There’s a thread on MTGSalvation for it that catalogs all my articles in the primer. That’s a good start if you’re looking to pick up the deck, but there’s no real replacement for reps, especially when it comes to mulligans. Good luck!

Depends on your definition of “playable”

Still worse than another Vault or SGW.

Thank you, Mr. Boisvert. Do you think that ruins of oran rief might have a place in the deck? I have been testing it a bit, and when I draw it, it has been impressive. It’s possible that it is a sideboard card against decks such as death and taxes, where creature size matters much more than the tempo loss of a tap land.

1. Scavenger Grounds definitely seems good in this deck (as noted in my HOU spoiler article) and I will test it as a 1- to 2-of. Exiling Scourge in Game 1 as a floor is very good and the disruptive applications are obvious.

2. Have tried this but not because of Gemstone. Very rarely have Gemstone’s drawbacks been an issue for me on the play. I’ve tried it because we tend to be more mana-hungry in postboard games against interactive decks (when we want a Relic-Scourge plan). Now I just mulligan differently on those plans to prioritize mana-heavy hands, which works as well or better without using up SB slots. Not a fan of one-of utility lands in the side since they are hard to find without Map. Cavern is totally unnecessary in this deck since Relic-Scourge (and Eldrazi Temple generally) pulverizes counterspell decks anyway.

3. Dismember is amazing, especially against the top decks. Tasigur, Gurmag, Shadow, Seer, Smasher are all heavily played right now because they are hard to remove with most kill spells (or just cost 1 in Shadow’s case); Dismember kills them all at a parity gain (again, besides Shadow, which it trades with equally on mana). It’s only “bad” against Burn, where it comes out for SC, but it’s still acceptable Game 1 (which incidentally is very hard to lose thanks to Chalice/Seer). I love DM against small creature decks. You want as much removal as possible in those matchups.

4. Thorn does very little in Modern. It also clashes with many of our mana-hungry SB plans (i.e. Bomb/Contortion/Relic) and would only “help” in matchups that are already quite good (Serum Vision decks, Storm, AN, etc.), making it pretty bad here.

Hope this helps 🙂

Thank you for the consideration of my ideas,
Sincerely,
Nicholas Decker

Covered them: http://quietspeculation.com/whats-time-hou-xln-first-impressions/
Desert will be impossible to activate reliably and a bad fit here. Exile land is okay, meta depending. But the lands we already run are very good and hard to cut.

Tomb is already worse than a 3rd Vault or 4th Wreckage.