We are a one card (Sram/Puresteel) combo deck essentially. Once our 'engine'/one card is in play and unmolested... well that's when the rest of the deck starts chaining. You want to find Retracts or Opals eventually, but it really reminds me of a Mind's Desire deck when it was in Standard. The goal was to Mind's Desire for 4-5 and hit another Mind's Desire and chain them essentially and it was damn good at doing so. Our best hands are 2 lands, 3 Cheeri0s and a Sram or Puresteel. I like where your head is at, but Infect isn't the closest comparison to what we are. Bogles is. Bogles for all purposes is a single card combo deck. 8 dudes that you need to slam and 20-22 enchantments and zero cantrips. Horizon Canopies and Kor Spiritdancers obv improve what Bogles is doing, but there are decks in Modern that function just fine without any 'traditional' cantrips like SV (and before anyone mentions it I know Spiritdancers can be viewed as card draw, but I've seen Ledgewalkers in successful lists too.. Kor just gives you more options in the hardmode games and more T4 kill draws)
I see where you're going with this, but this comparison doesn't quite work. In Bogles, the Spiritdancers are legitimate threats that synergize with the main gameplan, just as the 4 Horizon Canopies are legitimate cantrip effects. The cantrips might double as lands but they still represent cantrip and dig effects. By contrast, we don't have any equivalent to Spiritdancer as Plan B in slots 9-12. Nor do we have 4 cantripping lands. Like Infect, another deck with 12 core engines and a similar setup, Bogles simply has more threats than we do. We're legitimately stuck on 8 engines, which means we need to play the cantrips to make up the deficit. I can't think of a single deck in Modern history that had only 8 engines and didn't run such effects. But as you said, Repeal does sort count in this regard and may be enough, even if not quite as good as true cantrips like SV/Sleight/etc.
We can argue the points of Serum Visions over and over again, but I'd like to mention that many of the first lists in a post-Sram World had the full 4 and now that number keeps dropping. Food for thought.
I'm trying not to argue the point theoretically. I'm just trying to point to performing 2018 Cheeri0s lists, which average 3 cantrip effects.
All I'm saying is don't be afraid to mulligan hard and often if you need to. We only need that 1 card afterall!
I can't speak for others, but I know that myself, serenechaos, you, and at least a handful of other posters are always recommending mulliganing to an engine. There are few if any matchups and contexts where I'll keep a 7 or 6 without that engine. There are 5s I'll keep without the engine but it's matchup dependent. I assume everyone is doing this (maybe I shouldn't assume that), which means it shouldn't affect the 3 average cantrip count in the deck.
I would cut cantrips if we had an equivalent to Kor Spiritdancer or engines 9-12. Otherwise, we really do need the dig.
I'm for cantrips, so here's another thing to consider, expanding on something kt mentioned earlier:
Infect has 12 engines + 4 hierarch and their fuel doubles as protection.
Bogle's has 12 engines + some number of dryad arbor, 8 of which have hexproof while the other 4 doubles as a draw engine AND their fuel doubles as protection. They can also gain a bunch of life, so even more protection.
We have 8 engines, 4 of which are legendary(minor thing, but is there), maybe 4 backups, but often fewer or even none and minimal protection (Only against burn, typically only if paladin is out due to tight mana, revival can count, but has many uses).
So, we have less engines, less protection, usually no backup plan AND have to chain our fuel together instead of the 3-5? or so they need. We just have a lot more hoops to jump through. As of now, the easiest and most effective way to make up for these deficits appears to be cantrips. Bird(who is part engine/protection depending on what you consider the scry, part backup plan, not terribly surprising people are trying it, even if I'm not a fan of it atm) showing up may change this, but that is inconclusive as of this moment.
Tldr; we have a consistency issue compared to other combo decks and cantrips have, so far, been the best solution.
Performance based off of such a small sample size honestly means little to nothing to me. Even 5-0 list are rather pointless. The ev On competitive leagues is so bad I’d much rather play friendly’s as do many other people I know. I personally will not go back to cantrips when bird just has been everything I’ve wanted. I also just can’t see a world where I want to use up a sb slot on a land. If you want the black splash in the board just run the land main and call it a day. I ran black with claim and bobs months ago and liked it a lot but haven’t gone back to it since bird has been in my deck. Bird equipped early is another black source too so I may test the black yet again.
