So is there a general consensus on a 75 or at least a 60? I haven't played this deck in months so I am a little behind.
It's pretty safe to just take a winning list off the net and tweak a few slots for your meta/preference. ~70/75 cards in the deck are basically locked in.
WarMachine i do not think that Westvale Abbey is actually good enough. But all i wanted to get through is that a card similar to Abbey is a possiblity. But more then anything i think that an Westvale(Eldrazi Tron build) Would be more of a metagame Call if anything, but as a general idea i do not think that it is good enough, unless we somehow get better or newer eldrazi Cards in the futre that Works better With Westvale or gives Westvale an advantage over other lands or Creatures in the decks as of right now.
WarMachine i do not think that Westvale Abbey is actually good enough. But all i wanted to get through is that a card similar to Abbey is a possiblity. But more then anything i think that an Westvale(Eldrazi Tron build) Would be more of a metagame Call if anything, but as a general idea i do not think that it is good enough, unless we somehow get better or newer eldrazi Cards in the futre that Works better With Westvale or gives Westvale an advantage over other lands or Creatures in the decks as of right now.
Yes. At this time it is far too difficult to get 5 creatures on the board to sack and if we have 5 creatures on the board, we don't want to sack them anyway. I think what you may be trying to hint at is that there could be a flex land spot for a man-land. Search through the thread and you will find some that have been suggested. Competitive E-Tron lists aren't running any (man-lands) right now, but of course that could change. One of these days I'm going to run Dread Statuary to test it. There are others that seem better though. Good luck.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
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Looks like a pretty reasonable sideboard. Have you been having trouble with anything in particular? Suggestions I would make are to play 4 Mind Stones in the main with that much Skred, to fight the Blood Moons. Also I'd find room for a 3rd All is Dust in the side (assuming you have 2 main). It's great in every matchup you've listed there, save for the mirror.
You guys were right about Chalice. It performed very well against Burn & Storm.
Abzan & Smallpox were kinda similar in terms of their deployment. Endbringer & Walking Ballista performed here very well.
Just got lucky on not being paired to Affinity early on.
What I feel like changing:
Mind Stone should be ticked up to 4. The 2nd turn of this deck is like a black hole, there's not much in it (esp. vs. Valakut)
Witchbane Orb, Spellskite or might be a good addition in the sideboard against Valakut (Have yet to Test).
Mass Effect Card Advantage/ Temporary Solution Cards are very important. We just have to jam a big portion of them in our deck.
What I realized so far:
This deck is not that much powerful as it doesn't tap into some clean solutions, but it is very very very consistent.
Mulligan is our friend. Your opener evaluation needs to be checked here more importantly than most other decks.
We badly need to find a solution against Breach & Swarm (colorless swarm is much harder) without compromising our other MUs.
Overall, this deck is great. Also I won a game against Storm with Blood Moon on board, where I have to Surgical Extraction my own cards just to top deck a Wastes, for the last 5 damage through the Smasher in my hand. Crazy Crazy Day!
Thanks for the report. Also do agree that there is plenty to do on turn 2. Add Walking Ballista on 1 to the above list.
On finding an answer to Valakut and Affinity, I just don't think there are any. We can play a few cards to make the matchups better, but they will always be bad overall. That's just the way Modern is; you can't be good against everything.
How can we beat affinity? I feel like the matchup is the most unbalanced of all.
I mean, we can't block their flyers and they have lots of damages very early
Ratchet Bomb, Pithing Needle and Warping Wail are all solid contributors. Spatial Contortion too. If you wanna go really deep as I and others have at times, you can try Oblivion Stone.
Man, I've been on E-Tron the past few weeks and have been doing very well with it, 3-1 the past couple of times and undefeated tonight, beating burn, lantern, grixis shadow and drawing with Affinity so we can get a store credit prize. I'm lucky to play in the most competitive store in Philly, too.
Deck feels surprisingly interactive, it's not the hardest to play, but it feels good playing mid-range with Jund being bad and Grixis seeing too much hate.
