@Exiled_soul/chuckles9876789 Here's the list I was talking about

Great idea. But it needs play testing. Seems like a simple Dryad Arbor can eventually kill you.

My hats off to you. This is a very hard deck concept for modern. Rite of Flame, Desperate Ritual, Seething Song are all keys that are absent. Very hard deck without them.

@Joker1430 Dryad Arbor will have a tough time killing us, since we will normally either activate Goblin Charbelcher or be able to block it with a wall. If we also have a Assault Formation out, we will kill that Dryad Arbor too with the wall.

Also Rite of Flame and Seething Song are both banned in Modern. That is why we are running the walls and the Arbor Elf/Utopia Sprawl packages, to ensure we get enough mana.

I did consider adding red for things like Desperate Ritual, but it reduces the consistency. I would maybe want to add some Simian Spirit Guides if removed the Assault Formation part of the deck and went much more all in on the ramp strategy.

This is actually really cool and surprisingly consistent!

Nice work! +1

Playing Arbor Elf seems a little awkward in the case that you get a Chancellor turn 1 and no land. I think you're better off playing a dork that produces mana instead of untapping a land.

If you actually playtest the deck you're far more likely to get Chancellor and use that mana to use a 1 mana land fetch and then play that land, essentially netting two mana on turn 1.

@TMBRLZ I was actually surprised how consistent it is. The only issue is that sometimes we can't get all the forests out of the deck and just have to roll the dice. Thanks for the +1

@blasphemale We frequently will have a Lay of the Land type effect, since we run 12 in the deck. You are correct that Arbor Elf doesn't always produce mana, but it also has a much higher upside than Birds of Paradise since we are also running Utopia Sprawl. Getting to four mana as fast as possible is the plan, and typically we want to get to seven mana to play around removal. Arbor Elf gets us to that mark faster.

This is an interesting idea to say the least. I do think it is worth adding some Birds of Paradise just since it's mana consistency. Also, maybe throw in fetch lands to thin out the deck, Wooded Foothills are great but you'll pay for them, which can be used with Stomping grounds since that counts as a mountain also. Another card that might help would be Explore and that one is cheap all adding four of to play an extra land and draw should be simple. Other than that... I dunno what to say on this one.

Good Luck!

I feel like people should be required to actually playtest this deck before they make comments.

It's severely irritating.

I think it's pure genius. I'm actually tempted to build it.

@Squirrelbacon I do agree that Birds of Paradise would be good, but I'm currently running the additional walls to improve Assault Formation. If I was running a more typical Belcher list, then BoP would definitely be in here.

Wooded Foothills is strictly downside in this deck. We can't fetch them using our Lay of the Land effects, so it would actually decrease the success rate of our Goblin Charbelcher.

Explore would be interesting, and I would likely run it if I was going for a more all-in Belcher approach. However, we would have to cut some of the walls in order to run it, and that would seriously limit the effectiveness of Assault Formation.

Honestly, it's the sideboard that needs work. Currently we have about one flex spot in the mainboard, that being Recross the Paths.

@TMBRLZ If you do put it together, let me know how it runs. I haven't been able to get a lot of playtesting in against other decks, so more data would always be helpful.

I've only been jamming it on here. I may try it on Xmage late tonight or tomorrow night. Or proxy it out and test it out at the shop when I work the next couple of weeks.

I will say in all my goldfishing here though that Recross the Paths is generally the most useless card in the deck. Maybe I should try utilizing it on more of a priority than our lower cmc options and see how it runs, but I don't really appreciate it in my hand currently.

And I'll tell you what my friends at the shop told me when advising me on my sideboard for my Izzet Painful? combo deck. As a deck who's main (and really only method) of winning is to do this one specific thing, your sideboard needs to be less about responding to other decks and more about protecting your own. You want to make a sideboard that deals with their sideboard against you. You want to be able to protect your Goblin Charbelcher and get around cards that limit your ramp. The most relevant thing I can think of at the moment would be Aven Mindcensor + Leonin Arbiter .

Considering your deck is nearly strictly Green it would be hard to make a balanced sideboard.

I feel like you definitely want Pyroclasm. You simply want to have a turn 2 response to a flooded Elves and/or Affinity board.

Also consider putting in a white source in the deck. Say something like Sacred Foundry so you can have two shots at mountains for Goblin Charbelcher should you draw the other. This allows you to comfortably have a red source in play too and it can be fetched by Safewright Quest.

With this white source you can run cards like Kataki, War's Wage or Stony Silence in the sideboard to devastate Affinity and Eggs should you ever run across that mess. The white also allows you to equip yourself with non-green enchantment removal if needed to turn off things that might slow your deck down (or maybe even Silence your opponent). Also access to Path to Exile.

You also have cards like Vandalblast to consider. The reality is your biggest threats are going to be cards that hate Goblin Charbelcher, which is enchantments and artifacts.

Your a hard deck to protect honestly, because there's only so much you can manage to protect with without . And my thoughts are pretty scattered as a result.

Here's a list of cards I think would be useful to your sideboard: (to keep things straightforward)

(and this is assuming you put a 1-of Sacred Foundry in the mainboard)

• Kataki, War's Wage

• Path to Exile

• Vandalblast

• Pyroclasm

• Silence (can be very useful when you maintain priority and put it on top of something on the stack (like Charbelcher's ability) - can mess with control big time when used appropriately)

A lot of the other cards you already have like Autumn's Veil, Leyline of Sanctity, Relic of Progenitus, and Nature's Claim seem solid in the deck. Consider adding and what it can do for you though in your variance of defense mechanisms.

@TMBRLZ Recross the Paths is better when we aren't goldfishing and are playing against more controlling decks. The fact that we can stack our deck once we remove all the lands means we can continuously find more disruption or Goblin Charbelchers. Additionally, it allows us to tutor up whatever we need to combo off, such as stacking a Goblin Charbelcher on top and then bottoming it, with a Nature's Claim for their Stony Silence second. I do believe that it is the worst card in the deck, but it also adds a new layer of threats to the deck that other people may be unprepared to deal with.

Firespout has almost always been more impressive in testing than Pyroclasm. It has wider applications against the current Zoo decks, and it still wipes out both Elves and Affinity. I could maybe see including it in other situations, but I would rather have the higher impact card. Also with any Utopia Sprawl or Arbor Elf, we still have that turn 2 Firespout wipe.

Splashing white would be interesting, but I would likely remove red from the sideboard if I wanted that to happen. Our mana is already stretched as it is, so I would rather just splash a single color. Stony Silence is the largest hoser to this deck, which is why I am running so many Nature's Claims and the Fracturing Gust. I would never want to splash it in here. Fracturing Gust is also more impressive than Kataki, War's Wage in most scenarios.

Silence is a really cool one, and honestly one of the cards I would want to run if I did splash white. It is just a huge upgrade to Autumn's Veil in most cases, and it is good in a wider number of matchups. Wonderful card, especially since you can use it aggressively as well as defensively.

Path to Exile is good, but we rarely require it. It would help out when we need to Assault Formation them, or if we need to dig more basics out of our own deck. However, most of the creatures such as Aven Mindcensor can be killed with Firespout, which also improves our aggro matchups. I would include it if I did splash white, but honestly I don't think that there is enough justification to go white.

Vandalblast is sweet. I do really enjoy the card. However, Fracturing Gust and Nature's Claim are typically just better. If I did want to run a strictly artifact hoser, Ancient Grudge would likely be my pick.

Finally, your last point of adding a Sacred Foundry. Splashing any more than a single non-basic Forest makes it extremely difficult to clear out all the lands. Only Safewright Quest and Recross the Paths can get out the non-basics from our deck. We don't want a second unfetchable land. Stomping Ground is necessary to add a splash and because if we don't fetch it, then at least it being a mountain gives us a smaller fail rate. If I was going to add white, I would have to cut the Stomping Ground for a Temple Garden to also ensure we can get that turn 1 green source. Sacred Foundry just increases the risk of mulligans and bad belches.

TL;DR - White isn't as good as red since it doesn't have sweepers, and we can't easily splash two colors. I'm likely going to stick with red since it adds more robust options and makes our belches more likely to succeed.

Also right now I'm looking at maybe putting Defense Grids and Eternal Witnesss into the deck. Right now I'm testing out moving Recross the Paths into the sideboard (cutting Scavenging Ooze) and adding in one Eternal Witness.

Great deck idea! Maybe add in 1-2 more lands. I playtested, and had to mull to 2, but playtested later and this seemed consistent. Sideboard looks great, deck is great, +1 from me.

@Clockwurk Between the 7 lands and the 4 Chancellor of the Tangles, I can typically not mull below six. Adding in more basics would increase good starting hands by about 4%, but it would also decrease the size of our Goblin Charbelcher activations. I'm willing to mulligan more heavily if it also means that Goblin Charbelcher does it's work.

@TMBRLZ I brought this to Modern night and did poorly, but I'll post up a play by play once I have a bit of time. Basically our combo matchup sucks, but we do well against fair decks.

Well that's simply the nature of combo vs. combo.

Who gets there first is most of the decision making. Who is more flexible has some part in there to, but the matches can be interactive at times.

I have a fun time playing my Izzet Painful? deck against a local acolyte of the Hoogs who plays Kiki-Chord. Surprisingly interactive match given how glassy my cannon is.

If you can hold your own in a fair world than we're doing well by my book.

@TMBRLZ True, but other decks can also aggressively mulligan for sideboard cards. If we have a playable hand, it's best to not ship it.

Yeah, overall I have a good time. I just need to play against some more control to get a feel for that matchup, Delver doesn't really count in that regard.

NICE +1

@hamiam Thanks for the +1!

I would try to play more double Lands maybe some of the new ones. They will most of the time dont come into play tapped because you will have two basics in play and they are a much better target for belch as the forests.

You can only search for non-basics using Safewright Quest, or I would need to replace the Sakura-Tribe Elders with Farseek. It would reduce the overall consistency of the deck.

Why would it reduce the consistency if you remove the Sakura-Tribe Elder for a spell that can do it better?

lemmingllama - You can get basic lands using Safewright Quest as well as non-basic Forest and Plain type cards such as Temple Garden or Stomping Ground or Godless Shrine as they are technically one of either of those types. The basic lands also resemble the type required.

However the argument that Sakura-Tribe Elder is less effective than Farseek I don't understand. They both are the same. The difference is Sakura gets only basics (which you don't care about) and Farseek can't get Forests (which you do care about).

I fail to see the argument that you need Farseek over Steve. There's no weakness in Steve being a creature as you can just sac him in response to any kill spell. In Modern, if he's going to get countered, there's not many common counterspells that will care about whether he's a creature or a sorcery.

So I really don't see a point to any of this discussion.

Steve does the job just fine.

@Your name doesn't seem to exist

Farseek can't block or attack. Sakura-Tribe Elder can. Normally he reads "get a forest and save 2-6 life". This can also be important in games such as vs Tron when they have Wurmcoil Engine. Lifegain does decrease the odds of a single belch killing them, so sacrificing Sakura-Tribe Elder does the trick.

Farseek would only be necessary if I require more dual lands in the deck, and in the current build they are unnecessary.

@TMBRLZ Safewright Quest is the only way to get non-basics in the deck other than enabling Delirium and casting Traverse the Ulvenwald, or the singleton Recross the Paths. I intended the statement as "Safewright Quest is the only good way to search for non-basics in the deck".