The card Rout is a sorcery with an option to play it at instant speed for 2 more. So that's an existing rate to account for the superiority of instant over sorcery.
@jayjayhooks That's exactly my point. Asserting disregard for the feature that makes a card superior and then comparing cards isn't useful.
His qualifier was asking disregard for instant vs sorcery which is a HUGE disparity.
Indeed it is a huge disparity. But there are decks that literally don't care about the disparity in his example, and there are not decks that don't care about the disparity in your ancestral example. I agree that this deck is not one of the decks that doesnt care about the disparity between instants and sorceries entirely, but it's very possible that more than 51% of the time the disparity doesn't matter considering most people's versions of this deck run little to no instants outside of Whir. If it is the case that one of the two cards is better 51% of the time, then it is quantifiably superior or objectively better.
@jayjayhooks exactly. The conversation is "do we care?". That's all. And unless you have a supercomputer that can determine which percentage of the time a card would be better vs another all we have for now *sigh* is private testing and discussion on forums.
seth mentions tezzeret but comes up with a more old school list utilising trinket mage and relying more on bridge and tezz ult to win, surely the lack of thopter sword is a mistake though? even just the 2/1 split can be useful in a deck playing big tezz and trinket mage?! also no whir of invention, i get that UUU is gonna be hard for this deck but having at least 1 copy seems useful. guess my point is that whir and thoptersword are still criminally undervalued/played but these other lists still exist and i think its useful to reevaluate their strengths and drawbacks from time-to-time.
I Agree. I run a more classic list as well and thopter+sword is still a necessity next to the tezz ult or darksteels.
@jayjayhooks exactly. The conversation is "do we care?". That's all. And unless you have a supercomputer that can determine which percentage of the time a card would be better vs another all we have for now *sigh* is private testing and discussion on forums.
Agreed. Fwiw, I can't see me playing any copies of opt before the full set of serum visions. After that, it comes down to whether I'm running Snapcaster. Without Snapcaster. Now, most of my Thopter-sword lists tends to be well positioned to play at least a pair of Snapcaster, but that isn't true of most lists that I see people here playing.
I brewed up another interesting Thopter-sword draw-go style list that is different than what most are on here, and I'm planning on giving it a whir tonight. If it goes well, I'll post it. If not, it will be banished from my memory lol
Paradoxical outcome and mentor feel extemely powerful in the post side games. I'm thinking of playing some number of Sea's Claims side as they play well with EOT parodoxical and we need more of that targeted island effect to have consistent game against tron.
Every deck in the format has to try to extend an area of the game to their advantage. If you go too far to the extreme you are punished by efficient hate cards. Since Tron/Valakut's area of risk is nonbasic lands and there is no efficient punishment for that sector I feel the format will be fundamentally skewed toward land strategies for the foreseeable future.
I played the Mentor SB in 6 games last night, in the standard Turbo shell, but with two Hallowed Fountains instead of Breeding Pools. I got to play 6 games, 3 warmups against Abzan, BW Pox and GB Tron, and 3 in the main against GW Valuetown, Bant Eldrazi and Grixis Control (plus my first bye ever). My initial plan was to remove the combo and its enablers (4 Whir, 3 Thop, 2 Sword and a Time Sieve, 10 cards) and throw in the Mentor package(4 Mentor, 3 Slight and 3 Paradoxical).
Before I start, Ill admit I ran pretty cold, maybe one of the worst nights of Magic I've ever had, I had maybe one game where I didn't feel screwed or flooded.
Honestly, the whole thing felt terrible. Most of the time, on standard Turbo, I want to run out my hand as quickly as possible, while digging/cycling through to find Bridge, Tezz, Whir, Muddle or a piece of the combo. Without the ability to go find a Mentor(beyond just top decking one), I felt like I was trying to turbo into a threat that a. either wasn't in my hand, or was an unlikely topdeck, and b. is incredibly soft to every removal spell in the format, that I have 0 ways to defend. And if I did chance upon a Mentor, it was usually the last card in my hand. When Mentor came down while Stony was up, I couldn't chain mana artifacts together and create a massive board presence in my deck with 20 lands and extremely limited draw potential.
I did get to Paradoxical 6 things back in one of the two games I won, which was some rad, vintage-style fun, but I ended up winning with a Tezz ult behind a Bridge and not with my clunky 2/2.
I'm not saying that going transformational isn't a viable strategy, it has me interested in trying an Esper build with Souls, Polymorph and Emrakul, and I'm somewhat tempted to try the Mentor plan again at FNM for the sake of due diligence, but it felt much worse than the "standard" sideboard I was running the week before.
@cerealkyra I ran into that issue with stony as well.
So I should have mentioned that you don't power stuff out until you have a mentor or paradoxical ready to go. Until then you're digging. As for taking out the original combo I wouldn't do that either. You can still win in sided games with thopter sword.
I think it's a cool SB package which can make your opponent feel tilted (I shuffle the whole SB in every game and take out 15 every game to force them to not stilt against artifacts). I also think we're probably just going to be dogs in land matchups until we get a good SB card to give us any real chance against land strategies.
So after some thinking about some of the bad matchups, I'm trying a sideboard plan of 4 Lost Legacy. So far, I've had some games against Scapeshift, and reliably hitting legacy has been really nice. Take Primetime first, scapeshift second, and they're going to have a hard time after that.
Haven't played with the playset against Tron yet, but naming Ugin/All is Dust gets rid of the real problem cards.
And of course the card just neuters combo (aside from eggs).
I've been playing this deck for a while now - I'm running a fairly standard whir tezzerator build with flex slots employing inquisition of kozileks, 2 collective brutality, and 2 mainboard abrupt decay (frees up sideboard slots, i found i was almost always boarding it in so it made more sense mainboard). Anyway, the last couple of modern events I've played in the only match I've consistently been unable to win is G/W vizier/devoted druid combo - I've got a better win rate against big Tron than that deck even!
I usually board in grafdigger's cage (anti-coco/chord), torpor orb (anti-eternal witness and reclamation sage), flaying tendrils, a 2nd pithing needle (anti-devoted druid, ezuri), and a golgari charm (side note, this card is awesome in the sideboard) and maelstrom pulse for enchantment removal. I usually leave ensnaring bridges in, but they're pretty bad against an ezuri or walking ballista kill.
Despite all that, I usually manage to take out one threat, whir to stop the combo once, then die (usually around turn 4 or 5). Does anyone have any tech or strategy on how to approach this match up?
Yeah, I maindeck a steam vents just so I can play 3 izzet staticaster out of the board. He's like a mini-bridge in that he shuts down stuff on a more permanent basis. Counters company has a real tough time with him.
Attending a PPTQ tomorrow. Worried about Vizier Company too. Lots of them around. Switched out my sb Chalices to now include 2x Flaying Tendrils on top of Damnation as sweepers. Torpor Orb and 2nd Needle also come in against them. There's still a sb flex slot i could use though. What other silver bullet do we have? 3rd Needle to shut all their outs, perhaps? Hits Eldrazi Tron in the crossfire. 4th Brutality? This would generally improve aggro, too. 3rd Tendrils or 2nd Damnation sounds overkill in the sweepy-sweep department.
Deck is very rough, but shows off what I want to be doing. I'm not really sure how good the Tron (both e-tron and traditional tron) match-up would be with this deck but I feel most midrange and aggressive creature decks would be easy. Death Shadow decks, specifically Grixis Death Shadow could be a problem match up too.
Zur's Weirding + Ensnaring Bridge is essentially Lantern Control in a 2 card combo, and with this deck we can actually get out from under the lock of Zur's Weirding pretty easily. Either Tezzeret can get us to the Thopter-Sword combo (since we aren't drawing cards, just putting them directly into our hand/battlefield) and if we have a Thopter Foundry we can just wait til Sword shows up on the top and if it get's milled via Weirding, we can just sac any other artifact to recur it and start the combo.
From there, we can easily deny our opponent any draws by paying 2 life every turn (since we'll be gaining more via Thopter Sword) and also we can attack through Ensnaring Bridge (most of the thopters will be 1/1s so after draw step we can swing then play our card) or if they don't let us draw, we'll drain them to death with Zur's Weirding.
====
Sideboard is very rough since I haven't been able to get good testing in, only on cockatrice and the decks I've been playing against have been pretty tier 5. I have something like 90% w/r but when I'm playing against decks like mono white borderpost manifest combo(?) it doesn't feel that impressive. Want some help on sideboard options, and maybe a suggestion of another color to add to make the deck stronger against Tron and Burn (though theoretically against Burn, with thopter-sword I should be good? not sure).
I'm also considering alternate win-cons in the sideboard, like an aggressive creature package. Maybe Geist? I only really have the core of the deck figured out so far.
PPTQ Day:
Welp. Deck ran hot as fire but also ran into multiples of Reclamation Sage, Creeping Corrosion, Kommands, By Force, Engineered Explosives, Surgical Extraction-Snap-Surgical, Stony Silence and whatnot (and on top of each other). Scrubbed out 0-3 losing to Elves, Grixis Shadow and Esper Shadow, all close games but decided upon clutch topdecks in their favour. I guess Zur's Weirding might not be such a bad idea. Also guessing that with not much GY decks around, everyone and their mother are overloading on artifact hate. Hurts.
Radouf, sorry to hear about the 0-3, but sometimes the topdeck gods are cruel. I wonder if the main-deck jars are rarely used game one. In fact, I've found relic of progenitus and cage to be very niche in the current (online) meta, especially main-deck, but your meta might vary. I'd try swapping those 4 spots for 4 Inquistion of Kozilek, which are good in every matchup pre-and-post board, crippling hands that keep a single piece of hate. Opponent's hand information is just so crucial. That would leave you with an artifact count of 23 which is still fine for Tezz.
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His qualifier was asking disregard for instant vs sorcery which is a HUGE disparity.
The card Rout is a sorcery with an option to play it at instant speed for 2 more. So that's an existing rate to account for the superiority of instant over sorcery.
With that frame of reference in mind:
2u sleight of hand as instant
U opt
Which is better?
Indeed it is a huge disparity. But there are decks that literally don't care about the disparity in his example, and there are not decks that don't care about the disparity in your ancestral example. I agree that this deck is not one of the decks that doesnt care about the disparity between instants and sorceries entirely, but it's very possible that more than 51% of the time the disparity doesn't matter considering most people's versions of this deck run little to no instants outside of Whir. If it is the case that one of the two cards is better 51% of the time, then it is quantifiably superior or objectively better.
I Agree. I run a more classic list as well and thopter+sword is still a necessity next to the tezz ult or darksteels.
Agreed. Fwiw, I can't see me playing any copies of opt before the full set of serum visions. After that, it comes down to whether I'm running Snapcaster. Without Snapcaster. Now, most of my Thopter-sword lists tends to be well positioned to play at least a pair of Snapcaster, but that isn't true of most lists that I see people here playing.
I brewed up another interesting Thopter-sword draw-go style list that is different than what most are on here, and I'm planning on giving it a whir tonight. If it goes well, I'll post it. If not, it will be banished from my memory lol
Lost to storm, Mono G tron, and GW tron.
Beat valakut, BW pox and elves.
Paradoxical outcome and mentor feel extemely powerful in the post side games. I'm thinking of playing some number of Sea's Claims side as they play well with EOT parodoxical and we need more of that targeted island effect to have consistent game against tron.
Before I start, Ill admit I ran pretty cold, maybe one of the worst nights of Magic I've ever had, I had maybe one game where I didn't feel screwed or flooded.
Honestly, the whole thing felt terrible. Most of the time, on standard Turbo, I want to run out my hand as quickly as possible, while digging/cycling through to find Bridge, Tezz, Whir, Muddle or a piece of the combo. Without the ability to go find a Mentor(beyond just top decking one), I felt like I was trying to turbo into a threat that a. either wasn't in my hand, or was an unlikely topdeck, and b. is incredibly soft to every removal spell in the format, that I have 0 ways to defend. And if I did chance upon a Mentor, it was usually the last card in my hand. When Mentor came down while Stony was up, I couldn't chain mana artifacts together and create a massive board presence in my deck with 20 lands and extremely limited draw potential.
I did get to Paradoxical 6 things back in one of the two games I won, which was some rad, vintage-style fun, but I ended up winning with a Tezz ult behind a Bridge and not with my clunky 2/2.
I'm not saying that going transformational isn't a viable strategy, it has me interested in trying an Esper build with Souls, Polymorph and Emrakul, and I'm somewhat tempted to try the Mentor plan again at FNM for the sake of due diligence, but it felt much worse than the "standard" sideboard I was running the week before.
So I should have mentioned that you don't power stuff out until you have a mentor or paradoxical ready to go. Until then you're digging. As for taking out the original combo I wouldn't do that either. You can still win in sided games with thopter sword.
I think it's a cool SB package which can make your opponent feel tilted (I shuffle the whole SB in every game and take out 15 every game to force them to not stilt against artifacts). I also think we're probably just going to be dogs in land matchups until we get a good SB card to give us any real chance against land strategies.
Haven't played with the playset against Tron yet, but naming Ugin/All is Dust gets rid of the real problem cards.
And of course the card just neuters combo (aside from eggs).
I've been playing this deck for a while now - I'm running a fairly standard whir tezzerator build with flex slots employing inquisition of kozileks, 2 collective brutality, and 2 mainboard abrupt decay (frees up sideboard slots, i found i was almost always boarding it in so it made more sense mainboard). Anyway, the last couple of modern events I've played in the only match I've consistently been unable to win is G/W vizier/devoted druid combo - I've got a better win rate against big Tron than that deck even!
I usually board in grafdigger's cage (anti-coco/chord), torpor orb (anti-eternal witness and reclamation sage), flaying tendrils, a 2nd pithing needle (anti-devoted druid, ezuri), and a golgari charm (side note, this card is awesome in the sideboard) and maelstrom pulse for enchantment removal. I usually leave ensnaring bridges in, but they're pretty bad against an ezuri or walking ballista kill.
Despite all that, I usually manage to take out one threat, whir to stop the combo once, then die (usually around turn 4 or 5). Does anyone have any tech or strategy on how to approach this match up?
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
2 Academy Ruins
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Glimmervoid
2 Inventors' Fair
2 Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
ARTIFACTS: 10
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Sword of the Meek
3 Mox Opal
4 Talisman of Dominance
4 Thopter Foundry
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Serum Visions
4 Fatal Push
PLANESWALKERS: 5
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
ENCHANTMENTS: 3
3 Zur's Weirding
2 Disdainful Stroke
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Pithing Needle
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Thoughtseize
4 Ghost Quarter
Deck is very rough, but shows off what I want to be doing. I'm not really sure how good the Tron (both e-tron and traditional tron) match-up would be with this deck but I feel most midrange and aggressive creature decks would be easy. Death Shadow decks, specifically Grixis Death Shadow could be a problem match up too.
Zur's Weirding + Ensnaring Bridge is essentially Lantern Control in a 2 card combo, and with this deck we can actually get out from under the lock of Zur's Weirding pretty easily. Either Tezzeret can get us to the Thopter-Sword combo (since we aren't drawing cards, just putting them directly into our hand/battlefield) and if we have a Thopter Foundry we can just wait til Sword shows up on the top and if it get's milled via Weirding, we can just sac any other artifact to recur it and start the combo.
From there, we can easily deny our opponent any draws by paying 2 life every turn (since we'll be gaining more via Thopter Sword) and also we can attack through Ensnaring Bridge (most of the thopters will be 1/1s so after draw step we can swing then play our card) or if they don't let us draw, we'll drain them to death with Zur's Weirding.
====
Sideboard is very rough since I haven't been able to get good testing in, only on cockatrice and the decks I've been playing against have been pretty tier 5. I have something like 90% w/r but when I'm playing against decks like mono white borderpost manifest combo(?) it doesn't feel that impressive. Want some help on sideboard options, and maybe a suggestion of another color to add to make the deck stronger against Tron and Burn (though theoretically against Burn, with thopter-sword I should be good? not sure).
I'm also considering alternate win-cons in the sideboard, like an aggressive creature package. Maybe Geist? I only really have the core of the deck figured out so far.
Welp. Deck ran hot as fire but also ran into multiples of Reclamation Sage, Creeping Corrosion, Kommands, By Force, Engineered Explosives, Surgical Extraction-Snap-Surgical, Stony Silence and whatnot (and on top of each other). Scrubbed out 0-3 losing to Elves, Grixis Shadow and Esper Shadow, all close games but decided upon clutch topdecks in their favour. I guess Zur's Weirding might not be such a bad idea. Also guessing that with not much GY decks around, everyone and their mother are overloading on artifact hate. Hurts.
/Edit: here is the list I ran.
3x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4x Whir of Invention
4x Mishra's Bauble
4x Serum Visions
4x Thopter Foundry
3x Sword of the Meek
1x Time Sieve
Bullets
1x Pithing Needle
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Grafdiger's Cage
3x Ensnaring Bridge
2x Welding jar
2x Collective Brutality
Mana (20 lands)
3x Mox Opal
4x Pentad Prism
2x Island
1x Swamp
4x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
2x Watery Grave
1x Breeding Pool
3x Darkslick Shores
2x Spire of Industry
1x Glimmervoid
1x Academy Ruins
2x Pithing Needle
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Torpor Orb
1x Witchbane Orb
1x Abrupt Decay
2x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Damnation
2x Flaying Tendrils
2x Thoughtseize
1x Collective Brutality
1x Liliana of the Veil
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.