Thought Flare and think twice are just not modern cards at all in my eyes.
In comparison to Thirst for Knowledge, you have to consider the cmc cost and then make sure your deck fits that curve and game-plan. I count 9 artifact cards total in your deck, so in all likely-hood, Thirst for knowledge will end up netting you 0 cards, or +1 if you're lucky to have an artifact to pitch making it a pretty conditional card. It's a great card don't get me wrong, but it's better positioned in an artifact-heavy build from my playtesting with it.
Think Twice will net you +1 cards unconditionally with the upside of having resilience to hand/land disruption, which are both huge in modern. It's also a 2CMC spell so I wouldn't just compare the two and say one is better than the other since your choice of draw-suite depends on your game-plan. If you are running an artifact heavy build then by all means go for it, you would still have to compromise your t1-2 plays to better fit that type of draw engine.
On a side-note, since our game-plan is to land the best finisher we have in our colors (Cruel ultimatum) I wanted to build the deck around the ability to dig for it. With enough instants and sorcery spells, this unlocks the viability of utilizing Augur of Bolas in order to not only put a relevant blocker/beater on the field, but to have access to the raw digging power while exploiting the versatility of being much more likely to grab the appropriate reactionary play. So it does boil down to preference with the augur instant/sorcery plan vs the Trinketmage/Thirst/Artifact plan, if you feel that the latter is more effective to your own play-style, then I would appreciate a rundown of how your recent matches/tournaments went.
Electrolyze is a better comparison to make with thirst for knowledge since they're both 3cmc spells. It will always cantrip of course, but you have the option of also netting tempo advantage and/or card advantage depending on what situation is presented to you. Would you rather run thirst for knowledge over electrolyze on your turn three play? The game plan is disrupt your opponent's tempo/card advantage without compromising your own card advantage long enough to land a Cruel Ultimatum or a Bomb of some sort.
All I'm saying is that the evaluation of a card's power-level is more complicated than face value. There's not only the interaction it has within your own deck, but also that of your opponent's. Then there is the added level of how a draw-spell interacts with your deck's ability to interact with your opponent's game-plan. After personally taking those possibilities into consideration, I've settled on Think Twice over Thirst for Knowledge until I feel that an artifact-heavy build is a more effective one.
I was just trying out Grave Titan as a temporary switch over 1 Cruel, he is not terrible by any means and there is very little removal that kills him. I like having both wurm coil and Batterskull in the deck as we have little life gain and you just pitch them to thirst and get them back when u want to close, they have so much upside vs some decks they are a solid piece of the Thist engine. Those creature finishers can come out a turn earlier than cruel and blunt more creatures if you have fallen behind.
Again we have thirst or even charm to filter these.
Thought Flare and think twice are just not modern cards at all in my eyes. We already have 4 thirst for Knoledge, just run some remands and more snap casters ( very often used on thirst) or Gifts Ungiven!
Oh and Slaughter Games is mostly for scape shift but it is fine vs Tron and control as well.
I wouldn't knock Thoughtflare until you try it. A lot of players think it's bad at first until they try playing with it, then they realize that it fits the gameplan perfectly (for the draw-go variant at least). Thirst is great, and you know I'm all for it, but it also warps your deck into forcing in artifacts that you may or may not want to be playing with. Thoughtflare digs deeper and nets you cards unconditionally, which allows you to play more early disruption that stabilizes you against aggro and combo.
As for Grave Titan, it may not die to lightning bolt, but it makes wraths relevant in control mirrors, which is not something you ever want to do in a control mirror. Batterskull on the other hand is always good since it's recursive and can equip to snapcasters or augurs when you're not using them. Additionally, it still dies to path, terminate and pulse, both of which still see play in the format to a decent degree. The other big problem with large creature finishers is that you literally can't ever cast them against combo unless you're playing tons of spot discard in a more tapout oriented variant. If free counters were available in the format, it would be different, but this isn't the case. Cruel is a special case in that it gets around a lot of the issues facing combo in that it forces them to discard 3. Even then, you usually don't want to hardcast cruel against combo unless you know the discard 3 will prevent them from comboing out (or you're about to die).
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Mmm Prof bolt!
With Thought Flare you are paying + 2 mana for +1 card over a thirst with no artifacts!
Just like thirst it is really great to see cards and more importantly filter bad ones in your hand. I love flare in itself but we just have better options, it didn't even see standard play... Gifts Ungiven gives you 2 cards with 2 in the yard (of your choice, possibly ones with flash back)
Remand> Think Twice imo, I really enjoy the extra protection from losing tempo/ board position, though I dont mind it if you can easily get it in the yard discarded off thirst or Gifts.
Messed around with A Gifts Ungiven build today with mostly all spells (and trying out a couple Pyro noobs)
Its pretty strong to just have 1 Cruel in you deck then make a gifts pile of Ultimatum Mystic Retrieval Snacaster Land or removal. If they don't eat your yard you basically have infinite action after that!
Revival is slow but its super sweet, gives you tons of late game gass, like a double snapcaster!
I still just want this card U1 instant, draw 2 discard 1, is that to much to ask for?
Mmm Prof bolt!
With Thought Flare you are paying + 2 mana for +1 card over a thirst with no artifacts!
Just like thirst it is really great to see cards and more importantly filter bad ones in your hand. I love flare in itself but we just have better options, it didn't even see standard play... Gifts Ungiven gives you 2 cards with 2 in the yard (of your choice, possibly ones with flash back)
Remand> Think Twice imo, I really enjoy the extra protection from losing tempo/ board position, though I dont mind it if you can easily get it in the yard discarded off thirst or Gifts.
Messed around with A Gifts Ungiven build today with mostly all spells (and trying out a couple Pyro noobs)
Its pretty strong to just have 1 Cruel in you deck then make a gifts pile of Ultimatum Mystic Retrieval Snacaster Land or removal. If they don't eat your yard you basically have infinite action after that!
Revival is slow but its super sweet, gives you tons of late game gass, like a double snapcaster!
I still just want this card U1 instant, draw 2 discard 1, is that to much to ask for?
I used to run Cruel Gifts, and I might go back to trying something similar out but it had it's weaknesses to graveyard hate and could be considerably slow. Nothing worse that staring down Deathrite Shaman or scavenging ooze. I was however running Archaeomancer over the retreival simply because it was nice to have return an archaeomancer from the gy with a cruel ultimatum. That said mystic retrieval doesn't care where the opponent puts it... seems pretty good, if you need a wrath just stack damnation, snapcaster, mystic retrieval and two other completely valuable cards. Ultimately I moved away from too much graveyard reliance because of the prevelance of hate... but maybe it's just something a sideboard needs to be ready to fight through.
Well those GY guys are pretty much in what 1-2 decks? And its not like we want to let them live, you do get 2 cards in hand still. Heck you could just tutor for 4 lands if they are out to thin you deck, its still basically an instant speed draw 2! We aren't trying to do cute reanimation tricks just use it as a good draw engine. Gifts is REALY good vs UWR as it puts you about as far ahead as Revelation but vastly easier to protect. 4cc gifts has had more success than any thirst deck admittedly, but maybe its just cuz they are basically a fancy jund deck with blue...
Curse of deaths hold is starting to grow on me a lot, in a long game you blank sooo many guys and make burn better vs larger ones, finks persist, bob, snaps, lingering souls etc etc all locked out. I wouldn't mind another bolt and snare in the main and young pyromancer or 2 could knock out some artifacts. The singleton duress seems a bit odd but its live vs most decks and great vs problematic cards backed by cryptic bounce and checking the coast to resolve ultimatum vs blue decks.
Grixis Hybrid
Here is an even more tricked out version squeezing in green for life from the loam ravens crime and urborg hehe. The single card 4th color seems acceptable since all our lands produce colors.
Oh and we have a kind of Prophetic bolt Bituminous Blast! Could be a sweet build around that, cascade into Cryptics and izzet charms as the only counters. I used to run a cruel cascade deck back in standard, hehe Kathari Remnant is better than he looks.
All the testing I have done has made me hopeful of this build except for tonight because one of my best friends has come down and brought his Jund and/or Bant Aura deck which is the one deck back in the day I could never seem to stop so I'm nervous to see how he does today but other than that I'm sure it's going to be a good night.
Edit: I have been doing some tinkering and online I like to switch in blightning over electrolyze. I feel the extra hand disruption plus damage that comes from blightning will serve me more than electrolyze. It would bring them down quicker when it hits along side a geth's or any burn really. I know it's sorcery speed but really it would be the only 3CMC card in my deck because right now electrolyze is the only one in so i don't think that speed would be an issue for me however I would like to run 2 blightning if doable? I guess I'll have to see how tonight goes to see if I would want it over electrolyze
Blightning is probably not what you want, I would just go with Rakdos return or consult the necro sages at that point. Discard just makes that end of Cuel pointless, the damage does not clear the board (decent vs walkers I guess) or help you draw cards or stack with other burn. If you are light on 3 s tribute to hunger is very helpful in this heck with not much life gain! Also a couple more hard counters would be good, dissipate and counter flux realy are fine. Cut those serum visions for lands son, aint no control deck workin with 24!
Blightning is probably not what you want, I would just go with Rakdos return or consult the necro sages at that point. Discard just makes that end of Cuel pointless, the damage does not clear the board (decent vs walkers I guess) or help you draw cards or stack with other burn. If you are light on 3 s tribute to hunger is very helpful in this heck with not much life gain! Also a couple more hard counters would be good, dissipate and counter flux realy are fine. Cut those serum visions for lands son, aint no control deck workin with 24!
You're right that blightning is probably not my choice but I can't see myself running any of those other cards as well. I did however find myself wanting a little more removal, I suppose, so I cut an izzet charm and added one more geth's verdict. It suited me better against pesky indestructibles and I wish i had another one added in the games tonight because I could have really used it. As far as hard counters I did feel I need some more oomphff but condescend + dreadship reef is phenom if there comes a time you need to use the stack. However to say that a control deck aint workin with 24 is a bit pessimistic. I have enough scry and draw to stabilize my mana base and believe it or not, every game I played today I was actually flooded with mana.
What about Opportunity over Thoughtflare? It's color intensive, only 1 colorless more and we don't have to discard.
They both play very clunky imo, but thoughtflare was always better for me. It also sounds ridiculous too but the "target player" clause alone makes you more vulnerable to Swerve and Mindslaver effects
However to say that a control deck aint workin with 24 is a bit pessimistic. I have enough scry and draw to stabilize my mana base and believe it or not, every game I played today I was actually flooded with mana.
You can scry and draw into your lands all day, but you would have dedicate turns to tapping out and spending resources on said spells just to be able to hit your land drops while your opponent starts to gain massive tempo advantages on you. Maybe a mid-range variant would be viable with only 24 lands. To say that a control deck won't work with only 24 lands is realistic, you need at least 26. That's a bare minimum
It's only a theory of mine because I wasn't there, but with the low-land count, having to scry and spend resources just to hit the land drops will dilute your game-plan thus resulting in scenarios in which you couldn't spend your mana efficiently enough in the early to mid-game, further giving off the impression that you flooded in the late-game. What kind of match-ups did you face and how did they transpire?
Thank you for further clarifying why spending resources to hit land drops puts you behind.
Loving the Gifts Ungiven plan with Mystic Retieval,feels like a draw 4 action cards or like fact or fiction, the card is frigin banned in Some formats!
Retrieval is quite powerful on its own, like mystical teachings but sorcery and half the flashback cost. In the late game used the same cryptic 3 times haha. Just spam whatever is best at the time.
Both of these provide hard selective card advantage that is more powerful than most of the compareably costed raw draw options.
Welcome Richo! You can make very good budget versions of this deck (one of the reasons I play it). Creeping Tar Pit is for sure the first card you need to add, very important for closing games and killing walkers! A single Lavaclaw Reaches is cool too as it can just do lethal in one swing. Tarns are sadly the most expensive fetch land but you can actually do ok with a good mix of Rav m10 INN and filter lands, in fact decreasing damage from lands is extremely helpful for us. Tribute to hunger has been pretty good for me at dealing with larg or hexproof guys and again we need life gain. Cryptic Command is also an important pick up, you need some hard counters in long games don't be afraid of Counterflux or Dissipate are solid!
The format is indeed week to isochon but I recommend no more than 2 as they can clutter your draws you realy want some Remands with them though!
Many decks are also very vulnerable to Curse of death's hold or Night of souls' Betrayal. Affinity, Twin and Pod basically can't win with this out! Tokens are also a problem for us, these sort it and make electrolyte even better, certainly good SB options at the least and powerful effect from black over white.
Well it is not a top tier deck or else every one would play it like the primary 5 decks, probably better in single Qs or paper. Many of the best palyers in the world are in those dailies, so entering them without a proven decks and average skill will yield frustrating results! You have to identify what you were loosing to and why. More explanation of specific problems and the list you were using would be a big help. Tez is deffinately not any better. It is also hyper difficult to play control in modern, but that's the fun and challenge.
I would say play UWR, Tron or Twin if you want something more competitive with a strong late game and still some interaction.
I didn't say it wasn't competitive just not top tier, honestly it seems well positioned vs uwr and pod. But hoping to jam this in Dailies and 3-1 all the time is very optimistic.
One thing I have to note is this deck NEEDS Engineered explosives" target="blank">Engineered explosives! I beat bogle twice yesterday because I have a virtual 3 copies. Pithing needle is also insanely helpful!
I shouldn't need to list again why these cards are so good and fill a lot of holes in the deck. Every time I try and play without the trinket package the deck feels so much less flexible. I have mized so many games off just nihil spell bomb main vs combo, or needleing tec edge man lands, or wasting affinity and bogle with explosives.
I don't want to be a messenger of bad news, but this should be somewhat clear to whoever plays Modern with this deck, and that is that this deck cannot perform overly well in Daily Events, with win percentage of about 40%. Thus I sold the deck off on MODO and will be playing Tezzerator there instead for now, just to see how well it performs.
I will probably be lurking once in a while in this thread to comment things.
What I would like to say though is that the deck suffers from a dilemma: power vs. consistency. The more consistent you make the deck, the less power it has and cannot simply compete with all the contenders of the metagame. A friend of mine who I trust with these matters said that he plays without Cruel Ultimatum, relying on Tectonic Edge instead, and that is probably worth it. As cool as it is to land a Cruel Ultimatum, the spell is quite overkill and it is a 7-mana spell, far more than what you should be casting.
My LGS holds Modern tournaments every other week though. So for that I will have Grixis ready to fight for the heck of it. But I feel this deck is ultimately too casual.
I disagree, since there is a high learning curve I would place control (grixis and any other variant) in the "Tier 2" category. It fairs well against a lot of top level contenders imo, the only bad match-ups are g1 against tron and burn while having fair to good match-ups against control mirrors, combo, affinity, soul sisters, aggro ect. One dead even match-up from my experience are midrange decks, Jund, Junk, BUG, and American. However, it is easy to lose an entire match if you make one simple mistake. The format is also really diverse so there are a lot of gimmicks you can fall for if you just don't know what to expect. If you maintain tight plays and accumulate match-up experience, then curel control can without a doubt be competitive. I still believe in cruel ultimatum, it costs a lot but it's clearly the best finisher any control deck has at their disposal.
I haven't seen a 4cc variant in a while. Has any body had success splashing white or green recently.
White would obviously give you access to Lightning Helix as well as verdict and some other decent removal. Green would give pulse and decay, not to mention Deathrite Shaman which could be nice acceleration into Cruel Ultimatum
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No idea because my favorite decks keep getting banned or having the rules changed against them
I haven't seen a 4cc variant in a while. Has any body had success splashing white or green recently.
White would obviously give you access to Lightning Helix as well as verdict and some other decent removal. Green would give pulse and decay, not to mention Deathrite Shaman which could be nice acceleration into Cruel Ultimatum
I would splash for esper charm or sphinx's revelation, just don't know how many white sources I would need. Maybe 5 or 6? It seems nigh impossible to build a stable mana base that doesn't auto-fold to blood moon but it seems worth a try
I think a very light 4th splash is an option since we have to play all colored sources for cruel. I am testing the gifts ungiven version with green JUst for life from the loam, still working out the lands though. Every one is terrified of blood moon and rightfully so but are the only decks that play it affinity and twin? Annul is a great side board card for us and good against both strategies in general, maybe this is a 4x SB. I am also testing out prophetic prism now and certainly like signets in thirst versions for the ramp and blood moon protection, and coloring a couple utility lands.
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In comparison to Thirst for Knowledge, you have to consider the cmc cost and then make sure your deck fits that curve and game-plan. I count 9 artifact cards total in your deck, so in all likely-hood, Thirst for knowledge will end up netting you 0 cards, or +1 if you're lucky to have an artifact to pitch making it a pretty conditional card. It's a great card don't get me wrong, but it's better positioned in an artifact-heavy build from my playtesting with it.
Think Twice will net you +1 cards unconditionally with the upside of having resilience to hand/land disruption, which are both huge in modern. It's also a 2CMC spell so I wouldn't just compare the two and say one is better than the other since your choice of draw-suite depends on your game-plan. If you are running an artifact heavy build then by all means go for it, you would still have to compromise your t1-2 plays to better fit that type of draw engine.
On a side-note, since our game-plan is to land the best finisher we have in our colors (Cruel ultimatum) I wanted to build the deck around the ability to dig for it. With enough instants and sorcery spells, this unlocks the viability of utilizing Augur of Bolas in order to not only put a relevant blocker/beater on the field, but to have access to the raw digging power while exploiting the versatility of being much more likely to grab the appropriate reactionary play. So it does boil down to preference with the augur instant/sorcery plan vs the Trinketmage/Thirst/Artifact plan, if you feel that the latter is more effective to your own play-style, then I would appreciate a rundown of how your recent matches/tournaments went.
Electrolyze is a better comparison to make with thirst for knowledge since they're both 3cmc spells. It will always cantrip of course, but you have the option of also netting tempo advantage and/or card advantage depending on what situation is presented to you. Would you rather run thirst for knowledge over electrolyze on your turn three play? The game plan is disrupt your opponent's tempo/card advantage without compromising your own card advantage long enough to land a Cruel Ultimatum or a Bomb of some sort.
All I'm saying is that the evaluation of a card's power-level is more complicated than face value. There's not only the interaction it has within your own deck, but also that of your opponent's. Then there is the added level of how a draw-spell interacts with your deck's ability to interact with your opponent's game-plan. After personally taking those possibilities into consideration, I've settled on Think Twice over Thirst for Knowledge until I feel that an artifact-heavy build is a more effective one.
I wouldn't knock Thoughtflare until you try it. A lot of players think it's bad at first until they try playing with it, then they realize that it fits the gameplan perfectly (for the draw-go variant at least). Thirst is great, and you know I'm all for it, but it also warps your deck into forcing in artifacts that you may or may not want to be playing with. Thoughtflare digs deeper and nets you cards unconditionally, which allows you to play more early disruption that stabilizes you against aggro and combo.
As for Grave Titan, it may not die to lightning bolt, but it makes wraths relevant in control mirrors, which is not something you ever want to do in a control mirror. Batterskull on the other hand is always good since it's recursive and can equip to snapcasters or augurs when you're not using them. Additionally, it still dies to path, terminate and pulse, both of which still see play in the format to a decent degree. The other big problem with large creature finishers is that you literally can't ever cast them against combo unless you're playing tons of spot discard in a more tapout oriented variant. If free counters were available in the format, it would be different, but this isn't the case. Cruel is a special case in that it gets around a lot of the issues facing combo in that it forces them to discard 3. Even then, you usually don't want to hardcast cruel against combo unless you know the discard 3 will prevent them from comboing out (or you're about to die).
With Thought Flare you are paying + 2 mana for +1 card over a thirst with no artifacts!
Just like thirst it is really great to see cards and more importantly filter bad ones in your hand. I love flare in itself but we just have better options, it didn't even see standard play...
Gifts Ungiven gives you 2 cards with 2 in the yard (of your choice, possibly ones with flash back)
Remand> Think Twice imo, I really enjoy the extra protection from losing tempo/ board position, though I dont mind it if you can easily get it in the yard discarded off thirst or Gifts.
Messed around with A Gifts Ungiven build today with mostly all spells (and trying out a couple Pyro noobs)
Its pretty strong to just have 1 Cruel in you deck then make a gifts pile of Ultimatum Mystic Retrieval Snacaster Land or removal. If they don't eat your yard you basically have infinite action after that!
Revival is slow but its super sweet, gives you tons of late game gass, like a double snapcaster!
I still just want this card U1 instant, draw 2 discard 1, is that to much to ask for?
I used to run Cruel Gifts, and I might go back to trying something similar out but it had it's weaknesses to graveyard hate and could be considerably slow. Nothing worse that staring down Deathrite Shaman or scavenging ooze. I was however running Archaeomancer over the retreival simply because it was nice to have return an archaeomancer from the gy with a cruel ultimatum. That said mystic retrieval doesn't care where the opponent puts it... seems pretty good, if you need a wrath just stack damnation, snapcaster, mystic retrieval and two other completely valuable cards. Ultimately I moved away from too much graveyard reliance because of the prevelance of hate... but maybe it's just something a sideboard needs to be ready to fight through.
Curse of deaths hold is starting to grow on me a lot, in a long game you blank sooo many guys and make burn better vs larger ones, finks persist, bob, snaps, lingering souls etc etc all locked out. I wouldn't mind another bolt and snare in the main and young pyromancer or 2 could knock out some artifacts. The singleton duress seems a bit odd but its live vs most decks and great vs problematic cards backed by cryptic bounce and checking the coast to resolve ultimatum vs blue decks.
Grixis Hybrid
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Batterskull
1 Counterflux
1 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Cryptic Command
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Damnation
1 Dismember
1 Duress
2 Electrolyze
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Gifts Ungiven
2 Izzet Charm
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Mana Leak
1 Mystic Retrieval
2 Remand
2 Spell Snare
1 Terminate
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Tribute to Hunger
1 Cascade Bluffs
3 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Drowned Catacomb
2 Island
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Steam Vents
2 Sulfur Falls
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Dreadship Reaf
3 Watery Grave
1 Chromatic Lantern (Blood Moon counter!)
1 Damnation
1 Dreadbore
1 Duress
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Negate
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
1 Pyroclasm
1 Spellskite
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Trinket Mage
1 Wurmcoil Engine
Here is an even more tricked out version squeezing in green for life from the loam ravens crime and urborg hehe. The single card 4th color seems acceptable since all our lands produce colors.
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Trinket Mage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Life from the loam
1 Raven's Crime
1 Counterflux
1 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Cryptic Command
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Damnation
1 Dismember
2 Electrolyze
2 Gifts Ungiven
2 Izzet Charm
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Mana Leak
1 Mystic Retrieval
1 Remand
2 Spell Snare
1 Terminate
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Tribute to Hunger
2 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Steam Vents
3 Sulfur Falls
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Dreadship Reaf
1 Watery Grave
1 Tectonic Edge
2 Breeding pool
1 Vivid Creek
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Chromatic Lantern (Blood Moon counter!)
1 Damnation
1 Dreadbore
1 Duress
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Negate
1 Pyroclasm
1 Spellskite
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Wurmcoil Engine
3 Young Pyromancer
Oh and we have a kind of Prophetic bolt Bituminous Blast! Could be a sweet build around that, cascade into Cryptics and izzet charms as the only counters. I used to run a cruel cascade deck back in standard, hehe Kathari Remnant is better than he looks.
2 Island
1 Watery grave
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Mountain
3 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Drowned Catacombs
2 Sulfur Falls
2 Steam Vents
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
2 Reflecting Pool
1 Blood Crypt
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Cascade Bluff
Creatures: 5
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Augur of Bolas
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Cryptic Command
3 Mana Leak
3 Izzet Charm
2 Condescend
2 Geth's Verdict
2 Thoughtflare
2 Damnation
2 Serums Visions
2 Cruel Ultimatum
1 Remand
1 Terminate
1 Electrolyze
1 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Consuming Vapors
2 Sowing salt
2 Slaughter games
2 Flash Freeze
2 Doom Blade
2 Rakdos Charm
2 Shadow of Doubt
All the testing I have done has made me hopeful of this build except for tonight because one of my best friends has come down and brought his Jund and/or Bant Aura deck which is the one deck back in the day I could never seem to stop so I'm nervous to see how he does today but other than that I'm sure it's going to be a good night.
Edit: I have been doing some tinkering and online I like to switch in blightning over electrolyze. I feel the extra hand disruption plus damage that comes from blightning will serve me more than electrolyze. It would bring them down quicker when it hits along side a geth's or any burn really. I know it's sorcery speed but really it would be the only 3CMC card in my deck because right now electrolyze is the only one in so i don't think that speed would be an issue for me however I would like to run 2 blightning if doable? I guess I'll have to see how tonight goes to see if I would want it over electrolyze
UUBBBRR
You're right that blightning is probably not my choice but I can't see myself running any of those other cards as well. I did however find myself wanting a little more removal, I suppose, so I cut an izzet charm and added one more geth's verdict. It suited me better against pesky indestructibles and I wish i had another one added in the games tonight because I could have really used it. As far as hard counters I did feel I need some more oomphff but condescend + dreadship reef is phenom if there comes a time you need to use the stack. However to say that a control deck aint workin with 24 is a bit pessimistic. I have enough scry and draw to stabilize my mana base and believe it or not, every game I played today I was actually flooded with mana.
UUBBBRR
They both play very clunky imo, but thoughtflare was always better for me. It also sounds ridiculous too but the "target player" clause alone makes you more vulnerable to Swerve and Mindslaver effects
You can scry and draw into your lands all day, but you would have dedicate turns to tapping out and spending resources on said spells just to be able to hit your land drops while your opponent starts to gain massive tempo advantages on you. Maybe a mid-range variant would be viable with only 24 lands. To say that a control deck won't work with only 24 lands is realistic, you need at least 26. That's a bare minimum
It's only a theory of mine because I wasn't there, but with the low-land count, having to scry and spend resources just to hit the land drops will dilute your game-plan thus resulting in scenarios in which you couldn't spend your mana efficiently enough in the early to mid-game, further giving off the impression that you flooded in the late-game. What kind of match-ups did you face and how did they transpire?
Loving the Gifts Ungiven plan with Mystic Retieval,feels like a draw 4 action cards or like fact or fiction, the card is frigin banned in Some formats!
Retrieval is quite powerful on its own, like mystical teachings but sorcery and half the flashback cost. In the late game used the same cryptic 3 times haha. Just spam whatever is best at the time.
Both of these provide hard selective card advantage that is more powerful than most of the compareably costed raw draw options.
UUBBBRR
Tribute to hunger has been pretty good for me at dealing with larg or hexproof guys and again we need life gain. Cryptic Command is also an important pick up, you need some hard counters in long games don't be afraid of Counterflux or Dissipate are solid!
The format is indeed week to isochon but I recommend no more than 2 as they can clutter your draws you realy want some Remands with them though!
Many decks are also very vulnerable to Curse of death's hold or Night of souls' Betrayal. Affinity, Twin and Pod basically can't win with this out! Tokens are also a problem for us, these sort it and make electrolyte even better, certainly good SB options at the least and powerful effect from black over white.
I would say play UWR, Tron or Twin if you want something more competitive with a strong late game and still some interaction.
One thing I have to note is this deck NEEDS Engineered explosives" target="blank">Engineered explosives! I beat bogle twice yesterday because I have a virtual 3 copies. Pithing needle is also insanely helpful!
I shouldn't need to list again why these cards are so good and fill a lot of holes in the deck. Every time I try and play without the trinket package the deck feels so much less flexible. I have mized so many games off just nihil spell bomb main vs combo, or needleing tec edge man lands, or wasting affinity and bogle with explosives.
I disagree, since there is a high learning curve I would place control (grixis and any other variant) in the "Tier 2" category. It fairs well against a lot of top level contenders imo, the only bad match-ups are g1 against tron and burn while having fair to good match-ups against control mirrors, combo, affinity, soul sisters, aggro ect. One dead even match-up from my experience are midrange decks, Jund, Junk, BUG, and American. However, it is easy to lose an entire match if you make one simple mistake. The format is also really diverse so there are a lot of gimmicks you can fall for if you just don't know what to expect. If you maintain tight plays and accumulate match-up experience, then curel control can without a doubt be competitive. I still believe in cruel ultimatum, it costs a lot but it's clearly the best finisher any control deck has at their disposal.
White would obviously give you access to Lightning Helix as well as verdict and some other decent removal. Green would give pulse and decay, not to mention Deathrite Shaman which could be nice acceleration into Cruel Ultimatum
I would splash for esper charm or sphinx's revelation, just don't know how many white sources I would need. Maybe 5 or 6? It seems nigh impossible to build a stable mana base that doesn't auto-fold to blood moon but it seems worth a try
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Augur of Bolas
1 Vendilion Clique
Instants (18)
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Mana Leak
1 Izzet Charm
3 Think Twice
1 Terminate
1 Far // Away
3 Electrolyze
2 Cryptic Command
1 Condescend
Sorcery (8)
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Dreadbore
2 Damnation
2 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Marsh Flats
4 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Steam Vents
3 Blood Crypt
2 Watery Grave
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
3 Island
3 Sulfur Falls
4 Thoughtseize
2 Rakdos Charm
3 Spellskite
2 Dragon's Claw
2 Sowing Salt
2 Bribery
Transforms into this
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Augur of Bolas
1 Vendilion Clique
Instants (19)
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Mana Leak
1 Izzet Charm
3 Think Twice
1 Terminate
1 Far // Away
1 Esper Charm
2 Electrolyze
2 Cryptic Command
1 Condescend
1 Sphinx's Revelation
Sorcery (7)
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Dreadbore
2 Damnation
1 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Marsh Flats
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Plains
2 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Hallowed Fountain
3 Blood Crypt
2 Watery Grave
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
3 Island
2 Sulfur Falls
4 Thoughtseize
2 Rakdos Charm
3 Spellskite
2 Dragon's Claw
2 Sowing Salt
2 Bribery
I would still doubt that the compromised consistency is worth esper charm and sphinx's revelation. They just don't seem powerful enough for the splash