Will be modifying
Intro
Hey All!
I loved the uniqueness of my standard deck of old (Dagger Burn) and decided to see if it can be ported into modern.
After many builds and attempts I believe i have found the right combination of cards to enable this dream. Please take a look and let me know what you think!
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How to Play this Deck
With the current meta we have to play slightly aggressively and risky. You will have to shock yourself with lands and give your opponent creatures at almost every opportunity. Imagine if your playing a burn deck, as long as you get them dead before they get you dead then it does not matter at all. This build is VERY greedy. But we want to do this combo quickly as possible. On average I win about T4 to T5 with this deck with some rare cases of a T3 win (vs death shadow t1 vial, t2 bloodseeker,t3
Suture Priest
and
Hunted Phantasm
for 10 damage burn after they already shocked themselves)
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4/13/18
Modified the sideboard a bit. Removed
Illness in the Ranks
and 1
Supreme Verdict
for two echoing truths. Illness though good at controlling the board state and nullifying the downside to giving tokens to opponent was just not in synergistic with
Rakdos Charm
. Verdict was a bit slow as well and we generally don't need to wipe the board.
Echoing Truth
does fulfill a few roles in our ddxk. Allows us to pick up our own creatures to protect them, allows us to pick up token producers, allows us to get rid of early leylines that make opponents hexproof, and can act as removal for opponents creatures.
4/3/18
Looking for alternate name for the deck. Please offer suggestions.
Added 3
Damping Sphere
to sideboard. This addresses tron and storm. Removed
Eidolon of Rhetoric
and
Fulminator Mage
Updates
Update 3 (3/17/18) - Echoing Truths Removed. It didn't work as intended and ended up being dead card many times.
Tron issue will be addressed soon! Currently have
Fulminator Mage
as a temporary solution but this is slightly slow. Damping sphere in Dominaria will affect Tron and storm, our biggest hard matchups!! May run 3 or 4 copies in side board replacing
Fulminator Mage
and
Eidolon of Rhetoric
. I could add 1 additional sb card in the form of
Negate
or some other so will take suggestions.
Update 2 (2/19/18) -
Echoing Truth
x2 added to main board. This spell is surprisingly good for many reasons. One is that it can be used as removal against opponents. We gave tons of tokens and are regretting that, this saves us. It also helps on protecting our combo a bit. If our opponent tries to kill our permanents we can bounce it back to our hand and protect it AND we can even sometimes vial it back right away. Plus it can allow us to trigger the ETB effects a second time. Use it on
Hunted Phantasm
to cast it a second time! To fit this in i took out 1
Dowsing Dagger
(though this removes one of the token producers from the deck we are hoping to replace it with a similar effect) and 1
Panharmonicon
(we only need one every match and 4 was a tad to much)
Update 1:
Rakdos Charm
Moved into mainboard,
Illness in the Ranks
moved to sideboard. And
Wrath of God
moved to maybe board.
Wrath of God
seems way to slow for what we want to do and would only stall the game out. However
Rakdos Charm
seems like a good mainboard item for a few reasons. Not only if we flood the board with tokens (0/2 defender, 1/1 goblins and spirits) but opponent will be playing and flooding board as well. Ideally this is a finisher for matches that are close. It also allows us to have mainboard GY hate (good against alot of meta right now) and helps in afinity matchups.
Illness in the Ranks
is passively good as it prevents our opponents using the tokens we give as well as some of the other token decks out there.
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ETB Tax Effects
Below are the cards arranged from most useful to least useful in this deck for taxing your opponent.
Trespasser's Curse
- By far the most useful and wanted tax effect card in our deck. Yes it does not work with
Aether Vial
but this effect drains(gets around the solimnity and
Phyrexian Unlife
combo). Even if you can't make opponent lose life for some reason you still gain life whenever a creature enters the field. This is very useful for keeping yourself alive against aggro decks and random damage.
Suture Priest
- Similar to
Trespasser's Curse
but only gains life on creatures that enter your side and damage on opponents creatures entering the field.
Blood Seeker
- Explains itself.
Rampaging Ferocidon
- This is a card that sometimes makes or breaks the game. It can go aggro and do some damage that way but its major use is in the opponent cannot gain life. This is almost certainly required against soul sister decks.
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Token Producers
Hunted Phantasm
- One of the main reasons for playing aether vial is the explosiveness you can get with this card. Playing this on your opponents turn can also allow you to get in for 4 damage on the next attack step. This card's main effect is giving your opponent 5 1/1 goblins. With a single tax effect,
Panharmonicon
and this card you can 20 your opponent!!!.
Forbidden Orchard
- This is such an amazing card in this deck. Giving your opponent 1/1s is a useful side effect for mana fixing and can end up being a
Lightning Bolt
on a land!
Dowsing Dagger
- The namesake card. This was the card this deck was built around in standard. This card can be equipped to any of your creatures to help force damage through and produces tokens as well.
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Other Cards
Aether Vial
- This deck needs to compete with some of the best decks out there. With how many creatures we have that make this combo work we need a way to cheat them in instantly to trick our opponents. This is a great card for getting what we need on the field. Plus this adds a layer of protection to our creatures which we vial at their end step means they either lose their turn or have to spend it removing our creatures.
Illness in the Ranks
- (Moved to sideboard) This card essentially removes all of the draw backs of giving our opponent tokens. It makes
Forbidden Orchard
an amazing card in this deck as there is no downside. Works VERY well with
Hunted Phantasm
which essentially makes it a 4/6 unblockable with no drawbacks. Though a good card it is now considered situational and was replaced for more aggressive match card
Rakdos Charm
though it is sideboard so that control match ups are a bit more fair (VS
Young Pyromancer
,BW Token builds etc)
Panharmonicon
enables the deck to go off. It just makes things faster and more potent.
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Combos
T4 win panharmonicon
T1 -
Aether Vial
T2 - Tax effect (assume
Trespasser's Curse
) , vial ticks up (1)
T3 - Anything (nothing is required here but you can vial in another 2 drop, lay another curse, or protect the field), vial ticks up (2)
T4 -
Panharmonicon
, vial ticks up (3), vial in
Hunted Phantasm
. Opponent gets 10 1/1 goblins and takes 2 damage per goblin = 20 damage per each tax effect.
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Panharmoniconless T4 Win
T1 -
Aether Vial
T2 -
Aether Vial
ticks up (1),
Trespasser's Curse
T3 -
Aether Vial
ticks up (2), another
Trespasser's Curse
t4 -
Aether Vial
ticks up (3), vial in
Hunted Phantasm
and cast a
Hunted Phantasm
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MaybeBoard Discussion
Swan Song
A good counterspell that produces a token effect that can trigger our effects. This has potential to be added into the sideboard. However it would most likely have to replace
Negate
which has the benefit of counter artifacts and planeswalkers. Need to investigate.
Chalice of the Void
Great against the low cost mana curve of other decks. Play on 0 or 1. This may be a good answer for things like burn and storm. Potential against tron as they cannot cast
Ancient Stirrings
or
Expedition Map
.
Ensnaring Bridge
- We dont like having creatures attack us while we set up our combo and big threats are easily let through if we don't have an answer. This could fit well into our curve (not many 3 mana plays in our deck) and has potential for stalling out the game long enough for us to win.
Crafty Cutpurse
- could help us in some match ups. Though not 100% sure its good to fit this in. Best idea i can think of is if opponent is expecting us to go non-creatures we can swap this in and go psuedo aggro by vial in
Hunted Phantasm
and take the tokens for attack. Possibly very good verses control and other token matchups.
Hunted Horror
- another big threat we can vial or cast that triggers our effects. However its in
Fatal Push
range and without
Crafty Cutpurse
we don't get to much value from this. If we do go crafty cutpurse build we may be able to pull this off.
Mercy Killing
- This is a card i am seriously considering. not only is it removal (something our deck wants) but its a token producer. If our opponent casts something huge like
Death's Shadow
then this can just produce an insane number of tokens and trigger our effects. Plus with
Illness in the Ranks
we may not even suffer the bad side effects.
