Hello, I was wondering what anyone thoughts were on including Hurkyll's Recall as a 1 or 2 of main deck. It seems it would help with consistency. The list I currently run is https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/592512#online
With 4 serum visions and 2 noxious revival you can easily drop to 15 lands (pitch a plains or seachrome) and add the Hurkyl's Recall. It will reduce fizzle rates significantly, and can clear pesky chalices or affinity swarms. Hard fizzles due to land will still only occur around 1% more often, with fizzles due to no bounce decreasing by well over 10%.
Are you guys finding that discard actually helps the bad matchups? It seems to me that it will be awesome when the opponent only has one piece of disruption. When the opponent has two pieces of disruption it seems to fall flat. Counterspells can succeed when the opponent can only cast one piece of disruption right now. On the other hand counterspells cost mana when you're trying to go off or carry extra risks with them (i.e. Pact of Negation).
It seems to me that in most cases redundancy is better than discard. The ideas I've seen floating around for redundancy are:
Monastery Mentor as an extra engine that can win when things don't go exactly according to plan.
Noxious Revival to rebuy engines, fetches, and retracts. Also randomly fizzles surgical extraction. Card disadvantage, but our threat density is so low that it's probably worth it.
Postmortem Lunge has fallen off the radar a bit lately, but I still have a soft spot for it. No card disadvantage like revival, dodges spell snare, lets you use paradise mantle immediately... seems handy.
Turn one Thoughtseize, remove the one kill spell, turn two engine card seems like the ideal. But turn two engine, engine dies, turn three rebuy engine seems almost as good. And the redundancies seem like much better topdecks. OTOH if the discard is actually working in practice then that's more valuable than theorycrafting.
Are you guys finding that discard actually helps the bad matchups? It seems to me that it will be awesome when the opponent only has one piece of disruption. When the opponent has two pieces of disruption it seems to fall flat. Counterspells can succeed when the opponent can only cast one piece of disruption right now. On the other hand counterspells cost mana when you're trying to go off or carry extra risks with them (i.e. Pact of Negation).
It seems to me that in most cases redundancy is better than discard. The ideas I've seen floating around for redundancy are:
Monastery Mentor as an extra engine that can win when things don't go exactly according to plan.
Noxious Revival to rebuy engines, fetches, and retracts. Also randomly fizzles surgical extraction. Card disadvantage, but our threat density is so low that it's probably worth it.
Postmortem Lunge has fallen off the radar a bit lately, but I still have a soft spot for it. No card disadvantage like revival, dodges spell snare, lets you use paradise mantle immediately... seems handy.
Turn one Thoughtseize, remove the one kill spell, turn two engine card seems like the ideal. But turn two engine, engine dies, turn three rebuy engine seems almost as good. And the redundancies seem like much better topdecks. OTOH if the discard is actually working in practice then that's more valuable than theorycrafting.
I would never use discard to beat discard. This is the exact opposite of how BGx mirrors play out; to beat BGx, you actually remove discard and add threats. I only like discard against some of the fast proactive decks, especially on the draw where we might be a turn too slow. Discard is not the answer to midrange though.
I just thought about it diffrent way. If our opponent has 2 of any distruption we lose most of a times, how u can beat 2x spellsnare or 2x push.
The way that you beat two fatal push, which is admittedly unlikely, is for the opponent to leave only one mana up while you have pact or swan song in hand. Pact is a little better for this because the opponent will often not realize that you can go off with two mana with counter backup (and thus they cast serum visions or whatever). You play your guy, pact the path, and hope you win on the spot.
It's not a great plan, but it's a plan. I'm open to persuasion that discard is a better plan but personally I would favor more redundancy before going the discard route.
Ok, first of all, casting pact to protect 1 Paladin seems to be bad idea. Second, waiting to have 3 mana open without moxes is risky when u run 15 lands.
Depending on the build and your hand you are something like 10-50% to win from the first draw engine hitting the board. If you let grixis take you into the long game I doubt you're 10% to win.
Functionally the thoughtseize plan isn't that much different than the pact plan. The drawback is that you lose if your opponent has two answers in hand. The advantage is that you get to play out a longer game if you fizzle after the t1 seize -> t2 engine. The problem imo is that the advantage is something of an illusion, since a long game against a grixis death's shadow deck is a near guaranteed loss anyway.
In game one you want to max out your chance of a combo kill by turn 4. SV helps with that by cutting down on the mulls to oblivion and sometimes mid-combo smoothing. Boarded games are inherently higher variance since we face more hate post-board and more prepared opponents. We can give either give ourselves a chance to let the variance work in our favor by bringing in sideboard cards or reduce variance by sacrificing speed and bringing in some redundancy (option a is the anti-hate plan, option b is the anti-removal/counter plan). Either way SV tends to fall by the wayside.
I've been noodling around with the idea of going all in game one on the turn 2-3 kill with a sideboard that lets you pull back to a more robust turn 3-4 kill plan.
Sideboarding plan:
-1 to 2 Simian Spirit Guide
-0 to 1 Hurkyl's Recall
-0 to 1 Noxious Revival
-1 to 2 Serum Visions
Often the best way to steal a game in a bad matchup is to kill them when they don't know they're in danger. For example, you go Arid Mesa, go, they go fetch into watery grave, serum visions, or fetch into blood crypt, traverse the uvenwald. Then you fetch, untap, and win. I hate to give up too much explosiveness in pursuit of stability game one.
Personally I've never tried the explosive SSG-version of the deck; but I think it can performe as well as the 15-lands deck if the lands and the engines you draw are according. With so much Rugged Prairie and few blue mana lands, don't you think you are just minimizing the probability of having a free T1 SV (or a mid combo one)? In this case, it could be fine to take off all of them. I'm just guessing if your strategy can be maximized with other cards.
I thought that initially and was going to go with a couple of Gemstone Mine but I decided to try it out with the Rugged Prairie manabase first. In practice it hasn't come up that much. When your mulligan rules are:
7 cards: keep if you have an engine and a land
6 or fewer: keep if you have an engine and a land or an SV you can cast turn 1
I just haven't seen any 6 or fewer card hands with an SV and a Rugged Prairie as the only land. I'm sure it happens occasionally, but IMO it's balanced out by the chance of a T1 Paladin and even the utility of T2 Prairie + SSG -> Paladin leaving your second land untapped. I haven't actually done the math on how frequent each situation is though.
How have the Thoughtsiezes worked out for you? It seems to me like they'd be clunky and take away from what we're trying to do. But I can see how the information might be helpful in knowing when or not it's okay to "go for it". I'm also loving the Geist of Saint Traft in your sideboard - Geist has always been one of my favorite cards, and I want to know how he works for you. Is it something to bring in in the removal heavy matches? How often does it just get chump blocked and killed? What about the Death's Shadow in the side? When do you bring him in, and how much do you feel it helps you? It seems to me like it might be difficult to utilize, given how effective removal is against us in the first place...
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MODERN GBCombo ElvesBG UExtra TurnsU UWCheeriosWU
EDH RGURiku of Two ReflectionsRGU (Combo / Creature Toolbox) BWKarlov of the Ghost CouncilWB (Control / Aggro) GWSelvala, Explorer ReturnedWG (Goodstuff) RUWNarset, Enlightened MasterWUR (Superfriends)
Just to reiterate my earlier observation: I don't think this deck is playable in the current online meta. I played through two leagues today and got matched up against death's shadow five times and grixis delver once. In the other matches I was 3-1, but...
Just to reiterate my earlier observation: I don't think this deck is playable in the current online meta. I played through two leagues today and got matched up against death's shadow five times and grixis delver once. In the other matches I was 3-1, but...
Ick...probably not going to be pleasant, although it is a good testing environment to try to improve our worst match-ups
I got my hopes up today for divert after seeing aven mindcensor in both the invocations and the new set, but they dashed my hopes.
Ick...probably not going to be pleasant, although it is a good testing environment to try to improve our worst match-ups
Beating them basically requires gameplay errors. I swipe the occasional game one when they keep a discard free hand and then tap out for a tarmogoyf or whatever (got one game off Cheon by grapeshotting for 8 off a retract) but once they know what's up the post-board matches are awful. I think I've taken literally one game post board. I may have to go back to leyline in the side just to have a chance.
Just to reiterate my earlier observation: I don't think this deck is playable in the current online meta. I played through two leagues today and got matched up against death's shadow five times and grixis delver once. In the other matches I was 3-1, but...
This deck is very poorly-positioned right now. DS decks are serious beatings, and I'm always bouncing between the all-in Leyline plan and the threat density plan. The Leyline plan is a bit better when it works, but it doesn't work as often; indeed, it only works in fewer than 15% of games (odds of drawing at least one engine, one Leyline, two mana sources, and having an otherwise keepable equipment/Retract hand). It's actually less than that because removal can still break up the plan. The threat density plan is a little more resilient and consistent, but it isn't a certain path to victory; you can still get raced or just disrupted to death. Numbers-wise, I'm still leaning towards threat density because Leyline is just pretty improbable, but I'm not a fan of most of my threats. I've yet to cast Herald before T4 against DS decks in testing, and Mentor, although frequently cast T3, isn't as decisive as I would like.
Just to reiterate my earlier observation: I don't think this deck is playable in the current online meta. I played through two leagues today and got matched up against death's shadow five times and grixis delver once. In the other matches I was 3-1, but...
This deck is very poorly-positioned right now. DS decks are serious beatings, and I'm always bouncing between the all-in Leyline plan and the threat density plan. The Leyline plan is a bit better when it works, but it doesn't work as often; indeed, it only works in fewer than 15% of games (odds of drawing at least one engine, one Leyline, two mana sources, and having an otherwise keepable equipment/Retract hand). It's actually less than that because removal can still break up the plan. The threat density plan is a little more resilient and consistent, but it isn't a certain path to victory; you can still get raced or just disrupted to death. Numbers-wise, I'm still leaning towards threat density because Leyline is just pretty improbable, but I'm not a fan of most of my threats. I've yet to cast Herald before T4 against DS decks in testing, and Mentor, although frequently cast T3, isn't as decisive as I would like.
I know it was kicked around earlier and mostly dismissed, but efficient construction might swing a game back against a DS deck. If it comes down T3 or T4 when they are sub 10 life 3-5 1/1 fliers might be too much of a clock for their non-evasive dudes. If a retract is around it should steal a game like Grapeshot sometimes does.
Efficient construction is interesting as our version of the empty the warrens plan for storm. The mana cost is a little rough. I do like having an engine that doesn't die to removal.
If we're going that route then it could be worthwhile to throw a Golem-Skin Gauntlets or two into the mix. Being able to put it on a flier could be pretty sweet.
Efficient construction is interesting as our version of the empty the warrens plan for storm. The mana cost is a little rough. I do like having an engine that doesn't die to removal.
If we're going that route then it could be worthwhile to throw a Golem-Skin Gauntlets or two into the mix. Being able to put it on a flier could be pretty sweet.
Also, it looks like a lot of folks are running devour flesh as an answer to DS. They usually either have a Goyf or Delver in play, so it can often be a 2 for 1 that kills both, or at least nails the goyf and weakens the DS. This could give us a bit of time to resolve those higher cost answers like Efficient Construction, Paradoxical Outcome, Gift's Ungiven, ect...
With 4 serum visions and 2 noxious revival you can easily drop to 15 lands (pitch a plains or seachrome) and add the Hurkyl's Recall. It will reduce fizzle rates significantly, and can clear pesky chalices or affinity swarms. Hard fizzles due to land will still only occur around 1% more often, with fizzles due to no bounce decreasing by well over 10%.
It seems to me that in most cases redundancy is better than discard. The ideas I've seen floating around for redundancy are:
Turn one Thoughtseize, remove the one kill spell, turn two engine card seems like the ideal. But turn two engine, engine dies, turn three rebuy engine seems almost as good. And the redundancies seem like much better topdecks. OTOH if the discard is actually working in practice then that's more valuable than theorycrafting.
I would never use discard to beat discard. This is the exact opposite of how BGx mirrors play out; to beat BGx, you actually remove discard and add threats. I only like discard against some of the fast proactive decks, especially on the draw where we might be a turn too slow. Discard is not the answer to midrange though.
It's not a great plan, but it's a plan. I'm open to persuasion that discard is a better plan but personally I would favor more redundancy before going the discard route.
Functionally the thoughtseize plan isn't that much different than the pact plan. The drawback is that you lose if your opponent has two answers in hand. The advantage is that you get to play out a longer game if you fizzle after the t1 seize -> t2 engine. The problem imo is that the advantage is something of an illusion, since a long game against a grixis death's shadow deck is a near guaranteed loss anyway.
I've been noodling around with the idea of going all in game one on the turn 2-3 kill with a sideboard that lets you pull back to a more robust turn 3-4 kill plan.
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Plains
4 Arid Mesa
1 Marsh Flats
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Mox Opal
4 Accorder's Shield
4 Bone Saw
4 Paradise Mantle
4 Cathar's Shield
4 Spidersilk Net
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Noxious Revival
2 Serum Visions
1 Grapeshot
4 Sram, Senior Edificer
4 Puresteel Paladin
3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Fragmentize
2 Path to Exile
2 Monastery Mentor
1 Echoing Truth
3 Pact of Negation
1 Noxious Revival
1 Postmortem Lunge
Sideboarding plan:
-1 to 2 Simian Spirit Guide
-0 to 1 Hurkyl's Recall
-0 to 1 Noxious Revival
-1 to 2 Serum Visions
Often the best way to steal a game in a bad matchup is to kill them when they don't know they're in danger. For example, you go Arid Mesa, go, they go fetch into watery grave, serum visions, or fetch into blood crypt, traverse the uvenwald. Then you fetch, untap, and win. I hate to give up too much explosiveness in pursuit of stability game one.
7 cards: keep if you have an engine and a land
6 or fewer: keep if you have an engine and a land or an SV you can cast turn 1
I just haven't seen any 6 or fewer card hands with an SV and a Rugged Prairie as the only land. I'm sure it happens occasionally, but IMO it's balanced out by the chance of a T1 Paladin and even the utility of T2 Prairie + SSG -> Paladin leaving your second land untapped. I haven't actually done the math on how frequent each situation is though.
How have the Thoughtsiezes worked out for you? It seems to me like they'd be clunky and take away from what we're trying to do. But I can see how the information might be helpful in knowing when or not it's okay to "go for it". I'm also loving the Geist of Saint Traft in your sideboard - Geist has always been one of my favorite cards, and I want to know how he works for you. Is it something to bring in in the removal heavy matches? How often does it just get chump blocked and killed? What about the Death's Shadow in the side? When do you bring him in, and how much do you feel it helps you? It seems to me like it might be difficult to utilize, given how effective removal is against us in the first place...
MODERN
GBCombo ElvesBG
UExtra TurnsU
UWCheeriosWU
EDH
RGURiku of Two ReflectionsRGU (Combo / Creature Toolbox)
BWKarlov of the Ghost CouncilWB (Control / Aggro)
GWSelvala, Explorer ReturnedWG (Goodstuff)
RUWNarset, Enlightened MasterWUR (Superfriends)
Ick...probably not going to be pleasant, although it is a good testing environment to try to improve our worst match-ups
I got my hopes up today for divert after seeing aven mindcensor in both the invocations and the new set, but they dashed my hopes.
This deck is very poorly-positioned right now. DS decks are serious beatings, and I'm always bouncing between the all-in Leyline plan and the threat density plan. The Leyline plan is a bit better when it works, but it doesn't work as often; indeed, it only works in fewer than 15% of games (odds of drawing at least one engine, one Leyline, two mana sources, and having an otherwise keepable equipment/Retract hand). It's actually less than that because removal can still break up the plan. The threat density plan is a little more resilient and consistent, but it isn't a certain path to victory; you can still get raced or just disrupted to death. Numbers-wise, I'm still leaning towards threat density because Leyline is just pretty improbable, but I'm not a fan of most of my threats. I've yet to cast Herald before T4 against DS decks in testing, and Mentor, although frequently cast T3, isn't as decisive as I would like.
I know it was kicked around earlier and mostly dismissed, but efficient construction might swing a game back against a DS deck. If it comes down T3 or T4 when they are sub 10 life 3-5 1/1 fliers might be too much of a clock for their non-evasive dudes. If a retract is around it should steal a game like Grapeshot sometimes does.
If we're going that route then it could be worthwhile to throw a Golem-Skin Gauntlets or two into the mix. Being able to put it on a flier could be pretty sweet.
Also, it looks like a lot of folks are running devour flesh as an answer to DS. They usually either have a Goyf or Delver in play, so it can often be a 2 for 1 that kills both, or at least nails the goyf and weakens the DS. This could give us a bit of time to resolve those higher cost answers like Efficient Construction, Paradoxical Outcome, Gift's Ungiven, ect...
Plan vs DS is still 4 Grapeshot.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
Well done, keep up the good work! When you have time, how has the 4 GS worked in testing for you?