Did you happen to use my sideboard?

Not at all !

Maybe it would have changed the results a lot...

: (

I do the tests on tappedout and it's a lot of trouble to change the cards between each games, so I never do it.

Probably Glaring Spotlight would have rape my mill deck, and Nevermore , Orzhov Charm and Sphere of Safety would have slow down my aggro deck a lot.

With those cards in mind and the tests I have made this morning, I think that you would very surely have won against my mill deck (especially with Obzedat, Ghost Council ... ; ). I don't think it would have been enough to stop my aggro deck, but you probably have resisted much more.

Thanks for the test, it was informative but ultimately can't be used to get a complete overview of how well it could do. Tell me, do you think its competitive at the level it currently is at?

Of course, it depends on a lot of things, like what kind of deck your opponent is playing, how good you are at playing that deck, how lucky you will be on your draws, but I think you might get more wins than lost. It also depends also on the level of play of your area, and the metagame of that area. But ultimately, it's almost there in my point of view. I don't think that you would get a first place but you could get a good rank tough.

And you probably will need to make some little changes after you sofer some loss at your FNM, but only then you will know witch cards you don't like to draw and witch cards could have helped you on some of your loss.

Until then, I think that 3 points will help your deck win more than on my tests:

1- Change your Treasury Thrull for Obzedat, Ghost Council

2- Add 4 Godless Shrine

3- Play your own deck. For example, I don't think that you could play my mill deck as well as I could. You probably understand your deck better than me and probably would have more success with it.

Then, I'll say yes, it's competitive.

Good luck, and please keep me informed on how it performs. : )

Several red flags go up immediately. First you have zero ramp Crypt Ghast

Extort is very mana hungry. To play extort properly you cannot plat the curve.

Second, You have zero draw power Sign in Blood or Blood Scrivener

Third, You are also very limited on your extort think Bump in the Night or other 1 or two drop spells that can get through for damage, You need more than just triggers and field presence, you need spells to extort. and you need ramp to do it and make bleeding worth while. Liliana of the Dark Realms . possibly?

Smite is better than Ethereal Armor and Ring of Xathrid and Smite + Tragic Slip is just cruel. Your other option is Ready / Willing . I'm sorry but Deathtouch and Lifelink on everything for 3, sure beats Ethereal Armor all day. Plus the meta game you put on your opponent has you trolling them.

I have been through Orzhov top to bottom with a current total of 22 Deck revisions worth of tweaking and tinkering. I have fought very hard to make this competitive.

Orzhov must have draw power, it must have ramp. With the release of Dragons Maze this is what I have built Merciless Orzhov

Ethereal Armor is decent, instead of Ring of Xathrid i would suggest Gift of Orzhova and add Staff of Nin . Anything that gets your high priest to 2+ toughness (Mask of Avacyn works too) combined with Staff of Nin = disaster for opponent. Also gives you card draw, albeit it will come a bit late in the game.

Staff of Nin is to expensive. Gift of Orzhova is garbage. As soon as Terminus starts targeting Mask of Avacyn will become a good card. For extort to work it needs cheap spells. Smite , Tragic Slip , Bump in the Night , Stuff that you can cast for 1 or 2 and then put 4 mana into on the extort.

Stop thinking about combat. If your playing Extort because you want to actually attack then you have lost your minds. The idea is to create a board presence with triggers and leech your opponent in a twisted game of "gotcha". While stopping their aggression. So you play tricks and make them pay for being the aggressor.

When Esper Control gets ahold of this guy, he has nothing to stop Tamiyos ultimate. Nothing to stop Jace with the exception of 4 O-Rings. Which after-all I am directly discussing Esper, so how long will those O-rings stay on the board?

Find ways to stop the aggression to a crawl. Blind Obedience and Ready / Willing . Find ways to mass remove Merciless Eviction , Mutilate , Killing Wave , Liliana of the Dark Realms . Negate and Deny your opponent while you site tight and run your extort.

In response to your comment directed to me. I want to point out that upvotes is simply a popularity contest and not a true measure of how well your deck does against others. case and point, my Modern Mill deck has taken first in multiple local Modern tournaments yet I have not gone out of my way to a) whore it out for upvotes or b) get it recognized for its accomplishments. Additionally, The playtests I conducted did not include a sideboard because I'm still not sure how to do that on Tappedout. However, I have a friend that runs a deck nearly identical to this and through many play-tests (think 15+ games here) I beat him more than 90% of the time with my control decks especially. He has slight changes to his deck that include Obzedat, Ghost Council , but the overall gist of his deck is the same as yours.

Again, I apologize if my assessment of your deck was overly critical or offended in some way, I just feel that the Extort mechanic is too slow in today's Meta to be a legitimate win-condition.

I playtested this a few times against random standard decks in tappedout, and I feel like even the bad hands are good.

Staff of Nin added to a 2+ toughness High Priest of Penance kills their board for days. It is not that slow, if you can disrupt and lifegain till turn 6, then drop the staff paired with the priest, they are shitting bricks. Jace, Tamiyo, anything is not safe from it.

Gift of Orzhova is not that great I admit, he is running Ethereal Armor already, so that can be slapped onto the High Priest of Penance as well. Mask of Avacyn is the slowest way to do it, but once it lands on the priest, it causes havoc combined with the staff. hexproof, 2/3 that gets pinged and psuedo vindicates their board...yes please....

When I get back from work this afternoon, I'll run more extensive play-tests and post full results if you'd like...

Treasury Thrull can be mixed in with Staff of Nin , and Ring of Xathrid can be replaced with Crypt Ghast . run 2 Staff of Nin , 2 Treasury Thrull , and 2 Crypt Ghast to widen the options for pain

lithionlx I have nothing but o-ring to stop planeswalkers? What about Thrull Parasite and High Priest of Penance ? I suppose those couldn't possibly kill a planeswalker, or at least stall them for me to kill them for that matter. And why in the world would I ever want to incorporate high cmc boardwipes into a small curved creature based deck. I swear, do people even think before they post here? Also, hexproof doesn't stop Terminus .

Humplestilskin great name and thanks I think so too.

khanye yea that would be pretty good, my High Priest of Penance s often get buffs. I may have to incorperate it in here even if its a 1 of. Even with no buffs on him as long as he is equipped with Ring of Xathrid he is either direct damage or a kill spell.

Love the idea at using the extort mechanic, I second khanye +1 from me.If you get the chance i could use some help at converting my deck into a standard one its almost done. Innovating Gruul (suggestions). Keep up the good work

So this may sound dumb and maybe I am missing a bigger picture here, but i just wanted to point out that a lot of the people commenting on here keep saying "Needs cheap spells to trigger Extort..." and then go on to name Instants and Sorceries. Now I may be mistaken but don't the rules of MTG state that Artifacts, Creatures and Enchantments are spells too? They can be countered as a spell. So by the wording on the Extort mechanic shouldn't this mean that all the creatures and enchantments in this deck (Cheap ones too) trigger Extort? Like I said before, I may be wrong somehow, but if I am then I blame WotC for not being more descriptive when the printed the Extort mechanic on the card.

+1 by the way

That's correct Alamitre yes, you are correct they would trigger extort, which is why in a previous comment I asked if they even think before commenting

The only thing I would change here is something thats already been mentioned countless times, Crypt Ghast is sooooooo good with extort haha, I already ordered the cards for this deck and I threw in some crypt ghasts that I will be trying out in the sideboard, I'll let you know how it plays in real life bud. A real solid budget deck.

Thanks

Maybe some draw?? Maybe disciple of bolas on a pumped xathrid creature? Be greedy =) cool deck!

Any sort of deck with a longer range goal/ large creatures has a good matchup against you. Control wipes the board you need to extort, and it's difficult for you to regain it as you don't have much card draw. Maybe Underworld Connections or Sign in Blood or something like that would work. Against creatures with 3 or more toughness, you have to have either High Priest of Penance or Vampire Nighthawk , so you only trade. Vs. decks that can continually spit out large creatures, you need to draw more answers. If you want to control, Lingering Souls provides a considerable amount of blockers and can be extorted on twice.

Speaking of answers, I would suggest adding more removal. Your only mainboard direct killspell is Oblivion Ring with High Priest of Penance and Vampire Nighthawk as likely removal. There are a plethora to choose from, and I don't know which would be best for you.

I don't think the Treasury Thrull s are very good. It's not a particularly good card in the first place, and at 6 mana, you need a finisher in case your board is dead/extort isn't doing enough.

Your sideboard also looks sort of weak. I assume Faith's Reward is there to stop board wipes. If that is so, Rootborn Defenses does that for 1 mana less. Glaring Spotlight usually 2 for 1s yourself unless you really need to push creature damage through. With only 4 mainboard removal, and only 4 more in the side, it's not very effective. I'd recommend replacing it with Devour Flesh or Tribute to Hunger , as that also deals with hexproof, and increases your removal count. You also might want some grave hate, like Purify the Grave or Rest in Peace .

Note that I've kept these options relatively budget.Good luck.

I like. +1