I agree with everything this guy is saying in his last 2-3 posts. *Golf clap*
Trophy is good for us in some critical matches but it doesn't replace decay, and I think decay is still better more often than Trophy (in the current metagame)
Just the existence of Trophy (and thus increase in Tarmogoyf metagame presence) will increase the number of Spell Snares (even mentioned in UW forum), which then makes Decay even more relevant.
Personally I'm loving all the Trophy hype because I'll be playing Sultai mid-range in the new metagame and eating other BGx decks for breakfast with my Spell Snares and Abrupt Decays, while they're ramping me into turn 3 JTMS
Well sure Trophy should be used for mostly Walkers and Creature Lands. But it does help Abzan since it doesn't have the breathe of options that Jund was rocking thanks to having Red.
I'm also not suggesting running decay instead of Trophy, but say a 2 Trophy - 1 Pulse split with maybe a 3rd Trophy in the board. Decay will probably end up being cut from 75 altogether anyway.
This part I disagree with.. Burn, Spirits, Humans, & Jund are all very popular decks in the format and Decay is actively better than Trophy here. I wouldn't want trophy at all for these matches (or maybe 1x post board against Jund) and Decay is so good especially against humans/spirits because it takes care of AEther Vial and nearly all creatures they use.
I'm also not suggesting running decay instead of Trophy, but say a 2 Trophy - 1 Pulse split with maybe a 3rd Trophy in the board. Decay will probably end up being cut from 75 altogether anyway.
This part I disagree with.. Burn, Spirits, Humans, & Jund are all very popular decks in the format and Decay is actively better than Trophy here. I wouldn't want trophy at all for these matches (or maybe 1x post board against Jund) and Decay is so good especially against humans/spirits because it takes care of AEther Vial and nearly all creatures they use.
I can see a world where we would play a 3/2 split on Trophy and Decay instead of 3/1/1 on AT/AD/Pulse. But there's just no way that a 2/2 or 2/3 split is correct on Day 1 of the new meta. Decay is a really narrow card. There are matchups where it has virtually, or literally, zero relevant targets. Trophy always does something and it often does a lot. We can't hedge on Decay being good in matchups when you might go an entire tournament without seeing those matchups. At least Trophy is always removing something and often removing something that Decay can't hit at all. This is the same reason we often see 3 TS in BGx even if TS is harmful and risky in many matchups. It's a catchall answer in a very diverse format. Trophy fits that bill.
Re: Spell Snare
If UWx adapts with this card, fine. Let's force them to have 6 lands in play, Teferi and Snare in hand every game to feel confident casting Teferi. If they want to run 1-2 Snare and compromise their countermagic against Lily, that's fine too. Running more Decays in place of Trophy doesn't solve any of these issues because Decay is often terrible in that matchup.
I can see a world where we would play a 3/2 split on Trophy and Decay instead of 3/1/1 on AT/AD/Pulse. But there's just no way that a 2/2 or 2/3 split is correct on Day 1 of the new meta. Decay is a really narrow card. There are matchups where it has virtually, or literally, zero relevant targets. Trophy always does something and it often does a lot. We can't hedge on Decay being good in matchups when you might go an entire tournament without seeing those matchups. At least Trophy is always removing something and often removing something that Decay can't hit at all. This is the same reason we often see 3 TS in BGx even if TS is harmful and risky in many matchups. It's a catchall answer in a very diverse format. Trophy fits that bill.
I'm glad you brought up this point. Have you noticed how IOK outnumbers TS is nearly every deck that uses both (except Shadow for obvious reasons). IOK is obviously far more narrow but it has no drawback. Then why on Earth is the split usually 4iok/2ts rather than reversed? Your logic here is already proven (incorrect) by the way people play TS and IOK.
RE: Spell Snare
If UWx adapts with this card, fine. Let's force them to have 6 lands in play, Teferi and Snare in hand every game to feel confident casting Teferi. If they want to run 1-2 Snare and compromise their countermagic against Lily, that's fine too. Running more Decays in place of Trophy doesn't solve any of these issues because Decay is often terrible in that matchup.
I'm not saying run Decay instead or run more Decays than Trophy, even. But there are relevant targets (albeit rare) in UW and Tron for Decay so it's not totally dead, and the fact that it's superior to Trophy in at least 25% of (other) match-ups in the metagame leads to believe that running small and equal numbers of each is probably correct, but that all depends on what metagame you're talking about. Local where you know what 80% of the players are on? Great, make the call. But in an open meta or competitive REL, I would say to be conservative with assassinating your opponents trophies 😁
I can see a world where we would play a 3/2 split on Trophy and Decay instead of 3/1/1 on AT/AD/Pulse. But there's just no way that a 2/2 or 2/3 split is correct on Day 1 of the new meta. Decay is a really narrow card. There are matchups where it has virtually, or literally, zero relevant targets. Trophy always does something and it often does a lot. We can't hedge on Decay being good in matchups when you might go an entire tournament without seeing those matchups. At least Trophy is always removing something and often removing something that Decay can't hit at all. This is the same reason we often see 3 TS in BGx even if TS is harmful and risky in many matchups. It's a catchall answer in a very diverse format. Trophy fits that bill.
I'm glad you brought up this point. Have you noticed how IOK outnumbers TS is nearly every deck that uses both (except Shadow for obvious reasons). IOK is obviously far more narrow but it has no drawback. Then why on Earth is the split usually 4iok/2ts rather than reversed? Your logic here is already proven (incorrect) by the way people play TS and IOK.
This is an inaccurate comparison. To start, IoK isn't narrow at all. IoK is live in literally every Modern matchup. It always hits something and often hits some of the best cards. By contrast, Decay is not live in every matchup. It sometimes hits literally/virtually nothing and sometimes only hits irrelevant things. Decay is itself narrow in the first place and is not comparable to the decidedly not-narrow IoK. This isn't even a radical point. We already know Decay is narrow. If Decay was truly comparable to the flexible and versatile IoK, we would already be playing 4 in every list. Instead, we see 1-2 in most lists because we know the card is narrow and isn't live in a lot of matches. The overwhelming majority of BGx players run at most 2 copies of Decay while simultaneously playing 4 IoK. This right there should show us that IoK and Decay are not comparable.
I'm not saying run Decay instead or run more Decays than Trophy, even. But there are relevant targets (albeit rare) in UW and Tron for Decay so it's not totally dead, and the fact that it's superior to Trophy in at least 25% of (other) match-ups in the metagame leads to believe that running small and equal numbers of each is probably correct, but that all depends on what metagame you're talking about. Local where you know what 80% of the players are on? Great, make the call. But in an open meta or competitive REL, I would say to be conservative with assassinating your opponents trophies 😁
All of my testing and experience is in the extremely broad and unpredictable MTGO metagame. It's about as close to an open meta as you can get and it's very competitive. You can run multiple leagues without facing UW Control or Humans once, and you can play a League where you play both decks twice each. This is the environment where catchalls shine and where I'd want the 3/2/0 or 3/1/1 split on Trophy/Decay/Pulse. There is no MTGO universe where I'm starting on any other interaction piece in that 3rd Trophy slot because Trophy does something in every single matchup.
Again, as I said in a few previous posts, I can envision a Day N metagame where we don't want 3 Trophy in the MD and instead want 2 MD and +1 in the SB. But that requires some format shifts that have not yet happened, and I'm not going to try and next level the next level of the metagame. That's a great way to just fall apart and get lost with a bad deck and bad cards. The correct Day 1 number is almost certainly 3 because you want catchall answers in an open format that gets more open with post-release uncertainties. The correct Day N number may well be the 2/1 MD/SB split.
@Velthov: no is misread it entirely. My bad. We're on the same page.
As i'm reading more of the card and know i will need a playset to cover all bases, i'm starting of with 2 maindeck copies in modern and probably an extra in the side. The card is awesoms, but the question raises: what to cut.
You guys are really focusing on citing the best case scenarios and not actual situations where you can't use the card tbh.
Sorry, but that’s not the case at all. You can disagree with the conclusions we’ve drawn about any particular matchup, but none of us have simply cited best case scenarios. If anything, the opposite is true; the critics of Trophy have tended to indulge in a little catastrophizing, IMO.
Trophy is more or less unplayable against Valakut, Burn and Storm. Similiar to how path is almost unplayable in these matchups in Abzan.
Path is “almost unplayable” in an exponentially higher number of common scenarios than Trophy. Just think of all the decks that play few or no creatures in the maindeck! This is an obvious point, but one that bears repeating because it seems clear that the sheer power and flexibility of Trophy is becoming overshadowed in some people’s minds by the prospect of inefficient use cases.
“Almost unplayable” in any given scenario is less likely to apply to Trophy than to any other answer card in Modern.
Before I forget, it’s worth noting that people on either side of this discussion might just be talking past each other. You and others are probably defaulting to the mindset of a Traverse player when considering the Trophy count, whereas I’m speaking from the perspective of a non-Traverse pilot, which is by definition more interested in noncreature answer cards.
E.g. 1. When affinity plays and equips Cranial Plating, you'll fire it off on it to not take 5-10 extra damage and they'd still get to use the land on their 2nd main phase. Ramping isn't "optional", you always ramp except when you fire it on a nonbasic and you'll rarely get to fire it off on a nonbasic.
Yes, but aren’t you glad you had a deck chock full of instant-speed outs to a must-answer card like Plating? Decay does the job more efficiently here (but only once—Affinity usually runs a lone basic AFAIK), but at the cost of being literally dead in hand against dozens of other must-answer threats in the format.
E.g. 2. When you fire it off eot against Infect when they're tapped out, they'd still get an extra land to protect their other threats during your turn. Even if you sequence this differently and fire Trophy on your turn, they'd still get an extra land and another card in the graveyard on their turn for pump spells unless you've killed exactly an Inkmoth Nexus where in that situation, they don't get the extra land. So yea, you gave them 2 different type of resources by killing one of their threats, delve fodder and an extra mana to spend on their turn while you are likely tapped out.
Being able to hit Inkmoth on our own terms (i.e. not having to wait for them to activate it) is extraordinary in this matchup—this is the exact reason we side in Fulminator Mage. Decay is great here too (but arguably higher variance; it blows them out if they’re leaning on Pierce but is dead in hand if they go all in on Inky). Still, consider that this is a matchup where the opponent plays counter magic AND literally zero CMC 4+ permanents, and yet Trophy still keeps pace with Decay, each card having roughly equal value overall. Let that sink in!
E.g. 3. Against Ad Nauseam, would you fire it off on Pentad Prism just to cut them off a single extra mana? Decay or any other artifact removal does its job here and Trophy is stuck in your hand in the same situation because it just doesn't have an impact. Killing Leyline with Golgari Charm instead of Trophy is miles better since they're not 1 step closer to combo off when they untap and discard spells in your hand might just not be enough to keep them off combo next turn now that you've ramped them. Similiarly, Trophy isn't ideal to fire off on Lotus Bloom either.
I guess you’ll just have to ask some AN pilots about this one. BGx is widely considered a nightmare matchup for them due to our combination of discard, flexible permanent removal, and a respectable clock. I’m quite confident in saying that the ability to remove Leylines (which they will mulligan aggressively for) far outweighs the downside Trophy brings; Leyline, more than any other single card, is what the matchup hinges upon.
In fact, AN is so cold to discard-heavy decks like ours that, a few months back, some pilots were trimming a Pact of Negation, a Sleight of Hand, and a Spoils of the Vault (or something similar) in order to jam 3 Leylines main. Our targets for removal, in order of priority and assuming a relatively normal progression on both sides: Leyline > Phyrexian Unlife > Lotus Bloom on their upkeep (only if you know their hand and the play makes sense) > Prism > Lotus Bloom with limited hand info.
Another factor worth noting is that most AN players are packing an alternate wincon in the side: Grave Titan, Dragonlord Dromoka, sometimes even a transformative plan of Unburial Rites + Gifts Ungiven + I-win fatties. Decay is dead and Trophy is live against anything along those lines they’re going to bring from the sideboard.
E.g. 4. Trophy is solid against Boogles, unless they've kept a greedy 1 lander with a hand full of action and you just gave them what they needed to run away with the game, hitting their leyline so they can empty out their hand after you've cast a discard spell or two.
“Solid” is the undersell of the century. Trophy killing Leyline enables our discard but more importantly sets our LoTV free! That’s so far ahead of ramping the Bogle player on the “this matters” scale that I don’t even know how to quantify it.
If they’re on a one-lander full of action and you’re wary about giving them a land, then you simply don’t give them a land. If their land is a Thicket or a Canopy then it’s actually a perfectly acceptable play to destroy it with Trophy and force them to operate off a lone basic, which limits them yet further. Or you just develop your board instead. Bogles on one land aren’t exactly pressuring us in a meaningful way.
Against GDS, do you think you'll get to fire it off on a nonbasic in an attirition match? Your first Trophy won't cut them off colors unless they only have 1 red source(they got basic Swamp&Island). Will cutting them off red matter? I don't think so because the cards they keep in their deck postboard are mostly blue and black(they are likely to side out TBR, wraith and looting)when playing against any GBx midrange deck except kcommand, bolts, pyromancer and maybe staticaster against souls and that's mostly 5-6 red cards pretty much. You're not realistically cutting them off blue or black and they'll fetch for 2 red sources if they're playing against a trophy deck. Pyromancer is also a possibility post board but it's rare at this point.
Agree that cutting GDS off of red isn’t the highest priority, but in a deck packing 3-4 Field it’s very doable—just not something you’d prioritize in an average match. The larger upside to Trophy in this matchup is simply the ability to kill Delve threats. Given their own level of hand disruption and stack interaction, having a high density of answers to their relatively limited number of genuine threats is not to be underestimated.
So I don't think Trophy is good against leylines since I don't think it's a spell you want to fire off on T1-3 and even T4 if your opponent missed a land drop tbh. That's why I'm suggesting 2 copies instead of 3 but 3rd copy can have a slot in the board against Tron and H1 or other similiar decks where it's playable on T2.
This is just where we part ways, I suppose. Isn’t this a lot like saying Path isn’t good against creatures because you’d sometimes decline to use it on their early plays if they’re missing land drops?
Again, I wonder if the big difference in perspective here resides in the Traverse vs traditional shells. Otherwise, I can’t imagine being so lukewarm about things like how powerful a maindeckable CMC 2 answer to Leyline of Sanctity is.
Again, we can do this exact same analysis for dead modes on Push, Path, Lily, and TS, all of which routinely see 3+ copies. The average Trophy is still way better than the average Decay in more matchups. The below average Trophies are still often find. Bad Trophy is admittedly very bad, but it's generally just as bad as bad Decay, bad TS, bad Push, etc.
I’d even take this one step further and say that bad Trophy is almost never as bad as bad Decay/Push/TS. The worst you can ever really say about Trophy is that it’s not good right now, a negative which lessens with each passing turn in any matchup. Not so for the other cards, which in certain matchups will start the game dead and end the game dead, with your best use case for them being free LoTV/Brutality fodder.
Anyway I think ktkenshinx is pretty spot on with most of his assessment on Trophy.
Same.
By the way.. there's no word from the Duke on the new spoilers, yet?
Don’t believe so, but our main man is looking swole lately. Hair and beard game is on point too. If the Duke says to play only two copies of Trophy then I will be forced to renounce my wicked ways.
This has nothing to do with Traverse or DS or Jund or Abzan or whatever. Midrange decks are good stuff decks and your cards can do so much. CoCo resolving is a blowout for all the midrange decks or opponent spewing their hand on the board T1-4 isn't easy to handle for any of the decks unless they can conjure a sweeper or multiple removal spells. Your strategy is built on gaining incremental advantage over time and Trophy rarely does that early in the game. It can let you handle problematic cards you had trouble handling in the past but you can't fill your deck with it and hope for it to be effective.
Our strategy is indeed based on gaining incremental advantage; and those incremental gains sometimes run into a brick wall, and are all for naught when our opponent resolves something we can’t deal with. As everyone acknowledges, Trophy means that BGx pilots are going to be saying “well...I can’t really beat that card” a whole lot less in the future.
Your position seems to be that we’re paying an extremely steep price for access to this wide-ranging coverage—too steep even to justify more than 2x Trophy in the main. My position is that the sheer power and flexibility of Trophy is going to be of nearly incalculable benefit in a deck like ours, which above all struggles with card selection (which really means finding the right answer—finding a specific threat is far less of an issue, often any of them will do so long as we can keep interacting favorably).
I think the top 15ish meta decks’ matchup rundown a few of us have taken a crack at shows pretty clearly how well Trophy is poised to do against the current meta.
Like hitting Leyline with Trophy doesn't mean anything if you're enabling your opponent to combo-kill you next turn through discard spells. Hitting your opponent's zombie fish doesn't also mean anything if you're ramping them into a kcommand so they can recur their fish and and drop it right back on the battlefield next turn or you're giving them an island so they can soft-stub the lili you're casting on curve when you untap.
Here’s an example of what I mean about catastrophizing. If we’re still talking about Ad Nauseam (which, given the Leyline + combo kill scenario, I assume we are), what could they even have that makes them able to “combo-kill you next turn through discard spells” (note the plural there)? They’d basically have to have Ad Nauseam/Spoils x3 (with each copy of AN in hand making the Spoils worse) with an Unlife in play (in which case it’s pretty aggressive to hit the Leyline to begin with), or they’d have to have 3x each of AN and Angel’s Grace...and they also have to have been gated from comboing off by exactly one basic land.
It’s a lot more realistic to acknowledge that Leyline is the single best card they can hope to open on in this matchup, and that our maindecked Trophies being able to kill it while also having plenty of other valid targets in the matchup is just fantastic for us nearly 100% of the time.
As for the GDS scenario, I agree that it would be pretty bad to Trophy the fish, give them an untapped Island, and then walk our LoTV into the force spike. Seems like there we’d just untap, slam the LoTV, edict, and still have our catch-all removal piece in hand!
We could go back and forth all day breaking down such scenarios—and don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to consider all the various lines—but ultimately the discussion thrives more at the conceptual level IMO.
Trophy is so bad sometimes that it creates new lines for your opponent and you can see these lines because you know what they have in their hand so Trophy ends up being unplayable at that point in the game. Like against any deck running push, you're giving them revolt and mana to cast it.
There is just so many similiar lines you create for your opponent and you'll experience this first hand pretty much. So yea, it's not a card you want to fire off early on to get rid of problematic things. If you want to hit a Leyline, your best bet is still charm or pulse, not just jamming a bunch of trophies into your 60 and hope that Search for Tomorrow you freely gave away isn't gonna bite you back.
So yea, Trophy is a negative tempo card that sometimes creates insurmountable board states just because you decided to use it or you had to use it at early turns of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if Reid decided to ran like 1 in 60 and 1 in the board or none in the 60 and 2 in the board. He might just go the other way and full up on paths and trophies too, there's that.
You mention our hand info as though it’s a downside that we won’t be as likely to blunder into giving the opponent ramp at an ideal time with Trophy. Hand info is just one of many ways our deck can naturally blunt the downside of Trophy.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad people are proceeding with caution as it regards this ramp effect. I’d just like to go on record as saying that many are starting to overstate its drawbacks, and in so doing are underrating one of the most spectacular printings in recent memory.
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Not sure I follow you...surely having enough information to avoid making a suboptimal play is a good thing? If you, for whatever reason, still wish to consciously make the “mistake” you would have made when lacking said information, you still have the option to do so. Maybe I’m misunderstanding; otherwise, I can’t see how a shell that provides hand information with some regularity could make our Trophy decisions worse than if we were left to guess at the contents of opponents’ hands.
Regardless, I’m happy that we’ve distilled the discussion down to the specific point of contention. Great talks as always, ladies and gents.
Firing it off is suboptimal except when it's your only out and you have to fire it off because the alternative is you lose the game but you still end up losing the game because you ramp'd your opponent.
I don't know why you are so fixated on this ramp effect. We know ramping the opponent isn't the end of the world. That's why the most successful recent Abzan lists are using 3 Paths. That's why UW Control uses 4 Paths. Ramping is only a problem if the deck can't deal with the end result, either by answering it or closing the game. BGx can be tuned to accomplish either of those, whether through grinding or through turning the corner. It's not nearly as disastrous as you are making it out to be.
It's just not a card that digs you out of a hole but just delays the inevitable pretty much so it shouldn't be relied on as an universal answer.
Again, I'm not sure why you are overselling the dangers of ramping. There are many decks that cannot take advantage of ramping consistently, and many board states where it won't matter. We can also all agree that the ramping stops mattering on T4 for most machups. Add to this the ability to hit cards that BGx is otherwise unable to hit at all, and the tradeoff is more than worth it.
I just do not understand the forecefulness of your argument. You appear to be arguing entirely about the 3rd Trophy and nothing else. I haven't seen a single BGx player outside of this thread argue that 0-1 is the correct number, and I've seen most people argue for 3-4. You seem to be arguing that 2 is correct instead of 3. That isn't an unreasonable position itself. But then you are selling that argument by making Trophy sound positively terrible in most matchups, which leads me to question why you want 2 in the first place. Instead, it reads to me as if you have decided that 2 is the correct number and you are willing to oversell and overemphasize Trophy's shortcomings to argue against that 3rd copy, but not apply those same arguments to the first 2 copies you already seem to want.
EDIT: The other thing I don't understand is why you keep citing Decay's relevance in this metagame. I can't find any relevant BGx lists that play 2+ Decays and you are arguing for Decay like we should be play 3+. People don't play 3+ Decay specifically because it's so narrow and so dead in so many matchups. But your arguments seem so consistently anti-Trophy and pro-Decay that I feel like you want to be playing 0-1 Trophy and 3+ Decay, which is almost certainly wrong even by current standards.
I can't find any relevant BGx lists that play 2+ Decays and you are arguing for Decay like we should be play 3+. People don't play 3+ Decay specifically because it's so narrow and so dead in so many matchups. But your arguments seem so consistently anti-Trophy and pro-Decay that I feel like you want to be playing 0-1 Trophy and 3+ Decay, which is almost certainly wrong even by current standards.
BG decks often play three copies of Abrupt Decay. That does not conflict with your statement about BGx. I'm just sayin'.
I can't find any relevant BGx lists that play 2+ Decays and you are arguing for Decay like we should be play 3+. People don't play 3+ Decay specifically because it's so narrow and so dead in so many matchups. But your arguments seem so consistently anti-Trophy and pro-Decay that I feel like you want to be playing 0-1 Trophy and 3+ Decay, which is almost certainly wrong even by current standards.
BG decks often play three copies of Abrupt Decay. That does not conflict with your statement about BGx. I'm just sayin'.
In the most recent top-placing 20 BG Rock decks I found, 1 played 1 copy, 10 played 2 copies, 2 played 3 copies, and 7 played 3 copies but all 7 of those were the same player (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/player/edward40hands), who appears to have played 4 copies since 2017. Fallleaf, the MTGO player with the most BGx finishes in the last 2-3 months, plays 2. I looked at 33 BG Rock/Abzan lists from 08/01 through present and found only 5 lists total that played 3+ Decays, and 4 of those lists were edward40hands. Every other list played 1-2.
If we look to GP, we see Duke playing 2 at PT Rix, Siow playing 2 at GP Toronto, Carvalho/de Togni/Jansen playing 2 at GP Lyon, and Giucci playing 2 at GP SP. Only the 26th place Abzan Aggro list at GP Lyon played by Boussaud played 3 copies of Decay, but it was also playing 4 Hierarch/1 Doran/4 Rhino and is far from conventional.
Based on this and our previous theoretical analysis, I am reasonably confident that 2 is the correct number for Decay. Unless, of course, you are edward40hands and you are playing BG Rock.
I'm so confused by this assessment. The average B/G/x deck, of any flavor, plays 5-6 discard spells, 4-6 1-mana removal spells, 1-3 3-mana removal spells, 4-5 Lilianas, and anywhere from 12-16 creatures. What decks are you playing against where they are consistently presenting some permanent that you have to kill, on the spot, through all of that disruption, on turns 1-2? You're looking at the card in a hyper-vacuum and making straw-man arguments that run fairly contrary to how games actually play out with the archetype. Nobody is taking the stance that you're arguing against, and everyone in this thread has acknowledged that ramping is a drawback in the early turns.
The hyperbole is getting really out of control, we're not even talking about real-world scenarios at this point. My plan is to not keep awful hands and sequence my cards to the best of my ability, which is what it's always been.
In the interests of getting the thread back on topic, I've really been liking the look of the B/G shell that went 6-1 in the recent Modern Challenge - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1351409#paper. I've been playing list a bit in paper and have liked how it plays out so far, it feels really nice to be playing Kalitas again.
My day 1 list post-Trophy is basically that one with Trophy in place of the clunkier maindeck removal spells, with a mildly tweaked sideboard:
I think that Darkblast is well-positioned with the rise of Spirits. It's really hard to resolve something like Damnation through both Thalia and Mausoleum Wanderer, but Darkblast lines up super well against them. I also really wanted a 5th 1-mana removal spell, and the alternatives weren't super exciting.
I think that Darkblast is well-positioned with the rise of Spirits. It's really hard to resolve something like Damnation through both Thalia and Mausoleum Wanderer, but Darkblast lines up super well against them. I also really wanted a 5th 1-mana removal spell, and the alternatives weren't super exciting.
I have long loved Dorkblast. There are a few match-ups where it is just super. It practically beats Affinity by itself.
Yeah, playing it in an Abzan shell definitely allows you to get some value out of the Dredge. I've never been a huge fan of Damnation in the sideboard of B/G/x, and I think that Jund gets away with not needing it because of the presence of Grim Lavamancer. While Darkblast obviously isn't on that same power level, I think that it can be a reasonable replacement as a repeatable removal spell out of the sideboard that isn't Liliana, the Last Hope. I've also been playing a bunch against Hardened Scales lately and have really struggled with not being able to kill a Steel Overseer in a timely manner because of Welding Jar. It also seems like Phantasmal Image is everywhere these days, which Darkblast is a great answer to.
Is Darkblast really usable against humans though? It's a great option for spirits and Affinity but that seems a bit narrow. I guess it could used against GW Vizier also. Not against humans though. It's only good against against Thalia, Noble and Phantasmal. And thats before they slam a Lieutenant
It's not at it's best against Humans, but I think it's passable. Like you said, it always answers Thalia, Hierarch, and Phantasmal Image in the main, and Sin Collector out of the sideboard. It also answers Champion of the Parish and Thalia's Lieutenant if you can play it in time, which I'll admit isn't always possible. The deck usually leads with Hierarch, Champion, or Vial on turn 1, and Darkblast can answer 2/3 of that, which seems okay. It's also possible to use the "Darkblast in upkeep, dredge Darkblast, Darkblast again" trick to kill x/2s, but that does have its own drawbacks. Speaking of x/2s though, it's common to play Liliana, the Last Hope against Humans, which pairs decently well with Darkblast. It can also team up with Flaying Tendrils to kill x/3s, but that's not something I would want to depend on.
It doesn't have the "win on the spot" potential of Damnation, but I think in the average game against Humans it can help round out your removal suite.
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I agree with everything this guy is saying in his last 2-3 posts. *Golf clap*
Trophy is good for us in some critical matches but it doesn't replace decay, and I think decay is still better more often than Trophy (in the current metagame)
Just the existence of Trophy (and thus increase in Tarmogoyf metagame presence) will increase the number of Spell Snares (even mentioned in UW forum), which then makes Decay even more relevant.
Personally I'm loving all the Trophy hype because I'll be playing Sultai mid-range in the new metagame and eating other BGx decks for breakfast with my Spell Snares and Abrupt Decays, while they're ramping me into turn 3 JTMS
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Agree completely. The untapped land makes it worse than PTE most of the early turns
This part I disagree with.. Burn, Spirits, Humans, & Jund are all very popular decks in the format and Decay is actively better than Trophy here. I wouldn't want trophy at all for these matches (or maybe 1x post board against Jund) and Decay is so good especially against humans/spirits because it takes care of AEther Vial and nearly all creatures they use.
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I can see a world where we would play a 3/2 split on Trophy and Decay instead of 3/1/1 on AT/AD/Pulse. But there's just no way that a 2/2 or 2/3 split is correct on Day 1 of the new meta. Decay is a really narrow card. There are matchups where it has virtually, or literally, zero relevant targets. Trophy always does something and it often does a lot. We can't hedge on Decay being good in matchups when you might go an entire tournament without seeing those matchups. At least Trophy is always removing something and often removing something that Decay can't hit at all. This is the same reason we often see 3 TS in BGx even if TS is harmful and risky in many matchups. It's a catchall answer in a very diverse format. Trophy fits that bill.
Re: Spell Snare
If UWx adapts with this card, fine. Let's force them to have 6 lands in play, Teferi and Snare in hand every game to feel confident casting Teferi. If they want to run 1-2 Snare and compromise their countermagic against Lily, that's fine too. Running more Decays in place of Trophy doesn't solve any of these issues because Decay is often terrible in that matchup.
I'm glad you brought up this point. Have you noticed how IOK outnumbers TS is nearly every deck that uses both (except Shadow for obvious reasons). IOK is obviously far more narrow but it has no drawback. Then why on Earth is the split usually 4iok/2ts rather than reversed? Your logic here is already proven (incorrect) by the way people play TS and IOK.
I'm not saying run Decay instead or run more Decays than Trophy, even. But there are relevant targets (albeit rare) in UW and Tron for Decay so it's not totally dead, and the fact that it's superior to Trophy in at least 25% of (other) match-ups in the metagame leads to believe that running small and equal numbers of each is probably correct, but that all depends on what metagame you're talking about. Local where you know what 80% of the players are on? Great, make the call. But in an open meta or competitive REL, I would say to be conservative with assassinating your opponents trophies 😁
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This is an inaccurate comparison. To start, IoK isn't narrow at all. IoK is live in literally every Modern matchup. It always hits something and often hits some of the best cards. By contrast, Decay is not live in every matchup. It sometimes hits literally/virtually nothing and sometimes only hits irrelevant things. Decay is itself narrow in the first place and is not comparable to the decidedly not-narrow IoK. This isn't even a radical point. We already know Decay is narrow. If Decay was truly comparable to the flexible and versatile IoK, we would already be playing 4 in every list. Instead, we see 1-2 in most lists because we know the card is narrow and isn't live in a lot of matches. The overwhelming majority of BGx players run at most 2 copies of Decay while simultaneously playing 4 IoK. This right there should show us that IoK and Decay are not comparable.
All of my testing and experience is in the extremely broad and unpredictable MTGO metagame. It's about as close to an open meta as you can get and it's very competitive. You can run multiple leagues without facing UW Control or Humans once, and you can play a League where you play both decks twice each. This is the environment where catchalls shine and where I'd want the 3/2/0 or 3/1/1 split on Trophy/Decay/Pulse. There is no MTGO universe where I'm starting on any other interaction piece in that 3rd Trophy slot because Trophy does something in every single matchup.
Again, as I said in a few previous posts, I can envision a Day N metagame where we don't want 3 Trophy in the MD and instead want 2 MD and +1 in the SB. But that requires some format shifts that have not yet happened, and I'm not going to try and next level the next level of the metagame. That's a great way to just fall apart and get lost with a bad deck and bad cards. The correct Day 1 number is almost certainly 3 because you want catchall answers in an open format that gets more open with post-release uncertainties. The correct Day N number may well be the 2/1 MD/SB split.
As i'm reading more of the card and know i will need a playset to cover all bases, i'm starting of with 2 maindeck copies in modern and probably an extra in the side. The card is awesoms, but the question raises: what to cut.
Modern: WUBRG Humans - GBW Traverse - GWU Knightfall - GRW
Sorry, but that’s not the case at all. You can disagree with the conclusions we’ve drawn about any particular matchup, but none of us have simply cited best case scenarios. If anything, the opposite is true; the critics of Trophy have tended to indulge in a little catastrophizing, IMO.
Path is “almost unplayable” in an exponentially higher number of common scenarios than Trophy. Just think of all the decks that play few or no creatures in the maindeck! This is an obvious point, but one that bears repeating because it seems clear that the sheer power and flexibility of Trophy is becoming overshadowed in some people’s minds by the prospect of inefficient use cases.
“Almost unplayable” in any given scenario is less likely to apply to Trophy than to any other answer card in Modern.
Before I forget, it’s worth noting that people on either side of this discussion might just be talking past each other. You and others are probably defaulting to the mindset of a Traverse player when considering the Trophy count, whereas I’m speaking from the perspective of a non-Traverse pilot, which is by definition more interested in noncreature answer cards.
Yes, but aren’t you glad you had a deck chock full of instant-speed outs to a must-answer card like Plating? Decay does the job more efficiently here (but only once—Affinity usually runs a lone basic AFAIK), but at the cost of being literally dead in hand against dozens of other must-answer threats in the format.
Being able to hit Inkmoth on our own terms (i.e. not having to wait for them to activate it) is extraordinary in this matchup—this is the exact reason we side in Fulminator Mage. Decay is great here too (but arguably higher variance; it blows them out if they’re leaning on Pierce but is dead in hand if they go all in on Inky). Still, consider that this is a matchup where the opponent plays counter magic AND literally zero CMC 4+ permanents, and yet Trophy still keeps pace with Decay, each card having roughly equal value overall. Let that sink in!
I guess you’ll just have to ask some AN pilots about this one. BGx is widely considered a nightmare matchup for them due to our combination of discard, flexible permanent removal, and a respectable clock. I’m quite confident in saying that the ability to remove Leylines (which they will mulligan aggressively for) far outweighs the downside Trophy brings; Leyline, more than any other single card, is what the matchup hinges upon.
In fact, AN is so cold to discard-heavy decks like ours that, a few months back, some pilots were trimming a Pact of Negation, a Sleight of Hand, and a Spoils of the Vault (or something similar) in order to jam 3 Leylines main. Our targets for removal, in order of priority and assuming a relatively normal progression on both sides: Leyline > Phyrexian Unlife > Lotus Bloom on their upkeep (only if you know their hand and the play makes sense) > Prism > Lotus Bloom with limited hand info.
Another factor worth noting is that most AN players are packing an alternate wincon in the side: Grave Titan, Dragonlord Dromoka, sometimes even a transformative plan of Unburial Rites + Gifts Ungiven + I-win fatties. Decay is dead and Trophy is live against anything along those lines they’re going to bring from the sideboard.
“Solid” is the undersell of the century.
If they’re on a one-lander full of action and you’re wary about giving them a land, then you simply don’t give them a land. If their land is a Thicket or a Canopy then it’s actually a perfectly acceptable play to destroy it with Trophy and force them to operate off a lone basic, which limits them yet further. Or you just develop your board instead. Bogles on one land aren’t exactly pressuring us in a meaningful way.
Agree that cutting GDS off of red isn’t the highest priority, but in a deck packing 3-4 Field it’s very doable—just not something you’d prioritize in an average match. The larger upside to Trophy in this matchup is simply the ability to kill Delve threats. Given their own level of hand disruption and stack interaction, having a high density of answers to their relatively limited number of genuine threats is not to be underestimated.
This is just where we part ways, I suppose. Isn’t this a lot like saying Path isn’t good against creatures because you’d sometimes decline to use it on their early plays if they’re missing land drops?
Again, I wonder if the big difference in perspective here resides in the Traverse vs traditional shells. Otherwise, I can’t imagine being so lukewarm about things like how powerful a maindeckable CMC 2 answer to Leyline of Sanctity is.
I’d even take this one step further and say that bad Trophy is almost never as bad as bad Decay/Push/TS. The worst you can ever really say about Trophy is that it’s not good right now, a negative which lessens with each passing turn in any matchup. Not so for the other cards, which in certain matchups will start the game dead and end the game dead, with your best use case for them being free LoTV/Brutality fodder.
Same.
Don’t believe so, but our main man is looking swole lately. Hair and beard game is on point too. If the Duke says to play only two copies of Trophy then I will be forced to renounce my wicked ways.
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Our strategy is indeed based on gaining incremental advantage; and those incremental gains sometimes run into a brick wall, and are all for naught when our opponent resolves something we can’t deal with. As everyone acknowledges, Trophy means that BGx pilots are going to be saying “well...I can’t really beat that card” a whole lot less in the future.
Your position seems to be that we’re paying an extremely steep price for access to this wide-ranging coverage—too steep even to justify more than 2x Trophy in the main. My position is that the sheer power and flexibility of Trophy is going to be of nearly incalculable benefit in a deck like ours, which above all struggles with card selection (which really means finding the right answer—finding a specific threat is far less of an issue, often any of them will do so long as we can keep interacting favorably).
I think the top 15ish meta decks’ matchup rundown a few of us have taken a crack at shows pretty clearly how well Trophy is poised to do against the current meta.
Here’s an example of what I mean about catastrophizing. If we’re still talking about Ad Nauseam (which, given the Leyline + combo kill scenario, I assume we are), what could they even have that makes them able to “combo-kill you next turn through discard spells” (note the plural there)? They’d basically have to have Ad Nauseam/Spoils x3 (with each copy of AN in hand making the Spoils worse) with an Unlife in play (in which case it’s pretty aggressive to hit the Leyline to begin with), or they’d have to have 3x each of AN and Angel’s Grace...and they also have to have been gated from comboing off by exactly one basic land.
It’s a lot more realistic to acknowledge that Leyline is the single best card they can hope to open on in this matchup, and that our maindecked Trophies being able to kill it while also having plenty of other valid targets in the matchup is just fantastic for us nearly 100% of the time.
As for the GDS scenario, I agree that it would be pretty bad to Trophy the fish, give them an untapped Island, and then walk our LoTV into the force spike. Seems like there we’d just untap, slam the LoTV, edict, and still have our catch-all removal piece in hand!
We could go back and forth all day breaking down such scenarios—and don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to consider all the various lines—but ultimately the discussion thrives more at the conceptual level IMO.
You mention our hand info as though it’s a downside that we won’t be as likely to blunder into giving the opponent ramp at an ideal time with Trophy. Hand info is just one of many ways our deck can naturally blunt the downside of Trophy.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad people are proceeding with caution as it regards this ramp effect. I’d just like to go on record as saying that many are starting to overstate its drawbacks, and in so doing are underrating one of the most spectacular printings in recent memory.
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Regardless, I’m happy that we’ve distilled the discussion down to the specific point of contention. Great talks as always, ladies and gents.
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I don't know why you are so fixated on this ramp effect. We know ramping the opponent isn't the end of the world. That's why the most successful recent Abzan lists are using 3 Paths. That's why UW Control uses 4 Paths. Ramping is only a problem if the deck can't deal with the end result, either by answering it or closing the game. BGx can be tuned to accomplish either of those, whether through grinding or through turning the corner. It's not nearly as disastrous as you are making it out to be.
Again, I'm not sure why you are overselling the dangers of ramping. There are many decks that cannot take advantage of ramping consistently, and many board states where it won't matter. We can also all agree that the ramping stops mattering on T4 for most machups. Add to this the ability to hit cards that BGx is otherwise unable to hit at all, and the tradeoff is more than worth it.
I just do not understand the forecefulness of your argument. You appear to be arguing entirely about the 3rd Trophy and nothing else. I haven't seen a single BGx player outside of this thread argue that 0-1 is the correct number, and I've seen most people argue for 3-4. You seem to be arguing that 2 is correct instead of 3. That isn't an unreasonable position itself. But then you are selling that argument by making Trophy sound positively terrible in most matchups, which leads me to question why you want 2 in the first place. Instead, it reads to me as if you have decided that 2 is the correct number and you are willing to oversell and overemphasize Trophy's shortcomings to argue against that 3rd copy, but not apply those same arguments to the first 2 copies you already seem to want.
EDIT: The other thing I don't understand is why you keep citing Decay's relevance in this metagame. I can't find any relevant BGx lists that play 2+ Decays and you are arguing for Decay like we should be play 3+. People don't play 3+ Decay specifically because it's so narrow and so dead in so many matchups. But your arguments seem so consistently anti-Trophy and pro-Decay that I feel like you want to be playing 0-1 Trophy and 3+ Decay, which is almost certainly wrong even by current standards.
BG decks often play three copies of Abrupt Decay. That does not conflict with your statement about BGx. I'm just sayin'.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
In the most recent top-placing 20 BG Rock decks I found, 1 played 1 copy, 10 played 2 copies, 2 played 3 copies, and 7 played 3 copies but all 7 of those were the same player (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/player/edward40hands), who appears to have played 4 copies since 2017. Fallleaf, the MTGO player with the most BGx finishes in the last 2-3 months, plays 2. I looked at 33 BG Rock/Abzan lists from 08/01 through present and found only 5 lists total that played 3+ Decays, and 4 of those lists were edward40hands. Every other list played 1-2.
If we look to GP, we see Duke playing 2 at PT Rix, Siow playing 2 at GP Toronto, Carvalho/de Togni/Jansen playing 2 at GP Lyon, and Giucci playing 2 at GP SP. Only the 26th place Abzan Aggro list at GP Lyon played by Boussaud played 3 copies of Decay, but it was also playing 4 Hierarch/1 Doran/4 Rhino and is far from conventional.
Based on this and our previous theoretical analysis, I am reasonably confident that 2 is the correct number for Decay. Unless, of course, you are edward40hands and you are playing BG Rock.
In the interests of getting the thread back on topic, I've really been liking the look of the B/G shell that went 6-1 in the recent Modern Challenge - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1351409#paper. I've been playing list a bit in paper and have liked how it plays out so far, it feels really nice to be playing Kalitas again.
My day 1 list post-Trophy is basically that one with Trophy in place of the clunkier maindeck removal spells, with a mildly tweaked sideboard:
4x Blooming Marsh
4x Field of Ruin
2x Forest
2x Overgrown Tomb
4x Swamp
4x Treetop Village
4x Verdant Catacombs
Instant (8)
4x Assassin's Trophy
4x Fatal Push
4x Dark Confidant
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3x Scavenging Ooze
4x Tarmogoyf
3x Tireless Tracker
Sorcery (8)
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Maelstrom Pulse
2x Thoughtseize
Planeswalker (5)
4x Liliana of the Veil
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
1x Choke
2x Collective Brutality
1x Darkblast
1x Duress
2x Flaying Tendrils
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1x Kitchen Finks
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
1x Natural State
1x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Vraska, Golgari Queen
I think that Darkblast is well-positioned with the rise of Spirits. It's really hard to resolve something like Damnation through both Thalia and Mausoleum Wanderer, but Darkblast lines up super well against them. I also really wanted a 5th 1-mana removal spell, and the alternatives weren't super exciting.
I have long loved Dorkblast. There are a few match-ups where it is just super. It practically beats Affinity by itself.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
Draft My Cube!
It doesn't have the "win on the spot" potential of Damnation, but I think in the average game against Humans it can help round out your removal suite.