Formats, so many yet so few...
Deck Help forum
Posted on Nov. 6, 2016, 1:32 p.m. by Sim_Will_CMcantfindmehopefully
Just to preface, I believe this is the forum most suited for this post although I may be wrong
Time for asking how to make a card made for standard work in different formats because it is a pet card. Modern is too fast, EDH is singleton, I don't care for Tarkir's draft environment, and it's a rare. This isn't like Hellcarver Demon where in EDH it feels great to play because it's a bomb, it's great mid-game pressure. Savage Knuckleblade is the card that made Temur one of my favourite colour combinations, o was skeptical of Gruul featuring... the control colour, especially when Jund filled my three colour Gruul niche at the time, but then I saw the absolute savagery of this card, and the use of blue to supplement Gruul, not overpower. Now I have a delima, I own several copies of it, and run one in two or three commander decks, but I'm trying to think of a format where I can run a playset, in theory I could build a midrange-ish Temur deck for Modern, with the Ogre can be a worse AEtherling but that's all I can think of. If there is a format that maybe I haven't heard of, or haven't evaluated correctly where this could work better, I'd love to hear about it.
Sim_Will_CMcantfindmehopefully says... #3
Mortem Maybe, I'll lay around with that.
November 6, 2016 2:17 p.m.
joecool1299 says... #4
How about Canadian Highlander? It's a rather wide format and a lot of different decks. Sure you won't be playing every game with Savage Knuckleblade. But it seems like the fast yet powerful format is good for Knucks. Perhaps a Temur aggro shell. Or even Temur Boggles? Here's the rule description
To this day I'm kinda unsure why Knucks didn't see play in Standard. It seemed perfect in it's respective format but it never broke through.
November 6, 2016 4:55 p.m.
Sim_Will_CMcantfindmehopefully says... #5
joecool1299 I don't do standard but maybe it was due to the crazy life swings available and control/durdling.
November 6, 2016 5:01 p.m.
Fleetwood-Mat says... #6
He was standard when other (better) three/four drops were also standard such as Monastery Mentor, Siege Rhino, and Brimaz, King of Oreskos, etc... He definitely displays efficiency, but if you consider cards like Monastery Swiftspear swinging in for 22+ on turn 3 with cards like Titan's Strength and Temur Battle Rage during his time in standard, with little you can do about it in the Temur shell at the time (except possibly Disperse), he just didn't pack enough of a punch when he hit the board. It's kind of the same thing in Modern... cuz let's face it, you're not dropping him on a turn when you can pay the bounce cost (leaving him super vulnerable to removal), and why pay 3 seperate colours for a 4/4 when Goyf gets to 4/4 no problem, and only costs 1G, it doesn't work in Modern either. Even in EDH, I struggle to see how much impact he can potentially have... Hard to remove isn't a good enough test of quality these days.
November 6, 2016 6:09 p.m.
Sim_Will_CMcantfindmehopefully says... #7
Fleetwood-Mat Swinging in with a 4/4 early that becomes 6/6 late that effectively can't be removed is pretty decent in EDH.
November 6, 2016 6:14 p.m.
I must admit, that Knuckles is one of my favorite cards.
If you want to build him in something, it will likely be modern. In not a fan of him in commander, simply because he lacks evasion and utility. He's just a beater.
Now, what can we do in modern? Unfortunately, he doesn't go into any well known decks. We need to build our own.
So, what does Knuckles excel at?
To me, his main feature is the ability to not get removed. However, of we want him to survive, we need to pay a solid 3 mana. It's at some want him to die on the spot, he needs to be cast turn 6...
This could be used in a control deck. However, it would simply be much easier to use the normal finishers.
This leaves us with either making an aggro or midrange deck.
He has some nice stats for a 3 mana creature. He unfortunately doesn't have haste until t4. That's not too good in aggro.
Now, this leaves us with midrange. Temur midrange. One thing that makes the usual b/g/x midrange decks good, is their ability to do a t1 discard. This can stop most decks. Temur doesn't have this. So my question is: what can we do turn 1?
We can still ramp. This could give us a t2 Knuckles,followed by a... T3 Chandra maybe? Maybe we could do some CoCo action? Knuckles do only cost 3...
It's all just ideas, me thinking loudly.
Though, I hope you'll end up making some sort of deck at last.
November 6, 2016 6:58 p.m. Edited.
Sim_Will_CMcantfindmehopefully says... #9
The_Raven I have an idea!! It also involves another card I want to make work! I'll be right back!
intentionally doesn't say for suspense
November 6, 2016 7:11 p.m.
There are a couple of lesser known budget formats with communities on MTGO where Knuckleblade would be legal, although having never played with the card I can't really speak to how successful it would be but they're definitely places where cards that fall through the cracks of other formats can shine.
Heirloom uses a card legality based on both rarity and price or in Penny Dreadful any card that costs a single penny is legal. Both have weekly tournaments run by players (two a week for Heirloom).
Although, obviously if you don't use MTGO and aren't interested in it, none of this really helps.
November 6, 2016 7:38 p.m. Edited.
Sim_Will_CMcantfindmehopefully says... #11
Bloody Knuckles
Modern*
SCORE: 1 | 0 VIEWS
I tried to make Training Grounds work, it's janky but it's a start.
November 6, 2016 9 p.m.
You could try the new post-modern format: Frontier.
Cards from M15 onwards are legal and the environment is fairly new with few decks being created and a lot of initial interest by several players...
Of course you'd be facing decks that were strong back in Tarkir days, which would also allow you to play Dig Through Time for example, alongside with the aforementioned pump spells like Titan's Strength, Temur Battle Rage and running other swingers as well, such as Monastery Swiftspear and even Stormchaser Mage!
November 7, 2016 7:56 p.m.
Sim_Will_CMcantfindmehopefully says... #13
Duffzord Frontier has a bad card pool in my opinion, thanks though!
Mortem says... #2
The thing is, in modern it could be so much more than a worse AEtherling. It's a 4/4 for 3, make use of that. Temur Zoo splashing white for Wild Nacatl?
November 6, 2016 2:06 p.m.