MTG Salvation

Quote from Thissystem »

Thanks for the reply!

My pleasure.

Quote from Thissystem »

The upside I saw in Primalcrux was the trample, so in situations where you have Xenagos, God of Revels out you don't need Kessig Wolf Run but I see your point. Just curious if there is any home for that big boy.

There's a lot to unpack here.

First, unless I intend on playing multiple copies of Xenagod, I wouldn't ever bank on having one in play. Most Tooth and Nail decks only play one, so it isn't something I'd factor into most card evaluations.

Second, even when Xenagod is on the battlefield, I don't need Wolf Run (or even a creature with trample for that matter) to get good value out of him. Giving Thragtusk or some other innocuous creature +5/+5 and haste is usually enough to force opponents into either making unfavorable blocks or casting some removal spell they might otherwise prefer to hold lest they take a ton of damage. And while that doesn't exactly win me the game, it's valuable nonetheless. If anything, it often helps me not lose, and that's great.

Third, Wolf Run isn't played primarily as a trample enabler. It's usually played because it allows players who have lots of excess mana but nothing to do with it to turn whatever creatures they still have lying around into significant threats turn after turn. And yeah, the trample matters. If Wolf Run didn't grant trample, it would certainly be a lot worse since it wouldn't be as good at pushing damage through. But considering most of the time Wolf Run just ends up targeting some fragile creature anyway, opponents will often block the creature (to kill it) knowing full well that if they don't destroy said creature it will continue to pressure them turn after turn for as long as it and Wolf Run both remain on the battlefield. I don't know, maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, but your post gave me the impression that you thought Wolf Run was the kind of card that people played because it enabled their top end to have trample and not because it was a valuable mana sink in the late game.

Fourth, it isn't critical that my top end has evasion. It's a nice quality to have, but what ultimately matters isn't whether my creatures are hard to block; it's whether they're effective at ending the game. Evasion can help end games, and lots of cards that are effective at ending games are effective because they have evasion, but evasion itself isn't strictly necessary for a creature to be a great game ender.

Fifth, if what I absolutely want is evasion, I can still find resilient creatures with it. Primeval Titan, as mentioned before, has trample. Carnage Tyrant is another resilient card with evasion.

If there was ever a home for Primalcrux, I think you found it; it would probably be a deck like this. Primalcrux is just such an underperformer that even devotion decks have better alternatives. Sweet art though.

Quote from Thissystem »

I have been playing Living End in modern since I began 4-5 years ago and a big problem there is if the opponent Thoughtseizes your combo pieces the gameplan changes to a more stall and go wide strategy. I feel like this should be pretty much the same in devotion, so the gamestyle isn't a problem.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to discourage you. Ramp decks just tend to play pretty linearly. They're designed to make as much mana as they can as quickly as they can so they can cast their expensive spells because if they don't make the mana they need then there's not a lot they can do. Cards like Tooth and Nail literally don't do anything unless I get to at least 7.

Quote from Thissystem »

So ramp and eventually you will draw Tooth and Nail?

Not necessarily. There are definitely games where I make lots of mana but fail to draw into any kind of payoff. All I was trying to get at is that, if an opponent draws more cards than me, it isn't the end of the world. Quantity of cards isn't the only thing that matters. Quality matters too. Obviously, if my opponent draws 20 more cards than I do, they're probably in a commanding lead, and I'm probably not going to win that game. Not all cards are equally important though. Expensive cards tend to matter more than inexpensive cards, and ramp decks tend to play more expensive cards than other decks.

Quote from Thissystem »

With Llanowar Tribe being spoiled I was looking for big creatures to ramp into and found Primalcrux is that something that have been tested yet? If you go the Tooth and Nail route you have a big body backup in case something bad happend to Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and it's by itself not hard to cast. The drawback might be no protection from removals, but that might be fine if it helps us reach 9 right? If it stays it's most likely to be game the turn after.

I've never played Primalcrux, so this is coming from me as a Magic player and not as someone who has independently tested the card.

The problem with Primalcrux is just like you said. It has no protection from removal. Granted, it will usually be huge, so damage based removal isn't likely to kill it, but aside from that it still gets thwarted by a meager Path to Exile. Now, just because a card can be destroyed doesn't mean it isn't necessarily worth running. What Primalcrux does have going for it, despite being soft to removal, is that it's just about the most dangerous card you could possibly play. Depending on the deck, one or two attacks from it will probably end your opponent.

The reason I (and most other players) don't play Primalcrux is because I don't want my most expensive cards to be easily removed. When I invest all of my mana, and all of my turns, and all of my cards into ramping, I want to be sure that whatever I play at the end of my curve is something that wins me the game, and Primalcrux doesn't do that because sometimes the opponent will just blow it up, and then everything I've done up to that point will be wasted. Essentially, if Primalcrux gets killed, it will usually lose me the game. Now, compare Primalcrux to other cards of the same cost like Primeval Titan. While Primalcrux is undoubtedly bigger, a card like Primeval Titan isn't small; it's nearly as good at ending the game if the opponent cannot kill it. But when the opponent does kill Primeval Titan, it wasn't all for naught; I still got two lands out of the deal, if not more. Those two lands, provided they were well chosen, can put me in a winning position even though Primeval Titan itself didn't happen to make it. The same can't be said for a card like Primalcrux which is why it's preferable for expensive cards to be resilient.

Quote from Thissystem »

How does devotion fight off hand disruption?

Poorly.

Ramp decks are essentially combo decks that require multiple unique cards to assemble their combo. If my opponent Thoughtseizes me, they're going to take something crucial out of my hand that I almost certainly don't have a second copy of. That isn't to say I couldn't draw another copy, only that it isn't likely I find the kind of card I need in a timely fashion. And there isn't a lot I can do about it either. Discard spells come down fast, so I usually can't empty my hand before my opponent has the chance to pick it apart. Not only that, but there are very few cards I can play with effects that provide useful countermeasures. Understanding this, I just accept the fact that there's little I can do to combat hand disruption with this sort of strategy, and if that isn't something I'm okay with, then I should just play some other deck instead.

