Most people I was talking to did not like the idea of running path to exile, I like that it is 1 CMC and that is it unconditional removal that I can't find in black
can we discuss these thoughts please?
wow ok. a few days ago I asked some long-time players of the deck about its position in modern.... now the old thread's gone weird and we have some sort of.... apocalypse happening?
@Esperino
thanks so much for taking the responsibility that nobody else bothered to shoulder, and actually doing something positive for the community. I can see you put a lot of thought into what might work, what might not and you've been thorough with your assertions, as well as showing some variations the deck can adopt.
I am embarrassed to see other people in a group I consider myself to be part of, behaving so shamefully, and I can only apologize on behalf of some of the other players here for their immature comments and hateful attitude.
keep rockin'
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Most people I was talking to did not like the idea of running path to exile, I like that it is 1 CMC and that is it unconditional removal that I can't find in black
can we discuss these thoughts please?
I would love to discuss the white splash with more people. So far it's essentially been a 1 on 1 discussion with esperino and myself. Imo its the strongest colour splash. The fast land is certainly an auto include. Personally I'm not a fan of ETB tapped lands so I stuck with mutavault over the vent but it's good too. I'm also running Pack Rats in the 75 so thats another reason for me to go mutavault.
I think that Path is a fine card. It's nice to have a 1cmc way to deal with wurmcoil engine permanently. I find the drawback isn't so terrible in a discard deck like this.
Right now I'm messing around with the 4cmc walkers Gideon AoZ, Elspeth and the Sorins to see how I like em. Just using em as 1 ofs for now.
last thursday modern night rsults 4-1 finish came in 3rd
match 1 vs jund 2-1 victory
I won game 1 pretty quickly, lost game 2, won game 3. Not much to say it was all so very straight forward ooze was a big problem game 2 and you have to keep dark confidant off the field at all cost. But I managed to pull ahead and get the win.
match 2 vs emeria gifts loss 1-2
game one i beat him pretty easily but game two he out valued me hard and there wasn't much i could do about it. Game 3 was close but he was able to keep jace out and stopped all my attempts to kill it which in the end won him the game.
game 3 vs scapeshift landfall deck 2-0 victory.
its a weir deck it ramps into scapeshift but also has landfall creatures so it can also be very aggressive and get quick kills. both games my hand discard ended his ramp plan and my removal and bridges stopped his creatures.
game 4 vs titan shift 2-0 victory
game 1 I ask him if he would like to go first he says sure (bawhahahahaha) he goes first. He thought i was on green devotion (i like mono colored decks). I rip his hand apart and the racks and mutavault kill him. Game 2 was the same he gave up after turn 4 but I protested and he kept playing. game two was a lot closer than he thought but ya :/ i won.
games 5 2-0 victory vs mono white prison
I went up against this really nice guy who likes to play an enchantment prison deck i feel kinda bad because the matchup was super lopsided. Anyway, i won it was very one sided, both games together took like 5mins.
also tomorrow is a modern pptq so ill keep you guys posted.
As for changes I would make to my list I would probably cut down on 1 land and up lili to 3 or 4 by also cutting 1 bridge. I really like bridge for some matchups but I find its too situational and I have a hard time finding space for it.
update: went to the pptq went 2-3 could have easily been 4-1 but i made really silly mistakes that cost me 2 rounds.
I support that Rob's list should be in the primer, it has results, it is an evolution of old list
And I dont support prejudice against Pack Rat
Its weak when played against full hand
But its good when hands are empty, I would say 2 is ok number for main
Also this 'Mono-black with Asylum Visitor' list is bad. 2 Ravens Crime? 1 Mind Shatter? 4 Disfigure?
And 'Mono-black with Ensnaring Bridge' should be replaced with a real list
wow ok. a few days ago I asked some long-time players of the deck about its position in modern.... now the old thread's gone weird and we have some sort of.... apocalypse happening?
@Esperino
thanks so much for taking the responsibility that nobody else bothered to shoulder, and actually doing something positive for the community. I can see you put a lot of thought into what might work, what might not and you've been thorough with your assertions, as well as showing some variations the deck can adopt.
I am embarrassed to see other people in a group I consider myself to be part of, behaving so shamefully, and I can only apologize on behalf of some of the other players here for their immature comments and hateful attitude.
keep rockin'
To be fair, what you see now is an improvement over the initial post. It was a bit jarring to say the least. Now that most of the craziness is fixed I think we can all get back to normal.
