Other threats that come down and apply early pressure other than voice can be strangleroot geist, finks, blade splicer maybe even brimaz. The first three also benefit from resto
the other side of the coin, and its far out there, but black does have way more things it could add to the deck then red. realistically red is only for kiki, and boy does it take a lot (2RRR) black could give rhinos, and hand disruption and sin collectors and orzhovs and abrupt decays. One could just play it as a GBW deck, and have two kicks as chording targets and accept that if drawn they are 100% uncastable.
I just wish red had more things to do with the mana on the way to getting to the 2RRR cost of kiki to justify being so predominant in the mana base.
The amount of black that gets played has to be weighed in terms of are black cards adding so much more value that green, white and red simply can not, that it is worth running a more unstable and painful mana base? Personally i like sticking just to the naya mana base. Sin collector never did SO MUCH for me that it justified adding an off colour land. It was different in kiki-pod because access to 4 colours meant you could chain through the deck and win on the spot. The 4th colour here only gets you a single duress on a stick. As for pontif, i think feiry justice plays the same role, a single wipe of several 1/1's. Feiry justice also has the added benefit of taking 2/2s, or planeswalkers or large goyfs as well.
I think both ghostly prison and worship are very reasonable cards, both have upsides and downside.
Prison slows them down to a crawl, they either attack or develope the board. Prison doesnt help (as much) late game where youre low anyways, theyll pick there most evasive or biggest creature and pay to bring it through for those last bits of damage if theyve been racing you, and most likely they are. And as hands get emptier and lands more plentiful it also become less useful. So prison is at its strongest early game.
Worship on the other hand is a great late game draw, the "oh no im at 4 life, whoops i drew worship now get rid of every creature before you can kill me" is a valid stratagy. Voice and finks play slightly better with worship as they have to have a wrath and bolt and have you at < 3 health or else can not just win. Worship is great at anytime but doesnt stop the alternate win cons like infect.
I personally prefer worship, but both are good at protecting against similar staratagies but in different ways. What makes me take worship over prison is that it cant be abrupt decayed and is a harder lock most of the time. Anything trying to infect me i can usually just hit with removal. And both do nothing against hive mind so i wouldnt bring either in in that match up for that reason.
Ive played Pia and Kiran for about the last 2 weeks now and im almost never unhappy to see them, very easy to cast, can come out turn three with a dork, plays a very similar role to lingering souls. They apply pressure, provide blockers, give reach to tricky creatures like delvers and bobs with the suicide thopters, best friends with resto angel, with chord in hand can be used to convoke so they cost virtually 1 mana. A very good out to affinity, and stalls infect and zoo, takes 3 peices of removal to remove everything from the board.
They do it all, i cant speak highly enough about them, id play 2-3 if they wernt legendary
@Daviusminimus and Divbalari, i think youre giving leap to much attention in that list, its currently sitting in the flex spots and playing only a support role. Its very nice turning of opposing removal, board wipes and upgrading late game lame ducks like birds but by no means have I built it as an engine of the deck. The link you posted, those decks are all in on essembling a 3 card combo with leap. Not worth it or consistant in my mind, better to just play CoCo. And there are many great target for it, namely any creature about to die.
That all being said it is the lowest card on the totem pole for being cut, but ive liked it to help mitigate flood. The bolts on the other hand ive found much more useful than either spellskite or qasali. Spellskite is nice when youre stopping them from attaching a twin or bolting a dude, but does a lot of sitting around. Why not try to close the game out faster instead. By adding some more proactive threats like finks (which most lists seem to exclude) is really good at eating their life total, than theyve got two options, waste resources to block the fast and resilliant attackers in which case kiki is that much safer, or they hold answers for kiki and the finks and voices close the game.
With the stock list i always felt i just deployed a ton of walls and hoped i could combo off, deck didnt feel like it was doing much than waiting for an angel kiki window. Id rather put the importance of combo in the back seat, have an aggressive approach with lots of interaction and reach through bolts and paths and have access to an 'oops i win combo' when available. Numerous people have assumed i was playing a weirdish zoo deck games 1 and 2 only to get blown out by kiki game three.
@Paraniod Sarge - As perspective from the other side of the table (the decks I take to competitive magic nights are abbot grixis and kiki chord so i understand them both well) I think Kikis strength in the match up is in its redundancy. Abbot Grixis is all about grinding value and chaining two for ones to exhaust the opponent. But Kiki chords mission is to provide targets that need to get killed twice (voice and finks) and restos blank the spot removal, or creatures already did the job with an ETB which makes Rise poor which all negates Grixis's plan of attack.
My biggest advice is to delay the mana ramp, bolt the bird as always and attack the hand as the deck want to chain E Witnesses together with chords to build up the critical mass. Early falls really hurt and the deck doesn't have the speed to close games quickly so you can leave them with a bunch of useless walls and not much of a clock. First thing to board out is lili here as there are always useless dorks and walls sitting around on the field and the deck is soft to board wipes.
Still though if I put my two decks head to head i think id rather be piloting the Kiki Chord in the match up. Luckily it is very much not a mainstream deck, but neither is this
Heres what ive currently been playing. Ive alwasy found the deck grinds really hard, creatures are really resiliant either needing to be killed twice like finks and voice, go wide like the nalaars, or can shut down a removal with resto. So the decks kiki chord matches up will against are the midrange BGx and UBR decks.
With the traditional Hoogland list ive found the tough match ups are the ones that try to get under us where we cant really slow them down in time enough to combo so thats why ive added main deck bolts. Having access to 7 peices of removal is nice. I dislike pathing a problem delver only to see an angler follow up. Bolts have made it so that i now find the affinitys, zoos, infects and such basically easy wins. Ive disliked so many singletons and rellying on chords to find them, i feel its usually to slow so ive tried to cut some of the toolbox creatures and become more redundent, dropped the chords to three and basically use them to assemble the combo only. This is how i used to play pod though, as more of an agressive/midrange deck that has a quick out of nowhere combo.
Also the salt gotten from an infect player when i had a kiki/witness and bolt loop going was priceless. Bolt-witness-bolt is almost as good as doing it with snapcaster.
Anyways let me know what you guys think. Last 3 weeks ive gone 3-1(lost to elves), 3-1 (lost to twin) and 3-0 so its been great in matches for me.
The Nalars are insane, had 2 matches tonight where resto blinked them against affinity (blockers for days) and against jund (7 power in the air makes a good clock with 2-8 dmg of reach by suiciding the tokens) i used to run huntmaster but realistically he never flips and two 2/2s on the ground dont do much. The nalars have been infinitly more impressive to me. I could even see playing 2 in some metas
@Maty78 Did Jund really feel bad to you? When I played against Jund tonight it was a massacre. They just couldn't keep up with Abbot, Jace, and Snap. [/quote]
Yeah it really did feel bad, but again, i feel like it should be good, im chalking it up too being the slightest too light on lands, only having 1 black cleave cliffs (slightly more painful mana) and just general misplays as i figure out the nuances of the deck and unlucky abbot flips. It really is a different beast than OG grigix control.
I played a bunch of test games last night against afinity and jund. All game ones, surprising the game ones against affinity were about 50-50 and i imagine it only gets better after board. Jund i found hard, matchup felt 30/70 not in our favor. I always felt the deck starved on lands so im going to go up to 21. So many times i played an abbot and hit something i was one mana away from being able to play. The games where i actually hit my lands against jund i felt so favoured cause the deck grinds so hard but to many times i couldnt get off the ground before they locked up the game with a gofy or ooze or manland. I really do think were favoured against jund but hitting the lands to be able to snap command is very important.
As some anecdotal proof of this decks power, this week at the LGS modern night, a newer player borrowed this deck from one of his friends with the only instructions being to play abbot before playing a land from hand. I watched him ask what almost every card, every player played against him did (thats how new he was) and proceed to crush 3-1 by the end of the night. It was pretty funny and to think of what the deck can do when piloted by someone who actually knows whats going on.
Im coming over from the other grixos control shell (cause i want to play jace and lili) does anyone have any links to any videos that i can study some game play with this deck?
I've been working in a BUG list, it's too early to tell if it was any legs but in theory, if you get around the land issue, it seems good, another green card I'm looki at in addition to your list is leap as a 1-2 of, there's lots of chunking going on in faeries so to be able to draw another creature and blank removal seems sweet, and then there's the plays of evolving championed faeries to bring back what's underneath like a spell stutter
I just wish red had more things to do with the mana on the way to getting to the 2RRR cost of kiki to justify being so predominant in the mana base.
Prison slows them down to a crawl, they either attack or develope the board. Prison doesnt help (as much) late game where youre low anyways, theyll pick there most evasive or biggest creature and pay to bring it through for those last bits of damage if theyve been racing you, and most likely they are. And as hands get emptier and lands more plentiful it also become less useful. So prison is at its strongest early game.
Worship on the other hand is a great late game draw, the "oh no im at 4 life, whoops i drew worship now get rid of every creature before you can kill me" is a valid stratagy. Voice and finks play slightly better with worship as they have to have a wrath and bolt and have you at < 3 health or else can not just win. Worship is great at anytime but doesnt stop the alternate win cons like infect.
I personally prefer worship, but both are good at protecting against similar staratagies but in different ways. What makes me take worship over prison is that it cant be abrupt decayed and is a harder lock most of the time. Anything trying to infect me i can usually just hit with removal. And both do nothing against hive mind so i wouldnt bring either in in that match up for that reason.
They do it all, i cant speak highly enough about them, id play 2-3 if they wernt legendary
@Daviusminimus and Divbalari, i think youre giving leap to much attention in that list, its currently sitting in the flex spots and playing only a support role. Its very nice turning of opposing removal, board wipes and upgrading late game lame ducks like birds but by no means have I built it as an engine of the deck. The link you posted, those decks are all in on essembling a 3 card combo with leap. Not worth it or consistant in my mind, better to just play CoCo. And there are many great target for it, namely any creature about to die.
That all being said it is the lowest card on the totem pole for being cut, but ive liked it to help mitigate flood. The bolts on the other hand ive found much more useful than either spellskite or qasali. Spellskite is nice when youre stopping them from attaching a twin or bolting a dude, but does a lot of sitting around. Why not try to close the game out faster instead. By adding some more proactive threats like finks (which most lists seem to exclude) is really good at eating their life total, than theyve got two options, waste resources to block the fast and resilliant attackers in which case kiki is that much safer, or they hold answers for kiki and the finks and voices close the game.
With the stock list i always felt i just deployed a ton of walls and hoped i could combo off, deck didnt feel like it was doing much than waiting for an angel kiki window. Id rather put the importance of combo in the back seat, have an aggressive approach with lots of interaction and reach through bolts and paths and have access to an 'oops i win combo' when available. Numerous people have assumed i was playing a weirdish zoo deck games 1 and 2 only to get blown out by kiki game three.
My biggest advice is to delay the mana ramp, bolt the bird as always and attack the hand as the deck want to chain E Witnesses together with chords to build up the critical mass. Early falls really hurt and the deck doesn't have the speed to close games quickly so you can leave them with a bunch of useless walls and not much of a clock. First thing to board out is lili here as there are always useless dorks and walls sitting around on the field and the deck is soft to board wipes.
Still though if I put my two decks head to head i think id rather be piloting the Kiki Chord in the match up. Luckily it is very much not a mainstream deck, but neither is this
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Wall of Roots
2 Wall of Omens
3 Voice of Resurgence
2 Eternal Witness
3 Courser of Kruphix
3 Kitchen Finks
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3 Restoration Angel
2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Path to Exile
2 Evolutionary Leap
3 Chord of Calling
1 Arid Mesa
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Forest
2 Gavony Township
2 Razorverge Thicket
2 Stomping Ground
2 Temple Garden
3 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
Heres what ive currently been playing. Ive alwasy found the deck grinds really hard, creatures are really resiliant either needing to be killed twice like finks and voice, go wide like the nalaars, or can shut down a removal with resto. So the decks kiki chord matches up will against are the midrange BGx and UBR decks.
With the traditional Hoogland list ive found the tough match ups are the ones that try to get under us where we cant really slow them down in time enough to combo so thats why ive added main deck bolts. Having access to 7 peices of removal is nice. I dislike pathing a problem delver only to see an angler follow up. Bolts have made it so that i now find the affinitys, zoos, infects and such basically easy wins. Ive disliked so many singletons and rellying on chords to find them, i feel its usually to slow so ive tried to cut some of the toolbox creatures and become more redundent, dropped the chords to three and basically use them to assemble the combo only. This is how i used to play pod though, as more of an agressive/midrange deck that has a quick out of nowhere combo.
Also the salt gotten from an infect player when i had a kiki/witness and bolt loop going was priceless. Bolt-witness-bolt is almost as good as doing it with snapcaster.
Anyways let me know what you guys think. Last 3 weeks ive gone 3-1(lost to elves), 3-1 (lost to twin) and 3-0 so its been great in matches for me.
@Maty78 Did Jund really feel bad to you? When I played against Jund tonight it was a massacre. They just couldn't keep up with Abbot, Jace, and Snap. [/quote]
Yeah it really did feel bad, but again, i feel like it should be good, im chalking it up too being the slightest too light on lands, only having 1 black cleave cliffs (slightly more painful mana) and just general misplays as i figure out the nuances of the deck and unlucky abbot flips. It really is a different beast than OG grigix control.