I agree, I'd love do get a cute little Ponder or a Thoughtseize somewhere in the pool as well. Sign in Blood would be great too. But this is probably asking for too much.

Can't speak about previous versions of Duels but it's indeed funny when you consider that in paper Magic UB has historically been a very nasty and powerful color combination.

Anyway in 2015 Dimir was arguably one of the worst dual-color combinations originally but I think it got a lot better with all the expansions. Still not up to what Golgari, Izzet or Selesnya decks can pull off but now I feel like it's competitive enough.




I would love to get your input on it if you get time to play with it. This has been my go-to deck from some time now and I can really feel the difference in consistency compared to when I first posted it, before the additional expansion cards.

I am going to give that list a run too. Been a while since I have played me some duels. Been playing the crap outta hearthstone!

This discussion made me think of one of the comics from Cardboardcrack they posted the other day.

Hiya guys,

Long time player, first time poster, just discovered this DOTP 2015 this January and I have invested at least 2 hours a day playing it and I anticipate the new Origins game coming. I love how I can get my MTG fix without having to go buying cards every week, and there is a much more people to play against. I play using my mobile, on android. I pretty much try and make a new deck every day or at least try to exploit a new card. I was reading a few previous of the end pages and noticed members mentioning of not any good dimir builds so I tried to create a great deck, which after deciding to read the first page of this posts, is quite similar to Nebula's build. I have been successful 3W - 1L, first win was tricky against UR, but he was running more control instead of tokens and it was a pretty basic beat down. Second game I defeated an opponent running mono white enchants, I don't want to say this deck automatically wins, but it certainly looked that way. Third match was down to the wire VS G/W tokens. He had the Beastmaster out since turn 3 and started swinging at turn 5, even throwing banishers exiling my creatures but somehow I was able to kill off 2-3 tokens per turn, he had many creatures, as expected with tokens, but with my attacking and targeting agent of fates, I was wiping the board as fast as he filled it, he was always one turn, one creature away from having that full beastmaster which would have killed me obviously but this deck can apply the pressure and force you to block with your precious tokens. I admit he could have won had I not even known about the beastmaster, but my knowledge of it made me play aggressively, showing the decks true strengths. Fourth battle I straight up lost to Goblins, pretty horribly. I had a crap hand and really I'm not too sure if this build could handle them without a perfect hand.

8 x Island
14 x Swamp
-
2 x Artiful Dodge
1 x Assassinate
1 x Mind Rot
-
2 x Fleeting Distraction
2 x Ulcerate
4 x Undying Evil
2 x Tribute to Hunger
2 x Cutthroat Maneuver
-
2 x Military Intelligence
2 x Quest for the Gravelord
1 x Dead Weight
-
3 x Pharika's Chosen
2 x Tidehollow Strix
2 x Blistering Beetle (Open, fairly reliable)
1 x Phyrexian Rager
2 x Agent of the Fates
2 x Scavenger Drake (Talrand?)
2 x Graveborn Muse
1 x Shadowborn Demon
2 x Dinrova Horror


Ultimately, the deck has great tempo, with a curve of 0-16-6-7-6-1-2. The highest costing is Dinrova, followed by Shadowborn. In my victories. I haven't actually run this enough to know just exactly what to remove or add, but by judging the cards that never hit the floor, i'm more than willing to explore.

Scavenger Drake for Talrand.
This deck is B heavy and so I decided not to include any UU. If I did, I'd probably throw in 2x Talrand or possibly 1 Time Warp, but the warp is unnecessary in this build because you are pretty much always tapping out on my turn or saving for their turn. Scav did hit the floor once and was mildly effective, and if replaced would most probably be with another creature as I am running the military's.

Blistering Beetle for Dead Weight
The synergy with this card and the Quest for Gravelord. Most decks are running quick 1/1s or 2/1s and espically goblins or tokens, it really stops that convoke for happening that extra turn, and I think the biggest weakness in this deck is Goblins. I love the fact that it provides an extra body for blocking, trading, chumping, or for Shadowborn. I don't need to mention it's great with Undying, but it's great. If you get the Agent out, you are pretty much beating any deck focusing on one or two creatures, the Blistering is exceptionally good at defeating a mass of soldiers, saprolings, or goblins.

All in all, i'm enjoying this build, and I just wanted to introduce myself here with a deck I thought was going to be unique but I can see probably every known option is probably posted, haha. I'll continue to post my decks and discuss them until the Magic 2016 is out. I truly love magic and this has to be the best and most creative game out there. My favourite most played decks at the moment are a R/G/U/B Warp World and G/W/B Reanimator. I still think my U/G/B build beats any and 80% of decks and is my staple, but for the moment, I'll enjoy the Dimir fun! Keep posted. I hope I don't decide to randomly build a deck at 4am again and forget about this one as I have a tendancy to build a deck each time I pick up the game.

I put your deck in a format that is more readable

So, I'll be posting a few of the less obvious (e.g.: not things like my token builds, lol) decks I've been playing lately. Here's the Dimir Deck:



I should say a few things about it.

1) this deck, while actually quite powerful, is more recommended for the fun. There are tons of interesting interactions, and in the hands of a good player, this deck will perform quite well. That said, in the hands of any player this deck will definitely entertain.
2) this is one of the very few decks I've built that can use Jalira and really make her shine. All of the unearth creatures really give her tons of fodder. And when you finally swing for the win, you will be surprised how explosive this seemingly tame deck can be.
3) there is tons of removal in this deck. It can handle tokens fairly well, but it will definitely mess with mid-range decks.
4) have fun with it.

looks solid. good job!

Thanks! It's really a lot of fun, and I hope people give it a shot.

This is a really cool Dimir Unearth list.. way better than some OTHER Dimir Unearth lists. I like it.

OH SNAP #shotsfired

Which still isn't as good as the Izzet Unearth build..........just sayin'

We all know the Selesnaya Unearth Build is the best. Duh.

This is my review of Dream Maker's "Cold Death" decklist



There is a lot of synergy and interactions in the decklist that are not immediately apparent. I have seen similar decklists that try to generate synergy via undying evil and specters, but this deck does it better than most of them. The deck is a solid performer and has a lot of synergy once you get going. While there is not much in the way of dedicated "answers," the deck has multiple ways of generating card advantage and some solid control elements. Brain maggot gets incredible value here, because of undying evil, peel, and rescue. You can plop brain maggot on the board and you have multiple ways of protecting it. The late game plan is to stick fatties on the board and be able to protect them with undying evil, or use rescue to get them back. Sheoldred feels pretty damn safe here.

The deck is consistent in the sense that there are multiple copies of important spells. You also have a lot of creatures with good EtB effects and a lot of ways of potentially exploiting those effects. Unfortunately, exploiting the effects usually relies on specific plays by your opponent. Undying evil requires your creatures to die, and shadowborn demon is the only repeatable sac outlet. Peel from reality does not just require that your opponent has a creature, it generally is a bad play to bounce a creature with a good EtB effect unless you can immediately hit them with brain maggot. Eventually you will get your opponent topdecking and the deck starts to function much better, but players who are smart enough to hold on to spare lands generally will not reach top deck mode any time soon.

The matchups are pretty uneven. This is a slow deck that has all sorts of ways of hosing other slow decks, especially those that aim shocks at your specters. Every time a control deck tries to exchange a removal spell for one of your creatures you enter into an uneven exchange - if you can successfully give one of your dudes undying in response, you not only get to keep your creature, but it gets +1/+1 and you get another EtB trigger. Peel and Dunrova Horror are powerful tempo plays against decks that ramp up into big, powerful creatures. You can also block non-trampling creatures all day long with undying and peel. Unfortunately, all this versatility and synergy starts on land drop 4. The deck has no board presence and no board interaction below 3 mana, and UB does not have access to sweepers. The matchup against decks that go wide or open with very aggressive early turns is bad.

If I had to nominate a best card for this deck it would be brain maggot. Getting multiple EtB triggers from the same maggot isn't helpful, but it is the most important early play in this deck as it helps to slow your opponent down or remove key cards such as anger.

The worst performer in this deck by a significant margin is frost lynx. It is nice in theory to have a wide selection of EtBs so that you can decide which creature to block with / peel. But this deck is just stuffed with ways of dealing with big, slow creatures. This isn't a deck where I want to dodge my opponent's creatures and sneak a few points of damage in, so it is generally just a one turn fog for one creature.

I thought about possible changes in a few areas. Having a way to sacrifice your own creatures would be really nice, but black sac outlets are crap, so I don't see any way to make undying evil more reliable. Next I thought about adding lower cost blockers - Tidehollow Strix is an attractive undying target. But again this would have the same issue as the lynx - the deck is already pretty good against big creatures. Vicious Hunger is actually looking attractive here, if paired with archaeomancer, since archaeomancer has a great EtB. I think the life gain is very relevant to this deck and the life loss of ulcerate should be avoided. Think Twice is generally a very good card, but its a fairly poor performer here. It is great in decks that exploit its two spellcasting triggers and great in decks that want to leave mana open anyway. This deck does neither. I found it extremely difficult to find the spare mana to cast think twice here. Graveborn Muse is much more attractive. I also think a singleton bident might be nice as a third card draw engine.
Lastly, I like the idea of a singleton suffer the past to help exile certain nasty graveyard cards, source of healing, and potential alternative finisher, but I couldn't find the cut.

In sum, I would want to test:
-4 frost lynx
-4 think twice
+3 vicious hunger
+2 archaeomancer
+2 graveborn muse
+1 bident of thassa

At first blush, this is a net cut of 1 two drop and 4 three drops in favor of adding 5 four drops, but think twice really costs five mana to do anything. The net result is a smoother mana curve. I also think the deck can support more four drops My goal with these changes is to smooth the deck out a bit - have a better game against token producers in the early game, have archaeomancer to recur whatever spell is critical in a given matchup (and add a broader range of EtB effects), and have better draw in the midgame so that we can keep on hitting critical cards.

That was a super cool review HenWen.. very nice of you to take the time for another board member. Great review too.

Wow, thanks a lot for the detailed review, I really appreciate it! It's very insightful!

I will try your suggestions and see how it goes, as I can definitely see how they could improve the deck. I'm a bit afraid that the new and particularly costs are going to be hard to sustain in some cases since the deck already has a lot of costs but we'll see how it goes.

I agree with your analysis when you say that this deck is weak against fast aggro matchups. TBH I kind of gave up tuning the deck to try and stand a chance against early aggro since these colors don't have much to fight against that. Still with some luck (mostly) and good plays it's not impossible to win against aggro with this list.

Regarding Frost Lynx and Think Twice for me at least those cards perform well enough.

Frost Lynx saved my ass many times and can actually help a bit against early aggro by tapping early hard hitters like Satyr Hoplite, Kiln Fiend or Goblin Rabblemaster. Doesn't actually deals permanently with the threats but can sometimes help you survive long enough in combination with Peel from Reality and Undying Evil until the opponent exhausts his hand (which happens often for aggro decks) or until you can bring the big threats. The tokens matchup sucks big time though and here I agree there isn't much Frost Lynx can do.

Think Twice is typically a turn 2 play unless I have a Maggot in hand already. Turn 3 is generally taken by Phyrexian Rager or Frost Lynx depending on what the opponent plays. I generally flashback it on Turns 4 or 5 depending on what I have next to play, or later in the game when I have more mana open. It's just one of the few turn 2 plays I have, and helps thinning the deck. Doesn't do much else though for sure.

As for Undying Evil I personally never really felt the need to sac a creature to use it. If I really need to force an ETB effect with it I will chump block or try to trick my opponent into blocking my creature. But aside from aggro matchups I use it more as a reactive card to save big creatures than in the early game.

Thanks again for the feedback, I'll give a try to the changes and will keep you posted.

Link? I'd like to check it out... I looked, but I couldn't find it.

both mine and eon's are twords the bottom of the page viewtopic.php?f=50&t=4685&start=360

Oh Cool! thanks. I guess I missed them. I like the concepts.

idk about eon's but mine loses to lifegain and counter magic so yeah

The only thing I don't like is that rockslide doesn't actually benefit from the second unearth death. They get exiled instead of dying. I tried something similar, but I just wasn't that happy with the way it worked.

Edit: the borderline guaranteed evolves are REALLY cool.

Forget megabeast, my Dimir Unearth is one of the better monoblue aggro decks out there!