Blossoming Defense

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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
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Blossoming Defense

Instant

Target creature you control gets +2/+2 and gains hexproof until end of turn.

wallisface on Selesyna Midrange

5 months ago

As far as cards I would ditch:

  • Garruk Wildspeaker feels too slow/midrange orientated and not useful for what you’re trying to do here. Same goes for Elder Gargaroth.

  • Blossoming Defense feels kindof meh here to me. None of your creatures are crucial to keep alive - i’d rather these slots be used for more creatures.

  • I don’t think you need/want Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx at all… if your deck is benefitting from it then your mana curve is too high.

I think you should be running Tail Swipe instead of Prey Upon. And i think you can run the full playset if there’s room.

As far as creatures to add/consider, i have a bunch of suggestions that aren’t beasts, but would help you a lot. At the moment your only reason to running mono-beasts is Descendants' Path, which imo isn’t a strong enough card to warrant restricting your creature options soo heavily.

Anyway, creatures that cpuld be good here: Pelt Collector, Experiment One, and Strangleroot Geist. There is also the option of going down to 18 lands, running playsets of Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic (you ditch Arboreal Grazer in this situation), and playing 3x Khalni Hydra as a terrifying finisher (they make your Aspect of Hydra back-breaking).

wallisface on Sliver-less

1 year ago

My main concern here is that without Odric, your deck has no real synergy going for it, and largely won't be doing much. 4 mana is quite a high cost for this card also - and the creature is particularly easy to remove, making the gameplan more dubious (I know you have Blossoming Defense, but that would mean needing 5 lands in play before casting Odric, and the game could be over by then).

Elsterooo on The most toxic pioneer ever was!

1 year ago

I actually went Selesnya first as well, here: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/working-the-most-toxic-pioneer-ever-was/

The strategy is more fun, so you're not alone in prefering it. I've got one more toxic deck and one more Rotpriest deck brewing currently, but looking at your list, it has the same issue I've had when testing. Mainly the same old "Why even go for poison counters"?

Mathematically speaking, they're nothing more than an alternative life count. 10 instead of 20. So 1 poison counter = 2 damage, in theory. Just looking at Jawbone Duelist, if you buff him with Blossoming Defense for example, you're still dealing 2 poison counters (4 damage), while you're also dealing 6 regular damage.

I didn't have as much fun brewing this deck as I'd hoped, mainly because toxic's big strength is cheap things go attack fast, kind of streamlined and boring.

That's all regarding competetive magic. In regards to following a theme and pushing it as far as possible, your deck looks great.

wallisface on Zalph

1 year ago

Youvegotplasticinyourlungs looks like a very interesting/cool build. The only cards i’m dubious of are Veil of Summer and Harmonize.

Veil of Summer feels weak because it’s doing nothing if your opponent isn’t playing blue or black. Green has loads of more broad protection spells if that’s your intention here - namely Vines of Vastwood or Blossoming Defense.

I’m not convinced with Harmonize because by the time you’re at that much mana, you should be dropping massive creatures, and this feels to me like a waste of a turn when you should be on the offensive. I’d swap this out for either another big creature, or more ramp (or some mix of that).

I guess lastly Hardened Scales feels like its only best on those creatures that add one counter at a time. Your creatures that are doubling counters probably don’t card too much about this card (its just 1 extra counter). I still think Hardened Scales is good here, but wonder if Solidarity of Heroes might provide you a bigger payoff… it’s hard to gauge so might need playtesting.

Personally i’d also drop the Forgotten Ancient so you can run playsets of Kalonian Hydra and Primordial Hydra. The hydras are definitely better, but it also makes your deck Modern legal if that ever mattered to you (personally I think this list looks surprisingly strong for its budget, and would do well against non-tiered decks).

Unlife on

1 year ago

One of infects deck's weaknesses is how few 'playable' infect creature there are for modern. Most decks run Glistener Elf, Blighted Agent, Plague Stinger, Inkmoth Nexus, and occasionally Ichorclaw Myr in some combination so they're sure to have a creature or two to pump for the kill. With only Blighted Agent, you are rarely going to consistently have an agent in hand to play.

You also need some protection. Infect decks are build around things like Vines of Vastwood and Blossoming Defense that both pump and protect your creatures from the removal that turns your 10/10 infect creature into just another graveyard addition.

I'd recommend looking at a current modern simic infect decklist, and finding ways to splash red and doublestrike in (Assault Strobe is also an option) so you have a strong core to work from.

PickleNutz on Don't Let Em Breathe (Quick)

1 year ago

Green is my color, has been a very long time. I’ve ran similar decks to this, but I’ve always had dorks in at early play and at least 2 to 4, 4 or 5 CMC beaters with evasion for that mid range strategy. I’ve always felt without haste being prominent in low CMC creatures it’s hard to weenie out something competitive. Red has always done that well with high damage low cost hasty things. However, I think what you have going on here is a legitimate strategy. My only suggestions would be to try Hardened Scales, Blossoming Defense, and Predator's Strike. They’re simple toolkit cards that may help in the sideboard or main deck against heavy hate decks. Devotion boosters like the instant you are running doesn’t give much consistent better numbers than Predator’s Strike. Both are instant, but pred gives you trample. Regardless, you’ve got a good thing going here.

Max_Hammer on

1 year ago

That's true, you do probably need some protection. Thankfully, green loves hexproof. Also, you're 100% right about Neverwinter but it's still not a terrible deal.

wallisface on Bant Infect

1 year ago

This link here is an example of what current modern infect decks look like. Specifically, the deck aims to win the game as fast as possible, ideally on turns 2 or 3. The deck doesn't want the game to go long because that will most-certainly mean defeat.

Added to the above, even non-aggressive modern decks still generally don't want to be playing more than 3-4 cards costing 4-mana, with nothing above this cost (you've got a whopping 20 cards costing 4-or-more, which will cause your deck to be miserably slow). Modern infect decks typcically don't want to play anything costing more than 2-mana (Though some more recent decks have been playing Phyrexian Crusader to help versus some matchups).

So, firstly I'd strongly suggest ditching all your slow and sluggish cards - all of Core Prowler, Evolution Sage, Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, Ajani, Sleeper Agent, Tamiyo, Compleated Sage, and Fuel for the Cause, Brokers Ascendancy, Hadana's Climb  Flip, Inexorable Tide, and Oath of Teferi. All of these cards are faaaar too slow and will just give your opponent too much time to get a stable boardstate and lock you out of the game. I would also suggest ditching Unbounded Potential, just because it's a weak spell, and adding a 3rd colour just needlessly complicates what you're doing given your awkward landbase (if you play just 2 colours you can probably just run basics and not slow yourself down running taplands).

Cards to consider adding in include Become Immense, Vines of Vastwood, Mutagenic Growth, Might of Old Krosa, Blossoming Defense, Distortion Strike, Scale Up, and Rancor. When playtesting your deck, you want to be aiming to reliably deal 10 infect within the first 2-3 turns.

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