Hey guys so check out this list I made that is kind of like the good old delver decks from last year's standard, plopping a threat on the field and then making sure it never leaves. The deck, through testing has two primary lines of play.
1. A) play a delver
B ) Manipulate deck to trigger a flip
C) Protect against other threats and removal via bounce and counter
or
2. A) drop Pyromancer
B ) Play draw go
C) land a bushwacker
Any advice is much appreciated!
EDIT: Here is the list, slightly edited after more playtesting!
I'd run 2 Vendilion Clique over the 2 Bushwackers and 1 Spell Snare over the Spell Pierce. Pyroclasms will hit pretty hard and negating that is obviously pretty good. For your lands you'll likely want the full 8 fetches to minimize the odds of flooding out.
If I were building the SB I'd run something like
3 Molten Rain/Blood Moon
2 Pyroclasm
3 Counterflux
2 Batterskull
2 Pithing Needle
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Vendilion Clique
I love it when people have the same idea as i am... anyway.
Mizzium skin might be a good MB. i also agree at MB cliques. it protects your pyromancer. and another win condition.
is there any hard counter than remand? i think you might wanna use cryptic command in this deck in place of mana leak.
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A team should be as happy as a meal - TEAM HAPPYMEAL
EDH - UWGrand Arbiter Agustin IV UBW Oloro, Ageless Ascetic Modern - Mono U tron / Polymorph / NFTW (ninja for the win)GR tronGR
Buy All the planeswalkers!!!
Buy All the Dual Lands!!!
Buy All the fetches!
Create tons of EDH Decks!!!
Eat Nothing but Oats!! (LOL, not true)
Train MMA!!!
Marry My girlfriend!!!
Get her Pregnant only Once!
Teach my Son/Daughter Sports and magic cards!!!
Continue my legacy son!!!/Daughter!!
(I also posted most of this in your deck creation thread)
The goblin seems like a win-more kind of card to me. Once you're dominating the board, putting the game away shouldn't be hard. If you like him, keep an eye on whether he can help you come back from being down or if he's only the straw that breaks the camel's back.
I've been playing a similar deck and Vendilion Clique is invaluable against combo and man lands are a beast at putting on a clock if the other creatures are all dying. Mutavault, Ghitu Encampment, and Faerie Conclave are all great, quick lands you could throw in here.
To respond to some of the above posts, this should probably be a tempo deck. You'll want a low curve and conditional counters should be plenty to get control of the board with pyro or stall enough for delver to do his thing.
Make sure the deck can function whether or not you stick a Young Pyromancer and still keep an aggressive clock.
Otherwise, it looks like a good start.
Well, the delver is the other main win condition haha. And I think I'm going to cut down 1 bushwacker, but in the games I drew him, it's almost an instant win. When people aren't expecting a singleton bushwacker, they won't be prepared for you to alpha strike with an army of 2/1's. I will try to find another spot for a clique though. Also, the other counter is mana leak due to the fact that getting to 4 mana every game is unrealistic with the amount of lands played. Mana leak gets what the deck needs done 95% of the time for two mana. But thanks to everyone for the comments! I'm gonna tinker my list and if anyone wants to try the list I posted feel free and tell me how it goes!
Jeff Hoogland's UR delver seems like an upgrade of the Faerie deck. You trade the more clunky faeries for more efficient beaters like Delver and adding the burn as reach and removal. Red also gives you a lot more sideboard tech.
The YP variant runs more cantrips to abuse the tokens. At first comparaison, Pyromancer seems gimmicky. The deck will be great when it sticks but your spells are more dependant on it (throwing around the cantrips with no pyromancer in play seems like a big tempo loss for a deck that tries to win asap) That said, maybe running 1-2 Talrand might help you have 6 effect of that kind? I feel like holding your spells until turn 5 for talrand only to see him die the turn you cast it is a great way to lose the game though.
I liked the addition of YP in storm. It gives an aggro edge to the deck. You can attack slower decks while shaping your hand. I guess you can chump block the other aggro decks too giving you more time to assemble the perfect hand to combo. I'm not sure how it is compared to Pyromancer ascension but from what I saw I thought it was interesting. From there, I also thought about delver deck that runs many cantrips like storm. Even manamorphose could be interesting. I think the issue is, like I said, if you're not shaping your combo hand like storm does and if you don't have YP in play, having too many cantrips seem pretty bad compared to having more burn/counter/snapcasters/spellstutter sprite in the deck.
Also a note on OP's sideboard. I don't understand Jace Beleren (isn't think twice better?) and Pyroclasm seems like it can often be a dead card when you have more creatures on board.
I'm also wondering if these decks could benefit from a 3rd color. Green for Goyf.. or white for Geist at the top of the curve.. black for thoughtseize or bob? These 3 options all have their primer here. I guess UR has blood moon but isn't there more ways to abuse the 2 colors? What about Vedalken Shackles? Is it too slow?
The YP variant runs more cantrips to abuse the tokens. At first comparaison, Pyromancer seems gimmicky. The deck will be great when it sticks but your spells are more dependant on it (throwing around the cantrips with no pyromancer in play seems like a big tempo loss for a deck that tries to win asap) That said, maybe running 1-2 Talrand might help you have 6 effect of that kind? I feel like holding your spells until turn 5 for talrand only to see him die the turn you cast it is a great way to lose the game though.
The idea is that the deck does just about as well as the Hoogland UR fae deck without YP, then is amazing with YP on board.
I would never build a deck solely around one mechanic. So, I would have at the most the three gitaxian probes he put in there as the gimmicky cards instead of people who are sayign to throw in all the free spells you can, which would make a really fragile, weak deck. Other than the probes, it plays out exactly like any other tempo deck would. I'm not a fan of talrand as he costs 4, which is a ton for a modern tempo deck.
I am very interested to see if one of the following could do well:
Grixis:Bob, Stronger Removal, Discard, Snappy, YP
RUG: Goyf, Snappy, YP (<===Probaby the most stable manabase of the three and could probably still utilize Blood Moon, but would lose the speed of having man-lands vs non-blood moon matchups)
WUR: Path, Helix, (maybe GoST), Snappy, YP
IMO, any deck playing YP should play just like a delver. Land it, protect it, profit.
I found myself casting bob on turn 2 over YP. It's not the best YP shell but it's not completely unplayable, i'm not willing to abandon it yet. But I do want to try some other YP builds to get other ideas.
I probably wouldn't go for a grixis build as the mana is just not there, especially for a tempo-ish deck. You can't play shards unless you're playing mana elfs. You really need your fetches to be able to get any shock.
YP is a terrible top deck and pretty bad if you're playing situational spells like counters. If you don't play enough cheap spells YP is pretty bad. If I were to build a UR version I'd play more cantrips. So you can go turn 2 YP into turn 3 make 2 tokens. You really want cards that are good on their own. Bolting someone in the face to make a 1/1 isn't that great of a deal. But I will try Jeff's version and a modified version of the OP.
I found myself casting bob on turn 2 over YP. It's not the best YP shell but it's not completely unplayable, i'm not willing to abandon it yet. But I do want to try some other YP builds to get other ideas.
I probably wouldn't go for a grixis build as the mana is just not there, especially for a tempo-ish deck. You can't play shards unless you're playing mana elfs. You really need your fetches to be able to get any shock.
YP is a terrible top deck and pretty bad if you're playing situational spells like counters. If you don't play enough cheap spells YP is pretty bad. If I were to build a UR version I'd play more cantrips. So you can go turn 2 YP into turn 3 make 2 tokens. You really want cards that are good on their own. Bolting someone in the face to make a 1/1 isn't that great of a deal. But I will try Jeff's version and a modified version of the OP.
Mana Leaking with Pyromancer is actually pretty insane, but yes, you need 8 cantrips for it to be consistant enough. The creature is bloody insane though, will share my deck as soon as it's completely balanced
This is the revised list I made, and let me tell you, the Isochron can flat out win games if you put something like a remand or mana leak on it. Izzet charm is also pretty nice every turn, too
they make a fast clock, and dont die to pyroclasms, for the most part.
Mainly because blood moon is such a strong sideboard card, and it loses some of it's power if you're playing 3 color :/ believe me, it would be cool, but blood moon just makes some matchups auto wins
it was just an option. im aware how good the moon is, however i feel, just having to add 1 forest, and possibly a stomping ground, would still allow for it.
it was just an option. im aware how good the moon is, however i feel, just having to add 1 forest, and possibly a stomping ground, would still allow for it.
edit and some mistys.
Yeah dude and thanks for the idea! I will have to test it a little bit. Feel free to do the same!
I agree, ARod. The deck doesn't need a ton of cantrips. In fact, it is worse that way.
It's tempo not so much combo. You just want to land a threat and have the rest of your cards clear the way and protect it.
More cantrips would be good if we had any decent ones, but alas, we don't.
As long as you're not running any man-lands, I don't think three colors would stretch you much in these colors. All you'd need to do is get your basic forest and an island or two as the non-basics will become mountains.
I think the UR deck is a lot like a faster, more stable RUG delver from last year.
The redundancy is what makes me absolutely love playing this UR pyro deck.
I play 10 counters, 10 removal, 7ish cantrips (counting electrolyze), and my 14 creatures.
I agree, ARod. The deck doesn't need a ton of cantrips. In fact, it is worse that way.
It's tempo not so much combo. You just want to land a threat and have the rest of your cards clear the way and protect it.
More cantrips would be good if we had any decent ones, but alas, we don't.
As long as you're not running any man-lands, I don't think three colors would stretch you much in these colors. All you'd need to do is get your basic forest and an island or two as the non-basics will become mountains.
I think the UR deck is a lot like a faster, more stable RUG delver from last year.
The redundancy is what makes me absolutely love playing this UR pyro deck.
I play 10 counters, 10 removal, 7ish cantrips (counting electrolyze), and my 14 creatures.
Hecks yeah! haha. Have you tried a single Bushwacker? He can make some insane alpha strikes lethal on turn four or five! It can also make you go into a sort of combo deck at points, which has saved me from death multiple times
I'll have to try out the one-of Bushwacker. I can't see too much of a downside (only one less potential counter/burn spell).
ARod, try out adding some man-lands if you haven't.
Like you said in the original post regarding paths to victory:
Plan A
Delver, Flip, Protect
Plan B
Pyro, Protect, Profit
and the last one that's possibly most important
Plan C
Snappy/Manland beatdown, which is especially important when the opponent has a lot of efficient removal (WUR) or has ways to kill your threats that can't be countered (Abrupt Decay in BGx). This way usually means that you have a total of at least 16 threats (maybe more if the deck runs Cliques).
In matches where we don't want blood moon in and in game one of other matches, manlands do work and add a another profitable aspect to only running two colors.
4 Steam Vents
4 Scalding Tarn
4 sulfur falls
3 Mountain
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Delver of Secrets/Insectile Aberration
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 Goblin Bushwhacker
1 Spell Snare
1 Spell Pierce
4 Remand
2 Vapor Snag
4 Serum Visions
2 Electrolyze
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Izzet Charm
4 Mana Leak
3 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flashfreeze
2 Pyroclasm
1 Jace Beleren
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Vapor Snag
1 Izzet Charm
Hey guys so check out this list I made that is kind of like the good old delver decks from last year's standard, plopping a threat on the field and then making sure it never leaves. The deck, through testing has two primary lines of play.
1. A) play a delver
B ) Manipulate deck to trigger a flip
C) Protect against other threats and removal via bounce and counter
or
2. A) drop Pyromancer
B ) Play draw go
C) land a bushwacker
Any advice is much appreciated!
EDIT: Here is the list, slightly edited after more playtesting!
5 Island
4 Steam Vents
4 Scalding Tarn
4 sulfur falls
3 Mountain
Creatures
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Delver of Secrets/Insectile Aberration
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Goblin Bushwhacker
Instants/Sorceries
3 Gitaxian Probe
1 Spell Snare
1 Spell Pierce
4 Remand
2 Vapor Snag
4 Serum Visions
2 Electrolyze
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Izzet Charm
4 Mana Leak
1 Telling Time
1 Isochron Scepter
3 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flashfreeze
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Vapor Snag
1 Izzet Charm
3 Blood Moon
If I were building the SB I'd run something like
3 Molten Rain/Blood Moon
2 Pyroclasm
3 Counterflux
2 Batterskull
2 Pithing Needle
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Vendilion Clique
XXXX
Modern
URTwinRU R.I.P.
EDH
WUGRoon of the Hidden RealmWUG
I also agree that clique would be better than bushwacker.
Mizzium skin might be a good MB. i also agree at MB cliques. it protects your pyromancer. and another win condition.
is there any hard counter than remand? i think you might wanna use cryptic command in this deck in place of mana leak.
EDH - UWGrand Arbiter Agustin IV
UBW Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
Modern - Mono U tron / Polymorph / NFTW (ninja for the win)GR tron GR
Buy All the Dual Lands!!!
Buy All the fetches!
Create tons of EDH Decks!!!
Eat Nothing but Oats!! (LOL, not true)
Train MMA!!!
Marry My girlfriend!!!
Get her Pregnant only Once!
Teach my Son/Daughter Sports and magic cards!!!
Continue my legacy son!!!/Daughter!!
The goblin seems like a win-more kind of card to me. Once you're dominating the board, putting the game away shouldn't be hard. If you like him, keep an eye on whether he can help you come back from being down or if he's only the straw that breaks the camel's back.
I've been playing a similar deck and Vendilion Clique is invaluable against combo and man lands are a beast at putting on a clock if the other creatures are all dying. Mutavault, Ghitu Encampment, and Faerie Conclave are all great, quick lands you could throw in here.
To respond to some of the above posts, this should probably be a tempo deck. You'll want a low curve and conditional counters should be plenty to get control of the board with pyro or stall enough for delver to do his thing.
Make sure the deck can function whether or not you stick a Young Pyromancer and still keep an aggressive clock.
Otherwise, it looks like a good start.
I've been using and tweaking his take on throwing Young Pyromancer into here and it's been great. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ur-tempo-02-07-13-1/
The primer is way more important than the decklist, but in combination should point this deck in the right direction.
The YP variant runs more cantrips to abuse the tokens. At first comparaison, Pyromancer seems gimmicky. The deck will be great when it sticks but your spells are more dependant on it (throwing around the cantrips with no pyromancer in play seems like a big tempo loss for a deck that tries to win asap) That said, maybe running 1-2 Talrand might help you have 6 effect of that kind? I feel like holding your spells until turn 5 for talrand only to see him die the turn you cast it is a great way to lose the game though.
I liked the addition of YP in storm. It gives an aggro edge to the deck. You can attack slower decks while shaping your hand. I guess you can chump block the other aggro decks too giving you more time to assemble the perfect hand to combo. I'm not sure how it is compared to Pyromancer ascension but from what I saw I thought it was interesting. From there, I also thought about delver deck that runs many cantrips like storm. Even manamorphose could be interesting. I think the issue is, like I said, if you're not shaping your combo hand like storm does and if you don't have YP in play, having too many cantrips seem pretty bad compared to having more burn/counter/snapcasters/spellstutter sprite in the deck.
Also a note on OP's sideboard. I don't understand Jace Beleren (isn't think twice better?) and Pyroclasm seems like it can often be a dead card when you have more creatures on board.
I'm also wondering if these decks could benefit from a 3rd color. Green for Goyf.. or white for Geist at the top of the curve.. black for thoughtseize or bob? These 3 options all have their primer here. I guess UR has blood moon but isn't there more ways to abuse the 2 colors? What about Vedalken Shackles? Is it too slow?
The idea is that the deck does just about as well as the Hoogland UR fae deck without YP, then is amazing with YP on board.
I would never build a deck solely around one mechanic. So, I would have at the most the three gitaxian probes he put in there as the gimmicky cards instead of people who are sayign to throw in all the free spells you can, which would make a really fragile, weak deck. Other than the probes, it plays out exactly like any other tempo deck would. I'm not a fan of talrand as he costs 4, which is a ton for a modern tempo deck.
I am very interested to see if one of the following could do well:
Grixis:Bob, Stronger Removal, Discard, Snappy, YP
RUG: Goyf, Snappy, YP (<===Probaby the most stable manabase of the three and could probably still utilize Blood Moon, but would lose the speed of having man-lands vs non-blood moon matchups)
WUR: Path, Helix, (maybe GoST), Snappy, YP
IMO, any deck playing YP should play just like a delver. Land it, protect it, profit.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=526191
I found myself casting bob on turn 2 over YP. It's not the best YP shell but it's not completely unplayable, i'm not willing to abandon it yet. But I do want to try some other YP builds to get other ideas.
I probably wouldn't go for a grixis build as the mana is just not there, especially for a tempo-ish deck. You can't play shards unless you're playing mana elfs. You really need your fetches to be able to get any shock.
YP is a terrible top deck and pretty bad if you're playing situational spells like counters. If you don't play enough cheap spells YP is pretty bad. If I were to build a UR version I'd play more cantrips. So you can go turn 2 YP into turn 3 make 2 tokens. You really want cards that are good on their own. Bolting someone in the face to make a 1/1 isn't that great of a deal. But I will try Jeff's version and a modified version of the OP.
Mana Leaking with Pyromancer is actually pretty insane, but yes, you need 8 cantrips for it to be consistant enough. The creature is bloody insane though, will share my deck as soon as it's completely balanced
5 Island
4 Steam Vents
4 Scalding Tarn
4 sulfur falls
3 Mountain
Creatures
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Delver of Secrets/Insectile Aberration
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Goblin Bushwhacker
Instants/Sorceries
3 Gitaxian Probe
1 Spell Snare
1 Spell Pierce
4 Remand
2 Vapor Snag
4 Serum Visions
2 Electrolyze
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Izzet Charm
4 Mana Leak
1 Telling Time
1 Isochron Scepter
3 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flashfreeze
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Vapor Snag
1 Izzet Charm
3 Blood Moon
This is the revised list I made, and let me tell you, the Isochron can flat out win games if you put something like a remand or mana leak on it. Izzet charm is also pretty nice every turn, too
they make a fast clock, and dont die to pyroclasms, for the most part.
Mainly because blood moon is such a strong sideboard card, and it loses some of it's power if you're playing 3 color :/ believe me, it would be cool, but blood moon just makes some matchups auto wins
edit and some mistys.
Yeah dude and thanks for the idea! I will have to test it a little bit. Feel free to do the same!
It's tempo not so much combo. You just want to land a threat and have the rest of your cards clear the way and protect it.
More cantrips would be good if we had any decent ones, but alas, we don't.
As long as you're not running any man-lands, I don't think three colors would stretch you much in these colors. All you'd need to do is get your basic forest and an island or two as the non-basics will become mountains.
I think the UR deck is a lot like a faster, more stable RUG delver from last year.
The redundancy is what makes me absolutely love playing this UR pyro deck.
I play 10 counters, 10 removal, 7ish cantrips (counting electrolyze), and my 14 creatures.
Hecks yeah! haha. Have you tried a single Bushwacker? He can make some insane alpha strikes lethal on turn four or five! It can also make you go into a sort of combo deck at points, which has saved me from death multiple times
ARod, try out adding some man-lands if you haven't.
Like you said in the original post regarding paths to victory:
Plan A
Delver, Flip, Protect
Plan B
Pyro, Protect, Profit
and the last one that's possibly most important
Plan C
Snappy/Manland beatdown, which is especially important when the opponent has a lot of efficient removal (WUR) or has ways to kill your threats that can't be countered (Abrupt Decay in BGx). This way usually means that you have a total of at least 16 threats (maybe more if the deck runs Cliques).
In matches where we don't want blood moon in and in game one of other matches, manlands do work and add a another profitable aspect to only running two colors.