Dreadhorde Arcanist Deck
Modern Deck Help forum
Posted on Aug. 5, 2019, 12:58 p.m. by Snowmen1
Ever since Dreadhorde Arcanist came out, I loved the card and wanted to make a deck with it. Its a very strong card that has the support, and proved it value in Vintage and Legacy, but not modern, and I think it should have a place in it. Here is a deck that I made that revolves around getting value from Dark Confidant and Seasoned Pyromancer in conjunction with Dreadhorde Arcanist . Though the deck feels great to play, I still think that the deck has problems that need solving such as: trouble dealing with large and high converted mana cost (cmc) creatures, and trouble competing with burn. Though I have taken some steps to address these issues, I think that maybe more can be done. Let me know what you think of the list.
Hey thanks for the input. Im not sure pillage is worth it since fulminator mage is a good threat against control and with kolaghans command making 5 anti artifact spells. Fulminator mage has been really good, but I think I can try a 3 and 2 split of engineer and fulminator mage.
August 6, 2019 10:38 a.m.
TitaniumChopstick says... #4
Personally, I play a lot of Dreadhorde Arcanist and the best shells I’ve found to use it In are Mardu Pyro and Jund. I find that Arcanist is best with burn spells that can either be flashed back to hit creatures, or also go to the face to help offset it’s 1 power, which feels really underwhelming at times. My current Jund deck is playing 4 Lightning Bolts and 4 Forked Bolts and it feels absolutely spectacular to play Forked Bolt First Main, attack with Arcanist and Flashback Forked Bolt to completely wipe a board of x1s. You can also “Bolt, Snap, Bolt” with Arcanist for a lot of extra reach late in the game.
Faithless Looting, Surgical Extraction and Unearth are also the other cards I feel combine best with Arcanist. In my experience, playing 4 Surgical Extractions + Arcanist really can shut off a lot of graveyard decks as well as Rest In Peace does because graveyard decks have far more enchantment removal after sideboarding than they do creature removal.
Another route is to pump Arcanist’s power for higher CMC spells, but I am not a fan of this strategy because pump spells are generally card disadvantage if you don’t have an Arcanist in hand and/or you arent using pump as a “combat trick” to kill a creature. Alternatively, you can get stuck with Arcanist on the board, a 3 CMC spell in the graveyard and no pump in hand, thus no targets for Arcanist, leaving you with a 2-mana 1/3, which isn’t ideal.
Another idea I’ve had is to make some sort of Zombie tribal build with lords, since Arcanist is a Zombie. I’m not sure how that deck would look at all at the moment, but the basic theory is to buff with lords, thus not losing card advantage in the process. With 2 lords in play, Arcanist could flashback Kolaghans Command or something similar every turn, which could be VERY strong. Faithless Looting and Stitcher’s supplier seem excellent in such a strategy.
August 14, 2019 3:50 p.m.
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.
heckproof says... #2
Hmmm...
Well, first of all, this deck is sweet. I am a huge fan of B/R midrange in general, and this list certainly has a lot of things going for it. Anyone running Sword of Light and Shadow in their maindeck instantly has my respect.
In terms of what you want to do with the sideboard, my thought is maybe replace some of the artifact hate with Pillage . It consolidates space in your sideboard by taking Fulminator Mage slots too, so you could conceivably fit in more Plague Engineer .
Idk, though. It’s just a thought. List seems pretty solid as is.
August 5, 2019 2:40 p.m.