Heh, forgot that your polluted can get blood crypt, so your minimum mana is at 11. I'd say that's close enough to cut the cake, especially since you run thought scour.I stand corrected :CI use magus of the moon in main as both a soft-lock but also as an anoyance. For example against burn I can lock down the white mana, demanding that they waste a bolt on the magus, which I really want them to, as I wont get hit by that bolt, and thus live long enough to play other anoying stuff. (Jorubai really annoy's burn) In many cases they have to go through spellskite to get to the magus, and when they finally deals lethal to either I usually respond by killing it myself with devour flesh or tribute, gaining some more life from a thing that's already dead anyways.Before I used magus affinity would usually sb moon against me (Or someone told me that was how he would board.) In the end it turned out that losing inky and blinky made affinity too easy to beat which is why I adapted the deck to play moons, and later magus. I started out with testing with 3 moons, but the paperstrips cut it down to 2, and the card was never really obsolete against any of the decks I tested against.I have also used magus to stop merfolk from having active mutavaults, leaving me with less merfolk to remove in general. I can also tell that BWG-junk is particularly vulnerable to the magus when you also use surgical extraction against their fetchlands. I've won games by ghostquartering their single plain and then playing a magus.I have to admit that I only discovered the existance of "eldrazi" recently, because tron was split namewise between RG tron and "eldrazi", so when the new eldrazi deck came into being it went under my radar :D It's a deck I haven't tested against, but I expect it to be easy enough to beat. (Competitive decks are rarely easy to beat though, when you start testing seriously against them)
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Your 19.6 black sources are backed up by 8 ways to get black mana, 27.5 red sources are backed up by 10 ways to get red mana while the remaining 52.9 blue sourcess are supported by 14 ways to get blue.Now I've been advocating for a long time that going below a minimum of 12 ways to get a color is catastrophical.My own mana was built by paperstrips (The way I use them they work like a stocastic computer) with a permanent blood moon effect in play, and the product that the strips came up with was 14 red, 14 black and 15 blue sources, which is close to the number another analytic mind has produced. (Frank castle recommends 14 ways to get a color)My best guess is that you, your group or a friend of you have based your mana on what was available, but I can tell you that the mana can be improved quite alot. According to some of the modernnexus articles the URB splinterversion was broken apart because noone was able to fix the mana to work during a blood moon.This means a serious amount of players have been trying to fix the mana of it.During iceage I started to use simulation to fix my own mana problems, and later I turned to paperstrips, both methods improved my games a lot, so mana's never been a problem for me and I've always loved to study the mana of top8 decks because no matter how similare a deck usually looks in design, players always vary their mana, which is a constant amusement to me because noone seems to be satisfied with another mans mana :DDuring my tests with bloodmoon I saw lots of problems as the mana statistically cannot avoid to backfire, but the mana ended up rather balanced once I analysed what the strips had done with it. The overall manacurves also fit some previous recipies I've used over the years generated by computersimulations so the strips generates the deck on all aspects, I just provide to cards that I think will work within the deck, and the strips either deny or confirm it.Now you write that you honestly don't think your mana is hindered by bloodmoon, but my games with turn 0 bloodmoon (affinity can generate a turn 1 blood moon) I found the mana a bit lacking despite the numbers involved.How often have you tested it with the moon in play?Here's a link to the article frank castle provided:http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/
I'm also interrested in knowing how well your mana behaves when pressed by your sideboarded moons.I've practically built my own deck against turn 0 bloodmoons when I started to fight affinity, and later I assimilated the strategy into my own deck since it really locked down affinity's lands. (I even tested against it pretending that affinity's own bloodmoons didn't affect it's own lands, and still managed to win)All of this moontalk is due to this: http://modernnexus.com/bloody-humans-15th-at-scg-vegas/
Comparing it with my own deck, most of the cards in here have lost out in evolutionary competition against alternate cards.Delver lost to sage of epityr (my deck didn't flip the delver as much as you might do)gurmag angler lost to shriekmaw which simply turned out to be more versatile.I havent had snapcaster compete but I lost all 4 to theft.Pretty much all the removal was also lost due to "better" or more versatile choices, but izzet charm had some use for a long time.I can also tell that I have had pretty good games with spellskite surgical extraction and bloodmoon/magus of the moon in mainboard.I also find 22 lands to be a bit low, especially with so little an amount of fetchlands.
1 shelldock only, and also 1 ghostquarter :D
One "flaw" in this design is the mana.I usually recommend people to play at least 12 cards that bring them an individual color.You only have 9 ways to generate black mana which is below my recommendation, so keep an eye out for this during play and you will notice how often you can only play 1 spell of black color during a turn.As an example imagine that you have 4 turns in which to play "stuff".Most of your cards splash black as a color, so your cards will compete to be played.At turn 4 you want UUBB to play 2 glimpse or a mind funeral and a hedron. These situations demand "equal mana" and you do not have that.I've recently developed a mana by using my paperstrip methods which is able to play three colors under a blood moon. In that mana there is more than 12 cards generating each mana. (most of these cards can generate several types of mana)Try to aim for that minimum of 12 and you will rarely be manascrewed. In past talks with you I may have been talking about godica's esper mill which in oppinion is the best version of them all.http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/godica-king-of-modern-mill/You may notice that godica does not follow the minimum of 12, but instead follow a minimum of 10 for two colors and has an explosion of blue sources. This could be improved upon a lot, but I'll leave this to you.Using paperstrips to create your mana is one option and you may look at my most recent build which has not been build by a human, but has been built by paperstrips. Count the numbers of lands able to somehow generate each type of mana that the deck needs and you will find that it has more than 12 cards bringing each color alive, and if you look even closer you will notice that it performs this trick while it ignores the existance of watery grave despite the fact that it is a grixis deck.http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/and-they-shrieked-and-shrieked/The paperstrip method is outlined here:http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/the-paperstrip-method/If you want to see all the tricks I employ in using paperstrips you can look at all my grixis variants in which I try to cover most of the process involved. It will take a lot of time to go through but will add lots of insight in how paperstrips can build a dec k. The easiest explanation I can come up with is that I somehow merge myself with a stocastical computer through the use of paperstrips by feeding it with choices that it can play with, then I play lots of games and note on each strip what worked well and what didn't and in the end this simple process built a deck on it's own. I suplied it with a cardpool, but the paperstrips made the choices of what to play from the cardpool.
As a rule of thumb you must at all time have at least 12 ways of drawing each color of mana to remain consistant.Since your deck has 7 island, 4 polluted and 4 watery that totals 15 ways to draw into blue mana and you have the same going for black mana, so your mana base is pretty solid, but could also allow you to remove some lands and add stuff like ghost quarters without watering the mana below the minimum of 12 :DI can recommend that you try out playing with 1 shelldock isle which sometimes adds to the speed when you have used up all your mill. Play this land only at times where you can play no other lands or you have enough mana to play what's in your hand or playing 1 other land wouldn't help you cast the last card. This is most likelly to happen at turn 4-5.I can also tell you that a high number of milldecks in modern that have won top 8 places have used 9 fetchlands total.(they also played 4 hedron crab)Hope this helps :D
Usually 4 gravehaters doesn't cut it :D I once sideboarded 12 gravehating cards against reanimation and ended up loosing... I recommend at least 6 individual cards if graves are your weak spot.I just sow a lot of picks, some may find your attention, others won't.
Well, I've built an aggro lantern variant halfway through my grixis project, and I might go back and develope it into a really nasty decktype at some time in the future. (2 years time I think)
Dark ritual?Warren weirding, black sun's zenith, darkblast, damnation, dark confidant, rotting rats, liliana's specter, thieving sprites, bitterblossom, noxious revival, bloodghast, serum powder, bojuka bog, faerie macabre.
I could actually imagine an aggro mill-"shell" with stuff like chancellor of the spires and surgical extraction as the core. Chancellor can be quite a beater once it's in play :DI'll investigate such a deck once I'm done with my almost mill-less grixis.
Oh, so many things can be put into this...I'll think about the stuff, but I can remember that legacy usually runs 2 hymn in main and one in sb, this is probably due to reanimatordecks :DI also recall that the more recent pox-builds had succes with life from the loam and raven's crime (or liliana) Most also went into red.
Now that everyone has had their say, I'd call for mill AND disruption. My alltime favorite "removal" has always been surgical extraction, and it works well with discard, or can replace it if you use a lot of turn 1 mill. It's the only card still a stable in my grixis deck, and the deck started out as a mill-deck. I use it either to cut down on heavy critters, killing a combo or as alternate landdestruction.
Also, since you run red and chancellors you might want to play with faithless looting to ditch them after the turn 1 mill to dig something else up.
Aha! Didn't know it was a phrase :D
MORE MANA!You need at least 25 mana to support chancellor and bolas, and you will still be in for a long wait.If you want a fast milldeck you need to play around 22 lands and things must cost no more than 3 mana unless you have plenty of removal.Besides the mana I wont comment on anything else than curse of the bloody tome, which can be replaced by "mesmeric orb" which is cheaper and much more effective.Toy with the mana first, then get back to me when you've learned how fast you can play with 25 lands :D
At another page you wanted to see alternate versions of lantern control.How about aggro lantern?http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/lantern-aggro-i-feel-weird/
I got 3-4th place with this:http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/modernmill-vs-1000gp-players/What you need to consider is wether or not you want to win by speed alone or if you want a long tiring game with lots of interaction.Mana leak, remand and sphinx's tutelage are slowing your game down, as you could have played something that mills fast instead.The modern mill i won with has nothing but mill, except for the leyline and it kills between turn 4-6.You will have to dedicate yourself a lot to build a speedy mill.The opposite direction will stall the game a lot, and then you kill with a few good millcards.The next link belongs to a deck where I really take it so far away that it can hardly be called mill anymore:http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/my-splintermill-updated/
Cool enough :D I never suspected morph to be "cast".Sometimes magic is filled with errata, like during the weekend I had activated 3 inkmoth and my opponent had a liliana of the veil. He wondered if liliana could be killed, and I interpretted it as if it could'nt, but turned out the rules stated she dies. :(
I hate pointing out the obvious, but since so many people have been involved I think it's time to state that:THIS DECK WONT GET EMRAKUL INTO PLAY!!!You need to cast a creature for possibility storm to play a creature for you.I doubt the "get more lands" can work fast enough for this to work...
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