Defense Grid is an option, but too narrow of one, I think. I plan on just jamming in as many threats as I can post-board.
TKS can draw or rip the new counter, and World Breaker can still recur. As you mentioned, Thragtusk dodges it completely, and still makes Bolts and Paths bad value propositions.
A singleton Emrakul 1.0 could help as well, but I fear she's too slow when they can be countering our Maps and Karns meant to get us to such a point. They already pack Crumble to Dust, and a successful one almost guarantees we'll never be able to cast her.
OG Kozilek might be an option; it refills your hand (to help fuel your way through counters) and reshuffles threats and Sanctums, or it can close the game in a swing if it sticks. Koz can hit play from turn four onward, so it could see play against decks other than control, or even be castable through Crumble if the game draws out.
Snapcaster Mage together with this counter...ugh. Relics and Cages at the ready, team.
I have also thought about going UG with the new Fastlands coming out. Might be worth a shot. Maybe play Coax form the blind eternities to hit our eldrazi? Other than that Dispel, Cyclonic Rift and the like may be worth it...
I will brew something up once i get home and let you guys know
Defense Grid is an option, but too narrow of one, I think. I plan on just jamming in as many threats as I can post-board.
TKS can draw or rip the new counter, and World Breaker can still recur. As you mentioned, Thragtusk dodges it completely, and still makes Bolts and Paths bad value propositions.
A singleton Emrakul 1.0 could help as well, but I fear she's too slow when they can be countering our Maps and Karns meant to get us to such a point. They already pack Crumble to Dust, and a successful one almost guarantees we'll never be able to cast her.
OG Kozilek might be an option; it refills your hand (to help fuel your way through counters) and reshuffles threats and Sanctums, or it can close the game in a swing if it sticks. Koz can hit play from turn four onward, so it could see play against decks other than control, or even be castable through Crumble if the game draws out.
Snapcaster Mage together with this counter...ugh. Relics and Cages at the ready, team.
I agree with most of these being non-answers. TKS is potentially the most interesting of the ones listed, for sure.
Mindbender seems interesting. You can easily fork several removal spells, counters, and even bombs like Nahiri or even Crumble in your opponents' hands.
I have also thought about going UG with the new Fastlands coming out. Might be worth a shot. Maybe play Coax form the blind eternities to hit our eldrazi? Other than that Dispel, Cyclonic Rift and the like may be worth it...
I will brew something up once i get home and let you guys know
People have tried it before, splashing mainly for Remand and Repeal, as well as Ruins to enable the SlaverLock (which can be fetched by potentially MD LftL). Someone had a list from an SCG event ages ago (but didn't place). Those would be the main cards I'd be looking at.
I don't think that the flexibility Coax can potentially provide is worth 2U. The most flexible things it can grab are All Is Dust and TKS/Mindbender on the other end of the spectrum. I just don't think there's a good reason you wouldn't be running the card you were fetching in the first place (especially considering you can fetch threats but not Coaxes via Stirrings).
With the new fastlands, i think Abzan will start to see way more play then Jund, and with Path to Exile already beeing the most played removal, it will be played even more. That makes our beloved Wurmcoil Engine way worse.
I disagree on Cavern of Souls not beeing a good option for us, there was a time Tron used it to land Sundering Titan against control deck.
If this new counter start to be present in all U SB's, i might try this :
With the new fastlands, i think Abzan will start to see way more play then Jund, and with Path to Exile already beeing the most played removal, it will be played even more. That makes our beloved Wurmcoil Engine way worse.
I disagree on Cavern of Souls not beeing a good option for us, there was a time Tron used it to land Sundering Titan against control deck.
That was also when we had Eye of Ugin to search up Sundering Titan.
With the new fastlands, i think Abzan will start to see way more play then Jund, and with Path to Exile already beeing the most played removal, it will be played even more. That makes our beloved Wurmcoil Engine way worse.
I disagree on Cavern of Souls not beeing a good option for us, there was a time Tron used it to land Sundering Titan against control deck.
That was also when we had Eye of Ugin to search up Sundering Titan.
I agree completely; nowadays our manabase is drawn so thin w/o Eye that I wouldn't recommend playing a land that counters counters on the off-chance you draw your threat in the first place; it doesn't help our planeswalkers at all, which are the majority of our threats. The second Sanctum still seems far stronger than the first Cavern.
I agree on not running cavern too. It's only going to be useful against a hand full of decks. Someone had already mentioned this a few posts back, but if you are worried about control decks and counterspells, throw Emrakul 1.0 back in to your 75. No need to skew your mama base.
Pretty stock list. I prefer the GQ over World Breaker by now. It's more reliable in my opinion. Sideboard is completely a meta choice, same as not running bolts. Where i play we have many many decks with Manadorks, weenies and the like. For everything bigger there's the All is Dust in the Sideboard. I chose to play Crucible as many players don't play artifact destruction (Grudge, Wear//Tear) but "lockdown" like Stony Silence against Tron so i felt this is a good choice. Life from the Loam could Dredge but without Eye of Ugin and being able to tutor your bombs i don't like dredging as much.
Edit: Figured i should explain the Meta a bit more. We have several midrange decks such as Jund, Junk and some weird "GW Humans Counter" deck working with Hardened Scales. Sounds weird but can go big pretty fast. Other decks are UW/Esper Control, Infect, Affinity, Nahirikul Control, Tooth & Nail and Burn.
Warping wail is more than decent in this Meta as a Removal Spell and a counter to Tooth & Nail, Ancestral Vision etc.
Pulse of Murasa is a card i wanted to try for quite some time now. The main landhate in the LGS are GQ, Tec Edged and Fulminators so i figured it could be worth a shot.
going back to tron which was my first modern deck. do you guys feel that 2 sanctums are necessary? it seems like 2 worldbreakers are common nowadays which can cut the slot of a 2nd ghost quarter.
how many cards do you guys dedicate for the infect matchup? i think spellskite is still the best card followed by spatial contortion and dismember??
?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
plays Ad Nauseam and Amulet Bloom in Modern
"He traded sand for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand."
—Afari, Tales
Short Info beforehand: I put the All is Dust in the MD going to 61 Cards. In that slot i played a Sundering Titan in the SB.
We played 4 Rounds of modern. Quick Recap:
I went 3-1 with my only loss in the finals against a very explosive Naya Zoo deck.
Match 1 vs. Junk
Game 1 i stick Ugin to the board. Self explanatory.
Game 2 I wipe his board with an All is Dust and then proceed to control the game with Ugin and Karn.
Match 2 vs. Tooth and Nail
Game 1 he goes for the turn 3 kill. Not much to do here. Had 2 Pyroclasms in hand but no red mana to kill his mana dorks.
Game 2 i get 3 Pithing Needles on the board naming Arbor Elf, Voyaging Satyr and Garruk Wildspeaker. His deck was pretty much dead afterwards and we slugged it out until i finally hit Tron and closed out the game.
Game 3 he threatens the turn 3 combo and i had nothing to do against it. Lucky for me he was bluffing. A good pyroclasm followed by some Pithing Needles won me the game. (Karn Eating a Land with 3 Enchantments on it was also pretty useful...)
Match 3 vs. Nahirikul Control
Game 1 he drops a Turn 4 Nahiri on the play without any counterspell backup. I had my Turn 3 Tron for sure, so i am not sure what he expected. Cleared it off with All is Dust. Then he didn't draw gas and Ulamog closed out the game.
Game 2 i get Turn 4 Crumble to Dusted which i saw coming to be honest but i held a clunky hand and he didn't make any plays until then either so i figured he doesn't have much gas. Game goes long and grindy. Eventually i gather up 10 lands for Ulamog and start slamming payoff spells winning the game.
Match 4 vs. Naya Zoo
Game 1 He goes: Turn 1 Nacatl, Turn 2 Kird Ape + Rancor on Nacatls, Turn 3 Rancor on Kird Ape and Bushwhacker Surged. Not much to do here.
Game 2 I manage to win the game by chaining Wurmcoils into Ugin Ultimate. All is Dust really saved me here as a turn 3 boardwipe.
Game 3 went pretty much like game 1. Too fast, no sideboard cards in hand and he had the burn to finish me off.
All in all i am happy with my performance. Could have been better as i made some small errors.
My MVPs of this evening were:
Sundering Titan (Never ceases to amaze me how awesome this guy is. Eating a ton of lands, huge body to deal with.)
Pyroclasm (Wiping a board full of mana dorks and small creatures is awesome. Now i'm not sure anymore Bolt is the right way to go)
All is Dust (Turn 3 Boardwipe proved to be pretty useful. Not sure if it's really maindeckable but it may be worth considering it.)
Finally got some good matchups last night, going 3-1 with tron. Deck smashes out midrange as usual but im finding control to be tricky, and sometimes going to time. i am debating defense grid out of the side.
ghost quarter, and double forest in the mainboard are really good. seeing lots of ghost quarter and path to exile. geier reach sanitarium was nice too. also won some games off of ugin. pyroclasm got some work in too; still like it better than bolt.
all is dust isn't bad either, gets around stony silence as a bonus. A configuration of 3 o-stone mainboard with 1 all is dust in the side might be good.
edit: i like that world breaker has reach, and can smash a manland. stops restoration angel nicely. i'm keeping him in mainboard.
@ two_face idk, personal preference. run what you like. i do see situations where sanctum is really good, but have been liking geier reach sanitarium so far. i like 1 ghost quarter.
infect? idk, 3-ish. some combination of spellskites or removal. i never win the matchup though so when building sideboards, I tend to ignore it or only use splash hate. i dont recall my sideboarding plan off the top of my head. i think im removing some number of wurmcoils and the 20th land. idk if this is correct though.
going back to tron which was my first modern deck. do you guys feel that 2 sanctums are necessary? it seems like 2 worldbreakers are common nowadays which can cut the slot of a 2nd ghost quarter.
how many cards do you guys dedicate for the infect matchup? i think spellskite is still the best card followed by spatial contortion and dismember??
?
The best card against Infect is probably Sudden Shock but if requires you to be in Red and is pretty unimpressive against other decks (you can sometimes get lucky with it on an Arcbound Ravager). The tricky thing is finding cards good against Infect that have utility elsewhere.
For example, while Spatial Contortion is better against Infect, I'd prefer to run Warping Wail because it has much greater utility in other matchups.
Which is another reason why Spellskite is good, as it's decent against some aggro decks so it's not only there for Infect. On the downside, they usually bring in Nature's Claim to deal with it, but hey, they have to draw their counter-hate.
going back to tron which was my first modern deck. do you guys feel that 2 sanctums are necessary? it seems like 2 worldbreakers are common nowadays which can cut the slot of a 2nd ghost quarter.
how many cards do you guys dedicate for the infect matchup? i think spellskite is still the best card followed by spatial contortion and dismember??
?
The best card against Infect is probably Sudden Shock but if requires you to be in Red and is pretty unimpressive against other decks (you can sometimes get lucky with it on an Arcbound Ravager). The tricky thing is finding cards good against Infect that have utility elsewhere.
For example, while Spatial Contortion is better against Infect, I'd prefer to run Warping Wail because it has much greater utility in other matchups.
Which is another reason why Spellskite is good, as it's decent against some aggro decks so it's not only there for Infect. On the downside, they usually bring in Nature's Claim to deal with it, but hey, they have to draw their counter-hate.
Fog is amazing agains´t Infect and many other aggro.
can you put the sanctum of ugin trigger on the stack after casting ulamog to bait if it will get countered? and of course since it's may, choosing yes if it does get countered to fetch another one or no if the ulamog resolves?
working on a green white list (link below) which i feel is better suited to our worst matchup which is burn and infect (last time i recall) with blessed alliance for both sacrifice effect and 4 life for burn with pte instead of pyroclasm or even a 3 of providence for burn and fast aggro decks? i think the 6 life matters a lot. wishing that warping wail also targeted instants so you can counter skullcrack and atarka's command which prevents lifegain..
does everyone go for a 3 o-stone 2 ugin split? or 4 o-stone and 2 ugins are overkill? seems like with everyone running stony silence, you would rather get a better shot at getting ugin to stabilize in those situations. plus the selfless spirit seems like a pest and ugin trumps it especially if we are relying too much on o-stone.
is ghost quarter still necessary if you run at least 1 worldbreaker maindeck?
has anyone tried the new emrakul and how did it feel with testing? controlling their turn and using their paths and removal on their own cards seems sweet!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
plays Ad Nauseam and Amulet Bloom in Modern
"He traded sand for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand."
—Afari, Tales
Sanctum triggers immediately upon cast and resolves before your spell resolves, so you have to sacrifice and fetch up a fatty before they decide if they want to counter your spell or not. But 10/10 on the board or no, quadruple vindicate is usually pretty tough to beat.
As far as GW Tron goes, I like it and am currently running it. I'd run Timely Reinforcements over Blessed Alliance. Sorcery speed is a downside, but 3 1/1s buys you a ton of time. Providence is way too slow. You need to be able to take action before you get tron on line.
Most lists go 3/2 over 4/2 o-stone/ugin split. That opens up room for Fog and Spellskite main.
Ghost Quarter is a meta call. It's nice that Worldbreaker exiles things and has reach, but people generally run 2 of them to get a critical mass of 7 drops to trigger Sanctum of Ugin. If you find yourself in a lot of mirror matches or up against Infect/Affinity then Ghost Quarter is fine, but it usually means going down to 1 Sanctum, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. I like having a tutorable land available that can deal with manlands.
TKS can draw or rip the new counter, and World Breaker can still recur. As you mentioned, Thragtusk dodges it completely, and still makes Bolts and Paths bad value propositions.
A singleton Emrakul 1.0 could help as well, but I fear she's too slow when they can be countering our Maps and Karns meant to get us to such a point. They already pack Crumble to Dust, and a successful one almost guarantees we'll never be able to cast her.
OG Kozilek might be an option; it refills your hand (to help fuel your way through counters) and reshuffles threats and Sanctums, or it can close the game in a swing if it sticks. Koz can hit play from turn four onward, so it could see play against decks other than control, or even be castable through Crumble if the game draws out.
Snapcaster Mage together with this counter...ugh. Relics and Cages at the ready, team.
GXTronGX
RWxBurnRWx
I will brew something up once i get home and let you guys know
BRGJundGRB
GCTronCG
WBRMardu PyromancerRBW
Legacy:
GElvesG
I don't think that the flexibility Coax can potentially provide is worth 2U. The most flexible things it can grab are All Is Dust and TKS/Mindbender on the other end of the spectrum. I just don't think there's a good reason you wouldn't be running the card you were fetching in the first place (especially considering you can fetch threats but not Coaxes via Stirrings).
GX Tron XG
UR Phoenix RU
GG Freyalise High Tide GG
UR Parun Counterspells RU
BB Yawgmoth Token Storm BB
WB Pestilence BW
I could imagine a list like this:
4 Botanical Sanctum
1 Sanctum of Ugin
1 Geier Reach Sanatarium
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Forest
4 Karn Liberated
2 Ugin, The Spirit Dragon
1 Ulamog, the ceaseless Hunger
1 Spellskite
3 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Ancient Stirrings
2 Repeal
2 Remand
1 Cyclonic Rift
4 Sylvan Scrying
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Expedition Map
3 Oblivion Stone
BRGJundGRB
GCTronCG
WBRMardu PyromancerRBW
Legacy:
GElvesG
I disagree on Cavern of Souls not beeing a good option for us, there was a time Tron used it to land Sundering Titan against control deck.
If this new counter start to be present in all U SB's, i might try this :
4 Thought-Knot Seer
2 World Breaker
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 Emrakul, the Promised End
12 Tron
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Forest
1 Sanctum of Ugin
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Cavern of Souls
Might be good to go to 20 lands. Maybe Ghost Quarter goes to SB for 1 more Sanctum of Ugin. More U decks means more Celestial Colonnade and Creeping Tar Pit for us to deal with too.
There is also the fact that with the surge of Bant Eldrazi and the possibility of more control decks, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon gets worse too. We can split 1/1 with Distended Mindbender.
GXTronGX
RWxBurnRWx
It protect our 7+ creatures and is free Not of this world
BWC Processors Eldrazi CWB
UBC Emerge EldraziCBU
C Tron Eldrazi C
RBC Meld Eldrazi CBR
GU Tokens Eldrazi UG
GXTronGX
RWxBurnRWx
GX Tron XG
UR Phoenix RU
GG Freyalise High Tide GG
UR Parun Counterspells RU
BB Yawgmoth Token Storm BB
WB Pestilence BW
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
2 Spellskite
3 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Karn Liberated
2 Ugin, The Spirit Dragon
4 Pyroclasm
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Sylvan Scrying
4 Chromatic Star
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Expedition Map
3 Oblivion Stone
2 Ghost Quarter
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
1 Geier Reach Sanatarium
3 Pithing Needle
2 Warping Wail
1 Crucible of Worlds
3 Nature's Claim
3 Thragtusk
1 Pulse of Murasa
1 Emrakul, the aeons torn
1 All is Dust
Pretty stock list. I prefer the GQ over World Breaker by now. It's more reliable in my opinion. Sideboard is completely a meta choice, same as not running bolts. Where i play we have many many decks with Manadorks, weenies and the like. For everything bigger there's the All is Dust in the Sideboard. I chose to play Crucible as many players don't play artifact destruction (Grudge, Wear//Tear) but "lockdown" like Stony Silence against Tron so i felt this is a good choice. Life from the Loam could Dredge but without Eye of Ugin and being able to tutor your bombs i don't like dredging as much.
Edit: Figured i should explain the Meta a bit more. We have several midrange decks such as Jund, Junk and some weird "GW Humans Counter" deck working with Hardened Scales. Sounds weird but can go big pretty fast. Other decks are UW/Esper Control, Infect, Affinity, Nahirikul Control, Tooth & Nail and Burn.
Warping wail is more than decent in this Meta as a Removal Spell and a counter to Tooth & Nail, Ancestral Vision etc.
Pulse of Murasa is a card i wanted to try for quite some time now. The main landhate in the LGS are GQ, Tec Edged and Fulminators so i figured it could be worth a shot.
Will report on how the FNM turned out.
BRGJundGRB
GCTronCG
WBRMardu PyromancerRBW
Legacy:
GElvesG
how many cards do you guys dedicate for the infect matchup? i think spellskite is still the best card followed by spatial contortion and dismember??
?
"He traded sand for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand."
—Afari, Tales
We played 4 Rounds of modern. Quick Recap:
I went 3-1 with my only loss in the finals against a very explosive Naya Zoo deck.
Match 1 vs. Junk
Game 1 i stick Ugin to the board. Self explanatory.
Game 2 I wipe his board with an All is Dust and then proceed to control the game with Ugin and Karn.
Match 2 vs. Tooth and Nail
Game 1 he goes for the turn 3 kill. Not much to do here. Had 2 Pyroclasms in hand but no red mana to kill his mana dorks.
Game 2 i get 3 Pithing Needles on the board naming Arbor Elf, Voyaging Satyr and Garruk Wildspeaker. His deck was pretty much dead afterwards and we slugged it out until i finally hit Tron and closed out the game.
Game 3 he threatens the turn 3 combo and i had nothing to do against it. Lucky for me he was bluffing. A good pyroclasm followed by some Pithing Needles won me the game. (Karn Eating a Land with 3 Enchantments on it was also pretty useful...)
Match 3 vs. Nahirikul Control
Game 1 he drops a Turn 4 Nahiri on the play without any counterspell backup. I had my Turn 3 Tron for sure, so i am not sure what he expected. Cleared it off with All is Dust. Then he didn't draw gas and Ulamog closed out the game.
Game 2 i get Turn 4 Crumble to Dusted which i saw coming to be honest but i held a clunky hand and he didn't make any plays until then either so i figured he doesn't have much gas. Game goes long and grindy. Eventually i gather up 10 lands for Ulamog and start slamming payoff spells winning the game.
Match 4 vs. Naya Zoo
Game 1 He goes: Turn 1 Nacatl, Turn 2 Kird Ape + Rancor on Nacatls, Turn 3 Rancor on Kird Ape and Bushwhacker Surged. Not much to do here.
Game 2 I manage to win the game by chaining Wurmcoils into Ugin Ultimate. All is Dust really saved me here as a turn 3 boardwipe.
Game 3 went pretty much like game 1. Too fast, no sideboard cards in hand and he had the burn to finish me off.
All in all i am happy with my performance. Could have been better as i made some small errors.
My MVPs of this evening were:
Sundering Titan (Never ceases to amaze me how awesome this guy is. Eating a ton of lands, huge body to deal with.)
Pyroclasm (Wiping a board full of mana dorks and small creatures is awesome. Now i'm not sure anymore Bolt is the right way to go)
All is Dust (Turn 3 Boardwipe proved to be pretty useful. Not sure if it's really maindeckable but it may be worth considering it.)
BRGJundGRB
GCTronCG
WBRMardu PyromancerRBW
Legacy:
GElvesG
ghost quarter, and double forest in the mainboard are really good. seeing lots of ghost quarter and path to exile. geier reach sanitarium was nice too. also won some games off of ugin. pyroclasm got some work in too; still like it better than bolt.
all is dust isn't bad either, gets around stony silence as a bonus. A configuration of 3 o-stone mainboard with 1 all is dust in the side might be good.
edit: i like that world breaker has reach, and can smash a manland. stops restoration angel nicely. i'm keeping him in mainboard.
infect? idk, 3-ish. some combination of spellskites or removal. i never win the matchup though so when building sideboards, I tend to ignore it or only use splash hate. i dont recall my sideboarding plan off the top of my head. i think im removing some number of wurmcoils and the 20th land. idk if this is correct though.
For example, while Spatial Contortion is better against Infect, I'd prefer to run Warping Wail because it has much greater utility in other matchups.
Which is another reason why Spellskite is good, as it's decent against some aggro decks so it's not only there for Infect. On the downside, they usually bring in Nature's Claim to deal with it, but hey, they have to draw their counter-hate.
Fog is amazing agains´t Infect and many other aggro.
GXTronGX
RWxBurnRWx
working on a green white list (link below) which i feel is better suited to our worst matchup which is burn and infect (last time i recall) with blessed alliance for both sacrifice effect and 4 life for burn with pte instead of pyroclasm or even a 3 of providence for burn and fast aggro decks? i think the 6 life matters a lot. wishing that warping wail also targeted instants so you can counter skullcrack and atarka's command which prevents lifegain..
http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=13211&d=277449&f=MO
does everyone go for a 3 o-stone 2 ugin split? or 4 o-stone and 2 ugins are overkill? seems like with everyone running stony silence, you would rather get a better shot at getting ugin to stabilize in those situations. plus the selfless spirit seems like a pest and ugin trumps it especially if we are relying too much on o-stone.
is ghost quarter still necessary if you run at least 1 worldbreaker maindeck?
has anyone tried the new emrakul and how did it feel with testing? controlling their turn and using their paths and removal on their own cards seems sweet!
"He traded sand for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand."
—Afari, Tales
As far as GW Tron goes, I like it and am currently running it. I'd run Timely Reinforcements over Blessed Alliance. Sorcery speed is a downside, but 3 1/1s buys you a ton of time. Providence is way too slow. You need to be able to take action before you get tron on line.
Most lists go 3/2 over 4/2 o-stone/ugin split. That opens up room for Fog and Spellskite main.
Ghost Quarter is a meta call. It's nice that Worldbreaker exiles things and has reach, but people generally run 2 of them to get a critical mass of 7 drops to trigger Sanctum of Ugin. If you find yourself in a lot of mirror matches or up against Infect/Affinity then Ghost Quarter is fine, but it usually means going down to 1 Sanctum, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. I like having a tutorable land available that can deal with manlands.
I haven't tried new Emrakul yet.
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG