@Siefer, Shelldell
I appreciate the more in-depth analysis for Titan - I had been facing a number of uninteractive matchups for a long time it appears.
@Siefer
I'm hesitant on Baneslayer, since Tusk feels similar while synergizing better with the flicker aspect of the deck (it also stabilizes immediately, which matters against burn). But I tried 3 Knights + 7 1 CMC dorks (I'm playing wolf-run instead of township) and it felt very powerful (more extensive testing later). Maaaaybe we need to be on 23 lands if we play the knight.
Edit: Also, we can run a Sejiri Steppe to make the knight protect our combo (or itself) against removal.
I think the big payoffs for Baneslayer are Affinity and Eldrazi Tron. Both have very limited options for getting it off the board, making it a credible blocker as soon as it comes down. I agree Thragtusk is significantly better against Burn.
Keep us posted on how Knight tests for you. I considered Wolf Run, but Gavony is easier on the mana, and more efficiently pays off the dorks. Perhaps giving big dumb KotRs trample is worth a second look, though. I also considered Sejiri Steppe, but I'm very hesitant to run a land that enters the battlefield tapped. It's likely less of an issue with 23 lands, but I'm iffy on upping the land count. Prior to adding KotR, I was trying to figure out how to cut down to 21.
Had some interesting matches in my last MTGO league. Would someone be interested if I made a video replaying them with comments and tips on how to play the deck / to sideboard?
The main deck is similar to what most lists here look like, though for me Lotus Cobra was completely new. The sideboard has some meta specific choices: Gideon's Intervention is meant to beat Valakut, Ad Nauseam, Living End and Bogles, which all show up at my LGS occasionally. Damping Matrix beats Vizier Company, the deck with the highest win rate at my LGS recently, and is pretty good against Eldrazi Tron and Affinity (as well as Lantern, but that's nonexistent in my meta). Nissa, Vital Force is a card I like a lot in grindy matchups, since it hits hard and generates card advantage.
R1 UB Mill (2-1)
After mulling to 4 and losing game 1 after casting one spell, I sideboarded up to 65 cards (in: Moon, Magus, Nissa, RecSage, Teeg). Game 2 was won quickly via combo, but in game 3 he hit Saheeli with Extirpate early on, and I misplayed by forgetting that sacrificing one of my two Lotus Cobras means one less mana. He flooded a little, then Nissa returned Reclamation Sage in time to stop Mesmeric Orb, and proceeded to kill him quickly. I won with 5 cards left in my deck, after starting with 65 in my library.
R2 Vizier Company (2-1)
This round I faced my brother, who has a great record with 4c Vizier Company over the last ~10 local tournaments. His list includes 3 maindeck Magus of the Moon, and 3 Chalice of the Void in the sideboard - luckily both cards don't do much against me. I won the die roll, and kept a mediocre hand, but Evo into Felidar to flicker Oath found Saheeli. He could Reflector Mage the Feldiar though, but didn't have a way to win before I cast both Felidar and Saheeli on turn 5 again.
I sideboarded in Gaddock, Staticaster, Linvala, Matrix, Path, Helix, Justice, and took out some Voices, Qasali, Finks, one Rallier, Titan and Glorybringer. Game 2 I kept a hand with Path and the combo, feeling great about my chances, but his turn 3 Company found double Devoted Druid, and I couldn't stop his turn 4 combo kill.
Game 3 my opener was slow but powerful: Damping Matrix, Path and Saheeli, but no early plays. I drew Felidar on turn 2, and used Path on his turn 2 Tireless Tracker, then put Saheeli down facing just a Bird. I scryed into Fiery Justice, and he conveniently cast another Bird and a Devoted Druid. I could have gone for the combo right then, but I didn't want to lose to Path if he has it, so I used Fiery Justice to boardwipe him, and scryed Gaddock to the top. Next turn he passes with 5 mana up. Again I decide to wait with the combo, and instead play Gaddock plus Matrix to essentially lock him out. He has nothing relevant and loses to my Felidar on turn 6.
R3 5c Humans (2-1)
I won the die roll again, but didn't know in advance what my opponent was playing. I kept a slow hand and was steamrolled hard by a great Humans draw. I sideboarded all my removal in and cut Titan and some other slow cards.
Game 2 he mulled to 5 and lost to Staticaster plus Saheeli copying it, then a topdecked Felidar. Game 3 I drew multiple removal spells and cast a turn 3 Glorybringer, then flickered it twice with Felidars. Not very fun for him.
R4 Naya Burn (1-2)
He succumbed game 1 after mulling to 5 and drawing 4-5 lands, but then I noticed my glaring lack of sideboard tools for this matchup. I brought in Helix and Path for Titan and Glorybringer, then lost 2 games to light flood and a lack of relevant cards.
Overall I was happy with my list, but I faced several decks where Sun Titan seemed awfully slow. Also, I really need a better sideboard plan against burn. Maybe I should replace Titan with Thragtusk and make room in the sideboard (Gideons Intervention?) for a second Lightning Helix. Thoughts?
Had some interesting matches in my last MTGO league. Would someone be interested if I made a video replaying them with comments and tips on how to play the deck / to sideboard?
@Lejoon: I like the Chord in the side with the E-Wit > Resto > Kiki chain as plan B when Evo is bad.
Having access to both Kiki for combo and Rhino for beats is reaally tempting, but the manabase still has me a little uneasy. I like having access to a lot of basics to keep the Blood Moon plan reliable against Tron / Titanshift and my matchup vs Burn less painful. Having lots of fetches to feed Rallier / Cobra is also good. I’ll think about this trade-off more.
The only sweeper you’re running is Gearhulk — have you been faster than Aggro decks?
————————
In the mean time, one card I wanted to bring up for discussion is Wilt-Leaf Liege.
Liege doesn’t have an ETB ability, but in theory Evolving into Liege could immediately add a lot of power to a board with some combination of Voices/Elementals, Pridemage, Gaddock, Rallier, Finks, KotR, Rhino, and so forth. If that sounds too “win-more” you could also imagine Evolving Voice into Liege on an otherwise empty board to get two 4/4s capable of surviving Anger, where the usual plan of Voice into Rallier/P&K/Huntmaster would be vulnerable.
Furthermore, copying Liege lets you stack the anthem effects for a pretty nasty alpha strike. But even if you just have Saheeli and Liege that’s still swinging with two 6/6s.
Valakut and Tron are not bad matchups that you need a narrow card like BM against them.
Have to disagree here. Especially Valakut has been very hard for me, and the games I've won against them I have either won the die roll and comboed too quickly for them or planted a Blood Moon on turn 2 or 3. The hardest matchups for this deck imo is Valakut and Storm.
Valakut and Tron are not bad matchups that you need a narrow card like BM against them. Tron itself doesn't care much, for Valakut it is merely a road block.
Counterspells like Disdainful Stroke, Unified Will and similar protect you from their game plan and from their interaction with your combo and are also useable in a myriad of other matchups.
While both Tron and Valakut can certainly beat a Blood Moon, you make it sound as if they barely blink an eye at the card. The Eldrazi Tron deck has several decent tools against it (TKS, Ratchet Bomb, Wastes), but can still lose to BM very easily. Certainly not all the time, but it happens. Valakut has a hard time winning if its namesake card gets shut down, which in my experience makes BM excellent against them. Sure, they can in theory just destroy it and play on, but do they even bring in Disenchant effects against us? Even if they KNOW we have 2 BMs in our deck, is a good idea for them to board narrow answers?
Countermagic indeed has wider uses, but what you didn't mention is that they are still just 1 for 1 trades. If your Valakut opponent has two threats, you need two counterspells to answer them both. Blood Moon might be able to shut down all the threats at once, or at least cripple them enough that you gain a lot of extra time.
Also, Saheeli lists play lots of cards at sorcery speed. Keeping up countermagic doesn't fit into that strategy very well. You can make it work somehow, but there is always tension between tapping out to advance the board and keeping up mana for a counterspell.
Considering taking this to a big end-of-year tournament in Japan, but unsure of what list to go with. I would prefer not to shell out for the Noble Hierarch play set, but I have been playing around with various lists in this thread for a while (And played the Standard legal deck to pretty good success before the ban.) and just was wondering what people would think would be a decent build to bring into a fairly unknown meta, but knowing Japan is probably heavy on the Grixis Death Shadow, Burn and any and all forms of combo.
Lejoon: Thanks for the input. I think you miss one point regarding the Valakut matchup though - people seldom bring in cards such as Nature’s Claim and Rec Sage vs the deck because they don’t stop any cards in our mainboard and they don’t suspect a Blood Moon coming from our greedy 4c deck. That is at least what I have experienced when I have faced them. Beast Within is something they likely bring in, but that’s it.
I’ve tried counters in the sideboard but don’t really like them in this kind of tap-out-deck. But I’m probably biased since I don’t like Counterspells in general.
What is your plan (and Win Rate % if you have the data available) against Jeskai for your recent decklist? In my experience so far they disrupt the combo long enough to turn the corner with Cryptic Command + Geist + Burn + Colonnade pretty much every time, forcing us to fall back on an aggressive Rallier/hatebear-centric tempo plan to get under them if possible. Meanwhile your recent list goes further in on the combo and away from aggro-tempo with Resto / Kikki and Walls / Coursers. Do the extra combo pieces translate to useful improvement in successful combo rates (and thus Win %) or do you just side out Kiki and Walls / Courser games 2/3?
Also, how has Unified Will performed for you in this matchup? I can see the value in pushing your own combo pieces through interaction but I've also had games where they've kept the spell turned off by having more creatures on the board.
And my last question got missed before we shifted to the Blood Moon conversation -- is your plan against Aggro just to combo faster than they can kill you? I've found having some sort of sweeper beyond Gearhulk (such as Fiery Justice) one of the most important parts of my SB, but perhaps that is meta specific.
I could potentially test a list very similar to yours this Friday. My most common matchups are Burn, Jeskai, Grixis Shadow, and Affinity. I imagine that this is close enough to the global meta right now that I don't need to tweak the list much but if you think it could be further tuned I'm open to suggestions.
I was first playing around with 1x Rhino and 1x Kiki (with a more red manabase) and eventually decided to ease off of red in order to commit to black more. With that in mind I added Overgrown Tomb on top of Bosk (over Gavony), added a second Rhino. Going 5 color pushed me to remove Blood Moon and try Unified Will again to tackle Big Mana per Lejoon's suggestion.
For the top end I decided to try out Blood Baron, which in theory should provide a very difficult to remove stabilizing top-end against Shadow, Jeskai, Burn, Humans, and possibly Taxes.
Lastly, in keeping with the very aggressive direction afforded by the Rhinos I wanted to try 2x Strangleroot Geists over my previous lists's Qasali Pridemage and Selfless Spirit. The thought here was that Evolving Geist into Rhino provides another very aggressive line in addition to Voice into Rhino. I was hoping Geist would chip in for early damage and harass the opponent into Pathing him. Alternatively, when he's outclassed by large midrange threats he could simply protect Saheeli by blocking twice compared to Wall only blocking once.
Match 1: Affinity (1-2)
-G1 I keep a reasonable but not accelerated hand and die to his T1-vomited robot army
-G2 I play Explosives for X=2 to take out both Vault Skirge and Plating. It also conveniently takes out my Voice so I can get a 5/5 Elemental. This buys me time to play Rhino into blink Rhino with Felidar, and win on beats.
-G3 I mull down to an unaccelerated 5 card hand, can't remember the details. Scry into Explosives. T1 Explosives for 0, T2 detonate to wipe out most of his attackers. He rebuilds faster than I can get anything going, though, and takes G3. SB: -3 Voice, -1 Courser, -1 Finks, -1 Rhino, -1 Blood Baron || +1 Gearhulk, +2 Fiery Justice, +1 Explosives, +1 Reclamation Sage, +2 Stony Silence
Match 2: Skred Red (2-0)
-G1 I cautiously fetch up 2x Forest and Plains, and have 2x Birds and Cobra out while he plays Koth and Eternal Scourge. I chip away at Koth.. he grinds by blocking with Scourge, exiling it with Progenitus, and re-casting it. He topdecks a Blood Moon which does nothing to either of us. At some point I assemble the combo and he scoops.
-G2 I keep a hand with Murmuring Bosk and Sacred Foundry as lands, but it also had something like Lightning Helix, Thalia, Felidar, Saheeli, and Evolution. I gamble that maybe he took out some or all Moons out after it was such a bad topdecks last game. In retrospect this was probably too risky but it turned out to be right. I lead tapped Bosk into Thalia, he plays Scourge. Thalia taxes him once or twice but eventually I run her into Scourge so that I can play Saheeli while stuck on 3 lands. He sets up with both Koth and Chandra, shielded by Scourge. Fortunately I land Rhino, then Saheeli and -2 to copy Rhino, pointing one Rhino at each Planeswalker. He burns out Saheeli and next turn I evolve a Cobra into a second Rhino, and follow it with Thrun. He scoops. SB: -1 Blood Baron, -3 Path || +1 Gaddock, +1 Thalia, +1 Thrun, +1 Helix
Match 3: Affinity (1-2)
-G1 was a rare grindy game against Affinity due to a bit of flooding on his part. I Path his counter-loaded Vault-Skirge and then next turn play Strangleroot evolved into Rhino, flickering Rhino next turn. Good beats.
-G2 I kept an enticing but ultimately poor hand of Stony Silence, Hallowed Fountain, Plains, Birds, Oath, Fiery Justice, and Evo. I thought "I'll stick a T2 Silence and I've got 3 chances to draw into one of my 18 green lands... then I might catch up with Birds and Fiery Justice. Nope. T2 Silence works but I draw only green spells and no lands off the top for the next ~6 turns (lol). A Battlecry-buffed Inkmoth infects me for the win.
-G3 I mull away several hands with no action until T3-T4.. finally getting down to a 4 card hand with 2 lands, Bird, and Path. I Path his Plated Skirge, draw into Fiery Justice. Meanwhile he's played Overseer and is tapping a couple other robots out of Justice's reach, animating Inkmoth. On my turn I take out Overseer with Justice I can't hit Inkmoth with sorcery speed and Master of Etherium is too large. I die a few turns later. SB: -3 Voice, -1 Courser, -1 Finks, -1 Rhino, -1 Blood Baron || +1 Gearhulk, +2 Fiery Justice, +1 Explosives, +1 Reclamation Sage, +2 Stony Silence
Match 4: Storm (0-2)
-G1 on the play I had the combo in hand, T1 Bird into T2 Saheeli, T3 I copy Voice and cast Felidar, which he remands. The free Elemental Tokens sit there sadly as he Storms off on his own T3. So close.
-G2 on the play I also have the combo. T1 pass, T2 Cobra, T3 I helix his Baral, T4 Felidar is remanded and stick a Bird, T5 Saheeli. He Bolts my Bird EoT, lands a second Baral at the start of his turn, and Storms off into Grapeshot. SB: roughly -1 Blood Baron, -2 Rhino, -1 Courser, -1 Finks, -1 Voice || +1 Eidolon, +1 Thalia, +1 Helix, +1 Unified Will, +1 Explosives, +1 Gearhulk
1-3
Overall takeaways:
Strangleroot Geist -- I really liked Strangleroot and I think I'll keep him in for now. I was never playing against Path decks so I didn't get to see his bait potential but he did more or less what I wanted in terms of early pressure and Evo value. I was slightly worried about the GG casting cost but I didn't run into any issues tonight, at least.
Siege Rhino -- This guy won me most of my games in conjunction with Felidar blinks and Saheeli copies. I was very happy with two copies.
Blood Baron -- Never came up and got boarded out. Still theoretically sweet but he didn't line up with my matches today. I'll try to test further but with the speed of my meta I think an argument could also be made for capping the curve at 4 drops.
Sweepers -- a couple weeks ago Fiery Justice got me a game-winning 3-for-1 against Merfolk. This week its sorcery speed stumbled against manlands and the robots grew out of its damage range. I'm thinking of replacing one Justice with Staticaster (which hits manlands but is even worse against growth effects), Pontiff, Sweltering Sun, Wrath of God, or something else entirely. Open to suggestions here.
Unified Will -- this time there was a moment where I had a Cobra out and my opponent had Baral and I had to wait a turn and play Bird to have more creatures and reactivate Will. Never got a chance to play it after that. Still not in love with this card, but I haven't had a chance to play it against Tron or Titanshift yet.
Thalia -- Just OK vs Skred. Got into a small situation where her symmetry hurt us but it worked out. Still potentially sweet in a wide range of matchups so I will probably keep for now and assess further. Other hatebear options include Kitesail Freebooter and Meddling Mage.
Murmuring Bosk -- I'm leaning towards Godless Shrine + Overgrown Tomb over Bosk since tapping Bosk for black still pings you and you often need to mull an opening hand with Bosk.
Cobra vs Hierarch: Cobra allows me to threaten the T3 combo without leaving Saheeli open on the Board T2 and provides a critical number of 2-drops for evolving into both Felidar and Rhino. It's also nice to have another 5 color dork for casting black cards. It is a little less smooth / consistent than all 1-drop dorks, and makes T1 Dork > T2 Evo into Eidolon less common, though. Always been a tough choice.
Moving forwards:
Our shop now has 3+ regular players on Affinity, Storm is on the rise, and Shadow has become less common, mimicking some of the global meta trends. I'm thinking about ways to further tune the deck to target Jeskai & Affinity, with a better plan for Storm as well (thoughts?). Meanwhile Big Mana strategies seem to be very low here relative to global meta, perhaps kept in check by all of the fast decks running around... guess that's good for me and helps validate my current choice of Rhino over Blood Moon.
Sin Collector seems potentially sweet for Jeskai, maybe too slow for Storm? Not sure.
I played it in a 200 person tournament in Japan. 3-5. Loss to Scapeshift twice, Dredge, Ponza and Living End. I beat a Wall Mill deck, that Random Discard Rakdos deck (It was someone from my store. Another person running the same deck placed third in the tournament.) and Mardu Control. I won at least one game every round except to Dredge which just ran me over, hard.
My list was roughly close to Lejoon's, but I changed the Tracker to Kiki-Jiki, Sigarda and the Chord were a Chameleon Colossus and a Izzet Staticaster. I used Disdainful Stroke as my counter instead. That worked out fine, when I have it.
Copying Eternal Witness with Saheeli to get the counter over and over again was real rough for Scapeshifit.
Kiki-Jiki and Siege Rhino got through a lot of board stalls. It won that way as much as I did with the combo.
Renegade Rallier was very unimpressive. Never really got a lot of use out of it. Kruphix was equally unexciting. It wasn't bad. Good target to get Kiki Jiki and speed up the land a bit, but yeah.
I wanted Evolutions more than I saw them.
Overall, it just felt weak and slow. Sometimes I could stall into something, but often I just got over powered. No idea how Tron, Affinity or Jeskai Tempo would have been, didn't see them in the eight rounds.
Blood Baron -- Never came up and got boarded out. Still theoretically sweet but he didn't line up with my matches today. I'll try to test further but with the speed of my meta I think an argument could also be made for capping the curve at 4 drops.
[...]
Our shop now has 3+ regular players on Affinity, Storm is on the rise, and Shadow has become less common, mimicking some of the global meta trends. I'm thinking about ways to further tune the deck to target Jeskai & Affinity, with a better plan for Storm as well (thoughts?). Meanwhile Big Mana strategies seem to be very low here relative to global meta, perhaps kept in check by all of the fast decks running around... guess that's good for me and helps validate my current choice of Rhino over Blood Moon.
Sin Collector seems potentially sweet for Jeskai, maybe too slow for Storm? Not sure.
That's the problem with Blood Baron: While it's amazing in a handful of matchups, a 4/4 lifelinker for 5 is terrible against decks like Storm, Eldrazi Tron, Affinity, Titanshift, Counters Company etc. It's not even that great against some of the controlling and midrange decks, since it dies to Snapcaster+Bolt, Supreme Verdict and Tarmogoyf. Thragtusk, Glorybringer or Sun Titan might not be very useful in some of those matchups either, but at least they hit a little harder and have more synergy with Saheeli and Felidar.
In your list with black, you could try Kambal, Consul of Allocation in the maindeck to fight Storm and Jeskai. It's not quite the same as Eidolon, but its body is better (2/3 beats Geist of Saint Traft, Goblin Guide, Snapcaster Mage) and is relevant in more matchups (Storm, Control, Burn, Lantern, many fringe decks like Taking Turns, 8-Rack, Infect, etc). I've played a Abzan Evolution list in the past and Kambal was a great tool for game 1.
Who is Jedgi? I'd love to hear about the choices for this deck and the matchups they have seen.
That is an unsual approach! Only 1 Voice, 4 Coiling Oracle, 3 Reflector Mage, 1 of each Tamiyo, Nahiri and Gideon, and the Paths in the sideboard. Seems like it's targeted at a rather grindy metagame, and probably not so great against Tron, Titanshift and Storm. (Although Reflector Mage can be good in those matchups.)
Kambal’s a great suggestion, but I think Kambal shares the same issues of mixed matchup performance and mediocre core synergy that Baron has, so I would probably prefer to run it in the side, possibly over Thalia (exchanging asymmetry for a loss of Rallier synergy is tough).
@maniospas how did Acidic Slime perform in your testing a while back? Is it maindeckable? The reward ceiling seems good -- it could potentially help with Affinity G1, catch random hate pieces, and also fill in for Blood Moon a bit, which is attractive to me right now -- but the reward floor of a 2/2 deathtouch is not very exciting. My gut feeling is that it's probably not worth running but I thought I'd check with you just in case.
Next question: how has Glorybringer performed vs Affinity?
In theory we’re usually winning with the combo here rather than racing beats unless we line up a really good sweeper, snipe plating, or stick Stony/Kataki. Conversely, Glorybringer is aimed at tapping out to race beats or act as sorcery-speed point removal rather than blocking. To be fair, Exerting away a Vault Skirge or Steel Overseer can sometimes be enough to make racing viable (and yes copying/flickering GB makes it much better but I’d prefer to focus on average value of GB alone), but a Ravager on the field makes sorcery-speed point removal kinda bad, too. I could see Glorybringer being “OK” to decent game 1 before being boarded out for Gearhulk, Angel of Sanctions, or some other cheaper sweeper / interaction.
Is this similar at all to your experience or am I offbase here?
My Blood Baron replacement options right now look like:
Pridemage
Rec sage to main
Linvala
P&K
Restoration Angel
Baneslayer Angel
Glorybringer
Angel of Sanctions
Again, targeting Affinity, Jeskai, and Burn. P&K sounds best atm but I’m still figuring out if there’s a comfortable manabase that’s up to the task of RR with Rhino.
Someone on this thread found me on mtgo and linked me. I'll crosspost what I put on Reddit:
"Hi all, here's the list: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/846784#paper
Clearly this particular league went well, but I think the deck needs some tuning. There's a lot of potential here though, in my opinion. The deck can out-grind decks like Jund, but also turbo out Saheeli combo to compete against other combo decks.
I'm currently trying an island rather than Hallowed Fountain, as I did not really ever need Hallowed fountain that badly. I've also been trying out some other flex and/or board cards like Meddling Mage, Rec Sage, and Elspeth (Sun's Champion).
Here's a general feel for how the matchups have been so far in my opinion. The deck has a lot of close matchups. Nothing is really a free win, and nothing is really unwinnable, either.
//
Grixis DS: It's a close and grindy matchup, but I think this deck is a little favored, particularly after board when you take out much of the combo. You can go really wide and get so many permanents on the battlefield that they really can't keep up. Alternatively, they could have the perfect disruption for your hand and removal for your dorks so you can't get anything going before being hit with giant shadows.
Eldrazi Tron: Close again, but this time I feel a little bit behind. Thought-Knot seer is really good, and turn 3 Karn is almost unbeatable (unless you can vomit enough permanents onto the battlefield on turns 1 and 2). Being on the play is very helpful in this one.
Tron: I think a bit easier than Etron, as they can't put together a quick clock. They win by getting a quick Ugin.
Storm: Game 1 is a race to combo, they are probably a bit favored. After board it feels much better with scavenging ooze and unified will. I'm thinking of finding room for a maindeck meddling mage just to be able to have a free game 1 here.
Humans: I've only played against it once so far, but it feels like the person on the play is heavily favored. Dusk to dawn and settle are big comeback mechanics, though. If you're on the draw, combo becomes more of the main gameplan rather than beatdown.
Jeskai: Oddly enough, I haven't ran into it much, yet. I think it would be close, likely a bit little behind because of board wipes and instant speed interaction on their part. On the other hand, resolving a 4 mana planeswalker against them seems tough for them to handle.
Jund/Abzan: Definite favorite. Their one for ones don't do much against coiling oracles and renegade ralliers. Evolutioning for Thragtusk/Sun Titan puts it over the top.
Dredge: I think this deck goldfishes faster than them. I haven't lost to dredge yet, but I'm still working with a small sample size.
Scapeshift: It's a race to combo, but they're favored because they have board wipes to slow you down until they scapeshift.
Burn: Haven't played against it yet, but I imagine it's not good for us.
//
That's what I've gathered so far. Some particular nuances to know about the deck if you plan on trying it out are:
You can create infinite Sun Titans with 2 Saheelis in the graveyard (or one in GY one in hand).
Always dork on turn one when it is a choice between dork and ponder oath of nissa. I think should be obvious, but just in case it's not, here you go.
Think carefully about where you target your Saheeli -2 ability. Baiting the opponent into removing a coiling oracle only to drop Tireless Tracker+fetchland could be great.
This goes for any deck with more than one way to win, but constantly evaluate your best path to victory. When it's the beatdown (and it often is), see if you can try to play in such a way that you seem to be threatening combo. Forcing your opponent to play around the gameplan you are not necessarily trying to win with is very helpful.
Ghost quarter might be bad, but if you keep it in the deck, do remember to recur it as much as you can against Tron type decks or decks with low basic land counts.
That's all I have for now. Please let me know if you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions. Thanks."
Regarding Auriok Champion against Burn and Shadow:
Champion’s reward ceiling in both matchups can be quite high, gaining 5+ life and blocking Burn’s guide or keeping a Shadow at bay while being tricky to remove. However, it’s floor can also be low in each matchup.
Against Burn we usually want to lead with green mana — ideally a basic forest — so landing WW on T2 often means shocking yourself and a net loss of life until three more creatures have entered the battlefield. Essentially you have to hit T1 Forest, Dork -> T2 Plains and then have a full grip of low costed, ideally token-producing creatures to follow.
Additionally, Temur Battle Rage is making a resurgence in Shadow decks, so depending upon a pro-black creature to block and keep yourself alive can lead to blowouts if you’re not careful.
Champion also doesn’t do much against a lot of other T1 decks and is a bad topdeck. Maybe the next best thing Champion could do would be buying a turn against Empty the Warrens. And then even if you do get the infinite life combo off decks like Affinity, Ad Nauseam, Tron (others?) have ways around it.
The last thing I don’t like about Champion is that she has to already be on the field before you play your second Felidar, rather than Evo-ing for Champion when you happen to have two Felidars (which is the more probable scenario).
With all of that said I’m still open to the possibility of her being good and look forward to more results.
I agree, Auriok Champion isn't easy to cast on curve, and is quite bad in many matchups. Even against Shadow, it's essentially a 2cmc removal spell that gains some life. If they have a second threat, you might still be in trouble. And if they have Kozilek's Return or Flaying Tendrils, they can even get rid of the Champion.
@Shelldell: A 5-drop that's solid against both Jeskai and Burn, easy on the mana and not on your list of ideas: Thragtusk
And since you have black in your list, Lingering Souls is a very good option against Affinity and most grindy decks. You can't fetch it with Evolution, but it's also not as susceptible to discard when playing against Shadow compared to something like Auriok Champion.
@Jedgi
Thank you for the insights! If you could be kind enough, because your list deviates from what most people have in mind here, could you please tell us:
a) how would you evaluate Oracles instead of effectively Voices (we generally have a poor opinion of Oracle here, but I think it's at least very interesting to consider what it brings to the deck)
b) did you have trouble with 20 lands? (I realize that Oracles somewhat fix this, but getting to curve smoothly should still be a bit difficult with burn levels or land count)
c) why planeswalkers instead of removal (i.e. Path) ? Did they pull their weight?
I didn't ever look at a stock list when originally putting the deck together, so it would make sense why my list deviates from what others may have in mind. There are positives and negatives to this; I didn't experience tunnel visioning on strategies put together by group-think, but I also may have overlooked some superior strategies.
a and b (these go together): Oracles are fantastic, they synergize with just about every piece of the deck. They're a good Saheeli target, good evolution target, good Rallier target, and they allow me to play fewer lands. They also chump very well against decks like Shadow and Jund. With oracles, I have never had any issue with land. 8 dorks (that can be recurred by rallier), 4 ponders/oaths, and 4 oracles allows 20 lands to be more than enough. I think I would sooner play 19 than 21, but I'm not 100% on that one. In my testing thus far, I rarely feel desperate to draw a land.
c. I tried out a few one-of planeswalkers to see which ones performed the best. I'd theoretically tighten the list by playing more of the better walkers. Unfortunately, each has shone in different circumstances, so I'm still not sure which is the best (leaning towards Nahiri, though). I do notice that I'm siding in path to exile a lot, so I'm currently trying a couple mainboard.
I'm pretty much tweaking the deck after each league, still looking for a tighter list. But I think I have a pretty solid starting point.
I have tested one Auriok Champion in the sideboard, but it has recently been cut simply because the matchups where it's good is already pretty favorable for us (Death's Shadow). I feel that Burrenton Forge-Tender is better against Burn (and decks that bring in red sweepers) because it's easier to cast and can protect our combo.
I think the big payoffs for Baneslayer are Affinity and Eldrazi Tron. Both have very limited options for getting it off the board, making it a credible blocker as soon as it comes down. I agree Thragtusk is significantly better against Burn.
Keep us posted on how Knight tests for you. I considered Wolf Run, but Gavony is easier on the mana, and more efficiently pays off the dorks. Perhaps giving big dumb KotRs trample is worth a second look, though.
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
4x Noble Hierarch
2x Birds of Paradise
4x Voice of Resurgence
1x Qasali Pridemage
2x Lotus Cobra
1x Reflector Mage
2x Renegade Rallier
1x Eternal Witness
1x Kitchen Finks
4x Felidar Guardian
1x Glorybringer
1x Sun Titan
Other Spells 14
4x Oath of Nissa
3x Path to Exile
4x Saheeli Rai
3x Eldritch Evolution
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
3x Forest
2x Plains
1x Mountain
1x Gavony Township
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Magus of the Moon
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1x Cataclysmic Gearhulk
1x Path to Exile
1x Lighting Helix
1x Fiery Justice
1x Damping Matrix
1x Blood Moon
2x Gideon's Intervention
1x Nissa, Vital Force
The main deck is similar to what most lists here look like, though for me Lotus Cobra was completely new. The sideboard has some meta specific choices: Gideon's Intervention is meant to beat Valakut, Ad Nauseam, Living End and Bogles, which all show up at my LGS occasionally. Damping Matrix beats Vizier Company, the deck with the highest win rate at my LGS recently, and is pretty good against Eldrazi Tron and Affinity (as well as Lantern, but that's nonexistent in my meta). Nissa, Vital Force is a card I like a lot in grindy matchups, since it hits hard and generates card advantage.
R1 UB Mill (2-1)
After mulling to 4 and losing game 1 after casting one spell, I sideboarded up to 65 cards (in: Moon, Magus, Nissa, RecSage, Teeg). Game 2 was won quickly via combo, but in game 3 he hit Saheeli with Extirpate early on, and I misplayed by forgetting that sacrificing one of my two Lotus Cobras means one less mana. He flooded a little, then Nissa returned Reclamation Sage in time to stop Mesmeric Orb, and proceeded to kill him quickly. I won with 5 cards left in my deck, after starting with 65 in my library.
R2 Vizier Company (2-1)
This round I faced my brother, who has a great record with 4c Vizier Company over the last ~10 local tournaments. His list includes 3 maindeck Magus of the Moon, and 3 Chalice of the Void in the sideboard - luckily both cards don't do much against me. I won the die roll, and kept a mediocre hand, but Evo into Felidar to flicker Oath found Saheeli. He could Reflector Mage the Feldiar though, but didn't have a way to win before I cast both Felidar and Saheeli on turn 5 again.
I sideboarded in Gaddock, Staticaster, Linvala, Matrix, Path, Helix, Justice, and took out some Voices, Qasali, Finks, one Rallier, Titan and Glorybringer. Game 2 I kept a hand with Path and the combo, feeling great about my chances, but his turn 3 Company found double Devoted Druid, and I couldn't stop his turn 4 combo kill.
Game 3 my opener was slow but powerful: Damping Matrix, Path and Saheeli, but no early plays. I drew Felidar on turn 2, and used Path on his turn 2 Tireless Tracker, then put Saheeli down facing just a Bird. I scryed into Fiery Justice, and he conveniently cast another Bird and a Devoted Druid. I could have gone for the combo right then, but I didn't want to lose to Path if he has it, so I used Fiery Justice to boardwipe him, and scryed Gaddock to the top. Next turn he passes with 5 mana up. Again I decide to wait with the combo, and instead play Gaddock plus Matrix to essentially lock him out. He has nothing relevant and loses to my Felidar on turn 6.
R3 5c Humans (2-1)
I won the die roll again, but didn't know in advance what my opponent was playing. I kept a slow hand and was steamrolled hard by a great Humans draw. I sideboarded all my removal in and cut Titan and some other slow cards.
Game 2 he mulled to 5 and lost to Staticaster plus Saheeli copying it, then a topdecked Felidar. Game 3 I drew multiple removal spells and cast a turn 3 Glorybringer, then flickered it twice with Felidars. Not very fun for him.
R4 Naya Burn (1-2)
He succumbed game 1 after mulling to 5 and drawing 4-5 lands, but then I noticed my glaring lack of sideboard tools for this matchup. I brought in Helix and Path for Titan and Glorybringer, then lost 2 games to light flood and a lack of relevant cards.
Overall I was happy with my list, but I faced several decks where Sun Titan seemed awfully slow. Also, I really need a better sideboard plan against burn. Maybe I should replace Titan with Thragtusk and make room in the sideboard (Gideons Intervention?) for a second Lightning Helix. Thoughts?
Ok, here it is (part 1 of 5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOIOn9eqMRU
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
Having access to both Kiki for combo and Rhino for beats is reaally tempting, but the manabase still has me a little uneasy. I like having access to a lot of basics to keep the Blood Moon plan reliable against Tron / Titanshift and my matchup vs Burn less painful. Having lots of fetches to feed Rallier / Cobra is also good. I’ll think about this trade-off more.
The only sweeper you’re running is Gearhulk — have you been faster than Aggro decks?
————————
In the mean time, one card I wanted to bring up for discussion is Wilt-Leaf Liege.
Liege doesn’t have an ETB ability, but in theory Evolving into Liege could immediately add a lot of power to a board with some combination of Voices/Elementals, Pridemage, Gaddock, Rallier, Finks, KotR, Rhino, and so forth. If that sounds too “win-more” you could also imagine Evolving Voice into Liege on an otherwise empty board to get two 4/4s capable of surviving Anger, where the usual plan of Voice into Rallier/P&K/Huntmaster would be vulnerable.
Furthermore, copying Liege lets you stack the anthem effects for a pretty nasty alpha strike. But even if you just have Saheeli and Liege that’s still swinging with two 6/6s.
The discard protection is a nice plus. Thoughts?
Have to disagree here. Especially Valakut has been very hard for me, and the games I've won against them I have either won the die roll and comboed too quickly for them or planted a Blood Moon on turn 2 or 3. The hardest matchups for this deck imo is Valakut and Storm.
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
While both Tron and Valakut can certainly beat a Blood Moon, you make it sound as if they barely blink an eye at the card. The Eldrazi Tron deck has several decent tools against it (TKS, Ratchet Bomb, Wastes), but can still lose to BM very easily. Certainly not all the time, but it happens. Valakut has a hard time winning if its namesake card gets shut down, which in my experience makes BM excellent against them. Sure, they can in theory just destroy it and play on, but do they even bring in Disenchant effects against us? Even if they KNOW we have 2 BMs in our deck, is a good idea for them to board narrow answers?
Countermagic indeed has wider uses, but what you didn't mention is that they are still just 1 for 1 trades. If your Valakut opponent has two threats, you need two counterspells to answer them both. Blood Moon might be able to shut down all the threats at once, or at least cripple them enough that you gain a lot of extra time.
Also, Saheeli lists play lots of cards at sorcery speed. Keeping up countermagic doesn't fit into that strategy very well. You can make it work somehow, but there is always tension between tapping out to advance the board and keeping up mana for a counterspell.
I’ve tried counters in the sideboard but don’t really like them in this kind of tap-out-deck. But I’m probably biased since I don’t like Counterspells in general.
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
What is your plan (and Win Rate % if you have the data available) against Jeskai for your recent decklist? In my experience so far they disrupt the combo long enough to turn the corner with Cryptic Command + Geist + Burn + Colonnade pretty much every time, forcing us to fall back on an aggressive Rallier/hatebear-centric tempo plan to get under them if possible. Meanwhile your recent list goes further in on the combo and away from aggro-tempo with Resto / Kikki and Walls / Coursers. Do the extra combo pieces translate to useful improvement in successful combo rates (and thus Win %) or do you just side out Kiki and Walls / Courser games 2/3?
Also, how has Unified Will performed for you in this matchup? I can see the value in pushing your own combo pieces through interaction but I've also had games where they've kept the spell turned off by having more creatures on the board.
And my last question got missed before we shifted to the Blood Moon conversation -- is your plan against Aggro just to combo faster than they can kill you? I've found having some sort of sweeper beyond Gearhulk (such as Fiery Justice) one of the most important parts of my SB, but perhaps that is meta specific.
I could potentially test a list very similar to yours this Friday. My most common matchups are Burn, Jeskai, Grixis Shadow, and Affinity. I imagine that this is close enough to the global meta right now that I don't need to tweak the list much but if you think it could be further tuned I'm open to suggestions.
And no other 5+ CMC Evo targets in the main?
4x Birds of Paradise
3x Lotus Cobra
2x Strangleroot Geist
4x Voice of Resurgence
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Kitchen Finks
2x Renegade Rallier
4x Felidar Guardian
2x Siege Rhino
1x Blood Baron of Vizkopa
Spells (14)
4x Saheeli Rai
4x Oath of Nissa
3x Path to Exile
3x Eldritch Evolution
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Arid Mesa
1x Flooded Strand
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Breeding Pool
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Stomping Ground
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Murmuring Bosk
3x Forest
2x Plains
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Lightning Helix
1x Scavenging Ooze
2x Stony Silence
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2x Unified Will
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
2x Fiery Justice
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Cataclysmic Gearhulk
For the top end I decided to try out Blood Baron, which in theory should provide a very difficult to remove stabilizing top-end against Shadow, Jeskai, Burn, Humans, and possibly Taxes.
Lastly, in keeping with the very aggressive direction afforded by the Rhinos I wanted to try 2x Strangleroot Geists over my previous lists's Qasali Pridemage and Selfless Spirit. The thought here was that Evolving Geist into Rhino provides another very aggressive line in addition to Voice into Rhino. I was hoping Geist would chip in for early damage and harass the opponent into Pathing him. Alternatively, when he's outclassed by large midrange threats he could simply protect Saheeli by blocking twice compared to Wall only blocking once.
-G1 I keep a reasonable but not accelerated hand and die to his T1-vomited robot army
-G2 I play Explosives for X=2 to take out both Vault Skirge and Plating. It also conveniently takes out my Voice so I can get a 5/5 Elemental. This buys me time to play Rhino into blink Rhino with Felidar, and win on beats.
-G3 I mull down to an unaccelerated 5 card hand, can't remember the details. Scry into Explosives. T1 Explosives for 0, T2 detonate to wipe out most of his attackers. He rebuilds faster than I can get anything going, though, and takes G3.
SB: -3 Voice, -1 Courser, -1 Finks, -1 Rhino, -1 Blood Baron || +1 Gearhulk, +2 Fiery Justice, +1 Explosives, +1 Reclamation Sage, +2 Stony Silence
Match 2: Skred Red (2-0)
-G1 I cautiously fetch up 2x Forest and Plains, and have 2x Birds and Cobra out while he plays Koth and Eternal Scourge. I chip away at Koth.. he grinds by blocking with Scourge, exiling it with Progenitus, and re-casting it. He topdecks a Blood Moon which does nothing to either of us. At some point I assemble the combo and he scoops.
-G2 I keep a hand with Murmuring Bosk and Sacred Foundry as lands, but it also had something like Lightning Helix, Thalia, Felidar, Saheeli, and Evolution. I gamble that maybe he took out some or all Moons out after it was such a bad topdecks last game. In retrospect this was probably too risky but it turned out to be right. I lead tapped Bosk into Thalia, he plays Scourge. Thalia taxes him once or twice but eventually I run her into Scourge so that I can play Saheeli while stuck on 3 lands. He sets up with both Koth and Chandra, shielded by Scourge. Fortunately I land Rhino, then Saheeli and -2 to copy Rhino, pointing one Rhino at each Planeswalker. He burns out Saheeli and next turn I evolve a Cobra into a second Rhino, and follow it with Thrun. He scoops.
SB: -1 Blood Baron, -3 Path || +1 Gaddock, +1 Thalia, +1 Thrun, +1 Helix
Match 3: Affinity (1-2)
-G1 was a rare grindy game against Affinity due to a bit of flooding on his part. I Path his counter-loaded Vault-Skirge and then next turn play Strangleroot evolved into Rhino, flickering Rhino next turn. Good beats.
-G2 I kept an enticing but ultimately poor hand of Stony Silence, Hallowed Fountain, Plains, Birds, Oath, Fiery Justice, and Evo. I thought "I'll stick a T2 Silence and I've got 3 chances to draw into one of my 18 green lands... then I might catch up with Birds and Fiery Justice. Nope. T2 Silence works but I draw only green spells and no lands off the top for the next ~6 turns (lol). A Battlecry-buffed Inkmoth infects me for the win.
-G3 I mull away several hands with no action until T3-T4.. finally getting down to a 4 card hand with 2 lands, Bird, and Path. I Path his Plated Skirge, draw into Fiery Justice. Meanwhile he's played Overseer and is tapping a couple other robots out of Justice's reach, animating Inkmoth. On my turn I take out Overseer with Justice I can't hit Inkmoth with sorcery speed and Master of Etherium is too large. I die a few turns later.
SB: -3 Voice, -1 Courser, -1 Finks, -1 Rhino, -1 Blood Baron || +1 Gearhulk, +2 Fiery Justice, +1 Explosives, +1 Reclamation Sage, +2 Stony Silence
Match 4: Storm (0-2)
-G1 on the play I had the combo in hand, T1 Bird into T2 Saheeli, T3 I copy Voice and cast Felidar, which he remands. The free Elemental Tokens sit there sadly as he Storms off on his own T3. So close.
-G2 on the play I also have the combo. T1 pass, T2 Cobra, T3 I helix his Baral, T4 Felidar is remanded and stick a Bird, T5 Saheeli. He Bolts my Bird EoT, lands a second Baral at the start of his turn, and Storms off into Grapeshot.
SB: roughly -1 Blood Baron, -2 Rhino, -1 Courser, -1 Finks, -1 Voice || +1 Eidolon, +1 Thalia, +1 Helix, +1 Unified Will, +1 Explosives, +1 Gearhulk
1-3
Strangleroot Geist -- I really liked Strangleroot and I think I'll keep him in for now. I was never playing against Path decks so I didn't get to see his bait potential but he did more or less what I wanted in terms of early pressure and Evo value. I was slightly worried about the GG casting cost but I didn't run into any issues tonight, at least.
Siege Rhino -- This guy won me most of my games in conjunction with Felidar blinks and Saheeli copies. I was very happy with two copies.
Blood Baron -- Never came up and got boarded out. Still theoretically sweet but he didn't line up with my matches today. I'll try to test further but with the speed of my meta I think an argument could also be made for capping the curve at 4 drops.
Sweepers -- a couple weeks ago Fiery Justice got me a game-winning 3-for-1 against Merfolk. This week its sorcery speed stumbled against manlands and the robots grew out of its damage range. I'm thinking of replacing one Justice with Staticaster (which hits manlands but is even worse against growth effects), Pontiff, Sweltering Sun, Wrath of God, or something else entirely. Open to suggestions here.
Unified Will -- this time there was a moment where I had a Cobra out and my opponent had Baral and I had to wait a turn and play Bird to have more creatures and reactivate Will. Never got a chance to play it after that. Still not in love with this card, but I haven't had a chance to play it against Tron or Titanshift yet.
Thalia -- Just OK vs Skred. Got into a small situation where her symmetry hurt us but it worked out. Still potentially sweet in a wide range of matchups so I will probably keep for now and assess further. Other hatebear options include Kitesail Freebooter and Meddling Mage.
Murmuring Bosk -- I'm leaning towards Godless Shrine + Overgrown Tomb over Bosk since tapping Bosk for black still pings you and you often need to mull an opening hand with Bosk.
Cobra vs Hierarch: Cobra allows me to threaten the T3 combo without leaving Saheeli open on the Board T2 and provides a critical number of 2-drops for evolving into both Felidar and Rhino. It's also nice to have another 5 color dork for casting black cards. It is a little less smooth / consistent than all 1-drop dorks, and makes T1 Dork > T2 Evo into Eidolon less common, though. Always been a tough choice.
Moving forwards:
Our shop now has 3+ regular players on Affinity, Storm is on the rise, and Shadow has become less common, mimicking some of the global meta trends. I'm thinking about ways to further tune the deck to target Jeskai & Affinity, with a better plan for Storm as well (thoughts?). Meanwhile Big Mana strategies seem to be very low here relative to global meta, perhaps kept in check by all of the fast decks running around... guess that's good for me and helps validate my current choice of Rhino over Blood Moon.
Sin Collector seems potentially sweet for Jeskai, maybe too slow for Storm? Not sure.
Who is Jedgi? I'd love to hear about the choices for this deck and the matchups they have seen.
My list was roughly close to Lejoon's, but I changed the Tracker to Kiki-Jiki, Sigarda and the Chord were a Chameleon Colossus and a Izzet Staticaster. I used Disdainful Stroke as my counter instead. That worked out fine, when I have it.
Copying Eternal Witness with Saheeli to get the counter over and over again was real rough for Scapeshifit.
Kiki-Jiki and Siege Rhino got through a lot of board stalls. It won that way as much as I did with the combo.
Renegade Rallier was very unimpressive. Never really got a lot of use out of it. Kruphix was equally unexciting. It wasn't bad. Good target to get Kiki Jiki and speed up the land a bit, but yeah.
I wanted Evolutions more than I saw them.
Overall, it just felt weak and slow. Sometimes I could stall into something, but often I just got over powered. No idea how Tron, Affinity or Jeskai Tempo would have been, didn't see them in the eight rounds.
That's the problem with Blood Baron: While it's amazing in a handful of matchups, a 4/4 lifelinker for 5 is terrible against decks like Storm, Eldrazi Tron, Affinity, Titanshift, Counters Company etc. It's not even that great against some of the controlling and midrange decks, since it dies to Snapcaster+Bolt, Supreme Verdict and Tarmogoyf. Thragtusk, Glorybringer or Sun Titan might not be very useful in some of those matchups either, but at least they hit a little harder and have more synergy with Saheeli and Felidar.
In your list with black, you could try Kambal, Consul of Allocation in the maindeck to fight Storm and Jeskai. It's not quite the same as Eidolon, but its body is better (2/3 beats Geist of Saint Traft, Goblin Guide, Snapcaster Mage) and is relevant in more matchups (Storm, Control, Burn, Lantern, many fringe decks like Taking Turns, 8-Rack, Infect, etc). I've played a Abzan Evolution list in the past and Kambal was a great tool for game 1.
That is an unsual approach! Only 1 Voice, 4 Coiling Oracle, 3 Reflector Mage, 1 of each Tamiyo, Nahiri and Gideon, and the Paths in the sideboard. Seems like it's targeted at a rather grindy metagame, and probably not so great against Tron, Titanshift and Storm. (Although Reflector Mage can be good in those matchups.)
I really like the added planewalkers here. I'm going to test this out on MTGO
20 lands
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
In theory we’re usually winning with the combo here rather than racing beats unless we line up a really good sweeper, snipe plating, or stick Stony/Kataki. Conversely, Glorybringer is aimed at tapping out to race beats or act as sorcery-speed point removal rather than blocking. To be fair, Exerting away a Vault Skirge or Steel Overseer can sometimes be enough to make racing viable (and yes copying/flickering GB makes it much better but I’d prefer to focus on average value of GB alone), but a Ravager on the field makes sorcery-speed point removal kinda bad, too. I could see Glorybringer being “OK” to decent game 1 before being boarded out for Gearhulk, Angel of Sanctions, or some other cheaper sweeper / interaction.
Is this similar at all to your experience or am I offbase here?
My Blood Baron replacement options right now look like:
Pridemage
Rec sage to main
Linvala
P&K
Restoration Angel
Baneslayer Angel
Glorybringer
Angel of Sanctions
Again, targeting Affinity, Jeskai, and Burn. P&K sounds best atm but I’m still figuring out if there’s a comfortable manabase that’s up to the task of RR with Rhino.
"Hi all, here's the list:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/846784#paper
Clearly this particular league went well, but I think the deck needs some tuning. There's a lot of potential here though, in my opinion. The deck can out-grind decks like Jund, but also turbo out Saheeli combo to compete against other combo decks.
I'm currently trying an island rather than Hallowed Fountain, as I did not really ever need Hallowed fountain that badly. I've also been trying out some other flex and/or board cards like Meddling Mage, Rec Sage, and Elspeth (Sun's Champion).
Here's a general feel for how the matchups have been so far in my opinion. The deck has a lot of close matchups. Nothing is really a free win, and nothing is really unwinnable, either.
//
Grixis DS: It's a close and grindy matchup, but I think this deck is a little favored, particularly after board when you take out much of the combo. You can go really wide and get so many permanents on the battlefield that they really can't keep up. Alternatively, they could have the perfect disruption for your hand and removal for your dorks so you can't get anything going before being hit with giant shadows.
Eldrazi Tron: Close again, but this time I feel a little bit behind. Thought-Knot seer is really good, and turn 3 Karn is almost unbeatable (unless you can vomit enough permanents onto the battlefield on turns 1 and 2). Being on the play is very helpful in this one.
Tron: I think a bit easier than Etron, as they can't put together a quick clock. They win by getting a quick Ugin.
Storm: Game 1 is a race to combo, they are probably a bit favored. After board it feels much better with scavenging ooze and unified will. I'm thinking of finding room for a maindeck meddling mage just to be able to have a free game 1 here.
Humans: I've only played against it once so far, but it feels like the person on the play is heavily favored. Dusk to dawn and settle are big comeback mechanics, though. If you're on the draw, combo becomes more of the main gameplan rather than beatdown.
Jeskai: Oddly enough, I haven't ran into it much, yet. I think it would be close, likely a bit little behind because of board wipes and instant speed interaction on their part. On the other hand, resolving a 4 mana planeswalker against them seems tough for them to handle.
Jund/Abzan: Definite favorite. Their one for ones don't do much against coiling oracles and renegade ralliers. Evolutioning for Thragtusk/Sun Titan puts it over the top.
Dredge: I think this deck goldfishes faster than them. I haven't lost to dredge yet, but I'm still working with a small sample size.
Scapeshift: It's a race to combo, but they're favored because they have board wipes to slow you down until they scapeshift.
Burn: Haven't played against it yet, but I imagine it's not good for us.
//
That's what I've gathered so far. Some particular nuances to know about the deck if you plan on trying it out are:
- You can create infinite Sun Titans with 2 Saheelis in the graveyard (or one in GY one in hand).
- Always dork on turn one when it is a choice between dork and ponder oath of nissa. I think should be obvious, but just in case it's not, here you go.
- Think carefully about where you target your Saheeli -2 ability. Baiting the opponent into removing a coiling oracle only to drop Tireless Tracker+fetchland could be great.
- This goes for any deck with more than one way to win, but constantly evaluate your best path to victory. When it's the beatdown (and it often is), see if you can try to play in such a way that you seem to be threatening combo. Forcing your opponent to play around the gameplan you are not necessarily trying to win with is very helpful.
- Ghost quarter might be bad, but if you keep it in the deck, do remember to recur it as much as you can against Tron type decks or decks with low basic land counts.
That's all I have for now. Please let me know if you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions. Thanks."Champion’s reward ceiling in both matchups can be quite high, gaining 5+ life and blocking Burn’s guide or keeping a Shadow at bay while being tricky to remove. However, it’s floor can also be low in each matchup.
Against Burn we usually want to lead with green mana — ideally a basic forest — so landing WW on T2 often means shocking yourself and a net loss of life until three more creatures have entered the battlefield. Essentially you have to hit T1 Forest, Dork -> T2 Plains and then have a full grip of low costed, ideally token-producing creatures to follow.
Additionally, Temur Battle Rage is making a resurgence in Shadow decks, so depending upon a pro-black creature to block and keep yourself alive can lead to blowouts if you’re not careful.
Champion also doesn’t do much against a lot of other T1 decks and is a bad topdeck. Maybe the next best thing Champion could do would be buying a turn against Empty the Warrens. And then even if you do get the infinite life combo off decks like Affinity, Ad Nauseam, Tron (others?) have ways around it.
The last thing I don’t like about Champion is that she has to already be on the field before you play your second Felidar, rather than Evo-ing for Champion when you happen to have two Felidars (which is the more probable scenario).
With all of that said I’m still open to the possibility of her being good and look forward to more results.
@Shelldell: A 5-drop that's solid against both Jeskai and Burn, easy on the mana and not on your list of ideas: Thragtusk
And since you have black in your list, Lingering Souls is a very good option against Affinity and most grindy decks. You can't fetch it with Evolution, but it's also not as susceptible to discard when playing against Shadow compared to something like Auriok Champion.
I didn't ever look at a stock list when originally putting the deck together, so it would make sense why my list deviates from what others may have in mind. There are positives and negatives to this; I didn't experience tunnel visioning on strategies put together by group-think, but I also may have overlooked some superior strategies.
a and b (these go together): Oracles are fantastic, they synergize with just about every piece of the deck. They're a good Saheeli target, good evolution target, good Rallier target, and they allow me to play fewer lands. They also chump very well against decks like Shadow and Jund. With oracles, I have never had any issue with land. 8 dorks (that can be recurred by rallier), 4 ponders/oaths, and 4 oracles allows 20 lands to be more than enough. I think I would sooner play 19 than 21, but I'm not 100% on that one. In my testing thus far, I rarely feel desperate to draw a land.
c. I tried out a few one-of planeswalkers to see which ones performed the best. I'd theoretically tighten the list by playing more of the better walkers. Unfortunately, each has shone in different circumstances, so I'm still not sure which is the best (leaning towards Nahiri, though). I do notice that I'm siding in path to exile a lot, so I'm currently trying a couple mainboard.
I'm pretty much tweaking the deck after each league, still looking for a tighter list. But I think I have a pretty solid starting point.
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen