What a Rack!

Modern kmcree

SCORE: 82 | 198 COMMENTS | 16781 VIEWS | IN 29 FOLDERS


3-1 at Sunday Modern —Nov. 16, 2014

Went 3-1: Beating Delver, Delver, and 8Rack, losing to BUG control.

Round 1: 2-0 vs 8Rack. Beat a mono-black 8Rack very easily. Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace gave me a huge advantage, and my opponent had a couple misplays.

Round 2: 2-0 vs Delver. Beat Delver, again pretty easy games. Was able to Lightning Bolt a couple early Delvers and a Monastery Swiftspear, and also Thoughtseized Sword of Fire and Ice twice. My opponent wasn't really able to stick anything on the board long enough to threaten me.

Round 3: 0-2 vs BUG Control. Interesting deck. He was kind of all over the place, but it worked very well. Game 1, after I got us both to topdeck mode, he ended up hitting a Treasure Cruise, finding Abrupt Decay with it to take out my Ensnaring Bridge, and I couldn't catch back up. Game 2 he wore me down pretty quickly with Pack Rat of all things. He ended up going 4-0 and taking 1st place.

Round 4: 2-1 vs Delver. Won game 1 pretty quickly, Thoughtseizeing a Treasure Cruise and Lightning Bolting a Delver. Game 2 he was able to land a Monastery Swiftspear and equip Sword of Fire and Ice to it. I almost got him anyway, but he got off a Treasure Cruise to refill his hand and stay out of range of The Rack. Game 3 I landed a t3 Ensnaring Bridge, and he couldn't do anything. He had Delver and Young Pyromancer on board, but couldn't deal with the bridge in time.

All in all, pretty good games. The only thing I'd like to do is find a way to fit in some more choice discard, maybe Blackmail or Despise? I'll have to play around with it a little bit.

xlaleclx says... #1

You're diluting the deck too much with the removal spells and burn spells. Waste Not is also really bad in modern, its super slow and you'd rather just have more wrench minds

October 9, 2014 10:59 p.m.

kmcree says... #2

Did you read the description or playtest at all? This isn't a traditional 8Rack. But its definitely not watered down, and it's very competitive.

October 9, 2014 11:16 p.m.

uiuiho12 says... #3

I agree with Waste Not being taken out. take out x2 Terminate and put in 2 more lands.

October 10, 2014 12:02 a.m.

kmcree says... #4

I definitely don't need any more lands. My curve tops out at 3. The last thing I want is to be flooded and not have enough discard/removal spells.

October 10, 2014 12:45 a.m.

uiuiho12 says... #5

20 lands will cap you out at ~2 mana, and because you have more 3 mana spells than 2 mana spells you will want to get to that 3 mana set more consistently.

October 10, 2014 10:21 a.m.

kmcree says... #6

I'm not sure how you did that math, but it's not correct. In order to play 3 lands on time, I would have to have drawn 3 lands by turn 3. This means I would have 9 or 10 cards drawn, depending on whether I went first or second (7 from opening hand, turn 1 draw, turn 2 draw, and turn 3 draw). That would mean I would need 3 out of 9 (or 10) cards to be lands, which is 33%. If I have 20 lands in a 60 card deck, what do you know, 33%.

Granted, real life doesn't always follow the math, but I can tell you after having played this deck in over a dozen events, I definitely do not need more land.

October 10, 2014 2:50 p.m.

uiuiho12 says... #7

assuming you draw 10 cards, your chance of drawing exactly 3 lands is about 28%. while the chance of drawing less than or equal 3 lands is at about 55%. this means that in about a quarter your games you will not not hit your 3rd land drop by turn 3, assuming you are on the draw.

when you are on the play(9 cards) your chance of drawing exactly 3 lands is about 30%. with the chance of you drawing less than or equal to 3 lands being about 66%.

so when you are on the play you have 1/3 chance of missing a land drop by turn 3, and when you are on the draw you have 1/4 chance to miss a land drop by turn 3.

at 22 lands your odds drop to 1/4 for on the play and 21%(about 1/5) for on the draw.

when you are running 9 high-inpact 3cmc spells you want to make sure you hit that land drop.

October 10, 2014 5:26 p.m.

Scytec says... #8

I agree with kmcree here on the land count. 20 is a good amount for a curve that tops out at 3 mana. Any more is pointless and a waste of space. This is an interesting build...I'd be interested to see how Waste Not played here...just not sure if not playing a turn 2 discard spell is worth it in a meta where most games are decided by turn ~6-7...are the tokens really worth letting your opponent play their combo pieces?

October 20, 2014 8:30 p.m.

Jamesfurrow says... #9

Also for this land situation take into consideration the type of hand that is kept. Your most likely going to keep a hand where you have already 2-3 lands in it to make sure you have the ability to play what spells you need...

October 20, 2014 9:37 p.m.

kmcree says... #11

Yeah, 20 lands is definitely where I'm staying.

@Scytec: so far, Waste Not has performed pretty well. In an ideal situation, I can use Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek t1 to steal their biggest early threat. That allows me to spend t2 dropping Waste Not . Follow that up with either Blightning or Wrench Mind and a Lightning Bolt on t3 and you're in pretty good shape.

October 21, 2014 12:21 p.m.

Scytec says... #12

Ya...that would be ok I suppose...but the chances of the ideal draw are slim. :) I see this deck being viable. Good job. I run a pretty sick Rakdos Aggro deck in standard, and I am thinking about jumping into modern soon with an 8-Rack deck, so I always try to check them out to see how they are looking. :) Good luck with the deck. Hope it runs well for you.

October 21, 2014 2:33 p.m.

kmcree says... #13

Yeah, chances of an ideal draw are slim. But having both Lightning Bolt and Terminate for removal, as well as Ensnaring Bridge , allow me to be reactive enough to handle threats they drop on t2. So far, the deck has worked very nicely. If you were looking at going 8Rack in Modern, I'd say that B/R is definitely the way to go.

October 21, 2014 4:25 p.m.

MisterHyde says... #14

uiuiho12 how can you have a lower chance of drawing 3 lands out of 10 cards then out of 9? I think your math left out the % of the time you will draw more than 3 lands and so your numbers are too low.

October 21, 2014 4:53 p.m.

uiuiho12 says... #15

my math includes percent less than 3, percent exactly 3, and the remainder is more than 3. I did not go over the remainder because that is not important when consider the situation of not hitting the 3rd land drops...

October 21, 2014 6:23 p.m.

MisterHyde says... #16

Ah. So you take the % <= 3 and subtract the % = 3 to get % < 3. Got ya. That's makes 27% out of 9 cards and 36% out of 10 like you said :)

October 21, 2014 8:29 p.m.

scholar says... #17

What's the point of Dakmor Salvage ?

October 22, 2014 8:57 p.m.

kmcree says... #18

Dakmor Salvage combos nicely with Raven's Crime to give you repeatable discard. It's sort of just a small combo thrown in to the deck, but there's very little downside.

October 22, 2014 9:19 p.m.

Twanicus says... #19

Have you considered some number of Bitterblossom? The tokens are good at chump blockin when necessary, but also double as accelerating the rack/affliction burn down.

November 12, 2014 9:26 p.m.

kmcree says... #20

I don't use Bitterblossom for a couple reasons: first is budget, it just doesn't make sense for me to spend that much for a fringe card. Second is the life loss, my games are already short and I often stabilize at a very low life total. Blossom would make that more difficult. Third, the tokens don't really benefit me that much. I don't need to chump block if I'm able to remove their threats with Terminate and Lightning Strike, and I don't need to worry about attackers at all if I can get Ensnaring Bridge online.

November 13, 2014 1:44 p.m.