Re: Clique - i am currently running one, its been okay, sort of in a weird spot but it is nice when you want to hold counter magic and then still have the option to use mana (clique and resto are nice like that.
Another thought ive had, ive found two spots im my list id like to shore up. First is removal. I dislike relying solely on 4 paths to protect myself. They are aweful early game and certain creatures just dont deserve a path. Currently i am playong 2 dromokas command to add the slightest extra bit of removal. Problems with that is its a jack of all trades card, master of none. The red counter is situational, so is enchantment destruction, +1/+1 is situational and the fight ability also has the same problem of path in being terrible early game before you have a good creature base, or plays into 2-for-1's another bad thing. The other thing id like to shore up is reliably growing goyf, i pnly play 2 so i dont need it as a cornerstone.
But those few problems led me to look at swift reckoning it can be played early enough, easy mana cost, not dependent on having a creature fight, hard removal, enemy creatures can be tapped down to turn it on with retreat, late game should be an instant, but still counts as a sorcery for goyf.
Bant just really has terrible removal other than paths. I usually like to run between 7-10 peices of interaction which now is 4 path, 3 counterspells of some nature and 2 extra something removals (currently dromokas C) but im going to be trying both swift reckoning and sun lance. Anyone have any other ideas of 1-2 cmc removal for bant? Detention sphere is boarder line there for me, its just one too many, but it hits everything so maybe, also crystallization is close to
it DOES not protect the combo if your opponent is competent. That is my point. Dispel ALWAYS workds. Steppe works 1/100 times if your opponent plays proerly.
A card is not good if it only works if people missplay.
it DOES not protect the combo if your opponent is competent. That is my point. Dispel ALWAYS workds. Steppe works 1/100 times if your opponent plays proerly.
A card is not good if it only works if people missplay.
So, basically taking it out makes the deck more forgiving on our opponents. If they don't realize they must kill the knight on the spot, then we are safe? But if we don't keep it in, they are free to kill our knight at any point?
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it DOES not protect the combo if your opponent is competent. That is my point. Dispel ALWAYS workds. Steppe works 1/100 times if your opponent plays proerly.
A card is not good if it only works if people missplay.
If you have an extra fetch ready to crack it does. Since you can attack with knight, wait for removal, untap with the fetch, tap for sejiri.
So, basically taking it out makes the deck more forgiving on our opponents. If they don't realize they must kill the knight on the spot, then we are safe? But if we don't keep it in, they are free to kill our knight at any point?
I realize the interaction. However, you have to think what went on for the game to get to that state:
You have had to have knight in play for more than one turn. All removal heavy decks will kill it the turn you play knight if they have any removal (because they wouldn't want you to get any value out of knight, much less get potentially blown out by a possible sejeri steppe), and if they don't have a removal, then steppe doesn't matter.
If you have an untapped knight sitting on a board stall (or else 99% of the time its just better to attack than wait to combo), then you will have had to never use knight during end step for value, or your opponent would kill it in resp. So, your knight would have to sit there doing actual nothing, which is not what I signed up for when paying 3 mana in modern.
So, for this to actually ever be relevant, It would have to be a board stall against a removal heavy deck, where you never activate or attack with knight, then you draw the combo, and your opponent managed to draw a removal in the meantime, and has not cast it at any point on any card in play. In all other game states, you will have a tapped knight in play at some point, for your opponent to kill, and steppe will do nothing.
All I'm saying is, the scenario people are describing almost never comes up in real play against players that know whats up. I understand the interaction is nice, and was good in a slower format, but drawing a tapped, mono-white, non-plains will cost you more games than it will save you.
So, basically taking it out makes the deck more forgiving on our opponents. If they don't realize they must kill the knight on the spot, then we are safe? But if we don't keep it in, they are free to kill our knight at any point?
I realize the interaction. However, you have to think what went on for the game to get to that state:
You have had to have knight in play for more than one turn. All removal heavy decks will kill it the turn you play knight if they have any removal (because they wouldn't want you to get any value out of knight, much less get potentially blown out by a possible sejeri steppe), and if they don't have a removal, then steppe doesn't matter.
If you have an untapped knight sitting on a board stall (or else 99% of the time its just better to attack than wait to combo), then you will have had to never use knight during end step for value, or your opponent would kill it in resp. So, your knight would have to sit there doing actual nothing, which is not what I signed up for when paying 3 mana in modern.
So, for this to actually ever be relevant, It would have to be a board stall against a removal heavy deck, where you never activate or attack with knight, then you draw the combo, and your opponent managed to draw a removal in the meantime, and has not cast it at any point on any card in play. In all other game states, you will have a tapped knight in play at some point, for your opponent to kill, and steppe will do nothing.
All I'm saying is, the scenario people are describing almost never comes up in real play against players that know whats up. I understand the interaction is nice, and was good in a slower format, but drawing a tapped, mono-white, non-plains will cost you more games than it will save you.
An uncracked fetch usually works just fine for me. If you're not attacking, you're probably behind. Combo or not, as you said. But there's really no situation where having an uncracked fetch on the board doesn't protect the knight apart from the turn you drop her. I guess I just feel like running one Steppe makes more sense than dedicating 3-4 slots to protecting the combo when the combo is an oops I win, anyway. I run a coco list, so I'm not usually worried about finding another one or racing through removal.
Sure there is, the scenario of the turn you play the knight. Unluss he is getting haste somehow neither KotR nor the uncracked fetch are finding sejerri step, and if its in your hand the land cant be played in response.
I agree with whats been said about sejeri. 1/100 games you'll blank removal. But 5/100 its going to cost you the game for being a restrictive tap land
The only reason i see having it is for its cheap rogues passage effect, to let an attacker get through bevause there are going to be times when they dont have removal but do have defenders. Still dont think its worth it
With the number of creature you are running that have <4 power (knight is variable) I would suggest unified will instead of spell pierce. I run two out of my board, but I think I want to up that to 3. It is such a great surprise to hard counter a creature with 2 mana up. It has won me multiple games. I would say 80% of the time we have more creatures than out opponents, so it is a hard counter.
Other removal you may consider is valorous stance and detention sphere has been a life saver a few times.
I will say geist is an absolute power house in this deck. With 7 exalted creatures, he rarely swings into bad blocking situations. For some decks he is really hard to answer and will just win you the game.
Has any one figured out a good way to deal with sweepers? Any time I face a UWx deck, Verdict just hoses me and there isn't much I can do about it. Valorous stance to save 1 guys is about all I got.
I don't know why, but I'm a bit scared of unified will, I may give it a shot. As for geist--even with exalted, I never had it where he could survive a blocking goyf--in contrast smiter with one exalted almost always could. Moreover, smiter's imperfect protection could help draw fire away from knight.
Valorous Stance seems like an interesting option. I sort of feel like detention sphere could end up a bit slow and clunky. Anyone tried Bant Charm? I feel like it could be OK, but it is also a bit slow
As for sweeper protection; not that I'm suggesting this is a great idea, but wrap in vigor does blank supreme verdict and damage-based sweepers. It sucks against older wraths and generally anything not wrath specific, so it may not be worth a slot.
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I dunno, when I was actively testing I tended to untap with knights and no retreat pretty regularly, and using the knight to threaten allowed me to swing for gavony beats with the team. Eventually playing chicken leads to blanking removal.
It was really, really bad when you drew it had and had a tap-plains though. Really bad.
I use it as a 1-of in my UW Midrange deck and it's been very good. People have poo-pooed it a lot, but I haven't found anything better as a 5th removal spell--the number of deceiver exarchs I've reality shifted is very high
I could see Knightfall supporting two because of the lifegain and extreme bear defense. But really what's missing from Knightfall midrange (in my experience) was abrupt decay.
An uncracked fetch usually works just fine for me. If you're not attacking, you're probably behind. Combo or not, as you said. But there's really no situation where having an uncracked fetch on the board doesn't protect the knight apart from the turn you drop her. I guess I just feel like running one Steppe makes more sense than dedicating 3-4 slots to protecting the combo when the combo is an oops I win, anyway. I run a coco list, so I'm not usually worried about finding another one or racing through removal.
If you reread my previous post, I addressed -exactly- the gameplay scenario you describe. It will not happen like you are saying in real gameplay against real opponents. Realize that I am not advocating running maindeck negates/dispels whatever to protect the combo. I am just saying sejeri steppe does NOT work as you describe in real tournaments.
And I am still of the opinion chord>>>coco in this deck. Coco messes up our curve way way too much to get any reasonable % of getting value and so is unreliable. We do NOT have 1-2 mana combo pieces that we can find, and our voices we find are worse than abzans because we can't 'turn them on' with a sack outlet. So we have to cram even more 3 drops in our already packed 3-drop deck in order to have enough good hits. This is a much worse coco deck than abzan. Just run the percentages. At absolute best we are about 50-60% to find 2 good hits (with a bad curve), which is still worse than hitting all parts of a combo. Abzan is like 85-90% because of the combo pieces it can hit.
I dunno, when I was actively testing I tended to untap with knights and no retreat pretty regularly, and using the knight to threaten allowed me to swing for gavony beats with the team. Eventually playing chicken leads to blanking removal.
It was really, really bad when you drew it had and had a tap-plains though. Really bad.
So, when you untap with knights and no retreats regularly, do you then proceed to never activate or attack with knight until you draw a retreat (because if you arent attacking then you wont win until you can combo simply because you arent attacking)? Because if you do either at any point, you then turn your opps removal back on, and steppe remains useless. If you are sitting there with any untapped knight while townshipping with multiple other creatures in play, then your opponents spot removal is already poor simply because you are townshipping with multiple creatures in play. So, usually a winmore scenario to 'protect' your useless (because you arent activating or attacking with it) knight while you township your opp to death.
The main thing sejiri steppe does for us is give us information. When we go off and start by getting some fetches, if the opponent does not respond with a removal spell we know the coast is clear and can safely go off, because we have sejiri steppe in our deck.
On a side note i've tried commune with the gods and love it. Also i gave geist of saint traft a second chance and he preformed very well, i must have been unlucky with my matchups the first time i played him. That being said i'm going to try eternal witness x2 alongside commune, seems like a lot of value!
An uncracked fetch usually works just fine for me. If you're not attacking, you're probably behind. Combo or not, as you said. But there's really no situation where having an uncracked fetch on the board doesn't protect the knight apart from the turn you drop her. I guess I just feel like running one Steppe makes more sense than dedicating 3-4 slots to protecting the combo when the combo is an oops I win, anyway. I run a coco list, so I'm not usually worried about finding another one or racing through removal.
If you reread my previous post, I addressed -exactly- the gameplay scenario you describe. It will not happen like you are saying in real gameplay against real opponents. Realize that I am not advocating running maindeck negates/dispels whatever to protect the combo. I am just saying sejeri steppe does NOT work as you describe in real tournaments.
And I am still of the opinion chord>>>coco in this deck. Coco messes up our curve way way too much to get any reasonable % of getting value and so is unreliable. We do NOT have 1-2 mana combo pieces that we can find, and our voices we find are worse than abzans because we can't 'turn them on' with a sack outlet. So we have to cram even more 3 drops in our already packed 3-drop deck in order to have enough good hits. This is a much worse coco deck than abzan. Just run the percentages. At absolute best we are about 50-60% to find 2 good hits (with a bad curve), which is still worse than hitting all parts of a combo. Abzan is like 85-90% because of the combo pieces it can hit.
I dunno, when I was actively testing I tended to untap with knights and no retreat pretty regularly, and using the knight to threaten allowed me to swing for gavony beats with the team. Eventually playing chicken leads to blanking removal.
It was really, really bad when you drew it had and had a tap-plains though. Really bad.
So, when you untap with knights and no retreats regularly, do you then proceed to never activate or attack with knight until you draw a retreat (because if you arent attacking then you wont win until you can combo simply because you arent attacking)? Because if you do either at any point, you then turn your opps removal back on, and steppe remains useless. If you are sitting there with any untapped knight while townshipping with multiple other creatures in play, then your opponents spot removal is already poor simply because you are townshipping with multiple creatures in play. So, usually a winmore scenario to 'protect' your useless (because you arent activating or attacking with it) knight while you township your opp to death.
Yeah, I'll concede you do make a good point. I don't know that it's worth taking out Steppe, though, if you're not going to replace it with something else to protect the knight when you do have a retreat out. I suppose the point is that you're banking on them not having removal in-hand if they didn't already take out the Knight before she untapped/retreat came down, but being able to tutor up protection in a pinch is not insignificant, despite Steppe being the worst imaginable topdeck.
So, when you untap with knights and no retreats regularly, do you then proceed to never activate or attack with knight until you draw a retreat (because if you arent attacking then you wont win until you can combo simply because you arent attacking)? Because if you do either at any point, you then turn your opps removal back on, and steppe remains useless. If you are sitting there with any untapped knight while townshipping with multiple other creatures in play, then your opponents spot removal is already poor simply because you are townshipping with multiple creatures in play. So, usually a winmore scenario to 'protect' your useless (because you arent activating or attacking with it) knight while you township your opp to death.
If you have an untapped knight on board, but can't swing because they'll remove it, you're much better off with Sejiri since you can wait for retreat to pop up. If you don't have Sejiri, the knight just dies instantly. And in an unknown meta, sometimes you git someone.
If you play Knight and another smaller creature with Township in play, and untap with both, you're vastly better off having Sejiri since you force them to remove neither creature or risk having their removal blanked. vs. if you did not have Sejiri, they can just remove the most threatening creature (Knight usually) and you don't have the combo as an out.
You can also sit there swinging with the other critter and there's nothing they can do, whereas they could go for tempo plays like removing an attacker to try to buy time--not an option with an untapped knight.
I would not advocate cutting into your normal land slots for Sejiri, but it is a good 23rd or 24th land - it's at least as good as a spell in many situations.
Are you still trying to make midrange work? If so what interaction are you running besides path/D-commands. The one of Valorous Stance in the board has proven to be very useful so I'm running it in the main now.
Also isn't mana leak awkward for you with path?
Yep! I'm still on midrange, I really liked how its been playing and I've started to see a bunch more midrangey decks pop up around here, its great to see.
Mana leak is not ideal with path but its not terrible either. look at a lot of the UW creature control decks that have been doing well recently. They sometimes are playing 4 paths alongside 4 leaks. Its rare to have them totally dead, people just love using as much mana as possible. Sometimes people just go "yup" and pay the 3 mana but until there is anything as versatile as leak (it hits anything) its still going to be the best option modern has (or at least the least awful option).
Currently the "interaction" I'm playing are 4 paths, 2 dromokas and 3 mana leaks. I consider interaction anything that slows or disrupts what the other person is doing so the counterspells fit in that category. They're like removal but before the card hits the field. So like i said thats 9 pieces of interaction. I was running a 10th with a single cryptic command but it was always hard to cast. But I've always just found dromokas disappointing in the main. sometimes it does awesome things like reloading finks and 2-for-1'ing in combat for blow out blocks and fights. but its let me down so many times as well where a card that just read "kill a creature" would have been a million times better. so thats what I'm looking at now. i have to pick up 2 copies but right now I'm liking the sounds of swift reckoning but heres the other ones I've found warranting consideration at least oust, reciprocate, smite, sunlance(if this was an instant i would play this in an absolute heartbeat), azorius charm, crystallization, runed halo, valorous stance and reality shift
Dispel is the only thing commune can't get, hence the 3x. It is just waaay too good to pass up.
Seal of primordium seems redundant with qasali pridemage but i like having a non boltable answer that allows me to tap out later on vs twin and affinity.
Dryad militant is for the numerous midrange delve decks in my meta.
I use it as a 1-of in my UW Midrange deck and it's been very good. People have poo-pooed it a lot, but I haven't found anything better as a 5th removal spell--the number of deceiver exarchs I've reality shifted is very high
I could see Knightfall supporting two because of the lifegain and extreme bear defense. But really what's missing from Knightfall midrange (in my experience) was abrupt decay.
Abrupt Decay sounds so good, wish this deck had access to that card. I'll give Reality Shift a try.
I dunno, I definitely think discard is stronger glue than dorks though. Playing dark confidant as a way to dig for the combo might not be the worst either. I'll fiddle around with it.
Being able to abrupt decay exarchs (and random combo pieces) and inquisition combo decks brings a lot to the table.
I use it as a 1-of in my UW Midrange deck and it's been very good. People have poo-pooed it a lot, but I haven't found anything better as a 5th removal spell--the number of deceiver exarchs I've reality shifted is very high
I could see Knightfall supporting two because of the lifegain and extreme bear defense. But really what's missing from Knightfall midrange (in my experience) was abrupt decay.
Abrupt Decay sounds so good, wish this deck had access to that card. I'll give Reality Shift a try.
Can't we make WGbu work?
I was debating the whole idea of BUGw at one point. Whipping (Whip of Erebos) back a knight would be kind of a cool trick. I guess this would be more of a control build and makes me wish deathrite shaman was still in modern. He would be gross with Retreat lol. Yet another direction to think about.
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Another thought ive had, ive found two spots im my list id like to shore up. First is removal. I dislike relying solely on 4 paths to protect myself. They are aweful early game and certain creatures just dont deserve a path. Currently i am playong 2 dromokas command to add the slightest extra bit of removal. Problems with that is its a jack of all trades card, master of none. The red counter is situational, so is enchantment destruction, +1/+1 is situational and the fight ability also has the same problem of path in being terrible early game before you have a good creature base, or plays into 2-for-1's another bad thing. The other thing id like to shore up is reliably growing goyf, i pnly play 2 so i dont need it as a cornerstone.
But those few problems led me to look at swift reckoning it can be played early enough, easy mana cost, not dependent on having a creature fight, hard removal, enemy creatures can be tapped down to turn it on with retreat, late game should be an instant, but still counts as a sorcery for goyf.
Bant just really has terrible removal other than paths. I usually like to run between 7-10 peices of interaction which now is 4 path, 3 counterspells of some nature and 2 extra something removals (currently dromokas C) but im going to be trying both swift reckoning and sun lance. Anyone have any other ideas of 1-2 cmc removal for bant? Detention sphere is boarder line there for me, its just one too many, but it hits everything so maybe, also crystallization is close to
A card is not good if it only works if people missplay.
So, basically taking it out makes the deck more forgiving on our opponents. If they don't realize they must kill the knight on the spot, then we are safe? But if we don't keep it in, they are free to kill our knight at any point?
If you have an extra fetch ready to crack it does. Since you can attack with knight, wait for removal, untap with the fetch, tap for sejiri.
I realize the interaction. However, you have to think what went on for the game to get to that state:
You have had to have knight in play for more than one turn. All removal heavy decks will kill it the turn you play knight if they have any removal (because they wouldn't want you to get any value out of knight, much less get potentially blown out by a possible sejeri steppe), and if they don't have a removal, then steppe doesn't matter.
If you have an untapped knight sitting on a board stall (or else 99% of the time its just better to attack than wait to combo), then you will have had to never use knight during end step for value, or your opponent would kill it in resp. So, your knight would have to sit there doing actual nothing, which is not what I signed up for when paying 3 mana in modern.
So, for this to actually ever be relevant, It would have to be a board stall against a removal heavy deck, where you never activate or attack with knight, then you draw the combo, and your opponent managed to draw a removal in the meantime, and has not cast it at any point on any card in play. In all other game states, you will have a tapped knight in play at some point, for your opponent to kill, and steppe will do nothing.
All I'm saying is, the scenario people are describing almost never comes up in real play against players that know whats up. I understand the interaction is nice, and was good in a slower format, but drawing a tapped, mono-white, non-plains will cost you more games than it will save you.
Acts as a prot spell and also as a finisher, since the goyf-less list runs more multi coloured but still white creatures.
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An uncracked fetch usually works just fine for me. If you're not attacking, you're probably behind. Combo or not, as you said. But there's really no situation where having an uncracked fetch on the board doesn't protect the knight apart from the turn you drop her. I guess I just feel like running one Steppe makes more sense than dedicating 3-4 slots to protecting the combo when the combo is an oops I win, anyway. I run a coco list, so I'm not usually worried about finding another one or racing through removal.
CG
I agree with whats been said about sejeri. 1/100 games you'll blank removal. But 5/100 its going to cost you the game for being a restrictive tap land
The only reason i see having it is for its cheap rogues passage effect, to let an attacker get through bevause there are going to be times when they dont have removal but do have defenders. Still dont think its worth it
I don't know why, but I'm a bit scared of unified will, I may give it a shot. As for geist--even with exalted, I never had it where he could survive a blocking goyf--in contrast smiter with one exalted almost always could. Moreover, smiter's imperfect protection could help draw fire away from knight.
Valorous Stance seems like an interesting option. I sort of feel like detention sphere could end up a bit slow and clunky. Anyone tried Bant Charm? I feel like it could be OK, but it is also a bit slow
As for sweeper protection; not that I'm suggesting this is a great idea, but wrap in vigor does blank supreme verdict and damage-based sweepers. It sucks against older wraths and generally anything not wrath specific, so it may not be worth a slot.
It was really, really bad when you drew it had and had a tap-plains though. Really bad.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I could see Knightfall supporting two because of the lifegain and extreme bear defense. But really what's missing from Knightfall midrange (in my experience) was abrupt decay.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
If you reread my previous post, I addressed -exactly- the gameplay scenario you describe. It will not happen like you are saying in real gameplay against real opponents. Realize that I am not advocating running maindeck negates/dispels whatever to protect the combo. I am just saying sejeri steppe does NOT work as you describe in real tournaments.
And I am still of the opinion chord>>>coco in this deck. Coco messes up our curve way way too much to get any reasonable % of getting value and so is unreliable. We do NOT have 1-2 mana combo pieces that we can find, and our voices we find are worse than abzans because we can't 'turn them on' with a sack outlet. So we have to cram even more 3 drops in our already packed 3-drop deck in order to have enough good hits. This is a much worse coco deck than abzan. Just run the percentages. At absolute best we are about 50-60% to find 2 good hits (with a bad curve), which is still worse than hitting all parts of a combo. Abzan is like 85-90% because of the combo pieces it can hit.
So, when you untap with knights and no retreats regularly, do you then proceed to never activate or attack with knight until you draw a retreat (because if you arent attacking then you wont win until you can combo simply because you arent attacking)? Because if you do either at any point, you then turn your opps removal back on, and steppe remains useless. If you are sitting there with any untapped knight while townshipping with multiple other creatures in play, then your opponents spot removal is already poor simply because you are townshipping with multiple creatures in play. So, usually a winmore scenario to 'protect' your useless (because you arent activating or attacking with it) knight while you township your opp to death.
On a side note i've tried commune with the gods and love it. Also i gave geist of saint traft a second chance and he preformed very well, i must have been unlucky with my matchups the first time i played him. That being said i'm going to try eternal witness x2 alongside commune, seems like a lot of value!
Yeah, I'll concede you do make a good point. I don't know that it's worth taking out Steppe, though, if you're not going to replace it with something else to protect the knight when you do have a retreat out. I suppose the point is that you're banking on them not having removal in-hand if they didn't already take out the Knight before she untapped/retreat came down, but being able to tutor up protection in a pinch is not insignificant, despite Steppe being the worst imaginable topdeck.
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If you have an untapped knight on board, but can't swing because they'll remove it, you're much better off with Sejiri since you can wait for retreat to pop up. If you don't have Sejiri, the knight just dies instantly. And in an unknown meta, sometimes you git someone.
If you play Knight and another smaller creature with Township in play, and untap with both, you're vastly better off having Sejiri since you force them to remove neither creature or risk having their removal blanked. vs. if you did not have Sejiri, they can just remove the most threatening creature (Knight usually) and you don't have the combo as an out.
You can also sit there swinging with the other critter and there's nothing they can do, whereas they could go for tempo plays like removing an attacker to try to buy time--not an option with an untapped knight.
I would not advocate cutting into your normal land slots for Sejiri, but it is a good 23rd or 24th land - it's at least as good as a spell in many situations.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Yep! I'm still on midrange, I really liked how its been playing and I've started to see a bunch more midrangey decks pop up around here, its great to see.
Mana leak is not ideal with path but its not terrible either. look at a lot of the UW creature control decks that have been doing well recently. They sometimes are playing 4 paths alongside 4 leaks. Its rare to have them totally dead, people just love using as much mana as possible. Sometimes people just go "yup" and pay the 3 mana but until there is anything as versatile as leak (it hits anything) its still going to be the best option modern has (or at least the least awful option).
Currently the "interaction" I'm playing are 4 paths, 2 dromokas and 3 mana leaks. I consider interaction anything that slows or disrupts what the other person is doing so the counterspells fit in that category. They're like removal but before the card hits the field. So like i said thats 9 pieces of interaction. I was running a 10th with a single cryptic command but it was always hard to cast. But I've always just found dromokas disappointing in the main. sometimes it does awesome things like reloading finks and 2-for-1'ing in combat for blow out blocks and fights. but its let me down so many times as well where a card that just read "kill a creature" would have been a million times better. so thats what I'm looking at now. i have to pick up 2 copies but right now I'm liking the sounds of swift reckoning but heres the other ones I've found warranting consideration at least
oust, reciprocate, smite, sunlance(if this was an instant i would play this in an absolute heartbeat), azorius charm, crystallization, runed halo, valorous stance and reality shift
My current sideboard:
3 dispel
2 stony silence
2 seal of primordium
2 aven mindcensor
2 kitchen finks
2 scavenging ooze
2 dryad militant
Dispel is the only thing commune can't get, hence the 3x. It is just waaay too good to pass up.
Seal of primordium seems redundant with qasali pridemage but i like having a non boltable answer that allows me to tap out later on vs twin and affinity.
Dryad militant is for the numerous midrange delve decks in my meta.
Can't we make WGbu work?
Being able to abrupt decay exarchs (and random combo pieces) and inquisition combo decks brings a lot to the table.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I was debating the whole idea of BUGw at one point. Whipping (Whip of Erebos) back a knight would be kind of a cool trick. I guess this would be more of a control build and makes me wish deathrite shaman was still in modern. He would be gross with Retreat lol. Yet another direction to think about.