I have a ton of experience with Hooting Mandrills from the old days and none with Pteramander.
Hooting Mandrills is often a turn 2 play. Just drop it on the field forget about it. He's hearty, doesn't need as much protection as other threats since he dodges Push/Bolt/Aburpt Decay. He also always turns on Stubborn Denial. His anti-synergy with Goyf is rarely an issue, since you often only need 1 threat to win and Goyf doesn't need a lot of cards in the grave, just ones of different types. It's not actually hard to facilitate both cards in the deck, despite how it appears on paper. He has trample, which isn't trivial either. His primary downsides are 1) that he gets outclassed by cards like Gurmag Angler, Death's Shadow, most of the Eldrazi and a handful of other commonly played threats, and 2) well time grave nukes can make him nearly impossible to cast.
All in all, I think he's better than you give him credit for. Is he better than Pteramander? That's definitely up for debate. Pteramander has some unique qualities that make him an attractive option, but I haven't done any testing with him yet.
The positives in favor of him seem to be his potential 5/5 body with flying is bombastic. A 4 turn unblockable clock is a bit better than a 5 turn clock with pseudo evasion (trample). He can come down on turn 1 without any setup. He seems like a solid top deck. He's blue, so he pitches to Shoal if you're going that route. His potential problems are that he's a base 1/1 flyer for 1, so even if you play him on turn 1, if you fail to Adapt him in a timely manner, he's kind of a dud. He's also vulnerable to every removal in the format without protection/setup.
I think how good Pteramander is all depends on how quickly you're able to Adapt him. If you can Adapt him quickly, I think he could be a decent choice over Hooty. If not, I'd rather stick with Hooty because he doesn't require much babysitting. I haven't tested Pteramander at all yet, but I definitely would like to give him a whirl to see what his potential is. The maindeck would probably need more ways to burn through instants and sorceries.
One thing I've sort of noticed about GDS, in general, is that a lot of people are behind on the trends of the deck and have a lot of misconceptions… even people playing GDS. Plenty of people still think that most GDS players are maindecking K-Command, but that's been relegated to the sideboard for some time now.
2 Dismember has become pretty standard at this point and that number seems right… for now.
Control matchups seemed pretty good back when I was exclusively on RUG Delver, but that was when we had Gitaxian Probe (man, do I miss that card). That made it easy to line up your counterspells perfectly to answer their removal and threats. Supreme Verdict was a pain, but often times, just sequencing your threats correctly could help keep a Verdict from wrecking you.
Basically, you stuck a threat by Turn 1 or 2, then used counter magic to muck up any plays that would let them stabilize or neutralize your board presence. If they hit Cryptic Command range and you don't have interaction for it, that's when the game can turn ugly pretty quickly. Basically, you needed have that clutch Stubborn Denial/Mana Leak to hit their 4/5 mana way of turning the tables and be close to killing them so you could finish the game up in a turn or 2. Post board, Blood Moon was a house against most Control decks.
Control has more toys now. Teferi and Search for Azcanta can be pretty rough when those are both online. It's probably a tougher matchup than it used to be, since RUG hasn't gotten much to work with.
I'm glad this thread is still so active. I've been on GDS, UR Moon, and Phoenix lately, but I think I'm going to sleeve RUG up for old time's sake. Nothing feels as quite as good as jamming a Hooting Mandrills on turn 2!
This is the Modern forum. Are you looking to buy a Modern deck or a Standard deck. If you're looking to buy a Standard deck, you might want to ask the folks in the Standard forum.
I’d even play the 4th Mishra’s Bauble before playing a single Opt. When paired with Fetchlands, Bauble does a pretty good impression of Opt without costing any mana. Also, remember that Serum Visions pairs pretty well with Street Wraith and, to a lesser extent, Mishra’s Bauble. Topping a Stubborn Denial from a Serum Visions, then cracking a Bauble to grab it on your opponent’s upkeep to counter their next play feels pretty good, even if it’s only a corner case.
On Faithless Looting: the card is good when you need it and fine most other times when you don’t. The main thing I keep in mind with it in the deck is that sometimes it’s better to let that 4th or 5th land drop chill in your hand. That way, you can pitch those to Looting and essentially trade them for relevant cards.
Once looting successfully resolves, you will naturally have priority again. Your opponent cannot cast spells or activate abilities until you pass priority again.
So, while you can cast Unburial Rites with no fear of it being Surgicalled, the target of your Unburial cast will be vulnerable to Surgical.
Bedlam Reveler is a very different card. He's basically a 2 mana Ancestral Recall that also happens to leave a decent sized body that can grow with each spell cast. Pteromander fills a very different role. He doesn't reload your hand after you've dispensed all of your spells.
Crackling Drake and Thing in the Ice both serve valuable roles. They allow you to attack on an angle that does not require your graveyard, which gives you ways to win if your opponent has grave hate. Thing in the Ice also provides massive tempo swings that can completely turn a game sideways.
My initial instinct is that Pteromander just isn't good enough. As a 1 drop, he's unimpressive. A 1/1 evasive body that only hits for 1 every turn is not really what the deck wants. He does at least scale that later the game goes on... but at the cost of making you more dependent on the grave.
GDS has tempo, midrange, and combo elements in it, but the primary gameplan resembles a tempo gameplan rather than a midrange one. This seems strange, since it uses discard effects, which are classically tempo negative plays, as a means to protect and enable the threats. The main reason the deck even uses discard is because Thoughtseize does double duty in enabling a faster Death’s Shadow and it’s an effective preemptive counterspell to clear out anything that would stop your threat from winning you the game. So, while the deck is “disrupting” first, like a good Midrange deck likes to do, it’s carried solely on the fact that Thoughtseize is that darn good with DS.
Back when GDS was running a full set of Snaps, Kolaghan’s Command in the main and sometimes even Lilianas in the main, I would have classified it as a Midrange deck. But the deck has evolved into supporting the tempo gameplan more. Now, it’s running things like Mishra’s Bauble and Faithless Looting, partially just to enable more consistent Gurmag Anglers (Looting is more as a measure to smooth out mana flooding, but it also works as extra copies of Thought Scour). The reality is that in most matchups, it’s just more important to put a clock on the opponent than it is toss discard effects at your opponent until you can rely on the overall card quality of your topdecks.
I’m actually of the opinion that Anger of the Gods is really pretty medium against UR Phoenix. The only thing that it reliably hits is Arclight Phoenix… after it gets its hit in. It doesn’t kill TiTI, Crackling Drake, or Bedlam Reveler. It does hit Monastery Swiftspear, so there’s that.
If multiple Phoenixes are hitting you, and your response is to clear them out an exile them on your next main phase, chances are pretty good that your life total is low enough where you need to just make the kill in the next turn.
I like Surgical Extraction much better against that deck, since your main removal spells should be enough to clean up any other creatures they might have, and you can pop a Surgical on them when they try to off with Phoenixes in the bin. That way, they blow their cards and lose the payoff.
I’d like to see something like a trap card with conditions that make it cheaper to cast. Something like:
4R – Wave of Flames
Instant - Trap
If an opponent had 2 or more creatures enter the battlefield this turn, you may pay (R) instead of paying its mana cost.
Wave of Flames deals 4 damage to each creature. If a creature dealt damage by Wave of Flames would die this turn, exile it instead.
That, or something with conditional upgrades to a spell.
1RB - Destroy a Thing
Instant
Destroy target creature or artifact.
If an opponent had a permanent enter the battlefield from the graveyard this turn, you may exile target creature or artifact instead. Then, exile each card on the battlefield and graveyard with the same name.
If anything, the last 12 months have shown that the format has the ability to adapt and self-correct. Certain decks archetypes have presented alarming results, followed by a reaction and rise of a new subset of decks.
Humans, UW, KCI, Tron, Hardened Scales Affinity, Hollow One, BridgeVine, Arclight Phoenix, and Spirits are all decks that have ebbed and flowed over the last year, but nothing has really put up consistently oppressive level results. It's really made me re-evaluate my own opinions on the format. I feared the Jace unban, but the card has proven to be just kind of okay. I was on board for the idea of an Ancient Stirrings ban, only to see the colorless decks being seemingly managed.
I do still yearn for some of the old “glory days”. That was when I could play Temur Delver and know that Affinity, Twin, Jund, and Tron were the main pillars to prepare for. But, I enjoy the format for what it is, even if it’s much different than what the format was when I started playing.
I would probably play Shivan Reef before Sulfur Falls in this deck. With only 18 lands, and 4 more being Spirebluff Canal, you’re going to have to mulligan more hands where your only lands are Sulfur Falls/Spirebluff Canal. Shivan Reef might eat some of your life, but it will never come into play tapped.
Yeah, opinions of the Pros always need to be taken with a grain of salt. While their accomplishments to warrant some amount of respect, that’s no reason to put high faith in their opinions. As idSurge already stated, plenty of Pros claimed that Jace would break the format in half and mostly he’s just been “kind of okay sometimes”.
Hooting Mandrills is often a turn 2 play. Just drop it on the field forget about it. He's hearty, doesn't need as much protection as other threats since he dodges Push/Bolt/Aburpt Decay. He also always turns on Stubborn Denial. His anti-synergy with Goyf is rarely an issue, since you often only need 1 threat to win and Goyf doesn't need a lot of cards in the grave, just ones of different types. It's not actually hard to facilitate both cards in the deck, despite how it appears on paper. He has trample, which isn't trivial either. His primary downsides are 1) that he gets outclassed by cards like Gurmag Angler, Death's Shadow, most of the Eldrazi and a handful of other commonly played threats, and 2) well time grave nukes can make him nearly impossible to cast.
All in all, I think he's better than you give him credit for. Is he better than Pteramander? That's definitely up for debate. Pteramander has some unique qualities that make him an attractive option, but I haven't done any testing with him yet.
The positives in favor of him seem to be his potential 5/5 body with flying is bombastic. A 4 turn unblockable clock is a bit better than a 5 turn clock with pseudo evasion (trample). He can come down on turn 1 without any setup. He seems like a solid top deck. He's blue, so he pitches to Shoal if you're going that route. His potential problems are that he's a base 1/1 flyer for 1, so even if you play him on turn 1, if you fail to Adapt him in a timely manner, he's kind of a dud. He's also vulnerable to every removal in the format without protection/setup.
I think how good Pteramander is all depends on how quickly you're able to Adapt him. If you can Adapt him quickly, I think he could be a decent choice over Hooty. If not, I'd rather stick with Hooty because he doesn't require much babysitting. I haven't tested Pteramander at all yet, but I definitely would like to give him a whirl to see what his potential is. The maindeck would probably need more ways to burn through instants and sorceries.
2 Dismember has become pretty standard at this point and that number seems right… for now.
There's just nothing quite like casting a "Branco Smembrante" on someone.
Basically, you stuck a threat by Turn 1 or 2, then used counter magic to muck up any plays that would let them stabilize or neutralize your board presence. If they hit Cryptic Command range and you don't have interaction for it, that's when the game can turn ugly pretty quickly. Basically, you needed have that clutch Stubborn Denial/Mana Leak to hit their 4/5 mana way of turning the tables and be close to killing them so you could finish the game up in a turn or 2. Post board, Blood Moon was a house against most Control decks.
Control has more toys now. Teferi and Search for Azcanta can be pretty rough when those are both online. It's probably a tougher matchup than it used to be, since RUG hasn't gotten much to work with.
I'm glad this thread is still so active. I've been on GDS, UR Moon, and Phoenix lately, but I think I'm going to sleeve RUG up for old time's sake. Nothing feels as quite as good as jamming a Hooting Mandrills on turn 2!
I’d even play the 4th Mishra’s Bauble before playing a single Opt. When paired with Fetchlands, Bauble does a pretty good impression of Opt without costing any mana. Also, remember that Serum Visions pairs pretty well with Street Wraith and, to a lesser extent, Mishra’s Bauble. Topping a Stubborn Denial from a Serum Visions, then cracking a Bauble to grab it on your opponent’s upkeep to counter their next play feels pretty good, even if it’s only a corner case.
On Faithless Looting: the card is good when you need it and fine most other times when you don’t. The main thing I keep in mind with it in the deck is that sometimes it’s better to let that 4th or 5th land drop chill in your hand. That way, you can pitch those to Looting and essentially trade them for relevant cards.
Care to share your reasoning on why it's too powerful?
So, while you can cast Unburial Rites with no fear of it being Surgicalled, the target of your Unburial cast will be vulnerable to Surgical.
Crackling Drake and Thing in the Ice both serve valuable roles. They allow you to attack on an angle that does not require your graveyard, which gives you ways to win if your opponent has grave hate. Thing in the Ice also provides massive tempo swings that can completely turn a game sideways.
My initial instinct is that Pteromander just isn't good enough. As a 1 drop, he's unimpressive. A 1/1 evasive body that only hits for 1 every turn is not really what the deck wants. He does at least scale that later the game goes on... but at the cost of making you more dependent on the grave.
Back when GDS was running a full set of Snaps, Kolaghan’s Command in the main and sometimes even Lilianas in the main, I would have classified it as a Midrange deck. But the deck has evolved into supporting the tempo gameplan more. Now, it’s running things like Mishra’s Bauble and Faithless Looting, partially just to enable more consistent Gurmag Anglers (Looting is more as a measure to smooth out mana flooding, but it also works as extra copies of Thought Scour). The reality is that in most matchups, it’s just more important to put a clock on the opponent than it is toss discard effects at your opponent until you can rely on the overall card quality of your topdecks.
If multiple Phoenixes are hitting you, and your response is to clear them out an exile them on your next main phase, chances are pretty good that your life total is low enough where you need to just make the kill in the next turn.
I like Surgical Extraction much better against that deck, since your main removal spells should be enough to clean up any other creatures they might have, and you can pop a Surgical on them when they try to off with Phoenixes in the bin. That way, they blow their cards and lose the payoff.
4R – Wave of Flames
Instant - Trap
If an opponent had 2 or more creatures enter the battlefield this turn, you may pay (R) instead of paying its mana cost.
Wave of Flames deals 4 damage to each creature. If a creature dealt damage by Wave of Flames would die this turn, exile it instead.
That, or something with conditional upgrades to a spell.
1RB - Destroy a Thing
Instant
Destroy target creature or artifact.
If an opponent had a permanent enter the battlefield from the graveyard this turn, you may exile target creature or artifact instead. Then, exile each card on the battlefield and graveyard with the same name.
Humans, UW, KCI, Tron, Hardened Scales Affinity, Hollow One, BridgeVine, Arclight Phoenix, and Spirits are all decks that have ebbed and flowed over the last year, but nothing has really put up consistently oppressive level results. It's really made me re-evaluate my own opinions on the format. I feared the Jace unban, but the card has proven to be just kind of okay. I was on board for the idea of an Ancient Stirrings ban, only to see the colorless decks being seemingly managed.
I do still yearn for some of the old “glory days”. That was when I could play Temur Delver and know that Affinity, Twin, Jund, and Tron were the main pillars to prepare for. But, I enjoy the format for what it is, even if it’s much different than what the format was when I started playing.