You have 2 main win conditions: milling and thopters. So you can ignore leyline of sanctity/emrakul/rest in peace and still win consistently. You don't really need a sideboard for those hate cards but you normally need to sideboard in reaction to opposing sideboards so understanding common lists is important.
Be careful not to overboard and be respectful of your curve and artifact density.
Bring in surgical versus decks with snapcaster and artifact destruction, tron (hope to mill a land early), combo decks.
Decay and Maelstrom pulse are good versus stony silence decks. Decay is better versus affinity/jeskai where you have very specific targets to kill quickly and uncountable matters. I don't really want removal for random creature decks post board, but sometimes burn has eidelon/harsh mentor and coco has kataki that you need to answer, decay is fine here.
Welding jar - anyone who has artifact destruction in the board. Affinity/jund/Death shadow.
Leyline for burn/valakut/lantern
Aether grid for coco/affinity/Eldrazi and taxes.
Tezz for slower grindy decks. Not jeskai or coco.
Search kinda comes in whenever versus grindy decks.
Needle is for tron/mirror/pride mage decks
For sideboarding you trim the thopter combo versus tron/storm or decks where you don't need a grindy clock and tezz is just better.
Trim the lantern combo against decks that control the top of their deck very well (GDS or living end). Focus on your own draws in these matchups.
Trimming bauble/mox in slower matchups.
Cut bullets obviously when they're bad. Don't leave in needle because they have things to name, just leave in needle if you need to stop the things they have (pridemage/Jace/karn/balista)
One key in general is always blind mill yourself to sometimes hit a sword unless you can mess up their scry.
Thanks Molz7, that's what I thought. Without chalice we'll have a very hard time winning against Shadow decks with this hybrid version, especially against grixis.
From my somewhat extensive experience on Lantern I think it is not *so so* bad, but you certainly gotta bend the gameplan a lot, some parts of it being unintuitive. The additional copies of Tezz and Thopter-Sword certainly give us a boost here, as either one of these resolved can get away with the game. « Just gotta play around the targeted discard, countermagic, and artifact destruction -- with recursion » Amirite? So flawless sideboarding, opener, and sequencing are mandatory. But the tools are there. Not sure what my point is lol but, in my experience (once you know what you're doing) the match-up sits between 45-55 for them to 50-50.
what are people's thoughts on azor's gateway? similar to search for azcanta but its an artifact, we can run cards from 0-5 CMC so flipping it isnt impossible, could enable us to whir for a blightsteel colossus, or just make a ton of thopters, more than doubling our life each turn. even if it doesn't flip, card selection is useful and i find i usually have unspent mana. im thinking of some sort of build using cranes, a ballista, hangarbacks etc and maybe 2 whirs. a handful of discard and fatal push for our 1 CMC slot, a couple big tezz and some lili, go back to a more old school build.
I think it's pretty bad actually! Sure it loots but then what? You wanna splash for Wurmcoil? Blightsteel Colossus? What are we even going to do with a bajilion extra mana? 5 mana and Thopter-Sword is already aplenty to win most games, not sure what match-up having access to 20 mana would flip on it's head. Pretty win-more IMO. While, unlike Search (where the land mode is actual card advantage), it gets shut down by Stony or destroyed by the various Shatter iterations ; so it's in no way a form of «alternate gameplan». Radouf' Rating : Bleh.
Molz7- Thank you. I have also been curious of playing a single Krark-clan ironworks in the MB instead of spyglass. This would allow an infinite thopter combo as early as T4 if you can get the thopter/sword in play. Have you tried this?
Molz7- Thank you. I have also been curious of playing a single Krark-clan ironworks in the MB instead of spyglass. This would allow an infinite thopter combo as early as T4 if you can get the thopter/sword in play. Have you tried this?
I definitely enjoyed a way to infinite the game like time sieve/KCI in the thopter only deck, but now lantern is your way to lockup the game against decks you'd want to go infinite. Another 4 drop would hurt the ability to get below bridge too much I think as well.
I likely don't want KCI or time sieve unless I run 4 thopter 3 sword.
I was recently thinking that in a deck dedicated to getting XUUU so it could Whir for various hosers, casting 1UUU (Cryptic Command) might come very naturally as well. Some split of say 4 Whir/3 Cryptic seems totally reasonable with most of the mana/artifact bases I've tried. Cryptic diversifies the deck and gives an out to Stony Silence and other various hate enchantments and artifacts.
Adding in 2-3 Talisman's would also go a long way to making both those cards consistently usable on T3 (or even T2 given Talisman on 1) while allowing Daksteel Citadel to sneak in a couple land slots and help with T1 Opal.
Collective Brutality seems to be on peoples radars, what was the downside of Thirst for Knowledge? Getting to pitch Sword/Opal/Darksteel Citadel/etc. for +3 cards at instant speed seems sweet. Of course Bridge is a bit of a nombo but you can happily pitch two expensive cards as well.
While Cryptic and TfK are really powerful magic cards, starting your deck construction with 3-4 Ensnarinng Bridges, 4x Whir, 2-4x TfK and 2-4x Tezz AoB already make for a suuuuper top-heavy list. Don’t you think? How do you make up for it?
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MODERN Blue Lantern, UBx Tezzerator. OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
i think its been discussed before but how do people like tidehollow strix? yes it doesn't cantrip like baleful strix but other than that its effectively the same card, and we're most of us playing bauble at the moment anyway and some fatal push too, but playing a couple copies of strix means we can whir for removal, can hit removal of tezz +1 and block, kill a dude then sac to foundry to gain a life and a thopter. so yes it might not be the best card but neither are a lot of what we play, but the synergy those cards have in this deck makes it work, similar to affinity.
i know this opens us up to creature removal no longer being dead cards for our opponent and without the cantrip we wouldnt see any value from tidehollow. buuuut we can regenerate with welding jar to prevent said removal or even to keep it in play to kill 2 creatures, and in some cases where we can only whir for 2 instead of 3 we can use strix to remove a problematic dude which might buy us enough time to slam bridge or the combo?
I think you rationalized the reason we don't play it immediately. It needs to draw a card. Would you ever chord of calling for ambush viper? Probably not. Baleful Strix has very limited opportunity cost associated with it and is ALWAYS a 2-1 in creature matchups when uncountered. Tidehollow will always trade for your opponents worst card. It is almost like a punisher card in that respect. They can trade their worst creature or their worst answer for it. Most likely a card that otherwise wasn't doing anything for them in the matchup.
In addition to that it is completely dead in the non=creature matchups like Storm or Tron where Baleful Strix can at least cycle himself.
I would just play any kill spell before I played Tidehollow Strix. We want to avoid playing weak cards just for the sake of the artifact type line. That is going to be the fastest way to have a deck full of weak cards. In reality it reads "Sorcery - Target player sacrifices a creature." Versus "Sorcery - Target player sacrifices a creature. Draw a card." Clearly you wouldn't play the first but you would play the second.
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U/B Tezzeret Control
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
I was thinking something like 1 Bridge, 2 TfK, 3 Cryptic, 4 Whir, and maybe trimming down to 1 or 0 Tezzeret. Tezzeret doesn't really fit the instant speed gameplan that Whir/Cryptic enables. Cryptic can act as a Bridge for a turn when tapping down opponent creatures while replacing itself with a card.
One problem that I was running into with the version I tried is not enough 1 cmc artifacts to turn on Mox Opal. In many cases I have to cast an artifact to then Inquisition with the Opal and between 4 Mishra's, 2 Welding Jar, 2 Darksteel Citadel, 1 Grafdigger's, 1 Pithing Needle, there doesn't feel like enough support for Opal. Has anyone found a sweetspot for 0 and 1 drops to keep opal online? I guess one of the advantages of the Lantern version is 12+ 1 drops.
I get your instant-speed plan, keep us posted on how is goes. One thing I can tell you however is that going down to one Bridge might be counterproductive when you consider the virtual card advantage it provides -- when you go up in TfK numbers specifically aiming at that : provide card advantage. In Modern, it is the most common thing to see one active Bridge holding back 5+ creatures on board. Up to 10, really. Voiding your opponent's card is a form of card advantage in itself. I don't believe I've ever seen any card giving me as much virtual CA than Bridge has. It really appears ridiculous and broken, sometimes. And TfK are only as good as the best card they're digging you toward. Bridge and Tezz and some of your best standalone cards. That's why I'm unsure of the plan you're proposing. Just that, if you wanna go so far into instant-speed realm, why not cut Bridge and Tezz altogether and go for a Gifts Ungiven - Thopters build?
Then on the Opal enablers, our turbo builds (not @boomforest super-turbo, the ones before that, from around the PPTQ season) from a couple months back showcase what we thing was the best balance between utility and explosiveness. We'd been tweaking these a lot. Lists weren't designed to have it online T1 (although it did happen some times) but mostly T2 / T3. The advantage you get off it T2 or 3 is effectively very, very close.
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MODERN Blue Lantern, UBx Tezzerator. OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
I personally only run 2/2 bauble opal split and have 2 engineered explosives in the main. Couldn't tell u how many times EE has saved my ass. And if u run ruins it's even better. Plus in a pinch u can just drop it on 0 and blow it and bring it back if need be.
I haven't had a chance to play this as much as I would like before bringing it to a mid-sized tournament this weekend but I think I'll go with this deck since my other options lose too badly to Jeskai. I haven't kept too much up to date with the meta in the last few months, am I missing anything obvious? Any tune-ups you'd suggest?
My main worries:
Too many colorless lands (2) to play prism effectively?
Not enough to deal with affinity?
Adding the red means I go down to two Islands which makes me worse against moon. Is splashing red for crumbles worth it?
@Felduir:
1.) You should be fine. Pretend they are not mana sources. If you do that you squeak by with 90% confidence to cast Pentad Prism which is pretty good.
2.) My go to anti-affinity tech is flaying tendrills and it has been fantastic for me. If you stick with red play pyroclasm.
3.) I would recommend against it because I don't think it sways that match-up far enough in your favor while also hurting you everywhere else.
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U/B Tezzeret Control
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
Thanks for the reply @racing089! Flaying tendrils/pyroclasm is a great suggestion and it should help against a few other decks as well (elves, devoted druid decks, etc).
So jeski/uw control and Tron variants apparently control my fnm now. Went 3/1 Friday. Only win was to slivers lol. Tron was Tron but faced 2 control decks even with 8 mb discard and 2 lotv they still managed to counter and bounce counter literally every payoff spell I played. Last match I couldn't and it was 11....11 things I had countered. So anyway I was thinking about a transformative sideboard with ensouls and tezzerets touch. It's 8 cards but with 3 tezz that's a ton of pressure to answer as well as the combo possibilities. There's a vid of a tezz aggro deck that gave me a few ideas and I made my own tezz aggro build and it seemed pretty good especially with prisms. I'm gunna test it out and get BK, but it seems like it'd be good against tron and control
With the rise of Mardu Pyromancer and the sinking realization that Tron isn't going away anytime soon I started crafting a list that I felt had more game against big mana and k-command decks.
I have been playing a TON of modern lately but I haven't been on Tezzeret. Throughout those games I played against a handful of UWx Field of Ruins decks and found the Field of Ruins strategy to be reasonably powerful. However you can't build an entire deck on the premise of strip mining your opponent out of the game because there are many decks where that just isn't going to work or they kill you before you get the engine online. As a Tezzeret deck we gain access to mana fixing and mana ramp in the form of mana rocks to help field of ruins come online quicker. In addition to that we get to run 5 effective copies of Crucible of Worlds main deck without having redundant draws or dead draws in certain matchups.
I felt like the planeswalker heavy Tezzeret lists were doing something powerful yet inconsistent. The Whir lists were doing something very consistent but slow and under powered against artifact removal. This was an attempt to meet in the middle somewhere. I am very happy with my preliminary results and suggest some try out!
Azor's Gateway - Card has been great in testing. I find myself using Whir to fetch this card when I have control of the board but not much else going on. Obviously you tutor out the combo when you already have one piece or Crucible of Worlds when you have the time to deny your opponent lands but Azor's Gateway helps you rip through the deck incredibly fast for the cards you want to see most mid to late game. It will almost never flip, and I think it may actually be worse if it flipped. Definitely try it.
I would like to try 2 Search for Azcanta but the slots are really tight. I plan to cut dismember and collective brutality next time I play and see how it goes.
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U/B Tezzeret Control
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
@racing098 - Azor's gateway seems weird if you're not trying to abuse the backside, but even then it take a million years to get it online without an untap key. I also feel like the 'loot' ability on gateway is mostly there to fix your top-deck draws, so any artifact that can scry is going to provide the same kind of 'tear through the deck' function like you describe. Loot is much more powerful than scry, obviously. But is it better than scry 2, Crystal ball? Or Darksteel pendant which plays nice with Tezzeret? Or treasure map, which ramps much sooner, and eventually draws 3? I'm not saying any of those are playable, I'm just trying to get a feel for how you evaluate Gateway. I mean I guess there just aren't really any good artifacts that draw cards, so maybe it's great? I also kind of feel like Key to the city fills a similar role, while also having more synergy with Whir and bridge, but I guess needing a creature in play is pretty significant.
@Racing089: i like the look of this. I really feel the Gateway and something else should be 2x Search for Azcantas. Flip this thing and now tell me about « tearing through your deck » ;D
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MODERN Blue Lantern, UBx Tezzerator. OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
I'm going to be trying this build at FNM tomorrow night. I'm mostly trying to play a broader set of win conditions by including creatures and cranial plating. With the idea being that glint-nest cranes work similarly to Serum Visions, but can also block and attack through my own bridge when required, maybe even carrying cranial plating for a faster clock. Spellskite replaces a welding jar, and also has the ability to carry a cranial plating through an opposing bridge in a dire situation.
Cranial plating itself can function similarly to time sieve if nothing else. They both win when thopter/sword is down and you have enough mana.
This build is probably weaker to blood moon, because if it comes down early and I haven't fetched any basics, then I have no way of destroying it without the green splash.
The sideboard is a few standard silver bullets, and more fun to play threats for grindy matchups. It's not the most tuned thing on the planet, but I think I'll have options against most matchups.
Critiques and questions are welcome if anyone cares to give them.
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I didn't know when the lantern half would be good or bad, so a lot of my initial thoughts came from this article and part 1: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=14367&writer=Brian Braun-Duin&articledate=12-29-2017
You have 2 main win conditions: milling and thopters. So you can ignore leyline of sanctity/emrakul/rest in peace and still win consistently. You don't really need a sideboard for those hate cards but you normally need to sideboard in reaction to opposing sideboards so understanding common lists is important.
Be careful not to overboard and be respectful of your curve and artifact density.
Bring in surgical versus decks with snapcaster and artifact destruction, tron (hope to mill a land early), combo decks.
Decay and Maelstrom pulse are good versus stony silence decks. Decay is better versus affinity/jeskai where you have very specific targets to kill quickly and uncountable matters. I don't really want removal for random creature decks post board, but sometimes burn has eidelon/harsh mentor and coco has kataki that you need to answer, decay is fine here.
Welding jar - anyone who has artifact destruction in the board. Affinity/jund/Death shadow.
Leyline for burn/valakut/lantern
Aether grid for coco/affinity/Eldrazi and taxes.
Tezz for slower grindy decks. Not jeskai or coco.
Search kinda comes in whenever versus grindy decks.
Needle is for tron/mirror/pride mage decks
For sideboarding you trim the thopter combo versus tron/storm or decks where you don't need a grindy clock and tezz is just better.
Trim the lantern combo against decks that control the top of their deck very well (GDS or living end). Focus on your own draws in these matchups.
Trimming bauble/mox in slower matchups.
Cut bullets obviously when they're bad. Don't leave in needle because they have things to name, just leave in needle if you need to stop the things they have (pridemage/Jace/karn/balista)
One key in general is always blind mill yourself to sometimes hit a sword unless you can mess up their scry.
Hope that helps some!
I think it's pretty bad actually! Sure it loots but then what? You wanna splash for Wurmcoil? Blightsteel Colossus? What are we even going to do with a bajilion extra mana? 5 mana and Thopter-Sword is already aplenty to win most games, not sure what match-up having access to 20 mana would flip on it's head. Pretty win-more IMO. While, unlike Search (where the land mode is actual card advantage), it gets shut down by Stony or destroyed by the various Shatter iterations ; so it's in no way a form of «alternate gameplan». Radouf' Rating : Bleh.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
I definitely enjoyed a way to infinite the game like time sieve/KCI in the thopter only deck, but now lantern is your way to lockup the game against decks you'd want to go infinite. Another 4 drop would hurt the ability to get below bridge too much I think as well.
I likely don't want KCI or time sieve unless I run 4 thopter 3 sword.
I was recently thinking that in a deck dedicated to getting XUUU so it could Whir for various hosers, casting 1UUU (Cryptic Command) might come very naturally as well. Some split of say 4 Whir/3 Cryptic seems totally reasonable with most of the mana/artifact bases I've tried. Cryptic diversifies the deck and gives an out to Stony Silence and other various hate enchantments and artifacts.
Adding in 2-3 Talisman's would also go a long way to making both those cards consistently usable on T3 (or even T2 given Talisman on 1) while allowing Daksteel Citadel to sneak in a couple land slots and help with T1 Opal.
Collective Brutality seems to be on peoples radars, what was the downside of Thirst for Knowledge? Getting to pitch Sword/Opal/Darksteel Citadel/etc. for +3 cards at instant speed seems sweet. Of course Bridge is a bit of a nombo but you can happily pitch two expensive cards as well.
While Cryptic and TfK are really powerful magic cards, starting your deck construction with 3-4 Ensnarinng Bridges, 4x Whir, 2-4x TfK and 2-4x Tezz AoB already make for a suuuuper top-heavy list. Don’t you think? How do you make up for it?
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
I think you rationalized the reason we don't play it immediately. It needs to draw a card. Would you ever chord of calling for ambush viper? Probably not. Baleful Strix has very limited opportunity cost associated with it and is ALWAYS a 2-1 in creature matchups when uncountered. Tidehollow will always trade for your opponents worst card. It is almost like a punisher card in that respect. They can trade their worst creature or their worst answer for it. Most likely a card that otherwise wasn't doing anything for them in the matchup.
In addition to that it is completely dead in the non=creature matchups like Storm or Tron where Baleful Strix can at least cycle himself.
I would just play any kill spell before I played Tidehollow Strix. We want to avoid playing weak cards just for the sake of the artifact type line. That is going to be the fastest way to have a deck full of weak cards. In reality it reads "Sorcery - Target player sacrifices a creature." Versus "Sorcery - Target player sacrifices a creature. Draw a card." Clearly you wouldn't play the first but you would play the second.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
One problem that I was running into with the version I tried is not enough 1 cmc artifacts to turn on Mox Opal. In many cases I have to cast an artifact to then Inquisition with the Opal and between 4 Mishra's, 2 Welding Jar, 2 Darksteel Citadel, 1 Grafdigger's, 1 Pithing Needle, there doesn't feel like enough support for Opal. Has anyone found a sweetspot for 0 and 1 drops to keep opal online? I guess one of the advantages of the Lantern version is 12+ 1 drops.
I get your instant-speed plan, keep us posted on how is goes. One thing I can tell you however is that going down to one Bridge might be counterproductive when you consider the virtual card advantage it provides -- when you go up in TfK numbers specifically aiming at that : provide card advantage. In Modern, it is the most common thing to see one active Bridge holding back 5+ creatures on board. Up to 10, really. Voiding your opponent's card is a form of card advantage in itself. I don't believe I've ever seen any card giving me as much virtual CA than Bridge has. It really appears ridiculous and broken, sometimes. And TfK are only as good as the best card they're digging you toward. Bridge and Tezz and some of your best standalone cards. That's why I'm unsure of the plan you're proposing. Just that, if you wanna go so far into instant-speed realm, why not cut Bridge and Tezz altogether and go for a Gifts Ungiven - Thopters build?
Then on the Opal enablers, our turbo builds (not @boomforest super-turbo, the ones before that, from around the PPTQ season) from a couple months back showcase what we thing was the best balance between utility and explosiveness. We'd been tweaking these a lot. Lists weren't designed to have it online T1 (although it did happen some times) but mostly T2 / T3. The advantage you get off it T2 or 3 is effectively very, very close.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
I haven't had a chance to play this as much as I would like before bringing it to a mid-sized tournament this weekend but I think I'll go with this deck since my other options lose too badly to Jeskai. I haven't kept too much up to date with the meta in the last few months, am I missing anything obvious? Any tune-ups you'd suggest?
My main worries:
3 Mox Opal
4 Mishra's Bauble
1 Welding Jar
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
4 Thopter Foundry
3 Sword of the Meek
3 Pentad Prism
1 Talisman of Dominance
2 Ensnaring Bridge
Other (15):
3 Fatal Push
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Collective Brutality
4 Whir of Invention
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
4 Darkslick Shores
2 Watery Grave
1 Breeding Pool
1 Steam Vents
2 Spire of Industry
1 Drowned Catacomb
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Academy Ruins
1 Inventors' Fair
2 Thoughtseize
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Damnation
3 Crumble to Dust
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Collective Brutality
1 Witchbane Orb
1 Welding Jar
1 Pithing Needle
1.) You should be fine. Pretend they are not mana sources. If you do that you squeak by with 90% confidence to cast Pentad Prism which is pretty good.
2.) My go to anti-affinity tech is flaying tendrills and it has been fantastic for me. If you stick with red play pyroclasm.
3.) I would recommend against it because I don't think it sways that match-up far enough in your favor while also hurting you everywhere else.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
1 Academy Ruins
3 Darkslick Shores
4 Field of Ruin
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Inventors' Fair
3 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
3 Watery Grave
1 Collective Brutality
3 Damnation
1 Dismember
4 Fatal Push
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Whir of Invention
Artifacts:
1 Azor's Gateway
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Mox Opal
1 Pithing Needle
2 Sword of the Meek
3 Talisman of Dominance
2 Thopter Foundry
1 Witchbane Orb
With the rise of Mardu Pyromancer and the sinking realization that Tron isn't going away anytime soon I started crafting a list that I felt had more game against big mana and k-command decks.
I have been playing a TON of modern lately but I haven't been on Tezzeret. Throughout those games I played against a handful of UWx Field of Ruins decks and found the Field of Ruins strategy to be reasonably powerful. However you can't build an entire deck on the premise of strip mining your opponent out of the game because there are many decks where that just isn't going to work or they kill you before you get the engine online. As a Tezzeret deck we gain access to mana fixing and mana ramp in the form of mana rocks to help field of ruins come online quicker. In addition to that we get to run 5 effective copies of Crucible of Worlds main deck without having redundant draws or dead draws in certain matchups.
I felt like the planeswalker heavy Tezzeret lists were doing something powerful yet inconsistent. The Whir lists were doing something very consistent but slow and under powered against artifact removal. This was an attempt to meet in the middle somewhere. I am very happy with my preliminary results and suggest some try out!
Azor's Gateway - Card has been great in testing. I find myself using Whir to fetch this card when I have control of the board but not much else going on. Obviously you tutor out the combo when you already have one piece or Crucible of Worlds when you have the time to deny your opponent lands but Azor's Gateway helps you rip through the deck incredibly fast for the cards you want to see most mid to late game. It will almost never flip, and I think it may actually be worse if it flipped. Definitely try it.
I would like to try 2 Search for Azcanta but the slots are really tight. I plan to cut dismember and collective brutality next time I play and see how it goes.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
4 Darkslick Shores
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Academy Ruins
2 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Swamp
3 Island
3 Watery Grave
Spells
2 Collective Brutality
2 Fatal Push
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Whir of Invention
Planeswalkers
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Glint-Nest Crane
1 Spellskite
Artifacts
1 Cranial Plating
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Mox Opal
3 Pentad Prism
1 Pithing Needle
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Sword of the Meek
2 Thopter Foundry
1 Welding Jar
1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Fatal Push
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Herald of Anguish
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
1 Pithing Needle
1 Quicksilver Fountain
3 Thoughtseize
1 Witchbane Orb
1 Wurmcoil Engine
I'm going to be trying this build at FNM tomorrow night. I'm mostly trying to play a broader set of win conditions by including creatures and cranial plating. With the idea being that glint-nest cranes work similarly to Serum Visions, but can also block and attack through my own bridge when required, maybe even carrying cranial plating for a faster clock. Spellskite replaces a welding jar, and also has the ability to carry a cranial plating through an opposing bridge in a dire situation.
Cranial plating itself can function similarly to time sieve if nothing else. They both win when thopter/sword is down and you have enough mana.
This build is probably weaker to blood moon, because if it comes down early and I haven't fetched any basics, then I have no way of destroying it without the green splash.
The sideboard is a few standard silver bullets, and more fun to play threats for grindy matchups. It's not the most tuned thing on the planet, but I think I'll have options against most matchups.
Critiques and questions are welcome if anyone cares to give them.