As funny as that sounds, I think Shalai is much better than Giver of Runes because Neoform is much more powerful than Chord.
My opinion is that both Call and Chord are unplayable in this archetype if we want to focus on competitiveness (there's a reason kiki-chord is a well-known clunky meme-ish strategy). In my experience, the bottleneck we encounter is mana on turns 2-5 (followed closely by the ability to close the game without a combo and through removal - but that's another discussion) and these cards are incredibly intensive in that regard for a deck whose only impactful creatures have CMC 3+ (usually wanting to grab Guardian/Kiki with tutors too).
On another note Collector Ouphe better than Kataki against Hardened Scales?
The question for me is: is Charm better than Hieroglyphic Illumination? In essence: is the flexibility of having more counters later on better than the flexibility of smoothing out land drops?
Quick question guys : any reasons why the miracle package seems to have fallen out of flavor ? Is it because of the new planeswalkers that people are toying with ?
Guess Terminus has been the best choice to deal with bant spirits being tier 1. Against shadow amulet humans field Verdict is much better.
Agreed, but then what about Phoenix and Dredge ?
I guess the trend of maindecking 1-2x Surgicals or Rests has helped these matchups enough to not actually need Terminus (which is luckluster enough on its own).
I think the negativity comes from overhype. I don't know if Wizards played a pivotal role in this, but the community was more of the mindset "let's wait for Horizons, it will introduce cards and hopefully fix things".
I personally like what I'm seeing when I just look at the new cards individually; some safety measures, cool lands, new tools to tinker with (I'd love to attack with a Glistener Wurm) and some cards that get a reference or lore chuckle (the goat-stealing thing was great). However, up to now it feels like they designed FoN + a slightly more powerful standard set rather than something that directly addresses modern issues. Mostly, I see an effort to try and invigorate low-tier archetypes, which is commendable (and which I also like) but not exactly I believe what people had in mind.
Note: I'm saying that it feels like this, because they could have done something great that nobody knows yet - e.g. the elephant gift sounds promising.
It passes 2 of the three points I mentioned before: a lot of power at once quickly enough and is better than soul flashback. However, it doesn't help discard dredgers and souls and requires too many lands to function (without Loam it needs 5 lands by turn 2-3 to function in any meaningful manner - probably more, and this dilutes the deck too much).
If I really had to give some advice (although it feels fine):
a) Put a 3rd basic mountain. There are some very rare scenarios where, after fetching a mountain (e.g. for looting) and a non-red source we're forced to fetch a red to Conflagrate turn 3 and then want to play loam+shockless conflagrate turn 4.
b) Cut a Bojuka Bog because we can't find it consistently enough to do anything in the faster matchups. (Note: if you do, it's imperative to play TecEdge as the third LD as a control hozer). In my mind, this is the card that competes with Murmuring Bosk.
c) Play a couple of fastlands; they can help save life.
I feel very weakly for all these points though, because they don't impact the deck's winrate considerably.
P.S. Horizons brings a lot of cool things to the table, so I'm hoping for something this archetype can use (the canopy lands are not very good for it).
Hi Danr,
playing Bosk is a convoluted decision that I'm almost convinced is correct if we want to maindeck white mana at all (which is very debatable but gives me peace of mind). Please bear with me while I try to explain my reasoning.
First of all, I want to point out that this archetype is very color intensive on its curve, because in a vacuum we want to eventually achieve 1 black, 1 green and 2 red mana in that order of priority (black without green can win the game with souls and despair but the opposite is rarely true because Loam is too slow to get the deck going by itself). Things like bloodmoon and LD may make us prioritize basics and the second green mana for insurance, but let's leave this aside for the moment, because in such matchups we're effectively a different deck.
Everything seems fine with this curve until you realize that sometimes (I'd guess 30% of the time, but this is an empirical estimate that could deviate by as much as 10%) this incredibly confounding archetype somehow wants to curve with: red for looting, second red for Conflag to clear the board, and then green to Loam into black or black if green is in hand.
Things are further complicated because it's imperative to run 3 colorless LDs (preferably the 3rd being tec-edge) that shave off from the number of colored slots.
In the end we only have room only for only 7-8 fetches without compromising the "mill my own useful lands" and "run out of colored sources I'd need in the lategame" issues.
The things in the spoiler tag mean that, often, we'll have a random land and a fetch to fix all our colors without the help of loam yet. If we rely on Loam for color fixing we're usually dead unless the opponent stumbles, which is happening with increasing rarity as the powerlevel of decks increases.
The question then becomes; how do we support white mana in addition to the previous insane and unpredictable requirements? Short answer; we can't. If we grab a white+something else shock, odds are that we'll get very badly color-screwed, since we won't get the needed colors on time. Furthermore, we don't really have the space to accommodate a white-producing land that 99% of the time becomes an one-colored (e..g green) shock. If we wanted to do that, we'd need to play fastlands to fix the number of colored sources. But this means that we need to cut basic mountains, which leaves us unable to get a shockless turn 4 Conflagrate.
To address this problem, the question we must ask is "what do we need white mana for?"
The answer is very specific: we need them in slower matchups or when our starting hand lacks sufficient card advantage. The most characteristic example to have in mind is a hand with [Infestation or Looting]+Souls but no Squee/dredge (or dredge that wiffs on finding Loam/squee) + Wooded Foothills + Mountain. These hands are close to unkeepable without white mana, but if we have access to white then perhaps we can get enough grinding presence with 4 soul tokens (instead of 2).
In these kinds of hands, developing our colors correctly so that we can cast a topdecked infestation or loam can usually only be done by grabbing a non-white dual. To solve this conundrum, I think the only solution is to play a tri-colored land, whose first two colors do what the land's supposed to do while providing the needed white mana on top of that. This prevents us from running a useless land that we'll never want to grab and, even more importantly, can substitute the fetch slot without reducing the critical number of black and green sources we run.
An additional thing to consider when evaluating Bosk is whendo we want to grab it. The answer is rather simple honestly: in the early turns when we have no meaningful play; if we have some card (e.g. looting) that is actually meaningful to cast (i.e. it grinds value) then we can just put Souls in the graveyard and proceed with the value play. For example, let's return to our example of turn 2 Infestation into turn 3 hardcast souls without other value available; in this case, we don't have a turn 1 play, which allows us to fetch a tapped land.
The tapped clause is only a real drawback if want to grab a fetch with loam and hardcast souls exactly on turn 5 while having spent turn for loam + conflagrate/despair. I'd argue that if one arrived at such a board state though, Souls should have been discarded in prior turns to get more value.
Synopsis of the last spoiler tag: a triple land is necessary to satisfy our color needs but untapped white is not important.
As a final remark, Bosk's green is painless and this leads to taking at most 2 damage off it.
Combos already have Pact of Negation. Although Dovin's Veto is very convenient in being a big NO button that ignores this, I'm extremely happy with the design of FoN as a method to combat unfair things without itself being unfair. Hopefully, this card also means that we switch to London mul, since it helps combat the decks that would gain the most.
I got excited with prohibit for an instant, then realized it's not that good, but then remembered that people were clamoring for the same effect with revolt instead of kicker. So now I'm sitting here confused, trying to understand whether they gave us what we wanted and we don't know what we want or if they ended up trolling us with an unplayable version of almost exactly what we demanded.
Matron is nice to have and hopefully midrange goblins can be ported to modern in some manner (at least it makes Skirk Fecundity more playable).
I imagine running SV has helped a lot with little Chad mana colors. I'm usually splashing red for 3 Helixes (and occasionally 2 Bolts - although they feel more and more useless nowadays) and I did have some issues casting him when running Opt but none when running SV.
First time posting while lurking here, but I do want to comment.
My opinion is that Domri as a better Judith, because a) it's pseudo-removal and b) a boltable anthem is not very impressive in modern. (Also, it shouldn't theoretically matter, but since this is kind of a budget archetype for the time being, getting a Cavern effect without the $$$ is nice.)
Command is interesting, but it's a win-more finisher that boosts speed a little vs combo; not committing to the board with a creature deck seems very unappealing in modern, since there are a ton of ways opponents can just grind games out. Playing some value engine that can get more creatures in the last noncreature slots (e.g. Light up the Stage?) creates more staying power, which in my opinion is more important.
P.S. Has anyone of the more experienced players in this thread tried maindecking Goblin Ruinblaster? I've found 2 copies to be pretty amazing (enough that I'm up to 3, but this could be a mistake without a means to accelerate it other than Banneret) since it's often timewalk with more mana but upside in the more difficult matchups.
What I meant was that if we field/quarter an opponent's land they do get to search because the ability is controlled by Ashiok's controller, which they are not; the search is only prevented if they caused it.
But the card seems versatile enough indeed!
Missed that you were suggesting sideboard material; my dovin suggestion is for the mainboard.
