the only saving grace, and why we can run field when jund cant, is that we operate at instant speed (mostly); meaning we can find more spare mana for activations.
Why do people think this matters so much?
yeah im not understanding what you are getting at. instant speed effects work well together?
im proposing that field of ruin is better when you dont have to commit to a play on your main phase. that doesnt seem unreasonable. how much it matters pretty much stops there.
It doesn't matter. If you were going to make the play anyway, all your doing is allowing your opponent a card and more available mana to deal with whatever comes down the pipe. I've been running into this mentality a lot lately. Jund doesn't run Field of Ruin because they have Fulminator Mage so there's no need to jack up the mana base. It's just better for Jund's purposes. The speed at which it resolves has very little to do with it.
the only saving grace, and why we can run field when jund cant, is that we operate at instant speed (mostly); meaning we can find more spare mana for activations.
Why do people think this matters so much?
yeah im not understanding what you are getting at. instant speed effects work well together?
im proposing that field of ruin is better when you dont have to commit to a play on your main phase. that doesnt seem unreasonable. how much it matters pretty much stops there.
It doesn't matter. If you were going to make the play anyway, all your doing is allowing your opponent a card and more available mana to deal with whatever comes down the pipe. I've been running into this mentality a lot lately. Jund doesn't run Field of Ruin because they have Fulminator Mage so there's no need to jack up the mana base. It's just better for Jund's purposes. The speed at which it resolves has very little to do with it.
i mean your delving directly into the topic of why instants are more powerful than sorceries, and i know you know the reasons why they are. unless you truly want to debate that they arent.
sure you might activate field on your turn if the context of the game dictates that. that isnt the point though, its about information and more decision points. sorcery speed plays are an upfront choice, and being able to play that game requires more risk/reward analysis which in turn requires accurately discerning hidden information. even still, decks that make more plays on their main phase are bound to working with more unknowns and maximize their mana usage (ie curving out) on their turn. having multiple instant speed effects means you wait, and simply choose the best response; hence more options are open for a longer period of time and more information has been gathered (their play happens, meaning the accumulated information in the gamestate increases).
field is an instant speed effect, it plays better with more instants opposed to shackling it to a restriction from another source. i posited that is why jeskai, as a 3 color deck with similar colored requirements to jund, has been able to use 3 fields effectively while jund hasnt.
consider what jund is doing on turn 3, or turn 4. they are deciding what threat to deploy, possibly using discard. they might weigh that decision against not progressing their board and holding up a piece of removal instead. no matter what they choose, they are forced to decide then and there. fulminator works well in that scenario. do you think UW control would play fulminators over fields if they could? of course not, because it invalidates their other instants; namely counter magic. it isnt a mindset, its a description of reality lol.
I'm with Tronix here. Holding a Field activation till EoT on t3 means you're representing a 2cmc counterspell (knot, leak, remand, negate) or other interaction. I think that is not insignificant, even if it is not a game breaker.
I generally do agree that 3 FoR is fairly greedy for Jeskai, but I wouldn't run fewer than 2. Remember it's not just the actual land destruction that is always important. I often use Field activations to shuffle after a Teferi -3 Or a Jace 0 with no fetch access.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks
------------ URW Jeskai Control GUWRB Amulet Titan GR Ponza
My point is that you're making a comparison between two decks that operate way differently but still trying to compare how they play. Jund isn't trying to play a purely reactive game. Jeskai is. Jund isn't trying to always do stuff during or at the end of an opponent's turn. You are. That doesn't make Field of Ruin better in either deck. They would just be played differently. My point in the example is that Jund doesn't care to play Field of Ruin anyway since it has Fulminator Mage, which is as effective starting on the same turn while not screwing up the mana base.
Would UW play it? Probably, if they could and it was powerful enough. UW cares less about operating at instant speed than Jeskai.
i did my best to highlight the differences between jund and jeskai, the only similarity i was drawing was that both are 3 color decks with strict color requirements. the fact that it would be played differently in different decks means the net benefit would be different. i know it isnt quantifiable, and an assumption, but given the gameplay considerations i brought up (which you agreed on) it has more basis than believing 2 decks would get the same out of a card despite using it in separate ways.
the proactive element, that primarily takes place at sorcery speed, is precisely what makes field better in a deck like jeskai. that isnt the same as saying jund would get zero use, or that they are unable to leverage it at all; rather the notion of taking a turn off to destroy a land that may just inconvenience most decks sequencing doesnt justify running multiple colorless lands.
when you arent precisely planning out your turn because you are waiting for your opponent to act, prompting your response, the tempo swings create 'wasted' or spare mana. therefore playing at instant speed offers more opportunities to use an instant speed mana sink.
i dunno, are you primarily thinking about matchups where taking care of a problematic land is paramount? in those cases dealing with a threat like tron being assembled or an inkmoth nexus supersede pretty much anything else you are doing, because you will likely lose otherwise; therefore any deck that had access to field would get good use out of it. however field is only used that way a fraction of the time. in those other cases you have a colorless land staring you in the face, and 2 mana isnt easy to find for the majority of decks out there. jeskai, and similarly UW, have more opportunities to fire it off and get that basic; meaning its less cumbersome, and you gain small edges in restricting your opponents colors - hence extra benefit.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
The problem is your premise about "extra mana." I think it's bogus. There's no such thing as finding extra mana. If you need it, you plan accordingly. Whether that is holding up mana for a counter magic until the last moment or you're figuring out what line you plan on taking on your turn. Even you said it isn't often you're just blowing things up with it so it tends to sit there as a colorless land that does nothing but jack up a mana base.
call it whatever you want. your belief in it isnt necessary because im describing a play pattern that happens, its reality. hold up a counterspell, the opponent doesnt play something worth countering, its the end of their turn, that mana is now free to do other things.
also i didnt say its rare comes up that you tag some random dual to fix your own mana, it comes up way more than those dire moments where you need to kill some problematic land or fall behind. with more opportunities for field activations (see above), converting it into a colored source is less difficult; therefore making the total strain on your manabase less. 3 colorless lands is greedy as hell, but it still a form of fixing in its own right.
clearly im not going to convince you. some decks/strategies utilize cards/effects better than others. sometimes cards work well with other cards/effects in a deck. these arent outrageous claims, nor are they some misguided mindset, and im honestly confused as why you are pushing back against them.
so we can leave it at that
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
I don't get the extra mana thing, but even if I do not have interaction, I will still hold my FoR till EoT to make them play around my non existent interaction. Opponents WILL make suboptimal plays occasionally if you are simply representing 3 untapped lands, one of which is blue.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks
------------ URW Jeskai Control GUWRB Amulet Titan GR Ponza
im not sure where 'extra mana' came from. the descriptors that i used were 'wasted' and 'spare'. playing at instant speed allows you to keep the most options open for the longest period of time; including masking your cards to bluff. for example if you have a 2 cmc counter in hand and a path, and your choice is contingent on what the opponent plays on their turn. if you end up using path because the counterspell is better used somewhere else; what happens to that 1 mana? better yet what if they are stumbling and dont present anything you care about at all. oh hey, there is this convenient mana sink you can make use of at instant speed; its now worth considering to use.
likewise i dunno where you got 'forced' to use field activations. i explicitly said there are more opportunities to pay for the activation without having to commit, or as 0oSunnYo0 points out, seeming to commit to a line of play. the fact that you can incidentally pick up another colored source is what mitigates the colorless aspect, at least compared to other decks.
ask yourself why its common practice to make plays at the end of your opponents turn.
or why are instants better than sorceries
its about flexibility from timing, which ties directly to options
still, im not even sure what you are arguing. maybe i just suck at explaining. cards have different properties. those properties dictate how, or how well, they interact with other cards. instant speed effects work well together because they both dont share the timing restriction. the same way that snapcaster is better with instants. field activations are instant. therefore field is more effective in a deck full of instant speed plays rather than in one full of sorcery speed plays.
this isnt rocket science.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
i agree that the argument has gone on too long, and would be glad to drop it.
i also agree that counterspells, as instants, are a unique case of being mostly restricted since they can only be used as a response. the difference in your jund player proactively using field into discard, is that a field activation, unless used on some vital land, is relatively low impact. unless your hand offers no other options, committing to that line on your turn is done with less information and is a tempo investment. which is why fulminator is better, because its a body on the ground that you dont need to use right away (along with other synergies like k-command, ltlh, etc). whereas jeskai, given it has multiple options to choose from, doesnt need to place priority on its activation over other lines; making its usage and benefit a good portion of the time incidental. at which point, instead of maybe knowing what your opponent might do, you definitely know.
i also disagree that jund doesnt need the effect. they play fulminators precisely for it. it just happens to work better in their strategy, like field works better in ours. which is the entire premise of my many ranting posts. assassin's trophy just allows them to converge those slots. jeskai no longer needs to tap out for garbage like molten rain because it makes our other interaction worse.
but yeah sure whatever, everyone can make use of field equally. even mono-red beatdown, they just dont need the effect. so ill just stop talking about it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
yeah no point dwelling on what jund may or may not be doing. i was just surprised because i honestly didnt think my idea/theory was that farfetched, but apparently it was. card evaluation is what it is.
as for field. running 3 in jeskai is pure greed, no two ways about it. my experience playing with the card has taught me that once you have multiples of the effect, with a decently large variability in efficacy between matches or games, that you need to find activations when you can. our colored mana requirements dont exactly get easier; especially when we start double or even triple spelling in the mid and late game. so there are times when you hold back and wait to snipe a key land at the right time, but plenty of other times its just minor disruption/fixing/shuffle effect. the increased chance to draw multiples places diminishing returns on the former, and asks the player to better navigate the latter.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
I don't think detention sphere is all that good in jeskai. Its not well positioned if you expect trophy to be popular.
I also think 2 negate is a little heavy. If you expect midrange/control, I'd 100% cut a negate and the sphere for 2 copies of spell snare.
I think you also want jaces in the deck somewhere. They're another powerful threat against mid/control, and they shuffle away dead AVs.
IMO, you're too light on card advantage (esp since AV is not consistent). I think pretty much all jeskai decks should be playing atleast 1 copy of jace to supplement the 2 teferis.
I also don't think keranos is that good. Getting hit by teferi is super brutal. Cutting it for another clique seems pretty good, especially if you add jaces for midrange.
As is, not a list I would be particularly worried to play against on uw/x.
Personally I like your 3 dispel 2 Geist sideboard plan for the Mirror.
I would also go -1 Negate +1 Snare.
Personally I think Detention Sphere is well worth it if you're not playing Jeskai Miracles as it gives you a main deck out to recursion and a resolved Chalic etc, but once Trophy is released this could be another Snare like Cody suggests.
I think 2 AV and 1 Search is the better set up. Remember you don't have to flip search.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks
------------ URW Jeskai Control GUWRB Amulet Titan GR Ponza
Spell Snare basically as powerful as dispel in a UWx mirror. Dispel hits cryptic, but Snare hits Snapcaster and Azcanta. They both will basically always have a target in a counter war.
Also, a Clique in the main-deck is very, very good if you are tuning for mirrors.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern Decks
------------ URW Jeskai Control GUWRB Amulet Titan GR Ponza
Yea if you want to beat UW basically any jeskai list will do, endstep pressure is just devastating to them as they are kind of forced to path your snaps. You do have to give up percentage somewhere else though, either by losing to manascrew by running field of ruin or guaranteed losing g1 vs tron by not running field of ruin.
I have found AV to be very mediocre, at least when playing the UW mirror. The mirror often ends up being about someone starting a counterfight, followed by both players slamming threats after the opponent tapped out for theirs. AV does not really help there, because even though getting to fight the counterwar with full mana available, your opponent will just answer by slamming their own threat. I think you are better off leaving all the burn in, playing flash creatures like clique, snap and queller. These can both perform as a threat as well as threathening theirs.
Fighting UW with CA is a lost cause as their card quality is higher, you need to out tempo them and punish them for having lousy answers to your creatures postboard
Snare is definitely good vs uw/x. It hits snap/leak/negate/sfa, sometimes sideboard stuff too, all for 1 mana.
Teferi + bolts + manlands are answers to planeswalkers, and while sphere is reasonable, I don't think its great in jeskai.
If you're not registering terminus, then you're making the decision that bloodghast/bridge decks are a bad matchup. Adding sphere seems like too much of a half-measure.
I'd rather see another jace, or a pnk, or a 4 mana gideon or something over keranos since they leave value behind if they get trophy-ed. As much as I don't love elspeth sun's champion, that also seems better than keranos to me.
I personally would play atleast 1 copy of search, and I'd play the 8th fetch over a glacial/sulfur falls.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
It doesn't matter. If you were going to make the play anyway, all your doing is allowing your opponent a card and more available mana to deal with whatever comes down the pipe. I've been running into this mentality a lot lately. Jund doesn't run Field of Ruin because they have Fulminator Mage so there's no need to jack up the mana base. It's just better for Jund's purposes. The speed at which it resolves has very little to do with it.
I admit though, I dont like the card and what it does to the mana base.
Spirits
i mean your delving directly into the topic of why instants are more powerful than sorceries, and i know you know the reasons why they are. unless you truly want to debate that they arent.
sure you might activate field on your turn if the context of the game dictates that. that isnt the point though, its about information and more decision points. sorcery speed plays are an upfront choice, and being able to play that game requires more risk/reward analysis which in turn requires accurately discerning hidden information. even still, decks that make more plays on their main phase are bound to working with more unknowns and maximize their mana usage (ie curving out) on their turn. having multiple instant speed effects means you wait, and simply choose the best response; hence more options are open for a longer period of time and more information has been gathered (their play happens, meaning the accumulated information in the gamestate increases).
field is an instant speed effect, it plays better with more instants opposed to shackling it to a restriction from another source. i posited that is why jeskai, as a 3 color deck with similar colored requirements to jund, has been able to use 3 fields effectively while jund hasnt.
consider what jund is doing on turn 3, or turn 4. they are deciding what threat to deploy, possibly using discard. they might weigh that decision against not progressing their board and holding up a piece of removal instead. no matter what they choose, they are forced to decide then and there. fulminator works well in that scenario. do you think UW control would play fulminators over fields if they could? of course not, because it invalidates their other instants; namely counter magic. it isnt a mindset, its a description of reality lol.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I generally do agree that 3 FoR is fairly greedy for Jeskai, but I wouldn't run fewer than 2. Remember it's not just the actual land destruction that is always important. I often use Field activations to shuffle after a Teferi -3 Or a Jace 0 with no fetch access.
------------
URW Jeskai Control
GUWRB Amulet Titan
GR Ponza
Would UW play it? Probably, if they could and it was powerful enough. UW cares less about operating at instant speed than Jeskai.
the proactive element, that primarily takes place at sorcery speed, is precisely what makes field better in a deck like jeskai. that isnt the same as saying jund would get zero use, or that they are unable to leverage it at all; rather the notion of taking a turn off to destroy a land that may just inconvenience most decks sequencing doesnt justify running multiple colorless lands.
when you arent precisely planning out your turn because you are waiting for your opponent to act, prompting your response, the tempo swings create 'wasted' or spare mana. therefore playing at instant speed offers more opportunities to use an instant speed mana sink.
i dunno, are you primarily thinking about matchups where taking care of a problematic land is paramount? in those cases dealing with a threat like tron being assembled or an inkmoth nexus supersede pretty much anything else you are doing, because you will likely lose otherwise; therefore any deck that had access to field would get good use out of it. however field is only used that way a fraction of the time. in those other cases you have a colorless land staring you in the face, and 2 mana isnt easy to find for the majority of decks out there. jeskai, and similarly UW, have more opportunities to fire it off and get that basic; meaning its less cumbersome, and you gain small edges in restricting your opponents colors - hence extra benefit.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)also i didnt say its rare comes up that you tag some random dual to fix your own mana, it comes up way more than those dire moments where you need to kill some problematic land or fall behind. with more opportunities for field activations (see above), converting it into a colored source is less difficult; therefore making the total strain on your manabase less. 3 colorless lands is greedy as hell, but it still a form of fixing in its own right.
clearly im not going to convince you. some decks/strategies utilize cards/effects better than others. sometimes cards work well with other cards/effects in a deck. these arent outrageous claims, nor are they some misguided mindset, and im honestly confused as why you are pushing back against them.
so we can leave it at that
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)------------
URW Jeskai Control
GUWRB Amulet Titan
GR Ponza
likewise i dunno where you got 'forced' to use field activations. i explicitly said there are more opportunities to pay for the activation without having to commit, or as 0oSunnYo0 points out, seeming to commit to a line of play. the fact that you can incidentally pick up another colored source is what mitigates the colorless aspect, at least compared to other decks.
ask yourself why its common practice to make plays at the end of your opponents turn.
or why are instants better than sorceries
its about flexibility from timing, which ties directly to options
still, im not even sure what you are arguing. maybe i just suck at explaining. cards have different properties. those properties dictate how, or how well, they interact with other cards. instant speed effects work well together because they both dont share the timing restriction. the same way that snapcaster is better with instants. field activations are instant. therefore field is more effective in a deck full of instant speed plays rather than in one full of sorcery speed plays.
this isnt rocket science.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)i also agree that counterspells, as instants, are a unique case of being mostly restricted since they can only be used as a response. the difference in your jund player proactively using field into discard, is that a field activation, unless used on some vital land, is relatively low impact. unless your hand offers no other options, committing to that line on your turn is done with less information and is a tempo investment. which is why fulminator is better, because its a body on the ground that you dont need to use right away (along with other synergies like k-command, ltlh, etc). whereas jeskai, given it has multiple options to choose from, doesnt need to place priority on its activation over other lines; making its usage and benefit a good portion of the time incidental. at which point, instead of maybe knowing what your opponent might do, you definitely know.
i also disagree that jund doesnt need the effect. they play fulminators precisely for it. it just happens to work better in their strategy, like field works better in ours. which is the entire premise of my many ranting posts. assassin's trophy just allows them to converge those slots. jeskai no longer needs to tap out for garbage like molten rain because it makes our other interaction worse.
but yeah sure whatever, everyone can make use of field equally. even mono-red beatdown, they just dont need the effect. so ill just stop talking about it.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)as for field. running 3 in jeskai is pure greed, no two ways about it. my experience playing with the card has taught me that once you have multiples of the effect, with a decently large variability in efficacy between matches or games, that you need to find activations when you can. our colored mana requirements dont exactly get easier; especially when we start double or even triple spelling in the mid and late game. so there are times when you hold back and wait to snipe a key land at the right time, but plenty of other times its just minor disruption/fixing/shuffle effect. the increased chance to draw multiples places diminishing returns on the former, and asks the player to better navigate the latter.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I also think 2 negate is a little heavy. If you expect midrange/control, I'd 100% cut a negate and the sphere for 2 copies of spell snare.
I think you also want jaces in the deck somewhere. They're another powerful threat against mid/control, and they shuffle away dead AVs.
IMO, you're too light on card advantage (esp since AV is not consistent). I think pretty much all jeskai decks should be playing atleast 1 copy of jace to supplement the 2 teferis.
I also don't think keranos is that good. Getting hit by teferi is super brutal. Cutting it for another clique seems pretty good, especially if you add jaces for midrange.
As is, not a list I would be particularly worried to play against on uw/x.
I would also go -1 Negate +1 Snare.
Personally I think Detention Sphere is well worth it if you're not playing Jeskai Miracles as it gives you a main deck out to recursion and a resolved Chalic etc, but once Trophy is released this could be another Snare like Cody suggests.
I think 2 AV and 1 Search is the better set up. Remember you don't have to flip search.
------------
URW Jeskai Control
GUWRB Amulet Titan
GR Ponza
Also, a Clique in the main-deck is very, very good if you are tuning for mirrors.
------------
URW Jeskai Control
GUWRB Amulet Titan
GR Ponza
Fighting UW with CA is a lost cause as their card quality is higher, you need to out tempo them and punish them for having lousy answers to your creatures postboard
Teferi + bolts + manlands are answers to planeswalkers, and while sphere is reasonable, I don't think its great in jeskai.
If you're not registering terminus, then you're making the decision that bloodghast/bridge decks are a bad matchup. Adding sphere seems like too much of a half-measure.
I'd rather see another jace, or a pnk, or a 4 mana gideon or something over keranos since they leave value behind if they get trophy-ed. As much as I don't love elspeth sun's champion, that also seems better than keranos to me.
I personally would play atleast 1 copy of search, and I'd play the 8th fetch over a glacial/sulfur falls.