The one matchup I have yet to play that Im not sure we are favored is the U/W control decks that have been around lately on magic online. If anyone has played against them please post your experiences as I'm a little bit concerned about that matchup.
It happened that I played against one at my local fnm lately, and I gotta say, if you are able to resolve a Liliana of the Veil, its pretty much game, the only answer they might have is Detention Sphere or bounce it via Cryptic Command, but I also had Bobs to grind my opponent out, so the matchup felt very good for me all the time. Colonnades were a bit threatening, but as we happen to have many spotremovals like Path or Terminate, we can hold them off from attacking. In general, discard, Bob and Liliana were allstars in the matchup. This surely won't say much by sharing one match-experience, but it gave me some really good feelings about the matchup. Further testing and experience is needed to say more about it.
EDIT: I forgot about Leyline of Sanctity, which could be problematic for us, but it would still not prevent Liliana from plusing. (Therefore you can aggresively SB Wear // Tear for sure)
@Indormi Yeah, facing an Elspeth sounds pretty scary, you are right. My opponent didn't have any Planeswalker whatsoever though, I guess against Eldrazi Aggro they seem a bit slow by now.
In general I also Like Wear // Tear or Hide // Seek in the Side. (Especially against Leyline of Sanctity or Spreading Seas) As for Torpor Orb, I might consider it depending on the meta.
Honestly i wouldn't worry too much about the regular u/w control decks; despite the fact that i dont have bob or veil in my deck, i've managed to grind them out pretty pretty consistently (I have no experience with any of the eldrazi decks running around so I can't say much there.) I'd suggest bringing in blood baron of viskopa, since they'll have no way to take it off the field unless they have a wrath or bounce it with cryptic. Sin collector is another way to go if you need more hand disruption, but based on what i saw with your deck it might be a little overboard.
I cut the Grim Lavamancer for an additional Terminate. I'm still not thrilled by Ajani but my sustitutes for them have the tendency of not working out. Vault is still meh, but I like it over the 1 ghost quarter and I dont really want to go up on the taplands.
This looks like a solid list, I like it very much. I personally have Abbots in the spot of the Grand Masters, so I am pretty curious on how they will perform for you, I hope not too bad!
@ Indormi: Its a bummer that it went that bad for you, but you gotta focus on the things you learned during that tournament. Bad luck is a part of the game, its there and we have to accept it as it is, we can't interfere with it. Concerning your general flooding I would give you the advice of changing your shuffling habits. I don't know how yours are, but try to shuffle pretty aggressively for a while and see how it goes. Force yourself to pileshuffle in every mulligan and between every game/match. It won't completely control your luck concerning flooding, but what you gain is the randomness, which every deck should have, before sitting down to play. Statistically you will have less mana-flooded games. I do this quite a while now and its surprising for me how impactful apropriate shuffling is on the outcome of games.
Your bad experience at that tournament could have also been caused by your anger to be facing Eldrazi in the very first match. This may be a little aspect worth thinking of, since mindset influences pretty heavily how we make our decisions and what we take into concideration. I am telling you this, because I personally work around with those aspects lately. I really think this little aspects along with experience and understanding of the game (along with luck, but its crucial to success to be able to not focus on it) which decide most of the games, and people tend to blame luck more often than focus on their strengh and what they personally could have done better and I don't know if that is the case for you, just wanted to mention it.
I would think about these topics before changing the complete deck list for example.
Regarding the matches themselves, how did Torpor Orb do for you? Got any chance to play the card?
You would be surprised if you actually see the impact of pile shuffling, I didn't believe it either, but it does even your deck and contributes to your draws. I feel that, ff you just had a pretty grindy game finished, thus your lands tend to be pretty much all stuck together in one big junk. If you just mash shuffle, you might not resolve this junks and you will draw lands in multiples later. If you mash shuffle and then pileshuffle and again mash shuffle (or some similar pattern like that) the lands will be distributed more evenly throughout the deck.
I personally would always play 2 RIP right now, as this card is also great against Abzan Company/Kikki Chord/Creature Toolbox deck (think of Eternal witness or Kitchen finks or their infinite combos)
Did you actually get the chance to play with the Grand Masters?
@ Indormi nice report, surprised to hear that you took down Living End 2-0. I feel pretty strongly that's a completely terrible MU, discard isn't great since they have 7-8 cascade spells & most of the rest of their cards are cantrips so you really can't keep them from casting Living End consistently & when they do resolve it it's generally an insane 6-for-1 or better that's mostly non-boltable threats & there's basically no way for us to recover especially since if we do they can easily do it again & we'll be equally helpless the second time. G2 is obviously a bit better with things like RiP and our own Fulminators, but it's just not going to be good game 1. I can't believe that your opponent cascaded t2 for only 2 creatures (one of which was boltable), definitely a case of inexperience I think.
Like other ppl have mentioned I'd also recommend 2 RiP, but that's more because a 1-of that has no overlap with any other effect in your 75 (unlike say extra removal / discard / lifegain) is just too inconsistent for my tastes. Doesn't need to be RiP specifically imo.
@ boatsboatsboats I actually have thought about splashing colorless, though for Thought-Knot not for Smasher (I think Seer is miles better overall, lower cost for Confidant, and gives great redundancy to our discard suite all while just being a fat dude). I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that it's totally impossible to cast consistently. The only reason our mana works consistently with 3 colors as-is is because of fetches, and none of them can search up colorless sources (Don't play Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse, just don't). You'd have a much easier time splashing green for Goyf than splashing colorless for Seer or Smasher.
I recently played a 6-round 50-person event with this deck, so I'll share a writeup soon. It wasn't even overwhelmingly Eldrazi either, only like 12 our of 50 players, but this event also had a smaller turnout than usual probably thanks to the existence of Eldrazi and players that chose not to play because they didn't have an Eldrazi deck.
You would be surprised if you actually see the impact of pile shuffling, I didn't believe it either, but it does even your deck and contributes to your draws. I feel that, ff you just had a pretty grindy game finished, thus your lands tend to be pretty much all stuck together in one big junk. If you just mash shuffle, you might not resolve this junks and you will draw lands in multiples later. If you mash shuffle and then pileshuffle and again mash shuffle (or some similar pattern like that) the lands will be distributed more evenly throughout the deck.
I personally would always play 2 RIP right now, as this card is also great against Abzan Company/Kikki Chord/Creature Toolbox deck (think of Eternal witness or Kitchen finks or their infinite combos)
Did you actually get the chance to play with the Grand Masters?
Note that pile shuffling is not considered actual shuffling, and if you fail to sufficiently randomize your deck (approx 8 mashes) after pile shuffling, it can be seen as stacking your deck. (as you are placing cards into a specific order in the piles, and it is technically possible to know the order of your deck before pile shuffling.)
If you sufficiently randomize your deck, pile shuffling should not matter anyways.
Here's a report on a recent 2k at an area shop, turnout was 49 players I think, and to give you an idea it was around ~25% Eldrazi. You be the judge on how gross that number is. First off, here's the list I took along with notes on some changes I made in anticipation of an Eldrazi meta:
The MD changes
-1 Inquisition of Kozilek / +1 Thoughtseize
-1 Lightning Helix / +1 Crackling Doom
-1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar / +1 Olivia Voldaren
-1 Ghost Quarter / +1 Vault of the Archangel
Basically all of these changes are a nod to improving the various Eldrazi MUs and it's pretty obvious why they're better in those MUs. One that's less intuitive is Ghost Quarter; I found that LD isn't particularly effective against Eldrazi, it helps a bit but they're effectively a very big Zoo deck so answering their threats is much more important and our deck being fairly mana-hungry doesn't help. I always felt incredibly behind when I put myself down to 2 lands on turn 3 only to put an Eldrazi player from 5~6 mana down to 3~4, it felt like I was kneecapping myself. Vault on the other hand is another nice way to prevent flood alongside Manlands & allows you to trade Souls tokens for real threats on defense, or use the lifelink to race on offense.
The SB changes
-1 Flaying Tendrils / +1 Damnation
-1 Thoughtseize / +1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
-1 Crumble to Dust / +1 Timely Reinforcements
Again these were changes that I made to try to improve Eldrazi MUs. I cut the Sieze since it was moved to the main & gave Elspeth a shot as a good way to quickly stabilize, turn the corner & close out the game all in one card; Elspeth's expensive & I'd rather have a 5 drop there but she's much more impactful than any of the alternatives. I cut Crumble for basically the same reason I cut Ghost Quarter; LD isn't as effective as it seems against Eldrazi, especially not if it comes down turn 4. Crumble is much better against Tron & the silver lining is that Eldrazi has pretty much completely pushed Tron out of the meta. A second Timely is a great way to bridge the midgame against Eldrazi, buy time & chump some Endless Ones and Thought-Knots, and compensates in other Aggro MUs for cutting a Helix and IoK main.
The MVPs of the day Olivia Voldaren: She was just consistently insane; I won every game against Eldrazi that I resolved an Olivia, she quickly gets out of Dismember range, gets large enough to block anything, and is a very fast clock to close out the game. Never actually stole any of their Eldrazi, surprisingly (though I had the opportunity). It was just quicker and easier to kill them with a gigantic flier. Just having an Olivia and enough mana means that if your opponent can't answer her they can't even play most creatures, since they'll just directly feed Olivia & won't even cost me a card. Soulfire Grand Master: In some ways Soulfire played out like Olivia, at least against Eldrazi; if Eldrazi can't immediately answer her they're unlikely to be able to beat her once you start buying back removal spells. The lifegain she provides makes a big difference as well, +2 life / turn isn't a lot, but if you can keep her attacking that lifegain is enough to keep you stabilized, and if Eldrazi commits more bodies to defense, great. I still think it's fine as just a 1-of, but the card pulled its weight. Rest in Peace: This card really showed off its power level against the fair decks surprisingly, since I never even ran into any dedicated GY strategies like Melira CoCo or Living End. The amount of damage this card did to decks that depended on Delve cards, Goyfs, Kommands, or Snapcasters was just backbreaking. Vault of the Archangel: This card played out in some ways a lot like a 5th manland, giving some flood-proofing & a solid mana sink that can advance you toward a win. The ability to use Vault to race with Lingering Souls came up several times and put away the game. Using it defensively to trade a token for a creature came up less, but I definitely had the option and that's part of why I put it back in (racing was just the better line most of the time).
The Matchups
Round 1: RUG Delver; Win, 2-1
Game 1 I was just able to take all of my opponent's relevant threats via removal or discard, and ground them out with the value bears.
Game 2 I lost to my own sketchy keep; I was on the draw at 7 cards with Blackcleave Cliffs, Iok, Thoughtseize, Bolt, and Rest in Peace, confident that in the top 2~3 cards I could peel a land and that my opponent wouldn't be able to beat a Rest in Peace. Ofc the lands didn't come; would you have mulliganed (knowing you were on the draw)?
Game 3 I managed to go t3 Souls, t4 flashback Souls + Rest in Peace while my opp had only 1 mana up, a Goyf in play & a Hooting Mandrills in hand. Souls just won the game from there, and my opponent was largely shut out by RiP; they Destructive Revelry'd the RiP, but thye'd lost way too much ground by then.
Sideboarding
Brought in 1 or 2 Doom and 2 RIP, taking out a mix of discard spells and bolt effects (can't remember exactly, definitely cut at least 1 Seize and at least 1 Helix).
Round 2: Jund; Win, 2-0
Game 1 I started on discard and took a defensive stance picking off threats 1 by 1; between discard, Kommand discarding, and a bit of flood for my opponent I ran them out of cards & stuck a Bob and Souls and took the game from there. Vault of the Archangel paired with Souls to win despite bad Bob flips & Raging Ravine beats.
Game 2 was very similar, with less discard and more Lingering Souls. Vault of the Archangel helped win this game as well, and I was holding a Timely Reinforcements in my hand the entire game which made the race basically unloseable.
Sideboarding
Boarded out all 6 discard spells and 2 Helix, bringing in 2 Doom 2 Timely 2 RIP 1 Elspeth and 1 Fulminator. I think there's a decent argument for the second Fulminator as well since Raging Raving is a very relevant Liliana-proof threat.
Round 3: UW Eldrazi; Loss, 1-2
Game 1 my opp mulled as the eldrazi deck often does, he lead with a mimic t1 but I was able to sieze away his follow up Thought-Knot. Soon after I had a Bolt for the Mimic and that was able to give me enough breathing room to keep up with 1-for-1'ing his threats from there. Soulfire Grand Master helped keep my life total padded a bit, and when she got dismembered I dropped an Olivia to close the game fairly easily.
Game 2 my opp again mulled, but this time stuck a t1 Mimic t2 Seer and t3 Seer, against my fairly slow hand with a few too many 3-drops. He snagged my Timely first and then I drew my Lilly (on turn 2) only to pass and have it snagged as well. Needless to say this was basically a slaughter & by turn 3 I was already much too far behind.
Game 3 I lost to a gigantic punt, and it felt pretty bad. I was overwhelmingly ahead, I'd siezed a Worship, I'd Fulminated on turn 3 and my opp missed land drops the next 2 turns, and had Soulfire on board gaining me life & I'd even gotten to the point of buing back a Path to Exile. My board was Soulfire, Abbot & 3 Spirits vs my opponent's 3 scions, Drowner & Skyspawner, and I'm holding Path and Bolt and at 6 life. Here I cast Path with buyback on Drowner & opp taps Abbot & Soulfire in response, so I swing with 2 spirits leaving 1 on defense. My opp peels a Reality smasher and swings for exactly 6. 2 mistakes: first, I should have swung before pathing to almost guarantee connecting with Soulfire to gain some life, and second there was no reason to spend the extra mana to tap out & buyback path when I was so far ahead (likely winning with the Bolt + fliers next turn) so I should have kept up Bolt for the pocket 3 life. Alternatively if I'd just done the math and left back 2 spirits I couldn't have died to a Smasher. Live and learn.
Sideboarding
I got very used to this SB'ing since I had 3 Eldrazi MUs and the SB'ing is basically the same every time; Inquisitions and Bobs are all boarded out along with one Lightning Bolt (Kommand is also fairly bad if they don't have Chalice), and I brought in 2 Doom 2 Timely 2 Fulminator 1 Elspeth and 1 Damnation. That's how I boarded for every Eldrazi deck, the only exception is VS UW where in addition to that I bring in 1 Flaying Tendrils in place of a Kommand to kill off Skyspawners & scion tokens. In other Eldrazi MUs tendrils doesn't do enough.
Round 4: Grixis Delver; Loss, 0-2
Game 1 in this game I thought that my opponent was on Grixis control, as I never saw a Delver or Pyro. My hand was a bit weak for the MU, having multiple Bobs and an Abbot that were all killed on-sight as my opponent set up Snapcaster + Kommand chains. My opp's list actually was running Jori-En, Ruin Diver as a 1 or 2 of, stuck a copy + Visions to immediately get a free card, I never drew removal for it and it drew an extra card literally every turn until I lost. Hate to say it but it was pretty great. Lingering Souls or Liliana would have been a game-breaker at pretty much any point, so while this was a pretty savage beating I wouldn't call it a bad MU.
Game 2 went much longer and I made some play mistakes in the process. Rest in Peace was a big player here though later a Jori started to compenaste for the damage done by RiP, and eventually after a lot of grinding I discarded his Mana Leak and stuck Elspeth. He managed to flip a Delver and take her out and 1-for-1'd all 6 of my tokens stabilizing at 1 life. I actually miscounted this game and snapped off a Bolt to the face when he was at 4 and not 3 which probably cost me the game, since I'd have otherwise bolted his Delver and had plenty of time to find another threat. A funny play this game BTW, at one point I had 5 mana and Elspeth + double Path in hand, and my opp popped Engineered Explosives on 2 (to destroy RiP as well) and I pathed my own Abbot to grab my last basic to cast Elspeth next turn, only to find out that my only remaining basic had been milled & exiled earlier by my opponent's Thought Scour. Always make sure the land you want is still in your deck before you fetch, folks.
Sideboarding
Took out 1 Seize 2 Helix 1 Confidant, brought in 2 RiP 1 Elspeth and 1 Duress.
Round 5: Colorless Eldrazi; Loss, 1-2
As a quick note, this was a departure from the Pro Tour list, with no MD Chalices & Spirit Guides, instead having extra beef in cards like Endbringer and Oblivion Sower.
Game 1 I lost starting with a turn 2 Thought-Knot off of the top, immediately after I siezed one out of his hand. He snagged my Liliana, then found a 3rd Seer to snag another Liliana before I got the mana to cast her. The opponent followed that up with an Oblivion Sower and quickly closed out the game.
Game 2 started with a turn 1 Seize for a Thought-Knot & turn 2 Bolt for their turn 1 Mimic. Cast turn 4 Olivia, which easily won the game on her own.
Game 3 I lost to t1 Mimic t2 Seer t4 Smasher draw, difficult to deal with without a Path or Seize. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have kept a hand without either a Seize in it or 2 ways to answer a Seer.
Sideboarding
I used the standard Eldrazi SB'ing I laid out earlier.
Round 5: UW Eldrazi; Win, 2-0
Game 1 may have gone particularly easily because of a bad keep from my opponent, they had no play until a turn 4 Thought-Knot off of 4 lands, evidence that when the Eldraz plays fair it's pretty damn bad.
Game 2 was a nail-biter, but chip damage from manlands and spirit tokens were critically important. I won at 2 life but never really stabilized (I was chumping Reality Smasher with Shambling Vents for net-neutral damage, which was barely good enough).
Sideboarding
I used the standard Eldrazi SB'ing I laid out earlier.
Overall, despite the pretty crappy record I actually really liked the list, and as usual found a few ways to tighten my play. I found the UW Eldrazi MU to actually be pretty good, surprisingly. I also tested a few more rounds with a friend on Colorless Eldrazi (PT list mostly) after the event and our test games made the matchup feel much better than it played out in the tournament; having Kommand to remove chalice was fairly important though. I'm a lot less optimistic about the RG Eldrazi MU, which on paper just seems terrible, but on the other hand that build also has absolutely no way to deal with an Olivia that's grown past 5 toughness so we do still have at a trump (though that's far from enough to make the MU decent). Didn't actually see anyone on RG at the event though.
Awesome write ups guys. These tournament reports are so helpful. It's too bad about the results, but reading these makes me feel like the deck is pretty well positioned.
Glad to hear Vault was good for you. That card has been awesome for me everytime I've drawn it. Might have to give SFGM a main deck run, just picked it up for the board but I'll give it a spin in the main and see how it goes.
@ Sabre about the issue of gassing out or flooding, while that can happen I actually find that this deck 'scales' into the late game better than most.
I'm usually able to use nearly all of my mana every turn even as the game goes longer and I rarely have no action thanks to value cards that can get you additional cards to pump more mana into like Kolaghan's Command (returning a creature to cast), Lingering Souls, Abbot of Keral Keep, and manasinks like Olivia Voldaren or Soulfire Grand Master. We can keep up with decks like Grixis chaining Kolaghan's Commands and Snapcasters into the late game & can pretty easily outgrind decks like Jund. Lingering Souls is pretty much our #1 card in this department, and is honestly our best way of closing the game; I can't tell you how many games I've won with a single copy of Lingering Souls, even in the face of multiple removal spells that were eventually pointed at the souls in desperation.
The big exception is if we have a Liliana of the Veil in play for multiple turns, in which case of course we gas out, but I'm pretty confident if I've had a Lilly on the table for multiple turns unanswered anyways. Sometimes though, you're right that the deck can flood out (really, any deck can) which is why the manlands or something like Vault of the Archangel are pretty important, same as Colonnade and Raging Ravine are in Jund & Jeskai. I've actually been liking having access to a Lavaclaw Reaches for that reason since it scales better into the late game.
The big exception is if we have a Liliana of the Veil in play for multiple turns, in which case of course we gas out, but I'm pretty confident if I've had a Lilly on the table for multiple turns unanswered anyways.
Why? You are not obliged to activate Lili's abilities every turn. It depends on what you have in your hand and what your opponent's deck is (or on the gamestate) whether to activate or not, therefore you are not necessarily running out of gas.
I think, as we have access to Bob we have a pretty significant card advantage engine there. I had once an opponent playing UW Control and he was facing my Bob, ignoring it and eventually I drew like 10 cards because of him that game. I told him afterwards that I probably only won that game because of Bob and he just said that Bob was not his problem. (I think this was a huge mistake, he could have gotten rid of it with Supreme Verdict for example) Nevertheless, the issue with blue Control decks is, that they are mostly reactive only and relying on counterspells or the right tools to do the job. When they haven't got answeres, they probably lose. Therefore they need way more card draw as we do in my opinion, as we are proactive as well. We produce value every turn, whereas a Blue Control player may sit on some inapropriate answers for the opponent's threats and they are loosing value every turn from it. (In modern we have counterspells which are too situational to be good all the time) If we happen to have inapropriate answers, we still have our proactive cards like Lingering Souls or Liliana (which also can nicely get rid of unwanted cards in our hand, along with taking a possibly more valuable card from the opponents hand) This is one big reason why I like this deck, its a combination of reactive and proactive alike.
Sure, you can choose not to activate Liliana, but let's be honest it's usually correct to activate her unless your opponent is hellbent. My point was that activating Lilly and losing cards to her is not the same as losing gas, because Liliana is gas. She won't close the game with damage, but if left unanswered she can prevent most opponents from winning the game.
Sure, you can choose not to activate Liliana, but let's be honest it's usually correct to activate her unless your opponent is hellbent.
Its most of the times yes, but people tend to forget about this option, which, if forgotten, can be backbreaking as well. One has to always consider his/her options before taking action, and that, is one of them.
My point was that activating Lilly and losing cards to her is not the same as losing gas, because Liliana is gas. She won't close the game with damage, but if left unanswered she can prevent most opponents from winning the game.
Okay, I see. I guess your statement was a bit misleading there, because you said that, if you have Liliana, you would of course run out on gas, which is not necessarily right.
So I have a slightly different version of midrange I wanted to try.
This version can grind really well but puts a focus on creatures.
The card that I wanted to really try is Blightning. Just about any of my two drops followed by a turn three Blightning can be really powerful.
My removal spells Roast and Crackling Doom are designed to kill eldrazi decks with relative ease, as long as synergize with Soulfire Grandmaster. Her giving life link to burn spells can keep you in the game, and also lets you get more value with bob and painful truths. The eldrazi decks don't have many ways of killing creatures so each of my creatures sticking around will provide more value.
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"I do as I choose, and I answer to no one!"
—Dr. Doom
-My approach to building decks. Sometimes it works.
I honestly don't like Painful Truths at all. For this card you basically need to tap out in order to get the cards, which surely is card advantage, but the tempoloss along with the life loss is significant as long as this meta is so fast as it is right now. Your decks seems interesting, looks to me very Aggro-Controlish, a bit like Delver, overall slower, but bigger. I just am not sure if you can afford that tempoloss with Painful Truths, I honestly didn't test it much, but I am a bit unsure about it. As soon as you tested this version I am happy to see your results and maybe it will proof me wrong.
I think your list needs more Turn 1 plays honestly. That could be something like IoK / Seize, or in a higher creature count list like yours you could try Monastery Swiftspear I guess. You might also want Kolaghan's Command, it gets even better in lists with a somewhat higher creature count.
How important is it to run discard in Mardu? I only have 2 discard cards in my deck (Inquisition of Kozilek) and I'm looking to find something else to run in their place. I don't have the funds to get more Inquisitions or Thoughtseize so I'm thinking of replacing the 2 in my deck with Plunge Into Darkness. Inquisition has been less than stellar for me because of how few I have.
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Collecting Timbermare, hit me up if you have any for trade
I think they're a cornerstone of the deck, having discard is our best way to make sure we have some game & relevant interaction against any strategy, a lot like counterspells in other decks. They're our universal answers & they're usually the best thing to be doing turn 1. Against spell-based decks that just don't care about bolts and paths hand disruption is a big part of the mardu game plan, without it you're really sinking those MUs. That said, you could find success using Scullers & SB Duresses, if you really don't want to pick up IoK and seize (the effect is important though).
As a meta reason, I've also got to say that seize feels very strong against Eldrazi, especially since the deck mulligans a lot.
Edit: if you only have 2 discard spells I can see why they're lackluster, you're more likely to draw them later than to have them in your opener with less copies, which is the opposite of how you'd like them to play out.
I would agree, discard is very important to pretty much any black based midrange. Duress or despise can be mainboarded if you know your meta, as you can't afford inq or seize.
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It happened that I played against one at my local fnm lately, and I gotta say, if you are able to resolve a Liliana of the Veil, its pretty much game, the only answer they might have is Detention Sphere or bounce it via Cryptic Command, but I also had Bobs to grind my opponent out, so the matchup felt very good for me all the time. Colonnades were a bit threatening, but as we happen to have many spotremovals like Path or Terminate, we can hold them off from attacking. In general, discard, Bob and Liliana were allstars in the matchup. This surely won't say much by sharing one match-experience, but it gave me some really good feelings about the matchup. Further testing and experience is needed to say more about it.
EDIT: I forgot about Leyline of Sanctity, which could be problematic for us, but it would still not prevent Liliana from plusing. (Therefore you can aggresively SB Wear // Tear for sure)
In general I also Like Wear // Tear or Hide // Seek in the Side. (Especially against Leyline of Sanctity or Spreading Seas) As for Torpor Orb, I might consider it depending on the meta.
This looks like a solid list, I like it very much. I personally have Abbots in the spot of the Grand Masters, so I am pretty curious on how they will perform for you, I hope not too bad!
Your bad experience at that tournament could have also been caused by your anger to be facing Eldrazi in the very first match. This may be a little aspect worth thinking of, since mindset influences pretty heavily how we make our decisions and what we take into concideration. I am telling you this, because I personally work around with those aspects lately. I really think this little aspects along with experience and understanding of the game (along with luck, but its crucial to success to be able to not focus on it) which decide most of the games, and people tend to blame luck more often than focus on their strengh and what they personally could have done better and I don't know if that is the case for you, just wanted to mention it.
I would think about these topics before changing the complete deck list for example.
Regarding the matches themselves, how did Torpor Orb do for you? Got any chance to play the card?
I personally would always play 2 RIP right now, as this card is also great against Abzan Company/Kikki Chord/Creature Toolbox deck (think of Eternal witness or Kitchen finks or their infinite combos)
Did you actually get the chance to play with the Grand Masters?
Like other ppl have mentioned I'd also recommend 2 RiP, but that's more because a 1-of that has no overlap with any other effect in your 75 (unlike say extra removal / discard / lifegain) is just too inconsistent for my tastes. Doesn't need to be RiP specifically imo.
@ boatsboatsboats I actually have thought about splashing colorless, though for Thought-Knot not for Smasher (I think Seer is miles better overall, lower cost for Confidant, and gives great redundancy to our discard suite all while just being a fat dude). I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that it's totally impossible to cast consistently. The only reason our mana works consistently with 3 colors as-is is because of fetches, and none of them can search up colorless sources (Don't play Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse, just don't). You'd have a much easier time splashing green for Goyf than splashing colorless for Seer or Smasher.
I recently played a 6-round 50-person event with this deck, so I'll share a writeup soon. It wasn't even overwhelmingly Eldrazi either, only like 12 our of 50 players, but this event also had a smaller turnout than usual probably thanks to the existence of Eldrazi and players that chose not to play because they didn't have an Eldrazi deck.
Note that pile shuffling is not considered actual shuffling, and if you fail to sufficiently randomize your deck (approx 8 mashes) after pile shuffling, it can be seen as stacking your deck. (as you are placing cards into a specific order in the piles, and it is technically possible to know the order of your deck before pile shuffling.)
If you sufficiently randomize your deck, pile shuffling should not matter anyways.
2 Marsh Flats
1 Arid Mesa
1 Blood Crypt
1 Godless Shrine
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Plains
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Shambling Vent
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
3 Abbot of Keral Keep
1 Soulfire Grand Master
2 Olivia Voldaren
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
4 Path to Exile
1 Terminate
1 Crackling Doom
2 Kolaghan's Command
3 Liliana of the Veil
4 Lingering Souls
2 Crackling Doom
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Stony Silence
1 Duress
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Rest in Peace
1 Damnation
1 Hide // Seek
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
-1 Inquisition of Kozilek / +1 Thoughtseize
-1 Lightning Helix / +1 Crackling Doom
-1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar / +1 Olivia Voldaren
-1 Ghost Quarter / +1 Vault of the Archangel
Basically all of these changes are a nod to improving the various Eldrazi MUs and it's pretty obvious why they're better in those MUs. One that's less intuitive is Ghost Quarter; I found that LD isn't particularly effective against Eldrazi, it helps a bit but they're effectively a very big Zoo deck so answering their threats is much more important and our deck being fairly mana-hungry doesn't help. I always felt incredibly behind when I put myself down to 2 lands on turn 3 only to put an Eldrazi player from 5~6 mana down to 3~4, it felt like I was kneecapping myself. Vault on the other hand is another nice way to prevent flood alongside Manlands & allows you to trade Souls tokens for real threats on defense, or use the lifelink to race on offense.
The SB changes
-1 Flaying Tendrils / +1 Damnation
-1 Thoughtseize / +1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
-1 Crumble to Dust / +1 Timely Reinforcements
Again these were changes that I made to try to improve Eldrazi MUs. I cut the Sieze since it was moved to the main & gave Elspeth a shot as a good way to quickly stabilize, turn the corner & close out the game all in one card; Elspeth's expensive & I'd rather have a 5 drop there but she's much more impactful than any of the alternatives. I cut Crumble for basically the same reason I cut Ghost Quarter; LD isn't as effective as it seems against Eldrazi, especially not if it comes down turn 4. Crumble is much better against Tron & the silver lining is that Eldrazi has pretty much completely pushed Tron out of the meta. A second Timely is a great way to bridge the midgame against Eldrazi, buy time & chump some Endless Ones and Thought-Knots, and compensates in other Aggro MUs for cutting a Helix and IoK main.
The MVPs of the day
Olivia Voldaren: She was just consistently insane; I won every game against Eldrazi that I resolved an Olivia, she quickly gets out of Dismember range, gets large enough to block anything, and is a very fast clock to close out the game. Never actually stole any of their Eldrazi, surprisingly (though I had the opportunity). It was just quicker and easier to kill them with a gigantic flier. Just having an Olivia and enough mana means that if your opponent can't answer her they can't even play most creatures, since they'll just directly feed Olivia & won't even cost me a card.
Soulfire Grand Master: In some ways Soulfire played out like Olivia, at least against Eldrazi; if Eldrazi can't immediately answer her they're unlikely to be able to beat her once you start buying back removal spells. The lifegain she provides makes a big difference as well, +2 life / turn isn't a lot, but if you can keep her attacking that lifegain is enough to keep you stabilized, and if Eldrazi commits more bodies to defense, great. I still think it's fine as just a 1-of, but the card pulled its weight.
Rest in Peace: This card really showed off its power level against the fair decks surprisingly, since I never even ran into any dedicated GY strategies like Melira CoCo or Living End. The amount of damage this card did to decks that depended on Delve cards, Goyfs, Kommands, or Snapcasters was just backbreaking.
Vault of the Archangel: This card played out in some ways a lot like a 5th manland, giving some flood-proofing & a solid mana sink that can advance you toward a win. The ability to use Vault to race with Lingering Souls came up several times and put away the game. Using it defensively to trade a token for a creature came up less, but I definitely had the option and that's part of why I put it back in (racing was just the better line most of the time).
The Matchups
Round 1: RUG Delver; Win, 2-1
Game 1 I was just able to take all of my opponent's relevant threats via removal or discard, and ground them out with the value bears.
Game 2 I lost to my own sketchy keep; I was on the draw at 7 cards with Blackcleave Cliffs, Iok, Thoughtseize, Bolt, and Rest in Peace, confident that in the top 2~3 cards I could peel a land and that my opponent wouldn't be able to beat a Rest in Peace. Ofc the lands didn't come; would you have mulliganed (knowing you were on the draw)?
Game 3 I managed to go t3 Souls, t4 flashback Souls + Rest in Peace while my opp had only 1 mana up, a Goyf in play & a Hooting Mandrills in hand. Souls just won the game from there, and my opponent was largely shut out by RiP; they Destructive Revelry'd the RiP, but thye'd lost way too much ground by then.
Sideboarding
Brought in 1 or 2 Doom and 2 RIP, taking out a mix of discard spells and bolt effects (can't remember exactly, definitely cut at least 1 Seize and at least 1 Helix).
Round 2: Jund; Win, 2-0
Game 1 I started on discard and took a defensive stance picking off threats 1 by 1; between discard, Kommand discarding, and a bit of flood for my opponent I ran them out of cards & stuck a Bob and Souls and took the game from there. Vault of the Archangel paired with Souls to win despite bad Bob flips & Raging Ravine beats.
Game 2 was very similar, with less discard and more Lingering Souls. Vault of the Archangel helped win this game as well, and I was holding a Timely Reinforcements in my hand the entire game which made the race basically unloseable.
Sideboarding
Boarded out all 6 discard spells and 2 Helix, bringing in 2 Doom 2 Timely 2 RIP 1 Elspeth and 1 Fulminator. I think there's a decent argument for the second Fulminator as well since Raging Raving is a very relevant Liliana-proof threat.
Round 3: UW Eldrazi; Loss, 1-2
Game 1 my opp mulled as the eldrazi deck often does, he lead with a mimic t1 but I was able to sieze away his follow up Thought-Knot. Soon after I had a Bolt for the Mimic and that was able to give me enough breathing room to keep up with 1-for-1'ing his threats from there. Soulfire Grand Master helped keep my life total padded a bit, and when she got dismembered I dropped an Olivia to close the game fairly easily.
Game 2 my opp again mulled, but this time stuck a t1 Mimic t2 Seer and t3 Seer, against my fairly slow hand with a few too many 3-drops. He snagged my Timely first and then I drew my Lilly (on turn 2) only to pass and have it snagged as well. Needless to say this was basically a slaughter & by turn 3 I was already much too far behind.
Game 3 I lost to a gigantic punt, and it felt pretty bad. I was overwhelmingly ahead, I'd siezed a Worship, I'd Fulminated on turn 3 and my opp missed land drops the next 2 turns, and had Soulfire on board gaining me life & I'd even gotten to the point of buing back a Path to Exile. My board was Soulfire, Abbot & 3 Spirits vs my opponent's 3 scions, Drowner & Skyspawner, and I'm holding Path and Bolt and at 6 life. Here I cast Path with buyback on Drowner & opp taps Abbot & Soulfire in response, so I swing with 2 spirits leaving 1 on defense. My opp peels a Reality smasher and swings for exactly 6. 2 mistakes: first, I should have swung before pathing to almost guarantee connecting with Soulfire to gain some life, and second there was no reason to spend the extra mana to tap out & buyback path when I was so far ahead (likely winning with the Bolt + fliers next turn) so I should have kept up Bolt for the pocket 3 life. Alternatively if I'd just done the math and left back 2 spirits I couldn't have died to a Smasher. Live and learn.
Sideboarding
I got very used to this SB'ing since I had 3 Eldrazi MUs and the SB'ing is basically the same every time; Inquisitions and Bobs are all boarded out along with one Lightning Bolt (Kommand is also fairly bad if they don't have Chalice), and I brought in 2 Doom 2 Timely 2 Fulminator 1 Elspeth and 1 Damnation. That's how I boarded for every Eldrazi deck, the only exception is VS UW where in addition to that I bring in 1 Flaying Tendrils in place of a Kommand to kill off Skyspawners & scion tokens. In other Eldrazi MUs tendrils doesn't do enough.
Round 4: Grixis Delver; Loss, 0-2
Game 1 in this game I thought that my opponent was on Grixis control, as I never saw a Delver or Pyro. My hand was a bit weak for the MU, having multiple Bobs and an Abbot that were all killed on-sight as my opponent set up Snapcaster + Kommand chains. My opp's list actually was running Jori-En, Ruin Diver as a 1 or 2 of, stuck a copy + Visions to immediately get a free card, I never drew removal for it and it drew an extra card literally every turn until I lost. Hate to say it but it was pretty great. Lingering Souls or Liliana would have been a game-breaker at pretty much any point, so while this was a pretty savage beating I wouldn't call it a bad MU.
Game 2 went much longer and I made some play mistakes in the process. Rest in Peace was a big player here though later a Jori started to compenaste for the damage done by RiP, and eventually after a lot of grinding I discarded his Mana Leak and stuck Elspeth. He managed to flip a Delver and take her out and 1-for-1'd all 6 of my tokens stabilizing at 1 life. I actually miscounted this game and snapped off a Bolt to the face when he was at 4 and not 3 which probably cost me the game, since I'd have otherwise bolted his Delver and had plenty of time to find another threat. A funny play this game BTW, at one point I had 5 mana and Elspeth + double Path in hand, and my opp popped Engineered Explosives on 2 (to destroy RiP as well) and I pathed my own Abbot to grab my last basic to cast Elspeth next turn, only to find out that my only remaining basic had been milled & exiled earlier by my opponent's Thought Scour. Always make sure the land you want is still in your deck before you fetch, folks.
Sideboarding
Took out 1 Seize 2 Helix 1 Confidant, brought in 2 RiP 1 Elspeth and 1 Duress.
Round 5: Colorless Eldrazi; Loss, 1-2
As a quick note, this was a departure from the Pro Tour list, with no MD Chalices & Spirit Guides, instead having extra beef in cards like Endbringer and Oblivion Sower.
Game 1 I lost starting with a turn 2 Thought-Knot off of the top, immediately after I siezed one out of his hand. He snagged my Liliana, then found a 3rd Seer to snag another Liliana before I got the mana to cast her. The opponent followed that up with an Oblivion Sower and quickly closed out the game.
Game 2 started with a turn 1 Seize for a Thought-Knot & turn 2 Bolt for their turn 1 Mimic. Cast turn 4 Olivia, which easily won the game on her own.
Game 3 I lost to t1 Mimic t2 Seer t4 Smasher draw, difficult to deal with without a Path or Seize. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have kept a hand without either a Seize in it or 2 ways to answer a Seer.
Sideboarding
I used the standard Eldrazi SB'ing I laid out earlier.
Round 5: UW Eldrazi; Win, 2-0
Game 1 may have gone particularly easily because of a bad keep from my opponent, they had no play until a turn 4 Thought-Knot off of 4 lands, evidence that when the Eldraz plays fair it's pretty damn bad.
Game 2 was a nail-biter, but chip damage from manlands and spirit tokens were critically important. I won at 2 life but never really stabilized (I was chumping Reality Smasher with Shambling Vents for net-neutral damage, which was barely good enough).
Sideboarding
I used the standard Eldrazi SB'ing I laid out earlier.
Overall, despite the pretty crappy record I actually really liked the list, and as usual found a few ways to tighten my play. I found the UW Eldrazi MU to actually be pretty good, surprisingly. I also tested a few more rounds with a friend on Colorless Eldrazi (PT list mostly) after the event and our test games made the matchup feel much better than it played out in the tournament; having Kommand to remove chalice was fairly important though. I'm a lot less optimistic about the RG Eldrazi MU, which on paper just seems terrible, but on the other hand that build also has absolutely no way to deal with an Olivia that's grown past 5 toughness so we do still have at a trump (though that's far from enough to make the MU decent). Didn't actually see anyone on RG at the event though.
Glad to hear Vault was good for you. That card has been awesome for me everytime I've drawn it. Might have to give SFGM a main deck run, just picked it up for the board but I'll give it a spin in the main and see how it goes.
I'm usually able to use nearly all of my mana every turn even as the game goes longer and I rarely have no action thanks to value cards that can get you additional cards to pump more mana into like Kolaghan's Command (returning a creature to cast), Lingering Souls, Abbot of Keral Keep, and manasinks like Olivia Voldaren or Soulfire Grand Master. We can keep up with decks like Grixis chaining Kolaghan's Commands and Snapcasters into the late game & can pretty easily outgrind decks like Jund. Lingering Souls is pretty much our #1 card in this department, and is honestly our best way of closing the game; I can't tell you how many games I've won with a single copy of Lingering Souls, even in the face of multiple removal spells that were eventually pointed at the souls in desperation.
The big exception is if we have a Liliana of the Veil in play for multiple turns, in which case of course we gas out, but I'm pretty confident if I've had a Lilly on the table for multiple turns unanswered anyways. Sometimes though, you're right that the deck can flood out (really, any deck can) which is why the manlands or something like Vault of the Archangel are pretty important, same as Colonnade and Raging Ravine are in Jund & Jeskai. I've actually been liking having access to a Lavaclaw Reaches for that reason since it scales better into the late game.
Why? You are not obliged to activate Lili's abilities every turn. It depends on what you have in your hand and what your opponent's deck is (or on the gamestate) whether to activate or not, therefore you are not necessarily running out of gas.
I think, as we have access to Bob we have a pretty significant card advantage engine there. I had once an opponent playing UW Control and he was facing my Bob, ignoring it and eventually I drew like 10 cards because of him that game. I told him afterwards that I probably only won that game because of Bob and he just said that Bob was not his problem. (I think this was a huge mistake, he could have gotten rid of it with Supreme Verdict for example) Nevertheless, the issue with blue Control decks is, that they are mostly reactive only and relying on counterspells or the right tools to do the job. When they haven't got answeres, they probably lose. Therefore they need way more card draw as we do in my opinion, as we are proactive as well. We produce value every turn, whereas a Blue Control player may sit on some inapropriate answers for the opponent's threats and they are loosing value every turn from it. (In modern we have counterspells which are too situational to be good all the time) If we happen to have inapropriate answers, we still have our proactive cards like Lingering Souls or Liliana (which also can nicely get rid of unwanted cards in our hand, along with taking a possibly more valuable card from the opponents hand) This is one big reason why I like this deck, its a combination of reactive and proactive alike.
Its most of the times yes, but people tend to forget about this option, which, if forgotten, can be backbreaking as well. One has to always consider his/her options before taking action, and that, is one of them.
Okay, I see. I guess your statement was a bit misleading there, because you said that, if you have Liliana, you would of course run out on gas, which is not necessarily right.
So I have a slightly different version of midrange I wanted to try.
This version can grind really well but puts a focus on creatures.
The card that I wanted to really try is Blightning. Just about any of my two drops followed by a turn three Blightning can be really powerful.
My removal spells Roast and Crackling Doom are designed to kill eldrazi decks with relative ease, as long as synergize with Soulfire Grandmaster. Her giving life link to burn spells can keep you in the game, and also lets you get more value with bob and painful truths. The eldrazi decks don't have many ways of killing creatures so each of my creatures sticking around will provide more value.
—Dr. Doom
-My approach to building decks. Sometimes it works.
As a meta reason, I've also got to say that seize feels very strong against Eldrazi, especially since the deck mulligans a lot.
Edit: if you only have 2 discard spells I can see why they're lackluster, you're more likely to draw them later than to have them in your opener with less copies, which is the opposite of how you'd like them to play out.