Do you think running just 4 of each thoughtseize and downfall will work? For fnm tomorrow as my prep for scg cincinnati im running 4 downfall 4 seize and rolling the dice and running 4 doom blade. I think there will be alot of rg bw and naya floating that justifys it.
You know your local meta better than others, but monoblack aggro and monoblack devotion are both quite good. Why not run ultimate price over doom blade if you feel like you need more removal? Maindeck lifebane zombie is another good option if you anticipate those decks.
@MrEnigmas I have been maindecking 2 dismember (w/ 2 side) and they really help vs pod. I think I am 6-0 or 7-0 against melira/kiki pod (with a bit of luck obviously). Vs a platinum angel deck, I presume they were running urzatron, or at least had a bunch of artifacts? If so, I would consider running a card like nature's claim rather than dismember, as the card is more versatile against artifact based decks. Don't overboard vs urzatron, it should be a really good matchup, and you must have gotten unlucky.
Also, earlier you spoke out against wild defiance. While I agree that a budget version without noble hierarch should avoid this card, its a really valuable tool for U/G infect, and is not a 'win more'. The reason being is that it is to be viewed as a defensive card, not an offensive one. It solves many of the weaknesses infect has. Suddenly, all their burn is essentially useless, but it also gets around spellskite, since your spells still trigger defiance. For similar reasons, it also gets around chalice of the void. Less obviously, it gets around melira, sylvok outcast, because with defiance out, you can simply pump for the full 20. One of my matches vs pod, I would have lost, as he was able to get melira and pod both out by turn 3, and he was on the play. My turn 1 was noble hierarch, turn 2 was wild defiance, and turn 3 with apostle's blessing (pro green) and two pump spells to swing for 18 with exalted, which was exactly lethal since he had taken 2 from his lands. If he had gotten to untap that game, my odds of winning would have been very near 0%. Also, defiance allows me to kill with non-infect creatures in any matchup, and I usually feel comfortable keeping hands with defiance+hierarch and a couple pump spells (but no infect guy).
Some extremely marginal and unlikely cases where defiance has been great:
1) I was out of pump spells, and needed like 8 points of infect. I had a hierarch and a wild defiance and blighted agent, and got the kill by dismembering my own guy, and then apostle's blessing it to give to +6/+6.
2) I had out 2 spellskite and a wild defiance. I target one spellskite with a pump spell, and redirect back and forth to make both my spellskites huge, and finish off my opponent.
Does Vines give it protection from the opponents own spells? Or does it simply provide it with hexproof? For that is an important distinction, which I may have been mistaken about.
But yes, thanks for the great advice.
It does the former. Its actually a great defensive card. Some common targets/situations:
stopping splinter spin
stopping ravager modular
stopping cranial plating equip (or preventing instant speed requip
stopping ghor clan bloodrush
etc.
So, before I present a remade version of your deck, some general pointers on playing combo:
1)Redundancy is king. If your combo is based around one card and cannot win otherwise, you are going to lose a ton or need to mulligan extremely aggressively. You can relax the redundancy requirement if you have...
1a)Tutors - the ability to search for combo pieces greatly increases consistency
1b)Card Draw/Filtering. Cards like ponder are so effective at drawing through your deck they can make a combo work even if it needs to find a specific card to win.
2)The individual pieces should not be worthless. Don't get me wrong, usually the individual pieces will be much weaker, but try to create your combo in such a way that the 'combo' cards still do something even when you are not comboing. This requirement can be relaxed for potent 2-card combos.
3)Be focused. Almost every card in the deck should be a combo piece or devoted to finding a combo piece. Typically, combo decks try to rely on speed over removal and disruption. Make sure every card in the deck is contributing to the plan.
Ok, with these 3 points in mind, here is my first draft of a U/G illusionist's bracers combo deck.
1)Is is redundant?
So, this combo is trying to get infinite mana. It has the 2x kiora's follower + bracers, but it more easily gets infinite mana with Thassa's Ire and a creature that can tap for 5 mana. Bracers is still good here because it doubles how much kiora's follower and voyaging satyr tap for. We have 6 enchantments that increase how much you tap for (and add mana of any color, which is critical because thassa's ire needs blue mana) and we also have 3 nykthos and a lot of green enchantments that make building devotion to green a reasonable task.
We also get redundancy through commune with the gods, which digs 5 cards deep and can find the combo creatures or thassa's ire or the land enchants. Also, it mills, which can be useful in conjunction with codex shredder.
What about the redundancy in the kill? First up is codex shredder, which mills an opponent if you have infinite untaps with kiora's follower. Next is dakra mystic, which if you have infinite untaps and infinite mana, you can activate repeatedly to mill out both players librarys. Since you dont actually lose until you try and draw a card, you can pass the turn and they will lose the game (or if you have more cards in library you can win by forcing them to draw cards. Last up is retraction helix + verdant haven/bow of nylea. Basically, you can repeatedly bounce and replay these cards for arbitrarily large amounts of life (as well as returning all nonland permanents to your owners hand. Six cards is a bit lighter in the 'win' department than is optimal, but you also get 4 thassa's ire to prevent your opponent from attacking in the meantime.
2)Cards good on own?
Cards like retraction helix are very synergistic with the deck even when you arent comboing. If you have a kiora's follower or illusionist's bracers you can bounce 2 things instead of 1, and if you have both you can bounce 4 things. You can also untap with thassa's ire to bounce more things. Dakra mystics ability is doubled with bracers and she helps find the combo, and even can self mill which synergizes with codex shredder. Shredder is a bit slow, but it can return combo pieces that get hit by removal, or combo pieces that get milled by commune.
3) Is it focused?
The only card that isnt a combo piece in some way or a way to search for a combo piece is elvish mystic, which is needed to give the deck the speed it needs to combo off before dying.
Hope this helps with building the deck. Please note that the revised build is not particularly competitive, but you should be able to win some games and have fun at a typical FNM. If you are interested in splashing some other colors and comboing somewhat differently (a blue/green/red build) there are ways to make some more competitive infinite combos.
I was interested to see the deck I play suddenly get a bunch of forum traffic, but reading through I realized it was almost all responses one person trolling... at this point its probably best to simply ignore this person.
On Topic:I am currently liking the wild defiance version, which helps play around all the spellskites out there
"Infect" is typically classified as combo, but it plays like aggro in that you are trying to connect with creatures. I don't think G/B infect is the best (prefer UG or BUG), but it is reasonable, and can be built without fetches.
I posted a budget version of BY Obliterator in the Budget sub and someone questioned why it was there bc he priced it out and it w as $450. He didn't think it belonged. I posted an iteration of it in the deck creation forum but noone responded. In the main deck forum? The response is always "go get all the chase money rares." I agree that there should be a middle ground between a $25-50 deck and $1,000 - 1500+ one.
This is what I mean. Where are you supposed to post the $250 version of a $1000 deck? Deck creation? Budget? Proven?
I think a lot of people simply post these types of things on the established/proven forum, but the intent of those forums is not for budget discussion, and currently there is not a great place to post these discussions.
@Valanarch I agree that thread traffic is probably the main reason people post budget discussions in the main thread - the budget subforum is a bit of a ghost town. I think this is partially because people dont want to bother making a whole thread about how to make a budget version of a competitive deck. However, in many cases, there are lots of people with questions about how to make budget versions of competitive decks, especially as modern improves in popularity but also in price.
To take the infect thread as an example, perhaps half of all the discussion is about how to budgetize the deck. In the case that there is significant interest in a budget version of a deck, does it make more sense to have its own thread? It might not, but it seems worth considering.
I am aware of that, but that forum is full of posts about budget decks, not budget versions of competitive decks. If someone wants to discuss how to build budget melira pod, for example, they dont post in the budget subforum, they end up posting in the melira pod thread (not saying they shouldnt post in budget, but what I currently observe to happen).
I agree that one option is to encourage people who want to have discussions about 'budget' versions of competitive decks to simply post them in the budget subforum, but that isnt happening in many cases. For example, in the infect thread, there are many people asking about how to build budget monogreen infect. I dont really blame them for posting there, since it is the 'infect' thread after all, but really they are talking about a deck that belongs in the budget subforum.
So, maybe this is a bad idea, but I was thinking: what if the established and proven modern forums had budget subforums?
There is a lot of interest in many threads about how to 'budgetize' card choices and mana bases, etc. In my opinion, this is a good thing: the more modern players, the better for the community. At the same time, these discussions often run parallel to how to optimize a fully competitive version of the deck. Frequently, I will avoid contributing to these 'budget' discussions simply because I dont want to derail the thread too far away from a discussion of the competitive version of the deck, and I think a budget subforum could be the solution.
Maybe it's just me, but most of the time I am too busy focusing on what I am sideboarding and making sure I end up with a 60 card deck to pay all that much attention to my opponent's SB numbers.
I agree in most cases knowing the number of cards sided in/out is marginal, but in some cases it can be pretty important. For example, lets say its game 3 and my storm opponent is on the play (against me, playing infect), if he sides for game 3, I might think he is siding out hate (which, say, I saw in game 2) and just trying to be as fast as possible on the play. If he looks at his sideboard and runs the same deck back, I know I need to play around cards like bolt and echoing truth (and might be able to keep slower hands that kill turn 4 with inkmoth)
One player even mentioned an unusual strategy for discovering your opponents sideboarding decisions. Basically, you ask to see the text of a card you saw them play between games (which they might think they have no reason to hide, since you are entitled to the oracle text). But, then you know if they kept that card in the main or the side.
To clarify, Im talking about concealing the number of cards sideboarded, not which cards were sideboarded. A savvy opponent will know common sideboards of top decks, and may be able to determine your sideboard plan knowing how many cards you side. Of course, you should always conceal which cards you side in/out by keeping them face down.
When I sideboard at FNM, I sometimes dont want my opponent to know which cards I am sideboarding. One way to disguise your sideboarding decision is to side in all 15 cards, shuffle, then remove 15 cards from your deck. The problem with this is that it can be pretty time consuming and is a bit annoying to do. A 'faster' way is to set your deck on a chair next to you, remove a couple cards, then add a couple cards as needed. Is removing your deck from your opponents sight considered 'okay'?
How do you (or do you?) conceal your sideboarding decisions, and does it matter if it is an FNM or a GP, etc?
If you are operating on an extreme budget, that is good to know, but then this thread should be moved to the budget deck creation forums.
The only card on this list of a 'modern' power level is mirran crusader that I can see. Maybe an argument could be made for a couple of the others (i.e. champion of the parish). The fact is, good decks typically use good cards (and those cards are typically quite pricy!)
How competitive are you hoping to be with this deck, and where do you plan to play it? If you plan to play casually against friends, then a deck like this could be a lot of fun! If you are aiming for a more competitive angle, then the most competitive angle is probably a 'mono white hatebears' type strategy (in modern hatebears is typically G/W, and in legacy a similar strategy is known as 'death and taxes')
To find such a hatebears deck, I would recommend googling 'mono white hate bears modern'
Now, I note that your signature indicates an aversion to 'net decking'. I respect that, but if you are new to a format like modern (or even older formats) its highly unlikely you will be able to make a deck close to competitive without borrowing heavily from sources with more experience.
It feel like this card is underplayed in modern. The three top decks (pod/twin/affinity) have a lot of difficulty removing it, and it is very very difficult for them to beat. 7 mana is a lot, and this is a turn 4 format, which understandably makes things more difficult for the grandest of cenobites. Despite this, there are several ways to cheat/get it into play:
1) Gifts->Rites
2) Windbrisk Heights
3) Hardcast off manadorks? (i.e. turn 1 hierarch, turn 2 KotR, turn 3 lotus cobra + fetch ->Norn Xmasland)
4) Nykthos?
5) Summoning Trap?
6) Play Control and drop it in turn 7
What are some other good ways of getting this guy into play, or what types of shells do you feel he could see play in?
An example of a 'shell': a reaniminator deck running goryo's vengeance alongside liliana and lingering souls/zombie infestation + windbrisk heights with norn/griselbrand.or emrakul as fatties.
You know your local meta better than others, but monoblack aggro and monoblack devotion are both quite good. Why not run ultimate price over doom blade if you feel like you need more removal? Maindeck lifebane zombie is another good option if you anticipate those decks.
EDIT:
Here's my version of monoblack, FWIW
4 Rackdos Cackler
4 gnarled scarhide
4 tormented hero
4 brain maggot
4 spiteful returned
4 herald of torment
2 lifebane zombie
2 ultimate price
2 hero's downfall
Other:
4 Thoughtseize
3 hall of triumph
Lands
19 Swamp
4 mutavault
4 dark betrayal
4 duress
2 lifebane zombie
3 doom blade
2 devour flesh
The deck has the max discard package, so should be solid against control, and comes prepared for the mirror and green or white creature decks.
Also, earlier you spoke out against wild defiance. While I agree that a budget version without noble hierarch should avoid this card, its a really valuable tool for U/G infect, and is not a 'win more'. The reason being is that it is to be viewed as a defensive card, not an offensive one. It solves many of the weaknesses infect has. Suddenly, all their burn is essentially useless, but it also gets around spellskite, since your spells still trigger defiance. For similar reasons, it also gets around chalice of the void. Less obviously, it gets around melira, sylvok outcast, because with defiance out, you can simply pump for the full 20. One of my matches vs pod, I would have lost, as he was able to get melira and pod both out by turn 3, and he was on the play. My turn 1 was noble hierarch, turn 2 was wild defiance, and turn 3 with apostle's blessing (pro green) and two pump spells to swing for 18 with exalted, which was exactly lethal since he had taken 2 from his lands. If he had gotten to untap that game, my odds of winning would have been very near 0%. Also, defiance allows me to kill with non-infect creatures in any matchup, and I usually feel comfortable keeping hands with defiance+hierarch and a couple pump spells (but no infect guy).
Some extremely marginal and unlikely cases where defiance has been great:
1) I was out of pump spells, and needed like 8 points of infect. I had a hierarch and a wild defiance and blighted agent, and got the kill by dismembering my own guy, and then apostle's blessing it to give to +6/+6.
2) I had out 2 spellskite and a wild defiance. I target one spellskite with a pump spell, and redirect back and forth to make both my spellskites huge, and finish off my opponent.
It does the former. Its actually a great defensive card. Some common targets/situations:
stopping splinter spin
stopping ravager modular
stopping cranial plating equip (or preventing instant speed requip
stopping ghor clan bloodrush
etc.
1)Redundancy is king. If your combo is based around one card and cannot win otherwise, you are going to lose a ton or need to mulligan extremely aggressively. You can relax the redundancy requirement if you have...
1a)Tutors - the ability to search for combo pieces greatly increases consistency
1b)Card Draw/Filtering. Cards like ponder are so effective at drawing through your deck they can make a combo work even if it needs to find a specific card to win.
2)The individual pieces should not be worthless. Don't get me wrong, usually the individual pieces will be much weaker, but try to create your combo in such a way that the 'combo' cards still do something even when you are not comboing. This requirement can be relaxed for potent 2-card combos.
3)Be focused. Almost every card in the deck should be a combo piece or devoted to finding a combo piece. Typically, combo decks try to rely on speed over removal and disruption. Make sure every card in the deck is contributing to the plan.
Ok, with these 3 points in mind, here is my first draft of a U/G illusionist's bracers combo deck.
4 Kiora's Follower
4 Voyaging Satyr
4 Elvish Mystic
2 Dakra Mystic
4 Market Festival
4 Thassa's Ire
2 Verdant Haven
2 Bow of Nylea
2 Codex Shredder
2 Retraction Helix
4 Commune with the Gods
4 Mana Confluence
4 Breeding Pool
4 Temple of Mystery
3 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
5 Forest
2 Island
1)Is is redundant?
So, this combo is trying to get infinite mana. It has the 2x kiora's follower + bracers, but it more easily gets infinite mana with Thassa's Ire and a creature that can tap for 5 mana. Bracers is still good here because it doubles how much kiora's follower and voyaging satyr tap for. We have 6 enchantments that increase how much you tap for (and add mana of any color, which is critical because thassa's ire needs blue mana) and we also have 3 nykthos and a lot of green enchantments that make building devotion to green a reasonable task.
We also get redundancy through commune with the gods, which digs 5 cards deep and can find the combo creatures or thassa's ire or the land enchants. Also, it mills, which can be useful in conjunction with codex shredder.
What about the redundancy in the kill? First up is codex shredder, which mills an opponent if you have infinite untaps with kiora's follower. Next is dakra mystic, which if you have infinite untaps and infinite mana, you can activate repeatedly to mill out both players librarys. Since you dont actually lose until you try and draw a card, you can pass the turn and they will lose the game (or if you have more cards in library you can win by forcing them to draw cards. Last up is retraction helix + verdant haven/bow of nylea. Basically, you can repeatedly bounce and replay these cards for arbitrarily large amounts of life (as well as returning all nonland permanents to your owners hand. Six cards is a bit lighter in the 'win' department than is optimal, but you also get 4 thassa's ire to prevent your opponent from attacking in the meantime.
2)Cards good on own?
Cards like retraction helix are very synergistic with the deck even when you arent comboing. If you have a kiora's follower or illusionist's bracers you can bounce 2 things instead of 1, and if you have both you can bounce 4 things. You can also untap with thassa's ire to bounce more things. Dakra mystics ability is doubled with bracers and she helps find the combo, and even can self mill which synergizes with codex shredder. Shredder is a bit slow, but it can return combo pieces that get hit by removal, or combo pieces that get milled by commune.
3) Is it focused?
The only card that isnt a combo piece in some way or a way to search for a combo piece is elvish mystic, which is needed to give the deck the speed it needs to combo off before dying.
Hope this helps with building the deck. Please note that the revised build is not particularly competitive, but you should be able to win some games and have fun at a typical FNM. If you are interested in splashing some other colors and comboing somewhat differently (a blue/green/red build) there are ways to make some more competitive infinite combos.
Edit: Forget that, midrangy deck with ETB effects (obzedat, sin collector), this bro, and whip of erebos.
On Topic:I am currently liking the wild defiance version, which helps play around all the spellskites out there
This is what I mean. Where are you supposed to post the $250 version of a $1000 deck? Deck creation? Budget? Proven?
I think a lot of people simply post these types of things on the established/proven forum, but the intent of those forums is not for budget discussion, and currently there is not a great place to post these discussions.
To take the infect thread as an example, perhaps half of all the discussion is about how to budgetize the deck. In the case that there is significant interest in a budget version of a deck, does it make more sense to have its own thread? It might not, but it seems worth considering.
I am aware of that, but that forum is full of posts about budget decks, not budget versions of competitive decks. If someone wants to discuss how to build budget melira pod, for example, they dont post in the budget subforum, they end up posting in the melira pod thread (not saying they shouldnt post in budget, but what I currently observe to happen).
I agree that one option is to encourage people who want to have discussions about 'budget' versions of competitive decks to simply post them in the budget subforum, but that isnt happening in many cases. For example, in the infect thread, there are many people asking about how to build budget monogreen infect. I dont really blame them for posting there, since it is the 'infect' thread after all, but really they are talking about a deck that belongs in the budget subforum.
There is a lot of interest in many threads about how to 'budgetize' card choices and mana bases, etc. In my opinion, this is a good thing: the more modern players, the better for the community. At the same time, these discussions often run parallel to how to optimize a fully competitive version of the deck. Frequently, I will avoid contributing to these 'budget' discussions simply because I dont want to derail the thread too far away from a discussion of the competitive version of the deck, and I think a budget subforum could be the solution.
Thoughts?
I agree in most cases knowing the number of cards sided in/out is marginal, but in some cases it can be pretty important. For example, lets say its game 3 and my storm opponent is on the play (against me, playing infect), if he sides for game 3, I might think he is siding out hate (which, say, I saw in game 2) and just trying to be as fast as possible on the play. If he looks at his sideboard and runs the same deck back, I know I need to play around cards like bolt and echoing truth (and might be able to keep slower hands that kill turn 4 with inkmoth)
One player even mentioned an unusual strategy for discovering your opponents sideboarding decisions. Basically, you ask to see the text of a card you saw them play between games (which they might think they have no reason to hide, since you are entitled to the oracle text). But, then you know if they kept that card in the main or the side.
To clarify, Im talking about concealing the number of cards sideboarded, not which cards were sideboarded. A savvy opponent will know common sideboards of top decks, and may be able to determine your sideboard plan knowing how many cards you side. Of course, you should always conceal which cards you side in/out by keeping them face down.
How do you (or do you?) conceal your sideboarding decisions, and does it matter if it is an FNM or a GP, etc?
If you are operating on an extreme budget, that is good to know, but then this thread should be moved to the budget deck creation forums.
The only card on this list of a 'modern' power level is mirran crusader that I can see. Maybe an argument could be made for a couple of the others (i.e. champion of the parish). The fact is, good decks typically use good cards (and those cards are typically quite pricy!)
How competitive are you hoping to be with this deck, and where do you plan to play it? If you plan to play casually against friends, then a deck like this could be a lot of fun! If you are aiming for a more competitive angle, then the most competitive angle is probably a 'mono white hatebears' type strategy (in modern hatebears is typically G/W, and in legacy a similar strategy is known as 'death and taxes')
To find such a hatebears deck, I would recommend googling 'mono white hate bears modern'
Now, I note that your signature indicates an aversion to 'net decking'. I respect that, but if you are new to a format like modern (or even older formats) its highly unlikely you will be able to make a deck close to competitive without borrowing heavily from sources with more experience.
It feel like this card is underplayed in modern. The three top decks (pod/twin/affinity) have a lot of difficulty removing it, and it is very very difficult for them to beat. 7 mana is a lot, and this is a turn 4 format, which understandably makes things more difficult for the grandest of cenobites. Despite this, there are several ways to cheat/get it into play:
1) Gifts->Rites
2) Windbrisk Heights
3) Hardcast off manadorks? (i.e. turn 1 hierarch, turn 2 KotR, turn 3 lotus cobra + fetch ->Norn Xmasland)
4) Nykthos?
5) Summoning Trap?
6) Play Control and drop it in turn 7
What are some other good ways of getting this guy into play, or what types of shells do you feel he could see play in?
An example of a 'shell': a reaniminator deck running goryo's vengeance alongside liliana and lingering souls/zombie infestation + windbrisk heights with norn/griselbrand.or emrakul as fatties.