Ok, so this might not be the right place for this, but something I've been wondering is whether Chord is the right second tutor here in a deck that focuses so much on putting creatures in and out of the yard.
Evolution makes us very weak to graveyard hate already, so maybe it'd be worth considering Gifts Ungiven instead of Chord? There are many gifts packages with eldritch evolution that are quite strong if durdly and end in either kiki combo or lark combo pretty easily.
Being able to just go for gifts-norn seems reasonable too, T3 gifts untap and rites norn has won a lot of games. A package of 3 gifts/1 rites/4 evolution seems reasonable.
That's not a terrible idea, actually.
The most recent iterations of gifts that did anything were abzan splashing blue anyway, so you don't lose much (in theory) by including a couple of gifts as an experiment.
Worth a try at least. The issues are obvious though. The "combo" is slow and feels bad when drawn. Without Liliana or some way to discard your combo pieces they get stranded in your hand majorly. This could be the nail in the coffin for the idea, but try it out anyway.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
including gifts in the deck really strains the slots being taken up by toolbox creatures right now. I already experienced awkward draws when I tried 1 Elesh norn/Ruric, but having to include an unburial rites as well as a few gifts, which is awful in multiples, seems like a recipe for constant mulligans. Chord fits because it doesn't need a bunch of unwieldy support cards and works fine in multiples, as long as you can keep your board full.
Edit: That came out pretty negative. I'm not dismissing gifts outright, just cautious of an inherently "clunky" card in a deck that can feel pretty clunky at times.
This is similar to how the Nic Fit discussion went on the source. Just because we can play a lot of clunky jank doesnt mean we should. I'm of the opinion that chord is by far the superior tutor after playing a ton with Evolution as a 4 of. I only really wanted to see Evo maybe once but always wanted to see chord.
including gifts in the deck really strains the slots being taken up by toolbox creatures right now. I already experienced awkward draws when I tried 1 Elesh norn/Ruric, but having to include an unburial rites as well as a few gifts, which is awful in multiples, seems like a recipe for constant mulligans. Chord fits because it doesn't need a bunch of unwieldy support cards and works fine in multiples, as long as you can keep your board full.
Edit: That came out pretty negative. I'm not dismissing gifts outright, just cautious of an inherently "clunky" card in a deck that can feel pretty clunky at times.
There's no reason you have to play norn/rites--Gifts for the lark/kiki/witness/resto package, or gifts for 4 different red producing lands, or whatever.
I'm kind of personally coming around to the idea that Chord is still better than evolution because of how it lets you cheat on mana with a wide board and interact at instant speed, but I think gifts might be better with evolution (because evolution really rewards you for filling your yard up with creatures).
I'm kind of personally coming around to the idea that Chord is still better than evolution because of how it lets you cheat on mana with a wide board and interact at instant speed
chord is obviously great if you have the mana, but people seem to be dodging or ignoring the fact that chord tends to be great when things are going well for you, and awful (sitting in your hand doing nothing) when things don't go that well, or your opponent has a fast start (or you have a slow one). just pitching out a disruptive 3-drop like pontiff costs 6 mana, which is too much against most of what you need those disruptive cards for in the first place.
hasn't anyone noticed the deck doing better in tournaments since the printing of eldritch evolution? there seems to be a noticeable uptick in results.
take for instance the many super-aggro decks that can potentially kill on turn 3 or 4, and are tier 1 or close. chord in those matchups is, on average, an expensive do-nothing. Evolution, on the other hand, can come down early and fetch something to stem the tide, slow the game down to your level, and let you start recouping advantage (and, yes, eventually allow you to cast that chord)
this is why Hoogland has moved to a 4:2 split of evo:chord. chord is a great late-game bullet-finder and finisher. evo is the card which lets you turn the early game around in your favour.
personally, i've found evo to be an absolute powerhouse against decks like infect, affinity and similar. anything where Orzhov Pontiff can wreck their day, or nekrataal, or archangel of tithes. these cards are blowouts in the right situation, but chording for 6 mana on turn 2, or 7 mana on turn 3, is not feasible.
[aside:i know people prefer shriekmaw to nekrataal, and their reasoning is sound, but at 5 mana it's often a whole turn (or two) too slow, and you really need to focus on using the faster, more proactive 2-to-4 jump to have a chance against the decks that put on early pressure]
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
One thing is bothering me.
EE is legal for a month or so now...In my testings so far I've came to a conclusion that Nahiri - Emmy package is more consistent, or is that just me? I've tried both blue and black version, /w and w/o Nahiri and currently i am playing "old" black version except I got split of 3 EE/2 Chords/3 paths and it's much more stable.
One thing is bothering me.
EE is legal for a month or so now...In my testings so far I've came to a conclusion that Nahiri - Emmy package is more consistent, or is that just me? I've tried both blue and black version, /w and w/o Nahiri and currently i am playing "old" black version except I got split of 3 EE/2 Chords/3 paths and it's much more stable.
Interested in other opinions :9
Cheers!
Funny, because I also came on this thread to read or maybe ask about it. I also like Nahiri a lot, and was wondering if it's still worth playing it over Evo. 4 nahiri's + emrakul + some evo's and chord seem to be a bit too much, especially as it'd mean removing removals to fit the creatures we need, while removal is often important to let nahiri live. Also, I think I prefer black atm too, but I like being able to play an exarch, as an out to enchantments or artifacts in combinaison with a nahiri.
And in more mainstream lists, did anyone consider playing some bolts instead of path? I find I often want to remove something early game, when I'm not willing to use a path.
[aside:i know people prefer shriekmaw to nekrataal, and their reasoning is sound, but at 5 mana it's often a whole turn (or two) too slow, and you really need to focus on using the faster, more proactive 2-to-4 jump to have a chance against the decks that put on early pressure]
I know this has been said before, but you brought it up again so there we go - Shriekmaw really is a 1B removal spell more than anything if it's in your hand. Nothing proactive about having a Nekrataal stranded in your hand cause you can't pay BB.
Concede and move on is pretty much is my experience vs Valakut decks. You need a good mix of pressure and disruption in order to beat them. If they are on BTL, hope you get a Eidolon of rhetoric into play fast enough. Magus is fine but dies to bolt/anger etc.
How often are you all finding that you are boarding in the 4th Path to Exile if you are running it in the sideboard? I feel like the 2x lightning helix and shriekmaw covers the bases for removal, but that may not be correct as the path is 1 mana removal.
Trying a split of Wall of Omens and Wall of Roots, as sometimes I've found the mana ramp to be more useful than the extra card depending on the situation.
Thinking of picking up this deck as I already have a lot of pieces to build it (I play primarily Abzan Company). What do you guys think of Hoogland's straight up Naya list as opposed to the ones running a black splash? Is the extra consistency worth losing the black cards?
After testing against dredge, Anafenza isn't that good. Yixlid Jailer is a much better card for the anti dredge slot though it doesn't work against Snapcaster Mage(neither does Anafenza) because it deals with stuff already in the yard like conflagrate, bloodghast, every card with dredge, etc.
Im interested in seeing how good EE is. In my opinion, the biggest downfall of our chord decks is their atrocious curve. Wotc keeps printing awesome 4 drops, and over the last few years, our already-bad curve (due to the nature of having our combo be between a 4 drop and 5 drop, and chord being essentially a 4-5 drop, in the context of having a strong first few turns) has gotten increasingly worse. There are ways to smooth it out a little, but simply adding more dorks raises other consistency issues.
Im hoping EE, while only sometimes a '3-drop' due to the sacrifice clause (I feel that hooglands curve has been slipping more and more,going from an already very high 9 4+ drops including chord, to 13-14 4+ drops, like in the latest nahiri editions), and EE 'might' be a useful solution. I have felt for a long time that chord, while a great late-game engine and instant speed midgame trick/hate-card tutor/combo piece, still has its problems: cluttering up opening turns of the game and being awkward relatively often due to its high total cost in the high-powered modern format (8 permanants to find kikijiki is still alot for example). Its still amazing a lot, dont get me wrong, but i think theres a little bit of a 'rose covered glasses' going with cards like chord, because of how freaking sweet they can be when they are great, and the stories they invoke. I know most of my favorite plays with the deck involved chord.
Of course we have mana accel, with wall of roots performing especially well in our deck, but they come at a cost, with our deck being nearly half mana sources. This ratio performs well against many modern decks, we still run into some issues against the grindier matchups, drawing too many bricks. Given that most of our deck is designed to slow the game down in order to combo/value our opponents, one of our many balancing factors of deisgning our list is to have our deck be at our best in the exact game states we try to create (the stalled board). We can alleviate this slightly post-board against jund/grixis/jeskai/esper/etc by taking out a few our even all of our mana dorks for our plentiful powerful sideboard cards in those matchups.
However, due to the fast paced nature of modern, these decks (especially jund)can all apply very early pressure (in turns of board presence, or high value card economy, like a bob+kalitas), so this plan risks us stumbling to having too many high costing, powerful cards to win the lategame. Even with a man dork, just having 2 4 drops and a chord will just lose a lotta games on the draw against those decks. I have definitely felt that I have lost more games against the grindy decks to stumbling, rather than getting outvalued lategame (post board). Siding in lots of removal like we do helps this problem, the 'bad jund deck' role, but I still think we can do better (whether or not we can now with the current card pool, or with EE, remains to be seen imo).
Now, EE has problems too, but it does a similar job as chord (combo them dead) while providing a pretty different avenue of doing it (the sacrifice 'combo' with voice/pia, and being cheaper to cast in a fair number of circumstances (turn 2 fulminator is actually good against tron, unlike turn 4 fulminator, for example).
Still wanna test, could be a flop who knows, just hoping it might fix some of the issues the deck has had in its many iterations.
4th Wall of omens: curve lowering, digs for our important cards, needed sac outlet for EE. Ive been very happy with it so far, and am pretty sure its needed with EE. Wall-> p&k, while not as good as with voice, is still great against a few of the fastest decks in modern, where we need that early p&k regardless. Maybe we will have more 'flipped' voices due to EE, so the filler body will be slightly more relevant. Also, against a blue deck, i'd rather sac the wall than the voice, so they get punished for countering the EE and 'getting' us.
Courser of kruphix: Over the last few years I have felt like courser is one of the best cards in the deck. Like wall of omens, its the 'glue' that holds our deck together, and one of the few non-4 drops that provide a repeatable, 'engine-y' effect to provide advantage. Aggro being on the uptick makes be even more confidant in courser's place in the deck.
6 Mana dorks: I actually want to shave one of the heirarchs, Im just trying to find the right replacement. Maybe a 3rd courser.
0quasali pridemageor reclamation sage: Since we are playing EE, the philosophy of the deck has to change to accommodate that. As such, we are going to be tutoring for 'value' less (or at instant speed to catch an inkmoth or o-stone), and using more of a k.o style card (like posters were saying earlier). I might want the sage in the board, but im still not sure. Theres a relatively small window in games where tutoring for the combo isnt just better, and we might do it with more consistency and faster now that we have 6 tutors. I was rarely impressed with rec sage anyways, and theres SO many decks in modern.
Lone Missionary: In addition to skite and scooze as hate cards, I included lone missonary maindeck over baloth for curve reasons. I feel like missionary is more likely to trip up our opponents when they go for lethal or just being reasonable value against the aggro decks (and our manabase), than other cards providing other 'tricky' value, like pridemage. That said, this (in addition to the 2nd heirach) is a flex spot that I am not sure about.
Devout lightcaster: Ive been wanting to play this baby for awhile now, and the recent 'change' to go naya and play archangel of tithes gave me the courage to finally put it in the SB. Suck it jund!
I played the deck on sunday at a card kingdom event, going 3-1 and losing to mono-u tron, and beating grixis delver, wr soul sisters, and dredge. Notable plays were EEing a witness to get a reveillark against grixis (sweet!), and then game one against dredge I end stepped turn 3 resto, untapped and EEed my courser for kiki-jiki and killed him, whereas I didnt have enough permanents to chord in that spot. Its not much testing and its hardly conclusive, but its a start!
I'm so used to reading "EE" as Engineered Explosives that reading some of these posts about evolution is really tripping me up. As for scapeshift, I just play sin collector and mindcensor and hope I can slow them down enough to combo before they do. I'm thinking about trying Archangel of Tithes in the board since it seems to be popping up a lot and I'm seeing a lot of bushwhacker zoo lately.
