Drown in the Loch
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Drown in the Loch

Instant

Choose one —

  • Counter target spell with converted mana cost less/mana value than or equal to the number of cards in its controller's graveyard.
  • Destroy target creature with converted mana cost/mana value less than or equal to the number of cards in its controller's graveyard.

Icbrgr on Dimir Undoing

3 weeks ago

Any reason for not running some number of Drown in the Loch?

Overall I think this looks pretty cool! Part of me wants to say Mission Briefing would be good in here too.

nbarry223 on Shifty Crabs!

1 month ago

Well, if you were going a third color, the obvious choice is . Drown in the Loch is so powerful in a mill deck as a denial card, as it can counter a threat or be removal, and it scales, all for 2 mana. also has a lot of gravehate options, many of which gain life, so they help against both aggro and graveyard oriented decks, which may help to free up some slots in the sideboard, by consolidating your hate a bit.

Jace, the Perfected Mind is also a pretty powerful potential tool if able to be enabled, main enabler is usually Archive Trap (would suggest Field of Ruin if you went that route). Tasha's Hideous Laughter is another option if just going for the mill since most modern decks are very low curves.

I'm also a little surprised you don't have much in the way of gravehate in your sideboard. What do you do against decks where your mill strategy enables them? Bojuka Bog and Grafdigger's Cage just seem suboptimal. If removing threats already in the graveyard, I'd consider something like Surgical Extraction or Ashiok, Dream Render. If doing something preventative, replacement effects are the way to go instead of narrow denial strategies like Grafdigger's Cage since a lot of strategies like Living End get around it. Dauthi Voidwalker or Rest in Peace are the two main cards that come to mind. Honestly though, I think your best option in your current colors is Relic of Progenitus, since it lets you slowly chip away at graveyard strategies or is a cantrip that can be used in response to their graveyard strategy.

legendofa on Viability of Elesh Norn, Mother …

1 month ago

My first thought was some sort of blink value deck, like the current Death and Taxes with Skyclave Apparition and Solitude, but the five mana does make it hard to work around. I think it's going to be potentially powerful in Limited, a strong build-around in Standard, Commander, and casual Modern, and maybe top a fringe-competitive Pioneer control/value deck (I'm not up to date on Pioneer).

As far as removal, Bx still has stuff like Terminate and Drown in the Loch, there's the usual array of Counterspell and friends, and Supreme Verdict and other board wipes wander in once in a while. If a 5-mana 7-toughness creature with no way to immediately protect itself becomes dominant, there will be answers.

wallisface on Blue/black mill

1 month ago

Some thoughts:

  • It looks like you're currently trying to do 3 different things here: mill your opponent out, combo-off, and deal them 20 damage. This is just going to weaken your overall gameplan because whichever way to try to win, only half of the cards you draw are going to help with that. I would suggest you reorganize the deck to be entirely-focused on the mill plan, entirely focused on the Duskmantle Guildmage combo, or entirely focused on the beatdown plan.

If you're wanting to build a Mill Deck:

  • There are no creatures at all worth running except for Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab. Nothing else is even remotely worth the effort of running, because nothing else really helps with the goal of milling your opponent.

  • Also something to be aware of, is that you need any card that is milling to get at least 8 cards from your opponents deck (try to compare mill spells as burn spell, except you need to do 53 damage instead of 20 - so the same way that burn can never justify running Shock, mill can never justify running Tome Scour). Any less than this, and you just end up empty-handed with your opponent still alive. So I would suggest ditching Mind Grind, Tome Scour, Traumatize, both the planeswalkers, and your artifacts. I would also say to get rid of Fraying Sanity because that card is just bad. Instead look to add things like Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony and Archive Trap.

  • You'll want a decent amount of interaction in the form of Surgical Extraction and Fatal Push, as well as Drown in the Loch. Crypt Incursion is also great to keep yourself alive longer

  • An example deck of how this looks here

If you're wanting to build a Combo Deck:

  • you'll want to up your copies of Mindcrank to a full playset. You also want ways to fetch both your combo pieces in the way of cards like Dimir Infiltrator and Muddle the Mixture, as well as draw spells like Consider or Serum Visions.

  • Duskmantle Guildmage is the only real creature you need to run, though its worth also considering Spellskite as a way to protect your combo pieces, and Vendilion Clique as either a way to fix your own hand, or mess with your opponents.

  • Your other cards should mainly be focused on ensuring your opponent can't disrupt what you're doing. Spell Pierce and Counterspell will be great here, as well as proactive cards like Inquisition of Kozilek. Because you only really want to slow your opponent down, stuff like Vapor Snag can be decent too (note this card can also start the combo triggering once you have the pieces in play).

  • A budget dechtech example with description, list & video this deck here

If you're wanting to build a Creature-beatdown Deck:

  • You probably don't want to be doing much milling at all, or at least you don't want to be running any cards that only mill. The most practical route to go down is probably using Rogues, with cards like Thieves' Guild Enforcer and Soaring Thought-Thief.

  • A budget dechtech example with description, list & video this deck here

zapyourtumor on Grixis Arcanist!

2 months ago

Personally I think Mission Briefing is probably too slow for this type of deck.

Lack of Fatal Push is a little weird.

Persist is so, so much worse than both Claim and Unearth since all your creatures are 2 or less cmc. I really don't think you need 9 reanimation spells either, so I'd definitely cut this one at the very least.

I highly recommend 4 Dragon's Rage Channeler for another playset of aggressive 3 power one-drop flyers.

Since Delver is more of a tempo deck, Stitcher's Supplier kind of stands out as a card that doesn't do too much. I'd probably cut it.

I see you already have Ledger Shredder in the maybeboard, I'd definitely slot at least 2 in the mainboard that card is crazy strong in this type of deck.

I prefer Consider over Thought Scour since it lets you filter a bit and you don't need to turbo fill your graveyard with Scour since Jace will be flipped easily anyways.

Expressive Iteration is a really powerful card advantage spell, also pretty cheap.

1-2 Spell Pierce is pretty strong in the current meta as well.

Drown in the Loch is a good counterspell/removal spell.

zapyourtumor on Murky Waters

2 months ago

Card Suggestions Show

I think the main decision you have to make with this deck is whether you want it to be a true control deck or a tempo deck. A true control deck would try to trade one for one and build card advantage before dropping a threat like Murktide or Jace or simply winning with Snappy beatdown. A tempo deck on the other hand would try to turbo out a quick Murktide and then protect that threat.

Mixing control and tempo is nothing new, and it sometimes works quite well. But because a lot of the cards from each type of deck don't necessarily go well together, you can sometimes end up in an awkward situation.

Here, you definitely have a mix of both types (which, I'd like to emphasize, is not necessarily bad). Archmage's Charm, Counterspell, Cryptic Command, Snapcaster Mage, Devastation Tide and Jace, the Mind Sculptor are all heavily control-flavored cards in your deck. They all either break even or generate card advantage, or massively stall out the game.

On the other hand, Force of Negation, Otherworldly Gaze, Thought Scour, Spell Pierce, and Subtlety are all tempo-flavored cards.

The problem with this combination in this deck is that half of your cards aim to turbo out a Murktide Regent as fast as possible with Otherworldly Gaze and Thought Scour and then protect it in the short term with cheap spells like Dismember, Force of Negation, Subtlety, and Spell Pierce. The main problems with these cards is that they are pretty terrible topdecks late game. Scour isn't too bad because it cantrips, but topdecking a Gaze when you really needed a counterspell or card advantage engine or a Murktide would probably feel terrible. And all the control-type cards aim to reach that stage of the game.

One example of a problem that arises when you try and combine these two archetypes is in the manabase. Tempo decks typically don't need many lands; depending on the deck's mana curve, we are generally looking at 19-20 lands, and occasionally even 18 or less. On the other hand, control decks almost always want at least 22-23 lands, sometimes up to 24-26 lands in order to reliably play their more expensive spells on curve like Archmage's Charm, Cryptic Command and Snapcaster Mage, and to also always have mana held up during their opponents turn for a reactive spell.

Of course, many cards fit very flexibly into both tempo and control decks, for example Counterspell is just so strong it works in both, while Consider being a cheap cantrip also fits into both types. So in my opinion one of the most important decisions you should make, if you want to make the deck more cohesive and just function smoother as a whole, is whether you want to lean more towards tempo or control.

Quick disclaimer: I think it is definitely possible to make the deck more competitive while keeping both tempo and control aspects; however you should probably then trim both the very slow control-leaning cards (Cryptic Command, Devastation Tide, Jace, the Mind Sculptor), and the cheap tempo-leaning cards (Otherworldly Gaze, Thought Scour, Force of Negation) and replace them with cards more towards the middle ground. The rest of the cards, like Archmage's Charm, Subtlety, Force of Negation, Spell Pierce, Dismember, and of course Murktide Regent are all flexible enough that they can slot into both types of decks.

The second important decision to make is what secondary color, if any, you want for your deck in order to complement the primary color (blue). The main issue with mono blue control is that you have very few ways to deal with resolved permanents, which is why most players typically splash white or black (or occasionally red). Blue only has access to bounce spells, which are decent in tempo decks but generally bad in control decks because they are card disadvantage (and also terrible late).

Here, I see you kind of "splashed" black, but your only maindeck spell with black pips uses phyrexian mana anyways, while the only black spell in your sideboard can be casted with only blue mana. In my opinion, since you already have black lands, I would commit fully to a UB manabase by including a few more fetches (U fetches since that's your main color) because it gives you access to a lot of strong options:

Drown in the Loch is a really good spell doubling as both removal and countermagic at only 2 cmc, and only gets stronger as the game goes on. Fatal Push is another great removal spell which is generally stronger than Dismember, although it needs at least around 7 fetches to show its full potential. You can also run discard like Inquisition of Kozilek, although that is more tempo/midrange-esque so it may not be a great fit for this deck. Black also gives you an actual boardwipe in the form of Damnation, which is definitely a lot stronger than something like Devastation Tide since it gets rid of the creatures permanently and indirectly generates CA by trading with multiple enemy creature cards. It also doesn't hit Jace. If you don't think you need it in the mainboard, it can be a great sideboard inclusion. Lastly you have access to some sideboard options like Unmoored Ego.

If all of the blue pip spells like Counterspell and Archmage's Charm have you worried about mana fixing issues, you can run the filter land Sunken Ruins which is great in these types of decks to ensure you can cast both BB and UUU spells.

Those two main points aside, I have a few other card suggestions I think could work well here, some of which lean more control and some which lean more tempo.

Ledger Shredder is a great card which leans a bit more towards tempo but unlike Gaze/Thought Scour it helps turbo out a Murktide while also growing into a significant threat itself.

Aether Gust and Mystical Dispute are decent color-specific sideboard cards.

Remand is a tempo-leaning card that is generally not great in pure control lists, but could be good here if you decide to stick to the turbo murktide strategy.

Spreading Seas is probably the best sideboard option mono-blue has against Urza's Saga.

Memory Deluge has a bit of antisynergy with Murktide, but a very good digging spell if you decide to go towards control.

Orvar, the All-Form is another great sideboard card which instantly turns the tables on any Creativity player thinking they auto won the game after cheating out an early Archon of Cruelty.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading all of my comments. I like the deck and I'm excited to see where you can take it in the future. Happy brewing!

wallisface on Grixis wincons viability

2 months ago

I think you're going about this a bit wrong. Grixis decks typcically don't want to be winning by any kind of big flashy-combos, or high-mana-cards. Their gameplan is typically to grind away any kind of proactive play from the opponent, and then quickly edge-out a win before the opponent can recoup from all that early-game disruption.

To that end, iconic Grixis spells include Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, Counterspell, Spell Pierce, and Stubborn Denial, as well as occasionally some stuff like Drown in the Loch, Expressive Iteration, and Unholy Heat. Their creatures are often cards that can hit hard fast, or come with free value - things like Death's Shadow, Snapcaster Mage, Dragon's Rage Channeler, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Gurmag Angler, Ledger Shredder, and occasionally things like Tasigur, the Golden Fang or Murktide Regent.

So, their gameplan is typically a very straightforward one - every one of their cards provides value on its own, everything is fairly low-mana-curve, and the overall goal is to quickly disrupt your opponents ability to play, and then kill them before they recover.

In terms of the cards you've suggested, I would say they don't really fit into any kind of typical Grixis shell, for the following reasons:

  • Cormela, Glamour Thief is a very high-costing card with very low relative value for that mana-investment. Same goes for Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God.

  • Grapeshot is a combo card and something better having a deck dedicated towards making it work. Instead of trying to do value-plays, you try and combo off asap. This archetype already exists in Modern as Storm, so has no real home/reason-to-exist outside of that. Similarly, as Grixis isn't trying to do any flashy combos, Manamorphose & Dramatic Reversal have super-limited/non-existant use.

  • Lazav, the Multifarious doesn't really do anything or add anything important to be worth building around, imo. Grixis decks especially often have a super-low creature count, which makes its ability pretty niche. Maybe it's a "pet card" that could fit as a 1-of in a death's shadow brew?

  • Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger is a fine card to include in Grixis decks, as many decks already run this (though often as only a 1-of or 2-of at most) - it definately requires some deckbuilding considerations to include it though. I think Ob Nixilis, the Adversary could potentially fit within a Grixis shell, though Grixis decks do often run a very small quantity of creatures, and this may pose a problem.

Now, most of these cards you can still easily build decks around, though I would say you generally don't want to be trying to fit them into typical "Grixis" builds. Some of these cards fit a lot better in UR combo decks (Grapeshot, Manamorphose) for example. I would say that all the cards you've mentioned will have some home within modern, baring only Cormela, Glamour Thief (the card is trash) and Dramatic Reversal (there's just better ways to achieve anything this card is trying to achieve).

Ammonzy on 8 Crab Mill

3 months ago

Check out my decklist. Its pretty much what most tournament-winning mill decks run. The only exception is I believe in the power of Mesmeric Orb more than others, but I think the constant value outweighs moving those 3 slots into other cards. The ultimate tip a mill player can embrace is to always focus on milling and not get distracted by too many other game elements.

Im experimenting with Founding the Third Path however it works well with Mesmeric Orb's self-milling, hitting copies of Tasha's Hideous Laughter or Fractured Sanity that hit your graveyard. At worst, you hit a Fatal Push, Drown in the Loch or Visions of Beyond

Bruvac the Grandiloquent is not modern legal. The closest effect we have to that in modern is Fraying Sanity.

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/05-09-20-ub-mill/

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