I don’t think you really need breach or Kiki now. I’ve been running a snow land build with skred as my other form of removal because I hate roast. I play mostly at instant speed so scrying sheets has also been good. Now rather than those cards I just play 2 jtms, 3 bedlam revler, and 4 snaps as my win cons. I think 2 vapor snags in my list are allstars as well.
Willing to share your list? Because that sounds awesome.
I've been playing UR Breach for quite a few weeks at my local shop for modern events which is home to a good handful of competitive players and tiered decks. So far my record overall is 22-4-1 in matches at modern FNMs. I played last Monday with two jaces as the modern challenge decklist suggested and I agree that it felt at home. I believe two is correct as generally you only want to see one within a given game being a primarily combo oriented deck (not a primarily Jace control deck). You definitely do not want simian spirit guide in this deck. Yes, there will be hands which reward you for including mox monkey but overall you will lose big percentage points for including this card in your maindeck. With all of the combo Peices we need to run, there is no room for topdecking another potentially dead card outside of our opening hand.
Edit: I firmly believe this deck is well positioned moving forward as our wincon dodges removal and Inquisition of kozilek (which most of the mid-range decks have adopted as the four of per Reid Duke and with the slight decline in shadow decks). Breach also plays well against opposing control decks as it is an instant and playing on their EOT with breach leads to many wins when you can sandbag a second breach or remand your own after having them waste spells.
Makes sense for the spirit guides. Other questions on the UR breach: the challenge list runs 3 snaps 3 cryptics, is this the standard?
Playing less than 4 snapcaster feels wrong, though I've tester going down to 2 cryptics and missing the 3rd one, as it is extremely relevant at gaining one turn against aggressive decks (tap+draw) to set up a turn 5 breach.
I agree on the 2 Jace MD, it feels like the right number. Do you ever side out some parts of the combo vs grindy decks? It feels like the twin-strategy of going down on combo for more grindy cards (Keranos/3rd Jace) post side should work, but as our combo pieces are useless by themselves, cutting some of them just increases the chances we get stuck with dead cards in hand. Maybe the strategy is to either side out none of the cards, or side them all out?
I just don't think Shoal is a good card. Its too situational. You need a card with the exact CMC in your hand to make it worth it. Its no where near as powerful as FoW. You're also discarding a card that you may need to flip a TitI, or want it to get another Pyromancer trigger.
For some reason I've been drawn to UR since the unban b/c a T3 Moon followed by T4 Jace just seems back breaking, and potentially having a TitI on T2 to protect Jace is even more crazy. There are a ton of mana greedy decks out there right now and I just want to punish people for it with Blood Moon.
Sure this is the reason I'm skeptic about the card. Modern is also a more fair format than legacy, and FoW feels lackluster in most fair matchups, so playing a subpar fow in a format that doesn't need the fow to interact with early combo doesn't seem that sexy.
It is a bit early to draw conclusions from the results, and we only have a very small insight on mtgo data (how many of these nearly identical UR lists actually 5-0ed? How many entered the league?).
Disrupting shoal at least has some arguments to back up its inclusion : in the scenario you describe where you tappout on 2, 3 and 4, logic knot or remand feel bad, and shoal can gain you incredible tempo advantage.
Early in the game, it should be possible to know which card you want to play around/counter and keep a pitch according to that, modern cmcs are cocentrated between 1-4. Later on, the shoal can be hardcasted and the card disadvantage recovered by a Jace.
I'll try to test the card to try and have an unbiased opinion about the card in this new shell
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MTGO Username: Tajicyolo
Currently Playing:
Modern Grixis Shadow, Storm Legacy: Grixis Delver, Sneak and Show Duel Commander:Kess High Tide Vintage Big blue(MTGO)
Data from mtgo should be taken as a grain of salt. For leagues they only publish "unique" deck lists. I would only look at leagues for sweet tech.
Mtgo modern challenge has better data, but we need multiple weeks of data to draw any conclusions from it.
The best way to get data is to post your experiences and admit when you played vs good/bad opponents and when you made bad decisions to give a real perspective on the decks performance.
