WolfWhoWanders wrote: ↑3 years ago
No worries, thanks for the response. I went ahead and gave the breach version of the deck a spin and is a lot of fun to play and seems very strong. Being relatively new to cedh I've made a ton of misplays so far, like crop rotating for something that doesn't make me red and having Kalamax unsubstantiated during a lethal swing with a pyroblast in hand. Silly things that wouldn't seem like they'd end your game in something casual but make all the difference in a competitive match up. I've also inspired a fear of the big dino in people. It's a great proactive and reactive playstyle, I really enjoy it. Love the breach addition too. What a cool card. Got a lot of learning to do in using that, but looking forward to it. Thanks again Darren, you da man.
I've been toying around with a few different configurations over the last week to really play out some other theory-crafting ideas I've had.
I've missed the
Chord of Calling a bit so I really tried to think about a combo winning combination of creatures outside of just the
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker +
Deceiver Exarch (or any ETB untap creature).
The reason I cut it in the first place is that I didn't like Kiki-Jiki or Deceiver as natural draws, as they didn't add anything on their own.
Also
Chord of Calling for
5ggg in a creature light deck (so you don't get much help the convoke) is a little mana intensive.
Anyway I couldn't come up with a "perfect" set of creatures...however I have been thinking about it a lot...
Some ideas could be getting infinite mana say with
Grand Architect +
Pili-Pala. But Infinite mana with a mana sink commander isn't an instant win.
Actually that's the reason I've cut
Dramatic Reversal and
Isochron Scepter from the deck. Getting infinite +1/+1 counter isn't game winning either.
You could go
Painter's Servant +
Trinket Mage to get
Grindstone. At least
Trinket Mage provides some value on it's own and
Painter's Servant has minimal value with
Force of Negation,
Force of Will,
Pyroblast,
Red Elemental Blast if naming "blue". You could also name "black" and get incredible value out of
Reap.
But you can only eliminate an opponents at a time, and requires
3 on the
Grindstone so even if you Chord for
3ggg you still have cast the Grindstone and activate it. Pretty slow actually.
benjameenbear already suggested
Dualcaster Mage +
Spellseeker to find
Twinflame. The two creatures have some merit on their own. Well
Spellseeker is excellent actually. This ends up being a sorcery speed kill and because
Twinflame costs mana it's still a 8 mana play if looking to do this main phase. You can Chord for
3ggg and do this at end of opponents turn, and untap and cast the
Twinflame, but this obviously means another full turn cycle rather than trying to win main phase.
Twinflame on its own outside of maybe
Dockside Extortionist is very weak in the deck.
Unfortunately outside of black means that you can't look for a
Thassa's Oracle +
Spellseeker into
Demonic Consultation type win which would be a mana efficient.
Anyway I was thinking with
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker there is a combo using
Conspicuous Snoop and
Goblin Recruiter getting
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. But it requires some other Goblins (or potential) to work.
Let's say it was just literally these 3 creatures. Say at the end of opponents turn you can
Chord of Calling for
2ggg getting
Conspicuous Snoop and
Dockside Extortionist.
Goblin Recruiter can get
Dockside Extortionist and
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. You draw
Dockside Extortionist and now Kiki-Jiki is on top. You can make infinite
Conspicuous Snoop but they will all be tapped. So you'd need to wait another full turn cycle and make the infinite Snoops at end of opponents turn so that you get to untap with them. So even though it's mana efficient (
2ggg) it's very slow.
So Goblins that can help to win faster are
Torch Courier and
Mogg Fanatic (or any way to creature damage off a Goblin).
The idea is that you can
Chord of Calling in your turn and put
Torch Courier,
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker on top with
Goblin Recruiter.
You can cast the
Torch Courier to give the original
Conspicuous Snoop haste and then make infinite copies. Then you can use the copy ability to make another
Goblin Recruiter and put
Mogg Fanatic on top. Now all the infinite
Conspicuous Snoop can be sacrificed to deal damage.
So obviously the downsides to running this all is that it's
6 cards dedicated to a combo. It still running Kiki-Jiki and now it has some pretty weak cards outside of the combo.
The upsides however are that you actually have a way to win with just drawing
Goblin Recruiter. You can cast it normally and look to setup
Conspicuous Snoop with the other combo Goblins. The deck also has lots of cantrip cards so you can look to draw and cast the Snoop in the same turn you cast Recruiter.
It does require lots of
red mana however to try and do this all in the same turn.
So if looking to do it all in the same turn you'd need
1r (Recruiter) +
rr (Snoop) +
r (Torch Courier) +
u (cantrip like Peek/Opt/etc) =
1rrrru. So actually quite doable, but just need to be mindful of how much red you need.
Other downsides to the combo in general is if you've actually drawn some of these Goblins. If you've drawn Kiki-Jiki or
Mogg Fanatic then you can't actually combo with the sequence I mentioned.
However the way to get around this is by using
Spellseeker instead to get
Brainstorm. So for example you'd
3ggg getting
Goblin Recruiter and
Spellseeker (for
Brainstorm). Now you can put back a Kiki-Jiki and/or
Mogg Fanatic and look to win again.
So an upside to
this combo is that you can't do this same trick using Kiki-Jiki +
Deceiver Exarch if you have Kiki-Jiki in hand.
Now don't get me wrong, having to use
Spellseeker means that you can't get
Conspicuous Snoop into play at the same time, so requires more mana again. You have to cast
u (Brainstorm) +
rr + (Snoop) +
r (Torch Courier) on top of the Chord for
3ggg. So realistically you'd need to do the Chord just before your turn to have the available mana.
So if you wanted to go even further with a Goblins package that can play around even more redundancy then the trick would be to replace
Mogg Fanatic with 2 cards in
Siege-Gang Commander AND
Skirk Prospector. This way it doesn't matter if you have these cards in your hand because as long as you can make infinite Snoops, you can cast and sacrifice for mana to get Siege-Gang into play and then sacrifice Snoops for damage.
This might sound all very long winded, but this is the sort of thing I really like to figure out. I've been trying the
Goblin Recruiter,
Conspicuous Snoop,
Torch Courier,
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker,
Mogg Fanatic package to see how it fairs.
I haven't got enough reps yet (4 games with this) to really make a proper assessment yet. I did win a game by casting
Goblin Recruiter and winning in the same turn with the
1rrrr needed. The reason I didn't need a cantrip is that I had
Sensei's Divining Top in play to draw the
Conspicuous Snoop.
But I haven't drawn
Chord of Calling in those games either to make use of the double up Chord,
Of note you can of cause just cast Chord NOT copied (no Kalamax) for
Goblin Recruiter to try and setup a win that way, so this is another upside of the Goblin package.
I did however have two games that I drew
Mogg Fanatic and
Torch Courier and those felt like very bad draws.
Torch Courier can be used to give Kalamax haste at non-combo times, but this isn't very strong really.
So in conclusion I'm just going to keep trying it out until I feel it's worth it or not.
If you want to know what to get with
Intuition then you obviously have to have a way to get
Underworld Breach back when it goes to your graveyard.
So one of the
Intuition can get
Underworld Breach +
Noxious Revival +
Regrowth (or Reap if you've already cast another one).
Then your second copy of
Intuition just needs a mana producer and realistically a
Brain Freeze to make sure you can keep comboing.
So for example (
Lion's Eye Diamond or
Frantic Search) +
Brain Freeze + anything else, maybe a counterspell like
Fierce Guardianship) to push through the combo easier.
There are ways to trick opponents into giving you cards that might help to make it more mana efficient, but just assume opponents know what is going on and the above type of cards is what you're going to need.
General Changes
On another note I have made some other changes, more or less to help out the
Underworld Breach from functioning better.
I really tried to not have
Lion's Eye Diamond in the deck as I felt it's pretty lack-luster without Wheel effects like
Timetwister,
Wheel of Fortune,
Windfall, etc.
However it does make comboing with
Underworld Breach a lot easier. Often I've found myself having to completely tap out to cast a
Frantic Search and get disrupted even though I have access to a counter.
Of note as well for the purposes of trying the Goblin package LED does help out with naturally casting Goblin Recruiter for a same turn win. So the idea is that you can sacrifice the LED in response to a cantrip to then cast the Conspicuous Snoop and Torch Courier with the
rrr you'd get.
I also took out
Seedborn Muse after trying it out for a while. I did have some good games with
Holdout Settlement,
Survivors' Encampment,
Springleaf Drum, but I also had some games where I didn't and it just ended up being too awkward.
Chain of Vapor is a staple among cEDH decks, and normally I'd sing its praises, but honestly in this deck it has felt very awkward. There is already a lot of removal in the deck, and with Kalamax getting +1/+1 counters you really don't feel like putting it out there to have opponents then bounce him back to hand.
Plus the deck isn't massive on it's own storm approach where you might look to to bounce your own mana sources to recast for a big turn.
I took out the
Dramatic Reversal +
Isochron Scepter because honestly was pretty weak in the deck. The idea was that
Dramatic Reversal could be used as another method for untapping mana sources with
Underworld Breach combo, but I've found it better to use
Lion's Eye Diamond or
Frantic Search (with access to
Utopia Sprawl,
Wild Growth,
Fertile Ground) to generate mana.
Then getting infinite mana isn't actually the be-all-end-all you want anyway for this deck as there are no mana sinks.
With Goblin and Chord of Calling package. I'm trying without the copy spells for infinite +1/+1 and a little less on Breach support and control as it moves to more combo.