The deck might fare well against budget decks but the deck is a $400 deck.
How expensive a deck is doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with its competitiveness--that is, you can have a relatively expensive homebrew if you run goyfs, hierarchs, snapcasters, etc. Either way, $400 is pretty cheap for a Modern deck.
OP: I agree with wpgstevo that your focus on exalted is a bit excessive. Your 'best case scenario' isn't ever going to happen since removal exists, and you're running pretty bad creatures to make it work. If you're playing a green aggro deck, you should be playing Tarmogoyf.
Again, I'd highly recommend you move away from going so all-in with exalted. If you're interested in abusing Collected Company, there are a number of decks that people have been discussing in the Deck Creation forums. The Pod Reloaded is a value/midrange deck, and Look Ma, No Pod! more closely resembles pre-banning Melirapod combo lists.
Izzetmage pretty much summed it up. Bad decks do win tournaments (albeit rarely) and just because a single list won a single 150-man really doesn't mean anything at all.
However most people on this forum (and like in real life) only look at things on paper rather than actually playing.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. A huge number of players who post on this forum are competitive players and basically every primer thread is chock full of testing and tournament reports.
you're [sic] argument is usually (lmao not Tarmogoyf or Rhino)
That's because that's the only argument that's really needed here. When Siege Rhino enters the battlefield, it provides you with immediate advantage regardless of whether or not it is removed before it can attack. Tarmogoyf is (almost always) big by the time it comes down and only gets bigger as the game goes on at no cost to you or advantage to you opponent. Sheltering Ancient, while big when it comes down, provides advantage to your opponent before it attacks and continues to benefit your opponent after it's gone. Like some other people have said, if your opponent's Siege Rhino or Tarmogoyf has even one counter on it, it wins the race because it can eat your Siege Rhinos and Tarmogoyfs. Additionally, there's a pretty significant chance that your opponent won't have a creature on the board on turn two, and most of the creatures that will be there you really don't want to be getting bigger--I sure as hell don't want to be putting +1/+1 counters on my opponent's Blighted Agent, Arcbound Ravager, Tarmogoyf, or Monastery Swiftspear.
It's a cute idea but the downside is too significant to make it worthwhile.
I can't imagine why you would want to run Nykthos in a three-color aggro deck. Not only will you not have much devotion of any particular color, you don't need much mana. As an aggro deck you want to drop cheap, efficiently costed creatures, not expensive things that require you go out of your way to cast.
@OP: I think Noble Hierarch would be a better mana dork than Birds of Paradise for this deck. The exalted trigger and be pretty relevant. I'm not sure why you aren't playing Tarmogoyf and Siege Rhino; they both are excellent creatures without Doran/Assault Formation and are even better with it. Tasigur, the Golden Fang is also an excellent card for grindy matchups and I think he merits testing.
I make these suggestions because basically every creature you're running outside of Doran himself is really subpar if you don't have Assault Formation or Doran, the Siege Tower out. Running creatures that are good on their own is important.
No. Pacts create a delayed trigger upon resolution that is independent of the zone the card is in when that ability would be triggered. However, Stifle, Squelch, and the like could counter the triggered ability when it is on the stack.
Deck tags make your list a lot easier to look at. To make them, just type up your list and put [.deck] (without the period) before it and [/deck] after it. It'll come out all pretty like this:
In terms of the list itself, I'll point your towards the mono-white vial knights primer that already exists. Your deck looks very similar to that archetype and there's a lot of good discussion in that thread.
Ad Nauseam seems like a poor choice. As far as I can tell you're not using it as a combo-kill, and outside of that all it is is a very inefficient and risky draw engine. I'll second replacing Wrath of God with Damnation--it's identical in function but way easier on your mana and makes it a lot easier to splash another color.
As some others have said your deck seems exceptionally threat-light, and I'd look into some other options. If you splash blue (which seems like a good idea--it gives cardselection and controlelements) Creeping Tar Pit is a solid clock that doesn't take up a spell slot.
Hey everyone! I play Splinter Twin in Modern, and was recently told by a friend at my LGS that I need to be able to physically represent each of the tokens I make while comboing. Is this correct? It'd be great if someone could direct me to where that is (or isn't) stated in the tournament or comprehensive rules as well, since I couldn't find anything explicitly stating anything about this. Thanks!
I question the wisdom of allowing strangers to make a decision of this caliber for you.
I don't see how asking for people's opinions on the two options is harmful. OP isn't bound to choose whatever comes out on top on the poll, and it's often very helpful to hear other people's opinions on matters like these.
OP: Objectively, Edric is by far the more powerful of the two options. I agree with arrogantAxolotl that branching away from blue is probably a good idea since all of your decks run blue and doing so has a pretty significant effect on the way to build and play a deck. Ghave, Guru of Spores is a more powerful "+1/+1 counters matter" commander (if power is especially important to you--I don't know if it is) but I think Daghatar is the option of the two that will give you the most refreshing experience.
MY GOD EVERY POST ON MY THREADS ARE ABOUT TWIN! 1 person at fnm out of 43 plays Twin at my local card shoppe. STOP USING IT AS AN EXCUSE TO HAVE IT LOSE! (In reply to Kalynis)
Woah there, no need to shout. My apologies for making the (apparently unreasonable?) assumption that you are optimizing your decks against the established metagame. You might get more useful advice if you give people an idea of what your local meta is like so you get advice for optimizing against that.
Your manabase could also use some smoothing out. To start, you're running four copies of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Excepting Divinity of Pride (of which you're only running two and thus can't expect to see every game) none of your permanents have more than two colored mana symbols in their costs, and many only have one and a significant number have none at all. Even if you were to run Nykthos (which I really don't think is worth it) you don't want to run more than two since it's legendary and is useless in multiples. I'd cut them altogether and replace them with Verdant Catacombs. Since you're only two colors you could also pretty safely cut some basics and add Woodland Cemetery. I'd also think about upping your land count--22 is low for a midrange/control deck, especially one that is focused on big mana.
As I also mentioned, before, you're running a lot of really bad creatures just because they gain you life. I don't know about you, but when my opponent is dropping Siege Rhino or Tarmogoyf or Snapcaster Mage I really don't want to be dropping Wall of Limbs or Disowned Ancestor. I'd suggest a more BG/x creature base with Tarmogoyfs and maybe a Tasigur or two. Tarmogoyf is just the best green creature ever printed (and arguably one of the best creatures ever printed) and Tasigur is basically both another goyf and a source of consistent card advantage as the game goes on. Thragtusk might be another option to consider as well. Either Sakura-Tribe Elder (per weltkreig's suggestion) or Birds of Paradise should replace Leaden Myr. Child of Night is an aggressive two-drop... in limited. I can't think of a good reason to run it in any Modern deck, much less this one. Same goes for Disowned Ancestor--it's just an objectively bad card. I'd cut both of them for some of the aforementioned Tarmogoyfs and Tasigurs and maybe some extra removal/discard or those extra two lands you really ought to be running.
Every deck needs a boardwipe or semi-boardwipe to equalize the board in case you're behind.
This is pretty shaky advice. Many successful decks don't run board wipes. In fact, the majority of archetypes don't; control is really the only archetype that benefits a whole lot from them. Aggro decks aim to close out the game before their opponent stabilizes (much less is ahead) and midrange (which is what I'd classify this deck as) aims to survive the early game and start dropping powerful, hard-to-kill threats. Combo often doesn't care about the board state. Because this is a heavily creature-based midrange deck I'd recommend against playing boardwipes.
1. This deck fits solidly into the "midrange" archetype. Midrange decks seek to survive long enough to stabilize against aggro decks before they start playing powerful, efficient threats to close out the game.
2. The big thing I notice immediately about your deck is the number of cards that you have 1 or 2 of; most decks try to run 3 or 4 of each card they play because that increases the likelihood of you drawing that card in any given game. To begin streamlining your deck I'd identify the cards that you find do the most work for you game-to-game and try to max out on those while cutting cards that you find to underperform. There are several cards I'd recommend cutting altogether:
Elixir of Immortality may be appealing at first--after all, if the game goes long you don't want to deck yourself, right? The thing is that I can quarantee that you will never, ever, find yourself with an empty library with this type of deck. Since you're running minimal card draw (a singleton Garruk's Packleader at the moment) it'll take you between 40-50 draw steps (accounting for deck thinning due to ramp spells) before you end up with an empty library, and games basically never go that long. Even you were a deck that frequently was in danger of decking itself (like U/W Control from Ravnica-Theros standard) you wouldn't run more than one, since that's all you need. All that said, I'd recommend that you cut all of your Elixir of Immortalitys for more effective cards.
Satyr Wayfinder and Gather Courage both just don't seem to do what this deck really wants to be doing. Satyr Wayfinder is an overcosted inefficient beater that doesn't really do anything except for fill your graveyard (which you don't really want to be doing, since you have no other cards that interact with the graveyard) and Gather Courage, while a cute combat trick, is at best a Shock and at worst a 1-for-1, which just isn't that appealing.
Timberland Ranger is just straight-up inefficient. I get that it synergizes with Mycoloth, but two power for two mana just isn't efficient enough to be worth it.
Spire Tracer is cute, but ultimately inefficient and quickly outclassed. I'd replace it with something like Experiment One.
Mycoloth is another card I'd call into question. While not unarguably bad like the cards I've previously mentioned, it puts you in the uncomfortable position of risking an n-for-1 trade, where n isn't in your favor. If it sticks around a turn it does start providing card advantage (although not a significant amount--an army of 1/1s, no matter how big, is still an army of 1/1s that get eaten by Grizzly Bears and die to Pyroclasm) there's a pretty significant risk that your opponent will just untap and Doom Blade it, meaning they spent one card to get Mycoloth and whatever other creatures you sacrificed to it, which really sucks.
Since most of my suggestions involving lowering or smoothing out your curve (that is, where the casting costs of your cards fall on a bell curve) in some you'll be a lot less dependent on ramp. I'd recommend cutting some or all of the Cultivates, Elvish Pioneers, and Armillary Spheres for some of the cards I mentioned.
Those things said, here are some cards I'd add or try to max out on:
Leatherback Baloth is an excellent example of an efficient creature. It'd be difficult to cast in a deck with more than one color, but since you're only running green it shouldn't be an issue. Unless your opponent is cheating in Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or casting Tarmogoyf, then Leatherback Baloth is guaranteed to outclass whatever creature they play on turn 3. I'd play 3 or 4.
Strangleroot Geist is another very efficiently costed creature that is not only hasty but gets better when it dies. I'd run 3-4.
Kalonian Tusker is yet another efficiently costed beater that is basically guaranteed to outclass whatever your opponents are playing on turn 2. I'd run 3-4.
Experiment One, as I mentioned earlier, is a great aggressive one-drop. Not only does it get better and better as the game goes on, but it can protect itself. I'd run 3-4.
One thing that you've probably found about playing Green is that you tend to empty your hand very quickly; this isn't easy to remedy (green has always had issues with card draw) but adding another Garruk's Packleader and maybe one or two Harmonize can help this issue a lot.
Finally, 3. This depends on who and what decks you're playing against, but monogreen stompy is an age-old archetype that's been around since Force of Nature was printed Alpha, so you won't be getting the jump on your opponents or get an advantage due to surprise or unconventional strategy. That said, stompy has always been a recognized archetype and while it does poorly against combo (the best you can hope to do is race them) its efficient creatures and low curve have kept it a mainstay of kitchen tables for as long as Magic's been around.
dark ritual will help with casting costs in a power build
Dark Ritual is a bad idea in basically anything other than a combo deck. It is inherent card disadvantage and makes it very easy for you to be two-for-one'd by removal or a counterspell. The only non-combo decks I'd recommend Dark Ritual in are things like The Gate and Suicide Black, both of which are aggro decks that try to close out the game so fast that their own life total and card economy are irrelevant.
I'd highly recommend against running Dark Ritual in any version of this list.
Brainstorm isn't incredibly powerful without shuffle effects like fetchlands. I'd try out Preordain in its place if you absolutely need draw power, but it really doesn't seem like you do. I'd probably replace it with more powerful permission like Cryptic Command.
