So, a little bit of Gearhulk theory that I'd like input on from you lot: at what point is Gerahulk worth it?
I've been considering how best to use it, and I think I've come to the conclusion that if I am flashing back a three (or more) mana spell then I'm getting a reasonable deal, effectively paying 1 extra mana for a 5/6 rather than the 2/1 Snapcaster Mage. On the other hand, if I cast a 2 mana spell then Gearhulk's extra cost suddenly seems quite steep.
Ultimately of course how you use them is going to require a lot more nuance, but I think this does,as has been pointed out, raise some interesting deck construction questions. As far as I'm concerned we probably shouldn't be adding Thunderous Wraths to our deck, so what should we play instead? As far as I am concerned the dram is to cast Cryptic Command off Torrential Gearhulk, if you can pull it off then it is juts a better value Snapcaster Mage. Basically Gearhulk provides an insensitive for us to play more of these expensive spells.
With that in mind what cahnges should we make? If we can agree that the deck should be running Cryptic Command, which doesn't seem to contentious, then perhaps we should consider playing more of them. I currently only play 2 in my list, and Gearhulk is making me consider a 3rd (and maybe even a 4th if I can find space!). I am also thinking of slightly upping my three drop slot, maybe cutting my main deck Dispel for a second Electrolyze to add to my two Kolaghan's Commands. Finally, I am still considering adding a 5 drop spell, something like Jace's Ingenuity (which as I have said before, seem super close to playable).
All in all, I think the key is to play slightly more splashy spells, but not to play cards that are only good with gearhulk. As i said at the top, I'd be really keen to hear what you guys think of this.
EDIT: Apologies, I realised after I wrote this that it is a bit rambling, TL;DR, don't play bad spells for Gearhulk, but maybe play more expensive good spells?
I was honestly thinking of putting in a fourth CC. I currently run 3 in my build but I think the 4th, with the addition of gearhulks, will be a sweet add. Flashing Fatcaster in and having a CC to flash back is going to be nuts I feel. Being that CC is my only hard counter outside of spell snare and countersquall, I would love to see it more often and have the option to flash one back as often as needed. It's versatility is unmatched.
With that being said though I do feel I want to revamp my deck structure by cutting some singletons I have looming around and put in a 4th cryptic and maybe even 4 IOK. I want to try the hand disruption again and see how it goes. But to be able to do this I think I may need to move my spell snares to the SB? And even suffer the past which that one isn't a big deal but I'm not sure how I feel about spell snare not being in my mb..
What do you guys think?
I'll be able to post what I want to play test in a moment once I finish up some business.
The SB still needs to be worked with entirely because my spell snare need to be somewhere in there with some Geth's Verdict but I pretty much had to cut 1 terminate, 1 suffer the past, 1 Geth's Verdict, 1 Electrolyze, 3 spell snare and 2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang.
It's a little wonky and I'm not sure how I feel about it because I kind of wanted to keep 3 terminate but I had to make room for anger of the gods. My idea is to rid their hands of spells with IOK that spell snare would have a slight chance at hitting, and to use the knowledge of their hand to my benefit and plan my counters around that. Adding the 4th Cryptic Command seemed like a sure go to thing thanks to torrential gearhulk. It's pretty much as if I were using snap anyways to flash one back yet I get a massive beater for pretty much the same cost of snap+cc. I would maybe like a little more card draw(?) such as electrolyze back instead of kolaghan's command but I like the versatility of the card and the options it brings to the table. kind of. I honestly haven't had a need yet to play it all that often but maybe bringing back one of my six flash-casters will be a nice combo to add to my arsenal. I swapped out Tasigur for Gearhulks.
Once I get my hands on 2 more IOK I will be able to fully test this deck out and see how it goes but I think it should bring some good times and maybe a smoother ride into the mid to late game where we tend to shine and do our best. I've always been a fan of hand disruption and I think there's a lot of things we can hit with IOK that will make our game one somewhat easier for us. Thoughts and suggestions?
I feel like if we're adding cards like Jace's Ingenuity to this we could go all the way and use something like Thoughtflare along with it or instead of it, no? Draws an extra card and then dumps more stuff in the graveyard to use with Snaps or the other Fatcaster, sounds like a dream on paper anyways.
