AV is objectively superior to Think Twice. One is 3 cards for 1 mana the other 2 cards for five. The only downside of AV is that it takes time to resolve which should not be a factor in a control mirror
AV also has the downside of not helping hit land drops like TT. I think it's incorrect to just chuck TT for AV, as they fill slightly different roles.
This is correct. Ancestral is the card people hoped rev would be. It does not replace tt if you ran that before.
I am intrigued by this Nahiri combo idea. I think the real testament would be how good Nahiri is just in normal games. The -2 is strong, but sort of limited.
I guess she is sort of like Ajani in that way...kinda.
I am definitely on board with running more Anger of the Gods if you are doing this sort of strategy since it smooths out the curve.
Having Emrakul drawn on the turn you plan to ultimate seems like a very minimal cost since it is a very low chance. If it is a real issue there are plenty of discard outlets that could be leveraged.
For a brief moment I thought about checking out Oath of Jace...but then I read the card. Why is Oath of Nissa head and shoulders above the others? Green is getting all the toys in standard! /shakesfist
Unfortunately I would have to wait for the card price to drop before trying it out, but definitely a cool idea.
I've been testing 1-2 Nahiri in Jeskai control online since the full spoiler was released as purely another looter (+2 ability) mixed with main deck removal (-2 ability). The -2 ability crapping on Blood Moon and Spreading Seas feels so good. I've even used the -8 ability to just get a Snapcaster Mage. I used it to cast Bolt at the end of my turn and hold it up through their next turn. She's pretty solid on her own. She just doesn't have an ability to win the game on her own for you. She's literally just a utility thing unless you pair with Emrakul or some other fatty that has an awesome ETB effect.
I feel like regardless of how good AV actually is (i for one really like it) many people either see it as the literal second coming or utterly unplayable
(not speaking of anyone in particular, well maby hoogland, he is quite vocal on his stream about how silly we are for thinking av is modern playable #salt )
Because of this discussing it becomes somewhat difficult at times.
Personally i am completly sold on AV in the pure control shell for now, it's been performing well and any time i died with it on suspend it was a game where i would have most likely lost no matter what draw / cantrip card i would have had instead.
(Most of the time nut draws by the big aggro three but overall i seldom died with one on suspend)
I am unsure about it in the nahiri + emrakul version, not because it feels bad, it even has some nice "synergy" with nahiri, but because i feel like serum visions might just be a better pick, especially if the deck ends up in a way that tries to combo of quickly (since AV doesn't help with dropping a t4 nahiri like finding it or clearing the board ahead of time.
If the deck will end up playing more like the full on controll shell which is in no rush to combo i think AV will still be the better choice.
Might be wrong about all of that ofcourse.
I feel that AV is a required 4-of in any "true" control deck now, meaning planning on going to turn 10+ and having no combo finish. If AV isn't modern playable then blue-based control isn't modern playable
If the gameplan is to end with a combo finish, AV is not a strict requirement. The Nahiri combo deck plans on winning turn 6, making raw card advantage not a necessity.
I run a pure control Jeskai list and I was super skeptical about AV before I tried it but I'm glad I did. I've yet to die with it on suspend but I don't doubt that it will happen eventually. The main problem with pure control lists is that they tend to run out of gas before finishing the game up, the solution is either to run a combo, run more aggressive creatures or to run a bunch of card draw to stay juiced. The thing is the card draw was alwaya took up too much mana so you couldn't actually afford to play it. Suspends ability to functionally trade time for manga works really well in control. Control decks create time by making the game go longer but they can't always afford to use their mana on draw spells. You have to keep your mana up prettt much all the time to represent countermagic or removal so even Sphinx's Revelation can be a liability some times.
Now all that said I am pretty sad about the cards I had to cut to make room for Visions. I had one flex slot but I had to cut my second Sphinx's Revelation and both my electrolyzes.
Unfortunately every try hard from Sacramento to Shanghai preaches from the top of their 27 lands + Mana Reflection that Tooth and Nail and Time Stretch are fine to play in the same turn but Armageddon is unfair.
Hey everyone, I wanted to poke my head in here and see what was going on with the whole nahiri/Emmy plan and noticed a lot of discussion over AV/TT spots. I have had extensive experience with both and wanted to chime in as a person with a lot of game time and results with both. For the last many months I have been on esper control and recently moved over to plain UW control (proper control, no sun titan midrange nonsense) and have had ups and downs with both. Since it is a touch lengthy I've broken it up into a few spoiler sections so I don't hijack an entire page.
First and foremost, they are different cards that fill different roles.
If you were running TT don't just make a hard swap over to AV, you will be doing yourself a disservice and be left with a sour taste at the end. Secondly, ancestral comes with a rule attached for it to be a solid card and that is that it cannot be your only draw spell. This is because hands with 3 lands, 2 AV, 2 spells are usually a horrible trap and cause you to lose with them on suspend if your draws do not cooperate. You need something to keep cards flowing while AV ticks down and keeping your level of interaction high so that when you pop your free ancestral you are ahead rather than just not catching up.
The one thing I cannot stress enough is that think twice is not a cantrip. It is not something you run to "smooth out your draws" or to "help you hit your land drops." Think twice is a card draw spell, it is card advantage, it is absolutely not card filtering or selection. If selection is what you feel your list needs then you should not run TT and you definitely shouldn't run ancestral.
The best mix I have found of draw spells was 4 AV, 3 Think Twice, and 2 revelation if you plan on going super late along with zero copies of serum visions or remand.
If you're on an aggressive shell with resto and clique main or the nahiri plan then the revelations are no longer necessary because you can end the game far sooner.
