Hobbez9186 Deckling

I like the Archer, edging in a little damage as you burn down your opponent's stuff, works as a blocker or early attacker. Seems good. The Aetherborn is basically removal with that deathtouch, I can't believe those things are up to $3 though lol. I like both of those better than the Map as two drops. Not sure which is better, the double black on the Aetherborn probably makes it just slightly less reliable if you are missing two black to start, but the core finishers are all black so being heavier on black mana isn't a bad thing.

Reinvigorated Deadlock Roc after getting pummeled by an interesting deck on MTGO. That bird can do a lot of work and the deck has an interesting go-wide strategy as a backup that is quite nasty. Check it out!

Deadlock Roc

Standard* Hobbez9186

SCORE: 4 | 462 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

I kind of like the Map more than the Mirror because you're right, sometimes you have more triggers than you have mana. Too bad you have to spend a mana to scry, but it might still be worth it. At least the map comes down cheap. Is that better than just having removal though? I guess it depends on when you want to play the map, too late and it might just be too slow since you have to use it three times before you get your mana back. If not mana, at least it can add another card to hand by using the second ability to draw an extra card and then when you discard you've got an extra trigger. I could see it being a great turn 2 drop if you are playing against a mid-range opponent that doesn't have early plays of their own so your removal is sort of wasted to hold on to. On the other hand Map on turn 2, Faith on 3, and Oil on 4 gives your opponent three turns to do whatever they want. If you played your Courier on turn 1 that curve wouldn't leave you the mana to use it until turn 5 so if it got hit with removal those cards are just gone. Waiting to play Faith on turn 5 or 6 gives you some room for interaction and maybe an activation or two of the Scry and by then your max hand size will be coming down so you can start using Faith. But then you'd have to have your Courier survive that many turns which might be tricky.

On paper, the Map ties up too many of your early turns. If you don't have what you need in hand however it would help you stabilize your draws and recover from a mediocre starting hand. So then the question is how consistent are you without the Map? If you regularly have to mulligan to 5 or 6 cards then it's probably a safe addition. If you regularly run out of mana in the mid to late game then it's probably a safe addition. If you need to save your mana to interact with your opponent in the early game then I wouldn't put it in there. That'll be meta dependent. You've got more data with this than I do, but thinking it through I see it being a great sideboard card against a slower opponent to make sure that you hit what you need when you need it. Against a fast deck that plays creatures every turn I think you'd rather have mana open to pick them off until your opponent is in top-deck mode and then go for the combo. 16 removal spells should be plenty to make that happen as long as you keep drawing into them.

Again, its all meta dependent. My group plays a lot of aggro so the Map would not help me most of the time because I'd need to play removal. I've got a guy that plays super big spells for the long game with elaborate finishes and the Map would be awesome against him. We've also got a few people that play multi-piece combos that will mess you up if you let them, so the consistency of draws gained from the Map would be preferred there as well. I'm curious how it works out for you and what you'd change to add it in. Good luck :)

If you have Ramunap Excavator you can replay the Deserts that you sac to other Deserts. For example, sac Dunes of the Dead to Hashep Oasis to buff a creature and create a 2/2, then just replay the Dunes from your graveyard. That's a lot of gain for three mana.

Key to the City is another way to dump a Desert for free while making something unblockable, like the Hydra. Works well with the Excavator because you can pitch land instead of playing it for the evasion and then just play the land anyway.

A Verdant Sun's Avatar might be worth it somewhere because you gain 5 life just playing it and then every time you play another creature (which should be every turn) you'll gain more back. It's also super budget. Probably a worth testing one-of for the sideboard.

Ancient Brontodon might seem weird, but with two ways in the deck to make him extra burly it might be worth it. Playing any creature on a turn it can attack that Monument makes it an 11/11 Trample. Key to the City makes a 9/9 unblockable which could just end the game. Another possibility for the sideboard if you don't want to run it main.

Pounce I think is better than Stomp since you aren't exclusively running dinosaurs, and at Instant speed it makes for a nice trick. I have a Dino deck that runs both, and Stomp is great, but less reactive.

In a green Stompy deck you can't go wrong with Rishkar's Expertise. Fantastic draw spell that should get you 4-6 cards and then drop a free creature. So far, everything in your deck would qualify with 5 or less cost. Could even be sweet to hit Hour of Promise. You'd net a bunch of cards, two land, and two tokens for 6 mana. Seems good.

Anyway, just my two cents. You don't see many mono color decks these days (that aren't red anyway). Glad to see someone giving it a go :)

Good luck!

I think I'm just going to like 3 Combustible Gearhulks instead of trying to find the best one-of artifact. Amulet does cool things but always seems to come up at the wrong time. It didn't on paper, but in paper the timing has been unfortunate and I got frustrated by it.

I could absolutely get behind a more traditional mill deck that runs 4 copies of Amulet along with a full set of Sanity, Argument, and every other mill spell in the format with Torrential Gearhulk to help seal the deal. That seems completely viable and there should be plenty of support cards out there to make it happen.

Anyway, -1 Amulet, +1 Gearhulk.

That could work. Wouldn't that turn into an Oil with 0 counters on it for the end step? Also it could be another Faith to sink mana into, that'd be sweet if you have the mana. It could work, and has the added bonus of being able to become something scary from the other side of the board. You could even turn it into a Courier and pop it for another discard activation without having to blow up the actual Courier. I'd say becoming an extra Faith is the strongest option but it has some other uses that could be interesting. It could double the potency of an Archfiend during the end step with the negative counters and get in twice as much damage in the air which wouldn't be terrible either.

I guess the bigger question is what would you take out?

Still building new stuff and I haven't even tackled most of the new tribes of Ixalan.

In fact, I just finished a Cat tribal deck that runs a lot like the new Vampires. Cats don't drain life, but they do pretty much all have lifelink because of Regal Caracal and some of these cats get really big.

Check it out right meow:

Meow, Do You Know How Fast You Were Going?

Standard Hobbez9186

SCORE: 1 | 1 VIEW

Then I have another spin on the Faith of the Devoted + Midnight Oil combo from Deserts After Dark that tries it with white. This one is Mid-Range Control with a lot of removal and exile effects that helps lock out your opponent while you get set up.

Check that one out here:

Midnight Isolation

Standard Hobbez9186

SCORE: 1 | 2 VIEWS

I have some others in Standard and Modern that I'm kicking around. I'll post more when I get them straightened out. I'm intrigued by Merfolk after seeing some matches on MTGO. There aren't a ton of options since there hasn't been a Merfolk in Standard in a while so I'm going to have to get creative to stand out. Not sure if anyone has splashed black to give Winding Constrictor a go since they throw around a lot of +1/+1 counters. We'll see.

You could do it right away, but it's better if you wait a few turns. It isn't meant to drop sooner because of starting with 0 counters, it's just meant to come online immediately when you do it. This means you could play pretty much whatever you want for the first 6 turns and then drop both on turn 7 for smooth sailing after that. It shouldn't take many turns to drain out your opponent so you can spend your first turns doing other things. You could also play the Oil without Solemnity to give yourself time to wind it down if that's better, and just discard Solemnity if you don't need it. Chances are pretty good your opponent's deck will include Energy, Positive, or Negative counters in some way, so it still can be relevant. If it doesn't work it can just be boarded. Perhaps it makes more sense to use it in the sideboard instead, not sure, but coming in with the surprise on turn 7 is the main strategy with that combo and spending the first 6 turns killing things and putting Faith/Orrery down.

Either way, its just another option when building around the combo. I still prefer the green version since it has fewer picky situations and I've been able to play it for a while now on MTGO and it works. The Courier is cool for red, and it has the most options for cheap burn and spot removal so that definitely works too and probably has the best chances to win the early game. It's unfortunate that white lost Stasis Snare and the new cards cost 4. It certainly feels slower and has fewer secondary win conditions, but still fun to mess around with.

Pretty sure it does, here's what I had to go on.

From Gatherer:

"Solemnity stops counters from being put on an artifact, creature, enchantment, or land as it enters the battlefield, as well as stopping counters from being put on them later."

The counters do not exist until you play Oil so if Solemnity is already on the board you can't put counters on it. The action by the player is to put/place/add counters which Solemnity specifically prevents. There are no cards that already have counters on them while they are in your hand and the only type of counters that exist outside of the game are Suspended cards with time counters on them.

"Counters can be put on cards that aren't on the battlefield. Notably, suspended cards will still get time counters."

There's also dozens of articles about brewing with Solemnity and they include cards like Dark Depths and Thing in the Ice  ^Flip to automatically get the bonus of having 0 counters, and stopping cards like Walking Ballista, Engineered Explosives and Ratchet Bomb from entering with counters to completely shut them down.

All of those cards are worded the same way as Oil by "entering the battlefield with [X] [type] counters" on them.

I've got the black/white version almost figured out. I started playing with it yesterday and it seems pretty good. I'm impressed that each color combination has a viable way to build around the combo, it's pretty sweet.

Btw I like how you cleaned up the description, looks like you're having some fun with this ;)

Actually I'm looking at going with a bit of a reanimator angle using mostly creatures that have either Embalm or Eternalize to be able to replay from the graveyard.

The big "trick" of enabling the Faith/Oil almost immediately is with Solemnity so that when you play the Oil it comes in with 0 counters already. Then you can just play cheap Embalm creatures as needed or sink mana into Faith. I do like the Conquistador for the very reason you stated and it's on the list for sure.

Usually white decks that use Solemnity at all have it in the sideboard to stop Energy and +1/+1 counter decks, but I can run it in the main as a huge enabler of my combo while also shutting down those decks from the get-go.

I think it has some potential for sure, I'm about to look into my options right now and see what turns out. I already have at least 70% of the deck worked out in my head though, it just needs some glue to hold it together :)

I hadn't looked at it that way, but Hour of Promise does come with 4 power and 4 toughness over two creatures and it gets me the Desert lineup I'd need to recycle my land for either more tokens or repeatable pump. All of that along with the main combo requires a pretty big mana pool so even a 5 cost ramp card has value. I look at it more as a token generator and combo enabler than just a ramp spell, but even as a ramp spell it makes sure I have plenty of mana to maximize the triggers from Faith of the Devoted and now the Sniper. I put one Archfiend back in because it does work very well as a one sided sweeper in place of the fourth HoP. I can add more back in through the sideboard.

Maybe I don't need it at all and 2 or 3 Archfiends in the main along with the Compass and another land or two is enough to make sure that I hit a drop every turn. The Orrery already allows me to play more than one per turn, perhaps I've got too much ramp. Dunno, but playing this on MTGO as it is (or was prior to the Sniper) I felt very consistent and did what I needed to, just sometimes not quite fast enough due to lack of blockers early and taking too much damage. The smaller creature drop should help that as a nice chumper that can also pick off other small creatures or weaken bigger ones.

Still playing around, this combo is uncharted territory as there are literally no other references to borrow data from. I'm really liking it though and I feel like it's very close to where it needs to be.

I can probably cut down the amount of land to 24 or 25 to make room as well. I would move the Archfiends to the side board and have 3 snipers and 2 keys, maybe 3 and 3 or 4 and 2. Through testing there is not much going on during the first few turns so I can get behind these changes for sure.

I also like that it might draw early removal and tie up mana and turns from the opponent. I'll play around with it when I get home.

The Sniper isn't a bad idea and it has synergy with the Spider much earlier than the Archfiend, especially if Faith isn't online yet.

I might have to try that out.

Actually in red theres a God for this: Hazoret the Fervent.

He likes to discard on purpose for damage and always having hands of 2 cards and discarding to him and eventually the Oil means you'll be dealing plenty of damage every turn.

The Orrery isn't right for this build but I love it with Green. I think Hazoret could be really nice here though. You could start the turn with barely any cards, attack with Hazoret and whatever else, then pop the Courier to discard for some triggers and replace cards in your hand to discard what's left and cause more triggers.

Yeah, never thought I'd miss SOI and EMN so much, especially those commons and uncommons :)

Fair point on Reunion being a bad draw with Oil and not enough cards to discard. Thats where I'd say Voice is better, but there really isn't a better draw option in either color specifically.

That's why I went with Ghirapur Orrery because you start each turn with 5 total cards with that, your draw, and the extra card from Oil. Then you do have the fuel to use Reunion and if you have the mana you get two discard triggers from Reunion, draw three, then discard to 0 for another 5 triggers. That's 7 total triggers in one shot after going into the turn with 0 cards.

Keep playing with it, I'm sure you'll land on the right mix :)

Can it be done with black and white? Then you'd have access to some of the best removal, wipes, and exile in Standard. Would become more of a midrange control deck so speed is not very likely, but seems like getting to the late game and pulling off the combo might just be easier. Maybe I'll see what I can come up with over the weekend for another possible build. That last thought got me thinking.

I suppose it depends. Compared to the Gate, it's just as useful but in a different way and has a nice back up with enhanced milling potential.

The whole reason to have any other artifact besides Gift is to protect you from dying if they are all too deep in your deck when you use Madcap. If you didn't, you would hit Gift 100% of the time, but likely take a lot more damage in the process which could kill you before you turn around and kill them. To cushion yourself you need to add a few more targets just in case and minimize the damage you take. The Gearhulks will trigger when you hit them and either give you three cards or mill three cards which helps in both cases. It may mill a Swallower for you, or just any 3 cards and deal anywhere between 0 (3 lands) to 21 (3 Swallowers and/or Gifts). This can, but won't likely be, lethal. Drawing 3 cards will likely give you ways to keep searching for the combo. Win win.

So that's slightly off all-in but still moves forward if you "miss". 7 seems to be the right number of artifacts to make sure you avoid killing yourself, so the question is do you just run a third Gearhulk, or do you give yourself another "out"? Having 8 or more targets meant missing the primary target way too often, so the last card needs to have some other value.

Gift has mixed performance, usually underwhelming with its activation cost. It's not terrible, but it's definitely the weakest target. Amulet won't immediately change the game either, but it's spell discount means you can cast nearly twice as many spells per turn since most of them cost 2 or 3. Flipping it means you get double duty from your spells, most notably Compelling Argument. By now you should have your Sanity out so getting a double cast of Argument will mill 10 cards and then another 10 at end of turn. If you cast another one that becomes 30. It's not the main strategy of turbo milling with the fish, but its still quite a lot of cards.

For that reason I feel it does help you stabilize and accellerates your ability to finish if you miss your Gift. You probably won't get a second or maybe third chance to hit Gift depending on your life total, so you'll need to ensure you drop lands every turn and get to 7 mana to hard cast it if possible, or make sure one if the other strategies gets online.

The other possibility is that you have to hard cast the Amulet on turn 4 and try to recover and the discount on turn 5 and beyond will help get there. In casual play you may be allowed to Milligan until you get a decent hand, but when you lose a card every time you shuffle and redraw you have to be prepared to take a different path. I believe that all of these paths lead you the same direction even though one may be more scenic than the other.

I hope that explains it, I do think the Amulet will be the best current Standard fit until we see what Rivals of Ixalan has to offer.

The Fiend is definitely slower if you aren't ramping so I agree there.

In red I'd strongly recommend Cathartic Reunion and/or Tormenting Voice to net card draw while triggering discard at the same time.

You know what, that's a good point lol.

I don't often seek the assistance of Planeswalkers when deck building because I always aim for the budget build first and then if it really works and is fun to play I'll invest in the walkers if they help.

I think this is still one of those cases where it's probably the right move but I'm not ready to invest. Definitely putting it on the maybeboard so I don't forget. Good call :)