So I was thinking about switching think twice for izzet charm. My rationale is twofold.
1. Is that the charm is more versatile having three modes of Spell Pierce, shock, and faithless looter. All useful.
2. While I understand that izzet charm is card disadvantage 3 to discard pile for only two cards. It seems to me in many match ups that we are playing to grab the few answers we have to all the different synergies in the format. So it seems a deeper filter that can have two other uses may be more valuable.
I am really curious to hear the other side here. I have been under the assumption that this must be the wrong direction as no one seems to include izzet charm. Just would like to hear if there is a theory why. I hate making deck decisions simply because "no one runs this card" instead of understanding why I am not including it.
You never want card disadvantage in a control deck. Apart from that, it's not better than Think Twice. Drawing cards at instant speed is good when you have nothing to do, but Izzet Charm is a card you want to save for when your opponent is doing things. That's sort of the opposite of Think Twice, which is meant to get you ahead when the opponent is inactive or trying to out-control you.
Somehow every time I resolve the card, I win the game. Truth to be told, I mainly play the deck in the practice games on MTGO.
I know the card is expensive, 6 mana is a lot, but when she hits, you've pretty much won against quite a lot of decks.
I understand that the practice games are not the most competitive meta, but why is she not played? Is it that hard to stay alive until turn 6 to cast her and take over the board?
Well, the reason I wouldn't play it is plain and simple: Keranos and Batterskull are just better cards.
I'd even consider Ajani Vengeant and Gideon Jura over Elspeth. Not to mention my buddy Tasigur, which I greedily splash for.
Hey guys do you really see spell snare as a good card? I like it against twin for ex., it's useful in the counter wars, and burn, but other than that i don't really like it. It's cool when it answers a goyf or a voice, but those decks have ways of removing your answers and it's a really bad top deck. I think control will have a better chance against BGx list with a more redundant list with 2 Sweeper effects, 2 sphinx's revelation, 4 snapcasters, 4 cryptics and think twice 'cause they are like the only card that is true card advantage, a thing that we surely need. Shaun Mclaren has been trying a list with no spell snare and I kind think it's a good starting point beside a slot or two I don't really love.
..what are your thoughts on Spell Snare? It feels somehow week, staring down those Abrupt Decays and as soon as the opponent has information about us holding it (using Thoughtseize, Probe, vClique, etc.), Snare is even weaker..
What is really relevant to counter besides Tarmogoyf, which justifies 3x in the main??
Every time I have it in hand I can only think of how good some other card x would be in its place..
Seeing as those decks are common tier 1 decks, 2-3 Spell Snare is a main deck unknown meta choice. If you don't see much of those, then yeah you could replace it with something more relevant.
There are a lot of targets in all the decks. The list would be too long for a comprehensive list. Certainly the card is better in a competitive meta where decks are well known. In local meta, a more general counter might be better (since more brews). Just some targets:
I didn't include a lot of the random stuff like Terminate that isn't really worth a counter usually. There's a lot of overlap with counter magic and generally good spells like Snapcaster. This also doesn't take info effect sideboard and nonconventional mainboard selections. There's a lot of other fringe decks that would have even more potential Snare targets. But you probably get the idea that there are a lot of 2cmc spells in modern. Perhaps the only deck Snare is truely a dead card is the weird Cascade Restore Balance combo decks.
As for what to counter against storm, my primary target is Manamorphose. It's their only source of color fixing and it's a cantrip. Two birds with one stone. The other target is Ascension.
I think it was something like this. I think Timely is an awesome card against BGx decks cause it gives us time and lets us keep our resources. I think it's a good strategy to go against BGx decks.
Timely is more for the aggro matchups than the attrition matchups. For attrition, cards like Gideon Jura or Keranos, God of Storms are simply better.
I really feel the matchup against tron is just plain bad with these 75.
It's certainly not favorable. However, I don't necessarily think it's a "bad" matchup if you're prepared for it and know the correct line of plays. Skill, practice, and preparation go a long way.
I think the twin matchup is bad with control lists cause some have blood moon on the main deck, and pos side it gets a little better, but they are more consistent in my opinion and with no pressure they have all the time to find the answers they need.
If you're expecting Blood Moon, prepare for it by fetching basics to start with (Island, Plains).
Current list. Should I add disruption with black (Thoughtseize and its ilk) or is black not justifiable? I have no problems getting black mana, and Lingering Souls does seem really good. Tasigur is very strong as a late-game card. He will always hit value.
Batterskull in the sideboard is also going to be replaced with something better, preferably what shores up fast aggressive decks.
Spell Snare to me is a very good card, as a topdeck Mana Leak can be actually worse.
I still haven't figured out what the right amount of Cryptic Command is.
It's either 3 or 4. 3 works for me to lower the curve, and it doesn't get stuck in my hand as often. Though if you have excellent early game, 4 Cryptics could be better.
So were apparently good in the current meta which has made sense to me for a while now. only thing is rg tron and bloom are rough. do we start running ghost quarters and molten rains?
I have had issues with my finishers being killed, countered, etc...
Getting my opponent to low life, closing out the game has been the issue. And with Banefire, being unstoppable late game, it seems like a great card for our control burn deck.
After dropping Batterskull from my list, I need a new win condition. Is Baneslayer any good?
Baneslayer dies too easily. However, Gideon Jura is great. He just immediately stabilizes almost any board that he resolves on and can remove creatures and fog attacks until you have Cryptic Command backup so that you can safely attack with him.
Edit: You can also safely cast him against Twin. If they counter it they probably won't have enough mana to combo off and if they don't you can just activate the plus ability to stop them from killing you with their combo.
Actually maybe, but just maybe, Kolaghan's Command has caused Gideon Jura to become a better card than Batterskull. In this precise moment I'm just overreacting, got a couple of Kolaghan in my face and lost to it twice, while if I had played Giden I would have won in at least one case. So I have to think to this carefully. But it's a fact that Batterskull is not as good as it was before the printing of Command.
I think that Gideon is better than Batterskull anyways. Batterskull just doesn't fight well against Tasigur and Siege Rhino and it can be flown easily. Gideon just wins you most games that he can get cast in. He's that good.
I have had issues with my finishers being killed, countered, etc...
Getting my opponent to low life, closing out the game has been the issue. And with Banefire, being unstoppable late game, it seems like a great card for our control burn deck.
If you are having issues with your threats being countered and killed, I might play one Pearl Lake Ancient in the sideboard. While it isn't a great card, it is really strong against Twin and Scapeshift since you can cast it at the end of their turn instead of casting a threat on your turn and then being killed by the combo. It also is really strong against control decks since it can never stay dead. The only problem is that it doesn't actually stabilize your board and it costs 7 mana.
I'll consider a Thundermaw Hellkite for the Blood Moon post-board games. No way that you're going to beat a Thundermaw after a Moon. Burn literally can't deal with it, and Twin will have a really tough time without their combo.
EDIT: If you decide to splash for another colour (I splash black for Souls and Tas), you could add Sigarda, which is brilliant.
Yeah, you can def. win this matchup, theres no denying that. While playing Gr Tron I played Uwr control three times(at PTQ/GPT level) and I lost once, and won twice. I also won once against Uwr flash and lost to Uwr midrange with Blade Splicers one time, though I consider the latter to be pretty far from control, lol. This was also at GPT/PTQ level.
But its not really that I consider it good, its just that its generally accepetd as favored for Gr Tron, even though of course as you said its a matchup you can still win.
i thin you're right, in that you gotta play very aggressively in this MU, you have to adopt a tempo gameplan because the control gameplan just doesn't work(I love playing any kind of control when on Tron - even Blue Moon!).
RG Tron isn't the best matchup, but it's winnable. After all, control is just a glorified burn deck. The reason we can beat Tron is because they're trying to do things, and the gameplan of control is to stop you from doing things. Usually Tron has more threats than counters, but about every 1/3 games, they don't have enough. When they're threat heavy, the gameplan needs to change to a really aggressive one.
UW Tron is actually the worst matchup, that. What they're doing is durdling until they can cast Gifts and keep up countermagic.
As long as fast unfavorable Tron MUs remain tier 1 (Twin, Burn, Infect, Affinity) and 2 (Bloom Titan), I won't be expecting a large portion of the metagame to be playing tron. While I'll respect the MU and include some tech edges, counter magic, and Shadow of Doubt in my main and favorable counter magic and Stony Silence in my sideboard, I'm not going to worry too much about it. Rather, I'd be more worried about Abzan, Jund, Bloom, and Blood Moon decks with a deck like this. They're far more common and similarly difficult.
