MTG Salvation

Spreading Seas definitely isn't being replaced by those cards - I would be playing 2 Mana Leak and a Snare with or without Seas. Those four slots are going to the two Wall of Omens, Blessed Alliance, and third copy of Snapcaster Mage, so it's not like I'm replacing them with awful topdecks. Besides, without cheap interaction in the deck, you aren't going to get to that lategame stage, and you shouldn't really be topdecking often with UW. Seas is really only good against Tron and sometimes 3 color midrange, I would rather have room for a couple Walls, which are great with the 6 planeswalkers I'm on. The Miracles builds are already dropping Seas to make room for more Terminus-friendly cantrips, and I think it's perfectly reasonable for regular UW to do the same.

Also, I'll be brief, but I played in a short 3-round tournament last night. My 75 was the same, except I had 2 RiP 1 Stony in the board - I wanted to swap one Ally of Zendikar for a Crucible of Worlds, but I had finished shuffling for round one before I remembered.

Round 1: BG Rock 2-1 (1-0)
Usually seeing BG, I assume they want the 4 Field of Ruin instead of Bolt/Terminate, but I think that this is pretty much just wrong after the Bloodbraid unban. Turns out that wasn't the case, and he just wanted to reliably cast Phyrexian Obliterator. Game one I Snare a Confidant and Path the second one before it draws a card, and ran away with a Jace, and I had a counter for Maelstrom Pulse by the time he found it. Game 2 he played turn one Shaper's Sanctuary into turn 3 Choke against my triple Island draw, so while not quite dead I chose to scoop so we could play game three. In game 3 I chose to develop an Ally of Zendikar to try to get him to overextend into a Wrath, but I get punished by Maelstrom Pulse plus Thoughtseize for the Wrath. He drew something like 4 or 5 cards from a Tireless Tracker, but I get to clean up with Snapcaster Wrath and his Phyrexian Obliterator manabase means he doesn't have Field of Ruin or Ghost Quarter to stop me from pulling ahead with Azcanta.

In: 2 Ally of Zendikar, Wrath, Elspeth
Out: 2 Leak, 1 Plains, Settle
After game 2 I swapped something for the Disenchant, but I don't remember what it was.

Round 2: 8-Whack with Burning-Tree Emissary 2-0 (2-0)
Game one I leak his Burning-Tree on turn 2, which gives me enough time to make land drops, and he walks into a Settle the Wreckage with 6 creatures and it's pretty easy from there. Game two Path and Snapcaster hold off his early game, and I'm at a high enough life total to take a few turns to finish cleaning up to guarantee that my Baneslayer can't get hit with a Goblin Grenade.

In: Timely, Clique, Wrath, Baneslayer
Out: 2 Jace, Teferi, Negate
Not a fan of Geist here like I am against Burn, the matchup is about answering the board, not clocking them before they can draw enough burn spells.

Round 3: Eldrazi Tron 2-0 (3-0)
Here's a matchup where no Seas stings a little bit, but it's really not a big dead against Eldrazi Tron compared to real Tron - you aren't going to stop them from hitting 5-6 mana even without Tron. Still, there's a lot to fight over in the lands, Tron, Caverns, Sea Gate Wreckage, their Ghost Quarters (to protect Azcanta). Despite that, I think that this matchup is pretty favorable - TKS and Chalice are annoying but fundamentally they just play a few big creatures that suck against Path and Wraths. Game one involves a couple Cryptics that bounce his Chalice and draw before it gets stuck under a DSphere, and Gideon Jura kills two creatures while buying me 5-6 turns. Card advantage from Teferi eventually pulls me ahead for the win. Game two is pretty much the same, trading one for ones until planeswalkers basically win me the game. I finished with Teferi Emblem into Jace brainstorms, which is absolutely disgusting and he ended the game with no permanents.

In: Disenchant, Stony, Wrath, Elspeth
Out: Snare, 2 Leak, 1 Wall
I'm not quite sure what the 4th card to come out should be, but I really like the 4 coming in. Baneslayer could also be good, because it beats all their creatures in combat (except massive Ballistas) but I don't think it's unreasonable for them to have some number of Dismembers so it stayed in the side.

A short event, but an easy $20 in credit I guess. Overall, I remained impressed with the 6 planeswalker setup, and didn't really miss Seas. Not really much to say for an event this size, other than I wish I hadn't forgotten to put that Crucible in the board.

Honestly, it sounds like you're mulling to Leyline far too aggressively. Like you said, keeping hands with a bunch of cantrips and no combo pieces can be fine against Thoughtseize decks, and that doesn't change when you have Leyline in your deck. It's not even close to an auto-win, so why would you mulligan like it is? Even though Dispel is great in control mirrors, you won't go to 5 looking for one, so why do similar here?

Quote from rick90 »

HI guys! I am building a classic UW control list but without Jace and with a couple or Teferi! Then I would like to add a couple of Gideons but I have some doubts about the number and type of them! Would you go with 2 gideon of the trials? O a split between 1 trials and 1 ally/jura?

Thanks a lot for your help!!

I personally like 2 Trials and 1 Jura maindeck, and I'll tend to have 0-2 Ally of Zendikar in my board depending on the week. It does depend on your build though, if you're on a miracles-slanted list you'll likely want 0 in favor of something like 3 Jace, 2 Teferi.

For reference, here's the list I'm on:


This is the list I played at FNM last week, and I finished 4-0-1 for 1st place - we didn't split, I played all five rounds and had an unintentional draw during round three.

Round 1: BR Moon 2-0 (1-0)
This definitely isn't a common meta deck, but it's popped up from time to time if you've been watching the format for the last couple years. Game one was very close, we both ground each other completely out of resources game one, and there was a critical moment where he had one open window to topdeck Demigod of Revenge to kill my Gideon of the Trials and Jace, and he hit it. Fortunately, he had chipped himself down enough off of lands and Thoughtseize that I was able to untap, Supreme Verdict, and then have a 2-turn clock with Colonnade. Game 2, I was one mana short of casting Logic Knot on his Blood Moon, so I had to choose between grabbing a second Island or first Plains from Field of Ruin, so I went with the Plains. Unfortunately, I then proceeded to get hit with a Boil on the next turn, and didn't have double blue anymore. The game went on for a long time after, and I was forced to spend Paths on a Demigod and Hazoret instead of getting an Island from my Wall. Eventually, I drew my second Plains and Gideon Jura killed two planeswalkers and then my opponent without me finding an Island.

In: RiP, 2 Ally of Zendikar, Elspeth, Purge
Out: Snare, 2 Snapcaster, Blessed Alliance, 1 Wall
Alliance would have stayed in if I saw Hazoret, but I didn't see her or Stormbreath in a very long game one. A couple Snaps came out because RiP came in and I was expecting Nihil Spellbomb from his graveyard-based deck.

Round 2: Burn 2-1 (2-0)
I had my opponent on Goblins from the last time I saw him 2 weeks ago, where we split 1st/2nd in the final round when I was playing Devoted Company. Unfortunately, I kept a mediocre 7 based on turn 4 Verdict being great on the play, and got punished with a great Burn hand. Game 2, I managed to land a Baneslayer at 10 life and connected with it the next turn which prompted a concession. Game three was extremely tight, and revolved around, in my opinion, two important factors. First was a window where he used an Exquisite Firecraft to trigger Prowess on a Swiftspear instead of saving it for the final points of damage, second was a sequencing misstep that let me counter a Lightning Helix with a Mana Leak that probably should have been a dead card by that stage of the game. There were some extremely tricky situations involving an Eidolon near the end of the game, and I think that I did a great job of navigating it in a way where it was a detriment to him instead of me.

In: 2 Geist, Timely, Clique, Baneslayer, Dispel
Out: 2 Jace, Teferi, Gideon Jura, Settle, 1 Verdict
I'm not totally sure on boarding out Jura, he's obviously lights out if you have a Trials emblem, but 5-mana spells are a really, really hard sell against Burn. I do like keeping in at least one verdict, as getting 2 creatures with a spell that gets over Eidolon can be big. To be totally correct I probably should have swapped it for the Wrath for the 0.5% of games where I don't have to fetch-shock to cast it. Also, after Baneslayer won game 2, my opponent went back to his board for 3 cards, I assume Paths - I'll take that any day, I have one Baneslayer and Path is for the most part dead.

Round 3: Jund 1-1-1 (2-0-1)
Game one I got complete control, but couldn't find a quick way to close out the game, and it took almost 40 minutes to close, playing very quickly. Eventually after I resolved a Rev for 5 and had active Azcanta,I fatesealed a few expensive spells to the top with Jace, and Confidant killed him. Obviously not the way to play if we weren't timed, but I was worried about getting run over game 2 and drawing the match, which was exactly what happened... I mulled to 5, keeping 3 lands, Jace, Ally of Zendikar and got Thoughtseized turn one. After joking about the fact that it wasn't Inquisition, he curved Goyf, Tracker, Bloodbraid and I didn't have the turn 4 Wrath I would need to have a chance. Game 3 wasn't a real game, we both made some suboptimal plays involving Thrun, a Wrath of God, and Liliana the Last Hope trying to either win on time or not lose in time, as I didn't have any chance of clocking him in a 3-minute game. I felt like I would have had an extremely great chance of winning the last game given time, and my opponent admitted he should have conceded game one far earlier.

In: 2 Ally of Zendikar, Wrath, Elspeth
Out: 2 Mana Leak, Settle, 1 Plains
I like taking out Leak and the 25th land here on account of how long and grindy the games go, but it may have been a misstep in the context of this specific match's time constraints. Geists and Clique probably should have come in over some of the slow stuff like Teferi/Search/Jace/whatever to have hopes of winning game three, but I really don't think it would have mattered.

Round 4: UB Mill 2-0 (3-0-1)
I had to apologize to my opponent after this one, because I was pretty visibly/audibly upset about the fact that this guy was somehow 3-0 and I got paired against him. Mill is (in my opinion) a garbage deck, and UW Control is one of its only good matchups, and a great matchup at that. I was less than 2 minutes distanced from a frustrating draw with a borderline slow-playing opponent to being paired to an awful matchup to knock me from real prize contention. That said, I did the only thing that UW can do here, which is get a Gideon of the Trials emblem and protect it from specifically Set Adrift. Not a ton to say.

In: 2 Geist, Clique, 2 Ally of Zendikar, 1 Dispel
Out: Settle, 2 Verdict, Blessed Alliance, Teferi, Sphinx's Rev
Path stays in to respect Hedron Crab

Round 5: GW Valuetown
I know that I'm getting more and more brief here, but there's not a ton to say this match. My opponent overextended into Verdict thanks to a Wall and Gideon of the Trials, then Snap-Verdict cleaned up his rebuild and Gideon finished the game in a few turns. Game two I landed RiP on turn 2 while his draw was mostly Eternal Witnesses and Ramunap Excavators. Honestly, this is the perfect matchup - slow value creatures do very poorly against boardwipes and planeswalkers.

In: Rest in Peace, Baneslayer, Elspeth, Wrath, 2 Ally of Zendikar
Out: 1 Snapcaster, Negate, Spell Snare, Blessed Alliance, 2 Mana Leak
Snare is great against Voice but that's the only 2-mana card that matters, and Alliance can be ok but it's sort of underwhelming. Leak is fine, but I like Ally of Zendikar slightly better against the mostly ground-based creature deck.

Because of the awkward round 3 draw and the fact that I beat undefeated players rounds 4 and 5, I took first place. The Jund player from round 3 did the same, but my tiebreakers were slightly better. For my local meta, I want to try fitting in a second RiP (there were 2 dredge players I dodged) and possibly a Crucible into the board, but that's meta-specific stuff. Overall, I was incredibly impressed with how well the Gideons did, as there were plenty of midrange decks that have a hard time not overextending to the board in order to beat them. I definitely didn't feel the missing Spreading Seas, which may have been due to the fact that the only Tron player in the room was mono-blue, but Walls, 3rd Snapcaster, and mainboard Blessed Alliance felt far stronger to me.

Quote from RADN »

I came here to talk about the absolut need (or not) in having the leylines on the sideboard.

But then i see ^^ this guy with them on the maindeck and maybe its too soon to adress the elephant in the room

Yeah, Leyline is incredibly powerful. There are basically two ways to fight the combo - on the stack or out of the hand. Pact of Negation fights back on the stack, Leyline covers hand disruption. Depending on the meta, one can be more important than the other, so 3/0 and 2/3 are common splits, with the rest of the playsets in the board.

I've been off of AdNaus for a while, but I'm looking to run with something pretty close to this list on Friday - it's almost certainly a bad idea considering my local meta, but I love the deck enough to possibly throw one event.

Mainboard is basically the stock layout for mainboard Leylines - I like 3 main because I'm dealing with plenty of Thoughseize decks and it's nice splash damage to further lock up a good matchup against the 3 or so local burn pilots. I'm running Dreadship Reef as my 20th land, which I generally like when playing 4 Gemstone Mine and 0 City of Brass. Other considerations there would be Mikokoro for the reasonable amount of control, or just the safe 4th Temple of Deceit. Urborg is also fine, especially with the 4 Gemstone Mine. However, I tend to default to Reef in the flex land slot when playing the other flex card, Teachings over 3rd Spoils. This is possibly getting too cute with the Gifts sideboard package, but I like the idea of having Gifts be live for Visions, Sleight, Teachings and either a Spoils or Temple. Outside of being great with Gifts, it's a perfectly reasonable flex spot card on its own so I'm ok with having one in the main.

The sideboard is a bit of a mess right now, I'll admit. The Gifts board is something I've been wanting to try, as it wasn't really a thing the last time I sleeved up AdNaus and I think it's space worth exploring. Having a one-card combo that can catch people off-guard when you don't have enough mana represented for an Ad Nauseam win feels really big, and Blazing Archon feels like an autowin against some awful matchups like Humans and Infect. However, only having 9 slots outside of the Gifts package is obviously more constrained than I'm used to working with, so I'll have to sit down and figure out what matchups Gifts doesn't really help, so I can dedicate more to those matchups. In particular, I'm not sold on the 2 Bontu's, because a lot of the decks you want wraths against have games end the second you get Blazing Archon into play. I'm also worried about not having a card like Elspeth Sun's Champion or Grave Titan for the midrange decks, and that I might be leaning on the mainboard leylines a bit too hard there.

I would love to hear some thoughts from anyone who's played the Gifts sideboard, and also mainboard Leyline builds. Like I said, Gifts in AdNaus is new to me, and I've only played about 4 or 5 FNM-type events with mainboard Leylines.

Quote from Shelldell »

Personally I'm happy for Nathan's success and glad the deck's putting up results but I can't tell if his list is expertly crafted to his expected meta or just unfocused between the singleton Chord, 3x Oath / Felidar / Saheeli and the fairly GY-intensive top-end Of Lark and Titan. I'd be curious to read a write-up on his deckbuilding choices and matches.

Worship has come up here a few times and probably warrants further consideration.

Well, an SCG Classic is a pretty large event, so it's tuned to the meta at large rather than the 30-40 person LGS metas that I'd normally consider tuning to. Overall I really like the look of it, with Huntmaster and only 3x Oath. Bolt is pretty interesting from the board, especially considering there's no Staticaster.

Quote from maniospas »

Congrats to Nathan for the top8!
It's a bit too heavy on lategame threats for my liking, but maybe that was what the metagame was calling for. Actually, Pia & Kiran is a really good call against Affinity, which has become a thing again, but I keep all my doubts concerning double red.

Agreed that 2RR is tricky, but if you look at his manabase, it makes a lot of sense, he's pretty heavy toward red with Fire-Lit, Grove, Raging Ravine, and Steam Vents.

Quote from Shelldell »

How is Chord good with Titan? I'm not sure I follow there.

I think what he's saying is that even with one Felidar Guardian gone, you still have 4 creatures that will combo with Saheeli, so there's still enough of them that control can't kill every one, compared to chewing through 3 Felidars wouldn't be too tough. I don't think it's really that relevant, but I don't inherently disagree with Chord over 4th Guardian.

With regards to Harmonic Sliver, the card is definitely sweet, and it gives more incentive to play with Phantasmal Image (especially sweet with a Chord in the deck) so that's something I welcome.


EDIT:
Well, somehow I missed that there was another page, and only replied to page 17 stuff. I'll just edit in here rather than make another post.

As far as dorks, I think that they're definitely cuts against control. Sure, they can help with speed to get things underneath Cryptic/Snap-Leak/etc, but realistically we aren't set up to win that quickly against control decks anyway so the dorks are just air. Against midrange boarding out dorks follows the same logic as why Jund or Abzan will usually side out their targeted discard in mirrors - the games come down to the top of the deck, and you can't afford to have dead draws. Even against Shadow, we aren't a deck that they're looking to get quick kills on or Battle Rage out of the game - we can force them to go long. Comparing the likelyhood of comboing early against the Thoughtseize/Push/Terminate deck, going long sounds like a way better plan to me, so no dorks.

For Blood Moon, I still believe that this isn't a Blood Moon deck because we aren't built to take advantage of it in the same way that Skred, Ponza, or even Blue Moon are. It's fine as an "I win" against the right decks, but things like tricolor midrange or Shadow (which is really just tricolor midrange...) are concerned, Moon is just "ok" against those decks, so I think that it should stay in the board. I also think that having to play 3 Forest 2 Plains is more of a concession to the fact that you have Blood Moon in your deck rather than something that enables Moon. Also, it's somewhat self-defeating that Blood Moon or Magus is a known quantity from the board out of the GWRx creature toolbox decks,so opponents can very easily fetch around it to minimal downside. Especially because there are no land destruction effects (Ghost Quarter doesn't really count in this context) in the 75, Blood Moon can very easily do nothing against a lot of decks.

Duskwatch Recruiter is awkward because I think that he's being underrated, while also not at his best in this deck. For Abzan Company, I often think he's the best creature in the deck alongside Eternal Witness, and singlehandedly lets you stay in games that you'd otherwise have no business winning. Especially against Control or Midrange without an immediate clock on board, activating Recruiter is the best thing you can do short of hitting Witness off Company. However, in this deck, the lack of Company's cmc restriction means that it's very often going to be harder to activate him while playing another creature to the board if necessary. However, the flip side is better here, which wile not as big a deal is worth considering. Overall I'm not sure if he's good enough, but almost certainly he's better than Fauna Shaman.

Lastly, congrats on the top8, Nate. Glad to see you showing up in this thread.

3/3 split vs. 4/2 on Voice/Wall is something that would be hard to nail down in testing, and I think that it's close enough that I'll follow the conventional wisdom and go with 4 Voice then.

As far as the lands, you're absolutely right that Thicket can become a different land without the need to cast Kiki. This also opens me up to shaving to one Stomping Ground, and not worrying so much about every one of my lands hitting Stomping Ground. Right now I think that they can get cut for some combination of Flooded Strand, Horizon Canopy, and Temple Garden. I'm leaning slightly to Strand/Canopy right now, but double Canopy might be excessive.

For Sigarda, she's definitely a very powerful card against BGx, but I'm less comfortable jamming her in a world with plenty of Supreme Verdict and Gurmag Angler. Keranos might not be the right answer, but I'd lean more towards Chameleon Colossus or Whipserwood Elemental than Sigarda right now, depending on if I wanted a Shadow/BGx or UWx/BGx focused card.

Right now I think I'm happy with Sun Titan. The utility of being a combo piece with double Saheeli and also a finisher on its own is great. Also, I think that having one very powerful six-drop to find off evolving Felidar is good. I will admit that part of this is (slightly) due to the fact that Sun Titan has been one of my favorite cards from back when I first started playing, and I love my Japanese prerelease copy. In a meta where I wanted to lower my curve, I would probably put a Huntmaster in this slot, though more realistically I'd play a different deck.

Teeg is definitely a very powerful card, and I'll admit that there should be at least one copy in the board. It can probably get filed with the Ethersworn Canonist in a "mistakes made because I'm in a Chord/Company deck" frame of mind. He'll pretty safely take the spot of the second Rule of Law effect in my board moving forward.

As far as Archmage and Unified Will go, I think that having some number of counterspells is definitely worth it in the board. Like you said, it's extremely hard to cover as much ground as Unified Will and Negate can, so I personally think that they're somewhat of a necessary evil. Holding up 1U is awkward, but as somewhat of a consolation prize, the Unified Will matchups (other than burn) are often less about jamming Finks or Courser on 3 and more about comboing, so it's slightly more bearable.

Magus is definitely fine against tricolor midrange decks, sometimes it's just going to be a liability when drawn, but overall it's relatively low cost for the ability to have a blowout. Be aware of your opponents though, often having to respect a Moon effect is going to be nearly as strong as landing the Moon. Against Eldrazi Tron and Bant, I would 100% bring in every Blood Moon I had. Eldrazi Tron has the capability to go so far over the top of what we're doing with Planeswalkers, Smasher, and massive Ballista that we want both the dorks and Blood Moons to leverage any speed advantage we can get - even if Moon is far from a hard lock, buying a couple turns is immense. Bant Eldrazi has pretty much the greediest manabase that exists in Modern, and Blood Moon is absolutely backbreaking against them, as they're basically a 4 color non-red deck. Add in the fact that they play two basics and zero fetches to find them in the first couple turns, Moon is basically unbeatable - even if I wanted to board my dorks out (I don't in this matchup) I would still have Moon as an autowin. It's also worth noting that neither one of these decks have the critical mass of removal/discard/counters that make manadorks especially bad.

Also, two other notes on Blood Moon. First, I took a quick look at your sideboarding chart a few posts back, and it looks pretty good but I would note what you're taking out as that's just as important. Other than disagreeing with Moon against Shadow and Junk, the only other thing I'd say is that you should 100% bring in Blood Moon against Ad Nauseam. The deck only has two basics with zero fetches, and whenever I'm playing Ad Naus I find it harder to beat than Chalice, Eidolon, or Stony because it destroys my ability to cantrip for Echoing Truth or other answers. The other thing is that you might want to consider a different sideboard card for the Blood Moon spot. I think that Fulminator and Avalanche Riders are underwhelming, but Crumble to Dust is a very strong contender for the slot. Generally it's better against Gx Tron, comparable against Eldrazi Tron, and good against UWx where Moon isn't even worth bringing in. The tradeoff is that it's a bit worse against Valakut decks, and not generally worth boarding against Bant Eldrazi or Ad Nauseam. If your chart of decks in your metagame is accurate, then I would probably stick on Moon but it's worth considering for the future.

Also, I figure that I might as well share the (very slightly) changed list that I might play tomorrow if I decide audible off of Storm. Still thinking about Misty over the Horizon Canopy, and I'd have a Linvala on me to swap into the board over Keranos depending on which players I see showing up 5-10 minutes before the event starts, but overall I'm fairly confident in this list.

Last night was the first time I got around to playing the Saheeli version of the general creature-toolbox shell. However, I'm far from a stranger to non-Saheeli builds - after tons of events on variants of Kiki-chord, Angel Chord, and a million Abzan Company builds over the years, I figured it was about time I sleeved some Felidar Guardians. Here's the list I played:



Some notes on individual cards:

• Kiki-Jiki: Kiki is probably the card I'm most undecided on in the 75. Obviously he's a 5th combo piece with Guardian that can be Evolved into, but Guardian is much weaker with Kiki than Restoration Angel is. He also warps the mana around him a bit, necessitating 2nd Stomping Ground and Fire-Lit Thicket while preventing me from playing Misty instead of Mesa, and 1 Strand over a Foothills. Still, a Kiki on board that doesn't get immediately removed will probably win the game.
• Mulldrifter: It didn't take me that long to realize that as much as I love Mulldrifter, it just isn't doing enough here. Five mana is the sweet spot for power, with Tusk, Lark, Keranos, Kiki, Sigarda, Gearhulk, Angel of Sanctions... there just isn't room to justify Mulldrifter, and you also aren't going to Evolve to it nearly often enough to justify the fact that 99% of the time you're playing Divination that you can find with Oath.
• Mainboard 3-Drops: Between Finks, Courser, Tracker, Reflector Mage, Eternal Witness, Renegade Rallier, Fairgrounds Warden, Blade Splicer, Knight of the Reliquary, Spell Queller, and others, there are tons and tons of options for three drops. I think that Finks is the best because it helps with the painful 4-color manabase, has synergy with Felidar to reset the persist, and is the second-best 3-drop to Evolve after Blade Splicer. Rallier is overall a very flexible card with Oath, Voice, ramping with fetches, etc. Witness was almost a second Rallier, but the ability to get Path and discarded Evolution as well as larger permanents back made me willing to try the split - though the Witness didn't come up in the games I played. Rallier and Witness also play well with Evolution, providing most of their value up front.
• Ethersworn Canonist: This is just a holdout from playing Chord of Calling decks, where having a 2-mana Rule of Law is important. If I play the deck again, it will definitely be a second Eidolon. My meta has a ton of Storm though, so if yours doesn't you can probably just play one Eidolon and have another board slot.
• Keranos: The classic "GBx can't beat this" card - while I still think it's quite powerful, Shadow is a slightly different brand of midrange compared to the old Jund decks, and while I haven't played Keranos against Shadow enough, I highly suspect it's less potent. If you're confident in the control matchups, this could very easily switch to a Chameleon Colossus or similar to be more potent against Shadow.
• Thrun: The best card against control, and a perfectly fine 4-mana evolve in non-blue grindy matchups where you can leave in your Evolutions. Personal bias, but I think that pretty much every fair green deck needs a strong reason if they aren't going to board Thrun.

Notable Exclusions:

• Lotus Cobra: This card is, in my mind, just super meh due to the amount of things that have to go right in order for it to be any good - not the type of card that I'm looking to put in a deck with lots of 1-ofs. Add the fact that it evolves very poorly, and it was an easy cut for me. However, it's quite good when it's good though, so I can respect playing 1-2 copies, even if I don't like it.
• 22nd Land: Yep, I should be playing this without Lotus Cobra. Probably a Horizon Canopy.
• Huntmaster/Vizier of the Menagerie: The best fair 4-drops outside of Thrun. Personally, I think that these are significantly worse compared to the 5-mana options that I'm willing to accept the fact that Wall of Omens won't evolve as well as it could.
• Engineered Explosives: Along with the Canonist, this was my other big mental slip building my sideboad - there's no real reason that a 4-color deck shouldn't be packing at least one.
• Removal Creature: Other than explosives, the one thing I wish that I had access to was an Angel of Sanctions or Fairgrounds Warden. An Angel will probably take the Mulldrifter spot if I play the deck again soon, and I considered a Gearhulk in the side.
• About 1,000 sideboard cards: My board is fairly tuned to the meta I was expecting, and I could probably list at least 50 cards in 10 minutes that would be more than reasonable sideboard options for this deck, and my sideboard is tuned for the meta I was expecting to play. I would recommend you do the same, and avoid playing this deck at large tournaments or online because you can't effectively target as well.

Thoughts on Dorks and Blood Moon:
Obviously I haven't been following this deck extremely closely, or for that long, but from reading through the past few pages, I think that people are boarding and using Blood Moon incorrectly. Mostly this is because of the interaction between Moon and Manadorks during sideboarding. In my mind, two things need to be true in order to bring Blood Moon in. First and most obvious, Blood Moon needs to provide a strong lock against our opponent. Second, the matchup needs to be one in which we're willing to leave Birds and Noble in the deck. Dorks are a clear necessity in Modern for speed, but as soon as our opponent is interacting with us in a significant way, they quickly become the worst cards in the deck - especially after sideboard where we have to fight through more interaction. Against almost every single deck with Push/Path/Thoughtseize/Terminate/Decay/Cryptic/etc, the first cards I'm cutting from my deck are Birds and Hierarch, because I want every card to actually do something. Blood Moon, on the other hand, requires the manadorks to be functional in any real capacity for our 4-5 color pile of a manabase. Against decks like Gx Tron, Valakut, Ad Nauseam, etc. this is just fine, because we need the velocity from the dorks, and Blood Moon is strong. However, against Junk, Jund, Shadow, or any other grindy 3-color midrange deck, siding in Blood Moon essentially says that we're willing to put 6 near-useless cards in our deck to facilitate a 2-of that might win us the game if we happen to draw it at the same time as a dork (that lives), it doesn't get discarded or hit by float mana decay, and they haven't fetched or drawn the basic they need. Overall, I think that leaving in their manadorks too often is the biggest and most common mistake that I see GWx toolbox players make, especially in decks without township.

Short Tournament Report:
Round One: Esper PWs/Tapout Control 2-0
Game one I keep a risky one-lander with a Hierarch and Oath of Nissa, and proceed to immediately get my Noble pushed and whiff a land off the oath. Fortunately, I draw a fetch turn three and get to deploy the Walls and Voices from my hand. My opponent has a relatively slow start with discard and removal. Felidar Guardians and Rallier let me get 6-7 Oath of Nissa ETBs over the course of the game and grind through, and eventually combo. It only clears Gideon Jura off of his triple-Gideon plus Emblem board, but he doesn't find an answer on his turn and concedes.
SB: -4 Birds, -2 Noble, -1 Evolution || +Thragtusk, +Keranos, +Glen Elendra, +Reveillark, +Path, +Thrun, +Staticaster
Game two his removal and discard heavy suite lines up even more poorly against a pile of value creatures than they did game one. He treads water with a couple Lingering Souls for a while, but eventually I draw Kiki and go infinite - basically a formality though, as he's facing Thrun, Keranos, and a 2/2 Archmage while hellbent.

Round Two: Burn 2-0
Game one, I keep a decent hand on the play, but the turn one Goblin Guide from my opponent makes the three shocklands in my hand look pretty bad. Fortunately, my opponent's draw is a bit land-heavy and a couple points from Courser let me just barely combo turn 5 at one life.
SB: -Titan, -Kiki, -Mulldrifter, -1 Saheeli || +2 Unified Will, +Path, +Thragtusk
The worst possible first turns happen, with him going Guide into Searing Blaze on my turn one Noble. I have to go all-in on Finks evolve to Thragtusk on my turn four at 6 life, and fortunately he doesn't have the Skullcrack.

Round Three: Storm 2-0
Game one was honestly just a race, I have a Path for Electromancer on his upkeep and proceed to win on turn 4. Nothing to say other than a great die roll win and opening hand.
SB: -Titan, -Kiki, -2 Finks, -Courser, -Mulldrifter || +2 Unified Will, +Glen Elendra, + Eidolon, +Canonist, +Path
Game two I have turn three Evolve a Wall of Omens into Eidolon. My opponent checks his sideboard to confirm that he didn't have any way to get it off the table, and conceded. I was very surprised, as my opponent is on Storm every week, and I would have expected that Eidolon was on his radar when boarding. Fortunate for me, because revealing his hand shows that I was extremely dead if he had Echoing Truth/Wipe Away/Dismember.

Round Four; Small turnout, ID

Overall, a small tournament and only six games played, so not a ton to go off. More than anything, I think that it showed how much I got to hammer my round one opponent with sideboard cards because I knew I didn't really need to worry about board cards for Valakut or Dredge.

Personally, I'm going to keep Boonweaver in my list instead of replacing it with hulk, with the rationale that Hulk grabbing Grand Abolisher + Academy Rector lets you beat grave hate that comes in the form of Relic, Scooze, Tormod's Crypt etc. I'm also in agreement that a card that only facilitates a win is useless, but I'm keeping in Zulaport Cutthroat due to the fact that having access to a win condition out of incidental combos such as Saffi + Loyal Retainers, Fiend Hunter/Saffi + Sun Titan, etc. is fairly valuable.

That said, I think I'm going to be moving away from Karador to a UG/BW Partner list for Hulk combo, as blue has a bunch of useful tools if you're focused entirely on the combo. Karador probably still grinds better though, so I'd say it comes down to what you're playing against on a regular basis.

Played Ponza for the first time last night, figured I could write down some thoughts. I played with the following list:



A couple notes on the deck construction:
I actually subbed out 3 Bonfires and a Scavenging Ooze last-second for the Bolts and Dark-Dwellers. I've played Bonfire in the sideboard in Nykthos Green, and even when it only shows up in games where it's good, and in a deck that can cast it for 4+ on a consistent basis, I've never been impressed. Still, I might be totally off the mark here. In order to maintain interaction against creature decks I added Bolt in their place, and at that point figured I had enough cmc <= 3 instants and sorceries to justify a singleton Goblin Dark-Dwellers. I was fairly happy with the sideboard, as I brought in every card except for the Sudden Shocks and Ancient Grudges, and there were definitely decks in the room those would have been good against - plus I think they're two of the most important cards, considering the deck's weaknesses.

Overall I went 3-1, 6-1 in games.

Round 1, I showed up late and had to take a loss. Mondays are 6:30, Thursday is 7:00. Whoops.

Round 2: Mono Green Stompy 2-0 (1-1)
Not the ideal matchup for a Blood Moon deck, but I think in general they're still fairly weak to land destruction, with Dungrove Elder and a low land count.

Game 1 on the draw:
Because I showed up 15 minutes late, I got to see what deck he was on, and mulliganed an otherwise good turn 2 Blood Moon hand. My 6 was great, and I got to curve Dork -> Stone Rain -> Acid-Moss -> Acid-Moss -> Inferno Titan while he did nothing.

Game 2 on the draw:
My opponent mulliganed to 4 and ended the game with no permanents in play, not a ton to say here.

Board: +3 Anger, +2 Kitchen Finks, +Dismember || -4 Blood Moon, -2 Acid-Moss
Fairly straightforward, taking out the dead Moons and clunky LD for great removal, and Finks lines up great against his threats. I considered taking the other two Acid-Moss out for Sudden Shocks, but I didn't want to take out too much ramp and leave Inferno Titans stranded in my hand, or too much LD and make the remaining Stone Rains awkward and ineffective. Relic would also be a consideration, as it shuts down Rancor and Strangleroot Geist, but I don't think that it would be better than any card I could take out, maybe Primal Command. If I saw him board into Kitchen Finks game two, they would come in for sure.

Round 3: Boggles 2-1 (2-1)
Another fairly awful matchup, as Ponza packs pretty minimal interaction that actually matters, but at least they're still super soft to Blood Moon and Land destruction. I caught a glimpse of him playing Glistener Elf, which while not totally unheard of in the boggles sideboard, is definitely unconventional and made me slightly unsure of what his list would look like.

Game 1 on the draw:
He opened on a double Kor Spiritdancer hand, which I managed to stop with Bolt into Beast Within before he could get an Umbra on them. A second Beast Within took out the 3/3 that he suited up with Coronet + Rancor + Ethereal Armor, but he had gained so much life against my threat-light draw that he had time (especially with a couple paths) to reassemble a big boggle that I couldn't beat.

Game 2 on the play:
I kept a good hand that had no threats, but double land destruction by turn three, then drew into a castable turn 5 titan. My opponent bricked his draw steps, and ended the game with only a Gladecover and Spider Umbra in play. After the match, my opponent told me that he had Suppression Field in hand, and if he hit a second land my Arbor Elf + triple Fetchland draw would have been locked out.

Game 3 on the draw:
My opponent's three lands were double Horizon Canopy and Razorverge Thicket, so I got to lock him out on a turn 2 Blood Moon. Awkwardly it was off Stomping Grounds, Mountain and Birds, so I didn't have double green. Still, he only managed to make a 3/2 flier with Gryff's Boon and Spider Umbra before getting locked, so it wasn't enough to contest a Stormbreath Dragon that ended up going monstrous and winning the game.

Board: +3 Anger of the Gods, +Fracturing Gust || -Dark-Dwellers, -2 Primal Command, -1 Acid-Moss
After game 2, on the draw: -2 Thragtusk, +2 Kitchen Finks
Primal Command and Dark-Dwellers are honestly just too slow here. Anger isn't very good either, but there's some small chance that I can snipe a boggle with it on turn 2/3. A long shot, but still at least possible. Going back on the draw after game 2, I swapped Thragtusks out for Kitchen Finks as they accomplish similar things while Finks comes down sooner. I'm still not sure about that, it may have been correct to keep the tusks, or even immediately board to finks, but I'm not sure.

Round 4: UWR Nahiri 2-0 (3-1)
This is the sort of matchup that I'm not entirely sure of. On one hand, they're soft to Moon and land destruction, but counterspells, Path, and Snapcaster are all amazing against our deck. It's probably fairly draw-dependent, but I just don't have the experience here.

Game 1 on the draw:
My hand had a dork and double Blood Moon, which would have shut him out, but a loss of the die roll (for the third time in a row) meant that he got to Mana Leak into Clique to handle both of them. From there, I didn't have enough land destruction to keep him off of a color or triple blue for Cryptic as they kept getting pointed at Collonades, but he didn't draw Nahiri and eventually the Threats in my deck managed to beat out his answers. This game also featured some of the most interesting Primal Command decisions that I've made, and I've played a ton of Primal Commands from Nykthos Green. The first of the two searched out a Stormbreath Dragon, which I based most of my gameplan around resolving. The other mode on the first one was to shuffle his graveyard, as it was fairly stacked for Snapcasters and he had just scried double top with Serum Visions - not a very intuitive play at first glance, but in context I think it was much better than sending a land to top for the "time walk" that was effectively the same as just making him discard a card. The second Primal Command searched out an Infernal Titan, and I got once again presented with the choice between putting a land on top of his library and shuffling my graveyard into my library. My graveyard at this point was fairly stacked, holding a Thragtusk, Primal Command and two Inferno Titans, so a very significant chunk of the threats in my deck. However, in this case, my gameplan still revolved around resolving the Stormbreath Dragon, so considering I had just resolved Primal Command, I could figure that there was a decent chance that the coast was clear as things stood. Therefore, I chose instead to place a Spirebluff Canal on top in order to (most likely) guarantee that I could win the game with a Stormbreath. I ended up getting in a hit with the Dragon, which put him in the range of Bolt + Titan ETB. Overall, he used a lot of his Bolts and Helixes in pairs to deal with Titans, or with Clique to trade fully with Thragtusk, so a couple Arbor Elves ended up getting in for significant chip damage.

Game 2 on the draw:
I didn't see a Blood Moon this game, but I had enough land destruction with a Stone Rain, Acid-Moss and a Dark-Dwellers to keep him at three lands or under until he was under enough pressure that he couldn't afford to either play Nahiri or hold up Cryptic. I opened with a Thrun in my starting hand, and ended up having a couple points during the game where I had the opportunity to either resolve another threat like Baloth or Thragtusk, which allowed me to more effectively beat his countermagic, but potentially exposed my Thrun to gettting hit by Vendillion Clique. Overall, I think that because the deck typically plays only 1 Clique, sometimes 2 after sideboard, it was more effective to resolve other creatures while windows were open. Still, there's an argument that can be made that I'm basically unbeatable once I've landed Thrun against a fairly land-light opponent, so both lines are worth considering in my mind. The deciding factor for me was that I would have still been in a fairly strong position even if my Thrun had been Cliqued. If I thought that I would have had difficulty after a Clique on Thrun, then I would have cast him as soon as I had 6 mana and he could regenerate through a Supreme Verdict. Funnily enough, the turn I finally cast Thrun happened at the exact same time that people were talking to the Monogreen Stompy player about including Thrun in his sideboard.

Board: +3 Relic, +Thrun, +2 Kitchen Finks || -2 Birds, -Arbor Elf, -3 Bolt
Fairly straightforward boarding, just replacing cards that are low impact with hard to deal with threats and Relic to deal with Snapcaster. In retrospect, I should have probably kept in the Bolts and instead taken out the other three Arbor Elves, as Bolt kills Nahiri if she drops and minuses, and makes sure that I can't randomly die to Clique and Snapcaster. On the play, I think I would prefer dorks as they allow Blood Moon or Stone Rain to come down underneath Mana Leak, but because they can't do that on the draw they're probably too low-impact to warrant keeping and I'd rather cut all six. Utopia Sprawl stays because we can't cut all of the ramp and reliably cast our threats, and it's the only one mana ramp that doesn't die to Lightning Bolt.


Overall my impression of the deck was fairly favorable despite the fact that I ran into a monocolor aggro deck and Boggles, which I would expect to be two of my worst matchups. In all honesty, I probably got fairly lucky in the Boggles matchup, but once again I'm still not confident enough to call a definite impression on any matchup based on two or three games. Mostly, I'm looking for thoughts on my list and some of the more interesting plays. I think that I'm leaning towards keeping the Bolts and Dark-Dwellers, though I'd be interested in hearing what others think about Bolt vs. Bonfire for dealing with the small creature decks of the format. The other consideration I'm toying with is including a single Eternal Witness, potentially in either the Dark-Dwellers or a Bolt slot. I think that Witness is strong because of its flexibility here - because land destruction is more powerful when rebought to come in pairs, the deck contains a small number of individually powerful threats, and being generally mana-hungry means just getting a fetchland can be good. So Witness counts as a slower version of the three types of cards, mana, LD, and threat. Finally, and the thought that prompted the consideration is the fact that if you're ahead on board at all, Primal Command throwing a land on top and fetching Witness basically sets up back-to-back time walks. I'm also going to slot in a Chandra Flamecaller over a titan to increase the diversity of my threats, and a Cinder Glade over one of the Stomping Grounds because there are enough basics to make it pretty much a straight upgrade, and my error that it wasn't in there in the first place.

My big takeaway from this tournament is that I'm irritated about the fact that I didn't show up on time in order to go for the 4-0.

Awesome tournament report - I'm, definitely revisiting the idea of mainboard Swan Song over extra cantrips. You explained things fairly well, but the one thing I'd like to ask is about the manabase. I've been running 6 fetch, 4 Seachrome Coast. How did the extra fetches treat you? I can't imagine it's a massive difference, but I imagine it's three extra lifea significant amount of the time.

Quote from CurdBros »

Do have a Wuestion for you guys though. What's better:

1. Cloudstone Curio + two Walkers

2. One Walker + Temur Sabertooth + Felidar Guardian

Both are 3-card combos in a similar shell.

the Walker Combo deck would become more like:

(decklist)

Given the proposed lists, I would say that the curio version seems preferable, at least in concept. Guardian just doesn't do enough with the rest of the devotion staples compared to some of the things that Curio lets you do. Especially if you're looking to play x-cost creatures like Genesis Hydra and Walking Ballista, they're much better with Curio.

What people have been missing in the discussion of Path to Exile over Dispatch is considering when we should be boarding in the removal spell as well as what targets we're looking to hit with it. As a fast combo deck, we shouldn't be diluting our deck for removal spells unless they're absolutely necessary - I'm not casting Path or Dispatch on a Goyf. Rather, the targets we need to hit are specific hate cards - Eidolon of Rhetoric, Eidolon of the Great Revel, or similar hate creatures. For these, we're most likely going to cast removal immediately before going off, in which case the land is not as relevant.

More importantly, however, is the opportunity cost of playing your equipment before Paladin or Sram hits the board. Yes, the deck plays a lot of them, but you need some in hand to get started. Imagine a world where you had the opportunity to play this card:

Shields to Plowshares - W
Instant
As an additional cost to cast ~, discard three cards.
Exile target creature.

That's the opportunity cost we're talking about here. Sure, you'll get them back off of a Retract, but your chances to chain Retracts gets much lower when the opening burst is much smaller.

Finally, consider the two most noteworthy hate creatures, the Eidolons. Against Great Revel, playing Dispatch will cost you an additional six life through enabling metalcraft over just casting Path. Versus Rhetoric, you'll have to set up three of your turns casting one equipment a turn and then finally Dispatch on their turn. Considering my most-played and most successful deck in Modern has been Company with a side of Kiki-Chord, I can almost guarantee you that over that period of time they've managed to find Sculler/Sin Collector/Spellskite... or just kill you.

So, as the long story condensed, Dispatch is pretty awful in the deck when you consider that we have no need for a random removal spell to hit just any creature, we need efficient removal for very specific creatures. I'm sorry if it came out as a jumbled rant, but I'm getting sick of people suggesting Dispatch just because there are a bunch of artifacts in the deck.


As a more positive note, I'm glad that I got my copies of Paladin/Retract on Sram's spoiler day, as supply is really starting to shrivel up.


EDIT:

Quote from the_falsehate »

Okay folks, it's time to start talking about the mirror breaker. It seems there will be more Cheeri0s than Burn in my local meta within a month's time. Ideas?

If you're really looking for a mirror-breaker, I would potentially consider Ethersworn Canonist, as it locks them into one Retract while it will bounce with your first Retract and no longer interfere. Otherwise, I'd just up your Path count as they're applicable in a wider range of matchups.

On Leyline, I certainly agree that it's underwhelming, and not something I'd mulligan very hard for. However, the other options available are leaning heavily on Noxious Revival to rebuy engines, or fringe cards such as Pure Intentions. Neither options seems especially appealing, so Leyline may be the best available. The only other choice that I could see being effective is Swan Song, but as with Pure Intentions, leaving it up when I want to be casting other spells like cantrips or Favor of the Mighty during setup turns seems difficult.

As to Be_lakor regarding extractions, I'm aware that Surgical Extractions gets countered by (but also counters) Noxious Revival. However, it's more the threat of Lost Legacy or Slaughter Games picking off Grapeshot that I'm worried about, as they're both cards I've seen plenty of. My own fault for playing too much Ad Nauseam, I suppose. While we can theoretically win underneath them, their presence is probably going to put my on the Hysteria + Mentor or Gaveleer plan, but I don't know if it belongs main or side, as both are fairly tight for space.

Finally, for those of you who have tested with Aether Grid, what were your impressions? While it has potential, in my mind the upside maxes at pinging for 2-3 a turn starting on turn 3, which isn't exactly relevant for either a clock or removal in the matchups we would want it. Affinity can use the card for cleanup work, while Lantern forces extremely long games. We do neither so the card seems underwhelming. That said, I haven't tested with it yet, so I'll leave myself open to being persuaded of its effectiveness.