Modern Front Page Feature #2

Features

ChiefBell

19 June 2016

1022 views

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#2 - Screams from the Fallen

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I’m bringing you a fresh deck each weekend from our homepage that caught my eye as it floated down on a deckcycle. I’ll show you the list, provide you with insights directly from the creator, offer improvements, and display a few runners-up that barely missed the cut. Join me as we celebrate our community’s creativity and get the lowdown on a sweet brew!

When am I most likely to see your deckcycles? I’m always taking peeks at TappedOut throughout the day (and night), so there’s not one specific time each week I’m looking for new lists. It’s the luck of the draw, but deckcycling more often can’t hurt you.

This week’s deck belongs to MattStar, who wanted to build a competitively viable deck that utilised the graveyard

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Screams from the Fallen

Modern* MattStar

SCORE: 86 | 102 COMMENTS | 23890 VIEWS | IN 37 FOLDERS

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4x Birds of Paradise 1x Breeding Pool 2x Dryad Arbor 4x Fauna Shaman 1x Forest 2x Gnaw to the Bone 4x Hedron Crab 4x satyr wayfinder 1x Island 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer 3x Misty Rainforest 1x Nighthowler 1x Nyx Weaver 2x Overgrown Tomb 3x Polluted Delta 1x Quickling 3x Renowned Weaver 4 Satyr Wayfinder 2x Screams from Within 1x Soul of Innistrad 1x Spellskite 4x Splinterfright 4x Street Wraith 3x Strength from the Fallen 1x Swamp 1x Venser, Shaper Savant 3x Verdant Catacombs 1x Wasteland Viper 1x Watery Grave Sideboard: 2x Abrupt Decay 2x Brain Maggot 2x Ghost Quarter 1x Increasing Confusion 1x Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord 2x Life from the Loam 2x Raven’s Crime 3x Seal of Primordium

This is a Sultai deck with a very heavy emphasis on graveyard shenanigans. The key driving force of the deck is the immense speed at which cards like Street Wraith and Hedron Crab can fill the graveyard, and in doing so trigger huge buffs from Strength from the Fallen and create very large Splinterfrights. There’s some fantastic synergy between Strength from the Fallen and Screams from Within whereby screams triggers Strength when it comes into play, and then if attached to a creature with 1 toughness it instantly kills it and can be returned to the battlefield to trigger Strength a second time. This repeatable loop can turn late game Birds of Paradise or Satyr Wayfinder into sacrifice fodder in order to pump up a huge threat.

        Strengths

This deck is obviously fast given that on turn 2 a Hedron Crab can mill 6 cards with a fetchland, and in doing so massively fill your graveyard ready for shenanigans. The ramp from Birds of Paradise can make Splinterfright potentially castable on turn 2, which can then be followed up by multiple Hedron Crabs on turn 3 and then a fetchland for the turn in order to suddenly throw 6, 12, 18 etc cards into your graveyard and swing with a huge Splinterfright the turn it loses summoning sickness. I can see that when this deck has a perfect hand it’s probably terrifying to play against.
Another thing that I see as a particular strength is that Strength from the Fallen triggers other Strength from the Fallen that are already on the battlefield. This means your third copy of strength of the fallen yields 3 triggers at once! Strength from the Fallen is also triggered by Renowned Weaver turning into a spider, at instant speed! The synergy here is fantastic and could blow out unsuspecting opponents.

        Weaknesses

18 lands and 4 Birds of Paradise means that the deck is liable to screw, especially when a hand with a low number of lands but lots of birds is kept, only to meet a Thoughtseize or Lightning Bolt from the opponent. Ouch! However I must admit that a turn two Satyr Wayfinder may be able to address this problem more often than not.
The second problem I can foresee is that the win conditions are relatively low in number. We have Splinterfright and Nighthowler for big swings, accompanied by Strength from the Fallen. It’s worth noting that only Splinterfright has trample so chump blocking many large swings is very possible. It may be possible to hold off the deck’s onslaught with a few chump blocks and removal spells, by which point it could have run out of steam.
The final point, as with all graveyard decks, is that it’s very soft to Rest in Peace, Scavenging Ooze and Relic of Progenitus. This is to be expected and is a frequent problem with any deck that relies on the graveyard. These cards vary in popularity depending on how "in" graveyard decks are. When everyone is running dredge, reanimator, and others, then expect to see a lot of Relic of Progenitus. When they’re not then you’re fairly safe.

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        Creator Insights

What inspired you to build the deck? What’s the motivation there? Is it the colour combinations, or the strategy that interests you the most?

"Screams from Within + Strength from the Fallen was the initial inspiration. I was trying to find a way to create a graveyard themed deck that could perform quickly. Early on I had included many clashing ideas; there were sorceries and instants, kill cards, and reanimation. All of it drew away from streamlining the pay-off. creatures needed to be the most common card type so I could reliably mill a mass of them into the graveyard early. So creatures needed to be the spells, creatures needed to be the removal, and creatures needed to be the protection, and they needed to transition as fast as possible from my library straight to the graveyard. The lost creatures should not be retrieved from the grave, but rather when one dies or gets milled, another should be fetched from the library to continue the cycle. Obviously, the engine that does the searching and does the milling needed to be creature-based as well so that when they make the transition, even if they do nothing but die, they all serve their greater purpose in giving me that extra +1 damage to my opponent’s face. "

How have you found the mana base and production? You appear to have a low land count with a high number of mana dorks. How risky is this in your opinion? Does it often pay off? Or do you sometimes suffer because of it?

"There needs to be 1 more land, however in playtesting the current land base works fine. as long as you have at least one green producing land in the first hand and at least either another land or a Birds of Paradise rolling into a Satyr Wayfinder, you’ll be sitting pretty. Many times you will have 2 or 3 lands and a bird, but even those times when you have only 1 land, look at the rest of the hand, you may still be able to make magic happen pretty consistently. Very rarely do I suffer for the low land count, and the mana dorks are very necessary to make the build hit lethal damage a turn early. When you’re talking about hitting lethal on turn 4 vs turn 5, or even turn 3 vs turn 4, one turn really starts to matter. Beyond that though, fewer lands just means fewer non-creature cards to self-mill into the graveyard. I hate milling lands in this build when I’m trying to just get that extra one or two dead critters in there."

The deck has a number of 1-of silver bullet cards designed to help it adapt to a variety of situations. What inspired you to go for this route with Fauna Shaman, and do you feel it pays off? What’s your view on this balancing act between the flexibility of many 1-ofs and the consistency of many 4-ofs?

"Before I introduced Fauna Shaman to the build there were a number of situational cards that I always seemed to want to run, but I couldn’t be prepared for everything, and most games I simply wouldn’t need them. They were effectively a waste of space until I took them out and then I’d wish I still had them in. Fauna Shaman really pays out in multiple ways, allowing me to search for answers and utilize them in direct response to my opponent’s actions, and to get the main effort online when it doesn’t fall into my starting hand.
Another fun perk is watching my opponent sweat over deciding what to do with a kill card in hand, "do I kill the shaman? or do I kill the giant splinterfright?" either they kill the Splinterfright and I just replace it with a bigger one, or they take out the Fauna Shaman and stare down the barrel of my trample-tree. Another key aspect of the supplemental 1-ofs is that their effects are largely instantaneous. I fetch them out at crucial moments either for protection or to enhance my combat. Either way, once they first hit the field, their job is done and I shouldn’t need them again so they can go on and die for all I care. I hope they do in fact! But should the stars align and my opponents’ have answers for me, we have some creative and fairly effective options for retrieval in three different 1-ofs for variety. Though retrieval is counterproductive, if I am on the backfoot and need to get something out of the graveyard in an emergency, multiple solutions are available."

In playing and/or designing the deck have you spotted any particular problems or all-stars? Have any cards turned out to be much worse or better than you initially expected?

"There are a few problems that arise from having one- and two-of’s when you play the deck over and over again. Sometimes the starting hand will have an awkward combination of supplemental cards and you can’t manage much early tempo in getting the main effort online, but that happens very rarely. If the deck is practiced and piloted correctly you can know better when to keep a 1 land starting hand, or shoot for boosted crab over searching for a forced Splinterfright. It takes practice, but the deck does have a surprising range of flexibility and capabilities. The biggest dud happens to also be the biggest bomb when used correctly, but in any zone of the game Screams from Within can be hit and miss. The surprise all-star however is hands down Renowned Weaver. Shocking i know. She does a lot for the deck even if it’s just a simple early chump block and rolling over into the grave. She produces a reaching chump blocker with a fair amount of toughness, but the outstanding fact of the matter is that she triggers constellation on strength of the fallen at instant speed to get a surprize +X/+X boost on any creature you choose AFTER she go the grave to get that extra +1 power. Her interactions allow both offensive and defensive interactions in combat that reliably swings the tide into your favor almost always with a big surprise to your opponent."

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        Potential Improvements

-2 Gnaw to the Bone, +1 Forest, +1 Architects of Will

My first thought is that this deck is primarily an aggressive deck and therefore it needs to capitalise on speed and consistency. We’ve already heard that the deck can sometimes suffer with inconsistency and occasionally a lack of lands, so my first suggestion would be to swap a card that does nothing to help your tempo for two cards that can help you get fantastic opening hands. Architects of Will is an interesting card because not only can it be thrown away early for just a single mana in order to draw a card, it also buffs Splinterfright when you do so. Another interesting use for it is to be cast for 4 mana after the opponent scry’s or you suspect a killspell may be coming in order to manipulate their draws. It’s probably not worth more than a 1-of but I can definitely see it having use because it never seems to be totally useless whether you’re ahead or behind.

-1 Venser, Shaper Savant, +1 Apostle's Blessing

In order to fetch up Venser and cast him you need 5 mana open. This deck is running 18 lands now (19 with my suggested changes), with only 4 mana dorks. I honestly don’t see that happening, and even if it does I think the deck should have won by that point as it is. I was initially toying with the idea of AEther Adept but the lack of flash is definitely a problem because it limits it to basically only being useful when you want to swing a Splinterfright and then opponent has a large blocker. In this light I opted for a one-of Apostle's Blessing. I know it’s not a creature but it’s an awesomely flexible card that allows you to blank killspells or swing through unblocked for just 1 mana and 2 life. It’s a risky inclusion and it might not pay off, but I think it has a better chance of being castable than Venser, and sometimes it can certainly win games as it allows you to push through that last lot of damage despite the opponent having an established board.

-1 Dryad Arbor, +1 Swamp

I understand the use of Dryad Arbor but when we’re going for turn 4 kills we really need our lands to be usable on the turn we cast them. The deck is playing a very low number so every single one counts here.

-1 Soul of Innistrad, +1 Viscera Seer

I love Soul of Innistrad and I think its use in this deck is undeniable, but again the mana problem comes into play. I can understand that in longer games it may be useful but if you need a recurring threat then perhaps it may be worth looking at some kind of dredge creature. My default reaction is to go Viscera Seer. Useful in the early game to smooth out draws and feed the graveyard. Late game you can just look at it as a 1 mana spell that allows you to scry 1 and give Splinterfright +1/+1. Again I think this is a safe option - I doubt you will ever draw this card and find it utterly useless but it’s not mind-blowingly amazing either.

Overall

So the changes I’ve gone for here are pretty safe. They’re designed to speed up the deck, make it more consistent and provide a few more ways to push damage through despite the opponent trying to stop you. Most of the cuts I’ve made have been cards that I think are largely uncastable. Now this doesn’t mean these decisions will ALWAYS be the right ones, but I hope that 9 times out of 10 they produce favourable results.

This leaves us with the following list:

4x Birds of Paradise 1x Breeding Pool 1x Dryad Arbor 4x Fauna Shaman 2x Forest 1x architects of will 4x Hedron Crab 1x Island 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer 3x Misty Rainforest 1x Nighthowler 1x Nyx Weaver 2x Overgrown Tomb 3x Polluted Delta 1x Quickling 3x Renowned Weaver 4x Satyr Wayfinder 2x Screams from Within 1x viscera seer 1x Spellskite 4x Splinterfright 4x Street Wraith 3x Strength from the Fallen 2x Swamp 1x apostle’s blessing 3x Verdant Catacombs 1x Wasteland Viper 1x Watery Grave Sideboard: 2x Abrupt Decay 2x Brain Maggot 2x Ghost Quarter 1x Increasing Confusion 1x Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord 2x Life from the Loam 2x Raven’s Crime 3x Seal of Primordium

Sideboard
Sideboards are very meta specific so it would be impossible to suggest something that is fully formed. This deck already has a fairly well developed sideboard here, but I would perhaps suggest a sweeper such as Drown in Sorrow and something to disrupt affinity. Gnaw to the Bone would be good against Burn also. I think that perhaps Raven's Crime isn’t doing a lot here given that it seems awfully unlikely you can activate retrace.

Do you have anything else to add? What would you do differently? What do you think? Let me know down below!

Keep deckcycling out there! You never know when I could be eyeballing your list.

Happy tapping, players!
ChiefBell

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