I'm not a huge fan of Crumble unless you see a TON of other Tron decks. The matchup is still about playing Karn ASAP. As for the other two, I prefer Life from the Loam. I tend to board it in against Jund most often, and dodging discard, K Command and Abrupt Decay is huge. Crucible is slightly better for looping Ghost Quarters, since sometimes you dredge emrakul and everything gets shuffled back, but short of that happening, Loam is much harder to disrupt, since nobody boards in graveyard hate against tron.
On the other hand, Life from the Loam is faster with Ghost Quarter, as you can start the loop a turn earlier.
I guess vs. Burn we're supposed to just blow up Chromatic Star with Nature's Claim and gain four and a card, right? You can blow up the Sphere if you really need the life but you lose lots of card advantage doing that.
Is there any benefit to saving the Claim for Eidolons, or is that card not really a threat vs. Tron?
Against Burn, I typically Nature's Claim my stuff while my opponent can't Skullcrack me. I'm comfortable with blowing up any cantrip rock (such as Relic). I typically don't bust it on Eidolons, but maybe I should toy with that if I don't have the Tron.
On boarding out Karn against Twin:
Karn is 100% safe to play against Twin as long as Twin has 3 lands or less and no Exarchs, as if Karn resolves, you boot a land immediately and buy another turn of Twin not comboing off, and if Karn gets countered, they can't play an Exarch that turn because they're too tapped out. I therefore board out all Ugins before boarding out Karn (but I still typically board out some Karns).
Turn 3 Karn will get Remanded. If you're on the play, turn 4 Karn is fairly safe: you exile a land and if they play an Exarch in response, they will only have 3 lands on turn 4. The only issue is that your Karn will probably be sitting at 2 loyalty counters next turn from Exarch beats, so he won't be able to stop the turn 5 combo win from Twin.
If you're on the draw, they'll say OK if you have a turn 4 Karn and then flash in Exarch at EOT followed by Splinter Twin on their next main phase. You can jam the Turn 4 Karn on the draw if you go for the Osyp Lebedowicz Jedi mind trick and say "Skip to cleanup step?" against dumb people playing Twin, but the good ones will never fall for this. The very dumb ones may try flashing in Exarch in response to Karn, in which case you exile him and chuckle softly to yourself.
Make sure you play something if you have it. O-stone is top priority if you have eight.
These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
T3 Karn can still win games all on his own if they don't have the remand ready to go, and that happens often enough that I am willing to keep some number of them in the deck and play a T3 Karn into open mana just to force them to have it.
That said, T4+ Karn gets a lot worse as mana opens up for your opponent to do stuff and still leave mana open and/or get insane value with stuff like Snapcaster > Remand. I feel like, in the Twin MU, the longer you wait to play Karn, the more he becomes "return this card to your hand, your opponent discards Remand and gets 1 card closer to his combo" and the same deal with Cryptic Command as well.
I have been known to just sit there and play nothing but Maps/Stirrings/Scrying until I have Eye and Ulamog or Emrakul as I feel it draws my opponent into their combo less quickly. I will even activate Eye just to pull creatures out of the deck and never play them just to get me to Em faster.
Nothing feels quite as bad as running Karn into Remand over and over and then watching your opponent topdeck a Twin-win on turn 7.
I've been playing with Explore lately to a fairly good amount of success locally (2-1 and 3-0 in local weeklies and a 2nd place finish at a 44 player IQ). My 75:
Most notable differences being the removal of the Pyroclasms to the board and the inclusion of Explore (mostly in place of the Relic).
I found relic to be mostly dead or too often a 2 mana cantrip, much like Explore. Unlike explore, it can't be used to turn any hand relying on a turn 1 Stirrings into a turn 3 tron, help recover from the tempo loss of a Fulminator Mage, or open up a turn 3 Ugin/OStone&break/Newlamog.
I'm just on my lunch now, so I'll try to finish the big one this evening, but the last modern Monday went as follows:
Round 1 against UW(b) control
Rocked the match hard. Actually lived the dream: turn 1 mine-star, turn 2 power plant-explore into Tower, map, search up another tower, turn 3 Newlamog.
Round 2，against Soul Sisters
Anyone who's played this matchup knows how one-sided it is. Even without pyro main, OStone and ugin still wreck small white chicks. Pyro came game 2, but my opponent kept a ropier hand and didn't hit a second land until after i had a live karn.
