Help me out, Veeky Forums
I want to build a good, strong, imaginative Modern deck, but I'm not used to the format (I've been playing it casually for the past 6 years or so, but I want a real solid deck now)
I usually play Pauper and sometimes Legacy and EDH
When I want to build a deck, I usually focus on a few cards, or a specific mechanic, or interactions between mechanics and I build the deck around this concept
I love counter-intuitive decks (I play manaless dredge in legacy, a necropotence deck I made to play casually with lots of 0 CMC cards and Tendrils of Agony as a finisher), exploiting mechanics (in pauper I made a sacrifice-based deck, another one was based on the Trample + Deathtouch interaction), and I would appreciate recommendations on which mechanics could be interesting and fun to play with and still be competitive, or cards I could brew a nice deck around, ideas for decks etc
No need to be Pro-Tour level, just strong enough to play with random people and still manage to be consistent and win on a decent basis
>tl;dr ideas on mechanics and cards to build a modern deck around and deck brewing general thread
MTG DECK BREWING GENERAL
Ad Nauseum sounds right up your alley.
mtggoldfish.com
Alternatively, Swan Hunt
mtggoldfish.com
Or Zombie Hunt
mtggoldfish.com
Would both be good for you.
Thanks for the links, user, I'm looking into it
But I'm not a fan of netdecking, I'm actually more interested in tips about mechanics that could go well together, cards that can be built around etc
Specially if they're not yet much explored
>Not a fan of netdecking
That's fine, but netdecking and brewing go hand in hand. You have tons of information at your fingertips and should utilize that information. Instead of wasting time and energy finding out what works, you can already see what works and pick and choose pieces that you like to go in a deck.
>Not much explored
Thousands of people have already done exactly what you're doing now, and not using that knowledge is just intentionally gimping yourself. There aren't many decks in any given format that haven't been thought up, heavily tested, and either perfected or discarded.
I agree with your first point
Gonna try to explore interactions found on these decks but try another build, keeping only the essence of it
Could be real nice
About the latter, sure there's been lots of testing and refining, but still there are lots of "not *much* explored" interactions
It'd be too pretentious of me to go and try something "never made before", sure, but I just want something not heavily exploited (like Delver of Secrets, which has been used in pretty much any manner possible to build around)
A real solid deck and an imaginative deck are mutually exclusive ideas in modern, sadly.
Standard (historically), is the place where you can play jank and do okay. Sadly, they keep printing wildly imbalanced cards, making only a couple decks viable at a time.
I've only played standard for one season. Kahns of Tarkir block. My Temur deck was my own and it kicked ass. Until Dromoka's command gave the best deck a card that gets to destroy my Temur Ascendancy for free. I haven't played standard since.
I know you didn't ask for my life story, but there it is fucker.
You can play some jank in Legacy. Sometimes.
>Martyr Blue
>A real solid deck and an imaginative deck are mutually exclusive ideas in modern, sadly.
fairly well correct. there isn't a whole lot going on that doesn't fall into 'well X is just a worse version of Y, so why aren't i just playing Y?'
Standard and Legacy are better for brewing. Shit, I played THIS in standard and it was the tits. You just ignored the other player and furiously masturbated your entire deck onto the battlefield then swing for like a thousand with all your 50/50 haste lands.
Nah, I appreciate the points of view yoi guys are giving
I actually wanted to hear more about the Dromoka's Command
How does your deck work? How did Dromoka's Command affect it?
Can you post the link? Reading and searching all the cards is a pain in the ass (and I don't know most of them --as I said, not really used to Modern)
But yeah, sometimes I have an idea for a deck and some friends say "yeah but if you wanna go in this direction, why don't you just play this deck or that one?"
That's actually kind of annoying and at the same time disappointing, like if there's little space for the game to be both competitive and at the same time diversified
Anyway, which strategies can be exploited? I know energy is a good option (though I don't quite like it), and all that death's shadow stuff and all, but what do you guys think I could build a deck with?
>Can you post the link?
deleted ages ago. that was a standard deck anyhow, tc and dig are banned in modern. basically you had elemental ascendancy which turns a land into a 4/4 creature with haste, jeskai ascendancy that says 'whenever you cast a noncreature spell all creatures you control untap and get +1/+1 until end of turn' and 'whenever you cast a noncreature spell you may draw a card. if you do, discard a card' and then a bunch of noncreature spells that say 'draw a card'. so you make your land a dude, cast a 'draw x card' spell, untap your land and give it +1/+1. then you do it like 40 more times until you have 200-something power worth of haste creatures and kill the other guy on turn 3 or 4.
you gotta ask yourself how you want to win at magic cards, then you can flesh out a deck shell from there. i can't tell you what you want to do, you have to tell me (and yourself) what you want to do.
It was Temur midrange. I could hit the ground running some games or grind value and control other games. I decided to go all in on Temur Ascendancy. If a creature didn't have 4 power or tapped for mana, it wasn't going in.
Playing the enchantment was rough. 3 mana do nothing for a turn. It sets you back, and you have to play several creatures afterwards in order to feel like you got ahead in the deal.
Siege Rhino made Abzan the top deck. It was all fine and dandy until Dragons came out. Dromoka's command was ran in nearly every Abzan deck. People weren't even primarily running it for the enchantment removal. It was just a good card.
So when I set myself back by playing Temur Ascendancy, and then an opponent plays Dromoka's Command, they kill one of my creatures but also kill my enchantment that I invested a turn in to -- for free.
That sounds pretty nice to play
So, I've thought about something really abstract and I'm trying to narrow it down to a deck
Modern decks need to have at least 60 cards, and that leads to less consistency than thinner decks
My goal is to thin my deck by filling it with cantrips, and adding creatures/enchantments/whatever that benefits me for buying cards/playing spells
This way I can have a more consistent deck, play lots of spells each turn, benefiting from it and thinning my deck at the same time
Cards I looked up that go well with this strategy are Guttersnipe, Kiln Fiend, Young Pyromancer, Grapeshot, Aqueous Form, Slip Through Space
The bad part is: card advantage cards in modern don't seem to be that good at all
Got it, thanks for the explanation
I'm leaning towards something that allows to me buy lots of cards each turn, play lots of spells, and hit my opponent hard
I believe it'll make my deck more consistent and controlled, since the deck will virtually have ~35-40 cards
Does it make any sense? Sounds reasonable to me
Don't know if these cards are the best options, but it looks like something that could work
I have something like this, Firebrand archer/Thermo Alchemist+Curiosity, along with Rituals, Opt/Serum Visions, bolts, and cheap counter spells. All your spells become cantrips and do 1 damage.
Do you have a list or something for me to take a look at the cantrips and rituals?
Don't know what are the good Modern cantrips, and about rituals I don't know which of them could fit, since the deck will almost certainly be UR
I thought of simian spirit guide and desperate ritual to ramp a bit, but I'll probably need more blue-producing stuff
You don't really need that much blue mana producers, faithless looting works well as a red draw spell and the manabase leans more towards blue since you may want to counter something on your opponent's turn. It's essentially a variant of Storm decks, you might want to look into that. Mountain Ape is only really used in decks that need to empty their hand turn 2, like Infect, Storm and this deck profits more from playing spells. Do you have a budget?
>I want to build a good, strong, imaginative Modern deck
First Mistake
>When I want to build a deck, I usually focus on a few cards, or a specific mechanic, or interactions between mechanics and I build the deck around this concept
Second Mistake
>I love counter-intuitive decks
Third Mistake
Yeah, I was thinking about a variant on storm or something like that as you said
Playing lots of spells, thinning the deck, dealing damage with Firebrand Archer or Thermo Alchemist or buffing Kiln Fiend and making it unblockable with Aqueous Form or Slip Through Space, and then dealing more damage with Guttersnipe, so it'd be a bit of a storm deck backed up by huge beaters or creatures like the Archer that deals damage for each spell I play (and I plan on dealing a fair amount each turn)
Wouldn't Simian help? It would let me cast more spells each turn, deal damage faster... no?
