Concerted Effort Legendary creature!!! Whoooo that's awesome. And that removal spell is pretty strong. I'm not sure how good it is right now because of the number of token decks, but it definitely has potential.
Obviously a powerful effect, and Utter End saw play in standard decks. I'm thinking this will see play in different decks than Utter End did, though. This seems way better for more aggressive decks. Control decks eek out too many games against aggro decks where three life could turn into a loss. I'm sad that they didn't just do "Exile target permanent. You lose three life." But I suspect they are afraid of too many standard games being totally one sided if an aggro/midrange deck gets to exile an opponent's land on turn 3.
Considering the only non-white creatures you run are the Automaton and the Metamorph (which will probably copy a white creature), I'd recommend switching the Glorious Anthems for Honor of the Pures. You might also want to consider Aether Vial. It would free up some mana so that you could more effectively pump up your Figures and it would help against any deck packing counterspells. Ajani Goldmane is another card to consider. In my experience he can lead to blowouts with his -1 ability when you're playing a weenie deck.
EDIT: Wow, lots of posts since I started to reply. Here's the post that I was mostly responding to when I wrote this:
Concerning RDW, I just meant that I have yet to see a list that splashed White just for PtE or Swords in Legacy so why would that change in modern?
When I say RDW, I almost mean burn. Creature package? Grim, goblin guide hellspark elemental, keldon marauders, etc... Most of them are dealing damages even when sitting on their asses (with the exception of GG, and hellspark but they have haste so...)
You shouldn't worry about "being blocked" you should race them, and if they can block, burn them and finish the job.
When I compared Boros to D+T, it was mostly due to the amount of cards in common they have (if you pack SFM in Boros). I know how D+T's working and Boros felt like a more aggressive version of the deck (minus the board control).
So yeah I don't understand why you would want to play PtE in a RDW like deck, when most of your creatures have haste, are pretty much like burn spells or able to deal damages without attacking. White doesn't add anything relevent to that strategy imo.
If you want to add white, it's better to go the middrange route, which is why I advocated on SFM. Turn 3 Batterskull is almost a reason by itself to play SFM. Otherwise if you wanna play straight aggro, just play Zoo or a regular RDW. Both of them feels much more competitive than "boros".
Keldon Marauders deals two damage if it doesn't get to attack. Two damage for two mana is pathetic, and if that were a spell (the closest I can think of is Kindle), no one would play it. Goblin Guide only does 2 damage if it gets to attack once before it gets blocked by something. It does 0 if they have a blocker the turn you play it. You run creatures in all cases because they can be much more efficient than a burn spell, but they lose that efficiency if they get blocked and killed. Your ability to race is dependent on your creatures actually being able to connect.
Compare a hand with Goblin Guide and Lightning Bolt to one with GG and Path to Exile. If you play the GG and swing then your opponent plays a Goyf/KoTR/other big critter then your GG ends up sitting there having been a shock and you get to bolt the opponent. If the bolt was a path, though, you get to path their blocker and get in again with the GG and potentially get in again after that if they don't play another blocker. AND you don't have to worry about when that creature, who's much bigger than one of your creatures, starts turning sideways against you.
When I compared Boros to D+T, it was mostly due to the amount of cards in common they have (if you pack SFM in Boros). I know how D+T's working and Boros felt like a more aggressive version of the deck (minus the board control).
If you take out the board control from D+T then it is NO LONGER D+T.
People play white in Boros because they get access to Steppe Lynx (who is potentially the most damaging 1 drop in the game aside from stupid shenanigans with Phyrexian Dreadnaught or Death's Shadow or something), Path to Exile (probably the best removal spell for aggro decks), lightning helix (one of the best burn spells ever, which helps a lot in races - it bolts AND negates an opponent's bolt), AND it allows you to have much stronger sideboard options.
Turn three Batterskull is not reason enough to play SFM in an aggro deck because had you been doing more aggressive things with your mana on turns 2 and 3 you could have killed them on turn 3 instead. Isn't just killing the opponent better than having a 4/4 vigilance lifelink creature? Now obviously there are decks where SFM is extremely powerful, but Boros isn't one of them. Boros is an aggro deck and if you don't understand that, you probably shouldn't be posting in this thread.
There are probably quite a few others. You also have the possibility of aggro decks just killing the DD deck before they can get the combo off, other combo decks killing them first, or any number of counters on Hexmage from a control deck. There are a lot of cards that can answer Merit Lage or that can stop you from even making the token in the first place, and outside of nut draws, the deck wouldn't be making the token until turn 3, which leads to a turn 4 win. Not exactly what I would call broken.
I would not play a RDW deck splashing white just for Lynx, PtE or lightning helix though. I should have just stayed mono red in the first place.
PtE would be bad (burns seems way more in the optic of the deck), lightning helix do not make the cut (a slightly better incinerate is cute but...), only remains Lynx (who is great, nothing more to add).
Splashing for SFM (thus playing Boros) changes the strategy to a more middrange one. It's slower but more consistent. Your creatures are smaller than goyf or KotR? Well you have swords to compensate that.
PtE who would be bad in a more aggro strategy, is now more becoming more relevant. Playing 2 colors also makes the deck less vulnerable to mana denial than Zoo.
You can also fit the punishing grove combo as well (might be overkill but... I dunno).
In conclusion, I see Boros, more like a Death and taxes list, splashing Red for burns.
This post shows that you really don't have any idea wth you're talking about. What happens in RDW when your opponent plays a creature with 4+ toughness? (something that will happen fairly frequently) You have to use two burn spells on it. If you have PTE, you use one spell on it and they get a land. You acknowledge that your creatures are smaller than some of Zoo's, so why would you EVER suggest taking out a spell that can remove their blocker to let you swing through and recommend replacing it with something that won't kill their blocker?
Also, the suggestion that SFM "makes the deck slower but more consistent" shows how little you understand Boros' strategy. By making the deck slower, you are making it less consistent. The reason for that is that Boros plays smaller, but faster, creatures than most other decks. You want to get in as much damage as fast as you can so that you can finish the player off with a burn spell or two. If you take turn two to play SFM and turn three to plop down a burn spell, that allows the other player to play out blockers which will be REALLY annoying for you, such as KoTR, Kitchen Finks, etc, and your chances of being able to utilize your smaller, more aggressive creatures, vanishes.
Lastly, your suggestion that you see Boros as more of a Death and Taxes list splashing red shows that you have no idea how either of the decks work. Death and Taxes tries to control the board state through its creatures and plays out as a midrange control deck. Boros plays out at an aggro deck. It wants to have the opponent dead by turn 4 every game. They use completely different strategies. You could splash red in D+T for bolt, helix and Grim Lavamancer, but that would still be primarily be D+T, it would not be Boros.
Probably the biggest reason to play Boros in Modern (over just playing Zoo, who's frequently just as fast, but has access to larger creatures) is that it can do far less damage to itself with lands than what Zoo does, but it loses very little in the way of speed to do so. If you know you're playing against another aggro deck, you can probably fetch out basics every turn instead of shocks, but in many cases, Zoo will be forced to fetch out a shock on at least its first turn so that it will have all three land types on turn 2 for its Nacatls. Modern's a format where many decks do a large amount of damage to themselves, so if you can play a deck that is extremely aggressive and does a much smaller amount of damage to itself, then you can be at an advantage in races.
I'd up the count on your fetches if you're going to play Boom // Bust to 4 of each. If you cast Boom targeting your fetch and their land then you can fetch in response and since their land is still a legal target, the spell still resolves. I'd also take out some of the filter lands and add in more shock lands to help make sure you have enough targets to find with Flagstones and fetches.
Some other cards to consider:
Venser, Shaper Savant
Venser, the Sojourner
Stonehorn Dignitary
Remand
Spellstutter Sprite
also flagstone should be run as a 1 of because there is no reason not to. in spash decks you can use it with mangara to mana fix.(if desperate) Also if LD decks or boom//bust becomes popular in zoo or decks looking to abuse it with cascade. 2 of flagstones probably wouldn't be a pain very often especially if LD is around.
You can't use it with Mangara to mana fix; Mangara exiles and Flagstones has to go to the GY to trigger. You could fix your mana by Ghost Quartering your own Flagstones, but that would be awkward. And whether or not Flagstones is a decent choice for putting into the deck depends on how much non-basic hate there is. If people start running Magus of the Moon/Blood Moon or Anathemancer, then it could be better to stick with basics.
^ Is a pretty good suggestion, though it could be hurt by the Leonin Arbiter plan. If you're playing a Land D strategy there is absolutely no reason for you to not be playing Molten Rain. Also, I'd take out the Tectonic Edges. If the opponent has gotten to four mana, then you're probably going to lose because they still have access to all of their three mana spells even if you've got Ajani locking down one of their lands. I might consider something like Ghostly Prison, Windborn Muse or Ensnaring Bridge (you'd still have access to Grim Lavamancer's shocks and Ajani Vengeant's helixes as well as your normal burn, though I could see drawing extra Ajani's hampering that plan) to slow down aggressive strategies and lock them out of attacking if you get their mana base under control.
Also, I'm not sure I'd actually suggest it for this deck, but Avalanche Riders plus Momentary Blink was a successful strategy back around Timespiral.
(Vial @1) Turn two Akoum Battlesinger
Vial in Hada Freeblade opp. endstep
(Vial @ 2) Turn three Kabira Evangel naming relevant color prot
Swing in with 5 damage protection from relevant color
Vial in Bojuka Brigand opp. endstep, or in response to spot removal to trigger Evangel for prot
(Vial @ 2) Turn four Adaptive Automaton naming ally
Swing in with 17 damage protection from relevant color
Continue to vial in and beat face
Not to mention the color scheme is RBW which provides for some of the best removal and response in the game for a tribe that would win by swinging.
One of the problems with the scenario that you listed is that you're wasting allies triggers by vialing stuff in on the opp's turn. Especially in the case of the Battlesinger, who doesn't get any permanent benefit from another ally coming into play. You also missed swinging for two on turn two with the Battlesinger.
Obviously Mother of Runes isn't legal in Modern, but you could pretty easily plug Inquisition of Kozilek into that slot. I'm not sure allies are worth it instead of just running creatures that work better on their own, but if you want to give it a try, the list above would be a good place to start.
As I said, I'm definitely not sure it's the problem, but on my monitor, only three pictures will fit across with the normal width of the posts. If you look at Jhoira's Dredge primer, all of the pictures that she uses are in rows of three pictures, but you have four pictures in a row. Also, tbh, I don't think the full card pictures actually look very good. They take up a huge amount of space and you can get the same information across just by having the name of the card in card tags so that anyone that's not familiar with the card can click it to find out what it is, but it's not as in-your-face to people who are already familiar with the card.
As far as your changes to the primer, the English Minor in me wants to tear his eyes out.
An example with several of the common problems: "so yah, ouch. so much you can do, and it's all so good... the deck works together so perfectly. it's so beautiful..."
Capital letters are your friend. As are periods. Many people over use ellipses (the three periods). It's a fairly common tendency among people who are trying to replicate pauses found in spoken English, but overuse of ellipses can make writing seem stilted.
That quote is also an example of hyperbole; you're talking the deck up like you want to make love to it. For the purposes of a primer, you want to give a more detached explanation of the deck. If the primer gets stickied, people will not only be reading it to see if they will want to play it, but also to see how to play against it. Talking about how great the deck or a specific interaction in the deck doesn't help further discussion. It would be more helpful to discuss what decks certain interactions are good against and what decks they are less successful against. Mangara tricks, for example, can be extremely successful against bant style decks that run fewer, large creatures and a low removal count in favor of counters (which can be circumvented with Aether Vial) but can be weak against decks that pump out creatures more quickly or that have a high number of removal spells such as sligh builds of Zoo.
For the matchups section, I would just put that it is strongly decklist-dependent and add that even the difference of a couple cards can completely change how a matchup will play out. Adding Ethersworn Canonists to the main deck can take combo from basically unwinnable to being a coin toss, but in some matchups that same all-star in the combo matchup is going to be a vanilla bear. The same can be said of pretty much all of the hatebears. One of the biggest strengths of the deck is that if you know the decks you'll be facing, you can pretty much start the tournament pre-sideboarded for the matches that you think you'll play most/are most worried about.
Sorry if any of that came off as pretentious/preachy, but I took 6 creative writing classes in the last year and a half and I get irrationally annoyed when I see improper English nowadays. I wish I could turn it off; the internet is not a place of proper grammar
PS: I tried out a list with Visions of Beyond and SoBaM and it was terrible. To be fair, it was a UB list, so it wasn't running Mystics, but SoBaM is really underwhelming when the protection it offers isn't relevant. Visions itself wasn't ever terrible, because at worst it can always just cycle for a blue, but I'm not sure that any deck would ever be able to reliably turn it on without running really underwhelming cards.
I'm definitely not sure, but I think it could be because of the pictures, try putting a line break between half of the pictures so that you have two rows of pictures instead of one long row.
are you sure about the double strike interaction though? i'm not sure that works. if it does, sounds like an awesome deck.
Yeah, I'm sure. Sword of Body and Mind reads "Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, you put a 2/2 green Wolf creature token onto the battlefield and that player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard." With double strike, the creature deals first strike damage then normal damage, so the swords trigger twice. So connect once with Mirran Crusader equipped with SoBaM and they mill 20 and you get 2 wolves. The only problem with that that I can see is that if you connect once like that you deal 8 damage and have 12 damage on the field for the next turn, so it seems like Visions of Beyond would probably end up being a little win more.
I think that if you really want this to be up as a stickied primer, you need to spend more time working on it.
Currently, it is at best, a collection of ideas and thoughts from some posters compiled by you. It hardly resembles a primer.
I agree to a certain extent. I think you do a good job of explaining your specific take on D+T, but I think you fail to explain other routes people can take with the deck. There are a lot of options with the deck, even just within Mono-White. Look at the differences between my list and yours to see how different they can be. I would add a section explaining possible card choices for different builds (such as the different hatebears) and how they can affect different matchups.
In my opinion, Death and Taxes' greatest strength is its ability to be pre-sideboarded versus certain strategies. MD Cannonist, for example can greatly improve combo matchups, especially in Modern where the combos are generally going off turn 2-4 instead of Legacy's turns 1-3. MD Martyr of Sands helps a great deal against dredge, removing Bridge From Belows in their GY, and gaining you life to help survive any zombies they've already gotten. Jotun Grunt is great against any GY strategy, be it Dredge, Goyf, Knight of the Reliquary or Life from the Loam. I haven't actually gotten to play any games with him yet, but Grand Abolisher seems like it will make any counter-heavy deck weep.
In your primer you say that D+Ts loses some speed going from Legacy to Modern, but I'd actually say it probably gains some speed. In legacy, D+T uses a lot of its mana/land in order to hinder the opponent, so we actually gain speed by using that mana instead on playing out spells, we just lose the ability to hinder the opponent's development. In addition, the switch from Swords to Plowshares to Path to Exile means that when we use our removal on an opp's goyf, it doesn't make it take longer to kill them.
Additionally, I'd mention in the primer that a big strength that you gain going from Legacy to Modern with D+T is the mana base. That probably sounds outlandish considering we lose Karakas, Wasteland and Rishidan Port, but consider that most decks that make the transition from Legacy to Modern end up with a much more painful manabase and susceptibility to Anathemancer, Magus of the Moon, and other similar effects, but the number of basics that D+T runs actually goes up during the transition. While other decks will be bolting themselves the first turn by fetching into an untapped shockland, Mono-White D+T's manabase doesn't harm us at all.
It's a little heavier on burn than most decks will probably be, but maybe not by all that much when compared to Zoo or Boros. (this BR list is my own creation, and I think it will be pretty solid) Wheel of Sun and Moon might be a decent sideboard card to add to the deck as well. It stops dredge and Punishing Groves and Punishing Groves seems like it will be good against all the builds of this deck since we run such small critters.
One of - Hythonia says destroy all non-gorgon creatures.
Black is shaping up to look pretty strong in limited. This plus the Grey Merchant of Asphodel at common.
Keldon Marauders deals two damage if it doesn't get to attack. Two damage for two mana is pathetic, and if that were a spell (the closest I can think of is Kindle), no one would play it. Goblin Guide only does 2 damage if it gets to attack once before it gets blocked by something. It does 0 if they have a blocker the turn you play it. You run creatures in all cases because they can be much more efficient than a burn spell, but they lose that efficiency if they get blocked and killed. Your ability to race is dependent on your creatures actually being able to connect.
Compare a hand with Goblin Guide and Lightning Bolt to one with GG and Path to Exile. If you play the GG and swing then your opponent plays a Goyf/KoTR/other big critter then your GG ends up sitting there having been a shock and you get to bolt the opponent. If the bolt was a path, though, you get to path their blocker and get in again with the GG and potentially get in again after that if they don't play another blocker. AND you don't have to worry about when that creature, who's much bigger than one of your creatures, starts turning sideways against you.
If you take out the board control from D+T then it is NO LONGER D+T.
People play white in Boros because they get access to Steppe Lynx (who is potentially the most damaging 1 drop in the game aside from stupid shenanigans with Phyrexian Dreadnaught or Death's Shadow or something), Path to Exile (probably the best removal spell for aggro decks), lightning helix (one of the best burn spells ever, which helps a lot in races - it bolts AND negates an opponent's bolt), AND it allows you to have much stronger sideboard options.
Turn three Batterskull is not reason enough to play SFM in an aggro deck because had you been doing more aggressive things with your mana on turns 2 and 3 you could have killed them on turn 3 instead. Isn't just killing the opponent better than having a 4/4 vigilance lifelink creature? Now obviously there are decks where SFM is extremely powerful, but Boros isn't one of them. Boros is an aggro deck and if you don't understand that, you probably shouldn't be posting in this thread.
LOL @ "every possible viable card". Other possible MD cards:
There are probably quite a few others. You also have the possibility of aggro decks just killing the DD deck before they can get the combo off, other combo decks killing them first, or any number of counters on Hexmage from a control deck. There are a lot of cards that can answer Merit Lage or that can stop you from even making the token in the first place, and outside of nut draws, the deck wouldn't be making the token until turn 3, which leads to a turn 4 win. Not exactly what I would call broken.
This post shows that you really don't have any idea wth you're talking about. What happens in RDW when your opponent plays a creature with 4+ toughness? (something that will happen fairly frequently) You have to use two burn spells on it. If you have PTE, you use one spell on it and they get a land. You acknowledge that your creatures are smaller than some of Zoo's, so why would you EVER suggest taking out a spell that can remove their blocker to let you swing through and recommend replacing it with something that won't kill their blocker?
Also, the suggestion that SFM "makes the deck slower but more consistent" shows how little you understand Boros' strategy. By making the deck slower, you are making it less consistent. The reason for that is that Boros plays smaller, but faster, creatures than most other decks. You want to get in as much damage as fast as you can so that you can finish the player off with a burn spell or two. If you take turn two to play SFM and turn three to plop down a burn spell, that allows the other player to play out blockers which will be REALLY annoying for you, such as KoTR, Kitchen Finks, etc, and your chances of being able to utilize your smaller, more aggressive creatures, vanishes.
Lastly, your suggestion that you see Boros as more of a Death and Taxes list splashing red shows that you have no idea how either of the decks work. Death and Taxes tries to control the board state through its creatures and plays out as a midrange control deck. Boros plays out at an aggro deck. It wants to have the opponent dead by turn 4 every game. They use completely different strategies. You could splash red in D+T for bolt, helix and Grim Lavamancer, but that would still be primarily be D+T, it would not be Boros.
Probably the biggest reason to play Boros in Modern (over just playing Zoo, who's frequently just as fast, but has access to larger creatures) is that it can do far less damage to itself with lands than what Zoo does, but it loses very little in the way of speed to do so. If you know you're playing against another aggro deck, you can probably fetch out basics every turn instead of shocks, but in many cases, Zoo will be forced to fetch out a shock on at least its first turn so that it will have all three land types on turn 2 for its Nacatls. Modern's a format where many decks do a large amount of damage to themselves, so if you can play a deck that is extremely aggressive and does a much smaller amount of damage to itself, then you can be at an advantage in races.
Some other cards to consider:
Venser, Shaper Savant
Venser, the Sojourner
Stonehorn Dignitary
Remand
Spellstutter Sprite
You can't use it with Mangara to mana fix; Mangara exiles and Flagstones has to go to the GY to trigger. You could fix your mana by Ghost Quartering your own Flagstones, but that would be awkward. And whether or not Flagstones is a decent choice for putting into the deck depends on how much non-basic hate there is. If people start running Magus of the Moon/Blood Moon or Anathemancer, then it could be better to stick with basics.
^ Is a pretty good suggestion, though it could be hurt by the Leonin Arbiter plan. If you're playing a Land D strategy there is absolutely no reason for you to not be playing Molten Rain. Also, I'd take out the Tectonic Edges. If the opponent has gotten to four mana, then you're probably going to lose because they still have access to all of their three mana spells even if you've got Ajani locking down one of their lands. I might consider something like Ghostly Prison, Windborn Muse or Ensnaring Bridge (you'd still have access to Grim Lavamancer's shocks and Ajani Vengeant's helixes as well as your normal burn, though I could see drawing extra Ajani's hampering that plan) to slow down aggressive strategies and lock them out of attacking if you get their mana base under control.
Also, I'm not sure I'd actually suggest it for this deck, but Avalanche Riders plus Momentary Blink was a successful strategy back around Timespiral.
One of the problems with the scenario that you listed is that you're wasting allies triggers by vialing stuff in on the opp's turn. Especially in the case of the Battlesinger, who doesn't get any permanent benefit from another ally coming into play. You also missed swinging for two on turn two with the Battlesinger.
A much better scenario would be:
T1 Vial
T2 Play Kazandu Blademaster, vial in Hada Freeblade at end step
T3 Vial in Akoum Battlesinger, play Kabira Evangel and swing for 15 with protection from a relevant color.
Placed 26th at a Legacy 5K
4 Aether Vial
Artifact Creatures
4 Tidehollow Sculler
Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hada Freeblade
4 Kabira Evangel
4 Kazandu Blademaster
3 Mother of Runes
4 Ondu Cleric
4 Oran-Rief Survivalist
2 Ranger of Eos
4 Path to Exile
Basic Lands
3 Plains
Lands
2 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
2 Savannah
4 Scrubland
4 Windswept Heath
1 Tormod's Crypt
3 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Kor Firewalker
2 Ranger of Eos
2 Krosan Grip
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Gaddock Teeg
Obviously Mother of Runes isn't legal in Modern, but you could pretty easily plug Inquisition of Kozilek into that slot. I'm not sure allies are worth it instead of just running creatures that work better on their own, but if you want to give it a try, the list above would be a good place to start.
As far as your changes to the primer, the English Minor in me wants to tear his eyes out.
An example with several of the common problems: "so yah, ouch. so much you can do, and it's all so good... the deck works together so perfectly. it's so beautiful..."
Capital letters are your friend. As are periods. Many people over use ellipses (the three periods). It's a fairly common tendency among people who are trying to replicate pauses found in spoken English, but overuse of ellipses can make writing seem stilted.
That quote is also an example of hyperbole; you're talking the deck up like you want to make love to it. For the purposes of a primer, you want to give a more detached explanation of the deck. If the primer gets stickied, people will not only be reading it to see if they will want to play it, but also to see how to play against it. Talking about how great the deck or a specific interaction in the deck doesn't help further discussion. It would be more helpful to discuss what decks certain interactions are good against and what decks they are less successful against. Mangara tricks, for example, can be extremely successful against bant style decks that run fewer, large creatures and a low removal count in favor of counters (which can be circumvented with Aether Vial) but can be weak against decks that pump out creatures more quickly or that have a high number of removal spells such as sligh builds of Zoo.
For the matchups section, I would just put that it is strongly decklist-dependent and add that even the difference of a couple cards can completely change how a matchup will play out. Adding Ethersworn Canonists to the main deck can take combo from basically unwinnable to being a coin toss, but in some matchups that same all-star in the combo matchup is going to be a vanilla bear. The same can be said of pretty much all of the hatebears. One of the biggest strengths of the deck is that if you know the decks you'll be facing, you can pretty much start the tournament pre-sideboarded for the matches that you think you'll play most/are most worried about.
Sorry if any of that came off as pretentious/preachy, but I took 6 creative writing classes in the last year and a half and I get irrationally annoyed when I see improper English nowadays. I wish I could turn it off; the internet is not a place of proper grammar
PS: I tried out a list with Visions of Beyond and SoBaM and it was terrible. To be fair, it was a UB list, so it wasn't running Mystics, but SoBaM is really underwhelming when the protection it offers isn't relevant. Visions itself wasn't ever terrible, because at worst it can always just cycle for a blue, but I'm not sure that any deck would ever be able to reliably turn it on without running really underwhelming cards.
Yeah, I'm sure. Sword of Body and Mind reads "Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, you put a 2/2 green Wolf creature token onto the battlefield and that player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard." With double strike, the creature deals first strike damage then normal damage, so the swords trigger twice. So connect once with Mirran Crusader equipped with SoBaM and they mill 20 and you get 2 wolves. The only problem with that that I can see is that if you connect once like that you deal 8 damage and have 12 damage on the field for the next turn, so it seems like Visions of Beyond would probably end up being a little win more.
I agree to a certain extent. I think you do a good job of explaining your specific take on D+T, but I think you fail to explain other routes people can take with the deck. There are a lot of options with the deck, even just within Mono-White. Look at the differences between my list and yours to see how different they can be. I would add a section explaining possible card choices for different builds (such as the different hatebears) and how they can affect different matchups.
In my opinion, Death and Taxes' greatest strength is its ability to be pre-sideboarded versus certain strategies. MD Cannonist, for example can greatly improve combo matchups, especially in Modern where the combos are generally going off turn 2-4 instead of Legacy's turns 1-3. MD Martyr of Sands helps a great deal against dredge, removing Bridge From Belows in their GY, and gaining you life to help survive any zombies they've already gotten. Jotun Grunt is great against any GY strategy, be it Dredge, Goyf, Knight of the Reliquary or Life from the Loam. I haven't actually gotten to play any games with him yet, but Grand Abolisher seems like it will make any counter-heavy deck weep.
In your primer you say that D+Ts loses some speed going from Legacy to Modern, but I'd actually say it probably gains some speed. In legacy, D+T uses a lot of its mana/land in order to hinder the opponent, so we actually gain speed by using that mana instead on playing out spells, we just lose the ability to hinder the opponent's development. In addition, the switch from Swords to Plowshares to Path to Exile means that when we use our removal on an opp's goyf, it doesn't make it take longer to kill them.
Additionally, I'd mention in the primer that a big strength that you gain going from Legacy to Modern with D+T is the mana base. That probably sounds outlandish considering we lose Karakas, Wasteland and Rishidan Port, but consider that most decks that make the transition from Legacy to Modern end up with a much more painful manabase and susceptibility to Anathemancer, Magus of the Moon, and other similar effects, but the number of basics that D+T runs actually goes up during the transition. While other decks will be bolting themselves the first turn by fetching into an untapped shockland, Mono-White D+T's manabase doesn't harm us at all.
EDIT:
I just tested this deck against a BR deck running Punishing Fire and Grove of the Burnwillows and... ouch. I definitely think Burrenton Forge-Tender or Kor Firewalker deserve a spot in the 75.
The deck I tested against was:
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Dark Confidant
4 Kiln Fiend
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Punishing Fire
4 Staggershock
4 Blightning
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Blood Crypt
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Swamp
3 Mountain
It's a little heavier on burn than most decks will probably be, but maybe not by all that much when compared to Zoo or Boros. (this BR list is my own creation, and I think it will be pretty solid) Wheel of Sun and Moon might be a decent sideboard card to add to the deck as well. It stops dredge and Punishing Groves and Punishing Groves seems like it will be good against all the builds of this deck since we run such small critters.