The audience was here for a million UW Evoke videos, so we don’t mind the same deck repeatedly. I personally like refinements on something you have expertise with.
@@martyb4552 maybe I should build and jam an updated UW Evoke. Sounds fun. I think the main problem is soul of migration does not seem well positioned now with a lot less faeries in the meta compared to back then
I'd rather see you playing a deck that you enjoy over and over again than you playing decks that you don't enjoy just for diversity. It's great to follow the journey and to see the deck evolve and improve over time. Great content overall and I'm glad to have you back.
@@akuyara4420 good point. I do enjoy mixing it up too. Also fun to work on the same deck, especially when I’m enjoying it. I’ll just try and strike a balance that’s right for me
I love seeing you play this deck a ton! if i really wanted to watch people play ponza or madness there are plenty of people i could watch, but as the creator of this deck you are my favorite authority on it
I played this at a paper tournament recently and unfortunately went 2-2. Won against Ponza and Heroic. Lost against Ponza and Madness. Really like the deck but it takes some experience to pilot this one well. Well thought out Mulligans and the early turns seem to be crucial to it. As always, well played Snap Bolt!
@@UpstairsEast totally, this deck is pretty tough to play. Lots of decisions throughout the game like flicker decisions, when to do it, and when to leave up strands or not. And that’s just scratching the surface Thanks!
Great matches in this vid Snap Bolt! Awesome to see you back, and I'll echo everyone else, very happy to see you continue playing a deck you enjoy, not tiresome for me to watch at all :)
Hey! Personally I'm here because of this deck, I've tried brewing something like this when I saw the spoiler for the rat. I'm always looking for the next video with this deck to see updates :) have a good one and thanks for the content!
I like to have more lines to enable turn two rat. Blood fountain is probably still the easiest way to do that. Rebuying KCS is strong and all the other creatures are decent rebuys as well. Discard for strands is decent.
Seems like a strong deck with some mismatched incentives. Feels like you want more copies of cheap unconditional removal/charms over the strands, especially with Eldrazi popping up so frequently. So many decks just seems to revolve around around specific creatures or jamming fat initiative creatures. Also seems like you want to pick either ardent elementaliet + ephemerate or Goliath paladin to lean into as non monarch value. Idk if paladin is necessary you don’t seem to be concerned about killing them quickly which is most of what initiative does. Maybe +1 palace guards monarch seems better in your deck and it’s cheaper. Good video dude!
Yo, what's up Max? You have some good points, and perhaps I don't need 3, or even any, goliath paladin. However, I think the shell of strands, plus monarch and/or initiative creature is still a powerful combo. Perhaps another build where you just loop ardent and get back galv blasts is enough.
Also, not sure if you remember, but when you came and played pauper one night at brute force, I played the older, straight boros version of this deck against you
Commenting again just to shoutout the discord server for the deck! I suppose a lot of people watching this video might be interested in it, there's a reddit post on the pauper subreddit about it ✌️
small bit of advice, if you are going to wide fire and play a tapped land, wildfire first, you might want to play a different tapped land, like at 9:35ish you could have had an untapped black source next turn even if they kill the swamp
You are absolutely right. I'm not sure if I mention it after, but I realized I should have waited on playing that land. That may have cost me that game.
hey there! love your videos! playing an alternative version of mardu with glintblade in paper, and im doing good. Thinking about using your initiative list now. I know its hard but if you had to replace prismatic strands what would it be? Im having trouble finding them at MOL, Thx a lot!
Sick list, have you considered Krark Clan Shaman for this deck? Seems helpful to have that 3rd damage a lot of times (especially vs wall combo). I'm building out a version of this rn!
Was there any temptation game 1 to wildfire the forest with the 2 enchantments? Obviously their draw was crazy (and with the spawns they had a lot of mana regardless so could definitely believe your line was better). Fortunately our local meta doesnt have much ponza (yet) so haven't played against it much!
Since we only had two mana total, I had to wildfire myself, and hope get to enough mana to set up a strand + ardent + ephemerate loop or something similar. I would def wildfire myself in that spot every time.
I will say you could probably afford to drop one palace sentinel to add the late to dinner back in. While it does make graveyard hate better against us we're already pretty weak to it so I don't think that's gonna be the make or break. It also allows us to pretty freely discard our clunky 4 drops to looting when they're bad and get them back once we've stabilized which I like.
I also think the deck does like some number of lootings still. Allows us to shape our hand alot which is pretty necessary in this heavy 4 drop variation I think.
@@SnapBolt I think 1 doesn't hurt us much. Id be ok going -1 palace sent for 1 late to dinner and -1 familiar for a looting. Familiar, while great, in a meta full of rakdos I found myself cutting it to SB fairly often. So perhaps cutting 1 isn't too awkward. Or maybe we just go back to 4 inspector.
~55:00, where OP started the infinite colorless mana + infinite broodscale line. The only conclusion I can draw is that they misclicked and canceled the loop because the broodscale ability to 'create a 0/1 Eldrazi spawn token' is a *may* ability.
So a question for the gruul eldrazi deck. Should they be running the colorless lesson cards from Strixhaven? Sounds like it would be a good use of all the additional colorless mana
Hi again. If you had only one paper copy of Goliath Paladin, what would you substitute while you were waiting for additional copies to arrive in the mail? Also no Dust to Dust, would you sub Revoke Existence, Cast into the Fire, or just use the slots for a different matchup? Is it just irreplaceable because 2-for-1 is so good in Pauper?
@@david_s5693 hmm, probably more removal like a second thraben charm (seems good against all the glee decks) and maybe another inspector or two Yeah, D2D is the best option against affinity because exiling two of their lands can often win you the game but one may not be enough. You can play some revoke, more gorilla shaman, and more lifegain cards like lone missionary for mono red
Im gonna make this deck in paper, would you say that this is the best version to build? Or are there cards that you are experimenting with a little in this version that you wouldnt recommend for a paper version that I wont be updating probably
@@oogaboek5659 I would recommend a build like the post league deck discussion. I think krark clan shaman is gonna be really good, but I haven’t tested it yet. I’m always making small changes and you can/should to but I think the deck is fairly tuned
spoilers..... rough league, half the time it felt like there were 45 lands in the deck rest of the time mully for lands... then draw all lands... way to tough it out. I like the changes looks good even didn't get the result ya wanted. ponza had the nuts 2 of 3 not much you can do without counters when they slam fatty after fatty starting on turn 2 on the play. Glad the thraben charm was finally able to show off its flexibility a bit. Flexible answers are never as efficient as more narrow ones, but i think that this one comes close. I like the oversears a lot of the time ephem to draw is just better than eating a card out of their hand, the refurbished fam was not nearly as good this league and i think the oversears were much better than them, digging seemed way better when you are facing down some of the more grindy value oriented decks in pauper.
@@bobsmith-gn7ly yeah, all good comments. Flooding or mana screw can certainly happen with this style of deck. You want to go long and you don’t have good blue cantrips Still think refurbished is good, especially in this deck with ephemerate but overseer was solid too
@@SnapBolt yeah i think refurbished is good too, i think both have their place, putting an extra overseer seemed good, even if only a 3-2 seemed like variance more than deck construction.
Why run one Terminate over another Cast Down, is it just for Guardian of the Guildpact? Does anything even regenerate in this format? Seems better to go less color-intensive, plus turn off Hydrobast. If it's just for Guardian, why not an Edict? Sorry if answered already, new to this format, this deck, and your channel
@@david_s5693 all good. Good question, it’s for guardian. I’d rather have the targeted removal than one edict. I think terminate is a better answer for guardian than something like chainer’s edict Guardian isn’t even that strong against us generally, since we have strands and now a stonehorn
Thanks for good responses. Yeah Terminate is also just better than Chainer's in at least 80% of the other, non-Guardian situations too, bc Ardent Elementalist
I don't think you should worry much about diversity. Play whatever you think is fun. The opponents' decks add a considerable amount of variety anyway. If you feel like its too much of the same stuff, you can always swap it up a bit. Do it because you want to though, not because you think some invisible person called "the fans" want it, lol.
The algorithm may or may not care but, personally, I was disappointed when the previous wasn’t another iteration of this deck. It was still a good time, don’t get me wrong, but I find it as hard to walk away from Mardu Initiative as a viewer as you do when you’re playing it.
The audience was here for a million UW Evoke videos, so we don’t mind the same deck repeatedly. I personally like refinements on something you have expertise with.
That's what I was thinking. If UW Evoke came back in the meta, I'd watch it another million times.
@@iTzDritte sounds good. This deck has a lot of similarities to UW evoke, which is pretty funny 😄
@@martyb4552 maybe I should build and jam an updated UW Evoke. Sounds fun.
I think the main problem is soul of migration does not seem well positioned now with a lot less faeries in the meta compared to back then
@@SnapBolt They'll print something eventually that'll give it a second life and we'll be ready :D
I've been itching to see how this deck iterates. I'm enjoying watching multiple vods of this deck.
I'd rather see you playing a deck that you enjoy over and over again than you playing decks that you don't enjoy just for diversity.
It's great to follow the journey and to see the deck evolve and improve over time.
Great content overall and I'm glad to have you back.
Nice statement
@@akuyara4420 good point. I do enjoy mixing it up too. Also fun to work on the same deck, especially when I’m enjoying it. I’ll just try and strike a balance that’s right for me
@@akuyara4420 facts
@@SnapBoltI think that is the way to go. The best videos are the ones where the content creator is having fun.
So go for whatever is fun to you 😄
I like the same deck to see the continued evolution of it. And i have it in paper, so it's good for me to see.
@@thesuperfan99 sweet! I want to continue working on it. It’s so fun to play it doesn’t feel like work
I agree (although I prefer more combo or tempo decks rather than grindy midrange personally).
Get 'em! Thanks for continuing to tweak this list. Late to dinner cut was probably smart.
The peaceful rhino is a great sight for my sore eyes.
@@benlittle5543 yeah, the inevitability is nice to have in theory but you can usually grind them out without it
No shame in the tilt concede to the SECOND dino into pirate. I would have been steaming lol.
@@devangoad lol yeah, that was rough
I want to be mardu main, I copied every list from you. Exellent work I love it. I play in my local store.
Keep posting we are here for that🎉
@@sebaseba8655 awesome, hope you are crushing your locals with it!
I love seeing you play this deck a ton! if i really wanted to watch people play ponza or madness there are plenty of people i could watch, but as the creator of this deck you are my favorite authority on it
@@celeste-y9x thanks a lot. I ‘stole’ some of these recent innovations from selkahs like cutting late to dinner and playing the 4th galv blast
@@SnapBoltalso, I just finished watching game 1 against that broodscale deck. super cool game with you beating their combo even with it assembled
@@celeste-y9x yeah, those were good games. We have a fair amount of interaction for them which makes it a pretty interesting, grindy match up
@@SnapBolti’m currently playing a lot of ponza but I enjoyed this iteration of the deck and might try it soon
I'm actually playing a league right now and 2/3 of my matches have been against combo decks :( deck really struggles against walls unfortunately
Don't play Magic anymore but I've been enjoying these Mardu videos. Love the passion!
@@umiforce8152 thank you! Glad you’re enjoying the content. Maybe I can pull you back in
@@SnapBolt If any formats gonna do it it's Pauper haha
Abraços do Brasil ! Adoro esse deck! Parabéns
@@Atreu. Thank you! Glad you like the deck 🤙🏼
Love to see another mardu video, the deck seems fun as hell and I'm excited to test it out and make it in paper too. Keep up the vids!
@@zOOmer991 sweet! Planning on it 🤙🏼
56:05 I think they declined their Broodscale trigger. Weird.
Yeah, must have been a misclick. We got lucky there
I played this at a paper tournament recently and unfortunately went 2-2.
Won against Ponza and Heroic.
Lost against Ponza and Madness.
Really like the deck but it takes some experience to pilot this one well. Well thought out Mulligans and the early turns seem to be crucial to it.
As always, well played Snap Bolt!
@@UpstairsEast totally, this deck is pretty tough to play. Lots of decisions throughout the game like flicker decisions, when to do it, and when to leave up strands or not. And that’s just scratching the surface
Thanks!
Great matches in this vid Snap Bolt! Awesome to see you back, and I'll echo everyone else, very happy to see you continue playing a deck you enjoy, not tiresome for me to watch at all :)
@@GetCommanded thanks a lot! Glad you’re enjoying the vids
I am definitely here to watch you cast cards you have fun playing! Thank you for the content!
Love to hear that, thanks for the nice comment.
Hey! Personally I'm here because of this deck, I've tried brewing something like this when I saw the spoiler for the rat. I'm always looking for the next video with this deck to see updates :) have a good one and thanks for the content!
@@jeremiehoule548 no doubt, hopefully my updates are good and make the deck stronger!
KCS seems like a dope idea and i would like to see the addition of one blood fountain as well
@@akuyara4420 yeah, I want to try that as well. Might be somewhat overkill like late to dinner but could be really strong sometimes
I like to have more lines to enable turn two rat. Blood fountain is probably still the easiest way to do that. Rebuying KCS is strong and all the other creatures are decent rebuys as well. Discard for strands is decent.
@@akuyara4420 yeah, makes sense. Maybe I’ll try 1 blood fountain next time. Maybe even 2!
I see snap bolt, I watch!
@@CloudBorne awesome 😎😎😎
Our rat lock champion has returned
@@Mattatamus never left 😎
Seems like a strong deck with some mismatched incentives. Feels like you want more copies of cheap unconditional removal/charms over the strands, especially with Eldrazi popping up so frequently. So many decks just seems to revolve around around specific creatures or jamming fat initiative creatures. Also seems like you want to pick either ardent elementaliet + ephemerate or Goliath paladin to lean into as non monarch value. Idk if paladin is necessary you don’t seem to be concerned about killing them quickly which is most of what initiative does. Maybe +1 palace guards monarch seems better in your deck and it’s cheaper. Good video dude!
Yo, what's up Max?
You have some good points, and perhaps I don't need 3, or even any, goliath paladin. However, I think the shell of strands, plus monarch and/or initiative creature is still a powerful combo. Perhaps another build where you just loop ardent and get back galv blasts is enough.
Also, not sure if you remember, but when you came and played pauper one night at brute force, I played the older, straight boros version of this deck against you
@@SnapBolt yeah I remember that now, that was rough you beat me pretty badly. Good times
@@MaxMick I got lucky 🍀
MARDU HYPE!
@@iTzDritte HYPE
Commenting again just to shoutout the discord server for the deck! I suppose a lot of people watching this video might be interested in it, there's a reddit post on the pauper subreddit about it ✌️
☮
Games 2&3 of round 5 were HOT! So many “not like this” moments.
@@iTzDritte yeah, big grind. They tried to go agro and it surprisingly worked! (Once)
small bit of advice, if you are going to wide fire and play a tapped land, wildfire first, you might want to play a different tapped land, like at 9:35ish you could have had an untapped black source next turn even if they kill the swamp
You are absolutely right. I'm not sure if I mention it after, but I realized I should have waited on playing that land. That may have cost me that game.
hey there! love your videos! playing an alternative version of mardu with glintblade in paper, and im doing good. Thinking about using your initiative list now. I know its hard but if you had to replace prismatic strands what would it be? Im having trouble finding them at MOL, Thx a lot!
Yeah bro, let's GO. And this version is even more affordable to me lol, great
@@joaopedroalmeidacaetano1619 sweet. Cause one less initiative creature?
@@SnapBolt Yep, one less prismatic too haha
I like dropping late to dinner, it was definitely win-more and cutting it drops a lot of vulnerability
@@devangoad I think so too, for now at least
please please please get timestamps in ur vids
@@OskyddatSamtal I’ll consider it, thanks for the suggestion
Sick list, have you considered Krark Clan Shaman for this deck? Seems helpful to have that 3rd damage a lot of times (especially vs wall combo). I'm building out a version of this rn!
check out the post league deck discussion 😎
Was there any temptation game 1 to wildfire the forest with the 2 enchantments? Obviously their draw was crazy (and with the spawns they had a lot of mana regardless so could definitely believe your line was better). Fortunately our local meta doesnt have much ponza (yet) so haven't played against it much!
Since we only had two mana total, I had to wildfire myself, and hope get to enough mana to set up a strand + ardent + ephemerate loop or something similar.
I would def wildfire myself in that spot every time.
Rat lock? I suddenly feel the need for a Bx Clue deck. Ratlock solves the case!
Rat lock is where it's at
I will say you could probably afford to drop one palace sentinel to add the late to dinner back in. While it does make graveyard hate better against us we're already pretty weak to it so I don't think that's gonna be the make or break. It also allows us to pretty freely discard our clunky 4 drops to looting when they're bad and get them back once we've stabilized which I like.
I also think the deck does like some number of lootings still. Allows us to shape our hand alot which is pretty necessary in this heavy 4 drop variation I think.
@@saltandpauper yeah, all good points salt. Maybe cutting looting isn’t the play. I’m waffling on it
@@SnapBolt I think 1 doesn't hurt us much. Id be ok going -1 palace sent for 1 late to dinner and -1 familiar for a looting. Familiar, while great, in a meta full of rakdos I found myself cutting it to SB fairly often. So perhaps cutting 1 isn't too awkward. Or maybe we just go back to 4 inspector.
almost forgot to upvote this masterpiece :,0
@@todeshorst1697 you’re too kind 😎
~55:00, where OP started the infinite colorless mana + infinite broodscale line.
The only conclusion I can draw is that they misclicked and canceled the loop because the broodscale ability to 'create a 0/1 Eldrazi spawn token' is a *may* ability.
@@eric.ingram yeah, makes sense. I think I you are totally right.
So a question for the gruul eldrazi deck. Should they be running the colorless lesson cards from Strixhaven? Sounds like it would be a good use of all the additional colorless mana
@@Zantino88 are you saying maindeck a colorless 3 mana preordain? I don’t think that’s a good plan
In round 3, it seems like they declined the Broodscale trigger. It is a may after all, and a strange decision.
@@adamfiergang243 yeah, I think you’re right. Probably a misclick
Hi again. If you had only one paper copy of Goliath Paladin, what would you substitute while you were waiting for additional copies to arrive in the mail?
Also no Dust to Dust, would you sub Revoke Existence, Cast into the Fire, or just use the slots for a different matchup? Is it just irreplaceable because 2-for-1 is so good in Pauper?
@@david_s5693 hmm, probably more removal like a second thraben charm (seems good against all the glee decks) and maybe another inspector or two
Yeah, D2D is the best option against affinity because exiling two of their lands can often win you the game but one may not be enough. You can play some revoke, more gorilla shaman, and more lifegain cards like lone missionary for mono red
1:23:20 you'd rather be able to answer their combo with galv imo
Yeah, you're probably right.
How about Gruul LD and br madness? Good or bad match?
YESSSS MARDU INIT
@@CharlotteMimic let’s go!
This deck is Epic! UW Flicker 2024!
@@andreashk2tm flicker rat is so much fun
@@SnapBolt So much fun! Its good to have you back :)
Im gonna make this deck in paper, would you say that this is the best version to build? Or are there cards that you are experimenting with a little in this version that you wouldnt recommend for a paper version that I wont be updating probably
@@oogaboek5659 I would recommend a build like the post league deck discussion. I think krark clan shaman is gonna be really good, but I haven’t tested it yet. I’m always making small changes and you can/should to but I think the deck is fairly tuned
After 60 seconds of analyzing your videos mardu iniative have more views count around 100-200 view more then other deck
Exept lizard glee combo
@@superluckyhappylife2358 sweet. The people want Mardu init
R1G1: OUCH
@@goodshipzion t2 chrysalis t3 double chrysalis lol
In game 3 around 55:26 I think the opponent accidentally misclicked no for the broodscale trigger.
@@jamesmccabe3041 ah yeah, that’s probably what happened. Lucky break for us
How do you deal with the actual combos?
@@GabrielReis-mh8oq watch this league! We break up their combos a few times if I recall correctly
spoilers.....
rough league, half the time it felt like there were 45 lands in the deck rest of the time mully for lands... then draw all lands... way to tough it out. I like the changes looks good even didn't get the result ya wanted. ponza had the nuts 2 of 3 not much you can do without counters when they slam fatty after fatty starting on turn 2 on the play. Glad the thraben charm was finally able to show off its flexibility a bit. Flexible answers are never as efficient as more narrow ones, but i think that this one comes close. I like the oversears a lot of the time ephem to draw is just better than eating a card out of their hand, the refurbished fam was not nearly as good this league and i think the oversears were much better than them, digging seemed way better when you are facing down some of the more grindy value oriented decks in pauper.
@@bobsmith-gn7ly yeah, all good comments. Flooding or mana screw can certainly happen with this style of deck. You want to go long and you don’t have good blue cantrips
Still think refurbished is good, especially in this deck with ephemerate but overseer was solid too
@@SnapBolt yeah i think refurbished is good too, i think both have their place, putting an extra overseer seemed good, even if only a 3-2 seemed like variance more than deck construction.
2:03:56 how?
Guess I thought they could go infinite without glee for some reason 😄
Why run one Terminate over another Cast Down, is it just for Guardian of the Guildpact? Does anything even regenerate in this format? Seems better to go less color-intensive, plus turn off Hydrobast. If it's just for Guardian, why not an Edict? Sorry if answered already, new to this format, this deck, and your channel
@@david_s5693 all good. Good question, it’s for guardian. I’d rather have the targeted removal than one edict. I think terminate is a better answer for guardian than something like chainer’s edict
Guardian isn’t even that strong against us generally, since we have strands and now a stonehorn
@@david_s5693 guardian steals our emblems which can be annoying to deal with
Thanks for good responses. Yeah Terminate is also just better than Chainer's in at least 80% of the other, non-Guardian situations too, bc Ardent Elementalist
@@david_s5693 yeah, should mostly function as another cast down
22 power on board turn 3 game 1 that's just rude.
🤮
Love mardu🖤❤️🤍
@@superluckyhappylife2358 😎😎
I don't think you should worry much about diversity. Play whatever you think is fun. The opponents' decks add a considerable amount of variety anyway. If you feel like its too much of the same stuff, you can always swap it up a bit. Do it because you want to though, not because you think some invisible person called "the fans" want it, lol.
@@SoopaPop that’s what I’m doing! Playing what I want and having fun 🤙🏼
The algorithm may or may not care but, personally, I was disappointed when the previous wasn’t another iteration of this deck. It was still a good time, don’t get me wrong, but I find it as hard to walk away from Mardu Initiative as a viewer as you do when you’re playing it.
"Every time I think I'm out.... they pull me back in!"