Kiki Pod has never really been as strong as Melira Pod. It was flavour of the month for a while but that's about it.
The biggest thing was UWR rising to dominance. You see, Kiki Pod, at least the second iteration of it that I played, banked really hard on the combo happening. It didn't play generally good creatures, it was just reliant on the combo. The original one had Kitchen Finks, but then CFB came along and said "Finks really doesn't do anything", and they were right. You never won from Finks, it was just a good card for Pod. So they removed it and added in cards like Deceiver Exarch and Phantasmal Image. And then you had this glass-cannon combo deck that required two pieces. It was considerably hard to pull off against a deck like UWR with tons of removal for you.
Eventually Kiki Pod just started fading back into obscurity. It's still a fine deck and has some success here and there but it's not at the level Melira Pod is. It doesn't have all the same options and isn't as flexible. Yeah, more recent versions play cards like Finks and Redcap to trend away from the combo version, but it's still heavily reliant on the combo happening.
Right now I think it's like tier 1.5. I think Affinity, Melira Pod, Jund, BG Rock, Twin, and UWR are all better than it. Now you're deciding to play a deck that you accept is worse than others and realize you should just play a better deck. If you really enjoy the deck and don't want to play at the PT it's fine, but otherwise I'd recommend to play something else.
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- darksteel88
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Member for 12 years, 1 month, and 27 days
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Nov 24, 2013
darksteel88 posted a message on Scrolls is brokenSo after they reset the Scrolls ranking I have steadily been going up. I've only lost a couple of games, and honestly, the majority of the games you lose are to poor draws on your part.Posted in: darksteel88 Blog
I remember one game in particular that I lost, I had almost no Growth and it was stupid. When I scooped I'd played probably one Growth card the entire game. Yeah. Those are the games you lose, when the RNG just screws you over and you draw the wrong cards. His deck was also well suited to beat me, being really fast aggro and having haste creatures. Funny enough though, we played each other again next game and I crushed him.
I've gotten up to a 1600 rating now and I'm in the top 50. Here's a pic for proof: http://i.imgur.com/xPzizJT.jpg
I have a feeling that if I'm playing against actual Scrolls pros, the deck will flop on itself. But as the ratings fluctuate over the next few days/weeks and correct themselves, the deck still seems good.
Mojan has talked about indirectly nerfing this deck, by limiting the number of cards you can draw in a turn. I really hope they don't, I like playing with myself (pun intended). It makes people mad that I don't interact with them, and that's, well, delicious. Let me feast on your delicious tears as you cry to mom about how I beat you fair and square.
I think some number of Pothers is potentially good. Someone cast Binding Root on my Golem, making it so it can't move. That was annoying as hell. But I suppose it's not back breaking. Pothers let me win faster but in reality, every non-Growth deck should have adequate answers to kill it on any given turn, meaning it won't live anyways. I do still think that I want to try some other cards out though.
Rigged seems good. I can rig any structure and trade their unit for it, stemming the early game. I'm not sure how good it makes things or whatnot but it doesn't seem awful. It costs only 1 and it does everything I need early game.
I'm also not convinced with Decimation. I rarely cast it for the -1 ability, only to kill an idol. Sometimes I get value in that it kills the row so my Golem can move, but that's a minor consequence when I have Burns and Kabonks to kill the memorials anyways. It seems largely useless outside the fact that it turns a 6-turn clock into a 3-turn clock. It's possible that we lose too fast and I have to just cut it.
Still, it's cool the deck is working. I'm also glad I can post here without fear of people seeing anything. I don't want them to know until I'm like number 1 on the ladder and go "well gee, look at what I have". I think when I get to rank 1, I'm taking a screenshot and putting it, along with the deck, up on a site. -
Nov 22, 2013
darksteel88 posted a message on Scrolls is brokenOkay they reset the rankings on Scrolls and I got up to an 800 Rating in like 9 games or something. This deck is pretty good.Posted in: darksteel88 Blog
The deck does have some flaws:
1. Consistency. If you draw poorly early, you can lose. Literally drawing 0 memorial openers without any Summons will lose you the game. You can lose off the opening hand or drawing poorly, so it's somewhat of a gamble there.
2. Fast aggro. If they can kill you before you get to critical mass, it's hard. You rely really heavily on the first End of Reason you cast to wipe the board, and if it's lacklustre you're screwed.
3. One-shotting idols. Even though we basically do the same, they can do it against us. Someone once went Frost Gale into Loyal Darkling into Rat King into Necrogeddon. Two damage to my idol, then 9 power hitting it. I won the game but it was insanely close. Necrogeddon is a really scary card.
This deck makes people mad. I enjoy that. I enjoy watching someone say "damn wtf is this it's stupid". I get a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside. I know, I'm a jerk. But hey, deal with it.
I decided to post the list simply because I want to have evidence I was playing it first. When people start playing it too or people claim who the inventor was, well, you saw it here first.
Without further ado, here is the list:
3 Desert Memorial
3 Woodland Memorial
3 Law Memorial
3 Tribal Memorial
3 Sand Pact Memorial
3 Stone Pact Memorial
3 Summons
3 Eye of Eagle
3 Kabonk
2 Pother
3 Heritage
3 Imperial Resources
3 Burn
3 Sister of the Fox
3 Fertile Soil
1 Faith BLessing
1 Solemn Giant
1 Decimation
3 End of Reason
Basically the deck is a combo deck. You cast Memorials to get stupid amounts of resources and then draw 30 cards in a turn and cast just as many spells. End of Reason being able to sac Memorials means you can effectively Wrath with them. The rest is a ton of draw spells in various combinations.
Your win condition is Solemn Giant + Decimation. You can, for the measly cost of 10, cast and cd the Solemn Giant to 0, dealing a straight eight to an idol. Then you Decimation and it's done. If you end of Reason with Giant in play, doesn't die. The Decimation isn't necessary but attacking 6 times with Giant is inefficient. Decimation proved to be the best card choice for a second win condition since it can kill dudes as well.
Going forward I want to try cutting Pother. Maybe I can add something like Pushback and Tickbomb? I almost never cast Pother and I'd like to have more utility. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I think as long as cards are topping out just over $100 USD, I think they're okay with how things go. Even if they start increasing the EV of masters sets by putting more valuable cards, there's no easy way to mass reprint things to plummet the market. Your most accessible method to getting them in the hands of players is packs that are reasonably priced. So in reality, you might get a set like A25 except it also had Snap, Goyf, Lili, Bob, and a couple other things.
I brought in Fulminator Mages, the Damnation I'm testing, and the Kitchen Finks, cutting the discard spells and I think an Abrupt Decay. My thoughts were that Mages are still fine against Temple, and the Damnations seem good. Finks felt like the resiliency would be good.
I'm not sure what the matchup is supposed to be like or how we're supposed to approach it. I just tried to play dudes and removal and stuff, just the typical Jund sort of strategy. The games really didn't seem that close.
Yeah, Lantern is definitely a deck that requires knowledge of the format to play well. If you look at the opponent's top card and can't determine if they should or shouldn't have it, then you absolutely can't play the deck. It becomes imperative that you know all the decks and how they function. The deck doesn't have a lot of room for error, you can lose by giving them even just one card you weren't supposed to. Even if you can figure it out, as a new player you might be a little slow at it, and the deck takes a long time to win games so it's inherently slow.
We can definitely help you out if you give us a better idea of what you'd like to play. There are plenty of decks out there to play, we just need to find one that fits you.
Punting with decks just means you have more room to grow, it happens to everyone. I think it's important that you recognize your failures and learn from them. You need to embrace being wrong because it means next time you can do better. Affinity looks like it will offer you the flexibility you want, it's significantly less linear than the decks you listed that you play, and I think you'll welcome that change.
Now, looking at the card itself and how it matches up against us, I'm not exactly sure it's that big of a deal early on. That's one of the strengths of our deck, that we don't get hosed by hate the same way Eldrazi or Gx Tron does. While it's obviously going to be unfortunate that our lands aren't tapping for the mana we need them to, we often don't need them to. Gifts Combo doesn't need Tron at all, so we don't necessarily get blown out by it.
If you're thinking of playing it, I don't think it's the Tron answer we're looking for. The problem in that matchup is that they get to late game earlier than us while dodging Gifts Combo. What we really need is a Gifts target that can win the game. Like Iona except for colourless.
I think it'll see some play, but probably not as much as you think. Don't forget that while we are a Tron deck, it's not super critical for us to have Tron. Even if that card is good against us, how good is still up for debate.
If you put rares in it you can only put so many copies. This is especially true for legendary creatures or Planeswalkers. Part of what makes Merfolk attractive is you can put singular Merfolk lords at rare since there's a few, and there aren't $30 cards.
If we cut the Vials, all the lands, and the SB Relics, the deck price is actually around the amount that we could print. They've got a lot they can do with it. I think the fact that we have Merfolk in Standard makes it a really attractive option. You can leverage Standard players into Modern like that by giving them a nice way to transition. "Hey you know that Standard Merfolk deck? Well you can upgrade it with some other powerful Merfolk from Magic's past and then play it in Modern". That's definitely going to turn some heads.
As a reminder, if $75 is about where they want the deck to be MSRP valued. I'm guessing the whole deck has to be under $200 market value at the time of making it. They're at 3x on the challenger decks upper end, so about $200 max seems about right. I also think with Modern, they're more willing to skirt the idea of 1-ofs and print a more playable product, since the cost is higher and is more likely to attract competitive/semi-competitive rather than casual players.
If you ever get a chance to kill an Infect creature without the risk of them blanking your removal, you take it. They play typically 12 Infect creatures (including Inkmoth) so you just always want to be able to kill it. This is especially true for non-Glistener Elf targets because they can't be blocked. But they really can't win without creatures so if you keep killing them, that's the plan.
