There are a few places where I feel this list can improve.
You are definitely running too many copies of the sword/foundry combo. They're not likely to get exiled and gifts finds the whole combo if you build it right, so here are some suggestions:
Run 1 of each combo piece
Run 1 Noxious Revival so you can Gifts for Snapcaster/Foundry/Sword/Revival and guarantee the combo on the following turn. You can also run a Breeding Pool to mitigate the life, but two life shouldn't matter when you're about to gain a ton from the combo.
Run Esper Charm!
Disagree. 3 foundry/2 sword is almost certainly correct for esper gifts--because thirst for knowledge lets you pitch artifacts for value, and we really do need about six or 7 artifacts to get max value out of those. I think if you go 4-color (gifts/loam), then 1/1 is fine.
I'm playing around with two lists, and alternating between them:
list 1 is gifts-based with thirst for knowledge, esper charm, and a more midrangy-grindy gameplan.
List 2 is mystical teachings/esper charm/ancestral vision as a draw engine with mana leak/remand/some finishers.
In both cases, I'm not playing white sun's zenith any longer--there are just better finishers.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
So after a grand total of 53 matches since yesterday (stayed up all night with the crew to bring you the most juicy statistics), I can safely say I'm playing 0 AV.
I have here in this notebook 48 instances of "used think twice before turn 5 of the game, ripped a cryptic, verdict, spell snare which was crucial, or a much needed path to exile"
What this usually looked like was ripping the think twice itself on turn 3, eot'ing it, and ripping a verdict, cryptic, or possibly just a land which enabled me to cast one of those things. Often times the card I ripped off of the EOT turn 3 think twice was garbage for the situation I was in, but getting that card out of the way enabled me to untap and topdeck the card I needed a turn earlier. 48 times out of 53 matches is very close to what most would consider "at least once every match I was in a position where I really seriously needed think twice and AV would have done nothing"
There were exactly 35 instances I've marked down of "turn 7 or later, holding a grip of lands, rip think twice and play it plus flashback EOT, ripping a relevant spell for stabilization" of those 35 instances, 26 of them were "Dead on board if I don't rip cryptic, verdict, or path" and of those 26 instances the required stabilization cards were in fact drawn 22 times (from either think twice, flashback, or the following draw step after drawing two cards)
That's 26 theoretical times out of 35 were AV straight up gets us killed, and 22 ACTUAL times were AV gets us killed.
Now here's the disclaimer: AV is obviously good, but it's going to shine in decks without a lot of inherent card advantage. Decks like uw/r control are now possible, maybe some BUG things or just straight UW or UB. AV can fill the role of Esper Charm in those decks as far as raw drawing power is concerned.
US on the other hand, are trying to fix something that isn't broken. Please note how none of the historical decks that played AV never had Sphinx's Rev also (because it wasn't printed, but still) That's because realistically the AV was getting cast later in the game. Well, now we have REV for that purpose, and the EARLY game AV play has already been discussed, and it's not great.
By all means I'll be brewing U/W tapout on the side or something wit AV, but as far as the deck actually being discussed in this forum, the numbers are in, and they say "meh"
So after a grand total of 53 matches since yesterday (stayed up all night with the crew to bring you the most juicy statistics), I can safely say I'm playing 0 AV.
I have here in this notebook 48 instances of "used think twice before turn 5 of the game, ripped a cryptic, verdict, spell snare which was crucial, or a much needed path to exile"
What this usually looked like was ripping the think twice itself on turn 3, eot'ing it, and ripping a verdict, cryptic, or possibly just a land which enabled me to cast one of those things. Often times the card I ripped off of the EOT turn 3 think twice was garbage for the situation I was in, but getting that card out of the way enabled me to untap and topdeck the card I needed a turn earlier. 48 times out of 53 matches is very close to what most would consider "at least once every match I was in a position where I really seriously needed think twice and AV would have done nothing"
There were exactly 35 instances I've marked down of "turn 7 or later, holding a grip of lands, rip think twice and play it plus flashback EOT, ripping a relevant spell for stabilization" of those 35 instances, 26 of them were "Dead on board if I don't rip cryptic, verdict, or path" and of those 26 instances the required stabilization cards were in fact drawn 22 times (from either think twice, flashback, or the following draw step after drawing two cards)
That's 26 theoretical times out of 35 were AV straight up gets us killed, and 22 ACTUAL times were AV gets us killed.
