Introducing Round 4 of the Break the Card Contest. The rules are mostly the same - the only change is to rule number 7 - Judging. I'm opening judging to everyone who manages to test every deck.
The rules: 0. I will announce 1 or more cards for each round. 1. You may submit a deck that utilizes one or both of the announced cards. Decks that use multiple announced cards may get a small bonus in the judging (at the judges' discretion) 2. Your deck should "break" the chosen card(s). A card can be considered broken if it has a normally weak effect that gets utilized in an exceptionally powerful way. A card that has trade-off effects can also be considered broken if it is used in such a way that all of its effects are positive for the deck. 3. You ARE required to run full playsets of each of the chosen cards that you use. 4. Unless explicitly stated, there are NO deckbuilding restrictions (color, rarity, or otherwise). As long as it's legal in Duels and breaks one or more of the cards, it's valid. 5. The building part of the contest will last for a week. After that, I'll still consider submissions, but probably with some sort of late penalty. 6. Submissions must be sent by PM. For this round, submissions will NOT be anonymous. 7. Unless they object, the judging will be done by Soupcannon and Barney again, however, since Barney is also participating, I'm thinking we can open judging to anyone who actually plays every list. Any judges can use whatever criteria they please provided they aren't egregiously self serving and have some semblance of fairness. Judges should assign ranks to each deck and then those rankings will be composited with the simple scoring rubric we've used for the last 2 rounds. Anyone who wishes to judge should post brief summaries of all games played with each deck. 8. The winner of each round gets to decide one of the cards for the next round.
Cucho Lambreta, the winner of the last round, has chosen Cathartic Reunion as the build around card for this round. This is not a terrible card so, really, there are no excuses for making bad decks with it, now, right? BUT THAT WONT STOP US FROM TRYING, DAMMIT!
So, uh... get cracking if you haven't already. Submission deadline is Monday November 27.
Alright, deadline's passed and we even got a few new participants this time! Here are the lists:
Black Barney:
"Banedon Ramp"
Creatures 2x Sylvan Advocate - obvious really, especially since it survives your own sweepers. Best possible play against control on turn 2, heck best possible play in general on turn 2. 1x Nissa, Vastwood Seer - Nissa is just a good card and can help you make your land drops to win conditions. However I think it's genuinely possible Reclamation Sage is better instead to shore up weaknesses. 2x Gaea's Revenge - you don't want your ramp targets to die. Gaea's cannot be countered, deals a substantial amount of damage (no trample though) and getting opposing planeswalkers off the board. 2x Plated Crusher - see above. Plated has trample and is somewhat sturdier, but no haste & can be countered are both significant drawbacks. 1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger - every ramp deck runs this.
Spells 2x Fatal Push 4x Cathartic Reunion - this card is good. Ramp decks have inherent problems if they draw the wrong half of their deck and this helps. Discard win conditions early and excess lands / ramp spells later. Discarding creatures can even be actively great, given the planeswalker suite in the deck. More on this later. 2x Unlicensed Disintegration - no artifacts, but it's easier on the mana than Murder. 2x Never // Return - great value card. Kills planeswalkers and importantly turns into a 2/2 late-game. It's not much but better than nothing and it will grind down control decks. 1x Oath of Liliana - a one-of specifically meant to kill indestructible creatures and / or hexproof creatures. Used to be Trial of Ambition but turns out the 1-extra mana typically doesn't matter, while the occasional zombies almost always do (and by a lot). 3x Nissa's Pilgrimage - It's either this or Gift of Paradise. More on this later. 2x Languish 2x Yahenni's Expertise 3x Explosive Vegetation - mandatory ramp card. 1x Nissa's Renewal - all the way to Ulamog and gains nontrivial amount of life.
Planeswalkers 1x Liliana, the Last Hope - single-handedly kills all 1-toughness creatures and the minus is also good with Cathartic Reunion. All-around good card. 1x Chandra, Torch of Defiance - all-around good card, more on her later. 1x Nissa, Vital Force - not that strong but the modes are all relevant. Threatening an immediate ultimate is great at helping grind and the minus works well with Cathartic Reunion too. 1x Liliana, Death's Majesty - best combo with Cathartic Reunion, I won one game on the back of T5 Ulamog. This deck has no qualms with the +1 as well, since it's got plenty of ways to win before it decks itself. 1x Ob Nixilis Reignited - all-around good card. 1x Chandra, Flamecaller - great in many ways. The +1 kills other planeswalkers, the zero turns your dead cards to real cards (see Cathartic Reunion) and the minus acts as a fifth board clear.
Creatures:16 2 Bomat Courier: Ridiculous if unanswered, and still fine if it is. Another artifact for UD. Can draw removal that would target more relevant creatures. Don't get attached till it's sitting on 3+ cards, offer trades where sensible. 2 Asylum Visitor: Mostly a dumb beater, but it can be cute to "flash" in off a HD buyback or Key activation. Card draw doesn't come up often, but neat when it does. 3 Bloodrage Brawler: The big boy. Best opening line is BB on T2 discarding HD, but playing it on T3 discarding a madness burn is solid as well. 3 Furyblade Vampire: BB 4-6, kind of. These are neat to play on T2, as the delayed discard means you'll have all your mana available for madness shenanigans. Fine discard if you have better things going on, Scroungers will appreciate the food down the road. 2 Scrapheap Scrounger: Another beater, makes UD a happy murder tool. Also a fair discard when out of cards you actively want to pitch. Good insurance against wipes. 3 Haunted Dead: The heart and soul. Building around Reunion's "discard 2" is well and good, but instant speed makes it that much better. Discard ASAP, but keep hardcasting in mind when reasonable. 1 Hazoret the Fervent: The deck can have a harder time getting to heckbent then it might seem, but you can play this regardless to intimidate the dim-witted and threaten an attack on the following turn. Games don't last long once online.
Burn:14 2 Cut // Ribbons: Echoing everyone else, Ribbons can be absurd. Discard Cut early if it becomes apparent that Opp will present no viable targets. 4 Alms of the Vein: Honestly couldn't imagine playing this card before now. Turns out a playset adds nicely to a burn package while keeping you alive. 4 Fiery Temper: Lightning Bolt! 3 Unlicensed Disintegration: Even when it's just Murder, UD is neat. Eight artifacts to turn on the burn have been sufficient. Last resort discard if necessary. 1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance: Even her worst cases of Shock + gain life (as she gets attacked) or creature removal + gain life are fine outcomes. Untapping with her makes it extremely difficult for Opp to come back.
Misc: 2 Key to the City: Free, instant speed discard. Option to "sac a clue" the turn after use. Ignore blockers to chip in the final points. Enables UD. Spent far too long mulling this over before finally putting it in the deck. 2 Smuggler's Copter: A little risky with only 16 creatures, but too good to exclude. HD and Scrounger help keep it in the air. 4 Cathartic Reunion: The namesake! Obviously best to fire off when able to discard/cast two madness spells, but one plus HD/Cut/Scrounger/excess land is fine. If multiple copies are in hand, consider discarding one as part of the cost of the other. Don't feel bad discarding these with Hazoret if trying to become heckbent.
Lands:22 2 Smoldering Marsh: Play on T1 if no Courier. 2 Dragonskull Summit: WotC sure stretched time and space to flavorfully include this in IXL. 10 Mountain: Yay basics. 8 Swamp: Yay more basics.
Joined: Feb 29, 2016 Posts: 2899 Location: Portugal
I'm sure we can come up with some Cathartic Reunion decks that'll make you feel like slitting your wrists after winning with them (let alone losing). I just know someone will go for mill, but at least Cathartic being red will keep away the turbo-briar variant which is the most depressing of all. I find playing against mill is like sitting in front of someone who is masturbating (they must really be enjoying themselves, but to me they're just being rude and disgusting and having all the fun by themselves. Also: if it were a hot-chick playing mill, I wouldn't mind so much). Hopefully my graphic comments will discourage mill submissions...
Joined: Feb 29, 2016 Posts: 2899 Location: Portugal
Got some Duels time and tried the list I posted in the other thread, it went 4-4 against high ranks on steam, so its ok, but not spiky enough. So I made some changes, pulled the niblis, added shock and a couple of alchemists. Then I faced back to back R40 fat-stacks playing (you guessed it) 5-color superfriends and went 1-1. What's with fat stacks and their ungodly luck? Damn... There is no more demoralizing loss.
Joined: Feb 29, 2016 Posts: 2899 Location: Portugal
As for Cathartic Reunion, well... I'd say its actually a very hard card to really break, because it doesn't really do much by itself. Its more an enabler, or tool card that allows you to dig pretty quickly through your deck and find combo pieces, dump them in the yard or trigger Discard effects. It doesn't give card advantage by itself, or rather card parity, 3 for 3 giving you the option to toss unwanted cards and possibly get better ones. So its a gamble too, you will often draw 3 lands when you don't need them and throw away cards that could be useful later on.
My approach atm is to use it to fill the yard with instants and sorceries for cards that take advantage of that. But, the main problem is with Land. You often find yourself not wanting Land later on and ditching them to Cathartic would be a good idea, but, my current deck doesn't really want to keep lands in your hand, It wants to keep playing them, meaning that late game its less useful than early on, where its great to dig for Land and get set-up fast. So I think it doesn't really "breaks" it. Tutelage, on the other hand uses the draw triggers, so it mill your opponent pretty hard and can dig for Answers, so that's probably the best way to break the Reunions. But I loathe mill.
Joined: Jun 08, 2016 Posts: 622 Location: noun, a particular place or position
Identity: Protozoan
Preferred Pronoun Set: Soup/Soup's/Soupself
I have a happy izzet mill/burn deck that runs fairly well on the laddr, but I'm not submitting anything to the contest, as I want to remain ostensibly impartial. Other than the Russian bribes. I look forward to poking holes in all of your awful, incompetent builds. And it's a poor deckbuilder who blames the pilot, so my own incompetence is irrelevant!
Other than mill, I wonder what you guys can do to ruin the beautiful moment of reunion between mother and daughter.
Joined: Nov 10, 2013 Posts: 17748 Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
I don’t expect any bias in my judging since I go by very random opponent matches to declare a winner. But I’m very familiar with how to play my own build so that might create some light outperformance. I do play Reunion very badly in general, often making poor choices for discards or allowing the timer to run out. So at least all the builds will have that in common
Here's where I'm at right now, trying to exploit all facets of the Reunion. Value from casting via prowess, value from the discard via madness and Flameblade Adept, value from stuff in the yard via Crop-Mate. Kinda followed the synergies from the ground up to this rough build, though I think it leaves me with a good amount of cards that aren't great on their own. Suggestions welcome.
This is stupid, I selected a great card and I got my ass handled to my self on the ladder with my izzet mill (3-5) ... so I went for drake heaven and it is working far better... I will upload a list later tonight. Nomad I could be completely wrong but i think that that list got far to many different things going to be consistent enough.
I found the mill deck I had (Temur Turbofog) got a lot less effective after Amonkhet.
Cucho I thought it was a mess too, but now it keeps winning me games I have no business winning. I just beat a board with Oketra, Priest and Procession active by going wider than they could. I really have no idea if it's actually good or just riding lucky draws, but all the looting you do with those reunions and Scavengers definitely helps on the consistency front. Scavenger + Crop-Mate is close to godliness.
ok so... I´m going for the Mill, this one is fun to play... I might switch some creatures and go for a thermo Mill one of my favourite decks during SOI.
Here is where I am ATM
Cathartic Mill Description The engine of this deck is Cathartic reunion use It to enable Sphinx Tutelage and Fiery Temper then take advantage of Take Inventory, Galvanic bombardment and Geistblast graveyard value
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