Also the two lists that've been posted for testing with Fatcaster look absolutely fun as hell. I'm gonna load both onto Cockatrice for some testing later tonight.
The thing I have against Thoughtflare is that I tend to find that what I really want is card quantity rather than the card quality. I appreciate what you are saying, but I think I'd prefer to go +2 cards than +1 card and +2 in graveyard. That said, I would, as always, be open to discussion!
I'll be interested in your testing results as well, adding 5 and 6 mana cards not from the sideboard seems a little counterintuitive in this meta, even in a control deck, but you certainly can't argue with the power level of that play.
So yesterday I played some games agains jund with my semi revised deck. Only thing I was missing were mainboard anger of the gods and gearhulks but other than that the deck seemed to have performaned somewhat nicely. IOK was nice although game 1 I didn't see it at all but games 2 and 3 it was prevelant and helped me pull nuisances and fill my gy along with serum visions and a shock land to drop tasigur. He was a real star holding the battlefield for me and using his ability to cycle cards into my hand.
I like the revised version but I can't wait to test it out once the gearhulks come and anger of the gods. IOK was great to pull Liliana or goyf if I had no countersquall or terminate. I left dark confidant and ooze if I had bolts in hand. Pretty much he never had a board established to take me down and I was swinging with tasigur and bolting for lethal.
Okay, quick update on stuff since it's been a few days. I did manage to get SOME testing in with the Gear Grinders, but not enough for a significant conclusion just yet. Tuesday was hectic and I ended up not being at home at all for most of the night like I'd hoped and Wednesday was when I got most of the testing in before my internet was cut off until the next day. The builds went as expected, sometimes I kind of wanted some way of dumping stuff in the yard easier like Izzet Charm or something, but overall the general plan worked out and it still felt fun as hell. Didn't get the AncestralHulk plays off yet, but once I get around to more testing probably on Sunday, I'll see what I can do.
My store's doing a PPTQ tomorrow around noon and I'm doing everything I can to make sure that I can make it there and bring Cruel Control to represent. The event WILL be streamed, but it's going to be something like a 100+ person event and the managers want to switch up who gets streamed each round and keep it from being something boring like Infect vs Infect, so there's a chance I'll be on camera. I'll see what I can do about getting a twitch.tv link for those around tomorrow. I'm considering swapping Ob out for the event in exchange for Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, Liliana, the Last Hope, or Chandra, Torch of Defiance. New Lili's seen testing in my deck to some decent results, Chandra's...Chandra, she seems like a slam dunk in gameplay if she resolves since her abilities are all significant to either cleaning the board up a bit or getting closer to Cruel, and Ash feels like they'd be good against decks like Knightfall or maybe Jund barring the obviously easy death to Abrupt Decay. On that end though, a lot of the more experienced players I talked to last night suggested I keep Ob just because he furthers the game plan a lot of the time, which is a valid point. My list looks pretty much the same as the last time I posted it, though I'm looking to mix the land base up a bit since the guys at the shop yesterday dissected my deck and said I could go for a fastland oriented base with a 4-of Inquisition of Kozilek.
Wish me luck guys, hopefully I get far in the event.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
-Modern- UUBBBRR Cruel Control BRG BRgBurn BR URStorm
-Commander- B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired] GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
Good luck! let us know how it all goes and what your list ends up being!
Of the three walkers you mentioned I'm still not sold on Chandra (for our deck, she's obviously great in some decks), Lili seems fine in an aggressive meta and Ashiok is at its best in a grindy meta. I don't know what you are expecting in terms of local decks but of the three I'd be most in favour of lili in the main.
For those of you who have been asking where I have been getting my build ideas, it is off of these sort of lists (I like the ones that use Tamiyo, the Moon Sage):
The first link is the most similar to my current build.
Also, I have been considering the idea of using Phyrexian Obliterator over Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, since the former does not get wiped out by Languish and has more synastry with Cruel Ultimatum than both that card and Cryptic Command do. I have not tested the idea out yet. Don't know how it would work yet, but probably as good of an effect as you can get as a black mana greedy card versus a blue equivalent one.
The first of those two lists plays lots of good cards, it is just waaaaay to big. That said, it is playing 4 Cryptic Command which is a plus!
The second list I quite like, although I'm not sold on the three Vendilion Clique sideboard plan. Coalition Relic is a card I haven't really considered, and is one I'm not 100% sold on, but has some potential.
I figured I'd give Spell Snare a shot since my Esper friend was playing Living End and I couldn't decide on using Lili or Ash, so I opted to play both in different boards, which worked out for the most part. Lili blunted a lot of really heavy creatures and got me snapcasters or one of the other creatures back when I needed them, but Ash didn't see much play outside of the Jund matchup I had. I can safely say though I will never run Snares again. 80% of the matchups I played in, it sat in hand and did nothing or acted as discard fuel against Loam Pox to protect my other spells. Every other time, it did what it was supposed to, but even then that was if it came up. I would've much rather have had the other Terminate and Remand I cut for them.
Regardless, I got to do some insane ***** this time around. Highlights include winning a game after surviving with 1 life after a topdecked Cruel, ulting Jace to grab Bolas and steal Lili from an opposing player's deck, and counterburning someone to death with Keranos and Snaps.
Wasn't nearly as rough as I thought it'd be. G1 I spent most of the game countering Mwonvuli Acid Mosses and Blood Moons and killing his beating sticks. I managed to stick Keranos around turn 5 and it proceeded to burn him to death as expected. When it wasn't landing spells, it was rebuilding my landbase after all of the LD spells stopped and he went into topdeck mode. G2 took us to time, I wasn't drawing threats and he wasn't hitting his. Ended up losing the game to a resolved Thrun, the Last Troll after responding with Snap > Kolammand choosing discard and disentomb on my other snap > Snap > Bolt instead of targeting Tasigur with Kolammand or Damnation with Snap. Lost G3 on turns when I couldn't hit kill spells and got beaten to death before Turn 4. 1-2
This match made me hate Snare. Got stuck on lands for a bit while eating poison counters from inkmoths and begging for removal. I did manage to drop a few elves and hierarchs, but those lands always survived my bolts and kill spells. I managed to draw a topdecked Cruel...at about 9 infect with a creatureless board. Had nothing else I could've done to kill two inkmoths so I dropped it as my final middle finger before dying. G2 was weird. I spent a lot of the game not caring about my life total, so I was surprised when I had a hierarch swinging at me for 11 damage while I was at 13. Tried to remove it when he swung for lethal, but he had more hexproof spells than I had kill spells. 0-2
A friendly matchup. G1 I got burned pretty heavily and punched in the face by Lingering Souls. Ended up having to burn some Cryptics to keep a fully loaded Nahiri from ulting. As said, I got down to 1 before getting Cruel off of a Serum Visions scry the turn before in order to stabilize. Managed to get Nahiri discarded off that Cruel and I got Bolas down the turn after for the win. G2 was a little more rough on his end, I laid down the beatings with my Tar Pits and lobbed burn spells. I ended up burning him enough to get him low enough for a lethal Cruel. 2-0
The dreaded match. Surprisingly, Game 1 went pretty nicely at first, my deck did literally everything I wanted it to. I somehow dodged eating massive amounts of hand disruption long enough to counter and kill my way up to Cruel Ultimatum which I managed to fire off. Unfortunately, it was with a Lili on the field that I couldn't hurt with Ult because of life loss instead of damage. That Lili actually managed to screw me over, I couldn't get the Tasigur in my hand down to beat her because she'd minus and kill him and I wasn't drawing any other followup spells, giving my opponent time to recoup after the Ult. Ended up dying to a beatdown swarm following a Lili ult. G2 was pretty much in his favor the entire time. I DID manage to get Ashiok out, but he didn't get to do much mainly because my opponent sent creatures his way before I managed to exile any creatures. It sucks too because I found out post game, my opponent boarded out all of his Decays because he didn't know what other walkers I had besides Jace and Bolas. Ended up dropping dead to Raging Ravine. 0-2.
Sweet jolly-****in-ranchers, I fully understand now why people have an issue with this matchup. I know that you're supposed to keep the auras from landing, but for whatever reason, I hit zero counter spells and all of my targeted removal instead. Spell Snare did come in handy a little this time, but not by much. I also got really land starved this game and the one after it, never managed to get enough mana for Cruel or draw into my wraths. Both games were pretty straight forward, first one was me dying to the beatings from Slippery Bogle, second game got me screwed over because my opponent correctly guess I'd be packing artifact based destruction spells and correctly sideboarded in Natural State and killed me before I could draw any wraths or my Anger. 0-2, I'm going to be ready for Bogles next time (also shoutout to the guy I played, Shaun Penrod, he hosts podcasts for MTG Pro Tutor, definitely worth checking imo.)
This build was Loam Pox, but it was an interesting build. It ran Haakon, Stromgald Scourge in conjunction with Knight of the Reliquary and the usual LoamPox package. Game 1 was cool as *****, I managed to ult Jace in order to grab Nicol Bolas for a very smooth win after countering and killing off his knights and using his own Liliana against him. Game 2 was rough, I got crippled by an early Smallpox and a double Tectonic Edge later on that kept me off of my sources long enough to get some huge Knights going. Last Hope shined here, she blunted KotR long enough for me to at least try and stall with Tasigur. Almost got her to ult until he went all in at her and dropped her too low to survive much longer. In the end, I lost to Tasigur dying to a Path and KotR smashing my face in. G3 was similar to G1, Jace hit the field early on and stalled out long enough for me to get Bolas and Lili again. Bolas didn't kill NEARLY as fast as he usually does, but that's only because he took 2 to the face from Spirit tokens off Lingering Souls a bunch. I managed to keep him alive long enough to Ult which ended up getting me the game. 2-1.
So it was rough, but I did what I could. Definitely not going to run Spell Snare after this, it's a good card and I respect its capabilities, but I have awful luck and that usually screws me over when using Snare. Might also drop Tasigur in favor of Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, he just offsets so much of the life loss the deck endures and he can potentially create a mini-army off of one wrath. Also want to figure out how to optimize my Sideboard more after this, maybe add Ash into the Sideboard and maybe even the Main if he ends up performing well there after some testing. Last Hope also really feels like she might have a spot in my deck, but again that'll have to be seen after testing. Overall, not my finest moment, but it was a great learning experience and the sheer amount of people that went ape***** watching my games and casting Cruel or Bolas felt great. Definitely going to keep practicing for the next large event in the meantime.
If you are playing a counterless Nahiri deck and they want to ulti nahiri on 8 counters your best use of Cryptics is to let Nahiri ulti (so she dies) they bring Emrakul and then you tap her precombat. End of turn Emrakul returns to their hand and you got a nice 3 for 1
So I did some more play testing on my build. It appears that Phyrexian Obliterator works really well against opponents that throw mad damage at you. If they don't have anything else to sacrifice, it even makes them sac lands to pay the cost of damaging it. Putting 2 of them in the deck also justified replacing the 3 Geth's Verdict or Devour Flesh with Mana Leak which supports the 3 Cryptic Command and 2 Insidious Will I have in my deck which protects my Gifts combo (I know people are tired of hearing about that, but I am still using that).
@Grimbs I probably SHOULD have at least one skite in the 'board, it'd definitely help a lot in general not just against Bogles but Infect, Burn, etc. Might try to make room for it at some point, got a lot of testing ahead of me after this event. I also do keep my handy dandy Dreadbore around for Nahiri and Lili among other walkers, hasn't let me down much at all since I picked it back up.
@Ymir I actually thought about that a little bit post game, just tapping Emmy with Cryptic. Definitely going to remember that next time the matchup comes up.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
-Modern- UUBBBRR Cruel Control BRG BRgBurn BR URStorm
-Commander- B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired] GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
Ok, updates time, two things have happened over the last couple of days which I think are not worthy:
1) Pro Tour Kaladesh is happening and Torrential Gearhulk is in three of the top 8 decks. This means that (a) I hope you got a couple of copies before the price spiked if you were planning on testing them, and (b) we now have some models for what pros think makes for a good Gearhulk curve (in standard). Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, it looks like pro players are just jamming good instants, and not worrying too much about wanting higher CMCs, although there is a deck with six 4 CMC instants! This suggests to me that my previous assessment was probably a little bit off. We might well want to play 3 or 4 Cryptic Command, but I might drop the Jace's Ingenuity, it is probably just too cute.
2) Modern Nexus have just released another of their excellent metagame breakdowns (as an aside, if you don't know about Nexus, then I highly recommend it, if nothing else the metagame analysis is really good). I am particularly interested by the Tier 1 decks atm, Eldrazi, Burn, Infect, Affinity, Jund, Dredge, and Abzan. In terms of deck construction I think this has some useful information, namely that removal is probably more valuable than counterspells. This has me considering a few list updates: Anger of the Gods is a card I want a second copy of in my main at the moment for Dredge, Affinity and even Infect (dodges Vines of Vastwood/Spellskite), and I am considering Disfigure as bolts 5+, Terminate is a bit weak against Burn and Dredge, but otherwise I quite like it. Remand feels pretty weak against the three hyper aggro decks, but is pretty reasonable against the GB/xs and Eldrazi, Cryptic Command is in a pretty similar spot in my mind, and Mana Leak is sort of fine everywhere.
I'd be really keen to hear what you guys think of all this.
I just watched the actual finals of the pro tour and I'd highly recommend that anyone else interested in a masterclass in playing control mirrors do the same!
I really like your list Grumble, and I know what you mean about Think Twice and the challenge of balancing carf quality and quantity. I know I play too many "fun ofs", and I do feel like I sometimes need a big draw spell, I just can't seem to find the right one!
I've been considering how best to use it, and I think I've come to the conclusion that if I am flashing back a three (or more) mana spell then I'm getting a reasonable deal, effectively paying 1 extra mana for a 5/6 rather than the 2/1 Snapcaster Mage. On the other hand, if I cast a 2 mana spell then Gearhulk's extra cost suddenly seems quite steep.
Ultimately of course how you use them is going to require a lot more nuance, but I think this does,as has been pointed out, raise some interesting deck construction questions. As far as I'm concerned we probably shouldn't be adding Thunderous Wraths to our deck, so what should we play instead? As far as I am concerned the dram is to cast Cryptic Command off Torrential Gearhulk, if you can pull it off then it is juts a better value Snapcaster Mage. Basically Gearhulk provides an insensitive for us to play more of these expensive spells.
With that in mind what cahnges should we make? If we can agree that the deck should be running Cryptic Command, which doesn't seem to contentious, then perhaps we should consider playing more of them. I currently only play 2 in my list, and Gearhulk is making me consider a 3rd (and maybe even a 4th if I can find space!). I am also thinking of slightly upping my three drop slot, maybe cutting my main deck Dispel for a second Electrolyze to add to my two Kolaghan's Commands. Finally, I am still considering adding a 5 drop spell, something like Jace's Ingenuity (which as I have said before, seem super close to playable).
All in all, I think the key is to play slightly more splashy spells, but not to play cards that are only good with gearhulk. As i said at the top, I'd be really keen to hear what you guys think of this.
EDIT: Apologies, I realised after I wrote this that it is a bit rambling, TL;DR, don't play bad spells for Gearhulk, but maybe play more expensive good spells?
With that being said though I do feel I want to revamp my deck structure by cutting some singletons I have looming around and put in a 4th cryptic and maybe even 4 IOK. I want to try the hand disruption again and see how it goes. But to be able to do this I think I may need to move my spell snares to the SB? And even suffer the past which that one isn't a big deal but I'm not sure how I feel about spell snare not being in my mb..
What do you guys think?
I'll be able to post what I want to play test in a moment once I finish up some business.
Edit:
So this is what I would like to try and run
4 Polluted Delta
3 Drowned Catacomb
3 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Steam Vents
2 Sulfur Falls
2 Watery Grave
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Wandering Fumarole
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Blood Crypt
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Torrential Gearhulk
Spells
4 Serum Visions
4 lightning bolt
4 Cryptic Command
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Remand
2 Terminate
2 Kolaghan's Command
2 Countersquall
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Cruel Ultimatum
The SB still needs to be worked with entirely because my spell snare need to be somewhere in there with some Geth's Verdict but I pretty much had to cut 1 terminate, 1 suffer the past, 1 Geth's Verdict, 1 Electrolyze, 3 spell snare and 2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang.
It's a little wonky and I'm not sure how I feel about it because I kind of wanted to keep 3 terminate but I had to make room for anger of the gods. My idea is to rid their hands of spells with IOK that spell snare would have a slight chance at hitting, and to use the knowledge of their hand to my benefit and plan my counters around that. Adding the 4th Cryptic Command seemed like a sure go to thing thanks to torrential gearhulk. It's pretty much as if I were using snap anyways to flash one back yet I get a massive beater for pretty much the same cost of snap+cc. I would maybe like a little more card draw(?) such as electrolyze back instead of kolaghan's command but I like the versatility of the card and the options it brings to the table. kind of. I honestly haven't had a need yet to play it all that often but maybe bringing back one of my six flash-casters will be a nice combo to add to my arsenal. I swapped out Tasigur for Gearhulks.
Once I get my hands on 2 more IOK I will be able to fully test this deck out and see how it goes but I think it should bring some good times and maybe a smoother ride into the mid to late game where we tend to shine and do our best. I've always been a fan of hand disruption and I think there's a lot of things we can hit with IOK that will make our game one somewhat easier for us. Thoughts and suggestions?
UUBBBRR
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Snare
2 Mana Leak
2 Remand
3 Terminate
1 Think Twice
1 Anger of the Gods
2 Electrolyze
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Cryptic Command
1 Damnation
1 Jace's Ingenuity
2 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Torrential Gearhulk
Lands
1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
1 Reflecting Pool
2 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
2 Swamp
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Wandering Fumarole
2 Watery Grave
Trying to keep the list pretty clean, I'll do some tests and see how it goes!
Also the two lists that've been posted for testing with Fatcaster look absolutely fun as hell. I'm gonna load both onto Cockatrice for some testing later tonight.
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
I like the revised version but I can't wait to test it out once the gearhulks come and anger of the gods. IOK was great to pull Liliana or goyf if I had no countersquall or terminate. I left dark confidant and ooze if I had bolts in hand. Pretty much he never had a board established to take me down and I was swinging with tasigur and bolting for lethal.
UUBBBRR
My store's doing a PPTQ tomorrow around noon and I'm doing everything I can to make sure that I can make it there and bring Cruel Control to represent. The event WILL be streamed, but it's going to be something like a 100+ person event and the managers want to switch up who gets streamed each round and keep it from being something boring like Infect vs Infect, so there's a chance I'll be on camera. I'll see what I can do about getting a twitch.tv link for those around tomorrow. I'm considering swapping Ob out for the event in exchange for Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, Liliana, the Last Hope, or Chandra, Torch of Defiance. New Lili's seen testing in my deck to some decent results, Chandra's...Chandra, she seems like a slam dunk in gameplay if she resolves since her abilities are all significant to either cleaning the board up a bit or getting closer to Cruel, and Ash feels like they'd be good against decks like Knightfall or maybe Jund barring the obviously easy death to Abrupt Decay. On that end though, a lot of the more experienced players I talked to last night suggested I keep Ob just because he furthers the game plan a lot of the time, which is a valid point. My list looks pretty much the same as the last time I posted it, though I'm looking to mix the land base up a bit since the guys at the shop yesterday dissected my deck and said I could go for a fastland oriented base with a 4-of Inquisition of Kozilek.
Wish me luck guys, hopefully I get far in the event.
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
Of the three walkers you mentioned I'm still not sold on Chandra (for our deck, she's obviously great in some decks), Lili seems fine in an aggressive meta and Ashiok is at its best in a grindy meta. I don't know what you are expecting in terms of local decks but of the three I'd be most in favour of lili in the main.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-grixis-cruel-control#online
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/32979_Daily-Digest-Cruel-Control.html
The first link is the most similar to my current build.
Also, I have been considering the idea of using Phyrexian Obliterator over Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, since the former does not get wiped out by Languish and has more synastry with Cruel Ultimatum than both that card and Cryptic Command do. I have not tested the idea out yet. Don't know how it would work yet, but probably as good of an effect as you can get as a black mana greedy card versus a blue equivalent one.
The second list I quite like, although I'm not sold on the three Vendilion Clique sideboard plan. Coalition Relic is a card I haven't really considered, and is one I'm not 100% sold on, but has some potential.
Decklist I used consisted of:
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Keranos, God of Storms
Instants:
2 Cryptic Command
3 Terminate
3 Mana Leak
2 Think Twice
2 Remand
2 Spell Snare
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
Sorceries:
2 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Serum Visions
1 Damnation
1 Languish
1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Lands:
2 Blood Crypt
3 Steam Vents
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Island
1 Mountain
2 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
3 Watery Grave
1 Anger of the Gods
2 Countersquall
2 Dismember
1 Dreadbore
2 Molten Rain
2 Rakdos Charm
2 Ratchet Bomb
1 Vandalblast
1 Batterskull
1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
I figured I'd give Spell Snare a shot since my Esper friend was playing Living End and I couldn't decide on using Lili or Ash, so I opted to play both in different boards, which worked out for the most part. Lili blunted a lot of really heavy creatures and got me snapcasters or one of the other creatures back when I needed them, but Ash didn't see much play outside of the Jund matchup I had. I can safely say though I will never run Snares again. 80% of the matchups I played in, it sat in hand and did nothing or acted as discard fuel against Loam Pox to protect my other spells. Every other time, it did what it was supposed to, but even then that was if it came up. I would've much rather have had the other Terminate and Remand I cut for them.
Regardless, I got to do some insane ***** this time around. Highlights include winning a game after surviving with 1 life after a topdecked Cruel, ulting Jace to grab Bolas and steal Lili from an opposing player's deck, and counterburning someone to death with Keranos and Snaps.
So it was rough, but I did what I could. Definitely not going to run Spell Snare after this, it's a good card and I respect its capabilities, but I have awful luck and that usually screws me over when using Snare. Might also drop Tasigur in favor of Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, he just offsets so much of the life loss the deck endures and he can potentially create a mini-army off of one wrath. Also want to figure out how to optimize my Sideboard more after this, maybe add Ash into the Sideboard and maybe even the Main if he ends up performing well there after some testing. Last Hope also really feels like she might have a spot in my deck, but again that'll have to be seen after testing. Overall, not my finest moment, but it was a great learning experience and the sheer amount of people that went ape***** watching my games and casting Cruel or Bolas felt great. Definitely going to keep practicing for the next large event in the meantime.
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
One advice for the nahiri MU.
If you are playing a counterless Nahiri deck and they want to ulti nahiri on 8 counters your best use of Cryptics is to let Nahiri ulti (so she dies) they bring Emrakul and then you tap her precombat. End of turn Emrakul returns to their hand and you got a nice 3 for 1
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
I would say (bare minimum):
2 Snapcaster Mage + 2 Cryptic Command + 2 Languish + 2 Phyrexian Obliterator + 1 Grave Titan + 1 Torrential Gearhulk at bare minimum makes a complete cycle into Cruel Ultimatum.
Just have to make sure you max out on blue/black dual lands in your mana base, probably.
@Ymir I actually thought about that a little bit post game, just tapping Emmy with Cryptic. Definitely going to remember that next time the matchup comes up.
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
1) Pro Tour Kaladesh is happening and Torrential Gearhulk is in three of the top 8 decks. This means that (a) I hope you got a couple of copies before the price spiked if you were planning on testing them, and (b) we now have some models for what pros think makes for a good Gearhulk curve (in standard). Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, it looks like pro players are just jamming good instants, and not worrying too much about wanting higher CMCs, although there is a deck with six 4 CMC instants! This suggests to me that my previous assessment was probably a little bit off. We might well want to play 3 or 4 Cryptic Command, but I might drop the Jace's Ingenuity, it is probably just too cute.
2) Modern Nexus have just released another of their excellent metagame breakdowns (as an aside, if you don't know about Nexus, then I highly recommend it, if nothing else the metagame analysis is really good). I am particularly interested by the Tier 1 decks atm, Eldrazi, Burn, Infect, Affinity, Jund, Dredge, and Abzan. In terms of deck construction I think this has some useful information, namely that removal is probably more valuable than counterspells. This has me considering a few list updates: Anger of the Gods is a card I want a second copy of in my main at the moment for Dredge, Affinity and even Infect (dodges Vines of Vastwood/Spellskite), and I am considering Disfigure as bolts 5+, Terminate is a bit weak against Burn and Dredge, but otherwise I quite like it. Remand feels pretty weak against the three hyper aggro decks, but is pretty reasonable against the GB/xs and Eldrazi, Cryptic Command is in a pretty similar spot in my mind, and Mana Leak is sort of fine everywhere.
I'd be really keen to hear what you guys think of all this.
I really like your list Grumble, and I know what you mean about Think Twice and the challenge of balancing carf quality and quantity. I know I play too many "fun ofs", and I do feel like I sometimes need a big draw spell, I just can't seem to find the right one!