I really enjoy Midrange and Control mirrors also, specifically the Jund v GDS matchup. So many decision trees that can become relevant several turns down the line vs MUs like storm where you just play out your hand and if you have the right disruption you win.
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18 land mana is advantage in a matchup like this because it means you will draw less lands which at the same time means you will draw more threats/answers to their threats.
I strongly disagree with this statement. Against Jund I want to board in my 3 Lilianas (2 LotV, 1 Last Hope), my extra Kolaghan's Command, my single Engineered Explosives, my 2 Nihil Spellbombs. I will also probably end up cutting at least 2 of my Street Wraiths because I need to keep some disruption of my own to keep their Lilianas off the board. This means that the average CMC of my deck will increase significantly to a point at which having the extra land will usually be more helpful than drawing yet another value card early. Missing my turn 3 land drop can dramatically diminish the value of my Snapcaster Mages and Lilianas. In addition, extra lands can often be pitched to the LotV that one of the players is almost inevitably going to resolve in these games.
I'm fine if you feel the way as you do but I'm definitely rather on the deck with less lands in that kind of matchup because that means I am more likely to draw more spells and GDS can operate on very few lands.
Following your reasoning, wouldn't it be smart to board out more lands for extra value cards? 17 lands could be even better than 18 lands. What makes you feel that 18 lands is the sweet spot, not 17 or 19?
Honestly, 17 lands has been working very well for me with a 3-2 split of Serum Visions and Opt. However, I have basically no land hate in my local meta at all, so it's a decision I've made with that in mind. I still experience more flood than screw, but going for anything lower than 17 seems way too greedy.
@aiolia
I think he means, serum visions is better on setting your next draws if you keep a 1 land hand because of the scry 2. If you don't need the lands by turn 3 or you hit the 3 lands early then Opt is better cause you'll be getting more threats/answers rather than looking for a land.
Not so familiar with the list, but Lightning Helix and Lingering Souls kept beating me together with indestructible 4/4 Gideon. Won 1 game out of 6 games with TBR.
I've got enough Gideons, Geists, Tron and just random annoyances in my meta that having a one-off To the Slaughter in the SB seemed like something worth trying out. So far I've only seen it in the mirror match, where it was a decent response to an Angler (at mana parity with a dismember, since I already was at low life). I look forward to testing it more.
Nihil Spellbomb, Izzet Staticaster and Liliana, the Last Hope are very good sideboard cards vs Mardu Pyromancer. It is also noteworthy that Mardu Pyromancer leans towards heavy discard rather than heavy removal. The deck is not as good at getting rid of Gurmag Angler as Abzan because it usually doesn't have Path. TBR can obviously be good in this matchup, especially because Mardu Pyromancer is sometimes hellbent in the later stages of the game. I wouldn't call the matchup unfavorable, but I have only played about a dozen games against the deck.
+2 Anger of the Gods/Kozilek's Return
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Izzet Staticaster/Liliana, the Last Hope (ideally both)
+2 Nihil Spellbomb
+1 Stubborn Denial
My plan is to streamline my deck by cutting cards I don't need in multiples (plus Kommand because it's not relevant enough). The remaining discard spells are mostly there to take their discard spells. If they play very defensively, I would cut 2 IOKs instead of 2 Thoughtseizes, an Opt/Serum Visions instead of one Street Wraith and a Fatal Push instead of a Dismember. From my experience, they will go all in though, so I'd like to keep the self-hurt at a reasonable level and let them do the work.
To give a little context, i have played the Mardu Pyro matchup about 10-12 times, i won about 7-8 of those. The pilot of the Mardu deck was a friend of mine testing the deck, he is not an amazing player but he's pretty smart and whenever he made a bad choice or a simple missplay(like wrong fetch) he could take it back and play correctly.
First thing i noticed about the matchup is that you want to grind but in a tempo fashion rather than a midrange one. What i mean by this is that Stubborn Denial is great, and you win a lot of games by resolving a Delve threat and protecting it with counter. Discard is still good to get things hard to beat out their hand, like Blood Moon, Young Pyro and whatnot.
