Dreadhorde Arcanist

Creature — Zombie Wizard

Trample

Whenever Dreadhorde Arcanist attacks, you may cast target instant or sorcery card with converted mana cost less than or equal to Dreahorde Arcanist's power from your graveyard without paying its mana cost. If that card would be put into your graveyard this turn, exile it instead.

Discussion (51)

lagotripha on Creepy Laboratory for Creepy Scientists

1 day ago

This is interesting- as a first forray into modern it doesn't look like the worst I've seen.

I really reccomend taking a 'true' $30 budget deck or borrowing a deck to play FNM- there isn't much point building something if everyone is running a counter to that deck. Metagame matters.

Second, deckbuilding strategy. Modern decks have a 15 card sideboard- so you aren't picking 60 cards but rather 75 cards, chosen to meet whatever your metagame is.

Delver is a tempo deck- the strategy is pretty simple, put a clock on the board, protect it with counterspells/removal, then finish with lightning bolts to the face. This means that your spells are trying to trade 1-for-1 and stall your opponent, creatures are trying to benifit from that process and finish the game quick.

For budget, I'd consider sticking to two colours unless you already have fetches. Cutting blood crypt/watery grave/swamp will make your deck much, much more reliable, while the black cards have enough options in just U/R.

Seasoned Pyromancer and Bedlam Reveler are used because they refill your hand- giving a lot more reach and allowing it to fight out of topdeck mode. 'Draw two' or 'draw three' is really good. You will want to run reveler, as budget puts Snapcaster Mage out of the running, making the 'cheap' two for ones that power the deck less of a thing. Dreadhorde Arcanist offers an option to double up lightning bolts the way snappy does, if you are prepared to play at sorcery speed.

As for creatures, I'd either cut the number and focus exclusively on spell synergy ( Sage of Epityr / Thunderous Wrath , for example) or Adeliz, the Cinder Wind / Naru Meha, Master Wizard tribal synergies.

For budget, tribal or other synergy options get you the same 'power' as expensive cards in return for being a little more vulnerable to dusruption (something wizards can play around with counterspells).

DragonzBane on Delver of Tempo

5 days ago

Hello Molesto-the-Egregious! Currently fetches and shocks are a bit expensive for the budget, unfortunately. But would absolutely be an upgrade. Lava Spike is not added as a replacement for Faithless Looting (RIP), but Skewer the Critics doesn't work with Dreadhorde Arcanist so it's a no go. That's the same reason for Psionic Blast and Risk Factor . Thanks for the suggestions!

Angrath_the_flame_chained on Mardu Death's Shadow

2 weeks ago

I really like this one. I have a similar Mardu Shadow although I run things a bit differently.

I run a playset of Dreadhorde Arcanist and a single copy of Giver of Runes that I can tutor it with Ranger-Captain of Eos which is great. I run Lightning Bolt and Dismember instead of full playsets of Tidehollow Sculler and Path to Exile so I can lower my life total and not rely on white to heavily. I have the Hex Parasite 's on the sideboard. I use Spellskite instead for extra protection along with a couple of Seasoned Pyromancer 's for card advantage.

Snowmen1 on Replacing Looting in Mardu Pyro

2 weeks ago

Its going to be hard to find a replacement for looting and I hope that they print something that pyro can use. One thing is for sure, I think a lot of people are falling for thinking that they have to put stuff in their graveyard at any cost. I dont really see that as being worth it to play Stitcher's Supplier just to be able to cast Lingering Souls from the graveyard. The idea behind mardi pyromancer is to get value and card advantage through effects like Faithless Looting , and thought looting is not in the format anymore and there is nothing nearly as efficient, you still have a lot of ways to still get value through powerful spells that make you discard cards. For now you have some other good options. You have Lightning Axe as potentially better removal than Fatal Push , and Collective Brutality or discard like Mind Rake . Those dont net you card advantage really, but it can get you value off of those good cards. To get value you have other options like Sarkhan, Fireblood and Nahiri, the Harbinger maybe paired with emrakul, and you could also try Rotting Regisaur . I dont see all of these options as the best really, but I can see the deck functioning reasonably well by playing discard and spot removal in the first turns of the game, and then playing a Seasoned Pyromancer or a Sarkhan, Fireblood to seal the game out and get value with a turn 3 discard and draw. I dont know though, that may be clunky having a lot of spells you just really cant cast until the third or fourth turns of the game. but then again, you can also discard them early. I dont know. It looks hard and pyro would have to change drastically, but I think it could be a very reasonable deck. If you want to try it you could also go the route of using the goryos + obzidat combo that you see in esper sometimes that may be cool. That seems good in a slower deck. You could also pivot into a deck that doesnt rely on looting effects as much too. I have a midrange deck built around Dark Confidant and Dreadhorde Arcanist where you just get value by casting your cards naturally and recasting them, it doesn't cycle through as many spells like pyro used to, but it is a deck that I've had people mistake for pyro a lot and it is fun to play with. Thinking about it you could also play a pox type game and play Smallpox and Liliana of the Veil . With all of this later and more mana imtensive discard you could also play more free or cheap graveyard value cards such as Squee, Goblin Nabob or Bloodghast . Who knows, theres a lot of directions you could go, decks may even just use the newly unbanned Stoneforge Mystic . Anyways, I think the deck has a chance post-ban, but I think it has potential to be a reasonable deck like it used to be. I hope at least some of the cards I threw out may help to make a reasonable deck, and I wish you luck in remaking the deck. All the best.

jordanalessi on Zada Storm

3 weeks ago

Dreadhorde Arcanist

Caerwyn on Will WOTS find any foothold?

4 weeks ago

I would say War of the Spark has made quite the splash, with a large number of its cards making the top 60 most played nonland cards in the non-Standard formats. From MTGTop8:

Narset, Parter of Veils is the 17th most played nonland card in Vintage, the 23rd most played in Legacy, and the 31st most played card in Modern.

Karn, the Great Creator is the 29th most played nonland card in Vintage, the 51st most played in Legacy and the 13th most played in Modern

Dreadhorde Arcanist is the 15th most played nonland card in Legacy

Liliana's Triumph is the 44th most played nonland card in Legacy.

Teferi, Time Raveler is the 52nd most played nonland card in Legacy and the 11th most played in Modern.

Finale of Promise is the 30th most played nonland card in Modern.

hankhill on Feather Spellslinger

4 weeks ago

awesome deck, great use of Dreadhorde Arcanist

Snowmen1 on Dreadhorde Arcanist Deck

1 month ago

Hey thanks for the comment TitaniumChopstick. If you look at the decklist I linked you will see that the deck I have constructed is a jund style deck that involves powerful one for one removal to disable the my opponents while playing powerful creatures such as Dark Confidant and the new card, Dreadhorde Arcanist , to generate value and win the game. the main use of Dreadhorde Arcanist is to flashback powerful one cmc spells, which is why the deck is in rakdos colors as it has some of the best like Thoughtseize , Inquisition of Kozilek , Lightning Bolt , Fatal Push , Unearth , and Surgical Extraction . Since the deck is mostly cmc one cards that are powerful to play, the deck has no discard outlets and plans to simply cast the spells to put them into the graveyard for Dreadhorde Arcanist to reuse. While the deck is mostly cmc 1 spells, there are a few 2 amd 3 cmc cards like Kolaghan's Command and Collective Brutality which cant be flashed back with Dreadhorde Arcanist on its own. The deck mostly runs higher cmc spells because of their sheer power, but utilizing other multifunctional cards such Funeral Charm and Sword of Light and Shadow , you can pump Dreadhorde Arcanist and allow the option of flashing these spells back as well. While these cards are used to flash back these powerful spells, it is pretty easy to see that these cards are also individually powerful, and are not only in the deck for the purpose of increasing Dreadhorde Arcanist 's power. It is in a deck like this that I think Dreadhorde Arcanist is most powerful, and Id like to know your thoughts on the build.

As an update for everyone else who saw this thread before, I took out one Fatal Push and my one-of Slaughter Pact in favor of two Flame Slash , and I also took the two Shadowfeed out of the 75 altogether in favor of playing Collective Brutality . I may also find room for an additional Collective Brutality in the mainboard.

I added flame slash because I found that the deck still has a problem with removing big creatures. A creature four or more toughness is actually very hard to deal with, and if that creature also has a high converted mana cost, there is almost nothing that the deck can do. Additionally, with Dreadhorde Arcanist , casting and then immediatly flashing Flame Slash back increases the range of damage the deck can do to a creature with one spell from six, with Lightning Bolt , to eight. This gives the deck more of a fighting chance against a Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis , which the deck could deal with previously, but only as long as Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis did not enter the battlefield before being in the graveyard for it can be hit with Surgical Extraction .

I added Collective Brutality for the sole purpose of combating burn. Once testing against burn, I found that Shadowfeed did little to nothing against it. While I found the card to actually be very useful in graveyard matchups, the main purpose of the card was to deal with burn, so I cut and looked for a better card. Rakdos does not really have much in the way of lifegain, and most burn hate that could be feasably played would be artifacts such as Dragon's Claw and Sun Droplet . I think I would run dragons claw since it can allow the deck to gain more life than it loses, especially with Dreadhorde Arcanist allowing for you to cast red cards twice, but burn has a lot of ways to deal with artifacts, and I feel that a Dragon's Claw would quickly get destroyed by a Smash to Smithereens or Destructive Revelry . Though I can see reason to run Dragon's Claw or another artifact to deal with burn, I opted to play Collective Brutality because it allows me to discard two additional cards and use all of its modes to disable burn more efficiently. Additionally, while dragons claw is only really good against burn, Collective Brutality can be used against Storm decks, and also helps to solve wrong half problems that interractive midrange decks often face.

I will make an update to the decklist shortly.