dknight27

Im thinking of swapping out grisley salvage for collective brutality. Thoughts?

There are a few areas of improvement I see that could be made in here. Supernatural stamina and bontu's monument don't do what decks like this want to do, which is hit the ground fast and hard and maximize the material.

This is how I would build a modern rat deck.

https://www.mtgvault.com/dknight27/decks/modern-rats-3/

Pure speed and swarm with enough discard to protect yourself

Unfortunately this deck is WAY too 3-drop heavy, and has too high a curve to be able to compete in modern. Basically nothing is going to get done till turn 3 (assuming you have the 3 lands), and even then it will be turns of dropping 1 card per turn until you field the 5th or 6th land, and by then opponent will already have what he needs or be able to say no to whatever you're doing.

16 lands is thin, even for a 1-drop heavy build like this. You are going to eat mulligans and get hamstrung by wasteland

Agreed on all fronts. I have no idea why they made it an instant. Card advantage, combo assimilation, and tempo to boot for an affordable price in blue. Stupid.

Life from the loam is the most interesting interaction ive found for it so far.

I very much like the snap/snapcaster combo. Not sure how I feel about the 1 copy of search for azcanta, as its a dead draw once the combo starts ticking, and the math is against it being in play and swapped to a land by the time the combo goes off. I think another peek (which I personally like maxing out) would hit better.

the easiest win condition is cunning wish into brain freeze after you storm through your deck

This build is really really top heavy, and will have serious problems getting going. I highly recommend switching in a hefty dose of 1-drop mana producing elves so you are basically guaranteed to drop one turn 1. I also don't see the need for mainboarded naturalize and the like

No one should actually be able to play with decks like this. I'm glad wizards created the format vintage so these cards couldn't be used in other formats, but the only way to be competitive in vintage is to have enough available cash not to care that you are effectively buying a new car for 60 pieces of paper.

Fun to theorize about though.

Unfortunately trinket mage only grabs 1-drops or lower, so it will fetch all the moxes and 2 of the combo pieces, but not painter's servant or time vault.

The instant speed of whir of invention is also very preferable, as I want to get the combo out when opponent is least prepared. Vintage is a stupid fast format, hence the majority of the deck is a 1-drop or external condition. I wouldn't cast trinket mage when I had just 3 mana available even if I had the other combo piece ready because opponent will either have a counter ready for it or will have his plan pop off if my lands are tapped out.

I'm not a big fan of mana leak in here, as opponent won't be playing many multi-spell turns (you hopefully want to discard those away), so perhaps something like remand would work better, as you can keep things from fielding then force a discard to effectively kill it while retaining tempo and material for you.

You can get away with 19 lands in here, especially since you aren't running fetches. I would also suggest risk factor over firecraft, assuming you can afford it (risk factor goes for 7 a pop now).

What format are you trying to use this in? Modern competitive, modern casual, just for fun?

You've got some color problems in here. Blue guys with no blue mana, and no black to make lingering souls any good

Surveil is a fantastic ability to be sure, better than scry by leaps and bounds. I hope they keep going with it.

Here is my thought process on ionize, and bear with me, its going to cause me to wax poetic.

As I see it, there are only 4 types of decks possible to build: aggro, combo, proactive control, reactive control. And all 4 of them seek to take advantage of the strange relationship between tempo (how fast you develop toward your goal), material (how many cards you have), interaction (the ability to change the board state or the future of the board state), and board state (what's in play and how it affects the win conditions).

The desire for tempo is a constant in all decks, and can't be ignored at any cost. However, the other 3 variables are in flux depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

Aggro just fields critters as fast as possible and tries to overwhelm board state at the cost of interaction, and has the possibility of material problems as they can be nuked into oblivion with 1 card.

Combo ignores material and largely doesn't care about board state in favor of a vastly accelerated tempo and enough interaction to get the job done.

Proactive control is the great compromise, which has pretty much equal interests in all 4 categories (the best recent example of this idea is nicol bolas the ravager).

But reactive control has the strange problem of maxing interaction with the inverse relationship between card advantage and board state. Simply put, every card you have in a control deck that is a win condition is hurting your ability to stop opponent's win condition, which is the entire point of the build. Thus, you have to very carefully balance the win conditions vs the control cards, and if you get the balance wrong you get steamrolled. Ionize is an example of a fantastic compromise that gets around this problem. If you can shock for free when you cast an interaction, you retain material and advance board state, all at the same time. Another fantastic example of this is electrolyze.

So, my contention is that in a reactive control deck, running cards like ionize lets you run fewer win conditions, which overall keeps you in control more often.

I've never been a fan of syncopate or its like. Too conditional for me. Ionize is the strongest in the format, and I wouldn't doubt it will trickle into modern. Negate is also extremely strong, as it hates on the dominant planeswalkers. besides those two, unwind isn't too bad, and sinister sabotage is solid (although harder to cast). But the best option I see for this deck in the side against control is risk factor. It does exactly what control doesn't want used against it, which is a + in tempo and material. If opponent uses a negate on it, they're down material when you ditch a land to recast it. If they let the 4 damage hit because they aren't close to the danger zone, you can still recast it by ditching a land. Its a damn near perfect card for control vs control.

No ionize?

I would pull 2 lands and the sabatage's for maxed ionize. They are just too good to ignore.

As for Carnage Tyrant, that's the question isn't it? I haven't seen a better anti-control critter in standard in a long time. Fortunately, and I believe firmly that this was on purpose, star of extinction is the answer. It can double as a side option against swarms if needed (honestly fiery cannonade is a fantastic nuke option), but this deck desperately needs 3 sided star of extinctions for game 2 and 3 against the tyrant.

It's also worth noting that your side is currently heavy on critter hate, as is the deck (even with the negate changes), so it would be a good idea to give the side some options against non-critter decks (mirror matches, grixis, jeskai, etc). The burn spells are fine, as they can go to the face, but essence scatter, lava coil, fiery cannonade are 9 basically dead draws against decks that use control or grind it out, so siding them out for non-critter hate will help bigtime.

In general this looks extremely solid.

I don't think you need 24 lands though, especially since none of them are tech lands (field of ruin).

I also see a couple balancing problems.

I hate running 4 crackling drakes, as you don't want one in the opening at all (hard to cast, conditional return). I would cut it down to 2 or 3. I have similar feelings about chemister's insight, as you don't want it in the opening, so maybe drop that down to 3.
Right now you have more than enough critter hate, but only a little non-critter hate. I would advise mainboarding 4 negates, as there are plenty of targets to take advantage of in standard with it.

I'm surprised to see no ionize in here, as its the flagship of control builds right now.

I hate running 4 thunderous wrath's in a burn deck, as if you have one in the opening hand its is a dead card the whole game.