I mean, I wouldn't say muddle is a fixture. It's just one of several options in that flex spot, that can really be anything from muddle to ideas to more brutality, or a planeswalker like Tezz. I think I may decide on a 1/1 split of muddle and ideas for the time being. Ideas is much better against aggro, and muddle is better against stuff like Jund and control.
When core set 19 drops, I will be changing out the Witchbane orb for a Amulet of Safekeeping for the 2cmc synergy. I've always felt pretty good against aggro, so I'm going with 2 muddles.
1. When I talked about not being able to whir early, it’s not usually due to colour issues, but more quantity. Ill need to test more to be more specific but I’ll consider changing the manabase.
I was really satisfied with inventors fair, it always felt useful and relevant, as we need that life gain and late game “whir” is very good when we are top decking looking for a combo/threat. Is it really worth taking out?
Similarly, is dark steel citadel really that bad? It has gotten me into a few pickles regarding manafixing, and I find I rarely use Tezz -1 to animate it. It’s also turned off by stony silence. In that case I will probably remove it.
What about academy ruins? I was seriously considering getting at least tolaria West + ruins for late game artifact recursion, since we have no other way of getting dead bridges or other value artifacts back. Is it worth putting in over a citadel/coloured source?
2. Regarding time sieve, it rarely does much but when it does, it’s incredibly helpful. I’m never in a case where I need to cast it early. You mentioned needing to get it out on curve/with colours but most times I cast it is usually when I have either no other option or as a whir target to end the game.
3. Regarding thoptersword, I currently only have 1 sword of the meek as a lot of obscure cards are rare in Australia, and cards like pentad prism are hard to find thanks to its popularity in decks like ad nauseam. I definitely would prefer st the very least 3/2 thopter/sword split. Is 4/3 or 4/4 even worth it?
4. I find the super fast matchups just are able to get too much spot removal at such a low cost. I rarely have a situation where I have 2 bridges available to me and often people don’t target thopter foundry since I can do stuff in response, and when I’m thopterswording it’s usually later on behind a bridge and priority number 1 for them is nuking bridge to swing for a billion that’s just sitting on the board.
I find many red decks main board artifact hate (at least in my meta) so Jund and Mardu pyromancer often have 4x kolaghans command which on turn 3/4 just ruins my day.
Imagine this line: turn 1 land + 0 drop artifact + some 1 cmc spell. Turn 2 pentad for 2. Turn 3 bridge with some mana to spare from pentad, and little other threats on my field. Their turn they hit the bridge and swing for lethal. I just don’t have enough threats to not die from bridge being spot removed. Even if I spend the 2 mana from pentad on a thopter foundry I have no mana left to make thopters and I just die, or take near-lethal dmg often finished by kcommand or bolt. It seems unwinnable, we just can’t win without bridge surviving for multiple turns.
Other than that, I will take your advice. I don’t have a breeding pool atm but I do have 2 flooded strands - I’m pretty tight on money and my main goal is to get the last 1-2 swords, then work on getting 2-3 bridges and 2 moxes, but it’s so hard to justify spending a whole decks worth on like 4 cards.
I also definitely think 4 pushes is too many but with collective brutality being so expensive (on par with bridge which I need more desperately) it’s just not accessible.
@Deleno - Your nightmare scenario of getting run over by Jund or Pyromancer on turn 4 is unrealistic. Those decks don't have clocks that fast. But in all honesty, I believe Ensnaring Bridge isn't great in those matchups anyway, like I said in my above post. Playing bridge on an early turn is just sort of bad in those matchups. Also, I would suggest not playing pentad prism, but to play more answers like Inquisitons or Thoughtseizes. When I play an early bridge against Jund and Grixis Pyromancer, it's because I want them to use their artifact removal on it so that I can follow up with a Foundry and start winning the game. Targeted discard is good. Having the full 4 copies of Thopter Foundry is good. They won't kill you that quickly, so your goal should be to assemble the combo and make as many thopter tokens as possible to pull ahead. Against those decks, lots of thopters will win the matchup, not Tezz + Bridge. Which leads me to Tezz, which is a great walker, but isn't really that great against a lot of the modern field because the threats are so fast and attack so wide (multiple attackers). Playing 4 copies of the planeswalker is sub-optimal, in my opinion.
@Soracak - +1 on having a revoker in the SB. Against Tron, it's whirring for a damping sphere ASAP, and hoping to go infinite with sieve before they start resolving karns and stuff off 7 lands. I'm playing 2 Field of Ruin, but they're only slightly helpful in delaying Tron. Sphere guarantees you some time.
Instead of running a bunch more bridge foundry sword you should play two welding jar on the list. That will help vs abrades and kcommamds. Also helps dump hand for bridge improvise whir and metalcraft opal. One mainboard for sure as you can then whir for it if needed too.
Someone mentioned locket not sure about that as it shrinks all tokens.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Sorry I could find your list posted, but I find battle at the bridge to be very useful to remove threats and give the extra by of life to stay alive till the combo gets going when playing against faster aggressive decks.
Oh man... I was testing for a week for the Stoneforge Mystic unban, and having so much fun. The deck felt near unbeatable. Ah well. Here's to a future unban. Here's what I had come up with though.
If you want to play Tezzerets without Thopter/Sword then your best bet is U/R Tezzeret Prison. Do a search on that and you will find it.
Tezzeret control is currently Tier 3ish (at best Tier 2.5), but it is not dead. At FNMs you can 4/5-0 and there are occassional MTGO 5-0 as well. No major tournaments have been won though, so this decks time is still to come. When the meta becomes a little more friendly it should do better. We do keep getting more tools, we just need 1-2 more cards to really push it over the edge and give it more consistency.
I'm sure others would have their own thoughts as well.
@holiclol there is a grixis PW list featuring both tezzerets. It’s a full bore hand disruption/bridge/PW deck so you have to be prepared to take an absolute beating before you turn the games around - but it can definitely win and definitely stump your local meta a while.
24 LANDS
1 Academy Ruins
1 Blood Crypt
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Inventors' Fair
1 Island
3 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Spire of Industry
4 Swamp
4 Temple of Deceit
1 Watery Grave
1 CREATURES
1 Walking Ballista
12 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Collective Brutality
3 Damnation
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
23 OTHER SPELLS
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Liliana of the Veil
2 Pithing Needle
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Search for Azcanta
2 Talisman of Dominance
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
1 Witchbane Orb
SIDEBOARD
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Damnation
1 Damping Matrix
1 Damping Sphere
1 Etched Champion
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Relic of Progenitus
3 Slaughter Games
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Welding Jar
So I was thinking today about what cards could be good in my favorite deck. I want your guys opinions on grand architect. Since the thopters being made off of foundry are blue it goes off in the same way that krark clan ironworks would, but at one less mana. The problems I see with it are that it is not an artifact, so tez and whir do not grab it, so it is much harder to play as a one of. Also I don't know if 3 mana is relative because on turn three I can't think of a way to throw this down and already have foundry sword online. That all being said, I am curious of other thoughts.
@DegenerateEE Grand Architect in a nonbo with the deck. Since the thopters are blue, they enter as 2/2s and won't trigger Sword to come back, turning off the combo
1x Breeding Pool
2x Collective Brutality
4x Darkslick Shores
2x Ensnaring Bridge
2x Field of Ruin
1x Flooded Strand
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Island
4x Mishra's Bauble
1x Misty Rainforest
2x Mox Opal
2x Muddle the Mixture
2x Pentad Prism
2x Pithing Needle
4x Polluted Delta
1x Search for Azcanta
3x Serum Visions
1x Swamp
3x Sword of the Meek
3x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4x Thopter Foundry
1x Time Sieve
2x Watery Grave
4x Whir of Invention
1x Witchbane Orb
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Battle at the Bridge
1x Damnation
2x Extirpate
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Padeem, Consul of Innovation
1x Phyrexian Revoker
2x Spellskite
1x Surgical Extraction
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
When core set 19 drops, I will be changing out the Witchbane orb for a Amulet of Safekeeping for the 2cmc synergy. I've always felt pretty good against aggro, so I'm going with 2 muddles.
Just to respond to a few things:
1. When I talked about not being able to whir early, it’s not usually due to colour issues, but more quantity. Ill need to test more to be more specific but I’ll consider changing the manabase.
I was really satisfied with inventors fair, it always felt useful and relevant, as we need that life gain and late game “whir” is very good when we are top decking looking for a combo/threat. Is it really worth taking out?
Similarly, is dark steel citadel really that bad? It has gotten me into a few pickles regarding manafixing, and I find I rarely use Tezz -1 to animate it. It’s also turned off by stony silence. In that case I will probably remove it.
What about academy ruins? I was seriously considering getting at least tolaria West + ruins for late game artifact recursion, since we have no other way of getting dead bridges or other value artifacts back. Is it worth putting in over a citadel/coloured source?
2. Regarding time sieve, it rarely does much but when it does, it’s incredibly helpful. I’m never in a case where I need to cast it early. You mentioned needing to get it out on curve/with colours but most times I cast it is usually when I have either no other option or as a whir target to end the game.
3. Regarding thoptersword, I currently only have 1 sword of the meek as a lot of obscure cards are rare in Australia, and cards like pentad prism are hard to find thanks to its popularity in decks like ad nauseam. I definitely would prefer st the very least 3/2 thopter/sword split. Is 4/3 or 4/4 even worth it?
4. I find the super fast matchups just are able to get too much spot removal at such a low cost. I rarely have a situation where I have 2 bridges available to me and often people don’t target thopter foundry since I can do stuff in response, and when I’m thopterswording it’s usually later on behind a bridge and priority number 1 for them is nuking bridge to swing for a billion that’s just sitting on the board.
I find many red decks main board artifact hate (at least in my meta) so Jund and Mardu pyromancer often have 4x kolaghans command which on turn 3/4 just ruins my day.
Imagine this line: turn 1 land + 0 drop artifact + some 1 cmc spell. Turn 2 pentad for 2. Turn 3 bridge with some mana to spare from pentad, and little other threats on my field. Their turn they hit the bridge and swing for lethal. I just don’t have enough threats to not die from bridge being spot removed. Even if I spend the 2 mana from pentad on a thopter foundry I have no mana left to make thopters and I just die, or take near-lethal dmg often finished by kcommand or bolt. It seems unwinnable, we just can’t win without bridge surviving for multiple turns.
Other than that, I will take your advice. I don’t have a breeding pool atm but I do have 2 flooded strands - I’m pretty tight on money and my main goal is to get the last 1-2 swords, then work on getting 2-3 bridges and 2 moxes, but it’s so hard to justify spending a whole decks worth on like 4 cards.
I also definitely think 4 pushes is too many but with collective brutality being so expensive (on par with bridge which I need more desperately) it’s just not accessible.
Of the recent decks shown here, only a few has a field of ruin or two and none seem to be great against kci outside the needles.
@Soracak - +1 on having a revoker in the SB. Against Tron, it's whirring for a damping sphere ASAP, and hoping to go infinite with sieve before they start resolving karns and stuff off 7 lands. I'm playing 2 Field of Ruin, but they're only slightly helpful in delaying Tron. Sphere guarantees you some time.
Someone mentioned locket not sure about that as it shrinks all tokens.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
U/B Faeries
U/B Tezzerator
// 21 Artifact
1 Batterskull
3 Thopter Foundry
2 Sword of the Meek
2 Mox Opal
4 Pentad Prism
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Pithing Needle
4 Mishra's Bauble
2 Welding Jar
1 Relic of Progenitus
// 4 Creature
4 Stoneforge Mystic
// 10 Instant
4 Whir of Invention
4 Path to Exile
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Spell Pierce
3 Celestial Colonnade
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
2 Field of Ruin
2 Island
1 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
3 Hallowed Fountain
2 Darksteel Citadel
// 3 Planeswalker
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
// 11 Artifact
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Welding Jar
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Damping Sphere
1 Batterskull
1 Pithing Needle
2 Disenchant
1 Spell Snare
or is actual tezz control dead and never coming back
Tezzeret control is currently Tier 3ish (at best Tier 2.5), but it is not dead. At FNMs you can 4/5-0 and there are occassional MTGO 5-0 as well. No major tournaments have been won though, so this decks time is still to come. When the meta becomes a little more friendly it should do better. We do keep getting more tools, we just need 1-2 more cards to really push it over the edge and give it more consistency.
I'm sure others would have their own thoughts as well.
My Decks:
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
24 LANDS
1 Academy Ruins
1 Blood Crypt
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Inventors' Fair
1 Island
3 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Spire of Industry
4 Swamp
4 Temple of Deceit
1 Watery Grave
1 CREATURES
1 Walking Ballista
12 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Collective Brutality
3 Damnation
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
23 OTHER SPELLS
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Liliana of the Veil
2 Pithing Needle
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Search for Azcanta
2 Talisman of Dominance
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
1 Witchbane Orb
SIDEBOARD
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Damnation
1 Damping Matrix
1 Damping Sphere
1 Etched Champion
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Relic of Progenitus
3 Slaughter Games
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Welding Jar
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron