5% of good opponents you beat on the past are now even. Maybe not much to worry, but player should knew this now bevore getting surprised sometimes. edit: saw after posting again 2 matches on stream prison versus Tron and they won both. Red prison is on uptick watch soon 5:0 results on mtgo everywhere with
Well I went 3-2 today in my first real league with the deck. Put a bunch of time into testing and it didn't disappoint. It was my B day today so I was unfocused due to the calls and stuff so I punted against day's Undoing Combo, I had a good chance of winning that match if I just ... remembered to use my Nature's Claim lol
Anyhow here's the quick scoop:
Just played a league 3-2, lost to the New Days Undoing Combo and in the mirror to Creator Tron. CacharroDelMal and I spoke about the tech choices he made, in G3, he grabbed a Skite and nullified my Ulamog cast triggers, allowing him to protect his karn. He also Sided in Warping wail, so the tron lists I'm seeing are "Creator" Lists, I beat
2-0 Win GB midrange (through 3x Fulminator, 3x Field and a Surgical), that's how good Karn is 2-0 here,
Eldrazi Tron 2-1 Win
UW Midrange 2-0 Win
Lost to UB Days Undoing and the Mirror (Great tech on his part). I also misplayed against Days Undoing since I had a billion calls for my B day...I wasn't focus for that G3. Decks, really GOOD.
Lastly: My buddy who mainly plays legacy messaged me about Creator Tron, and I gave him the run down. He went 2-3 and then 5-0 in his 2nd league. Once he figured out the configurations he messaged me a few meme like pics of board states against humans and the like. the 5-0 league saw him retain 3x Thragdaddy's in the SB. No TKS
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Standard Arena: Eh? Gruul or Die
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now: G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record) C Eldrazi Tron (9-5) UG Infect RW Burn
What were both your sideboards? I'm deciding between one board with 7 wish targets and 3 thrag 3 claim 2 dismember; or one minus the dismembers and plus 2 more wish targets. What wish targets do you guys find are locks for slot, and which are fringe or don't quite make the cut? Thoughts on o-stone taking up a wish slot? Witchbane? Ballista? Crucible?
What were both your sideboards? I'm deciding between one board with 7 wish targets and 3 thrag 3 claim 2 dismember; or one minus the dismembers and plus 2 more wish targets. What wish targets do you guys find are locks for slot, and which are fringe or don't quite make the cut? Thoughts on o-stone taking up a wish slot? Witchbane? Ballista? Crucible?
I personally believe the only locks for the wishboard are Oblivion Stone, Mycosynth Lattice, Walking Ballista, and a graveyard hate rock. O. Stone is good at clearing out darn near any dire board state, Mycosynth is the most over-the-top thing you can do with Karn, the Great Creator, and Ballista does anything from block one guy and ping another on Turn 3 to wipe boards and become a must-kill threat on later turns. The yard hate rock (Grafdigger's Cage, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt) doesn't take up much sideboard space and can be boarded in if you think your opponent can do something busted on Turn 2 that involves the graveyard. Cage is likely the best overall, especially if you fear people cheating out stuff from their library such as Allosaurus Grishoalbrand, Chord of Calling, Bring to Light, and Madcap Experiment, but Tormod's Crypt is your best yard hate rock against Living End.
...Except I've seen 1-2 MTGO lists without O. Stone in the wishboard, so they clearly don't think it's a lock.
Witchbane Orb is close to a lock in an open meta--I'll assume an open meta contains enough Burn and RG Valakut to make Witchbane worth it. Witchbane is only good against UR Storm in Game 1, and in Game 1, you'll conserve sideboard slots wishing for graveyard hate instead.
I think a fat regular sideboard with the requisite number of Thragtusks and Thought-Knot Seers can afford to not run Crucible of Worlds in the wishboard. You might end up exiling your own blown-up lands with Relic, anyway, and TKS and Thrag are quite good at tiding you over while you have 4+ lands but not the Tron.
That's interesting. I don't see O-stone as a lock in my wishboard because I'm on 3 maindeck in my build and I feel I can move one to the side post-board for access to wishing it. I prefer that because I have many more cards in my wish board than you do and slots are extremely tight.