Now here's the disclaimer: AV is obviously good, but it's going to shine in decks without a lot of inherent card advantage. Decks like uw/r control are now possible, maybe some BUG things or just straight UW or UB. AV can fill the role of Esper Charm in those decks as far as raw drawing power is concerned.
US on the other hand, are trying to fix something that isn't broken. Please note how none of the historical decks that played AV never had Sphinx's Rev also (because it wasn't printed, but still) That's because realistically the AV was getting cast later in the game. Well, now we have REV for that purpose, and the EARLY game AV play has already been discussed, and it's not great.
By all means I'll be brewing U/W tapout on the side or something wit AV, but as far as the deck actually being discussed in this forum, the numbers are in, and they say "meh"
You don't have to cut think twice. What i'm planning on testing is to cut SoD and snappy from the original list and go from there
There were exactly 35 instances I've marked down of "turn 7 or later, holding a grip of lands, rip think twice and play it plus flashback EOT, ripping a relevant spell for stabilization" of those 35 instances, 26 of them were "Dead on board if I don't rip cryptic, verdict, or path" and of those 26 instances the required stabilization cards were in fact drawn 22 times (from either think twice, flashback, or the following draw step after drawing two cards)
That's what I meant by playing Anticipate + Ancestral Vision, if we happen to need the immediate drawing power of Think Twice to search for an specific answer while we have an AV suspended, card selection that digs for 3 is straight up better, even if we don't have the flashback. Therefore, I believe we can actually cut TT if we play something like Anticipate to search for answers that let us survive until it comes out of Suspend. My only concern would be facing stuff like Eldrazi processors, but those just aren't that common in the first place.
Hopefully I'll be able to test this theory of mine during the weekend and let you now if it's actually any good.
@ses as amalek0 stated, if you only change 4 cards in the deck, AV will look bad. what list were you playing ?
Right, I just don't see the point in changing an entire list around to make one "pretty good" card work, when the list already works and in fact just got WAY better positioned in the metagame.
I mean, Gideon Jura is pretty good right now, why don't you change the entire deck around to fit him in here? Lingering souls is "pretty good", why not re-work the entire framework to play souls?
I'll tell you why you aren't doing those things, because Souls and Gideon aren't new and shiny.
Obviously almost ANY card is bad if you just "only change 4 cards in the deck", my point is, as much as you guys hate on think twice, it's actually good. I don't know what's up with all this "it's the best we got so I guess we'll use it" kind of attitude, I LOVE casting think twice. I love drawing it, it's useful and immediate and generates card advantage and lets me split the mana investment while still getting a card in the short term. I just genuinely like the card and think that, in this shell, the card is good.
I think the gist of this is that perhaps needs to be a new thread for deck creation based around AV in a control shell. I'm not saying this deck can't use AV, but there seems to be a more dedicated AV deck that needs to get developed from the ground up.
So I've been testing a bit to see how we fare in the new meta, and it looks like the current versions for blue AV is basically unbanned.deck. It looks like a tap-out style either with red/white for bolts and electrolyze or esper for lilianna and lingering souls, they all run baby jace, and I've lost every game against them. I just can't deal with resolved planeswalkers, nevermind countering their threats, plus leaving counter magic up for when AV casts, plus enough to counter their counters too. Any ideas on what we do about this? I've tried everything I can think of, bar anguished unmaking (which may actually be even better now) to try and beat them. A resolved AV for them means they hit their lands more consistently, and just generally bury us in CA.
Why not start a thread for generic Esper Control? You can place the link in here and everyone will shift over.
Ancestral doesn't make any sense in a draw-go deck. The card works best as the only source of card draw for decks that can empty their hand early. Think GBx or Shardless BUG in Legacy. That's the first style of deck to benefit, and likely the new "best deck" in a few months. Other, less aggressive, decks that benefit are UWR or it's predecessor, UB Faeries. A Tezzerator deck with Thopter-Sword could also abuse Ancestral in a prison-control setup, since Thoughtseize and Inquisition just got a lot better. Tezzerator is great at dumping it's hand, though Ensnaring Bridge could be awkward with Ancestral.
Visions in a deck already full of draw spells is just bad, though. It's a "no assembly required" draw engine that would occupy the same space as Revelation or WSZ. You have to have it on turn 1 to draw 3 on turn 5. Ancestral in your opening hand is a mulligan in the same sense as a Revelation is. The rest of your hand has to carry you and these cards are only live in the mid-endgame. Revelation requires you build your deck around it but has a much higher ceiling than Ancestral.
All the Modern Control archetypes that had no good way to draw cards are going to benefit here. This is the one archetype that was flooded with card draw. There's plenty to try and I know UWR and Tezzerator are decks I'm going to revisit. Making this a cluster**** brewing thread for them all is going to negate it's usefullness, though.
@amalek: You said you were thinking about rewriting the primer? You should point out in even the most basic description on this deck, the relationship between raw card drawers, land flooding, and Sphinx's Revelation. The last few pages are full of people comparing Think Twice and Ancestral.
I've actually been tinkering around, and I've got an idea I want to test but I don't have time to do it in the next day or two:
What if we DO try going back to Wafo's card draw suite from olden days? 4 charm, 4 visions, 3 mystical teachings was the draw engine behind one of his better format smashers.
12 1 and 2 mana spells, plenty of card draw. It's a lot of early game interaction. It also feels like it would flow a bit better than what I currently have been testing. It also has the advantage of letting us do all sorts of broken stuff from the sideboard--Teferi for the blue mirrors (nice AV's there guys!), fracturing gust against affinity, extirpate against thopter/sword decks, etc. I really like the build linked a few posts earlier, and I think if it were tweaked to reflect the faster/more linear metagame and the presence of remand and dispel that it could be a house.
I've had more success in the past with 2 teachings/26 lands, but thats not to say 3/27 is wrong.
If you're playing teachings, anguished unmaking should probably find atleast 1 space in the main. Even if you don't run other singetons, unmaking does look powerful with teachings.
Notion thief also looks like a lot of fun with teachings.
SSS might be good if you also play cliques, but I don't think thats a direction we should go.
I've still yet to make thopter sword work and not feel terrible, but I'll test the you posted swiftspear.
Why not start a thread for generic Esper Control? You can place the link in here and everyone will shift over.
Ancestral doesn't make any sense in a draw-go deck. The card works best as the only source of card draw for decks that can empty their hand early. Think GBx or Shardless BUG in Legacy. That's the first style of deck to benefit, and likely the new "best deck" in a few months. Other, less aggressive, decks that benefit are UWR or it's predecessor, UB Faeries. A Tezzerator deck with Thopter-Sword could also abuse Ancestral in a prison-control setup, since Thoughtseize and Inquisition just got a lot better. Tezzerator is great at dumping it's hand, though Ensnaring Bridge could be awkward with Ancestral.
Visions in a deck already full of draw spells is just bad, though. It's a "no assembly required" draw engine that would occupy the same space as Revelation or WSZ. You have to have it on turn 1 to draw 3 on turn 5. Ancestral in your opening hand is a mulligan in the same sense as a Revelation is. The rest of your hand has to carry you and these cards are only live in the mid-endgame. Revelation requires you build your deck around it but has a much higher ceiling than Ancestral.
All the Modern Control archetypes that had no good way to draw cards are going to benefit here. This is the one archetype that was flooded with card draw. There's plenty to try and I know UWR and Tezzerator are decks I'm going to revisit. Making this a cluster**** brewing thread for them all is going to negate it's usefullness, though.
@amalek: You said you were thinking about rewriting the primer? You should point out in even the most basic description on this deck, the relationship between raw card drawers, land flooding, and Sphinx's Revelation. The last few pages are full of people comparing Think Twice and Ancestral.
Nevermind, even amalek's doing it. I give up.
You do realize that Wafo-Tapo played 4 AV in his Extended Teachings Draw-Go deck, right? No? OK then. Where do people get this idea that Visions doesn't fit in Draw-go decks? It's so baffling to me. Visions is literally made for Draw-go decks.
You do realize that Wafo-Tapo played 4 AV in his Extended Teachings Draw-Go deck, right? No? OK then. Where do people get this idea that Visions doesn't fit in Draw-go decks? It's so baffling to me. Visions is literally made for Draw-go decks.
This was before Sphinx's Revelation. Like I said, Ancestral and Revelation are operating in the same space. His only raw card drawers are 4 Esper Charm and those 4 Ancestral. That list is closer to a Gifts deck than a draw-go deck. Of course, I'm sure you'll say it's all draw-go because they all have "a lot of instants".
He even had 4x Mana Leak, which he eschewed from the current list because he isn't trying to drag the game out indefinitely. He has a proactive gameplan once Teachings is live. The draw-go version doesn't soft-lock people with Teachings or chain them into flash creatures.
He even had 4x Mana Leak, which he eschewed from the current list because he isn't trying to drag the game out indefinitely. He has a proactive gameplan once Teachings is live. The draw-go version doesn't soft-lock people with Teachings or chain them into flash creatures.
Yes, his pro-active gameplan of 2 Teferi's and 1 Crovax. That is literally his only way to win games with that deck. Sorry he had 1 Colonnade as well. If that's not the definition of a Draw-Go control deck I'm not sure what is to be honest. How far down the No True Scotsman rabbit hole do we have to go here? Sphinx's is a fine card, but AV is more economical. I'd rather play 4 AV, 4 TT, 4 Esper Charms, 3 Cryptics, than play with Sphinx imho. Anyways, that's beside the point. AV is a draw-go card.
You do realize that Teachings is a "draw" card, that just happens to tutor instead of the random off the top library draw, right? That deck had a lot of draw power - 4 AV, 4 Esper Charm, 4 Cryptics, 3 Teachings, & 1 Repeal.
Is AV a draw go card? Irrelevant, we play Supreme Verdict. Whatever
Point being, does it actually make our current deck better without building an entirely different deck / engine? NO. It doesn't
I was waiting for it to happen, someone finally just compared REV to AV saying "I'd rather have AV imho" Well sir, go and take your AV. That's your prerogative.
I hate to do this, because it reeks of condesescension and I DON'T intend it that way at all, but BESIDES Amalek, I look down the list and names I recognize from the forum of people who have been posting here and relentlessly grinding this deck for over a year, most of you (us) seem to be relatively "meh" on visions and are more "hey well the deck we already had is now better positioned, so instead of redesigning the whole thing we can play the deck we've worked so hard on and be better positioned to attack the metagame than we used to be, yayyyy" These are the people who understand the power of sphinx's rev, understand the consistency of think twice, and the people who will be remanding your AV until the cows come home.
Then there are a gang of newer contributors who perhaps don't have as much physical and practical playtime with the deck who are all on the hype train. This brings us back to the "build the original wafo list and go from there so you can understand how the shell works " thing we have to go back to every so often.
I'm not hating onyou guys, in fact that teachings list is sweet. I just don't think it's better than what we were doing. Given the fact that Wadfo-had access to teachings and chose not to play it, neither did he. You can try to pin me on an "appeal to authority" there, but facts are facts. We are playing a deck that is basically just wafo worship. I think it's pretty telling that he of all people abandoned teachings.
I tried for a few months last year to get teachings to work and it was just never as solidly consistent as the GP Boston shell.
Where are Donny and Piotrowiak? (forgive the spelling)
I plan on remanding AV. I think our current deck is doing well and slight meta related card changes are what should guide us. I'm still worried about U tron. I lose every time to a Tron deck. It's an exciting time for modern. Lets enjoy this moment of discovery and possibly even control sumpremacy.
I've only done a few games of testing on XMage, but I can officially say that AV is much better than I thought it was -- so much so that it might be worth changing a lot about the deck to make it work. Playing it with a set of Remands to interact and cantrip into lands during the early stages of the game has felt very, very good. I've been playing AV in a 4x AV/ 4x Esper Charm/3x Teachings shell (you can even call the deck Ancestral Teachings!), and I like it a lot so far. I'm still playing Zenith as a one-of to Teachings for and end the game too, so it doesn't really feel so different. After you suspend the first AV, hitting the next few isn't even a concern -- you just suspend another when it's convenient and it feels like you never stop drawing cards. It does seem like I'll need the 27th land, but there's something there and I'm determined to find it now.
@Rissun What is your strategy vs AV UWx decks that you saw in your testing? I'm finding that match-up especially hard, it seems that they have too many things that I need to stop, all the while having counters for me. I may just be playing the match-ups wrong, but I'm interested to hear why you found it so easy.
I'm running pretty much the standard Wafo build, minus 2 SoD, 1 Negate, 1 Runed Halo.
Disagree. 3 foundry/2 sword is almost certainly correct for esper gifts--because thirst for knowledge lets you pitch artifacts for value, and we really do need about six or 7 artifacts to get max value out of those.
What makes you say that you need that many artifacts for value? or is that specifically referring to the thirsts? I've found with 2-3 muddle the mixture a 3/2 thopter sword split is plenty enough to find it when you need.
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I was thinking of trying out visions in a tap out shell and I remembered you posted something months ago I had wanted to try at the time but never got around to. Do you think this would be a viable place to start?
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There are a few places where I feel this list can improve.
You are definitely running too many copies of the sword/foundry combo. They're not likely to get exiled and gifts finds the whole combo if you build it right, so here are some suggestions:
Run 1 of each combo piece
Run 1 Noxious Revival so you can Gifts for Snapcaster/Foundry/Sword/Revival and guarantee the combo on the following turn. You can also run a Breeding Pool to mitigate the life, but two life shouldn't matter when you're about to gain a ton from the combo.
Run Esper Charm!
I stream Modern events semi-regularly at http://www.twitch.tv/nezeru
I'm playing around with two lists, and alternating between them:
list 1 is gifts-based with thirst for knowledge, esper charm, and a more midrangy-grindy gameplan.
List 2 is mystical teachings/esper charm/ancestral vision as a draw engine with mana leak/remand/some finishers.
In both cases, I'm not playing white sun's zenith any longer--there are just better finishers.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I have here in this notebook 48 instances of "used think twice before turn 5 of the game, ripped a cryptic, verdict, spell snare which was crucial, or a much needed path to exile"
What this usually looked like was ripping the think twice itself on turn 3, eot'ing it, and ripping a verdict, cryptic, or possibly just a land which enabled me to cast one of those things. Often times the card I ripped off of the EOT turn 3 think twice was garbage for the situation I was in, but getting that card out of the way enabled me to untap and topdeck the card I needed a turn earlier. 48 times out of 53 matches is very close to what most would consider "at least once every match I was in a position where I really seriously needed think twice and AV would have done nothing"
There were exactly 35 instances I've marked down of "turn 7 or later, holding a grip of lands, rip think twice and play it plus flashback EOT, ripping a relevant spell for stabilization" of those 35 instances, 26 of them were "Dead on board if I don't rip cryptic, verdict, or path" and of those 26 instances the required stabilization cards were in fact drawn 22 times (from either think twice, flashback, or the following draw step after drawing two cards)
That's 26 theoretical times out of 35 were AV straight up gets us killed, and 22 ACTUAL times were AV gets us killed.
Now here's the disclaimer: AV is obviously good, but it's going to shine in decks without a lot of inherent card advantage. Decks like uw/r control are now possible, maybe some BUG things or just straight UW or UB. AV can fill the role of Esper Charm in those decks as far as raw drawing power is concerned.
US on the other hand, are trying to fix something that isn't broken. Please note how none of the historical decks that played AV never had Sphinx's Rev also (because it wasn't printed, but still) That's because realistically the AV was getting cast later in the game. Well, now we have REV for that purpose, and the EARLY game AV play has already been discussed, and it's not great.
By all means I'll be brewing U/W tapout on the side or something wit AV, but as far as the deck actually being discussed in this forum, the numbers are in, and they say "meh"
You don't have to cut think twice. What i'm planning on testing is to cut SoD and snappy from the original list and go from there
That's what I meant by playing Anticipate + Ancestral Vision, if we happen to need the immediate drawing power of Think Twice to search for an specific answer while we have an AV suspended, card selection that digs for 3 is straight up better, even if we don't have the flashback. Therefore, I believe we can actually cut TT if we play something like Anticipate to search for answers that let us survive until it comes out of Suspend. My only concern would be facing stuff like Eldrazi processors, but those just aren't that common in the first place.
Hopefully I'll be able to test this theory of mine during the weekend and let you now if it's actually any good.
Right, I just don't see the point in changing an entire list around to make one "pretty good" card work, when the list already works and in fact just got WAY better positioned in the metagame.
I mean, Gideon Jura is pretty good right now, why don't you change the entire deck around to fit him in here? Lingering souls is "pretty good", why not re-work the entire framework to play souls?
I'll tell you why you aren't doing those things, because Souls and Gideon aren't new and shiny.
Obviously almost ANY card is bad if you just "only change 4 cards in the deck", my point is, as much as you guys hate on think twice, it's actually good. I don't know what's up with all this "it's the best we got so I guess we'll use it" kind of attitude, I LOVE casting think twice. I love drawing it, it's useful and immediate and generates card advantage and lets me split the mana investment while still getting a card in the short term. I just genuinely like the card and think that, in this shell, the card is good.
*shrug*
Ancestral doesn't make any sense in a draw-go deck. The card works best as the only source of card draw for decks that can empty their hand early. Think GBx or Shardless BUG in Legacy. That's the first style of deck to benefit, and likely the new "best deck" in a few months. Other, less aggressive, decks that benefit are UWR or it's predecessor, UB Faeries. A Tezzerator deck with Thopter-Sword could also abuse Ancestral in a prison-control setup, since Thoughtseize and Inquisition just got a lot better. Tezzerator is great at dumping it's hand, though Ensnaring Bridge could be awkward with Ancestral.
Visions in a deck already full of draw spells is just bad, though. It's a "no assembly required" draw engine that would occupy the same space as Revelation or WSZ. You have to have it on turn 1 to draw 3 on turn 5. Ancestral in your opening hand is a mulligan in the same sense as a Revelation is. The rest of your hand has to carry you and these cards are only live in the mid-endgame. Revelation requires you build your deck around it but has a much higher ceiling than Ancestral.
All the Modern Control archetypes that had no good way to draw cards are going to benefit here. This is the one archetype that was flooded with card draw. There's plenty to try and I know UWR and Tezzerator are decks I'm going to revisit. Making this a cluster**** brewing thread for them all is going to negate it's usefullness, though.
@amalek: You said you were thinking about rewriting the primer? You should point out in even the most basic description on this deck, the relationship between raw card drawers, land flooding, and Sphinx's Revelation. The last few pages are full of people comparing Think Twice and Ancestral.Nevermind, even amalek's doing it. I give up.
I've had more success in the past with 2 teachings/26 lands, but thats not to say 3/27 is wrong.
If you're playing teachings, anguished unmaking should probably find atleast 1 space in the main. Even if you don't run other singetons, unmaking does look powerful with teachings.
Notion thief also looks like a lot of fun with teachings.
SSS might be good if you also play cliques, but I don't think thats a direction we should go.
I've still yet to make thopter sword work and not feel terrible, but I'll test the you posted swiftspear.
You do realize that Wafo-Tapo played 4 AV in his Extended Teachings Draw-Go deck, right? No? OK then. Where do people get this idea that Visions doesn't fit in Draw-go decks? It's so baffling to me. Visions is literally made for Draw-go decks.
This was before Sphinx's Revelation. Like I said, Ancestral and Revelation are operating in the same space. His only raw card drawers are 4 Esper Charm and those 4 Ancestral. That list is closer to a Gifts deck than a draw-go deck. Of course, I'm sure you'll say it's all draw-go because they all have "a lot of instants".
Yes, his pro-active gameplan of 2 Teferi's and 1 Crovax. That is literally his only way to win games with that deck. Sorry he had 1 Colonnade as well. If that's not the definition of a Draw-Go control deck I'm not sure what is to be honest. How far down the No True Scotsman rabbit hole do we have to go here? Sphinx's is a fine card, but AV is more economical. I'd rather play 4 AV, 4 TT, 4 Esper Charms, 3 Cryptics, than play with Sphinx imho. Anyways, that's beside the point. AV is a draw-go card.
You do realize that Teachings is a "draw" card, that just happens to tutor instead of the random off the top library draw, right? That deck had a lot of draw power - 4 AV, 4 Esper Charm, 4 Cryptics, 3 Teachings, & 1 Repeal.
Point being, does it actually make our current deck better without building an entirely different deck / engine? NO. It doesn't
I was waiting for it to happen, someone finally just compared REV to AV saying "I'd rather have AV imho" Well sir, go and take your AV. That's your prerogative.
I hate to do this, because it reeks of condesescension and I DON'T intend it that way at all, but BESIDES Amalek, I look down the list and names I recognize from the forum of people who have been posting here and relentlessly grinding this deck for over a year, most of you (us) seem to be relatively "meh" on visions and are more "hey well the deck we already had is now better positioned, so instead of redesigning the whole thing we can play the deck we've worked so hard on and be better positioned to attack the metagame than we used to be, yayyyy" These are the people who understand the power of sphinx's rev, understand the consistency of think twice, and the people who will be remanding your AV until the cows come home.
Then there are a gang of newer contributors who perhaps don't have as much physical and practical playtime with the deck who are all on the hype train. This brings us back to the "build the original wafo list and go from there so you can understand how the shell works " thing we have to go back to every so often.
I'm not hating onyou guys, in fact that teachings list is sweet. I just don't think it's better than what we were doing. Given the fact that Wadfo-had access to teachings and chose not to play it, neither did he. You can try to pin me on an "appeal to authority" there, but facts are facts. We are playing a deck that is basically just wafo worship. I think it's pretty telling that he of all people abandoned teachings.
I tried for a few months last year to get teachings to work and it was just never as solidly consistent as the GP Boston shell.
Where are Donny and Piotrowiak? (forgive the spelling)
UWB Esper Draw-Go Control (clicky)
UW Azorius Control (clicky)
Currently pursuing a degree in Biochemistry.
EDH: I've decided I don't like multiplayer formats.
I'm running pretty much the standard Wafo build, minus 2 SoD, 1 Negate, 1 Runed Halo.
What makes you say that you need that many artifacts for value? or is that specifically referring to the thirsts? I've found with 2-3 muddle the mixture a 3/2 thopter sword split is plenty enough to find it when you need.
I was thinking of trying out visions in a tap out shell and I remembered you posted something months ago I had wanted to try at the time but never got around to. Do you think this would be a viable place to start?