It is 4 mana not 1. It seems like an interesting one-of in the board for attrition/control to win against graveyard hate and otherwise generate value while setting up for the win (e.g., copying a dig spell). I think it's test worthy.
Whoops, missed that. I doubt it's playable at that cost.
Too bad it doesn't keep the cost reduction when it flipped, this card could have been insanely broken.
Whoa there. It says you 'may' transform the card. A 1 mana, harder-to-kill Electromancer that can duplicate a spell in a pinch if necessary sounds quite good to me.
I think Bournat Courier is a reason to get excited about Dredgevine again. Who knows if it will make the deck better than Dredge, but it's strictly better in this deck than in Dredge.
Yeah this is for sure really good, it's a creature we can fling out on turn one (for a COLORLESS) and get some card advantage of. That being said, this card seems pretty dead later in the game, he'll wall into stuff.
Read your own signature and I think you'll understand why that's not so relevant for this deck.
I think Bournat Courier is a reason to get excited about Dredgevine again. Who knows if it will make the deck better than Dredge, but it's strictly better in this deck than in Dredge.
I'm still on Chandra, Torch of Defiance. It just seems like so much raw power. on turn 4 it can cost "2" mana by plus 1ing it. It defaults to at worst, shocking every turn, IF you miss the draw. Flame slashing with it is costly, but effective enough if you have to go for it, which I think is the biggest down side of this card. But those 2 plus 1s really seem to put this card out. If you look at it at pure flexibility, its basically got 5 abilities:
+1 draw a card
+1 shock a player
+1 2 free spirit guides
-3 Flameslash
-7 Win the game in 2 turns.
About this I would say:
- The first +1 is damn good.
- The second plus 1 is wholly mediocre. Saying "2 spirit guides" is ridiculous because by the time that matters it's turn 3 earliest and you're using RR to... Pyroclasm? More likely, you get 7 mana on turn 5 and use it to... no idea.
- The -3 is not so good, but will do.
- The -7 is fairly conditional and so not great. Then again, if you get to the point where you can Ult Chandra, you're probably doing well enough that you can cast a few spells and stabilize/win. I just don't like how this Ult doesn't do anything to swing the game in your favour unless you're sitting on gas already.
I see this being a roleplayer in Jund and perhaps various other brews. But I don't see it becoming ubiquitous.
Madcap Experiment is masically a 4 mana Platinum Emperyon. That seems to be a pretty good creature but it's not a game winning combo.
My guess would be to jam it in a shell with other powerful creatures to force your opponent's removals. In your Jeskai list they will just keep their Path/Terminate until your play Madcap Experiment because and it will not do much.
But I'd go with a Naya shell like Big Zoo that look like this :
That looks powerful. I like the combination of 4-drops & mana dorks. 4 Nahiri seems a bit much perhaps? But your logic seems sound about Path/Terminate. This list seems to just use Madcap as a curve topper, which is legit. What are we giving up from normal big zoo to go this direction? Some Lightning Helixes and Atarkas Commands, or more Planeswalkers? Either way the list seems nice.
I will try it in my tooth and nail list, something like this. The courser, scavenging and harmonize you can switch around depending on meta and prefered cards.
Stil feeling that 4x Tooth and Nail and 4x Madcap Experiment is a bit much, and that you may want a 1 of Boseiju in there? But I have no experience with this deck.
I also liked Lantern's idea of slotting this into Grixis (he mentioned it in the Kaladesh discussion). Seems like this could shore up some weaknesses there.
Even though Tooth and Nail isn't really a tier 1 deck I think madcap+platinum could slot in it quite easily. With arbor elf+utopia sprawl you can cast this turn two. Also it will never be a dead card since you usually can ramp to 8 mana. Also it can be a decent silver-bullet with primal command in some matchups.
Ooh, I like the idea of bringing this into Tooth & Nail or even GR Ponza with Arbor Elf / Utopia Sprawl. I created a thread in Deck Discussion to brew actual lists, but we can also just develop decks here, I guess. Interested to see where this goes.
I wasn't sure whether to put this in the main modern forum or in deck creation, but I figure since we'll hopefully develop an actual list that it should go here.
Madcap Experiment seems pretty broken with Platinum Emperion. I mean, maybe someone will come up with a better card to combo it with, but for now that's the best we have.
It seems like legitimately this combo could become or fit into a tier one or two deck, so it's probably worth brewing around. Granted, Platinum Emperion doesn't win the game when it hits, but at 4 mana it's pretty strong. If you can protect it, a lot of decks just can't beat you -- Infect doesn't care about it; affinity can beat you with Inkmoth Nexus; Ad Nauseum with Lab Man if they're running it; and Jeskai Nahiri with Emrakul's annihilator trigger -- but that's it (off the top of my head).
So, this isn't a foolproof combo. It's still strong. Someone in the spoiler discussion thread threw out the idea of playing it with Liliana of the Veil in Jund, which seems like a solid idea. Another idea would be creating an RW brew running Nahiri as Experiments 4-6 (or 3-5, or whatever). If you're in RW, you could actually play Blightsteel Colossus instead of Emperion, and then run Burrenton Forge-Tender and Soulfire Grand Master to negate the life loss. It'd be a bit more fragile but also more powerful -- and probably too janky to be good.
Those are my initial thoughts. Interested to hear what you all think!
EDIT:
I'll start us off with a sample list. No idea if it's better than the Jund direction.
That's 60. No idea if it's good, but it looks at least comparable to Jeskai Nahiri. Charm, Lighthouse, Clique and Nahiri all let you bin extra Emperions, but you can also hardcast them if the game goes long enough.
Hey all, wrote a little blog post on my thoughts about Conspiracy 2 and especially the new Death & Taxes lists that will emerge soon. Perhaps I didn't give enough credit to Chrome Mox — seems like you guys really like the idea of it. Are you worried about running out of steam when you have to pitch a guy so early? Plus, Mox is pretty awful with Aether Vial.
Thalia dies to bolt. So what? A lot of creatures die to bolt. You won't always play against bolt decks and besides, they can't bolt everything. At this point, D&T is reaching the critical mass of cards it needs to be good (not sure if it's there yet - this is def a Legacy staple but for Modern we'll see) and this is one more piece of that puzzle. Stop underestimating it for Modern. Even though it's vulnerable, it must be dealt with or, just like Confidant, you run away with the game (most likely). It completely shuts down certain decks and is at least decent against many others. I would definitely play somewhere between 2 and 4 of these in D&T in both Modern and Legacy.
Just a heads-up that the Neonate list is still feeling very strong for me on Cockatrice. Quite explosive; relatively consistent. Still fiddling with the mana.
A green splash + Decay is my plan against Stony Silence. But I like the idea of the gifts plan too. ThopterSwords is insane. 4 of each is too many (that's where I started) but 3 swords is fine because you can always pitch an extra to TfK or Lili, which is really where you want to be. 4 Lili feels good because it's a must-answer card. 4 TfK may be too much; I haven't cast many so far. I'm underwhelmed by Hangarback but 4 Spellskite felt like too much. Perhaps there's a place here for Ensnaring Bridge, but in my quick testing it felt rather useless in comparison to ThopterSwords as a defensive card.
Thanks for the nice post Niall. I just irks me sometimes that people will say, "Your feedback must be invalid because you haven't tested!" Of course testing is good. But you can still make (often) decent recommendations by just looking at a list. Of course, testing will have to back them up.
I hear what you're saying about Cantrips. I still think you're not quite correct. I remember reading stuff like 2 cantrip = 1 land back in the day, and I don't object to such a qualification. But, I think if you're trying to hit 4 CMC to play CCommand, you can't count the CCommands themselves as cantrips, at least for that purpose, because they won't help you do that. Remand is also a bit conditional, but overall probably consistent enough.
Point being, I don't think the mana here is bad, but I do think it's not 100% correct to say you play 16 cantrips, at least not when you're discussing getting to 4 mana to cast Cryptic Command. But maybe 12 is plenty for that anyways. Either way I think the 4th Git. Prob is a must.
I will test this deck this weekend when I am not working.
No, with the addition of Insolent Neonate the blue version is obsolete.
You're welcome to believe as you will but let's not go down the line of stating personal opinion as absolute truth. Some of us happen to think Neolate is not all its cracked up to be.
Until we have an actual tier placing everything is fair game and nothing is obselete.
"All views are of course my own and not representative of the entire "Dredgevine" community." How's that?
You can fetch BSkull, SoFaI, Smuggler's Copter, etc...
Not sure what deck wants it, but def one to keep an eye on.
Whoops, missed that. I doubt it's playable at that cost.
Whoa there. It says you 'may' transform the card. A 1 mana, harder-to-kill Electromancer that can duplicate a spell in a pinch if necessary sounds quite good to me.
Read your own signature and I think you'll understand why that's not so relevant for this deck.
I'd play:
4 Insolent Neonate
4 Bournat Courier
4 Lotleth Troll
4 Faithless Looting
4 Vengevine
4 Bloodghast
4 Gravecrawler
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
20 Lands
Quadlazer, here we come.
About this I would say:
- The first +1 is damn good.
- The second plus 1 is wholly mediocre. Saying "2 spirit guides" is ridiculous because by the time that matters it's turn 3 earliest and you're using RR to... Pyroclasm? More likely, you get 7 mana on turn 5 and use it to... no idea.
- The -3 is not so good, but will do.
- The -7 is fairly conditional and so not great. Then again, if you get to the point where you can Ult Chandra, you're probably doing well enough that you can cast a few spells and stabilize/win. I just don't like how this Ult doesn't do anything to swing the game in your favour unless you're sitting on gas already.
I see this being a roleplayer in Jund and perhaps various other brews. But I don't see it becoming ubiquitous.
That looks powerful. I like the combination of 4-drops & mana dorks. 4 Nahiri seems a bit much perhaps? But your logic seems sound about Path/Terminate. This list seems to just use Madcap as a curve topper, which is legit. What are we giving up from normal big zoo to go this direction? Some Lightning Helixes and Atarkas Commands, or more Planeswalkers? Either way the list seems nice.
Stil feeling that 4x Tooth and Nail and 4x Madcap Experiment is a bit much, and that you may want a 1 of Boseiju in there? But I have no experience with this deck.
I also liked Lantern's idea of slotting this into Grixis (he mentioned it in the Kaladesh discussion). Seems like this could shore up some weaknesses there.
Ooh, I like the idea of bringing this into Tooth & Nail or even GR Ponza with Arbor Elf / Utopia Sprawl. I created a thread in Deck Discussion to brew actual lists, but we can also just develop decks here, I guess. Interested to see where this goes.
Madcap Experiment seems pretty broken with Platinum Emperion. I mean, maybe someone will come up with a better card to combo it with, but for now that's the best we have.
It seems like legitimately this combo could become or fit into a tier one or two deck, so it's probably worth brewing around. Granted, Platinum Emperion doesn't win the game when it hits, but at 4 mana it's pretty strong. If you can protect it, a lot of decks just can't beat you -- Infect doesn't care about it; affinity can beat you with Inkmoth Nexus; Ad Nauseum with Lab Man if they're running it; and Jeskai Nahiri with Emrakul's annihilator trigger -- but that's it (off the top of my head).
So, this isn't a foolproof combo. It's still strong. Someone in the spoiler discussion thread threw out the idea of playing it with Liliana of the Veil in Jund, which seems like a solid idea. Another idea would be creating an RW brew running Nahiri as Experiments 4-6 (or 3-5, or whatever). If you're in RW, you could actually play Blightsteel Colossus instead of Emperion, and then run Burrenton Forge-Tender and Soulfire Grand Master to negate the life loss. It'd be a bit more fragile but also more powerful -- and probably too janky to be good.
Those are my initial thoughts. Interested to hear what you all think!
EDIT:
I'll start us off with a sample list. No idea if it's better than the Jund direction.
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
3 Madcap Experiment
2 Nahiri, the Harbinger
4 Serum Visions
2 Ancestral Vision
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
1 Izzet Charm
3 Remand
1 Spell Snare
1 Cryptic Command
2 Electrolyze
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Spirebluff Canal
3 Seachrome Coast
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
2 Flooded Strand
1 Desolate Lighthouse
That's 60. No idea if it's good, but it looks at least comparable to Jeskai Nahiri. Charm, Lighthouse, Clique and Nahiri all let you bin extra Emperions, but you can also hardcast them if the game goes long enough.
Another direction could be a more all-in combo feature Boseiju, Who Shelters All.
Here's my post: https://fetchlandformats.wordpress.com/. Let me know what you think!
Thanks,
Ian
Here's what I'm at so far:
4 Gravecrawler
4 Bloodghast
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Vengevine
ENABLERS
4 Faithless Looting
4 Insolent Neonate
4 Lotleth Troll
DREDGERS
4 Golgari-Grave Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
FLEX
2 Lightning Axe
1 Life from the Loam
1 Rotting Rats
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Natural State
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Gnaw to the Bone
2 Darkblast
2 Lightning Axe
2 Hangarback Walker
4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Thopter Foundry
3 Sword of the Meek
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Talisman of Dominance
2 Dimir Signet
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Murderous Cut
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Darksteel Citadel
3 Darkslick Shores
2 Watery Grave
2 Swamp
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Academy Ruins
1 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Damnation
2 Disfigure
2 Hurkyl's Recall
A green splash + Decay is my plan against Stony Silence. But I like the idea of the gifts plan too. ThopterSwords is insane. 4 of each is too many (that's where I started) but 3 swords is fine because you can always pitch an extra to TfK or Lili, which is really where you want to be. 4 Lili feels good because it's a must-answer card. 4 TfK may be too much; I haven't cast many so far. I'm underwhelmed by Hangarback but 4 Spellskite felt like too much. Perhaps there's a place here for Ensnaring Bridge, but in my quick testing it felt rather useless in comparison to ThopterSwords as a defensive card.
Any tips / suggestions?
I hear what you're saying about Cantrips. I still think you're not quite correct. I remember reading stuff like 2 cantrip = 1 land back in the day, and I don't object to such a qualification. But, I think if you're trying to hit 4 CMC to play CCommand, you can't count the CCommands themselves as cantrips, at least for that purpose, because they won't help you do that. Remand is also a bit conditional, but overall probably consistent enough.
Point being, I don't think the mana here is bad, but I do think it's not 100% correct to say you play 16 cantrips, at least not when you're discussing getting to 4 mana to cast Cryptic Command. But maybe 12 is plenty for that anyways. Either way I think the 4th Git. Prob is a must.
I will test this deck this weekend when I am not working.
"All views are of course my own and not representative of the entire "Dredgevine" community." How's that?