*UPDATED NOTES HERE* : !!!KEEN SENSE!!!! Its really good ive taken out spirit link and put in these instead, leave spirit link in the side!!! Forget what I said about blood moon I was simply playing the deck wrong. Once you have a dual land you should pretty much be fetching basics no matter what to prevent this. Also Dryad Arbor is GOOD because it helps vs sacrifice effects. Kor Spiritwalker x4 is NOT A BAD OPTION because when i play against this deck i go to side out my target removal and then say wait a minute... I cant. and when i side out some THEY ALWAYS GET THE COMBO.
Pretty straightforward deck, and it wins vs tier 1, a lot. out of about 30 sets of playtesting vs 80% tier 1 archetypes I won about 70-75% of my matches. Tron doesnt stand a chance, and it seemes like this decks worst matchup is to elf combo which should make you feel pretty safe while playing this deck.
Almost mulligan to a creature preferably a hexproof however if you mull past 6 and you have a Kor with a totem armor enchant consider keeping this hand if you think Kor will survive a turn to put the armor on. Its risky but it works about half the time. MULLIGAN LIBERALLY! you can win on mull to 4 easily with this deck! especially on game 1 YOU NEED A HEXPROOF CREATURE TURN 1.
I would find room for 4 Ledgewalker tbh. The card's exceptionally good in this type of deck. I play a variant of it in Pauper with a fair amount of success.
I would find room for 4 Ledgewalker tbh. The card's exceptionally good in this type of deck. I play a variant of it in Pauper with a fair amount of success.
The deck placed well in a recent PTQ. Also Thrunn would NEVER work in this deck this deck runs off of 2 lands and is built so, also if you ever get more than 2 lands you are just going to sac draw off of horizon canopy, ledgewalker is certainly not needed unless you wanted to replace the kor's, evasion is already granted through rancor and spirit mantle. the creature base is perfect as is. I used to think lifelink was bad and i was trying out silverblade paladin / o-ring / and revenge of the hunted, however lifelink is a complete blowout vs red decks and also synergises with ethereal armor so is never truly dead. the card is solid and gaining life vs any deck in modern is relevent right now as many decks will spell snare / destroy your daybreak
Jund destroys this deck. Combo destroys this deck. This was one of the first decks I played and still do for fun but its not very competitive. The only decks you have a good match up are aggro decks that are not infect or affinity and that is... relatively almost nothing in the format.
Take a look at that and take a look at the stickied Troll Worship thread for some alternatives.
You will get wrecked by Jund btw. My version was altered to be less vulnerable. You need to have enough creatures so that Liliana and hand disruption won't wreck you. And of course being vulnerable to Jund is not what you want to be right now.
You can give yourself a far better matchup against jund and other greedy manabases by splashing blue for sea's claim and spreading seas. It may be only a sideboard option, but they still trigger your kor spirit dancer and wreck non blue decks.
Marc Lalague was streaming this deck last night. Cedric also played the deck last night (didn't stream it), and he bought 25 daybreak coronets. I believe they're both going to play the deck in the mtgo ptq today.
He was winning like crazy. It's amazing how solid this deck is. However a couple of things to note. People don't know how auras work, how totem armor works, and how the deck works in general. So opponents were making a bunch of missplays. Over time people will learn how to play against the deck's win % will lower.
I don't know his exact win % vs jund, but it was 50% if not better. He even beat jund on a mull to 5 on the play. Dryad arbor stops liliana. And some jund decks don't play lili since it's bad in the jund mirror.
I would find room for 4 Ledgewalker tbh. The card's exceptionally good in this type of deck. I play a variant of it in Pauper with a fair amount of success.
Thurn costs too much. If you look at the mana curve the deck stops at 2. The only time Marc really wanted ledge walker was against jund. And he was still beating jund without it so he was torn on whether to bring it into the 75. He didn't test the card so I can't say if it's good or not.
Jund destroys this deck. Combo destroys this deck. This was one of the first decks I played and still do for fun but its not very competitive. The only decks you have a good match up are aggro decks that are not infect or affinity and that is... relatively almost nothing in the format.
This deck can win on turn 4, so it can race combo. It also plays white, so it has good sideboard options. It can also race affinity since it has life link cards.
Infect is probably a bad match up though. I don't think they played against it all night, so it could be a moot point.
You can give yourself a far better matchup against jund and other greedy manabases by splashing blue for sea's claim and spreading seas. It may be only a sideboard option, but they still trigger your kor spirit dancer and wreck non blue decks.
Splashing blue is not worth it. The deck runs fine without blue.
Marc mentioned several high tournament placings in the video, so I definitely think this deck deserved to be pinned at least. Here's my thoughts on the deck:
For the MD, Marc talked about how he didn't really like Path in the deck. I think Lignify could be a really solid replacement. Great with Spiritdancer & Ethereal Armor, plus it doesn't have the drawback of Path putting a land into play.
For the SB, this is what I would consider running:
Spellskite (answers removal, 0/4 body is good vs aggro, Twin, removal, Infect)
Pridemage or Leonin-Relic Warder (as the preferred artifact/enchant removal)
Phyrexian Revoker (Twin, Pod, Tron)
Canonist (Storm)
Grand Abolisher (any blue/counterspell deck, hurts Vial)
3rd Teeg (Cryptic, Wrath, Twin, most Planeswalkers, Pod)
Spellskite & Teeg are easily the best cards from the sideboard. Anyone running this deck should have both in their boards.
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what do you mean by people are robbing all the bots?
People are buying all the cards while their value is low and hoarding them. Then when this deck breaks out, the prices of cards will sky rocket and they'll sell them for a profit.
Marc mentioned several high tournament placings in the video, so I definitely think this deck deserved to be pinned at least. Here's my thoughts on the deck:
For the MD, Marc talked about how he didn't really like Path in the deck. I think Lignify could be a really solid replacement. Great with Spiritdancer & Ethereal Armor, plus it doesn't have the drawback of Path putting a land into play.
Lignify is 2 mana and leaves a blocker. Though it might be worth testing.
For the SB, this is what I would consider running:
Spellskite (answers removal, 0/4 body is good vs aggro, Twin, removal, Infect)
Pridemage or Leonin-Relic Warder (as the preferred artifact/enchant removal)
Phyrexian Revoker (Twin, Pod, Tron)
Canonist (Storm)
Grand Abolisher (any blue/counterspell deck, hurts Vial)
3rd Teeg (Cryptic, Wrath, Twin, most Planeswalkers, Pod)
Spellskite & Teeg are easily the best cards from the sideboard. Anyone running this deck should have both in their boards.
Yeah I agree teeg and spellskite are great cards. I think nature's claim is pretty good too. I don't know if canonist is playable since it slows this deck down too.
I don't understand why anyone would want to play lifelink when spirit link is available. It's basically the same card except for 2 advantages:
-it can be used as pseudo-removal but putting it on an opponent's creature, nullifying non lethal damage,
-unlike the keyword lifelink, multiple spirit links on the same creature stack (since it still uses the old wording).
I don't understand why anyone would want to play lifelink when spirit link is available. It's basically the same card except for 2 advantages:
-it can be used as pseudo-removal but putting it on an opponent's creature, nullifying non lethal damage,
-unlike the keyword lifelink, multiple spirit links on the same creature stack (since it still uses the old wording).
Oh good catch, i didn't see the OP had lifelink and so did the PTQ list. Spirit link is better for the reason you mentioned. The one small thing is that spirit link uses the stack, so you can die with it on the stack. Very very unlikely to come up though.
I've been playing versions of this since Ethereal Armor was spoiled in Standard, Modern and Legacy. This is extremely similar to my deck of choice but this version of it is not as good as it's being made out to be.
Kor Spiritdancer hardly ever works. Your opponent will remove her before you can put an umbra on her. If for some reason your opponent is not able to deal with your Spiritdancer then you might be able to accelerate into a blowout win but it hardly ever works out the way you want it to.
Yes - I've tried all of these cards in all of these amounts. I've also tried it with blue and counterspells, I've also tried stuff like Faith's Shield.
What will happen when the deck runs properly is you'll blow your opponent away. You'll win 36-0 on turn 3, 4 or 5.
The creature count is way too low and none of them have evasion. What'll happen against Jund is you'll lose either your hexproof creature or one of your better auras on the first turn to discard. If you're on the play then you'll be able to sneak one or the other out but then Jund will take the other piece. If you lose the hexproof creature then you're probably done. Your odds of having 2 hexproofs in your opening hand aren't very good and that's not really optimal anyways. You might have a SpiritDancer but she'll take a Bolt or PTE to the face as soon as you try to use her.
Sometimes you'll get to round 4 or 5 in a relatively even boardstate and you'll topdeck the bogle you needed. Your opponent on the other hand is top-decking 5/6 Tarmagoyfs and Bloodbraid Elfs. You will have to learn to accept bad topdecks.
You will have some impressive goldfishes every now and then but you're nowhere near consistent enough to compete with a real aggro deck. You have no way to interact with combo decks at all - so you have to count on these goldfishes that don't turn up anywhere near consistent enough to win a tournament.
I've been playing a deck just like this every day for months. You will sometimes get on a ridiculous run of good draws and you'll wreck everything you run into. You'll feel invincible for a day or two. Then all of a sudden you'll go cold. It can happen at any time. You'll draw auras but no creature, or creature but no auras. These cards are terrible if you don't have all of the elements. You'll see. You'll have a Bogle up to 12/10 but you'll be missing the Umbra. Wrath of God. Kor Spiritdancer goes down and gets PTEd. Then you'll be trying to topdeck a creature and you'll draw Umbra after Umbra while your opponent's army grows and grows.
I've been playing a deck just like this every day for months. You will sometimes get on a ridiculous run of good draws and you'll wreck everything you run into. You'll feel invincible for a day or two. Then all of a sudden you'll go cold. It can happen at any time. You'll draw auras but no creature, or creature but no auras. These cards are terrible if you don't have all of the elements. You'll see. You'll have a Bogle up to 12/10 but you'll be missing the Umbra. Wrath of God. Kor Spiritdancer goes down and gets PTEd. Then you'll be trying to topdeck a creature and you'll draw Umbra after Umbra while your opponent's army grows and grows.
In Marc's version, he has three ways to fix the inconsistency: 4x Horizon Canopy, and 2x Dryad Arbor (fetched by the fetchlands obviously). The Arbors are a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's pretty awesome to EOT crack a fetch to grab a creature, then drop a Rancor or two on it and start swinging. On the other hand, it's pretty awful to see it in a starting hand if you have 2 or less lands. Sometimes you can make this work by just risking it and dropping the Arbor anyway, but you risk them Bolting it, which is a serious setback. The third way is just Keen Sense. Depending on the deck, I'd side them out on the draw. On the play, they're going to be pretty awesome, going for just a simple T1 guy, T2 Keen Sense.
Hopefully the new Cipher mechanic is kind of like casting an aura. If there turn out to be any good Cipher cards, then going for a UGW list could be good - you gain Invisible Stalker (better than Silhana Ledgewalker anyway) and more importantly, Spectral Flight.
Illinest, what's your list (or lists?) look like, if you don't mind me asking? Sounds like it's worth just going -4 Spiritdancer, +4 Silhana. Trading power for consistency sounds reasonable.
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In Marc's version, he has three ways to fix the inconsistency: 4x Horizon Canopy, and 2x Dryad Arbor (fetched by the fetchlands obviously). The Arbors are a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's pretty awesome to EOT crack a fetch to grab a creature, then drop a Rancor or two on it and start swinging. On the other hand, it's pretty awful to see it in a starting hand if you have 2 or less lands. Sometimes you can make this work by just risking it and dropping the Arbor anyway, but you risk them Bolting it, which is a serious setback. The third way is just Keen Sense. Depending on the deck, I'd side them out on the draw. On the play, they're going to be pretty awesome, going for just a simple T1 guy, T2 Keen Sense.
Hopefully the new Cipher mechanic is kind of like casting an aura. If there turn out to be any good Cipher cards, then going for a UGW list could be good - you gain Invisible Stalker (better than Silhana Ledgewalker anyway) and more importantly, Spectral Flight.
Illinest, what's your list (or lists?) look like, if you don't mind me asking? Sounds like it's worth just going -4 Spiritdancer, +4 Silhana. Trading power for consistency sounds reasonable.
I would definitely swap Silhana in for Spiritdancer. No question.
I prefer the Bant version for a few reasons.
Invisible Stalker is a huge part of it. You can have blue without sacrificing too much consistency by using Noble Hierarch and by using Abundant Growth. Abundant Growth can be really hard to appreciate unless you've used it in this deck for a while. It fixes, cantrips, synergizes with Ethereal Armor and it gives you an extra way to cast Daybreak Coronet on a Dryad Arbor.
Daybreak is risky. I am not convinced that you should ever have 4 of them. I think 2 might be better. It's a game-winner when it lands but you don't always have a place to put it. You can run a bigger aura package as we see in this list but then you run the risk of having a hand full of auras with no creature to put them on.
I do like the Dryad Arbor angle. I wasn't doing that before. I'm going to try it for a while. I like that it avoids sweeps and sacrifice effects.
I strongly recommend that you have close to 1 creature for every aura. Having more auras than creatures sounds great when you're dreaming up awesome goldfishes but in practice you're better off with a higher creature count. I have cheated a lot by using Squadron Hawks and now Dryad Arbor. It's 19 creatures that plays like 25.
I play Squadron Hawks and Sword of Fire and Ice. The Sword can be equipped to anything really but it induces especially large fits of rage when it's equipped to the Invisible Stalker. The Squadron Hawks are there primarily to chump block but they can also serve as sword-carriers a la Caw Blade.
Here is a slightly different Bant list that I was working on. Sideboard is a work in progress.
Worship isn't too hard to keep active when you've got a full complement of hexproof creatures and the excellent Ascetic Troll is useful even when you don't have Worship. You also have access to Geist of Saint Traft.
Mana Leak - I'm not sure about. I'm thinking about going back to Rancor.
Spectral Flight is a great card but I'm not sure it's necessary.
The Umbras aren't worth it. I used to play them. I would have - say... Silhana Ledgewalker on the table on the second turn and then I would cast my 2 Umbras and she was still only a 3/3 creature at that point. She was redundantly protected from board wipes but I had 3 cards applied to a single 3/3 creature. That's a terribly inefficient play that will cause you to lose games.
Key additions seem to be Keen Sense & Leyline of Sanctitiy.
The Bez was also running Ray of Revelation in the side, which seems a good call if this deck becomes popular.
Yes, Marc Lalague was the person who tested all those cards:
I wouldn't mind being wrong.
I'd like to discuss this some more. I don't want to shut down conversation on this deck - actually I'm hoping that there's something I don't know about yet.
How popular is it in Jund to ditch Liliana and Discard? When I've playtested against Jund it was always against a version that has 4 Lilianas and 6 Discard spells. My results were just shy of 50% when I played those early versions of my deck. Not a terrible matchup but I figured that if you can't do better than 45% against Jund then you're not likely to go far unless all of your other matchups are pretty good. Unfortunately I felt like I still had a lot of bad matchups at that point including most aggro and all combo decks.
So I felt like I needed to increase the creature count against Jund but at the same time I felt like I needed to either go faster against those other decks or else find some way to establish control. I tried speed first and I ran into the problem that I described in prior posts - being that speed calls for more auras but the resultant lower creature count starts to become a problem in terms of having to mull a lot and lack of resilience. If your opponent is able to block or otherwise neutralize that one creature you're enchanting then you're in trouble. So instead I went in the other direction and came up with something that played more like Troll Worship. More creatures, better creatures and the Worship lock.
So - going back to questions - what kinds of opponents are these tournament decks running into? I can envision having a very good matchup against Jund, especially if Jund has taken out Liliana.
Then - I can see how Jund may have discouraged people from playing a few decks that GW aura probably would've struggled against but if GW aura is ever successful enough to hate out Jund then you're probably also bringing a bunch of other decks back into the format. A blue-based tempo deck could easily prevent GW aura from ever landing an aura on your creature. That 1/1 Bogle could still be 1/1 when the game ends. Spell Pierce into Remand into...
Of course I might be misinterpreting things but I was of the impression that Blue tempo decks are being discouraged by Jund right now.
Control decks meanwhile can also be a problem. Wrath of God takes out your hexproof voltron and then you're trying to draw into a second one and it can be a bad scene.
So is this an attempt to game the meta against Jund?
So this deck put 2 players into the top 8 and another in 11th of last nights modo ptq.
for those fast enough to scope replays players are -
Phresh87 4th
Thalai 7th
The Bez 11th
Key additions seem to be Keen Sense & Leyline of Sanctitiy.
The Bez was also running Ray of Revelation in the side, which seems a good call if this deck becomes popular.
Anyone got the lists for these placings? Perhaps True Believer could find a spot in the SB. Another idea is Fists of Ironwood, could help vs sacrifice effects. I was thinking that Spellskite could even fit in the MD - it blocks, protects Spiritdancer, can be enchanted and disrupts various decks.
Illinest, Arbor fights Liliana/other sacrifice effects, and totem armor & SB Teegs fight Wrath. SB Leylines fight discard.
Maybe the best way to make this deck would be a version that uses a transformation SB to turn into Troll Worship, but I'm not sure if that would be effective or not. Troll Worship is heavy on the 3-4cc part of the curve, while Boggle is exclusively 1-2cc (except for Leylines which are free).
How popular is it in Jund to ditch Liliana and Discard?
Liliana is bad in the jund mirror when everyone is playing lingering souls. The guy who won GP Toronto played zero lilianas. So some people are willing to not play liliana. And if you look at the GW aura list, there's 2 dryad arbors and a bunch of fetches to protect you from liliana. The discard is a problem though if you're on the draw.
I would like to explain in more detail what I was talking about when I said inconsistencies.
(I should start by saying that I've had bad results with Kor Spiritdancer and I think that's a terrible choice for this deck)
I start with the assumption that you're going to be able to keep a relatively standard percentage of your initial draws for land reasons. I'd say 70% keep rate at worst, 85% at best. I'll work within that range.
Now you're a strange kind of an aggro deck that can't do anything without a creature so I use a hypergeometric distribution calculator to find the odds of having one of your 8 viable targets for aura. 70%.
Then you need at least one enchantment and preferably one with first strike since your creatures have no evasiveness. There are only 8 enchantments that have first strike and can be cast on turn 2. Going out to turn 3 introduces another 4 but those come from Daybreak Coronet so you not only need to have 2 white mana but you also need to have an aura already on the creature. I'm not counting them as equal to the other 8. 8 cards is 70% odds again.
So that's a keeper hand to me. Appropriate number of lands, one creature, one first strike aura.
.7 x .7 x .7 = 34%
or
.85 x .7 x .7 = 42%
You're only going to get the proper opening hand about 34-42% of the time. (depending on your rate of mulling for land)
If you are willing to risk keeping a hand with (for example) Kor Spiritdancer, Spider Umbra and Daybreak Coronet then you're going to have a better keep rate but in my experience more often than not you're going to cast the Spiritdancer, try to throw the Umbra on it and it'll get bolted. Both cards lost. Then you've got a dead Coronet in your hand and nothing in play.
I would trade Spiritdancer for Silhana Ledgewalker - no question. It would up your creature probability (of having one of the 12 hexproof creatures by turn 2) up to 88%. It also introduces evasiveness. Your new rate would be
43 - 53% which is still not good but is a lot better than the list with Spiritdancer.
You'd also have gains in the sense that you don't need First Strike as much if Silhana is the creature you're enchanting so your keep rate is better yet.
And I'm only dealing with a limited portion of the starting hand. There will be terrific draws where you get a bogle, 2 ethereal armors and a daybreak coronet. In that case your opponent is likely to get blown out. 5/5 first strike on turn 2, 10/10 first strike, lifelink, vigilance on turn 3. I'm not disputing that there is some terrific blowout potential. I'm just pointing out that there are a lot of parts that need to come together at the same time to create those blowouts.
If Green Sun's Zenith ever gets unbanned then I would say that the odds get a lot better and I'm anxious to see if Simic gets anything nice in Gatecrash.
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Pretty straightforward deck, and it wins vs tier 1, a lot. out of about 30 sets of playtesting vs 80% tier 1 archetypes I won about 70-75% of my matches. Tron doesnt stand a chance, and it seemes like this decks worst matchup is to elf combo which should make you feel pretty safe while playing this deck.
4x Gladecover Scout
4x Slippery Bogle
2x Kor Spiritdancer
~Enchantments~
4x Daybreak Coronet
4x Ethereal Armor
4x Hyena Umbra
4x Spider Umbra
2x Spirit Link / OR / Keen Sense
4x Spirit Mantle
4x Rancor
4x Path to Exile
~Land~ 20
1x Dryad Arbor
4x Horizon Canopy
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Plains
4x Razorverge Thicket
4x Temple Garden
2x Verdant Catacombs
4x Relic of Progenitus
2x Torpor Orb
2x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Gaddock Teeg
3x Qasali Pridemage
1x Choke
2x Nature's Claim
Almost mulligan to a creature preferably a hexproof however if you mull past 6 and you have a Kor with a totem armor enchant consider keeping this hand if you think Kor will survive a turn to put the armor on. Its risky but it works about half the time. MULLIGAN LIBERALLY! you can win on mull to 4 easily with this deck! especially on game 1 YOU NEED A HEXPROOF CREATURE TURN 1.
any thoughts, reccomendations?
Also, you could look at cutting 2 Lifelink for 2 Thrun, the Last Troll or 2 Silhana Ledgewalker
I would find room for 4 Ledgewalker tbh. The card's exceptionally good in this type of deck. I play a variant of it in Pauper with a fair amount of success.
Modern:
Bant Eldrazi
Merfolk
Abzan Company
EDH:
Mono-Green Omnath
Mono-White Odric Soup
Mono-Blue Muzzio
Mono-Red Feldon
-Tom
The deck placed well in a recent PTQ. Also Thrunn would NEVER work in this deck this deck runs off of 2 lands and is built so, also if you ever get more than 2 lands you are just going to sac draw off of horizon canopy, ledgewalker is certainly not needed unless you wanted to replace the kor's, evasion is already granted through rancor and spirit mantle. the creature base is perfect as is. I used to think lifelink was bad and i was trying out silverblade paladin / o-ring / and revenge of the hunted, however lifelink is a complete blowout vs red decks and also synergises with ethereal armor so is never truly dead. the card is solid and gaining life vs any deck in modern is relevent right now as many decks will spell snare / destroy your daybreak
Sexy Sig by mchief111 @ Rising Studios
EDH
G Isao
Take a look at that and take a look at the stickied Troll Worship thread for some alternatives.
You will get wrecked by Jund btw. My version was altered to be less vulnerable. You need to have enough creatures so that Liliana and hand disruption won't wreck you. And of course being vulnerable to Jund is not what you want to be right now.
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
http://www.wizards.com/magic/digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/4775904
Marc Lalague was streaming this deck last night. Cedric also played the deck last night (didn't stream it), and he bought 25 daybreak coronets. I believe they're both going to play the deck in the mtgo ptq today.
http://www.twitch.tv/mlalague/videos?kind=past_broadcasts
He was winning like crazy. It's amazing how solid this deck is. However a couple of things to note. People don't know how auras work, how totem armor works, and how the deck works in general. So opponents were making a bunch of missplays. Over time people will learn how to play against the deck's win % will lower.
I don't know his exact win % vs jund, but it was 50% if not better. He even beat jund on a mull to 5 on the play. Dryad arbor stops liliana. And some jund decks don't play lili since it's bad in the jund mirror.
He made some changes to the deck:
3 Verdant Catacombs
4 Razorverge Thicket
3 Temple Garden
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Horizon Canopy
2 Dryad Arbor
Creatures 12
4 Slippery Bogle
4 Kor Spiritdancer
4 Gladecover Scout
4 Spirit Mantle
2 Keen Sense
4 Ethereal Armor
3 Spider Umbra
4 Hyena Umbra
4 Daybreak Coronet
4 Rancor
Spells 3
3 Path to Exile
3 Rest in Peace
2 Nature's Claim
2 Gaddock Teeg
3 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Stony Silence
2 Spirit Link
I don't think he likes his sideboard very much.
Thurn costs too much. If you look at the mana curve the deck stops at 2. The only time Marc really wanted ledge walker was against jund. And he was still beating jund without it so he was torn on whether to bring it into the 75. He didn't test the card so I can't say if it's good or not.
This deck can win on turn 4, so it can race combo. It also plays white, so it has good sideboard options. It can also race affinity since it has life link cards.
Infect is probably a bad match up though. I don't think they played against it all night, so it could be a moot point.
Splashing blue is not worth it. The deck runs fine without blue.
The deck is actually extremely weak to spellskite too. Splinter twin is probably the worst match up.
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For the MD, Marc talked about how he didn't really like Path in the deck. I think Lignify could be a really solid replacement. Great with Spiritdancer & Ethereal Armor, plus it doesn't have the drawback of Path putting a land into play.
For the SB, this is what I would consider running:
Spellskite (answers removal, 0/4 body is good vs aggro, Twin, removal, Infect)
Pridemage or Leonin-Relic Warder (as the preferred artifact/enchant removal)
Phyrexian Revoker (Twin, Pod, Tron)
Canonist (Storm)
Grand Abolisher (any blue/counterspell deck, hurts Vial)
3rd Teeg (Cryptic, Wrath, Twin, most Planeswalkers, Pod)
Spellskite & Teeg are easily the best cards from the sideboard. Anyone running this deck should have both in their boards.
It's an updated version of Brawl into an epic, new game.
People are buying all the cards while their value is low and hoarding them. Then when this deck breaks out, the prices of cards will sky rocket and they'll sell them for a profit.
Lignify is 2 mana and leaves a blocker. Though it might be worth testing.
Yeah I agree teeg and spellskite are great cards. I think nature's claim is pretty good too. I don't know if canonist is playable since it slows this deck down too.
-it can be used as pseudo-removal but putting it on an opponent's creature, nullifying non lethal damage,
-unlike the keyword lifelink, multiple spirit links on the same creature stack (since it still uses the old wording).
Oh good catch, i didn't see the OP had lifelink and so did the PTQ list. Spirit link is better for the reason you mentioned. The one small thing is that spirit link uses the stack, so you can die with it on the stack. Very very unlikely to come up though.
Kor Spiritdancer hardly ever works. Your opponent will remove her before you can put an umbra on her. If for some reason your opponent is not able to deal with your Spiritdancer then you might be able to accelerate into a blowout win but it hardly ever works out the way you want it to.
Yes - I've tried all of these cards in all of these amounts. I've also tried it with blue and counterspells, I've also tried stuff like Faith's Shield.
What will happen when the deck runs properly is you'll blow your opponent away. You'll win 36-0 on turn 3, 4 or 5.
The creature count is way too low and none of them have evasion. What'll happen against Jund is you'll lose either your hexproof creature or one of your better auras on the first turn to discard. If you're on the play then you'll be able to sneak one or the other out but then Jund will take the other piece. If you lose the hexproof creature then you're probably done. Your odds of having 2 hexproofs in your opening hand aren't very good and that's not really optimal anyways. You might have a SpiritDancer but she'll take a Bolt or PTE to the face as soon as you try to use her.
Sometimes you'll get to round 4 or 5 in a relatively even boardstate and you'll topdeck the bogle you needed. Your opponent on the other hand is top-decking 5/6 Tarmagoyfs and Bloodbraid Elfs. You will have to learn to accept bad topdecks.
You will have some impressive goldfishes every now and then but you're nowhere near consistent enough to compete with a real aggro deck. You have no way to interact with combo decks at all - so you have to count on these goldfishes that don't turn up anywhere near consistent enough to win a tournament.
I've been playing a deck just like this every day for months. You will sometimes get on a ridiculous run of good draws and you'll wreck everything you run into. You'll feel invincible for a day or two. Then all of a sudden you'll go cold. It can happen at any time. You'll draw auras but no creature, or creature but no auras. These cards are terrible if you don't have all of the elements. You'll see. You'll have a Bogle up to 12/10 but you'll be missing the Umbra. Wrath of God. Kor Spiritdancer goes down and gets PTEd. Then you'll be trying to topdeck a creature and you'll draw Umbra after Umbra while your opponent's army grows and grows.
Then what would you say about infect?
Hopefully the new Cipher mechanic is kind of like casting an aura. If there turn out to be any good Cipher cards, then going for a UGW list could be good - you gain Invisible Stalker (better than Silhana Ledgewalker anyway) and more importantly, Spectral Flight.
Illinest, what's your list (or lists?) look like, if you don't mind me asking? Sounds like it's worth just going -4 Spiritdancer, +4 Silhana. Trading power for consistency sounds reasonable.
It's an updated version of Brawl into an epic, new game.
Hope you don't run into it.
I would definitely swap Silhana in for Spiritdancer. No question.
I prefer the Bant version for a few reasons.
Invisible Stalker is a huge part of it. You can have blue without sacrificing too much consistency by using Noble Hierarch and by using Abundant Growth. Abundant Growth can be really hard to appreciate unless you've used it in this deck for a while. It fixes, cantrips, synergizes with Ethereal Armor and it gives you an extra way to cast Daybreak Coronet on a Dryad Arbor.
Daybreak is risky. I am not convinced that you should ever have 4 of them. I think 2 might be better. It's a game-winner when it lands but you don't always have a place to put it. You can run a bigger aura package as we see in this list but then you run the risk of having a hand full of auras with no creature to put them on.
I do like the Dryad Arbor angle. I wasn't doing that before. I'm going to try it for a while. I like that it avoids sweeps and sacrifice effects.
I strongly recommend that you have close to 1 creature for every aura. Having more auras than creatures sounds great when you're dreaming up awesome goldfishes but in practice you're better off with a higher creature count. I have cheated a lot by using Squadron Hawks and now Dryad Arbor. It's 19 creatures that plays like 25.
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Invisible Stalker
3 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Silhana Ledgewalker
Enchantments
4 Abundant Growth
4 Ethereal Armor
2 Daybreak Coronet
4 Rancor
4 Detention Sphere
4 Sword of Fire and Ice
Land
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Horizon Canopy
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Temple Garden
3 Forest
1 Island
1 Dryad Arbor
I play Squadron Hawks and Sword of Fire and Ice. The Sword can be equipped to anything really but it induces especially large fits of rage when it's equipped to the Invisible Stalker. The Squadron Hawks are there primarily to chump block but they can also serve as sword-carriers a la Caw Blade.
Here is a slightly different Bant list that I was working on. Sideboard is a work in progress.
4 Squadron Hawk
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Invisible Stalker
3 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Troll Ascetic
Enchantments
4 Abundant Growth
4 Ethereal Armor
2 Rancor
3 Worship
3 Detention Sphere
3 Mana Leak
Artifacts
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
Land
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Horizon Canopy
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Temple Garden
3 Forest
1 Island
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Qasali Pridemage
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Rest in Peace
1 Worship
Worship isn't too hard to keep active when you've got a full complement of hexproof creatures and the excellent Ascetic Troll is useful even when you don't have Worship. You also have access to Geist of Saint Traft.
Mana Leak - I'm not sure about. I'm thinking about going back to Rancor.
Spectral Flight is a great card but I'm not sure it's necessary.
The Umbras aren't worth it. I used to play them. I would have - say... Silhana Ledgewalker on the table on the second turn and then I would cast my 2 Umbras and she was still only a 3/3 creature at that point. She was redundantly protected from board wipes but I had 3 cards applied to a single 3/3 creature. That's a terribly inefficient play that will cause you to lose games.
Yes, Marc Lalague was the person who tested all those cards:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=9520870&postcount=8
He didn't have ray of revelation, but yeah like you said its good in the mirror.
I'd like to discuss this some more. I don't want to shut down conversation on this deck - actually I'm hoping that there's something I don't know about yet.
How popular is it in Jund to ditch Liliana and Discard? When I've playtested against Jund it was always against a version that has 4 Lilianas and 6 Discard spells. My results were just shy of 50% when I played those early versions of my deck. Not a terrible matchup but I figured that if you can't do better than 45% against Jund then you're not likely to go far unless all of your other matchups are pretty good. Unfortunately I felt like I still had a lot of bad matchups at that point including most aggro and all combo decks.
So I felt like I needed to increase the creature count against Jund but at the same time I felt like I needed to either go faster against those other decks or else find some way to establish control. I tried speed first and I ran into the problem that I described in prior posts - being that speed calls for more auras but the resultant lower creature count starts to become a problem in terms of having to mull a lot and lack of resilience. If your opponent is able to block or otherwise neutralize that one creature you're enchanting then you're in trouble. So instead I went in the other direction and came up with something that played more like Troll Worship. More creatures, better creatures and the Worship lock.
So - going back to questions - what kinds of opponents are these tournament decks running into? I can envision having a very good matchup against Jund, especially if Jund has taken out Liliana.
Then - I can see how Jund may have discouraged people from playing a few decks that GW aura probably would've struggled against but if GW aura is ever successful enough to hate out Jund then you're probably also bringing a bunch of other decks back into the format. A blue-based tempo deck could easily prevent GW aura from ever landing an aura on your creature. That 1/1 Bogle could still be 1/1 when the game ends. Spell Pierce into Remand into...
Of course I might be misinterpreting things but I was of the impression that Blue tempo decks are being discouraged by Jund right now.
Control decks meanwhile can also be a problem. Wrath of God takes out your hexproof voltron and then you're trying to draw into a second one and it can be a bad scene.
So is this an attempt to game the meta against Jund?
Anyone got the lists for these placings? Perhaps True Believer could find a spot in the SB. Another idea is Fists of Ironwood, could help vs sacrifice effects. I was thinking that Spellskite could even fit in the MD - it blocks, protects Spiritdancer, can be enchanted and disrupts various decks.
Illinest, Arbor fights Liliana/other sacrifice effects, and totem armor & SB Teegs fight Wrath. SB Leylines fight discard.
Maybe the best way to make this deck would be a version that uses a transformation SB to turn into Troll Worship, but I'm not sure if that would be effective or not. Troll Worship is heavy on the 3-4cc part of the curve, while Boggle is exclusively 1-2cc (except for Leylines which are free).
It's an updated version of Brawl into an epic, new game.
Liliana is bad in the jund mirror when everyone is playing lingering souls. The guy who won GP Toronto played zero lilianas. So some people are willing to not play liliana. And if you look at the GW aura list, there's 2 dryad arbors and a bunch of fetches to protect you from liliana. The discard is a problem though if you're on the draw.
BTW Marc Lalague said he was going to stream this deck tonight:
http://www.twitch.tv/mlalague
(I should start by saying that I've had bad results with Kor Spiritdancer and I think that's a terrible choice for this deck)
Link to calculators:
http://www.danielsoper.com/statcalc3/calc.aspx?id=66
http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx
I start with the assumption that you're going to be able to keep a relatively standard percentage of your initial draws for land reasons. I'd say 70% keep rate at worst, 85% at best. I'll work within that range.
Now you're a strange kind of an aggro deck that can't do anything without a creature so I use a hypergeometric distribution calculator to find the odds of having one of your 8 viable targets for aura. 70%.
Then you need at least one enchantment and preferably one with first strike since your creatures have no evasiveness. There are only 8 enchantments that have first strike and can be cast on turn 2. Going out to turn 3 introduces another 4 but those come from Daybreak Coronet so you not only need to have 2 white mana but you also need to have an aura already on the creature. I'm not counting them as equal to the other 8. 8 cards is 70% odds again.
So that's a keeper hand to me. Appropriate number of lands, one creature, one first strike aura.
.7 x .7 x .7 = 34%
or
.85 x .7 x .7 = 42%
You're only going to get the proper opening hand about 34-42% of the time. (depending on your rate of mulling for land)
If you are willing to risk keeping a hand with (for example) Kor Spiritdancer, Spider Umbra and Daybreak Coronet then you're going to have a better keep rate but in my experience more often than not you're going to cast the Spiritdancer, try to throw the Umbra on it and it'll get bolted. Both cards lost. Then you've got a dead Coronet in your hand and nothing in play.
I would trade Spiritdancer for Silhana Ledgewalker - no question. It would up your creature probability (of having one of the 12 hexproof creatures by turn 2) up to 88%. It also introduces evasiveness. Your new rate would be
43 - 53% which is still not good but is a lot better than the list with Spiritdancer.
You'd also have gains in the sense that you don't need First Strike as much if Silhana is the creature you're enchanting so your keep rate is better yet.
And I'm only dealing with a limited portion of the starting hand. There will be terrific draws where you get a bogle, 2 ethereal armors and a daybreak coronet. In that case your opponent is likely to get blown out. 5/5 first strike on turn 2, 10/10 first strike, lifelink, vigilance on turn 3. I'm not disputing that there is some terrific blowout potential. I'm just pointing out that there are a lot of parts that need to come together at the same time to create those blowouts.
If Green Sun's Zenith ever gets unbanned then I would say that the odds get a lot better and I'm anxious to see if Simic gets anything nice in Gatecrash.