I originally thought ballista was a lock, but now I'm certain that a creature is a lock but I'm changing whether that creature is ballista or spellskite. Spellskite often blocks better than ballista (if you're wishing it on turn 3 with 3 mana left) and skite is a silver bullet in a few matchups. I'm currently seeing infect in local paper tournies so skite is getting the nod right now.
Grafdigger's cage is my lock for my graveyard hate slot. I typically will move cage to my maindeck postboard against dredge to hit it turn 1, and move a relic to the side as a wish target late. My sideboard also includes 1 surgical extraction so postboard I have 1 relic, 1 surgical, and 1 cage in my maindeck to hit early and I have 1 relic in my board as a wish target.
Lattice is definitely a lock as it's a 6 mana better than ulamog card a lot of the time.
Witchbane orb is something I've flipped back and forth on. Sometimes the 4th mana cost makes it feel bad and too slow, other times it's turn 4 against titanshift and I really wish I had the witchbane in there because it would have lined up perfectly. Ive also beaten mill because they couldn't target me with their spells or (some) of their triggers anymore.
Ensnaring bridge is absolutely a lock in my list at the moment. Before creator karn was printed I was VERY off of this card as I didn't see how it worked with the tron shell. But in practice, boy it does work. Early game against phoenix, titan, shadow; later against humans once you empty your hand more. It's been pretty important in spots for me to protect creator so I can lattice lock next turn with creatures on the board.
Trinisphere has been my single best performing card thus far. It has won multiple times more games singlehandedly than any other card. Other than the obvious times (infect, phoenix) the card is EXTREMELY punishing to modern decks that operate on low land counts or miss land drops early. A lot of times the trinisphere tells the opponent "you have 1 turn to use at least 3 mana on a spell to stop me from latticing you next turn and locking you out of the game with your empty board state" and if they don't have a card, which they likely won't or likely can't pay the mana tax, it's a free win basically. I've used this card against way more of the field than I anticipated because it's great in spots where the opponent can't pay the tax regardless of what deck they are.
One more card that isn't a lock but is proving really well is sorcerous spyglass. Looking at the hand of control players at a 2 mana cost is pretty good; considering I've cut TKS for my list for better combo hate cards like trinisphere. You can shut off planewalkers from bgx or UWx, it's good against robot varieties,field of ruin,the mirror,and griselbrand to name a few. I feel like I'm forgetting some other utility of this card as well.
So I've tried both a small wish board (6 cards) and large (9-10) cards and Liquimetal Coating usually makes the cut in the latter but no the former. The first turn it comes down it shuts off a land on the opponents turn with creator's passive (weak to lightning bolt out of titan decks) but that one turn can mean everything againt titan or the mirror. Coating becomes absurd the following turn, when you can then turn the opponent's land into an artifact and then uptick on it with creator to turn it into a 0/0 creature and kill it. So basically you can make a makeshift karn liberated that eats lands and have 8 copies of karn in the mirror (or use the coating 1 time to shut them off karn while you lattice the next turn). The popularity of tron right now and the prevalence of the mirror are reason to include this card in larger wish boards. 8 karns in the mirror is good.
Crucible is a great card and I ran one in my side pre-wishboard testing quite often. I started with one in my wish board but in testing I'm not sure I like how it played out. Against the two decks I want crucible (bgx and uwx), i found a turn 4 creator on 4 mana into tutoring crucible was just not doing anything. Before, I could play the crucible on turn 3 against bgx or I could bait uwx into countering a 1 mana ancient stirrings on turn 4 to easily resolve crucible there. crucible coming down 2 turns slower against bgx is not helpful, and trying to resolve crucible against uwx in this scenario is more difficult as well. With how tight my sideboard list is, I'm just not sure if this card is making enough impact to deserve a slot as a wish target when other options are more powerful.
So here's where I'm at with testing. My maindeck is identical whether I'm doing a small or large wishboard:
12 tron land
4 forest
1 ghost quarter
1 sanctum of ugin
1 blast zone (hands down the best colorless utility land we have access too and the only one that gives green producing Horizon Canopy competition for the slot)
With this build I'm keeping spot removal in because I don't want to auto lose to infect, devoted druid, etc. Pretty much swapping tks in the board for silver bullets against different combo decks.
Losing spot removal and a thragtusk to have more turn 3 wish targets against the field and have witchbane against titan, burn, mill, etc. Also walking ballista is a great card turn 3 and later but again I prefer skite if I'm using a smaller wish board, at least right now.
There's lots of testing and practicing to be done but I feel like the minimalistic wish board replacing TKS with silver bullets has some real legs. It lowers the curve of the maindeck a good bit, gives us a maindeck threat against blood moon in creator, and gives us a one sided stony silence which is super nice against all kinds of decks. It's really hard to say with any certainty whether this build or the traditional build is better right now, but I think they are within small percentage points of one another regardless so there's a lot to be gained in testing this new configuration when we know what we have in the traditional build and we know how to pilot it.
In my opinion, the current "locks" are Bridge, Cage, Lattice, and 3Ball (some lists run Chalice over 3Ball, but 3Ball is far more popular). Almost every list that's been posted so far runs these 4 cards.
After that, extremely common cards I've seen have been Witchbane, Defense Grid, Spyglass, Crucible, and Ballista. I think over half the lists that have been posted run some number of these cards.
Minority picks that come up once in a while but aren't overly common are O-Stone, Wurmcoil, Skite, Tormod's, Needle, and Coating. Coating seems a lot more popular in the Mono-Red Prison lists, as those lists have a better chance of going all-in on an early Karn.
How better is the new wish list with KTGC compared with the classic Gtron list?Is the change worth it?
I know both list play some wurmcoil /ballista mix, but I love the my big tentacle monsters ,my singleton world breaker, TKS ready in the side...and the list newseem more like a counter hate/lock deck using the wish sideboard plus a the classic.
(TLDR) All this said, it's pretty close. It's close enough to as good that a lot of people will do it-, because -the card and its toolbox aspect is very fun, and it's been so long since this deck has gotten anything to be excited about.
I think sicsmoo said it best but I took some liberties with the quote, click sicsmoo's name for the full unadulterated original.
Quick question: the featured Tron deck on MTGGoldfish for me right now is the New Karn, the Great Creator version of the deck, but it also has an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in the maindeck. Is that just spice that happened to work or is the card making a comeback?
Quick question: the featured Tron deck on MTGGoldfish for me right now is the New Karn, the Great Creator version of the deck, but it also has an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in the maindeck. Is that just spice that happened to work or is the card making a comeback?
I think it's just spice that happened to work. Emrakul 1.0 costs a whopping 15 mana, and in a Modern meta this fast, I'd think that a 15-mana card is a liability. I'd rather run Relic of Progenitus #3 or Karn, the Great Creator #4.
How better is the new wish list with KTGC compared with the classic Gtron list?Is the change worth it?
I know both list play some wurmcoil /ballista mix, but I love the my big tentacle monsters ,my singleton world breaker, TKS ready in the side...and the list newseem more like a counter hate/lock deck using the wish sideboard plus a the classic.
I'd say the Karn GC version is definitely worth it in a more combo-heavy meta because Karn GC can outright steal Game 1 from combo decks (and I've ran into too many combo-playing opponents who comboed off through Karn Liberated) without sacrificing too much against any other deck type. I'd say that the average open meta (GP, MTGO, etc.) has enough combo that I'd rather play a Karn GC list.
Emrakul could also just be a way to win through a board like Karn GC on both side plus mycosynth on either side (discard emrakul, shuffle your graveyard into your library, can't deck yourself, gg).
Emrakul could also just be a way to win through a board like Karn GC on both side plus mycosynth on either side (discard emrakul, shuffle your graveyard into your library, can't deck yourself, gg).
That's so narrow that I'd honestly go for Kozilek, Butcher of Truth if that's the case because at least Kozi 1.0 can be cast as early as turn four if that scenario doesn't happen.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Hmm, it seems like a mistake not to have a Wurmcoil and O-Stone in the wish board. O-Stone is such a get out of jail card. Wurmcoil for when you REALLY need to stabilize. Ballista is great, too. Keeping those 3 in tact almost makes it as if those 3x KCG were barely taking up room in the deck if your plan is just to just do Tron things. Your deck isn't sacrificing much to be a tool-box deck that does not dilute your main game plan whatsoever.