I also greatly appreciate the effort and time for formatting. I know how many hours that takes. And for sure Nik should be able to feature his own ideas and thoughts. Let's just get some kind of common ground platform that's not so polarizing to start from eh?
Or not. I like that you (esperino) have more of an open mind on "the core". Please don't lose that.
Yea, I'm definitely not going to lose that. And not over Raven's Crime of all things. While the card is pretty good in the deck, it's one of the pieces with an incredibly low power level on it's own. Most often you will see players start to make cuts on the Wrench Mind and Raven's Crime before anything else and the reason is exactly that - when the deck is working, the cards are pretty good, but when you want to introduce new and powerful things (let's even say Smallpox), the place to start chipping from the deck are it's overall weaker pieces.
Most people I was talking to did not like the idea of running path to exile, I like that it is 1 CMC and that is it unconditional removal that I can't find in black
can we discuss these thoughts please?
Giving them lands will matter very few of the times since they are going to be casting their topdeck anyway. In this deck (and others of similar approach) it's a lot more like a Swords to Plowshares. The reason why Path to Exile is generally considered an evil necessity is because white only has midrange and control decks, in which giving your opponent lands is a very bad idea but they run some copies anyway because it's removing part is just so good.
wow ok. a few days ago I asked some long-time players of the deck about its position in modern.... now the old thread's gone weird and we have some sort of.... apocalypse happening?
@Esperino
thanks so much for taking the responsibility that nobody else bothered to shoulder, and actually doing something positive for the community. I can see you put a lot of thought into what might work, what might not and you've been thorough with your assertions, as well as showing some variations the deck can adopt.
I am embarrassed to see other people in a group I consider myself to be part of, behaving so shamefully, and I can only apologize on behalf of some of the other players here for their immature comments and hateful attitude.
I'll put it up tonight when I get to another round of updates for the primer. Do you have some sort of commentary to go along with it that you'd like to give or perhaps your stats from Xmage?
Re: Asylum list. This is an old list and involves experiments that I did, such as Mind Shatter. Sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's bad. When I get updating the older decklists Shatter in particular won't make the cut. But it's a solid deck, I've had great matches with it and unless you've tried and tested it you have no ground to speak against it. Honestly, by swapping Shatter for another Crime and switching the counts of Disfigure and Dismember it will be almost like Rob's list but much better and more consistent.
Re: Asylum list. This is an old list and involves experiments that I did, such as Mind Shatter. Sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's bad. When I get updating the older decklists Shatter in particular won't make the cut. But it's a solid deck, I've had great matches with it and unless you've tried and tested it you have no ground to speak against it. Honestly, by swapping Shatter for another Crime and switching the counts of Disfigure and Dismember it will be almost like Rob's list but much better and more consistent.
SO a few lateral changes to the removal package and suddenly my list becomes "much better and more consistent"? If only this were true. Sorry but I disagree with your analysis of removal spells, their priorities, and their overall impact on the deck. Removal spell choice is probably the least important aspect of the deck. Get any 4 removal spells, I literally don't even care what they are, and the deck will operate with high efficiency. The other place I think you really fall short is when you analyze cards in a vacuum. MTG isn't like that. Cards work together. The weaknesses of a card that make it unplayable normally could be end up being mitigated by lines of play that are going to happen no matter what. Then the weakness gets obliterated for free and you just get the good stuff. 8Rack is LITTERED with examples of this concept in action, in fact its a core part of why the deck works. Yet you just look at cards on their own first, making sure they pass some sort of internal "this is powerful by itself" test before you work the card into the existing lines of play. Sorry but this is shortsighted deckbuilding imo.
Let's do a podcast this weekend. You can have a full chance to justify your choices, but I want some answers too.
I'm all for it. I really think having the best removal does matter a lot, otherwise why would every other deck in the history of Magic care about it and not us? I don't see how it's not better than your list, it's 90% the same except removal instead of Rats and more copies of Visitor for one fewer Crime, which literally only makes it more consistent because there is an unarguably an arbitrarily larger amount of draw effects. "Much better" is of course a personal opinion of mine, because every Modern deck gets a lot better once it's not running Pack Rat. The other 56 cards are exactly the same! Unless your argument is that having Rats is better than removal. OK, maybe against a Thalia+Mangara of Corondor+Resto Angel (hatebears?) deck it is, but not much more besides that. If you had them in the side to bring them in only in matchups where they were relevant in any capacity, instead of siding in Darkblasts almost every single game, then the deck would SO much better. To the point where I can endorse Rat as a legit sideboard card against some game plans.
I don't mind doing the podcast, although I'm not sure which day I'm free, but I guess PMs do exist for that purpose.
Uh yeah I am saying having a plan b is better than being completely linear. I've been saying that, with no logical retort. In fact, when I first pitched the deck it was loudly dismissed for being TOO LINEAR.
You know I watch your streams right? For the past several instalments now you've been saying that you are liking Tom Ross' list more now that you see what it's trying to do. His list (in your own words) is just more linear without a Plan B. And he made Top 8 of a pretty big Modern Open. Soooooo? Logic would dictate that being linear, if done the right way, is better, right? I don't know if Smallpox is the right way since nobody ever tries non-pox lists at tournaments and I have my own suspicions whether or not it is, but results contradict what you're saying, man.
I love the effort put into this and its great to see the discussion going on. But I really feel that if you leave out The Rack and Shrieking Affliction out of the core, it is doing the deck a disservice. It is indeed called 8rack, not 8seize or LilyDiscard. They are the main wincons, they need to be included in the core PERIOD.
Sorry had to get that off my chest. Continue on.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
You know I watch your streams right? For the past several instalments now you've been saying that you are liking Tom Ross' list more now that you see what it's trying to do. His list (in your own words) is just more linear without a Plan B. And he made Top 8 of a pretty big Modern Open. Soooooo? Logic would dictate that being linear, if done the right way, is better, right? I don't know if Smallpox is the right way since nobody ever tries non-pox lists at tournaments and I have my own suspicions whether or not it is, but results contradict what you're saying, man.
No you are twisting the truth. I stated multiple times that linearity MIGHT be the right choice if you are willing to go "all in" and accept losses that a more aggressive approach wins. Makes sense for stealing a Top 8 at a big tourney, with a good bit of luck of course (part of mtg). Average Joe FNM 8Rack player may have a varied experience with that list.
I posted a 4-0 and an FNM win tonight with all wins being 2-0's and none really being overly close. Two of the wins were against tier one decks in Bogles and Burn so I was happy about that. Will post the results this weekend
Wrapping up the first poll! 70% of those who voted are in favour of decklist rotation, so we are going to stick with that. Check out the changelog just below the primer for more information on how it works.
I posted a 4-0 and an FNM win tonight with all wins being 2-0's and none really being overly close. Two of the wins were against tier one decks in Bogles and Burn so I was happy about that. Will post the results this weekend
I posted a 4-0 and an FNM win tonight with all wins being 2-0's and none really being overly close. Two of the wins were against tier one decks in Bogles and Burn so I was happy about that. Will post the results this weekend
Wrapping up the first poll! 70% of those who voted are in favour of decklist rotation, so we are going to stick with that. Check out the changelog just below the primer for more information on how it works.
People voted that way when the front page list was mardu 8rack. If you leave Tom Ross' list up there I doubt anyone would have a problem with that.
I'll put it up tonight when I get to another round of updates for the primer. Do you have some sort of commentary to go along with it that you'd like to give or perhaps your stats from Xmage?
Re: Asylum list. This is an old list and involves experiments that I did, such as Mind Shatter. Sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's bad. When I get updating the older decklists Shatter in particular won't make the cut. But it's a solid deck, I've had great matches with it and unless you've tried and tested it you have no ground to speak against it. Honestly, by swapping Shatter for another Crime and switching the counts of Disfigure and Dismember it will be almost like Rob's list but much better and more consistent.
My combined match winrate over about 400 matches is 73%, about 60% vs aggro, 80% vs control and combo.
Regarding Mind Shatter, I as experienced player dont have to play a card to say if its good or bad, of course thats subjective but having an opinion after playing a card is also subjective and for objective results without overlapping confidence intervals a card must be tested for tremendous number of matches (playset. Singleton can't be tested in a reasonable time). Mind Shatter doesnt go well in average 8Rack game: usually we want to sit on 3 lands to pitch excess lands to Ravens Crime and the more turns into a game the more likely opponent wont have cards to discard. When we already have 4 Wrench Minds Mind Shatter is superflous, if we dont have 4 then we better put Wrench than Shatter. Not to mention you played it and said it will be cut.
Overall regarding numbers: number of cards played by each list is what differentiates mediocre list from a good one. I treat Ravens Crime as third most important card in the deck, I even thought for quite a while if its better that Inquisition or not, but put Inquisition second and Liliana as first. So I have no doubt Ravens Crime should be 4-of. Disfigure is a sideboard card, it can be maindecked as metacall but full playset is surely wrong for anything but a small FNM with known opponents.
concealed courtyard helps allow the white splash
shambling vent is a nice substitute for mutavault in a non pack rat build
turn 2/3/4 a flagstones of trokair searching for godless shrine off of a smallpox is a great way to pull ahead
Most people I was talking to did not like the idea of running path to exile, I like that it is 1 CMC and that is it unconditional removal that I can't find in black
can we discuss these thoughts please?
@Esperino
thanks so much for taking the responsibility that nobody else bothered to shoulder, and actually doing something positive for the community. I can see you put a lot of thought into what might work, what might not and you've been thorough with your assertions, as well as showing some variations the deck can adopt.
I am embarrassed to see other people in a group I consider myself to be part of, behaving so shamefully, and I can only apologize on behalf of some of the other players here for their immature comments and hateful attitude.
keep rockin'
I think that Path is a fine card. It's nice to have a 1cmc way to deal with wurmcoil engine permanently. I find the drawback isn't so terrible in a discard deck like this.
Right now I'm messing around with the 4cmc walkers Gideon AoZ, Elspeth and the Sorins to see how I like em. Just using em as 1 ofs for now.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Shrieking Affliction
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Smallpox
1 Doom Blade
3 Dismember
3 Thoughtseize
3 Wrench Mind
3 Funeral Charm
4 The Rack
4 Raven's Crime
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Mutavault
14 Swamp
1 Dakmor Salvage
1 Pack Rat
1 Bile Blight
2 Flaying Tendrils
2 Nyxathid
1 Illness in the Ranks
2 Disfigure
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
3 Leyline of the Void
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Mutavault
16 Swamp
Discard: 22
4 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 ensnaring bridge
3 Wrench Mind
3 Raven's Crime
4 Smallpox
4 Dismember
2 Funeral Charm
Wincon: 8
4 The Rack
4 Shrieking Affliction
1 pithing needle
2 funeral charm
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
2 hero's downfall
2 Disfigure
1 slaughter pact
2 Flaying Tendrils
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Asylum Visitor
last thursday modern night rsults 4-1 finish came in 3rd
match 1 vs jund 2-1 victory
I won game 1 pretty quickly, lost game 2, won game 3. Not much to say it was all so very straight forward ooze was a big problem game 2 and you have to keep dark confidant off the field at all cost. But I managed to pull ahead and get the win.
match 2 vs emeria gifts loss 1-2
game one i beat him pretty easily but game two he out valued me hard and there wasn't much i could do about it. Game 3 was close but he was able to keep jace out and stopped all my attempts to kill it which in the end won him the game.
game 3 vs scapeshift landfall deck 2-0 victory.
its a weir deck it ramps into scapeshift but also has landfall creatures so it can also be very aggressive and get quick kills. both games my hand discard ended his ramp plan and my removal and bridges stopped his creatures.
game 4 vs titan shift 2-0 victory
game 1 I ask him if he would like to go first he says sure (bawhahahahaha) he goes first. He thought i was on green devotion (i like mono colored decks). I rip his hand apart and the racks and mutavault kill him. Game 2 was the same he gave up after turn 4 but I protested and he kept playing. game two was a lot closer than he thought but ya :/ i won.
games 5 2-0 victory vs mono white prison
I went up against this really nice guy who likes to play an enchantment prison deck i feel kinda bad because the matchup was super lopsided. Anyway, i won it was very one sided, both games together took like 5mins.
also tomorrow is a modern pptq so ill keep you guys posted.
As for changes I would make to my list I would probably cut down on 1 land and up lili to 3 or 4 by also cutting 1 bridge. I really like bridge for some matchups but I find its too situational and I have a hard time finding space for it.
update: went to the pptq went 2-3 could have easily been 4-1 but i made really silly mistakes that cost me 2 rounds.
And I dont support prejudice against Pack Rat
Its weak when played against full hand
But its good when hands are empty, I would say 2 is ok number for main
Also this 'Mono-black with Asylum Visitor' list is bad. 2 Ravens Crime? 1 Mind Shatter? 4 Disfigure?
And 'Mono-black with Ensnaring Bridge' should be replaced with a real list
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
I also greatly appreciate the effort and time for formatting. I know how many hours that takes. And for sure Nik should be able to feature his own ideas and thoughts. Let's just get some kind of common ground platform that's not so polarizing to start from eh?
Yea, I'm definitely not going to lose that. And not over Raven's Crime of all things. While the card is pretty good in the deck, it's one of the pieces with an incredibly low power level on it's own. Most often you will see players start to make cuts on the Wrench Mind and Raven's Crime before anything else and the reason is exactly that - when the deck is working, the cards are pretty good, but when you want to introduce new and powerful things (let's even say Smallpox), the place to start chipping from the deck are it's overall weaker pieces.
Giving them lands will matter very few of the times since they are going to be casting their topdeck anyway. In this deck (and others of similar approach) it's a lot more like a Swords to Plowshares. The reason why Path to Exile is generally considered an evil necessity is because white only has midrange and control decks, in which giving your opponent lands is a very bad idea but they run some copies anyway because it's removing part is just so good.
Thanks a lot for the kind words!
I'll put it up tonight when I get to another round of updates for the primer. Do you have some sort of commentary to go along with it that you'd like to give or perhaps your stats from Xmage?
Re: Asylum list. This is an old list and involves experiments that I did, such as Mind Shatter. Sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's bad. When I get updating the older decklists Shatter in particular won't make the cut. But it's a solid deck, I've had great matches with it and unless you've tried and tested it you have no ground to speak against it. Honestly, by swapping Shatter for another Crime and switching the counts of Disfigure and Dismember it will be almost like Rob's list but much better and more consistent.
SO a few lateral changes to the removal package and suddenly my list becomes "much better and more consistent"? If only this were true. Sorry but I disagree with your analysis of removal spells, their priorities, and their overall impact on the deck. Removal spell choice is probably the least important aspect of the deck. Get any 4 removal spells, I literally don't even care what they are, and the deck will operate with high efficiency. The other place I think you really fall short is when you analyze cards in a vacuum. MTG isn't like that. Cards work together. The weaknesses of a card that make it unplayable normally could be end up being mitigated by lines of play that are going to happen no matter what. Then the weakness gets obliterated for free and you just get the good stuff. 8Rack is LITTERED with examples of this concept in action, in fact its a core part of why the deck works. Yet you just look at cards on their own first, making sure they pass some sort of internal "this is powerful by itself" test before you work the card into the existing lines of play. Sorry but this is shortsighted deckbuilding imo.
Let's do a podcast this weekend. You can have a full chance to justify your choices, but I want some answers too.
I don't mind doing the podcast, although I'm not sure which day I'm free, but I guess PMs do exist for that purpose.
Being linear isn't a strength its a weakness.
Sorry had to get that off my chest. Continue on.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I posted a 4-0 and an FNM win tonight with all wins being 2-0's and none really being overly close. Two of the wins were against tier one decks in Bogles and Burn so I was happy about that. Will post the results this weekend
Legacy: Pox, R/B Goblins
Commander: Mono Black, Mono Blue
Pauper: Goblins
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
People voted that way when the front page list was mardu 8rack. If you leave Tom Ross' list up there I doubt anyone would have a problem with that.
Regarding Mind Shatter, I as experienced player dont have to play a card to say if its good or bad, of course thats subjective but having an opinion after playing a card is also subjective and for objective results without overlapping confidence intervals a card must be tested for tremendous number of matches (playset. Singleton can't be tested in a reasonable time). Mind Shatter doesnt go well in average 8Rack game: usually we want to sit on 3 lands to pitch excess lands to Ravens Crime and the more turns into a game the more likely opponent wont have cards to discard. When we already have 4 Wrench Minds Mind Shatter is superflous, if we dont have 4 then we better put Wrench than Shatter. Not to mention you played it and said it will be cut.
Overall regarding numbers: number of cards played by each list is what differentiates mediocre list from a good one. I treat Ravens Crime as third most important card in the deck, I even thought for quite a while if its better that Inquisition or not, but put Inquisition second and Liliana as first. So I have no doubt Ravens Crime should be 4-of. Disfigure is a sideboard card, it can be maindecked as metacall but full playset is surely wrong for anything but a small FNM with known opponents.
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!