For exact numbers AV has to be at least a 3of in order for it to do anything of note. As we all know it's a terrible top deck and is at its best in the first 3 turns so you want to make that as likely as possible. Only playing with 2 or 1 will lead you to draw it late when you're low on gas and wonder why you ever thought this garbage was playable in the first place. If your deck is not built to correctly support a suspend-4 draw spell it will be awful, you will lose games because of it, and you will yell at everyone for considering it.
One final consideration is that if you are on 4 AV and some number of flash back spells you want to cut down to 3 snapcaster mages for two reasons. The obvious is that you now have a large amount of spells that he does not work well with, but the second and most important is that you will wind up with a lot of hands that do not "do" anything. A hand of lands, AV, think twice, and snaps is another potential trap hand. Snappy is amazing, but he needs friends and if you have a poor supporting cast you'll have a lot of clunky hands that need a bit of luck from the top of your deck to pan our successfully. The most miserable feeling is dying with 2 snapcasters in hand that never had something worthwhile to bring back.
You need to also consider on how long you intend your average game to be.
If you want the game to end on turn 8-10 then AV might not be the card you want, in which case serum visions is better since you are wanting to look for specific cards to end the game with. However if you expect something more like turn 15+ is when you want the game to be on lock and eventually win from then you want as many big draw spells as you can get.
Furthermore, I have discovered that to fully maximize the potential of AV you need a big turn 4 play so that you can suspend on 1, do something impressive on 4, then resolve a free ancestral on 5 and slingshot yourself miles ahead. This can be anything from a wrath of god or a cryptic on a key spell or nahiri. Sure this may be "the dream" but you still want to have access to such an overwhelming sequence if possible.
Last but not least is how AV effects your general match ups after your deck construction. Without a powerful draw engine, your matches against CoCo and BGx are going to be somewhere between super tight or abysmal. I would go so far as to say that without some serious raw card advantage CoCo is nearly unbeatable with uwr and jund is very difficult. But the moment you add in 4 AV and 3 TT those matches become as close to a bye as you can get. And since those are some of the most popular decks right now, I think that an AV package is where I want to be.
EDIT: Forgot one other important thing to note about playing with AV. The misconception that it rewards you for dumping your hand.
This is something that sounds correct in theory, but does not actually play out in actual games where both players are playing optimally. What it rewards you for is not shoving everything you've got, but instead for a smooth course of interaction. This means a steady stream of 1 for 1 answers with the occasional 2 for 1 trade. I say this for two reasons.
First is because you have little control over when you get the large influx of cards. You put it on suspend and then it happens 4 turns later regardless of what you do between now and then. This can be a problem because if you are not casting spells in those 4 turns that it is on suspend then you are likely going to discard down to hand size which can partially or completely negate the card draw you've built your deck to support in the first place. There is no point in drawing a ton of extra cards if you never get to use them.
Simply put, a deck that wants to dump their hand early is a deck that does not want to be still playing on turn 10. Conversely, a deck that wants to be in the game on turn 10 is not one that tends to dump their hand. Essentially the logic seems correct but is actually in direct contrast to what each type of deck is planning to do. In other words, a control deck is fundamentally incapable of dumping their hand in the first few turns to refuel with AV while still being comfortable with all of their potential draw steps in the late game.
The second and more pertinent reason is that if you're in the business of dumping your hand ASAP then you are not interested in getting into the long game. Decks like burn, delver zoo, and so forth want to jam as much business in the early game so that their efficiency makes up for their general lack of "power." But when these decks find themselves on turn 9 they tend to be in a very bad spot and would be mortified at drawing a card that literally does nothing for yet another 4 turns. As a control player you are actively wanting to get to turn 12 or turn 20 and are not wanting to fire off every spell you draw. As a matter of fact, sometimes you are literally not capable of casting them such as drawing a path or a spell snare and your opponent does not present you with something that they can answer. So in order to maximize what AV can do for you, you want to be interacting every turn and not spamming cantrips which keep your hand at a consistent size causing you to discard the cards that you have been waiting for.
How many of you have been testing out the Nahiri/Emmy builds of UWR? I've been playing it a lot lately and it definitely has the power that I want for a control deck's end game, but I'm not entirely sold that it's better than the other options available as far as deck construction goes. Main deck reusable disenchants are nice to have for sure as is another exile effect for monsters outside of bolt range so weather or not emrakul is the right way to go I like having nahiri in the list. So far my biggest issue has been beating combo decks that do not rely on creatures like storm, but especially RUG scapeshift.
My solution was to put a play set of leylines in the side next to a pile of counters and play a protect the queen strategy post board and it has seemed to work out quite well. When I was putting together my personal SB guide I began noticing that there are a ton of decks that are completely cold to a white leyline. This is something that also helps solve another major problem that control has had in modern in that we are very soft to the numerous fringe decks the format has to offer, but conveniently they also have a tenancy to be soft to leylines. The biggest downside of course is that it takes up so much SB space.
Here's the list I've been working on a bunch lately. It is 100% on the control and late game spectrum that uwr slides up and down, with a primary focus on beating midrange decks and being a favorite (though not a landslide victor) against infect and affinity.
The 3/2 split of helix and bolt is because I wanted 2 helix in the main but I didn't want to overload on removal spells. As it is, I am more afraid of burn, 8 Whack, and other decks that are attacking you in the midgame. This is opposed to ones that are hyper 1-drop centric where the mana efficiency is far more important than the life gain.
I only have 3 nahiri because I have found that I only ever need to draw one. Yes you can rummage away a redundant copy to the one you have cast, but I would rather have an extra piece of business to get me to the point where I am capable of tapping 4 mana at sorcery speed in the first place.
I'm also only on 25 lands instead of the traditional 26+ for a control deck. This is because the mana curve is so low and with sphinx's revelation being absent from the list I have very little use for having 10 lands in play. In addition to that most of them end up getting looted away rather than actually tapped for mana. I would consider going to 24 if it weren't for the fact that I still am extremely pressed to hit 4 lands on time, every time. Even though it's essential to have 4 mana on turn 4 to cast your wraths and cryptics, land drops after that are not terrible, but they are far from an absolute necessity to win.
There are zero copies of remand, serum visions, electrolyze or mana leak. I'm not interested in spells that delay threats rather than answering them since this deck is focused on being control with a "combo finish" and not the other way around. As such early game filtering and digging for your nahiri is not as important as simply being up on card count. Being able to have a healthy grip of cards at all times is how you are going to win a protected game against CoCo or jund, not by just finding a fast nahiri and hoping it's good enough. As for electrolyze, I'm not playing it because I have just never ever liked it in uwr. Outside of affinity you need a set of very specific circumstances for it to be a good card and those are far too uncommon for my liking. More often than not it kills a completely irellevant creature and draws a card for 3 mana. Sure that is technically a 2 for 1, but if what you're killing has zero influence on how the game ends then you just spent 3 mana to cycle. I need my 3+ mana spells to have a whole lot more impact than that.
The disdainful strokes in the side are specifically for tron. They counter ulamog, karn, ugin, and other eldrazi whereas negate is hit or miss and they are still valuable in nearly every match where negate would come in. Having a 2 mana hard counter to 100% of their threats is so valuable in such a swingy match up that I haven't cut them from my SB in any control deck since eye of ugin was banned. Trust me, if tron is something that you're shooting to beat they're awesome.
There is also a distinct lack of life gain in the side, but this is because I expect the leylines to do some seriously heavy lifting in the matches where life gain is something you want a lot of. Between dispels, snares, and other 2 cmc counters they aren't hard to hard cast and protect against the disenchant effects you tend to see.
The two cards that I'm undecided on in the side are wear/tear and purge. I want purges for things like liliana or an opposing nahiri among the many other things that it can hit, but I also want an answer to pithing needle. Having 3 cryptics to bounce a needle to turn on nahiri is nice, but is not as reliable as I would like. Since this deck's Plan A is to win with her summoning Emmy, having them shut off is a big deal.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
How many of you have been testing out the Nahiri/Emmy builds of UWR? I've been playing it a lot lately and it definitely has the power that I want for a control deck's end game, but I'm not entirely sold that it's better than the other options available as far as deck construction goes. Main deck reusable disenchants are nice to have for sure as is another exile effect for monsters outside of bolt range so weather or not emrakul is the right way to go I like having nahiri in the list. So far my biggest issue has been beating combo decks that do not rely on creatures like storm, but especially RUG scapeshift.
My solution was to put a play set of leylines in the side next to a pile of counters and play a protect the queen strategy post board and it has seemed to work out quite well. When I was putting together my personal SB guide I began noticing that there are a ton of decks that are completely cold to a white leyline. This is something that also helps solve another major problem that control has had in modern in that we are very soft to the numerous fringe decks the format has to offer, but conveniently they also have a tenancy to be soft to leylines. The biggest downside of course is that it takes up so much SB space.
Here's the list I've been working on a bunch lately. It is 100% on the control and late game spectrum that uwr slides up and down, with a primary focus on beating midrange decks and being a favorite (though not a landslide victor) against infect and affinity.
The 3/2 split of helix and bolt is because I wanted 2 helix in the main but I didn't want to overload on removal spells. As it is, I am more afraid of burn, 8 Whack, and other decks that are attacking you in the midgame. This is opposed to ones that are hyper 1-drop centric where the mana efficiency is far more important than the life gain.
I only have 3 nahiri because I have found that I only ever need to draw one. Yes you can rummage away a redundant copy to the one you have cast, but I would rather have an extra piece of business to get me to the point where I am capable of tapping 4 mana at sorcery speed in the first place.
I'm also only on 25 lands instead of the traditional 26+ for a control deck. This is because the mana curve is so low and with sphinx's revelation being absent from the list I have very little use for having 10 lands in play. In addition to that most of them end up getting looted away rather than actually tapped for mana. I would consider going to 24 if it weren't for the fact that I still am extremely pressed to hit 4 lands on time, every time. Even though it's essential to have 4 mana on turn 4 to cast your wraths and cryptics, land drops after that are not terrible, but they are far from an absolute necessity to win.
There are zero copies of remand, serum visions, electrolyze or mana leak. I'm not interested in spells that delay threats rather than answering them since this deck is focused on being control with a "combo finish" and not the other way around. As such early game filtering and digging for your nahiri is not as important as simply being up on card count. Being able to have a healthy grip of cards at all times is how you are going to win a protected game against CoCo or jund, not by just finding a fast nahiri and hoping it's good enough. As for electrolyze, I'm not playing it because I have just never ever liked it in uwr. Outside of affinity you need a set of very specific circumstances for it to be a good card and those are far too uncommon for my liking. More often than not it kills a completely irellevant creature and draws a card for 3 mana. Sure that is technically a 2 for 1, but if what you're killing has zero influence on how the game ends then you just spent 3 mana to cycle. I need my 3+ mana spells to have a whole lot more impact than that.
The disdainful strokes in the side are specifically for tron. They counter ulamog, karn, ugin, and other eldrazi whereas negate is hit or miss and they are still valuable in nearly every match where negate would come in. Having a 2 mana hard counter to 100% of their threats is so valuable in such a swingy match up that I haven't cut them from my SB in any control deck since eye of ugin was banned. Trust me, if tron is something that you're shooting to beat they're awesome.
There is also a distinct lack of life gain in the side, but this is because I expect the leylines to do some seriously heavy lifting in the matches where life gain is something you want a lot of. Between dispels, snares, and other 2 cmc counters they aren't hard to hard cast and protect against the disenchant effects you tend to see.
