What decks run Dark Confidant?
General forum
Posted on Jan. 13, 2014, 10:32 a.m. by RJ_Rozzman
I rarely see this pricey card in my play group, so what kind of decks run Bob? Does he run a specific playstyle?
Every deck in every format where he is legal that contains black mana, and curves out at 3/4 CMC.
January 13, 2014 12:37 p.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #8
A lot of decks will avoid running him in Legacy because of the prevalent use of Ponder , Preordain and Brainstorm mixed with fear of hitting running Force of Will s or a Batterskull a la Bob himself. Also, some black decks in Legacy don't give a crap, like Dredge or Reanimator (plus fear of hitting an 8 cmc creature with Bob in Reanimator is a healthy thing).
January 13, 2014 5:27 p.m.
PrimeEpoch says... #9
For those who just said decks who can run him (effectively), I have to disagree. If you are playing modern esper control (for example), then you would have a high curve, and drawing an expensive win-con is going to hurt a lot. So you wouldn't run him, you'd run other sources of card advantage (Sphinx's Revelation ).
So in reality, the answer is competitive and aggressive decks which have a low mana curve, and have black in.
January 13, 2014 5:28 p.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #10
The entire point of Bob (and why he's heavily used in Jund) is he allows for an aggressive use of your curve and essentially reshapes it, letting you curve faster and more reliably. Sure, card draw is good, life as a resource, etc. but it's all down to the playstyle of the deck...... He favors a fast deck with a low curve, mostly Rock or Jund where the curve maxes at 4 for Huntmaster of the Fells Flip usually and you have a ton of one to three drop power cards like Tarmogoyf , Dark Confidant , Deathrite Shaman and Liliana of the Veil . Occasionally you'll catch Bob in a Four Color Gifts or a BUG deck, but that's kind of a rare occurrence.
January 13, 2014 5:36 p.m.
"If you are playing modern esper control (for example), ..."
No such thing.
Bob is great because he is a 2-power beat-stick that generates card advantage for you. With a bit of protection, he will draw you a full hand's worth of cards by the end of the game at the cost of maybe 1 or 2 life per card, on average.
Now which player would you rather be?
January 13, 2014 7 p.m.
Esper control does appear in Modern occasionally. Usally it's a control-style Gifts deck.
January 13, 2014 7:04 p.m.
It has shown up officially 8 times after doing well in any tournament worth reporting on on TCGplayer since August, and no decks from tournament reports contain both Gifts Ungiven and Dark Confidant on TCGplayer.
In Modern, Bob is almost exclusively used in Jund and Junk mid-range grindy decks, and some fringe-playable tier-2 options, like Mono-Black Control and even-greedier-with-their-colors Jund decks.
In Legacy, you only see Bob decks placing in tournaments when someone is (a) playing Jund (usually with Punishing Fire ) or (b) playing Grixis Delver and didn't play against any good players that day.
But because Jund is one of the big decks to beat in Modern and because he is one of the cornerstone cards in that deck, his price remains high.
January 13, 2014 7:15 p.m.
Oh yea I'm saying that he's not used in Esper control, but that it does exist. I thought you were saying Esper control isn't a thing in Modern.
gufymike says... #2
Q&A is for rules related questions., Epochalyptik will need to move it. These things should be posted in the General Discussion forum.
To answer your question, low cost, high advantage decks, modern jund and I believe junk does, some builds of esper stoneblade in legacy also run him. (mtgtop8.com)[http://mtgtop8.com) visit the search section, you can search by card and format(s) on the left side, take a look for more examples.
January 13, 2014 10:35 a.m.