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Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Biting Rain
Sorcery
All creatures get -2/-2 until end of turn.
Madness (If you discard this card, discard it into exile. When you do, cast it for its madness cost or put it into your graveyard.)
Darth_Savage on
Grixis (mostly) Toolbox (probably)
5 years ago
I think I understand what you are trying to do now, essentially you want to make what is refered to as a toolbox deck. Thing is your sort of in the wrong colours, traditionally would be the primary colours of the toolbox. The GW Toolbox uses cards like Chord of Calling and Eldritch Evolution to fish out creature based answers. In there isn't really an equivelent, however you could try cards like Disciple of Deceit to fetch answers. However answering enchantments outside GW is difficult, the best options are probably Kiora's Dismissal or Drake Familiar...
Eidolon of the Great Revel can be played around by using cards like Biting Rain or Morsel Theft, basically any card which has an alternative cost or a cost reduction as the Eidolon only checks the converted mana cost, not the cost you actually paid. I made a half hearted attempt at a sort of toolbox here Grixis Toolbox, it isn't really efficient enough, but it might help you out.
What would help more though is just running the low cost removal and killing Monastery Swiftspear and Eidolon the turn your opponent plays them, or near after. Trying to play around someone elses deck dilutes what your own deck is able to do. There is an article on wizards pages which covers this very topic https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/reconstructed/zero-sixty-2012-03-26 (apologies the link wouldn't work) I'd suggest you give it a read...
If you still want to build a toolbox deck then I'd suggest dropping Red in favour of Green, between Black Green and Blue you should be able to answer near enough everything...
Duke.Fleed on
Infernal Downfall
5 years ago
Nice deck! I love madness. If you don't mind, here are a few suggestions for improvements:
For a madness deck to be good, you shouldn't include cards just because they say madness. Even if the rate of the madness cost is good, remember that that cost is always plus a minimum of a mana (since you had to cast another card beforehand). The only situation in which you will get full value for your madness is off of Liliana, but at that point you could just be casting a better card. Take Fiery Temper for example. I think this is probably the most popular madness card, but also the most over rated. When it is good, it feels reeeallly good. But when it is bad, it is beyond bad. This deck looks to be focused on inevitability, in that your win conditions are big, hard to deal with, threats that WILL win the game if the op does nothing. So would you play Lightning Bolt in this deck? Do you need to burn their face? No. You have hazoret for that. So what is the point of bolt other than creature removal? I understand that it speeds up the game, but my point is, why make it harder to cast bolt by playing fiery temper if it isn't an integral card to the deck anyways? I feel the same way about Biting Rain vs Damnation or Anger of the Gods or Sweltering Suns.
Ok, I'm done saying negative things. Here is what I like about the deck and what I think you can increase. Discarding cards for value is a great feeling. So you should include cards that like to be discarded, other than just madness cards. Like: Bloodghast and Cut / Ribbons. The good thing about cards like these is they can stay in your graveyard and do not have demand immediate mana like the madness cards do. I am not saying you need to cut the madness from the deck, just be very specific with which madness cards you are keeping. Don't just think of them in their best case scenario, but also not in their worst case scenario, you've got to think about things in averages. "on average, how good is this card?" Cards like Faithless Looting, Collective Brutality, and Kolaghan's Command are all great examples of cards that are pretty good most of the time, and are therefore great includes!
Hopefully my ramblings help. Let me know if you have any questions, and if you like my suggestions: check out my podcast all about brewing decks at mtgcoldbrew.buzzsprout.com (we're also on itunes and spotify)
Raremeeet on Returning player looking for optimization …
6 years ago
Hey guys I'm new to the forum and returning to Magic from a long break. The last set that came out before I gave it up was the Urzas set.
Anyways, out of boredom I started playing magic duels on my Xbox and then reconnected with some of my old friends who still play magic. I'd like to get a paper version of the my favorite deck from duels but am so out of touch with the game I'm not even sure what's out there. The format is pretty casual, but from what I can tell most of the decks my friends use would likely fall into modern format, but there are also some really old cards too, so im pretty flexible as far as sets I can use. Lastly I'd like to keep this fairly budget, I like the game but am not sure I'm ready to sink real money into it yet... and yes I realize that means the the liliana in the deck list has to come out.
The main thing I like about this deck is the interaction between the ruthless snipers, the various discard enablers and the madness mechanic. So I'm hoping you all could make some suggestions to take further advantage of that. I realize some cards in there aren't great but they're what i have available on the video game.
2 Cryptbreaker, 3 Ruthless Sniper, 2 Sanitarium Skeleton, 2 Lightning Axe, 3 Furyblade Vampire, 2 Call the Bloodline, 2 Macabre Waltz, 1 avacyn's judgement, 2 Distemper of the Blood, 3 Bloodmad Vampire, 1 Olivia, Mobilized for War, 4 firey temper , 1 Liliana, the Last Hope, 1 Avaricious Dragon, 2 Bloodhall Priest, 2 Merciless Javelineer, 1 Biting Rain, 1 Cut / Ribbons, 2 Horror of the Broken Lands, 1 Incorrigible Youth,
9 swamp, 9 mountain, 2 Dragonskull Summit, 2 Geier Reach Sanitarium,
JANKYARD_DOG on What game elements does a …
6 years ago
Black is probably your best bet as most hate bears are just that... 2/2 bears. Bontu's Last Reckoning, Toxic Deluge, Drown in Sorrow, Biting Rain (madness cost), Flaying Tendrils, Infest, and Golden Demise are all under 4cmc. May not hit them all but it'd surely get a lot of them
Sjorpha on
Rat Circus
6 years ago
cdkime Thank you for reviewing and providing feedback, much appreciated.
As for your suggestions, I have considered some of those cards before and I might be testing them out. I have a few reasons why I suspect they don't fit this deck that well, the primary context is that I have a very deliberate tempo strategy with this deck.
Marrow-Gnawer is potentially super powerful with providing board presence and evation, but the problem is he requires tapping out and then waiting a turn to untap as well. Since this deck is built around keeping mana up for counterspells and other answers and then have the flexibility to do something else in opponents endstep if no response were needed, like making rats, digging with tasigur, digging with supreme will, activating nezumi or snapcasting something. You get the idea. I feel that Cryptic Command already fulfills the role of enabling that final big attack (tapping down the board) when needed while at the same time being able to solve other problems. And if you have a Pack Rat out it's super easy to make the needed 4-6 rats for lethal anyways, and if you don't have a Pack Rat Marrow Gnawer won't do very much. So I think he's better suited for a mono black rat deck but would be a potentially dead draw and win-more card in this one.
Swarmyard I will definitely try out. My worry is that we don't have enough use for the colorless mana and might end up being unable to cast Cryptic Command or make a rat. It would be really nice to have primarily for protecting Nezumi against graveyard decks. Pack Rat I find usually protects himself, but it's nice to have the option there as well. Maybe 1 or 2 copies.
Biting RainIt's a potential sideboard card, but it does kill every creature in our deck except 3+ Pack Rats and Tasigur. I'm thinking that something more universally powerful like Damnation would be a better choice against wide boards in this deck, and then just keep a creature in hand to recover. I Play it in my other madness deck so I know it can be very good, worth testing.
Call to the Netherworld: I can see crazy EOT Pack Rat plays discarding first a creature, then Call picking the creature up and so on. The problem is it's a potentially dead card in some situations, it's not a good card to draw in your opening hand for example, and can't pick up Snapcaster. It's also hard to see a good cut for it. Worth noting that Nezumi already provides a way to pick up creatures from the grave, and that Grave Scrabbler is a more expensive but similar effect that could pick up any creature while providing an extra body. Maybe Call is worth sideboarding in against uncounterable removal like Abrupt Decay and Supreme Verdict?
Caerwyn on
Rat Circus
6 years ago
I greatly enjoy how quickly this deck spirals out of control. After playtesting it some, I came up with a couple suggestions:
Marrow-Gnawer seems like it could be a powerful card in this deck. In addition to providing evasion, it grants a bit of flexibility, allowing you to sacrifice a blocked/blocking rat, and instantly pump your other Pack Rats before they deal combat damage. While it may be a bit slow, given its five mana casting cost, I think it has the potential as a powerful finisher.
Swarmyard would give you some protection from your opponent's removal spells.
Biting Rain might make a good sideboard card against token decks, particularly given how easi it is to hit the 3/3 threshold with your own creatures.
Call to the Netherworld would allow you to return killed/discarded creatures for free.
As for potential cuts to make room for additional cards, that I am less sure about. In my playtesting, everything currently in the deck seemed to work well together, and every card provided valuable utility.
Arian_the_Fox on
some dargons
6 years ago
Lightning Bolt is too good not to run. If you don't run Fatal Push then you could do something like. Sakura-Tribe Elder & Tragic Slip for ramp & kill. Or try Go for the Throat, Nature's Way, Victim of the night, Ulvenwald Tracker or something like that to kill opponents problemstic cards. Pyroclasm, Volcanic Fallout, or Biting Rain kill small dudes but don't kill your dragons. Fall of the Hammer might also work.
bellz76 on
Hour Of D Speed Cycle (Needs Help!)
6 years ago
Yeah, I thought the Creation might just have been a theoretical broken card... ahh well. That's why we test, right?
I'm glad the key preformed for you the way it did for me. The thing that I like most about it- it's not rotating for a year and change so we'll have plenty of time to continue abusing it :-)
Now that we've got the deck mostly where you want it, it's time to do some fine tuning. First and foremost- and I'm sorry I didn't see this before- take out the rediculious Submerged Boneyard and replace them with the Fetid Pools. Good grief how did we miss this?
So my questions revolve around just a few of the cards- Unburden, main deck Negate, and the Horror of the Broken Lands. I'll start with the Horror- how good is he? I mean really? A 4\4 for 5 is only ok, he has no evasion or trample so when he gets big he can be chump-blocked without the key. I understand that with the key he's a 6\5 unbloackable, but are there better cards? Off the top of my head I was thinking the Archfiend of Ifnir. He's still a 5 drop, still cycles, but in a deck like this when you cycle and cycle again, he might be better than the Horror. I feel a 5\4 flyer for the same mana is already better, and the passive ability to give -1 counters makes him more versatile. If you have him on the board and then be able to use New Perspectives? That seems pretty good too. So is the Horror better than the Fiend? Thoughts?
Next is Unburden... I like it, but again, is there a better card? Or is it good enough to run more of them? Is it a good play on turn 3 to make your opponent discard? Or turn 4? Or turn 5? Or is there something better? Did you find the deck weak to anything when you were testing? Typically, you play discard when you're playing against control- make them counter that instead of your threats. I would think this a better sideboard card that main deck..... I also feel the same way about the main deck Negate. I feel they are something you bring in instead of starting with them. That's why I put them on the list of cards that I was uncertain of... You already have the Censor in the main, and that's plenty of awesome right there... do you need the negate as well?
If you take those cards out and put them in the board, it gives you 4 slots to play with... I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions to what they might be, but I also have tested the deck yet... My gut says that there isn't enough removal in here... Even if you swap in the Fiend, I just think you need something to interact with the opponent... Grasp of Darkness maybe? What do you do vs Anointed Procession? Maybe Biting Rain? I really don't know, but I think you need something there in the event they play a big fatty... perhaps Never or Ruinous Path?
Either way, these are just some thoughts. I like where there deck is, and it certainly looks fun to play. I'm hoping to build it and test myself, but time has not been my friend.
Look forward to hearing what you think.
