https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/zz6xao/going_from_mono_red_prowess_to_izzet_murktide/
created by iunoionnis on 30/12/2022 at 17:58 UTC*
180 upvotes, 12 top-level comments (showing 12)
We have had a few recent threads where new players have been asking about a good way to get started in the modern format, specifically with how to start with a budget deck and then slowly upgrade this into a meta deck. In my view, the two best entry level decks in the current format are Prowess and Mono Blue Affinity, but Prowess is the best deck to buy if you wish to upgrade your deck over time.
I was inspired to try to sketch out an upgrade path for these players this morning. Since I spent some time putting this together, I thought I would share it with the community. I hope you enjoy the guide! (My students are probably wondering why I haven't submitted their grades yet ...)
I decided to start with the following mono red prowess list. While Tappedout currently lists it over $60, it isn't factoring in that Mishra's Bauble's have dropped to around 50 cents after the Brother's War Reprint. Please let me know if you have any suggestions about improvements for the list.
Here is the Primer on Tappedout!
Mono Red Prowess is proactive and aggressive, making this one of the more competitive budget decks. You are going to steal wins off meta decks that aren't prepared for your fast aggro plan, which will help you with your FNM entries and hopefully provide you with some store credit to speed up the upgrade process.
$60 Mono Red Prowess on Tappedout
$60 Mono Red Prowess on Moxfield
`4 Dragon's Rage Channeler, 4 Monastery Swiftspear, 3 Electrostatic Infantry, 4 Soul-Scar Mage`
`4 Lava Dart, 4 Light Up the Stage, 4 Lightning Bolt, 3 Manamorphose, 1 Tarfire, 4 Reckless Impulse, 4 Mishra's Bauble, 3 Mutagenic Growth`
`12 Mountain, 4 Ramunap Ruins, 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance, 1 Den of the Bugbear,`
`2 Abrade, 3 Dragon's Claw, 1 Jegantha, the Wellspring, 1 Kozilek's Return, 1 Pyrite Spellbomb, 2 Smash to Smithereens, 1 Soul-Guide Lantern, 1 Tormod's Crypt, 3 Unholy Heat`
​
So the upgrade path that I am suggesting, in $60 increments, is the following:
`2 Scalding Tarn, 2 Blood Moon`
Fetchlands help you reach delirium and can be used to shuffle away cards in combination with Mishra's Bauble. Blood Moon gives you an edge against greedy manabases and can be played in the main or the side depending on your metagame. It also is played in Murktide, so it's helping us there as well.
`2 Scalding Tarn, 1 Fiery Islet`
More fetchlands and flood protection. Scalding Tarn is the most-played Fetchland, so we are acquiring it first because if you suddenly decide you want to play, say, Rhinos, UW Control, or Living End, you have blue fetches. We also aren't diversifying fetches because it's better for budgetary reasons, but not diversifying your fetches can give you a slight (but rare) disadvantage against Pithing Needle.
`4 Arid Mesa, 1 Underworld Breach`
Finishing out the fetchlands, which lets us hit Delirium easier, thin our deck, and add to the graveyard for Underworld Breach. Breach is mainly used in prowess as a kind of finisher, but the current number of copies is being debated.
$240 Mono Red Prowess on Tappedout
$240 Mono Red Prowess on Moxfield
`3 Steam Vents, 3 Spirebluff Canal, 4 Expressive Iteration, 3 Sprite Dragon/Third Path Iconoclast, 4 Vapor Snag, 1 Invasive Surgery, 4 Spell Pierce, 2 Alpine Moon,`
This upgrade is a two-month installment, yet it adds an entire second color. After this upgrade, you have a pretty solid Izzet Prowess shell, one that's only missing Shattering Sprees and Flusterstorms. From this point on, we start acquiring cards for Murktide while rounding out our Prowess sideboard.
Note: Underworld Breach is spiking right now (wish I'd ordered some!), and I am unsure how many copies the stock prowess lists will end up playing, so I'm going to just leave this out of my calculations.
$360 Izzet Prowess on Tappedout
$360 Izzet Prowess on Moxfield
​
`2 Flusterstorm, 1 Mystical Dispute, 2 Dress Down, 4 Counterspell, 4 Consider, 1 Unholy Heat`
Flusterstorm is useful against spell-based combo decks like Cascade and Creativity. The rest of these cards are the cheaper parts of our Murktide list.
`4 Shattering Spree, 4 Murktide Regent, 1 Brotherhood's End`
Shattering Spree helps our deck against Affinity and Hammertime. Brotherhood's End is the anti-hammer/affinity tech for Murktide. Finally, we go ahead and pick up our Murktide Regents.
`4 Ledger Shredder, 3 Misty Rainforest, 1 Spirebluff Canal`
This upgrade leaves you with enough to play a pile of Murktide cards, but you are still missing essential sideboard pieces.
`1 Otawara, Soaring City, 2 Engineered Explosives, 2 Unlicensed Hearse, 1 Brazen Borrower`
At this point, you now have a functioning $530 Murktide deck. The nice thing about this list is that you only really need 4 copies of Ragavan and some sideboard flex slots to have a stock list. I started playing Murktide by putting together a similar list and then borrowing Ragavans until I could trade, buy, and use store credit to complete my playset.
Note: you might also want to acquire Subtlety and Fury for the sideboard.
`1 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer`
At this point, just keep picking up Ragavans using store credit, your monthly budget, trading with other players, or borrowing them when you can.
Comment by [deleted] at 30/12/2022 at 22:17 UTC
48 upvotes, 2 direct replies
This is one of the best posts made on this sub this year.
I wonder what other decks this can be done with.
Comment by TeaorTisane at 30/12/2022 at 21:44 UTC
24 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Can we just sticky this? Mods? This is an extremely high quality post and I feel like we get at least 3-4 posts a week on it.
Maybe link to it in the FAQs?
Comment by iunoionnis at 30/12/2022 at 19:06 UTC*
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I threw together the sideboard for the $60 version based on what I could fit into the budget, but here's a general explanation of the sideboard choices:
[[Abrade]] doubles as a removal spell against creature decks and artifact hate against decks like Hammertime, Affinity, and Hardened Scales. While you can also snag a turn one Amulet of Vigor on the draw against Titan, this might be too slow. Abrade also deals with Chalice of the Void
[[Dragon's Claw]] Whenever you are in a matchup where you need to race, Dragon's Claw gains you a ton of life. Bring it in in the mirror and against burn, for sure.
[[Kozilek's Return]] This card serves a few different purposes. Because it only deals two damage, your prowess creatures will survive the spell, meaning you can use this to clear the board in matchups like Hammertime, Yawgmoth, or Creature based decks. But the spell is also colorless, meaning that it can kill creatures with protection from Red like Sanctifier en-Vec
[[Smash to Smithereens]] This gives us some extra reach against hammer and burn while also destroying their shadowspear or getting rid of an artifact blocker.
[[Unholy Heat]] This is a removal spell for matchups like Yawgmoth where we need to get through blockers or anything where we need to kill something. This can also take care of a primiveal titan if we have delirium.
[[Pyrite Spellbomb]] This card is more Sanctifier En-Vec protection.
[[Tormod's Crypt]] Zero mana graveyard hate. Because it's zero mana, it also is good for getting prowess/delirum triggers.
[[Soul-Guide Lantern]] One mana graveyard hate that gets past leyline of sanctity, or deals with a single target in the graveyard and then cantrips.
Now, I would quickly take out the [[Smash to Smithereens]] for a couple of Blood Moons. We're mono-red and blood moon is great in the current format, so we should definitely take advantage of this. I also think that the three [[Dragon's Claws]] are a bit excessive (since burn isn't that big of a deck right now, and I'm not sure where else you want it besides Burn and the mirror), so I'm open to suggestions here.
Comment by Mojigoesaway at 30/12/2022 at 18:36 UTC
15 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Great write up. And thank you for providing this for the community. If anyone wants to do a similar thing it would be nice to go a little deeper why the purchases are important and why you chose that order. It might help if the prices change significantly.
Comment by AngryDuck1313 at 30/12/2022 at 18:30 UTC
15 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Omg this is exactly what I needed! Bought my mono red prowess deck and received it just before i left my home for the holidays.
So excited to play it and upgrade it.
Comment by meman666 at 30/12/2022 at 20:57 UTC*
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I think Moxfield is a superior deck building site than tapped out, but otherwise this is such a great guide! I think after more people would get into modern if there were more of these around with good plans on how to go from budget to competitive.
If the goal is murktide, it might be worth skipping out on arid mesa to get there faster. There's maybe also some equity lost in getting both blood moon and alpine moon.
Similarly Breach can probably be shaved, maybe for an islet? That way you aren't spending $ on something that isn't in the final list, and you can get to more important cards faster.
I think in the week you jump to blue, you can shave some number of the lands for a misty rainforest, the first rainforest might be better than the 3rd steam vents, since it also helps with delirium and baubles. Serum visions and thought scour are other way to help out with delirum, and thought scour also helps particularly with murktide.
Also, Shivan reef is ~$1 so those also might be worth picking up in the interim before you complete the mana base, making sure you can cast counterspell on 2 is probably worth some life points.
There have been murktide lists that have done well cutting ragavan entirely, in favor of delver of secrets, so that might be another way to cheaply gain power as you switch into blue.
In the 5th week, I think flusterstorms should be murktide regents. You gain way more equity upgrading 4 sprite dragon to 4 murktide than you do by upgrading 2 spell pierce to 2 flusterstorm.
In week 6, I think 4 shattering spree is too many, for a card that's $5 each. 2 brotherhood end and an abrade is plenty.
I think you can gain equity by stopping after 2 ledger shredder - not all lists play the full 4 anyways.
I would skip brazen, otawara, and at least 1 hearse/EE until after ragavan. Having access to the first copy of hearse/EE is good in a deck that sees so many cards, but I think getting towards monkey faster is more important than the second copy. 2 hearse probably isn't $10 better than 1 hearse, 1 lantern/crypt. Brazen borrower doesn't always see play, and it isn't $25 better than something like blink of an eye, geistwave, or alchemists retrieval.
I think after the first 2-3 ragavan, then it makes sense to start going for some of the more luxury sideboard upgrades. You already mentioned fury and subtlety, but seasoned Pyromancer is also a pretty good sideboard option for grindy matchups.
Comment by houndsofhate at 31/12/2022 at 06:28 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is an amazing post. I would love to see other deck types if possible.
Comment by Desperate-Hour9450 at 31/12/2022 at 04:12 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
As a player, who wants to get into modern this is extremely helpful. Thank you.
P.s. when should I start playing modern? Is it expected that 3rd horizons might release summer of 2023? Should I wait and save up and start playing couple of months after it's release?
Comment by WhiskeyKisses7221 at 31/12/2022 at 04:52 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
A nice guide, though I might save some of the expensive sideboard options until the end. Sideboard cards can change frequently as the meta shifts. I'm not sure you want to get 4 Shredder and 4 Murktide, I'd get the mix you want and only get more if you want to adjust.
Comment by Suavidades253 at 31/12/2022 at 19:05 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Very good post. Did it very similarly. Only difference was i bought the entire murktide manabase in one go
Comment by GG_Henry at 04/01/2023 at 04:47 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Very cool. I wonder how we could convert this idea to mtgo and rental services. 3 tix a week rental gets you UR prowess. Then just a matter of winning enough to upgrade
Comment by ashleyinreal at 24/09/2023 at 01:17 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Is this still applicable and viable? This seems super awesome, and I've been wanting to get into modern. Both Prowess and Murktide lists seem really fun and way up my alley in terms of playstyle. I love aggro and tempo playstyles :D