Planeswalker rule change? I haven't heard anything about this... Can you now have multiples of the same type of PW as long as it isn't the exact same one? That would shake things up pretty majorly I think. Secure the wastes seems pretty decent, but Jura still wins me a lot of games too. I really want to give spell queller more of a shot in the sideboard, seems like it would be pretty good in some matchups like storm and valakut where you already take out verdicts. I know some people use them, but I haven't seen any of them on anyone's stream. I have them in paper, but have never really used them either.
edit: Ok so I just read the section on the mechanics for Ixalan and that's completely insane. I think GoTT is instantly broken and we should play at least 12 gideons! But seriously, it's going to be tough for anyone to win if you resolve a turn 3, 4 and 5 gideon.
We were talking about making a Tribal Gideon Prison deck in Gab Nassif's stream yesterday, we could end up turning into UW Gideon Prison... It could actually be legit. I totally forgot about the flip Gideon, Kytheon, Hero of Akros. Imagine him attacking with 2 other Gideons, your opponents would have so much loyalty to try to get rid of before ever actually being able to kill you.
I'm thinking though that like 3 GoTT, 2 Ally and 1 Jura would be a pretty good starting point, I can't wait for this rule to take effect now!
I was thinking about building a Tribal Gideon deck in a WB shell. Thoughtseize, IoK, Fatal Push, PtE, Lingering Souls, and 6-8x Gideons. Sorry if this is too off-topic.
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Now Playing Modern RUBW Affinity BGR Midrange UWR Control RG Titan Shift RW Burn GW Bogles G Tron
@Ballisticquill - Cage is nice, but i was thinking something more specifically for the maindeck. Cage might be a little narrow for that purpose, and for sideboard cards I think we get more utility out of Rest in Peace. Regarding Lilianas - I don't find either Lilly to be a problem, and the decks that tend to run them are some of our better matchups imo. I'm not concerned about BGx decks getting a small boost from the rules, in fact I hope they get more popular so we can prey on them.
@Borzi - What specific aggro cards were you thinking? I don't think we can start cutting Paths or Verdicts, maybe walls? But walls let us set up Gideons so nicely. Or did you mean out of the sideboard?
I stand behind my conviction that Sphinx Rev is the worst card in the deck, and now with the possibility of increasing threat density with more Gideons I think it gets even worse. The life gain becomes less relevant (probably), and I'd much rather see a planeswalkers in my opener than a Rev. Crucible might also get a bit worse as a main deck consideration, Gideons are also fine in that matchups where crucible would be good..
I like Slowgod's starting point of 3 Trials, 2 Ally, 1 Jura. I'll be testing that once the rules change goes live.
I would first test 3 trials/1 ally/2 jura first because our deck is overloaded on 4-cmc spells already and ally is the weakest in our deck.
Without curve considerations , which I will address momentarily, and even before the rules change, I think AOZ might be pretty good in our deck. There was a 7-1 list from the recent MOCS that eschewed Jura for AOZ. Jura has been at the foray of discussion recently with regards to whether or not he gets the axe as he is too often a 5 mana 6/6. I'd rather have a 4 mana 5/5 indestructible personally (turns off terminate for what that's worth), and AOZ is a faster clock (start swinging for 7 the turn after he comes down and comes down a turn earlier) against decks like storm. As far as clogging up the 4cmc slot - I don't think that's a very good argument; we play tons of cheap spells to fill out the curve and we are a deck that tries to hit every land drop - the more mana efficient spell should always take precedent imo. One final reason why 2 AOZ might be better thatn 2 Jura is that AOZ is fine in multiples, you can Emblem and cast the 2nd one, you can't really do that with Jura.
** Edit for clarification/potential biasing factors - I have been on 3 Trials and 0 Jura for the majority of the time I've been on this list.
To be fair to jura, two of him in a row is often very good. Strong board control line to play him kill something, die to combat, play the second and kill something.
To be fair to jura, two of him in a row is often very good. Strong board control line to play him kill something, die to combat, play the second and kill something.
Looking forward to testing it for sure.
I hadn't considered that line, sounds pretty sweet actually lol
soooo, new PW rule.
I wanna keep playing our UW build, im thinking about building 3 GoTT, 2 Ally of Z and 1 Jura.
Im also gonna try 1 Jace AOT and 1 jace UoS.
I play very stock deck with 2 GoTT and 1 Jura atm.
My question is what to cut for the 3x extra Gideon....? (1 det sphere, the last TT and maybe de rev?)
Also thinking about reducing the number of Collonades because of our higher threat dens. and play faster lands instead.. any ideas / suggestions?
Long time lurker in think mode
I'm going 2 GoTT 1 AOZ and 1 jura. I still don't think you want an abundance of 4 and 5 cmc but that fourth gideon would be powerful.
Yeah those black decks are getting kind of off topic, they look good and I've been thinking about them also but they should be UW in here I think. Not like I'm going to enforce anything Historically (I've been playing on and off since alpha) I am much more of a Bx player and white was probably always my least played color, but I love it now.
I went 4-1 in a league last night with pretty much Bennyhillz list except I don't have the surgicals online so they are Elspeth / Grafdigger's. I should have been 5-0 but I made 1 stupid mistake against tron where I tried to supreme will a Ballista and totally forgot he had a mindstone in the corner to pay the 3. I had verdict in hand too and using the impulse effect would have certainly found me something, instead I wasted 2 cards on the ballista and then he top decked some smashers.
I finally got to play against a tuned Grixis shadow list (I guess they are all running deprive now) I actually cut him off black in 1 game and then game 3 was draw-go for like 12 turns while I just had all my verdicts in hand. I also played against a grixis delver shadow deck the other day which was interesting, but I won that as well. I beat Knightfall company (thanks grafdigger's cage) game 2 he drew the absolute nuts and told me it was like as if he had stacked his deck with the perfect cards. I was dead on turn 4. My final match was against bogles! That was pretty darn easy lol.
soooo, new PW rule.
I wanna keep playing our UW build, im thinking about building 3 GoTT, 2 Ally of Z and 1 Jura.
Im also gonna try 1 Jace AOT and 1 jace UoS.
I play very stock deck with 2 GoTT and 1 Jura atm.
My question is what to cut for the 3x extra Gideon....? (1 det sphere, the last TT and maybe de rev?)
Also thinking about reducing the number of Collonades because of our higher threat dens. and play faster lands instead.. any ideas / suggestions?
Long time lurker in think mode
Think Twice and Rev is what I was eyeballing to cut first as well. I also like Jace Unraveler. I watched Gabriel Nassif stream UB for about a week and he was winning with The Scarab God as a 5/5 for 5mana, with the ability being almost completely irrelevant. He later made a comment about how well Baneslayer angel might be positioned in UW based on that observation. To my eye, it seems like now is just not a particularly hostile meta for 5 Mana sorcery speed threats, and I've been playing a bit with Unraveler online in both UW and UB. It's been fine but not great. Very much feels on par with AOT basically so 1/1 split is probably a fine starting place with rules update.
I will also be testing out a version with no Rev and no Spreading seas when the rule change takes place. My thought process is that all of our matches other than Tron where seas would be good get a huge boost from running more planeswalker threats. I do think that UWs success has been mostly due to lil Gid and Spreading Seas though, so cutting them could certainly be wrong. But, I feel compelled to do the testing.
A Monastery Mentor could be really interesting alongside more Gideons, especially since they have good synergy with AoZ. Doesn't play well with verdict, but who knows, we may not need to rely on verdict so much in this kind of build.
The biggest changes are removing spreading seas, dsphere and Rev while bringing in 3 more gideons, spell snare and cast out.
My reasoning for the card removals are as follows:
Spreading Seas was good against control, burn, Abzan as well as affinity and Tron. The former 3 matchups get much better with more walkers and the rules change, while the latter two are good matchups (maybe because of seas, but some of the new inclusions make up for affinity, snare mostly.
Dsphere - Was good or at least decent against pretty much everything other than storm, ad naus, Titanshift and burn. Since those former 3 are basically our worse matchups, I don't mind insulating a little bit by switching to cast out. Generally it just turns into a cycle in those matchups, while still allowing the cath-all removal that dsphere gave us in other matchups.
Rev - I think the card sucks in a deck with 4 Tec Edge. I often have to choose between making more land drops or blowing up key lands and it just doesn't do what the deck wants to do. It's too mana intensive for our bad matchups, and it shines in our good-matchups. I only ran it in the past due to a lack of a 'critical density' of high impact spells. More gideons absolves us from that burden.
Onto the new inclusions:
Snare - I think it is has a lot of targets in every deck except for Tron and Death's shadow. In those matches it can still hit X Spells or Snapcaster/Terminate, so its not completely dead, but those are good match-ups anyways. It helps especially with Storm, our worst matchup up and could slide COCO counters decks from ~50/50 to more favourable since it hits their combo pieces while we set up in the early turns.
3 Gideons - I've been on 3 trials forever basically, so for me its +2 AOZ +1 Jura, but for most lists it's +1 of each. Trials I think is the best card in the deck, and it gets even better with the rules update, I don't think I need to sing it's praises much. 2 AOZ and 1 Jura split needs to be tested, it could be that we only want 1 of each, or 2 Jura and 1 AOZ. I will certainly test all those configurations, but I like starting with more Gideons generally so that I get a feel for how the rules change will play out, and I like startin with 2 AOZ due to the lower mana cost.
Cast Out - The reasoning for this change was spelled out pretty clearly in the explanation for the removal of Dsphere.
Other Notable Changes:
3 Think Twice - With no rev and more countermagic, I think having something to spend our extra mana on is necessary. The numbers could be off, and I'll likely try some number of other draw spells like Glimmer of Genius(which I think is bad) and Scour the Laboratory (which is also bad, but a little more likely to be turned on due to Cast Out and a Higher density of Planeswalkers). I am open to suggestions here though (except rev or pull from tomorrow)
Only 4 Taplands - I think with more 1 mana options, we want less taplands, but this could also be wrong. I have really enjoyed cycling Irrigated Farmland, or having a 2nd fetchable dual when only running 1 hallowed fountain
Sideboard Changes: - I normally like being on only 1 Stony Silence, but giving up a little equity in the Tron and Affinity matchup by cutting seas makes me feel this could be necessary. Normally I like a Timely as well, but I think we can cut a few aggro sideboard slots due to the increased presence of Gideons. 0 crucible or elspeth - never really liked Elspeth in the side. Crucible I liked, but both of these cards with this list basically got the axe for the same reason a lot of the cards I aced - good in good matchups, bad in bad matchups. With cutting seas, it could be correct to still run crucible side to hedge there a bit, but im willing to give up some point to Tron in the beginning of my testing.
Again, cutting spreading seas feels weird, because I think it has been like the 3rd or 4th best card in the deck for a long time. I don't feel that is the case anymore, especially after the rules update.
@jayjayhooks
Although my intuition for building UW control is bad, I believe Spreading Seas is the main reason this deck affords to switch to a tappout style in the early turns.
On another note, since I'm not that good with Seas builds yet (and the search function is absymal), I would like some advice on the Titanshift matchup. I usually save my counters for titan / scapeshift and managing valakuts with litl' Gideon, seas and land destruction (but I also use seas to color screw them if possible). However, I often feel that I'm lacking a counter when it matters. (My cards answers in the matchup are 2 Leaks, 1 Knot, 1 Negate, 3 Cryptics, 2 Snapcasters, 2 Quarters, 1 Tec Edge, 2 Trials Gideon). Are we unfavored there by principle, am I doing something wrong or has variance randomly hit me for a while?
I agree that seas has been a big part of this decks success. That doesn't mean it shouldn't tested, and j mentioned multiple times that it could easily be wrong. I still think that we should constantly being trying to innovate, and as long g as people explain thier thought processes, as I tried to so, I think that thinking outside of the box can only help to sharpen the minds that play this awesome deck! I think the tapout success came from little gideon and supreme verdict mostly though, with seas a key player as well.
To your question. The matchup is one of our tougher tiered matchups for sure. You are right to save the counters for shift/Titan but how come you are only running 3 Colourless lands? Most everyone is running 4, and in large part 3 of those as tec edge, which makes the match slightly better. I also don't think colour screwing them is a winning line most of the time, they are a deck that relies on the consistency of thier mana. That's not to say it won't work ever, bit generally save LD for valakuts. And definitely get a couple more tec edge in there! Cheers. **Edit - surgical extraction and Disdainful stroke out of the board can do a lot for you as well. Generally unless your deck is very stock, it's a good idea to post your list when asking for help because a lot of the time it is deck building choices rather than playstyle that can make a big difference in specific matches.
edit: Ok so I just read the section on the mechanics for Ixalan and that's completely insane. I think GoTT is instantly broken and we should play at least 12 gideons! But seriously, it's going to be tough for anyone to win if you resolve a turn 3, 4 and 5 gideon.
UW Control
UWR Geist
UWR Control
UBRJeleva, Nephalia's Scourge
BWTeysa,Orzhov Scion
GWKarametra, God of Harvests
UW Dragonlord Ojutai
R Daretti, Scrap Savant
Modern
GB Tron
UW UW Control
I'm thinking though that like 3 GoTT, 2 Ally and 1 Jura would be a pretty good starting point, I can't wait for this rule to take effect now!
Modern
RUBW Affinity
BGR Midrange
UWR Control
RG Titan Shift
RW Burn
GW Bogles
G Tron
@Borzi - What specific aggro cards were you thinking? I don't think we can start cutting Paths or Verdicts, maybe walls? But walls let us set up Gideons so nicely. Or did you mean out of the sideboard?
I stand behind my conviction that Sphinx Rev is the worst card in the deck, and now with the possibility of increasing threat density with more Gideons I think it gets even worse. The life gain becomes less relevant (probably), and I'd much rather see a planeswalkers in my opener than a Rev. Crucible might also get a bit worse as a main deck consideration, Gideons are also fine in that matchups where crucible would be good..
I like Slowgod's starting point of 3 Trials, 2 Ally, 1 Jura. I'll be testing that once the rules change goes live.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Without curve considerations , which I will address momentarily, and even before the rules change, I think AOZ might be pretty good in our deck. There was a 7-1 list from the recent MOCS that eschewed Jura for AOZ. Jura has been at the foray of discussion recently with regards to whether or not he gets the axe as he is too often a 5 mana 6/6. I'd rather have a 4 mana 5/5 indestructible personally (turns off terminate for what that's worth), and AOZ is a faster clock (start swinging for 7 the turn after he comes down and comes down a turn earlier) against decks like storm. As far as clogging up the 4cmc slot - I don't think that's a very good argument; we play tons of cheap spells to fill out the curve and we are a deck that tries to hit every land drop - the more mana efficient spell should always take precedent imo. One final reason why 2 AOZ might be better thatn 2 Jura is that AOZ is fine in multiples, you can Emblem and cast the 2nd one, you can't really do that with Jura.
** Edit for clarification/potential biasing factors - I have been on 3 Trials and 0 Jura for the majority of the time I've been on this list.
Looking forward to testing it for sure.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I hadn't considered that line, sounds pretty sweet actually lol
I'm going 2 GoTT 1 AOZ and 1 jura. I still don't think you want an abundance of 4 and 5 cmc but that fourth gideon would be powerful.
I went 4-1 in a league last night with pretty much Bennyhillz list except I don't have the surgicals online so they are Elspeth / Grafdigger's. I should have been 5-0 but I made 1 stupid mistake against tron where I tried to supreme will a Ballista and totally forgot he had a mindstone in the corner to pay the 3. I had verdict in hand too and using the impulse effect would have certainly found me something, instead I wasted 2 cards on the ballista and then he top decked some smashers.
I finally got to play against a tuned Grixis shadow list (I guess they are all running deprive now) I actually cut him off black in 1 game and then game 3 was draw-go for like 12 turns while I just had all my verdicts in hand. I also played against a grixis delver shadow deck the other day which was interesting, but I won that as well. I beat Knightfall company (thanks grafdigger's cage) game 2 he drew the absolute nuts and told me it was like as if he had stacked his deck with the perfect cards. I was dead on turn 4. My final match was against bogles! That was pretty darn easy lol.
Think Twice and Rev is what I was eyeballing to cut first as well. I also like Jace Unraveler. I watched Gabriel Nassif stream UB for about a week and he was winning with The Scarab God as a 5/5 for 5mana, with the ability being almost completely irrelevant. He later made a comment about how well Baneslayer angel might be positioned in UW based on that observation. To my eye, it seems like now is just not a particularly hostile meta for 5 Mana sorcery speed threats, and I've been playing a bit with Unraveler online in both UW and UB. It's been fine but not great. Very much feels on par with AOT basically so 1/1 split is probably a fine starting place with rules update.
I will also be testing out a version with no Rev and no Spreading seas when the rule change takes place. My thought process is that all of our matches other than Tron where seas would be good get a huge boost from running more planeswalker threats. I do think that UWs success has been mostly due to lil Gid and Spreading Seas though, so cutting them could certainly be wrong. But, I feel compelled to do the testing.
UWR Control
BR Hollow One
2 Wall of Omens
2 Snapcaster Mage
Planeswalkers (7)
3 Gideon of the Trials
2 Gideon Ally of Zendikar
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Gideon Jura
Spells (24)
4 Serum Visions
4 Path to Exile
2 Snare
3 Think Twice
3 Mana Leak
1 Negate
2 Cast Out
3 Supreme Verdict
2 Cryptic Command
5 Island
3 Plains
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Glacial Fortress
4 Tectonic Edge
2 Rest in Peace
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Negate
2 Clique
2 Dispel
2 Stony Silence
1 Celestial Purge
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Blessed Alliance
The biggest changes are removing spreading seas, dsphere and Rev while bringing in 3 more gideons, spell snare and cast out.
My reasoning for the card removals are as follows:
Spreading Seas was good against control, burn, Abzan as well as affinity and Tron. The former 3 matchups get much better with more walkers and the rules change, while the latter two are good matchups (maybe because of seas, but some of the new inclusions make up for affinity, snare mostly.
Dsphere - Was good or at least decent against pretty much everything other than storm, ad naus, Titanshift and burn. Since those former 3 are basically our worse matchups, I don't mind insulating a little bit by switching to cast out. Generally it just turns into a cycle in those matchups, while still allowing the cath-all removal that dsphere gave us in other matchups.
Rev - I think the card sucks in a deck with 4 Tec Edge. I often have to choose between making more land drops or blowing up key lands and it just doesn't do what the deck wants to do. It's too mana intensive for our bad matchups, and it shines in our good-matchups. I only ran it in the past due to a lack of a 'critical density' of high impact spells. More gideons absolves us from that burden.
Onto the new inclusions:
Snare - I think it is has a lot of targets in every deck except for Tron and Death's shadow. In those matches it can still hit X Spells or Snapcaster/Terminate, so its not completely dead, but those are good match-ups anyways. It helps especially with Storm, our worst matchup up and could slide COCO counters decks from ~50/50 to more favourable since it hits their combo pieces while we set up in the early turns.
3 Gideons - I've been on 3 trials forever basically, so for me its +2 AOZ +1 Jura, but for most lists it's +1 of each. Trials I think is the best card in the deck, and it gets even better with the rules update, I don't think I need to sing it's praises much. 2 AOZ and 1 Jura split needs to be tested, it could be that we only want 1 of each, or 2 Jura and 1 AOZ. I will certainly test all those configurations, but I like starting with more Gideons generally so that I get a feel for how the rules change will play out, and I like startin with 2 AOZ due to the lower mana cost.
Cast Out - The reasoning for this change was spelled out pretty clearly in the explanation for the removal of Dsphere.
Other Notable Changes:
3 Think Twice - With no rev and more countermagic, I think having something to spend our extra mana on is necessary. The numbers could be off, and I'll likely try some number of other draw spells like Glimmer of Genius(which I think is bad) and Scour the Laboratory (which is also bad, but a little more likely to be turned on due to Cast Out and a Higher density of Planeswalkers). I am open to suggestions here though (except rev or pull from tomorrow)
Only 4 Taplands - I think with more 1 mana options, we want less taplands, but this could also be wrong. I have really enjoyed cycling Irrigated Farmland, or having a 2nd fetchable dual when only running 1 hallowed fountain
Sideboard Changes: - I normally like being on only 1 Stony Silence, but giving up a little equity in the Tron and Affinity matchup by cutting seas makes me feel this could be necessary. Normally I like a Timely as well, but I think we can cut a few aggro sideboard slots due to the increased presence of Gideons. 0 crucible or elspeth - never really liked Elspeth in the side. Crucible I liked, but both of these cards with this list basically got the axe for the same reason a lot of the cards I aced - good in good matchups, bad in bad matchups. With cutting seas, it could be correct to still run crucible side to hedge there a bit, but im willing to give up some point to Tron in the beginning of my testing.
Again, cutting spreading seas feels weird, because I think it has been like the 3rd or 4th best card in the deck for a long time. I don't feel that is the case anymore, especially after the rules update.
Cheers
I agree that seas has been a big part of this decks success. That doesn't mean it shouldn't tested, and j mentioned multiple times that it could easily be wrong. I still think that we should constantly being trying to innovate, and as long g as people explain thier thought processes, as I tried to so, I think that thinking outside of the box can only help to sharpen the minds that play this awesome deck! I think the tapout success came from little gideon and supreme verdict mostly though, with seas a key player as well.
To your question. The matchup is one of our tougher tiered matchups for sure. You are right to save the counters for shift/Titan but how come you are only running 3 Colourless lands? Most everyone is running 4, and in large part 3 of those as tec edge, which makes the match slightly better. I also don't think colour screwing them is a winning line most of the time, they are a deck that relies on the consistency of thier mana. That's not to say it won't work ever, bit generally save LD for valakuts. And definitely get a couple more tec edge in there! Cheers. **Edit - surgical extraction and Disdainful stroke out of the board can do a lot for you as well. Generally unless your deck is very stock, it's a good idea to post your list when asking for help because a lot of the time it is deck building choices rather than playstyle that can make a big difference in specific matches.