I'm not a fan of Serum Visions because we're not exactly digging for anything in particular. I'd rather leave the mana open for a Spell Snare or Spell Pierce, I run 2 Snares and 1 Pierce in my build. I also like leaving mana open for Remand. If Brainstorm was legal I'd probably squeeze it in but I don't like Sorcery speed cards in the deck, the only time I want to tap out is to drop a Geist otherwise I flash everything.
I personally run 3 serum visions 2 think twice. Think is nice cos if you leave remand mana up and they simply pass, you can still cycle. Also helps vs liliana.
Since the ban announcements, I have been testing a build set up around utilizing Ancestral Vision to the highest degree possible. As such it differs quite a lot from the other lists I've seen in this thread. That said, it still seems the most appropriate place to post this.
Card choices: Seeker of the Way: The deck can be a bit slow early, which makes the lifelink very helpful. Very nice synergy with Ardent Plea. Soulfire Grand Master may be a possible replacement for it, no prowess, but permanent lifelink and a very good lategame ability may make it a viable alternative. Meddling Mage: A versatile hatecard which can be cascaded into. It is OK, but not amazing, and I would like something better in this spot. I already tried Snapcaster Mage and Abbot of Keral Keep in this spot, but I cut them since they didn't work with Ancestral Vision and fairly hard to utilize proberly if cascaded into in the early game. Monastery Mentor: Gets out of hand if it lives a turn or two and provides a very solid clock. While we lack the protection offered in eternal formats like Force of Will and Mental Misstep this is still quite nice. I originally had Geist of Saint Traft here, but everyone was playing Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo which made it pretty hard to connect with him. I suspect the use of either Mentor or Geist is mostly a question of which meta you are expecting. Restoration Angel: Protects you other creatures from spot removal and abuses the ETB trigger of Goblin Dark-Dwellers. Goblin Dark-Dwellers: A beefy evasive creature that provides value by casting stuff in your graveyard. Notably able to cast Ancestral Vision.
Ardent Plea: Playing this due its ability to cast Ancestral Vision. The exalted trigger is a nice bonus but particularly exciting. Provides two prowess triggers if cascade hits a non-creature spell. A neat interaction against decks using Ensnaring Bridge is attacking with Spellskite, dealing damage with the exalted triggers.
Ancestral Vision: The entire reason to play this deck. Three cards for U has always been amazing.
In the sideboard I'm using Relic of Progenitus over Rest in Peace as graveyard hate, since a big part of the decks gameplan hinges on being able to cast stuff out of the graveyard with Dark-Dwellers. The rest of the sideboard should be pretty obvious.
The build is still very much a work in progress and I would love to get some feedback
Kolaghan's Command sure is looking sweet right now with affinity and thopter foundry looking to be top dogs. It'd pull me towards grixis if Stony Silence, Lightning Helix, and Geist were black instead of white.
(Begin's retesting 4th color splash now that land destruction should no longer be as prevalent.)
I don't think ardent plea is where you want to be. I know cascade seems good with visions, but it works in legacy where you have one, better cascade cards (I'd rather have a 2/2 than just an extra exalted trigger), but the biggest reason is that you have brainstorm/jace the mindsculptor to put visions from your hand back on top.
Yea, worse case scenario you're casting a bolt off ardent plea, but 3 mana for a sorcery speed bolt you can't plan around seems bad.
I am not sure how invasive surgery wins counter wars or why you would want to cut negate for them.
Invasive surgery stops living end, scapeshift, ancestral visions, damnation, maelstrom pulse...
Negate stops that and instants like collected company or counters, enchantments like worship, artifacts like ensuring bridge or thopters assembly, and planeswalkers like liliana or elspeth.
Invasive surgery is great against scapeshift, but I feel it's terrible against visions. Late game I'd rather they draw the dead card than have it removed from their deck.
I'm still feeling that unless scapeshift takes over, Negate is the better counterspell.
Second post: I absolutely agree that midrange can win before av "takes over." As you said it is only net 2 cards. And it is net 2 that costs time and tempo and is a terrible late game draw.
I'm not sold on av for us and I fully agree with your assessment of it.
Trimmed down to 3 Geist instead of 4 because drawing excessive amounts of Geist off of Visions doesn't sound like a great plan. 3 Geist is still rather consistent and lets us play more of a mid-control game and we can drop a Geist as a win-con. Similarly, no Thundermaw. Instead we have Dank Dwellrs which dodges all the same removal as Thundermaw and still gets value during ETB. If Abzan is on the rise, we can definitely have it in the SB or mainboard when metagaming appropriately.