Round 3 against Junk.
Game 1 was a bit closer than I'm comfortable with. He layed out 2 Goyfs, which i followed up with Newlamog taking 2 lands. He drops Liliana, killing Newlamog, and attacks me down to 8. Ancient stirrings showed me an OStone and he scooped here.
Game 2，he led with a birds and proceded to miss a second land (and subsequently the Fulminator). He scooped turn 3 after i dropped (i believe) a wurmcoil.
6-0 in games that night. Also faced positive matchups all night which helped.
Edit: Apparently I just straight-up forgot to include lands in my list. Not that 90% of it is any different than any other list.
It sounds like you got some really easy matchups. I wouldn't want to have Explore vs. Fish instead of Pyroclasm, though.
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MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
So played GR tron last night and went 2-1 against, Infect, Amulet Bloom and Burn.
I'm playing a stock GR list, except with 2 Ulamog 2.0, 2 Ugin, 2 Spellskite and no pyroclasm main board.
Got lucky against infect as either he flooded or he didnt draw into any pumps.
Amulet Bloom is very fun to play against. In one game I managed to kill all 4 of his titans. Torpol Orb ftw here.
Burn... I can't win.
I do acknowledge that i did have easy matchups that night. But I did play against fish 3 times in the IQ. Pyro never really mattered after turn 2 against them when i played it main. Between 4 Stone, 2 Ugin, and the Rending Volley in the board, i only dropped one game against them. Again, I'll be writing up a proper (or slightly less *****ty) one tonight for that event.
Plays out fine in my meta, nearly no Twin or Bloom, but many fast aggro decks (less Burn, more Affinity, Zoo, Fish, Goblins and some Infect).
I'd put a 4th Skite into my 75 before Orb, but it definitely follows directly to that on my waiting list.
Against Burn, you would like to have Pyroclasm MD and don't board it out. It kills all of their creatures (besides Vexing Devil if they play it, and then just always pay the life unless you can handle it soon differently).
Burn is one of our worst MUs, if you see it a lot, you could put more Thragtusk or some Feed the Clan in your SB.
Against Burn, you would like to have Pyroclasm MD and don't board it out. It kills all of their creatures (besides Vexing Devil if they play it, and then just always pay the life unless you can handle it soon differently).
Burn is one of our worst MUs, if you see it a lot, you could put more Thragtusk or some Feed the Clan in your SB.
And unless they're playing Wild Nacatl which is a thing many burn players are doing nowadays.
Against Burn, you would like to have Pyroclasm MD and don't board it out. It kills all of their creatures (besides Vexing Devil if they play it, and then just always pay the life unless you can handle it soon differently).
Burn is one of our worst MUs, if you see it a lot, you could put more Thragtusk or some Feed the Clan in your SB.
And unless they're playing Wild Nacatl which is a thing many burn players are doing nowadays.
They're also running atarka's command which can stone pyroclasm.
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A good Burn player isn't going to sit on their Atarka's Commands waiting to say "gotcha!" when we cast Pyroclasm; that's a gamble, and they are (in most realistic scenarios) leaving damage on the table by waiting to cast it until our turn (which means not when they are attacking for the +1/+1 pump). Even cards like Lightning Bolt don't get held back very often with a Swiftspear on the board, because odds are that you either don't have or won't be drawing Pyroclasm in such few turns anyway. Unless Goblin Guide turns up your Pyroclasm or something equally revealing happens, the Burn player should be racing with the clock as hard as possible against damage-based sweepers.
Any 75 for this deck that isn't packing at least three Spellskites and the full playset of Pyroclasm against an open meta is doing it wrong. Burn, Infect, Bogles, Elves, Affinity, even Merfolk and Zoo (especially when we're on the play)...these are matches that often take us out before we ever develop. Ugin and O-Stone can own many of these, but you have to live to get them there.
I still see Boil in some sideboards...please tell me, what are they doing for us in matches we don't already win that we don't get better with Newlamog? If it's Blood Moon from Twin, we still have 3-4 copies of Nature's Claim to assist (especially solid since it can also shut off their combo). I used to play Boil to help against a sea of Twin and some local regulars on Scapeshift, but Newlamog is just way more versatile and potent.
Boil is great against any Island-heavy deck. Especially in an unknown meta, where you won't expect Slaughter Games to be usefull, I'd always pack 3-4 Boil.
Delver decks, Geist of Saint traft decks, Fairies, any Twin variant, Scapeshift, UWx control etc pp.
Boil brought me to Day 2 on a GP, though being lucky once against Burn.
And you can cast it without Tron far sooner than Newlamog.
Towards BUG: I would expect some more Goyfs and no Kommand, so it's more like BGx. Saw it once on a tournament, but I have no real gameplan. I'd guess Karn, Wurmcoil and the Eldrazi shine here as always, and they probably won't play Crumble to Dust.
The thing with BUG is that they often wield Cryptics and Remands in addition to the BGx arsenal (discard, efficient clocks). And if you're not prepared, Ashiok can steal a Wurmcoil.
Boil is great against any Island-heavy deck. Especially in an unknown meta, where you won't expect Slaughter Games to be usefull, I'd always pack 3-4 Boil.
Delver decks, Geist of Saint traft decks, Fairies, any Twin variant, Scapeshift, UWx control etc pp.
Boil brought me to Day 2 on a GP, though being lucky once against Burn.
And you can cast it without Tron far sooner than Newlamog.
Boil tends to run between worthless and win-more for me in most of the match-ups you've mentioned.
-Against Twin, Rending Volley is a much better choice, along with Skites for backup. If I'm bringing anything else in against them, it's Nature's Claim, as it can remove Twin, Moon, and gain us life back if they go for their tempo plan. At least with Claim, there's a chance it will be relevant if they attempt to go off early (their best way of beating us).
-Geist decks are decks we naturally beat unless they can stick and defend him early, so our regular sweepers tend to be better here.
-It's often good against Faeries, but that deck is very rare, and at least Oblivion Stone is still great in that match.
-UW control is something we naturally prey on; why do we need Boil here? Newlamog and Emrakul are amazing against them.
-Of all the decks you listed, Scapeshift is the one for sure where Boil is a great card to replace dead ones. That said, there's still the chance they will counter it; with Newlamog, he sets them back regardless, and he fits into our shell much more organically. He's also much better in other matches, and Scapeshift is also not terribly common anymore.
I had run Boil for a long time; it feels great to take your blue-playing opponent out of the game at end of turn, or in response to something (especially Blood Moon). I just don't think the blue decks that truly beat us (which are few) require such a specific silver bullet, instead of other very powerful and generally useful ones. Once Newlamog arrived, I pulled all of the Boils for other things, and I can't remember the last time I lost to Scapeshift or a game against Twin that went long.
Just checking in, i haven't been able to play at all ofr the past couple of weeks and it kinda sucks.
Kinda felt a small need of posting my list and see what you guys think about it because maaaaybe this week im gonna be able to play some magic for once.
This is the list im rocking atm.
I've added 1 Newlamog to the sideboard against the potential scapeshift/combo deck, maybe i could cut 1 karn in the Twin matchup and replace him with Newlamog? Boil is thill there because it has won me ALOT of games.
But i dunno, it feels odd to go down to 2 Rending Volleys, maybe i should just cut 1 of my relics from the sideboard?
I've swapped out one wurmcoil for one conduit of ruin and it's been very good. The tutoring is just one upside, getting a 2cc discount makes grabbing and casting newlamog really consistent.
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Against Burn, I typically Nature's Claim my stuff while my opponent can't Skullcrack me. I'm comfortable with blowing up any cantrip rock (such as Relic). I typically don't bust it on Eidolons, but maybe I should toy with that if I don't have the Tron.
On boarding out Karn against Twin:
Karn is 100% safe to play against Twin as long as Twin has 3 lands or less and no Exarchs, as if Karn resolves, you boot a land immediately and buy another turn of Twin not comboing off, and if Karn gets countered, they can't play an Exarch that turn because they're too tapped out. I therefore board out all Ugins before boarding out Karn (but I still typically board out some Karns).
If you're on the draw, they'll say OK if you have a turn 4 Karn and then flash in Exarch at EOT followed by Splinter Twin on their next main phase. You can jam the Turn 4 Karn on the draw if you go for the Osyp Lebedowicz Jedi mind trick and say "Skip to cleanup step?" against dumb people playing Twin, but the good ones will never fall for this. The very dumb ones may try flashing in Exarch in response to Karn, in which case you exile him and chuckle softly to yourself.
Make sure you play something if you have it. O-stone is top priority if you have eight.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
T3 Karn can still win games all on his own if they don't have the remand ready to go, and that happens often enough that I am willing to keep some number of them in the deck and play a T3 Karn into open mana just to force them to have it.
That said, T4+ Karn gets a lot worse as mana opens up for your opponent to do stuff and still leave mana open and/or get insane value with stuff like Snapcaster > Remand. I feel like, in the Twin MU, the longer you wait to play Karn, the more he becomes "return this card to your hand, your opponent discards Remand and gets 1 card closer to his combo" and the same deal with Cryptic Command as well.
I have been known to just sit there and play nothing but Maps/Stirrings/Scrying until I have Eye and Ulamog or Emrakul as I feel it draws my opponent into their combo less quickly. I will even activate Eye just to pull creatures out of the deck and never play them just to get me to Em faster.
Nothing feels quite as bad as running Karn into Remand over and over and then watching your opponent topdeck a Twin-win on turn 7.
4 chromatic star
4 expedition map
4 sylvan scrying
4 ancient stirrings
4 oblivion stone
3 explore
4 karn liberated
2 ugin the spirit dragon
3 wurmcoil engine
1 emrakul, the aeons torn
1 spellskite
1 newlamog
1 void winnower
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Eye of Ugin
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Forest
1 Cavern of Souls
3 spellskite
3 rending volley
2 crumble to dust
3 pyroclasm
4 nature's claim
Most notable differences being the removal of the Pyroclasms to the board and the inclusion of Explore (mostly in place of the Relic).
I found relic to be mostly dead or too often a 2 mana cantrip, much like Explore. Unlike explore, it can't be used to turn any hand relying on a turn 1 Stirrings into a turn 3 tron, help recover from the tempo loss of a Fulminator Mage, or open up a turn 3 Ugin/OStone&break/Newlamog.
I'm just on my lunch now, so I'll try to finish the big one this evening, but the last modern Monday went as follows:
Round 1 against UW(b) control
Rocked the match hard. Actually lived the dream: turn 1 mine-star, turn 2 power plant-explore into Tower, map, search up another tower, turn 3 Newlamog.
Round 2，against Soul Sisters
Anyone who's played this matchup knows how one-sided it is. Even without pyro main, OStone and ugin still wreck small white chicks. Pyro came game 2, but my opponent kept a ropier hand and didn't hit a second land until after i had a live karn.
Round 3 against Junk.
Game 1 was a bit closer than I'm comfortable with. He layed out 2 Goyfs, which i followed up with Newlamog taking 2 lands. He drops Liliana, killing Newlamog, and attacks me down to 8. Ancient stirrings showed me an OStone and he scooped here.
Game 2，he led with a birds and proceded to miss a second land (and subsequently the Fulminator). He scooped turn 3 after i dropped (i believe) a wurmcoil.
6-0 in games that night. Also faced positive matchups all night which helped.
Edit: Apparently I just straight-up forgot to include lands in my list. Not that 90% of it is any different than any other list.
Have any questions or concerns? Come take a dip in my pool.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
I'm playing a stock GR list, except with 2 Ulamog 2.0, 2 Ugin, 2 Spellskite and no pyroclasm main board.
Got lucky against infect as either he flooded or he didnt draw into any pumps.
Amulet Bloom is very fun to play against. In one game I managed to kill all 4 of his titans. Torpol Orb ftw here.
Burn... I can't win.
So how do I handle the burn match up?
Sideboard is:
4 Nature's Claim
2 Rendering Volley
1 Spellskite
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Vandalblast
2 Torpol Orb
1 Thragtusk
3 Pyroclasm
I boarded in 4 Claims, 1 Spellskite and 1 Thrag.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=499393 My Sales Thread
Have any questions or concerns? Come take a dip in my pool.
2 Rending Volley
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Whipflare
1 Spellskite
1 Crucible of Worlds
3 Boil
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Plays out fine in my meta, nearly no Twin or Bloom, but many fast aggro decks (less Burn, more Affinity, Zoo, Fish, Goblins and some Infect).
I'd put a 4th Skite into my 75 before Orb, but it definitely follows directly to that on my waiting list.
Greetings
Burn is one of our worst MUs, if you see it a lot, you could put more Thragtusk or some Feed the Clan in your SB.
And unless they're playing Wild Nacatl which is a thing many burn players are doing nowadays.
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
They're also running atarka's command which can stone pyroclasm.
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
Any 75 for this deck that isn't packing at least three Spellskites and the full playset of Pyroclasm against an open meta is doing it wrong. Burn, Infect, Bogles, Elves, Affinity, even Merfolk and Zoo (especially when we're on the play)...these are matches that often take us out before we ever develop. Ugin and O-Stone can own many of these, but you have to live to get them there.
I still see Boil in some sideboards...please tell me, what are they doing for us in matches we don't already win that we don't get better with Newlamog? If it's Blood Moon from Twin, we still have 3-4 copies of Nature's Claim to assist (especially solid since it can also shut off their combo). I used to play Boil to help against a sea of Twin and some local regulars on Scapeshift, but Newlamog is just way more versatile and potent.
Delver decks, Geist of Saint traft decks, Fairies, any Twin variant, Scapeshift, UWx control etc pp.
Boil brought me to Day 2 on a GP, though being lucky once against Burn.
And you can cast it without Tron far sooner than Newlamog.
Towards BUG: I would expect some more Goyfs and no Kommand, so it's more like BGx. Saw it once on a tournament, but I have no real gameplan. I'd guess Karn, Wurmcoil and the Eldrazi shine here as always, and they probably won't play Crumble to Dust.
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
Boil tends to run between worthless and win-more for me in most of the match-ups you've mentioned.
-Against Twin, Rending Volley is a much better choice, along with Skites for backup. If I'm bringing anything else in against them, it's Nature's Claim, as it can remove Twin, Moon, and gain us life back if they go for their tempo plan. At least with Claim, there's a chance it will be relevant if they attempt to go off early (their best way of beating us).
-Geist decks are decks we naturally beat unless they can stick and defend him early, so our regular sweepers tend to be better here.
-It's often good against Faeries, but that deck is very rare, and at least Oblivion Stone is still great in that match.
-UW control is something we naturally prey on; why do we need Boil here? Newlamog and Emrakul are amazing against them.
-Of all the decks you listed, Scapeshift is the one for sure where Boil is a great card to replace dead ones. That said, there's still the chance they will counter it; with Newlamog, he sets them back regardless, and he fits into our shell much more organically. He's also much better in other matches, and Scapeshift is also not terribly common anymore.
I had run Boil for a long time; it feels great to take your blue-playing opponent out of the game at end of turn, or in response to something (especially Blood Moon). I just don't think the blue decks that truly beat us (which are few) require such a specific silver bullet, instead of other very powerful and generally useful ones. Once Newlamog arrived, I pulled all of the Boils for other things, and I can't remember the last time I lost to Scapeshift or a game against Twin that went long.
Just checking in, i haven't been able to play at all ofr the past couple of weeks and it kinda sucks.
Kinda felt a small need of posting my list and see what you guys think about it because maaaaybe this week im gonna be able to play some magic for once.
This is the list im rocking atm.
1x Forest
2x Ghost Quarter
4x Grove of the Burnwillows
4x Urza's Mine
4x Urza's Power Plant
4x Urza's Tower
4x Ancient Stirrings
2x Pyroclasm
4x Sylvan Scrying
4x Chromatic Sphere
4x Chromatic Star
4x Expedition Map
4x Oblivion Stone
1x Relic of Progenitus
2x Spellskite
1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
3x Wurmcoil Engine
4x Karn Liberated
2x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Feed the Clan
1x Life from the Loam
4x Nature's Claim
2x Pyroclasm
2x Relic of Progenitus
2x Rending Volley
1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
I've added 1 Newlamog to the sideboard against the potential scapeshift/combo deck, maybe i could cut 1 karn in the Twin matchup and replace him with Newlamog? Boil is thill there because it has won me ALOT of games.
But i dunno, it feels odd to go down to 2 Rending Volleys, maybe i should just cut 1 of my relics from the sideboard?
Been a while since i tinkered with the deck.
What do you guys think?
Who needs Colours?
My most played EDH deck:
X Kozilek, the Great Distortion
UBR Nekusar, the Mindrazer
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins