@CTonyJab
It is possible to run Walking Ballista as a win condition when you make infinite mana from the combo. It would take Pyrite Spellbomb's slot in that case. People typically prefer the spellbomb because of its ability to draw a card.
1-2 Grishoalbrand
1-2 Enduring Ideal
2-0 Rogue Deck
1-2 GW Elves
2-1 Death’s Shadow/Hollow One
2-0 Lantern Control
2-0 Eldrazi Tron
The Elves and Enduring Ideal matches were lost to a combination of misplays and incorrect sideboarding from me. I wasn’t prepared to see Grishoalbrand but still played against it the best I believe I could.
Against Lantern Control, game 2 I won through Surgical Extraction on Scrap Trawler with Ghirapur Aether Grid, Walking Ballista, and Spine of Ish Sah.
Game 2 Against Eldrazi I won through Chalice on 1 by casting Spine and recurring it, keeping the opponent off of Tron lands and relevant creatures.
Against Hollow One, my two maindeck Nephalia Adacemy’s turned his burning inquiries into brainstorms for me.
I’m going to another IQ in two weeks and I hope to report better results then.
It was nice to see a couple of KCI decks doing actually quite well in the Swiss portion of the tournament at the protour. The deck's got a little more exposure now. Who knows, we may see a slight bump in popularity.
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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
I'm actually putting serious thought into building this deck but know it can be kind of difficult to pilot. Are there any articles you would recommend me read? I'm trying to get my hands on anything I can (the more current, the better). Thanks!
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Decks Modern UGWRB Humans G Mono-Green Tron UWBR Ad Nauseam
I'm actually putting serious thought into building this deck but know it can be kind of difficult to pilot. Are there any articles you would recommend me read? I'm trying to get my hands on anything I can (the more current, the better). Thanks!
The best resources you have atm are the P. Maynard and Ari Lax leagues and goldfishing A LOT to get familiar with the lines and the loops. Unfortunately, all the content is a bit outdated for what I know.
I'm actually putting serious thought into building this deck but know it can be kind of difficult to pilot. Are there any articles you would recommend me read? I'm trying to get my hands on anything I can (the more current, the better). Thanks!
The best resources you have atm are the P. Maynard and Ari Lax leagues and goldfishing A LOT to get familiar with the lines and the loops. Unfortunately, all the content is a bit outdated for what I know.
I'm actually putting serious thought into building this deck but know it can be kind of difficult to pilot. Are there any articles you would recommend me read? I'm trying to get my hands on anything I can (the more current, the better). Thanks!
The best resources you have atm are the P. Maynard and Ari Lax leagues and goldfishing A LOT to get familiar with the lines and the loops. Unfortunately, all the content is a bit outdated for what I know.
It depends, I think it is suboptimal (think about having in your opening two Emrakul). Why you want two in the main? I can see having a different wincon (Reservoir, Spellbomb, Ballista) in the main tho.
Reservoir seemed like a fun idea until I realised that drawing it fairly deep into a chain means tracking back and working out how many spells you've cast and urgh I'm not about that at all. On mtgo it could be a pretty clean wincon but in paper urghhhh there's enough to keep track of, I'm not about to start counting storm as well.
Maybe that's just me.
Also I had a situation come up recently where I established the following:
I demonstrated what I thought was a clean loop & my opponent was like "sure, go for it" indicating they wanted me to play it out (or at least some of it. Fair enough!)
What happened next was a mess, as somewhere along the line I messed up the loop without realising and ended up with some sort of ragged semi-loop and ergh it was horrific and painful to execute and probably to watch.
I've been playing this deck for ages as well. Although I will admit I had completely passed over a second trawler being technically infinite (like honestly I'd never realised). It was a bit embarrassing and something I need to work on. Also I guess it makes all my other wins all the more impressive if I didn't even realise I could go infinite hahaha.
Still, wasn't my finest moment.
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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
I'm actually putting serious thought into building this deck but know it can be kind of difficult to pilot. Are there any articles you would recommend me read? I'm trying to get my hands on anything I can (the more current, the better). Thanks!
