Sorry, I didn't notice this reply until now. @dumpsterac1d said in The Present and Future of "Taxing" decks?: @Griselbrother how is 3 mana prohibitive! I'm confused. Are people saying that any deck other than Shops has an impossible time generating enough mana to play 3-drops on turn 1 or 2? I think in the past week I've had 2 people drop Jace on turn 1 against me while I was holding a t1 3-drop. If you drop a Prison t1 or even t2 against Shops, They'll most likely have to make a decision of whether to attack or cast spells which can buy you time, and they can't pay for Prison with Shop mana. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but in combination with Null Rod, Suppression Field, targeted removal, etc, it can do work. 3 mana isn't impossible to get to, yet it's still worth mentioning that Hatebears has a harder time getting to 3 mana than most other decks because of the lack of draw and card filtering. I think the problem is that people want a "Golden Gun" against any deck, like they want to bring in one card from the SB without thinking too hard and just draw it and then their opponent scoops. I can think of several combinations of the cards mentioned that, together, could incapacitate a Shops deck, and many others. Since they're incapable of running crippling taxing effects now and have basically stopped putting things like Tangle Wire into the deck, having 2 or even 3 cards that are really good against shops (but not golden gun good) is perfectly reasonable. I don't think they'll print this for us: Magus of "I Kill Shops Decks" U Flash, Haste, Hexproof. T: Destroy all artifacts your opponents control. 1/6 so... We might as well just pick things that have the broadest applications in Vintage and use a few of them. Personally, I have 3 Kataki, 3 Stony, 2 Muse, 3 Relic Warder and more, and I'm trying Suppression Field in the SB, but I'm not personally sure it fits into my deck yet. One thing I am quite sure about is that Ensnaring Bridge isn't going to work unless the deck is built around it, and with JUST Bridge and your hand at zero cards, I'm not even sure it would be effective when Ballista is a card. I agree with your statement that you, in general, want to play cards that have a broad application, which I believe I also mentioned earlier. I also wrote that "In my experience it takes a pretty dedicated build and a combination of quite a few cards to beat shops" which pretty clearly indicates that I'm not looking for a "Golden Gun" against Shops. While I do think that Ghostly Prison has some application across matchups (although it's definitely not what I want to be doing against Delver/Pyro/BUG), I think that it's actually an example of such a "Golden Gun" and probably not a very good one (though it should be said that I haven't tested it) because it's a) slow and b) can be played around.

Let's bump this thread once again and hope it will get a little more discussion - especially now that David Williams and Eric Froelich both played Hatebears in VSL the last weeks and did well (although I'm not really a fan of the build they played but I can comment on that another time if desired). Personally I'm a big fan of Palace Jailer but only in certain builds. It has been very good in the one I posted originally in this thread (because of Ancient Tomb, Containment Priest and Eldrazi Displacer), but I do recognize that it can be clunky in more traditional builds. I have been playing both Mono White, GWB and GW lately, and personally I prefer the Mono White or the GW builds. Black gives acces to some very good cards like Dark Confidant and, especially, Abrupt Decay and Demonic Consultation but I don't like either Dark Confidant or Abrupt Decay against Shops and what I've found is that you really want to focus on Shops first and foremost for at least three reasons. I've also found both Deathrite Shaman and Kambal, Consul of Allocation to be underwhelming. Basically Deathrite Shaman is too slow and I almost always wanted it to be an Elvish Spirit Guide instead. Kambal is also slow and I'd rather prevent my opponent from playing spells instead of him taking 2 damage off each spell.

I liked the idea of using artifact mutation on something like a LSG or tanglewire. By Force is way less swingy and I'll make the swap. Thanks for the feedback, and the deck is almost all red now 😲! Also, @mediumsteve said in R/G Hatebears: I'll preface by saying that I don't think this deck is going to be great, but anyways... 100% on that. I just want something fun and cheap. If I wanted good I'd play a different deck.

@Dumpsterac1d How about Tabernacle? Well, not exactly budget I guess, but it pretty much kills token strategies...

@Griselbrother Abrupt Decay: I really don't have many problems with mentor/pyromancer personally; and if it's already generated a bunch of tokens, AD/Swords/Path/whatever won't save you at that point. Phyrexian Revoker (which I noticed you weren't playing) shuts down some of the cards you brought up and so does Stony Silence. Having a nice, clean answer to Oath is great, but I'd just play BUG Leovold at that point since I feel like it's going to be a better deck (maybe?). Mana Crypt: After making my opponents lose to their own Crypt and seeing it kill numerous people, I'm not convinced especially in a deck that is not a combo deck. There are plenty of games that go long, and this deck isn't exactly packing life gain, but that's less of an issue if you have DRS. There are going to be games where Crypt is way better than Sol Ring, but I don't like including cards in my deck that can cost me the game when there are acceptable (and better in some cases) alternatives. Edit: After a few play test games thinking about it, Sol Ring doesn't really make a lot of sense since it goes against the philosophy of "play dudes on turn 1."

Magus is for sure a non-bo with the mana bases of the best human decks from recent years (Storm's Humans that won in Spain spring to mind here.), but a couple questions spring to my mind at least. Firstly, could you just jam a couple Magus into some version of Humans as a sort of uncounterable (off of Cavern), Armageddon-like effect to just end games where you have already played out a Thalia, into Mantis Rider, into Reflector Mage and then Magus is the cherry on top that never lets them replay the Smasher you just put back in their hand.... ? Maybe? I kinda doubt this would work myself... but maybe some slightly redder version of humans with Harsh Mentor is out there where Magus is a capstone sort of lock piece. The destroying your own manabase does seem like a problem though. Secondly, is there a much much redder version of Humans out there? Something more like Kurt Crane's Moons deck from NAChamps (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/503260#online) Assuming that Harsh Mentor is good, I actually think that something along these lines with 4 Magus, 4Harsh, and 2-4 Blood Moon might be pretty tough, since the opponent will be dealing with a Magus or a Harsh nearly all the time, and will be faces with crazy problems like having to try to remove Magus, so that a Flooded Strand can become not a Mountain, and instead become a fetchland that costs 3 life to use. If a second Harsh comes down, it now costs 5, and at that point shouldn't they just be in such an impossible situation that there is no getting out? I'm also optimistic about this angle, since Magus seems great against both Eldrazi (which I think is the worst matchup for Humans) and Mentor, while Harsh seems great against Shops. Now just add some number of Eidolons and you have multiple, on-color, mainboard answers for a huge chunk of the metagame. (56% of top 8 decks in the last year, going by mtgtop8)

Seems reasonable, but i am really not liking kataki. I was testing against Doomsday and I was surprised by how much game the deck had. I think cutting kataki for hammer mage and then playing chalice seems real interesting.