To further the discussion on the two though:
What is the primary purpose of Lingering Souls in the deck for us? For me, its in the board and its mainly against the grindy mid range match ups, Affinity and Infect. Its there for the bodies, and 2 bodies alone isnt impressive, but 4 is enough to warrant playing it, especially if you can play it and hold up 2 mana on turn 4 after flashback.
The primary function of lingering souls is "card advantage" or value. In this deck we can get card advantage by negating our opponent's removal/sweepers with instant speed protection spirits, or exiling spells with spell queller, all of which is done by improving our board state with evasive creatures. Since the deck doesn't have access to draw spells, we are relying on our topdecks to maintain the pressure and draw more threats/disruption. Souls has built in value, and gets us multiple bodies for one card, and is resilient to discard effects. It ensures we keep pressuring the opponent's life total and that we can add board presence if the opponent is successfully killing our threats with one for one removal, or if we don't draw any gas.
Its role is similar to collected company in bant, except we get 100% 4 tokens, while CoCo gets up to 2 creatures than are better than 1/1 flying spirits, but with variance. The other difference with bant is that souls recquire a small black splash, while bant needs to build their mana base so that they get green for hierarch turn one, and will likely take more damage from their lands. Bant can also avoid the "not enough good 2-drops" issue by playing noble hierarch allowing them to overload the 3 drop slots.
To further the discussion on the two though:
What is the primary purpose of Lingering Souls in the deck for us? For me, its in the board and its mainly against the grindy mid range match ups, Affinity and Infect. Its there for the bodies, and 2 bodies alone isnt impressive, but 4 is enough to warrant playing it, especially if you can play it and hold up 2 mana on turn 4 after flashback.
The primary function of lingering souls is "card advantage" or value. In this deck we can get card advantage by negating our opponent's removal/sweepers with instant speed protection spirits, or exiling spells with spell queller, all of which is done by improving our board state with evasive creatures. Since the deck doesn't have access to draw spells, we are relying on our topdecks to maintain the pressure and draw more threats/disruption. Souls has built in value, and gets us multiple bodies for one card, and is resilient to discard effects. It ensures we keep pressuring the opponent's life total and that we can add board presence if the opponent is successfully killing our threats with one for one removal, or if we don't draw any gas.
Its role is similar to collected company in bant, except we get 100% 4 tokens, while CoCo gets up to 2 creatures than are better than 1/1 flying spirits, but with variance. The other difference with bant is that souls recquire a small black splash, while bant needs to build their mana base so that they get green for hierarch turn one, and will likely take more damage from their lands. Bant can also avoid the "not enough good 2-drops" issue by playing noble hierarch allowing them to overload the 3 drop slots.
This is a pretty good description of how Bant with CoCo and Esper with Lingering Souls play out differently. The one thing I will add to all of that is that with CoCo you actually get rewarded for having more 3 drops and less 2 drops. The lack of a good two drop is a problem in non-Bant builds I think, which is why I'm leaning towards Bant at the moment.
Played an FNM last week at a LGS with the W/U spirits I posted a few pages ago. Went 3-2.
Round 1, 2-0 vs Abzan midrange
Round 2, 2-1 vs Abzan Evolution
Round 3, 2-1 vs W/U control
Round 4, 0-2 vs burn
Round 5, 0-2 vs G/B infect
Had a LOT of fun with the spirits, but as I am not running as much interaction besides the creatures themselves and path I found it difficult especially in the last match up to deal with some board states. I was thinking about unsubstantiate. What is everyone's thoughts on this card? I really like it in the fact it gets around uncounterable spells and also allows us to save a spirit if needed but since it doesnt have the card draw of say a remand, is it worth running?
Ok your main deck is very similar to mine, and i've had great success with it. I would never run unsubstantiate, seems like both modes are bad. I know it is flexible but i don't like the card in modern, because the power level is so low. Also i would run moorland haunt main, the card has been amazing for me. Engineered explosives is also a great sideboard card to run. Takes care of small stuff while d-sphere takes care of the big stuff.
Other than that you seem well equipped to take down most decks. I don't know how the last 2 games played out but i would say you have a reasonable chance vs these matchups.
It is not uncommon for me as well to play vs not top tier decks, but we shouldn't complain about that, we're playing one as well But yeah seeing your matchups i can definitely see the value in remand here, countermagic gets you ahead vs all the combo decks you played. Souls shine vs fairer decks for sure, i guess playing it over counter magic is a meta call. What i do like about souls is it complements our "linear" plan giving us bodies when we are the beatdown deck, and giving chumpers when we are the control deck. If i was going to a tournament and knew i would face the decks you faced i would pack some mana leaks over it for sure though.
I don't see a lot of jund honestly, i've played two matches vs it (out of about 30 total since i started playing the deck), i won one and lost one (out of the six match losses i have had total). I think most decks are 50/50 vs Jund, and thats fine.
If you are looking to improve this particular matchup lingering souls is obviously great. I also bring in relic of progenitus and kira, great glass spinner for game 2 and 3. I found aether vial pretty important in that matchup to counter removal by flashing in protective spirits, but that might be me just not liking to side out vials ever. Getting maximum value out of your flash stuff is key, but it can be hard to hold on to your spirits in hand when the got liliana of the veil or targetted discard. Not much more you can do, and it will still be close to 50/50 no matter what, which is why jund is a great deck.
Right now I'm trying out a red splash in my list instead of black, for more removal and late game reach. This lets me run GoST with less worry. The red cards I'm running are:
4 Bolt
4 Electrolyze
Excited to see how more removal can help our aggro matchups, because I always feel like I'm trying to topdeck paths and Worships so I don't lose. Maybe itll help out with keeping the pressure off. I also feel like bolts help us with reach and explosiveness.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: G Stompy G UR Izzet Prowess/Delver UR UWB Spirits UWB UWB Brain Control UWB WUB Esper Reveillark WUB EDH: WUBRG Horde of Notions WUBRG W Nine-and-a-Half TailsW WGUR Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis WGUR
Right now I'm trying out a red splash in my list instead of black, for more removal and late game reach. This lets me run GoST with less worry. The red cards I'm running are:
4 Bolt
4 Electrolyze
Excited to see how more removal can help our aggro matchups, because I always feel like I'm trying to topdeck paths and Worships so I don't lose. Maybe itll help out with keeping the pressure off. I also feel like bolts help us with reach and explosiveness.
Bolt and electrolyze are great cards and all but what are you taking out for them? Are you still plying vial with all these non-creature spells? I'm worried that you'll end up too threat light, could you post your list?
Right now I'm trying out a red splash in my list instead of black, for more removal and late game reach. This lets me run GoST with less worry. The red cards I'm running are:
4 Bolt
4 Electrolyze
Excited to see how more removal can help our aggro matchups, because I always feel like I'm trying to topdeck paths and Worships so I don't lose. Maybe itll help out with keeping the pressure off. I also feel like bolts help us with reach and explosiveness.
Bolt and electrolyze are great cards and all but what are you taking out for them? Are you still plying vial with all these non-creature spells? I'm worried that you'll end up too threat light, could you post your list?
Sure, here it is:
Creatures:
4 Spell Queller
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Rattlechains
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Drogskol Captain
3 Geist of Saint Traft
Sorry about not linking the cards, I'm doing this from my phone
Basically the deck is trying to lose the sorcery speed LS and Inquisition for more removal against fast decks. It plays more to spirit's tribal strengths of flashing in cards. With the inclusion of more removal GoST starts to look more appealing, so we run him to make up for the power lost by cutting Souls.
I'm questioning Captain in this list however, because he's okay but redundant with GoST, where he really shines with LS. Maybe Nebelgast Herald could fill his spot, flash also helps.
I also kind of hate Selfless Spirit and I really want a flash spirit for his slot. I also don't want to run Snapcaster.
I haven't had any great testing with it because of bad shuffling on my part, but I'll try to get some games in. The concept seems appealing but it might be lackluster in practice.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: G Stompy G UR Izzet Prowess/Delver UR UWB Spirits UWB UWB Brain Control UWB WUB Esper Reveillark WUB EDH: WUBRG Horde of Notions WUBRG W Nine-and-a-Half TailsW WGUR Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis WGUR
Selfless spirit is great, don't know why you hate it, there aren't more flash spirits anyways, shadows block really spoiled us with the best there is. I have doubts about you list, seems like spirits diluted with jeskai good stuff, but without their best card (snapcaster mage)... I still encourage you to try it out but i'm not very optimistic about this version, maybe you can prove me wrong.
Today i tried something different and welcomed my old friend thalia to the party:
Went 3-1, got bye round one, lost to jeskai prowess aggro, beat jund, and boros good stuff (with boros reckoner and blasphemous act).
In the end i did miss lingering souls, thalia was good but i like that souls, in the dark, is never bad in this deck because its just more bodies to beat with. If my meta becomes too unfair i'll bring back thalia (i liked her better than more counter magic).
So after lots of testing I'm pretty sure quickling is the 2 drop flier that the deck has been looking for, at least until wizards gives us our last 2 mana flying spirit with upside.
Before getting on my case about no path etc, my thought process is that since this is an aggro tempo deck and we are weak to fast aggro, we need the remands for the card draw and i'd rather bounce something and do 1 damage than put them up a land. In my experience giving them a land came back to bite me on more than one occasion. Also you can do fancy stuff like snag your queller to exile something permanently and then have the queller ready to counter something else. Labyrinth is in for decks that draw cards. Since we can't draw as many cards as merfolk can the next best option is to keep everyone on our level and not draw any either.
Other observations:
- "spirits is just a bad faeries": no, just no. Most faeries are 1/1 and all of our spirits hit way harder than faeries ever will. All we have to do is blank all their removal (which this deck does really well) and assemble 2 spirits and 2 drogskol captains/captain+image and we are swinging at least 14 flying damage with a board they can't interact with. Faeries have more board interaction sure, but faeries are easy to kill. We don't care about the board as much as we care about tempo and blanking removal so we can swing 6+ damage every turn.
So, I haven't made it to any larger tournaments yet, but I'm undefeated through 3 local tournaments with my Poltergeists (Hate Spirits) build. I've played against pretty much everything so far and been beating it, but it's still a small sample size. I originally had a couple wraths in the board, but the deck is so good vs removal that Worship seems like a straight upgrade and it's better in a lot more matchups. I also changed Kor Firewalker into Spellskite to help vs Infect and Boggles.
I agree with cutting vials vs Jund especially as it's bad vs K Command which I try to make even worse with Rest in Peace. No, they aren't a graveyard deck, but between 4 Goyf, 2 Scooze, and 2-3 K Command, my 2 rip neuter a good chunk of their deck and then it often draws a decay or pulse. The 4th path and meddling mage fill out the sideboard plan. Mage isn't great against them because they don't rely on 1 card, but when you are already invalidating large parts of their deck, making lily or bolt dead draws too can be too much for them. All of the grindy decks have seemed not too hard for this build so far as constraining their mana and invalidating their removal allows us to beat them down pretty consistently.
Tron just seems like a bye for this build. The hatebears and ghost quarters combine to slow them down and they just can't do anything relevant until they die.
Same goes for Titanshift and Scapeshift. Thalia and Leonin Arbiter along with Ghost Quarter are allstars here and very tough for them to beat when we can protect them.
Affinity can go either way before board. Arbiter and Thalia are weak here, but fliers are great vs them and our guys are naturally bigger with ghost quarter lining up well vs their manlands. Post board, we ditch the vials and non fliers except 1 Thalia for everything but the Negates and graveyard hate and 5 of those enchantments we board in can just KO them.
Infect isn't as easy as some of the other matchups, but Thalia and Arbiter are both very live here and Ghost Quarter is fantastic as well. The unblockable guy is the only concern, but we have enough interaction that this is at worst 50/50. Selfless Spirit is pretty lackluster vs them so that's the one that comes out.
Dredge's fastest draws can be pretty hard to beat, but their average ones are much easier. Post board we have 5 cards that they need an answer to in order to win and our evasive clock is very good against them.
The spell based combo decks like Storm and Ad Nauseum are very good matchups as Thalia, Wanderer, and Queller are so good vs them. Living End is much easier than Dredge as we have many ways to fight spells.
Against Burn, Thalia is fantastic while Arbiter may be too slow on the draw. We can slow them down enough to win the race.
Zoo style decks can be harder because our creatures are smaller than theirs, but Selfless Spirit makes for some great trades.
Suicide Zoo and Bloo are very quick and can sometimes just get a nut draw, but are spell based and we do a great job of slowing down spell based decks enough to be able to win the race.
The deck can have some insane starts on the play that are very hard for anything to beat. Protecting an Arbiter with a couple ghost quarter activations on 3rd turn can be GG and Thalia shuts a few decks down on it's own. The entire thing synergizes very well with a mana denial plan that only Path doesn't go along with which is why there are only 3 main, but Path is just that good, can be mitigated by Arbiter, and isn't needed when the mana denial plan is working. Mausoleum Wanderer, Selfless Spirit, and Kira, Great Glass-Spinner are so good at protecting the hatebears and that is what makes the deck so good and better than the other versions of Hatebears IMO. I saw someone talk about losing to Blood Moon. I've had 2 different opponents try this against me, but between Pathing my own guy, Ghost Quartering my own land, Aether Vial, and just Spell Quellering it, I wasn't affected all that much.
@Voltage: i've been playing modern death and taxes for a long time and my meta was too hostile to it, so i gave up on it. I can see the value of free wins with leonin arbiter + ghost quarter, and if your meta allows it i think it is pretty good.
@schmitty247: quickling is interesting, i like the card but bouncing our own stuff could be bad tempo sometimes? The vapor snag argument i can get behind, but path is so good, i'll be the conservative one on this question and hold on to my paths.
Some time ago somebody here suggested pride of the clouds as our missing 2-drop of choice. I'd love to try it soon in this list:
I think obviously the lingering souls version is the right one for it. I like that pride gets pumped by opposing flyers too, making it rule the sky and solve our weakness to bigger flyers (restoration angel mainly).
What do you mean by hostile, was it all really fast aggressive decks? Even there, if they play fetches, he's good on the play. I haven't come across anything that seems worse than 50% so far. It could be that I've been getting lucky, but this deck definitely seems to have good matchups vs several tier 1 decks plus quite a few tier 2s. It really seems to fill in the weak spots the traditional hatebear lists have.
D&T is great in a meta full of unfairs deck, and there was a time i had lots of success with it. My meta shifted to more creature based «fair» decks, where your little 2/2s don't compete with opposing bigger stuff. Yes sometimes you get them with gq + arbiter + thalia but most of the times these little bears get outclassed quickly. Maybe mixing them with spirits solves this issues by having a solid evasive beatdown plan. I'm experimenting myself with thalia, and like her so far.
Yeah, on paper, the aggro matches don't look as good, and maybe it's been luck, but for instance, I played 5 games vs Suicide Zoo yesterday and went 4-1 without sideboarding. The funniest part was when I Imaged his Death's Shadow and mine was bigger than his and his pump spells weren't resolving so he couldn't attack.
For your deck, I think death's shadow zoo is one of the best matchups among aggro decks. They use a lot of non-creature spell and not that many lands, making thalia, guardian of thraben and mausoleum wanderer very strong. Ghost quarter is also very good, even without leonin arbiter, because they play few/no basics, making it easy for you to screw their mana. The addition of spirits makes it even better, because since they do so much dmg to themselves, the flyers can easily finish the job.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
modern:UW spirits, BR goblins
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
The primary function of lingering souls is "card advantage" or value. In this deck we can get card advantage by negating our opponent's removal/sweepers with instant speed protection spirits, or exiling spells with spell queller, all of which is done by improving our board state with evasive creatures. Since the deck doesn't have access to draw spells, we are relying on our topdecks to maintain the pressure and draw more threats/disruption. Souls has built in value, and gets us multiple bodies for one card, and is resilient to discard effects. It ensures we keep pressuring the opponent's life total and that we can add board presence if the opponent is successfully killing our threats with one for one removal, or if we don't draw any gas.
Its role is similar to collected company in bant, except we get 100% 4 tokens, while CoCo gets up to 2 creatures than are better than 1/1 flying spirits, but with variance. The other difference with bant is that souls recquire a small black splash, while bant needs to build their mana base so that they get green for hierarch turn one, and will likely take more damage from their lands. Bant can also avoid the "not enough good 2-drops" issue by playing noble hierarch allowing them to overload the 3 drop slots.
L: Maverick
This is a pretty good description of how Bant with CoCo and Esper with Lingering Souls play out differently. The one thing I will add to all of that is that with CoCo you actually get rewarded for having more 3 drops and less 2 drops. The lack of a good two drop is a problem in non-Bant builds I think, which is why I'm leaning towards Bant at the moment.
Round 1, 2-0 vs Abzan midrange
Round 2, 2-1 vs Abzan Evolution
Round 3, 2-1 vs W/U control
Round 4, 0-2 vs burn
Round 5, 0-2 vs G/B infect
Had a LOT of fun with the spirits, but as I am not running as much interaction besides the creatures themselves and path I found it difficult especially in the last match up to deal with some board states. I was thinking about unsubstantiate. What is everyone's thoughts on this card? I really like it in the fact it gets around uncounterable spells and also allows us to save a spirit if needed but since it doesnt have the card draw of say a remand, is it worth running?
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
Here is the list.
WUBRGCoco/Vial Slivers
WUBRGSlivers of the Void
Pioneer
WUBRGCoco Slivers
Legacy
WUBRGAll in Slivers
Ok your main deck is very similar to mine, and i've had great success with it. I would never run unsubstantiate, seems like both modes are bad. I know it is flexible but i don't like the card in modern, because the power level is so low. Also i would run moorland haunt main, the card has been amazing for me. Engineered explosives is also a great sideboard card to run. Takes care of small stuff while d-sphere takes care of the big stuff.
Other than that you seem well equipped to take down most decks. I don't know how the last 2 games played out but i would say you have a reasonable chance vs these matchups.
It is not uncommon for me as well to play vs not top tier decks, but we shouldn't complain about that, we're playing one as well But yeah seeing your matchups i can definitely see the value in remand here, countermagic gets you ahead vs all the combo decks you played. Souls shine vs fairer decks for sure, i guess playing it over counter magic is a meta call. What i do like about souls is it complements our "linear" plan giving us bodies when we are the beatdown deck, and giving chumpers when we are the control deck. If i was going to a tournament and knew i would face the decks you faced i would pack some mana leaks over it for sure though.
If you are looking to improve this particular matchup lingering souls is obviously great. I also bring in relic of progenitus and kira, great glass spinner for game 2 and 3. I found aether vial pretty important in that matchup to counter removal by flashing in protective spirits, but that might be me just not liking to side out vials ever. Getting maximum value out of your flash stuff is key, but it can be hard to hold on to your spirits in hand when the got liliana of the veil or targetted discard. Not much more you can do, and it will still be close to 50/50 no matter what, which is why jund is a great deck.
4 Bolt
4 Electrolyze
Excited to see how more removal can help our aggro matchups, because I always feel like I'm trying to topdeck paths and Worships so I don't lose. Maybe itll help out with keeping the pressure off. I also feel like bolts help us with reach and explosiveness.
G Stompy G
UR Izzet Prowess/Delver UR
UWB Spirits UWB
UWB Brain Control UWBWUB Esper Reveillark WUB
EDH:
WUBRG Horde of Notions WUBRG
W Nine-and-a-Half TailsW
WGUR Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis WGUR
Bolt and electrolyze are great cards and all but what are you taking out for them? Are you still plying vial with all these non-creature spells? I'm worried that you'll end up too threat light, could you post your list?
Sure, here it is:
Creatures:
4 Spell Queller
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Rattlechains
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Drogskol Captain
3 Geist of Saint Traft
Spells:
4 Path to Exile
2 Spell Snare
4 Lighting Bolt
2 Electrolyze
4 Remand
Lands:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Seachrome Coast
1 Spirebluff Canal
3 Island
3 Mountain
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Ghost Quarter
Sorry about not linking the cards, I'm doing this from my phone
Basically the deck is trying to lose the sorcery speed LS and Inquisition for more removal against fast decks. It plays more to spirit's tribal strengths of flashing in cards. With the inclusion of more removal GoST starts to look more appealing, so we run him to make up for the power lost by cutting Souls.
I'm questioning Captain in this list however, because he's okay but redundant with GoST, where he really shines with LS. Maybe Nebelgast Herald could fill his spot, flash also helps.
I also kind of hate Selfless Spirit and I really want a flash spirit for his slot. I also don't want to run Snapcaster.
I haven't had any great testing with it because of bad shuffling on my part, but I'll try to get some games in. The concept seems appealing but it might be lackluster in practice.
G Stompy G
UR Izzet Prowess/Delver UR
UWB Spirits UWB
UWB Brain Control UWBWUB Esper Reveillark WUB
EDH:
WUBRG Horde of Notions WUBRG
W Nine-and-a-Half TailsW
WGUR Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis WGUR
Today i tried something different and welcomed my old friend thalia to the party:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept heath
2 polluted delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Plains
2 Islands
2 Seachrome coast
2 Cavern of souls
2 Moorland haunt
2 Tectonic edge
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Thalia, guardian of thraben
4 Rattlechains
2 Phantasmal image
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol captain
4 Nebelgast herald
artifact: 4
4 Aether vial
Instants 4
4 Path to exile
2 Detention sphere
2 Rest in peace
2 Pithing needle
2 Engineered explosives
2 Spellskite
2 Burrenton forge-tender
2 Eidolon of rhetoric
1 Kira, great glass-spinner
Went 3-1, got bye round one, lost to jeskai prowess aggro, beat jund, and boros good stuff (with boros reckoner and blasphemous act).
In the end i did miss lingering souls, thalia was good but i like that souls, in the dark, is never bad in this deck because its just more bodies to beat with. If my meta becomes too unfair i'll bring back thalia (i liked her better than more counter magic).
Here's my current deck for reference:
4x Mausoleum Wanderer
2x Phantasmal Image
3x Quickling
4x Rattlechains
4x Selfless Spirit
2x Spirit of the Labyrinth
4x Drogskol Captain
4x Spell Queller
2x Spell Pierce
4x Remand
3x Vapor Snag
Artifacts
4x AEther Vial
Lands
2x Faerie Conclave
4x Flooded Strand
3x Glacial Fortress
4x Hallowed Fountain
4x Island
1x Plains
1x Polluted Delta
1x Seachrome Coast
Before getting on my case about no path etc, my thought process is that since this is an aggro tempo deck and we are weak to fast aggro, we need the remands for the card draw and i'd rather bounce something and do 1 damage than put them up a land. In my experience giving them a land came back to bite me on more than one occasion. Also you can do fancy stuff like snag your queller to exile something permanently and then have the queller ready to counter something else. Labyrinth is in for decks that draw cards. Since we can't draw as many cards as merfolk can the next best option is to keep everyone on our level and not draw any either.
Other observations:
- "spirits is just a bad faeries": no, just no. Most faeries are 1/1 and all of our spirits hit way harder than faeries ever will. All we have to do is blank all their removal (which this deck does really well) and assemble 2 spirits and 2 drogskol captains/captain+image and we are swinging at least 14 flying damage with a board they can't interact with. Faeries have more board interaction sure, but faeries are easy to kill. We don't care about the board as much as we care about tempo and blanking removal so we can swing 6+ damage every turn.
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
4 Leonin Arbiter
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Phantasmal Image
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
1 Kira, Great Glass-spinner
3 Path to Exile
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Adarkar Wastes
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Moorland Haunt
2 Plains
1 Island
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Path to Exile
2 Rest in Peace
3 Stony Silence
1 Meddling Mage
1 Spellskite
2 Negate
2 Detention Sphere
2 Worship
I agree with cutting vials vs Jund especially as it's bad vs K Command which I try to make even worse with Rest in Peace. No, they aren't a graveyard deck, but between 4 Goyf, 2 Scooze, and 2-3 K Command, my 2 rip neuter a good chunk of their deck and then it often draws a decay or pulse. The 4th path and meddling mage fill out the sideboard plan. Mage isn't great against them because they don't rely on 1 card, but when you are already invalidating large parts of their deck, making lily or bolt dead draws too can be too much for them. All of the grindy decks have seemed not too hard for this build so far as constraining their mana and invalidating their removal allows us to beat them down pretty consistently.
Tron just seems like a bye for this build. The hatebears and ghost quarters combine to slow them down and they just can't do anything relevant until they die.
Same goes for Titanshift and Scapeshift. Thalia and Leonin Arbiter along with Ghost Quarter are allstars here and very tough for them to beat when we can protect them.
Affinity can go either way before board. Arbiter and Thalia are weak here, but fliers are great vs them and our guys are naturally bigger with ghost quarter lining up well vs their manlands. Post board, we ditch the vials and non fliers except 1 Thalia for everything but the Negates and graveyard hate and 5 of those enchantments we board in can just KO them.
Infect isn't as easy as some of the other matchups, but Thalia and Arbiter are both very live here and Ghost Quarter is fantastic as well. The unblockable guy is the only concern, but we have enough interaction that this is at worst 50/50. Selfless Spirit is pretty lackluster vs them so that's the one that comes out.
Dredge's fastest draws can be pretty hard to beat, but their average ones are much easier. Post board we have 5 cards that they need an answer to in order to win and our evasive clock is very good against them.
The spell based combo decks like Storm and Ad Nauseum are very good matchups as Thalia, Wanderer, and Queller are so good vs them. Living End is much easier than Dredge as we have many ways to fight spells.
Against Burn, Thalia is fantastic while Arbiter may be too slow on the draw. We can slow them down enough to win the race.
Zoo style decks can be harder because our creatures are smaller than theirs, but Selfless Spirit makes for some great trades.
Suicide Zoo and Bloo are very quick and can sometimes just get a nut draw, but are spell based and we do a great job of slowing down spell based decks enough to be able to win the race.
The deck can have some insane starts on the play that are very hard for anything to beat. Protecting an Arbiter with a couple ghost quarter activations on 3rd turn can be GG and Thalia shuts a few decks down on it's own. The entire thing synergizes very well with a mana denial plan that only Path doesn't go along with which is why there are only 3 main, but Path is just that good, can be mitigated by Arbiter, and isn't needed when the mana denial plan is working. Mausoleum Wanderer, Selfless Spirit, and Kira, Great Glass-Spinner are so good at protecting the hatebears and that is what makes the deck so good and better than the other versions of Hatebears IMO. I saw someone talk about losing to Blood Moon. I've had 2 different opponents try this against me, but between Pathing my own guy, Ghost Quartering my own land, Aether Vial, and just Spell Quellering it, I wasn't affected all that much.
Modern: UW Spirits
@schmitty247: quickling is interesting, i like the card but bouncing our own stuff could be bad tempo sometimes? The vapor snag argument i can get behind, but path is so good, i'll be the conservative one on this question and hold on to my paths.
Some time ago somebody here suggested pride of the clouds as our missing 2-drop of choice. I'd love to try it soon in this list:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept heath
2 Polluted delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Godless shrine
1 Watery grave
2 Plains
2 Island
2 Cavern of souls
1 Concealed courtyard
1 Darkslick shores
2 Moorland haunt
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Pride of the clouds
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
2 Phantasmal image
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol captain
artifact: 4
4 Aether vial
Instants 4
4 Path to exile
sorceries: 4
4 Lingering souls
2 Negate
2 Detention sphere
2 Relic of progenitus
2 Engineered explosives
2 Spellskite
2 Burrenton forge-tender
2 Eidolon of rhetoric
1 Kira, great glass-spinner
I think obviously the lingering souls version is the right one for it. I like that pride gets pumped by opposing flyers too, making it rule the sky and solve our weakness to bigger flyers (restoration angel mainly).
Thoughts?
Modern: UW Spirits
Modern: UW Spirits