Grimoire is in the category of cards that make a ton of sense when chains isn't on the field. My goal is to tutor and play chains ASAP most games though. So idk. That and skullclamp are both no-brainers without chains. I think I'll want to see how the deck plays out before I decide whether I should include them.
Quandary I'm less enthused about. It's a lot of mana, and life loss isn't really that useful to me. I'd rather have a tutor that could set up the anvil + chains lockout combo, then they don't get to cast anything anyway.
pokken wrote: ↑4 years ago
lake of the dead can enable a turn 3 rankle, although fairly high risk. Might be worth running with Crucible tho.
terrain generator is a fairly low risk way to generate a turn 4 rankle with mana to spare, might be worth a thought.
I expect
nether traitor would fit well in the suite of Rankle critters, quite a bit more mana efficient than a lot of the others that usually cost 2.
murderous rider is a card I have really enjoyed in my Golos mono black--represents +1 card which is nice.
I do think that the
skullclamp is fairly low investment way to break parity on the Rankle stuff.
culling the weak can turn one of those sac guys into a turn 2 rankle which I think is pretty important.
dark ritual #2 functionally.
This is likely a deck that would get a lot of mileage out of
oversold cemetery as well.
Looks like a very fun deck from a design perspective; I don't think I'd want to play against it all the time, but fun every now and then. Rankle is a bit vicious in that haste makes him really hard to deal with and mono black has so many ways to get him back without sending him to the zone that it's easy to dodge tax. Reclamation/Cemetery, etc.
I think you might be misreading Rankle as costing 5? Terrain generator doesn't speed him up at all, and lake is definitely overkill. I'd consider running more 2-cmc rocks to get him out T3 though.
My beef with nether traitor is that it doesn't work on its own, it needs another creature. Once that's done, it's a lot more mana efficient than most other options, but idk how much that'll matter, the deck is pretty low-curve for the most part. We'll see.
Rider doesn't seem efficient or useful enough. I'm hoping to mostly avoid single-target removal for creatures, since we'll hopefully lock people out of having them entirely.
skullclamp...yeah, see above. Good chance it'll find its way in, but I want to try without it first and really commit to the chains plan.
Culling the weak would only work with a 1-cmc creature (for a t2 rankle), which excludes a lot of them. And then, if I've just sacked that creature, I probably won't have anything to sac to rankle on attacks anyway, and I'll be pretty wrecked by removal. Idk, maybe it's the casual in me, but I'd rather run a 2-cmc rock that gives me a bit more resiliency, even if it doesn't have quite as much burst potential.
oversold cemetery is a good idea. I'll see if I can find room for it.
TheAmericanSpirit wrote: ↑4 years ago
Played stax for years, I can say that it is very hard to be on the losing end of your own Tangle Wire or Smokestack because of how you can stack their triggers in lopsided ways and both require surprisingly little support to be worthwhile includes. I'd play them in nearly every stax deck, this one notwithstanding.
Torpor Orb is another beast of a card that can make what precious few cards/creatures your opponents can retain do even less, while not laying a finger on Rankle.
I'll think about it for those two. They're definitely strong, not sure if they support exactly what we're trying to do though. Probably tangle wire is more likely than smokestack but they're both possible.
Orb is also reasonable, if I can find room for it I might throw it in.
Feyd_Ruin wrote: ↑4 years ago
Blood Scrivener is well worth considering given the discard and chains. Even without chains, you're often card locking yourself with the rest of the table, and Scrivener is an easy way ahead. Scrivener also works well with Chains, even if it'll confuse the hell out of your opponents.
Suppose you have one or two cards in hand, with Chains, Rankle, and Scrivener. Swing with rankle and then either choose discard+draw (if two cards in hand), or just draw (if already only one). Rankle will have you draw, which Chains replaces as Discard->Draw. Here's the trick of it: When you discard that card to draw, you will then be drawing a card without any cards in hand. This will trigger Scrivener's replacement effect, and you'll draw two cards instead. Now, since Chains has already replaced this instance, it won't go again: you'll draw two cards and go on your merry way. (This is net +1 if one card in hand, or a one sided discard effect with added filter if you started with two)
Scrivener can even get out of the Anvil-Chains lock. Normally you start with no cards and end the draw step with no cards. Anvil's Discard->Draw becomes Discard->Draw->Discard, BUT you'll again hit that magic moment in the middle where you're drawing with no cards in hand. Thus, you get Discard->Draw 2->Discard and end up with a card in hand at the end of your draw step.
Importantly: both of these replacement stacks skip using the graveyard entirely. It isn't quite obvious at first, but a clever opponent will note that Chains' weak point is actually graveyard hate. If someone lays down a
Rest in Peace you're often just as locked as everyone else. Scrivener is a key answer to this.
Hmm, that's some interesting interaction I hadn't thought about. I'd actually looked at scrivener but didn't think to stack the replacements in the opposite order for some reason. Neat.
Whether I actually want to include scrivener I'm not sure, though, the dredge cards are all in there to kind of do the same thing, except they don't require an empty hand. Besides rankle there's not a TON of discard in the deck, so idk if I'll end up hellbent often...Also, I think most players, when faced with repeated discard, are likely to try to empty their hand to mitigate the effect, which then means I have no reason to choose Rankle's discard mode, and can safely build a hand. To say nothing of cards like necro easily outpacing any discard effects. But if I find myself hellbent while playing, I'll circle back around to it.
void_nothing wrote: ↑4 years ago
More like Wankle
Nothing much to say except I love this evil idea and Feyd has come through with the analytics.
Thanks!