MTG Salvation

Hey all,

I`m looking at getting into Living End because the deck just looks awesome to play and I been eyeballing it for years but never got into it.
I got one small question. Why do you play Demonic Dread because as fas as I can see all spells cost more than 3 mana.

Thanks in advance.

Oh wait I got it. You get Living End with it of course. PLease correct me if I`m wrong.

Just go with Devil and have fun.

Quote from ChazA4 »

To help out in hasty matters, consider Hammer of Purphoros or Urabrask the Hidden as well. Adding Purphoros himself is also not a bad idea.

Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon can also keep people off-balance, but they might be too much of a danger to you. In that case, consider Blood Sun; sure, that will also hurt some of your lands, but not critically so. Still, it's something to be aware of.

I'm not sure how many were in the red wedge, but you would also be well served to look back in the Zendikar block(the original Zendikar/Worldwake/Rise of the Eldrazi): the Rebound mechanic is worth visiting. While the damage may not be that great on those spells, getting them cast for free the next turn plays right into your gameplan.

Thanks for the reply. I will include Blood Moon because I got rid of some of the lands that I think are not really needed that much.
I will take a look at the other suggestions.

In the end it all comes down to what deck you play and against what deck you are going up to. I understand all the statistics about Modern vs Legacy win percentage but like said before in Legacy you can jam one deck and have a good chance against almost the whole field. In Modern you need to keep switching decks and read your local or tournament meta when you want to bring a deck out to have a good chance of winning.

I got a hard time udnerstanding why that is not a `matchup lotery`. If I bring the wrong deck I`m done for the rest of the tournament becasuse I get matched up against decks I almost can`t beat. Does that make me a bad player? Also if I choose the right deck I can sweep the field and take home to first price. Does that make me really that much more skilled than my opponents or did I just chose the right deck for that day.
To me that sounds like a `matchup lotery`.

I read this article from Tom Ross some time ago and he talked about how he likes to show up at tournaments with a deck that can either detroy the field or fail miserebly. He was talking about the tournament which he won playin Green Tron.
Does that not sound like a `matchup lotery` to you guys.

Maybe matchup lotery is not the right word to use for it but I dan`t think of a better one because English is not my native language. So please if someone can think of a better word for it let me know please.

I might lose credits by saying this but I actually think that xxhellfirexx3 knows what he is talking about and is not afraid to show this.

I think we all should agree that when a format has a thread going that is called the sate of Modern and it fills up with thousands of post the format is far from healthy and perfect.
I started playing Legacy because I just got sick of Modern being, for a big part, a lottery on what deck you are facing and more of a sideboard battle.
I got days when I get my good matchups and stomp everyone and other days, even when my deck is working for me, I got the bad matchups and just get completely stomped.
Of course I know that a deck should not have good matchups or 50/50 matchups against the whole field but in Modern the difference is just to big if you ask me.

Also the constant complaining about what to ban, when to ban it and waht and when to unban it has pushed me away from Modern. Don`t get me wrong Legacy is also not perfect but there is a lot less complaining going on in that format. People just play the game and they are having fun doing it.

I been playing Modern since the first year it started, wich was also the first time I started playing Magic so I been through a lot of meta`s and chanced and you name it.

But I also noticed that if Legacy was more easily accecable and cheaper Modern would not even be discussed like this.

Take care mate.

When I started playing Modern I was looking for a fun and not to expansive deck to build all those years ago and your Zoo primer was what got me into playing Zoo. I loved the deck back then and played it so much I was slamming down creatures without even thinking about it

How is it possible that a tread about the meta always, and I mean always, ends up in a Twin discussion?

Don’t you people get tired of yourself always talking about the same stuff?

Twin is banned, the deck is dead!

Get over it and get on with you life!

Comment Hidden

While I understand op's frustration you can not force people to play cards in their language.

I am living in Japan and I try to get most of my cards in English but sometimes they just don't have them in stock so I get them in Japanese. I can speak some Japanese but reading all those kanji's is something I can not. Now this summer I went back to my country for a vacation and brought my deck with me to play with my friends.

Am I not allowed to play my Japanese cards now? That just makes no sense.

Quote from Roycoroi »

Folks, go or not go with Dredge at GP São Paulo here in Brazil and what best build with or without Driven?

I say go but of course I love playing Dredge so I would always take it.

Quote from Vissah »

I`m really into just being the best combo deck I can be, specially game 1. After that I don`t mind changing or playing a bit more midrange because games turn out a lot like that.
I play the same style with Reanimator so what kind of list would you suggest if I just want to combo off as fast and cinsistent as possible.

OK, here we go:
Living End is a good Deck for game 1 in particular when your opponent tries to fill the boards with many creatures very fast. (Elves / Bogles / 8Wack Goblins)
And it is much better against hand disruption than Ad Nauseam, Vizier Combo or Saheli Cat, because you need 1 Cascade spell as the payoff and thats it. I would agree that it is very easy to achieve the combo so it is in my opinion the most consistent combo deck. I like to play both cascade spells 4x but many play only 3 Demonic Dreads. But the combo does not directly win you the game and the opponent has the option to interact with it. You still need to attack with the creatures and when you Cascade for 4 creatures with Demonic Dread your opponent can play a wrath card or burn you to death. (For example Affinity sacrifices all creature Artifacts to Arcbound Ravager and they can basically keep their board if you don't have the Faerie Macabre) Which brings me to my next point: Imagine you play against a "normal deck" with black Interaction for destroying creatures, attacking the hand and so on. They will interact with you, they will Push / Bolt their own creatures on the board Or will Thoughtseize /Thoughscour themselves for that juicy Gurmag Angler Boy who hols up your 4/4s. If your opponent knows what he is doing and has a game plan against Living End, he will interact with you even in game 1, because he can. You do get some really free Game 1s with T3 Cascade and reanimate a 6/4 , two 4/4s and a 3/4 and your opponent just scoops or does not have an out, but that is not the case against most non super linear decks. On the other hand the games against Hollow One and Grixis Deaths Shadow are among the most interactive matches I ever had and I love it. Thats one reason you see Faerie Macabres and Fulminator Mages in the main board on basically all the lists. You want interaction, because it is often worth it / you need it because the opponent hits harder / is faster. (Storm / GrishoalBrand / BridgeVine)

One of the big upsides of Living End (in my opinion) is that you don't fold to hate automatically. Your main gameplan has already 2 sides: Kill everything on the board AND put everything from your GY back to the field. The opponent has a Rest in Peace and 3 creatures on the board? OK, Cascade into living End, wipe the board and start casting your stuff. Even a small living end can win you the game when you wipe the opponents board. Then you also have the Land-destruction plan which is awesome against Tron and Ux-Control Decks. They don't care about their creatures -> hit the lands.

I feel like Living End is not a usual Reanimator deck at all, at least not to me. It is much more interactive and flexible and plays super interesting cards like faerie Macabre and Ricochet Trap while being in my favorite colors black and red.
Edit: It may also be noticed, that the living end combo disrupts other combos like Saheli, Vizier or Kiki-Angel.

Quote from Vissah »

Hey all,

I`m looking at getting into Living End because the deck just looks awesome to play and I been eyeballing it for years but never got into it.
I got one small question. Why do you play Demonic Dread because as fas as I can see all spells cost more than 3 mana.

Thanks in advance.

Oh wait I got it. You get Living End with it of course. PLease correct me if I`m wrong.

Demonic dread is one of our two Living end enablers. There's other ways to cheat Living end but in the jund colors Demonic dread and Violent outburst.

THe deck is very powerful and is and very fun to play because it's very different from what you usually have in modern. Also it's a good investment since it's a deck that has been around for years and hasn't changed much.

I've felt for a while that Modern and Vintage actually share quite a bit of characteristics with eachother. At least, Vintage from a few years ago before Mentor really took off. Dredge, Shops, and Blue were the top 3 archetypes. We're sort of at a similar spot in Modern.

In Vintage the "fair" decks NEEDED to slot 4+ gy hate AND 4+ artifact hate in their SBs. The reason they didn't lose to the rest of the field is because of cards like Force of Will and Wasteland being main-deck answers to the fringe shenanigans.

In Modern you can slot 4+ gy hate and 4+ artifact hate in the SB. In fact I think that's probably the right thing at the moment. But you still need enough answers to the rest of the field, which includes multiple strategies. Field of Ruin is a good start if you're in 2 colors. But we need a 0-mana answer like Force to be able to contain the shenanigans. When fair decks can't contain the field because they're focused on the other top dogs, we get results like today's.

I'm not necessarily advocating for Force in Modern. But we need something like that. We need something to help police the format instead of just banning things once the meta gets solved and results in degeneracy.

Maybe the answer really is "unban Twin."

Quote from javierillo_am »

Personally for my Twin I would do better the format. They banned Twin because it impeded that other decks of control were played more, everybody played grixis twin, tarmo twin, etc ... and now? How many Grixis control are played? RUG? UR with breach ... Jeskai and Uw are the only control decks that are played.

This is the nature of the game. People talk about how deck diversity is stifled, blah blah blah, but its an illusion, thrown up to distract from what really takes place.

Good decks are played, poor decks are not. 'Diversity' within a given archetype (say URx Control) is....not real. Diversity simply means 'there is nothing really defined, or good enough, to see play'. Once people identified the correct ways to play control, URW = Blow up the dudes and UW = Mess up the lands, thats it. I see little to no Grixis, or Esper, online. I see little discussion for either (more so esper, people love that group) but the reality is once the best way to do it is found, the diversity disappears.

Why are there 15 different UR decks? Because no finisher is ACTUALLY good enough. Once the right one is found (or unbanned/printed) then it will instantly remove all those other options for people who are serious about success.

Deck suppression is not a thing within an archetype. Diversity is not a thing, within an archetype.

You are either a good deck, or you are just one more Tier 2/3 jank deck, good enough to win and 5-0 a league, but not an actual Tier 1 contender.

Quote from pizzap »

NBL Modern is a different format than Modern, so I don't think it has any use for predicting unbans.

Exactly.

As a NBL player and crafter, I get really mad on how bad most of the top 32 decks were designed. I'm also surprised that nobody played Tezzerator (arguably the strongest Control deck), Affinity(with Skullclamp, only one guy in day 2) and Dredge, however, I attribute this to the lack of knowledge about the format than anything else.

Though, the deck BBD played is REALLY good (from a deck design perspective), it's Eldrazi match-up is really good.

Also, something people need to realise about NBL Modern, the angst from Combo is an illusion, Control decks either play Chalice or Top + Counterbalance, the "Tempo" decks have enough disruption (be it Discard, Counters (MM, Spell Pierce, Leak), or hatebears (Thalia says hi)) and all other decks have either a combination of the last mentioned things, or can just race you.

So yeah, for me it was expected that the metagame will look something like this, cause it is the "lazy" approach (people knew what is obviously good so they played, for the next layer they didn't want to invest enough time).

Greetings,
Kathal

Hot take: Most of the time when people complain about the meta being uninteractive, they are just bad at combat maths. Or assigning roles based on matchup and game state

If you banned the fetchlands, players would have to play more duals. This increases the costs of manabases and makes blood moon / back to basics even better. It would certainly shake up the format quite a bit.

If you banned the dual lands, that would greatly reduce the cost of manabases and it would be interesting. But people who own duals would be very upset. I can't see it happening because they have been around since the beginning and they are so iconic.

To help out in hasty matters, consider Hammer of Purphoros or Urabrask the Hidden as well. Adding Purphoros himself is also not a bad idea.

Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon can also keep people off-balance, but they might be too much of a danger to you. In that case, consider Blood Sun; sure, that will also hurt some of your lands, but not critically so. Still, it's something to be aware of.

I'm not sure how many were in the red wedge, but you would also be well served to look back in the Zendikar block(the original Zendikar/Worldwake/Rise of the Eldrazi): the Rebound mechanic is worth visiting. While the damage may not be that great on those spells, getting them cast for free the next turn plays right into your gameplan.

Quote from NZB2323 »

Unbanning BBE would hurt lantern. Jund with BBE would play a high number of Khologhan’s command, which would be very effective against lantern.

It wasn't very effective on Sunday......

Dredge is still a great deck. Solid mid to high tier 2. The truth is what we are feeling is a little bit of power creep away from us. Wizards hasn't feed us new cards in over a year. Seriously... a year. Ixalan gave us nothing, and amonkhet (a grave themed block too) gave us like... 2 half-a-cards. We didnt get a kitesail freebooter or a power house like mom hug.

So our deck is faultering. Currently the meta is unkind to us too. Games are fast, we cant exactly interact, and the prime control and combo deck of the format use the yard so grave hate is high. Its basically a 2 punch KO for us.

That BR hallowone deck is basically all in dredge that isnt super weak to grave hate. I don't believe its as amazing of a deck as people think it is, its diff less consistent than us. But its faster and it doesnt roll over to hate...

We need new cards, something that makes us less soft to side hate, and something that helps us interact a bit more. Or if the meta shifts back to grind, well do just find.