Dwarf Bugs

[Barook]

I saw this decklist on Anu's stream (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1144859495) and surprisingly has potential, even if it has some rough edges.

Decklist (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4279434#paper)

Essentially, you're doing all kinds of tribal shenanigans with Changeling, Dwarven Recruiter and Pyre. Decklist looks like it's tons of fun.

Closer inspection of the deck by the deck creator (https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/pirv45/dwarf_bugs_a_legacy_deck_built_for_fun_is/)

[Scott]

A day or two ago, this happened to me after a bunch of creatures were chain-milled. I had no idea what was happening. Ended up winning through it

https://i.imgur.com/e4Dr8Oi.png
https://i.imgur.com/e4Dr8Oi.png

[FTW]

Needs more Crucible of Fire in the board vs Plague Engineer @ Insect.

Edit: Depala, Pilot Exemplar may be a more realistic lord to use. Only +1/+1, but it's a Dwarf creature (Vial, Cavern, Recruiter) and it can draw you a bunch of creatures (e.g. tap to Mothdust Changeling).
Lord of the Unreal is another option. Not a Dwarf, but only 2 mana and also adds Hexproof.

[FTW]

The deck looks really fun from the stream.

I would start by tweaking it like this


//Creatures: 28
4 Mothdust Changeling
2 Universal Automaton
2 Changeling Outcast
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
3 Unsettled Mariner
3 Masked Vandal
4 Dwarven Recruiter
1 Realmwalker
4 Valiant Changeling
1 Platinum Emperion

//Planeswalkers: 4
4 Grist, the Hunger Tide

//Artifacts: 7
4 Aether Vial
3 Pyre of Heroes

//Lands: 21
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Unclaimed Territory
3 City of Brass
3 Mana Confluence
3 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
2 Ally Encampment
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Swarmyard

//Sideboard: 15
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Brain Maggot
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Crucible of Fire
1 Depala, Pilot Exemplar
1 Fairgrounds Warden
1 Dwarven Blastminer
1 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Utvara Hellkite
1 Mirror Entity


+1 Grist
+1 Recruiter
-1 Swarmyard
-1 Feline Sovereign

+2 Outcast
-2 Automaton

+1 Vandal
-1 Mariner

+2 City of Brass
-1 Confluence
-1 Reflecting Pool


Reasons
Often the deck really needs to draw Grist, Recruiter or Magda to beat the opponent's game state. Grist is very strong in general. This is probably the best Grist deck in Legacy (so many ways to abuse it), and Grist is the only removal in the deck, so Grist should be 4-of. Redundant copies are not a problem... opponent will remove them or lose.

Recruiter is a 1-card combo even without Grist (Realmwalker + Magda pile), can tutor for silver bullet answers, and is the only card in the deck really capable of recovering in topdeck mode, so 4 copies seems good main. Copies can always be shaved postboard. This optimizes combo shenanigans in game 1, when it's most likely to work and the opponent won't know what's going on.

Feline Sovereign is an easy cut. Easily the worst card in the deck. Masked Vandal is a more reliable disenchant effect when you need to remove something, and there are much better lord effects.

22 lands seems high. I shaved a land and tweaked the configuration to cut down on Reflecting Pool and Swarmyard because they're the lands most likely to manascrew you. Can't afford do-nothing lands in this format. That one board state with 2 Pool + 2 Swarmyard was just painful. The original deck had 4 Confluence + 1 City of Brass. That seemed wrong to me. Sure City is bad against Port, but Confluence can't tap for mana with Emperion out, so Confluence is no longer strictly better. 3-3 split?

I swapped 2 Automatons for 2 Outcasts. The creator used Automaton because it can block Ragavan but I think 4 copies is overreacting to the monkey. Monkey already dies to everything in the deck and doesn't even want to cast most of your stuff. Automaton walks harder into disenchants (Force of Vigor, Serenity, Wear//Tear). Outcast can tap for Magda (unblockable) and can't get ambushed by flash blockers.

I made a lot of changes to the sideboard. I don't think you are winning games by trying to Plague Engineer/Kozilek's Return another weenie deck. Kozilek is hard to cast and sets this deck backwards too, even if the 2nd ability is cute with Valiant Changeling. Better to be the aggressor and try to combo harder than bringing in slow 3-mana reactive answers to their creatures. They'll have better trades overall and their creatures are better, so they should be favored after the board wipe.

Against combo you do need answers, so I kept Leylines and Canonist. I added Brain Maggot for discard. It's a 2-mana Insect so it's uncounterable with Caverns, can be Vialed in at instant speed, and can be Pyred into Grist. Proactive plays like Maggot and Canonist seem better than passing with 2 mana up for Warping Wail. This deck is often forced to use lands at sorcery speed.

Fairgrounds Warden seems good vs fatty decks. This replaces Dragonlord Silumgar. Dragonlord might be better, but Warden is much easier to get in play (Pyre @ 2, Recruiter, Vial @ 3, cast with lands).

Opponents will absolutely board in X/1 hate (Plague Engineer, Blazing Volley, Liliana Last Hope, Jitte, etc). The SB needs an answer. Crucible of Fire's +3/+3 is a clean 1-card proactive solution and alternate wincon, but 4 mana is also a lot. Needs testing. Depala is a Dwarf lord that draws cards. Seems good. Any other 2-mana lord (Lord of the Unreal hexproof, Master of the Pearl Trident vs Islands.format) could be good for curve reasons.

Utvara Hellkite is a 2nd 8-mana fatty target when you want something aggressive to end the game instead of Emperion's defense. Magda can find it (Dragon). So can Pyre + Valiant Changeling. Mirror Entity is another option.

Edit: More on why I don't like Plague Engineer here. To get turn 3 Engineer, you need one of the following sequences
1) Lucksack it in opening hand & hit 3 mana with a reliable black source
2) T1 Vial, T2 Pyre, T3 Vial in 2-mana changeling & Pyre it into Engineer
3) T1 Mothdust, T2 Magda + make treasures + play changelings, T3 5 treasures into Pyre into Engineer

In #2 you dump your hand and first 3 turns just to make Plague Engineer. Sure you might kill some guys, but then you have no board state and no game plan, you wasted a Vandal or Mariner as fodder, and if they remove Engineer they probably recover faster than you.
#3 you're already winning, you could just get Emperion or anything else.
In #1 you rely on getting lucky and not getting disrupted (more luck).
Otherwise it takes longer to get out Engineer. By then, the tribal deck might already win. Slower Engineer might help against slow D&T but they also have a lot of removal for it and mana denial to keep you off 2B.
These just seem like losing fights to pick.

A big problem here: Pyre is slow. It takes 4 mana + a creature to do anything. Then you're still down a card, so you better get something unfair. If you get a fair card, opponent trades up and you're playing from behind on both cards and tempo. Pyre starts to pay off after multiple activations. But that's really slow. If you're only activating once, Neoform is much faster. Neoform is very hard to cast in this manabase though... but maybe there is a way to fix the mana.

[Memories of the Time]

I agree with you FTW about almost everything: i want to take this deck at my proxy tournament this sunday (and make some leagues with it before on modo), but yeah pyre seems slow, at the same time it feels necessary with so many cc1 with niche applications: in the anu video seems like we want a chain to have specific piece often. Not saying that Neoform can't be better, but i think it would be so when moving away from this hilarious manabase to something different (if possible).

Fairgrounds Warden is a nice card, agree. I think this deck needs a b plan and Crucible works in evading engineer pretty well for sure, but yeah cc4 seems a lot/not reliable. In a version with Springleaf Drum it would be better for sure.

Another thing to consider is a Coat of Arms md as a secondary, cheaper artifact with huge impact if we draw Emperor. Is way easier to cast and the bonus can easily get out of control. I think i'm gonna play one bw it and Mirror Entity md in the league.

Another idea could be playing mox opal to accelerate things up, with glimmervoid and Spire of Innovation as rainbow lands but maybe it's asking for more problems post side.

About the sideboard, i think that something like Kozilek's Return is still needed: i agree that Engineer seems slow/not enough impactful at that point, but we are a combo deck more than an aggro one against those decks that we want return for, and casting it from the grave is usually gg (niche application, but faesible with so many tutors i think). I like the brain maggot idea and the proactive approach, even if some of the cool things you said (uncounterable, insect for grist) don't really applies in the mu where we want it probably (combo). I mean, are we podding away it for grist in what mu, Miracle? Are we boarding them in against delver or other fair mu? don't think so

[FTW]

i want to take this deck at my proxy tournament this sunday (and make some leagues with it before on modo)

Good luck! Looking forward to hearing results.


Another thing to consider is a Coat of Arms md as a secondary, cheaper artifact with huge impact if we draw Emperor. Is way easier to cast and the bonus can easily get out of control. I think i'm gonna play one bw it and Mirror Entity md in the league.

If you draw Platinum Emperion you can cast it with the 5 treasures. 5 treasures = +5 mana.

Coat of Arms is a great idea. Maybe better SB because it's symmetrical. You do not want it if they have more creatures than you (your changelings buff their team). Also too many Magda targets lead to dead draws. Coat of Arms is a good answer for Plague Engineer (net -0/-0 to your changelings). Probably better than Crucible because you can get it with Magda and it doesn't need colored mana.



Another idea could be playing mox opal to accelerate things up, with glimmervoid and Spire of Innovation as rainbow lands but maybe it's asking for more problems post side.

I think there aren't enough artifacts to support that reliably. The meta is also full of artifact hate. Not worth it.



but yeah pyre seems slow, at the same time it feels necessary with so many cc1 with niche applications: in the anu video seems like we want a chain to have specific piece often. Not saying that Neoform can't be better, but i think it would be so when moving away from this hilarious manabase to something different (if possible).

Yeah, I kept Pyre above because it still fits better than other options.

In Anu's video, there were also many cases where Pyre was too slow or when he only needed to activate it once. He considered swapping some for Birthing Pods, but Pod is a turn 3 card so it's still slow. Pyre/Pod is only better if you activate multiple times. If you only activate once, Neoform is less mana for a better effect (+1/+1 counter & any creature type). But UG is hard... Eldritch Evolution does +2 but GG is still hard.


I like the brain maggot idea and the proactive approach, even if some of the cool things you said (uncounterable, insect for grist) don't really applies in the mu where we want it probably (combo). I mean, are we podding away it for grist in what mu, Miracle? Are we boarding them in against delver or other fair mu? don't think so

Uncounterable helps vs Doomsday. They have too much disruption for a few counterable SB cards to matter.
Also OmniTell, SneakShow... any combo deck with counters.

Insect for Grist could matter on the killing turn. Pyre it into Grist (giving them card back), play Recruiter same turn, +1 Grist.
You risk them winning with the returned card, but if you don't go for a fast enough kill they may just draw into another win anyway. This is a lot safer if you have Emperion out and just need to win before they remove it.
Maybe this is still too slow vs combo and only good against control.



About the sideboard, i think that something like Kozilek's Return is still needed: i agree that Engineer seems slow/not enough impactful at that point, but we are a combo deck more than an aggro one against those decks that we want return for, and casting it from the grave is usually gg (niche application, but faesible with so many tutors i think).

Yeah, maybe keep some Returns and see if it works.

I'm just thinking of the Elves match Anu played. He drew the 2-of SB card and cast it and wiped their board and his own, but they recovered faster and won. It didn't help him actually win vs Elves. This deck topdecks bad changelings, card disadvantage and conditional lands while most creature decks have better draws. Opponent should recover from the wipe better. Even if he was able to recur that Valiant Changeling to trigger Kozilek, he clears the board to stay alive longer but isn't much closer to winning himself. To cast that Valiant, you need another changeling too (to reduce cost). That's using 2 cards to trigger Kozilek. Then you're still far from assembling winning combos. Kozilek's Return hurts the opponent, but does it help this deck progress towards a winning state? Needs more testing.

Against D&T, Maverick or Goblins they can Waste you off Red mana. Thalia makes it cost 4.

Doesn't combo usually play the "aggressor" role vs creature piles? Boarding into 3-mana board wipes is taking a control role.

[Barook]

Master of the Pearl Trident might be really cool due to Islandwalk. Same goes for Coat of Arms.

What irks me about Brain Maggot is that one the hand, Automaton is bad due to artifact hate, yet on the other hand, an enchantment creature gets a pass, although most of the common hate hits it, too?

I do think the deck needs some of mana acceleration since it's so slow. Mana dorks like Birds or Hierarchs are going to have a bad time with the current mana base (Hierarchs also can't cover all colors necessary). And the relatively low land count prevents Mox Diamond from being consistent (artifact hate aside).

Manaweft Sliver (aka the better Gemhide Sliver) could turn all your Changelings into mana dorks, which would also give you another way for Magda to produce treasure tokens with Changelings. Not sure if that would be a fix since it's still kinda slow, but it opens up all kinds of fancy shenanigans, SB included (e.g. Harmonic Sliver vs enchantment/artifact heavy decks - would nuke your Vials/Pyres with no opposing targets, though). In case a Sliver package has any merit, Sliver Hive should be run over other creature-type specific rainbow lands.

Other interesting Sliver candidates would be (either MD or SB):
Cloudshredder Sliver
Necrotic Sliver
Crystalline Sliver (in combination with Mirror Entity)

Another thing worth considering would be a Urza's Saga package - aside from Vial and Automaton, Retrofitter Foundry would be a great target since it can turn any Changeling instantly into a 4/4. Spamming Constructs while Magda produces treasure tokens sounds pretty juicy, too. It's only 5 cards total package, with 4 being lands. Trim some garbage lands like Swarmyard and Pool and it shouldn't be to hard to get there. Sagas should be able to carry games by themselves and could be a rock-solid plan B. I'm not really sold on Mariner, so it could be

+4 Saga
+1 Retrofitter Foundry

-3 Mariner
-1 Pool
-1 Swarmyard

And probably 4x Automaton instead a mix of Automaton and Outcast due to better synergy with Saga/Constructs. An example turn sequence looks like this:

T1: Saga, Automaton
T2: Land, Magda, swing with Automaton, get treasure
T3: Make Construct (with land + treasure), grab Retrofitter Foundry, swing with Automaton, get treasure, then sac Automaton at some point to make a 4/4.

At this point, you have Madga, a treasure, a 4/4 Construct, Foundry and the Saga Construct (currently 4/4).

[FTW]

What irks me about Brain Maggot is that one the hand, Automaton is bad due to artifact hate, yet on the other hand, an enchantment creature gets a pass, although most of the common hate hits it, too?

Good point. Maybe Maggot isn't good enough.

Universal Automaton is bad due to being a bad card. Does Merfolk want Merfolk of the Pearl Trident? Walking into artifact hate is just another downside. The deck creator started with Outcasts and only switched to Automatons to chump Ragavan. Outcast is better in most scenarios like making treasures with Magda (2/1 unblockable), ticking down planeswalkers, stealing the Monarch, and sneaking through damage in stalled board states with Platinum Emperion.

GY combo decks may board in multi-disenchants (Force of Vigor, Wear // Tear, Serenity) to beat Leyline. They will trade those with Leyline either way. If you play T1 artifact creature, it gives them a free 2nd target.

Maggot was for other combo matches like Doomsday, OmniTell and TES. These are abysmal matchups. They're also designed to combo through 1 counterspell, so SB Warping Wail doesn't do much. But Maggot off Cavern/Vial can actually sneak around their protection to exile a combo piece, potentially doing something. They're unlikely to board in mass-disenchants against Changeling tribal.



I do think the deck needs some of mana acceleration since it's so slow. Mana dorks like Birds or Hierarchs are going to have a bad time with the current mana base (Hierarchs also can't cover all colors necessary). And the relatively low land count prevents Mox Diamond from being consistent (artifact hate aside). Manaweft Sliver (aka the better Gemhide Sliver) could turn all your Changelings into mana dorks

I agree accel is needed. Tough to find a good card though. Birds/Hierarch are unreliable to cast on T1. Chrome Mox is bad in 5c.
Is T2 mana dork too slow? Needs testing.



In case a Sliver package has any merit, Sliver Hive should be run over other creature-type specific rainbow lands.

Harmonic Sliver could be strong, but it's a liability with no "may" clause. Masked Vandal seems better and fits a better spot on the curve (clogged at 3cmc with combo pieces).

