I'm feeling that the meta is once again shaping up to be a fine matchup for GW Hatebears (or, more importantly, decks that don't despise running 3+ Thalia's). That said in my playtesting lately, the sideboard can really rock a lot of matchups positively.
Worship is a house vs Skullcrack, especially over C:OP Red. If that's your fear, remember: Worship doesn't prevent damage. "Worship does not prevent damage. It causes some damage to be unable to lower your life total. So any damage rendered useless by Worship was still dealt and is counted by effects that track the amount of damage done to a player. In addition, Worship does not prevent loss of life, so loss of life bypasses Worship." JUST A FRIENDLY REMINDER.
With UR Aggro & RDW being huge parts of the meta, being efficient, bigger and better is totally possible. Spellskite has a lot of worth here in just soaking up damage until you can get a decent board put together. I also read a little bit about Spellskite with Scapeshift as being good, but not good enough. With Scapeshift, you just have to remember that you're delaying the inevitable. If you're not aggressive, you won't win. You have to slow them down just enough to get enough damage in. Count, play as if you're the aggro deck. It's also a nice reason to use Aether Vials (Set on 2. or 3) so that even if they bounce your Skite or Mindcensor, you can just replay it, and force them to have a bad line of play, aka: the entire reason to play this deck.
Rhox Faithmender is something I've also been looking at in conjunction with Kitchen Finks as a way to beat Rx (as a 1/5 double lifelink is pretty good) or with Auriok Champion.
I think the Swords of X&Y are in a pretty bad place right now as being too slow. They're much better when UWx is a larger part of the meta, but now? Can't see that they're useful. Basically, channeling a lot of effort into punishing Rx decks is a positive. This makes a lot of overlap possible with other decks (see Auriok Champion vs D.Exarch). Worship falls into those lines as well. I don't know if you want 6 mana dorks though or 4. I keep thinking that more than 4 is right, but without Swords, it's hard to justify Birds of Paradise (which was the previous justification for riding swords, because t1 birds, t2 sword, t3 roll was a thing).
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Never 4 Vials. I'm 100% convinced in these kinda lists, 4 vials is bad. 3's the only thing you should run. 3 or 0.
I think 5 or 6 dorks are worthwhile even with vials in the list because you're looking for a bit of explosion. But Birds are just so bad in a list without any other cards to buff them (Swords, Rancor, Elspeth, etc.). It's a weird place.
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Could someone explain why Worship is good? I can understand the soft lock with Thrun and worship, but I feel like it is a lose less card.
I'm just trying to understand why it is in the sb.
Could someone explain why Worship is good? I can understand the soft lock with Thrun and worship, but I feel like it is a lose less card.
I'm just trying to understand why it is in the sb.
This deck runs like 30 creatures. The odds of your opponent being able to kill every creature you play is pretty slim (even Burn may struggle to kill everything, especially since some of our guys take more than one burn spell to kill). It lets you stall and keep them from winning until you can build a board state that you can win from (find your angel or sword, or whatever). And, as you said, coupled with a Thrun or a creature with the right color protection (ie Kor Firewalker vs Burn) it can completely prevent them from winning unless they can destroy it -- which, again, buys you time to kill them.
I was playing vs Affinity. Got Worship out. I was ahead by 1 card because they searched off of Path. Played draw go for almost 15 turns. Found an Engineered explosives. It's not a lose less card, it's a 'you can't win' card. You'll eventually find some sort of hate card vs decks that they just can't beat. Creeping Corrosion. Kor Firewalker. SoX&Y. Thrun. Baneslayer.
How does Boggles beat it? Affinity? Burn? Merfolk? Basically all of the 'better' aggro decks don't have a real out to it. Because we're not often the aggro deck, we're the control deck in aggro matchups, we go bigger than they do. We have a bunch of big butted creatures. It's hard to effectively attack into a board with a lot of creatures (and ScOoze). Some decks just can't beat it. They can't. If you wait until you get the right trump card, then there's nothing they can do to pressure you. You can sit at one life for a very long time, and with a threat density of 30-34 creatures, you're almost always going to draw a creature half of the time (and with creature lands it's almost possible to not even worry about board wipes).
Like everything else in the deck, you're delaying their best plays. You're delaying your optimal plays, and forcing them into suboptimal plays. With Worship, their either going to hold back, or play cards, and have little effect on the board state. You're essentially turning the game into a 'wait until i get my card you can't deal with and your abrupt decay isn't going to do much here, so...'
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I've found the opposite regarding Worship. All decks usually have an "out" to worship even pre-board. Affinity can win through inkmoth nexus, red/black burn can win with bump in the night, merfolk can win with vapor snag. Blue decks have cryptic command, and even some zoo lists run qasali pridemage. It's definitely a strong card when it sticks, but I've found that I would rather play a card to help me win faster than to help me lose slower.
That said, I don't think UR delver actually has an out to thrun/worship in their 75.
I've liked Worship before, but I'm not crazy about it in the current meta. I don't like the idea of resolving a CMC 4 sorcery-speed spell to beat a meta dominated by two very fast decks, one of which runs counterspells.
I've found the opposite regarding Worship. All decks usually have an "out" to worship even pre-board. Affinity can win through inkmoth nexus, red/black burn can win with bump in the night, merfolk can win with vapor snag. Blue decks have cryptic command, and even some zoo lists run qasali pridemage. It's definitely a strong card when it sticks, but I've found that I would rather play a card to help me win faster than to help me lose slower.
That said, I don't think UR delver actually has an out to thrun/worship in their 75.
You have to understand what your gameplan is when you play it though. If you play worship, the only way you can lose is through inkmoth. You have more ghost quarters, tec edges, removal spells, pridmages than they have inkmoths. R/B Burn isn't really a thing though. It's either WR, WRU or RU. Never RB anymore. Merfolk can win with Vapor Snag, but you also play Scavenging Oozes & Path to Exile which you can gain life/path your own creature in response (or as I've done before, redirect to spellskite, in response kill it with Pridemage). Blue decks have Cryptic, but, not all blue decks. UWR doesn't run cryptic, Blue Moon does, and so does RUG Scapeshift. But Worship isn't your primary game plan vs either of those decks either.
You have to think about positioning with it, with it's purpose. It's not a simply "but they have outs to it", but how many layers do they have to take in order for you to possibly deal with it.
So, lets talk about the two 'I don't want to cast this card in the face of JesAsc & UR Burn'. Because, they're real things. What is this deck designed to do?
Delay. Delay. Delay. Lock the game down. Force yourself into a better board position. Win the game. There's few games where you're actually the aggro deck. If you're thinking you're supposed to "win faster", I don't think you're in the right colors to do that. I don't think this is the right deck for that. It's been this decks bread and butter. There's few decks that you want to play the aggressive deck with, and few circumstances. Saying that the best way to beat decks is to be faster... How? There's only so many 3 drop 4/4's that have value in GW. Most 2 drop 3/3's aren't very good (Watchwolf/Fleecemane), you don't have efficient, reachy beaters like red does. You have to, more often than not, play the control game. If you're playing the control game. Play the control game. Don't try to beat the fast deck by being faster (aka, the aggro decks). You're going to win more games by being slower and controlling than the other way around I think. There's 3-4 decks that you're the aggro deck though pretty much 90% of the time. Uxx Control/Midrange. Tron. Scapeshift. Even against the combo decks, your primary goal is to delay, while applying pressure. It's a fine balance. If you said, on turn 2, with a dork in play already, do i: play another dork + Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, or a Loxodon Smiter, you'd always play the Thalia, right? Because it buys you turns.
And that's the point of this deck. Buy you enough turns to turn enough creatures sideways to win you games.
Back to UR Delver. It's not even Thrun. They don't have a realistic out to 2 creatures, one of which is a x/4 creature + Worship. You're not playing to x hexproof creature. I've actually found the matchup to be pretty winnable with Auriok Champion and Baneslayer (I know. I've never run Baneslayer in my list ever, you can check back all 100 some pages. Never once. I'm running it now because it's basically worship 2.0). They don't have a ton of counterspells, and they don't have a ton of hard threats. It's basically as 'threat dense' as UR delver in legacy, only without brainstorm or ponder. How do you beat it? Gain life. Save your ScOozes. Sunlance. I don't know. Zoo was a 'fast' deck, and it still pretty much scooped them up when you played Worship (unless they played a 2 of destructive revelry). There's just a ton of ways to interact with that deck. Just be judicious with your Oozes.
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I like Worship, and against a lot of decks they HAVE to answer it. The problem with Burn is that they bring in enchantment and artifact hate from the board for games 2-3. I play Burn, and if I'm not running Destructive Revelry, I am bringing in Wear // Tear every time. Even if I have no idea what they might bring in. I'm expecting Spellskite. I'm expecting Leyline of Sanctity. I'm expecting Dragon's Claw. And I have a card that can answer all of those in my board. Some Burn decks still run black for Bump in the Night, which also gets around Worship.
Now I'm not willing to say that Worship is good or bad right now. I'm going to wait until after GP Madrid this weekend to really formulate my thoughts on the meta, and where I think we should be. Auriok Champion and Kor Firewalker are our best bets for beating Burn, since they are cards that gain us life that they can't answer directly. Although they still have Leyline of Punishment and Rain of Gore.
I dont really see Hooting Mandrills fire'ing off in a list that fills its graveyard only when your opponent destroys stuff pretty much.
The rest looks solid though. Have you considered Wilt-Leaf Liege instead of mandrills? I see you have 4 Pridemages/4 Familiars and Brimaz => they all play nicely with the Liege (ofc Smiter does too and on)...
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My case for hooting mandrills is as follows. I wanted to keep the curve at 3 or less to use the mana denial plan more aggressively(I'm actually thinking of a 4th tec edge). Hatebears does a pretty good job of filling the graveyard with the land hate, canopy and playing creatures our opponents have to remove. Hooting Mandrills can also fight it's way through 1/1 tokens/chump blockers. I'm still testing it and it's been a dependable beater so far. The reason I'm not running liege is tri color payment. I've have been screwed over by that many times and I feel ghost quarter and tec edge are too good to cut down.
Most of the time I play Mandrills for 3 making it pseudo Smiter 5-8. 4 Thalia has been great especially when opening with judge's familiar. I played rancor but found my critters being blown up in response or shortly after. Why not have that effect on a bolt resistant body?
As a 4-off, i think beyond the first one he is rather >cmc3, not?
Anyway, i also like a 4/4 trample by all means, im just not sure about delve in hatebears.
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A 4th in the board is probably OK, especially vs decks that like Electrolyze or Forked Bolt.
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I'm feeling that the meta is once again shaping up to be a fine matchup for GW Hatebears (or, more importantly, decks that don't despise running 3+ Thalia's). That said in my playtesting lately, the sideboard can really rock a lot of matchups positively.
Worship is a house vs Skullcrack, especially over C:OP Red. If that's your fear, remember: Worship doesn't prevent damage. "Worship does not prevent damage. It causes some damage to be unable to lower your life total. So any damage rendered useless by Worship was still dealt and is counted by effects that track the amount of damage done to a player. In addition, Worship does not prevent loss of life, so loss of life bypasses Worship." JUST A FRIENDLY REMINDER.
With UR Aggro & RDW being huge parts of the meta, being efficient, bigger and better is totally possible. Spellskite has a lot of worth here in just soaking up damage until you can get a decent board put together. I also read a little bit about Spellskite with Scapeshift as being good, but not good enough. With Scapeshift, you just have to remember that you're delaying the inevitable. If you're not aggressive, you won't win. You have to slow them down just enough to get enough damage in. Count, play as if you're the aggro deck. It's also a nice reason to use Aether Vials (Set on 2. or 3) so that even if they bounce your Skite or Mindcensor, you can just replay it, and force them to have a bad line of play, aka: the entire reason to play this deck.
Rhox Faithmender is something I've also been looking at in conjunction with Kitchen Finks as a way to beat Rx (as a 1/5 double lifelink is pretty good) or with Auriok Champion.
I think the Swords of X&Y are in a pretty bad place right now as being too slow. They're much better when UWx is a larger part of the meta, but now? Can't see that they're useful. Basically, channeling a lot of effort into punishing Rx decks is a positive. This makes a lot of overlap possible with other decks (see Auriok Champion vs D.Exarch). Worship falls into those lines as well. I don't know if you want 6 mana dorks though or 4. I keep thinking that more than 4 is right, but without Swords, it's hard to justify Birds of Paradise (which was the previous justification for riding swords, because t1 birds, t2 sword, t3 roll was a thing).
I think 5 or 6 dorks are worthwhile even with vials in the list because you're looking for a bit of explosion. But Birds are just so bad in a list without any other cards to buff them (Swords, Rancor, Elspeth, etc.). It's a weird place.
I'm just trying to understand why it is in the sb.
This deck runs like 30 creatures. The odds of your opponent being able to kill every creature you play is pretty slim (even Burn may struggle to kill everything, especially since some of our guys take more than one burn spell to kill). It lets you stall and keep them from winning until you can build a board state that you can win from (find your angel or sword, or whatever). And, as you said, coupled with a Thrun or a creature with the right color protection (ie Kor Firewalker vs Burn) it can completely prevent them from winning unless they can destroy it -- which, again, buys you time to kill them.
Modern: GW Hatebears/midrange, WGU Knightfall/evolution midrange stuff
Standard: nope
Legacy: W Death & Taxes
EDH (not Commander!): W Avacyn, Angel of Hope, GR Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, WGB Anafenza, the Foremost, WU Hanna, Ship's Navigator
How does Boggles beat it? Affinity? Burn? Merfolk? Basically all of the 'better' aggro decks don't have a real out to it. Because we're not often the aggro deck, we're the control deck in aggro matchups, we go bigger than they do. We have a bunch of big butted creatures. It's hard to effectively attack into a board with a lot of creatures (and ScOoze). Some decks just can't beat it. They can't. If you wait until you get the right trump card, then there's nothing they can do to pressure you. You can sit at one life for a very long time, and with a threat density of 30-34 creatures, you're almost always going to draw a creature half of the time (and with creature lands it's almost possible to not even worry about board wipes).
Like everything else in the deck, you're delaying their best plays. You're delaying your optimal plays, and forcing them into suboptimal plays. With Worship, their either going to hold back, or play cards, and have little effect on the board state. You're essentially turning the game into a 'wait until i get my card you can't deal with and your abrupt decay isn't going to do much here, so...'
That said, I don't think UR delver actually has an out to thrun/worship in their 75.
Modern: GW Hatebears/midrange, WGU Knightfall/evolution midrange stuff
Standard: nope
Legacy: W Death & Taxes
EDH (not Commander!): W Avacyn, Angel of Hope, GR Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, WGB Anafenza, the Foremost, WU Hanna, Ship's Navigator
You have to understand what your gameplan is when you play it though. If you play worship, the only way you can lose is through inkmoth. You have more ghost quarters, tec edges, removal spells, pridmages than they have inkmoths. R/B Burn isn't really a thing though. It's either WR, WRU or RU. Never RB anymore. Merfolk can win with Vapor Snag, but you also play Scavenging Oozes & Path to Exile which you can gain life/path your own creature in response (or as I've done before, redirect to spellskite, in response kill it with Pridemage). Blue decks have Cryptic, but, not all blue decks. UWR doesn't run cryptic, Blue Moon does, and so does RUG Scapeshift. But Worship isn't your primary game plan vs either of those decks either.
You have to think about positioning with it, with it's purpose. It's not a simply "but they have outs to it", but how many layers do they have to take in order for you to possibly deal with it.
