So I'm thinking about coming back to some sort of stompy deck after a longish hiatus. Why is avatar of the resolute being played as a 4 of in so many decks? It seems like not much more then a slightly better garruk's companion and honestly I imagine that playing scavenging ooze as a 4 of would be much more potent than a 3/2 that sometimes in a perfect world is slightly larger. I'd love to hear some experiences with the card.
Have a quick look back through the last 10 - 15 pages or so of this thread - the topic has been discussed a few times. The short version, though, is Avatar is an absolute house. Strictly better than Garruk's Companion (with Reach) on an empty board, and quite regularly coming into play as 4/3 or 5/4 (Experiment One and Strangleroot Geist providing the +1/+1s). He's an automatic 4-of IMO. The only choice then is whether you prefer to use Garruk's Companion over Kalonian Tusker. Some do and like the trample, but the general consensus is that overall the 3 toughness of Tusker is very relevant (dodges Electrolyze and other 2 damage spells, and doesn't trade with Snapcaster Mage, Dark Confidant, Pestermite etc) and is enough better than the trample of the Companion for it to get the nod.
That said, a lot of this deck is feel and how you enjoy playing it - test out both and see which you prefer!
Glad to see the thread is still doing well. I have to admit I cheated on the Leatherback and decided to go for D&T for GP Copenhagen. I eyed an opportunity and a huge weakness in the metagame relating to the grave and the way other decks fight unfair decks. Turns out, it paid off with a top 8 for me, which means I'm going to my first Pro Tour! Couldn't have been happier, except perhaps if it was the Leatherback that had taken me there ;-)
Congrats on making Pro Tour! It'd have been awesome if you made it with Stompy but sadly we're not quite competitive enough, especially on paper.
There haven't been many matches I can think of that I could have used Apostle's Blessing - most of the time we can get our creatures big enough (Leatherback Baloth, Avatar of the Resolute... heck you can even get Experiment One to 6/6 if you really run well) that in Modern they're getting chump-blocked by most decks and we're happy with trampling over the top using Rancor or Avatar. The only games where I might have wanted a Blessing were against token decks that can throw out a bunch of blockers, but often enough you can Rancor up something and get damage through that way. I can't see including the Blessing in my 75. There might be an argument for it against Affinity, but it's fairly narrow.
...unless you're talking about running a couple of Sunpetal Grove / Temple Garden / Razorverge Thicket simply in order to be able to cast Path to Exile. If this is what you're saying it's just not worth the increased inconsistency of the manabase simply for a W removal spell, when Dismember mostly does the same job for 1 - mostly the four life is of no concern if it's stopping Twin from winning the game.
Round 1: UR Twin. Lost the die roll, on the draw for game one. Opponent flooded a bit, never tried for the combo, I won after a bit of grind. Out: Prey Upon and a Rancor; in: 2 Choke. Game two, mulled to six on the draw, slow start, opponent hit Twin fairly early - I couldn't stop it. Game three: Kept a good hand, good aggressive start, kept a Vines up in case of Twin but never needed it. Won 2-1.
Round 2: GR Tron. Lost the roll, on the draw for game one. Off to a very quick start, win on turn 4 or 5 with Vines. Out: Prey Upon, 2 Dismember, 2 Spellskite; in: 3 Unravel the Æther, 2 Aspect of Hydra. Game two, opponent had Tron fairly early and cast a Wurmcoil Engine. I Unraveled it and attacked him down to 5. Next turn he cast another one and a Thragtusk. Another Thragtusk next turn was enough for me and I scooped. Game three was similar to game two. He got tron early, got Wurmcoil, I unraveled and put him to 7. He untapped, cast Thragtusk then Wurmcoil then another Thragtusk the next turn. Way too much for me to deal with. Lost 1-2.
Round 3: GW (or was it Bant?) Auras. Won the roll and got off to a good start game one after my opponent mulled to 5, but he got lucky and hit Daybreak Coronet, suiting up and beating me down while gaining a ton of life. Out: 2 Aspect of Hydra, Prey Upon; in: 3 Unravel. Game two: Didn't leave mana open for Unravel, he cast Daybreak Coronet again. Bah humbug. Lost 0-2.
Round 4: BW Tokens. Won the roll, mulled to six for game one. Played E1, opponent Inquisitioned me taking my Leatherback Baloth, leaving me with 2 Forest and a Rancor. Ugh. Drew another Leatherback - nice. Suited up the E1 and bashed. Next turn cast Spellskite, evolve E1 (it got Pathed but Skite tooke one for the team), bash again, cast Leatherback, evolve and bash again. Never threatened. Out: Prey Upon, Rancor; in: 2 Scavenging Ooze. Game two, good start on the draw, beating down, had him to 4 before he cast two Intangible Virtues with a bunch of tokens in play - ouch. I went to 1, swung back hoping he'd screw up, but he didn't. Ugh. Decided I didn't like Scooze after all so sided them back out and put in 2 Aspects. Game three, a little grindier than game one but he was always on the back foot. I even Unraveled his Bitterblossom so he'd stop getting blockers at the low low price of one life. Won 2-1.
Round 5: Infect. Ugh, I don't like this matchup. Won the roll (WOO!!) for game one and had him on the back foot fairly quickly, Dismembering his first Glistener Elf, then beating down and making him use pumps defensively. Best move I made was chumping his Glistener Elf (exalted with Noble Hierarch) with an E1 - he was on about 10 facing my Rancored Kalonian Tusker (I was on 4 poison) so the attack looked suspicious. Opponent later said I'd have died if I didn't block. Phew! Out: Prey Upon, E1; in: 2 Hunt the Hunter. This wasn't a great choice but for game two he mulled to four, kept a no-lander and I won quickly with a great start and an Aspect. Won 2-0.
Round 6: UR Twin... but quite a different build to the first guy. Lost the die roll, on the draw. All was going fairly well, I was getting in for damage and keeping Vines up for the combo. Got him to 5. He cast Twin. I cast Vines in response. Sure. On my turn he cast Cryptic Command tapping my team, then untapped and cast Twin again. Sigh, ggs. Out: Prey Upon, 2 Rancor; in: 2 Choke, Unravel. Game two: Holy crap, what a game. Seesawed back and forth, opponent ended up beating me down with Snapcaster Mage and Deceiver Exarch after wrecking me with Anger of the Gods. I was on 5, he was on 7. I cast Strangleroot Geist. Resolves. Rancor. Opponent responds with Electrolyze. I respond with Vines kicked and swing to win. Opponent unhappy; he punted it by responding to the Rancor instead of the Vines. Okay by me! 1-1, I decide I want Scoozes so side out a Choke and an Unravel for a pair of them, and we go to game three. Which was one of the crazier games of Magic I've ever played. He got a Batterskull out that I couldn't do much about... but he made so many misplays, even casting Twin on his Snapcaster when I had Spellskite out. Yoink!! He kept attacking, I kept making copies of Spellskite, evolving E1 in the process, and blocking with the copies. He got up to about 40 life, we ran out of time and wound up with no result. 1-1 draw.
So, finished up 3-2-1. Today's all-star: Dryad Militant. Every opponent hated having their things exiled, it was music to my ears! Very happy with the day - only losing to a hot drawing GR Tron and a bit of a rough match against a lucky Auras opponent, but beating Twin, Infect, and BW tokens, and ekeing out a draw against another Twin deck, which my opponent perhaps should have won. Had a lot of fun and loved how the deck performed! Pretty happy I didn't have to face Kolaghan's Command - that card is a beating. Looking forward to the next one!
This was my initial thought as well. Sometimes, it'd be excellent, especially in the grindier matchups. But it'd be pretty much stone dead in a top deck situation, and I could see myself just wishing it were a creature in others. I'm not saying I won't test with it, but I don't think it's quite up to the standard needed to make the 75.
A fair bit of the reason I'm running this deck (other than it's relative simplicity and consistency) is value for money. I built this deck having had almost all of the cards lying around already, picked up the Avatars for next to nothing, and played. The only things that cost me much were a couple of Spellskites, which I traded into. One is a foil from New Phyrexia, but I got decent value on a trade for it and I'm happy to have it.
Even if the deck is less well placed than it was, it's still fun to play, even if you're going to lose some of the tougher matchups. I wouldn't consider playing Goyf in this deck unless it was suddenly under $10 - I don't own any copies, and frankly I'm not interested in getting any at the price they are. So much of my enjoyment of Magic is playing and surprising people with a cheap 'underdog' deck, rather than turn up with the most expensive deck and get all mad when I don't win.
All of these have been tried/addressed. I have a post on page three of the thread that addresses most, if not all of them at once.
It can't have addressed Hunt the Hunter or Feed the Clan - neither card had been released when this thread was in its infancy. The only other point to address is the Prey Upon / Dismember issue and which one is better to run in the main. My feeling is that Dismember is probably better in the main since it's good against most decks and only bad against a couple, so I might make that change. Only own two copies of Dismember at the moment though, so I'll have to acquire a third. I'd like a second Spellskite as well and could even see running them in the main - it just hates on so many decks. I do like Scooze though as it can sneakily wreck opponents out of nowhere.
I'm curious as to why you are playing Prey Upon in the mainboard and Dismember in the side board. Was that just a meta call that you were expecting to go up against a lot of burn/aggro?
It was honestly mainly because that's how they were arranged in the Primer. The meta locally is quite diverse - there's a few of almost every different deck kicking around - someone even ran Living Twin, the list that LSV piloted recently on Channel Fireball. I played against five different decks and saw at least twice that many different decks out of a field of only 24 players. So sideboarding for my local meta is not going to be easy!
My first Modern tournament today with any deck. I've only had fairly limited testing as well so the learning curve was going to be steep. Played at my local shop.
Finished up 2-3. Had horrific luck all day, bad draws, constant mulligans, flooding, mana screw - you name it, it happened. Lost all my dice rolls except one as well, which really didn't help. I started getting really frustrated!
R1: Affinity (0-2 loss). G1: Lost the die roll, mulled to 5 on the draw, did my best but his draw was pretty good. Out: 2 Prey Upon and 2 Scavenging Ooze, in: A Dismember and 3 Unravel the Æther. G2: Kept 7 but got wrecked to Ravager, Etched Champion and Cranial Plating, even after I'd already Unraveled two threats.
R2: Grixis Twin (1-2 loss). G1: Lost the die roll again. On the draw, Militant into Militant into one or two other things. He dealt with the other things, then tapped out for Tasigur on 10. I VoVed a Militant, then Prey Upon eating Tasigur, attacked for 8 to put him to 2. He drew then scooped. Out: 2 Scavenging Ooze and 2 Prey Upon, in: 2 Dismember, 2 Choke 1 Spellskite. G2: Twin combo fairly early on, I was stuck on mana and tapped out. G3: Started out okay but he saw and cast all three Spellskites, which was rough. I broke up the Twin combo even with a Spellskite in play. He cast Twin on his Deceiver Exarch, I Dismember in response, he redirects to Spellskite. I let that resolve then cast Vines on his Exarch to break up the combo. I then flooded out while he dug through his deck with Desolate Lighthouse.
R3: American Control (2-1 win). G1: Lost the roll yet again, now 0-3. On the draw. Quite a grindy game, he cast Lightning Helix a few times and had a Restoration Angel, but I battled through to win. Can't remember how I boarded but brought in Spellskite and 2 Choke I think. G2: He cast Lightning Helix what felt like about 8 times, constantly killing my creatures and killing me with Celestial Colonade. Sided Chokes back out again, put in a Kitchen Finks and an Aspect of Hydra. G3: Flooded a bit through a long drawn out battle until we were both in top deck mode - me on 11, him on 5. Drew and cast a Scavenging Ooze and Rancored it. Passed with loads of mana up. He drew then scooped.
R4: Infect (1-2 loss). G1: Won the roll, lost the game. Probable misplay by not attacking with a guy on turn 3 may have cost me the game. Out: 2 Ooze 3 Prey Upon; In: Spellskite 2 Dismember 2 Hunt the Hunter. G2: Quick start with E1 and Dryad Militant with Kalonian Tusker. Win with Aspect of Hydra and Vines. G3: No 1 drop on the draw, only cast a Strangleroot Geist, he dropped a hand of pump and unblockable to deal 12 poison and kill me. Ouch.
R5: Creatureless Mardu burn (2-0 win). G1: Lost the roll again, mulled to 6 on the draw. He aimed some burn at my face while I aimed creatures at his. Easy win. Out: 2 Ooze 3 Prey Upon; In: 2 Kitchen Finks 2 Aspect of Hydra 1 Spellskite. G2: mulled to 6 on the draw again but had a quick start and won easily again to finish up 2-3 on the day.
Thoughts: Had some really awful draws and had to mulligan a lot, seemed to either flood or mana screw nearly every match, lost 80% of my dice rolls against some pretty tough decks and opponents, which really hurt. Felt that had my luck been a fraction better I should've easily gone 3-2, possibly even 4-1 had it been my day. Really tough intro to Modern but I learned a lot and have a new low baseline for how much variance can own you.
Managed to pick up a foil Avatar of the Resolute in a trade last night, and a Spellskite - gradually picking up the various sideboard options I could try. The main deck is pretty well finished, although it's hard finding a 4th copy of Leatherback Baloth - hardly anyone seems to have them locally! It's a nuisance. I've ordered a couple off Star City but they can take a while to get to New Zealand. The tournament is in 48 hours (not the PPTQ itself, just a practice event, but I still want to play!).
I'd also quite like to play this deck on MTGO - how do you go about picking up the various commons and uncommons without getting gouged for tix? I only started playing MTGO around Gatecrash, so I don't have Tusker, Baloth, Geist, Vines, Rancor etc. Anyone got a bot they suggest for these? Thanks.
Hi everyone. Just joined up (posted in the Introductions thread already), mainly because of this thread. I've only recently looked at getting into Modern and I've been keeping my eye out for the best bang for buck deck I can get (as with any constructed format I play - I try to be sensible with how much I spend on Magic!), and I really like the look of this one. I've always liked playing aggro, always liked green, and had 95% of the cards in the deck already - when Avatar of the Resolute came out I traded into a playset for no reason other than thinking it was a cool card at $1, so that worked out quite well!
Anyway there isn't a lot of paper Modern played where I am locally, but I have done some casual testing (without SB) against Affinity, Grixis Delver, Burn, Infect, and Scapeshift (with Affinity and Infect being the toughest matchups), and have really liked the way the deck has performed. I'm playing the same list in the Primer as at today, except 21 Forests and 1 Treetop Village. Probably going to cut a forest for the 4th Avatar of the Resolute - I've been impressed with it and less impressed with flooding!
There are a couple of paper tournaments coming up at my local store - practice runs for a PPTQ that's coming up - and I'm going to play. If nothing else, because we don't have many Modern players locally, me playing brings the number of players up and diversifies the meta a bit... but I'm secretly hoping to pull off a few surprise wins. I'll post up how I get on!
Greetings. Long time lurker, first time poster - have finally got around to registering!
I'm Ryan, from Christchurch, New Zealand. I started playing Magic back in Revised edition - I was only a kid though, so I had no idea what I was doing. I played with my friends and dabbled with Homelands (eugh), Ice Age, and 4th edition, before going off to high school, losing touch with Magic playing friends, and getting rid of all my cards (not very many at that stage). As years passed I never forgot about Magic, randomly buying boosters of 7th, 8th, and 9th editions, opening them, but never doing anything with the cards.
Then eventually I found out about Friday Night Magic and thought great, I can play Magic regularly without needing Magic playing friends! I entered my first FNM in Rise of the Eldrazi, a tough set to learn to draft in. I went to FNMs regularly(ish) through M11 and then Scars of Mirrodin, but a dislike of Scars of Mirrodin, a big earthquake in Christchurch, employment upheaval, and the breakdown of my 8 year relationship saw me put Magic on the backburner again.
A couple of years later I saw on a post on Facebook from my local store that the M13 prerelease was on that weekend. I had my first spare weekend for months, so I went along. Some of the players there remembered me from a couple of years earlier, and I had a great time. I've been a regular at the store ever since.
My favourite format is Limited (booster draft especially but sealed as well). I've played some Standard and had some success, but when I started traveling to a couple of more serious events I found there were just too many ********s, guys who were super serious and competitive, and would do absolutely anything it took to win. I found this was very detrimental to my enjoyment of the game, so I play less Standard lately. I've recently started getting into Modern, I've tried a couple of decks, but found I have the most fun with mono green Stompy - actually, it's the Stompy primer thread on here that has finally got me to register and post. Anyway I'm still learning the format, but I love bang for buck builds (same goes for Standard actually, maybe it's my tendency to support the underdog?) and this deck fits the bill nicely. When you own none of the expensive cards in Modern (Goyf, Bob etc) and have to be sensible with how much you spend on Magic, going back for buck is good. Reasons why I don't play Legacy at all!
Have a quick look back through the last 10 - 15 pages or so of this thread - the topic has been discussed a few times. The short version, though, is Avatar is an absolute house. Strictly better than Garruk's Companion (with Reach) on an empty board, and quite regularly coming into play as 4/3 or 5/4 (Experiment One and Strangleroot Geist providing the +1/+1s). He's an automatic 4-of IMO. The only choice then is whether you prefer to use Garruk's Companion over Kalonian Tusker. Some do and like the trample, but the general consensus is that overall the 3 toughness of Tusker is very relevant (dodges Electrolyze and other 2 damage spells, and doesn't trade with Snapcaster Mage, Dark Confidant, Pestermite etc) and is enough better than the trample of the Companion for it to get the nod.
That said, a lot of this deck is feel and how you enjoy playing it - test out both and see which you prefer!
Congrats on making Pro Tour! It'd have been awesome if you made it with Stompy but sadly we're not quite competitive enough, especially on paper.
Today's deck:
20 Forest
1 Treetop Village
Creatures - 26
4 Experiment One
4 Dryad Militant
4 Kalonian Tusker
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Avatar of the Resolute
2 Spellskite
4 Leatherback Baloth
4 Rancor
4 Vines of Vastwood
2 Dismember
2 Aspect of Hydra
1 Prey Upon
3 Unravel the Æther
2 Prey Upon
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Aspect of Hydra
2 Choke
2 Hunt the Hunter
2 Feed the Clan
Round 1: UR Twin. Lost the die roll, on the draw for game one. Opponent flooded a bit, never tried for the combo, I won after a bit of grind. Out: Prey Upon and a Rancor; in: 2 Choke. Game two, mulled to six on the draw, slow start, opponent hit Twin fairly early - I couldn't stop it. Game three: Kept a good hand, good aggressive start, kept a Vines up in case of Twin but never needed it. Won 2-1.
Round 2: GR Tron. Lost the roll, on the draw for game one. Off to a very quick start, win on turn 4 or 5 with Vines. Out: Prey Upon, 2 Dismember, 2 Spellskite; in: 3 Unravel the Æther, 2 Aspect of Hydra. Game two, opponent had Tron fairly early and cast a Wurmcoil Engine. I Unraveled it and attacked him down to 5. Next turn he cast another one and a Thragtusk. Another Thragtusk next turn was enough for me and I scooped. Game three was similar to game two. He got tron early, got Wurmcoil, I unraveled and put him to 7. He untapped, cast Thragtusk then Wurmcoil then another Thragtusk the next turn. Way too much for me to deal with. Lost 1-2.
Round 3: GW (or was it Bant?) Auras. Won the roll and got off to a good start game one after my opponent mulled to 5, but he got lucky and hit Daybreak Coronet, suiting up and beating me down while gaining a ton of life. Out: 2 Aspect of Hydra, Prey Upon; in: 3 Unravel. Game two: Didn't leave mana open for Unravel, he cast Daybreak Coronet again. Bah humbug. Lost 0-2.
Round 4: BW Tokens. Won the roll, mulled to six for game one. Played E1, opponent Inquisitioned me taking my Leatherback Baloth, leaving me with 2 Forest and a Rancor. Ugh. Drew another Leatherback - nice. Suited up the E1 and bashed. Next turn cast Spellskite, evolve E1 (it got Pathed but Skite tooke one for the team), bash again, cast Leatherback, evolve and bash again. Never threatened. Out: Prey Upon, Rancor; in: 2 Scavenging Ooze. Game two, good start on the draw, beating down, had him to 4 before he cast two Intangible Virtues with a bunch of tokens in play - ouch. I went to 1, swung back hoping he'd screw up, but he didn't. Ugh. Decided I didn't like Scooze after all so sided them back out and put in 2 Aspects. Game three, a little grindier than game one but he was always on the back foot. I even Unraveled his Bitterblossom so he'd stop getting blockers at the low low price of one life. Won 2-1.
Round 5: Infect. Ugh, I don't like this matchup. Won the roll (WOO!!) for game one and had him on the back foot fairly quickly, Dismembering his first Glistener Elf, then beating down and making him use pumps defensively. Best move I made was chumping his Glistener Elf (exalted with Noble Hierarch) with an E1 - he was on about 10 facing my Rancored Kalonian Tusker (I was on 4 poison) so the attack looked suspicious. Opponent later said I'd have died if I didn't block. Phew! Out: Prey Upon, E1; in: 2 Hunt the Hunter. This wasn't a great choice but for game two he mulled to four, kept a no-lander and I won quickly with a great start and an Aspect. Won 2-0.
Round 6: UR Twin... but quite a different build to the first guy. Lost the die roll, on the draw. All was going fairly well, I was getting in for damage and keeping Vines up for the combo. Got him to 5. He cast Twin. I cast Vines in response. Sure. On my turn he cast Cryptic Command tapping my team, then untapped and cast Twin again. Sigh, ggs. Out: Prey Upon, 2 Rancor; in: 2 Choke, Unravel. Game two: Holy crap, what a game. Seesawed back and forth, opponent ended up beating me down with Snapcaster Mage and Deceiver Exarch after wrecking me with Anger of the Gods. I was on 5, he was on 7. I cast Strangleroot Geist. Resolves. Rancor. Opponent responds with Electrolyze. I respond with Vines kicked and swing to win. Opponent unhappy; he punted it by responding to the Rancor instead of the Vines. Okay by me! 1-1, I decide I want Scoozes so side out a Choke and an Unravel for a pair of them, and we go to game three. Which was one of the crazier games of Magic I've ever played. He got a Batterskull out that I couldn't do much about... but he made so many misplays, even casting Twin on his Snapcaster when I had Spellskite out. Yoink!! He kept attacking, I kept making copies of Spellskite, evolving E1 in the process, and blocking with the copies. He got up to about 40 life, we ran out of time and wound up with no result. 1-1 draw.
So, finished up 3-2-1. Today's all-star: Dryad Militant. Every opponent hated having their things exiled, it was music to my ears! Very happy with the day - only losing to a hot drawing GR Tron and a bit of a rough match against a lucky Auras opponent, but beating Twin, Infect, and BW tokens, and ekeing out a draw against another Twin deck, which my opponent perhaps should have won. Had a lot of fun and loved how the deck performed! Pretty happy I didn't have to face Kolaghan's Command - that card is a beating. Looking forward to the next one!
This was my initial thought as well. Sometimes, it'd be excellent, especially in the grindier matchups. But it'd be pretty much stone dead in a top deck situation, and I could see myself just wishing it were a creature in others. I'm not saying I won't test with it, but I don't think it's quite up to the standard needed to make the 75.
http://www.mythicspoiler.com/ori/cards/elementalbond.html
Not sure it's what the deck needs, but a big portion of the creatures in our deck triggers it. Drawing more cards makes me happy!
Even if the deck is less well placed than it was, it's still fun to play, even if you're going to lose some of the tougher matchups. I wouldn't consider playing Goyf in this deck unless it was suddenly under $10 - I don't own any copies, and frankly I'm not interested in getting any at the price they are. So much of my enjoyment of Magic is playing and surprising people with a cheap 'underdog' deck, rather than turn up with the most expensive deck and get all mad when I don't win.
It can't have addressed Hunt the Hunter or Feed the Clan - neither card had been released when this thread was in its infancy. The only other point to address is the Prey Upon / Dismember issue and which one is better to run in the main. My feeling is that Dismember is probably better in the main since it's good against most decks and only bad against a couple, so I might make that change. Only own two copies of Dismember at the moment though, so I'll have to acquire a third. I'd like a second Spellskite as well and could even see running them in the main - it just hates on so many decks. I do like Scooze though as it can sneakily wreck opponents out of nowhere.
It was honestly mainly because that's how they were arranged in the Primer. The meta locally is quite diverse - there's a few of almost every different deck kicking around - someone even ran Living Twin, the list that LSV piloted recently on Channel Fireball. I played against five different decks and saw at least twice that many different decks out of a field of only 24 players. So sideboarding for my local meta is not going to be easy!
Deck list:
20 Forest
1 Treetop Village
Creatures - 26
4 Experiment One
4 Dryad Militant
4 Kalonian Tusker
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Avatar of the Resolute
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Leatherback Baloth
4 Rancor
4 Vines of Vastwood
3 Prey Upon
2 Aspect of Hydra
3 Unravel the Æther
2 Dismember
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Aspect of Hydra
2 Choke
2 Hunt the Hunter
1 Spellskite
1 Relic of Progenitus
Finished up 2-3. Had horrific luck all day, bad draws, constant mulligans, flooding, mana screw - you name it, it happened. Lost all my dice rolls except one as well, which really didn't help. I started getting really frustrated!
R1: Affinity (0-2 loss). G1: Lost the die roll, mulled to 5 on the draw, did my best but his draw was pretty good. Out: 2 Prey Upon and 2 Scavenging Ooze, in: A Dismember and 3 Unravel the Æther. G2: Kept 7 but got wrecked to Ravager, Etched Champion and Cranial Plating, even after I'd already Unraveled two threats.
R2: Grixis Twin (1-2 loss). G1: Lost the die roll again. On the draw, Militant into Militant into one or two other things. He dealt with the other things, then tapped out for Tasigur on 10. I VoVed a Militant, then Prey Upon eating Tasigur, attacked for 8 to put him to 2. He drew then scooped. Out: 2 Scavenging Ooze and 2 Prey Upon, in: 2 Dismember, 2 Choke 1 Spellskite. G2: Twin combo fairly early on, I was stuck on mana and tapped out. G3: Started out okay but he saw and cast all three Spellskites, which was rough. I broke up the Twin combo even with a Spellskite in play. He cast Twin on his Deceiver Exarch, I Dismember in response, he redirects to Spellskite. I let that resolve then cast Vines on his Exarch to break up the combo. I then flooded out while he dug through his deck with Desolate Lighthouse.
R3: American Control (2-1 win). G1: Lost the roll yet again, now 0-3. On the draw. Quite a grindy game, he cast Lightning Helix a few times and had a Restoration Angel, but I battled through to win. Can't remember how I boarded but brought in Spellskite and 2 Choke I think. G2: He cast Lightning Helix what felt like about 8 times, constantly killing my creatures and killing me with Celestial Colonade. Sided Chokes back out again, put in a Kitchen Finks and an Aspect of Hydra. G3: Flooded a bit through a long drawn out battle until we were both in top deck mode - me on 11, him on 5. Drew and cast a Scavenging Ooze and Rancored it. Passed with loads of mana up. He drew then scooped.
R4: Infect (1-2 loss). G1: Won the roll, lost the game. Probable misplay by not attacking with a guy on turn 3 may have cost me the game. Out: 2 Ooze 3 Prey Upon; In: Spellskite 2 Dismember 2 Hunt the Hunter. G2: Quick start with E1 and Dryad Militant with Kalonian Tusker. Win with Aspect of Hydra and Vines. G3: No 1 drop on the draw, only cast a Strangleroot Geist, he dropped a hand of pump and unblockable to deal 12 poison and kill me. Ouch.
R5: Creatureless Mardu burn (2-0 win). G1: Lost the roll again, mulled to 6 on the draw. He aimed some burn at my face while I aimed creatures at his. Easy win. Out: 2 Ooze 3 Prey Upon; In: 2 Kitchen Finks 2 Aspect of Hydra 1 Spellskite. G2: mulled to 6 on the draw again but had a quick start and won easily again to finish up 2-3 on the day.
Thoughts: Had some really awful draws and had to mulligan a lot, seemed to either flood or mana screw nearly every match, lost 80% of my dice rolls against some pretty tough decks and opponents, which really hurt. Felt that had my luck been a fraction better I should've easily gone 3-2, possibly even 4-1 had it been my day. Really tough intro to Modern but I learned a lot and have a new low baseline for how much variance can own you.
I'd also quite like to play this deck on MTGO - how do you go about picking up the various commons and uncommons without getting gouged for tix? I only started playing MTGO around Gatecrash, so I don't have Tusker, Baloth, Geist, Vines, Rancor etc. Anyone got a bot they suggest for these? Thanks.
Anyway there isn't a lot of paper Modern played where I am locally, but I have done some casual testing (without SB) against Affinity, Grixis Delver, Burn, Infect, and Scapeshift (with Affinity and Infect being the toughest matchups), and have really liked the way the deck has performed. I'm playing the same list in the Primer as at today, except 21 Forests and 1 Treetop Village. Probably going to cut a forest for the 4th Avatar of the Resolute - I've been impressed with it and less impressed with flooding!
There are a couple of paper tournaments coming up at my local store - practice runs for a PPTQ that's coming up - and I'm going to play. If nothing else, because we don't have many Modern players locally, me playing brings the number of players up and diversifies the meta a bit... but I'm secretly hoping to pull off a few surprise wins. I'll post up how I get on!
I'm Ryan, from Christchurch, New Zealand. I started playing Magic back in Revised edition - I was only a kid though, so I had no idea what I was doing. I played with my friends and dabbled with Homelands (eugh), Ice Age, and 4th edition, before going off to high school, losing touch with Magic playing friends, and getting rid of all my cards (not very many at that stage). As years passed I never forgot about Magic, randomly buying boosters of 7th, 8th, and 9th editions, opening them, but never doing anything with the cards.
Then eventually I found out about Friday Night Magic and thought great, I can play Magic regularly without needing Magic playing friends! I entered my first FNM in Rise of the Eldrazi, a tough set to learn to draft in. I went to FNMs regularly(ish) through M11 and then Scars of Mirrodin, but a dislike of Scars of Mirrodin, a big earthquake in Christchurch, employment upheaval, and the breakdown of my 8 year relationship saw me put Magic on the backburner again.
A couple of years later I saw on a post on Facebook from my local store that the M13 prerelease was on that weekend. I had my first spare weekend for months, so I went along. Some of the players there remembered me from a couple of years earlier, and I had a great time. I've been a regular at the store ever since.
My favourite format is Limited (booster draft especially but sealed as well). I've played some Standard and had some success, but when I started traveling to a couple of more serious events I found there were just too many ********s, guys who were super serious and competitive, and would do absolutely anything it took to win. I found this was very detrimental to my enjoyment of the game, so I play less Standard lately. I've recently started getting into Modern, I've tried a couple of decks, but found I have the most fun with mono green Stompy - actually, it's the Stompy primer thread on here that has finally got me to register and post. Anyway I'm still learning the format, but I love bang for buck builds (same goes for Standard actually, maybe it's my tendency to support the underdog?) and this deck fits the bill nicely. When you own none of the expensive cards in Modern (Goyf, Bob etc) and have to be sensible with how much you spend on Magic, going back for buck is good. Reasons why I don't play Legacy at all!
Anyway...
TL;DR: Hi, I'm Ryan.