rather spent 1 mana more for natural order....Originally Posted by Echelon
Why is horizon canopy really really bad? Normally I would play another Savannah or scrubland but I noticed a horizon canopy in Davi's list from the mediocre league and thought to give it a go.
By meaningful interaction are you referring to the lack of spot removal?
Horizon Canopy is bad because it costs you tons of life and our deck is mana hungry so not using it isn't an option. 1 life per turn is too much, and it's not until very late game that you really want to cash it in. It usually costs you 4-6 life per game when you draw it, and that much life is enough to turn our best matchups like Delver into our worst.
And yes, the lack of removal at all is a big deal. In Legacy you can play what you want, but you have to pay the toll. You need a certain amount of removal, discard, and counterspells in order to have a competitive deck and your list just doesn't have it. I did watch some of the mediocre league play, the Pod list literally made me cringe at how bad the lines were.
I think the removal point is fair and I can definitely get behind cutting clunky/cute things (sun Titan/eldrazi displacer etc..) for efficient removal to get us to the late game.
This is probably where we just have different opinions but I still don't think Horizon Canopy is that bad. Like you said the life loss can certainly be a reason to not run it but with kitchen finks, siege rhino, thragtusk and jitte I think the deck can manage running a land like canopy.
My opinion on Canopy is from experience with the card. I don't know how far back it is now since this thread moves pretty quick but it wasn't all that long ago (2 months maybe?) where I was trying the card. It's probably around the SE Fit discussion. I've been looking pretty hard for some form of additional CA and thought Canopy could fill the role. Drawing it early was always a disaster though, and it was easily the worst card in my deck. Canopy working out so poorly is actually what eventually lead me to using Dark Confidant, but I wouldn't suggest Bob in a Pod list.
Displacer is really interesting. It's probably the strongest creature printed in the last 2-3 years if you can make the colors work. With an active displacer it is damn near impossible to actually lose in a combat step. If you add it though you have to think of things as a 4 color list, and while you only have the one outlet for colorless mana it becomes important to have access to multiple colorless for several activation's in a turn. I think it requires a fundamentally different manabase where you're using a series of pain lands, filters, basics, and caverns with mostly humans as your creatures.
I'm pretty sure that Displacer should never be a 1 of either. If you're going in on the strategy you should be going all in.
Horizon Canopy is a bad card that hurts us plenty, so we'll fix it by running another card we don't want to run? For at least half a second or so?
Yes, yes, I'm a dick, but did you really think this through before you posted it..?
Not necessarily. Drawing your NO target might just make it a dead card, drawing anything you could Evolution for is just a card you get to cast later. Yeah, NO'ing into Progenitus/Worldspine Wurm is pretty cool, but dropping Sigarda also wins plenty of games (where Sigarda isn't a dead card when drawn). Or Sun Titan + Pernicious Deed. Both are slower, but usually still good enough.
The other difference between NO and Evolution is that NO requires green creatures, which limits lines a lot. Particularly when several of our best 'spare/fodder' creatures are nongreen I. E. Baleful Strix and Stoneforge Mystic.
Strix isn't something you'd want to sacrifice (we don't play Elvish Visionary either), but SFM, yeah, absolutely.
Dropping SFM, use it to drop equipment and then Evolve SFM into a Siege Rhino sounds good to me. And'll usually be enough to win the game.
For those of you running Meren of Clan Nel Toth, how do you typically use her? What situations?
Is there a creature suite that you want to use her with for an engine? What decks do you find she is best against?
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She shines in long, grindy MUs vs. opponents that don't play white or graveyard hate. So not vs. that many MUs at the moment. Vs. a deck like MUD she can be backbreaking when combined with Qasali Pridemage. Otherwise, recurring an Eternal Witness is a very neat trick. The Witness + Meren loop can be established with a lone Diabolic Intent. After you establish the loop (i.e. Diabolic Intent for a Phyrexian Tower), just cast PtE every turn to clear the board (or Diabolic Intent when facing an empty board). You could also use it to loop a Pernicious Deed, when you have enough mana.
When you plan to abuse Meren, make sure to include some creatures with EtB/on death triggers to generate value. She fits quite nicely in the Abzan Rhino Fit shell, as it already runs some nice looping targets.
Outside of Abzan, she plays quite well with Baleful Strix.
This was more or less my thinking given where my list was with Junk-Fit a few months back.
The upside of E.Evolution is that you're not bound to green things. Unfortunately, just like NO, the spell is still high risk <--> high return.
So far the return hasn't been worth the risk for me (and this comes from someone that does his sudoku in pen).
Maybe it was just me, maybe it was my build, maybe the deck just had an off day, I don't know. It's surely not an auto-include and (as much as it pains me) I'm strongly leaning towards considering it The Danger Of Cool Things.
My heart bleeds a little bit for this card.
So I've been messing around with four colour manabases, and came up with this:
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Windswept Heath
1 Marsh Flats
2 Forest
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Island
2 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
1 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
1 Mana Confluence
1 Phyrexian Tower
Adds up to 22 lands, with 15 G sources, 14B and 13W/13U. With that in mind, we can potentially put something together which combines some of the high points of the Abzan and Sultai lists.
- Baleful Strix and Stoneforge play well together since it's nice to have cheap fliers to carry your equipment. Also makes the list good at stabilizing which is important when you're playing Mana Confluence.
- Path To Exile (or Swords) makes the deck's removal significantly better.
- Brainstorm is great with the absurd numbers of shuffle effects we run.
- However we probably can't run JTMS & Sigarda since they both require double-colour of our splash colours. It might be doable but is definitely harder than in a standard 3Colour list. IMO Jace is a better choice, since he's better when we aren't looking to end the game (providing filtering / removal) rather than acting as a relatively uninteresting beatdown option. It might well be correct to run neither, though - it might not be worth trying to make double blue mana.
The core of the list (i.e the reason we're running these colour) probably looks something like this:
3 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
Vet numbers are a little down and DRS numbers are up, just because rainbow mana is pretty important in this deck. We also are probably going to have a relatively low curve (because SFM and Strix) so we probably aren't quite as dependent on getting a Veteran Explorer activation as normal.
3 Baleful Strix
2 Stoneforge Mystic
Card advantage, stabilization, finishers. Synergise with each other. In you go.
1 Eternal Witness
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Thragtusk
Makes Zenith act as CA, stabilization and finisher. Pretty standard.
3 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Brainstorm
1 Sensei's Divining Top
Card Advantage and filtering. Less zeniths since we're going to have less targets than normal. Singleton top since the first one we draw is much better than the rest, and Top/Brainstorm are great with all our shuffles from Zenith/Fetch/SFM/Vet. We can't run too many do-nothing cantrip style slots though. Might want a third Brainstorm.
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Path to Exile (or Swords to Plowshares)
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Pernicious Deed
Therapy is still great, and we'll have a lot of fodder creatures. Swords/Path is unconditional and great. Abrupt Decay for Counterbalance, Chalice and other annoying problems. Fewer deeds than normal since Strix+SFM makes us good at stabilizing already and less Deed-dependent.
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Umezawa's Jitte
Stoneforge targets that help us stabilise, win board control, and then kill our opponent. Batterskull is nice but rather on the mana hungry side.
That's 32 cards. We have 6-7 slots left to finish the deck up, with this setup currently:
- Ramp: 8 (3 Veteran Explorer, 2 Deathrite Shaman, 3 Green Sun's Zenith)
This is a little low, but we are curving out at 5. We could potentially add in another Zenith and another ramp creature (maybe an STE) but we'd need to add some more Zenith targets too. Not that that's necessarily a mistake.
- Interaction: 15 (2 Equipment, 2 Stoneforge Mystic, 4 Cabal Therapy, 3 Path/Swords, 2 Abrupt Decay, 2 Pernicious Deed)
This is fine, but could potentially do with an extra couple. We don't have that much interaction with large creatures, large noncreatures, or non-board affecting combos like Storm. Glen Elendra Archmage, an Anguished Unmaking, or JTMS for the bounce could help us out here.
- Stabilization: 17 (3 Vet, 3 Strix, 3 GSZ, 1 Thragtusk, 5 removal spells, 2 Deed)
I've added this in to my evaluation. I'm looking at cards that help us deal with a threatening enemy board state, either by removing their stuff or making them not want to attack. Stoneforge doesn't count since she costs a lot of mana to actually make the opponent not want to attack, and equipment doesn't help unless we already have creatures. These numbers are probably fine, but maybe a Siege Rhino to provide another zenithable combat-winner could be handy.
- Draw/Filtering: 14 (3 Strix, 2 SFM, 3 GSZ, 1 Witness, 1 TTracker, 2 Brainstorm, 1 SDT, 1 SoFaI)
This is a little on the low side, when you consider that we're running Brainstorm and so have more single-use effects. Jaces would be helpful, as would other planeswalkers like Sorin GN. Adding a couple more Brainstorms would help out somewhat too. If we want more permanent options, we could also add in another copy of Tireless Tracker and Eternal Witness, both of which are pretty effective CA options and can also hold a sword and threaten to kill people. Meren of Clan Nel Toth could work too, but I like it when my CA engines work against Miracles.
- Finishers: 11 (2 SFM, 2 Equipment, 1 TTracker, 1 Thragtusk, 3 GSZ, 2 Deathrite)
We could do with a couple more here, but that's to be expected. All our finishers rely on creatures which isn't necessarily a good position to be in. However they also aren't easy to 1-for-1 which helps. A lot of the good blockers in the format are red or blue (TNN, Pyro tokens) and we have Strix to hold our SoFaI against Moats, so we can generally get our attackers in, but it might help to have noncombat options for stuff like Ensnaring Bridge. JTMS is fine although he has double blue in his mana cost, so we could instead go with Big Sorin or something.
For reference, we currently have 5 cards with [W] symbols (Stoneforge and Swords/Path) and 5 cards with [U] symbols (Strix and Brainstorm). We have 16 [G] symbols (with one GG on Eternal Witness) and 13 [B] symbols.
If we want to take the risk of running a double-colour card, I'd lean towards something like this for the last seven cards:
+1 Eternal Witness
+1 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Siege Rhino
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Combat Planeswalker (Garruk Relentless or Sorin, Lord of Innistrad)
- Swap Phyrexian Tower for a second Island
Or to play it safe and keep to single-symbol cards in the splash colours:
+1 Tireless Tracker
+1 Brainstorm
+1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Siege Rhino
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
I appreciate the feedback from your experience.
She had not done a lot for me in the list thus far. I have replaced her with a copy of Master of the Wild Hunt.
I really wanted her to work but it just doesn't seem to fit the winning strategy.
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She can definitely be iffy, especially in certain matchups. You really have to ask yourself how many interactions you have to make her worth it. Number of small dudes, inclusion of Dryad Arbor, whether or not you choose to include other forms of graveyard interaction (Recurring Nightmare), ETB effects including Qasali Pridemage or Siege Rhino.
The thing is, she can just completely seal the deal against many ground-based decks. If your Eldrazi, Shardless, general goyf or Maverick matchups are already good, then she isn't needed as much. I like her in my Junk SFM due to higher count of small dudes, Arbor, and few other graveyard interactions it has. If I make many other changes (might add another combat walker...or two...or three) then I'd replace her.
Where did I say I would "fix" the issue by running another card I don't want to run? Like I have said I have never had the life loss from Horizon Canopy be that bad in the first place and there was already plenty of life-gain to offset it making its inclusion seem pretty reasonable..do you ever think before you post? Or do you just embrace coming off us as an insufferable contrarian?
Let me make a suggestion Roon of the Hidden Realm. It's similar to Eldrazi Displacer, can be GSZ'ed, has a reasonable body. Another one to maybe consider would be Stoic Angel. They're both easily splashable, use blue, and can be tutored.
has anyone thought about distended mindbreaker in an abzan fit deck? double black doesn't seem too hard get and the deck has been looking for hand disruption on a stick. it's not zenithable but
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MTGO: Homura_Akemi
Legacy: Spanish Inquisition / R/G Combo Lands / Junk Fit / Oops! All Spells / Doomsday
Modern: KCI Eggs / Ad Nauseam
It comes down pretty late. If you want creature based hand disruption try out Tidehollow Sculler. I've run them over Thoughtseize from time to time and they work alright.
I play junk decks, frequently switching between loam nic fit and junk deathblade, basing my deck around its disruption package and letting the rest of the deck follow.
When it comes time to play nice fit again I always run the standard 4 rhino junk build.
I find that displacer plus rhinos and witnesses ect works out well.
I feel a lot of disdain or hesitancy with displacer. With mostly etb creatures what is the real downside of displacer?
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