So, lets talk about the two 'I don't want to cast this card in the face of JesAsc & UR Burn'. Because, they're real things. What is this deck designed to do?
Delay. Delay. Delay. Lock the game down. Force yourself into a better board position. Win the game. There's few games where you're actually the aggro deck. If you're thinking you're supposed to "win faster", I don't think you're in the right colors to do that. I don't think this is the right deck for that. It's been this decks bread and butter. There's few decks that you want to play the aggressive deck with, and few circumstances. Saying that the best way to beat decks is to be faster... How? There's only so many 3 drop 4/4's that have value in GW. Most 2 drop 3/3's aren't very good (Watchwolf/Fleecemane), you don't have efficient, reachy beaters like red does. You have to, more often than not, play the control game. If you're playing the control game. Play the control game. Don't try to beat the fast deck by being faster (aka, the aggro decks). You're going to win more games by being slower and controlling than the other way around I think. There's 3-4 decks that you're the aggro deck though pretty much 90% of the time. Uxx Control/Midrange. Tron. Scapeshift. Even against the combo decks, your primary goal is to delay, while applying pressure. It's a fine balance. If you said, on turn 2, with a dork in play already, do i: play another dork + Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, or a Loxodon Smiter, you'd always play the Thalia, right? Because it buys you turns.
And that's the point of this deck. Buy you enough turns to turn enough creatures sideways to win you games.
Back to UR Delver. It's not even Thrun. They don't have a realistic out to 2 creatures, one of which is a x/4 creature + Worship. You're not playing to x hexproof creature. I've actually found the matchup to be pretty winnable with Auriok Champion and Baneslayer (I know. I've never run Baneslayer in my list ever, you can check back all 100 some pages. Never once. I'm running it now because it's basically worship 2.0). They don't have a ton of counterspells, and they don't have a ton of hard threats. It's basically as 'threat dense' as UR delver in legacy, only without brainstorm or ponder. How do you beat it? Gain life. Save your ScOozes. Sunlance. I don't know. Zoo was a 'fast' deck, and it still pretty much scooped them up when you played Worship (unless they played a 2 of destructive revelry). There's just a ton of ways to interact with that deck. Just be judicious with your Oozes.
Now I'm not willing to say that Worship is good or bad right now. I'm going to wait until after GP Madrid this weekend to really formulate my thoughts on the meta, and where I think we should be. Auriok Champion and Kor Firewalker are our best bets for beating Burn, since they are cards that gain us life that they can't answer directly. Although they still have Leyline of Punishment and Rain of Gore.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Leonin Arbiter
2 Qasali Pridemage
3 Scavenging Ooze
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Aven Mindcensor
4 Loxodon Smiter
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Sigarda, Host of Herons
4 Path to Exile
2 Beast Within
3 Worship
Lands:
2 Plains
2 Forest
2 Brushland
4 Temple Garden
4 Razorverge Thicket
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Stirring Wildwood
2 Gavony Township
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Mark of Asylum
2 Rest in Peace
1 Spellskite
2 Stony Silence
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Torpor Orb
2 Choke
2 Fracturing Gust
4 Judge's familiar
4 Leonin Arbiter
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging ooze
3 Aven Mindcencor
4 Loxodon smiter
1 Brimaz, king of Oreskos
4 Hooting Mandrills
4 Temple Garden
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Horizon Canopy
1 Plains
2 Forest
4 Ghost Quarter
3 Tectonic Edge
My Current list. Sideboard is still a working WIP.
The rest looks solid though. Have you considered Wilt-Leaf Liege instead of mandrills? I see you have 4 Pridemages/4 Familiars and Brimaz => they all play nicely with the Liege (ofc Smiter does too and on)...
Rancor, by that reasoning, is the better choice imo.
Btw: How is 4 thalia going, is it worth it ? I am currently playing 3, but 4 does not sound THAT bad i guess.
Anyway, i also like a 4/4 trample by all means, im just not sure about delve in hatebears.