The two cards that I'm undecided on in the side are wear/tear and purge. I want purges for things like liliana or an opposing nahiri among the many other things that it can hit, but I also want an answer to pithing needle. Having 3 cryptics to bounce a needle to turn on nahiri is nice, but is not as reliable as I would like. Since this deck's Plan A is to win with her summoning Emmy, having them shut off is a big deal.
"They counter Ulamog"...not really unless you consider still getting your two best permanents exiled as stopping Ulamog. Why not destroy their land?
I don't really follow the logic of not wanting to overload on removal and then running 3 mainboard wraths. I also believe Think Twice is way too slow if your gameplan is to win on turn 6. Remand also greatly helps in the Nahiri combo deck as delaying threats is incredibly strong if you plan on a turn 6 Emrakul. I'd also recommend you at least try out Serum Visions over AV, and run the full playset of Nahiri; If you're going to dilute your control deck with 4/5 wincon cards you should plan on winning asap.
I agree. I've never really followed the logic on lists that are playing colonnade on T1 (doing nothing). T2 play a Logic Knot with 1 card in the yard = ( Play a Think Twice on T3 and think they are going to stand a chance.
I agree. I've never really followed the logic on lists that are playing colonnade on T1 (doing nothing). T2 play a Logic Knot with 1 card in the yard = ( Play a Think Twice on T3 and think they are going to stand a chance.
It depends on the whole build. In a deck like esper draw-go with Esper Charm or some UWR builds where red is only to remove threats (no tempo-burn plan B), the Think Twice engine can work because the goal of such builds is to generate card advantage to reach a stage of the game where they can't lose anymore. This stratgey is obviously weak to aggro decks and maybe not at its best in the current metagame, but it is a coherent one.
That being said, I think that Ancestral Vision is probably better in UWR than in esper draw-go because typical UWR lists play a lot of cheap and versatile spells. UWR is probably the Modern control deck with the more early interactions in order to survive until Ancestral Vision resolves, so a t1 AV is maybe more realistic in UWR while Think Twice is maybe better than AV in esper draw-go which has access to less cheap intercation.
Nice assessment. I generally agree. But I think as time goes on all of the control lists will move over to Vision. It's just too powerful for one mana. Forcing your card draw spell to resolve with 4-5 mana up is very strong for a control deck in modern. I agree with you that if TT has a place Esper-draw go is sort of the "last frontier".
I don't follow any logic that would state that AV is better than the swiss army knife that is Nahiri. In the maybe 25 games I've played with her, she's been insane every time I've drawn her.
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My modern Decks: GBRJundGBR URWJeskai NahiriURW My Legacy Deck: URBGrixis DelverURB My EDH Decks: GJarad, Golgari Lich LordB GRhys, The RedeemedW RWArchangel AvacynRW UWDragonlord OjutaiUW
What do you think is the difference between Grixis control and Jeskai control? I am pretty torn between the two.
Grixis control scoops to burn, Jeskai doesn't
But really though, Jeskai has much better sideboard options and is better at going long, whilst Grixis control is more similar to Jund, being able to grind a lot of value off Kolaghan's Command. It's Path to Exile and Lightning Helix versus Kolaghan's Command and discard spells.
I don't follow any logic that would state that AV is better than the swiss army knife that is Nahiri. In the maybe 25 games I've played with her, she's been insane every time I've drawn her.
Which card do you think is better, Lord of Atlantis or Scapeshift?
I don't follow any logic that would state that AV is better than the swiss army knife that is Nahiri. In the maybe 25 games I've played with her, she's been insane every time I've drawn her.
I don't think anyone has made such a comparison because that would be ....weird.
Vision is 1 U draw three cards. Nahiri is 2RW Maybe loot, maybe remove some type of permanent.
They don't really have enough relation to compare as cards.
It's like me saying "I don't follow any logic that would state Thoughtseize is better than Snapcaster Mage."
What do you think is the difference between Grixis control and Jeskai control? I am pretty torn between the two.
Grixis control scoops to burn, Jeskai doesn't
But really though, Jeskai has much better sideboard options and is better at going long, whilst Grixis control is more similar to Jund, being able to grind a lot of value off Kolaghan's Command. It's Path to Exile and Lightning Helix versus Kolaghan's Command and discard spells.
But, with the Nahiri combo and with the present issue of Grixis's lack of efficient finishers (Jund has a ton of good green creatures like Tarmogoyf and Kitchen Finks, while grixis does not have nearly as many finishers as jund and jeskai). Jeskai seems to be the better option in terms of being able to close the game. Grindfest decks are quite tiring to play, too.
Yeah I agree, I play pretty much every version of blue control there is in modern and I think Jeskai is the best option. Right now I'm mostly thinking about what is the best way to close out the game
Yeah I agree, I play pretty much every version of blue control there is in modern and I think Jeskai is the best option. Right now I'm mostly thinking about what is the best way to close out the game
That's interesting. Where are you folks having trouble? I have never really put much into that line of thought as I've never had much trouble finishing with burn, snaps, colonnades, Cliques.
G1: He starts off with Blackleave cliffs, Inqusition of Kozliek, takes my geist, thats fine
I draw a spell snare, and see his dark confidant go right to the graveyard! good start for me. It turns out he really needed that. because he is stuck with that cliffs and a forest. on his t4 after draw i flash in my drawn v clique, reveal a lot of good stuff but he only has 2 lands, so i dont take anything (Iok, K command, Liliana of the V, terminate and bolt).
He bolts it, then i draw my other one, then i repeat and get his goyf out of his hand, and answer a bob on the board with a path before his turn started. I play Elspeth next turn and he takes 7, then i basically ride her to victory. he has a split second of hope when he tops a scavenging ooze, but i top deck an electrolyze and he is pretty upset at this point lol He answers my tokens for a few turns, but i draw a Colonnade and ride that with the elspeth to my g1 win. He was stuck on 3 lands the whole game.
