Artifacts//2
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Kaldra Compleat
Creatures//24
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
4 Orcish Bowmasters
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Grief
4 Solitude
4 Esper Sentinel
3 Stoneforge Mystic
Enchantments//3
3 Deafening Silence
Instants//4
4 Ephemerate
lands//21
3 Scrubland
4 Marsh Flats
3 Plains
2 Swamp
3 Prismatic Vista
4 Wasteland
1 Karakas
1 Tundra
Sorceries//6
4 Reanimate
2 Thoughtseize
Sideboard//15
1 Pithing Needle
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Dauthi Voidwalker
2 Skyclave Apparition
2 Sheoldred's Edict
1 kambal, consol of allocation
1 Karakas
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
2 Thoughtseize
I've been testing with this a bit. The scam package seems to kind of give you a leg up against opposing orcish bowmasters. Reanimate is quite swingy against them and ephemerate can blank their triggers while generating your own. I've been rather liking the full 8 elemental 4 reanimate+ 4 ephemerate package for that reason, and it's quite mana efficient. I don't know if the numbers are right, or what the optimal list should necessarily look like. I tried incorporating the Kambals to add some orzhov cards for the 8 elementals, there could very well be a better orzhov card for that slot, and it's also perfectly plausible that it's just supposed to be stoneforge #4.
Also, I'm not too sure if Jitte is good or not. I imagined it would be, but it's been underperforming as I have been playing against a lot of combo.
Looks strong. The Grief scam package already looks good in the Bowmaster meta.
Kambal seems bad. Tidehollow Sculler or Vindicate are more interactive cards to consider if you need a BW gold card for color reasons. Sculler has a trick with Ephemerate to permanently exile 1 card and then exile a 2nd.
Jitte main might be weak. The meta will adapt to have fewer non-Bowmaster X/1s (to not lose to Bowmaster), making Jitte worse. That could be Batterskull or a Sword. Maybe Jitte SB, although Plague Engineer might be better.
3 Deafening Silence main is a lot. Are they ever redundant or dead? Do you face enough combo and tempo to get value? Would that slot be better as Thoughtseize or Prismatic Ending main (swap 2 Silence to SB)?
Just getting back into the swing of things tbh. Haven't been playing for a long while. I do Kind of like Tidehollow as an option.Originally Posted by FTW
Jitte has been underperforming overall. Yeah, I haven't really seen the Kambals, but the idea is that similar to bowmasters, he's quite punishing on cantrips from opponents as well as rituals and rocks. If you can pressure hard enough, slamming him later on can soft-lock akin to something like a maddening hex. It's all theory though, haven't gotten too many games in at all.
Is Batterskull still impactful enough in the current meta?
My meta is VERY combo oriented atm. Lots of decks packing dark rituals and lotus petals. People seem to be shying away from creature based stuff atm, due to the heavy prevalence of the new lord of the rings cards. Bowmasters can pick critters off, and the one ring can fog and draw an absurd amount of cards in the interim. I could see trimming them to 2, and maybe flexing into another stax piece, but it's gotta be a valid stax piece against Doomsday/Storm/Reanimator/Show I feel.
Batterskull's not the banger it once was, but it's still a very common backup Stoneforge target after Kaldra. You could run all 3: Kaldra, Batterskull and Jitte. But Jitte may get worse as people play around Bowmasters, and Jitte overlaps with what Bowmasters already hates on.
Kambal can be punishing. But you already have faster tools filling that role: Thalia, Esper Sentinel, and Deafening Silence. Kambal seems redundant and slow in comparison.
Meanwhile I just noticed you don't have any maindeck way to remove noncreature permanents, so you might want to make room for a few cards like Prismatic Ending or Vindicate. That probably means cutting one of the redundant slots. Kambal and Deafening Silence jump out as the easiest cuts, unless you're constantly playing against combo. Edit: If your meta is heavy combo then maybe keep the combo hate main and put removal in the SB. Fracture is a decent SB option that is BW.
Would the skyclaves work? Could in theory bring them main.
Skyclave answers The One Ring unlike the others, so that's a big bonus.
It's not bad in the scam package either tbh. Gotta be careful not to give them too many tokens :D.
3-0 in matches 6-0 in games, against Show, lands, and reanimator. People playing Griselbrand need to be a little careful with their life totals in the age of orcish bowmasters.
Still statistically insignificant numbers, but the deck has been feeling solid. Ephemerate letting you both keep the evoke creature and generate 2 extra triggers is insane at just 1 mana.
Great results! You should catch a lot of players by surprise. They'll be ready for Grixis Bowmasters but your Elemental tricks can storm out the gates with faster tempo.
Won a game against delver 2-0 as well. Deck is running hot. Between the tax effects of thalia and sentinel, it made it really awkward for them to devlop, and when they committed more to the board, ephemerate on solitude was lights out both games. Didn't see bowmasters either game even though it would've been good.
I thought more of what you had said last night and moved the kambals to the side, they're actually really fantastic under the right conditions (cantrip based decks in general, combo and control as archetypes in general as well usually), but they can be slow if your opponent just already "has it" and you haven't already ripped them apart with discard or gotten another less expensive stax piece out already. The skyclaves just kind of give you additional redundancy removal-wise in the main while synergizing with the main plan.
The current list:
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/MowDt5v4Z0Gh1QS130tl5g
Lost 0-2 to miracles, terminus was a beating.
Beating Terminus might just be about play patterns. If they're control, don't commit too many bodies to the battlefield at once. Stick with 1-2 threats at a time.
Board out card disadvantage for more disruption or Kambal.
If you avoid Terminus blowouts (don't play too many creatures at a time) and avoid card disadvantage trades, the matchup should be OK. You'll lose some to bad luck but shouldn't get blown out too badly.
So, the deck feels fantastic in testing so far. Bowmasters+taxes is insane if people are ever forced to play their cantrips. I also slotted in an Angel of Ruins which has also been performing stellar, performing blowouts in certain matchups when it gets reanimated.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/MowDt5v4Z0Gh1QS130tl5g
I do still feel the decklist is far from optimal, because when I look at it it just doesn't look right even though it is performing well. Would like some ideas on how it might get cleaned up if that is indeed the case.
I feel recruiter is just too slow and might be better served as another angel and then maybe skyclave apparition just becomes an animate dead.
It looks high synergy. Many ways to reuse ETB triggers and many powerful ETB effects for little mana.
Recruiter stands out as the slowest tempo of all the effects there (may need 4 mana to cast and hold up 1 for a trick, and it doesn't impact the board until you cast what it gets). On the other hand, it also grabs everything good in your deck. It also justifies running 1-ofs like Skyclave.
It's tough to tell just by looking at it if 1-2 slower cards hurt the deck or if the card selection, card advantage and flexibility are worth it. How does it perform in games?
Since you're a 2 color deck, do you have room in the manabase for 1 Volrath's Stronghold? It's slow but insane late game value with all your value creatures when you run out of gas. Otherwise maybe 1 Takenuma.
I think I turned a corner in deck construction. I was fiddling around with the mono-white samewise Gamgee as a means to buyback orcs, wastes, evoke creatures etc. Seemed solid, but the deck was beginning to run into those A+B issues, so since the deck seriously lacks selection, I decided to double down on redundancy to fix the problem instead of additional "win-more" effects. The deck is now much more reanimator-eque and is in need of a LOT of polishing up. Taking Thalia out of the main hurt, but the deck needed to speed up rather than try to slow others. Dunno if she even really belongs in the 75 anymore.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/MowDt5v4Z0Gh1QS130tl5g
Mainboard//60
4 Esper Sentinel
4 Grief
4 Orcish Bowmasters
4 Solitude
2 Archon of Cruelty
2 Ashen Rider
2 Angel of the Ruins
4 Animate Dead
4 Ephemerate
4 Entomb
2 Dark Ritual
4 Marsh Flats
2 Plains
4 Scrubland
2 Swamp
2 Prismatic Vista
4 Reanimate
3 Thoughtseize
3 Collective Brutality
Sideboard//15
1 Opposition Agent
2 Dauthi Voidwalker
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Plague Engineer
2 Deafening Silence
1 Serenity
2 Sheoldred's Edict
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Angel's Grace
1 Thoughtseize
I think you need to pick a direction. If you want to be BW Renaimator, then you should commit to the aggressive direction (4 Dark Ritual, 0 Esper Sentinel, some Griselbrand/Atraxa) and do your thing quickly. I would replace Sentinels with 4 Chancellor of the Annex, which taxes and pitches to Solitude at the same time, or can be reanimated as a threat. It fits better than spending turn 1 on Esper Sentinel. Then your SB needs to focus on fighting Reanimator hate (i.e. multiple Serenity, other disenchant effects, maybe Silent Gravestone or discard to fight Surgical, Swords to fight hate creatures, etc).
Otherwise if you like the fair taxing, I would cut that extra Reanimator stuff and stick to the plan you had before, which seemed to be working. Committing to 4 Animate Dead 4 Entomb makes you weaker to grave hate when you didn't have that weakness before.
Been testing with roughly this list for a little while now, and I think i'm starting to get the numbers right. I've decided on an odd middle ground that seems to be VERY powerful. Reanimation is oftentimes incredibly mana efficient, generally the least expensive way to cheat threats into play. Taxing effects in moderation will harm other decks a lot more on average. Pair this great tempo and pressure with bowmasters and our other stax pieces, it often serves as a 1-2 punch. Ephemerate with etbs in gross. Getting 3 triggers off grief in general or solitude in creature matchups is gross. I was sleeping on Samwise and now realize he's amazing. Not only can he rebuy anything you happen to lose and buyback the evoke critters, he has a secret waste-lock option. All you need is him, a wasteland, and karakas with enough mana to replay him. You can wasteland every single turn until your tax effects take over in some matchups. He also helps orc v orc it, but this deck is INSANE against other orcs. Yes, other orcs are annoying, but this deck is probably the best deck out there at fighting opposing orcs with our blink and reanimation/rebuy effects. The deck has insane burst potential on its own while often staxing the opponent to a crawl or leaving them with nothing after an elemental.
A few numbers may still need tweaking, but this seems to be getting close. I'm kind of crushing it guys.
1 Thorn of Amethyst
4 Esper Sentinel
4 Grief
4 Orcish Bowmasters
4 Solitude
1 Angel of the Ruins
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Samwise the Stouthearted
2 Troll of Khazad-dûm
2 Deafening Silence
2 Animate Dead
4 Ephemerate
1 Malakir Rebirth
4 Marsh Flats
2 Plains
4 Scrubland
2 Swamp
4 Wasteland
2 Karakas
4 Reanimate
4 Thoughtseize
2 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Opposition Agent
2 Dauthi Voidwalker
2 Skyclave Apparition
1 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
1 Archon of Emeria
2 Sheoldred's Edict
3 Surgical Extraction
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/MowDt5v4Z0Gh1QS130tl5g
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