Through the Breach with Velomachus Lorehold

Through the Breach

Strixhaven, Episode 11: This Week in Brewing (May 7, 2021)

Velomachus Lorehold has arrived in Modern, posting a Top 8 and Top 32 finish in the weekend Modern Challenges and becoming a mainstay of the 5-0s. The Temur shell with Indomitable Creativity is powerful, but are there other ways to cheat the dragon into play? We tune up a reanimator variant proposed by Velomachus expert Zach “Manacymbal” Ryl.

Manacymbal wasn’t the only Faithless Family member rocking the Challenges this weekend. Soren Wellman, a frequent author on our website, notched a Challenge Top 8 with his version on Izzet Through the Breach, featuring Prismari Command, Torrential Gearhulk, and Magma Opus. We take a close look at Soren’s proposed update, as well as some spicy decks that popped up in the Modern 5-0s.

STX #11 At a Glance

[3:00] New Article on FaithlessBrewing.com: Velomachus Taking Turns: A Warped Deck for Modern
[9:48] Brew Review: Velomachus Reanimator by Zach Ryl
[23:34] Brew Review: Through the Breach by Soren Wellman
[36:04] David’s Pick: Tooth and Nail
[39:46] Damon’s Pick: Grixis Prowess ft. Underworld Breach
[45:10] Cavedan’s Pick: Rakdos Arcanist ft. Waste Not

Full Episode Transcript (click to expand)

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:00:00] You are listening to Faithless magic, the gathering podcasts for the spice. We design new decks in modern and pioneers. We put our creations to the test and share our findings. All the air coming up on the Brownsville. Indomitable creativity is making waves in Modern but are there better options for cheating things into play?

You’re going through the breach on episode 11 of Strixhaven season. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

David Robertson: [00:01:01] welcome to the Faithless brewing podcast. I’m David Robertson joined as always by my guy on the left coast. He is Damon Alexander Damon. What’s going on?

Damon Alexander: [00:01:09] Hey. Hey, not too much. Just enjoying the springtime.

David Robertson: [00:01:13] Excellent. And we are joined again after a brief. So Jorn by the CEO of the fate of swimming podcast. He is Dan Schriever. Dan. Welcome back.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:01:24] Hey, it’s good to be back. Thanks for holding it down while I was away.

David Robertson: [00:01:29] It was our pleasure. It was not the same without you

Damon Alexander: [00:01:31] for dismissing a few bricks, but yeah. Held it down.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:01:35] Yeah. More, more of your favorites, Faithless brewers, or possibly less isn’t that right? Damon.

Damon Alexander: [00:01:40] I’m not sure which, which way you lean on that one, Dan.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:01:43] Well, let me just say that it was a joy to just get in the shoes of the listeners for a couple of weeks and just sit back, hit play, and my favorite podcast app and just enjoy the show.

Damon Alexander: [00:01:54] Yeah. And I’m sure after listening to it for two weeks straight, uh, you now know who your favorite brewer is and it’s yourself.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:02:00] Coach put me back in. I’m ready. No, no, I can. I can. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:02:04] Well, glad to have you back.

David Robertson: [00:02:06] All right. Just as a reminder, we are now releasing two episodes a week. Hopefully you’re hearing this one on Friday. This will include a bunch of our looks into the latest and greatest technology in pioneer and modern, including some sweet new bruise from some people from our discord.

And then on Sunday, we will be looking back at our bruise around Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa’s card, elite Spellbinder as well as proposing some new bruise around the sedge. More which so without further ado, we want to give a quick shout out to Zach Ryl he has co-hosted this podcast three times. I think he’s the only three timer.

He has a new article up at Faithless brewing.com, which is about a Velomachus taking turns list that he has really been enjoying and modern and has been having a bunch of success with.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:03:03] So you and Damon talked about this list last week because it had shown up in not just the five-oh is, but also when the challenges in two different versions, there is an 80 card version with Yorion floating around and then we’re much more streamlined to 60 card version.

That I believe the streamer freakUnasty. He was the first person to five-oh with that both versions have found success and continue to find success freak you nasty piloted. His 60 car builds to a top eight in the Saturday modern challenge. Zach Ryl Manacymbal play the same list on Sunday in the modern challenge.

And he got a top 32, I believe. And it’s been consistently in the five O’s. So I thought you guys did a great job, sort of breaking down the essential structural differences between the two builds. I was really appreciated then just like reading this article from Zach, cause he’s been playing the deck nonstop.

He even has like a detailed sideboard Guide for like 15 different mashups. So now that we’ve seen it for a while, do you guys feel like this is just a flash in the pan or is this a deck we should be taking seriously as a mainstay of the game?

Damon Alexander: [00:04:06] It seems like one of those decks that is one of the many welcome, you know, tier 1.5 to tier two decks.

That I don’t think we’ll ever see this decade in a huge Medicaid numbers and less, it gets further boost to power, which actually might be to its detriment in the longterm. But that’s a great place to be there. This deck. I think if everybody is ready for it and packing grafdigger’s cages or whatever, to shut down the transmogrify or Indomitable creativity line, which works in the same way, then this deck will obviously take a hit, but the more the metadata can’t afford to devote a bunch of sideboard slots to it, the stack can sit there and get those free winds.

David Robertson: [00:04:41] Yeah. I mean, it’s actually, I think, uniquely positioned to get around cage because you can just target cage with your Indomitable creativity. Almost. They have a second cage, I guess.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:04:50] Well, actually I, I think that creativity natively gets around cage just because I guess I was a card before it enters the battlefield.

So it’s not entering from your library. It’s entering from exile.

Damon Alexander: [00:05:00] Oh, well, nevermind

David Robertson: [00:05:03] yourself a minute.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:05:04] Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So this could be a case where the deck is going to become a victim of its own success, because I do feel like it’s a little bit fragile, a little bit vulnerable after reading Zack’s article.

Just that I would take this deck through league myself and see what’s all the fuss was about. It was certainly like a ton of fun. I had Zach in my ear kind of coaching me through the match-ups. I found that it was actually kind of hard to do the thing with the Indomitable creativity when the opponent knew what you’re up to.

I found myself losing to some Thoughtseize decks, as well as the, Izzet prowess deck. That’s all over the place these days. Between discard spells leaving up fatal push man out or leaving up lava doors to pick off the dwarves. If they want to stop you from resolving the creativity, I feel like they can.

And that’s not even getting to the question of like, what if they just leave up a half the exile to stop Velomachus after Velomachus enters play.

Damon Alexander: [00:05:58] Yeah. So how does it compare then? You know, one car that solves this problem is the Emrakul, the Aeons torn, can’t pass that card. And meanwhile, you don’t have to clutter your deck with cards, like say for the moment, which is that perhaps a good card on its own, right outside of a taking turns shell.

And so tech has a strength that in theory, it can play the take and transform with Wrenn and Six, but I wonder, you know, the, the kind of Jeskai transmogrify into Emrakul deck. That was the thing for awhile.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:06:23] It’s still a thing. I mean, you’ll find a lot of Through the breach decks in the results from the past week, some of them also include Indomitable creativity as kind of like a secondary plan for Emrakul.

So you’ll find decks that are like four through the breach for Emrakul and for Indomitable creativity. And they’re using Prismari commands to make treasures. Slash a dwarven mines to make dwarves as your way to get the Indomitable creativity off. There are some bills that actually just start with, for, through the breach and just have a much lighter touch.

So just like a single Indomitable creativity and a single Dwarven mine, just to like, get more copies of the effect. So they could be the case, Damon that like, yeah, it’s just more reliable to use the spaghetti monster.

David Robertson: [00:07:05] I mean, also Velomachus can whiff, there’s only eight cars even want to hit. If you hit prismatic command or a Prismari command or growth spiral, I mean, probably lose the game on the spot.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:07:17] I had that same concern, but when I actually played it Velomachus was like pretty consistent. You only need to like hit it on the first time because often you’ll have a time warp effects already in your hand. So as long as the first Velomachus, doesn’t totally whiff.

Damon Alexander: [00:07:30] Thanks. Critical. We now know the chance to miss with a Time Warps in your deck is 25%.

David Robertson: [00:07:37] Well, I was just told we had one in our hands,

Damon Alexander: [00:07:38] so then it goes up to a 30%, but I already had, I mean, you, you still have, I mean, a five, five vigilant Dragon. No, it’s not that many modern decks are necessarily going to kill you through that, the next term. And maybe, yeah, if you hit a Prismari command Growth spiral or bolt, you know, Remand is probably a, the worst hit in the deck, but sometimes I was supposed to at least do something.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:08:02] So I do think there’s a lot of room for improvement in the builds. I haven’t played it enough to like say for sure how to improve it, but it was striking to me that the bill has really not changed that much from the first freaky nasty five-oh and into his current form. I think the only difference is that they originally started off with like two Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

They went down to one copy. And I think just in today’s that don’t, there was a copy with, there was a pilot with zero Jace, the Mind Sculptor, everyone who has played this, like I said, that’s the worst card and you only need to get around infinite life from Heliod. But like, if it’s just for one matchup, just put it on the sideboard.

If you have to, it’s not pulling its weight in the main deck. What I found is that, you know, you’re built and vulnerability is. That’s a very painful manna base. You know, you’re, you’re in three colors. You need to get all the mountains to support dwarven Mine it’s a lot of shots and fetches with Wrenn and Six that combined with a fairly limited quantity of spot removal, just for lightning bolts and some number of Prismari command means that like you are kind of vulnerable to getting run over early.

And maybe, maybe you do need to tweak your numbers a little bit more to have just like Six spot removal instead of four on one man of maybe. Maybe four is not the right number of Indomitable creativity effects that you could easily play five or six copies. If you want to play some transmogrifies and cars like remand and growth Spiral while they are perfect in some situations.

They’re not that great on the draw, there are somewhat limited in like the, the range of situations that they can get you out of when you’re behind.

Damon Alexander: [00:09:35] What are your thoughts? Totally different variant of this Velomachus idea. That’s more like a turbo blood moon playing like rituals because you can also ritual into the creativity.

I guess you have to have, it’s hard to ritual into a dwarven Mine activation.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:09:48] Well, it’s hard to blood mood into a Dwarven Mine activation as well. But I think that’s the exact question, right? And it turns out that we have a brew review submission coming from Zach Ryl himself, which is another way to build the Velomachus deck.

So as I understand it, all you need to have to win is a Velomachus in play and some kind of thing that converts the first Velomachus attack until lethal damage. Now, the team reversion uses these eight Time Warp effects. So you can think of my core is for Time Warp, for savor the moment to Velomachus and it’s up to me, how to get the Velomachus and play.

Do I want to go Indomitable creativity? Do I want to like use Goryo’s vengeance? Do I want it to do Magda or any crazy thing that just gets the Dragon implant attacking beyond those 10 slots? The rest of the deck is up to you and Zach. Thinking, maybe along similar lines, but even more extreme a has proposed they list here for us to consider that doesn’t use Time warps at all, but uses extra combat steps, specifically world at war Savage beating and relentless assault.

I’m not even sure I know all these cards. So do you want to walk us through this build and what Zach has written up about it?

Damon Alexander: [00:11:00] Yeah, so. I’m going to have to double check some of these rules interactions with you guys. Zach makes some comments here, but basically instead of taking extra turns, you could just say extra combat steps.

And because Velomachus triggers in each combat step, you have a chance to find more cards that give you more combat steps. And so the most famous one of these is relentless assault, but it has this little niggling rules. These help that it only works. If you cast it during a main phase, And Velomachus, uh, the trigger works on attack during combat.

And so the card Savage beating, which is a similar version where you taking a lot of combat stuff, does work with Velomachus and world of war also does, but this is only after the first post combat main phase. So you can’t change too many of the world of Wars together. The world is only so much at war.

That’s the good news out there at least, but there are a lot of the salts. It seems like you just have to cast them. But going through the rest of the deck before we discussed that issue, the deck is a ReAnimator deck featuring thrilling discovery as a cool new way to get your crappy cards into the bin and draw some good cards.

Or in this case, your big graveyard reanimated bubble beaters, like the Velomachus or Obzedat ghost council. We also have for merchant of the Vale to do so and four Thoughtseize a pinch and three lightning acts as our discard outlets. And then to reanimate, we have Goryo’s vengeance, the favorite one black to bring and legendary creature.

I give it haste and then it gets exiled at the end step. And so with Velomachus, maybe there is no end step. Your point pointed dies before that happens with opposite debt. It will be doing it spooky thing until the exile zone before. The Goryo’s has vendors trigger results. Anyway, so you kinda just get a permanent Obzedat.

If that’s enough to win a game of modern, we also have footsteps of the Goryo which does something similar, but it doesn’t give haste. Fortunately Velomachus has, has haste. And so that clause from glorious ventures isn’t required. The downside is of course, that footsteps to the Goryo is a sword, um, cost three mana.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:12:50] So David, what’s your initial reaction to this proposal here from Zach?

David Robertson: [00:12:54] Well, yeah, so six of these cards don’t really work the way we want them to. That’s a pretty big downside to one of the reasons why he proposes build as you wanted more time work like kits, but we actually, because of rules, interactions end up with less.

