I am going to play some matches with one of these builds soon.

babasoonist, the rdw and izzet decks that you crushed, did they have max 60 cards? Did they have a decent starting hand? Did they fair well in their draws? Just curious. I pretty much assume the odds of beating those decks (especially rdw) (with pretty much most decks in this format) are slim to non-existent on well constructed builds that get a good starting hand.

they were 60 cards and had decent starts, player skill on the other hand thats debatable

well if they lost to a girl, then yeah player skill is suspect at best.

/runs

>_>

[reggaeton horns]

bassoon, is that smiley supposed to be dagger-eyes or madonna-bra?

I will give it a try again, just not my usually cup of tea.

Just remember that after a certain point, you can choose not to use Seance's ability. There is strategy that can be employed to avoid the synergy issues.

the first.... I don't even know who the second person is and I'm too lazy to google

Yet you typed more characters to respond than it would've taken to Google something.....

you be nice!

This is why the Seance deck I posted earlier in this thread (which HenWen and I discussed) only runs a single copy of SS.

I am on the same page as you, really dislike the anti-synergy with Seance.

I found a single copy was still more than enough to get drawn/milled into pretty consistently, so having SS around when you want/need it is still pretty common, but you are less likely to get flooded with them which can be really bad in situations where you have already depleted a good portion of your GY by activating Seance.

Then again, my Witch-Maw Seance deck has overall less Self-mill than most dedicated GY decks and relies more on ETB stuff, so SS loses value anyways, since we aren't turbo-milling 20 creatures into the yard by T5 consistently, which is where you really would want all 3 copies of SS to increase the chances of drawing into one as early as possible.

*shrug*

It's an interesting setup, I'll admit. It runs smoother than I thought it would and if you are only targeting Satyrs, Soothsayers, and Assistants with Seance, it mills out at a nice pace. Only trouble I've been running into over the past few games is the mana base. That might be a fluke because your Tri-Lands are solid, but other than that, it's interesting if nothing else.

bump

My favorite version of spider spawning is blue-green base with self mill. Hedron crab is the best card in the deck. The deck's only weakness was that it didn't interact well with what the opponent was trying to do, and it could lose to burn/tokens before it got going.

With the new lands from the expansion, I can easily add a white splash to my black splash. Rhox War Monk was the card I was really after, winning most aggro match-ups single handedly, and white actually offers some reliable removal to boot.

The idea is to play out all your creatures that cycle for other creatures, cycling your deck and filling your graveyard while pressuring durdlers and staving off aggro. Whenever you cast spider spawning you win, but it is very possible to win without it.



This deck has been performing insanely well for me over the past couple days. It's the highest casting card in the deck is 5 mana, so it curves out nicely almost every game. About half the cards in the deck cycle or draw, and it's packed with value from the graveyard and self mill. With spider spawning as the late game threat it has a more reliable finisher than most ramp or control style decks. Anyone who wants to give it a test or offer advice is welcome.

At the moment the only non-good match-up is against decks with talrand/guttersnipe plus negates.

Edit: The deck was still a bit slow, so I dropped the swamp for a plains and switched out a Soothsayer for a Baneslayer Angel. One less way to fill our graveyeard and draw what we need for more life gain and racing pressure. Should make the deck absolutely crush aggro and burn, and deal reliably with fliers. Makes Mentor a bit worse as well, but I was never really having trouble against slower decks anyway.

Edit 2: That done, the deck stalls to 8 mana extremely well every game. I might be able to afford a Craterhoof after all. Maybe I'll try it out in place of the quickling. Quickling was one of the cards making Mentor amazing, so I'll have to see if the damage to my draw engines is too high. The deck has been renamed to make the intentions of the variant plain without reading my theory.

Edit 3: This heavy into white already I can actually consider Brimaz or Banisher Priest, though those changes would make me a bit weak to board clears. Maybe Brimaz over a Masked Admirer or War Monk, and Banisher Priest over Reprisal? I could also consider a Rescue from the Underworld over a Treasured Find since I have better creatures to get back. What do people think?

no craterhoof?

Yeah, in his other post he pretty much said he doesn't want Craterhoof when I suggested putting it in. This was his reasoning:



What he posted here is basically the same deck, just changed the limited removal around. Pretty much think he should drop white out since it doesn't do much beneficial for him. Then he could put in the Craterhoof, Graveborn Muse and some recursion spells to increase reliability and speed.

But that's me. If this is working for him, cool.

I've player the straight sultai version quite a bit and it loses hard to aggro/burn if it doesn't have spider spawning on turn 5. What I wanted to make here was a deck with a consistently high win rate vs aggro.

The way I see the current meta, common decks have predictable win conditions:

1. Aggressive creature killing you early, finishing you with burn or anthem effects. (Blue evasion, white auras, or any variation of red/white/green weenies.)

2. Ramp decks running cultivate, bombs, and lifegain.

3. Control decks running card draw, removal, and wraths, winning the battle of attrition.

4. Decks running guttersnipes or talrand plus spells.

5. Decks relying on powerful enchantments.

6. Graveyard decks like this one.

Spider spawning decks naturally crush ramp decks who can't attack into a wall of spiders. They're difficult to 1 for 1 with their graveyard elements, so they have favorable match-ups vs control. (Especially this variation which probably draws more cards than a typical control deck.)

The poor match-ups are against burn and aggro who can kill you before you can kill them, and against enchantment heavy decks it comes down to who can assemble their pieces first. Adding white doesn't help us do powerful things faster, but it adds lifegain, removal, and enchantment removal to counter almost every non-winning match-up. The cards it adds are more situational, so if you want to curve out properly you can't really afford to run stuff like Craterhoof. You spend your early turns cycling your deck and interacting with the opponent instead of hoping you can do something big fast enough.

P.S. There is something to be said for a deck with a strong late game that runs 0 large expensive creatures. It forces the enemy to use their expensive hard removal on your 1 drops or 3 drops and gives you a tempo advantage in such situations.

Look a few pages back and you will see a few builds. Mine and Hakeem's version are 3 cards different. Seance is the reason to go white. You should try it out. Hakeem has also showcased this deck on his you tube channel.

well, that's the first time I've seen YouTube written like that. If I had a grandmother left, I bet she's write it like that. Or maybe, "the you tube"