Been on Todd Steven's 75 (except 1 collar instead in the board). Thank god for his sideboard guide from Starcity, Shadow has felt like an underdog against me.
Does anyone have any sideboarding tips for the following decks: (my deck is super cookie cutter).
Ponza
Humans
8Rack
Lantern felt surprisingly harder than I thought, the pithing needles and leyline postboard feels brutal
Man, I've been on E-Tron the past few weeks and have been doing very well with it, 3-1 the past couple of times and undefeated tonight, beating burn, lantern, grixis shadow and drawing with Affinity so we can get a store credit prize. I'm lucky to play in the most competitive store in Philly, too.
Deck feels surprisingly interactive, it's not the hardest to play, but it feels good playing mid-range with Jund being bad and Grixis seeing too much hate.
Been on Todd Steven's 75 (except 1 collar instead in the board). Thank god for his sideboard guide from Starcity, Shadow has felt like an underdog against me.
Does anyone have any sideboarding tips for the following decks: (my deck is super cookie cutter).
Ponza
Humans
8Rack
Lantern felt surprisingly harder than I thought, the pithing needles and leyline postboard feels brutal
Not sure exactly which list you're referring to ("Todd Stevens' 75"), as he will of course change it over time, but honestly the deck doesn't differ that much from list to list so I can give some general thoughts.
Ponza: This matchup is ostensibly terrible as our focus is having lots of mana and their focus is blowing up lands, but we're actually quite resilient to it. With 24 Lands, 4 Maps and 2-3 Mind Stones, plus Matter Reshapers doing their thing, it can be hard for them to actually run us out of resources. Of course if they're on the play with Arbor Elf and 3 land destruction spells in a row or something, it's not gonna be good, but that's not too common.
The key is cutting off their mana acceleration so they can't play the LD above curve. This is one of the very few matchups where it is correct to use Dismember on turn 1. Kill Arbor Elf or Bird on sight. Ping em off with Ballista. Warping Wail is the single best card in the matchup because it both kills their dorks and counters their big sorceries. Ratchet Bomb is the other key SB card as it kills all the dorks, Utopia Sprawl and Blood Moon if necessary. You can cut Chalices and Relics. My record in this matchup is 9-1.
Humans: It's just terrible. I think this is our #1 worst matchup in the format, worse than Affinity. They go wide but also big, and disrupt us all the while. Big Thalia is particularly terrible as it makes casting All is Dust in a timely manner really difficult, plus they have cards like Sin Collector and Meddling Mage to throw more wrenches into that. Ratchet Bomb is decent, but they have a fairly spread out curve, and also Stony Silence. Dismember is okay but not particularly good because the life loss doesn't go well with the immense pressure they put on. Spatial Contortion is nice one, but it's hard to find room in the side for these. I think early interaction plus mid-game board wipe (All is Dust, Ugin) is the best plan, but it's not easy to achieve for aforementioned reasons. Nightmare matchup. Record 2-8.
8Rack: Don't actually have much experience with this matchup as Eldrazi Tron as it has seen virtually no play online over the past year, but I faced it a lot as Classic Tron in previous times. It was very difficult to lose, I considered it the best possible matchup. With Etron I would think it's not quite as good but still quite favorable. Simple reason being they can't disrupt our manabase well and we have powerful topdecks. We can easily get Tron online and keep it there, and Sea Gate Wreckage is an all-star. They can never beat Karn in a million years. Of course, if they get multiple Rack effects down early it can be bad, which makes Ratchet Bomb the key card out of the sideboard. Pithing Needle is also nice to stop Liliana or Mutavault, or Pack Rat if they have it. Hangarback Walker would be nice as a package of hard-to-deal-with threats.
Lantern is very swingy. It often comes down to how the opening hands line up, which is true of a lot of matchups in Modern but I think this one is one of the more significant examples. If they have Thoughtseize, Lantern, Pithing Needle, Ensnaring Bridge and a Codex Shredder or something like that, it can be pretty much unbeatable. But more average draws are a lot more beatable. Recurring theme in this post - Ratchet Bomb is the best card to bring in. A huge amount of their things cost 1, and it can kill Bridge too as necessary. Needle also good to name any number of their things. To expound on the swingy comment a bit more - if we play Chalice on 1 early and they don't have Decay it's lights out for them, no pun intended This is one of the matchups I like having an additional large threat in the sideboard for - ie Ugin/Ulamog, because they usually only have 3 Pithing Needles and they already want to name Endbringer, Karn, and Ballista. Coin-flip matchup in my experience. Record 10-10.
I played Humans Friday as my game 1, it felt atrocious. He rolled over me game 1 and game 3. It's not so much that they go wide, it's the fact they get so many counters on them getting out of ballista range. And yes, Big Thalia was an absolute nightmare.
Surprised to hear about Ponza. I was extremely salty a few weeks ago when I played E-Tron for the first time in paper and Ponza was literally my first match. I think he went 2-2 and I cashed out at 3-1.
Lantern was annoying. Game 2 the guy brought in Leyline so he shut my Balista and Endbringer from ever doing anything, and named karn and ratchet bomb early.
You're absolutely right about the swinginess; game 3 I kept a loose hand of 2 urza lands, 2 ratchet bombs, 1 Reality Smasher, 1 map. He couldn't deal with a turn 3 smasher with a ratchet bomb, into a turn 4 smasher. The original opener for 7 was too slow, it had karn and endbringers but didnt look like it would do anything for several turns. The deck mulls extremely well.
I made him play out the entire game 2 against me even with an early lock, he had a draw against another E-Tron player. We had 12 minutes left after game 2 and I saw his heart sink a little when I elected to pile shuffle with our little time left. Only took 4 minutes to win game 3. I don't have a bad record against Lantern with all the decks I play, but the deck makes me extremely salty, I don't have fun playing against the deck.
Yeah, Lantern is really not fun. Back when I was playing Classic Tron I was doing some testing in paper with a friend on Lantern. Before we started he lamented that it was such a bad matchup for him. I didn't have my data (all coming from MTGO) close to memory so I said hmm, really? It didn't feel that great. Went back and looked at the data and I was like 8-2 or something. Really good matchup as Classic Tron, but I didn't identify it as such just because it's so miserable to play against.
Yeah the 9-1 Ponza record likely has some variance reflected in there - 10 is a fairly small sample size. I do think it's a positive matchup if you play it right though, but no matchup is 90-10 and certainly not that one. Probably closer to 60-40 realistically.
I think I played against Ponza wrong, in hindsight, I didn't ping his dorks early on sight.
Feels bad losing tempo and saccing a GQ to hit a land with the echantment.
Trons land base is crazy good, I'm shaking my head when people attack the land-base, you need serious dedication to hurt the land base.
My grixis shadow opponent tonight seemed confused, and I was shocked when he played a surgical on my Thought-Knot, especially since I drew a second copy that turn, was kinda foolish. He was doing too much damage to himself both games before he even had shadow available. We had a board-stall, he had 2x Gurmags, Tasigur, and 2 huge shadows on board and couldn't break the boardstall, a 7/7 Hangarback walker was just too much.
Death Shadow's is such a difficult deck to play well, I have to admit I like E-Tron's lower skill curve. Last week I beat the IQ winner of Glassboro. He's a much better player than me, but chalice and hangarback walker are just stupid good against Grixis Shadow. Hangarback is backbreaking for Grixis Death Shadow. I think he scooped too early out of frustration, but it is what it is. I try to bait everything out before trying to land hangarback.
I feel like E-Tron is secretly the best deck in the format while Grixis Death's Shadow is facing all the heat.
faced that new (?) Gw land destruction yd and got wrecked. Anyone else played vs it and can give some tips? Needle on knight would be sweet if id drawn it.
Yeah, Needle would be decent. Would be nice to have access to a Crucible of Worlds for this matchup but I think overall you just hope to not see it because it seems like a horrendous matchup.
How's two spellskite sideboard right now? Is it good enough against ravager modular or against burn to be put in? Or is it just good to avoid a single removal and thus it's pointless?
Skite is nice against Ravager but the problem is they can still easily kill you without Ravager, so it's only situationally good. It's nice against Burn, but we don't really need help in that matchup. I can think of a few matchups it would be decent in, but none that it would be great in. Pretty hard to find sideboard space for it I think.
Spellskite kinda disappeared with the death of infect. Spellskite doesn't make sense in this meta with fatal push being such an efficient spot removal, spellskite was better where a bolt didn't kill it.
In an open field I wonder if any of the 75 needs to change or if the Todd Stevens cookie cutter 75 is still fairly stock and reasonable. Storm is now up to tier 1 which means that graveyard hate should be packed.
Also, question--I ran into Sun and Moon on mtgo in the practice rooms, what's the plan there--what am I sideboarding out? 2x Relics and 4x Chalices for 1x Wurmcoil, 2x Ratchet Bombs, 1x Pithing Needle, 2x Warping Wail is what I imagine, just wanted to know how everyone felt about that matchup.
Wurmcoil is slow, you need tron to get him out early.
I agree with Todd Stevens that Ulamog is a no go for this deck, while it's super nice that he exiles two permanents, I rarely am thinking, "man, my three 5/5s are too small". I've had All is Dust stuck in hand too many times to know I definitely don't want Ulamog in my 75. The difference is All in Dust is a safety lever that I think works well for the deck.
The moment you start cutting relics is when decks like dredge and storm do well. Storm is also now back to tier 1, so I don't like that idea. I also dislike having less turn 1 plays.
Valakut is pretty bad, there's almost nothing in the 75 that works well against that, but E-Tron rarely feels like it's destroyed by any other deck. I actually think E-Tron is proactive enough to be good in this meta.
FWIW, Storm has been good again since Baral was printed 6 months ago, which is the same time we got Walking Ballista which made our deck playable, so it's not really a new phenomenon. Different sources can have different definitions for what "tier 1" is, so it might not be that useful of a metric when making deck choices. It looks like that tappedout link you posted uses 4% metagame share as the threshold for tier 1? By that definition Storm has been tier 1 basically all year. I've actually shaved graveyard hate over the past month, because there are more maindeck Relics than ever now (Us, Tron, Titan Shift) and this has made Dredge all but disappear. We already have a ton of tools against Storm, so dropping a couple grave hate cards is no big deal. Personally I've dropped the Surgicals at the moment, as have others in this thread IIRC.
Re: Grixis Shadow - it's not a poor matchup if you play it correctly. At worst it's 50-50. I've faced it almost 100 times now and my record is about 55/45.
On the meta at large, I do think our deck has lost a step over the past couple months. At least my experience is that I've been winning less over that time period. I largely attribute this to the rise in Titan Shift over the same period, and also Hatebears and Affinity.
Titanshift and Affinity are definitely the biggest reasons E-Tron is worse. I'm actually really surprised Titanshift became this big.
Siscmoo, what did you replace the 2x surgicals for? A third Ratchet Bomb, a second pithing needle, or a second Collar?
I definitely have no intentions of having less than 4x relics and 2x cages, but I could certainly see the 2x surgicals going, either for warping wails, ratchets, collars or needle.
Well, I'm not replacing anything directly for anything else cause I'm not working off a base list in particular, so I'll just show you what my current list looks like. I thought about it and decided to make room for a miser Surgical after all. I like the applications it has against Tron and Valakut, while being good against any graveyard decks I run into as well. I don't really like 4 Relics because there are really only 2, maybe 3 matchups I really want all 4 in. I think 3 is a good number. I have not felt myself wanting Cages much lately at all. But really I'm editing the last 2-3 slots quite regularly to flow with the meta I'm seeing.
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It's pretty safe to just take a winning list off the net and tweak a few slots for your meta/preference. ~70/75 cards in the deck are basically locked in.
Yes. At this time it is far too difficult to get 5 creatures on the board to sack and if we have 5 creatures on the board, we don't want to sack them anyway. I think what you may be trying to hint at is that there could be a flex land spot for a man-land. Search through the thread and you will find some that have been suggested. Competitive E-Tron lists aren't running any (man-lands) right now, but of course that could change. One of these days I'm going to run Dread Statuary to test it. There are others that seem better though. Good luck.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Just Top 8ed a 58-man event... Lost in the Quarters against a dreaded enemy... Breach Titan...
Swiss: Overall (4-0-2)
Round1: Abzan (2-0)
Round2: Burn (2-1)
Round3: BW Smallpox (2-0)
Round4: UR Storm (2-1)
Round5: Affinity (0-0-1)
Round6: Affinity (0-0-1)
Top8:
Quarters: Breach Titan (0-2)
Assessment:
You guys were right about Chalice. It performed very well against Burn & Storm.
Abzan & Smallpox were kinda similar in terms of their deployment. Endbringer & Walking Ballista performed here very well.
Just got lucky on not being paired to Affinity early on.
What I feel like changing:
Mind Stone should be ticked up to 4. The 2nd turn of this deck is like a black hole, there's not much in it (esp. vs. Valakut)
Witchbane Orb, Spellskite or might be a good addition in the sideboard against Valakut (Have yet to Test).
Mass Effect Card Advantage/ Temporary Solution Cards are very important. We just have to jam a big portion of them in our deck.
What I realized so far:
This deck is not that much powerful as it doesn't tap into some clean solutions, but it is very very very consistent.
Mulligan is our friend. Your opener evaluation needs to be checked here more importantly than most other decks.
We badly need to find a solution against Breach & Swarm (colorless swarm is much harder) without compromising our other MUs.
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Ghost Quarter
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Powerplant
4 Urza's Tower
2 Wastes
2 Endbringer
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Reality Smasher
4 Thought-Knot Seer
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
4 Walking Ballista
1 Basilisk Collar
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Dismember
4 Expedition Map
2 Mind Stone
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Karn Liberated
1 All is Dust
1 Batterskull
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Pithing Needle
2 Ratchet Bomb
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Spellskite
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
2 Warping Wail
Overall, this deck is great. Also I won a game against Storm with Blood Moon on board, where I have to Surgical Extraction my own cards just to top deck a Wastes, for the last 5 damage through the Smasher in my hand. Crazy Crazy Day!
Peace...
On finding an answer to Valakut and Affinity, I just don't think there are any. We can play a few cards to make the matchups better, but they will always be bad overall. That's just the way Modern is; you can't be good against everything.
Ratchet Bomb, Pithing Needle and Warping Wail are all solid contributors. Spatial Contortion too. If you wanna go really deep as I and others have at times, you can try Oblivion Stone.
Deck feels surprisingly interactive, it's not the hardest to play, but it feels good playing mid-range with Jund being bad and Grixis seeing too much hate.
Been on Todd Steven's 75 (except 1 collar instead in the board). Thank god for his sideboard guide from Starcity, Shadow has felt like an underdog against me.
Does anyone have any sideboarding tips for the following decks: (my deck is super cookie cutter).
Ponza
Humans
8Rack
Lantern felt surprisingly harder than I thought, the pithing needles and leyline postboard feels brutal
Not sure exactly which list you're referring to ("Todd Stevens' 75"), as he will of course change it over time, but honestly the deck doesn't differ that much from list to list so I can give some general thoughts.
Ponza: This matchup is ostensibly terrible as our focus is having lots of mana and their focus is blowing up lands, but we're actually quite resilient to it. With 24 Lands, 4 Maps and 2-3 Mind Stones, plus Matter Reshapers doing their thing, it can be hard for them to actually run us out of resources. Of course if they're on the play with Arbor Elf and 3 land destruction spells in a row or something, it's not gonna be good, but that's not too common.
