Skaab is actually not bad... ive been testing him for a while against removal heavy decks as a 2 of in my sideboard. You pretty much hit the nail on the head Cody_x. He's not even worth thoughtseizing! lol He really is a headache for UWR unless they find a pte and jund hates him. Ive even tried him against zoo recently and he is a champ against hyper agrro decks... especially off aether vial.
Happy sigg got dismissed a while back because of the mana requirements since we were running 19 lands but hmmm... looking at him now in combination with kira... you could be on to something. Or maybe its just too janky lol. Ill try him when im done with shorestalker!
I think im gonna switch back to trickster as well... my meta is full of fetches. uwr, jund, pod, zoo... ugh, has to be at least worth trying.
Random:
Sometimes i miss the old Lord.deck days before master of waves and thassa, where everything was a lord, even the bad one merfolk soverign and the curve topped out at 3. It feels like we won more games then, based on sheer power alone. Could it be that MOW is sideboard material.
I run a UW list... with 4 Merrow Reejery and i find lategame 1drops like trickster or cursecatcher let me tap down a blocker or untap land/vial. That's not so bad now is it?
Trickster got out of hand very often before lords showed up while i was testing because this is modern... fetches are everywhere... shuffle effects are everywhere. He also makes path to exile somewhat better since quite often ppl will not go for that land. Just saying... but CC is nice to have if you're worried about combo in your meta. I once ran a split of both in a fish heavy deck that did well against kikipod and UWR, just too much fish for them to handle. Of course there was more room since MOW nor Thassa had been released yet.
IMHO, UW is better (also what I play] however, my perceived pros and cons
UW Pros sygg, river guide sejiri merfolk path to exile
White also offers more sideboard options, kataki, rip, harms way, etc
Most of my sideboard is white. Remov is lacking in blue, and PtE is the best removal in the format.
UW cons
Sygg costs mana
Path is counter productive to spreading seas
More expensive mana, more likely to be mana/color screwed
UR pros
Bolt/damage to the face
No direct downside to removal spells
Fetch lands
UR cons
Wants to play tempo (which seems to worse)
Bolts don't kill everything (goyf)
Fetches cost life.
Tbh, if you wanted a splash, black might be better than red, with 1 mana discard, smother/go for the throat
You could go esper fish too, with black and white.
Right now i'm testing UWR Fish and its not optimal but its performing pretty well. There is one little unexpected surprise that gets me a priceless look from opponents...
As far as Spreading Seas, I wasn't convinced when I started putting the deck together, and in fact the only reason I even put them in the deck was because the shop was out of Aquitect's Will. But I just can't argue with the results, that card wins me so many games. Out of all the decks I've played against, the only one where it didn't do anything was against R/U Kiki combo. Other than that deck, Affinity, and Tron, everything else is 3 color. Esper, America, Living End, Infect, all get shut down easily. And as for Affinity and Tron, removing Blinkmoth/Inkmoth flyers makes a huge difference, and obviously busting up Urzatron is a thing. In fact, at this point I don't even consider them Islandwalk enablers, they're straight up land disruption cards, and I'm almost always happy to see one in my opening hand. Of course, this may change if the meta starts shifting away from super greedy Shockland/Fetch based mana bases for whatever reason, but right now they just work.
Whats even more important is that its a cantrip along with Silvergill adept... they draw us cards and provide gas. Im not going to below 3 lol...
I play 2 kira main... I dont like happy sig's mana intensiveness but i cant deny his casting cost and islandwalk make me want to play him. thing is... with kira i just drop her n keep swinging lol.
i have a FNM tonight and im finally gonna get to test a singleton or dual Mirrorweave ill report in later.
I remember decimating a Mono B discard once... but that was the old Demigod red with hellsparks and lavaman mainboard. What ever happened to those days... sigh.
The decks have effectively merged at this point. As demonstrated by the emptiness of the rdw thread, and the high creature count in many burn decks. The thing is that when they were split, they had different game plans. rdw used cards like figures. But now the game plans are effectively the same of efficiency and mass bolts.
Besides, even with boros charm, you still have a lot of open slots...if you remove the outdated tech of things like magmajet and searing blaze.
Ive never liked magma jet... but I cant agree with you that searing Blaze is outdated tech... Not in a world where card advantage is king. Im seeing more and more decklist running 4 MB. Personally i run 8 fetches and 3 main.
I miss the creature heavy days where RDW had a lategame... im gonna go test a build with hellriders at my top end and see if that strategy can still work... i believe it can.
Pretty sure RDW got greedy for speed, forgot who it was... forgot its gameplan and became burn. Gone are the days where people werent sure if to play leyline of sanctity because it was useless against RDW.
I was the guy playing the deck, if you guys have any questions. I faced the UWR geist deck twice, and found the matchup extremely favourable actually. I was on the draw all 4 games and still felt like I had my opponent on the backfoot the entire time. Faced affinity twice, which is obviously heavily in our favour. Also faced jund twice, winning in 3 both matches. Matchup depends heavily on them getting a few cards (finks, inquisition).
Also faced a few durdly do-nothing decks, all of which seemed heavily in my favour as well. Only match loss was against twin, the deck just seems to have so much redundancy. In the second game against him I killed two sets worth of combo, and he just had the third to win. Was pretty brutal.
I really liked the maindeck, it seems that you have so many cards that (will on average at least) do 4 damage (Charm, Vexing Devil, Goblin Guide, Lavamancer) that it's just extremely easy to burn people out. I might make a few changes to the sideboard, maybe having a couple extra cards for the jund matchup. The Back to Natures were for the enchantment deck, which I knew at least one person would be playing and is normally our worst matchup.
-What are your thoughts on RBW burn? especially for Bump as an additional bolt. and access to Rakdos charm and maybe surgical extraction Post SB?
- Ive always run 3 paths SB LOL... gets rid of Iona, Kiki, protection from red critters, overgrown goyfs... its like a super pesticide lol. Plus i love the look of terror when i cast a pte from what my opponent expected to be mono red...:cool2:
I also play burn, and yes they run creatures, and yes they still frequently scoop to a t0 leyline. Chalice of the Void hurts even more, however, and I tend to drop both, if I can. If you play burn and you don't get pissed when you see a t0 leyline, you're absolutely lying to yourself. Your gameplan just got a heck of a lot slower and more complicated than it should be, and you're probably going to lose against midrange.
UMMM.... i also play burn... and the white in my SB says ive never scooped to a leyline. Keening apparition begs to differ. As does erase. Leyline of sanctity itself is no longer safe.
Also: Imagine the horror in people eyes when i path to exile their kor firewalker... then proceed to burn them out (insert evil laugh here)
Ever since I first started playing modern Death and Taxes a little over a year ago, I've been trying to make Suppression Field work. I've been a fan of the card since the old Extended GW Haterator days.
Unfortunately, the Ghost Quarter/Arbiter interaction is just too powerful to give up. You can definitely build a list designed to use Suppression Field (and I've built several), but there's just no way that I've found to make it remotely competitive.
It is ridiculously fun to play, though!
Back in the old days the trick was to run no activated abilities whatsoever... just vanilla hatebears beaters, suppression field, and damping matrix... oh and knight of the holy nimbus lol.caus even if he dies they just wasted a turn syncing their mana into killing a 2drop.:D
Tbh, counterspells are only ok in Merfolk. If a good viable zero mana counter spell was available, then it should be run.
Also, kataki, war's wage can destroy affinity when they have to really decide what to keep. (Be careful for ink moths afterwards, however) it makes cranial plating quite a bit worse.
I've never been a fan of remand, it's too temporary, but sometimes ok.
I would not play fae~folk, it seems better to just play NLU or straight up faeries.
Personally faerie conclave is bad.
It ETBT, it adds only blue, and its 2 mana plus itself (3 mana) for 2 damage that dies to any flying blocker.
Muta is good because its 2 mana for 2 damage that synergizes with lord effects.
Fun Fact: "fishes" is an actual word
I switched to aggro fish caus the getting the counter package right was pissing me off. LOL. Recently i saw Unified will... since i skipped the eldrazi block. what do you guys think about it? too narrow?
And Deprive Vs Familiars ruse? I imagine Ruse wins because we can bounce an adept to draw/untap/tap with reejery. Do we really want to pick up the land from deprive? unless its later in the game maybe... where we're not dropping any...
Just my opinion(which is far from gospel) but i think you shud max out on VD since he shines on 2nd turn right behind Guide. Ive usually dealt 11 damage by the end of turn 2 LOL. Heck 2 VD on 2nd turn is like mass genocide... But be warned... this will often result in people hating you out next tournament lol. Thats why i also play aggro merfolk, Aggro DnT and Boros!:trolo:
I also dont like earthquake, its more RDW-ish but in burn since we seldom get to 4 land... so might as well be flamebreak (3 damage to the battlefield for RRR) or if ur in a control heavy meta like i am volcanic fallout(2 damage uncounterable to the battlefield for 1RR). Fallout destroys Geist of St Traft btw.
Just noticed... On the land topic... how is 3 Shard volley working out on 17 land? Has this even let u cast earthquake? and for how much?
My thoughts:
-2 earthquake
-1 Shard volley
- 2 ash zealot(maybe... but i like her so much )
upon further consideration... Id look into replacing hellspark with ash zealots to avoid feeding deathrite shaman tho... or if u dont then replace the shard volleys with searing blaze so you can 2 for 1 them. Opposing DRS are to be shot on site!:mob:
EDIT: Smash to smitherines is a great 2 for 1 against afinity. Lets you take out key pieces while staying aggressive. There's also shattering spree which is nuts against them lol but less aggressive.
Random:
Sometimes i miss the old Lord.deck days before master of waves and thassa, where everything was a lord, even the bad one merfolk soverign and the curve topped out at 3. It feels like we won more games then, based on sheer power alone. Could it be that MOW is sideboard material.
Trickster got out of hand very often before lords showed up while i was testing because this is modern... fetches are everywhere... shuffle effects are everywhere. He also makes path to exile somewhat better since quite often ppl will not go for that land. Just saying... but CC is nice to have if you're worried about combo in your meta. I once ran a split of both in a fish heavy deck that did well against kikipod and UWR, just too much fish for them to handle. Of course there was more room since MOW nor Thassa had been released yet.
Right now i'm testing UWR Fish and its not optimal but its performing pretty well. There is one little unexpected surprise that gets me a priceless look from opponents...
I replaced merfolk soverign with Taurean Mauler. What say you gentlemen? its an islandwalknig goyf lol...
Whats even more important is that its a cantrip along with Silvergill adept... they draw us cards and provide gas. Im not going to below 3 lol...
I play 2 kira main... I dont like happy sig's mana intensiveness but i cant deny his casting cost and islandwalk make me want to play him. thing is... with kira i just drop her n keep swinging lol.
i have a FNM tonight and im finally gonna get to test a singleton or dual Mirrorweave ill report in later.
Ive never liked magma jet... but I cant agree with you that searing Blaze is outdated tech... Not in a world where card advantage is king. Im seeing more and more decklist running 4 MB. Personally i run 8 fetches and 3 main.
I miss the creature heavy days where RDW had a lategame... im gonna go test a build with hellriders at my top end and see if that strategy can still work... i believe it can.
Pretty sure RDW got greedy for speed, forgot who it was... forgot its gameplan and became burn. Gone are the days where people werent sure if to play leyline of sanctity because it was useless against RDW.
-What are your thoughts on RBW burn? especially for Bump as an additional bolt. and access to Rakdos charm and maybe surgical extraction Post SB?
- Ive always run 3 paths SB LOL... gets rid of Iona, Kiki, protection from red critters, overgrown goyfs... its like a super pesticide lol. Plus i love the look of terror when i cast a pte from what my opponent expected to be mono red...:cool2:
UMMM.... i also play burn... and the white in my SB says ive never scooped to a leyline. Keening apparition begs to differ. As does erase. Leyline of sanctity itself is no longer safe.
Also: Imagine the horror in people eyes when i path to exile their kor firewalker... then proceed to burn them out (insert evil laugh here)
Back in the old days the trick was to run no activated abilities whatsoever... just vanilla hatebears beaters, suppression field, and damping matrix... oh and knight of the holy nimbus lol.caus even if he dies they just wasted a turn syncing their mana into killing a 2drop.:D
I switched to aggro fish caus the getting the counter package right was pissing me off. LOL. Recently i saw Unified will... since i skipped the eldrazi block. what do you guys think about it? too narrow?
And Deprive Vs Familiars ruse? I imagine Ruse wins because we can bounce an adept to draw/untap/tap with reejery. Do we really want to pick up the land from deprive? unless its later in the game maybe... where we're not dropping any...
Just my opinion(which is far from gospel) but i think you shud max out on VD since he shines on 2nd turn right behind Guide. Ive usually dealt 11 damage by the end of turn 2 LOL. Heck 2 VD on 2nd turn is like mass genocide... But be warned... this will often result in people hating you out next tournament
I also dont like earthquake, its more RDW-ish but in burn since we seldom get to 4 land... so might as well be flamebreak (3 damage to the battlefield for RRR) or if ur in a control heavy meta like i am volcanic fallout(2 damage uncounterable to the battlefield for 1RR). Fallout destroys Geist of St Traft btw.
Just noticed... On the land topic... how is 3 Shard volley working out on 17 land? Has this even let u cast earthquake? and for how much?
My thoughts:
-2 earthquake
-1 Shard volley
- 2 ash zealot(maybe... but i like her so much
+ 2 vexing devil
+1 gemstone mine
+2 flamebreak/fallout
upon further consideration... Id look into replacing hellspark with ash zealots to avoid feeding deathrite shaman tho... or if u dont then replace the shard volleys with searing blaze so you can 2 for 1 them. Opposing DRS are to be shot on site!:mob:
EDIT: Smash to smitherines is a great 2 for 1 against afinity. Lets you take out key pieces while staying aggressive. There's also shattering spree which is nuts against them lol but less aggressive.
Yup... waiting patiently for this so i can go crazy and hopefully get some good stuff.