As promised, my tournament report from regionals today:
Regionals:244 people showed up
Rd1: mono G devotion 2-1 1-0
G1: goes utopia sprawl voyaging satyr into double overgrowth. Nissa and prime time get the game as I draw blanks with sram
G2: t1 paladin. T2 sram and win
G3: he mulls to 5 and keeps no lands arbor elf. Never draws the land. T2 paladin t3 win
Rd2: grixis 2-1 2-0
Played against Gerard Fabiano and knew I had to play my best match so far.
G1: couldn't stop t2 paladin t3 sram with swan song backup
G2: game goes long as I whiff a couple times on triggers of sram. Then goes thoughtseize/snapcaster thoughtseize hitting my retract and outcome. Couldn't come back
G3: t1 paladin underneath iok hitting sram and seeing my saw in hand. Hit him down to 4 with a few swings and grapeshot for the rest
Rd3: burn 2-1 3-0
G1: had a good hand but misplayed swan song to the flames of the blood hand. Died to a 3rd bolt
G2: had gotten down to 3 to triple swiftspear. Played my hand of double retract with 3 equips/Opal to get to 12 storm. Killed the swiftspears and 6 to him. Hardcasted leyline and forgetender along with a huge paladin get there
G3: t0 leyline met t2 destructive revelry. whiffed initially on the t2 paladin. But drew into forgetender. He realized real fast that swan song counters eidolon on his turn and with 2 mana up he couldn't get through the paladin and forgetender and I stormed off.
Rd4: Jeskai counterburn 1-2 3-1
Backup feature match
G1: apparently he had the path in hand but let me combo off t2. Ok we'll take those
G2: vendilion cliqued my retract while paladin is out so I play noxious revival targeting it. He pathed and had backup for my swan song. Didn't find another engine in time facing down bolts and helixes
The feature match ends as we're sbing between games 2 and 3 and we got called for our game 3 to be on stream
G3: I mull to 4 but am able to start comboing off, but stall. This gave him enough time to stabilize with ven clique and I couldn't get another equipment and he burned me out.
After the match another player on Cheerios is being deck teched lol.
Rd5: Titan breach 1-2 3-2
G1: mull to 5 with 1 land and no engine. Serum visions doesn't find it and he freely is able to do basically whatever he wanted.
G2: t1 paladin/retract into t2 paladin is the best I could ever ask for in this deck
G3: didn't realize they board into chalice. So the t1 chalice on 0 wrecks me. I try to store up 0s while I wait for sram but he t5 breaches into primetime and does 18 to me. Oh well.
R6:abzan coco(?) 2-1 4-2
G1: kept a sketchy hand and didn't pay off in time. He slammed infinite life combo and I scooped it up
G2: his t1 birds met my t2 paladin with a few equips and passed with Opal up. He plays engineered explosives X=0 but misses his second land drop. I echoing truth the bird forcing the activation and retract in response to EE. T4 drop sram then draw my deck and slam lab man for the win.
G3: t1 bird t2 voice of resurgence met my t2 sram. I drew my deck
I didn't see a copy of company or chord the entire match.
R7:ad nauseum 2-1 5-2
G1: t2 paladin with only 2 equipment with a second paladin in hand. t3 ad nauseum
G2:t4 leyline hardcasted for opponent. Fragmentize into paladin the following turn and combo out.
G3: intense game! He had 1 mana up for the angel's grace as I was going off, looking exclusively for swan song(yes I realize it doesn't stop angel's grace, but he had enough mana for ad nauseum follow up).It was the 5th from the bottom! Grapeshot got him to 1. He played all 4 graces and had lab man block trying to deck me out. I throw down 2 more Paladins and win through combat as I draw the last card in my deck.
Rd8: dredge 2-0 6-2
Easily my easiest match of the night.
G1: sram t2 into t3 paladin. Draw my deck
G2: sram t2. Draw my deck.
He played a grand total of 4 spells the entire match lol
Rd9: grixis 0-2 6-3
A buddy of mine just grabs me and with a frustrated tone tells me we're playing. Why the final round?!
G1: engines got bolted or pushed and got away from me real fast as he just slammed snaps and a clique and beat me down.
G2: double sram 3 cheers serum sacred foundry opener. Keep the hand. Don't find my second land until t4. By then he has the counters or the pushes for sram.
End of my shot of prizing but all in all great night. Ended up 38th at 6-3, and another player ended up 10th at 7-2. It is very consistent and it punishes a lot of the format.
Looking forward, I will probably cut to 1 outcome board, and possibly go back to Erayo in the board, as the tougher matchups seem to rely on 1-2 spells a turn. Even countering one of them may turn a match in my favor. Also if they push/bolt/etc Erayo it's less removal for the engines.
Nice report; sounds like you kept getting just the tiniest pushback from the universe on your way to the top. Playing your friend last round? Ew.
I don't like maindeck Outcomes. My buddy is playing them and loves them, but I just can't justify anything >3cmc maindeck.
Pretty much always board in at least 1-2 Echoing Truth, especially now that we're well known. Literally any deck can slot in 4 Chalice and drop it for 0 Turn 1. It can be an expensive mini-retract for yourself in an emergency (probably EOT to kickstart your next combo turn). I'm also definitely playing 1 maindeck Hurkyl's.
Don't use Erayo. She's pretty bad.
I'm really glad you had fun! That's why we're here after all.
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That sounds cool. I've been experimenting with something of a 'hate cheerios' build. It's not something I've tested enough to really make a proper post about, but now that everyone who plays Modern is aware of what we're up to, I figured I'd change the attack angle a bit. I haven't got the ratios right yet but a primary aim (aside from the straight up win) is the soft lock of Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and Ethersworn Canonist which has been really strong. (Only soft to Engineered Explosives / Ratchet Bomb as common sideboard cards). I haven't managed to get it consistent enough and sadly suspect it never will be, but it sure is fun.
Someone brought this up on /r/modernmagic: why don't we try twisted image as an alternative win con against GBx type decks. I remember more than one instance in which I was facing a lone liliana on 1 when I drop a paladin and equip everything.
It might be 'cute', but I'm curious if anyone has tried this?
Twisted Image is a cute idea that opens up paladin to Bolt removal. I also don't understand your example. You would need haste to make this situation better. Twisted Image also would have to linger in your hand until then...
If we're thinking about going that route for winning, Assault Formation was mentioned to me yesterday as an alt wincon. I started laughing because of how cute it could be.
Won a GPT with the deck today (same list I posted a few days ago but -1 Silence, +1 Hurkyl's in the board). In the swiss, wins against Infect, Esper Control, and Skred Red, with losses to Grixis Control and Junk. Ended up in 8th and survived being on the draw against Grixis Delver and Elves (finals was split since the other player couldn't go to Vancouver).
Observations/Notes from today:
Once again, Geist of Saint Traft out of the board was an MVP vs the control decks when I expected they boarded out sweepers (especially when you get it down on T2 with Opal and then suit up with a Shield to stop Snapcaster blocks). Highly considering going up to two.
The Sram,Paladin,Opal,Land,3xCheerio hand came up quite a bit today (at least 5 times), and it's certainly something worth discussing. I snap kept it on the draw against the non-interactive decks like Infect and Elves, but in the dark or against other decks it's much closer. On the play in the dark is also an interesting discussion since you can dodge bolt with the T1 Paladin if you have a Shield Cheerio.
Modern: WUR Eat a good breakfast, have some Cheeri0s! C I've got an Affinity for running you over with artifacts
EDH: G Ezuri W Kemba WUBRG Scion-spiracy (in progress)
If we're thinking about going that route for winning, Assault Formation was mentioned to me yesterday as an alt wincon. I started laughing because of how cute it could be.
I was at kirwan's went 6-3 and got 38th, another player went 7-2 and made 10th place. To say we didn't stand a chance is just not true. It would've been tough from the t8 lists, but against elves, abzan coco, and burn it's a coinflip at worst. We also just race against grishoalbrand. I lost to the Jeskai player on camera r4 but only because of a mull to 4 game 3 and I still got rolling and required him to go topdeck mode against me. The only decks I would have feared then were the jund list and the 8-rack deck. I had already beaten grixis thanks to a t1 pally so I would know how to play against it
Huh. I must've been distracted when i checked those, for some reason I was really inflating the Burn and Jund lists in my head and seeing 7/8 awful matchups. Thanks for pointing that out, and also, great job!
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Hi all!
I finally made an account so that I could post in this thread. I had been watching the old thread for quite some time, and when Sram was spoiled, I immediately went and bought all of the cheeri0s pieces I could. I just took this list to Regionals MN:
G1: I mull to 6 and he mulls to 5. I fizzle on a turn 3 attempt, but the fat butts on my dudes keep him from swinging his glistener elf in. I rip a retract off the top of my deck next turn for the win.
G2: I mull to 6 and try to go off turn 2, staring down a blighted agent. I don't get there, and his agent bashes me for 9. I peal an Aether Grid off the top, and he doesn't keep a creature for the rest of the game. I start smashing in with beefy srams and pallies, and grapeshot for 5 to close it out.
All in all, Infect felt like a cakewalk.
Match 2: Living End Scapeshift (1-2) 1-1
G1: I mulligan to 5 looking for an engine. He has a pretty small yard, and I was confused when I saw a search for tomorrow. He gets there with his street wraith and his carabid.
G2: He has removal to hit my t2 Sram, but I silence in response to his violent outburst the next turn, so he can't cast his living end. I go off with the pally in my hand next turn.
G3: I punt this one. He was representing outburst and I fetched my only untapped land. He was rather new to the game, so I felt safe. I felt much less safe when he cast outburst in response to the fetch and I die to a bunch of bad creatures with a silence rotting in my hand. Ouch. He shows me the scapeshift part of the deck that he sided out. What a whacky deck.
Match 3: Jeskai Control (0-2) 1-2
G1: Felt like I was playing monoSpellSnare.dec. He spell snares, spell snare, snap - spell snares my three dudes and then bashes with a spell queller.
G2: Managed to slide in a paladin while he was tapped down but didn't go off. I suit up the pally and commence the 4/7 vigilance, reach beats. I keep his spell quellers at bay and get him down to 2. Near the end, he had lethal on board with a colonade if he drew a land. I try to use both of my retracts and he dispels them, then I die to a path off the top.
This felt like a pretty awful matchup for me.
Match 4: Infect (2-1) 2-2
G1: I couldn't manage to find an engine, but I make sure he doesn't see a single cheeri0 all game. He was rather clueless as to what was going on. He kills me dead pretty fast.
G2: I drop a turn two engine and go off the next turn. He had no idea what was going on until he was staring down a grapeshot for 30.
G3: Pretty much repeat the last game. I went off a turn before he killed me both games.
Again, I love the infect match-up
Match 5: Jeskai Aggro-Midrange (2-1) 3-2
G1: I mull to 5 and was off on lands, he had all of his burn spells. I manage to somehow keep 2 engines, but don't find a retract in the top 30. Die to burn the next turn.
G2, G3: I get two engines out and suit them up, then cast silence to stop him from doing anything. He dumps hand and I combo out to kill him. In both of these games, he had removal for my guys but didn't cast it until they were too big to remove. Huge misplay on his end. I should not have won this match.
Match 6: GW Tokens (2-0) 4-2
G1: Before the match, my opponent said something about seeing a lot of cheeri0s and I feigned innocence. I mull to 5. Fetched a Sacred Foundry turn 2 to further the lie. When they tap out for a t3 spectral procession, I cast a pally and the jig is up. I kill him and his spirits look pretty sad. I love fair decks.
G2: I can't find my second land, and he slams a t3 eidolon of rhetoric. He was pretty smug until I counter it with swan song. His tune really changed when I use a mox opal to finally get out a puresteel, draw into my next land, and retract to eventually kill him.
Match 7: Affinity (0-2) 4-3
This is where things start to go downhill
Affinity is one of my easiest match-ups, and I've done extensive playtesting against it. I mull to 5 in the first game and don't see an engine after a serum visions. He thinks I'm on control, because I repealed a memnite to stay alive. I mull to 6 in the next game and don't find an engine after a serum visions. I saw 5 hands and 2 serum visions, but no engines in sight. This one hurt.
Match 8: Junk (0-2) 4-4
G1: I go to 5 looking for an engine, only to have it ripped out of my hand. I'm on one land the entire game, and I die to scooze beats.
G2: Plenty of lands this game, but only 1 engine. He has one land for 5 turns until he finally gets a bob out and slowly recovers. My only engine ate a path and I saw there drawing lands until I had 7 of the, and died to his bob.
Match 9: Burn (0-2) 4-5
G1: I mull to 5 and don't have any lands.
G2: I mull to 6, swan song an eidolon, but my engine eats a bolt and I die to a swiftspear.
This tournament felt super bad. I mulled to 5 in every single match except my first and third. I only didn't have to mulligan in one of my matches. The last 3 matches, I had huge issues drawing the necessary pieces of my deck. It sucked, because the deck had never bricked like this in all of my testing. To combat this, and probably over-correcting, I'm gonna test out a list with 4 riddlesmiths, 16 lands, and less interaction. I'm doing this in the hopes to have less variance, and also to have a better chance against removal heavy decks. Someone also suggested trying a 62 card deck so I could run the full 4 swan songs, which I thought warranted further thought.
For those struggling with mana issues, I advise going up to 15 lands and 3-4 SV. It's the best way to avoid mana screw while also keeping variance low.
Re: 62 card deck
Everyone repeat after me: I'll never play 61+ cards in the MD in Cheeri0s. If our objective is to reduce variance, this is one of the worst ways to achieve that.
Re: tricks like Twisted Image and Assault Formation
Again, our goal is to reduce variance. Cute tricks like Image don't achieve this and are generally only working when we're already ahead (i.e. win more). Formation is even worse: it's off color, doesn't cantrip, and doesn't do anything on its own.
with 4 bastion inventor (sb)
i think is a great card against jund and control.
i m palying 4 cavern main deck and no serum vision
4/4 hexproof, on turn2 can be a good answer to jund and control deck. our main problem.
jund can t discard him with inquisition.
I'd be careful with Inventor. Liliana is a major trump to Inventor, and without Saw/Sigil, a Goyf, Tasigur, or Rhino can stonewall him for days. 5/6 Goyf can stop even an Inventor with a Saw. Double blocks are a major problem, and Lingering Souls gives four turns of blockers.
He's much better against Grixis Delver and Grixis Midrange, where they just don't have removal that can hit him and they don't have as many chumps. Double blocks are still an issue though.
So far our T8 representation is looking glum; I won't naysay yet since we don't have all the results in, but I do think that a few things clearly kept us from dominating super hard:
1) Hype. The biggest killer. 3 CFB articles/video series in a matter of days? SCG, Elsik taking 5th and numerous League 5-0s. Everyone heard about it. BG/x was already going to come very strong because everyone wanted to try Fatal Push, but finding out there's a new, insanely broken combo deck that BG/x folds in half? Anyone who wasn't convinced to play it knew they needed to be packing removal. Hype gave us huge numbers, but also a complete lack of stealth.
2) Newness, or "newosity" if you will. Like I said, the exposure attracted a lot of pilots, and sheer numbers are a big step in getting the deck up there. However, everything blew up in the immediate aftermath of bans and Aether Revolt. As Lepore demonstrated, even very good players need more time than this to practice with a new deck, especially one like this that has many subtleties but masquerades as entirely straightforward. Looking simple makes people think they don't have to delve any deeper, just jam a Paladin and draw cards. I've heard of a LOT of x-2 and x-1 finishes that made 9th or 10th place. That's fantastic, both because these are great results, and because it confirms what we saw in the CFB and SCG videos, that the deck is so powerful you can just pick it up blind, make mistakes, and still win. But it means we don't get seen in the winner's chairs by outsiders. It means that our festure matches don't look great (seriously, so many repetitions of "Let's see how this new deck does against Jund! Oh it lost, it must be terrible").
If we didn't lose too many pilots to discouragement, and the community just sort of moves on without looking at our overall placings, I can see the second coming being massively disruptive to the format, and probably getting our ban.
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Great seeing the reports! Thanks for the updates My cards have been lost in the mail, so no physical games for me, but I've done quite a lot of testing on the computer, and checking the results with the tourney results being posted, I am fairly confident in the following analysis:
The only way to reduce variance and improve the bad matchups in this deck is to increase the threat count. How you do that is up to you, there are multitudes of builds, my general idea is use threat to kill them, and combo off as a backup plan while they try and deal with the threat. The key here is to pick threats that synergise and don't cannibalise your hand. Have to be very careful on that last point.
Cantrips and protection can't solve all the deck's issues. Cantrips simply aren't good enough- you either run a small number and then have a chance of not drawing them, or you run a large number and you gaurantee drawing them, which fizzles the combo plan just as often as it enables it. You hit a steady state of still-not-quite-being-low-enough-variance. Likewise, protection is "do nothing" on its own, so while it helps sometimes, equally as often it just doesn't do anything to advance your gameplan.
This is why I advocate for upping the threat count (while also keeping a small to moderate number of cantrips). Drawing the right threat forces your opponent to make plays and that alone makes it superior to cantrips or protection.
What I think needs more of in this thread is analysis of backup plan threats, coupled with "downside" analysis. Not upside analysis.
For example, assault formation is a bad idea: it does nothing unless you have creatures, and doesn't help you get, or protect, your creatures. And if you're only looking at the upside case where you already have creatures, you can already combo to win. As such, the card is lose-lose in the majority of cases. Compare doran, the siege tower. He is a creature, does the same effect, so is generally better in most cases than assault formation since it doesn't require anything else to be imposing. I.e. makes a reasonable topdeck. Dies to removal? Sure, but so what, assault formation doesn't work if the opponent has removal either. Doran's colours are bad? True, but there are some very highly synergistic cards in that colour combination, including ayli, eternal pilgrim and time of need. I've done builds like this in the past, but I'm personally not invested in Doran, so it's not where I prefer to sink my time.
Another example: storm entity and monastery swiftspear work very well T1 or T2 -> enraged giant. Good plan right? Maybe, the problem is that enraged giant -> swiftspear/storm entity is very bad over 2 turns, so you can randomly loose to ordering.
Another example: bastion inventor avoids removal, but as I've said before, and ktkenshinx repeats correctly above, guy gets chumped, double blocked, dies to liliana. Doesn't really help our jund matchup. Geist of saint traft falls into the same category (slightly better on the offensive, but worse on the mana requirements).
My personal preference *at the moment* (and subject to more testing) is to run maverick thopterist vs burn and jund, alongside thoughtcast and reverse engineer (the latter in low numbers). It kinda works, but I'm cutting it close in testing and I'm not sure if my opponent is playing optimally since I can't see their hand. Also does not work very well vs aggro decks, since the thopterist is a slow clock, and I'm not sure how transformative my sideboard can be.
Glint Hawk and Golem-skin Gauntlets is worth a try if you're lookin for more threats for beat down mode, but against Lili unless you have haste or generate multiple creatures in one play it's rough.
So far our T8 representation is looking glum; I won't naysay yet since we don't have all the results in, but I do think that a few things clearly kept us from dominating super hard:
Hype and newness were definitely at play. I also think experience, as a corollary to newness, was a big issue. When watching streams and playing MTGO, I see a lot of really bad gameplay on this deck. This ranges from catastrophic errors, like mishandling Mox mana to forgetting to Revival a Retract, to constant goofs, like forgetting to equip cards, questionable mulligans, bad scrys, etc. I also see a lot of hopeless tilt when players are up against interactive decks and just give up. They stop looking for outs, make crummy plays, start blaming bad luck or bad matchups, and other game-losing behavior. Once this irons out, I expect the deck will get more results.
I also think the sideboards for this deck are mostly wrong and no one is sure about how to SB properly. This includes using the wrong cards period as well as making sub-optimal substitutions. This one will take more time to fix than the inexperience issue, but once it's improved, the deck will start putting up better numbers.
If we didn't lose too many pilots to discouragement, and the community just sort of moves on without looking at our overall placings, I can see the second coming being massively disruptive to the format, and probably getting our ban.
Remember: no banlist talk outside of approved threads. This is a blanket prohibition and, although it seems strict, is necessary to keep deck discussions from spiraling into banlist talk.
This is why I advocate for upping the threat count (while also keeping a small to moderate number of cantrips). Drawing the right threat forces your opponent to make plays and that alone makes it superior to cantrips or protection.
On the one hand, I do think cantrips are the way to go in G1. It fits the format of every other decent Ux combo deck to-date, and is currently the most successful Cheeri0s version we've seen in our admittedly limited sample. It's also the clearest variance reducer at our disposal. This doesn't include a singleton (or maybe double) Riddlesmith. Smith is actually an engine that helps us win games. He's also better than Paladin against Chalice (cast trigger), and triggers off Opals. I think adding 1-2 might be correct, even at the expense of some number of SV/NR/GS.
On the other hand, I do think the idea of adding other threats (Inventor, Thopterist, Geist, Grid, etc.) is important in G2-G3, depending on the matchup. This is where my issue of sub-optimal sideboards comes back. I think most SBs are just really awkward right now and we need to figure out how to build them better. This will necessarily include deciding on threats vs. protection, and what particular cards of each to run.
I'm also considering a single Riddlesmith. He basically gives us half an engine, bringing us to 9 cards that we can drop on T2 and threaten a combo kill.
I don't think threats out of the board are as necessary as the right protection and smart play. Our G2/3 Turn 2 rate should be intentionally lower so that we can use Silence, Swan Song, Truth, etc, and we should definitely use them. Aside from uninteractive opponents, or opponents with slow or sorcery interaction, I would plan to use protection no matter how good my hand is or unprepared my opponent seems. Depending on the situation, I may even opt for Turn 3 silence even if they had tapped out on Turn 2.
Also, when I finally save up enough energy from my 70hr work weeks, I plan to test a top secret version that is potentially stronger against removal and will not present like known versions before dropping Paladin, giving an element of surprise game 1.
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Regionals:244 people showed up
Rd1: mono G devotion 2-1 1-0
G1: goes utopia sprawl voyaging satyr into double overgrowth. Nissa and prime time get the game as I draw blanks with sram
G2: t1 paladin. T2 sram and win
G3: he mulls to 5 and keeps no lands arbor elf. Never draws the land. T2 paladin t3 win
Rd2: grixis 2-1 2-0
Played against Gerard Fabiano and knew I had to play my best match so far.
G1: couldn't stop t2 paladin t3 sram with swan song backup
G2: game goes long as I whiff a couple times on triggers of sram. Then goes thoughtseize/snapcaster thoughtseize hitting my retract and outcome. Couldn't come back
G3: t1 paladin underneath iok hitting sram and seeing my saw in hand. Hit him down to 4 with a few swings and grapeshot for the rest
Rd3: burn 2-1 3-0
G1: had a good hand but misplayed swan song to the flames of the blood hand. Died to a 3rd bolt
G2: had gotten down to 3 to triple swiftspear. Played my hand of double retract with 3 equips/Opal to get to 12 storm. Killed the swiftspears and 6 to him. Hardcasted leyline and forgetender along with a huge paladin get there
G3: t0 leyline met t2 destructive revelry. whiffed initially on the t2 paladin. But drew into forgetender. He realized real fast that swan song counters eidolon on his turn and with 2 mana up he couldn't get through the paladin and forgetender and I stormed off.
Rd4: Jeskai counterburn 1-2 3-1
Backup feature match
G1: apparently he had the path in hand but let me combo off t2. Ok we'll take those
G2: vendilion cliqued my retract while paladin is out so I play noxious revival targeting it. He pathed and had backup for my swan song. Didn't find another engine in time facing down bolts and helixes
The feature match ends as we're sbing between games 2 and 3 and we got called for our game 3 to be on stream
G3: I mull to 4 but am able to start comboing off, but stall. This gave him enough time to stabilize with ven clique and I couldn't get another equipment and he burned me out.
After the match another player on Cheerios is being deck teched lol.
Rd5: Titan breach 1-2 3-2
G1: mull to 5 with 1 land and no engine. Serum visions doesn't find it and he freely is able to do basically whatever he wanted.
G2: t1 paladin/retract into t2 paladin is the best I could ever ask for in this deck
G3: didn't realize they board into chalice. So the t1 chalice on 0 wrecks me. I try to store up 0s while I wait for sram but he t5 breaches into primetime and does 18 to me. Oh well.
R6:abzan coco(?) 2-1 4-2
G1: kept a sketchy hand and didn't pay off in time. He slammed infinite life combo and I scooped it up
G2: his t1 birds met my t2 paladin with a few equips and passed with Opal up. He plays engineered explosives X=0 but misses his second land drop. I echoing truth the bird forcing the activation and retract in response to EE. T4 drop sram then draw my deck and slam lab man for the win.
G3: t1 bird t2 voice of resurgence met my t2 sram. I drew my deck
I didn't see a copy of company or chord the entire match.
R7:ad nauseum 2-1 5-2
G1: t2 paladin with only 2 equipment with a second paladin in hand. t3 ad nauseum
G2:t4 leyline hardcasted for opponent. Fragmentize into paladin the following turn and combo out.
G3: intense game! He had 1 mana up for the angel's grace as I was going off, looking exclusively for swan song(yes I realize it doesn't stop angel's grace, but he had enough mana for ad nauseum follow up).It was the 5th from the bottom! Grapeshot got him to 1. He played all 4 graces and had lab man block trying to deck me out. I throw down 2 more Paladins and win through combat as I draw the last card in my deck.
Rd8: dredge 2-0 6-2
Easily my easiest match of the night.
G1: sram t2 into t3 paladin. Draw my deck
G2: sram t2. Draw my deck.
He played a grand total of 4 spells the entire match lol
Rd9: grixis 0-2 6-3
A buddy of mine just grabs me and with a frustrated tone tells me we're playing. Why the final round?!
G1: engines got bolted or pushed and got away from me real fast as he just slammed snaps and a clique and beat me down.
G2: double sram 3 cheers serum sacred foundry opener. Keep the hand. Don't find my second land until t4. By then he has the counters or the pushes for sram.
End of my shot of prizing but all in all great night. Ended up 38th at 6-3, and another player ended up 10th at 7-2. It is very consistent and it punishes a lot of the format.
Looking forward, I will probably cut to 1 outcome board, and possibly go back to Erayo in the board, as the tougher matchups seem to rely on 1-2 spells a turn. Even countering one of them may turn a match in my favor. Also if they push/bolt/etc Erayo it's less removal for the engines.
I don't like maindeck Outcomes. My buddy is playing them and loves them, but I just can't justify anything >3cmc maindeck.
Pretty much always board in at least 1-2 Echoing Truth, especially now that we're well known. Literally any deck can slot in 4 Chalice and drop it for 0 Turn 1. It can be an expensive mini-retract for yourself in an emergency (probably EOT to kickstart your next combo turn). I'm also definitely playing 1 maindeck Hurkyl's.
Don't use Erayo. She's pretty bad.
I'm really glad you had fun! That's why we're here after all.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
It might be 'cute', but I'm curious if anyone has tried this?
Modern: Bogles // 8-Whack/Goblins // UW Titan // Hollow One // Affinity // Dredge
EDH: Nissa, Vastwood Seer // Atraxa, Praetor's Voice // Meren of Clan Nel Toth
If we're thinking about going that route for winning, Assault Formation was mentioned to me yesterday as an alt wincon. I started laughing because of how cute it could be.
http://articles.kirwansgamestore.com/decklists/deck-lists-scg-regional-catskill-ny-modern-2417/
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
Observations/Notes from today:
Once again, Geist of Saint Traft out of the board was an MVP vs the control decks when I expected they boarded out sweepers (especially when you get it down on T2 with Opal and then suit up with a Shield to stop Snapcaster blocks). Highly considering going up to two.
The Sram,Paladin,Opal,Land,3xCheerio hand came up quite a bit today (at least 5 times), and it's certainly something worth discussing. I snap kept it on the draw against the non-interactive decks like Infect and Elves, but in the dark or against other decks it's much closer. On the play in the dark is also an interesting discussion since you can dodge bolt with the T1 Paladin if you have a Shield Cheerio.
Level 1 JudgeModern:
WUR Eat a good breakfast, have some Cheeri0s!
C I've got an Affinity for running you over with artifacts
EDH:
G Ezuri
W Kemba
WUBRG Scion-spiracy (in progress)
This is hilarious and I am going to build this deck I think. Monastery Mentor, Bastion Inventor, and Geist of Saint Traft all backed up by Puresteel Paladin and Cathar's Shield with some Assault Formation sounds right up my alley.
I was at kirwan's went 6-3 and got 38th, another player went 7-2 and made 10th place. To say we didn't stand a chance is just not true. It would've been tough from the t8 lists, but against elves, abzan coco, and burn it's a coinflip at worst. We also just race against grishoalbrand. I lost to the Jeskai player on camera r4 but only because of a mull to 4 game 3 and I still got rolling and required him to go topdeck mode against me. The only decks I would have feared then were the jund list and the 8-rack deck. I had already beaten grixis thanks to a t1 pally so I would know how to play against it
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
I finally made an account so that I could post in this thread. I had been watching the old thread for quite some time, and when Sram was spoiled, I immediately went and bought all of the cheeri0s pieces I could. I just took this list to Regionals MN:
4 Puresteel Paladin
4 Sram Senior Edificer
Spells 18:
4 Mox Opal
4 Retract
4 Serum Visions
2 Swan Song
2 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
1 Repeal
4 Flooded Strand
4 Windswept Heath
3 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Plains
1 Seachrome Coast
Cheeri0s 20:
4 Accorder's Shield
4 Paradise Mantle
4 Bone Saw
4 Spidersilk Net
2 Sigil of Distinction
2 Cathar's Shield
Here's my report:
Match 1: Infect (2-0) 1-0
G1: I mull to 6 and he mulls to 5. I fizzle on a turn 3 attempt, but the fat butts on my dudes keep him from swinging his glistener elf in. I rip a retract off the top of my deck next turn for the win.
G2: I mull to 6 and try to go off turn 2, staring down a blighted agent. I don't get there, and his agent bashes me for 9. I peal an Aether Grid off the top, and he doesn't keep a creature for the rest of the game. I start smashing in with beefy srams and pallies, and grapeshot for 5 to close it out.
All in all, Infect felt like a cakewalk.
Match 2: Living End Scapeshift (1-2) 1-1
G1: I mulligan to 5 looking for an engine. He has a pretty small yard, and I was confused when I saw a search for tomorrow. He gets there with his street wraith and his carabid.
G2: He has removal to hit my t2 Sram, but I silence in response to his violent outburst the next turn, so he can't cast his living end. I go off with the pally in my hand next turn.
G3: I punt this one. He was representing outburst and I fetched my only untapped land. He was rather new to the game, so I felt safe. I felt much less safe when he cast outburst in response to the fetch and I die to a bunch of bad creatures with a silence rotting in my hand. Ouch. He shows me the scapeshift part of the deck that he sided out. What a whacky deck.
Match 3: Jeskai Control (0-2) 1-2
G1: Felt like I was playing monoSpellSnare.dec. He spell snares, spell snare, snap - spell snares my three dudes and then bashes with a spell queller.
G2: Managed to slide in a paladin while he was tapped down but didn't go off. I suit up the pally and commence the 4/7 vigilance, reach beats. I keep his spell quellers at bay and get him down to 2. Near the end, he had lethal on board with a colonade if he drew a land. I try to use both of my retracts and he dispels them, then I die to a path off the top.
This felt like a pretty awful matchup for me.
Match 4: Infect (2-1) 2-2
G1: I couldn't manage to find an engine, but I make sure he doesn't see a single cheeri0 all game. He was rather clueless as to what was going on. He kills me dead pretty fast.
G2: I drop a turn two engine and go off the next turn. He had no idea what was going on until he was staring down a grapeshot for 30.
G3: Pretty much repeat the last game. I went off a turn before he killed me both games.
Again, I love the infect match-up
Match 5: Jeskai Aggro-Midrange (2-1) 3-2
G1: I mull to 5 and was off on lands, he had all of his burn spells. I manage to somehow keep 2 engines, but don't find a retract in the top 30. Die to burn the next turn.
G2, G3: I get two engines out and suit them up, then cast silence to stop him from doing anything. He dumps hand and I combo out to kill him. In both of these games, he had removal for my guys but didn't cast it until they were too big to remove. Huge misplay on his end. I should not have won this match.
Match 6: GW Tokens (2-0) 4-2
G1: Before the match, my opponent said something about seeing a lot of cheeri0s and I feigned innocence. I mull to 5. Fetched a Sacred Foundry turn 2 to further the lie. When they tap out for a t3 spectral procession, I cast a pally and the jig is up. I kill him and his spirits look pretty sad. I love fair decks.
G2: I can't find my second land, and he slams a t3 eidolon of rhetoric. He was pretty smug until I counter it with swan song. His tune really changed when I use a mox opal to finally get out a puresteel, draw into my next land, and retract to eventually kill him.
Match 7: Affinity (0-2) 4-3
This is where things start to go downhill
Affinity is one of my easiest match-ups, and I've done extensive playtesting against it. I mull to 5 in the first game and don't see an engine after a serum visions. He thinks I'm on control, because I repealed a memnite to stay alive. I mull to 6 in the next game and don't find an engine after a serum visions. I saw 5 hands and 2 serum visions, but no engines in sight. This one hurt.
Match 8: Junk (0-2) 4-4
G1: I go to 5 looking for an engine, only to have it ripped out of my hand. I'm on one land the entire game, and I die to scooze beats.
G2: Plenty of lands this game, but only 1 engine. He has one land for 5 turns until he finally gets a bob out and slowly recovers. My only engine ate a path and I saw there drawing lands until I had 7 of the, and died to his bob.
Match 9: Burn (0-2) 4-5
G1: I mull to 5 and don't have any lands.
G2: I mull to 6, swan song an eidolon, but my engine eats a bolt and I die to a swiftspear.
This tournament felt super bad. I mulled to 5 in every single match except my first and third. I only didn't have to mulligan in one of my matches. The last 3 matches, I had huge issues drawing the necessary pieces of my deck. It sucked, because the deck had never bricked like this in all of my testing. To combat this, and probably over-correcting, I'm gonna test out a list with 4 riddlesmiths, 16 lands, and less interaction. I'm doing this in the hopes to have less variance, and also to have a better chance against removal heavy decks. Someone also suggested trying a 62 card deck so I could run the full 4 swan songs, which I thought warranted further thought.
Re: 62 card deck
Everyone repeat after me: I'll never play 61+ cards in the MD in Cheeri0s. If our objective is to reduce variance, this is one of the worst ways to achieve that.
Re: tricks like Twisted Image and Assault Formation
Again, our goal is to reduce variance. Cute tricks like Image don't achieve this and are generally only working when we're already ahead (i.e. win more). Formation is even worse: it's off color, doesn't cantrip, and doesn't do anything on its own.
I'd be careful with Inventor. Liliana is a major trump to Inventor, and without Saw/Sigil, a Goyf, Tasigur, or Rhino can stonewall him for days. 5/6 Goyf can stop even an Inventor with a Saw. Double blocks are a major problem, and Lingering Souls gives four turns of blockers.
He's much better against Grixis Delver and Grixis Midrange, where they just don't have removal that can hit him and they don't have as many chumps. Double blocks are still an issue though.
1) Hype. The biggest killer. 3 CFB articles/video series in a matter of days? SCG, Elsik taking 5th and numerous League 5-0s. Everyone heard about it. BG/x was already going to come very strong because everyone wanted to try Fatal Push, but finding out there's a new, insanely broken combo deck that BG/x folds in half? Anyone who wasn't convinced to play it knew they needed to be packing removal. Hype gave us huge numbers, but also a complete lack of stealth.
2) Newness, or "newosity" if you will. Like I said, the exposure attracted a lot of pilots, and sheer numbers are a big step in getting the deck up there. However, everything blew up in the immediate aftermath of bans and Aether Revolt. As Lepore demonstrated, even very good players need more time than this to practice with a new deck, especially one like this that has many subtleties but masquerades as entirely straightforward. Looking simple makes people think they don't have to delve any deeper, just jam a Paladin and draw cards. I've heard of a LOT of x-2 and x-1 finishes that made 9th or 10th place. That's fantastic, both because these are great results, and because it confirms what we saw in the CFB and SCG videos, that the deck is so powerful you can just pick it up blind, make mistakes, and still win. But it means we don't get seen in the winner's chairs by outsiders. It means that our festure matches don't look great (seriously, so many repetitions of "Let's see how this new deck does against Jund! Oh it lost, it must be terrible").
If we didn't lose too many pilots to discouragement, and the community just sort of moves on without looking at our overall placings, I can see the second coming being massively disruptive to the format, and probably getting our ban.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
The only way to reduce variance and improve the bad matchups in this deck is to increase the threat count. How you do that is up to you, there are multitudes of builds, my general idea is use threat to kill them, and combo off as a backup plan while they try and deal with the threat. The key here is to pick threats that synergise and don't cannibalise your hand. Have to be very careful on that last point.
Cantrips and protection can't solve all the deck's issues. Cantrips simply aren't good enough- you either run a small number and then have a chance of not drawing them, or you run a large number and you gaurantee drawing them, which fizzles the combo plan just as often as it enables it. You hit a steady state of still-not-quite-being-low-enough-variance. Likewise, protection is "do nothing" on its own, so while it helps sometimes, equally as often it just doesn't do anything to advance your gameplan.
This is why I advocate for upping the threat count (while also keeping a small to moderate number of cantrips). Drawing the right threat forces your opponent to make plays and that alone makes it superior to cantrips or protection.
What I think needs more of in this thread is analysis of backup plan threats, coupled with "downside" analysis. Not upside analysis.
For example, assault formation is a bad idea: it does nothing unless you have creatures, and doesn't help you get, or protect, your creatures. And if you're only looking at the upside case where you already have creatures, you can already combo to win. As such, the card is lose-lose in the majority of cases. Compare doran, the siege tower. He is a creature, does the same effect, so is generally better in most cases than assault formation since it doesn't require anything else to be imposing. I.e. makes a reasonable topdeck. Dies to removal? Sure, but so what, assault formation doesn't work if the opponent has removal either. Doran's colours are bad? True, but there are some very highly synergistic cards in that colour combination, including ayli, eternal pilgrim and time of need. I've done builds like this in the past, but I'm personally not invested in Doran, so it's not where I prefer to sink my time.
Another example: storm entity and monastery swiftspear work very well T1 or T2 -> enraged giant. Good plan right? Maybe, the problem is that enraged giant -> swiftspear/storm entity is very bad over 2 turns, so you can randomly loose to ordering.
Another example: bastion inventor avoids removal, but as I've said before, and ktkenshinx repeats correctly above, guy gets chumped, double blocked, dies to liliana. Doesn't really help our jund matchup. Geist of saint traft falls into the same category (slightly better on the offensive, but worse on the mana requirements).
My personal preference *at the moment* (and subject to more testing) is to run maverick thopterist vs burn and jund, alongside thoughtcast and reverse engineer (the latter in low numbers). It kinda works, but I'm cutting it close in testing and I'm not sure if my opponent is playing optimally since I can't see their hand. Also does not work very well vs aggro decks, since the thopterist is a slow clock, and I'm not sure how transformative my sideboard can be.
Hype and newness were definitely at play. I also think experience, as a corollary to newness, was a big issue. When watching streams and playing MTGO, I see a lot of really bad gameplay on this deck. This ranges from catastrophic errors, like mishandling Mox mana to forgetting to Revival a Retract, to constant goofs, like forgetting to equip cards, questionable mulligans, bad scrys, etc. I also see a lot of hopeless tilt when players are up against interactive decks and just give up. They stop looking for outs, make crummy plays, start blaming bad luck or bad matchups, and other game-losing behavior. Once this irons out, I expect the deck will get more results.
I also think the sideboards for this deck are mostly wrong and no one is sure about how to SB properly. This includes using the wrong cards period as well as making sub-optimal substitutions. This one will take more time to fix than the inexperience issue, but once it's improved, the deck will start putting up better numbers.
Remember: no banlist talk outside of approved threads. This is a blanket prohibition and, although it seems strict, is necessary to keep deck discussions from spiraling into banlist talk.
On the one hand, I do think cantrips are the way to go in G1. It fits the format of every other decent Ux combo deck to-date, and is currently the most successful Cheeri0s version we've seen in our admittedly limited sample. It's also the clearest variance reducer at our disposal. This doesn't include a singleton (or maybe double) Riddlesmith. Smith is actually an engine that helps us win games. He's also better than Paladin against Chalice (cast trigger), and triggers off Opals. I think adding 1-2 might be correct, even at the expense of some number of SV/NR/GS.
On the other hand, I do think the idea of adding other threats (Inventor, Thopterist, Geist, Grid, etc.) is important in G2-G3, depending on the matchup. This is where my issue of sub-optimal sideboards comes back. I think most SBs are just really awkward right now and we need to figure out how to build them better. This will necessarily include deciding on threats vs. protection, and what particular cards of each to run.
I don't think threats out of the board are as necessary as the right protection and smart play. Our G2/3 Turn 2 rate should be intentionally lower so that we can use Silence, Swan Song, Truth, etc, and we should definitely use them. Aside from uninteractive opponents, or opponents with slow or sorcery interaction, I would plan to use protection no matter how good my hand is or unprepared my opponent seems. Depending on the situation, I may even opt for Turn 3 silence even if they had tapped out on Turn 2.
Also, when I finally save up enough energy from my 70hr work weeks, I plan to test a top secret version that is potentially stronger against removal and will not present like known versions before dropping Paladin, giving an element of surprise game 1.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.