Sizorninja77 Hello mate! here's what you are looking for!

Watery Grave - Hallowed Fountain

These are fetchable.

But lands still need work. I'm not sure about fetch/shock lands in a deck based on life loss every turn. (Maralen)

Uncanny_Ghoul Did you see saffron's decklist? I like ours a lot more but I haven't playtested either so.

YourBoi-tman TO be honest I think his list is really bad.

I did tell him that I felt green wasn't the right call for the deck and he said he didn't really know how to build Maralen either so.

I can't tell if this deck is any better though.

I playtested quite a few times and I hit maralen combo pretty often now. thanks to remand/scour/opt.

I just goldfished a couple of hands. How long does it usually take you to establish the lock?

Turn 5-8, 7 most often. Not too bad I suppose. Definetly not competitive though.

Been working on this for a while now, it is sweet in a death and taxes build. Maralen Hatebears is my take on it, with all of the issues with this deck sovled for the most part.

SynergyBuild thanks but I'm currently trying to do something else with this list. Everyone builds Maralen in the same shell and that something I'm keenly staying away from.

But thanks for passing by :)

Have you considered Archive Trap? If you have Maleren out it's a free mill 13.

However, if you're facing a graveyard deck, it's just a dead card.

PurpleGame0 thanks for the suggestion!

I'm not a fan of Archive Trap, if the lock is in place, I'm giving the opponent a chance to hit something which can come back from the raveyard (dredge/zombie/flashback/etc). I'm not entirely sure what else it does in this kind of deck tbh?

Unless We go an alternative plan and aim for a mill deck with a lock as alt/wincon.

Nice! When I was playing with the deck - Dark Confidant and Anticipate were my go to cards. The reason being was that they get you more cards without "drawing" them.

The typical dream play;

Turn 1 Inquisition of Kozilek/Thoughtseize.

Turn 2 Dark Confidant

Turn 3 Maralen of the Mornsong

Turn 4 Mindlock Orb

+1 by the way!

Hello ! cplvela0811

Dark confidant + maralen makes you lose a ton of life every turn I'm not certain how you plan to kill your opponent before you die to yourself?

I think 4x Chord of calling in a deck with 1 Maralen + 1 orb would be interesting, you put maralen into play at the end of their turn, then fetch and play the orb to put the lock down. Could be put in a GW creature toolbox shell as a more controlling alternative to the more aggressive combos.

Sjorpha This sounds like a really interesting idea. While I'd love to try that out, 3 green mana is quite alot, Also we get locked from this lock as well and green doesn't offer much to help with that.

But i'm interested, Green instead of white I suppose, it makes it easier to get maralen too. Remove tidehollow + perplex. for 4x chord. Remove 3 Maralen. so we have 6 open spot. Was your idea something along that? GW makes this a 4 color deck, and I think it would harm more than anything.

More details would be nice ^^

What I'm thinking above is that you'd use an entirely different concept for the deck, an abzan creature toolbox/valuetown shell with things like Scavenging Ooze, Tireless Tracker, seige rhino, mana dorks and so on and then Maralen + the orb would be 1 offs that you play using the chord mid to late game once you have the board advantage and locking down any further draws is beneficial to you.

It's a downside that you can't use chord once Maral is in play, and also it's awkward if you draw her to your hand, but I still thinks it'a interesting idea.

Another idea would be to combine her with madcap experiment + platimnum empyrion combo to avoid the lifeloss and maybe a playset of Dark Confidant as well. That would have to be without the orb though as you'd madcap into the orb and kill yourself.

For the control deck style you're making here I'd like to see search for Azcanta as it gets around the orb.

Another possibility would be to use something like an Isochron Scepter deck with silence and Shadow of doubt instead of mindlock orb, for a one sided lock.

Too bad Stranglehold isn't modern legal.

Here's another one that could be funny. Maralen + orb + blood clock, you pick up the orb in your upkeep, search the card in your draw step and then replay the orb. Or you could pick up Maralen, draw the card and replay her.

Also Experimental Frenzy is a new card that allows playing the top card in your library, for one mana less than magus, may be worth looking at.

Sjorpha to be honest at this point it really only depends on the meta as white could be swaped out for red for experimental and lightning bolts.

Each versions has it's own benefits but I think I like the current build.

I didn't hate the death/taxes version but I wanted to stay away from it as most people used it.

Thanks for the suggestions I'll be looking into that for a while ^^ if you think of anything else feel free to post.

So I've playtested three versions now.

Esper with isochron scepter, silence and shadow of doubt. Phyrexian unlife + Solemnity combo to complete the lock and let Maralen kill the opponent while we are immune to damage. Also ran Teferi, mage of Zhalfir since he makes a hard lock with isochron silence and allows playing Maralen with flash in the lategame. Worked decently.

Second version was abzan running again Phyrexian + Solemnity, but now with mindcensor and leoinin arbiter to support maralen and with a major focus on attacking lands with ghost quarter and assassin's trophy under arbiter prior to playing Maralen. Birds of paradise for accelleration and chord to play maralen at instant speed. Didn't work that well actually, not quite enough pressure to compound the soft lock, leaving too much time for opponent to get out of the lock before I can close the game. It's also hard to support the necessary creature count to fuel chord reliably.

Last version is Mardu, again with arbiter and mindcensor with some land disruption, but now with a focus on damage pressure to compound Maralen and Madcap experiment into Platinum Emperion to break parity with the lifeloss. This is the one that works best in online testing by far, approaching something almost competitive, it's been working so well in fact that I've put the deck up here:

The Mornsong Experiment

Modern Sjorpha

4 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

I realise what I ended up with is a very different kind of deck from what you're trying to do here, but it was the one I got to win the most and also had most fun playing.

I personally feel like the orb lock is just giving up on Maralen's biggest strength, which is the unconditional tutoring effect, and I think any success in making her modern playable is going to center around abusing the tutoring rather than creating a hard lock.

hey i'm not sure if you're still looking for suggestions on this deck, but i like it a lot and i think i'm going to try making a dimir version

anyway, you could put Sleight of Hand in place of Opt so it isn't a dead draw once the lock is in place