Crystalline Sliver would be useful, but Lord of the Unreal is even better at the same cost (hexproof over shroud & +1/+1!).



I'm not really sold on Mariner, so it could be
-3 Mariner


Mariner is needed for curve reasons. The deck needs 2 cmc changelings to Pyre into Grist & Recruiter and a critical mass of changelings to do the combo. Mariner isn't amazing but it's better than every 2cmc changeling other than Masked Vandal. Cutting it for non-2cmc changeling weakens the core engines (cut Pyre instead?).

[Memories of the Time]

First league ended 3-2, won against d&t,UB Urza and UW standstill, lost against show and U stompy with the following list:https://i.ibb.co/xmrZT3j/2021-09-16-17-21-40-Magic-The-Gathering-Online.png (https://ibb.co/xmrZT3j)

I've played a split bw outcast and automation and the first has ben way better, as expected. Outcast is a clock with Magda and has been really good for the beatdown plan.

Urza's Package has been good (obvs) but the deck is mana hungry and without vial it's often harsh to make constructs. Needs more tests, as for all the deck. More lands has been good anyway, flooded once but i've ended up winning anyway (this deck is really strong against control). I've mulled a lot due to color screw for the ally/dragon lands, probably need a cut here.

Grist+Recruiter has been my gg most of the games, Vandal has overperformed, Mirror Entity has been a nice alternative wincon, Valiant has been meh and it will cut i think. a 3/3 double strike isn't enough almost always and the line to pyre away it for Emperor is really niche: Probably i will up the mariner again but don't know, it hasn't been really important in these match up. Pyre has been good but sometimes slow, but it's needed yeah.
The "cannon" with realmswalker hasn't been really faesible, but the grind/Ca factor is probably worth: i probably want Depala md as another Lord effect anyway

A question: why emperor is better than platinum angel? i think they die from the same things while the angel protects us from more things (mainly, DDAY and painter) while being an evasive beater (i mean, cutting away the valiant and then the pod reason).

This is what at i'm at rn, but i think that the sb needs more impactful cards against U stompy/urza decks (what?) https://i.ibb.co/0VxY7rd/2021-09-16-17-40-36.png (https://ibb.co/0VxY7rd)

Beside that, yeah the deck with a reliable acceleration would be really good. I still think that there aren't so much mass artifact hate to not trying an artifact version, probably with Springleaf drum instead of vial with mopal, rainbow artifact lands etc. It will also cut the life loss of city/confluence that against taxes has been a problem, but the deck should be reconstructed differently.

[Reeplcheep]

A question: why emperor is better than platinum angel? i think they die from the same things while the angel protects us from more things (mainly, DDAY and painter) while being an evasive beater (i mean, cutting away the valiant and then the pod reason).

Beside that, yeah the deck with a reliable acceleration would be really good. I still think that there aren't so much mass artifact hate to not trying an artifact version, probably with Springleaf drum instead of vial with mopal, rainbow artifact lands etc. It will also cut the life loss of city/confluence that against taxes has been a problem, but the deck should be reconstructed differently.

My guess is the higher toughness to beat unholy heat/double bolt out of delver. But angel does seem much better vs combo.

Another option is chrome mox for acceleration. Duergar assailant over outcast gives you extra interaction, Imprints nicely and works with the primary combo. If you have cut the double striker it works with basically everything except grist. If TES can make chrome mox work with more artifacts and 5c you should be fine. Trim to 1 realmwalker 1 masked vandal and the deck is basically jesksai for mox purposes.

Edit: chrome mox over vial also means you have only 4 non creatures that cost mana. This makes ancient ziggurat much more playable, which is way better than some of your 5c lands.

[Memories of the Time]

Chrome mox would also let us play thalia in the sb, and that could be huge

[FTW]

Thanks for the results! Useful to know.

Edit: Platinum Emperion has some corner cases like dodging burn/Dismember and stopping Uro from attacking as profitably. Angel is better vs combos and to fly over ground blockers.
I think Emperion was chosen for 8 cmc (Pyre + Valiant). On the Reddit thread, the deck creator is big on having cards you can get with both Pyre and Magda. If you cut Valiants, there's no reason to limit yourself to only 8 cmc targets.

The Ally land is probably the worst one if you need to clean up the manabase.

How were the SB cards? Was Sporeweaver actually good? Did Brain Maggot or Plague Engineer do enough in those matches?

What do you use Pyre for if not Emperion? To get Grist and Recruiter? If so then yeah, you need enough 2 cmc changelings.

[FTW]

Chrome mox would also let us play thalia in the sb, and that could be huge

Am I missing something? Isn't Chrome Mox really bad in a 5 color deck? It will tap for the wrong color.

[Reeplcheep]

Am I missing something? Isn't Chrome Mox really bad in a 5 color deck? It will tap for the wrong color.

TES is playing 3 and they have even less overlap in colours and more artifacts. Assuming -4 outcast -1 vandal for +1 mariner +4 assailant you have 9 cards that will cast 2/3s of your deck when imprinted. 4 ziggurat and 9 white cards increases your ability to cast Thalia (on t1 even) without needing to name soldier on your good lands. You even indirectly improve your ability to cast grist since you can replace spirit haven/ally encampment with ziggurat.

[FTW]

If you're cutting Valiant Changeling, can you simplify the manabase by cutting down on colors?


//Creatures: 26
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Masked Vandal
1 Shapesharer
1 Lord of the Unreal
4 Dwarven Recruiter
1 Realmwalker
1 Mirror Entity
1 Chameleon Colossus
1 Platinum Angel

//Artifacts: 8
4 Aether Vial
3 Pyre of Heroes
1 Retrofitter Foundry

//Planeswalkers: 3
3 Grist, the Hunger Tide


That reduces the deck to URg in the early turns, with slight splash for W and B cards (Grist, Mirror Entity) that you can get through Pyre, Vial or Treasures.

You could run something like RUG lands + 4 Caverns. That would allow you to play nontribal SB cards more easily. And maybe even play some Neoform over Pyre, to reduce the need for mana ramp.


//Lands: 23
3 Urza's Saga
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Taiga
1 Underground Sea
1 Badlands

[Barook]

Crystalline Sliver would be useful, but Lord of the Unreal is even better at the same cost (hexproof over shroud & +1/+1!).
Shroud and hexproof are identical for all intents and purposes as long as you don't run stuff that targets your own creatures. It boils down to a Lord effect vs the Sliver being untouchable to spot removal while Lord of the Unreal is a weak spot in your defenses as long as you don't have a Mirror Entity online.

Speaking of targeting, another Dwarf that could enable Magda would be Dwarven Bloodboiler. Although RRR is probably too harsh on the mana of the 5C build. However, between Mothdust Changeling and Changeling Outcast, the pump might be a real threat - and it works right out of the box, potentially stealing wins out of nowhere.

A RUG manabase could make the use of BoP more feasible as an accelerant.

As for Ziggurat, keep in mind that it can't be used to cast or activate Pyre (Vial is less of an issue here due to its low cost).

[Zoid]

First off, this is probably the most interesting deck in Legacy in years.
It looks deliciously stupid and I'm really keen to see where it goes.
The 5 color version is also a nice budget deck which legacy really needs.


If you're cutting Valiant Changeling, can you simplify the manabase by cutting down on colors?


//Creatures: 26
4 Mothdust Changeling
2 Universal Automaton
2 Duergar Assailant
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Masked Vandal
1 Shapesharer
1 Lord of the Unreal
4 Dwarven Recruiter
1 Realmwalker
1 Mirror Entity
1 Chameleon Colossus
1 Platinum Angel

//Artifacts: 8
4 Aether Vial
3 Pyre of Heroes
1 Retrofitter Foundry

//Planeswalkers: 3
3 Grist, the Hunger Tide


That reduces the deck to URg in the early turns, with slight splash for W and B cards (Grist, Mirror Entity) that you can get through Pyre, Vial or Treasures.

You could run something like RUG lands + 4 Caverns. That would allow you to play nontribal SB cards more easily. And maybe even play some Neoform over Pyre, to reduce the need for mana ramp.


//Lands: 23
3 Urza's Saga
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Taiga
1 Underground Sea
1 Badlands


Am I missing something here?
What does the Angel do here besides being a random 1-off?
You don't have anything 6cmc to Pyre it.


Shroud and hexproof are identical for all intents and purposes as long as you don't run stuff that targets your own creatures. It boils down to a Lord effect vs the Sliver being untouchable to spot removal while Lord of the Unreal is a weak spot in your defenses as long as you don't have a Mirror Entity online.

Speaking of targeting, another Dwarf that could enable Magda would be Dwarven Bloodboiler. Although RRR is probably too harsh on the mana of the 5C build. However, between Mothdust Changeling and Changeling Outcast, the pump might be a real threat - and it works right out of the box, potentially stealing wins out of nowhere.

A RUG manabase could make the use of BoP more feasible as an accelerant.

As for Ziggurat, keep in mind that it can't be used to cast or activate Pyre (Vial is less of an issue here due to its low cost).

Opposition or Glare of Subdual? Expensive but could be a silver bullet against most giant things in the format.

Kyren Negotiations could also be a hilarious win con.

In terms of Pyre-able things Field Surgeon seems the best from a quick search.

[Barook]

Opposition or Glare of Subdual? Expensive but could be a silver bullet against most giant things in the format.

Kyren Negotiations could also be a hilarious win con.

In terms of Pyre-able things Field Surgeon seems the best from a quick search.
Aphetto Grifter would probably the closest thing to a Opposition-like effect that could also be Pyre'd. Shacklegeist is cheaper, but also more limited.

[FTW]

Am I missing something here?
What does the Angel do here besides being a random 1-off?
You don't have anything 6cmc to Pyre it.

You can get Angel with Magda, Brazen Outlaw. Magda's the more common way to get Platinum Emperion in the 5c deck too.
The deck Memories posted has the same thing. I built off that idea, since he was running Angel and cutting Valiant Changeling anyway.

The 4-mana tap outlets are too slow and hard to cast with the 5c manabase. The deck needs to start going earlier to have any shot of playing at Legacy speed. Shacklegeist could be strong. It can't Port them like the Wizard, but it comes online earlier and helps the beatdown plan better. It can lock down a turn 2 Marit Lage or Griselbrand.

Edit: Ancient Ziggurat also can't be used with Urza's Saga or Retrofitter Foundry. I think you don't want Saga + Ziggurat in the same build, otherwise your mana can backfire too easily.

[Zoid]

You can get Angel with Magda, Brazen Outlaw. Magda's the more common way to get Platinum Emperion in the 5c deck too.
The deck Memories posted has the same thing. I built off that idea, since he was running Angel and cutting Valiant Changeling anyway.

The 4-mana tap outlets are too slow and hard to cast with the 5c manabase. The deck needs to start going earlier to have any shot of playing at Legacy speed. Shacklegeist could be strong. It can't Port them like the Wizard, but it comes online earlier and helps the beatdown plan better. It can lock down a turn 2 Marit Lage or Griselbrand.

Edit: Ancient Ziggurat also can't be used with Urza's Saga or Retrofitter Foundry. I think you don't want Saga + Ziggurat in the same build, otherwise your mana can backfire too easily.

Ah, I see, thanks for clarification.
These kids with them new cards these days.
I looked at Shacklegeist but that flops hard if your opponent doesn't have dudes.
I think you'd want something that doesn't need conditional targets.

What is currently meta relevant that Angels protects you against that Emperion doesn't?
Is that really worth the risk of being more vulnerable?

[Barook]

I found this list (https://twitter.com/9thonbreakers/status/1438738150856273923/photo/1) in my Twitter feed. It's Modern-legal, but it never hurts to get some fresh ideas.

[FTW]

What is currently meta relevant that Angels protects you against that Emperion doesn't?
Is that really worth the risk of being more vulnerable?

Thassa's Oracle from Doomsday and Oops!
To a lesser extent, Infect and Grindstone.

Don't know if it's worth the risk. But once you cut Valiant Changelings, there's no reason to be limited to 8 cmc Emperion. Both have merits.


I looked at Shacklegeist but that flops hard if your opponent doesn't have dudes.
I think you'd want something that doesn't need conditional targets.

Good point. Shacklegeist is too unreliable.

Smuggler's Copter? You can crew as many times as you want, at instant speed. Also helps with beatdown and card selection.

To solve the mana ramp problem, there's also Birchlore Rangers or Springleaf Drum.

[Memories of the Time]

Yeah copter can be good, we need some selection imho.

Drum is another card to consider bc it doesn't cost colored mana (assuming to be on the rainbow list) and can tap everything : I'm suspicious for cards like geist or ranger bc we often have to tap recruiter and Magda too

About Ziggurat (that i'm trying in 2x with 3 thalia in the sb) i think you are overstimating the problem in not tapping for urza or pyre: i mean, it's a problem only if we are really low on lands (mostly against heavy denial decks where they could leave us with 2 land and a pyre, yeah). Otherwise it woun't cloug up the mana (if not in multiples)?

Angel has a nice upside vs Emperor: 7 mana let you cast it t3 with magda+mothdust

Bloodboiler can be really good with 8 evasive cheap beaters, but gosh that mana is harsh without something like 4 ziggurat

Edit: a nice screenshots, both g1. Against reanimator i was tempted to concede after his double discard+griselbrand, but he exumed my recruiter, put magda on top and then i kept making sac folder for archon <3 so goood
https://i.ibb.co/RQpc5Zw/2021-09-17-18-49-35-Legacy-League-Stage-1-Match-2-vs-Harbor-Elite.png (https://ibb.co/RQpc5Zw)https://i.ibb.co/gM7ddsV/2021-09-17-19-12-41.png (https://ibb.co/gM7ddsV)

[Barook]

Drum and Copter sound pretty good, as they're both colorless (works well with the tribal lands) and could serve vital functions for the deck.

T1 Drum, T2 Magda can enable either another 1-drop + gaining a treasure token, or you can play another 2-drop. That's pretty close to a mana dork.

The better question is: What to cut to make room for those cards?

[Memories of the Time]

I keep losing against Dday (found 3 in 2 leagues): they can almost always t2 dday and there are no creature that can really beat that.
Maybe going on the dual manabase is needed to have flusterstorm.

[FTW]

Good point about tribal enablers like Birchlore and Shacklegeist. Maybe Drum or Copter is the way to go.

Lol why did the Reanimator player concede? No outs to Platinum Angel + Foundry tokens for Archon?

Maybe 2x Ziggurat is OK instead of 4x. Have you not run into clashes yet? How do you sequence your land drops? Do you have fewer copies of Saga too?

With Ziggurat + Saga, you need 4 lands to make any Constructs. 4 lands isn't easy. That makes you really vulnerable to tempo plays from Waste/Port denying 1-2 Constructs.
If you have Zig + Saga + 2 rainbow and they Waste a rainbow land and you don't draw a 5th land, you go -2 Constructs. Then Saga sacrifices itself so you're down to 2 lands (Zig + rainbow), not enough to use Pyre, and only 1 land can tap for Retrofitter or noncreatures. A single Wasteland takes you from 4 lands to being manascrewed on 1 mana (+Zig) and counters 2 Constructs.

I worry about relying on lands like Reflecting Pool and Ancient Ziggurat because the opponent can just Waste your other land and get a "2-for-1" tempo blowout.

[FTW]

I found this list (https://twitter.com/9thonbreakers/status/1438738150856273923/photo/1) in my Twitter feed. It's Modern-legal, but it never hurts to get some fresh ideas.

Interesting. I've been thinking a lot about Neoform due to the mana efficiency. It's viable if the manabase is cleaned up to duals. But because it's a 2-for-1 and only 1 use, it seems better for getting something busted (e.g. 8-mana with Valiant Changeling).

Pyre + Valiant only makes Emperion on turn 4
T1 changeling dork
T2 Valiant
T3 Pyre (assuming you can't rely on 4 land drops)
T4 activate Pyre
This costs 4 turns and 7 mana. Could be too slow to protect against combo.
Fair decks can easily disrupt this because you broadcast what you're doing. Lightning Bolt at Valiant after casting Pyre undoes 3 full turns for 1 mana.

Neoform + Valiant is a full turn faster
T1 changeling
T2 Valiant
T3 Neoform
That 1 less turn could be a big deal vs combo.
Vs fair decks you don't have to advertise what you're doing. You can go fair beatdown with Valiant. Once Neoform is on the stack, they can't remove Valiant anymore.


The minimal colors for Valiant Changeling + Neoform are Bant. Staying 3 colors, that means losing Dwarves + Grist tech and becoming a different changeling deck. But it opens up other tribal synergies.
I've been thinking about this Wizards build...
Patron Wizard and Spellstutter Sprite both pitch to FoW and get significantly better with high tribe counts.

Bant Neoform Wizards


//Creatures: 28
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
3 Unsettled Mariner
2 Masked Vandal
3 Vedalken Aethermage
3 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Patron Wizard
1 Mirror Entity
4 Valiant Changeling
1 Platinum Emperion

//Spells: 12
4 Aether Vial
4 Daze
4 Neoform

//Lands: 20
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Island

//Sideboard: 15
4 Force of Will
2 Lord of the Unreal
1 Masked Vandal
1 Meddling Mage
1 Deputy of Detention
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Magus of the Moat
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Griselbrand


Blue duals means you get access to Daze. Daze protects the proactive creature plan, improves the combo matchups, and makes the taxes of Unsettled Mariner and Patron Wizard even better.
The counters should give the deck legs against disruption and enemy combo decks, at the expense of its own combo explosiveness (no Dwarf cannon).
Neoform + Aethermage allows a toolbox SB. Aethermage seems slow but costs less than Pyre + activate and isn't card disadvantage. It can also bounce your own creatures in response to death.

There's some cool stuff there but it loses Dwarves.
You could also just play Daze in the Dwarf deck. If you go harder on the Magda plan, there's another red creature that makes Treasures

RUG Dwarves


//Creatures: 27
3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
2 Duergar Assailant
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Masked Vandal
4 Dwarven Recruiter
1 Realmwalker
1 Mirror Entity

//Artifacts: 5
3 Pyre of Heroes
1 Coat of Arms
1 Platinum Emperion / Platinum Angel

//Spells: 8
4 Once Upon A Time
4 Daze

//Lands: 20
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Taiga
1 Island
1 Mountain


Both of these deviate from the main plan. Just some ideas to consider. Maybe the original deck is trying to do too many combos at once.

[Barook]

Phil uploaded his run with the deck.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMt3I6Pt2TY

The most interesting tech here is probably Steely Resolve in the SB.

[Zoid]

I keep losing against Dday (found 3 in 2 leagues): they can almost always t2 dday and there are no creature that can really beat that.
Maybe going on the dual manabase is needed to have flusterstorm.

I suppose Doomsday doesn't really care about Dryad Militant so I guess you have to go with something else.
Without mana costs Mindbreak Trap might be an option.
Deafening Silence would also be an option if you clean up the mana base.

In general I agree that it seems the deck is trying to do too many things in 60 cards.
The question is which is the weakest link?

[FTW]

Vs Doomsday, Platinum is too slow and they can easily beat Warping Wail
Brain Maggot seems good there. Off Cavern or Vial, they can't stop it with Force or Daze.
Otherwise Torpor Orb?

[Barook]

RUG Dwarves


//Creatures: 27
3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
2 Duergar Assailant
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Masked Vandal
4 Dwarven Recruiter
1 Realmwalker
1 Mirror Entity

//Artifacts: 5
3 Pyre of Heroes
1 Coat of Arms
1 Platinum Emperion / Platinum Angel

//Spells: 8
4 Once Upon A Time
4 Daze

//Lands: 20
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Taiga
1 Island
1 Mountain


Both of these deviate from the main plan. Just some ideas to consider. Maybe the original deck is trying to do too many combos at once.
Grist is one of the core pieces of the deck. I don't think it's correct to lose it.

The other core piece is Magda. I wonder if it's worth it to throw in some Imperial Recruiters since it can grab all the good stuff (Grist, Magda, Dwarfen Recruiter, Masked Vandal, potential tutor targets like Mirror Entity). Recruiter also works better with Vial and it would decrease the reliance on Pyre. That doesn't necessarily mean that Pyre should be cut, though.

[FTW]

Grist is only used for 1 of 4 combo lines in the original deck.

The original deck has 4 combo lines
1) Valiant Changeling + Pyre -> Platinum Emperion

2) Mothdust Changeling + Magda -> big artifact or dragon

3) Dwarven Recruiter into Realmwalker pile (Realmwalker, Magda, Mothdust, 1 cmc dwarves...)

4) Dwarven Recruiter + Grist combo

In Anu's stream, he never used the Grist line in any match. It does require the most setup (2-card combo, most mana and tempo, needs to pass the turn).
With just Magda and Recruiter you can still do #2 and #3.

If you play all 4 combos it takes 5 colors and a rainbow manabase. If you cut some, you can reduce the manabase and have easier access to anti-combo cards (Daze, Flusterstorm, Thalia, Deafening Silence...).

If you cut #1, you can cut white.
#2 needs UR
#3 needs RUG.
#4 needs Jund.

It comes down to what kind of mana you want to run. There's a tradeoff between doing everything (greediest mana + least SB options) and cutting some for better mana + SB.

[Barook]

Grist can also be used as removal against problematic creatures and planeswalkers. That's my main consideration here. Because otherwise, you're a dog against certain cards. Grist + Vandal gives you a solid coverage against most non-land permanents.

[FTW]

True. So maybe it could work with bURG mana. White is the easiest cut. With just Grist in black, you don't need many black sources.

e.g.
-4 OUAT
+4 Grist

-1 Island
-1 Mountain
+1 Underground Sea
+1 Badlands

Imperial Recruiter is interesting but 3 mana might be too slow. What about Living Wish? Or Diabolic Intent, Gamble or Worldly Tutor?

[Barook]

Imperial Recruiter is interesting but 3 mana might be too slow. What about Living Wish? Or Diabolic Intent, Gamble or Worldly Tutor?
Living Wish is cheaper and gives alot of flexibility, but doesn't work with Vial @3 and a creature type-centric mana base.

[Zoid]

In terms of rainbow lands, what about:

Forbidden Orchard
Gemstone Mine
Rhystic Cave
?

They got other problems but are not limited to creatures.

[FTW]

Living Wish is cheaper and gives alot of flexibility, but doesn't work with Vial @3 and a creature type-centric mana base.

Are those 2 things necessary to make the deck work?
Something always has to be cut to make room for something new. The relevant question is if it's worth cutting that thing.

4 colors could work. White is the easiest cut.

Example

//Creatures: 27
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
4 Changeling Outcast
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Masked Vandal
1 Shapesharer
3 Dwarven Recruiter
1 Realmwalker
1 Mirror Entity
1 Platinum fatty

//Planeswalker: 3
3 Grist, the Hunger Tide

//Artifacts: 6
4 Aether Vial
2 Pyre of Heroes

//Spells: 4
4 Living Wish

//Lands: 20
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
2 Taiga
1 Underground Sea
1 Badlands

//Wishboard: 15
1 Grist, the Hunger Tide
1 Dwarven Recruiter
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Dwarven Blastminer
1 Plague Engineer
1 Lord of the Unreal
1 Patron Wizard
1 Endurance
1 Karakas


The manabase loses to nonbasic hate but no worse than the 5c manabase does.

I cut down to 2 Pyre because it's terrible in multiples (see streams from ThrabenU and AnziD) and there's less dependence on it without the Valiant Changeling combo.

Living Wish curves into the 3 cmc combo pieces (Recruiter, Grist) much more smoothly than Pyre does.
T2 Wish T3 combo piece (neutral on cards)
vs
T2 2 cmc changeling, T3 Pyre, T4 activate Pyre to get 3 drop (-1 card)
Leaning on Living Wish to find them means there isn't as much need to Pyre 2-cmc changelings, so I dropped the curve a bit. 12 1cmc instead of 8. The 1 cmcs play better with Magda and Realmwalker.
Overall this seems a little smoother on tempo.

[Kanti]

Retrofitter Foundry seems strong in a deck chock-full-o-changelings.

[Memories of the Time]

Yesterday tournament hasn't been great, ended 3-3 winning against 2 goblins and ,losing against BUG Witherbloom (won against 2 plague engineer and a ouphe lol, anyway that decks suffer istant speed interaction that we lack), Dragon Stompy (Very close one but he flipped two times fury with squad, otherwise i would have won the first and the third game) and GW Depths (felt unwinnable). I've mulligan'd a lot, often to 5 and once to 4 (but i ended up winning that game lol).

The list i've played was basically the same i've posted. Our cards felt underwhelming and too slow, recruiter is really sad almost always and can lock ourselves, Magda/mothdust/outcast are horrendous in multiple and useless if not togheter.

I think the deck can be something but needs a reconstruction. A blue-centered manabase seems necessary for both daze and brainstorm probably, we have too many pieces totally useless by themselves and the risk of both screw and flood is really high. Plus the medium cc isn't really high, so we can support well both these cards (on paper, at least).

[Zoid]

Yesterday tournament hasn't been great, ended 3-3 winning against 2 goblins and ,losing against BUG Witherbloom (won against 2 plague engineer and a ouphe lol, anyway that decks suffer istant speed interaction that we lack), Dragon Stompy (Very close one but he flipped two times fury with squad, otherwise i would have won the first and the third game) and GW Depths (felt unwinnable). I've mulligan'd a lot, often to 5 and once to 4 (but i ended up winning that game lol).

The list i've played was basically the same i've posted. Our cards felt underwhelming and too slow, recruiter is really sad almost always and can lock ourselves, Magda/mothdust/outcast are horrendous in multiple and useless if not togheter.

I think the deck can be something but needs a reconstruction. A blue-centered manabase seems necessary for both daze and brainstorm probably, we have too many pieces totally useless by themselves and the risk of both screw and flood is really high. Plus the medium cc isn't really high, so we can support well both these cards (on paper, at least).

What do you think hurt you vs "fair" decks?
Counters or removal?
Destiny Spinner or Prowling Serpopard might be ok vs counters, the illusion lord vs removal.

I agree that the deck has a lot of cards required to make it work so there's little room to change things up.
It is basically like Ichorid where a lot of the deck is useless for most situations.

What really hurts I think is that the deck can't play Chalice.
That leaves you very open.

[FTW]

In your list you cut Valiant Changeling right? I wonder how much that hurt the fair beatdown plan in disruptive games. 3/3 double strike is a clock and payoff for the 1/1s. Otherwise you rely a lot on Magda and Grist, or adding another payoff.

You can't play Chalice, but you can play Daze.

I think lord effects (e.g. Lord of the Unreal or Master of the Pearl Trident in a blue-centric base) would make the 1/1 changelings better too. Another option is Patron Wizard, even as a 1-of, which would give instant speed stack interaction.

[Noctalor]

The decks surely looks cool, probably, the best thing to do is try our best to make the deck less cool, but more viable.

Firstly, the deck has an insane amount of straight garbage cards, you should look for the minimun amount of bad cards needed for the engine to work.

Secondly, the entire recruiter plan seems legacy unplayable, you are supposed to
- Cast recruiter (1 turn doing nothing)
- Cast Grist and get a bunch of 1/1

If grist gets countered this line leaves you with the realmwalker play, which is kinda bad (dies to removal leaving us with a million 1/1s to topdeck).
Imho, it's quite sad but i would consider cutting entirely recruiter, grist and realmwalker.

As long as this deck is running 8x 1/1s, we should run 4x retrofitter, it's not as cool but 2 4/4 are winning you the game.

I would consider to run max amount of Pyre, the card is good to find magda and it's decent/good postboard in most MUs, given that in my idea we would run a bunch of colorless, I would consider sol lands and thorn of amethyst or chrome mox

I would start with something like this

// 36 Maindeck
// 16 Artifact
4 Pyre of Heroes
4 Thorn of Amethyst
4 Retrofitter Foundry
4 Chrome Mox

// 20 Creature
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Universal Automaton
4 Mothdust Changeling
1 Platinum Emperion
4 Valiant Changeling
1 Meddling Mage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Imperial Recruiter

UWR Manabase

[FTW]

Secondly, the entire recruiter plan seems legacy unplayable, you are supposed to
- Cast recruiter (1 turn doing nothing)
- Cast Grist and get a bunch of 1/1

There are 2 different Recruiter plans.

1) Grist + Recruiter plan:
Play Grist
Play Recruiter -> Put X changelings on top, then a filler Dwarf (Magda?), then another Recruiter
+1 Grist -> Mill X+1 cards, make X+1 1/1 Insect tokens, add X loyalty counters
Next turn -5 Grist and attack with Insects


You can do Grist + Recruiter in the same turn using Vial, Pyre, or treasure mana.
Otherwise you would get Grist first (probably -2 to kill something), then cast Recruiter next turn and immediately +1 Grist. Recruiter first is bad because it cannot find Grist so you're just doing nothing for a turn and wrecking your draw step for no reason without knowing if Grist will resolve. Grist first, then Recruiter after.
The bigger problem is it needs 2 3-mana cards and still needs to pass the turn, making this worse than all other A+B combos.


2) Recruiter + Realmwalker plan:
Cast/Vial/Pyre out Recruiter -> Stack library as Realmwalker, Magda (if not in play), Mothdust, other 1 cmcs, 2 cmcs, Recruiter
Next turn draw & cast Realmwalker
Then from top of library cast Magda, Mothdust, then use them to make treasures and cast as many creatures as possible.


The two lines are different.
You definitely DO NOT do the Grist + Recruiter line casting Recruiter first, passing the turn to draw Realmwalker and leaving 1/1s on top without knowing if Grist will stick. As you said, that's suicidal.
Cast Grist first. IF Grist lives, then you can Recruiter (without Realmwalker) and immediately +1 to mill. If the Grist does not live you don't have to Recruiter lock yourself. You could go for Line 2 or just tutor for a 1-of.


If you are considering cutting Grist + Recruiter dwarf combo and going down to 3 colors, there's no reason to stick to these colors or dwarf tribal. Patron Wizard is a card.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben seems better than Thorn in a UWR deck with Pyre and Chrome Mox.

[FTW]

In a 3 color shell, Force+Daze is easier to support than Thorn + sol lands. Sol Lands + 3-color manabase is a mess.

Also I think if you're going to cut durdly things from the deck, Pyre is one of those cuts. It's card disadvantage and slow, especially without the Sol Land mana.

Maybe you can play Grixis Dwarf Ninjas instead


//Creatures: 22
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Changeling Outcast
2 Universal Automaton
3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
2 Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
2 Ingenious Infiltrator
1 Platinum Emperion

//Spells: 16
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
2 Fatal Push
2 Snuff Out

//Artifacts: 4
4 Retrofitter Foundry

//Lands: 18
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain

//Sideboard:
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Coat of Arms
3 Sudden Edict
2 Plague Engineer
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
1 Force of Negation
1 Flusterstorm


You can still cheese Magda into Platinum Emperion, but changelings can also be turned into 4/4s or draw cards as Ninjas.

Small combo with Yuriko trigger + Brainstorm back Emperion

Edit: +3 Ragavan, because it would be nutty not to play it in an aggressive deck with Volcanic+Daze and treasure payoffs

Edit: Dolmen Gate might be a card with Magda.

[Memories of the Time]

The decks surely looks cool, probably, the best thing to do is try our best to make the deck less cool, but more viable.

Firstly, the deck has an insane amount of straight garbage cards, you should look for the minimun amount of bad cards needed for the engine to work.

Secondly, the entire recruiter plan seems legacy unplayable, you are supposed to
- Cast recruiter (1 turn doing nothing)
- Cast Grist and get a bunch of 1/1

If grist gets countered this line leaves you with the realmwalker play, which is kinda bad (dies to removal leaving us with a million 1/1s to topdeck).
Imho, it's quite sad but i would consider cutting entirely recruiter, grist and realmwalker.

Agree on both points, i was thinking that a good plan could be to play 3-4 Grist (if the manabase can support it, obvs), 3-4 tutors (pyre, recruiter) and then only 1-2 Dwarven Recruiter to combo out.
Without Grist Magda and other dwarves can be a splash, and i don't really know how good it can be. Wouldn't Mox Opal good in your lists with 4 Automation 4 Retrofitter 4 Pyre? Maybe standstill and Urza's Saga too at that point.

(Yeah, i cut the Valiant but they wouldn't have made any differences in any of the mu anyway)

[Ninjastill]

Not really the Legacy version, but went 4-1 in a Modern league last night beating 3 Tier 1 Decks, almost had the 5-0.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3770244#paper

Take from it what you may, may provide some inspiration for Legacy lists!

[Memories of the Time]

Not really the Legacy version, but went 4-1 in a Modern league last night beating 3 Tier 1 Decks, almost had the 5-0.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3770244#paper

Take from it what you may, may provide some inspiration for Legacy lists!

Cool list, but why that dragon over Utvara Hellkite?

[Ninjastill]

Cool list, but why that dragon over Utvara Hellkite?

Utvara Hellkite doesn't kill on turn 3

Kurrthus give's the "dragons" haste and untaps them so you can have a turn 3 kill

T1 Mothdust
T2 Magda - Make 2 Treasure
T3 Cast Valiant Changeling - Make 3 Treasures, get Dragon, Attack for a bunch.

its easily the best dragon to get and has won me most games :)

[Memories of the Time]

Utvara Hellkite doesn't kill on turn 3

Kurrthus give's the "dragons" haste and untaps them so you can have a turn 3 kill

T1 Mothdust
T2 Magda - Make 2 Treasure
T3 Cast Valiant Changeling - Make 3 Treasures, get Dragon, Attack for a bunch.

its easily the best dragon to get and has won me most games :)

Yeah i mean, it's a combo of 3 cards + no interaction. Without the changeling you have a fat dragon that the oppo can ignore (taking 7 damage) while finding a solution in their turn. Hellkite leave big bodies on the board and it's can be cheated with pyre for changeling. Anyway it's a matter of personal preferences too =)

Btw another video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgmDWAIuuVk

[FTW]

That's also in Modern, a much less interactive format. Karrthus seems too risky in Legacy.

Edit: Watched the video. Not impressed.
High variance hands lead to many mulligans, trying to win with 5-6 cards vs good Legacy decks. One was a mull to 3.
The manabase gets wrecked by Wasteland.
Pyre is often a turn too slow to be relevant.
Easily gets disrupted from doing the thing with brewer's advantage lost.
Doesn't necessarily win even if you do the thing and cheat out Emperion.

Losing 1-of Realmwalker meant the deck had no potential winning lines with just Dwarven Recruiter, so it just became a 3-mana Worldly Tutor without Grist. And the Grist + Recruiter line was never used, seemed hard to assemble.

Duergar Assailant seems much better than Bloodfire Dwarf, except against Elves and Goblins. The 0-mana activation is a big difference and it doesn't kill your own board.

I'm really not sold on Warping Wail and Spatial Contortion. Even in the matchups where you'd want it, they never did enough (in this stream or others) to actually win games. It's better than having no interaction but they're worse than the equivalent colored spells every other deck is playing. I also think not bringing in Steely Resolve more vs fair decks was a mistake, losing to removal on Magda and Valiant too often.

Overall I think the deck just lacked interaction and lost to the opponent playing interaction or resolving problems this deck can't deal with. I think the 3-color versions with more interaction seem a lot more promising.

[Ninjastill]

That's also in Modern, a much less interactive format. Karrthus seems too risky in Legacy.

Edit: Watched the video. Not impressed.
High variance hands lead to many mulligans, trying to win with 5-6 cards vs good Legacy decks. One was a mull to 3.
The manabase gets wrecked by Wasteland.
Pyre is often a turn too slow to be relevant.
Easily gets disrupted from doing the thing with brewer's advantage lost.
Doesn't necessarily win even if you do the thing and cheat out Emperion.

Losing 1-of Realmwalker meant the deck had no potential winning lines with just Dwarven Recruiter, so it just became a 3-mana Worldly Tutor without Grist. And the Grist + Recruiter line was never used, seemed hard to assemble.

Duergar Assailant seems much better than Bloodfire Dwarf, except against Elves and Goblins. The 0-mana activation is a big difference and it doesn't kill your own board.

I'm really not sold on Warping Wail and Spatial Contortion. Even in the matchups where you'd want it, they never did enough (in this stream or others) to actually win games. It's better than having no interaction but they're worse than the equivalent colored spells every other deck is playing. I also think not bringing in Steely Resolve more vs fair decks was a mistake, losing to removal on Magda and Valiant too often.

Overall I think the deck just lacked interaction and lost to the opponent playing interaction or resolving problems this deck can't deal with. I think the 3-color versions with more interaction seem a lot more promising.

Karrthus is the same amount of risk as really any fatty, the good thing about it is it untaps your 'dragons/dwarf's' making more treasures if it doesn't get stp away. I played a few test matches last night with my legacy version - still have 5c manabase, went up on Imperial Recruiter's, beat Doomsday 4c Control and lost to Storm 1-2.

List - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4314673#paper

[FTW]

I like the Imperial Recruiter package and downgrading Dwarven Recruiter to a 1-of, when you want the combo. Imperial is much better for SB options or just getting Magda. This all reduces variance, reduces durdle, and increases interactive lines you can play.

I also like that you're on some of the Wizard package with Lord of the Unreal and Spellstutter Sprite. Spellstutter is strong with Changelings.dec and Lord of the Unreal is probably the most efficient Lord for fair beatdown/anti-Plague Engineer.

[Ninjastill]

I like the Imperial Recruiter package and downgrading Dwarven Recruiter to a 1-of, when you want the combo. Imperial is much better for SB options or just getting Magda. This all reduces variance, reduces durdle, and increases interactive lines you can play.

I also like that you're on some of the Wizard package with Lord of the Unreal and Spellstutter Sprite. Spellstutter is strong with Changelings.dec and Lord of the Unreal is probably the most efficient Lord for fair beatdown/anti-Plague Engineer.

Updated List changed a few things - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4314673#paper

but played some more last night
2-1 vs GW Depths, and 2-0 vs Cloudpost

I think Imperial recruiter gives the deck a lot more oopmh, also being able to recruiter for Grist in grindy matches is very nice

[Memories of the Time]

Updated List changed a few things - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4314673#paper

but played some more last night
2-1 vs GW Depths, and 2-0 vs Cloudpost

I think Imperial recruiter gives the deck a lot more oopmh, also being able to recruiter for Grist in grindy matches is very nice

Yeah i've dropped the deck for a bit now but i was also thinking that cutting recruiter to 1 to play the strong one is way better.
I like your list now (except for the dragon, as said), maybe 10 cc1 drops are too many, and another payoff for them is probably good? Like yuriko

[Ninjastill]

Yeah i've dropped the deck for a bit now but i was also thinking that cutting recruiter to 1 to play the strong one is way better.
I like your list now (except for the dragon, as said), maybe 10 cc1 drops are too many, and another payoff for them is probably good? Like yuriko

I looked at Yuriko last night, worth considering for sure

[FTW]

Updated List changed a few things - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4314673#paper

but played some more last night
2-1 vs GW Depths, and 2-0 vs Cloudpost

I think Imperial recruiter gives the deck a lot more oopmh, also being able to recruiter for Grist in grindy matches is very nice

What are bad matchups right now? Could the combo matchups like Doomsday be improved by cutting colors so you can add Daze and better SB cards?

If you do cut colors, it sounds like the Grist + Recruiter combo is the most convoluted and easiest cut.
The deck could focus on faster synergies like Magda + Mothdust, T2 Valiant beatdown, Pyre+Valiant...

Jeskai Dwarves


//Creatures: 30
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
2 Duergar Assailant
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Unsettled Mariner
1 Lord of the Unreal
1 Mirror Entity
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Valiant Changeling
1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund
1 Platinum Emperion

//Spells: 4
4 Daze

//Artifacts: 6
4 Aether Vial
2 Pyre of Heroes

//Lands: 20
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
2 Arid Mesa
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
1 Island
1 Plains

//Rough Sideboard: 15
4 Force of Will
3 Prismatic Ending
1 Lord of the Unreal
1 Meddling Mage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Containment Priest
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Skyclave Apparition
2 Surgical Extraction

//Maybeboard:
Spellstutter Sprite
Magus of the Moon
Coat of Arms
Bolas's Citadel
Retrofitter Foundry
Phyrexian Revoker
Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Utvara Hellkite
Patron Wizard


Or maybe replace Daze with Thalia.
The taxes from Daze, Mariner and then midgame Patron Wizard all add up.

[Memories of the Time]

I think that without Thalia and with this manabase, we want 4 brainstorm. The card is simply too good and we have cheap ccs, Daze and lots of pieces that we don't want in multiple as other (unnecessary) reasons to play it.
I think cutting 2 cc1 drop, 1 recruiter and 1 valiant?

[Ninjastill]

What are bad matchups right now? Could the combo matchups like Doomsday be improved by cutting colors so you can add Daze and better SB cards?

If you do cut colors, it sounds like the Grist + Recruiter combo is the most convoluted and easiest cut.
The deck could focus on faster synergies like Magda + Mothdust, T2 Valiant beatdown, Pyre+Valiant...

Jeskai Dwarves


//Creatures: 30
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
2 Duergar Assailant
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Unsettled Mariner
1 Lord of the Unreal
1 Mirror Entity
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Valiant Changeling
1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund
1 Platinum Emperion

//Spells: 4
4 Daze

//Artifacts: 6
4 Aether Vial
2 Pyre of Heroes

//Lands: 20
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
2 Arid Mesa
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
1 Island
1 Plains

//Rough Sideboard: 15
4 Force of Will
3 Prismatic Ending
1 Lord of the Unreal
1 Meddling Mage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Containment Priest
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Skyclave Apparition
2 Surgical Extraction

//Maybeboard:
Spellstutter Sprite
Magus of the Moon
Coat of Arms
Bolas's Citadel
Retrofitter Foundry
Phyrexian Revoker
Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Utvara Hellkite
Patron Wizard


Or maybe replace Daze with Thalia.
The taxes from Daze, Mariner and then midgame Patron Wizard all add up.

I dont think we need to incorporate daze, playing recruiters allows you to have a bunch of good hate cards to find, was thinking of playing the Torpor Orb hatebear in the SB as well...

Can also play Mindbreak trap in the sb if you are worried about combo

[Barook]

I wonder if Reaper King would be any good in the 75. It can be searched for with Magda, is a Lord for your Changelings and can nuke problematic permanents in conjunction other changelings. Since it has a rainbow casting cost, it could even be hardcast via treasures.

[FTW]

Imperial Recruiter + hatebear is a turn 4 play at the earliest. What about combo decks that can win before that?

The deck also struggles to get Emperion out before then (turn 3 possible but requires lucksacking into strong hand undisrupted). Interacting with the opponent's turns 1-2 (turn 3 to a lesser extent) seems like the deck's biggest weakness. That could be where Daze helps, because Daze shines the most in that phase of the game. Daze also interacts well with Unsettled Mariner, messing up opponent's tax math. Playing around both costs lots of tempo.

+4 Brainstorm sounds strong in that configuration. It would increase % of drawing into SB hatebears too. A Brainstorm build only needs 1x fatty, because you can Brainstorm it back if you draw it.

Mindbreak Trap works against TES and Belcher, but BR Reanimator, Doomsday, All Spells, Hogaak, OmniTell, Depths, Shortcake etc. can all go off around Mindbreak. We could just play more blue creatures and board into FoW instead? Or Flusterstorm or something else.

Reaper King is interesting, especially in the 5c deck.

[The_Dream_Stalker]

I'm the guy that posted the original Legacy list on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/pirv45/dwarf_bugs_a_legacy_deck_built_for_fun_is/). This seems like the best spot I've found to keep working on this deck to make it better, so I wanted to weigh in. Off the bat I want to say that the excitement around the list has been amazing. Is it a deck that is built for fun? Yes. Is it a deck that is some how better than it seems like it should be? Also yes. Does that make it top tier? Not currently, but the potential card pool for this is huge, so I'm not ruling it out with future printings, discovered cards, etc. At the moment could this be a good FNM deck, keep you at about even in leagues or potentially spike a 5-0? Yes. I'm basically about 50%, but I don't track things super intensely. I'm hoping you all can keep brewing and helping to develop this. My goal currently is to optimize it for winning, and that's what some of this post is about. But I think it's paramount to remember that this deck is for fun, so please remember that if you want to try something I suggest against, just try it anyway. Have the fun. And learn with me. It's part of the journey.

Content
If you want to see some content, I'm trying to aggregate it a little and cross post it here and on reddit.

Anzid's VOD here: https://www.twitch.tv/anzidmtg/v/1144859495?sr=a&t=57s

AnziD posted one on Channelfireball: https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/legacy-dwarves-legacy-mtg-anuraag-das/

He posted another one to his youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LeYCDNNVvI&t=47s&ab_channel=anzidmtg

Thraben U has also featured the deck twice: First one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMt3I6Pt2TY&t=1961s&ab_channel=ThrabenU

Second one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgmDWAIuuVk&t=292s&ab_channel=ThrabenU


Current list
My current list that I just went 5-5 with over two leagues.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4322396#paper

I have been going a similar direction to what you all have been suggesting independently. The Recruiter + Grist plan is slow, and while absolutely awesome, can be hard to cast off of our mana. I am keeping it in the list to make sure that win is available for long grindy games or instances of having to face an ensnaring bridge, moat, etc. This deck has gone more toolbox against fair matchups, and that allows me to free the sideboard up for combo. I'm doing a lot better against combo, like I've pulled some matches against doomsday, and the EPIC Storm feels like it went from bad to slightly unfavorable (maybe even). But I do think I over did the tool box here.

Cards that Underperformed
The plague engineers do so little against many of the decks I bump into routinely, and sometimes they are too slow or not quite impactful enough against elves, which is really where I want them to shine. I think they are still good enough for the sideboard or something, but 2 in the main was too much.

Karrthus was also a little dissappointing for me. Was it awesome to turn 3 someone out of no where? Absolutely. I got an excellent raging from opponent when I pulled it off. Was I almost always wanting coat of arms instead, yes sadly. This really came up the most against a delver player that was running Urza's saga for some reason, and they found cage. This shut down my Magda outright. Plus the ability to flash coat in as a combat trick is sweet. Having said that, I don't love coat either. The pool of cards is so big here as the second magda target that I feel like something better must be out there.

Cards that Overperformed
One card that has been overperforming has been brainstorm. Of course that card is amazing in legacy, so it shouldn't be surpring. With the revamped manabase I think I would play more. I like having two spellstutters. Those guys have been great, but you don't want too many because they are weak bodies and while you're going up on card advantage, it's hard to capitialize beyond the tempo gain often. Imperial recruiter was great for me, but I think I'd keep him at 1 copy. He effectively allows you to pyre a 2 drop changeling into an immediate Magda, which is great. Two in the main would be reasonable if you wanted to go with like a wizards/dwarfs approach as I do out of the sideboard here. Karakas was great too for obvious reasons.

Some things I've learned along the way

I have gotten a lot of requests to try various things, and I've done my best to try to incorporate a lot of them. Here's some stuff I've tried.

1. Thalia over Valiant - This was an interesting exercise, because it taught me two things. First, Thalia is cool, but when you add her to this list you are really increasing the X/1 count. This makes us really vulerable to a lot of pyroclasm type effects. Second, this got me really thinking about Valiant Changeling and while I do not love the card, I have a lot of respect for it. It does a surprisng amount of work. He hits super hard, he dodges deathtouching birds and snakes, he evades CMC related removal ( like abrupt decay, prismatic ending, or fatal push), it means that if they pyroclasm our team we still crunch in, and he sets up emperions/other 8 drops off the pyre. So I guess where I'm getting at is that it's a tough cut, and I wouldn't recommend going below 3.

2. The 1 drops - I will on occassion shave the 1 drops down to 7, but it's so brutal having an opener without a 1. I've seen some folks here going up to more than 8 and that might ultimately be right. I like the automotons over the outcasts. Being able to block is huge, and so is the colorless manacost. But also I'll mention I've seen people try time sieve as the second Magda target and autmotons let you do this. Second, if you have a Canonist out you can cast two spells.

3. Scourge of Valkus / Reaper King - So these guys are awesome as magda targets, and I actually tried a dragon chain with Pyres so I could get the Scourge one time. Both of these are reasonable, but the issue is often that it takes a lot of effort to get magda's first hit and often we want to spam the board when we can. A mothdust into magda, often lets us deploy another changeling that turn, or maybe two. We want to do this when we can because if they untap they may kill our magda and we want to be ahead on tempo. But if magda survives and we can search up one of these guys, we are suddenly in a spot where we have no more guys to trigger our Scourge or Reaper King. Having said that, this deck is about doing sweet things, so I wouldn't fault anyone for going this way.

4. Utvara Hellkite - Another sweet Magda target. This one I think is a bit of a victim of awkward timing from games I've played. Usually magda turns require tapping out before the combat step via mothdust or by attacking. So this guy often comes in and sits for a turn before we get activations out of him. At 6 toughness that means that he's double boltable or unholy heatable, so we might not even get a chance to make summoning sick dragons.

5. Dwarf Wizards and the Value of Realmwalker - So I did take a totally different approach and go with a dwarf wizards deck https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4322455#paper. The idea was to make things better against combo and to make the manabase better. I've seen some suggestions of similar takes here. This went 1-4, beating combo, and it otherwise did not feel very good, but I did learn some things. First, what I learned is that a lot of those cards can beat combo, which was hopefully the case, and so many are now in the sideboard. But I also learned about dwarf bugs by trying to do dwarf wizards. Part of what dwarf bugs does is synergizes well. Our pieces all work together in surprising ways. Dwarf Wizards did not. I ended up having a lot of dead air. I've seen some people critique the Dwarf Bugs list because they feel it's too magda heavy. Well this verison truly is too magda heavy. Dwarf Bugs does 4 things, which is kind of crazy to think about. It beats, it magda/pyres cheats emperions, it recuiter + realmwalker cannons, and it does the grist recuiter combo. Somehow the strength of the deck is the diversity of the angles of attack even though conventional wisdom is to do one or two things really well. When we go in a lot of different directions, it's hard for opponents to know what to swords, and as long as we're doing it smoothly, we can get away with it. This dwarf wizards verison, and I think Thraben U's second video, show me the necessity of realmwalker and recruiter. Without it, people just kill the magda's and the valiant changelings and we lose, because all we have left are 1/1s.

6. Pyre is a necessary evil - I've seen a lot of people critique the speed of pyre, and I think that's fair. Having 2 in hand feels pretty bad, and I do think that 4 is incorrect for sure. But I also don't hate having the first pyre. It's not just get emperion on turn 4, but it's also get Canonist on 3, which can be the difference maker. It lets us play some bullets, but if we go down too far on them, then our bullets have no way to be gotten. So I'm leaning towards 3.


Matchups in my experience

It's getting late as I write this so I'll keep this brief. Posting from the Goldfish website, I'll take some of the top decks. Feel free to ask for details if you have quesitons.

Delver - I find this matchup fun, and I think it's pretty even, but might be slighly unfavorable. I do bring in the spell stutters and I will bring in leylines if they seem heavy on the DRCs and Murktides.

Death and Taxes - I think this might be slightly unfavorable at the moment, but I think I'm 2-3 against them or so. I think this matchup could be hedged against if it became a problem.

Lands - I like this matchup. I would say it's slightly favorable. Leylines turn off loam and punishing fire. So if you can stop the 20/20 from killing you, you can usually get there. I find these matches really fun too.

Snow Miracles/AnziD's 4 color midrange/Control - I like this matchup and feel it is favorable. I think I am about 4-2 against it. Our vials and caverns are hard for them to navigate, and they have a lot of 1-for-1 removal. So dwarven recruiter does work here. If we get terminused, we can recruiter + Realmwalker again. It often feels like the only thing I care about is uro, which I think could be fixable by adding surgicals to the board.

Elves - Slightly unfavorable. They can go fast. I'm probably about 3-5 against them with the various versions over time. I think if I wanted to beat them regularly we'd need a few copies of something like electrickery.

Doomsday - A horrendous matchup is now slightly unfavorable I would guess, but I don't have a ton of matches since revamping the sideboard.

Reanimator - Even. They can get there, but leyline does work. If we get emperion out, they really don't have much to get out from there.

Jeskai Ragavan - Even. I enjoy this matchup. If they end up murktiding we are in trouble, but magus of the moon can just crush them before that happens.

Knight of the Reliquary Decks - A commentor once mentioned that he felt this matchup was unwinable. I disagree. I would say it is slightly favorable. Again, it is how can we counteract a 20/20. But between mothdusts, emperion, and now karakas, it's not that difficult to do. Leylines out of the board turn the rest of their gameplan off. I think the big thing here is that they have to commit a lot of resources to assemble a 20/20, and so if we can foil their plan we are up big on card advantage.

Epic Storm / Storm - So I haven't seen ANT in a while, but that matchup was good from the get go. Mariners just shut them down as they have no way to stop him in game 1. That's not really the case for Epic Storm, as they can get Peer and sometimes even pay for the mariner or Veil the triggers away. The new sideboard has really helped though. Put your meddling mage on Burning Wish and they have a tough time from there given the other hatebears or Force of Wills that you'll find. I'd say we're still probably slightly unfavored since they will likely take game one. But this particular matchup was pretty bad for a while, so I'm glad I'm picking some wins up.

Other things I feel we are favorable against that I bump into: 1) Maddness (3-0); 2)Crashing Footfalls (3-0) 3) Oops all Spells 4) BUG or UG Zenith or CoCo Decks 5) Red Prison (I haven't played the version that has more creatures though, which looks tougher).

Other things I feel we are not favorable against that I bump into: 1) Karn Echoes (though we can beat the 4xSai verisons without Karn) 2) Burn (holy moly this felt bad) 3) Sneak and Show (but Aphetto Grifter has helped a surprsing amount).

Other things I feel are about even against that I bump into: 1) Aluren 2) Food Chain 3) Slivers 4) Hogaak

[Barook]

@The_Dream_Stalker Nice to see you around here. Welcome!


In a 3 color shell, Force+Daze is easier to support than Thorn + sol lands. Sol Lands + 3-color manabase is a mess.

Also I think if you're going to cut durdly things from the deck, Pyre is one of those cuts. It's card disadvantage and slow, especially without the Sol Land mana.

Maybe you can play Grixis Dwarf Ninjas instead


//Creatures: 22
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Changeling Outcast
2 Universal Automaton
3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
2 Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
2 Ingenious Infiltrator
1 Platinum Emperion

//Spells: 16
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
2 Fatal Push
2 Snuff Out

//Artifacts: 4
4 Retrofitter Foundry

//Lands: 18
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain

//Sideboard:
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Coat of Arms
3 Sudden Edict
2 Plague Engineer
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
1 Force of Negation
1 Flusterstorm


You can still cheese Magda into Platinum Emperion, but changelings can also be turned into 4/4s or draw cards as Ninjas.

Small combo with Yuriko trigger + Brainstorm back Emperion

Edit: +3 Ragavan, because it would be nutty not to play it in an aggressive deck with Volcanic+Daze and treasure payoffs

Edit: Dolmen Gate might be a card with Magda.
After looking further into it, Ninjas probably have the best tribal draw engine (Yuriko/Infiltrator). I wonder if it's worth exploring the Grixis version more or if it would only result in a bad Ninja deck.

Another interesting tribal card I've found is Cover of Darkness. Against the right decks, it makes a good chunk of your creatures unblockable.

[Graf_Caligula]

Does Coveted price work with changelings?

Edit:
Got too excited :(

From the wiki:

A player's party consists of up to one each of creatures with four creature classes: Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard. A player controls a full party if that player fills all "party roles" with four different creatures of the appropriate types.[3] Each creature in a player's party only fills one role, so, for example, a creature with Changeling will only count as one creature in the party, not four.

[The_Dream_Stalker]

I was wondering about the Ninjas application too. If what ultimately comes from the Dwarf Bugs project is somehow ninjas gets better by adding mothdust + magda and removing ornithopers and whatnot, I think that was a success. I personally don't really want to quite pivot at the moment, mostly because I don't want to spend the money on a lot of the cards I don't have, but this could be a good thing to explore with folks that are doing the ninja thing. If I was going to go Ninjas, then we are off Pyre, which means we can find any artifact or dragon as the magda target. So I'd probably go for a gigantic Ur dragon, other blue dragon or inkwell to make sure our fatty can pitch to force and crush face, or I'd go with a Draco / Scion of Draco kind of thing so that your high CMC works well with Yuriko hits + Brainstorm. Emperion is a great guy for Dwarf Bugs because we often start aggressive in the early turns, get slowed somehow, and then pivot into Emperion to stablize until we can find some way to get around whatever the opponent has done. It works well with the Dwarf bugs game plan, but I think Ninjas is hoping to never be on the backfoot from what I can tell, so big bashers seem good to me in the Emperion's place.

[Barook]

For what it's worth, Reaper King has a CMC of 10, so that could qualify as heavy hitter for Yuriko as well.

[The_Dream_Stalker]

Reaper does seem better in the ninjas I think, because you'd be bouncing and recasting a lot of guys. It does pitch to FOW. So I would try it here. I mean I'd try it anywhere, but definitely try it here.

[FTW]

I'm the guy that posted the original Legacy list on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/pirv45/dwarf_bugs_a_legacy_deck_built_for_fun_is/). This seems like the best spot I've found to keep working on this deck to make it better, so I wanted to weigh in.

Thanks for posting here with your experiences, feedback and content!



My goal currently is to optimize it for winning, and that's what some of this post is about. But I think it's paramount to remember that this deck is for fun, so please remember that if you want to try something I suggest against, just try it anyway. Have the fun. And learn with me. It's part of the journey.

Current list
My current list that I just went 5-5 with over two leagues.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4322396#paper

What matchups are you losing the most in that configuration? What were you losing the most before the changes? Do you feel the MD "SB cards" (Canonist, Magus, Plague Engineer) are worth it?

I like dropping the Grist+Recruiter combo to a 1-of. Theoretically accessible in stalled games, but not clogging up the main lines.




Cards that Overperformed
One card that has been overperforming has been brainstorm. Of course that card is amazing in legacy, so it shouldn't be surpring. With the revamped manabase I think I would play more. I like having two spellstutters. Those guys have been great, but you don't want too many because they are weak bodies and while you're going up on card advantage, it's hard to capitialize beyond the tempo gain often. Imperial recruiter was great for me, but I think I'd keep him at 1 copy. He effectively allows you to pyre a 2 drop changeling into an immediate Magda, which is great. Two in the main would be reasonable if you wanted to go with like a wizards/dwarfs approach as I do out of the sideboard here. Karakas was great too for obvious reasons.


How do you feel about going up to 4 Brainstorms? Seems very good at reducing draw variance and need for 2nd Magda target. Also improves access to SB cards and improves FoW.

The first places I'd look at for cuts are the MD Plague Engineers and Magus. How good are they? They seem slow/dead in many matchups, perhaps better in the SB?




5. Dwarf Wizards and the Value of Realmwalker - So I did take a totally different approach and go with a dwarf wizards deck https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4322455#paper. The idea was to make things better against combo and to make the manabase better. I've seen some suggestions of similar takes here. This went 1-4, beating combo, and it otherwise did not feel very good, but I did learn some things. First, what I learned is that a lot of those cards can beat combo, which was hopefully the case, and so many are now in the sideboard. But I also learned about dwarf bugs by trying to do dwarf wizards. Part of what dwarf bugs does is synergizes well. Our pieces all work together in surprising ways. Dwarf Wizards did not. I ended up having a lot of dead air.

Thanks for posting this too. Good to see this tested. So it does fix the combo problem, but then struggles to actually win the game with a bunch of durdly hatebears and relying too much on Magda.

ThrabenU's 2nd video gave up free wins if he had Realmwalker. He had to cast Recruiter for 1-of targets because there was no way to 1-card combo it.

[FTW]

I was wondering about the Ninjas application too. If what ultimately comes from the Dwarf Bugs project is somehow ninjas gets better by adding mothdust + magda and removing ornithopers and whatnot, I think that was a success. I personally don't really want to quite pivot at the moment, mostly because I don't want to spend the money on a lot of the cards I don't have, but this could be a good thing to explore with folks that are doing the ninja thing. If I was going to go Ninjas, then we are off Pyre, which means we can find any artifact or dragon as the magda target. So I'd probably go for a gigantic Ur dragon, other blue dragon or inkwell to make sure our fatty can pitch to force and crush face, or I'd go with a Draco / Scion of Draco kind of thing so that your high CMC works well with Yuriko hits + Brainstorm. Emperion is a great guy for Dwarf Bugs because we often start aggressive in the early turns, get slowed somehow, and then pivot into Emperion to stablize until we can find some way to get around whatever the opponent has done. It works well with the Dwarf bugs game plan, but I think Ninjas is hoping to never be on the backfoot from what I can tell, so big bashers seem good to me in the Emperion's place.

I was driven to Ninjas idea after seeking changeling payoffs that could cheaply generate CA. I tried a few configurations of Dwarf-Wizards but found the durdly hatebears thing lacked ways to pull head in card advantage or board state. Dwarf-Bugs lack CA too (making the aggressive mulligans and card-disadvantage tutors even more punishing). So I was looking for cheap CA and another 2-mana payoff for changelings to be less dependent on Magda, ideally in a blue manabase that allowed FoW+Daze+Brainstorm (vs fast decks). Yuriko does all of that well.

With Ninja-Dwarves, the goal is to have multiple different payoffs for 1/1 changelings (Magda treasures, Ninja card draw, Retrofitter 4/4 beatdown). Then you can go all-out with more than 8 copies and not worry about flooding on vanilla 1/1s or scooping to Electrickery. It also has a lot of 0-mana interaction (FoW, Daze, Snuff Out) so that you can curve out T1 changeling T2 payoff while still interacting with the opponent's game plan. It prioritizes better tempo over slower engines like Vial and Pyre.

That 3-of Ragavan is probably too cute. Should be 4 Universal Automaton (-3 Ragavan, +2 Automaton, +1 Yuriko).

You make a good point that Emperion is too defensive for the Ninjas plan, and it already has the FoW+Daze to stop early combo. Reaper King looks good. Pitches to FoW. Maindeck Lord effect. Ninjitsu + card draw will put more cheap changelings in hand too.

Cover of Darkness could be good SB tech to force the Ninjas/Magda through.

Edit: Would change it to this

//Creatures: 22
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Changeling Outcast
4 Universal Automaton
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
3 Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
2 Ingenious Infiltrator
1 Reaper King

//Spells: 16
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
2 Fatal Push
2 Snuff Out

//Artifacts: 4
4 Retrofitter Foundry

//Lands: 18
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain

//Sideboard: 15
1 Platinum Angel
2 Cover of Darkness
3 Sudden Edict
2 Plague Engineer
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm


Instead of Platinum, a 2nd Magda target could be Bident of Thassa (card draw), Time Sieve (extra turns), God-Pharaoh's Statue (taxes), or maybe Dragonlord Silumgar (steal fatty).

I wonder if there's a way to make hybrid Dwarves-Ninjas that still has Dwarven Recruiter + 1-of Realmwalker for the pile. Chaining out 1/1s is so strong with Reaper King. It also avoids that whole "pass the turn" vulnerability, because you can destroy all their lands.

[BirdsOfParadise]

Congratulations to The_Dream_Stalker and the rest of you for making Legacy better.

I have a foil Reaper King that has probably never once come out of its card sleeve. I’m rooting for this to be good.

Your Orcs matchup looks iffy, maybe try Dwarven Soldier in the SB.

[bwangeroo]

I've been tinkering with this deck for a couple weeks now, here's my list:

Main

4 Aether Vial
2 Retrofitter Foundry
1 Aether Spellbomb
4 Mothdust Changeling
3 Universal Automaton
3 Changeling Outcast

4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Unsettled Mariner
4 Valiant Changeling
3 Once Upon a Time
1 Masked Vandal

3 Grist, the Hunger Tide
1 Mirror Entity

1 Korvold, Fae-Cursed King

4 Urza's Saga
4 Mana Confluence
2 City of Brass
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Unclaimed Territory
2 Reflecting Pool
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
1 Karakas

Sideboard

1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Pithing Needle
3 Leyline of the Void
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Torpor Orb
2 Plague Engineer
1 Masked Vandal
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Containment Priest

Some notes on card choices:

Once Upon A Time: This card has impressed me a ton, helps with the consistency of opening hands a lot. It's very easy to open a hand with a bunch of 1/1 changelings with no payoff, and OUaT cuts down on those a lot.

Urza's Saga/Retrofitter Foundry: Of course Foundry synergizes with Changelings, and Saga synergizes with Foundry. But Saga constructs also just get big from Vial/Automaton/Treasure Tokens. The Saga/Foundry B plan works pretty well imo.

Aether Spellbomb: Probably the best maindeck utility target to get off Saga. Can help get a Kaldra germ off your back, and also protect you from certain combo kills as well (e.g., Painter/Grindstone, Depths/Stage). I've found Spellbomb to be excellent given we have no other removal.

Korvold, Fae-Cursed King: I've liked this best as a Magda target. It being actually castable has mattered a bunch, and it gets real big, real fast given all the sacrifice outlets in the deck (Foundry, Saga, Grist, Magda).

Mirror Entity: Your quickest goldfishes usually involve getting this card off Magda. But also good in a ground-stall situation – can turn all of your Constructs/Servos/Insects into Dwarves for Magda purposes, and also synergizes well with Urza's Saga constructs (they go from base 0/0 to base X/X and still get the +1/+1 for each artifact on top of that).

I've been pretty happy with the maindeck overall, I think the sideboard might need some adjustment though. You can see here if you're interested in seeing me play through an MTGO league with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR_50Unh26c&ab_channel=bwangeroo

[Zoid]

I've been tinkering with this deck for a couple weeks now, here's my list:

Main

4 Aether Vial
2 Retrofitter Foundry
1 Aether Spellbomb
4 Mothdust Changeling
3 Universal Automaton
3 Changeling Outcast

4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Unsettled Mariner
4 Valiant Changeling
3 Once Upon a Time
1 Masked Vandal

3 Grist, the Hunger Tide
1 Mirror Entity

1 Korvold, Fae-Cursed King

4 Urza's Saga
4 Mana Confluence
2 City of Brass
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Unclaimed Territory
2 Reflecting Pool
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
1 Karakas

Sideboard

1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Pithing Needle
3 Leyline of the Void
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Torpor Orb
2 Plague Engineer
1 Masked Vandal
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Containment Priest


What is the point of Grist if you don't play Dwarven Recruiter?

While this version seems more stable, it seems also less explosive and less threatening since you have basically no way of creating card advantage while playing a bunch of 1/1 changelings.

[bwangeroo]

What is the point of Grist if you don't play Dwarven Recruiter?

While this version seems more stable, it seems also less explosive and less threatening since you have basically no way of creating card advantage while playing a bunch of 1/1 changelings.

Grist is just a generically very good card even without Recruiter. You can still blind-flip into multiple insects, and it's your only source of real removal in the maindeck, which is pretty important to have against certain threats (looking at you, Murktide Regent). It generally helps you grind if your first wave of Changeling beatdowns has been disrupted. It also has some microsynergies with the rest of the deck (can turn on Masked Vandal if not already, provides extra stuff for Mirror Entity, provides sacrifice triggers for Korvold). I've tried Yuriko in this slot as well but Grist is much better in my experience.

I agree that this build is overall less powerful – you have no "oops I win" situations that the Pyre/Recruiter shenanigans provided you. But it is more consistent and less clunky. Others in the thread seem to have questioned the slowness of Pyre and the badness of Recruiter sans Grist – this list takes those criticisms seriously and takes the alternative tack of "play efficient, generically good cards that ask less of you synergy-wise" (Retrofitter Foundry + Saga).

[The_Dream_Stalker]

So some updates...

First someone started a discord if people are interested. It has Modern and Legacy decks in it. https://discord.gg/wfpwTjncYx Please feel free to join.

Second, recently Kanister took the list for a test drive in Modern. He nearly 5-0ed, barely losing the last match. It was a pretty great stream. But it got me thinking about Modern. So I've been trying it there, and it's been going well. I'm logging my matches and once I get a respectable number of leagues in I'll post the spreadsheet. I'm not off of Legacy btw, just trying something new. I will admit that I do love not playing around Daze and Force.

Some general thoughts on Modern vs. Legacy. Starting with the bads... What do we lose when we go to Modern? Well Recruiter of course. It's our only card that's not modern legal. Recruiter is a sneaky good card in the deck, as it does a lot. It gets more Magdas, does the Realmwalker cannon and pairs well with grist. It really enables us to be a deck that doesn't just care about sticking Magda. Once we start to be a deck that cares only about sticking Magda opponents can focus on killing Magda and we fall apart pretty easily. So we have to consider this with the rest of the build. We also have to run into [[Wren and Six]], which is super annoying, given that our best draw is Mothdust into Magda. People are also playing more 1-for-1 cheap removal, and [[Fury]] is maindecked in some lists. There are a few decks that don't feel great either, like Amulet, Jund or Indomitable Creativity, but those decks are a relatively small portion of the metagame. Also we need to run a basic land due to Paths and such.

But on the whole I like Modern for this deck quite a bit. There are some big payoffs in the format. The primary one is that we get to avoid things, like whole decks. The biggest thing we get to skip is Turn 1 combo decks. No more dying to Doomsday, Storm or Sneak and Show! But we also get to dodge Monkey + Daze, which while not necessarily game ending, is an annoying thing we no longer have to engage with. We also don't have to worry about Punishing Fire, quick 20/20s, Tabernacles, Opposition Agent, Wasteland or playing around Force of Will.

There are also some good matchups we pick up by going to Modern too. While I've only played it twice Tron feels great (I had someone turn 3 a Karn and they couldn't do anything meaningful because of my Mariner, and I killed them shortly thereafter), and I quite like the HammerTime matchup (I'm 3-0 so far). Burn feels pretty good too as they no longer have access to [[Price of Progress]], [[Fireblast]] or [[Chain Lightning]]. Conversely, there aren't a lot of Legacy matchups that I actively like playing against. There are some that feel slightly favorable in Legacy, but in Modern - at least with my limited testing - there are some that feel slightly favorable to good. I also feel that the random brews we run into in Modern are generally better matchups than the random decks I saw in Legacy, given the diversity of ways people are trying to attack the Legacy metagame.

So I think the Modern meta is generally much friendlier to the deck in concept. The challenge then is how do we replace the versatility and mid-game benefit of Dwarven recruiter? Do we want to go more aggressive? Go more combo? Or replace the effect with something similarly midrangy? I've seen people go in all three directions and to varying degrees of success. I think the cardpool is so deep, it's hard to really know the right answer, but I've been going down the last option first, mostly because it requires the least changes and it suits my playstyle.

My current Modern list is here https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4358016#paper I started with Kanister's modern version, which was IPlayBadDeck's version with more Imperial Recruiters, more Ancient Ziggurat's, slightly different top end guys and drum's instead of Vials. I don't totally agree with his numbers or his top end guys, but I do think the Imerpial Recruiters, drums and Ziggurats are all great. I like Imperial Recruiter a bit, as it let's us tool box and shave a Pyre, but it is a little slow and getting more copies of Magda is only one of the three things that Dwarven Recruiter does. So I'm still trying some things to find that midrange value. The cards I've tried in the Dwarven recruiter spot are [[Kaalia, Zenith Seeker]] who I love but is hard to cast, [[Tovolar, The Dire Overlord]] who I was sadly not impressed with, I've also tried a midrange dragon element, and now I am trying 1) [[Lurrus, the Dream-den]] plus 2) [[Kraul Harpooner]] and 3) I'm putting the Swarmyard back in, as this allows us to fight with harpooner and regen, plus since people are leaning more on bolts and unholy heats instead of Daze and Force. This Lurrus package has probably been the best for me of these options. What is weird about Lurrus though is the naming lands, so you do have to be careful. That's also why I looked to Harpooner. I tend to name Insect first, and then Cat, if I have a blend of naming lands and other colored lands, and Harpooner works there.

Lurrus actually brings me to the point discussed above too about Grist. I see Grist in lots of lists (not just Changelings) even though he is just making a 1/1. Our deck is the best Grist deck even without recruiter, as we have some instances where he naturally makes many insects. He's also our only source of removal, I've ultimated him many times for lethal, and sacrificing a guy can be useful. He's a nightmare for the UW decks, and you can bring him in around countermagic with Cavern. Everytime I have tried to move away from Grist, I've regretted it in both formats. So the Lurrus build embraces that, and adds insects and ways to manipulate the yard. I have been boarding out the Harpoonists a lot, but they have decent game against DRC, Delver, Ornithoper, Small Murktides, Brazen Borrower, Mulldrifter, Archon of Emeria, and Flickerwisp, so I like them main given their floor as being just a 3/2 body. The value of potentially Harpooning multiple times with Lurrus or keeping a solid blocker with Swarmyard is worth tying I think, especially with the mild grist synergy.

Another maindeck inclusion I added that I think is gold is the [[Apostle's Blessing]]. It's rarely bad and often great. It allows us to turn one mothdust turn two magda and keep protection up. It pairs well with Mariner too, because then our protection spell is half the price of their bolt. These situations can result in a huge tempo swing. Blessing is easily castable with our weird manabase, stops the occassional artifact removal, and can even protect our Pyre, if necessary. I even used it to swing in for leathal against a GW deck the other day, by setting up a situation where I got them to swing in with a Germ token and keep a mono-white board of defenders. I think people could try [[Shelter]] or something like that to really go for the blow out, but I love being able to reliably cast blessing.

The sideboard is a work in progress as I'm still learning Modern's metagame. Several of the cards are pretty standard. But the ones that probably warrant some explanation are Redcap Melee (primarily there to kill Wren and Six, but has splash damage against monkey, DRC, Goblin Guide, etc.), [[Bishop of Wings]] has unperformed sadly at being a life gainer against tempo and burn and as a wrath protector against UW. [[Heroic Intervention]] is a must I think in a format with [[Supereme Verdict]] as a card in the most played deck. I love me some [[Feline Sovereign]] against any deck that might have Plauge Engineers or [[Urza's Saga]]. [[Magus of the Moon]] may seem weird with our manabase. But since Magda is red, we have a lot of Pyre activations, recruiter is red, drums are often out and we're usually ahead, I've found Magus to be great. Lastly, I'll mention that I happened to scour Gatherer the other day, as I so often do with this deck, and I came across [[Nix]]. I plan to put this in my board soon, as it seems amazing in modern right now, especially for what we're doing. It counters (and 2-for-1s) all evoked elementals and force of negation, while also being great against cascaded or suspended Living Ends and Rhinos. Often times these decks need their evoked spell or caseded one to resolve to regain tempo and for a single mana we can go up on card advantage and retain tempo. Seems like a deal. So I want to try it.

Anyway, that's all for this thought dump update.

[Rationalist]

Just sharing an experiment, seeing if anyone has critical feedback on it:

(Theoretical Critical Feedback is fine as I won't be able to test it again for a number of days)

Full Deck List: (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/4445578)

4 - Mothdust Changline
4 - Universal Automaton
4 - Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 - Reyav, Master Smith
4 - Stoneforge Mystic
4 - Valiant Changeling
1 - Sundering Titan

4 - Thoughtseize
4 - Rancor
2 - Cabal Therapy
1 - Kaldra, Compleat
1 - Batterskull
1 - Crafted Wargear

4 - Cavern of Souls
4 - City of Brass
4 - Mana Confluence
3 - Unclaimed Territory
2 - Reflecting Pool
1 - Windswept Heath
1 - Verdant Catacombs
1 - Scrubland
1 - Savannah
1 - Gemstone Mine

I’ve really been liking the Magda and Valiant Changeling payoffs of the deck, but having played the deck a bit I’ve found that I wasn’t that hot on the Recruiter + Grist combo (and I'm not surprised to find other people here having already dropped it) so I decided to focus on the elements that felt stronger and were delivering me a much higher number of wins.

The major issue I wanted to address was the individual card quality of the deck; Mothdust Changeling and Universal Automaton aren’t the greatest cards to be running when your other threats have been answered so low card quality translates to low-threat density, and I wanted more cards that could work as individual threats. Cards like Mariner and Aether Vial only exacerbated this issue, and I neither taxing their mana to leverage Mariner or wasn’t filling up my hand with recruited creatures like the other decks that leverage Aether Vial optimally.

This led me to Stoneforge Mystic and Reyav, Master Smith (who is a Dwarf). Stoneforge is a proven individual threat, and I was able to tweak the manabase to 15 “natural” white sources. Reyav, as the replacement for Mariner, plays very well with Kaldra/Batterskull as well as Magda (as he’s not only a Dwarf he allows you to Madga-summon a double striking Kaldra on Turn 3), and becomes a major lynchpin for the rest of the deck.

With Reyav, Rancor becomes better than a permanent Berserk for 1 mana. It essentially doubles a creature’s existing power, then adds another 4 power on top of that, and then gives it trample, all permanently . For example, simply putting a Rancor on Reyav allows him to start swinging for 8 points of Trample o turn 3, or 10 if Magda is in play. Rancor is not a legacy-playable card in isolation, but it becomes fantastic with Reyav and is already fantastic with Valiant Changeling (since it’s +4 effective power + trample there as well) and that success rate has made me more than happy with how it plays out here. Also, importantly, Rancor and the 1 Crafted Wargear allow you to get more value out of your 1 drops as recuring buffs.

Of course this package is just leaning even further into vulnerability to instant speed removal, which was already the major interaction point for the opponent. To both combat this removal, and also provide some game against combo, the rest of the deck is made up of the discard package (including 2 cabal therapy to squeeze yet a bit more value out of those superfluous 1-drop bodies).

The only other thing to mention here is that the Steely Resolves are a critical juke of sorts from the sideboard. As a creature-based aggro/combo deck with Cavern of Souls and enablers like Mothdust Changeling, the deck is screaming pretty loudly that the way to interact with it is just with an abundance of 1-for-1 removal (or Karakas, which the main-deck is pretty cold to). This means that when your opponent is willing and able to lean into removal, playing a 2-drop enchantment that blanks it is great virtual card-advantage (it also can protect hatebears and name “Phyrexian” vs. Infect).

PERCEIVED PROS:
Higher Card Quality
More Aggressive, Higher Threat Density
Leaning Dwarves more towards proven Legacy technology and Staples, but incorporated synergistically with what I would argue is the best part of the Dwarf Shell

PERCEIVED CONS:
Worse against Karakas
Worse against Wasteland
Worse against Bloodmoon
Worse against resolved permanents that negate a fair gameplan (Humility, Ensnaring Bridge)
Compared to Bwangeroos build no Spellbomb means Depths is far less winnable, I would wager

I have not had as much success with this build as I had playing a more "stock" version of the deck, but I haven't had much opportunity to test it much and even though I lost the matches I have played I liked how the deck felt better enough to continue experimenting in this direction rather than reverting towards the stock build. Any critical feedback would be appreciated.

[FTW]

I like that you can use either Stoneforge or Magda to make Kaldra.

What's the reason for Sundering Titan over the stock Platinum Angel or Platinum Emperion? Your deck can't really leverage the mana denial (even cut Mariner). Would you get some increase in win % just by having the Platinum option instead (important against combo)?

Most builds are bad against Blood Moon and Wasteland, that's fine.

Does 4 Rancor increase draw variance? How often do you draw Rancors with no creatures out? Would some cheap equipment work better instead? For example Bonesplitter and Shadowspear are cards and also put less demand on your fragile colored mana.

[Rationalist]

I like that you can use either Stoneforge or Magda to make Kaldra.

What's the reason for Sundering Titan over the stock Platinum Angel or Platinum Emperion? Your deck can't really leverage the mana denial (even cut Mariner). Would you get some increase in win % just by having the Platinum option instead (important against combo)?

Most builds are bad against Blood Moon and Wasteland, that's fine.

Does 4 Rancor increase draw variance? How often do you draw Rancors with no creatures out? Would some cheap equipment work better instead? For example Bonesplitter and Shadowspear are cards and also put less demand on your fragile colored mana.

I found that Platinum Emperion was too easy to just remove against a lot of what I was running up against, while Sundering Titan provides value immediately and can get multiple lands at once. I could easily be wrong on that selection though. (One of the major reasons I'm looking for feedback here is that I haven't had enough time to test this sufficiently yet to figure those details out myself with much confidence.)

I haven't yet run into any situations where I'm drawing Rancors with no targets as the deck more often has some superfluous bodies, so so far it doesn't feel like its reasonably increasing variance, but that's a valid point to bring up. The only feel bad they've engendered is I did walk into the 2-for-1 against Swords once. They've been + card advantage more often than they've been - card advantage so far.

I can't think of any cheap equipment that can compare with +4 Effective Power plus trample, and both the evasion and the fact that you get it back when the creates dies is important.

Getting G didn't seem that demanding, as I have 14 function green sources plus treasures. I don't think I would trade them out for Bonesplitter (which doesn't give trample). Shadowspear is more interesting, but that's just so slow and mana intensive at 3 mana + 2 for each subsequent, compared to 1 mana + 1 for each subsequent, and it's also less aggressive even if it was the same mana (meaning it's only real upside is the lifelink and insulation against Swords). I don't feel like that's worth being slower, weaker, and more mana intensive, but it's definitely something I'll keep in mind if I become desperate for either the lifelink of the Swords insulation, sure.

Thanks for the feedback; let me know if at any point you have any other thoughts.

[Zoid]

While the build seems more streamlined, It has no ways of creating card advantage and always needs at least 3 specific cards to work.
Your only plan seems to flood the board and hope your opponent runs out of removal before you run out of creatures.
No option to win MD vs anything unfair.

[Rationalist]

While the build seems more streamlined, It has no ways of creating card advantage and always needs at least 3 specific cards to work.
Your only plan seems to flood the board and hope your opponent runs out of removal before you run out of creatures.
No option to win MD vs anything unfair.

I agree with the first criticism, it has no way of creating card advantage.

I don't agree and/or understand the second criticism though. What 3 specific cards does it need to work?

Also, it's hard for me to see how I've decreased the deck's unfair matchup by adding 6 discard and increasing the clock.

Not being defensive, I'm actively wanting the criticism - I just don't understand it. Maybe that's my failing, if you're willing to explain it.

[Borg]

It makes the deck Jeskai but I think Depala, Pilot Exemplar could be a great addition to Mothdust/Magda.
Maybe taking it a little too far but Intruder Alarm could make for an insane combo.

[Zoid]

I agree with the first criticism, it has no way of creating card advantage.

I don't agree and/or understand the second criticism though. What 3 specific cards does it need to work?

Also, it's hard for me to see how I've decreased the deck's unfair matchup by adding 6 discard and increasing the clock.

My point was more that you always need like Magda + Changelings, Reyav + equipment + Rancor, etc.
There is the Magda plan and the equipment plan which is a different deck which seems just better to me.
If you draw the wrong combination of cards, you still only have changelings.

It is common misconception that discard wins vs unfair decks.
At most it slows them down.
Your clock is still slow and if you don't draw the right cards it's even slower.
6 cards is also not that much and Therapy is not reliable, at least the first time you cast it.

[Rationalist]

My point was more that you always need like Magda + Changelings, Reyav + equipment + Rancor, etc.
There is the Magda plan and the equipment plan which is a different deck which seems just better to me.
If you draw the wrong combination of cards, you still only have changelings.

It is common misconception that discard wins vs unfair decks.
At most it slows them down.
Your clock is still slow and if you don't draw the right cards it's even slower.
6 cards is also not that much and Therapy is not reliable, at least the first time you cast it.

Gotchya, I understand. Thanks.

[Rationalist]

So are there any versions of the deck that you think have positive unfair MD matchups and/or have a respectable ability to generate card advantage?

[Zoid]

So are there any versions of the deck that you think have positive unfair MD matchups and/or have a respectable ability to generate card advantage?

The initial versions of the deck can generate some advantage but rely heavily on drawing the right cards.

As for beating unfair decks, that's what a big part of this thread is about.
In a concept that needs so many individual parts to work, I'm not seeing it tbh.

[Rationalist]

The initial versions of the deck can generate some advantage but rely heavily on drawing the right cards.

As for beating unfair decks, that's what a big part of this thread is about.
In a concept that needs so many individual parts to work, I'm not seeing it tbh.

Unfortunately I don't feel the initial versions did this in any reasonable way, so there's no real "legacy" technology that I'm seeing that we can implement here.

Here are my thoughts, based on this response:

Given how much air the deck is priced into at this point (meaning until we start printing some better friends for Magda) I don't think attempting to draw additional cards is a reasonable way to try to fight a game against an opponent with higher density of answers than you have threats. So if the concern is leveraging card advantage in a grindier game, I feel like the better tac may just be to deny the opponent theirs. Spirit of the Labyrinth might be the kind of effect that could help in this regard, and has the side benefit of increasing the opportunity to steal Game 1 off of an unfair opponent by turning off cantrips and Echo of Eons.

Unfortunately I don't think I can reasonably increase the fair (No Magda on 2) clock of the deck to faster than Turn 4 (un-interacted with), which I think is respectable for what the deck is doing but I appreciate isn't exactly going to straight up race the face combo decks, even with a Thoughtseize, and is slower and less robust than things like the Madness 8-Wala deck are doing. The only other thing I can think to do here is switch the Madga target to Platinum Angel, which as this thread has talked about yes is more vulnerable, but is definitely a more solid lock vs. Combo. I don't think current stock builds of Doomsday, TES, or Reanimator can beat it whatsoever, it's still at the very least hard to answer game 1 for a lot of other unfair decks, and in fair games you can just fetch something else.

This means Game 1 against combo we would have a hand disruption, a 2-card combo win of our own (but without a way to search it up), a card-draw denial effect in Spirit of the Labyrinth against combos for which that is relevant (Sneak and Show, Doomsday, Elves, High Tide, etc), and a reasonable Turn 4 fair clock since we can often start swinging for 10 turn 3.

I'm not saying this makes us favored in the matchup, I think you're right that even with all of this we'd still be a dog, but it seems like past that point the marginal cost of increasing the unfair matchup becomes too expensive as it detracts from the built in infrastructure of the deck, and at least personally I'd be willing to accept that as long as the sideboard was reasonable.

In my case, at least, this would bring me closer to a list that looks like (doing my best to adapt to your input):

4 - Mothdust Changeling
4 - Universal Automaton
4 - Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 - Reyav, Master Smith
4 - Stoneforge Mystic
4 - Valiant Changeling
3 - Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 - Platinum Angel

4 - Thoughtseize
4 - Rancor
1 - Kaldra, Compleat
1 - Batterskull

4 - Cavern of Souls
4 - City of Brass
4 - Mana Confluence
3 - Unclaimed Territory
2 - Reflecting Pool
1 - Windswept Heath
1 - Verdant Catacombs
1 - Scrubland
1 - Savannah
1 - Gemstone Mine

As it stands I'd still be reluctant to move from this list towards other currently suggested ones that I've seen (although I'd be happy to be pitched them more strongly). Based on current experience (although I do need more of that before getting a sufficient sense of things), I don't feel like your assessment of a mix-and-match problem is pervasive in this list beyond that which I believe is unfortunately bought into by the need to reasonably play at least 12 other non-valiant-dwarves besides Magda. Rancor has 8 partners which can lead it to kill in just a couple turns, which puts us up at around 75% to be optimally payed off on turn 3 all else being equal, and in the worse case is a way to get some unimpressive but real value out of "stinkers" that often sticks around or can be recurred while we wait for one of those 8 cards to come up or just give Batterskull some extra power and trample. Reyav has an even higher density of high synergy partners.

Ultimately the game we're talking about is what are the number of non-functional hands we can draw. While a card like rancor does increase the number of hands we can draw that objectively non-functional (drawing 2 rancors and lands looks pretty bad when you could have drawn 2 independently valid threats), it increases the number of playable hands that include the "2-drop non-Magda dwarf slot" immensely, and also turns Valiant changeling into a 2 turn threat even against a mildly clogged board state. The thing is that I don't think we can reasonably build a deck with Magda, 12 otherwise unplayable dwarves, and then a bunch of strictly independently good cards and compete. I think we need to increase the competitive viability of those 12 slots, and that means at least for the time being that we're somewhat priced into a "plug and play" style deck. (Parts that are designed to make other parts better) Would you agree?

If you're willing to make that concession, I would make the argument that Reyav is the most competitive non-Valiant dwarf available to us for 2 mana or less. He synergizes with Magda because he essentially doubles the things that Magda searches out, and with the right set of cards he perma-berserks your own creatures, and while Rancor isn't exactly a legacy staple it does strongly synergize with other cards we're already playing.

So your criticism is right, I don't like the G1 combo matchup and I do have more dead hands than I would like in a perfect world, but I still don't see an off-ramp on the highway of logic that goes

Magda needs a critical density of Dwarf Friends -> We have to make those Dwarf Friends better -> We are priced into being synergy based -> There's a 2-drop dwarf that synergizes with Magda and regularly produces Turn 4 kills -> We should be playing that Dwarf

And yes, this path leads me towards Rancor, but it also leads into things like T1 Thoughtseize into an Uncounterable Stone-Forge mystic, so of the paths of which I am currently away this is still the most promising one - although I might certainly be unaware of something you are.

[Borg]

Magda needs a critical density of Dwarf Friends -> We have to make those Dwarf Friends better -> We are priced into being synergy based -> There's a 2-drop dwarf that synergizes with Magda and regularly produces Turn 4 kills -> We should be playing that Dwarf
T2 dwarf drops :
Seven Dwarves : you can have seven of them in your deck and each one makes all the other better.
Veteran Motorist : nice combo with Smuggler's Copter for card draw and tapped Dwarfs without havin to attack with the dwarves themselves.

Depala, Pilot Exemplar : dwarf lord + card advantage. Don't understand why this deck doesn't have at least one copy.

Mothdust -> Magda -> Depala is nice, no ?
Maybe being more explosive with Petals and refill hand with Depala ?

[FTW]

I found that Platinum Emperion was too easy to just remove against a lot of what I was running up against, while Sundering Titan provides value immediately and can get multiple lands at once. I could easily be wrong on that selection though. (One of the major reasons I'm looking for feedback here is that I haven't had enough time to test this sufficiently yet to figure those details out myself with much confidence.)

It probably depends on the matchup. Sundering Titan is probably better against multicolor fair decks packed with StPs and multiple land types to hit. Has it been forced to kill your Scrubland and Savannah much?

Emperion is good against combo (e.g. Storm, Depths, Doomsday). You can "not lose" at instant speed instead of losing, after they blow all their resources to combo fast. Then you get to stall many turns while they have to find an answer to Emperion. Otherwise this deck struggles to interact with combo.

You've added discard instead for the combo matchup. That works for some combo decks (awkward vs Depths) but does lead to sequencing conflict. G1 vs unknown opponent you really want to play T1 changeling instead of T1 discard. But that means they may get you in game 1 even though you drew your answer. If you did lead on discard to be safe, they might not be combo and that slows down the Magda and Valiant lines by a full turn. If you're going for T1 discard at the expense of T2 Magda/Valiant, why even play this deck instead of another discard deck like Deadguy Ale? So there's some sequencing conflict with the T1 discard main. In other versions we considered Force of Will instead of discard, partly because it leads to smoother sequencing. I see why you don't have Force. But I wonder if maindeck discard is really the solution. Instead, you could try maindeck hatebears and SB discard, only needing to play T1 discard when you know it matters?

Edit: I meant Platinum Angel instead of Platinum Emperion. Emperion is quite bad vs Thassa's Oracle decks.


So are there any versions of the deck that you think have positive unfair MD matchups and/or have a respectable ability to generate card advantage?

I'm a bit biased because I posted it, but I think the Grixis Dwarf-Ninja hybrid manages this problem well. Yuriko to draw cards with Changelings. Force of Will to interact with combo without awkward sequencing.

Retrofitter Foundry is a good way to generate advantage from a board of durdly Changelings (T: become 4/4). It takes fewer pieces than the equipment/aura plan. Easy 4-of.

Some builds use an Urza's Saga package for multiple purposes:
-Generate threats
-Generate card advantage
-Tutor for combo hate pieces like Pithing Needle, Aether Spellbomb
-Find Retrofitter

I don't know that any of this makes the unfair match positive, but they should help.

[Rationalist]

It probably depends on the matchup. Sundering Titan is probably better against multicolor fair decks packed with StPs and multiple land types to hit. Has it been forced to kill your Scrubland and Savannah much?

More than I would like at least, yeah.



You've added discard instead for the combo matchup. That works for some combo decks (awkward vs Depths) but does lead to sequencing conflict.

I'm pretty sure the build I'm working on right now would get obliterated by depths at least 70% of the time. You're right about the sequencing conflict, but in practice it's never been a problem on the draw leading on Changeling when keeping an opener with both and dictating the turn 2 sequence based on 1st turn identification and whether or not they tap out (if they tap out, I can safely Magda, produce treasure, and then Thoughtseize, which is better than letting the removal against the non-combo opponent hit Magda anyways). It's a valid conceptual concern but in practice it hasn't been overly problematic since you can Magda and Thoughtseize in the same turn 2, and I'd be hesitant to play Magda into open Turn 1 mana without Thoughtseizing them first if I have the option anyways.



If you're going for T1 discard at the expense of T2 Magda/Valiant, why even play this deck instead of another discard deck like Deadguy Ale?

Well I'm not claiming you actually should as of yet, but I have a quicker clock, a combo, can cast my cards off of force of will to weaken counter-magic, and I get a 5 color sideboard. It is more than bad cards deadguy ale.



In other versions we considered Force of Will instead of discard, partly because it leads to smoother sequencing. I see why you don't have Force. But I wonder if maindeck discard is really the solution. Instead, you could try maindeck hatebears and SB discard, only needing to play T1 discard when you know it matters?.

Okay but removing discard leaves my key creatures more vulnerable to removal. I don't know if I want to weaken all my fair matches to show up my combo match a bit more but still not to fantastic levels.



I'm a bit biased because I posted it, but I think the Grixis Dwarf-Ninja hybrid manages this problem well. Yuriko to draw cards with Changelings. Force of Will to interact with combo without awkward sequencing.

Retrofitter Foundry is a good way to generate advantage from a board of durdly Changelings (T: become 4/4). It takes fewer pieces than the equipment/aura plan. Easy 4-of.

I definitely believe my current list is less competitive than straight-up stock Ninjas, I'm just not convinced that "Dwarf Ninjas" is that much better than Ninjas. It might be, I'm not telling you you're doing it wrong and I haven't tried your list, but while I feel pretty confident is talking about why what I'm doing here is distinct from Deadguy Ale, I'm not actually so sure what problems Ninjas have that Dwarves solve. (Feel free to elaborate on that.)



Some builds use an Urza's Saga package for multiple purposes:
-Generate threats
-Generate card advantage
-Tutor for combo hate pieces like Pithing Needle, Aether Spellbomb
-Find Retrofitter

I don't know that any of this makes the unfair match positive, but they should help.

I've seen the bwangeroo videos and while I respect the cards in the tutor package, I'm apprehensive about taking a deck with these types of mana requirements and adding a colorless land so that I can tutor up situational answers to fast combo on Turn 4 while also adding more air to the deck to fit that tutor package in. If I make it to turn 4, I'd rather just kill them anyways, ideally.

[Rationalist]

(Plays around with Ninja Dwarves for Science)

... Oh, Reaper King destroys lands and is a blue card for FoW.

Okay, well that's at least one thing I didn't adequately appreciate about the idea. I don't know why that didn't immediately process. Getting to un-deadify drawing a Magda target certainly reduces the cost of the package.

[bwangeroo]

I think yours is an interesting build – haven't played around with it myself but Reyav seems neat. Giving Kaldra double-strike seems pretty awesome in and of itself, and Rancor on a Valiant Changeling likewise seems great. I'm willing to believe that the aggro draws have a faster goldfish than those of more stock builds.

However, I feel like it might actually be more susceptible to opposing disruption than at least my Saga-based build? Saga, Foundry, and Grist are all great at grinding opponents out when their plan is mono-removal, whereas equipment + Auras play into removal more. I suppose that's where the discard is supposed to come in – but I think at least against blue interactive decks, it's easy for them to just cantrip their way to another removal spell. E.g., trading Thoughtseize for their Swords to Plowshares isn't reliable when they have Expressive Iteration + Ponder in hand as well. Better to overload the removal than try to strip them of it, imo.

The discard probably does give you better game against combo in g1, though. I'm mostly OK accepting those as bad matchups and rely on the sideboard to shore them up.

Some minor points:
- Without Saga or Clock of Omens, isn't Changeling Outcast just better than Universal Automaton in your build?
- I would guess that Umezawa's Jitte or SoFaI would be better than Grafted Wargear. Getting double triggers off a double-striking creature is the cherry on top.

[Rationalist]

I think yours is an interesting build – haven't played around with it myself but Reyav seems neat. Giving Kaldra double-strike seems pretty awesome in and of itself, and Rancor on a Valiant Changeling likewise seems great. I'm willing to believe that the aggro draws have a faster goldfish than those of more stock builds.

However, I feel like it might actually be more susceptible to opposing disruption than at least my Saga-based build? Saga, Foundry, and Grist are all great at grinding opponents out when their plan is mono-removal, whereas equipment + Auras play into removal more. I suppose that's where the discard is supposed to come in – but I think at least against blue interactive decks, it's easy for them to just cantrip their way to another removal spell. E.g., trading Thoughtseize for their Swords to Plowshares isn't reliable when they have Expressive Iteration + Ponder in hand as well. Better to overload the removal than try to strip them of it, imo.

Oh, that's definitely the case. I've conceded losing G1 to mono-removal and trying to pivot to Steely Resolve out of the board, but obviously that still fails to mono-removal+countermagic. It's probably a lack of respect for UR Delver since I'm playing at Card Kingdom Paper Weeklies, Delver is underrepresented, and I've been generally lucky (probably) against it so far. Thoughtseize and Rancor vs. Urza's Saga is clearly a worse heavy-removal Delver plan though, I can't argue with that.

Do you feel you have a positive UR Delver matchup?

[bwangeroo]

Oh, that's definitely the case. I've conceded losing G1 to mono-removal and trying to pivot to Steely Resolve out of the board, but obviously that still fails to mono-removal+countermagic. It's probably a lack of respect for UR Delver since I'm playing at Card Kingdom Paper Weeklies, Delver is underrepresented, and I've been generally lucky (probably) against it so far. Thoughtseize and Rancor vs. Urza's Saga is clearly a worse heavy-removal Delver plan though, I can't argue with that.

Do you feel you have a positive UR Delver matchup?

Oh no, UR Delver is awful. Probably one of the worst matchups. They kill you in the air before any of the Grist/Saga/Foundry grindy stuff matters. I've found that, depending on how reliant their build is on DRC/Murktide, if you can mulligan to a good hand + a Leyline of the Void in postboard games, that can help a lot, because then they're basically trying to use Ragavan only to kill you, giving you time to set up with your Grist/Saga/Foundry stuff. But Leyline + otherwise functional hand is still going to be a minority of hands.

I feel a bit better about "fair blue midrange soup" decks though.

[FTW]

Well I'm not claiming you actually should as of yet, but I have a quicker clock, a combo, can cast my cards off of force of will to weaken counter-magic, and I get a 5 color sideboard. It is more than bad cards deadguy ale.

My point was less about comparing you to Deadguy Ale specifically than that T1 Changeling T2 Magda/Valiant is the best thing about Dwarves. Imho if you build in a way that discourages that play pattern, then you risk losing the best reasons to be Dwarves instead of some other random Thoughtseize deck.

If you find in practice that Thoughtseize doesn't conflict with sequencing (especially if you can go T2 Magda into Thoughtseize), that changes things. I also didn't consider how much you were using discard to clear removal from fair decks, not just to police unfair decks. Getting rid of instant removal does seem important when you depend on untapping with Magda/Stoneforge or can get 2-for-1'd on Rancor.


I definitely believe my current list is less competitive than straight-up stock Ninjas, I'm just not convinced that "Dwarf Ninjas" is that much better than Ninjas. It might be, I'm not telling you you're doing it wrong and I haven't tried your list, but while I feel pretty confident is talking about why what I'm doing here is distinct from Deadguy Ale, I'm not actually so sure what problems Ninjas have that Dwarves solve. (Feel free to elaborate on that.)

I was just answering your question about whether any other Dwarf builds have respectable ability to generate card advantage and fight unfair decks MD. That was the very origin of my brew: a conscious effort to solve both those problems (as well as the mana denial problem), starting with the Changeling + Dwarf shell. At that point I was also trying to cut Dwarves down to 3 colors for more stable mana and better noncreature SB options. RUG, UWR and RUB were all tried. Ninjas have the best tribal draw engine. I experimented with other tribe lords, but there was no better CA enabler than Yuriko. The other changes weren't necessarily Ninja-related. Retrofitter Foundry is good with Changelings. Force/Daze help the unfair matchups without interfering with sequencing, natural fits in a proactive plan that wants to tap out for creatures on T1 and T2. These changes solve many Dwarf problems, at the expense of some of the fun combo lines. The deck ends up looking a lot like Ninjas as it tries to solve similar problems in the same colors, but it really started as a changeling shell splashing Yuriko/Infiltrator for card draw.

What makes it different than Ninjas? Magda + Mothdust opens up different lines and allow you to cut Ornithopter (no 0/2 topdecks), since Mothdust can also gain evasion or turn into a 4/4. With the extra 1/1s it's also much better at blocking Ragavan.

Magda -> Reaper King is not only a fatty lord but turns your changelings into 1-mana Vindicates. That's insane value and destroys permanent types Ninjas normally can't. Ninjitsu returns changelings to hand to reuse... Reaper King also pitches to FoW and -10s them with Yuriko + Brainstorm, so the card has a lot of uses.

Magda's +1/+0 makes the durdly 1-drops better. Magda's treasures add tempo to do things like play out extra cards drawn or hold untapped mana to threaten tricks.

Magda's ability can also get Retrofitter or SB artifact pieces. That diversifies some SB options. If you're facing an unfair deck like TES with Defense Grids + Silence/Veil to hate out counterspells, now they have to worry about both counters and permanent-based hate (tutorable with Magda). That taxes their answers since they don't usually run answers to both at the same time.

You also gain red SB cards like Abrade and Pyroblast, doing things that UB cards don't.

So it's not strictly worse than Ninjas. I'm not convinced it's necessarily better either, which is why I haven't developed the deck further. But it does do things and offer different lines.


Oh, that's definitely the case. I've conceded losing G1 to mono-removal and trying to pivot to Steely Resolve out of the board, but obviously that still fails to mono-removal+countermagic. It's probably a lack of respect for UR Delver since I'm playing at Card Kingdom Paper Weeklies, Delver is underrepresented, and I've been generally lucky (probably) against it so far. Thoughtseize and Rancor vs. Urza's Saga is clearly a worse heavy-removal Delver plan though, I can't argue with that.

What matchups have you tested so far in paper? What is this meta like?

[FTW]

ThrabenU tries another iteration of this deck. DwarfThopterFaeries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuE0oBMhgrI

Phil's Deck

//Lands: 22
4 Urza's Saga
4 Cavern of Souls
4 City of Brass
4 Mana Confluence
3 Secluded Courtyard
2 Wasteland
1 Karakas

//Artifacts: 11
4 Aether Vial
4 Retrofitter Foundry
1 Springleaf Drum
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Clock of Omens

//Creatures: 23
4 Universal Automaton
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Unsettled Mariner
4 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Mirror Entity
1 Scourge of Valkas
1 Platinum Emperion

//Spells: 4
2 Once Upon A Time
2 Swords to Plowshares

//Sideboard: 15
2 Swords to Plowshares
3 Valiant Changeling
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Leyline of the Void
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Pithing Needle
1 God-Pharaoh's Statue
1 Masked Vandal
1 Vampires' Vengeance


There's an "infinite" combo here.
Magda + 5 treasures + Universal Automaton -> Clock of Omens -> Tap Clock + Automaton: untap Automaton & create Treasure -> Tap Automaton + treasure: untap Automaton & creature Treasure -> infinite tapped Treasures -> Scourge -> get every changeling & kill with Scourge's ETB trigger

That looks fun. But to me it looks like the combo is fragile and has too many moving pieces. Phil thought so too and never got to pull it off, adding Platinum Emperion and God-Pharaoh's Statue as easier Magda targets.

StP is hard to cast in this manabase (9 lands produce white), but from Phil's games removal seemed important.
Vial seems suboptimal with a 1-2 curve. I suppose it allows uncounterable Magda or holding up Spellstutter Sprite, but it's a bad topdeck in a deck that already has a lot of bad draws.

I notice that if you cut the Clock combo and OUAT, this is just Jeskai colors. You could play a regular Jeskai manabase and cast spells more easily.

Jeskai Dwarf-Thopter-Faeries

//Lands: 20
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
2 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Mutavault

//Spells: 12
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares

//Creatures: 24
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Unsettled Mariner
3 Valiant Changeling
1 Platinum Emperion

//Artifacts: 4
4 Retrofitter Foundry

//Sideboard: 15
4 Force of Will
2 Prismatic Ending
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Unlicensed Hearse
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Deafening Silence
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 God-Pharaoh's Statue
1 Reaper King
1 Vampires' Vengeance


That gives more stable colored mana (Xerox) and access to more powerful disruptive tools (FoW, StP, Ending) and SB choices. There isn't room for both Mutavault and Saga here. I think Mutavault is slightly better in this configuration with less room for artifacts. cards]Mutavault[/cards] is a Thopter (turns into 4/4 with Retrofitter), Dwarf (makes Treasures with Magda), Faerie (helps Spellstutter counter), and makes Valiant Changeling cost less even after a board wipe. Mutavault and maindeck Valiants should improve the fair beatdown plan when Magda and Retrofitter are disrupted.

Instead of Spellstutter, this deck may want Depala, Pilot Exemplar for more beatdown and card draw.

Or you could keep the rainbow mana, cleaning it up a bit, and add Changeling Outcast for better lines with Retrofitter and Magda

Rainbow Dwarf-Thopter-Faeries

//Lands: 22
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Secluded Courtyard
4 City of Brass
4 Mana Confluence
4 Urza's Saga
2 Mutavault

//Creatures: 27
4 Mothdust Changeling
4 Universal Automaton
4 Changeling Outcast
4 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Unsettled Mariner
1 Masked Vandal
1 Mirror Entity
1 Platinum Emperion

//Artifacts: 6
4 Retrofitter Foundry
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Springleaf Drum

//Spells: 5
3 Once Upon A Time
2 Dismember

//Partial Sideboard:
2 Swords to Plowshares
3 Valiant Changeling
1 Pithing Needle
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 God-Pharaoh's Statue
1 Vampires' Vengeance


Dismember might be better than StP with such a low white-producing land count, so I have a 2/2 split. With even more creatures and fewer spells, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben may be good in the SB.

[bwangeroo]

Oh hey, this was my donation :)

Thanks for watching, I have some reflections on your notes:


But to me it looks like the combo is fragile and has too many moving pieces. Phil thought so too and never got to pull it off, adding Platinum Emperion and God-Pharaoh's Statue as easier Magda targets.


I'm a pretty big believer in the Clock combo – Clock is my most often Magda target, and I win with the combo much more than I do by just fetching a dragon. Platinum Emperion and God-Pharaoh's Statue I think are too low-impact and are importantly hard to hardcast when you draw them. Needing Automaton to get the chain started is less of a drawback than it might seem, with 8 functional copies in Automaton + Saga.


Vial seems suboptimal with a 1-2 curve. I suppose it allows uncounterable Magda or holding up Spellstutter Sprite, but it's a bad topdeck in a deck that already has a lot of bad draws.


Yeah Vial definitely isn't as good here as it is in something with a higher curve like DnT, but it still serves lots of important roles. Making Magda or Sprite uncounterable is big game sometimes. Gives you some game against Blood Moon and Back to Basics. Helps neutralize Karakas against Magda. Importantly, actually lets you get away with the 8 colorless source manabase, both in color-fixing and in letting you use those mana-intensive colorless lands. Retrofitter in addition can be mana-intensive and Vial helps with that.


I notice that if you cut the Clock combo and OUAT, this is just Jeskai colors. You could play a regular Jeskai manabase and cast spells more easily.


I've tried a Jeskai manabase in the past and found that this actually made the mana a bit worse. Consider: if you have 2 rainbow lands and a colorless land, a single Wasteland doesn't color-screw you, whereas if you have Tundra + Volcanic + a colorless land, a single Wasteland does. You also lose lots of other benefits as well: OUaT is an incredible card for a creature-based combo deck, Retrofitter Foundry into Masked Vandal is a great opener against artifact-based decks, and you can't afford to play quite as many colorless lands (e.g. not being able to play Saga is tough).


Dismember might be better than StP with such a low white-producing land count, so I have a 2/2 split

Dismember is definitely a viable option that I've considered in the past, it's just so bad against Delver though. And also less good against insulating you from Marit Lage. But pretty good in most other respects.

[kinda]

I've always wanted Mark of the oni to work and wondering if a version like thus is playable? Maybe want to squeeze in d Rit or ouat...


2 Badlands
2 Bayou
3 Blade of the Oni
3 Bloodstained Mire
4 Changeling Outcast
1 Embodiment of Agonies
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Liliana's Contract
3 Magda, Brazen Outlaw
4 Mark of the Oni
1 Masked Vandal
2 Mutavault
1 Nightmare Shepherd
1 Rakshasa Deathdealer
1 Realmwalker
1 Retrofitter Foundry
1 Scourge of the Skyclaves
1 Shadowspear
1 Spawn of Mayhem
3 Swamp
1 Taborax, Hope's Demise
1 Taiga
1 The Bloodsky Massacre
4 Universal Automaton
4 Urza's Saga
1 Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire
1 Vault of Whispers
4 Verdant Catacombs

2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Dread of Night
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Opposition Agent
1 Pithing Needle
1 Red Elemental Blast
4 Thoughtseize

[FTW]

That looks like a fun concept!

It looks too ambitious on big mana plays though. Probably cut
-4 Leyline, -2 Helm, -3 Liliana's Contract, -1 Mark

From there you may want to reconsider some of the singleton demons. It's cool that most are hardcastable at 2-4 mana, but maybe you don't need so many. The tribal ones that draw cards seem best. Otherwise you can run more Changelings (count as Demon or Dwarf - or Berserker or Cleric). Maybe 1 Demon-Dragon or Artifact Demon as a Magda target. And some sacrifice outlet so you can sacrifice the stolen creature before opponent removes your Demons.

Cutting blue is tough because Mothdust Changeling is the best enabler for Magda, Brazen Outlaw. You can still get treasures by attacking, but then you have summoning sickness and have to worry about blockers, so there are drawbacks to not playing blue.

If you stay in Jund colors, more Masked Vandal seems good. Maybe you even want the Dwarven Recruiter + Grist combo? Grist works as a sac outlet too.

[kinda]

That looks like a fun concept!

It looks too ambitious on big mana plays though. Probably cut
-4 Leyline, -2 Helm, -3 Liliana's Contract, -1 Mark

From there you may want to reconsider some of the singleton demons. It's cool that most are hardcastable at 2-4 mana, but maybe you don't need so many. The tribal ones that draw cards seem best. Otherwise you can run more Changelings (count as Demon or Dwarf - or Berserker or Cleric). Maybe 1 Demon-Dragon or Artifact Demon as a Magda target. And some sacrifice outlet so you can sacrifice the stolen creature before opponent removes your Demons.

Cutting blue is tough because Mothdust Changeling is the best enabler for Magda, Brazen Outlaw. You can still get treasures by attacking, but then you have summoning sickness and have to worry about blockers, so there are drawbacks to not playing blue.

If you stay in Jund colors, more Masked Vandal seems good. Maybe you even want the Dwarven Recruiter + Grist combo? Grist works as a sac outlet too.

Good points, think I'm underestimating mothdust's importance...and probably want some grist.