I personally dont think all in ramp is the way to go in modern. its too easily disrupted by cheap removal. You want to have some control so you can deal with fast creatures.
Here are the issues i see:
1. gargos is a powerhouse card, but you have no way of getting him out early. only utopia sprawl and arbor elf help with ramp for that. you want to get him out asap, preferably turn 3.
2. all your removal cards are big, high casting cards that dont really do much early / mid game. You need cheap and efficient removal and sweepers.
3. a lot of cards that rely on X are subpar here, and heavily rely on unbound flourishing. you want to stick to maximizing X cc hydras.
I think sultai colors are the best for you here.
1. heartless summoning and/or urza's incubator could be interesting in this build since the -1/-1 isnt that much of an issue, and also helps cast gargos early.
2. hydroid krasis is an awesome hydra and can help with card advantage.
3. blue / black has a lot of control spells. black has cheap removal.
I haven't read through the 200 plus posts in the thread but has anyone suggested using Untaidake, the Cloud Keeper in place of Shizo, Death's Storehouse? With an Urborg in play you can get black off of Untaidake and although the 2 life hurts it acts like copy #5 of Eye of Ugin for Ulamog or Kozilek. Just a thought, sorry if its been mentioned.
It comes into play tapped (which of itself i would rule out immediately) and can really only be used to play ulamog when theres no urborg. IMO its way too conditional.
The changes are rather small. I moved the ghost quarters and bojuka bog to the SB because I felt like every time I drew it I wanted/needed another land. This may not be correct, though. Corrupted crossroards helps fix our mana for Thought-knot seer and World Breaker. With Talisman of Dominance, there were instances where I ramped out 3-4 cards early on in a single turn and had no hand. Thus, I feel like the inclusion of Sea Gate Wreckage helps us with the late game when we want to do something with our mana (assuming there isn't an eye of ugin out) AND it helps fix for thought-knot seer. Sire of stagnation is just a pain in the butt to deal with, but may essentially just be a large body late game when lands drops become not needed. The corrupted crossroads MAY be able to fix for world breaker, not sure yet. I think 2 may be too many, but I feel like 1 should be OK. Titan's presence may not be the correct call. Possibly just 3 doom blades is better. BUT, titan's presence helps fuel our processing for Ulamog's Nullifier.
I look forward to your comments/suggestions, thanks!
You should replace a watery grave with an overgrown tomb or breeding pool. This will allow you to get green with your fetches if you need it for world breaker. Also, titans presence really isnt that great. its a horrible top deck if you dont have any creatures in your hand.
Still working on SB. I originally was just going to splash green for worldbreaker, but I've changed my mind. I really like the oracle of mul dayas. They provide pretty good ramp by allowing you to play all those extra lands that are in the deck that can tend to flood your draws and they clear your top deck so you'll never have to worry about getting a land on the draw. mind stones, ancient stirrings, and fetchlands reset the top card to make oracle even better when your top card is not a land and you want to abuse your extra land a turn. Theres 9 cards (4 heartless, 3 warping wail, 2 mind stone) that you can play t2 to get oracle out t3.
Ridiculous play ive done more than once now:
t1 land (IoK or ancient stirrings if you have it)
t2 land heartless
t3 oracle. play eye of ugin and eldrazi temple from hand / top of library. play combination of 2 thought knot seers / reality smashers.
If people wouldn't run Descendant's Path in Slivers or Allies in modern, why would I run it in a deck with half as many creatures that have cast triggers?
descendents' path casts the creatures. thats why its great when we have creatures with great cast effects. Our creatures are also huge, so the effect is much greater. Cheating in 1 ulamog is way better than cheating in 2-3 slivers or elves.
No, because Eldrazi Temple/Eye of Ugin are straight upgrades, and Golgari Signet compared to those gets less mana.
It's easy enough to get Green Mana with Llanowar Wastes and Overgrown Tomb, and then you only get the mana you need.
but in either situation you are still at the same amount of mana for turn 3 assuming you had the same lands in ur opening hand
t1 land
t2 sol land + signet
t3 land = 5 mana
t1 land
t2 sol land + sylvan scrying grabbing another sol land
t3 sol land = 5 mana
:S assuming you didn't start with a sol land in ur hand:
t1 land
t2 land + signet
t3 land = 4 mana
t1 land
t2 land + scrying
t3 sol land = 4 mana
They both have their pros and cons. sylvan scrying gets us the exact card we need, which can be useful. However, signet can mana fix us, even with a blood moon out. if blood moon gets more prevalent, we may want to include artifacts like signet that can get around it until we can play worldbreaker or abrupt decay. I just wish they had a golgari talisman.
I made a list with descendants' path and the deck couldn't really handle more than 2 of them without them getting in the way of things. I ended up replacing them with mind stones. Path was really cute in certain situations but it makes the deck less consistent.
As far as ramp goes, I am brewing something with 3x oracle of mul daya, 2x mind stone, and 3x warping wail for ramp. It's working out fairly nicely. 9 sources to get oracle on turn 3 and she is nuts. With 25 lands, she pretty much guarantees you'll be able to put out an extra land (from your hand or on top of your deck) before she dies, and it forces your opponent to use up a removal spell on her (if they dont kill her, we get so much card advantage) instead of an eldrazi, which really helps us.
What i'm facing is how much discard i should sacrifice for ramp. right now i have 4x inquisition of kozilek, but it's getting in the way of my ramp/removal spells. idk if ramp is more important than the 8 discard spells (4 IoK/TKS).
Whats more important, 4 IoK or 4 ancient stirrings?
Call me crazy but I'm currently trying to also splash red for some sideboard tech, though Kozilek's Return might make it to the main, we'll see. The mana has not been an issue so far, so I'll keep testing. Ultimately I think Crumble to Dust might be worth splashing for if Tron and Eldrazi are super popular.
Actually it might be the right way to go. Flaying Tendrils is very disappointing from what I've played. Ravager, Master and Overseer in Affinity, Bogles fatties, Merfolk and Elves lords, pump spells in Infect... ALL the MUs where we need a cheap wrath they can play around Tendrils. While K's Return can be played early, then set up for a 7-drop to deal 5 to everybody, which should deal with most of the boards but Bogles. The red splash seems just necessary to me.
I believe Ancient Stirrings, Kozilek's Return and World Breaker are the 3 only colored cards that really work 200% for the deck. Artifacts do the job of green ramp / tutors, and black isn't needed after all since we have TKS and Breaker. Grove of the Burnwillows is such an amazing land for an archetype that has bad aggro MUs that it seems obvious there's something to do here. Urborg remains as a combo land with Eye and fetchlands we get out of Sowers, which is completely fine !
I like oracle of mul daya better than explore. It also costs only 1G with heartless summoning. Can cast turn 3 if heartless or mind stone was cast turn 2. It is very fragile, especially with heartless, but you should be able to play 1-2 lands before an opponent can even bolt it (due to priority and lands not going on the stack). If they don't, its even more crazy. It can really help us get to our spells faster mid/late game.
This is all speculation though. I haven't actually played it in the deck to see how it will do.
A colorless turn 1 play is appealing. It lets you play HS or TKS on turn 2, and crack the map later, or just crack the map on turn 2, which is no tempo loss in comparison to Scrying. Scrying is right in the turn-2 slot, already occupied a fair amount of times. Plus, you keep a lot of hands that have actually no green sources in them, so Scrying in a colorless opener is basically a mulligan.
I'm not convinced that destroying the consistency of the deck for an effect we already have with an artifact is worth it.
Fair enough, I don't run Map or Scrying but I was curious.
I run 4 Stirrings, 3 Scrying, and 0 Maps. Why? Because T1 Stirrings is the one of the best plays we have, and lets you keep hands with 0 threats or 0 Eldrazi lands. If you have both of those but no green, then later you get to dig for an answer when the boardstate becomes stale. Its really good.
Yes, Map is better than Scrying for turns 1 and 2, but if we already have a great T1 play then that means Map becomes worse than Scrying for T2. This can also be relevant later when you need to find an extra colorless or Eldrazi land for your top-level threat. The difference between 3cc to play and crack vs. 2cc can mean the difference between fetching and playing your threat or having to wait until the next turn.
If t1 stirrings is the best thing you can do, you should have the mana base to always play it t1 if its in your hand. 8 possible sources (looking at your desklist on p5) that can create green turn 1 is not adequate. The problem is, getting 11+ green mana turn 1 is very hard without abandoning important stuff like ghost quarter or urborgs.
Kozilecs return seems pretty awsome for red, but 3 colours is not this decks strength (I may be wrong)
Simian Spirit Guide - Is a cool idea and makes red easier, have you thought of Talisman of Indulgence for fixing as well?
Maybe faithless looting with Dread Defiler n Barrage Tyrant, could be worth considering.
Yeah I like Kozilek's Return and my only reason to splash red is for playing this and luckily other cards like Simian and Chalice were just appearing and connecting with the whole deck idea. I like spot removals but there are some games that even if we cast Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger they just have more small threats that we can't survive a next turn massive attack.
I will do some tweaks to my current list this weekend (and things will change after oath release online) but i will post here soon (will do more tests). Other thing people had mentioned is Crumble to Dust that is the other reason I like Simian to cast it as soon as turn 3 against tron (or even mirror match) along side sideboard surgical extraction (main deck ghost quarter). I know surgical extraction is not a friend of Chalice but against tron we side out our creature removals and bring in surgical extraction + Crumble to Dust (and cutting some chalices). The same simian ramp works with sideboard Slaughter Games against combos.
EDIT: Thinking better Descendants' Path + Conduit of Ruin combo is very strong. If they don't answer it you will do so many unfair things =).
Descendants' Path...I love it. This is more of a mid game card once our board is a little more established, so i can see putting 2 in the deck. It can make our mid/late game great if we're running out of gas. even if we can't cast a creature, it'll filter through our deck to get to the creatures faster. I think putting in emrakul would be too greedy since we wouldn't really play 4 descendant's path in the deck and it'll be extremely difficult to cast emrakul normally. I'm going to brainstorm how I can use Descendants' Path
@jrankin12 and @mambosong: thanks for your insights.
Yeah Breaker killing a Wurmcoil is very appealing... And I agree having a good 7-drop is great with Conduit. It has Reach too, which is one weakness in the monoB version. If you jam this against Affinity, Tokens and even more Infect, it probably stabilizes enough.
@Jrankin, how do you feel about not running Verdant Catacombs and what about Oblivion Sower ? I'm less and less tempted to play Sower, even though he's good in the big-creature mirrors.
I wish the manabase could work without 4 Catacombs but I cant find another land that works to let us pay turn one Thoughtseize or Ancient Stirrings besides maybe Gemstone Mine since we run 4 Urborg, tomb of Yawgmoth too? The more I test the more I see how good World Breaker is in this shell. Its so easy to get to 7 mana but its a really tight manabase.
This is why in my previous post i said i was not worrying about ancient stirrings. the mana base just isnt there. If you only worry about world breaker the mana base gets a lot more doable. If only tainted wood was modern legal.
Whats everyone's thoughts on punishing fire getting unbanned? With all the ghost quarters and graveyard hate floating around (especially the new eldrazi decks), it seems like unbanning it wouldnt be that bad.
I have been testing this list, and when it works it does crazy stuff. But I also feel like it can just stall out and has no real way of recovering. In the processor version, the cantrips can help you get out of tough spots. I feel like this deck needs something like that. Any thoughts?
I played maybe 30 practice games last night with friends and random internet players, and I agree that something is still missing from this deck, but what are you talking about when you say cantrips? I don't know of any cantrips in <>Bx processors... Do you just mean the processing triggers?
Anyway, the main problem I've been facing is getting stuck at 4 or 5 mana when the critical amount of mana for this deck is 6. 6 mana is crucial because (1) it allows you to cast Conduit and Sower, which makes casting Ulamog the following turn relatively easy and (2) it's roughly when you can start making two plays in a single turn. Often, I have found that I draw only one copy of either Eye, Temple, or Heartless Summoning early on, and then I lose a turn or two of tempo hoping to topdeck a land, which sometimes leads to losses. This got worse when we replaced Kozilek's Channeler with Thought-Knot Seer, but Channeler is just so much worse than either Conduit or Thought-Knot Seer that I can't imagine it's right to bring that card back. So what do we do? I can think of a couple things:
1) Run more Warping Wail and Expedition Map - these cards enable the small mana boost you need to get over the hump when you're stuck.
2) Run less Oblivion Sower. Honestly, I've been thinking about doing this for a while since it has been underperforming without Relic - he gets 0 or 1 land reasonably often in this shell, which is not great, and rate for the body has never been that spectacular. But as far as this discussion is concerned, lowering the number of these by some amount will ease the 6-drop glut. I think I may try cutting this guy altogether just for testing, although it is likely that that is completely wrong.
3) Try to splash green for Ancient Stirrings. I'm not in love with this idea, but it may be necessary for consistency.
If you're running out of gas, you need more ramp. Try playing 3-4x map and 1-2x mind stone. I would cut 1 discard spell and 1 creature removal from your list to fit them in. You have more than plenty removal/discard spells.
expedition is pretty mandatory since its never a dead draw when trying to cast an ulamog as soon as possible (which is the main goal of this deck) since it enables you to cast ulamog 1-2 turns sooner if you don't have the mana.
Here are the issues i see:
1. gargos is a powerhouse card, but you have no way of getting him out early. only utopia sprawl and arbor elf help with ramp for that. you want to get him out asap, preferably turn 3.
2. all your removal cards are big, high casting cards that dont really do much early / mid game. You need cheap and efficient removal and sweepers.
3. a lot of cards that rely on X are subpar here, and heavily rely on unbound flourishing. you want to stick to maximizing X cc hydras.
I think sultai colors are the best for you here.
1. heartless summoning and/or urza's incubator could be interesting in this build since the -1/-1 isnt that much of an issue, and also helps cast gargos early.
2. hydroid krasis is an awesome hydra and can help with card advantage.
3. blue / black has a lot of control spells. black has cheap removal.
It comes into play tapped (which of itself i would rule out immediately) and can really only be used to play ulamog when theres no urborg. IMO its way too conditional.
You should replace a watery grave with an overgrown tomb or breeding pool. This will allow you to get green with your fetches if you need it for world breaker. Also, titans presence really isnt that great. its a horrible top deck if you dont have any creatures in your hand.
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
4 Conduit of Ruin
3 World Breaker
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
3 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Heartless Summoning
Spells
3 Warping Wail
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Ancient stirrings
Artifacts
2 Mind stone
Lands
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Eye of Ugin
1 Miren, the moaning well
2 Overgrown tomb
4 llanowar wastes
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Tendo ice bridge
1 Forest
3 Verdant catacombs
Still working on SB. I originally was just going to splash green for worldbreaker, but I've changed my mind. I really like the oracle of mul dayas. They provide pretty good ramp by allowing you to play all those extra lands that are in the deck that can tend to flood your draws and they clear your top deck so you'll never have to worry about getting a land on the draw. mind stones, ancient stirrings, and fetchlands reset the top card to make oracle even better when your top card is not a land and you want to abuse your extra land a turn. Theres 9 cards (4 heartless, 3 warping wail, 2 mind stone) that you can play t2 to get oracle out t3.
Ridiculous play ive done more than once now:
t1 land (IoK or ancient stirrings if you have it)
t2 land heartless
t3 oracle. play eye of ugin and eldrazi temple from hand / top of library. play combination of 2 thought knot seers / reality smashers.
descendents' path casts the creatures. thats why its great when we have creatures with great cast effects. Our creatures are also huge, so the effect is much greater. Cheating in 1 ulamog is way better than cheating in 2-3 slivers or elves.
They both have their pros and cons. sylvan scrying gets us the exact card we need, which can be useful. However, signet can mana fix us, even with a blood moon out. if blood moon gets more prevalent, we may want to include artifacts like signet that can get around it until we can play worldbreaker or abrupt decay. I just wish they had a golgari talisman.
As far as ramp goes, I am brewing something with 3x oracle of mul daya, 2x mind stone, and 3x warping wail for ramp. It's working out fairly nicely. 9 sources to get oracle on turn 3 and she is nuts. With 25 lands, she pretty much guarantees you'll be able to put out an extra land (from your hand or on top of your deck) before she dies, and it forces your opponent to use up a removal spell on her (if they dont kill her, we get so much card advantage) instead of an eldrazi, which really helps us.
What i'm facing is how much discard i should sacrifice for ramp. right now i have 4x inquisition of kozilek, but it's getting in the way of my ramp/removal spells. idk if ramp is more important than the 8 discard spells (4 IoK/TKS).
Whats more important, 4 IoK or 4 ancient stirrings?
you need black for heartless summoning
This is all speculation though. I haven't actually played it in the deck to see how it will do.
If t1 stirrings is the best thing you can do, you should have the mana base to always play it t1 if its in your hand. 8 possible sources (looking at your desklist on p5) that can create green turn 1 is not adequate. The problem is, getting 11+ green mana turn 1 is very hard without abandoning important stuff like ghost quarter or urborgs.
Descendants' Path...I love it. This is more of a mid game card once our board is a little more established, so i can see putting 2 in the deck. It can make our mid/late game great if we're running out of gas. even if we can't cast a creature, it'll filter through our deck to get to the creatures faster. I think putting in emrakul would be too greedy since we wouldn't really play 4 descendant's path in the deck and it'll be extremely difficult to cast emrakul normally. I'm going to brainstorm how I can use Descendants' Path
This is why in my previous post i said i was not worrying about ancient stirrings. the mana base just isnt there. If you only worry about world breaker the mana base gets a lot more doable. If only tainted wood was modern legal.
If you're running out of gas, you need more ramp. Try playing 3-4x map and 1-2x mind stone. I would cut 1 discard spell and 1 creature removal from your list to fit them in. You have more than plenty removal/discard spells.