The key is cutting off their mana acceleration so they can't play the LD above curve. This is one of the very few matchups where it is correct to use Dismember on turn 1. Kill Arbor Elf or Bird on sight. Ping em off with Ballista. Warping Wail is the single best card in the matchup because it both kills their dorks and counters their big sorceries. Ratchet Bomb is the other key SB card as it kills all the dorks, Utopia Sprawl and Blood Moon if necessary. You can cut Chalices and Relics. My record in this matchup is 9-1.
Humans: It's just terrible. I think this is our #1 worst matchup in the format, worse than Affinity. They go wide but also big, and disrupt us all the while. Big Thalia is particularly terrible as it makes casting All is Dust in a timely manner really difficult, plus they have cards like Sin Collector and Meddling Mage to throw more wrenches into that. Ratchet Bomb is decent, but they have a fairly spread out curve, and also Stony Silence. Dismember is okay but not particularly good because the life loss doesn't go well with the immense pressure they put on. Spatial Contortion is nice one, but it's hard to find room in the side for these. I think early interaction plus mid-game board wipe (All is Dust, Ugin) is the best plan, but it's not easy to achieve for aforementioned reasons. Nightmare matchup. Record 2-8.
8Rack: Don't actually have much experience with this matchup as Eldrazi Tron as it has seen virtually no play online over the past year, but I faced it a lot as Classic Tron in previous times. It was very difficult to lose, I considered it the best possible matchup. With Etron I would think it's not quite as good but still quite favorable. Simple reason being they can't disrupt our manabase well and we have powerful topdecks. We can easily get Tron online and keep it there, and Sea Gate Wreckage is an all-star. They can never beat Karn in a million years. Of course, if they get multiple Rack effects down early it can be bad, which makes Ratchet Bomb the key card out of the sideboard. Pithing Needle is also nice to stop Liliana or Mutavault, or Pack Rat if they have it. Hangarback Walker would be nice as a package of hard-to-deal-with threats.
Lantern is very swingy. It often comes down to how the opening hands line up, which is true of a lot of matchups in Modern but I think this one is one of the more significant examples. If they have Thoughtseize, Lantern, Pithing Needle, Ensnaring Bridge and a Codex Shredder or something like that, it can be pretty much unbeatable. But more average draws are a lot more beatable. Recurring theme in this post - Ratchet Bomb is the best card to bring in. A huge amount of their things cost 1, and it can kill Bridge too as necessary. Needle also good to name any number of their things. To expound on the swingy comment a bit more - if we play Chalice on 1 early and they don't have Decay it's lights out for them, no pun intended This is one of the matchups I like having an additional large threat in the sideboard for - ie Ugin/Ulamog, because they usually only have 3 Pithing Needles and they already want to name Endbringer, Karn, and Ballista. Coin-flip matchup in my experience. Record 10-10.
Hope that helps.
I played Humans Friday as my game 1, it felt atrocious. He rolled over me game 1 and game 3. It's not so much that they go wide, it's the fact they get so many counters on them getting out of ballista range. And yes, Big Thalia was an absolute nightmare.
Surprised to hear about Ponza. I was extremely salty a few weeks ago when I played E-Tron for the first time in paper and Ponza was literally my first match. I think he went 2-2 and I cashed out at 3-1.
Lantern was annoying. Game 2 the guy brought in Leyline so he shut my Balista and Endbringer from ever doing anything, and named karn and ratchet bomb early.
You're absolutely right about the swinginess; game 3 I kept a loose hand of 2 urza lands, 2 ratchet bombs, 1 Reality Smasher, 1 map. He couldn't deal with a turn 3 smasher with a ratchet bomb, into a turn 4 smasher. The original opener for 7 was too slow, it had karn and endbringers but didnt look like it would do anything for several turns. The deck mulls extremely well.
I made him play out the entire game 2 against me even with an early lock, he had a draw against another E-Tron player. We had 12 minutes left after game 2 and I saw his heart sink a little when I elected to pile shuffle with our little time left. Only took 4 minutes to win game 3. I don't have a bad record against Lantern with all the decks I play, but the deck makes me extremely salty, I don't have fun playing against the deck.
Yeah the 9-1 Ponza record likely has some variance reflected in there - 10 is a fairly small sample size. I do think it's a positive matchup if you play it right though, but no matchup is 90-10 and certainly not that one. Probably closer to 60-40 realistically.
Feels bad losing tempo and saccing a GQ to hit a land with the echantment.
Trons land base is crazy good, I'm shaking my head when people attack the land-base, you need serious dedication to hurt the land base.
My grixis shadow opponent tonight seemed confused, and I was shocked when he played a surgical on my Thought-Knot, especially since I drew a second copy that turn, was kinda foolish. He was doing too much damage to himself both games before he even had shadow available. We had a board-stall, he had 2x Gurmags, Tasigur, and 2 huge shadows on board and couldn't break the boardstall, a 7/7 Hangarback walker was just too much.
Death Shadow's is such a difficult deck to play well, I have to admit I like E-Tron's lower skill curve. Last week I beat the IQ winner of Glassboro. He's a much better player than me, but chalice and hangarback walker are just stupid good against Grixis Shadow. Hangarback is backbreaking for Grixis Death Shadow. I think he scooped too early out of frustration, but it is what it is. I try to bait everything out before trying to land hangarback.
I feel like E-Tron is secretly the best deck in the format while Grixis Death's Shadow is facing all the heat.
Yeah, Needle would be decent. Would be nice to have access to a Crucible of Worlds for this matchup but I think overall you just hope to not see it because it seems like a horrendous matchup.
Skite is nice against Ravager but the problem is they can still easily kill you without Ravager, so it's only situationally good. It's nice against Burn, but we don't really need help in that matchup. I can think of a few matchups it would be decent in, but none that it would be great in. Pretty hard to find sideboard space for it I think.
This is the meta right now
http://tappedout.net/mtg-articles/2017/aug/1/modern-tiered-list-bi-weekly-update-73117/
In an open field I wonder if any of the 75 needs to change or if the Todd Stevens cookie cutter 75 is still fairly stock and reasonable. Storm is now up to tier 1 which means that graveyard hate should be packed.
Also, question--I ran into Sun and Moon on mtgo in the practice rooms, what's the plan there--what am I sideboarding out? 2x Relics and 4x Chalices for 1x Wurmcoil, 2x Ratchet Bombs, 1x Pithing Needle, 2x Warping Wail is what I imagine, just wanted to know how everyone felt about that matchup.
I agree with Todd Stevens that Ulamog is a no go for this deck, while it's super nice that he exiles two permanents, I rarely am thinking, "man, my three 5/5s are too small". I've had All is Dust stuck in hand too many times to know I definitely don't want Ulamog in my 75. The difference is All in Dust is a safety lever that I think works well for the deck.
The moment you start cutting relics is when decks like dredge and storm do well. Storm is also now back to tier 1, so I don't like that idea. I also dislike having less turn 1 plays.
Valakut is pretty bad, there's almost nothing in the 75 that works well against that, but E-Tron rarely feels like it's destroyed by any other deck. I actually think E-Tron is proactive enough to be good in this meta.
Re: Grixis Shadow - it's not a poor matchup if you play it correctly. At worst it's 50-50. I've faced it almost 100 times now and my record is about 55/45.
On the meta at large, I do think our deck has lost a step over the past couple months. At least my experience is that I've been winning less over that time period. I largely attribute this to the rise in Titan Shift over the same period, and also Hatebears and Affinity.
Siscmoo, what did you replace the 2x surgicals for? A third Ratchet Bomb, a second pithing needle, or a second Collar?
I definitely have no intentions of having less than 4x relics and 2x cages, but I could certainly see the 2x surgicals going, either for warping wails, ratchets, collars or needle.