Serum Visions seems the proof that we really needed that surveil2 one-drop 1/1 flying spirit (which would be somewhat better, in my opinion, as it would be a body instead of a cantrip effect)
Oh well, i won't complain as long as spirits is top of the meta and doing well (especially since we got so much love in m19), we'll see in the next set if we'll get our most-needed 1CMC spirit
Hi, i recently decided to join the blue side of magic =)
Ive played burn and mardu pyromancer before and ive just completed this deck.
I would like some feedback, tips etc. My local meta have alot of creature decks and a few combo decks.
We have 2 playing Valakut which is why i like Leonin Arbiter.
Deprive is a counter that should give you the chance to contest those spells spell queller can't hit, so it is meant to be cast off curve, ideally. Off curve means more chances to have the double blue available.
Truth is whatever the counterspell we decide to use, there's a downside to live with. Negate doesn't cover creatures, which I need a counterspell to be able to. Unified will doesn't work on an empty board, which happens, nor when your opponent has got more, frequently happening against vizier, hardened scales and elves. I think mana leak is the best compromise but it won't help against a miracled terminus, and won't help against scapeshift cast on seven lands nor against tron in a good amount of times.
I want a clean counterspell so I'm stretching the numbers in my mana base and live with that tempo loss when I'm forced to cast it on turn 2 with no vial on the table. I have never felt like "I need a better counterspell than deprive" since I have brought the 3 copies in my side. It's been one year now since November 2017, I consider it a staple card as much as the 2x eidolon. Those are the 5 cards I have never shaved so far.
As for the 1cmc spirit yes, that would have helped a lot, yet I believe a late game SV is a decent gamble. You might end up drawing a land as much as a creature with a higher mana cost which means a heavier impact. Having it in form of a spirit creature would have given so much explosiveness to this version though.
Hi, i recently decided to join the blue side of magic =)
Ive played burn and mardu pyromancer before and ive just completed this deck.
I would like some feedback, tips etc. My local meta have alot of creature decks and a few combo decks.
We have 2 playing Valakut which is why i like Leonin Arbiter.
You've got tons of coloured sources, you can shave some for extra utility lands. I think 1x cavern of souls is something to have, and the deck can definitely work with 4 grey lands (mutavaults, moorlands) if 21 is your land count. I have loved and relied on the Moorland haunt - nebelgast herald interaction for all the time untill Phantom has been released and I can say it's been one of the bet features of my deck for a long time, but now I think we're better off with 8 lords + mutavault and the beat down plan. Also the 4th seachrome coast is more important than the 2nd hallowed fountain; and the first four fetchlands should always be flooded strands for obvious reasons
I like the old school approach to the deck so for me 4x selfless are stock, especially in a metagame where humans, jund and GB are a thing: fogging or trading selfless for a removal aimed at spell queller or drogskol captain is very relevant nowadays.
In my opinion UW doesn't work if you don't provide a reasonable amount of drawing and filtering. It happened to me to rank 2nd to a 53 people pptq this summer, or to hit the first place at some FNM with a lists that didn't have many ways to draw, fact if that you'll have a hard time hitting an overall 70% win rate with no card draw or deck manipulation, on the long term . I'm sold to this idea right now, the best advice I can give you is to lower the curve and add 4 cheap cards that make you draw.
In your side I don't see stony silence. They are a bit narrow but very relevant, they shut down entire strategies on their own... pithing needle isn't that great of a card for us instead. Not sure about ensnaring bridge, you won't attack either And valakut is scary but overall it's a 60-40 in our favor once you learn how to play against that deck, arbiters seem unnecessary.
So is there a consensus on UW vs Bant Spirits? Or to put it another way which one holds up against Dredge and KCI better?
The consensus is that bant is better than UW. I have played bant just once and that was before the bant-vial version came up, so I can speak for UW only. KCI and Dredge are good matchups, sure, you'll always lose the game where they pull off a crazy start, but on average I am happy when I'm playing against those decks. My record against dredge is 9 wins, 3 losses so far since the end of September.
