Rancor used to be obsession, but I'm trying to be more aggressive.
Against spirit I side in 2 clarion, 2 EE, and collar; side out 2 Pierce, 2 blossoming and opt. As already said before it's a close matchup in which you have to use wisely your removal.
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First draft of the deck. I´m about to get back to magic after about 2 years of abscence, and this is one of the decks I´m thinking about playing. I know my deck looks kinda counter heavy compared to others, but shat do you think about it otherwise? I´ve read trough all pages in this thread and considered a lot of cards, so it was really tough to choose only 60
Plains = A little because of Path, but mostly because of Field of Ruin that my meta is packed of. The other choice is Sacred Foundry and I think the downsides of that is bigger than the upsides. Maybe Mountain instead?
Send to sleep = It looks insane against other creature based tempo decks that are looking to block us or just to tap them out of 1 attack.
Thought Scour = I got terrified by the fact that some people in the thread wrote that it just milled their cards that they needed. I think I can afford to play Mandrill some turn later.
But I haven´t tested the deck yet, so I could be wrong. Is it even possible to optimize a deck the first try?
Plains = A little because of Path, but mostly because of Field of Ruin that my meta is packed of. The other choice is Sacred Foundry and I think the downsides of that is bigger than the upsides. Maybe Mountain instead?
Send to sleep = It looks insane against other creature based tempo decks that are looking to block us or just to tap them out of 1 attack.
Thought Scour = I got terrified by the fact that some people in the thread wrote that it just milled their cards that they needed. I think I can afford to play Mandrill some turn later.
But I haven´t tested the deck yet, so I could be wrong. Is it even possible to optimize a deck the first try?
Against field of ruins it's more important to keep fetches for when you need the mana. Forest and Island are enough. Plains in starting hands leads to mulligans most of the times. I'd put the third tarn.
Milling singleton lands with thought scour can happen but very rarely; it could mill useless cards too at the same rate and when you have two unflipped delver you can use scour to help flipping at least one of them. It's a false fear. It's more important to be aggressive. I don't like scours much but they're necessary.
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Plains = A little because of Path, but mostly because of Field of Ruin that my meta is packed of. The other choice is Sacred Foundry and I think the downsides of that is bigger than the upsides. Maybe Mountain instead?
Send to sleep = It looks insane against other creature based tempo decks that are looking to block us or just to tap them out of 1 attack.
Thought Scour = I got terrified by the fact that some people in the thread wrote that it just milled their cards that they needed. I think I can afford to play Mandrill some turn later.
But I haven´t tested the deck yet, so I could be wrong. Is it even possible to optimize a deck the first try?
Against field of ruins it's more important to keep fetches for when you need the mana. Forest and Island are enough. Plains in starting hands leads to mulligans most of the times. I'd put the third tarn.
Milling singleton lands with thought scour can happen but very rarely; it could mill useless cards too at the same rate and when you have two unflipped delver you can use scour to help flipping at least one of them. It's a false fear. It's more important to be aggressive. I don't like scours much but they're necessary.
Well, I kinda need some mana the first few turns, and as soon as the opponent know what he´s doing he will destroyt the most important lands, and I need to be able to produce more than 2 colors of mana. We don´t always draw fetches in these situations, since we are low on lands.
I will try out Thought Scour sometime in the future, though!
[quote from="Mikefon »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/573218-counter-cat-nacatl-delver?comment=754"]
Well, I kinda need some mana the first few turns, and as soon as the opponent know what he´s doing he will destroyt the most important lands, and I need to be able to produce more than 2 colors of mana. We don´t always draw fetches in these situations, since we are low on lands.
They can't use field until turn 3 so you should have cast some threats for that time (good luck to them if they use it immediately wasting their entire turn 3 with pressure on board). You can survive some turns not having red or white. The only deck that could be tricky is BG since they have discards and removal in addition to land hate. The other decks aren't a problem. UW wants to take the game long, but you pressure them so much that they can't afford to use field until late game (unless they miracle terminus, but that's another problem). Keep uncracked fetches in those game. I usually see 4+ lands per game (against FoR decks) so mana isn't really an issue. I managed to win under blood moon more than once and pretty easily in the past.
In any case try, and if you feel better with a plains in your main go on
I’m interested in building this deck I think. Any opinions on what’s better: Counter Cat or RUG delver?
I'm still on Countercat train. The other option I can consider is the new UR list from Ashton but I haven't tested it yet. RUG is too graveyard dependant nowadays. In any case it depends on meta. MikePemulis is doing quite well with temur for example.
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I've got a 1K tournament coming up this weekend. I feel the deck is pretty strong against the field locally. I'm expecting to see burn, dredge, phoenix, spirits, infect, amulet titan, tron, and maybe a humans player and a smattering of other decks. How would you guys prepare for such a field? This is the deck I currently have built
I’m interested in building this deck I think. Any opinions on what’s better: Counter Cat or RUG delver?
CC has a lot of awesome tools at its disposal, and sidesteps grave hate quite well with the SB. The issues with the deck right now IMO are:
- Outclassed threats. Goyf is slow compared to Phoenix and Nacatl is smaller than so much stuff on the ground.
- Consistency. Sometimes you keep a cantrip-heavy one-lander, fetch Steam Vents, eventually draw Scalding Tarn and lose. This deck would benefit immensely from an upgrade to Sleight of Hand (i.e. Preordain).
That being said, Mutagenic is looking to be insane right now with Nacatl. I would recommend this list:
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
I agree with all you said. I learned to mulligan those type of one land hands. We have to wish for preordain for at least another year and I fear even more.
I'm currently playing your maindeck except for a notable difference. I needed something to interact early with linear decks so I replaced mutagenics and a sleight of hand with 3 Disrupting Shoals and 2 opts. I'm not completely sold on mutagenic due to the high loss of life. Many aggro decks (burn and Phoenix above all) punish painful mana bases and I wanted to counter more than just bolts. I may be greedy but I'm quite happy so far.
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I agree with all you said. I learned to mulligan those type of one land hands. We have to wish for preordain for at least another year and I fear even more.
I'm currently playing your maindeck except for a notable difference. I needed something to interact early with linear decks so I replaced mutagenics and a sleight of hand with 3 Disrupting Shoals and 2 opts. I'm not completely sold on mutagenic due to the high loss of life. Many aggro decks (burn and Phoenix above all) punish painful mana bases and I wanted to counter more than just bolts. I may be greedy but I'm quite happy so far.
That seems fine to me actually. I've long endorsed making a conscious decision of Muta or Shoal with this deck depending on the metagame. I really like Shoal's applications against the aggro-combo flavors currently present in Modern (it's great at stopping enablers like Looting/Inquiry/Manamorphose/Stirrings/etc.), and as you know am playing a 4-Shoal deck right now. Agree that those aggro-combo decks tax the life total heavily.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
Hey, I've just taken this archetype for a spin in friendly leagues, because I love legacy tempo decks, and I was quite surprised how good it actually feels, I went 2x 5-0 and 3-2, while still tinkering with the decklist. I've fully expected much worse deck then Grixis Shadow, which is the only real tempo deck in modern, but having counterspells instead of discard is much bigger deal then it seems:
(Playing so many one-offs is just for testing purpose, mostly in sideboard but also in maindeck.)
Some notes:
- 17 lands is not enough to have consistent opening hands, but 18 floods often in the midgame, 18 + 2x Faithless Looting is the best combination I've found.
- Tarfire is great, Trickbind is still being evaluated.
- Mishra's Bauble is great, but not a spell for Delver of Secrets and not a cantrip for land-light hands, 2 seems reasonable, but I can see both cutting all of them or going up to 3 as possible.
- Spell Pierce vs. Stubborn Denial is super hard decision, I think it depends on how many Hooting Mandrills are in the deck.
- Serum Visions is the best in fixing manascrewed hands, flipping delvers and providing fuel in later stages, but sorcery speed is really really unpleasant in this kind of deck, while legacy tempo decks can afford to play Ponder or Preordain because their countermagic is free, here we really want instant speed cantrips so we can hold counterspells in first few rounds when its most critical. I will try to go down to 3. Thought Scour is still in evaluation but with only 2 Hooting Mandrils 0-1 seems like the right ammount. Faithless Looting is critical since we will often have dead cards and lands, 2 seems OK, since we generally want to see exactly one in the midgame, but its servicable early game too. Opt is average but probably the best tool we have.
- White splash just feels... Bad is too strong, but I am fairly certain that its not worth it. While both Wild Nacatl and Path to Exile are awesome, the manabase is just too awkward to be worth the small edge in power level.
1. You want to have as many blue sources as possible, then green/red, but when fetching for Wild Nacatl we are often in situation where its not possible to fetch into correct dual lands or we don't know yet what fetchlands we will draw (Bauble, Opt etc.)
2. In 99% we want to have Breeding Pool as one of the lands, usually the first land, but that leads either to Sacred Foundry as a second land which is super bad, it cant be used to hold counterspell or cast any creature, or we can go for Steam Vents / Hallowed Fountain but then we are stuck with 2/2 and we dont have to get another land for few turns or it does not have to be a correct land, in which case Wild Nacatl is just a bad onedrop.
3. Dealing so much damage to ourselves just to have a slightly better onedrop then lets say Pteramander might be worth it in some metas, but with Izzet Phoenix and Burn so popular... Without white we could play more fastlands/basics.
4. I don't see any obvious solution to this problem, other then eliminating white. While I hate giving away Path to Exile (the meta is full of Thing in the Ice and Arclight Phoenix and Death's Shadow, I believe it has to go.
- Nobody expects so much cheap interaction in the early game, many decks just can't deal with the tempo.
5. I would stay away from Mutagenic Growth, its only good against Bolt or in trades, and in such matchups another creature would serve basically the same purpose. Making the deck much weaker to unconditional removal and mostly discard to get some questionable advantage with nut draws seems like a bad tradeoff.
It feels great to play a deck that
- applies strong pressure and has reach, many draws simply kill opponent that stumbles a bit via 1-2 cheap creatures and bolt or two very fast.
- interacts with opponent T1 and T2, Spell Pierce / Stubborn Denial in first 2 turns can disrupt fragile decks such as Tron/Dredge/Shadow enough to basically win the game. Holding up Spell Pierce blindly T1 instead of playing a creature seems to be a correct play most of the time, which is why maxing on instand speed cantrips is so important.
- plays so many cantrips, which probably means giving away a bit of raw power level, but brings consistency and.. fun, it honestly feels much better to be "in control" all the time instead of just relying on topdecks.
Thanks for an awesome deck idea and hopefully I'll snag some 5-0 in competitive leagues too so there are more Nacatl decklists around the net
1. You want to have as many blue sources as possible, then green/red, but when fetching for Wild Nacatl we are often in situation where its not possible to fetch into correct dual lands or we don't know yet what fetchlands we will draw (Bauble, Opt etc.)
2. In 99% we want to have Breeding Pool as one of the lands, usually the first land, but that leads either to Sacred Foundry as a second land which is super bad, it cant be used to hold counterspell or cast any creature, or we can go for Steam Vents / Hallowed Fountain but then we are stuck with 2/2 and we dont have to get another land for few turns or it does not have to be a correct land, in which case Wild Nacatl is just a bad onedrop.
Leading with pool bring to the issues you underlined. It's 99% time wrong. You should fetch for the couples steam vents/temple garden (that you don't even play) or Stomping grounds/Hollowed Fountain as first and second land and grab breeding only as a third land. This is true even if you have a UG only hand. The main reason is because Sacred foundry is the very worst land we could play. This way of fetching smoothes incredibly the mana. You have always a 3/3 turn 2 if needed and all the color covered in the right way (you always have UG or WR available which are the most needed combinations).
3. Dealing so much damage to ourselves just to have a slightly better onedrop then lets say Pteramander might be worth it in some metas, but with Izzet Phoenix and Burn so popular... Without white we could play more fastlands/basics.
4. I don't see any obvious solution to this problem, other then eliminating white. While I hate giving away Path to Exile (the meta is full of Thing in the Ice and Arclight Phoenix and Death's Shadow, I believe it has to go.
- Nobody expects so much cheap interaction in the early game, many decks just can't deal with the tempo.
5. I would stay away from Mutagenic Growth, its only good against Bolt or in trades, and in such matchups another creature would serve basically the same purpose. Making the deck much weaker to unconditional removal and mostly discard to get some questionable advantage with nut draws seems like a bad tradeoff.
If you cut white just play temur or izzet delver: there's a thread for temur delver on salvations and Ashton linked his article about izzet. They're both good decks but have their problems too.
In any case Pteramander is not a good "early" drop since it's online only by turn 3+ (the same is true for say death's shadow or delve creatures: they're not turn 1 creatures). Nacatl is a true "turn one" creature and maybe the best. Path covers the lack of removals that is a feature of temur shell.
I already said I cut mutagenics for shoals and I'm happy with that.
Pierce is better in this deck since it's stronger if you only have nacatls or delver.
Leading with pool bring to the issues you underlined. It's 99% time wrong. You should fetch for the couples steam vents/temple garden (that you don't even play) or Stomping grounds/Hollowed Fountain as first and second land and grab breeding only as a third land. This is true even if you have a UG only hand. The main reason is because Sacred foundry is the very worst land we could play. This way of fetching smoothes incredibly the mana. You have always a 3/3 turn 2 if needed and all the color covered in the right way (you always have UG or WR available which are the most needed combinations).
I've tried this approach too, but there are different issues: UR + GW or GR + UW doesn't work in one-lander situations, doesn't really work with blue heavy hands, and blue heavy hands are very, very common. Also hands with basic lands or duals in wrong combinations. Basically Sacred Foundry is quite bad in the very best scenario that you've mentioned, but its also fixing many hands such as Basic + 1 Fetch etc.
What follows is mine opinion based on my experience with the deck. It isn't obviously "the absolute truth". I'm just trying to be helpful. I'm glad that more peoples are joining us in the Temur delver (or temur+W) way
A 4 color deck can't work with 1 land so most of 1 land hands are mulligans.
Most of Blue heavy hands are mulligans as well (unless there's delver in them) because they're too slow most of the times. If there's delver and you don't have nacatl you don't need to have the full 4 colors. And if you are heavy blue you'll surely find quite quickly the third land.
If you have 2 lands and a blue heavy hand you can play anything even if sometimes you can't chain cantrips in the same turn. If I have basic + fetch I usually play temur or bant until I hit the third land that fixes everything. I can't see a case where I want basic + foundry. In both case you'd lack one of the main colors of the deck: either the threats one or the dig+counter one. I'm not sold.
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What follows is mine opinion based on my experience with the deck. It isn't obviously "the absolute truth". I'm just trying to be helpful. I'm glad that more peoples are joining us in the Temur delver (or temur+W) way
A 4 color deck can't work with 1 land so most of 1 land hands are mulligans.
Most of Blue heavy hands are mulligans as well (unless there's delver in them) because they're too slow most of the times. If there's delver and you don't have nacatl you don't need to have the full 4 colors. And if you are heavy blue you'll surely find quite quickly the third land.
If you have 2 lands and a blue heavy hand you can play anything even if sometimes you can't chain cantrips in the same turn. If I have basic + fetch I usually play temur or bant until I hit the third land that fixes everything. I can't see a case where I want basic + foundry. In both case you'd lack one of the main colors of the deck: either the threats one or the dig+counter one. I'm not sold.
Have to side with Mikefon on all points (this post and the previous one). A hand with one land that is not liable to lock in a second (i.e. with no card selection) should be mulliganed. To reiterate, Breeding Pool is a terrible first land in this deck and an excellent third.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
Thanks for input, I will try to ponder about shock-land order a bit more, but in my experience the UR into UG or UG into UR wasn't very practical in real games, it often meant not losing tempo with cards stuck in hand etc.
Here's the list I'm currently playing. How would you guys change the sideboard to prepare for a field of phoenix, some burn, spirits, infect, amulet titan, tron, maybe a bit of BGx, frenzy affinity, living end, maybe a humans player and a smattering of other random decks. I've got a 1K coming up on Saturday that I want to be prepared for
Here's the list I'm currently playing. How would you guys change the sideboard to prepare for a field of phoenix, some burn, spirits, infect, amulet titan, tron, maybe a bit of BGx, frenzy affinity, living end, maybe a humans player and a smattering of other random decks. I've got a 1K coming up on Saturday that I want to be prepared for
This is what I'm playing.
I prefer the second Grudge over a reverlry and the second sweeper over the other one (I chose Radiant falmes because they're easier to cast than the RR of anger even if Anger is definetly more useful against GY decks; they can also let you save your nacatl if you want). Enchantments ar usually covered by EE. I chose Grafdigger's over trap as a concession to chords decks (vannifar and elves above all). If you don't fear them, trap is just as good (sometimes even better). Hazoret is very strong against many decks, I won't cut it. Otherwise we play almost the same things. I think that most of the MU are covered with this sideboard.
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I agree with the second grudge for sure. The traps have been amazing for me so I'm going to be keeping them in. Radiant flames seems like a decent choice; I often find my Angers too hard to cast on time, but I do like being able to exile dredge's board.
I bring Hazoret against BGx shadow and controls. It is useful against moon decks since you can cast it under moon and can get rid of the card stuck in hand. And it's a win con against Ensnaring bridge too.
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18 U CMC; 8 UU CMC; 27 inst./sorc. for delver flip.
I managed to do only a couple of matches. The first impression is that we lose a little bit of speed the first turns but we gain a lot once we can activate Pteramander. Obviously Shoal works better.
I still don't know how many Scour I should play. I want to try with 0 (since I hate them), but I may have to play at least 2-3.
In side I don't know if I should play Surgical or negate.
For anybody interested in some video contents about this deck I uploaded here some videos I recorded for myself (since XMage doesn't have the replay feature or I can't find it).
Feel free to PM me for anything related.
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I'm currently playing this list (with more wins than losses on XMage):
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Hooting Mandrills
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Rancor
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
1 Tarfire
2 Blossoming Defense
1 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
2 Mana Leak
4 Serum Visions
2 Thought Scour
1 Opt
1 Sleight of Hand
1 Chart a Course
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Stomping Ground
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Temple Garden
1 Island
1 Breeding Pool
1 Forest
2 Damping Sphere
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Deafening Clarion
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Pithing Needle
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Hazoret the Fervent
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Negate
Rancor used to be obsession, but I'm trying to be more aggressive.
Against spirit I side in 2 clarion, 2 EE, and collar; side out 2 Pierce, 2 blossoming and opt. As already said before it's a close matchup in which you have to use wisely your removal.
Modern:
// 16 Creature
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Snapcaster Mage
3 Hooting Mandrills
// 20 Instant
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Opt
2 Spell Pierce
2 Mana Leak
4 Path to Exile
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Simic Charm
2 Disrupting Shoal
1 Steam Vents
1 Temple Garden
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Stomping Ground
1 Breeding Pool
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Plains
4 Serum Visions
2 Chart a Course
Dunno how it works to get the sideboard in there, but it looks like this:
And what is send to sleep for?
No thought scour? It helps so much for fast mandrills...
Just curious.
Modern:
Send to sleep = It looks insane against other creature based tempo decks that are looking to block us or just to tap them out of 1 attack.
Thought Scour = I got terrified by the fact that some people in the thread wrote that it just milled their cards that they needed. I think I can afford to play Mandrill some turn later.
But I haven´t tested the deck yet, so I could be wrong. Is it even possible to optimize a deck the first try?
Against field of ruins it's more important to keep fetches for when you need the mana. Forest and Island are enough. Plains in starting hands leads to mulligans most of the times. I'd put the third tarn.
Milling singleton lands with thought scour can happen but very rarely; it could mill useless cards too at the same rate and when you have two unflipped delver you can use scour to help flipping at least one of them. It's a false fear. It's more important to be aggressive. I don't like scours much but they're necessary.
Modern:
Well, I kinda need some mana the first few turns, and as soon as the opponent know what he´s doing he will destroyt the most important lands, and I need to be able to produce more than 2 colors of mana. We don´t always draw fetches in these situations, since we are low on lands.
I will try out Thought Scour sometime in the future, though!
They can't use field until turn 3 so you should have cast some threats for that time (good luck to them if they use it immediately wasting their entire turn 3 with pressure on board). You can survive some turns not having red or white. The only deck that could be tricky is BG since they have discards and removal in addition to land hate. The other decks aren't a problem. UW wants to take the game long, but you pressure them so much that they can't afford to use field until late game (unless they miracle terminus, but that's another problem). Keep uncracked fetches in those game. I usually see 4+ lands per game (against FoR decks) so mana isn't really an issue. I managed to win under blood moon more than once and pretty easily in the past.
In any case try, and if you feel better with a plains in your main go on
I'm still on Countercat train. The other option I can consider is the new UR list from Ashton but I haven't tested it yet. RUG is too graveyard dependant nowadays. In any case it depends on meta. MikePemulis is doing quite well with temur for example.
Modern:
This is the deck I currently have built
- Outclassed threats. Goyf is slow compared to Phoenix and Nacatl is smaller than so much stuff on the ground.
- Consistency. Sometimes you keep a cantrip-heavy one-lander, fetch Steam Vents, eventually draw Scalding Tarn and lose. This deck would benefit immensely from an upgrade to Sleight of Hand (i.e. Preordain).
That being said, Mutagenic is looking to be insane right now with Nacatl. I would recommend this list:
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Hooting Mandrills
1 Snapcaster Mage
Instants 19
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Pierce
2 Mana Leak
4 Path to Exile
2 Thought Scour
4 Mutagenic Growth
1 Spell Snare
Sorceries 7
4 Serum Visions
2 Sleight of Hand
1 Chart a Course
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
1 Stomping Ground
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Temple Garden
1 Island
1 Breeding Pool
1 Forest
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Pyroclasm
2 Damping Sphere
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Hazoret the Fervent
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Shapers' Sanctuary
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Destructive Revelry
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Negate
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
I'm currently playing your maindeck except for a notable difference. I needed something to interact early with linear decks so I replaced mutagenics and a sleight of hand with 3 Disrupting Shoals and 2 opts. I'm not completely sold on mutagenic due to the high loss of life. Many aggro decks (burn and Phoenix above all) punish painful mana bases and I wanted to counter more than just bolts. I may be greedy but I'm quite happy so far.
Modern:
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Botanical Sanctum
1 Island
1 Forest
Instants 19
1 Stubborn Denial
2 Mana Leak
1 Remand
1 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
1 Trickbind
1 Thought Scour
2 Opt
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Tarfire
3 Path to Exile
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Wild Nacatl
2 Hooting Mandrills
1 Bomat Courier
Sorceries 6
2 Faithless Looting
4 Serum Visions
Artifacts 2
2 Mishra's Bauble
1 Abrade
1 Chart a Course
1 Life Goes On
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Blossoming Defense
2 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Send to Sleep
1 Feed the Clan
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Stony Silence
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Forked Bolt
1 Negate
(Playing so many one-offs is just for testing purpose, mostly in sideboard but also in maindeck.)
Some notes:
- 17 lands is not enough to have consistent opening hands, but 18 floods often in the midgame, 18 + 2x Faithless Looting is the best combination I've found.
- Tarfire is great, Trickbind is still being evaluated.
- Mishra's Bauble is great, but not a spell for Delver of Secrets and not a cantrip for land-light hands, 2 seems reasonable, but I can see both cutting all of them or going up to 3 as possible.
- Spell Pierce vs. Stubborn Denial is super hard decision, I think it depends on how many Hooting Mandrills are in the deck.
- Serum Visions is the best in fixing manascrewed hands, flipping delvers and providing fuel in later stages, but sorcery speed is really really unpleasant in this kind of deck, while legacy tempo decks can afford to play Ponder or Preordain because their countermagic is free, here we really want instant speed cantrips so we can hold counterspells in first few rounds when its most critical. I will try to go down to 3. Thought Scour is still in evaluation but with only 2 Hooting Mandrils 0-1 seems like the right ammount. Faithless Looting is critical since we will often have dead cards and lands, 2 seems OK, since we generally want to see exactly one in the midgame, but its servicable early game too. Opt is average but probably the best tool we have.
- White splash just feels... Bad is too strong, but I am fairly certain that its not worth it. While both Wild Nacatl and Path to Exile are awesome, the manabase is just too awkward to be worth the small edge in power level.
1. You want to have as many blue sources as possible, then green/red, but when fetching for Wild Nacatl we are often in situation where its not possible to fetch into correct dual lands or we don't know yet what fetchlands we will draw (Bauble, Opt etc.)
2. In 99% we want to have Breeding Pool as one of the lands, usually the first land, but that leads either to Sacred Foundry as a second land which is super bad, it cant be used to hold counterspell or cast any creature, or we can go for Steam Vents / Hallowed Fountain but then we are stuck with 2/2 and we dont have to get another land for few turns or it does not have to be a correct land, in which case Wild Nacatl is just a bad onedrop.
3. Dealing so much damage to ourselves just to have a slightly better onedrop then lets say Pteramander might be worth it in some metas, but with Izzet Phoenix and Burn so popular... Without white we could play more fastlands/basics.
4. I don't see any obvious solution to this problem, other then eliminating white. While I hate giving away Path to Exile (the meta is full of Thing in the Ice and Arclight Phoenix and Death's Shadow, I believe it has to go.
- Nobody expects so much cheap interaction in the early game, many decks just can't deal with the tempo.
5. I would stay away from Mutagenic Growth, its only good against Bolt or in trades, and in such matchups another creature would serve basically the same purpose. Making the deck much weaker to unconditional removal and mostly discard to get some questionable advantage with nut draws seems like a bad tradeoff.
It feels great to play a deck that
- applies strong pressure and has reach, many draws simply kill opponent that stumbles a bit via 1-2 cheap creatures and bolt or two very fast.
- interacts with opponent T1 and T2, Spell Pierce / Stubborn Denial in first 2 turns can disrupt fragile decks such as Tron/Dredge/Shadow enough to basically win the game. Holding up Spell Pierce blindly T1 instead of playing a creature seems to be a correct play most of the time, which is why maxing on instand speed cantrips is so important.
- plays so many cantrips, which probably means giving away a bit of raw power level, but brings consistency and.. fun, it honestly feels much better to be "in control" all the time instead of just relying on topdecks.
Thanks for an awesome deck idea and hopefully I'll snag some 5-0 in competitive leagues too so there are more Nacatl decklists around the net
Leading with pool bring to the issues you underlined. It's 99% time wrong. You should fetch for the couples steam vents/temple garden (that you don't even play) or Stomping grounds/Hollowed Fountain as first and second land and grab breeding only as a third land. This is true even if you have a UG only hand. The main reason is because Sacred foundry is the very worst land we could play. This way of fetching smoothes incredibly the mana. You have always a 3/3 turn 2 if needed and all the color covered in the right way (you always have UG or WR available which are the most needed combinations).
If you cut white just play temur or izzet delver: there's a thread for temur delver on salvations and Ashton linked his article about izzet. They're both good decks but have their problems too.
In any case Pteramander is not a good "early" drop since it's online only by turn 3+ (the same is true for say death's shadow or delve creatures: they're not turn 1 creatures). Nacatl is a true "turn one" creature and maybe the best. Path covers the lack of removals that is a feature of temur shell.
I already said I cut mutagenics for shoals and I'm happy with that.
Pierce is better in this deck since it's stronger if you only have nacatls or delver.
Modern:
I've tried this approach too, but there are different issues: UR + GW or GR + UW doesn't work in one-lander situations, doesn't really work with blue heavy hands, and blue heavy hands are very, very common. Also hands with basic lands or duals in wrong combinations. Basically Sacred Foundry is quite bad in the very best scenario that you've mentioned, but its also fixing many hands such as Basic + 1 Fetch etc.
A 4 color deck can't work with 1 land so most of 1 land hands are mulligans.
Most of Blue heavy hands are mulligans as well (unless there's delver in them) because they're too slow most of the times. If there's delver and you don't have nacatl you don't need to have the full 4 colors. And if you are heavy blue you'll surely find quite quickly the third land.
If you have 2 lands and a blue heavy hand you can play anything even if sometimes you can't chain cantrips in the same turn. If I have basic + fetch I usually play temur or bant until I hit the third land that fixes everything. I can't see a case where I want basic + foundry. In both case you'd lack one of the main colors of the deck: either the threats one or the dig+counter one. I'm not sold.
Modern:
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
Here's the list I'm currently playing. How would you guys change the sideboard to prepare for a field of phoenix, some burn, spirits, infect, amulet titan, tron, maybe a bit of BGx, frenzy affinity, living end, maybe a humans player and a smattering of other random decks. I've got a 1K coming up on Saturday that I want to be prepared for
1x Arid Mesa
1x Breeding Pool
1x Flooded Strand
1x Forest
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Scalding Tarn
1x Steam Vents
1x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
1x Wooded Foothills
Creatures
4x Delver of Secrets
3x Hooting Mandrills
1x Snapcaster Mage
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Wild Nacatl
1x Chart a Course
1x Curious Obsession
3x Disrupting Shoal
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Mana Leak
2x Opt
4x Path to Exile
4x Serum Visions
2x Spell Pierce
1x Spell Snare
2x Thought Scour
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Anger of the Gods
2x Damping Sphere
2x Destructive Revelry
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Feed the Clan
1x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Pithing Needle
2x Ravenous Trap
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Shaper's Sanctuary
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Radiant Flames
2x Damping Sphere
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Feed the Clan
2x Hazoret the Fervent
1x Pithing Needle
2x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Surgical Extraction
This is what I'm playing.
I prefer the second Grudge over a reverlry and the second sweeper over the other one (I chose Radiant falmes because they're easier to cast than the RR of anger even if Anger is definetly more useful against GY decks; they can also let you save your nacatl if you want). Enchantments ar usually covered by EE. I chose Grafdigger's over trap as a concession to chords decks (vannifar and elves above all). If you don't fear them, trap is just as good (sometimes even better). Hazoret is very strong against many decks, I won't cut it. Otherwise we play almost the same things. I think that most of the MU are covered with this sideboard.
Modern:
When do you typically bring Hazoret in? Assuming against most midrange? Anything else of note?
I think I have my list finalized. Wish me luck, boys! I'll report back tomorrow night or Sunday
Modern:
3 Pteramander
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Tarmogoyf
//Removals (8)
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
//Counters (9)
1 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
2 Mana Leak
4 Disrupting Shoal
// Cantrips (10)
2 Opt
4 Serum Visions
2 Sleight of Hand
2 Chart a Course
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Stomping Ground
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Island
1 Forest
2 Damping Sphere
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Hazoret the Fervent
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Negate
1 Rest for the Weary
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Radiant Flames
1 Pyroclasm
18 U CMC; 8 UU CMC; 27 inst./sorc. for delver flip.
I managed to do only a couple of matches. The first impression is that we lose a little bit of speed the first turns but we gain a lot once we can activate Pteramander. Obviously Shoal works better.
I still don't know how many Scour I should play. I want to try with 0 (since I hate them), but I may have to play at least 2-3.
In side I don't know if I should play Surgical or negate.
Modern:
Feel free to PM me for anything related.
Modern: