wickeddarkman

An overall tip:
When choosing cards in a half deck setting try to chose cards that can be cast on both yours and your opponents creatures.
You wouldn't normally think that this would be an advantage, but there are actually many situations that are rare but in which the advantages are very high.

This is one major reason why I love testing against merfolk with phantasmal image. It keeps reminding me of that option.

In this deck you might want to consider despondency which has defensive applications and could be really cool with wicked visitors if you could find a sacrifice outlet for it.

I'd add more riptide chimera, as it allows you to continuously reselect the best targets with the enchantments you have.

Ghostly flicker might also be better than hubris.

Reverting to classics?

Hehe, or you could just use ephemerate in a pinch ;)

Considering that both of you play with grief, maybe that's your problem...

When pitched it takes 2 cards to hit 1 card.

When pitched and "scammed", you use 3 cards to take out 2 cards.

In either case it's a -1 cardadvantage for you.

Even when these are hardcast it's a matter of being a 1 for 1 trade.

There's also the consideration of card quality to attend, to as any incarnation needs to eat up a coloured card, meaning that you are forced to abandon card quality as well. If only you could cheat that aspect, you could perhaps pitch by land instead.

So consider painter's servant.

It could colour your lands making them pitch able, and it's a card that has a past in hosing various colours, you just have to look at what hosers might give you the benefits.

Looking at the modern meta I would certainly run an old paper deck, based on leyline of sanctity and leyline of the void (two of each in main, 1 of each in board)

The overall deck was using white to play a number of creatures with protection from black and red, but it also featured mindshrieker, which was in the deck to be grown by all my spells which overall had a high cost due to cards like the leylines or shriekmaw, dismember and so on.

In an environment where your opponents play a lot of cards that are rarely hardcast, mindshrieker is pretty powerful, which is something I wrote about when the incarnations were printed, because they, I see patterns and how that would form.

Then again, I wouldn't trust the meta except at larger tournaments, where things reflect the known archetypes.
At local tournaments I'd start from scratch and play several deck types played at random intervals while figuring out what the meta is really doing.

But if you are trying to just beat the publisher metagame, then it's rather easy, as all new archetypes have a major vulnerability. They are prepared for new cards...

The past of magic will have had similar problems, and so, if you dig deep enough, you will find tech.

Like painter's servant.

Go through the deck archetypes and break down what isn't playable, or how you can crack the hosers.

If you can't get a draw engine started because of orcish bowmasters, could you get around it by simply playing gut shot?
Solutions like that are always there.

Go through every card in every deck type, break down any weaknesses and simply build up an arsenal.

Then you figure out which weaponry hits most deck types and you will be on track again.

(Gut shot deals with both ragavan & bowmasters, and hello, two gut shots even take out grief if you try to ephemerate it)


Speaking of ephemerate, back in the past it wasn't actually the go to blink card. Momentary blink was the one card everyone went to in that time, because it could be split up unlike ephemerate which sort of runs automatically regardless of you have creatures, and as such it can be abused by players who want you to bounce their stuff. (I'd play sage of epityr in my 5 shriekers deck)

Well I took a look at a bunch of modern decks, and here's the number of free spells in the first 5 decks that I looked at.

Grief & fury.

Endurance (sb)

Fury & solitude.

Subtlety, demonic dread, violent outburst, force of negation.

Summoner's pact.

I haven't seen such a solid range of free spells in a long time, so I guess your meta is out of the ordinary ;)

Murktide regent variants use subtlety, fury and mishra's bauble as well.

The seventh deck that I've looked at had no free spells in main or board, so I'd say in most modern metas [[nix]] would be playable, and a decent sideboard card if nothing else.

You managed to misspell tinybones...

Around 2018 I had two major builds built by evolution to participate in modern, one was an expert design with two skyline and of sanctuary in main board and one in sideboard. It also featured 2 leyline of the void in mainboard and one in the sideboard, and both were used very successfully, despite a lot of people questioning the idea itself.

To be honest I have faced a meta with mill with total disregard of people there playing 4 leyline of sanctuary, though I did sideboard 2 echoing truth in such games after game 1.

"Nix" is a pretty unknown card which specialised in taking out spells cast for free, and I suspect that magic being magic, at tournaments you will hit multiple situations in which you can cast it. It will hit both pitch spells as well as 0 cost spells, which is a detail few notice.

So is modern filled with free spells and 0 cost spells at the moment ?

Considering how long the cycle of incarnations seem to be "good" I find it odd that none are using them with cards that can be played from exile.

Also why hasn't people started to use skyline of sanctity to avoid grief ?

Or that counterspell that takes out spells cast without their casting cost being paid ?

Go with mighty energies ;)

God, the power of commercialism...
"Have a break, have a kit-kat"
I can still hear the jingle.

Wasn't the chocolate package just boros colored ?

[[Nighthawk scavenger]]

Not knowing commander may skew my judgement, but it does look like fun.
There's a flying goyfish vampire, I think it might be from the second zendikar cycle, or maybe eldraine, I remember noting it during a time where mill gained a lot of actually cheap agressive creatures in modern.

I'm also wondering why borderpost artifacts doesn't seem to be a thing in commander even though they are quite the ramp. Got any info on why people pass those by ?

I mean you skip casting stuff on turn 1, but gain a manafix on turn 2. The more colors you play, the more outposts you get to play, and commander does seem to love having many colors in general. It's a perfect ramp concept.

One of the oldest infinite combos out there ???
I'd like to butt in and say there's been infinite combos since unlimited, and they never stopped coming since then.

They were clunky, obscure and forgotten by the average player, but a few of us remember stuff like the enduring renewal, ornithopter, ashnod's altar combo for example, which is old...

It's a white combo, so perhaps it's better to mention intruder alarm, birds of paradise and shrieking drake.

Yeah, I get it...

No changes to this site, but good to see you are still out there.

I'm going to crunch the numbers soon.
Starting out with 4 abundant growth, 1 rites of initiations and 4 treasure hunt.

I will be cutting some treasure hunt

Why ?

Because abundant growth will fetch them.

Abundant growth will randomly fetch one of the three key pieces, itself, which means you just cast it again, the rites which you need and treasure hunt.

The treasure hunt will get you a random one of either three.

In all cases you only want to draw into 1 rites of initiation, and between treasure hunt and abundant growth, abundant growth costs less mana.

Wether scrapyard or rites of initiation is faster is a good question. Scrapyard is less vulnerable I think.

I also have a backup plan, khalni garden, dwarven mine and gates. Especially basilisk gate.

Rite of initiations is sweet with khalni gardens, and you might want to add dwarven mine

Wail, I think this is a scream ;)
With the banshee theme you could search for a few cards with shriek, scream, screech, howl and so on to build upon the legend of the banshee scream.