A serious question, how this deck can be a tier if every time we face infect or Coco/kiki chord/maybe affinity we lose hard?
Sure, this is a fun deck but is competitive?
Some major exaggerations there. Infect is pretty even - we have 2 maindeck spellskites for instance and Ancient Stirrings can grab them. Skyspawner, Displacer, Path, Drowner, and Thought-Knot Seer all are great cards in the matchup too. Post-board we have a lot of options to make it possibly even slightly in our favor.
Abzan Coco is rough game 1. That's a bad matchup. Post board you need to hit some sideboard cards or run lucky. Grafdigger's Cage, also fetchable by Stirrings shuts them down hard. Any sort of counter spells Negate/Stubborn Denial is great vs Coco/Chord as well. TKS stealing important pieces is great of course.
Kiki Chord I don't understand why it would be a bad matchup. They're a slow combo deck.
Affinity is rough game 1, but significantly better post board. A lot of our creatures still are decent game 1, especially if you have been weaving in 2-3 Skyspawners into the main.
To point to more empirical evidence rather than match-up based evidence. In the past 2 weeks, Bant Eldrazi has T4ed a 2200 man GP, and a T8ed an SCG Modern Classic, and started putting up results online. Regardless of your opinion of certain match-ups, it is a competitive deck.
Since Merfolk has been doing well, what do we do to stop the fish in our matchup?
Engineered Explosives for 2 is the way to deal with the fish.
Watchout for Spell Pierce and dont get greedy with it, if you get 1 Silvergil adept and 1 Lord explosives did its job and its Smasher and Drowner´s job to close it down.
Since Merfolk has been doing well, what do we do to stop the fish in our matchup?
Engineered Explosives for 2 is the way to deal with the fish.
Watchout for Spell Pierce and dont get greedy with it, if you get 1 Silvergil adept and 1 Lord explosives did its job and its Smasher and Drowner´s job to close it down.
Thanks!
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Round 2 Abzan Coco (0-2)[1-1]:
Game 1 was horrid. He had essentially natural T3 infinite life and I drew 2 spellskites and all lands as answers. Game 2 I should have won with a very very complicated line of play that I screwed up. I'll go over the logistics with yall so that maybe you'll remember it if it ever happens to you. So I have him at 5 life. He has a Spellskite, Melira, Seer, Anafenza and Noble Hierarch in play. I have 2 Drowner of Hopes 4 Scion tokens and a Displacer that I just topdecked and played. I have enough mana to blink 3 things... however I also have a stubborn denial in hand and my opponent has 1 card in their hand (they know I have Denial as I found it off a Matter Reshaper). In the end if I try to blink my Drowner of Hope he can redirect to spellskite twice and go down to 1. Even if I tap down as many as possible with the scions, he'd still have enough to block the attackers. Likewise if try and sacrifice Scion tokens he redirects 2 to Spellskite and has 2 creatures back to block the 2 Drowner of Hope and then he will be able to untap. Instead I pass the turn and him and I both know that he has to find a Kitchen Finks and has 4 available (Scry) triggers to find it. He finds it 3 down and goes infinite which we just don't have an answer to. Here was the play I should have made. I sac the scion tokens to tap down all but Seer and Anafenza. He is forced to block or die so he now has to find 2 pieces for the infinite combo and I'd have him dead on the following turn. CoCo would normally be his out there but with Stubborn denial up with Ferocious it wouldn't resolve. Oh well. Live and learn I guess. This matchup feels really awkward to bad. I really wish we had a way to win through infinite life.. oh well.
Sorry to drag this back up from a couple of days ago, but I've only just seen it. I think there was a way for you to have won that turn though.
Drowner of Hope
Drowner of Hope
Eldrazi Displacer
Scion
Scion
Scion
Scion
If you go to blink one of your drowners, the villain has the option to use spellskites ability. It doesn't really matter if he does or not though if my thinking is correct. Either he uses the ability and he loses life or he doesn't and you get 2 more scions.
You could do it a second time if you want but it doesn't matter, you've got enough of everything you need. If spellskite gets displaced with its activation cost, it'll come back into play tapped and can't block. If you sac a scion to tap another creature, the villain will either have to let it happen or lose another 2 life redirecting that to spellskite.
