Quote from VariousBoots »Quote from ernest_theweedwhackerguy »Fifth turn dropped a Boseiju after I topped Primal Surge, so I tried to keep him distracted. I played a courser, he countered it, I looked devastated and passed turn. Sixth turn, "Primal Surge for Win?" "....Show me.... Yep, that's a win for you. Good game."
I love this. The psychological part of a game of magic. Well done baiting out his counters to push the Surge through.
Well thank you, sir. I think that was my favorite match of the night.
People wouldn't believe how much your opponent tries to judge what to do based off of your expressions when it comes to magic. Everybody I play against(other than my brother) all wear the kind of poker face that people put on while playing in a huge Texas Hold-em tournament for $5 million. This makes it really easy for emotions to throw kinks in somebody's plan and/or make them think that they have you on the ropes.
2
1
1
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/6985d7/decks_you_didnt_know_you_wanted_to_play_in_modern/
1
Welcome Cuson! It's awesome to hear you are interested in the deck. I think Heartless Architect is a lot of fun "fair" deck for the combo-oriented players out there. Hopefully I can address your concerns to your satisfaction.
- Interacting with modern's turn 3 kills is an appropriate concern. We have been able to take care of this in a few different ways. Infect is actually a fairly good matchup for us and something that is very easy to tune for if you see a lot of it. 3-4 maindecked Spellskites are extremely effective against them as well as against the Boggles and suicide aggro decks you may see out and about. Additionally we also have been playing around with various numbers of Dismembers, Slaughter Pacts, and other kill spells which take out threats at instant speed. These alongside applying our own pressure with Myr Superion[/s]s and Lodestone Golems help to make the matchup mostly favorable. Sideboarded Chalice of the Void cast at 1 is also very good here as you pointed out.
Burn is another beast. In the case of burn, we still have Spellskite to take some damage for us and it, Myr Superion, and friends can all stand in the way of Goblin Guides and Monastery Swiftspear while we apply our own pressure. Filigree Familiar and Elixir of Immortality do a great job of stalling the game while we beat down with our larger threats.
- I think that if you play around with the deck a little you may see that we don’t actually need Heartless Summoning and instead it just gives us some of our most explosive plays. Unlike a lot of combo decks that rely on filtering or tutoring for a specific win condition, Heartless Architect plays a full engine package consisting of some number of Heartless Summoning, Grand Architect, Etherium Sculptor, and Chief Engineer. I personally play 12 total engine pieces which all can do well in enabling the deck on their own and most do great things when their effects are added on to each other. So we are not relying on finding one of our 3 heartlesses but instead relying on drawing one or more similar effects from a pool that makes up about 1/5 of the main deck.
I hope this answers a few of your initial questions and I look forward to hearing how your testing goes.I have tried a more counter and discard oriented version of the deck and the problems I found were that you only ever wanted to play an Inquisition of Kozilek or a Thoughtseize turn 1, otherwise they got in the way of your turns 2 and 3 which are, without a doubt, our most important turns. Likewise, holding up mana for Remands and Mana Leaks is extremely awkward because they prevent us from making the early explosive plays we need to win most games.
Chalice of the Void has proved to be very good in testing. It works great against a number of decks but mostly in dealing with 1 cmc removal spells. As mentioned above, it hits infect very hard, but it doesn’t do nearly as much against burn. It hits most of their creatures, but those have normally been played before we can drop a Chalice and we also can deal with those threats fairly well with our own creatures. But it unfortunately only hits Lightning Bolt and Lava Spike while the rest of their spells (especially Destructive Revelry) can be cast as normal and we have missed an opportunity to play something more impactful. So I choose to play 1 Chalice of the Void in my sideboard in my Trinket Mage toolbox but I could see an argument for putting that up to 2 or so.
1
Trophy Mage has some sweet implications for the SB that you have covered pretty well. I would just like to add the thought of tutoring that 1of Staff of Domination for when you have Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and Grand Architect in play and you feel like you would enjoy infinite life, infinite mana, and want to draw your deck
Scrap Trawler is intriguing but I don’t think it’s what we want in the 3 cmc slot. They unfortunately shot down the combo potential by adding the “lesser converted mana cost” clause. But it could still be a power house in some sort of grindy sacrifice engine. This + Smuggler’s Copter may make me reconsider my old janky Disciple of Deceit toolbox brew that I have always been tempted to try out….
So overall, I am by far the most excited for Yahenni’s Expertise because it 100% has a place as at least a 2of in the 75 and will significantly improve several bad matchups. Trophy Mage will be very fun to play with and I will gladly pick up a playset of the promos to add to my collection of other fancy artifact wizards.
PS: I use a different username on this forum
1
My list is similar to Ulka's list he posted above and I can confirm that multiple Lodestone Golems (or Metamorphed Lodestones) happen in a high percentage of games. Plenty of times you will be playing multiple in a turn and if they eat removal, then they worked as a timewalk + duress puling out a removal spell from the opponent's hand and then we get to drop either something like a wurmcoil or chain sphinxes. I don't know if you have played many games with Lodestone, but if you haven't I would recommend you try him out and see that the performance we are describing is not Magical Christmas Land scenarios (MCL scenarios are much much better than just slamming 2 Lodestones).
Also, I realize that KCommand is a card and as you pointed out in your earlier post, it is highly effective against decks of this style. I don't have much more to say on that other than its something you have to accept and be cognizant of when playing decks, like Jund, that are likely to be running it. When fighting discard, Dodecapods in the SB are great vs Lili and KCommand effects but otherwise you have to play through it just like any other combo or synergy based deck. I guess you could play Witchbane Orbs but that just seems bad...
2
In my experience Lodestone Golem has been a key piece of this deck. Yes it is a nonbo with several cards, but it slows down your opponent much more than it slows down you. And in the case where I get something like a Tezz stuck in my hand, I am happy to hold off playing it for a few turns while I have the stronger and more aggressive board state (depending on the matchup) and then dropping it as soon as I can pay the tax or Lodestone gets removed. Also notably, Lodestone is generally the card that wins me most of my games. Lodestone is also 1 of the ways I rely on for "interaction" with the opponent. You mentioned taxing the opponent by turn 3 to 4 which is exactly the point. Lodestone Golem taxes the combo players to push their win conditions back at least 1 turn while also applying pressure and threating to end the game quickly. Similarly, it is effective vs wrath effects because it does come down by turn 4 and pushes wraths back at least 1 turn while you continue to beat down.
I hope that gets across my thoughts on the Golem and I would be happy to pursue this further or any of your other questions (I think they are valid questions to ask) but I don't believe my lists to be similar enough to be very helpful on this thread.
1
Foundry Inspector
Edit: Apparently it hasn't been added to mtgSalvation yet. Spoiler can be found here.