The only change I've made since putting this up is to take out the boarded GCharm for a Blind Obedience. It's there for aggro decks with haste creatures and/or burn spells. If it's good enough, I might play more than 1--I often have spare mana to use it.
@Mr_Mikey: A lot of these spells (in the main) can or do produce card advantage. Urban Evolution is the only simple raw draw spell, but Deadbridge Chant is going to draw an extra card each turn, and Unexpected Results can produce card advantage itself (either by hitting a land and buybacking itself, or by hitting one of those other draw spells). And Sylvan Primordial also happens to thin out a land while just being a fat 3-for-1, not to mention all the potential card advantage built into the removal suite. So while I always would like more plain draw spells, it's been pretty fine so far the way it is. I'd like to have maybe something in the board to produce CA, which is part of what Psychic Intrusion is for, or a couple Opportunity in the main...but it's not the highest thing on my list of "stuff to add" right now. And usually card draw is #1 on my list for any deck I'm building/tuning.
I'm going to put up a couple videos of replays/games and do some commentary on them, but I've been having technical issues with recording the videos thus far. So I've made note of the game numbers and I'll take care of it when I buy Fraps (again--I used to own it). Some of these games are absolutely ridiculous. Yesterday I had one where I mulled to 5, got Thoughtseized on turn 1 and Lifebaned for a Primordial on turn 3, and then on my turn 3 I hit a Primordial anyways off a Results. I also find that I regularly have games where I play triple Evolution in one turn...it seems to keep happening.
- i-never-smile
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May 27, 2014i-never-smile posted a message on Mega Ramp in StandardPretty epic game produced a few really epic game states, one of which being:Posted in: i-never-smile Blog
Ended up grinding out to the point where we both drew our decks; the difference was that I had a Bow and he didn't have an Elixer, so when I Merciless Evicted his 2 DSpheres on the table, he ended up playing his last 2 DSpheres to hit 2 Chants and the Bow, and then I responded by stacking my deck with Urban, Merciless, Merciless, Down/Dirty and proceeded to Down him (for the last 2 cards in his hand), Merciless for his 2 DSpheres, Merciless for Jace+Elspeth, have Bow back to stack the next 4 draws.
Might record the replay and put it up on YouTube. -
Jan 29, 2014i-never-smile posted a message on The Upcoming Modern B/R AnnouncementDo you think you could elaborate more about why "Deathrite isn’t really all that degenerate. It is a strong card sure, but it’s a completely fair card." This piqued my interest...and then you changed the subject. Isn't DRS one of the biggest subjects of debate for ban/unban discussion?Posted in: Koopa Blog
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Jan 7, 2014i-never-smile posted a message on BUG Delver (Modern)You might consider Halimar Depths for some utility with Delver and Dark Confident.Posted in: Tapped Out Blog
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Apr 25, 2013i-never-smile posted a message on Mana Drain and You: Plasm Capture in Ritual GiftsI noticed the 62 cards, too. I'm about to play it on MWS, so I made the following cuts:Posted in: Musings of the False God
Turn/Burn (frankly, this card sucks)
Mana Leak (just because it seems less imporant than any of the other MD counters and countermagic appeared to be the only thing I could cut)
Also, Increasing Ambition--I assume you meant the Fork, not the DT.
Let's see how this thing runs in action.... - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Brainstorm is Ancestral Recall when you have extra storm copies of Sprouting Vines. You can win games without finding a Tolarian Winds because of the legwork that Brainstorm, AK, Gush, etc put in to find you action. Winds is the easiest way to shift your hand from a lot of blank lands to a hand saturated with business, but you can only play so many Winds, and Winds is pretty awful before you combo off. So Brainstorm might have some flaws in the early game, but it's at worst going to just cycle and show you what you're drawing. I think that makes it worthwhile.
The biggest downside used to be that, mid-combo, BS was a bad filter spell; you could see 3 deep but then need to pay another blue to scry or shuffle those 2 cards away. This is different with Ash Barrens because you now can pay a red mana to shuffle away those 2. Chances are high that if you're mid-combo and your hand is a lot of blanks, you probably have an Ash Barrens to shuffle away dead cards after a Brainstorm. That relieves some tension from the blue mana, too...in many combo turns, blue mana is precious and sparse.
So I think it's fair to look at something like Ponder as a replacement for BS #4 because--well, it would be hypocritical of me to think that 3 Vines and 3 Winds are correct but not consider 3 of another card with potential diminishing returns in multiples. However, multiple Brainstorms only get better as the combo turn goes on, and in the early game if you draw 2-3 of them you can always just cycle them.
Moment's Peace is amazing if you can find it. I'm starting to miss Impulse.
Edit: List:
4 Ash Barrens
1 Terrmorphic Expanse
1 Mountain
11 Island
Rituals:
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Lotus Petal
4 Manamorphose
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
Bomb Draw:
4 Gush
3 Sprouting Vines
3 Tolarian Winds
Protection:
2 Gigadrowse
Win:
1 Rolling Thunder
2 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Forest
4 Moment's Peace
2 Keep Watch
1 Flaring Pain
1 Rolling Thunder
1 Repeal
4 Spell Pierce
Testing the Keep Watches alongside the Peaces.
