While there's a bit of discussion going on about BW E&T, I'll share something I wrote recently. I've also posted this on Reddit.
Although my writing in the past has generally focused on tournament reports, I figured it'd be a lot more useful to write something that pertains to general experience with BW E&T and my thoughts on how to play the deck.
While specific decklists and sideboard guides are always helpful, I think it's valuable to spend some time thinking about how to approach games and matchups. This is my attempt at articulating those thoughts. Hopefully you find this worth reading!
Hi all! It's been a while. I recently played in the main event at GP Toronto with BW Eldrazi & Taxes. I always enjoy writing thorough tournament reports, so I'd like to share this one with you:
I included some thoughts on the Modern metagame, deck choices, and other tidbits that I think are insightful. Hopefully this is helpful and informative to some of you!
Hi all! I've posted here previously with a link to some of my decklists and notes. My apologies for not following up with deeper thoughts, despite having had many in the interim.
I've been tinkering a bit more with the deck, and have generated quite a number of ideas, ranging from reasonable to outright silly/insane (which I can share at another time). For starters though, I put together what I dubbed a "clean" version of BUG eternal command, tweaked to take advantage of Assassin's Trophy. See below:
I'm not 100% sure if the above is correct (i.e. what I actually played), but it's at most +/- one maindeck card. I went 4-0 at yesterday's FNM, beating mono-red prison (2-0), mono-blue tron (2-1), GW valuetown (2-0) and KCI (2-1).
Some loose thoughts about certain card choices, concepts, and ideas:
1) Aether Vial. I've played with this card nonstop for something like 5 years now, having played a ton of D&T in Modern and Legacy. As a result, I am always starkly wary of how much of liability it can be in the midgame. As a result, I've tried to think of numerous ways to mitigate the possibility of drawing useless Vials in the midgame.
2) To this end, Collective Brutality is an amazing card, and I think less than 2 is a mistake. There are lots of reasons for this:
The main conundrum that has plagued the BUG colours in Modern for eternity is that even though there is a lot of natural synergy between those colours - there is actually a lot of conflicting aspects as well, particular among the best cards of those colours. The idea of midrange naturally suggests taking advantage of black cards like Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize and Liliana of the Veil, while blue offers countermagic and Snapcaster Mage. I'm of the belief that these cards don't work well together (hand disruption + LotV incentivizes depleting both players' hands and winning via sheer card quality, which simultaneously conflicts with Cryptic Command, not to mention Aether Vial haha), so you have to pick a primary approach and stick with it. So by virtue of building around Aether Vial/Eternal Witness/Cryptic Command in the first place, those cards are out of the question (without being excessively fancy). In this way, Collective Brutality fills all the gaps. It is an outlet for extra Aether Vials, it's spot removal, and to the above point, it offers hand disruption without pulling the deck heavily into that direction. It also plays well with Delirium (more on this below).
3) Traverse the Ulvenwald. I strongly think that this card belongs in this deck - for multiple very important reasons:
i) Again, by virtue of having Aether Vial, extra Aether Vials should go to the graveyard if possible. This makes (or should make) Delirium an easy thing to obtain.
ii) More importantly, Eternal Command is a deck that simultaneously plays Vial while playing few creatures - which is self conflicting in a way. Being able to traverse for a creature bridges the gap between taking advantage of Vial and the low creature count. Not to mention the selection as well.
iii) Another self-conflicting aspect of the deck is that by virtue of being a Vial deck, the land count is low. The majority of the deck takes advantage of the immense mana advantage you get against the opponent (Vial cheats on mana, spells are cheap, etc), which incentivizes a low land count. But at the same time, you need to hit your fourth landdrop to play the primary card in the deck! Lots of internal conflict. Again, Traverse is the perfect midgame card to glue everything together - it serves as an additional landdrop if need be, it can find the creature you need, it can be flashed back, etc.
I've tried a wild assortment of ideas to take this idea further, including:
i) Courser of Kruphix. It's an enchantment for Delirium and Goyf, plays nicely with Confidant - both by seeing the top card as well as lifegain, and increases chances of shuffling away dead topdecks like Vial. But ultimately I decided against it, due to the deck naturally not wanting to play a lot of lands. Same logic goes against playing Tireless Tracker main.
ii) Mishra's Bauble. I still like the idea, but at the end of the day, I figured there was simply not enough room in the deck. If I had the balls to shave a land or two, I might include 2x of them or something.
iii) Liliana, the Last Hope. Another card type, plays well with the graveyard. Decided against it for now in the interest of keeping the maindeck "clean". Could see myself cutting a land for her.
iv) Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Same as above, but too mana-costly. The main reason for not trying it maindeck was that it strays away too much from the deck's primary game-plan. So I decided to try it (for now) in the board, in the event that my post-board plan shifts to grinding more.
v) Bitterblossom. Enchantment card type, and is a threat. A great turn 2 follow-up to Vial. But I decided to put it in the board, since its impact varies drastically based on matchup.
vi) Search for Azcanta. I picked this maindeck instead of Bitterblossom because pre-board, the opponent doesn't have as much graveyard hate. In that case, it also serves as a pseudo land-drop (and blue!). It's equally, if not more, potent as a turn 2 follow-up to Vial. The big reason here though is that I want the maindeck to abuse the graveyard, and have the option to shift the deck away from the graveyard post-board if need be (i.e. Bitterblossom out of the board since it's a non-graveyard-based threat that can just win the game on its own).
4) Dark Confidant. Maybe this card doesn't necessarily need a discussion, but I think there are some subtleties here. The main thing is that as with all Aether Vial decks, with an early Vial, mana expenditure is massively accelerated - but as a result, gas depletes similarly quickly. Dark Confidant is the perfect card to bridge this gap. There also seems to be an interesting dynamic where it's a removal lightning rod, and thus makes for a very good early game Eternal Witness target.
I won't comment in specifics about the sideboard, since the majority of it are just random experimental choices. But I think the following are important to consider:
i) 4 Leyline of the Void. I think this is absolutely a no-brainer, especially right now. There are so many strong graveyard-based decks right now (Dredge, Hollow One, Mardu Pyromancer, KCI, etc) that you simply cannot beat otherwise. It's an auto-win there. And in line with the aforementioned logic with Delirium and Traverse, there are plenty of ways of take advantage of extra copies later in the game.
ii) Despite that, I think it's worthwhile to incorporate non-graveyard-based win conditions post-board. Bitterblossom against Control/Midrange, planeswalkers, creatures (not sure Tireless Tracker is actually that good), etc. And the rest is just flex. Appropriate countermagic, board sweepers for assuming the control position.
All in all, the deck is powerful, and is flexible enough to re-configure into all sorts of approaches post-board. For example: you can play a tempo-oriented game against Tron by sticking a threat and countering you way to victory. You can outgrind midrange/control opponents. You can play the control role against aggro decks.
This was by no means comprehensive, but hopefully this was insightful. Happy to discuss further, answer questions, etc.
Hi all! I have never posted in this thread until now, but hopefully this will be a welcome contribution.
I finished in first place at a ~46 person PPTQ in Toronto last weekend.
I wrote up a tournament report that you can find here.
I also posted a link to it on Reddit in r/ModernMagic, which you can find here. There has been a number of questions, to which I tried to answer thoughtfully.
Hope this is somewhat helpful, or at the very least just more data to the collection.
Decided to take this deck through my first Modern Challenge today. Ended 5-3 for 39th place out of 132 (apparently I had terrible breakers). I want to blame my losses on poor draws from me and lucky draws from my opponent, as I can't think of too many misplays (and the misplays I made, I ended up winning those games somehow.) My matchups were:
Round 1) W - Ad Naus (DaSneakyPete)
Round 2) W - Mardu Pyro
Round 3) L - G Tron - This came down to game 3 where he had one turn to hit tron, and he did
Round 4) L - Living End - Really awkward game 3 where I lost a game to hard cast fatties when I had a RIP on board and could come up with no pressure
Round 5) W - Cheerios
Round 6) L - UR Control/Titi
Round 7) W - Hollow one
Round 8) W - UW Miracles
Deck felt good, a couple awkward draws and games where it came right down to the wire and my opponents had it. Oh well! I ran a single damping sphere side, think I'll make it 2.
Nice results! Do you think you could share how you sideboarded in your matchups?
@SpiderSpace
If I could go back and prepare for another big tournament like Regionals, I would first ask myself the following questions:
Am I happy with 4 Dismembers, or do I want some maindeck insurance against either Blood Moon or Planeswalkers?
Do I want a little bit more hedge against Humans?
Do I want a little bit more hedge against Mardu Pyromancer? If so, would that be by attacking their graveyard or presenting threats or better-aligned removal?
Do I want a little bit more hedge in grindy matchups like Jund?
At this moment, the answers to those questions are.. yes (4 Dismembers main), no (though any sideboard changes that incidentally improve the Humans matchup is welcome), yes and yes (the reason being that this deck is very good at fighting unfair decks with "unfair" lock pieces, it's very weak to fair midrange strategies).
In terms of exact changes, I kind of feel like I want to jam either a Blade Splicer or Matter Reshaper somewhere in the 75 (probably at the expense of either one of the small or big Thalia's or the 4th Dismember). As for the sideboard, like you say, I can't see any direct one or two changes to the sideboard that really satisfy me. I think as is, the sideboard accomplishes everything it needs to, but with very little wiggle-room. Though I do think much more drastic and impactful changes can be made to the board if we can even just somewhat rely on getting WW mana, but I haven't tried enough to really know that as of yet.
And I know this isn't the answer you might be looking for, but my mind does wander off about the possibilities of RW or maybe even GW (since GW can take advantage of 4x Horizon Canopy better). RW being able to use Anger of the Gods (which adds removal to the board and alleviates the Honor Guard slots) is a big boon, and Nahiri might be a good option as a single card that provides both grind and removal for problem enchantments.
Other cards (not mentioned in recent posts) that are on my short-list to try are Spellskite and Timely Reinforcements.
Will continue posting as I test more and/or have more thoughts ^^.
@redtwister
Thanks for the compliment! I really enjoy writing, I usually do a tournament report every time I come back from an event (most of them are formalized and posted in my blog). My apologies about the poor scholarship, at the time I played in the tournament, I had just found this thread, and didn't actually go back to look at the first page.
I was overall satisfied with my play (aside from all the things I thought/realized in retrospect were misplays or wrong decisions). Thankfully the deck is mostly comprised of cards I've played with an extensive amount already. But I am still getting a feel for it - compared to D&T and 4c Loam (with which I've played with Chalice), this deck has a much higher ceiling for doing unfair things, which demands a different approach and skillset when it comes to evaluating hands to keep/mulligan.
= = =
Here is the SCG Regionals Top 8 metagame (I compiled the data and made this figure). One minor surprise I had was how well colourless Eldrazi did - most of them were the Serum Powder/Chalice version of the deck. Their strong results are a good indication of the current strength and position of unfair SSG/Chalice/TKS/Reality Smasher. This is a good sign, since Thalia Stompy is built on the same premise. Compared to that, I think playing cards like Thalia/Arbiter and having white sideboard cards ought to be much stronger. All I'm saying is - I think these are all signs further pointing towards this deck being a good one in the current format.
@bmchu168
At first I was mildly skeptical, but after thinking about it some more, I am intrigued with the idea of a WR version of the deck. The major thing the deck gains is a much better Mardu Pyromancer matchup (as well as better matchup against Humans and Affinity, though we have a plan/tools for that), which is one of our weaker matchups overall. Though this comes at the cost of a weaker manabase of course - maybe. I think Horizon Canopy is one of our strongest lands (unfair decks tend to have a lot of "air" in them, which Canopy helps with), and losing out on them is a real cost. On the other hand, filterlands might be a great tool, since they provide colourless mana as well as singlehandedly provide two coloured mana.
I think it's a good avenue to look into, though my instinct is 1) there isn't enough room to really take advantage of many red cards and 2) the manabase being slightly shakier might not ultimately be worth it. Could be wrong though.
I'm glad to see that my twitch VODS were put to some good use! It sounds like you did some really good work and had pretty great results, all considered. I know it can be hard afterward when you realize you made a punt (did you see that game I had vs bant knightfall?), but it's best to take it on the chin. Everyone can make mistakes, especially at a longer event like that and without much experience with the deck. I've been impressed with the 75 you took, though I've been doing some testing mostly with the board and the 4th dismember before Vegas to see if I can get any valuable information I was missing. I'll likely write up a tournament report of my own afterwards.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your results and I'm glad the deck is treating you well!
EDIT: I'm looking forward to seeing how much representation the deck had at regionals because I know quite a few people who said they were going to take it. I should also note that my win % has gone down quite a bit since the deck has received as much attention as it has. I think people are prepping for us a little more than they used to. I'm down to a still pretty great 68%.Having said that, there's still no other list I'd rather take to Vegas.
Thanks for the response, appreciated!
Regarding the 4th Dismember and sideboard slots, when I tested on MTGO, I actually tried some combination of Cast out and Ixalan's Binding (1/1 split of the two in the main/sideboard). But ultimately for Regionals I ended up going with your exact list. However, after the tournament, I think I have a better idea of why Ixalan's Binding can be so good (over, as someone else had asked, Oblivion Ring for example). In particular, I think it's very good against Mardu Pyromancer and Tron (both of which are less in our favour than we'd like). From what I can tell, the Mardu matchup tends to be close until the opponent pulls ahead with Bedlam Reveler or something. Binding can answer it cleanly, as well as prevent the opponent from chaining multiple Revelers, which is a very real thing and they best way of exploding ahead. I think the same logic applies to Tron, which plays with a lot of redundancy and is centered around a few key threats that we need to handle.
Congrats on the results. Great finish! I only skin down to the bottom but will read your report in detail later. Just wanted to say I'm thrilled with the Finish and more people getting excited about our deck! I have still yet to play a single mirror up to this point... That may not last much longer.
Thank you! I didn't expect to play against the mirror, but I did come across it one time in open play. I think I was the better player, but Tocatli Honor Guard and Displacer made his TKS look pretty bad.. haha.
Long time D&T player here (used to post in the D&T thread somewhat frequently). I had been aware of SpiderSpace's finishes with the deck on MTGO before, but as you all have noticed, the recent finishes brought it back to my attention. I actually thought I could find some more information about it in the D&T thread, but was confused when I couldn't find anything (obviously that has fortunately changed now that I am here haha).
I had been working on GW hatebears for SCG Regionals this past weekend. But after finding this deck, this past week, I got the missing pieces to try it out on MTGO, and have put the deck together on paper. I did some quick testing (mediocre results but great learning experiences) and some crash course learning watching SpiderSpace's Twitch VOD, and decided to take this deck to Regionals yesterday.
This is a write-up of my preparation, testing, tournament, and other tidbits. It's fairly lengthy, but I figure could be of interest to you all.
I've played BUG Eternal Command off-and-on (moreso off than on) over the last year or so, and recently thought to put it together again for fun. I typically only come on MTGSalvation for the D&T thread, which I've played for over 4 years now, hence the obsession with Aether Vial. I only recently thought to check to see if there's an MTGSalvation thread on the deck - lo-and-behold!
I keep a lot of personal notes on all the decks I play in Evernote, so I thought I'd share my list, and my thoughts on the deck and card-choices. I imagine a lot of it is not-so-new (I certainly am not trying to undermine any of the expertise and experience of the contributors in this thread), but perhaps still worth sharing. It's documented in a journal format from the very first version of the deck I played over a year ago to its current iteration.
On the topic of BW E&T, I played in a Modern 2K this past weekend with a friend of mine (he played Eldrazi Tron). We ended up splitting in the finals (yay).
I'll admit that I still have not quite figured out the best way to sideboard against Grixis Death's Shadow, but I've definitely learned some things from the tournament.
Thanks! I typically just write these articles as an exercise for myself and to help whoever I can, since I'm not able to disseminate it really widely, but I'm really glad you found it insightful. I really appreciate the props.
On the point of calculating probabilities of subsequent hands, I don't remember 100% at this point, but if I recall correctly those numbers are indeed a cumulative probability. For example, if the deck has 4 copies of Rest in Peace, the odds of finding at least one with at least one land if you're willing to mulligan down to 4 is 75.5%. That being said, it's been a while and I should probably double check (the chart I included is really a condensed version of code I have written elsewhere). Either way, that goes to show that if a card like RiP is going to outright win you the game, just having 4 of them in your deck post-board gives you a 75% (pretty high, right?) chance of winning if you're willing to bank on the odds and mulligan for it.
@deathandcatmix:
Yea, while the mono-W list has plenty of fliers (which is what it's got going for it over something like GW hatebears), I don't think it quite pushes the matchup to anywhere near favourable without serious commitment. It's a bit unfortunate since Aether Vial gives the deck a decent (but low) chance of winning Game 1 by sheer virtue of keeping pace on board and abusing flyers and flicker effects, but this is given up postboard by bringing in Stony Silence. I'm generally skeptical of Sunlance's ability to offer heavy lifting in the matchup, since it's only at its best when you've already played Stony Silence. Even then, there's a decent chance you're struggling to keep up on board.
That said, Dismember is a good 1-of that's much more powerful and flexible, so is Disenchant (that's a pretty hefty concession, though it's got some fringy uses against Eldrazi Tron, 8Rack, etc). If you stick to monoW, there's also Relic Warder.
Speaking of which, Craig Wescoe played these in the sideboard in his successful monoW list back in February. I actually briefly discuss it here. I remember thinking it was very Wescoe-esque and pretty brilliant overall. He always builds his decks to be very focused against target decks, and this one was clearly built to be good (or at least much better for a monoW D&T list) against Affinity. Specifically, 3x Stony Silence is solid, along with 2x Relic Warder which are also focused against Affinity. In addition to these, 2x Sunlance is flexible and offers more removal support, as well as 2x Oblivion Ring. What I think makes this very clever is that there are much more relevant cards against Affinity, while retaining a lot of broad general utility.
So if the goal is to stick to mono-W but work in a better plan against Affinity, this might be a good approach.
@deathandcatmix: I agree that there are a lot of approaches and exercises that could all help players improve their game, even just marginally. And among them, understanding probabilities is a major advantage. This could be in many different wants, from keeping track of lands drawn in a game for you and/or your opponent to help you narrow down most likely upcoming draws, to figuring out whether to mulligan for sideboard cards.
I actually wrote a blog post about that last point a while ago: about whether or not you should opt to mulligan in post-sideboard games based on how many game-winning cards you've boarded in (using Rest in Peace as an example).
The major take-away is: if you've committed a heavy portion of sideboard space to cards that will swing a particular matchup in your favour (e.g. Rest in Peace versus Dredge) - there's basically absolutely no reason to keep a 7-card hand without any of them. Your odds are too good to not mulligan. (This is also a manifestation of another important principle in Modern: just because a hand has lands and spells doesn't mean it's keepable).
In light of Brian Coval's win at the SCG Invitational Weekend with mono-W Death & Taxes, I wrote a blog post covering some of my thoughts about the deck and the D&T archetype in general. I think a lot of it is intuitive and known to most people here, but it was a good exercise to get some of my thoughts down in writing. If you're interested, give it a read! Your thoughts, comments, and feedback would be very much appreciated.
I had originally wanted to also write about all the results as a whole (the Invitational, the Open, the Classic), which included some finishes from other D&T decks, as well as my thoughts on the different archetypes and how they are all positioned in the current metagame. But that was pretty lofty, so I figured I'll try to write about that at a later time.
I will offer the following thoughts though:
While this mono-W list (the Theau Mery list) has done very well for a second time (along with an explosion of 5-0 results on MTGO), my opinion of it is that it is a very metagame-targetted deck, which is obviously a good thing in these cases: the pilots identified the target decks, and built/played a deck to beat them. On a more local level with a more random and varied assortment of decks, I don't imagine this list will consistently do quite as well (though it definitely has a LOT of good things going for it).
Personally, I switched back to GW D&T and have really enjoyed it. I'm 12-3 with it across three FNM's (which I know doesn't say much, but is some sort of anecdotal evidence). I'll post more about my list and thoughts later as well.
I'm switching over from Eldrazi & Taxes to mono-white. I find the manabase for EnT to be way too unreliable and that's often what kills me. Since Horizon Canopy is way over my budget, I'm going with a playset of Blinkmoth Nexus instead; any opinions on that? Also, I've been questioning the usefulness of Leonin Arbiter recently. He hasn't really been helpful and I've been thinking about playing 2 of him instead of 4, would that be a mistake?
@xotug Big Thalia has been helpful for me in some matches, but I've more often than not found myself siding her out. It has helped me against Titanfall deck especially.
I won't comment too much on the E&T manabase. Despite it being a common gripe people have with the deck, my experience is that the mana is fine (not any worse than the mono-W manabase, though susceptible to Blood Moon). My opinion is that a lot of this has to do with having an increased acceptance, if not willingness, to mulligan (which is a major skill in Modern, and plays well to D&T's strengths).
As long as you have 13+ white source in your deck, you can distribute your colourless sources however you want (less Tec Edge's, more Blinkmoths, etc). Though of course, playing Blinkmoth requires some build-around's in the rest of the deck. And as others have mentioned, this puts mono-W and E&T on par with one another in terms of numbers of coloured mana sources.
While yes, there are often scenarios where Leonin Arbiter feels like the objectively weakest card in your deck, not playing it means you might as well not play the D&T archetype. What I mean by that is, while Arbiter is objectively weak in certain scenarios, the deck is build around its strengths. If you're going to cut it - you might as well move from: mono-W D&T to mono-W midrange or Emeria control, or from GW D&T to GW beatdown/little kid abzan, etc. As a whole, this kind of experience might be a symptom of playing against too many match-ups that are inherently poor for D&T, which again raises the point of "maybe D&T is a poor choice, why not deck ___ instead?".
Although my writing in the past has generally focused on tournament reports, I figured it'd be a lot more useful to write something that pertains to general experience with BW E&T and my thoughts on how to play the deck.
BW Eldrazi & Taxes - Heuristics, Approaches, & Anecdotes
While specific decklists and sideboard guides are always helpful, I think it's valuable to spend some time thinking about how to approach games and matchups. This is my attempt at articulating those thoughts. Hopefully you find this worth reading!
BW Eldrazi & Taxes - GP Toronto Retrospective
I included some thoughts on the Modern metagame, deck choices, and other tidbits that I think are insightful. Hopefully this is helpful and informative to some of you!
Cheers,
Zimu
I've been tinkering a bit more with the deck, and have generated quite a number of ideas, ranging from reasonable to outright silly/insane (which I can share at another time). For starters though, I put together what I dubbed a "clean" version of BUG eternal command, tweaked to take advantage of Assassin's Trophy. See below:
1 search for azcanta
4 tarmogoyf
2 grim flayer
3 dark confidant
4 snapcaster mage
2 eternal witness
4 serum visions
1 traverse the ulvenwald
2 collective brutality
3 fatal push
3 assassin's trophy
2 remand
3 cryptic command
3 verdant catacombs
3 misty rainforest
2 watery grave
1 breeding pool
1 overgrown tomb
2 darkslick shores
1 blooming marsh
1 creeping tar pit
2 island
1 swamp
1 forest
1 jace, the mind sculptor
1 liliana, the last hope
1 bitterblossom
1 tireless tracker
1 obstinate baloth
1 negate
1 spell snare
1 damping sphere
1 golgari charm
2 damnation
4 leyline of the void
I'm not 100% sure if the above is correct (i.e. what I actually played), but it's at most +/- one maindeck card. I went 4-0 at yesterday's FNM, beating mono-red prison (2-0), mono-blue tron (2-1), GW valuetown (2-0) and KCI (2-1).
Some loose thoughts about certain card choices, concepts, and ideas:
1) Aether Vial. I've played with this card nonstop for something like 5 years now, having played a ton of D&T in Modern and Legacy. As a result, I am always starkly wary of how much of liability it can be in the midgame. As a result, I've tried to think of numerous ways to mitigate the possibility of drawing useless Vials in the midgame.
2) To this end, Collective Brutality is an amazing card, and I think less than 2 is a mistake. There are lots of reasons for this:
The main conundrum that has plagued the BUG colours in Modern for eternity is that even though there is a lot of natural synergy between those colours - there is actually a lot of conflicting aspects as well, particular among the best cards of those colours. The idea of midrange naturally suggests taking advantage of black cards like Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize and Liliana of the Veil, while blue offers countermagic and Snapcaster Mage. I'm of the belief that these cards don't work well together (hand disruption + LotV incentivizes depleting both players' hands and winning via sheer card quality, which simultaneously conflicts with Cryptic Command, not to mention Aether Vial haha), so you have to pick a primary approach and stick with it. So by virtue of building around Aether Vial/Eternal Witness/Cryptic Command in the first place, those cards are out of the question (without being excessively fancy). In this way, Collective Brutality fills all the gaps. It is an outlet for extra Aether Vials, it's spot removal, and to the above point, it offers hand disruption without pulling the deck heavily into that direction. It also plays well with Delirium (more on this below).
3) Traverse the Ulvenwald. I strongly think that this card belongs in this deck - for multiple very important reasons:
i) Again, by virtue of having Aether Vial, extra Aether Vials should go to the graveyard if possible. This makes (or should make) Delirium an easy thing to obtain.
ii) More importantly, Eternal Command is a deck that simultaneously plays Vial while playing few creatures - which is self conflicting in a way. Being able to traverse for a creature bridges the gap between taking advantage of Vial and the low creature count. Not to mention the selection as well.
iii) Another self-conflicting aspect of the deck is that by virtue of being a Vial deck, the land count is low. The majority of the deck takes advantage of the immense mana advantage you get against the opponent (Vial cheats on mana, spells are cheap, etc), which incentivizes a low land count. But at the same time, you need to hit your fourth landdrop to play the primary card in the deck! Lots of internal conflict. Again, Traverse is the perfect midgame card to glue everything together - it serves as an additional landdrop if need be, it can find the creature you need, it can be flashed back, etc.
I've tried a wild assortment of ideas to take this idea further, including:
i) Courser of Kruphix. It's an enchantment for Delirium and Goyf, plays nicely with Confidant - both by seeing the top card as well as lifegain, and increases chances of shuffling away dead topdecks like Vial. But ultimately I decided against it, due to the deck naturally not wanting to play a lot of lands. Same logic goes against playing Tireless Tracker main.
ii) Mishra's Bauble. I still like the idea, but at the end of the day, I figured there was simply not enough room in the deck. If I had the balls to shave a land or two, I might include 2x of them or something.
iii) Liliana, the Last Hope. Another card type, plays well with the graveyard. Decided against it for now in the interest of keeping the maindeck "clean". Could see myself cutting a land for her.
iv) Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Same as above, but too mana-costly. The main reason for not trying it maindeck was that it strays away too much from the deck's primary game-plan. So I decided to try it (for now) in the board, in the event that my post-board plan shifts to grinding more.
v) Bitterblossom. Enchantment card type, and is a threat. A great turn 2 follow-up to Vial. But I decided to put it in the board, since its impact varies drastically based on matchup.
vi) Search for Azcanta. I picked this maindeck instead of Bitterblossom because pre-board, the opponent doesn't have as much graveyard hate. In that case, it also serves as a pseudo land-drop (and blue!). It's equally, if not more, potent as a turn 2 follow-up to Vial. The big reason here though is that I want the maindeck to abuse the graveyard, and have the option to shift the deck away from the graveyard post-board if need be (i.e. Bitterblossom out of the board since it's a non-graveyard-based threat that can just win the game on its own).
4) Dark Confidant. Maybe this card doesn't necessarily need a discussion, but I think there are some subtleties here. The main thing is that as with all Aether Vial decks, with an early Vial, mana expenditure is massively accelerated - but as a result, gas depletes similarly quickly. Dark Confidant is the perfect card to bridge this gap. There also seems to be an interesting dynamic where it's a removal lightning rod, and thus makes for a very good early game Eternal Witness target.
I won't comment in specifics about the sideboard, since the majority of it are just random experimental choices. But I think the following are important to consider:
i) 4 Leyline of the Void. I think this is absolutely a no-brainer, especially right now. There are so many strong graveyard-based decks right now (Dredge, Hollow One, Mardu Pyromancer, KCI, etc) that you simply cannot beat otherwise. It's an auto-win there. And in line with the aforementioned logic with Delirium and Traverse, there are plenty of ways of take advantage of extra copies later in the game.
ii) Despite that, I think it's worthwhile to incorporate non-graveyard-based win conditions post-board. Bitterblossom against Control/Midrange, planeswalkers, creatures (not sure Tireless Tracker is actually that good), etc. And the rest is just flex. Appropriate countermagic, board sweepers for assuming the control position.
All in all, the deck is powerful, and is flexible enough to re-configure into all sorts of approaches post-board. For example: you can play a tempo-oriented game against Tron by sticking a threat and countering you way to victory. You can outgrind midrange/control opponents. You can play the control role against aggro decks.
This was by no means comprehensive, but hopefully this was insightful. Happy to discuss further, answer questions, etc.
Cheers!
I finished in first place at a ~46 person PPTQ in Toronto last weekend.
I wrote up a tournament report that you can find here.
I also posted a link to it on Reddit in r/ModernMagic, which you can find here. There has been a number of questions, to which I tried to answer thoughtfully.
Hope this is somewhat helpful, or at the very least just more data to the collection.
Thanks! Cheers.
Nice results! Do you think you could share how you sideboarded in your matchups?
If I could go back and prepare for another big tournament like Regionals, I would first ask myself the following questions:
At this moment, the answers to those questions are.. yes (4 Dismembers main), no (though any sideboard changes that incidentally improve the Humans matchup is welcome), yes and yes (the reason being that this deck is very good at fighting unfair decks with "unfair" lock pieces, it's very weak to fair midrange strategies).
In terms of exact changes, I kind of feel like I want to jam either a Blade Splicer or Matter Reshaper somewhere in the 75 (probably at the expense of either one of the small or big Thalia's or the 4th Dismember). As for the sideboard, like you say, I can't see any direct one or two changes to the sideboard that really satisfy me. I think as is, the sideboard accomplishes everything it needs to, but with very little wiggle-room. Though I do think much more drastic and impactful changes can be made to the board if we can even just somewhat rely on getting WW mana, but I haven't tried enough to really know that as of yet.
And I know this isn't the answer you might be looking for, but my mind does wander off about the possibilities of RW or maybe even GW (since GW can take advantage of 4x Horizon Canopy better). RW being able to use Anger of the Gods (which adds removal to the board and alleviates the Honor Guard slots) is a big boon, and Nahiri might be a good option as a single card that provides both grind and removal for problem enchantments.
Other cards (not mentioned in recent posts) that are on my short-list to try are Spellskite and Timely Reinforcements.
Will continue posting as I test more and/or have more thoughts ^^.
Thanks for the compliment! I really enjoy writing, I usually do a tournament report every time I come back from an event (most of them are formalized and posted in my blog). My apologies about the poor scholarship, at the time I played in the tournament, I had just found this thread, and didn't actually go back to look at the first page.
I was overall satisfied with my play (aside from all the things I thought/realized in retrospect were misplays or wrong decisions). Thankfully the deck is mostly comprised of cards I've played with an extensive amount already. But I am still getting a feel for it - compared to D&T and 4c Loam (with which I've played with Chalice), this deck has a much higher ceiling for doing unfair things, which demands a different approach and skillset when it comes to evaluating hands to keep/mulligan.
= = =
Here is the SCG Regionals Top 8 metagame (I compiled the data and made this figure). One minor surprise I had was how well colourless Eldrazi did - most of them were the Serum Powder/Chalice version of the deck. Their strong results are a good indication of the current strength and position of unfair SSG/Chalice/TKS/Reality Smasher. This is a good sign, since Thalia Stompy is built on the same premise. Compared to that, I think playing cards like Thalia/Arbiter and having white sideboard cards ought to be much stronger. All I'm saying is - I think these are all signs further pointing towards this deck being a good one in the current format.
@bmchu168
At first I was mildly skeptical, but after thinking about it some more, I am intrigued with the idea of a WR version of the deck. The major thing the deck gains is a much better Mardu Pyromancer matchup (as well as better matchup against Humans and Affinity, though we have a plan/tools for that), which is one of our weaker matchups overall. Though this comes at the cost of a weaker manabase of course - maybe. I think Horizon Canopy is one of our strongest lands (unfair decks tend to have a lot of "air" in them, which Canopy helps with), and losing out on them is a real cost. On the other hand, filterlands might be a great tool, since they provide colourless mana as well as singlehandedly provide two coloured mana.
I think it's a good avenue to look into, though my instinct is 1) there isn't enough room to really take advantage of many red cards and 2) the manabase being slightly shakier might not ultimately be worth it. Could be wrong though.
Thanks for the response, appreciated!
Regarding the 4th Dismember and sideboard slots, when I tested on MTGO, I actually tried some combination of Cast out and Ixalan's Binding (1/1 split of the two in the main/sideboard). But ultimately for Regionals I ended up going with your exact list. However, after the tournament, I think I have a better idea of why Ixalan's Binding can be so good (over, as someone else had asked, Oblivion Ring for example). In particular, I think it's very good against Mardu Pyromancer and Tron (both of which are less in our favour than we'd like). From what I can tell, the Mardu matchup tends to be close until the opponent pulls ahead with Bedlam Reveler or something. Binding can answer it cleanly, as well as prevent the opponent from chaining multiple Revelers, which is a very real thing and they best way of exploding ahead. I think the same logic applies to Tron, which plays with a lot of redundancy and is centered around a few key threats that we need to handle.
Thank you! I didn't expect to play against the mirror, but I did come across it one time in open play. I think I was the better player, but Tocatli Honor Guard and Displacer made his TKS look pretty bad.. haha.
Long time D&T player here (used to post in the D&T thread somewhat frequently). I had been aware of SpiderSpace's finishes with the deck on MTGO before, but as you all have noticed, the recent finishes brought it back to my attention. I actually thought I could find some more information about it in the D&T thread, but was confused when I couldn't find anything (obviously that has fortunately changed now that I am here haha).
I had been working on GW hatebears for SCG Regionals this past weekend. But after finding this deck, this past week, I got the missing pieces to try it out on MTGO, and have put the deck together on paper. I did some quick testing (mediocre results but great learning experiences) and some crash course learning watching SpiderSpace's Twitch VOD, and decided to take this deck to Regionals yesterday.
This is a write-up of my preparation, testing, tournament, and other tidbits. It's fairly lengthy, but I figure could be of interest to you all.
Looking forward to the discussion! Cheers.
I've played BUG Eternal Command off-and-on (moreso off than on) over the last year or so, and recently thought to put it together again for fun. I typically only come on MTGSalvation for the D&T thread, which I've played for over 4 years now, hence the obsession with Aether Vial. I only recently thought to check to see if there's an MTGSalvation thread on the deck - lo-and-behold!
I keep a lot of personal notes on all the decks I play in Evernote, so I thought I'd share my list, and my thoughts on the deck and card-choices. I imagine a lot of it is not-so-new (I certainly am not trying to undermine any of the expertise and experience of the contributors in this thread), but perhaps still worth sharing. It's documented in a journal format from the very first version of the deck I played over a year ago to its current iteration.
BUG Eternal Command Decklists & Notes
I keep my match records and matchup-related info elsewhere, but if there's interest, I can share those experiences here as well.
Cheers!
I wrote a tournament report here.
I'll admit that I still have not quite figured out the best way to sideboard against Grixis Death's Shadow, but I've definitely learned some things from the tournament.
Thanks! I typically just write these articles as an exercise for myself and to help whoever I can, since I'm not able to disseminate it really widely, but I'm really glad you found it insightful. I really appreciate the props.
On the point of calculating probabilities of subsequent hands, I don't remember 100% at this point, but if I recall correctly those numbers are indeed a cumulative probability. For example, if the deck has 4 copies of Rest in Peace, the odds of finding at least one with at least one land if you're willing to mulligan down to 4 is 75.5%. That being said, it's been a while and I should probably double check (the chart I included is really a condensed version of code I have written elsewhere). Either way, that goes to show that if a card like RiP is going to outright win you the game, just having 4 of them in your deck post-board gives you a 75% (pretty high, right?) chance of winning if you're willing to bank on the odds and mulligan for it.
@deathandcatmix:
Yea, while the mono-W list has plenty of fliers (which is what it's got going for it over something like GW hatebears), I don't think it quite pushes the matchup to anywhere near favourable without serious commitment. It's a bit unfortunate since Aether Vial gives the deck a decent (but low) chance of winning Game 1 by sheer virtue of keeping pace on board and abusing flyers and flicker effects, but this is given up postboard by bringing in Stony Silence. I'm generally skeptical of Sunlance's ability to offer heavy lifting in the matchup, since it's only at its best when you've already played Stony Silence. Even then, there's a decent chance you're struggling to keep up on board.
That said, Dismember is a good 1-of that's much more powerful and flexible, so is Disenchant (that's a pretty hefty concession, though it's got some fringy uses against Eldrazi Tron, 8Rack, etc). If you stick to monoW, there's also Relic Warder.
Speaking of which, Craig Wescoe played these in the sideboard in his successful monoW list back in February. I actually briefly discuss it here. I remember thinking it was very Wescoe-esque and pretty brilliant overall. He always builds his decks to be very focused against target decks, and this one was clearly built to be good (or at least much better for a monoW D&T list) against Affinity. Specifically, 3x Stony Silence is solid, along with 2x Relic Warder which are also focused against Affinity. In addition to these, 2x Sunlance is flexible and offers more removal support, as well as 2x Oblivion Ring. What I think makes this very clever is that there are much more relevant cards against Affinity, while retaining a lot of broad general utility.
So if the goal is to stick to mono-W but work in a better plan against Affinity, this might be a good approach.
(Edit: minor grammar/spelling)
I actually wrote a blog post about that last point a while ago: about whether or not you should opt to mulligan in post-sideboard games based on how many game-winning cards you've boarded in (using Rest in Peace as an example).
The major take-away is: if you've committed a heavy portion of sideboard space to cards that will swing a particular matchup in your favour (e.g. Rest in Peace versus Dredge) - there's basically absolutely no reason to keep a 7-card hand without any of them. Your odds are too good to not mulligan. (This is also a manifestation of another important principle in Modern: just because a hand has lands and spells doesn't mean it's keepable).
In light of Brian Coval's win at the SCG Invitational Weekend with mono-W Death & Taxes, I wrote a blog post covering some of my thoughts about the deck and the D&T archetype in general. I think a lot of it is intuitive and known to most people here, but it was a good exercise to get some of my thoughts down in writing. If you're interested, give it a read! Your thoughts, comments, and feedback would be very much appreciated.
I had originally wanted to also write about all the results as a whole (the Invitational, the Open, the Classic), which included some finishes from other D&T decks, as well as my thoughts on the different archetypes and how they are all positioned in the current metagame. But that was pretty lofty, so I figured I'll try to write about that at a later time.
I will offer the following thoughts though:
While this mono-W list (the Theau Mery list) has done very well for a second time (along with an explosion of 5-0 results on MTGO), my opinion of it is that it is a very metagame-targetted deck, which is obviously a good thing in these cases: the pilots identified the target decks, and built/played a deck to beat them. On a more local level with a more random and varied assortment of decks, I don't imagine this list will consistently do quite as well (though it definitely has a LOT of good things going for it).
Personally, I switched back to GW D&T and have really enjoyed it. I'm 12-3 with it across three FNM's (which I know doesn't say much, but is some sort of anecdotal evidence). I'll post more about my list and thoughts later as well.
Cheers!