Currently, I can definitely see cutting 1 Ancestral Vision, 1 Spell Snare, 1 Electrolyze, or 1 Lightning Helix, but I believe the rest of the deck is pretty set in stone. Also, what are peoples' thoughts on Declaration in Stone for a deck like ours? If they spend time to crack their clue that's almost good for us because it means we're winning the tempo game. It should definitely be in a more aggressively oriented version of the deck though.
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Declaration is a reasonable sideboard card. I'd only mainboard it in metas where bolts don't cut it.
That being said, I think lightning helix is your cut, unless you need to lifegain over the card draw (electrolyze).
I feel that if you are running ancestral visions then you are no longer on the tempo game plan, you are on the grindy or control game plan. Pay u and a card, wait 4 turns is negative tempo. That said it's excellent if you can afford to wait the 4 turns, hope you have av in your opening hand, and hope to never top deck it late. Av suspended turn 1 to draw into more av on turn 5 could happen and in that case it is a much worse serum visions (which is a card that is not terrible even late).
My post-Eldrazi sideboard now rocks a Linvala for New Pod and a couple of Hallowed Moonlights as a 1 for 1 with Remand against decks rocking CoCo/Chord.
I don't run Cryptics at all in my build. I feel they're more of a Control card with a place in some Combo decks. My 3 - 4 - 5 slots at the moment look like 4 Geist, 2 Clique, 2 Electrolyze, 3 Resto Angel, 2 Ojutai. I'm still digging Ojutai and Snapcaster + Something is usually 3-5 mana as well.
Second post: I absolutely agree that midrange can win before av "takes over." As you said it is only net 2 cards. And it is net 2 that costs time and tempo and is a terrible late game draw.
I'm not sold on av for us and I fully agree with your assessment of it.
To be clear, I am not advocating for AV, at least not yet, but I also haven't ruled it out.
Also, I do not think we can consistently beat Control decks before AVs begin resolving. Of course it is possible, but when I think back on many of the games in which I beat control, many of them happened mid to late game. You could eventually set things up so that you could resolve a Geist and ride it to victory, or make them deal with other things and win with a flurry of burn spell.
What I am trying to say, is that I don't think those mid to long game victories are going to be as likely with them having access to Ancestral Visions, and I think that is where many of our victories were likely to come from.
Yeah I agree with that, we have the potential to deploy too many threats for Control, Geist in particular is awful for Control to face. AV doesn't really fit us and a meta that shifts more to Control isn't really bad for us either.
What do you guys think of Thing in the Ice as a sideboard card? I am currently trying out 3 of them to swap out with Geist in the aggro match-ups. It seems like Geist and Thing are complementary sideboard partners. Geist is great in the control/midrange matchup where Thing is great in the aggro matchup.
My list is rather threat-light, running only 10 creatures mainboard, so it might not be a great option for people running a higher amount. I'm using a few sideboard slots that would have been taken up by sweepers for the Thing.
I think one thing we don't want to be doing is overreacting to Vision. Like OMG he suspended a Vision, let's go all in and play all of our burn spells and creatures to try and win as fast as possible. Or let's try to keep all our ressources to win a counter war over Vision or to deal with threats afterwards.
Our gameplan should stay the same. Play at instant speed, stuff like Snap-Bolt, Clique and Resto, if they tap out punish them with Geist, Keranos and such, otherwise, beat them down. When a suspended Vision is about to resolve, if we have a couple counterspells, we should try and fight over it to either prevent them from casting it or forcing them to tap out on their own turn and play a threat in our following turn.
I still think our deck is not something a control player wants to face, regardless of Vision, 'cause we can quickly threaten their life total, Geist has hexproof, we play mostly at instant speed, we can run cheap counterspells, we are grindy.
And Clique is always great vs control, we can run up to 3 if needed.
I agree with this completely. I've had opponents resolve Sphinx's Revelation for 3 cards before in different matches, and the game plan was still more or less exactly the same for us. We have solid enough interaction that we can fight through the card advantage. It gets a little harder with AV, but I don't see it being insurmountable. I have a little more to say about this, but I'm tired and behind on work. And Aller more or less said everything I was gonna say.
What do you guys think of Thing in the Ice as a sideboard card? I am currently trying out 3 of them to swap out with Geist in the aggro match-ups. It seems like Geist and Thing are complementary sideboard partners. Geist is great in the control/midrange matchup where Thing is great in the aggro matchup.
