Tokens (either Abzan or WG) is definitely going to be a thing post-rotation.
Another thing a friend and I were talking about is Mardu Walker Control. 4x Oath of Liliana with 4x Gideon, Eldritch Lili, 4x New Chandra and Nahiri. You’d curve at Sorin and you’d run stuff like Planar Outburst, Madness Bolt and mixed removal. You’d board in handhate for counterspell heavy Control decks, you’d probably run a couple of Kalitas as well. It seems disgustingly solid, especially with the smoother new 3 colour mana. You’ve got enemy manlands still as well.
Haven’t looked at superfriends type of stuff because those are usually shitty, uninspired and boring decks.
Not saying you aren’t right but every Time somebody is like “look at this awesome midrange deck I built” and that shit has 10 planeswalker is just assume they’re retarded and can’t think for themselves.
For the useful comment: Gideon can be used to make tokens and also to fetch a 6 casting cost creature with with evolution.
@Iduno In standard I’d rather play Goblin Dark Dwellers because menace is a more offensively useful ability and does pretty much the same thing for one mana less. More importantly though, it keeps me from having to play blue because that color is absolute rubbish right now.
Gideon is silly with Oath of Liliana as you force them to sac t3 and then play 2 creatures t4 with the walker body. I’m not a fan of those decks either personally it just seems like Wizards with all their focus on story and having protagonists have made the Walkers ridiculous for this Standard rotation.
I don’t usually run the obvious meta decks but I can basically guarantee you some form of Walker Control, likely Mardu, will be insanely powerful.
One out of the box idea I had is that Mono Blue Control may be okay in the next rotation. Engulf the Shore with Torrential Gearhulk is just BEGGING to ruin someones day. There are a lot of decent counterspells and draw spells in Standard as well. Odd little cards like Press For Answers as well.
On the modern perspective, it’s basically: Good luck making it to 6 mana before you are dead. The meta is extremely aggressive right now. But even if I miraculously made it to 5-6 mana, I’d rather play primeval titan(R/G Valakut) or a Sun Titan(to run away with the game. Currently this deck doesn’t exist right now because this game is stupid).
Summary: The titans are better because they single handedly can win a game; the gearhulks only win conditionally(which Wizards strongly intended).
In my favourite Modern deck I run 2 copies of Ojutai and 25 land. Ojutai has hexproof though and I have stuff like Minamo and Restoration Angel to protect him. I also dump on aggro with 4 path, 4 bolt, 4 helix and 2 electrolyze. That deck is a true midrange deck and has a very strong matchup vs. aggro as a result and a poorish one vs. Control though I can sometimes race them with Geist and Burn.
I’d pretty much never try play a 6 mana creature as the amount of land you need in a deck to see 6 on curve is ridiculous so usually it’s coming out around turn 7-8 which is way too slow for Modern without winning the game outright. You’d need to ramp into it, and I’m not sure any of the Gearhulks are worth building a ramp deck around with some of the other stuff in Modern. Hell people don’t even bother to ramp into Grave Titan in Modern.
This thing makes me sad, I would really like to play grave daddy. But you are right, there are so many powerfull 6 drops that don’t see play in modern that I can’t really see Blue Hulk being a thing.
Anyway, this weekend I will try my best at wmcq. I will go with Tron, since is the deck I know and like the most. This is what I’m thinking after a lot of testing:
I don’t really play Tron but it seems heavy on Ulamog. You won’t want to ever see multiples. I’d probably run 1. Other than that it seems fine but you might want some form of sideboard Loam type stuff if they’re heavy on land removal. Don’t forget Stony Silence is a thing either.
As for the previous discussion on Blue Hulk I’m going to riff Mono Blue for Standard based around Engulf The Shore and Blue Hulk
At some point my wife is gonna leave me the fuck alone and I’ll make an interesting post full of useful information to keep in mind about the upcoming format.
It doesn’t take a miracle to get to 5-6 mana in Modern. It’s match-up dependent. The modern tournaments I go to are extremely competitive yet I’ve had to incorporate Dromoka’s Command into my Abzan deck to deal with Keranos (I’ve experienced going to a Modern tournament where my only losses came at the hands of this one card). Elspeth, Sun’s Champion has also been gaining a ton of traction as the midrange trump card of choice.
By the time a nonramping opponent has the mana to play a six drop they are either: Losing but has a counterpunch ready to turn the game around; losing but dealing with threats until top decking a win condition, completely even(I feel like completely even at six mana is losing because dying to variance isn’t something I like), or winning already even without the six drop.
A person relying on getting six mana to win the game without ramping is usually talking a big time beating on the way there. A deck that needs a big win con like that will more likely than not be in a very critical condition by then. Usually caused by a low life total or getting slowly outvalued(because lower land count=more gas when versus a control deck along with all of the value spells getting cast).
Games don’t last too much longer for either side at this point, so if a card doesn’t say win on the spot like Elspeth says, then it just isn’t worth playing in modern. I didn’t literally mean that you won’t get to play your sixth mana versus any deck, I meant that the player that needs six mana to close out a game is usually in bad shape, so there aren’t many viable cards in that slot that are really modern playable and Torrential Gearhulk does not do enough at the ‘eleventh hour’ part of the game.
Agreed on Torrential Gearhulk. I was just pointing out that Modern does allow you to play six-mana cards like Titans or Elspeth outside of dedicated ramp decks. It’s just that you need to put them in the sideboard for grindy match-ups for optimal performance. Even in the main deck, you could jam a 6-mana haymaker or two and it won’t be too bad. Sometimes it’ll be good. Travis Woo keeps putting random Wurmcoil Engines in his deck, and I think they are awful, but they don’t hurt him too much and sometimes they win games.
Keranos is a strong sideboard card. The issue with having those cards main board though is always that too many decks can kill you turn 3 or are Tron which is far bigger and scarier.
One of the reasons Keranos and some Walkers work is they’re removal resistant. Playing an expensive creature without some ETB effect or removal resistance like Wurmcoil or Batterskull is never usually a good idea.
I think you mean something like Baneslayer Angel. Both Wurmcoil and Batterskull have removal resistance. It’s just that Wurmcoil’s resistance isn’t so good against Path and Batterskull’s resistance is expensive unless you want to open yourself up to Kolaghan’s Command.
Neither of them see play really, but they are removal resistant.
Baneslayer has no ETB or resistance but it’s just cheap and powerful enough at 5 to see fringe play.
When you start looking at Baneslayer style cards at 6+ you never want them. No beater without removal resistance or an ETB effect powerful enough to justify a deck spot is worth it.