Magic the Gathering

Or even just as a value creature. I can totally see this being Young Pyromancer #5-8 in Delver lists or even maybe a brew that's just White-Red. I feel like it'll be very strong no matter what.

This is probably in my top 3 most hyped cards in the set already. =D



I've wanted to play a UB Control variant in Modern for a while, now, but I never really put my focus to it. I knew for sure I wanted to build it around Mystical Teachings, just getting a ton of value out of all sorts of good instants and really grind the game out. It'd play similarly to the UR deck I posted earlier in this thread, except it wouldn't have as much reach. It'd have hand attack, though, which draws me in, though I like the card Lightning Bolt in control more than Thoughtseize, lol.

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So, I know it's nearing that time of a shift in Standard, but I decided to abandon my GU Yisan deck, as fun as it was, for a slightly lower powered, equally gimmicky, but much more consistent aggressive Midrange deck.

I'm now playing Sidisi-Soul, which is basically just Abzan, splashing blue for Sidisi in the maindeck, and some sideboard cards. What's great about the deck is that you get to play a pretty aggressive early game, but when you get to the late game, where it looks like the deck would fall off, you can still go over the top with Soul of Theros. Any problem you might think the deck would have is answered with this: "Activate Soul of Theros".
-Losing the race? Activate Soul of Theros
-Need to close out the game? Activate Soul of Theros
-The board is cluttered and stalled out? Activate Soul of Theros

The power that Soul of Theros gives is obviously really good in any combat situation, but it can also invalidate a lot of burn from the Jeskai deck, making those not reliable as removal. The first strike makes blocks VERY awkward for your opponents, making trades nearly impossible, especially because your creatures are pumped up too. Finally, the lifelink, combined with an army of creatures (which is not very hard to create, even just two or three creatures can be enough), will gain you SO MUCH LIFE that even if it still hasn't fully stablized the game, it buys you very many turns, and sometimes, simply immediately breaks the game in half.

The best part about the deck is that it doesn't really need Whip of Erebos, since Soul of Theros takes over that role (and performs it better IMO), but many opponents will still think that this is a Sidisi-Whip deck, since seeing Sidisi seems to make people believe that the deck just automatically has some Whips. Erase is boarded against me quite often, and it's always dead. Erase only can kill Courser, and that's not nearly good enough against me.

I've found that I rarely ever lose, unless I'm mana screwed. The deck is absurdly consistent and powerful. I beat near impossible odds against a Green Devotion deck that fully went off with a bunch of Genesis Hydras and Hornet Queens, and I muscled through a Sultai deck who managed to get Kiora's ultimate, winning 5 turns after my opponent ultimated and got many Krakens.

Here's the list I'm running. It's heavily inspired by Caleb Durward's list, but in his most recent list, he cut Anafenza, a card I actually liked because it helps the deck be aggresive, so I kept it in, and have been satisfied with it:



Sideboard:


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Meanwhile, I mentioned earlier that I'm playing Jeskai Ascendancy in Modern, though I'll be honest when I say I'm not sure how long this deck will last anymore, since the new banlist is coming soon. I still feel very strongly that at least one of the Delve cards is being banned (and likely both), and Jeskai Ascendancy will get banned, just for it's power level and resilience. The deck has gotten significantly slower, almost like a control deck, except that's why it can still win even through a huge pile of disruption.

Here's the list I'm using. For now, it's STILL an exact netdeck of Josh Utter-Leyton's build from the World Championship.



Sideboard:

Just came back from a Legacy event. 4-1 in the pools, and then won the whole thing from top 8 with Dredge.

Doomsday : 1-2
Death and Taxes : 2-0
Death and Taxes : 2-1
Esper Stoneblade : 2-1
MUD : 2-0

Top 8 :
BR Reanimator : 2-1
UR Delver : 2-1
Cloudpost MUD : 2-1

Won the Duel Decks Anthology. Not bad at all.

Ooooh, awesome. Any cool stories come out of it? Any close games, or fun moments?

The Second Death and Taxes deck I played during the 5-rounds was he mulled down to 3 the last game. Felt bad and I asked why, he said all the draws were Terri-bad. Against BR Reanimator, last game, he Turn 1 Griselbrand drew 21 cards, and I won it with my own Grislbrand, he said he was trying to dig for free mana spells to kill me that turn, but he couldn't find the Apes or the Lotus Petals. Against UR Delver, first game, I went T1 : Gemstone Mine, LED which got FoW'ed, and then Cabal Therapy naming Lightning Bolt. The opponent had 2 fetchlands and 3 Lightning Bolts in hand. THAT CABAL SNIPE!!! Third game came down to the wire, but I got a Dread Return to return Elesh Norn to win. Last game against MUD, T2 he played Chalice for 1, when I T1 went to discard phase to discard a dredger. After that I went dredge, played Cephalid, LED, sac LED, use Chephalid, and won from there. 3rd game, he put a Trinishpere down, and I evoked an Ingot Chewer, and won from there. Over all a lot of the games were intense.

Haha, many tight games, then, lol. Those are always the best. When you win, you feel like you really earned it, and when you lose, it usually is still satisfying.

Congratulations on your victory, concerning the mud match, how long did it take you to get the 3 mana to evoke an Ingot Chewer? Because I am a bit curious since the mana-base in Dredge is not that stable for getting more than 1-2 mana within a reasonable amount of time if you do not have access to acceleration, which in this case is blocked by Trinisphere.

IIRC, I was holding 2 mana and the Ingot Chewer and drew into the 3rd land. My sideboard consists of 2x City of Brass due to me running 4x Mana Confluence, 3x Cephalids, 2x City of Brass, and 4x Gemstone Mine on main.

Also won a Modern event today due to it being a Japanese holiday. Won with UG Infect.

Luck was on your side that tournament, well played (lucked?) indeed. Infect is always fun, I had an infect combo deck in modern that could win on turn 3-4 consistently, I disassembled it to create my MBC though.

Oho, UG Infect? Mind if I see your list? I used to play with BUG Infect for more explosiveness and better sideboard, but I always thought UG is probably more consistent.

Creatures:
4x Blighted Agent
4x Glistener Elf
4x Ichorclaw Myr
2x Spellskite
3x Noble Hierarch
Spells :
4x Mutagenic Growth
2x Apostle's Blessing
1x Distortion Strike
2x Rancor
4x Groundswell
4x Vines of the Vastwood
2x Titanic Growth
4x Gigantic Growth
Lands :
2x Forest
2x Pendalhaven
4x Inkmoth Nexus
4x Breeding Pool
4x Hinterland Harbor
4x Misty Rainforest

SB :
2x Wild Defiance
3x Spell Pierce
2x Spellskite
4x Nature's Claim
2x Hunt the Hunter
2x Apostle's Blessing

Feel like I can actually change a few things here an there as well. Replace 1 of the Rancors for another Distortion Strike, and change the Titanic Growths to Become Immense due to the fact that I'm using a lot of spells to pump up the creature, might as well Delve them as well for a bit more potency.

For sure, I've seen people tech in 1 or 2 copies of Become Immense in the Legacy version all the time. It seems worth it. TBH, I just don't like Titanic Growth at all, lol. Compared to the one-mana pump spells, it's SOOOO inefficient.

Kinda surprised not to see Might of Old Krosa. I like having as many one-mana +4/+4s as possible, though it also means going more all-in. Also kinda surprised you don't like Rancor that much. It lets you still have gas when you do try to force through a creature unsuccessfully, or even just push through a pile of chump blockers, since it's a more consistent source of damage than Distortion Strike. But again, that's just me always wanting to go balls to the wall with this deck, having backup plans in case something goes wrong.
Since Distortion Strike probably just kills them the two turns it resolves, I can see your case for it, though. It's probably correct, too, lol.

Ever consider any card draw or counterspells, making it a sort of Tempo deck, too? Like maybe have some Serum Visions and Spell Pierces to set up your turns better and protect your creatures? It sounds like a cool concept, except the deck is no longer very explosive.

With the meta right now, I actually prefer these cards over anything due to the fact that UR Delver is running rampant and you really can't go all-in against that type of deck.

As with cantrips or counterspells, I really haven't looked into it, but it does seem like it will lose a lot of its burst potential, and with Infect, I do think you want to win as fast as possible to keep up with the xUR decks out there.

That's fair, especially since Young Pyromancer is annoying on defense in addition to everything else.

Yeah, I only suggested it as a possiblity. I agree that Infect should just be bursty, and win before your opponent accomplishes, well, anything.
It intrigued me though because I remember a list that had that stuff, which actually made it pretty resilient if it fails to win within the first few turns, since it lets it set up for another gigantic swing.

When we are on the topic of Modern infect I thought I would share a little pet deck of mine I used to run in Modern, I never won a tournament with it though, but I usually went 2-3 or 3-2, it is a blast to play if you ever want a change of pace.



While I still play it once in a while (The 12.3% chance to kill yourself T1 with the deck is somewhat funnier in a "casual" enviroment). It should be noted that it has potential to kill on turn 3, however turn 4 is the most consistent.

I've seen a Legacy deck similar to this, lol. I, in general, just love Death's Shadow. It was one of the creatures that intrigued me most when I first started playing.

How you guys do during the pre-release? Not sure if I wanna go Jeskai or Sultai for it.

I haven't done my prerelease yet, but I hesitantly chose Jeskai. All the commons and uncommons seem really synergistic and flexible, so it seems like the most powerful choice. I wanted to do Temur, since I feel like they have very similar power level, and has a lot of cool stuff going for it with its uncommons. It feels too reliant on some later game strategies though. Temur certainly looked more fun though, I might regret my decision.

besides that, white looked the strongest to me in terms of cards, so I wanted to choose a white clan, and besides that, there's a bunch of white rares I want. want to maximize my odds of opening a Monastery Mentor lolol

Unfortunately I have no time for this prerelease due to work, but I will probably do a draft with some of my friends later on where we will draft something like Fate-Khans-Fate for the fun of it, I still got two boxes of unopened Khans, so I might as well use them for something.

So, I was undefeated in the Prerelease, having basically the perfect Jeskai deck. I almost feel as though my deck couldn't be beaten as long as I wasn't mana screwed, and that turned out to be true.
I didn't even have many rares, and the two rares I did have in my deck carried the game whenever I cast them: Flamerush Rider and Dragonscale General.

Unfortunately, my prize packs weren't that exciting, not much value. But it felt good to do so well during the games, so I'm just happy about that.
This limited format seems really fun, too. I learned a lot, and things went well for me. Bolster is a lot better than I first thought it would be, and Dash was a great mechanic, as expected.
Prowess is really ridiculous now, because there's all sorts on instants and sorceries that manifest, essentially being creatures that trigger prowess, which is really silly.

EDIT: Completely unrelated note, I cut the one-of Electrolyze a while ago for the third Vedalken Shackles in my MonoU-splash-R control deck a few pages back. Electrolyze never pulled it's weight, and Shackles always did.
I still haven't figured out what to cut for Shadow of Doubt, because the Pod matchup and the Scapeshift matchup is still a bit shaky, but for the most part, I still think the deck is my absolute favorite Modern deck. I honestly think the list is basically perfect, at least, for my taste, even without that one final card I arguably don't need that badly. I'm just at that point where I'm so comfortable with the list that it feels wrong to change anything, lolol.
Obviously, it has its weaknesses, but I enjoy playing it too much. Until I secure some kind of job, though, I still can't buy any of the high-end cards for it, so it'll still be my primary deck online only. The Jeskai Combo deck is still my RL deck for the time-being.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19

Although I'm glad Treasure Cruise is banned, I'm upset that Dig is banned as well. I just got all the cards for Jeskai Ascendancy combo for Modern, and that really hurt my wallet for the Digs... Pod needed to be ban for a while, but also a little sad to see it go.