Great OP!

Speeker wrote:

1) I don't think I quite understand the mechanics behind Shock Trooper.  I mean I get he has trample/haste/lifelink, but its only good for one turn, then hes kind of useless.  Am I missing something with him?

2) There are two conflicting opinions about the guildgates. I see both sides.    Maybe I will try it out with them in it at first then see what happens.

Again as always you guys give great help.

To understand Spark Trooper you need to understand the joy of Ball Lightning, the original 6/1 hasty trampler. He was around in old-school mono-red lists as a very efficient beater. Thinking of it as "only good for one turn" is the wrong way to look at what is basically a burn spell. If you had a spell that said "1RRW: Deal 6 damage divided as target opponent chooses among that player and any creatures he or she controls. You gain 6 life.", you'd play it in a RW aggro deck, right? Well, that's what Spark Trooper is. The life gain won't always be relevant, but against another aggro deck (or especially another burn deck) that 6 life could make all the difference.

As for your questions...

1) Personally, I'm anti-Guildgate for the same reasons mentioned above. If your curve tops at 4 (and I think it should), you basically never want a land to come into play tapped. However, I would keep the Strongholds, as they let you maintain your tempo with anything you drop late-game.

2) I think the aggro strategy is WAY stronger in the current environment. There's no good mono-white sweeper, so if you want to play control you have to rely on wiping the board through damage, which isn't easy.

3) Ash Zealot is a solid 2-drop, but the other one to consider is Gore-House Chainwalker, since you likely won't be blocking anyways. Legion Loyalist is pretty good but you want to drop and immediately attack, which means you won't put him out on turn 1 anyways. Naya Humans are becoming popular enough that I'd look at Rakdos Cackler or Stromkirk Noble as a real 1-drop.

4) In this build, I'd definitely stick with Firemane Avenger or Hellrider in the 4-drop slot, and not have anything above 4 (not even a Thundermaw). That will let you get away with running 22-23 lands, which will make the deck feel really lean.

Cuts:
Aurelia, the Warleader
Foundry Champion
Cloudshift
Assemble the Legion
Blind Obedience

Additions:
Stromkirk Noble
Ash Zealot
Searing Spear
Legion Loyalist

177

(4 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

Tysonp wrote:

My Budget is ZERO.
My play style is slower.  I like to build up and wipe them out, or just drag the game out until they make a mistake.
I would prefer to work with cards that I already own.

Alright then!

So we're probably looking at UW control with some kind of artifact theme, in which case you'll want things that make the game go longer; board wipes, counters, tap/bounce spells, and hopefully artifact versions of those. I'd be looking at things like:
- Nevinyrral's Disk
- Terminus/Wrath of God/Day of Judgment/Supreme Verdict/etc.
- Land Tax
- Tumble Magnet
- Master Transmuter

You likely only need to run 3-4 threats (Angel of Serenity/Platinum Emperion/Avacyn/Platinum Angel, perhaps), and if you can focus the rest of your deck on surviving until you land one of those, you'll be in good shape.

I would definitely cut the one-drops, as they don't advance your plan, and go up to 25-26 lands; while an aggro deck will be fine stuck on 3, you won't.

178

(7 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

Kaalia decks usually focus on cheating into play the biggest, baddest, fattest dudes in the game, so right away you can probably safely cut anything that isn't big or bad enough. I'd also be looking for ways to protect Kaalia herself, and ways to get just the guys I need into my hand.

I'd make the same cuts as Nighthawk, plus:
- Serra Avenger
- Furnace Whelp
- Lightkeeper of Emeria
- Dread Cacodemon

and start adding things like:
+ Griselbrand
+ Ryusei, the Falling Star
+ Kokusho, the whatever Star
+ Dragon Mage
+ Demonic Tutor
+ Lightning Greaves
+ Swiftfoot Boots
+ Enlightened Tutor
+ Necropotence

179

(4 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

OK, I don't want you to think of this as criticism, but this just looks like a bunch of white/blue/artifacts piled together. You've got a bunch of one-drops, but nothing to keep them safe or punch them through. Are you hoping to use them to ramp out a Qumulox or to make them indestructible with Mycosynth Lattice/Darksteel Forge? If so, you're only running one of each of those, and you have no way of searching for them or ramping into them; your Gilded Lotuses need to be ramped into themselves, with only 20 land. And lifegain is nearly useless unless you plan on using your life for something other than living longer, and you've got a Platinum Emperion that makes at least 5 cards in the deck useless.

Some initial questions:
- What's your budget like?
- What kind of game do you prefer to play? Attack with a bunch of cheap dudes, or sit back and control the game?

180

(21 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

I think part of the problem is that people aren't providing much when they ask for help to begin with.

For example, this is a bad OP:

"hey guys this is my deck advice welcome <link>"

If I saw this, I wouldn't know where to begin. It doesn't tell us anything about what advice you need, what your budget is, whether you're planning to play casually or competitively, what your good/bad matchups are; it doesn't even tell us what format your deck is!

Think about what your deck is trying to do. Do you want to fill the board with a swarm of dudes and overwhelm your opponent? Do you want to deplete their resources until they are stuck top-decking and you have a full hand? Do you want to stick a single big threat early, and then make sure your opponent stays one step behind? Do you want to durdle around until you deal them 20 damage in a single turn? All of these things affect the way you build your deck; despite what you might think from tournament results, you can't just jam 4x Thragtusks in every green deck.

On the other hand, if you posted something like:

"Hey, this is a Standard deck I'm building and I want to do better at my local FNM with it. The goal is to drop a bunch of humans onto the board, cycle through my deck generating mana and drawing cards, and eventually burn them out with Burn at the Stake/Devil's Play. I don't have much difficulty against aggressive strategies like mono-red, but blue-white flash decks constantly beat me. Also I don't have much money so I'd like to stick to commons/uncommons. <link>"

Now I know exactly what you're asking for, which makes it MUCH easier to provide constructive criticism. I might ask why you are using white for Increasing Devotion, when your deck would be more consistent and faster with Burning-Tree Shamans (for example). And I'm not going to give useless advice like "run four Bonfires of the Damned", since you've already said you can't/won't.

Started a trade with you.

Pretty sure I've got a spare Watery Grave I can send you.

I feel like with EDH we need to know a lot more about what the goal of the deck is, especially with a 5-color commander. What's your game plan? Do you rely on your commander, or are you just using him to enable a 5-color deck? How do you envision a Magical Christmas Land game going?

I don't mean to criticize the deck, but many generals are chosen specifically because of how they relate/enable certain strategies (Ghave = tokens, Godo = equipment, Zur = enchantments, etc.), and Cromat is too vague to even figure out what doesn't fit and what does.

184

(1 replies, posted in Reddit MTG Trades)

I'll take those Huntmasters, started a trade with you.

185

(2 replies, posted in Reddit MTG Trades)

So I guess now that Jund is no longer a deck, you all have Bobs you want to trade me, right? RIGHT? big_smile

Everything on my trade list is for trade, including Cryptics, Rishadan Ports, etc.

I'd get as many shocklands as I possibly could, or maybe even as many Scars of Mirrodin fast-lands. Relatively stable value and used in every format. I wouldn't get anything that's currently Standard-legal.

Trade started! I can hook you up!

188

(10 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Nolberg wrote:

But I can sacrifice is twice because the first time knocks off the germ token right?

What? No. What?

When you use an activated ability, you have to pay the cost for it. In Mortarpod's case, that cost is "Sacrifice this creature". There is no way for you to also sacrifice that creature to something else and get both effects. By the time you have priority to do anything, the creature has been sacrificed and is gone.

Nothing "knocks off" the germ token, you can't unequip equipment. You can use the ability twice by sacrificing the creature Mortarpod is equipped to, then equipping it to another creature, then sacrificing that creature as well.

189

(10 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Nolberg wrote:

What about mortar pod?

Same deal: sacrificing the creature is part of the cost, so you pay it before the effect goes on the stack, and you can't then use the creature for something else in response to that effect.

Come to think of it, if I were to cut the green for red, I'd do something like:

2 Legion Loyalist
4 Invisible Stalker
4 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Silverblade Paladin

4 Boros Charm <- this does literally everything you want
4 Spectral Flight
4 Pursuit of Flight
4 Ethereal Armor
3 Madcap Skills
2 Detention Sphere
2 Gift of Orzhova

23 lands

Edit: To clarify, this is focused on replacing green pump and enchantments with red pump and enchantments; this may make it more of a glass cannon build. Legion Loyalist comes down as an alpha-striker if you end up with two guys out (perhaps a suited up stalker paired with a Paladin). Increasing Savagery and Rancor are gone, replaced with Madcap Skills, Pursuit of Flight and Gift of Orzhova (Holy Mantle would also be an option here). I think Boros Charm is the big reason to play red here, as it protects your guys against sweepers, can turn attacks from damaging to lethal, and can even deal that last 4 damage that you can't quite push through.

Note that white is now the biggest mana requirement here, so that should be considered when balancing the mana base.

Glaring Spotlight is an absolutely awful card; now you have to draw two specific cards and spend your entire turn dealing with my one hexproof guy? Sounds good, I'll just get my Rancors back and put them on the other hexproof guy in my hand, now that you don't have any removal. If I played this deck, I would hope people side in Spotlights against me!

Sphere of Safety is too slow, against an aggro deck they'll have you dead by turn 4-5 anyways and just burn you out for the rest.

Actual possibilities: Holy Mantle, Verdant Haven, Gift of Orzhova (remember you can cast this without running black) are all valid additions. I think Verdant Haven is the most interesting, as it provides ramp, fixing, ups your Ethereal Armor boost, and depending on the matchup that 2 life may actually be relevant.

Remember what your deck is trying to do. You aren't a reactive deck that should be running counter spells and combos; you're a proactive deck with minimal interaction. Any card that isn't a hexproof attacker, an individually strong combat aura, or a card that lets you get one of those things out faster, you should think really hard about why you're playing it. Your goal against midrange/control decks is to kill them faster than they can wrath the board and start controlling the game, and your plan against aggro might as well be to race them. Siding in Pacifisms and Negates and Divine Favor actively slow down your deck, which in this kind of archetype is a Bad Thing.

I like this idea but I think green offers you more than you realize. Rancor is dangerous specifically because it comes back to your hand, which makes everything you play a threat. If you have a Geist with Madcap Skills, I can wrath the board with Supreme Verdict or Mutilate, or just double-block it, and you lose both cards instead of getting your aura back. The mana fixing that Avacyn's Pilgrim and Abundant Growth provide help make sure you have exactly the mana you need; getting stuck with a bunch of auras and the wrong land will feel like the worst thing.

If you do want to consider red, I'd run Pursuit of Flight over Curse of Stalked Prey. If you're getting in for double-strike damage with any of your guys, you're probably already winning, so the Curse is redundant.

193

(6 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Either sell them or trade them or find a store that will let you add them to the draft pool for cheaper drafts. Don't open them.

194

(10 replies, posted in General Discussion)

HikingStick wrote:
imsully2 wrote:

No, the sacrifice is part of the cost for each of the cards, you have to pay the cost for each ability, it's similar to trying to cast an arbor elf then a giant growth with the same green mana, costs must be paid before the ability happens, if you sacrifice Chromatic Star however you do get to draw a card because it's when it's put into the graveyard, not sacrificed, therefore you wouldn't get 1 mana of any color

I thought sacrificing was just one means for something to enter the graveyard.  As I understood it, you would get the draw if an opponent destroyed Chromatic Star, or if you Sacrifice it, because it hits the graveyard either way.  If you sacrifice it, however, as part of the cost for the first ability, that effect would happen.  The draw would happen after the card lands in the graveyard.

This is true because Chromatic Star has two different effects. When it's put into the graveyard, you draw a card, no matter how it ends up there. So if you sacrifice it as part of its ability, you get the mana, then the triggered ability goes on the stack, and you draw a card if/when it resolves. If you sacrifice it some other way, say with Reshape, you still get to draw that card.

Compare that to Chromatic Sphere, where the two abilities are linked. If I sacrifice a Chromatic Sphere to Reshape, I don't get to draw anything because it's card draw is part of its activated ability, which I'm not using.

195

(10 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Nope. Sacrificing the artifact is part of the cost, so you can't then use it to pay the cost of something else.

It sounds like you're pretty new to the format, so you definitely want to start by looking at what sets are legal and what cards are banned (all of which is here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/resour … /sfrmodern).

Wild Defiance was popular when infect decks were being run in Standard, as they let you turn free Phyrexian mana spells into pump spells (you could cast Mutagenic Growth, Dismember and Apostle's Blessing on your own guy to make him lethal without spending any mana). In Modern, the pump spells are good enough, and as you point out it's pretty bad to cast on turn 3 instead of attacking. Wild Defiance is a "win-more" card; if you play it and are able to win, you probably would have won without it.

Games can last a long time, which is a problem for a "glass cannon" build like Infect; if you haven't killed your opponent by turn 4 or 5, you're in a lot of trouble. Fetches don't really speed up the format, but they do make it trivially easy to run 3-4 colour decks. Tron can't afford them because they already have 12 slots devoted to their namesake lands. The mono-white thing you saw may have been Soul Sisters, which doesn't run fetchlands because (a) it's mono-white, and (b) the deck works by running cards that synergize with life-gain, and the damage from fetchlands can be relevant.

TyWooOneTime wrote:

Thanks for the heads up.  It's a totally new format for me to even think about running into, but I'll dig into the decklists you just suggested and will see what I can figure out.

It's a lot of fun! I like it way more than Standard right now. The big advantage of decks like Death & Taxes or Merfolk is that they are mono-coloured, so if you're on a tight budget you don't need to pick up fetchlands or anything. If you like the format you'll probably want to pick up fetchlands anyways, though, as they go in literally every single deck. Even the burn decks in modern run black.

The way most modern infect decks play go something like this:

T1: Noble Hierarch or Glistener Elf
T2: Infect creature
T3: Cast some combination of Might of Old Krosa, Groundswell, Rancor, Apostle's Blessing, Vines of Vastwood and Mutagenic Growth, swing for 10 poison at once.

A good infect player will mulligan aggressively to get one of these hands. The bloodrush option exists, but to be honest is probably slower and less reliable than existing builds. You're already running blue, green and black for the infect creatures and tricks, and adding red for bloodrush and Assault Strobe means you have to hit just the right land drops. If you cut either blue or black, what happens when you don't get one of your infect creatures out? In general, if you play an infect creature, it will be bolted/unsummoned/exiled almost immediately, which means you may not even want to run it out on Turn 1. On turn 2 you can put it out and have Vines as protection, but that means you need to deal all 10 in a single strike. Countering combat tricks is a losing strategy in this matchup, so the uncounterability of Bloodrush doesn't help as much as you might think.

Death & Taxes gets played quite a bit online, but I've never seen it in person and wouldn't call it a "stereotypical" build. Here's the most common decks that you'll realistically run into:
- Jund (BRG good stuff)
- UWR Midrange
- Splinter Twin combo
- Storm (just had a key component banned so this may become less popular)
- Birthing Pod, either with Kiki-Jiki or Melira to infinite combo
- GW Hatebears
- Scapeshift
- Tron

Other builds:
- Death & Taxes
- Zoo
- Gifts Ungiven/Reanimator
- Infect
- UW or UWR Cryptic Control

If you're looking for a list to use Bloodrush in, look at Living End. It's a combo deck that uses lots of huge cycling creatures to fill the graveyard quickly, then casts a Cascade spell to cast Living End for free, wrathing your opponent's board and bringing your whole army in. It's already in Jund colours anyways, and it's a good way to start re-filling the graveyard for the next Living End if you need one.

199

(5 replies, posted in Reddit MTG Trades)

You'll see a lot more available, as all the people who picked them up pre-banlist announcement try to get rid of them again, but odds are they'll sell for the same price they bought at to at least try and break even. I can't see him ever coming off the banlist, especially with BBE on the list now. I can't picture them dropping below $80, even if they do release a Judge promo.

That said, I'd pick them up at $80, since they won't drop and it's hard enough to find people willing to part with them as-is.

200

(0 replies, posted in Trading Post)

I know, I know, it's Modern season and all of this stuff is in high demand. Ship it to me! My tradelist is below and stocked with all kinds of goodies from every format.

3 Batterskull
3 Blood Moon
1 Counterflux
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
3 Remand
2 Sacred Foundry (Gatecrash)
4 Spellskite
2 Stomping Ground (Gatecrash)
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Thundermaw Hellkite

Lesser wants:
4 Arid Mesa
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Thundermaw Hellkite