MtG $$$$$$ COMPETITIVE $$$$$$ MODERN GENERAL

Yeah pretty much complete dogshit.

You are going to spend the first 5 turns ramping your mana and then either your opponent is just going to Path/Terminate/Murderous Cut/Counter the first dragon you try to land, or they just walk over your non-existant defenses and kill you before that happens. I get that the plan is to stick lightning greaves on the dragon but that is super unreliable without more card selection than many combo decks run, and even in the best scenario of a hasty shrouded Utvata Hellkite on turn 5 you will still probably lost the game.

Some of your card choices are so bad that I don't even know where to start in explaining to you why they are bad..

Continuing from If you truly wish to walk the path of Dragons in modern and have a chance of winning you should start by reading mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/developing-competitive-modern/718932-skred-red and building the dragon-heavy version of that deck.

Most of the cards are really cheap with the exception of Blood Moon and Snow-covered mountains which are still cheap by modern standards.

The greaves are 99% for Elvish Piper and Ventmaw to a lesser extent. Turn 1 bird/mystic, turn 2 greaves, turn 3 piper+any dragon?

But you gotta give me at least one or two things that must go or that I'm doing wrong. Pls buddy.

Yeah I do really wanna use dragons. It's no fun winning with the good shit everyone else uses. I'm just trying to make the cards I wanna use as close as possible to being good. But thanks I'll give it a read (hopefully it's not one of the articles I've already read).

Bare minimum. Get yourself some Anger of the Gods, Roast and Lighting Bolt. Take out the ramp cards that die to removal and just durdle until you can start jamming your dragons.

From there start swapping the high mana cost dragons for faster ones.

I'll give it a shot, thanks lad.

>competitive discussion
>COMPETITIVE
>dinosaurs
>dragon deck
You people really do need to start reading the ops

people who only use the good shit rather than what the want are fags, unless you simply want to win, which is also gay

I guess if you just like Magic and don't care what cards you're using it might make sense to just use what's good without being a fag, but

There isn't much to be said about competitive magic though. Plus I enjoy helping people turn their casual jank into something resembling a modern deck.

>you can ONLY discuss 2 or 3 decks here get out!!!
fuck off dude

can't just discuss the kithkin living end match up all day

Are there any decent Sultai decks out there?

Wanted to make use of my Polluted Deltas and Damnations, since they're basically collecting dust atm.

In the long run not worth it, through 20 years of magic I managed to actually teach one player overally.

It always boil to
>teach a dude/gal basics
>month later they think they're hot shit
>can't beat casual jank decks I make for funzies
>they get mad when they get turn 3rd 4th consistently with my FNM decks

>teach a gal
why the fuck would you do this? did you build a deck for her boyfriend too?

>why the fuck would you do this?
Because any one that actually want to learn is worth teaching to

How many cards of a splash color do you have to run to consider a splash worth it? Is it worth it if it's just one set of a certain card if it helps a lot?

yeah?

If it's convenient and doesn't slow you down.
Like, for example if you run a lot of land search, put in some dual lands you can search out to tap for your main color and the color you need so you always have access to your splash color, I dunno, use your head.

None of the folks I taugh magic became Sith Lords.

Atleast not yet.

>Sith Lords
not cannon

Wait what?

This doesn't invalidate what I said
Anakin/Darth Vader changed what kind of things he wanted to learn first then stopped wanting to learn anything (more precisely thought he had nothing to learn anymore)
In the end, he realized he still had things to learn

Fine, bad example, but you understand my point, nerd.

Find at what point in the original movies they mention sith lords. I'll wait here.

What's your point? "Not all people that want to learn are worthy of being teached"? It just means that they weren't actually interested in learning (hence the "actually" in my first post)

Also, I'm pretty sure they mention Sith Lords in the prequels and as far as I know, the prequels ARE objectively canon

Friendly reminder that if we could all be a little more civil to each other, this general could be a little bit better.

My point is willingness to learn isn't a good enough reason, what's their motive?

Besides, I was just making fun of girls for a bit of sport, not trying to instigate some reddit argument.

shush

Is B/W tokens better now? Seems like it should be since printing Fatal Push, Collective Brutality, Anguished Unmaking, and Gideon Ally of Zendikar. Anyone want to brew up a list together?

>willingness to learn isn't a good enough reason

Not him, but that's a shitty sentiment to have. Are you too good to teach people to play a card game?

W O L F
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T
O
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NO I WAS JUST BREAKING BALLS, YOU AUTISTS

Sorry man, it's hard separate retards from "retards" sometimes. No hard feelings.

Seems to be pretty easy to brew up. Discard package, Paths, Pushes, Souls, Sorins. Not sure how I feel about Unmaking, maybe one or two copies?

Better? Not exactly, just has newish toys to play with. Still a fine deck to take to FNM, though.

From what I see on MtgGoldfish, removal packages seem to be 6-7 total Fatal Push/Path to Exile, with 1 or 2 Unmaking. And that seems fine. 3/3 split of Thoughtsieze and Inquisition. Actually, I might build the deck myself, it seems as though I already have a bunch of pieces, and I can forgo the Bitterblossoms for some other token spell. It's not really a card I like or want to pay for.

Sems good. Should the deck go Abzan for access to Nobles, Nissa Voice of Zendikar, Horizon Canopy, and Gavony Township?

I'd say it's better. Mass removal is being taken out of MBs in exchange for single target because of DS and Eldrazi. Sure it didn't really get any new cards, but it should be better in the current meta.

BW Tokens
Lands (24)
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Godless Shrine
3 Concealed Courtyard
2 Shambling Vent
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Westvale Abbey
3 Plains
3 Swamp

Creatures (3)
2 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Teysa, Orzhov Scion

Instants and Sorcery (22)
4 Fatal Push
4 Path to Exile
3 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lingering Souls
4 Spectral Procession

Enchantments (8)
4 Bitterblossom
4 Intangible Virtue

Planeswalkers (3)
1 Gideon, AoZ
1 Elspeth Knight Errant
1 Elspeth Suns Champion

I wouldn't. I don't play the deck (yet), but on the surface it looks like you're strapped for slots. Not exactly in your exact numbers, but the actual cards themselves seem pretty set. You need some number of TS/Inquisition/ PtE/ Push/etc, etc. I could be wrong, though. I'll keep researching and goldfishing, but my guy gut says no.

Yeah, i do feel like the deck list is so tight its hard to adjust numbers. Gideon and Nissa have great synergy tho. And Horizon Canopy helps with the decks lack of card draw. Noble into turn 2 Nissa/ Lingering Souls/ Procession seems good.

Man, you're so close. You be got the core, but there are a couple of things I'd liie to point out;

1- Westvale Abby can be cut. It's not a card that's very good. I get that you play it to get around boardwipes, but otherwise it's just a winmore card: by the time yiu can activate it, you've got enough on board already to win.

2- Your creatures are mediocre at best. Auriok Champion is run in most lists for a reason. Its a self-protecting soul sister, so it supports Bitterblossom very well. Teysa is meh, but you can try her out.

Your spells package looks great, no criticisms there.

3- Your Planewalker package. Where are your Sorin, Solemn Visitor? He's pretty necessary. He's an anthem + Lifelink, a token producer, and an okay ult all on in one card. His + ability is where you win games. Run 2-3.

Ok
Cut Westvale for Fetid Heath.
The creatures are meh but I really dont want to pay $25 for a single Auriok Champion.
Which walkers should I cut? Gideons a house, and I like Elspeth for the waifu material. Suns Champion is the best shes been in a long time. Ill try to fit in 2 Solemn Visitor.

You could go with a couple of regular soul sisters to give you that life gain even if it's not as resilient as the Champions.

Yeah i guess ill run a Souls Attendant. I like Pontiffs Anthem effect and hes so good against Affinity.

So run Zealous Persecutions instead. Cheaper and at instant speed.

Oh, man, I didn't realize auriok champion was that much. You can try Soul Warden in that slot. Fills the same roll, but doesn't have the added benefit of protection. You can also move Elspeths to the sideboard. I'm sure they can serve some purpose. And Gideon is a powerhouse in the deck.

Pontiffs effect happens twice tho

I beat it every week with elves :^)

>wizards finally reprint dinosaurs
>they all have feathers

1-10 how mad would you be?

What did you not teach them that allowed you to continue to consistently beat them?

I honestly don't understand why they can't start their own thread and decide to post their bullshit in this one even if it doesn't belong.

If you want to talk about casual shit that's fine but do it in the appropriate place and not in a thread meant for Modern discussion.

The name of the format is misleading. I know many casuals and I've asked if they play modern and they just assume I'm referring to recently printed cards

It literally says in the OP though

>This thread is for the competitive discussion of the modern format. Kitchen table discussion is not welcome, but they don't read OPs anyway. For reference the average deck will run you anywhere from $400-$2000.

We've distinguished that this is a format and not a timeframe and yet they still post here.

I can somewhat understand. Many of them have this idea that they want to optimize a pet deck while retaining the core of what made it their pet deck. Before I got really invested in competitive play I ran a monogreen big mana deck. It was basically 4x llanowar elves 4x elvish mystic and the idea was to ramp out something big and fucking stupid. The big and stupid of choice was usually primeval titan, which would grab my single red source and kessig wolf run and usually end the game the next turn.

I spent lots of nights messing with flex slots, land count, sideboard, etc trying to optimize the deck. It took a long time for me to accept that it just wasn't a particularly competitive deck, even though I usually did mediocre-okay at FNM because turn 3 prime time isn't the worst thing in magic and your opponent doesn't ALWAYS have pyroclasm/anger/etc. Although they usually do.

You know nobody reads op

I dont get how hard it is to learn Magic. When I first started Modern around the time BFZ dropped I was pretty casual, I had no idea there were already established decks I just thought I had to create a good deck. Ended up building a Goblin tribal with 4 Goblin Guide, 4 Goblin King, 4 Warren Instigator, and 4 Blood Moons plus Bolt and Grenade. It stole wins sometimes and I eventually studied the game and converted the deck to Burn.

>have a serious discussion about competitive magic
>on a board that is so bad at card evaluation it almost universally thought siege rhino was a shit card even though it was obviously playable and was the final straw that made pod too broken
>on a board that regularly gets basic rules of the game wrong

Yeah, okay, you have fun with that.

>Playing?
Gw Tron, thinking about converting it to Gb Tron.

>Brewing?
UB Mill/Control With Ashiok

Yes, it's shit.

>Metagame thoughts?
Blue and white need more attention.

>Bans/Unbans?
SFM unban would be neat, but that's a pipe dream.

Not only that it completely missed Monastery Mentor and thought that shit enchantment was better. It thought As Foretold was good lol.

*tips*

Nobody thought AF was good but nice revisionist history

"serious"

I play GB tron. What's your meta like?

>Playing?
Spirits

>Brewing?
Esper Death's Shadow, because Delver and Orzhov Charm

>Metagame thoughts?
It's in a state of flux, which is the only time it's really balanced or interesting since it's most prone to spiking with both rogue decks and consistency monsters.

>Bans/Unbans?
Twin would be fine imo. You're retarded if you're a "muh tap out on turn 3" player. No banlist modern is a blast, try it some time.

>teach them poorly
>they make some dumb deck that sucks and are happy because they're clueless
>spank them with "casual" decks that use obscure combos or gimmick creatures that you need to tech against
>smugly say that despite your teaching they lost to unpredictable stuff and are frustrated by it.

wow man such a role model.

Vanilla Jund, Merfolk, Burn, and Emeria Foundry. I need the lifegain for burn, but I feel like hand disruption would be more useful most of the time.

>I'm bad at teaching people things

GB has a pretty decent matchup against burn. Collective brutality is very solid. Killing a gg, recouping the damage it did, and taking a boros charm or something for 2 mana and some discarded eggs can be a massive tempo swing.

I'm not convinced As Foretold is unplayable. Sure, it's another three drop in three-drop-the-format but unanswered it wins the game, and in the mean time makes other already played cards much better. Idk man I like free spells, especially draw threes.

I mean, you can plan for and play around it, but it's seriously backbreaking a lot of the time. Some day they will print a red Counterspell that I can side in against collective brutality. Some day.

>three-drop-the-format
You don't play modern

>unanswered it wins the game
Actually it doesn't even come close to winning you the game
What makes you think this?

Card advantage. If you're casting twice as many cards as your opponent and still aren't winning, you didn't build your deck correctly.

It usually boils down to
>I dont want to spend X on that
>I want my grizzly bears to work and be competetive

Why don't you just suspend the Ancestral T1 instead of playing some stupid 3-mana card to enable it.

As Foretold is just a weird Blue spell pretending to be a Green spell. It only gains you free mana and in a fairly shitty way. We've evaluated all the cards it could cheat in and Ancestral is the only one that is any good. If you're going to play Balance there are better Cascade engines.

You need a way to draw those cards and it comes online so late you can just ignore it. It's quite bad

As Foretold is not card advantage. It's mana advantage. And it's shit mana advantage as it doesn't let you cast something ridiculous in a timely manner as well as Tron lands or regular mana ramp.

Why not suspend Ancestral Vision T1 and also not have it be a dead draw almost every turn afterwards? Who said we're playing RB? I just want to hold up counter magic + free dispel, then remand, etc. If you only think of it as a cascader then you aren't evaluating it properly.

>I just want to hold up counter magic + free dispel, then remand, etc.
You can't hold up any of those things when you're casting a 3-mana do-nothing enchantment that doesn't stabilize or advance the board position. A Planeswalker is always going to do more work tapping out to cast if you've stabilized and provides reliable value and actual card advantage. Jace Beleren is a better card than As Foretold.

But I digress.

You haven't posted a list and I sure as hell am not going to test the card to prove its impotency. So we're never going to come to an agreement.

I'm not saying those aren't valid points, but like you say the jury is still out sans testing. Lepore did a video series with this list:

channelfireball.com/videos/modern-monday-as-foretold-control/

I don't think he's that great but probably still better than anyone posting here. It's a starting place if nothing else. I think he goes 3-2.

>discarding 2-3 cards
>in a deck that runs no real source of card advantage
I'll enjoy the free win.

>kills creature with one card
>takes bolt with other card
>takes 2/3rds of a bolt with another card
>all for 2 mana
It's not really card disadvantage user

Yeah, that list is fine except for the As Foretolds.

The thing about the UWx Control deck is that all they've got is time. They've got all the time in the world to get as much mana they want to kill someone with something like Collonades or a Planeswalker. As Foretold only generates you a mana advantage, which is something the deck ultimately has no problem achieving. It's not a tempo-control deck it's a CONTROL deck. It's weaknesses are stabilizing through the early game.

I played the UWr Control deck and it operates identical to Lepore's list that he took from some guy on MTGO except it doesn't shit itself by playing a do-nothing Enchantment when it would rather have a removal spell or Planeswalker in its place.

Key point: the conventional control deck is built around filters, stabilizers and a couple big win conditions; this is what makes the deck strong as well as weak. As Foretold advances none of the deck's goals and only amplifies its weaknesses.

I am disheartened that you want to continue defending this card in the face of these arguments. It's this level of wish-fulfillment that fucking ruins Magic because people have been sold that "anything is possible" or "anything can work/happen" and it utterly makes it impossible for people to agree on some pseudo-objective basis that something is worse than another thing. And because of an utter inability to agree on more-or-less concrete facts is because we can't get fucking better at the game.

tl;dr Lepore is wrong. Just because he is paid with an Internet audience or the fact that he's probably a better magic player doesn't protect him from being wrong in making terrible deck-building choices.

>Collective Brutality doesn't wreck burn

Historically burn has had the edge against GBx but you haven't played many games against Brutality if you don't find it incredibly problematic.

We've been over this a trillion fucking times you autismo nippon image board revisionist, nobody thought siege rhino was shit. I went through the archives, found the thread meme rhino was first spoiled in and read all the replies. 2 or 3 if the whole fucking thread were dismissing it, the rest were overwhelmingly positive. How fucking stupid are you?

>calls other autismo
>while searching through several year old archives to disprove a stranger

>implying searching the archives is hard

I play Burn every Friday. Brutalitys good but its not unwinnable through. Multiples can be hard to beat, depending on the pilot they can discard too many cards for not enough effect and end up not being able to close out the game so we go to topdeck mode. Ive also seen people who completely throw the game away. I was against Abzan at a larger tournament and pass the turn after swinging with Swiftspear with two untapped lands, dude fucking Brutalities into a Skullcrack trying to kill Swift and gain life but does none of that and quickly loses the game afterwards.

Oh gosh, but that opponent though

>burn player leaves two mana up with card(s) in hand, doesn't suspect instant

>upon deducing that the burn player has an instant, doesn't deduce that the only spell you actually want to cast instantly instead of pushing through the one extra prowess damage is either Skullcrack or Searing Blaze if they have a fetchland

Maybe if you only had one card in hand, and he was hoping it was a land you were holding onto for Blaze?

It was like turn 3, I had a nearly full hand.
He also played LoTV the previous game at 2 life instead of activating Shambling Vent and I topdecked Lava Spike

Just getting this off my chest
>Be semi-competitive, love the game
>Filthy casual friends insist on playing Modern format because on paper it's the best long-term investment, too poor for Legacy or Standard.
>Help them build decks they like as competitively as possible (Huntmaster of the Fells for a Werewolf tribal deck, Path to Exile for some kind of WB Muh Orzhov deck, Lava Spikes and Hellsparks for Mono Red Burn, Dreadbore for Rakdos aggro etc)
>They are also too poor to buy shit like Blood Moon or Goblin Guides
>They blow TONS of time+money on shitty phone games
>One of them takes a shitty mono black vampire deck to a local Modern tourney against my advice
>Gets blown the fuck out
>Vampireguy no-shows some of our meets - other friend tells me his btfo'd experience intimidated him
>This other friend gets salty when I use non-tuned tier 2/3 shit like 8whack against them, to the point where they outright refuse to play against those decks - despite my showing how to beat the decks + sideboarding advice
>oh btw he refuses to have a sideboard
>Whenever Vampireguy does join us we have 3-ways that inevitably turn into handicap matches against me on principal because I'm the better player. Even when I'm playing janky burn.
>They whine when I suggest to have Archenemy games if we keep having handicap matches
>Vampireguy wants to play Commander
>Sideboard hater also hates singleton
>Sideboard hater plays much more yet still can't shuffle and still casts instants as sorceries etc. I think he may have a learning disability, or he is ADD because he plays fucking phone games during stalemates.
>Want new friends
>My LGS has snarky netdeckers who scoffed at my running Tarfire over Lightning Bolt in Jund, until it becomes the meta and then they forget I ever did. (A couple of them having even lectured me for an hour on how 3 damage is more than 2)
It's depressing.

Condolences friend, our LGS also has a no-sideboard guy. He seems all there, even acknowledging that it's wrong, but no one can convince him to build a SB, and he pays money to enter FNM's. Some people.

Never said it was difficult

I never can get this. Its just 15 cards, a few board wipes, some lifegain for Burn, some anti artifact cards, and like 3 other cards.