The best resources you have atm are the P. Maynard and Ari Lax leagues and goldfishing A LOT to get familiar with the lines and the loops. Unfortunately, all the content is a bit outdated for what I know.
It depends, I think it is suboptimal (think about having in your opening two Emrakul). Why you want two in the main? I can see having a different wincon (Reservoir, Spellbomb, Ballista) in the main tho.
From my limited testing of the deck so far, I've sometimes found it hard to find Emrakul. I know we can get him off Sanctum but I've still had a hard time in a few games. I figured the extra Emrakul would make things a little easier but it is possible I'm doing something wrong (like holding my landrop until I absolutely have to put it down).
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Decks Modern UGWRB Humans G Mono-Green Tron UWBR Ad Nauseam
1) sac Star (2 mana)
2) sac trawler (4 mana), return star and play it and sac it (5 mana)
3) sac retriever (7 mana), get back star and trawler. Play them (3 mana) and sac star (5 mana).
4) sac trawler (7 mana), return star and retriever and play them (4mana). Sac Star (6 mana) and go to step 3.
The rule of thumb is 1 trawler on the board and one in the gy is infinite with myr and KCI. As soon as you recognize the board state is just autopilot
Double myr retriever is far more elegant I feel you.
Agree with Reservoir, card is EXTREMELY narrow, it just helps against stuff like infinite life (I hate the vizier decks), attacks from another angle (welding jar + bridge is a very powerful combo) and sometimes the incidental life gain is relevant. Also, it tilts the opponent when game 1 you ping them for 50 then g2 you show them emrakul The reservoir math is a bit tricky on paper, what I do is asking my opponent if he is fine if I start gaining life from my next spell (starting from 1) so it is easier also for him to follow, then I proceed to cast 8-10 spells to kill him. The gain life formula is X(X+1)/2 where X is the number of spells you cast this turn. For example, if I can loop 8 spells is 36 Life, 9 is 45 life and so on.
Can't you go infinite with just 1x Trawler, 1x Retriever, 1x KCI, 2x Chromatic Star/Sphere(1x in the yard, 1x in hand)?
Let's assume you have 2x Chromatic Sphere, which is the worst case scenario. It should go like this :
Step 1 : Announce that you will play a Chromatic Sphere
Step 2 : Use KCI to sac Trawler et Retriever to pay for the star - You now have 4 mana in pool
Step 3 : Spend 1 mana for the Chromatic Sphere that you played - You now have 3 mana in pool
Step 4 : Both Trawler and Retriever goes to the yard at the same time, meaning you get 2 triggers off them.
Trawler gets back Retriever and Retriever gets back Trawler and the Chromatic Sphere in the yard
Step 5 : Play the Trawler - You now have no mana in pool, 1x Trawler in play and 1x Chromatic Star in play
Step 6 : Sac the Chromatic Star in play with KCI to play Retriever - You are now back to step 1
If there's a 0 mana artifact in the yard, you can go infinite mana through step 6 and then proceed to draw as many cards as you want.
If you have at least one Chromatic Star instead of a Chromatic Sphere, you get to draw as many cards as you want through step 6.
Even better is that you don't really need Chromatic Sphere to begin with, all you need is 2x one mana artifacts.
I think step 2 is what most people are unaware of. Either that or this doesn't work as I think it does.
Can't you go infinite with just 1x Trawler, 1x Retriever, 1x KCI, 2x Chromatic Star/Sphere(1x in the yard, 1x in hand)?
Let's assume you have 2x Chromatic Sphere, which is the worst case scenario. It should go like this :
Step 1 : Announce that you will play a Chromatic Sphere
Step 2 : Use KCI to sac Trawler et Retriever to pay for the star - You now have 4 mana in pool
Step 3 : Spend 1 mana for the Chromatic Sphere that you played - You now have 3 mana in pool
Step 4 : Both Trawler and Retriever goes to the yard at the same time, meaning you get 2 triggers off them.
Trawler gets back Retriever and Retriever gets back Trawler and the Chromatic Sphere in the yard
Step 5 : Play the Trawler - You now have no mana in pool, 1x Trawler in play and 1x Chromatic Star in play
Step 6 : Sac the Chromatic Star in play with KCI to play Retriever - You are now back to step 1
If there's a 0 mana artifact in the yard, you can go infinite mana through step 6 and then proceed to draw as many cards as you want.
If you have at least one Chromatic Star instead of a Chromatic Sphere, you get to draw as many cards as you want through step 6.
Even better is that you don't really need Chromatic Sphere to begin with, all you need is 2x one mana artifacts.
I think step 2 is what most people are unaware of. Either that or this doesn't work as I think it does.
This all sounds right. I've never actually thought of doing the step 2 before, but there's no rule limiting you to only activating mana abilities to a certain amount while casting a spell.
yeah you just need 1 trawler 1 retriever and a star or Terrarion to go infinite. total cost is 6 and your net from ironworks is 6. you stack the effects so that trawler trigger from retriever gets star, trawler trigger grabs retriever, and retriever trigger grabs trawler. this will let you draw your entire deck and also give you 3 storm count every time you preform the loop. I exclusively play the whir reservoir version so its important to memorize all the loops that can create an infinite storm count. Also id say against decks like soul sisters or infinite life gain decks reservoir is just a cleaner and faster kill. the big advantage of emrakul over whir is that emrakul is just better against hate then the whir builds.
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Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
yeah you just need 1 trawler 1 retriever and a star or Terrarion to go infinite. total cost is 6 and your net from ironworks is 6. you stack the effects so that trawler trigger from retriever gets star, trawler trigger grabs retriever, and retriever trigger grabs trawler. this will let you draw your entire deck and also give you 3 storm count every time you preform the loop. I exclusively play the whir reservoir version so its important to memorize all the loops that can create an infinite storm count. Also id say against decks like soul sisters or infinite life gain decks reservoir is just a cleaner and faster kill. the big advantage of emrakul over whir is that emrakul is just better against hate then the whir builds.
Oh my God I've been playing this deck wrong the whole time 0_0
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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
it happens when you have decks with massive redundancy. Knowing that though should make it so you win a turn faster. the fastest ive ever had it go off is turn 2 on god hand status and extreme luck.
opening hand was
2 mox, babuble, citadel, trawler, star, ironworks. drew a land on turn 2 and the star after being sacrificed gave me prophetic prism into retriever. Ive only had it happen once.
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Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
it happens when you have decks with massive redundancy. Knowing that though should make it so you win a turn faster. the fastest ive ever had it go off is turn 2 on god hand status and extreme luck.
opening hand was
2 mox, babuble, citadel, trawler, star, ironworks. drew a land on turn 2 and the star after being sacrificed gave me prophetic prism into retriever. Ive only had it happen once.
Oh I've won on turn 2 at some pretty large competitive REL tournaments. I've done very well with the deck and I feel like I owe it something haha it's been good to me.
All the same though, the sac retriever, hold priority, sac trawler, get back three things interaction is frankly bonkers and I'd completely missed it.
Always learning
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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
So... how do I get this (step 2) to work on MTGO. If I, say, activate thopter foundry and use KCI to pay for it, can I just sac as many artifacts as I want to gain a "go to the graveyard at the same time" effect? Won't it ask me to choose targets as triggers go on the stack one at a time during sacrificing?
If this works, that means KCI+Trawler+Retriever+Foundry and any 0cmc artifact = infinte mana, life, and thopters. Not all that practical, but still noteworthy.
EDIT: I tested this on MTGO this morning and it worked just fine with thopter activations, as well as spell casting. I did have a problem with casting mox opal, though, as mox would just get auto-cast from hand before I could try to pay mana for it. Don't know if there's a solution to that. Of course these tests just reminded me why I don't play this deck online, as turning a winning board state into an actual victory takes like 7 minutes and gives me carpal tunnel.