So that’s already kind of a deal. We know that this deck sort of functions because did you five-oh with the list in, or do you see someone five-oh? I can’t remember. It was like six weeks ago now, but. A list using merchant of the veil Obzedats, lightening axe or Goryo’s vengeance. Obviously they were not playing Velomachus cause Velomachus has not yet been released, but that interaction with Obzedat that was something that we know is feasible.

Yeah. Already.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:13:34] Yeah. That ghost dad ReAnimator had a brief of surgeons. It must’ve been a month ago or so.

David Robertson: [00:13:39] Yeah. I think it showed up in like two or three consecutive five-oh dumps. So, I mean, there’s already something close to being there, but. I mean the, the primary card of relentless assault, doesn’t do what we want.

So I think that that needs to get taken out no matter what. And then it starts to make you wonder if we’re just doing this because we wanted more hits or Velomachus and we’re taking out four of those hits, then, you know, we’re starting to pick away at the, the base upon which we’ve built our beautiful palace.

Damon Alexander: [00:14:08] Yeah. At one point I built a Neheb, Dreadhorde champion deck for commander. This is the car that whatever deals damage to a player Planeswalker, you can discard some cards, draw them in the cards and add that much red manner and you don’t lose it for that turn. And so what you can do is. Play a bunch of cards like relentless assault, and then perhaps kind of just go infinite in the same way this Velomachus deck is trying to do.

I played it. I actually had a lot of fun kind of proxying I practiced the cards and I would just kind of shuffle off and play solitaire over lunch break and enjoyed it. But five times realized that I would be the most antisocial person to ever play this with other people and took the deck apart. But some cards that took out of play where cards like seize the day, which has the same problem as relentless assault and aggravated. Aggravated assault, which has a totally different problem as an enchantment

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:14:52] cars, even in modern and seize the day is from Odyssey, right?

Damon Alexander: [00:14:55] Yeah. But it’s also in ultimate masters,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:14:59] but that doesn’t change its legality.

Damon Alexander: [00:15:01] Yeah. Cut it. I think it might. And horizons. Well, the good news is it doesn’t work for, I guess, multiple reasons.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:15:07] Yeah. But I mean, what you’re saying is reminding me of like the cards used in Narset cannon with Narset Enlightened Master trying to get that into the graveyard. And Gloria, was it on turn to and. Youth Fury of the horde and whatnot, to just keep taking a tack steps with Narset. It’s a, Velomachus obviously it looks at more cards than Narset that does.

But Narset is not restricted on the CMC of the car. And so you can play your seven drop Fury of the Horde or whatever you need to cast. So I think it does come down to what David is saying that the payoff spells are not payoff, spells, sorry. These are enablers spells. The enabler smells that grant extra combat steps, or they kind of suck.

They don’t either they don’t work or they actually just don’t do anything without Velomachus in play. And that’s going to be a huge difference from the time warp, savor the moment. Version where those cards actually do something. They at least can’t trip. That being said, the idea to go to every animation package opens up, turn to Kilz.

So what if you just like switch it up? You know, you don’t need to play these red, extra combat stuff. Cars just pay the Time effects instead and keep the Goryo’s package.

Damon Alexander: [00:16:11] So basically just have a wash of uncharitable Time, Time Warp of effects just because, you know, the sec has the Savage Beatings are practically on castable.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:16:18] Well, I mean, you could adjust your men and accordingly now you’re a Grixis ReAnimator with extra turns,

David Robertson: [00:16:25] but then you just can’t cast offs it off. I mean, the problem is Obzedat is Superman intensive. And in theory, that’s the car that helps you beat like graveyard hate, right? Cause it’s like getting a five man is a thing you can do in post board games.

When your opponent brings in all their graveyard hate, are there. Whatever spot removal for Velomachus.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:16:42] Uh, I mean, all of that is pulling you into white as is the thrilling discovery. That’s that case here, although that could just be cathartic reunion, if you’re willing to live dangerously. The other card that the old Obzedat decks used to use, they were Esper colors and they use Jace, Vryn’s prodigy, because that also interacts favorably with Goryo’s

so if we’re looking into more of a blue, black ReAnimator with Velomachus, maybe the blue is actually, you know, JVP. Is one of your important cards and you have more of a controlling deck that will take extra turns or whatnot.

David Robertson: [00:17:16] Yeah. I guess my concern with Jace, Vryn’s prodigy is like right now, it’s a pretty agro heavy metal game.

So everyone has got spot removal and Jace, Vryn’s prodigy will be the only card that like lightning bolt kills or fatal push kills this entire deck. So it feels like Jace is just not long for this world, although. If you’re just Goryo’s vengeance and get on EOT or something, maybe that’s not as big of a deal, but I like right now at this deck is sort of immune to a lot of the cards that are good against blue, red prowess, for instance.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:17:48] Mmm. And the idea to just switch to blue, extra turn spells.

David Robertson: [00:17:53] I mean, I think that’s probably the way to go. I think that the underrated thing is that the turn spells work a lot better when you just have a bunch of Planeswalkers lying around like Time work it. Time warp is a lot better than just Cantor pinning.

Right? If you got a Wrenn or a JS, although apparently it’s the worst Soul-Scar in the deck. It actually like moves you towards winning the game and casting Time work in this deck where you have no planes, walkers at all, it feels like it’s much worse. So you you’re really hoping to actually just get there all the way.

I mean, you have to do the full 20 with your Dragon basically, or whatever, like 15 plus one Opus trigger, plus your opponent’s fetch lands kind of a deal. Yeah.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:18:30] I found that three attacks. That’s usually enough to close it out. Um, I assume you have lightning bolts. Although though I see this bill does not have any models.

I think the other big problem is that that’s, again, animation package just takes up more slots than the team or version, and the team are built. It’s eight turns bells to Velomachus for creativity. So it’s only 14 cards. And here in order to get Velomachus into the graveyard, you need to play the full place out of Velomachus and you need to play a bunch of reanimation effects.

I see eight copies total here between footsteps and vengeance, and then you need at least eight. Of your big enabler, extra turn, extra combat effects. So there’s just fewer slots left in the deck overall.

Damon Alexander: [00:19:09] Yeah. And the thing is that as soon as you go graveyard, the advantage is it’s a little bit faster than the Indomitable creativity lines, but every opponent has four plus cars in their sideboard waiting for you.

Trench necks are so powerful that they can fight through those in a number of ways. This tech, I suspect we’ll have some problems with those cards.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:19:30] Okay, two suggestions then what do you think of these option one? Let me go into Jeskai colors. We keep the turn spills. We use Nahiri the harbinger as a Planeswalker that can take up to a dangerous Ultimate’s.

When we are playing extra turn spills, it also functions as a discard outlets. If we want to do something like an Unburial Rites, which happens at roughly the same turn as the creativity would happen. But does that grab you a little more you to play in all the interactive effects that Jeskai has access to?

Damon Alexander: [00:19:58] Hold, but via unbearable rights.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:20:00] Yeah. Or in a hurry, you can and get it into play. Or we just defend defends, take extra turns and then cast Velomachus on seven mana

David Robertson: [00:20:07] I mean, that, that sounds better. The one thing I like is that we can play Emrakul in that list as well. As a one off target for Nahiri.

Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:20:17] Yeah. What’s interesting is that the card through the breach does let you get a Velomachus Lorehold into play in a way that counts. And it also is a hit or Velomachus Lorehold, but you’ll have to rely on the creature coming through the breach to have a good ETB, because it will not be able to attach Zach.

Right. I mean, if you’re running opposite that I guess that it has a good. Not an ETB, but, uh, end of turn, melody that were favorably with, for the breach in the same way.

David Robertson: [00:20:43] It, that has a, Hey, come into play ability. It just isn’t that powerful.

Damon Alexander: [00:20:48] Sure, sure. I could get a five, five Dragon swing, hit it through the breach.

Surprise obzedat. Take two. Yeah. I mean, that seems kind of like the, the way that, you know, I think that this Mardu shell just doesn’t work and the Jeskai shell you’re proposing. Could work. There’ll be slower though. And the problem with graveyard is I think he was because of how much hate people have, you know, you’ll win games because they have a single piece and you’re on the play in game three.

Any Thoughtseize it? Or they Mulligan to oblivion trying to find it because they have to Mulligan because they’re going to die on turn two or turn three. But if you’re going to kill them, I turn to her for a turn and five, they find their second piece. They didn’t Mulligan at all because they kept a decent seven hand card hand, and they just drew into it.

David Robertson: [00:21:32] I do kind of like if you’re playing Jeskai though, you can play the like wildfire flagstones package, which just gives you like main deck game against big man on as well.

Damon Alexander: [00:21:40] So from there Velomachus swing cleansing wildfire you’re or is this tower that’s value?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:21:48] All right. One other quick, quick idea. And this came up because when I played a league with this deck, I was frustrated that my dwarfs felt very exposed.

They felt very vulnerable to everything. It occurred to me that like, I don’t need to be targeting towards with the Indomitable creativity. What if I had just had an artifact instead? Now Prismari command does that. And the team are built was, was using Prismari command. A lot of these Indomitable creativity techs are doing that, but like, what if I want that like guaranteed treasure?

What if I just totally redid my database to make it bass green and played gingerbread cabin instead of the tour and mine. You’d need a lot of red, green duals to creativity on the gingerbread cabin food token, but that’s much harder to do to disrupt.

David Robertson: [00:22:33] Yeah, man, the man, it seems so tough there. I agree with you though, like structurally or combos a lot better, but that’s the first, like, I feel like the second and third turn of the game, every time is going to just be bolting yourself.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:22:49] But it’s already like that. Like it’s already, it’s already like that in the buildings that currently exists. Yeah.

David Robertson: [00:22:56] I mean, I guess maybe, maybe that’s all you need to do. That’s like you bolt on yourself twice and then take one damage from your first batch land fetching, a trial end and you should be okay.

That’s seven. So can you point to 13 damage to you on three and a half turns? Probably.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:23:12] But if they don’t, you have all this food coming out of your mouth,

David Robertson: [00:23:15] but you have to eat your food right away. So it’s Prismari command. It’s just a garbage card. So anything that means it means that you can play less of those.

Maybe you can, I guess you can’t play Urza okay.

Damon Alexander: [00:23:24] Well, the thing is David, you’re kind of going against the pack a little on Prismari command. The cart is seeing a fair amount of play. Our next brewer. I mentioned that they liked Prismari command a lot.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:23:34] Yeah, let’s let let’s dip over to that deck because it ties into a lot of the builds we’re talking about.

This is a Through the breach deck. It comes to us from Serena Wellman, who is 1stTurnNegator on magic, online and Soren is coming off another great weekend. He made top eight in the Sunday challenge first, ever top eight. He says so congrats to him, gave us a little tournament right up in our Faithless Brewing discord.

And he has submitted for our consideration, a tweaked version of his top eight deck. David do you want to walk us through this build?

David Robertson: [00:24:05] Yeah. So, as you mentioned, I’m trying to cast through the breach in Emrakul. So those types of shells have existed for awhile. This tech does a few interesting things. One, it does not play what we often see is like a boil proof man base.

Instead, it actually stretches the man base to add green specifically to play Veil of summer’s a sidebar card. So that’s really interesting. And I liked that the pilot has identified that as important. The other thing is they’re sort of playing a very controlling shell. So a four lightning bolt for Remand Dan’s favorite card for Archmage’s charm one cryptic command, one Magma Opus.

The proposed deck is even adding a flame slash I think to try to deal with the fact that, like we mentioned, it’s a, it’s a very agro heavy metal game. Three Snapcaster Mage and then a one Torrential Gearhulk one Magma Opus package also worth noting Torrential. Gearhulk a very good with, Through the breach.

A lot of times what happens is your opponent, you know, is targeting you through this card. Maybe not in game two, because you would get to bring in your Veil of summers. It turns out Gearhulk is functionally, you know, through the breach number five, and then Snapcaster Mages you know, six, seven, and eight.

So really cool list. And I think there’s a lot of interesting technology here, specifically that green splash for post-war games, both for Weather the Storm and, veil of summer is something I have not seen. I think there just aren’t that many boils anymore because blue took a serious nurse. And so this has taken advantage of the fact that you can kind of do whatever you want with your man on, in modern right now.

Damon Alexander: [00:25:33] Yeah, it’s true. The boil proof base is a good thing to know about, but right now nobody is worrying about boil.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:25:40] Maybe they should. I mean, blue had a good weekend and this a Dryad of the Elysian Grove bring to light deck is all over the place.

David Robertson: [00:25:49] You was the best red deck is a red blue deck. And so it’s probably, and it’s also trying to kill you before it has poor lands in play.

So it’s probably not trying to catch, boil that often. Yeah. There’s like, it’s hard for the classic deck. They played boil, which was like red, green Ponza. That deck does not line up well with, uh, how good these prowess shells are, the kind of game it’s trying to play, or it’s blowing up a land on and turn to is just not very good against, you know, do eight damage.

Do you wanna turn to the, the red and green Ponza Carranza list?

Damon Alexander: [00:26:21] I think they’re they’re okay. Right now you have Karn to find Ensnaring bridge or whatever they have some game, but the thing is they could play boil, but they’re already a Ponza deck. So there’s doubling data. What they do well already.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:26:33] Let’s dig into the weeds a little bit on the details of Soren’s build here. So in terms of interaction, there’s interactive pieces. There’s the combo. Top-end, there’s a manna base and cyber considerations. All of these have like little margins, you can tweak things to try to get things configured. Exactly.

Right. But is there anything structural to it that is jumping out at you as something that is either a great breakthrough or something you, you want to change? David, you singled out the card. Prismari command is one that you haven’t liked and pioneer. It is seeing a lot of play in modern. I feel like almost every is a deck and modern is playing at least two copies now.

So Ryan has three here and this is three Prismari command with no obvious synergies per se or there’s no like. Indomitable creativity to convert the treasure into a number. Cool. For example, this is most likely, you’re just, you’re going to loot. Maybe you discard a extra Emrakul piece or extra through the reach, but maybe you’re just thinking for your combo.

David Robertson: [00:27:28] Yeah. I mean, I think the reason you can justify it in this deck is it sort of accelerates you to the combo because it can make a treasure and you are playing an AB combo. It’s hard. I mean, this deck can win games where it does not resolve through the breach Emrakul, but. I mean, it’s gotta be like a 95% that it wins that way.

So I think you can justify playing a card that just legitimately just goes down a card. If it at least moves you towards your combo or accelerates your combo, and this can do one or the other

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:27:56] what’d you put Magma Opus into that category as well.

David Robertson: [00:28:00] Well, he says it could be anything and that’s correct. I mean, you can put the ACE of spades there.

I’m just not a believer in Magma Opus and modern. We talked about it a bit during our Magma Opus week, you know, and I just don’t think it fits that well in a deck like this. I, I think it plays well in games where you have a lot of resources. I think in games where you have a lot of resources, you just win with your AB combo.

Because you assemble it. And so if you’re worried, you know, he’s listing cards that are, he are definitely struggling against our dredge and blue red prowess. I mean, I think that’s a perfect slot and maybe even a Prismari command is a slot to put in cards that are good against, I mean, Prismari command just is legitimately not a cardigans prowess.

It’s three men and you won’t kill a creature. So, and Magma Opus. I mean, if you’re resolving that you you’ve won the game anyway.

Damon Alexander: [00:28:45] So yeah, the thing with this, this list is. I would probably play my first Magmatic sinkhole over my first flame slash or that card is just a little bit more reliable being instant as nice.

You have plenty of fodder in the graveyard.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:28:57] I agree with this one card.

Damon Alexander: [00:29:00] Well, how many cards you need to turn one flame slash

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:29:03] in your aggressive match-ups their entire deck. I mean, you need to turn one removal.

Damon Alexander: [00:29:08] I think that the reason that you play a deck like this with the Emrakul and stuff, is that you’re, you’re willing to let the board get a little bit out of control because you swinging over the top with your 15 and 15 and flier.

And so, you know, you have your four bolts, you have your four Remands, you have Prismari commands can do a little bit of bolts. Action or shock action. And so you’re just trying to like kind of buy time and let things get a little bit out of control. And so I don’t know if you, if you need the flame slash for that.

David Robertson: [00:29:35] I guess my instinct would be to play a sinkhole in a cryptic command and to cut a Magma Opus in a Prismari, but we’re really talking about like fudging around the edges. Like the technology is really interesting to me is a green splash, uh, five cards in the sideboard for basically just a couple of lands.

Being different is really interesting. And it goes to show that kinda knows what he wants to beat with them. I think it’s worth noting that the, the graveyard hate there’s there’s really none. And, and that it’s identified as a dredge is a, is a tough matchup. So that’s something you can fix. But, you know, at what costs you, you have to kind of decide which decks are going to be weak against at a certain point.

Damon Alexander: [00:30:14] Yeah. Although one card is good against both dredge and prowess is the card Aether gusts, or this card is actually incredible against dredge because it hits their cathartic reunion. It hits the thrill of discovery. It hits actually critically ox of a goannas his life from the low minute pinch and these cars, actually, it doesn’t matter if you counter them and Aether Gust is just as well against them.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:30:35] I mean, I want to believe that, but this is the kind of deck that we’ll lose game one to dredge 80 to 90% of the time, which means that even if you bring in your gusts and get them and game two, you’re on the draw and game three dredge these days is almost certainly going to cast cathartic reunion or thrilling discovery on turn to, and you’re not going to have a gust ready for that.

So I kind of feel like you need a term one piece if you’re like actually serious about fighting dredge.

Damon Alexander: [00:30:59] Yeah. I it’s definitely worth having at least a couple a turn on pieces. I agree. Or even just term and countermeasure, like spell peers or spell snare. You have the force of Negation

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:31:10] yes. Spell Pierce is kind of interesting to me. I think that that might be a good med. Again, this is a card that Soren identifies in his little write-up here as one that he’s considering. Spell snare as well. Yeah.

David Robertson: [00:31:20] I mean, when I lists like this, I always play one spell snare. I can’t say that it’s good or bad, any specific metagame, but I don’t know. It’s just never a card I’m happy seeing. And I mean, every time you resolve it, you’ve just gained yourself a manna.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:31:34] What’d you play the basic forest?

Damon Alexander: [00:31:36] I would definitely not play the basic forest.

David Robertson: [00:31:38] Yeah. I mean, I, I was surprised to see it, you know, with four Archmage’s charm one cryptic man, and I’m even recommending adding another cryptic command, but.

I also just don’t have the heart for stuff like that. Like the one time I draw it, it just sticks out in my brain. And all I can remember is the one game that like, just totally hosed me and the, you know, five games where I was able to fetch it and take no damage. And then Veloz summer, you know, thoughts or whatever.

It seems like it seems like a land you can’t afford to play. And just the Triome plus breeding pool is good enough. But again, I haven’t played the list, so I don’t want to be like too confident my assertion, but my first instinct would be to not play the basic forest.

Damon Alexander: [00:32:16] The green spots is interesting. I personally would lean against it, but I guess with, with the, Through the Breach lines, you’re really just trying to resolve one single card in a way that a typical blue moon shell.

David Robertson: [00:32:26] I think the Soren probably has a better sense of this, but it’s possible that the green spells are just really good against Dexy are already great against, or that blue and red could. Kind of fixed and you have got all these slots indicated that could be maybe moved to be better against pro and dredge, which he’s already identified, or you can split the difference.

But, you know, like, I don’t think there’s a lot of like Jund or whatever. So like veil of, summer’s not that powerful of a card, especially when you could just play, you know, mystical dispute or spell Pierce or things like that, that aren’t that dissimilar. And then whether the storm is great against a storm and it’s kind of good against burn.

I mean, green. Is the only way to get life gain, right. Blue and red don’t really do that. So maybe you want the green for that.

Damon Alexander: [00:33:12] Yeah. It was the curd dragons claw, which is the other red life gain spill.

David Robertson: [00:33:17] Yeah. That’s not tripping my trigger.

Damon Alexander: [00:33:20] Yeah. This is where it’s like with one of the storms. I think that three is too many, even if you are definitely playing green and the sense that.

This deck has the ability to kill burn decks. I don’t know where, and so you’re just trying to survive until turn five and theory hope they deal damage to themselves with their idol lines or whatever, and then through the breach and Emrakul for lethal. And so, uh, three weather, the storm is that’s a lot of weather storm.

I mean the whole point of all these counter spells and, and removal spouses. At some point, once you have five lands and they’re drawing off the top, I don’t think you need a card that can really take you to very high life. In the meantime, they could play cards like Skullcracks sometimes.

David Robertson: [00:33:54] Yeah, and I think his revised lessons even cut or weather the storm.

So I think so on. And you are thinking along the same lines, Damon.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:34:02] Okay. Yeah, maybe it’s just spell Pierce. Maybe that’s the answer.

Damon Alexander: [00:34:06] I love spell Pierce. I never get sick of casting spell Pierce, even though it obviously doesn’t do well in long games. You know, if you’re going to play a long gentle magic against the Esper control deck, I wonder, does that typically fuel the rune?

Is that why we need the snow covered forest so that when the games on his 15th turn, we can still cast our veil of summer.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:34:25] I think the reason for that is because if you’re imagining that you, I want to bring in weather the storm, when your life tows under pressure, you also are imagining that you can crack a wooded foothills and get a basic forests to save life.

But I’m not sure. I mean, I think it’s definitely an expendable land. You could just change that back to something else and accept that you have to shock fetch.

David Robertson: [00:34:45] But yeah, all in all, I really liked the look of the stack. I’d have to actually play with it. Like I said, to be confident in more or less, I think Valakut awakening is a very powerful card enlist like this.

So I’m surprised only see one here, but again, maybe you need to play more actual lands because your shock fetch base is altered a little bit. Cause you need ways to fetch green and you’re playing the one basic forest. You normally, wouldn’t

Damon Alexander: [00:35:09] very important. This deck has his fifth landed or play untapped.

And I guess Prismari command is kind of like functions as a. Weird Valakut awakening effect.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:35:18] All right. Well, I think we should leave it there and leave it to, to Soren who has played this list a lot more than we have. And we’ll hopefully get another top eight and next weekend, maybe, maybe top four, maybe take down the whole thing.

David Robertson: [00:35:30] Just don’t draw that for us. And your first three land drops when you got Archmage’s Charm in your hand and it should be okay.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:35:38] Yeah. All right. We’re going to take a short break. When we come back, we will hit on our picks of the week to highlight some of the new tech from Strixhaven.

David Robertson: [00:36:04] all right. So we are looking at some technology that caught our eye this week. I enjoy this Mono green. Tooth and nail lists, tooth and nail for boomers like me was one of the original, super powerful combos. Just a quick reminder. It’s five green, green sorcery. Search your library. Excuse me. Choose one.

Search your library for up to two creature cards, reveal them and put them into your hand. Then shuffle your library or put up the two creature cards from your hand into play. And then if you pay an additional two colorless for the entwined costs, you get to do both. So for nine man out, you get to fetch two creatures.

There’s been a bunch of combinations throughout magic’s history that have one on the spot, this text sort of functions like a mediocre Ponza list. So I was playing one Mwonvuli acid Moss, which destroys land plow under which functioning destroys to land primal command can destroy land. And ultimately you also Trinisphere.

It was sort of punish your opponent for not having a lot of lands. You have all kinds of planes, walkers that make manna. So Nissa who shakes the world. And plus Garruk if Garruk and this are in play, you just have all the men and the world, and eventually you resolve your tooth and nail for nine man. You get Xenagos, God of Revels and Emrakul is, then it goes.

Doubles the power of your Emrakul, which is apparently crucial and gives it Hayes, which is actually important. And you do 30 damage to your opponents. It’s a, it’s a deck built around the Arbor, elf a utopia sprawl. So I think it is similarly conceptual to the red green pond’s list. A lot less interaction.

I think a lot more explosive draws even have to Nick those because you aren’t required have any red manner, even though Zen, it goes technically has a red it’s cast and costs. This deck cannot actually cast. Does that Niv go? So it can only be put in place through a tooth and nail.

Damon Alexander: [00:37:51] Yeah. The tech is sweet.

You’ll see it also go by the name of Mono green control. Of course. Monitor green is the ability to control a board state is limited to cards likeMwonvuli Acid-Miss, and primal command. Emrakul

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:38:02] command is good against dredge and good against prowess. That’s the solution.

Damon Alexander: [00:38:08] Yeah. I mean, honestly, these two transfers, you’re going to win some games, just having a turn to transfer on the play.

It forces the other deck to play at your speed. And this tech likes to play at the speed of things. Costing three plus mana

David Robertson: [00:38:20] I also like the wall of roots here as a mana source that is also like a fine blocker for various three threes out of dredge, or at least absorbing a burn spell or two plus a promised creatures attack after it made some manner for you.

Damon Alexander: [00:38:34] Yeah. Especially with all the planes walkers. It’s good to have blockers around.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:38:37] I like how this pilots has shown restraint in how hard they went on the devotion angle I’ve come across older builds that felt like because we’re playing Rakdos we have to play a lot of pips. So you see like wistful silkies getting played just as three green pips in a camp trip.

And sometimes . Kevincito is not playing any of that stuff. He’s just like if my three drop is going to be trend, fear, it’s going to be a trend of sphere or the turtle witness. Rebuying a plow wonder or something like that. I think that’s what you have to do. I mean, if you’re going to take the gamble that your deck interacts in the right way and is fast enough, there’s not going to be time for just like mucking around, building up the devotion pips.

David Robertson: [00:39:17] And for anybody out there who hasn’t like plow under their opponent, then it turned a witness plow under their opponent. I mean, man, that is just sweet. Like you can kill them with tooth and nail, but at that point you can probably just get there with eternal witness, which is awesome

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:39:30] tooth and nail for return all business to get the pile under back.

Damon Alexander: [00:39:33] Exactly. And it goes, makes the eternal witness a four, three Hayes.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:39:38] Nice, super sweet deck. Very happy to see this triumphantly returning to the five-oh is today. Damon. What about you? What’s your pick of the week?

Damon Alexander: [00:39:46] Yeah, so the list I picked comes from the five-oh dump from SIghtWinner, and it is a traditional Grixis prowess deck featuring four Swiftspear, three Soul-Scar Mage, four Scourge of the sky claves for spraySpriteDragon.

But then it gets a little bit weird because in addition to the Cantor suite have to Crash through for dart, for bolt to mute. And I grow with a Serum Visions format and morphos, it also plays to underworld breach. And so as cool to me here is that these prowess techs are playing a lot of cards. That go one for one, they just kind of either.

You play a Manamorphose you, you spend one card, you draw one card or you play bolt and you spend one card, you kill one thing. And along the way, you’re making your team a little bit bigger with prowess. And so this works towards your game plan of killing your opponent pretty quickly, but they don’t have too many ways to get like a head on cards if they ever fall behind.

And so it opponent like a Jund deck that just kind of trades one for one with these decks for awhile. Cause someone was just take them to the cleaners. But now you have this line of just the resolving, an underworld breach, and you may have just a bunch of gas sitting in your graveyard. Somebody a little bit weird with this listed as 74 cards.

So with, so it’s like, is there a companion here? Like a Lurrus but there’s four street race. So I’m not totally sure about that. I would recommend cleaning that up, figure out what’s going on with his missing sideboard card. Possibly just play Lurrus but maybe he wants a street raise to work with your fuel, your breaches.

What do you guys think?

David Robertson: [00:41:09] This deck makes a bunch, two interesting choices. So the street wraith versus Lurrus is already interesting. The 15 sidewalk card missing. Never going to be solved. And then there’s just a bunch of crazy numbers. So it’s not eight one man prowess creatures for our Husker Jeskai clay.

It’s seven. It’s only to crash through only two mutagenic growth, one Serum Visions, exactly. One painful truths. I’m not saying these numbers are wrong or right. But I just, I want to know if there was like a rhyme or reason, you know, like. SightWinner went through and, you know, ran the numbers and like, all right, painful trues is, you know, the perfect card I want the one of, or did they just kind of like, Oh, I’ll just see which one of these I like more or less than they happen to five-oh.

But at the end they were like, Oh, I really preferred X to Y or whatever. I mean, to crash through one Serum Visions, one painful choose that’s our like, Draw card. Sweet. Just seems so strange, especially when just blue, red prowess, you know, is playing the new two for one, for two manna. That seems like a card that would maybe fitness some of those slots, or I guess maybe not.

If you’re specifically like painful shoes, damaging you is not trivial. If you’re playing for Scourge of the Skyclaves

Damon Alexander: [00:42:18] yeah. The expressive iteration, the new blue red card, it seems to be a little controversial thumb imp one, one of the modern challenges playing zero of them. Going back to the trustee, light up the stage.

And I watched some ado, Mike playing the, the Izzet blitz deck over the weekend. And you could see how the expressive iterations sometimes led to some weird or difficult sequencing. So maybe it was a conscious choice, you know, the Serum Visions, plus the crash Through, I think this is obvious David. I can’t believe that you even questioned this, but you play the Serum Visions and then you scribe and he wants them immediately see play crash through.

Meanwhile, your discouraged gets trampled. What could you know, what more could you want?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:42:53] Yeah, you can’t draw these cards. If you don’t put exactly one in your deck.

Damon Alexander: [00:42:57] Yeah. And the one painful truth is kind of like a, you know, it works the same way as underworld breach, put it to like a different, you know, non graveyard version she pointed brings in their rest and pieces of whatever.

And you’re like, ha painful truth. Steven, out of my sideboard. It’s just been here the whole time.

David Robertson: [00:43:12] Yeah, I guess that’s what sticks out to me. Painful truth feels like a sideboard card that we’ve already pre-made decked.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:43:19] So they’re missing sideboard card. I feel like it has to be Lurrus sometimes we’d see decks that wanted to play the desk title core with which street rate is an important piece, but dust settled X would often cite out the street race when their life total was under pressure room.

And that gives you like a nice ability to pivot to a controlling rule against the red deck. And if you sign up the street Wraith what you’re left with is a Lurrus compatible deck. So I don’t know why there’s only 14 cars here, but you should just put the Lurrus and as your 50th card, because you’re very likely to face prowess decks in which you’ll want to cite all the street rates.

I don’t understand why there’s a street Wraith in here supporting only Scourge this guy clean. It was like, w why is there no Death’s Shadow? If we’re going to go that hard on lay flaws?

David Robertson: [00:43:58] Yeah. Like, could we play Death’s shadow, but no Sprite. Dragon, I guess maybe it’s right. Dragon is awesome with underworld breech. I don’t know.

There’s just like a ton of moving parts here.

Damon Alexander: [00:44:07] Yeah. That’s the genius of it. I just liked the idea of a prowess type of card advantage. I, I don’t like playing prowess techs because you just, when you run out of steam, it feels so bad. The stack doesn’t run as team as easily.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:44:18] I’m going to go out on a limb and say, we will not be seeing this one in the future.

My experience of playing with and against promise is that they just, they don’t run out of guests. Like they have horizon lands, expressive iterations. Let’s two from one.

David Robertson: [00:44:31] I mean, I’m going to take your bet, Dan, but I want to know how different the numbers can be. Like if someone does it with four Soul-Scar Mage and one crashed through with two Serum Visions, is that the same deck or.

Have they fundamentally altered the essence of each.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:44:45] There will not be under breach. I’ll just throw that out there. It’s just too inefficient. That’s my guess. And it cannibalizes the graveyard where Lurrus, which you should probably be playing, would use the griever at anyway,

Damon Alexander: [00:44:58] the Lurrus lines are slow breach into metamorphose is fast.

Kind of, yeah, there’s this, this is interesting. I’m not going to claim that I would take this to your next GP if there ever is a GP, but I’ve heard there’s some cool ideas here.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:45:10] My pick is built around the card waste, not this is from core sets, 2015, one of the community. You make the card monstrosities where at every stage, the public at large, got to vote on the rules, text and the name and the artwork.

And even I think the flavor text very, very interesting car. This is one of those white whale type cards that some people have spent their entire careers chasing. There was a streamer Dylan MTG. It was dealing Cruz who has not only even been playing waste, not forever. He runs an entire waste, not discord where they’ve been playing every iteration of waste.

Not that you can imagine. And I believe this build came ultimately from that discord originally and has now been in three or four consecutive five-oh dumps in basically the same 75. How does it work? Well, this deck identifies that the best use of waste not is to grind value. So waste not, we’ll give you something every time your opponent discards a card, but the amount you get out of that depends on how long the game goes.

How many times your opponent has to discard to trigger this? Some of like the agro or combo builds of waste knots. Are ultimately only trying to have like one great term with waste, not, and at that point it’s like, it wasn’t really worth it. This that goes completely opposite direction. The surrounding cell just looks like a red, black, mid range, you know, thoughts, ease inquisition for each of those lightning bolts fail, pushes dread hurricane lists.

If not for the waste knots hanging out, you’d be like, Oh, this is just normal. Rakdos mid-range so what makes it a waste? Not deck. Is it just that you can thought to use and draw card? No, it’s not just that. There’s also. Perhaps the single best card in magic in all of magic to use with waste not is burning inquiry, single red sorcery, each player draws three, then discards three.

So this gets around the problem of once your opponent has no cards left on their hand, a waste, not no longer does anything for you because you just can’t make the discard anymore. Burning inquiry doesn’t care. If they’re empty handed, it just makes them draw three, just car three, and you get some value.

It’s such a good card that I feel like, you know, the reason why it’s not, has not been more successful in the past is that bring inquiry is unique and you can only have four copies. This bill kind of gets around that by using dread Harkness to rebuy copies of Burning inquiry. And it also has three Kroxa and Lurrus coming out of the companion zone to just sort of clean up the mess and make use of some of the debris that accumulates in your graveyard throughout the game.

Damon Alexander: [00:47:35] Yeah. And there’s this spicy one of dream salvage, which is, uh, an instant for blue-black hybrid draw cards equal to the number of cards, target opponent, discarded this turn. So you cast your first printing inquiry, and if you find a dream salvage, you get to cast a card that actually I was going to say, I would prefer if I resolve a waste, not my preferred smell would actually be ancestral recall over inquiry with dream Salvage you can post you.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:47:59] Fair fair.

David Robertson: [00:48:01] One thing I like with these newer builds that include Lurrus is that a lot of times waste I’ll make a bunch of manna when you have them discard lands, randomly and decks like this that are super low to the ground with all these one minute spells, don’t get to use that manna, but gain to put Lurrus in your hand.

And if they’ve just Karn three lands, you can put them in a plant into your hand. And then into play is actually like a really cool way to use one of the value streams that is often not very useful for ducks like this, the two too, obviously. A tax points. So total or saves yours drawing cards is always great, but getting to actually use the manna is something that decks like this I have kind of been missing out on.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:48:38] So I’m fairly surprised that some of the cars that are not in this list, the biggest one that I would probably play is Ox of Agonas. Now that does take away that juicy Lurrus line that David just outlined, but I found that ox is like still sort of worth it. It gives you as much Karn adventures as Lurrus would have.

Maybe, maybe that’s an if and it doesn’t force you to play Mishra’s Bauble otherwise don’t really do anything in your deck. The second card that I was kind of expecting to see was Kolaghan’s command because that has the mode of draw step, make you discard. So that is another way to get around the problem of if your opponent has emptied out their hand, you have all these useless thoughts, pieces, and inquisitions, well cake.

And man says, you know, it still has a mode there. You just let them draw their card and you immediately make them discard it and their draw step. Yeah.

David Robertson: [00:49:21] And I mean, to me, I’m always tempted to play. Just add a little bit of blue and play like two or three Snapcaster majors. I don’t know that I played on their blue card to Dan’s point.

We want to catch a bunch of burning inquiries. Sometimes our dead heard Arcadis don’t get to attack our opponent has a fatal push or whatever lying around. I just don’t like Kroxa so like being able to cut one of those is always super attractive. But yeah, just like Snapcaster burning inquiry. If they kill our dead hard rock and it’s, that feels good.

You know, Snapcaster fatal push. If they’ve, you know, attacking you with a bunch of problems, creatures, like you don’t need to main deck and Nihil spellbomb. I don’t think you don’t need to play to main deck cleaner to dos. I don’t think so. That would be two slots right there that I, I look to sneaky. Snapcaster Mage

Damon Alexander: [00:50:04] what about our new cards? Sea-Gate Stormcaller.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:50:07] Yeah. A little bit better when the Arcanist is still alive. So maybe that’s like, not as versatile as what David is outlining, where the Arcanist has died and you don’t have access to the Burning inquiry readily because it’s already in the graveyard.

David Robertson: [00:50:20] Yeah. I feel like you have arguments lives and get to attack twice in your waste. Not list it. You should win all those games. So I’m not too worried about.

Damon Alexander: [00:50:28] Well, it lets you have the following nice sequence where you go turn to waste, not turn three. So you get strong color burning inquiry.

David Robertson: [00:50:35] Yeah. That is, that is legitimately amazing. I agree.

Damon Alexander: [00:50:38] Yeah. Lurrus docs is an interesting question, Dan. I mean, I like the bubbles because they fuel the croaks on the other hand. Yeah, I agree that ox is a, is a powerful magic card.

David Robertson: [00:50:46] I found ox to only be powerful against me or when Dan is playing it. When I have it in my deck, it doesn’t do anything. So it’s keep

Damon Alexander: [00:50:55] eight is a lot.

David Robertson: [00:50:57] It’s strange how that works.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:50:59] Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, I just want to highlight this deck because this is one that, you know, we’re always tempted by it. I think, you know, if you listen to us, talk about, Birgi, God of Storytelling, a few, a few weeks back, I guess that wasn’t a couple months ago, you know, David had drawn up a similar concept to this where waste not was part of an underworld breach.

Birgi Burning inquiry core. This is a card that, you know, it just captures the imagination. I understand that this list that we’re seeing succeed now is it may look random, but it’s actually the product of a lot of work, a lot of tuning from a fairly dedicated group of people, of brewers who are locked in on this card.

David Robertson: [00:51:35] And by weed, it means me. Dan likes Waste not a lot.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:51:39] I do.

David Robertson: [00:51:40] And this is not a car that has caused me to compare myself to Ahab or whatever. But Dan has said, call me Ishmael. So.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:51:47] Yeah, I’ve played this a GPS. If I’m like trying to figure out the exact number of funeral charms and piracy charm it’s hard to like, hold it all together.

David Robertson: [00:51:55] Then I’m like, well, I might cut down to three waste not you’re like, what the hell is long we ever do that. That’s ridiculous.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:52:00] Yeah. You were correct though. All right. So those are three picks of the week to highlight a little bit of a tech. We’re still fairly early in Strixhaven season. This is what three week three now week four, that Strixhaven has been legal and magic online.

Although modern horizons two is right around the corner. So we are due for yet another big shift.

David Robertson: [00:52:19] Yeah. I think modern horizon preview start in two weeks. By the time people are listening to this podcast, it will probably be one and a half weeks. So yeah, I mean, we don’t know what the. Set will contain, but likely it will be highly disruptive to modern because Hasbro is looking to sell some packs.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:52:40] Abundant harvest we’ll break modern coal on the sharp my house. So I think that’s a good place to leave it here. We will be back on Sunday with our brewing episode when we propose some new necklace built around the major crafts mechanic and specifically these sedges more, which we’ll see you then take care, gentlemen.

That’s a wrap on episode 11 of Strixhaven season tune in on Sunday for our brew session. Featuring sedge more with support for this podcast is provided by brewers like you. If you’d like what we do research to join our community at patreon.com slash  Faithless brewing for discord access bonus content and Mono that’s all for today.

Stay safe and we’ll see you next time. .

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