I'm noticing on Cobblepotts list that a lot of the "cost" stax effects have been taken out(vryn wingmare and glowrider and thorn), while still retaining the "effect" stax effects(eidolon and teeg and labyrinth). I was curious what the reason for taking these out are, and if it is a strong idea then why keep thalia in at all?
Also, Read the bones has been fantastic, but Painful Truths has been a little less consistent overall and I agree with them over muse or arena, but Skullclamp has come in clutch several times.
Sun Titan is a strong recursion card and an infinite combo piece with altar and saffi/fiendhunter so his removal would require testing as he can be an alternate wincon if pattern and living plane lock both get locked out in some way.
That makes sense, keep her as the strongest choice of the multitude.
I'll have to try taking Iona out. She has been alright but i feel like she is very meta dependent while every deck uses artifacts that SS shuts down.
I have loved arbor elf as well. Do you think there is potential for null rod, sphere of resistance, or static orb? or is static orb too much lock down on ourselves?
I have also still used mindslicer and while it isn't always useful, it is rarely useless and has helped me greatly in several games.
I've noticed that the hatebears are very vulnerable to board wipes specifically toxic deluge. I've used many turns to build up the grip of stax using hate bears, but once the toxic deluge comes down, it's really hard to come back since my combo hasn't been drawn. I agree that this deck needs a lot more draw power. I've considered phyrexian arena and necropotence in here just to get the explosive start. However, double and even triple black is difficult to pull off depending on the lands that you draw. I've even thought of putting aluren in here to provide instant stax pieces and build a board from nothing, but once again it is 4 mana and by that time, we should have won with combo. My meta is full of blue combo/control most of it being grixis or BUG. All of my pieces either countered or deluge'd so it's a bit difficult to pilot this. Do you guys have any suggestions as to what I can play? I am thinking of adding pieces that can enable quicker combos such as buried alive and victimize to get a sac outlet + boonweaver giant. With the addition of Cryptolith rite I believe we should be able to abuse armageddon too since we have Sun Titan and null rod with stony silence if they have mana rocks. I believe that's the route I will go. Flagstones of Trokair will help offset the balance of land stax and so will Cryptolith rite.
Teeg is pretty instrumental to keeping your board in a manageable state. If he's online, Toxic Deluge and a kicked Cyclonic Rift are the only things to be worried about. If you keep getting Deluged, maybe throw in some rattlesnakes like Mindslicer to reduce the profitability of wraths.
In a blue heavy meta, you want to target your opponents' resources to keep them from countering everything. What kind of resources do they depend on? Land? Hokori, Winter Orb, Norn/Linvala+Living Plane. Artifacts? Kataki/Stony Silence. Dorks? Elesh Norn. Lots of Cards? Spirit of the Labyrinth. You can also metagame. My list is a baseline for the general meta. I removed several of the tax pieces because creature oriented midrange is prominent now, but if your meta is instant heavy feel free to lean back into the tax pieces or even add blue specific hate.
Per card draw, there is a balance to be found between tutor density and card advantage, especially with the yard as a potential resource. Phyrexian Arena is great (though I'm enjoying Dark Tutelage more since it doesn't say 'draw') and you should run it if it makes sense. Necropotence would be in if Survival of the Fittest weren't so crucial to the gameplan.
I'm noticing on Cobblepotts list that a lot of the "cost" stax effects have been taken out(vryn wingmare and glowrider and thorn), while still retaining the "effect" stax effects(eidolon and teeg and labyrinth). I was curious what the reason for taking these out are, and if it is a strong idea then why keep thalia in at all?
Under Vancouver there's been a significant swing over to creature oriented midrange. Thus, tax effects that hurt noncreature spells are less widely applicable. I keep Thalia because you do still run into storm or counterspell lists from time to time and need to have some outs to deal with them.
That makes sense, keep her as the strongest choice of the multitude.
I'll have to try taking Iona out. She has been alright but i feel like she is very meta dependent while every deck uses artifacts that SS shuts down.
I have loved arbor elf as well. Do you think there is potential for null rod, sphere of resistance, or static orb? or is static orb too much lock down on ourselves?
I've taken Iona out too. With the swing to creature heavy lists, Elesh Norn has taken over as the most powerful card in the deck (of course besides Boonweaver).
Per Null Rod, spheres and orbs, it's a meta call. I wouldn't run Static Orb because there isn't a great way for us to break parity short of janky niche pieces.
So C16 decks are gonna be 4-color. This got me wondering, if they printed a better Boonweaver commander in WUBG, what cards would you all want to try out?
These were the ones that came to my mind, in order of my confidence in them:
Noble Hierarch
Intuition
Gilded Drake
Body Double
flip Jace
Flash
"Instead of building a fast car to win the race, you fill the race track with manure and drive your tractor to victory.
That is stax."
~cmv_lawyer, 2016
This is a difficult question, one that I've been Pondering for a bit. Blue gives access to more efficient draw, countermagic, more hatebears, stax pieces, and alternate wincons. Do we expand on the hatebear aspect of the list and move toward a Derevi + B? Do we keep Karador mostly as it is and just add draw/countermagic? Does it become something altogether different? There are so many dimensions and potential directions for it to go that we'll have an enormous amount of conjecture, brainstorming, testing, trial, and error before we get to the correct blend. Also, the actual WUBG commander's abilities will likely influence the skew the list eventually takes. I'm very interested to see what we get.
So yesterday, I've played a game which Elesh + Living Plane just kept winning me games.
First game pretty went mana dorks to cast null rod and baited a counterspell then played a survival. Pitched a creature to get Elesh then get Loyal Retainers. Got back Elesh and played Living planes. Everyone scooped.
Second game, turn 3 winter orb then some hatebears and crop rotate into gaea's cradle to break parity. Imp seal for crpytolith then drew and played Sidisi for Living Planes since I drew an Elesh haha!! Orb and crypto with carpet + gaea's is no joke haha.
Third game, I played saffi and had a pattern of rebirth in my hand with living planes and reanimate. I sacced saffi with rebirth and got elesh. Before I could play living planes they killed my elseh. So I reanimate my elesh and proceeded with living planes LOL. They scooped afterwards
@4zuresky: Congrats on your wins! Who were you facing in those games? Any thoughts on the deck itself?
Haha thanks! I played against waste not combo and maelstrom food chain. Then played against maelstrom food chain and damia combo that uses deadeye and palinchron with blue sun zenith. Finally I played against jeleva storm and damia combo from before.
In the fourth I responded to jelevas cracking a fetchland with Aven mindcensor hehehehe. He scooped because he couldn't find anything and only had a sunken ruin with no way to create color mana. Damia wrecked me afterwards because I didn't draw any good stax pieces nor good synergies to work with. I lost the roll too or else I could have played mindcensor for damia's ramping with nature's lore and cultivate.
I love the deck overall, but I run out of gas easily so I'm leaning towards diff drawing options. I've tried dark tutelage like cobblepott suggested; however, it hurts me too much. I might try phyrexian arena in place of the tutelage.
While piloting the deck I realized that you have to understand what your opponents hands are like based on their reactions and may need to be either aggressive or hold back. When creature stax pieces go to the grave, casting karador is pretty good at bringing them back. I personally replaced iona with Armageddon because of how lethal a well timed MLD can tilt games. I used to play Armageddon stax in legacy which is why I have flagstones of trokair in there too. Mana dorks also break this parity and allow us to recover quicker. I added victimize to allow instant comboing or stax if I have two important pieces in the grave. I haven't gotten around to play buried alive as much as I liked so I would want more testing.
Also, winter orb has new old rules on it now. We might be to abuse this somehow even though I haven't figure out how.
It's pretty much exactly because of stax that I want to start setting up the draws rather than paying extra for them. It stays longer on the board and draws more than 3 cards IF it stays. However, as you said, you can scry + draw right away. If there is Thalia, guardian of thraben or Thorn of amethyst in the field it would cost 4-5 rather than 3 due to our own hatebears and I mull pretty hard for Thalia due to my combo meta. I do think that Phyrexian Arena and all those drawing cards is anti-synergistic with Spirit of the labyrinth.
Hi guys. New to the discussion here, but I've been lurking for quite a while.
I'm constructing my own Karador deck by the guidelines in this thread, while struggling (and failing) to get the cards on the higher cost end, so I'll probably be skipping the Linvala + Living Plane combo. At any rate, my meta is more Kaalia and Krenko aggro decks and several midrange, and I'd love hearing your suggestions for good cards to include against these compositions.
I'm wondering about several suggestions and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Lots of people have been complaining about MLD... How often do you encounter it, maybe it's worth slotting in a dedicated MLD-hate card?
If you encounter a lot of Armageddon and Ruination I'd consider something like Terra Eternal - while not the best, it can be tutored by Rector and recurred by Titan, so it could be rather useful.
Perhaps you're suffering more from stax effects and from Cataclysm - for that and for other uses I'd heavily consider Sigarda, Host of Herons. Fetchable by GSZ and really difficult to get rid of, in addition to greatly improving our overall board state.
More nifty cards I've been thinking about have been:
Liliana - if not Veil, then Liliana, Heretical Healer. She flips almost 100% of the time with our composition, has a much better time staying on the board because of her first ability being +2, and can easily recur our small creatures if needed. Her ultimate is gg if we have a creature comp versus us (and for us in general). When she dies she can be recurred as a 3CMC permanent by Titan and as a 2 power creature by Reveillark for longer attrition potential.
Bygone Bishop - Again, probably for less cutthroat metas, but still very useful. While mentor is a 2/2 bear which requires you to pay 1 immediately, the bishop is a much better body that lets you pay for cards whenever you're comfortable. The casting restriction doesn't really hurt us since we cast cards through Karador's ability, and usually the cards we reanimate are too fat for the mentor anyway.
Matter Reshaper - Personally a card that I am dying to experiment with. Most of our deck is CMC 3 and below (and permanents), so almost any card revealed when it dies is going to go on the field. You could even utilize Sensei's Divining Top to set animate dead and the like to be on the top of the library, bringing the creature back when it hits play, which can lead to more cards revealed. Colorless mana is a problem, but with painlands and phyrexian tower and high market and the like it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
The deck typically has enough many dorks and other alternate mana sources that it gets hit less hard by MLD than most decks. If it's super prevalent in your meta, Crucible of Worlds might be worth sticking in. cryptolith rite also helps.
The deck runs over most common forms of stax, and even plays several stax pieces itself. Not an issue usually.
Lili, Bishop, and Reshaper all don't do enough for the deck to justify inclusion.
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"Instead of building a fast car to win the race, you fill the race track with manure and drive your tractor to victory.
That is stax."
~cmv_lawyer, 2016
I'm surprised Grand Abolisher isn't on the list as a hatebear. Is there a particular reason why he doesn't make the cut? I feal if you're trying to protect your combo he's the best thing you can have.
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Modern
Competitive: GW Hatebears - UG Infect - BGW Liege Rhino
Casual: GR Titan Ramp - BR Aggro
WIP: BUW Control Mill
I see. I was thinking if you drop him and he doesn't get destroyed, then you win on your next turn.
I think it would be a meta call, but unless you were anticipating a bunch of single removal (which is typically inefficient in multi-player), you really don't need him.
I absolutely agree with you. I was merely giving scenarios in which the cards could be of use. Tutoring OtA with Shred Memory to get a Skullclamp is a over the top play that would only be relevant 1% of the time - that's what kind of play it is. You just talked about telegraphing plays - a play like that would be okay if you or someone had the board lock down and you where going to draw some cards while you're letting your stax pieces do their jobs. there's a lot of variables that it would cripple your board. - I mean Karador would turn any mana dork into a sign in blood a turn, that's not really "crippling". Again, are the suggested cards good in the deck in it's current form being discussed on this thread? Nope. I just like not completely writing stuff off - you never know when a suggestion will galvanize something amazing.
Anywho, love the discussion going on in this thread. gma, keattz, and others - you guys are really throwing around great ideas and strategy - especially after cobblepot's interest in the deck waned. Keep up the good work guys!
If we're talking about a turn 3 play for draw i'd probably go with phyrexina arena.
tutelage telegraphs pretty hard, mentor needs a specific hand.
Skullclamp i can feel it, but only if i have enough dorks to start with.
Currently i'm running painful, read, and arena. And honestly not feeling too hot with read the bones
I too am a bigger fan of arena compared to tutelage though tutelage gets around spirit of the labyrinth, whereas arena becomes "take 1 damage per turn, no benefit".
As for PT v RtB. I find read the bones if more useful when the board is uneven in some way, leading you to need to search for either answers and a way to close and read gives you better selection, while painful truths tend to be better in more even game states where the raw card advantage is worth more than the selection, as you are looking for generalized, non specific choices.
Skullclamp vs Mentor i think comes down to your meta more than anything else. I get more use from clamp than from mentor personally, but my meta has more creature removal than artifact/enchantment hate, and there are greater things to fear than the clamp.
Most of us do not run ethersworn canonist, but in a meta of thick with storm slotting in that plus some other cost taxers could prove beneficial.
TLDR: several of the card choices that are being discussed more recently are more of meta/personal style fine tuning decisions.
Sooo... The hottest topic for me is instant card advantage versus incremental card advantage. Personally I prefer cards that generate positive CA at once (Painful Truths and Read the Bones). Keattz and Cobb prefer Skullclamps, Mentor of the Meeks and Phyrexian Arenas/Dark Tutelages. What do you think about that?
As stated above, I feel this is really a meta choice. If you are the fastest deck at the table, thenot generally the +1 or +2 oder RtB and PT would generally serve you better. On the flip side, if you find yourself slowing the game a lot- the draw over time by PA and Dark Tutelage should help more with that grind. The long game benefits these cards more.
I am a huge fan of Dark Tutelage over Phyrexian Arena. I have hosed so many other decks with a spirit of the labyrinth it is starting to get ridiculous and draws so much hate. Even buying a couple turns while people burn tutors to deal with it is well worth it.
I am currently running kataki, stone silence, and aura shards. I play against a very heavy artifact/enchantment meta that almost always has blue as well. I combo'd off the first few weeks but after a month of playing I may have to go even more stax route. The reason I have yet to do so is the tutors are just so good at getting the answer you need. Even without committing to a stax vs. race combo deck the amount of hate you can tutor up is great. However, because of this and other decks I play against we have long slow games that end up just ending after the board wipe (usually play 6 man someone always board wipes) to either boonweaver combo or the kiki-jiki or sharum combo player ending the game. Due to this, sweepers, board wipes, counters, I much prefer the draw over time cards like dark tutelage or arena as way to consistently rebuild.
Aura shards let me cut all the instant or sorcery speed removal I had to board in after getting hit with torpor orb an rest in peace 5-6 games in a row.
Currently building a land base (taking forever) and trying to anticipate graveyard hate that I know is coming. Looking into gravepurge, thran foundary, feldons cane, and riftsweeper.
This is the list I run, been slowing building over time. Runs very similar to cobblepots original list. I still need to go in and switch out 2-3 cards after last week I dont remember exactly which ones yes but the list is mostly up to date. I know at the very least I want to try out Thalia, Heretical Cathar
aura shards[/card] cannot remove torpor orb.
your only cards to remove it are beast within pernicious deed and anguished unmaking.
Thats why I save anguished unmaking. Also running pernicious deed as well. Probably wasnt as clear in my reply as I could have been. Aura shards lets me save my other removal for things like torpor orb.
So far most board wipes are for creatures, or are of the return to hand variety so I dont usually lose my enchantments. Usually sylvan tutor or survival of the fittest eat the targeted removal.
My personal take on aura shards is that with so many 1 and 2 drops its like having 10 reclamation sages and acidic slime also lets you wipe the board (in a limited since) with an infinite pair
Also, Read the bones has been fantastic, but Painful Truths has been a little less consistent overall and I agree with them over muse or arena, but Skullclamp has come in clutch several times.
Sun Titan is a strong recursion card and an infinite combo piece with altar and saffi/fiendhunter so his removal would require testing as he can be an alternate wincon if pattern and living plane lock both get locked out in some way.
I'll have to try taking Iona out. She has been alright but i feel like she is very meta dependent while every deck uses artifacts that SS shuts down.
I have loved arbor elf as well. Do you think there is potential for null rod, sphere of resistance, or static orb? or is static orb too much lock down on ourselves?
I have also still used mindslicer and while it isn't always useful, it is rarely useless and has helped me greatly in several games.
Teeg is pretty instrumental to keeping your board in a manageable state. If he's online, Toxic Deluge and a kicked Cyclonic Rift are the only things to be worried about. If you keep getting Deluged, maybe throw in some rattlesnakes like Mindslicer to reduce the profitability of wraths.
In a blue heavy meta, you want to target your opponents' resources to keep them from countering everything. What kind of resources do they depend on? Land? Hokori, Winter Orb, Norn/Linvala+Living Plane. Artifacts? Kataki/Stony Silence. Dorks? Elesh Norn. Lots of Cards? Spirit of the Labyrinth. You can also metagame. My list is a baseline for the general meta. I removed several of the tax pieces because creature oriented midrange is prominent now, but if your meta is instant heavy feel free to lean back into the tax pieces or even add blue specific hate.
Per card draw, there is a balance to be found between tutor density and card advantage, especially with the yard as a potential resource. Phyrexian Arena is great (though I'm enjoying Dark Tutelage more since it doesn't say 'draw') and you should run it if it makes sense. Necropotence would be in if Survival of the Fittest weren't so crucial to the gameplan.
Under Vancouver there's been a significant swing over to creature oriented midrange. Thus, tax effects that hurt noncreature spells are less widely applicable. I keep Thalia because you do still run into storm or counterspell lists from time to time and need to have some outs to deal with them.
I've taken Iona out too. With the swing to creature heavy lists, Elesh Norn has taken over as the most powerful card in the deck (of course besides Boonweaver).
Per Null Rod, spheres and orbs, it's a meta call. I wouldn't run Static Orb because there isn't a great way for us to break parity short of janky niche pieces.
These were the ones that came to my mind, in order of my confidence in them:
Noble Hierarch
Intuition
Gilded Drake
Body Double
flip Jace
Flash
UBR Jeleva Grixis Storm
WBG Karador Boonweaver Combo
WUBRG Food Chain Tazri
That is stax."
~cmv_lawyer, 2016
WUI Don't Mean to Brago, But... RWBI'll Kaalia Back Later GBWKaradora the Graveyard Explorer BRGLive Long and Prosshper
BGUMuscle Plasm URGImperial Animarch BGLemon Meren Pie GWStop Being Such a Sisay UTefearsome RGWMarath of the Titans
UBRNow Watch me Trai Trai RWBAleshstax GWUPrison Can Roon Your Life BRGrenzo: Your Doom UArcum's Asylum of Stax
BGFeel the Ground Croak GThe All New 2016 Yisan Wanderer URFo Rizzle Mah Mizzle UBRA Game of Marchess
First game pretty went mana dorks to cast null rod and baited a counterspell then played a survival. Pitched a creature to get Elesh then get Loyal Retainers. Got back Elesh and played Living planes. Everyone scooped.
Second game, turn 3 winter orb then some hatebears and crop rotate into gaea's cradle to break parity. Imp seal for crpytolith then drew and played Sidisi for Living Planes since I drew an Elesh haha!! Orb and crypto with carpet + gaea's is no joke haha.
Third game, I played saffi and had a pattern of rebirth in my hand with living planes and reanimate. I sacced saffi with rebirth and got elesh. Before I could play living planes they killed my elseh. So I reanimate my elesh and proceeded with living planes LOL. They scooped afterwards
UBR Jeleva Grixis Storm
WBG Karador Boonweaver Combo
WUBRG Food Chain Tazri
Haha thanks! I played against waste not combo and maelstrom food chain. Then played against maelstrom food chain and damia combo that uses deadeye and palinchron with blue sun zenith. Finally I played against jeleva storm and damia combo from before.
In the fourth I responded to jelevas cracking a fetchland with Aven mindcensor hehehehe. He scooped because he couldn't find anything and only had a sunken ruin with no way to create color mana. Damia wrecked me afterwards because I didn't draw any good stax pieces nor good synergies to work with. I lost the roll too or else I could have played mindcensor for damia's ramping with nature's lore and cultivate.
I love the deck overall, but I run out of gas easily so I'm leaning towards diff drawing options. I've tried dark tutelage like cobblepott suggested; however, it hurts me too much. I might try phyrexian arena in place of the tutelage.
While piloting the deck I realized that you have to understand what your opponents hands are like based on their reactions and may need to be either aggressive or hold back. When creature stax pieces go to the grave, casting karador is pretty good at bringing them back. I personally replaced iona with Armageddon because of how lethal a well timed MLD can tilt games. I used to play Armageddon stax in legacy which is why I have flagstones of trokair in there too. Mana dorks also break this parity and allow us to recover quicker. I added victimize to allow instant comboing or stax if I have two important pieces in the grave. I haven't gotten around to play buried alive as much as I liked so I would want more testing.
Also, winter orb has new old rules on it now. We might be to abuse this somehow even though I haven't figure out how.
UBR Jeleva Grixis Storm
WBG Karador Boonweaver Combo
WUBRG Food Chain Tazri
How does your meta look like?
UBR Jeleva Grixis Storm
WBG Karador Boonweaver Combo
WUBRG Food Chain Tazri
I'm constructing my own Karador deck by the guidelines in this thread, while struggling (and failing) to get the cards on the higher cost end, so I'll probably be skipping the Linvala + Living Plane combo. At any rate, my meta is more Kaalia and Krenko aggro decks and several midrange, and I'd love hearing your suggestions for good cards to include against these compositions.
I'm wondering about several suggestions and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Lots of people have been complaining about MLD... How often do you encounter it, maybe it's worth slotting in a dedicated MLD-hate card?
If you encounter a lot of Armageddon and Ruination I'd consider something like Terra Eternal - while not the best, it can be tutored by Rector and recurred by Titan, so it could be rather useful.
Perhaps you're suffering more from stax effects and from Cataclysm - for that and for other uses I'd heavily consider Sigarda, Host of Herons. Fetchable by GSZ and really difficult to get rid of, in addition to greatly improving our overall board state.
More nifty cards I've been thinking about have been:
The deck runs over most common forms of stax, and even plays several stax pieces itself. Not an issue usually.
Lili, Bishop, and Reshaper all don't do enough for the deck to justify inclusion.
That is stax."
~cmv_lawyer, 2016
WUI Don't Mean to Brago, But... RWBI'll Kaalia Back Later GBWKaradora the Graveyard Explorer BRGLive Long and Prosshper
BGUMuscle Plasm URGImperial Animarch BGLemon Meren Pie GWStop Being Such a Sisay UTefearsome RGWMarath of the Titans
UBRNow Watch me Trai Trai RWBAleshstax GWUPrison Can Roon Your Life BRGrenzo: Your Doom UArcum's Asylum of Stax
BGFeel the Ground Croak GThe All New 2016 Yisan Wanderer URFo Rizzle Mah Mizzle UBRA Game of Marchess
Competitive: GW Hatebears - UG Infect - BGW Liege Rhino
Casual: GR Titan Ramp - BR Aggro
WIP: BUW Control Mill
Competitive: GW Hatebears - UG Infect - BGW Liege Rhino
Casual: GR Titan Ramp - BR Aggro
WIP: BUW Control Mill
Competitive: GW Hatebears - UG Infect - BGW Liege Rhino
Casual: GR Titan Ramp - BR Aggro
WIP: BUW Control Mill
I think it would be a meta call, but unless you were anticipating a bunch of single removal (which is typically inefficient in multi-player), you really don't need him.
..
Azusa - Derevi - Glissa - Mizzix - Sharuum - Wanderer - Wort
both fetch animate dead/dance and pattern of rebirth. + heliod is creature searchable.
Heliod's Pilgrim, as you said, is a creature hence easily tutorable. Gives you Dance of the Dead, Animate Dead, and even Gift of Immortality if your list runs it. I can even see synergies like playing it to get a reanimate spell for that Carrion Feeder in the yard, then poding it into Academy Rector.
Open the Armory costs 1 less, is tutorable with Shred Memory, and gets Skullclamp
Anywho, love the discussion going on in this thread. gma, keattz, and others - you guys are really throwing around great ideas and strategy - especially after cobblepot's interest in the deck waned. Keep up the good work guys!
tutelage telegraphs pretty hard, mentor needs a specific hand.
Skullclamp i can feel it, but only if i have enough dorks to start with.
Currently i'm running painful, read, and arena. And honestly not feeling too hot with read the bones
As for PT v RtB. I find read the bones if more useful when the board is uneven in some way, leading you to need to search for either answers and a way to close and read gives you better selection, while painful truths tend to be better in more even game states where the raw card advantage is worth more than the selection, as you are looking for generalized, non specific choices.
Skullclamp vs Mentor i think comes down to your meta more than anything else. I get more use from clamp than from mentor personally, but my meta has more creature removal than artifact/enchantment hate, and there are greater things to fear than the clamp.
Most of us do not run ethersworn canonist, but in a meta of thick with storm slotting in that plus some other cost taxers could prove beneficial.
TLDR: several of the card choices that are being discussed more recently are more of meta/personal style fine tuning decisions.
As stated above, I feel this is really a meta choice. If you are the fastest deck at the table, thenot generally the +1 or +2 oder RtB and PT would generally serve you better. On the flip side, if you find yourself slowing the game a lot- the draw over time by PA and Dark Tutelage should help more with that grind. The long game benefits these cards more.
Aura shards let me cut all the instant or sorcery speed removal I had to board in after getting hit with torpor orb an rest in peace 5-6 games in a row.
Currently building a land base (taking forever) and trying to anticipate graveyard hate that I know is coming. Looking into gravepurge, thran foundary, feldons cane, and riftsweeper.
This is the list I run, been slowing building over time. Runs very similar to cobblepots original list. I still need to go in and switch out 2-3 cards after last week I dont remember exactly which ones yes but the list is mostly up to date. I know at the very least I want to try out Thalia, Heretical Cathar
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/20-06-16-to-infinity-and-beyond/
Thats why I save anguished unmaking. Also running pernicious deed as well. Probably wasnt as clear in my reply as I could have been. Aura shards lets me save my other removal for things like torpor orb.
So far most board wipes are for creatures, or are of the return to hand variety so I dont usually lose my enchantments. Usually sylvan tutor or survival of the fittest eat the targeted removal.
My personal take on aura shards is that with so many 1 and 2 drops its like having 10 reclamation sages and acidic slime also lets you wipe the board (in a limited since) with an infinite pair