Boros, Beats, Battlestar Galactica

[Khaospawn]

I've also been experiencing a fucking ton of Tron.

[Khaospawn]

Fortunately for you, you're also a combo deck and that's what beats R/G Tron. With Twin on the decline and Rock decks on the rise, Tron has some easy prey.

[hamfactorial]

How's my Hide // Seek taste?

[hamfactorial]

Check out round 2 for a Karn on 27 loyalty.

[Khaospawn]

I'm playing in a Modern SE and my first 2 opponents have been R/G Tron. I'm so glad I maindeck Molten Rain/Skullcrack/Flames of the Blood Hand

[hamfactorial]

Heh! Get rekt, Tron. Buncha slackjawed faggots.

[Kyarie]

Hey Ham, deck got a mention in this article : http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=12000

Wish I had the fetches IRL, looks like a blast to play.

[hamfactorial]

Sweet, good eye Kyarie!

[LP, of the Fires]

Decks sweet. Cut a brimaz and a batterskull for Chandra and Elspeth and id add the skull to the board.

[hamfactorial]

I haven't gotten a chance to test Elspeth yet, hoping to get free time this week once work calms down.

[Toblakai]

Nicely done, Ham. Hopefully your opponents are still in a state of shock when you drop that Hide // Seek.

[hamfactorial]

thank you sir.

The more Hide//Seek-triggered suicides, the better.

[Toblakai]

Might you have any insights on how a red-centric deck (perhaps splashing black for Terminate) would approach a midrange strategy? Skred is the premier red midrange deck for Modern, but its biggest weakness is that it is full of hate and somewhat short on threats. Here, it seems you've got an adequate amount of threats and Path to Exile essentially plays the role of Skred, except a bit quicker. I imagine Figure of Destiny and Eidolon of the Great Revel would be in the lineup, but it is that three-drop slot where the game gets tricky. Of course, I could run a higher land count and play sets of Stormbreath and something like Wurmcoil alongside a set of Koth.

[hamfactorial]

Toblakai:

Red is my favorite color and midrange is my favorite archetype. I've made many variations of the midrange red archetype since switching to Modern after ISD rotated, and I've learned some things.

Midrange is a tricky area for red, and I've chosen to plug the hole with white because of a lack of virtual card advantage (VCA) available at the 3-4 CMC slot. White also gives me the best sideboard options.

If you look at the low CMC card pool for red creatures, you get a choice between fast, fragile threats (Goblin Guide, Hellspark Elemental, Vexing Devil) or slow, incremental advantage threats (Figure of Destiny, Grim Lavamancer, Eidolon of the Great Revel, Kargan Dragonlord) that are easy to
deploy and get better in the midgame. Generally, red is in a poor position in any board stall, since its creatures are low toughness.

When you approach 3 CMC, red lags far behind white and green in terms of the value you get for the mana you've spent. Modern is fundamentally a turn 4 format, so your 2-3 CMC threat needs to do one of the following things -

1. Provide card advantage (draw a card (Wall of Omens, Prophetic Flamespeaker), create a token on ETB (Blade Splicer, live through removal (Kitchen Finks)
2. Prevent your opponent from winning that turn (disrupt a combo element (Spellskite, Phyrexian Revoker), destroy a land (Fulminator Mage, tax the opponent (Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, shut off ETB effects (Hushwing Gryff)
3. Be so powerful that unless your opponent
wins on the spot, you're going to win if you untap (Geist of Saint Traft, Brimaz, King of Oreskos)

When you get to 4 CMC and above, red starts to catch up. You get value enablers like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, big flying bodies (Thundermaw Hellkite, Stormbreath Dragon, Demigod of Revenge) and everything has haste. If you're a tinkerer like me, you can play more incremental value creatures like Rakka Mar and experiment with planeswalkers like Chandra, Pyromaster and Koth of the Hammer in lieu of creatures.

The frustration with heavy red is that to avoid dying immediately to Twin/Pod combo and small aggro, you need to fill your deck with enough cheap creature removal (Lightning Bolt, Skred, Flame Javelin, etc) that you don't just fall over and die on turn 4 with a bunch of
dragons in your hand. This means lowering your threat count, which means that you're leaning more and more on each creature in your deck to win. I created a midrange deck called "Mana Sink Deck Wins" which depended heavily on Figure of Destiny on Kargan Dragonlord living to kill my opponent. If my opponent could kill them (Jund in particular was difficult to fight), I had no hope of winning unless I drew a hand with 6 burn spells and beat them the old fashioned way.

A midrange deck wants to play some critical mass of creatures that are all excellent threats on their own, capable of ending the game, undercosted for their size, or provide some other advantage that gives your opponent a headache. Pod is a deck that does this well. They have so many creatures that you can't hope to ever remove them all, they have an infinite combo that they can tutor up with Birthing Pod, and each threat from 2 CMC and up provides some card advantage or disruptive element.

How can red ever compete? By
finding a complementary color to fill the gaps. If you're in the mood to splash black, you gain a few things.

1. Black has better creature removal (Dismember, Terminate, Slaughter Pact) that lets you deploy your cheap red threats and sit back on efficient black removal.
2. Black has better creature-based card advantage (Dark Confidant, Pack Rat)
3. Black can disrupt your opponent's gameplan (Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize)
4. The sideboard is better against combo (Rakdos Charm, Slaughter Games)

I created a deck called "Koth's Big Black Deck" which ultimately transformed into a heavy black deck splashing red for Prophetic Flamespeaker that does very well. It hurts itself a lot, so its a bit weak in the current RDW-heavy meta, but otherwise a very good deck. Pack Rat in particular is a dream come true.

If I wanted to make a red-heavy midrange deck splashing black, here's what I would do.

[deck]Lands:23
4 Arid Mesa
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Verdant Catacombs
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Blood Crypt
4 Mountain
1 Swamp

Creatures:20
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Pack Rat
4 Dark Confidant
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Prophetic Flamespeaker

Spells:12
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Searing Blaze
2 Slaughter Pact
2 Dismember

Planeswalkers:5
3 Liliana of the Veil
2 Chandra, Pyromaster[/deck]

You get a bunch of good board control attached to a permanent (Grim Lavamancer, Liliana), some better removal (Slaughter Pact, Dismember) to supplement your red burn, a finisher / discard enabler for Grim Lavamancer with Pack Rat, a recurring GY threat in Chandra's Phoenix, and CA with Dark Confidant, Prophetic Flamespeaker and Chandra.

Looks pretty metal

[Toblakai]

Thank you for that most thoughtful post, Ham. Your insights have given me some ideas, and so as to not take this thread too far off course, I invite you to peek into the Big Red thread that I've got running. There are a couple of potential builds I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on.

Something I like to pull, akin to your stunts with Hide // Seek: Guttural Response their Cryptic Commands. :

[hamfactorial]

The sideboard Leylines are unnecessary vs real decks, effectively doing nothing unless I'm fucking around in the tourney practice room. I want to put Blood Moon back in.

My latest builds have been heavier red, so I gave some thought to cutting back on white mana and anything that pulls me heavily off of red. Hitting [mana]WW[/mana] on T3 for Brimaz is difficult unless I go for a bunch of fetchlands and duals, leaving me screwed if a Blood Moon shows up.

Here's the mana base I want to run, complete with 12 fetches to support the playset of Grim Lavamancer, while enabling pain-free Blood Moon out of the SB -

[Deck]4 Scalding Tarn
4 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
4 Sacred Foundry
5 Mountain
1 Blood Crypt
1 Plains
1 Slayers' Stronghold[/deck]

I should be reasonably assured to find my white source for T3 Blade Splicer with this mana base.

With the goal of cutting heavy white out, I removed Brimaz
and started wondering what to play in his place.

I thought of Thalia first, Figure of Destiny second, but then had a wild idea. Phyrexian Revoker hangs out in the 2 CMC spot, offers me a decent body that doesn't tax my mana, and offers me a maindeck way to fight combo without being dead in fair matchups.

It offers some protection from planeswalkers, which historically give me trouble (Liliana and Karn are particularly irritating). It turns off Pod, mana dorks, AEther Vials, and troublesome artifacts like Cranial Plating and Arcbound Ravager.

I can reset it with Restoration Angel or make a copy with Kiki with something on the stack.

It's not great vs. RDW, but it trades with their dudes and shuts off Hellspark Elemental for a little while.

I think it has some merit, so I'll be playing this tomorrow -

[deck]BBBSG V. 1.34[/deck]

I may go with 3 Grims/Relic/Blood Moon or a 25th land before I enter the daily if I think of something better to put in their place. It may be useful to use that as a testing slot for Elspeth or a true RDW hoser (Dragon's Claw?)

[hamfactorial]

Went 2-2 (scrumped out in the last round to burn), Revoker didn't do anything. I'll try again with something else, but liked the rest of the deck.

Figures I'd die to burn immediately after removing Leyline

[hamfactorial]

Burn and RDW are both everywhere after the good showing at that Japanese GP, so I'm throwing Leylines back into the SB and swapping the crappy 2nd 2drop with Lightning Helix.

Also going to swap Ember Hauler for Grim Lavamancer as a test. The mancers have been under performing.

[NerdBoyWonder]

Looking for a new modern deck to play and I think this is something I am looking for. It has Mountains, is aggressive, and has Kiki. Only if I could fit My current pet card Goblin Rabblemaster...

[hamfactorial]

I built a similar but worse combo deck with Kiki and Lightning Crafter. It could be a decent finisher for a Rabble Red shell.

[hamfactorial]

Is Rabblemaster any good in Modern? I keep reading it and it seems overcosted for the format.

[Valdarith]

I did see that someone accidentally registered their Rabble Red deck for Modern and went 3-1 anyway. I think the card could potentially be very good in the right Goblin build but I wouldn't touch it anywhere else.

[NerdBoyWonder]

In the PTQ this past weekend in San Diego apparently there was a guy running a list with Rabblemaster and was doing decent but I never heard the style of deck or color combo.

Kiki + Thornbite Staff + Lightning Crafter or Mogg Fanatic = infinite damage.

[hamfactorial]

I like that Flamespeaker is a Shaman for Lightning Crafter synergy.

[GoblinWarchief]

kiki + crafter + any sac outlet = infinite damage unfortunately skirk prospector / goblin sledder are not available in modern. The best i can think of is viscera seer, but it would be better if it was an artifact not to splash a color.

[hamfactorial]

I'm putting Auriok Champion back in, since Burn is rampaging all over the 8-mans. Upside against Twin for great value

The leylines may be overkill with both 2-drops (Eidolon + Auriok Champion) hosing Burn in a big way.

It stretches the mana, but the heavy Red deck seems to have a big vulnerability to Burn.

[hamfactorial]

Played against a bunch of Burn in testing and didn't drop a match with maindeck Champion and Eidolon.

[NerdBoyWonder]

[deck]Creature 25
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Figure of Destiny
4 Eidolon of Great Revel
4 Blade Splicer
2 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
3 Prophetic Flamespeaker
4 Restoration Angel
2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

Planeswalker 1
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Spells 8
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile

Artifact 2
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine

Land 24
4 Arid Mesa
4 Clifftop Retreat
4 Marsh Flats
2 Mountain
2 Plains
4 Sacred Foundry
2 Slayers' Stronghold
2 Battlefield Forge[/deck]

List I will be testing this and next week then I will be hopping back into standard for GP LA.

[hamfactorial]

Looks pretty sharp. I like the 3/1 Flamespeaker Chandra split. Please let me know how the list runs in testing.

[NerdBoyWonder]

For shits here is a Mardu (B/R/W) list also:

[deck]MARDU KIKI BEATS[/deck]

[Toblakai]

Mardu gives you access to Boros Charm in the side. I found it useful in some red midrangey decks I was tinkering with.

[Toddington]

Rakdos Charm?

[NerdBoyWonder]

Mardu has a lot of tools/creatures. Black splash adds Hand disruption (thoughtseize/IoK), card draw (Bob), removal (slaughter pact/terminate/dismember), and utility tools such as Rakdos Charm that beats twin, fights graveyards, and kills artifacts.

Things I noticed from your videos Ham is that you kept in Path when you brought in Blood Moon. No sideboard space for alternative removal (combust/dismember/terminate/chained to rocks)?

[hamfactorial]

The Path thing was an oversight, I shouldn't have left that in when bringing in Moon.

The Leylines could easily come out now that the Burn matchup is better.

I ran 3 colors originally for Confidant, but getting colors on time was difficult. I hope you have better luck than me

[hamfactorial]

I played a handful of games with this list and thoroughly enjoyed myself -

[deck]Modern BBBSG v. 1.35[/deck]

I tested with Elspeth and found her to be a bit lackluster. Ajani was much better in that spot, using him for removal or shutting off a land or a blocker was more valuable.

NBW's
3/1 Flamespeaker Chandra split works out beautifully, and it helps trim the 3 spot down a bit.

Auriok Champion means I can drop PtE and use burn for removal instead against Twin. Opens up space for Blood Moon in the SB, which hurts all the popular decks except RDW.

[Khaospawn]

Love the updated list. Like, I really think something awesome is starting to come together.

I like Auriok Champ as Twin protection, but just have a Bolt/Helix handy if they put Twin on a Pestermite!

[hamfactorial]

Precisely it's easy to do 3 damage, but 4 requires jumping through too many hoops.

[hamfactorial]

I like the extra power that shifting to 4 drops has given me. Not killing myself with my own Eidolon is a plus

[Khaospawn]

Don't be a pussy. Take that 2 damage and love it!

[hamfactorial]

Ride the Snake!