Grixis fam, a fellow forum member 5-0'd a league with my cryptic delver list and recorded it with commentary! His list is even CLOSER than mine to corey control (by 2 cards lol). Just wanted to share and showcase the strength of delver vs the strength of vision, which of course shine in their own respective match ups.
I hate to say this part because it feels like a shameless plug, but feel free to like/subscribe/comment so I can bring you some more Grixis content in the future. MTGO ain't free!
I really like this list, I'd probably work hard to find 2 slots for a Keranos and a Loothouse somewhere but I don't know what I'd cut. Maybe the 4th Ancestral Vision and one of the Tar Pits. It looks really good, though.
The sideboard is kind of something I threw together based on my experience with other Delver lists, but I do think I need to re-approach the sideboard not only to handle a certain meta, but to behave more like a control SB. Definitely some tweaks that I would like to make going forward. If you watched the final video with the closing statements, you'll see that I didn't actually expect to do so well, but the combination of Delver and Cryptic worked really well against a lot of decks that aren't classified as removal.dec AKA Jund, Junk, Grixis, or Jeskai variants. Looking forward to tweaking it in the future, so thanks for checking it out!
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Check out some Magic Gameplay and Commentary videos here, including Modern Grixis, Jeskai, and Esper videos as well as some Standard and Drafts too: My YouTube Channel!
Entertaining videos! Ill sleeve up a similar list for this weeks modern and il tell you how it went for me. Id love to see more videos of yourself against the bad matchups. And maybe against bgx as well. Cheers!
What if this deck ran Death's Shadow? It constantly hovers at low life the entire game. I'm sure some have had them in the sideboard at one point, but I can see playing them as an extra cheap threat.
On a side note I was pretty disappointed with the GP results. Hardly any Blue representation minus Merfolk. Modern is so dominated by Black, Green, Red it seems. Green is obviously one of the best colors and makes me feel like if I'm not playing green I deserve to lose. Anyway, been seeing some Grixis control popping up in the 5-0's still. At least that is still happening.
Edit: I didn't take the time to go through anything non top 8. I see Corey made it to 19th which is awesome news really and another in 32nd place by Andy Wilson. There were also some Esper variants in Brisbane. Not bad I guess.
Commander GUR Maelstrom Wanderer BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith RRR Feldon of the Third Path WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
What if this deck ran Death's Shadow? It constantly hovers at low life the entire game. I'm sure some have had them in the sideboard at one point, but I can see playing them as an extra cheap threat.
On a side note I was pretty disappointed with the GP results. Hardly any Blue representation minus Merfolk. Modern is so dominated by Black, Green, Red it seems. Green is obviously one of the best colors and makes me feel like if I'm not playing green I deserve to lose. Anyway, been seeing some Grixis control popping up in the 5-0's still. At least that is still happening.
Edit: I didn't take the time to go through anything non top 8. I see Corey made it to 19th which is awesome news really and another in 32nd place by Andy Wilson. There were also some Esper variants in Brisbane. Not bad I guess.
There were also 2 grixis control decks at the SCG combined weekend, a Corey like list and a more midrangey one that ended up 2nd.
What if this deck ran Death's Shadow? It constantly hovers at low life the entire game. I'm sure some have had them in the sideboard at one point, but I can see playing them as an extra cheap threat.
On a side note I was pretty disappointed with the GP results. Hardly any Blue representation minus Merfolk. Modern is so dominated by Black, Green, Red it seems. Green is obviously one of the best colors and makes me feel like if I'm not playing green I deserve to lose. Anyway, been seeing some Grixis control popping up in the 5-0's still. At least that is still happening.
Edit: I didn't take the time to go through anything non top 8. I see Corey made it to 19th which is awesome news really and another in 32nd place by Andy Wilson. There were also some Esper variants in Brisbane. Not bad I guess.
There were also 2 grixis control decks at the SCG combined weekend, a Corey like list and a more midrangey one that ended up 2nd.
Ahh, thank you for pointing those out. I was unaware of the team constructed event. I do like that 2nd place deck design by Asa. Zero AV and a few more creatures along with mainboard damnation does look pretty sweet.
Commander GUR Maelstrom Wanderer BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith RRR Feldon of the Third Path WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
should Death's Shadow aggro/zoo be a good matchup for us?
there were 3 in the top 8 of GP Vancouver and I barely beat one at the GPT yesterday
Corey Burkhart says it's 60-40 in his favor, but... that's Corey Burkhart. For mortals, I'd say it's probably dicey at best. T1-2 discard your interaction, T2-4 slam threat after threat, T3-6 endlessly recur and tutor more threats sounds dreadful. Our bolts and K-Commands fail to interact favorably with their board (although their removal doesn't deal with Delve fatties), and meanwhile they have incredible redundancy and recursion. It doesn't help that if they have any board presence whatsoever, they'll be able to block our Tasigurs and Snapcasters all day.
Surgical-Snap-Surgical may be devastating against them, though. If you nab Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf, their deck is basically two planeswalkers, a few Shocks, and some land tutors. Although I'd imagine the number of times you can pull that off through IoK and Seize would be pretty low.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
I don't think this is a MU for Surgical. You need a healthy amount of resources to get to the point where extracting becomes effective and the risk of having cards that don't interact with the board when you might be facing 2-3 fatties is scary.
It's possible you might want to bring in 1 or 2 (they do play Kommands and Lilianas after all), but certainly all the card that straight up trade with their spells are better. Lightning Bolt is an interesting card - it's not very good at killing their creatures, but it can easily win you the game if you just shoot them upstairs. I'm leaning towards thinking they are quite good in the MU. Cryptic is another great complimentary tool since the Jund deck can't interact with it, and it can set up surprise lethals. Needs more playtesting.
should Death's Shadow aggro/zoo be a good matchup for us?
there were 3 in the top 8 of GP Vancouver and I barely beat one at the GPT yesterday
Corey Burkhart says it's 60-40 in his favor, but... that's Corey Burkhart. For mortals, I'd say it's probably dicey at best. T1-2 discard your interaction, T2-4 slam threat after threat, T3-6 endlessly recur and tutor more threats sounds dreadful. Our bolts and K-Commands fail to interact favorably with their board (although their removal doesn't deal with Delve fatties), and meanwhile they have incredible redundancy and recursion. It doesn't help that if they have any board presence whatsoever, they'll be able to block our Tasigurs and Snapcasters all day.
Surgical-Snap-Surgical may be devastating against them, though. If you nab Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf, their deck is basically two planeswalkers, a few Shocks, and some land tutors. Although I'd imagine the number of times you can pull that off through IoK and Seize would be pretty low.
I felt super lucky to get there. Both games I won I pretty much needed to top deck some form of direct damage to be able to get there and not die on the back swing
I bring in all 3 surgicals in the death shadow matchup, like the guy said, its lights out when you get rid of goyf and shadow... ive played games where i draw the wrong half of course but i write it off to variance. Id like to believe grixis is highly favored in the matchup on fair draws.
If your opponent is killing your Clique, it probably means they are at least somewhat reactive - great! this is where we pull ahead with Kommand. Of course Clique also excels against combo decks, where you can keep your shields up and still apply pressure.
The downside of Clique is that it's bad against fast creature decks - slow, and trades down in mana. The weakness to lingering souls is also significant. None of these downsides are as damning as the ones that Stormbreath has, which begin with the CMC of that card.
Whether you should play any of these cards is a metagame call. Expecting Combo and Ramp? Play Clique. Expecting Junk and fast aggro? Just bring in more cheap removal or EE. I'm not sure where Dragons fit in this picture, though.
The combination of 2 leak/2 Snare/ 1 remand / 1 dispel are very good , with the metagame changing again... maybe is time to drop Ancestral?
If we going with -4 ancestral to +2 Gurmag angler + 1 dispel + 1 remand , expecting more combo deck , burn and tron again the will be more resilent?
Even Jeskay decks not running ancestral now days
well, it's not like you need a permission to drop AV. if you don't like it don't play it. I don't thing Gurmag Angler is very good though, too taxing for the graveyard.
What deck play dis?
Serious question, it seems like huge value.
I really like this list, I'd probably work hard to find 2 slots for a Keranos and a Loothouse somewhere but I don't know what I'd cut. Maybe the 4th Ancestral Vision and one of the Tar Pits. It looks really good, though.
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Staffround 1 I 2-1 GR titanshift.
Games 1 and 3 I have answers for everything, game 2 he gets there
1-0.
Round 2 I get dumpstered by Eldrazi tron. I prefer to not think about this match ever again
1-1
Round 3 I get there 2-1 vs boggles. Yahhenni's expertise is great.
2-1
Round 4 I punted game 3 vs my buddy's UB zombies list. Played an expertise right into getting countered instead of baiting the second out
Round 5-I get scooped into the finals by the guy I eventually split with.
3-2 gets me into top 8
top 8 I beat Jund death's shadow aggro. stole wins games 2 and 3
top 4 I dumpster skred. He didn't do much game 1, then I get the win game 2 when he plays the batterskull that could save him into a negate
split with my buddy in the finals since none of us were going to Richmond
Myself and a few elves players have begun using it over Lead the Stampede. For chord lists they may have it in the sideboard for attrition games.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
On a side note I was pretty disappointed with the GP results. Hardly any Blue representation minus Merfolk. Modern is so dominated by Black, Green, Red it seems. Green is obviously one of the best colors and makes me feel like if I'm not playing green I deserve to lose. Anyway, been seeing some Grixis control popping up in the 5-0's still. At least that is still happening.
Edit: I didn't take the time to go through anything non top 8. I see Corey made it to 19th which is awesome news really and another in 32nd place by Andy Wilson. There were also some Esper variants in Brisbane. Not bad I guess.
GURB Grixis/Jund Shadow
RBG Dredge
xUx U Ballista Tron
Commander
GUR Maelstrom Wanderer
BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius
BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth
WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
RRR Feldon of the Third Path
WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
Ahh, thank you for pointing those out. I was unaware of the team constructed event. I do like that 2nd place deck design by Asa. Zero AV and a few more creatures along with mainboard damnation does look pretty sweet.
GURB Grixis/Jund Shadow
RBG Dredge
xUx U Ballista Tron
Commander
GUR Maelstrom Wanderer
BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius
BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth
WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
RRR Feldon of the Third Path
WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
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Staffthere were 3 in the top 8 of GP Vancouver and I barely beat one at the GPT yesterday
Corey Burkhart says it's 60-40 in his favor, but... that's Corey Burkhart. For mortals, I'd say it's probably dicey at best. T1-2 discard your interaction, T2-4 slam threat after threat, T3-6 endlessly recur and tutor more threats sounds dreadful. Our bolts and K-Commands fail to interact favorably with their board (although their removal doesn't deal with Delve fatties), and meanwhile they have incredible redundancy and recursion. It doesn't help that if they have any board presence whatsoever, they'll be able to block our Tasigurs and Snapcasters all day.
Surgical-Snap-Surgical may be devastating against them, though. If you nab Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf, their deck is basically two planeswalkers, a few Shocks, and some land tutors. Although I'd imagine the number of times you can pull that off through IoK and Seize would be pretty low.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
It's possible you might want to bring in 1 or 2 (they do play Kommands and Lilianas after all), but certainly all the card that straight up trade with their spells are better. Lightning Bolt is an interesting card - it's not very good at killing their creatures, but it can easily win you the game if you just shoot them upstairs. I'm leaning towards thinking they are quite good in the MU. Cryptic is another great complimentary tool since the Jund deck can't interact with it, and it can set up surprise lethals. Needs more playtesting.
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StaffI felt super lucky to get there. Both games I won I pretty much needed to top deck some form of direct damage to be able to get there and not die on the back swing
The downside of Clique is that it's bad against fast creature decks - slow, and trades down in mana. The weakness to lingering souls is also significant. None of these downsides are as damning as the ones that Stormbreath has, which begin with the CMC of that card.
Whether you should play any of these cards is a metagame call. Expecting Combo and Ramp? Play Clique. Expecting Junk and fast aggro? Just bring in more cheap removal or EE. I'm not sure where Dragons fit in this picture, though.
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Staffhttp://www.channelfireball.com/videos/channel-lsv-modern-grixis-control/
The combination of 2 leak/2 Snare/ 1 remand / 1 dispel are very good , with the metagame changing again... maybe is time to drop Ancestral?
If we going with -4 ancestral to +2 Gurmag angler + 1 dispel + 1 remand , expecting more combo deck , burn and tron again the will be more resilent?
Even Jeskay decks not running ancestral now days
well, it's not like you need a permission to drop AV. if you don't like it don't play it. I don't thing Gurmag Angler is very good though, too taxing for the graveyard.
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