Are you sure? If you cast Reward first and Sunrise last, Sunrise resolves first and returns the Crypt to your opponent's side.
Sunrise first, Reward second:
Sunrise (last to resolve)
Crypt
Reward (first to resolve)
Reward resolves - eggs return, Crypt does not
Crypt resolves - exiles Reward
*Crack everything again*
Sunrise resolves - eggs + Crypt return
Net result: 2 cycles
Reward first, Sunrise second:
Reward (last to resolve)
Crypt
Sunrise (first to resolve)
Sunrise resolves - eggs + Crypt return
1) Do nothing - Reward has no effect
2) Crack eggs - opponent Crypts on the stack:
Reward
Crypt
Cracked eggs
Crypt
Net result: 1 cycle OR you lose all your eggs.
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- izzetmage
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Member for 12 years, 9 months, and 3 days
Last active Wed, Jan, 8 2020 11:38:36
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Phoenix top deck by win % at two GPs, KCI second
Personally I wouldn't play it, especially not in this meta, where it's "yes, please help me discard my Arclight Phoenix/Bloodghast/whatever so I don't have to go through the trouble of Looting it myself".
D&T has a lot less free wins off Leonin Arbiter nowadays because more decks aren't playing fetchlands (e.g. Humans, Hardened Scales, even Storm. UW has 4 fetches instead of 8). Also, Pod is banned and Scapeshift isn't what it used to be.
Kaya is a terrible card. Nihil Spellbomb and Rest in Peace exile whole graveyards, not just two cards. You can only activate her ability at sorcery speed, so your opponent can just dump creatures and revive them on his turn, e.g. Loot a Bloodghast and play a land while Kaya is unable to do anything about it. Her -1 is Isolate that hits a few other inconsequential things.
It's not enough to just look at Kaya and say "oh she has lots of targets vs different decks, therefore she is good", you have to think "OK, I've exiled their stuff - now what?" Are they gonna kill you anyway because there's so much more where that came from? Probably yes.
Hallowed Moonlight is a bad SB card because it only slows your opponent for one turn, but doesn't force them to go through the motions of rebuilding their graveyard. If I blow Nihil Spellbomb against a Bloodghast deck for example, not only do I stop the Bloodghasts from coming in, but my opponent also has to work to get more Bloodghasts into his graveyard again, since the Bloodghasts that would have come in are now sitting in exile. This buys you a lot more time than Hallowed Moonlight - if you Moonlight an opponent who's about to revive Bloodghast, he just chooses to not revive them since the ability is optional. Crucially, the Bloodghasts are still in his graveyard (not in exile, like the Spellbomb case), ready to jump out on landfall. The same applies to Aether Vial.
Prized Amalgam has to piggyback off Bloodghast or Narcomoeba and those are optional. Collected Company says "up to two", zero is up to two.
- Augury Owl, which is more Mystic Speculation than Preordain
- Augur of Bolas and Glint-Nest Crane, which can only grab specific types of cards. Notably NOT lands (except Darksteel Citadel), meaning if you're stuck on 2 lands they don't dig you out of it.
- Silvergill Adept, which does actually see play, albeit not in a very good deck
A 2-drop with literal Preordain (not "Preordain if you close one eye and squint") would 100% see play.The other way is to get two Swords on the field. You can see an example of this in Seth's video. https://youtu.be/pl8ghdAgeXE?t=2547
Also, like KCI, you have Sai postboard.
P.S. ex-KCI players, you might want to give this deck a shot, it's got Trawlers and Mox in it and you feel like a genius when comboing off.
RIP SFM speculators
This announcement is something new, "excessively arcane rules interactions" is now a factor.
P.S. also, a word of silence for all the jank tier 5 brews with Sword of the Meek + Thopter Foundry + Krark-Clan Ironworks. Or the combo on Johnny, Combo Player himself.
Facts:
- There were five GPs with 16 or more copies of Ancient Stirrings in the T8: Lyon, Las Vegas, Sao Paulo, Atlanta, and most recently Oakland.
- Four different Ancient Stirrings decks have won five separate GPs: RG Eldrazi at Lyon, KCI at Hartford and Las Vegas, Hardened Scales at Prague, Tron at Hong Kong. Amulet also came close, losing to (what else?) KCI in the finals of Hartford.
Wanna count PTs too? OK, then notch another win for Lantern at PT RIX.
Is there any other nonland card that's even come close to what Stirrings has done? I'm serious - I encourage anyone reading this to go dig through GP decklists for any Modern staple at all (Looting, Hierarch, Bolt, SV, Mox Opal, ...) and see how they stack up to our favorite green cantrip. The closest I found was Looting, with four GP wins (Dredge at Barcelona, Mardu Pyromancer at Sao Paulo, Grixis DS at Portland, UR Phoenix at Oakland). It's got nothing on Stirrings' T8 count though, and DS doesn't run it as a 4-of.If you're not using Electrodominance to play one of the costless Time Spiral suspend spells, all it really does is deal X damage for RR. Electrodominance for X=2 costs 4 mana, deals 2 damage to something, and you get a 2-drop out of it. Bolt followed by hardcasting a 2-drop costs 3 mana, deals 3 damage to something, and you get the same 2-drop out of it.
Some sequences that are possible with Shimmer instead of Peer, assuming you hit all land drops untapped (note that this criterion is more likely with the older fetchland builds):
T2 Shimmer getting Unlife/SSG, T3 Unlife, T4 SSG into Ad Nauseam
T2 Shimmer getting Prism, T3 Prism, T4 Angel's Grace + Ad Nauseam
In Storm it digs pretty deep for a Baral/Electromancer, although current lists spam 1-mana cantrips (Opt) and have counters for opposing hate (Remand, Unsubstantiate) at 2+ mana. Adding more 2-mana spells could throw that off balance.
Some old Goblin decks played Frenzied Goblin. Tin Street Dodger is kinda close. It doesn't let your whole team swing unopposed against one blocker like Frenzied Goblin does, but it can chip for 1 every turn in the late game no matter how many (non-defender) blockers your opponent has. Haste is also pretty hard to play around - it's free damage after your opponent taps out for a board wipe, and your opponent can be caught completely off-guard by a creature that wasn't there on the battlefield a turn ago (and who, other than dedicated Goblin players, knows what each little Goblin does anyway?!)
None
4
Skewer the Critics
3
Rampage of the Clans
Deputy of Detention
Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
Incubation//Incongruity
2
Shimmer of Possibility
Sphinx of Foresight
Cry of the Carnarium
Electrodominance
Light Up the Stage
Tin Street Dodger
Growth-Chamber Guardian
Growth Spiral
1
The rest
Reprints: shocklands
I think the Sphinx, Pteramander, and Electrodominance are overrated. Light Up the Stage had my interest for a while until Skewer the Critics showed up. Growth Spiral would be higher if Temur/BTL Scapeshift was still a deck.
Skewer the Critics is a great card, but for one deck only. Deputy of Detention would be the opposite, not super good (probably SB), but can see play in multiple decks.
Growth-Chamber Guardian seems like a good sleeper pick. It's like Self-Assembler, but you can split the 5 mana payment 2-3 (also meaning it's Collectable), and it's in a mana-making creature type. Elves does already have a mana sink though, and it's a lord to boot.
As always, data includes MTGO 5-0s.
Citywide Bust: 0
Hunted Witness: 0
Venerated Loxodon: 0
Mission Briefing: 8
Radical Idea: 0
Sinister Sabotage: 0
Creeping Chill: 78
Doom Whisperer: 0
Gruesome Menagerie: 0
Mausoleum Secrets: 0
Necrotic Wound: 1
Plaguecrafter: 3
Ritual of Soot: 1
Arclight Phoenix: 90
Experimental Frenzy: 5
Goblin Cratermaker: 1
Legion Warboss: 5
Maximize Velocity: 21
Risk Factor: 24
Runaway Steam-Kin: 7
Beast Whisperer: 3
Nullhide Ferox: 4
Pelt Collector: 2
Assassin's Trophy: 166
Chance for Glory: 0
Crackling Drake: 53
Deafening Clarion: 1
Emmara, Soul of the Accord: 0
Firemind's Research: 4
Ionize: 2
Knight of Autumn: 155
Lazav, the Multifarious: 0
Ral, Izzet Viceroy: 35
Tajic, Legion's Edge: 12
Unmoored Ego: 8
Discovery//Dispersal: 3
Chamber Sentry: 0
Impervious Greatwurm: 3
The big winners were Arclight Phoenix and Crackling Drake, spawning a whole archetype by themselves and winning the most recent GP. Other winners were Dredge (Creeping Chill) and Noble Hierarch/Aether Vial decks (Knight of Autumn). To nobody's surprise, Assassin's Trophy came out on top, although what may come as a surprise is how little BGx has moved after gaining this new removal spell.
Ral, Izzet Viceroy was an unexpected winner. It's played mostly as a 1-of in the SB of UR Phoenix, where it's a big threat that can set up Phoenixes and pump Drake with its +1, and kill stuff with >3 toughness with its -3.
As for duds? Man, there were more than a few. Mission Briefing made Mill better, but not "there yet", and went virtually unplayed everywhere else. Mausoleum Secrets held no secrets. Plaguecrafter and Tajic, Legion's Edge did not make the cut in Humans (while, ironically, the non-Human Knight of Autumn did). Unmoored Ego was just a SB card, and not a good one at that, no matter how unfair extracting a Tron land or basic land sounds.
On the subject of extraction effects, having now seen two in recent sets go nowhere (Lost Legacy and Unmoored Ego), it's probably time to stop putting them on a pedestal. It's very tempting to think that they can auto-win combo matchups, but the truth is that combo decks will side into alternate wincons. You're better off trying to stop them from comboing off (killing their engines, taxing their spells) than trying to remove their wincons.
There's another topic that GRN sparked: punisher cards. Risk Factor saw some play (although I do not believe it will stay for the long-term) and Vexing Devil was used in Pelt Collector decks. For the most part, conventional wisdom (i.e. punisher cards are bad and you shouldn't play them) holds. However, if the punisher card combos with the rest of your deck (e.g. Vexing Devil evolving Pelt Collector and Experiment One, Risk Factor triggering Runaway Steam-Kin and discarding Arclight Phoenix and Fiery Temper), then they are passable in that deck. I should note that that doesn't imply said deck becomes good - Pelt Collector Zoo does not have many results, and UR Phoenix has overtaken mono-red.
Speaking of Phoenix, play cantrips. ktkenshinx knows me for always saying this. I feel like every combo deck goes through a phase during its development when people are trying out all sorts of new cards and they have the choice between playing explosive cards like Simian Spirit Guide (or, in Phoenix's case, Runaway Steam-Kin) and playing Serum Visions. Inevitably, SV always wins - it's happened to Amulet with Summer Bloom, Cheeri0s, and now Phoenix. Just play cantrips.