Now this is not an ideal SB plan for the burn matchup, but I 100% don't want any of the 9 cards I board out, and if I draw them game 1, I will never cast them. Thats why I bring in Spellbombs to just have a redraw.
Sometimes Spellbomb is even more than a redraw because you can partially shut off their Lavamancer.
In addition to that, would it be plain wrong to play 1 Kalitas instead of the 4th Ooze?
Its probably not plain wrong, given that you lack a strenght in midrange mirrors. However, its pretty bad in quite a few matchups actually. 4 Ooze mess with many strategies atm. Just think about Control (Snapcaster), Storm (PiF), Burn, creature based strategies, Grixis DS (Snapcaster, KCommand) Mardu Pyromancer (Reveler, Looting, Souls) and Dredge. Ooze seems strong atm.
I am aware of the power of Ooze in the current metagame but the full playset seems like an overkill. Kalitas also has its usefulness against Wurmcoil.
I think its not really overkill, its reliability. Oozes get removed often, and having a second one can benefit us quite a bit now. I think Kalitas + Wurmcoil is fringe case scenario, and I also would likely board out Kalitas in that matchup.
I would run Kalitas only if I would expect more creature based matchups. I think its not a card you would want over Ooze in the Tron matchup.
Eldrazi Tron is the most dominant "big mana" deck in my meta, and I particularly like Kalitas against this pesky Matter Reshaper. They also tend to board in Hangarback Walker. Tron, Titanshift and Storm (maybe Affinity) are probably the only T1 decks where I would board him out. There are many t2 decks where I really like him.
E-Tron should actually be absurd between Quagmire, FoR, LoTV and Damnation in the SB.
Souls is definitely no autowin vs. Control though. Specifically against the Nikolich-esque lists. It likely trades 2-for-1, but if you have souls only, you won't win the game vs. Control either.
I did not test the deck vs. Tron yet, but I can imagine that the Tron matchup changes potentially to a max of 50/50 or slightly less.
I think if you would choose a deck for the PT or whatever, you can't just loose to Tron. Thats why you would need to go for an DS build, and have a bad Control matchup, which I also don't like, or try somthing like this, which gives up on midrange power and has a decent shot at Big Mana and is definitely not complete underdog against Control. Its balancing out the matchups pretty much.
I know most of you are still pro Souls, I can see that, but thinking in a more general sense here, not for a personal meta, you have to admit that this Rock list has potential against the field.
If you look at the most recent results, Rock is the best GBx deck atm.
"Simplicity", that is the term Reid uses for this deck and that's what I love about it. Fetching is smooth, you play in typical GBx style and FoR is a powerhouse other Black Midrange decks don't have access to.
"Simplicity", that is the term Reid uses for this deck and that's what I love about it. Fetching is smooth, you play in typical GBx style and FoR is a powerhouse other Black Midrange decks don't have access to.
Yeah, its very streamlined. On paper FoR does really not look that impressive, but I did often hear now that it actually is absurd. Let alone that fact makes me wanna jam that list.
Another thing: is 4 IoK, 4 TS really needed in the GB rock deck? Usually GBx runs 6 discard spells, sometimes 7. I think trimming one or two of those for additional threats might be right. The deck as is feels threat light to me compared to other GBx. Jund has Raging Ravines to complement their creature suite and Abzan usually has 13 creatures + 4 Souls + manlands. On the other hand, GB Rock has 14 creatures + Hissing Quagmire, but Quagmire is usually much better on defense than on offense.
I am tempted to cut 1 or 2 discard spells for Grim Flayers.
Flyer, you really seem to be into the rock plan...but isn't a shadow deck better if those are the decks you're trying to beat? I wonder if traverse shadow is dangerous to play due to jeskai and FOR decks.
I don't think 4x scoozes is ever right. That's far too many. What happened to replacing 1x with e wit?
Another thing: is 4 IoK, 4 TS really needed in the GB rock deck? Usually GBx runs 6 discard spells, sometimes 7. I think trimming one or two of those for additional threats might be right. The deck as is feels threat light to me compared to other GBx. Jund has Raging Ravines to complement their creature suite and Abzan usually has 13 creatures + 4 Souls + manlands. On the other hand, GB Rock has 14 creatures + Hissing Quagmire, but Quagmire is usually much better on defense than on offense.
I am tempted to cut 1 or 2 discard spells for Grim Flayers.
I would not do that, 8 discard spells is one of the appeals from this deck which makes it great. You see, we don't have endless answers for anything on the board. Discard is really strong in the current metagame, as it prevents opponents from doing their stuff. I think 14 creatures + the manland is enough. Compared to jund thats actually more individual creatures. I know Ravine hits way harder, but thats why you have to run the discards, to slow opponents down.
There is also more chance you have lines like: Turn 1 discard, turn 2 Bob into turn 3 FoR + a second discard. That way you have already disrupted the opponents gameplan twice and also blew up a land from them. I would not cut any discard honestly.
Flyer, you really seem to be into the rock plan...but isn't a shadow deck better if those are the decks you're trying to beat? I wonder if traverse shadow is dangerous to play due to jeskai and FOR decks.
I don't think 4x scoozes is ever right. That's far too many. What happened to replacing 1x with e wit?
No, all DS decks combined have a big problem: Control. I mean objectively Grixis DS is surely better, but its actually too hard for me to pilot it perfectly, and I think I would not fare well against Control decks.
I am sceptical as well on the 4 oozes, but not trying it could mean we are missing something, right? I am off the E-Witt as I talked to my LGS owner. I'll try the 4 oozes.
I would not do that, 8 discard spells is one of the appeals from this deck which makes it great. You see, we don't have endless answers for anything on the board. Discard is really strong in the current metagame, as it prevents opponents from doing their stuff. I think 14 creatures + the manland is enough. Compared to jund thats actually more individual creatures. I know Ravine hits way harder, but thats why you have to run the discards, to slow opponents down.
There is also more chance you have lines like: Turn 1 discard, turn 2 Bob into turn 3 FoR + a second discard. That way you have already disrupted the opponents gameplan twice and also blew up a land from them. I would not cut any discard honestly.
The other BGx decks don't have endless answers either. If you compare the Frankfurt list to traditional Abzan lists, you will see that the Frankfurt list runs the same amount of removal spells as Abzan +/- 1. We see from this comparison that BG Rock makes room for the extra discard spells by cutting threats. Abzan could do that but it doesn't, so I think this is something that requires more careful thought. It's possible that it's right, but throughout the last few years, BGx decks more or less settled on six or seven, so I am highly skeptical.
Flyer, you really seem to be into the rock plan...but isn't a shadow deck better if those are the decks you're trying to beat? I wonder if traverse shadow is dangerous to play due to jeskai and FOR decks.
I don't think 4x scoozes is ever right. That's far too many. What happened to replacing 1x with e wit?
Here is my bold prediction: I think Field of Ruin is a very powerful card that the community is just being slow to adopt because it is not obviously powerful. I think in the long run, Field of Ruin will find its way into in any deck that can reasonably support it. I think every deck in Modern will need a plan to play through Field of Ruin similarly to how every deck in Legacy has to think about how it plays through Wasteland. So yes, I do think that Traverse Shadow has a big flaw that is only going to be exploited more and more over time.
Now for a history lesson: I completely forgot BGx can play Tectonic Edges and do well. Here is a top-4 list from GP Birmingham last year: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16525&d=302196&f=MO
I wonder if we can have our cake and eat it too by following this general template. Here is one proposed decklist:
I've organized the mana base very explicitly to make the counting easier.
Not counting Field of Ruin for anything, this deck has 17 black sources, 16 green sources, and 11 white sources. The white is strictly just to cast Lingering Souls, Stony Silence, and a singleton Path, which takes the "universal removal" slot away from the Dismember/Go for the Throat/Slaughter Pact found in BG Rock. I feel that Path has always been a "necessary evil" in Abzan, but you really can't play very many with this mana base. Essentially if you ever draw two in the early game, it is a complete disaster, and it's possible even the first is wrong.
The basic Plains looks very bad in this build, but I think you need it because you will sometimes want to find it off of Field of Ruin. The Spellbomb is there just to help turn on the Grim Flayers. It's possible that the Flayers should just be Tireless Trackers, but I felt that 9 three-drops was already a little heavy and Souls occupies the "value" slots that Tracker normally fills. It's also possible Bob is wrong, I suppose.
I tried to play 4 Ruins as well with splashing white for Souls. I think you need more than 4 basics to support FoR better. I would at least go for 5. And by doing so, the manabase gets into greedy town for me.
Lets look at the numbers: If you want Lili on 3, you would ideally need 19 black sources. The regular Rock list also runs only 18. To add though, FoR can be count as manabase fixing to some extent, lets say if you run 3-4 FoR, you can add one black source to it. That means you have 1 too few.
Don't know about Path here, but lets say you generally want to cast it on turn 2 onwards, you need 13 white sources for it. Souls on 3 would need the given 11 though, thats fine.
But obviously, if you want Souls, you need to cut 2 discard spells.
I would probably try a build with 3 FoR only, however, then you sacrifice some manadenial here, which I don't like all that much. I think Ruins shines when get to play multiples a game, therfore I would want to play 4.
For me its just a really great deck, would love to play it that way, but the manabase says no for me. You are loosing consistancy here, and I think a consistant streamlined Rock list just runs more smoothly.
You see this list just wants everything, and we all know, that this is not possible without loosing consistancy. And thats the problem.
Thoughts on BG midrange? (Triosk/Thalai from MTGO). I'm thinking in playing it at the PT, currently at Jeskai Flash but I'm not feeling confident enough with the deck after 25 leagues.
I am on a BG list atm, I think it has some merit to it, because I really like Ruins. The lack of Souls is the only problem I have, don't know how good the Control matchups are without them. Did you play against it with Jeskai Flash? Any thoughts?
I tried the BG list (triosk version) on MTGO, and the results weren't as expected. Won most of the clunky decks but lost pretty hard against GDS multiple times. I'm a bit dissapointed right now, but I can't complain after only 3 leagues. I think I shouldn't move from jeskai 12 days before the PT so I'll stick with it. If not, I'd try to master sideboard plan for 5C Humans, which is my other weapon of choice right now.
About BG vs Jeskai, I only faced twice, once regular jund and the other was that FoR list I played. If you manage to deal with early bobs and slow them a bit the match is favourable for jeskai. I played with all flash guys version (I'm on geist right now) which was better IMHO. Queller is sometimes too dangerous, because you win the tempo-game but sometimes decay or push finds a LOTV quelled and it's like a snowball after that.
The 4 Tectonic Edge decklist is the pet deck of a friend of mine, Alberto Galicia. We went together to Albuquerque in Nov as he Q'd in Birgmingham and I did via RPTQ for PT Ixalan the week after that we both played the RPTQ and we both Q'd again, me with 5C humans and he with the same exact 75 of Birmingham (Madrid RPTQ). He's been playing the list since Aug 17: 2400 matches worth of testing, and his SB plan have hundreds of hours behind, he work hard studying the metagame after each tournament to improve his sb'ing and knows his deck very well. He have like 67% winrate with the deck, and finished the last MTGO comp league with 14 trophies I think. I tried the deck in a couple of tournaments and all those tecs felt like garbage, but I made a lot of missplays he wouldn't do, so I can't complain at all.
He's 100% sure about playing tec edge > field on ruin in his decklist and he's going to sign that for the PT, but he's trying to move from the deck after Lyon (and the most than likely bans/unbans that will occour) so I think he won't test FoR at all
Thats the closest what I can think off that would go in terms of consistancy. I still think this deck is too inconsistant though.
You at least got 18 black sources (and 4 FoR which adds up to about 19 sources) you got 15 green sources (with FoR 16) and 10 white sources, which is the only one which doesn't fulfill the white on 3 requirement. Therfore I would not run Path whatsoever here. Only 3 Souls, no white in the SB either.
