I think Spellstutter Sprite is OK but not great in this deck. Yes it will counter a 1 cmc spell regularly, and if you're playing a few you might tag some higher value spells, but its pretty anemic as a clock. If you want a creatures that acts as a counter spell (on top of Snapcaster Mage) then stick with Torrential Gearhulk.
In other news I piloted my list to yet another disappointing 2:2 finish at FNM on Friday. Short version: bye in round 1, lost to Bang Eldrazi round 2, beat Grixis Selver round 3 and lost to B/W Tokens in the last round. I feel like I have the right deck for my play style, but the wrong deck for meta looking around the room of 20 players I think I saw maybe 2 decks that I felt favoured against, 2 that I was about even with, and everything else looked rough. In particular B/W Tokens has become a huge slice of the meta, there were about 7 [card]Lingering Souls[/decks] in the room :/ I'll be keeping an eye on Cruel, but I think I'm going to try out Cory Burkhart's Grixis Control for a week or two and see how that feel (I can guarantee I'll be back here before long XD)
More Staticaster and a pair of Engineered Explosives should solve those token problems
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Level 1 Judge
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
I think that possibly what I need to do for this MU is adjust my play. Obviously this isn't going to be a great MU for us pre-board (we have a bunch of 1:1 removal which doesn't play well against them), but I think I should have answers to the actual tokens in post-board games.
At the moment I'm using my counters (currently 4 Countersquall, 2 Spell Snare, 3 Cryptic Command main, with 2 Negate being relevant in the board) to snag pretty much whatever. This could be planeswalkers, anthems or token makers, though I never try and counter Souls. In the future I think I might just dismiss the token producers altogether, and only counter anthems and planeswalkers (and maybe Bitterblossom). Does anyone else with experience of the MU have any thoughts on that as a plan? As I said, it has become a huge part of the meta and properly prioritising my counters seems like it is probably my easiest "level up".
If your meta is truly infested things like Virulent Plague and Illness in the Ranks are absolute answers. You can also use Bile Blight if you want something that can be used in other matchups as well.
You should counter anthems and planeswalkers. We can sweep the tokens away, but we get killed by walkers and enchantments.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Level 1 Judge
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
Manatee, thanks for the input on sprite. Also, sorry for the inevitable wall of text it make cause I can't seem to get to a point, but there is a point to this and this shows why this deck type imo will shine in the new meta.
I came to this from grixis delver and I always ran sprites because they gave me a 3 turn clock when paired with delver as opposed to a 4 turn clock (accounting for mana) , which in the burn/affinity/infect heavy meta here in east Texas, that was super relevant, but the banning of g probe and the printing of fatal push, the format has slowed to a point where tempo just isn't as viable as it used to be. Instead of going on curve until like turn 4-5 and then either gettting a clock or burning them out, I guess I gotta be alittle more carful about things. But now that it's worst matchups lost g probe, tron is on the rise. We currently have 12 tron players at my lgs. Before the ban, there where like 4 of them. The mainboard pyroclasms in rg are a pain, mono blue uses wurm which makes me want to bang my head against a wall because it puts me in a position where I either go to time trying to grind out the game, or they get a second wincon to back that up and I get the final nail in the coffin. From there I moved to jeskai control (the non nahirikul version, cause I <3 batterskul) where it complimented colonnade very well because of the vigilance making it open on the opponents turn and coupled with a second land I had a clock path/push protection on my turn and then discard protection on their turn. The problem then came from the fact that bant eldrazi was a bad matchup. I pretty much had to scoop to smasher in almost every game because it was just so hard to deal with. From there I moved to esper, as lingering souls and thopter sword make both matchups a cake walk (flying is VERY underrated and kalitos ruins dredge, any green midrange deck that has goyf, and abzan company) however, I don't run red and because I have to play many cards that require 2-3 of my colors at every part of the curve, I have to run a very greedy mana base and basically scoop to blood moon, which is becoming more popular with the rise of big mana decks, and without actually running red, I just can't get there without any kind of burn. Delver wanted to grind AND control at the same time, on the same turn, jeskai wanted answers to bigger, harder to target creatures, and esper needed the red for bolt as a finisher and a hedge against creature decks. Cruel Ultimatum is the best control deck imo as it solves all of these problems while being in the best colors and playstyle to counter the meta. Stapled on top of that, this deck hasn't seen mainstream in years so now is the time to play it as no one will see it coming, as they didn't play during its glory days, or they just forgot about it. I expect this to either rise the one of the most popular control lists in the format, or to take the entire scene by surprise and crush until it burns its image into the back of every players mind for a very long time.
Also, what about bitter blossom? I know the life loss isn't great if you plan to go into the long game, but with cards like batterskul and the lifegain from ultimatum could help to counteract that. The deck likes to go long and from my time playing mono blue fae (and from my time playing ub fae) i know that spellstutter sprite holds a batterskul well! Lol I feel like this adds a second layer of inevitability to your game and even if you can't find a spot in the main, and even if you run it in the sideboard, it absolutely crushes jund from what I have tested with it (i never casted a blossom and felt like I was loosing after that in that matchup, but beware of discard as it counts as 2 for goyf as it is a tribal enchantment!) and if, like you said, you are having trouble with tokens, this helps you win the token fights while dealing with the anthems and walkers.
I think I might try sticking to my re-prioritised counters for the time being, with Illness in the Ranks as an option I'll resort to if I have to...
At the point of adding Bitterblossom and Spellstutter Sprite to the deck you might as well just play Grixis Faeries, which sounds kind of fun but like a rather different deck...
EDIT:
On an unrelated note, I ma trying to produce a list of the things I would want to know about a metagame in order to produce a deck list (i.e. pick my answers). How does this look as a template?
Average creature CMC
Average toughness
Average number of creatures per deck that you want to exile rather than just kill
Average number of non-creature spells per deck
Average number of "must counter" non-creature spells
TBH I honestly have given up on sprite at this point, cause I'm a tempo player at heart and bad habits die hard. However, as far as jund and abzan go, what do you think about bitter blossom? I am having a bit of trouble with the matchup and I already have the blossom from my fae days. I mean, lingering souls is why junk is so good against jund, and it pretty much makes lingering souls useless.
Edit: now that I think about it, I might as well just play kalitos instead as it hoses graveyards, makes burn wanna quit magic, and creates enough tokens to deal with souls. Idk tho, it dies to a fetch/push and path, so idk.
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet has proven itself to be really solid in my opinion. I bring it in against burn, or zoo, as well as dredge and Abzan coco. In each of those MUs it has proved itself to be a really valuable tool.
Bitterblossom is a fine card, but if you are looking to hose GB/x then I would recommend something different. Personal favourites include Keranos, God of Storms, Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and Jace, Architect of Thought though I'm sure other people have other suggestions. Personally with one or two of those in the board I've always found GB/x to be a pretty decent MU, maybe even 60:40 in our favour?
Do you think it is worth it to try to optimize the mana base to run blood moon in the side? It might screw me over if I do it wrong, but tron and gb/x scoop to it and that is like 80 % of my meta.
Thanks for all of the input, it really helps. Sorry if I seem annoying, but I have a really odd meta and I want to make sure what I put money into building isn't really bad, and proxying can only do so much.
No worries about the questions! I'n happy to help! I hope I'm not across as too dismissive of your ideas :/ everyone has slightly different takes on the right way to build the deck so I'd recommend experimenting
The Blood Moon question is and interesting one. My personal thought on that is that if you are trying to cast Cruel the Moon isn't going to be your friend the exception to this would be a build using Chromatic Lantern which wouldn't be too bad I guess...?
The main way you do this is run less shocks and more basics and fetches, but yea that was my main concern. I know it probably seems bad as it would make casting cruel harder, but there is only one person in my area who plays blood moon and he plays scred red and gets 1st every single time we have modern at the lgs. Idk if he cheats or what but his deck just seems too consistent, and he gets blood moon turn 3 EVERY GAME where it just wins on the spot, and in every other matchup where it does nothing he never draws it. However, I'm not sure about lantern. It seems like a 3 mana card that does nothing turn 3, but idk I might run it. I run a 1 of mana clash in my side for the matchup I can't win...
EDIT: he doesn't win 1st EVERY time, but most of the time. Also, there is a modern legal card that can give it phasing, which is probably really bad and could shoot you in the foot, but it's funny so idk maybe at unlimited tonight
Pretty sure there is going to be a new bolis. If he is anything like the old bolis but slightly weaker and a lower CMC, do you think he would be any good in this deck?
If they follow the trend they have been going in previous sets, we'll get a bolis with a really high cmc that is crap, and we will get one at 3-4 cmc that is really good. They have done that with most of the gatewatch, and maybe it'll make grixis tier 1 if it's good enough. Idk tho, maybe it's just wishful thinking.
New Bolas will be 4-6 mana. The recent trend is to make all planeswalkers playable, especially if they are the face of the set.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Level 1 Judge
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
This was in the recent M-Files article from the mothership when talking about Dark Intimations (which, fun fact, was originally going to be Discard 2, Sac 2 permanents and immediately makes me wish that's what it did on release):
Okay. So, I can't tell you when Bolas is coming. This was intended as a call-forward to when we actually do print a Bolas (yes, we will fulfill this at some point; no Steamflogger Boss here) and to show off that Bolas was behind the actions in Kaladesh. This line of text went through a lot of changes to be cool and possibly powerful but not limit us on what we could make Bolas do. For example, an early version recast itself like Kozilek's Return. It read cool, but it would also mean that if you were to resolve a Bolas planeswalker, it would definitely be overkill. We would never want to have to make Bolas a weak card because of how strong it would be in conjunction with Dark Intimations. In the end, we went with something that is impactful but wouldn't put too hard of a restriction on what we could do with Bolas.
There's almost a 100% chance of him being printed during Amonkhet block and a lot of people are saying Big Boss v2 is going to be pretty pushed. I have no clue what they'll do to make him even stronger than Big Boss v1 is, but there's no way he'll be a 10 mana Serum Visions or anything like that. I can't imagine him being any lower than 6 though, this is the same planeswalker that had to be near Grixis colored leylines in order to not completely collapse whatever plane he was on, it makes sense for him to be relatively expensive in exchange for being extremely powerful. Lord Bolas doesn't assist if you're not willing to commit mana towards playing him.
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
To be fair, I run the current Bolas in my deck and cast him regularly and people think he's overcosted for what he does. People generally don't stick around after he resolves let alone after he starts upticking and I can count the number of times I've ulted him to win on one hand. If the new one's anything like the old, if not better, his Ult might not even be necessary to win the game.
Now if it's anything like some people are theorizing where he has no plus abilities and has to use Dark Intimations to get to his ult, I'm probably going to jump off a cliff.
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
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In other news I piloted my list to yet another disappointing 2:2 finish at FNM on Friday. Short version: bye in round 1, lost to Bang Eldrazi round 2, beat Grixis Selver round 3 and lost to B/W Tokens in the last round. I feel like I have the right deck for my play style, but the wrong deck for meta looking around the room of 20 players I think I saw maybe 2 decks that I felt favoured against, 2 that I was about even with, and everything else looked rough. In particular B/W Tokens has become a huge slice of the meta, there were about 7 [card]Lingering Souls[/decks] in the room :/ I'll be keeping an eye on Cruel, but I think I'm going to try out Cory Burkhart's Grixis Control for a week or two and see how that feel (I can guarantee I'll be back here before long XD)
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
EDIT:
I think that possibly what I need to do for this MU is adjust my play. Obviously this isn't going to be a great MU for us pre-board (we have a bunch of 1:1 removal which doesn't play well against them), but I think I should have answers to the actual tokens in post-board games.
At the moment I'm using my counters (currently 4 Countersquall, 2 Spell Snare, 3 Cryptic Command main, with 2 Negate being relevant in the board) to snag pretty much whatever. This could be planeswalkers, anthems or token makers, though I never try and counter Souls. In the future I think I might just dismiss the token producers altogether, and only counter anthems and planeswalkers (and maybe Bitterblossom). Does anyone else with experience of the MU have any thoughts on that as a plan? As I said, it has become a huge part of the meta and properly prioritising my counters seems like it is probably my easiest "level up".
You should counter anthems and planeswalkers. We can sweep the tokens away, but we get killed by walkers and enchantments.
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
I came to this from grixis delver and I always ran sprites because they gave me a 3 turn clock when paired with delver as opposed to a 4 turn clock (accounting for mana) , which in the burn/affinity/infect heavy meta here in east Texas, that was super relevant, but the banning of g probe and the printing of fatal push, the format has slowed to a point where tempo just isn't as viable as it used to be. Instead of going on curve until like turn 4-5 and then either gettting a clock or burning them out, I guess I gotta be alittle more carful about things. But now that it's worst matchups lost g probe, tron is on the rise. We currently have 12 tron players at my lgs. Before the ban, there where like 4 of them. The mainboard pyroclasms in rg are a pain, mono blue uses wurm which makes me want to bang my head against a wall because it puts me in a position where I either go to time trying to grind out the game, or they get a second wincon to back that up and I get the final nail in the coffin. From there I moved to jeskai control (the non nahirikul version, cause I <3 batterskul) where it complimented colonnade very well because of the vigilance making it open on the opponents turn and coupled with a second land I had a clock path/push protection on my turn and then discard protection on their turn. The problem then came from the fact that bant eldrazi was a bad matchup. I pretty much had to scoop to smasher in almost every game because it was just so hard to deal with. From there I moved to esper, as lingering souls and thopter sword make both matchups a cake walk (flying is VERY underrated and kalitos ruins dredge, any green midrange deck that has goyf, and abzan company) however, I don't run red and because I have to play many cards that require 2-3 of my colors at every part of the curve, I have to run a very greedy mana base and basically scoop to blood moon, which is becoming more popular with the rise of big mana decks, and without actually running red, I just can't get there without any kind of burn. Delver wanted to grind AND control at the same time, on the same turn, jeskai wanted answers to bigger, harder to target creatures, and esper needed the red for bolt as a finisher and a hedge against creature decks. Cruel Ultimatum is the best control deck imo as it solves all of these problems while being in the best colors and playstyle to counter the meta. Stapled on top of that, this deck hasn't seen mainstream in years so now is the time to play it as no one will see it coming, as they didn't play during its glory days, or they just forgot about it. I expect this to either rise the one of the most popular control lists in the format, or to take the entire scene by surprise and crush until it burns its image into the back of every players mind for a very long time.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
At the point of adding Bitterblossom and Spellstutter Sprite to the deck you might as well just play Grixis Faeries, which sounds kind of fun but like a rather different deck...
EDIT:
On an unrelated note, I ma trying to produce a list of the things I would want to know about a metagame in order to produce a deck list (i.e. pick my answers). How does this look as a template?
Average creature CMC
Average toughness
Average number of creatures per deck that you want to exile rather than just kill
Average number of non-creature spells per deck
Average number of "must counter" non-creature spells
Edit: now that I think about it, I might as well just play kalitos instead as it hoses graveyards, makes burn wanna quit magic, and creates enough tokens to deal with souls. Idk tho, it dies to a fetch/push and path, so idk.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
Bitterblossom is a fine card, but if you are looking to hose GB/x then I would recommend something different. Personal favourites include Keranos, God of Storms, Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and Jace, Architect of Thought though I'm sure other people have other suggestions. Personally with one or two of those in the board I've always found GB/x to be a pretty decent MU, maybe even 60:40 in our favour?
Thanks for all of the input, it really helps. Sorry if I seem annoying, but I have a really odd meta and I want to make sure what I put money into building isn't really bad, and proxying can only do so much.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
The Blood Moon question is and interesting one. My personal thought on that is that if you are trying to cast Cruel the Moon isn't going to be your friend the exception to this would be a build using Chromatic Lantern which wouldn't be too bad I guess...?
EDIT: he doesn't win 1st EVERY time, but most of the time. Also, there is a modern legal card that can give it phasing, which is probably really bad and could shoot you in the foot, but it's funny so idk maybe at unlimited tonight
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
Full link to the article here.
There's almost a 100% chance of him being printed during Amonkhet block and a lot of people are saying Big Boss v2 is going to be pretty pushed. I have no clue what they'll do to make him even stronger than Big Boss v1 is, but there's no way he'll be a 10 mana Serum Visions or anything like that. I can't imagine him being any lower than 6 though, this is the same planeswalker that had to be near Grixis colored leylines in order to not completely collapse whatever plane he was on, it makes sense for him to be relatively expensive in exchange for being extremely powerful. Lord Bolas doesn't assist if you're not willing to commit mana towards playing him.
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
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/770827-primer-legacy-pili-pala
Now if it's anything like some people are theorizing where he has no plus abilities and has to use Dark Intimations to get to his ult, I'm probably going to jump off a cliff.
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