Quote from Thissystem »

handle card draw?

Ramp decks with crazy expensive top ends don't have to worry too much about their opponents getting card advantage on them since it ultimately doesn't matter how many extra cards they get to draw if they still just die to a resolved Tooth and Nail.

Quote from CurdBros »

I do wonder if Llanowar Tribe is good in Tooth and Nail? Has anyone tried it?

My initial testing with Llanowar Tribe suggests it's every bit as good as I initially believed it would be. Once Modern Horizons comes out, I'll be playing four copies and never looking back.

Quote from CurdBros »

I have found Karn, the Great Creator to work a lot like Tooth and Nail. When you have 10 mana; you win 99% of the time....but you can cast it over two turns (for 4 then 6)..I know I’ve been pushing it for a while; but Karn has been really good in my experience.

I haven't gotten a chance to play with Karn much, but I suspect he will be amazing. Not only can I play Karn, Lattice on 10 to seal the game then and there, but I can also curve Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Utopia Sprawl, Karn —> Land, Lattice to win the game turn 3. That's an extremely powerful sequence, especially if I'm on the play where it's even less likely that an opponent has developed a creature with which to attack Karn, and it only requires three nonland cards. (The third land is even replaceable with a second copy of Utopia Sprawl.) Granted, turn 3 kills were always possible with Tooth and Nail, but getting to 9 by turn 3 requires a very specific (read: unlikely) combination of cards, so those sorts of wins really only happen once in a blue moon. With Karn, turn 3 wins are much more likely than they were before.

Something else I like about Karn is that my deck is so tight as it is that I really benefit from having a wishboard seeing as I can't ordinarily afford to side out that many cards anyway. My biggest concern is that Karn won't have much impact the turn I play him (especially if I'm behind on board as I often am) if the opponent isn't already playing some artifact focused strategy. I know I can always -2 him the turn I play him and cast whatever I find with the rest of my mana, but there are only so many artifacts I can play in the same turn after sinking 4 mana. Figuring out which will be the best ones is going to be a fun exercise though. For now, I'm testing two copies and will adjust that number accordingly once I receive more firsthand experience. He seems nuts.

Quote from bohemen86 »

Then I don't think you've played Garruk long enough to experience his value. He's a staple in most green ramp decks for a reason.

Come on, man. Be a little more charitable than that. I know I'm a stranger, and you don't know if you can trust me because your experiences don't align with mine, but you have no idea how long I've played with Garruk either. I would have never gone out of my way to write an absolute diatribe about his faults if I wasn't speaking from experience. Not that I'm claiming to be the foremost expert on Garruk Wildspeaker or anything because, yeah, I could totally be wrong about him. It's entirely possible that, despite all of the problems I listed, maybe Garruk is still worth playing. The least you could do is give me some credit though. It isn't like I'm some anti-Garruk ideologue or something. I've played the card. If my experiences with it were positive, then that's what I'd be writing about. My experiences with Garruk weren't positive though. They were profoundly negative as evidenced from my post.

Now, I'm not saying other players can't (or shouldn't) have positive experiences with the card. That would be ridiculous. No two players will ever play the same Garruk. We're each operating under different variables: different decks, different play skill, different opponents, different luck. Just, when I say the card didn't work out for me, take my word for it; it didn't work out for me. It was awful.

Quote from bohemen86 »

I have barely tried Kiora BB, I don't play enough +4 power creatures to get much card advantage, and when I tried her she felt clunky as she didn't do anything when she came to the field. But I have not tried her in my Tooth-deck, only in my Hoof-deck. I have not seen Kiora preform in any tournament-lists either (searched her up on mtgtop8), even though shes being spoken of warmly both here and on reddit.

Well, she's still super new, having only been out for a month, and even if it turns out she's better than other untappers (and that may not even be the case), I wouldn't be surprised if it took a while for people to catch on. Non-Tron ramp strategies aren't exactly the most popular decks in Modern, so innovation will naturally occur at a slower pace, let alone innovation that yields positive results. Hell, I've never tried Kiora myself yet. Right now she just isn't a card I'm particularly interested in playing.

Quote from bohemen86 »

I suggest Titan as your 6 drop - Fetching Kessig and Nyktos is a clean and simple wincon. I did not read through everything you wrote, but a plainswalker is harder to get your hands on without Genesis Wave and Oaths, as with creatures you got fetch cards.

Didn't read through everything?

Right now the only cards I'm playing that find other creatures are Primal Command and Tooth and Nail, and seldom will I ever find a Primeval Titan with Tooth and Nail, so that really just leaves Primal Command which I don't even play four copies of. I certainly see merit in making my 6-drops creatures so that Primal Command can possibly find them whenever the situation calls for that, but I'm not sure that reason alone would justify playing something that may be objectively worse. That isn't to say Primeval Titan is objectively worse. It might not be. If that isn't the case though, I'm not certain being searchable is enough of a redeeming factor to want to play it instead of some alternative.

Quote from bohemen86 »

Please post your list when it's done, I would love other Tooth-list ideas as the classic one has become a bit boring, not played it since last year

Well, I don't know what I'd qualify as "done." I'm the kind of person who plays with one deck for a very long period of time, learning its intricacies and tinkering with it until it enters a space where there's no possible way I can refine it any further. That entire process takes months, frequently years, so if you're waiting until my journey's finished (and it's barely only begun), then you'll be waiting a long time. In the meantime, here's where I'm at right now:

That's 55 cards. I'm not certain about the exact numbers on everything yet. At least, not aside from the core cards anyway. It's possible this deck wants 21 or 23 land instead of 22, or maybe it wants 7 total 6-drops instead of 8. I won't know any of those things until I get a sense for the deck heuristically. But generally speaking, I'm pretty happy with where the numbers are at.

As for the remaining five cards, there's a lot that could fill that space. Birds of Paradise, Voyaging Satyr, Harmonize, Primal Command, and Primeval Titan are all different things I'm considering, though I am starting to learn towards Birds. I'm open to suggestions.

As of now, I've also been pleased with the three Madcap Experiment and two Platinum Emperion my deck is currently playing, but I'm not sure if those five cards are the best way to use my remaining space. Several of my opponents have mistakenly sideboarded Grafdigger's Cage against Tooth and Nail thinking that would stop it only to actually have Madcap Experiment (and I suppose now possibly Woodland Bellower) inadvertently hit in the crossfire, so incentivizing my opponents to bring those in even more may not be something I want to encourage. Not to mention I find myself siding out the package enough of the time to perhaps retire it there completely. And speaking of sideboards, this is where I'm at:

While I wouldn't want to dedicate the entire sideboard to Karn/Woodland Bellower, I don't mind having quite a few sideboard slots dedicated to those cards since there aren't many cards in the main deck that I can typically afford to take out anyway. The whole sideboard is pretty unrefined at the moment.

Quote from Gary238 »

I think Garruk is better in traditional devotion than in Tooth and Nail. Tooth and Nail is really racing to get to 9 mana, and while Garruk is a super powerful ramp spell he might be outclassed by Kiora just on the basis of his cmc. In other devotion lists we're playing more utility creatures, and dont have the big "I win" button at 9. Having the overrun available often leads to wins out of nowhere, even if that's not the decks plan A.

Agreed.

Quote from Gary238 »

My latest iteration of the deck is optimized to flood the board and then overrun with either Garruk or Craterhoof as quickly as possible, and Garruk is easily the best card in the deck. It takes some building around to really get the most from him, though. You want a lot of bodies, and you dont want defenders. I'm using full sets of BTE, Elvish Visionary, and Summoner's Pact, along with three Wolfbriar Elemental and a Hornet Queen (as a pact target) to ensure I have a wide board. It's not unusual to play Garruk, untap two lands, use the mana to deploy a few beaters, and then overrun for the win on my next turn.

Yeah, your deck seems primed to make much better use of Garruk. I'm not playing any of the cards you'd find only fueling devotion strategies like Burning-Tree Emissary or Elvish Visionary, so Garruk's ultimate loses almost all its utility for me.

Quote from Gary238 »

In related news, my favorite 6-drop is Wolfbriar Elemental, kicked twice

I'm glad you mentioned Wolfbriar Elemental because it didn't appear in my search. I'm not sure I prefer it to Woodland Bellower as a 6-drop. A 4/4 and two 2/2s is probably worse than a 6/5 and the 3-drop of my choice? Still, there's certainly merit to the card since it scales the same way as an X spell.

Quote from darrenhabib »

By any chance has the domain mtgsalvationsalvation been registered?

Yeah, I guess a new name is something to consider, huh?

So, I know I made a post about this a few days ago, but I've continued to put a lot of thought into what 6-drops I probably ought to be playing, and I was hoping maybe some of you might share your thoughts with me because I think I've made a breakthrough. Here's where I'm at right now:

Hydroid Krasis — This will be good no matter when I cast it, but it will never be the best card I could cast at any given point. My fear with Krasis is twofold. First, I'm worried that Krasis has a low degree of confidence. Sure, playing Krasis for X equals 4 is fine, but a 4/4 flying, trample won't win the game by itself. It's too slow, and something is going to stop it. And the two cards it draws aren't going to make a big difference either. I mean, yes, those two cards matter, but it's not like I'm going to find the support Krasis needs to run away with the game by drawing two additional cards. I'll likely just find more ramp, or lands, or anything else that isn't a haymaker. And while I can obviously spend more mana on Krasis to the point that I will be able to reliably follow it up, with that much mana I could probably also just win the game outright with some other card like Tooth and Nail.

My second concern is that Narset's recent popularity makes Krasis inopportune. Narset can come down before Krasis if the opponent is on the play, and while a resolved Krasis may be able to slay an opposing Narset to the benefit of future Krasi, not drawing any cards at all is rotten. I traditionally hate X spells, so maybe I'm biased, but I suspect other 6-drops possess a higher degree of confidence than Krasis does.

Primeval Titan — The Titan is good for obvious reasons. He finds two lands immediately, so in the event that he dies he still ramps me towards my top end. When he does survive though, the Titan provides a steady stream of lands in addition to a respectable clock. This is all clearly useful. He provides exactly what I want in a card without resilience by giving me something valuable the turn I play him in addition to something valuable every turn thereafter. Ideally, the Titan even finds some land that threatens the opponent in case they do happen to answer him. The obvious choices being Nykthos (to ramp into something even more dangerous) and Kessig Wolf Run (to provide a useful mana sink for when I have nothing else to cast), but man-lands like Raging Ravine can provide sizable threats of their own, and the innocuous Memorial to Folly can even return an answered Titan (made even easier to activate and immediately recast when paired with Nykthos).

My greatest fear is that Llanowar Tribe, despite making Titan easier than ever to cast on turn 3, will now also weaken Titan by reducing the number of utility lands I can afford to play alongside him. Granted, perhaps all I need are two. If two utility lands are enough to make Titan worthwhile, then that might also be few enough lands to not seriously decrease my chances of landing a turn 2 Tribe. Still, the fact that I might draw some utility lands prior to playing Titan means sometimes Titan won't find anything special. Sometimes he's just going to pull out some basics. Or shocks. That isn't the end of the world, mind you. As a matter of fact, another possibility is that maybe I don't need anything special at all to make Titan worthwhile. Maybe two lands of any kind are enough to still warrant his inclusion. Still, I seriously worry this isn't the case, that Explosive Vegetation isn't going to matter in the grand scheme of things, and that makes me want to look for other alternatives.

I'm also concerned that Nykthos and Kessig Wolf Run might not even be good enough and that neither are any of the other lands. If Titan is answered, perhaps by a sweeper (as sometimes he will be), if I don't have any kind of follow-up, Nykthos and Wolf Run won't do anything for me. To make Wolf Run worthwhile, what I usually need are multiple disposable creatures, and that's something ramp decks don't always have. Plus, Wolf Run may not even be fast enough. Unless I'm absolutely drowning in mana, even if I have both enough creatures in play and plenty of mana with which to activate it, Kessig Wolf Run will still probably take several turns to kill my opponent due to just how seldom I pressure my opponents outside of haymakers. (Raging Ravine suffers for that same reason even though it doesn't rely on having creatures in play.) And Nykthos, for all its strengths, still relies upon having both a significant board state and something expensive enough for me to use the mana on, or else I won't get any more mileage out of it than I would a basic Forest.

Vraska, Relic Seeker — I think this is the one. I think this is what I probably ought to be ramping into. When I first read Vraska, I was sort of nonplussed. She reads a lot like Ugin, the Ineffable and Ajani Unyielding. They have plus modes that generates value (be it a creature, a card, or both in the case of Ugin), minus modes that answer problematic permanents, and one other ability that may or may not matter. What I failed to notice though was just how much loyalty Vraska has compared to her counterparts. It's absolutely ridiculous. If I can land Vraska reliably as early as turn 3 where there probably aren't any significant on-board threats yet (especially if I'm on the play), I can safely make a 2/2 blocker and tick up Vraska to 8 loyalty. EIGHT LOYALTY. There's absolutely no way an opponent will be able to eat through that. And even if somehow an opponent could attack for that much, Vraska's minus ability ensures no one single creature will ever be able to threaten her because if something possibly could have she would have just blown it up first.

Strategically, I didn't think a value-generating, attrition style card was what I was looking for either. After all, these kinds of cards tend to be played as ways to take over the game once an opponent has safely stalled out after having traded 1-for-1 all game, not as some card advantage engine cheated into play early while the opponent still has resources at their disposal. Still, the more I thought about it, the more I warmed up to the idea. In essence, she's just like Primeval Titan. She does something relevant the turn she comes into play (either by destroying any one problematic card and ramping a point or by developing a 2/2 on an otherwise empty board), and she continues to do something relevant every turn thereafter. Unlike the Titan though, Vraska is more resilient. Yes, she can be attacked, so she has weaknesses different than Titan, but for reasons I already explained above, both her plus ability and her minus ability make it so that killing Vraska by attacking her is almost impossible. And in the event an opponent somehow could kill Vraska by attacking her with on-board threats, I was probably so far behind that using her minus ability to keep me alive (and make a treasure) would have been safer than blocking with Titan anyway. It's just a lot easier to kill creatures unconditionally than it is to kill planeswalkers.

Now, hypothetically, Vraska's a slower clock. That may not be important considering how reliably I kill my opponent is ultimately what matters, and not the speed in which I kill them, but there's no hiding the fact that 2/2 menace pirates don't pack as much punch as a 6/6 trampler; they're going to take a while. And Titan, provided he both survives and finds Kessig Wolf Run, can probably end the game in two, maybe three turns after the turn he's played. In some cases, it may even be over as soon as the following turn. In practice though, I suspect Vraska will end the game much more reliably not only because of how hard she is to remove but also because of her ultimate. If Vraska lands on a board where the opponent cannot threaten her (perhaps because she came into play early and created a blocker before the opponent could deploy any significant threats), Vraska can set the opponent's life to 1 in as few as three activations. That wins the game two turns after she enters the battlefield, the same speed which I might expect an otherwise unanswered Titan to kill the opponent as a pair of 2/2 menace pirates are going to get the job done. Admittedly, opponents can delay Vraska's ultimate by presenting threats you're forced to destroy or by taking her down a few pegs, but Vraska forcing these sorts of lines from opponents seem all the more reason to want her.

It isn't all sunshine and rainbows though; Vraska does have some consequences. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Llanowar Tribe makes casting multicolor 6-drops on turn 3 difficult because I almost certainly need exactly a shockland (Overgrown Tomb in this case) to cast them. And while I can jam my deck full of fetchlands to accommodate that, not only does that tax my life additionally, but sometimes I'm not going to find one of those lands; sometimes I'm just going to find basics and/or utility lands in some combination if I happen to play them. This makes a multicolor card like Vraska less reliable than a monocolor card like Titan. Despite these consequences, I still believe Vraska is the preferable 6-drop. She's better on the defensive as she reacts to threats immediately, be they singular or in multitude, and she can answer cards Primeval Titan cannot otherwise touch. In addition, she can blow stuff up twice in a row if need be, and the treasure she creates, while temporary, isn't insignificant as it still ramps me towards my top end. The increased number of fetchlands needed to support her also has the unintended side effect of making Tireless Tracker better. On nearly every front, Vraska just seems like the better card with the possible exception that Primeval Titan appears to be better at killing planeswalkers.

Woodland Bellower — As stoked as I am about Vraska, Woodland Bellower is another card I'm paying close attention to. I think it might also be better than Titan. To state the obvious, Woodland Bellower's a 6/5. It doesn't have trample, so it's easier to block than Titan, but it's still almost as big. And instead of finding land cards, the Bellower creates a 3-drop. That makes it only as useful as whatever it happens to find. If what I want is more mana, I can always rocket myself from 6 to 9 by finding Llanowar Tribe, but there's a myriad of other 3-drops Woodland Bellower can dig for, so much so that I decided to make a list:

Now, I would clearly never want to play all of these. Hell, some of these I might never want to play ever. I just wrote down everything I saw with potential. And these are only the 3-drops. There are cheaper cards out there I'd still be likely to find (cards like Scavenging Ooze come to mind), but from this list, I think my favorites are Dauntless Escort, Eternal Witness, Knight of Autumn, Llanowar Tribe, and Tireless Tracker.

Dauntless Escort — Protects my Bellower and my mana dorks from wanton removal. That includes sweepers. His 3/3 body, while unimpressive, isn't irrelevant either as a 6/5 and 3/3 together still present a somewhat impressive clock. The biggest issue I have with Escort is that, if my opponent isn't interacting with me, he's just Centaur Courser, and Centaur Courser is a card I never want to draw. If I want to be able to find it though, that means I'll sometimes have to draw it. Of the five cards I listed, this is the one I'm least sure about, but what he does is both powerful and unique enough for me to give it some consideration.

Eternal Witness — Good for the reasons you expect. If I curve into Woodland Bellower turn 3, I don't want to search for Witness; I want to find some proactive 3-drop instead. Eternal Witness is already a card I like to play in absence of Bellower though (and in sparing quantities no less), so Bellower greatly benefits from being able to circumstantially find it. I suppose what I like most about Eternal Witness is that it can regrow a haymaker my opponent previously answered or discarded. In doing so, it addresses one of my fears with Primeval Titan by guaranteeing a backup threat in case my current threat is answered. It often won't do that when curved into, which is a shame, but providing insurance some of the time is still an enticing aspect.

Knight of Autumn — A great silver bullet, providing life, artifact and enchantment removal, and a sensible body all on one card. I think the Knight is preferable to a card like Reclamation Sage if only because having access to searchable life gain in the main deck without also having to dedicate an additional card slot to that effect is well worth the more difficult casting cost. Because the Knight is white though, that does mean having to include some support if I ever want to cast it naturally (and I will), but that's a trifle compared to what the rest of the card offers.

Llanowar Tribe — I think I've said enough about this card already. It's great in tandem with Bellower because it helps get Bellower into play quickly while also being useful target for when I play Bellower. It's also generic and prevalent enough to ensure that I always have something useful to fetch with Bellower in the event I don't need ramp (or any other effect for that matter).

Tireless Tracker — I've experimented with this lately to great success. Like Eternal Witness, Tireless Tracker is a card I already want to include in my deck independent of my choice to include Woodland Bellower, so the fact that Woodland Bellower can find it is just gravy. What's great about Tracker is that he provides both a substantial threat and card draw all for 3 mana. That way, if an opponent happens to answer him, that's okay. I still managed to get a few extra cards out of the deal with which to hopefully find a replacement threat. And in the event an opponent can't answer Tracker, he completely takes over the game. Obviously, the Tracker depends on making land drops, so there will be instances where Tracker isn't anything more than a vanilla 3/2, but those instances are sparse seeing as how I can usually hold back one land. And because this deck excels at making mana, paying the 2 to crack open clues isn't prohibitively expensive either.

Of the remaining cards, Rubblebelt Rioters is terrifying in that the Bellower makes it swing for 6 immediately. Some of the idiots are nothing to scoff at either. With a curve like Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Llanowar Tribe —> Woodland Bellower into Reverent Hunter, that's a 6/5 and an 8/8 on turn 3. Even the safer Steel Leaf Champion which doesn't depend on context presents a second body that's almost as big as the first. There may even be some merit to something like Heartwood Storyteller in the right matchup. Whatever the proper targets, I think there's a chance that developing one of these 3-drops and pressuring the opponent that way will have a higher degree of confidence than playing Primeval Titan and tutoring for the usual.

Quote from PygmyPieMan »

Tooth and Nail decks are probably the most successful 'devotion' deck (I say 'devotion' because they're not strictly devotion decks) out. They're the only decks with nykthos that make any results.


https://mtgdecks.net/Modern/tooth-and-nail

the reason it's not really talked about here is because they're far more linear and and such aren't as fun

I've never seen this before. Thanks for sharing the link. It was gratifying seeing my homebrew independently imitate other proven successes.

And, yeah. Maybe I'm the odd man out here. I wouldn't really consider myself a devotion player. I just consider myself a ramp player. Devotion, and specifically Nykthos, is one way to go about ramping, but it isn't anything I'm married to. I just want to find the cards that win me the game with as high a degree of confidence as possible and cast them as quickly as I can.

Quote from Rendroc »

I don't understand why people are removing Garruk, he's a core of devotion.

Frankly, I think he sucks. I included him in the earliest versions of my Tooth and Nail deck because of how much the opening post hyped him up. After having a chance to play with him though, I started noticing just how often I side him out. From there, it wasn't long before I cut him from my deck entirely. I think the problems with Garruk are:

1.) He's a 4-drop. Without opening exactly on Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Utopia Sprawl, you're not getting to 4 by turn 2. That means the earliest you're probably playing Garruk is turn 3, and a Garruk on 3 is very different than a Garruk on 2. By turn 3, there's a reasonable chance your opponent has already played something that can threaten him, especially if you're on the draw, and it's unlikely you have a way to defend him adequately because your initial prerogative is ramping. That leads me to my second point.

2.) He's frail. Garruk's just a fragile dude. Sure, you can create a beast to block for him, but a 3/3 beast isn't particularly useful other than as a blocker because ramp decks tend to kill their opponents by landing a single choice haymaker. And it isn't as though a 3/3 beast is all that great at keeping Garruk alive either. At 3 starting loyalty, Garruk is susceptible to too many things. His token can be removed. An evasive creature can ignore blocks. Hell, multiple smaller creatures can push through damage. In one game, my opponent controlled two 2/2 zombie tokens, and I could not plus nor minus Garruk to keep him alive. He even starts in Bolt range unless you immediately +1 him, and that isn't always a great play either since...

3.) He often doesn't do anything significant the turn he comes down. Sure, you could say the same for most ramp spells, but most ramp spells don't often cost 4. They also don't often die to both on-board and off-board threats. Yes, Garruk untapping two lands effectively means he costs less than 4, but that doesn't change the fact that you're probably not casting him before turn 3. And when you do cast Garruk turn 3 and untap two lands, unless you have something like Overgrowth (and you won't all the time), you're probably not playing anything else significant the turn you play Garruk since you already had at least two turns prior to casting him with which to play cheaper cards. And in the event you can't do anything with the extra mana at all, Garruk may as well cost the full 4 and have no effect entirely.

4.) By turn 3, there's usually bigger game. While it's possible you only have 4 mana turn 3 (in which case, fair enough. Developing your mana further is probably what you want to be doing.), you will often have more than 4 mana available to you. Lines like Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Overgrowth or Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Land, Overgrowth —> Land aren't uncommon, and it would probably be more effective for you to cast some 5 or 6-drop instead of casting Garruk + maybe something else. In fact, if you can make it to 6, if what you want is more ramp, you may as well just cast Primeval Titan and find yourself a Nykthos.

5.) Untapping two lands is often excessive. If what you want is to make a lot of mana, you usually don't need to untap two different lands because usually you don't control more than one land that taps for lots of mana, be it Nykthos or some decked out Forest. As such, untapping one land is often sufficient. This causes Garruk to feel a lot like a worse Voyaging Satyr due to his susceptibility and due to his prohibitive mana cost.

In short, I think Garruk would play a lot better if he had higher loyalty, and if he cost 3 instead of 4. That card exists and is called Kiora though.

Quote from 3drinks »

The biggest thing that always got me when I was on the committee, was and I quote "a submission is never approved on the first request".

Wait. When did this become a thing? When I was on the Committee (which wasn't all that long ago), we totally approved prospective primers on the first go.

Quote from Deruvid »

I went the other way around and gravitated towards this deck BECAUSE I was a commander player at first.

Same. In Commander, Tooth and Nail is notorious for being a 1-card combo. That made me wonder. Why had I never seen anyone play Tooth and Nail in Modern? Sure, getting to 9 mana is tough, but the payoff surely must be worth it, right? Anyway, that led me to building Tooth and Nail myself, and inevitably I found myself here.

Quote from Aethelianmage »

@arrogantAxolotl


I threw a Ravager Wurm in my board and played a few games. Only drew it once, but that once was an easy 2-for-1. It ate their LOTV after fighting through a blocker.

I think the card is worth consideration.

I think Ravager Wurm has a lot of positive qualities, but after intensely scrutinizing all of the available 6-drops, I think there are likely better alternatives. I'll share my analysis sometime in the not so distant future.

Quote from Gruul_Me_Harder »

Somberwald Sage is so much worse than Tribe, that should be apparent. As for fragility...literally all of Devotion's creatures are fragile to removal, so using that as a metric is not worthwhile.


The main boon I see for Tribe is that it demands an answer that turn. If the opponent doesn't have one at that moment, it is bad news. I am much more willing to play a creature that either a) dies to bolt or b) wins the game, than a middling midrange creature. Tribe allows normal Devotion to have a quicker ramp strategy similar to T&N, which I would argue is a more competitive deck. Having a linear gameplan is where you want to be in Modern, and since the color green has no interaction, that's the path we should follow as well. Sometimes you just have to keep it simple and go T1 dork, T2 Tribe, T3 Hornet Queen. No cutesie ***** just gimme dat ramp.

These are my thoughts verbatim. Not everything you play is going to have hexproof, indestructible, and an ETB trigger. Some of your cards will inevitably be destroyed. That doesn't mean those cards aren't worth playing. Nay, we play such cards despite the fact they will sometimes be destroyed because they're just so impactful in the moments they aren't. Granted, I think there are still instances where being resilient matters. Specifically, when it comes to payoff cards, I think you definitely want something that won't be easily thwarted. After all, if you invest multiple turns worth of cards and mana into ramping out some giant-but-easily-dispatched threat, you risk having everything you've done up until that point invalidated if your opponent does answer it.

Also, this should go without saying, but Llanowar Tribe is in a completely different ball park than Somberwald Sage. Not only is a 3/3 body much more relevant than an 0/1, but unless your top end is exactly creatures, you can't to use Somberwald Sage to help you cast, say, Tooth and Nail.

Oh, man. I'm so bummed Soulherder isn't green. If it was, you could put it into play via Woodland Bellower, then blink the Bellower at end of turn, getting another 3-drop. From there, you could continue to blink the Bellower every end step, finding new 3-drops, or blink whatever 3-drops the Bellower put into play off its ability. That would have totally been wild.

Am I the only one who thought cryogen was being facetious when he said Mirrodin Besieged was a 16 card combo?

Wait. Soulherder is just Conjurer's Closet at 3 mana? Why did I not realize this before?

Glad to see this generate discussion.

Mirrodin Besieged triggering on end steps is certainly scary, but the fact that it only makes a single player lose instead of outright winning the game, as obnoxious as that is given how little recourse said player likely has if played on the same turn it triggers, means Mirrodin Besieged is probably safe. Plus, it isn't as though filling your graveyard with 15 artifacts isn't a significant hoop either. It certainly is. Or, at least I anticipate it being a significant hoop in the decks players choose to include Mirrodin Besieged in.

Quote from dopespot »

Hi arrogantAxolotl! I appreciate the detailed post on you and your friend's brainstorming.

My pleasure.

Quote from dopespot »

-Path to Exile is an absolute must here. This is a midrange/control deck in all iterations and we need the outs Goblin Guide/Meddling Mage/Death's Shadow.

That sounds like it's probably true. The problem with a card like Path to Exile is that the deck has a lot of needs. It needs a lot of cyclers; it needs a lot of valuable creatures to blink; and Path to Exile isn't any of that. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be played per se. At a distance, I just don't know where it fits.

Quote from dopespot »

-Astral Drift can be a versatile stall piece and value engine, but it isn't gamebreaking in any sense and at the end of the day is a 3-mana do nothing in many cases; Drift is also weak against most creature-light decks and combo. Combined with the fact that we are GW and don't have access to counters or discard, we will most likely get trashed by Tron and combo without a speed boost and dedicated disruption. Even against a deck like humans, your plan of "t1 tapland, t2 wall/invader, t3 Drift" just isn't doing much to stop their gameplan of beating you to death.

I think that's a concession you'll just probably have to make if you want to play a deck like this. A GW deck like this is just the epitome of fair. It's just trying to win a game of attrition. Undeniably, there are going to be matchups where this sort of deck just can't compete, and I'm not convinced warping the deck in such a way to make it less focused on its premise just so it can stand a better chance against these sorts of decks is productive. I mean, if you're not happy with the vision, that's fine, but I don't see much point in building a deck with Astral Drift in it instead of an Astral Drift deck.

Quote from dopespot »

-Because of this, I'm currently banking on mana dorks to HELP bridge the gap in speed. Speeding the deck up a full turn allows us to actually play magic and deploy defenders/disruption. Turn 2 Kitchen Finks buys time against aggro, Turn 2 Eldritch Evolution buys time against control/combo. Turn 2 Magus of the Moon can win the game. Untapping on Turn 3 with Drift in play can stall. While they are bad top-decks in the lategame, this deck already has a great late-game plan of drawing boatloads of cards and generating value with Drift. Furthermore, extra mana heading into the mid-late game can be sunk into cycling and Loam payments.

I highly value mana ramp, and it's entirely possible that a deck like this wants Noble Hierarch as well as something else. My only concern is the logistics. Right now, I'm just not seeing how you can play those sorts of cards and still make the deck work. They take up a lot of slots, slots that are probably needed to support other themes, and with so few untapped green sources, I don't think mana elves will be that reliable. Not to mention, unless you fill the deck to the brim with them, it isn't terribly likely you're going to always start with them anyway. To me, it seems more reasonable to cut my losses and accept that a deck playing this many ETB tapped lands probably ought to bank on playing one of them turn 1. They're going to mess with the curve somewhere, and turn 1 is the best place for that to happen.

Quote from dopespot »

-The issue with having enough Turn 1 green sources to cast a dork needs to be addressed. I'm playing 26 lands currently as I would like to avoid playing cycle lands when possible, and it is also a good idea to monitor the number of hands that have to be mulliganed due to Field of Ruins not producing G. I like the idea of FoR because of its utility, especially against Tron and Amulet, but if the lack of green is a problem then they should be turned into green sources.

Playing 26ish lands sounds like a great observation. I'm not convinced that alone is going to give you the number of untapped green sources you want turn 1 though. At least, not without making sacrifices elsewhere in the landbase anyway. I like the idea of playing Field of Ruin too. If you decide to include Knight of the Reliquary, even more so.

Quote from dopespot »

-Speaking on lands, I'm not keen on Scattered Grove, primarily because the cycling cost of 2 is likely just too much and the deck is already stocked with tapped lands. If the deck heads in a direction with out dorks and the need for T1 green then I can see them being more useful.

I'm not keen on it either. Like you said, cards that cost 2 to cycle aren't sexy at all, but I think this might still might be worth it despite that fact. Maybe not as a 4 of though. I don't think I can tell without actually playing some games with it.

Quote from dopespot »

-Dissenter's Deliverance and Cast Out are two cards that are on my watch list. Deliverance could be a solid SB card, but is too narrow to include MD. Cast Out is a verstatile answer to a lot of problems, but 3W is a chunk of mana. If planeswalkers become an apparent problem, Cast Outs value increases. Besides these two and maybe cycling duals, I don't know of any cycling cards that are really up to par, with a notable exception of Censor. But that may be too blue for this.

I like Censor, Curator of Mysteries, and Nimble Obstructionist in blue. I agree that Dissenter's Deliverance might be too narrow, but I'm inclined to give it a chance because the deck is light on removal already, and hey, it cycles! My thoughts on Cast Out are pretty much the same as I wrote before. 4 mana is certainly a bit steep, but I think having a catch all like Cast Out is a good idea for decks already light on removal, and it looks like it creates good play patterns between it, Restoration Angel, cycling cards, and other instants.

Quote from dopespot »

-Edge of Autumn's cycling cost is very real. Sacrificing a land in the first 4 turns of the game is a significant setback. By the time the game progresses to the point that I am willing to sac a land to cycle, I would much rather instead just pay a mana instead. I can see it being necessary without mana dorks, but this just makes me want to play dorks even more to avoid having to play a rampant growth analog.

I think the only reason you would cycle Edge of Autumn with fewer than four lands in play is because you landed an early Astral Drift and because the value you would get from cycling it would exceed the value of having an additional land. That's going to be heavily influenced by what exactly you're blinking. I agree that in the late game, you'd prefer to pay 1 than to sacrifice a land, but in that stage of the game, you may have a surplus of lands anyway to the point that losing one of them isn't even relevant. And when mana is relevant and you're operating on a strict mana budget, losing another land entirely obviously sucks, but having the option to trigger Astral Drift and to dig for one more card in those situations seems incredibly valuable to me nonetheless. Essentially, if it isn't valuable to do, you won't do it, but I predict situations arising often enough where I'd be thrilled to have that option.

Quote from dopespot »

Restoration Angel is definitely on my watch list; she plays better with more value creatures like Wall of Omens than the bullets and hatebears I'm playing with Evo. I'm also trying to keep the curve as low as possible right now.

I think a low curve is smart. Cycling costs mana, so you either need cheap things in play to blink prior to casting Astral Drift or cheap creatures to play once Astral Drift is in play so you can afford to pay the cycling costs to blink them in the same turn. Maybe Restoration Angel isn't cut for the deck, but it certainly seems like it overlaps in all the right places.

Quote from dopespot »

@Lectrys: I am 100% sure that Loam + cycling lands will be the core of a modern deck, but I'm not sure that Astral Drift is in that deck. As soon as you want to play Ayula's Influence, why not just remove white and play the real Seismic Assault, Countryside Crusher, etc.?

This. I think you have to look at this as a cycling deck first, and as a Loam deck second. Once you start making Life from the Loam the focus of the deck, I don't think you even want to play Astral Drift anymore, and you end up with a completely different deck. Granted, that deck is probably a lot better than this one, but it's a different deck nonetheless.

EDIT: Here are all the lines that get you to 5 by turn 3 that also don't get you to 6:

5 mana, 4 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Utopia Sprawl
5 mana, 5 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Arbor Elf, Arbor Elf
5 mana, 5 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Arbor Elf —> Land
5 mana, 5 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Arbor Elf, Arbor Elf —> Land
5 mana, 5 cards:Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Land, Utopia Sprawl, Utopia Sprawl
5 mana, 5 cards:Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Land
5 mana, 5 cards:Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Utopia Sprawl, Utopia Sprawl —> Land

So basically for this to happen you need to have a bunch of the same kind of 1-drop, be it Arbor Elf or Utopia Sprawl, and no 3-drops because if you cast a 3-drop on turn 2, you're going to make it to 6 provided that none of your stuff gets blown up with one exception. (Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Land, Overgrowth doesn't get to 6 on turn 3 if you don't have a 3rd land.) Alternatively, if you have exactly two lands, exactly one Arbor Elf, and exactly one Utopia Sprawl, that also only gets you to 5, but one additional land, one additional Arbor Elf, or one additional Utopia Sprawl would each still get you to 6 provided that the additional Arbor Elf was cast turn 2.

This really demonstrates the importance of the 3-drop ramp spells. Not only do they make more mana, but they typically do so with fewer cards and with fewer redundant copies of cards, so they're more likely to happen. Ironically, that makes 6-drops easier to cast on turn 3 than 5-drops.

Quote from CurdBros »

This is a really great point. I mean...at 6 there is probably nothing better than Primeval Titan; but even Primal Command is great to be able to consistently cast on 5-CMC.

Yeah, I'm kind of at a crossroads. I've peeked at all the 6-drops, and I'm really unsure which I should be playing. Primeval Titan is the obvious frontrunner. He enables your more expensive cards even if he's killed, and in the event that he isn't he runs away with the game. My biggest fear is that, despite Llanowar Tribe making it easier than ever to land a turn 3 Primeval Titan, Llanowar Tribe might just reduce the number of meaningful lands Primeval Titan can fetch by encouraging you to run only untapped green sources. Maybe you don't need more than two good lands to make Primeval Titan worthwhile (I'm thinking Nykthos and Kessig Wolf Run), but I'm leery nonetheless.

My next three considerations (in no particular order) are Carnage Tyrant, Ravager Wurm, and Hydroid Krasis. Carnage Tyrant is sweet in that it's virtually unkillable. It doesn't do anything other than be a big idiot, but it also applies a lot of pressure, and if your opponent doesn't have exactly a sweeper, then they're not going to get rid of it unless they also have enough power to block it. Ravager Wurm is perhaps the most devastating card. The dream is to cast this turn 3 on the play and destroy one of your opponent's lands, setting them back to the stone age. The Wurm boasts a less than stellar body though, and it's entirely possible there aren't any cards in play that it can kill if you play it too early, so I'm wary this is the right call. Hydroid Krasis isn't the most impressive monster at x equals 4, but a 4/4 flample that refunds you two cards is tolerable enough that it may be worth playing anyway. I generally hate X spells in general, but the flexibility here might make this one of the best choices.

Another card I'm looking at is Karn, the Great Creator. At 6 mana turn 3, you can cast Karn for 4, -2 him, and then cast whatever relevant 2-drop artifact you want with the rest of your mana (Spellskite, Sorcerous Spyglass, Defense Grid, Torpor Orb, Vivien's Arkbow). Then, on the following turn, provided the coast is still clear, you just -2 Karn again, find Mycosynth Lattice, and win the game. While there will certainly be instances where he isn't very good (like if you're staring down a board full of creatures), he's incredibly flexible. You can play him turn 2 with the right opener, and with 10 mana you can even throw down Lattice immediately.

EDIT2: Something I just realized is that, if you want to cast a multicolor 6-drop off the back of a Llanowar Tribe opener, you're 100% going to need a shockland because both Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl have to make G in order to cast Llanowar Tribe turn 2. That isn't the end of the world, mind you. With enough fetches, you can likely find a shockland the first two turns of the game anyway. It just constrains what 6-drops you probably want to cast since, unless you fill your deck to the brim with fetchlands, not every opener with two lands, a 1-drop, and Llanowar Tribe will have fetches and shocks. Sometimes those two lands are just going to be basic Forests, and it's really going to suck if you can make 6 turn 3 but can't cast your 6-drop because you can only make GGGGGG. Not to mention, if you only have shocks and neither fetches nor basics, then Utopia Sprawl is going to have to enchant a shock, making it much more vulnerable to stuff like Field of Ruin. For these reasons, I suspect multicolor 6-drops are probably undesirable.

Quote from CurdBros »

We got Wall of Blossoms!

As someone who wasn't already playing Elvish Visionary, I'm not sure how excited I should be about this.