It's feeling as if 3x Claims are a lock---but TKS seems less useful than the combo hate artifacts.
With the influx of Tron players to appear, Liquidmetal coating seems good for now the meta.
Also, you guys keep referencing Witchbane Orb against Titanshift. Can't they just Valakut all of our threats to death?
Also, you guys keep referencing Witchbane Orb against Titanshift. Can't they just Valakut all of our threats to death?
I think in most cases they'll just concede to Witchbane in game 1, assuming they don't have a random Rec Sage or are playing the Woodfall/Breach version. If not, we just Lattice or Ulamog them.
They still have titans to beat face with so its not quite a beat down.
If you get bridge (or just kill all the titans the turns after they play them) they still die. Hoping to attack with titans is kind of living on a prayer.
They still have titans to beat face with so its not quite a beat down.
True, but without Valakut, Titan is just a 6/6 and we should have no problem dealing with it. I used to run 4x Leyline of the Void maindeck in Tron (this was years ago, back when Storm and Valakut were huge) and as long as I had a Leyline in play I really wasn't afraid at all of their Primeval Titans.
Hmm, it seems like a mistake not to have a Wurmcoil and O-Stone in the wish board. O-Stone is such a get out of jail card. Wurmcoil for when you REALLY need to stabilize. Ballista is great, too. Keeping those 3 in tact almost makes it as if those 3x KCG were barely taking up room in the deck if your plan is just to just do Tron things. Your deck isn't sacrificing much to be a tool-box deck that does not dilute your main game plan whatsoever.
It's feeling as if 3x Claims are a lock---but TKS seems less useful than the combo hate artifacts.
With the influx of Tron players to appear, Liquidmetal coating seems good for now the meta.
Also, you guys keep referencing Witchbane Orb against Titanshift. Can't they just Valakut all of our threats to death?
On Wurmcoil in the wishboard:
I think Wurmcoil is only justifiable in metas heavy on Stony Silence effects. In an open meta, I need that one more free sideboard slot to counter Tron hate (cheap removal for Gaddock Teeg, enchantment removal for Moons and Stony), slow down fast decks (Thragtusk, additional graveyard hate), or have the cheaper threat density to slog through losing the Tron (Thrag, Thought-Knot Seer). Since I swapped out Wurmcoil for Walking Ballista in the wishboard, I haven't regretted it: Ballista's ability to save me on Turn 3 or without the Tron has been invaluable.
On Liquimetal Coating in the wishboard:
Only if your meta is really Gx Tron-infested, IMO. Even then, wished-for Spellskite trumps the Liquimetal plan (and is generally my Turn 3 Karn, the Great Creator tutor target in the mirror because it also prevents opposing Karn Liberated from doing anything useful for a crucial turn--just long enough to Mycosynth Lattice them out of the game), and Spellskite is useful against more decks.
On Witchbane Orb vs. Titanshift/RG Valakut:
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Witchbane plan against RG Valakut (at least in Game 1). I've found that losing Karn GC to tutor for Witchbane is worth it. Yes, RG Valakut will now use their Valakut triggers to kill all our guys instead. Yes, if they don't maindeck artifact removal, they may get creative with Scapeshift (Scapeshift can cheat in enough Valakut triggers to OHKO Ugin, the Spirit Dragon). Yes, they're very capable of killing Karn GC and breaking up the Mycosynth lock with simply Valakut triggers. But preventing immediate KOs from Scapeshift and Primeval Titan lets you stabilize that well.
Enough Witchbanes and maybe RG Valakut will put Blast Zone in their 75. Seems like an underrated option in that rival mondo ramp deck, anyway.
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Anyhow here's the quick scoop:
Just played a league 3-2, lost to the New Days Undoing Combo and in the mirror to Creator Tron. CacharroDelMal and I spoke about the tech choices he made, in G3, he grabbed a Skite and nullified my Ulamog cast triggers, allowing him to protect his karn. He also Sided in Warping wail, so the tron lists I'm seeing are "Creator" Lists, I beat
2-0 Win GB midrange (through 3x Fulminator, 3x Field and a Surgical), that's how good Karn is 2-0 here,
Eldrazi Tron 2-1 Win
UW Midrange 2-0 Win
Lost to UB Days Undoing and the Mirror (Great tech on his part). I also misplayed against Days Undoing since I had a billion calls for my B day...I wasn't focus for that G3. Decks, really GOOD.
Lastly: My buddy who mainly plays legacy messaged me about Creator Tron, and I gave him the run down. He went 2-3 and then 5-0 in his 2nd league. Once he figured out the configurations he messaged me a few meme like pics of board states against humans and the like. the 5-0 league saw him retain 3x Thragdaddy's in the SB. No TKS
Modern: Decks I'm playing right now:
G Mono Green Tron (34-10-3 paper record, only SCG/Regionals/PPTQ record)
C Eldrazi Tron (9-5)
UG Infect
RW Burn
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
I personally believe the only locks for the wishboard are Oblivion Stone, Mycosynth Lattice, Walking Ballista, and a graveyard hate rock. O. Stone is good at clearing out darn near any dire board state, Mycosynth is the most over-the-top thing you can do with Karn, the Great Creator, and Ballista does anything from block one guy and ping another on Turn 3 to wipe boards and become a must-kill threat on later turns. The yard hate rock (Grafdigger's Cage, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt) doesn't take up much sideboard space and can be boarded in if you think your opponent can do something busted on Turn 2 that involves the graveyard. Cage is likely the best overall, especially if you fear people cheating out stuff from their library such as Allosaurus Grishoalbrand, Chord of Calling, Bring to Light, and Madcap Experiment, but Tormod's Crypt is your best yard hate rock against Living End.
...Except I've seen 1-2 MTGO lists without O. Stone in the wishboard, so they clearly don't think it's a lock.
Witchbane Orb is close to a lock in an open meta--I'll assume an open meta contains enough Burn and RG Valakut to make Witchbane worth it. Witchbane is only good against UR Storm in Game 1, and in Game 1, you'll conserve sideboard slots wishing for graveyard hate instead.
I think a fat regular sideboard with the requisite number of Thragtusks and Thought-Knot Seers can afford to not run Crucible of Worlds in the wishboard. You might end up exiling your own blown-up lands with Relic, anyway, and TKS and Thrag are quite good at tiding you over while you have 4+ lands but not the Tron.
I originally thought ballista was a lock, but now I'm certain that a creature is a lock but I'm changing whether that creature is ballista or spellskite. Spellskite often blocks better than ballista (if you're wishing it on turn 3 with 3 mana left) and skite is a silver bullet in a few matchups. I'm currently seeing infect in local paper tournies so skite is getting the nod right now.
Grafdigger's cage is my lock for my graveyard hate slot. I typically will move cage to my maindeck postboard against dredge to hit it turn 1, and move a relic to the side as a wish target late. My sideboard also includes 1 surgical extraction so postboard I have 1 relic, 1 surgical, and 1 cage in my maindeck to hit early and I have 1 relic in my board as a wish target.
Lattice is definitely a lock as it's a 6 mana better than ulamog card a lot of the time.
Witchbane orb is something I've flipped back and forth on. Sometimes the 4th mana cost makes it feel bad and too slow, other times it's turn 4 against titanshift and I really wish I had the witchbane in there because it would have lined up perfectly. Ive also beaten mill because they couldn't target me with their spells or (some) of their triggers anymore.
Ensnaring bridge is absolutely a lock in my list at the moment. Before creator karn was printed I was VERY off of this card as I didn't see how it worked with the tron shell. But in practice, boy it does work. Early game against phoenix, titan, shadow; later against humans once you empty your hand more. It's been pretty important in spots for me to protect creator so I can lattice lock next turn with creatures on the board.
Trinisphere has been my single best performing card thus far. It has won multiple times more games singlehandedly than any other card. Other than the obvious times (infect, phoenix) the card is EXTREMELY punishing to modern decks that operate on low land counts or miss land drops early. A lot of times the trinisphere tells the opponent "you have 1 turn to use at least 3 mana on a spell to stop me from latticing you next turn and locking you out of the game with your empty board state" and if they don't have a card, which they likely won't or likely can't pay the mana tax, it's a free win basically. I've used this card against way more of the field than I anticipated because it's great in spots where the opponent can't pay the tax regardless of what deck they are.
