I have never wanted a common reprinted into a standard legal set as much as Ash Barrens. I absolutely love it and it would help give loam a boost. Although, it does weaken blood moon, which I'm not okay with.
Has anyone here considered Animist's Awakening? Seems like a great ramp spell in a deck that is half lands and it does the untappkng for us with spell mastery.
Did some minor testing and this deck seriously lacks draw power to do an eggs style win. It's great if you can get a trade routes into seism and faiths reward effect, but that hand isn't likely.I think you want to play a card like Hedron crab and more fetches to accelerate and get a bunch of lands in the grave. I'd also play Faithless looting to sculpt your hand early and dump unneeded cards. Dakmor Salvage is a fun interaction with trade routes as well, because you can discard and then immediately dredge for 2 as many times as you can pay one mana. If you want a win con that works from the grave and is a mana sink, try Devil's Play or Increasing Confusion. Confusion has the added bonus of being insane gas while combing off.
Blood moon is not in any way oppressive, and encourages a player to make choices during deck building. It's easy to spot and keeps decks from being 5 color goodstuff.
Blood moon is actually one of the best forms of land hate to play against. It doesn't oppress new players trying to get into the format (who will likely be playing decks with a high number of basics for budget concerns or monored.) for starters. It also limits only the colors you have access to and not the amount of mana like other forms of land destruction.
Compare this to a card like Choke, Boil, or Flashfires which will absolutely be a feels bad experience for a new player and actually punish you for playing basics!
Tl;Dr moon good because it punishes greed, you can play around it, and enforces deck building choices. Boil/Choke/Flashfires bad because they punish basics.
Upsides from ad nauseam: doesn't kill you if you have to pass turn (you're at one life), theoretically faster using rituals, doesn't fold to getting the win con discarded (blight steel shuffles in)
Downsides: creature reliant, can't use artifact ramp, sorcery speed
Edit: and your backup plan for this is through the breach or discarding blight steel to get it back in your deck.
I'd knock it because I think my idea is better. You could even run this and ad nauseam in the same deck.
Upsides from ad nauseam: doesn't kill you if you have to pass turn (you're at one life), theoretically faster using rituals, doesn't fold to getting the win con discarded (blight steel shuffles in)
Downsides: creature reliant, can't use artifact ramp, sorcery speed
Edit: and your backup plan for this is through the breach or discarding blight steel to get it back in your deck.
If you're going only creatures, any though to Ancient Ziggurat? I don't think going only creatures is the way to go though. Also, what about Mentor of the Meek?
Sure you have to activate the sac outlet and disciple doesn't give you life, but it does kill your opponent through anything but a split second ability like Sudden Shock and nobody runs those in modern very frequently.
You cast Scapeshift and win the game. Or you cast Bring to Light, tutor for scapeshift, cast scapeshift, and win the game.
With seven lands, you tutor for one Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and 6 mountains, valakut sees all the other mountains enter at the same time, triggers 6 times, and you deal 3 damage per trigger x 6 triggers = 18 damage to your opponent's face.
With eight lands, you tutor for two Valakut and 6 mountains, and deal 36 damage to your opponents face.
Combined with ramp to get you to how many lands you need, and counterspells to slow your opponent down and protect the combo, the deck is certainly viable.
For Bane fire to kill your opponent, you need to generate 21 mana. Which is not only difficult but almost unreasonable. If you want to get there, I'd recommend some sort of mono green Devotion ramp shell, and run Bane fire instead of Genesis wave . The big thing is that a lot of other decks can straight up win the game with a lot less investment.
One of the best things about rats is the amount of discard they have stapled onto bodies. If you want to go rat tribal, you're going to have to leverage this fact to be really competitive. I reccomend you use Rotting Rats, Drainpipe Vermin, Nezumi Bone-reader, and Ravenous Rats. The stats on these cards are not the most impressive, but when you discard your opponent's hand and they have little to answer them with, you'll stand a better chance. There's no reason you can't be discard-oriented, AND aggressive.
Since you need to be aggressive, cards like ink-eyes, marrow-gnawer, nezumi cutthroat, and high mana cost creatures like that are too slow. Ratcatcher is also too much of a lategame card in an aggressive deck. In my opinion, you should supplement your low drop creatures with targeted hand disruption, such as Inquisition of Kozilek, Duress, Thoughtseize, Blackmail, Mire's Toll etc. Nykthos is also not that great in this deck, as it doesn't ramp you into much, and you don't have any large X mana cost spells to power out with it.
Since the new plan is to go wide, Adaptive Automaton is looking better, but if you want an anthem effect, why not go with the harder to remove and lower cost Bad Moon?
Ideally, you'd also be running Cavern of Souls too, but I understand avoiding that one. I can't afford it either.
Anyway, I think that's all I have unless you want to splash a color other than black. Green gets you Abrupt Decay, Red gets you Kolaghan's Command, Lightning Bolt, and a few others. Hope I was helpful!
You might be trying too hard to counter your opponents deck. If you're keeping it modern legal and need an answer to hexproof creatures, look for edict effects like geth's verdictsmallpox, or even cruel edict .
Black and red do not have enchantment destruction, so assault formation is a card you can't answer in those colors. You could try running some hand disruption like duress, blackmail, inquisition of kozilek, thoughtseize to try and take it from his hand before he can play it.
Because your opponent is running a slow deck, you will want to focus on ending the game as quickly as possible, rather than directly answering every threat he plays. Focus on burning him down quick with disruption.
If you can afford to, serum visions before sleight of hand always. If you're not under pressure and have both, you may come under pressure and need the extra dig on a critical turn. In that case, you'll be glad you kept sleight for later.
The only case I can think of where you may not want to do that is to dodge hand hate. You might get lucky and put a combo piece on the top of your deck the turn before you want to go off with the scry from serum visions. But this means you have to have two of the other piece and hope to hit the other 2 to 3 cards deep, which is extremely unlikely.
Also, if you're running white, isn't Silence better than autumn's veil?
Blood moon is actually one of the best forms of land hate to play against. It doesn't oppress new players trying to get into the format (who will likely be playing decks with a high number of basics for budget concerns or monored.) for starters. It also limits only the colors you have access to and not the amount of mana like other forms of land destruction.
Compare this to a card like Choke, Boil, or Flashfires which will absolutely be a feels bad experience for a new player and actually punish you for playing basics!
Tl;Dr moon good because it punishes greed, you can play around it, and enforces deck building choices. Boil/Choke/Flashfires bad because they punish basics.
I'd knock it because I think my idea is better. You could even run this and ad nauseam in the same deck.
Upsides from ad nauseam: doesn't kill you if you have to pass turn (you're at one life), theoretically faster using rituals, doesn't fold to getting the win con discarded (blight steel shuffles in)
Downsides: creature reliant, can't use artifact ramp, sorcery speed
Edit: and your backup plan for this is through the breach or discarding blight steel to get it back in your deck.
Sure you have to activate the sac outlet and disciple doesn't give you life, but it does kill your opponent through anything but a split second ability like Sudden Shock and nobody runs those in modern very frequently.
With seven lands, you tutor for one Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and 6 mountains, valakut sees all the other mountains enter at the same time, triggers 6 times, and you deal 3 damage per trigger x 6 triggers = 18 damage to your opponent's face.
With eight lands, you tutor for two Valakut and 6 mountains, and deal 36 damage to your opponents face.
Combined with ramp to get you to how many lands you need, and counterspells to slow your opponent down and protect the combo, the deck is certainly viable.
Since you need to be aggressive, cards like ink-eyes, marrow-gnawer, nezumi cutthroat, and high mana cost creatures like that are too slow. Ratcatcher is also too much of a lategame card in an aggressive deck. In my opinion, you should supplement your low drop creatures with targeted hand disruption, such as Inquisition of Kozilek, Duress, Thoughtseize, Blackmail, Mire's Toll etc. Nykthos is also not that great in this deck, as it doesn't ramp you into much, and you don't have any large X mana cost spells to power out with it.
Since the new plan is to go wide, Adaptive Automaton is looking better, but if you want an anthem effect, why not go with the harder to remove and lower cost Bad Moon?
Ideally, you'd also be running Cavern of Souls too, but I understand avoiding that one. I can't afford it either.
Anyway, I think that's all I have unless you want to splash a color other than black. Green gets you Abrupt Decay, Red gets you Kolaghan's Command, Lightning Bolt, and a few others. Hope I was helpful!
You can also try some black sweepers such as damnation, mutilate, languish or even barter in blood if you're on a budget.
Black and red do not have enchantment destruction, so assault formation is a card you can't answer in those colors. You could try running some hand disruption like duress, blackmail, inquisition of kozilek, thoughtseize to try and take it from his hand before he can play it.
For life gain, you can counter that with Rain of gore, Everlasting torment, and Skullcrack.
Because your opponent is running a slow deck, you will want to focus on ending the game as quickly as possible, rather than directly answering every threat he plays. Focus on burning him down quick with disruption.
Happy spell slinging, hope this helps you.
The only case I can think of where you may not want to do that is to dodge hand hate. You might get lucky and put a combo piece on the top of your deck the turn before you want to go off with the scry from serum visions. But this means you have to have two of the other piece and hope to hit the other 2 to 3 cards deep, which is extremely unlikely.