Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm really interested in Saheeli combo in modern, and I'm also a fan of Bring to Light, as it allows tutoring for silver bullet instants and sorceries as well. To that end, I've brewed up this and am taking it to my LGS to test this week. Any suggestions before I sleeve it up? I'm still new ish to the game so any feedback is appreciated. Here's a link to the deck on mtggoldfish, as I'm not sure how to format it for this site. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/780604#paper
jupiterninja: Looks fun, give it a go! Will be interesting to hear how the control and Death's Shadow matchups go without Voice of Resurgence. I like the Bring to Light -> Madcap Experiment combo after sideboard
Thanks for the feedback so far! I think you're right about Voice. We have a lot of control in my local meta (which is why I don't like Eldritch Evo, I feel like I'll sac a creature and just have it countered). I moved some pieces around to add 2 Voice and 1 Reflector Mage. I'm also thinking of running Thrun in the sideboard.
The Hostage Taker is a cool idea/card, though does feel a mana too high possibly. It is kind of like Tidehollow Sculler and Reflector Mage had a baby. Other thing is as noted before deck is tight on 4cc+ cards and this doesn't do anything if opponent hasn't played a threat yet. Flickering at instant speed could be strong (for them to lose card permanently) but this deck can only do at sorcery speed. For those that do want to try and not drop another color I'd suggest trying a 1x of Murmuring Bosk a fetchable tri-land.
@Shelldell
Really like the newest version you posted above. I myself tried a few ideas with Nahiri but in the end even getting down to 7 4cc+ cards would end up making evolution feel weak. Now that others also talking about Hostage Taker that is probably the better card for this shell for the removal if desired at 4cc. One thing playing with that reminded me of is why I liked Wall Of Omens, especially in a PW deck. The 1x of Courser of Kruphix also looks good as its bad to draw multiples but good synergy with cobra and saheeli. I also did want to get Thragtusk back in my version at 5cc as a good evo target. Overall your build seems to give strong game 1 vs burn and zoo strategies with most of the speed of original 1.0. I also like cards like Glen Elendra Archmage out of MB as can be clunky in a lot of matchups. I've seen I believe a variation of kiki-chord go a full 3-4x Fiery Justice MB (food for thought), so just not sure how much 1 copy will be worth. Also like the 1x Reveillark in the 75. I also prefer rallier than tracker as it plays with the flickering strategy better and should at least ramp. Have you considered trimming a hierarch and trying one of each? Overall like the sideboard but few notes/questions:
1) Why no Izzet Staticaster? Also see no Linvala, Keeper of Silence, were these intentionally cut or just no room?
2) Is there much in modern outside of Liliana of the Veil that Sigarda protects from?
3) Ponza wants to tempo you out, and we play a greedy manabase which they can feed on. Gaddock could help a bit outside of getting hit by Abrade/Titan as he stops their bonfire, acid-moss, primal command and chandra. Counterspells could help here and if can deny their mana ramp. I'd probably bring glen elendra in as well and if you add in Forge-Tender they'd be auto include. On plus side they don't have much at instant speed to disrupt the combo or any hand discard/counterspells .
Hostage Taker doesn't exile when blinked at instant speed, they don't do the seperate triggers anymore, it's not fiend hunter, it's banisher priest. If Taker leaves play with his trigger on the stack, nothing happens, target stays in play.
@adri_kalo
Thing about adding combos is, you want the pieces to interact with each other. You don't want two dead cards when you draw the wrong two pieces. A number of decks here play Sun Titan as the top end, that can also combo with Saheeli. Spike Feeder is not that good for burn, it's a 3 mana gain 4 life, maybe chump one attack before sacing it. Kitchen Finks gains the same amount of life while trading with at least 1 creature. If you want to Evo or flicker Spike Feeder, it's just gain 2. Saheeli copy is gain 4, not exactly what you want to minus for. Archangel of Thune is nice with Saheeli, but again, you can do better. The copy just wins more as the Archangel can take over a game by itself. On the other hand, you can't blink it, when you Evo for it you sac one creature that it wants to counter up...
@jupiterninja
hi!
why the 3/3 split of Birds/Noble in full-on 5 color? Seems like an easy 4of birds.
Like the addition of Anafenza, the Foremost, seen the first version and was gonna suggest it as a possibility.
Also was going to suggest the Murmuring Bosk as @Reckless mentioned.
Any plan for Blood Moon? You had Qasali Pridemage main, not a bad idea. Reclamation Sage in the board would work, too. You can BTL for 3 under moon, so any targets at 3 cmc are fine.
Following is just brainstorming, not strict upgrades:
I'm not sold on The Scarab God, it won't be bad as the floor is 5/5 for 5, but there may be more impactful or synergistic cards.
You have varied 3 drops, I pressume as a toolbox for Bring to Light. IMO this works with Chord more than BTL. Casting BTL for Courser, Blade Splicer, Finks or Reflector Mage is just overpaying. Anafenza has the right powerlevel when you want her.
Now, I don't mean to throw out everything, but you could look at which of those helps the deck the most and commit to one direction, making it consistent part not silver bullets. For example if Finks help you survive early, or Courser helps you with lands, play one as 3-4of and add a few 1of powerful cards.
If you'd play Kiki-Jiki you can combo with a single Bring to Light like the Chord decks (BTL Witness > return BTL, BTL Felidar > blink Witness > return BTL, BTL Kiki). Not clear you should, the 5c mana is rough and Chord sets up at instant speed.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa main or board, dodges everything but wraths. This is the type of effect I would look for to make BTL better than Chord.
Right, I've seen similar Naya Kiki lists that go all-in on Fiery Justice. My feeling is that we can't really afford to do the same since Saheeli is essentially taking too much space at the 3 CMC spot. However, I think even one copy could still be useful.
Staticaster and Justice are competing for a sideboard slot here:
Izzet Staticaster
+Can be found off of Oath & Evolution
+Can be copied and flickered to hit X/2
+Repeatable pinging effect every turn to continually suppress X/1s
+0/3 body can sometimes be relevant as a blocker
-Doesn't do much once aggro decks outgrow the 1 damage via anthem effects
-Multiple targets must share name to have wide effect
-Requires dork to cast under Blood Moon
Fiery Justice
+Damage can be split as needed: take out 5 Spirit tokens, an X/3 + X/2, or burn out one Angler/Tasigur
+Burn out Planeswalkers for 5 loyalty
+Lifegain offers tricks against Death's Shadow (although this matchup is already OK)
+Can be cast under Blood Moon without dorks
-Lifegain can conflict with beat down plan B, pushes you more toward needing to combo out
-Can't be found off of Oath & Evolution
So the main factor is that Staticaster can be found with increasing reliability as the game goes on, but against many of the tribal aggro matches in my meta its usefulness can drop off sharply as the match goes on. Against Elves and Fish especially it's easy to imagine them quickly dropping a lord and shutting down Staticaster. Justice is better at staying relevant as these matches go on and also has greater versatility against PWs and larger creatures. Since our deck arguably pushes the combo angle harder than Kiki lists I think we should be able to play around the lifegain even better.
Overall Cataclysmic Gearhulk is a much stronger answer in these matchups, and if I were going to Evo for something I would hope to Evo for it over Staticaster in many scenarios. It's a tough call between Staticaster and Justice to keep me in the game until Gearhulk can come down (or I can combo off), but I'm going to give Justice a shot tomorrow evening to get a better feel for it in practice.
Anyone else have experience with these two cards and wanna chime in?
I also prefer rallier than tracker as it plays with the flickering strategy better and should at least ramp. Have you considered trimming a hierarch and trying one of each?
I think you're right that I should keep Rallier in the MB for now due its synergy with the core. As for shaving a Hierarch to run Tracker I really like having my Hierarchs for T2 Blood Moon, and I would probably shave Cobras before Hierarchs. If I have too many issues with flooding I may re-examine this in the future.
Livanala can be great, I just don't actually own a copy at the moment. She's definitely relevant against Elves and Bant Eldrazi in my meta, but I haven't run into any other creature combo like Vizier CoCo / Knightfall for her to stop so she doesn't quite qualify as essential enough to push out other cards from my stuffed sideboard. Depending upon how my matches with Elves and how frequently the Bant Eldrazi player is there I may reassess this choice in the future.
2) Is there much in modern outside of Liliana of the Veil that Sigarda protects from?
as Nal2 said, All is Dust is a big one. There's an 8-rack player in my meta, and they sometimes run Smallpox somewhere in the 75, but I'm not sure on his configuration yet.
3) Ponza wants to tempo you out, and we play a greedy manabase which they can feed on. Gaddock could help a bit outside of getting hit by Abrade/Titan as he stops their bonfire, acid-moss, primal command and chandra. Counterspells could help here and if can deny their mana ramp. I'd probably bring glen elendra in as well and if you add in Forge-Tender they'd be auto include. On plus side they don't have much at instant speed to disrupt the combo or any hand discard/counterspells.
It's tough to squeeze in a counterspell but I might consider it depending upon how things go in the future.
I have two slots for additional removal in sideboard, tentatively occupied by Fiery Justice and Engineered Explosives. Competing for these slots are:
(1) The fourth Path
(2) Fiery Justice (up to 2x)
(3) Izzet Staticaster
(4) Engineered Explosives (up to 2x)
(5) Reflector Mage (up to 2x)
(6) Angel of Sanctions
(7) The second Reclamation Sage
And I don't totally agree that non-tutorable 1-of cards aren't worth running -- while tutorable is obv ideal as long as I have at least one other good tutor target my Evos will still bring in value and I'm happy to draw into powerful hate cards naturally.
I did end up keeping Staticaster over Fiery Justice in the side and Rallier over Tracker in the main. These turned out to be good calls.
Match 1: Goblins (2-1)
G1 is hazy. I stabilize at 3 life and then beat down. G2 I think I'm stabilizing and he pulls double Goblin Grenade into double Bolt the next turn to kill me out of nowhere. RIP, not much I can do about that. G3 we reach a board stall and I topdeck into the combo to win.
Match 2: Grixis Death's Shadow (2-1)
My opponent rolls out an Urza's Tower mat and I prepare for the worst, only to be pleasantly surprised by Shadow. G1 my hand is destroyed by repeated discard but he stumbles on land drops and I claw my way back with Courser + Voice and slooowly chip in for the kill. G2 he lands an early Liliana, The Last Hope and snipes my birds. He ticks lili up to target my Felidar (without Saheeli on the board) and states that this should prevent the combo kill since Saheeli would create 0/2 copies. I'm pretty sure this is wrong (right?) but I don't bother to call a judge as my Saheeli is Stubbornly Denied anyways and he follows with a 5/5 Shadow and Zombie Fish to close the game. G3 he tries to be sneaky and flashes in Snapcaster Mage to block Voice, which gives me two Elemental tokens lol. Those keep him busy until I can evolve a Bird into Rallier to return Voice and beat down.
Match 3: Affinity (2-1)
G1 I'm on the draw, immediately faced with 3x Thopters and a Pest. I Path the Pest during combat, forgetting that the Battle Cry buff remains (>.<). Next turn brings an Arcbound Ravager which he uses to sac everything and animate a 5/5 Inkmoth to deal 5 poison. He ignores my Saheeli, tapped out, and I combo out with Felidar before he can finish infecting me. G2 he vomits out a wretch of robots on T1 and Plates up one of the Thopters. I Evolve a dork into Reclamation Sage to destroy the plating, but he plays a second Plating next turn and finishes me off. G3 I have the most exquisite curve of T1 Hierarch, T2 Stony Silence + Bird, T3 Cobra + Saheeli + Oath, T4 Felidar and there's pretty much nothing he can do.
Match 4: Mardu Burn (2-0)
G1 I hit Bird -> Finks -> Felidar flicker, landed a Voice, and beat down. G2 I hit Hierarch -> Evo Hierarch into Finks -> Felidar Flicker. This put me far enough ahead on life to play Eternal Witness to grab back a burned-out Saheeli and complete the combo.
Final record 4-0. After a couple of weeks of correcting misplays and meta calibration the deck seems to be working well for Friday's more aggressive crowd. Having Cobra (and 12 fetches) was an important part of getting under Affinity and Shadow, and I appreciated the blocks and consistency that Wall provided, so I'll be leaving them in the 2-drop slots for now. I also realize that the global meta is a bit slower and grindier than what I faced here so I dunno how much help this list will be to you all, but I was pleased as it seemed reasonably fast, consistent, and proactive -- playing to the archetype's strengths.
EDIT: Looking back over the list the card that felt the most replaceable was Sigarda. She can certainly win games on her own but I'm not running into much LotV / Annihilator / Smallpox and against Black midrange I find myself boarding in Lark to help recover from discard and I overall feel perhaps slightly favored. Linvala / ScOoze / Selfless Spirit / Fiery Justice / Tracker / Counterspell are all looking for room in the 75 so I'm guessing this slot will get taken to help fix whatever match I have trouble with next unless someone convinces me I'm crazy
I'm using Regisaur Alpha in my deck and it's pretty decent blinking him in and out all the time getting a 3/3 dinosaur. That said, I don't think it's better than Blade Splicer blinking.
Huntmaster is sort of a middle ground between Rallier, Finks, and Splicer. I like him a lot since he combines Finks's immediate life gain stabilization vs Burn with the 2-body distribution that guarantees some minimum value against Path a la Splicer.
If you have Voice & Evo, Evolving Voice...
into Rallier gets you 8 power / 3 bodies,
into Finks gets you 5 power / 2 bodies / +2 life,
into Splicer gets you 7 power / 3 bodies,
into Huntmaster gets you 7 power / 3 bodies / +2 life.
In most of my games so far my opponents have run out of cards before me, so he flips when they pass an empty turn. One exception being that I will sometimes hold my cards and pass the turn if his 2 DMG flip shock will remove something good and/or the 4/4 body outclasses something important. He doesn't always offer a ton of immediate impact but he's decent at digging us out of the sort of board stalls we find ourselves in frequently. I've played him, had my opponent pass, flipped, dealt 2+2, attacked for 4, played two spells to flip back for another wolf + 2 life, and then flickered Huntmaster with Felidar for a third wolf + 2 life.
Copying a flipped Ravager of the Fells with Saheeli for a hasty 4/4 trample is decent, and has come up in a couple games.
His compatibility with Lark is a nice bonus, although in matches where Lark comes in I often want Glen Elendra over Huntmaster. One exception to this was Grixis Death's Shadow, where I was boarding in Blood Moons and wasn't sure I could support Glen Elendra's blue mana needs, and kept Huntmaster with Lark.
If you had to play one card against Burn I would absolutely prioritize running at least one Finks before Huntmaster, though, so that you can reliably get some lifegain T2-T3. Splicer is a good card and I bought a couple copies to try for one of my build revisions, but I just ended up needing the life gain too much to justify running it.
Lastly, I should note that I am slightly biased as I think Huntmaster is just a generally cool card. Great art, neat flavor, solid power. I don't think the the card is a mandatory part of the archetype by any means and he doesn't do a lot against unfair matchups (though neither do Finks / Splicer / Rallier), but he does work well for my relatively fair meta. He's a safe pick game 1 for a lot of matchups and being able to swap between him and Glen Elendra in the 4-drop slot games 2-3 feels good.
@Shelldell I agree I really like Huntmaster at the 4 slot. Saheeli if in play also gives ability to do something without needing to cast on a later turn to help trigger flip. While your list is definately well tuned for burn I think the finks may be less needed having walls, huntmaster, and thragtusk. I think that slot makes more sense to add back in a Tireless Tracker, could even shave a cobra and add 2 (or 2nd rallier). Finks is not a great target
for flickering, doesn't work with Reveilark anyway, and persist doesn't work with saheeli clone exile effect.
Good to see you ended up trying Izzet Staticaster again over Fiery Justice and that it worked better. With single copy and running evo creature just seems better. I also remembered later part of reason kiki lists switched to Fiery Justice is those lists decided to go full Blood Moon MB and path is a nonbo with BM. Since list you're running has 2 BM in side you probably do want to side out the paths in those cases and have options in SB for removal if necessary. I also like the 1x Engineered Explosives. Reflector mage would be good vs delve/dredge and favors a more aggro/tempo win style.
I had a feeling All is Dust said sacrifice but wasn't sure off top of my head. Well seems you are looking to cut Sigarda anyway. Maybe add back linvala as its easier to evo out a 4 drop?
While your list is definitely well tuned for burn I think the finks may be less needed having walls, huntmaster, and thragtusk. I think that slot makes more sense to add back in a Tireless Tracker, could even shave a cobra and add 2 (or 2nd rallier). Finks is not a great target
for flickering, doesn't work with Reveilark anyway, and persist doesn't work with saheeli clone exile effect.
I'll admit it's possible that I'm over-prepared in the main for Burn, but there are at least 3 Burn players and 1 Goblin player at the store so I can count on facing it pretty much every night and I'd prefer to turn those into reliable wins if possible. Obviously you should do whatever's best for your own meta in your version of the list if you're not happy with Finks.
I will say that I don't think Finks is such an awful Flicker target -- 2 life is OK but more importantly if you're able to flicker away the persist counter you free up Finks for another block / another sac to Evo etc which can really help out-grind aggro and midrange. I agree that Saheeli copying Finks for 2 life and a one-time 3/2 attacker is just OK. However I should note that your proposed replacement, Tracker, is worse for flickering, worse for copying (unless you copy then crack a Clue), and also can't be rez'd with Lark. If I were to replace Finks I think the next most attractive candidate might be Blade Splicer, trading life-gain for Lark compatibility. If I don't drop any more game to Burn next time I play I might test that swap. I've also found that I'm pretty happy with one copy of Rallier as an Evo target -- any more and IMO you start to get really polarized between amazing early tempo plays and redundant late game Ralliers that either lack recursion targets or Revolt enablers.
In terms of shaving 2-drops for a 3-drop I would rather not right now, I think having 2-drops to smooth out the curve and set up Evo into Felidar is important. I've thought about cutting a Cobra but we want to see it at the beginning of the game more consistently and then in the later game we'd ideally Scry away topdeck copies. 2 copies makes more sense for this approach than 1 copy IMO. Rather than shaving one copy of Cobra if it's not working well for you I would cut both copies for something more grindy or utility based (Selfless Spirit / Q Pridemage / Ooze / Spellskite / Fauna Shaman).
Sigarda -> Linvala is definitely a contender for me. I might try to proxy this before getting ahold of Linvala, though. Lots of other things competing for this slot.
One card in particular that I'm thinking about is Runed Halo. I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread. I've been looking around for some broad interaction that doesn't necessarily require us to hold up mana, especially blue mana. Could potentially be useful especially against midrange and combo (see below). Fits our proactive tap-out style and slots into our 2-CMC gap. Return blown-up/discarded Halos with Rallier. Flicker Halo to reset it to a more valuable target as the game progresses. Unfortunately not tutorable, it doesn't grant combat protection to Saheeli, and its WW cost weakens its attraction as a Blood Moon compatible piece of interaction (still less of a nonbo than Path)... but possibly versatile and powerful enough to consider nevertheless.
Grixis Death's Shadow: Death's Shadow / Tasigur
Vizier Company: Walking Ballista, Redcap?
Affinity: Etched Champion, Arcbound Ravager, Inkmoth
Burn: Eidolon of the Great Revel
Eldrazi: Reality Smasher, Thought-Knot Seer
Knightfall: Knight of the Reliquary
Elves: Shaman of the Pack
Junk: Liliana, IoK, whatever beater is on the board
Lantern Control: Codex Shredder, Inquisition of Kozilek
Scapeshift: Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, Prime Time
Storm: Grapeshot
Ad Nauseam: Lightning Storm
Tron: Karn Liberated, Wurmcoil Engine
UWx: Celestial Colonnade
Halo wouldn't actually come in for all of these as we have better options for many, just brainstorming
I forgot about flickering finks after its got the -1/-1 to reset. Reason I mentioned tracker was partly as you seemed to want to fit a copy in there before and to potentially increase resiliency for longer game. Not a huge fan of it myself as mentioned before and I agree its not a good flicker target. Its more to take advantage of all the fetches. I'm fine keeping finks in for now its still a great evo sac target.
Btw comparing your list with original 1.0 (as not that different), lands aside:
-2 Renegade Rallier
-1 Path to Exile
-1 Angel of Sanctions
-1 Sun Titan
+1 Kitchen Finks
+1 Courser of Kruphix
+2 Wall of Omens
+1 Huntmaster of the Fells
So overall there is more card filtering/draw and lower CC overall. Almost no loss to explosiveness of mana. Better able to win through damage and more resilient to aggro.
Linvala is a great time to pick up as it dropped from 50$ to ~10$ when was reprinted. It's also a great card in EDH. I'll swap it in for now
Runed Halo is interesting, I am pretty sure I have it in SB in one of my orzhov decks. The double white isn't great for early play but we do have 6 mana dorks. One issue I think it has here is the protection may not extend to planeswalkers on direct damage redirection, so may not protect saheeli. Suppose some similar options would be:
the new 2CC pithing needle Sorcerous Spyglass, which throws in seeing opponent's hand which is always good for combo. Spyglass may be interesting also as easy to cast with any mana.
Also there is at 3cc Nevermore which can outright prevent card from being played ala teeg.
Actually going with "protection" theme a good single copy of Gideon of the Trials could be interesting as it basically locks out one card with +1 and can also turn off other combo victories with the emblem. Best yet it also works with Oath. This could also open idea of also using a copy of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar in SB for more attrition/control matchups, also benefiting from change to legendary rule. Both cards can also attack and help win in combat backup strategy.
For now Runed Halo does protect from redirecting burn spells, however this is expected to change at some point whenever Wizards goes through with their upcoming Planeswalker redirection rule change, at which point Planeswalkers will become directly targetable assuming they don't errata Runed Halo and similar effects as well.
Of those three you mentioned I think Gideon of the Trials sounds the most promising. Gideon AoZ is interesting as well, although I think having a general tool against unfair matchups (Trials Gideon) is more important since we already to decently against fair decks. This tool could be as simple as just running Unified Will, but if we can find a proactive option that works with the deck I think that'd be better.
He ticks lili up to target my Felidar (without Saheeli on the board) and states that this should prevent the combo kill since Saheeli would create 0/2 copies. I'm pretty sure this is wrong (right?)
Just for the record, of course that's nonsense, copies always care about the base card.
I like Runed Halo in control decks, not sure about this one. Wouldn't Leyline of Sanctity work better in the protection part? We don't have that much of a problem with big creatures except Reality Smasher. I would regard Leyline on the level of Stony Silence or Blood Moon for sideboard, play 2of and don't care it's not tutorable. Runed Halo doesn't hose as much.
Which unfair decks Gideon Trials protects against? I think Leyline does better job there, too. Storm and Valakut just shoot Gideon, other decks just attack him. Ad Nauseam switches to Lab Maniac with both Gideon and Leyline. Lantern possibly, but they have Decay and Pulse, not sure how that plays out.
What I'm curious about with the upcoming burn templating change is Saheeli redirecting the 1 dmg to walkers. I'm afraid this will no longer be possible which would be a shame, Saheeli killed a lot of Lilianas for me, it's surprisingly useful to keep walkers in check. They talk about changing "target player" to "target player or walker", I don't see them changing "each opponent" to "each opponent and/or walker". Just a speculation for now.
Anyone considered Siren Stormtamer? Protects both Saheeli and Felidar. Maybe too low impact to play multiples, just something about the flying men interested me.
Regarding Siren Stormtamer, if you're considering this type of shield card then Spellskite seems better in pretty much every way -- better blocker (except against Affi), doesn't require you to pay Blue and then hold up a second Blue to be live right away, evolves into Felidar, and has some other niche applications as well vs Burn, Valakut, etc. Am I missing any important usage cases for Stormtamer?
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EDIT: I'm trying to decide between Unified Will and Dusk // Dawn for my last slot (currently Sigarda).
Would you guys bring in Cataclysmic Gearhulk against Bant Eldrazi / Eldrazi Tron? The thought of leaving them with Reality Smasher -- likely forcing me to double-block with Gearhulk and whatever else I might save -- doesn't sound great. But there could be a bunch of other board states without a Smasher where Gearhulk might be favorable to us, I suppose.
Unified Will would be potentially helpful against many flavors of control / prison, Titanshift, Eldrazi, Storm and other combo decks (though I've only ran into Storm).
Dusk // Dawn would be potentially helpful against Fish, Elves, Grixis Shadow, Junk (?), Eldrazi, and possibly Ponza.
If Gearhulk is good enough for Eldrazi I will probably lean on that and run Unified Will over Dusk // Dawn. What do you all think?
Regarding Cataclysmic Gearhulk - in the best scenarios (which aren't that unusal) you will end up witih Cataclysmic Gearhulk + another nonartifact creature + a token from a sacrificed Voice of Resurgence. I would keep Cataclysmic Gearhulk in vs any Eldrazi matchup.
Is it worth bringing in Gearhulk vs Affinity? I've brought it in before but it hasn't come up yet. Ravager can ensure that their remaining 1-2 creatures are big, and we might not have a chance to get to 5 CMC (or 3 drop + Evo) in this fast matchup.
Is it worth bringing in Reclamation Sage vs Merfolk (or Taxes) to be able to blow up Vial (and possibly Smuggler's Copter)? This slows their board development down by a turn or two but doesn't do much to advance ours, and since they probably don't have more than one artifact flickering Rec Sage won't usually give any payoff. I'm leaning towards not bringing this in vs Merfolk, but against Taxes they can side in Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace so I'm leaning yes there. Anything else I should bring in other than Gearhulk & Explosives? Deliberating on Glen Elendra vs Huntmaster... I guess Staticaster might be useful against Master of Waves but otherwise seems underwhelming. Against Taxes Staticaster could snipe Thalia / Blade Splicer / Flickerwisp, and with a flicker it could hit most of the rest of the creatures in the list so it seems like a good idea there. SB list here.
Is it worth bringing Stony Silence in vs E-Tron? I'm leaning towards no. Turning off Walking Ballista + Ratchet Bomb + Basilisk Collar doesn't seem like our highest priority and we have Blood Moon, Gaddock, and Gearhulk to bring in and make room for.
You're right about Ballista, upon further thought they only need one counter on it to ping Saheeli after she flickers and ticks down to take her out, which is very possible for them to set up in the early game even without any acceleration / through Blood Moon.
I think it's a toss up on Mind Stone. In the last month MTGTop8 shows ~33% builds playing with 0 stones, ~5% with 1 stone, and ~63% with 2 stones for all skill levels, although that skews more towards 50% 0 stones at larger events. If I had Linvala to cover Ballista I'm not sure I would side in Stony Silence unless I'd already seen Mind Stone in play. But I could be wrong here, maybe Ballista is worth covering with redundant hate.
Also Elves has gotten a lot scarier since I played against it a couple years ago! New technology in the forms of the Druid infinite combo, Chordable Selfless Spirit as anti-sweeper tech in the main, and Westvale Abbey as alt win-con are all pretty nuts. The need to handle Elves as well as Ballista is definitely nudging me back towards Linvala, lol.
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EDIT: I also had a few more questions about more fringe applications of Eidolon of Rhetoric. I was thinking of bringing it in against cantripping Snapcaster decks (UW Control, Jeskai Geist, Grixis Shadow) while trimming something like a Hierarch vs Shadow or Path vs UW. Additionally, I was thinking of bringing it in on the play against Burn, Goblins, or Elves over, say, Eternal Witness. Thoughts?
One last thing that I wanted to bring back up was the tension between Path to Exile and Blood Moon.
For our most common midrange matches (Abzan, Eldrazi, Shadow) we're hoping to lean on a T2-T3 Blood Moon effect to lock them out of the game long enough for us to get a sizable lead, if not combo out. In these matchups I would love to have lots of hard spot removal to supplement the Moon plan but I find myself cutting down to ~2 Paths to at least make the nonbo less frequent..
In a prior list I was running Unified Will in the board and brought those in over Paths -- this was a slight improvement but it was reliant on having a Dork stick around to supply U through Blood Moon, which creates its own (albeit lesser) tension.
Is the efficiency of Path outside of midrange battles good enough to justify its awkwardness with Moon? If you guys think this is a problem, has anyone played around with an alternative interaction suite in the main? If you don't feel that it's a problem or is the best we can do, let me know why.
I will try to amend this post with some ideas on interaction spells later.
One last thing that I wanted to bring back up was the tension between Path to Exile and Blood Moon.
For our most common midrange matches (Abzan, Eldrazi, Shadow) we're hoping to lean on a T2-T3 Blood Moon effect to lock them out of the game long enough for us to get a sizable lead, if not combo out. In these matchups I would love to have lots of hard spot removal to supplement the Moon plan but I find myself cutting down to ~2 Paths to at least make the nonbo less frequent..
In a prior list I was running Unified Will in the board and brought those in over Paths -- this was a slight improvement but it was reliant on having a Dork stick around to supply U through Blood Moon, which creates its own (albeit lesser) tension.
Is the efficiency of Path outside of midrange battles good enough to justify its awkwardness with Moon? If you guys think this is a problem, has anyone played around with an alternative interaction suite in the main? If you don't feel that it's a problem or is the best we can do, let me know why.
I will try to amend this post with some ideas on interaction spells later.
I have also felt that this is quite awkward and have tried running 3 Oath of Chandra instead of Paths. They are of course less powerful but interact nicely with Felidar Guardian and Renegade Rallier / Sun Titan. Sometimes dealing 2 damage when playing Saheeli is also pretty nice. The fact that I never could kill things at instant speed and never 4+ toughness creatures with them made me scratch that project though. An alternative could be Dismember over Path, but that doesn't kill large Death's Shadows and also hurts our already a bit fragile life resource.
Back up to the gearhulk affinity question, albeit not having direct experience I would imagine that ravager can make that not a killer play, albet followed up with a path it could. Also doesn't affect their land artifacts. Linvala would be good there also as shuts off their two pump creatures and also provides a flying blocker. Can be shot down by their burn though.
Hmm the oath of chandra is interesting, guess extra bonus is makes a chalice on 1 hurt us less. Without path though witness is worse and would probably look to run another rallier instead. For that reason oath could be better vs discard with more ways to get it back out. For what its worth with the Sun titan +2 saheeli combo and oath out you could win through a a bridge lock.
Also along lines of oath and planeswalker goodness, I started thinking how a copy of Chandra, Torch of Defiance would fit maybe over a cobra. Provides removal but also can help ramp with the RR ability for a cat + saheeli turn. Shes also good with blood moon as even easier to cast.
Last night was the first time I got around to playing the Saheeli version of the general creature-toolbox shell. However, I'm far from a stranger to non-Saheeli builds - after tons of events on variants of Kiki-chord, Angel Chord, and a million Abzan Company builds over the years, I figured it was about time I sleeved some Felidar Guardians. Here's the list I played:
Kiki-Jiki: Kiki is probably the card I'm most undecided on in the 75. Obviously he's a 5th combo piece with Guardian that can be Evolved into, but Guardian is much weaker with Kiki than Restoration Angel is. He also warps the mana around him a bit, necessitating 2nd Stomping Ground and Fire-Lit Thicket while preventing me from playing Misty instead of Mesa, and 1 Strand over a Foothills. Still, a Kiki on board that doesn't get immediately removed will probably win the game.
Mulldrifter: It didn't take me that long to realize that as much as I love Mulldrifter, it just isn't doing enough here. Five mana is the sweet spot for power, with Tusk, Lark, Keranos, Kiki, Sigarda, Gearhulk, Angel of Sanctions... there just isn't room to justify Mulldrifter, and you also aren't going to Evolve to it nearly often enough to justify the fact that 99% of the time you're playing Divination that you can find with Oath.
Mainboard 3-Drops: Between Finks, Courser, Tracker, Reflector Mage, Eternal Witness, Renegade Rallier, Fairgrounds Warden, Blade Splicer, Knight of the Reliquary, Spell Queller, and others, there are tons and tons of options for three drops. I think that Finks is the best because it helps with the painful 4-color manabase, has synergy with Felidar to reset the persist, and is the second-best 3-drop to Evolve after Blade Splicer. Rallier is overall a very flexible card with Oath, Voice, ramping with fetches, etc. Witness was almost a second Rallier, but the ability to get Path and discarded Evolution as well as larger permanents back made me willing to try the split - though the Witness didn't come up in the games I played. Rallier and Witness also play well with Evolution, providing most of their value up front.
Ethersworn Canonist: This is just a holdout from playing Chord of Calling decks, where having a 2-mana Rule of Law is important. If I play the deck again, it will definitely be a second Eidolon. My meta has a ton of Storm though, so if yours doesn't you can probably just play one Eidolon and have another board slot.
Keranos: The classic "GBx can't beat this" card - while I still think it's quite powerful, Shadow is a slightly different brand of midrange compared to the old Jund decks, and while I haven't played Keranos against Shadow enough, I highly suspect it's less potent. If you're confident in the control matchups, this could very easily switch to a Chameleon Colossus or similar to be more potent against Shadow.
Thrun: The best card against control, and a perfectly fine 4-mana evolve in non-blue grindy matchups where you can leave in your Evolutions. Personal bias, but I think that pretty much every fair green deck needs a strong reason if they aren't going to board Thrun.
Notable Exclusions:
Lotus Cobra: This card is, in my mind, just super meh due to the amount of things that have to go right in order for it to be any good - not the type of card that I'm looking to put in a deck with lots of 1-ofs. Add the fact that it evolves very poorly, and it was an easy cut for me. However, it's quite good when it's good though, so I can respect playing 1-2 copies, even if I don't like it.
22nd Land: Yep, I should be playing this without Lotus Cobra. Probably a Horizon Canopy.
Huntmaster/Vizier of the Menagerie: The best fair 4-drops outside of Thrun. Personally, I think that these are significantly worse compared to the 5-mana options that I'm willing to accept the fact that Wall of Omens won't evolve as well as it could.
Engineered Explosives: Along with the Canonist, this was my other big mental slip building my sideboad - there's no real reason that a 4-color deck shouldn't be packing at least one.
Removal Creature: Other than explosives, the one thing I wish that I had access to was an Angel of Sanctions or Fairgrounds Warden. An Angel will probably take the Mulldrifter spot if I play the deck again soon, and I considered a Gearhulk in the side.
About 1,000 sideboard cards: My board is fairly tuned to the meta I was expecting, and I could probably list at least 50 cards in 10 minutes that would be more than reasonable sideboard options for this deck, and my sideboard is tuned for the meta I was expecting to play. I would recommend you do the same, and avoid playing this deck at large tournaments or online because you can't effectively target as well.
Thoughts on Dorks and Blood Moon:
Obviously I haven't been following this deck extremely closely, or for that long, but from reading through the past few pages, I think that people are boarding and using Blood Moon incorrectly. Mostly this is because of the interaction between Moon and Manadorks during sideboarding. In my mind, two things need to be true in order to bring Blood Moon in. First and most obvious, Blood Moon needs to provide a strong lock against our opponent. Second, the matchup needs to be one in which we're willing to leave Birds and Noble in the deck. Dorks are a clear necessity in Modern for speed, but as soon as our opponent is interacting with us in a significant way, they quickly become the worst cards in the deck - especially after sideboard where we have to fight through more interaction. Against almost every single deck with Push/Path/Thoughtseize/Terminate/Decay/Cryptic/etc, the first cards I'm cutting from my deck are Birds and Hierarch, because I want every card to actually do something. Blood Moon, on the other hand, requires the manadorks to be functional in any real capacity for our 4-5 color pile of a manabase. Against decks like Gx Tron, Valakut, Ad Nauseam, etc. this is just fine, because we need the velocity from the dorks, and Blood Moon is strong. However, against Junk, Jund, Shadow, or any other grindy 3-color midrange deck, siding in Blood Moon essentially says that we're willing to put 6 near-useless cards in our deck to facilitate a 2-of that might win us the game if we happen to draw it at the same time as a dork (that lives), it doesn't get discarded or hit by float mana decay, and they haven't fetched or drawn the basic they need. Overall, I think that leaving in their manadorks too often is the biggest and most common mistake that I see GWx toolbox players make, especially in decks without township.
Short Tournament Report:
Round One: Esper PWs/Tapout Control 2-0
Game one I keep a risky one-lander with a Hierarch and Oath of Nissa, and proceed to immediately get my Noble pushed and whiff a land off the oath. Fortunately, I draw a fetch turn three and get to deploy the Walls and Voices from my hand. My opponent has a relatively slow start with discard and removal. Felidar Guardians and Rallier let me get 6-7 Oath of Nissa ETBs over the course of the game and grind through, and eventually combo. It only clears Gideon Jura off of his triple-Gideon plus Emblem board, but he doesn't find an answer on his turn and concedes.
SB: -4 Birds, -2 Noble, -1 Evolution || +Thragtusk, +Keranos, +Glen Elendra, +Reveillark, +Path, +Thrun, +Staticaster
Game two his removal and discard heavy suite lines up even more poorly against a pile of value creatures than they did game one. He treads water with a couple Lingering Souls for a while, but eventually I draw Kiki and go infinite - basically a formality though, as he's facing Thrun, Keranos, and a 2/2 Archmage while hellbent.
Round Two: Burn 2-0
Game one, I keep a decent hand on the play, but the turn one Goblin Guide from my opponent makes the three shocklands in my hand look pretty bad. Fortunately, my opponent's draw is a bit land-heavy and a couple points from Courser let me just barely combo turn 5 at one life.
SB: -Titan, -Kiki, -Mulldrifter, -1 Saheeli || +2 Unified Will, +Path, +Thragtusk
The worst possible first turns happen, with him going Guide into Searing Blaze on my turn one Noble. I have to go all-in on Finks evolve to Thragtusk on my turn four at 6 life, and fortunately he doesn't have the Skullcrack.
Round Three: Storm 2-0
Game one was honestly just a race, I have a Path for Electromancer on his upkeep and proceed to win on turn 4. Nothing to say other than a great die roll win and opening hand.
SB: -Titan, -Kiki, -2 Finks, -Courser, -Mulldrifter || +2 Unified Will, +Glen Elendra, + Eidolon, +Canonist, +Path
Game two I have turn three Evolve a Wall of Omens into Eidolon. My opponent checks his sideboard to confirm that he didn't have any way to get it off the table, and conceded. I was very surprised, as my opponent is on Storm every week, and I would have expected that Eidolon was on his radar when boarding. Fortunate for me, because revealing his hand shows that I was extremely dead if he had Echoing Truth/Wipe Away/Dismember.
Round Four; Small turnout, ID
Overall, a small tournament and only six games played, so not a ton to go off. More than anything, I think that it showed how much I got to hammer my round one opponent with sideboard cards because I knew I didn't really need to worry about board cards for Valakut or Dredge.
Hi VenocStorm! Welcome to the thread, congrats on your matches so far, and thank you for sharing your detailed notes.
I had a few questions for you:
1) Please forgive me for one instance of "why not X" -- Gaddock Teeg? He has been an important part of my plan against green CoCo/Chord decks, blue Cryptic/Verdict decks, and some problematic haymakers in Titanshift, Tron, and others. I also like that he's a proactive permanent in the deck's primary colors that can be rez'd with Rallier + Lark. I personally will run at least one copy even in an unknown global meta.
It looks like you plan to handle many of the same problematic spells with Unified Will / Glen Elendra and bring in Thrun as your ace against Ux control? Myself and some other players have been struggling a bit on whether or not to include counterspells such as Unified Will. Its breadth of coverage is really unparalleled, and it's especially useful in some of our worst matchups. However it's also a reactive blue spell in a deck that's otherwise predominantly focused on fully utilizing (GW) mana to develop its board at sorcery speed. Any thoughts here?
2) I've been uncertain about bringing in Blood Moon but leaving dorks vs tricolor midrange recently, so thank you for outlining things more clearly. I will probably still try bringing in Magus of the Moon against these decks just in case there is a scenario where I can safely Evo into Magus to set up a midgame lock without Dorks. What do you think about Moon vs Bant Eldrazi & Eldrazi Tron? These decks both grind very well so we want good topdecks but they have perhaps fewer ways to efficiently answer Dorks and are softer to Moon than midrange so I'm inclined to leave both the Dorks and the Moon package in unless you think this would be unwise.
Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm really interested in Saheeli combo in modern, and I'm also a fan of Bring to Light, as it allows tutoring for silver bullet instants and sorceries as well. To that end, I've brewed up this and am taking it to my LGS to test this week. Any suggestions before I sleeve it up? I'm still new ish to the game so any feedback is appreciated. Here's a link to the deck on mtggoldfish, as I'm not sure how to format it for this site. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/780604#paper
Thanks!
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
@Shelldell
Really like the newest version you posted above. I myself tried a few ideas with Nahiri but in the end even getting down to 7 4cc+ cards would end up making evolution feel weak. Now that others also talking about Hostage Taker that is probably the better card for this shell for the removal if desired at 4cc. One thing playing with that reminded me of is why I liked Wall Of Omens, especially in a PW deck. The 1x of Courser of Kruphix also looks good as its bad to draw multiples but good synergy with cobra and saheeli. I also did want to get Thragtusk back in my version at 5cc as a good evo target. Overall your build seems to give strong game 1 vs burn and zoo strategies with most of the speed of original 1.0. I also like cards like Glen Elendra Archmage out of MB as can be clunky in a lot of matchups. I've seen I believe a variation of kiki-chord go a full 3-4x Fiery Justice MB (food for thought), so just not sure how much 1 copy will be worth. Also like the 1x Reveillark in the 75. I also prefer rallier than tracker as it plays with the flickering strategy better and should at least ramp. Have you considered trimming a hierarch and trying one of each? Overall like the sideboard but few notes/questions:
1) Why no Izzet Staticaster? Also see no Linvala, Keeper of Silence, were these intentionally cut or just no room?
2) Is there much in modern outside of Liliana of the Veil that Sigarda protects from?
3) Ponza wants to tempo you out, and we play a greedy manabase which they can feed on. Gaddock could help a bit outside of getting hit by Abrade/Titan as he stops their bonfire, acid-moss, primal command and chandra. Counterspells could help here and if can deny their mana ramp. I'd probably bring glen elendra in as well and if you add in Forge-Tender they'd be auto include. On plus side they don't have much at instant speed to disrupt the combo or any hand discard/counterspells .
@adri_kalo
Thing about adding combos is, you want the pieces to interact with each other. You don't want two dead cards when you draw the wrong two pieces. A number of decks here play Sun Titan as the top end, that can also combo with Saheeli.
Spike Feeder is not that good for burn, it's a 3 mana gain 4 life, maybe chump one attack before sacing it. Kitchen Finks gains the same amount of life while trading with at least 1 creature. If you want to Evo or flicker Spike Feeder, it's just gain 2. Saheeli copy is gain 4, not exactly what you want to minus for.
Archangel of Thune is nice with Saheeli, but again, you can do better. The copy just wins more as the Archangel can take over a game by itself. On the other hand, you can't blink it, when you Evo for it you sac one creature that it wants to counter up...
@jupiterninja
hi!
why the 3/3 split of Birds/Noble in full-on 5 color? Seems like an easy 4of birds.
Like the addition of Anafenza, the Foremost, seen the first version and was gonna suggest it as a possibility.
Also was going to suggest the Murmuring Bosk as @Reckless mentioned.
Any plan for Blood Moon? You had Qasali Pridemage main, not a bad idea. Reclamation Sage in the board would work, too. You can BTL for 3 under moon, so any targets at 3 cmc are fine.
Following is just brainstorming, not strict upgrades:
I'm not sold on The Scarab God, it won't be bad as the floor is 5/5 for 5, but there may be more impactful or synergistic cards.
You have varied 3 drops, I pressume as a toolbox for Bring to Light. IMO this works with Chord more than BTL. Casting BTL for Courser, Blade Splicer, Finks or Reflector Mage is just overpaying. Anafenza has the right powerlevel when you want her.
Now, I don't mean to throw out everything, but you could look at which of those helps the deck the most and commit to one direction, making it consistent part not silver bullets. For example if Finks help you survive early, or Courser helps you with lands, play one as 3-4of and add a few 1of powerful cards.
If you'd play Kiki-Jiki you can combo with a single Bring to Light like the Chord decks (BTL Witness > return BTL, BTL Felidar > blink Witness > return BTL, BTL Kiki). Not clear you should, the 5c mana is rough and Chord sets up at instant speed.
Blood Baron of Vizkopa main or board, dodges everything but wraths. This is the type of effect I would look for to make BTL better than Chord.
Sideboard:
Rest in Peace could be Nihil Spellbomb, Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus if you want to keep Witness, Finks, Voice, Rallier online.
If control is a problem don't forget Gaddock Teeg.
Crumble to Dust is a BTL bullet.
All is Dust, which probably is a larger threat for this deck than Lily.
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
Staticaster and Justice are competing for a sideboard slot here:
Izzet Staticaster
+Can be found off of Oath & Evolution
+Can be copied and flickered to hit X/2
+Repeatable pinging effect every turn to continually suppress X/1s
+0/3 body can sometimes be relevant as a blocker
-Doesn't do much once aggro decks outgrow the 1 damage via anthem effects
-Multiple targets must share name to have wide effect
-Requires dork to cast under Blood Moon
Fiery Justice
+Damage can be split as needed: take out 5 Spirit tokens, an X/3 + X/2, or burn out one Angler/Tasigur
+Burn out Planeswalkers for 5 loyalty
+Lifegain offers tricks against Death's Shadow (although this matchup is already OK)
+Can be cast under Blood Moon without dorks
-Lifegain can conflict with beat down plan B, pushes you more toward needing to combo out
-Can't be found off of Oath & Evolution
So the main factor is that Staticaster can be found with increasing reliability as the game goes on, but against many of the tribal aggro matches in my meta its usefulness can drop off sharply as the match goes on. Against Elves and Fish especially it's easy to imagine them quickly dropping a lord and shutting down Staticaster. Justice is better at staying relevant as these matches go on and also has greater versatility against PWs and larger creatures. Since our deck arguably pushes the combo angle harder than Kiki lists I think we should be able to play around the lifegain even better.
Overall Cataclysmic Gearhulk is a much stronger answer in these matchups, and if I were going to Evo for something I would hope to Evo for it over Staticaster in many scenarios. It's a tough call between Staticaster and Justice to keep me in the game until Gearhulk can come down (or I can combo off), but I'm going to give Justice a shot tomorrow evening to get a better feel for it in practice.
Anyone else have experience with these two cards and wanna chime in?
I think you're right that I should keep Rallier in the MB for now due its synergy with the core. As for shaving a Hierarch to run Tracker I really like having my Hierarchs for T2 Blood Moon, and I would probably shave Cobras before Hierarchs. If I have too many issues with flooding I may re-examine this in the future.
Livanala can be great, I just don't actually own a copy at the moment. She's definitely relevant against Elves and Bant Eldrazi in my meta, but I haven't run into any other creature combo like Vizier CoCo / Knightfall for her to stop so she doesn't quite qualify as essential enough to push out other cards from my stuffed sideboard. Depending upon how my matches with Elves and how frequently the Bant Eldrazi player is there I may reassess this choice in the future.
as Nal2 said, All is Dust is a big one. There's an 8-rack player in my meta, and they sometimes run Smallpox somewhere in the 75, but I'm not sure on his configuration yet.
It's tough to squeeze in a counterspell but I might consider it depending upon how things go in the future.
I have two slots for additional removal in sideboard, tentatively occupied by Fiery Justice and Engineered Explosives. Competing for these slots are:
(1) The fourth Path
(2) Fiery Justice (up to 2x)
(3) Izzet Staticaster
(4) Engineered Explosives (up to 2x)
(5) Reflector Mage (up to 2x)
(6) Angel of Sanctions
(7) The second Reclamation Sage
As previously noted, my local meta is shown here. How would you all utilize these two slots?
And I don't totally agree that non-tutorable 1-of cards aren't worth running -- while tutorable is obv ideal as long as I have at least one other good tutor target my Evos will still bring in value and I'm happy to draw into powerful hate cards naturally.
My list is mostly unchanged from my last post
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Noble Hierarch
2x Lotus Cobra
4x Voice of Resurgence
2x Wall of Omens
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Eternal Witness
1x Kitchen Finks
1x Renegade Rallier
4x Felidar Guardian
1x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Thragtusk
Spells (14)
4x Oath of Nissa
4x Saheeli Rai
3x Path to Exile
3x Eldritch Evolution
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
3x Verdant Catacombs
1x Flooded Strand
1x Breeding Pool
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
3x Forest
2x Plains
1x Gavony Township
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Gaddock Teeg
2x Stony Silence
2x Blood Moon
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Magus of the Moon
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Glen Elendra Archmage
1x Cataclysmic Gearhulk
1x Reveillark
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
Match 1: Goblins (2-1)
G1 is hazy. I stabilize at 3 life and then beat down. G2 I think I'm stabilizing and he pulls double Goblin Grenade into double Bolt the next turn to kill me out of nowhere. RIP, not much I can do about that. G3 we reach a board stall and I topdeck into the combo to win.
Match 2: Grixis Death's Shadow (2-1)
My opponent rolls out an Urza's Tower mat and I prepare for the worst, only to be pleasantly surprised by Shadow. G1 my hand is destroyed by repeated discard but he stumbles on land drops and I claw my way back with Courser + Voice and slooowly chip in for the kill. G2 he lands an early Liliana, The Last Hope and snipes my birds. He ticks lili up to target my Felidar (without Saheeli on the board) and states that this should prevent the combo kill since Saheeli would create 0/2 copies. I'm pretty sure this is wrong (right?) but I don't bother to call a judge as my Saheeli is Stubbornly Denied anyways and he follows with a 5/5 Shadow and Zombie Fish to close the game. G3 he tries to be sneaky and flashes in Snapcaster Mage to block Voice, which gives me two Elemental tokens lol. Those keep him busy until I can evolve a Bird into Rallier to return Voice and beat down.
Match 3: Affinity (2-1)
G1 I'm on the draw, immediately faced with 3x Thopters and a Pest. I Path the Pest during combat, forgetting that the Battle Cry buff remains (>.<). Next turn brings an Arcbound Ravager which he uses to sac everything and animate a 5/5 Inkmoth to deal 5 poison. He ignores my Saheeli, tapped out, and I combo out with Felidar before he can finish infecting me. G2 he vomits out a wretch of robots on T1 and Plates up one of the Thopters. I Evolve a dork into Reclamation Sage to destroy the plating, but he plays a second Plating next turn and finishes me off. G3 I have the most exquisite curve of T1 Hierarch, T2 Stony Silence + Bird, T3 Cobra + Saheeli + Oath, T4 Felidar and there's pretty much nothing he can do.
Match 4: Mardu Burn (2-0)
G1 I hit Bird -> Finks -> Felidar flicker, landed a Voice, and beat down. G2 I hit Hierarch -> Evo Hierarch into Finks -> Felidar Flicker. This put me far enough ahead on life to play Eternal Witness to grab back a burned-out Saheeli and complete the combo.
Final record 4-0. After a couple of weeks of correcting misplays and meta calibration the deck seems to be working well for Friday's more aggressive crowd. Having Cobra (and 12 fetches) was an important part of getting under Affinity and Shadow, and I appreciated the blocks and consistency that Wall provided, so I'll be leaving them in the 2-drop slots for now. I also realize that the global meta is a bit slower and grindier than what I faced here so I dunno how much help this list will be to you all, but I was pleased as it seemed reasonably fast, consistent, and proactive -- playing to the archetype's strengths.
EDIT: Looking back over the list the card that felt the most replaceable was Sigarda. She can certainly win games on her own but I'm not running into much LotV / Annihilator / Smallpox and against Black midrange I find myself boarding in Lark to help recover from discard and I overall feel perhaps slightly favored. Linvala / ScOoze / Selfless Spirit / Fiery Justice / Tracker / Counterspell are all looking for room in the 75 so I'm guessing this slot will get taken to help fix whatever match I have trouble with next unless someone convinces me I'm crazy
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
If you have Voice & Evo, Evolving Voice...
Copying a flipped Ravager of the Fells with Saheeli for a hasty 4/4 trample is decent, and has come up in a couple games.
His compatibility with Lark is a nice bonus, although in matches where Lark comes in I often want Glen Elendra over Huntmaster. One exception to this was Grixis Death's Shadow, where I was boarding in Blood Moons and wasn't sure I could support Glen Elendra's blue mana needs, and kept Huntmaster with Lark.
If you had to play one card against Burn I would absolutely prioritize running at least one Finks before Huntmaster, though, so that you can reliably get some lifegain T2-T3. Splicer is a good card and I bought a couple copies to try for one of my build revisions, but I just ended up needing the life gain too much to justify running it.
Lastly, I should note that I am slightly biased as I think Huntmaster is just a generally cool card. Great art, neat flavor, solid power. I don't think the the card is a mandatory part of the archetype by any means and he doesn't do a lot against unfair matchups (though neither do Finks / Splicer / Rallier), but he does work well for my relatively fair meta. He's a safe pick game 1 for a lot of matchups and being able to swap between him and Glen Elendra in the 4-drop slot games 2-3 feels good.
for flickering, doesn't work with Reveilark anyway, and persist doesn't work with saheeli clone exile effect.
Good to see you ended up trying Izzet Staticaster again over Fiery Justice and that it worked better. With single copy and running evo creature just seems better. I also remembered later part of reason kiki lists switched to Fiery Justice is those lists decided to go full Blood Moon MB and path is a nonbo with BM. Since list you're running has 2 BM in side you probably do want to side out the paths in those cases and have options in SB for removal if necessary. I also like the 1x Engineered Explosives. Reflector mage would be good vs delve/dredge and favors a more aggro/tempo win style.
I had a feeling All is Dust said sacrifice but wasn't sure off top of my head. Well seems you are looking to cut Sigarda anyway. Maybe add back linvala as its easier to evo out a 4 drop?
I will say that I don't think Finks is such an awful Flicker target -- 2 life is OK but more importantly if you're able to flicker away the persist counter you free up Finks for another block / another sac to Evo etc which can really help out-grind aggro and midrange. I agree that Saheeli copying Finks for 2 life and a one-time 3/2 attacker is just OK. However I should note that your proposed replacement, Tracker, is worse for flickering, worse for copying (unless you copy then crack a Clue), and also can't be rez'd with Lark. If I were to replace Finks I think the next most attractive candidate might be Blade Splicer, trading life-gain for Lark compatibility. If I don't drop any more game to Burn next time I play I might test that swap. I've also found that I'm pretty happy with one copy of Rallier as an Evo target -- any more and IMO you start to get really polarized between amazing early tempo plays and redundant late game Ralliers that either lack recursion targets or Revolt enablers.
In terms of shaving 2-drops for a 3-drop I would rather not right now, I think having 2-drops to smooth out the curve and set up Evo into Felidar is important. I've thought about cutting a Cobra but we want to see it at the beginning of the game more consistently and then in the later game we'd ideally Scry away topdeck copies. 2 copies makes more sense for this approach than 1 copy IMO. Rather than shaving one copy of Cobra if it's not working well for you I would cut both copies for something more grindy or utility based (Selfless Spirit / Q Pridemage / Ooze / Spellskite / Fauna Shaman).
Sigarda -> Linvala is definitely a contender for me. I might try to proxy this before getting ahold of Linvala, though. Lots of other things competing for this slot.
One card in particular that I'm thinking about is Runed Halo. I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread. I've been looking around for some broad interaction that doesn't necessarily require us to hold up mana, especially blue mana. Could potentially be useful especially against midrange and combo (see below). Fits our proactive tap-out style and slots into our 2-CMC gap. Return blown-up/discarded Halos with Rallier. Flicker Halo to reset it to a more valuable target as the game progresses. Unfortunately not tutorable, it doesn't grant combat protection to Saheeli, and its WW cost weakens its attraction as a Blood Moon compatible piece of interaction (still less of a nonbo than Path)... but possibly versatile and powerful enough to consider nevertheless.
Vizier Company: Walking Ballista, Redcap?
Affinity: Etched Champion, Arcbound Ravager, Inkmoth
Burn: Eidolon of the Great Revel
Eldrazi: Reality Smasher, Thought-Knot Seer
Knightfall: Knight of the Reliquary
Elves: Shaman of the Pack
Junk: Liliana, IoK, whatever beater is on the board
Lantern Control: Codex Shredder, Inquisition of Kozilek
Scapeshift: Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, Prime Time
Storm: Grapeshot
Ad Nauseam: Lightning Storm
Tron: Karn Liberated, Wurmcoil Engine
UWx: Celestial Colonnade
Halo wouldn't actually come in for all of these as we have better options for many, just brainstorming
Btw comparing your list with original 1.0 (as not that different), lands aside:
-2 Renegade Rallier
-1 Path to Exile
-1 Angel of Sanctions
-1 Sun Titan
+1 Kitchen Finks
+1 Courser of Kruphix
+2 Wall of Omens
+1 Huntmaster of the Fells
So overall there is more card filtering/draw and lower CC overall. Almost no loss to explosiveness of mana. Better able to win through damage and more resilient to aggro.
Linvala is a great time to pick up as it dropped from 50$ to ~10$ when was reprinted. It's also a great card in EDH. I'll swap it in for now
Runed Halo is interesting, I am pretty sure I have it in SB in one of my orzhov decks. The double white isn't great for early play but we do have 6 mana dorks. One issue I think it has here is the protection may not extend to planeswalkers on direct damage redirection, so may not protect saheeli. Suppose some similar options would be:
Of those three you mentioned I think Gideon of the Trials sounds the most promising. Gideon AoZ is interesting as well, although I think having a general tool against unfair matchups (Trials Gideon) is more important since we already to decently against fair decks. This tool could be as simple as just running Unified Will, but if we can find a proactive option that works with the deck I think that'd be better.
Just for the record, of course that's nonsense, copies always care about the base card.
I like Runed Halo in control decks, not sure about this one. Wouldn't Leyline of Sanctity work better in the protection part? We don't have that much of a problem with big creatures except Reality Smasher. I would regard Leyline on the level of Stony Silence or Blood Moon for sideboard, play 2of and don't care it's not tutorable. Runed Halo doesn't hose as much.
Which unfair decks Gideon Trials protects against? I think Leyline does better job there, too. Storm and Valakut just shoot Gideon, other decks just attack him. Ad Nauseam switches to Lab Maniac with both Gideon and Leyline. Lantern possibly, but they have Decay and Pulse, not sure how that plays out.
What I'm curious about with the upcoming burn templating change is Saheeli redirecting the 1 dmg to walkers. I'm afraid this will no longer be possible which would be a shame, Saheeli killed a lot of Lilianas for me, it's surprisingly useful to keep walkers in check. They talk about changing "target player" to "target player or walker", I don't see them changing "each opponent" to "each opponent and/or walker". Just a speculation for now.
Anyone considered Siren Stormtamer? Protects both Saheeli and Felidar. Maybe too low impact to play multiples, just something about the flying men interested me.
Regarding Siren Stormtamer, if you're considering this type of shield card then Spellskite seems better in pretty much every way -- better blocker (except against Affi), doesn't require you to pay Blue and then hold up a second Blue to be live right away, evolves into Felidar, and has some other niche applications as well vs Burn, Valakut, etc. Am I missing any important usage cases for Stormtamer?
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EDIT: I'm trying to decide between Unified Will and Dusk // Dawn for my last slot (currently Sigarda).
Would you guys bring in Cataclysmic Gearhulk against Bant Eldrazi / Eldrazi Tron? The thought of leaving them with Reality Smasher -- likely forcing me to double-block with Gearhulk and whatever else I might save -- doesn't sound great. But there could be a bunch of other board states without a Smasher where Gearhulk might be favorable to us, I suppose.
Unified Will would be potentially helpful against many flavors of control / prison, Titanshift, Eldrazi, Storm and other combo decks (though I've only ran into Storm).
Dusk // Dawn would be potentially helpful against Fish, Elves, Grixis Shadow, Junk (?), Eldrazi, and possibly Ponza.
If Gearhulk is good enough for Eldrazi I will probably lean on that and run Unified Will over Dusk // Dawn. What do you all think?
Here's my current sideboarding chart:
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
Is it worth bringing in Gearhulk vs Affinity? I've brought it in before but it hasn't come up yet. Ravager can ensure that their remaining 1-2 creatures are big, and we might not have a chance to get to 5 CMC (or 3 drop + Evo) in this fast matchup.
Is it worth bringing in Reclamation Sage vs Merfolk (or Taxes) to be able to blow up Vial (and possibly Smuggler's Copter)? This slows their board development down by a turn or two but doesn't do much to advance ours, and since they probably don't have more than one artifact flickering Rec Sage won't usually give any payoff. I'm leaning towards not bringing this in vs Merfolk, but against Taxes they can side in Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace so I'm leaning yes there. Anything else I should bring in other than Gearhulk & Explosives? Deliberating on Glen Elendra vs Huntmaster... I guess Staticaster might be useful against Master of Waves but otherwise seems underwhelming. Against Taxes Staticaster could snipe Thalia / Blade Splicer / Flickerwisp, and with a flicker it could hit most of the rest of the creatures in the list so it seems like a good idea there. SB list here.
Is it worth bringing Stony Silence in vs E-Tron? I'm leaning towards no. Turning off Walking Ballista + Ratchet Bomb + Basilisk Collar doesn't seem like our highest priority and we have Blood Moon, Gaddock, and Gearhulk to bring in and make room for.
I think it's a toss up on Mind Stone. In the last month MTGTop8 shows ~33% builds playing with 0 stones, ~5% with 1 stone, and ~63% with 2 stones for all skill levels, although that skews more towards 50% 0 stones at larger events. If I had Linvala to cover Ballista I'm not sure I would side in Stony Silence unless I'd already seen Mind Stone in play. But I could be wrong here, maybe Ballista is worth covering with redundant hate.
Also Elves has gotten a lot scarier since I played against it a couple years ago! New technology in the forms of the Druid infinite combo, Chordable Selfless Spirit as anti-sweeper tech in the main, and Westvale Abbey as alt win-con are all pretty nuts. The need to handle Elves as well as Ballista is definitely nudging me back towards Linvala, lol.
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EDIT: I also had a few more questions about more fringe applications of Eidolon of Rhetoric. I was thinking of bringing it in against cantripping Snapcaster decks (UW Control, Jeskai Geist, Grixis Shadow) while trimming something like a Hierarch vs Shadow or Path vs UW. Additionally, I was thinking of bringing it in on the play against Burn, Goblins, or Elves over, say, Eternal Witness. Thoughts?
For our most common midrange matches (Abzan, Eldrazi, Shadow) we're hoping to lean on a T2-T3 Blood Moon effect to lock them out of the game long enough for us to get a sizable lead, if not combo out. In these matchups I would love to have lots of hard spot removal to supplement the Moon plan but I find myself cutting down to ~2 Paths to at least make the nonbo less frequent..
In a prior list I was running Unified Will in the board and brought those in over Paths -- this was a slight improvement but it was reliant on having a Dork stick around to supply U through Blood Moon, which creates its own (albeit lesser) tension.
Is the efficiency of Path outside of midrange battles good enough to justify its awkwardness with Moon? If you guys think this is a problem, has anyone played around with an alternative interaction suite in the main? If you don't feel that it's a problem or is the best we can do, let me know why.
I will try to amend this post with some ideas on interaction spells later.
I have also felt that this is quite awkward and have tried running 3 Oath of Chandra instead of Paths. They are of course less powerful but interact nicely with Felidar Guardian and Renegade Rallier / Sun Titan. Sometimes dealing 2 damage when playing Saheeli is also pretty nice. The fact that I never could kill things at instant speed and never 4+ toughness creatures with them made me scratch that project though. An alternative could be Dismember over Path, but that doesn't kill large Death's Shadows and also hurts our already a bit fragile life resource.
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
Hmm the oath of chandra is interesting, guess extra bonus is makes a chalice on 1 hurt us less. Without path though witness is worse and would probably look to run another rallier instead. For that reason oath could be better vs discard with more ways to get it back out. For what its worth with the Sun titan +2 saheeli combo and oath out you could win through a a bridge lock.
Also along lines of oath and planeswalker goodness, I started thinking how a copy of Chandra, Torch of Defiance would fit maybe over a cobra. Provides removal but also can help ramp with the RR ability for a cat + saheeli turn. Shes also good with blood moon as even easier to cast.
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Arid Mesa
2 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Forest
1 Plains
2 Razorverge Thicket
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
Noncreatures (14)
4 Saheeli Rai
4 Oath of Nissa
3 Path to Exile
3 Eldritch Evolution
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Noble Hierarch
Other Creatures (19)
4 Felidar Guardian
3 Wall of Omens
3 Voice of Resurgence
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Renegade Rallier
1 Eternal Witness
1 Mulldrifter
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Sun Titan
1 Path to Exile
1 Fiery Justice
2 Unified Will
1 Stony Silence
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Thragtusk
1 Reveillark
1 Keranos, God of Storms
Some notes on individual cards:
Thoughts on Dorks and Blood Moon:
Obviously I haven't been following this deck extremely closely, or for that long, but from reading through the past few pages, I think that people are boarding and using Blood Moon incorrectly. Mostly this is because of the interaction between Moon and Manadorks during sideboarding. In my mind, two things need to be true in order to bring Blood Moon in. First and most obvious, Blood Moon needs to provide a strong lock against our opponent. Second, the matchup needs to be one in which we're willing to leave Birds and Noble in the deck. Dorks are a clear necessity in Modern for speed, but as soon as our opponent is interacting with us in a significant way, they quickly become the worst cards in the deck - especially after sideboard where we have to fight through more interaction. Against almost every single deck with Push/Path/Thoughtseize/Terminate/Decay/Cryptic/etc, the first cards I'm cutting from my deck are Birds and Hierarch, because I want every card to actually do something. Blood Moon, on the other hand, requires the manadorks to be functional in any real capacity for our 4-5 color pile of a manabase. Against decks like Gx Tron, Valakut, Ad Nauseam, etc. this is just fine, because we need the velocity from the dorks, and Blood Moon is strong. However, against Junk, Jund, Shadow, or any other grindy 3-color midrange deck, siding in Blood Moon essentially says that we're willing to put 6 near-useless cards in our deck to facilitate a 2-of that might win us the game if we happen to draw it at the same time as a dork (that lives), it doesn't get discarded or hit by float mana decay, and they haven't fetched or drawn the basic they need. Overall, I think that leaving in their manadorks too often is the biggest and most common mistake that I see GWx toolbox players make, especially in decks without township.
Short Tournament Report:
Round One: Esper PWs/Tapout Control 2-0
Game one I keep a risky one-lander with a Hierarch and Oath of Nissa, and proceed to immediately get my Noble pushed and whiff a land off the oath. Fortunately, I draw a fetch turn three and get to deploy the Walls and Voices from my hand. My opponent has a relatively slow start with discard and removal. Felidar Guardians and Rallier let me get 6-7 Oath of Nissa ETBs over the course of the game and grind through, and eventually combo. It only clears Gideon Jura off of his triple-Gideon plus Emblem board, but he doesn't find an answer on his turn and concedes.
SB: -4 Birds, -2 Noble, -1 Evolution || +Thragtusk, +Keranos, +Glen Elendra, +Reveillark, +Path, +Thrun, +Staticaster
Game two his removal and discard heavy suite lines up even more poorly against a pile of value creatures than they did game one. He treads water with a couple Lingering Souls for a while, but eventually I draw Kiki and go infinite - basically a formality though, as he's facing Thrun, Keranos, and a 2/2 Archmage while hellbent.
Round Two: Burn 2-0
Game one, I keep a decent hand on the play, but the turn one Goblin Guide from my opponent makes the three shocklands in my hand look pretty bad. Fortunately, my opponent's draw is a bit land-heavy and a couple points from Courser let me just barely combo turn 5 at one life.
SB: -Titan, -Kiki, -Mulldrifter, -1 Saheeli || +2 Unified Will, +Path, +Thragtusk
The worst possible first turns happen, with him going Guide into Searing Blaze on my turn one Noble. I have to go all-in on Finks evolve to Thragtusk on my turn four at 6 life, and fortunately he doesn't have the Skullcrack.
Round Three: Storm 2-0
Game one was honestly just a race, I have a Path for Electromancer on his upkeep and proceed to win on turn 4. Nothing to say other than a great die roll win and opening hand.
SB: -Titan, -Kiki, -2 Finks, -Courser, -Mulldrifter || +2 Unified Will, +Glen Elendra, + Eidolon, +Canonist, +Path
Game two I have turn three Evolve a Wall of Omens into Eidolon. My opponent checks his sideboard to confirm that he didn't have any way to get it off the table, and conceded. I was very surprised, as my opponent is on Storm every week, and I would have expected that Eidolon was on his radar when boarding. Fortunate for me, because revealing his hand shows that I was extremely dead if he had Echoing Truth/Wipe Away/Dismember.
Round Four; Small turnout, ID
Overall, a small tournament and only six games played, so not a ton to go off. More than anything, I think that it showed how much I got to hammer my round one opponent with sideboard cards because I knew I didn't really need to worry about board cards for Valakut or Dredge.
I had a few questions for you:
1) Please forgive me for one instance of "why not X" -- Gaddock Teeg? He has been an important part of my plan against green CoCo/Chord decks, blue Cryptic/Verdict decks, and some problematic haymakers in Titanshift, Tron, and others. I also like that he's a proactive permanent in the deck's primary colors that can be rez'd with Rallier + Lark. I personally will run at least one copy even in an unknown global meta.
It looks like you plan to handle many of the same problematic spells with Unified Will / Glen Elendra and bring in Thrun as your ace against Ux control? Myself and some other players have been struggling a bit on whether or not to include counterspells such as Unified Will. Its breadth of coverage is really unparalleled, and it's especially useful in some of our worst matchups. However it's also a reactive blue spell in a deck that's otherwise predominantly focused on fully utilizing (GW) mana to develop its board at sorcery speed. Any thoughts here?
2) I've been uncertain about bringing in Blood Moon but leaving dorks vs tricolor midrange recently, so thank you for outlining things more clearly. I will probably still try bringing in Magus of the Moon against these decks just in case there is a scenario where I can safely Evo into Magus to set up a midgame lock without Dorks. What do you think about Moon vs Bant Eldrazi & Eldrazi Tron? These decks both grind very well so we want good topdecks but they have perhaps fewer ways to efficiently answer Dorks and are softer to Moon than midrange so I'm inclined to leave both the Dorks and the Moon package in unless you think this would be unwise.
Thanks