Checking in with a report from my first paper event with this deck! It was a great debut, despite my build being a little bit of a mess: I ended up bringing a 61-card setup (the list I posted a couple pages back with a Crucible tacked on), which, as people here have pointed out, is definitely suboptimal; but I was willing to lose a few percentage points of efficiency to see how everything played. Things got a little worse when I showed up and found out that the dude who was lending me Cryptics for the night (the only cards in here I don’t own yet—waiting on the IM printing), only had two copies. Without any time to really think about it before the tourney kicked off, I threw my Vendilion Clique in the main and added a Disenchant to the side (also suboptimal, but decent in my meta).
Round 1 vs GW Combo Elves:
I was on the play, and kept a four-lander with Serum Visions, Wall of Omens, and Verdict. He had a full board and an empty hand by the end of his T3, which would have been a blowout for me if not for the fact that his opener included a maindeck Selfless Spirit. My Wall plus Jace and Gideon were able to stall for a while as I dug for a Path or D-Sphere for the Spirit, but I never found one and Ezuri overruns got him there. Game 2 he flooded the board similarly, but this time I had an EoT Path for his Spirit into a T4 Verdict and T5 Gideon Jura, who closed the game in a hurry. Game 3 he played a little more cautiously, which worked for me, as I kept an opener that was great in every way besides the lack of a wrath. Mana Leak countered his Archdruid, Dispel countered his CoCo, and Jace kept his dorks at bay while I took over the board. His topdecked Choke made the game last longer than it should have, but once more Jura beats got me over the line. 1-0
Round 2 vs Izzet Delver/Pyromancer:
Game 1 I got an early advantage with Verdict taking down a flipped Delver, a Pyromancer, and three tokens. From there I felt favored, but he burned me down to three life over time, then topdecked a Lightning Bolt on an empty hand. I responded to the Bolt by Revving for 4, and drew Search, Cryptic, Negate, and a land, which put the game on lockdown. Game 2 was crazily long and interactive, with a midgame highlight being my Jura, his Negate, my Negate, his Negate, my Dispel, his Dispel...lol. Later on I resolved a Gideon OTT, ticked him up, and next turn made his emblem, which combined with my card advantage and better topdecks put the game out of reach. 2-0
Round 3 vs RG Ponza:
Game 1 he kept a threat-less hand with a dork, a Blood Moon, and a couple of Stone Rains. My opener of five lands (two fetches, a basic, Field, and Farmland) Serum Visions, and Gideon OTT was well positioned against him. I slammed Gideon on T3, ticked him up, and then swung every turn after that. Besides his Arbor Elf, who chumped Gids at some point, the only other creature he found was a Goblin Dark-Dwellers while at 4 life, for which I had an EoT Path and the lethal swing to follow. Probably the quickest I’ve ever won a game with this deck, lol. Game 2 was a huge blowout for me...I Mana Leaked his T3 Stone Rain, then proceeded to lock him out of red with three straight Spreading Seas. Both Gideons hit the field shortly thereafter, and it was over rather quickly. 3-0
Round 4 vs Dredge:
I prepared myself for an early scoop G1, despite a respectable opening seven in my hand, but my opponent mulled to five on the play, which gave me some hope. Opponent made his first land drop and passed, then went two turns without hitting another land or a play. My progression was T1 Colonnade, T2 Serum and fetch, T3 Serum and pass holding up Mana Leak. His T4 saw him hit a second land drop and cast Cathartic Reunion, which I was crucially able to counter. From there I tried a Spreading Seas lock (didn’t work as he found lands 3 and 4), but Wall of Omens, Gideon OTT, and Jace took over the board and won me the game just as he was starting to really look threatening. Game 2 I kept an okay 4-land opener including a Grafdigger’s Cage. Cage was a huge stumbling block for him, but I flooded out hard, despite aggressively thinning out my deck (prioritizing fetches over Colonnades) and Scrying lands to the bottom whenever possible. He found an Abrupt Decay for my Cage and then went off as I continued to flood.
Game 3 I drew two unkeepable hands and mulled to a very sketchy five of Island, Cage, Celestial Purge, D-Sphere, and Settle the Wreckage, Scrying Gideon Jura to the bottom. Thankfully for me, I hit my land drops right away, and my opponent lacked an early answer for the Cage, so I was able to stabilize and recover from my card disadvantage. The game went on for ages as I hung on to my Settle, able to control the board well enough with Gideon OTT, a pair of Walls, and Paths/Spheres that I was never taking more than a Narcomeba hit on any given attack. The turning point of the game cane when he Decayed my Cage, and I knew I had two turns to find an answer. On the first turn of do or die I minused Jace and found a Search. Next turn I flipped the Search, activated it to find three lands and a Path, then cashed in Jace, at last finding my first Rest In Peace of the series. I immediately slammed it and then Verdicted his massive board. He shifted to a hardcast plan, but I was able to get in with Gideon OTT and a Colonnade while holding up seven mana for Settle, Path, and a counterspell, which got me the win. 4-0
Not bad for the deck’s paper debut, especially considering 61 cards + only two Cryptics + hurried inclusions of Clique main and Disenchant side ( I probably should have just left Clique in the side and played with 60). But I will say that I’ve never been so mentally exhausted after a local Modern event as I was last night. The cognitive load is real when piloting UW, even though some of that is probably due to me being new to the archetype.
Thrilled with the power of this deck, the challenge it presents as a pilot, and the types of matches it leads to. Before last night I was considering shaving a Jace, but he was arguably my MVP on the night, so I think in a couple weeks I’ll run it back exactly as is, 61 cards and all (though hopefully with a third Cryptic by then!).
Sorry for the huge wall of text, but thanks for all of the discussion that helped me nail down the decklist and playstyle before my first tourney, and thanks especially to bennyhillz and HolyShamgar for some great and informative streaming.
Congrats on the results! That's awesome! Excellent breakdown and happy to see you're enjoying it. The power level of this deck still strong despite the changing meta and always nice to see good results. Playing this deck definitely takes a mental toll I've found, especially against mirrors/Jeskai.
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Modern Decks: UWAzorius Titan ControlUW BWOrzhov ControlBW
I know you're set on playing 61 cards, but if you can be convinced to cut anything, I would recommend cutting the 3rd cryptic. I find having too many 4 drops very clunky and Cryptic is one of the first cards that tends to get cut post-board in a lot of matches, at least in my experience. I've been playing 2 cryptics for awhile now to reasonable success. It's a great card, don't get me wrong, and I think that playing 3 is justifiable if the rest of your list is perfect, but I think the error margin of playing a 61st card is much, much higher than the error margin between playing 2 and 3 cryptic command.
I’m currently building UW control, what are it’s good and bad matchups? Primer doesn’t cover them.
Good matches:
Gx Tron
Grixis Shadow
Affinity
Even to Good matches:
Burn
E-tron
BGx Midrange
Even to Bad:
Counters Company
Titan Shift
Bad:
Storm
Dredge
** With the caveat that it isn't a popular opinion that Gx Tron variants are favorable, but personally I find it to be about the best match-up we have.
@Chantu9Y: Thanks! Agreed wholeheartedly on the added mental strain that comes with anything resembling a control mirror. My match against Izzet was probably the most strenuous of the night, despite 2-0ing without really being in danger of losing the second game.
I know you're set on playing 61 cards, but if you can be convinced to cut anything, I would recommend cutting the 3rd cryptic. I find having too many 4 drops very clunky and Cryptic is one of the first cards that tends to get cut post-board in a lot of matches, at least in my experience. I've been playing 2 cryptics for awhile now to reasonable success. It's a great card, don't get me wrong, and I think that playing 3 is justifiable if the rest of your list is perfect, but I think the error margin of playing a 61st card is much, much higher than the error margin between playing 2 and 3 cryptic command.
Cheers
Thanks man.
Shaving a Cryptic is definitely up for consideration, and I’ll try that at some point. A copy of Jace, Blessed Alliance, the Crucible, a land, and maybe even a two-mana counterspell are other considerations for the cut. Soon I’ll whittle it down to 60, but for now I’m gonna ride the 61-card hype train until it crashes.
I’m currently building UW control, what are it’s good and bad matchups? Primer doesn’t cover them.
Good matches:
Gx Tron
Grixis Shadow
Affinity
Even to Good matches:
Burn
E-tron
BGx Midrange
Even to Bad:
Counters Company
Titan Shift
Bad:
Storm
Dredge
** With the caveat that it isn't a popular opinion that Gx Tron variants are favorable, but personally I find it to be about the best match-up we have.
Concur, tho I would put Abzan Co in the Even-Good category.