Blast Zone is reasonably impressive as a midrange strategy. It's not the strong boardswipe it appears to be (too much mana), but once you establish a topdeck war it often helps lock people out of their outs. To this end, it's even better with Despair, since the latter forces said topdeck war. I have actually replaced Pharaohs (which aren't very good against the multitude of oversized creatures we're nowadays hit with) with two copies of the land maindeck; this could be a mistake but has left me reasonably pleased, if nothing else because it reaches a critical land count for Loam without diluting the amount of interaction the deck can grind with.
Note #1: I badly want to maindeck a Flame Jab, but it feels overkill with 4 Conflags and 2 Zones to handle planeswalkers (although I may not have enough red to justify the 4th Conflag, but I'm still testing this).
Note #2: Brownscales and the Bosk are my flexslots. I keep changing them to random things; mostly Pharaohs, additional GQ, sometimes even playing Sylvan Scrying as a way to tutor GQ/Bojuka Bog/Zone on demand (although it's too slow to call it a plan).
The best play pattern in my experience so far with Zone is to find some time in the first 3 turns to deploy it, preferably on turn 3 (when you can also proceed to set it to 2 counters if low on gas). Thinking that you can get it back on demand with Loam later is a huge punt, because you won't have enough mana to do all the things you want to do.
Call the Bloodline is many times more powerful than Invasion (in a Loam+Squee deck that wants to actively discard things) and even that ended being a bit too slow (although it's fine in a bit slower metas). In the end, the things to ask for the grindy repeatable token generation cards are:
a) Can they help discard cards turn 2?
b) Are they much better than flashing back Lingering Souls? (because the latter will be dredged into fairly consistently)
c) Do they put enough power on the board quickly enough?
Bloodline fails only on the last point, whereas Invasion fails all 3 (!) .
Currently, the Driven//Despair package feels more like a necessary evil; I can't seem to get enough unfair things going on without it (modern is a competition at whose deck is more unfair at this point) but its effectiveness is high variance and sometimes I need two to win the game (which is why I maintain the 3rd copy).
On the other hand, Ironworks is no more, storm sees less play, creature decks are prevalent and Zone makes us want to increase our land count (it's a land) so I think it's a good time to try to find Pox version of the deck that works.
I'd think that, given how bad this archetype's matchup is against control of any sorts, we should be interested in maindecking at least one Teferi. (I'm not exactly sure, but I think he also stops miracled Terminus.) Grinding value by bouncing and replaying Guardian repeatedly (or perhaps Oath once) should also not be bad.
On a side note, I want to share my current list, into which I've tried to jam Vannifar with relative success in that it is very action-dense and curves smoothly enough.
Amongst interesting techs:
- It pains me to state this, but I've come to realize that the 2nd Van is better than the 4th Saheeli, because Saheeli is very bad at representing deck density.
- KotR is acceleration that can become a meaningful clock if needed and provides T3 kills with Battlments and Evo into Van. It's also maindeck one-shot GY hate, which proves relevant a lot in buying combo time.
- I'm trying to copy successful Van lists with the removal package.
- Shalai's purpose is to guarantee a Van combo that works around Bolt if there are redundant untap/bounce effects in hand (including Saheeli).
I get the impression that when people say that they hate the looting decks, they mostly mean Phoenix variants and then remember some non-oppressive archetype they don't like that utilizes it and throw it under the bus too.
I very much doubt looting would be ban-worthy without Phoenix or at least if the latter was legendary, which makes me think that the offender is actually Phoenix here.
My opinion is that both Call and Chord are unplayable in this archetype if we want to focus on competitiveness (there's a reason kiki-chord is a well-known clunky meme-ish strategy). In my experience, the bottleneck we encounter is mana on turns 2-5 (followed closely by the ability to close the game without a combo and through removal - but that's another discussion) and these cards are incredibly intensive in that regard for a deck whose only impactful creatures have CMC 3+ (usually wanting to grab Guardian/Kiki with tutors too).
On another note Collector Ouphe better than Kataki against Hardened Scales?
I guess the trend of maindecking 1-2x Surgicals or Rests has helped these matchups enough to not actually need Terminus (which is luckluster enough on its own).
I personally like what I'm seeing when I just look at the new cards individually; some safety measures, cool lands, new tools to tinker with (I'd love to attack with a Glistener Wurm) and some cards that get a reference or lore chuckle (the goat-stealing thing was great). However, up to now it feels like they designed FoN + a slightly more powerful standard set rather than something that directly addresses modern issues. Mostly, I see an effort to try and invigorate low-tier archetypes, which is commendable (and which I also like) but not exactly I believe what people had in mind.
Note: I'm saying that it feels like this, because they could have done something great that nobody knows yet - e.g. the elephant gift sounds promising.
It passes 2 of the three points I mentioned before: a lot of power at once quickly enough and is better than soul flashback. However, it doesn't help discard dredgers and souls and requires too many lands to function (without Loam it needs 5 lands by turn 2-3 to function in any meaningful manner - probably more, and this dilutes the deck too much).
a) Put a 3rd basic mountain. There are some very rare scenarios where, after fetching a mountain (e.g. for looting) and a non-red source we're forced to fetch a red to Conflagrate turn 3 and then want to play loam+shockless conflagrate turn 4.
b) Cut a Bojuka Bog because we can't find it consistently enough to do anything in the faster matchups. (Note: if you do, it's imperative to play TecEdge as the third LD as a control hozer). In my mind, this is the card that competes with Murmuring Bosk.
c) Play a couple of fastlands; they can help save life.
I feel very weakly for all these points though, because they don't impact the deck's winrate considerably.
P.S. Horizons brings a lot of cool things to the table, so I'm hoping for something this archetype can use (the canopy lands are not very good for it).
playing Bosk is a convoluted decision that I'm almost convinced is correct if we want to maindeck white mana at all (which is very debatable but gives me peace of mind). Please bear with me while I try to explain my reasoning.
Everything seems fine with this curve until you realize that sometimes (I'd guess 30% of the time, but this is an empirical estimate that could deviate by as much as 10%) this incredibly confounding archetype somehow wants to curve with: red for looting, second red for Conflag to clear the board, and then green to Loam into black or black if green is in hand.
Things are further complicated because it's imperative to run 3 colorless LDs (preferably the 3rd being tec-edge) that shave off from the number of colored slots.
In the end we only have room only for only 7-8 fetches without compromising the "mill my own useful lands" and "run out of colored sources I'd need in the lategame" issues.
The things in the spoiler tag mean that, often, we'll have a random land and a fetch to fix all our colors without the help of loam yet. If we rely on Loam for color fixing we're usually dead unless the opponent stumbles, which is happening with increasing rarity as the powerlevel of decks increases.
To address this problem, the question we must ask is "what do we need white mana for?"
The answer is very specific: we need them in slower matchups or when our starting hand lacks sufficient card advantage. The most characteristic example to have in mind is a hand with [Infestation or Looting]+Souls but no Squee/dredge (or dredge that wiffs on finding Loam/squee) + Wooded Foothills + Mountain. These hands are close to unkeepable without white mana, but if we have access to white then perhaps we can get enough grinding presence with 4 soul tokens (instead of 2).
In these kinds of hands, developing our colors correctly so that we can cast a topdecked infestation or loam can usually only be done by grabbing a non-white dual. To solve this conundrum, I think the only solution is to play a tri-colored land, whose first two colors do what the land's supposed to do while providing the needed white mana on top of that. This prevents us from running a useless land that we'll never want to grab and, even more importantly, can substitute the fetch slot without reducing the critical number of black and green sources we run.
An additional thing to consider when evaluating Bosk is whendo we want to grab it. The answer is rather simple honestly: in the early turns when we have no meaningful play; if we have some card (e.g. looting) that is actually meaningful to cast (i.e. it grinds value) then we can just put Souls in the graveyard and proceed with the value play. For example, let's return to our example of turn 2 Infestation into turn 3 hardcast souls without other value available; in this case, we don't have a turn 1 play, which allows us to fetch a tapped land.
The tapped clause is only a real drawback if want to grab a fetch with loam and hardcast souls exactly on turn 5 while having spent turn for loam + conflagrate/despair. I'd argue that if one arrived at such a board state though, Souls should have been discarded in prior turns to get more value.
Synopsis of the last spoiler tag: a triple land is necessary to satisfy our color needs but untapped white is not important.
As a final remark, Bosk's green is painless and this leads to taking at most 2 damage off it.
I got excited with prohibit for an instant, then realized it's not that good, but then remembered that people were clamoring for the same effect with revolt instead of kicker. So now I'm sitting here confused, trying to understand whether they gave us what we wanted and we don't know what we want or if they ended up trolling us with an unplayable version of almost exactly what we demanded.
Matron is nice to have and hopefully midrange goblins can be ported to modern in some manner (at least it makes Skirk Fecundity more playable).
P.S. The hype is here for SQUIRREL TRIBAL!
My opinion is that Domri as a better Judith, because a) it's pseudo-removal and b) a boltable anthem is not very impressive in modern. (Also, it shouldn't theoretically matter, but since this is kind of a budget archetype for the time being, getting a Cavern effect without the $$$ is nice.)
Command is interesting, but it's a win-more finisher that boosts speed a little vs combo; not committing to the board with a creature deck seems very unappealing in modern, since there are a ton of ways opponents can just grind games out. Playing some value engine that can get more creatures in the last noncreature slots (e.g. Light up the Stage?) creates more staying power, which in my opinion is more important.
P.S. Has anyone of the more experienced players in this thread tried maindecking Goblin Ruinblaster? I've found 2 copies to be pretty amazing (enough that I'm up to 3, but this could be a mistake without a means to accelerate it other than Banneret) since it's often timewalk with more mana but upside in the more difficult matchups.
But the card seems versatile enough indeed!
Missed that you were suggesting sideboard material; my dovin suggestion is for the mainboard.
Ashiok only stops the opponent's abilities - not your own, right?
I'm more interested in Dovin, since he stalls really well.
Note #1: I badly want to maindeck a Flame Jab, but it feels overkill with 4 Conflags and 2 Zones to handle planeswalkers (although I may not have enough red to justify the 4th Conflag, but I'm still testing this).
Note #2: Brownscales and the Bosk are my flexslots. I keep changing them to random things; mostly Pharaohs, additional GQ, sometimes even playing Sylvan Scrying as a way to tutor GQ/Bojuka Bog/Zone on demand (although it's too slow to call it a plan).
3 Stinkweed Imp
4 Bloodghast
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Golgari Brownscale
Enchantments (4)
4 Zombie Infestation
Lands (25)
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Blood Crypt
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Blooming Marsh
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Stomping Ground
1 Murmuring Bosk
2 Blast Zone
1 Canyon Slough
4 Life from the Loam
4 Faithless Looting
4 Conflagrate
3 Lingering Souls
3 Driven // Despair
3 Memory's Journey
3 Ancient Grudge
1 Ray of Revelation
2 Nature's Claim
2 Lightning Axe
1 Darkblast
1 Heaven // Earth
1 Golgari Charm
1 Scattered Groves
The best play pattern in my experience so far with Zone is to find some time in the first 3 turns to deploy it, preferably on turn 3 (when you can also proceed to set it to 2 counters if low on gas). Thinking that you can get it back on demand with Loam later is a huge punt, because you won't have enough mana to do all the things you want to do.
Call the Bloodline is many times more powerful than Invasion (in a Loam+Squee deck that wants to actively discard things) and even that ended being a bit too slow (although it's fine in a bit slower metas). In the end, the things to ask for the grindy repeatable token generation cards are:
a) Can they help discard cards turn 2?
b) Are they much better than flashing back Lingering Souls? (because the latter will be dredged into fairly consistently)
c) Do they put enough power on the board quickly enough?
Bloodline fails only on the last point, whereas Invasion fails all 3 (!) .
Currently, the Driven//Despair package feels more like a necessary evil; I can't seem to get enough unfair things going on without it (modern is a competition at whose deck is more unfair at this point) but its effectiveness is high variance and sometimes I need two to win the game (which is why I maintain the 3rd copy).
On the other hand, Ironworks is no more, storm sees less play, creature decks are prevalent and Zone makes us want to increase our land count (it's a land) so I think it's a good time to try to find Pox version of the deck that works.
On a side note, I want to share my current list, into which I've tried to jam Vannifar with relative success in that it is very action-dense and curves smoothly enough.
2 Felidar Guardian
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Voice of Resurgence
3 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Lotus Cobra
2 Arbor Elf
1 Renegade Rallier
1 Knight of Autumn
1 Scryb Ranger
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
2 Prime Speaker Vannifar
1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty
1 Deceiver Exarch
1 Eternal Witness
1 Reflector Mage
4 Oath of Nissa
Lands (22)
1 Plains
6 Forest
1 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
1 Stomping Ground
1 Breeding Pool
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Hanweir Battlements
3 Saheeli Rai
Instants and Sorceries (5)
3 Eldritch Evolution
2 Path to Exile
Amongst interesting techs:
- It pains me to state this, but I've come to realize that the 2nd Van is better than the 4th Saheeli, because Saheeli is very bad at representing deck density.
- KotR is acceleration that can become a meaningful clock if needed and provides T3 kills with Battlments and Evo into Van. It's also maindeck one-shot GY hate, which proves relevant a lot in buying combo time.
- I'm trying to copy successful Van lists with the removal package.
- Shalai's purpose is to guarantee a Van combo that works around Bolt if there are redundant untap/bounce effects in hand (including Saheeli).
I very much doubt looting would be ban-worthy without Phoenix or at least if the latter was legendary, which makes me think that the offender is actually Phoenix here.