Still, it would've been hilarious to see people playing DRUG Delver :D
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There were three motivations for me to have 4 Needles SB:
Your list was one of them, the second being a hedge against Wasteland after the Dig ban, the third being I saw another deck run 3 Needles and made top8/16, whatever it was on a 160 something man tourney.
I tested it and it worked well.
@MUD Stompy testing:
I've concluded that the Zirath stompy shell doesn't work anymore even with Cavern of Souls instead of Buried Ruins. With 22 lands, mulligans have been awful, though the deck can easily survive with 1 or 2 lands only. Then I've upped the count to 23 lands, it didn't make a difference. There were just too many threats in the list that costs 6 and greater. Then I went to change half of the 6cc into 5cc (Forgemaster, Batterskull or Precursor Golem). It worked really well and most of the time didn't need Metalworker to spit out threats. At the end of the testing, I was almost at Sugiyama/L10's list with 23 lands (3 Ports over the Urborg), and Revokers instead of Greaves. So I concluded that I'd rather play the generic MUD list.
@ new draw land:
I don't think it fits the generic MUD shell. It has to go in a deck that can consistently hellbend itself and produce lots of mana. Possibly a new stompy shell. Playing it with Bottled Cloister feels like win-more.
I agree it doesn't fit the generic MUD shell, it's too slow. I don't agree that is it a win-more in Bottled Cloister shell. These decks are low on threat count often and can use any extra card drawn. I have even played one Moonring Mirror in this shell and that wasn't even a win more, but very much needed. I guess this new land would do a better job :smile:
As an aside from MUD, which art do people prefer:
Ancient Tomb - Expedition
or Tempest/FTV?
And Wasteland - Expedition as well.
I would love to see a City of Traitors - Expedition as well. That would give MUD three new looks.
GREY mana.
But i prefer original arts in most cases, especially old border. Exeption is Lightning Greaves. Promo is better, but i cant play it due to it being foil.
It's worth testing; assuming Standard doesn't do stupid things to its price, I'll pick up a few to try out. I'm just not sure it's better than any of our dedicated card-draw or mana options, even if it's more flexible (similar to how I feel about Hedron Archive).
I always prefer originals and don't love the Expedition frame, but the new art is nice. Still, MUD needs more brownish cards, not fewer.
This may have been said already in the 180+ pages of this primer, but what about Ethersworn Canonist? You get to splash white for removal as well, Seal of Cleansing and Swords to Plowshares. Might even be worth a splash for an early Ghostly Prison too.
Anyone tried splashing for something other than red? I can see Black being a good splash color too, adding early discard elements to clean out removal and counterspells, making sure things go your way. Almost added Gitaxian Probe to check to see if my plays were safe, but Phyrexian mana is tough in a deck with Ancient Tomb.
GeddonStax, WhiteStax, DutchStax, Angel Stompy and whatnot. It's in other threads.
I never felt i needed Ethersworn, even against storm. Also, why, would you want to play 1 mana spells in MUD that cant be cast with Cavern of Souls or are resurrected with Daretti/Welder? #Chalice1
There were several attempts to splash to other colors, white mud with stoneforge and scourglass is the second most used.
Black usually is to use the abyss or nether void, but it's clunky (and expensive).
About 2011 people were trying green to use cradle and sylvan library with no success.
Blue MUD is called Deep Blue, it tries to get card advantage, but it's slow and doesn't get the consistency that other decks use blue for.
It's a bit hard to find sample lists.
I was thinking of brewing an RG mud with a similar manabase to Airwave's RW list from page 178. Using pod, it would go: welder -> ?? -> metalworker/scarecrone ->lodestone->kuldotha -> coil -> battlesphere -> emperion/sundering. A Thopter engineer could also fetch a welder saccing the token or a lodestone. Maaaaybe even using Impositor myr for a fast titan. Still didn't had the time to stop and think it through yet.
I always wanted to try Blue just for Teferi's Response in the board. Gotcha! lol, but too cute. But for those wasteland and Port decks I just run Pithing Needle and I'm ok. I have a Tsabo's Web in the board right now too.
Whenever I've tried splashing a color, I would get color screwed way too often.
I guess you're right about Swords, didn't think of that.Although, other builds have 1CMC cards maindeck, like Pithing Needle, which can't be cast through a Cavern either. I guess it just depends on if removing creatures or turning off Wastelands is more important in your meta?
I've not built a Welder variant, but all the matchups I've watched online with Welder never effectively use it to 'go off' or manage to protect/weld out more than two things, although I'll admit I haven't seen much and am doing a lot of research/brewing to find out if what I want to do. Welder initially seems better in a deck that runs Entomb, Gamble, XSteel Clossus and artifact lands than whatever purpose it's serving in MUD, but I don't know anything.
Thinking about white, there are a few cards that would be neat to splash for (Canonist being one of them), but ultimately, from what I've seen, the problem is the counter-heavy metagame, and horizontal board development that's the shit right now (in free Elemental tokens). Grixis Delver is huge, it has Young Pyromancer, and can rack up tokens for countering my stuff with Daze and FoW, which don't care about Chalice either.
Keeping that in mind... Black seems like a great color to splash in MUD. Turn 1, game 1, Thoughtsieze or Duress is a better play in the blind than a Chalice on 1, simply because they could be playing whatever, and getting that insight plus having a way to stall their plan for a turn seems amazing, especially since the problem for MUD is keeping pace with decks that run lots of removal and counterspells. If you're on the draw and they Daze your discard spell or some other nonsense, you're not losing a chalice, you're still getting a 1 for 1 at best, and you're not losing anything important. Turn 2, drop a Trinisphere. Play Chalice at your leisure with more information. Before you drop a >5CMC baddie or a Metalworker, take a look at their hand again and take something to make sure the coast is clear.
From what I've seen, this seems like a better plan overall than counting on turn 1 Chalice for 1 (which might do little), turn 2 Cavern naming Goblin, turn 3... cast welder? From then on, betting on having dead artifacts/artifact land to weld what they manage to get rid of, assuming they don't get rid of welder? I dunno. Not dogging it, I've never played it, but it seems like a more reactive strategy than a proactive one. Black also offers some good removal for other problems that can be boarded in.
I also assume that this has been tested extensively and that I don't know anything about it (I'm only on page 10 of the primer thus far), but after looking through a lot of decklists lately, this kind of black-splash-proactive strategy makes the most sense and gives the MUD player something powerful and useful to do in the early game (and targeted discard remains just as useful in late-game) rather than mana ramping, passing turns back, and hoping the opponent doesn't have counterspells or Krosan Grips.
I've played some variants with white only in the past. The aforementioned Stoneforge Mystic is nice. But I've also played a version with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben alongside Lodestone and Thorn of Amethyst. Fully creature packed of course :smile:
I've tried to build something similar but couldn't get it to work. I'm very interested to see if you'll get it to work, scarecrone for one I didn't think about. Seems like a good choice.
On the cmc 2 -> Maybe Phyrexian Revoker?
Beauty of Birthing Pod is that you can't don't need the green mana per se :cool:
When I'm brewing with a color, my first concern is always "does this auto loses to bloodmoon/null rod?" as they are prevalent in my meta. The phyrexian mana on pod is a great upside on this.
Also, thopter engineer is an artificer like welder and stoneforge, so that cavern goes double duty :) Other interesting artificers are Master Transmuter, Riddlesmith, Arcum Dagsson, Faerie Mechanist, all the splicers, etherium sculptor, and Feldon, although double colored is just suicide.
Revoker seems like the best choice so far.
I hardly face any Null Rod, thank god. It would be devastating for this deck I guess since the artifacts lands are blown to hell. I guess the cloudpost version could survive, but it's a nasty card anyway.
I've thought about playing Arcum Dagsson with the nexus-manlands but never put it to real testing.
a creature that can hold that emrakul/grisel, draw and ping twice. Interesting...
http://mythicspoiler.com/ogw/cards/endbringer.jpg
I'd tap that.
http://mythicspoiler.com/ogw/cards/seagateruins.jpg
Seems like out of anything, this'd be an auto include, especially for MUD decks that don't run any extra card drawing.
Quote:
Sea Gate Ruins
Land
T: Add ◊ to your mana pool. (◊ represents colorless mana.)
2◊, T: Draw a card. Activate this ability only if you have no cards in hand.