This list recently 5-0'd a league, thought you all would be interested, don't know if tarmo is a good choice here over voice, but blade splicer seems incredible. easy to bounce and clone for value, and a great to sac to evo (though should be noted that this particular list runs no evos)
Nahiri has been a good two of, felidar bouncing her for multiple activations in a turn is good value and having the nahiri ult to grab emrakul sneaks out some wins, especially when you can play her early via the dorks and clog the board. Not to mention she's grabable with oath, and filters out some of your awkward draws with her plus 2.
Kinda nice to have an additional win con in the deck that doubles as filtering and removal. These kind of decks often suffer from a lack of interactivity as we sort of get tunnel vision on the combo, nahiri assists with this without getting in the way.
Most people come here to build decks rather than to hound those doing it. If you have an idea for another deck I suggest you keep the rudeness to yourself and work on your list until it's ready to share.
After goldfishing extensively with the Saffron Olive / PV list, I found that casting Breaking // Entering was far and away the most powerful thing the deck could do. While occasionally explosive, Beck // Call mostly drew into fatties, mana dorks, and fuse cards and did not provide the necessary cards to combo again. The lack of deck manipulation also made it difficult to assemble the combo in a reasonable time frame and Breaking // Entering and Beck // Call often did nothing on their own. In an attempt to remedy some of these problems, I came up with a variant on Grixis Goryo's Vengeance:
Because the deck isn't running mana dorks or Dryad Arbor, it uses Forbidden Orchard to insure that there is a creature on board for Kari Zev's Expertise. The tokens that Orchard produces can become annoying, especially if we have to tap Orchard for mana before the combo turn, but Yahenni's Expertise cleans them up.
The Breaking side of Breaking // Entering can be used to set up Goryo's Vengeance, although it's best to wait until you have the mana to cast both Breaking and Goryo's in case you hit an Emrakul.
Pact of Negation is a hedge against control decks, but I could see swapping them out for something in the sideboard depending on your meta. Thoughtseize might actually be a better choice because it can be used to bin our own fatties.
At the moment, I'm running Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur as the ninth creature since it acts like a fifth Griselbrand, but I'm considering other options such as Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Narset, Enlightened Master. I originally ran Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre but found that he was a weak Goryo's Vengeance target. Annihilating four permanents and maybe dealing 10 damage was not enough to justify the resources expended on Goryo's Vengeance. As it stands, Griselbrand is usually a better Goryo's Vengeance target than Emrakul anyway because it draws you 7-14 cards and allows you to either combo again the next turn or set a up a second Goryo's Vengeance or Breaking // Entering on the spot. Emrakul is at its best as a Goryo's Vengeance target when your opponent is at 15 or less life or you can annihilate most of their board, giving your self plenty of time to reassemble the combo.
The sideboard is fairly tentative right now until I figure out exactly what the deck's weaknesses are.
So far the deck has preformed very well in testing. It can go off by turn 3 regularly and has the potential for a turn one combo (Forbidden Orchard, Kari Zev's Expertise, 2 SSG, Breaking // Entering). I welcome your feedback and suggestions for improvement.
I must say if the way to go with Fusion Expertise is too exclusively be casting Breaking // Entering, this is probably pretty close to the list we should go with. That said, I think you're discounting the power of Beck // Call. It has a unique ability to alternatively slow down the game and provide massive card draw, and in some cases against decks unprepared, to win the game with multiple flyers. The biggest strength of your list is that it's likely going to be reanimating powerful creatures more often, but without running green for dorks you're simply a lot slower and your Kari Zev's Expertise is a lot worse. Forbidden orchard is literally your only way to give it targets against control decks that will eventually understand that giving you a target is a death sentence, and are well equipt to fizzel your Kari Zev's Expertise with a removal spell. If you're going grixis, dropping green, and making a dedicated reanimator list you should replace some amount of kari zevs expertise with Brain in the Jar, if not all of them. Brain synergies decently well with your higher non creature spell count anyway. Also Defense Matrix is a must have sideboard card for all of these lists.
Funeralofgod, Goblin Dark-Dwellers are good but can't cast both halves of the "fuse" cards.
The plan of your deck seems slower and requires more cards to work.
About the comparison to "Goryo's Breach", this combo lets you keep the creature and not sac' it (that is why I prioritize resilient Eldrazi finisher) and can go off as fast with many redundant pieces and a better backup plan in Beck // Call, I think that this deck can become the better Reanimaror combo strategy of the two.
Dark Dwellers can cast both halves of a fuse card, but it's still 5 whole mana and if you are running eldrazi in your list the chance of you binning them with something like a faithless looting means he's better left in the binder.
I agree on the comment about the comparison to Goryo's Breach list being inaccurate. The deck is seeking to combo in the none emrakul lists and emrakul isn't even a guaranteed win with one swing against some decks. Lingering souls is back in the meta in a big way thanks to cards like Grim Flayer and Collective Brutality improving Abzan's lot in the meta, and believe me having life above 15 and a bunch of tokens is a great way to survive a one off emrakul attack. Besides, we're improvements on their strategy in many ways. For one we have multiple fuse cards to take advantage off giving us multiple lines of victory through our multiple two card combos. Beck // Call has been hugely underrated thus far. A beck // call off of a Sram's Expertise is likely game over against midrange strategies filled with one for one removal.
I'm still on my Zoo list with incidental knightfall combo. Recently swapped out Wild Nacatl for Narnam Renegade to test as it's certainly close to nacatl and is far better with collected company. While you want to get maximum mana advantage from coco I feel a more aggressive deck still needs 1 drop action, having your 1 drop threat slot filled with a deathtoucher means they aren't lackluster/dead hits later in the game as you can coco during combat and force some hilarious trades. Who knows if it's actually better but I figure revolt is incredibly easy to trigger with 12 fetchlands. Still solidly aggressive and lightning rods removal which is great for keeping your larger later threats on the board. Heres the link
I'm still on my Zoo list with incidental knightfall combo. Recently swapped out Wild Nacatl for Narnam Renegade to test as it's certainly close to nacatl and is far better with collected company. While you want to get maximum mana advantage from coco I feel a more aggressive deck still needs 1 drop action, having your 1 drop threat slot filled with a deathtoucher means they aren't lackluster/dead hits later in the game as you can coco during combat and force some hilarious trades. Who knows if it's actually better but I figure revolt is incredibly easy to trigger with 12 fetchlands. Still solidly aggressive and lightning rods removal which is great for keeping your larger later threats on the board. Heres the link
Once again, faithless looting isn't there to bin emrakul, it's there for card filtering and binning griselbrand. I have no idea why people are so relentlessly focused at calling down my deck for being similar to others. I don't want or need deck building brownie points for using bad but unique cards, I want to play the best deck possible and there are only so many cards in magic. Similarities between lists at higher tier competitive play is inevitable because of this.
1. Yahenni's Expertise on the face of it might seem like the better card for us to use, as wiping away creatures attacking us seems good for stablization, but in testing in general I felt underwhelmed by the -3/-3. it wasn't hitting enough stuff and was especially bad at delaying Bant Eldrazi's fast starts as well as tarmogoyf decks, in which I'd honestly just rather have 3 chump blockers in addition to my beck call flyers than -3/-3 killing nothing except potential beck call birds of my own left over from my previous beck calls. Even against the decks that -3/-3 was good against, 3 chump blockers was generally as effective or only slightly less so in delaying them. Then consider that Beck calling off of a Sram's expertise leaves you with over 7 power on the board spread across 7 different bodies, 4 of which is flying. That is very nearly a win con against many midrange decks in modern without even having to make it to breaking entering.
2. As discussed on the other threat, I'm not totally sure Blightsteel Colossus works with Breaking Entering do to it's replacement effect
3. Faithless Looting is less for set up (though it does set up your griselbrands) and more for card filtering in general. It's just hard to make sure you're going to have everything you need all the time without having to draw a few extra cards in a combo deck. I thought SSG was a little excessive when I tested him in the original decklist as I often found our mana dorks working out perfectly by themselves to get us to our combos a turn earlier.
4. Forbidden Orchard actually seems awesome and I hadn't considered it before thank you for the suggestion! Having 2 in the manabase with a Dryad Arbor is really going to make sure that we always have our Kari Zav targets.
Something to consider though, just had another brewer suggest Defense Grid for the sideboard against blue decks and honestly it seems so much better than what I have at the moment.
There's been discussion of this particular landfall shell in both the Zoo and Knightfall threads. Though I'd drop my list here so you guys can take a look.
Can Blightsteel Colossus even be reanimated by Breaking // Entering? Its shuffle clause is a replacement effect rather than a trigger ability like the Eldrazi Titans so I believe it would instantly be shuffled back into your deck before you could move on to resolving the rest of the card and reanimating it. Does anyone know for sure?
While you're on a similar list to my own seems like most of the posts are going in more varied directions. I'm specifically trying to get discussion started on this combo version.
Fusion Expertise!! An unholy combo deck that is likely to be simultaneously the best tokens deck and the best reanimator deck in Modern. Fusion Expertise isn't exactly a wholly unique idea, I must credit both PVD and Saffron Olive's articles as the origin of the deck idea. Certainly there is much to test but as of now I'm trying to make the combo as reliable as possible without really dipping into disruption outside of the sideboard. Here's the list.
Breaking // Entering is our primary wincon, with the rest of the deck set up to give you a solid statistical chance of hitting a Griselbrand, Emrakul, The Aeons Torn, or an Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre off of breaking and reanimating it with Entering permanently with the addition of haste. Hitting an Emrakul is immediate game over, Ulamog does a decent Emrakul impression, and Griselbrand lets you draw an ungodly amount of cards for your trouble to set up another go at Breaking // Entering if it gets pathed. Beck // Call is less of an instant win card but it's honestly closer than you'd think as the sheer value of getting 4 1/1 flyers and drawing 4 is difficult for any other deck in modern to match, not to mention it's just inevitably drawing you closer to setting up a winning Breaking // Entering.
The rest of the deck is ramp and Kari Zev's Expertise targets in Birds of Paradise, Sylvan Caryatid, Dryad Arbor, and Forbidden Orchard. Then a playset of Faithless Looting to grease the wheels and bin your Griselbrands should you draw them. Please note that binning your Eldrazi Monsters with faithless looting WILL CAUSE THEM TO BE SHUFFLED BACK INTO YOUR DECK. They cannot sit in your bin for an easy entering later like Griselbrand can, they MUST be hit in the 8 cards your mill with breaking. This is something you might want to do to get eldrazi stranded in your hand back into your library to increase your chances of a Breaking // Entering hit. But keep in mind, it shuffles your whole graveyard back in, so any Faithless Looting that you haven't flashed back will be gone.
Defense Grid, Leyline of Sanctity, and Nature's Claim are all here to make sure your opponent can't mess with your combo with things like counterspells, discard spells, and little enchantments called Rest in Peace. Blood Moon is here just to gunk up the opponents works when you transform in game 2 and 3 into a more relentless but slower combo deck.
Important Sad Information
With the printing of Aftermath cards in Amonkhet the rules regarding the cmc's of split cards have changed, making the entire interaction between Brain in the Jar/The Expertise Cards + split cards now invalid. Here's the article.
Really cool to see landfall coming up again, certainly got a lot stronger now that it has a three drop to double up on landfall triggers turn 3. I remember when coralhelm had just been spoiled and people where thinking of running the landfall duo with the combo as it has some obvious synergy. Problem was sometimes your landfall dudes just sit there looking foolish but hopefully rallier is going to keep them swinging. I adjusted the landbase for blue and just swapped out the seals for 2 coralhelms.
Simple and fair enough adjustment, but cutting Seal of Fire loses the awesome synergy with Rallier: it both enables Rallier by triggering Revolt, and acts as a payoff for Rallier since Rallier can return it, turning him into a mini-Flametongue Kavu. Removing Seal of Fire also weakens Tarmogoyf.
That being said I'm going to ask the question that's probably on the mind of any budget-conscious people who would be interested in this deck: what's a good replacement for Tarmogoyf, if any? In the videos Jeff Hoogland basically answered this question with "play another deck" but... What do you guys think? If anything, Selfless Spirit seems a reasonable candidate: good to return with Rallier, can enable Rallier in a pinch, offers protection to Knight and our landfall dorks, and it's an evasive threat.
Not to mention, I've never been impressed with Goyf in decks like this one that mainly only run creatures, lands and instants.
Honestly at 2 mana the best goyf replacement I've seen in a deck that wants to be attacking is Greenwheel Liberator. Revolt is trivial to trigger and frankly this is just way better than something like Flinthoof Boar which is the typical suggestion before Greenwheel's printing. But frankly, it ain't goyf. It's dying to lightning bolt. With That said Goyf is never going to be as good in our decks as it will be in a deck with targeted discard, but it's still trivially easy for it to get big on it's own based on what our both we and our opponents naturally do throughout the game. That's always what this argument comes down to in the end. Goyf is just typically going to be bigger, badder, and more bolt proof that anything else in the two mana slot. Yeah, sometimes he'll just be 1/2 in our deck but those games are far far rarer than the games where he's in the 3/4 to 5/6 range.
Also I didn't want to discount the Seal of Fire synergy with Renegade Rallier but if we have to make cuts I'd rather be full up on bolts and paths then cutting them for Retreat to Coralhelm. With that said this list is very very early and we might find room yet for Seal of Fire
This list recently 5-0'd a league, thought you all would be interested, don't know if tarmo is a good choice here over voice, but blade splicer seems incredible. easy to bounce and clone for value, and a great to sac to evo (though should be noted that this particular list runs no evos)
Kinda nice to have an additional win con in the deck that doubles as filtering and removal. These kind of decks often suffer from a lack of interactivity as we sort of get tunnel vision on the combo, nahiri assists with this without getting in the way.
I must say if the way to go with Fusion Expertise is too exclusively be casting Breaking // Entering, this is probably pretty close to the list we should go with. That said, I think you're discounting the power of Beck // Call. It has a unique ability to alternatively slow down the game and provide massive card draw, and in some cases against decks unprepared, to win the game with multiple flyers. The biggest strength of your list is that it's likely going to be reanimating powerful creatures more often, but without running green for dorks you're simply a lot slower and your Kari Zev's Expertise is a lot worse. Forbidden orchard is literally your only way to give it targets against control decks that will eventually understand that giving you a target is a death sentence, and are well equipt to fizzel your Kari Zev's Expertise with a removal spell. If you're going grixis, dropping green, and making a dedicated reanimator list you should replace some amount of kari zevs expertise with Brain in the Jar, if not all of them. Brain synergies decently well with your higher non creature spell count anyway. Also Defense Matrix is a must have sideboard card for all of these lists.
Dark Dwellers can cast both halves of a fuse card, but it's still 5 whole mana and if you are running eldrazi in your list the chance of you binning them with something like a faithless looting means he's better left in the binder.
I agree on the comment about the comparison to Goryo's Breach list being inaccurate. The deck is seeking to combo in the none emrakul lists and emrakul isn't even a guaranteed win with one swing against some decks. Lingering souls is back in the meta in a big way thanks to cards like Grim Flayer and Collective Brutality improving Abzan's lot in the meta, and believe me having life above 15 and a bunch of tokens is a great way to survive a one off emrakul attack. Besides, we're improvements on their strategy in many ways. For one we have multiple fuse cards to take advantage off giving us multiple lines of victory through our multiple two card combos. Beck // Call has been hugely underrated thus far. A beck // call off of a Sram's Expertise is likely game over against midrange strategies filled with one for one removal.
2. As discussed on the other threat, I'm not totally sure Blightsteel Colossus works with Breaking Entering do to it's replacement effect
3. Faithless Looting is less for set up (though it does set up your griselbrands) and more for card filtering in general. It's just hard to make sure you're going to have everything you need all the time without having to draw a few extra cards in a combo deck. I thought SSG was a little excessive when I tested him in the original decklist as I often found our mana dorks working out perfectly by themselves to get us to our combos a turn earlier.
4. Forbidden Orchard actually seems awesome and I hadn't considered it before thank you for the suggestion! Having 2 in the manabase with a Dryad Arbor is really going to make sure that we always have our Kari Zav targets.
Something to consider though, just had another brewer suggest Defense Grid for the sideboard against blue decks and honestly it seems so much better than what I have at the moment.
4x Arid Mesa
1x Flooded Strand
1x Forest
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Mountain
1x Plains
1x Sacred Foundry
2x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed Fountain
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Plated Geopede
4x Renegade Rallier
4x Steppe Lynx
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Wild Nacatl
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
2x Retreat to Coralhelm
2x Burrenton Forge-Tender
2x Ghost Quarter
3x Lightning Helix
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Selfless Spirit
2x Thrun, the Last Troll
There's been discussion of this particular landfall shell in both the Zoo and Knightfall threads. Though I'd drop my list here so you guys can take a look.
1 Brain in a Jar
Creature 17
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Griselbrand
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Sylvan Caryatid
3 Simian Spirit Guide
Land 20
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Stomping Ground
2 Temple Garden
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Forest
2 Plains
1 Mountain
2 Forbidden Orchard
4 Windswept Heath
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Kari Zev's Expertise
4 Sram's Expertise
4 Breaking // Entering
4 Beck // Call
4 Faithless Looting
2 Blood Moon
3 Defense Grid
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Nature's Claim
3 Ravenous Trap
The basic idea is to create a deck that uses the interaction between Kari Zev's Expertise, Sram's Expertise, Brain in a Jar, and Breaking // Entering, and Beck // Call to cast both sides of these powerful fuse cards for only the cost of the expertise spell or the brain in the jar activation.
Breaking // Entering is our primary wincon, with the rest of the deck set up to give you a solid statistical chance of hitting a Griselbrand, Emrakul, The Aeons Torn, or an Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre off of breaking and reanimating it with Entering permanently with the addition of haste. Hitting an Emrakul is immediate game over, Ulamog does a decent Emrakul impression, and Griselbrand lets you draw an ungodly amount of cards for your trouble to set up another go at Breaking // Entering if it gets pathed. Beck // Call is less of an instant win card but it's honestly closer than you'd think as the sheer value of getting 4 1/1 flyers and drawing 4 is difficult for any other deck in modern to match, not to mention it's just inevitably drawing you closer to setting up a winning Breaking // Entering.
The rest of the deck is ramp and Kari Zev's Expertise targets in Birds of Paradise, Sylvan Caryatid, Dryad Arbor, and Forbidden Orchard. Then a playset of Faithless Looting to grease the wheels and bin your Griselbrands should you draw them. Please note that binning your Eldrazi Monsters with faithless looting WILL CAUSE THEM TO BE SHUFFLED BACK INTO YOUR DECK. They cannot sit in your bin for an easy entering later like Griselbrand can, they MUST be hit in the 8 cards your mill with breaking. This is something you might want to do to get eldrazi stranded in your hand back into your library to increase your chances of a Breaking // Entering hit. But keep in mind, it shuffles your whole graveyard back in, so any Faithless Looting that you haven't flashed back will be gone.
Defense Grid, Leyline of Sanctity, and Nature's Claim are all here to make sure your opponent can't mess with your combo with things like counterspells, discard spells, and little enchantments called Rest in Peace. Blood Moon is here just to gunk up the opponents works when you transform in game 2 and 3 into a more relentless but slower combo deck.
Honestly at 2 mana the best goyf replacement I've seen in a deck that wants to be attacking is Greenwheel Liberator. Revolt is trivial to trigger and frankly this is just way better than something like Flinthoof Boar which is the typical suggestion before Greenwheel's printing. But frankly, it ain't goyf. It's dying to lightning bolt. With That said Goyf is never going to be as good in our decks as it will be in a deck with targeted discard, but it's still trivially easy for it to get big on it's own based on what our both we and our opponents naturally do throughout the game. That's always what this argument comes down to in the end. Goyf is just typically going to be bigger, badder, and more bolt proof that anything else in the two mana slot. Yeah, sometimes he'll just be 1/2 in our deck but those games are far far rarer than the games where he's in the 3/4 to 5/6 range.
Also I didn't want to discount the Seal of Fire synergy with Renegade Rallier but if we have to make cuts I'd rather be full up on bolts and paths then cutting them for Retreat to Coralhelm. With that said this list is very very early and we might find room yet for Seal of Fire