You have to draw the right half of your deck. Meddling mage, freebooter and thalia are best here.
If you just draw 'vanilla' dudes you'll likely lose.
The jeskai deck doesn't really have such an issue. It can xerox it's way through the deck to sweepers and it packs a lot of spot removal.
So *if* we draw the right half of the deck it's a fairly easy win. If we don't, it's tricky.
NB adding sin collector out of the sideboard helps a lot by increasing the density of relevant threat/interaction you can put down. Any kind of card advantage engine is also good here.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
How has 20 lands and 5 colors been working out for you? I'm trying just Bant Black right now, a little hesitant to try squeezing in red for a CoCo mana base. I'm also only on 6 rainbow lands with more Fetches, and I still sometimes run into uncastable CoCos in hand (not often, but it happens) no SB tech for Blood Moon?
Cage is interesting too in a CoCo list
Haven't played vs. Jeskai all that often actually, but one of my good friends plays the Geist deck and does pretty well against me. But he is a very talented player who knows when to switch between aggro and control at all times. Maybe I shouldn't have spoken so categorically. My usual plan is to try for Champion and Lieutenant to get to 4 and to try to stick a Bob, plus opportunistically using Meddling as possible to make some hay out of resource denial. They have a lot of removal though. I was wondering about Deft Duelist as possible anti-removal tech that kills Snapcaster without trading, any thoughts?
I went 4-0-1 (ID'ed and then won the for-fun match final round) on Friday at my very competitive LGS. I play there almost every Monday and Friday and it always has at least 25 players; on Friday there were 57. (I've seen it over 60 occasionally for these weekly tourneys.) All the 4-0 players ID'ed in the final round and I wound up at 1st place on tiebreakers, winning a shiny, useless, Pirate token. Wish WotC hadn't given up on good promos after they did a month with Push.
My deck is pretty close to standard for a Vial build:
Should be 4x Horizon Canopy but I only own three right now. Maybe the holidays will bring more... I am convinced that the full playset of Canopy is unquestionably correct.
Knowing my opponent, who is a regular, I kept a hand with T2 Mantis Rider on the draw after some hemming and hawing. It proved to be the right decision as I was able to apply a fast clock and stop his Signal Pest from clocking me with Ornithopters. Bouncing Steel Overseer and Master of Etherium with a couple of Reflectors was also very good. G2 played out very similar to G1 with a second T2 Mantis Rider leading to a similar result.
When my opponent played a T1 Slippery Bogle on the play, I was bummed, figuring I wasn't likely to have too many outs in this match, especially after losing the roll. However I put up a pretty good fight after naming Daybreak Coronet with Meddling, turning off lifelink and vigilance. I made a mistake though, and lost a chump to his Path, which meant that trample damage from Rancor killed me in G1 with him at 4 life and dead on board next turn. In G2 he played a land and passed, allowing me to seize the opportunity and name Kor Spiritdancer with my T2 Meddling, thereby shutting him off of creatures and giving me an easy win. For G3 he played a T1 Gladecover Scout, but then passed turn after missing his land drop on T2. That allowed me to play a T2 Thalia, which impeded his mana so he couldn't get any pants on his guys even after drawing into a second land. I got lucky on my opponent's bad openers but also was shrewd enough to see the right play--not something I can always say in this type of situation.
I noticed that my Chamions got HUGE in this match, and I could easily see being able to wall a Bogles player who can't land Daybreak Coronet or Spirit Mantle.
Lost the roll again and quickly died to a T1 Vault Skirge/T2 Cranial Plating beatdown. For G2 a T2 Staticaster kept him shut down, while in G3 I drew and played all 4 Meddling Mage, blind-naming Etched Champion (twice after the first was removed), Arcbound Ravager, and Galvanic Blast. He died with a Champion and two Blasts in hand after never really getting rolling.
Finally I win the roll to go first. However I was about two beers deep by now (my LGS has a beer/wine bar attached) and did not take notes. I think we have more threats than they have removal, so unless they have sweepers--and draw them in time--I think we just win here.
Lost the roll again, and again I have no notes. But my pad does show me only getting to 14 life in G1 and never losing any life in G2, winning at 20. Similarly to the Jund match, I think we are pretty favored here. I sided out Vials for Bobs, Reflector, and Mirran Crusader in both of these Shadow matches.
