@Sled_Dog Because in order to See, you have to look deep, it is not enough to take a glimpse.
So explain. Explain what shadow of doubt does against a deck that doesn't do much searching. Delver only needs 3 or 4 land and they might only run 4-6 fetches. It also means holding up mana to wait for them to fetch instead of making them discard. Let's skip the part where they might be holding spell pierce/snare. There's nothing to see here, no matter how deeply you stare.
So that means your delver trump card is tombstalker. Formidable but not unbeatable, if you get it out. Game one will be a surprise. Game two they remand it. How many times can you delve 6 to cast it? It almost insists on Raven's Crime being active.
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Modern UB Tezzerator UBW Gifts B 8Rack
Legacy RB Goblins
Discussing anything is absolutely pointless. This list does perfectly what it was designed to do, ergo the card choices are not subject to change, therefore whether you agree/disagree with any of them is irrelevant.
Umm... What? Absolutely not. Discussing is always good, everyone should keep doing that and never have this level of unreceptiveness for their decklist. Rather than preach from a pedestal and come off as extremely conceited and pretentious, why not give some insight/substance to support yourself?
You've said more than once that Murderous Cut was the key to beating delver, but I guess you've double-backed on that. You've put the bridges to the sideboard and opted with more board control and pressure, which I'm fine with, though I don't see Tombstalker making much of a presence against a counterspell heavy deck that will force you to eventually try to hardcast it for the full 8cmc when it remands/pierces/vapor snags all your attempts with delve. And then you double-back on the proactive route and put in a soft counterspell for searching with shadow of doubt? So, the plan is to... sit on mana whenever they have a fetchland in play and wait for them to crack it, and attempt to "counter" it? Outside of birthing pod, fetchlands are your only target for all those decks you "now crush". So forgive the skepticism that many share right now with your choices, but if you're not going to give any explanation or reasons for them and take this extreme of a bullheaded stance, then I don't think you have any right to complain or rebut when anyone criticizes your choices.
Dark, I don't complain when somebody criticisez my choices, I don't care. I made a list, I played the hell out of it for two days straight, I got excellent results and I decided to give it to everybody.
A reasonable man would sleeve it and playtest it to see for himself, not look at it on paper and criticise potential scenarios. That's the entire problem of this forum, too much talking, hypothetical situations and even more hypothetical rebuttals.
If you want to know how something works, play it, don't talk about how you don't see it working. The reason I consistently beat Delver is because it's been my primary deck for the past two weeks. I know what they don't want taken, what they are afraid of and when they have a counter or are bluffing it.
If you are unwilling to take a shot at actually playing the list, there is nothing I can say or explain that will change anything. You have already made up your mind. Most of you have, actually, and the majority of people are going to dislike it simply based on the fact that it's comming from me, because of my direct and rude attitude.
Anything more extensive will have to wait until Sunday evening when I access a keyboard that doesn't fit in my hand (in regard to that, apologies for the typos).
Dark, I don't complain when somebody criticisez my choices, I don't care. I made a list, I played the hell out of it for two days straight, I got excellent results and I decided to give it to everybody.
A reasonable man would sleeve it and playtest it to see for himself, not look at it on paper and criticise potential scenarios. That's the entire problem of this forum, too much talking, hypothetical situations and even more hypothetical rebuttals.
For those who want other testing results and are unable/unwilling to test it yourself, I have some results coming too. They will be from the Burn matchup, specifically game 1. The tests were done by myself and an experienced Modern player who is a friend of mine, 15 on the play and 15 on the draw. I used Esperino's list for 8Rack and the winning list from the recent Japanese Champions of Modern tournament for Burn. I don't have our notes with me now, but I believe the game 1 win % is just around 50% for 8Rack. Will report back later with more.
I'm afraid in this case the burden of proof lies with you and only you. More than a handful of people have already asked you how your deck runs or works. If you're unable, or unwilling, to answer any of those question, then the only conclusion is that there isn't any. If it will have to wait until Sunday evening for you provide any info, then that's fine, I'll (we'll) wait.
Alright, so I tested out Esperino's list (posted a page back) against Burn. I was impressed by his claims about the deck and am trying to look for cool tech and ideas that can penetrate this current metagame, and his list had promise.
For the Burn list, I used the one that won the Japanese Champions of Modern tournament a week or so back. That was a large tournament with high-ranking Japanese players, and the Burn list packed a full slew of scary cards; TC, MS, Eidolon, etc. My Japanese isn't so good, so this actually might be the 2nd place deck and not the 1st, but they were similar enough that it doesn't really matter for testing purposes:
A friend of mine and I tested the game 1 matchup. We still have not done the post-board game, so that might change things for the better or worse regarding 8Rack's win rate. To run the tests, we played a dozen or so games without recording results, just to get a feel for how both decks played against each other and to figure out possible play trees that we might otherwise miss. This was particularly important with 8Rack, where choosing the wrong card to discard off an IoK or TS can be as disastrous as using the wrong Lilly mode. After those games, we played 40 games 1s, splitting 20 on the play for 8Rack and 20 on the draw. We swapped decks every few games to minimize any hidden pilot error and bias.
Overall 8Rack win rate: 43% (17/40)
8Rack win rate on the play: 40% (8/20)
8Rack win rate on the draw: 45% (9/20)
Average 8Rack win turn: Turn 6.5
Average 8Rack loss turn: Turn 5
In the 40 game 1s we played, 8Rack had a 43% win rate. The overwhelming majority of losses came when two or more of three things happened.
HOW TO LOSE VS. BURN: CHOOSE 2+
1) TC resolves once
2) Eidolon sticks for longer than a turn
3) At any point, there are 2+ creatures on the field
If two or more of those factors were true, 8Rack lost the game in about 98% of cases. In that one exception game, I won through a TC/Eidolon/double MS because Darkblast dredge enabled me to play a 2nd Tombstalker, which held the line as a blocker until Rack chipped the Burn life total into alpha-strike range. The 8Rack wins were much more varied, and involved a lot of cool play trees involving Tombstalker (MVP), Mutavault (MVP), gradual racking in super tight races, and knowing when to switch from control mode to just clocking with racks/discard.
There were a few surprise in the matchups that are implicit in my above list of losing factors. The most interesting is that TC resolutions ALONE don't stop this deck. A lot of people are probably scared to play 8Rack in a TC-dominated metagame, but I won a number of games through a single TC, and one game through 2. It wasn't TC alone that kills you. It's a TC that sets up either multiple creatures in play, or just a single Eidolon. As a related note, I was surprised at just how nasty Eidolon is here. If you don't kill it right away, it's almost impossible to win because it just deals so much damage between the passive and the attacking. This led to situations where I would not play turn 1 IoK on the play just to maximize my chance of catching Eidolon before it landed. Another related note is the importance of Burn mana in this matchup, which is one reason TC is not quite as powerful as some people believe. Between Wrench Mind, Lilly, and Raven's Crime, your opponent has to pitch a lot of random cards. Those are often lands because nothing is as bad in Burn as running out of fuel and being just 2 damage away from lethal. But that means after you TC, you often don't have enough mana to cast everything or explode into some 4/5 MS attack. 8Rack can often react with Lilly activations or Raven's Crime recursion to chip down that hand. It's only when TC drew into creatures, especially Eidolon, that things really went south.
Overall, here are my reflections on Esperino's list.
1. Add one more land
I lost about 4 games just because of my mana situation. This was either not drawing my third land by turn 3, not having access to BB on turn 2, or not drawing my second land when on the draw with an otherwise awesome hand. One more land would probably eliminate at least 1-2 of those losses, or at least reduce their likelihood.
2. Disfigure = MVP
Great removal in this format. I haven't tested it against Delver but I'm sure it's just as strong there as against Burn. The only time I wanted a different spell was when an opponent had MS with 1+ mana open. But in most cases, it was basically a 1 mana hard kill spell.
3. Tombstalker = MVP
TS is a beast for two reasons. First, Burn can't attack into this profitably without losing a creature and wasting a Burn spell. If dropped around a middling life total, or even a little lower, this will halt even two creatures from attacking while the Burn player waits to draw resources. Second, TS switches from defense to offense in a heartbeat, and it's amazing how quickly he and 1-2 Racks can close out a game. Bonus points if you Darkblast dredge into an earlier Tombstalker, which I did twice to great effect.
4. Shadow of Doubt is a big underperformer
Shadow might be in this deck for other matchups, so I acknowledge that up front before criticizing it. But against Burn, it's really not very good. We didn't even play around it when running these lists. We just wantonly cracked fetches into 2 open mana, just to see how it would work against unprepared opponents. The only time Shadow worked was when the Burn player cracked for a Vents to cast TC next turn, and then never found that blue mana for the rest of the game. But in the 10 or so other games where it got cast, it was almost always worse than another discard spell or another removal spell. That's especially true if you fall even a little behind; nothing is as demoralizing as drawing Shadow of Doubt against an active Eidolon when you desperately need removal.
Honestly, that win rate would have been a lot different if Shadow had been removal of almost any kind. Preferably hard removal that can help both against the weenies of Burn/Delver but also the fatter stuff in other Modern decks. I would not use Murderous Cut, because my suspicion is that Tombstalker is going to be better if you can only include 1 set of delve cards. Victim of Night or Slaughter Pact would have been way better.
I think we will test game 1 against UR Delver before doing games 2/3 with Burn, just to get a better sense of the deck's strenghts and weaknesses in this metagame.
I've seen you post a report like this at least twice. Just wanted to say that they're awesome and I'm jealous that you have a play partner that will do such things with you.
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@ktkenshinx - Thanks for posting how you piloted the deck. Can't wait for the Delver matchup. Got questions. Why not cast Iok on your turn 1 play? Is it intuition that tells you they don't keep their opening hand with it? Of course, you have a test partner and chances are he/she won't keep it since he/she knows you are on 8Rack. Are you just timing it the way how your opponent sets up his lands to produce enough mana to cast it? I just don't understand how this works.
Howbout Monastery Swiftspear? How were you able to deal with it if it goes into play on turn 1 and you don't have an answer yet?
First of all, thank you for talking from experience. With that said, I want to touch on a couple of things:
For starters, I'm not sure how fair it is to test only Game 1s. Shadow of Doubt is bad against that particular deck and the last thing you want to see when you have it is Eidolon. Repeatedly playing with it against the same deck doesn't make a lot of sense, at least to me.
Speaking of SoD, a lot of people don't understand why it's in the deck. Without hard removal, I had to put in a failsafe against Pod, preferably something that's not completely dead against other decks. In that regard, it's cycling is used as access to more removal/options.
About the extra land... while I too would feel more comfortable wih it, putting it in will mean compromising another critical part of the deck. Just don't keep risky hands of the type "if I had gotten another land, this hand would've been perfect".
And lastly... Burn was one of the least explored matches. Personally my record is better, but that may be due to differences in the list/pilot. I didn't take it specifically into account when designing the list, just found it fares better than previous mono-black ones. Also, that appears to be morebof a RDW stle than Burn, but whatever.
For starters, I'm not sure how fair it is to test only Game 1s.
It was incomplete testing, but it's still valuable as long as you keep that in mind. It sounds like there's a strong possibility the game two matchup is coming soon:
We still have not done the post-board game, so that might change things for the better or worse regarding 8Rack's win rate.
I get the impression that playing a bunch of game ones then a bunch of game twos is how pro teams test when they have specific matchups they're trying to investigate. I wonder if any would confirm or deny that...
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I've seen you post a report like this at least twice. Just wanted to say that they're awesome and I'm jealous that you have a play partner that will do such things with you.
@ktkenshinx - Thanks for posting how you piloted the deck. Can't wait for the Delver matchup. Got questions. Why not cast Iok on your turn 1 play? Is it intuition that tells you they don't keep their opening hand with it? Of course, you have a test partner and chances are he/she won't keep it since he/she knows you are on 8Rack. Are you just timing it the way how your opponent sets up his lands to produce enough mana to cast it? I just don't understand how this works.
I should be clearer around the IoK play. There are only a few circumstances where I don't open with IoK. It's not a categorical rule. I only saved IoK when I was on the play against Burn, when I had another turn 1 play I could make (a Rack, a Disfigure), and when I did NOT have a better turn 2 play. So if you have Wrench Mind, you are definitely going turn 1 IoK. If you have Thoughtseize or a second IoK, you definitely play the first on turn 1. The only reason one should be reserving that IoK is if your turn 2 play wouldn't be better than seeing one more card and possibly stopping the Eidolon.
As a similar line of play, I generally try and reserve TS until turn 3, to stop the turn 4 TC. TS is the only card that reliably hits TC before they cast it, and TC is not a card you want resolved.
Howbout Monastery Swiftspear? How were you able to deal with it if it goes into play on turn 1 and you don't have an answer yet?
A single MS was never a serious problem. Between the Lilly and the Disfigure/DB, you have enough removal to handle it. Disfigure is also very good at punishing overly aggressive MS players by killing while the Prowess trigger is on the stack. The key here is that, if you are doing your job right, Burn doesn't have a lot of cards to work with, which means they will tend to pitch lands to the discard effects. That in turn means they don't have a lot of mana to work with, so they can't save up hands with multiple burn effects that are castable. Remember that MS without a hand to cast spells isn't very strong. If you can't attack the MS, you should be able to attack their hand. And if you can't attack either, you kept a ***** opening 7 and probably lost anyway.
As a side note, in case it's not obvious, never, ever cast Disfigure into one open mana unless you can TS/IoK first. That's a great way to just lose a card and still take 5+ damage.
For starters, I'm not sure how fair it is to test only Game 1s. Shadow of Doubt is bad against that particular deck and the last thing you want to see when you have it is Eidolon. Repeatedly playing with it against the same deck doesn't make a lot of sense, at least to me.
I was testing your original list that you said stomped Burn. I agree that this particular card sucks against Burn, which is one reason I question its inclusion in a metagame that (on MTGO at least) is about 35% Delver/Burn.
As for testing only Game 1s, there are only so many games we can play. I'd rather get 40 game 1 tests in than 20 game 1s and 20 game 2s. Now we can do the game 2s later and see if that improves the matchup. Both sideboards have a number of cards that will affect the matchup, so I'm interested to see how it turns out.
Speaking of SoD, a lot of people don't understand why it's in the deck. Without hard removal, I had to put in a failsafe against Pod, preferably something that's not completely dead against other decks. In that regard, it's cycling is used as access to more removal/options.
Honestly, I would just use hard removal or some sweeper effect. The overwhelming majority of decks right now, with the exception of Scapeshift, are going to be just as hurt by the hard removal as they would be by SoD. Hard removal is going to be better against Twin, Pod, and Affinity, and obviously better against that 35% of the metagame which is Burn/Delver.
About the extra land... while I too would feel more comfortable wih it, putting it in will mean compromising another critical part of the deck. Just don't keep risky hands of the type "if I had gotten another land, this hand would've been perfect".
Except mulliganing against Burn is a terrible idea. It's bad both because a 6 card hand is likely to be even worse than a 7 card hand (suffering moreso from lack of lands, lack of color requirements, or lack of interaction), and it's bad because Burn will punish a bad mulligan. Against a deck like Scapeshift, Twin, or UWR Control, it's totally fine for 8Rack to mulligan to something better. They either can't clock it down fast enough, or our mulligan is still likely to have the tools you need to stop their game plan from working. But that is not true against Burn. I also don't see how adding 1 more land would compromise anything in the deck. -1 SoD +1 Swamp would be great, and if anything would directly benefit at least one part of the deck (Crime recursion).
And lastly... Burn was one of the least explored matches. Personally my record is better, but that may be due to differences in the list/pilot. I didn't take it specifically into account when designing the list, just found it fares better than previous mono-black ones. Also, that appears to be morebof a RDW stle than Burn, but whatever.
That's totally fair. We'll be testing Delver next, which I imagine will be much better than Burn because it is relatively slower.
@Esperino (or others): What would you sideboard against Burn? In the current list, I'm obviously ditching 4 SoD, but would you ditch anything else? Would you put value on Bridge over Extraction? Bridge isn't great against their lower power dudes and we often can't empty our hand fast enough. Extraction seems nice theoretically, but I'm not sure how it goes in real games. Any thoughts on this?
Pros generally just test post-sideboard only, iirc.
I'd much rather 61 cards with an extra land than the current approach. Sometimes it's correct to go to 61 cards. In either case, having all the spells you want in the deck isn't very good if you have to regularly mull to be able to cast them all.
@negativeview That is how professional teams test, I can tell you that beause I test with my national team. However, that is what they do when they want to know about a deck's viability in an entire metagame, not against one specific deck. In fact, when testing a specific matchup, games 2 and 3 are way more important.
@ktkenshinx Going down to 3 SoD is not a good idea. I've done it in the past and it's a card you want as early as possible. Just so you know, I'm aware that most decks would be hurt by more hard removal, but keep in mind SoD translates not only into more Disfigures, but more Racks/Discard as well, which is key here. A sweeper, as you said, would be very good, but the only good one is very vulnerable to soft permission beacause it costs 4, which is not something I would rely entirely on in the metagame right now. Obviously decks like Pod don't use that sort of thing and I've said multiple times Damnation is the best card against them, but there are other matches. When I make a list, I try to take everything into account. Draw means potentially more of everything, ergo I went with that. SoD is not the card that makes or breaks the list, it's rather something I felt I had to put in after the rest of the deck was done. Obviously everybody is free to make any changes they want, but that's what I'm going with (not to mention that wastelanding a UR Delver is something that wins the game pretty much every time). You can't have 60 cards, all of which to be great against everything.
@ktkenshinx (or others): Well 4 Extraction for 4 SoD is rather obvious. Against a creature-heavy Burn list like the one you were playing with (aka RDW) I would consider the Damnations, probably taking a Thoughtseize, a Rack and a Lili for the 3 sweepers. The rest of the cards don't make sense to me. Bridge is way too unreliable in this matchup and Cage is rather obviously useless.
@negativeview That is how professional teams test, I can tell you that beause I test with my national team. However, that is what they do when they want to know about a deck's viability in an entire metagame, not against one specific deck. In fact, when testing a specific matchup, games 2 and 3 are way more important.
We will be doing both the game 1s and the game 2/3s. It is important to do both even if games 2/3 are obviously more important, if for no other reason than that there are more of them.
@ktkenshinx Going down to 3 SoD is not a good idea. I've done it in the past and it's a card you want as early as possible. Just so you know, I'm aware that most decks would be hurt by more hard removal, but keep in mind SoD translates not only into more Disfigures, but more Racks/Discard as well, which is key here. A sweeper, as you said, would be very good, but the only good one is very vulnerable to soft permission beacause it costs 4, which is not something I would rely entirely on in the metagame right now. Obviously decks like Pod don't use that sort of thing and I've said multiple times Damnation is the best card against them, but there are other matches. When I make a list, I try to take everything into account. Draw means potentially more of everything, ergo I went with that. SoD is not the card that makes or breaks the list, it's rather something I felt I had to put in after the rest of the deck was done. Obviously everybody is free to make any changes they want, but that's what I'm going with (not to mention that wastelanding a UR Delver is something that wins the game pretty much every time). You can't have 60 cards, all of which to be great against everything.
I'm not going to weigh in on SoD until we finish testing Delver. Preliminarily, I will say that three things hamstring its effectiveness against Delver. First, if they see it off a Probe, they will never crack a fetch into it without countermagic mana. Second, even if they just cast into it, that deck only needs 2 lands to function passably and 3 to function optimally. Given how many cantrips and filters the deck plays, it isn't hard to find that next land if you blow up the first. Finally, and this is more a general point than just against Delver, having a chance to cycle into cards is never the same as just having those cards alone. There are certainly scenarios where SoD is going to be a cantripped Sinkhole at instant speed. But how many more situations are there where it just has Cycling BB and you would rather actually have a spell that affects the board or hand? That's a testing matter, but my suspicion is that this just is not the metagame for SoD.
Why not use Drown? Although if we did I really feel like we're just in bad-Monoblack Control territory. Hell, maybe we already are.
Drown would definitely be excellent against both Burn and Delver. It's not amazing vs. Twin, only passable vs. Pod, and is bad against all the higher toughness midrange decks. But given that Burn/Delver is about 35%ish of the MTGO metagame, maybe it's fine to hedge bets on that removal and let the discard carry you elsewhere.
We could main Drown, cut something from the sideboard, and put Bridge in the side, or cut something in the side and put Drown in there. Or if you're feeling particularly daring, just direct swap Bridge with Drown and make no other changes.
Maybe I should've said it before you started playing... the way to use SoD against Delver is to wasteland that much needed fetch on Turn 2 and strangle them out of the game from there. Obviously they will soon get the land count back up to 3/4, but this little choke is the advantage you need to reliably take control of the game. Any post-turn2 SoD is just a measely cantrip.
About the Drown discussion... if you completely drop Bridge for Drown, you have no way of stopping fatties. On another note, DiS is not that great in the sideboard. If you want a sweeper, for just one extra msna you get the best one in Magic. If you're dead on turn 3 than 4, that wouldn't have saved you. Drown is generally in a weird spot.
