Thats all true, but 2x rune halo is also removal and so much more:)
Name restoration angel against kiki-chord deck and they are gone:)
That's cool, pick your poison. Runed Halo counts as spot removal in my book. All I was saying is that in an aggressive meta like this, I think 2 extra spot removal spells are essential in the MB, and I don't think Anguished Unmaking fills that role about it in the MB. Maybe a 1:1 split could be possible, but 3 mana and 3 life is a lot to ask for to polish off a 3/3 Nacatl.
Despite this comment though, I still believe that sideboarding strategies for games 2 and 3 are more pertinent topics for discussion.
Unfortunately a lot of the discussion we can have is mostly done in the abstract because of so many factors making it just impractical. What's your list? what's in the side? What meta do you expect? What are you happy instantly conceding to? Do you want maximum versatility in the board to always have at least 2 cards to bring in? It just goes on and on and on, so it's really hard to say "you should take in X and take out Y against affinity" because for the most part it's on a case by case basis.
For myself I want to have at least something to bring in against every deck I expect so a lot of things I could suggest are totally pointless to a lot of people even if the plan is solid.
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Anguished Unmaking seems like a trap just like Utter End was a trap. Being in a comfortable life range to be able to ignore things is something the deck is already lacking and this card makes that eorse. Even midrange deck can kill you out of no where if you are killing yourself even more.
Unfortunately a lot of the discussion we can have is mostly done in the abstract because of so many factors making it just impractical. What's your list? what's in the side? What meta do you expect? What are you happy instantly conceding to? Do you want maximum versatility in the board to always have at least 2 cards to bring in? It just goes on and on and on, so it's really hard to say "you should take in X and take out Y against affinity" because for the most part it's on a case by case basis.
For myself I want to have at least something to bring in against every deck I expect so a lot of things I could suggest are totally pointless to a lot of people even if the plan is solid.
True, and I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss things as a whole. I'm just saying that the sideboard has the most room for variability, since most of us run 56/60 of the same MB cards.
Honestly this new card To the Slaughter doesn't look that bad. It's mostly a 2 for 1 against decks running walkers and creatures and it hits hexproof dudes. Don't know if it's worth using, but I might test it as a one of in the board
Honestly this new card To the Slaughter doesn't look that bad. It's mostly a 2 for 1 against decks running walkers and creatures and it hits hexproof dudes. Don't know if it's worth using, but I might test it as a one of in the board
Honestly this new card To the Slaughter doesn't look that bad. It's mostly a 2 for 1 against decks running walkers and creatures and it hits hexproof dudes. Don't know if it's worth using, but I might test it as a one of in the board
I'd agree if delirium was easy for us to turn on. We get land, instant, and sorcery right away but getting up to 4 is REAL hard.
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Honestly this new card To the Slaughter doesn't look that bad. It's mostly a 2 for 1 against decks running walkers and creatures and it hits hexproof dudes. Don't know if it's worth using, but I might test it as a one of in the board
The card is too situational and expensive. Like 90% of the time it is going to be a 3 mana edict and we do not see people running to play crackling doom in midrange deckd in modern. Only walker of note in any competitive metagame is lili and at that point you might as well just play purge.
Yeah, it does definitely come down to sideboarding. For myself, I always sideboard super conservatively--I board to play the longest game possible regardless of matchup. Some people like clique and other dudes in the board to go on a tempo gameplan; that's perfectly fine to do.
For myself, I'm not intending to move over to clique unless I play 2-3, maybe even 4 of them in the 75. I'm not going to do that until the metagame compresses enough that things like spell pierce and mana leak become reasonable cards. Believe me, I'd love to run clique and cryptic as curve toppers with other cheap permission in a deck, but that just doesn't work until WOTC gives us some better CHEAP answer cards. Like a counterspell. Or, something like stoneforge mystic back so we can actually establish a reliable early clock.
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Haha I just assumed that we would have 4 card types in the yard most of the time. I didn't actually do the math to find that we rarely have 4 card types in the yard. Thanks for pointing that out guys, it definitely isn't worth running.
Surgical Extraction. The bottom line is that it is super versatile grave hate. Sure it isn't as crippling to yard reliant decks as RIP, but it does a pretty good job while hitting so many other strategies reliant on one or two cards. Negate ain't gonna stop Loam or Emeria from doing their things, and if it's in the board already because of these cheap strats, then you might as well bring it in against decks like Grishoalbrand.
Your comparisons above do a good job showing two different approaches to this deck. Also, thank you for putting it out there that the sideboard is really what we care about, since everyone's MB is practically the same + or - a removal spell , or extra win-con etc.
Edit: Any chance we could hear a tourney report from the GP, Cipher? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd be interested in hearing it. If not, that's cool.
Yeah, I was planning on doing a write-up, win or lose, but was so pissed after leaving I forgot. If you want more detail on any matchup, let me know but essentially it went like this:
I started out 3-0 and dropped 4-3 after the seventh round when I took my third loss. The decks I beat were:
Little Kid Junk Actual (Jund-Style) Junk
Hard to differentiate between these two matches at this point, but we all know these are relatively easy matchups, especially the version with cards like the 4/4 that pumps GW creatures. The actual Junk deck was a bit closer, and I recall being forced to Runed Halo Liliana after he cast it turn 3 on the play. I didn't want to gamble on Colonnade dying on turn 6 and the thing ultimating me. It was the closest I came to dying to Liliana form a Jund deck, but since I waited it out till it was at 5 counters to cast Runed Halo, he discarded 2 copies of Abrupt Decay White Sun's Zenith the first game and Revelation the second closed the doors on the match. I almost got to Cryptic his Liliana away, but he hit the second Abrupt Decay on the final turn (i.e. he had a card in hand when he activated Liliana), so I had to burn the Runed Halo and let him grind my hand away for 5 or 6 turns.
Echantress-style GWr
Seeing this deck in the X-1 bracket was hilarious; he must have hit all Eldrazi. As I always do against this deck, I stacked 2 Esper Charms and just played draw-go with him till I had about 12 lands in play and was drawing dead fetchlands. I drew 3 copies of Think Twice the first game, so he was topdecking with me having 3 or 4 cards in hand. Eventually ended up killing Ghostly Prisons and killing him with WSZ tokens with Cryptic mana up. Game 2 was a complete route, with me Esper Charming Blood Moon and slamming a Baneslayer. There was also and entertaining win-more sequence where he cast 2 Oblivion Rings on two Snapcasters. I had an Esper Charm in hand and another in graveyard.
Merfolk
Game 1 was very close, but Runed Halo was grabbing 2-for-1s all day. I run enough spot removal that Verdict wasn't necessary and ended up just being a 1-for-1 when I was at a low life total. Game 2 I made the mistake of boarding in Baneslayer Angel, and it turns out he was running 4x Phantasmal Image because of Eldrazi. He managed to cast double Phantasmal Image on my Baneslayer. Just barely survived with 1 health for several turns thanks to Verdict and put the game away with a Revelation. They were some very good games, and we almost went to time despite me winning 2-0.
The decks I lost to were:
Elves
This was extremely tilting. I'd never lost to elves in Modern ever, but game one he had the nut draw:
Turn 1: Elvish Mystic
Turn 2: Dwyen's Elite + Heritage Druid, tap all three for Elvish Archdruid. I believe that was 11 power on turn 2 on the play?
Turn 3: Elf into Collected Company, hits two Shaman of the Pack, for a total of 20 damage.
I read just yesterday Reid Duke's article about the deck and he described the sequence from those first 2 turns as the decks "dream hand"
Game 2, I Runed Halo 2 copies of Nettle Sentinel and assumed I couldn't lose. His third creature on board was Heritage Druid, and he cast Collected Company. I could have countered this, I was holding Mana Leak up, but what could he actually hit to kill me (I had Verdict in hand for when I untapped)? Well, clearly I'm an idiot, and he hits Ezuri + Elvish Archdruid and untaps and overruns twice for lethal. I don't remember how he generated 10 mana, but it definitely happened. He must have played a Dwyen's elite when he untapped or something.
Grishoalbrand
I talked about this earlier, but the games were tight and enjoyable, with his winning the second off Spliced Through the Breach -> untap Through the Breach again. He actually had Pact for the second counter, which is pretty ballsy since he could just whiff on the combo. Game 3 he does the 3-card Through the Breach splice combo again with 4 mana in play. I have Mana Leak and Cryptic in hand and cast Cryptic, bouncing one of his lands so that I'm not dead to another land drop. Instead of land #5, he just happened to have another copy of the splice combo in hand, and makes the same play the next turn. Seems pretty astronomical, and I'm pretty damn tilted at this point, but the games were great, and I'll get to why this really is just life as usual in just a minute.
UW Eldrazi
The guy mulligans to 5 game 1, but I kept a hand with no spot removal, only Remand, Think Twice, etc. Never see a removal spell and he just wins. Game 2 goes according to plan and I eventually drop a Baneslayer. End up wrathing away the Baneslayer, but he was at 2, and dies to Colonnade the turn after. Game 3 was interesting. On 7 cards, I see:
I took about 3 or 4 minutes, but decided to keep it. Now, maybe the fact that I only managed to play against the deck once before this was just coming to bite me, but I saw that I had removal for his first 3 creatures and just kept. I only have to hit a single blue land and I'm good to go. Naturally, I miss the first second land drop, draw into the second copy of plains, and wait for it, hit the Swamp as my third land drop. X_x
My fourth land drop is Drowned Catacomb and I manage to Verdict at 8 life. He untaps and plays Endless one for...8 (I did Path him 3 times). I untap, draw nothing, and have Think Twice and Esper Charm. If I'm recounting correctly, I can play Think Twice and have 1 shot at:
1 Path
2 Condemn
and (depending on which lands are tapped):
2 Go for the Throat
OR
2 Runed Halo
...or I can Esper Charm and have 2 shots at:
1 Path
2 Condemn
Clock was running, opponent starts getting antsy, and after what was probably 4 or 5 minutes of attempting to remember my Stats 250 class from college (while also trying to calm myself out of the massive tilt that accrued), with the last thought on my mind being the Runed Halos, I tap Swamp + Drowned Catacomb like a champ and cast Think Twice.
The card was Go for the Throat.
My opponent was a graceful winner and wished me better luck the rest of the rounds. I tell him I'm dropping and he somberly wishes me better luck "with whatever endeavors I come across the rest of the day". What a guy.
Not a likely scenario to run across, but a good topic for discussion and definitely indicative of the kind of decisions this deck puts in your hands. How would others on this thread have played it? My line is to tap Plains Catacombs and Think Twice. I like Go for the Throat slightly better than Runed Halo since the guy had boarded in (and lost game 2 because of) 2 Disenchants.
In regards to what I was saying about the Grishoalbrand game being "life as usual", I mean to say that this deck theoretically has almost all positive matchups, with Tron being the sole exception. The reality though is, we have an inherent chance to just draw the wrong half of our deck and die with a full grip. Goldfishing with draw spells solves this most of the time, but the tempo (mana) lost from casting draw spells needs to be recouped by either sweeping the board against creatures, or the combo deck being foiled by counterspells on a key card creating a bottleneck. Decks like Tron or old BW Eldrazi don't fall into these categories, and we end up losing to a "combo deck" with virtually 16-20 copies of it's "combo pieces". I think this is a sort of hidden loss of percentage points that holds the deck back. Say we have a 10% chance of just never hitting the relevant disruption type, well when you add that to the auto-win percentage that we also lack, we really need to tighten up those recovery scenarios to become Tier 1. Creatures are easy, since we have Supreme Verdict, but the random spell-based matchups that seem 60-40 on paper lack an equivalent. In Legacy, you've got Counterbalance shutting down spells, and Terminus shutting down creatures; I've been trying to find an equivalent, but Vendilion Clique maindeck seems like it may compromise the creature matchups like Affinity or Junk Company. And it's not as if it's a rule-breaker like Counterbalance that warps the game on resolution. Not unless you have Snapcaster and Bolt in your deck.
My changes after the tournament are to cut Thoughtseize for 2 Negate and possible swap 2 Go for the Throat for a third Condemn and a second Wrath. Against Tron, I'm starting to think that games won are games where Expedition Maps and Sylvan Scryings get countered all game. I've Thoughtseized many times and taken a Karn form a hand with 2 Ulamogs and a Wurmcoil, or some other nonsense. That may even be 50/50 to happen, but I don't record data to know for sure. I'm still not sure about the removal package coming in form the sideboard, but going up to 6 Wraths seems overkill against Eldrazi, and having 7 Swords plus 5 sweepers at least sounds right. Maybe I'll get some reps in against eldrazi before they just ban the deck in a few weeks. Third Condemn and fifth sweeper are also welcome against the mass of creature decks, whereas Go for the Throat was mostly a gimmick to get around Spellskite and Chalice.
I'll be honest, I've been playing the deck for a good while here, and for one reason or another, I suspect I play incredibly similarly to how amalek0 explains it.
I think everyone is too worried with "But what about this 1 creature", be it goblin guide or anything else.
It doesn't matter. Goblin guide gives you lands for crying out loud.
I think it really boils down to how people perceive taking damage. I've had plenty of people say something along the lines of "Oh, already at 12 life? You've taken a lot." But the answer is that I probably haven't taken much at all. 12 is still more than half of what I started with. Yea, the goblin guide probably dealt a good amount of the 8 damage, but I have plenty of ways to deal with him. In the end, I'm eventually going to win a game by putting down a white sun's zenith, or just beating down with colonnades, or using whatever finisher I have, and every single one of those can beat goblin guide. Its not the guide that matters, its the other creatures + the burn that matters. We often times remember ourselves losing to goblin guide turn 1s simply because those tend to be the best hands from burn/zoo, where they have good turn 1/2 creatures and plenty of burn.
I'll be honest, I've been playing the deck for a good while here, and for one reason or another, I suspect I play incredibly similarly to how amalek0 explains it.
I think everyone is too worried with "But what about this 1 creature", be it goblin guide or anything else.
It doesn't matter. Goblin guide gives you lands for crying out loud.
I think it really boils down to how people perceive taking damage. I've had plenty of people say something along the lines of "Oh, already at 12 life? You've taken a lot." But the answer is that I probably haven't taken much at all. 12 is still more than half of what I started with. Yea, the goblin guide probably dealt a good amount of the 8 damage, but I have plenty of ways to deal with him. In the end, I'm eventually going to win a game by putting down a white sun's zenith, or just beating down with colonnades, or using whatever finisher I have, and every single one of those can beat goblin guide. Its not the guide that matters, its the other creatures + the burn that matters. We often times remember ourselves losing to goblin guide turn 1s simply because those tend to be the best hands from burn/zoo, where they have good turn 1/2 creatures and plenty of burn.
Maybe Burn was a bad example, but that deck's capacity to burn you out from 20 lowered drastically when they added Nacatl. Up to a threshold, it's hard to argue that adding an additional Condemn isn't strictly better than a Dispel in that matchup. Do you leave in Verdict? If your answer to the Goblin Guide is turn 4 Verdict then you're not going to win that game. A Dispel is a great sideboard card, but I'd go up to 8 spot removal spells before swapping them in the sideboard specifically for this matchup.
When Wafo built the original deck, Burn wasn't a Tier 1 (or 2) deck, and if Infect existed back in summer 2014, it wasn't huge. The Aggro deck was Affinity, and Spell Snares were better than anything else, there. Spot removal doesn't do much against that deck.
Curious if you have a specific card change you're supporting. Sometimes it seems like people go into platitudes without anything specific in mind. Is the point that you stack Negate/Dispel instead of Spot Removal in the board? Do you run smaller amounts of specific hate cards for particular matchups? Amalek actually had Celestial Purges in his list still; maybe that's a local metagame thing. If the difference between your sideboard and the next guy's is that you run 2 Timely Reinforcement over 2 Condemn, for example, the argument wouldn't have anything to do with worrying over creatures.
My point was more that trying to answer the guide turn 1 is potentially unimportant.
I believe burn was actually a contender when wafo built his deck, but without eidolon/atarka' command/etc it wasn't as powerful.
I have very little against burn. I don't think I need it. I'm also talking about game 1 here.
I think all of you are too worried about life totals. Yea, if you take hits from a guide, thats less burn they have to cast, but if they're playing eidolons, playing nacatls, etc, its going to happen anyways.
Pathing creatures, countering whatever you can, mind rotting them, and throwing around snapcaster mages will get you to verdicts.
Spell Snare hits a ton of their spells.
Sure, burn isn't the best example, but I think its a fine (not good, but reasonable) matchup, simply because you don't have to care about most of their cards individually. You can throw out your answers judiciously.
I like both of these especially the build your own fact or fiction. I still do not know how I feel about sorcery speed 5 mana walkers outside the board but with twin gone the jace is probably good.
Nope, that's just Steam Augury. You'll never get the Verdict with lethal on the table, so it's best for high-velocity, graveyard-based decks that aren't really Control.
New Jace seems too slow for Modern but good in standard.
Epiphany has the wrong person choosing what goes into your hand; otherwise it'd be amazing. I do hope WOTC returns to Fact or Fiction wording instead of Steam Augury wording.
TiTi remains the only thing I would consider adding to this deck so far from spoilers.
Soo, I'm going to take the time now to have a fireside chat with you all; about how I play the deck personally, how/why my list is what it is, and what I do for a large number of matchups. For most of these, I'll try to talk a bit about how I view removal on a strategic level in the matchup.
I'm going to talk about all of these from the perspective of "blind" opponents. Some matchups can become much more difficult or much easier if your opponent has played against your deck enough to recognize it within the first 1-2 turns. Remember that we aren't even pushing a .1% metagame share with this deck--there's only a handful of players who bother to run this deck on MTGO (I can understand why, because the clock system punishes unfamiliarity with the deck almost as hard as familiarity with the deck gives you a major clock advantage on MTGO), and only a couple of us actually run with this deck at large events like opens/GP's.
Matchups:
This matchup is pretty straightforward. My strategy from the moment they play their first turn (and pretty much explicitly reveal they're on merfolk) is to dig hard for a wrath. Merfolk actually doesn't have very many hands that threaten turn 4 lethal, it's usually turn 5 in my experience testing against them, so even on the draw a turn 4 wrath is more than enough, especially because hands that ARE that fast basically are out of gas. Furthermore, no individual creature is really that scary at this point (at worst they hit for 3 if they topdeck another lord), so once you hit the first wrath, it's just mop-up procedure--wraths become additional spot removal and the goal is just to 1 for 1 them until we hit a rev or a zenith. One of the important things to remember is that in this stage of the game, it's often correct to save your cryptics to loop with snapcaster in tap-bounce snapcaster mode (or tap/draw mode) because the merfolk player pretty much has no interaction for us other than creature beats, so buying additional draw steps and maybe baiting them into verdict 2 for 1's again is the best use in general. Obviously, exceptions exist. Post board, they don't have much to bring in against us--maybe some negates/unified will/rest in peace shenanigans. Board in wraths because that's our key play for the matchup, board in additional slot removal if you have any that's applicable, and shave down on countermagic. We want to interact with them on the battlefield, not the stack. For myself: +2 baneslayer angel +1 wrath of god +1 runed halo, -2 leyline of sanctity, -2logic knot.
If BGx is our bread and butter, this is our meat and potatoes. Spell snare is huge here, as is a turn 4 wrath. My goal is to keep plating, ravager, steel overseer, and master of etherium off the table. I'm perfectly willing to take beats from other dudes all day long. I play 4 spell snare, some of you cut down on the snares. I pretty much have either snare or a wrath in every reasonable opening hand. runed halo targets are manlands if possible. Note that sometimes you can get huge x-for-1's against affinity pilots of moderate skill by blocking ravager with a colonnade, waiting for them to modular a ton, then pathing it. Depends on the board state, but it can often be a huge swing--they will often forget about a runed halo on a manland and dump counters on the manland, only to realize it's now useless. For myself, I board as follows: +2 baneslayer angel, +1 wrath of god, +2 stony silence -2 logic knot -2 leyline of sanctity -2 cryptic command +1 runed halo. This gives me more effective spot removal, plenty of outs to manlands, and plenty of auto-win buttons to slam.
Fear turn 3 liliana. Turn 4 liliana sucks. Turn 5 liliana is whatever--probably let it resolve just to strip their hand before you deal with it. Otherwise, just keep drawing cards, cast other spells when necessary to avoid death, eventually bury them in cats. Jund is a little closer than Abzan, because they have burn to try and finish us off. Against both of these decks, I keep the leylines in because their sideboard plan is often limited to more discard, planeswalkers/value dudes, or a combination of the two. In both cases, leyline is fine and leads to a percentage of games where they just have a nearly dead opener. I board as follows: +1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion, +1 wrath of god, +2 celestial purge, -2 runed halo, -2 logic knot. I don't want dead countermagic in hand against BGx, so I cut logic knot. Spell snare is too powerful to cut, especially since bob/goyf/teeg/voice of resurgence are all kind of important, some more than others. Wrath comes in because it's a spot removal spell that doesn't get hit by inquisition of kozilek, and if they're on level 2 and boarding out discard spells, it's another answer to the impending creature swarm. celestial purge hits liliana, and it hits all the flavors of Chandra/outpost siege that they may have in the board. The scariest thing they can do is board in green planeswalkers like the 6 mana garruk. That's potentially rough to deal with. The other hard one is when they have a heavy fulminator mage package. Keep calm and think about it. Or think about it. They can't outgrind us going long.
This is a rough matchup for my build. I've conceded that this is going to be a poor matchup, but I still have powerful cards. Runed Halo shows its worth in this matchup because each copy in game one neuters 1/3 of their threats. If we start from the assumption that we won't ever die to mana dork or dryad arbor beats, then we only have 12 threats to eliminate: 4 glistener elf, 4 inkmoth nexi, and 4 blighted agents. Runed halo on the nexi is solid, leaving you to deal with creatures that only come in at sorcery speed, don't have haste, and die to supreme verdict. Don't be afraid to do the math and tank some big hits. I win most games against infect that I win while on 8 or 9 poison counters. Spot removal should generally be used either on their turn post-combat damage or on your own turn with countermagic backup for vines etc. I board like so: + 1 dispel +1 negate +1 runed halo + 2 baneslayer angel -4 cryptic command. We want to be low to the ground and mana efficient here, in order to trade effectively without hitting 10 poison counters. We don't need to have powerful spells in this matchup, just efficient ones paired with some efficient card draw. Most wins will be with celestial colonnade beats or baneslayer angel beats. This is one matchup where having more spot removal in the mainboard gives a lot of percentage points.
This matchup is simultaneously one of the easiest and one of the hardest matchups to play. The reality is, it all comes down to a numbers game--their drawsteps, their consistency, your drawsteps, your consistency. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. The only time this matchup is anything other than straightforward drawstep quality is against very bad or extremely good burn players. I don't ever sweat the goblin guides or swiftspears--they have to get dealt with eventually, but the goal should be to get the burn player into topdeck mode, or very close to it (life cushion against all possible remaining cards in hand) and then wipe the board. Often, if we get there, it's relatively academic to close the game out. The fiendishly good or really bad burn players will make things a lot more interesting however--they'll play out creatures, but hold their burn spells. This ends one of two ways--either they're bad, and the creatures eat spot removal while the burn gets countered, or they use one or two creatures to pressure you until you're FORCED to interact with the creatures--at which point, they use the opportunity to force through a lot of burn damage while your shields are down. This is somewhat similar to the way legacy burn operates against miracles--these are generally the best burn pilots in the room, often players who pilot burn in both formats, and you should rightfully be scared of them. Navigating when to deal with their creature threats is more art than science, and often you just have to get a read on them as to what exact combination of spells they're holding. I sideboard as follows: +2 baneslayer angel, +2 celestial purge, +1 dispel, +1 negate, +2 flex slots, -2 runed halo, -1 white sun's zenith, -2 ghost quarter (or colorless/utility land), -3 cryptic command. I want to be low to the ground and interact with them, because the goal is to trade as many cards 1 for 1 as possible as early as possible to leave them topdecking, then pull ahead with draw spells. One baneslayer hit is generally enough to lock the game away; often just resolving it and not being dead to spells can cause opponents to concede.
In general, I want to point out a couple of things:
1. I use my life total as a resource. I will hold off on wrathing the board, even at 3 for 1 levels, just to buy myself more draw steps--Many players think of this as a "greedy noob control player" move, but the reality is that IF (and ONLY IF) you can take the next hit safely, holding off on the wrath is almost always correct because it delays their ability to re-assert pressure on the board by a turn; if they overextend, you win, if they hold back, you win on tempo. Note that deciding WHEN it is safe to do this is a major skill--it's not just "am I dead", but rather "am I dead if I go down this much based on the cards he has/could be representing/could draw?"
2. Runed Halo is probably the second best slot removal spell all-around, especially for mainboard play. Two lines that some of you may be missing: bounce with cryptic and replay after initial threat has been cleared by a wrath effect, and naming burn spells against fair URx decks. Really. The difficulty level for things like grixis midrange/delver or tempo-style RUG decks that might otherwise appear to have decent matchups against us ratchets up a ton when they can't actually hit us with reach spells, and most of the time their gameplan is going to involve some number of bolts to the face. Taking that away as an option makes cards like snapcaster mage significantly worse.
2b. Runed Halo is flexible unlike condemn or go for the throat or other options--it can stop a creature, but it can also stop combo decks in their tracks. Name borborygmos whatever against grishoalcannon. Name lightning storm against Ad Nauseum. Name valakut, the molten pinnacle against scapeshift decks of all flavors (they have a hard time actually killing us with just titan beats). These are all matchups where the individual spot removal spells are more or less dead cards in the grand scheme of things. It's not as good RIGHT NOW in every matchup, but it's not dead in any matchups. Many people notice the "wrong half of deck" problem, and doing things like playing 6 or 7 spot removals + 2-3 wraths exacerbates that problem--creature decks don't have that problem, because dudes are threats so they're good all the time.
3. People depend waaay too much on sideboard bullets. I only see stony silence in maybe a third of my sideboarded games against affinity. I have like an 80% MATCH win percentage against that deck. The reason is that my overall STRATEGY is simply overwhelming for them. Too many decks try to jam some copies of stony silence to shore up a matchup that they're fundamentally weak to. For the most part, I try to avoid making that mistake with esper--I craft a sideboard built to shift my strategic positioning in matchups, not one built to answer opposing decks. People keep posting about "my metagame is <this>, it's very diverse, what should I play/change?" and without fail, it's a mix of fast agro, ramp, and linear combo. Very rarely do people come asking this question and post a local metagame that is TRULY diverse (containing combo-control, prison decks, and non bgx midrange in addition to the three categories above). The reality is, in the narrow metagame (in an archetype representation sense), you pretty much just need access to board wipes, an answer to the ramp deck inevitability or fast mana options, and generic disruption for the fast linear combo (note that countermagic is not often sufficient for this--grishoalcannon plays pact of negation for a reason!)
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
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Unfortunately a lot of the discussion we can have is mostly done in the abstract because of so many factors making it just impractical. What's your list? what's in the side? What meta do you expect? What are you happy instantly conceding to? Do you want maximum versatility in the board to always have at least 2 cards to bring in? It just goes on and on and on, so it's really hard to say "you should take in X and take out Y against affinity" because for the most part it's on a case by case basis.
For myself I want to have at least something to bring in against every deck I expect so a lot of things I could suggest are totally pointless to a lot of people even if the plan is solid.
True, and I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss things as a whole. I'm just saying that the sideboard has the most room for variability, since most of us run 56/60 of the same MB cards.
I'd agree if delirium was easy for us to turn on. We get land, instant, and sorcery right away but getting up to 4 is REAL hard.
The card is too situational and expensive. Like 90% of the time it is going to be a 3 mana edict and we do not see people running to play crackling doom in midrange deckd in modern. Only walker of note in any competitive metagame is lili and at that point you might as well just play purge.
For myself, I'm not intending to move over to clique unless I play 2-3, maybe even 4 of them in the 75. I'm not going to do that until the metagame compresses enough that things like spell pierce and mana leak become reasonable cards. Believe me, I'd love to run clique and cryptic as curve toppers with other cheap permission in a deck, but that just doesn't work until WOTC gives us some better CHEAP answer cards. Like a counterspell. Or, something like stoneforge mystic back so we can actually establish a reliable early clock.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Yeah, I was planning on doing a write-up, win or lose, but was so pissed after leaving I forgot. If you want more detail on any matchup, let me know but essentially it went like this:
I started out 3-0 and dropped 4-3 after the seventh round when I took my third loss. The decks I beat were:
Little Kid Junk
Actual (Jund-Style) Junk
Hard to differentiate between these two matches at this point, but we all know these are relatively easy matchups, especially the version with cards like the 4/4 that pumps GW creatures. The actual Junk deck was a bit closer, and I recall being forced to Runed Halo Liliana after he cast it turn 3 on the play. I didn't want to gamble on Colonnade dying on turn 6 and the thing ultimating me. It was the closest I came to dying to Liliana form a Jund deck, but since I waited it out till it was at 5 counters to cast Runed Halo, he discarded 2 copies of Abrupt Decay
Echantress-style GWr
Seeing this deck in the X-1 bracket was hilarious; he must have hit all Eldrazi. As I always do against this deck, I stacked 2 Esper Charms and just played draw-go with him till I had about 12 lands in play and was drawing dead fetchlands. I drew 3 copies of Think Twice the first game, so he was topdecking with me having 3 or 4 cards in hand. Eventually ended up killing Ghostly Prisons and killing him with WSZ tokens with Cryptic mana up. Game 2 was a complete route, with me Esper Charming Blood Moon and slamming a Baneslayer. There was also and entertaining win-more sequence where he cast 2 Oblivion Rings on two Snapcasters. I had an Esper Charm in hand and another in graveyard.
Merfolk
Game 1 was very close, but Runed Halo was grabbing 2-for-1s all day. I run enough spot removal that Verdict wasn't necessary and ended up just being a 1-for-1 when I was at a low life total. Game 2 I made the mistake of boarding in Baneslayer Angel, and it turns out he was running 4x Phantasmal Image because of Eldrazi. He managed to cast double Phantasmal Image on my Baneslayer. Just barely survived with 1 health for several turns thanks to Verdict and put the game away with a Revelation. They were some very good games, and we almost went to time despite me winning 2-0.
The decks I lost to were:
Elves
This was extremely tilting. I'd never lost to elves in Modern ever, but game one he had the nut draw:
Turn 1: Elvish Mystic
Turn 2: Dwyen's Elite + Heritage Druid, tap all three for Elvish Archdruid. I believe that was 11 power on turn 2 on the play?
Turn 3: Elf into Collected Company, hits two Shaman of the Pack, for a total of 20 damage.
I read just yesterday Reid Duke's article about the deck and he described the sequence from those first 2 turns as the decks "dream hand"
Game 2, I Runed Halo 2 copies of Nettle Sentinel and assumed I couldn't lose. His third creature on board was Heritage Druid, and he cast Collected Company. I could have countered this, I was holding Mana Leak up, but what could he actually hit to kill me (I had Verdict in hand for when I untapped)? Well, clearly I'm an idiot, and he hits Ezuri + Elvish Archdruid and untaps and overruns twice for lethal. I don't remember how he generated 10 mana, but it definitely happened. He must have played a Dwyen's elite when he untapped or something.
Grishoalbrand
I talked about this earlier, but the games were tight and enjoyable, with his winning the second off Spliced Through the Breach -> untap Through the Breach again. He actually had Pact for the second counter, which is pretty ballsy since he could just whiff on the combo. Game 3 he does the 3-card Through the Breach splice combo again with 4 mana in play. I have Mana Leak and Cryptic in hand and cast Cryptic, bouncing one of his lands so that I'm not dead to another land drop. Instead of land #5, he just happened to have another copy of the splice combo in hand, and makes the same play the next turn. Seems pretty astronomical, and I'm pretty damn tilted at this point, but the games were great, and I'll get to why this really is just life as usual in just a minute.
UW Eldrazi
The guy mulligans to 5 game 1, but I kept a hand with no spot removal, only Remand, Think Twice, etc. Never see a removal spell and he just wins. Game 2 goes according to plan and I eventually drop a Baneslayer. End up wrathing away the Baneslayer, but he was at 2, and dies to Colonnade the turn after. Game 3 was interesting. On 7 cards, I see:
Plains
Path
Path
Path
Think Twice
Verdict
Baneslayer
I took about 3 or 4 minutes, but decided to keep it. Now, maybe the fact that I only managed to play against the deck once before this was just coming to bite me, but I saw that I had removal for his first 3 creatures and just kept. I only have to hit a single blue land and I'm good to go. Naturally, I miss the first second land drop, draw into the second copy of plains, and wait for it, hit the Swamp as my third land drop. X_x
My fourth land drop is Drowned Catacomb and I manage to Verdict at 8 life. He untaps and plays Endless one for...8 (I did Path him 3 times). I untap, draw nothing, and have Think Twice and Esper Charm. If I'm recounting correctly, I can play Think Twice and have 1 shot at:
1 Path
2 Condemn
and (depending on which lands are tapped):
2 Go for the Throat
OR
2 Runed Halo
...or I can Esper Charm and have 2 shots at:
1 Path
2 Condemn
Clock was running, opponent starts getting antsy, and after what was probably 4 or 5 minutes of attempting to remember my Stats 250 class from college (while also trying to calm myself out of the massive tilt that accrued), with the last thought on my mind being the Runed Halos, I tap Swamp + Drowned Catacomb like a champ and cast Think Twice.
The card was Go for the Throat.
My opponent was a graceful winner and wished me better luck the rest of the rounds. I tell him I'm dropping and he somberly wishes me better luck "with whatever endeavors I come across the rest of the day". What a guy.
Not a likely scenario to run across, but a good topic for discussion and definitely indicative of the kind of decisions this deck puts in your hands. How would others on this thread have played it? My line is to tap Plains Catacombs and Think Twice. I like Go for the Throat slightly better than Runed Halo since the guy had boarded in (and lost game 2 because of) 2 Disenchants.
In regards to what I was saying about the Grishoalbrand game being "life as usual", I mean to say that this deck theoretically has almost all positive matchups, with Tron being the sole exception. The reality though is, we have an inherent chance to just draw the wrong half of our deck and die with a full grip. Goldfishing with draw spells solves this most of the time, but the tempo (mana) lost from casting draw spells needs to be recouped by either sweeping the board against creatures, or the combo deck being foiled by counterspells on a key card creating a bottleneck. Decks like Tron or old BW Eldrazi don't fall into these categories, and we end up losing to a "combo deck" with virtually 16-20 copies of it's "combo pieces". I think this is a sort of hidden loss of percentage points that holds the deck back. Say we have a 10% chance of just never hitting the relevant disruption type, well when you add that to the auto-win percentage that we also lack, we really need to tighten up those recovery scenarios to become Tier 1. Creatures are easy, since we have Supreme Verdict, but the random spell-based matchups that seem 60-40 on paper lack an equivalent. In Legacy, you've got Counterbalance shutting down spells, and Terminus shutting down creatures; I've been trying to find an equivalent, but Vendilion Clique maindeck seems like it may compromise the creature matchups like Affinity or Junk Company. And it's not as if it's a rule-breaker like Counterbalance that warps the game on resolution. Not unless you have Snapcaster and Bolt in your deck.
My changes after the tournament are to cut Thoughtseize for 2 Negate and possible swap 2 Go for the Throat for a third Condemn and a second Wrath. Against Tron, I'm starting to think that games won are games where Expedition Maps and Sylvan Scryings get countered all game. I've Thoughtseized many times and taken a Karn form a hand with 2 Ulamogs and a Wurmcoil, or some other nonsense. That may even be 50/50 to happen, but I don't record data to know for sure. I'm still not sure about the removal package coming in form the sideboard, but going up to 6 Wraths seems overkill against Eldrazi, and having 7 Swords plus 5 sweepers at least sounds right. Maybe I'll get some reps in against eldrazi before they just ban the deck in a few weeks. Third Condemn and fifth sweeper are also welcome against the mass of creature decks, whereas Go for the Throat was mostly a gimmick to get around Spellskite and Chalice.
I think everyone is too worried with "But what about this 1 creature", be it goblin guide or anything else.
It doesn't matter. Goblin guide gives you lands for crying out loud.
I think it really boils down to how people perceive taking damage. I've had plenty of people say something along the lines of "Oh, already at 12 life? You've taken a lot." But the answer is that I probably haven't taken much at all. 12 is still more than half of what I started with. Yea, the goblin guide probably dealt a good amount of the 8 damage, but I have plenty of ways to deal with him. In the end, I'm eventually going to win a game by putting down a white sun's zenith, or just beating down with colonnades, or using whatever finisher I have, and every single one of those can beat goblin guide. Its not the guide that matters, its the other creatures + the burn that matters. We often times remember ourselves losing to goblin guide turn 1s simply because those tend to be the best hands from burn/zoo, where they have good turn 1/2 creatures and plenty of burn.
Maybe Burn was a bad example, but that deck's capacity to burn you out from 20 lowered drastically when they added Nacatl. Up to a threshold, it's hard to argue that adding an additional Condemn isn't strictly better than a Dispel in that matchup. Do you leave in Verdict? If your answer to the Goblin Guide is turn 4 Verdict then you're not going to win that game. A Dispel is a great sideboard card, but I'd go up to 8 spot removal spells before swapping them in the sideboard specifically for this matchup.
When Wafo built the original deck, Burn wasn't a Tier 1 (or 2) deck, and if Infect existed back in summer 2014, it wasn't huge. The Aggro deck was Affinity, and Spell Snares were better than anything else, there. Spot removal doesn't do much against that deck.
Curious if you have a specific card change you're supporting. Sometimes it seems like people go into platitudes without anything specific in mind. Is the point that you stack Negate/Dispel instead of Spot Removal in the board? Do you run smaller amounts of specific hate cards for particular matchups? Amalek actually had Celestial Purges in his list still; maybe that's a local metagame thing. If the difference between your sideboard and the next guy's is that you run 2 Timely Reinforcement over 2 Condemn, for example, the argument wouldn't have anything to do with worrying over creatures.
I believe burn was actually a contender when wafo built his deck, but without eidolon/atarka' command/etc it wasn't as powerful.
I have very little against burn. I don't think I need it. I'm also talking about game 1 here.
I think all of you are too worried about life totals. Yea, if you take hits from a guide, thats less burn they have to cast, but if they're playing eidolons, playing nacatls, etc, its going to happen anyways.
Pathing creatures, countering whatever you can, mind rotting them, and throwing around snapcaster mages will get you to verdicts.
Spell Snare hits a ton of their spells.
Sure, burn isn't the best example, but I think its a fine (not good, but reasonable) matchup, simply because you don't have to care about most of their cards individually. You can throw out your answers judiciously.
Opinions about these...
I like both of these especially the build your own fact or fiction. I still do not know how I feel about sorcery speed 5 mana walkers outside the board but with twin gone the jace is probably good.
Very, very disappointing.
RBUGrixis ControlUBR
GUSimic MerfolkUG
WUUW ControlUW
RBUGrixis ControlUBR
BUUB MillUB
Colorless Eldrazi Tron
WRBurnRW
GUSimic MerfolkUG
UMono U TurnsU
WGGenesis Wave EnchantressGW
Epiphany has the wrong person choosing what goes into your hand; otherwise it'd be amazing. I do hope WOTC returns to Fact or Fiction wording instead of Steam Augury wording.
TiTi remains the only thing I would consider adding to this deck so far from spoilers.
Currently trying to discover the quickest way to get the opponent from 20 to 0.
First up:
4 flooded strand
4 watery grave
2 hallowed fountain
2 watery grave
3 island
2 plains
1 swamp
2 ghost quarter
1 drowned catacomb
1 glacial fortress
4 spell snare
2 logic knot
4 esper charm
4 think twice
2 sphinx's revelation
4 path to exile
3 supreme verdict
2 runed halo
2 leyline of sanctity
2 snapcaster mage
1 white sun's zenith
2 baneslayer angel
2 celestial purge
2 stony silence
2 rest in peace
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 dispel
1 negate
1 runed halo
1 wrath of god
1 flex slot: whatever + decent vs burn
1 flex slot: whatever + decent vs burn (not necessarily same card)
I'm going to talk about all of these from the perspective of "blind" opponents. Some matchups can become much more difficult or much easier if your opponent has played against your deck enough to recognize it within the first 1-2 turns. Remember that we aren't even pushing a .1% metagame share with this deck--there's only a handful of players who bother to run this deck on MTGO (I can understand why, because the clock system punishes unfamiliarity with the deck almost as hard as familiarity with the deck gives you a major clock advantage on MTGO), and only a couple of us actually run with this deck at large events like opens/GP's.
Matchups:
This matchup is pretty straightforward. My strategy from the moment they play their first turn (and pretty much explicitly reveal they're on merfolk) is to dig hard for a wrath. Merfolk actually doesn't have very many hands that threaten turn 4 lethal, it's usually turn 5 in my experience testing against them, so even on the draw a turn 4 wrath is more than enough, especially because hands that ARE that fast basically are out of gas. Furthermore, no individual creature is really that scary at this point (at worst they hit for 3 if they topdeck another lord), so once you hit the first wrath, it's just mop-up procedure--wraths become additional spot removal and the goal is just to 1 for 1 them until we hit a rev or a zenith. One of the important things to remember is that in this stage of the game, it's often correct to save your cryptics to loop with snapcaster in tap-bounce snapcaster mode (or tap/draw mode) because the merfolk player pretty much has no interaction for us other than creature beats, so buying additional draw steps and maybe baiting them into verdict 2 for 1's again is the best use in general. Obviously, exceptions exist. Post board, they don't have much to bring in against us--maybe some negates/unified will/rest in peace shenanigans. Board in wraths because that's our key play for the matchup, board in additional slot removal if you have any that's applicable, and shave down on countermagic. We want to interact with them on the battlefield, not the stack. For myself: +2 baneslayer angel +1 wrath of god +1 runed halo, -2 leyline of sanctity, -2logic knot.
If BGx is our bread and butter, this is our meat and potatoes. Spell snare is huge here, as is a turn 4 wrath. My goal is to keep plating, ravager, steel overseer, and master of etherium off the table. I'm perfectly willing to take beats from other dudes all day long. I play 4 spell snare, some of you cut down on the snares. I pretty much have either snare or a wrath in every reasonable opening hand. runed halo targets are manlands if possible. Note that sometimes you can get huge x-for-1's against affinity pilots of moderate skill by blocking ravager with a colonnade, waiting for them to modular a ton, then pathing it. Depends on the board state, but it can often be a huge swing--they will often forget about a runed halo on a manland and dump counters on the manland, only to realize it's now useless. For myself, I board as follows: +2 baneslayer angel, +1 wrath of god, +2 stony silence -2 logic knot -2 leyline of sanctity -2 cryptic command +1 runed halo. This gives me more effective spot removal, plenty of outs to manlands, and plenty of auto-win buttons to slam.
Fear turn 3 liliana. Turn 4 liliana sucks. Turn 5 liliana is whatever--probably let it resolve just to strip their hand before you deal with it. Otherwise, just keep drawing cards, cast other spells when necessary to avoid death, eventually bury them in cats. Jund is a little closer than Abzan, because they have burn to try and finish us off. Against both of these decks, I keep the leylines in because their sideboard plan is often limited to more discard, planeswalkers/value dudes, or a combination of the two. In both cases, leyline is fine and leads to a percentage of games where they just have a nearly dead opener. I board as follows: +1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion, +1 wrath of god, +2 celestial purge, -2 runed halo, -2 logic knot. I don't want dead countermagic in hand against BGx, so I cut logic knot. Spell snare is too powerful to cut, especially since bob/goyf/teeg/voice of resurgence are all kind of important, some more than others. Wrath comes in because it's a spot removal spell that doesn't get hit by inquisition of kozilek, and if they're on level 2 and boarding out discard spells, it's another answer to the impending creature swarm. celestial purge hits liliana, and it hits all the flavors of Chandra/outpost siege that they may have in the board. The scariest thing they can do is board in green planeswalkers like the 6 mana garruk. That's potentially rough to deal with. The other hard one is when they have a heavy fulminator mage package. Keep calm and think about it. Or think about it. They can't outgrind us going long.
This is a rough matchup for my build. I've conceded that this is going to be a poor matchup, but I still have powerful cards. Runed Halo shows its worth in this matchup because each copy in game one neuters 1/3 of their threats. If we start from the assumption that we won't ever die to mana dork or dryad arbor beats, then we only have 12 threats to eliminate: 4 glistener elf, 4 inkmoth nexi, and 4 blighted agents. Runed halo on the nexi is solid, leaving you to deal with creatures that only come in at sorcery speed, don't have haste, and die to supreme verdict. Don't be afraid to do the math and tank some big hits. I win most games against infect that I win while on 8 or 9 poison counters. Spot removal should generally be used either on their turn post-combat damage or on your own turn with countermagic backup for vines etc. I board like so: + 1 dispel +1 negate +1 runed halo + 2 baneslayer angel -4 cryptic command. We want to be low to the ground and mana efficient here, in order to trade effectively without hitting 10 poison counters. We don't need to have powerful spells in this matchup, just efficient ones paired with some efficient card draw. Most wins will be with celestial colonnade beats or baneslayer angel beats. This is one matchup where having more spot removal in the mainboard gives a lot of percentage points.
This matchup is simultaneously one of the easiest and one of the hardest matchups to play. The reality is, it all comes down to a numbers game--their drawsteps, their consistency, your drawsteps, your consistency. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. The only time this matchup is anything other than straightforward drawstep quality is against very bad or extremely good burn players. I don't ever sweat the goblin guides or swiftspears--they have to get dealt with eventually, but the goal should be to get the burn player into topdeck mode, or very close to it (life cushion against all possible remaining cards in hand) and then wipe the board. Often, if we get there, it's relatively academic to close the game out. The fiendishly good or really bad burn players will make things a lot more interesting however--they'll play out creatures, but hold their burn spells. This ends one of two ways--either they're bad, and the creatures eat spot removal while the burn gets countered, or they use one or two creatures to pressure you until you're FORCED to interact with the creatures--at which point, they use the opportunity to force through a lot of burn damage while your shields are down. This is somewhat similar to the way legacy burn operates against miracles--these are generally the best burn pilots in the room, often players who pilot burn in both formats, and you should rightfully be scared of them. Navigating when to deal with their creature threats is more art than science, and often you just have to get a read on them as to what exact combination of spells they're holding. I sideboard as follows: +2 baneslayer angel, +2 celestial purge, +1 dispel, +1 negate, +2 flex slots, -2 runed halo, -1 white sun's zenith, -2 ghost quarter (or colorless/utility land), -3 cryptic command. I want to be low to the ground and interact with them, because the goal is to trade as many cards 1 for 1 as possible as early as possible to leave them topdecking, then pull ahead with draw spells. One baneslayer hit is generally enough to lock the game away; often just resolving it and not being dead to spells can cause opponents to concede.
In general, I want to point out a couple of things:
1. I use my life total as a resource. I will hold off on wrathing the board, even at 3 for 1 levels, just to buy myself more draw steps--Many players think of this as a "greedy noob control player" move, but the reality is that IF (and ONLY IF) you can take the next hit safely, holding off on the wrath is almost always correct because it delays their ability to re-assert pressure on the board by a turn; if they overextend, you win, if they hold back, you win on tempo. Note that deciding WHEN it is safe to do this is a major skill--it's not just "am I dead", but rather "am I dead if I go down this much based on the cards he has/could be representing/could draw?"
2. Runed Halo is probably the second best slot removal spell all-around, especially for mainboard play. Two lines that some of you may be missing: bounce with cryptic and replay after initial threat has been cleared by a wrath effect, and naming burn spells against fair URx decks. Really. The difficulty level for things like grixis midrange/delver or tempo-style RUG decks that might otherwise appear to have decent matchups against us ratchets up a ton when they can't actually hit us with reach spells, and most of the time their gameplan is going to involve some number of bolts to the face. Taking that away as an option makes cards like snapcaster mage significantly worse.
2b. Runed Halo is flexible unlike condemn or go for the throat or other options--it can stop a creature, but it can also stop combo decks in their tracks. Name borborygmos whatever against grishoalcannon. Name lightning storm against Ad Nauseum. Name valakut, the molten pinnacle against scapeshift decks of all flavors (they have a hard time actually killing us with just titan beats). These are all matchups where the individual spot removal spells are more or less dead cards in the grand scheme of things. It's not as good RIGHT NOW in every matchup, but it's not dead in any matchups. Many people notice the "wrong half of deck" problem, and doing things like playing 6 or 7 spot removals + 2-3 wraths exacerbates that problem--creature decks don't have that problem, because dudes are threats so they're good all the time.
3. People depend waaay too much on sideboard bullets. I only see stony silence in maybe a third of my sideboarded games against affinity. I have like an 80% MATCH win percentage against that deck. The reason is that my overall STRATEGY is simply overwhelming for them. Too many decks try to jam some copies of stony silence to shore up a matchup that they're fundamentally weak to. For the most part, I try to avoid making that mistake with esper--I craft a sideboard built to shift my strategic positioning in matchups, not one built to answer opposing decks. People keep posting about "my metagame is <this>, it's very diverse, what should I play/change?" and without fail, it's a mix of fast agro, ramp, and linear combo. Very rarely do people come asking this question and post a local metagame that is TRULY diverse (containing combo-control, prison decks, and non bgx midrange in addition to the three categories above). The reality is, in the narrow metagame (in an archetype representation sense), you pretty much just need access to board wipes, an answer to the ramp deck inevitability or fast mana options, and generic disruption for the fast linear combo (note that countermagic is not often sufficient for this--grishoalcannon plays pact of negation for a reason!)
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm