I’m actually on Chalice + Guide right now and think it’s correct to run that combination as Dredge continues to lose footing in the metagame. Relic is less of a lock piece and more a very efficient, self-replacing disruptive permanent. But it’s important to remember that combined with Scourge, it can make combat nightmarish for opponents, which is more desirable than Chalice against certain decks (CoCo/Chord, Zoo, Little Kid Abzan, etc.). That’s in addition to butchering Grixis/Jund/Jeskai/Abzan midrange decks and hosing certain strategies (Goryo’s, Dredge) on its own.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

Powder: I would advise mulliganing very aggressively with this deck. In the dark on the play, 7 cards with no Temple is a ship. Six cards with no temple and no turn one Chalice is a ship. Five cards with no Temple, no turn one Chalice, or no Dismember is a ship. Since I’m regularly going to 4 or 5 with this deck to find my Temples, I think Powder is invaluable. You could build this deck to be slower and more consistent without the Powders, but I don’t think the solution there is to simply sub in Reshapers. If you want to go that route, I’d play Expedition Maps and add Tron lands. The main reason to play this build of Eldrazi Stompy is to maximize your early starts, and Powder helps a lot with that. The interaction with Eternal Scourge, a card that covers similar ground as Reshaper by posing problems for removal-heavy decks, brings the card from interesting to integral.

Wreckage: That’s true. Flooding on lands with Wreckage makes me wish I still had Lilianas in this deck. When I’m on mainboard Chalice and Guides (as I am right now), I like to cut the 24th land (a 4th Wreckage) for a Reshaper or something, but still don’t feel comfortable going much lower on the land count since opening a lot of them is very important when we mull/Powder down to 4 or 5 and need to make sure we cast our exiled Scourges on time. Wreckage really just gives us something extra to do with excess mana, as the manlands do. But I like having a split between attacking with that mana (manlands) and drawing cards (Wreckage) since it just gives us more options. There are lots of situations that come up where we have extra mana but would rather draw than poke.

Endless One and Mimic: Agree and agree. I think Endless is actually the best creature in the deck. I even play him as a 2/2 a good portion of the time, like when I have a Temple and Scourge and TKS in hand and no Mimic. Obviously, ripping him off the top is great. And in the late-game we can play him for 4 or something and continue to draw with Sea Gate. I board out Mimic against Bolt decks to give them zero good targets for the spell, but think it’s too important against linear combo to ever be cut from this deck.

Scourge: Terrible blocker against 3/3s. Scourge’s uses are making removal look terrible (we love sitting back on a grip of great creatures against reactive decks like Grixis Control as we poke with Scourge and force their hand) and giving us some extra manpower after we mull/Powder into a Temple.

Wastes over Urborg: This seems fine. Depends how many Paths and Quarters you see in your metagame.

Thanks for the detailed comment. You clearly have been playing with the deck a lot, as you’ve thought about a lot of the same stuff that popped up for me.

Ghostfire: Yep, this is definitely better than Bonesplitter. My oversight there. Glad you’ve had success with it. I’m playing a single Matter Reshaper over the 4th Sea Gate right now. Important to note that I’m also currently on Chalice + Guide, a package which makes Ghostfire less attractive. But it looks great with Relics in the main.

Reshaper: Still a great card but our worst threat, as it’s our most conditional. Our other threats all offer something of value in every matchup, whereas Reshaper only works when opponents interact with us (either with removal or through combat).

Scourge: I think this card is better than Reshaper against decks full of Bolts/Paths/Terminates, and worse against decks full of Nacatls/Finks/Thragtusk. Its interaction with Gemstone Caverns and Powder, as well as the fact that the Bolt deck holds a larger metagame share, makes me inclined to believe it’s better in this slot if we have to choose between the two.

I really like Mimic against removal-light linear decks. It allows us to pressure them very efficiently. How are you beating decks like RG Breach and Ad Nauseam without Mimic?

Relic on its own isn’t lights out against Dredge, but playing 4 of them AND backing them up with fast, aggressive starts makes the matchup very good. Chalice + Guide is definitely viable in this metagame and is looking to be the optimal configuration now that Dredge is on the decline (as it has been for the last two weeks).

Bomb can work in the main if you can find space. Cutting Powders will definitely free up some slots, but I don’t feel comfortable axing them. Since Eternal Scourge’s introduction to this deck, I have really been loving the Powders. Like you said, the deck lives and dies based on its openers.

That’s just me being bad. Ghostfire Blade is definitely better than Bonesplitter here.

The lock piece chosen for the main depends on metagame and preference. I’ve been running Chalices for the last couple of weeks and have loved them, but before then I had been on Relic and not missing Chalice so much. I think either can work depending on the context.

GB Infect is a Tier 3 deck and not one I do any testing against. I also can’t remember the last time I saw Wild Defiance out of Infect. That doesn’t mean they can’t run it, but they don’t usually. Removal like Ratchet Bomb and Dismember also gets around Defiance.

I’ll add that I’m not just theorizing here, but have put in a lot of games against Infect and feel the matchup is very good based on those.

Bant Eldrazi is a different deck though. It doesn’t have access to mainboard Chalice, allows its mana to be disrupted by Lightning Bolt/Gut Shot, and is less efficient about finding its Temples. There’s a reason Colorless Eldrazi Stompy has a great Bant Eldrazi matchup.

I’ve been play-testing extensively with this build for the past couple of weeks, and have been extremely impressed with the results. This deck feels incredibly powerful in the current meta. At least my local meta. I haven’t kept track of every win/loss, but I’d peg it to be somewhere around 70% win rate. The Ratchet Bombs have been all-stars across the board, and I’d argue that they have a place mb. I’ve won through decks running Bridges and tons of hate. This deck really does live or die based on the explosiveness of our starts though. Unfortunately, that’s the weakest part of the deck, but not a reason to bring in Serum Powder, as Powder just plays poorly. This deck is quite capable of hitting t1 Thought-knot, which is ridiculous. It’s been a long time since I’ve had this much fun playing big dumb critters.

I know Bonesplitter is just a fringe card you’re considering, but wouldn’t Ghostfire Blade be an upgrade for the purposes of this deck in particular?

PS: Serum Powder plus Scourge might be ok though. You get a lot of bash for Powder however it might be the correct line to make the deck a little more consistant than trying to draw a 4-of or bust.

You are half right. Relic is VERY good against attrition based decks like Grixis,Jund and Jeskai. The big problem is that Relic is no lights out agaisnt Dredge unfortunately. Dredge is a messed up deck that i prefer to combat with a potent hoser like Leyline/Urborg or Ravenous Trap.

The percentage points you win by playing Chalice on turn 1 are much higher that Relic. My biggest fear is not dying to midrange or control which are underrepresented anyways. Chalice destroys Burn and Infect. It hoses blue decks that are based around Path/Bolt/Serum and Ancestral Vision(s). Ultimately, this deck has no “virtual” Eldrazi Temple like Bant in the form of mana dorks. So why not mainboard a lock piece to buy you some time and make mulligans less stressful?.

TL;DR, if i was taking this deck tomorrow to an event, it would be because of Chalice and Monkey nothing else.

I have been running colorless eldrazi ever since the ban of eye of ugin, and I found it not as bad as most people thought it is. Most people thinks the deck is slower and would always tell me to play the bant version, in which they think is better, but I told them that it is quite reliant on turn 1 noble hierarch to get you going most of the time and although it strengths lies in the mid to late game with their value creatures, it can sometimes fall prey pretty hard to bloodmoon and a bolt early.

Another thing to note, instead of running bone splitters, run ghostfire blade. A much better option since all our creatures are colorless anyway. Ghostfire blade won me quite a lot of games as I could attach it to an underpowered mimc in the mid/late game or just give to reality smasher to beat through against a stalemate of gofy on the opposing board.

I love matter reshaper and I rarely board it out except maybe for matches like infect where it doesn’t matter that much and having more removals for their creatures is much more important. And I would have to say I am quite impress with it most of the time as the only good way is to remove it is to exile it without having any drawback like path to exile.

I am on the fence on eternal scourge though, it is a value creature but I think that matter reshaper just does the job better most of the time unless the game got into a super drawn out match. It is great to be able to replay it but modern is so fast that it doesn’t really matter most of the time and being able to generate immediate value is sometimes much more efficient.

P.S. I was featured in a game for a PPTQ, and you can see my deck in action. The list I am running then was almost the same as the list I am running now with minor sideboard changes against the current meta.
https://youtu.be/7RtNO2Shc1E

Would just like to add though, that I love these articles and I really appreciate you holding the torch for this particular deck 🙂 (even if you have a weird obsession with serum powder haha)

Keep on trucking. Can’t wait for your next eldrazi story.

Cards like chalice are there to do 2 things:
1) buy you time and/or stunt your opponent’s growth to establish a board advantage. If you get to the point where you can no longer attack into an opponent’s creatures, you probably aren’t winning
2) hamstring certain key cards so that you can attack more freely, without the worry of a powerful backswing or a combat trick (e.g. Might of old krosa, lightning bolt, path to exile)

I’d appreciate you spending a moment to explain how relic of progenitus does these 2 things. It’s a great card to be sure, but i don’t see how it plays into the “stompy” style, instead looking (to me at least) like a niche pre-board card such as Tron used to play. It helps in a couple of matchups (dredge, right?) but doesn’t aggressively lock anything down?
Just to expand, Blood Moon is another good example of this kind of effect, although obviously doesn’t fit here.

For the sake of a discussion; let’s say you were to straight-swap serum powder for simian spirit guide, and relics for chalices. How would your game 1 matchups change? As far as I can see, the big premier aggro decks in modern would all get easier, along with 1-drop-reliant decks like delver, Jund and so forth. It also fixes your UW spirits matchup rather nicely by bringing speed and shutting off their utility 1-drops as early as turn 1.
Critically, the bad matchups wouldn’t get any worse, per se. dredge gets worse in game 1, but that’s the only one. Seeing as the deck’s so easy to hate out from the board (and is possibly stompy’s defacto worst tiered matchup) I would be fine taking this risk and having an aggressive sideboard for dredge.

Surely these options sound reasonable. I play the deck regularly, have given serum powder enough chances to shine, but it just de-powers the deck too much with mushy-midgame-stalling and it costs too many wins for me to condone it as a solid choice.

Chalice on 1 is a beating vs. Infect.

I ended up cutting Powder all together for 4x Reshapers. Other than in the case of Blood Moon, Powder was a dead card the vast majority of the time when in hand. There’s no doubt that Serum Powder strengthens the mull-early-and-often angle, though. If I were to run it again I’d be unlikely to go above three, I think, because it really is so bad as a spell–and this in a deck with almost no way to dig or filter draws (I mained Chalice, not Relic).

Wreckage helps some, but the hellbent clause really limits its utility. Anyone playing Wreckage knows the pain of drawing consecutive lands with it, which shuts it down for a turn every time it happens. Also the manlands’ mana needs are in tension with its not-inconsiderable activation cost.

Endless One was amazing, fitting any point in the curve was absolutely huge and meant I felt guaranteed to have something productive to do at just about any stage of the game. Mimic was also amazing and, if not removed, was an early game threat that pushed through major damage many, many times.

Scourge was a mixed bag, though it is much better when Relics are active. Scourge’s utility with Caverns was the envy of my opponents, and cast a T1 Scourge into T2 Seer/swing for 3 into T3 Smasher/swing for 12 a bunch of times. However Scourge exiles to Path and Bolt even with Chalice active, and recasting it really only feels good if you don’t have something else to do with that mana, like say activate the manlands or Wreckage. As a blocker it is pretty bad, absent Relic.

Obviously both Seer and Smasher are total all-stars, and landing a T1 Seer was something I managed a handful of times to my great satisfaction.

The manlands–Nexus in particular–were outstanding at closing out the last few points of damage to end a game. I ran three Wastes, since I decided to cut Urborg. Having literally no other damage out of my own deck, plus lots of Ghost Quarters and Paths being thrown my way, made this felt like the right call to me.

I wholly agree with the good/bad matchups analysis. though I would call Merfolk “awful” instead of “bad;” If they land an Aether Vial, or a Cavern of Souls, our Chalices are near useless, and Relic does not fill that void in such a case. Additionally, any match that doesn’t rely strongly on T2+ 1-drops is also pretty bad; for instance Kiki builds, Coco builds, D&T, etc. Lantern was pretty easy if I could keep my opponent off Bridge with Seer or Ratchet Bomb.