Good work! I'd still like the deck lists in the article for the decks that are in the videos. It would make it easier to reference the lists without having to start the video and stare at the card view. Plus the sideboard starts out cut off for me that way so I have to jump around the video a little too. Could just be my personal preference though?
Re: Pack Rat - If you are talking about Wescoe's list from last year, that was B/W Dead Guy Ale. Another player won a PTQ with a very similar build. It was the first list I talked about in this article, complete with a shout out to Pack Rat:
3 Doomed Traveler
4 Soul Warden
4 Soul's Attendant
4 Pack Rat
4 Blood Artist
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
3 Reveillark
2 Ranger of Eos
1 Wrath of God
1 Return to the Ranks
3 Blasphemous Act
2 Falkenrath Aristocrat
3 Mirror Entity
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Unburial Rites
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Temple of Malice
2 Temple of Triumph
1 Temple of Silence
2 Marsh Flats
2 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Plains
1 Mountain
2 Swamp
4 Godless Shrine
My thinking with the Mirror Entities is they make all those 1/1s actually dangerous and a sideboard tech might body double in as a discardable (to pack rat) combo (with entity, and reveillark with blood artist on the table for continuous infinite life drain.)
I know Wescoe also had a B/W aggro deck with Pack Rat. If you google it I am sure it will come up. I will gladly show you the deck in action :) Had some snow days here so my recording has been delayed but it will happen.
A deck as good as Pod can win a lot of events in one month. The initial drop would be bad, but not as bad as with a few days notice. Folks frequently buy into Standard decks that have a high number of cards rotating out with less than a month to go. It stabilizes the price. Voice, Linvala, etc wouldn't drop hardly at all day one after announcement.
Panic causes the crash. Less panic if I have a month to pick the 'best' exit price.
I'm reasonably certain one month warning would have been at least better than Pod Crash Zero was...
I'm glad someone understands that it's not just a card that got banned, it was essentially all my cards. I picked up bob at what I thought was a reasonable price, but sold for maybe a total of one ticket off of four. If I'd held for another month! It's a good card and good cards always gain their value back.
I sold everything I owned in modern last week. Don't care about waiting for a rebound. Still quite a bit of extra tickets when all was done. I got my rant out, got rid of the bad vibes by selling the bad memories, now I'm better.
I'm on to Fate Reforged and pretty new cards to lose money on!
Thanks for pointing that out. I do know that interaction but I actually didn't think about it there. At the very least I should have exiled Jace instead of Show so I could activate Oath and play Show with Griselbrand in hand. I still would have lost since he had 2 counters but if he only had won it would have made the difference.
What I'm not sure is which play is better as both have pros and cons:
Fightning Cage and winning doesn't cost me 3 mana the following turn and allows for Yawgmoth's Will, but it's pretty bad if he has another Cage. If he has only one counter it doesn't really matter because I end up playing Show and Tell on my turn.
Not fightning Cage means I can activate Library.
So not fightning Cage is probably better here mainly because of double Cage but also the Library activation. Him not having a single counter is very unlikely and that's the only scenario where fightning Cage is better but if that's the case I very likely win the game anyway.
Once again thanks for pointing that out because I do know that trick with Oath + Cage but sometimes in situations like this I'm so focused in one thing that I don't even consider the outside the box play. It's easy to miss those things in Vintage because there are so many possible decisions and so many things to think about.
M3G2 Instead of pitching SnT to FoW to fight the cage, you could have let Cage resolve, then trigger Oath to tutor Griselbrand for you and then cast SnT when you drew the Griselbrand with FoW backup (using the Jace as FoW fodder). Even with Cage out, Oath still acts as a tutor for your threat even though it won't put it into play.
I think the problem is that Yisan is actually even worse still than a bolt-able Pod that can't be activated the turn you play it. He costs 3 mana to activate (as opposed to 2 or 1) meaning you will probably be spending your whole turn just activating it each turn, and you can't jump up the chain like Pod - you have to go in order and fetch up a 1-mana creature then a 2-mana creature etc. Also, he's legendary so you can't have two on the go.
I think you're right to say even with higher toughness or hexproof that he would still only be decent. It'd be fun to try but Yisan will never be a good replacement for Pod.
They'd be very tough if you had to play 40 cards. Decks would be weaker and less consistent. The 30 card deck was the excuse that WotC used for briefly eliminating them when Gatecrash came out. WotC said that they never had 30 card decks in mind when designing cards and sets. 30 cards makes Mill a very viable option in sets with good Mill options - Innistrad/Dark Ascension had a lot of Mill victories (Curse of the Bloody Tome, Increasing Confusion, Trepanation Blade...).
I have forgotten a few times, usually just after doing pre-release sealed tourneys or a bunch of drafts, and submitted a 40 card deck out of habit. Once I got lucky and went 3-0 with one.
Yeah, it's one of those things that you'd assume would still be 40 cards. If I hadn't looked it up the first time I wanted to play in one I would've played 40 cards at the start.
It is definitely possible to make a good yisan deck in some formats (Tribal Wars, Commander, 2hg standard and so on). Modern probably not so much because the parts are too slow to be "good". That said rogue builds that include Yisan as a one-2 shot could be an effective "what the heck" type of deck, particularly if you pack multiple ways to get your silver bullets. I expect that is mostly xmasland but you never know.
Yisan actually builds up card advantage, like pod, chord does not. that said, yisan is not good enough.
people don't pack much, if any, main deck enchantment or artifact removal. they have tons of creature removal usually. Imagine how bad pod would have been if you could bolt it, and couldn't activate it on the turn you played it. that's yisan.
If yisan was slightly better, had hexproof, a higher toughness, etc, he'd be in the maybe pile.
I think you're right about the bans. I felt like an idiot, anda hypocrite when I sold my pod decks. I'd written about sticking with one deck, and specifically about how Kiki-Pod was going to be my deck for eternity. I really liked playing my delver lists, and felt that they were more consistent. And I wanted to try Legacy. I thought for sure that I'd regret selling the deck.
Now, I'm sad for everyone else. I get why things are banned, but pod wasn't eggs. pod wasn't storm, hypergenesis, 12 post, or any of the other nutty decks. It was a midrange value deck with an essentially fair game plan. Funny thing is, you can STILL play eggs, and storm! They aren't as good without second sunrise and seething song, but they exist. If one more person mentions Yisan I'm going to puke. The closest deck to pod in the format is GBX. I feel bad for everyone that suddenly needs four goyfs, lilliana's, and bobs.
On a side note, I wish I had picked up bobs at his lowest. I made a few bucks off the splinter twins, but I should have saved those.
What exactly do you think is changed by giving one month notice?
Card values would still be slashed as soon as the announcement was known, one extra month of play time does not seem to be enough to change anyone's sale/purchase decisions.
"I am a little surprised they didn't get the ax in Block too since that's usually the first format broken by new cards."
It makes sense when you look at the card. This one is like the perfect exception, it only really becomes powerful enough to be a problem when you have a variety of cheap cantrips to fuel it, and that's only an issue in formats with a wider card pool.
Did you consider this instead of return to the ranks in dark soul sisters?
I threw together a similar deck to this with bloodghast and thoughtpicker witch instead of rats and bloodsoaked champion.
I know! It's wonderfully weird tech!
As far as the flame haired one goes, we shall see where this strange rocket lands. I'm the meantime, I'm enjoying the ride. :)
Stormbind makes an odd sense if you were already adding green for your sideboard, why not? Everything becomes a shock.
Congrats on luring a Redhead to your depraved self. :) I expect to hear good things in the future.
Thanks man! Look forward to playing against you in Overdrive in a Cruise, Dig, and Pod free meta.
Good input Gio, I will include decklists from now on :)
nice job man, RIP Pod!
Good work! I'd still like the deck lists in the article for the decks that are in the videos. It would make it easier to reference the lists without having to start the video and stare at the card view. Plus the sideboard starts out cut off for me that way so I have to jump around the video a little too. Could just be my personal preference though?
Re: Pack Rat - If you are talking about Wescoe's list from last year, that was B/W Dead Guy Ale. Another player won a PTQ with a very similar build. It was the first list I talked about in this article, complete with a shout out to Pack Rat:
http://puremtgo.com/articles/modern-perspective-duck-season-modern-seaso...
Post banning, most of the lists I talked about there seem like fun decks to experiment with for those looking for something different.
my own craptastic but fun variant as follows:
3 Doomed Traveler
4 Soul Warden
4 Soul's Attendant
4 Pack Rat
4 Blood Artist
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
3 Reveillark
2 Ranger of Eos
1 Wrath of God
1 Return to the Ranks
3 Blasphemous Act
2 Falkenrath Aristocrat
3 Mirror Entity
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Unburial Rites
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Temple of Malice
2 Temple of Triumph
1 Temple of Silence
2 Marsh Flats
2 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Plains
1 Mountain
2 Swamp
4 Godless Shrine
My thinking with the Mirror Entities is they make all those 1/1s actually dangerous and a sideboard tech might body double in as a discardable (to pack rat) combo (with entity, and reveillark with blood artist on the table for continuous infinite life drain.)
I know Wescoe also had a B/W aggro deck with Pack Rat. If you google it I am sure it will come up. I will gladly show you the deck in action :) Had some snow days here so my recording has been delayed but it will happen.
You can only have one Yisan out at a time...
A deck as good as Pod can win a lot of events in one month. The initial drop would be bad, but not as bad as with a few days notice. Folks frequently buy into Standard decks that have a high number of cards rotating out with less than a month to go. It stabilizes the price. Voice, Linvala, etc wouldn't drop hardly at all day one after announcement.
Panic causes the crash. Less panic if I have a month to pick the 'best' exit price.
I'm reasonably certain one month warning would have been at least better than Pod Crash Zero was...
Who wouldn't? Lol but seriously, I may have to give that a shot. I love Pack Rat and am convinced it has a home somewhere in modern.
I'm glad someone understands that it's not just a card that got banned, it was essentially all my cards. I picked up bob at what I thought was a reasonable price, but sold for maybe a total of one ticket off of four. If I'd held for another month! It's a good card and good cards always gain their value back.
I sold everything I owned in modern last week. Don't care about waiting for a rebound. Still quite a bit of extra tickets when all was done. I got my rant out, got rid of the bad vibes by selling the bad memories, now I'm better.
I'm on to Fate Reforged and pretty new cards to lose money on!
Thanks for pointing that out. I do know that interaction but I actually didn't think about it there. At the very least I should have exiled Jace instead of Show so I could activate Oath and play Show with Griselbrand in hand. I still would have lost since he had 2 counters but if he only had won it would have made the difference.
What I'm not sure is which play is better as both have pros and cons:
Fightning Cage and winning doesn't cost me 3 mana the following turn and allows for Yawgmoth's Will, but it's pretty bad if he has another Cage. If he has only one counter it doesn't really matter because I end up playing Show and Tell on my turn.
Not fightning Cage means I can activate Library.
So not fightning Cage is probably better here mainly because of double Cage but also the Library activation. Him not having a single counter is very unlikely and that's the only scenario where fightning Cage is better but if that's the case I very likely win the game anyway.
Once again thanks for pointing that out because I do know that trick with Oath + Cage but sometimes in situations like this I'm so focused in one thing that I don't even consider the outside the box play. It's easy to miss those things in Vintage because there are so many possible decisions and so many things to think about.
M3G2 Instead of pitching SnT to FoW to fight the cage, you could have let Cage resolve, then trigger Oath to tutor Griselbrand for you and then cast SnT when you drew the Griselbrand with FoW backup (using the Jace as FoW fodder). Even with Cage out, Oath still acts as a tutor for your threat even though it won't put it into play.
I think the problem is that Yisan is actually even worse still than a bolt-able Pod that can't be activated the turn you play it. He costs 3 mana to activate (as opposed to 2 or 1) meaning you will probably be spending your whole turn just activating it each turn, and you can't jump up the chain like Pod - you have to go in order and fetch up a 1-mana creature then a 2-mana creature etc. Also, he's legendary so you can't have two on the go.
I think you're right to say even with higher toughness or hexproof that he would still only be decent. It'd be fun to try but Yisan will never be a good replacement for Pod.
They'd be very tough if you had to play 40 cards. Decks would be weaker and less consistent. The 30 card deck was the excuse that WotC used for briefly eliminating them when Gatecrash came out. WotC said that they never had 30 card decks in mind when designing cards and sets. 30 cards makes Mill a very viable option in sets with good Mill options - Innistrad/Dark Ascension had a lot of Mill victories (Curse of the Bloody Tome, Increasing Confusion, Trepanation Blade...).
I have forgotten a few times, usually just after doing pre-release sealed tourneys or a bunch of drafts, and submitted a 40 card deck out of habit. Once I got lucky and went 3-0 with one.
Yeah, it's one of those things that you'd assume would still be 40 cards. If I hadn't looked it up the first time I wanted to play in one I would've played 40 cards at the start.
There aren't THAT many cantrips in Modern...They banned a lot of them.
It is definitely possible to make a good yisan deck in some formats (Tribal Wars, Commander, 2hg standard and so on). Modern probably not so much because the parts are too slow to be "good". That said rogue builds that include Yisan as a one-2 shot could be an effective "what the heck" type of deck, particularly if you pack multiple ways to get your silver bullets. I expect that is mostly xmasland but you never know.
Yisan actually builds up card advantage, like pod, chord does not. that said, yisan is not good enough.
people don't pack much, if any, main deck enchantment or artifact removal. they have tons of creature removal usually. Imagine how bad pod would have been if you could bolt it, and couldn't activate it on the turn you played it. that's yisan.
If yisan was slightly better, had hexproof, a higher toughness, etc, he'd be in the maybe pile.
I think you're right about the bans. I felt like an idiot, anda hypocrite when I sold my pod decks. I'd written about sticking with one deck, and specifically about how Kiki-Pod was going to be my deck for eternity. I really liked playing my delver lists, and felt that they were more consistent. And I wanted to try Legacy. I thought for sure that I'd regret selling the deck.
Now, I'm sad for everyone else. I get why things are banned, but pod wasn't eggs. pod wasn't storm, hypergenesis, 12 post, or any of the other nutty decks. It was a midrange value deck with an essentially fair game plan. Funny thing is, you can STILL play eggs, and storm! They aren't as good without second sunrise and seething song, but they exist. If one more person mentions Yisan I'm going to puke. The closest deck to pod in the format is GBX. I feel bad for everyone that suddenly needs four goyfs, lilliana's, and bobs.
On a side note, I wish I had picked up bobs at his lowest. I made a few bucks off the splinter twins, but I should have saved those.
Good article man, you do nice work.
Had no idea sealed 4 pack was 30 min cards... good to know
What exactly do you think is changed by giving one month notice?
Card values would still be slashed as soon as the announcement was known, one extra month of play time does not seem to be enough to change anyone's sale/purchase decisions.
"I am a little surprised they didn't get the ax in Block too since that's usually the first format broken by new cards."
It makes sense when you look at the card. This one is like the perfect exception, it only really becomes powerful enough to be a problem when you have a variety of cheap cantrips to fuel it, and that's only an issue in formats with a wider card pool.