I am here to make a thread about G/W Value from Todd Stevens' list.
With that list, and his team, he won the SCG team event.
I want to start a discussion about the deck with other hyped modern players, looking to make the deck better and discuss card choices and making a sb - sb guide and even turn this into a primer one day.
I have a few questions about this deck as I've been playing it for a while.
Why Ramunap in the side? When do you ever need 3?
Why Finks over Goyf? You need another threat, no?
Is there anyway to get trample? I feel like some decks (Mono W Hatebears for example, elves) just get too many small things on board and chump forever. I've been using Rhonas a bit and it seems good, but maybe not good enough on it's own.
The game plan seems heavily built around Knight and sometimes it feels like the worst card in the deck. I am obviously missing something here. GY hate kills it, push kills it, it gets chumped.
This deck is actually relatively in it's infancy. Sure the color scheme is eternal, but this deck is very hard to play with so many lines.
I don't have experience with this deck exactly, but my best performance at a major tournament was a green blue tempo aggro deck in time spiral days. That said I started with 8 Mana guys also, but found 5 was the correct number to give you the best odds of drawing them while also not taking away too much from your aggro plan. Right now 31 cards of your 60 card deck are basically Mana sources. Even blue based control decks don't play that many Mana sources.
Hi I'am playing. Mostly the deck works very well as Todd Stevens have been prove. My opinion is that planeswalkers can be very big problems, also titanshift and storm looks hard ones.
I would not add any other colour to manapool. GW is enough, I'm even thinking to add more horizon canobys, because horizon + excavator is great combo.
Not the completely same list, but very similar deck. I have little changes as 3 coursers, 7 mana dorks and so on, but still I keep my eyes on what Todd is doing. I dont have EE so I might use wrath of god for those situations.
I have played in my SD a few Leyline of sanctity. That could be a good choise againts ad nauseum, also helps against titanshift, burn and Junk/Jund. Have you think about that?
Unfortunately I havent had any time to test this deck in IRL tournaments, I have lot of test plays againts uw control which feels pretty bad one. Especially elspeth sun champion is almost unbeatable, they have also lot of board swipers. Other bad matchups are titanshift and storm.
Which are the best choices againts these decks?
Had to say that Ghost quarter + surgical dont help againts valakuts if they use scapeshift or uses breach to primetime or just founds primetime. Those valakuts enters the battlefield at the same time and triggers before we can do anything. That's why I think that it's better that they hit their valakuts to our creatures than to our lifepoints. We have more creatures, but dont have more lifepoints. Also then we dont haveto worry about our paths so we can easily use paths to primetimes. If we use Leyline of Sanctity the primetime is our only problem and I think 6/6 Trampler is smaller problem for us.
On the other hand, the aven mindcensor is good againts scapeshift.
btw, tested yesterday a deck with 4x knights/coursers/ramunaps/azuzas and two trackers in web. Didnt have big influence for the result but naturally I found more ofter ramunap+azusa combo. I continue my testings.
I have just finished building this having seen Todd Stevens playing it and doing so well with it. Does anyone feel up to doing a primer for this deck, listing best and worst match ups? One thing I like about this deck is that it doesn't really have any hate, other than blood moon. I have been running Affinity and Dredge in the past and they both have so much hate against them after game one.
deck is generally weak against combo decks and creature heavy decks with strong evasion (merfolk, humans). i even lost to a standard pirate deck multiple times dring playtesting. it was designed mainly to deal with modern decks that have greedy mana bases or tron archetypes which are the competitive meta.
deck is extremely reliant on kotr as a win con and can become a grind when opponent has an endless supply of chump blockers to stall. i highly recommend alternate win conditions like kessig wolf run / vault of the archangel and/or gavony township to shore up stalled boardstates.
Anyone been rocking the value town lately? The deck keeps putting up 5-0s on mtgo and Stevens continues to do well with the list so I'm not sure why it doesn't have more interest than it currently does.
I'm just gonna pretend people will eventually be into this deck more (it's MUCH better than it's meta share suggests) - so I wrote a tournament report with some notes over on the modernmagic sub. Here's what I wrote over there -
Good morning -
Got to jam some value action last night for the first time (in paper) at my store's modern monday - and as far as I can tell there aren't any dedicated communities playing this deck online and I wanted to talk about it somewhere (is there a discord? Sub? MTGSalvation thread?). I played Todd Stevens' most recent main deck with a cobbled together sideboard based on what I had available. Below is the list (tappedout link) -
Match notes and sideboards - I don't take very good notes and don't have a great memory of every single turn (I have no idea how some of you have such detailed tournament reports) but I always remember how I sideboarded so I'll just try to give you the gist.
Match 1 - Lantern Control - 2-0
I feel pretty favored against lantern normally as we have SO much control over the top of our library and that proved to be the case in these games.
Game 1 - Had a turn 2 Knight that he couldn't answer at all and it was far too hard for him to control my draw step and he couldn't find a bridge. Easy and quick win.
Sideboard:
Out
4 Path - no targets
3 Voice of Resurgence - just a grizzly bear and that's definitely not where you want to be.
In
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Kataki
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Shalai
2 Stony Silence
Game 2 - This was more of the same if not better as I got to just remove all of my dead stuff. Ended up delivering most of my beats via a BOP under a bridge with double Hierarch triggers. He whirred for a spellbomb to kill one of the Hierarch's which dropped my clock to give him time to find outs. I ended up with 2 knights in play and in one upkeep saw 8 different cards on top of my deck before I drew. Knight is stupid. Finally found a Kataki which basically wrathed his board and that was the game.
Match 2 - Jeskai Control - 2-0
Jeskai can be a tough matchup if they see enough removal early and can stabilize at a high enough life total. Our general gameplan here is to try and grind with them while constantly pressuring their basics. Most Jeskai players run 3/4ish basics - generally 2 islands and a plains but some will run a third island or 1 mountain.
Game 1 - Did exactly what I was looking to do in that he naturally drew his basics and I got to a point where I could ghost quarter aggressively. A Ramunap sealed his fate with GQ's every turn while he tried to deal with some pesky Voices.
Sideboard:
Out
4 Path
4 Birds of Paradise - dorks aren't really where you want to be against a super removal heavy deck - you want to insulate yourself from easy removal targets and give yourself better late game topdecks
In
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Choke
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric - 4 power toughness creatures come in against Jeskai as only path cleanly deals with them. The other text isn't terribly relevant but it does turn off Snapcaster, so that's nice.
1 Engineered Explosives - a hedge against them bringing in something like Rest in Peace
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Reclamation Sage - also a hedge against RIP
1 Shalai
1 Sigarda
Game 2 - Mulled to 6 and snap kept a hand with a voice, choke, and Coco. Drew a Noble and played it turn one - into voice (not playing into mana leak), end of his fourth turn I played Coco into Cryptic mana and he took the bait and I slammed Choke on my turn keeping him completely tapped out. Voice was a slow clock and he got some more lands up while I built out my board and the game ended when I 'countered' a wrath with Avacyn.
Match 3 - Jund - 2-1
Jund games are the grindiest of the grindy games. Your success comes down to how able you are to hold off aggression while ghost quartering them out of the game as they don't run many basics.
Game 1 - I got relatively lucky and found a constant stream of huge knights that he couldn't deal with all in a row and I got a Scavenging Ooze going early which helped clean up Goyfs.
Sideboard:
General idea - similar to that of Jeskai. Dorks are not where you want to be. Give yourself better top decks and the more you can inoculate yourself against bolt, the better. Our board is pretty good against Jund so I felt pretty good going into the sideboard games.
Out
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Noble Hierarch
In
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Nissa
1 Shalai
1 Sigarda
Game 2 - I thought I kept a fairly good hand with some voices, but one ate an inquisition and he followed it up with a Bob that went ham, and a Scavenging Ooze that ended up with 10 counters on it and my graveyard completely empty. Despite my best efforts I never found a path.
Game 3 - Kept a super shaky 6 - 2 lands (fetch and ghost quarter) with a my only real playables being a courser and EE and scryed another courser to the bottom. First draw step was another courser. He dropped a goyf with only lands in the yard. I find a land and drop Courser. I don't block his goyf when he swings in because I saw he had the bolt (he did). Got the second courser up and passed. Blocked his two goyfs (which were 2/3s) and he didn't have anything to punish me and played a bob in his second main. Hit my 4th land drop into EE on 2, popped, swing. He found a Liliana the Last Hope and we start to grind out a little bit, with him finding another pesky Scooze that got big enough to be a threat. He couldn't put pressure on though and I blew him out with Avacyn negating a push on a late Excavator. Feels good.
So yeah, I love this deck. You have so many options, you have so many different ways to attack the format and you have outs to almost everything.
Some cards I'm considering - I really like spice - can you think of anything else that might be spicy?
Scryb Ranger - the pro blue clause is irrelevant, but being able to flash in something that gives you extra tracker activations, knight activations, pseudo ramp (if I can't make my landdrop for the turn), etc. Just seems sweet. Maverick in Legacy runs it as a 1-of, but obviously they're doing some things we aren't (a lot of things - ha!).
Lyra - Lyra seems like a pretty sweet sideboard option in that it straight up wins the game against some decks and along with the other angels, we get to turn into a sweet angel stompy deck.
Linvala - I should be running Linvala already (I need to pick one up) because it just shuts down so many random decks and gives me such a better game against elves. Many, elves is rough.
Anything else? I know Stevens digs Elspeth Sun's Champion and Gideon, but I thought the idea of Nissa was pretty sweet for grindy matchups as it gives me another coco hit and stretches the amount of things the opponent then has to deal with.
This deck likely lacks the critical mass of interactions required to make the inclusion of Scryb Ranger worthwhile. If you want to try Scryb Ranger I'd suggest so in place of Azusa.
Linvala doesn't do a lot outside of the Elves/Company Combo and Affinity matchups - so I wouldn't consider her necessary.
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This deck likely lacks the critical mass of interactions required to make the inclusion of Scryb Ranger worthwhile. If you want to try Scryb Ranger I'd suggest so in place of Azusa.
Linvala doesn't do a lot outside of the Elves/Company Combo and Affinity matchups - so I wouldn't consider her necessary.
Good points and I think you're right about all of the above. With GSZ legal in the format it might make Scryb a little more viable, but I don't think it's there right now.
Great blog by the way - playing any GW builds in modern?
I'm an enthusiast for this deck, and I find it odd too that this doesn't even have a proper primer and more discussion. The facebook community is pretty active though.
Imagine having a card engine that can find hate cards which artifacts are famous for... that also pumps knight... and can be recurred every turn...
Brew away.
I think inventors's fair is too slow. With Coco you have change to hit the correct card 3rd turn. With inventors' fair you can land your hate card in fifth turn. Againts many deck you're already dead then.
[[Knight of Autumn]] Is versatile enough to be run MB, ramunap excavator can lead to blowouts against decks like phoenix that run very few lands and might be punished for this. I'm spinning a GW Hatebears list into this one. Idk about CoCo because I do want to play Thalia GoT though
Thalia, guardian of thraben is a must imho, it slows down the boogie man of the format in phoenix and its all arround great. one of my favorite cards in modern
I am here to make a thread about G/W Value from Todd Stevens' list.
With that list, and his team, he won the SCG team event.
I want to start a discussion about the deck with other hyped modern players, looking to make the deck better and discuss card choices and making a sb - sb guide and even turn this into a primer one day.
Why Ramunap in the side? When do you ever need 3?
Why Finks over Goyf? You need another threat, no?
Is there anyway to get trample? I feel like some decks (Mono W Hatebears for example, elves) just get too many small things on board and chump forever. I've been using Rhonas a bit and it seems good, but maybe not good enough on it's own.
The game plan seems heavily built around Knight and sometimes it feels like the worst card in the deck. I am obviously missing something here. GY hate kills it, push kills it, it gets chumped.
This deck is actually relatively in it's infancy. Sure the color scheme is eternal, but this deck is very hard to play with so many lines.
I would not add any other colour to manapool. GW is enough, I'm even thinking to add more horizon canobys, because horizon + excavator is great combo.
Unfortunately I havent had any time to test this deck in IRL tournaments, I have lot of test plays againts uw control which feels pretty bad one. Especially elspeth sun champion is almost unbeatable, they have also lot of board swipers. Other bad matchups are titanshift and storm.
Which are the best choices againts these decks?
On the other hand, the aven mindcensor is good againts scapeshift.
btw, tested yesterday a deck with 4x knights/coursers/ramunaps/azuzas and two trackers in web. Didnt have big influence for the result but naturally I found more ofter ramunap+azusa combo. I continue my testings.
i wonder what are the flex spots in this deck?
i have found variants that run 7 mana dorks (3 bop - 4 noble) / 1 of Qasali Pridemage / 1 of Linvala, Keeper of Silence.
due to the flexiblity of the selenya guild, there is even a variant with a soft red splash for Kessig Wolf Run.
i am currently running a budget version using Wall of Roots and am trying out 1 copy of Chord of Calling in place of Dromoka's Command.
Active thread contributor of Jeskai Prowess Tempo
deck is generally weak against combo decks and creature heavy decks with strong evasion (merfolk, humans). i even lost to a standard pirate deck multiple times dring playtesting. it was designed mainly to deal with modern decks that have greedy mana bases or tron archetypes which are the competitive meta.
deck is extremely reliant on kotr as a win con and can become a grind when opponent has an endless supply of chump blockers to stall. i highly recommend alternate win conditions like kessig wolf run / vault of the archangel and/or gavony township to shore up stalled boardstates.
Active thread contributor of Jeskai Prowess Tempo
Good morning -
Got to jam some value action last night for the first time (in paper) at my store's modern monday - and as far as I can tell there aren't any dedicated communities playing this deck online and I wanted to talk about it somewhere (is there a discord? Sub? MTGSalvation thread?). I played Todd Stevens' most recent main deck with a cobbled together sideboard based on what I had available. Below is the list (tappedout link) -
1 Gavony Township
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Horizon Canopy
2 Plains
2 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Archangel Avacyn
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Ramunap Excavator
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Tireless Tracker
4 Voice of Resurgence
4 Collected Company
1 Dromoka's Command
4 Path to Exile
2 Blessed Alliance
1 Choke
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Eldritch Evolution
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
2 Stony Silence
Match notes and sideboards - I don't take very good notes and don't have a great memory of every single turn (I have no idea how some of you have such detailed tournament reports) but I always remember how I sideboarded so I'll just try to give you the gist.
Match 1 - Lantern Control - 2-0
I feel pretty favored against lantern normally as we have SO much control over the top of our library and that proved to be the case in these games.
Game 1 - Had a turn 2 Knight that he couldn't answer at all and it was far too hard for him to control my draw step and he couldn't find a bridge. Easy and quick win.
Sideboard:
Out
4 Path - no targets
3 Voice of Resurgence - just a grizzly bear and that's definitely not where you want to be.
In
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Kataki
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Shalai
2 Stony Silence
Game 2 - This was more of the same if not better as I got to just remove all of my dead stuff. Ended up delivering most of my beats via a BOP under a bridge with double Hierarch triggers. He whirred for a spellbomb to kill one of the Hierarch's which dropped my clock to give him time to find outs. I ended up with 2 knights in play and in one upkeep saw 8 different cards on top of my deck before I drew. Knight is stupid. Finally found a Kataki which basically wrathed his board and that was the game.
Match 2 - Jeskai Control - 2-0
Jeskai can be a tough matchup if they see enough removal early and can stabilize at a high enough life total. Our general gameplan here is to try and grind with them while constantly pressuring their basics. Most Jeskai players run 3/4ish basics - generally 2 islands and a plains but some will run a third island or 1 mountain.
Game 1 - Did exactly what I was looking to do in that he naturally drew his basics and I got to a point where I could ghost quarter aggressively. A Ramunap sealed his fate with GQ's every turn while he tried to deal with some pesky Voices.
Sideboard:
Out
4 Path
4 Birds of Paradise - dorks aren't really where you want to be against a super removal heavy deck - you want to insulate yourself from easy removal targets and give yourself better late game topdecks
In
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Choke
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric - 4 power toughness creatures come in against Jeskai as only path cleanly deals with them. The other text isn't terribly relevant but it does turn off Snapcaster, so that's nice.
1 Engineered Explosives - a hedge against them bringing in something like Rest in Peace
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Reclamation Sage - also a hedge against RIP
1 Shalai
1 Sigarda
Game 2 - Mulled to 6 and snap kept a hand with a voice, choke, and Coco. Drew a Noble and played it turn one - into voice (not playing into mana leak), end of his fourth turn I played Coco into Cryptic mana and he took the bait and I slammed Choke on my turn keeping him completely tapped out. Voice was a slow clock and he got some more lands up while I built out my board and the game ended when I 'countered' a wrath with Avacyn.
Match 3 - Jund - 2-1
Jund games are the grindiest of the grindy games. Your success comes down to how able you are to hold off aggression while ghost quartering them out of the game as they don't run many basics.
Game 1 - I got relatively lucky and found a constant stream of huge knights that he couldn't deal with all in a row and I got a Scavenging Ooze going early which helped clean up Goyfs.
Sideboard:
General idea - similar to that of Jeskai. Dorks are not where you want to be. Give yourself better top decks and the more you can inoculate yourself against bolt, the better. Our board is pretty good against Jund so I felt pretty good going into the sideboard games.
Out
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Noble Hierarch
In
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Nissa
1 Shalai
1 Sigarda
Game 2 - I thought I kept a fairly good hand with some voices, but one ate an inquisition and he followed it up with a Bob that went ham, and a Scavenging Ooze that ended up with 10 counters on it and my graveyard completely empty. Despite my best efforts I never found a path.
Game 3 - Kept a super shaky 6 - 2 lands (fetch and ghost quarter) with a my only real playables being a courser and EE and scryed another courser to the bottom. First draw step was another courser. He dropped a goyf with only lands in the yard. I find a land and drop Courser. I don't block his goyf when he swings in because I saw he had the bolt (he did). Got the second courser up and passed. Blocked his two goyfs (which were 2/3s) and he didn't have anything to punish me and played a bob in his second main. Hit my 4th land drop into EE on 2, popped, swing. He found a Liliana the Last Hope and we start to grind out a little bit, with him finding another pesky Scooze that got big enough to be a threat. He couldn't put pressure on though and I blew him out with Avacyn negating a push on a late Excavator. Feels good.
So yeah, I love this deck. You have so many options, you have so many different ways to attack the format and you have outs to almost everything.
Some cards I'm considering - I really like spice - can you think of anything else that might be spicy?
Scryb Ranger - the pro blue clause is irrelevant, but being able to flash in something that gives you extra tracker activations, knight activations, pseudo ramp (if I can't make my landdrop for the turn), etc. Just seems sweet. Maverick in Legacy runs it as a 1-of, but obviously they're doing some things we aren't (a lot of things - ha!).
Lyra - Lyra seems like a pretty sweet sideboard option in that it straight up wins the game against some decks and along with the other angels, we get to turn into a sweet angel stompy deck.
Linvala - I should be running Linvala already (I need to pick one up) because it just shuts down so many random decks and gives me such a better game against elves. Many, elves is rough.
Anything else? I know Stevens digs Elspeth Sun's Champion and Gideon, but I thought the idea of Nissa was pretty sweet for grindy matchups as it gives me another coco hit and stretches the amount of things the opponent then has to deal with.
Cheers! May your cocos always hit well!
Linvala doesn't do a lot outside of the Elves/Company Combo and Affinity matchups - so I wouldn't consider her necessary.
Good points and I think you're right about all of the above. With GSZ legal in the format it might make Scryb a little more viable, but I don't think it's there right now.
Great blog by the way - playing any GW builds in modern?
Imagine having a card engine that can find hate cards which artifacts are famous for... that also pumps knight... and can be recurred every turn...
Brew away.
I think inventors's fair is too slow. With Coco you have change to hit the correct card 3rd turn. With inventors' fair you can land your hate card in fifth turn. Againts many deck you're already dead then.
Thalia, guardian of thraben is a must imho, it slows down the boogie man of the format in phoenix and its all arround great. one of my favorite cards in modern