We could go crazy with Dungrove Elders, Troll Ascetics, and Thrun, the Last Trolls as our primary source of beatdown entirely. Streamline the mana ramp so we can angle for T2/T3 and be heavy set on the LD package. Imagine a list they can't interact with, for the most part.
Could be a worthwhile direction. Could be a waste of time, but will most certainly be fun.
I've been playing my fav archetype lately (D&T) after running this for a month. I haven't dismantled MGC, and don't plan on it, but I'll probably rotate it in every few weeks to put my opponents on tilt.
I looked long and hard at Finks before moving forward with the Coursers myself. I went with Coursers because of their resilience against Bolt and because they were a good T2 against aggro and burn in an otherwise slower hand. Sometime opponents would focus attention on it, burning 2 burn spells to drop it before I could gain anything from it - which is just fine with me since it bought me time to stabilize and avoid 2 spells intended for my life total.
Other than the Wal-mart scry effect, the lifegain was always quite pronounced, especially with Acid-Moss, Prime Time, and Elder. I gained far more than 4 life a game that Finks could provide after 1 persist trigger. It's not that I think Finks is bad, far from it, but Courser provides what Finks does and then some. Since you're already hanging with 1 main, maybe a 2/2 3/1 split with Tracker instead?
As far as the bounce lock, I'm with you. When it works it works very well, but it's usually better to just run more business spells or win conditions outside Neilson's stock list.
I didn't end up getting to play with the last list because I had to skip the tourney. I continued testing with mainboard Oust and it was an absolute blowout at times and otherwise depressing at others. I think there might still be room, but not alongside Smuggler's Copter, since it reduces my threat density to a point where I'm thirsty for ways to kill my opponent on a clear board. That being said, I've spent the last week tweaking the below list for my meta.
I've moved away from Restoration Angel because I'm so often using my lands for their spell effects and don't get to stay at 4 lands. I may still find a way to sneak 2 into the main with -1 Wisp and -1 Displacer, but they've been better for me overall. The Finks can set up a pretty oppressive lifegain loop with Displacers, but they are fine 3/2 dorks that come back from the dead. Crusader has been insane at my shop, and I would love to have 3 in the main somewhere if I could muster it.
Selfless Spirit's been great in testing, and works will with post-board wrath effects, which I wish were just ***/DoJ, but D/D is all I have right now. Against Combo or other decks that aren't trying to blow up my dorks, Spirits are sided out for direct hate. The Champions and last Crusader in the board are a nod to the insane amount of Jund (and burn) in my meta. If I could find a way to include the 3rd Crusader in the main by cutting a land, I would, but I'm already stressing the manabase with so many WW critters. Barring any life things, I'll post a report after the tourney tomorrow night.
Being able to hit Thalia, a silver bullet from SB, or even a legendary land (Flagstones/Eiganjo) makes me think it can be a nice addition to up the deck's consistency. I don't think it's insane since it's 2 mana (or even 3 with Thalia in play), but I'm really interested in testing some copies.
That could actually be pretty absurd for us under the right circumstances, and I agree on its post-board usefulness. Like Legacy D&T sporting Enlightened Tutor and a stack of silver bullets. While it can whiff on what you're aiming for, it's likely you'll find something, and it doesn't care about our Arbiters/Heretics/Mindcensors. If any of the Sagas are good it can be even stronger, so I'm excited to at least test.
Speaking of testing, here's the list I'm going to be running in a 55-person-ish tourney tomorrow:
It's seeking to leverage a slightly different set of tools than last week, and is trying to have an asymmetrical approach to some of the board states and matchups I've seen over the last few months.
I'm sure this list will send some eyes twitching on this thread, but that's okay. Less than 4 PTE, Wisp, 1 Angel, and only 23 land is hard to get away from. Believe me, I've always had a hard time prying myself away from stock lists too. But I'm 4 cards off from the core overall, without much of a loss in consistency with my gameplan.
My experience with Oust from legacy was a touch different in a field awash with highly tuned and aggressive lists (Affinity/Gobs/Delver/etc). Basically, it's PTE #5-6 if we have a library denial bear (Arbiter/Mindcensor) and blow up a land with Quarter / Field after resolving it. It puts our opponnent in the unenviable position of choosing to get their dude back 2 turns from now or pay the tax to get their land. In the earlier turns it slows them down further (as far as casting stuff) if they are relying on fetches to develop their board position. It's funny when they delve to throw out an Angler or Tasigur and don't have enough in the 'yard to delve again 2 turns from now.
Worst case, sometimes I'll just Oust one of my own dorks with an ETB effect for the lifegain and for another chance at the ability (like a Finks with a -1/-1 counter on it), which has saved me in the past. Against decks that are creature-light, it's an easy thing to sideboard out for more beefy fare, but is rarely completely useless for it's ability to (slowly) recycle some of our critters.
The sideboard is mostly self-explanatory, but the Ghostly Prisons are for tokens and hyper-aggressive lists. I leaned away from Dawn / Dusk because Prison comes down a turn sooner, is easier to cast, and for the constant tax it places on them - a tax they potentially can't play if mana denial is working.
The set of protection bears is a nod towards Jund, U/R/x, Burn, and Shadow lists running amok. The singleton Worship is most certainly jank, but capable of stealing the win against the right board state.
Provided I don't scrub out in the first 4 rounds, I'll throw down a tourney report late tomorrow night or early Wednesday.
was in a lot of my matchups, but so was Fatal Push. So it's really 50/50 for me at this point, but the 4 point life swings and occasionally 1-sided survivability in combat, at least in my meta, is super attractive. I'm actually looking at Auriok Champions in the board over the Kor Firewalkers, as well as some jank in the form of Fiendslayer Paladin and Stillmoon Cavalier. It really depends on just how many Bolts/Pushes I run into in the coming weeks.
I totally missed Declaration in Stone even existing, so I'm going to pick a few up for my board as well. There were enough tokens and duplicates on the board more than once to make that a good effect. Worst case, you just pop your own dead in the water critters and hope for the best.
I originally had Fragmentize and Kataki, War's Wage in the board, but made room for more removal after seeing only 1 Affinity deck and tons of other decks with targets for that removal. I didn't run into any artifacts that had to be killed, but I can see the benefit against opposing vials and even slowing down Tron's cantrips. Besides, landing either those against Lantern would be hilarious.
@t3hwo0ki3 any changes you'd made for the future? what were your losses and what matches you think you were about to lose?
I answer both of those questions if you click the Tournament Button in my above post, just FYI. But my losses were Jund and Mardu, and I felt like I might lose the Mono Green Tron matchup after my misplay in Game 1. Tron can overwhelm us quickly, even through LD, if we make a stupid error.
I felt pretty good in the other matchups, and a lot of my Ls came from misplays and keeping suboptimal hands. Aggressively mulliganing, utilizing my Canopies, and watching for card interactions more carefully will help shore those up down the line. Well, that and time I guess.
The 1 or 2-ofs you keep seeing in lists is probably a portion of the flex slots that's tailored for the meta the pilots predicted for the event which they topped.
Generally, 2-ofs are often some kind of proactive tool that you want to see late-game. Very good examples of these are Thalia HC or Eldrazi Displacer (in mono-white without Temples).
1-ofs are often silver bullets, or 5th piece of disruption (Mindcensor being a good example, as you mentioned). Don't be too concerned about these numbers, the flex spots can both be full playsets or 1/2-ofs depending on how much power you'll sacrifice for flexibility. MTGO meta is very spread so lots of 1/2-ofs are a common sight when looking at top8 lists.
My only suggestion is that you should always run 4 copies of the cards in the core, I really don't like lists that cuts a Thalia, Wisp (or even Splicer) for extra removal or some random jank like Mana Tithe. Those cards, althought useful, belong in flex spots.
You just made sense out of what's been bugging me with all these Modern lists for over a month, thanks for breaking that down for me. In legacy the only 1-ofs we ran were equipment, which was a virtual 4 or 5-of due to Mystic, creatures as bullets with Recruiter was after my time. Seeing the duos lategame and singletons as a virtual 5th piece makes a lot of sense, and my eyes simply weren't communicating with my brain. Thankfully, I've long-since accepted that D&T (either modern or legacy) has a core component that shouldn't fiddled with, generally speaking.
