8Rack is a take on the classic discard / Pox strategy, in which you tear apart your opponent's hand turn after turn with discard spells, then make them slowly die with cards like The Rack. It is exactly as fun as it sounds (if you're the pilot).
The deck has been in the Established MTGS forum for almost a year, and in the Deck Creation forum for about as long as well. In the right meta, it's a competitive deck capable of hanging with top tier decks, and does best against unsuspecting pilots and an unsuspecting field. To date it has a heap of Magic Online daily tournament wins, and one high place finish in a paper tournament (and many lower place finishes in major tournaments, and high place finishes in minor tournaments). One of my goals with this primer is to help increase the amount of high place major tournament finishes.
When considering whether or not you want to play this deck, you must first understand it's very unique and it mostly eschews many of the common elements of other decks, like card advantage and creatures. We ditch card advantage entirely or mostly because by "controlling the hand and controlling the game", we don't need it, and doing so allows us to better focus on the deck's primary goals. Also, we want to have few or no cards to prevent creatures from attacking under Ensnaring Bridge. Finally, we have engines that make the deck consistent, eliminating the need for draw. 8Rack can benefit from card draw, but it certainly doesn't need it, so keep that in mind when discussing the deck. That said, we could benefit from cheap filtering, a la Sensei's Divining Top - perhaps one day a suitable card on that front will be printed. On the creature front, we don't want them because we have other ways to win, we like our opponent to have dead cards, and if we only have 2-4 copies of a creature, it's going to die right away almost always since no other creatures are there to soak up removal. However, cards that evade popular removal (Bolt, Abrupt Decay, etc), can be great, especially if they can act as a pseudo-Ensnaring Bridge (Bitterblossom and Pack Rat are good examples). Lands that can turn into creatures (Mutavault) can also be very good (they're "free" creatures, so we usually don't care much if they die). I hope you now understand that if you're looking for a traditional deck with card draw, kill spells, and creatures, you should head elsewhere (see the 'Other Lists and Related Primers section below). If you're interested in trying something with a very different approach, I welcome you to stick around.
The List
8Rack lists are somewhat varied, but common cards between them almost always include a large discard suite, Ensnaring Bridge, Liliana of the Veil, and of course, The Rack (and its brethren Shrieking Affliction). Removal and alternate win cons are also common. Beyond that, there is some room for exploration, although the most successful lists are similar to mine below. This isn't to say it's definitively the best list, but it is highly tuned, built on hundreds of hours of collective playtesting, tweaking, and discussion, and has many results to stand on.
For the skeptics and/or stats lovers, below is some hard data on the mana base.
200 sample hands per test
One land: One land, any type
Zero land: Zero lands
Too much land: 4+ lands with no Crime
Mutavault issue: One or more Mutavault; Mutavault is preventing or may prevent spells from being cast as needed
2+ Urborg: Two or more Urborgs; sometimes an issue (prevents or may prevent spells from being cast as needed), sometimes not (Crime, lots of other action, etc)
Dakmor issue: One or more Dakmor; Dakmor is preventing or may prevent spells from being cast as needed
Running 4 Urborg will be even more important if you run more than 3 colorless lands.
Using Less Colorless lands and less Urborg Is a meta choice, trading power for consistency.
However choosing the incorrect amount of Urborg for your choice of colorless lands is not a matter of opinion. It will just put you at a statistically disadvantaged position.
Monoblack Control Primer - For those that want to try a more traditional monoblack control deck with board wipes, creatures, more removal, card draw, etc.
Deadguy Ale Primer - Go here to discuss BW midrange lists with hand disruption.
Assault Loam Primer - This is the place to discuss decks with discard that are centered around abusing Life from the Loam and controlling the board moreso than directly controlling the hand and locking down the board.
BG Smallpox thread - This is the place to discuss BG decks that run Smallpox (go figure).
Top Control Primer - An artifact centric deck that uses various artifacts to attack the top of the deck rather than the hand (though there is a little hand disruption too, and Ensnaring Bridge). For the most part, it plays differently than 8Rack but the results are the same: your opponent can do little or nothing. If you like 8Rack, give it a try!
UB Tezzeret Primer - A black control deck that shares our love of hand disruption and board control, but splashes blue for draw, digging, and a Tezzeret toolbox.
Pox Primer - The classic monoblack control strategy, also for Legacy. A lot of the roots of 8Rack come from this deck. Some of the discussion is relevant to Modern.
Card choices
Below you can find an in-depth look at the cards in 8Rack, including reasons why they're chosen and how they're best used.
Thoughtseize
A critical part of our discard suite, Thoughtseize represents precise discard, which is to say it allows us to pick out the biggest threats and toss them. Also sweet in situations where you have Wrench Mind in hand and your opponent has one artifact; in these you can pick the artifact to ensure Wrench Mind is a 2 for 1. The life loss is usually only problematic against Burn.
Inquisition of Kozilek
Like Thoughtseize, Inquisition represents precise discard, and as such is very important to us. The CMC clause can be problematic on rare occasion.
Raven's Crime
One of the key pieces that makes 8Rack work, and by far one of the best cards in the deck, Crime represents persistent discard. This is extremely important because your opponent draws a card every turn, and while he might play one every turn too, sometimes he'll start stockpiling his hand or will draw extra cards, and so on, so we need to neutralize that with persistent discard.
8Rack newbies severely underestimate this card (I did when I first began playing it), and will even consider dropping the count to 1-3 copies. This is a huge mistake, as many games hinge on drawing a Crime.
Here are a variety of applications for Crime you wouldn't see until you play with it extensively:
1. You've taken all your opponent's nonland cards from his hand, leaving him with two land in hand. You need to discard one more to turn on 2x Shrieking Affliction, so you cast Crime, forcing him to discard a land.
2. Your opening hand is 1x Inquisition, 1x Raven's Crime, 1x The Rack, 4x Swamp. You turn 1 Inquisition, turn 2 double Raven's Crime, turn 3 Raven's Crime + The Rack
3. You flood on land, and stockpile it every turn until you pull a Raven's Crime, then triple Raven's Crime your opponent, emptying their hand
4. Your opponent is in topdeck mode and you need to keep him there to keep your Rack and Affliction ticking. In hand you have 1x Dakmor Salvage; in the yard you have 1x Raven's Crime. You retrace the Crime every turn with the Dakmor for the win.
5. Your opponent is playing Merfolk, has a bunch of 2/1s and 2/2s in play; you have a Bridge in play, you've played a Swamp for the turn, and have 3x Swamp and 1x Raven's Crime in hand. You play Crime on them, turning on your Affliction, then retrace it twice, targeting yourself so they can no longer attack.
6. Your opponent has a Wild Nacatl in hand and nothing else; you're at 2 life. The card would be just enough to squeeze out a win. You have a Thoughtseize and Raven's Crime in hand.
7. Your opponent has 3x land and 1x Wurmcoil Engine in hand, the latter of which you desperately need to get rid of. You have 1x Inquisition, 3x Swamp, 1x Raven's Crime in hand.
8. You need to land a Necrogen Mists against UWR, but you know they have a Mana Leak and other more important spells in hand, and you only have 5x Swamp out. You Raven's Crime, retrace it twice until the Leak is gone, then play Mists.
9. Living End player is stuck on one land; you cast and retrace Crime multiple times; he cycles and draws once, and is forced to discard his other cyclers, and is still stuck on one land.
10. Opponent needs to play more land to cast his Ajani, but if he does he'll take 6 every turn from 2x Affliction. He holds the lands in hand, which you make him discard anyway by retracing Crime.
Wrench Mind
It's a 2 for 1 so it's automatically good. Best served after precise discard. Weak against Affinity and Tron, but it's so good against all others decks that it's still well worth maindecking despite that.
Liliana of the Veil
You can't say this for many if any planeswalkers: all of Lily's abilities are made frequent use of in our deck, and all of them are exactly what we want. Like with Crime, she offers the ever-important persistent discard, she kills creatures, and she can prevent opponents from coming back by blowing up all their nonland permanents (if your opponent is worth a *****, he'll choose to keep his lands). We want to see her frequently and she dies fairly often, so we don't mind running 4.
Shrieking Affliction
Our Racks 5-8. This does more damage than The Rack when your opponent is at 1 card and is an enchantment, so it usually stays on the field. However, it does the same at 0 cards, and can't hit planeswalkers.
The Rack
Our Racks 1-4. It does less damage than Affliction when your opponent is at 1 card and it's an artifact so it gets blown up a lot more, but it does the same at 0 cards and can hit planeswalkers.
Ensnaring Bridge
Bridge is another critical piece of the deck that makes it work. Without it, we'd probably just be better off playing Monoblack Control, or at least a "reactive" 8Rack list, which, historically, hasn't been nearly as effective.
Because we empty our hand so quickly and can reliably keep it that way, Bridge often reads, "Creatures can't attack", which is pretty great in a format chock full of creatures. It is an artifact, though, so it gets blown up a lot, and zero power creatures like Noble Hierarch can swing through it, so it's not perfect. However, we have Mutavault and Pack Rat for backup, so often we're in good shape in terms of defense.
Victim of Night
This hits almost everything that sees play in Modern; double black can be problematic on rare occasion and it doesn't hit Mutavault, but despite that, it's our best kill spell in metas with moderate to high amounts of aggro.
Slaughter Pact
Pact allows for plays like drop Lily, -2 Lily, kill 1 one their 2 creatures threatening lethal, then Pact the other. Or drop Lily, +1 Lily, putting them in Rack/Affliction range, then Pact their Goblin Electromancer. There are many others, but you get the idea.
Pack Rat
Gets around Leyline of Sanctity, acts as a pseudo-Bridge, can provide a very quick clock (see below), and gets damage through regardless of our opponent's hand size (very important, as we won't always be able to keep it down). Be aware that if you see an opponent's hand and it's light on threats, you can often just slam this and go all in on it and steal the game. Some prefer 3 or 4.
Yes, there are times you'll want to attack with your rats through Bridge and can't, but keep in mind we can manipulate those situations to an extent by stockpiling cards or by using Lily's -6 to blow up our Bridge and swing for an alpha strike (be sure you can win when you do this, keeping in mind their removal, how many rats you have, how much damage your opponent could do next turn, etc). Also, if you have a Bridge and a massive rat army, there's a good chance you have the game locked, so who cares if they can't attack?
Normally we don't want creatures in our deck because we like dead cards and if we only have 2-4 copies of a creature, it's going to die right away since no other creatures are there to soak up removal. However, Rat makes copies of itself, so it turns that notion on its head. Best played once we see their hand and/or empty it, as then we can almost definitely make at least one copy before they draw removal.
T1 land, discard
T2 land, rat
T3 land, make a rat (two rats on board), swing for 2 (2 damage total)
T4 make a rat (three rats on board), swing for 6 (8 damage total)
T5 make a rat (four rats on board), swing for 12 (20 damage total)
T6 make a rat (five rats on board), swing for 20 (40 damage total)
T1 land, discard
T2 land, rat
T3 land, make a rat (two rats on board), swing for 2 (2 damage total)
T4 mutavault, make a rat (three rats on board), animate Mutavault, swing for 8 (10 damage total)
T5 make a rat (four rats on board), animate Mutavault, swing for 15 (25 damage total)
T6 make a rat (five rats on board), animate Mutavault, swing for 24 (49 damage total)
Dakmor Salvage
In the right situations, this sets up a soft lock with Raven's Crime that acts as Lily's +1. Great when you have the board mostly or entirely controlled, a Rack out, and your opponent's hand down and need to keep it down. Also can be useful in digging for Raven's Crime or Darkblast. Some prefer 2.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Makes our Mutavaults or other non-basics tap for black. Especially important since we have 12 or more double black spells, and often need to hit them. Also useful against Spreading Seas. Some prefer 3 to avoid having to lower the amount of situations in which you see 2 Urborgs, and are forced to go down to 2 land on board (I haven't found this to be much of an issue).
Mutavault
Gets around Leyline of Sanctity, provides a quicker clock when used in combination with Racks (and a clock when the opponent isn't in Rack range), has great synergy with Pack Rat, and is untouchable by Abrupt Decay. It's our best overall choice for a non-basic, just a little ahead of Buried Ruin (more on that in the Card options section). I've been pretty happy with 4, although it's possible 3 is the correct number, enabling us to most consistently cast our double black cards.
Pithing Needle
A versatile weapon that hurts Tron (Oblivion Stone, Karn), Affinity (Cranial Plating, Arcbound Ravager, manlands), random planeswalkers, and more.
Surgical Extraction
An extremely versatile card with applications in heaps of matchups. Use it for Tron, Gifts, Storm, Scapeshift, Ad Nauseam and more to make it very difficult for them to win, and sometimes impossible. Also alleviates that pesky topdeck weakness we have. Against decks like Tron with few or no instant speed cards, be sure to cast it on their draw step in case they draw the card you're targeting. We use this instead of Extirpate because free is far more valuable to us than Split Second -- free will often mean an extra discard spell, and often an extra discard spell will be needed to hit your graveyard target, to turn on Affliction, to get rid of a critical card, etc. Plus we just don't need the Split Second in almost all cases: many decks we bring it in for don't have a response for it, and the ones that do we can almost always play around by properly utilizing hand control/waiting for them to tap out.
Darkblast
Recursive removal that's extremely effective against Delver, Affinity, and Infect, among other decks. Also digs for Raven's Crime and Dakmor Salvage. I recommend this over Drown in Sorrow, partly because it hits manlands and is easier on our curve.
Bile Blight
Kills almost every creature in Modern, and is especially strong against any deck with tokens (Storm, BW Tokens) or a high amount of redundancy (Zoo, Affinity). It's soft to Tarmogoyf and the other rare bigger creatures so we put it sideboard, but it can be worth it to maindeck it in some metas.
Syphon Life
Provides some much-needed insurance against any deck with burn spells in it. Creatures we can often handle, but creatures and burn spells together can be tough - unless you have Syphon Life. Also a solid alternate win con sometimes.
Nyxathid
We side this in for decks where Bridge is difficult to activate, and where he's a needed blocker when life total is low, is guaranteed to be huge every turn, and difficult or impossible to deal with, and can end the game quickly. The primary application is Burn, where he's extremely effective, but it's also useful against Infect and a few other decks.
Card options
Besides the cards discussed already, there are a variety of other options you may wish to use, due to personal preference or your local meta. If you want to discuss a card but it's not listed here, there's a 98% chance it's been discussed to death already and rejected, for good reason (some popular examples: Liliana's Caress, Quest for Nihil Stone, Bloodchief Ascension, Extirpate, Hero's Downfall). If you're determined against all odds to make these kinds of cards work, before discussing them here, do actual testing against top tier decks on MTGO and/or against skilled local paper opponents, then report any good results in detail.
Buried Ruin
Has great synergy with Dakmor and Darkblast, allowing us to dig for our Bridge or Rack or hate card, or recover a destroyed Bridge or Rack or hate card. It's an excellent choice for our non-basic, although likely a little less effective overall than Mutavault.
Ghost Quarter
A great choice in a Tron heavy meta, especially in combination with Surgical Extraction.
Waste Not
Waste Not fills in the decks holes (reach, defense, mana) and steals games on occasion when you get discard chains going. As a bonus, it's good against Living End's cycling creatures, Faithless Looting, Izzet Charm, Desolate Lighthouse, Thirst for Knowledge, Pack Rat, Jeskai Ascendancy, and Desperate Ravings. It's usually a bad topdeck, but as a 1 or 2-of, you'll rarely run into that issue. It could be correct to run this as a 1-of in place of a Pack Rat.
Spellskite
Can be an effective weapon against Burn, Zoo, Infect, Auras, and Twin, but is mostly worth considering for Burn, where we need the most help. Can be good with Darkslick Shores, although this makes us quite vulnerable to Blood Moon, which can hurt us a ton.
Smallpox
I might exclude this card from the list, but it's one of the most asked about, so I'll address it. Smallpox has explosive potential, but it's quite inconsistent, and isn't meant for deck like ours with 22-23 land (Pox in Legacy runs it alongside 25-27 lands, and sometimes Crucible of Worlds); we really need our lands until the late game, whereas Smallpox wants to be cast turn 2. We could increase the land count, but that would mean taking out important cards, and then more would need to be taken out for Smallpox. There simply isn't room for it. That and it's really better in a deck built around resource denial, not just hand control (like Pox).
Dark Confidant
Like Smallpox, this is another I'd prefer to leave off the list, however it's come up so much it needs to be addressed. As detailed in the intro (read it now if you haven't), we don't need draw or creatures because of our unique strategy, and Bob is both. While he can be effective, he is less so than other options. If you're really dying for draw/gas, use Waste Not.
Bitterblossom
An excellent alternate win condition that can attack under Bridge unlike Pack Rat. Drop this on a stable board and watch it spiral out of control quickly. However, it does have major downsides that see most preferring to use Pack Rat: the life loss is a real problem against any red decks or aggro decks, it's too slow for fast decks, the tokens can't trade with too many creatures, it's terrible when your life total is low, and Electrolyze can blow it out. When it works it feels like the perfect card for us, but too often for some, it doesn't work.
Leyline of the Void
Great against Storm and Living End. Although we can cast it, keep in mind it's vastly more effective in the opener.
Doom Blade
Dark Confidant and Deathrite Shaman were the reason this card has seen almost no play, but now with Shaman banned, it can be a strong choice when BGx isn't dominating.
Dismember
Dismember lets us kill nearly anything at flexible casting costs. It is our strongest choice in metas light on aggressive decks.
Although we have a backup route to victory, a lot of times it won't work out, and seeing as our primary strategy is quite linear, this leaves us pretty vulnerable to certain hate cards. This section is intended to illustrate how these cards are a problem and how we can attempt to fight through them.
Leyline of Sanctity
Despite popular conception, the deck does not automatically fold to it, and generally speaking, it's not worth it to splash for it, especially in an aggro heavy meta. There are several reasons for these things:
We have "free" and resilient creatures to get around it (Mutavault, Tombstalker, Pack Rat, Tomb of Urami token, Waste Not Zombie tokens, Bitterblossom, etc). Yes, these conflict with Bridge, but sometimes it's not out, and when it is, we can stockpile cards to let them attack (then play cards after attacking to prevent our opponent from attacking), and/or use Lily's ult to blow it up when we're positive we can win that turn.
Liliana of the Veil gets around it (and if we use Waste Not, she's even better).
We are great at locking down the board, which can buy us enough time to win with our creatures. On rare occasion it even happens through mill.
Sometimes they will mull hard to Leyline. Playing lands and spells on top of that means they've done a lot of the work for us. All we need from there is a Lily and Rack (and sometimes other stuff) to secure the win.
This isn't to say Leyline can't steal a win for them or give us a hard time (it can), just that we can definitely win through it.
Chalice of the Void
Can be brutal if cast turn 2 and our hand has lots of 1cmc spells, but even then, sometimes Pack Rat, Wrench Mind, Lily, and/or Bridge do plenty to get the job done. Remember we can force them to sac it or all other permanents with Lily's ultimate. If they choose the latter, and we do it repeatedly, we can likely win through mill.
Wilt-Leaf Liege/Loxodon Smiter/Obstinate Baloth
These cards are all pretty much interchangeable since we hate them all for the same reason: our discard turns them into a free creature, and one that puts us on a 4-5 turn clock, just by itself. If we have a kill spell, Bridge, or wall of Pack Rats, it's fine, but often we won't, or we'll have the answer too late. If you know they have one of these cards in hand, shy away from imprecise discard until you have an answer ready. Otherwise, you should probably take the risk.
Splashing
If you're interested in splashing, white offers Path to Exile, green offers Abrupt Decay, and red offers the reach of Lightning Bolt; blue is basically useless for what we're trying to do. There are other cards we're interested in, of course, but these are the givens. Each of the approved three colours offers a variety of potentially great sideboard options, too, which can shore up our weak points/matchups.
All that said, the monoblack lists have proven the most consistent over about a year of testing and tuning involving many people in this forum, partly because 4x Thoughtseize and fetches/shocks together in our style of deck (which often wins at low life) can be rough (also Blood Moon), so any splash is not to be taken lightly.
Below is a nice white splash list by ktkenshinx, with some commentary from him about it. If you're interested in it, consider that you may want to just run Deadguy Ale instead (see the 'Other lists' section above), or even both!
"In essence, it's a monoblack list with a splash just for Souls. This was done in an effort to keep the strengths of the mono black version but add the strengths of souls. What you lose from a splash (mostly life to fetches/shocks) is more than made up for by Souls contributions, not to mention those of cards in the board.
The land count is higher because adding Souls gives you way more 3 mana cards that absolutely need to be dropped around turn 3. 24 lands lets you consistently hit that, barring bad keeps and bad draws. In actual games, Souls is excellent. It can be played interactively to buy time by blocking creatures; with the exception of Rhino, no creatures in this format really have trample. It can be played non-interactively by just attacking an opponent for 2-4 per turn while Racks do their job. And it can be played alongside Bridge as a pseudo Rack to allow you to attack for 2-4 per turn before ditching your card and bringing up Bridge again. Souls is also awesome against Lilly, which is typically one of the BGx player's best ways to kill Bridge.
I'm down to 2 Crimes because of decks like Abzan Liege, and because I don't like fueling turn 2 Tas's or my opponent's turn 2 Souls. Typically, the reason to run 4 of these has been to guarantee a retrace lock in the late game, but Souls already does that in tandem with a Bridge anyway.
Reinforcements is just as strong against Burn on paper as it is in actual games. This is a great deck to use that card in because we can reliably clear their hand of Skullcracks before using Reinforcements. It sets them back 2 burn spells and typically prevents at least 1 combat phase worth of damage, and then typically kills one of their creatures. It's really amazing against them. It's definitely worse than Nyx in terms of a clock; you don't use Reinforcements and then hope to just win off the 3 soldiers, as opposed to winning off a 6/6 Nyx. But I think there are way more boardstates where Reinforcements is going to be better than Nyx, especially if we include non-Burn aggro decks. I'm not sure about the rest of the sideboard because I've tested primarily Junk, Burn, and Infect."
Next is an aggressive-styled red splash list by Pete Casella, who won an SCG IQ tournament with it. It has some questionable choices, but I can't argue too much with a tourney finish, so for now, this is the red splash list I recommend basing your own off of. If you think you have a better one, definitely let me know and I'll consider replacing this one with it.
If you want to know more about the deck and the tournament, you can read Pete's article on both here.
One of our best matchups. Rip apart their hand, be aggressive with what you play to ensure an Ensnaring Bridge lock (even just one card in hand will let them win through it), and when necessary, play around an end of your turn 3 Deceiver Exarch / Pestermite into turn 4 Splinter Twin with kill spells and discard. Lily is great when they have Deceiver / Pestermite but no Splinter Twin. Some versions run Tarmogoyf and Ancient Grudge (the latter could be a good reason to board in Needle (naming Pestermite) instead of other options, as it gives them more artifacts to deal with.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Surgical Extraction
RG Tron
By far our worst matchup, RG Tron almost always feels like the deck was custom built to beat us. Oblivion Stone wipes our entire board, Karn Liberated gets rid of troublesome permanents, and they have a high amount of redundancy, allowing them to recover from even tons of discard on our part. Surgical Extraction sideboard gives us a fighting chance: use it primarily on O Stone and Karn (the Urza lands before they get all three out are ideal but they almost never discard them); in some cases their dig/tutor spells and Wurmcoil Engine can be good targets, too. Also, Needle naming O Stone or Karn (choose Stone first) can do a lot of work, although proves futile when they wipe it out with whatever you didn't name (a regular occurrence).
Sideboarding: -4 Wrench Mind -1 Slaughter Pact -1 Victim of Night +3 Surgical Extraction +2 Pithing Needle +1 Pack Rat
Affinity
Probably the least understood and most misplayed matchup, Affinity is favoured for us, particularly post-board. Bridge and removal do well against them, and what they don't do, Darkblast makes up for and then some in games 2/3. One of the tricks to playing against them is to understand hands that are great against other decks are sometimes poor against them (Wrench Mind and 'developing' hands are often awful here), and hands that are poor against other decks are great against them (removal and Rack heavy hands, particularly those with Bridge and/or Darkblast). Also, be aware particularly good players or just those experienced against 8Rack can sneak a 0 power creature under Bridge and then equip it if they have double black available. It usually doesn't happen, unless they have two irrelevant lands and we have Urborg out (for this reason you shouldn't play Urborg unless you need to). Signal Pest and Arcbound Ravager can also sneak under Bridge, so play around them / kill them.
Sideboarding: -4 Wrench Mind -2 Pack Rat +2 Darkblast +2 Bile Blight +2 Pithing Needle
Burn
This matchup is tough game 1, but very favorable in games 2/3 thanks to extra removal, Nyxathid, and Syphon Life. If we can't discard or remove Eidolon of the Great Revel, it will often take over the game for them. Like Affinity, they dump their hand for us, so sometimes we can just race with Rack damage.
Check out a great statistical analysis of the matchup by ktkenshinx here.
Sideboarding: -1 Thoughtseize -2 Pack Rat -4 Ensnaring Bridge +1 Shrieking Affliction +2 Bile Blight +3 Nyxathid +1 Syphon Life
Ascendancy
Ascendancy functions much like Storm in that they 'go off' with a ton of cantrips and can win through even a ton of discard on our part with a decent amount of luck, thanks to all the draw and redundancy. Our best shot is to tear apart their hand quickly and keep it that way, making it difficult or impossible for them to win, while keeping their mana dorks off the table at all costs. Versions running Waste Not can sometimes benefit significantly from Ascendancy discard triggers.
The deck can deal with or get around our Bridge easily enough, plus they sometimes bring in Leyline of Sanctity, so post-board, we take it out and focus on creature control and beating them with creatures (though the discard plan should still be pursued whenever possible). Extraction doesn't do much against them since Glittering Wish exiles itself and they can fetch Jeskai Ascendancy from the sideboard.
Sideboarding: -4 Ensnaring Bridge +4 Darkblast
Delver
This is mostly a cakewalk for us, although Monastery Swiftspear has made the matchup a little worse for us. Darkblast helps a lot post-board (although little against MS).
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat -4 Ensnaring Bridge +2 Bile Blight +2 Darkblast +1 Pack Rat +1 Syphon Life
Jund/Junk/The Rock
One of our harder matchups, this deck packs precision discard, Abrupt Decay, and draw (Dark Confidant), all of which can hurt a lot. That said, Bridge can often hold down the fort for a few turns at least, and a well-timed Pack Rat can ruin their 1-for-1 attrition plan, and serve well as a backup Bridge that gets around Abrupt Decay. Also, their Lily is sometimes terrible against us (although can be great if they're not afraid of Racks).
Check out a great statistical analysis of the matchup by ktkenshinx here.
Sideboarding: -1 Slaughter Pact +1 Pack Rat
Merfolk
One of our best matchups, Bridge alone can win us the game unless they're especially fast (usually they're not). Post-board, it's about the same, although they sometimes run 1 or 2 Steel Sabotage, so play around it. Spreading Seas will occasionally screw us out of casting double black cards, so hold off on playing Urborg unless you need to.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Bile Blight
Auras
Also one of our best matchups, for the same reason Merfolk is: Bridge shuts them down hard. Plus, them going all in on one creature means it's easily dealt with by Lily (note sacrifice gets around Totem armor). Still, Kor Spiritdancer can be problematic, some versions run Suppression Field which can be annoying, and post-board they bring in Nature's Claim and sometimes Leyline of Sanctity, so watch out for those.
Sideboarding: No changes
Blue Tron
This one is counterspell based, so we fare much better than against RG Tron. Play around Condescend and bounce spells, discard artifacts when necessary to make Wrench Mind better, and land a Bridge (two, preferably), when you know or suspect they have no counterspells. If you land a Pack Rat, go all in on it if you know their hand isn't threat heavy and you should steal the game quick. Post-board, do the same but try to Extract Tron pieces, Oblivion Stone (typically they have one main, one side), and bounce spells.
Sideboarding: -4 Wrench Mind +3 Surgical Extraction +1 Pack Rat
Soul Sisters
Bridge is great main and post-board here. Watch out for Ajani's Pridemate, which can deliver a hard beating quickly. Some versions run artifact removal, although not much, but play around it.
Sideboarding: No changes
Scapeshift
A good matchup, although as with all combo decks, sometimes they can win out nowhere despite our best efforts (in this case, it's with Scapeshift). Their mana ramp is a lot more valuable than it might look (keep them at 5 land or lower and we're probably safe), so keep that in mind when choosing targets. Beyond that, it's the usual fare against counterspell heavy decks: rip apart their hand, (mostly) not care about Remand, and put them on a good clock (the all-in Pack Rat plan can be great). Post-board, we have the excellent Surgical Extraction, but they (usually) have the ever-frustrating Obstinate Baloth, so be wary of it until you land a Bridge or get a Rat engine going.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +3 Surgical Extraction (yes, go to 61 cards)
Infect
Infect is fast and has creature protection so sometimes can steal games, but typically our combination of discard, removal, and Bridge will prove too much for them. Discard whatever they have less of (usually, it's creatures), or sometimes protection spells. Post-board, Darkblast does major work; just be aware of Pendelhaven (also, Nature's Claim).
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Darkblast
Storm
This one plays out like Ascendancy in that they use a ton of cantrips to 'go off', although instead of relying on creatures to chain together spells, they rely on rituals (spells that net mana), and the graveyard. It also has a high amount of redundancy and can go off with very few cards in hand, thanks to Pyromancer Ascension. Be sure to kill their Goblin Electromancer asap or they're very likely to win that turn or the next. Post-board they bring in Empty the Warrens to dodge graveyard hate. As such, Bile Blight is very good here if you can afford to run it in your meta. In combination with our discard and removal, Leyline of the Void is often a silver bullet. Unfortunately, it's only really good against this deck and Living End, neither of which are very common. For most people, I recommend just making the most of your Extractions: Ascension, Electromancer, and Manamorphose are your top targets (they often get stuck on blue mana if they don't have Manamorphose).
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Bile Blight -4 Ensnaring Bridge +3 Surgical Extraction +1 Nyxathid
Blue Moon
A nearly monoblue deck with counterspells, so we have it easy here. You won't see this deck often, but when you do, know that their hate cards are mostly dead against you, and Darkblast kills everything they have.
Sideboarding: -4 Ensnaring Bridge +2 Darkblast +2 Bile Blight
Zoo
'Fast' Zoo throws a load of efficient one mana creatures and also burn spells at us, which can be a real challenge, but Bridge can do a lot of work against it. 'Big' Zoo is slower and much easier to handle. It operates basically the same, but has bigger, slower creatures. Be wary of artifact removal in both cases.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat -1 Thoughtseize +2 Bile Blight +1 Syphon Life
Hatebears
This comes in monowhite and GW varieties. White is generally easier because they don't have Loxodon Smiter, but both are a pain because of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (kill her immediately unless you have an unusually high amount of land in play) and Leonin Arbiter; for monowhite, watch our for alpha strikes courtesy of Flickerwisp (which can temporarily get rid of Bridge). As with Scapeshift and their Baloths, be careful against GW with non-precise discard unless you have a Bridge out.
Sideboarding: No changes
BW Tokens
An easy match, although occasionally they will get very aggressive quickly (Lingering Souls + Intangible Virtue hurts) and blow us out. Bridge does a ton of work; just be wary of the rare bit of artifact removal. Also be aware sometimes they'll try to get in lethal under Bridge courtesy of Zealous Persecution. Bile Blight is great, here, acting as a two mana wrath a lot of the time.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Bile Blight
Gifts Tron
Easier than RG Tron but harder than Blue Tron, Gifts can be tough because they rely on graveyard shenanigans, which we help with, and also because Gifts Ungiven can act as a toolbox card, which we hate. This is another match we can sometimes go all in on Pack Rat with and steal the game quickly. Iona, Shield of Emeria can win them the game singlehandedly, so try to stick a Lily and keep it there to make them sac it. Post-board, targeting their Tron pieces but especially Gifts with Extraction will help dramatically.
Sideboarding: -4 Wrench Mind +3 Surgical Extraction +1 Pack Rat (artifact version) -2 Pack Rat +2 Darkblast -2 Victim of Night -1 Murderous Cut +3 Surgical Extraction (4c non-artifact version)
Ad Nauseam
Combo decks are easy for us, and this one is no exception. Game 1 discard the key pieces (Ad Nauseam, Angel's Grace, Phyrexian Unlife) as well as mana sources to slow them down; game 2 they have a playset of Leyline of Sanctity, so you may have to abandon the Rack plan for the Rat/Mutavault plan. Fortunately this is very viable with Surgical Extraction, which can lock them out of the game entirely (Nauseam is your top target, but Simian Spirit Guide can also keep them from casting their win con).
For this matchup, I've lifted the excellent, thorough description from the old primer written by negativeview, who has done extensive Living End testing versus a friend.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat -2 Victim of Night -1 Murderous Cut -1 Slaughter Pact +3 Nyxathid +3 Surgical Extraction
Living End's plan A involves cycling Monstrous Carabid turn one, two more similar guys on turn two, and on turn three casting Violent Outburst, cascading into Living End and suddenly having around 12 power on the board out of nowhere. The deck is incredibly consistent if the opponent has no way to disrupt them, but it is also a very greedy deck that is entirely possible to disrupt if you know how to evaluate the cards.
Strategy
Almost every card in the Living End deck serves multiple purposes. The key is going to be to recognize what stage of the game the Living End player is in, what card effect the Living End player needs, and to discard whatever card is capable of serving that purpose.
Going first or second doesn't matter in most games. If they keep a very very greedy hand, it's better to go first in order to more likely punish them. If you know your opponent is Living End in game one, always go first in case they don't know what you are playing. In game two or three only a bad player is going to keep a super greedy hand against a discard deck, so it likely doesn't matter. Still go first just in case you're playing someone that is willing to give you a free win. It never is a notable advantage to go second.
Stage One - One Land
Living End is a deck that can sometimes keep a one land hand under the right conditions. 8Rack is one of the few decks that can punish them for doing so. If they have only one land, they're banking off of cycling into a second land. Look for any of their cards that allow them to cycle for free (Street Wraith), or for only one mana (Deadshot Minotaur, Architects of Will, Monstrous Carabid). If they run out of castable cyclers and are still stuck on one land, you have essentially just stolen the game.
Stage Two - Two Lands
At two lands, a lot more opens up. They can just cycle one-mana cyclers twice, but what a competent player is going to be doing is to find their third land. At two mana, they can landcycle with things like Twisted Abomination or Pale Recluse. It's better to let them cycle more often and fill up their board than it is to let them easily find a third land. It's around here that I'd start taking things like Violent Outburst or Demonic Dread. Living End doesn't really have a good way to make two land drops, so for most lists this is where you have to start worrying about them getting in range.
Stage Three - Three+ Lands
They are within range to cast their win condition. Our priorities have switched again. Now all they want to do is fill their board and draw more cards to find their win condition. Remove the cheap cyclers. It fills up their yard, but denies them drawing cards.
Game-Swinging Cards
Extirpate/Surgical Extraction - If you exile all of their copies of Living End they have to switch to Plan B (hard casting their creatures). That plan is significantly easier for 8Rack to beat as it's slow and most of Living End's lands start coming into play tapped.
Ingot Chewer - Most Living End players play at least one copy maindeck, and have all four in the 75 thanks to affinity, which is a matchup they fear greatly. Your bridges aren't necessarily safe even game one.
Maelstrom Pulse - Many Living End players have a copy or two in the sideboard. This makes it a harder decision to run out multiple bridges, though it's still probably the right play since Ingot Chewer is far more likely to see than Pulse.
Beast Within - An answer to any permanent and it gives them a creature to target with Demonic Dread.
Simian Spirit Guide - This card is a contentious issue among Living End players. It allows them to go off a turn early against an unsuspecting opponent, but has no synergy with Living End itself. Keep your eye out for this card and always keep in mind that they can burst up one more mana if they feel like it. I've never played 8Rack against a SSG or played Living End with SSG in the deck. Not sure how aggressively to discard them.
Second 3-1 today. Screenshot. Beat janky monogreen Infect, Scapeshift, RG Tron (!), lost to Twin (thanks in part to a misplay...should've emptied my hand instead of playing conservative, which allowed him to sneak a Deceiver + Bolt in and get rid of Lily).
Congrats, man. Can I ask for more details about your game against Tron? Or actually more details in general? I feel like the results are great but maybe having these posts have more details on how the decks play would help give new players a better understanding of how the deck works. Hopefully, this could subsequently guide the card discussion better when people (generally) have a better idea of how the deck goes exactly.
I haven't had much of chance to test it so far but Rain of Tears has been showing promise (instead of Shadow of Doubt). I've been sideboarding against tron as such:
+As many Rats as you've got
+4 Rain Of Tears
+4 Surgical
-3 Iok
-2 Wrench Mind
-3 Shrieking Affliction
With going back up to 4 Mutavaults I've found leaning on rats in this matchup to be fairly reliant. With Rain to slow them down/put lands in the graveyard, Surgical actually becomes useful.
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A few things to add. The original build included bitterblossom as an altwincon, still a viable option if you're not a pack rat fan. While monoblack is the prototype, and effective especially against blue decks, folks have been tinkering with splashes to help in our bad matches. For example green or white to handle leyline of sanctity or to add life from the loam to create an engine with raven's crime.
Matchups.
This deck thrives against blue stuff, almost an autowin vs. control. I belive the creator actually said "this deck was built to f*** up control decks".
Bad matchups are RG tron, pod, and BGx. Abrupt decay hits everything we run. O stone is a killer. Karn...well it's karn. Pack rats help in the tron matchup provided you avoid pyroclasm.
All other matchups depend on the pilot, which tells me they're all about 50/50 naturally.
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Modern UB Tezzerator UBW Gifts B 8Rack
Legacy RB Goblins
Also, I feel like this thread should try to put together a Test Group. Over cockatrice or MTGO it would be easy (more on Cockatrice) to set up a gauntlet of the hardest matches and then play against people we know are good instead of relying on dailies, FNM, kitchen table, cockatrice randoms. I think a lot of people don't have the chance to test and it could be good for 8rack in general.
Let me know what people think. Even if we're not the most amazing Tron/Affinity/Pod pilots, I think could still be a useful tool for testing sideboards/changes/learning the matchups from both sides.
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The Tron match was a lot of luck + Surgical on O Stone.
The deck's effectiveness versus UWR Control is grossly overstated. It definitely favors us, but if we stumble (which happens fairly often), they have a good chance of taking over the game. Do not underestimate them.
Sure, the burn they run + snapcaster means they can just burn us out. No match is a true autowin. I lost today to UW from a few games of bad draws, once flooded and once starved out. It's magic, man.
Most recently I've tested a white splash, which makes the sideboard very effective. Most recently I'm running a blue splash and still sorting out numbers. Mixed results.
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Okay, that's fair. I does seem slow, but a lot of lists I've been facing have always had enough basics to make ghost quarter not as good as I always hope it would be. Is this abnormal? A lot of lists I see online seem basic light, but then I drop like 5 gq's in a row and they've always got basics for them. Maybe just bad luck. I'll probably go back to them and keep them in the side. Synergizes better with Loam anyways. The games I played have shown that they're amazing when you're ahead, but don't help you catch up any. Delver issues, I guess, haha.
I'd have to agree with you on the UWR matchup. The cards I hate to see most are Remand, and Repeal. Stalling us for a turn, while cantripping is so strong. I've been trying to side out the more expensive card - Bridge, Waste Not, and Pack rat - for doubling up cheaper effects. In this way remanding t2 waste not and then remanding t3 lily isn't so soul crushing. It ends up being remand t2 thoughtseize. then cast again for another remand. t3 cast as many 1 drop discard spells as possible, and just keep jamming them in. Keep an eye on what's in their yard and what counter's they've used. When they're low on cards, only then do you resolve your liliana's, racks, afflictions, bridges. It's been a learning curve but for anyone that's struggling with the matchup that's what's been working for me.
I'm curious what you think of this plan, Destroyer, and what you do against the UWR matchup. I know what I mentioned is basically "what you do for every control heavy matchup," but I think it's easy to fall into the idea that discard preys on control and can't lose. Remands can do a lot for them to stall and start gaining a huge mana advantage and maintain CA with their cantripping counters.
Edit: I do like Darkblast in this match as it hits Snapcaster and Clique which they'll often tap out for EOT. It also dredges for when it's countered. A solid choice to stop their non-manland clock. After that I think it's really just manlands? I guess GQ would be good here too.
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You can side in leyline of sanctity and either torpor orb or grafdigger. Orb is prob better since it stops their resto angel from blinking. But I pull out remands first. Let them spell snare or leak, thats a discard. You do need to play around leak with liliana. Maybe pithing needle for colonnade. It depends what you run in the side. With a white splash you can run spirit of the labyrinth, which is a hilarious hoser for them. Ever seen someone cast sphinx rev just for the life gain? I have and it's gratifying.
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Is the burn really an issue? Like it seems like if that's their plan they're a less good burn deck. Obviously they'll play it different, but it doesn't seem like something to side for. I can only imagine they're running:
Which could win them the game but that seems like a long shot. I'd be more concerned with running out of gas and getting out tempo'ed. We have no way of drawing cards. Every card they play draws them cards. What we'd need to do is ensure we can keep their hand down early and keep that up.
Looking through the UWR primer Resto Angel isn't really played. One deck had two of them and it's mentioned as being good for Combo meta. That means they'd have to spend huge amount of mana to burn you out. 12 damage for RRRR with bolt another RWRWRW would be the cheapest they could do it. Compare that to Burn: 7 mana tops. Much less with Guide and Eidolon. We still beat Burn with needing a ton of sideboard slots. I don't think we should be boarding burn hate for UWR. Darkblast for their creatures, maybe GQ's for manlands, and siding out Bridges and Rat to avoid tempo and turn off some of their cards.
Having said that sled_dog, I know you already run Leyline and Spirit in the side, but I don't think it's something non-white decks should be trying to splash for. With regards to this matchup. They're great cards, but I don't see it as being that huge, especially games 2/3
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I tested the loam list and it's *****, I lost to burn, scapeshift and tron. I'd have an FTV:Anihilation or at least a brand new Polluted Delta if I had taken the core list instead.
Report me if you want, ***** is *****.
I'll try the Lightning Bolt splash in a couple of the modern league tournaments we'll be having at our LGS, it starts in two weeks and it's 8 dates, one every couple weeks. I cannot take 8Rack to all because the community is relatively small (38-45 players) and modern is damn easy to hate, but I'll take 8Rack to at least two and 8rRack to at least other two. I'll let you know how I do.
I may not participate as much anymore because I came for the videos, not to read about how much you can't beat one of the most straight-forward decks ever (and I say this as someone who absolutely loves Burn in legacy).
We closed the first thread due to posts like this, and we made it clear that we will not tolerate these behavior. Infraction Issued. ~Lantern
Thank you for this refresher. I am more than happy now to post a bit more avidly; I had reservations in the previous thread about posting, and now with air clear I feel I can post without fear.
I've been testing this deck for a few months preparing for the coming Grand Prix in Omaha, and chose this deck because of my love of resource denial.
I've been testing against two variants of pod, two variants of Tron (no GR as of yet, unfortunately), Jund aggro, burn, Pyrodelver, and Storm.
I haven't tested with Pack Rats, and although I've never been a fan of them, I will be trading for a playset to see what all the fuss is about. I never cared for the creatures available to this deck; one of the strengths I've found in it is how it turns most mainboard removal moot--although mid or late game rats seem advantageous.
I've dominated both Pod decks I've played to the extent that one of their boards was almost changed outright to combat discard. It's GW Pod and Kiki-Pod that I've defeated consistently, and almost all of the time it's through shear attrition. They have combo'd on a small number of games, although I've come to find our sideboard really hurts them.
I went positive against U/W Tron, although I was running a slighlty different variant of my deck beforehand (I had three mainboard Smallpox at the time). I have since moved from Smallpox to mainboard Victim of Night,Dismember, and Funeral Charm.
On the topic of Funeral Charm and Smallpox: I am in complete and utter love with Funeral Charm in the mainboard, to the point I've considered upping it to three. It hits dorks, Delvers, early Goyfs that are naked, and other goodies that seem fun to hit. Aside from that you also have the instant discard, which is definitely relevant. I can't see not running it anymore. On the topic of Smallpox; I either blew opponents out, or it sat in my hand for Lily. It wasn't terrible, and it was absolutely BONKERS with a good Waste Not trigger, but I found myself wanting hard removal in a deal of my matchups--I will probably go back to Smallpox in some variant testing.
I am overly fond of Waste Not, to the extent that I almost need four in the deck. I understand that people have concerns about its diminishing returns. . .they're warranted, and there are a handful of games I've had where I've topdecked one and not been quite delighted. With that said, however, it is pure and disgustingly powerful card advantage--especially in multiples. Against Tron I've gone from them having a full hand and a solid board position to a second Waste Not, Wrench Mind, and destruction of their hand and hopes of winning. It's too sexy to me, and I will continue to push for it to the point that a red splash to me seems more than reasonable.
With that said, I am continuing to play and test the deck against many variants. I am hoping to splash red and test Burning Inquiry with Waste Not and possibly Lilana's Caress. I've seen and read the reservations, but I will personally be reviewing how it performs before I rule it out. I'm not entirely sure that Lightning Bolt is necessary, and I know that many people have given Blightning a solid 'mediocre', but that is one of the cards I'm gravitating towards other than a possible sideboard of Blood Moon.
My absolute hardest matchup at this moment in time is G/W Hatebears. I can not win. I have never won. It destroys me in every instance; Damnation exists in my sideboard for two boogeymen on my block: G/W Hatebears and Affinity--and it does not get the job done.
Ensnaring Bridge is my only out, and even then I have to kill a Qasli Pridemage to properly protect myself.
I'll continue to update this with my new tests and changes! Sorry if I've re-iterated anything, I've just had a lot on my mind and a lot I've wanted to post that I truly haven't felt capable of writing up until today.
That seems like a cool list, but why Mutavault without Pack Rat? Maybe it's because I've been running the two together for too long, but I don't see mutavault being as good without rat. I've been able to win a number of memorable games when someone tried to kill all my rats, but I was able to activate mutavault in response to save them and alpha strike next turn. Honestly, the synergy is so good. Pack rat has quickly become one of my favourite creatures.
Do you find yourself mulliganing differently with 3 Waste nots? I ask because they are so, so good early, but less good late. Does that come into play?
Are you running 4 Damnation?
Lastly, I really want to see the sideboard.
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I already tested Burning Inquiry and it's very bad, it was actually better with Liliana's Caress than with Waste Not because at least then you knew you were dealing 6 no matter what, Waste's three-modes plus randomness can really mess you up (zombies when you have bridge, cards that let your opponent attack over the bridge, lots of mana and three lands in hand, it's awful) and the bad returns are more probable than the good returns. Lightning Bolt and Slaughter Games are what I would take from splashing red since one is "the most powerful removal in modern" and the other is an anti-sideboard marvel against known quantities (Ancient Grudge) and an O-Stone obliterator. Test both configurations out and keep what feels better to you, what most people forgot (or refused to accept) in the old thread is that this is an anti-meta game and as such must be tailored to everyone's own metagame for best results.
My absolute hardest matchup at this moment in time is G/W Hatebears. I can not win. I have never won. It destroys me in every instance; Damnation exists in my sideboard for two boogeymen on my block: G/W Hatebears and Affinity--and it does not get the job done.
Ensnaring Bridge is my only out, and even then I have to kill a Qasli Pridemage to properly protect myself.
What does your sideboard look like exactly? Darkblast should be really good at shutting down Affinity and Surgical Extraction might be more of what you're missing out on, depending on what you're siding in.
What exactly is going wrong in the GW Hatebears matchup for you? I don't recall that being a matchup this deck had serious issues against. That's what Pod (Melira & Angel), Tron, and Burn have been for the most part.
Like I mentioned earlier, most of these matchups (whether they are good for us) depends on the pilot. I always hammer hatebears and have a tough time with pod. Opposite for Euphony. Some folks kill affinity, I think UW tron should be a win for us, lots of variables in the choices we make. I think that demonstrates that the deck has resiliency, provided you make the right choice at the right time. It's something that gets overlooked when discussing the difficulty level of piloting this deck. It's not as simple as it seems. Easy to learn, difficult to master, know what I mean.
The blue splash testing is going well. I'm figuring out numbers of stuff right now, and sorting out the sideboard. Echoing Truth is potent, and a perfect addition against leyline of sanctity and tokens, as well it gets troublesome other things out of the way like an "about-to-ult" planeswalker or your own bridge to smash with rats. You can also save your own Lili. This was a huge factor in one game. Opponent is on jund. We each have Liliana out. He goes to bolt lili, I echoing truth, we both pick up our walkers. Next turn I cast lili, make him discard...his lili. Total turnaround.
I'm also testing the duskmantle/mindcrank combo. There's room if you make it, which means no rats or waste not, but it has won games for me that I was dead. Like I mentioned, I'm still sorting out numbers so things are inconsistent and results are mixed. Will it be a good thing? Things are unclear. Fun to turn on though.
Okay, that's fair. I does seem slow, but a lot of lists I've been facing have always had enough basics to make ghost quarter not as good as I always hope it would be. Is this abnormal? A lot of lists I see online seem basic light, but then I drop like 5 gq's in a row and they've always got basics for them. Maybe just bad luck. I'll probably go back to them and keep them in the side. Synergizes better with Loam anyways. The games I played have shown that they're amazing when you're ahead, but don't help you catch up any. Delver issues, I guess, haha.
I'd have to agree with you on the UWR matchup. The cards I hate to see most are Remand, and Repeal. Stalling us for a turn, while cantripping is so strong. I've been trying to side out the more expensive card - Bridge, Waste Not, and Pack rat - for doubling up cheaper effects. In this way remanding t2 waste not and then remanding t3 lily isn't so soul crushing. It ends up being remand t2 thoughtseize. then cast again for another remand. t3 cast as many 1 drop discard spells as possible, and just keep jamming them in. Keep an eye on what's in their yard and what counter's they've used. When they're low on cards, only then do you resolve your liliana's, racks, afflictions, bridges. It's been a learning curve but for anyone that's struggling with the matchup that's what's been working for me.
I'm curious what you think of this plan, Destroyer, and what you do against the UWR matchup. I know what I mentioned is basically "what you do for every control heavy matchup," but I think it's easy to fall into the idea that discard preys on control and can't lose. Remands can do a lot for them to stall and start gaining a huge mana advantage and maintain CA with their cantripping counters.
Edit: I do like Darkblast in this match as it hits Snapcaster and Clique which they'll often tap out for EOT. It also dredges for when it's countered. A solid choice to stop their non-manland clock. After that I think it's really just manlands? I guess GQ would be good here too.
I didn't mean to imply the matchup was such that we need to change anything for it. We don't. I'm just saying not to underestimate them, because doing so can cost you games you should've won.
Remand can certainly be a real pain, but we can play around it. For one, don't drop your land for the turn before playing that Thoughtseize. This tells them maybe it's your only play for the turn which makes Remand seem much better than it is. Two, if you know or suspect they have a Remand (or any counter really), try to play multiple things in a turn. Third, though it can be a good idea to play second in some matchups, always play first against control; it's so much easier to keep up your tempo and keep theirs down if you do. Drop the bombs only when you know the way is clear, suspect it is, or just have to do something. That's control matchup basics I suppose, but maybe it will help some.
You can side in leyline of sanctity and either torpor orb or grafdigger. Orb is prob better since it stops their resto angel from blinking. But I pull out remands first. Let them spell snare or leak, thats a discard. You do need to play around leak with liliana. Maybe pithing needle for colonnade. It depends what you run in the side. With a white splash you can run spirit of the labyrinth, which is a hilarious hoser for them. Ever seen someone cast sphinx rev just for the life gain? I have and it's gratifying.
You seem to fall into the same trap as others in that you side in things simply because you can. It's extremely important to understand our strategy is very linear for the most part, and also inherently great against a lot of decks without any sideboarding. As such, recognize when you're losing more than you're gaining by sideboarding. For example, Orb isn't worth it, since you're probably going to be so oppressive they either never get to play the Angel in the first place, or if they do, them blinking a Snap is going to be worthless since they'll be mana light and unable to cast anything off it. Also, you're probably going to have a Bridge ready for it. Orb is less proactive against them than other cards, and we need to be as proactive against all decks as possible (conversely, Orb is sick against Pod; we gain so much more in using it against them than UWR). I've played the matchup a ton with no sideboard changes, and I've always felt most confident in the mainboard alone, for good reason.
The Mindcrank list is clever, although I'm skeptical it could be consistent. But keep at it and let us know if you make real progress with it.
No that's fair. I was coming at it from the point of a green splash. Decays, and Bridges, and Waste Nots don't do tons for me in the matchup. So I'm more likely to sideboard in such a way as to maximize my Thoughtseizes, Mend Wrenchs, etc. That's what I meant. Just side anything 3 cmc that isn't Liliana for more cheap discard if you have some.
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Bridge is great in the matchup; it's relatively easy to resolve and once it's down it usually stays there, at least long enough to win. It's key against Resto and Colonnade, though holding off even a single Snapcaster is often the difference between a win and loss. I don't know why you'd have more discard in the board.
Waste Not is great at suppressing their card advantage capabilities.
Introduction
8Rack is a take on the classic discard / Pox strategy, in which you tear apart your opponent's hand turn after turn with discard spells, then make them slowly die with cards like The Rack. It is exactly as fun as it sounds (if you're the pilot).
The deck has been in the Established MTGS forum for almost a year, and in the Deck Creation forum for about as long as well. In the right meta, it's a competitive deck capable of hanging with top tier decks, and does best against unsuspecting pilots and an unsuspecting field. To date it has a heap of Magic Online daily tournament wins, and one high place finish in a paper tournament (and many lower place finishes in major tournaments, and high place finishes in minor tournaments). One of my goals with this primer is to help increase the amount of high place major tournament finishes.
When considering whether or not you want to play this deck, you must first understand it's very unique and it mostly eschews many of the common elements of other decks, like card advantage and creatures. We ditch card advantage entirely or mostly because by "controlling the hand and controlling the game", we don't need it, and doing so allows us to better focus on the deck's primary goals. Also, we want to have few or no cards to prevent creatures from attacking under Ensnaring Bridge. Finally, we have engines that make the deck consistent, eliminating the need for draw. 8Rack can benefit from card draw, but it certainly doesn't need it, so keep that in mind when discussing the deck. That said, we could benefit from cheap filtering, a la Sensei's Divining Top - perhaps one day a suitable card on that front will be printed. On the creature front, we don't want them because we have other ways to win, we like our opponent to have dead cards, and if we only have 2-4 copies of a creature, it's going to die right away almost always since no other creatures are there to soak up removal. However, cards that evade popular removal (Bolt, Abrupt Decay, etc), can be great, especially if they can act as a pseudo-Ensnaring Bridge (Bitterblossom and Pack Rat are good examples). Lands that can turn into creatures (Mutavault) can also be very good (they're "free" creatures, so we usually don't care much if they die). I hope you now understand that if you're looking for a traditional deck with card draw, kill spells, and creatures, you should head elsewhere (see the 'Other Lists and Related Primers section below). If you're interested in trying something with a very different approach, I welcome you to stick around.
The List
8Rack lists are somewhat varied, but common cards between them almost always include a large discard suite, Ensnaring Bridge, Liliana of the Veil, and of course, The Rack (and its brethren Shrieking Affliction). Removal and alternate win cons are also common. Beyond that, there is some room for exploration, although the most successful lists are similar to mine below. This isn't to say it's definitively the best list, but it is highly tuned, built on hundreds of hours of collective playtesting, tweaking, and discussion, and has many results to stand on.
4 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Wrench Mind
4 Raven's Crime
Planeswalkers: 4
4 Liliana of the Veil
Enchantments: 6
4 Shrieking Affliction
2 Bitterblossom
3 The Rack
4 Ensnaring Bridge
Instants: 4
3 Victim of Night
1 Slaughter Pact
Lands: 23
15 Swamp
1 Dakmor Salvage
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Mutavault
2 Pithing Needle
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Darkblast
1 Bitterblossom
2 Bile Blight
1 Syphon Life
3 Nyxathid
1 The Rack
For the skeptics and/or stats lovers, below is some hard data on the mana base.
200 sample hands per test
One land: One land, any type
Zero land: Zero lands
Too much land: 4+ lands with no Crime
Mutavault issue: One or more Mutavault; Mutavault is preventing or may prevent spells from being cast as needed
2+ Urborg: Two or more Urborgs; sometimes an issue (prevents or may prevent spells from being cast as needed), sometimes not (Crime, lots of other action, etc)
Dakmor issue: One or more Dakmor; Dakmor is preventing or may prevent spells from being cast as needed
22 land "greedy" manabase (2x Dakmor, 4x Mutavault, 4x Urborg, 12x Swamp)
Hey Guys, I crunched a few numbers to find out how many Urborgs we should run.
Long Story Short:
Run 1 more Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth than all colorless lands combined.
ie: 3 Buried Ruins means run 4 Urborg
Method:
Used Hypergeometric distribution to maximize the probability of having access to:
T1 B
T2 BB
T4 BB1
Mana Being Tested
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Colorless lands
2 Dakmor Salvage
13 Swamp
vs
-1 Urborg
+1 Swamp
Results:
T1 Sucess
Same (91.66%)
T2 BB
4 Urborg/3 Colorless/13 Swamp (77.3% Chance)
3 Urborg/3 Colorless/14 Swamp (76.5% Chance)
T4 BB1
4 Urborg/3 Colorless/13 Swamp (84.9% Chance)
3 Urborg/3 Colorless/14 Swamp (84.3% Chance)
Running 4 Urborg will be even more important if you run more than 3 colorless lands.
Using Less Colorless lands and less Urborg Is a meta choice, trading power for consistency.
However choosing the incorrect amount of Urborg for your choice of colorless lands is not a matter of opinion. It will just put you at a statistically disadvantaged position.
Below you can find an in-depth look at the cards in 8Rack, including reasons why they're chosen and how they're best used.
Thoughtseize
A critical part of our discard suite, Thoughtseize represents precise discard, which is to say it allows us to pick out the biggest threats and toss them. Also sweet in situations where you have Wrench Mind in hand and your opponent has one artifact; in these you can pick the artifact to ensure Wrench Mind is a 2 for 1. The life loss is usually only problematic against Burn.
Inquisition of Kozilek
Like Thoughtseize, Inquisition represents precise discard, and as such is very important to us. The CMC clause can be problematic on rare occasion.
Raven's Crime
One of the key pieces that makes 8Rack work, and by far one of the best cards in the deck, Crime represents persistent discard. This is extremely important because your opponent draws a card every turn, and while he might play one every turn too, sometimes he'll start stockpiling his hand or will draw extra cards, and so on, so we need to neutralize that with persistent discard.
8Rack newbies severely underestimate this card (I did when I first began playing it), and will even consider dropping the count to 1-3 copies. This is a huge mistake, as many games hinge on drawing a Crime.
Here are a variety of applications for Crime you wouldn't see until you play with it extensively:
2. Your opening hand is 1x Inquisition, 1x Raven's Crime, 1x The Rack, 4x Swamp. You turn 1 Inquisition, turn 2 double Raven's Crime, turn 3 Raven's Crime + The Rack
3. You flood on land, and stockpile it every turn until you pull a Raven's Crime, then triple Raven's Crime your opponent, emptying their hand
4. Your opponent is in topdeck mode and you need to keep him there to keep your Rack and Affliction ticking. In hand you have 1x Dakmor Salvage; in the yard you have 1x Raven's Crime. You retrace the Crime every turn with the Dakmor for the win.
5. Your opponent is playing Merfolk, has a bunch of 2/1s and 2/2s in play; you have a Bridge in play, you've played a Swamp for the turn, and have 3x Swamp and 1x Raven's Crime in hand. You play Crime on them, turning on your Affliction, then retrace it twice, targeting yourself so they can no longer attack.
6. Your opponent has a Wild Nacatl in hand and nothing else; you're at 2 life. The card would be just enough to squeeze out a win. You have a Thoughtseize and Raven's Crime in hand.
7. Your opponent has 3x land and 1x Wurmcoil Engine in hand, the latter of which you desperately need to get rid of. You have 1x Inquisition, 3x Swamp, 1x Raven's Crime in hand.
8. You need to land a Necrogen Mists against UWR, but you know they have a Mana Leak and other more important spells in hand, and you only have 5x Swamp out. You Raven's Crime, retrace it twice until the Leak is gone, then play Mists.
9. Living End player is stuck on one land; you cast and retrace Crime multiple times; he cycles and draws once, and is forced to discard his other cyclers, and is still stuck on one land.
10. Opponent needs to play more land to cast his Ajani, but if he does he'll take 6 every turn from 2x Affliction. He holds the lands in hand, which you make him discard anyway by retracing Crime.
Wrench Mind
It's a 2 for 1 so it's automatically good. Best served after precise discard. Weak against Affinity and Tron, but it's so good against all others decks that it's still well worth maindecking despite that.
Liliana of the Veil
You can't say this for many if any planeswalkers: all of Lily's abilities are made frequent use of in our deck, and all of them are exactly what we want. Like with Crime, she offers the ever-important persistent discard, she kills creatures, and she can prevent opponents from coming back by blowing up all their nonland permanents (if your opponent is worth a *****, he'll choose to keep his lands). We want to see her frequently and she dies fairly often, so we don't mind running 4.
Shrieking Affliction
Our Racks 5-8. This does more damage than The Rack when your opponent is at 1 card and is an enchantment, so it usually stays on the field. However, it does the same at 0 cards, and can't hit planeswalkers.
The Rack
Our Racks 1-4. It does less damage than Affliction when your opponent is at 1 card and it's an artifact so it gets blown up a lot more, but it does the same at 0 cards and can hit planeswalkers.
Ensnaring Bridge
Bridge is another critical piece of the deck that makes it work. Without it, we'd probably just be better off playing Monoblack Control, or at least a "reactive" 8Rack list, which, historically, hasn't been nearly as effective.
Because we empty our hand so quickly and can reliably keep it that way, Bridge often reads, "Creatures can't attack", which is pretty great in a format chock full of creatures. It is an artifact, though, so it gets blown up a lot, and zero power creatures like Noble Hierarch can swing through it, so it's not perfect. However, we have Mutavault and Pack Rat for backup, so often we're in good shape in terms of defense.
Victim of Night
This hits almost everything that sees play in Modern; double black can be problematic on rare occasion and it doesn't hit Mutavault, but despite that, it's our best kill spell in metas with moderate to high amounts of aggro.
Slaughter Pact
Pact allows for plays like drop Lily, -2 Lily, kill 1 one their 2 creatures threatening lethal, then Pact the other. Or drop Lily, +1 Lily, putting them in Rack/Affliction range, then Pact their Goblin Electromancer. There are many others, but you get the idea.
Pack Rat
Gets around Leyline of Sanctity, acts as a pseudo-Bridge, can provide a very quick clock (see below), and gets damage through regardless of our opponent's hand size (very important, as we won't always be able to keep it down). Be aware that if you see an opponent's hand and it's light on threats, you can often just slam this and go all in on it and steal the game. Some prefer 3 or 4.
Yes, there are times you'll want to attack with your rats through Bridge and can't, but keep in mind we can manipulate those situations to an extent by stockpiling cards or by using Lily's -6 to blow up our Bridge and swing for an alpha strike (be sure you can win when you do this, keeping in mind their removal, how many rats you have, how much damage your opponent could do next turn, etc). Also, if you have a Bridge and a massive rat army, there's a good chance you have the game locked, so who cares if they can't attack?
Normally we don't want creatures in our deck because we like dead cards and if we only have 2-4 copies of a creature, it's going to die right away since no other creatures are there to soak up removal. However, Rat makes copies of itself, so it turns that notion on its head. Best played once we see their hand and/or empty it, as then we can almost definitely make at least one copy before they draw removal.
T1 land, discard
T2 land, rat
T3 land, make a rat (two rats on board), swing for 2 (2 damage total)
T4 make a rat (three rats on board), swing for 6 (8 damage total)
T5 make a rat (four rats on board), swing for 12 (20 damage total)
T6 make a rat (five rats on board), swing for 20 (40 damage total)
T1 land, discard
T2 land, rat
T3 land, make a rat (two rats on board), swing for 2 (2 damage total)
T4 mutavault, make a rat (three rats on board), animate Mutavault, swing for 8 (10 damage total)
T5 make a rat (four rats on board), animate Mutavault, swing for 15 (25 damage total)
T6 make a rat (five rats on board), animate Mutavault, swing for 24 (49 damage total)
Dakmor Salvage
In the right situations, this sets up a soft lock with Raven's Crime that acts as Lily's +1. Great when you have the board mostly or entirely controlled, a Rack out, and your opponent's hand down and need to keep it down. Also can be useful in digging for Raven's Crime or Darkblast. Some prefer 2.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Makes our Mutavaults or other non-basics tap for black. Especially important since we have 12 or more double black spells, and often need to hit them. Also useful against Spreading Seas. Some prefer 3 to avoid having to lower the amount of situations in which you see 2 Urborgs, and are forced to go down to 2 land on board (I haven't found this to be much of an issue).
Mutavault
Gets around Leyline of Sanctity, provides a quicker clock when used in combination with Racks (and a clock when the opponent isn't in Rack range), has great synergy with Pack Rat, and is untouchable by Abrupt Decay. It's our best overall choice for a non-basic, just a little ahead of Buried Ruin (more on that in the Card options section). I've been pretty happy with 4, although it's possible 3 is the correct number, enabling us to most consistently cast our double black cards.
Pithing Needle
A versatile weapon that hurts Tron (Oblivion Stone, Karn), Affinity (Cranial Plating, Arcbound Ravager, manlands), random planeswalkers, and more.
Surgical Extraction
An extremely versatile card with applications in heaps of matchups. Use it for Tron, Gifts, Storm, Scapeshift, Ad Nauseam and more to make it very difficult for them to win, and sometimes impossible. Also alleviates that pesky topdeck weakness we have. Against decks like Tron with few or no instant speed cards, be sure to cast it on their draw step in case they draw the card you're targeting. We use this instead of Extirpate because free is far more valuable to us than Split Second -- free will often mean an extra discard spell, and often an extra discard spell will be needed to hit your graveyard target, to turn on Affliction, to get rid of a critical card, etc. Plus we just don't need the Split Second in almost all cases: many decks we bring it in for don't have a response for it, and the ones that do we can almost always play around by properly utilizing hand control/waiting for them to tap out.
Darkblast
Recursive removal that's extremely effective against Delver, Affinity, and Infect, among other decks. Also digs for Raven's Crime and Dakmor Salvage. I recommend this over Drown in Sorrow, partly because it hits manlands and is easier on our curve.
Bile Blight
Kills almost every creature in Modern, and is especially strong against any deck with tokens (Storm, BW Tokens) or a high amount of redundancy (Zoo, Affinity). It's soft to Tarmogoyf and the other rare bigger creatures so we put it sideboard, but it can be worth it to maindeck it in some metas.
Syphon Life
Provides some much-needed insurance against any deck with burn spells in it. Creatures we can often handle, but creatures and burn spells together can be tough - unless you have Syphon Life. Also a solid alternate win con sometimes.
Nyxathid
We side this in for decks where Bridge is difficult to activate, and where he's a needed blocker when life total is low, is guaranteed to be huge every turn, and difficult or impossible to deal with, and can end the game quickly. The primary application is Burn, where he's extremely effective, but it's also useful against Infect and a few other decks.
Card options
Besides the cards discussed already, there are a variety of other options you may wish to use, due to personal preference or your local meta. If you want to discuss a card but it's not listed here, there's a 98% chance it's been discussed to death already and rejected, for good reason (some popular examples: Liliana's Caress, Quest for Nihil Stone, Bloodchief Ascension, Extirpate, Hero's Downfall). If you're determined against all odds to make these kinds of cards work, before discussing them here, do actual testing against top tier decks on MTGO and/or against skilled local paper opponents, then report any good results in detail.
Buried Ruin
Has great synergy with Dakmor and Darkblast, allowing us to dig for our Bridge or Rack or hate card, or recover a destroyed Bridge or Rack or hate card. It's an excellent choice for our non-basic, although likely a little less effective overall than Mutavault.
Ghost Quarter
A great choice in a Tron heavy meta, especially in combination with Surgical Extraction.
Waste Not
Waste Not fills in the decks holes (reach, defense, mana) and steals games on occasion when you get discard chains going. As a bonus, it's good against Living End's cycling creatures, Faithless Looting, Izzet Charm, Desolate Lighthouse, Thirst for Knowledge, Pack Rat, Jeskai Ascendancy, and Desperate Ravings. It's usually a bad topdeck, but as a 1 or 2-of, you'll rarely run into that issue. It could be correct to run this as a 1-of in place of a Pack Rat.
Spellskite
Can be an effective weapon against Burn, Zoo, Infect, Auras, and Twin, but is mostly worth considering for Burn, where we need the most help. Can be good with Darkslick Shores, although this makes us quite vulnerable to Blood Moon, which can hurt us a ton.
Smallpox
I might exclude this card from the list, but it's one of the most asked about, so I'll address it. Smallpox has explosive potential, but it's quite inconsistent, and isn't meant for deck like ours with 22-23 land (Pox in Legacy runs it alongside 25-27 lands, and sometimes Crucible of Worlds); we really need our lands until the late game, whereas Smallpox wants to be cast turn 2. We could increase the land count, but that would mean taking out important cards, and then more would need to be taken out for Smallpox. There simply isn't room for it. That and it's really better in a deck built around resource denial, not just hand control (like Pox).
Dark Confidant
Like Smallpox, this is another I'd prefer to leave off the list, however it's come up so much it needs to be addressed. As detailed in the intro (read it now if you haven't), we don't need draw or creatures because of our unique strategy, and Bob is both. While he can be effective, he is less so than other options. If you're really dying for draw/gas, use Waste Not.
Bitterblossom
An excellent alternate win condition that can attack under Bridge unlike Pack Rat. Drop this on a stable board and watch it spiral out of control quickly. However, it does have major downsides that see most preferring to use Pack Rat: the life loss is a real problem against any red decks or aggro decks, it's too slow for fast decks, the tokens can't trade with too many creatures, it's terrible when your life total is low, and Electrolyze can blow it out. When it works it feels like the perfect card for us, but too often for some, it doesn't work.
Leyline of the Void
Great against Storm and Living End. Although we can cast it, keep in mind it's vastly more effective in the opener.
Doom Blade
Dark Confidant and Deathrite Shaman were the reason this card has seen almost no play, but now with Shaman banned, it can be a strong choice when BGx isn't dominating.
Dismember
Dismember lets us kill nearly anything at flexible casting costs. It is our strongest choice in metas light on aggressive decks.
Smother
Hits most creatures in Modern, except for a few popular ones: Restoration Angel, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Obstinate Baloth, and Primeval Titan. They'll have a hard time getting through Bridge, but we won't always have Bridge.
Hate cards
Although we have a backup route to victory, a lot of times it won't work out, and seeing as our primary strategy is quite linear, this leaves us pretty vulnerable to certain hate cards. This section is intended to illustrate how these cards are a problem and how we can attempt to fight through them.
Leyline of Sanctity
Despite popular conception, the deck does not automatically fold to it, and generally speaking, it's not worth it to splash for it, especially in an aggro heavy meta. There are several reasons for these things:
Chalice of the Void
Can be brutal if cast turn 2 and our hand has lots of 1cmc spells, but even then, sometimes Pack Rat, Wrench Mind, Lily, and/or Bridge do plenty to get the job done. Remember we can force them to sac it or all other permanents with Lily's ultimate. If they choose the latter, and we do it repeatedly, we can likely win through mill.
Wilt-Leaf Liege/Loxodon Smiter/Obstinate Baloth
These cards are all pretty much interchangeable since we hate them all for the same reason: our discard turns them into a free creature, and one that puts us on a 4-5 turn clock, just by itself. If we have a kill spell, Bridge, or wall of Pack Rats, it's fine, but often we won't, or we'll have the answer too late. If you know they have one of these cards in hand, shy away from imprecise discard until you have an answer ready. Otherwise, you should probably take the risk.
Splashing
If you're interested in splashing, white offers Path to Exile, green offers Abrupt Decay, and red offers the reach of Lightning Bolt; blue is basically useless for what we're trying to do. There are other cards we're interested in, of course, but these are the givens. Each of the approved three colours offers a variety of potentially great sideboard options, too, which can shore up our weak points/matchups.
All that said, the monoblack lists have proven the most consistent over about a year of testing and tuning involving many people in this forum, partly because 4x Thoughtseize and fetches/shocks together in our style of deck (which often wins at low life) can be rough (also Blood Moon), so any splash is not to be taken lightly.
Below is a nice white splash list by ktkenshinx, with some commentary from him about it. If you're interested in it, consider that you may want to just run Deadguy Ale instead (see the 'Other lists' section above), or even both!
7 Swamp
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Mutavault
2 Godless Shrine
1 Plains
4 Isolated Chapel
1 Temple of Silence
4 Marsh Flats
Clock: 12
4 The Rack
3 Shrieking Affliction
4 Lingering Souls
2 Raven's Crime
4 Thoughtseize
4 Wrench Mind
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Liliana of the Veil
Removal/Defense:
4 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Victim of Night
1 Slaughter Pact
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Syphon Life
4 Timely Reinforcements
2 Rest in Peace
3 Stony Silence
2 Disenchant
Next is an aggressive-styled red splash list by Pete Casella, who won an SCG IQ tournament with it. It has some questionable choices, but I can't argue too much with a tourney finish, so for now, this is the red splash list I recommend basing your own off of. If you think you have a better one, definitely let me know and I'll consider replacing this one with it.
If you want to know more about the deck and the tournament, you can read Pete's article on both here.
4 Swamp
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Blood Crypt
1 Godless Shrine
2 Graven Cairns
2 Lavaclaw Reaches
4 Marsh Flats
1 Verdant Catacombs
Creatures: 3
3 Nyxathid
Other spells: 31
4 The Rack
1 Liliana's Caress
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Murderous Cut
4 Terminate
4 Blightning
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
4 Wrench Mind
4 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Dismember
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Wear // Tear
3 Duress
3 Pyroclasm
Matchups and sideboarding
Twin
One of our best matchups. Rip apart their hand, be aggressive with what you play to ensure an Ensnaring Bridge lock (even just one card in hand will let them win through it), and when necessary, play around an end of your turn 3 Deceiver Exarch / Pestermite into turn 4 Splinter Twin with kill spells and discard. Lily is great when they have Deceiver / Pestermite but no Splinter Twin. Some versions run Tarmogoyf and Ancient Grudge (the latter could be a good reason to board in Needle (naming Pestermite) instead of other options, as it gives them more artifacts to deal with.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Surgical Extraction
RG Tron
By far our worst matchup, RG Tron almost always feels like the deck was custom built to beat us. Oblivion Stone wipes our entire board, Karn Liberated gets rid of troublesome permanents, and they have a high amount of redundancy, allowing them to recover from even tons of discard on our part. Surgical Extraction sideboard gives us a fighting chance: use it primarily on O Stone and Karn (the Urza lands before they get all three out are ideal but they almost never discard them); in some cases their dig/tutor spells and Wurmcoil Engine can be good targets, too. Also, Needle naming O Stone or Karn (choose Stone first) can do a lot of work, although proves futile when they wipe it out with whatever you didn't name (a regular occurrence).
Sideboarding: -4 Wrench Mind -1 Slaughter Pact -1 Victim of Night +3 Surgical Extraction +2 Pithing Needle +1 Pack Rat
Affinity
Probably the least understood and most misplayed matchup, Affinity is favoured for us, particularly post-board. Bridge and removal do well against them, and what they don't do, Darkblast makes up for and then some in games 2/3. One of the tricks to playing against them is to understand hands that are great against other decks are sometimes poor against them (Wrench Mind and 'developing' hands are often awful here), and hands that are poor against other decks are great against them (removal and Rack heavy hands, particularly those with Bridge and/or Darkblast). Also, be aware particularly good players or just those experienced against 8Rack can sneak a 0 power creature under Bridge and then equip it if they have double black available. It usually doesn't happen, unless they have two irrelevant lands and we have Urborg out (for this reason you shouldn't play Urborg unless you need to). Signal Pest and Arcbound Ravager can also sneak under Bridge, so play around them / kill them.
Sideboarding: -4 Wrench Mind -2 Pack Rat +2 Darkblast +2 Bile Blight +2 Pithing Needle
Burn
This matchup is tough game 1, but very favorable in games 2/3 thanks to extra removal, Nyxathid, and Syphon Life. If we can't discard or remove Eidolon of the Great Revel, it will often take over the game for them. Like Affinity, they dump their hand for us, so sometimes we can just race with Rack damage.
Check out a great statistical analysis of the matchup by ktkenshinx here.
Sideboarding: -1 Thoughtseize -2 Pack Rat -4 Ensnaring Bridge +1 Shrieking Affliction +2 Bile Blight +3 Nyxathid +1 Syphon Life
Ascendancy
Ascendancy functions much like Storm in that they 'go off' with a ton of cantrips and can win through even a ton of discard on our part with a decent amount of luck, thanks to all the draw and redundancy. Our best shot is to tear apart their hand quickly and keep it that way, making it difficult or impossible for them to win, while keeping their mana dorks off the table at all costs. Versions running Waste Not can sometimes benefit significantly from Ascendancy discard triggers.
The deck can deal with or get around our Bridge easily enough, plus they sometimes bring in Leyline of Sanctity, so post-board, we take it out and focus on creature control and beating them with creatures (though the discard plan should still be pursued whenever possible). Extraction doesn't do much against them since Glittering Wish exiles itself and they can fetch Jeskai Ascendancy from the sideboard.
Sideboarding: -4 Ensnaring Bridge +4 Darkblast
Delver
This is mostly a cakewalk for us, although Monastery Swiftspear has made the matchup a little worse for us. Darkblast helps a lot post-board (although little against MS).
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat -4 Ensnaring Bridge +2 Bile Blight +2 Darkblast +1 Pack Rat +1 Syphon Life
Jund/Junk/The Rock
One of our harder matchups, this deck packs precision discard, Abrupt Decay, and draw (Dark Confidant), all of which can hurt a lot. That said, Bridge can often hold down the fort for a few turns at least, and a well-timed Pack Rat can ruin their 1-for-1 attrition plan, and serve well as a backup Bridge that gets around Abrupt Decay. Also, their Lily is sometimes terrible against us (although can be great if they're not afraid of Racks).
Check out a great statistical analysis of the matchup by ktkenshinx here.
Sideboarding: -1 Slaughter Pact +1 Pack Rat
Merfolk
One of our best matchups, Bridge alone can win us the game unless they're especially fast (usually they're not). Post-board, it's about the same, although they sometimes run 1 or 2 Steel Sabotage, so play around it. Spreading Seas will occasionally screw us out of casting double black cards, so hold off on playing Urborg unless you need to.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Bile Blight
Auras
Also one of our best matchups, for the same reason Merfolk is: Bridge shuts them down hard. Plus, them going all in on one creature means it's easily dealt with by Lily (note sacrifice gets around Totem armor). Still, Kor Spiritdancer can be problematic, some versions run Suppression Field which can be annoying, and post-board they bring in Nature's Claim and sometimes Leyline of Sanctity, so watch out for those.
Sideboarding: No changes
Blue Tron
This one is counterspell based, so we fare much better than against RG Tron. Play around Condescend and bounce spells, discard artifacts when necessary to make Wrench Mind better, and land a Bridge (two, preferably), when you know or suspect they have no counterspells. If you land a Pack Rat, go all in on it if you know their hand isn't threat heavy and you should steal the game quick. Post-board, do the same but try to Extract Tron pieces, Oblivion Stone (typically they have one main, one side), and bounce spells.
Sideboarding: -4 Wrench Mind +3 Surgical Extraction +1 Pack Rat
Soul Sisters
Bridge is great main and post-board here. Watch out for Ajani's Pridemate, which can deliver a hard beating quickly. Some versions run artifact removal, although not much, but play around it.
Sideboarding: No changes
Scapeshift
A good matchup, although as with all combo decks, sometimes they can win out nowhere despite our best efforts (in this case, it's with Scapeshift). Their mana ramp is a lot more valuable than it might look (keep them at 5 land or lower and we're probably safe), so keep that in mind when choosing targets. Beyond that, it's the usual fare against counterspell heavy decks: rip apart their hand, (mostly) not care about Remand, and put them on a good clock (the all-in Pack Rat plan can be great). Post-board, we have the excellent Surgical Extraction, but they (usually) have the ever-frustrating Obstinate Baloth, so be wary of it until you land a Bridge or get a Rat engine going.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +3 Surgical Extraction (yes, go to 61 cards)
Infect
Infect is fast and has creature protection so sometimes can steal games, but typically our combination of discard, removal, and Bridge will prove too much for them. Discard whatever they have less of (usually, it's creatures), or sometimes protection spells. Post-board, Darkblast does major work; just be aware of Pendelhaven (also, Nature's Claim).
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Darkblast
Storm
This one plays out like Ascendancy in that they use a ton of cantrips to 'go off', although instead of relying on creatures to chain together spells, they rely on rituals (spells that net mana), and the graveyard. It also has a high amount of redundancy and can go off with very few cards in hand, thanks to Pyromancer Ascension. Be sure to kill their Goblin Electromancer asap or they're very likely to win that turn or the next. Post-board they bring in Empty the Warrens to dodge graveyard hate. As such, Bile Blight is very good here if you can afford to run it in your meta. In combination with our discard and removal, Leyline of the Void is often a silver bullet. Unfortunately, it's only really good against this deck and Living End, neither of which are very common. For most people, I recommend just making the most of your Extractions: Ascension, Electromancer, and Manamorphose are your top targets (they often get stuck on blue mana if they don't have Manamorphose).
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Bile Blight -4 Ensnaring Bridge +3 Surgical Extraction +1 Nyxathid
Blue Moon
A nearly monoblue deck with counterspells, so we have it easy here. You won't see this deck often, but when you do, know that their hate cards are mostly dead against you, and Darkblast kills everything they have.
Sideboarding: -4 Ensnaring Bridge +2 Darkblast +2 Bile Blight
Zoo
'Fast' Zoo throws a load of efficient one mana creatures and also burn spells at us, which can be a real challenge, but Bridge can do a lot of work against it. 'Big' Zoo is slower and much easier to handle. It operates basically the same, but has bigger, slower creatures. Be wary of artifact removal in both cases.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat -1 Thoughtseize +2 Bile Blight +1 Syphon Life
Hatebears
This comes in monowhite and GW varieties. White is generally easier because they don't have Loxodon Smiter, but both are a pain because of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (kill her immediately unless you have an unusually high amount of land in play) and Leonin Arbiter; for monowhite, watch our for alpha strikes courtesy of Flickerwisp (which can temporarily get rid of Bridge). As with Scapeshift and their Baloths, be careful against GW with non-precise discard unless you have a Bridge out.
Sideboarding: No changes
BW Tokens
An easy match, although occasionally they will get very aggressive quickly (Lingering Souls + Intangible Virtue hurts) and blow us out. Bridge does a ton of work; just be wary of the rare bit of artifact removal. Also be aware sometimes they'll try to get in lethal under Bridge courtesy of Zealous Persecution. Bile Blight is great, here, acting as a two mana wrath a lot of the time.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat +2 Bile Blight
Gifts Tron
Easier than RG Tron but harder than Blue Tron, Gifts can be tough because they rely on graveyard shenanigans, which we help with, and also because Gifts Ungiven can act as a toolbox card, which we hate. This is another match we can sometimes go all in on Pack Rat with and steal the game quickly. Iona, Shield of Emeria can win them the game singlehandedly, so try to stick a Lily and keep it there to make them sac it. Post-board, targeting their Tron pieces but especially Gifts with Extraction will help dramatically.
Sideboarding: -4 Wrench Mind +3 Surgical Extraction +1 Pack Rat (artifact version) -2 Pack Rat +2 Darkblast -2 Victim of Night -1 Murderous Cut +3 Surgical Extraction (4c non-artifact version)
Ad Nauseam
Combo decks are easy for us, and this one is no exception. Game 1 discard the key pieces (Ad Nauseam, Angel's Grace, Phyrexian Unlife) as well as mana sources to slow them down; game 2 they have a playset of Leyline of Sanctity, so you may have to abandon the Rack plan for the Rat/Mutavault plan. Fortunately this is very viable with Surgical Extraction, which can lock them out of the game entirely (Nauseam is your top target, but Simian Spirit Guide can also keep them from casting their win con).
Sideboarding: -4 Ensnaring Bridge +3 Surgical Extraction +1 Nyxathid
Living End
For this matchup, I've lifted the excellent, thorough description from the old primer written by negativeview, who has done extensive Living End testing versus a friend.
Sideboarding: -2 Pack Rat -2 Victim of Night -1 Murderous Cut -1 Slaughter Pact +3 Nyxathid +3 Surgical Extraction
Strategy
Almost every card in the Living End deck serves multiple purposes. The key is going to be to recognize what stage of the game the Living End player is in, what card effect the Living End player needs, and to discard whatever card is capable of serving that purpose.
Going first or second doesn't matter in most games. If they keep a very very greedy hand, it's better to go first in order to more likely punish them. If you know your opponent is Living End in game one, always go first in case they don't know what you are playing. In game two or three only a bad player is going to keep a super greedy hand against a discard deck, so it likely doesn't matter. Still go first just in case you're playing someone that is willing to give you a free win. It never is a notable advantage to go second.
Stage One - One Land
Living End is a deck that can sometimes keep a one land hand under the right conditions. 8Rack is one of the few decks that can punish them for doing so. If they have only one land, they're banking off of cycling into a second land. Look for any of their cards that allow them to cycle for free (Street Wraith), or for only one mana (Deadshot Minotaur, Architects of Will, Monstrous Carabid). If they run out of castable cyclers and are still stuck on one land, you have essentially just stolen the game.
Stage Two - Two Lands
At two lands, a lot more opens up. They can just cycle one-mana cyclers twice, but what a competent player is going to be doing is to find their third land. At two mana, they can landcycle with things like Twisted Abomination or Pale Recluse. It's better to let them cycle more often and fill up their board than it is to let them easily find a third land. It's around here that I'd start taking things like Violent Outburst or Demonic Dread. Living End doesn't really have a good way to make two land drops, so for most lists this is where you have to start worrying about them getting in range.
Stage Three - Three+ Lands
They are within range to cast their win condition. Our priorities have switched again. Now all they want to do is fill their board and draw more cards to find their win condition. Remove the cheap cyclers. It fills up their yard, but denies them drawing cards.
Game-Swinging Cards
Extirpate/Surgical Extraction - If you exile all of their copies of Living End they have to switch to Plan B (hard casting their creatures). That plan is significantly easier for 8Rack to beat as it's slow and most of Living End's lands start coming into play tapped.
Ingot Chewer - Most Living End players play at least one copy maindeck, and have all four in the 75 thanks to affinity, which is a matchup they fear greatly. Your bridges aren't necessarily safe even game one.
Maelstrom Pulse - Many Living End players have a copy or two in the sideboard. This makes it a harder decision to run out multiple bridges, though it's still probably the right play since Ingot Chewer is far more likely to see than Pulse.
Beast Within - An answer to any permanent and it gives them a creature to target with Demonic Dread.
Simian Spirit Guide - This card is a contentious issue among Living End players. It allows them to go off a turn early against an unsuspecting opponent, but has no synergy with Living End itself. Keep your eye out for this card and always keep in mind that they can burst up one more mana if they feel like it. I've never played 8Rack against a SSG or played Living End with SSG in the deck. Not sure how aggressively to discard them.
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PROHIBITED POSTS
4x Ensnaring Bridge
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Liliana of the Veil
4x Mutavault
2x Pack Rat
4x Raven's Crime
4x Shrieking Affliction
1x Slaughter Pact
13x Swamp
4x The Rack
4x Thoughtseize
4x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2x Victim of Night
1x Waste Not
4x Wrench Mind
4x Darkblast
4x Leyline of Sanctity
4x Surgical Extraction
3x Torpor Orb
I haven't had much of chance to test it so far but Rain of Tears has been showing promise (instead of Shadow of Doubt). I've been sideboarding against tron as such:
+As many Rats as you've got
+4 Rain Of Tears
+4 Surgical
-3 Iok
-2 Wrench Mind
-3 Shrieking Affliction
With going back up to 4 Mutavaults I've found leaning on rats in this matchup to be fairly reliant. With Rain to slow them down/put lands in the graveyard, Surgical actually becomes useful.
R8whackR
WUBGAtraxa Stax-Superfriends *Under Construction*WUBG
Matchups.
This deck thrives against blue stuff, almost an autowin vs. control. I belive the creator actually said "this deck was built to f*** up control decks".
Bad matchups are RG tron, pod, and BGx. Abrupt decay hits everything we run. O stone is a killer. Karn...well it's karn. Pack rats help in the tron matchup provided you avoid pyroclasm.
All other matchups depend on the pilot, which tells me they're all about 50/50 naturally.
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
Let me know what people think. Even if we're not the most amazing Tron/Affinity/Pod pilots, I think could still be a useful tool for testing sideboards/changes/learning the matchups from both sides.
R8whackR
WUBGAtraxa Stax-Superfriends *Under Construction*WUBG
The Tron match was a lot of luck + Surgical on O Stone.
The deck's effectiveness versus UWR Control is grossly overstated. It definitely favors us, but if we stumble (which happens fairly often), they have a good chance of taking over the game. Do not underestimate them.
Most recently I've tested a white splash, which makes the sideboard very effective. Most recently I'm running a blue splash and still sorting out numbers. Mixed results.
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
I'd have to agree with you on the UWR matchup. The cards I hate to see most are Remand, and Repeal. Stalling us for a turn, while cantripping is so strong. I've been trying to side out the more expensive card - Bridge, Waste Not, and Pack rat - for doubling up cheaper effects. In this way remanding t2 waste not and then remanding t3 lily isn't so soul crushing. It ends up being remand t2 thoughtseize. then cast again for another remand. t3 cast as many 1 drop discard spells as possible, and just keep jamming them in. Keep an eye on what's in their yard and what counter's they've used. When they're low on cards, only then do you resolve your liliana's, racks, afflictions, bridges. It's been a learning curve but for anyone that's struggling with the matchup that's what's been working for me.
I'm curious what you think of this plan, Destroyer, and what you do against the UWR matchup. I know what I mentioned is basically "what you do for every control heavy matchup," but I think it's easy to fall into the idea that discard preys on control and can't lose. Remands can do a lot for them to stall and start gaining a huge mana advantage and maintain CA with their cantripping counters.
Edit: I do like Darkblast in this match as it hits Snapcaster and Clique which they'll often tap out for EOT. It also dredges for when it's countered. A solid choice to stop their non-manland clock. After that I think it's really just manlands? I guess GQ would be good here too.
R8whackR
WUBGAtraxa Stax-Superfriends *Under Construction*WUBG
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
3-4 Bolt
0-3 helix
4 Snapcaster
0-2 Angel
3-4 Electrolyze
Which could win them the game but that seems like a long shot. I'd be more concerned with running out of gas and getting out tempo'ed. We have no way of drawing cards. Every card they play draws them cards. What we'd need to do is ensure we can keep their hand down early and keep that up.
Looking through the UWR primer Resto Angel isn't really played. One deck had two of them and it's mentioned as being good for Combo meta. That means they'd have to spend huge amount of mana to burn you out. 12 damage for RRRR with bolt another RWRWRW would be the cheapest they could do it. Compare that to Burn: 7 mana tops. Much less with Guide and Eidolon. We still beat Burn with needing a ton of sideboard slots. I don't think we should be boarding burn hate for UWR. Darkblast for their creatures, maybe GQ's for manlands, and siding out Bridges and Rat to avoid tempo and turn off some of their cards.
Having said that sled_dog, I know you already run Leyline and Spirit in the side, but I don't think it's something non-white decks should be trying to splash for. With regards to this matchup. They're great cards, but I don't see it as being that huge, especially games 2/3
R8whackR
WUBGAtraxa Stax-Superfriends *Under Construction*WUBG
Report me if you want, ***** is *****.
I'll try the Lightning Bolt splash in a couple of the modern league tournaments we'll be having at our LGS, it starts in two weeks and it's 8 dates, one every couple weeks. I cannot take 8Rack to all because the community is relatively small (38-45 players) and modern is damn easy to hate, but I'll take 8Rack to at least two and 8rRack to at least other two. I'll let you know how I do.
I may not participate as much anymore because I came for the videos, not to read about how much you can't beat one of the most straight-forward decks ever (and I say this as someone who absolutely loves Burn in legacy).
We closed the first thread due to posts like this, and we made it clear that we will not tolerate these behavior. Infraction Issued. ~Lantern
I've been testing this deck for a few months preparing for the coming Grand Prix in Omaha, and chose this deck because of my love of resource denial.
This is my current list:
4x The Rack
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Thoughtsieze
4x Raven's Crime
2x Funeral Charm
4x Wrench Mind
3x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Dismember
1x Victim of Night
3x Waste Not
2x Darkmor Salvage
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2x Ghost Quarter
3x Mutavault
I've been testing against two variants of pod, two variants of Tron (no GR as of yet, unfortunately), Jund aggro, burn, Pyrodelver, and Storm.
I haven't tested with Pack Rats, and although I've never been a fan of them, I will be trading for a playset to see what all the fuss is about. I never cared for the creatures available to this deck; one of the strengths I've found in it is how it turns most mainboard removal moot--although mid or late game rats seem advantageous.
I've dominated both Pod decks I've played to the extent that one of their boards was almost changed outright to combat discard. It's GW Pod and Kiki-Pod that I've defeated consistently, and almost all of the time it's through shear attrition. They have combo'd on a small number of games, although I've come to find our sideboard really hurts them.
I went positive against U/W Tron, although I was running a slighlty different variant of my deck beforehand (I had three mainboard Smallpox at the time). I have since moved from Smallpox to mainboard Victim of Night,Dismember, and Funeral Charm.
On the topic of Funeral Charm and Smallpox: I am in complete and utter love with Funeral Charm in the mainboard, to the point I've considered upping it to three. It hits dorks, Delvers, early Goyfs that are naked, and other goodies that seem fun to hit. Aside from that you also have the instant discard, which is definitely relevant. I can't see not running it anymore. On the topic of Smallpox; I either blew opponents out, or it sat in my hand for Lily. It wasn't terrible, and it was absolutely BONKERS with a good Waste Not trigger, but I found myself wanting hard removal in a deal of my matchups--I will probably go back to Smallpox in some variant testing.
I am overly fond of Waste Not, to the extent that I almost need four in the deck. I understand that people have concerns about its diminishing returns. . .they're warranted, and there are a handful of games I've had where I've topdecked one and not been quite delighted. With that said, however, it is pure and disgustingly powerful card advantage--especially in multiples. Against Tron I've gone from them having a full hand and a solid board position to a second Waste Not, Wrench Mind, and destruction of their hand and hopes of winning. It's too sexy to me, and I will continue to push for it to the point that a red splash to me seems more than reasonable.
With that said, I am continuing to play and test the deck against many variants. I am hoping to splash red and test Burning Inquiry with Waste Not and possibly Lilana's Caress. I've seen and read the reservations, but I will personally be reviewing how it performs before I rule it out. I'm not entirely sure that Lightning Bolt is necessary, and I know that many people have given Blightning a solid 'mediocre', but that is one of the cards I'm gravitating towards other than a possible sideboard of Blood Moon.
My absolute hardest matchup at this moment in time is G/W Hatebears. I can not win. I have never won. It destroys me in every instance; Damnation exists in my sideboard for two boogeymen on my block: G/W Hatebears and Affinity--and it does not get the job done.
Ensnaring Bridge is my only out, and even then I have to kill a Qasli Pridemage to properly protect myself.
I'll continue to update this with my new tests and changes! Sorry if I've re-iterated anything, I've just had a lot on my mind and a lot I've wanted to post that I truly haven't felt capable of writing up until today.
Do you find yourself mulliganing differently with 3 Waste nots? I ask because they are so, so good early, but less good late. Does that come into play?
Are you running 4 Damnation?
Lastly, I really want to see the sideboard.
R8whackR
WUBGAtraxa Stax-Superfriends *Under Construction*WUBG
Lightning Bolt and Slaughter Games are what I would take from splashing red since one is "the most powerful removal in modern" and the other is an anti-sideboard marvel against known quantities (Ancient Grudge) and an O-Stone obliterator. Test both configurations out and keep what feels better to you, what most people forgot (or refused to accept) in the old thread is that this is an anti-meta game and as such must be tailored to everyone's own metagame for best results.
What does your sideboard look like exactly? Darkblast should be really good at shutting down Affinity and Surgical Extraction might be more of what you're missing out on, depending on what you're siding in.
What exactly is going wrong in the GW Hatebears matchup for you? I don't recall that being a matchup this deck had serious issues against. That's what Pod (Melira & Angel), Tron, and Burn have been for the most part.
UR UR Storm UR
G Infect G
Legacy
RG Goblins RG
Commander
UBR Sedris, the Traitor King UBR
UR Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind UR
UR Jhoira of the Ghitu UR
WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic WUB
G Omnath, Locus of Mana G
The blue splash testing is going well. I'm figuring out numbers of stuff right now, and sorting out the sideboard. Echoing Truth is potent, and a perfect addition against leyline of sanctity and tokens, as well it gets troublesome other things out of the way like an "about-to-ult" planeswalker or your own bridge to smash with rats. You can also save your own Lili. This was a huge factor in one game. Opponent is on jund. We each have Liliana out. He goes to bolt lili, I echoing truth, we both pick up our walkers. Next turn I cast lili, make him discard...his lili. Total turnaround.
I'm also testing the duskmantle/mindcrank combo. There's room if you make it, which means no rats or waste not, but it has won games for me that I was dead. Like I mentioned, I'm still sorting out numbers so things are inconsistent and results are mixed. Will it be a good thing? Things are unclear. Fun to turn on though.
The Rack/Crank list.
1 Dakmor Salvage
4 Darkslick Shores
2 Drowned Catacombs
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Island
7 Swamp
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Spells
2 Echoing Truth
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Raven's Crime
4 Thoughtseize
4 Wrench Mind
4 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Mindcrank
3 Shrieking Affliction
3 The Rack
Dudes/Planeswalker
4 Duskmantle Guildmage
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Mindcrank
3 Torpor Orb
1 Echoing Truth
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Damnation
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
I didn't mean to imply the matchup was such that we need to change anything for it. We don't. I'm just saying not to underestimate them, because doing so can cost you games you should've won.
Remand can certainly be a real pain, but we can play around it. For one, don't drop your land for the turn before playing that Thoughtseize. This tells them maybe it's your only play for the turn which makes Remand seem much better than it is. Two, if you know or suspect they have a Remand (or any counter really), try to play multiple things in a turn. Third, though it can be a good idea to play second in some matchups, always play first against control; it's so much easier to keep up your tempo and keep theirs down if you do. Drop the bombs only when you know the way is clear, suspect it is, or just have to do something. That's control matchup basics I suppose, but maybe it will help some.
You seem to fall into the same trap as others in that you side in things simply because you can. It's extremely important to understand our strategy is very linear for the most part, and also inherently great against a lot of decks without any sideboarding. As such, recognize when you're losing more than you're gaining by sideboarding. For example, Orb isn't worth it, since you're probably going to be so oppressive they either never get to play the Angel in the first place, or if they do, them blinking a Snap is going to be worthless since they'll be mana light and unable to cast anything off it. Also, you're probably going to have a Bridge ready for it. Orb is less proactive against them than other cards, and we need to be as proactive against all decks as possible (conversely, Orb is sick against Pod; we gain so much more in using it against them than UWR). I've played the matchup a ton with no sideboard changes, and I've always felt most confident in the mainboard alone, for good reason.
The Mindcrank list is clever, although I'm skeptical it could be consistent. But keep at it and let us know if you make real progress with it.
R8whackR
WUBGAtraxa Stax-Superfriends *Under Construction*WUBG
Waste Not is great at suppressing their card advantage capabilities.