You always want to board in any card that can answer an Infect creature, so yes. Always removal, you don't need threats. They probably will have almost no removal, so like you can just win off of basically nothing. If they can never get a creature to stick they simply can't win. Grudges and Fulminators are good even if they only hit a few cards.
Maybe a little, but you already play a fair number of removal and cards come in. You can board out your BBEs to make room because you really just need answers. Because they have so few threats usually it's not hard to find enough removal.
Okay let's think about this. Your opponent knows you have a Grim Lavamancer in play so he knows he's going to have to respond with something on one of the Inkmoths. So if he activates one, he has to have an answer to it. If he activates two, he's either willing to trade one Inkmoth off or has Mutagenic Growth.
Your opponent probably expects you have at least one removal in hand. You passed with four untapped lands so that's a very safe assumption. K Command is effectively two removal spells if he attacks with both only, so on average you probably have one hard removal and one soft (damage) removal. I think your opponent making that attack means he mostly likely doesn't have two answers (some sort of non-green buff/protection like Mutagenic or Apostle's Blessing) and a 1+ cmc one, so with two cards in hand he likely doesn't have Mutagenic + something. His attack does signal Mutagenic, so he very likely has Mutagenic + X.
If you take the 9 damage this turn, you're effectively going to run into the same situation next turn. Your opponent probably makes that attack regardless of what X is. I think the game goes better for him if he tries to end it earlier. You probably just can't afford to keep elongating the game, and have to just hope for the best.
Round 1 vs Jund
Game 1 I mull to 6 and keep Inquisition, Bolt, Lili, and three lands (blind). I proceed to not draw a single creature all game and eventually BBE + Bob overrun me from too much card advantage. Can't win if he gets ahead and I draw zero creatures.
Game 2 I mull to 6 again and flood out. Game ended with my opponent having 4 cards in hand and 4 lands in play, I had 10 lands in play. I ended up stalling the game quite a bit from a couple Lili topdecks, but eventually too many topdecked lands lost me the game.
Can't really feel bad, the deck just didn't play well for me there.
Record: 0-1
Round 2 vs Lantern
Lantern is a deck that my buddy has been playing for a long time, more than two years probably. Anyway, game 1 I mulled to 6 and he just drew the right set of cards and my hand wasn't fast enough. I actually kept a 1 land hand on the play and missed on the second land for a couple of turns. Eventually he landed Bridge and after he milled all four of my answers (2x K Command, 1 Decay, 1 Pulse) with Pithing Needle naming Lili, I just conceded.
Game 2 I mulled to 6 and kept a hand that would lose to Leyline, which of course he had and I lost to. We still played it out but I scooped after he had enough mill rocks and I had lost enough answers.
Not particularly sure if I should consider mixing my board to play more answers to this deck, knowing that it's going to be there every week as well as at least a couple Affinity. Maybe a third Grudge or Shatterstorm might not be the worst. I also think maybe Abrupt Decay/Pulse over the Terminate might be good as well.
Record: 0-2
Round 3 vs Eldrazi Tron
Game 1 I steamroll him after he misses on Tron. Double Mine double Plant, and I just had a field day pushing him really low. He played Conduit of Ruin and searched up an Endbringer and then ended up scooping the next turn after I went BBE into removal.
Game 2 I mulled to 6 and Inquisitioned my opponent and saw no cards I could take, notably seeing an All Is Dust and the second Tron land. Of course, Map off the top which meant he had turn 4 All Is Dust that I had to awkwardly play around. After he hit my Liliana, the Last Hope + Goyf, I played another Goyf. He turn 6 Ulamog'd me and that basically ended the game there.
Game 3 I mulled to 6 and had an early Fulminator Mage to keep him off Tron but he had multiple Temples that let him slam multiple Endbringers. I actually Thoughtseize and took Reality Smasher instead (no cards in my hand) thinking I could draw removal for Endbringer but not Smasher but just never drew removal. We bricked for a while on the board while I drew nothing particular until he found his Ulamog and killed me when he blew up my only blockers.
Record: 0-3
I don't particularly feel like I played poorly or the deck was poorly positioned or anything, just the games didn't go well for me. In practice games before the tournament they weren't close and I was crushing, I just got unlucky in the event. For what it's worth, I mulled on average 2 times per round, which I think is statistically an anomaly. I got flooded about as often as I got screwed, so I really don't think 24 vs 25 lands makes enough of a difference that the outcomes would have changed.
As for sideboarding in the mirror, always board out the discard. Jund mirrors are historically super grindy, and the chance of eating a BBE doesn't offset the grindy nature. If things go as expected, topdecks will become a thing, at which point you can't afford to miss on discard spells. Every card in your deck needs to be a creature, Planeswalker, or answer. Using Rubin's list from the MOCS, I'd bring in Thrun, Liliana, Lavamancer, and replace remaining discard with Fulminators.