Performance based off of such a small sample size honestly means little to nothing to me. Even 5-0 list are rather pointless. The ev On competitive leagues is so bad I’d much rather play friendly’s as do many other people I know. I personally will not go back to cantrips when bird just has been everything I’ve wanted. I also just can’t see a world where I want to use up a sb slot on a land. If you want the black splash in the board just run the land main and call it a day. I ran black with claim and bobs months ago and liked it a lot but haven’t gone back to it since bird has been in my deck. Bird equipped early is another black source too so I may test the black yet again.
I think that's a fair point on the SB. Shrine in the SB just seems really, really wrong and flies in the face of basically all viable, competitive SB strategies I know. I get what Claim is trying to accomplish and think that's worth exploring, but not the Shrine SB side of it.
As for cantrips, I'm emphasizing that this is not just based on a small sample size of top performing Cheeri0s decks. Although I will add that we can't ignore actual performing strategies and need to take those as baselines. Moreover, however, it's based on literally every single blue-based combo deck in Modern history. It's also based on comparisons to Infect and Bogles, both of which have 12 engines instead of 8 and Bogles still runs 4 cantrip options in Canopy. Even non-blue combo decks run cantrip effects. Grishoalbrand has Looting, not to mention Whisper. KCI has Stirrings and over a dozen artifacts that draw cards. That weird all-in Vizier Druid deck runs 16+ cantrip effects in Commune, Stirrings, Wraith, Bauble, Impulse, etc. It's just not possible that we are the only combo deck in Modern that shouldn't run cantrip effects, especially because we're in blue and only have 8 engines.
I will totally concede that we don't necessarily need SV. There are lots of options to choose from, whether Repeal, Sleight, Opt, Wraith, Canopy, etc. But I am confident saying that there is overwhelming historical and metagame evidence that this deck requires actual cantrips.
Hello, I'm kind of new here and I've been reading about using SV or AA maindeck, and the use of cantrips has always been a positive thing in combo decks, is there a possibility of using both SV and AA, or would it interfere with each other? Or would it be better to choose only the set of 1 of the two?
I've got this guy on reddit arguing with me that Cheeri0s would want SFM if it were unbanned. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, there's no way Cheeri0s wants that card, right? It's just more bricks if you're trying to combo, and has the same weakness to removal that the main plan has.
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Hello, I'm kind of new here and I've been reading about using SV or AA maindeck, and the use of cantrips has always been a positive thing in combo decks, is there a possibility of using both SV and AA, or would it interfere with each other? Or would it be better to choose only the set of 1 of the two?
Welcome! Great question about AA/SV. Generally speaking, the deck has 5 flex slots on top of two cantrips, or 7 flex slots if you don't want cantrips at all:
Some of those slots get eaten up by some metagame calls like +1 NR for removal heavy decks. You could easily do 2-3 AA, 2-3 cantrips, and still have room for 1-3 extra things like Repeal, Truth, SV, etc.
Performance based off of such a small sample size honestly means little to nothing to me. Even 5-0 list are rather pointless. The ev On competitive leagues is so bad I’d much rather play friendly’s as do many other people I know. I personally will not go back to cantrips when bird just has been everything I’ve wanted. I also just can’t see a world where I want to use up a sb slot on a land. If you want the black splash in the board just run the land main and call it a day. I ran black with claim and bobs months ago and liked it a lot but haven’t gone back to it since bird has been in my deck. Bird equipped early is another black source too so I may test the black yet again.
I think that's a fair point on the SB. Shrine in the SB just seems really, really wrong and flies in the face of basically all viable, competitive SB strategies I know. I get what Claim is trying to accomplish and think that's worth exploring, but not the Shrine SB side of it.
As for cantrips, I'm emphasizing that this is not just based on a small sample size of top performing Cheeri0s decks. Although I will add that we can't ignore actual performing strategies and need to take those as baselines. Moreover, however, it's based on literally every single blue-based combo deck in Modern history. It's also based on comparisons to Infect and Bogles, both of which have 12 engines instead of 8 and Bogles still runs 4 cantrip options in Canopy. Even non-blue combo decks run cantrip effects. Grishoalbrand has Looting, not to mention Whisper. KCI has Stirrings and over a dozen artifacts that draw cards. That weird all-in Vizier Druid deck runs 16+ cantrip effects in Commune, Stirrings, Wraith, Bauble, Impulse, etc. It's just not possible that we are the only combo deck in Modern that shouldn't run cantrip effects, especially because we're in blue and only have 8 engines.
I will totally concede that we don't necessarily need SV. There are lots of options to choose from, whether Repeal, Sleight, Opt, Wraith, Canopy, etc. But I am confident saying that there is overwhelming historical and metagame evidence that this deck requires actual cantrips.
Many of these examples hedge towards my thinking. Not all combo decks are the same and not all storm decks are even the same. The cards don’t just get judged on an even axis as “cantrips”.
Looting isn’t a cantrip it’s filtering cards to an area that the decks that play it need them. It nets you down a card.
Whisper is a sub optimal card in a deck that just wants to see as many cards as it can. If the deck just wanted the efficient cantrip it’d play 4 manamophose.
Canopy is perfectly on color for boggles and also happens to be in a deck where you need more than 3 lands almost never. If it were u/w (like it should be imo) it’s obviously be 100% auto included in Cheeri0’s.
Stirrings would be 100% auto include as well if our engines were colorless like the decks that use it.
Where I’m going with this leads me to my conclusion that bird gives us the most value. It doesn’t replace itself (remember neither does looting one of the best “cantrips” in modern) but it fits our decks design in filtering perfectly. It provides a threat (not nothing when people on this very forum are very vocal that you want sigil for the beat down, except the problem with the deck is that the creatures all get removed) that has evasion built in. It allows another mana t2 in the event you’re going off with paladin and have a mantle but no opal. It provides a flying blocker (relevant vs things like inkmoth killing you turn 3 or 4). It digs Deeper than sv almost every game it gets played (often times I’ll cast my opal t1 to scry then it scrys again if your engine card t2 is sram and that’s befor even casting your first 0. Most importantly (and this I don’t have the math for just the experience) it increases your t2 combo rate much more by decreasing your fizzle rate.
If preordain was legal then yes I might try it over bird because I actually can get some selection but draw a random card often just doesn’t do it for me.
Performance based off of such a small sample size honestly means little to nothing to me. Even 5-0 list are rather pointless. The ev On competitive leagues is so bad I’d much rather play friendly’s as do many other people I know. I personally will not go back to cantrips when bird just has been everything I’ve wanted. I also just can’t see a world where I want to use up a sb slot on a land. If you want the black splash in the board just run the land main and call it a day. I ran black with claim and bobs months ago and liked it a lot but haven’t gone back to it since bird has been in my deck. Bird equipped early is another black source too so I may test the black yet again.
I think that's a fair point on the SB. Shrine in the SB just seems really, really wrong and flies in the face of basically all viable, competitive SB strategies I know. I get what Claim is trying to accomplish and think that's worth exploring, but not the Shrine SB side of it.
As for cantrips, I'm emphasizing that this is not just based on a small sample size of top performing Cheeri0s decks. Although I will add that we can't ignore actual performing strategies and need to take those as baselines. Moreover, however, it's based on literally every single blue-based combo deck in Modern history. It's also based on comparisons to Infect and Bogles, both of which have 12 engines instead of 8 and Bogles still runs 4 cantrip options in Canopy. Even non-blue combo decks run cantrip effects. Grishoalbrand has Looting, not to mention Whisper. KCI has Stirrings and over a dozen artifacts that draw cards. That weird all-in Vizier Druid deck runs 16+ cantrip effects in Commune, Stirrings, Wraith, Bauble, Impulse, etc. It's just not possible that we are the only combo deck in Modern that shouldn't run cantrip effects, especially because we're in blue and only have 8 engines.
I will totally concede that we don't necessarily need SV. There are lots of options to choose from, whether Repeal, Sleight, Opt, Wraith, Canopy, etc. But I am confident saying that there is overwhelming historical and metagame evidence that this deck requires actual cantrips.
Many of these examples hedge towards my thinking. Not all combo decks are the same and not all storm decks are even the same. The cards don’t just get judged on an even axis as “cantrips”.
Looting isn’t a cantrip it’s filtering cards to an area that the decks that play it need them. It nets you down a card.
