Hm, I'm starting to like the idea of Damnation in the side more and more. It seems like it could really slow down affinity, shadow and 'drazi. I was worried about it in the main since it does nothing against combo and is too slow vs burn, but I'm very sold on how efficient it is when our threats are very recursive.
How is Relentless Dead treating you btw? I feel like if I play him on curve, he gets nuked the instant I tap out, but if I play him too late he's sorta irrelevant as a 2/2. He's also a bit of a brick against some decks, but I can see how he does great against Shadow merely by chumping for days. I mean, I get how in -theory- he can be a value engine, but for some reason he just isn't playing as one for me in actual games.
I found that once I went Aggro enough finding Zombies to tap for Cryptbreaker became more challenging and I ended up cutting it. Perhaps you've had a different experience, but as an experiment I'd start by swapping the Cryptbreakers for Trolls. In my list I also had to choose between Thoughtseize and removal in the main -- I settled on 3x Brutality for at least some hand disruption, 3x Push, 1x Dismember, 2x Decay. (The rest of my list is here.)
And I found casting Geralf's Messenger to be the biggest issue with Mutavault. Tossing an Overgrown Tomb (and maybe a couple Caverns) instead of your 8th Swamp doesn't really change that.
I've tested the deck extensively, including now two tournaments and never had an issue with casting the Messenger. Urborg let's me cast him off Mutavaults and un-popped fetches, so I save fetching exclusively for turning on Push or bringing back Bloodghast. I could throw a couple shocks in instead of swamps but I'm not gonna be able to cast Loleth Troll off Urborg and Mutavaults like I do everything else.
Cryptbreaker vs Loleth troll is something to consider however, I will give Lol-troll a shot next time and see how he behaves. It'll speed up my clock for sure. I will miss being able to frantically dig for answers vs combo, but maybe a faster clock means I won't have to.
The Thoughtseizes will stay, they are what allows a T2 deck to sit in front of three-turn clocks and not lose. I have five slots for removal, and if I will be playing green I wanna know what's the most efficient way to distribute Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay and Dismember in those 5 mainboard slots.
@Meyhoff: I have to be very wary of Lost Legacy since it's always net card disadvantage and literally my whole deck is built around the premise of "discard for value". The cool thing however, is that in matchups where I'd want a Lost Legacy, I'll be playing 9 sources of discard and 7 cards to look at their hand, this should give me enough information to manage to turn Surgical Extraction into pseudo-discard. I will test this theory next time I go into a tournament. Regarding Push vs Dismember, you're probably right, my initial reason for those dismembers was a way to try to deal with Smasher since it's one of the few relevant creatures in modern that push misses. But DS is a thing, so I need to be prepared for it too.
@Shelldell I'd been shying away from the green splash because Mutavault is such a powerful card here. It brings back Gravecrawlers (And thus bringing back Amalgams) It crews a Copter, it taps for Cryptbreaker and in desperate situation it eats a bullet for Belcher. I will try to make my manabase work that green splash while still running Urborg + Mutavault, and if I can't make it work, I pick Mutavault over Loleth Troll. I'd however like to know what cards you'd cut for the Troll.
@Horse Yeah, if I can manage to get green going with a certain level of consistency it opens up a whole new world of sideboard options and mainboard removal. I wanna test the theory of Glissa vs Big Creature decks.
Alright, after a lot of soul-searching I decided to go all-in with the "discard for value" package on my previous list by playing Prized Amalgam, the new one will be looking something like this:
Regarding removal: You're already playing white so why not go for Path to Exile? A land is very little compared to guaranteeing Death's Shadow can't recur their fatties.
I'm not sure Zealous persecution is mainboard material. Seeing how you're a sacrifice combo deck you could play Liliana, the Last Hope to slow down enemy aggro decks and recur combo pieces.
Víscera Seer is a great sac outlet because he can setup your combo. If you have Solemnity and Butcher Ghoul then you get infinite scries until you find a combo piece to end the game. Plague Belcher doubles as a beater and combo piece, leave it there. Given how you can win with only creature combos (if you have Viscera Seer, ofc) you could run a single copy of Rally the Ancestors for x=3 to win the game literally out of nowhere after a wrath.
The idea was to pack a value engine by using discard effects like Liliana, Copter, Cryptbreaker and then discarding Gravecrawlers and Bloodghast as fodder, all while running serious hand and battlefield interaction. With Belcher, Geralfs and Copter providing for reach. Went 3-1 but my one loss was in the top 4 pairings so I never got to play the 5th game.
Round 1: Ad Nauseam
Game 1: The deck performed beautifully. Hand interaction kept him off his combo long enough to kill him. There was a close one when an inquisition of Kozilek showed me an Ad Naus I couldn't discard but Copter and Cryptbreaker allowed me to dig very deep into my deck for an answer before I lost.
Game 2: Same deal as before, got two copters going and digging through my deck for the discard while hurting him a lot.
Game 1: Easy win, he didn't draw into any exiling removal so my threats just kept coming back. Mutavault and Bloodghast were all-stars here.
Game 2: He cast a Surgical extraction in response to a Bloodghast trigger that was going to bring back two of them, and snapcasted it into Gravecrawler, absolute back-breaker.
Game 3: Early Arena and Liliana were too much pressure for him to handle.
Game 1: I went big, I drew into a couple belchers who kept resetting the messenger who was trading with his creatures.
Game 2: He was very unlucky, he was manascrewed the first turns and never drew into an anthem effect. Copter just kept attacking into his spirit tokens and generating CA until my board was full and his was empty.
Game 1: I had some nice discard going on, with Thoughtseize into Collective Brutality into Liliana. It was all useless, I had him at 4 and 2 cards in hand and he cast gifts at EoT and proceeded to combo me on his turn using only cards in his graveyard.
Game 2: I think my sideboard made this one even worse? I sided out my removal so his Baral just sat there for a T5 combo.
Overall I left this match with the feeling that there is nothing I could have done to win it. My clock just isn't fast enough and my disruption does almost nothing. I think outside of splashing white for super-specific storm hate this will remain a match-up with almost 0% winrate.
OUT: 3 Fatal Push, 2 Dismember
IN: 1 Duress, 1 Collective Brutality, 2 Surgical Extraction, 1 Relic of Progenitus.
Thoughts:
I like how the deck plays, I didn't get the chance to play against big creatures decks like Death Shadow or Eldrazi, so there's a lot of testing to be done. I'm pretty certain that Dredge is also a terrible matchup so I'm considering bumping the Surgical Extraction count to 4 in the sideboard to maybe have a better chance against storm and dredge. Collective Brutality does a good job of killing critters so I'm thinking of loading a bit more on Dismember and less on Fatal Push. Finally, I kept finding that the cards that terrify me are cmc4+ so I will switch my inquisitions for thoughtseizes.
Solemnity/Geralfs Messenger is an interesting combo, given a sac outlet. This however means that it might see play in more combo oriented builds like Melira, and less in a zombies shell. If only we had a decent zombie sac outlet.
I'm not sure it competes with Vizier combo, but it shuts it down in addition to being your own combo piece.
Last Hope plays the recursion game nicely and can be very solid. She's also a very viable option. The Kansas IQ deck had 2 of The Veil, 2 Last Hope and 2 Heretical Healer on the main.
Oh no, Fleshbag isn't mainboard material ever, he goes in the side if you're really struggling against zoo and shadow. Contaminated could be interesting tech against Tron, I'd never considered it, it might deserve a spot on the side since B/W has no access to Quarter. But it's dead too often to deserve the mainboard spot. (In fact, controlled lifeloss can often get you killed against Shadow). If you want a mainboard card to shore up aggressive matchups you could consider Lili of the Veil, she kills a dude and often eats a burn spell, making burn lose a lot of time.
This deck relies on finding a crawler, gotta be careful about that.
The card that wins games on its own against burn is Collective Brutality, much more so than circles of protection and stuff. Killing a creature and forcing them to discard a burn spell is back-breaking, specially for a deck which has stuff like crawler to discard.
I don't like contaminated ground because it's a dead card in multiple matchups, is sheer card disadvantage and there are better ways to buy time. If you really are having a LOT of problems with naya and affinity then Push in the mainboard and path on the side is a better plan.
An absolute backbreaker for those decks is Fleshbag Maraudes, you don't care about sacrifice like they do, it probably even furthers your plan, and it has a body that can easily trade with a lot of things. I believe the sideboard could use a little change. I'm not sold on Tormods vs Nihil Spellbomb. You could easily fit some Fulminators on the side to deal with Tron.
Yeah, but it's not an actual combo, just a fun interaction. That's what I mean by resetting your Messenger. It's not super broken, but it really gums up your board and deals some damage to the other player. In a more sac-oriented shell like the one that placed 3rd at Kansas IQ resetting your Messenger does much more than in an aggro list like ours.
If you mean resetting a messenger with a belcher then sure, then again my list runs three of each in the MB so it might not be a great example. It's strong but not exactly a combo. Some decks that rely on beating you on the ground, like taxes or zoo, will have lots of trouble with those two on the ground however.
Metallic Mimic + Geralfs Messenger is a really bad Non-bo, and there really isn't a reason to run Blood Scrivener over Dark Confidant (Not that I'm a fan of Bob here anyways).
Lifebane Zombie hasn't really done well in my SB, I feel like, for a hand picking effect he's too slow.
You could replace them for Collective Brutality, killing a creature, discarding a burn card and gaining two life feels so strong against burn that it might as well be a silver bullet.
I kinda understand the role Vial is playing here though. There are decks against which our only choice is to try and outrace, because we simply don't have the kind of disruption needed to stop them significantly. I'm talking about Valakut, Tron and similar decks that often lose to aggro but can readily beat midrange strategies like ours. Vial allows us to empty our hands really quickly to go for kills that merely curving out would never allow us.
However, aside from those matchups, it feels like a weak card, specially against matchups where we're supposed to be the ones responding to their threats, like Burn.
How is Relentless Dead treating you btw? I feel like if I play him on curve, he gets nuked the instant I tap out, but if I play him too late he's sorta irrelevant as a 2/2. He's also a bit of a brick against some decks, but I can see how he does great against Shadow merely by chumping for days. I mean, I get how in -theory- he can be a value engine, but for some reason he just isn't playing as one for me in actual games.
I've tested the deck extensively, including now two tournaments and never had an issue with casting the Messenger. Urborg let's me cast him off Mutavaults and un-popped fetches, so I save fetching exclusively for turning on Push or bringing back Bloodghast. I could throw a couple shocks in instead of swamps but I'm not gonna be able to cast Loleth Troll off Urborg and Mutavaults like I do everything else.
Cryptbreaker vs Loleth troll is something to consider however, I will give Lol-troll a shot next time and see how he behaves. It'll speed up my clock for sure. I will miss being able to frantically dig for answers vs combo, but maybe a faster clock means I won't have to.
The Thoughtseizes will stay, they are what allows a T2 deck to sit in front of three-turn clocks and not lose. I have five slots for removal, and if I will be playing green I wanna know what's the most efficient way to distribute Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay and Dismember in those 5 mainboard slots.
@Meyhoff: I have to be very wary of Lost Legacy since it's always net card disadvantage and literally my whole deck is built around the premise of "discard for value". The cool thing however, is that in matchups where I'd want a Lost Legacy, I'll be playing 9 sources of discard and 7 cards to look at their hand, this should give me enough information to manage to turn Surgical Extraction into pseudo-discard. I will test this theory next time I go into a tournament. Regarding Push vs Dismember, you're probably right, my initial reason for those dismembers was a way to try to deal with Smasher since it's one of the few relevant creatures in modern that push misses. But DS is a thing, so I need to be prepared for it too.
@Shelldell I'd been shying away from the green splash because Mutavault is such a powerful card here. It brings back Gravecrawlers (And thus bringing back Amalgams) It crews a Copter, it taps for Cryptbreaker and in desperate situation it eats a bullet for Belcher. I will try to make my manabase work that green splash while still running Urborg + Mutavault, and if I can't make it work, I pick Mutavault over Loleth Troll. I'd however like to know what cards you'd cut for the Troll.
@Horse Yeah, if I can manage to get green going with a certain level of consistency it opens up a whole new world of sideboard options and mainboard removal. I wanna test the theory of Glissa vs Big Creature decks.
3x Cryptbreaker
4x Prized Amalgam
4x Smuggler's Copter
3x Geralf's Messenger
3x Plague Belcher
4x Bloodghast
4x Thoughtsieze
2x Fatal Push
2x Liliana of the Veil
3x Dismember
2x Collective Brutality
4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Marsh Flats
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3x Mutavault
1x Watery Grave
4x Ghost Quarter
1x Duress
1x Collective Brutality
3x Gifted Aetherborn
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4x Surgical Extraction
1x Phyrexian Arena
I'd like to hear your critiques. The matchups that I have the most doubts about are: Death's Shadow, Storm, Dredge, Tron and Eldrazi.
Regarding removal: You're already playing white so why not go for Path to Exile? A land is very little compared to guaranteeing Death's Shadow can't recur their fatties.
I'm not sure Zealous persecution is mainboard material. Seeing how you're a sacrifice combo deck you could play Liliana, the Last Hope to slow down enemy aggro decks and recur combo pieces.
Víscera Seer is a great sac outlet because he can setup your combo. If you have Solemnity and Butcher Ghoul then you get infinite scries until you find a combo piece to end the game. Plague Belcher doubles as a beater and combo piece, leave it there. Given how you can win with only creature combos (if you have Viscera Seer, ofc) you could run a single copy of Rally the Ancestors for x=3 to win the game literally out of nowhere after a wrath.
3x Cryptbreaker
3x Relentless Dead
4x Smuggler's Copter
3x Geralf's Messenger
3x Plague Belcher
4x Bloodghast
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1x Thoughtsieze
3x Fatal Push
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Liliana of the Veil
2x Dismember
2x Collective Brutality
4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Marsh Flats
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3x Mutavault
4x Ghost Quarter
1x Duress
1x Collective Brutality
3x Gifted Aetherborn
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x Phyrexian Obliterator
1x Relic of Progenitus
The idea was to pack a value engine by using discard effects like Liliana, Copter, Cryptbreaker and then discarding Gravecrawlers and Bloodghast as fodder, all while running serious hand and battlefield interaction. With Belcher, Geralfs and Copter providing for reach. Went 3-1 but my one loss was in the top 4 pairings so I never got to play the 5th game.
Round 1: Ad Nauseam
Game 1: The deck performed beautifully. Hand interaction kept him off his combo long enough to kill him. There was a close one when an inquisition of Kozilek showed me an Ad Naus I couldn't discard but Copter and Cryptbreaker allowed me to dig very deep into my deck for an answer before I lost.
Game 2: Same deal as before, got two copters going and digging through my deck for the discard while hurting him a lot.
OUT: 3 Fatal Push, 2 Dismember
IN: 1 Duress, 1 Collective Brutality, 2 Surgical Extraction, 1 Phyrexian Arena.
Round 2: Esper Control
Game 1: Easy win, he didn't draw into any exiling removal so my threats just kept coming back. Mutavault and Bloodghast were all-stars here.
Game 2: He cast a Surgical extraction in response to a Bloodghast trigger that was going to bring back two of them, and snapcasted it into Gravecrawler, absolute back-breaker.
Game 3: Early Arena and Liliana were too much pressure for him to handle.
OUT: 3 Fatal Push, 2 Dismember
IN: 1 Duress, 1 Collective Brutality, 2 Gifted Aetherborn, 1 Phyrexian Arena.
Round 3: B/W Tokens
Game 1: I went big, I drew into a couple belchers who kept resetting the messenger who was trading with his creatures.
Game 2: He was very unlucky, he was manascrewed the first turns and never drew into an anthem effect. Copter just kept attacking into his spirit tokens and generating CA until my board was full and his was empty.
OUT: 2 Liliana
IN: 1 Duress, 1 Collective Brutality.
Round 4: U/R Gifts Storm
Game 1: I had some nice discard going on, with Thoughtseize into Collective Brutality into Liliana. It was all useless, I had him at 4 and 2 cards in hand and he cast gifts at EoT and proceeded to combo me on his turn using only cards in his graveyard.
Game 2: I think my sideboard made this one even worse? I sided out my removal so his Baral just sat there for a T5 combo.
Overall I left this match with the feeling that there is nothing I could have done to win it. My clock just isn't fast enough and my disruption does almost nothing. I think outside of splashing white for super-specific storm hate this will remain a match-up with almost 0% winrate.
OUT: 3 Fatal Push, 2 Dismember
IN: 1 Duress, 1 Collective Brutality, 2 Surgical Extraction, 1 Relic of Progenitus.
Thoughts:
I like how the deck plays, I didn't get the chance to play against big creatures decks like Death Shadow or Eldrazi, so there's a lot of testing to be done. I'm pretty certain that Dredge is also a terrible matchup so I'm considering bumping the Surgical Extraction count to 4 in the sideboard to maybe have a better chance against storm and dredge. Collective Brutality does a good job of killing critters so I'm thinking of loading a bit more on Dismember and less on Fatal Push. Finally, I kept finding that the cards that terrify me are cmc4+ so I will switch my inquisitions for thoughtseizes.
I'm not sure it competes with Vizier combo, but it shuts it down in addition to being your own combo piece.
The card that wins games on its own against burn is Collective Brutality, much more so than circles of protection and stuff. Killing a creature and forcing them to discard a burn spell is back-breaking, specially for a deck which has stuff like crawler to discard.
I don't like contaminated ground because it's a dead card in multiple matchups, is sheer card disadvantage and there are better ways to buy time. If you really are having a LOT of problems with naya and affinity then Push in the mainboard and path on the side is a better plan.
An absolute backbreaker for those decks is Fleshbag Maraudes, you don't care about sacrifice like they do, it probably even furthers your plan, and it has a body that can easily trade with a lot of things. I believe the sideboard could use a little change. I'm not sold on Tormods vs Nihil Spellbomb. You could easily fit some Fulminators on the side to deal with Tron.
Lifebane Zombie hasn't really done well in my SB, I feel like, for a hand picking effect he's too slow.
You could replace them for Collective Brutality, killing a creature, discarding a burn card and gaining two life feels so strong against burn that it might as well be a silver bullet.
However, aside from those matchups, it feels like a weak card, specially against matchups where we're supposed to be the ones responding to their threats, like Burn.