“We are gonna be more aggressive, but let’s just wait one more turn”. Classic Seth. lmao When most people think of Seth, they think of his opening line, when I think of him, the first thing that pops into my head is, “let’s wait one more turn”.
Spoiler Szn "We ALSo got." "Is this not just really good? *clicks teeth* *sighs deeply* "So [Card Name] *proceeds to tell you why he doesn't think it is that good*."
My friend played this at our local store. I told him I was sideboarding in emrakul game 2. He forgot, eventually started to combo, someone watching who didn't know how it worked asked how it worked as he was finishing up. "Emrakul gets milled, I have a library again and he crys" Friend paused for 3 seconds then scooped. Went to game 3 and drew to time.
always funny when you side an og eldrazi in case of mill. in 99.9% of matches (before this becomes mainstream) you won't need it, but in the 0.1% it's hilarious
i saw someone play this in arena shortly after MKM came out -- and i noticed that all of their lands were untapped MDFC lands. This greatly helps the evidence math.
Which format? Timeless? That might not be needed in Modern, since there's Evoke elementals, but maybe a few MDFCs are worth it, but I ain't doing the math on a deck like this lol
The math is more interesting as, excluding 1 Altar of Dementia and 1 Lamplight Phoenix to combo, the deck has 7x 1-drops and 7x 3-drops to make 7 pairs, and 8x 2-drops to make 4 pairs. So with 24x 4+drops and the 11x pairs, we have 35x activations available maximum. Meaning on turn 3 on the play we'd have 68 - 9 = 59 cards in our deck, and our opponent would have 60 - 9 = 51. Thus it'd take 17 activations to mill them out, so we'd only be able to mill ourselves at most 35 - 17 = 18 times for 54 cards (not enough, not even including cards stuck in hand). We could mill only 15 or so times and see if we mill enough to activate 17 extra times to mill the opponent out, which is highly likely (but as shown above, not guaranteed).
Yes, the math here doesn't take into account that any card over 4 cmc only counts as a 4 so we need to adjust the math again the total manavalue is 155 - 5 = 150 but the effective combo total is 145 - 5 = 140. This means we struggle to play the one ring and leyline binding as they stay in play and reduce the cycle by 1 each.
Haven't seen anyone mention it but this deck was brewed by cftsoc3, the same player who created the nissa slogurk aftermath analyst deck that won the standard 75k a month or so ago. Absolute goat.
68 & 72 are great numbers for deck building if you want to have more of ‘something’ and have the dig & redundancy. Also - there are some players at FNM who experience physical pain at losing to “non optimal” deck sizes so it was well worth it.
Huh. I was in AspiringSpike's stream when he was trying to brew around the combo. He kept getting stuck trying to make the mana curve high enough to let the combo work. Eventually someone joked about Yorion and he realized he could just up the deck size. I think he ended up at 70 cards with Profane Tutor, but then eventually cut it and went down to 68. Interesting that two people ended up at the same number when brewing the deck independently.
Of all the things I ever expected to get mispronounced by this man, parlor didn't make the list... Man, Sethron Olive, you are the GOAT, bringing smiles to the fridays of so many nerds.
I think the math is wrong. If you exile a card with mana value greater than 4 to return the phoenix then you lose that extra mana value for later. So cards like Solitude (mana value 5) or Leyline Binding (mana value 6) mean that you cannot actually return the Phoenix often enough because you lose mana value. E.g.: 2x Leyline Binding = mana value 12 --> Enough mana value for 3 returns of the Phoenix but only 2 cards. So you can only return the Phoenix twice with that converted mana value of 12. For the math: The side board only got 4-drops and lower. The main deck got 7x 6-drops, 8x 5-drops, 9x 4drops, 8x 3-drops, 9x 2-drops, 7x 1-drops and 20 lands. So the main deck got a total mana value of 167. Take away the 2 cards for the combo = 5 mana value --> remaining mana value in the main deck: 162 That also leaves 7x 3-drops to match perfectly with the 7x 1-drops to get the exact mana value of 4 each time. Now however you need to deduct a mana value of 2 for every 6-drop and a mana value of 1 for every 5-drop: 162 - 7x 2 - 8 x 1 = 140 mana value that can be separated into actual returns of the Phoenix. Actual possible returns of the Phoenix = 140/4 = 35 . 1 time normal Phoenix + 35 returned Phoenix being sacrificed. So you can actually mill at most a total of 36 times with this deck.
Doesn't that math only apply if you are collecting exactly 4 cmc every time you bring back Phoenix? If we had a 100 mana card it would raise our deck's total cmc by a lot but still only bring back Phoenix once.
Yeah, the "math" should consider how many cards you need for evidence. 1 Leyline Binding in the graveyard = 1 Phoenix loop, same for the pitch elementals. The deck should probably look to play more 4 mana value cards that have alternate uses (like cycling).
You are correct, however it doesn’t really matter most of the time for 2 reasons. First, most of the time your opponent will be drawing, tutoring, or milling themselves at least a few extra cards, reducing the amount that needs to be milled, and second you’ll likely be putting a few cards in your own graveyard before you mill with landcyclers, solitudes, etc and reducing your deck/inflating the average cmc of your remaining deck by pulling out lands with fetches and cyclers, which is why it all still works out despite the real calculation coming short of a full combo kill assuming you start with nothing in the grave and you and your opponent just land go besides playing your combo pieces and comboing on turn 3
Yep, this deck cant win on turn 3. It has 33 recursions of phoenix in it, plus 3 more cards from not bringing it back. We need 19 of them on turn 3 for our own deck, meaning we can mill our opponent 45 cards on turn 3.
I was also surprised he didn't play it first. Was half-paying attention with this in the second monitor, so just assumed he didn't have the mana to do 3feri + Altar + Phoenix, but after losing to Counterspell and actually checking, yeah, he definitely could've done all 3. I'd argue the time shouldn't even have been a factor as casting Teferi to at least give yourself a shot at winning would take a couple of seconds off the clock at most.
I just want to take the time to tell you Seth, that you are such a good commentator. I can't tell you how the little things like explaining the deck and hovering over the cards for description, to all of your train of thought. I haven't played magic in such a long time, but your passion has inspired me to download arena and get back into tcg. I love the work, keep it up!
this combo is actually currently legal in Penny Dreadful - and you can make it even better (and not require 68 cards) with Bridge From Below! though with it showing up in Modern, im sure it won't be next season 😅
Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion, but I actually think "committing a crime" is flavorful. Killing opponent's creature: Murder. Making opponent discard: Destruction of private property. Yes, it doesn't work for everything, but because most of the time you're targeting an opponent or their stuff you're doing something negative, I think "crime" is a fitting name. Of course, they could have created a crime mechanic that *only* counted negative effects, but the added complexity doesn't seem worth it IMO.
They would have to list out all negative effects, otherwise it could be argued things like "milling me isn't negative because I want some cards in the graveyard".
Absolutely love the math and theory!!! I feel like you should do this way more often, just my opinion but it is truly a unique yet needed mtg video angle.
In that game against the izzet deck early in the video I know you saw the money in hand but you had more then enough mana to play the teferi first to garentee that they didn't topdeck something. Was just a little to eager/greedy on that one but it happens to everyone so don't blame ya for not playing it safe.
This video caused me to instantly start doing math because someone says a number is required, I start running numbers Imagine t3 with two 60 card decks where the total number of cards left in libraries is 101. You need 34 Altar activations for both libraries to be emptied. Accounting for 20 lands and extra copies of the combo (3 evidence groups equaling 5), 31 cards with a CMC of 4 or greater would do it. The problem with this is that you probably have some important pieces in hand unless you only have lands, so in case you really need every card, make that 32 card a conflagrate. Dredgers and mill cards can lower the required cmc further since they can fill the grave without spending evidence on self-mill. it might be janky but we can do it with 60!
You were low on time, but if I'm not mistaken wouldnt you have been able to play teferi first which would've forced the counter out of their hand in the murktide game? you had enough mana left over to still combo and knowing their other card was ragavan means they couldnt have 2 counters so it would be a guaranteed win (except if they refused to scoop and made you lose to clock) Either way in the end I feel like they kinda abused the clock to win, forcing you through the whole combo the first game even when it became clear it was game winning, kinda bm
@@CrowsofAcheron except it’s only slow because you can’t just demonstrate loop on computer, in reality with shortcuts in paper this would take 30 seconds tops, it’s not indeterminate after the first few loops so there’s no reason to sit through the rest. It’s the same as when you present an infinite damage or life gain loop
@@Zeequals The math isn't as perfect as Seth says, the combo can still fizzle. Also, the opponent can have Eldrazi or something that hard counters mill. So the loop will still have to play out in a lot of circumstances. I've seen tons of people scoop because they thought a combo was coming, and it wasn't. This happens more in paper, because we've normalized 'explaining the loop' which can become a vector for unscrupulous players to grab wins they don't deserve. It also creates a gulf between experienced players and newbies. A new player may not be able to follow a combo, and may not accept a loss to something they don't understand.
@@CrowsofAcheron if someone has an eldrazi that's an entirely different circumstance, and not the one that happened where we're talking about. The combo is already on board and being demonstrated in this case, so the "scoop when a combo isn't actually coming" argument is irrelevant" and I'm not saying scoop the moment the loop starts, as I already mentioned but you chose to ignore to add more arguments, I'm talking about when the point it's become determinate. The only valid argument is if the player is new enough not to be able to tell this is game ending, which is unlikely.
33:44 Seth you had the mana to cast teferi into the combo and teferi would have had to eat the counterspell and you'd have won ( at least in our hearts)
@@redram9 honestly I think he did, even if he cast terefi je reasonably didn't have the time to play out the combo and I'm pretty sure the opponent wasn't keen on scooping anyway
I built this deck when the card was spoiled, but it was for historic and focused on using discover to hit the combo pieces. MH3 made the deck actually good and now it can win through hexproof, lifegain, antimill, etc.
Match 1 was one of the most interesting games I've seen in a while. The bad beats on it were epic, and it seemed both you and your opponent were playing very well.
23:48 I feel like waiting here was not the best call. Yes, you eventually would find the land and be able to play the combo with a Veil of Summer backup, but by waiting you're also giving them the time they need to draw a second counterspell, and play the mana they need to cast it.
Last turn of round 1 game 3 was a misplay. Play teferi before combo piece, guarantees protection if resolved, or they counter teferi and their hand is just ragavan with no counterspell. Clock is still an issue though.
Okay, this combo seems perfect to mess with tournaments. Horribly slow, non-deterministic (you could get really unlucky milling lands at the start) and dangerously fast once in a blue moon. I love it.
I was gonna complain about a combo deck opting for 68 cards, hurting the odds of drawing the combo, but then I remembered the One Ring was a thing, and the guys at Wizards were high as balls while designing it.
1:05:33 did you consider evoking the Solitude to get rid of the Troll and get it in the graveyard to collect evidence for the Phoenix after the Crypt resolves? It then could kill the Karn unless they have Sheoldred's edict (or another 2mv removal).
One thing that confuses me, counting any mana value above 5 aurely doesnt matter because 4+ is all functionally the same in that 4 is the threshold for a card "collecting" on its own
So there's a bunch of things, while I love the math of the deck, I'd like to point out a few things, for the purpose of collecting evidence 4 your average mana value need to be calculated so that every card with mana value 4 or more is actually mana value 4. Also only accounting for the best case scenario is kinda risky. This also means that when sideboarding a card like dead gone whose mana value is 6 you can replace it with a 4 drop and be fine While it is true that the earliest we can combo is turn 3, we should also look at the card counts for later turns although I don't think it's significant before very later on
@@born2getbizy didn't look like a 1 for 1 build. They used Bolts, inquisition, toughtsieze, bowmaster...the usual suspects in timeless plus a random infinite combo and beseech for redundancy
The izzet player was runnning wild hot with those one man counters xD Awesome deck, loved the math part, this deck is genius. Makes me wonder if its worth running like 70 cards to have a a bit more mana value to work with in case something goes wrong.
Wouldn't adding some pump effect be another way of reducing the amount of loops needed to mill yourself and your opponent? I'm not sure if there is any good or efficient enough but what about the free spell anthem? I can think of many other ways to add more power (for more milling) like creating tokens when your creatures die or your creatures entering this turn get a counter but are any playable here? I also agree with many others about adding mdfcs to increase the average cmc and possibly having a higher cmc and better plan b by including Draco. I feel like this could be a lot better with tuning.
I haven't put in the thought to know how it'll affect the deck, but I've been pretty high on noxious revival recently and I think that can give some resiliency against counters and whatnot
Interesting maths, but a few problems: if you have 5 mana value of cards on the battlefield (phoenix & altar) surely you have something in your hand? Unless you've drawn only lands for 3 turns? And anything with mana value 4 or above should only count for 4 mana value, because when you Collect Evidence 4 and exile something like Leyline Binding, although you've exiled 6 mana value, you've only got 4 mana value worth. I mention because it seems they've worked out that 68 cards is optimal, but it's on incorrect assumptions.
I hope the math behind this was counting all cards with mana value 4 and greater as just 4. Any card that's higher than mana value 5 isn't contributing more than 4.
either i'm wrong or the math is wrong , you need to trim the excess mana vaule of the cmc 4+ cards to 4 , downgrading the total mana cost of evidence from 155 to 133 (150 --> 128) for example , 2 bindings are 12 cmc , yet you can't collect evidence 3 times with em
There is probably a budget version of this deck possible. Could easily slot into hollow one since they play street wraith, ox, lightning axe, and the namesake each fully satisfying the requirement
I'm getting 145 for the mana value (so 140 after subtracting 1 phoenix and 1 altar) - I actually tried counting multiple ways/times but never got 155, neither on the list in the video nor on the decklist in the link from the description. Just to be clear, any card with CMC > 4 should be counted as 4 for the purposes of mathing out this combo because it's excess cmc over 4 is a waste when targetted by lamplight phoenix. I was curious if the original math accounted for this (and maybe it did but someone just round down a random +10 on accident somewhere?) Either way, I also tried counting cards with their CMCs above 4 and still couldn't get 155 as the result, so something ain't mathing out right from the descriptions of this deck.
How would this work running street wraiths and 1 mana cyclers instead of the cantrip spells? I guess your card selection would be a lot worse, but you might be able to up the average mana value nicely
Something else you could do, if you didn't want to run 68 cards, is to play fewer cards with 3 or less mana value, because the most economical way to execute this combo is to make sure as high of a percentage as possible of the cards in your deck are 4+ mana value. Without even watching any gameplay yet, I'm a bit suspicious of only having 24 cards (about a 1/3 of the deck) being mana value four or greater. Split cards are absolutely your friend, and I think this deck could definitely use more of them. Also, I know that it's kinda become a bit of a meme at this point, but since you're already running Leyline Binding, the Leyline of the Guildpact/Scion of Draco package seems perfect, giving the deck both a better Plan B, as well as making your Plan A better too, by playing 8 more cards that bring back the Phoenix on their own.
You need to bait out the counters if you know he is going to counter something still use your protection as it is more resources you'll push through and theres a odd chance he won't have more counters and in that first match you should have played out teferi and then altar as he would have countered the teferi letting the altar resolve
The cards that have mana value greater than four only have 4 effective mana value because you cannot split it up into two instances of collecting evidence
when you say average value are you counting cards with >4 value as such?, as for the purposed of this combo a card with 4 cmc is the same as a card with 500 mana value
The math is off Seth. 2 leyline bindings for example are 12 mana, but only add 2 lamp loops instead of three because you have to round down all your division, 6/4 won't be 1.5, it'll be one.
Match 1, game 3 you could've sacrificed the lantern to shrink the DRC and exiled the Ragavan to deny the treasure, mana from the opponent, therefore keeping then off spell snare
@@egg5802I think this rule has changed some years ago It happened because in 2 separate instances players were punished with game losses because they forgot to take away one card while sideboarding…. Nowadays you can do anything you want… anything is fair game as long as your deck is still above 60 cards… you can just go up to 75 in game 2 if you wish to
@@egg5802it doesn’t need to be, you can side into the full 75. In limited you could even put hundreds of lands into your deck for game 2 if you wanted to
On game 3 of the match against Izzet Murktide, couldn't you have just cast the Teferi first in order to dodge counterspell? Because either they counter the teferi or they can't counter at all.
Seth: "The deck builder is a genius for mathing it all out!!" Original deck builder (probably): "I just kept adding to the deck size, til it worked..." /s
But as far as I understood, there is some “wasted” mana value on the calculation, right? Even though you have, let’s say 150 MV in the deck, when you collect evidence 6 with Leyline Biding, you’re wasting 4 mana there. The same is true with Solitude, Subtlety…
If you see your opponent do that, you can just try to cycle a few extra land cyclers, say like 4 lorien revieled in total, or equivalent mana value with surveil lands etc. That's 5 extra activations of altar. You can also just add your sideboard in game 3
it's a bit unfair to say it went 2 in 4 when you literally won the first match if not for time. that last game was deterministically won with enough mana for teferi into a hand we knew only having 1 unkown
“We are gonna be more aggressive, but let’s just wait one more turn”. Classic Seth. lmao
When most people think of Seth, they think of his opening line, when I think of him, the first thing that pops into my head is, “let’s wait one more turn”.
The greed runs strong in his blood 😄
Spoiler Szn
"We ALSo got."
"Is this not just really good?
*clicks teeth* *sighs deeply* "So [Card Name] *proceeds to tell you why he doesn't think it is that good*."
Should've put one more card in
Nice
@@AkodoNoEyes Nice
Nice
nice
nice
My friend played this at our local store. I told him I was sideboarding in emrakul game 2. He forgot, eventually started to combo, someone watching who didn't know how it worked asked how it worked as he was finishing up.
"Emrakul gets milled, I have a library again and he crys"
Friend paused for 3 seconds then scooped. Went to game 3 and drew to time.
Nice
always funny when you side an og eldrazi in case of mill. in 99.9% of matches (before this becomes mainstream) you won't need it, but in the 0.1% it's hilarious
Maybe he didn't forget, just thought you were bluffing.
Yeah why did the reanimated opponent concede there? Seems like emrakul stops our combo
Emrakul doesn't counter this completely. The combo player can just mill himself and sideboard Tassa's Oracle.
20:00 Several turns of people staring at each other with removal in hands, exactly as Garfield intended.
i saw someone play this in arena shortly after MKM came out -- and i noticed that all of their lands were untapped MDFC lands. This greatly helps the evidence math.
This also means you take a fuckload of damage and your mana sucks though, but it is an option!
At the very least oliphaunts seems right
@@midn8588 Since the idea is to win as fast as Turn 3, you might take 9 from 3 MDFC lands and PROFIT!!!
Which format? Timeless? That might not be needed in Modern, since there's Evoke elementals, but maybe a few MDFCs are worth it, but I ain't doing the math on a deck like this lol
Yeah, that helps too.
The math is more interesting as, excluding 1 Altar of Dementia and 1 Lamplight Phoenix to combo, the deck has 7x 1-drops and 7x 3-drops to make 7 pairs, and 8x 2-drops to make 4 pairs.
So with 24x 4+drops and the 11x pairs, we have 35x activations available maximum.
Meaning on turn 3 on the play we'd have 68 - 9 = 59 cards in our deck, and our opponent would have 60 - 9 = 51. Thus it'd take 17 activations to mill them out, so we'd only be able to mill ourselves at most 35 - 17 = 18 times for 54 cards (not enough, not even including cards stuck in hand). We could mill only 15 or so times and see if we mill enough to activate 17 extra times to mill the opponent out, which is highly likely (but as shown above, not guaranteed).
Yes, the math here doesn't take into account that any card over 4 cmc only counts as a 4 so we need to adjust the math again the total manavalue is 155 - 5 = 150 but the effective combo total is 145 - 5 = 140. This means we struggle to play the one ring and leyline binding as they stay in play and reduce the cycle by 1 each.
Haven't seen anyone mention it but this deck was brewed by cftsoc3, the same player who created the nissa slogurk aftermath analyst deck that won the standard 75k a month or so ago.
Absolute goat.
the 68 card deck god
They seem to have a thing for 68 card decks.
@@MTGGoldfish it’s the new 60!!
68 & 72 are great numbers for deck building if you want to have more of ‘something’ and have the dig & redundancy.
Also - there are some players at FNM who experience physical pain at losing to “non optimal” deck sizes so it was well worth it.
Huh. I was in AspiringSpike's stream when he was trying to brew around the combo. He kept getting stuck trying to make the mana curve high enough to let the combo work. Eventually someone joked about Yorion and he realized he could just up the deck size. I think he ended up at 70 cards with Profane Tutor, but then eventually cut it and went down to 68. Interesting that two people ended up at the same number when brewing the deck independently.
Of all the things I ever expected to get mispronounced by this man, parlor didn't make the list... Man, Sethron Olive, you are the GOAT, bringing smiles to the fridays of so many nerds.
I think the math is wrong.
If you exile a card with mana value greater than 4 to return the phoenix then you lose that extra mana value for later.
So cards like Solitude (mana value 5) or Leyline Binding (mana value 6) mean that you cannot actually return the Phoenix often enough because you lose mana value.
E.g.: 2x Leyline Binding = mana value 12 --> Enough mana value for 3 returns of the Phoenix but only 2 cards. So you can only return the Phoenix twice with that converted mana value of 12.
For the math:
The side board only got 4-drops and lower.
The main deck got 7x 6-drops, 8x 5-drops, 9x 4drops, 8x 3-drops, 9x 2-drops, 7x 1-drops and 20 lands.
So the main deck got a total mana value of 167.
Take away the 2 cards for the combo = 5 mana value --> remaining mana value in the main deck: 162
That also leaves 7x 3-drops to match perfectly with the 7x 1-drops to get the exact mana value of 4 each time.
Now however you need to deduct a mana value of 2 for every 6-drop and a mana value of 1 for every 5-drop:
162 - 7x 2 - 8 x 1 = 140 mana value that can be separated into actual returns of the Phoenix.
Actual possible returns of the Phoenix = 140/4 = 35 .
1 time normal Phoenix + 35 returned Phoenix being sacrificed.
So you can actually mill at most a total of 36 times with this deck.
Doesn't that math only apply if you are collecting exactly 4 cmc every time you bring back Phoenix? If we had a 100 mana card it would raise our deck's total cmc by a lot but still only bring back Phoenix once.
Definitely add one more card to be safe.
But seriously, all of the cards with CMC >= 5 will throw the math off.
Yeah, the "math" should consider how many cards you need for evidence. 1 Leyline Binding in the graveyard = 1 Phoenix loop, same for the pitch elementals. The deck should probably look to play more 4 mana value cards that have alternate uses (like cycling).
Exactly what i was thinking
You are correct, however it doesn’t really matter most of the time for 2 reasons. First, most of the time your opponent will be drawing, tutoring, or milling themselves at least a few extra cards, reducing the amount that needs to be milled, and second you’ll likely be putting a few cards in your own graveyard before you mill with landcyclers, solitudes, etc and reducing your deck/inflating the average cmc of your remaining deck by pulling out lands with fetches and cyclers, which is why it all still works out despite the real calculation coming short of a full combo kill assuming you start with nothing in the grave and you and your opponent just land go besides playing your combo pieces and comboing on turn 3
Yep, this deck cant win on turn 3. It has 33 recursions of phoenix in it, plus 3 more cards from not bringing it back. We need 19 of them on turn 3 for our own deck, meaning we can mill our opponent 45 cards on turn 3.
32:51 You would have won if you cast Teferi first. You had the mana.
Came here to say this as well. Drop Teferi and they wouldn't have even been able to counterspell.
Big misplay but tbh when you're two minutes on your clock the stress gets pretty intense.
getting countered might have been less soul crushing than not having enough time to pull off the combo tho
I was also surprised he didn't play it first. Was half-paying attention with this in the second monitor, so just assumed he didn't have the mana to do 3feri + Altar + Phoenix, but after losing to Counterspell and actually checking, yeah, he definitely could've done all 3. I'd argue the time shouldn't even have been a factor as casting Teferi to at least give yourself a shot at winning would take a couple of seconds off the clock at most.
42:11 he also could have pitch-cast solitude to exile grief before his opponent could have gotten off the double ephemerate the following turn.
I just want to take the time to tell you Seth, that you are such a good commentator. I can't tell you how the little things like explaining the deck and hovering over the cards for description, to all of your train of thought. I haven't played magic in such a long time, but your passion has inspired me to download arena and get back into tcg. I love the work, keep it up!
The Math on this is really cool. Im glad you showed it in the video
That's my favorite part of this deck!
this combo is actually currently legal in Penny Dreadful - and you can make it even better (and not require 68 cards) with Bridge From Below! though with it showing up in Modern, im sure it won't be next season 😅
25:05 I'm a little confused at this concession. They only had four red up to put you to 2 life.
I was looking for this comment. I was gonna ask how it’s lethal. Is there something in their graveyard or hand we aren’t thinking of?
49:59 "You can't scam the top of my deck" i feel like fate is gonna come around and make lantern control/scam a deck now
lantern scam sounds like a hilarious archetype. not actually much overlap between the two other than making your opponents hand worse though
@@kaedox not until modern horizons 3! :^)
Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion, but I actually think "committing a crime" is flavorful. Killing opponent's creature: Murder. Making opponent discard: Destruction of private property. Yes, it doesn't work for everything, but because most of the time you're targeting an opponent or their stuff you're doing something negative, I think "crime" is a fitting name.
Of course, they could have created a crime mechanic that *only* counted negative effects, but the added complexity doesn't seem worth it IMO.
They would have to list out all negative effects, otherwise it could be argued things like "milling me isn't negative because I want some cards in the graveyard".
Absolutely love the math and theory!!! I feel like you should do this way more often, just my opinion but it is truly a unique yet needed mtg video angle.
The whole "sit there topdecking while control crafts their hand with expressive iteration for 10 turns" is the most Seth strategy of all time.
In that game against the izzet deck early in the video I know you saw the money in hand but you had more then enough mana to play the teferi first to garentee that they didn't topdeck something. Was just a little to eager/greedy on that one but it happens to everyone so don't blame ya for not playing it safe.
This video caused me to instantly start doing math because someone says a number is required, I start running numbers
Imagine t3 with two 60 card decks where the total number of cards left in libraries is 101. You need 34 Altar activations for both libraries to be emptied. Accounting for 20 lands and extra copies of the combo (3 evidence groups equaling 5), 31 cards with a CMC of 4 or greater would do it.
The problem with this is that you probably have some important pieces in hand unless you only have lands, so in case you really need every card, make that 32 card a conflagrate. Dredgers and mill cards can lower the required cmc further since they can fill the grave without spending evidence on self-mill. it might be janky but we can do it with 60!
Already given a like for the idea and the deck tech explanation alone. Good job, Seth! Now, I'm expecting the first game to be against a Yorion deck.
I love your Modern videos, Seth. Thanks for uploading!
You explained the math of the combo very well! easy to follow and understand! thank you professor seth
If there was ever a deck to use the Steiner math clip this would be it.
hilarious, but the whole thing is for sure too long to be just a clip
"Don't interact with us (;"
*Proceeds to quadruple Grief you*
You were low on time, but if I'm not mistaken wouldnt you have been able to play teferi first which would've forced the counter out of their hand in the murktide game? you had enough mana left over to still combo and knowing their other card was ragavan means they couldnt have 2 counters so it would be a guaranteed win (except if they refused to scoop and made you lose to clock)
Either way in the end I feel like they kinda abused the clock to win, forcing you through the whole combo the first game even when it became clear it was game winning, kinda bm
It could be considered bm to waste for opponents time with an incredibly slow combo.
@@CrowsofAcheron except it’s only slow because you can’t just demonstrate loop on computer, in reality with shortcuts in paper this would take 30 seconds tops, it’s not indeterminate after the first few loops so there’s no reason to sit through the rest. It’s the same as when you present an infinite damage or life gain loop
@@Zeequals The math isn't as perfect as Seth says, the combo can still fizzle. Also, the opponent can have Eldrazi or something that hard counters mill. So the loop will still have to play out in a lot of circumstances.
I've seen tons of people scoop because they thought a combo was coming, and it wasn't. This happens more in paper, because we've normalized 'explaining the loop' which can become a vector for unscrupulous players to grab wins they don't deserve.
It also creates a gulf between experienced players and newbies. A new player may not be able to follow a combo, and may not accept a loss to something they don't understand.
@@CrowsofAcheron if someone has an eldrazi that's an entirely different circumstance, and not the one that happened where we're talking about. The combo is already on board and being demonstrated in this case, so the "scoop when a combo isn't actually coming" argument is irrelevant" and I'm not saying scoop the moment the loop starts, as I already mentioned but you chose to ignore to add more arguments, I'm talking about when the point it's become determinate.
The only valid argument is if the player is new enough not to be able to tell this is game ending, which is unlikely.
@@ZeequalsIt is non-deterministic. Nothing stops you at any moment from hitting 10 lands and 2 preordains in a row.
33:44 Seth you had the mana to cast teferi into the combo and teferi would have had to eat the counterspell and you'd have won ( at least in our hearts)
Thank you, was coming to comment this. Seth should have seen that
@@redram9 honestly I think he did, even if he cast terefi je reasonably didn't have the time to play out the combo and I'm pretty sure the opponent wasn't keen on scooping anyway
I built this deck when the card was spoiled, but it was for historic and focused on using discover to hit the combo pieces.
MH3 made the deck actually good and now it can win through hexproof, lifegain, antimill, etc.
!punt on last game against murktide. Couldve played the teferi first to protect against the cspell then played the full combo with just enough mana
Love seeing Modern again!!
"You got to be kidding me!!", Seth at his most furious
Match 1 was one of the most interesting games I've seen in a while. The bad beats on it were epic, and it seemed both you and your opponent were playing very well.
Not playing Teferi first in that game 3 in round 1 hurt.
23:48 I feel like waiting here was not the best call. Yes, you eventually would find the land and be able to play the combo with a Veil of Summer backup, but by waiting you're also giving them the time they need to draw a second counterspell, and play the mana they need to cast it.
Last turn of round 1 game 3 was a misplay. Play teferi before combo piece, guarantees protection if resolved, or they counter teferi and their hand is just ragavan with no counterspell. Clock is still an issue though.
I normally skip the modern content because I play on Arena, however this video drew me in and it was awesome
First round was wild! Great Deck!
Okay, this combo seems perfect to mess with tournaments. Horribly slow, non-deterministic (you could get really unlucky milling lands at the start) and dangerously fast once in a blue moon.
I love it.
I was gonna complain about a combo deck opting for 68 cards, hurting the odds of drawing the combo, but then I remembered the One Ring was a thing, and the guys at Wizards were high as balls while designing it.
1:05:33 did you consider evoking the Solitude to get rid of the Troll and get it in the graveyard to collect evidence for the Phoenix after the Crypt resolves? It then could kill the Karn unless they have Sheoldred's edict (or another 2mv removal).
What about the 7 mana mdfc lands that cost 3 to put into play untapped...
One thing that confuses me, counting any mana value above 5 aurely doesnt matter because 4+ is all functionally the same in that 4 is the threshold for a card "collecting" on its own
So there's a bunch of things, while I love the math of the deck, I'd like to point out a few things, for the purpose of collecting evidence 4 your average mana value need to be calculated so that every card with mana value 4 or more is actually mana value 4. Also only accounting for the best case scenario is kinda risky.
This also means that when sideboarding a card like dead gone whose mana value is 6 you can replace it with a 4 drop and be fine
While it is true that the earliest we can combo is turn 3, we should also look at the card counts for later turns although I don't think it's significant before very later on
I beat a timeless version of this deck on arena due to the timer ending opp combo before lethal. Swung back for the win lol
Do you know what they were playing instead of evoke eles?
@@born2getbizy didn't look like a 1 for 1 build. They used Bolts, inquisition, toughtsieze, bowmaster...the usual suspects in timeless plus a random infinite combo and beseech for redundancy
@@davidcochran6974 Nice one ty for reply
In modern I always include Gaea's Blessing in my sideboard for mill shenanigans like this.
One of the best decks in Penny Dreadful right now, except we get Bridge from Below
The izzet player was runnning wild hot with those one man counters xD Awesome deck, loved the math part, this deck is genius. Makes me wonder if its worth running like 70 cards to have a a bit more mana value to work with in case something goes wrong.
Math is no longer just for Blockers
that 1st match was insane who plays that many counters in a deck lol
Wouldn't adding some pump effect be another way of reducing the amount of loops needed to mill yourself and your opponent?
I'm not sure if there is any good or efficient enough but what about the free spell anthem? I can think of many other ways to add more power (for more milling) like creating tokens when your creatures die or your creatures entering this turn get a counter but are any playable here?
I also agree with many others about adding mdfcs to increase the average cmc and possibly having a higher cmc and better plan b by including Draco. I feel like this could be a lot better with tuning.
I feel like you can swap some low cost cards for cards that have alternate/reduced costs. Specifically thinking things like Overwhelming Remorse.
I haven't put in the thought to know how it'll affect the deck, but I've been pretty high on noxious revival recently and I think that can give some resiliency against counters and whatnot
Interesting maths, but a few problems: if you have 5 mana value of cards on the battlefield (phoenix & altar) surely you have something in your hand? Unless you've drawn only lands for 3 turns? And anything with mana value 4 or above should only count for 4 mana value, because when you Collect Evidence 4 and exile something like Leyline Binding, although you've exiled 6 mana value, you've only got 4 mana value worth. I mention because it seems they've worked out that 68 cards is optimal, but it's on incorrect assumptions.
33:00 super funny to lose to a counterspell while holding teferi in hand
I hope the math behind this was counting all cards with mana value 4 and greater as just 4. Any card that's higher than mana value 5 isn't contributing more than 4.
I just love when deck techs start with "we'll get to the math of how this works"
If you mulligan you improve your chance of milling by a lot since you can mill yourself for more MV
either i'm wrong or the math is wrong , you need to trim the excess mana vaule of the cmc 4+ cards to 4 , downgrading the total mana cost of evidence from 155 to 133 (150 --> 128)
for example , 2 bindings are 12 cmc , yet you can't collect evidence 3 times with em
There is probably a budget version of this deck possible. Could easily slot into hollow one since they play street wraith, ox, lightning axe, and the namesake each fully satisfying the requirement
Parlor has twice as many R’s as you might think
I'm getting 145 for the mana value (so 140 after subtracting 1 phoenix and 1 altar) - I actually tried counting multiple ways/times but never got 155, neither on the list in the video nor on the decklist in the link from the description.
Just to be clear, any card with CMC > 4 should be counted as 4 for the purposes of mathing out this combo because it's excess cmc over 4 is a waste when targetted by lamplight phoenix. I was curious if the original math accounted for this (and maybe it did but someone just round down a random +10 on accident somewhere?)
Either way, I also tried counting cards with their CMCs above 4 and still couldn't get 155 as the result, so something ain't mathing out right from the descriptions of this deck.
Playing some MDFCs would help with the plan
32:40 why not play teferi first for counter bait in instead of altar? i feel like it was a misplay?
So If post board I just add my entire sideboard to my deck the enemy using the combo just scoops?
How would this work running street wraiths and 1 mana cyclers instead of the cantrip spells? I guess your card selection would be a lot worse, but you might be able to up the average mana value nicely
would the mdfc lands be better because they are lands with manavalue?
32:53 why not tefferi first? it was either bait or protection and you had mana
Itd be great if the one ring were limited to 1 copy in modern. Its the perfect way for it to not be so broken and ubiquitous.
Something else you could do, if you didn't want to run 68 cards, is to play fewer cards with 3 or less mana value, because the most economical way to execute this combo is to make sure as high of a percentage as possible of the cards in your deck are 4+ mana value.
Without even watching any gameplay yet, I'm a bit suspicious of only having 24 cards (about a 1/3 of the deck) being mana value four or greater. Split cards are absolutely your friend, and I think this deck could definitely use more of them.
Also, I know that it's kinda become a bit of a meme at this point, but since you're already running Leyline Binding, the Leyline of the Guildpact/Scion of Draco package seems perfect, giving the deck both a better Plan B, as well as making your Plan A better too, by playing 8 more cards that bring back the Phoenix on their own.
What happens if your opponent boards in all 15 cards, going up to 75? Is it even possible to win?
What do you do in the mirror though?!
You need to bait out the counters if you know he is going to counter something still use your protection as it is more resources you'll push through and theres a odd chance he won't have more counters and in that first match you should have played out teferi and then altar as he would have countered the teferi letting the altar resolve
The cards that have mana value greater than four only have 4 effective mana value because you cannot split it up into two instances of collecting evidence
when you say average value are you counting cards with >4 value as such?, as for the purposed of this combo a card with 4 cmc is the same as a card with 500 mana value
Why didn't you play Teferi first on that last turn against Murktide?
The math is off Seth. 2 leyline bindings for example are 12 mana, but only add 2 lamp loops instead of three because you have to round down all your division, 6/4 won't be 1.5, it'll be one.
Match 1, game 3 you could've sacrificed the lantern to shrink the DRC and exiled the Ragavan to deny the treasure, mana from the opponent, therefore keeping then off spell snare
This list reminds me of Sly red and the inception of the Mana Curve. "The math just worked out, I guess" thanks to Rhystic Studies for that knowledge
Sligh
@@thelunchlady8276 thank you
I think it’s funny that if your opponent simply throws every single sideboard card in the deck before game 2 without taking anything out, you lose
Edit: this is incorrect
iirc, your deck needs to be he same size through all 3 games.
@@egg5802I think this rule has changed some years ago
It happened because in 2 separate instances players were punished with game losses because they forgot to take away one card while sideboarding…. Nowadays you can do anything you want… anything is fair game as long as your deck is still above 60 cards… you can just go up to 75 in game 2 if you wish to
@@egg5802it doesn’t need to be, you can side into the full 75. In limited you could even put hundreds of lands into your deck for game 2 if you wanted to
@@poirihuh. Neat
You could still attack with your creatures I guess
On game 3 of the match against Izzet Murktide, couldn't you have just cast the Teferi first in order to dodge counterspell? Because either they counter the teferi or they can't counter at all.
Seth: "The deck builder is a genius for mathing it all out!!" Original deck builder (probably): "I just kept adding to the deck size, til it worked..." /s
couldnt you get this down to 60 cards and still have enough mana value if you just swap out some of the lands for mdfcs?
If you're already playing 68 cards, why not go to 80 and play a free Yorion? Probably makes the math a bit less fringe, too.
I'm surprised they're not playing border posts and MDFCs in place of lands
Besides evoke elementals, isn’t this deck basically on arena?
Back my day, a deck like this would have come from a "small Japanese tournament" 👴
Hey guys it's Seth, probably better known as Mathron Olive
How does Ephemerate stop Solitude?
i think you punted the second game match 1 you should have went for the combo after they subtly the solitude with veil backup
32:55 why didn’t you cast teferi first!?!? You had it!!
But as far as I understood, there is some “wasted” mana value on the calculation, right? Even though you have, let’s say 150 MV in the deck, when you collect evidence 6 with Leyline Biding, you’re wasting 4 mana there. The same is true with Solitude, Subtlety…
32:53 drew protection for the combo but didn't play it before jamming the combo, oof
wouldn't Street Wraith help this?
If they pull their whole 15 to make a 75 on game 2-3 dont they just win?
If you see your opponent do that, you can just try to cycle a few extra land cyclers, say like 4 lorien revieled in total, or equivalent mana value with surveil lands etc. That's 5 extra activations of altar. You can also just add your sideboard in game 3
I don get it, why not play teferi first in the last game of match 1? For time reasons?
I dont get it
I wonder if this deck wants thought scour?
Great until you face an opponent running an 80-card deck and just scoop in shame.
it's a bit unfair to say it went 2 in 4 when you literally won the first match if not for time. that last game was deterministically won with enough mana for teferi into a hand we knew only having 1 unkown
why you didnt play teferi before altar last round of game 1 is beyond me