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Colourless cards
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Author:  Banedon [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:07 am ]
Post subject:  Colourless cards
Reality Smasher - 5-mana 5/5 with Trample and Haste and in-built protection against removal
Thought-Knot Seer - 4-mana 4/4 who removes the best card from opponent's hand, including removal that can kill it
Matter Reshaper - 3-mana 3/2 that at least draws you a card on death, with a good chance to provide actual ramp as well

Clearly these cards are very strong. I remember that Reality Smasher and Thought-Knot Seer are strong enough to see play in Modern. Matter Reshaper is the least strong of the three, but still a very good card. Hell colourless even gets Spatial Contortion, which is a decent removal spell capable of killing stuff Skywhaler's Shot / green / blue decks cannot.

So here is a genuine question: why is colourless so rare? I see all five colours quite often on the ladder, but it's rare to see any deck that uses genuine colourless mana (Aether Hub is pretty common but most often it's not used for colourless cards). I suppose a big reason is that there are not colourless dual lands, but still: these cards ought to be plenty powerful enough to use. It's not like we can't easily generate colourless mana either (Evolving Wilds). Even though there aren't enough cards to build a dedicated colourless decks, I would've expected 2-colour decks using Colorless as a support colour.
Author:  Black Barney [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Once I saw Aether Hub for the first time, I was sure we were going to see a return of colourless spells. Aether Hub seems to be the best colourless Land by far and allows a colourless splash very easily

Hasn't really happened tho
Author:  WrightJustice [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
I'm not sure they fit in many decks together if you're not focusing on colourless and seems like they're not worth splashing for in that respect.
Author:  DJ0045 [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:44 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
A few seasons ago, I ran both TKS and RS in my UW tournament deck, because they were worth it. I think the big problem now is that we have sufficient payoffs in other colors to make them unnecessary. And the mana actually isn't good, we only have 3 ways to produce colored and colorless mana, as opposed to 11 for any 2 color deck (common duals, hubs, and 4 rare lands). That's a big difference.
Author:  Joly [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 11:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
The mana doesnt allow to play a 2 color+colorless deck. 6 cards dont justify messing up a mana base. You can play them in a mono color shell and its probably quite good.
Author:  WrightJustice [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 11:38 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Also modern can throw these out on the cheap and can have a much more synergistic deck with them.
Author:  Sjokwaave [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 12:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Joly wrote:
The mana doesnt allow to play a 2 color+colorless deck. 6 cards dont justify messing up a mana base. You can play them in a mono color shell and its probably quite good.


This is just not true. Mardu vehicles is the best deck in the game and it runs 3 colours. If you're running Hub and you dont need colourless until turn 4 then it is super easy to splash in a dual colour deck (Reshaper isn't worth the effort). Hell I've run Bant with Displacer off Wilds, 1 Waste and Hubs and it ran fine. Our mana is bad but TKS and Smasher are easily accomidated.
Author:  Joly [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 2:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Sjokwaave wrote:
Joly wrote:
The mana doesnt allow to play a 2 color+colorless deck. 6 cards dont justify messing up a mana base. You can play them in a mono color shell and its probably quite good.


This is just not true. Mardu vehicles is the best deck in the game and it runs 3 colours. If you're running Hub and you dont need colourless until turn 4 then it is super easy to splash in a dual colour deck (Reshaper isn't worth the effort). Hell I've run Bant with Displacer off Wilds, 1 Waste and Hubs and it ran fine. Our mana is bad but TKS and Smasher are easily accomidated.

Statiscally , you will get stuck with the colorless cards in your hand too many times for my liking. You can run displacer ( like I do) because you can at least always cast him as a 3/3 body
Author:  DJ0045 [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 2:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Joly wrote:
Sjokwaave wrote:
Joly wrote:
The mana doesnt allow to play a 2 color+colorless deck. 6 cards dont justify messing up a mana base. You can play them in a mono color shell and its probably quite good.


This is just not true. Mardu vehicles is the best deck in the game and it runs 3 colours. If you're running Hub and you dont need colourless until turn 4 then it is super easy to splash in a dual colour deck (Reshaper isn't worth the effort). Hell I've run Bant with Displacer off Wilds, 1 Waste and Hubs and it ran fine. Our mana is bad but TKS and Smasher are easily accomidated.

Statiscally , you will get stuck with the colorless cards in your hand too many times for my liking. You can run displacer ( like I do) because you can at least always cast him as a 3/3 body


You don't need much to support the needed splash (really just 6 sources or so) for Displacer - 3 Aether Hubs and 2 Evolving Wilds (w/ 1 waste obviously) should do it, or less evolving wilds if you have other colorless mana sources. The issue is wether or not Displacer is even worth running anymore, and I'm not so sure it is. A 3/3 for 3 is pretty good, but it's actually outclassed by a lot of 2 drops now (let alone the better 3 drops) - only under optimal circumstances, but still. TKS and RS are still better than most other cards at their costs right now. It's just hard to justify a card that affects your deck's mana requirements, without really being able to take over a game on its own. Displacer is definitely not a card that just wins the game - or makes a 7 card starting hand great, just by virtue of its presence. I probably wouldn't run it often anymore. Which is too bad, because it's definitely a cool card. Maybe if we get better mana in the future it will regain its rightful place.
Author:  Joly [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 2:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
I have to disagree.
Displacer is one of The MVPs of my deck. It takes over games where it sticks, and often requires imediate removal. I wouldnt play a worse mana base for it but I already want to run 6 colorless lands anyway
Author:  DJ0045 [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 2:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Joly wrote:
I have to disagree.
Displacer is one of The MVPs of my deck. It takes over games where it sticks, and often requires imediate removal. I wouldnt play a worse mana base for it but I already want to run 6 colorless lands anyway


If the deck supports 6 colorless lands without displacer, and has white in it already, I would see no reason not to run displacer, unless I also had access to reflector Mage, Thalia, spell queller, tireless tracker, a couple PW'ers, some great removal, Always Watching, etc... it's not wether displacer is good, it's whether displacer is displacing something better.

But I don't want you to get the wrong idea, I'm a fan of the card, so don't take the above as an overly harsh critique, because I bet you and I aren't too far off on the value of the card. And if the deck really supports the mana anyway, I'd certainly consider displacer as a high pick to build with.
Author:  WoodlandWanderer [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 6:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
i agree splashing for ability isn't quite equal to splashing for card.

scrounger is 3/2 for 2 by itself. black mana can come from caravan or hub or that singleton swamp at any time and that shouldn't affect main actions deck want to perform. Same goes for displacer.

splashing for tks and reality smasher would require some serious mana base consideration as they'd be dead cards if mana doesn't line up right. plus usually they are so important to be casted on curve for the deck to perform. I'd only do the "colorless splash" with at least 12 colorless sources (in theory should be 10 for the T4 TKS though)
Author:  zzmorg82 [ Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Sjokwaave wrote:
Joly wrote:
The mana doesnt allow to play a 2 color+colorless deck. 6 cards dont justify messing up a mana base. You can play them in a mono color shell and its probably quite good.


This is just not true. Mardu vehicles is the best deck in the game and it runs 3 colours. If you're running Hub and you dont need colourless until turn 4 then it is super easy to splash in a dual colour deck (Reshaper isn't worth the effort). Hell I've run Bant with Displacer off Wilds, 1 Waste and Hubs and it ran fine. Our mana is bad but TKS and Smasher are easily accomidated.


I'm liking the new avy. Image

OT: I agree, splashing colorless is not hard at all; if you find the right amount of cards to run, you can be consistent with it. This is with 2 color decks though; I'm not singing the same tune with 3+ color decks. Image
Author:  Banedon [ Mon Feb 27, 2017 6:36 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
WoodlandWanderer wrote:
i agree splashing for ability isn't quite equal to splashing for card.

scrounger is 3/2 for 2 by itself. black mana can come from caravan or hub or that singleton swamp at any time and that shouldn't affect main actions deck want to perform. Same goes for displacer.

splashing for tks and reality smasher would require some serious mana base consideration as they'd be dead cards if mana doesn't line up right. plus usually they are so important to be casted on curve for the deck to perform. I'd only do the "colorless splash" with at least 12 colorless sources (in theory should be 10 for the T4 TKS though)


Scrounger is obviously a great card, but it's a purely aggressive one. I would imagine midrange decks to be interested in colourless.

I'm not sure about the number of colorless mana sources you're thinking of. Are you referring to Frank Karsten's analysis? The difference between a colourless splash and that analysis is that you only want the colourless source if you have a colourless card in hand, and we only have four of them - 2x TKS and 2x RS. So the real question becomes what the odds are of not drawing a colourless source by turn 4 but drawing a TKS, or not drawing a colourless source by turn 5 while drawing a TKS or RS. Importantly as well we only need one colourless source to function.

I don't know what the exact probability is (perhaps someone more mathematically inclined is able to calculate this?) but I imagine the odds to be quite good. After all, even something like 4x Evolving Wilds + 3x Aether Hub + 1x Wastes is effectively 8 colourless sources, pretty close to the theoretical 11-source requirement.
Author:  Modulo [ Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
The big issue with splashing Colorless is that Duels does not have many lands that can produce both colorless and coloured mana at same time (no Filter lands, no pain lands...). Your only good choices for fixing are Evolving Wilds and Aether Hub, which, together with one Wastes, amount to 8 sources. TKS, the card most likely to splash, requires 11. So the manabase has to make room for Utility lands, which is possible in 2 colours, but really puts the strain into the manabase if you're running 3; or it has to run suboptimal options (out of which Crumbling Vestige is arguably the best).

Another thing is that the cards you are splashing for are 4-drops in a very aggressive Format. They currently don't line up well against what Vehicles/Counters throw at you.

I've had some success with GC Ramp last season; don't think it's viable currently (I'd love to be proven wrong though).
Author:  Wintervoid [ Tue Feb 28, 2017 12:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
I agree with everyone else. 4 cards are not worth the amount of colorless sources you need. Many are saying you have 8 w/ 3 Hubs, 1 Waste and 4 Wilds. In my experience, you can't always count those Wilds as colorless, because they can often be used to fix other mana issues. I ran TK in my Bant, and although it was decent, and I was running 9 sources (A Rogues passage as well) I felt it was not worth all the hoops I had to jump through to make it work.

The deck I have seen colorless work in is some 2 color decks. I saw a Snake deck that ran TK, RS and Contortion that seemed decent. Also a few Artifact decks that use the land that gives colorless +1 run the colorless set. G/C is also decent.

As far as Displacer, he is a boss in the right deck. I run him w/ Bant, and paired w/ Sage, Mage, Avacyn, Flagship or sometimes Queller he is amazing. Even solo he gets rid of tokens and shuts down vehicles, not to mention 3 mana for tap effects and great combat tricks. At worst he is a 3/3 for 3 with lots of upside. Usually, I save him until 6 mana if possible, but vs some agro, a 3/3 blocker for three is the best play. I only run 7 sources of colorless (3 Wilds), and usually that is fine for him by T6.
Author:  Mowie666 [ Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
I think with Walking Ballista, Scrapheap Scrounger, along with the 3 good ol' boys listed in the OP, you can have a pretty good beatdown deck. Orzhov is nice because you can bring in Yahenni and Thalia for relatively minor mana hits. But then the question is what removal/buffs you use besides that?
Author:  Banedon [ Wed Mar 01, 2017 6:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Modulo wrote:
The big issue with splashing Colorless is that Duels does not have many lands that can produce both colorless and coloured mana at same time (no Filter lands, no pain lands...). Your only good choices for fixing are Evolving Wilds and Aether Hub, which, together with one Wastes, amount to 8 sources. TKS, the card most likely to splash, requires 11. So the manabase has to make room for Utility lands, which is possible in 2 colours, but really puts the strain into the manabase if you're running 3; or it has to run suboptimal options (out of which Crumbling Vestige is arguably the best).

Another thing is that the cards you are splashing for are 4-drops in a very aggressive Format. They currently don't line up well against what Vehicles/Counters throw at you.

I've had some success with GC Ramp last season; don't think it's viable currently (I'd love to be proven wrong though).


Well as I mentioned, 11 sources is if you want to be able to consistently generate colourless mana by turn 4. But you only have two colourless cards to cast on turn 4. The real question is what the odds of drawing TKS by turn 4 is without having drawn colourless mana. Strictly speaking there's even more than that - what are the odds of drawing TKS by turn 4 but no other comparably strong T4 play (e.g. Gideon, Woodland Wanderer) and no colourless source. I think the odds of this should be pretty low even with 8 colourless sources, but have not crunched the numbers.

About vehicles: two of the most important vehicles (Fleetwheel Cruiser & Smuggler's Copter) can be killed by Spatial Contortion, so it's not a total loss. Besides, if you're running green, you can simply play 3x Reclamation Sage. I'm also not seeing the very aggressive meta on ladder. Aggressive decks outnumber control ones, but midrange decks are still around in decent quantity.

I think GC ramp should still be viable, you can even run Walker of the Wastes and it'll be great if not immediately removed (since Explosive Vegetation hunts up more Wastes). I don't know. I will have to try it.

@Wintervoid - you ran a colourless splash in a deck that's already 3 colours? That seems quite aggressive. I'm not actually that ambitious, just looking at 1+C or 2+C decks for now. I completely agree about Evolving Wilds not acting like Wastes however. I'm currently tuning an Orzhov control deck that's splashing for TKS & RS, and I often find I want to represent Grasp of Darkness on turn 2, which Evolving Wilds does not help me with, and even contradicts the "play your CIPT lands first" maxim. There's also the problem of having to have two white mana by turn 4 to play Gideon / Gisela, not possible without dual lands if I also want to have BB for Grasp / Languish. If Evolving Wilds said something like "comes into play tapped, [T] sacrifice to find a basic land and put it into play untapped" then the colourless splash would be a lot better.

@Mowie666 - Black has the best removal in the game and White removal isn't bad either (especially in a beatdown deck when Declaration in Stone is at its best). I think Spatial Contortion is only applicable to Green and Blue decks as a result.
Author:  Modulo [ Wed Mar 01, 2017 9:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
Banedon wrote:
Well as I mentioned, 11 sources is if you want to be able to consistently generate colourless mana by turn 4. But you only have two colourless cards to cast on turn 4. The real question is what the odds of drawing TKS by turn 4 is without having drawn colourless mana. Strictly speaking there's even more than that - what are the odds of drawing TKS by turn 4 but no other comparably strong T4 play (e.g. Gideon, Woodland Wanderer) and no colourless source. I think the odds of this should be pretty low even with 8 colourless sources, but have not crunched the numbers.


Sure, the numbers are guidelines only; and if you don't see TKS as a turn 4 play but instead a card that you plan to cast turn 10-ish instead, go ahead and run 8 sources. I disagree with TKS being that good of a card however.

If you go out of your way to splash for a card (and yes, even running 1 Wastes is going out of your way), you're running it for its maximal effect. If you aren't able to cast it reliably, you obviously don't have that maximal effect. In that case you're better off just running two "comparatively strong plays" instead; even if they are a bit weaker you will lose more games from the inability to cast the splash card than by not having access to the splash card itself. Exceptions would be made in case of the splash card being an irreplaceable part of the deck's gameplan - and I don't see that apply to TKS.

BTW, if you want help crunching numbers Frank Karsten has got you covered.
Author:  Banedon [ Wed Mar 01, 2017 10:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Colourless cards
I already linked Frank Karsten's analysis above. The point is, "if you want to consistently cast TKS on turn 4" pre-supposes that you will actually draw TKS on turn 4. The odds of any individual 4-of card being drawn by turn 4 is <50%, I'm pretty sure (I remember seeing calculations that the odds of drawing any individual 4-of card in your opening hand is ~40%), which obviously skews the percentages. Frank Karsten's analysis is great for your main colours, but for splashed ones, not so much - if you take it at face value you'd effectively say that this deck should run 11 red sources to "cast Nahiri consistently on turn 4", which is completely wrong.

Like I said,

Quote:
The real question is what the odds of drawing TKS by turn 4 is without having drawn colourless mana. Strictly speaking there's even more than that - what are the odds of drawing TKS by turn 4 but no other comparably strong T4 play (e.g. Gideon, Woodland Wanderer) and no colourless source.
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