kamarupa Deckspert

Thanks a bunch, Kyln! As it stands now, there isn't any spell in this deck that can stop a Terminus. However, I would say that, in general, it's best to wait to cast Life and Limb or Sylvan Awakening until all the combo parts are in hand. In the case of Terminus, casting a Sylvan Awakening with a Throne of the God-Pharaoh down will deal opponents a decent chunk of damage. In the same turn, a Harvest Season will double the lands, but those lands won't be creatures. Since Terminus is a sorcery, an opponent planning on using it against this deck will have to wait until after the Throne deals them damage and after my lands have been doubled. If they do cast Terminus on their next turn, they'll only get half the lands, which would then allow me to cast a Life and Limb on the next turn, provided I have one in hand.

If I were concerned with fending off Terminus, I'd probably add something like Judge's Familiar, Mana Tithe or Restoration Angel to the sideboard. I can't recall any mass flicker spells off hand, but that would be a great way to thwart Terminus, provided it was White or Green. Obviously, I could splash blue for a Negate or something.

It would be an interesting experiment to see if I could make a "competitive deck" according to TappedOut that was actually unplayable. It's a fun tool, but I do think many people put too much stock into it.

Yes, that is exactly what I mean by "fork." I'm not particularly familiar with 'Taxes' staples beyond being aware of the archetype. I definitely think you should include Crypt Ghast in your Extort/Taxes fork - the mana it will help generate will be really useful. Liliana of the Dark Realms pairs very well with it, so that might be something you'll want to consider as well. Beyond that, I'd just google or search here for Taxes decks and look at what people are playing. You'll have to decide which format you want to build in. I almost singularly build Modern, but you might prefer a Legacy Taxes build - I believe the archetype is pretty old and started with Legacy cards.

Glad to help. Happy brewing!

Arbor Elf+Utopia Sprawl or Fertile Ground generates quite a lot of mana. If you run enough Elves, Elvish Archdruid generates a ton of mana, too. Oran-Rief, the Vastwood might be cool if you have a lot of creatures entering the battlefield in the same turn.

Throne of the God-Pharaoh is pretty cool with land creatures. Check out my modern deck, Throne of Thorns for some other potentially relevant spells!

Hey Hey! Thanks a bunch for the +1's, FullmetalWes & Liquidbeaver!!

I think as it stands now, you're likely to be able to compete at some level, with some matchups being better than others. You're going to suffer a bit against aggro decks that come out swinging - upgrades to your 1CMC discard spells such Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize would help increase your competitiveness - that's pretty much true across the board- the more money you spend, the more competitive your deck is likely to be. That said, I also think that competitiveness is a bit of a misnomer in Magic. I'm pretty sure the TappedOut competitiveness meter just looks at your decklist and gives you a rating based on how many of your cards are played in Tier 1 decks - so basically - the more expensive your deck is, the more likely it will be "competitive." But I don't think that's the whole story. Competitiveness is relative to what you're playing against. While there are many budget decks that can kill Tier 1 decks, they aren't necessarily as broadly or even specifically capable of taking down any and all Tier 1 decks. Now if you consider all possible decks outside Tier 1, competitiveness is a lot harder to clearly define.

I like to build forks of decks here on TappedOut. Consider as you move forward, instead of continuing to make changes to this build, instead making a new deck, building it back up from scratch while focusing on a variation of strategy. For example, you could try a build that swapped out your discard spells for creature removal. The advantage of making forks on TappedOut is that you can compare the builds against each other. I also find it helpful as a means to reconsider a deck's strategy - sometimes it seems like there just isn't enough room to do everything, but if I rebuild the deck, it can be easier to focus on one specific strategy, and then see how it shapes up if I take it in slightly different directions.

Looks good! I hope you playtest it a bunch here and continue to adjust the numbers of each spell based on that and actual games!

Long week at work! I'd say the most important cards are Unburial Rites and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur. After that, Dark Deal, Increasing Confusion and Traumatize seem pretty important, though I'd also say, that anything powerful enough to shift a lot of cards from your library to your graveyard seems pretty vital.

I suggest 4xUnburial Rites, 4xJin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, 4xDark Deal, 4xIncreasing Confusion, and 2xTraumatize. That's 18 cards, many at a very high CMC. Along with 24 lands (and I think you should include 1xReliquary Tower in that 24), that's 42 cards. With the remaining 18 slots, I'd suggest sticking to 1 CMC spells as much as possible. Blackmail & Duress will be very helpful. I think Dark Petition might be the exception there, as it will make the deck more consistent at the cost of being 1 turn slower. If you feel like you've got to include any other cards over 2 CMC, I suggest only adding 1x. No matter how great the synergy might seem, if it's not part of the main wincon, it's likely to be a dead card in your hand, or at best only slow down opponents. And while it's nice to slow opponents down, it's always better to have the advantage, forcing a win, than it is preventing opponents from putting the final nail in your coffin.

This is all based on the idea that you want to cheat Jin out of your graveyard. I think you have nearly a whole other deck in Taxes-type cards. I suggest you shift those "choose" cards into a new deck, this time without Jin or any graveyard shenanigans.

I'll try to respond in detail soon. I'm really busy with work this week.

I think if your main goal/plan is to Traumatize yourself, the more spells you can cast out of the graveyard, the better. I like to search for cards on TCGplayer.com because I find the advanced search tool to be easier to use than the one that Wizards of Coast offers (though sometimes the Wizards search can find cards that TCG can't - it's rare though). You can just add "flashback" to the description TCG's advanced search and then select Modern for Format and then click the colors you want to look at and it will bring up every card with flashback. Here's a link to that search, which shows there are 37 spells with flashback that are either White, Blue, Black or Colorless: https://shop.tcgplayer.com/magic/product/show?OracleText=flashback&RequiredFormat=modern&Color=White%2cBlue%2cBlack%2cColorless&Color_ExcludeUnselected=Exclusive

I don't find any non-basic mono-blue lands that I really like except Halimar Depths - it's okay, but not so amazing it's a must add. Choked Estuary looks great. Good choice!

Thanks for the +1, Pervrat!!

Thanks for the +1, JKRice!!

I'd say you've added nearly enough lands for blue & white mana. The biggest issue is definitely the double blue mana required for Traumatize. While it would be ideal to have 1 white mana to use with Unburial Rites, you won't necessarily need it provided you don't mill them all into your graveyard. Traumatize, on the other hand, must have not just 1, but 2 blue mana to be cast at all, so it's vital you get those 2 lands down. It would probably be good to have 10 lands that produce blue mana. However, I think 6 lands that produce white mana would be enough. Since you've decided to keep Traumatize and run Unburial Rites, I think you should drop Cabal Stronghold - it will take too long to to get 5 Swamps to make it worth tapping. You might replace them with Jwar Isle Refuge or the like - whatever's in your budget - BTW, if you don't already know, the deck, All the lands in a sorted list can be very useful when you're looking for non-basic lands. I think Small Pox is going to create some additional difficulties for you as you try to reach your critical mana point of 5+ lands. You can't afford to miss a single land-drop, so 23 lands is probably the minimum, I prefer to build decks around low-cmc spells so I typically run about 20 lands. That, of course, creates more room for spells in my decks. The point here is that, if you have to cast Traumatize and other 5CMC spells to get your deck swinging, you're going to lose space in the deck to lands. You'll want to strip away anything that is not absolutely phenomenal. It's probably also worth pointing out Glimpse the Unthinkable is a very powerful mill spell that could speed up your deck quite a bit. While it won't mill as many as Traumatize, it'll do it 3 turns sooner. It'll also cost you quite a bit more than Traumatize - perhaps that's why you're not already employing it.

It occurs to me, you may want to consider other spells with flashback such as Forbidden Alchemy and Increasing Confusion might be good ideas, too.

Dark Petition is fun, and can be pretty great, so long as you get to 5 lands to cast it. Your might also consider Dimir Machinations. You might also consider Crypt Ghast - while it's on the slow side of mana ramps, the combination of a big mana boost coupled with extort can be pretty effective.

Plains are super cheap and easy to come by. Something like 1-2xTemple of Enlightenment might be worth the pricetag. Since you don't need very much either blue or white mana, it would serve both purposes. You could go much cheaper, too, of course with lands like Sejiri Refuge, Coastal Tower or even Arcane Sanctum

Unburial Rites is as good or better than either of those because of the flashback opportunity (albeit, you're not running any white mana producing lands) Since you're not playing Zombies, Rise from the Grave isn't any better. The Eldest Reborn is run, but since it can be removed, it's less likely to be effective AND you'll have to wait all the way until T7 without missing a single land-drop to get the effect you're after, which slows you down by 2 turns. Since you're planning on milling yourself, you're going to want at least 4 spells that will bring a creature back, if not 6-8.

Thanks for the +1, McCoy506!!

So Stitch Together (and Timmerian Fiends aren't Modern legal. - So you'll have to decide whether you really want to go Modern or Legacy or budget/casual Legacy. If you go either of the Legacy routes, Diabolic Servitude is probably the card you're after. That or Exhume. However, if you're looking to to do a 'Buried Alive' in Modern sort of build, that's going to be a little more difficult. It won't be a very viable deck in Modern if you're only able to put high CMC creatures from your graveyard on top of your library (especially without a great mana ramp) - you're still sticking yourself with the mana cost, which really defeats the purpose of milling yourself out - there are plenty of tutor spells that can put a card into your hand for 5CMC or less (IE - Traumatize's cost). That is to say - there are more efficient means of putting a specific card in your hand. It's not that there aren't cards in Modern that can bring your creatures back from your graveyard to the battlefield, it's that their CMC is too high to make a good strategy in the format. You've just got to be faster. A few such spells, should you decide you want to explore your options: Immortal Servitude, Isareth the Awakener, Whisper, Blood Liturgist, Postmortem Lunge, Liliana, Death's Majesty, Gravedigger, Unburial Rites - there more - I'm sure you can figure out how to find some more.

Things that put stuff from your graveyard on top of your library are a dime a dozen - Mortuary Mire, for example, is cheap to buy for a reason. You need to be very specific about what you want your deck to do. It's easy to think you can do more than there's room for.

I feel obligated to let you know that what brought me to your deck is that this is one of the only Modern decks on Tappedout with painful quandry - a spell that is tantalizing in power and downright sour in CMC. There are so many cards like it in black, especially, and I'm particularly keen to see any deck that attempts to play them. I think there's no way around ramping into such high CMC spells and still expect to hit a wincon within Modern's turn/time-frame. Since there's almost no ramp in black and not in blue either, the best ramp option in is to run green. I'm not advocating for green here, only pointing out that it might be necessary, depending on what you want to to do. Keep in mind - I don't play control decks - I don't like them because I think they're reactionary, and therefore prone to limitations in responding to threats are instant speed. Just my take.

Assassin's Trophy (Guilds of Ravnica)

How do you plan on getting things out of your graveyard, tho?

Land stuff: Needs Island? If no Islands, then maybe 1xCabal Stronghold. 1xScavenger Grounds, 1xBojuka Bog