How expensive a deck is doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with its competitiveness--that is, you can have a relatively expensive homebrew if you run goyfs, hierarchs, snapcasters, etc. Either way, $400 is pretty cheap for a Modern deck.
OP: I agree with wpgstevo that your focus on exalted is a bit excessive. Your 'best case scenario' isn't ever going to happen since removal exists, and you're running pretty bad creatures to make it work. If you're playing a green aggro deck, you should be playing Tarmogoyf.
Again, I'd highly recommend you move away from going so all-in with exalted. If you're interested in abusing Collected Company, there are a number of decks that people have been discussing in the Deck Creation forums. The Pod Reloaded is a value/midrange deck, and Look Ma, No Pod! more closely resembles pre-banning Melirapod combo lists.
I can't see any tribe really wanting Chameleon Colossus. As mentioned, Leaf-Crowned Elder would be better for treefolk, and elves is primarily a combo deck in which Chameleon Colossus would do more harm than good.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. A huge number of players who post on this forum are competitive players and basically every primer thread is chock full of testing and tournament reports.
That's because that's the only argument that's really needed here. When Siege Rhino enters the battlefield, it provides you with immediate advantage regardless of whether or not it is removed before it can attack. Tarmogoyf is (almost always) big by the time it comes down and only gets bigger as the game goes on at no cost to you or advantage to you opponent. Sheltering Ancient, while big when it comes down, provides advantage to your opponent before it attacks and continues to benefit your opponent after it's gone. Like some other people have said, if your opponent's Siege Rhino or Tarmogoyf has even one counter on it, it wins the race because it can eat your Siege Rhinos and Tarmogoyfs. Additionally, there's a pretty significant chance that your opponent won't have a creature on the board on turn two, and most of the creatures that will be there you really don't want to be getting bigger--I sure as hell don't want to be putting +1/+1 counters on my opponent's Blighted Agent, Arcbound Ravager, Tarmogoyf, or Monastery Swiftspear.
It's a cute idea but the downside is too significant to make it worthwhile.
I can't imagine why you would want to run Nykthos in a three-color aggro deck. Not only will you not have much devotion of any particular color, you don't need much mana. As an aggro deck you want to drop cheap, efficiently costed creatures, not expensive things that require you go out of your way to cast.
Very mature.
@OP: I think Noble Hierarch would be a better mana dork than Birds of Paradise for this deck. The exalted trigger and be pretty relevant. I'm not sure why you aren't playing Tarmogoyf and Siege Rhino; they both are excellent creatures without Doran/Assault Formation and are even better with it. Tasigur, the Golden Fang is also an excellent card for grindy matchups and I think he merits testing.
I make these suggestions because basically every creature you're running outside of Doran himself is really subpar if you don't have Assault Formation or Doran, the Siege Tower out. Running creatures that are good on their own is important.
4 Student of Warfare
3 Knight of Glory
4 Mirran Crusader
4 Paladin en-Vec
4 Knight Exemplar
3 Mentor of the Meek
2 Hero of Bladehold
4 Path to Exile
4 Æther Vial
4 Brave the Elements
2 Wrath of God
2 Defense Grid
2 Torpor Orb
3 Kor Firewalker
4 Celestial Purge
2 Rest in Peace
2 Kataki, War's Wage
In terms of the list itself, I'll point your towards the mono-white vial knights primer that already exists. Your deck looks very similar to that archetype and there's a lot of good discussion in that thread.
Kataki, War's Wage seems like a bad SB choice since it hurts your Aether Vials, which are pretty integral to your strategy. Timely Reinforcements is a more versatile card than Kor Firewalker since it is usefull in matchups other than just Burn.
Ad Nauseam seems like a poor choice. As far as I can tell you're not using it as a combo-kill, and outside of that all it is is a very inefficient and risky draw engine. I'll second replacing Wrath of God with Damnation--it's identical in function but way easier on your mana and makes it a lot easier to splash another color.
As some others have said your deck seems exceptionally threat-light, and I'd look into some other options. If you splash blue (which seems like a good idea--it gives card selection and control elements) Creeping Tar Pit is a solid clock that doesn't take up a spell slot.
I don't see how asking for people's opinions on the two options is harmful. OP isn't bound to choose whatever comes out on top on the poll, and it's often very helpful to hear other people's opinions on matters like these.
OP: Objectively, Edric is by far the more powerful of the two options. I agree with arrogantAxolotl that branching away from blue is probably a good idea since all of your decks run blue and doing so has a pretty significant effect on the way to build and play a deck. Ghave, Guru of Spores is a more powerful "+1/+1 counters matter" commander (if power is especially important to you--I don't know if it is) but I think Daghatar is the option of the two that will give you the most refreshing experience.
Woah there, no need to shout. My apologies for making the (apparently unreasonable?) assumption that you are optimizing your decks against the established metagame. You might get more useful advice if you give people an idea of what your local meta is like so you get advice for optimizing against that.
Even if Twin isn't in your meta, as weltkreig said, it'd do you a lot of good to run a discard/removal package. Your deck as it stands only is running a single playset of a very subpar (doesn't hit Siege Rhino, Dark Confidant, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Plague Stinger, Bloodghast, etc.) removal spell. As I mentioned before, Blossoming Wreath isn't legal in Modern (since it was only printed in Weatherlight, which isn't in the Modern card pool) so I'd cut it and Doom Blade for something like a playset of Abrupt Decay and some combination of Thoughtseize/Inquisition of Kozilek.
Your manabase could also use some smoothing out. To start, you're running four copies of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Excepting Divinity of Pride (of which you're only running two and thus can't expect to see every game) none of your permanents have more than two colored mana symbols in their costs, and many only have one and a significant number have none at all. Even if you were to run Nykthos (which I really don't think is worth it) you don't want to run more than two since it's legendary and is useless in multiples. I'd cut them altogether and replace them with Verdant Catacombs. Since you're only two colors you could also pretty safely cut some basics and add Woodland Cemetery. I'd also think about upping your land count--22 is low for a midrange/control deck, especially one that is focused on big mana.
As I also mentioned, before, you're running a lot of really bad creatures just because they gain you life. I don't know about you, but when my opponent is dropping Siege Rhino or Tarmogoyf or Snapcaster Mage I really don't want to be dropping Wall of Limbs or Disowned Ancestor. I'd suggest a more BG/x creature base with Tarmogoyfs and maybe a Tasigur or two. Tarmogoyf is just the best green creature ever printed (and arguably one of the best creatures ever printed) and Tasigur is basically both another goyf and a source of consistent card advantage as the game goes on. Thragtusk might be another option to consider as well. Either Sakura-Tribe Elder (per weltkreig's suggestion) or Birds of Paradise should replace Leaden Myr. Child of Night is an aggressive two-drop... in limited. I can't think of a good reason to run it in any Modern deck, much less this one. Same goes for Disowned Ancestor--it's just an objectively bad card. I'd cut both of them for some of the aforementioned Tarmogoyfs and Tasigurs and maybe some extra removal/discard or those extra two lands you really ought to be running.
This is pretty shaky advice. Many successful decks don't run board wipes. In fact, the majority of archetypes don't; control is really the only archetype that benefits a whole lot from them. Aggro decks aim to close out the game before their opponent stabilizes (much less is ahead) and midrange (which is what I'd classify this deck as) aims to survive the early game and start dropping powerful, hard-to-kill threats. Combo often doesn't care about the board state. Because this is a heavily creature-based midrange deck I'd recommend against playing boardwipes.
1. This deck fits solidly into the "midrange" archetype. Midrange decks seek to survive long enough to stabilize against aggro decks before they start playing powerful, efficient threats to close out the game.
2. The big thing I notice immediately about your deck is the number of cards that you have 1 or 2 of; most decks try to run 3 or 4 of each card they play because that increases the likelihood of you drawing that card in any given game. To begin streamlining your deck I'd identify the cards that you find do the most work for you game-to-game and try to max out on those while cutting cards that you find to underperform. There are several cards I'd recommend cutting altogether:
Elixir of Immortality may be appealing at first--after all, if the game goes long you don't want to deck yourself, right? The thing is that I can quarantee that you will never, ever, find yourself with an empty library with this type of deck. Since you're running minimal card draw (a singleton Garruk's Packleader at the moment) it'll take you between 40-50 draw steps (accounting for deck thinning due to ramp spells) before you end up with an empty library, and games basically never go that long. Even you were a deck that frequently was in danger of decking itself (like U/W Control from Ravnica-Theros standard) you wouldn't run more than one, since that's all you need. All that said, I'd recommend that you cut all of your Elixir of Immortalitys for more effective cards.
Satyr Wayfinder and Gather Courage both just don't seem to do what this deck really wants to be doing. Satyr Wayfinder is an overcosted inefficient beater that doesn't really do anything except for fill your graveyard (which you don't really want to be doing, since you have no other cards that interact with the graveyard) and Gather Courage, while a cute combat trick, is at best a Shock and at worst a 1-for-1, which just isn't that appealing.
Timberland Ranger is just straight-up inefficient. I get that it synergizes with Mycoloth, but two power for two mana just isn't efficient enough to be worth it.
Armillary Sphere is just inefficient. Kodama's Reach costs less mana and gets you a lot more value.
Spire Tracer is cute, but ultimately inefficient and quickly outclassed. I'd replace it with something like Experiment One.
Mycoloth is another card I'd call into question. While not unarguably bad like the cards I've previously mentioned, it puts you in the uncomfortable position of risking an n-for-1 trade, where n isn't in your favor. If it sticks around a turn it does start providing card advantage (although not a significant amount--an army of 1/1s, no matter how big, is still an army of 1/1s that get eaten by Grizzly Bears and die to Pyroclasm) there's a pretty significant risk that your opponent will just untap and Doom Blade it, meaning they spent one card to get Mycoloth and whatever other creatures you sacrificed to it, which really sucks.
Since most of my suggestions involving lowering or smoothing out your curve (that is, where the casting costs of your cards fall on a bell curve) in some you'll be a lot less dependent on ramp. I'd recommend cutting some or all of the Cultivates, Elvish Pioneers, and Armillary Spheres for some of the cards I mentioned.
Those things said, here are some cards I'd add or try to max out on:
Leatherback Baloth is an excellent example of an efficient creature. It'd be difficult to cast in a deck with more than one color, but since you're only running green it shouldn't be an issue. Unless your opponent is cheating in Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or casting Tarmogoyf, then Leatherback Baloth is guaranteed to outclass whatever creature they play on turn 3. I'd play 3 or 4.
Strangleroot Geist is another very efficiently costed creature that is not only hasty but gets better when it dies. I'd run 3-4.
Kalonian Tusker is yet another efficiently costed beater that is basically guaranteed to outclass whatever your opponents are playing on turn 2. I'd run 3-4.
Experiment One, as I mentioned earlier, is a great aggressive one-drop. Not only does it get better and better as the game goes on, but it can protect itself. I'd run 3-4.
One thing that you've probably found about playing Green is that you tend to empty your hand very quickly; this isn't easy to remedy (green has always had issues with card draw) but adding another Garruk's Packleader and maybe one or two Harmonize can help this issue a lot.
Finally, 3. This depends on who and what decks you're playing against, but monogreen stompy is an age-old archetype that's been around since Force of Nature was printed Alpha, so you won't be getting the jump on your opponents or get an advantage due to surprise or unconventional strategy. That said, stompy has always been a recognized archetype and while it does poorly against combo (the best you can hope to do is race them) its efficient creatures and low curve have kept it a mainstay of kitchen tables for as long as Magic's been around.
Dark Ritual is a bad idea in basically anything other than a combo deck. It is inherent card disadvantage and makes it very easy for you to be two-for-one'd by removal or a counterspell. The only non-combo decks I'd recommend Dark Ritual in are things like The Gate and Suicide Black, both of which are aggro decks that try to close out the game so fast that their own life total and card economy are irrelevant.
I'd highly recommend against running Dark Ritual in any version of this list.