I'm just going to keep calling stuff like this out until people realize how ridiculous it is.
How can you cherrypick one daily, before anyone knew how to beat/sideboard against the deck, when you ignore the 327 person paper tournament that happened a week later? Despite being the 8th most-played deck that day, JA Storm didn't send one player to the T8. In a real, 8+ round tournament, not a 4 round MTGO romp. To me, that 327 person event is clearly the biggest and most important datapoint in the last 2 weeks and no one is talking about it.
I was there and I must say that it has been due to several factors. People were expecting even a greater number of Jeskai Combo, and they were prepared for it. The pilots were not that good, some of them were given losses by the judges that have been really competent in that tournament and they were carefully watching all the jesaki players for mistakes. The meta in Italy is really Jund/Junk oriented and turn 1 discards are the norm. A lot of players were using things like Eidolon of Rethoric, Spirit of the Labyrinth or even unfair cards like Slaughter Games or Stain the Mind. The deck was fresh enough that the players weren't able to test it properly and they based their strategy on goldfishing.
We don't need tutors. We just need a way to control the cards they are drawing. The solution here could be Lantern of Insight but I don't know which slot it should take.
The problems with this deck are always been twofold, and don't go over me since I played this deck in Legacy way before this primer and liliana, using necrogen mists, bottomless pit, racks and cursed scrolls.
In legacy the problem has always been topdecking/tutoring. We can't just sit to wait to draw our finishers while they are waiting to draw their responses to bridge or even rack\affliction.
In modern the problem is just amplified since we have 2 major weaknesses: topdecks ANDaggro. Most of the finishers in modern involves creatures, apart from tron/scapeshift. Bridge is a must, it locks these decks out but it does not suffice.
4 cards out of 60 in order to win in a reliable way isn't enough.
This is the list I am currently running, 5/1 at a local (medium size, 86 players) unsanctioned Christmas tourney:
Smallpoxes are A MUST. They slow other decks to the point that we can usually have enough time to draw a bridge and to set up our hands.
It helps with untargetable creatures and other nasty beings.
Waste Not is finally our needed 4th to 8th copy of bridge, helping us to deal with all the mess happening ON the board. But it doesn't solve the other main issue which is tutoring/topdecking.
I just want a playset of Tourach at a reasonable price.
For the box, they can even go out and hang themselves up.
They will probably spoil another good card, the rest will be garbage like Gilded Lotus or Ink-Eyes to which nobody gives a ****.
We don't have any mana acceleration, that's the drawback.
The deck "may" work in Legacy, in modern we can't hope to win just by removing them 2 cards in 2 turns.
I have been playing discard decks since forever, so I think I can add something on this deck.
Three are the main problems of the deck: searching for bridges, going into topdeck mode, non-reactive strategy
Bridge-dependancy is actually a huge issue, we are always threatened as long as we are not able to play a bridge.
In legacy, this is not a problem, since we have things like dark rituals.
On the other hand, in modern, a turn 3 drop is sometimes just too slow.
Sure once it is dropped is almost a guaranteed lock, since the opponents will have to wait for a solution, if any, but considering the cost and the fact that it is an artifact, playing around bridge is not a big deal.
Topdeck mode is something subtle. We cannot hard lock the game like in legacy, where we have Null Brooch. Even if the opponent draws just one card, he is able to put a threat to us each turn. It is worth nothing that they will have to deal with rack/shrieking, we will not be able to keep answers against them since our goal is to be hand empty. An obvious solution would be putting BoB... So are Dark Confidants worth it? Absolutely not. Games may be very long and a Confidant on the board is really difficult to deal with for us, unless we want to give to the opponent the possibility to keep one more card in hand or destroying our manabase with a smallpox.
The real problem is that we cannot easily tutor cards and even if we would be able to, we have almost zero solution to non-creature board threats.
Non-reactive means that we cannot usually deal with a threat that has been already casted. If something unexpected is able to sneak on the board on the opponent side, you can rest assured that it will remain for a long time.
I really wish this kind of deck could be played with a degree of safety, unfortunately it is not.
Honorable mention: a single engineered explosives and it's game.
I put Liliana in the deck and played in the Premier Modern today and things didn't go so well. It's hard to put a finger on exactly what the deck was missing because I never got blown out in any games. I just had that feeling the deck was coming up a little short in order to pull out a win. The difference maker seemed to be that I got setup to scavenge a Death's Shadow or I didn't, there was no in between. If I wasn't setup then I was sitting there struggling to keep my opponent at bay. Liliana was kind of meh for me. I usually didn't have much out to keep her alive so if I put her out then I got one use and she was gone. Her and Lotleth Troll kind of clashed because they both want me to be discarding and getting rid of that much of my hand is hard to deal with. If I don't discard at all with him then a 2/1 body isn't very threatening. So in short, I feel really "all in" on many of the games and sometimes got stuck in no mans land with not much to threaten my opponent. I'm going to have to adapt the deck into a more traditional Jund list I think and not try to be cute with setting up scavenges. That would probably entail bringing Tarmogoyf into the list unfortunately. I sold my playset a while ago and I'm not going to spring for another quite yet until I see if MM makes any difference in his price. If I come back to the deck I'll probably be running something like this:
I'll have to switch around my sideboard some with this list so I didn't even include it. I'm done for now though so hopefully you guys get better results than I did.
I will check it out. Too bad I loved the idea of this deck.
Alrighty! I'm keen to get into modern, on a budget with something that's not too common, mono black should be sweet!! I'm going to proxy these up before I buy all of them, what are your thoughts??
You also never offer substantiating evidence and frequently come in here with posts as non-constructive as this one. Multiple posters have asked you to either be more constructive or stop posting in here.
And you have yet to reply to all the points that I have provided you some posts ago. Completely ignoring the meaningful posts because you cannot reply in a convincing way?
I was there and I must say that it has been due to several factors. People were expecting even a greater number of Jeskai Combo, and they were prepared for it. The pilots were not that good, some of them were given losses by the judges that have been really competent in that tournament and they were carefully watching all the jesaki players for mistakes. The meta in Italy is really Jund/Junk oriented and turn 1 discards are the norm. A lot of players were using things like Eidolon of Rethoric, Spirit of the Labyrinth or even unfair cards like Slaughter Games or Stain the Mind. The deck was fresh enough that the players weren't able to test it properly and they based their strategy on goldfishing.
In legacy the problem has always been topdecking/tutoring. We can't just sit to wait to draw our finishers while they are waiting to draw their responses to bridge or even rack\affliction.
In modern the problem is just amplified since we have 2 major weaknesses:
topdecks AND aggro. Most of the finishers in modern involves creatures, apart from tron/scapeshift. Bridge is a must, it locks these decks out but it does not suffice.
4 cards out of 60 in order to win in a reliable way isn't enough.
This is the list I am currently running, 5/1 at a local (medium size, 86 players) unsanctioned Christmas tourney:
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
3 Shrieking Affliction
4 The Rack
4 Wrench Mind
3 Liliana of the Veil
2 Raven's Crime
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Necrogen Mists
2 Blood Crypt
4 Thoughtseize
1 Dakmor Salvage
4 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Damnation
2 Godless Shrine
4 Smallpox
4 Pyroclasm
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
Smallpoxes are A MUST. They slow other decks to the point that we can usually have enough time to draw a bridge and to set up our hands.
It helps with untargetable creatures and other nasty beings.
Waste Not is finally our needed 4th to 8th copy of bridge, helping us to deal with all the mess happening ON the board. But it doesn't solve the other main issue which is tutoring/topdecking.
We have Magus of the Scroll, unfortunately he is a creature.
For the box, they can even go out and hang themselves up.
They will probably spoil another good card, the rest will be garbage like Gilded Lotus or Ink-Eyes to which nobody gives a ****.
Or even Augur of Skulls
The deck "may" work in Legacy, in modern we can't hope to win just by removing them 2 cards in 2 turns.
Three are the main problems of the deck: searching for bridges, going into topdeck mode, non-reactive strategy
Bridge-dependancy is actually a huge issue, we are always threatened as long as we are not able to play a bridge.
In legacy, this is not a problem, since we have things like dark rituals.
On the other hand, in modern, a turn 3 drop is sometimes just too slow.
Sure once it is dropped is almost a guaranteed lock, since the opponents will have to wait for a solution, if any, but considering the cost and the fact that it is an artifact, playing around bridge is not a big deal.
Topdeck mode is something subtle. We cannot hard lock the game like in legacy, where we have Null Brooch. Even if the opponent draws just one card, he is able to put a threat to us each turn. It is worth nothing that they will have to deal with rack/shrieking, we will not be able to keep answers against them since our goal is to be hand empty. An obvious solution would be putting BoB... So are Dark Confidants worth it? Absolutely not. Games may be very long and a Confidant on the board is really difficult to deal with for us, unless we want to give to the opponent the possibility to keep one more card in hand or destroying our manabase with a smallpox.
The real problem is that we cannot easily tutor cards and even if we would be able to, we have almost zero solution to non-creature board threats.
Non-reactive means that we cannot usually deal with a threat that has been already casted. If something unexpected is able to sneak on the board on the opponent side, you can rest assured that it will remain for a long time.
I really wish this kind of deck could be played with a degree of safety, unfortunately it is not.
Honorable mention: a single engineered explosives and it's game.
[snip]
Warning for Spam t_c
I will check it out. Too bad I loved the idea of this deck.
Check the deck in my signature. It has still problems against Melira pod, but against the rest you should be fine.
And you have yet to reply to all the points that I have provided you some posts ago. Completely ignoring the meaningful posts because you cannot reply in a convincing way?