I like being able to win without having to draw my sixth land. That's the main reason, but playing with Restoration Angel and Snapcaster Mage is pretty sweet too. The theory is that you're playing all the good cards Delver is playing except you have real removal.
feralminded's list seems cool, just play a crap ton of removal and eventually it will stick. Then you can actually afford to base your game plan around winning with Sun Titan and Elesh Norn.
This weekend didn't go so well though--it felt like my answers were always not quite good enough and my threats weren't quite fast enough.
I didn't make the 5k, in fact I'm out of (semi) competitive magic until October I think so I've dismantled my solar flare. I felt the deck was very strong and I feel traditional solar flare is slightly better against delver and wolf run than esper-mid-range but I feel the mid-range deck is better against everything else including the new wave of pod decks, zombies, and R/G. I definitely feel like this deck lives and dies through it's endless amount of removal (oblivion ring counts here too), eventually going over the top of basically every deck around. That said I think I would prefer a 3rd GFTT over the dead weight, even though the dead weight sometimes gets good work done against mana dorks or delvers ... the mana base never really supports this. The odds of a T1 untapped black is under 5% whereas the odds of T2 B1 is over 70%. The weight is fun to recur, and sometimes this is even relevant (though most of the time who cares, you have sun titans!) ... but the instant speed removal is almost always more important to respond to all of the flash and haste out there.
As for lingering souls it's just not great right now, but that doesn't make it bad. It's still a plenty fine chump blocker for plenty of matchups and I still find spamming some souls as my best possible bait to setup a Day of Judgement. I was very content with the performance of 2 souls, 2 splicers but I probably played my splicers wrong (I attacked with the golem far too often only to eat a hasty strangleroot in response ... largely I just wasn't that adept against the R/G matchup even though the deck eats it). And against delver lingering souls is still aces all the way.
Ultimately I think the elesh norn plan, with sun titan backup and all of the versatility of phantasmal image is really quite overwhelming, specially against anything with a creature. The only new matchup I am curious about is MBC, but in my head I really don't picture that matchup going well for them. The only truly bad matchup is zombies, which has caught fire recently and blood artist just turns most of our "answers" into masochistic self-mutilation. Even with my full sideboard plan (bunch of terminus, celestial purges, etc) I still felt I was at best 45-55 against them ... and that assuming they didn't have real answers for us.
After attending a PTQ with perhaps 35% R/G rancor I can say bonfire is the real deal, worth every penny. I was playing solar flare (with splicers over souls) so it wasn't cast against me much, but I watched it just win plenty of games.
If I were to build a grixis deck today I would start with 4 bonfires and probably 2-4 Pillars and go from there. GFTT and Doomblade are where I would look next as instant speed removal is key to control decks right now. I think that's a solid start, add in win-cons as necessary. Honestly outside of ponder I'm not really feeling blue for this deck ... I personally would rather go B/R/W even though the mana base is crap. Red has enough card draw/filtering that blue just isn't bringing much to the table unless you're looking to exploit Talrand (possibly worth it). Once GFTT and Doomblade rotate I'd drop black in a heartbeat ... it's always going to be a splash color for this deck and unless you can splash for meaningful instant removal there's just not much else there.
The B/r zombies and the new U/G infect decks are the only matchups I actively fear.
Pod and some versions of wolf run are just good games and come down to skill and luck.
Delver, R/G, traditional wolf run, and Frites we should just beat, though the old-school pike/stalker delver is worse for us than the current one which is a touch slower, and that's good enough.
I went 2/2 this saturday for the PTQ and will not look back. I left the other 2 souls in the SB for delver and wolf run (still very relevant against them) but the splicers are heaven-sent against the R/G and zombies decks that are rampant at the moment.
Well here's my solar flare report. Placed 18 out of 126 at the providence PTQ going 5-2 and one of my losses was against nigh unbeatable draws. There was nothing here I could not reasonably beat except for the final matchup (and maybe zombies). I faced plenty of Rancor and it's not the boogieman people make it out to be.
Deck Notes
In the 11th hour I cut 2 gideons for 3rd oblivion ring and a 2nd GFTT. I love gideon but he's a 5 mana fog in this meta and I knew oblivion ring and instant speed removal were all that would get me by the Rancor decks. I have no regrets as indeed oblivion rings and instant speed removal were largely responsible for my success.
Then in the 11:59th hour (9:30am before registration) I swapped the 2 splicers from my sideboard with 2 souls mainboard. I wanted the splicers over the souls for most matchups besides delver and this choice proved rather paramount later in the tournament. My only regret is not making the mirran a 3rd splicer (I only had 2, which is why the mirran is there at all ... to jump in front of zombies and strangleroot geists).
0-0 Round 1 - Delver (1-2 Loss)
Delver is a fine matchup for us, specially the list I have here. My sideboard plan for normal delver is -2 blade splider, +2 lingering souls. If I see a couple of pikes and swords I will toss in a divine offering but it's not really necessary.
G1 (Loss): I was on the draw, he T1 delver, T2 flip. I was able to take it down eventually but it cost me too many resources and he killed me I think turn 6 or 7 with a GoST I couldn't answer when I ran out of gas
G2 (Win): I was on the play and he didn't land a T1 delver so the game was the typical resource battle (one we win after ~5 rounds). I was able to pressure him into equipping a sword on a restoration angel that I then double doom bladed (he snapped-leaked the first) ... costing him too much tempo. I then took control with an o-ring on the sword and lingering souls spam.
G3 (Loss): I really hate to whine about this, but he again T1 delver, T2 flipped on me. I probably should have mulliganed more aggressively as I had no answers at all and never found one. Dead by T5 I think.
0-1 Round 2 - G/R Rancor (2-0 Win)
I had playtested against delver and wolf run and zombies, but I had no experience here so I was quite intimidated. Turns out this decklist annihilates these guys. For them I brought in the 3rd doomblade over a ratchet bomb, swapped a ghost quarter for my cavern, swapped terminus for a DoJ, and would bring in the offerings if I saw swords (some lists just did rancor + revenge of the hunted).
G1 (Win): I was on the draw and I was able to oblivion ring his rancor after taking a couple hits, had 2 souls go up and undie his now pair of strangleroots, and then next round took a hit from his thundermaw who wiped out my souls. A day of judgement later he was out of cards and gas and it was smooth sailing from here even though I ended the game at I think 5 life.
G2 (Win): T5 elesh norn, simple as that.
1-1 Round 3 - G/R Rancor (2-1 Win) G1 (Loss): I was on the draw. I managed to efficiently slow him down and even board wiped with a miracled terminus which I though was going to get me there, but he followed that with a Silverheart, followed by a Hellrider that combined for very lethal damage on me.
G2 (Win): On the play. This was a fairly standard "stall until turn 6 and then just win" solar flare. I killed a few creatures, he hit me for some damage, and T6 I went bigger than he could handle and he just lost.
G3 (Win): On the draw. He got mana screwed, plain and simple ... which was good for me because I durdled a bit more than I should have. Easy, but ugly win.
2-1 Round 4 - Delver (2-1 Win) G1 (Win): This was a rather unremarkable game. Essentially I drew out mana leaks on sub-optimal targets so I could cast the spells I wanted to. Oblivion rings and phantasmal images got serious work done and elesh norn made the game unwinnable.
G2 (Loss): This was an infuriating loss because I had the win but missed an EoT trigger with my ratchet bomb. Essentially I had 2 counters on the bomb, missed ticking it up to 3, and 2 turns later I was staring 3 restoration angels in the face who I could have kept off the board with the 4 counter bomb. Either way I came very close to pulling it out but sitting at 3 life left me in snag/gutshot range.
G3 (Win): Another protracted resource war (the typical match between these decks). I wound up applying too much pressure with 6 lingering souls, forcing him to make sub-optimal plays to survive (gutshots and snags on souls). Essentially when playing Delver as flare just spam souls because they don't have a lot of options and you give yourself room to cast your other, better spells.
3-1 Round 5 - U/G/r Wolfrun (2-1 Win)
This was the most intense match of the day for me. I found out the guy had played on the pro-tour a couple years which probably intimidated me unnecessarily. Either way he was a nice guy and very taxing to play against. I feel like my deck beat him, but he was a much better player than me. His deck was basically frost-titan/miracle control with primeval titan and wolfrun/nexus as a win-con. I used my G/R ramp sideboard plan of 2nd quarter over cavern, doomblade over ratchet, grisel over elesh, and souls over splicers.
G1 (Win):On the play (think this was my first coin toss win). I was able to answer his primeval titan with a re-animated sun titan, who imaged the primeval titan to get me the ghost quarter I needed for his wolf run. A couple rounds of recurring ghost quarter combined with doomblades for his titans left him without a win con.
G2 (Loss): On the draw. He crushed me this game by miracling a Time Walk, dropping a frost titan, then on his next turn hard casting a time walk, and on his third turn casting a 2nd frost titan. All of my land was tapped and would not untap, I was at 8 life with an empty board facing 2 frost titans. It was like he was playing magic by himself.
G3 (win): On the play. This was a long, ugly game that I won because of Griselbrand. He managed to kill him (twice), but the card advantage was too much. This is also where I learned that you don't have to discard on their end-step ... something I was actually planning on to bin half of my grip to recur with sun titans on my turn. I am a scrub. Either way I only keep Grisel around for ramp and control matchups and he just wins these for me when I get him into play.
4-1 Round 6 - G/R Rancor (2-0 Win) G1 (Win): On the play. T3 blade splicer, T4 imaged splicer and the game was basically over. Bonfire almost pulled him back into it but I had too much mana and too big of a graveyard by then. Sun titan and he loses.
G2 (Win): This was my only "free" game since the T5 elesh norn. He went T1 bird, I went T1 dead weight (1 of card that I have only 4 T1 black sources for) and he sighs and asks me if that's a 1 of. He kept 1 forest, birds, 2x strangleroot, rancor, 2x GSZ. He didn't draw another land until T5 ... game was completely out of reach for him by then.
5-1 Round 7 - U/G Infect (0-2 Loss)
And this was a nightmare matchup for me. He was just plain fast, blazing fast, with evasive, mega-pumped poisoners. He freely admits his deck falls over to delver, but he didn't have to much worry about that in the finals because by then they were just about all gone.
G1 (Loss): On the draw. I kept a hand I should not have (elesh, sun titan, 2x unburial in hand), I'm pretty sure I was thinking far too much about the T8 prize pool (I was 5th seed) and those tickets to Seattle. Anyhow he had me at 10 poison by T4 and I didn't cast a single spell. He had 2 mutagenics in hand he didn't use either, he just came in crazy fast.
G2 (Loss): On the play. I had more game this time, kept a hand with some removal and an alchemy. That said he had a grip full of those white phyrexian mana spells that give pro-color of choice to keep his unblockable infect alive. T6 I had him dead to rights with a hard-cast terminus but I never got to untap, T5 he put wild defiance on his unblockable and then pumped it to 10/10 or something ridiculous.
Final Thoughts
Oblivion ring, GFFT/DB, and blade splicer keep us totally relevant. Sun titan is still all but an unbeatable finish but our deck has to be built to get us there and in this meta it's all about instant speed removal and exiling nasty things. I would replace 1 ratchet bomb with a 4th oblivion ring and probably the 2nd unburial with a 3rd doom blade or GFTT. From there I think the list is solid and ready to go. Zombies and I guess this poison deck are just bad matchups for us but against everything else we've got plenty of game. Even zombies we're ok thanks to splicer and post board celestial purge just does evil things to them.
I'm still a bit heated that I got aced by T1 delvers but honestly I had some luck myself. I probably should have lost my round 3 match against R/G but he got stuck on mana so luck cuts both ways. I played a bit better than I expected and overall felt the deck did the heavy lifting when I fell down. The only time I got in over my head was the one game I had griselbrand out and had ~25 cards in the graveyard ... it was really hard to keep my head straight that game and I imagine I missed some stronger lines of play but I still pulled it out.
Also and finally, delver is dead. 1 of the final 8 was delver and I think it was delverless with only 2 in the top 32. The 2nd chance table was covered with them which was kind of a sad sight (but lots of interesting matches). All this means for us is lingering souls is sideboard fodder for them and blade splicers rise to the forefront. Splicers with images is a pretty sick line of play against many of the aggro decks that just cannot answer the big first strike goons.
I've never played with staff of nin, but I can't imagine a situation where I wouldn't rather draw a grave titan or a wurmcoil engine. That late in the game, you want a card that will let you win or save your life.
I can't deny the power of either of those cards but I still honestly feel more secure with the goofy little staff than either of them. Against delver both fatties can get some good work done but still run into issues with swords and snags. Against other decks with actual removal, though, they become far less impressive and quickly lose steam. Nothing says "ouch" like watching your fattie run into a zealous conscript or even just a doomblade. Zombies would be happy to use any of their pile of removal on your fatties. There's just a ton of mechanisms out there right now that do serious damage to creatures to make it problematic at best to rely on big scary monsters to win. Some of these things are about to rotate but as you said, irrelevant right now.
I think nin is a little bit better than you are evaluating it here, but I will admit it's probably a little bit worse than I am as well. It's pulled off some miracles for me such as that last point of damage when mutilate fell short (can be hard to sometimes take out silverhearts), and its also the nuts against phantasmal images and their ilk. No it's not a beater and it's not obvious how much it will affect the game and as I said ... won't win you a game from behind, but it most certainly will win you a game that's anywhere near even which it should be ... we're playing control using cards that tend to stall/muddle the board state. Maybe that's not enough, I only play 1 for a reason, but it's done good work for me and when it hits the board it almost never leaves so it definitely feels like a more resilient "answer" than most of the others we traditionally see.
I don't really see the attraction to Staff of Nin. Have people really had good luck with this 6 drop?
It's a lot more powerful than you think. It's essentially an (nearly) unkillable planeswalker. It won't pull you from way behind, but if you are way behind by turn 6 in a control deck then you're either unlucky or doing it wrong. That said if the board state is anywhere near stable you just run away with the game. The ping isn't irrelevant either, but not as powerful as it could be ... but it doesn't need to be.
I run it as a 1 of and have never been unhappy to see it though I doubt I would run 2. We have so many amazing finishers/big CC bombs at this point I am happy to diversify.
As for the mana curve it largely depends on your finishers. If the top of your curve is bloodgift (with maybe a nin or sorin) then 23 + pristines is fine. If you are really pushing for grave titans and griselbrands then I could see us pushing for 24-25 and more ramp. That said my deck curves out at 4 (mutilate) and everything else is really gravy so 23 + 3 pristines works out fine for me. Beyond 4 I have 2 bloodgifts, 1 nefarox, 1 nin, and 1 sorin markov and I never really get stuck. The sign in bloods get work done in this regard. The only thing I really miss is ponder ... that card is just bananas for giving consistency to a deck.
I'm honestly a much bigger fan of negate for us than leak. I feel like we have plenty of creature control (at least I do), but it's specifically the spells that kill us. I understand Cavern isn't quite the killer boogie-man people make it out to be but even still given that we can control creatures better than any other deck in the format AND that spells/artifacts/enchantments are what kill us (Rancor right now has me shaking) ... I feel negate is well positioned. Honestly R/G can have their strangleroot geist, it's their sword/rancor that's gonna kill me.
The way I see it though is that the cards you mention mostly belongs in RG aggro, which isnt a problematic mu for Flare.
Really? I find R/G almost as rough as zombies. Their god draw (T2 sword, t3 geist + equip) feels unwinnable and most of their normal ones really crush us as well. Basically when strangleroot lands if I dont have an image I'm usually behind and its really tough to claw back out of it. Thanks to their ubiquitous acceleration ratchet bomb just doesn't come online fast enough to really deal with swords. By T5 I've usually taken at least 1 if not 2 hits from the sword at which point its basically over. It's specifically because of R/G that I now MD 1 divine offering (doesn't hurt against pod either) and am considering 2. The only MU divine offering isn't much use is zombies (still not bad to hit the pod) or mirror ... but that's a very small % of the field. It's also worth nothing that rancor is going to be gross in R/G.
Unfortunately the mirror resembles WRR mirrors ... or any titan mirror really. It's largely a top-deck/opening hand race. Because flare has become popular I have begun running 2 Jaces in the board as he hits pretty hard but thats 2 SB slots that I would use in essentially no other matchup so I don't feel too good about it.
That's totally fair enough. They really, really, really don't like that Celestial Purge thing...
I think about this from time to time, and never get around to trying it. It's not an awful idea either...
It would only recur ponder and DB/GFTT. There's probably not a lot of situations where we want to flashback a DoJ, specially not if we got the snapcaster off of a sun titan. Not a terrible thing but we're not exactly talking a lot of targets here ... we're built for flashback already. I just don't see it having a ton of value for us over a more purposeful card like a spellbomb or ponder or deadweight.
Nope, and it's not unreasonable from the graveyard as recursion as well, especially at removing pesky blockers...
3 Doomblades though? You don't play 1 GFTT?
GFTT is only relevant against zombies, DB is relevant against anything with a metamorph, wurmcoil, or inkmoth. Zombies isn't a great matchup for us and I know the doomblades don't help but in the end I don't think 1 GFTT will make that matchup better enough to justify sometimes blanking against a metamorph or inkmoth when I really need it.
For zombies I replace the 3 doomblades with celestial purges and call it good enough ... they don't like that card (and it's also a decent board-in if I happen to run into RDW for some magical reason). I'm happy taking a 65% G1 loss against zombies with it's current position in the meta to assist my G1 against more prevalent decks. I reckon that singleton GFTT over doomblade won't push that 65% much higher than 64.5% anyhow.
Bingo, and it's not like a T1 Dead Weight on the draw is an awful card. Putting it on a mana dork or a delver is completely relevant.
I personally am happier with 3 doomblade/ 1 dead weight over 4 doomblade against any deck but wolf run. That said I'm not certain there's any deck I want 2 doomblade/2 deadweight against. I concur it is seriously mising as a 1 of, but considering most games we will see 20+ cards it's not unreasonable.
Wolf Run doesn't have a ton of game vs Solar Flare though... Even with like, 3 Inferno Titans... I mean, it's not the worst thing you can do on the play. Tick it up to 4,5,6 and keep it there as an extra removal vs top decks...
Yes you are correct ... it's just that for the coming PTQs I've tooled my 60 up largely to combat delver and R/G aggro so this means 3 ratchet bombs and when I see ramp they are typically the first to come out (current WRR plan is -3 ratchet, -1 DoJ, +2 liliana, +1 doomblade, +1 griselbrand). Preboard I find wolf run is a decent matchup ... post board I find I crush them mercilessly. It's like solar flare is built to annihilate Wolf run so even with a slightly de-optimized MB its not a big deal and the few sideboard cards really make it unfair. Even if they have/bring in surgicals or spellbombs there's not much they can do to the pile of win-cons we effectively have against them.
I didn't make the 5k, in fact I'm out of (semi) competitive magic until October I think so I've dismantled my solar flare. I felt the deck was very strong and I feel traditional solar flare is slightly better against delver and wolf run than esper-mid-range but I feel the mid-range deck is better against everything else including the new wave of pod decks, zombies, and R/G. I definitely feel like this deck lives and dies through it's endless amount of removal (oblivion ring counts here too), eventually going over the top of basically every deck around. That said I think I would prefer a 3rd GFTT over the dead weight, even though the dead weight sometimes gets good work done against mana dorks or delvers ... the mana base never really supports this. The odds of a T1 untapped black is under 5% whereas the odds of T2 B1 is over 70%. The weight is fun to recur, and sometimes this is even relevant (though most of the time who cares, you have sun titans!) ... but the instant speed removal is almost always more important to respond to all of the flash and haste out there.
As for lingering souls it's just not great right now, but that doesn't make it bad. It's still a plenty fine chump blocker for plenty of matchups and I still find spamming some souls as my best possible bait to setup a Day of Judgement. I was very content with the performance of 2 souls, 2 splicers but I probably played my splicers wrong (I attacked with the golem far too often only to eat a hasty strangleroot in response ... largely I just wasn't that adept against the R/G matchup even though the deck eats it). And against delver lingering souls is still aces all the way.
Ultimately I think the elesh norn plan, with sun titan backup and all of the versatility of phantasmal image is really quite overwhelming, specially against anything with a creature. The only new matchup I am curious about is MBC, but in my head I really don't picture that matchup going well for them. The only truly bad matchup is zombies, which has caught fire recently and blood artist just turns most of our "answers" into masochistic self-mutilation. Even with my full sideboard plan (bunch of terminus, celestial purges, etc) I still felt I was at best 45-55 against them ... and that assuming they didn't have real answers for us.
If I were to build a grixis deck today I would start with 4 bonfires and probably 2-4 Pillars and go from there. GFTT and Doomblade are where I would look next as instant speed removal is key to control decks right now. I think that's a solid start, add in win-cons as necessary. Honestly outside of ponder I'm not really feeling blue for this deck ... I personally would rather go B/R/W even though the mana base is crap. Red has enough card draw/filtering that blue just isn't bringing much to the table unless you're looking to exploit Talrand (possibly worth it). Once GFTT and Doomblade rotate I'd drop black in a heartbeat ... it's always going to be a splash color for this deck and unless you can splash for meaningful instant removal there's just not much else there.
Pod and some versions of wolf run are just good games and come down to skill and luck.
Delver, R/G, traditional wolf run, and Frites we should just beat, though the old-school pike/stalker delver is worse for us than the current one which is a touch slower, and that's good enough.
3 Sun Titan
3 Phantasmal Image
2 Blade Splicer
2 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Spells (24)
4 Forbidden Alchemy
3 Ponder
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Day of Judgment
2 Lingering Souls
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Unburial Rites
2 Go for the Throat
2 Doom Blade
1 Dead Weight
1 Terminus
4 Isolated Chapel
3 Glacial Fortress
3 Seachrome Coast
3 Darkslick Shores
3 Plains
2 Drowned Catacomb
2 Evolving Wilds
2 Island
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Swamp
3 Celestial Purge
2 Divine Offering
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Lingering Souls
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Terminus
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Doom Blade
1 Griselbrand
1 Ghost Quarter
Deck Notes
In the 11th hour I cut 2 gideons for 3rd oblivion ring and a 2nd GFTT. I love gideon but he's a 5 mana fog in this meta and I knew oblivion ring and instant speed removal were all that would get me by the Rancor decks. I have no regrets as indeed oblivion rings and instant speed removal were largely responsible for my success.
Then in the 11:59th hour (9:30am before registration) I swapped the 2 splicers from my sideboard with 2 souls mainboard. I wanted the splicers over the souls for most matchups besides delver and this choice proved rather paramount later in the tournament. My only regret is not making the mirran a 3rd splicer (I only had 2, which is why the mirran is there at all ... to jump in front of zombies and strangleroot geists).
0-0 Round 1 - Delver (1-2 Loss)
Delver is a fine matchup for us, specially the list I have here. My sideboard plan for normal delver is -2 blade splider, +2 lingering souls. If I see a couple of pikes and swords I will toss in a divine offering but it's not really necessary.
G1 (Loss): I was on the draw, he T1 delver, T2 flip. I was able to take it down eventually but it cost me too many resources and he killed me I think turn 6 or 7 with a GoST I couldn't answer when I ran out of gas
G2 (Win): I was on the play and he didn't land a T1 delver so the game was the typical resource battle (one we win after ~5 rounds). I was able to pressure him into equipping a sword on a restoration angel that I then double doom bladed (he snapped-leaked the first) ... costing him too much tempo. I then took control with an o-ring on the sword and lingering souls spam.
G3 (Loss): I really hate to whine about this, but he again T1 delver, T2 flipped on me. I probably should have mulliganed more aggressively as I had no answers at all and never found one. Dead by T5 I think.
0-1 Round 2 - G/R Rancor (2-0 Win)
I had playtested against delver and wolf run and zombies, but I had no experience here so I was quite intimidated. Turns out this decklist annihilates these guys. For them I brought in the 3rd doomblade over a ratchet bomb, swapped a ghost quarter for my cavern, swapped terminus for a DoJ, and would bring in the offerings if I saw swords (some lists just did rancor + revenge of the hunted).
G1 (Win): I was on the draw and I was able to oblivion ring his rancor after taking a couple hits, had 2 souls go up and undie his now pair of strangleroots, and then next round took a hit from his thundermaw who wiped out my souls. A day of judgement later he was out of cards and gas and it was smooth sailing from here even though I ended the game at I think 5 life.
G2 (Win): T5 elesh norn, simple as that.
1-1 Round 3 - G/R Rancor (2-1 Win)
G1 (Loss): I was on the draw. I managed to efficiently slow him down and even board wiped with a miracled terminus which I though was going to get me there, but he followed that with a Silverheart, followed by a Hellrider that combined for very lethal damage on me.
G2 (Win): On the play. This was a fairly standard "stall until turn 6 and then just win" solar flare. I killed a few creatures, he hit me for some damage, and T6 I went bigger than he could handle and he just lost.
G3 (Win): On the draw. He got mana screwed, plain and simple ... which was good for me because I durdled a bit more than I should have. Easy, but ugly win.
2-1 Round 4 - Delver (2-1 Win)
G1 (Win): This was a rather unremarkable game. Essentially I drew out mana leaks on sub-optimal targets so I could cast the spells I wanted to. Oblivion rings and phantasmal images got serious work done and elesh norn made the game unwinnable.
G2 (Loss): This was an infuriating loss because I had the win but missed an EoT trigger with my ratchet bomb. Essentially I had 2 counters on the bomb, missed ticking it up to 3, and 2 turns later I was staring 3 restoration angels in the face who I could have kept off the board with the 4 counter bomb. Either way I came very close to pulling it out but sitting at 3 life left me in snag/gutshot range.
G3 (Win): Another protracted resource war (the typical match between these decks). I wound up applying too much pressure with 6 lingering souls, forcing him to make sub-optimal plays to survive (gutshots and snags on souls). Essentially when playing Delver as flare just spam souls because they don't have a lot of options and you give yourself room to cast your other, better spells.
3-1 Round 5 - U/G/r Wolfrun (2-1 Win)
This was the most intense match of the day for me. I found out the guy had played on the pro-tour a couple years which probably intimidated me unnecessarily. Either way he was a nice guy and very taxing to play against. I feel like my deck beat him, but he was a much better player than me. His deck was basically frost-titan/miracle control with primeval titan and wolfrun/nexus as a win-con. I used my G/R ramp sideboard plan of 2nd quarter over cavern, doomblade over ratchet, grisel over elesh, and souls over splicers.
G1 (Win):On the play (think this was my first coin toss win). I was able to answer his primeval titan with a re-animated sun titan, who imaged the primeval titan to get me the ghost quarter I needed for his wolf run. A couple rounds of recurring ghost quarter combined with doomblades for his titans left him without a win con.
G2 (Loss): On the draw. He crushed me this game by miracling a Time Walk, dropping a frost titan, then on his next turn hard casting a time walk, and on his third turn casting a 2nd frost titan. All of my land was tapped and would not untap, I was at 8 life with an empty board facing 2 frost titans. It was like he was playing magic by himself.
G3 (win): On the play. This was a long, ugly game that I won because of Griselbrand. He managed to kill him (twice), but the card advantage was too much. This is also where I learned that you don't have to discard on their end-step ... something I was actually planning on to bin half of my grip to recur with sun titans on my turn. I am a scrub. Either way I only keep Grisel around for ramp and control matchups and he just wins these for me when I get him into play.
4-1 Round 6 - G/R Rancor (2-0 Win)
G1 (Win): On the play. T3 blade splicer, T4 imaged splicer and the game was basically over. Bonfire almost pulled him back into it but I had too much mana and too big of a graveyard by then. Sun titan and he loses.
G2 (Win): This was my only "free" game since the T5 elesh norn. He went T1 bird, I went T1 dead weight (1 of card that I have only 4 T1 black sources for) and he sighs and asks me if that's a 1 of. He kept 1 forest, birds, 2x strangleroot, rancor, 2x GSZ. He didn't draw another land until T5 ... game was completely out of reach for him by then.
5-1 Round 7 - U/G Infect (0-2 Loss)
And this was a nightmare matchup for me. He was just plain fast, blazing fast, with evasive, mega-pumped poisoners. He freely admits his deck falls over to delver, but he didn't have to much worry about that in the finals because by then they were just about all gone.
G1 (Loss): On the draw. I kept a hand I should not have (elesh, sun titan, 2x unburial in hand), I'm pretty sure I was thinking far too much about the T8 prize pool (I was 5th seed) and those tickets to Seattle. Anyhow he had me at 10 poison by T4 and I didn't cast a single spell. He had 2 mutagenics in hand he didn't use either, he just came in crazy fast.
G2 (Loss): On the play. I had more game this time, kept a hand with some removal and an alchemy. That said he had a grip full of those white phyrexian mana spells that give pro-color of choice to keep his unblockable infect alive. T6 I had him dead to rights with a hard-cast terminus but I never got to untap, T5 he put wild defiance on his unblockable and then pumped it to 10/10 or something ridiculous.
Final Thoughts
Oblivion ring, GFFT/DB, and blade splicer keep us totally relevant. Sun titan is still all but an unbeatable finish but our deck has to be built to get us there and in this meta it's all about instant speed removal and exiling nasty things. I would replace 1 ratchet bomb with a 4th oblivion ring and probably the 2nd unburial with a 3rd doom blade or GFTT. From there I think the list is solid and ready to go. Zombies and I guess this poison deck are just bad matchups for us but against everything else we've got plenty of game. Even zombies we're ok thanks to splicer and post board celestial purge just does evil things to them.
I'm still a bit heated that I got aced by T1 delvers but honestly I had some luck myself. I probably should have lost my round 3 match against R/G but he got stuck on mana so luck cuts both ways. I played a bit better than I expected and overall felt the deck did the heavy lifting when I fell down. The only time I got in over my head was the one game I had griselbrand out and had ~25 cards in the graveyard ... it was really hard to keep my head straight that game and I imagine I missed some stronger lines of play but I still pulled it out.
Also and finally, delver is dead. 1 of the final 8 was delver and I think it was delverless with only 2 in the top 32. The 2nd chance table was covered with them which was kind of a sad sight (but lots of interesting matches). All this means for us is lingering souls is sideboard fodder for them and blade splicers rise to the forefront. Splicers with images is a pretty sick line of play against many of the aggro decks that just cannot answer the big first strike goons.
I can't deny the power of either of those cards but I still honestly feel more secure with the goofy little staff than either of them. Against delver both fatties can get some good work done but still run into issues with swords and snags. Against other decks with actual removal, though, they become far less impressive and quickly lose steam. Nothing says "ouch" like watching your fattie run into a zealous conscript or even just a doomblade. Zombies would be happy to use any of their pile of removal on your fatties. There's just a ton of mechanisms out there right now that do serious damage to creatures to make it problematic at best to rely on big scary monsters to win. Some of these things are about to rotate but as you said, irrelevant right now.
I think nin is a little bit better than you are evaluating it here, but I will admit it's probably a little bit worse than I am as well. It's pulled off some miracles for me such as that last point of damage when mutilate fell short (can be hard to sometimes take out silverhearts), and its also the nuts against phantasmal images and their ilk. No it's not a beater and it's not obvious how much it will affect the game and as I said ... won't win you a game from behind, but it most certainly will win you a game that's anywhere near even which it should be ... we're playing control using cards that tend to stall/muddle the board state. Maybe that's not enough, I only play 1 for a reason, but it's done good work for me and when it hits the board it almost never leaves so it definitely feels like a more resilient "answer" than most of the others we traditionally see.
It's a lot more powerful than you think. It's essentially an (nearly) unkillable planeswalker. It won't pull you from way behind, but if you are way behind by turn 6 in a control deck then you're either unlucky or doing it wrong. That said if the board state is anywhere near stable you just run away with the game. The ping isn't irrelevant either, but not as powerful as it could be ... but it doesn't need to be.
I run it as a 1 of and have never been unhappy to see it though I doubt I would run 2. We have so many amazing finishers/big CC bombs at this point I am happy to diversify.
As for the mana curve it largely depends on your finishers. If the top of your curve is bloodgift (with maybe a nin or sorin) then 23 + pristines is fine. If you are really pushing for grave titans and griselbrands then I could see us pushing for 24-25 and more ramp. That said my deck curves out at 4 (mutilate) and everything else is really gravy so 23 + 3 pristines works out fine for me. Beyond 4 I have 2 bloodgifts, 1 nefarox, 1 nin, and 1 sorin markov and I never really get stuck. The sign in bloods get work done in this regard. The only thing I really miss is ponder ... that card is just bananas for giving consistency to a deck.
Unfortunately the mirror resembles WRR mirrors ... or any titan mirror really. It's largely a top-deck/opening hand race. Because flare has become popular I have begun running 2 Jaces in the board as he hits pretty hard but thats 2 SB slots that I would use in essentially no other matchup so I don't feel too good about it.
It would only recur ponder and DB/GFTT. There's probably not a lot of situations where we want to flashback a DoJ, specially not if we got the snapcaster off of a sun titan. Not a terrible thing but we're not exactly talking a lot of targets here ... we're built for flashback already. I just don't see it having a ton of value for us over a more purposeful card like a spellbomb or ponder or deadweight.
GFTT is only relevant against zombies, DB is relevant against anything with a metamorph, wurmcoil, or inkmoth. Zombies isn't a great matchup for us and I know the doomblades don't help but in the end I don't think 1 GFTT will make that matchup better enough to justify sometimes blanking against a metamorph or inkmoth when I really need it.
For zombies I replace the 3 doomblades with celestial purges and call it good enough ... they don't like that card (and it's also a decent board-in if I happen to run into RDW for some magical reason). I'm happy taking a 65% G1 loss against zombies with it's current position in the meta to assist my G1 against more prevalent decks. I reckon that singleton GFTT over doomblade won't push that 65% much higher than 64.5% anyhow.
I personally am happier with 3 doomblade/ 1 dead weight over 4 doomblade against any deck but wolf run. That said I'm not certain there's any deck I want 2 doomblade/2 deadweight against. I concur it is seriously mising as a 1 of, but considering most games we will see 20+ cards it's not unreasonable.