I just wanted to be sure I was looking at the same thing so I could apply some context to your criticism. I've felt Abrade wasnt doing enough for a long time, but didnt really know what to do with it. I have tried Flashfreeze before, found it too narrow.
Some good points, I'll consider things vs what I see a lot of locally.
The point of my post that was decks like yours are bad/doing it wrong.
I don't intend to be mean here, but literally every difference between our lists are things I feel pretty strongly about right now.
I know they're not widely different (they're the same archetype) but if anyone posted an old jeskai nahiri list with 4 av main, you'd probably feel similarly about that as I do about this.
Elspeth is super medium, and terrible mainboard.
4 bolt 2 helix is not the correct split of burn.
Mainboard negate is terrible.
24 lands 0 rev is sub par.
I think your sideboard is kind of a mess as well. The rev in particular is definitely a "main or bust" card for me. Swapping it with the elpseth at the very least would be a major improvement, though there are a number of other sideboard choices you've made that I don't like.
what are you even on about? i read that post of yours in the UW thread, and your "correct" jeskai list is literally just a stock big jeskai list shaving bolts and a rev in the main (a whopping 3 cards). the concept of shaving bolts isnt new, and was discussed in this very thread - with the online player Jahn posting multiple good finishes with a build with 0-bolts, 25 lands, more sweepers, and a bigger top end with elspeth in the main. we even discussed the idea of lowering the snap count if our bolt numbers were lower.
tuning lists is always an ongoing process, but we do so against a theoretical metagame - or in some cases with a local meta that we have reliable information on. with the assumption that we will be playing one set of decks more than the others. however this assumption is hardly always true.
making a case for or against certain cards is one thing. if someone is proposing a drastic change in the deck from lists that have proven results; then i think it is absolutely appropriate to question their ideas or reasoning. however the idea that there is this elusive "right" list is frankly kind of dumb.
your proposed changes give you small percentages against certain decks, and those decks may or may not be the correct ones to plan for. considering the small number of card changes and no meaningful change in the decks strategy though, i wouldnt expect anything more than a slight change in your win percentage - even in the event that you are correct. to think otherwise would be turning a blind eye to how probability works.
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I actually quite like this. Haven't tested it, but it looks great. Personally, I would keep the Gideon in the main and ether squeeze in a fourth snap somewhere or just stay at three. Personally, I would cut a Negate for a dispel, and an alliance for either an elspeth or a halo.
Maybe we have a different idea of what the stock list looks like, tronix, but theres more than just 3 different cards.
I'm not trying to say I've come up with something brand new and original, but simply that the current popular lists are subpar.
Yes, other people have done similar. I've mentioned as much in this thread that I draw inspiration from those lists.
The idea of a "right list" being dumb kind of defeats the purpose of deck discussion. Theres going to be different directions you can take a decklist, and some of them are going to be better than others. And by definition, one of them is going to be the best. Yes, this may change frequently, as the meta does, but the pursuit is not irrelevant.
You're welcome to play the list yourself and let me know what your thoughts are, but question has never been about overall deck strategy (assuming we're focusing on big jeskai) and its always been on the ideal set of tools to go with that strategy.
I've been off and on gideon right now. Sometimes I like him, sometimes I don't. He's definitely worth a spot in the 75, but sometimes mainboard doesn't feel right, and I like secure more than him.
I normally prefer negates over dispels, especially since I'm light on mainboard countermagic. Its possible a second dispel is better than the second negate, but I'm not inclined to think so.
I'm very off the elspeth train recently, I think she's actually very poorly positioned right now. She's good against jund (but not actually amazing), but she doesn't have much overlap. She's also ok in other blue matchups, but 6 mana sorceries are never ideal.
Halo I've only missed vs valakut. Its a lot weaker in general now that jace is here, and I think once dominaria drops, halo will be even worse, but its still ok for now, if you expect a lot of valakut. As I mentioned, I've not had too much trouble with the matchup, and I don't expect it to be terribly popular right now, so I'll pass on halo.
mostly i was referring to your post in the UW that held the implication that jeskai was stagnating and falling by the wayside with poor results because we are ignoring what is going on, or are unwilling to adapt. which i think is a poor representation of what has actually been going on. then you go on to say decklists are bad, and people are doing it wrong. i understand the reason for your card choices, and agree with some of them - but tbh there isnt even remotely enough information available to qualify your direction as the correct one. we can just make best guesses.
all in all it just came off like you were the first person to think about the deck post-unbanning and you needed to save us from our stupidity.
moving on - as for some card choices:
-i dont believe cutting that many bolts is where we wanna be. it is one of the most powerful spells in the format, and premium removal. which categorizes it as an excellent game 1 card because the floor on the card is never that low, while the ceiling against decks like humans (which is still showing up in numbers) is very high. im a firm believer in streamlining the deck to be the best at what it does game 1 (stomping out creature aggression).
-i agree that we should be moving away from negate in the main. the field is far too open right now for it to be a reliably live draw. if anything id drop it for another piece of 1 mana interaction - with snare being an obvious choice but id also consider another non-damage based removal spell (ie oust, condemn) in the face of the plethora of 4+ toughness creatures. if we can steal game one from decks like hollow one, colorless eldrazi, or dredge; then we are in a prime position to win the match because we only improve post board.
-up the fetch count by 1 or 2 and drop a colonnade (yes you heard me right). land disruption is rampant right now, and pretty much any deck that can run some form of it brings it in against us. more fetches insulates you from getting color screwed, and you can hold them up to cold a stone rain effect. colonnade is less impressive in a deck with azcanta and jace to dig to our other finishers.
-young pyromancer showing up more makes electrolyze look more attractive. staticaster is looking better than ever as a sideboard tool.
-celestial purge is one of our best sideboard cards right now. BR decks are everywhere
-no thoughts on sphinx's rev at the moment. we want more haymaker value cards, i can be pretty sure of that. however getting to 6+ lands where it is a real knock out punch is ambitious. at some point i might try out Glimmer of Genius
-we need graveyard hate in the 75. we cant ignore it anymore.
the way i see things is jeskai is never, and i repeat NEVER, going to be a natural predator to decks like jund. we gotta stop thinking like that. i know some people think we are favored, some people even, and some people think we are unfavored. my point is that we can only do things to make the matchup slightly better, to the point where we feel comfortable having a good chance of winning given we play well.
if you wanna beat up on fair decks go full on durdle mode or play tron.
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I've played a few games 3/3 on bolt/helix, and its fine.
If not for Path, I would be 100% on Leak instead of Negate, but when your early removal is Path, and you just end up Ramping them into things it feels terrible.
I've been down to 2 Collonade for a long time. Sea's, Ghost Quarter, Field of Ruin, Ponza, Fulminators...just too much to depend on and mana coming in tapped when I need it tilts me. Jim lost a game due to that this last weekend on camera so there is that too.
I'll try Ally of Zendikar, I've got one coming in the mail.
I think jeskai is stagnating a little bit. It saw some decent success right up until the unbanning because people had figured out the best lists.
The the metagame shakes up, and suddenly jeskai is not doing nearly as well. Its not horrible, but its struggling far more than basically anyone would have predicted, and thats in large part due to the fact that most of the decklists are untuned.
People do need to be more willing to adapt here, what was true about jeskai pre-jace is no longer necessarily true, the format is very different.
People playing the old lists with a couple jaces is not working.
The problem with bolt recently (since push was released) is that we sort of have a format where some decks are almost totally immune to bolt (bogles, hollow one, dredge, eldrazi, u/traverse shadow, gb/x, etc), or decks that just present a ton of removal targets (affinity, coco, aether vial decks, etc) that are weak to basically any removal spell.
Bolt misses a lot of important targets right now, and while it does hit plenty of other threats, its not something I'm inclined to maximize anymore. 5 copies of the card is quite enough, and helix has been much better than bolt for me.
As I've mentioned, jeskai is no longer good at stamping out fast aggro decks, especially game 1. Dredge, bogles, hollow one, etc, are popular enough that this isn't really the same strength that it used to be. This is very related to how effective bolt is against these decks.
In general, I would stay away from condemn or oust as I would negate. I see answers in modern in primary 3 categories:
1, always mainboard worthy. Cards like bolt/helix, path, verdict, cryptic, logic knot, fatal push, terminate, etc, will pretty much always make the mainboard in some number.
2, the sometimes mainboard worthy, sometimes sideboard/not. This is cards like oust, condemn, blessed alliance, negate, settle the wreckage, thoughtseize/collective brutality, anger of the gods, snare, runed halo, etc. These are usually better when you have more of an idea of the metagame.
3, the sideboard only cards. This category is pretty obvious, the stuff like ceremonious rejection, izzet staticaster, rest in peace, etc, that you'd almost never mainboard, but are sideboard staples.
IMO, blessed alliance has a higher floor than either oust or condemn, so playing a single copy main might be ok. I did for a little while (I wanted more hard removal after cutting a lot of the bolts) but it was only so-so, so I just left a copy in the board.
With colonnade, I actually think the opposite. SFA is important in our ability to lock up a game, as is colonnade. In general, our opponents won't have enough land destruction for all of them, so presenting enough targets to overload their removal is somewhat valuable. If you cut colonnades, you're essentially letting them tec edge a colonnade for free (because you have 1 less to play with).
Staticaster, EE, and celestial purge are very well positioned right now. My sideboard is still mostly a pile of singletons for a number of reasons, but all of these cards are very valuable.
I don't love rev either, but glimmer of genius simply isn't better. Pre-jace an argument could be made for it (though I never liked it then either) but now I don't think its correct.
I'm also not convinced we need gravehate.
My "main" modern deck for a while has been esper draw-go, primarily because of its ability to have game against just about everything (dredge was the major exception, but even there you had tools). Jeskai has never had the tools to beat everything before (not in the same 75 at least). If you expect a lot of tron and dredge, jeskai is just never going to be the right meta call, no matter how you build your deck.
While some people are ride or die with jeskai, I'm much less willing to try to fix unwinnable matchups with this deck. At some point, I'd rather switch off jeskai than devote giant amounts of my sideboard to a few matchups if I could instead play different colors and be better positioned.
I do agree about your point on jund.
Jeskai in the past has had a dubiously favorable matchup vs jund. You'd win more than 50% (though not much more), but it was very very easy for things to not go your way.
Now of course, the matchup is probably the worst its ever been.
I said on the UW thread, I think, that jeskai is not very well positioned right now, and I still think thats true.
We're worse than ever against midrange, we're worse than ever vs aggro, we're bad vs ponza, and we're not better enough vs valakut or tron or eldrazi or storm to make up for any of that.
If the meta settles down and we have a more narrow field to attack this could change, but for the moment anyone looking for the best control deck in the format is probably better off looking away from jeskai.
yeah i definitely fall into the ride or die category. i also mentioned a couple pages back that i also think jeskai isnt that well positioned. tbh it think that ALL blue control decks arent the best place to be. jace was quite the boon, but for the most part a bunch of decks just simply dont care about it.
i think our disagreement on some card choices stems from the decks we are seeing. im fortunate to live in an area with a pretty good modern following, and multiple lgs not too far apart. its competitive enough where plenty of people jump around on decks depending on what they think is good, but in the same vein there are others who play what they like.
so while im seeing more hollow one or boggles in general, i still also see affinity, humans, zoo, merfolk, elves, counters company, infect, etc. cutting cheap removal puts me in a spot where slam dunk matchups start to look like im only slightly favored; so i end up losing to the decks that were good against me anyways AND occasionally losing to decks i normally toss into the dumpster.
i think another point in bolts favor is sniping turn 1 mana dorks, which is like life or death against ponza.
yeah oust and condemn suck but they were the first thing i could think of after snare. maybe spell pierce, or flame slash (Porphyry Nodes!!). at 2cmc blessed alliance is definitely one of the better options. i actually dont mind remand either - which is comically bad against BBE, but still good in a lot of situations.
as for colonnade. i see your point, but at the same time i find that i activate it less now - which may just be some sort of observation bias but thats my general feeling about it at the moment. its still good to have, and having mana sinks is just good practice with deckbuilding; but with azcanta activations and using the cards i get off jace it just doesnt come up as much anymore. add to this being able to play around land disruption, have less untapped sources, and being good with jace. people arent tagging manlands to stop us from getting value out of them - they are trying to stop us from being able to cast our spells.
speaking of azcanta, i saw in your post that you arent very high on the card. i wholeheartedly disagree on that front. the card seems like a 2 mana do-nothing, but having a pseudo scry every draw step equates to some fraction of a card. even if it never flips just the draw is virtual card advantage, similar to a free cantrip every turn. it doesnt take many triggers for the card to reach an impressive mana to cards ratio.
as for grave hate i wasnt thinking about dredge, which is just awful no matter how you write it up. more along the lines of graveyard value decks. we have been in this awkward situation where we use our own graveyard just enough for us not to be able to run rest in peace. now though i think there is a case to be made that it would be net positive to shut off an opponents graveyard even if it means it makes some of our own cards worse. for instance shutting off mardu pyromancers faithless looting/lingering souls engine and making revelers cost 8 mana makes them look like a draft deck. it also shuts off delirium, delve cards, and goyfs. there are less abrupt decays floating around to answer it as well.
dredge and hollow one can play under a RIP, but if we can stabilize at any point the card is the nail in the coffin.
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I agree that all blue control decks aren't the best place to be, but some are definitely better than others.
I agree that I also activate it less now, partially because of search, partially because of opposing removal, etc, but having them around to draw fire is nice. I'm also on fewer 1 drop spells so dropping a colonnade on t1 is not terribly hurtful for me.
I still plays search, its not horrible, but having to be tapping mana every turn for card advantage kind of sucks sometimes, which is another reason I think 25 lands is correct, getting to the activate search + interact level of mana can be game changing.
My problem with gravehate has always been that there are better ways to overlap sideboard hate. EE/staticaster are good vs pyromancer, purge and planeswalkers are good vs the goyf decks, etc, and all of these cards don't also hurt us.
The number of decks that we have to fight with graveyard hate is low, and those matchups are horrible enough to the point where why should we bother.
Is jund being played way more?
That being said, this deck just got jace, the mind sculptor unbanned, it seems hard to argue thats its not underperforming.
Sure, when I'm playing at FNMs, I'm as successful as ever, but thats not really meaningful. The deck is not performing at large events nearly as well as most would have expected.
Looking at the worcester classic, we have 1 queller list, and no jund lists. At the open, we have jund in 5th and 18th, jeskai in 13th and 27th, and at the last classic, we have jund in 2nd and 12th, and another queller list at 8th. Jund does seem to be doing quite a bit better than jeskai control, assuming you count queller as a different deck (which it is, IMO).
I don't consider queller to be in the same conversation. Its not a jace-playing jeskai deck. Whne i'm talking about how well big jeskai is doing, queller doesn't factor in. In my mind, its like adding dredge's results to jund because they're the same color.
So looking at that, we have 4 jund lists and 2 jeskai lists, with the jund lists placing higher.
I can't find day 1 numbers for these events, but apparently there were 6 jund decks and 4 jeskai decks making day 2 of the open. We don't know how many of those jeskai lists play queller because scg doesn't differentiate. That being said, atleast 2 of them have to be big jeskai.
Since we don't have day 1 numbers, its pretty difficult to say if jund is actually being played more (if you have these numbers, please tell me, because I can't find them, but perhaps I'm just not finding them).
At the very least, jund is placing higher than jeskai at these tournaments. Comparing 5th and 18th vs 13th and 27th seems pretty obvious here.
That being said, comparing conversion rates because jund is being played more is a little unfair. Jund is being played more because people think/know its good. Fewer people chose to show up with jeskai because they were not convinced it could win. Thats not exactly points for jeskai in my opinion.
yeah for the most part that is why i questioned Cody_X's assessment about jeskai falling behind or lists not reflecting what is going on around us.
in fact its been the opposite of that. from what we have seen so far there hasnt been a single unifying theme among the jeskai lists we see showing up. which i find particularly irritating because i consider those who frequent this thread to be at least a little more informed than the average jeskai player - to the point where we thought there was something to be gained by finding others to discuss the archetype with.
so we are at a point where if a new player comes here and asks whats good right now our answer amounts to: "i dunno man. do whatever you want. we have no clue what the metagame looks like and your choices dont really matter"
THAT is why i dont think jeskai is positioned well right now. if decks are just jamming whatever spells are in our colors and occasionally doing well, then that indicates to me that there is something else at play.
-we say queller looks bad right now -> queller lists all over the place
-we say you shouldnt play jace MD in a tempo shell -> queller/geist + jace lists showing up
-big jeskai lists we see are doing something a little different (ie. 0 bolts) -> the 2 top placing jeskai lists at dallas are stock (with MD negates)
-we dont think moving away from azcanta to more creatures is best -> resto blade splicer lists
if the meta is so wide open and you could feasibly do well with any type of build, that pushes me to advocate just sticking to the qualities of our deck that we know are good/powerful, ride out the chaos, then reassess when the dust settles.
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At the last PT, UWR got smashed. It has done OK in the hands of a few, but Bolt is in this weird place.
Against any number of decks, it doesn't do enough.
Against a number of decks, like Humans, it's a beating.
And against some, it just let's us race.
To me that's the only sell for UWR, Snap Bolt.
I'm not tied to Bolt, I may give Esper a spin, but if Bolt is less optimal, I can see how (because I'm playing it every day since unbans) that alone tilts against UWR.
I think Cody X's assessments are off drastically..
I played in the Worcester tournament and can say that there was too much Jund there and not many people showed up with Jeskai because they thought it would be heavily targeted against. The only thing that I have noticed since the unbanning was the emergence of Ponza style land destruction decks that throw us off of our colors and that Tron/Eldrazi Tron are still horrible matches. As for Jund I think personally from my playing we are heavily favored. BBE is not really doing crazy broken things in their deck to the same way it does in Ponza and an easy electrolyze usually takes care of it without problem.
I do think we need to tailor the decks a little more and I think how we do that will involve a lot more countermagic. I think it is wrong to take out negate from the mainboard given that a lot of decks are shifting to run a lot of non creature spells. Even decks running BBE aren't trying to cascade into a creature but instead something like blood moon/Molten Rain/etc...
@tronix, I feel your frustration. I'm even certain it has been expressed in this subforum within the last three years. The "problem" is that Jeskai is a weird beast. I don't know about you, but every time I'm preparing to take it out for a tournament, I rebuild it from the ground up to deal with the possible metagame I'm aiming at. My play style leans slightly more aggressive so I tend to stick with tempo lists unless something changes my mind. I have no problems playing control variants but I probably don't do it as well as others who stand by that strategy the way I do with tempo. This is all to say, Jeskai can play different flavors. It's more about knowing how to play your list as well as you can against the field. This archetype isn't limited to doing a specific thing just due to its colors. Oddly enough, this was also a reason given for trying to split Jeskai into multiple threads a while back.
my feelings right now are mostly in the context of just this last couple of months. probably too short of a time frame to expect to find what is good/best.
jace is good enough to play in jeskai. i think that is a pretty safe statement lol. i dont mind keeping everything jeskai related consolidated in one place. no matter the flavor there are enough overlapping elements.
for instance i believe that the jeskais place in the format has entirely been predicated on three cards: snapcaster mage, path to exile, and lightning bolt. no matter the playstyle deck lists build off of that core of powerful cards.
as for what is going on right now i still believe the safest option is playing with a tempo build. just invalidate your opponents plays enough to get em dead. being proactive is where you want to be when you have no idea what decks you are facing. i think the salient topic to be discussing for this is how to incorporate jace into a tempo build.
for those who still want to play controlling. the best we can do is discuss card choices against X, Y, and Z decks.
if people are actively looking for new directions to take the color combo i think there are a few choices:
-midrange/flash
-tappout control
-young pyromancer tokens
none of these has proven themselves yet, so anything related to them would require experimentation.
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I did come up with a couple lists abusing Kolaghan's Command with Snapcaster Mage and Young Pyromancer and Ojutai's Command with both of them as well. Fun times. Wish I saved them.
if people are actively looking for new directions to take the color combo i think there are a few choices:
-midrange/flash
-tappout control
-young pyromancer tokens
none of these has proven themselves yet, so anything related to them would require experimentation.
Many people are experimenting with Young Pyromancer now in the wake of it's success in the Pro tour in UR and mardu colors.
Not so much in jeskai colors, though, even after the success of UR Pyromancer, but this bad boy with disrupting shoals showed up in the latest league results: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/985686#online
yeah getting YP to work in jeskai has been an elusive white whale
i believe that decklist you linked to was created by h0lydiva on this forum. diva said it was working pretty good, and got a 5-0 comp league result posted.
disrupting shoal is really interesting tech, and i wish i had copies to play with. its no force of will, but if you play with enough blue spells of the right CMCs then its servicable. not to mention being able to just hard cast it as a counter.
i know it shows up in Bloo because technically you can cast it for the wrong CMC, not counter the spell, but still get a prowess/whatever trigger.
edit: to comment on young pyromancer. i cant find a good explanation for why it is only recently starting to show up more. barely anyone played the card even when Git Probe was legal, and those cards are like peanut butter and jelly
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Pyromancer has shown up recently-ish because of the decline of bolt, and the emergence of things like gurmag angler, death's shadow, eldrazi, etc, that get chumped by the tokens, which sort of sparked a whole "Oh hey, this card is actually good in modern", which has carried through til now. Despite removal heavy decks back on the upswing, a lot of the pyromancer decks are difficult to grind through, which gives them a place in the meta.
(There also aren't very many good wincons for U moon if you dislike kiki combo/breach combo/madcap combo) pre-jace, so the UR pyromancer list from the pro tour sort of picked the two best options and went with them.
In the past most of the pyromancer decks were more like UR delver, so they played probe, and it was harder to imagine pyromancer without probe, but the lists now are slower and grindier.
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Some good points, I'll consider things vs what I see a lot of locally.
Spirits
what are you even on about? i read that post of yours in the UW thread, and your "correct" jeskai list is literally just a stock big jeskai list shaving bolts and a rev in the main (a whopping 3 cards). the concept of shaving bolts isnt new, and was discussed in this very thread - with the online player Jahn posting multiple good finishes with a build with 0-bolts, 25 lands, more sweepers, and a bigger top end with elspeth in the main. we even discussed the idea of lowering the snap count if our bolt numbers were lower.
tuning lists is always an ongoing process, but we do so against a theoretical metagame - or in some cases with a local meta that we have reliable information on. with the assumption that we will be playing one set of decks more than the others. however this assumption is hardly always true.
making a case for or against certain cards is one thing. if someone is proposing a drastic change in the deck from lists that have proven results; then i think it is absolutely appropriate to question their ideas or reasoning. however the idea that there is this elusive "right" list is frankly kind of dumb.
your proposed changes give you small percentages against certain decks, and those decks may or may not be the correct ones to plan for. considering the small number of card changes and no meaningful change in the decks strategy though, i wouldnt expect anything more than a slight change in your win percentage - even in the event that you are correct. to think otherwise would be turning a blind eye to how probability works.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I actually quite like this. Haven't tested it, but it looks great. Personally, I would keep the Gideon in the main and ether squeeze in a fourth snap somewhere or just stay at three. Personally, I would cut a Negate for a dispel, and an alliance for either an elspeth or a halo.
UWR Control
BR Hollow One
I'm not trying to say I've come up with something brand new and original, but simply that the current popular lists are subpar.
Yes, other people have done similar. I've mentioned as much in this thread that I draw inspiration from those lists.
The idea of a "right list" being dumb kind of defeats the purpose of deck discussion. Theres going to be different directions you can take a decklist, and some of them are going to be better than others. And by definition, one of them is going to be the best. Yes, this may change frequently, as the meta does, but the pursuit is not irrelevant.
You're welcome to play the list yourself and let me know what your thoughts are, but question has never been about overall deck strategy (assuming we're focusing on big jeskai) and its always been on the ideal set of tools to go with that strategy.
I've been off and on gideon right now. Sometimes I like him, sometimes I don't. He's definitely worth a spot in the 75, but sometimes mainboard doesn't feel right, and I like secure more than him.
I normally prefer negates over dispels, especially since I'm light on mainboard countermagic. Its possible a second dispel is better than the second negate, but I'm not inclined to think so.
I'm very off the elspeth train recently, I think she's actually very poorly positioned right now. She's good against jund (but not actually amazing), but she doesn't have much overlap. She's also ok in other blue matchups, but 6 mana sorceries are never ideal.
Halo I've only missed vs valakut. Its a lot weaker in general now that jace is here, and I think once dominaria drops, halo will be even worse, but its still ok for now, if you expect a lot of valakut. As I mentioned, I've not had too much trouble with the matchup, and I don't expect it to be terribly popular right now, so I'll pass on halo.
all in all it just came off like you were the first person to think about the deck post-unbanning and you needed to save us from our stupidity.
moving on - as for some card choices:
-i dont believe cutting that many bolts is where we wanna be. it is one of the most powerful spells in the format, and premium removal. which categorizes it as an excellent game 1 card because the floor on the card is never that low, while the ceiling against decks like humans (which is still showing up in numbers) is very high. im a firm believer in streamlining the deck to be the best at what it does game 1 (stomping out creature aggression).
-i agree that we should be moving away from negate in the main. the field is far too open right now for it to be a reliably live draw. if anything id drop it for another piece of 1 mana interaction - with snare being an obvious choice but id also consider another non-damage based removal spell (ie oust, condemn) in the face of the plethora of 4+ toughness creatures. if we can steal game one from decks like hollow one, colorless eldrazi, or dredge; then we are in a prime position to win the match because we only improve post board.
-up the fetch count by 1 or 2 and drop a colonnade (yes you heard me right). land disruption is rampant right now, and pretty much any deck that can run some form of it brings it in against us. more fetches insulates you from getting color screwed, and you can hold them up to cold a stone rain effect. colonnade is less impressive in a deck with azcanta and jace to dig to our other finishers.
-young pyromancer showing up more makes electrolyze look more attractive. staticaster is looking better than ever as a sideboard tool.
-celestial purge is one of our best sideboard cards right now. BR decks are everywhere
-no thoughts on sphinx's rev at the moment. we want more haymaker value cards, i can be pretty sure of that. however getting to 6+ lands where it is a real knock out punch is ambitious. at some point i might try out Glimmer of Genius
-we need graveyard hate in the 75. we cant ignore it anymore.
-possibly a time to revisit Threads of Disloyalty
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)the way i see things is jeskai is never, and i repeat NEVER, going to be a natural predator to decks like jund. we gotta stop thinking like that. i know some people think we are favored, some people even, and some people think we are unfavored. my point is that we can only do things to make the matchup slightly better, to the point where we feel comfortable having a good chance of winning given we play well.
if you wanna beat up on fair decks go full on durdle mode or play tron.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)If not for Path, I would be 100% on Leak instead of Negate, but when your early removal is Path, and you just end up Ramping them into things it feels terrible.
I've been down to 2 Collonade for a long time. Sea's, Ghost Quarter, Field of Ruin, Ponza, Fulminators...just too much to depend on and mana coming in tapped when I need it tilts me. Jim lost a game due to that this last weekend on camera so there is that too.
I'll try Ally of Zendikar, I've got one coming in the mail.
Spirits
The the metagame shakes up, and suddenly jeskai is not doing nearly as well. Its not horrible, but its struggling far more than basically anyone would have predicted, and thats in large part due to the fact that most of the decklists are untuned.
People do need to be more willing to adapt here, what was true about jeskai pre-jace is no longer necessarily true, the format is very different.
People playing the old lists with a couple jaces is not working.
The problem with bolt recently (since push was released) is that we sort of have a format where some decks are almost totally immune to bolt (bogles, hollow one, dredge, eldrazi, u/traverse shadow, gb/x, etc), or decks that just present a ton of removal targets (affinity, coco, aether vial decks, etc) that are weak to basically any removal spell.
Bolt misses a lot of important targets right now, and while it does hit plenty of other threats, its not something I'm inclined to maximize anymore. 5 copies of the card is quite enough, and helix has been much better than bolt for me.
As I've mentioned, jeskai is no longer good at stamping out fast aggro decks, especially game 1. Dredge, bogles, hollow one, etc, are popular enough that this isn't really the same strength that it used to be. This is very related to how effective bolt is against these decks.
In general, I would stay away from condemn or oust as I would negate. I see answers in modern in primary 3 categories:
1, always mainboard worthy. Cards like bolt/helix, path, verdict, cryptic, logic knot, fatal push, terminate, etc, will pretty much always make the mainboard in some number.
2, the sometimes mainboard worthy, sometimes sideboard/not. This is cards like oust, condemn, blessed alliance, negate, settle the wreckage, thoughtseize/collective brutality, anger of the gods, snare, runed halo, etc. These are usually better when you have more of an idea of the metagame.
3, the sideboard only cards. This category is pretty obvious, the stuff like ceremonious rejection, izzet staticaster, rest in peace, etc, that you'd almost never mainboard, but are sideboard staples.
IMO, blessed alliance has a higher floor than either oust or condemn, so playing a single copy main might be ok. I did for a little while (I wanted more hard removal after cutting a lot of the bolts) but it was only so-so, so I just left a copy in the board.
With colonnade, I actually think the opposite. SFA is important in our ability to lock up a game, as is colonnade. In general, our opponents won't have enough land destruction for all of them, so presenting enough targets to overload their removal is somewhat valuable. If you cut colonnades, you're essentially letting them tec edge a colonnade for free (because you have 1 less to play with).
Staticaster, EE, and celestial purge are very well positioned right now. My sideboard is still mostly a pile of singletons for a number of reasons, but all of these cards are very valuable.
I don't love rev either, but glimmer of genius simply isn't better. Pre-jace an argument could be made for it (though I never liked it then either) but now I don't think its correct.
I'm also not convinced we need gravehate.
My "main" modern deck for a while has been esper draw-go, primarily because of its ability to have game against just about everything (dredge was the major exception, but even there you had tools). Jeskai has never had the tools to beat everything before (not in the same 75 at least). If you expect a lot of tron and dredge, jeskai is just never going to be the right meta call, no matter how you build your deck.
While some people are ride or die with jeskai, I'm much less willing to try to fix unwinnable matchups with this deck. At some point, I'd rather switch off jeskai than devote giant amounts of my sideboard to a few matchups if I could instead play different colors and be better positioned.
I do agree about your point on jund.
Jeskai in the past has had a dubiously favorable matchup vs jund. You'd win more than 50% (though not much more), but it was very very easy for things to not go your way.
Now of course, the matchup is probably the worst its ever been.
I said on the UW thread, I think, that jeskai is not very well positioned right now, and I still think thats true.
We're worse than ever against midrange, we're worse than ever vs aggro, we're bad vs ponza, and we're not better enough vs valakut or tron or eldrazi or storm to make up for any of that.
If the meta settles down and we have a more narrow field to attack this could change, but for the moment anyone looking for the best control deck in the format is probably better off looking away from jeskai.
i think our disagreement on some card choices stems from the decks we are seeing. im fortunate to live in an area with a pretty good modern following, and multiple lgs not too far apart. its competitive enough where plenty of people jump around on decks depending on what they think is good, but in the same vein there are others who play what they like.
so while im seeing more hollow one or boggles in general, i still also see affinity, humans, zoo, merfolk, elves, counters company, infect, etc. cutting cheap removal puts me in a spot where slam dunk matchups start to look like im only slightly favored; so i end up losing to the decks that were good against me anyways AND occasionally losing to decks i normally toss into the dumpster.
i think another point in bolts favor is sniping turn 1 mana dorks, which is like life or death against ponza.
yeah oust and condemn suck but they were the first thing i could think of after snare. maybe spell pierce, or flame slash (Porphyry Nodes!!). at 2cmc blessed alliance is definitely one of the better options. i actually dont mind remand either - which is comically bad against BBE, but still good in a lot of situations.
as for colonnade. i see your point, but at the same time i find that i activate it less now - which may just be some sort of observation bias but thats my general feeling about it at the moment. its still good to have, and having mana sinks is just good practice with deckbuilding; but with azcanta activations and using the cards i get off jace it just doesnt come up as much anymore. add to this being able to play around land disruption, have less untapped sources, and being good with jace. people arent tagging manlands to stop us from getting value out of them - they are trying to stop us from being able to cast our spells.
speaking of azcanta, i saw in your post that you arent very high on the card. i wholeheartedly disagree on that front. the card seems like a 2 mana do-nothing, but having a pseudo scry every draw step equates to some fraction of a card. even if it never flips just the draw is virtual card advantage, similar to a free cantrip every turn. it doesnt take many triggers for the card to reach an impressive mana to cards ratio.
as for grave hate i wasnt thinking about dredge, which is just awful no matter how you write it up. more along the lines of graveyard value decks. we have been in this awkward situation where we use our own graveyard just enough for us not to be able to run rest in peace. now though i think there is a case to be made that it would be net positive to shut off an opponents graveyard even if it means it makes some of our own cards worse. for instance shutting off mardu pyromancers faithless looting/lingering souls engine and making revelers cost 8 mana makes them look like a draft deck. it also shuts off delirium, delve cards, and goyfs. there are less abrupt decays floating around to answer it as well.
dredge and hollow one can play under a RIP, but if we can stabilize at any point the card is the nail in the coffin.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I agree that I also activate it less now, partially because of search, partially because of opposing removal, etc, but having them around to draw fire is nice. I'm also on fewer 1 drop spells so dropping a colonnade on t1 is not terribly hurtful for me.
I still plays search, its not horrible, but having to be tapping mana every turn for card advantage kind of sucks sometimes, which is another reason I think 25 lands is correct, getting to the activate search + interact level of mana can be game changing.
My problem with gravehate has always been that there are better ways to overlap sideboard hate. EE/staticaster are good vs pyromancer, purge and planeswalkers are good vs the goyf decks, etc, and all of these cards don't also hurt us.
The number of decks that we have to fight with graveyard hate is low, and those matchups are horrible enough to the point where why should we bother.
Is jund being played way more?
That being said, this deck just got jace, the mind sculptor unbanned, it seems hard to argue thats its not underperforming.
Sure, when I'm playing at FNMs, I'm as successful as ever, but thats not really meaningful. The deck is not performing at large events nearly as well as most would have expected.
Looking at the worcester classic, we have 1 queller list, and no jund lists. At the open, we have jund in 5th and 18th, jeskai in 13th and 27th, and at the last classic, we have jund in 2nd and 12th, and another queller list at 8th. Jund does seem to be doing quite a bit better than jeskai control, assuming you count queller as a different deck (which it is, IMO).
So looking at that, we have 4 jund lists and 2 jeskai lists, with the jund lists placing higher.
I can't find day 1 numbers for these events, but apparently there were 6 jund decks and 4 jeskai decks making day 2 of the open. We don't know how many of those jeskai lists play queller because scg doesn't differentiate. That being said, atleast 2 of them have to be big jeskai.
Since we don't have day 1 numbers, its pretty difficult to say if jund is actually being played more (if you have these numbers, please tell me, because I can't find them, but perhaps I'm just not finding them).
At the very least, jund is placing higher than jeskai at these tournaments. Comparing 5th and 18th vs 13th and 27th seems pretty obvious here.
That being said, comparing conversion rates because jund is being played more is a little unfair. Jund is being played more because people think/know its good. Fewer people chose to show up with jeskai because they were not convinced it could win. Thats not exactly points for jeskai in my opinion.
in fact its been the opposite of that. from what we have seen so far there hasnt been a single unifying theme among the jeskai lists we see showing up. which i find particularly irritating because i consider those who frequent this thread to be at least a little more informed than the average jeskai player - to the point where we thought there was something to be gained by finding others to discuss the archetype with.
so we are at a point where if a new player comes here and asks whats good right now our answer amounts to: "i dunno man. do whatever you want. we have no clue what the metagame looks like and your choices dont really matter"
THAT is why i dont think jeskai is positioned well right now. if decks are just jamming whatever spells are in our colors and occasionally doing well, then that indicates to me that there is something else at play.
-we say queller looks bad right now -> queller lists all over the place
-we say you shouldnt play jace MD in a tempo shell -> queller/geist + jace lists showing up
-big jeskai lists we see are doing something a little different (ie. 0 bolts) -> the 2 top placing jeskai lists at dallas are stock (with MD negates)
-we dont think moving away from azcanta to more creatures is best -> resto blade splicer lists
if the meta is so wide open and you could feasibly do well with any type of build, that pushes me to advocate just sticking to the qualities of our deck that we know are good/powerful, ride out the chaos, then reassess when the dust settles.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Against any number of decks, it doesn't do enough.
Against a number of decks, like Humans, it's a beating.
And against some, it just let's us race.
To me that's the only sell for UWR, Snap Bolt.
I'm not tied to Bolt, I may give Esper a spin, but if Bolt is less optimal, I can see how (because I'm playing it every day since unbans) that alone tilts against UWR.
It's just a question of if Black gives more.
Spirits
I played in the Worcester tournament and can say that there was too much Jund there and not many people showed up with Jeskai because they thought it would be heavily targeted against. The only thing that I have noticed since the unbanning was the emergence of Ponza style land destruction decks that throw us off of our colors and that Tron/Eldrazi Tron are still horrible matches. As for Jund I think personally from my playing we are heavily favored. BBE is not really doing crazy broken things in their deck to the same way it does in Ponza and an easy electrolyze usually takes care of it without problem.
I do think we need to tailor the decks a little more and I think how we do that will involve a lot more countermagic. I think it is wrong to take out negate from the mainboard given that a lot of decks are shifting to run a lot of non creature spells. Even decks running BBE aren't trying to cascade into a creature but instead something like blood moon/Molten Rain/etc...
my feelings right now are mostly in the context of just this last couple of months. probably too short of a time frame to expect to find what is good/best.
jace is good enough to play in jeskai. i think that is a pretty safe statement lol. i dont mind keeping everything jeskai related consolidated in one place. no matter the flavor there are enough overlapping elements.
for instance i believe that the jeskais place in the format has entirely been predicated on three cards: snapcaster mage, path to exile, and lightning bolt. no matter the playstyle deck lists build off of that core of powerful cards.
as for what is going on right now i still believe the safest option is playing with a tempo build. just invalidate your opponents plays enough to get em dead. being proactive is where you want to be when you have no idea what decks you are facing. i think the salient topic to be discussing for this is how to incorporate jace into a tempo build.
for those who still want to play controlling. the best we can do is discuss card choices against X, Y, and Z decks.
if people are actively looking for new directions to take the color combo i think there are a few choices:
-midrange/flash
-tappout control
-young pyromancer tokens
none of these has proven themselves yet, so anything related to them would require experimentation.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Many people are experimenting with Young Pyromancer now in the wake of it's success in the Pro tour in UR and mardu colors.
Not so much in jeskai colors, though, even after the success of UR Pyromancer, but this bad boy with disrupting shoals showed up in the latest league results:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/985686#online
UWRUWR Delver/Lynx TempoUWR-------UWRUWR Midrange GeistUWR-------UWRUWR Nahiri ControlUWR-------UWRUWR SaheeliUWR
BGRJund / Jund ShadowBGR-------BGWAbzan / Abzan ShadowBGW
Commander (Leviathan/MTGO): UWGeist of Saint TraftUW
i believe that decklist you linked to was created by h0lydiva on this forum. diva said it was working pretty good, and got a 5-0 comp league result posted.
disrupting shoal is really interesting tech, and i wish i had copies to play with. its no force of will, but if you play with enough blue spells of the right CMCs then its servicable. not to mention being able to just hard cast it as a counter.
i know it shows up in Bloo because technically you can cast it for the wrong CMC, not counter the spell, but still get a prowess/whatever trigger.
edit: to comment on young pyromancer. i cant find a good explanation for why it is only recently starting to show up more. barely anyone played the card even when Git Probe was legal, and those cards are like peanut butter and jelly
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)(There also aren't very many good wincons for U moon if you dislike kiki combo/breach combo/madcap combo) pre-jace, so the UR pyromancer list from the pro tour sort of picked the two best options and went with them.
In the past most of the pyromancer decks were more like UR delver, so they played probe, and it was harder to imagine pyromancer without probe, but the lists now are slower and grindier.