Faithless Brewing MTG: Modern and Pioneer for the Spike Rogue

Kaldheim Season, Episode 17: Giants Week

Fire giants. Ice giants. Even a few creatures pretending to be giants. Kaldheim has no shortage of Giants, but none on the level of Bonecrusher Giant or the Theros titans. Instead, we got some intriguing supporting tools: Invasion of the Giants, Glimpse the Cosmos, and a few other utility creatures. Are any of these equal to the challenge in Modern and Pioneer? Let's find out!

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Decklists for this episode can be viewed at FaithlessBrewing.com

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Kaldheim Season, Episode 16: This Week in Brewing (March 12, 2021)

Is Niv-Mizzet the best deck again in Modern? Is Sylvan Caryatid the most powerful card in Pioneer? And can you go infinite with Ugin's Nexus, or is six turns in a row good enough?

Meanwhile on the Flashback, we tested four new builds with Esika's Chariot, notching a slick 5-0 in Modern and some encouraging results in Pioneer. Is this the new face of Cat Combo?

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Decklists for this episode can be viewed at FaithlessBrewing.com

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Kaldheim Season, Episode 15: Esika's Chariot

The cat's out of the bag on Esika's Chariot. The green Kitty Wagon is already making waves in Pioneer thanks to its purrrfect synergy with Transmogrify strategies as well as Naya Winota. But that's just the tip of the whiskers for this magical Cat-illac. The card is already outstanding value by itself, but with the aid of a certain cat-loving planeswalker, Chariot has the potential to be something really special. One cat just leads to another, so lets see what this chariot can do!

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Decklists for this episode can be viewed at FaithlessBrewing.com

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Kaldheim Season, Episode 14: Post-B&R Week 2 Roundup

In last week's Brew Session we vowed to go In Search of Greatness, at any cost. One week later, as we tally up said costs, the result is a big yikes. Our pursuit of Greatness resulted in a truly MASSIVE losing streak, the likes of which our podcast has never seen. Was it just bad luck? Or is this Search for Greatness doomed to be a "Fail to Find"?

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Decklists for this episode can be viewed at FaithlessBrewing.com

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Kaldheim Season, Episode 13: In Search of Greatness

In Search of Greatness is a real brewer's card. It bears a passing resemblance to many different cards, but in each case the differences far outweigh the similarities. The most famous comparison is Aether Vial, a mana generator so powerful that it spawned an entire class of archetypes. But where Aether Vial has a clear ask -- fill your deck with creatures and put them at similar spots on the mana curve -- In Search of Greatness is far more demanding. To unlock its powerful but capricious free cast trigger, you need to play all up and down the mana curve, and dig deep into the bag of deckbuilding tricks. Getting even one free activation off Greatness feels like an achievement, much less activating it turn after turn. Toski is a fickle little squirrel it seems, always asking for something new and bigger in your hand. Then again, we can always scry 1!

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Decklists for this episode can be viewed at FaithlessBrewing.com

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Kaldheim Season, Episode 12: Post-B&R Week 1 Roundup

There's nothing quite like that new meta smell. With one week of tournaments in the books and nary an Uro in sight, the crew takes a look at what's been winning in the new Modern landscape. Is Heliod Company a cut above the field? Which archetype is poised to become the new face of control? And why the sudden uptick in squirrels?

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Decklists and timestamps for this episode can be viewed at FaithlessBrewing.com

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Kaldheim Season, Episode 11: Righteous Valkyrie

There’s nothing subtle about Righteous Valkyrie. Pay three mana, get a 2/4 flyer. Make angels or clerics, gain some life, and double buff your team. It’s an eminently fair bargain, the exact kind of card that ought to be sweet but is rarely good enough in non-rotating formats.

But hope springs eternal, especially when all the formats are brand new. 2W for a 4/6 flying double anthem is plenty of payoff, but is the supporting cast going to be too weak? We’ve got six configurations to put through their paces, so let’s fire up the life gain and see what this angel can do!

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Brew Session: Righteous Valkyrie

Flashback: Birgi, God of Storytelling

Where to find Arun:

Kaldheim Season, Episode 10: Analyzing the Feb. 15 B&R Update

Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is very hard to kill. You can try to fight Uro with this strategy or that one, but the card just keeps coming at you, in format after format. Natural metagame forces were powerless in the face of Uro's F.I.R.E. design friends. In the end, Wizards took a page from Sigourney Weaver and did they only thing they could: You have to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Brewer extraordinaire Arun Singh joins the cast this week to help us make sense of the biggest B&R announcement in Magic history. Five cards were banned in Modern, including a beloved monkey, and the Cascade mechanic was altered to end the brief but terrifying reign of Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor. Five cards were also banned in Pioneer, sending shockwaves through a metagame that now seems completely wide open. Did WOTC go too far with these bannings, or have they perhaps not gone far enough? And what does this all mean for the formats we so know and love?

"Vehicles: Rails Were Meant to be Broken (ft. Cavedan!!)" -- Serum Visions Podcast #12

Where to find Arun:

Twitter: @asingh517

MTGO: Jiggywiggy

Serum Visions Podcast

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Kaldheim Season, Episode 9: Birgi, God of Storytelling // Harnfel, Horn of Bounty

When evaluating new cards, a quick hack is to look for anything that cheats on mana. These are the cards that can really do something special. Cheating out a 7 mana Tibalt? Yep, that tracks. Fistfuls of Treasure off Magda? Sign us up.

This week continues that trend. Birgi, God of Storytelling is a cost reducer dialed up to 11. Her front face resembles Baral, Chief of Compliance or Goblin Electromancer: mana engines that scale the more spells you cast. But Birgi is even more generous. Cards that cost 1 are completely free, and cards that cost zero actually send up you mana. Mishra’s Bauble becomes a ritual; Mox Amber becomes Seething Song.

Once you have this much mana, all you’re looking for is a source of cards. Birgi makes this easy as you please: just flip the card over and you have Harnfel, Horn of Bounty, a multi-use Magmatic Channeler that trades each card in your hand for two fresh ones. Standard players learned to fear the pairing of Runaway Steam-Kin and Experimental Frenzy; Birgi gives you both effects on the same card.

All told, Birgi is shockingly open-ended, capable of supporting existing engine decks or perhaps spawning new archetypes all her own. We’ve got seven lists to test across multiple formats, so let’s see what Birgi can do!

View decklists for this episode at FaithlessBrewing.com

Decklists for Birgi // Harnfel

Sketch 1: Boros Showdown Storm

Sketch 2: Temur Artifact Ramp

Sketch 3: Pioneer Song of Creation

Sketch 4: Modern Birgi Song

Sketch 5: Birgi Grinding Breach by Nilsfit (5-0 league)

Sketch 6: UR Prowess

Sketch 7: Birgi Waste Not

Flashback: Magda, Brazen Outlaw

Magda Jeskai Ascendancy: 1-4 league

Temur Treasures: 0-4 league

Jeskai Dwarf Tempo: 2-3 league

Aura of Dominion Combo: 2-3 league

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Kaldheim Season, Episode 8: Top 8 in the Modern Challenge with 5c Counter-Tibalt

What is the highest achievement for a brewer? It’s not winning the Pro Tour. No, ask most hardcore brewers and they’ll tell you the ultimate dream is to “break the format” — to invent the deck that proves unstoppable, to rake in accolades as your creation gets picked up by top players and dominates the tournament meta.

But here’s the thing about broken formats: people tend to hate them. It’s a fine line between powerful and oppressive, and somewhere in the last seven days, Cascade Tibalt has crossed that line. We spent two weeks brewing an amazing Spell Queller Counter-Tibalt deck, taking it all the way to Top 8 in last weekend’s Modern Challenge, and guess what? People hate it. It seems that what’s true for Batman is also true for brewing: you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. 

The era of Cascade Tibalt is likely to be short lived, but while it’s here we are going to savor the moment. After all, it’s not every day that a brew we drew up as a thought experiment turns out to be tier zero. Along the way, we amassed an 80% win rate in leagues (28-7) and a 73% win rate in Challenges (7th and 19th place). Even an early version of our list, still running Demonic Dread, was good enough to notch a 10th place finish in Saturday’s Challenge. Of course, that was all ages ago in the fast moving world of Cascade Modern. The format has moved on, and so shall we. There’s always something new to learn, and the next broken deck to discover!

Happy brewing,

5c Counter-Tibalt (6-2 Saturday Challenge, 5-2 Sunday Challenge): https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3741661#online

Build notes: is this the final form of the deck?

Picks of the Week

David’s version (4-1 league): https://scryfall.com/@FaithlessMTG/decks/bd966d1d-d9ea-4721-82b0-f53989266690

Damon’s pick: Mardu Showdown by Nolansanity https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3741603#online

Cavedan’s pick: World Tree Combo by killersuv