G2: This game, was a lot more back and forth. I got rid of 2 dark confidants, and honestly thats the most significant i can remember of it. It was a lot of back and forth on resources, he was flooding out pretty hardcore and my resources were lining up perfectly. A 'from the hand' bonfire takes care of huntmaster, a zombie left over from a Geth, and a wolf, which felt pretty amazing but horrible to pay 7 mana for lol ride elspeth (4 drop) and colonnade both to the win for this round as well
Beat Lantern Control 2-1
G1: Nothing special here gang, he gets an early ensnaring bridge, and chills until he hits an Ghirapur Æther Grid. i am drawing ok here, and get him down to 5 life with the burn until he kills me. Oh well! first time ever playing against this so.. lets see whats up lol
Sideboard: -2 resto, -1 thundermaw, -1 bonfire, -2 path, +2 stony silence, +1 EE +1 Wear/Tear, +1 negate, +1 dispel, +1 pithing needle (kept 2 in because of spellskite coming in redirecting my burn spells)
G2: turn 1 serum visions, t2 stony silence, hells yeah so he just plays a lot of 1 drop artifacts, but no Ensnaring Bridge! so i lay a V Clique on his draw step t4, and i take an ancient stirings.
i attack with that a few times, i spell snare a Sun Droplet to keep on the pressure and the burn, then start attacking with a colonnade that i drew into. our libraries are revealed, i see he has a ghost quarter coming up, so i ask a judge to be sure, but i pithing needle, naming ghost quarter, so my Colonnade is safe! and he cracks up when i do it lol So i WIN THIS ONE! WHOOP!
G3: so he keeps a no lander, for some reason... i guess his hand was the nuts if he had land, anyways. i go t2 lightning helix, then a t3 geist. t4 i land a clique, then t5 i lay elspeth and a colonnade tapped. he hits his first land on his t3, and doesn't really do much. I wreck him this game. and it feels great lol
Loss Abzan Company 1-2 tomorrow
i didn't take the same amount of notes. with this deck... there would be like 5 pages lol im stuck on a steam vents and a ghost quarter for the longest time, but he eats both spell snares that i draw. Long story short, i get down to 6, and I swing for 14 from a geist, an on board elsepth, and a thundermaw hellkite for the win!
Sideboard: I honestly have no idea what i brought out, but i brought in a dispel, 2 negate, EE, supreme verdict,
G2: very fast and bad., NO counter magic was drawn, and he infinite life pretty early lol
G3: grindy as hell, but he kills me creature style in combat, in turn 3 of turns. i was flooding out hardcore this game, and no celestial colonnades.
Intentional draw for the last round, the guy had to leave and I was nice.
Thoughts:
-Bonfire is gone. It's very not good lol
-Thundermaw hellkite is amazeballs.
-I changed Gideon to elspeth knight errant and she was fantastic. Wanting another mainboard. Seriously. She kicked ass.
-electrolyze seems great, I want to put another mainboard if I can.
-Vendilion Clique was awesome. I loved seeing it, 2 mainboard seems great for my build.
-spell snare is the BEEZE-MOTHA-FREAKIN-NEEZE.
- I'm not sure if I'm a control or midrange deck so I posted here and as well as midrange. Would appreciate the input gang
Yeah I agree, I play pretty much every version of blue control there is in modern and I think Jeskai is the best option. Right now I'm mostly thinking about what is the best way to close out the game
That's interesting. Where are you folks having trouble? I have never really put much into that line of thought as I've never had much trouble finishing with burn, snaps, colonnades, Cliques.
Maybe I'm running more burn?
I've been trying different angles of wincons, basically. I am not a fan of the all-in burn plan, I think it is inconsistent in winning the game fast enough and has logistic issues against 25+ creature decks like coco and merfolk where you can't expect to both deal with all their relevant creatures whilst at the same time finding 5 burn spells to go to the face.
I'm now trying out 3 different gameplans;
Geist of Saint Traft: i've had a lot of success with this list. Basically all-in burn but supplements that with 3 Geists, using AV's card advantage to take out all their threats and tries to win as fast as possible once AV resolves. Really strong game one as it basically blanks all their removal with no targets in the deck. Wraths and Lili tend to be easy to deal with as I plan to cast Geist when I can back him up with countermagic, but has some issues against decks that can deploy blockers at instant speed as it forces me to use mana on my own turn
Archangel Avacyn: Basically UWr flash with cliques, resto, snap and avacyn. The idea of the deck is that I can always spend my mana at the end of my opponent's turn to always have a hold of the game's tempo as they are forced to play into open mana, and force them to make a move with a suspended AV. Avacyn is just a huge blowout every time I cast her. This is probably my favourite list as of now as it has very good game against coco decks, which seem to be common
Nahiri: The combo deck people have been discussing. I think going all-in on the combo is a very powerful strategy that is hard to disrupt for many decks. It can't use AV effectively however and has some issues against other control decks
Mainboard is fine although you run a lot of odd one ofs that I think is just a matter of deciding which card is better, especially 1 Tec Edge/GQ. With 3 Serum Visions and a Geist list you can probably cut a land as well. In the sideboard Engineered Explosives nonbos with Stony Silence against affinity, you should probably run Anger of the Gods instead
This is correct. Ancestral is the card people hoped rev would be. It does not replace tt if you ran that before.
I've been testing 1-2 Nahiri in Jeskai control online since the full spoiler was released as purely another looter (+2 ability) mixed with main deck removal (-2 ability). The -2 ability crapping on Blood Moon and Spreading Seas feels so good. I've even used the -8 ability to just get a Snapcaster Mage. I used it to cast Bolt at the end of my turn and hold it up through their next turn. She's pretty solid on her own. She just doesn't have an ability to win the game on her own for you. She's literally just a utility thing unless you pair with Emrakul or some other fatty that has an awesome ETB effect.
I feel that AV is a required 4-of in any "true" control deck now, meaning planning on going to turn 10+ and having no combo finish. If AV isn't modern playable then blue-based control isn't modern playable
If the gameplan is to end with a combo finish, AV is not a strict requirement. The Nahiri combo deck plans on winning turn 6, making raw card advantage not a necessity.
Now all that said I am pretty sad about the cards I had to cut to make room for Visions. I had one flex slot but I had to cut my second Sphinx's Revelation and both my electrolyzes.
First and foremost, they are different cards that fill different roles.
The one thing I cannot stress enough is that think twice is not a cantrip. It is not something you run to "smooth out your draws" or to "help you hit your land drops." Think twice is a card draw spell, it is card advantage, it is absolutely not card filtering or selection. If selection is what you feel your list needs then you should not run TT and you definitely shouldn't run ancestral.
The best mix I have found of draw spells was 4 AV, 3 Think Twice, and 2 revelation if you plan on going super late along with zero copies of serum visions or remand.
For exact numbers AV has to be at least a 3of in order for it to do anything of note. As we all know it's a terrible top deck and is at its best in the first 3 turns so you want to make that as likely as possible. Only playing with 2 or 1 will lead you to draw it late when you're low on gas and wonder why you ever thought this garbage was playable in the first place. If your deck is not built to correctly support a suspend-4 draw spell it will be awful, you will lose games because of it, and you will yell at everyone for considering it.
One final consideration is that if you are on 4 AV and some number of flash back spells you want to cut down to 3 snapcaster mages for two reasons. The obvious is that you now have a large amount of spells that he does not work well with, but the second and most important is that you will wind up with a lot of hands that do not "do" anything. A hand of lands, AV, think twice, and snaps is another potential trap hand. Snappy is amazing, but he needs friends and if you have a poor supporting cast you'll have a lot of clunky hands that need a bit of luck from the top of your deck to pan our successfully. The most miserable feeling is dying with 2 snapcasters in hand that never had something worthwhile to bring back.
You need to also consider on how long you intend your average game to be.
Furthermore, I have discovered that to fully maximize the potential of AV you need a big turn 4 play so that you can suspend on 1, do something impressive on 4, then resolve a free ancestral on 5 and slingshot yourself miles ahead. This can be anything from a wrath of god or a cryptic on a key spell or nahiri. Sure this may be "the dream" but you still want to have access to such an overwhelming sequence if possible.
Last but not least is how AV effects your general match ups after your deck construction. Without a powerful draw engine, your matches against CoCo and BGx are going to be somewhere between super tight or abysmal. I would go so far as to say that without some serious raw card advantage CoCo is nearly unbeatable with uwr and jund is very difficult. But the moment you add in 4 AV and 3 TT those matches become as close to a bye as you can get. And since those are some of the most popular decks right now, I think that an AV package is where I want to be.
EDIT: Forgot one other important thing to note about playing with AV. The misconception that it rewards you for dumping your hand.
First is because you have little control over when you get the large influx of cards. You put it on suspend and then it happens 4 turns later regardless of what you do between now and then. This can be a problem because if you are not casting spells in those 4 turns that it is on suspend then you are likely going to discard down to hand size which can partially or completely negate the card draw you've built your deck to support in the first place. There is no point in drawing a ton of extra cards if you never get to use them.
Simply put, a deck that wants to dump their hand early is a deck that does not want to be still playing on turn 10. Conversely, a deck that wants to be in the game on turn 10 is not one that tends to dump their hand. Essentially the logic seems correct but is actually in direct contrast to what each type of deck is planning to do. In other words, a control deck is fundamentally incapable of dumping their hand in the first few turns to refuel with AV while still being comfortable with all of their potential draw steps in the late game.
The second and more pertinent reason is that if you're in the business of dumping your hand ASAP then you are not interested in getting into the long game. Decks like burn, delver zoo, and so forth want to jam as much business in the early game so that their efficiency makes up for their general lack of "power." But when these decks find themselves on turn 9 they tend to be in a very bad spot and would be mortified at drawing a card that literally does nothing for yet another 4 turns. As a control player you are actively wanting to get to turn 12 or turn 20 and are not wanting to fire off every spell you draw. As a matter of fact, sometimes you are literally not capable of casting them such as drawing a path or a spell snare and your opponent does not present you with something that they can answer. So in order to maximize what AV can do for you, you want to be interacting every turn and not spamming cantrips which keep your hand at a consistent size causing you to discard the cards that you have been waiting for.
My solution was to put a play set of leylines in the side next to a pile of counters and play a protect the queen strategy post board and it has seemed to work out quite well. When I was putting together my personal SB guide I began noticing that there are a ton of decks that are completely cold to a white leyline. This is something that also helps solve another major problem that control has had in modern in that we are very soft to the numerous fringe decks the format has to offer, but conveniently they also have a tenancy to be soft to leylines. The biggest downside of course is that it takes up so much SB space.
Here's the list I've been working on a bunch lately. It is 100% on the control and late game spectrum that uwr slides up and down, with a primary focus on beating midrange decks and being a favorite (though not a landslide victor) against infect and affinity.
4 path to exile
3 lightning bolt
2 lightning helix
2 supreme verdict
1 wrath of god
Permission
3 cryptic command
3 spell snare
2 logic knot
1 deprive
Card Draw
4 ancestral vision
3 think twice
Win Cons
3 nahiri, the harbinger
3 snapcaster mage
1 emrakul, the aeons torn
4 celestial colonnade
4 scalding tarn
4 flooded strand
2 steam vents
2 hallowed fountain
1 sacred foundry
3 island
1 plains
1 mountain
1 desolate lighthouse
1 glacial fortress
1 sulfur falls
4 leyline of sanctity
2 stony silence
1 anger of the gods
1 wear // tear
1 celestial purge
2 disdainful stroke
1 dispel
1 negate
1 counterflux
1 elspeth, sun's champion
A few (too many) notes on the list.
I only have 3 nahiri because I have found that I only ever need to draw one. Yes you can rummage away a redundant copy to the one you have cast, but I would rather have an extra piece of business to get me to the point where I am capable of tapping 4 mana at sorcery speed in the first place.
I'm also only on 25 lands instead of the traditional 26+ for a control deck. This is because the mana curve is so low and with sphinx's revelation being absent from the list I have very little use for having 10 lands in play. In addition to that most of them end up getting looted away rather than actually tapped for mana. I would consider going to 24 if it weren't for the fact that I still am extremely pressed to hit 4 lands on time, every time. Even though it's essential to have 4 mana on turn 4 to cast your wraths and cryptics, land drops after that are not terrible, but they are far from an absolute necessity to win.
There are zero copies of remand, serum visions, electrolyze or mana leak. I'm not interested in spells that delay threats rather than answering them since this deck is focused on being control with a "combo finish" and not the other way around. As such early game filtering and digging for your nahiri is not as important as simply being up on card count. Being able to have a healthy grip of cards at all times is how you are going to win a protected game against CoCo or jund, not by just finding a fast nahiri and hoping it's good enough. As for electrolyze, I'm not playing it because I have just never ever liked it in uwr. Outside of affinity you need a set of very specific circumstances for it to be a good card and those are far too uncommon for my liking. More often than not it kills a completely irellevant creature and draws a card for 3 mana. Sure that is technically a 2 for 1, but if what you're killing has zero influence on how the game ends then you just spent 3 mana to cycle. I need my 3+ mana spells to have a whole lot more impact than that.
The disdainful strokes in the side are specifically for tron. They counter ulamog, karn, ugin, and other eldrazi whereas negate is hit or miss and they are still valuable in nearly every match where negate would come in. Having a 2 mana hard counter to 100% of their threats is so valuable in such a swingy match up that I haven't cut them from my SB in any control deck since eye of ugin was banned. Trust me, if tron is something that you're shooting to beat they're awesome.
There is also a distinct lack of life gain in the side, but this is because I expect the leylines to do some seriously heavy lifting in the matches where life gain is something you want a lot of. Between dispels, snares, and other 2 cmc counters they aren't hard to hard cast and protect against the disenchant effects you tend to see.
The two cards that I'm undecided on in the side are wear/tear and purge. I want purges for things like liliana or an opposing nahiri among the many other things that it can hit, but I also want an answer to pithing needle. Having 3 cryptics to bounce a needle to turn on nahiri is nice, but is not as reliable as I would like. Since this deck's Plan A is to win with her summoning Emmy, having them shut off is a big deal.
"They counter Ulamog"...not really unless you consider still getting your two best permanents exiled as stopping Ulamog. Why not destroy their land?
Nice assessment. I generally agree. But I think as time goes on all of the control lists will move over to Vision. It's just too powerful for one mana. Forcing your card draw spell to resolve with 4-5 mana up is very strong for a control deck in modern. I agree with you that if TT has a place Esper-draw go is sort of the "last frontier".
GBRJundGBR
URWJeskai NahiriURW
My Legacy Deck:
URBGrixis DelverURB
My EDH Decks:
GJarad, Golgari Lich LordB
GRhys, The RedeemedW
RWArchangel AvacynRW
UWDragonlord OjutaiUW
Grixis control scoops to burn, Jeskai doesn't
But really though, Jeskai has much better sideboard options and is better at going long, whilst Grixis control is more similar to Jund, being able to grind a lot of value off Kolaghan's Command. It's Path to Exile and Lightning Helix versus Kolaghan's Command and discard spells.
Which card do you think is better, Lord of Atlantis or Scapeshift?
I don't think anyone has made such a comparison because that would be ....weird.
Vision is 1 U draw three cards. Nahiri is 2RW Maybe loot, maybe remove some type of permanent.
They don't really have enough relation to compare as cards.
It's like me saying "I don't follow any logic that would state Thoughtseize is better than Snapcaster Mage."
But, with the Nahiri combo and with the present issue of Grixis's lack of efficient finishers (Jund has a ton of good green creatures like Tarmogoyf and Kitchen Finks, while grixis does not have nearly as many finishers as jund and jeskai). Jeskai seems to be the better option in terms of being able to close the game. Grindfest decks are quite tiring to play, too.
That's interesting. Where are you folks having trouble? I have never really put much into that line of thought as I've never had much trouble finishing with burn, snaps, colonnades, Cliques.
Maybe I'm running more burn?
overall everything went great!
3x Geist of Saint Traft
2x Restoration Angel
4x Snapcaster Mage
1x Thundermaw Hellkite
2x Vendilion Clique
1x Electrolyze
1x Cryptic Command
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Lightning Helix
1x Mana Leak
4x Path to Exile
2x Remand
2x Spell Snare
3x Serum Visions
1x Elspeth, Knight Errant
4x Arid Mesa
4x Celestial Colonnade
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Tectonic Edge
4x Flooded Strand
1x Glacial Fortress
1x Hallowed Fountain
2x Island
1x Plains
2x Sacred Foundry
2x Steam Vents
2x Sulfur Falls
Sideboard (15)
1x Dispel
1x Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Negate
1x Pithing Needle
2x Rest in Peace
2x Stony Silence
1x Supreme Verdict
2x Timely Reinforcements
1x Wear / Tear
Beat Jund 2-0
G1: He starts off with Blackleave cliffs, Inqusition of Kozliek, takes my geist, thats fine
I draw a spell snare, and see his dark confidant go right to the graveyard! good start for me. It turns out he really needed that. because he is stuck with that cliffs and a forest. on his t4 after draw i flash in my drawn v clique, reveal a lot of good stuff but he only has 2 lands, so i dont take anything (Iok, K command, Liliana of the V, terminate and bolt).
He bolts it, then i draw my other one, then i repeat and get his goyf out of his hand, and answer a bob on the board with a path before his turn started. I play Elspeth next turn and he takes 7, then i basically ride her to victory. he has a split second of hope when he tops a scavenging ooze, but i top deck an electrolyze and he is pretty upset at this point lol He answers my tokens for a few turns, but i draw a Colonnade and ride that with the elspeth to my g1 win. He was stuck on 3 lands the whole game.
Sideboard- -3 geist, -2 bolt. +2 Rest in peace, +1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion, +1 Engineered Explosives, +1 Pithing Needle
G2: This game, was a lot more back and forth. I got rid of 2 dark confidants, and honestly thats the most significant i can remember of it. It was a lot of back and forth on resources, he was flooding out pretty hardcore and my resources were lining up perfectly. A 'from the hand' bonfire takes care of huntmaster, a zombie left over from a Geth, and a wolf, which felt pretty amazing but horrible to pay 7 mana for lol ride elspeth (4 drop) and colonnade both to the win for this round as well
G1: Nothing special here gang, he gets an early ensnaring bridge, and chills until he hits an Ghirapur Æther Grid. i am drawing ok here, and get him down to 5 life with the burn until he kills me. Oh well! first time ever playing against this so.. lets see whats up lol
Sideboard: -2 resto, -1 thundermaw, -1 bonfire, -2 path, +2 stony silence, +1 EE +1 Wear/Tear, +1 negate, +1 dispel, +1 pithing needle (kept 2 in because of spellskite coming in redirecting my burn spells)
G2: turn 1 serum visions, t2 stony silence, hells yeah
i attack with that a few times, i spell snare a Sun Droplet to keep on the pressure and the burn, then start attacking with a colonnade that i drew into. our libraries are revealed, i see he has a ghost quarter coming up, so i ask a judge to be sure, but i pithing needle, naming ghost quarter, so my Colonnade is safe! and he cracks up when i do it
G3: so he keeps a no lander, for some reason... i guess his hand was the nuts if he had land, anyways. i go t2 lightning helix, then a t3 geist. t4 i land a clique, then t5 i lay elspeth and a colonnade tapped. he hits his first land on his t3, and doesn't really do much. I wreck him this game. and it feels great lol
Sideboard: I honestly have no idea what i brought out, but i brought in a dispel, 2 negate, EE, supreme verdict,
G2: very fast and bad., NO counter magic was drawn, and he infinite life pretty early lol
G3: grindy as hell, but he kills me creature style in combat, in turn 3 of turns. i was flooding out hardcore this game, and no celestial colonnades.
Thoughts:
-Bonfire is gone. It's very not good lol
-Thundermaw hellkite is amazeballs.
-I changed Gideon to elspeth knight errant and she was fantastic. Wanting another mainboard. Seriously. She kicked ass.
-electrolyze seems great, I want to put another mainboard if I can.
-Vendilion Clique was awesome. I loved seeing it, 2 mainboard seems great for my build.
-spell snare is the BEEZE-MOTHA-FREAKIN-NEEZE.
- I'm not sure if I'm a control or midrange deck so I posted here and as well as midrange. Would appreciate the input gang
Thanks you very much DarkNightCavalier for the Sig.
I've been trying different angles of wincons, basically. I am not a fan of the all-in burn plan, I think it is inconsistent in winning the game fast enough and has logistic issues against 25+ creature decks like coco and merfolk where you can't expect to both deal with all their relevant creatures whilst at the same time finding 5 burn spells to go to the face.
I'm now trying out 3 different gameplans;
Geist of Saint Traft: i've had a lot of success with this list. Basically all-in burn but supplements that with 3 Geists, using AV's card advantage to take out all their threats and tries to win as fast as possible once AV resolves. Really strong game one as it basically blanks all their removal with no targets in the deck. Wraths and Lili tend to be easy to deal with as I plan to cast Geist when I can back him up with countermagic, but has some issues against decks that can deploy blockers at instant speed as it forces me to use mana on my own turn
Archangel Avacyn: Basically UWr flash with cliques, resto, snap and avacyn. The idea of the deck is that I can always spend my mana at the end of my opponent's turn to always have a hold of the game's tempo as they are forced to play into open mana, and force them to make a move with a suspended AV. Avacyn is just a huge blowout every time I cast her. This is probably my favourite list as of now as it has very good game against coco decks, which seem to be common
Nahiri: The combo deck people have been discussing. I think going all-in on the combo is a very powerful strategy that is hard to disrupt for many decks. It can't use AV effectively however and has some issues against other control decks
Mainboard is fine although you run a lot of odd one ofs that I think is just a matter of deciding which card is better, especially 1 Tec Edge/GQ. With 3 Serum Visions and a Geist list you can probably cut a land as well. In the sideboard Engineered Explosives nonbos with Stony Silence against affinity, you should probably run Anger of the Gods instead
3 Restoration Angel
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Archangel Avacyn
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Lightning Helix
3 Electrolyze
4 Path to Exile
2 Cryptic Command
2 Remand
2 Spell Snare
1 Logic Knot
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Sulfur Falls
2 Desolate Lighthouse
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
2 Stony Silence
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Crumble to Dust
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Counterflux
1 Negate
1 Dispel
1 Wear // Tear
1 Celestial Purge