I'm very new to this archetype but I was watching Kanister stream this really spicy 16 land KCI version. He went 5-0 with it. Interesting choices being no Myr Retriever so I don't think it technically goes infinite. He said on the stream that the Walking Ballista was for time out purposes and in real life would run a 2nd pirite spell bomb. He liked the pentad prism because it ramped to Whir faster. The sideboard Ugin was very powerful on stream. What do you guys think?
It is possible to run Walking Ballista as a win condition when you make infinite mana from the combo. It would take Pyrite Spellbomb's slot in that case. People typically prefer the spellbomb because of its ability to draw a card.
I think with the two different types of artifact tutors this could be a powerfully consistent middleground.
Legacy:
GRB Belcher
UUB Merfolk
RRR Burn
GWU Bant Walker
RB Goblins
1-2 Grishoalbrand
1-2 Enduring Ideal
2-0 Rogue Deck
1-2 GW Elves
2-1 Death’s Shadow/Hollow One
2-0 Lantern Control
2-0 Eldrazi Tron
The Elves and Enduring Ideal matches were lost to a combination of misplays and incorrect sideboarding from me. I wasn’t prepared to see Grishoalbrand but still played against it the best I believe I could.
Against Lantern Control, game 2 I won through Surgical Extraction on Scrap Trawler with Ghirapur Aether Grid, Walking Ballista, and Spine of Ish Sah.
Game 2 Against Eldrazi I won through Chalice on 1 by casting Spine and recurring it, keeping the opponent off of Tron lands and relevant creatures.
Against Hollow One, my two maindeck Nephalia Adacemy’s turned his burning inquiries into brainstorms for me.
I’m going to another IQ in two weeks and I hope to report better results then.
There's a unified modern GP in December in the UK. I'm planning to attend and KCI might be my deck (it's that or tron).
Let's hope the modern protour gives us a favourable metagame.
Modern
UGWRB Humans
G Mono-Green Tron
UWBR Ad Nauseam
The best resources you have atm are the P. Maynard and Ari Lax leagues and goldfishing A LOT to get familiar with the lines and the loops. Unfortunately, all the content is a bit outdated for what I know.
Ok thanks Also, would it be crazy to consider running 2 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn in the MB?
Modern
UGWRB Humans
G Mono-Green Tron
UWBR Ad Nauseam
It depends, I think it is suboptimal (think about having in your opening two Emrakul). Why you want two in the main? I can see having a different wincon (Reservoir, Spellbomb, Ballista) in the main tho.
Maybe that's just me.
Also I had a situation come up recently where I established the following:
On board, 2x trawler, 1x myr retriever, 1x KCI, 1x chromatic star.
From there it's infinite right?
I demonstrated what I thought was a clean loop & my opponent was like "sure, go for it" indicating they wanted me to play it out (or at least some of it. Fair enough!)
What happened next was a mess, as somewhere along the line I messed up the loop without realising and ended up with some sort of ragged semi-loop and ergh it was horrific and painful to execute and probably to watch.
I've been playing this deck for ages as well. Although I will admit I had completely passed over a second trawler being technically infinite (like honestly I'd never realised). It was a bit embarrassing and something I need to work on. Also I guess it makes all my other wins all the more impressive if I didn't even realise I could go infinite hahaha.
Still, wasn't my finest moment.
From my limited testing of the deck so far, I've sometimes found it hard to find Emrakul. I know we can get him off Sanctum but I've still had a hard time in a few games. I figured the extra Emrakul would make things a little easier but it is possible I'm doing something wrong (like holding my landrop until I absolutely have to put it down).
Modern
UGWRB Humans
G Mono-Green Tron
UWBR Ad Nauseam
it should be:
1) sac Star (2 mana)
2) sac trawler (4 mana), return star and play it and sac it (5 mana)
3) sac retriever (7 mana), get back star and trawler. Play them (3 mana) and sac star (5 mana).
4) sac trawler (7 mana), return star and retriever and play them (4mana). Sac Star (6 mana) and go to step 3.
