Blightning was the deciding factor in splashing red, although Terminate gets honorable mention. I currently run Wrench Mind and Smallpox as my two drop discard suite, as Fall seems like it can whiff more often in mid game when they're holding onto lands to fend off the racks. Just wanted to see if you had input.

On an unrelated note, the one color I never see splashed in 8rack is blue. Not sure if its viable, but access to the efficient two drop counters in modern seems to warrant at least SOME exploration.

Twanicus if u check out the Salvation forums, you'll find a long thread of 8Rack discussion. They explore the world of unfair, however the conclusion is that the best thing unfair can offer is Spellskite which u don't need to splash to even run.

They have also discussed academy ruins and tezzeret in depth. I do like spellskite in the list but I don't think there are any other blue cards that really add anything worthwhile, and as you said, you don't need to play blue to play spellskite.

haha love the name +1

Have you tried out the new M15 card Waste Not ? I have a similar 8 rack deck list that runs Waste Not and it's extremely powerful

Admittedly I have not yet tested it, I should probably get around to that.

I do think this might not be the best list for the card however, this sort of discard strategy doesn't really want to run megrim/liliana's caress style effects because the focus is on keeping the hand empty rather than actually continuously discarding. The effect is very powerful though, so who knows, it might still be good enough :P thanks for the suggestion!

Wow now! You've got a lot of discussion going on here man!

Just put together a rack deck myself.I uploaded it yesterday and was looking around for ideas. We've almost got exactly the same deck apart from about 4 or 5 cards which is why I'm interested.

The main card I like that I hadn't thought of is Bitterblossom . I like your thinking! I run just The Rack and Shrieking Affliction to win. I find these are enough to do the job and I also play 2x Infernal Tutor to fetch more of each if needed. I know you've tried Infernal Tutor and have your reasons for not running it. It can slow you down a turn, agreed, but only if it's in your starting hand. At any point later in the game it's the bomb! Get a bridge to stop creatures, a removal, liliana, etc I love it!

Anyway sorry back to Bitterblossom , great idea as another win condition. Also I can see how it could be ace to have faeries jumping in the way or big creatures each turn whilst The Rack and Shrieking Affliction do the job. What has your experience been of that card in this deck? How does it tend to help? When are you ideally dropping it?

I run a couple of Dark Confidant , more seems a bit much but 2 is nice. Any opinion on that?

Played a few Modern tournaments so far. It kicks the shit out of Jund and The Rock, does well against Affinity, Burn Control and Burn. Where I've struggled is against small creature heavy decks if Ensnaring Bridge doesn't show or gets destroyed. How's your deck done against others? I'm curious because my meta game is mainly the decks I've just mentioned, was wondering if you've played against other ones.

Cheers dude

Oh yeah sorry +1 for ideas/comments and name :)Only just put my rack deck up but take a look if you want.

smileymagic for small creature aggro, Drown in Sorrow in mono black. Problem is it doesn't hit the 3 toughness creatures in zoo. B/r has access to both Firespout and Anger of the Gods . Spout is easier to cast, but misses flying. Anger is double red, but hits everything AND exiles.

smileymagic Thanks for the kind words :)

Discard is top priority for this deck obviously, in order to run the opponent into the ground, so I'm probably not dropping Bitterblossom turn 2 if I still have discard in hand, but it also does pay to play Bitterblossom as soon as reasonable to start building the army up. Timing it often depends on what the opponent is doing, and if I need blockers pronto. I think bitterblossom is great in the deck, as you said faeries can be blockers, but most importantly they serve as another wincon that is separate from hand size. This means that if the opponent is drawing a lot or somehow avoiding my discard, such as playing a Leyline of Sanctity , the faeries serve as a separate source of damage from the deck's core game-plan, and they will often steal you wins. Bitterblossom also synergises well with the Ensnaring Bridge lock. When it comes to top-deck mode, you can draw for the turn, swing in with a bunch of flying faeries with 1 card in hand, then empty your hand before the opponent's turn. Bitterblossom is great because in a deck like this that totally denies your opponent and yourself resources, it is an engine that keeps pumping out value.

On Dark Confidant , it is undeniably an exceptionally powerful card and I've seen a number of people running variants of the 8rack shell who have had great success with it, but that sort of deck runs a little differently to mine, being a more reactive list generally, which is why I don't run it. In my case it's not that I don't want to run it, but I feel like my deck is so focused that I couldn't justify removing anything for it, and most of the time he would just be eaten by removal. Try looking at some of the other lists that run bob, there are quite a few floating around.

The most trouble I've had with the deck personally has been against melira pod, storm, and to an extent affinity. Pod is quite a bad matchup because the deck is just full of contingency plans, and a bridge doesn't stop them from combo-ing off. The storm players in my area are quite skilled, and very regularly go off on turn 3, they play a deck full of cantrips, so they're a little difficult to interrupt with discard, they can flashback their entire graveyard meaning they can still benefit from discarded cards, and the deck doesn't care about bridge as most damage comes straight to the face. Affinity is much more manageable than the other two matchups for me, but fast aggro like that can often just dump the majority of their hand before I get a chance to discard it (a blessing and a curse), and if I can't empty my own hand fast enough or find a bridge, it's just game over.

Anyway, I hope that was what you were after, thanks for the comments and +1 :) I'll check your deck out when I get a chance.

Mindbreak Trap on your SB for storm!

What aspect of Affinity is giving u trouble? Spellskite should help in that match quite a bit.

Torpor Orb is also really good hate for Pod in addition to the cage. Most Pod lists only run 1 Qasali Pridemage anyway.

I have considered spellskite and mindbreak before. If I can get my hands on some traps I might try them in the side for when I think I have a good chance of playing against storm. Sadly they're pretty useless otherwise.

I have wanted to run spellskites in the side for a while, but I don't know what I'd remove for them (and I only own 1 at the moment). I have a few torpor orbs and they might be worth a shot, but I feel like I might be wasting valuable sideboard space if I devote too much to pod matchups.

If you want to try Spellskite , cut 2x Mutavault , 5x Swamp , 1x Bitterblossom , and 1x Victim of Night

Replace with 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth , 1x Buried Ruin , 1x Academy Ruins , 4x Darkslick Shores , and 2x Spellskite

I meant in the sideboard, though they definitely do seem to work mainboard and I should give them a proper test. I think I might test some mainboard for fun next chance I get, see what all the fuss is about.

I'm pretty satisfied with this list overall though, so I do hate removing things from it :P

I know that feeling. But sometimes a change brings unexpected success.

Ensnaring Bridge + Bottled Cloister i dont understand why you havent thought of this yet. Ensnaring Bridge is a $22 bucks and for less then $2 bucks you can lock down there creatures with. Bottled Cloister . I hope this helped

I'm already running 4 bridges. I don't really like bottled cloister, it does work well with bridge, but it's too high cmc for the deck, it doesn't let me hold removal, and by the time I'm casting it I should have emptied my hand enough anyway. The card draw is nice though.

I like the idea of 2 Mutavault and 2 Buried Ruin . Is this split working out? I would like to test it, but I have no Mutavault at the moment. If you have done some testing, can you tell me your impression? Thanks!

I have tested both and I like both. A far as the ratio goes, I'm really not sure what is correct. I'm still not sure whether running a split is correct or whether I'm spreading myself too thinly and focusing on one would be better. If I were to only run one I think I would keep mutavault, but ruin has won me a decent number of games, and having it in the board gives me a little peace of mind.

Painful Quandary or Quest for the Nihil Stone , or both :P I love running those cards :D

I read the sideboard talk up above and I figured I'd mention, Torpor Orb is good against melira-pod and kiki-Pestermite .

also just as a sidenote; all you lovely commenters (and the creator of this deck) are free to check out my modern decks, I'm having trouble deciding which one I actually want to purchase. An 8rack/rackdos discard build will be up in the near future too!

thanks!

Thanks! Torpor orb is definitely a useful card. It can be hard to nail down sideboards a lot of the time because everyone's meta is a little different, and they're all constantly changing. I've also been considering Illness in the Ranks in the sideboard, but I'd have to swap Bitterblossom out for it when boarding which may not always be optimal.

I think the Illness in the Ranks might not be a horrible 2-of, weenies decks are more popular since they released that event deck, and it seems like the only real weakness of this deck is getting swarmed by creeps or getting Leyline of Sanctity 'd