Of all the difference in decks that we have talked about lili or no lili pyro or no pyro so on and so forth one thing that has never been fought is jace's place in the deck. I would recommend testing soon as it is one of our most powerful cards.
You'd be wise to slide him in as a 2 of at least. I'd pull out one maindeck discard and one Terminate. Drawing Jace is PURE gas - he enables so many broken plays and completely buries the opponent in card advantage (and even if he eats removal, that's removal not pointed at an actual threat or your face, win win).
One of the best moves with Jace is not flipping him on your turn even if you are able to. Waiting to use him as a chump blocker, then flip before damage. Yes, you don't get to uptick him right away, but blocking an opposing Gurmag and then flipping is like gaining 5 life and getting a plainswalker. Most times it has been correct to have both a flipped and an unflipped Jace on the board at the same time.
Back to young pyromancer- it gives our deck a little more speed with which to kill. It may be just a win more game 1 card. I'm afraid to tweak the configuration, the deck seems to always provide the answers we need via the graveyard or all the cantrips.
That being said: I could go down to 3 abbots and add 1 pyromancer, or: I could cut 1 abbot and move 1 Liliana to the board and play two pyromancers. Thought?
I have loved him where I have had him. I ended up on a 3/3/3 split on abbot/jace/snap a 2/1 tasigur and gurmag split and moved one of my 2 lilis to the sideboard to allow for the 2 pyromancers I have.
I have missed the Liliana in the main at times but I think pyromancer has won me more games than not having Liliana has lost me. He sures up the ground well snowballs a game very quickly and provide another must kill threat he is a more need to kill threat than abbot as often people can take a hit or 2 kill the abbot and stabilize in this regard if it take a turn or 2 to kill the pyromancer he has left behind a small army. I find his ability to blank for a few turns against Coco decks or opposing goyfs invaluable as he provides the time needed to really turn the corner and get our card advantage online. I haven't missed the abbot much I think the 3/3/3 has felt the most fluid of any split I had played previously anyway so that adjustment was okay. I do play grixis pyromancer in legacy a lot so I had a high valuation on Pyro already and this deck with him around has been very good.
As for board mine looks like this
3x fulminator mage
2x vampiric link
2x echoing truth
2x surgical extraction
2x anger of the gods
1x damnation
1x EE
1x Liliana
1x K command
It has worked well so far I have decdied to take the targeted graveyard hate simply because my meta has a lot of twin and tron so surgical does help.
Does one or two copys of bob is impossible to play in this deck just because 3 cards on 60 cards are 6-7 cost
Drawing 2 cards per turn would help feeding the grave and playing with 20 lands would feel easyer.
Serum visions could be used more often with snapcaster + jace;; to get less damage as possible from Bob.
(putting a land or low mana cost as next drawstep)
The deck in the primer has an average cmc of around 3 by my math. Jund typically runs at about 1.4 cmc average, so they can run Bob. This deck+ Bob is a a death sentence, and not something you want to do unless you are running Death's Shadow from left field.
I'm having trouble imagining this deck being good vs. Affinity. Grixis Control runs the same interaction but has an abysmal matchup.
Pyro seems interesting, but I've always played it in a more reactive shell in order to protect it + its tokens. Do you tend to slam it down on T2 and hope it survives or later on to try to get value? Pyro also seems a bit weird since it really wants Gitaxian Probe but that seems kind of redundant with the discard suite. That said, I love YP and would be really happy if he succeeds here.
Does one or two copys of bob is impossible to play in this deck just because 3 cards on 60 cards are 6-7 cost
Drawing 2 cards per turn would help feeding the grave and playing with 20 lands would feel easyer.
Serum visions could be used more often with snapcaster + jace;; to get less damage as possible from Bob.
(putting a land or low mana cost as next drawstep)
Jund plays 1tasigur, 1maelstrom, 4lili, 2Kcommand,.. and can stay alive;
I'd like to know your though.. I think he would give more wins than loses..
We could play more spells to make abbot bigger.. !!
***just noticed than revelling rise/fall = lose 4 lifes.. Damn ***** -.- !! *** sad story
They probably have a much better way of doing average cmcs. I just add it all up (1 Kommand=3) and divide by 60.
According to their formula, Jund is around 2.11, with Junk at 2.36. If you cut the right cards you could possibly get away with bob according to their formula. Just cut the correct cards so you don't raise your cmc and it'll be... different.
2-3 maindeck kol comand and 6 ways to flash it back. Affinity is a good MU for us game one and it gets better post board.
I'm gonna try 1 young pyro in the main, cutting 1 abbot... Not excited, but worth trying. 10 of us staying in a big house tomorrow night. Lots of opportunities to test.
The affinity matchup isn't good but it isn't horrible either. We interact better because we are a much more proactive deck than chapin grixis the discard spells are not ideal but they are a lot better game one then cryptic command as they often take something like a cranial plating or ravager meant for turn 2 and oddly enough the bounce on rise is handy for dealing with ravagers plus we have a lot of low cost creatures that can chump. It isn't ideal but its better than grixis control. I am running a pyromancer version of this deck and he helps a bit not a ton but hes better than lili against affinity.
Against affinity a lot of time yeah you are slamming pyro turn 2 if you can and have no better play. We often protect him by stripping the hand with thoughtseize effects and fall he ends up being protected because of the low resource game our opponents are often playing. That is where the info from IOK and TS becomes important crafting a game plan off seeing the opening hand. If there is one or no removal spells than hes safe and can attempt to snowball from turn 2 at the same time if there is a lot of removal he can be a way to bait out those spells or can sit tight in your hand until we have ran our opponent out of resources, a lot of it comes down to the line you choose. Like a lot of grixis shell this deck has a lot of lines of play (in my opinion the most different lines of play game to game) and what pyro does is throw in a threat that attacks from an angle the deck wasn't before by being a must kill threat that can take control of the game all alone by going wide. Now not having probe means that yes Pyro definitely isn't at his strongest in this deck but in the same way bolt isn't at its most powerful in jund because they have no snaps. The decks weaker matchups are aggro based and with the exception of merfolk he helps a lot there without giving up to much since he is a great tool in the grindy games as well.
Pyro should be abused for value to gum up the ground, and no I don't think probe is necessary. Most YP decks can't sit back and control like this shell can do YP shines.
@Chefdodge
Really its meta dependant whether or not pyro is awesome or meh same is true of lili. The recent modern meta has not been kind to grixis being as it has been very aggro heavy in that sort of meta pyro is better for us. If the meta goes back to all twin and chapin control then pyros value is minimal compared to lili who becomes awesome again. Depends what you expect to face. I just like how the deck feels more well rounded with 2 copies in the main but then again I wasn't as attached to abbot as some here are I believe he is very good and worthy of his place in this deck but 4 always felt a little too clunky to many abbots flipping to abbots and such 3 always played better when I ran the deck testing.
Does one or two copys of bob is impossible to play in this deck just because 3 cards on 60 cards are 6-7 cost
Drawing 2 cards per turn would help feeding the grave and playing with 20 lands would feel easyer.
Serum visions could be used more often with snapcaster + jace;; to get less damage as possible from Bob.
(putting a land or low mana cost as next drawstep)
Jund plays 1tasigur, 1maelstrom, 4lili, 2Kcommand,.. and can stay alive;
I'd like to know your though.. I think he would give more wins than loses..
We could play more spells to make abbot bigger.. !!
***just noticed than revelling rise/fall = lose 4 lifes.. Damn ***** -.- !! *** sad story
Another important factor for jund/k is that as green decks they have maindeckable life gain whereas we are very much constrained by our starting life total. I think there could very well be an aggro version of the deck that eschews jace for bob and the delve creatures (perhaps ironically for delvers), but you are talking about a very different deck at that point.
Concerning the earlier discussion about extraction effects, they tend to be pretty useless if they aren't changing the matchup from can't win to got this. My funsies mill deck runs two copies of surgical main because if they have an eldrazi trigger you just cannot win w/o them, and as a mill deck, packing some main deck grave hate is advisable. In TSP/Ravnica standard I had a crazy mono black control deck that main decked copies of extirpate because it tapped out a lot and could not beat the full pack of mana leak/rune snag/remand (especially from pickles), but left alone it was doing bigger things than those decks could contain. There likely isn't enough reason to board the extractions here over something like nihil spell bomb.
And yeah, modern would be a lot easier with a 20 card board~
I've been testing this deck all week and I'm in love with ridiculous plays it makes. I do think that there aren't enough Engineered Explosives in the deck, considering how often I board both of them in. I even bring them in against UR Twin where you can set it on 3 and as long as you leave up 2 mana, they can't combo off. The rest of my SB is skewed a bit towards beating boggles though (also the reason I have the Lilies as a 2/1 split in mb/sb), considering we have 3 people playing it at our store and I really really hate that deck.
Seriously though, 2 EE in your SB, do it. It hits a LOT cards we can't otherwise deal with and is the best sweeper against merfolk (another tough matchup for us).
Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
I love the work you have all put in on this. I've been lurking for awhile, and trying to put together the pieces for the deck. Unable to get Jaces yet, which led me down a slightly different route. Trying to find something similar that you can stick on turn 2 and ride to card advantage, I have been trying Sygg, river cutthroat and Dark Confidant. Sygg, while a pet card of mine, hasn't been very good in limited testing except for the occasional game where it snowballs, but I think dark confidant may be worth considering. It obviously requires a different build of the deck, but in changing the deck to accommodate dark confidant, I've found that my abbots have become better. The gist of the changes is:
Replaced delve creatures with young pyromancer (rather not dome myself for 6-7 off confidant). This gives me less reliance on the graveyard, and can gum up the ground in a different way. it's cold to some removal that the delve fatties beats, but it better against some of the spot removal. overall a powerful card replacing powerful cards.
get rid of thought scour, add gitaxian probe and mishra's bauble (extremely underrated card). thought scour lost a lot of its value without jace and delve fatties. 8 free cantrips makes serum visions into turn 2 abbot for value as well as turn two snapcaster impersonating silvergill adept both real plays. also, with dark confidant, having access to 4 serum visions and 4 mishra's baubles makes it a bit easier to control the potential life loss.
add 3 dark confidant. similarly to jace, it just runs away with games. I brought down the top end of the curve by taking out lilianas and going to 2 rise//fall and 2 colophon's command. I would love to have more of all these cards, but having 8 free cantrips makes this almost a 52 card deck, mitigating the change. Since we don't have life gain, dark confidant forces a more aggressive stance to win before we die, so more threats in place of liliana is good. It also influences me to run inquisition over thoughtseize and a less painful manabase. Playing this version probably demands searching out basics more often as well as paying mana for gitaxian probe when possible to mitigate the potential life loss sources.
Dropped the land count to 18. definitely increases the risk of mulligan, but this percentage out of 52 cards is very similar to the percentage that 20.5 lands would be out of 60. Not completely perfect translation, but this gives a lot of play. Perhaps for those of you wishing for 20.5 lands as I've seen in a lot of posts, trimming some stuff for free cantrips is a good way to manipulate the numbers to make the mana base feel like 20.5 lands.
Here's the list I'm working with. Keep in mind I'd be playing similar to the stock list you guys came up with if I had the jaces, but have been enjoying the play of this version and think some of the thoughts may have merit. I do think the free cantrips have merit in any version of this deck, in some number. This version is far less vulnerable to graveyard hate, but would hate to see a proclaims or golgari charm, that's for sure.
3 dark confidant
3 young pyromancer
4 snapcaster
4 abbot
Just wanted to say good luck to you tomorrow Chefdodge! Keep us updated, if you can! You mentioned your friend is playing a similar deck as well, if we can get his thoughts too, that would be great
He went no Liliana at all. 2 grim lavamancer instead. He also is boarding out some of the abbots for counter magic when needed. I heard the field was a ton of affinity and infect today. It should be fun times. I'll try not to punt too bad.
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Back to young pyromancer- it gives our deck a little more speed with which to kill. It may be just a win more game 1 card. I'm afraid to tweak the configuration, the deck seems to always provide the answers we need via the graveyard or all the cantrips.
That being said: I could go down to 3 abbots and add 1 pyromancer, or: I could cut 1 abbot and move 1 Liliana to the board and play two pyromancers. Thought?
And now, you essentially have a 14 card side board. What's that look like?
As for board mine looks like this
3x fulminator mage
2x vampiric link
2x echoing truth
2x surgical extraction
2x anger of the gods
1x damnation
1x EE
1x Liliana
1x K command
It has worked well so far I have decdied to take the targeted graveyard hate simply because my meta has a lot of twin and tron so surgical does help.
Drawing 2 cards per turn would help feeding the grave and playing with 20 lands would feel easyer.
Serum visions could be used more often with snapcaster + jace;; to get less damage as possible from Bob.
(putting a land or low mana cost as next drawstep)
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10426&d=259646&f=MO
Jund plays 1tasigur, 1maelstrom, 4lili, 2Kcommand,.. and can stay alive;
I'd like to know your though.. I think he would give more wins than loses..
We could play more spells to make abbot bigger.. !!
***just noticed than revelling rise/fall = lose 4 lifes.. Damn ***** -.- !! *** sad story
BGUSultai Shadow
BURGrixis Shadow
BGUSultai midrange
BRWMardu Pyromancer
BGRJund
Cheeri0sXWU
Reid Duke's Level One
Who's the Beatdown
Alt+0198=Æ
Pyro seems interesting, but I've always played it in a more reactive shell in order to protect it + its tokens. Do you tend to slam it down on T2 and hope it survives or later on to try to get value? Pyro also seems a bit weird since it really wants Gitaxian Probe but that seems kind of redundant with the discard suite. That said, I love YP and would be really happy if he succeeds here.
They probably have a much better way of doing average cmcs. I just add it all up (1 Kommand=3) and divide by 60.
According to their formula, Jund is around 2.11, with Junk at 2.36. If you cut the right cards you could possibly get away with bob according to their formula. Just cut the correct cards so you don't raise your cmc and it'll be... different.
Cheeri0sXWU
Reid Duke's Level One
Who's the Beatdown
Alt+0198=Æ
I'm gonna try 1 young pyro in the main, cutting 1 abbot... Not excited, but worth trying. 10 of us staying in a big house tomorrow night. Lots of opportunities to test.
Against affinity a lot of time yeah you are slamming pyro turn 2 if you can and have no better play. We often protect him by stripping the hand with thoughtseize effects and fall he ends up being protected because of the low resource game our opponents are often playing. That is where the info from IOK and TS becomes important crafting a game plan off seeing the opening hand. If there is one or no removal spells than hes safe and can attempt to snowball from turn 2 at the same time if there is a lot of removal he can be a way to bait out those spells or can sit tight in your hand until we have ran our opponent out of resources, a lot of it comes down to the line you choose. Like a lot of grixis shell this deck has a lot of lines of play (in my opinion the most different lines of play game to game) and what pyro does is throw in a threat that attacks from an angle the deck wasn't before by being a must kill threat that can take control of the game all alone by going wide. Now not having probe means that yes Pyro definitely isn't at his strongest in this deck but in the same way bolt isn't at its most powerful in jund because they have no snaps. The decks weaker matchups are aggro based and with the exception of merfolk he helps a lot there without giving up to much since he is a great tool in the grindy games as well.
Really its meta dependant whether or not pyro is awesome or meh same is true of lili. The recent modern meta has not been kind to grixis being as it has been very aggro heavy in that sort of meta pyro is better for us. If the meta goes back to all twin and chapin control then pyros value is minimal compared to lili who becomes awesome again. Depends what you expect to face. I just like how the deck feels more well rounded with 2 copies in the main but then again I wasn't as attached to abbot as some here are I believe he is very good and worthy of his place in this deck but 4 always felt a little too clunky to many abbots flipping to abbots and such 3 always played better when I ran the deck testing.
Another important factor for jund/k is that as green decks they have maindeckable life gain whereas we are very much constrained by our starting life total. I think there could very well be an aggro version of the deck that eschews jace for bob and the delve creatures (perhaps ironically for delvers), but you are talking about a very different deck at that point.
Concerning the earlier discussion about extraction effects, they tend to be pretty useless if they aren't changing the matchup from can't win to got this. My funsies mill deck runs two copies of surgical main because if they have an eldrazi trigger you just cannot win w/o them, and as a mill deck, packing some main deck grave hate is advisable. In TSP/Ravnica standard I had a crazy mono black control deck that main decked copies of extirpate because it tapped out a lot and could not beat the full pack of mana leak/rune snag/remand (especially from pickles), but left alone it was doing bigger things than those decks could contain. There likely isn't enough reason to board the extractions here over something like nihil spell bomb.
And yeah, modern would be a lot easier with a 20 card board~
3 Abbot of Keral Keep
3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Gurmag Angler
Non-Creatures (26)
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Serum Visions
3 Thought Scour
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Terminate
2 Kolaghan's Command
3 Rise // Fall
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
1 Desolate Lighthouse
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Blood Crypt
1 Watery Grave
1 Steam Vents
2 Swamp
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Dispel
2 Negate
2 Vampiric Link
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Molten Rain
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Kolaghan's Command
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Spellskite
1 Languish
I've been testing this deck all week and I'm in love with ridiculous plays it makes. I do think that there aren't enough Engineered Explosives in the deck, considering how often I board both of them in. I even bring them in against UR Twin where you can set it on 3 and as long as you leave up 2 mana, they can't combo off. The rest of my SB is skewed a bit towards beating boggles though (also the reason I have the Lilies as a 2/1 split in mb/sb), considering we have 3 people playing it at our store and I really really hate that deck.
Seriously though, 2 EE in your SB, do it. It hits a LOT cards we can't otherwise deal with and is the best sweeper against merfolk (another tough matchup for us).
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
Replaced delve creatures with young pyromancer (rather not dome myself for 6-7 off confidant). This gives me less reliance on the graveyard, and can gum up the ground in a different way. it's cold to some removal that the delve fatties beats, but it better against some of the spot removal. overall a powerful card replacing powerful cards.
get rid of thought scour, add gitaxian probe and mishra's bauble (extremely underrated card). thought scour lost a lot of its value without jace and delve fatties. 8 free cantrips makes serum visions into turn 2 abbot for value as well as turn two snapcaster impersonating silvergill adept both real plays. also, with dark confidant, having access to 4 serum visions and 4 mishra's baubles makes it a bit easier to control the potential life loss.
add 3 dark confidant. similarly to jace, it just runs away with games. I brought down the top end of the curve by taking out lilianas and going to 2 rise//fall and 2 colophon's command. I would love to have more of all these cards, but having 8 free cantrips makes this almost a 52 card deck, mitigating the change. Since we don't have life gain, dark confidant forces a more aggressive stance to win before we die, so more threats in place of liliana is good. It also influences me to run inquisition over thoughtseize and a less painful manabase. Playing this version probably demands searching out basics more often as well as paying mana for gitaxian probe when possible to mitigate the potential life loss sources.
Dropped the land count to 18. definitely increases the risk of mulligan, but this percentage out of 52 cards is very similar to the percentage that 20.5 lands would be out of 60. Not completely perfect translation, but this gives a lot of play. Perhaps for those of you wishing for 20.5 lands as I've seen in a lot of posts, trimming some stuff for free cantrips is a good way to manipulate the numbers to make the mana base feel like 20.5 lands.
Here's the list I'm working with. Keep in mind I'd be playing similar to the stock list you guys came up with if I had the jaces, but have been enjoying the play of this version and think some of the thoughts may have merit. I do think the free cantrips have merit in any version of this deck, in some number. This version is far less vulnerable to graveyard hate, but would hate to see a proclaims or golgari charm, that's for sure.
3 dark confidant
3 young pyromancer
4 snapcaster
4 abbot
4 serum visions
4 lightning bolt
1 spite of mogis
4 gitaxian probe
4 Mishras bauble
3 terminate
4 inquisition of kozilek
2 rise//fall
2 kologhan’s command
3 polluted delta
4 scalding tarn
1 swamp
1 mountain
1 island
1 steam vents
1 watery grave
1 blood crypt
3 blackcleave cliffs
2 creeping tar pits (not sure if this is just better as darkslick shores)
Average CMC for Dark Confidant: 1.2
Still working on the mana base.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. Hopefully it helps me win an FNM to get the store credit for my Jaces.