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Dimir Braids v3

Modern* UB (Dimir)

McKnuty


Sideboard


Maybeboard


Braids Pet Deck

Frogtide but swap counterspells for pro-active land destruction.

Gameplans:

Plan A - Land destruction smallpox, rain of tears, braids lock

Plan B - Frog / Murktide beats

Plan C - Master of Death attrition lategame

Synergies and Card Choices Explained:

Smallpox : T2 smallpox best play. Pitch and/or sacrifice master of death / dakmor salvage in combination to smallpox. Faster decks run fewer lands and will sometimes keep 1 land hands, so smallpox is devastating. If opponent keeps land heavy hand ... , you can still use smallpox to fill yard and charge up murktide.

Psychic Frog + Murktide Regent : Discard spells with frog and exile them frog to grow both.

Dakmor Salvage + Psychic Frog : Discard the land, then dredge it back with the draw trigger after connecting with frog and keep filling yard, find zombies etc.

Dakmor Salvage + Braids, Cabal Minion: Braids lock without needing to spend mana or make land drops. 1 dakmor and 1 braids, only 2 permanents in play is enough to win.

Dakmor Salvage + Thought Scour: Thought scour may not have as much choice as card like consider or preordain, but milling more means you are more likely to fill yard, which in turn gives you more options like picking up a dakmor salvage off dredge draw trigger from scour, as well as fueling all your graveyard synergies. You can also mess up your opponent's surveil/scry/tutor top card set-up.

Braids, Cabal Minion + Master of Death + Dakmor Salvage : Recursion package. Idea is that early smallpox does well against non-interactive decks low on lands, while master of death is our plan for grinding out interactive decks.

Sheoldred's Edict + Smallpox : Our edicts do not target players. Gets around Leyline of Sanctity and lots of other protection. Gives us game against hexproof and similar protect the queen strats.

Master of Death : 3cmc is a lot, but plan is to not cast it unless lategame. You just use it as frog discard food and smallpox food so cost is more like 0 cmc. Coming back to hand instead of straight to battlefield keeps feeding smallpox and frogs. Surveil filters and fills yard for murktide, finds more copies of itself and dakmor for braids lock. When games get grindy, a recursive body like Master of Death can be sacrificed to smallpox and keep your murktides, frogs, and braids alive. Master makes smallpox waaaayyyy better. It finds more copies of itself, and it also finds a 4th land in a pinch to hit braids on time. Having 3 power sometimes matters for "cannot be blocked by creatures with power 2 or less".

Rain of Tears over Liliana of the Veil : 3cmc timewalk in black. Kill land now seems to be worth it over slow grind synergies. Bias towards instant/sorceries for murktide, hence no planeswalkers. Maindeck removal for utility lands means we don't need Field of Ruin effects and can cast smallpox T2 more consistently. Don't run Flagstones of Trokair to cast smallpox more reliably.

Toxic Deluge - The life payment is worth it because that's what you'll lose playing a 4cmc wipe anyway. Deluge hits indestructible and regeneration. We run enough edicts, but we need a wipe for Kozilek's Command eldrazi spawn token and go wide strats we cannot lock out. Ratchet Bomb is present for similar reasons (fast go wide strategies).

Orcish Bowmasters + Echo of Eons - Orcs are obviously good, I just haven't bought them yet. Draw a bunch to board-wipe or fireball them, then smash with big orc. Great together with Psychic Frog, which can discard your hand prior to drawing another 7 and grow big too. Echo has flashback so we'll find it easily. Lots of other combo pieces on color already printed like Day's Undoing, Whispering Madness, Narset, Parter of Veils, and Geier Reach Sanitarium. Probably a bit too cute. Maybe just maindeck orc and a single Echo.

Unearth - Can't bring back Braids, Cabal Minion. Unearth toolbox is pretty cool, alas Braids is 4cmc.

Abhorrent Oculus - Oculus has better synergy with braids and smallpox, but you NEED 3 mana to cast it. Murktide you only need 2 mana to cast, and with smallpox and braids we ear a lot of our own lands. Sometimes 2 is all you have. For now I prefer murktide, but it's close. You can probably run either. It's really close. Both soft to graveyard hate.

Weaknesses / Ideas / Possible Changes

Graveyard hate - Not sure how I want to address this yet. Eternal Scourge perhaps if yard exile effects become common, or experiment with an exile focus build replacement instead of running out of graveyard. Another option is to run token generators such as Kozilek's Command or Sedgemoor Witch, but then you're less resilient to interaction spot-removal/wipes/counters. For now running versatile Ratchet Bomb as removal. I could run enchantment removal instead, but that's less versatile.

Artifacts Route - Could try Scrapheap Scrounger, Emry, Lurker of the Loch... Braids eats Mishra's Bauble and other artifacts too, lots of which are fast/free. You don't always have to crack. Artifacts maybe worth it if you can get Braids out T3 consistently. You sacrifice Mox Amber and they lose a land.

Engines - We run wipes, but cards like Wrenn and Sixx (land recursion), Klothys, God of Destiny (can't remove easily and clocks us), Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer (cheap permanent generators), Kozilek's Command (tokens AND mana) can get around our permanent destruction locks. Goblin Rabblemaster sees less play and costs more, but same idea.

Vindicate - Swap Rain of Tears for Vindicate. I think I can afford a white splash, but tradeoff will be similar to boros energy vs mardu energy. This defeats most graveyard hate and opponents locks like Ensnaring Bridge. Vindicate stays on land destruction plan, while Ratchet Bomb does not, but is cheaper, cast-able, better against decks running Cori-Steel Cutter. Adding white also adds token options like running Lingering Souls instead of Master of Death.

Crack the Earth - Crack is the cheapest LD in modern. Red braids might be okay. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is cheap and generates permanents. Red has more land destruction and Faithless Looting. Overall though I think red has a worse plan B, wheras dimir has frogtide to fall back on. All-in red LD might be insane though. Maybe Young Pyromancer + Smallpox but that's bad against bowmasters. Red is interesting.

Tempo/Counter Decks - They run a low land count, but a good player using Force of Negation correctly against us is probably close.

Snapcaster Mage - Probably not good enough anymore.

Cling to Dust - I should probably make room for a copy in my 75.

Meathook Massacre - Probably 1 copy because it's good in general, but also for Goblin Bombardment out of boros energy.

More dredgers / add reanimation - Could go even more all-in on graveyard synergies. If Dakmor Salvage was dredge 5 instead of 2, it would be a lot better (just be careful not to mill yourself out). Maybe try running some copies of Stinkweed Imp, Darkblast and other dredge cards. Maybe add a reanimator package.

Surveil Synergies - Search for Azcanta   was errata'd to say surveil. Dimir Spybug probably not good enough, but they keep printing surveil cards. Keep an eye out for more.

Flash - flash can land in response to a braids sacrifice trigger. Vendilion Clique, Orcish Bowmasters seem fine.

Essence Harvest - I want this on a big murktide, but probably not playable. Kills through an Ensnaring Bridge and helps the burn matchup. Besides murktide we also have access to large creatures like Souls of the Lost, Consuming Aberration, The Ancient One, and Nighthowler. Murktide and Frog are probably enough on their own though.

Tier 1 decks - Yeah, this isn't a tier 1 list tuned by professionals. bOrOs eNeRgY iS bEtTeR... okay then play that.

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Casual

99% Competitive