The first thing I want to say about this deck is that it is currently a rough draft. I haven't had a chance to build it and test it, so I'm just spitting ideas out to see what people think. I'm always open to suggestions to make this deck better, but for now...
I first got the idea for this deck while watching my friend play Travis Woo's Mono White Devotion build. As I looked over the deck, I realized that it was really just a deck of sideboard cards, that ended up hating out most of the good decks in the format with relative ease.
"What if I made something similar, only I actually included a way to kill people in my version," I thought to myself, as I watched him laugh and play another ghostly prism to the misery of his opponent.
I quickly flipped through the modern section of my binder, and my eyes came upon this little beauty..
"This is an artifact, so it can go into any deck. It also hates on two of the most powerful decks in the format in Pod and Splinter Twin. Let's start here,"
These guys are about the point that I realized I had stumbled upon something hilarious. What could be funnier then casting a turn 2 Torpor Orb against your Melira Pod opponent, and then dropping down a 7/7 trample on turn three. This seemed like a pretty good way to start off a game, but it was apparent to me that this deck needed more.
Since this combo is something you want to be hitting early, I needed more combo pieces, and ways to make sure you would draw them in order. Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand would help with the second part, but for the first part...welcome to the team, Sundial of the Infinite! What a beautiful little card this is. Not only does it stop any bad triggers from happening when you play your beaters on the table, but if you draw it late, you also can stop them from killing your dudes!...as long as they do it on your turn.
So it's not perfect, but it's still pretty funny. I also added a few ratchet bombs into the mix (Play a Hunted Horror, pop the bomb at zero and kill the tokens you gave your opponent) As well as a few Trickbinds. Both of these cards work with the combo, but can have uses in the game beyond that.
With an artifact sub theme, the last addition to the deck seemed simple. Hello Tezzeret! After Torpor Orb has done it's job on turn 3, you can turn it into a 5/5 beater as well! Unstoppable, right!?
Okay, to be honest, I would be open to the idea of cutting Tezzeret in favor of something like another two Muddles or maybe just two sleight of hands to make your turn one more consistent. The reason that I kept it in was because I planned on putting more artifacts in the sideboard. To be honest, Spellskite is such a good card that, depending on the meta game at your local store, I could be convinced to putting a couple of them in main deck instead of bringing them out of the board. Cryptic Command is also something I debated for this deck, but ultimately decided against.
At the end of the day, I don't think this deck is going to win you a GP. However, if you want a fun/relatively cheap deck (Cutting the fetches will drop your price a lot, and with two colors that can easily be done) that you can bring to your local FNM and have some fun with, you should give this a try. If you do, please comment below and tell me how it went!
I really want to play this deck! This is a seriously fun brew. I think I would cut 2 x Avatar of Discord and 2 x Tezzeret to maximize the other plans.
ReplyDeleteTo do this, I would go up to 4 x Ratchet Bomb, since Ratchet Bomb is incidentally good against pretty much everything, and it curves nicely into either of the hunted creatures. Let's say we cut the 2 x Tezzeret, Slave of Bolas for this.
To maximize protection for Torpor Orb, I would also consider playing Swan Song. Swan Song has fantastic synergy with Ratchet Bomb, protects Torpor Orb and Sundial if necessary, remains cheap to help us curve out, and becomes irrelevant once our big dudes land. The Avatar of Discords can get cut for this slot because I'm not entirely sure that they're good enough, honestly -- I would much rather another Hunted creature in their slot. Alternatively, we can use this to cut Muddle the Mixture or Trickbind -- to be honest, with 4 x Ratchet Bomb, I'm not sure we need the others to support just Eater of Days.
I also think we want to main deck some Duress or Thoughtseize in there since we're pretty cold to combo.
I actually really like this becoming "Hunted Tezzerator" Tezzeret provides a nice opposite to the shaky explosive combo element in that he is just a solid one man team. With tezzeret I could see bulking up on a bunch of "silver bullets" either main or sideboard, pithing needle, chalice, damping matrix, all powerful effects to make opponents sad.
ReplyDeleteAlso, ratchet bomb or engineered explosives?
ReplyDeleteYou can't engineered explosives for 0 to kill off the tokens.
DeleteI might be missing something, but why not?
DeleteI see what both are you are saying, and I agree. I actually think both ways are a fine way to take this deck.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Avatar of Discord is that even when cheating on the ETB, it still dies to Bolt. I like the core though.
ReplyDeleteYeah, dying to bolt really isnt appropriate(note this is different from the dies to removal argument since it should be noted that it is 3 mana and 3 cards dying to the most common removal spell in the whole format), i think we found room for the tezzerets!
DeleteHoly crap, this is an incredibly entertaining deck. Next time I have $40 to drop on Magic, I'm building this thing. This is like, weapons-grade stupid. Which is good! It's entertaining and janky and it looks like it wouldn't work at first glance, but it probably would be really consistent. I can just imagine the Pod Spikes I play with tilting out over this.
ReplyDeleteBring this deck on Friday and teach me how to play Modern!
ReplyDelete