I just bought a set of Ash Barrens on MTGO, so I'll be playing the deck again. I'm going with 18 lands: 1 Mountain, 4 Ash, 1 Terramorphic, 12 Island. Playing 1 Giga/2 Conjurer's main, AKs main, Rites main, 4 Preordain/Brainstorm (so prettymuch same thing but with Ash Barrens). In the board I'm putting a basic Forest and a set of Moment's Peace as the anti-beatdown strat...we'll see how this goes. I think it had problems in previous iterations because of the lack of extra draw to compensate for it, but AKs should help with that. And that's a 19th land vs control, if wanted.
I think the biggest thing will be to see how much Ash Barrens affects the deck's consistency moving forward. Gonna prettymuch just focus on that, see from there.
Seems like maybe we could use something that has Mystic Remora's power level, though...something we drop early that produces some sort of steady advantage, or even just an early advantage. Rhystic Study is too slow to compare to Remora. Maybe there's a creature that costs 1-2 that can dig? IDK.
Just going to +1 this.
It's not a bad plan. I do want to point out that lotus petals are handy in the slow match-ups, though. Against MBC it's an artifact to pitch to Wrench Mind. Against blue control decks you can play a draw spell to go above 7 cards and then roll out a Petal so you don't have to discard. And it's also useful to build up more storm for a non-combo turn Vines, which can really set you up for a nice midgame.
I feel like the Delver match-up is one that sometimes you can steal, especially in game one. It seems like a horrible match-up, but when they don't open turn 1 Delver they cannot kill you before turn 6. So then you get to basically just do whatever you want for 5+ turns, and every time they tap out for a ninja or spire or ponder, you get to resolve something else. If you can play through one counterspell plus one Daze/Force Spike, you can often beat them in game one (if they didn't open that T1 Delver). Playing through a counter sounds hard, but Rite of Flame is pretty good at that. AK/Words of Wisdom are both good in this situation as well, since you want to spend 2-4 more turns sculpting.
Does that make Drowse worth more in the mainboard? IDK. Drowse is bad against Snap and can be dealt with by Daze sometimes. It's still the best thing against Delver IMO, which is part of why I lean toward 2 in the main...but I'm not married to it.
Cool. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
Yeah, that's fair. I wouldn't mind playing 4 of them if we could get more mileage from the looting effect. When I first was messing around with Vines, it was a couple years ago and Treasure Cruise was legal...that was a big reward for cycling away a whole hand, but obviously it's never coming back. But maybe there's another option. Deep Analysis is pretty sketchy, but there could be something else. I've tried boarding some Take Inventorys in grindy match-ups (as a spare set of AKs), so maybe that's good alongside more Winds. More of a board plan, though.
I think it's correct. I've tried boarding out basically every card in the deck at one point or another, and Inner Fire is one of the most damaging things to take out. If I'm not boarding a complete transformation into some other style of deck, I'm not taking out Inners. TBH, I think the deck could function with just 3 Rite of Flame. I board 1-2 of those out all the time. One Inner Fire is basically enough to get your combo turn going by itself, most of the time. If we could play like 6 of those, I would.
Ideas is terrible. I keep trying that card, and it keeps showing me how much I'm starved for blue mana. It sucks at setup, it's a sorcery, and it sucks up all your useful blue mana.
The analogy to Splinter Twin falls short when you consider that Splinter Twin decks specifically need to draw one each of an untapper guy and a twin effect. This combo deck is different. Your goal is to chain draw spells and rituals to build up a large hand for large Inner Fires and then cast your fireball effect. If you do that with Vines and Winds, that's fine. If you do that with Gush, AKs, and Winds, that's fine. If you do that with a big Vines (or two of them) and a bunch of Brainstorms, that's also fine. So there is more potential for redundancy than simply maximizing the two main bomb draw effects, and my personal solution involves the mainbord full sets of Brainstorm and AK. It might not be as simple/easy to go off on as many combo turns, but the deck sucks a lot less before combo turns because I've chosen a different suite of cards for draw redundancy. It's a trade-off, and not one with an obviously better option.
Anyway, hopefully that doesn't come across as too negative. I have a pretty strong opinion against 4/4 Vines/Winds, but I'm open to discussing its merits. I care about making the deck better more than I do about being right. Just being honest and stating my opinion.
*raptor: Ash Barrens leads to more mulligans than fetchlands, but I've always been an aggressive mulliganer so that doesn't bother me. My solution is to run more draw (AKs) to offset the card disadvantage of those mulligans.
As far as hand size goes, I tend to just put artifacts on the table or pitch Rite of Flames when I go over 7.
I think we need a more cohesive plan against aggro than just bringing in some stall tactics. Fog and bounce effects typically buy about one turn, but bringing in more than 3-4 of them starts to dilute the combo--and then there's also the fact that casting a tempo spell means not casting a spell to sculpt a better combo hand. So I think we either need stall tactics that double time walk (like Moment's Peace or a legit board sweeper) or we need a different plan in general. I'm considering the idea of something like Gurmag Angler coupled with bounce spells: put a road block out there, force them to trade board position for damage, and bounce the unblocked attackers. Withdraw would be really good for that: if they swing with 3 guys and they're tapped out, Angler can eat one while Withdraw bounces the other 2. Or if they try to kill your Angler, you Withdraw one of their guys and then use the soft part of Withdraw on your own Angler. Obviously Angler goes into another color and requires delving, but the point is to have a good blocker out there--it could be anything. I'm cool with winning on turn 8 against aggro if I've taken over the board for most of the game.
Anyway, that's where my head's at after a few dozen more games.
It's definitely safer to board a second win-con, especially against mill with Jace's Erasure. I think it's fine. Right now, I'm eschewing a boarded back-up win condition because I just want to test with more sideboard cards in the practice room. I think it's probably better to have the backup so you have a lower chance of getting wrecked against mill, but vs most of the other decks I don't think it's necessary to have a 2nd win con. My reasoning is that I'm playing 4 Brainstorm and 2 Conjurer's Baubles, and I don't board any of those out (especially vs mill--but in general I've completely quit boarding out baubles).
If I wanted to replace Rolling Thunder, the card I would most likely pick is Gorilla Shaman. That's one of those cards that I just don't own, but Affinity can be such a pain in the neck that I could see rolling 2-4 mox monkeys and just killing their dreams with it (especially with ritual support). Or, if not mox monkey, I'd want some other card that's so devastating in a particular match-up that it makes up for sometimes just losing to mill or duress+bojuka bog when I don't have a second win condition. If I play anything where product is on the line, I'll be putting the spare Rolling Thunder back into the board.
I'm going to do some more testing with Withdraw and Repeal and see where my head's at for aggro match-ups. It was really helpful to see how you're boarding; I'm going to take it into serious consideration while I try to pin down what works.
(Edited for clarity.)
Yeah Rolling Thunder is essentially 1 more mana (which is almost negligable) to deal with Standard Bearers, and occasionally you can Gush-->Inner Fire and just kill 3 things to survive. The counter-resistance from Torch is useless, so I dumped it back in Spring before I took my hiatus.
Okay, onto your sideboard: Honestly, I like all of the cards in it. It's easy to see that they each hold a purpose, and there is pretty clear overlap between some of the different cards (beyond just the hydros and BEBs being functionally similar). I think a bigger question is: what are your board plans? Because I think there are good arguments for whichever anti-aggro cards you want to bring, but my personal struggle is knowing what I can feasibly cut for those Withdraws. You know? That was always a big problem with the deck (at least, for me) earlier in the year.
Anyways, I also want to point out that I have tested Withdraw and Lethargy Trap after seeing those cards in this thread, and there were some times that they put in work. Right now, I'm kind of in a place where I want to know whether I can take out Rites or a TWinds or something else against those aggressive decks, the ones where you have to stall them a turn or 2 to win on the draw. I think that's where you either want a Withdraw/Trap/Gigadrowse to stall a team and take a time walk or two, or you want cantripping stall tactics that can add up to a turn or 2 while cycling into some combo fuel. Frankly, I don't know what's right. I think you have a good plan with what you're doing, so long as you aren't diluting your combo too much when you bring it in. That's the problem I've been having, anyways.
I took a hiatus from MTG for about half a year, but I missed this deck. So I've been playing lately, and messing around with the deck's construction. I decided to check out the forums to see if anyone else has been working on the deck, and came across this thread. It's also been a couple years since I've logged in to MTGSalvation at all (due to the vast amount of stupid trolls), but I thought it was worthwhile to log in again and post here because, Raptor_56, I appreciate how hard you're trying here.
I'm currently on maindeck AK and 4 Brainstorm as well. This is my list:
1 Mountain
12 Island
4 Lotus Petal
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Manamorphose
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Gush
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Sprouting Vines
1 Ideas Unbound
2 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Rolling Thunder
2 Gigadrowse
4 Arcane Denial
2 Condescend
3 Outwit
1 Flaring Pain
3 Repeal
I have been running this on MTGO, and also testing (through solitaire) Ash Barrens in place of the fetches as a potential alternative if/when it becomes a thing in Pauper. So far, my conclusion is that it has a large amount of upside for fixing Brainstorms in the middle of a combo turn, as well as enabling turn 1 BS into turn 2 upkeep shuffle. Its primary downside is that it leads to more mulligans--though that becomes less dangerous in an AK build. I think an 18 land build surely can support 4 Ash Barrens, and it makes the deck a lot more consistent beyond the mulligan.
On sideboarding:
I run Arcane Denial and Condescend out of the board for times when I want to take the Rites out against some of the slower match-ups. I like using a Denial on my own spell for +1 CA and I like that Condescend goes well with Brainstorm. I'd like to maximize BS's potential if possible.
I actually learned about Outwit from here, and I'm glad I tried it out. I like niche sideboard cards that work very well in a small number of match-ups. You can count on it against a UB deck with Duresses and Curses, which are the only things you need to counter, and then it's obviously good against Burn.
Other than that, most of my board is pretty typical stuff. Anyways, I'm really happy to see that there is a thread somewhere on this deck. Cya round!