I was also thinking about Collective Brutality when I was looking at this list. The most logical reason I could think of on why it isn’t there is cost efficiency — but that’s only for the main deck. Thoughtseize and CB would be a good tag team post-board and is something that could be considered. If you could test it out using CB instead of the 1-of Call to the Netherworld, please let us know how it turns out.

This leads me to wonder why Collective Brutality itself isn’t in the 75. Too slow? Or is it that the flexibility and power are offset by the fact that the deck already does everything brutality does more efficiently/effectively? For example, Thoughtsieze is better at discard, Fiery Temper is better at burn, Etc.

I really like seeing Bloodghast and Vengevine together. Would have been nice to see vengy here but the Gurmag seems like a better fit due to its size and synergy with the used spells. As for the call, I always see it as a free spell that could net you any of our black crits at some point in the game. It’s arguable that it could be cut, though.

Noted. This isn’t supposed to be replacement for other content on Nexus, more like an extra little, “Hey, here’s what happened last weekend.” They’ll be moving to Monday for this reason. I will also say, though, we’ve had good responses on this type of article, and for players newer to Modern it can be interesting just to get exposure to a large number of decks.

Call to the Netherworld is fine but not stunning (small sample size, about 20 matches). It does a fine job of getting value, and has even won games where I needed a hasty bloodghast and had no lands in hand. It’s one of the cards I cut the most (basically, any fast match-up I don’t bother with it). You do get back Street Wraith about as often as Angler, but remember Angler isn’t just going to the yard via Inquiry / Looting. It gets killed in combat or via terminates etc often enough too. It is your biggest creature after all.

For what it’s worth, I find these sort of articles almost useless. You could start and finish this article with a decklist, because telling me that Leyline of the Void is good against GY decks isn’t really telling me anything at all. It tells us that the sideboard helps against lopsided match-ups… Well, 1 – every sideboard is meant to do that and 2 – which match-ups are lopsided?! There’s actual 0 information here.

Having played the deck a bit, combo match-ups are close because you’re basically a turn 4 deck, and on the draw, that’s not always fast enough. When you sideboard in your thoughtseizes, if you get given a non-disruptive fast hand, you are sort of forced to keep it anyway (since thoughtseize won’t necessary win you the match vs a deck like RG Valakut), so it stays likely unfavourable after sideboarding too. Midrange and Control match-ups are fairly positive, because you draw a tonne of cards, have reach in the form of 8 bolts, and bloodghast + flamewake tax opponents resources like crazy. Agro match-ups tend to be favourable too, mainly because your 4/4s and 5/5s are as good as anything else out there. Affinity is tough G1 since you can’t block much (though hardcasting flamewake in your 2nd main is a reasonable play), but the sideboard has a lot of interaction.

Wish these articles would include a small video set (like SCG do) or at least had some analysis based on games actually played. Channelfireball do articles very similar to these, and the decklist is usually enough – unless there’s some synergy that is hard to spot (which isn’t often the case).

I’ve had my eye on call to the netherworld for a while as a 0 mana madness card – mostly for collective brutality but this looks reasonable too. I don’t know how much the card advantage pays off here but I suppose it can’t hurt. I would imagine you usually want to rip back a gurmag angler for free, but I can also imagine casting faithless looting, pitching call to get back a wraith, cycle the wraith for free and bam hollow one for 0 🙂