Pillars of Might is underpowered, and has anti-synergy with effects like Honor of the Pure. It doesn't help Green's best 1/1s either; Llanowar Elves doesn't need the boost, and it actually hurts Young Wolf. It's also rather slow.
Rebellion of the Meek, on the other hand, should probably cost at least 1 more. In a token deck, this card can be better than a Plague Wind; that's a huge game, and one that needs to be costed accordingly. I like the theme of both cards, however; it would probably work well in Avacyn Restored.
Mexican Standoff comes into play with X time counters on it, where X is equal to the number of players. At the beginning of each player's upkeep, remove one time counter from Mexican Standoff.
Creatures cannot attack.
When there are no time counters on Mexican Standoff, it gains Sacrifice Mexican Standoff: Every creature fights every other creature simultaneously. Any player may activate this ability.
Be cautious of Wurmcoil Engine and Vault of the Archangel ;).
I like it. There's plenty of removal out there that can take care of her, but I predict the set is going to be full of cheap removal-hate. The meta can't stay this removal-centered forever, and with the rotation of power-creeped cards like Phyrexian Obliterator, we're going to see fatties get another shot at life. Thalia's an example of the kind of thing we can expect going forward.
I've not read through all 30 pages of the deck, but in testing I've noticed that one of our deck's biggest weaknesses is an inability to remove creatures with toughness greater than 3. This is a general problem in R/G decks, but a particular problem in our build as we profile as more midrange than most and are particularly weak to decks that. Therefore, here are a few ideas I had for pseudo-removal:
Prey Upon
Pro: Incredibly cheap and versatile. Works well with our early fatties.
Con: Sorcery speed. Somewhat situational. Useless against Obliterator.
Blood Feud
Pro: Easily the best way of dealing with Phyrexian Obliterator. Can open up a chance to swing for the win in the endgame.
Con: Useless against tokens and higher toughness creatures. Way overcosted. Sorcery speed. Highly situational.
Traitorous Blood
Pro: Reasonably priced. Very good against the titans. Useful at all points in the game. Trample allows for big swings.
Con: Sorcery speed. Effectiveness diminishes without a big hitter to use it on.
Ambush Viper
Pro: Doesn't take up a creature space in the deck. Cheap. Instant.
Con: More of a limited trick than anything else. Useless against fliers and unblockables. Can only be used in a retaliatory manner.
Beast Within
Pro: Destroys anything instantly. Can be used on one's own creatures to up graveyard count as a backup plan.
Con: Gives your opponent card advantage. More useful in the endgame, where 3/3 creatures pose little threat.
Blasphemous Act
Pro: Very useful against an opponent that relies on board presence. Sweeps everything you'll ever need.
Con: Recovery could be difficult to pull off in time. Sorcery. Don't even think about it vs Obliterator. Too expensive against many opponents.
Slim pickings overall, and nothing with flashback. Would you include any of these in the sideboard or main deck?
Junk tokens is one of the decks worst matchups. You can't just write off the whole archetype because you kept losing to a deck you're a dog to.
Tokens, UB Zombies, Spirits, and Humans are probably the worst matchups for the deck. Tokens gets us by swarming, zombies get us with Obliterator, spirits gets us because of their fliers, and humans has Mirran Crusader.
Most of them can be dealt with through proper sideboarding and metagame choices. You're also leaving out how UG Dredge crushes Wolf-Run, is favored against most non-infect aggro decks, and has a solid matchup against Delver
I really think it comes down to play style and meta. The deck fits my play style very well and I've had nothing but success with it. I can't see it taking down a big event right now because, but I don't particularly care about that as I don't go to big events. It's very competitive in the right metagame and in the hands of the right player
Agreed. The playstyle I've been using is to minimize the mana dorks and force your opponent to treat each early creature as a threat that demands removal, rather than just as support for the beaters. Played turn 1, Lavamancer is easy board lockdown. Played turn 2, Skinshifter becomes a 4/4 trampler (5 turn clock unaugmented) that rolls over tokens, and Strangleroot Geist can make a real dent immediately. Postmortem Lunge can be played at any time to bring one of them back in case of emergency. These are the kind of guys we need to be playing, in my opinion, instead of guys like Viridian Emissary that don't pose an immediate threat and are shunned by removal. That's not a bad card, but it's designed to play a type of game that we can't win.
This deck can't afford to wait around. We don't have easy access to removal of anything beyond 3 toughness, which can be a serious problem once a Titan or Obliterator hits the field. What we can do is force our opponent to spend mana and cards on removal before Splinterfright, Ghoultree, and Cagebreakers hit the field, and take them down before their deck really starts to mean business.
I've been winning above 50% against he field with most of my losses coming to Nihil Spellbomb. I like the deck, but I REALLY want a creature to play early that goes the the grave naturally. The options just aren't that enticing. Dawntreader Elk has been okay, but hardly stellar. I tried Furnace Scamp with mixed results. I tried lowering the creature count and using Mulch, but that was ineffective unless a Faithless Looting came along.
I also tried Fling for a while, and I think it has tons of potential. I've liked the Geistflame + Chandra's Phoenix combination, but I'm thinking of moving away from it to concentrate on a bit more brute.
If you insist on not using Mulch (which I recommend, since Tracker's doesn't get many guys into your grave), you should give Viridian Emissary a go. He dies more easily than Dawntreader and fixes your mana a lot more reliably as well. If you want a bigger threat, Skinshifter can swing for 4/4 trample on turn 3 and foil all but the biggest fatties without a kill spell. Sure, it doesn't do much when it dies and it dies easily, but it forces your opponent on the defensive early on, which opens up opportunities for you to lay down an early beater without it immediately eating removal.
If you're looking for something bigger, there's always Blasphemous Act, but it'll kill all your guys too. (That's not always bad.)
The problem there is that it only deals with the cheapo creatures, and not the enchantments that pump them. Tempered Steel, Honor of the Pure, and Sorin's emblem are going to be the problem more often than not, whilst your opponent can fill the board back up for cheap. Perhaps I'm overestimating their draw power, but i don't see it being more than a sideboard at best.
..? Not sure what lists your looking at these days, but the UG lists are running a LOT more creatures then its RG counterpart. Upwards of 30-32 creatures, as opposed to most RG lists running 24-28.
Hmm, guess that was just one out of place deck I saw that ran a ton of counterspells and mills. Still, UG often results in drawn out battles while our deck can go for the throat by turn 5. Thats important in this meta.
It would be nice if this deck had a bigger wrath than Slagstorm. Once your opponent's token or Steel deck creatures get to 4/4, we have no reasonable means of dealing with them beyond blocking.
I'm not insulted, because KWR makes my deck worse, which is why I'm not running it. I rarely get above 6 lands on the field and a +3 pump isn't worth destabilizing my mana base
It's obviously good in the RG lists
Fair enough. I've never really liked the UG build due to the lack of creatures and win conditions, which can be exploited by the right deck. That said KWR is indeed awkward just for a splash, and I love how cheap and useful Artful Dodge can be in the right deck.
I'm surprised Slagstorm performed so poorly. What was the biggest problem with it: consistently milling it, restrictive mana, or never having a positive effect? I imagine it would work better against a lot of the top tier decks, where cheap tokens rule.
The biggest difference that I see between using Urabrask the Hidden (or any other haste giving thing) and Postmortem Lunge is that Urabrask + Kessig Cagebreakers is a 2 card combo. Postmortem Lunge + Kessig Cagebreakers is essentially a 1 card combo, since it is easy enough to get Cagebreakers into your graveyard in the first place. In addition, the biggest problem for Cagebreakers is the fact that it would always die; with Postmortem Lunge, even if you draw KCB, you can play it like normal and if it dies you still have the PML option to win the game. The only real problem PML has is that it is not a creature, and therefore does not provide value if it is in the graveyard. However, Slagstorm has been relatively successful, so PML might be able to work under the current setup.
Ubarask isn't bad, and it has very good synergy with Slagstorm (wipe your opponent's chumps and swing with everybody this turn and next? Don't mind if I do), but it needs to hit the field and stay there to have a real effect, which is uncommon in this meta, what with all the Doom Blades and Dismembers running around. Your 5 mana guys are always gonna be the main targets, and while Ubarask helps, he's not gonna end games.
Postmortem Lunge's synergy with Cagebreakers seems really great, since you can afford to dump it into the graveyard with Looting if you draw it early and recur at the end of the game. Splinterfright is also ideal, since it's got trample and grows as it enters the graveyard. One of this deck's biggest advantages is being able to overwhelm your opponent with your sheer number of big hitters in the midgame (they'll leave one too few blockers and end up having to eat 10 from a Ghoultree), while you can spit them out cheaply. We're always going to be eating removal, so using Postmortem allows you to get that last little extra in to overwhelm them.
That said, there are only so many non-creatures you want to run, especially without flashback. Faithless, Mulch, and Slagstorm make up 10 and are all pretty essential; you should generally only run 4 more at most, and there's a lot of competition for that slot (GTTB, Fling, Shriekhorn, Ancient Grudge).
With 22 lands along with the Mulches, Lootings, and Birds, I don't think your deck will have mana problems. If you're not running Gnaw to the Bone though, you should at least keep it in a sideboard. It's very strong against decks that are faster than you, especially RDW.
Acidic Slime is interesting, but it seems a bit overcosted in this deck. At five mana, you're already playing your biggest hitter, Kessig Cagebreakers. If you manage to resolve Cagebreakers without eating removal instantly, your opponent is probably going to lose anyway, so the Slime throws the curve of this deck a bit off. That said, your deck seems a bit light on creatures in the first place (having mana dorks is an excuse to put more creatures in the deck)... I'd consider throwing in a few cheaper red creatures to help balance your play in the early going, such as Furnace Scamp or Crimson Mage. Huntmaster of the Fells is also awesome if you run into one, but the going rate for it is high these days. It comes into play already giving you the goods, and the threat of constant transformation triggers can hogtie your opponent, especially when you have a KWR to pour all your mana into and let Huntmaster flip at the end of the turn.
Also, has anybody tested Skinshifter in this deck? He seems useful: 4/4 trample in case of tokens, 2/2 flyer in case you need that last bit of damage or some way to take down Delver, 0/8 in case of ramp/removal. He can solve a lot of our matchup problems without taking up an extra creature space. I think he might be worth testing in place of Wurm, which is awkward to cast early and overshadowed by Ghoultree later.
I've thought about Wild Hunger, but it's really too expensive for what it is. The flashback is nice if it gets milled, but our deck isn't really the type to have a lot of leftover mana, and it already has enough flashback options that do more and for less. Trample is really the only thing that we need out of this card, and if a lack thereof is serious enough to necessitate paying at least 3 mana and taking up a card slot for, then we need to be rethinking the creatures we're using instead. Kessig Wolf Run is really the better option, since it gets targeted by Mulch, serves a dual purpose, and can be recurred as many times as you want.
Spellbomb is serious hate, but most decks these days don't run a lot of pure hate or even keep it in the sideboard unless they're specifically shut down by a certain deck, which we aren't since our aim isn't to shut decks down. Cage is more effective against every graveyard deck but our own anyway. And having a few Ancient Grudge in the sideboard should be enough, since you'll generally draw or discard it before your opponent can do real damage with the Spellbomb.
Against Blue I just hold it till they tap out or I am forced to play it, imo its too good not to play
Fling isn't great against most heavily blue decks, since Vapor Snag wastes your mana and Mana Leak is devastating. If you manage to get your Ghoultree down without it being countered, you should be in pretty good shape anyway. You'd be better off siding out for Whipflare or Slagstorm in that case, particularly against Delver and decks that run lots of hexproof.
Primarily White and Green decks, on the other hand, hate it. White's pseudo-removal and tapping isn't much help when you can just throw the affected creature at them, and having an extra burst of aggression against Green's ramp can make all the difference in the world. Really, it all depends on the matchups.
Oh, and on the topic of fling: it doesn't seem like a good idea at all. If you were able to get through with Ghoultree the first time, why wouldn't you be able to get in a second? And if you weren't able to get through, you would need to draw 2 Ghoultrees and 2 Fling to be able to have a chance at winning. Yes, hitting for 10, then flinging seems amazing, but anytime that I can conceive you doing that, you would have been able to just swing twice, keep your creatures in case of problems, and kill your opponent without having to draw useless cards.
Fling has many more uses than that. Players who expect to use Doom Blade to block your Ghoultree will still eat 10 unless they've got an extra counterspell handy. Pacified and exiled creatures can go to the graveyard where they belong. Early threats that start getting chump blocked like Boneyard Wurms suddenly become effective removal spells against an opponent's real threats, like big fliers that we can't otherwise manage to block. Rare is the occasion that Fling is a dead card in my hand; it can wreak havoc in the midgame when your opponent doesn't have a good backup plan.
I've tested Shattered Perception, and it's pretty bad, especially if you're running Wurm. You generally won't want to play it on turn 3, since you'll be wanting to play a creature unless you manage to already have 2 on the field, in which case you're losing most of the advantage you get by discarding your hand anyway. You also lose one of the advantages of Looting; drawing before you discard, which allows you to dictate the pace of the game. The flashback is too expensive to be useful, since at that point in the game you're better off playing the few cards you have in your hand.
Mulch, even more than Splinterfright, is really the heart of the deck. It's pure fuel. You're unlucky if more one of the cards you draw with it doesn't have a good use; usually at least 3 out of 4 cards will either be creature fuel in the graveyard, a spell with reasonable flashback, or lands that go right into your hand. It does its job so well that I'm skeptical of whether Tracker's Instincts really has a place. There's a big chance you only draw one creature (and an 8% chance of drawing none), in which case you've wasted 2 mana on hoping you discarded one of the few spells with flashback. It does filter your deck, but that's what Faithless Looting is built for doing cheaply. It's not a terrible card, but I'm not convinced it's worth splashing blue over when the deck is aggressive enough to play Slagstorm and make a more immediate impact on the board instead. It's a great card in a slower U/G build that could use the extra creatures, but not really for this deck.
Rebellion of the Meek, on the other hand, should probably cost at least 1 more. In a token deck, this card can be better than a Plague Wind; that's a huge game, and one that needs to be costed accordingly. I like the theme of both cards, however; it would probably work well in Avacyn Restored.
Mexican Standoff- 4RRR
Enchantment
Mexican Standoff comes into play with X time counters on it, where X is equal to the number of players. At the beginning of each player's upkeep, remove one time counter from Mexican Standoff.
Creatures cannot attack.
When there are no time counters on Mexican Standoff, it gains Sacrifice Mexican Standoff: Every creature fights every other creature simultaneously. Any player may activate this ability.
Be cautious of Wurmcoil Engine and Vault of the Archangel ;).
EDIT: Forgot to change the title. Oh well.
Prey Upon
Pro: Incredibly cheap and versatile. Works well with our early fatties.
Con: Sorcery speed. Somewhat situational. Useless against Obliterator.
Blood Feud
Pro: Easily the best way of dealing with Phyrexian Obliterator. Can open up a chance to swing for the win in the endgame.
Con: Useless against tokens and higher toughness creatures. Way overcosted. Sorcery speed. Highly situational.
Traitorous Blood
Pro: Reasonably priced. Very good against the titans. Useful at all points in the game. Trample allows for big swings.
Con: Sorcery speed. Effectiveness diminishes without a big hitter to use it on.
Ambush Viper
Pro: Doesn't take up a creature space in the deck. Cheap. Instant.
Con: More of a limited trick than anything else. Useless against fliers and unblockables. Can only be used in a retaliatory manner.
Beast Within
Pro: Destroys anything instantly. Can be used on one's own creatures to up graveyard count as a backup plan.
Con: Gives your opponent card advantage. More useful in the endgame, where 3/3 creatures pose little threat.
Blasphemous Act
Pro: Very useful against an opponent that relies on board presence. Sweeps everything you'll ever need.
Con: Recovery could be difficult to pull off in time. Sorcery. Don't even think about it vs Obliterator. Too expensive against many opponents.
Slim pickings overall, and nothing with flashback. Would you include any of these in the sideboard or main deck?
Agreed. The playstyle I've been using is to minimize the mana dorks and force your opponent to treat each early creature as a threat that demands removal, rather than just as support for the beaters. Played turn 1, Lavamancer is easy board lockdown. Played turn 2, Skinshifter becomes a 4/4 trampler (5 turn clock unaugmented) that rolls over tokens, and Strangleroot Geist can make a real dent immediately. Postmortem Lunge can be played at any time to bring one of them back in case of emergency. These are the kind of guys we need to be playing, in my opinion, instead of guys like Viridian Emissary that don't pose an immediate threat and are shunned by removal. That's not a bad card, but it's designed to play a type of game that we can't win.
This deck can't afford to wait around. We don't have easy access to removal of anything beyond 3 toughness, which can be a serious problem once a Titan or Obliterator hits the field. What we can do is force our opponent to spend mana and cards on removal before Splinterfright, Ghoultree, and Cagebreakers hit the field, and take them down before their deck really starts to mean business.
If you insist on not using Mulch (which I recommend, since Tracker's doesn't get many guys into your grave), you should give Viridian Emissary a go. He dies more easily than Dawntreader and fixes your mana a lot more reliably as well. If you want a bigger threat, Skinshifter can swing for 4/4 trample on turn 3 and foil all but the biggest fatties without a kill spell. Sure, it doesn't do much when it dies and it dies easily, but it forces your opponent on the defensive early on, which opens up opportunities for you to lay down an early beater without it immediately eating removal.
The problem there is that it only deals with the cheapo creatures, and not the enchantments that pump them. Tempered Steel, Honor of the Pure, and Sorin's emblem are going to be the problem more often than not, whilst your opponent can fill the board back up for cheap. Perhaps I'm overestimating their draw power, but i don't see it being more than a sideboard at best.
Guess I want too much out of a card ;).
Hmm, guess that was just one out of place deck I saw that ran a ton of counterspells and mills. Still, UG often results in drawn out battles while our deck can go for the throat by turn 5. Thats important in this meta.
It would be nice if this deck had a bigger wrath than Slagstorm. Once your opponent's token or Steel deck creatures get to 4/4, we have no reasonable means of dealing with them beyond blocking.
Fair enough. I've never really liked the UG build due to the lack of creatures and win conditions, which can be exploited by the right deck. That said KWR is indeed awkward just for a splash, and I love how cheap and useful Artful Dodge can be in the right deck.
I'm surprised Slagstorm performed so poorly. What was the biggest problem with it: consistently milling it, restrictive mana, or never having a positive effect? I imagine it would work better against a lot of the top tier decks, where cheap tokens rule.
Ubarask isn't bad, and it has very good synergy with Slagstorm (wipe your opponent's chumps and swing with everybody this turn and next? Don't mind if I do), but it needs to hit the field and stay there to have a real effect, which is uncommon in this meta, what with all the Doom Blades and Dismembers running around. Your 5 mana guys are always gonna be the main targets, and while Ubarask helps, he's not gonna end games.
Postmortem Lunge's synergy with Cagebreakers seems really great, since you can afford to dump it into the graveyard with Looting if you draw it early and recur at the end of the game. Splinterfright is also ideal, since it's got trample and grows as it enters the graveyard. One of this deck's biggest advantages is being able to overwhelm your opponent with your sheer number of big hitters in the midgame (they'll leave one too few blockers and end up having to eat 10 from a Ghoultree), while you can spit them out cheaply. We're always going to be eating removal, so using Postmortem allows you to get that last little extra in to overwhelm them.
That said, there are only so many non-creatures you want to run, especially without flashback. Faithless, Mulch, and Slagstorm make up 10 and are all pretty essential; you should generally only run 4 more at most, and there's a lot of competition for that slot (GTTB, Fling, Shriekhorn, Ancient Grudge).
Acidic Slime is interesting, but it seems a bit overcosted in this deck. At five mana, you're already playing your biggest hitter, Kessig Cagebreakers. If you manage to resolve Cagebreakers without eating removal instantly, your opponent is probably going to lose anyway, so the Slime throws the curve of this deck a bit off. That said, your deck seems a bit light on creatures in the first place (having mana dorks is an excuse to put more creatures in the deck)... I'd consider throwing in a few cheaper red creatures to help balance your play in the early going, such as Furnace Scamp or Crimson Mage. Huntmaster of the Fells is also awesome if you run into one, but the going rate for it is high these days. It comes into play already giving you the goods, and the threat of constant transformation triggers can hogtie your opponent, especially when you have a KWR to pour all your mana into and let Huntmaster flip at the end of the turn.
How has Lunge been working out for you?
Spellbomb is serious hate, but most decks these days don't run a lot of pure hate or even keep it in the sideboard unless they're specifically shut down by a certain deck, which we aren't since our aim isn't to shut decks down. Cage is more effective against every graveyard deck but our own anyway. And having a few Ancient Grudge in the sideboard should be enough, since you'll generally draw or discard it before your opponent can do real damage with the Spellbomb.
Fling isn't great against most heavily blue decks, since Vapor Snag wastes your mana and Mana Leak is devastating. If you manage to get your Ghoultree down without it being countered, you should be in pretty good shape anyway. You'd be better off siding out for Whipflare or Slagstorm in that case, particularly against Delver and decks that run lots of hexproof.
Primarily White and Green decks, on the other hand, hate it. White's pseudo-removal and tapping isn't much help when you can just throw the affected creature at them, and having an extra burst of aggression against Green's ramp can make all the difference in the world. Really, it all depends on the matchups.
Fling has many more uses than that. Players who expect to use Doom Blade to block your Ghoultree will still eat 10 unless they've got an extra counterspell handy. Pacified and exiled creatures can go to the graveyard where they belong. Early threats that start getting chump blocked like Boneyard Wurms suddenly become effective removal spells against an opponent's real threats, like big fliers that we can't otherwise manage to block. Rare is the occasion that Fling is a dead card in my hand; it can wreak havoc in the midgame when your opponent doesn't have a good backup plan.
I've tested Shattered Perception, and it's pretty bad, especially if you're running Wurm. You generally won't want to play it on turn 3, since you'll be wanting to play a creature unless you manage to already have 2 on the field, in which case you're losing most of the advantage you get by discarding your hand anyway. You also lose one of the advantages of Looting; drawing before you discard, which allows you to dictate the pace of the game. The flashback is too expensive to be useful, since at that point in the game you're better off playing the few cards you have in your hand.
Mulch, even more than Splinterfright, is really the heart of the deck. It's pure fuel. You're unlucky if more one of the cards you draw with it doesn't have a good use; usually at least 3 out of 4 cards will either be creature fuel in the graveyard, a spell with reasonable flashback, or lands that go right into your hand. It does its job so well that I'm skeptical of whether Tracker's Instincts really has a place. There's a big chance you only draw one creature (and an 8% chance of drawing none), in which case you've wasted 2 mana on hoping you discarded one of the few spells with flashback. It does filter your deck, but that's what Faithless Looting is built for doing cheaply. It's not a terrible card, but I'm not convinced it's worth splashing blue over when the deck is aggressive enough to play Slagstorm and make a more immediate impact on the board instead. It's a great card in a slower U/G build that could use the extra creatures, but not really for this deck.