One more card that isn't a lock but is proving really well is sorcerous spyglass. Looking at the hand of control players at a 2 mana cost is pretty good; considering I've cut TKS for my list for better combo hate cards like trinisphere. You can shut off planewalkers from bgx or UWx, it's good against robot varieties,field of ruin,the mirror,and griselbrand to name a few. I feel like I'm forgetting some other utility of this card as well.
So I've tried both a small wish board (6 cards) and large (9-10) cards and Liquimetal Coating usually makes the cut in the latter but no the former. The first turn it comes down it shuts off a land on the opponents turn with creator's passive (weak to lightning bolt out of titan decks) but that one turn can mean everything againt titan or the mirror. Coating becomes absurd the following turn, when you can then turn the opponent's land into an artifact and then uptick on it with creator to turn it into a 0/0 creature and kill it. So basically you can make a makeshift karn liberated that eats lands and have 8 copies of karn in the mirror (or use the coating 1 time to shut them off karn while you lattice the next turn). The popularity of tron right now and the prevalence of the mirror are reason to include this card in larger wish boards. 8 karns in the mirror is good.
Crucible is a great card and I ran one in my side pre-wishboard testing quite often. I started with one in my wish board but in testing I'm not sure I like how it played out. Against the two decks I want crucible (bgx and uwx), i found a turn 4 creator on 4 mana into tutoring crucible was just not doing anything. Before, I could play the crucible on turn 3 against bgx or I could bait uwx into countering a 1 mana ancient stirrings on turn 4 to easily resolve crucible there. crucible coming down 2 turns slower against bgx is not helpful, and trying to resolve crucible against uwx in this scenario is more difficult as well. With how tight my sideboard list is, I'm just not sure if this card is making enough impact to deserve a slot as a wish target when other options are more powerful.
So here's where I'm at with testing. My maindeck is identical whether I'm doing a small or large wishboard:
12 tron land
4 forest
1 ghost quarter
1 sanctum of ugin
1 blast zone (hands down the best colorless utility land we have access too and the only one that gives green producing Horizon Canopy competition for the slot)
2 Ulamog
3 Wurmcoil
1 Ballista
4 karn liberated
4 karn creator
2 ugin, spirit dragon
4 chromatic sphere
4 chromatic star
4 expedition map
3 oblivion stone
2 relic of progenitus
4 sylvan scrying
4 ancient stirrings
Small wish board:
1 grafdiggers cage
1 trinisphere
1 ensnaring bridge
1 sorcerous spyglass
1 spellskite
1 mycosynth lattice
3 thragtusk
3 nature's claim
2 dismember
1 surgical extraction
With this build I'm keeping spot removal in because I don't want to auto lose to infect, devoted druid, etc. Pretty much swapping tks in the board for silver bullets against different combo decks.
Large wish board:
1 grafdiggers cage
1 trinisphere
1 ensnaring bridge
1 sorcerous spyglass
1 spellskite
1 mycosynth lattice
1 liquimetal coating
1 witchbane orb
1 walking ballista
2 thragtusk
3 nature's claim
1 surgical extraction
Losing spot removal and a thragtusk to have more turn 3 wish targets against the field and have witchbane against titan, burn, mill, etc. Also walking ballista is a great card turn 3 and later but again I prefer skite if I'm using a smaller wish board, at least right now.
There's lots of testing and practicing to be done but I feel like the minimalistic wish board replacing TKS with silver bullets has some real legs. It lowers the curve of the maindeck a good bit, gives us a maindeck threat against blood moon in creator, and gives us a one sided stony silence which is super nice against all kinds of decks. It's really hard to say with any certainty whether this build or the traditional build is better right now, but I think they are within small percentage points of one another regardless so there's a lot to be gained in testing this new configuration when we know what we have in the traditional build and we know how to pilot it.
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
After that, extremely common cards I've seen have been Witchbane, Defense Grid, Spyglass, Crucible, and Ballista. I think over half the lists that have been posted run some number of these cards.
Minority picks that come up once in a while but aren't overly common are O-Stone, Wurmcoil, Skite, Tormod's, Needle, and Coating. Coating seems a lot more popular in the Mono-Red Prison lists, as those lists have a better chance of going all-in on an early Karn.
GX Tron XG
UR Phoenix RU
GG Freyalise High Tide GG
UR Parun Counterspells RU
BB Yawgmoth Token Storm BB
WB Pestilence BW
I know both list play some wurmcoil /ballista mix, but I love the my big tentacle monsters ,my singleton world breaker, TKS ready in the side...and the list newseem more like a counter hate/lock deck using the wish sideboard plus a the classic.
BWC Processors Eldrazi CWB
UBC Emerge EldraziCBU
C Tron Eldrazi C
RBC Meld Eldrazi CBR
GU Tokens Eldrazi UG
I think sicsmoo said it best but I took some liberties with the quote, click sicsmoo's name for the full unadulterated original.
For reference: Here's a link to the list
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
I think it's just spice that happened to work. Emrakul 1.0 costs a whopping 15 mana, and in a Modern meta this fast, I'd think that a 15-mana card is a liability. I'd rather run Relic of Progenitus #3 or Karn, the Great Creator #4.
I'd say the Karn GC version is definitely worth it in a more combo-heavy meta because Karn GC can outright steal Game 1 from combo decks (and I've ran into too many combo-playing opponents who comboed off through Karn Liberated) without sacrificing too much against any other deck type. I'd say that the average open meta (GP, MTGO, etc.) has enough combo that I'd rather play a Karn GC list.
That's so narrow that I'd honestly go for Kozilek, Butcher of Truth if that's the case because at least Kozi 1.0 can be cast as early as turn four if that scenario doesn't happen.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
It's feeling as if 3x Claims are a lock---but TKS seems less useful than the combo hate artifacts.
With the influx of Tron players to appear, Liquidmetal coating seems good for now the meta.
Also, you guys keep referencing Witchbane Orb against Titanshift. Can't they just Valakut all of our threats to death?
GX Tron XG
UR Phoenix RU
GG Freyalise High Tide GG
UR Parun Counterspells RU
BB Yawgmoth Token Storm BB
WB Pestilence BW
On Wurmcoil in the wishboard:
I think Wurmcoil is only justifiable in metas heavy on Stony Silence effects. In an open meta, I need that one more free sideboard slot to counter Tron hate (cheap removal for Gaddock Teeg, enchantment removal for Moons and Stony), slow down fast decks (Thragtusk, additional graveyard hate), or have the cheaper threat density to slog through losing the Tron (Thrag, Thought-Knot Seer). Since I swapped out Wurmcoil for Walking Ballista in the wishboard, I haven't regretted it: Ballista's ability to save me on Turn 3 or without the Tron has been invaluable.
On Liquimetal Coating in the wishboard:
Only if your meta is really Gx Tron-infested, IMO. Even then, wished-for Spellskite trumps the Liquimetal plan (and is generally my Turn 3 Karn, the Great Creator tutor target in the mirror because it also prevents opposing Karn Liberated from doing anything useful for a crucial turn--just long enough to Mycosynth Lattice them out of the game), and Spellskite is useful against more decks.
On Witchbane Orb vs. Titanshift/RG Valakut:
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Witchbane plan against RG Valakut (at least in Game 1). I've found that losing Karn GC to tutor for Witchbane is worth it. Yes, RG Valakut will now use their Valakut triggers to kill all our guys instead. Yes, if they don't maindeck artifact removal, they may get creative with Scapeshift (Scapeshift can cheat in enough Valakut triggers to OHKO Ugin, the Spirit Dragon). Yes, they're very capable of killing Karn GC and breaking up the Mycosynth lock with simply Valakut triggers. But preventing immediate KOs from Scapeshift and Primeval Titan lets you stabilize that well.
Enough Witchbanes and maybe RG Valakut will put Blast Zone in their 75. Seems like an underrated option in that rival mondo ramp deck, anyway.