Hey all, I was thinking in a place of one Hugs, play one Zombie infestation, in case we face leylines, RiP, and all GY hate.. we still can draw a lot, and at least make a swam of zombies, have anybody though about it?
I don't think we have to stray too much from the maindeck plan with Borborygmos/Griselbrand/Worldspine Wurm. The thing that needs to be updated nowadays is the Sideboard, since the inclusion of Damping Sphere randomly screwing us over.
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Why don't you come and contribute making the best Abzan deck in modern? Abzan Liege
Hello, how are the matchups for the grixis version (classic version with emrakul)? I play with this version and want to hone to see if I play a GP with it yet I have not decided.
Torgaar, Famine Incarnate, seems to be very interesting, how many copies do you think would enter the deck? or would it be side?
If you're talking about the newer lists we're discussing in this thread, I don't think they exist. As far as I know, I'm the only one really playing the Fateful Showdown build and I haven't recorded any vids, and the Torgaar build so far is just a twinkle in Gerry Thompson's eye.
Hey all, I was thinking in a place of one Hugs, play one Zombie infestation, in case we face leylines, RiP, and all GY hate.. we still can draw a lot, and at least make a swam of zombies, have anybody though about it?
I have not tested it but I don't think it's necessary. Breach is already such a strong Plan B against GY hate that I don't think we need a Plan C on top of that. That said, if there was an even higher degree of GY hate in the format, I could see 3 Infestation in the SB as a near-total swap for Vengeance. I've definitely hit matchups and metagames where I want all the Goryo's gone and just stick with hand or battlefield-based wins. Infestation could shine there.
Hello, how are the matchups for the grixis version (classic version with emrakul)? I play with this version and want to hone to see if I play a GP with it yet I have not decided.
Shoal version is significantly better. You have so many more options with splice/arcane, which rewards better players and lets you beat most permission-based decks. You can also reliably play Moon, are yourself resilient to Moon, take very little damage from your lands (important in an aggressive metagame), and get maindeck anti-aggro cards with Shoal. As a side note on Shoal, the ability to Shoal/Breach for 2RR vs. 4R is huge in a faster format. Not to mention splice/arcane getting around Meddling Mage.
Torgaar, Famine Incarnate, seems to be very interesting, how many copies do you think would enter the deck? or would it be side?
Seems too inconsistent in the Shoal version. The metagame has so many aggressive decks that you are all but guaranteed to encounter a blocker in most of your games. The Grishoalbrand is also super tight on slots and I wouldn't want to cut my flexes (2 Brutality) for an inconsistent "win" condition.
I don't see its advantages over the Shoal build. Splice/arcane are just so incredibly dynamic and hard to play around in tight matches. They also create more options and decisions for experienced players to leverage into wins. I want my combo decks to have as many decision trees as possible in order to create as many outs as possible. Showdown just brute forces the win up the middle.
Even if you used Showdown alongside the Shoal plan, I'd still rather have Borby as my win condition. Borby pitches to Shoal which a) creates more opportunities for life gain during the combo, b) creates more opportunities for 2RR Breach, especially into Wurm, and c) creates more opportunities for life gain in an "oh *****" pinch. Borby also wins games on his own against decks that are too aggressive with their life total. He also clears away bad board states if you can't win but can crash for 7 (or block an incoming attack) before firing 3 "Bolts" to reset an opposing board. As I said, I want cards that create options. Borby creates a LOT of options. Showdown is much more direct.
how is this deck surviving the DAMPING SPHERE hype??
I haven't had serious issues with Sphere. In most games, you can draw cards, reset your hand, and win again next turn with your reloaded hand. Sphere doesn't do anything to stop a Breached Wurm or a Breached Borby if they are low enough and you have a few lands to spare. Moreover, SSG doesn't count towards Sphere's spell tally, so you can sometimes win right through Sphere by Shoal-Breach-splicing in a Borby for lethal (3RR total vs 5R for Breach itself). Don't forget that you can also do this before you attack in certain situations, crashing for 14 off Griselbrand/Borby and then just needing 2-3 lands (depending on fetches/shocks) to finish. Overall, it's just not that scary.
Has anyone had any experience sideboarding 4 Leyline of Sanctity in their Grishoalbrand list? I found myself wanting more Manamorphose in the main in order to hard cast it in case I drew it and it wasn't in my opener. I run the obligatory 1 Manamorphose like all the lists I see. Does anyone have any advice on possibly running more?
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Standard:
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
Manamorphose tends to be a "flex" spot. Some metas are better suited to running more copies than others. I ran 4 Leyline in various griselbrand lists including shoal, but overall I'm not a fan since it can encourage you to keep some fairly mediocre hands plus become a dead draw. If you are going to run Leyline and are worried about hardcasting it, I'd bump up to 2 manamorphose, but a turn 4 leyline seems... pretty miserable
One other thing I wanted to suggest. I think it might be a great idea right now to sideboard a few Grim Lavamancers. I know its sort of a non-bo with sweepers but it can get around some discard effects (Kitesail freebooter) and Thalia. I think humans and Death & Taxes might side out a lot of their creature interaction cards. Right now I have found those sort of disruptive creatures the hardest things to overcome. Any thoughts?
EDIT: Ooh, what about Necroplasm to get around Kitesail and Thalia?
The soonest it makes something is turn 4, which only wipes the none relevant creaturs (aka no hate bears). The turn 5 (so the CMC 2 wipe) might be to slow, but I have to enough experience playing against Humans :/
3 year ad nauseam player here, lookig for a second good combo deck to play. Played already some torneys with the deck.
One thing ive always wondered is why no maindeck thoughtseizes?
-Plan A - Disrupt the oponent plan (hatebears and hatecards in general), or secure the combo against control (acts like a safer pact of negation mostly)
-Plan B - Discard Grisel stuck in hand - proceed to goryos it next turn and win (increasing the probability of turn 2 kill)
3 year ad nauseam player here, lookig for a second good combo deck to play. Played already some torneys with the deck.
One thing ive always wondered is why no maindeck thoughtseizes?
-Plan A - Disrupt the oponent plan (hatebears and hatecards in general), or secure the combo against control (acts like a safer pact of negation mostly)
-Plan B - Discard Grisel stuck in hand - proceed to goryos it next turn and win (increasing the probability of turn 2 kill)
I understand your logic, but the list is tight and I think there are a few issues with adding Thoughtseize:
1) Life loss matters - There are a ton of aggressive strategies in Modern currently. This also could mean less life to pay for drawing with Griselbrand.
2) Against control we want to be splicing our Goryo's or TTB's in order to play around counters. This is already an effective way to combat control which is one of our easier matchups already.
3) Top deck advantage against grindy matchups - Against decks that need discard to interact with our combo (Jund, Mardu), we need to heighten our chances of finding our threats or payoff cards. I remember back in the day when I used to play Jund in standard and people would say to take out discard in the mirror so that your top decks are more live. We want to keep card draw against the discard decks and against Jund specifically I want to either have a turn two kill or a spirit guide/ritual into a T1 or T2 Blood moon.
4) I have noticed that each card in the sideboard configuration that we are used to seeing at this point (3 Blood Moon, 3 Chalice, 3 Bontu's Last Reckoning, 1 Engineered Explosives, 2 Shattering Spree, 2 Pact of Negation, 1 Removal Spell, Typically Collective Brutality or Lightning Axe)really serves a crucial purpose in the problem matchups and it would be hard to find room for anything else. At most maybe a couple of T.S. in place of the piece of removal and something else depending on your local meta might work.
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Standard:
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
Also, if you would want to play it in the MD, you have only two slots for such cards, and there Collective Brutallity and/or Lightning Axe is just better.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Here's another variant of the Fateful Showdown build I've been toying around with in paper lately, largely to try to fight the midrange and control decks that have been popping up. Also, Lingering Souls is sometimes very powerful with Infernal Plunge.
Not having MD removal means I lose to Thalia a lot, but it's still pretty sweet for stuff like weeklies. And if Jeskai + Mardu pushes humans out enough, it feels much more reasonable.
One of these days when I have more time, I'll get on MTGO and try to put up some more 5-0s with this shell.
not much rationale. testing for PT and the no ban list open left me no time to contemplate much about a new list so I thought I'd try something new.
Lavamancer is pretty good vs some major matchups. Word on the street was KCI and storm will be running amok so I thought I'd sacrifice some oomph on the individual SB cards for flexibility. Did get Paul Muller once in the QF with Rakdos charm before he promptly swept me away.
Don't think Leyline's any good right now. Very little GBx.
Humans is probably our worst matchup. Death and Taxes is just as bad in my experience. I tested out Grim Lavamancer and he seems pretty good. I was actually thinking about Archfiend of Ifnir as well since it can block the turn it comes down, Freebooter misses it, and we have a lot of discard effects (maybe with extra CB's post board). If he sticks then we can have recursive board wipes and a finisher.
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Standard:
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
Finalnub/Jonathan I know we talked a lot about sideboarding at GP Toronto. I recently switched to amulet titan in paper but am picking up the deck on mtgo pretty soon. Do you have an updated version of your sideboard guide. I saw that you were running a lot of different things since we last talked. For example, lavamancer seems sweet. If anyone else has insight on this topic I'd love to hear from you. Sideboarding is probably my biggest struggle so I'd love to see how you guys are sideboarding.
Finalnub/Jonathan I know we talked a lot about sideboarding at GP Toronto. I recently switched to amulet titan in paper but am picking up the deck on mtgo pretty soon. Do you have an updated version of your sideboard guide. I saw that you were running a lot of different things since we last talked. For example, lavamancer seems sweet. If anyone else has insight on this topic I'd love to hear from you. Sideboarding is probably my biggest struggle so I'd love to see how you guys are sideboarding.
+1!
@finalnub/Jonathan
I’m going to GP Barcelona in 2 weeks and picked up the deck solely on your great write-ups and detailed guide. I’m working on a cheat sheet for sideboarding which I will be taking with me and an update from you would be a great starting point/guidance. I’ll be posting my plan here for review anyway so any feedback would be great by the wider community too!
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Currently working on making the best Time Warp deck in here: Taking Turns
Torgaar, Famine Incarnate, seems to be very interesting, how many copies do you think would enter the deck? or would it be side?
About Fateful Showdown What do you guys think?
I have not tested it but I don't think it's necessary. Breach is already such a strong Plan B against GY hate that I don't think we need a Plan C on top of that. That said, if there was an even higher degree of GY hate in the format, I could see 3 Infestation in the SB as a near-total swap for Vengeance. I've definitely hit matchups and metagames where I want all the Goryo's gone and just stick with hand or battlefield-based wins. Infestation could shine there.
Shoal version is significantly better. You have so many more options with splice/arcane, which rewards better players and lets you beat most permission-based decks. You can also reliably play Moon, are yourself resilient to Moon, take very little damage from your lands (important in an aggressive metagame), and get maindeck anti-aggro cards with Shoal. As a side note on Shoal, the ability to Shoal/Breach for 2RR vs. 4R is huge in a faster format. Not to mention splice/arcane getting around Meddling Mage.
Seems too inconsistent in the Shoal version. The metagame has so many aggressive decks that you are all but guaranteed to encounter a blocker in most of your games. The Grishoalbrand is also super tight on slots and I wouldn't want to cut my flexes (2 Brutality) for an inconsistent "win" condition.
I don't see its advantages over the Shoal build. Splice/arcane are just so incredibly dynamic and hard to play around in tight matches. They also create more options and decisions for experienced players to leverage into wins. I want my combo decks to have as many decision trees as possible in order to create as many outs as possible. Showdown just brute forces the win up the middle.
Even if you used Showdown alongside the Shoal plan, I'd still rather have Borby as my win condition. Borby pitches to Shoal which a) creates more opportunities for life gain during the combo, b) creates more opportunities for 2RR Breach, especially into Wurm, and c) creates more opportunities for life gain in an "oh *****" pinch. Borby also wins games on his own against decks that are too aggressive with their life total. He also clears away bad board states if you can't win but can crash for 7 (or block an incoming attack) before firing 3 "Bolts" to reset an opposing board. As I said, I want cards that create options. Borby creates a LOT of options. Showdown is much more direct.
I haven't had serious issues with Sphere. In most games, you can draw cards, reset your hand, and win again next turn with your reloaded hand. Sphere doesn't do anything to stop a Breached Wurm or a Breached Borby if they are low enough and you have a few lands to spare. Moreover, SSG doesn't count towards Sphere's spell tally, so you can sometimes win right through Sphere by Shoal-Breach-splicing in a Borby for lethal (3RR total vs 5R for Breach itself). Don't forget that you can also do this before you attack in certain situations, crashing for 14 off Griselbrand/Borby and then just needing 2-3 lands (depending on fetches/shocks) to finish. Overall, it's just not that scary.
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
Either way, I'm back and fully agree with ktkenshinx.
- Greetings
One other thing I wanted to suggest. I think it might be a great idea right now to sideboard a few Grim Lavamancers. I know its sort of a non-bo with sweepers but it can get around some discard effects (Kitesail freebooter) and Thalia. I think humans and Death & Taxes might side out a lot of their creature interaction cards. Right now I have found those sort of disruptive creatures the hardest things to overcome. Any thoughts?
EDIT: Ooh, what about Necroplasm to get around Kitesail and Thalia?
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
The soonest it makes something is turn 4, which only wipes the none relevant creaturs (aka no hate bears). The turn 5 (so the CMC 2 wipe) might be to slow, but I have to enough experience playing against Humans :/
- Greetings
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
3 year ad nauseam player here, lookig for a second good combo deck to play. Played already some torneys with the deck.
One thing ive always wondered is why no maindeck thoughtseizes?
-Plan A - Disrupt the oponent plan (hatebears and hatecards in general), or secure the combo against control (acts like a safer pact of negation mostly)
-Plan B - Discard Grisel stuck in hand - proceed to goryos it next turn and win (increasing the probability of turn 2 kill)
I understand your logic, but the list is tight and I think there are a few issues with adding Thoughtseize:
1) Life loss matters - There are a ton of aggressive strategies in Modern currently. This also could mean less life to pay for drawing with Griselbrand.
2) Against control we want to be splicing our Goryo's or TTB's in order to play around counters. This is already an effective way to combat control which is one of our easier matchups already.
3) Top deck advantage against grindy matchups - Against decks that need discard to interact with our combo (Jund, Mardu), we need to heighten our chances of finding our threats or payoff cards. I remember back in the day when I used to play Jund in standard and people would say to take out discard in the mirror so that your top decks are more live. We want to keep card draw against the discard decks and against Jund specifically I want to either have a turn two kill or a spirit guide/ritual into a T1 or T2 Blood moon.
4) I have noticed that each card in the sideboard configuration that we are used to seeing at this point (3 Blood Moon, 3 Chalice, 3 Bontu's Last Reckoning, 1 Engineered Explosives, 2 Shattering Spree, 2 Pact of Negation, 1 Removal Spell, Typically Collective Brutality or Lightning Axe)really serves a crucial purpose in the problem matchups and it would be hard to find room for anything else. At most maybe a couple of T.S. in place of the piece of removal and something else depending on your local meta might work.
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
1 Temple of Silence
1 Temple of Triumph
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Arid Mesa
1 Marsh Flats
1 Blood Crypt
1 Godless Shrine
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Mountain
2 Swamp
3 Cathartic Reunion
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Infernal Plunge
3 Lingering Souls
3 Fateful Showdown
4 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Through the Breach
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Griselbrand
2 Obzedat, the Ghost Council
2 Collective Brutality
2 Defense Grid
1 Guttural Response
1 Bontu's Last Reckoning
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Wear//Tear
3 Blood Moon
2 Timely Reinforcements
Not having MD removal means I lose to Thalia a lot, but it's still pretty sweet for stuff like weeklies. And if Jeskai + Mardu pushes humans out enough, it feels much more reasonable.
One of these days when I have more time, I'll get on MTGO and try to put up some more 5-0s with this shell.
Lavamancer is pretty good vs some major matchups. Word on the street was KCI and storm will be running amok so I thought I'd sacrifice some oomph on the individual SB cards for flexibility. Did get Paul Muller once in the QF with Rakdos charm before he promptly swept me away.
Don't think Leyline's any good right now. Very little GBx.
How's it holding up in the Humans meta? I feel like Meddling Mage would suck
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
Could Fortune Thief be a viable sideboard option versus Humans and possibly other aggro strategies that might side out removal?
N/A
Modern:
Grishoalbrand / Grixis Death's Shadow / Jeskai Control / UW Control
+1!
@finalnub/Jonathan
I’m going to GP Barcelona in 2 weeks and picked up the deck solely on your great write-ups and detailed guide. I’m working on a cheat sheet for sideboarding which I will be taking with me and an update from you would be a great starting point/guidance. I’ll be posting my plan here for review anyway so any feedback would be great by the wider community too!