I'll point out that if you look at recent metagame shifts, Tron seems to be gaining share while Infect, Affinity, and Burn are being pushed out.
Over the last 2x weeks, the top archetypes (>=5%) from MTGTop8 are:
Junk 9%
Tron 9%
Titan 9%
Mono G 9%
Twin 8%
UR Aggro 8%
Looking at last 2x months:
Burn 9%
UR Aggro 9%
Junk 8%
Twin 8%
Tron 7%
Mono G 6%
Affinity 6%
Titan 5%
The above includes online results like Daily's, so it's a much different picture if we only look at paper tournaments last 2x months:
Junk 14%
Twin 10%
Affinity 9%
UR Aggro 8%
Titan 6%
Burn 5%
Zoo 5%
Melira Co 5%
Though, Tron has generally been good in GBx formats, so I could see this being a prime format for a shift if it isn't already occurring.
MTG Top 8 is a terrible site for metagame breakdowns. You should use Modern Nexus instead, which is much more reliable (for example, the Monogreen Aggro decks that you mentioned are almost all Collected Elf combo decks and the UR Aggro decks are really Grixis Delver). While most of your final conclusions are correct, they still come from an unreliable source.
Eh? Have you even gone to the site? It's just a database full of decklists. What you've suggested is more akin to SCG.
It is a database of decklists, but it often sorts those lists into the wrong categories. It is geeat for folinding decklists, but Modern Nexus's metagame tracker (run by Ktkenshinx), is much more accurate.
Be aware as well that mtgtop8 only counts decks from the daily results that Wizards posts, which means that they miss a LOT of data. Modern Nexus does more manual deep dives and gets their info from other sources as well, making their metagame stats a lot more accurate.
As long as fast unfavorable Tron MUs remain tier 1 (Twin, Burn, Infect, Affinity) and 2 (Bloom Titan), I won't be expecting a large portion of the metagame to be playing tron. While I'll respect the MU and include some tech edges, counter magic, and Shadow of Doubt in my main and favorable counter magic and Stony Silence in my sideboard, I'm not going to worry too much about it. Rather, I'd be more worried about Abzan, Jund, Bloom, and Blood Moon decks with a deck like this. They're far more common and similarly difficult.
Burn has been dropping in paper, and Infect has been bleeding metagame points for months. If Jund and the Abzan Collected Company lists continue to rise, along with Junk keeping fairly steady, I would be very surprised if Tron's meta percentage didn't rise to meet them.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern URW Control WBG Abzan GRW Burn
EDH GR Rosheen Meanderer
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You never want card disadvantage in a control deck. Apart from that, it's not better than Think Twice. Drawing cards at instant speed is good when you have nothing to do, but Izzet Charm is a card you want to save for when your opponent is doing things. That's sort of the opposite of Think Twice, which is meant to get you ahead when the opponent is inactive or trying to out-control you.
UWR Control
Legacy:
W D&T
I'd even consider Ajani Vengeant and Gideon Jura over Elspeth. Not to mention my buddy Tasigur, which I greedily splash for.
UWR Control
Legacy:
W D&T
See the following 3 quotes:
Timely is more for the aggro matchups than the attrition matchups. For attrition, cards like Gideon Jura or Keranos, God of Storms are simply better.
It's certainly not favorable. However, I don't necessarily think it's a "bad" matchup if you're prepared for it and know the correct line of plays. Skill, practice, and preparation go a long way.
If you're expecting Blood Moon, prepare for it by fetching basics to start with (Island, Plains).
C Kozilek C
GB Gitrog GB
G Titania G
WU Brago WU
GB MerenGB
Duel Commander Decks
UR Keranos UR
BRG Jund BRG
GR Tron GR GW Tron GW
C Eldrazi Tron (SB) C
BG Lantern Control BG
UW Control (SB) UW
UWR Control
Legacy:
W D&T
4x Celestial Colonnade
4x Flooded Strand
1x Hallowed Fountain
3x Island
1x Mountain
1x Plains
1x Polluted Delta
1x Sacred Foundry
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Steam Vents
2x Tectonic Edge
2x Watery Grave
Creatures (6)
4x Snapcaster Mage
1x Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1x Vendilion Clique
3x Cryptic Command
1x Electrolyze
1x Electrolyze
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Lightning Helix
1x Lightning Helix
3x Mana Leak
3x Path to Exile
2x Remand
1x Shadow of Doubt
2x Spell Snare
1x Sphinx's Revelation
1x Valorous Stance
Sorcery (4)
2x Lingering Souls
1x Supreme Verdict
1x Wrath of God
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Batterskull
1x Celestial Purge
1x Counterflux
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Flashfreeze
1x Keranos, God of Storms
1x Leyline of Sanctity
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Shadow of Doubt
1x Spellskite
2x Stony Silence
1x Timely Reinforcements
1x Wear / Tear
Current list. Should I add disruption with black (Thoughtseize and its ilk) or is black not justifiable? I have no problems getting black mana, and Lingering Souls does seem really good. Tasigur is very strong as a late-game card. He will always hit value.
Batterskull in the sideboard is also going to be replaced with something better, preferably what shores up fast aggressive decks.
UWR Control
Legacy:
W D&T
It's either 3 or 4. 3 works for me to lower the curve, and it doesn't get stuck in my hand as often. Though if you have excellent early game, 4 Cryptics could be better.
UWR Control
Legacy:
W D&T
decks playing:
none
I have had issues with my finishers being killed, countered, etc...
Getting my opponent to low life, closing out the game has been the issue. And with Banefire, being unstoppable late game, it seems like a great card for our control burn deck.
Baneslayer dies too easily. However, Gideon Jura is great. He just immediately stabilizes almost any board that he resolves on and can remove creatures and fog attacks until you have Cryptic Command backup so that you can safely attack with him.
Edit: You can also safely cast him against Twin. If they counter it they probably won't have enough mana to combo off and if they don't you can just activate the plus ability to stop them from killing you with their combo.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I think that Gideon is better than Batterskull anyways. Batterskull just doesn't fight well against Tasigur and Siege Rhino and it can be flown easily. Gideon just wins you most games that he can get cast in. He's that good.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
If you are having issues with your threats being countered and killed, I might play one Pearl Lake Ancient in the sideboard. While it isn't a great card, it is really strong against Twin and Scapeshift since you can cast it at the end of their turn instead of casting a threat on your turn and then being killed by the combo. It also is really strong against control decks since it can never stay dead. The only problem is that it doesn't actually stabilize your board and it costs 7 mana.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
EDIT: If you decide to splash for another colour (I splash black for Souls and Tas), you could add Sigarda, which is brilliant.
UWR Control
Legacy:
W D&T
RG Tron isn't the best matchup, but it's winnable. After all, control is just a glorified burn deck. The reason we can beat Tron is because they're trying to do things, and the gameplan of control is to stop you from doing things. Usually Tron has more threats than counters, but about every 1/3 games, they don't have enough. When they're threat heavy, the gameplan needs to change to a really aggressive one.
UW Tron is actually the worst matchup, that. What they're doing is durdling until they can cast Gifts and keep up countermagic.
UWR Control
Legacy:
W D&T
C Kozilek C
GB Gitrog GB
G Titania G
WU Brago WU
GB MerenGB
Duel Commander Decks
UR Keranos UR
BRG Jund BRG
GR Tron GR GW Tron GW
C Eldrazi Tron (SB) C
BG Lantern Control BG
UW Control (SB) UW
Over the last 2x weeks, the top archetypes (>=5%) from MTGTop8 are:
Looking at last 2x months:
The above includes online results like Daily's, so it's a much different picture if we only look at paper tournaments last 2x months:
Though, Tron has generally been good in GBx formats, so I could see this being a prime format for a shift if it isn't already occurring.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
MTG Top 8 is a terrible site for metagame breakdowns. You should use Modern Nexus instead, which is much more reliable (for example, the Monogreen Aggro decks that you mentioned are almost all Collected Elf combo decks and the UR Aggro decks are really Grixis Delver). While most of your final conclusions are correct, they still come from an unreliable source.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
It is a database of decklists, but it often sorts those lists into the wrong categories. It is geeat for folinding decklists, but Modern Nexus's metagame tracker (run by Ktkenshinx), is much more accurate.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Burn has been dropping in paper, and Infect has been bleeding metagame points for months. If Jund and the Abzan Collected Company lists continue to rise, along with Junk keeping fairly steady, I would be very surprised if Tron's meta percentage didn't rise to meet them.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer