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TraxDaMax
08-08-2013, 01:20 AM
Hello and welcome to the primer of my new modern deck!
I will start off with the history of the deck, to give you an idea how long this deck had to wait to actually come together.


History of the deck:


The main idea of this deck came with the printing of Extirpate.
A buddy of mine and myself realized that with the help of a card which could be played as much as you like, and was not a basic land, Extirpate could do Doomsday like shenanigans.
The only card for that back then, was Relentless Rats. So we started a search for combo's in which we could abuse our library size, but we were left hungry.
When Lorwyn was released and we saw Shelldock Isle, we looked for something to win with it now that we had an enabler.
But it took us untill Rise of the Eldrazi to finally find the (arguably) most broken creatures ever printed, with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn as the chief and choice here.

So we found our enablers and wincondition, but there were still several issues.

The first issue was not finding Extirpate. And adding cards to find Extirpate made the whole plan of removing cards in our library harder since the whole point of Extirpate + Relentless Rat + Shelldock Isle was to get 20 cards or less. Every card you add makes the magic number 20 harder to achieve.

The second issue was, when we didn't have Extirpate, we were playing 3 mana 2/2's. This is even mediocre in coreset limited.

So the deck got tossed untill Surgical Extraction got printed and I searched forums to ask for help, if anybody had interest but not much of that was shown, and for good reason too.
See, the first problem of the deck had actually been solved with 4 Surgical Extraction, but the "I'm playing 2/2-dorks.dec" hadn't.

Finally, M14 brought us the key to make the whole idea come together. Shadowborn Apostle.

It was an easy trade with RR, especially because Apostle has it's very own combo built in to fetch the best Demon in the game, Griselbrand.
It's also only 1 mana instead of 3, which means it can chumpblock or even attack in the meanwhile when we are looking for Extirpate/Surgical Extraction while still representing a threat of getting Grizza.
Here I give you, the first build (I'm sure it'll need finetuning) of:

The Twelve Apostles

Maindeck (60)
30 Shadowborn Apostle
3 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Griselbrand

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction

4 Shelldock Isle
4 Marsh Flats
4 Watery Grave
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Darkslick Shore

Sideboard
4 Pithing Needle
4 Nature's Claim
1 Overgrown Tomb
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Dispel


Like Manaless Dredge in Legacy, we opt to draw first, and discard an Apostle. From there we try to find a Surgical Extraction/Extirpate for the Apostle in our bin, and in the meantime we just toss out the Apostle's in our hand and the ones we draw onto the battlefield. Once we have our Apostles sent to Exile, finding a Shelldock Isle and getting a wincon under it is our plan.
I have done this turn 3 in testing. And it often happends turn 4 and 5. Extra drawn Extirpates/S.E. can be used to filter out our deck even more (fetch, other Extirpate/S.E) or sometimes to remove something from our opponents if needed(snapcaster target, past in flames etc..).

The sideboard is made against the cards we hate so see:

-Fulminator Mage
-Relic of Progenitus
-Rest in Peace
-Tormod's Crypt
-Scavenging Ooze
-Deathrite Shaman
-Discard spells
-Dispel vs counters and Beast Within

Remember, if we are able to Nature's Claim an artifact/enchantment hate card, we can extract all of them from our opponents deck, we play 8 of these effects!
This friday will be my first tourny with the deck, and I'm pretty excited as so many people are playing Blue decks, which this deck is usually awesome against. There is also so little graveyard hate going on, that this is more then often just broken in half.

I hope this read didn't bore you, and if you have suggestions, I've been working on the deck for years, so I'm very dedicated to try any possible changes!

Phoenix Ignition
08-08-2013, 02:10 AM
Man, I just don't see it working. I'm getting a 30.08% chance of you hitting an Extirpate effect with a Shelldock and Shadowborn in your opener (counting your deck as 56 cards since you play 4x Gitaxian Probe, but that's a bit disingenuous since hitting a hand of 2x Gitaxian probe and then swamps and Shadowborns is something you might mulligan instead of keeping to cycle the Git Probes). That's not including the chance of you drawing a black mana source if the extirpate was actually Extirpate and not Surgical. That's also not attempting to include Shelldock fizzling or similar effects.

So that on top of mulligans really hurting your Draw/discard strategy means you'd either do nothing for more turns or possibly just throw Shadowborns in play and hope the enemy kills them (or you hit 6 and sac them for Grisel? Fat chance in turn-4-kill-metagame).

Other than that you lose to land hate with a full turn of comes into play tapped lands, which is the main avenue for most decks to hate out Tron. Aven Mindcensor is pretty big right now, and even some Leonin Arbiters. You also have basically nothing to slow down other decks, which might just be deadly in itself, even with your fastest kill possibility (turn 4?).

And lastly of what I'll touch on, you need to guess the appropriate hate card against whatever you're playing. Are they playing Pithing Needle? Do you just side in 4 Nature's Claims in case? What about Blood Moon (not that you have any answer at all to that)?

30.8%... just not enough to warrant the idea, as fun as it would be.

TraxDaMax
08-08-2013, 06:24 AM
Man, I just don't see it working. I'm getting a 30.08% chance of you hitting an Extirpate effect with a Shelldock and Shadowborn in your opener (counting your deck as 56 cards since you play 4x Gitaxian Probe, but that's a bit disingenuous since hitting a hand of 2x Gitaxian probe and then swamps and Shadowborns is something you might mulligan instead of keeping to cycle the Git Probes). That's not including the chance of you drawing a black mana source if the extirpate was actually Extirpate and not Surgical. That's also not attempting to include Shelldock fizzling or similar effects.

So that on top of mulligans really hurting your Draw/discard strategy means you'd either do nothing for more turns or possibly just throw Shadowborns in play and hope the enemy kills them (or you hit 6 and sac them for Grisel? Fat chance in turn-4-kill-metagame).

Other than that you lose to land hate with a full turn of comes into play tapped lands, which is the main avenue for most decks to hate out Tron. Aven Mindcensor is pretty big right now, and even some Leonin Arbiters. You also have basically nothing to slow down other decks, which might just be deadly in itself, even with your fastest kill possibility (turn 4?).

And lastly of what I'll touch on, you need to guess the appropriate hate card against whatever you're playing. Are they playing Pithing Needle? Do you just side in 4 Nature's Claims in case? What about Blood Moon (not that you have any answer at all to that)?

30.8%... just not enough to warrant the idea, as fun as it would be.

Actually, the Shelldock doesn't necessairly need to be in our starting hand. After 34+ cards are out of the deck and we get a couple of more draw steps we should be able to find a shelldock. And from there on filtering the deck is very easy after our first S.E. or Extirpate.

It isn't a waterproof combo deck, it's hit and miss, but that seems to be the way WoTC wants us to play combo.
Our fastest kill would be turn 4 if you don't consider casting Emrakul on turn 3. Which in my opinion is a game won on turn 3 but I guess that could be debatable.

As for siding, this starts out with knowing the metagame and what people are playing.
If they are playing U/W, side in Nature's Claim. If they are playing Jund side in Pithing Needle.
The amount of Pithing Needle's in opponents side is also so little that we shouldn't fear it untill we see it. Pretty much the same way Dredge plays, if you aren't sure what you're opponent will bring in don't side in too much.
Blood Moon is dealt with Nature's Claim too by the way. If you can't cast it when they cast it, well you loose.
It's a glasscanon, but needs specific hate that if you would look at sideboards on TCDecks etc you would find that decks barely play hate against this type of deck. Atleast that is what my perception is.

Anyways, I will play tomorrow and see what it brings me :) there are also still a lot of things I need to try out.

Plunge into Darkness, Serum Powder, Cantrips, Discard main etc...

Davran
08-08-2013, 08:56 AM
Blood Moon is dealt with Nature's Claim too by the way.

I don't know much about statistics and combo math, but I do know that you can't actually cast a Nature's Claim with a Blood Moon on the table using your current list. All of your lands are non-basic, and will therefore be mountains under the moon. You might consider switching from Marsh Flats to Verdant Catacombs (still gets Watery Grave) and running a basic forest for just this possibility.

Phoenix Ignition
08-08-2013, 03:39 PM
I don't know much about statistics and combo math, but I do know that you can't actually cast a Nature's Claim with a Blood Moon on the table using your current list. All of your lands are non-basic, and will therefore be mountains under the moon. You might consider switching from Marsh Flats to Verdant Catacombs (still gets Watery Grave) and running a basic forest for just this possibility.

He probably means floating the green mana with Blood Moon on the stack, and then after it hits play before they change phase you cast Nature's Claim. It's a solid tactic to use, especially if you're playing Abrupt Decay in a normal deck, but the problem is in this deck you absolutely need to leave up that green land, which narrows your mana-spending abilities.


And yeah, I know you don't need to hit the Shelldock right away, but it seems bad to keep hands that can do half of the combo and then just hope to draw into what you need, even if you're down to 1/2 the size of the deck. I could do some more maths on it, but starting with 30.1% chance of getting a turn 3/4 kill in a format where decks like SplinterTwin get consistent turn 4 kills with disruption doesn't seem worth it.

No_Life_No_Future
08-09-2013, 03:12 AM
This looks amazing! Brilliant Idea. I can't wait to try it out. How often does Grisselbrand actually get searched out?--seems like it could be cut. Going second to be able to discard means you are missing your land drop and adds a turn to the kill if you have Extirpate instead of Surgical Extraction. Also it lets your opponent Thoughtsieze you or drop hate cards/have counters. Without testing here are some suggestions:

This deck would truly benefit from Faithless Looting. (I know it doesn't fit well with the manabase, but this is a fast combo deck and you could run gemstone mines, city of brass, forbidden orchard--maybe even gemstone caverns). This is an excellent filter card to find Extirpate/Surgical Extraction. It puts 1/1s in the yard and Emrakul back in the deck.

I think Thoughtsieze will be a great addition, it protects and enables the combo.

Here are some other cards interesting/janky cards you could try:
Chancellor of the Anexx
Lightning Axe
Goryo's Vengance
Infernal Plunge
Thrumming Stone (JK LOLZ)

I think the hate cards for search effects are pretty slow against this deck. I would be more concerned with GY hate, specifically Leyline of the Void. You have split second Surgical Extraction against the others (uncounterable doomsday is sweet). Also pithing needle and Ghost Quarter are annoying. Nature's Claim seems like it would work well. Needle hits Ghost Quarter, Relic, Crypt, Deathrite Shaman, and others. I agree with your analysis that most sideboards will not be prepared to stop the combo. You may want Leyline of Sanctity in the board.

TraxDaMax
08-13-2013, 01:37 PM
This looks amazing! Brilliant Idea. I can't wait to try it out. How often does Grisselbrand actually get searched out?--seems like it could be cut. Going second to be able to discard means you are missing your land drop and adds a turn to the kill if you have Extirpate instead of Surgical Extraction. Also it lets your opponent Thoughtsieze you or drop hate cards/have counters. Without testing here are some suggestions:

This deck would truly benefit from Faithless Looting. (I know it doesn't fit well with the manabase, but this is a fast combo deck and you could run gemstone mines, city of brass, forbidden orchard--maybe even gemstone caverns). This is an excellent filter card to find Extirpate/Surgical Extraction. It puts 1/1s in the yard and Emrakul back in the deck.

I think Thoughtsieze will be a great addition, it protects and enables the combo.

Here are some other cards interesting/janky cards you could try:
Chancellor of the Anexx
Lightning Axe
Goryo's Vengance
Infernal Plunge
Thrumming Stone (JK LOLZ)

I think the hate cards for search effects are pretty slow against this deck. I would be more concerned with GY hate, specifically Leyline of the Void. You have split second Surgical Extraction against the others (uncounterable doomsday is sweet). Also pithing needle and Ghost Quarter are annoying. Nature's Claim seems like it would work well. Needle hits Ghost Quarter, Relic, Crypt, Deathrite Shaman, and others. I agree with your analysis that most sideboards will not be prepared to stop the combo. You may want Leyline of Sanctity in the board.


Hey,

Thanks for the support.
Had a couple of games last friday, but only against other rogue decks unfortunately. Held a little tournament at home with friends, results were good enough for me to keep faith in this and keep improving it.

Match 1 vs U/W Faeries

Game 1: I play Emrakul Turn 3.
Game 2: Pestermite with Momentary Blink, and Cryptic Command keep my Emrakul tapped long enough to get me to 0.
Game 3: I fail to find Shelldock in time before a team of Pestermite, Spellstutter Sprite and Mutavault bash me to death.

1-2

Match 2: Bye

Match3: U/W Denial.dec?

Game 1: Emrakul turn 3 again.
Game 2: My 3rd Shelldock is the first to reveal an Emrakul, but he has Venser, Shaper Savant in hand which I know from Extirpating his Silence. So I need to find a 4th Shelldock and it needs to contain Emrakul. I Surgical Extract my own Extirpates, filter out 3 this way and find my S.I. with Emrakul under it playing around Venser this way.

2-0


So,
Not too much testing here yet but I have learned a couple of interesting things.

Venser, Shaper Savant is nasty for us and Cryptic Command/Perstermite/Deceiver Exarch can be a pain in the butt, so need to be careful for Splinter Twin.

I have now moved away from Gitaxian Probe as it does little to nothing for us. If we want to know their hand, we have 8 Extirpates to do so.
I replaced G.Probes with Sylvan Scryings, and added another Overgrown Tomb main to support it. This helps me find Shelldock a lot easier.
I will be running the Verdant Catacombs and a basic Forest in the Side to fight Bloodmoon also.

No_Life_No_Future
08-13-2013, 03:56 PM
How are you getting your guys in the yard? Are you going second and discarding? I still feel like Faithless Looting and Thoughtseize are pretty awesome. Here is what I was goldfishing:

Land: (Note.... Everything produces U which I found was very important if you want to combo with Shelldock)

4 Darkslick Shores
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Shelldock Isle
1 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave


Instants/Sorceries:

4 Surgical Extraction
4 Extirpate
4 Faithless Looting
4 Thoughtseize
4 Gitaxian Probe


Creatures:

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
22 Shadowborn Apostle


I tried Izzet Charm, but I wasn't terribly impressed. I agree Gitaxian Probe could be something else here. I would like to try Thought Scour. It puts dudes in the graveyard, as well as enabling Shelldocke while potentially running fewer Apostles (perhaps I could cut red and go the green route). Instead of Sylvan Scrying I would try Ancient Stirrings because if your library is around 20 cards and you have 4 Shelldocke left it will hit often. Expedition Map or the even slower Tolaria West could be on color land tutors. I was thinking we could also look into cards like Magma Jet or Gut shot or Lightning bolt or pyroclasm...etc as ways to get our 1/1s into the yard and disrupt the opponent. I think the deck needs some interaction as the combo is only turn 3 at best which isn't extremely fast for modern. One thing is clear, the sooner you remove all of your Shadowborn Apostles from the deck the better... That should be our number 1 priority.

ScatmanX
08-13-2013, 04:33 PM
Just came here to say that this deck idea is awesome.
Congrats to thinking it.

TraxDaMax
08-13-2013, 04:51 PM
I have still been discarding yes. To be honest I'm scared of only running 22 Apostles's although I am also fan of looting and Thoughtseize.
Discarding or slowdredging as they call it, also gives an extra drawstep.
So for now I will keep testing what I'm on now because I don't have enough experience yet to tell what is better. I would suggest however to replace the Darkslicks with Duals or basics. Every card we can filter out of the deck is one step closer to getting to 20 cards in library.
Also, Aggro isn't really a concern I think. When we Extirpate our d00ds we "fail to find" the ones in our hand, giving us some stall to chumpblock while we search Shelldock. If we don't have a lot of guys in hand odds are higher of drawing Shelldock or actually already having one in hand.

Anyways, I appreciate the suggestions. When I've tested some more I'll have a better view of what has to go or stay, what the right number of apostles is etc..

No_Life_No_Future
08-13-2013, 06:21 PM
I originally had basics but I cut them because there isn't room and the color requirement is harsh with three colors. The deck design is pretty complicated and I will admit I haven't done the math but you definitely want to jam as many fetches as possible. They pull out cards enabling Shelldock and further filtering your deck. You don't need more than 3 lands in play to win which is why I only put in 2 fetch targets, maybe a third is right (the lifeloss is steep).

I came to 22 apostles because of the flawed logic. You need more.

FTW
08-13-2013, 08:22 PM
And yeah, I know you don't need to hit the Shelldock right away, but it seems bad to keep hands that can do half of the combo and then just hope to draw into what you need, even if you're down to 1/2 the size of the deck.


Hmm.. if only there was a way to put them all in your graveyard instead of exile then you could run Visions of Beyond and have 4 Ancestral Recalls to find Shelldock Isle. 4 Ancestrals seems good, no?

TraxDaMax
08-14-2013, 12:48 AM
I originally had basics but I cut them because there isn't room and the color requirement is harsh with three colors. The deck design is pretty complicated and I will admit I haven't done the math but you definitely want to jam as many fetches as possible. They pull out cards enabling Shelldock and further filtering your deck. You don't need more than 3 lands in play to win which is why I only put in 2 fetch targets, maybe a third is right (the lifeloss is steep).

I came to 22 apostles because of the following logic:
You start with 60 cards. Without a mulligan on the play you'll have 53 cards in your deck with around 2 apostles in your starting hand.
Fetching gives the deck -1, Looting gives the deck -2 (if you don't hit apostles), and Probing gives the deck -1 ("if you don't hit apostles") this is why I like Thought scour -3....

So assuming you fetch or loot or do any kind of manipulation you will probably have 52 cards left and around 20 of them apostles. If you surgical first turn you are in good shape because on turn 3 you will have drawn until the deck is 19 cards (shelldock nets -1). If you extirpate on turn 2 then you risk drawing an apostle but (shelldocks -1) would still put you with 20 cards in your library on turn 3.

It is complicated, but the bottom line is that you don't need 30 apostles to "acitivate" shelldock. I am unsure what the correct number is, but a deck with 30 apostles is going to have a ton of dead cards and very few slots to sideboard. The next problem would be the hideaway trigger hitting an emralkul. If you are playing 4 emralkul then I believe it is 40% to draw at least 1 in the opener leaving at least 3 in a deck of 20 or fewer cards. There is good probability to hit with shelldock especially if you can filter further to reduce the number of cards in the deck and if not you could probably play a second shelldock soon.

I think back in the old Relentless Rats builds, I tried some cantrips like Ponder. But the problem back then was with only say 22-26 Rats, or actually apostles now, if our opening hand is 6 apostle and a card we need to ship it because it'll never get Shelldock active on time with only 22, where with 30 apostles main, 6 in the opener still has a rough shot at it.
Anyways, I'm sure there will be a perfect number and I will see if I can persuade a mathgenius friend of mine to help calculate the numbers.
Maybe it's 25. Maybe it's 20. Maybe it's 32. I'm not sure yet, but if you are on 22 for the moment I'm very happy you are willing to try it out. Since I am logically unable to try out all configurations by myself.


Hmm.. if only there was a way to put them all in your graveyard instead of exile then you could run Visions of Beyond and have 4 Ancestral Recalls to find Shelldock Isle. 4 Ancestrals seems good, no?
Sure would be awesome indeed :) But try and think Shelldock as being almost the same thing. Well, or atleast like a tutor.

When I hit say 26 cards after Extirpate, and I play Shelldock Isle,the cards I can hit if I don't have them in my hand are 3 Shelldock Isle, 4 Sylvan Scrying and 4 Threats(3Emmy/1Grizza). That means 11outof26 cards are cards I'm trying to hit by looking at the top 4. Chances that I don't hit one of those 11 are very very slim.

No_Life_No_Future
08-14-2013, 11:02 PM
I would cut grizz. its not going to happen...

TraxDaMax
08-15-2013, 07:30 PM
I would cut grizz. its not going to happen...



You're probably right and I'm probably just naïve, but I don't mind the one Demon main. I mean usually a Griselbrand will also just be enough to win and if the game goes long for some reason it's even castable. So I'm just opting for flexibility even though it's only a ridiculous chance of happening. If people know the deck, and know there aren't any targets for the Apostles they won't bother killing them either. While now they present a turn 4 Griselbrand in a perfect draw.

edit: Slowly getting the cards together online. Verdant Catacombs playset is like 100 tix..

And Surgicals are like 8-10 a pop.. absurd!