The rule of thumb is 1 trawler on the board and one in the gy is infinite with myr and KCI. As soon as you recognize the board state is just autopilot
Double myr retriever is far more elegant I feel you.
Agree with Reservoir, card is EXTREMELY narrow, it just helps against stuff like infinite life (I hate the vizier decks), attacks from another angle (welding jar + bridge is a very powerful combo) and sometimes the incidental life gain is relevant. Also, it tilts the opponent when game 1 you ping them for 50 then g2 you show them emrakul The reservoir math is a bit tricky on paper, what I do is asking my opponent if he is fine if I start gaining life from my next spell (starting from 1) so it is easier also for him to follow, then I proceed to cast 8-10 spells to kill him. The gain life formula is X(X+1)/2 where X is the number of spells you cast this turn. For example, if I can loop 8 spells is 36 Life, 9 is 45 life and so on.
Can't you go infinite with just 1x Trawler, 1x Retriever, 1x KCI, 2x Chromatic Star/Sphere(1x in the yard, 1x in hand)?
Let's assume you have 2x Chromatic Sphere, which is the worst case scenario. It should go like this :
Step 1 : Announce that you will play a Chromatic Sphere
Step 2 : Use KCI to sac Trawler et Retriever to pay for the star - You now have 4 mana in pool
Step 3 : Spend 1 mana for the Chromatic Sphere that you played - You now have 3 mana in pool
Step 4 : Both Trawler and Retriever goes to the yard at the same time, meaning you get 2 triggers off them.
Trawler gets back Retriever and Retriever gets back Trawler and the Chromatic Sphere in the yard
Step 5 : Play the Trawler - You now have no mana in pool, 1x Trawler in play and 1x Chromatic Star in play
Step 6 : Sac the Chromatic Star in play with KCI to play Retriever - You are now back to step 1
If there's a 0 mana artifact in the yard, you can go infinite mana through step 6 and then proceed to draw as many cards as you want.
If you have at least one Chromatic Star instead of a Chromatic Sphere, you get to draw as many cards as you want through step 6.
Even better is that you don't really need Chromatic Sphere to begin with, all you need is 2x one mana artifacts.
I think step 2 is what most people are unaware of. Either that or this doesn't work as I think it does.
This all sounds right. I've never actually thought of doing the step 2 before, but there's no rule limiting you to only activating mana abilities to a certain amount while casting a spell.
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
Oh my God I've been playing this deck wrong the whole time 0_0
opening hand was
2 mox, babuble, citadel, trawler, star, ironworks. drew a land on turn 2 and the star after being sacrificed gave me prophetic prism into retriever. Ive only had it happen once.
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
Oh I've won on turn 2 at some pretty large competitive REL tournaments. I've done very well with the deck and I feel like I owe it something haha it's been good to me.
All the same though, the sac retriever, hold priority, sac trawler, get back three things interaction is frankly bonkers and I'd completely missed it.
Always learning
If this works, that means KCI+Trawler+Retriever+Foundry and any 0cmc artifact = infinte mana, life, and thopters. Not all that practical, but still noteworthy.
EDIT: I tested this on MTGO this morning and it worked just fine with thopter activations, as well as spell casting. I did have a problem with casting mox opal, though, as mox would just get auto-cast from hand before I could try to pay mana for it. Don't know if there's a solution to that. Of course these tests just reminded me why I don't play this deck online, as turning a winning board state into an actual victory takes like 7 minutes and gives me carpal tunnel.
Decklist
4 Scrap Trawler
1 Walking Ballista
Sorcery- 4
4 Ancient Stirrings
Instant- 3
3 Whir of Invention
Artifacts 32
4 Mox Opal
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Terrarion
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Ichor Wellspring
2 Pentad Prism
1 Prophetic Prism
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Krark-Klan Ironworks
4 Glimmervoid
4 Spire of Industry
2 Island
4 Botanical Sanctum
2 Yavimaya Coast
2 Thoughtseize
1 Pyroclasm
1 Collective Brutality
2 Nature's Claim
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdiggers Cage
1 Defense Grid
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Inspiring Statuary
2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn