LOL

@ Dream Maker - part of my point wasn't just related to the individual strengths of think twice and the lynx, but their role in your mana curve. Your base deck has 12 three drops, and think twice flashback is four more, against 0 four drops and 7 two drops.

Keep in mind that our pool is limited at the 4 drop slot for decent options and a lot of builds end up suffering at that point on the curve (and before folks start the "what about this card", just compare the 4 CMC slot to any other point on the curve in terms of volume of choices in our pool). That and both and have some pretty poor options to choose from at the 2 drop slot (that's always been a concern for most Dimir builds). Thank goodness the one DLC added Brain Maggot.


elk

Black and blue are very thin at two mana, I've considered Walking Corpse and Maritime Guard at times. I wish they'd give us stuff like Omenspeaker instead.

I agree about black, but blue is fine at 2 CMC. Think twice is excellent, and fits with many blue strategies or at least gets you there, as is couriers capsule. I'm not usually having trouble at 2 CMC for blue, and while 4 is a bit thinner, there are still some excellent option in both blue and black, you just have to build around them.

That said, I've noticed a lot of my decks skipping the 4 slot, so I might be wrong there.

;-)

Graveborn Muse and Bident of Thasa are both at the 4 spot and are both top tier card draw engines. Ogre Jailbreaker is good in some builds.

Blue and Black are ok at the two spot.. the thing they both lack however is creatures that can block without dying.. that don't suck.

Talrand is also excellent in many, many, many builds. (And I love Jalira, yeah not that great, but I still love 'er)

There is a lot of chaff though. like 4 CMC 3/2 (or is it 2/3? who cares) fliers and other garbage that no one should ever play ever.

I honestly can't think of the good 2 CMC black cards. I know what I use, but I usually use them only to fill the gap. Black really needed some help, and it never really got it. This was true IMO from day one. I guess when you take out cheap removal black really suffers, the 2 CMC slot is where I'd expect to find cards that could kill most things - and by 3 I expect all the things to die (except maybe black things) - instead we get totally unconditional at 5 CMC, aka weak sauce. /shrug

Brain Maggot and Vicious Hunger are at 2cmc.. but that's it. It's a very weak list.

confirmed DJ's waifu is Jalira

also you got some vampires in the 2 slot for black but they are usually double black

I mean... Vicious Hunger? ugh. just no. lol (Jalira! If only she could actually do something useful. I'm really sad about her, because we don't have what we need in DotP to really make her shine, and IRL she isn't even in the ball park of good enough to run, unless you play with friends and you set serious power limits on what decks are allowed to be built.)

I can fill a page with all the obnoxious 1-2 toughness utility/combo creatures in this game. Vicious Hunger isn't top notch.. but its not Turd tier either.

@Babasoonist: You're right.. I forgot about the (good) Kalastria Highborn and the (barely mediocre) Child of Night.

Ughhh... Agree to disagree? I can't think of a deck I would use it in. I get that it has it's place in the META, but still... Sorcery Speed removal with condition that it's capped at two. Just no. lol (Maybe as my 5-6th removal package in an all out anti creatures deck, maybe not even then because of the BB requirement)

Sorin's Thirst ok maybe, this one is garbage.

Vicious hunger isn't a card you play if you have access to better removal options in other colors. Dead weight is generally better. But I wanted an instant/sorcery for Archaeomancer, and the lifegain is quite relevant in certain decks. A deck with 4 ragers and 2 graveborn muses that also tends to take a lot of hits early game needs some way to offset that life loss.

I'm testing a removal heavy mono black build inspried by your Dimir build that has a bunch of removal.. Vicious Hunger made the cut.. largely bc of all the self plinking draw, and lack of quality early blockers. I actually found it to be better than Dead Weight in that deck.

The removal suite is:
3x Ulcerate
3x Vicious Hunger
2x Tribute to Hunger
2x Flesh to Dust
1x Shadowborn
1x Sheoldred

Vicious Hunger fits in there nicely.. bc I want to save Ulcerate as a combat trick.

I see your point. Still in my experience the huge amount of 3CMC in this deck didn't really prove to be a problem in practice. I can still play them on turn 4 and keep mana open for Undying evil, or on turn 5 and keep 2 mana for Peel or hard-casted think twice. Though I agree that Muse or Bident are indeed much stronger plays to do on these turns and can help cement your position for the following turns.

By the way, I had a few runs with your suggestions by the way and so far it's running pretty nicely! The Muse and the Bident did their job to keep me full of cards. Sometimes a bit to the point of overdraw but it's ok since I have recursion with Archeomancer, Sheoldred and Rescue. Vicious Hunger also helped me a few times, but doesn't always show up when I need it. I guess against aggro you want to have one in your starting hand but still was helpful enough to remove annoying threats with 2 toughness that would have been a pain otherwise.

However as I feared the new amount of double costs in both black and blue proved to be a problem sometimes. I swapped 2 Swamps and 1 Island for 3 Arcane Sanctums and it seems to be a bit better but still need to give more testing. I don't like having too many taplands in the later game but it's better than not being able to pay my 2 to 4 CMC costs.

DJ - Covenant of Blood is a card I would never play. Removal of any kind that does two damage for a low price is just very, very relevant in this cardpool. In addition to the stuff about lifegain, this deck already has access to instant speed bounce and undying for combat tricks. And if you have enough mana open, undying + sacrifice via rescue from the underworld is a way of triggering dunrova horror at instant speed.

Dream Maker - the nice thing about archaeomancer and the bident is that both are generally not cards you are going to play on curve. I like to play archaeomancer on six mana in order to leave two mana open. Same thing with bident, usually it takes some time to build up a few creatures for bident to be worthwhile. One bonus with bident is that it basically forces your opponent to block your low power creatures, giving you more control over where and how you apply undying.

The reason for the 3 vicious hunger / 2 archaeomancer split was simply because vicious hunger is very good in certain matchups, and mediocre in others. Obviously you have to draw it to use archaeomancer though. I am glad it is working out for you. I added 3 taplands myself and haven't had many mana problems.

I don't think Vicious Hunger is playable outside of monoblack.

I didn't realize this discussion was dealing with a deck. I'm sorry about that. I was talking about Vicious Hunger (which I still think is terribad) in general, not in light of what you may have done with it (which might make me change my mind). I guess I should try the deck out then. Linky?

This is really Dream Maker's deck with a few tweaks by me.



@ Hakeem - notice the manabase is very heavily skewed towards black. I have 18 black mana sources.

I'm late to the party but still wanted to touch base on this. Blue is not fine on curve at 2CMC. There are good blue cards that cost 2CMC but a very select few you would actually play on T2. The most important note though is that none of these good blue 2 CMC cards are board presence. Sames goes for Black. Now in Tidehollow or other options can be brought up but those costs can be problems to play on curve (generally I'd like to see a in a mono black or very heavily black themed deck with late color splashes). So outside of those cases with restrictive costs, not much is hitting the board until T3 in those colors (and makes Dimir's options even worse).

The noticing of the shallow 4 CMC slot in your decks is the indicator I was mentioning. Folks did it anyway and mentioned 'what about this 4 mana CMC card?!?!' but if you do a comparison of cards at each point on the curve, 4 is the one slot with the smallest amount of "good" options (or options that get played regularly).

elk