Grief

Creature — Elemental Incarnation

Menace

When this enters the battlefield, target opponent reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card.

Evoke—Exile a black card from your hand. (You may cast this for its evoke cost. If you do, this is sacrificed when it enters the battlefield.)

Discussion (35)

rambunctiousOrator on Muldrotha, the PermaGrave

1 month ago

Yeah, let's talk about it!

• The Great Henge functions mainly in turning your creature into draw spells. This is vital! 30 creatures is a lot of creatures, and you don't have to work that hard to get value out of TGH. Your commander has 6 power, so this reduces the cost of TGH to 1GG as a base. This means the turn it comes out you are spending 1 mana for this. Would you put another Sol Ring in your deck? This synergizes with evoke creatures, as they will still ETB even if they immediately get sacrificed. A classic synergy here is Mulldrifter evoked + The Great Henge to draw 3 cards for 3.

• Hullbreaker Horror has flash, your goal is to play this on your opponents turns right before it swings to your turn. The spell can't be countered, and the goal here is to trigger the first ability as often as you can on your turn. Each trigger of HH solidifies your domination on the board, each trigger is someone's commander getting bounced for free, someone's Sol Ring getting bounced, etc. while playing cards you were already going to play. Every non land card is by definition a spell. This is especially good if you decide to go more into a reanimation route with cards like Animate Dead and The Scarab God. This is Cyclonic Rift attached to a creature, trust me.

• Archon of Cruelty is easily the best black creature printed in a long time. This card is worth playing on it's own, and the fact that your deck can recur this card from the graveyard is truly oppressive. I think the lie we tell ourselves is that we won't get to 8 mana, but really in most decks you get to 8 mana around turn 5 or 6. This card is oppressive, especially with reanimation or copy effects.

• Vendilion Clique is a control card, plain and simple. This card is another play-with-and-see how oppressive this feels. You aren't just cycling them, you are taking the best card out of their hand. In lieu of counter-spells, I think this is one of the best cards you can ask for in your deck. This is also a very rare hand attack spell with FLASH, meaning when your opponents resolves a Demonic Tutor you can hand attack them before they can do anything about it!

• The Scarab God absolutely doesn't need to go in zombie-tribal. This is one of the best reanimation spells ever printed, stapled to a creature. The scry and damage is incidental. Would I recommend this in your deck as-is? Probably not, I would recommend adding more reanimation targets like Hullbreaker Horror, Archon of Cruelty, Vendilion Clique.

Additionally, consider these cards for your deck:

• Shigeki, Jukai Visionary
• Eternal Witness
• Glasspool Mimic  ^Flip
• Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
• Solemn Simulacrum
• Mulldrifter
• Grief
• Subtlety
• Massacre Wurm
• Avenger of Zendikar
• Greater Good
• Nissa of Shadowed Boughs
• Tamiyo, Collector of Tales

Let me know your thoughts on these!

lagotripha on Need help rebuilding an old …

1 month ago

Over the last few years, modern has changed a lot, and the cards printed in MH2 have really pushed the game's power curve higher.

A lot of the budget brews I did 5 years ago are no longer viable, and even teir 1 decks need serious work-overs. There are options, but its important to look at how your local meta has changed rather than leaning too hard on generic advice.

The most important cards to get to grips with to know how the metagame has shifted;

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer - card advantage, ramp, it goes in every deck that can afford it, until wizards finally gets around to a banning.

Solitude,Grief and the rest of the cycle made flicker effects very good.

Expressive Iteration - its card advantage that is defining R/U

Counterspell has been printed into modern.

Prismatic Ending (and recently, March of Otherworldly Light) has replaced Path to Exile as it hits all nonland cards, making enchantress/noncreature combos more vulnerable.

Dauthi Voidwalker, which is killing graveyard interactions.

Mishra's Bauble is out there pretending to be Gitaxian Probe, making every deck 4 cards smaller or more when it can be cast from the graveyard (though less now Luurus is banned).

Triomes, fetches for multiple colours, treasures etc mean that there are a lot of '4-5 colour good stuff' type lists, or two colour decks just splashing for one card.

Hammer time is no longer a meme.

Crashing Footfalls/Living end got some incredible cascade/cycling cards, so have a plan for lots of creatures early.

'Competitive' B/R is mostly just jamming voidwalker, pilferer then thoughtsieze/lightning bolt.

All of that said, there are options.Black/Red has just got a glut of tokens, that point to artifact sacrifice or similar shenanigans - I've had fun messing around with Glaze Fiend/Slaughter-Priest of Mogis. I can't say its competitive, but its not completely out of the running.

Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar/The Underworld Cookbook. He offers removal, life gain graveyard synergy and card advantage.

Kalain, Reclusive Painter creature buffs, tokens and ramp.

Oni-Cult Anvil makes 1/1 artifact tokens and pings.

Rakdos Headliner points to more discard strategies, but doesn't yet have enough support cards.

Brew hard, and best of luck finding something that works for your modern group.

psionictemplar on why hasnt titan been banned

2 months ago

IndepenentMeta : While that it is true titan can come on turn 3 (t2 is possible on a 2x amulet draw), the number of cost efficient answers have also greatly increased. Unholy Heat and Solitude are two commonly seen ones, not to mention the possible ways to interact before titan could even hit play. (Ex:Thoughtseize/Grief).

There also has to be the consideration that at 6 mana, it should be a powerful card able to win games in a short time frame.

That being said, I've taken my fair share of titan beatings over the years and its gotta be one of the more enjoyable ways to lose in my book. The level of skill necessary to do the truly powerful plays makes it reasonable and fair in my opinion.

UndeadxPenguins on Esper Stoneblade

4 months ago

Entrei to be fair, I built this roughly when MH2 first came out. Plus, even with 6 one the 1 drops, they can be really bad dead draws, so having more than that is worrisome to me. From my personal playtesting & taking this to FNMs, 6 is the right number. You could argue for 1 or 2 more but I, personally, don't think more than 6 is necessary. This deck isn't all in on the combo either. It is a Midrange deck that has multiple avenues to victory. Usually the games I play tend to be longer because I like to use Sword of Light and Shadow to cycle through my Elementals in the mid to late game, ensuring that my opponent has no chance. I rarely get Kaldra Compleat first because there are so many ways around it in Modern nowadays. Teferi, Time Raveler, Prismatic Ending, hell, even Brazen Borrower. The deck is a Midrange deck that looks to the mid to late game for the win. Sure, turn 1 combo with Grief is great (My literal favorite thing to do in Modern atm), but it shouldn't be an all in thing. I've had great success with this deck so far. Only thing I have really changed is adding in the 2 Damn. Figured board wipes could be useful in some games.

zAzen7977 on RISE OF THE NAZGUL - Esper Reanimator [Primer]

4 months ago

Thanks Mark3sie!! I highly encourage you to build it, it’s a ton of fun to pilot.

I have experimented with different versions, including a version that ran Grief, Solitude, Mulldrifter, and Ephemerate. That build runs less blue and is less reactive than my current iteration, but is more explosive during early turns. Plus Ephemerate is brutal with Archon of Cruelty. However, exiling cards from my hand takes its toll, and I found that incarnations ended up clogging my hand, or I ran out of steam after turn 4. This is why I elected to forgo Grief and blink effects and focus on protecting my spells with Counterspell, Force of Negation, and Teferi, Time Raveler. This deck hinges on sticking an Archon on the battlefield and attacking with it, and in this current meta that is almost impossible without defense.

Oof_Magic on Incorporeal Zombies (Modern Spirits)

5 months ago

Revan0287 I don’t update my SB as much as I do my MB. I have Geist of Saint Traft and Kira, Great Glass-Spinner because at the time Grixis Shadow and W/U/r Control were topping the format. Sanctifier is moderately okay against Shadow and utterly useless against Control. Perhaps the format is in a different place. I haven’t gotten out to play in quite a while but I adjust my sideboard when I do. I find discussing SB slots to be hit or miss as that is more targeted to a local meta. I’ll consider Sanctifier but will wait to play in my local meta before I make any change.

I will note that Damping Sphere is probably more effective against Tron than Void Mirror. Just because Tron runs a lot of colorless cards doesn’t mean they can’t just use colored mana while playing those spells so Void Mirror is easier for Tron to play around. Mirror is great for the MH2 Evoke Incarnations. Considering Grief and Solitude are by far the most played, an evoked Grief is probably coming out quicker than Void Mirror and I think spirits have enough resiliency between Rattlechains, Drogskol Captain, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, and to a lesser extent Glasspool Mimic  ^Flip as well as Geist of Saint Traft. I think including Solitude becomes a weak argument for Mirror. But to reiterate what I said earlier about SB slots, your local meta may warrant it.

Darth_Savage on

5 months ago

Why the singletons? For most decks in Modern you want to be running 4x of the best options, that's how you make the deck consistent. Your deck just seems a bit unfocussed, as an example if I was running Feign Death I'd be running Grief or Shriekmaw something you can actually leverage with the effect.

Have a look at https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/modern#paper it will help you get an idea of the modern meta...

wallisface on Modern answers to Elemental decks

7 months ago

Hi folks,

Recently on mtgo i’ve been coming up against a lot of Elemental decks (example archtype breakdown here), and been struggling to find an optimal sideboard plan for tackling them.

The decks i’ve been playing are largely irrelevant for this thread, as i’m more interested to hear what other people have been sideboarding against this archtype, and what successes/struggles people’ve been having in general.

Their various evoke-based creatures make running any kind of creature-based deck against them a nightmare. Ephemerate is also a huge issue, as a single well-timed casting of it can often cause a big-enough blowout to snowball the game very quickly.

I had thought Torpor Orb was an optimal card, but then i’ve also come across versions of this deck running Grief, which just strips the card from hand immediately. I do get that Orb (and likely Void Mirror) is very strong versus non-Grief builds.

What have been other peoples experiences playing against this deck? Are there any solid counters to the archtype you’ve come across?