That might work to some extent, but I doubt it personally.
@ Ayiluss and FlyingDelver: I am not arguing that the mana base is rather inconsistent. The idea was just that you might want to trade off consistency for access to FoR + Souls because of metagame considerations. I think you want FoR because Tron is popular and you want Souls because Control is popular. Maybe it's worth the tradeoff, maybe not. But I think it is clearly a question worth asking because people have played large amounts of Tectonic Edge in Jund or Abzan before to good success when the metagame was right for it. Here are some more examples of major tournament top8 finishes with GBx + a lot of colorless lands:
Thoughts on BG midrange? (Triosk/Thalai from MTGO). I'm thinking in playing it at the PT, currently at Jeskai Flash but I'm not feeling confident enough with the deck after 25 leagues.
I am on a BG list atm, I think it has some merit to it, because I really like Ruins. The lack of Souls is the only problem I have, don't know how good the Control matchups are without them. Did you play against it with Jeskai Flash? Any thoughts?
I tried the BG list (triosk version) on MTGO, and the results weren't as expected. Won most of the clunky decks but lost pretty hard against GDS multiple times. I'm a bit dissapointed right now, but I can't complain after only 3 leagues. I think I shouldn't move from jeskai 12 days before the PT so I'll stick with it. If not, I'd try to master sideboard plan for 5C Humans, which is my other weapon of choice right now.
About BG vs Jeskai, I only faced twice, once regular jund and the other was that FoR list I played. If you manage to deal with early bobs and slow them a bit the match is favourable for jeskai. I played with all flash guys version (I'm on geist right now) which was better IMHO. Queller is sometimes too dangerous, because you win the tempo-game but sometimes decay or push finds a LOTV quelled and it's like a snowball after that.
The 4 Tectonic Edge decklist is the pet deck of a friend of mine, Alberto Galicia. We went together to Albuquerque in Nov as he Q'd in Birgmingham and I did via RPTQ for PT Ixalan the week after that we both played the RPTQ and we both Q'd again, me with 5C humans and he with the same exact 75 of Birmingham (Madrid RPTQ). He's been playing the list since Aug 17: 2400 matches worth of testing, and his SB plan have hundreds of hours behind, he work hard studying the metagame after each tournament to improve his sb'ing and knows his deck very well. He have like 67% winrate with the deck, and finished the last MTGO comp league with 14 trophies I think. I tried the deck in a couple of tournaments and all those tecs felt like garbage, but I made a lot of missplays he wouldn't do, so I can't complain at all.
He's 100% sure about playing tec edge > field on ruin in his decklist and he's going to sign that for the PT, but he's trying to move from the deck after Lyon (and the most than likely bans/unbans that will occour) so I think he won't test FoR at all
Thanks for your insight! Thats impressive statistics your friend has there. No doubt he is an experienced player. I think he should take a closer look at Ruins though, I think this card really is a card that doesn't look good on paper, but unleashes its power when you actually play it. Therefore I think many people misinterpret Ruins right now, since by simply looking at it, it seems bad. If you buddy hasn't tested it yet, its a hint why he is fully on tec edge then I think. However, for the PT I would also stick to what I know best for sure.
@ Ayiluss and FlyingDelver: I am not arguing that the mana base is rather inconsistent. The idea was just that you might want to trade off consistency for access to FoR + Souls because of metagame considerations. I think you want FoR because Tron is popular and you want Souls because Control is popular. Maybe it's worth the tradeoff, maybe not. But I think it is clearly a question worth asking because people have played large amounts of Tectonic Edge in Jund or Abzan before to good success when the metagame was right for it. Here are some more examples of major tournament top8 finishes with GBx + a lot of colorless lands:
All those mana bases look pretty bad. But they did well regardless because the metagame was right for it.
I can see that. However, the thing is, is Control really that bad without Souls? Thats the big questionmark for me. FoR also does some work against Control, alongside 4 Fulminator and 2 Tracker and Thrun in the SB. So do we really want to make the trade is what I am wandering?
Whether or not we want to make the trade is a hard question with no obvious answer. Testing will have to show us the way. However, what I can say (based on my experiences yesterday) is that the grindy matchups need some help. In long grindy games, the current version of BG Rock has got to be one of the worst Thoughtseize/Liliana decks ever built. It has 8 discard spells, zero guaranteed two-for-ones like Souls or Huntmaster, and every single threat in the deck can be cleanly answered by both Fatal Push and Path to Exile. This is a very big problem against any midrange mirror and any control matchup. I don't know if this can be solved without splashing for Lingering Souls. Tireless Tracker is the current idea based on the popular decklists, but in my opinion it just isn't nearly as good. I know an unchecked Tracker just wins the game, but the floor is pretty low. When it gets killed on sight, the trade ends up being 3 mana + a clue for a Fatal Push or Bolt or Path. That is definitely not good enough. I think Grim Flayer can help a little bit with fighting token armies because it has trample, but I don't know what else can be done without dipping into white or red.
As for Field of Ruin versus control, it's good against Colonnade but that's about it. Actually, as I'm typing this, that comment makes me remember that 2 Tectonic Edge was extremely common in Jund back in ~2013-2014 when the metagame was dominated by Jund/Twin/UWR Control (i.e. Celestial Colonnade and Raging Ravine were serious concerns), and now that Colonnade is good again perhaps it's time to bring that idea back, but with an upgrade! Like you could play the following mana base in a conservative Abzan build (i.e. playing W just for Souls and maybe Stony Silence):
Cut Decays and Pushes/Path for Gideon, Spellbomb and CB. You are missing Fulminators and Thrun which are both really good against Control variants. I would still run 1 Thrun in the SB, and maybe a couple of Fulminators or Kitchen Finks.
Its probably not plain wrong, given that you lack a strenght in midrange mirrors. However, its pretty bad in quite a few matchups actually. 4 Ooze mess with many strategies atm. Just think about Control (Snapcaster), Storm (PiF), Burn, creature based strategies, Grixis DS (Snapcaster, KCommand) Mardu Pyromancer (Reveler, Looting, Souls) and Dredge. Ooze seems strong atm.
I think its not really overkill, its reliability. Oozes get removed often, and having a second one can benefit us quite a bit now. I think Kalitas + Wurmcoil is fringe case scenario, and I also would likely board out Kalitas in that matchup.
I would run Kalitas only if I would expect more creature based matchups. I think its not a card you would want over Ooze in the Tron matchup.
Souls is definitely no autowin vs. Control though. Specifically against the Nikolich-esque lists. It likely trades 2-for-1, but if you have souls only, you won't win the game vs. Control either.
I did not test the deck vs. Tron yet, but I can imagine that the Tron matchup changes potentially to a max of 50/50 or slightly less.
I think if you would choose a deck for the PT or whatever, you can't just loose to Tron. Thats why you would need to go for an DS build, and have a bad Control matchup, which I also don't like, or try somthing like this, which gives up on midrange power and has a decent shot at Big Mana and is definitely not complete underdog against Control. Its balancing out the matchups pretty much.
I know most of you are still pro Souls, I can see that, but thinking in a more general sense here, not for a personal meta, you have to admit that this Rock list has potential against the field.
If you look at the most recent results, Rock is the best GBx deck atm.
Yeah, its very streamlined. On paper FoR does really not look that impressive, but I did often hear now that it actually is absurd. Let alone that fact makes me wanna jam that list.
I am tempted to cut 1 or 2 discard spells for Grim Flayers.
I don't think 4x scoozes is ever right. That's far too many. What happened to replacing 1x with e wit?
I would not do that, 8 discard spells is one of the appeals from this deck which makes it great. You see, we don't have endless answers for anything on the board. Discard is really strong in the current metagame, as it prevents opponents from doing their stuff. I think 14 creatures + the manland is enough. Compared to jund thats actually more individual creatures. I know Ravine hits way harder, but thats why you have to run the discards, to slow opponents down.
There is also more chance you have lines like: Turn 1 discard, turn 2 Bob into turn 3 FoR + a second discard. That way you have already disrupted the opponents gameplan twice and also blew up a land from them. I would not cut any discard honestly.