Against your listed meta, I think the 1 Mindcensor is a good include. If you're feeling ballsy you can also try out my idea of of running 4 Vryn Wingmare alongside Thalia, it actually looks very useful here (not enough data to tell the effectiveness of this in modern tho).
I'm working on two lists right now, and one will sport both a singleton Mindcensor and 1-4 Vryns alongside more taxing elements (sass) and less beater elements (sass without the 's,' as in Splicer/Avenger/etc). I just need to grab a stack of the flying horsies before I finish it. I'm probably going to fill the flex spots with some Revokers, Tithe, and maybe a fifth piece of removal. I've been combing through the last 7 years of decklists looking for synergies and old strategies that may be once again viable in my current meta. I appreciate this forum's experience and direction in that.
After spending an absurd amount of time theory-crafting and scrapping lists, I managed to find a list I was pretty comfortable with and piloted to the top 8, landing 4th place out of 57 people.
I didn't take great notes cause I was tired and only got progressively more tired as the night wore on, as we start at 7PM and folks usually play it out due to high turnout each week & full prize payout. I'll do a better job recording next time, but below is the matchups with any impressions I can recall.
Round 1: Esper Spirits 2-1
He's a pretty skilled player that gets bored with standardized lists. He's got more of a stock Spirits build with heavier removal and some jank in the form of Zur, The Enchanter with a few bullets like Steel of the Godhead and Detention Sphere. The games were super-grindy and saw violent swings in life totals. He'd stabilize with a Geist of Saint Traft after Pushes and PTE wiped my board state, but Finks, Inspector, and Flickerwisp/Angel would routinely push me back into the green and neuter his plays with combat tricks. My sideboard wasn't a ton of help, but I remember throwing in my 3rd Crusader for a Looter Scooter and beating face. I misread Dusk / Dawn when I put it in my sideboard and wished it was a Doj/*** all night, as I often had nothing but 3-power creatures in play on my side, with 2-power dorks on his side, with no upside to /Dawn. Maybe I just boarded wrong, but I cinched game 3 by gaining a billion life off recuring/flickering Finks and double-striking my way to victory.
Round 2: Jund 0-2
Game 1 I almost got there, but he stabilized with Scooze and patiently played through my mana denial and made good decisions with his Bolts on my Crusader(s). Crusader is obviously a house here, I just wish Paladin En-Vec had double-strike. Game 2 I brought in 3 Relics and 2 Firewalkers to handle his Goofys and act as a pseudo Clue token and blank his Bolts. I wished my Firewalkers were Auriok Champions the whole night due to the Pushes/Bolts being the most prevalent spells in my meta. Game 2 he kept a 2-lander with Bob and 3 BBE. He didn't flip a single spell with Bob and played all 3 BBE's. I died in a fire, but he's a great Jund pilot.
Round 3: Grixis Death's shadow 2-1 Gurmag Angler got blocked all day Games 1-3 and most of his army couldn't block my Crusaders, or block them and live, anyway. The 3rd Crusader and 3 relics came in for the last 2 games. Game 2 he gets there with Liliana making me sacrifice my sole surviving creature. Game 3 I played tighter and more conservatively, grinding it out with (my) EOT Flickerwisp off vial 2 turns in a row to turn off his remaining black source after vialing in an Arbiter in response to his fetchland / my Quarters. The salt was real and he dropped.
Round 4: U/R Gifts Storm 2-0
Games 1 and 2 played out exactly the same during the first 2 turns. T1 Vial > T2 Inspector off Vial and play Thalia > he can't gain ground. Game 2 Eidolon came down and he bolted it and I said "sure, resolves." He tried putting the Eidolon in the graveyard when I reminded him it was a 1/4. He posed no threat and I beat him up with golems and flyers for the win. Feels good, man.
Round 5: Mono Green Tron 2-1
Missed a vial trigger game 1 like I didn't have years of D&T experience and it cost me the game. When I went to vial in Arbiter in response to Expedition Map. He Ugin'd and pooped on me. Games 2 and 3 were different and Finks did work post-Pyroclasms while his Tron pieces got Flickered during my end step / destroyed. I didn't know what to sideboard so 3 Relics came in, which just became Clue tokens, drawing me gas.
Round 6: Intentional draw into T8.
Round 1 of Top 8: 1-2 Mardu Pyromancer
This was the most fun I'd had in MTG in a long time (7 years to be exact). He was a joyful, pleasant opponent that shared banter with me as we got loopier and loopier as the night wore on (around 1:30 AM at this point). My inexperience in the format and first time seeing Mardu Pyromancer got me game 1 when he K-Commanded my Blade Splicer & Golem token in response to trying to Wisp it. Game 2 I got there off a Turn 3 and 4 Crusader. Game 3 I got him to 4 life when he looted 2 Lingering Souls and flashed them back, with no way for me to overcome his growing army, despite PTEing 2 Pyromancers and 1 Reveler. I ain't even mad.
Takeaways: Thraben Inspector is absurd. If I ever do include Judge's Familiar or Dryad Militant in the main, it will be in addition to Inspectors. I stopped counting at 15 cards drawn off that critter through the course of the night. The P/T was useful more than once against tokens and he was just a one-way ticket to value town. Mirran Crusader was a good call. I want to run 3 MB. Kitchen Finks was okay. Never quite useless, never quite the bomb, resilient and helpful occasionally. Maybe he should live in the sideboard or I should find more ways to abuse him, ala Eldrazi Displacer.
My manabase was tighter than a crab's rear-end and gave me no fits, but I think I'd rather have a 2/2 split Field of Ruin and Tectonic Edge or Mutavault.
Overall, a good first foray back into D&T.
I'm still not 100% in on Temur Sabertooth just yet. I'm curious to know if you all think that my 'fears' are unjustified..
The age-old test for creatures in Modern -- dies to Bolt. Or has Bolt gone out of style nowadays? Do we just wait to cast it when we have 2 open mana and a creature to bounce?
Wildebeests/Serow can go head-to-head with Tasigur, the Golden Fang/Gurmag Angler. I feel like these are two threats that are easy for an opponent to power out even if we destroy their lands. Or are we just safe having Acidic Slimes/Prime-Time/Cloudthresher to take care of these?
Wildebeests/Serow have Trample. I feel like as we start to pressure opponents into the late-game, they will be more likely to try and throw chump-blockers out until they can stabilize and chipping in 4 damage through a 1/1 sounds like a way to keep them on the back foot.
From 20, Wildebeests/Serow are a 4 turn clock. Sabertooth is a 5 turn clock. Maybe this isn't relevant at all but I personally like to close out a game without giving an opponent time to stabilize.
I do very much agree that the bounce ability being optional is a plus but I'm unsure if Sabertooth is an overall improvement (and I guess I also have a soft spot for Wildebeests/Serow )
These are good points, and I think your fears are justified. Half of deckbuilding appears to me to be a balance of accepting fear and taking specific actions to mitigate it. Bolt hasn't gone out of style, but neither has Fatal Push or Path to Exile. The "Dies to terror" argument is an old one and misses the point. Your Prime Time will survive a bolt, but not a bolt snap bolt or PTE. If someone's using a bolt on our Sabertooth and not us, that may be a good thing.
The thing about Temur is that it's a 4/3 that we can run out on an empty field (after maybe LDing and depleting our hand/having other creatures removed cheaply ala' Bolt/PTE/Fatal). Unlike the Stampeding twins, we can play Temur as a threat without other creatures in play. He doesn't depend on them to remain on the battlefield, and, depending on the creature, he can turn our soft lock into a hard lock with less. We only need access to 7 mana to Acidic Slime them out of the game, 8 to go through our entire deck and remove all lands with Prime Time. That being said, there's nothing stopping you from gravitating towards the Stampeding twins over Temur. I've played both in tournaments and now that I'm working to develop my board towards the lock, Temur just offers more versatility at the (I think low and acceptable) cost of being more vulnerable.
I agree that if we want to include Red (or really any other color), we're probably just better off playing Ponza. I think this point brings back up the question of "What does Mono Green do better or offer us that Ponza, Green Devotion, or the other strategies don't?" and I think we should start focusing on asking ourselves that. I just recently watched the MTGGoldfish video on Budget Brewing and I think the concept in the video applies to us here -- There are two ways of building/brewing a [budget] deck: 1) Playing a watered down version of an established deck or 2) taking underplayed cards/strategies and utilizing those. What would you guys say our 'mission statement' is as a deck? Where do we outperform Ponza/Green Devotion? What are our underplayed cards/strategies?
I haven't necessarily played the two, but I would think that we're trying to be more oppressive than Ponza and less direct-ramp-into-game-ending-fatties than Green Devotion. I feel like our "underplayed cards/strategies" are surely Plow Under and Stampeding Wildebeests/Stampeding Serow/Temur Sabertooth bouncing our own creatures to keep our opponent under a lock of sorts. I feel like we should somehow use our Mono Green aspect as an advantage, whether it be punishing opponents that use fetchlands/duel lands (like Root Maze or Encroaching Wastes), playing green cards that multi-colored decks can't support/have a hard time supporting (like Cloudthresher or something ridiculous like Primalcrux), or playing cards that reward us for playing basics/Forests (like Early Harvest or Vernal Bloom)
I'm with you there, and even considered, more than once, developing something G/R off the snow mechanic. No matter how cool it was sometimes, it just was worse than established G/R Ponza. We're certainly aiming to utilize cards that don't see a lot of play or, at the very least, sequencing and strategies with established cards that are underrepresented. I agree that moving towards more oppression is a viable avenue, but I don't know if it has to be our only avenue. We're here because Neilson built a budget mono green LD list that was consistent, playable, and had a gameplan that allowed it to adapt to a wildly diverse metagame at a large tournament. He's already spoken on the subject and his deck's gameplan, but the further we get from his updated list the further we are from sharing the exact plan and lines of play.
Frankly, my goal is to see how far I can stray while retaining the core and remaining viable, maybe even more viable in my specific meta, than Neilson's list would be. It may be that I can only experience middling success and will need to return to something closer to his list, but so far that's not what I'm seeing each week. I think I'm (we're) on to something, so I'm going to pursue it and see where it leads.
I don't mean to get all 'deep and philosophical' or whatnot but I've just seen some suggestions where I've thought to myself "If we splash Red, won't we basically be Ponza?" and "If we run Nykthos and Garruk won't we basically be Green Devotion?". And I hope I don't come off like I'm putting down anyone's suggestions -- I think those are great cards/combos but I'd just hate for us to be seen as a "watered down version of an established deck". Just my two cents. Smile
I jam to the philosophy and asymmetrical thinking MTG deck building and theory crafting brings, man. This is my favorite part of the process, even more than playing (which I love). 1 Nykthos doesn't make us devotion, but it can occasionally give us access to the devotion mechanic to achieve our existing gameplan(s) faster and sometimes multiple times in a turn. Devotion lists run 4 Nykthos and engineer their non-land permanents to make that devotion better earlier. We're not (at least I'm not), and the singleton Nyx doesn't get trotted out immediately unless I can make use of it or draw it. Generally, it's game-breaking when it hits the field 80% of the time for me. I think I've already made my points on Garruk, but I'll say this: There's no compelling reason we can't run a good card from X color or Y archetype if we are in a list outside that color and archetype. If you were building your own brew of a competitive mono-X deck, would you not run
We're evaluating cards for this largely unknown and unplayed amalgam of an archetype that fit one or more of the below criteria:
1. It's good on its own and we can cast it reliably (Garruk).
2. It's potentially good in concert with 1 or more of our core cards / strategies (Steve > Mystic because of Courser)
3. It was good in the past, but has been forgotten or the meta has shifted such that it is unprepared for it (Plow Under).
4. It's good in similar archetypes adjacent to our own (whatever that may be) to be worthy of inclusion to achieve the same goals it seeks to achieve in the other archetype (Devotion/Ponza run Courser for reasons beyond it having GG in its casting cost).
Hey, peeps. I'm an old hand with D&T in legacy, circa 2009-2011 when I left MTG behind. I returned to modern because the D&T list I sold back then for $1,000 would cost nearly triple to rebuild, that and Modern has more support from Wizards and more traction in my area. I kept up with the developments where I could and was happy to see D&T had gained enough tools to be viable here, and I've got a lot of experience testing out different card selections in the legacy metagame back then. I understand it's not the same, but thanks to functional reprints being a thing and Modern being so diverse, there are a few strategies folks have ignored or that have fallen by the wayside that I hope to contribute to this thread. Anyway, thanks for having me and I'm glad to be here!
I've been playing another deck since I returned to MTG for just over a month now, but I've had the cards to assemble D&T the whole time. I'm stuck in that weird place where I'm trying to find a list I'm comfortable with that meets the needs of my meta at the same time, so I've been waffling for a few weeks. At this point, I figured it's time to just post and see where a lot of you land on this stuff based off your experience. If you're the type to dismiss stuff out of hand that you've never tested, I'll probably ignore you and ask that you just ignore me. Don't worry, I'm not going to advocate for Vizzerdrix or anything crazy like that, but I do enjoy approaching deck-building asymmetrically sometimes.
Anyhow, my shop routinely breaks 50 people every Tuesday for Modern. I've seen a wide range of lists in the past month, but the most represented (from what I've played against and gleaned in-between rounds) has been:
Ad Nauseum
Burn
Flavors of Tron
U/R Gifts Storm (both fetches & fetch-less)
Jund
G/R Ponza
If I had to guess, the above makes up more than 50% of my local metagame. Aside from D&T's bone stock, which I believe to be this:
What are some of you fielding or would consider fielding against this meta? I've seen that Judge's Familiar, Aven Mindcensor and Thalia, Heretic Cathar have fallen out of favor, but they seem especially punishing in this environment with the obvious trade-offs of losing Inspector spots and fiddling with beats/tax ratios. Additionally, I've seen lists packing Smuggler's Copter and altering the D&T core to squeeze in extra utility with Dismember, Condemn, and even Mana Tithe. Personally, Oust in conjunction with Ghost Quarter, or without, can be especially useful in out-tempoing our opponents.
As you can see I've fallen into the trap of trying (or wanting) to do too many things at once. I've built heavy taxes lists, net decks of current top 8ers, heavy utility, and goofy hybrids. I keep seeing successful lists running a stack of 1-ofs (virtual 5-ofs if we count 1 Mindcensor with 4 Arbiter), 2-ofs, and 3-ofs all over the place, with the mostly-agreed-upon core being the only consistent theory in action. This, plus my inexperience with this particular format and 7 year absence has made this a real undertaking. Where do you awesome folks land on all of this?
I'm interested in what you think some of the good hands are that don't have Elf/Sprawl. Especially since you run 3 nonbasics, I always hate seeing a Sprawl and the one nonbasic I have in the deck, or even worse, a Treetop as my sole land on the draw.
A good hand that lacks neither? A good hand might be Treetop, Forest, Steve, Garruk, Acid-Moss, Courser, anything else. If I draw the 4th land by Turn 3 it's gravy. If not, I develop my board with Courser and see the land in short order > Moss > Garruk. If I have either/or elf/sprawl and a courser, that's a desirable hand too. I usually keep 2-land hands with any 1-2 CMC ramp. I pitch hands with 1 land in general, unless I have a stack of Sprawl/Arbor and I'm on the draw against a deck that's unlikely to kill my dude. It depends on the matchup, but I've kept fragile hands and pitched them just the same.
Something I'd really like to see you test on is Polukranos. I really want to like him, but I have a feeling I need Nykthos and more devotion to really make him work. In your build though, he could be even better than Walking Ballista.
I've looked at him a few times, but I've played Ballista for 4 to kill a Liliana or 2 1/1 dorks (2 Swiftspears when my burn opponent was top-decking lands courtesy of Plow Under and had nothing to do). That doesn't mean Polukranos is bad by a long shot, but I'll have to wait a turn if it's early. Is there a compelling reason we can't run both?
When do you side in Trinisphere, and do you ever wish you were mainboarding Root Maze or Trinisphere?
Trinisphere comes in against Death & Taxes, Burn, aggro, and Jeskai to make their lives miserable. Depending on my opening hand, I like to sit on them until after I've started blowing up their lands for maximum sadism.
Just to add a post that isn't a wall of text, but i think if you're not running 4 trackers, it's a mistake. As an example: in my weird lands land d deck, he's the best creature and it's not even close. He does two things the deck absolutely wants: Draws cards and puts a quick clock on your opponent. In the build with a bunch of fetches, it's even more strongly recommended to play 4. I really don't see the justification in running just 1, or not running it at all. This kind of deck tends to run out of steam since you don't cycle through cards all that much (courser doesn't really count since he can only hit lands and off the top of your deck).
Good point on the wall of texts thing, this thread was mostly me and Ark yelling into the void for a while.
As far as Tireless Tracker, I'm already sold on his usefulness, just not on the ratios. Not that you left any room for it, but I don't even know if I'd argue about him being the best card. The problem is that I've come to see Courser as vital to my strategy and resilient in the early turns of combat. Naturally, they both die to much of the same targeted removal (and Courser dies to wayward Atarka's Commands in burn, but they serve different and I think, complementary, roles. Assuming I'd only run 3 at most without fetches, I don't even know what I'd begin to cut to include them.
As a point of reference, what's your "weird lands land d deck" list look like?
There's been a lot more attention on this thread lately, which is awesome. Welcome aboard everyone.
Just a few things to address in no particular order.
1. We don't splash R because that makes us a worse version of Ponza. Ponza is established, we are not. We're the illegitimate child of Ponza and Green Devotion, at least those of us running Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
2. Going under 15 LD/Plow effects is a direction we can pursue, and one I've had some pretty decent success with. However, my experiences have taught me that we want more. We want as close to 1/4 of the deck to be focused on LD (or artifacts/enchantments/lands/planeswalkers Destruction) so we can leverage our gameplan. On a slow start, a start without LD, or a start with very little LD, our creatures are unlikely to out-value our opponent's. We want to be actively doing one of 3 things every turn:
A: Attacking our opponents resources
B: Developing our own resources (ramp/utility)
C: Developing our win conditions (playing big dumb critters and turning them sideways)
3. I am sold on the silver bullet strategy, within reason. We don't need 8 1-ofs, as that's going to blow up our consistency and make for awkward board development more often than not. I like to run 1-for-1 with Primal Command, so each of my bullets has 5 virtual copies (more, with recursion). I run 4 bullets and am constantly looking for a newer, better bullet. I also run a singleton Primeval Titan (down from 2), but I don't count him as a bullet really. Generally speaking, it's almost always beneficial for me to dump my Primeval Titan to grab Nyx (Plan B) or two Treetops (Plan C). A board of Garruk, Prime Time, and 2 Treetops is win on ultimate. It has for me more than once.
4. Courser of Kruphix synergies well with Sakura-Tribe Elder, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, Primeval Titan, and of course our regular land drops. Filtering past the topdecked land, or having 2 Coursers in play for a few turns have been the difference between victory and defeat multiple times.
5. Garruk Wildspeaker is only further cementing his usefulness to me each time I cast him. He can make for some pretty absurd plays and set you up for victory as early as Turn 3:
Turn 1 Forest, Arbor Elf.
Turn 2 Forest, Utopia Sprawl to add GG, Arbor elf's ability gets us GGGG, play Garruk, +1 to untap 2 lands, Play Courser.
Turn 3: Land drop to Mwonvuli-Acid Moss (Gain 2 off Courser), Arbor untaps to get GG, Garruk +1s to get an additional GGG, play Plow Under/Primal fetching Witness.
Turn 4: Be at 10 virtual mana while your opponent is on virtual Turn 1. Fetch & Cast Prime Time w/2 treetops.
Turn 5: Ultimate FTW.
More or less, the above can happen a turn later reliably or morph into Primal lock with your favorite flavor of Stampeding Serow (Stampeding Wildebeests / Temur Sabertooth) against a deck that's also ramping or putting up a fight.
6. If you're running the loop, I have to recommend Temur Sabertooth over the competition. The loss of trample is potentially relevant, but we get to choose when we return Witness, and we can return more than one creature at a time and even go for Sabertooth beatdown if we have dorks in play to trigger the indestructible. Bouncing a Walking Ballista to mow down an army/kill planeswalkers/kill opponents and proactively bouncing & repeatedly casting Prime Time to rid our deck of lands would be potentially devastating, if you hadn't already won by that point.
All that being said, I eschewed away from the 2 Elvish Mystics and went with 3
instead. Based off last Tuesday, I've also added +1 Slime an +2 Bramblecrush to hit my more desired ratios with Control/Utility/Ramp. I'm also running a singleton Cloudthresher for the reasons Neilson has mentioned multiple times, and cause I really hope I get paired up with B/W tokens again. I dropped the Hornet Queen cause I hadn't cast her once in 20 Matchups and she constantly got sided out. Anyhow, here's the updated list for Tuesday, if I don't end up finding a build of D&T I like more:
Yea, I guess I forgot to take into account the old adage of "...depending on your local meta". As I think more about Liliana, I start to lean back towards Bramblecrush. Will all this back and forth in my head, I'll probably just settle for a split of the two. And I guess you're right about having cards in the sideboard to help the match-up.
I know you're probably already aware but be careful with Fracturing Gust -- don't want to wipe out all your own Sprawls, Mazes, and Trinispheres. (I'll admit I've forgotten before) But then again, if you're completely wrecking Affinity with it then it's probably totally worth it I think Neilson actually said he had Cloudthresher as his Affinity hate. I never thought of it that way.
There are a lot of copies of Karn, Liliana, and Ugin floating around my meta (probably 6+ dedicated tron players). Outside that, I'd rely on the Slime(s) to blow up the non-Planeswalkers Bramblecrush misses.
Yeah, I'm aware. I haven't ever had to side it in, but I don't yet have a list with Trinis/Mazes put together. It's not that I'm not sold on the notion it'd be super oppressive, I'm sorta stuck on the ratios and options question. Topdecking either would be terrible, and finding a way to create synergy (Voyaging Satyr) and resiliency is just a big question mark in my mind.
I've found what I feel to be a viable vein with the direction I'm already in, so I'm going to need to pursue this to the end first to see if I can make something of it.
Running extra mana dudes still makes you vulnerable to a myriad of T1 ways to kill that dork, if only by a turn. Burn can destroy you on 2 lands, kill your Turn 1 play, kill your turn 2 play with Searing Blaze (still hit you), and get you on the ropes before you can stabilize. That being said, I haven't lost a match to Burn yet, just 2 games. MB Thrag & Command with Baloths in the board is pretty nasty for them and swings the game back to a very rough board state for them.
That's just burn, plenty of other decks run bolt/push/dismember, and as you gain infamy at the shop for being "The bad Ponza" guy, or sometimes more charitably, "The mono green control" guy, folks are going to kill your turn 1 play proactively.
I hear ya on the mana dudes, and I've waffled back and forth for the past month on it in my head. However, I kept the same amount of acceleration, just not at the same CMC. That builds some dead-er draws for me, and sometimes forces me to play a fair hand (4 CMC spells on turn 4), but depending on the matchup - it doesn't matter. If I turn 4 Acid-Moss, Turn 5 Plow, and Turn 6 *other LD*, I've effectively put them back on turn 2 and my dudes are bigger. If they aren't I go find a bigger dude, Ballista to mow down their dork army, or Primal / Thrag to gain 13 life. That, and Prime Time and Garruk have a special utility all their own that makes surviving slower development phases easier.
The most savage plays I've had are T1 Arbor Elf > Turn 2 Forest, Utopia Sprawl > Cast Garruk > +1 to untap and cast Courser > Turn 3 Plow Under > Turn 5 Prime Time for 2 treetops > Turn 6 Ultimate Garruk. Depending on if I have extra early accel, that can happen a turn earlier. Garruk is nuts for us and turns our zeros into heros, and he untaps Nykthos / Utopia'd Forests. And makes 3/3 beasts.
Nobody runs affinity around here, as they've been hated out of the meta pretty hard by a lot of players. We had 52 this past Tuesday and routinely had 40+, so the format's actually pretty diverse here. I still have Fracturing Gust for them in my list, but I've seen all but JTMS out of those planesewalkers, and the Ballista (aside from my own) and Wurmcoil.
That being said, you're still right. It's sort of a wash either way, but each copy of Reclaiming Vines is just counted as Acidic Slime #4-5 to me, so having the ability to blow up a Liliana would be nice. I regretted my Harmonizes against Jund Round 6, as he Ultimated her games 2 and 3, but may just be sentimentalism here because he shredded my hand of any business spells I would have had to draw into them anyway.
We have a hard time doing anything truly notable against early discard. The early turn plays like Courser offer us resiliency and (some) stability. Saying that, Sak Elder/Trini/Root maze might help make those turns even smoother for us.
I'll admit. No shame. Ok, maybe a little..I personally like going forward with the oppression route as well. I guess that's goes back to the sadist comment above.
At least now it's out in the open we can come up with a fitting deck name
I'm wondering if I'm including too many mana dorks/acceleration here -- I'm still designing my decklist after Neilson's versions.
I don't think anything's wrong with that strategy, but it always leaves me wondering if we're missing out on something. We gain consistent turns, but are vulnerable to strategies that disrupt it. I will say I do like Sakura-Tribe Elder cause he's not just a dork. He's a chump block, provides next-turn acceleration, and thins out our deck. I always look at him and wonder if I can find room again.
I actually like Reclaiming Vines over Bramblecrush. The only thing that it hits that Vines doesn't is Planeswalkers and if we're executing our gameplan well enough, a Planeswalker shouldn't hit the board anyway. If one does, we can always bounce with Primal Command. Or we're already on the losing end of the match. Vines can also hit Artifact and Enchantment creatures as well as creature lands once they're activated; Bramblecrush doesn't. It could very well be correct to do an even split of the two but I feel like we're more likely to need removal from random Artifact/Enchantment/Land creatures (Eidolons/Coursers/Affinity/Inkmoths/Blinkmoths/Colonnades/Tar Pits/Mutavaults/etc..) than Planeswalkers. I could be totally wrong though. lol
Can't say I disagree. I run 2 Bramblecrush, but your argument is compelling, though I do thin it's nice to have the option since we already have Slime.
I'm starting to warm up to the idea of Primeval Titan as our big beater. I was initially thinking that after 6 mana, the extra lands shouldn't make a difference to us but Titan performs multiple jobs -- grabbing our Treetops for the next turn beats, thinning our deck, and ultimately allowing us to cast multiple P Commands/creatures/LD spells in one turn.
I've never regretted casting Prime Time. He's either provided the impetus for my opponent to scoop, put me in a position to survive, or helped start savage (sadistic) plays. However, 1 may not be a bad call, and the only thing I'd fiddle with in your list would be -1 Prime and -1 Slime for 1 other win con (we rarely cast 2 Primes in a game and it's totally acceptable to go get it with Command) and maybe the combo piece in: Stampeding Serow / Stampeding Wildebeests / Temur Sabertooth. Your ratios largely stay the same and you can squeeze in a Ballista/Queen/etc and have more options.
Part of the reason Trinisphere works so well is that it allows us to utilize those slightly suboptimal ramp states where we've got the sprawl, but no arbor elf for the t2 destruction. So even though I also run more 4drop LD spells than normal, I was still missing the majority of my T2 plays. After playing around with Courser for a bit, I decided that he didn't really do much for me in the way of advancing the decks core strategy, which is oppressive restriction of our opponents resources, so I cut his slots and one Bramble crush to mainboard 3x Trinisphere. And boy, what a difference that makes in focusing the deck's abilities; not only do we start the pressure sooner, but when we're at our most vulnerable and not really using our mana yet anyways.
Fair points on maindecked Trinis.
T2 Acidmoss is still the dream, but even T2 Trini/T3 LD/T4 plowunder is a seriously, seriously oppressive play, and leaves us much further ahead in tempo by turn 5 than we would have been without trini.
At some point, we have to admit we're really just all a bunch of sadists playing a deck like this.
I'm going to go back to work on prioritizing oppression (root maze, trinis) and then the other elements second. If I get a list together I don't hate, I'll post it here, but I'm thinking a baseline something like this:
20 land
3 Trinisphere
3 Root Maze
10 turn 1 ramp
4 Acid-Moss
3 Plow Under
4 Command
That leaves 13 spots to flesh out ramp, add utility, and develop a threatening win condition package. Might be possible as-is, might take some fiddling with the ratios.
Could be a worthwhile direction. Could be a waste of time, but will most certainly be fun.
I looked long and hard at Finks before moving forward with the Coursers myself. I went with Coursers because of their resilience against Bolt and because they were a good T2 against aggro and burn in an otherwise slower hand. Sometime opponents would focus attention on it, burning 2 burn spells to drop it before I could gain anything from it - which is just fine with me since it bought me time to stabilize and avoid 2 spells intended for my life total.
Other than the Wal-mart scry effect, the lifegain was always quite pronounced, especially with Acid-Moss, Prime Time, and Elder. I gained far more than 4 life a game that Finks could provide after 1 persist trigger. It's not that I think Finks is bad, far from it, but Courser provides what Finks does and then some. Since you're already hanging with 1 main, maybe a 2/2 3/1 split with Tracker instead?
As far as the bounce lock, I'm with you. When it works it works very well, but it's usually better to just run more business spells or win conditions outside Neilson's stock list.
Either way, good luck!
3 Thraben Inspector
2 Selfless Spirit
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Leonin Arbiter
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Mirran Crusader
3 Blade Splicer
3 Eldrazi Displacer
4 Flickerwisp
4 Path to Exile
Artifacts: 6
2 Smuggler's Copter
4 Aether Vial
Land: 23
1 Tectonic Edge
2 Field of Ruin
2 Mutavault
2 Shefet Dunes
3 Horizon Canopy
4 Ghost Quarter
9 Plains
1 Mirran Crusader
2 Auriok Champion
2 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Rest in Peace
2 Stony Silence
2 Sunlance
3 Dusk / Dawn
I've moved away from Restoration Angel because I'm so often using my lands for their spell effects and don't get to stay at 4 lands. I may still find a way to sneak 2 into the main with -1 Wisp and -1 Displacer, but they've been better for me overall. The Finks can set up a pretty oppressive lifegain loop with Displacers, but they are fine 3/2 dorks that come back from the dead. Crusader has been insane at my shop, and I would love to have 3 in the main somewhere if I could muster it.
Selfless Spirit's been great in testing, and works will with post-board wrath effects, which I wish were just ***/DoJ, but D/D is all I have right now. Against Combo or other decks that aren't trying to blow up my dorks, Spirits are sided out for direct hate. The Champions and last Crusader in the board are a nod to the insane amount of Jund (and burn) in my meta. If I could find a way to include the 3rd Crusader in the main by cutting a land, I would, but I'm already stressing the manabase with so many WW critters. Barring any life things, I'll post a report after the tourney tomorrow night.
That could actually be pretty absurd for us under the right circumstances, and I agree on its post-board usefulness. Like Legacy D&T sporting Enlightened Tutor and a stack of silver bullets. While it can whiff on what you're aiming for, it's likely you'll find something, and it doesn't care about our Arbiters/Heretics/Mindcensors. If any of the Sagas are good it can be even stronger, so I'm excited to at least test.
Speaking of testing, here's the list I'm going to be running in a 55-person-ish tourney tomorrow:
3x Blade Splicer
2x Eldrazi Displacer
2x Aven Mindcensor
3x Flickerwisp
2x Kitchen Finks
4x Leonin Arbiter
1x Restoration Angel
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
3x Thraben Inspector
2x Oust
4x Path to Exile
Artifacts: 6
4x Aether Vial
2x Smuggler's Copter
Lands: 22
1x Eiganjo Castle
2x Field of Ruin
4x Ghost Quarter
3x Horizon Canopy
8x Plains
2x Shefet Dunes
2x Tectonic Edge
2x Auriok Champion
2x Eidolon of Rhetoric
2x Ghostly Prison
2x Mirran Crusader
1x Dismember
2x Rest in Peace
1x Restoration Angel
2x Stony Silence
1x Worship
I'm sure this list will send some eyes twitching on this thread, but that's okay. Less than 4 PTE, Wisp, 1 Angel, and only 23 land is hard to get away from. Believe me, I've always had a hard time prying myself away from stock lists too. But I'm 4 cards off from the core overall, without much of a loss in consistency with my gameplan.
My experience with Oust from legacy was a touch different in a field awash with highly tuned and aggressive lists (Affinity/Gobs/Delver/etc). Basically, it's PTE #5-6 if we have a library denial bear (Arbiter/Mindcensor) and blow up a land with Quarter / Field after resolving it. It puts our opponnent in the unenviable position of choosing to get their dude back 2 turns from now or pay the tax to get their land. In the earlier turns it slows them down further (as far as casting stuff) if they are relying on fetches to develop their board position. It's funny when they delve to throw out an Angler or Tasigur and don't have enough in the 'yard to delve again 2 turns from now.
Worst case, sometimes I'll just Oust one of my own dorks with an ETB effect for the lifegain and for another chance at the ability (like a Finks with a -1/-1 counter on it), which has saved me in the past. Against decks that are creature-light, it's an easy thing to sideboard out for more beefy fare, but is rarely completely useless for it's ability to (slowly) recycle some of our critters.
The sideboard is mostly self-explanatory, but the Ghostly Prisons are for tokens and hyper-aggressive lists. I leaned away from Dawn / Dusk because Prison comes down a turn sooner, is easier to cast, and for the constant tax it places on them - a tax they potentially can't play if mana denial is working.
The set of protection bears is a nod towards Jund, U/R/x, Burn, and Shadow lists running amok. The singleton Worship is most certainly jank, but capable of stealing the win against the right board state.
Provided I don't scrub out in the first 4 rounds, I'll throw down a tourney report late tomorrow night or early Wednesday.
I totally missed Declaration in Stone even existing, so I'm going to pick a few up for my board as well. There were enough tokens and duplicates on the board more than once to make that a good effect. Worst case, you just pop your own dead in the water critters and hope for the best.
I originally had Fragmentize and Kataki, War's Wage in the board, but made room for more removal after seeing only 1 Affinity deck and tons of other decks with targets for that removal. I didn't run into any artifacts that had to be killed, but I can see the benefit against opposing vials and even slowing down Tron's cantrips. Besides, landing either those against Lantern would be hilarious.
Thanks!
I answer both of those questions if you click the Tournament Button in my above post, just FYI. But my losses were Jund and Mardu, and I felt like I might lose the Mono Green Tron matchup after my misplay in Game 1. Tron can overwhelm us quickly, even through LD, if we make a stupid error.
I felt pretty good in the other matchups, and a lot of my Ls came from misplays and keeping suboptimal hands. Aggressively mulliganing, utilizing my Canopies, and watching for card interactions more carefully will help shore those up down the line. Well, that and time I guess.
You just made sense out of what's been bugging me with all these Modern lists for over a month, thanks for breaking that down for me. In legacy the only 1-ofs we ran were equipment, which was a virtual 4 or 5-of due to Mystic, creatures as bullets with Recruiter was after my time. Seeing the duos lategame and singletons as a virtual 5th piece makes a lot of sense, and my eyes simply weren't communicating with my brain. Thankfully, I've long-since accepted that D&T (either modern or legacy) has a core component that shouldn't fiddled with, generally speaking.
I'm working on two lists right now, and one will sport both a singleton Mindcensor and 1-4 Vryns alongside more taxing elements (sass) and less beater elements (sass without the 's,' as in Splicer/Avenger/etc). I just need to grab a stack of the flying horsies before I finish it. I'm probably going to fill the flex spots with some Revokers, Tithe, and maybe a fifth piece of removal. I've been combing through the last 7 years of decklists looking for synergies and old strategies that may be once again viable in my current meta. I appreciate this forum's experience and direction in that.
After spending an absurd amount of time theory-crafting and scrapping lists, I managed to find a list I was pretty comfortable with and piloted to the top 8, landing 4th place out of 57 people.
The list itself:
2 Mirran Crusader
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Blade Splicer
3 Restoration Angel
4 Thraben Inspector
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Flickerwisp
4 Path to Exile
Artifacts: 6
2 Smuggler's Copter
4 Aether Vial
Land: 23
1 Eiganjo Castle
3 Horizon Canopy
3 Tectonic Edge
4 Ghost Quarter
12 Plains
1 Dismember
2 Sunlance
2 Dusk / Dawn
2 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Mirran Crusader
2 Eidolon of Rhetoric
2 Kor Firewalker
Round 1: Esper Spirits 2-1
He's a pretty skilled player that gets bored with standardized lists. He's got more of a stock Spirits build with heavier removal and some jank in the form of Zur, The Enchanter with a few bullets like Steel of the Godhead and Detention Sphere. The games were super-grindy and saw violent swings in life totals. He'd stabilize with a Geist of Saint Traft after Pushes and PTE wiped my board state, but Finks, Inspector, and Flickerwisp/Angel would routinely push me back into the green and neuter his plays with combat tricks. My sideboard wasn't a ton of help, but I remember throwing in my 3rd Crusader for a Looter Scooter and beating face. I misread Dusk / Dawn when I put it in my sideboard and wished it was a Doj/*** all night, as I often had nothing but 3-power creatures in play on my side, with 2-power dorks on his side, with no upside to /Dawn. Maybe I just boarded wrong, but I cinched game 3 by gaining a billion life off recuring/flickering Finks and double-striking my way to victory.
Round 2: Jund 0-2
Game 1 I almost got there, but he stabilized with Scooze and patiently played through my mana denial and made good decisions with his Bolts on my Crusader(s). Crusader is obviously a house here, I just wish Paladin En-Vec had double-strike. Game 2 I brought in 3 Relics and 2 Firewalkers to handle his Goofys and act as a pseudo Clue token and blank his Bolts. I wished my Firewalkers were Auriok Champions the whole night due to the Pushes/Bolts being the most prevalent spells in my meta. Game 2 he kept a 2-lander with Bob and 3 BBE. He didn't flip a single spell with Bob and played all 3 BBE's. I died in a fire, but he's a great Jund pilot.
Round 3: Grixis Death's shadow 2-1
Gurmag Angler got blocked all day Games 1-3 and most of his army couldn't block my Crusaders, or block them and live, anyway. The 3rd Crusader and 3 relics came in for the last 2 games. Game 2 he gets there with Liliana making me sacrifice my sole surviving creature. Game 3 I played tighter and more conservatively, grinding it out with (my) EOT Flickerwisp off vial 2 turns in a row to turn off his remaining black source after vialing in an Arbiter in response to his fetchland / my Quarters. The salt was real and he dropped.
Round 4: U/R Gifts Storm 2-0
Games 1 and 2 played out exactly the same during the first 2 turns. T1 Vial > T2 Inspector off Vial and play Thalia > he can't gain ground. Game 2 Eidolon came down and he bolted it and I said "sure, resolves." He tried putting the Eidolon in the graveyard when I reminded him it was a 1/4. He posed no threat and I beat him up with golems and flyers for the win. Feels good, man.
Round 5: Mono Green Tron 2-1
Missed a vial trigger game 1 like I didn't have years of D&T experience and it cost me the game. When I went to vial in Arbiter in response to Expedition Map. He Ugin'd and pooped on me. Games 2 and 3 were different and Finks did work post-Pyroclasms while his Tron pieces got Flickered during my end step / destroyed. I didn't know what to sideboard so 3 Relics came in, which just became Clue tokens, drawing me gas.
Round 6: Intentional draw into T8.
Round 1 of Top 8: 1-2 Mardu Pyromancer
This was the most fun I'd had in MTG in a long time (7 years to be exact). He was a joyful, pleasant opponent that shared banter with me as we got loopier and loopier as the night wore on (around 1:30 AM at this point). My inexperience in the format and first time seeing Mardu Pyromancer got me game 1 when he K-Commanded my Blade Splicer & Golem token in response to trying to Wisp it. Game 2 I got there off a Turn 3 and 4 Crusader. Game 3 I got him to 4 life when he looted 2 Lingering Souls and flashed them back, with no way for me to overcome his growing army, despite PTEing 2 Pyromancers and 1 Reveler. I ain't even mad.
Takeaways:
Thraben Inspector is absurd. If I ever do include Judge's Familiar or Dryad Militant in the main, it will be in addition to Inspectors. I stopped counting at 15 cards drawn off that critter through the course of the night. The P/T was useful more than once against tokens and he was just a one-way ticket to value town.
Mirran Crusader was a good call. I want to run 3 MB.
Kitchen Finks was okay. Never quite useless, never quite the bomb, resilient and helpful occasionally. Maybe he should live in the sideboard or I should find more ways to abuse him, ala Eldrazi Displacer.
My manabase was tighter than a crab's rear-end and gave me no fits, but I think I'd rather have a 2/2 split Field of Ruin and Tectonic Edge or Mutavault.
Overall, a good first foray back into D&T.
These are good points, and I think your fears are justified. Half of deckbuilding appears to me to be a balance of accepting fear and taking specific actions to mitigate it. Bolt hasn't gone out of style, but neither has Fatal Push or Path to Exile. The "Dies to terror" argument is an old one and misses the point. Your Prime Time will survive a bolt, but not a bolt snap bolt or PTE. If someone's using a bolt on our Sabertooth and not us, that may be a good thing.
The thing about Temur is that it's a 4/3 that we can run out on an empty field (after maybe LDing and depleting our hand/having other creatures removed cheaply ala' Bolt/PTE/Fatal). Unlike the Stampeding twins, we can play Temur as a threat without other creatures in play. He doesn't depend on them to remain on the battlefield, and, depending on the creature, he can turn our soft lock into a hard lock with less. We only need access to 7 mana to Acidic Slime them out of the game, 8 to go through our entire deck and remove all lands with Prime Time. That being said, there's nothing stopping you from gravitating towards the Stampeding twins over Temur. I've played both in tournaments and now that I'm working to develop my board towards the lock, Temur just offers more versatility at the (I think low and acceptable) cost of being more vulnerable.
I'm with you there, and even considered, more than once, developing something G/R off the snow mechanic. No matter how cool it was sometimes, it just was worse than established G/R Ponza. We're certainly aiming to utilize cards that don't see a lot of play or, at the very least, sequencing and strategies with established cards that are underrepresented. I agree that moving towards more oppression is a viable avenue, but I don't know if it has to be our only avenue. We're here because Neilson built a budget mono green LD list that was consistent, playable, and had a gameplan that allowed it to adapt to a wildly diverse metagame at a large tournament. He's already spoken on the subject and his deck's gameplan, but the further we get from his updated list the further we are from sharing the exact plan and lines of play.
Frankly, my goal is to see how far I can stray while retaining the core and remaining viable, maybe even more viable in my specific meta, than Neilson's list would be. It may be that I can only experience middling success and will need to return to something closer to his list, but so far that's not what I'm seeing each week. I think I'm (we're) on to something, so I'm going to pursue it and see where it leads.
I jam to the philosophy and asymmetrical thinking MTG deck building and theory crafting brings, man. This is my favorite part of the process, even more than playing (which I love). 1 Nykthos doesn't make us devotion, but it can occasionally give us access to the devotion mechanic to achieve our existing gameplan(s) faster and sometimes multiple times in a turn. Devotion lists run 4 Nykthos and engineer their non-land permanents to make that devotion better earlier. We're not (at least I'm not), and the singleton Nyx doesn't get trotted out immediately unless I can make use of it or draw it. Generally, it's game-breaking when it hits the field 80% of the time for me. I think I've already made my points on Garruk, but I'll say this: There's no compelling reason we can't run a good card from X color or Y archetype if we are in a list outside that color and archetype. If you were building your own brew of a competitive mono-X deck, would you not run
We're evaluating cards for this largely unknown and unplayed amalgam of an archetype that fit one or more of the below criteria:
1. It's good on its own and we can cast it reliably (Garruk).
2. It's potentially good in concert with 1 or more of our core cards / strategies (Steve > Mystic because of Courser)
3. It was good in the past, but has been forgotten or the meta has shifted such that it is unprepared for it (Plow Under).
4. It's good in similar archetypes adjacent to our own (whatever that may be) to be worthy of inclusion to achieve the same goals it seeks to achieve in the other archetype (Devotion/Ponza run Courser for reasons beyond it having GG in its casting cost).
I've been playing another deck since I returned to MTG for just over a month now, but I've had the cards to assemble D&T the whole time. I'm stuck in that weird place where I'm trying to find a list I'm comfortable with that meets the needs of my meta at the same time, so I've been waffling for a few weeks. At this point, I figured it's time to just post and see where a lot of you land on this stuff based off your experience. If you're the type to dismiss stuff out of hand that you've never tested, I'll probably ignore you and ask that you just ignore me. Don't worry, I'm not going to advocate for Vizzerdrix or anything crazy like that, but I do enjoy approaching deck-building asymmetrically sometimes.
Anyhow, my shop routinely breaks 50 people every Tuesday for Modern. I've seen a wide range of lists in the past month, but the most represented (from what I've played against and gleaned in-between rounds) has been:
Ad Nauseum
Burn
Flavors of Tron
U/R Gifts Storm (both fetches & fetch-less)
Jund
G/R Ponza
If I had to guess, the above makes up more than 50% of my local metagame. Aside from D&T's bone stock, which I believe to be this:
22-23 Lands
What are some of you fielding or would consider fielding against this meta? I've seen that Judge's Familiar, Aven Mindcensor and Thalia, Heretic Cathar have fallen out of favor, but they seem especially punishing in this environment with the obvious trade-offs of losing Inspector spots and fiddling with beats/tax ratios. Additionally, I've seen lists packing Smuggler's Copter and altering the D&T core to squeeze in extra utility with Dismember, Condemn, and even Mana Tithe. Personally, Oust in conjunction with Ghost Quarter, or without, can be especially useful in out-tempoing our opponents.
As you can see I've fallen into the trap of trying (or wanting) to do too many things at once. I've built heavy taxes lists, net decks of current top 8ers, heavy utility, and goofy hybrids. I keep seeing successful lists running a stack of 1-ofs (virtual 5-ofs if we count 1 Mindcensor with 4 Arbiter), 2-ofs, and 3-ofs all over the place, with the mostly-agreed-upon core being the only consistent theory in action. This, plus my inexperience with this particular format and 7 year absence has made this a real undertaking. Where do you awesome folks land on all of this?
A good hand that lacks neither? A good hand might be Treetop, Forest, Steve, Garruk, Acid-Moss, Courser, anything else. If I draw the 4th land by Turn 3 it's gravy. If not, I develop my board with Courser and see the land in short order > Moss > Garruk. If I have either/or elf/sprawl and a courser, that's a desirable hand too. I usually keep 2-land hands with any 1-2 CMC ramp. I pitch hands with 1 land in general, unless I have a stack of Sprawl/Arbor and I'm on the draw against a deck that's unlikely to kill my dude. It depends on the matchup, but I've kept fragile hands and pitched them just the same.
I've looked at him a few times, but I've played Ballista for 4 to kill a Liliana or 2 1/1 dorks (2 Swiftspears when my burn opponent was top-decking lands courtesy of Plow Under and had nothing to do). That doesn't mean Polukranos is bad by a long shot, but I'll have to wait a turn if it's early. Is there a compelling reason we can't run both?
Trinisphere comes in against Death & Taxes, Burn, aggro, and Jeskai to make their lives miserable. Depending on my opening hand, I like to sit on them until after I've started blowing up their lands for maximum sadism.
Good point on the wall of texts thing, this thread was mostly me and Ark yelling into the void for a while.
As far as Tireless Tracker, I'm already sold on his usefulness, just not on the ratios. Not that you left any room for it, but I don't even know if I'd argue about him being the best card. The problem is that I've come to see Courser as vital to my strategy and resilient in the early turns of combat. Naturally, they both die to much of the same targeted removal (and Courser dies to wayward Atarka's Commands in burn, but they serve different and I think, complementary, roles. Assuming I'd only run 3 at most without fetches, I don't even know what I'd begin to cut to include them.
As a point of reference, what's your "weird lands land d deck" list look like?
Just a few things to address in no particular order.
1. We don't splash R because that makes us a worse version of Ponza. Ponza is established, we are not. We're the illegitimate child of Ponza and Green Devotion, at least those of us running Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
2. Going under 15 LD/Plow effects is a direction we can pursue, and one I've had some pretty decent success with. However, my experiences have taught me that we want more. We want as close to 1/4 of the deck to be focused on LD (or artifacts/enchantments/lands/planeswalkers Destruction) so we can leverage our gameplan. On a slow start, a start without LD, or a start with very little LD, our creatures are unlikely to out-value our opponent's. We want to be actively doing one of 3 things every turn:
A: Attacking our opponents resources
B: Developing our own resources (ramp/utility)
C: Developing our win conditions (playing big dumb critters and turning them sideways)
3. I am sold on the silver bullet strategy, within reason. We don't need 8 1-ofs, as that's going to blow up our consistency and make for awkward board development more often than not. I like to run 1-for-1 with Primal Command, so each of my bullets has 5 virtual copies (more, with recursion). I run 4 bullets and am constantly looking for a newer, better bullet. I also run a singleton Primeval Titan (down from 2), but I don't count him as a bullet really. Generally speaking, it's almost always beneficial for me to dump my Primeval Titan to grab Nyx (Plan B) or two Treetops (Plan C). A board of Garruk, Prime Time, and 2 Treetops is win on ultimate. It has for me more than once.
4. Courser of Kruphix synergies well with Sakura-Tribe Elder, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, Primeval Titan, and of course our regular land drops. Filtering past the topdecked land, or having 2 Coursers in play for a few turns have been the difference between victory and defeat multiple times.
5. Garruk Wildspeaker is only further cementing his usefulness to me each time I cast him. He can make for some pretty absurd plays and set you up for victory as early as Turn 3:
Turn 1 Forest, Arbor Elf.
Turn 2 Forest, Utopia Sprawl to add GG, Arbor elf's ability gets us GGGG, play Garruk, +1 to untap 2 lands, Play Courser.
Turn 3: Land drop to Mwonvuli-Acid Moss (Gain 2 off Courser), Arbor untaps to get GG, Garruk +1s to get an additional GGG, play Plow Under/Primal fetching Witness.
Turn 4: Be at 10 virtual mana while your opponent is on virtual Turn 1. Fetch & Cast Prime Time w/2 treetops.
Turn 5: Ultimate FTW.
More or less, the above can happen a turn later reliably or morph into Primal lock with your favorite flavor of Stampeding Serow (Stampeding Wildebeests / Temur Sabertooth) against a deck that's also ramping or putting up a fight.
6. If you're running the loop, I have to recommend Temur Sabertooth over the competition. The loss of trample is potentially relevant, but we get to choose when we return Witness, and we can return more than one creature at a time and even go for Sabertooth beatdown if we have dorks in play to trigger the indestructible. Bouncing a Walking Ballista to mow down an army/kill planeswalkers/kill opponents and proactively bouncing & repeatedly casting Prime Time to rid our deck of lands would be potentially devastating, if you hadn't already won by that point.
All that being said, I eschewed away from the 2 Elvish Mystics and went with 3
Critters: 20
2 Acidic Slime
4 Arbor Elf
3 Courser of Kruphix
3 Eternal Witness
1 Primeval Titan
3 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Temur Sabertooth
1 Thragtusk
1 Cloudthresher
1 Walking Ballista
2 Bramblecrush
4 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
3 Plow Under
4 Primal Command
Land: 20
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
2 Treetop Village
17 Forest
Planeswalker: 3
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
Enchantment: 4
4 Utopia Sprawl
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
2 Chameleon Colossus
2 Fracturing Gust
3 Obstinate Baloth
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
3 Trinisphere
There are a lot of copies of Karn, Liliana, and Ugin floating around my meta (probably 6+ dedicated tron players). Outside that, I'd rely on the Slime(s) to blow up the non-Planeswalkers Bramblecrush misses.
Yeah, I'm aware. I haven't ever had to side it in, but I don't yet have a list with Trinis/Mazes put together. It's not that I'm not sold on the notion it'd be super oppressive, I'm sorta stuck on the ratios and options question. Topdecking either would be terrible, and finding a way to create synergy (Voyaging Satyr) and resiliency is just a big question mark in my mind.
I've found what I feel to be a viable vein with the direction I'm already in, so I'm going to need to pursue this to the end first to see if I can make something of it.
That's just burn, plenty of other decks run bolt/push/dismember, and as you gain infamy at the shop for being "The bad Ponza" guy, or sometimes more charitably, "The mono green control" guy, folks are going to kill your turn 1 play proactively.
I hear ya on the mana dudes, and I've waffled back and forth for the past month on it in my head. However, I kept the same amount of acceleration, just not at the same CMC. That builds some dead-er draws for me, and sometimes forces me to play a fair hand (4 CMC spells on turn 4), but depending on the matchup - it doesn't matter. If I turn 4 Acid-Moss, Turn 5 Plow, and Turn 6 *other LD*, I've effectively put them back on turn 2 and my dudes are bigger. If they aren't I go find a bigger dude, Ballista to mow down their dork army, or Primal / Thrag to gain 13 life. That, and Prime Time and Garruk have a special utility all their own that makes surviving slower development phases easier.
The most savage plays I've had are T1 Arbor Elf > Turn 2 Forest, Utopia Sprawl > Cast Garruk > +1 to untap and cast Courser > Turn 3 Plow Under > Turn 5 Prime Time for 2 treetops > Turn 6 Ultimate Garruk. Depending on if I have extra early accel, that can happen a turn earlier. Garruk is nuts for us and turns our zeros into heros, and he untaps Nykthos / Utopia'd Forests. And makes 3/3 beasts.
Nobody runs affinity around here, as they've been hated out of the meta pretty hard by a lot of players. We had 52 this past Tuesday and routinely had 40+, so the format's actually pretty diverse here. I still have Fracturing Gust for them in my list, but I've seen all but JTMS out of those planesewalkers, and the Ballista (aside from my own) and Wurmcoil.
That being said, you're still right. It's sort of a wash either way, but each copy of Reclaiming Vines is just counted as Acidic Slime #4-5 to me, so having the ability to blow up a Liliana would be nice. I regretted my Harmonizes against Jund Round 6, as he Ultimated her games 2 and 3, but may just be sentimentalism here because he shredded my hand of any business spells I would have had to draw into them anyway.
I sided in the Obstinate Baloths and Chameleon Colossuss, but he (Jund) just ignored them and used only targeted Discard.
We have a hard time doing anything truly notable against early discard. The early turn plays like Courser offer us resiliency and (some) stability. Saying that, Sak Elder/Trini/Root maze might help make those turns even smoother for us.
At least now it's out in the open we can come up with a fitting deck name
I don't think anything's wrong with that strategy, but it always leaves me wondering if we're missing out on something. We gain consistent turns, but are vulnerable to strategies that disrupt it. I will say I do like Sakura-Tribe Elder cause he's not just a dork. He's a chump block, provides next-turn acceleration, and thins out our deck. I always look at him and wonder if I can find room again.
Can't say I disagree. I run 2 Bramblecrush, but your argument is compelling, though I do thin it's nice to have the option since we already have Slime.
I've never regretted casting Prime Time. He's either provided the impetus for my opponent to scoop, put me in a position to survive, or helped start savage (sadistic) plays. However, 1 may not be a bad call, and the only thing I'd fiddle with in your list would be -1 Prime and -1 Slime for 1 other win con (we rarely cast 2 Primes in a game and it's totally acceptable to go get it with Command) and maybe the combo piece in: Stampeding Serow / Stampeding Wildebeests / Temur Sabertooth. Your ratios largely stay the same and you can squeeze in a Ballista/Queen/etc and have more options.
Fair points on maindecked Trinis.
At some point, we have to admit we're really just all a bunch of sadists playing a deck like this.
I'm going to go back to work on prioritizing oppression (root maze, trinis) and then the other elements second. If I get a list together I don't hate, I'll post it here, but I'm thinking a baseline something like this:
20 land
3 Trinisphere
3 Root Maze
10 turn 1 ramp
4 Acid-Moss
3 Plow Under
4 Command
That leaves 13 spots to flesh out ramp, add utility, and develop a threatening win condition package. Might be possible as-is, might take some fiddling with the ratios.