Deprive has been real, real bad for me in UW Spirits. Frank Karsten would argue that UU is a real stretch for most of the usual UW mana bases. I guess it gets more playable with more draw and filtering, though. My counterspell package looks like this: 1x Remand main; in the side, 1x Dispel, 1x Negate, 1x Unified Will, 1x Disdainful Stroke. It seems like the right mix to me--whenever I want counterspells, I have at least two or three relevant ones to side in, no matter the match up. I'd like a sixth 2 drop counter but don't have room. I've considered Serum Visions for all the reasons Streex points out, but haven't tried it.
The argument for Deprive makes sense, we want as clean a version of Counterspell as possible as Modern is very diverse - Negate doesn't catch Lyra vs Control, Mana Leak is worse late game, Unified Will is not good versus Counters Company type decks.
Deprive works in all those situations but that UU casting cost makes me hesitant as in personal experience I regularly seem to end up with a colourless land/basic plains - maybe you're right in that it's a later game counterspell that misses that turn 2/3 play but hits the payoff cards after them.
This theoretical 1/1 Surveil 2 Spirit sounds ideal, maybe the Orzhov or Azorius could fit a 1 drop with a scry mechanic into their Guilds in January?!
Deprive works in all those situations but that UU casting cost makes me hesitant as in personal experience I regularly seem to end up with a colourless land/basic plains - maybe you're right in that it's a later game counterspell that misses that turn 2/3 play but hits the payoff cards after them.
Yep, this is the way I want to play deprive. Fact is that against Vizier and Elves and KCI you bring them in anyways and hope to hit the blue sources asap. If they have the turn 3 kill deprive is the card that can keep you alive, so I put statistics aside ( I'm a fan of them and Karsten too, FYI) and bring in all the disruptive tools I have access to.
So the Serum Visions didn't arrive in time so I decided to give Bant Spirits a try at a busy FNM (GP Liverpool is next weekend). Ran a bit of a mix of UW and Bant, wanted a couple of Rattlechains, ran 1 Reflector and 3 Paths, 1 Geist, 1 Kira.
Round 1 v. Boros Burn
Game 1 - I landed a Drogskol and my opponent decided to go upstairs with burn. Got the double Drogskol lock for my board and outraced him.
Game 2 - My opponent decided to prioritise playing sideboard cards - turn 2 Torpor Orb made my Mausoleum Wanderer a little sad, but I had plenty of lords to start winning the damage race and kept Queller up for something bad like Ensnaring Bridge, which he went for to avoid lethal.
Round 2 v. UG Infect
Game 1 - I lost the dice roll and my Paths and Reflector Mage on his Blighted Agents kept meeting Blossoming Defense.
Game 2 - Lots of removal but it was still very close - Settle the Wreckage caught him out and wiped his board.
Game 3 - I played this one slowly with lots of removal and disruption. It came down to a critical turn where he went for a winning line by tapping out for a Become Immense for lethal, which I had the Path for.
Round 3 v. Jund
Game 1 - Inquisition of Kozilek couldn't beat a Turn 3 Lili on an empty board despite his Dark Confidant drawing a Bloodbraid Elf and Kolaghan's Command.
Game 2 - What a difference being on the play makes - Mausoleum Wanderer countered his Inqusition, Thalia and Quellers stopped everything and a Drogskol added the damage
Game 3 - Yet another Inquisition took my Noble Hierarch, which he wasn't sure about in a 2 land, Path, Wanderer, Thalia and Rattlechains hand. I got some beats in before all the removal wiped my board. I had 3 lands and a CoCo whilst my opponent had a Bloodbraid and double Dark Confidant on 2 life. I drew another CoCo and a Mana Leak whilst my opponent's Bobs drew 4 lands over 2 turns.
Round 4 v. Affinity
Game 1 - Both mulled to 6, he played out triple Signal Pest but only had Vault Skirge and Inkmoth as threats. I managed to swing a big combat step with a Path on the Vault Skirge after I Vialed in an Image to copy it, which traded with the Inkmoth and denied him the lifegain he needed to keep up in the race.
Game 2 - he had a reasonable Affinity start but not the fastest. I proritised board development to dissuade him from chipping in with damage before landing a Stony Silence and a Knight of Autumn on a Vault Skirge. He went for a Whipflare on my Noble/Knight/Rattlechains board, which I let resolve with CoCo in hand. He went to combat with a mixture of low power creatures, CoCo hit double lord and that was pretty much game. Didn't even have time to play my Settle or Worship.
I played Bant to try and settle whether I felt it was a better version of UW for me and I'm still quite undecided. I really dislike the mana base as I feel it does add up damage over the course of a game, which made the Burn matchup closer than it could otherwise have been and gave me one less turn in the Jund games I lost. Noble Hierarch is a great option Turn 1 but as we've discussed, Serum Visions could fill that role for UW. I also think having access to more utility lands makes a big difference in the grindier matchups.
Overall, I think I prefer the style of UW, especially as Spirits really cares about what you want to hit off a CoCo and when you want to CoCo. Think it's back to UW for me with Serum Visions.
It generated a good deal of debate on the Facebook groups as well. As I see it, UW gets more utility lands, which I really like, and a less painful mana base, which helps in quite a few matchups, whereas Bant gets Noble and CoCo as payoffs. I personally feel UW plays more to Spirits' strengths of instant speed disruption/tempo elements, which foregoes the quicker starts of an unchecked Hierarch and the refuelling potential of a CoCo. Bant also has a slightly broader sideboard choice with Green mana available, but in turn CoCo means that you don't want to play as many non-creature spells as UW so that might be a moot point.
I wonder if people start bringing hate for Spirits then UW might be better positioned to play sideboard cards to counter/disrupt their plans. I don't know if Spirits is worth narrow hate like Raking Canopy, but I certainly feel in my (limited) experience with both versions that Bant has the narrower playstyle and could be more easily hated on.
I was wondering why most people don’t fun 2 or 3 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner. It seems like it fits with the spirit theme and helps all the other spirits quite a bit. It’s like a poor mans Drogskol Captain.
I run 1 Kira mainboard. It is nice against targeted removal but Kira does not protect your Phantasmal Images as they can still be targeted, unlike Drogskol Captain, which you have to be mindful of.
Guys I'm struggling so hard against those Phoenix decks. They can deploy a number of cheap threats either via graveyard or sticking some others like thing in the ice/crackling drake which actually take advantage of how the whole deck is built so that their power gets maximized. They also have reach and can massively shoot the field with multiple bolt effects. Yesterday 3x pte haven't been enough because they draw so much you can keep up with all of the threats they eventually end up having in their hand. It really makes me think of what the approach should be, bringing in side adjustments or trying to outspeed them somehow not playing around anger of the gods and deploying your hand asap. I feel like I'm facing a new kind of degeneracy which can't be hoosed by a single hate type of card (rest in peace).
I'm also wondering if this is a friendly metagame to Spirit of the Labyrinth, or maybe it's just this moment of the metagames where phoenix strategies are being seen everywhere and the hype is going to dilute with the passsage of the weeks.
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
spirit of the labyrinth is a very interesting card and in this meta i can see it used with proficiency. MagicAids used it in the mainboard in his latest video (5c spirits) and it seems thalia, guardian of thraben+spirit of the labyrinth is a very effective hate package against combo decks. SOTL also has a cute combo with geier reach sanitarium, if you want to deploy it mainboard.
All in all, i think it might be an interesting addition as long as phoenix decks are among the best decks out there, with incidental hate on other combo and control.
NB. as stated before, eidolon of rhetoric and wetball are solid options in addition to RIP
Ok i've faced those decks more coming to the conclusion Eidolon is the mvp in the match along with nebelgast herald. Rip didn't even feel necessary, not because it wouldn't have an impact on the game but because both the red version and the UR/grixis version of the Phoenix decks can attack you from different angles, so having a piece of hate against half of their strategy comes at the cost of it not being enough to slow them down: hollow ones on one side, thing in the ice /drakes on the other can close the game quickly along with burn spells.
Nebelgast herald is my pick over GoST in the current metagame by the way, too fast, too many trying to aggro you out and control decks being set back are the reasons why I believe GoSt ain't the best spirit for the UW version right now. I have also seen death shadows going up, not just locally but also at the local RPTQ. Nebelgast herald is matchwinner against them, definitely one of those cards I need to draw at one point to screw their plans and race them back. Herald also lets me cut 2-3 PtE against control comfortably because I know I have ways to deal with their 5/5s. I believe 2x in the 75 are very reasonable as things stand.
Do most people on this forum still think that the U/W version of this deck is the superior version? I have only see the Bant version represented in the major tournaments lately.
There are definitely advocates of UW here and on reddit. But claiming UW is superior? That's an opinion that's stretching a bit far. UW does certain things better than Bant and vice versa. There are also differing play patterns to an extent. There are also different pros and cons for things like mana consistency, explosiveness etc. Bant is definitely capable of the more powerful plays due to collected company.
There are valid reasons for those who favour UW over Bant. Personally I'm on the Bant side of things.
But based on the only quantifiable metrics available, Bant is better. Higher play rate, appearances in top 8s across multiple GPs.
Guys please opinions on japanese cards. Lost a 3/3 creature against Japan celestial colonade. This guy played all creatures and spells in english cards, but some cards in his manabase was japanese. I dont registrated this really ( my brain say its all fine and all english to me lets attack his empty board)...and i am sure it is a Kind of legal cheating. It is not ok, but i know legal. I Hate such people. I never forget colonade normally, but with this Tricks it can happen one time in 3 years and such people take advantage of this
If I am a customer spending premium amount of dollars, I expect a premium service. Jund falls into the category of a premium deck costing more dollars than a majority of the rest of the format. I'm not getting the desired performance ratio per dollars spent out of the Jund deck because WOTC decided to make the format more diverse.
Bant feels stronger at closing out games if an opponent doesn't have an ideal start. Which makes it well suited for longer tournaments.
UW feels like it plays much better against interactive matches with a solid game 1. It just can't turn up as much pressure as bant as quickly if your opponent stumbles (t3 coco into double lord).
At least in my experience this has been the case. I prefer UW but it plays better for my meta. In an open field I'd more than likely run bant because if even a few of your matches are you going hierarch, traft, coco hitting double captain then you're that much further into a tournament because lets be real...what is beating that? Take 9, take lethal while your opponent has gone into maybe t3? All your opponent can do is hold up mana to stop the coco or removal on the hierarch game 1 against those hands.
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Oh well, i won't complain as long as spirits is top of the meta and doing well (especially since we got so much love in m19), we'll see in the next set if we'll get our most-needed 1CMC spirit
Elves || GSpirits G || Spirits || Fish
Pauper
GElvesG || CAffinityC
Commander
G Roon (and the Hidden Realms) G
Ive played burn and mardu pyromancer before and ive just completed this deck.
I would like some feedback, tips etc. My local meta have alot of creature decks and a few combo decks.
We have 2 playing Valakut which is why i like Leonin Arbiter.
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Supreme Phantom
2 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Drogskol Captain
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
4 Rattlechains
3 Selfless Spirit
4 Spell Queller
4 Nebelgast Herald
Enchantment
1 Curious Obsession
1 Horizon Canopy
3 Seachrome Coast
2 Moorland Haunt
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Windswept Heath
1 Mutavault
2 Plains
4 Island
Artifact
4 Aether Vial
Instant
4 Path to Exile
1 Nikko-Onna
2 Leonin Arbiter
1 Remorseful Cleric
2 Rest in Peace
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Pithing Needle
1 Echoing Truth
1 Mana Leak
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Disdainful Stroke
Truth is whatever the counterspell we decide to use, there's a downside to live with. Negate doesn't cover creatures, which I need a counterspell to be able to. Unified will doesn't work on an empty board, which happens, nor when your opponent has got more, frequently happening against vizier, hardened scales and elves. I think mana leak is the best compromise but it won't help against a miracled terminus, and won't help against scapeshift cast on seven lands nor against tron in a good amount of times.
I want a clean counterspell so I'm stretching the numbers in my mana base and live with that tempo loss when I'm forced to cast it on turn 2 with no vial on the table. I have never felt like "I need a better counterspell than deprive" since I have brought the 3 copies in my side. It's been one year now since November 2017, I consider it a staple card as much as the 2x eidolon. Those are the 5 cards I have never shaved so far.
As for the 1cmc spirit yes, that would have helped a lot, yet I believe a late game SV is a decent gamble. You might end up drawing a land as much as a creature with a higher mana cost which means a heavier impact. Having it in form of a spirit creature would have given so much explosiveness to this version though.
You've got tons of coloured sources, you can shave some for extra utility lands. I think 1x cavern of souls is something to have, and the deck can definitely work with 4 grey lands (mutavaults, moorlands) if 21 is your land count. I have loved and relied on the Moorland haunt - nebelgast herald interaction for all the time untill Phantom has been released and I can say it's been one of the bet features of my deck for a long time, but now I think we're better off with 8 lords + mutavault and the beat down plan. Also the 4th seachrome coast is more important than the 2nd hallowed fountain; and the first four fetchlands should always be flooded strands for obvious reasons
I like the old school approach to the deck so for me 4x selfless are stock, especially in a metagame where humans, jund and GB are a thing: fogging or trading selfless for a removal aimed at spell queller or drogskol captain is very relevant nowadays.
In my opinion UW doesn't work if you don't provide a reasonable amount of drawing and filtering. It happened to me to rank 2nd to a 53 people pptq this summer, or to hit the first place at some FNM with a lists that didn't have many ways to draw, fact if that you'll have a hard time hitting an overall 70% win rate with no card draw or deck manipulation, on the long term . I'm sold to this idea right now, the best advice I can give you is to lower the curve and add 4 cheap cards that make you draw.
In your side I don't see stony silence. They are a bit narrow but very relevant, they shut down entire strategies on their own... pithing needle isn't that great of a card for us instead. Not sure about ensnaring bridge, you won't attack either And valakut is scary but overall it's a 60-40 in our favor once you learn how to play against that deck, arbiters seem unnecessary.
The consensus is that bant is better than UW. I have played bant just once and that was before the bant-vial version came up, so I can speak for UW only. KCI and Dredge are good matchups, sure, you'll always lose the game where they pull off a crazy start, but on average I am happy when I'm playing against those decks. My record against dredge is 9 wins, 3 losses so far since the end of September.
I wonder if a deck that plays Curious Obsession and Serum Visions might actually be able to make some hay out of Topplegeist.
Deprive works in all those situations but that UU casting cost makes me hesitant as in personal experience I regularly seem to end up with a colourless land/basic plains - maybe you're right in that it's a later game counterspell that misses that turn 2/3 play but hits the payoff cards after them.
This theoretical 1/1 Surveil 2 Spirit sounds ideal, maybe the Orzhov or Azorius could fit a 1 drop with a scry mechanic into their Guilds in January?!
Yep, this is the way I want to play deprive. Fact is that against Vizier and Elves and KCI you bring them in anyways and hope to hit the blue sources asap. If they have the turn 3 kill deprive is the card that can keep you alive, so I put statistics aside ( I'm a fan of them and Karsten too, FYI) and bring in all the disruptive tools I have access to.
Round 1 v. Boros Burn
Game 1 - I landed a Drogskol and my opponent decided to go upstairs with burn. Got the double Drogskol lock for my board and outraced him.
Game 2 - My opponent decided to prioritise playing sideboard cards - turn 2 Torpor Orb made my Mausoleum Wanderer a little sad, but I had plenty of lords to start winning the damage race and kept Queller up for something bad like Ensnaring Bridge, which he went for to avoid lethal.
Round 2 v. UG Infect
Game 1 - I lost the dice roll and my Paths and Reflector Mage on his Blighted Agents kept meeting Blossoming Defense.
Game 2 - Lots of removal but it was still very close - Settle the Wreckage caught him out and wiped his board.
Game 3 - I played this one slowly with lots of removal and disruption. It came down to a critical turn where he went for a winning line by tapping out for a Become Immense for lethal, which I had the Path for.
Round 3 v. Jund
Game 1 - Inquisition of Kozilek couldn't beat a Turn 3 Lili on an empty board despite his Dark Confidant drawing a Bloodbraid Elf and Kolaghan's Command.
Game 2 - What a difference being on the play makes - Mausoleum Wanderer countered his Inqusition, Thalia and Quellers stopped everything and a Drogskol added the damage
Game 3 - Yet another Inquisition took my Noble Hierarch, which he wasn't sure about in a 2 land, Path, Wanderer, Thalia and Rattlechains hand. I got some beats in before all the removal wiped my board. I had 3 lands and a CoCo whilst my opponent had a Bloodbraid and double Dark Confidant on 2 life. I drew another CoCo and a Mana Leak whilst my opponent's Bobs drew 4 lands over 2 turns.
Round 4 v. Affinity
Game 1 - Both mulled to 6, he played out triple Signal Pest but only had Vault Skirge and Inkmoth as threats. I managed to swing a big combat step with a Path on the Vault Skirge after I Vialed in an Image to copy it, which traded with the Inkmoth and denied him the lifegain he needed to keep up in the race.
Game 2 - he had a reasonable Affinity start but not the fastest. I proritised board development to dissuade him from chipping in with damage before landing a Stony Silence and a Knight of Autumn on a Vault Skirge. He went for a Whipflare on my Noble/Knight/Rattlechains board, which I let resolve with CoCo in hand. He went to combat with a mixture of low power creatures, CoCo hit double lord and that was pretty much game. Didn't even have time to play my Settle or Worship.
I played Bant to try and settle whether I felt it was a better version of UW for me and I'm still quite undecided. I really dislike the mana base as I feel it does add up damage over the course of a game, which made the Burn matchup closer than it could otherwise have been and gave me one less turn in the Jund games I lost. Noble Hierarch is a great option Turn 1 but as we've discussed, Serum Visions could fill that role for UW. I also think having access to more utility lands makes a big difference in the grindier matchups.
Overall, I think I prefer the style of UW, especially as Spirits really cares about what you want to hit off a CoCo and when you want to CoCo. Think it's back to UW for me with Serum Visions.
stop telling me to play bant spirits
EDIT: the answer to this: i'm in love with the coco
Elves || GSpirits G || Spirits || Fish
Pauper
GElvesG || CAffinityC
Commander
G Roon (and the Hidden Realms) G
It generated a good deal of debate on the Facebook groups as well. As I see it, UW gets more utility lands, which I really like, and a less painful mana base, which helps in quite a few matchups, whereas Bant gets Noble and CoCo as payoffs. I personally feel UW plays more to Spirits' strengths of instant speed disruption/tempo elements, which foregoes the quicker starts of an unchecked Hierarch and the refuelling potential of a CoCo. Bant also has a slightly broader sideboard choice with Green mana available, but in turn CoCo means that you don't want to play as many non-creature spells as UW so that might be a moot point.
I wonder if people start bringing hate for Spirits then UW might be better positioned to play sideboard cards to counter/disrupt their plans. I don't know if Spirits is worth narrow hate like Raking Canopy, but I certainly feel in my (limited) experience with both versions that Bant has the narrower playstyle and could be more easily hated on.
I'm also wondering if this is a friendly metagame to Spirit of the Labyrinth, or maybe it's just this moment of the metagames where phoenix strategies are being seen everywhere and the hype is going to dilute with the passsage of the weeks.
All in all, i think it might be an interesting addition as long as phoenix decks are among the best decks out there, with incidental hate on other combo and control.
NB. as stated before, eidolon of rhetoric and wetball are solid options in addition to RIP
Elves || GSpirits G || Spirits || Fish
Pauper
GElvesG || CAffinityC
Commander
G Roon (and the Hidden Realms) G
Nebelgast herald is my pick over GoST in the current metagame by the way, too fast, too many trying to aggro you out and control decks being set back are the reasons why I believe GoSt ain't the best spirit for the UW version right now. I have also seen death shadows going up, not just locally but also at the local RPTQ. Nebelgast herald is matchwinner against them, definitely one of those cards I need to draw at one point to screw their plans and race them back. Herald also lets me cut 2-3 PtE against control comfortably because I know I have ways to deal with their 5/5s. I believe 2x in the 75 are very reasonable as things stand.
There are valid reasons for those who favour UW over Bant. Personally I'm on the Bant side of things.
But based on the only quantifiable metrics available, Bant is better. Higher play rate, appearances in top 8s across multiple GPs.
UW feels like it plays much better against interactive matches with a solid game 1. It just can't turn up as much pressure as bant as quickly if your opponent stumbles (t3 coco into double lord).
At least in my experience this has been the case. I prefer UW but it plays better for my meta. In an open field I'd more than likely run bant because if even a few of your matches are you going hierarch, traft, coco hitting double captain then you're that much further into a tournament because lets be real...what is beating that? Take 9, take lethal while your opponent has gone into maybe t3? All your opponent can do is hold up mana to stop the coco or removal on the hierarch game 1 against those hands.