No, all DS decks combined have a big problem: Control. I mean objectively Grixis DS is surely better, but its actually too hard for me to pilot it perfectly, and I think I would not fare well against Control decks.
I am sceptical as well on the 4 oozes, but not trying it could mean we are missing something, right? I am off the E-Witt as I talked to my LGS owner. I'll try the 4 oozes.
The other BGx decks don't have endless answers either. If you compare the Frankfurt list to traditional Abzan lists, you will see that the Frankfurt list runs the same amount of removal spells as Abzan +/- 1. We see from this comparison that BG Rock makes room for the extra discard spells by cutting threats. Abzan could do that but it doesn't, so I think this is something that requires more careful thought. It's possible that it's right, but throughout the last few years, BGx decks more or less settled on six or seven, so I am highly skeptical.
Here is my bold prediction: I think Field of Ruin is a very powerful card that the community is just being slow to adopt because it is not obviously powerful. I think in the long run, Field of Ruin will find its way into in any deck that can reasonably support it. I think every deck in Modern will need a plan to play through Field of Ruin similarly to how every deck in Legacy has to think about how it plays through Wasteland. So yes, I do think that Traverse Shadow has a big flaw that is only going to be exploited more and more over time.
Now for a history lesson: I completely forgot BGx can play Tectonic Edges and do well. Here is a top-4 list from GP Birmingham last year: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16525&d=302196&f=MO
I wonder if we can have our cake and eat it too by following this general template. Here is one proposed decklist:
3 Blooming Marsh
4 Field of Ruin
2 Hissing Quagmire
(fetchables)
1 Forest
1 Godless Shrine
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
2 Swamp
1 Temple Garden
(fetches)
3 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
4 Dark Confidant
2 Grim Flayer
3 Lingering Souls
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Fatal Push
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Path to Exile
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Collective Brutality
1 Damnation
1 Flaying Tendrils
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Stony Silence
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
I've organized the mana base very explicitly to make the counting easier.
Not counting Field of Ruin for anything, this deck has 17 black sources, 16 green sources, and 11 white sources. The white is strictly just to cast Lingering Souls, Stony Silence, and a singleton Path, which takes the "universal removal" slot away from the Dismember/Go for the Throat/Slaughter Pact found in BG Rock. I feel that Path has always been a "necessary evil" in Abzan, but you really can't play very many with this mana base. Essentially if you ever draw two in the early game, it is a complete disaster, and it's possible even the first is wrong.
The basic Plains looks very bad in this build, but I think you need it because you will sometimes want to find it off of Field of Ruin. The Spellbomb is there just to help turn on the Grim Flayers. It's possible that the Flayers should just be Tireless Trackers, but I felt that 9 three-drops was already a little heavy and Souls occupies the "value" slots that Tracker normally fills. It's also possible Bob is wrong, I suppose.
Lets look at the numbers: If you want Lili on 3, you would ideally need 19 black sources. The regular Rock list also runs only 18. To add though, FoR can be count as manabase fixing to some extent, lets say if you run 3-4 FoR, you can add one black source to it. That means you have 1 too few.
Don't know about Path here, but lets say you generally want to cast it on turn 2 onwards, you need 13 white sources for it. Souls on 3 would need the given 11 though, thats fine.
But obviously, if you want Souls, you need to cut 2 discard spells.
I would probably try a build with 3 FoR only, however, then you sacrifice some manadenial here, which I don't like all that much. I think Ruins shines when get to play multiples a game, therfore I would want to play 4.
For me its just a really great deck, would love to play it that way, but the manabase says no for me. You are loosing consistancy here, and I think a consistant streamlined Rock list just runs more smoothly.
You see this list just wants everything, and we all know, that this is not possible without loosing consistancy. And thats the problem.
I tried the BG list (triosk version) on MTGO, and the results weren't as expected. Won most of the clunky decks but lost pretty hard against GDS multiple times. I'm a bit dissapointed right now, but I can't complain after only 3 leagues. I think I shouldn't move from jeskai 12 days before the PT so I'll stick with it. If not, I'd try to master sideboard plan for 5C Humans, which is my other weapon of choice right now.
About BG vs Jeskai, I only faced twice, once regular jund and the other was that FoR list I played. If you manage to deal with early bobs and slow them a bit the match is favourable for jeskai. I played with all flash guys version (I'm on geist right now) which was better IMHO. Queller is sometimes too dangerous, because you win the tempo-game but sometimes decay or push finds a LOTV quelled and it's like a snowball after that.
The 4 Tectonic Edge decklist is the pet deck of a friend of mine, Alberto Galicia. We went together to Albuquerque in Nov as he Q'd in Birgmingham and I did via RPTQ for PT Ixalan the week after that we both played the RPTQ and we both Q'd again, me with 5C humans and he with the same exact 75 of Birmingham (Madrid RPTQ). He's been playing the list since Aug 17: 2400 matches worth of testing, and his SB plan have hundreds of hours behind, he work hard studying the metagame after each tournament to improve his sb'ing and knows his deck very well. He have like 67% winrate with the deck, and finished the last MTGO comp league with 14 trophies I think. I tried the deck in a couple of tournaments and all those tecs felt like garbage, but I made a lot of missplays he wouldn't do, so I can't complain at all.
He's 100% sure about playing tec edge > field on ruin in his decklist and he's going to sign that for the PT, but he's trying to move from the deck after Lyon (and the most than likely bans/unbans that will occour) so I think he won't test FoR at all
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Dark Confidant
2 Tireless Tracker
Land
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Temple Garden
1 Godless Shrine
2 Hissing Quagmire
2 Blooming Marsh
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Field of Ruin
4 Swamp
1 Forest
4 Fatal Push
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Dismember
Sorcery
3 Thoughtseize
2 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Lingering Souls
4 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Liliana of the Veil
Thats the closest what I can think off that would go in terms of consistancy. I still think this deck is too inconsistant though.
You at least got 18 black sources (and 4 FoR which adds up to about 19 sources) you got 15 green sources (with FoR 16) and 10 white sources, which is the only one which doesn't fulfill the white on 3 requirement. Therfore I would not run Path whatsoever here. Only 3 Souls, no white in the SB either.
That might work to some extent, but I doubt it personally.
top 4 at GP Birmingham 2017: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16525&d=302196&f=MO
top 8 at MKM Madrid 2016: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=13028&d=276044&f=MO
top 16 at GP Kobe 2014: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=8053&d=246401&f=MO
winner at GP Boston 2014: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=7905&d=245457&f=MO
top 8 at GP Boston 2014: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=7905&d=245452&f=MO
All those mana bases look pretty bad. But they did well regardless because the metagame was right for it.
Thanks for your insight! Thats impressive statistics your friend has there. No doubt he is an experienced player. I think he should take a closer look at Ruins though, I think this card really is a card that doesn't look good on paper, but unleashes its power when you actually play it. Therefore I think many people misinterpret Ruins right now, since by simply looking at it, it seems bad. If you buddy hasn't tested it yet, its a hint why he is fully on tec edge then I think. However, for the PT I would also stick to what I know best for sure.
I can see that. However, the thing is, is Control really that bad without Souls? Thats the big questionmark for me. FoR also does some work against Control, alongside 4 Fulminator and 2 Tracker and Thrun in the SB. So do we really want to make the trade is what I am wandering?
As for Field of Ruin versus control, it's good against Colonnade but that's about it. Actually, as I'm typing this, that comment makes me remember that 2 Tectonic Edge was extremely common in Jund back in ~2013-2014 when the metagame was dominated by Jund/Twin/UWR Control (i.e. Celestial Colonnade and Raging Ravine were serious concerns), and now that Colonnade is good again perhaps it's time to bring that idea back, but with an upgrade! Like you could play the following mana base in a conservative Abzan build (i.e. playing W just for Souls and maybe Stony Silence):
With the FoR present to help against Control. It obviously isn't as good as 4 FoR versus Tron, but it's something.