Possible substitutes for Pod?
Modern forum
Posted on Feb. 3, 2015, 10:53 p.m. by TheGrayMerchant
I want to gather a list of all things that could be used in place of Birthing Pod. This might give pod players some new ideas to convert their deck into. So far I have Yisan, the Wanderer Bard, and Cast Through Time + Glittering Wish . Any more thoughts?
Chord of Calling is still an engine card for a Pod-type deck, but it loses the permanence that Birthing Pod gave the deck.
February 3, 2015 10:58 p.m.
Nigeltastic says... #4
Fauna Shaman isn't quite the same, but serves a semi-similar purpose, and combined with Elvish Piper is 
: put any creature in your deck into play.
February 3, 2015 11:17 p.m.
Well. Yisan + Prophet of Kruphix + Glen Elendra, archmage is a pretty nice lock if you can bounce the archmage. one of my win cons in my bant edh deck
February 3, 2015 11:18 p.m.
I can see that there is obvious POSSIBLE replacements but to be bluntly honest, I see the archetype as basically dead as a competitive modern deck. Pretty much anyone I know who had Pod built is either going to Hatebears, Junk, Jund, or Twin (the kiki-pod players) because they're just simply better than trying to force the deck to function after the loss of Birthing Pod. Hatebears is probably the closest thing to pod left in the format and they don't even run the Chord of Calling, its just value good creatures that interact with your opponent's board.
February 3, 2015 11:55 p.m.
This, unfortunately. But again, if you wanted to try and tutor stuff up, the interaction i mentioned above does work rather quickly. Up to 5 cmc creatures by the third turn Yisan's out.
February 4, 2015 12:02 a.m.
There is no replacement. All of the suggested cards are just strictly worse than not playing them at all. Abzan midrange is the replacement to pod.
February 4, 2015 12:19 a.m.
vampirelazarus says... #9
I've given up completely on the deck, and have moved on to Battle of Wits because fuck this game.
February 4, 2015 12:41 a.m.
vampirelazarus spending money on this game and then getting the main card in the deck banned sucks, of course it does. But at the same time, it's not like it's hard to figure out what's overpowered and what's going to get banned. When decks start hitting 16, 18% of a metagame, wizards is going to do something about it. The entire reason most people started playing pod was because they recognized it was too good for the format.
This isn't a dig on how you feel, as it is somewhat justified. You did get burned. But nothing's wrong with the game. If Wizards DIDN'T do stuff like this, the game would have died out years ago.
February 4, 2015 1:06 a.m.
I'll just echo what kyuuri117 said. Getting stuff banned SUCKS, I know. I was playing jund during BOTH of the more recent bans, Bloodbraid Elf and Deathrite Shaman. I was more than a little annoyed, but lets be honest: they were more than fair bans. Lets just be happy that MTG isn't owned by a company like Konami where the ban hammer hits every month or two and nukes several deck archetypes almost every single time it happens.
More on topic to follow up posts, yes there are ways to still create Birthing Pod like effects. However thats why in my initial post I stated that I give up on the deck as a competitive modern deck. All of the possible ways to play pod left require either A. more than one card to work or B. Its too slow, and/or too vulnerable. By all means to the more casual players out there, play a pod style deck. Whatever makes you happy guys, but if you want to know if you can still take it to a competitive environment and take on Twin, UWR control, B/G/x midrange and friends and still do well? You may want to look at another archetype. Thats pretty much the summation of this thread.
February 4, 2015 1:17 a.m.
JexInfinite says... #12
The deck was called Pod for a reason, and that reason is banned.
February 4, 2015 2:31 a.m.
Souljacker says... #13
Vorel of the Hull Clade can double the counters on Yisan. Also things that untap him can speed up the progress, especially Prophet of Kruphix as said.
February 4, 2015 3:18 a.m.
/shrug, he asked for options and we have him options. No one ever promised good options.
February 4, 2015 3:36 a.m.
There are lots of possible options. There are no viable ones.
TheGrayMerchant says... #2
Also, if there were any way to accelerate the amount of counters on Yisan, I think that could work.
February 3, 2015 10:53 p.m.