Glint-Nest Crane has really impressed me. I started out with 3 and immediately added the 4th. So far whenever I had it in my starting hand, I completely wrecked my opponent. The fact that it adds mana and gives you something to do with the mana seems to make the deck far more consistent and even more tempo-oriented. Some of the draws I've had with it has just been ridicules.
I don't know if you guys have tried it out, but if not you should give it a shot and tell me what you think.
I think you're right that the cards aren't just there yet. I think that going into more of a Dredge build than an Affinity build is the way to go, since the whole Bridge/Titan combo needs a huge GY to work. The kicker is to dredge into multiple bridges so that when you cast Titan, you will get a game winning amount of zombies into play. Saccing 3 artifact creatures only to get 3 zombies into play is just way too durdly I think.
The problem I see is that if you try to steal the explosive dredging from the traditional Dredge lists, there aren't a lot of slots left for the artifact sub-theme and in the end the Bridges might not be faster/more deadly than getting a bunch of Prized Amalgams back.
I think that's why I didn't post a deck list in this thread because I simply didn't have an answer to these problems.
I like the cards that you've found. Bomat Courier I like in particular, since it serves triple duty. Myr Retriever is interesting as well since it's another recurring artifact creature (if you have 2 of them). And speaking of recurring artifact creatures: Myr Servitor is also somewhat interesting but probably too cute in the end. The Slasher direction also is a potential powerful way to abuse the grave but I worry a bit about the 1 toughness.
Personally I like the Thopter/Sword direction especially if we run Myr Retrievers to get Thopter back. It does require that we hit all of our land drops but we can do that with Life from the Loam and Dakmor Salvage. With Loam we can also recur Thopter with Academy Ruins/Buried Ruin. I'm still not sure how to make room for it all though.
The reason for this is that Bridge's problem in Modern has always been that there's no sacrifice outlets that works from the grave like Cabal Therapy or Dread Return do. Salvage Titan was interesting to me because it solved half of the problem. On one hand, it gave us a sac outlet that works from the grave but on the other its conditions (it wanting a lot of artifacts to feed on) didn't really go well with the overall Dredge theme.
So why do I bring this up again?
Since then there are some new interesting cards.
- Scrapheap Scrounger is particularly interesting since it solves the last piece of the puzzle. Now we both have a sac outlet that works from the grave, but we also have recurring food to feed it with.
- Sword of the Meek has been unbanned. What this means is that a) We have more things to dredge into which closes the gap between the deck being Dredge on one side and Affinity on the other b) With Thopter Foundry we have another sac outlet for Bridge.
- Smuggler's Copter is a perfect way to both apply pressure but also to loot which is quite essential when you want to dredge. We could play it instead of Riddlesmith or maybe play both.
- Metalwork Colossus gives us even more sac outlets to play around with. Hard casting it doesn't seem realistic but it might come in handy if it turns out that finding 3 artifacts to sac is too difficult. The fact that you don't get a Craw Wurm into play seems marginal, since it's the Bridge tokens we are primarily gunning for.
What do you guys think? Is it worth pursuing? And what would a deck list look like?
Yeah 4 Flagships is definitely overkill. I think that 2-3 split between main and side might be the correct number.
I really like the Disciple/Scrapheap combo. I'm definitely gonna test it. I also miss Thoughtseize from the side when I play UW. That card solves a lot of problems (Scapeshift/Ad Nauseam etc.). I guess there's other options in UW like Spell Queller, Glen Elendra Archmage, Negate, Vendilion Clique and the white Leyline. But none of those are as clean as Thoughtseize is. Is Sword of L&S better than Sword of F&I though?
I sat brainsorming today on other decklists there might be worth trying out and came up with this one:
The idea is to abuse the green Gearhulk the best possible way and Geist seemed like a natural fit. You have equipment, Gearhulk, Hierarch, Township and Architect to pump it and you have Flagship to soften the ground. You are also not as worried about having Giest sitting back as you can use it to crew. He's also a spirit for Mausoleam Wanderer. I don't have the money to test it but it might be something worth trying in the future.
So far I don't think the Green Gearhulk is good enough. Batterskull and Wurmcoil are just on another power level. It's too soon to say, but I haven't been impressed so far. I'm warming up to Flagship though. It switches between being awful and being one of the best cards in the deck from matchup to matchup. When you're up against Tron, Jund and Scapeshift it's just really really bad but when you bump into Tribal Decks and such then it's a machine. I think that there might be more matchups where it's bad than the other way around but I think it deserves a spot somewhere in the 75.
First impressions: Smuggler's Copter: the card is goooood. The hype is real. It is everything I wanted it to be. It digs deep and puts on Delver-esque pressure on your opponent. That's a lot of value for 2 mana. Having another strong play when you go one-drop into Chief Engineer just makes the deck a lot more consistent and smooth. Of all the new cards I've tried so far, this is by far the strongest. Moorland Haunt: I've played it before in this deck and have always been impressed with it. But with the new cards it's even better. Haunt and Copter both feed each other. Copter discards dudes and Haunt supply a steady stream of pilots. It produces spirits as well, so you can buff Mausoleum Wanderer at instant speed which has been quite powerful so far. Reflector Mage: This is a new thing I'm trying out. I'm not sure about him yet. He has won me a couple of games but at 3 mana he's quite expensive (the nonbo with Lodestone isn't as big of a deal as it might seem though). The reason I'm trying him out is because I want outs against dudes with more than 3 toughness and I'm trying to avoid running stuff like Path because from experience, you want basically the whole deck to be pro-active else you get too many draws that don't do anything. Skysovereign, Consul Flagship: Not sure about this card to be honest. I had extremely high hopes for it and thought that this could be the card that made all the difference. As it turns out there's a lot of board states that doesn't include any Planeswalkers or x/3's. Playing this mid-game and starring down at a couple of Goyfs is just horrendous. I still think it has potential but probably more niche than I originally thought it would be.
Next up I'm gonna test a Bant version with Verdurous Gearhulk. I'm quite excited about testing it.
Not surprised by the latter two but still. Do you guys think that the prices will go down once the online pre-release is over (greater supply and all)?
streetMage: glad that Flagship pulls its weight. I can't wait to try it out.
Yea I pre-ordered all of those for my paper deck when they were about a third of those prices. I'm surprised Familiar and Smuggler's Copter are so expensive on mtgo and paper...makes me wonder if we aren't looking at Smuggler's Copter close enough..
I wish you could pre-order on MTGO as well. Apparently Copter is the new Hangarback of Standard and a Boros Vehicle deck is the break out deck.
Initially I really liked Copter for this deck as well. Evasion is huge plus the deck is pretty polarized between mana dorks and beef, being able to cycle one or the other seems like it could help the deck a lot. We also have a lot of 1/x's to crew, that doesn't do a whole lot on their own.
Not surprised by the latter two but still. Do you guys think that the prices will go down once the online pre-release is over (greater supply and all)?
streetMage: glad that Flagship pulls its weight. I can't wait to try it out.
Why run Reservoir over Grapeshot? The latter is cheaper (main reason), can be fetched with Peer Through Depths and can't get countered plus you can play it at the end of the chain as opposed to needing to find and cast it relatively early into the chain. Grapeshot require 10 more "storm" (if I've calculated correctly) but I think that evens out when you take into consideration that every spell you've cast before Reservoir count for 0. It also seem like the deck's biggest problem and the biggest reason for it to fizzle is running out of mana. Springleaf and Mantle doesn't net you anything and you can only have 1 Opal in play at a time, while Paradoxial costs 4 and no, Retract doesn't net you any mana either. So running a cheaper win condition I would think would be the biggest priority.
EDIT: unless you're aiming at going off over several turns. I guess that could work. In that case I would definitely run some amount of Welding Jars as that leaves you extremely vulnerable to removal. Not sure that going off over several turns is fast enough though.
Oh right, good point about Thalia. Didn't read the vehicles properly. It's not optimal then, but it still probably could works out ok-ish. I've run Thalia in 4x Batterskull lists before. I've tried running Thorn main before with mixed results. It's a meta call I think. Thalia has legs and trades well so she's never really a dead card. I don't know much about the meta right now so Thorn might be better now.
I'm not a big fan of the more aggressive vehicles. They might actually work in Vintage (though I know nothing about that format) but I have a feeling that they'd run into too many things in Modern and they both die to Bolt.
What do you guys think of Bant? Gavony Township seems really good. It's a long time ago I've played the deck but I remember losing with a bunch of mana dorks out and no action. Township just seems like a natural fit for a midrange all-dorks kinda deck. Now we also have access to Botanical Sanctum to make the mana base a bit softer.
I think I'm gonna try something like this (as long as Gearhulk/Flagship doesn't end up costing the engine of a jet)
EDIT: Again I might be too optimistic but I really feel that some of the questions this deck asked in the past is being answered with this expansion. The gab between having all mana dorks and no action in hand or having all action but no mana dorks can be bridged by Smuggler's Copter which incidentally also has flying so your opponent can't gum up the ground as easily. Flagship contributes with some much needed removal and Verdurous Gearhulk answers the question: "what powerful/unfair things can we do when we reach 5-6 mana that doesn't die to Path or Kolaghan's Command?".
Atlas is a win con by itself. It's just another way to bridge the gap between the last combo piece and something that isn't unplayable on its own. Look at it this way: would you rather run 4x kill conditions that doesn't do anything on their own or 3 Atlases and 1 kill condition? With the last configuration you get the best of both worlds especially if the kill condition happens to be Emmy, since you can kill your opponent with it without the Atlas in play. One of the other reasons I really like Atlas is that it helps us with our game plan by drawing us closer to our combo pieces, no other kill conditions mentioned so far does this.
There might be a better kill condition hiding out there somewhere though. It's probably worth keep on searching. Someone mentioned Devil's Play which is kinda cool too, since it can be used as removal in the early game plus it already has an inbuilt anti- discard/counter function.
The Lantern idea is actually kinda sweet but only if we can make it that it doesn't fill up too much space since if we go full on Lantern Control then the combo is probably redundant. I'm not closed to the ideas of tutors but a just a bit skeptical. Including silver bullets definitely make it make a lot more sense but I think that if we are going for pure gold fish then cycling is faster (though I could be wrong).
Something else to consider is to splash green, that gives us access to Ancient Stirrings which is huge but also Nature's Claim to deal with Stony Silence.
Crunkyeah, I like how your deck is shaping up. And I like the inclusion of Remand. Having another way to abuse Scepter is probably the correct call. At worst, they buy you a turn while drawing you closer to the combo.
UkkuhrMakhai: I've been thinking of Thoptor/Sword as well somewhere in the 75. At least having the combo as an option for game 2 and 3 against slower decks seems like it could work. It doesn't deal with Stony Silence though which does generally hose this deck. Not sure how to board against that.
About tutors: I think that my point with this was that tutors are generally best suited for 1 or 2 card combos since you are just looking for that 1 card. The more combo pieces you add, the worse tutors get since tutoring for several individual cards is inefficient. At that point you want to cycle through your deck as fast as possible until you find all the missing pieces. I like Muddle though since it's another option for Scepter (against Burn or Ad Nauseam for instance).
I think that if we are to go in this direction then I think that the tutors need to go. I've never been a big fan of tutors in Modern, especially in a 5-6 card combo deck. Spending one turn getting one out of 5 pieces is just too slow. I'm a bigger fan of a combination between Serum Visions, Thoughtcast and Tezzeret's Gambit, the last one is unorthodox but I've been impressed with it for its ability to ramp and draw at the same time.
The deck I used to run was around 1-1½ turn too slow. Not sure that this combo speeds the combo up that much but It'd be nice to mess around with and find out.
We cant ditch the tutors specifically because its a multicard combo. You wont win games by hoping to draw into your pieces with cheap card advantage. Also of all the things to do with infite mana and card draw, a single emrakul isnt exactly the best win con in the book.
I prefer Emmy to having Molten Psyche get countered tbh (especially after you've let your opponent draw into a bunch of cards). Not sure I understand why Emmy is a bad idea? What are the alternatives? I guess you could run Banefire but what if it gets Thoughtseized turn 1?
I don't know if you guys have tried it out, but if not you should give it a shot and tell me what you think.
I think you're right that the cards aren't just there yet. I think that going into more of a Dredge build than an Affinity build is the way to go, since the whole Bridge/Titan combo needs a huge GY to work. The kicker is to dredge into multiple bridges so that when you cast Titan, you will get a game winning amount of zombies into play. Saccing 3 artifact creatures only to get 3 zombies into play is just way too durdly I think.
The problem I see is that if you try to steal the explosive dredging from the traditional Dredge lists, there aren't a lot of slots left for the artifact sub-theme and in the end the Bridges might not be faster/more deadly than getting a bunch of Prized Amalgams back.
I think that's why I didn't post a deck list in this thread because I simply didn't have an answer to these problems.
I like the cards that you've found. Bomat Courier I like in particular, since it serves triple duty. Myr Retriever is interesting as well since it's another recurring artifact creature (if you have 2 of them). And speaking of recurring artifact creatures: Myr Servitor is also somewhat interesting but probably too cute in the end. The Slasher direction also is a potential powerful way to abuse the grave but I worry a bit about the 1 toughness.
Personally I like the Thopter/Sword direction especially if we run Myr Retrievers to get Thopter back. It does require that we hit all of our land drops but we can do that with Life from the Loam and Dakmor Salvage. With Loam we can also recur Thopter with Academy Ruins/Buried Ruin. I'm still not sure how to make room for it all though.
The reason for this is that Bridge's problem in Modern has always been that there's no sacrifice outlets that works from the grave like Cabal Therapy or Dread Return do. Salvage Titan was interesting to me because it solved half of the problem. On one hand, it gave us a sac outlet that works from the grave but on the other its conditions (it wanting a lot of artifacts to feed on) didn't really go well with the overall Dredge theme.
So why do I bring this up again?
Since then there are some new interesting cards.
- Scrapheap Scrounger is particularly interesting since it solves the last piece of the puzzle. Now we both have a sac outlet that works from the grave, but we also have recurring food to feed it with.
- Sword of the Meek has been unbanned. What this means is that a) We have more things to dredge into which closes the gap between the deck being Dredge on one side and Affinity on the other b) With Thopter Foundry we have another sac outlet for Bridge.
- Smuggler's Copter is a perfect way to both apply pressure but also to loot which is quite essential when you want to dredge. We could play it instead of Riddlesmith or maybe play both.
- Metalwork Colossus gives us even more sac outlets to play around with. Hard casting it doesn't seem realistic but it might come in handy if it turns out that finding 3 artifacts to sac is too difficult. The fact that you don't get a Craw Wurm into play seems marginal, since it's the Bridge tokens we are primarily gunning for.
What do you guys think? Is it worth pursuing? And what would a deck list look like?
I really like the Disciple/Scrapheap combo. I'm definitely gonna test it. I also miss Thoughtseize from the side when I play UW. That card solves a lot of problems (Scapeshift/Ad Nauseam etc.). I guess there's other options in UW like Spell Queller, Glen Elendra Archmage, Negate, Vendilion Clique and the white Leyline. But none of those are as clean as Thoughtseize is. Is Sword of L&S better than Sword of F&I though?
I sat brainsorming today on other decklists there might be worth trying out and came up with this one:
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Path to Exile
4 Chief Engineer
4 Smuggler's Copter
4 Myr Superion
4 Grand Architect
4 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
2 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
3 Verdurous Gearhulk
4 Flooded Strand
4 Botanical Sanctum
2 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Temple Garden
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Gavony Township
2 Island
1 Forest
The idea is to abuse the green Gearhulk the best possible way and Geist seemed like a natural fit. You have equipment, Gearhulk, Hierarch, Township and Architect to pump it and you have Flagship to soften the ground. You are also not as worried about having Giest sitting back as you can use it to crew. He's also a spirit for Mausoleam Wanderer. I don't have the money to test it but it might be something worth trying in the future.
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
2 Judge's Familiar
4 Chief Engineer
4 Myr Superion
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Smuggler's Copter
4 Grand Architect
3 Reflector Mage
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
4 Flooded Strand
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Moorland Haunt
7 Island
1 Plains
First impressions:
Smuggler's Copter: the card is goooood. The hype is real. It is everything I wanted it to be. It digs deep and puts on Delver-esque pressure on your opponent. That's a lot of value for 2 mana. Having another strong play when you go one-drop into Chief Engineer just makes the deck a lot more consistent and smooth. Of all the new cards I've tried so far, this is by far the strongest.
Moorland Haunt: I've played it before in this deck and have always been impressed with it. But with the new cards it's even better. Haunt and Copter both feed each other. Copter discards dudes and Haunt supply a steady stream of pilots. It produces spirits as well, so you can buff Mausoleum Wanderer at instant speed which has been quite powerful so far.
Reflector Mage: This is a new thing I'm trying out. I'm not sure about him yet. He has won me a couple of games but at 3 mana he's quite expensive (the nonbo with Lodestone isn't as big of a deal as it might seem though). The reason I'm trying him out is because I want outs against dudes with more than 3 toughness and I'm trying to avoid running stuff like Path because from experience, you want basically the whole deck to be pro-active else you get too many draws that don't do anything.
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship: Not sure about this card to be honest. I had extremely high hopes for it and thought that this could be the card that made all the difference. As it turns out there's a lot of board states that doesn't include any Planeswalkers or x/3's. Playing this mid-game and starring down at a couple of Goyfs is just horrendous. I still think it has potential but probably more niche than I originally thought it would be.
Next up I'm gonna test a Bant version with Verdurous Gearhulk. I'm quite excited about testing it.
I wish you could pre-order on MTGO as well. Apparently Copter is the new Hangarback of Standard and a Boros Vehicle deck is the break out deck.
Initially I really liked Copter for this deck as well. Evasion is huge plus the deck is pretty polarized between mana dorks and beef, being able to cycle one or the other seems like it could help the deck a lot. We also have a lot of 1/x's to crew, that doesn't do a whole lot on their own.
Smuggler's Copter 17 tix
Flagship 10 tix
Green Gearhulk 15 tix
Not surprised by the latter two but still. Do you guys think that the prices will go down once the online pre-release is over (greater supply and all)?
streetMage: glad that Flagship pulls its weight. I can't wait to try it out.
EDIT: unless you're aiming at going off over several turns. I guess that could work. In that case I would definitely run some amount of Welding Jars as that leaves you extremely vulnerable to removal. Not sure that going off over several turns is fast enough though.
I'm not a big fan of the more aggressive vehicles. They might actually work in Vintage (though I know nothing about that format) but I have a feeling that they'd run into too many things in Modern and they both die to Bolt.
I think I'm gonna try something like this (as long as Gearhulk/Flagship doesn't end up costing the engine of a jet)
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Chief Engineer
4 Myr Superion
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Smuggler's Copter
4 Grand Architect
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
4 Verdurous Gearhulk
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
2 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Temple Garden
EDIT: Again I might be too optimistic but I really feel that some of the questions this deck asked in the past is being answered with this expansion. The gab between having all mana dorks and no action in hand or having all action but no mana dorks can be bridged by Smuggler's Copter which incidentally also has flying so your opponent can't gum up the ground as easily. Flagship contributes with some much needed removal and Verdurous Gearhulk answers the question: "what powerful/unfair things can we do when we reach 5-6 mana that doesn't die to Path or Kolaghan's Command?".
There might be a better kill condition hiding out there somewhere though. It's probably worth keep on searching. Someone mentioned Devil's Play which is kinda cool too, since it can be used as removal in the early game plus it already has an inbuilt anti- discard/counter function.
Something else to consider is to splash green, that gives us access to Ancient Stirrings which is huge but also Nature's Claim to deal with Stony Silence.
Crunkyeah, I like how your deck is shaping up. And I like the inclusion of Remand. Having another way to abuse Scepter is probably the correct call. At worst, they buy you a turn while drawing you closer to the combo.
UkkuhrMakhai: I've been thinking of Thoptor/Sword as well somewhere in the 75. At least having the combo as an option for game 2 and 3 against slower decks seems like it could work. It doesn't deal with Stony Silence though which does generally hose this deck. Not sure how to board against that.
About tutors: I think that my point with this was that tutors are generally best suited for 1 or 2 card combos since you are just looking for that 1 card. The more combo pieces you add, the worse tutors get since tutoring for several individual cards is inefficient. At that point you want to cycle through your deck as fast as possible until you find all the missing pieces. I like Muddle though since it's another option for Scepter (against Burn or Ad Nauseam for instance).
I prefer Emmy to having Molten Psyche get countered tbh (especially after you've let your opponent draw into a bunch of cards). Not sure I understand why Emmy is a bad idea? What are the alternatives? I guess you could run Banefire but what if it gets Thoughtseized turn 1?