I'm so used to reading "EE" as Engineered Explosives that reading some of these posts about evolution is really tripping me up. As for scapeshift, I just play sin collector and mindcensor and hope I can slow them down enough to combo before they do. I'm thinking about trying Archangel of Tithes in the board since it seems to be popping up a lot and I'm seeing a lot of bushwhacker zoo lately.
I'm running tithes in the main, and with good reason.
Really harsh aggro decks can quite easily steal a game 2, even if you board in your hate. You only have to mulligan into a slightly slow hand an bam! Match loss.
By having more of a chance to win game 1 against fast aggro or dredge, you give yourself some breathing room because you only have to win one of the next two games to take the match.
It's an old and well-worn strategy but some people still are surprised by it, so it's worth a single card to sort of pre-board against the fast decks.
And let's be honest, she's a good card either way. Perfectly serviceable body and decent effect against quite a few decks
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
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That's not a terrible idea, actually.
The most recent iterations of gifts that did anything were abzan splashing blue anyway, so you don't lose much (in theory) by including a couple of gifts as an experiment.
Worth a try at least. The issues are obvious though. The "combo" is slow and feels bad when drawn. Without Liliana or some way to discard your combo pieces they get stranded in your hand majorly. This could be the nail in the coffin for the idea, but try it out anyway.
Edit: That came out pretty negative. I'm not dismissing gifts outright, just cautious of an inherently "clunky" card in a deck that can feel pretty clunky at times.
Modern
Value Town
Amulet Titan
Legacy
4C Loam
My Peasant Cube
http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/11667
Huh?
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
There's no reason you have to play norn/rites--Gifts for the lark/kiki/witness/resto package, or gifts for 4 different red producing lands, or whatever.
I'm kind of personally coming around to the idea that Chord is still better than evolution because of how it lets you cheat on mana with a wide board and interact at instant speed, but I think gifts might be better with evolution (because evolution really rewards you for filling your yard up with creatures).
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
chord is obviously great if you have the mana, but people seem to be dodging or ignoring the fact that chord tends to be great when things are going well for you, and awful (sitting in your hand doing nothing) when things don't go that well, or your opponent has a fast start (or you have a slow one). just pitching out a disruptive 3-drop like pontiff costs 6 mana, which is too much against most of what you need those disruptive cards for in the first place.
hasn't anyone noticed the deck doing better in tournaments since the printing of eldritch evolution? there seems to be a noticeable uptick in results.
take for instance the many super-aggro decks that can potentially kill on turn 3 or 4, and are tier 1 or close. chord in those matchups is, on average, an expensive do-nothing. Evolution, on the other hand, can come down early and fetch something to stem the tide, slow the game down to your level, and let you start recouping advantage (and, yes, eventually allow you to cast that chord)
this is why Hoogland has moved to a 4:2 split of evo:chord. chord is a great late-game bullet-finder and finisher. evo is the card which lets you turn the early game around in your favour.
personally, i've found evo to be an absolute powerhouse against decks like infect, affinity and similar. anything where Orzhov Pontiff can wreck their day, or nekrataal, or archangel of tithes. these cards are blowouts in the right situation, but chording for 6 mana on turn 2, or 7 mana on turn 3, is not feasible.
[aside:i know people prefer shriekmaw to nekrataal, and their reasoning is sound, but at 5 mana it's often a whole turn (or two) too slow, and you really need to focus on using the faster, more proactive 2-to-4 jump to have a chance against the decks that put on early pressure]
One thing is bothering me.
EE is legal for a month or so now...In my testings so far I've came to a conclusion that Nahiri - Emmy package is more consistent, or is that just me? I've tried both blue and black version, /w and w/o Nahiri and currently i am playing "old" black version except I got split of 3 EE/2 Chords/3 paths and it's much more stable.
Interested in other opinions :9
Cheers!
Funny, because I also came on this thread to read or maybe ask about it. I also like Nahiri a lot, and was wondering if it's still worth playing it over Evo. 4 nahiri's + emrakul + some evo's and chord seem to be a bit too much, especially as it'd mean removing removals to fit the creatures we need, while removal is often important to let nahiri live. Also, I think I prefer black atm too, but I like being able to play an exarch, as an out to enchantments or artifacts in combinaison with a nahiri.
And in more mainstream lists, did anyone consider playing some bolts instead of path? I find I often want to remove something early game, when I'm not willing to use a path.
I know this has been said before, but you brought it up again so there we go - Shriekmaw really is a 1B removal spell more than anything if it's in your hand. Nothing proactive about having a Nekrataal stranded in your hand cause you can't pay BB.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Noble Hierarch
4 Voice of Resurgence
2 Wall of Omens
1 Wall of Roots
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Selfless Spirit
1 Spellskite
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Courser of Kruphix
2 Eternal Witness
1 Anafenza, the Foremost
1 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Siege Rhino
2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3 Restoration Angel
1 Reveillark
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Eldritch Evolution
3 Path to Exile
2 Chord of Calling
Land (22)
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Temple Garden
2 Razorverge Thicket
2 Stomping Ground
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Fire-Let Thicket
1 Raging Ravine
1 Horizon Canopy
2 Forest
1 Plains
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Sin Collector
2 Lightning Helix
1 Thragtusk
1 Shriekmaw
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Archangel of Tithes
How often are you all finding that you are boarding in the 4th Path to Exile if you are running it in the sideboard? I feel like the 2x lightning helix and shriekmaw covers the bases for removal, but that may not be correct as the path is 1 mana removal.
Trying a split of Wall of Omens and Wall of Roots, as sometimes I've found the mana ramp to be more useful than the extra card depending on the situation.
I stream Modern events semi-regularly at http://www.twitch.tv/nezeru
Im interested in seeing how good EE is. In my opinion, the biggest downfall of our chord decks is their atrocious curve. Wotc keeps printing awesome 4 drops, and over the last few years, our already-bad curve (due to the nature of having our combo be between a 4 drop and 5 drop, and chord being essentially a 4-5 drop, in the context of having a strong first few turns) has gotten increasingly worse. There are ways to smooth it out a little, but simply adding more dorks raises other consistency issues.
Im hoping EE, while only sometimes a '3-drop' due to the sacrifice clause (I feel that hooglands curve has been slipping more and more,going from an already very high 9 4+ drops including chord, to 13-14 4+ drops, like in the latest nahiri editions), and EE 'might' be a useful solution. I have felt for a long time that chord, while a great late-game engine and instant speed midgame trick/hate-card tutor/combo piece, still has its problems: cluttering up opening turns of the game and being awkward relatively often due to its high total cost in the high-powered modern format (8 permanants to find kikijiki is still alot for example). Its still amazing a lot, dont get me wrong, but i think theres a little bit of a 'rose covered glasses' going with cards like chord, because of how freaking sweet they can be when they are great, and the stories they invoke. I know most of my favorite plays with the deck involved chord.
Of course we have mana accel, with wall of roots performing especially well in our deck, but they come at a cost, with our deck being nearly half mana sources. This ratio performs well against many modern decks, we still run into some issues against the grindier matchups, drawing too many bricks. Given that most of our deck is designed to slow the game down in order to combo/value our opponents, one of our many balancing factors of deisgning our list is to have our deck be at our best in the exact game states we try to create (the stalled board). We can alleviate this slightly post-board against jund/grixis/jeskai/esper/etc by taking out a few our even all of our mana dorks for our plentiful powerful sideboard cards in those matchups.
However, due to the fast paced nature of modern, these decks (especially jund)can all apply very early pressure (in turns of board presence, or high value card economy, like a bob+kalitas), so this plan risks us stumbling to having too many high costing, powerful cards to win the lategame. Even with a man dork, just having 2 4 drops and a chord will just lose a lotta games on the draw against those decks. I have definitely felt that I have lost more games against the grindy decks to stumbling, rather than getting outvalued lategame (post board). Siding in lots of removal like we do helps this problem, the 'bad jund deck' role, but I still think we can do better (whether or not we can now with the current card pool, or with EE, remains to be seen imo).
Now, EE has problems too, but it does a similar job as chord (combo them dead) while providing a pretty different avenue of doing it (the sacrifice 'combo' with voice/pia, and being cheaper to cast in a fair number of circumstances (turn 2 fulminator is actually good against tron, unlike turn 4 fulminator, for example).
Still wanna test, could be a flop who knows, just hoping it might fix some of the issues the deck has had in its many iterations.
Here's my list:
4 Birds of paradise
2 noble hierarch
4 voice of resurgence
4 wall of omens
1 spellskite
1 scavenging ooze
1 lone missionary
2 eternal witness
2 courser of kruphix
2 restoration angel
2 pia and kiran nalaar
1 kiki-jiki, mirror breaker
1 reveillark
Spells
4 path to exile
4 eldritch evolution
2 chord of calling
4 wooded foothills
4 windswept heath
1 arid mesa
2 forest
1 plains
1 mountain
2 stomping grounds
2 temple garden
1 sacred foundry
3 razorverge thicket
1 rugged prairie
1 horizon canopy
3 engineered explosives
1 ghostly prison
1 archangel of tithes
1 lightning helix
1 scavenging ooze
1 eidolon of rhetoric
1 kataki, war's wage
1 celestial purge
1 devout lightcaster
1 obstinate baloth
2 fulminator mage
1 vulshok sorcerer
Some notes:
4th Wall of omens: curve lowering, digs for our important cards, needed sac outlet for EE. Ive been very happy with it so far, and am pretty sure its needed with EE. Wall-> p&k, while not as good as with voice, is still great against a few of the fastest decks in modern, where we need that early p&k regardless. Maybe we will have more 'flipped' voices due to EE, so the filler body will be slightly more relevant. Also, against a blue deck, i'd rather sac the wall than the voice, so they get punished for countering the EE and 'getting' us.
Courser of kruphix: Over the last few years I have felt like courser is one of the best cards in the deck. Like wall of omens, its the 'glue' that holds our deck together, and one of the few non-4 drops that provide a repeatable, 'engine-y' effect to provide advantage. Aggro being on the uptick makes be even more confidant in courser's place in the deck.
6 Mana dorks: I actually want to shave one of the heirarchs, Im just trying to find the right replacement. Maybe a 3rd courser.
0quasali pridemageor reclamation sage: Since we are playing EE, the philosophy of the deck has to change to accommodate that. As such, we are going to be tutoring for 'value' less (or at instant speed to catch an inkmoth or o-stone), and using more of a k.o style card (like posters were saying earlier). I might want the sage in the board, but im still not sure. Theres a relatively small window in games where tutoring for the combo isnt just better, and we might do it with more consistency and faster now that we have 6 tutors. I was rarely impressed with rec sage anyways, and theres SO many decks in modern.
Lone Missionary: In addition to skite and scooze as hate cards, I included lone missonary maindeck over baloth for curve reasons. I feel like missionary is more likely to trip up our opponents when they go for lethal or just being reasonable value against the aggro decks (and our manabase), than other cards providing other 'tricky' value, like pridemage. That said, this (in addition to the 2nd heirach) is a flex spot that I am not sure about.
Devout lightcaster: Ive been wanting to play this baby for awhile now, and the recent 'change' to go naya and play archangel of tithes gave me the courage to finally put it in the SB. Suck it jund!
I played the deck on sunday at a card kingdom event, going 3-1 and losing to mono-u tron, and beating grixis delver, wr soul sisters, and dredge. Notable plays were EEing a witness to get a reveillark against grixis (sweet!), and then game one against dredge I end stepped turn 3 resto, untapped and EEed my courser for kiki-jiki and killed him, whereas I didnt have enough permanents to chord in that spot. Its not much testing and its hardly conclusive, but its a start!
Modern
Value Town
Amulet Titan
Legacy
4C Loam
My Peasant Cube
http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/11667
I'm running tithes in the main, and with good reason.
Really harsh aggro decks can quite easily steal a game 2, even if you board in your hate. You only have to mulligan into a slightly slow hand an bam! Match loss.
By having more of a chance to win game 1 against fast aggro or dredge, you give yourself some breathing room because you only have to win one of the next two games to take the match.
It's an old and well-worn strategy but some people still are surprised by it, so it's worth a single card to sort of pre-board against the fast decks.
And let's be honest, she's a good card either way. Perfectly serviceable body and decent effect against quite a few decks