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anvi

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Not me. The most common one I am seeing now is using Sarkhan to make Narset and Teferi and the other PWs into big 4/4 flying creatures and attack them together. And if/when I kill them, he uses that black card which pays life to bring back any number of creatures/PWs. He brings them all back and also Kenrith which gives them all haste. Attacks on same turn with like 5 PWs at 4/4 creatures and Kenrith too so I get hit for about 20 damage.
 

anvi

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I gave up on my Fires deck because I am missing some of the most important cards. Also I got owned yesterday by one of the toughest decks I've ever seen! It was a newer version of this:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1819972#arena

It has that huge boar which attacks and brings another creature from your hand to attack with it, and then puts the creature back in the hand. So I couldn't kill the creatures with any of my sorceries :/ He used Drakuseth and huge creatures that hit like a truck and then went back to his hand.
 

spectre

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It's a waste of Drakuseth to use it with Raze Boar because it won't trigger on attack. Still, nobody's arguing with seven extra damage out of nowehere, and if its Rhonas, that's a nice ass whooping you got there.

I remember Gruul with haste on everything was my go to deck when the meta was nothing but esper, so it appears that it fucks traditional control strategies really bad.
You basically need to chain removal after removal after removal to stay on top of this, and once they get a Rhythm of the Wild out, pretty much everything just drops with haste and hits for five or more, closing the game quite fast.
It helps a bit if you can get a three for one by Tefering a boardwipe on their turn, but if the other guy is smart, he won't ever let you get more than two for one.

Yeah, fires needs a lot of rares, though this applies to almost every competitive deck out there. For example, if you want a working Gruul, there's duals, embercleave, raze boar, rhonas, hellkite, questing beast, spellbreakers, pelt collectors.
Though with aggro, you can get away with some substitutions as long as you end up with more or less same curve. There's no easy subs in Fires, and control in general. All the good boardwipes tend to be rare, you pretty much need 4x Fires in there and 4x Teferis, but if you
have 4x Faeries, you can try and get away with tucking away some of the endgame stuff in the sideboard (big Chandra, Sarkan). Only thing you can sub is probably Flame Sweep for Clarion and Chemister's Insight for Drawn from Dreams.

I din't need to craft any Sorcerous Spyglasses cause I got mine from Ixalan, but they appear super useful right now. Got two on board today and it helped. Oko+Nissa is still fucking annoying, but it feels much closer now.
I got a nice streak and went all the way to Platinum with it today. Global stats say the winrate is 70% in 60 games, which I consider pretty damn good:

Again, not 100% cool with the mana, but it's very close, probably something like swapping out a Passage for a temple, and/or a mountain for a foundry, but it's always a balancing act with three colors.

Deck
4 Fires of Invention (ELD) 125
4 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
3 Fae of Wishes (ELD) 44
1 Island (ANA) 62
1 Chandra, Awakened Inferno (M20) 127
4 Narset, Parter of Veils (WAR) 61
2 Sarkhan the Masterless (WAR) 143
4 Teferi, Time Raveler (WAR) 221
2 Mountain (ANA) 64
4 Deafening Clarion (GRN) 165
2 Prison Realm (WAR) 26
2 Time Wipe (WAR) 223
1 Shimmer of Possibility (RNA) 51
3 Drawn from Dreams (M20) 56
1 Castle Vantress (ELD) 242
3 Fabled Passage (ELD) 244
4 Hallowed Fountain (RNA) 251
3 Interplanar Beacon (WAR) 247
2 Sacred Foundry (GRN) 254
1 Plains (ANA) 61
2 Temple of Epiphany (M20) 253
1 Temple of Triumph (M20) 257
1 Ral, Izzet Viceroy (GRN) 195
1 Mobilized District (WAR) 249
2 Conclave Tribunal (GRN) 6
1 Castle Ardenvale (ELD) 238
1 Sorcerous Spyglass (XLN) 248

Sideboard
1 Casualties of War (WAR) 187
1 Ashiok, Dream Render (WAR) 228
1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General (WAR) 97
1 Grafdigger's Cage (M20) 227
1 Chandra, Awakened Inferno (M20) 127
1 Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God (WAR) 207
1 Enter the God-Eternals (WAR) 196
1 Unmoored Ego (GRN) 212
1 The Elderspell (WAR) 89
1 Sorcerous Spyglass (XLN) 248
1 God-Pharaoh's Statue (WAR) 238
1 Conclave Tribunal (GRN) 6
1 Ethereal Absolution (RNA) 170
1 Return to Nature (WAR) 175
1 Clear the Mind (RNA) 34

Also, this deck is the literal cancer, being two cancers rolled into one.
While Oko gets all the press, Royal Scions seems to have gone under everyone's radar.
Have fun blocking a 6/4 first striking, trampling three-headed nonsense. Or a Giant.
And an Elk is fine, too.

Playing a Brazen Borrower with three clovers out is what usually makes people snap.
Deck
4 Once Upon a Time (ELD) 169
1 Mountain (ANA) 64
4 Oko, Thief of Crowns (ELD) 197
1 Island (ANA) 62
4 Lovestruck Beast (ELD) 165
2 The Royal Scions (ELD) 199
3 Forest (ANA) 65
4 Lucky Clover (ELD) 226
4 Bonecrusher Giant (ELD) 115
4 Gilded Goose (ELD) 160
4 Brazen Borrower (ELD) 39
1 Anticipate (M19) 44
2 Temple of Epiphany (M20) 253
4 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
2 Temple of Mystery (M20) 255
4 Breeding Pool (RNA) 246
2 Stomping Ground (RNA) 259
3 Fabled Passage (ELD) 244
4 Edgewall Innkeeper (ELD) 151
3 Questing Beast (ELD) 171
 

anvi

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It's a waste of Drakuseth to use it with Raze Boar because it won't trigger on attack. Still, nobody's arguing with seven extra damage out of nowehere, and if its Rhonas, that's a nice ass whooping you got there.
Yeah I actually used Thought Erasure on his Eternal Rhonas right at the start, but he had more :/ I would love to make that deck but it has about 10 rares I don't have.

I remember Gruul with haste on everything was my go to deck when the meta was nothing but esper, so it appears that it fucks traditional control strategies really bad.
You basically need to chain removal after removal after removal to stay on top of this, and once they get a Rhythm of the Wild out, pretty much everything just drops with haste and hits for five or more, closing the game quite fast.
It helps a bit if you can get a three for one by Tefering a boardwipe on their turn, but if the other guy is smart, he won't ever let you get more than two for one.
I don't even use Teferi in my esper control deck anymore, believe it or not, but I really wished I had it against that guy. I think that was the only time I remember wishing I had it, some wraths on his turn would have won it.

Yeah, fires needs a lot of rares, though this applies to almost every competitive deck out there. For example, if you want a working Gruul, there's duals, embercleave, raze boar, rhonas, hellkite, questing beast, spellbreakers, pelt collectors.
Though with aggro, you can get away with some substitutions as long as you end up with more or less same curve. There's no easy subs in Fires, and control in general. All the good boardwipes tend to be rare, you pretty much need 4x Fires in there and 4x Teferis, but if you
have 4x Faeries, you can try and get away with tucking away some of the endgame stuff in the sideboard (big Chandra, Sarkan). Only thing you can sub is probably Flame Sweep for Clarion and Chemister's Insight for Drawn from Dreams.
I have 4 fae of wishes, 3 fires, and 3 tereferis, but I gave up because I only have 1 bolas and 0 draw from dreams. I used a similar card which looks at the top 4 but it isn't as good. I also only have 1 Deafening Clarion which seems like the best thing to survive the start against aggro. And I only have 1 Time wipe. And no Sarkhan :/ Although I just played against a strong fires deck and he used U/B/Red so hit me with Thought Erasure at the start which saved his ass. I had a bunch of things in hand that would have removed his Fires but that throught erasure screwed me good. He did it twice early. I might try the deck again like that.

I din't need to craft any Sorcerous Spyglasses cause I got mine from Ixalan, but they appear super useful right now. Got two on board today and it helped. Oko+Nissa is still fucking annoying, but it feels much closer now.
I got a nice streak and went all the way to Platinum with it today. Global stats say the winrate is 70% in 60 games, which I consider pretty damn good:
Wow nice. I have been depressed at losing so much in the past week. 2 weeks ago I was winning so much I got up to 5k gold in a few days from nothing. Then this past week all I did was lose and because it costs 500g to play, I made a loss. This week is no better :/ I regret going half in to a Fires deck but I couldn't find any other deck I wanted to make so... it was that or quit I guess. I'll keep saving and hopefully get one like yours soon!
Also, this deck is the literal cancer, being two cancers rolled into one.
While Oko gets all the press, Royal Scions seems to have gone under everyone's radar.
Have fun blocking a 6/4 first striking, trampling three-headed nonsense. Or a Giant.
And an Elk is fine, too.

Playing a Brazen Borrower with three clovers out is what usually makes people snap.
Wow yeah. My deck is so strange because I actually win about 60% against all the Oko/Nissa decks. In fact yesterday I got a dream draw against his dream draw, but mine absolutely slaughtered him. He conceded on turn 5 ish because I killed his PW and board wiped him with 2 land creatures so I left him with nothing in play except 2 lands. The problem is that the cat baking deck I am losing more than I win. I can win because I have 1 Ethereal Absolution which completely ends his deck, but it is rare that I get it in time. I also have Doom Foretold which can kill his arti but if he has a few of them I usually die before I can kill it. I also have 2 Ugin which can kill any permanent but it has to have a color and the arti is colorless :/ That cat deck is really hard for me. Red decks I am usually 50/50 but this past week or so they have been killing me too fast because they always draw Torbran at the perfect time.

It is weird though because my deck was a strong control net deck and I found that it did ok against control but shit against aggro. So I completely changed it and now it does 50/50 against aggro but shit against other control decks :/ There is also no way to really improve the deck, I would have to just make a different control deck. I guess I'll just focus on building towards that Fires deck.
 
Last edited:

spectre

Arcane
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Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,381
Yeah, I read something similar on channel fireball. 60% of the field was some breed of Oko+Nissa. UG, UWG,UBG.
Wonder how long it'll take for them to take the shirtless poster boy down. People bitched about Teferi, but I don't recall it being so bad.
Next expansion better have some serious anti-tech if they continue sitting on their thumbs.

anvi
Sometimes a deck, even a very good one, will just crap out. Your only solution at this point is to respec it for the current meta, or bring a drastically different one that plays well vs. the currently popular stuff.
For example, last season I went 1 full rank up in under an hour with RDW, so naturally I took it to Standard event to end up with a disappointing 0:3. Bottom line is, people are so used to seeing mono red in the event
and it only pulls a disappointing 40% winrate for me in such an environment.

You will notice that my current Fires list has plenty of shit I wouldn't really play outside the current Bo1 environment - the Conclave Tribunals are mostly there for the mirror match (I started with one, and liked it quite a lot. it's castable on turn 3 if you manage a turn 2 faerie, and an easy follow-up to Fires) it also catches other stray enchantments like Cavalcade and Reclamation - the latter seems to have a bit of a resurgence. I'm sure they love my Teferi + Narset package.
Still, even that wasn't enough to get a fair game vs. Oko + Nissa, because it's nearly impossible to come ahead when they queue up - BoP, Oko, Questing Beast, Nissa, Hydroid - going first.
Spyglass helps a tiny bit, because you can just say: fuck off Oko, fuck off Teferi on turn two. There's also a few Chandras worth shutting off pre-emptively.
Nissa on the other hand still needs special attention, because her passive is too good to keep on the board.
I still keep losing if the opponent does a nutty opener like turn three Questing Beast, followed by yet another.
Sure, I probably spent too much time speccing for the oko matchup, but it was pretty much all I saw at Gold 1. Thankfully, I don't have to play ranked anymore this season.

I have 4 fae of wishes, 3 fires, and 3 tereferis, but I gave up because I only have 1 bolas and 0 draw from dreams. I used a similar card which looks at the top 4 but it isn't as good. I also only have 1 Deafening Clarion which seems like the best thing to survive the start against aggro. And I only have 1 Time wipe. And no Sarkhan :/ Although I just played against a strong fires deck and he used U/B/Red so hit me with Thought Erasure at the start which saved his ass. I had a bunch of things in hand that would have removed his Fires but that throught erasure screwed me good. He did it twice early. I might try the deck again like that.

Yeah, I think I said it before, there are two playable variants of Fires, one uses black for thought erasures, the other uses Teferi and has better boardwipes. I consider UBR to be better in the mirror.
If you only have one Bolo, that's fine. In WUR version, he's mostly chilling in the SB, because you can't hardcast him. If you're building an UBR version, you obviously need 2-3x.
The real gatekeeper for me was Sarkan, cause he's kills the opponent reasonably quickly in only a few turns and quickly stabilize your life total with the clarion lifelink. I started with just one and it really felt that I need a second one.
I used Ral as a substitute and it feels just right at the moment.

Another thing you absolutely need in here is a mana sink - since you're limited to two spell casts per turn under Fires, it's important to put as much of that free mana to use as possible.
Three, four utility lands like the white and blue castle should be sufficient. Blast Zone is also serviceable, but popping it decreases your land count. If you got a Kenrith, he's a champ in this role as well.
There are a few oddities like Verity Circle and Dawn of Hopes, you should have them in the starter decks and I'd give them a go in a budget version. If they grow on you, they can always go to the wishboard.

When it comes to Drawn from Dreams, the best thing about it is that it bypasses Narset.
If you have sufficient removal to off the cunt (and I believe I have), I'd substitute it with Chemister's Insight, Tamiyo's Epiphany should also give you the right performance.
The point is to generate card advantage, so you can't just have Shimmers of Possibility instead. It may look the same, but the difference between one and two cards is fundamental (and you want extra cards anyways, even if they're lands, to feed the Fae).
Shimmers I would use as wildcards, or pseudo-tutors - fetch the thing you need at the moment - board wipe, fires, point removal, land.

I'm going to spoiler this shit, but if I were to cobble together a budget version with what I infer you have, I'd try something like this:

Lands (27)
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Island
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Temple of Epiphany
2 Temple of Triumph
2 Fabled Passage
4 Interplanar Beacon
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Steam Vents
1 Castle Vantress
1 Castle Ardenvale
1 Mobilized District

Obviously, you can substitute a good chunk of the duals with lifelands, hopefully with Bacon these'll keep you alive long enough vs. aggro.
You're usually not doing much in the first 2 turns, but you need to be up and ready to wipe aggro on turns 3+ and once Fires are down, you don't really care if shit comes into play tapped or no.
Utility lands might be toughest, so use what you have, going double Vantress/Arvendale is fine, Blast Zones are cool as well. The point is to have meaningful mana sinks for turn 5+ under Fires.
You can try going down to 26 lands if your mana base feels stable enough.

Core (22):
2 Shimmer of Possibility // Anticipate
4 Fae of Wishes
3 Fires of Invention
3 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 Narset, Parter of Veils
*3 Sarkhan the Masterless
*3 Drawn from Dreams

So you should have this shit down, or else the deck won't work. Narset is uncommon, so no excuses from having a full set.
He's pretty good with elevated land counts, because he gets you a nonland. And if you hit an all-land pocket, you're glad it went to the bottom.

Like I said, Sarkhan is difficult to sub. He's a finisher, so you sub it with whatever sets a decent clock - Ugin could work, because he fills the board reasonably fast, I would also try Gideon and Kenrith if you have any shit like that lying about.
Apart from the beatdown, Sarkhan is nice because it unlocks a few tricks for your 'wankers - you can turn him into a dragon, attack, time wipe the board and replay him, making another token.
They can also be bounced with Teferi to reset loyalty and trigger Bacon.

When it comes to Drawn from Dreams, like I said, try working with a mix of Tamiyo's Epiphany and/or Chemister's Insight. Chemister is nice because it's an instant
and you should enjoy the benefits of playing shit at instant speed before you drop Fires. Otherwise, it puts your extra lands to work, which is always good.

Only three fires can be a problem and I hope all the library digging will help you get it around turn five. If you feel that you're not getting it often enough,
there's always an option to rely on Faes and put one in the sideboard. This means your odds of dropping it on turn 5 will be quite good,
but it does slow down the deck a bit.

Remember, the control shell should still work whether you draw Fires or not. It's supposed to supercharge your resources to 11, it should still be possible to play a fair game without it.

As a single card, I prefer having Shimmer of Possibility, Anticipate feels a bit more flexible as an instant if you have a few. See which one works for you.

Wipes (5):
1 Deafening Clarion
4 Flame Sweep
If that's the best you can do with the current cardpool, so be it. The point is to stay alive vs. aggro. 6 wipes, or wipe equivalents is a good amount to work towards in Bo1,
with deafening clarion being a priority because the +1 dmg hits the important shit - elk tokens, elemental lands.

Point removal (7):
2 Prison Realm
2 Conclave Tribunal
2 Lava Coil
1 Justice Strike

Try a mix of those and see which one works best. None of this is set in stone, because these are reactive cards - they need to answer whatever the other guy is playing.
If it doesn't, or it is too slow, ditch it.
The exile-enchantments may look iffy at first, but you can try making the most out of Teferi here. If you nabbed a Nissa with Prison Realm and they played another,
bounce it back so the extra copy dies from legendary rule then replay Prison Realm. Same principle can be applied to anything legendary (which questing beast and Torban are),
but also creatures in general. If you nabbed a steam kin earlier and can now kill it along with the rest of the shit with one boardwipe, why not do so and get the enchantment to work elsewhere.

Wishboard:
The good thing is you can get away with just putting all your sexy singles here. That's one of the perks of playing fires. One Chandra, one Enter the God Eternals, one Lilianna, one Bolo,
you can put them all to work this way.

Like I said above, putting Fires here is something to consider, same is true for any other important card. If, for example, you randomly get 1x Sarkan from ICR, I'd consider putting him here first.
Also, remember you cannot guarantee having fires on board at all times, so you should actually put shit you can hardcast in here.

1x Nicol Bolas - since you have the guy.
1x Ugin - not sure how many you have, but if you have two, you can try putting one in the sideboard and one in the main. Or two in the main if that's your only finisher.
1x Chandra, Awakened Inferno - she takes forever to kill people, unless you uptick her a few times. I like here more as a handy boardwipe / point removal rolled into one.
1x Conclave Tribunal - good to have a versatile answer to anything you can immediately cast after fetching.
1x Casualties of War - get it whenever you can do a three for one.
1x Elderspell - the nuclear option for too many 'wankers.
1x Unmoored Ego - if you recognize a netdeck and know what makes it tick, make the ticking stop. Remember, you can bounce shit with Teferi and make them go away forever.
1x Planar Cleansing - as a last resort probably.
1x Time Wipe - maybe keep it here until you get more copies.
1x Clear the Mind - use it in the really long games where both of you exhaust your resources. Or as a counter to mill.
1x Ashiok, Dream Render - anti-graveyard tech
1x Ethereal Absolution - anti weenie

Final three slots are up to you. I think I'd put in some card draw, preferably something that let's you draw 3+ cards in one go, a good mana sink such as Dawn of Hope,
if a game looks like it'll take a good while and you can't make Fires stick, a multicolored land might be a good option, say Gateway Plaza (just one lets you activate Absolution, make full use of Kenrith) Lotus Field should let you hardcast everything apart from Casualties of War.
Expansion // Explosion also doesn't look bad.
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,381
Yeah, I don't have a problem with the actual abilities, but the loyalty gain rate is obviously off. RDW can theoretically manage 6 dmg on turn two, but what feels particularly wrong is that a single uptick puts him out of range of Fry, which came out recently and is supposed to be a sideboard option exactly for this kind of shit.

There's like a million ways to balance this shit. You could do it with a fucking sharpie. Set starting loyalty 1, maybe change the abilities to +1 / +0 / -4. But we won't be getting an errata because 'muh physical cards and 'muh booster sales.
But it was so evident. A pseudo-removal/offensive ability has no business being a +1 on a three mana 'wanker. Not sure what were the designers smoking.
 

anvi

Prophet
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Jeez the fucking RNG of this game! I spent all last week getting owned, kind of broke even most of the week and then ended with some worse runs, so I was down like 2k gold. And today with the exact same deck... 7 wins in a row! And it was easy too.

1.ieOICx


5 out of the 7 opponents had the exact same deck which is the little green pelt guy and a RG deck which I find to be really easy to beat. No cats, oko, or torbran decks! They are the ones that give me a hard time. I guess everyone decided to try the pelt deck today for some reason.

anvi
Sometimes a deck, even a very good one, will just crap out. Your only solution at this point is to respec it for the current meta, or bring a drastically different one that plays well vs. the currently popular stuff.
For example, last season I went 1 full rank up in under an hour with RDW, so naturally I took it to Standard event to end up with a disappointing 0:3. Bottom line is, people are so used to seeing mono red in the event
and it only pulls a disappointing 40% winrate for me in such an environment.
Yeah I tried my cavalcade deck last week too and it got owned as well. I guess I just had a really bad luck week. I just won 7 in a row in standard event but I got to go first in most of the games which makes a big difference for my deck. I like the deck but it just isn't that good. I can win plenty and lose plenty, next I wanna make something that is more consistent. My deck is designed to do ok against everyone, I would prefer a deck that sucks against 1 or 2 types of deck but wins the rest of the time.

You will notice that my current Fires list has plenty of shit I wouldn't really play outside the current Bo1 environment - the Conclave Tribunals are mostly there for the mirror match (I started with one, and liked it quite a lot. it's castable on turn 3 if you manage a turn 2 faerie, and an easy follow-up to Fires) it also catches other stray enchantments like Cavalcade and Reclamation - the latter seems to have a bit of a resurgence. I'm sure they love my Teferi + Narset package.
Still, even that wasn't enough to get a fair game vs. Oko + Nissa, because it's nearly impossible to come ahead when they queue up - BoP, Oko, Questing Beast, Nissa, Hydroid - going first.
Spyglass helps a tiny bit, because you can just say: fuck off Oko, fuck off Teferi on turn two. There's also a few Chandras worth shutting off pre-emptively.
Nissa on the other hand still needs special attention, because her passive is too good to keep on the board.
I still keep losing if the opponent does a nutty opener like turn three Questing Beast, followed by yet another.
Sure, I probably spent too much time speccing for the oko matchup, but it was pretty much all I saw at Gold 1. Thankfully, I don't have to play ranked anymore this season.
Your fires deck looks great, I wish I had a few more rares for that.

I have 4 fae of wishes, 3 fires, and 3 tereferis, but I gave up because I only have 1 bolas and 0 draw from dreams. I used a similar card which looks at the top 4 but it isn't as good. I also only have 1 Deafening Clarion which seems like the best thing to survive the start against aggro. And I only have 1 Time wipe. And no Sarkhan :/ Although I just played against a strong fires deck and he used U/B/Red so hit me with Thought Erasure at the start which saved his ass. I had a bunch of things in hand that would have removed his Fires but that throught erasure screwed me good. He did it twice early. I might try the deck again like that.
Yeah, I think I said it before, there are two playable variants of Fires, one uses black for thought erasures, the other uses Teferi and has better boardwipes. I consider UBR to be better in the mirror.
If you only have one Bolo, that's fine. In WUR version, he's mostly chilling in the SB, because you can't hardcast him. If you're building an UBR version, you obviously need 2-3x.
The real gatekeeper for me was Sarkan, cause he's kills the opponent reasonably quickly in only a few turns and quickly stabilize your life total with the clarion lifelink. I started with just one and it really felt that I need a second one.
I used Ral as a substitute and it feels just right at the moment.
Sarkhan is the one I face the most I think, they usually have bolas too but I've fought a lot more Sarkhan people. Have you tried the Planewide Celebration thing with Bolas? Wins instantly which is awesome, although it costs 7 mana and you also need the Bolas to survive.

Another thing you absolutely need in here is a mana sink - since you're limited to two spell casts per turn under Fires, it's important to put as much of that free mana to use as possible.
Three, four utility lands like the white and blue castle should be sufficient. Blast Zone is also serviceable, but popping it decreases your land count. If you got a Kenrith, he's a champ in this role as well.
There are a few oddities like Verity Circle and Dawn of Hopes, you should have them in the starter decks and I'd give them a go in a budget version. If they grow on you, they can always go to the wishboard.
I have 1 Kenrith which I spent a wildcard on, I regret it now. My plan was to use it with Atemsis which says "you win the game if this creature hits the opponent and you have 6 different converted mana cost cards in your hand". I am sure it would work but I have given up trying to make homebrew decks because the meta is just so strong. I used to be able to win a lot with homebrews in Standard many years ago but for now I need the net decks.

When it comes to Drawn from Dreams, the best thing about it is that it bypasses Narset.
If you have sufficient removal to off the cunt (and I believe I have), I'd substitute it with Chemister's Insight, Tamiyo's Epiphany should also give you the right performance.
The point is to generate card advantage, so you can't just have Shimmers of Possibility instead. It may look the same, but the difference between one and two cards is fundamental (and you want extra cards anyways, even if they're lands, to feed the Fae).
Shimmers I would use as wildcards, or pseudo-tutors - fetch the thing you need at the moment - board wipe, fires, point removal, land.
I saw a Fires deck today which had Tamiyo and it worked well. He kept using it and I had used all my removal on other stuff so he just kept getting more and more of what he wanted. And yeah Shimmers just wasn't good enough. No Sarkhan really hurt me too but the Shimmers were the worst thing because if I mulligan to 5 and still have no fires in hand, and then I never draw it... it is hopeless. I figured it wasn't worth playing until I got the 4th fires and the better draw.


I'm going to spoiler this shit, but if I were to cobble together a budget version with what I infer you have, I'd try something like this:
Thanks for this! I will give it another shot.
 
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anvi

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The problem is that the cat baking deck I am losing more than I win. I can win because I have 1 Ethereal Absolution which completely ends his deck, but it is rare that I get it in time.
flash exile kittens and/or destroy oven. This is why my rakdos deck can win without kittens.
Yea it really makes me want to get Teferi back in my deck. I have 2 Prison Realm which can exile the cat but I have to do it when the oven is already tapped or he just dodges it. I have 3 murderous rider which can kill the cat when the oven is tapped, and then he cant bring it back because no food, but again, I gotta wait for the oven to already be tapped :/ I've got 1 legion's end which is the same deal. And 1 Ethereal Absolution which is game over if I get that out. But because most of them are not instants or flash, it is a tough opponent for me :/ Usually I win by killing his oven with Doom Foretold but it is hard to do.
 

spectre

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Sacrifice in an ability cost will always be faster than any traditional removal. Only way you can reliably nab the cat, whatever they do, is Cry of the Carnarium. Other exile effects they will simply dodge by being smart about about their baking and only tapping out at eot.
Otherwise, it's perfectly logical to just focus on the Oven part of the combo instead, because the cat is nothing special otherwise. Unfortunately, it's a guaranteed tempo loss. Especially if you have to pay 3+ to see it gone and involve a bunch of cards.

Now, regarding fires, since we're talking about a control deck, when you get down to it, it doesn't matter if you win with Lilianna, Bolas, Kenrith, or Sarkan. The point is to stabilize the game then get down to winning. The faster, the better.
If you have one Kenrith, it's the deck for him, cause all the abilities you can use with access to WUR are relevant.

I admit, I keep forgetting Planewide Celebration was a thing. I think I actually have it collected. The Bolas combo looks fine and I would totally use it in the UBR version (looks a bit faster to just draw the walker than pick everything from the sideboard one by one, and I think Lilianna operates similarly, so with a 3:2 split, it might end up being quite consistent, just winning on turn seven instead of dicking around).
I think Celebration is versatile enough to include in the wishboard as it is. The tokens aren't great but massive lifegain and recursion is something I could see myself using regularly in more than one matchup.
Good piece of tech, thanks for bringing this one up.

Tamiyo is also a good card to keep in mind, and I've seen him in a bunch of sideboards. If anything, stopping all sacrifice and discard effects tends to take a lot of people by surprise and cards that immediately shit on entire archetypes is what you want in a wishboard strat.
Alas, the board's getting a bit crowded, and I kinda wanted to trim it down for Bo3. For example I may have overshot with Cage + Ashiok, one graveyard hoser should be sufficient (given that I played a grand total of one reanimator deck so far),
so I might do some spring cleaning there.
 

anvi

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Another terrible day :/ I am gonna have to give up on my esper control deck. It used to be great but now it loses too much. I made a Wilderness Reclamation net deck but that loses too much as well. If I get to turn 6 ish I can nuke them for 500000 damage but all these Questing Beast decks own me long before that point. I did ok against cavalcade decks because Flame Sweep hits everything for 2 which is great. But those Questing Beasts... I had to use two Flame Sweep and then he just played another beast :/ I ended up having to use my Explosion on it but he killed me with a wolf next turn. I like the deck but I can't see it winning much.
 

Dawkinsfan69

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anyone played/experienced something like this?
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/standard-jund-aristocats#paper

I might be looking for altering my sacrifice experience, didnt think of going gbr

I feel like that deck would be a hell of a lot better if you dropped kitty and oven and replaced it with Oko and Savvy Hunter and just rely on sacking foods to trigger korvold and devil. You've got enough mana fixing in there to have 4x oko without needing blue lands
 

anvi

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Nevermind, deck sucks :/ I made a U/R/B deck which seems good against control but aggro screws whoops me. I need more bedevil.
 
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spectre

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Try Angarth's Rampage which is uncommon and slightly faster. Should give you an idea if it's worth committing to more bedevils (personally, I wouldn't unless artifacts specifically are a problem).

When it comes to different flavors of cat pie, GBR wouldn't be my first choice.
I realize splashing white is a no-go for lukaszek. He's obviously too sensitive a lad to abide life-stealing vampires, using basically fascism to enforce one's will and cleansing entire planes as a final solution to things.
For the rest of us, you can stack absurd amounts of ping triggers with Teysa Karlov, Cruel Celebrant and Corpse Knight for even more ping triggers.
 
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https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/61382
Brawl:
  • Oko, Thief of Crowns is banned.

it begins but why brawl only? Is it to give arena at least 1 playable format?
I assume they did an emergency ban on that because 1: Nobody gives a single fuck about brawl outside of Arena, and 2: Oko completely fucking ruined brawl single handedly. Banning Oko in standard would be a bigger deal, but they probably got data from the Arena devs saying Oko's busted in brawl and since brawl's only really played in Arena they did an emergency ban because no one else cares.

Does make me wonder if those goddamn Niv Mizzle Reborn decks will go even crazier now though. Those got me gnashing my teeth nearly as bad as Oko, the one advantage was at least they wouldn't steal your fucking commander if you were trying to play something like Ayara.
 

anvi

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Try Angarth's Rampage which is uncommon and slightly faster. Should give you an idea if it's worth committing to more bedevils (personally, I wouldn't unless artifacts specifically are a problem).

When it comes to different flavors of cat pie, GBR wouldn't be my first choice.
I realize splashing white is a no-go for lukaszek. He's obviously too sensitive a lad to abide life-stealing vampires, using basically fascism to enforce one's will and cleansing entire planes as a final solution to things.
For the rest of us, you can stack absurd amounts of ping triggers with Teysa Karlov, Cruel Celebrant and Corpse Knight for even more ping triggers.
Damn I never thought of that, thanks! That will help a lot. No Drawn from Dreams is really screwing me too. If I get 4 of those and a few more Bolas... this deck will be uber. I found a netdeck that is similar which helped me make some tweaks but it still doesn't do too well. It seems good but it also seems like you need a bit of luck to get discard and counters before oko/nissa. I also just played against an oko/nissa deck who had Bolas Citadel so even when I countered him, he just cast another one with his life.

https://decks.tcgplayer.com/magic/standard/chris-lamell/grixis-control/1362796

Also I got owned today by an awesome artifacts deck I'd love to make but I am lacking about 5 of the rares :/ So tempted to throw money at the game but I don't really want to support them :P
 

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