dknight27

you have a lot of unnecessary conditional cards in here that are great in the right situation, but on the average are really holding this deck back.

leyline of sanctity, nevermore, rule of law, and suppression field are unnecessary and in some cases actually fight against the purpose of the deck. any of them would be good to pull out for wall of omens.

Your best bet to actually make this deck consistent is to go hybrid blue and white and use some acceleration cards like serum visions that will let you move through the deck more quickly to get to either your win conditions or your important stall cards.

the curve here is a little high. you basically wont have anything to do until turn 3-4, and from there development will be pretty slow. I would consider running 4 wall of omens. It will speed up the deck tremendously as a turn 2 drop that provides card advantage and blocks early game threats.

Your curve is way too low to warrant 23 lands. Drop it to 22.

Desecration demon is perfect for this build. He puts the opponent on a turn 4 clock, and since you have so much creature control, they won't be able to tap him out. Plus, he is super cheap. If you were to change 1 think about this deck, add 4 desecration demons.

You basically can't run mono-black without phyrexian obliterator. Arguably the best beater in the game as your opponent can't/won't burn him off or chump block him and he can come out turn 4 in a mono-black build. It's slightly pricey, so I'm not sure if you are interested.

Phyrexian arena would be a good idea as well. You don't have any other sources of self-life drain, and the card advantage should be more than enough to justify the 1 life per turn.

In an ideal world, you would run bitterblossom, but that's super expensive.


Currently you only have 10 creatures, which is pretty slim. I would try and get it up to 15 at least. Squelching leeches is a cheaper alternative to obliterator if you don't want to shell out the money.

You know, you are absolutely right. Im gunna swap out devastating summons for them. Should help speed the deck up as well as help late game too. Thanks.

thanks. It's obviously too slow and dependent on conditions to work in tournament play, but its a fun concept

you couldn't ask for a better deck fit for phyrexian obliterator. he is a win condition by himself, and will give you +4 on your devotion count.

i would consider running diabolic tutor. its cheap enough to not mess up your curve, will work out to be about the same as chord of calling, and is super useful in a 3 card combo deck like this.

this is how i would build this deck

http://www.mtgvault.com/dknight27/decks/modern-mindcrank/

im afraid this deck wont be consistent enough in the long run. your mindcrack ascension combo is good, but you have only 1 way to search for it and no way to draw more quickly through your deck. i would consider running blue in here as well for 4 serum visions and 4 telling time. that way you have something to do while you assemble your combo more quickly and can save your burn to make the combo go off. i would also knock it up to 22 lands, as 20 makes it more difficult to hit your 4 for diabolic tutor, and this deck is relying extensively on hitting the combo as fast as possible, especially considering it wont go off until 2 turns after the combo is assembled. just a thought

you are right, this probably wouldn't hold up in competitive. im not too worried about discard, as there really isn't anything to hit other than gifts, and I could side in answers to that. plus, they have to have some king of creature presence to win with discard, and I have 8 nukes to deal with that. burn poses a bigger problem, but I would build the sideboard around dealing with faster decks like weenie and burn

your best friend in a mill deck is ensnaring bridge

mana ramp with axebane guardian and overgrown battlement into a burn spell

for this build I am focusing on fast and reliable damage. ill be making a soulstroke combo deck in the near future, and you're right, doomgape will be used.

oh ya, this deck would get murdered in competitive. I don't actually think there is a way to work giants in a modern tournament. too slow and vulnerable no matter what. I tried to stay away from mana ramp creatures cause they are so vulnerable to removal and that will basically lose me the game. but ive got 8 4 drop land searches, 4 3 drop searches, and 4 reduce costers, so in a given game I should be able to drop a giant turn 4, which is ideal

only 3 polymorphs and no search?

I know you want to use that as an alt win condition in here cause you are running so much token buff, but it seems to easy to dismantle to me. i would consider running 4 serum visions at least to help move the deck along

no worries

there is almost no way you will be able to pull this off in time. empty the warrens needs at least 1 other spell being played before it to give you the 4 creatures necessary to make casting battle hymn cost effective. which means you have to spend one of your ramp spells to make it happen, which cuts back on your ramp to dragonstorm.

im not really sure why you arnt running bogardan hellkite over your current choices, unless this is a multi player deck.

with only 3 copies of dragonstorm, no search, and only 7 cards that each let you draw 1 card, the combo isn't likely to go off until late game, and you have no way to slowing your opponent down or blowing up the field.

in order to make this work you need some serious search/draw power and a different ramp base. manamorphose nets you nothing, and you only need 3 other spells played to get your win, so its unnecessary

cranial extraction should be run over surgical extraction. i know you want to make them discard their cards and then surgical the rest of the pieces from their deck off, but cranial is more consistent. surgical has the condition of them already having discarded it, and since you are running the extraction to nix combo pieces'win conditions/and answers they side it, you cant afford to wait around until they discard something to extract it. cranial extraction is top 5 best sideboard cards in the game. you should run at least 3 copies. it fixes almost every problem in magic. murders combo decks. protects your combo from your opponents answer. gets rid of big win conditions. every time i run black i side it in

you need more than 17 lands unfortunately. i know you want to keep the land count low, but you have enough 2 and 3 drops in here that your deck can't operate on only 1 land, and 17 (especially with some fetch lands) is too likely to stick you with only 1 land and a hard full of useless 2 drops. i would knock it up to 4 arid mesas and a temple of triumph. that way, you dont change the concentration of the deck too much but can guarantee your second land on turn 2

its vintage that uses the mox en masse, and only combo decks rely on landless mana in legacy.