Maybe I should've said it before you started playing... the way to use SoD against Delver is to wasteland that much needed fetch on Turn 2 and strangle them out of the game from there. Obviously they will soon get the land count back up to 3/4, but this little choke is the advantage you need to reliably take control of the game. Any post-turn2 SoD is just a measely cantrip.
We've played SoD before; we know when it's best to use it. I'm just saying that you can't rely on that scenario. If they probe you on turn 1 or 2 and see it, you won't reliably land the Sinkhole. If they have Snare mana up, you won't reliably resolve it either. If they don't have a turn 2 fetch and, by the time they fetch, they have Remand/Leak mana you might not get it either. And maybe you do get the Sinkhole but couldn't answer the turn 1 Delver that flipped on turn 2, and now you desperately need removal.
When SoD works it's definitely pretty good. I'm only saying that it doesn't always work and you can't rely on it working every game. My concern, and this is something testing will or will not confirm, is that you would be better served by a spell that is guaranteed to impact the game rather than one that can be played around. Or worse, just ignored past a certain turn. In metagames earlier this year, SoD would have been much better. I am skeptical that this is still true.
About the Drown discussion... if you completely drop Bridge for Drown, you have no way of stopping fatties. On another note, DiS is not that great in the sideboard. If you want a sweeper, for just one extra msna you get the best one in Magic. If you're dead on turn 3 than 4, that wouldn't have saved you. Drown is generally in a weird spot.
I agree that it would be an error to ditch Bridge from the board. Not everything is Burn/Delver, even if many opponents will play it. My vote would be for kicking some number of SoD (or all of them) out of the maindeck and replacing them with some number of DiS/Pact/Darkblast/etc. I will say that, although the tests are not done, early results are not good for SoD against Delver either. The deck really hurts for removal, and I know that earlier versions played more of it.
That said, I will say that Tombstalker is a beast. It is miles better than Pack Rat in this metagame, and is extremely dangerous in both the Delver and Burn matchup.
Yes I feel strongly we can't afford to play anything but very reliable spells, and Doubt is just awful in this meta. It wasn't even good enough before in a better meta; it's mainly for Scapeshift, and we have Extraction for that. I can't see it helping with Pod much.
We need guaranteed ways to deal with creatures regardless of size while also having an edge on Burn and Delver, so I think probably Blight + Bridge main is optimal (alternately, Victim + Drown), at least when operating under traditional parameters. If we branch out some and use Tombstalker instead of Bridge, we have a variety of options, but we should probably use 1x Blast main. What is the optimal number of Tombstalker?
I can't speak for Delver yet, but I'm loving the Burn matchup now with 4x Blight and 2x Waste Not; I feel so much more in control. I'm done with Pack Rat entirely right now.
So explain. Explain what shadow of doubt does against a deck that doesn't do much searching. Delver only needs 3 or 4 land and they might only run 4-6 fetches. It also means holding up mana to wait for them to fetch instead of making them discard. Let's skip the part where they might be holding spell pierce/snare. There's nothing to see here, no matter how deeply you stare.
So that means your delver trump card is tombstalker. Formidable but not unbeatable, if you get it out. Game one will be a surprise. Game two they remand it. How many times can you delve 6 to cast it? It almost insists on Raven's Crime being active.
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
Umm... What? Absolutely not. Discussing is always good, everyone should keep doing that and never have this level of unreceptiveness for their decklist. Rather than preach from a pedestal and come off as extremely conceited and pretentious, why not give some insight/substance to support yourself?
You've said more than once that Murderous Cut was the key to beating delver, but I guess you've double-backed on that. You've put the bridges to the sideboard and opted with more board control and pressure, which I'm fine with, though I don't see Tombstalker making much of a presence against a counterspell heavy deck that will force you to eventually try to hardcast it for the full 8cmc when it remands/pierces/vapor snags all your attempts with delve. And then you double-back on the proactive route and put in a soft counterspell for searching with shadow of doubt? So, the plan is to... sit on mana whenever they have a fetchland in play and wait for them to crack it, and attempt to "counter" it? Outside of birthing pod, fetchlands are your only target for all those decks you "now crush". So forgive the skepticism that many share right now with your choices, but if you're not going to give any explanation or reasons for them and take this extreme of a bullheaded stance, then I don't think you have any right to complain or rebut when anyone criticizes your choices.
UR UR Storm UR
G Infect G
Legacy
RG Goblins RG
Commander
UBR Sedris, the Traitor King UBR
UR Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind UR
UR Jhoira of the Ghitu UR
WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic WUB
G Omnath, Locus of Mana G
A reasonable man would sleeve it and playtest it to see for himself, not look at it on paper and criticise potential scenarios. That's the entire problem of this forum, too much talking, hypothetical situations and even more hypothetical rebuttals.
If you want to know how something works, play it, don't talk about how you don't see it working. The reason I consistently beat Delver is because it's been my primary deck for the past two weeks. I know what they don't want taken, what they are afraid of and when they have a counter or are bluffing it.
If you are unwilling to take a shot at actually playing the list, there is nothing I can say or explain that will change anything. You have already made up your mind. Most of you have, actually, and the majority of people are going to dislike it simply based on the fact that it's comming from me, because of my direct and rude attitude.
Anything more extensive will have to wait until Sunday evening when I access a keyboard that doesn't fit in my hand (in regard to that, apologies for the typos).
For those who want other testing results and are unable/unwilling to test it yourself, I have some results coming too. They will be from the Burn matchup, specifically game 1. The tests were done by myself and an experienced Modern player who is a friend of mine, 15 on the play and 15 on the draw. I used Esperino's list for 8Rack and the winning list from the recent Japanese Champions of Modern tournament for Burn. I don't have our notes with me now, but I believe the game 1 win % is just around 50% for 8Rack. Will report back later with more.
UR UR Storm UR
G Infect G
Legacy
RG Goblins RG
Commander
UBR Sedris, the Traitor King UBR
UR Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind UR
UR Jhoira of the Ghitu UR
WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic WUB
G Omnath, Locus of Mana G
For the Burn list, I used the one that won the Japanese Champions of Modern tournament a week or so back. That was a large tournament with high-ranking Japanese players, and the Burn list packed a full slew of scary cards; TC, MS, Eidolon, etc. My Japanese isn't so good, so this actually might be the 2nd place deck and not the 1st, but they were similar enough that it doesn't really matter for testing purposes:
6 Mountain
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Arid Mesa
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Steam Vents
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
1 Vexing Devil
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide
Spells:
4 Treasure Cruise
4 Shard Volley
4 Skullcrack
3 Searing Blaze
4 Rift Bolt
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lava Spike
A friend of mine and I tested the game 1 matchup. We still have not done the post-board game, so that might change things for the better or worse regarding 8Rack's win rate. To run the tests, we played a dozen or so games without recording results, just to get a feel for how both decks played against each other and to figure out possible play trees that we might otherwise miss. This was particularly important with 8Rack, where choosing the wrong card to discard off an IoK or TS can be as disastrous as using the wrong Lilly mode. After those games, we played 40 games 1s, splitting 20 on the play for 8Rack and 20 on the draw. We swapped decks every few games to minimize any hidden pilot error and bias.
Overall 8Rack win rate: 43% (17/40)
8Rack win rate on the play: 40% (8/20)
8Rack win rate on the draw: 45% (9/20)
Average 8Rack win turn: Turn 6.5
Average 8Rack loss turn: Turn 5
In the 40 game 1s we played, 8Rack had a 43% win rate. The overwhelming majority of losses came when two or more of three things happened.
HOW TO LOSE VS. BURN: CHOOSE 2+
1) TC resolves once
2) Eidolon sticks for longer than a turn
3) At any point, there are 2+ creatures on the field
If two or more of those factors were true, 8Rack lost the game in about 98% of cases. In that one exception game, I won through a TC/Eidolon/double MS because Darkblast dredge enabled me to play a 2nd Tombstalker, which held the line as a blocker until Rack chipped the Burn life total into alpha-strike range. The 8Rack wins were much more varied, and involved a lot of cool play trees involving Tombstalker (MVP), Mutavault (MVP), gradual racking in super tight races, and knowing when to switch from control mode to just clocking with racks/discard.
There were a few surprise in the matchups that are implicit in my above list of losing factors. The most interesting is that TC resolutions ALONE don't stop this deck. A lot of people are probably scared to play 8Rack in a TC-dominated metagame, but I won a number of games through a single TC, and one game through 2. It wasn't TC alone that kills you. It's a TC that sets up either multiple creatures in play, or just a single Eidolon. As a related note, I was surprised at just how nasty Eidolon is here. If you don't kill it right away, it's almost impossible to win because it just deals so much damage between the passive and the attacking. This led to situations where I would not play turn 1 IoK on the play just to maximize my chance of catching Eidolon before it landed. Another related note is the importance of Burn mana in this matchup, which is one reason TC is not quite as powerful as some people believe. Between Wrench Mind, Lilly, and Raven's Crime, your opponent has to pitch a lot of random cards. Those are often lands because nothing is as bad in Burn as running out of fuel and being just 2 damage away from lethal. But that means after you TC, you often don't have enough mana to cast everything or explode into some 4/5 MS attack. 8Rack can often react with Lilly activations or Raven's Crime recursion to chip down that hand. It's only when TC drew into creatures, especially Eidolon, that things really went south.
Overall, here are my reflections on Esperino's list.
1. Add one more land
I lost about 4 games just because of my mana situation. This was either not drawing my third land by turn 3, not having access to BB on turn 2, or not drawing my second land when on the draw with an otherwise awesome hand. One more land would probably eliminate at least 1-2 of those losses, or at least reduce their likelihood.
2. Disfigure = MVP
Great removal in this format. I haven't tested it against Delver but I'm sure it's just as strong there as against Burn. The only time I wanted a different spell was when an opponent had MS with 1+ mana open. But in most cases, it was basically a 1 mana hard kill spell.
3. Tombstalker = MVP
TS is a beast for two reasons. First, Burn can't attack into this profitably without losing a creature and wasting a Burn spell. If dropped around a middling life total, or even a little lower, this will halt even two creatures from attacking while the Burn player waits to draw resources. Second, TS switches from defense to offense in a heartbeat, and it's amazing how quickly he and 1-2 Racks can close out a game. Bonus points if you Darkblast dredge into an earlier Tombstalker, which I did twice to great effect.
4. Shadow of Doubt is a big underperformer
Shadow might be in this deck for other matchups, so I acknowledge that up front before criticizing it. But against Burn, it's really not very good. We didn't even play around it when running these lists. We just wantonly cracked fetches into 2 open mana, just to see how it would work against unprepared opponents. The only time Shadow worked was when the Burn player cracked for a Vents to cast TC next turn, and then never found that blue mana for the rest of the game. But in the 10 or so other games where it got cast, it was almost always worse than another discard spell or another removal spell. That's especially true if you fall even a little behind; nothing is as demoralizing as drawing Shadow of Doubt against an active Eidolon when you desperately need removal.
Honestly, that win rate would have been a lot different if Shadow had been removal of almost any kind. Preferably hard removal that can help both against the weenies of Burn/Delver but also the fatter stuff in other Modern decks. I would not use Murderous Cut, because my suspicion is that Tombstalker is going to be better if you can only include 1 set of delve cards. Victim of Night or Slaughter Pact would have been way better.
I think we will test game 1 against UR Delver before doing games 2/3 with Burn, just to get a better sense of the deck's strenghts and weaknesses in this metagame.
R8whackR
WUBGAtraxa Stax-Superfriends *Under Construction*WUBG
Howbout Monastery Swiftspear? How were you able to deal with it if it goes into play on turn 1 and you don't have an answer yet?
For starters, I'm not sure how fair it is to test only Game 1s. Shadow of Doubt is bad against that particular deck and the last thing you want to see when you have it is Eidolon. Repeatedly playing with it against the same deck doesn't make a lot of sense, at least to me.
Speaking of SoD, a lot of people don't understand why it's in the deck. Without hard removal, I had to put in a failsafe against Pod, preferably something that's not completely dead against other decks. In that regard, it's cycling is used as access to more removal/options.
About the extra land... while I too would feel more comfortable wih it, putting it in will mean compromising another critical part of the deck. Just don't keep risky hands of the type "if I had gotten another land, this hand would've been perfect".
And lastly... Burn was one of the least explored matches. Personally my record is better, but that may be due to differences in the list/pilot. I didn't take it specifically into account when designing the list, just found it fares better than previous mono-black ones. Also, that appears to be morebof a RDW stle than Burn, but whatever.
It was incomplete testing, but it's still valuable as long as you keep that in mind. It sounds like there's a strong possibility the game two matchup is coming soon:
I get the impression that playing a bunch of game ones then a bunch of game twos is how pro teams test when they have specific matchups they're trying to investigate. I wonder if any would confirm or deny that...
Glad that it's helpful! I'll do some against UR Delver in the near future (we started already).
I should be clearer around the IoK play. There are only a few circumstances where I don't open with IoK. It's not a categorical rule. I only saved IoK when I was on the play against Burn, when I had another turn 1 play I could make (a Rack, a Disfigure), and when I did NOT have a better turn 2 play. So if you have Wrench Mind, you are definitely going turn 1 IoK. If you have Thoughtseize or a second IoK, you definitely play the first on turn 1. The only reason one should be reserving that IoK is if your turn 2 play wouldn't be better than seeing one more card and possibly stopping the Eidolon.
As a similar line of play, I generally try and reserve TS until turn 3, to stop the turn 4 TC. TS is the only card that reliably hits TC before they cast it, and TC is not a card you want resolved.
A single MS was never a serious problem. Between the Lilly and the Disfigure/DB, you have enough removal to handle it. Disfigure is also very good at punishing overly aggressive MS players by killing while the Prowess trigger is on the stack. The key here is that, if you are doing your job right, Burn doesn't have a lot of cards to work with, which means they will tend to pitch lands to the discard effects. That in turn means they don't have a lot of mana to work with, so they can't save up hands with multiple burn effects that are castable. Remember that MS without a hand to cast spells isn't very strong. If you can't attack the MS, you should be able to attack their hand. And if you can't attack either, you kept a ***** opening 7 and probably lost anyway.
As a side note, in case it's not obvious, never, ever cast Disfigure into one open mana unless you can TS/IoK first. That's a great way to just lose a card and still take 5+ damage.
I was testing your original list that you said stomped Burn. I agree that this particular card sucks against Burn, which is one reason I question its inclusion in a metagame that (on MTGO at least) is about 35% Delver/Burn.
As for testing only Game 1s, there are only so many games we can play. I'd rather get 40 game 1 tests in than 20 game 1s and 20 game 2s. Now we can do the game 2s later and see if that improves the matchup. Both sideboards have a number of cards that will affect the matchup, so I'm interested to see how it turns out.
Honestly, I would just use hard removal or some sweeper effect. The overwhelming majority of decks right now, with the exception of Scapeshift, are going to be just as hurt by the hard removal as they would be by SoD. Hard removal is going to be better against Twin, Pod, and Affinity, and obviously better against that 35% of the metagame which is Burn/Delver.
Except mulliganing against Burn is a terrible idea. It's bad both because a 6 card hand is likely to be even worse than a 7 card hand (suffering moreso from lack of lands, lack of color requirements, or lack of interaction), and it's bad because Burn will punish a bad mulligan. Against a deck like Scapeshift, Twin, or UWR Control, it's totally fine for 8Rack to mulligan to something better. They either can't clock it down fast enough, or our mulligan is still likely to have the tools you need to stop their game plan from working. But that is not true against Burn. I also don't see how adding 1 more land would compromise anything in the deck. -1 SoD +1 Swamp would be great, and if anything would directly benefit at least one part of the deck (Crime recursion).
That's totally fair. We'll be testing Delver next, which I imagine will be much better than Burn because it is relatively slower.
@Esperino (or others): What would you sideboard against Burn? In the current list, I'm obviously ditching 4 SoD, but would you ditch anything else? Would you put value on Bridge over Extraction? Bridge isn't great against their lower power dudes and we often can't empty our hand fast enough. Extraction seems nice theoretically, but I'm not sure how it goes in real games. Any thoughts on this?
I'd much rather 61 cards with an extra land than the current approach. Sometimes it's correct to go to 61 cards. In either case, having all the spells you want in the deck isn't very good if you have to regularly mull to be able to cast them all.
@ktkenshinx Going down to 3 SoD is not a good idea. I've done it in the past and it's a card you want as early as possible. Just so you know, I'm aware that most decks would be hurt by more hard removal, but keep in mind SoD translates not only into more Disfigures, but more Racks/Discard as well, which is key here. A sweeper, as you said, would be very good, but the only good one is very vulnerable to soft permission beacause it costs 4, which is not something I would rely entirely on in the metagame right now. Obviously decks like Pod don't use that sort of thing and I've said multiple times Damnation is the best card against them, but there are other matches. When I make a list, I try to take everything into account. Draw means potentially more of everything, ergo I went with that. SoD is not the card that makes or breaks the list, it's rather something I felt I had to put in after the rest of the deck was done. Obviously everybody is free to make any changes they want, but that's what I'm going with (not to mention that wastelanding a UR Delver is something that wins the game pretty much every time). You can't have 60 cards, all of which to be great against everything.
@ktkenshinx (or others): Well 4 Extraction for 4 SoD is rather obvious. Against a creature-heavy Burn list like the one you were playing with (aka RDW) I would consider the Damnations, probably taking a Thoughtseize, a Rack and a Lili for the 3 sweepers. The rest of the cards don't make sense to me. Bridge is way too unreliable in this matchup and Cage is rather obviously useless.
We will be doing both the game 1s and the game 2/3s. It is important to do both even if games 2/3 are obviously more important, if for no other reason than that there are more of them.
I'm not going to weigh in on SoD until we finish testing Delver. Preliminarily, I will say that three things hamstring its effectiveness against Delver. First, if they see it off a Probe, they will never crack a fetch into it without countermagic mana. Second, even if they just cast into it, that deck only needs 2 lands to function passably and 3 to function optimally. Given how many cantrips and filters the deck plays, it isn't hard to find that next land if you blow up the first. Finally, and this is more a general point than just against Delver, having a chance to cycle into cards is never the same as just having those cards alone. There are certainly scenarios where SoD is going to be a cantripped Sinkhole at instant speed. But how many more situations are there where it just has Cycling BB and you would rather actually have a spell that affects the board or hand? That's a testing matter, but my suspicion is that this just is not the metagame for SoD.
Drown would definitely be excellent against both Burn and Delver. It's not amazing vs. Twin, only passable vs. Pod, and is bad against all the higher toughness midrange decks. But given that Burn/Delver is about 35%ish of the MTGO metagame, maybe it's fine to hedge bets on that removal and let the discard carry you elsewhere.
About the Drown discussion... if you completely drop Bridge for Drown, you have no way of stopping fatties. On another note, DiS is not that great in the sideboard. If you want a sweeper, for just one extra msna you get the best one in Magic. If you're dead on turn 3 than 4, that wouldn't have saved you. Drown is generally in a weird spot.
We've played SoD before; we know when it's best to use it. I'm just saying that you can't rely on that scenario. If they probe you on turn 1 or 2 and see it, you won't reliably land the Sinkhole. If they have Snare mana up, you won't reliably resolve it either. If they don't have a turn 2 fetch and, by the time they fetch, they have Remand/Leak mana you might not get it either. And maybe you do get the Sinkhole but couldn't answer the turn 1 Delver that flipped on turn 2, and now you desperately need removal.
When SoD works it's definitely pretty good. I'm only saying that it doesn't always work and you can't rely on it working every game. My concern, and this is something testing will or will not confirm, is that you would be better served by a spell that is guaranteed to impact the game rather than one that can be played around. Or worse, just ignored past a certain turn. In metagames earlier this year, SoD would have been much better. I am skeptical that this is still true.
I agree that it would be an error to ditch Bridge from the board. Not everything is Burn/Delver, even if many opponents will play it. My vote would be for kicking some number of SoD (or all of them) out of the maindeck and replacing them with some number of DiS/Pact/Darkblast/etc. I will say that, although the tests are not done, early results are not good for SoD against Delver either. The deck really hurts for removal, and I know that earlier versions played more of it.
That said, I will say that Tombstalker is a beast. It is miles better than Pack Rat in this metagame, and is extremely dangerous in both the Delver and Burn matchup.
We need guaranteed ways to deal with creatures regardless of size while also having an edge on Burn and Delver, so I think probably Blight + Bridge main is optimal (alternately, Victim + Drown), at least when operating under traditional parameters. If we branch out some and use Tombstalker instead of Bridge, we have a variety of options, but we should probably use 1x Blast main. What is the optimal number of Tombstalker?
I can't speak for Delver yet, but I'm loving the Burn matchup now with 4x Blight and 2x Waste Not; I feel so much more in control. I'm done with Pack Rat entirely right now.