@TheAnnhililator0798 - I've heard others say they find the Counters Company matches to be on the even-to-good side as well. I'm obviously doing something wrong in the match. I mean, I'm not terrified to play against it, but I definitely have room to grow there. Any chance you can remember when/how you learned to approach the match? It's weird because I feel like they can out card-advantage me a lot of the time, when you combine that with the fact that they can just play a mediocre beats game in addition to being able to combo off, it seems like such a daunting task to take on all of those angles at once.
I tend to lose on the card advantage front more than anything else, rarely dying to medium beats or combo, our sweepers/paths and walkers do a good job cleaning that up. I seem to lose a lot when we get to the late game and they have these insane sequences that involve E-Wit where they can go from nothing on the field and next to nothing in hand to suddenly having spent 8 mana, have 2 bodies on the field and a COCO or Chord in hand ready to start up again.
I've gone as far as considering Sun Titan in the board for this match. Post-board I want RIP and Cage effects, but they have access to pridemage and reclamation sage. They can't really get through a titan though, so I don't hate the idea of moving off Rip and going heavier on Cage to accommodate Sunny T. What do you think?
1)Except for mirror/Tron and some very grindy matchup, what's for the crucible in the side ?
Fast enough for ETron or just regular Tron ?
And is it worth against titanshift? Imo its too slow, I would prefer a shadow of doubt against it.
2)Is sphinx rev really worth since we got Search for Azcanta now ? I was running 3 GotT (+1 jace and 1 jura main, 1 elspeth SB) and 0 Sphinx rev, but seems that the current style is to play only 2 GoTT and back to 1 Sphinx.
On another spot: i'm glad that everyone is happy with Field of Ruin right now, as i playtested 4 of them since the release and they never dissapoint, just finished my japanese foil playset of these *_* (btw i see that Benny's last brew added 1 more GQ to it, meta call i guess).
To your first question - As you mentioned, it's a grindy card that comes in for quite a few match-ups, and being an artifact in a deck that runs little to no artifacts shields it from hate a bit, so it's just a resilient engine. I would say that it is good enough to bring against E-tron, they run so few basics and so many utility lands and can actually go for grindy game plan going long. They have solid top decks and X spells like Ballista, so just keeping them low on land count is very strong. They aren't blisteringly fast, so you can definitely find the time to deploy it. That said, I stopped running crucible awhile ago because I find our long-game plan is strong enough that I'd rather dedicate the sideboard slot to something more focused on specific archetypes and most importantly, isn't geared towards our even-to-good match-ups. The single GQ isn't necessarily a meta call so much as just taking advantage of how good our mana is thanks to Field of Ruins. We can run 5 colorless lands without it hurting us too badly. GQ is also nice when you play crucible because it gives you a way to actually start taking them off basics at some point in the game.
To your second question - I personally prefer Search over Rev, and I've even been messing around with up to 3 Search. I'm probably biased though because I've always hated Rev in this deck due to the anti-synergy with the LD lands we've used in the past. Now that Field of Ruins seems to be the consensus best LD land, Rev makes a lot more sense. It's also nice that Rev is a game-winning spell that snapcaster can flashback for us - that isn't the case with our other threats like gideon, colonnade, search etc. I was also on 3 Trials for the longest time, and I think it's one of the best cards in the deck but the current meta seems to have a lot of combo and go-wide strategies, neither of which Trials is great at, so I think 2 or even 1 is defensible right now.
Against coco decks (ones playing the combo, not the ramunap value-town deck) they can't sideboard both value and combo.
Against control, they'll almost certainly shave way down on the combo (probably leaving a single vizier to chord for, and ~2 druids).
This means you have to be way less scared of the combo.
You have to focus on beating their value engines, which can be problematic sometimes, but very doable.
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that a lot of people are playing mana leaks and negates, which don't do a very good job of dealing with the deck.
If you have rip/cage, you obviously want to bring them in, and that should help with a lot of their value-accruing cards. Otherwise, its very possible for us to match them in value, assuming your deck is built for it.
Jace AoT in particular is a ton of value, as he drastically reduces the damage they can poke away with, as well as providing card advantage every time we weaken their board.
I don't think sun titan is really needed, IMO, but they do often have a difficult time beating elspeth.
Otherwise, it might just be how you play the matchup. I sometimes don't sideboard when I'm playing esper because I don't feel the need to (or only swap 1-2 cards), but I'm not sure I could make suggestions out of thin air without watching you play.
@Cody_X - Thanks for the feedback. After reading your post I realized that I hadn't really considered what their sideboard plan is against us. In fact I don't do that for a lot of decks unless it's a really bad match-up or the sideboard plan is very obvious, which they often are in linear decks. I'm gonna try to plug that hole in my game.
Modern Nexus has an article up that argues against Search for Azcanta in Modern, even in the specific context of our deck. I found that a little strange, given how high on the card most people here are.
I’ve been happy with one Search so far, sharing the card advantage load with other options like Jace, Rev, and Crucible—-but as someone new to the deck, I don’t really have a frame of reference to compare it to.
Yea, that guy isn't even close in his assessment of Search and is going to look back on that article as a huge miss. I mean, he's already clearly wrong, as he pointed out himself - many pros hold Search in high regard, and you can see most of the strong UW modern players running it in multiples, as well as seeing it show up in winning decklists all over the place. It took awhile for people to adopt the card (not me, I made off like a bandit with preorders at 4$ :D), but it's here to stay, and I personally think it's still being a little underrated.
Hey guys! After playing the deck for about two months now and getting my deck set up the way I'd like, I've started to play in the mtgo online leagues. While I feel good about my chances against a majority of the current metagaming, one MU that still feels like an auto loss is UR Gifts Storm. Is it worth boarding in two Rule of Laws in the SB to keep them from going off? Right now, I have 1 surgical, 3 leylines, and 2 Rest in peace in the SB and still can't buy a win. I could just be getting some bad draws in G2 (G1 is usually always a loss) but I just feel like they are usually the only deck I have a below .500 win percentage with by far.
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Eidolon of Rhetoric is probably better since it can attack and block, but in reality a 3 mana sorcery speed lock piece is not going to do the trick. Thats why Leyline and Rest in peace aren't going to do it for you either. In my experience the best angle is surgical extraction and more counter magic. My board plan is a couple dispel, negate, 1 grafdiggers cage, 1 rest in peace, 2 surgical and a clique. 1/1 split of cage/rip is nice because it diversifies against echoing truth.
No matter how you board, the important thing is to get a threat onto the field as quickly as possible, flashing in a naked snap on turn 2 is often the correct line, you will often find that you force them to storm off sub-optimally because they have to kill your threat, thats a good place to be because it usually means a colonnade hit or two can probably finish them off at some point.
@ jayjayhooks: I was also thinking of adding clique in the sideboard.
@ KarmaHoudini: I do have Runed Halo. Will definitely be bringing it in as well
Any thoughts on potentially adding Reflector Mage to the build? Would be on curve and have good synergy with our counters/stalling while digging for answers (especially if Azcanta is on the board).
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Reflector mage is probably horrible, though I don't think many people have tested it. Sorcery speed, body that doesn't matter much, temporary answer, etc, are not redeeming qualities.
If you want the effect from Reflector Mage, try Oust. The 2 Mana difference and actually trading for a whole card is probably on par with a 2/3 body, but since we don't care about being the beatdown and our plan is to cast a bunch of sweepers a 2/3 body means very little.
@TheAnnhililator0798 - I've heard others say they find the Counters Company matches to be on the even-to-good side as well. I'm obviously doing something wrong in the match. I mean, I'm not terrified to play against it, but I definitely have room to grow there. Any chance you can remember when/how you learned to approach the match? It's weird because I feel like they can out card-advantage me a lot of the time, when you combine that with the fact that they can just play a mediocre beats game in addition to being able to combo off, it seems like such a daunting task to take on all of those angles at once.
I tend to lose on the card advantage front more than anything else, rarely dying to medium beats or combo, our sweepers/paths and walkers do a good job cleaning that up. I seem to lose a lot when we get to the late game and they have these insane sequences that involve E-Wit where they can go from nothing on the field and next to nothing in hand to suddenly having spent 8 mana, have 2 bodies on the field and a COCO or Chord in hand ready to start up again.
I've gone as far as considering Sun Titan in the board for this match. Post-board I want RIP and Cage effects, but they have access to pridemage and reclamation sage. They can't really get through a titan though, so I don't hate the idea of moving off Rip and going heavier on Cage to accommodate Sunny T. What do you think?
Sorry for the super late response!
Honestly, Sun Titan isn't really the best option against CoCo -- it dies to Path, which they sometimes leave/board in for Colonnades, so I definitely think Elspeth, Sun's Champion is our go-to there. As for the matchup, it honestly REALLY depends on the way the opp sideboards -- the most correct sideboard plan for them in my experience is to cut as many creatures that tap for mana as they can while still reliably curving out and focusing on just putting consistent threats on the field in the right increments. Even a single Vizier of Remedies and a random attacker can end the game on its own when they put you into awkward situations with them. Targeted removal is the name of the game here, and Blessed Alliance is generally garbage against them due to recursion and Noble Hierarch, so really the best removal options are Path and Condemn. As for gameplan, I cut narrow cards like Negate to allow myself the flexibility to play Verdicts fairly freely if I can reliably keep up on resources. They aren't used to aggressive Verdicts, so a Verdict that kills a non-recursive threat and a mana dude is generally acceptable. Overall, play just conservatively enough to extend the game and let mana advantage get there for you. I tend to play towards Revs tho, so you may find it harder to grind them out with Azcanta (prolly not tho, seeing as it grinds really well when it grinds at all). Overall, just play around what you can. I even side in a singleton Dispel to allow freedom to play around CoCo without filling my deck with too many situational cards. Playing 2 Verdicts generally ends the game I would say.
From conversations with folks I think I haven't been losing quite as bad to Storm as a lot of people (mostly due to 2x Surgical) but I've been thinking about it and Silence is a pretty sweet tech against them. The problem with permanent-based answers is that they can see them on the battlefield so they get the choice to go off when they know they can win through it. I like Surgical so much because it represents really meaningful non-counterspell disruption that they can't play around as well. Silence does the same thing- if you resolve it in the middle of their combo they end up down a ton of resources, and since it just costs 1 mana it's easy to resolve through a Remand, we just need to make sure we have a backup counterspell for Dispel of something of the like. Haven't tested it, and it's admittedly a little narrow, but it also has utility against a lot of other random combo decks like Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand, Jeskai Ascendency, etc. Maybe worth a shot.
Congrats on the results! That's awesome! Excellent breakdown and happy to see you're enjoying it. The power level of this deck still strong despite the changing meta and always nice to see good results. Playing this deck definitely takes a mental toll I've found, especially against mirrors/Jeskai.
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
I know you're set on playing 61 cards, but if you can be convinced to cut anything, I would recommend cutting the 3rd cryptic. I find having too many 4 drops very clunky and Cryptic is one of the first cards that tends to get cut post-board in a lot of matches, at least in my experience. I've been playing 2 cryptics for awhile now to reasonable success. It's a great card, don't get me wrong, and I think that playing 3 is justifiable if the rest of your list is perfect, but I think the error margin of playing a 61st card is much, much higher than the error margin between playing 2 and 3 cryptic command.
Cheers
Good matches:
Gx Tron
Grixis Shadow
Affinity
Even to Good matches:
Burn
E-tron
BGx Midrange
Even to Bad:
Counters Company
Titan Shift
Bad:
Storm
Dredge
** With the caveat that it isn't a popular opinion that Gx Tron variants are favorable, but personally I find it to be about the best match-up we have.
Thanks man.
Shaving a Cryptic is definitely up for consideration, and I’ll try that at some point. A copy of Jace, Blessed Alliance, the Crucible, a land, and maybe even a two-mana counterspell are other considerations for the cut. Soon I’ll whittle it down to 60, but for now I’m gonna ride the 61-card hype train until it crashes.
Concur, tho I would put Abzan Co in the Even-Good category.
UWB Esper Draw-Go Control (clicky)
UW Azorius Control (clicky)
Currently pursuing a degree in Biochemistry.
EDH: I've decided I don't like multiplayer formats.
I tend to lose on the card advantage front more than anything else, rarely dying to medium beats or combo, our sweepers/paths and walkers do a good job cleaning that up. I seem to lose a lot when we get to the late game and they have these insane sequences that involve E-Wit where they can go from nothing on the field and next to nothing in hand to suddenly having spent 8 mana, have 2 bodies on the field and a COCO or Chord in hand ready to start up again.
I've gone as far as considering Sun Titan in the board for this match. Post-board I want RIP and Cage effects, but they have access to pridemage and reclamation sage. They can't really get through a titan though, so I don't hate the idea of moving off Rip and going heavier on Cage to accommodate Sunny T. What do you think?
To your first question - As you mentioned, it's a grindy card that comes in for quite a few match-ups, and being an artifact in a deck that runs little to no artifacts shields it from hate a bit, so it's just a resilient engine. I would say that it is good enough to bring against E-tron, they run so few basics and so many utility lands and can actually go for grindy game plan going long. They have solid top decks and X spells like Ballista, so just keeping them low on land count is very strong. They aren't blisteringly fast, so you can definitely find the time to deploy it. That said, I stopped running crucible awhile ago because I find our long-game plan is strong enough that I'd rather dedicate the sideboard slot to something more focused on specific archetypes and most importantly, isn't geared towards our even-to-good match-ups. The single GQ isn't necessarily a meta call so much as just taking advantage of how good our mana is thanks to Field of Ruins. We can run 5 colorless lands without it hurting us too badly. GQ is also nice when you play crucible because it gives you a way to actually start taking them off basics at some point in the game.
To your second question - I personally prefer Search over Rev, and I've even been messing around with up to 3 Search. I'm probably biased though because I've always hated Rev in this deck due to the anti-synergy with the LD lands we've used in the past. Now that Field of Ruins seems to be the consensus best LD land, Rev makes a lot more sense. It's also nice that Rev is a game-winning spell that snapcaster can flashback for us - that isn't the case with our other threats like gideon, colonnade, search etc. I was also on 3 Trials for the longest time, and I think it's one of the best cards in the deck but the current meta seems to have a lot of combo and go-wide strategies, neither of which Trials is great at, so I think 2 or even 1 is defensible right now.
Against control, they'll almost certainly shave way down on the combo (probably leaving a single vizier to chord for, and ~2 druids).
This means you have to be way less scared of the combo.
You have to focus on beating their value engines, which can be problematic sometimes, but very doable.
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that a lot of people are playing mana leaks and negates, which don't do a very good job of dealing with the deck.
If you have rip/cage, you obviously want to bring them in, and that should help with a lot of their value-accruing cards. Otherwise, its very possible for us to match them in value, assuming your deck is built for it.
Jace AoT in particular is a ton of value, as he drastically reduces the damage they can poke away with, as well as providing card advantage every time we weaken their board.
I don't think sun titan is really needed, IMO, but they do often have a difficult time beating elspeth.
Otherwise, it might just be how you play the matchup. I sometimes don't sideboard when I'm playing esper because I don't feel the need to (or only swap 1-2 cards), but I'm not sure I could make suggestions out of thin air without watching you play.
I’ve been happy with one Search so far, sharing the card advantage load with other options like Jace, Rev, and Crucible—-but as someone new to the deck, I don’t really have a frame of reference to compare it to.
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
No matter how you board, the important thing is to get a threat onto the field as quickly as possible, flashing in a naked snap on turn 2 is often the correct line, you will often find that you force them to storm off sub-optimally because they have to kill your threat, thats a good place to be because it usually means a colonnade hit or two can probably finish them off at some point.
@ KarmaHoudini: I do have Runed Halo. Will definitely be bringing it in as well
Any thoughts on potentially adding Reflector Mage to the build? Would be on curve and have good synergy with our counters/stalling while digging for answers (especially if Azcanta is on the board).
UWAzorius Titan ControlUW
BWOrzhov ControlBW
Sorry for the super late response!
Honestly, Sun Titan isn't really the best option against CoCo -- it dies to Path, which they sometimes leave/board in for Colonnades, so I definitely think Elspeth, Sun's Champion is our go-to there. As for the matchup, it honestly REALLY depends on the way the opp sideboards -- the most correct sideboard plan for them in my experience is to cut as many creatures that tap for mana as they can while still reliably curving out and focusing on just putting consistent threats on the field in the right increments. Even a single Vizier of Remedies and a random attacker can end the game on its own when they put you into awkward situations with them. Targeted removal is the name of the game here, and Blessed Alliance is generally garbage against them due to recursion and Noble Hierarch, so really the best removal options are Path and Condemn. As for gameplan, I cut narrow cards like Negate to allow myself the flexibility to play Verdicts fairly freely if I can reliably keep up on resources. They aren't used to aggressive Verdicts, so a Verdict that kills a non-recursive threat and a mana dude is generally acceptable. Overall, play just conservatively enough to extend the game and let mana advantage get there for you. I tend to play towards Revs tho, so you may find it harder to grind them out with Azcanta (prolly not tho, seeing as it grinds really well when it grinds at all). Overall, just play around what you can. I even side in a singleton Dispel to allow freedom to play around CoCo without filling my deck with too many situational cards. Playing 2 Verdicts generally ends the game I would say.
UWB Esper Draw-Go Control (clicky)
UW Azorius Control (clicky)
Currently pursuing a degree in Biochemistry.
EDH: I've decided I don't like multiplayer formats.
Please come back when you have the time