn't until 4 cmc that we start playing threats.
Now the problem that the Modern RW Lockdown deck has always had is that we frequently needed 4 turns to make any of a series of plays that really should've been finished by turn 3. That's where SSG comes in. With SSG in our hand we were scary, but without it we frequently became a janky sort of partial-lock deck. But SSG also creates problems of a different sort as it is both card disadvantage and a terrible top-deck. The best versions of RW Lockdown were running SSG but ideally we would be better off if we could shift the curve from 4 turns down to 3 turns.
Now we have Gideon. We can finally curve our plays properly.
T1: (?)
T2: Spellskite,
T3: Gideon
(If you're not down with Spellskite then I don't know man. I just don't know.)
As I see it our soft lock is in place. Now we add to it. A turn 0: Leyline shuts down a ton of stuff and is notably the only good answer against discard. A turn 1 Chalice (w/SSG) shuts down different stuff, but some of what it shuts down (e.g. lightning bolts) is redundant with the Leyline effect and a lot of other stuff could be dealt with through other methods. A turn 1 PtE isn't necessarily a nonbo any more since our lock can be Gideon rather than a combination of mana limiting effects. PtE solves lots of problems.
Glad to see someone else is very much on the same train of thought as me. I'm not certain about getting rid of the chalices entirely but there's definitely merit to consideration of it.
Leyline protects planeswalkers much better, too, given they cant redirect damage to them if they cant target you.
edit: And while spellskits is amazing on the whole; I'm not 100% on board with him in the 2 slot. Hearth of Kiran I like because you can crew with our walkers, and dodge wraths by not having it crewed yet. Awesome synergy. But I can see where youre coming from with it.
I'm not against Chalice myself but I am very much in favor of PtE. With a greater focus on Planeswalkers I think it just makes sense to have some hard answers to specific creature threats.
Spellskite is amazing at protecting planeswalkers and is tough enough to survive Anger of the Gods. Of course he dies to removal, but he forces the opponent to sequence their plays - killing Spellskite first. Abrupt Decay would otherwise be a very easy answer to Gideon.
I did also have some concern about the -
I'll just call it an umbrella approach - to creature control. I thought about using the big Elspeth for her sweeper ability but I prefer the lower curve of little Elspeth and I also noticed that her giant growth ability turns Spellskite into a bit of a threat.
I'm not against Chalice myself but I am very much in favor of PtE. With a greater focus on Planeswalkers I think it just makes sense to have some hard answers to specific creature threats.
Spellskite is amazing at protecting planeswalkers and is tough enough to survive Anger of the Gods. Of course he dies to removal, but he forces the opponent to sequence their plays - killing Spellskite first. Abrupt Decay would otherwise be a very easy answer to Gideon.
I did also have some concern about the -
I'll just call it an umbrella approach - to creature control. I thought about using the big Elspeth for her sweeper ability but I prefer the lower curve of little Elspeth and I also noticed that her giant growth ability turns Spellskite into a bit of a threat.
That's fair and may make sense. If you ever find yourself wanting to do some testing of builds against tiered decks on cockatrice, shoot me a PM; we could trade gauntlet runs. Always looking for people to playtest with and I think there's definitely going to be some changes to builds of RW Prison in the coming month(s).
Are you guys serious? Chalice is one of the best cards in the deck. Chalice at 1 flat out beats multiple tier 1 decks. If you aren't running 4x chalice and 4x blood moon, you should shift to jeskai control
Leyline stops discard and burn, but not deliver of secrets or deaths shadow or swiftspear or goblin guide or glistener elf, etc.
Chalice is also versatile. Chalice at 2 is almost always a good play as well, even if it hits us too.
I like skite in the sb, but he's not great vs lots of decks.
One of the main issues I have with this deck is that it lacks draw card spells. The deck is pretty dependent on top decking the correct card. Now, I could be wrong as I haven't played this deck too many times. I would like to hear whether or not you guys feel the same way.
I just picked up the deck (60 games played or so) and agree. At times when you draw well, the deck looks unbeatable. Other times you draw Plains, Plains, 2nd Blood Moon, Plains, 3rd Blood Moon while getting beat down by a single Snapcaster Mage.
I tried Tezzeret's Gambit and it's OK but slow. The proliferate part can be quite nice at times. I also included Temple of Triumph 5 and 6 in the form of New Benalia. As I put my 4 Chalice of the Void into the SB for 4 Leyline of Sanctity main I think about running 2-3 Faithless Looting as filters. Draw 2 discard 2 with flashback could exactly be what this deck needs. Ofc the drawback is when you bring in chalice. But then again, if you can play your chalice t1 or t2 against the decks you bring it in, it usually means you're in good shape and if you don't have the early chalice Faithless Looting can help you find one.
You should think of me as a retired player. I still like the deck building challenges though.
@ply and poi:
I've messed around with faithless looting. It always worked less well than I'd hoped it would.
My favorite draw card is Chandra, Torch of Defiance. If you're playing Nahiri, she helps you get rid of stuff you don't need. I've also messed around with Thraben Inspector and Wall of Omens sorts of builds and they can be okay.
You're also touching on another reason for me wanting to shift away from Chalice/Blood Moon sorts of builds. Of course Leyline can be a dead draw as well, but when you have 2 in your opening hand you at least don't have to worry so much about making an awkward sequence of plays around turn 4.
I feel like once we land a Nahiri or Chandra then the card advantage issue is a moot point, but getting there isn't always easy. That said, I haven't seen any successful lists running wager or anything similar because the question of what to cut for it isn't easily answered. I'd rather draw into a needed answer/prison piece than draw into wager.
Little Gideon is a nice power addition to the deck and helps with our biggest problem of providing a clock. Now we just need something to get printed that can double as both card advantage and control that isn't in the 4cmc slot.
If you're not running chalice, faithless looting is the answer to many problems. When i played with it i was always very happy to filter through my deck, getting rid of excess lands, redudant blood moons or planeswalkers, or just useless cards like removal against combo decks. Of course you cannot run 4, because it technically is card disadvantage, but as a 2-3 of is excellent.
Hi everyone, just wanted to share an article on control decks in Modern. I included RW Prison, because I feel the deck can be tooled to be playable in almost any metagame context. Check it out here, and let me know what you think!
Hi everyone, just wanted to share an article on control decks in Modern. I included RW Prison, because I feel the deck can be tooled to be playable in almost any metagame context. Check it out here, and let me know what you think!
Hey man; I'm the guy from Third Eye typically rocking sun and moon. Pretty good article; keep it up.
So feel free obviously to play however you want to play, but if you're nor running chalice and blood moon, I really think you could make a much better control deck adding blue for snapcaster, draw spells, counters, etc. The Jeskai Nahiri thread is quite good and the lists are similar.
For RW prison, however, chalice is the best lockpiece we have, and blood moon is the most OP card we have. I agree that turn 1 discard hurts, which is why I also run 2 mainboard leylines . Chalice isn't just an early game play, it is also a 4 mana play or a 6 mana play. Both shut off parts of our deck, but both hurt our opponents much more than us. We win with our 4 drops.
I also think moon at 3 is a mistake. I'm going to digress a bit into magic theory here. Thanks to the variance monster, every deck will sometimes just lose. Not because of the other player, but because they drew too many/not enough lands, or whatever it is. Both players in any given game face that issue, so to counterbalance that you want to be playing a deck that sometimes just wins. Blood Moon sometimes just wins against abzan, against grixis, against valakut, against tons of decks really. If it comes down early its a win, if it comes down late its a huge boon.
Sometimes it blanks, but the vast majority of times a turn 3 blood moon is a huge issue for our opponents. Same for chalice, and its important to remember that you don't have to set chalice at 1. You can use it as a free counterspell vs ancestral vision and cast it for 0, you can shut down their demands and leaks by casting for 2.
Bottom line, I think if you don't want to run chalice and moon, then the question you should ask is "would i be better off playing Jeskai Nahiri?"
On a separate note, I'm so excited for new gideon. I've been extensively testing him in the list I posted earlier and he is incredible. The biggest surprise is that his emblem is less useful than one would imagine while his +1 is super crazy powerful. His emblem is great vs ad nauseam and mill decks though. The biggest addition he gives 8s his +1 when we need to lock down a threat that squeaked past our prison , or being able to swing as a 4/4 indestructible. The addition has actually made me want to consider Heart of Kiran since they curve so well .
The answer to that is an obvious no. You might as well ask if you'd be better off playing bogles.
Blue control is a completely different way to play. I think I've even proposed a blue splash here before, but only for Snapcaster. To me this deck is as much about not using permission as it is about the cards you use. And I've been the worst offender by far when it comes to odd proposals but this suggestion of yours is a step too far for me. I'm bordering on annoyed, to give you an idea of how I feel about playing a permission deck. Please don't go there again.
Not sure how I feel about the rest of the supporting cards; but there's something worth experimentation there.
The Bust/Dark-Dwellers combo isn't everything. But it really makes a good comeback if you can't handle your opponents landdrop-rate.
I still think the list is solid, and hopefully something new could come to make it even better.
The thing is that SF makes it that the landkill-list can't really play Planeswalkers.. otherwise I'd definately try the new Gideon. But I still find suppression field soooo damn good together with Magus, Ghostly Prison and Landkill-cards, so I'm not sure at all I wanna change it.
You playing landkill too?
It depends.
Leyline dodges you on T1 discard which is huge in the meta right now; so on the draw its a huge upside. (Looking at MtgGoldfish data, Thoughtseize is played in 37% of decks; with an average count of 3; and Inquisition is in 24% of decks, with an average count of 3 as well. The chalice does you zero good if you cant keep it through discard. Chalice on T1 is a minimum two card combo; Leyline is a turn zero, one card bomb.
I'm not on Landkill rignt now; but I'm going to be running through all variants in some controlled testing environments against the Tier 1 meta as it sits. I think RW is positioned particularly well (barring any more major shakeup from Amonkhet).
I'll be running some variation of RW Prison in May at SCG Baltimore unless things shift dramatically.
edit: Let's look at this a little more:
Death's Shadow Jund: 8-10 pieces of discard; 8 of which hit T1. You'd need to be on the play, and have SSG to get ahead of this. Leyline always stays ahead of that. It also stops Collective Brutality discard effects, them from looking at your library with Bauble, K-Command discard / damage. Chalice on 1 hits a lot, but it's harder to keep it live.
Burn: Cant complain about a T0 leyline here.
Eldrazi Tron: Chalice on 1 does (almost) nothing. Leyline stops Thought-Knot disruption at least.
Bant Eldrazi: Kindof a wash here. Chalice blanks heirarch; Leyline blanks Thought-Knot.
Dredge: This one is tricky because they're not casting a lot; but a lot of their early game are 1 CMC cards. Anger of the Gods is the key card here anyways pre-SB.
Abzan: More discard. Lists seem to be running 5-7 pieces of T1 discard. Being on the draw stings. Leyline helps.
Affinity: Chalice on zero is decent early game. Leyline dodges Galvanic Blast at least. I can see the argument for both here.
There's still a lot of matchups to consider; but that's kinda where I'm coming from.
At 1 cmc, PtE doesn't work with Chalice or with any mana denial strategy. Lightning Bolt has an adequate replacement.
At 2 cmc, Suppression Field turns off Planeswalkers and Chalice is a turn too late. (I'll come back to that) Boom//Bust is powerful in combination with Flagstones but weak without.
At 3 cmc you've got tons of partial lock cards like Blood Moon, Ghostly Prison, Ensnaring Bridge, etc... They each have important limitations and none of them are threats.
It isn't until 4 cmc that we start playing threats.
Now the problem that the Modern RW Lockdown deck has always had is that we frequently needed 4 turns to make any of a series of plays that really should've been finished by turn 3. That's where SSG comes in. With SSG in our hand we were scary, but without it we frequently became a janky sort of partial-lock deck. But SSG also creates problems of a different sort as it is both card disadvantage and a terrible top-deck. The best versions of RW Lockdown were running SSG but ideally we would be better off if we could shift the curve from 4 turns down to 3 turns.
Now we have Gideon. We can finally curve our plays properly.
T1: (?)
T2: Spellskite,
T3: Gideon
(If you're not down with Spellskite then I don't know man. I just don't know.)
As I see it our soft lock is in place. Now we add to it. A turn 0: Leyline shuts down a ton of stuff and is notably the only good answer against discard. A turn 1 Chalice (w/SSG) shuts down different stuff, but some of what it shuts down (e.g. lightning bolts) is redundant with the Leyline effect and a lot of other stuff could be dealt with through other methods. A turn 1 PtE isn't necessarily a nonbo any more since our lock can be Gideon rather than a combination of mana limiting effects. PtE solves lots of problems.
Glad to see someone else is very much on the same train of thought as me. I'm not certain about getting rid of the chalices entirely but there's definitely merit to consideration of it.
Leyline protects planeswalkers much better, too, given they cant redirect damage to them if they cant target you.
edit: And while spellskits is amazing on the whole; I'm not 100% on board with him in the 2 slot. Hearth of Kiran I like because you can crew with our walkers, and dodge wraths by not having it crewed yet. Awesome synergy. But I can see where youre coming from with it.
Spellskite is amazing at protecting planeswalkers and is tough enough to survive Anger of the Gods. Of course he dies to removal, but he forces the opponent to sequence their plays - killing Spellskite first. Abrupt Decay would otherwise be a very easy answer to Gideon.
I did also have some concern about the -
I'll just call it an umbrella approach - to creature control. I thought about using the big Elspeth for her sweeper ability but I prefer the lower curve of little Elspeth and I also noticed that her giant growth ability turns Spellskite into a bit of a threat.
That's fair and may make sense. If you ever find yourself wanting to do some testing of builds against tiered decks on cockatrice, shoot me a PM; we could trade gauntlet runs. Always looking for people to playtest with and I think there's definitely going to be some changes to builds of RW Prison in the coming month(s).
Leyline stops discard and burn, but not deliver of secrets or deaths shadow or swiftspear or goblin guide or glistener elf, etc.
Chalice is also versatile. Chalice at 2 is almost always a good play as well, even if it hits us too.
I like skite in the sb, but he's not great vs lots of decks.
BG Rock
Modern:
RW Sun & Moon
RBG Dredge
RWG Burn
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes
With the nerf to the DD/Bust interaction I think I'm going to go with Sun/Moon (why do they call it that? I get the Moon part but...) for now.
I just picked up the deck (60 games played or so) and agree. At times when you draw well, the deck looks unbeatable. Other times you draw Plains, Plains, 2nd Blood Moon, Plains, 3rd Blood Moon while getting beat down by a single Snapcaster Mage.
I tried Tezzeret's Gambit and it's OK but slow. The proliferate part can be quite nice at times. I also included Temple of Triumph 5 and 6 in the form of New Benalia. As I put my 4 Chalice of the Void into the SB for 4 Leyline of Sanctity main I think about running 2-3 Faithless Looting as filters. Draw 2 discard 2 with flashback could exactly be what this deck needs. Ofc the drawback is when you bring in chalice. But then again, if you can play your chalice t1 or t2 against the decks you bring it in, it usually means you're in good shape and if you don't have the early chalice Faithless Looting can help you find one.
@ply and poi:
I've messed around with faithless looting. It always worked less well than I'd hoped it would.
My favorite draw card is Chandra, Torch of Defiance. If you're playing Nahiri, she helps you get rid of stuff you don't need. I've also messed around with Thraben Inspector and Wall of Omens sorts of builds and they can be okay.
You're also touching on another reason for me wanting to shift away from Chalice/Blood Moon sorts of builds. Of course Leyline can be a dead draw as well, but when you have 2 in your opening hand you at least don't have to worry so much about making an awkward sequence of plays around turn 4.
Including Emrakul
We have 3 card advantage pieces. 4x Temple of Triumph, Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Nahiri, The Harbinger. There have at times been other cards considered/tested, like Outpost Siege or Dangerous Wager (which is helpful once we're in topdeck mode), or Magma Jet. If you're feeling like you're not getting enough card draw, Dangerous Wager seems like the best option.
I feel like once we land a Nahiri or Chandra then the card advantage issue is a moot point, but getting there isn't always easy. That said, I haven't seen any successful lists running wager or anything similar because the question of what to cut for it isn't easily answered. I'd rather draw into a needed answer/prison piece than draw into wager.
Little Gideon is a nice power addition to the deck and helps with our biggest problem of providing a clock. Now we just need something to get printed that can double as both card advantage and control that isn't in the 4cmc slot.
BG Rock
Modern:
RW Sun & Moon
RBG Dredge
RWG Burn
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Hey man; I'm the guy from Third Eye typically rocking sun and moon. Pretty good article; keep it up.
For RW prison, however, chalice is the best lockpiece we have, and blood moon is the most OP card we have. I agree that turn 1 discard hurts, which is why I also run 2 mainboard leylines . Chalice isn't just an early game play, it is also a 4 mana play or a 6 mana play. Both shut off parts of our deck, but both hurt our opponents much more than us. We win with our 4 drops.
I also think moon at 3 is a mistake. I'm going to digress a bit into magic theory here. Thanks to the variance monster, every deck will sometimes just lose. Not because of the other player, but because they drew too many/not enough lands, or whatever it is. Both players in any given game face that issue, so to counterbalance that you want to be playing a deck that sometimes just wins. Blood Moon sometimes just wins against abzan, against grixis, against valakut, against tons of decks really. If it comes down early its a win, if it comes down late its a huge boon.
Sometimes it blanks, but the vast majority of times a turn 3 blood moon is a huge issue for our opponents. Same for chalice, and its important to remember that you don't have to set chalice at 1. You can use it as a free counterspell vs ancestral vision and cast it for 0, you can shut down their demands and leaks by casting for 2.
Bottom line, I think if you don't want to run chalice and moon, then the question you should ask is "would i be better off playing Jeskai Nahiri?"
On a separate note, I'm so excited for new gideon. I've been extensively testing him in the list I posted earlier and he is incredible. The biggest surprise is that his emblem is less useful than one would imagine while his +1 is super crazy powerful. His emblem is great vs ad nauseam and mill decks though. The biggest addition he gives 8s his +1 when we need to lock down a threat that squeaked past our prison , or being able to swing as a 4/4 indestructible. The addition has actually made me want to consider Heart of Kiran since they curve so well .
BG Rock
Modern:
RW Sun & Moon
RBG Dredge
RWG Burn
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes
The answer to that is an obvious no. You might as well ask if you'd be better off playing bogles.
Blue control is a completely different way to play. I think I've even proposed a blue splash here before, but only for Snapcaster. To me this deck is as much about not using permission as it is about the cards you use. And I've been the worst offender by far when it comes to odd proposals but this suggestion of yours is a step too far for me. I'm bordering on annoyed, to give you an idea of how I feel about playing a permission deck. Please don't go there again.