It feels like you could take advantage of this card. If you're ahead on cards but behind on the board, it can completely decimate your opponent, and if you're behind on cards, it can act as an equalizer, setting both sides to 0.
Is there a place for a Stax-ish deck in Modern? It's a powerful effect, and has the potential to put both sides into a situation your opponent hasn't prepared for, but you've built your deck for it (neither side having any permanents on the battlefield and no cards in hand). What would a Descent into Madness shell look like?
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Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Much longer answer, there is better cards that can flip the situation on you. You dont want to sit back and equalize, or come back. you want to win. Stax wants to win. thats why things they pitch have usefulness. This, does not. Stuff gets exiled, not yarded.
The issue with it is that it exiles the permanents. If they weren't exiled, then you could play around with graveyard mechanics and what not, but exiling literally just makes it a 'bring the game to a screeching halt until a player is able to stop this card'. You're right about the effect being powerful, and maybe there's a way to use it (maybe with that sphinx that you can cast from exile or something), but for now, I don't see anyone making this card into a decent deck idea that isn't already similar to something far better like deathcloud.
Rock build where you get 2-for-1 advantage with anything possible, then drop this to further extenuate the board position that you can race much better than your opponent.
Possibly push hard on discard early to ditch their hand, thus you'll be getting board exiles when this drops as opposed to discarded lands. Focus on CitP abilities like Nekrataal as opposed to spells like Go for the Throat so you have stuff to exile when Madness hits. Master of the Wild Hunt could be of use to give you removal and tokens to slaughter.
Recursive cards like Gravecrawler and Bloodghast that can return for future exile when necessary, maybe even combine them with the use of Deadly Allure to force creature trades.
Spells with board-impacting effects like Lingering Souls and Call of the Herd will be crucial to give you permanents to exile.
Bitterblossom would absolutely be the nuts if it was legal with this card, but sadly not.
Obviously, Tron would be difficult to combat unless you could drop this early...
Looks like a ****ty, overcosted version of Smokestack. Maybe in a discard heavy shell where you disrupt their hand and force them to sac/discard useful stuff. Maybe R/B land destruction with hand disruption?
UUU Talrand, Sky Summoner // (W/U)(W/U)(W/U) Grand Arbiter Augustin IV // RRR Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker // (R/G)(R/G)(R/G) Wort, the Raidmother // URG Riku of Two Reflections // RWU Ruhan of the Fomori
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This is why I started playing magic in the first place. It wasn't PT aspirations just making noobs cry by doing things that are perfectly fair.
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Part of me wants to combo this with Misthollow Griffin and maybe Bottled Cloister...but even then, it's not very good, unless you already have a favorable board position, in which case it's a "win more" card. I can't see any usefulness of it.
Curse of the Cabal seems like it would be far superior for this type of effect. And we haven't exactly been sing that causing any waves.
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I support WotC's goal of shaping Modern in favor of diversity.
I ran a thought experiment on my blog Modern in a Nuclear Wasteland
of an extreme case of banning 20 more cards to make sure they get everything, then scaling back where appropriate. WotC seems to be on a slowly build up approach. Both ways probably reach similar end points.
The post Gatecrash metagame is proving to be closer to the endpoint than I estimated, so its very possible that few (if any) more cards need to be banned.
The only way I could see this working is if you ran some sort of deck in which you could keep drawing a lot of cards while keeping your opponent with almost no cards in hand, so that they would have to exile permanents while you wouldn't.
But even if you could make it work, it wouldn't be any good for modern, or even standard; just a casual deck at best.
Is there a place for a Stax-ish deck in Modern? It's a powerful effect, and has the potential to put both sides into a situation your opponent hasn't prepared for, but you've built your deck for it (neither side having any permanents on the battlefield and no cards in hand). What would a Descent into Madness shell look like?
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Much longer answer, there is better cards that can flip the situation on you. You dont want to sit back and equalize, or come back. you want to win. Stax wants to win. thats why things they pitch have usefulness. This, does not. Stuff gets exiled, not yarded.
Modern Junk Primer
Legacy ANT Primer
L1 Judge
Possibly push hard on discard early to ditch their hand, thus you'll be getting board exiles when this drops as opposed to discarded lands. Focus on CitP abilities like Nekrataal as opposed to spells like Go for the Throat so you have stuff to exile when Madness hits. Master of the Wild Hunt could be of use to give you removal and tokens to slaughter.
Recursive cards like Gravecrawler and Bloodghast that can return for future exile when necessary, maybe even combine them with the use of Deadly Allure to force creature trades.
Spells with board-impacting effects like Lingering Souls and Call of the Herd will be crucial to give you permanents to exile.
Bitterblossom would absolutely be the nuts if it was legal with this card, but sadly not.
Obviously, Tron would be difficult to combat unless you could drop this early...
-MTG Salvation.
S
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Don't see much going anywhere with it.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I ran a thought experiment on my blog
Modern in a Nuclear Wasteland
of an extreme case of banning 20 more cards to make sure they get everything, then scaling back where appropriate. WotC seems to be on a slowly build up approach. Both ways probably reach similar end points.
The post Gatecrash metagame is proving to be closer to the endpoint than I estimated, so its very possible that few (if any) more cards need to be banned.
But even if you could make it work, it wouldn't be any good for modern, or even standard; just a casual deck at best.
Suspend and Control? Is that a new card or what?
BRG Loam Control (Assault - Loam) BRG
W Mono White Control (Martyr - Proc) W
-MTG Salvation.