Fatal Push is kind of bad here because YP is the only target, and the thing that makes more damage is the tokens which you will have to deal with a good SB hate against X/1s like Staticaster, Pyroclasm, Liliana Last Hope,etc.
Again, the most important thing i got from the limited amount of testing was the fact that you win by out tempoing them. Their deck is kind of clunky, and the card that beats you hard is Lingering Souls and YP(if he gets to generate too much value). Nihil Spellbomb is great against them since they are secretly leaning on GY shenaningans like flashback Looting, Souls and Bedlam Reveler.
The list my opp was playing had no Path(which i think is the norm), 2 Pushes, 4 Bolts and 2-1 Terminate/Dreadbore. I think you should play around getting Bolted out of the game on G1, G2 they'll probably SB out those.
My list is 18 land, 2 TBR stock, and 2 Kommands because i hate Chalice of the Bored.
I SB the following cards: -3 Push, -2 TBR, -1 Street Wraith
+1 Lili Last Hope, +2 Nihil Spellbomb, +2 Stubby D, +1 EE
I played against different versions on the deck on MTGO. Some of had Monastery Swiftspears in addition to the Young Pyromasters, which can't be killed by Liliana, the Last Hope and Izzet Staticaster. I also like to go aggressively after Young Pyromancer, because this has repeatedly provoked my opponents into recurring it with Kolaghan's Command and recasting it. That's a nice tempo swing for just 1 mana. And I want to play the tempo game here, because they will likely outgrind me if the game goes too long.
How about using surgical extraction instead of nihil spellbombs, since you can use SCM to flash it back. And why not remove all street wraith since it's a grindy match and they have burn spells? I would keep in kol command too.
Alright kids, would love a little feedback on some tinkering I am doing leading up to this weekend. I played in the first part of a two part tournament at Hareruya last weekend. 6 rounds of swiss, top 16 advance to the second day, which is this coming Saturday. Crushed everyone and everything to start 4-0, then ID ID because qualification was already guaranteed. List I played with looked like this:
Hard to argue with an undefeated run, but as always there is space for tinkering and improvement. In addition, assuming people play the same decks as last time (not required or guaranteed, but fairly likely), I know the exact expected metagame. It looks like:
5 Grixis Shadow (one of them me)
1 Red Stompy
1 Junk
1 Living End (Jund)
1 Bant Eldrazi (Actually with some red for Obligator, but the same Noble Hierarch-Ancient Stirrings core)
1 Eldrazi Tron
1 Elves (Black, no druid combo)
1 BR Discard (The burning inquiry deck)
1 Green Tron
1 Humans
1 UB Tezzeret
1 UR Madcap Moon
Squeeze that down a bit and we get
6 Three color Midrange
3 Eldrazi and/or Tron
2 Decks where I want Kozilek's Return
5 Random Nonsense, AKA Stubborn Denial-TBR-GG
So I can go a lot of different directions with all this, in both the Main and Side.
Initial thoughts:
Very little graveyard hate anywhere. Don't need to worry about any of that.
No LD ANYWHERE. Down to 4 Shocklands?
Maindeck:
Removal: Lightning Bolt 100 Percent out. No Affinity, only 2 decks where its good. Push is great against half the meta and fairly bad elsewhere. 3 feels right. Lots of mirrors makes me want to lean more towards Terminate than Dismember. 3-2-1 Push-Terminate-Dismember? 3-3-0?
Creatures: If there are lots of mirrors, and the rest of the decks want closing speed, I will look to go up to at least 3 and possibly 4 Anglers. Everything else is fine.
Stubborn Denial: Only really bad against Humans. Functional (but probably sided out) in the mirror, best card in the deck against team random nonsense. 3 maindeck might be fine.
Opt/Serum Visions: No Bolt makes me want Visions. Going up on Denial makes me want Opt. Flip a coin?
Kolaghan's Command: By my count its good in 10/15 matchups. 2 feels right.
TBR: Liability against midrange mirrors, great basically everywhere else. Probably still want one main.
Sideboard: Lets just go down the line:
Dire Fleet Daredevil: Certainly the most experimental and for funsies card in the deck, but not going anywhere in this meta. He's a monster in Fatal Push mirrors, and can also exile those pesky Lingering Souls. Honestly considering playing 3.
Young Pyromancer: Him dodging RiP and black Leyline is essentially irrelevant. Good if the mirror crew are packing LotV, loses points if they come with Last Hope. Daredevil seems the much better value 2-drop here.
Ceremonious Rejection: No Affinity and one of the Eldrazi decks packing 4 Caverns hurts, but it still poops on Tron and Eldrazi. 2 slots for the colorless menace seems fine, also helps a bit against Tezz.
Collective Brutality: No Burn, little combo. Want it for Elves to snap a dude and Company but other than that pretty low impact. I will 99 percent have 2 of these in the board for GP Kyoto but seems like a pretty reasonable cut this weekend.
Stubborn Denial: Probably want 4 in the 75 because they are the best thing to be doing against Madcap, Tezz, Blood Moons, but could easily be convinced to just play 3.
Disdainful Stroke: Good against all the Eldrazi/Tron nonsense, but pretty narrow and no Valakut to pick on either.
Kozilek's Return: Great against two decks, but pretty low on targets in this meta. Ignore sweepers, pump up to 3 TBR in the 75, Berserk through for the win?
TBR: Don't want it against Push, quite possibly the best card against all the other matchups.
Planeswalkers: I am generally a fan of 3, but I could see playing 4. Last Hope loses a bit of value with few x/1s running around. Fun-of Ashiok is also somewhere on the radar.
Graveyard Hate: Seems fine to ignore, yea? Play against Living End and Thoughtseize-Thoughtseize-Berserk them. The BR deck much more of a 'fair deck' than something like Dredge, so Push and Terminate still work.
Artifacts: I love me a By Force in the right meta, but no Affinity and no Lantern means the maindeck K Commands should do the trick.
Thoughts? Observations? Suggestions? I realize this isn't really relevant for something like a GP, but I do think its a good idea to occasionally get those wheels in your head spinning and thinking about matchups, strong and weak points of cards, and how we should be approaching sideboarding.
Using Dire Fleet Daredevil is spicey as hell, i love it.
Have you thought about Engineered Explosives instead of Kozilek‘s Return? It’s a very flexible card and can get rid of Liliana in the mirror matches which is a big deal besides beeing good against Tezzeret, Elves, Humans and Abzan too.
Daredevil is a delight. The power level is definitely there for it to be showing up in Modern and Legacy in the right spots. I have been playing with it a bit in Legacy DnT as well. Snapcaster Mage is basically the reason I play Modern but when Daredevil is good its way more fun than even my buddy Thiago. If I know that literally 40 percent of my metagame is playing Fatal Push and Thoughtseize then she is a powerhouse option to have. Time will tell if it has long term staying power in decks, but IMO its certainly worth testing. The other bonus for right now is you still catch people off guard with it and get the 'wait what the hell does that card do?' looks.
EE is something I have on my radar in general but didn't really click for this specific tourney until you mentioned it. That might be a great sweeper option here because its flexible against the mirror and junk but also picks off Blood Moon, Chalice, and Spirits. That looks pretty worth of consideration.
Dire Fleet Daredevil is cute, but it is just so much better in an Aether Vial deck. At the point in the game where we have 5 mana to cast Lingering Souls with it, a 2/1 with First Strike is going to be irrelevant most of the time. I can see how Dire Fleet Daredevil performs great in a Grixis Shadow mirror, but so do many other cute cards that only see fringe play because they are too narrow or too expensive to warrant one - let alone two - sideboard slots. Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Liliana's Defeat etc.
I’d like to point out that against Living End, discard isn’t nearly as good as you’re thinking. They play 8 copies of their Cascade spells and ~16 1-mana draw spells. Not to mention Beast Within your guy after battle rage. I’d throw some games against that one, it doesn’t navigate like normal combo. You may play a Deaths shadow at 14 life with a fetch in play to Trump their yard flip.
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The new Mono-U Living End seems like a really good matchup for us. I've run a few games against a friend who built the deck, and dropped a single game of about 6-7 due to him having an absolute god draw. Other than that I was able to both pick apart his hand and counter any As Foretolds he was trying to land in order to secure the wins.
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What is the relationship between "Opt better than Visions" and "hit your third land drop"? I really don't understand.
I think he means, serum visions is better on setting your next draws if you keep a 1 land hand because of the scry 2. If you don't need the lands by turn 3 or you hit the 3 lands early then Opt is better cause you'll be getting more threats/answers rather than looking for a land.
Not so familiar with the list, but Lightning Helix and Lingering Souls kept beating me together with indestructible 4/4 Gideon. Won 1 game out of 6 games with TBR.
-1 Dismember
-1 Kolaghan's Command
-1 Snapcaster Mage
-2 Street Wraith
-2 Thoughtseize
+2 Anger of the Gods/Kozilek's Return
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Izzet Staticaster/Liliana, the Last Hope (ideally both)
+2 Nihil Spellbomb
+1 Stubborn Denial
My plan is to streamline my deck by cutting cards I don't need in multiples (plus Kommand because it's not relevant enough). The remaining discard spells are mostly there to take their discard spells. If they play very defensively, I would cut 2 IOKs instead of 2 Thoughtseizes, an Opt/Serum Visions instead of one Street Wraith and a Fatal Push instead of a Dismember. From my experience, they will go all in though, so I'd like to keep the self-hurt at a reasonable level and let them do the work.
First thing i noticed about the matchup is that you want to grind but in a tempo fashion rather than a midrange one. What i mean by this is that Stubborn Denial is great, and you win a lot of games by resolving a Delve threat and protecting it with counter. Discard is still good to get things hard to beat out their hand, like Blood Moon, Young Pyro and whatnot.
Fatal Push is kind of bad here because YP is the only target, and the thing that makes more damage is the tokens which you will have to deal with a good SB hate against X/1s like Staticaster, Pyroclasm, Liliana Last Hope,etc.
Again, the most important thing i got from the limited amount of testing was the fact that you win by out tempoing them. Their deck is kind of clunky, and the card that beats you hard is Lingering Souls and YP(if he gets to generate too much value). Nihil Spellbomb is great against them since they are secretly leaning on GY shenaningans like flashback Looting, Souls and Bedlam Reveler.
The list my opp was playing had no Path(which i think is the norm), 2 Pushes, 4 Bolts and 2-1 Terminate/Dreadbore. I think you should play around getting Bolted out of the game on G1, G2 they'll probably SB out those.
My list is 18 land, 2 TBR stock, and 2 Kommands because i hate Chalice of the Bored.
I SB the following cards: -3 Push, -2 TBR, -1 Street Wraith
+1 Lili Last Hope, +2 Nihil Spellbomb, +2 Stubby D, +1 EE
3 Scalding Tarn
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
2 Watery Grave
1 Steam Vents
2 Blood Crypt
1 Island
1 Swamp
Creature (16)
4 Street Wraith
4 Death's Shadow
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, The Golden Fang
2 Gurmag Angler
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Serum Visions
4 Thoughtseize
Instant (15)
4 Thought Scour
3 Fatal Push
2 Stubborn Denial
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Terminate
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Temur Battle Rage
1 Dismember
Planeswalker (1)
1 Liliana of the Veil
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Collective Brutality
2 Cermonious Rejection
2 Young Pyromancer
2 Dire Fleet Daredevil
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Temur Battle Rage
Hard to argue with an undefeated run, but as always there is space for tinkering and improvement. In addition, assuming people play the same decks as last time (not required or guaranteed, but fairly likely), I know the exact expected metagame. It looks like:
5 Grixis Shadow (one of them me)
1 Red Stompy
1 Junk
1 Living End (Jund)
1 Bant Eldrazi (Actually with some red for Obligator, but the same Noble Hierarch-Ancient Stirrings core)
1 Eldrazi Tron
1 Elves (Black, no druid combo)
1 BR Discard (The burning inquiry deck)
1 Green Tron
1 Humans
1 UB Tezzeret
1 UR Madcap Moon
Squeeze that down a bit and we get
6 Three color Midrange
3 Eldrazi and/or Tron
2 Decks where I want Kozilek's Return
5 Random Nonsense, AKA Stubborn Denial-TBR-GG
So I can go a lot of different directions with all this, in both the Main and Side.
Initial thoughts:
Very little graveyard hate anywhere. Don't need to worry about any of that.
No LD ANYWHERE. Down to 4 Shocklands?
Maindeck:
Removal: Lightning Bolt 100 Percent out. No Affinity, only 2 decks where its good. Push is great against half the meta and fairly bad elsewhere. 3 feels right. Lots of mirrors makes me want to lean more towards Terminate than Dismember. 3-2-1 Push-Terminate-Dismember? 3-3-0?
Creatures: If there are lots of mirrors, and the rest of the decks want closing speed, I will look to go up to at least 3 and possibly 4 Anglers. Everything else is fine.
Stubborn Denial: Only really bad against Humans. Functional (but probably sided out) in the mirror, best card in the deck against team random nonsense. 3 maindeck might be fine.
Opt/Serum Visions: No Bolt makes me want Visions. Going up on Denial makes me want Opt. Flip a coin?
Kolaghan's Command: By my count its good in 10/15 matchups. 2 feels right.
TBR: Liability against midrange mirrors, great basically everywhere else. Probably still want one main.
Sideboard: Lets just go down the line:
Dire Fleet Daredevil: Certainly the most experimental and for funsies card in the deck, but not going anywhere in this meta. He's a monster in Fatal Push mirrors, and can also exile those pesky Lingering Souls. Honestly considering playing 3.
Young Pyromancer: Him dodging RiP and black Leyline is essentially irrelevant. Good if the mirror crew are packing LotV, loses points if they come with Last Hope. Daredevil seems the much better value 2-drop here.
Ceremonious Rejection: No Affinity and one of the Eldrazi decks packing 4 Caverns hurts, but it still poops on Tron and Eldrazi. 2 slots for the colorless menace seems fine, also helps a bit against Tezz.
Collective Brutality: No Burn, little combo. Want it for Elves to snap a dude and Company but other than that pretty low impact. I will 99 percent have 2 of these in the board for GP Kyoto but seems like a pretty reasonable cut this weekend.
Stubborn Denial: Probably want 4 in the 75 because they are the best thing to be doing against Madcap, Tezz, Blood Moons, but could easily be convinced to just play 3.
Disdainful Stroke: Good against all the Eldrazi/Tron nonsense, but pretty narrow and no Valakut to pick on either.
Kozilek's Return: Great against two decks, but pretty low on targets in this meta. Ignore sweepers, pump up to 3 TBR in the 75, Berserk through for the win?
TBR: Don't want it against Push, quite possibly the best card against all the other matchups.
Planeswalkers: I am generally a fan of 3, but I could see playing 4. Last Hope loses a bit of value with few x/1s running around. Fun-of Ashiok is also somewhere on the radar.
Graveyard Hate: Seems fine to ignore, yea? Play against Living End and Thoughtseize-Thoughtseize-Berserk them. The BR deck much more of a 'fair deck' than something like Dredge, so Push and Terminate still work.
Artifacts: I love me a By Force in the right meta, but no Affinity and no Lantern means the maindeck K Commands should do the trick.
Thoughts? Observations? Suggestions? I realize this isn't really relevant for something like a GP, but I do think its a good idea to occasionally get those wheels in your head spinning and thinking about matchups, strong and weak points of cards, and how we should be approaching sideboarding.
Daredevil is a delight. The power level is definitely there for it to be showing up in Modern and Legacy in the right spots. I have been playing with it a bit in Legacy DnT as well. Snapcaster Mage is basically the reason I play Modern but when Daredevil is good its way more fun than even my buddy Thiago. If I know that literally 40 percent of my metagame is playing Fatal Push and Thoughtseize then she is a powerhouse option to have. Time will tell if it has long term staying power in decks, but IMO its certainly worth testing. The other bonus for right now is you still catch people off guard with it and get the 'wait what the hell does that card do?' looks.
EE is something I have on my radar in general but didn't really click for this specific tourney until you mentioned it. That might be a great sweeper option here because its flexible against the mirror and junk but also picks off Blood Moon, Chalice, and Spirits. That looks pretty worth of consideration.
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Feel free to PM me about Affinity decks in any format!