Having a great time with the deck! I may ditch big Thalia for the fourth Mayor, since she is consistently underwhelming. I might also try one or even two Mutavault in place of a Seachrome and/or the current one-of Temple Garden, especially with the Mayor that seems good. Question: Is there any way to get a Mutavault to trigger a pump for Champion or Lieutenant?
About Deft Duelist, can you be more specific which MUs you'd like it ? It may sound counter-intuitive, but VS UWx control I'd rather have Geist of Saint Traft, Selfless Spirit or Spellskite in order to fight spot removal spells. Sin Collector and Negate-type cards also naturally fit and proved to be good in SBs. Obvisouly playing a Vial version narrows options, but i'm doubtful Duelist answers significantly better interactive MUs.
Instead of Mutavault, Ghost Quarter could be a nnice tech too, seeing the GP top8 right now (Valakut, Tron).
Any thoughts on Ash Zealot? The passive effect hits dredge and any snapcaster decks hard, but even against non-graveyard decks it’s a pretty overbudgeted 2/2 First Strike Haste for 2.
Dredge doesn't really cast that many cards from the graveyard, Faithless Looting and Conflagrate are about it. Ash Zealot would help, but not that much, I think. I think Plan A is to hit those cards (Conflagrate especially) with Meddling Mage. But the real problem with Zealot is that it doesn't really fit the manabase; you'll need a Vial or 2 of the 12 five-color lands, or it's going to rot in hand. That would happen a lot, I think.
I have searched through Gatherer, and the high-impact Humans are already in the deck. Lyev Skyknight is a maybe, I suppose. I was mainly throwing out Deft Duelist to see if others thought an untargetable first-striker in our existing colors seemed like it might have a role to play. I don't think it's a very good idea to expand the deck into off-tribe creatures, or most non-creature spells, unless they are castable off colorless lands.
I think expanding to some off tribal creatures is fine so long as they're very high impact creatures, and they don't need the Mana based changed to accommodate them. Spellskite seems fine to me, since it can slot in fairly easily and helps in a lot of situations. It's also fun to watch burn players struggle with how to deal with it.
Duelist is interesting but I'm not terribly sure about it. Would you put it in the main or side and what would you take out for it?
Played Humans at GP OKC; went 7-2 into 1-5. On the plane home as I type this.
Matchups were
Bye, Bye
4c Shadow - W
Affinity - L. Nut draws against me. Our best hands can't beat their best hands. Couldn't find one of my 3 Izzet Staticasters or 2 Vithian Renegades.
Storm - W
Eldrazi Aggro - W
Affinity - W
Storm - W
Grixis Shadow - L. I probably should have won this matchup but I punted.
Day 2
Grixis Shadow - W
GW Elves - L. This matchup is tough. Didn't find any sideboard cards and died.
GB Tron - L. I'm up against Corey Baumeister. I know he's on GB Tron because I roomed with Manfield for the weekend and they were on very similar lists. I had a great hand in game 2 but Baumeister cast a turn 3 Wurmcoil and a turn 4 Ugin.
RW Chalice - L. Opponent cast a turn 2 Blood Moon on the play with SSG and then named Aether Vial with Sorcerous Spyglass the following turn. This RW Chalice deck isn't great but it sure kicks the crap out of Humans.
Titanshift - L. In game 1, opponent played a turn 3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar and blocked me long enough for them to construct Valakut.
Jund - L. In game 3, opponent played a turn 1 Grim Lavamancer on the play. I had brought in the Dismembers, but never drew them or Reflector Mage.
I think I had reasonable matchups in Day 1, but lost the matchup lottery in day 2.
Throughout the entire weekend, it felt like I had very few decisions, and that I made the wrong ones for the one or two times where it was really relevant. Sometimes you Meddling Mage name one card that beats you and instead they have the other card that beats you.
I'm pretty down on Humans after this weekend. I still think it is a solid tier 2 deck that can be very good in the right meta, but that it is somewhat under-powered. I will enumerate my reasons below so that people can more easily follow and respond:
(1) Your most busted hands aren't as powerful as the most busted hands of decks like Affinity, Titanshift, or Tron.
(2) Our disruption package gets way worse postboard. People bring in a variety of removal spells, so that naming a card like Supreme Verdict could still get you blown out by Settle the Wreckage. It is also sometimes difficult to guess the right hate card, since people often bring their pet cards. And most decks have access to a lot of powerful sideboard cards against Humans. If other decks want to beat Humans by committing enough sideboard slots to the matchup, they usually can.
(3) There are some really bad matchups: GB Tron, Titanshift, Lantern, and Jeskai. These decks are on the rise and are very, very hard to beat. I do not think any Humans players have figured out a good sideboard strategies for these matchups. I understand that people are going to respond to this by saying they have had success versus some of these decks but I'd caution that you need to observe your results over a larger sample of games.
(4) The matchups that I thought were reasonable are actually pretty close, if not bad: people are learning how to beat Humans and are coming to tournaments with better sideboard plans. These decks include Affinity, Junk, Jund, and BW Hatebears.
(5) Humans has a very hard time playing from behind. This means that you are especially punished when you have to mulligan. You need to run above expectation to go deep in a tournament.
(6) As a corollary to the above, it is very difficult to leverage skill differences when you are playing from behind as Humans. I had lots of opponents make suboptimal decisions with their removal spells. For example, I had an opponent use Dismember on a Hierarch on an otherwise empty board when they had 2 more Fatal Pushes in hand and no fetches, meaning they would later have a hard time removing a Mantis Rider. This ended up not costing them the game, even though my opponent ended up taking a bunch of damage from my Mantis Rider, as I had mulliganed and my draws were anemic and so I was basically playing from behind all game. Had I had a more powerful opening hand, they would have lost this game. (To be sure, it is true that it is easy to play ahead with all decks, but more powerful decks like Storm and Tron are more capable of punishing someone for suboptimal plays.)
(7) It actually isn't too hard to play against Humans if you are packing enough removal. Just point and click and you will probably be fine.
(8) This might be obvious, but the deck is very, very play/draw dependent.
If your meta is filled with Eldrazi Tron and Storm, then I think Humans would remain a strong deck choice. And to be sure, there aren't any completely unwinnable matchups: sometimes you have a fast 2 Champion 2 Lieutenant hand and run them over.
That said, I probably would not be bringing this to an event like a GP, Open, or PT. (at least for the time being)
Okay, 2 MB Harsh Mentor is the real deal. It, in conjunction with Grafdiggers Cage, not only hoses Counters Company hard, but also hits Lantern and Affinity enough for them to start seriously reconsidering their main attack plan. Perhaps my success in paper has also been due to my opponents not knowing how many things Harsh Mentor actually covers in its 2 damage clause, but so far it’s been doing work! I subbed out 2 Mayors for them, and so far haven’t missed them at all.
I always thought that Mayor and 3/2 Thalia were the first 2 cards that could be easily swaped for improvements. I'm also testing adding Voltaic Brawler to the MD.
Been discussed ~9 months ago iirc. We compared it with Ghor-Clan Rampager, Rancor, and other 2-drops. It was when the Coco version was dominant and 3C and 4C versions in testing.
It didn't make the cut at that time, and was even less relevant as new creatures got printed.
It was interesting along with Burning-Tree Emissary as it was one more thing to cascade into (the other cards being Voltaic Brawler, Mayor of Avabruck, Lightning Mauler).
Now there's a Vial version with many creatures that can't attack through blockers in certain MUs (ex: Freebooter VS Affi, Med Mage VS Snapcaster, Thalia VS Baral), Smuggler's Copter is definitely back for a debate. Good call !
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Pioneer - A bunch of stuff Modern - Humans Legacy - Grixis Phoenix / Death & Taxes
Check the Op. It's been updated, so you can follow the links in the real text that reads: "Most recently, a 5 color Aether Vial build dominated the SCG Open in Cincinatti. Deck Tech here"
4 Images is certainly wrong. It's so clunky to have several in your opening hand. And the illusion drawback is real.
When Merfolk plays 2 copies of it (I never saw 4), they have 2 ways to make it stronger than anything Humans can do :
1- it helps alpha strikes by copying a lord + upside (either ensure islandwalk despite a removal spell, or more tap triggers with Rejeery);
2- it can be protected by Kira. Spirits can do nice tricks with the card too.
It's a card that have been dismissed in Coco variants in early testing, I don't see it coming back even with Vial (because of Cavern of Souls and Unclaimed Territory naming Human anyway). Not enough impact yet.
Chalice is a weird thing as well. We don't lose to 1cmc spells as far as I remember. Burn and Affi finishers are 2+cmc spells, ramp and control decks go over the top of us with 4+cmc spells.
I presume that was an event where the player tested those cards and played 4 of each to pick up data, which is completely fine. I'd be curious to read that player's feedback.
Looks like the Phantasmal Images tested pretty well! The Lotusbox crew concluded that out the Mayors for a playset made for a stronger redundancy package, as well as a way to tackle decks that go for bigger beaters (GBx, Reanimator decks, etc), in addition to acting as extra copies of our best creatures.
I used to run a 1off Phantasmal Image in my first modern BantB CoCo humans brew (list a few pages back) and have been impressed with it when it does what it does. Back then, copying Reflector Mage and Thalia's Lieutenant aswell as opposing Eldrazi felt great. I cut it when I figured out it allows for nasty 2 for 1's for your opponent, if the creature it copies get's destroyed/exiled in response. I never gave it another thought.
Now that we are on Aether Vial i'll definately give it another try. Yes it does put some strain on your manabase but I don't see the card as an early play per-sé.
About the manabase, I've been asking myself why we play the lands we do, apart from the 12 rainbowlands. This differs strongly from ine list to another.
I myself run 3 white based fetches with white shocks in the most important T1 and T2 colors WGBU. But need to cit one for a basic plains.
I'm curious to hear your reasoning on this topic.
Another piece of tech I'm interrested in is Chalice of the Void It could indeed take out most spells we worry about. Grixis and Jeskai come to mind. Spell Snare on the play and any counterspell on the draw are dangerous however.
About the manabase, I've been asking myself why we play the lands we do, apart from the 12 rainbowlands. This differs strongly from ine list to another.
I was skeptical about the 4 Horizon Canopy but it definitely works fine and I'm on board with them, and the Plains seems rather natural. From there, 2 last lands must be picked. I'm not a fan of Hallowed Fountain cause it helps Merfolk (narrow drawback but still). Seachrome Coast offers a blue source and seems priority over a Razorverge Thicket. Now is that last land a Thicket or sthg else ? It's up to you. It won't affect your opening hands much, you may play Ghost Quarter, Mutavault, etc... The only requirement is that the land you choose etb untapped.
On the topic of Image, I have my doubts about the 4 copies. I also have my doubts on Thalia V2 when you play Images. I'd rather have those Lyevs or another 187 effect instead.
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You have to draw the right half of your deck. Meddling mage, freebooter and thalia are best here.
If you just draw 'vanilla' dudes you'll likely lose.
The jeskai deck doesn't really have such an issue. It can xerox it's way through the deck to sweepers and it packs a lot of spot removal.
So *if* we draw the right half of the deck it's a fairly easy win. If we don't, it's tricky.
NB adding sin collector out of the sideboard helps a lot by increasing the density of relevant threat/interaction you can put down. Any kind of card advantage engine is also good here.
Cage is interesting too in a CoCo list
I went 4-0-1 (ID'ed and then won the for-fun match final round) on Friday at my very competitive LGS. I play there almost every Monday and Friday and it always has at least 25 players; on Friday there were 57. (I've seen it over 60 occasionally for these weekly tourneys.) All the 4-0 players ID'ed in the final round and I wound up at 1st place on tiebreakers, winning a shiny, useless, Pirate token. Wish WotC hadn't given up on good promos after they did a month with Push.
My deck is pretty close to standard for a Vial build:
4x Cavern of Souls
4x Ancient Ziggurat
4x Unclaimed Territory
3x Horizon Canopy
2x Seachrome Coast
1x Temple Garden
1x Plains
Artifact (4)
4x Aether Vial
Creature (37)
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Thalia's Lieutenant
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x Meddling Mage
4x Kitesail Freebooter
4x Mantis Rider
3x Reflector Mage
3x Mayor of Avabruck
2x Dark Confidant
1x Thalia, Heretic Cather
2x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Dismember
2x Dark Confidant
2x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Anafenza the Foremost
2x Izzet Staticaster
1x Reflector Mage
1x Mirran Crusader
1x Vithian Renegades
I noticed that my Chamions got HUGE in this match, and I could easily see being able to wall a Bogles player who can't land Daybreak Coronet or Spirit Mantle.
About Deft Duelist, can you be more specific which MUs you'd like it ? It may sound counter-intuitive, but VS UWx control I'd rather have Geist of Saint Traft, Selfless Spirit or Spellskite in order to fight spot removal spells. Sin Collector and Negate-type cards also naturally fit and proved to be good in SBs. Obvisouly playing a Vial version narrows options, but i'm doubtful Duelist answers significantly better interactive MUs.
Instead of Mutavault, Ghost Quarter could be a nnice tech too, seeing the GP top8 right now (Valakut, Tron).
2 Harsh Mentor
4 Kitesail Freebooter
4 Mantis Rider
2 Mayor of Avabruck
4 Meddling Mage
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Reflector Mage
4 Thalia's Lieutenant
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
4 Ancient Ziggurat
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Horizon Canopy
1 Inspiring Vantage
1 Plains
2 Seachrome Coast
4 Unclaimed Territory
1 Harsh Mentor
1 Reflector Mage
1 Anafenza, the Foremost
2 Dark Confidant
1 Fiend Hunter
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Izzet Staticaster
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Riders of Gavony
2 Vithian Renegades
Looks interesting. I've been considering giving Mentor a try anyway, so I think I'll test this list some. Any thoughts?
I have searched through Gatherer, and the high-impact Humans are already in the deck. Lyev Skyknight is a maybe, I suppose. I was mainly throwing out Deft Duelist to see if others thought an untargetable first-striker in our existing colors seemed like it might have a role to play. I don't think it's a very good idea to expand the deck into off-tribe creatures, or most non-creature spells, unless they are castable off colorless lands.
Duelist is interesting but I'm not terribly sure about it. Would you put it in the main or side and what would you take out for it?
Matchups were
Bye, Bye
4c Shadow - W
Affinity - L. Nut draws against me. Our best hands can't beat their best hands. Couldn't find one of my 3 Izzet Staticasters or 2 Vithian Renegades.
Storm - W
Eldrazi Aggro - W
Affinity - W
Storm - W
Grixis Shadow - L. I probably should have won this matchup but I punted.
Day 2
Grixis Shadow - W
GW Elves - L. This matchup is tough. Didn't find any sideboard cards and died.
GB Tron - L. I'm up against Corey Baumeister. I know he's on GB Tron because I roomed with Manfield for the weekend and they were on very similar lists. I had a great hand in game 2 but Baumeister cast a turn 3 Wurmcoil and a turn 4 Ugin.
RW Chalice - L. Opponent cast a turn 2 Blood Moon on the play with SSG and then named Aether Vial with Sorcerous Spyglass the following turn. This RW Chalice deck isn't great but it sure kicks the crap out of Humans.
Titanshift - L. In game 1, opponent played a turn 3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar and blocked me long enough for them to construct Valakut.
Jund - L. In game 3, opponent played a turn 1 Grim Lavamancer on the play. I had brought in the Dismembers, but never drew them or Reflector Mage.
I think I had reasonable matchups in Day 1, but lost the matchup lottery in day 2.
Throughout the entire weekend, it felt like I had very few decisions, and that I made the wrong ones for the one or two times where it was really relevant. Sometimes you Meddling Mage name one card that beats you and instead they have the other card that beats you.
I'm pretty down on Humans after this weekend. I still think it is a solid tier 2 deck that can be very good in the right meta, but that it is somewhat under-powered. I will enumerate my reasons below so that people can more easily follow and respond:
(1) Your most busted hands aren't as powerful as the most busted hands of decks like Affinity, Titanshift, or Tron.
(2) Our disruption package gets way worse postboard. People bring in a variety of removal spells, so that naming a card like Supreme Verdict could still get you blown out by Settle the Wreckage. It is also sometimes difficult to guess the right hate card, since people often bring their pet cards. And most decks have access to a lot of powerful sideboard cards against Humans. If other decks want to beat Humans by committing enough sideboard slots to the matchup, they usually can.
(3) There are some really bad matchups: GB Tron, Titanshift, Lantern, and Jeskai. These decks are on the rise and are very, very hard to beat. I do not think any Humans players have figured out a good sideboard strategies for these matchups. I understand that people are going to respond to this by saying they have had success versus some of these decks but I'd caution that you need to observe your results over a larger sample of games.
(4) The matchups that I thought were reasonable are actually pretty close, if not bad: people are learning how to beat Humans and are coming to tournaments with better sideboard plans. These decks include Affinity, Junk, Jund, and BW Hatebears.
(5) Humans has a very hard time playing from behind. This means that you are especially punished when you have to mulligan. You need to run above expectation to go deep in a tournament.
(6) As a corollary to the above, it is very difficult to leverage skill differences when you are playing from behind as Humans. I had lots of opponents make suboptimal decisions with their removal spells. For example, I had an opponent use Dismember on a Hierarch on an otherwise empty board when they had 2 more Fatal Pushes in hand and no fetches, meaning they would later have a hard time removing a Mantis Rider. This ended up not costing them the game, even though my opponent ended up taking a bunch of damage from my Mantis Rider, as I had mulliganed and my draws were anemic and so I was basically playing from behind all game. Had I had a more powerful opening hand, they would have lost this game. (To be sure, it is true that it is easy to play ahead with all decks, but more powerful decks like Storm and Tron are more capable of punishing someone for suboptimal plays.)
(7) It actually isn't too hard to play against Humans if you are packing enough removal. Just point and click and you will probably be fine.
(8) This might be obvious, but the deck is very, very play/draw dependent.
If your meta is filled with Eldrazi Tron and Storm, then I think Humans would remain a strong deck choice. And to be sure, there aren't any completely unwinnable matchups: sometimes you have a fast 2 Champion 2 Lieutenant hand and run them over.
That said, I probably would not be bringing this to an event like a GP, Open, or PT. (at least for the time being)
Harsh Mentor seems interesting.
Tempo
Modern
Eldrazi and Staxes
Whir Prison
Legacy
5c Humans
DnT
"I'm a lead farmer... !" Quote ruined due to policy.
It didn't make the cut at that time, and was even less relevant as new creatures got printed.
It was interesting along with Burning-Tree Emissary as it was one more thing to cascade into (the other cards being Voltaic Brawler, Mayor of Avabruck, Lightning Mauler).
Now there's a Vial version with many creatures that can't attack through blockers in certain MUs (ex: Freebooter VS Affi, Med Mage VS Snapcaster, Thalia VS Baral), Smuggler's Copter is definitely back for a debate. Good call !
Testing Auriok Champion in the sideboard and for the moment back to 2 Bob main, but that could become something else.
Tempo
Modern
Eldrazi and Staxes
Whir Prison
Legacy
5c Humans
DnT
"I'm a lead farmer... !" Quote ruined due to policy.
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
When Merfolk plays 2 copies of it (I never saw 4), they have 2 ways to make it stronger than anything Humans can do :
1- it helps alpha strikes by copying a lord + upside (either ensure islandwalk despite a removal spell, or more tap triggers with Rejeery);
2- it can be protected by Kira.
Spirits can do nice tricks with the card too.
It's a card that have been dismissed in Coco variants in early testing, I don't see it coming back even with Vial (because of Cavern of Souls and Unclaimed Territory naming Human anyway). Not enough impact yet.
Chalice is a weird thing as well. We don't lose to 1cmc spells as far as I remember. Burn and Affi finishers are 2+cmc spells, ramp and control decks go over the top of us with 4+cmc spells.
I presume that was an event where the player tested those cards and played 4 of each to pick up data, which is completely fine. I'd be curious to read that player's feedback.
Looks like the Phantasmal Images tested pretty well! The Lotusbox crew concluded that out the Mayors for a playset made for a stronger redundancy package, as well as a way to tackle decks that go for bigger beaters (GBx, Reanimator decks, etc), in addition to acting as extra copies of our best creatures.
Now that we are on Aether Vial i'll definately give it another try. Yes it does put some strain on your manabase but I don't see the card as an early play per-sé.
About the manabase, I've been asking myself why we play the lands we do, apart from the 12 rainbowlands. This differs strongly from ine list to another.
I myself run 3 white based fetches with white shocks in the most important T1 and T2 colors WGBU. But need to cit one for a basic plains.
I'm curious to hear your reasoning on this topic.
Another piece of tech I'm interrested in is Chalice of the Void It could indeed take out most spells we worry about. Grixis and Jeskai come to mind. Spell Snare on the play and any counterspell on the draw are dangerous however.
Modern: WUBRG Humans - GBW Traverse - GWU Knightfall - GRW Bushwhacker Zoo -
I was skeptical about the 4 Horizon Canopy but it definitely works fine and I'm on board with them, and the Plains seems rather natural. From there, 2 last lands must be picked. I'm not a fan of Hallowed Fountain cause it helps Merfolk (narrow drawback but still). Seachrome Coast offers a blue source and seems priority over a Razorverge Thicket. Now is that last land a Thicket or sthg else ? It's up to you. It won't affect your opening hands much, you may play Ghost Quarter, Mutavault, etc... The only requirement is that the land you choose etb untapped.
On the topic of Image, I have my doubts about the 4 copies. I also have my doubts on Thalia V2 when you play Images. I'd rather have those Lyevs or another 187 effect instead.