I'm pretty low on budget, but I'll try to build the deck overtime
Anyways, it's meant to be a good deck, but doesn't need to be Tier 1 kind of thing
>being this narrow-minded and not justifying any statement
>not accepting my way of brewing decks and having ideas, although not pointing out the flaws in my decisions and not presenting solutions
>implying counter-intuitive decks are a mistake, when manaless dredge is a rather strong Legacy deck, a variation of LED Dredge is one of the meta decks in Vintage, and Necropotence literally changed the history of the game in its time
I'm open to hear what you have to say and learn from that, but you're not being any helpful
At least come up with a decent argument
Meant to say Grapeshot, not Guttersnipe
Kiln fiend only needs about 3 to 4 spells (Mutagenic Growth, Assault Strobe, Apostle's blessing. ) played to be lethal. Overextending can lead to dumping your entire hand for nothing if you get counteredThe others need to have as much spells as possible. You should not combine those as they're essentially different decks with different styles. Kiln Fiend is one of the big champs in Pauper, while Storm is one of the best decks in Modern. Difference is that Kiln Fiend costs about 40 dollars, while Storm costs about 300(which is one of the cheaper decks you can make in Modern and performs incredibly well).
Pretty new to Veeky Forums, is it OK if I ask advice on my deck in this thread ?
Sure. Don't forget to mention your format and budget.
Thought they could work together somehow
So I'm more leaned towards storm
Kiln Fiend wouldn't work out well together? Because of bolt and removals?
I'll look more into storm decks
I'm OP, old /b/tard but new to Veeky Forums too, and I'm ok with that
I don't know the rules in here, but sounds perfectly fine to me
Cool, thanks !
So I'm a kitchen-table-only player (in a playgroup consisting of 7-8 noobs, including myself). We don't really play any particular format, we just build decks with the stuff we have and battle it out. I happen to really enjoy Eldrazi lore, so I wanted to build an Eldrazi-themed colorless semi aggro/ramp deck. Found this online and bought it for around $90 : tappedout.net
Thing is it's missing some kind of "punch". I found a quite stronger version made by Patrick Chapin : tappedout.net
Only problem is the changes I'd have to make would cost me another $100, which I'm not willing to fork out right now.
So my question is : what "budget" additions would you make to this deck, while keeping it fully colorless ? I'd say $20 to $30 would be OK.
Thank you !
Oh and, in the event that Chapin's deck would be THE "optimized" version of what I'd like to run, what cards should I buy first to make it run better immediately (while eventually building up to the full version) ?
FOr one, you don't have any of the legendary Eldrazi in there. If you want to build a big guys deck, why not include them? Ulamog would fit the most in this version.
Going full colourless pigeonholes you in a specific deck though. You're missing some good removal or ramp that other solours can provide. Colourless also has the problem of having a very shallow cardpool if you don't count artifacts. All these decks are basically old Standard decks since all cards come from the same 2 sets. You should treat Eldrazi as supplemental cards for decks, like Eldrazi Tron or Eldrazi and Taxes. I would honestly drop it being full colorless and put in green since it ramps and likes fat creatures. It gives you better mana, and some cool Timmy cards like Ghalta.
>FOr one, you don't have any of the legendary Eldrazi in there. If you want to build a big guys deck, why not include them?
Because they're pretty expensive. Two copies of Ulamog would set me back $25. But if you think that it fits in perfectly I might consider it.
>You should treat Eldrazi as supplemental cards for decks, like Eldrazi Tron or Eldrazi and Taxes. I would honestly drop it being full colorless and put in green since it ramps and likes fat creatures.
Thing is I'm kind of a sperglord and therefore firmly decided I would play Eldrazi exclusively. If I were to add green, could you point me to good green ones/spells ?
Tron lands can ramp you up real quick, specially with Expedition Map, Ancient Stirrings, Explore, Seek the Wilds
I'll check it out, thanks. I'm getting the feeling that it's quickly going to turn into a Tron deck though, which is not really what I'm looking to play
Get some Tron lands and Expedition Maps, and drop the inneficient lands that come into play tapped or only have situational ramp. Put a Single Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger in there. That'll set you back around 30 dollars and makes it more playable.
You don't play the traditional Tron since that uses Karn/Chalice of the Void/Walking Ballista.
Got it, I'll look into it. Thanks a lot guys !