Crushing scrubs in FNM doesn't mean anything but going 9-1 vs the top 3 players in you LGS means a lot. A 60% win rate in friendly leagues has some value, but doing that in comp leagues has more value.
Sideboarding for this deck is really tough to compare to the splinter twin deck for grindy match ups. Splinter twin needed to cut a lot of the combo against decks like jund or midrange which featured a plethora of ways to kill their combo creatures making it difficult to ever assemble a combo, leaving twins dead in hand which is why they often boarded into things like keranos to mitigate the bad match up. Honestly, Breach (the combo itself) has only one weakness against midrange, and that weakness is Thoughtseize. Obviously we can still get junded out by a fast draw but I'd still rather be playing breach against midrange decks (or in this meta really) right now than Splinter Twin. I find it difficult to board out the entire combo against almost everything, infact sometimes i just shave one copy of breach at most. We have ways to grind as a UR control deck, but we will often get ground out better by decks designed to do that in the first place. I would advise not boarding out your combo 99% of the time without a real good reason or unless your board is so stacked for a particular match up that you think playing out control is better, it's our main route to victory and the best draws we can assemble once we stabilize in any given match up. I actually feel favored against Jund style decks in this meta right now, especially pre sideboard.
After some more testing with Breach I'm really impressed with the deck, though I have yet to test against some BBE decks. I went undefeated in 2 local tournaments (3-0 against monoB zombies, BR hollow one & UW control, 4-0 against Jeskai control w/Jace, Valakut, Esper control & Tron)
I went 5-0 against UW control in a dedicated test session.
My impressions are that the control MU are extremely good. They have a lot of dead cards in game 1, we have more countermagic post side and our combo makes it very difficult for them to tapp out.
The Hollow one MU felt very close, we tested more games and it was about 50/50. We can't really deal with very early hollow one, but if we bolt their 1drop we can tempo them out to set up a turn5 breach. Cryptic was good at surviving turn 4. They have very few ways of disrupting us (Collective brutality), but the random draw/discard can destroy our hand
The deck seems very well positionned against Big mana, as expected from a blood moon+combo deck
I agree that discard is the most efficient way to interact with the combo. It seems though that most Jund lists are now cutting thoughtseize from the main which is very good for us. On the other hand, BBE makes it very difficult to stabilize the board for Jace
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MTGO Username: Tajicyolo
Currently Playing:
Modern Grixis Shadow, Storm Legacy: Grixis Delver, Sneak and Show Duel Commander:Kess High Tide Vintage Big blue(MTGO)
Playing a pretty standard UR Breach list with 3 MD Jace with a fourth in the SB that honestly gets brought in about half of the matches. He's without a doubt the missing piece this deck has needed since the Dig Through Time banning. He digs, generates card advantage, is disruptive/defensive, and is a completely independent win-con. Couple quick discussion points:
1. Jund and B/G in general are still difficult matchups because discard + efficient pressure makes comboing very difficult, but if you try to SB out your combo and play the value game against them you will likely get outclassed by the raw efficiency and power of their cards compared to ours, especially with BBE in the picture now. What are other Breach players SBing to combat this and how are you SBing? Are you taking out your combo to play the value game or are you still trying to combo out just with more targeted means against black decks? Jace is huge here but you really can't rely on him against Jund.
2. Other Jace decks and blue in general is overall favorable, but Jeskai decks have been giving me problems because of Geist of Saint Traft. Geist puts you in a position where you have to sb in subpar cards for the matchup such as Anger of the Gods otherwise you are put on a very quick clock that we don't have very many answers to. The few answers we do have are Cryptic tap-downs and Snap/Vendillion blocks but the former is a poor use of Cryptic in the matchup and the second is too unreliable against a deck that plays both Bolt and Path. Anybody else running into this problem?
3. Anybody else having problems with Hollow One decks? The black one is slower than the green one but makes up for it with discard, and the green one is just fast and mostly bolt-proof. Neither deck really cares about grave-hate or Anger of the Gods. If they get a good draw I just get steam-rolled.
Overall, I feel this deck is well positioned, if only because of a solid matchup against opposing Jace decks with the cheese-factor of playing a Moon deck also. The sheer volume of Jace/Snapcaster decks being played right now makes it too difficult for other decks to discern what we're playing and that makes them either play right into a Breach or Moon blow-out, or potentially play sub-optimally when expecting a Moon. Great stuff.
I'm currently running a 3 Blood Moon/3 Jace/4 Breach/3 Emrakul build. From my limited playtesting so far, Jund seems alright. I feel favored overall. G Tron feels incredibly favored. Humans feels unwinnable. What are people doing for the humans match up?
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Magic player since July 2011.
Modern - Esper Draw-Go (Best finish - 12-3, 45th at GP Charlotte 2015), Jeskai Control, UR Breach Moon
@Piotrowiak: My MD is the same numbers. For Humans I'm bringing in 2 Abrade, 2 Roast, 1 Entrancing Melody, and all my Anger of Gods, which is currently 3. I take out all Remands, 2 Vendillion, 1 Opt, and 1 Cyptic. Humans feels like the games can go either way; if you stumble or keep a hand with no early interaction you will likely get steam-rolled and the game gets to a point that even resolved Breach won't win because they have lethal on the table. On the flip side, Blood Moon stops them from playing Magic, and extra early removal can buy enough time to put the game away. I'm playing a lot of creature hate in the board right now so this might be tilting things. Abrade is so valuable right now that I might play 3 by cutting Entrancing Melody.
Humans is very tough. Having three do nothings (Jace) in your deck certainly isn't helping your cause. You could try a maindeck Anger of the Gods or Pyroclasm instead but IMO 3 Jace main is way too many, I'm on 1 right now and considering going to 0.
Went 4-0 in a small 16 man with my playgroup this weekend, beating Humans, G Tron, Death's Shadow, and Amulet (all 2-1).
Humans is very tough, I got pretty lucky Blood Moon locking him at one point and Pyroclasm was great. Like you said G Tron is very easy, I lost game 1 due to mana screw, died with 3 Breach 2 Emrakul in my hand stuck on 4 lands but easily won game 2 and 3. Death's Shadow was super tight, my opponent may have made a misplay at one point (tapping out for a relatively inconsequential K Command allowing me to resolve a Blood Moon) and in game 3 I got extremely lucky (topdecked a 3 outer Lightning Bolt basically). Then Amulet was interesting, I have little experience playing against it. Game 1 Blood Moon did its thing, game 2 I didn't find one and lost due to Cavern basically, and game 3 blood moon did its thing.
I think for next time I'll actually try cutting Jace or moving him to the board, I'm just not even sure if he's necessary in this version of the archetype where you want to be Blood Moon locking and then combo killing ASAP. He certainly has a home in the more durdly Young Pyro versions, for sure.
I'm on 2 jace right now for a UR breachmoon list, feels good at that many. Humans is a tough matchup and one of the reasons i run 3x anger in the sb. Madcap also usually helps g2 as they board out most removal.
I haven't tested with it but it seems good vs Burn and a few other matchups -- Humans I just worry about being able to get it off in time through Thalia, but I guess that's a problem with anything.
I run 3x Madcap/2 Emperion, and yeah for the humans match it's tough. I'll usually board out 2x Cryptic, 2x Jace, 1x Breach for the madcap combo, then board in 3 anger of the gods and that's about the best we can do. An early moon vs them is obviously crippling, but yeah thalia is a beating.
I've looked at/brewed/tested a number of different UR Moon lists in the last couple weeks, and also think Breach seems like the best shell.
It seems like the deck largely builds itself. Bolt, Remand, Snaps, cantrips, combo package, Blood Moon, lands. 2 Jace IMO. Boom. What I'm interested in is what people are running for their sideboards. I agree with dopespot that boarding out the combo isn't where we usually want to be at. Twin could do that because it ran a bunch of tempo beaters it could flash out behind permission, but we don't really have that. For that reason, transformative sideboards seem dicey to me, but I could be wrong.
Obviously extra burn, sweepers, and Abrade are a good start. Staticaster seems good given my LGS is swarming with Affinity, and more permission is always good. Other than that, though? Anyone doing the transformative sideboard? Or using specific hosers? Or more generic cards like permission?
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
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Willing to share your list? Because that sounds awesome.
Edit: I firmly believe this deck is well positioned moving forward as our wincon dodges removal and Inquisition of kozilek (which most of the mid-range decks have adopted as the four of per Reid Duke and with the slight decline in shadow decks). Breach also plays well against opposing control decks as it is an instant and playing on their EOT with breach leads to many wins when you can sandbag a second breach or remand your own after having them waste spells.
Playing less than 4 snapcaster feels wrong, though I've tester going down to 2 cryptics and missing the 3rd one, as it is extremely relevant at gaining one turn against aggressive decks (tap+draw) to set up a turn 5 breach.
I agree on the 2 Jace MD, it feels like the right number. Do you ever side out some parts of the combo vs grindy decks? It feels like the twin-strategy of going down on combo for more grindy cards (Keranos/3rd Jace) post side should work, but as our combo pieces are useless by themselves, cutting some of them just increases the chances we get stuck with dead cards in hand. Maybe the strategy is to either side out none of the cards, or side them all out?
Some interesting lists in the new batch of mtgo results:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/competitive-modern-constructed-league-2018-02-20
1 Kiki temur deck with moons in the side, and 1 UR moon-kiki
Another non-combo UR moon deck with 4 Jace, 4 TITi and 4 disrupting shoal
1 UR Pyromancer deck without moon
1 Temur Moon ft. Noble hierarch
No breach lists. It's interesting to see more Kiki-Jiki lists, and lots of temur (without BBE) moon lists.
Any opinions on the Titi+ disrupting shoal list? I am still a bit skeptic of the 4 shoals but maybe it's the real deal?
Currently Playing:
Modern Grixis Shadow, Storm
Legacy: Grixis Delver, Sneak and Show
Duel Commander: Kess High Tide
Vintage Big blue(MTGO)
For some reason I've been drawn to UR since the unban b/c a T3 Moon followed by T4 Jace just seems back breaking, and potentially having a TitI on T2 to protect Jace is even more crazy. There are a ton of mana greedy decks out there right now and I just want to punish people for it with Blood Moon.
It is a bit early to draw conclusions from the results, and we only have a very small insight on mtgo data (how many of these nearly identical UR lists actually 5-0ed? How many entered the league?).
Disrupting shoal at least has some arguments to back up its inclusion : in the scenario you describe where you tappout on 2, 3 and 4, logic knot or remand feel bad, and shoal can gain you incredible tempo advantage.
Early in the game, it should be possible to know which card you want to play around/counter and keep a pitch according to that, modern cmcs are cocentrated between 1-4. Later on, the shoal can be hardcasted and the card disadvantage recovered by a Jace.
I'll try to test the card to try and have an unbiased opinion about the card in this new shell
Currently Playing:
Modern Grixis Shadow, Storm
Legacy: Grixis Delver, Sneak and Show
Duel Commander: Kess High Tide
Vintage Big blue(MTGO)
Mtgo modern challenge has better data, but we need multiple weeks of data to draw any conclusions from it.
The best way to get data is to post your experiences and admit when you played vs good/bad opponents and when you made bad decisions to give a real perspective on the decks performance.
Crushing scrubs in FNM doesn't mean anything but going 9-1 vs the top 3 players in you LGS means a lot. A 60% win rate in friendly leagues has some value, but doing that in comp leagues has more value.
I went 5-0 against UW control in a dedicated test session.
My impressions are that the control MU are extremely good. They have a lot of dead cards in game 1, we have more countermagic post side and our combo makes it very difficult for them to tapp out.
The Hollow one MU felt very close, we tested more games and it was about 50/50. We can't really deal with very early hollow one, but if we bolt their 1drop we can tempo them out to set up a turn5 breach. Cryptic was good at surviving turn 4. They have very few ways of disrupting us (Collective brutality), but the random draw/discard can destroy our hand
The deck seems very well positionned against Big mana, as expected from a blood moon+combo deck
I agree that discard is the most efficient way to interact with the combo. It seems though that most Jund lists are now cutting thoughtseize from the main which is very good for us. On the other hand, BBE makes it very difficult to stabilize the board for Jace
Currently Playing:
Modern Grixis Shadow, Storm
Legacy: Grixis Delver, Sneak and Show
Duel Commander: Kess High Tide
Vintage Big blue(MTGO)
1. Jund and B/G in general are still difficult matchups because discard + efficient pressure makes comboing very difficult, but if you try to SB out your combo and play the value game against them you will likely get outclassed by the raw efficiency and power of their cards compared to ours, especially with BBE in the picture now. What are other Breach players SBing to combat this and how are you SBing? Are you taking out your combo to play the value game or are you still trying to combo out just with more targeted means against black decks? Jace is huge here but you really can't rely on him against Jund.
2. Other Jace decks and blue in general is overall favorable, but Jeskai decks have been giving me problems because of Geist of Saint Traft. Geist puts you in a position where you have to sb in subpar cards for the matchup such as Anger of the Gods otherwise you are put on a very quick clock that we don't have very many answers to. The few answers we do have are Cryptic tap-downs and Snap/Vendillion blocks but the former is a poor use of Cryptic in the matchup and the second is too unreliable against a deck that plays both Bolt and Path. Anybody else running into this problem?
3. Anybody else having problems with Hollow One decks? The black one is slower than the green one but makes up for it with discard, and the green one is just fast and mostly bolt-proof. Neither deck really cares about grave-hate or Anger of the Gods. If they get a good draw I just get steam-rolled.
Overall, I feel this deck is well positioned, if only because of a solid matchup against opposing Jace decks with the cheese-factor of playing a Moon deck also. The sheer volume of Jace/Snapcaster decks being played right now makes it too difficult for other decks to discern what we're playing and that makes them either play right into a Breach or Moon blow-out, or potentially play sub-optimally when expecting a Moon. Great stuff.
Modern - Esper Draw-Go (Best finish - 12-3, 45th at GP Charlotte 2015), Jeskai Control, UR Breach Moon
Went 4-0 in a small 16 man with my playgroup this weekend, beating Humans, G Tron, Death's Shadow, and Amulet (all 2-1).
Humans is very tough, I got pretty lucky Blood Moon locking him at one point and Pyroclasm was great. Like you said G Tron is very easy, I lost game 1 due to mana screw, died with 3 Breach 2 Emrakul in my hand stuck on 4 lands but easily won game 2 and 3. Death's Shadow was super tight, my opponent may have made a misplay at one point (tapping out for a relatively inconsequential K Command allowing me to resolve a Blood Moon) and in game 3 I got extremely lucky (topdecked a 3 outer Lightning Bolt basically). Then Amulet was interesting, I have little experience playing against it. Game 1 Blood Moon did its thing, game 2 I didn't find one and lost due to Cavern basically, and game 3 blood moon did its thing.
I think for next time I'll actually try cutting Jace or moving him to the board, I'm just not even sure if he's necessary in this version of the archetype where you want to be Blood Moon locking and then combo killing ASAP. He certainly has a home in the more durdly Young Pyro versions, for sure.
I haven't tested with it but it seems good vs Burn and a few other matchups -- Humans I just worry about being able to get it off in time through Thalia, but I guess that's a problem with anything.
Spirits
It seems like the deck largely builds itself. Bolt, Remand, Snaps, cantrips, combo package, Blood Moon, lands. 2 Jace IMO. Boom. What I'm interested in is what people are running for their sideboards. I agree with dopespot that boarding out the combo isn't where we usually want to be at. Twin could do that because it ran a bunch of tempo beaters it could flash out behind permission, but we don't really have that. For that reason, transformative sideboards seem dicey to me, but I could be wrong.
Obviously extra burn, sweepers, and Abrade are a good start. Staticaster seems good given my LGS is swarming with Affinity, and more permission is always good. Other than that, though? Anyone doing the transformative sideboard? Or using specific hosers? Or more generic cards like permission?
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon