Welcome back Spencerinnd!
I feel like both you and I have a very simmilar approach to the deck as after MH1 i was a running a very simillar list to yours also using 4 Ranger-Captain of Eos and the tutir targets like Thraben Inspector and kami of false hope.
Your new version is also simillar to mine, even running 2 Elite Spellbinder which is a card i've been trying out and i have been enjoying it.
Regarding your question about the equipments in particular, i think 3 is a good number to run (not counting here Mortarpod, as for this discussion in particular, i consider it more of a value 2 drop than an equipment at the power level of the others mentioned). Before MH2 i used to play with 1 Batterskull, 1 Sword of Fire and Ice and 1Sword of Feast and Famine so i think i can give you my thoughts on the card.
I mostly used Sword of Feast and Famine for it's black and green protection, rather than the triggers itself. They can be very useful yes, making our opponent discard a card and allwoing to double our mana in a turn, but during my games, i found that it was usually a bit underwhelming. Sometimes i had the mana but nothing to play, and other times my opponent had no cards to discard. That makes it a dud in certain situations. Sword of Fire and Ice trigger is always relevant. if it connects, it always delas 2 and it draws us a card. Thats also the reason i don't particualarly like the other swords: they are just too situational. Sword of Fire and Ice gives us relevant protection and has the best trigger for our deck. When i put Kaldra Compleat i knew i had to take one of the swords out, and given what i just said, the choice was obvious. Given your situtation, not having acces to Sword of Fire and Ice, i still think Sword of Feast and Famine is the second best choice. I absolutly love Shadowspear in the side for some matchups, but in terms of overall value, Sword of Feast and Famine still takes the cake for me as the protection is still very relevant and it has the good but not amazing triggers of discarding and kinda doubling your mana for the turn.
And yes, i'm a sucker for Teferi, Time raveler so for me, more is always better :b
Answering your question regarding the use of Skyclave Apparition and Ranger-Captain of Eos in the same deck: I think it's possible but you have to make a lot of sacrifices for it. The 3cmc lot is already very crowded with Skyclave Apparition, Court Hussar, Teferi, Time raveler, and in our case Elite Spellbinder too (although this last one i feel like it's a flex slot and could be more easily slotted out). To put ranger, you would have to probably pur 3-4 and the one drops to back it up, which would mean cutting some Wall of Omens and Charming Prince which in my opinion would make this version of the deck weaker. I absolutly adore Ranger-Captain of Eos and have been trying to slot it in, but the sacrifices were just to great to put him in unfortunatly.
In regards to the rest, your list is very simillar to mine so i can't really add much!
About the sideboard, i think everyone has different preferences catered to different metas, but the one i'm most curious about is the one of Leyline of Sanctity. In what matchups would you bring it and why the decision to include only one?
I'm very much looking forward to seeing your results to see how this version of the deck holds up against different decks form the ones i play at my LGS.
Regarding your question about Elite Spellbinder.
I think it's a flex slot and not nearly on the same powerlevel as the other 3 drops like Skyclave Apparition and Teferi, Time Raveler. Court Hussar i always run at least 2 because of the eternal recurrence sinergies with Sun Titan and Emeria, the Sky Ruin, so that is as low as i'm willing to go on that card.
Having built the rest of the deck i had 2 free slots and decided to try Elite Spellbinder. I have been quite impressed with the card, specially in the non aggro matchups. Being able to look at their hand and jsut make something cost 2 extra is actually quite good against some decks. I rememeber doing it last week against Jund, taking a Liliana of the Veil they were about to cast in the following turn, and they didn't cast her for 4 more turns due to lands constrictions. Being able to snag a combo piece also gives us another edge against one of our worst matchups wich has been historically combo decks where sometimes we just don't have an answer. Lastly, being a 3/1 flyer, it can actually end games quickly sometimes, specially when you equip it with a Sword or a Batterskull.
I'm quite liking the card, but while i would say Skyclave Apparition and Teferi, Time Raveler are 5/5 or close to it, being useful almost everytime, and i would rate this lower, as a 3/5 in general, a 2/5 (or sometimes even 1/5) in very agressive matchups and a 4/5 in those grindier matchups.
I think our deck already fares well against aggro, so i think we can spare the slots to put something more focused on other matchups, but i'm sure some will disagree with me on this topic and i would be happy to hear other opinions on the card as it hasn't been as widely discussed as other cards!
Hello everyone, and a warm welcome to Spencerrind!
I hope that you are all doing well this fine Canada Day, and wish you all a happy and healthy summer (especially in the heatwave which is also affecting us here in the prairie provinces with numbers currently hovering at around the 40-degree Celsius / 100 Farenheit mark). I will be out canoeing on the river soon, so here's hoping I don't incur heatstroke to pass out and drown! If I do perish, however, I will leave you with a few final thoughts.
Thank you for giving my strategy a try, Plichow! I feel as though you may have gotten unlucky not to do better on the day (the Chandra sequence in particular was painful to read, and post-board Celestial Purge is a card that joins Aether Gust in reducing these extremely unlikely losses to base-Red midrange decks - a strategy which I feel we have a death-grip on in general). Losing to Jeskai is more realistic, though I feel strongly advantaged there as well, but the Grixis Shadow loss is a real gut-check. Planeswalkers and Kaldra are indeed issues that must be managed with play patterns more than direct answers, so it does not surprise me to hear of that becoming an issue, and I would say that the sideboard was out of date by four cards (Mindcensors and Needles), and ill-optimized to the current metagame in another three (Lavinia, Prelate, and Alliance - my apologies for not having made that clear in these past few pages, since you broadly followed my list from the primer). I recommend you read my primer guide on Shadow, at the very least, to see how you sideboarded and what lines you took which differed from what I have found to be "best practice" there. This list is also one which rewards experience a lot, so if you continue to stick with it, you will eventually run across as series of "Ah-HA!" moments is a few areas which will affect your sequencing significantly. I wish you the best, and will hope to be around to offer more assistance in the future!
On the equipment package, I loathe things which cannot help stabilize the board once Emeria is on the table and all I need is either a land or another upkeep, but after re-stating that distaste I will weigh in on the options with the following list of priorities. 1) If the Stoneforge Mystic is being used to draw out removal or to go for the throat, Kaldra Compleat is the best option on offense, and Batterskull is nearly always the best option on defense - except against other Kaldras. 2) If you assume your Kor Artificer is going to die and you will then need to continue providing more blockers to survive (an ongoing theme in my deck), if Planeswalkers threaten game-breaking Loyalty abilities when you have no board presence (another commonly assumed state of affairs for me), or if you want to compound Emeria, the Sky Ruin advantages when you begin to close out the game, then Mortarpod is your man and covers against x-1 aggro/combo/utility/acceleration Creatures starting on turn 2 to boot. After that, things get considerably more murky.
The fact that Shadowspear provides immediate interaction on a 2-mana investment for potentially crippling plays from opponents, without necessitating a creature presence, combines with its overall cheapness to make it into a uniquely efficient tutor target in the deck, which also hedges with additional stats bonuses and lifegain where appropriate, but it in no way belongs in the maindeck unless the metagame shifts to make it more consistently relevant. Moving beyond this layer, unless you find yourself trying to solve a very specific issue, the respective advantages of the "Sword Of" cycle all boil down to their metagame-dependent Protection abilities more than anything else, with three notable exceptions for Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword Of Hearth and Home, and Sword Of Feast and Famine as real standouts. These three have triggers which contribute in direct ways to bridging the gap in the midrange sequences. Notably, however, the last two have analogues which are rarely discussed in the cheaper Sword of the Animist for fetching lands (though without the Flicker effect), and the MUCH cheaper Specter's Shroud (without the untap trigger). Blinking creatures or doubling mana can be extremely useful, but they generally pale in comparison to the startup mana efficiency required, particularly since the discard effect is extremely desireable against fast Combo decks when 2-drop heavy versions can follow their Mystic - or even Mortarpod - up immediately with resource denial given a natural curve into a third land. Once you move up to 5 mana Equip sequences SOF/I, though, hits the hardest and guarantees value best of all the other Sword effects, while SOH/H can situationally outpace it on value or board control early on, though never matching its pressure.
Lastly, I would like to weigh in on the Ranger-Captain of Eos combination with Skyclave Apparition, and will note that the 3-drop issue mentioned above is one of the key differences that Emeria, the Sky Ruin and Sun Titan combine to turn into a very important spot on the curve. In the past, whenever people suggested running Kitchen Finks, I would use that as a diagnostic of either lack of insight into the deck, or complete unfamiliarity with how it operates. Three is the "Magic Number" for the strategy, and slots in that space are incredibly competitive. If Mortarpod was somehow a 3-Mana Equipment, it wouldn't be in the top TWENTY effects I could justify in the colours, probably even if it offered 3 damage on sacrifice instead of one. (This also relates back a tiny amount to my issue with the "Sword Of" cycle above). In essence, then, though it is always theoretically possible to run both of the 1WW cards, their numbers are naturally reduced by the other important effects that will tend to displace them, and I find that the Blue 3-drops are the primary culprit. In the Mono- or Heavy-White versions, this slot opens up a little more, and I believe that it is far more realistic to run, say, 3 Ranger-Captain and 2 Skyclave Apparition together without significant issues. The question then becomes whether it is possible to do this without compromising too many matchups due to the lack of Blue support, to which my answer has thus far been "no". The saving graces for the Mono-White versions, however, do notably include excellent Emeria activation and nearly ironclad utility-land development otherwise.
Should any of you have differing ideas, however, as always you may feel free to ask me to take off my blinders, and I will give my honest opinion about the relative merits of certain choices in other shells. Just because I find my version to be the best for me, it in no way reduces my enthusiasm for optimization in other contexts.
have only managed to read this now. Nice, that was an exciting game against Orzhov Stoneblade. Yeah, I imagine Tourach Dread Cantor would be a real pain since he's pro-white, good thing Court Hussar was there to save the day. Well, I guess Emeria managed to outlast the opponent.
congrats on the good result.
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Elite Spellbinder added to the primer. Table of contents -> card choices -> he's beside Skyclave Apparition.
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on another topic. You seem to have plenty of experience fighting Izzet Blitz decks.. if you want, and have the time. Can you write a short guide on how to play and sideboard against it? Will add your guide to the primer, and write your name as the contributor.
Although it is possible that the aggressive versions will want Guardian of Faith more than I realize, 1) this will not be without consequence to the power level of the deck as a whole due to the 3-drop issue mentioned above and 2) this will only be true in the shells which are trying to win the game actively (which I maintain is not a strategy naturally synergistic with our namesake tapland in either philosophy or gameplay).
In addition, it provides little value when recurred on mainphase or upkeep for us, whereas Selfless Spirit provides a rough analogue for its utility at 2/3 of the cost, and on an evasive body which has free instant-speed activation built into its presence on the table. When tapping out so often, the value of hidden information is lesser for us as well, and the timing sensitivity when tied to a high up-front mana investment combines with the disastrous Living Weapon/Phasing interaction issues such that I, for one, am entirely uninterested in the card on first impression.
Should you wish to seek out its best home, I might recommend starting to test immediately against it because I believe that it will have a very high chance of becoming a staple in Collected Company decks, particularly (and rather obviously) in Bant Spirits.
In other spoilers, I believe that Ingenious Smith has approximately as much power as Professor of Symbology did, and therefore has a [EDIT: SMALL] chance of seeing play in specific builds who need card selection 2-drops (perhaps specifically the Yorion, Sky Nomad builds). Sadly, I see less potential in either Monk Class or Paladin Class given their respective balances, though I will look forward to seeing if their rules baggage will mean that they also interact favourably with Yorion.
Round 1: 2-0 VS UB Control
Not much to say here, I was playing against a newer player playing a very strange UB control list playing foretell cards, enchantments that cause creatures not to untap, and Lochmere Serpent and Ashiok, Nightmare Muse as win cons. I boarded out Verdicts and brought in detention sphere and sorcerous spyglass.
Round 2: 2-0 VS Lantern Control
G1 I got lucky because he thoughtsiezed me t1 and took skyclave but I drew a second one for my next draw step before he was able to play lantern and have knowledge of it. I killed with charming prince and elite spellbinder attacking a couple times, then playing apparation on ensnaring bridge and putting him on a one turn clock. Won around turn 7 I think.
Took out 4 Path, solitude, 3 verdict for 2 kataki, 2 seal of cleansing, 2 d sphere, 2 prismatic ending.
making 10 cards that can hit bridge seems good to me.
G2 Was similar but with less luck involved from my part. Apparation'd a bridge again and won again reasonably quickly.
Skyclave was the mvp in this matchup for sure.
Round 3: 0-2 vs UW Control
We both played very quickly as we knew time would be an issue.
G1: went about 20 minutes and was honestly pretty fun. I don't remember exactly how it went, but I got 1 sun titan exiled, and 2 in the graveyard, two emerias field of ruined with 1 in the deck, batterskull killed, and kaldra germs exiled multiple times. He didn't run away with any planeswalkers until like turn 20. but at some point I was hellbent and he had snap-caster, cryptic, bounce snapcaster.
verdicts out, spyglass and d spheres in.
G2: Went like game 1 but worse. To be noted, I kept threat light hands in both games so that might be a reason as to why the games went like they did, but their list seems like it would have answers to just about anything I did with prismatic ending, counterspells, teferi, path, etc. This matchup felt almost unwinnable but I'd be interested if others have felt differently. I'd imagine it's just down to them drawing all their fields of ruins. Maybe I need to sandbag my emerias until the coast is clear? unsure.
Round 4: 2-0 vs Jund
G1: I got thoughtsiezed, T1, then double inquisitioned T2, but I had a threat heavy hand and was left with a wall of omens. I topdecked teferi on turn 3 to bounce tarmagoyf and from that point they had to assassins trophy the teferi and lost to an on curve sun titan. that being said, they did evoke and cast kroxa, so that worried me a bit.
Boarded out 2 spellbider, 1 charming prince, 2 teferi, brought in 2 prismatic ending, 2 remorseful cleric, 1 celestial purge, wanted exile for kroxa, as well as answers to lili.
G2: Went well, can't quite remember what happened but he lost to sun titan again.
MVP Sun Titan, didn't seem like they could win if I cast or reanimated it once.
it's too bad with the uw control game, but beating Jund and Lantern Control showed that the deck is competitive.
perhaps threat heavy hands would have allowed to put up a better fight against the uw deck, since threat heavy hand was able to beat Jund?
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Primer update:
Spencerinnd_fnm added to Tournament Report section.
Well done, Spencerrind, I hope you continued to enjoy playing the deck!
In terms of facing Control, the thing to remember is that we enjoy inevitability in the abstract because an active Emeria, the Sky Ruin will beat most everything except for a Planeswalker literally threatening to ultimate before your next upkeep, but that is only assuming a well-stocked Graveyard. Since this precondition is the case, and since Supreme Verdict is otherwise such a liability to draw against Creature-light strategies, your lack of Mortarpod is something that flips the matchup heavily in their favour. By delaying the ultimate ability on Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for one turn on its own, it is a valuable tutor target in this matchup, and by pressuring loyalty with any random Wall of Omens sitting around waiting for something to do beside provide free blocks on the occasional Snapcaster Mage it becomes a threat worth some amount of their respect.
Next, the utility of both Pilgrim's Eye and Crucible of Worlds is far greater than might initially appear in more grindy pairings. When as a child I first caught the attention of my local tournament endbosses way back in the 90's, I received a piece of advice which has transposed directly into part of the philosophy I bring to this deck: "Never underestimate the power of mana development in Control mirrors". The 3-mana Artifacts I run are almost superior to Archmage's Charm and the like against Control for this reason, as I can guarantee access to land drops much better than their card draw can when tapping out mainphase - a strategic advantage that also extends to Wall of Omens and leads to operational and tactical difficulties for them because they are consistently uncertain whether tapout plays represent a sign of strength or of weakness from us. In addition, a maindeck Crucible also becomes nearly a must-counter threat, and turns their Field of Ruin into more of a delaying tactic than surefire disruption. The resilient trifecta of Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Crucible of Worlds, and Sun Titan is ultimately a very difficult one for them to answer cleanly, especially when given the presence of Mistveil Plains.
Given that you had no such angles available, the matchup should go from favourable for us to a noticeable though not overwhelming edge to them, but in order to make this the case given what you had I would have advised 1) that you bring in Remorseful Cleric as a way to disrupt graveyard recursion and pressure Planeswalkers [EDIT: WHILE FUELLING EMERIA SOME AMOUNT], and 2) that you bring in your Seal of Cleansing to set up your Detention Sphere for a permanent Exile effect on Planeswalkers, while protecting you from Prismatic Ending disaster scenarios and otherwise hedging a tiny amount against things like Rest in Peace. To make room for these, I would have removed at least two of your Path to Exile, (though I always like leaving in at least one Path for a chance at value on surprise Emeria activations ahead of schedule and possible coverage against Monastery Mentor or Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), and and I highly dislike handing over value on the board by keeping in Elite Spellbinder since it is so much less likely to resolve and attack given that I typically choose to draw every time in the matchup. In addition, the opposition is trying to reach the later game and has a flatter power distribution in its plays, so its trigger loses a lot of value by being a) less likely to disrupt their curve and b) eventually becoming no more than a taxing effect and therefore leaving them access to almost all of their lines of play once they inevitably draw sufficient land.
The last piece of advice I have for you here is indeed about your sequencing against Field of Ruin, where we have a huge edge in numbers. Lists running Cryptic Command, Counterspell, and Prismatic Ending are colour-intensive, to say nothing of the presence of either Archmage's Charm or Esper Charm. If the latter two are seen, their manabase is extremely unlikely to feature more than a single colourless-producing utility land, since it costs them so much of their curve to draw cards of that nature in the early game or when they Mulligan. Even if their card advantage comes from elsewhere, the heavily colour-restricted cards mean that 3 is a typical number for them in the maindeck, and we therefore have a conservative average of 2 more pieces of manabase disruption than they do. This means that at any point in the game attacking their coloured sources can quickly become an option worth keeping an eye out for, but the real trick is to actually hit their utility lands with our own copies whenever a clean opportunity presents itself. Though it is a symmetrical effect, I have sometimes delayed deploying Pithing Needle until I had an Emeria, the Sky Ruin in hand with seven Plains in play, at which point when they allowed the Needle to resolve I could either name Field of Ruin to play my Emeria and proceed immediately to the endgame instead of guessing at a Planeswalker as they expected, or justify the same play looking to freeze their activation in order to use Ghost Quarter on it to force them to find another precious copy within a turn cycle, which I would then meet with more of the same if I had either Crucible of Worlds or Sun Titan ready to turbo-charge running them out of basic land. This is virtually the only situation, however, where I would consciously go down a land against them.
I hope that this has been helpful, and wish you much luck in your next interaction with the strategy. There are subtleties in your other matchups that I could discuss as well, but they largely did not affect the results as far as I can tell, and you will be able to quickly find your optimal balance for them as they crop up in the future. Barring critique on your build (which I will gladly give if you feel unhappy with your list, or if you ask for a comparison with mine on matchups), I think that I would only ask why you included Leyline of Sanctity and Kataki, War's Wage. Were you expecting certain decks that these seemed important against? They are certainly good cards in the abstract, but sometimes suboptimal in this shell, and I might be able to advise more generic replacements if their narrow coverage was not specifically what you needed from them.
All in all, thank you for the report, and I hope your good fortune continues.
-Stéphane Gérard
(P.S.: The Yorion, Sky Nomad, Soullherder, and Ephemerate builds have had a possible new toy spoiled in Teleportation Circle. The new wording preference of "At the beginning of your End Step" is producing a larger than usual number of viable effects to tap out for, and this one joins the list as a Conjurer's Closet analogue that is cheaper, more versatile, and on-colour in a slightly more difficult to interact with permanent.)
(P.P.S.: I cannot recall who it was who asked whether Aura of Silence still had relevant advantages over Seal of Cleansing, perhaps Starstorm, but I forgot to answer them. My apologies. The reply is that Aura of Silence and Seal of Cleansing are literally different cards, which matters for two reasons. The first is that Pithing Needle, Sorcerous Spyglass, Phyrexian Revoker, Meddling Mage, and Surgical Extraction are all terrible cards against me, so I will flat-out refuse to give them any value to claw their pilot back into a match that they are desperately trying to stay afloat in. Their presence typically means that my opponent had even worse cards that they were looking to get rid of, and therefore the diversity is notable in preserving my win percentages post-board in excellent matchups. The second advantage is less strategic and more operational or tactical, where Aura of Silence is far better at breaking up combo pieces which are used as setup, despite its extra W mana cost. An excellent example is Underworld Breach, where taxing the initial investment in the card while simultaneously representing its destruction is a fantastic state of affairs. They therefore are less likely to threaten to combo in the first place, and can on a moment's notice be maximally punished for committing to the board. This is not a clear decision for me, since I value efficiency much more highly than almost anything, but the combination of factors makes me happier to mix and match my hate between these broadly overlapping Enchantments, generally also leaving me in a better situation against rogue strategies or new sideboard technology.)
Gerant, I appreciate the insight in playing the control matchup and I will surely reevaluate how I approach the matchup. One thing that I noted when playing crucible a year or two ago is it was a single card win con vs control decks, but prismatic ending being a catch all for many of my threats, even if I am able to resolve them is difficult to navigate. As for my sideboard, there is not as much thought put into it as I would like to admit, but if I had to give insight into my thought process, I would label the lone leyline of sanctity as a hedge against a deck that I perceived to be able to just win off of a grief/ephemerate combo. In reflection, I honestly think this deck topdecks better than many other decks, and the fact that I didn't even bring it in against jund who I knew was playing at least 7 discard spells speaks to how it may not even be remotely helpful. The katakis were there for afinity/asmor food decks, but they really do need to come out on turn 2 or else they have to the capability to remove it before their upkeep so maybe i'd just rather play a third seal of cleansing or otherwise crucible or something to sure up control matchups. It may be that I just had unfortunate luck or misplayed heavily, I look forward to testing the matchup more. I may also try and bridge a couple lists and see how that goes, as I was very happy with skyclaves in all but the control games. But I may want access to a mortarpod or potentially main deck d-sphere as a catch all or more teferis.
Hey fluff!
Sorry for not answering sooner but regarding the Izzet Blitz guide i think i'll try to do one that works for all the versions we are currently discussing instead of something completly focused on my build.
We usually have blockers on the ground that buy us a lot of time to develop our game. The biggest problem comes in the form of the fliers. When using 1 for 1 removal, try to prioritize flying creatures, only using it on ground creatures if it's absoultly needed and only after they pump it enough with a couple of spells to make them lose some value out of it.
When they go for attacks, if it's only one creature attacking, almost 100% of the times i won't block because if they actually pump it, they are losing value on those spells, as they could be pumping not 1 but 2 or 3 creatures.
Stoneforge Mystic is quite important to get Batterskull assuming we are running the Stoneforge package. Even when stabilized with an empty board, we are still going to probably be low on life, so that's the recovery we need to put the game to rest and our life total way out of their range.
Always remember that without creatures, they cannot threaten us. Be mindfull of Expressive Iteration. This card can single handidly change a game as for 2cmc they see 3 cards and get 2 of them. Even when they are on top deck mode, assume there is a line where they can kill you out of nowehere if you're low enough and be ready for it.
When sideboarding out, Don't be afraid on trimming Sun Titan (some or all of them) and an Emeria, the Sky Ruin to lower or curve a bit if you need the sideboard slots.
I think Stéphane already gave you a preety in deapth explanation on the UW Control matchup so i don't have much to add as you seemed to manage the other match ups quite well!
Hoping to see more good results in the future so good luck!
About the Aura of Silence vs Seal of Cleansing debate it was me indeed that asked about it. I see your reasoning behind it, being the same reason for the split in the wraths plus the upside of the innate tax that comes with Aura. It had never happened to me so i didn't actually thought of it as a problem, only looking at efficiency. With the prevalance of Urza's Saga, and the ability to grab Pithing Needle i think it's legitimate to see the split as a good idea, however, being 3cmc and Seal of Cleansing being only 2cmc, i think right now it's a very considerable difference because it can deal with Urza's Saga before it reches it's third, or even second chapter if you are on the play, which can completly change the course of the game, making them lose a land, the constructs and the fetchble artifact for only 2cmc.
Also went to FNM a couple of days ago and unfortuantly this time went 0-3. Despite the record the games were quite close and i don't think i made many mistakes, but sometimes it's just not enough. Going into the games.
Lost 0-1 to Amulet Titan in the first round.
As you can see for the record, this was a quite grindy game, and it owuld have been a 1-1 if i had 2 extra minutes on the clock. Urza's Saga is a quite powerfull Magic card, who would say Before we needed to worry about Primeval Titan and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. Now there are the Karnstructs that if left unchecked, they can quickly become at least 3/3 with one full cycle of an Urza's Saga, and bigger if they get more artifacts like the ones they use in mainboard, or Clues from Tirelesss Tracker form the side or just another Karnstruct coming in. Teferi, Time Raveler spiked in value for having the ability to bounce both the Construct aswell as the Saga, and bought me a lot of time.I dealt with 2 Titans and 2 Dryads, but unfortunatly, another Dryad and and Azusa, Lost but Seeking, in combination with a bounce land and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle just pinged me to death (didn't draw any Field of Ruin or Ghost Quarter so no interaction with land)
Second game went very much like the first one, but with Prismatic Ending to deal more effectively with Amulet of Vigor an eventually a Damping Sphere that actually put a strain on his mana, leaving him with only one Green Mana, that unfortunatly didn't last long as he drew Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth. The game carried on and i only drew Stoneforge Mystic almost at the end of the game, wich allowed me to put a Kaldra Compleat in and starting beating in, but time was already ending and my opponent just playing slowly didn't allow me to win game 2.
Oeverall i'm preety happy with the way i played, and i think the beiggest factor contributing to this defeat was not seeing Stoneforge Mystic for almost the entire 2 games. Kaldra Compleat can kill them quickly and can be used on defense against a Titan quite efficiently because of the First Strike and Exile effect. Still don't like this match up, but i think we have a good chance.
Lost 1-2 against Izzet Blitz in round 2.
Eventually i would have to lose against it just according to probability. Played the game exactly as intended, exactly how i described on other posts and with the same sideboard. The crucial difference: Didn't see Stoneforge Mystic nor Batterskull for the 3 games, and on game 3 had finally stabilized with a Supreme Verdict, was at 5 life, they were empty handed, and draw Lightning Bolt, crack a Fiery Islet and draw a Monastery Swiftspear that swings for lethal. I think this game they just had it and i didn't. Just part og the game.
Lost round 3 against Mardu Midrange (bascially Rakdos midrange, splashing white for Prismtaic Ending)
This was a very interesting game to see the power of the new cards in MH2. Dragon's Rage Channeler with it's surveil ability is actually a very big threat in such a spell heavy deck. The ability to dig for whatever they want, while also fueliing delirium is scary. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is also a bit scary, and the dash abilty thre me in for a loop as i forgot it existed and didn't expect the hasty attack. Fortunatly he exiled a Sun Titan and couldn't cast it, and i eventually ovwerpowered him to win game 1.
Oeverall the games were close and in my opinion it came down to drawing a bit poorly and specially not drawing Stoneforge Mystic in most games.
It still gave me more knowledge about the new meta and made me make some adjustments to the deck like bringing Mortarpod back into my build and bringing Prismatic Ending into the main. I think this card is a powerhouse. I brought it amost always from the side and i felt like having it was always good in whatever matchup i was playing. It just deals with preety much everyhting very clenly in most matchups and with the abundance of high impact 1 drops, this is a game changer. Dragon's Rage Channeler and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer are powerhouses that are here to stay and their card advantage/ card selection is just too good to be left unchecked. Mortapod was a good card before, but for me it had fallen a bit out of favor. Not anymore and it's better than ever. I still want Path to Exile and Solitude for the big cards like Primeval Titan, Stormwing Entity and Urza,Lord High Artificer si went with 3/3/3 split on the removal, as i also run 4 Skyclave Apparition and with mortarpod putting the 1 drops in check, i think it's not a bad split.
I think Stéphane's version of the deck that he posted a while ago is quite good against this meta with all the removal he has in his more controlling shell. I'm gonna make some changes to this version to better adapt to the new meta and i'll post some more results when i have them!
In the main did the changes i had mentiones, putting in 2 Mortarpod and 3 Prismatic Ending, taking 3Charming Prince and 2 Elite Spellbinder.
In this more agressive meta and with midrange decks using such cheap spells and having such powerfull 1 drops, i don't think it justifies using Elite Spellbinder, being the first to be cut as it was also my flex slot. Charming Prince is a card i quite like and it served me really well, but from all the cards in the deck, it was what made more sense to take out. I'm still keeping 3 Solitude as I think the card is quite powerfull and it deals with big creatures i had mentioned before, splitting it 3/3 with Path to Exile, and seeing if i like this split.
In the side i have made quite some changes as i felt i wasn't using some of my cards and sometimes i tended to sidebord in a lot of stuff in already winning matchups when i really didn't need it. Having Prismatic Ending in the main really freed up my slots and this is what i have come up with. Sideboards are always very meta dependant and local meta dependant so this is what i came up with for now, seeing what shined and what doesn't.
I'll let you know how the cards fare when i get to play them!
Izzet Blitz guide by Starstorm added. Table of contents->Match-ups and Side boarding->it's above the Burn guide.
thanks for the contribution Starstorm.
actually, it's fine if you tailor your sideboard guide to the list you are currently using, if that would make it more effective - after all, we are trying to be as competitive as possible. Take Amulet Titan as an example.. there are two guides there, one by Fincown, and one by Gerant -- each guide I assume uses cards from lists that they use.
Tournament Reports section also updated.
==
that's unfortunate on the last fnm. There's always next time. Info from the losses, can help for changes to make the deck better for the next fnm.
And I'm glad you shared bad results as well, since it shows our deck also can do poorly - if only good results are posted in the thread, new people who come here might think the deck is almost unbeatable, build the deck, and then get disappointed if the deck lose.
Thank you for the response, Starstorm, and luck is fickle for your losses. I agree with your analysis of Seal of Cleansing being better against Urza's Saga (and many other things, for that matter). There are two things which make this less relevant for my deck, however. 1) Strategically, I am not certain that the Enchantment-Land is a great enough part of the metagame to be worth losing the diversity over, as that might constitute warping the deck for one pairing, which rarely works well. It is also much less of a threat for me when I assume the Karnstructs are card-neutral for them in the face of abundant blockers and sweepers. I also have five manabase options to leverage against the card, though I would concede that these are somewhat stretched in the matchup. Regardless, their "Grindy" plan is fragile. Ours is more robust, and I like my chances if that is what they choose to focus on. 2) Operationally, the amount of one-shot defense my deck provides up to and beyond turn 4 signifies that in so many of my games the cards will come off the top of the deck instead of beginning in my opening 10 cards, say. This means that the value of 2 versus 3 is lesser if I assume I do not absolutely need these cards in order to survive, and will be well into turns 4/5/6 before I find myself wanting to cast them (I also consider both of these sideboard cards to be luxuries rather than necessities, and so they can attempt to tackle more subtle nuances with greater impact).
As I said before, though, mine is not a strong sentiment since the two cards are very, very close in power level. Running a 1-1 split or a 2-0 in favour of Seal of Cleansing is akin to a coin toss depending on pairings, so I wouldn't fault anything except perhaps the 0-2 split in favour of the Aura of Silence, which I would assume pushes the curve up far too much post-board. If I could run a set of 3, it would be of 2 Seal and 1 Aura.
On another note, I think that I disagree much more strongly with one specific piece of advice you gave in the Izzet Blitz matchup. You stated the following about your blocking heuristics:
When they go for attacks, if it's only one creature attacking, almost 100% of the times i won't block because if they actually pump it, they are losing value on those spells, as they could be pumping not 1 but 2 or 3 creatures.
I was surprised to read this because I would heavily recommend doing the exact opposite of your proposed play pattern, based off of precisely the same logic. Perhaps you value your creatures much more highly than mine for closing out the game, but in my eyes the purpose of my deck facilitates survival when I get every one of my spells to trade for as many pieces of cardboard as I can. I have no way to affect cards in hand or on the stack directly pre-board, so their Prowess mechanic actually offers an indirect way of encouraging them to trade cards in hand - and usually in multiple - for an attack that gets no damage in, leaving them down resources on some future more critical turn. Your statement is correct, in that they lose value pumping a single creature, but the corollary is that I would consider blocking as the best way to capitalize on that fact operationally in such a situation. Wall of Omens and Court Hussar are particularly well-suited to this task, as they have already accrued value by the time the decision [EDIT: SHOULD BECOME AVAILABLE] to throw their high-toughness bodies in front of the train, but Stoneforge Mystic also counts as a viable roadblock so that I can survive to hardcast the Batterskull later: it was probably going to die anyway. The 1-toughness "Creatures" of Mortarpod and Pilgrim's Eye are less valuable in this aim, generally being placed in harm's way at literally the first opportunity since they are so unlikely to survive, but can combine into a 1/2 to make the same kinds of plays. The scenario you described is a bad one for them, where we can also potentially make their sequencing awkward by taxing their mana and affecting their board development. I WANT them to make that attack. Whenever I can get them to spew their spells on only a single creature, I am happy with the exchange whether or not my creature survives.
Other than that notable discrepancy in our philosophies, I fully endorse the rest of your matchup guide.
Spencerrind, I am glad you appreciated the advice. Your observation about our resilience to discard via excellent topdecks is spot-on as well, and it usually takes people quite a long time to reach that conclusion. As an extreme example, when playing against 8-rack in the past, I felt very little (if any) danger, because our card velocity leaves us so much redundant hand size that I am almost never struggling to make land drops. I have, however, seen other pilots get into trouble by hanging on for value when the name of the game is, once more, our marquee Land. Emeria, the Sky Ruin does not require a hand to win the game, and Pilgrim's Eye or Crucible of Worlds are again the MVPs of such matchups. Discard everything else, up to and including Sun Titan, to keep putting Land into play. That is all. If they do not have Leyline of the Void, winning the game is that simple. If they do, we can beat it eventually in any number of ways, and they need to apply pressure to something other than our hand or we will eventually engineer a way out. Drawing the Leyline makes them less likely to have that pressure, and so we will rarely have to care about either Grief or any other Thoughtseize effects. My plan is thereby almost always simply to ignore these as irrelevant.
I wish you good luck with a blended list, though, this seems very promising given the wealth of options you have at your disposal currently. If you can manage it I, for one, would appreciate if you could test a list with some unusual combinations of cards by looking at things which have not been paired together in any single list found on this thread. We are all more or less set in our ways, and have biases and preferences which result in oversights or omissions which you could relevantly affect with fresh eyes on new combinations of established cards. That way, your list begins with solid cards that we can advise you on, you could immediately offer to share a new perspective on them, and you would be able to offer insights from a variety of different angles even if the experiment goes catastrophically poorly. The joy of playing a new list compensates fully for the sting of potential losses in these situations (to me, at least).
Hey all!! Happy belated Canada Day and hope everyone is enjoying the slightly lower temperatures of this week!
Ive continued to play with Emeria only a little, as i spent much of the weekend jamming martyr of sands in prelims and challenges on mtgo (to no avail). My most recent league with emeria was a 3/2 (losing to esper control and hammertime), but i have been learning more about the playstyles and ive really taken a liking to it. Pilgrim's eye is fast becoming one of my favourite magic cards.
The cards tbat stood out to me from the list i was playing were the eyes, court hussars and mortarpods. For some reason these were fantastic.
For my losses;
Esper: i found that kaya's guile is an incredibly strong card that hoses us efficiently if we're not careful. I also found that their copies of vindicate make our long game a little more awkward as they can just point it at our engines (and snap them back). I also found that i lost game 1 with 2 paths and 3 verdicts as my only cards in hand (to their 2 pws on board).
Earlier I think it had been talked about how mortarpod was excellent for keeping pws off ultimates, and it is, but sometimes a pw just drawing a card per turn forever is enough to bury us in card advantage. Is there any way that we might try to get these walkers off the table immediately? Also of note i had exchanged my remorseful clerics for sanctifier en vecs and i think that was a mistake on my part. Cleric just seems important here.
Hammertime: g1 i lost a long game due to multiple urza's sagas making constructs. I could only block for so long and use removal carefully, but eventually they searched out shadowspear to give trample to their creatures and i folded. I had to use verdict 2 turns in a row to stay alive as well, because they can make large constructs end of turn at instant speed. After it won the challenge on sunday i think we should go to 2 seal 1 aura sideboard.
Also, as far as playing against prowess and not blocking, i think the only time that i would do that is if they foolishly played nonhaste creatures precombat, as it telegraphs that they wont be pumping. Theyll most likely hold mutagenic growths for when all their creatures are in combat.
I may also not block if i have removal and i want to encourage my opponent to go all in, as prowess often either wastes spells triggering prowess, or wastes spells finding more threats. If they think their current threats are going the distance then they may not search for more threats at which point you can disrupt a little.
The Esper matchup is sometimes difficult, and Vindicate being a new adoption of theirs is an important piece of information to be aware of. I had assumed that their Flash play patterns were too important, but when Teferi, Time Raveler or Planeswalkers are involved they are 1) already playing a little at Sorcery-speed and 2) able to situationally use it as an Instant anyway. While we are on the subject I tested against a list the other day that ran zero Vindicate, but instead ran a full four Archmage's Charm as a response to the Kaldra Compleat subgame. I was caught off-guard by my opponent gaining control of the Germ and immediately threw away a game that was very much still in question otherwise. A word of caution to the wise: I am now keenly aware of permanent Ray of Command potential and generally try play around it with a Wall of Omens to re-equip to post-combat in the lategame, while my preferred options strongly favour both Mortarpod and Batterskull, which have inherent protection from the effect.
A few small things about the matchup before I get to suggestions for answers to Planeswalkers, then. You say you ended the game with multiple Supreme Verdict and Path to Exile in hand, and part of this is simply an occupational hazard of playing a board control deck. The first of these is a completely dead card unless you happen to be running Solitude, but the second is legitimately better used as a Ramp spell whenever possible if you have a) Germ tokens, b) Pilgrim's Eye, c) Stoneforge Mystic, d) Wall of Omens or e) Court Hussar on the table. The order here represents the sequencing starting with the LEAST valuable card to turn into a land, and ending with the MOST valuable effect to maintain access to recursion of. I love recurring Eye against control, but if I draw too many Paths, they have already gotten value, and there are more in the deck. Stoneforge Mystic runs out of targets or becomes much less relevant once the lategame is achieved, and is generally a high-priority target for their removal (one of the only ones we have), so assume they will give you an opportunity at some point to target it with your own removal in order to at least get a land out of the bargain. Recurring Walls and Hussars are the primary spell-advantage (as opposed to pure card advantage with lands included) vectors in the recursion lategame, and Teferi, Time Raveler almost always bounces either of these (or Eye) immediately for value whenever I have one of them around if he hits the table. The creatures do little enough else other than their ETB trigger at any rate in the matchup, so doubling up on these is preferred. And yes, finally, Remorseful Cleric is a prized Graveyard control effect here as well.
As I had stated on the last page, though, my new list is also having more trouble with Planeswalkers than before (due to the presence of Prismatic Ending to permanently remove my Detention Sphere more than anything else), so I am currently looking for better options as well, but there are a few choices that I can say I am looking at. The word on Prismatic Ending for us is that it does a very good job indeed at covering 3-mana Teferi, Liliana, Narset, Gideon, Davriel, Ashioks, etcetera with a Raugrin Triome, or specifically Wrenn and Six even without it, but cannot stretch up to four without serious retooling of the manabase. This is very unfortunate, because the quite strong Skyclave Apparition covers these cards as well, while hitting 4-mana Jaces, Ajanis, Elspeths, Nahiris, Karns, and more but does not reach up to most notably Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, meaning there is more space that must to be devoted to the Planeswalker issue even if you run both these spells.
The "good" news is that the printing of Prismatic Ending leaves the sideboard open by a few slots because Pithing Needle is no longer a reliable and recurrable safety valve. Its efficiency may still earn it a spot or two in the future, but I expect that it will leave the 75 entirely for at least a little while. The space provided by its departure can thus be turned directly to answer the issue at hand.
For a while in the past I ran an Archon of Justice as a combination with Mortarpod or Supreme Verdict, but this was at least seven years ago, and things have evolved far past its heyday in the intervening span of time, even handing over value when opponents bring in Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace. The same is true for the slightly more relevant Angel of Sanctions. There are also other odd Time Spiral cards that can be considered in Pentarch Paladin, but slightly more likely in Saltblast. To be exhaustive, I could also include Scourglass but none of these is truly high-appeal.
If we are willing to discuss 5-mana options, however, the interesting choice of Elspeth Conquers Death could be of great utility in the Tef3ri versions, and also synergizes quite well for attrition with the rest of the deck, while maintaining its primary function versus Graveyard removal and meshing extremely well with the coverage of a Triome-fuelled set of Prismatic Ending. Another 5-mana play (and one that notably does not get exiled by Force of Negation) has its own set of synergies in Cavalier of Dawn, but space is tight there at the moment. In more expensive ideas, my Mono-White build was extremely happy with [EDIT: Hour of Revelation] and Devastating Mastery as catchall Wraths that could become cheaper, and I had briefly considered the janky Exclusion Ritual or even the pipe-dream Karn Liberated, but these are almost certainly not what we need and would stand very little chance of seeing play even in the maindeck. Sadly, the only hyper-expensive option that I would be willing to consider in Ondu Inversion does not feature the Plains subtype on its back half.
Turning down from 5 mana on the curve, then, since I exclude all options already covered or improved on by Detention Sphere, Aether Gust, and/or Celestial Purge, we find a few specialty options cheap enough to sideboard in Angelic Ascension, the somewhat clunky Angelic Purge, the intriguingly efficient though narrow Glare of Heresy, the slightly retro and very slow Mangara of Corondor which can combine with Mortarpod on activation for a full monstrosity of a .5 per turn cycle combo with Emeria, the equal parts awkward and versatile Ravnica at War, and the highly noteworthy Reduce to Memory for potential Professor of Symbology value. This last option returns me to another effect from my Mono-White testing in Generous Gift, which was not as bad as it seemed when Wall of Omens was around to either block or upgrade with respect to the 3/3s.
Given my caveats, this list is exhaustive for spells castable using only White mana that read "destroy permanent", "exile permanent", "destroy planeswalker", or "exile planeswalker" on gatherer.wizards.com, and I may therefore be missing some Blue or Colourless options, but the former are not ideal given our manabase, and the latter will tend to be either prohibitively expensive or vulnerable again to Prismatic Ending, so barring a metagame shift where Glare of Heresy could supplement something like two Prismatic Ending and a Skyclave Apparition in the maindeck, I think that the 4 spells that give the opponent Creatures as a drawback (Ascension, Reduce, Gift, and Cavalier) join Elspeth Conquers Death or Saltblast as the best candidates for the job, considering their utility in other areas. Though they are expensive at 5 mana, I would put Cavalier of Dawn and ECD at the top of that list, as I would feel that they actually add some amount to the attrition plan and require nothing else in order to be a topdecked answer to an impending Ultimate ability. Of the cheaper options, Generous Gift being able to affect lands seems to matter the most, but Professor of Symbology continues to be more and more interesting to me as an option for an alternative build.
Please let me know if you find any upgrades to this list, or if you have differing opinions on their viability!
And the sideboard would be much more lesson-heavy to make the maindeck more resilient, meaning that the importance of winning game 1 would rise dramatically, however I think this might just be a reasonable plan in a metagame where Attrition is favoured. In addition to the Yorion, then, the sideboard would give Professor of Symbology the following 11 options in aside from looting on ETB to get rid of irrelevant cards in certain matchups:
If all were included, this would theoretically be 12 Cards, leaving 3 for legitimate sideboarding purposes, which I would call 1 Crucible of Worlds, the third Ghost Quarter, and a second settle the Wreckage.
No testing at all has gone into this, it is pure theorycraft for illustrative purposes.
-Stéphane Gérard
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I feel like both you and I have a very simmilar approach to the deck as after MH1 i was a running a very simillar list to yours also using 4 Ranger-Captain of Eos and the tutir targets like Thraben Inspector and kami of false hope.
Your new version is also simillar to mine, even running 2 Elite Spellbinder which is a card i've been trying out and i have been enjoying it.
Regarding your question about the equipments in particular, i think 3 is a good number to run (not counting here Mortarpod, as for this discussion in particular, i consider it more of a value 2 drop than an equipment at the power level of the others mentioned). Before MH2 i used to play with 1 Batterskull, 1 Sword of Fire and Ice and 1Sword of Feast and Famine so i think i can give you my thoughts on the card.
I mostly used Sword of Feast and Famine for it's black and green protection, rather than the triggers itself. They can be very useful yes, making our opponent discard a card and allwoing to double our mana in a turn, but during my games, i found that it was usually a bit underwhelming. Sometimes i had the mana but nothing to play, and other times my opponent had no cards to discard. That makes it a dud in certain situations. Sword of Fire and Ice trigger is always relevant. if it connects, it always delas 2 and it draws us a card. Thats also the reason i don't particualarly like the other swords: they are just too situational. Sword of Fire and Ice gives us relevant protection and has the best trigger for our deck. When i put Kaldra Compleat i knew i had to take one of the swords out, and given what i just said, the choice was obvious. Given your situtation, not having acces to Sword of Fire and Ice, i still think Sword of Feast and Famine is the second best choice. I absolutly love Shadowspear in the side for some matchups, but in terms of overall value, Sword of Feast and Famine still takes the cake for me as the protection is still very relevant and it has the good but not amazing triggers of discarding and kinda doubling your mana for the turn.
And yes, i'm a sucker for Teferi, Time raveler so for me, more is always better :b
Answering your question regarding the use of Skyclave Apparition and Ranger-Captain of Eos in the same deck: I think it's possible but you have to make a lot of sacrifices for it. The 3cmc lot is already very crowded with Skyclave Apparition, Court Hussar, Teferi, Time raveler, and in our case Elite Spellbinder too (although this last one i feel like it's a flex slot and could be more easily slotted out). To put ranger, you would have to probably pur 3-4 and the one drops to back it up, which would mean cutting some Wall of Omens and Charming Prince which in my opinion would make this version of the deck weaker. I absolutly adore Ranger-Captain of Eos and have been trying to slot it in, but the sacrifices were just to great to put him in unfortunatly.
In regards to the rest, your list is very simillar to mine so i can't really add much!
About the sideboard, i think everyone has different preferences catered to different metas, but the one i'm most curious about is the one of Leyline of Sanctity. In what matchups would you bring it and why the decision to include only one?
I'm very much looking forward to seeing your results to see how this version of the deck holds up against different decks form the ones i play at my LGS.
Regarding your question about Elite Spellbinder.
I think it's a flex slot and not nearly on the same powerlevel as the other 3 drops like Skyclave Apparition and Teferi, Time Raveler. Court Hussar i always run at least 2 because of the eternal recurrence sinergies with Sun Titan and Emeria, the Sky Ruin, so that is as low as i'm willing to go on that card.
Having built the rest of the deck i had 2 free slots and decided to try Elite Spellbinder. I have been quite impressed with the card, specially in the non aggro matchups. Being able to look at their hand and jsut make something cost 2 extra is actually quite good against some decks. I rememeber doing it last week against Jund, taking a Liliana of the Veil they were about to cast in the following turn, and they didn't cast her for 4 more turns due to lands constrictions. Being able to snag a combo piece also gives us another edge against one of our worst matchups wich has been historically combo decks where sometimes we just don't have an answer. Lastly, being a 3/1 flyer, it can actually end games quickly sometimes, specially when you equip it with a Sword or a Batterskull.
I'm quite liking the card, but while i would say Skyclave Apparition and Teferi, Time Raveler are 5/5 or close to it, being useful almost everytime, and i would rate this lower, as a 3/5 in general, a 2/5 (or sometimes even 1/5) in very agressive matchups and a 4/5 in those grindier matchups.
I think our deck already fares well against aggro, so i think we can spare the slots to put something more focused on other matchups, but i'm sure some will disagree with me on this topic and i would be happy to hear other opinions on the card as it hasn't been as widely discussed as other cards!
welcome to the thread. And goodluck in the tournament.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
I hope that you are all doing well this fine Canada Day, and wish you all a happy and healthy summer (especially in the heatwave which is also affecting us here in the prairie provinces with numbers currently hovering at around the 40-degree Celsius / 100 Farenheit mark). I will be out canoeing on the river soon, so here's hoping I don't incur heatstroke to pass out and drown! If I do perish, however, I will leave you with a few final thoughts.
Thank you for giving my strategy a try, Plichow! I feel as though you may have gotten unlucky not to do better on the day (the Chandra sequence in particular was painful to read, and post-board Celestial Purge is a card that joins Aether Gust in reducing these extremely unlikely losses to base-Red midrange decks - a strategy which I feel we have a death-grip on in general). Losing to Jeskai is more realistic, though I feel strongly advantaged there as well, but the Grixis Shadow loss is a real gut-check. Planeswalkers and Kaldra are indeed issues that must be managed with play patterns more than direct answers, so it does not surprise me to hear of that becoming an issue, and I would say that the sideboard was out of date by four cards (Mindcensors and Needles), and ill-optimized to the current metagame in another three (Lavinia, Prelate, and Alliance - my apologies for not having made that clear in these past few pages, since you broadly followed my list from the primer). I recommend you read my primer guide on Shadow, at the very least, to see how you sideboarded and what lines you took which differed from what I have found to be "best practice" there. This list is also one which rewards experience a lot, so if you continue to stick with it, you will eventually run across as series of "Ah-HA!" moments is a few areas which will affect your sequencing significantly. I wish you the best, and will hope to be around to offer more assistance in the future!
On the equipment package, I loathe things which cannot help stabilize the board once Emeria is on the table and all I need is either a land or another upkeep, but after re-stating that distaste I will weigh in on the options with the following list of priorities. 1) If the Stoneforge Mystic is being used to draw out removal or to go for the throat, Kaldra Compleat is the best option on offense, and Batterskull is nearly always the best option on defense - except against other Kaldras. 2) If you assume your Kor Artificer is going to die and you will then need to continue providing more blockers to survive (an ongoing theme in my deck), if Planeswalkers threaten game-breaking Loyalty abilities when you have no board presence (another commonly assumed state of affairs for me), or if you want to compound Emeria, the Sky Ruin advantages when you begin to close out the game, then Mortarpod is your man and covers against x-1 aggro/combo/utility/acceleration Creatures starting on turn 2 to boot. After that, things get considerably more murky.
The fact that Shadowspear provides immediate interaction on a 2-mana investment for potentially crippling plays from opponents, without necessitating a creature presence, combines with its overall cheapness to make it into a uniquely efficient tutor target in the deck, which also hedges with additional stats bonuses and lifegain where appropriate, but it in no way belongs in the maindeck unless the metagame shifts to make it more consistently relevant. Moving beyond this layer, unless you find yourself trying to solve a very specific issue, the respective advantages of the "Sword Of" cycle all boil down to their metagame-dependent Protection abilities more than anything else, with three notable exceptions for Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword Of Hearth and Home, and Sword Of Feast and Famine as real standouts. These three have triggers which contribute in direct ways to bridging the gap in the midrange sequences. Notably, however, the last two have analogues which are rarely discussed in the cheaper Sword of the Animist for fetching lands (though without the Flicker effect), and the MUCH cheaper Specter's Shroud (without the untap trigger). Blinking creatures or doubling mana can be extremely useful, but they generally pale in comparison to the startup mana efficiency required, particularly since the discard effect is extremely desireable against fast Combo decks when 2-drop heavy versions can follow their Mystic - or even Mortarpod - up immediately with resource denial given a natural curve into a third land. Once you move up to 5 mana Equip sequences SOF/I, though, hits the hardest and guarantees value best of all the other Sword effects, while SOH/H can situationally outpace it on value or board control early on, though never matching its pressure.
Lastly, I would like to weigh in on the Ranger-Captain of Eos combination with Skyclave Apparition, and will note that the 3-drop issue mentioned above is one of the key differences that Emeria, the Sky Ruin and Sun Titan combine to turn into a very important spot on the curve. In the past, whenever people suggested running Kitchen Finks, I would use that as a diagnostic of either lack of insight into the deck, or complete unfamiliarity with how it operates. Three is the "Magic Number" for the strategy, and slots in that space are incredibly competitive. If Mortarpod was somehow a 3-Mana Equipment, it wouldn't be in the top TWENTY effects I could justify in the colours, probably even if it offered 3 damage on sacrifice instead of one. (This also relates back a tiny amount to my issue with the "Sword Of" cycle above). In essence, then, though it is always theoretically possible to run both of the 1WW cards, their numbers are naturally reduced by the other important effects that will tend to displace them, and I find that the Blue 3-drops are the primary culprit. In the Mono- or Heavy-White versions, this slot opens up a little more, and I believe that it is far more realistic to run, say, 3 Ranger-Captain and 2 Skyclave Apparition together without significant issues. The question then becomes whether it is possible to do this without compromising too many matchups due to the lack of Blue support, to which my answer has thus far been "no". The saving graces for the Mono-White versions, however, do notably include excellent Emeria activation and nearly ironclad utility-land development otherwise.
Should any of you have differing ideas, however, as always you may feel free to ask me to take off my blinders, and I will give my honest opinion about the relative merits of certain choices in other shells. Just because I find my version to be the best for me, it in no way reduces my enthusiasm for optimization in other contexts.
Wishing you all the best,
-Stéphane Gérard
have only managed to read this now. Nice, that was an exciting game against Orzhov Stoneblade. Yeah, I imagine Tourach Dread Cantor would be a real pain since he's pro-white, good thing Court Hussar was there to save the day. Well, I guess Emeria managed to outlast the opponent.
congrats on the good result.
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Elite Spellbinder added to the primer. Table of contents -> card choices -> he's beside Skyclave Apparition.
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on another topic. You seem to have plenty of experience fighting Izzet Blitz decks.. if you want, and have the time. Can you write a short guide on how to play and sideboard against it? Will add your guide to the primer, and write your name as the contributor.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
Although it is possible that the aggressive versions will want Guardian of Faith more than I realize, 1) this will not be without consequence to the power level of the deck as a whole due to the 3-drop issue mentioned above and 2) this will only be true in the shells which are trying to win the game actively (which I maintain is not a strategy naturally synergistic with our namesake tapland in either philosophy or gameplay).
In addition, it provides little value when recurred on mainphase or upkeep for us, whereas Selfless Spirit provides a rough analogue for its utility at 2/3 of the cost, and on an evasive body which has free instant-speed activation built into its presence on the table. When tapping out so often, the value of hidden information is lesser for us as well, and the timing sensitivity when tied to a high up-front mana investment combines with the disastrous Living Weapon/Phasing interaction issues such that I, for one, am entirely uninterested in the card on first impression.
Should you wish to seek out its best home, I might recommend starting to test immediately against it because I believe that it will have a very high chance of becoming a staple in Collected Company decks, particularly (and rather obviously) in Bant Spirits.
In other spoilers, I believe that Ingenious Smith has approximately as much power as Professor of Symbology did, and therefore has a [EDIT: SMALL] chance of seeing play in specific builds who need card selection 2-drops (perhaps specifically the Yorion, Sky Nomad builds). Sadly, I see less potential in either Monk Class or Paladin Class given their respective balances, though I will look forward to seeing if their rules baggage will mean that they also interact favourably with Yorion.
Hoping this finds you all well,
-Stéphane Gérard
4x Wall of Omens
4x Charming Prince
4x Stoneforge Mystic
2x Court Hussar
2x Elite Spellbinder
4x Skyclave Apparition
1x Solitude
3x Sun Titan
Planeswalker (2)
2x Teferi, Time Raveler
Artifact (3)
1x Batterskull
1x Kaldra Compleat
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
3x Supreme Verdict
Instant (4)
4x Path to Exile
Land (24)
3x Emeria, The Sky Ruin
3x Field of Ruin
4x Flooded Strand
1x Ghost Quarter
4x Hallowed Fountain
1x Prairie Stream
1x Raugrin Triome
1x Snow-Covered Island
6x Snow-Covered Plains
1x Celestial Purge
2x Detention Sphere
2x Kataki, War's Wage
1x Leyline of Sanctity
2x Prismatic Ending
3x Remorseful Cleric
1x Sanctum Prelate
2x Seal of Cleansing
1x Sorcerous Spyglass
I went 3-1 in a 4 round modern FNM
Round 1: 2-0 VS UB Control
Not much to say here, I was playing against a newer player playing a very strange UB control list playing foretell cards, enchantments that cause creatures not to untap, and Lochmere Serpent and Ashiok, Nightmare Muse as win cons. I boarded out Verdicts and brought in detention sphere and sorcerous spyglass.
Round 2: 2-0 VS Lantern Control
G1 I got lucky because he thoughtsiezed me t1 and took skyclave but I drew a second one for my next draw step before he was able to play lantern and have knowledge of it. I killed with charming prince and elite spellbinder attacking a couple times, then playing apparation on ensnaring bridge and putting him on a one turn clock. Won around turn 7 I think.
Took out 4 Path, solitude, 3 verdict for 2 kataki, 2 seal of cleansing, 2 d sphere, 2 prismatic ending.
making 10 cards that can hit bridge seems good to me.
G2 Was similar but with less luck involved from my part. Apparation'd a bridge again and won again reasonably quickly.
Skyclave was the mvp in this matchup for sure.
Round 3: 0-2 vs UW Control
We both played very quickly as we knew time would be an issue.
G1: went about 20 minutes and was honestly pretty fun. I don't remember exactly how it went, but I got 1 sun titan exiled, and 2 in the graveyard, two emerias field of ruined with 1 in the deck, batterskull killed, and kaldra germs exiled multiple times. He didn't run away with any planeswalkers until like turn 20. but at some point I was hellbent and he had snap-caster, cryptic, bounce snapcaster.
verdicts out, spyglass and d spheres in.
G2: Went like game 1 but worse. To be noted, I kept threat light hands in both games so that might be a reason as to why the games went like they did, but their list seems like it would have answers to just about anything I did with prismatic ending, counterspells, teferi, path, etc. This matchup felt almost unwinnable but I'd be interested if others have felt differently. I'd imagine it's just down to them drawing all their fields of ruins. Maybe I need to sandbag my emerias until the coast is clear? unsure.
Round 4: 2-0 vs Jund
G1: I got thoughtsiezed, T1, then double inquisitioned T2, but I had a threat heavy hand and was left with a wall of omens. I topdecked teferi on turn 3 to bounce tarmagoyf and from that point they had to assassins trophy the teferi and lost to an on curve sun titan. that being said, they did evoke and cast kroxa, so that worried me a bit.
Boarded out 2 spellbider, 1 charming prince, 2 teferi, brought in 2 prismatic ending, 2 remorseful cleric, 1 celestial purge, wanted exile for kroxa, as well as answers to lili.
G2: Went well, can't quite remember what happened but he lost to sun titan again.
MVP Sun Titan, didn't seem like they could win if I cast or reanimated it once.
it's too bad with the uw control game, but beating Jund and Lantern Control showed that the deck is competitive.
perhaps threat heavy hands would have allowed to put up a better fight against the uw deck, since threat heavy hand was able to beat Jund?
____________
Primer update:
Spencerinnd_fnm added to Tournament Report section.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
In terms of facing Control, the thing to remember is that we enjoy inevitability in the abstract because an active Emeria, the Sky Ruin will beat most everything except for a Planeswalker literally threatening to ultimate before your next upkeep, but that is only assuming a well-stocked Graveyard. Since this precondition is the case, and since Supreme Verdict is otherwise such a liability to draw against Creature-light strategies, your lack of Mortarpod is something that flips the matchup heavily in their favour. By delaying the ultimate ability on Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for one turn on its own, it is a valuable tutor target in this matchup, and by pressuring loyalty with any random Wall of Omens sitting around waiting for something to do beside provide free blocks on the occasional Snapcaster Mage it becomes a threat worth some amount of their respect.
Next, the utility of both Pilgrim's Eye and Crucible of Worlds is far greater than might initially appear in more grindy pairings. When as a child I first caught the attention of my local tournament endbosses way back in the 90's, I received a piece of advice which has transposed directly into part of the philosophy I bring to this deck: "Never underestimate the power of mana development in Control mirrors". The 3-mana Artifacts I run are almost superior to Archmage's Charm and the like against Control for this reason, as I can guarantee access to land drops much better than their card draw can when tapping out mainphase - a strategic advantage that also extends to Wall of Omens and leads to operational and tactical difficulties for them because they are consistently uncertain whether tapout plays represent a sign of strength or of weakness from us. In addition, a maindeck Crucible also becomes nearly a must-counter threat, and turns their Field of Ruin into more of a delaying tactic than surefire disruption. The resilient trifecta of Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Crucible of Worlds, and Sun Titan is ultimately a very difficult one for them to answer cleanly, especially when given the presence of Mistveil Plains.
Given that you had no such angles available, the matchup should go from favourable for us to a noticeable though not overwhelming edge to them, but in order to make this the case given what you had I would have advised 1) that you bring in Remorseful Cleric as a way to disrupt graveyard recursion and pressure Planeswalkers [EDIT: WHILE FUELLING EMERIA SOME AMOUNT], and 2) that you bring in your Seal of Cleansing to set up your Detention Sphere for a permanent Exile effect on Planeswalkers, while protecting you from Prismatic Ending disaster scenarios and otherwise hedging a tiny amount against things like Rest in Peace. To make room for these, I would have removed at least two of your Path to Exile, (though I always like leaving in at least one Path for a chance at value on surprise Emeria activations ahead of schedule and possible coverage against Monastery Mentor or Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), and and I highly dislike handing over value on the board by keeping in Elite Spellbinder since it is so much less likely to resolve and attack given that I typically choose to draw every time in the matchup. In addition, the opposition is trying to reach the later game and has a flatter power distribution in its plays, so its trigger loses a lot of value by being a) less likely to disrupt their curve and b) eventually becoming no more than a taxing effect and therefore leaving them access to almost all of their lines of play once they inevitably draw sufficient land.
The last piece of advice I have for you here is indeed about your sequencing against Field of Ruin, where we have a huge edge in numbers. Lists running Cryptic Command, Counterspell, and Prismatic Ending are colour-intensive, to say nothing of the presence of either Archmage's Charm or Esper Charm. If the latter two are seen, their manabase is extremely unlikely to feature more than a single colourless-producing utility land, since it costs them so much of their curve to draw cards of that nature in the early game or when they Mulligan. Even if their card advantage comes from elsewhere, the heavily colour-restricted cards mean that 3 is a typical number for them in the maindeck, and we therefore have a conservative average of 2 more pieces of manabase disruption than they do. This means that at any point in the game attacking their coloured sources can quickly become an option worth keeping an eye out for, but the real trick is to actually hit their utility lands with our own copies whenever a clean opportunity presents itself. Though it is a symmetrical effect, I have sometimes delayed deploying Pithing Needle until I had an Emeria, the Sky Ruin in hand with seven Plains in play, at which point when they allowed the Needle to resolve I could either name Field of Ruin to play my Emeria and proceed immediately to the endgame instead of guessing at a Planeswalker as they expected, or justify the same play looking to freeze their activation in order to use Ghost Quarter on it to force them to find another precious copy within a turn cycle, which I would then meet with more of the same if I had either Crucible of Worlds or Sun Titan ready to turbo-charge running them out of basic land. This is virtually the only situation, however, where I would consciously go down a land against them.
I hope that this has been helpful, and wish you much luck in your next interaction with the strategy. There are subtleties in your other matchups that I could discuss as well, but they largely did not affect the results as far as I can tell, and you will be able to quickly find your optimal balance for them as they crop up in the future. Barring critique on your build (which I will gladly give if you feel unhappy with your list, or if you ask for a comparison with mine on matchups), I think that I would only ask why you included Leyline of Sanctity and Kataki, War's Wage. Were you expecting certain decks that these seemed important against? They are certainly good cards in the abstract, but sometimes suboptimal in this shell, and I might be able to advise more generic replacements if their narrow coverage was not specifically what you needed from them.
All in all, thank you for the report, and I hope your good fortune continues.
-Stéphane Gérard
(P.S.: The Yorion, Sky Nomad, Soullherder, and Ephemerate builds have had a possible new toy spoiled in Teleportation Circle. The new wording preference of "At the beginning of your End Step" is producing a larger than usual number of viable effects to tap out for, and this one joins the list as a Conjurer's Closet analogue that is cheaper, more versatile, and on-colour in a slightly more difficult to interact with permanent.)
(P.P.S.: I cannot recall who it was who asked whether Aura of Silence still had relevant advantages over Seal of Cleansing, perhaps Starstorm, but I forgot to answer them. My apologies. The reply is that Aura of Silence and Seal of Cleansing are literally different cards, which matters for two reasons. The first is that Pithing Needle, Sorcerous Spyglass, Phyrexian Revoker, Meddling Mage, and Surgical Extraction are all terrible cards against me, so I will flat-out refuse to give them any value to claw their pilot back into a match that they are desperately trying to stay afloat in. Their presence typically means that my opponent had even worse cards that they were looking to get rid of, and therefore the diversity is notable in preserving my win percentages post-board in excellent matchups. The second advantage is less strategic and more operational or tactical, where Aura of Silence is far better at breaking up combo pieces which are used as setup, despite its extra W mana cost. An excellent example is Underworld Breach, where taxing the initial investment in the card while simultaneously representing its destruction is a fantastic state of affairs. They therefore are less likely to threaten to combo in the first place, and can on a moment's notice be maximally punished for committing to the board. This is not a clear decision for me, since I value efficiency much more highly than almost anything, but the combination of factors makes me happier to mix and match my hate between these broadly overlapping Enchantments, generally also leaving me in a better situation against rogue strategies or new sideboard technology.)
Sorry for not answering sooner but regarding the Izzet Blitz guide i think i'll try to do one that works for all the versions we are currently discussing instead of something completly focused on my build.
Usually Izzet Blitz plays 16 creatures: 4 Monastery Swiftspear, 4 Soul-Scar Mage, 4 Stormwing Entity, and depending on the build, 4 Sprite Dragon or 4 Dragon's Rage Channeler.
We usually have blockers on the ground that buy us a lot of time to develop our game. The biggest problem comes in the form of the fliers. When using 1 for 1 removal, try to prioritize flying creatures, only using it on ground creatures if it's absoultly needed and only after they pump it enough with a couple of spells to make them lose some value out of it.
When they go for attacks, if it's only one creature attacking, almost 100% of the times i won't block because if they actually pump it, they are losing value on those spells, as they could be pumping not 1 but 2 or 3 creatures.
Stoneforge Mystic is quite important to get Batterskull assuming we are running the Stoneforge package. Even when stabilized with an empty board, we are still going to probably be low on life, so that's the recovery we need to put the game to rest and our life total way out of their range.
Always remember that without creatures, they cannot threaten us. Be mindfull of Expressive Iteration. This card can single handidly change a game as for 2cmc they see 3 cards and get 2 of them. Even when they are on top deck mode, assume there is a line where they can kill you out of nowehere if you're low enough and be ready for it.
Sideboaard considerations: Prismatic Ending (assuming you're not running it on mainboard already), Sanctifier en-Vec, Gideon of the Trials, Shadowspear, Celestial Purge, Kor Firewalker, Detention Sphere, Sanctum Prelate and whatever other removal, life gain or pretection from red you have.
When sideboarding out, Don't be afraid on trimming Sun Titan (some or all of them) and an Emeria, the Sky Ruin to lower or curve a bit if you need the sideboard slots.
I think Stéphane already gave you a preety in deapth explanation on the UW Control matchup so i don't have much to add as you seemed to manage the other match ups quite well!
Hoping to see more good results in the future so good luck!
About the Aura of Silence vs Seal of Cleansing debate it was me indeed that asked about it. I see your reasoning behind it, being the same reason for the split in the wraths plus the upside of the innate tax that comes with Aura. It had never happened to me so i didn't actually thought of it as a problem, only looking at efficiency. With the prevalance of Urza's Saga, and the ability to grab Pithing Needle i think it's legitimate to see the split as a good idea, however, being 3cmc and Seal of Cleansing being only 2cmc, i think right now it's a very considerable difference because it can deal with Urza's Saga before it reches it's third, or even second chapter if you are on the play, which can completly change the course of the game, making them lose a land, the constructs and the fetchble artifact for only 2cmc.
Lost 0-1 to Amulet Titan in the first round.
As you can see for the record, this was a quite grindy game, and it owuld have been a 1-1 if i had 2 extra minutes on the clock.
Urza's Saga is a quite powerfull Magic card, who would say Before we needed to worry about Primeval Titan and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. Now there are the Karnstructs that if left unchecked, they can quickly become at least 3/3 with one full cycle of an Urza's Saga, and bigger if they get more artifacts like the ones they use in mainboard, or Clues from Tirelesss Tracker form the side or just another Karnstruct coming in. Teferi, Time Raveler spiked in value for having the ability to bounce both the Construct aswell as the Saga, and bought me a lot of time.I dealt with 2 Titans and 2 Dryads, but unfortunatly, another Dryad and and Azusa, Lost but Seeking, in combination with a bounce land and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle just pinged me to death (didn't draw any Field of Ruin or Ghost Quarter so no interaction with land)
Sideboarded out: 2 Elite Spellbinder, 2 Charming Prince, 1 Court Hussar, 1 Sword of Fire and Ice, 1 Teferi, Time Raveler (this last one i think it should have stayed in in hindsight for the reasons i mentioned before)
Sideboarded in: 2 Prismatic Ending, 2 Seal of Cleansing, 2 Damping Spehere, 1 Ashiok, Dream Render.
Second game went very much like the first one, but with Prismatic Ending to deal more effectively with Amulet of Vigor an eventually a Damping Sphere that actually put a strain on his mana, leaving him with only one Green Mana, that unfortunatly didn't last long as he drew Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth. The game carried on and i only drew Stoneforge Mystic almost at the end of the game, wich allowed me to put a Kaldra Compleat in and starting beating in, but time was already ending and my opponent just playing slowly didn't allow me to win game 2.
Oeverall i'm preety happy with the way i played, and i think the beiggest factor contributing to this defeat was not seeing Stoneforge Mystic for almost the entire 2 games. Kaldra Compleat can kill them quickly and can be used on defense against a Titan quite efficiently because of the First Strike and Exile effect. Still don't like this match up, but i think we have a good chance.
Lost 1-2 against Izzet Blitz in round 2.
Eventually i would have to lose against it just according to probability. Played the game exactly as intended, exactly how i described on other posts and with the same sideboard. The crucial difference: Didn't see Stoneforge Mystic nor Batterskull for the 3 games, and on game 3 had finally stabilized with a Supreme Verdict, was at 5 life, they were empty handed, and draw Lightning Bolt, crack a Fiery Islet and draw a Monastery Swiftspear that swings for lethal. I think this game they just had it and i didn't. Just part og the game.
Lost round 3 against Mardu Midrange (bascially Rakdos midrange, splashing white for Prismtaic Ending)
This was a very interesting game to see the power of the new cards in MH2. Dragon's Rage Channeler with it's surveil ability is actually a very big threat in such a spell heavy deck. The ability to dig for whatever they want, while also fueliing delirium is scary. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is also a bit scary, and the dash abilty thre me in for a loop as i forgot it existed and didn't expect the hasty attack. Fortunatly he exiled a Sun Titan and couldn't cast it, and i eventually ovwerpowered him to win game 1.
Sideboarded out: 1 Teferi, Time Raveler, 2 Elite Spellbinder
Sideboarded in: 2 Prismatic Ending, 1 Sanctifier en-Vec
Game 2 i open with a Sanctifier en-Vec, which basically absolutly destroys his delirium strategy while providing a blocker against everyhting and against all removal. Or so i thought. With Dragon's Rage Channeler he surveils 4 times until he eventually finds a Prismatic Ending to deal with my creature. The game was quite close and eventually i had a creature with Sword of Fire and Ice facing a Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger. Eventually he put a Scourge of the Skyclaves and had a Lightning Bolt in hand that took care of my remaiing life total.
Game 3 was also a back and forth until he evntually plays his 1 of Tourach, Dread Cantor, kicked, making me discard a Sun titan and a Sword of Fire and Ice. That really hurt. I manage to put a Court Hussar to buy me some time to find a Supreme Verdict or a Living weapon or Stoneforge Mystic or anyhting that would deal with the pretection from white aspect, but he also had Shizo, Death's Storehouse which allowed him to pass through Court Hussar twice for the win. Once again, didn't see the Stoneforge Mystic wich seemed to be a problem during the entirity of the 3 matches.
Oeverall the games were close and in my opinion it came down to drawing a bit poorly and specially not drawing Stoneforge Mystic in most games.
It still gave me more knowledge about the new meta and made me make some adjustments to the deck like bringing Mortarpod back into my build and bringing Prismatic Ending into the main. I think this card is a powerhouse. I brought it amost always from the side and i felt like having it was always good in whatever matchup i was playing. It just deals with preety much everyhting very clenly in most matchups and with the abundance of high impact 1 drops, this is a game changer. Dragon's Rage Channeler and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer are powerhouses that are here to stay and their card advantage/ card selection is just too good to be left unchecked. Mortapod was a good card before, but for me it had fallen a bit out of favor. Not anymore and it's better than ever. I still want Path to Exile and Solitude for the big cards like Primeval Titan, Stormwing Entity and Urza,Lord High Artificer si went with 3/3/3 split on the removal, as i also run 4 Skyclave Apparition and with mortarpod putting the 1 drops in check, i think it's not a bad split.
I think Stéphane's version of the deck that he posted a while ago is quite good against this meta with all the removal he has in his more controlling shell. I'm gonna make some changes to this version to better adapt to the new meta and i'll post some more results when i have them!
A great day and great games to all of you!
2 Windswept Heath
3 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
6 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Raugrin Triome
3 Hallowed Fountain
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Prairie Stream
3 Field of Ruin
3 Flooded Strand
1 Snow-Covered Island
Creatures
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Wall of Omens
4 Skyclave Apparition
2 Court Hussar
3 Solitude
3 Sun Titan
2 Mortarpod
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Kaldra Compleat
1 Batterskull
Planeswalker
3 Teferi, Time Raveler
Sorcery
3 Prismatic Ending
2 Supreme Verdict
Instant
3 Path to Exile
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Sanctifier en-Vec
1 Remorseful Cleric
1 Ashiok, Dream Render
1 Damping Sphere
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
1 Kor Firewalker
1 Shadowspear
1 Gideon of the Trials
1 Celestial Purge
1 Sanctum Prelate
In the main did the changes i had mentiones, putting in 2 Mortarpod and 3 Prismatic Ending, taking 3Charming Prince and 2 Elite Spellbinder.
In this more agressive meta and with midrange decks using such cheap spells and having such powerfull 1 drops, i don't think it justifies using Elite Spellbinder, being the first to be cut as it was also my flex slot. Charming Prince is a card i quite like and it served me really well, but from all the cards in the deck, it was what made more sense to take out. I'm still keeping 3 Solitude as I think the card is quite powerfull and it deals with big creatures i had mentioned before, splitting it 3/3 with Path to Exile, and seeing if i like this split.
In the side i have made quite some changes as i felt i wasn't using some of my cards and sometimes i tended to sidebord in a lot of stuff in already winning matchups when i really didn't need it. Having Prismatic Ending in the main really freed up my slots and this is what i have come up with. Sideboards are always very meta dependant and local meta dependant so this is what i came up with for now, seeing what shined and what doesn't.
I'll let you know how the cards fare when i get to play them!
Izzet Blitz guide by Starstorm added. Table of contents->Match-ups and Side boarding->it's above the Burn guide.
thanks for the contribution Starstorm.
actually, it's fine if you tailor your sideboard guide to the list you are currently using, if that would make it more effective - after all, we are trying to be as competitive as possible. Take Amulet Titan as an example.. there are two guides there, one by Fincown, and one by Gerant -- each guide I assume uses cards from lists that they use.
Tournament Reports section also updated.
==
that's unfortunate on the last fnm. There's always next time. Info from the losses, can help for changes to make the deck better for the next fnm.
And I'm glad you shared bad results as well, since it shows our deck also can do poorly - if only good results are posted in the thread, new people who come here might think the deck is almost unbeatable, build the deck, and then get disappointed if the deck lose.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
Thank you for the response, Starstorm, and luck is fickle for your losses. I agree with your analysis of Seal of Cleansing being better against Urza's Saga (and many other things, for that matter). There are two things which make this less relevant for my deck, however. 1) Strategically, I am not certain that the Enchantment-Land is a great enough part of the metagame to be worth losing the diversity over, as that might constitute warping the deck for one pairing, which rarely works well. It is also much less of a threat for me when I assume the Karnstructs are card-neutral for them in the face of abundant blockers and sweepers. I also have five manabase options to leverage against the card, though I would concede that these are somewhat stretched in the matchup. Regardless, their "Grindy" plan is fragile. Ours is more robust, and I like my chances if that is what they choose to focus on. 2) Operationally, the amount of one-shot defense my deck provides up to and beyond turn 4 signifies that in so many of my games the cards will come off the top of the deck instead of beginning in my opening 10 cards, say. This means that the value of 2 versus 3 is lesser if I assume I do not absolutely need these cards in order to survive, and will be well into turns 4/5/6 before I find myself wanting to cast them (I also consider both of these sideboard cards to be luxuries rather than necessities, and so they can attempt to tackle more subtle nuances with greater impact).
As I said before, though, mine is not a strong sentiment since the two cards are very, very close in power level. Running a 1-1 split or a 2-0 in favour of Seal of Cleansing is akin to a coin toss depending on pairings, so I wouldn't fault anything except perhaps the 0-2 split in favour of the Aura of Silence, which I would assume pushes the curve up far too much post-board. If I could run a set of 3, it would be of 2 Seal and 1 Aura.
On another note, I think that I disagree much more strongly with one specific piece of advice you gave in the Izzet Blitz matchup. You stated the following about your blocking heuristics:
I was surprised to read this because I would heavily recommend doing the exact opposite of your proposed play pattern, based off of precisely the same logic. Perhaps you value your creatures much more highly than mine for closing out the game, but in my eyes the purpose of my deck facilitates survival when I get every one of my spells to trade for as many pieces of cardboard as I can. I have no way to affect cards in hand or on the stack directly pre-board, so their Prowess mechanic actually offers an indirect way of encouraging them to trade cards in hand - and usually in multiple - for an attack that gets no damage in, leaving them down resources on some future more critical turn. Your statement is correct, in that they lose value pumping a single creature, but the corollary is that I would consider blocking as the best way to capitalize on that fact operationally in such a situation. Wall of Omens and Court Hussar are particularly well-suited to this task, as they have already accrued value by the time the decision [EDIT: SHOULD BECOME AVAILABLE] to throw their high-toughness bodies in front of the train, but Stoneforge Mystic also counts as a viable roadblock so that I can survive to hardcast the Batterskull later: it was probably going to die anyway. The 1-toughness "Creatures" of Mortarpod and Pilgrim's Eye are less valuable in this aim, generally being placed in harm's way at literally the first opportunity since they are so unlikely to survive, but can combine into a 1/2 to make the same kinds of plays. The scenario you described is a bad one for them, where we can also potentially make their sequencing awkward by taxing their mana and affecting their board development. I WANT them to make that attack. Whenever I can get them to spew their spells on only a single creature, I am happy with the exchange whether or not my creature survives.
Other than that notable discrepancy in our philosophies, I fully endorse the rest of your matchup guide.
Spencerrind, I am glad you appreciated the advice. Your observation about our resilience to discard via excellent topdecks is spot-on as well, and it usually takes people quite a long time to reach that conclusion. As an extreme example, when playing against 8-rack in the past, I felt very little (if any) danger, because our card velocity leaves us so much redundant hand size that I am almost never struggling to make land drops. I have, however, seen other pilots get into trouble by hanging on for value when the name of the game is, once more, our marquee Land. Emeria, the Sky Ruin does not require a hand to win the game, and Pilgrim's Eye or Crucible of Worlds are again the MVPs of such matchups. Discard everything else, up to and including Sun Titan, to keep putting Land into play. That is all. If they do not have Leyline of the Void, winning the game is that simple. If they do, we can beat it eventually in any number of ways, and they need to apply pressure to something other than our hand or we will eventually engineer a way out. Drawing the Leyline makes them less likely to have that pressure, and so we will rarely have to care about either Grief or any other Thoughtseize effects. My plan is thereby almost always simply to ignore these as irrelevant.
I wish you good luck with a blended list, though, this seems very promising given the wealth of options you have at your disposal currently. If you can manage it I, for one, would appreciate if you could test a list with some unusual combinations of cards by looking at things which have not been paired together in any single list found on this thread. We are all more or less set in our ways, and have biases and preferences which result in oversights or omissions which you could relevantly affect with fresh eyes on new combinations of established cards. That way, your list begins with solid cards that we can advise you on, you could immediately offer to share a new perspective on them, and you would be able to offer insights from a variety of different angles even if the experiment goes catastrophically poorly. The joy of playing a new list compensates fully for the sting of potential losses in these situations (to me, at least).
Hoping this finds you both well,
-Stéphane Gérard
Ive continued to play with Emeria only a little, as i spent much of the weekend jamming martyr of sands in prelims and challenges on mtgo (to no avail). My most recent league with emeria was a 3/2 (losing to esper control and hammertime), but i have been learning more about the playstyles and ive really taken a liking to it. Pilgrim's eye is fast becoming one of my favourite magic cards.
The cards tbat stood out to me from the list i was playing were the eyes, court hussars and mortarpods. For some reason these were fantastic.
For my losses;
Esper: i found that kaya's guile is an incredibly strong card that hoses us efficiently if we're not careful. I also found that their copies of vindicate make our long game a little more awkward as they can just point it at our engines (and snap them back). I also found that i lost game 1 with 2 paths and 3 verdicts as my only cards in hand (to their 2 pws on board).
Earlier I think it had been talked about how mortarpod was excellent for keeping pws off ultimates, and it is, but sometimes a pw just drawing a card per turn forever is enough to bury us in card advantage. Is there any way that we might try to get these walkers off the table immediately? Also of note i had exchanged my remorseful clerics for sanctifier en vecs and i think that was a mistake on my part. Cleric just seems important here.
Hammertime: g1 i lost a long game due to multiple urza's sagas making constructs. I could only block for so long and use removal carefully, but eventually they searched out shadowspear to give trample to their creatures and i folded. I had to use verdict 2 turns in a row to stay alive as well, because they can make large constructs end of turn at instant speed. After it won the challenge on sunday i think we should go to 2 seal 1 aura sideboard.
Also, as far as playing against prowess and not blocking, i think the only time that i would do that is if they foolishly played nonhaste creatures precombat, as it telegraphs that they wont be pumping. Theyll most likely hold mutagenic growths for when all their creatures are in combat.
I may also not block if i have removal and i want to encourage my opponent to go all in, as prowess often either wastes spells triggering prowess, or wastes spells finding more threats. If they think their current threats are going the distance then they may not search for more threats at which point you can disrupt a little.
The Esper matchup is sometimes difficult, and Vindicate being a new adoption of theirs is an important piece of information to be aware of. I had assumed that their Flash play patterns were too important, but when Teferi, Time Raveler or Planeswalkers are involved they are 1) already playing a little at Sorcery-speed and 2) able to situationally use it as an Instant anyway. While we are on the subject I tested against a list the other day that ran zero Vindicate, but instead ran a full four Archmage's Charm as a response to the Kaldra Compleat subgame. I was caught off-guard by my opponent gaining control of the Germ and immediately threw away a game that was very much still in question otherwise. A word of caution to the wise: I am now keenly aware of permanent Ray of Command potential and generally try play around it with a Wall of Omens to re-equip to post-combat in the lategame, while my preferred options strongly favour both Mortarpod and Batterskull, which have inherent protection from the effect.
A few small things about the matchup before I get to suggestions for answers to Planeswalkers, then. You say you ended the game with multiple Supreme Verdict and Path to Exile in hand, and part of this is simply an occupational hazard of playing a board control deck. The first of these is a completely dead card unless you happen to be running Solitude, but the second is legitimately better used as a Ramp spell whenever possible if you have a) Germ tokens, b) Pilgrim's Eye, c) Stoneforge Mystic, d) Wall of Omens or e) Court Hussar on the table. The order here represents the sequencing starting with the LEAST valuable card to turn into a land, and ending with the MOST valuable effect to maintain access to recursion of. I love recurring Eye against control, but if I draw too many Paths, they have already gotten value, and there are more in the deck. Stoneforge Mystic runs out of targets or becomes much less relevant once the lategame is achieved, and is generally a high-priority target for their removal (one of the only ones we have), so assume they will give you an opportunity at some point to target it with your own removal in order to at least get a land out of the bargain. Recurring Walls and Hussars are the primary spell-advantage (as opposed to pure card advantage with lands included) vectors in the recursion lategame, and Teferi, Time Raveler almost always bounces either of these (or Eye) immediately for value whenever I have one of them around if he hits the table. The creatures do little enough else other than their ETB trigger at any rate in the matchup, so doubling up on these is preferred. And yes, finally, Remorseful Cleric is a prized Graveyard control effect here as well.
As I had stated on the last page, though, my new list is also having more trouble with Planeswalkers than before (due to the presence of Prismatic Ending to permanently remove my Detention Sphere more than anything else), so I am currently looking for better options as well, but there are a few choices that I can say I am looking at. The word on Prismatic Ending for us is that it does a very good job indeed at covering 3-mana Teferi, Liliana, Narset, Gideon, Davriel, Ashioks, etcetera with a Raugrin Triome, or specifically Wrenn and Six even without it, but cannot stretch up to four without serious retooling of the manabase. This is very unfortunate, because the quite strong Skyclave Apparition covers these cards as well, while hitting 4-mana Jaces, Ajanis, Elspeths, Nahiris, Karns, and more but does not reach up to most notably Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, meaning there is more space that must to be devoted to the Planeswalker issue even if you run both these spells.
The "good" news is that the printing of Prismatic Ending leaves the sideboard open by a few slots because Pithing Needle is no longer a reliable and recurrable safety valve. Its efficiency may still earn it a spot or two in the future, but I expect that it will leave the 75 entirely for at least a little while. The space provided by its departure can thus be turned directly to answer the issue at hand.
For a while in the past I ran an Archon of Justice as a combination with Mortarpod or Supreme Verdict, but this was at least seven years ago, and things have evolved far past its heyday in the intervening span of time, even handing over value when opponents bring in Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace. The same is true for the slightly more relevant Angel of Sanctions. There are also other odd Time Spiral cards that can be considered in Pentarch Paladin, but slightly more likely in Saltblast. To be exhaustive, I could also include Scourglass but none of these is truly high-appeal.
If we are willing to discuss 5-mana options, however, the interesting choice of Elspeth Conquers Death could be of great utility in the Tef3ri versions, and also synergizes quite well for attrition with the rest of the deck, while maintaining its primary function versus Graveyard removal and meshing extremely well with the coverage of a Triome-fuelled set of Prismatic Ending. Another 5-mana play (and one that notably does not get exiled by Force of Negation) has its own set of synergies in Cavalier of Dawn, but space is tight there at the moment. In more expensive ideas, my Mono-White build was extremely happy with [EDIT: Hour of Revelation] and Devastating Mastery as catchall Wraths that could become cheaper, and I had briefly considered the janky Exclusion Ritual or even the pipe-dream Karn Liberated, but these are almost certainly not what we need and would stand very little chance of seeing play even in the maindeck. Sadly, the only hyper-expensive option that I would be willing to consider in Ondu Inversion does not feature the Plains subtype on its back half.
Turning down from 5 mana on the curve, then, since I exclude all options already covered or improved on by Detention Sphere, Aether Gust, and/or Celestial Purge, we find a few specialty options cheap enough to sideboard in Angelic Ascension, the somewhat clunky Angelic Purge, the intriguingly efficient though narrow Glare of Heresy, the slightly retro and very slow Mangara of Corondor which can combine with Mortarpod on activation for a full monstrosity of a .5 per turn cycle combo with Emeria, the equal parts awkward and versatile Ravnica at War, and the highly noteworthy Reduce to Memory for potential Professor of Symbology value. This last option returns me to another effect from my Mono-White testing in Generous Gift, which was not as bad as it seemed when Wall of Omens was around to either block or upgrade with respect to the 3/3s.
Given my caveats, this list is exhaustive for spells castable using only White mana that read "destroy permanent", "exile permanent", "destroy planeswalker", or "exile planeswalker" on gatherer.wizards.com, and I may therefore be missing some Blue or Colourless options, but the former are not ideal given our manabase, and the latter will tend to be either prohibitively expensive or vulnerable again to Prismatic Ending, so barring a metagame shift where Glare of Heresy could supplement something like two Prismatic Ending and a Skyclave Apparition in the maindeck, I think that the 4 spells that give the opponent Creatures as a drawback (Ascension, Reduce, Gift, and Cavalier) join Elspeth Conquers Death or Saltblast as the best candidates for the job, considering their utility in other areas. Though they are expensive at 5 mana, I would put Cavalier of Dawn and ECD at the top of that list, as I would feel that they actually add some amount to the attrition plan and require nothing else in order to be a topdecked answer to an impending Ultimate ability. Of the cheaper options, Generous Gift being able to affect lands seems to matter the most, but Professor of Symbology continues to be more and more interesting to me as an option for an alternative build.
Please let me know if you find any upgrades to this list, or if you have differing opinions on their viability!
-Stéphane Gérard
I wanted to try one more time to put together a Yorion, Sky Nomad build, so here it is:
4 Field of Ruin
2 Ghost Quarter
10 Plains
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Raugrin Triome
4 Flooded Strand
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Island
4 Prismatic Ending
4 Path to Exile
4 Wall of Omens
4 Professor of Symbology
4 Pilgrim's Eye
4 Supreme Verdict
1 Settle the Wreckage
4 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 Sun Titan
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Elspeth Conquers Death
1 Skyclave Apparition
1 Remorseful Cleric
3 Mortarpod
1 Shadowspear
1 Batterskull
1 Kaldra Compleat
And the sideboard would be much more lesson-heavy to make the maindeck more resilient, meaning that the importance of winning game 1 would rise dramatically, however I think this might just be a reasonable plan in a metagame where Attrition is favoured. In addition to the Yorion, then, the sideboard would give Professor of Symbology the following 11 options in aside from looting on ETB to get rid of irrelevant cards in certain matchups:
If all were included, this would theoretically be 12 Cards, leaving 3 for legitimate sideboarding purposes, which I would call 1 Crucible of Worlds, the third Ghost Quarter, and a second settle the Wreckage.
No testing at all has gone into this, it is pure theorycraft for illustrative purposes.
-Stéphane Gérard