Oooh, also just got an idea: Cosi's Trickster could be a cool way to win with all the searching and shuffling. Not sure it will "break maralen" but it would certainly be a funny way to win.

skoobysnackz Hello

I added Anticipate, supreme will and telling time. I particularly like telling time.

I can't get through the art of the others haha

Duskmantle Seer I'm not sure why I would allow my opponent cards when I just locked him out :P

Cosi's Trickster Will not let anyone use Maralen ability so he probably won't get very big.

Thanks for the ideas :)

First of all love the deck and the idea my suggestion: make sure you have a plan B

You can talk about a two card combo that will probably win you the game assuming youre not dead on board. However in your quest to ruin peoples days, RnGsus may not be on your side. Always make sure that if the lock is not assembled you still have a way to win, or a secondary way to lock people out of the game.

Personally I think white would be good here so you can get some taxes aspects and land destruction with arbiter, mindscensor and ghost quarters. Also might be interesting to make a prison deck with ghost quarters and such to stall the game long enough to assemble your lock.

pickelchu Hello, Thanks for passing by :D

To be honest, I'm really trying to stay away from the leonin/aven cards. I know these cards really helps with maralen but without her, those are fairly useless.

Many suggested going control was the way to go, but I still need a way to win other than the lock, you are right.

saturn999 - Flooremoji - IAmTheWraith - legendofa - Sjorpha - YourBoi-tman - skoobysnackz - SeekerofSecrets

Athreos, God of Passage What do you guys think about Athreos? Could it have potential? it's not like any1 is playing maralen on turn 3 anyway, that would be stupid.

Splashing white could also allow to play Scout's Warning on turn 4 during opponent's turn so we can fetch our Mindlock Orb with maralen ability.

I like the Idea of having white, Athreos, God of Passage would work really good with it as well I think, You could possibly play like an esper good stuff with the maralen lock, and then have like a slight re-animator theme with Bloodghast, Bloodsoaked Champion and Lingering Souls. You would be able keep the board full even with the lock

Uncanny_Ghoul I already love athreos as a card and using him here I think works really well. If someone has removal in hand for our Maralen she just returns to hand, granted they'll have a turn to draw if we cant recast it but lets hope that 1 draw wont do anything. Plus, if they pay the 3 we can even add some recursion. In general I think recursion would be nice here. Another whole route the deck could take would be a graveyard recursion with the lock strategy. (Also speaking of graveyard, dredge and such seems like a bad matchup for this deck, so lets make sure to put in some graveyard hate in SB)

SeekerofSecrets lol great minds think alike. We were commenting at the same time.

YourBoi-tman haha wow! I don't think that has ever happened before!

you are missing the best combo which require red mana and Stranglehold

shadowmage modern deck :)

YourBoi-tman Yea, GY hate going to be needed without a doubt.

SeekerofSecrets as much as Lingering souls is an amazing card, I don't think it fits the theme, we can't return them to hand with athreos. bitterblossom could work though.

I don't have as much experience with Athreos as I would like, so I don't know how reliable it would be--if I saw Athreos and Maralen across from me, I'd be paying the life to keep her dead. I'd rather pay 3 life once than 3 life every turn. But if that's not as big an issue as I think, then yes, Athreos is great.

I say the maybeboard is big enough. It's time to build.

I'm not so sure about Bitterblossom it seems to me that on it's own maralen sets up a 7 turn clock for both our opponent and us as well (assuming that we both still have 20 life and we play it on there turn). With just maralen out we will eventually win b/c our opponent will hit 0 first (if we play it on our turn, we need to be 3 points ahead to consider casting it on theirs). If we have bitterblossum that causes us to have a 5 turn clock, so in a vacuum bitterblossum will kill us (assuming that our opponent has answers for the tokens, which in building the main i feel that we should, it may be a good side card though).

I also don't feel like in the current shell we don't have enough counter spells and hand disruption to reliably protect the lock. Maybe we could pull 2 Mindlock Orb to make room? we don't need multiple copies on the board and we can simply tutor for it with maralen whenever we want to establish the lock.

Hmmm... I think that Athreos might be a little too slow. For example, people will be paying to keep her dead, and then it was kinda pointless. I would say running red could be an option to get burn going and speed up the clock, making sure that we can win the damage race. Probably a Grixis shell would be best. For example:

4x Maralen of the Mornsong

4x Mindlock Orb

4x Lightning Bolt

4x Lava Spike

2x Rift Bolt

2x Bump in the Night

2x Isochron Scepter

4x Remand

2x Cryptic Command

1x Twilight Prophet

2x Vendilion Clique

4x Inquisition of Kozilek

Or something to that effect. This gives us a strong control shell that can still race damage to an opponent.

I feel like Siren Stormtamer could be good in here, maybe replacing a couple of Mindlock Orbs as SeekerofSecrets suggested. It gives you a 1/1 flyer for , which isn't unreasonable, and can protect your combo from removal. The downside is that it doesn't have flash like the Spellstutter Sprites, so it's tougher to be reactive with it.

Now, the shell I just described only helps if you have some non-draw cantrips to go with it. Like Telling Time, Anticipate, or Supreme Will. Or, you can use fun things like Hurkyl's Recall to bounce your own mindlock orb in your upkeep to search.

IAmTheWraith What if the goal to Athreos was different? I mean I don't really care if maralen is dead. it just cost him 6 life. mix tht with Tidehollow Sculler and Vendilion Clique & Augur of Skulls it's starting to be alot of life to keep them dead.

But maybe it is a bit slow. I did some playtesting and I always had a better card to play than athreos.

legendofa also spellstutter sprite is doing bad, not enough faeries.

SeekerofSecrets At this point the lock is probably better off as a secondary wincon. But I can't deny you are right about bitterblossom, while it's a nice card to have, it puts us at risk. Maybe lingering souls would be better.

maybe Siren Stormtamer to protect maralen?

what do you guys think about Tidehollow Sculler maybe the new pirate would be bad?

I have this crazy idea for maralen caw blade, the idea would be to cast a Squadron Hawk to fill your hand on turn two and then use maralen to search up your blades (to replace stone forge mystic).

The deck would be a high tempo/control list with the maralen lock as a back up

SeekerofSecrets not sure, I'd feel like I play a bad version of blades.

You would also allow your opponent to fetch cards...

Ive never actually played blades so i really don't know how to assess the power level

Allowing them to search isn't awful as long as we have answers, which esper has the best/versatile answers in the format and on top of that we don't really mind if they pull an answer to maralen or a hawk in this set up

Idk though this could just be my inner Johnny coming out though!

what about Leonin Arbiter and Gemstone Caverns

Agent_Fire To be able to fetch on my turn after flashing Maralen in, with leonin in play I need to pay 2 and won't have the mana to cast Mindlock Orb. Also, already in the maybeboard.

Gemstone Caverns I really, really don't want to draw into it with a 3 color deck that needs a colored mana every turn with (BB) (UU) in mana costs.

But thanks alot for your suggestions if you have anything more I'm all hears :)

I'm a little confused with your lands because you have 2 Marsh Flats and 2 Flooded Strand, yet no islands, swamps or plains to search for.