So either the villain is at 1 life and just the spellskite tapped or he's at 3 life and 2 blockers tapped. either he has 3 blockers left that you can tap all of them down with your scions and just walk in for the win, or he has 4 blockers left and can't redirect any more activations to spellskite.
After you've tapped his board, or most of it, you'll still have a free attacker to win the game. Thinking about it some more, it's probably better to try to blink a drowner twice first. Either you get more scions than you need and can do it easily, or he redirects to spellskite and you have more than enough scions to tap down his defenders.
If I've misread something from your initial post though, then disregard all of this as nonsense.
I did the math while I was sitting there (maybe I forgot a creature between the match and the writeup for his side like another mana dork or something). I remember knowing I could swing in but he'd have enough blockers to not die. My out was that I could have selected which creatures he blocked with (outside of Spellskite) and put him to 1. I had the answer for his only out (CoCo) in hand and he'd have been dead on the next turn since I could then blink and tap down his team. Still I admit that I punted that game and with it I never got to a game 3. I am not perfect all the time ha ha.
Ok Ladies and Gents.. I got another couple tournament reports for you! Finally stopped running headlong into Control unfortunately but now I can address other areas of concern and get reps in against other archetypes.
Round 1 Kiki-Chord (2-1)[1-0]:
Game 1 I had to mull to 5 and he got a very fast Kiki combo off. It was through a TKS to take a resto Angel as well. He ripped Chord on his next draw and went off the following turn (He chorded for Resto, blinked his on board Ewit get Chord back and then win on his turn). Game 2 and 3 I managed to play the grindy game and was able to minimize the value of his Voice's and a Grafdiggers Cage stranded 2 CoCo's and a Chord in his hand Game 3.
Round 2 RG Tron (2-0)[2-0]:
Game 1 stick large fat beats, take payoff card with TKS, have lethal through Wurmcoil on following turn. Game 2 dropped Stony Silence early and ripped only payoff card out of his hand. I get Displacer TKS soft lock on his draw step as I close out the game quickly. First time playing RG Tron with this deck and the games went according to plan. As long as they don't magical christmas us or our deck gives us chaff I think we are favored here.
Round 3 RG Tron (0-2)[2-1]:
Ok you know what I was saying before... ug. My opponent got his spellskites on Turn 2 both games and it stopped me from swinging through with the Matter Reshaper and Displacers I had on board. Top that off that I couldn't blink the things I wanted (I did get to hit him for essentially 10 with a TKS game 2 [swing for 4, attempt to blink twice during draw step which gets redirected to Spellskite]). The main issue is he found 2 during game 2 and was able to sit behind them and protect his Ugin til it got to Ult. I scooped when he dropped Ulamogg and destroyed my boardstate. He revealed his hand and had another Ulamogg and another Ugin in hand.. some people get all the luck.
Round 4 Abzan CoCo (0-2)[2-2]:
Game 1 he had the T3 Infinite combo pretty much natural as you draw it up (even played a Seer before he could see what I was on). Game 2 I had him dead on board as long as he didn't rip a Chord or a Finks. (he had Seer on Board and all the other combo pieces in hand when I looked at it with TKS. I had to take a Redcap to just not die (since he had Anafenza and Melira in hand). Ofcourse he ripped it off the top and won.
Ug some very bad beats there at the end... what are you gonna do. I keep getting wrecked by opposing Spellskites. Not being able to tap what we want or blink what we need to is just brutal. I am considering putting some number of Pithing Needles in the Sideboard since they can be found with Ancient Stirrings and it can be useful in multiple matchups (hitting Viscera Seer, Karn, O-Stone, Cranial Plating, Spellskite, Ezuri, Ravager, Inkmoth Nexus and so many more).
Round 1 Grixis Control (2-0)[1-0]:
So absurd stat for this match to identify how good our control matchup is if played correctly. I won game 1 on 3 spells and game 2 on 5. The rest of my cards and draws were lands. Westvale Abbey sealed me up Game 2 with a bit of Ohrmendhal overkill (he was at 1 but I flipped it for the hell of it because he had no outs and how often do we get to do that. I am now 13-0-1 against control with this list.
Round 2 UR Delver (1-2)[1-1]:
So Game 1 I rofled over him because he got hosed on lands and things I guess. I didn't see enough of his deck to really have him on anything. Saw a bunch of basic Islands (one of which he fetched for after the first Steam Vents) so I thought it was possibly Blue Moon. Game 2 I got punished hard for taking out Paths and he manages to rip a bolt to flip delver and kill me. Game 3 he had essentially the nuts and rode Swiftspear, Vapor Snag, Bolt, Roast to victory. Roast was the primary hurts card in the matchup. Being a budget list he was running a full 4x and as you can expect... it wrecks everything in our deck really. Normally over the coarse of a long game you'd be fine with the 2 for 1. As it stood, you couldn't keep taking the Delver, YP and Swiftspear beats. Ug, oh well.
Round 3 RG Tron (0-2)[1-2]:
Game 1 I got land screwed for the first time in a while. Stuck on 2 lands I was unable to stop what he was doing (I had enough time and threats in opening hand which consisted of both lands that I probably had him dead otherwise). Game 2 I stick a T2 Stoney Silence. He plays a 2nd Tron piece and passes the turn. I use my turn to Ancient Stirrings and find Ghost Quarter which is perfect so I could guarantee to stop his Natural tron and hopefully by me the time to get my TKS's on board and strip anything relevant from hand. Well as it turns out he had natural tron AND redundant pieces for the first 2 he played plus payoff cards. Man I am getting frustrated with my opponents having the nuts. It seems to be happening with stupid consistency.
Round 4 Grixis Control (2-0)[2-2]:
Second verse same as the first? This time I got more spells to play with but it was a total annihilation either way. Put my anti-control marker to 14-0-1 over 7 Tournaments.
Thoughts.. I think I am going to cut a land to 23 and World Breaker from the Main. My total changes might look something like this:
MB:
-1 Land
-1 World Breaker
+2 Eldrazi Skyspawner
SB:
-2 Timely Reinforcements
-1 Mark of Asylum
+2 Pithing Needle
+1 World Breaker
I want to try Skyspawner as another early creature that has the evasion to get around walls like Spellskite. Also it is ramp and another Scion for Drowner later (not to mention Skyspawner makes another Displacer target). I get flooded a LOT more than I'd like as well. I think with 5 dorks and 4 stirrings which can find lands we should be fine at 23 but it'll need testing. I like World Breaker but if I am reducing the land count I might as well reduce the curve. He also hasn't been 100% vital to my control matchup. As for Timely, they have just never come up in a spot to be good. Sure they might be good against burn but that has been the only matchup where they have come in for. I think I might just surrender the Burn matchup as being bad and give myself better odds of beating other decks.
I don't see what Warping Wail will add - it's a very mediocre counter (compared to Negate / Stubborn Denial), sure it can remove 1/* */1 critters but.. I dunno. I do feel that 2 engineered explosives might be to much in the sideboard - I see myself changing that to an additional removal spell or maybe something like Hurkyl / Hibernation.
I think that Warping Wail is a decent sideboard card, but it probably doesn't quite make the 75.
I really think that any less than 2 Engineered Explosives is a mistake though. It destroys Fish, Elves, Boggles, tokens, Lantern Control, etc. I board it in vs affinity and I've found it to be pretty good set on 0 or 2. It's also one of, if not our only out to Blood Moon. I see a lot of decks still running 3 copies of it.
I'm looking at putting this together because I love the flavor of Eldrazi and since it's a bit more balanced I figure it could be fun. My only question is how does this fair with the Nahiri decks going around? It seems my meta has at least two (but i'm sure more) that I had to play against last FNM.
I'm looking at putting this together because I love the flavor of Eldrazi and since it's a bit more balanced I figure it could be fun. My only question is how does this fair with the Nahiri decks going around? It seems my meta has at least two (but i'm sure more) that I had to play against last FNM.
Look through the last couple pages to see my tournament logs but I'll give you a slight spoiler. I am 14-0-1 against control. That includes Nahiri.
Anyone else feel Natural State is a perfect card for our sideboard? It hits Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge, and many other things that can cause us problems. I might be adding a couple into my SB.
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Anyone else feel Natural State is a perfect card for our sideboard? It hits Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge, and many other things that can cause us problems. I might be adding a couple into my SB.
Natural State is good. I've been playing one in my SB and liked it so far, super versatile card. Besides Moon and Bridge it comes in against Affinity, Bogles, Lantern, Infect (Inkmoth is usually the only target but the spell has always been relevant so far (as they tend to even play Sylvan Scrying to look for it), Ad Nauseam, Storm, Fish etc...
Anyone else feel Natural State is a perfect card for our sideboard? It hits Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge, and many other things that can cause us problems. I might be adding a couple into my SB.
It's a fine card if that's what you choose to bring in. I don't think it is exactly required though. Sideboards are really based on preference in answers. I actually haven't run into a ton of Blood Moons but the decks that do run them I typically try and just counter it with Stubborn Denial or rip it out of hand with TKS. Ensnaring Bridges problem comes from them getting multiples.. or a Spellskite to protect it. Ensnaring Bridge decks are also not very popular right now.
If a T3 Blood Moon comes down it's problematic (tested vs Blue Moon), but if you already developed somewhat of a board you can just go true them - the removal those decks play are pretty bad against us or just outright slow. That matchup did made me realize we have no fetchable / useable Waste source since we don't play any basic Island or Waste (so we aren't able to cast Drowner or Skyspawner). I did find myself with TKN, Smasher & Matter Reshaper in hand with no ability to cast them ever that game, pretty hard lock.
This is why cards like Stubborn Denial are good. If they try and jam Blood Moon turn 3 we can counter it. If they try to hold onto it for too long, the chance for us getting it with a TKS and usually apply enough pressure before they finish us (or get our basics into play). The main Blood Moon decks that I have found to be problematic are those that ALSO run land destruction to hit our basics. I do play 1 Waste for those instances though. Having 1 less G source for T1 hasn't really affected my overall experience as of yet.
I've been contemplating what good Infect hosers are - because that mu is pretty annoying. A friend that plays Infect told me that Ghostly Prison is problematic for them. What are other cards that come to mind that might work well? Ghostly also works against swarm decks such as Affinity & Bushwacker Zoo.
Norn's Annex is the only decent card you listed, Magus of the Moat and Teferi's Moat get ignored by Inkmoth Nexus, Blinkmoth, Ornithopter, and Vault Skirge. That makes them not even that good against infect(they are good against Boogles and Zoo though).
I've been contemplating what good Infect hosers are - because that mu is pretty annoying. A friend that plays Infect told me that Ghostly Prison is problematic for them. What are other cards that come to mind that might work well? Ghostly also works against swarm decks such as Affinity & Bushwacker Zoo.
Norn's Annex is the only decent card you listed, Magus of the Moat and Teferi's Moat get ignored by Inkmoth Nexus, Blinkmoth, Ornithopter, and Vault Skirge. That makes them not even that good against infect(they are good against Boogles and Zoo though).
Ghostly Prison is probably your best bet.
I think our best route is still trying to get to the following Spellskite->Displacer->Drowner of Hope. If you can ramp quickly enough to those you should be able to win. They REALLY struggle with Drowner since it requires double vines to stop. Bring in counter magic for the pump spells and be sure you kill Spellskites if you can.
I'm testing with 2worship in the SB, we can cast it on turn3 with mana dorks, opinions?
I play two in the side and I highly reccomend them. They cause so many free wins because your opponent can't possibly remove all our dudes and has no answer to enchantments. I don't reccomend slamming it turn three unless you're trying to dodge hand disruption or are likely to die otherwise. Your opponent will play differently once its on the field and you want them to get blindsided. The best use is when you and your opponent are racing and the turn before you would lose you resolve worship and suddenly the tons of life they lost attempting to win the race looks really bad.
Played a small tournament yesterday, had some serious matchups. Wrecked Elves 2-1 due to a Grafdigger's Cage nullifying 3 Chords + 1 Company in his hand - he made an attack with Ezuri active hoping I made a mistake.. suffice to say I didn't. Other games were vs. Jund/Junk - I think we should chew those decks up, midrange can't deal with the amount of pressure we put on the board.
Finals I id'd with a Affinity player but we played it out to see how horrible the mu really was, I won on the back of my single ghost quarter - he overloaded the board in the face of my Engineered Explosives (on 2, because Ravager + Skirge) - he was doing math and left 1 mana open to activate his Inkmoth (I noticed), my turn I cracked the EE mainfase to bait out that he would sac his board to Ravager and move the counters to his Inkmoth instead of his 0/1 battlecry dude... he did, afterwards I played my Ghost Quarter and that was GG. This game showed me how important the EE are, for all aggro matchups they matter, A LOT!
I actually think our Affinity matchup isn't too bad. EE does much better against them than Infect, they can't recover from a board wipe like Infect can (where they just hold their next creature in hand until the first one dies). T2 TKS -> T3 Smasher has never lost me a game against them because they simply have no answers. Displacer is also a monster against them by blinking whatever they put plating on or sac ravager to. Stony Silence out of the board is also pretty GG most times.
Played a small tournament yesterday, had some serious matchups. Wrecked Elves 2-1 due to a Grafdigger's Cage nullifying 3 Chords + 1 Company in his hand - he made an attack with Ezuri active hoping I made a mistake.. suffice to say I didn't. Other games were vs. Jund/Junk - I think we should chew those decks up, midrange can't deal with the amount of pressure we put on the board.
Finals I id'd with a Affinity player but we played it out to see how horrible the mu really was, I won on the back of my single ghost quarter - he overloaded the board in the face of my Engineered Explosives (on 2, because Ravager + Skirge) - he was doing math and left 1 mana open to activate his Inkmoth (I noticed), my turn I cracked the EE mainfase to bait out that he would sac his board to Ravager and move the counters to his Inkmoth instead of his 0/1 battlecry dude... he did, afterwards I played my Ghost Quarter and that was GG. This game showed me how important the EE are, for all aggro matchups they matter, A LOT!
Yeah, i definitely agree with the EE portion.
In fact, against aggro swarm, like Affinity, Merfolk, Slivers, etc, it´s a must draw for us.
I found myself with very good hands, and losing anyways.
I also found myself with bad hands, but with Path and EE in hand, and winning or coming very close to it, it matters that much to have a sweeper.
I think it makes a mulligan rule in this deck, if you don´t have the god hand, T2 TKS, T3 Smasher, T4 Another Smahser or Drowner, you should mull until you find SB or Stirrings. This is true for aggro swarm and only that for now.
EE is not that awkward against Totem Armors - all enchantments with CMC1 will be destroyed still, just the Bogle and any 2CMC+ auras will survive. So if it's a Bogle with Rancor, Ethereal, Spider Umbra, and Daybreak Coronet, EE on 1 will leave them with just the Bogle (Daybreak will fall off since there are no other enchantments). Speaking as a previous Bogle player, EE is one of the worst cards they want to see (that and Spellskite of course).
Well, after a bunch of testing with the 3/3/3 split of 3-drops i got to the conclusion that the mana base can´t support it the way its build.
I heard many pros like Gerry Thompson, Pascal, Sam Pardee, say that the blue comes in a splash for this deck, and adding Skyspawner kinda messes that up.
What i do think is that Skyspawner MIGHT be more important than Matter Reshaper. So, the natural transistion is to cut one of the two, since Displacer is the most important of the three.
What do you guys think?. Is it time to move over Reshaper or we can battle Affinity and Infect from another angle?.
Skyspawner has been sooo good that i find hard to not play him in the MB.
This deck is still in work and i barely can see the roof.
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To point to more empirical evidence rather than match-up based evidence. In the past 2 weeks, Bant Eldrazi has T4ed a 2200 man GP, and a T8ed an SCG Modern Classic, and started putting up results online. Regardless of your opinion of certain match-ups, it is a competitive deck.
Modern -
Modern
UGWRB Humans
G Mono-Green Tron
UWBR Ad Nauseam
Engineered Explosives for 2 is the way to deal with the fish.
Watchout for Spell Pierce and dont get greedy with it, if you get 1 Silvergil adept and 1 Lord explosives did its job and its Smasher and Drowner´s job to close it down.
Thanks!
Modern
UGWRB Humans
G Mono-Green Tron
UWBR Ad Nauseam
I did the math while I was sitting there (maybe I forgot a creature between the match and the writeup for his side like another mana dork or something). I remember knowing I could swing in but he'd have enough blockers to not die. My out was that I could have selected which creatures he blocked with (outside of Spellskite) and put him to 1. I had the answer for his only out (CoCo) in hand and he'd have been dead on the next turn since I could then blink and tap down his team. Still I admit that I punted that game and with it I never got to a game 3. I am not perfect all the time ha ha.
Ok Ladies and Gents.. I got another couple tournament reports for you! Finally stopped running headlong into Control unfortunately but now I can address other areas of concern and get reps in against other archetypes.
Friday FNM 57 People:
4x Noble Hierarch
1x Bird of Paradise
2x Spellskite
4x Matter Reshaper
4x Eldrazi Displacer
4x Thought-knot Seer
4x Reality Smasher
4x Drowner of Hope
1x World Breaker
Instants/Sorceries:
4x Ancient Stirrings
4x Path to Exile
Lands:
4x Windswept Heath
4x Eldrazi Temple
3x Cavern of Souls
3x Brushlands
2x Yavamaya Coast
1x Westvale Abbey
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Forest
1x Plains
1x Waste
1x Ghost Quarter
3x Engineered Explosives
3x Stubborn Denial
3x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Timely Reinforcements
2x Stony Silence
1x Mark of Asylum
1x Thragtusk
Round 1 Kiki-Chord (2-1)[1-0]:
Game 1 I had to mull to 5 and he got a very fast Kiki combo off. It was through a TKS to take a resto Angel as well. He ripped Chord on his next draw and went off the following turn (He chorded for Resto, blinked his on board Ewit get Chord back and then win on his turn). Game 2 and 3 I managed to play the grindy game and was able to minimize the value of his Voice's and a Grafdiggers Cage stranded 2 CoCo's and a Chord in his hand Game 3.
Round 2 RG Tron (2-0)[2-0]:
Game 1 stick large fat beats, take payoff card with TKS, have lethal through Wurmcoil on following turn. Game 2 dropped Stony Silence early and ripped only payoff card out of his hand. I get Displacer TKS soft lock on his draw step as I close out the game quickly. First time playing RG Tron with this deck and the games went according to plan. As long as they don't magical christmas us or our deck gives us chaff I think we are favored here.
Round 3 RG Tron (0-2)[2-1]:
Ok you know what I was saying before... ug. My opponent got his spellskites on Turn 2 both games and it stopped me from swinging through with the Matter Reshaper and Displacers I had on board. Top that off that I couldn't blink the things I wanted (I did get to hit him for essentially 10 with a TKS game 2 [swing for 4, attempt to blink twice during draw step which gets redirected to Spellskite]). The main issue is he found 2 during game 2 and was able to sit behind them and protect his Ugin til it got to Ult. I scooped when he dropped Ulamogg and destroyed my boardstate. He revealed his hand and had another Ulamogg and another Ugin in hand.. some people get all the luck.
Round 4 Abzan CoCo (0-2)[2-2]:
Game 1 he had the T3 Infinite combo pretty much natural as you draw it up (even played a Seer before he could see what I was on). Game 2 I had him dead on board as long as he didn't rip a Chord or a Finks. (he had Seer on Board and all the other combo pieces in hand when I looked at it with TKS. I had to take a Redcap to just not die (since he had Anafenza and Melira in hand). Ofcourse he ripped it off the top and won.
Ug some very bad beats there at the end... what are you gonna do. I keep getting wrecked by opposing Spellskites. Not being able to tap what we want or blink what we need to is just brutal. I am considering putting some number of Pithing Needles in the Sideboard since they can be found with Ancient Stirrings and it can be useful in multiple matchups (hitting Viscera Seer, Karn, O-Stone, Cranial Plating, Spellskite, Ezuri, Ravager, Inkmoth Nexus and so many more).
Sunday Morning Modern 39 People:
4x Noble Hierarch
1x Bird of Paradise
2x Spellskite
4x Matter Reshaper
4x Eldrazi Displacer
4x Thought-knot Seer
4x Reality Smasher
4x Drowner of Hope
1x World Breaker
Instants/Sorceries:
4x Ancient Stirrings
4x Path to Exile
Lands:
4x Windswept Heath
4x Eldrazi Temple
3x Cavern of Souls
3x Brushlands
2x Yavamaya Coast
1x Westvale Abbey
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Forest
1x Plains
1x Waste
1x Ghost Quarter
3x Engineered Explosives
3x Stubborn Denial
3x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Timely Reinforcements
2x Stony Silence
1x Mark of Asylum
1x Thragtusk
Round 1 Grixis Control (2-0)[1-0]:
So absurd stat for this match to identify how good our control matchup is if played correctly. I won game 1 on 3 spells and game 2 on 5. The rest of my cards and draws were lands. Westvale Abbey sealed me up Game 2 with a bit of Ohrmendhal overkill (he was at 1 but I flipped it for the hell of it because he had no outs and how often do we get to do that. I am now 13-0-1 against control with this list.
Round 2 UR Delver (1-2)[1-1]:
So Game 1 I rofled over him because he got hosed on lands and things I guess. I didn't see enough of his deck to really have him on anything. Saw a bunch of basic Islands (one of which he fetched for after the first Steam Vents) so I thought it was possibly Blue Moon. Game 2 I got punished hard for taking out Paths and he manages to rip a bolt to flip delver and kill me. Game 3 he had essentially the nuts and rode Swiftspear, Vapor Snag, Bolt, Roast to victory. Roast was the primary hurts card in the matchup. Being a budget list he was running a full 4x and as you can expect... it wrecks everything in our deck really. Normally over the coarse of a long game you'd be fine with the 2 for 1. As it stood, you couldn't keep taking the Delver, YP and Swiftspear beats. Ug, oh well.
Round 3 RG Tron (0-2)[1-2]:
Game 1 I got land screwed for the first time in a while. Stuck on 2 lands I was unable to stop what he was doing (I had enough time and threats in opening hand which consisted of both lands that I probably had him dead otherwise). Game 2 I stick a T2 Stoney Silence. He plays a 2nd Tron piece and passes the turn. I use my turn to Ancient Stirrings and find Ghost Quarter which is perfect so I could guarantee to stop his Natural tron and hopefully by me the time to get my TKS's on board and strip anything relevant from hand. Well as it turns out he had natural tron AND redundant pieces for the first 2 he played plus payoff cards. Man I am getting frustrated with my opponents having the nuts. It seems to be happening with stupid consistency.
Round 4 Grixis Control (2-0)[2-2]:
Second verse same as the first? This time I got more spells to play with but it was a total annihilation either way. Put my anti-control marker to 14-0-1 over 7 Tournaments.
Thoughts.. I think I am going to cut a land to 23 and World Breaker from the Main. My total changes might look something like this:
MB:
-1 Land
-1 World Breaker
+2 Eldrazi Skyspawner
SB:
-2 Timely Reinforcements
-1 Mark of Asylum
+2 Pithing Needle
+1 World Breaker
I want to try Skyspawner as another early creature that has the evasion to get around walls like Spellskite. Also it is ramp and another Scion for Drowner later (not to mention Skyspawner makes another Displacer target). I get flooded a LOT more than I'd like as well. I think with 5 dorks and 4 stirrings which can find lands we should be fine at 23 but it'll need testing. I like World Breaker but if I am reducing the land count I might as well reduce the curve. He also hasn't been 100% vital to my control matchup. As for Timely, they have just never come up in a spot to be good. Sure they might be good against burn but that has been the only matchup where they have come in for. I think I might just surrender the Burn matchup as being bad and give myself better odds of beating other decks.
I think that Warping Wail is a decent sideboard card, but it probably doesn't quite make the 75.
I really think that any less than 2 Engineered Explosives is a mistake though. It destroys Fish, Elves, Boggles, tokens, Lantern Control, etc. I board it in vs affinity and I've found it to be pretty good set on 0 or 2. It's also one of, if not our only out to Blood Moon. I see a lot of decks still running 3 copies of it.
Modern -
Look through the last couple pages to see my tournament logs but I'll give you a slight spoiler. I am 14-0-1 against control. That includes Nahiri.
Modern
UGWRB Humans
G Mono-Green Tron
UWBR Ad Nauseam
Natural State is good. I've been playing one in my SB and liked it so far, super versatile card. Besides Moon and Bridge it comes in against Affinity, Bogles, Lantern, Infect (Inkmoth is usually the only target but the spell has always been relevant so far (as they tend to even play Sylvan Scrying to look for it), Ad Nauseam, Storm, Fish etc...
It's a fine card if that's what you choose to bring in. I don't think it is exactly required though. Sideboards are really based on preference in answers. I actually haven't run into a ton of Blood Moons but the decks that do run them I typically try and just counter it with Stubborn Denial or rip it out of hand with TKS. Ensnaring Bridges problem comes from them getting multiples.. or a Spellskite to protect it. Ensnaring Bridge decks are also not very popular right now.
This is why cards like Stubborn Denial are good. If they try and jam Blood Moon turn 3 we can counter it. If they try to hold onto it for too long, the chance for us getting it with a TKS and usually apply enough pressure before they finish us (or get our basics into play). The main Blood Moon decks that I have found to be problematic are those that ALSO run land destruction to hit our basics. I do play 1 Waste for those instances though. Having 1 less G source for T1 hasn't really affected my overall experience as of yet.
Norn's Annex is the only decent card you listed, Magus of the Moat and Teferi's Moat get ignored by Inkmoth Nexus, Blinkmoth, Ornithopter, and Vault Skirge. That makes them not even that good against infect(they are good against Boogles and Zoo though).
Ghostly Prison is probably your best bet.
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Standard Deck:
BUPirates
Modern Deck:
B8-Rack
I think our best route is still trying to get to the following Spellskite->Displacer->Drowner of Hope. If you can ramp quickly enough to those you should be able to win. They REALLY struggle with Drowner since it requires double vines to stop. Bring in counter magic for the pump spells and be sure you kill Spellskites if you can.
I play two in the side and I highly reccomend them. They cause so many free wins because your opponent can't possibly remove all our dudes and has no answer to enchantments. I don't reccomend slamming it turn three unless you're trying to dodge hand disruption or are likely to die otherwise. Your opponent will play differently once its on the field and you want them to get blindsided. The best use is when you and your opponent are racing and the turn before you would lose you resolve worship and suddenly the tons of life they lost attempting to win the race looks really bad.
I actually think our Affinity matchup isn't too bad. EE does much better against them than Infect, they can't recover from a board wipe like Infect can (where they just hold their next creature in hand until the first one dies). T2 TKS -> T3 Smasher has never lost me a game against them because they simply have no answers. Displacer is also a monster against them by blinking whatever they put plating on or sac ravager to. Stony Silence out of the board is also pretty GG most times.
Yeah, i definitely agree with the EE portion.
In fact, against aggro swarm, like Affinity, Merfolk, Slivers, etc, it´s a must draw for us.
I found myself with very good hands, and losing anyways.
I also found myself with bad hands, but with Path and EE in hand, and winning or coming very close to it, it matters that much to have a sweeper.
I think it makes a mulligan rule in this deck, if you don´t have the god hand, T2 TKS, T3 Smasher, T4 Another Smahser or Drowner, you should mull until you find SB or Stirrings. This is true for aggro swarm and only that for now.
EDH: Rakdos, Lord of Riots
I would definitely bring in my two stony silence. How about negate/stubborn denials? Eldrazi mimic to put on pressure?
Also, what would I take out for these cards? Cheers.
I heard many pros like Gerry Thompson, Pascal, Sam Pardee, say that the blue comes in a splash for this deck, and adding Skyspawner kinda messes that up.
What i do think is that Skyspawner MIGHT be more important than Matter Reshaper. So, the natural transistion is to cut one of the two, since Displacer is the most important of the three.
What do you guys think?. Is it time to move over Reshaper or we can battle Affinity and Infect from another angle?.
Skyspawner has been sooo good that i find hard to not play him in the MB.
This deck is still in work and i barely can see the roof.