I have GP Lyon coming up this weekend and I tested a lot and decided to give Mardu Pyromancer a try. I've browsed the WWW for information and found that you all had some success with the deck, so I wanted to ask you some questions.
What would you change? I am not a fan of Blood Moon maindeck and I think Lilly is just better. Do you bring in Surgical against Tron or do you want to just delay it? I found out that playing Pyromancer turn 2 and just beating down is the best way of fighting and I did pretty good (even against Chalices on 1).
So yeah general advices for my list or do you think I am good to go?
Nevermind - I realized I have a 1 month premium subscription from an event a couple years ago I've been holding on to.
Merriam basically summarized the deck and explained his card choices. He gave a nod to the BG variants with Shaman + Thoughtsize SB (which I prefer), but said W has the edge with the combo and SB cards.
Said he would tweak his deck to the following. Personally I prefer Westvale Abbey over Nykthos, but then again I'm not playing in the semi finals of major events.
I watched the coverage of him playing that deck but I was so confused by only running one Vizier of Remedies if you are attempting to run the infinite mana combo in the deck... With such easy removal in the format right now, you would want a second at least, right?
I think I still want the ETernal Witness instead of the one off Elvish Visionary. Not sure about Abbey vs. Nykthis. I think when you have enough mana/devotion for nykthos you're already winning ,aren't you? Whil Westvale saves you from each deck with boardwipes/massburn but no PTE. Might be wrong tho^^
In the sideboard he is playing 2 Lead the Stampede which I would have considered 2 Nissa, Vital Force. In which matchups do you want which card? I think the Leads might have the edge due to costing only 3 mana while Nissa at 5 can be hard at some heavy disruptive matchups.
How does a stock list of just GW do against combo like Storm, Ad Nauseam, Living End, ect, ect? I'm weighing my options for the black splash
Play Eidolon of Rhetoric, it will stop Storm, Ad Nauseam and Living End and is Bolt proof Works very good in Elves (but there you have Chord of Calling to find the one-off
So I changed my list a little bit (- 4 Censors, + 4 Sweltering Suns) and had some pretty nice games. Is anyone else till on this deck and wants to help getting it better for Gameday? Any of the new cards for our deck?
Reallly liking this scheme over the Gearhulk plan. Through in some great ideas from Minniehajj, and then these changes:
1 Angel of Invention because (a) I can't find it, and (b) going more removal heavy.
Angel of Sanctions, takes out enemy artifacts, anything really.
Fairgrounds Warden takes out problem creatures, most especially embalmed tokens.
If either of those creatures die, we later get to remove something again once we bring alive the Gift.
And finally, instead of Strategic Planning which fixes the draw and puts 3 cards in the bin, Perpetual Timepiece fixes nothing but puts infinite cards in the bin. This card guarantees you have gas for your Gate to trigger, or your Refurbish to furbish or your Sunscourges to scourge. (We still have the Witty guy if you need to discard something.)
I feel it makes the deck absolutely brutal. 4 turns of dumping 2 cards and then you have your 5mana Gift almost guaranteed, and you can probably get a second Gift in action.
I always get it with Chord if I don't have a combo pieces ready. It do wonders in elf deck whatever version you have because we can produce an insane amount of mana. It also great in a Evolutionary Leap variant. Once Menagerie reveals a non-creature card, Evo leap can reset your library.
Any Thoughts?
I think you rather want Duskwatch Recruiter because with Recruiter there is no need for any other spell to change the top of your library, once you have infinite mana you can just draw all your creatures and win from there
If I remember correctly, Edel posted the list with just 19 lands. Jadine plays 20, and I have to say after testing I tend to prefer 20 lands as I was screwed several times when playing 19.
Was it just bad luck or are 19 lands not enough in a midrange deck? Although Willy Edel might have some reason to not include more.
There is a new article on CFB about lands in decks:
TL;DR: with 19 lands you have a chance of hitting T1 land on the draw by 98.4% and on the play by 97.7%. You have a chance to hit T2 land number 2 on the draw of 83.8% and 76.5% on the play.
Joe Soh won GP Kobe with BW Eldrazi and Semi-Taxes. Is this a DnT list? Is this a BW Eldrazi list? I think it is a weird mixture of both which seemed to work for him oO
This is my current take on the list. I still like the Sphinx in the main because my LGS knows what I will play and they just wait for my Approachto get countered. Might cut 1 land for 1 Faith of the Devoted, just to have another wincon in the deck.
Infect affinity and delver and elves. Also known as already good matchups.( non-existent in the case of infect..it would likely be poor without melira)
Eh. I don't think a handful of randomly displayed mtgo league top 8s are anything to base analysis about an emerging deck. If my wolf run list 5-0s and gets shown does that mean it's the best?
Those are matchups which can be quite faster. Since Elves is my pet-deck you can easily get a semi-win by playing Balista for 2 and kill the T1 dork (if you're on the play). Same is true for Merfolk, killing one of their Lords or even the MotW will make this matchup slighlty easier. I agree that those are good matchups, bit I still think instant winning in the mainphase is better than going to combat
Have you all considered playing 1 Elvish Visionary in the 60? For the fringe spots where we want to get a non-creature-spell out of our deck (mostly sideboard cards)? because we can just draw creatures with Duskwatch Recruiter. With a single Visionary you can stack your deck with Duskwatch at instant speed. If you're lucky to have a CoCo in hand you can set the wanted card (for example a Abrupt Decay) at seventh position in your deck and the Visionary somewhere in the first 6. You are then able to draw the non-creature spell with the Visionary. Might be better suited into decks with Eldritch Evolution since you can sacrifice it to get any 4 drop but this came to my mind when testing on XMage.
Can see cutting the 4th Eternal Witness for 1 Elvish Visionary. But most of the time we will win anyways when having the infinite mana combo. I am a big fan of playing Rhonas the Indomitable because this allows me to play Stony Silence from the sideboard. Worship is against my local meta which has some Elves, Merfolk, Affinity and Soul Sisters decks floating around.
Thanks for the reply guys. I agree with Torph regarding the seer finks vizier combo as a backup combo plan. I would totally drop anafenza and just bring in one seer. That would open up slots. Also not sure if i would be running more than 10 dorks. I think 12 is too much since we can combo very fast even without dorks turn one. I also agree on regarding eternal witness. It acts as a combo piece with infinite mana online and get chord in the yard. I am also testing courser of kruphix. It acts as a card advantage, filters draws, gains life in one card. @ torpf can you please your list. Thanks
I'm trying out a very focused G1 combo list an dork heavy tonight. I will type something up more detailed and reply to everyone with my thoughts on various cards once I am home. I want to see how "threat-light" we can make some lists. I am also cutting a lot of the flexible cards (such as courser) that give way to cornercase wins. I don't think they're needed in the long run. This list will be more focused on drawing a Company or Chord, but once it does it should find a win very fast. Will be back in a few hours.
That's what I suggested few pages back. Elves is currently my petdeck and there are some rules applying to both decks: be as fast as possible G1.
Eagerly awaiting your results @Torpf. My own results thus far have pretty strongly suggested faster is better right now, so I'm all on board with this. We just cannot afford to durdle with midrange value critters that don't protect or enable the combo right now.
Wooooooowie tonight was a trainwreck! Nothing seemed to be going well at all. Played 4 rounds, and in Round 1 I never saw a Chord in both games even though I had infinite mana for several turns. Couldn't do anything with it. Round 2 was vs Jund and just became a Finks + Gavony Township grindfest that eventually ended in me getting a Company to land on the combo. We were both about 2/3rds through our decks at this point. Round 3 I had like 8 manadorks in play, no Township and couldn't even beat down to win. And Round 4 was against a Grixis control deck that went the same way as Round 2. The deck did literally everything it's not supposed to tonight. It's frustrating, but I guess it goes that way sometimes. The list I was using for reference:
I tried to make a list that was super focused game 1. It has the 7 manadorks for a ~60% chance of drawing one in your opener. Manadorks range from often to always drawing removal to them early game which is also what I wanted. Draw out the removal so that they would be gassed later in the game. The same is true for Devoted Druid. Opponents were removing it as soon as they could. I did like these numbers of dorks but the biggest thing was that I felt I was being flooded in all my games by them. Either I had 5-6 lands in play and one dork, or 2-3 lands in play, 4 dorks, and not Township. It was really disproportionate all night and really sucked. Takeaways; the speed and consistency of these manadorks was unparalleled, but the opponents could ignore the dorks and focus on payoff cards like Collected Company (if I ever actually drew it...) so in practice the dorks seemed irrelevant.
You might be thinking, "But Torpf, you don't have a Walking Ballista or Rhonas the Indomitable?" This is because I was trying to make the deck very compact. Once I had infinite mana I could either chain Collected Companies or use a single Chord of Calling to a Duskwatch Recruiter into pay. From there I can draw all of the green creatures in my deck, get X nongreen creatures where X is the number of Eternal Witnesses I have left to play (only need two for Viscera Seer and Anafenza) or alternatively because you can see you deck just use a Collected Company to assemble the 'old' combo and put infinite +1/+1 counters on my creatures. The reason I built the list this way is to free up two slots from Walking Ballista and Rhonas the Indomitable. They are 'freed' because Anafenza acts as a combo piece on her own, helps create a wall of Kitchen Finks, and is in general a good creature on the beatdown. Overall she is more flexible and offers more to the deck than the other two aforementioned cards. There was never a situation in which I couldn't have won without this method of infinite damage. I am sure they will come up, but I have some ideas of future iterations of the deck to protect against it.
Keeping in the old combo allows me to play Kitchen Finks which is an insane value engine against any fair deck in the format. They destroy burn. The single handedly won games vs Grixis and Jund today. They are too good to drop I feel. The only thing I can see reducing them for is a Voice of Resurgence + Renegade Rallier package which I will talk about next.
One of, if not the biggest faults of my list I felt was that it didn't have the raw power or card quality to compete with other decks in the format. Yes it was blazingly fast; but if it didn't have a good Collected Company hit on Turn 3/4 or a Chord in hand to win on turn 3 then it would just fold to itself. Looking at the pieces on it's own they are all terrible (which is how the deck has always kinda been, but more so now). I was finding my options for Eternal Witnesses were... lands and Hierarchs... This was partly due to the fact that I was drawing like crap and partly due to the fact that the deck was diluted by so many small too-weak-on-their-own cards. The power of the deck was Kitchen Finks, which is fine, but I wasn't having any decisive wins. It was more like a "30 minute maybe I'll win" type thing which is not where we want to be in the deck.
Yes the 3 Razorverge Thicket should be 3 Horizon Canopies. Maybe if I didn't spend so many resources foiling out the deck I could have some by now. They are coming. When they do eventually get added I am eagerly looking at a the interaction of Courser of Kruphix + Horizon Canopy. Normally with infinite G mana and a Duskwatch Recruiter you can't cast nongreen creatures from your deck if you don't already have a Chord in the graveyard for Witness. With an infinite Duskwatch Recruiter you can get and play the Courser of Kruphix, then with either an infinite Duskwatch Recruiter or Viscera Seer you can use a Horizon Canopy still in your deck to get an extra draw for the turn. With the trigger on the stack you then flip through your deck until a Chord (or good Company) is on top. Let the trigger resolve to draw it, and then use it with all of the Witnesses you also drew. This is a corner case, but it can probably come up a few times and win some games. It may also be relevant if you have some nongreen hatecards you absolutely need to play before comboing off (ie: get rid of a Rest in Peace, Kalitas, Phyrexian Revoker naming Ballista or Rhonas, etc...)
Because I felt bad about not having raw power in the deck, I was kinda thinking of the Voice of Resurgence + Renegade Rallier package as maindeck material. Right now plan A is to combo asap game 1 and move into a more midragey role if need be games 2 and 3. The list I played did not have the ability to pressure the opponent and still have an "oops I won" feel to it. I really did nothing, didn't interact, and then tried to win through the slew of whatever removal they had. At this point with manadorks and other bad cards having HUGE targets on their heads it kinda makes sense to try and just beat down the opponent in the first game and happen to assemble the combo if it comes up. After tonight this seems like a better idea on paper, so I will test it out tomorrow. It also has a more Splinter Twin feel to me. This will be my next approach at the deck.
I played 22 lands because that is what I like. Without Horizon Canopies I like having less lands, and with 11 manadorks in total there is no real problem getting there. If you can run the Canopies then I would suggest 23 lands, but anywhere in this range is going to work.
Being almost purely GW felt really good on the manabase. You don't have to acknowledge the black game 1 if you don't want to, and it is there games 2 and 3 if you need it. After playing with it today I would remove the 1 Swamp, and maybe the 1 Godless Shrine for 1 Overgrown Tomb (or Temple Garden??) and 1 Forest.
If I am moving to a more Voice of Resurgence oriented build and looking to pressure the opponent then I will add in a Rhonas. I think he is better than Ballista in the sole fact that you can hit him off of Company. Wiffing sucks, and I did a lot of that tonight.
I only want 1 Viscera Seer. I don't know what I was thinking with 2. I guess it's ok since I was only playing one win condition, but people scoop before I did it anyway haha.
So in summary of my ramblings: Deck is fast, but relies very heavily on resolving a Company or Chord. If you cannot then the deck seemed to almost collapse. Again this was one night with some bad draws so I need to play it way way way more until I am sure. Before the new combo people were beginning to lean back towards some big value creatures (I'm looking at you Tireless Tracker) so that may be the way to go again. Just left a bad taste in my mouth after tonight.
So there are my very tired ramblings about my list. I need some sleep, but I said I'd post something so here it is. Sorry in advance for any spelling mistakes I may have missed. I will post what I am going to tweak the list to in the morning when I can focus a bit better.
My thoughts for being faster: cut unnecessary cards in the deck and get more of your win-cards in:
Cut the Scooze, go to 6 dorks (you don't need much black so 3-3 split), get in finishers, up the Duskwatch (even can see 4). You don't need the swamp, get 4 Horizon Canopies. This is the maindeck I will test. Not sure on the sideboard, if it is heavy with black discard I can see for 1 Swamp maindeck but as it is right now I think going GWb with just a little black is the best for the deck
I have GP Lyon coming up this weekend and I tested a lot and decided to give Mardu Pyromancer a try. I've browsed the WWW for information and found that you all had some success with the deck, so I wanted to ask you some questions.
This is my current take on the deck:
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Marsh Flats
3 Mountain
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Swamp
4 Bedlam Reveler
1 Hazoret the Fervent
4 Young Pyromancer
1 Abrade
3 Collective Brutality
1 Darkblast
1 Dreadbore
4 Faithless Looting
2 Fatal Push
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Kolaghan's Command
3 Lightning Bolt
4 Lingering Souls
1 Terminate
4 Thoughtseize
2 Blood Moon
1 Collective Brutality
3 Molten Rain
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Rakdos Charm
2 Surgical Extraction
What would you change? I am not a fan of Blood Moon maindeck and I think Lilly is just better. Do you bring in Surgical against Tron or do you want to just delay it? I found out that playing Pyromancer turn 2 and just beating down is the best way of fighting and I did pretty good (even against Chalices on 1).
So yeah general advices for my list or do you think I am good to go?
I think I still want the ETernal Witness instead of the one off Elvish Visionary. Not sure about Abbey vs. Nykthis. I think when you have enough mana/devotion for nykthos you're already winning ,aren't you? Whil Westvale saves you from each deck with boardwipes/massburn but no PTE. Might be wrong tho^^
In the sideboard he is playing 2 Lead the Stampede which I would have considered 2 Nissa, Vital Force. In which matchups do you want which card? I think the Leads might have the edge due to costing only 3 mana while Nissa at 5 can be hard at some heavy disruptive matchups.
Play Eidolon of Rhetoric, it will stop Storm, Ad Nauseam and Living End and is Bolt proof Works very good in Elves (but there you have Chord of Calling to find the one-off
4 Sheltered Thicket
4 Scattered Groves
3 Irrigated Farmland
2 Fetid Pools
1 Canyon Slough
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Mountain
2 Forest
2 Game Trail
4 Vizier of Tumbling Sands
4 Shefet Monitor
1 Sphinx of the Final Word
SORCERIES 8
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
3 Sweltering Suns
1 Approach of the Second Sun
INSTANTS 13
4 Shadow of the Grave
3 Haze of Pollen
3 Censor
3 Renewed Faith
ENCHANTMENT 7
4 New Perspectives
3 Weirding Wood
3 Negate
1 Haze of Pollen
1 Renewed Faith
1 Sweltering Suns
2 Drake Haven
1 Faith of the Devoted
3 Countervailing Winds
3 Hour of Devastation
Changes I would assume: Get a second Approach of the Second Sun into the main deck, maybe instead of the Sphinx of the Final Word or instead of 1 Censor.
Perpetual Timepiece seems nice, but I don't want to many non-creatures. I have added some cyclers from the UB list, which are still pretty decent on their own (Sphinx and Hexproof dude) and cutted to 3 Gate to the Afterlife, 3 God-Pharaoh's Gift and 3 Refurbish.
I think you rather want Duskwatch Recruiter because with Recruiter there is no need for any other spell to change the top of your library, once you have infinite mana you can just draw all your creatures and win from there
There is a new article on CFB about lands in decks:
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-many-lands-do-you-need-to-consistently-hit-your-land-drops/
TL;DR: with 19 lands you have a chance of hitting T1 land on the draw by 98.4% and on the play by 97.7%. You have a chance to hit T2 land number 2 on the draw of 83.8% and 76.5% on the play.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gpkob17
3 Weirding Wood
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Shadow of the Grave
4 New Perspectives
2 Cast Out
4 Censor
3 Renewed Faith
3 Haze of Pollen
4 Vizier of Tumbling Sands
4 Shefet Monitor
1 Sphinx of the Final Word
4 Scattered Groves
4 Irrigated Farmland
2 Fetid Pools
1 Canyon Slough
1 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Island
4 Forest
1 Renewed Faith
1 Haze of Pollen
3 Radiant Flames
1 Kefnet the Mindful
3 Drake Haven
3 Negate
2 Dispossess
1 Dispel
Those are matchups which can be quite faster. Since Elves is my pet-deck you can easily get a semi-win by playing Balista for 2 and kill the T1 dork (if you're on the play). Same is true for Merfolk, killing one of their Lords or even the MotW will make this matchup slighlty easier. I agree that those are good matchups, bit I still think instant winning in the mainphase is better than going to combat
Currently playing this deck:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
4 Horizon Canopy
2 Temple Garden
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
2 Forest
1 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Gavony Township
//Creatures 29
4 Devoted Druid
4 Vizier of Remedies
2 Duskwatch Recruiter
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
1 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
1 Viscera Seer
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Eternal Witness
1 Selfless Spirit
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Birds of Paradise
//Noncreature 8
4 Collected Company
4 Chord of Calling
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Worship
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Spellskite
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Eidolon of Rethoric
2 Stony Silence
2 Path to Exile
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Burrenton Forge Tender
1 Orzhov Pontiv
Can see cutting the 4th Eternal Witness for 1 Elvish Visionary. But most of the time we will win anyways when having the infinite mana combo. I am a big fan of playing Rhonas the Indomitable because this allows me to play Stony Silence from the sideboard. Worship is against my local meta which has some Elves, Merfolk, Affinity and Soul Sisters decks floating around.
My thoughts for being faster: cut unnecessary cards in the deck and get more of your win-cards in:
3 Birds of Paradise
3 Noble Hierarch
4 Devoted Druid
1 Viscera Seer
4 Vizier of Remedies
1 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
3 Duskwatch Recruiter
1 Spellskite
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Eternal Witness
1 Walking Balista
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
4 Chord of Calling
4 Collected Company
Lands
4 Windswept Heath
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Temple Garden
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
4 Horizon Canopy
3 Gavony Township
2 Forest
1 Plains
Cut the Scooze, go to 6 dorks (you don't need much black so 3-3 split), get in finishers, up the Duskwatch (even can see 4). You don't need the swamp, get 4 Horizon Canopies. This is the maindeck I will test. Not sure on the sideboard, if it is heavy with black discard I can see for 1 Swamp maindeck but as it is right now I think going GWb with just a little black is the best for the deck