I've been eyeing this deck for awhile as I've felt the lack of options when playing Modern and feel like I might as well jam Snapcasters. What would a good starting list look like? My metagame has a good variety but Tron is HUGE! That's what I'm worried about the most; I've been told Ux control decks in general don't do well against any Tron variants and they're littered through my local store.
Ux has traditionally been bad against Tron variants, however our Eldrazi tron matchup is slightly favourable and our traditional Gx Tron match up is just all I ever want to face, very favorable. Blue tron is a bad match for us though.
There have been some recent developments with the choice of Field of Ruin over the other LD lands, and those have yet to be fleshed out precisely, but it's probably correct to have an additional fetchable dual land to help mitigate the possibility of dead flooded strands late game.
I've been eyeing this deck for awhile as I've felt the lack of options when playing Modern and feel like I might as well jam Snapcasters. What would a good starting list look like? My metagame has a good variety but Tron is HUGE! That's what I'm worried about the most; I've been told Ux control decks in general don't do well against any Tron variants and they're littered through my local store.
Ux has traditionally been bad against Tron variants, however our Eldrazi tron matchup is slightly favourable and our traditional Gx Tron match up is just all I ever want to face, very favorable. Blue tron is a bad match for us though.
I find any of the Green based Tron decks to be pretty terrible matchups for us and Eldrazi Tron to be very favorable. Any reason why you think the G variants are good matchups? The problem with them is that their threats are more Planeswalker based in Karn and Ugin and they usually also intend on ramping out Ulamog. Our deck has very few ways to interact with resolved Planeswalkers, and all of our Paths/Verdicts are pretty close to dead in the matchup.
Eldrazi Tron, on the other hand, is so creature based that our deck can just run them out of gas with Path to Exiles and Supreme Verdicts before locking them out of the game with Crytpic chains.
I usually feel it's the opposite. Trons is a walk in the park and eldrazi tron is usually much more annoying since you can't really screw their manabase too much and some of the crazy hands are almost impossible to beat. Chalice is another huge factor in the annoying level.
@moxruby - their threats don't do anything against us unless they are cast ahead of curve, which they never are due to Seas and LD lands. I couldn't care less about getting a land or 4 exiled, or losing the worst card from hand. Thier 10 drop trades with my 1 Mana removal and a pair of lands. Since all of our cards do something, and all of thier cards only do one thing (ramp) we are usually up a lot of cards by the time they can cast thier threats, so the fact that those threats 2 or 3 for 1 us just doesn't matter. What's your list like moxruby, maybe the problem is there rather than in your approach to the match.
Bennyhillz streamed for about 6 hours yesterday, I didn't get to watch much at all, I just sort of had it on in the background. He added a couple kitchen finks to the SB and had some really good matches from what I can tell. I'm going to go back and watch it at some point to see how he made certain decisions especially in sideboarding with the finks. Definitely a good thing to watch for anyone who missed it.
Glad y'all liked the stream! And @moxruby, the most important thing in the matchup in my opinion (other than keeping them off of Tron for as long as you can obviously) is prioritizing counterspells. I almost never counter things like Wurmcoil, Oblivion Stone, Worldbreaker or Ulamog because we have other answers to them, but like you said it's really hard to deal with resolved planeswalkers. If we can keep a Karn or Ugin from resolving, the matchup is pretty easy.
Even when they do resolve planeswalkers, the key is to not panic, eventually you can find a snap, cryptic or sphere. The only disaster scenarios against Tron are if you get forced into using a sphere prematurely, since a Karn or Ugin will then present as 2 or more threats.
@Cody_X: The MU I've been seeing more of has been the green white and D&T. I've had several games where they've turn 1 vial, turn two arbiter, turn three LD followed by ramunap excavator. The game is pretty much done after that.
@chipper77: Great job with the streams! Can't tell you how much it's helped improve my game and understanding of the deck. I feel that my thought process is starting to shift for the better and today even had an opponent tell me he was impressed at some of the decisions I had made. Keep it up!
@jayjayhooks: Is it worth sb Ceremonious Rejection to deal with the Tron matches (can hit chalice/planeswalkers a little easier)?
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@chantu9y - Ceremonious Rejection is great against Gx Tron and Affinity, but it can be awkward against chalice. On the one hand it stops chalice on the when we are on the draw, on the other hand it's a dead draw if they already have chalice. I still usually bring it in though because I can often find a spot where I can cryptic bounce the chalice eot and then either spew my 1cmc cards next turn or counter it on the way back down.
Despite the fact that I play 1 Rejection and 1 Stony, it's probably correct to just run 2 Stony. My reasoning for the split is that the 2nd Stony is a dead draw and the 1st rejection can be snapped back at least once, so it's kind of like getting 3 cards out of two slots instead of 1 card out of 2 slots. But as I said, thats probably wrong just based on the fact of how powerful Stony is that you probably just want max ability to find it and not get cute.
So I’ve seen some people saying that a pair of Search for Azcanta allows us to trim the land count down to 24. The same argument has been applied to a maindeck copy of Crucible of Worlds. Since I recently snapped up a 10th edition Crucible on the cheap, I’ll be playing one of each to start. Is it too outlandish to roll with 61 cards and 25 lands, or should I just shave a land and play with 60?
Mark me down as another person enjoying the chipper77 streams. Free time is at a premium right now so I’m having to go through the playbacks piecemeal, but they’re very informative. Nice work.
@savagegaul - I think crucible and search work well enough together, but I would recommend sticking to 25 lands and 60 cards. As I've said in the past, I believe Search facilitates playing a higher land count better than it facilitates a lower land count. With an unflipped search in play you will end up mill-scrying a lot of lands away throughout the game, so having a high number to make sure you hit the first 6 land drops or so is well worth it in my estimation. I've heard the the argument for Search facilitating a lower land count, but I don't find it convincing because most of it's proponents are on a single or at most 2 copies of search, so there's no gaurantee that you can reliably count on it to ensure your land drops.
@SavageGual- I agree with jay jays assessment; you want to make sure you have plenty of land as many a MU is determined by us consistently hitting our land drops. I personally run 24 lands with two Search and a Crucible MD. Not sure it's correct, but its been working for me, as one Search is almost always an island if need be and Crucible helps me fix my mana consistently, if I can get it down relatively early. In general though, I've found Search leans us towards more lands in order to be more effective when digging through our deck.
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Uw control is a great deck but im really struggling against it with all the aggro and damn Storm running around these days! Not sure what to do, dropped from tier 1 to less then tier 3 in a week. and i dont really like jeskai control. What would u guys do? is the meta super hostile toward U/W control for you guys to?
Thanks lads. I should have clarified that the 61 card count was to be for my first few weeks of intensively playing the deck and learning its ins and outs; but even so, may as well just make a cut somewhere and play with 60.
Any insight on the Merfolk matchup? Obviously it’s on the unfavorable side and typically hinges on whether or not you can find a Verdict or two. I’ve found Spreading Seas to be surprisingly valuable. Shutting down Mutavaults and Caverns makes our lives a whole lot easier.
Whether or not to bring in Stony Silence is an open question IMO. It’s live against Vial, but not quite worth it for just that (consider also that they may side out some number of Vials despite its usefulness against counterspells, due to the lengthy nature of the matchup). Smuggler’s Copter is a huge pain; its presence makes Stony Silence a lot more appealing. Then there’s the question of the Merfolk player bringing in Relics, which they may or may not do.
The matchup is surprisingly interesting (unless you’re Verdict-less and they just casually Islandwalk to the T4 kill, lol).
I've played Merfolk quite a bit recently and have started to develop a consistent win record against them. As you've both mentioned Seas is good to hit their Mutavults as well as Caverns, and Verdict is massive. Getting a Wall down early is helpful and any lords that grant islandwalk need to be Pathed asap or the game can get out of hand quickly. I think our planeswalkers are great to stall and find answers and Azcanta has been my MVPs in all my wins. I like to bring in Stony Silence myself as it helps us control the tempo and not get blindsided by a random lord if they don't have access to their Vials. Runed Halo has also helped me stall games by granting me protection from certain attackers until I find my Verdict. One very helpful nugget to know is that if a Master of Waves comes down with multiple tokens, make sure you get rid of any lords on the board before killing Master (all tokens will be wiped out with him. Stole a win off that when opponent attacked with everything and I managed to path lord and chump block Master).
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@dylanyad Storm is just our worst matchup, but not unwinnable at all. If they don't kill you on turn 3 (which they usually do at least 1 of 3 games) You just have to counter and disrupt everything you can and then hope they don't naturally draw all their grapeshots. A lot of storm hate in the sideboard is the way to go. Edit: Also aggro decks are generally our best matchups, if you can path a couple things and survive until you can verdict they usually can't recover.
^^Merfolk used to give me problems, but then started becoming a pretty easy match. The vials and islandwalk are definitely the worst things, merfolk is 1 deck that really makes me want to try a settle the wreckage which would also be good against the new humans deck, hate bears and coco decks.
One of my funniest moments in magic happened yesterday, I killed an opponent who was still at 20 in 1 attack and I had a 12/11 snapcaster with annihilator 2, check this ridiculous screen shot that's now going into my sig Snapcaster of doom!
Search for Azcanta continues to impress - I used to think it was better as a topdeck, now I'm not so sure.
I cut Wall of Omens in favor of the 2 1cmc removal spells, I think the removal is slightly worse against midrange and control but those decks aren't as popular right now and wall just isn't putting in the work against humans that I would like (of note, I'm 2-0 in matches and 4-0 in games against humans in those two leagues). Other decks I beat up on both include regular shift and BTL shift, BW Eldrazi and Taxes, 8 rack , esper control and storm. Lost to a different storm and Jeskai Ascendency. overall not a very representative meta sample but i liked being able to beat a variety of decks.
@dylanyad Storm is just our worst matchup, but not unwinnable at all. If they don't kill you on turn 3 (which they usually do at least 1 of 3 games) You just have to counter and disrupt everything you can and then hope they don't naturally draw all their grapeshots. A lot of storm hate in the sideboard is the way to go. Edit: Also aggro decks are generally our best matchups, if you can path a couple things and survive until you can verdict they usually can't recover.
^^Merfolk used to give me problems, but then started becoming a pretty easy match. The vials and islandwalk are definitely the worst things, merfolk is 1 deck that really makes me want to try a settle the wreckage which would also be good against the new humans deck, hate bears and coco decks.
One of my funniest moments in magic happened yesterday, I killed an opponent who was still at 20 in 1 attack and I had a 12/11 snapcaster with annihilator 2, check this ridiculous screen shot that's now going into my sig Snapcaster of doom!
I think jeskai is getting to the point where it’s just better. Bolts and helixes really help vs storm and many other decks. Also something I’ve been running in my jeskai flash is nimble obstructionist, it’s great in a flash type of control rather than the tap out or in the middle like this u/w seems to be. Watching my storm opponent go off and shot me for 1 is great. I feel the removal is where you want to be vs humans growing in popularity too.
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Ux has traditionally been bad against Tron variants, however our Eldrazi tron matchup is slightly favourable and our traditional Gx Tron match up is just all I ever want to face, very favorable. Blue tron is a bad match for us though.
A stock list looks something like this:
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 Wall of Omens
Planeswalkers (4)
2 Gideon of the Trials
1 Jace, Architect of thought
1 Gideon Jura
Countermagic (7)
3 Mana Leak
1 Negate
3 Cryptic Command
4 Path to Exile
2 Detention Sphere
3 Supreme Verdict
Card Quality (9)
4 Serum Visions
4 Spreading Seas
1 Sphinx's Revelation
Land (25)
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
3 Glacial Fortress
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Mystic Gate
5 Island
3 Plains
4 Field Of Ruin
Thats 58 cards that I would consider to be pretty stock. The 2 remaining slots are almost always a card advantage source. 2 of any combination of Search for Azcanta, another Jace, architect of Thought, Think Twice, Crucible of Worlds and/or Glimmer of Genius.
There have been some recent developments with the choice of Field of Ruin over the other LD lands, and those have yet to be fleshed out precisely, but it's probably correct to have an additional fetchable dual land to help mitigate the possibility of dead flooded strands late game.
hope this helps, cheers!
I find any of the Green based Tron decks to be pretty terrible matchups for us and Eldrazi Tron to be very favorable. Any reason why you think the G variants are good matchups? The problem with them is that their threats are more Planeswalker based in Karn and Ugin and they usually also intend on ramping out Ulamog. Our deck has very few ways to interact with resolved Planeswalkers, and all of our Paths/Verdicts are pretty close to dead in the matchup.
Eldrazi Tron, on the other hand, is so creature based that our deck can just run them out of gas with Path to Exiles and Supreme Verdicts before locking them out of the game with Crytpic chains.
Video from yesterday is available here
@chipper77: Great job with the streams! Can't tell you how much it's helped improve my game and understanding of the deck. I feel that my thought process is starting to shift for the better and today even had an opponent tell me he was impressed at some of the decisions I had made. Keep it up!
@jayjayhooks: Is it worth sb Ceremonious Rejection to deal with the Tron matches (can hit chalice/planeswalkers a little easier)?
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
Despite the fact that I play 1 Rejection and 1 Stony, it's probably correct to just run 2 Stony. My reasoning for the split is that the 2nd Stony is a dead draw and the 1st rejection can be snapped back at least once, so it's kind of like getting 3 cards out of two slots instead of 1 card out of 2 slots. But as I said, thats probably wrong just based on the fact of how powerful Stony is that you probably just want max ability to find it and not get cute.
Mark me down as another person enjoying the chipper77 streams. Free time is at a premium right now so I’m having to go through the playbacks piecemeal, but they’re very informative. Nice work.
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
Any insight on the Merfolk matchup? Obviously it’s on the unfavorable side and typically hinges on whether or not you can find a Verdict or two. I’ve found Spreading Seas to be surprisingly valuable. Shutting down Mutavaults and Caverns makes our lives a whole lot easier.
Whether or not to bring in Stony Silence is an open question IMO. It’s live against Vial, but not quite worth it for just that (consider also that they may side out some number of Vials despite its usefulness against counterspells, due to the lengthy nature of the matchup). Smuggler’s Copter is a huge pain; its presence makes Stony Silence a lot more appealing. Then there’s the question of the Merfolk player bringing in Relics, which they may or may not do.
The matchup is surprisingly interesting (unless you’re Verdict-less and they just casually Islandwalk to the T4 kill, lol).
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
^^Merfolk used to give me problems, but then started becoming a pretty easy match. The vials and islandwalk are definitely the worst things, merfolk is 1 deck that really makes me want to try a settle the wreckage which would also be good against the new humans deck, hate bears and coco decks.
One of my funniest moments in magic happened yesterday, I killed an opponent who was still at 20 in 1 attack and I had a 12/11 snapcaster with annihilator 2, check this ridiculous screen shot that's now going into my sig Snapcaster of doom!
**Edit - NVM it's working now, sweet lol
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendillion Clique
Planeswalkers (4)
2 Gideon of the Trials
2 Jace, Architect of thought
Countermagic (6)
1 Spell Snare
2 Mana Leak
1 Negate
2 Cryptic Command
Removal (10)
4 Path to Exile
1 Oust
1 Condemn
1 Detention Sphere
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Settle the Wreckage
4 Serum Visions
3 Spreading Seas
3 Search For Azcanta
1 Supreme Will
Land (25)
4 Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Irrigated Farmland
1 Prairie Stream
5 Island
3 Plains
4 Field Of Ruin
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Stony Silence
2 Grafdiggers Cage
2 Surgical Extraction
3 Dispel
2 Disdainful Stroke
1 Negate
1 Spell Snare
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Sun Titan
Search for Azcanta continues to impress - I used to think it was better as a topdeck, now I'm not so sure.
I cut Wall of Omens in favor of the 2 1cmc removal spells, I think the removal is slightly worse against midrange and control but those decks aren't as popular right now and wall just isn't putting in the work against humans that I would like (of note, I'm 2-0 in matches and 4-0 in games against humans in those two leagues). Other decks I beat up on both include regular shift and BTL shift, BW Eldrazi and Taxes, 8 rack , esper control and storm. Lost to a different storm and Jeskai Ascendency. overall not a very representative meta sample but i liked being able to beat a variety of decks.
I think jeskai is getting to the point where it’s just better. Bolts and helixes really help vs storm and many other decks. Also something I’ve been running in my jeskai flash is nimble obstructionist, it’s great in a flash type of control rather than the tap out or in the middle like this u/w seems to be. Watching my storm opponent go off and shot me for 1 is great. I feel the removal is where you want to be vs humans growing in popularity too.