Is it Worth Expanding into Black for a Multicolor Pile?

Modern forum

Posted on Dec. 13, 2022, 10:44 a.m. by TheOfficialCreator

The deck in question: It's Raining Cats and Planeswalkers

This deck, essentially, runs a very land-type intensive mana base, which gives me good payoffs for my Wild Nacatls, Nishoba Brawlers, and Leyline Binding.

Ever since I made the deck, I have considered expanding into black to gain access to more cards like Vanishing Verse. Should I?

The advantages of doing so would be gaining access to a bigger card pool and reducing Leyline Binding's potential cost to 1 mana (as early as turn 2!), as well as increasing the potential power of Nishoba Brawler.

The downsides are that my mana base would likely become even more painful, and it has the potential of making it harder to cast my finisher, Omnath, Locus of Creation. It also makes Sundering Titan potentially even stronger against our deck, as in the past Tron has been a thorn in this deck's side.

What do you all think? Do you have any experience running multicolor planeswalker pile decks, and if so, does Ink-treader or Rainbow work better in your experience? Is there anything I'm missing?

Dead_Blue_ says... #2

I would add at least 1 black triome into the mix for Brawlers & Binding. I probably wouldn’t add any Vanishing Verse or additional cards

December 13, 2022 2:58 p.m.

aholder7 says... #3

i agree you should be playing a swamp in the mix already. i don't see verse as being a worthy addition and I also don't see anything off the tip of my head that you'd want to add otherwise with the black.

December 13, 2022 5:03 p.m.

nbarry223 says... #4

Change one of your triomes to include black and ignore the color you want the most (probably green).

On your splash colors you can get away with tapped sources you can fetch, while your main colors you definitely want a shock to be the majority of the mana sources, so they can come out untapped.

With multiple colors, balancing them and if they need to be untapped or not can be tricky, but those are good general guidelines to build upon.

I often count how many colored costs I need by turn x and put all the various colors needs side by side and balance from there.

If you look at all your cards and need 10 blue by turn 2, and 10 black by turn 4, you obviously want to invest more heavily into blue than black.

Also if you look at your cards and go I will need this color OR this color, it is very different from saying you need this color AND this color.

December 13, 2022 5:13 p.m.

wallisface says... #5

Decks playing stuff like Leyline Binding will often include a black-triome without actually having anything black to cast. I think s you have a few cards that care about domain, you should be aiming to get all 5 land types down by turn 2, just to maximise their efficiency (so, a triome followed by a shock).

Some other thoughts I’ve had just from reading the list:

  • your land count feels really low considering how many high cmc cards you’re running. And especially as Omnath wants lands to keep coming into play. I feel like you want to go up to at least 23 lands.

  • your deck has a weird mix of cards that want to be really aggressive, and then cards that want to slow the game down to a grind… it feels like your deck lacks some direction in what it wants to achieve. And that lack-of-direction is going to make it much harder to achieve a win.

December 13, 2022 9:13 p.m.

shadeslayerx22 says... #6

I'd include at least a black triome or shock, and if you're playing black in a domain deck Shadow Prophecy is a solid card advantage spell. It doesn't really fit in the list you're currently running. You've also got some questionable payoffs for some vastly different deck strategies, so I think shadow prophecy would work better with a more controlling omnath/t3feri deck. I don't think it would work as well in the zoo/land part of the deck.

December 16, 2022 11:02 a.m.

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