My list is rather threat-light, running only 10 creatures mainboard, so it might not be a great option for people running a higher amount. I'm using a few sideboard slots that would have been taken up by sweepers for the Thing.
Interesting thought. I'm eager to try out my new toys (just got 1 prerelease foil TiTi ).
Reprints the one card that people point to when saying that art objectifies women.
Well done Wizards.
Liliana does not objectify women in any way at all. We have gotten to a point in our society that every single picture of a women must be objectifying a women in some negative way......blah blah blah.. That is not the case. (((Sarcasm)))Picture of a girl drinking a milk shake, must be sex related and putting women down, picture of girl sitting on a beach, picture of a girl driving a car, picture of a girl on the moon at a new space station.)))
You have a picture of an attractive strong power women who girls dress up as for anime conventions. What more do you want? The picture is fine, happy to see a reprint. Sick of of seeing people claim that everything in existence must be putting women down. Then all I have to do is replace the word "women" with anything else to get the same mentality; fish, cats, arabs, blacks, jews, men, environment, whites, chinese, old people, etc. It doesn't matter what word I put in. Stop sucking life out of everything man. That artwork of her is awesome. Stop putting stuff down man. Just stop. If the picture was really as negative as you claim she would totally nude, in a kitchen, making sandwiches and giving blow jobs. Her abilities would be horrible as well. +1 do nothing -2 do nothing -6 do nothing. Instead liliana of the veil is an amazing planeswalker comparable to jace, the mind sculpter with great art to appreciate.
My suggestion listen to some comedy radio for a while, pandora is free, youtube is free there is something out there for you. ***** go make fun of somebody. The whole world is so serious and campaigning for some cause, or someones rights, everything is a hate crime, racist, sexist. blah blah blah.
"O no mcdonalds must be slandering a hate crime against skinny people every time they make a big mac." hahaha jeeze You're just someone perpetuating another groups negative perspective that they've made you believe is correct. Look at the picture for a hour and tell me what's wrong with it? I don't see anything.
I have heard vague rumors of a moustache-dispensing vending machine in a distant laundromat, across the street from a tattoo parlor. However, this information is shaky, and time is of the essence.
Because TiTi can win games after it sweeps the board. It fixes the one problem our deck has when playing the control side - closing out games. I tested with this card all weekend, and it makes the aggro matchup closer to 70% when played with 3-4 in the deck. It is a bad card when there is plenty of spot removal, but that's why it is a great compliment to Geist.
I'm not saying to not run Timely Reinforcements and Anger of the Gods, they are both great cards. But, try running 1x Anger, 1x Timely, and 3x Titi in your sideboard and you will not be dissapointed.
I like your list a lot, I'm going to test something like that but cutting a path and the sphinx's revelation for the fourth remand and mana leak (I never liked sphinx outside commander). I'll try the thing in the ice MB since my meta is mostly aggro and the geist of saint traft on the SB.
I like your list a lot, I'm going to test something like that but cutting a path and the sphinx's revelation for the fourth remand and mana leak (I never liked sphinx outside commander). I'll try the thing in the ice MB since my meta is mostly aggro and the geist of saint traft on the SB.
I felt like Ajani's been in an awkward spot; he and Elspeth, Knight-Errant haven't been putting in enough weight for me, so I ended up cutting them. They were just *okay*. Then again, I distinctly remember them during U/R Delver Treasure Cruise meta...so it might have colored my thoughts on them. I don't think Chandra, Pyromaster is where we want to be. But Jace, Architect of Thought did come across my mind -- if we go into a more control meta.
I used Gideon Jura and liked him a fair bit. I swapped him out for Elspeth, Sun's Champion. She seems slightly better than Gideon, for what I've been trying to use her for. But it's definitely a flex spot. I do like the curve toppers though. Might try Dragonlord Ojutai instead if I ever get around to acquiring him. Seems like I really would need Minamo, School at Water's Edge, Eiganjo Castle, and Slayers' Stronghold to really take full advantage of him.
Reprints the one card that people point to when saying that art objectifies women.
Well done Wizards.
Liliana does not objectify women in any way at all. We have gotten to a point in our society that every single picture of a women must be objectifying a women in some negative way......blah blah blah.. That is not the case. (((Sarcasm)))Picture of a girl drinking a milk shake, must be sex related and putting women down, picture of girl sitting on a beach, picture of a girl driving a car, picture of a girl on the moon at a new space station.)))
You have a picture of an attractive strong power women who girls dress up as for anime conventions. What more do you want? The picture is fine, happy to see a reprint. Sick of of seeing people claim that everything in existence must be putting women down. Then all I have to do is replace the word "women" with anything else to get the same mentality; fish, cats, arabs, blacks, jews, men, environment, whites, chinese, old people, etc. It doesn't matter what word I put in. Stop sucking life out of everything man. That artwork of her is awesome. Stop putting stuff down man. Just stop. If the picture was really as negative as you claim she would totally nude, in a kitchen, making sandwiches and giving blow jobs. Her abilities would be horrible as well. +1 do nothing -2 do nothing -6 do nothing. Instead liliana of the veil is an amazing planeswalker comparable to jace, the mind sculpter with great art to appreciate.
My suggestion listen to some comedy radio for a while, pandora is free, youtube is free there is something out there for you. ***** go make fun of somebody. The whole world is so serious and campaigning for some cause, or someones rights, everything is a hate crime, racist, sexist. blah blah blah.
"O no mcdonalds must be slandering a hate crime against skinny people every time they make a big mac." hahaha jeeze You're just someone perpetuating another groups negative perspective that they've made you believe is correct. Look at the picture for a hour and tell me what's wrong with it? I don't see anything.
I have heard vague rumors of a moustache-dispensing vending machine in a distant laundromat, across the street from a tattoo parlor. However, this information is shaky, and time is of the essence.
4x Seeker of the Way
4x Meddling Mage
3x Monastery Mentor
4x Restoration Angel
3x Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Enchantments (4):
4x Ardent Plea
Instants (12):
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
4x Lightning Helix
4x Ancestral Vision
Lands (22):
4x Arid Mesa
4x Flooded Strand
4x Scalding Tarn
1x Hallowed Fountain
2x Sacred Foundry
2x Steam Vents
2x Plains
2x Island
1x Mountain
2x Relic of Progenitus
3x Kor Firewalker
2x Spellskite
3x Blood Moon
3x Stony Silence
2x Pyroclasm
Seeker of the Way: The deck can be a bit slow early, which makes the lifelink very helpful. Very nice synergy with Ardent Plea. Soulfire Grand Master may be a possible replacement for it, no prowess, but permanent lifelink and a very good lategame ability may make it a viable alternative.
Meddling Mage: A versatile hatecard which can be cascaded into. It is OK, but not amazing, and I would like something better in this spot. I already tried Snapcaster Mage and Abbot of Keral Keep in this spot, but I cut them since they didn't work with Ancestral Vision and fairly hard to utilize proberly if cascaded into in the early game.
Monastery Mentor: Gets out of hand if it lives a turn or two and provides a very solid clock. While we lack the protection offered in eternal formats like Force of Will and Mental Misstep this is still quite nice. I originally had Geist of Saint Traft here, but everyone was playing Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo which made it pretty hard to connect with him. I suspect the use of either Mentor or Geist is mostly a question of which meta you are expecting.
Restoration Angel: Protects you other creatures from spot removal and abuses the ETB trigger of Goblin Dark-Dwellers.
Goblin Dark-Dwellers: A beefy evasive creature that provides value by casting stuff in your graveyard. Notably able to cast Ancestral Vision.
Ardent Plea: Playing this due its ability to cast Ancestral Vision. The exalted trigger is a nice bonus but particularly exciting. Provides two prowess triggers if cascade hits a non-creature spell. A neat interaction against decks using Ensnaring Bridge is attacking with Spellskite, dealing damage with the exalted triggers.
Path to Exile & Lightning Bolt: Efficient removal.
Lightning Helix: Pretty solid removal. I might end up cutting one or two for an extra land and/or a Condemn though.
Ancestral Vision: The entire reason to play this deck. Three cards for U has always been amazing.
In the sideboard I'm using Relic of Progenitus over Rest in Peace as graveyard hate, since a big part of the decks gameplan hinges on being able to cast stuff out of the graveyard with Dark-Dwellers. The rest of the sideboard should be pretty obvious.
The build is still very much a work in progress and I would love to get some feedback
(Begin's retesting 4th color splash now that land destruction should no longer be as prevalent.)
Yea, worse case scenario you're casting a bolt off ardent plea, but 3 mana for a sorcery speed bolt you can't plan around seems bad.
http://www.greatnate.com/articles/2016/4/8/initial-observations-of-jeskai-geist-vs-ancestral-visions-control-decks
Invasive surgery stops living end, scapeshift, ancestral visions, damnation, maelstrom pulse...
Negate stops that and instants like collected company or counters, enchantments like worship, artifacts like ensuring bridge or thopters assembly, and planeswalkers like liliana or elspeth.
Invasive surgery is great against scapeshift, but I feel it's terrible against visions. Late game I'd rather they draw the dead card than have it removed from their deck.
I'm still feeling that unless scapeshift takes over, Negate is the better counterspell.
I'm not sold on av for us and I fully agree with your assessment of it.
Here is my current list, it is currently 61 cards and I'm definitely looking for advice on what to cut.
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Restoration Angel
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Instants/Sorceries (24):
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Helix
4 Remand
2 Electrolyze
2 Spell Snare
4 Ancestral Vision
3 Celestial Colonnade
1 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
2 Steam Vents
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Eiganjo Castle
2 Sulfur Falls
1 Ghost Quarter
Trimmed down to 3 Geist instead of 4 because drawing excessive amounts of Geist off of Visions doesn't sound like a great plan. 3 Geist is still rather consistent and lets us play more of a mid-control game and we can drop a Geist as a win-con. Similarly, no Thundermaw. Instead we have Dank Dwellrs which dodges all the same removal as Thundermaw and still gets value during ETB. If Abzan is on the rise, we can definitely have it in the SB or mainboard when metagaming appropriately.
Currently, I can definitely see cutting 1 Ancestral Vision, 1 Spell Snare, 1 Electrolyze, or 1 Lightning Helix, but I believe the rest of the deck is pretty set in stone. Also, what are peoples' thoughts on Declaration in Stone for a deck like ours? If they spend time to crack their clue that's almost good for us because it means we're winning the tempo game. It should definitely be in a more aggressively oriented version of the deck though.
That being said, I think lightning helix is your cut, unless you need to lifegain over the card draw (electrolyze).
To be clear, I am not advocating for AV, at least not yet, but I also haven't ruled it out.
Also, I do not think we can consistently beat Control decks before AVs begin resolving. Of course it is possible, but when I think back on many of the games in which I beat control, many of them happened mid to late game. You could eventually set things up so that you could resolve a Geist and ride it to victory, or make them deal with other things and win with a flurry of burn spell.
What I am trying to say, is that I don't think those mid to long game victories are going to be as likely with them having access to Ancestral Visions, and I think that is where many of our victories were likely to come from.
My list is rather threat-light, running only 10 creatures mainboard, so it might not be a great option for people running a higher amount. I'm using a few sideboard slots that would have been taken up by sweepers for the Thing.
I agree with this completely. I've had opponents resolve Sphinx's Revelation for 3 cards before in different matches, and the game plan was still more or less exactly the same for us. We have solid enough interaction that we can fight through the card advantage. It gets a little harder with AV, but I don't see it being insurmountable. I have a little more to say about this, but I'm tired and behind on work. And Aller more or less said everything I was gonna say.
Interesting thought. I'm eager to try out my new toys (just got 1 prerelease foil TiTi
Because TiTi can win games after it sweeps the board. It fixes the one problem our deck has when playing the control side - closing out games. I tested with this card all weekend, and it makes the aggro matchup closer to 70% when played with 3-4 in the deck. It is a bad card when there is plenty of spot removal, but that's why it is a great compliment to Geist.
I'm not saying to not run Timely Reinforcements and Anger of the Gods, they are both great cards. But, try running 1x Anger, 1x Timely, and 3x Titi in your sideboard and you will not be dissapointed.
Also, is it me or Ajani vengeant is now in an akward spot? Shold we look at bringing jace, architect of thought MB, or maybe something different like Chandra, pyromaster?
I felt like Ajani's been in an awkward spot; he and Elspeth, Knight-Errant haven't been putting in enough weight for me, so I ended up cutting them. They were just *okay*. Then again, I distinctly remember them during U/R Delver Treasure Cruise meta...so it might have colored my thoughts on them. I don't think Chandra, Pyromaster is where we want to be. But Jace, Architect of Thought did come across my mind -- if we go into a more control meta.
I used Gideon Jura and liked him a fair bit. I swapped him out for Elspeth, Sun's Champion. She seems slightly better than Gideon, for what I've been trying to use her for. But it's definitely a flex spot. I do like the curve toppers though. Might try Dragonlord Ojutai instead if I ever get around to acquiring him. Seems like I really would need Minamo, School at Water's Edge, Eiganjo Castle, and Slayers' Stronghold to really take full advantage of him.