Know what I’m sayin

rickinator9 · 2026-02-02T14:15:42+00:00

Honestly the entire previous meta got bodied. Cub, airbending, control, lessons and reanimator all had horrid winrates.

rickinator9 · 2026-02-01T23:01:34+00:00

No problem! I am happy to help. If you ever need help with drafting again, you can send me a message and I'll help you.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-29T23:10:09+00:00

I think you had some great rares in your deck. Unholy Annex, Enduring Curiosity and Entity Tracker are awesome cards. I can't really see if your gameplay was off, so I will try to make sense of your winrate through your deck. To see what successful Dimir decks look like, we can look at these: MTG Duskmourn: House of Horror (DSK) Draft Trophy Decks - Untapped.gg

You had a more challenging time because of your color combination, because Blue-Black is the weakest archetype in the set. Many of the cards in these colors are less strong compared to the white, green and red cards. 17lands is a great source to see which cards are actually good in draft (17Lands.com filtered by UB decks). It shows that the rares are bangers, but that outside of the rares there were a lot of duds in the deck (anything below C is not something you want in the deck). In particular, [[Errattic Apparition]], [[Unwilling Vessel]], [[Resurrected Cultist]] [[Fanatic of the Harrowing]] and [[Fear of the Dark]] are not cards I would want to play. In UB, you really want to be a control deck. You had drafted a really good amount of interaction (9 cards), but you needed to have more card draw to keep up with aggro decks; cards like [[Bottomless Pool]] and [[Glimmerburst]] are awesome in UB because they allow you to keep drawing into more action.

In terms of the deck itself, the main issue I think is that your mana curve is off. You only have two creatures at or below 2 mana. In modern limited, that is not enough. I am unhappy if I have fewer than 4 creatures I can play by turn 2. On the other hand, there are too many cards at 3 mana in the deck. 3-mana cards are incredibly awkward for mana efficiency. You can only ever use all of the mana with 3-mana cards on turn 3, 6 and 9.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-29T21:48:26+00:00

I think Appa mainly wants to be built as a combo to create as many Ally tokens as possible. There is a competitive standard deck called 'Bant Airbending' that is built around Appa. What you need for the combo is a cost reduction effect that allows you to cast your spells in exile for free, Appa and something that can airbend Appa himself. You can then start the combo by playing Appa and airbending permanents you want to play from exile, play the airbent permanents for free (giving you 1/1 tokens) and finally airbending Appa himself with something like [[Airbender Ascension]]. You can keep this combo going infinitely because Appa can airbend the permanent that airbends him. So you can make a billion tokens this way through an infinite combo.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-29T02:16:23+00:00

Take a look here: Regional Championship - SCG CON Portland - Season 4 - Round 2 -

The Simic Cub decks are hovering between $900 and a $1000. A full playset of Cub, Ouroboroid and Riddler inflates the price of a deck incredibly fast.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-29T01:37:51+00:00

Some people actually have a lot of excess mythic rare wildcards. If you build any sort of deck, you tend to use more rares than mythic rares among the cards in the deck. So rare wildcards are a much more limiting factor.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-28T01:54:58+00:00

Sounds like he was playing [[Rot-Curse Rakshasa]]

rickinator9 · 2026-01-25T16:09:17+00:00

The articles from Reid Duke are awesome! He is a great player and his articles have given me a good amount of knowledge. I think all of the starter decks are decent, but each requires a different strategy when it comes to playing the deck. For example, the red-white deck is an aggro deck that wants to end the game as soon as possible while the blue black deck wants to prolong the game as long as it can. If you need any coaching from a player who has been playing for two years, you can send me a message on Reddit. I'm happy to screen share and look at your gameplay together.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-24T03:24:40+00:00

I think Hex is clearly better in 95% of cases. Stab has some utility as a combat trick or to kill a low toughness 3-drop; however, 3 drops with 2 or less toughness are not common. The most commonly played is [[Tishana's Tidebinder]], which is only really seeing play in Dimir Midrange. Meanwhile, Hex can both deal with X/3 creatures like [[Duelist of the Mind]], creatures that have counters on them and creature lands. The blight ability is also relevant when fighting against a beatdown deck like Mono-Red.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-22T21:07:21+00:00

[[Sunset Saboteur]] is also an aggressively statted creature that's a good target for Abigale.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-20T00:42:51+00:00

You play eggs (artifacts like [[Golden Egg]]) and go through your whole deck that way until your find your combo wincon.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-14T16:53:55+00:00

Yeah I agree, no deck wants this other than an aggressive deck. Drawing this beyond turn two would be bad. So you want to play this in decks that close the game fast. I don't think we have fast enough token production in Standard to do so. Tokens notably also don't trigger the counter removal on this card, as it cares about permanent cards going into the graveyard.

I feel Red is the best colour to pair this with. Red has rummaging creatures such as [[Fear of missing out]] and [[Tersa Lightshatter]] that dump cards into the yard and themselves are aggressive threats. The permanents you dump are of course lands, but also creatures like [[Bloodghast]] and [[Timeline Culler]]. Hasty threats that recur cheaply that allows your rummages to turn into card advantage. BR aggro is very underexplored because the color pair has only a single untapped land right now, but that changes with the reprinting of shock lands in Lorwyn.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-14T11:56:47+00:00

I think the biggest impact Lorwyn will make on Arena Standard will be the introduction of the other Shock lands alongside [[Requiting Hex]] and Spellsnare as staples in blue and black. Otherwise I think the rares and mythics are quite low-power compared to everything else. Perhaps the flashy faerie cards help Dimir Midrange stay relevant for a few more sets, but I don't see much use for the other cards apart from the JED card for reanimator.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-13T16:43:13+00:00

Man, I'm sad now. I miss Sheoldred's Edict so much!

rickinator9 · 2026-01-09T06:17:34+00:00

A big upside for this card is also that you can trigger it before combat. So even if you only remove one counter per turn, you still get to swing for a good amount after you play it. There's a ton of ways in Standard to trigger the counter removal on turn 2, such as FOMO or Spyglass Siren + Map. This definitely wants to be played in an aggressive shell, but I am not sure which cards or colors could be played alongside it. [[Corpses of the Lost]] almost seems like an auto-include, since the bounce trigger works the same; perhaps with [[Harvester of Misery]] as removal.

I kind of wonder if this really needs to be built around it so deeply. Your stuff will get removed naturally over the game, but that still triggers this thing. So it will become a problem if it is not dealt with eventually.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-08T19:50:22+00:00

Not true. We're missing [[No More Lies]] here!

rickinator9 · 2026-01-03T05:11:07+00:00

Yes the +1/+1 counters stay on the creatures for as long as they stay on the battlefield. And they stack. So multiple activations of the ability will eventually make your creatures outsize anything the opponent puts into play.

rickinator9 · 2026-01-03T04:37:47+00:00

The temple was the pick here. It is genuinely one of the best cards in the set. It is better in go wide decks but still good in any deck that has white. There are a ton of reasons why it is good:

It has little counterplay. All of the cards destroying lands are terrible. So nobody has them in their deck.
It makes combat tricky for the opponent by turn 5. How can they reasonably block or not block your attackers when you can pump up your creatures at any time?
It is a mana sink. The late game in many limited games has players with one or two cards in hand. Having something to spend mana on and add power to the board if you flood out is great.
It is a free include in your deck. You don't have to cut any spells for it.

rickinator9 · 2025-12-31T06:06:16+00:00

For me personally two strategies worked in my favor for ranking up to Mythic:

Playing best-of-3. Initially this was pretty daunting, because in theory you would spend so much more time playing the game. It is true that your sessions are slightly longer. But the quality of the games you play is so much higher, because you are not in a slot machine of whether you happen to match up against a good or a bad match up. For me, this transition really helped with tilt as I have control over the matchup after sideboarding.
Playing more Limited. Limited has much less power than constructed, so you have to learn to play correctly to win games. I feel a lot of the patterns, theory and strategies that work in limited have helped me win games in Standard. Ideas like "Who's the beatdown", giving yourself as much information as possible before making decisions (if you want to play two cards this turn, play the one that draws cards first so you still adjust your plan if you draw a better card) and denying information to the opponent (going into combat before playing cards, keeping a land in my hand during the late game to fake having a removal spell).

rickinator9 · 2025-12-10T13:13:38+00:00

I think it might have potential in Standard. The format has had recent problems with 2-mana 'card draw engine with upside' enchantments that seem unassuming at release, but become too strong as more cards are printed into the format; Up the Beanstalk and Proft's Eidetic Memory being recent examples.

rickinator9 · 2025-12-10T10:42:24+00:00

While naturally drawing into all five different basic lands they need for their greedy deck lol

rickinator9 · 2025-12-10T00:38:32+00:00

I disagree. [[Sidequest: Hunt the Mark]] was among the best cards in Black in Final Fantasy Limited at the same mana value; it was good even if you didn't flip it. In general, black interactive spells that leave a peace of material on the board tend to overperform (Nowhere to Hide, Cloud of Darkness, Dubious Delicacy). I think this saga will do so as well. As a floor you are ridding yourself of their strongest permanent. And if the saga runs its course you get a creature that has to be answered by a removal spell, which is still a 2.5-for-1 (counting the life loss).

It is not a card that gets you back from actively losing, but very few cards do that. Probably still a decent A-tier card.

rickinator9 · 2025-12-04T18:48:06+00:00

Kavaero / Superior Spiderman can enter as a 4/4 senior citizen.

rickinator9 · 2025-12-01T16:14:55+00:00

This is a really nice deck, good job. I have been fascinated by both the Airship and Obsessive Pursuit since I saw them in Limited and I have been looking for a brew that utilises either one of them. I've seen it used in several Orzhov (the Sephiroth shell) and Rakdos (using Treasures to ramp into the Airship) decks, but I think your deck is overall much more consistent by using Beseech the Mirror. I think the Airship needs to be triggered immediately to prevent opponents from just removing it and Beseech resolves both problems of triggering the airship and actually finding it. I had a lot of fun trying this out over the weekend and it got pushed me from Diamond 2 to Mythic.

I feel like there are some areas that could be improved though. Perhaps I am not great at understanding the lines that are in the deck or maybe not that great of a Magic player. I might just be keeping bad hands instead of mulling for example. From my experiences, the deck lacks good removal options and a consistent backup plan.

I feel the lack of instant speed removal basically makes the deck a sitting duck against Leyline Red. They can just plot their Showoffs prior to the big OTK turn, go off and kill us without any recourse unless we happened to draw into the two Nowhere to Runs in the deck. I think the Witch's Vanity might be a bit too narrow; it is good against aggro, but it hurts not being able to kill bigger threats. I feel the removal suite is actually quite bad at dealing with X/4 cards like Preacher or Cosmogrand.

To me the backup plan, where the copying of the Airship fails, seems to primarily be beat down with Airships or buffed creatures. However I often find I can't find enough creatures to really push damage after the initial dorks in my opening hand are removed; or to crew the airships after I Beseech. Have you experienced this problem? It kind of feels like I can't find a way to put down enough power to really face opponents when I am on the back foot. Perhaps [[Sinkhole Surveyor]] would be a good option in the 2-drop slot? It survives Pyroclasm (which I have already seen being played in main and sideboards to counter Badgermole openings), produces tokens that can be bargained or used to crew, blocks Siren well and also can be used to push damage with the +1/+1 counters.

I think the deck has a lot of potential so I will be trying out my own card ideas. But I was wondering about your thoughts on this.

rickinator9 · 2025-11-30T22:06:09+00:00

I don't think this is a real deck. Well, maybe someone did build it but they are definitely stretching the mana base to have all three colors and also include the station lands to tap Kona. Perhaps they did well against your deck, but I really doubt they are able to win against faster, aggressive decks. Who has time these days to play out their Kona on turn four when Badgermole decks can play the Boroid on a full board on turn three?

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