Whisper is a sub optimal card in a deck that just wants to see as many cards as it can. If the deck just wanted the efficient cantrip it’d play 4 manamophose.
Canopy is perfectly on color for boggles and also happens to be in a deck where you need more than 3 lands almost never. If it were u/w (like it should be imo) it’s obviously be 100% auto included in Cheeri0’s.
Stirrings would be 100% auto include as well if our engines were colorless like the decks that use it.
Where I’m going with this leads me to my conclusion that bird gives us the most value. It doesn’t replace itself (remember neither does looting one of the best “cantrips” in modern) but it fits our decks design in filtering perfectly. It provides a threat (not nothing when people on this very forum are very vocal that you want sigil for the beat down, except the problem with the deck is that the creatures all get removed) that has evasion built in. It allows another mana t2 in the event you’re going off with paladin and have a mantle but no opal. It provides a flying blocker (relevant vs things like inkmoth killing you turn 3 or 4). It digs Deeper than sv almost every game it gets played (often times I’ll cast my opal t1 to scry then it scrys again if your engine card t2 is sram and that’s befor even casting your first 0. Most importantly (and this I don’t have the math for just the experience) it increases your t2 combo rate much more by decreasing your fizzle rate.
If preordain was legal then yes I might try it over bird because I actually can get some selection but draw a random card often just doesn’t do it for me.
I don't want us to get caught up on what is or is not a cantrips. That's not my point. I just am showing that every combo deck in Modern has cards that dig and/or filter. Every deck without exception. And those cards do it on their own without expending additional resources, and draw the cards on the turn they are played. AA needs itself plus equipment, AND doesn't get us cards on the same turn. That's a totally different effect. I'm not saying use zero AA. I'm saying AA alone isn't enough and the deck needs at least 2-3 other dig effects that perform those functions.
I do not remember having seen here in the threads, but is there any discussion talking about side in and side outs? Mainly for matchs like, Humans, Jund, or even generic to matchs of Removal, or discard, or control, or lock pieces (thalias, damping sphere, explosives, chalice of the void and so ..)?
Another point I would like to know is how many fast, fetchs and chock lands should be ideal ? 15 is the number for sure, but i would like do know more deeply why some lists prefer running 2 fast and others 4 for example. Using less then 8 fetchs would significantly reduce the chances from storming ?
5-0 lists do not mean that is the optimal version of the deck, but success of any kind should not be ignored, especially when we have many people attempting to optimally tune the deck.
There have been plenty of successful decks that sideboard lands. Valakut decks have splashed black, Jeskai decks have splashed black, multiple decks have lands in the sideboard for when they add to their mana curve, etc. Lands being in the sideboard is not a wasted slot, especially when it gives the deck access to something it doesn't already have.
5-0 lists do not mean that is the optimal version of the deck, but success of any kind should not be ignored, especially when we have many people attempting to optimally tune the deck.
There have been plenty of successful decks that sideboard lands. Valakut decks have splashed black, Jeskai decks have splashed black, multiple decks have lands in the sideboard for when they add to their mana curve, etc. Lands being in the sideboard is not a wasted slot, especially when it gives the deck access to something it doesn't already have.
But you lose very little by cutting even 1 plains to go with shrine main. Success is skewed on this forum though because people want visual proof of said success. 5-0 multiple friendly leagues and local events doesn’t get decks noticed or published. Modern is so full of sweet ideas that could be built upon but often only the same decks get published.
Most people run a similar mana base. I like 8 fetches, 3 shocks, 2 basics, 2 fast lands but there has been some variety.
As far as sideboarding goes, against thoughtseize decks you want paradoxical, noxious, claim//fame, and some echoing truth. You always want echoing truth now, you never know what permanent based hate you'll run into.
Against blue decks you want silence, echoing truth, and possibly aether grid if their win conditions include 1/1 creatures and you're trying to grind.
Against burn you want forge tender, path, echoing truth (2 max). You need to kill eidolon.
Against humans you want path (thalia, meddling mage) echoing truth (thalia, sphere, meddling mage, etc.)and aether grid.
Against affinity you want echoing truth and repeals. It's possible you want aether grid but it's not really needed.
Against combo decks like tron and valakut you want echoing truth and nothing else really. These matchups you want to stay lean and combo as much as possible.
I went pretty general here for a general question but if you want exacts or have a specific deck in mind please elaborate.
Also, when boarding it's a good idea in general to take out your worst cards. This often includes any of the given flex spots and a few of the equipment (for more difficult matchups). This may mean trimming your extra noxious, paradoxicals, birds, repeals, etc.
I disagree with losing very little, the plains is important so that you don't have to fetch+shock as often and because of path and ghost quarter effects. I would always run 2. If anything I would cut a seachrome coast if you insist on adding black to the mainboard. It's possible that cutting the battlefield forge is even better, as we rarely grapeshot without a mox anyway but we would want the access to black without a mox. When I had a land in the board I would cut a coast when boarding it in.
I agree that the success is skewed as well, but it has seemed like there is a lot of discussion based on ideas that have not put up results so I don't think it's affecting discussion too much here.
I'm willing to try basically any technology or approach at least a few times. Especially for a deck that is under the radar with little in the way of an established core. But I generally want that tech/approach to align with existing strategies in a similar vein. For instance, this is why I think it is flatly wrong to not play 2-3 dig effects MD, and honestly we should probably use more. Even ignoring the 2018 Cheeri0s performers, the history of Modern combo and engine-style deck is overwhelmingly in favor of this approach. Note that I'm not saying cantrips because I think that term tripped up my argument. I'm simply talking about effects that dig for and draw more cards and make your deck more consistent. Every Modern combo deck uses them, except Infect which runs 12 engines instead of 8. So we should be running as many as we can fit without compromising other stuff.
This is one reason I'm a little nervous about the Shrine plan in the SB. There are very few decks that include non-utility lands in the SB. Gx Tron used to do it to dodge Quarters and Fields. But even there, most successful Tron lists abandoned this plan. In general, I think the SB slots are too valuable to use on a land. But maybe I'm wrong; it just doesn't align with my historical understanding of how Modern SBs get made. I'd need to read more results to know if it's worth trying.
I disagree with losing very little, the plains is important so that you don't have to fetch+shock as often and because of path and ghost quarter effects. I would always run 2. If anything I would cut a seachrome coast if you insist on adding black to the mainboard. It's possible that cutting the battlefield forge is even better, as we rarely grapeshot without a mox anyway but we would want the access to black without a mox. When I had a land in the board I would cut a coast when boarding it in.
I agree that the success is skewed as well, but it has seemed like there is a lot of discussion based on ideas that have not put up results so I don't think it's affecting discussion too much here.
I’m assuming you’re talking about cutting the red source? If so I love having the sacred foundry for when I bring on grid. I can’t remember the last time I was ghost quartered or ruined while playing Cheeri0’s. I go all in on the combo usually assuming if I don’t go off by t3 I’m very likely to lose. Blood moon seems like more of a reason to want basics than path or ld and that’s only really a big issue when it comes down t1 or t2 when I’m on the draw. All 1 drops are off color though anyway so I never want to start by fetching basic plains.
Currently testing AA with mishra’s baubles. Baubles get you your cantrip while hiding the card from hand disruption. They also play well into t1 AA as you get your scry and then the draw on your next turn if you’d like. They also enable opal t1 faster if wanted. Is it good idk but that’s why I’m testing it.
I never feel the need for the cantrip once I’m already going off and that’s where baubles are clearly less useful.
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I see where you're going with this, but this comparison doesn't quite work. In Bogles, the Spiritdancers are legitimate threats that synergize with the main gameplan, just as the 4 Horizon Canopies are legitimate cantrip effects. The cantrips might double as lands but they still represent cantrip and dig effects. By contrast, we don't have any equivalent to Spiritdancer as Plan B in slots 9-12. Nor do we have 4 cantripping lands. Like Infect, another deck with 12 core engines and a similar setup, Bogles simply has more threats than we do. We're legitimately stuck on 8 engines, which means we need to play the cantrips to make up the deficit. I can't think of a single deck in Modern history that had only 8 engines and didn't run such effects. But as you said, Repeal does sort count in this regard and may be enough, even if not quite as good as true cantrips like SV/Sleight/etc.
I'm trying not to argue the point theoretically. I'm just trying to point to performing 2018 Cheeri0s lists, which average 3 cantrip effects.
I can't speak for others, but I know that myself, serenechaos, you, and at least a handful of other posters are always recommending mulliganing to an engine. There are few if any matchups and contexts where I'll keep a 7 or 6 without that engine. There are 5s I'll keep without the engine but it's matchup dependent. I assume everyone is doing this (maybe I shouldn't assume that), which means it shouldn't affect the 3 average cantrip count in the deck.
I would cut cantrips if we had an equivalent to Kor Spiritdancer or engines 9-12. Otherwise, we really do need the dig.
Infect has 12 engines + 4 hierarch and their fuel doubles as protection.
Bogle's has 12 engines + some number of dryad arbor, 8 of which have hexproof while the other 4 doubles as a draw engine AND their fuel doubles as protection. They can also gain a bunch of life, so even more protection.
We have 8 engines, 4 of which are legendary(minor thing, but is there), maybe 4 backups, but often fewer or even none and minimal protection (Only against burn, typically only if paladin is out due to tight mana, revival can count, but has many uses).
So, we have less engines, less protection, usually no backup plan AND have to chain our fuel together instead of the 3-5? or so they need. We just have a lot more hoops to jump through. As of now, the easiest and most effective way to make up for these deficits appears to be cantrips. Bird(who is part engine/protection depending on what you consider the scry, part backup plan, not terribly surprising people are trying it, even if I'm not a fan of it atm) showing up may change this, but that is inconclusive as of this moment.
Tldr; we have a consistency issue compared to other combo decks and cantrips have, so far, been the best solution.
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I think that's a fair point on the SB. Shrine in the SB just seems really, really wrong and flies in the face of basically all viable, competitive SB strategies I know. I get what Claim is trying to accomplish and think that's worth exploring, but not the Shrine SB side of it.
As for cantrips, I'm emphasizing that this is not just based on a small sample size of top performing Cheeri0s decks. Although I will add that we can't ignore actual performing strategies and need to take those as baselines. Moreover, however, it's based on literally every single blue-based combo deck in Modern history. It's also based on comparisons to Infect and Bogles, both of which have 12 engines instead of 8 and Bogles still runs 4 cantrip options in Canopy. Even non-blue combo decks run cantrip effects. Grishoalbrand has Looting, not to mention Whisper. KCI has Stirrings and over a dozen artifacts that draw cards. That weird all-in Vizier Druid deck runs 16+ cantrip effects in Commune, Stirrings, Wraith, Bauble, Impulse, etc. It's just not possible that we are the only combo deck in Modern that shouldn't run cantrip effects, especially because we're in blue and only have 8 engines.
I will totally concede that we don't necessarily need SV. There are lots of options to choose from, whether Repeal, Sleight, Opt, Wraith, Canopy, etc. But I am confident saying that there is overwhelming historical and metagame evidence that this deck requires actual cantrips.
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Welcome! Great question about AA/SV. Generally speaking, the deck has 5 flex slots on top of two cantrips, or 7 flex slots if you don't want cantrips at all:
8 engines
20 equipment
4 Opal
4 Retract
1 Noxious
1 Grapeshot
15 lands
2 cantrips
5 flex
Some of those slots get eaten up by some metagame calls like +1 NR for removal heavy decks. You could easily do 2-3 AA, 2-3 cantrips, and still have room for 1-3 extra things like Repeal, Truth, SV, etc.
Many of these examples hedge towards my thinking. Not all combo decks are the same and not all storm decks are even the same. The cards don’t just get judged on an even axis as “cantrips”.
Looting isn’t a cantrip it’s filtering cards to an area that the decks that play it need them. It nets you down a card.
Whisper is a sub optimal card in a deck that just wants to see as many cards as it can. If the deck just wanted the efficient cantrip it’d play 4 manamophose.
Canopy is perfectly on color for boggles and also happens to be in a deck where you need more than 3 lands almost never. If it were u/w (like it should be imo) it’s obviously be 100% auto included in Cheeri0’s.
Stirrings would be 100% auto include as well if our engines were colorless like the decks that use it.
Where I’m going with this leads me to my conclusion that bird gives us the most value. It doesn’t replace itself (remember neither does looting one of the best “cantrips” in modern) but it fits our decks design in filtering perfectly. It provides a threat (not nothing when people on this very forum are very vocal that you want sigil for the beat down, except the problem with the deck is that the creatures all get removed) that has evasion built in. It allows another mana t2 in the event you’re going off with paladin and have a mantle but no opal. It provides a flying blocker (relevant vs things like inkmoth killing you turn 3 or 4). It digs Deeper than sv almost every game it gets played (often times I’ll cast my opal t1 to scry then it scrys again if your engine card t2 is sram and that’s befor even casting your first 0. Most importantly (and this I don’t have the math for just the experience) it increases your t2 combo rate much more by decreasing your fizzle rate.
If preordain was legal then yes I might try it over bird because I actually can get some selection but draw a random card often just doesn’t do it for me.
I don't want us to get caught up on what is or is not a cantrips. That's not my point. I just am showing that every combo deck in Modern has cards that dig and/or filter. Every deck without exception. And those cards do it on their own without expending additional resources, and draw the cards on the turn they are played. AA needs itself plus equipment, AND doesn't get us cards on the same turn. That's a totally different effect. I'm not saying use zero AA. I'm saying AA alone isn't enough and the deck needs at least 2-3 other dig effects that perform those functions.
Another point I would like to know is how many fast, fetchs and chock lands should be ideal ? 15 is the number for sure, but i would like do know more deeply why some lists prefer running 2 fast and others 4 for example. Using less then 8 fetchs would significantly reduce the chances from storming ?
There have been plenty of successful decks that sideboard lands. Valakut decks have splashed black, Jeskai decks have splashed black, multiple decks have lands in the sideboard for when they add to their mana curve, etc. Lands being in the sideboard is not a wasted slot, especially when it gives the deck access to something it doesn't already have.
But you lose very little by cutting even 1 plains to go with shrine main. Success is skewed on this forum though because people want visual proof of said success. 5-0 multiple friendly leagues and local events doesn’t get decks noticed or published. Modern is so full of sweet ideas that could be built upon but often only the same decks get published.
As far as sideboarding goes, against thoughtseize decks you want paradoxical, noxious, claim//fame, and some echoing truth. You always want echoing truth now, you never know what permanent based hate you'll run into.
Against blue decks you want silence, echoing truth, and possibly aether grid if their win conditions include 1/1 creatures and you're trying to grind.
Against burn you want forge tender, path, echoing truth (2 max). You need to kill eidolon.
Against humans you want path (thalia, meddling mage) echoing truth (thalia, sphere, meddling mage, etc.)and aether grid.
Against affinity you want echoing truth and repeals. It's possible you want aether grid but it's not really needed.
Against combo decks like tron and valakut you want echoing truth and nothing else really. These matchups you want to stay lean and combo as much as possible.
I went pretty general here for a general question but if you want exacts or have a specific deck in mind please elaborate.
Also, when boarding it's a good idea in general to take out your worst cards. This often includes any of the given flex spots and a few of the equipment (for more difficult matchups). This may mean trimming your extra noxious, paradoxicals, birds, repeals, etc.
I agree that the success is skewed as well, but it has seemed like there is a lot of discussion based on ideas that have not put up results so I don't think it's affecting discussion too much here.
This is one reason I'm a little nervous about the Shrine plan in the SB. There are very few decks that include non-utility lands in the SB. Gx Tron used to do it to dodge Quarters and Fields. But even there, most successful Tron lists abandoned this plan. In general, I think the SB slots are too valuable to use on a land. But maybe I'm wrong; it just doesn't align with my historical understanding of how Modern SBs get made. I'd need to read more results to know if it's worth trying.
I’m assuming you’re talking about cutting the red source? If so I love having the sacred foundry for when I bring on grid. I can’t remember the last time I was ghost quartered or ruined while playing Cheeri0’s. I go all in on the combo usually assuming if I don’t go off by t3 I’m very likely to lose. Blood moon seems like more of a reason to want basics than path or ld and that’s only really a big issue when it comes down t1 or t2 when I’m on the draw. All 1 drops are off color though anyway so I never want to start by fetching basic plains.
AA is Artificer's Assistant
Affinity
GR Eggs GR
UR Storm UR
BR Hollow One BR
WUR Cheerios WUR
G Mono-Green Control G
I never feel the need for the cantrip once I’m already going off and that’s where baubles are clearly less useful.