General The Constructed thread

Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
Well, that ended quickly. So I just burned through all my matches here were my results:

Round 1 vs UB Delver 2-0
Well that didn't take long to find a delver.
Apparently bounce is good against delve creatures and the glacial rays finished off the delvers whenever they appeared. Felt in control during both games. He timed out in game 2 but I'll take it as a win.

Round 2 vs Burn 1-2
Game 1 and after a Rift Bolt, Curse of the Pierced Heart and two lightning bolts I know I have absolutely no chance and look at my hand of Consuming Vortex's and sigh.
Game 2 I take out the vortex's and torrent of stone's to put in the vital surges and wear away. I slowly set up with some draw spells and hit away two Goblin Fireslinger with some spliced Glacial Rays. Peer for a Vital Surge and splice it onto everything I can. I managed to get to 8 life with him having no cards in hand and won from there.
Game 3 he does what he usually does and I dig hopelessly to find a Vital Surge. It hits turn 6, he Fireblasts me and I peer in response. Whiff on the Surge and sadly have to gg.

Round 3 vs Artifact Jeskai 0-2
Game 1 he gets an early Kuldotha Rebirth and I struggle to take them down as I am taking down Lone Missionary's Glint Hawks and Mulldrifters during each other turn. I get to 7 life and he Galvanic Blasts me twice.
Game 2 was pretty close. He kept using Ichor Wellsprings and Glint Hawks to draw cards while I ramping, filtering and burning them away. He kept throwing value guys out and some burn when we had it and we eventually get to this point.
zqNQMsw.png


So he has Galvanic Blasted me at the end of my turn. I have a feeling he might have enough burn to finish me off. So I just go for it and Ire of Kaminari. It resolves, so I fire off the other one and get mana leaked. Then proceed to die to burn during his turn. Don't know if I should have Surged there or something, oh well.

Round 4 vs Naya Slivers 2-0
This is the matchup I live for. All I need is a Glacial Ray in hand at the start and they almost cannot win. I had a small heart attack in this game when he dropped a Heart Sliver, Hive Stirrings and Muscle Sliver in one turn, when I was tapped out (Cursed Kodama's Reach being a sorcery). I managed to mitigate the damage then just double Ire him out.
Game 2 he must have been on the surprise plan because he didn't play a spell for the first 5 turns. I just burned through my library with two dampen thoughts during this process and managed to kill him on turn 7 with double Ire.

Round 5 vs Esper Familiar 0-2
Game 1 on the draw the first thing I do is Kodama's Reach. His turn 4 entails Sunscape Familiar -> Cloud of Faeries -> Swamp -> evoke Mulldrifter -> Sac trigger on the stack Ghostly Flicker on drifter and faerie -> Preordain -> Cloud of Faeries -> Nightscape Familiar -> Snap Mulldrifter -> Sunscape Familiar -> Mulldrifter. Oh boy am I in trouble.
So I just pass turn holding up some terrible instants then he Capsize's two of my lands and I know I have lost and scoop.
Game 2 has some interesting plays. I manage to Eye to Nowhere a Bounceland on turn 3 for value. I also dispel a snap and a ghostly flicker to stop combo shenanigans. My only issue was that I was stuck on only islands. So there I was sitting there with an electrickery and Glacial Ray in hand while my opponent drops a mnemonic wall and starts to go infinite with ghostly flicker and cloud of faeries. Than capsizes all my lands so I dampen thought him twice for vengeance and concede.

So overall I went 2-3 with my pile and to be honest it was what I expected. What I didn't expect was the complete lack of mono blue delver as my opponent. I would have liked some more aggro matchups but, eh that's how it goes. I have no idea how to beat familiar combo with this deck. Just need to be lucky I guess. I am definitely going to put in the last Vital Surge in the SB though. It is the nuts against red. Thanks for reading my results. If you have any suggestions on how to improve certain matchups I am more than willing to listen. I really do love this deck and will probably run though a league with it again.
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
Jason Waddell said:
Any changes planned to deck Kirb?
Click to expand...

Current changes so far:
Out: 2x Torrent of Stone, 2x Consuming Vortex
In: 4x Vital Surge.
I also shifted the lands around a little to deal with the addition of more green.

I found those cards sat in my hand a little too often. The vital surges are great against any deck running red. As I sided them in during the artifact jeskai match and they really pulled their weight. All this deck needs to do is buy time and they do that better than the other two cards in more situations so they go in. Who would of though that an almost worse Healing Salve was what I was looking for.

The Sideboard I have changed to:
4x Dispel
4x Electrickery
4x Eye of Nowhere
3x Wear Away

I have an unheathly obsession with Electrickery in pauper, but it is for any token deck and bogles. Dispel is for any blue deck because them countering a huge spliced spell is just sad. Eye of Nowhere is just a throw in for any deck trying to be greedy with bouncelands. The wear aways are pretty obvious.

The problem is you really need a high density of arcane spells to make the deck function. I would like it if I didn't have any non-arcane cards in the main, to keep the consistency (Hana Kami gets a pass).

I mean here are the options for other possible arcane spells to choose from:


The first five there are the only ones I would consider adding at this point. The reason I am not running Sift or Ideas Unbound is not only because of the double blue, but because of the fact they don't actually give me card advantage. This is why I am running Murmurs From Beyond instead. The fact you lose the best card has only mattered once so far (in that artifact jeskai match, I lost a mountain when I was colour screwed). Maybe it might be worth trying one of them or maybe the psychic puppetry in the 2 consuming vortex slots left in the main, as the vital surges should still do their job, and I have the Eye to Nowhere's in the SB if I need bounce.

Having a great time mucking around. I might throw in 8 tickets for another league run once I am finished with the adjustments. Best part is the deck only costs like 2 tix and I still have plenty of credit leftover to make adjustments.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
For the paper Peasant lovers over here, I just discovered that the French and German communities (who are still active, unlike the Groningen community) have teamed up in a council and unified their rules. They now both use gatherer, and have completely reevaluated the banned list. I'll refer to the below site for rules, decklists, etc. It's much more current than my antiquated blog (that I can't even edit anymore since I passed on the organizer torch).

http://mtg-peasant.com/home/
http://mtg-peasant.com/rules/

Edit: Sweet. I recognize most of the decks, but there are still a few new ones for me. A shaman tribal deck won a 10-person tournament in Lyon :)

Monkey Fap is also new to me. That looks nasty!
I guess it gets free wins against Thopter Combo, which is a deck that has been wrecking our metagame before we banned the Foundry.
Sphinx's Tutelage is of course new to me in Peasant, since we stopped before that got printed. Won a 21-man!
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Thats not a bad record considering you were running a somewhat niche rogue deck, kirb. I feel like you got a little unlucky in a few of those games.

Familiar is a pretty brutal deck to play against, and I'm not sure what the plan is there besides just race them. As an aside, I feel like there has to be something awesome that can be done with toils of night and day, desperate ritual, nightscape familiar and bouncelands.

I need to get on the jank train. I would run sprouting vines combo with jace's erasure, but don't want to spend the money on moment's peace.

There were a few decks from metagame.ita that looked pure rogue (just ignore the italian, lists are in english).

Bug Harpy



Essence warden + cavern harpy + cloud of faeries + bouncelands creates an infinite loop, producing infinite life. Add in wirewood sage to draw your entire deck, looking for the kill condition: maggot carrier.

RUG Watch Rites



Combo large scale token production with keep watch, and kill with rites of initiation. I have a soft spot for raid bombardment, and this is another deck that lets me run four.

Balustrade Combo



No Lands! Kill condition is the one of haunting misery. Probably won't make it though, as I don't want to buy lotus petals, but anything that makes mana with songs of the damned catches me interest.

I also made this weird RWG Madness deck


Mad Tired

Creatures (22)
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Squadron Hawk
3 Granger Guildmage
3 Benevolent Bodyguard
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Tireless Tribe

Spells (19)
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Apostle's Blessing
4 Fiery Temper
3 Inside Out
1 Journey to Nowhere
3 Manamorphose
3 Lightning Axe

Lands (19)
3 Plains
3 Forest
4 Mountain
4 Evolving Wilds
3 Blossoming Sands
2 Rugged Highlands

SB (15)
4 Pyroblast
2 Young Wolf
3 Electrickery
4 Ancient Grudge
2 Molten Rain

(0)


And a Mardu Metalcraft deck


Need More Siege Rhino

Creatures (13)
4 Glint Hawk
4 Kor Skyfisher
1 Gurmag Angler
4 Bleak Coven Vampires

Spells (25)
4 Galvanic Blast
2 Journey to Nowhere
1 Firebolt
3 Kuldotha Rebirth
1 Grim Harvest
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ichor Wellspring
4 Prophetic Prism
2 Terminate

Lands (22)
4 Bloodfell Caves
4 Wind-Scarred Crag
4 Ancient Den
4 Great Furnace
4 Vault of Whispers
2 Bog Wreckage

SB (15)
2 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Electrickery
3 Ray of Revelation
3 Ancient Grudge
3 Chainer's Edict
1 Lone Missionary

(0)


Seemed reasonable when I ran it, though it had some problems. These artifact decks are really vulnerable to any sort of AF hate hitting their lands, and I lost to a tron player game 3 because of ancient grudge.
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

I don't know which blue decks get better/more diverse as a result of the ban, which is why I think their reasoning is pretty poor.
What options are there in blue (not Merfolk) that are still competitive in Modern, given that Tron and Eldrazi, along with Infect/Affinity/Burn will be the new top-tier decks?
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

vennythekid said:
Does anyone else on the forums play Modern? WoTC released their new B&R and...
Splinter Twin [and Summer Bloom] are banned in Modern!
Click to expand...


My Modern experience is all pre-2014, but Twin was an abysmal deck to play against when it drew a nice mix of combo and protection. I've heard it kept the noninteractive decks in check, though, as it can disrupt them and then combo itself quickly thereafter, so it'll be interesting to see if more all-in strategies start appearing in the upper echelon of competitive Modern. I really enjoyed Modern during the Blazing Shoal era (played a Doran, the Siege Tower 4c Junk deck), but never got too into it again beyond playing Melira Pod here and there.

My expectations of clicking this thread were not met; Grillo, how does Cloud of Faeries leaving Pauper shake things up?!
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

vennythekid said:
I don't know which blue decks get better/more diverse as a result of the ban, which is why I think their reasoning is pretty poor.
What options are there in blue (not Merfolk) that are still competitive in Modern, given that Tron and Eldrazi, along with Infect/Affinity/Burn will be the new top-tier decks?
Click to expand...

It's amusing to think how blue dominated latter-day Extended but hasn't been able to get a solid foothold in Modern. It must *really* need Chrome Mox or Sensei's Divining Top. Whatever happened to the UWR control deck?
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Here is a pretty good article about the topic.

Its a little angry, but I think he hit the nail on the head. The tldr version being:

It’s really hard to justify buying into a top-tier Modern deck right now. Everything is in danger of banning just for being good and just because Wizards wants to make things interesting for a single event. This puts us in a situation where investments are dangerous and Wizards doesn’t appear to respect how players allocate resources to their decks.
Click to expand...

Giving how expensive a single deck can be, that seems like a much bigger issue even before we start talking about metagame consequences.

If just seems really funny to me that they make this move in an expensive format, but than they take literally years to make necessary bans in pauper (and when they do they are still very conservative), the cheapest eternal format.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
re pauper:

Its a good change, but probably not enough.

The cloud of faeries ban is a step in the right direction, but was very conservative. That familiar deck will still exist, it just has to go off in a slightly different manner, chaining snap and archaeomancer/mnemonic wall casts with a critical mass of familiars/bouncelands.

I don't think WOTC understands that deck, it really is much closer to the summer bloom deck (though probably better within the context of its format) as its essentially a resilient combo deck that can also run off of a grindy ramp plan. The ability to up storm count means that it can use reaping the graves to overwhelm most removal suites, and just outpace decks looking to win via incremental gains or card advantage.

It can still execute that game plan, it just looks to be less streamlined without cloud of faeries, and thats assuming there doesn't exist a more snap focused build to switch to. It may not substantially hurt the deck tbh. It seems like they don't want to eliminate that combo deck, and are taking a really tentative step towards railing it in/didn't know that you could still go off with snap. I'm guessing the latter.

What is interesting is the impact it has on mono U delver, which now has an important part of its rube goldberg tempo generation contraction removed. Spellstutter sprite becomes much worse, which at least superficially makes ninja of the deep hours worse. Maybe we'll see $$$ builds based more on x4 daze, or another shift towards U/x delver builds. I don't know, but thats potentially exciting at least.

Anything that makes the format less condensed so that people can run CIPT dual lands and not feel horrible is a good thing.

What they need to do though, is ban ponder and preordain (the same conclusion I came to for the same reasons--blue dominance-- in my own format). They just add so much consistency to blue decks as to overshadow every other colors draw smoothing tools and thus question their existence. Think twice or impulse is a healthy place for the format to be as far as blue draw smoothing is concerned i.m.o.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Without knowing anything about Modern, could they have just banned Serum Visions to hamper the consistency of the Twin deck, without nuking the titular card? Do fair blue decks bother with stuff like Visions, or is that just a pure combo enabler?
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

Chris: MTGO Academy said:
It's amusing to think how blue dominated latter-day Extended but hasn't been able to get a solid foothold in Modern. It must *really* need Chrome Mox or Sensei's Divining Top. Whatever happened to the UWR control deck?
Click to expand...
With Pod out of the format, fast aggro/combo is extremely strong in the format (Burn, Affinity and Infect have always been top tier or close to it), and to answer these decks you either need to be playing your own fast combo (i.e. Twin, Amulet) or be able to tear apart combo player's hands with discard and heavy removal (i.e. Jund, Junk, Grixis) and win through attrition. UWr simply can't keep up with that as the lack of cheap card selection prevents it from drawing the proper answers in time.

Birthing Pod decks kept many of these fast combo decks in check because it could consistently tutor its "silver-bullets" (Kitaki vs Affinity, Finks->Rhino->Thragtusk for Burn, Melira for Infect, Linvala for Pod/Twin, etc.) postboard whilst playing a strong midrange creature deck. So essentially, Pod supressed all the fast aggro-combo decks to an extent.

UWr Control was born out of the old standard UWr Flash-Revelation decks from Innistrad/RTR and was hence built to have answers for the meta at the time, which was Pod, Affinity, Twin, and Jund. Jund was its bad matchup, but once Deathrite Shaman got banned out, the matchup evened out to be 50-50. UWr became the premier control deck and was extremely successful because the meta gave it matchups that were either favorable or even. This established a tier-one "UR Snapcaster-Bolt" archetype in Modern.

Enter the Treasure Cruise meta. Treasure Cruise heavily rewards proactive play, which UWr was not. So the dominant UR Snapcaster deck became UR Cruise Delver, and it was dominant because it was the most proactive UR deck and because Treasure Cruise was a mistake. The main deck that could compete with Delver at the time was Birthing Pod, because Delver (in Modern) has always struggled with large (bigger than Bolt) value creatures that gained life on the board (AKA Siege Rhino). So the meta became Delver vs Pod, and realizing their mistake, Wizards banned Cruise and Dig (rightfully so) but also banned Birthing Pod because it was too high a meta percentage. (Which is a whole other beef I have but I'll save that for a later date).

So with Birthing Pod and Delver gone, new decks arise: the fast combo decks that Pod suppressed (Burn, Infect, more Affinity), along with Rhino-Junk. With a new metagame in mind, the UR deck had to evolve. UWr was too slow and not proactive enough to be able to handle pressure from the new fast-combo decks nor could it compete with Lingering Souls, Rhino, and Liliana out of the Junk deck, so UWr was pushed out in favor of Twin, a deck that could combo against fast combo but still play control (albeit a weak control game) against the other decks.

Then, more delve cards got printed...
Tasigur, Gurmag Angler, Kolaghan's Command, and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy breathed life into Modern control once more. At first, these cards were played in the Twin shell, but soon split into its own archetype. Delve allowed control to have a stable board presence early while still being able to grind longer matchups (i.e. Jund and Junk) with K-Command. With the prevalence of Grixis and GBx in the meta, Tron saw a surge in popularity as a response (Tron is very good in against control/midrange, as it out mana-s and has ineveitability in the form of the Eldrazi Titans). Also seeing play now are Colloected Company and Chord of Calling decks that play their namesake cards in leu of Birthing Pod. They're strong creature decks that lack the consistency and raw power/card advantage/flexibility of Pod. Somewhere in this timeline, players perfected the Amulet Bloom combo deck as well (giving it sorta-consistent T2-T3 wins). Shortly after BFZ was released, a new Bx Eldrazi deck has been on the rise; it plays a similar game to Tron, utilizing Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi temple to power-out large value creatures and eventually Eldrazi Titans. UWr control has difficulty competing against these "big mana decks" (Tron, Eldrazi, Bloom) as well because of their late game inevitability.

So to recap, the meta (as of yesterday) was:
Fast Aggro/Combo: Affinity, Burn, Infect, Bloom
Midrange: Junk, Jund, Grixis, Chord/Coco
Splinter Twin (UR, Grixis, Tarmo variants)
Big Mana: Tron, Bx Eldrazi, Bloom

As of the B&R announcement, remove Bloom and Twin:
Fast Aggro/Combo: Affinity, Burn, Infect
Midrange: Junk, Jund, Grixis, Chord/Coco
Big Mana: Tron, Eldrazi

My personal thoughts about where Modern is headed:
Jund, Junk, and Grixis were strong because they preyed on Twin and each other ("fair" decks), but can't compete with Big Mana. So they've lost their main good matchup and their worse matchups (Big Mana) are more prevelant. BGx falls out of the meta.
Grixis is a midrange deck that can't compete with Bx Eldrazi or Tron, and it's other good matchup (Twin) is gone. Grixis falls out, and there isn't a blue deck to play.
Tron's worst matchup historically has been Twin. No longer. Tron is still good against aggro/combo because Pyroclasm is strong in those matchups and Karn/Wurmcoil/O-stone are good stabilizers.
Fast aggro decks are still strong, and their sideboards open up now that Twin isn't a concern. They can streamline and ignore interaction even more.
Because of the nature of the Eldrazi deck (its cards generate value on cast, not resolution, so counterspells are poor), and the prevalence of Burn, a 3-color control deck won't be viable, ever.

So the meta will become: Big Mana and Fast Aggro/Combo.
We're back to square one, only the two most popular decks that Modern players enjoyed playing (Pod and Twin) aren't available anymore.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
That seems about right. My dorky grixis delver deck vanished from the meta because of the big mana matchups (it cant beat tron), and I dont see how it, or a delverless varient can return now. One of the reasons to play the deck was the splinter twin matchup.

I had originally invested in it because I told myself that even if delver tanked, I could upgrade it to another grixis deck, or splinter twin. That is evidently now impossible.

There really is no reason for the ban, and you can see that in the non existent reasoning they provided. It seems to support the idea the ban was made to spice up the pro tour.
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

Grillo_Parlante said:
There really is no reason for the ban, and you can see that in the non existent reasoning they provided. It seems to support the idea the ban was made to spice up the pro tour.
Click to expand...

Yeah, what I really hate about this (and the article you linked echoes this sentiment) is that Modern was sold to players as a non-rotating format, and now Wizards has imposed a yearly rotation to the format under the guise of "spicing up the format."
 
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