Puh. You both show me some nice options there.
Cant decide if i wanna for UW/Panharmonicon flicker or Thought knot seer..
Panharmonicon in modern is a
dead play.
Unless you cheat it into play somehow, you tap 4 mana at turn 4 for an artifact that will... do nothing until turn 5, 99% of times.
Since you have no experience in modern being a new player, here is the unwritten rule of the format:
- For a deck to be considered competitive, you have to close the game at turn 3, or at least be enough in advantage that the opponent can't recover ever unless you do a really bad play or topdeck 5 lands.
- Corollarium: this does not apply to pure control decks, where you grind your opponent down with answers cheaper than his threats.
In those cases, your goal is to prolong the game as much as possible to obtain the virtual card advantage a control deck is structured for.
Of course this is not always possible, nor the rule is always applicable, but it remains valid for a good number of top tier deck (infect, ur
kiln fiend, affinity, jund, junk, burn).
While you play your
panharmonicon, your opponent will:
- attack with a 17/2 double attack trample pumped
Kiln Fiend (UR
Kiln fiend deck)
- swing for lethal poison damage via a 7/7
Inkmoth Nexus (infect deck)
- bolt you down (literally.) (burn)
- swarm the field and swing for lethal with an army of little robots (affinity)
- etc...
See the problem with
panharmonicon, and modern in general?
Is a quick format.
You got to be aggressive, and you got to be fast.
Almost everything with CMC > 3 is unplayable, unless you find a way to cheat it into play or you got a crazy fast mana acceleration (and that's why cards like
Noble Hierarch,
Chord of Calling and similar cards have such high $$$ price).
Care that flickering is not an ability you can build a deck on.
It's more of a supportative ability to
squeeze the most advantages you can from your cards.
When you include flickering cards in a deck, you have to look at the sinergies they can create.
Flickering is used in conjunction with EOT triggers.
More specifically, EOT triggers that create some permanent effect on the field, tangible for you and/or the opponent.
Example are:
- Creating tokens:
Blade Splicer,
Nest Invader,
Dwynen's Elite,
Attended Knight,
Eldrazi Skyspawner,
Pia Nalaar,
- Cut cards:
Tidehollow Sculler,
Brain Maggot,
Ravenous Rats- Create card advantage:
Auramancer,
Snapcaster Mage,
Wall of Omens,
Abbot of Keral Keep,
Treefolk Harbinger,
Augur of Bolas,
Elvish Visionary,
Rogue Refiner-
Recover pieces:
Leonin Squire,
Eternal Witness,
Ironclad Slayer,
Renegade Rallier- Board Control:
Fiend Hunter,
Oblivion Ring,
Aether Adept,
Reflector Mage,
War Priest of Thune,
Azorius Arrester,
Leonin Relic-Warder,
Meddling Mage,
Spell Queller- Mana adjustment:
Burning-Tree Emissary,
Hidden Herbalists,
Priest of Urabrask- General utility:
Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit,
Kor Outfitter,
Maulfist Revolutionary,
Mentor of the Meek,
Rishkar, Peema RenegadeA little trick you can do with flickering is when a card says something like
"When enter the battlefield,
exile X.
When leave the battlefield, return exiled card X".
Oblivion ring is an old example of this.
Flickering the ring while the "enter on battlefield" effect is on the stack basically allows you to
exile 2 permanents, and the first one will be permanently exiled.