I played in DC this last weekend and ended up losing my win&in (as well as 1 other round) to this new Bant deck. The lists were a bit different though. One heavier white (with mother of runes and vial), the other more like the black/duke list. Both had true name. Im sure some of that will change as a "best" list becomes settled on but it was pretty difficult to play around daze, vial in stuff like teeg, force, mother, greensun for pridemage/teeg/etc. Maverick was always a pain and this seems like a harder maverick matchup. Did anyone else have trouble or experience with this matchup? Any thoughts on it?
Not really, Humility turns your Clique and Angels into 1/1. Goblins and Elves will just try to spit out more creatures to try to overwhelm your life total.
Im not too sure.
Elves is a pretty easy matchup anyway. Plus turning off the come into play effects vs elves is probably still worth humility instead of moat, and potentially better as it turns off all the creature based outs to enchantments and turns off stuff like teeg.
vs goblins theyre not exactly playing all 1 drops, so fairly often with humility out theyre casting 1/1 siege gang commands and matrons for 3-5 mana. Its possible to be overwhelmed but most of the time humility is plenty good enough. Moat is defintiely better but humility never seems substantially worse.
So yeah maybe I phrased that wrong. Im sure humility isnt always better, but I want the card more than I want something like moat as moat is pretty narrow narrow, and when humility is just being a bad moat its still good enough.
Im sure its possible im totally wrong. What matches are you guys bringing in Moat for where humility doesnt do enough?
twndomn, I appreciate the support you usually give me, but you need to read more carefully. Panavision said that he plays a version like mine because he was tired of getting stuck with RIP/Helm at times.
Blue blasts are in the deck because they are useful against burn, but better against the field than sphere of law.
Makes sense. Dont often see burn here in my local meta, so sorta easy to forget about it.
1: I have a TON of dead cards to board out.
2: It is a fairly useful card in the matchup. If they drop a first turn Aether Vial, I am very happy to take it away from them. If not, or assuming I draw it later in the game, I use it to protect my mana. I would prefer to stop Wasteland since Rishadan Port uses up a lot of their mana, but that has never actually happened. Usually I find it somewhere in the middle of a game and they have already Wasted once and are using a Port to lock me down each turn. Having access to four mana total as well as double white is pretty important, and Needle on Port can help me achieve that.
If I for some reason I had two in the board, I would happily bring in both of them.
I guess if you're answering boarding questions, curious about the blue blasts and why they're worth the slots to you.
Also, ive been playing a version very similar to yours since I was usually pretty bummed to have dead cards with helm combo in a lot of matches. I tried out the filter lands as well, but I felt like I would flood out or get top locked too much without the extra shuffle effects. Do you still run into choke? Have you experimented with dropping a land or two and working in something like ponder or portent?
Nice work btw. always enjoy watching your matches.
I think youre in trouble with shocks too. Theres plenty of games where you stabilize just out of bolt range or where you need to crack a fetch and use the mana to top and you will be punished pretty bad. You could try cutting the red splash and playing more basics and a couple mystic gates/glacial forts. gate is actually nice because you can make any combination of mana turn 2/3 with basics.
Thanks Sounds reasonable, i'll try that for starters!
Well, that was helpful...
Anyone has any tips for my 2nd question?
Im sort of in the "board by intuition" school, I think you generally get a handle on the deck, and you quickly realize which cards do close to nothing in a matchup. Once youre comfortable with the deck youll have a pretty good idea of what to take out. also legacy decks in general have fairly linear game plans so its pretty common to have dead cards to take out in each match. With binek's sideboard:
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Counterspell
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Energy Field
1 Humility
1 Disenchant
3 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Red Elemental Blast
swords comes in vs aggro. fine vs reanimator and its ok vs tinfins.
tutor comes in when any of your enchantments can end the game.
cards that autowin can be rest in peace, blood moon, and sometimes you desperately want a turn 2 counterbalance, maybe energy field. its just super match dependent.
the extra counter is good for control mirrors. can be fine vs combo too.
explosives is good vs aggro and also good vs chalice decks, which can be a pain to play against when they turn 1 chalice for 1.
bridge is for show and tell. fine vs tinfins as well, but a bit slow.
canonist is for storm, high tide, etc. it will for sure be abrupt decayed.
energy field is mostly just good for burn. most decks are probably already boarding in abrupt decay vs you so dont expect too much from this card vs. decks that can cast it.
humility is for show and tell. its really only good if you let them resolve show and tell though, not something you want to just jam on turn4 and pass as they will just bounce it.
giest - im not really wild about it but apparently its to put a clock on combo. i prefer clique for that.
clique - i think clique is great vs combo as it puts a clock and disrupts a bit. can be great in response to a show and tell, but still with some risk obviously.
reb - the real reason to splash red. great vs show, tide or any deck with jace.
think thats roughly the idea. im sure im forgetting a few things.
He's there primarily to bring in against decks where you need to provide a clock against them.
For instance, you can't just sit there and play draw-go against High Tide because that's exactly what they want. Jamming a Geist and bashing in for 6 a turn puts them under a four turn clock. Potentially three turn clock with a couple fetchlands on their part.
I suppose that makes sense. Ive generally had cliques for the same reason as it feels safer to play at instant speed and provides a little disruption as well. Would be pretty nervous jamming a turn 3 giest vs high tide. But I guess I should just try it out.
I suggested this in development when I first saw the deck for the same reasons. In practice, you need more mana sources to make it work. Try it out playing on SB games (to test with Sneak in and reanimation out) -- let me know if that works out better than just playing Sneak Show itself.
well ive been boarding in 3 ancient tombs, so mana wise, compared to a normal sneak list, you are just missing 2 city of traitors, but you get 4 probes 4 rituals and 2 moxes. obviously casting sneak attack and activating it is much more awkward than casting show and tell. probably worth making the main deck swamp into a badlands for that reason. may even want the tundra to be a volcanic. ung... how valuable has that tundra been for you?
what do you guys think of the sneak&show board xform? Been testing 4x sneak, 4x show, 3x tomb, 2x gris, 2x emrakul. In theory I like it alot because I feel like the deck really only loses to graveyard hate, but havent really been able to test it vs all that many decks.
so the general jist is to play general, counter their things. try to force a stasis. Once it resolves wait or force them to tap out, then take extra turns until you can safely polymorph into emrakul and protect him? or how do most games play out?
I played in DC this last weekend and ended up losing my win&in (as well as 1 other round) to this new Bant deck. The lists were a bit different though. One heavier white (with mother of runes and vial), the other more like the black/duke list. Both had true name. Im sure some of that will change as a "best" list becomes settled on but it was pretty difficult to play around daze, vial in stuff like teeg, force, mother, greensun for pridemage/teeg/etc. Maverick was always a pain and this seems like a harder maverick matchup. Did anyone else have trouble or experience with this matchup? Any thoughts on it?
Im not too sure.
Elves is a pretty easy matchup anyway. Plus turning off the come into play effects vs elves is probably still worth humility instead of moat, and potentially better as it turns off all the creature based outs to enchantments and turns off stuff like teeg.
vs goblins theyre not exactly playing all 1 drops, so fairly often with humility out theyre casting 1/1 siege gang commands and matrons for 3-5 mana. Its possible to be overwhelmed but most of the time humility is plenty good enough. Moat is defintiely better but humility never seems substantially worse.
So yeah maybe I phrased that wrong. Im sure humility isnt always better, but I want the card more than I want something like moat as moat is pretty narrow narrow, and when humility is just being a bad moat its still good enough.
Im sure its possible im totally wrong. What matches are you guys bringing in Moat for where humility doesnt do enough?
Makes sense. Dont often see burn here in my local meta, so sorta easy to forget about it.
I guess if you're answering boarding questions, curious about the blue blasts and why they're worth the slots to you.
Also, ive been playing a version very similar to yours since I was usually pretty bummed to have dead cards with helm combo in a lot of matches. I tried out the filter lands as well, but I felt like I would flood out or get top locked too much without the extra shuffle effects. Do you still run into choke? Have you experimented with dropping a land or two and working in something like ponder or portent?
Nice work btw. always enjoy watching your matches.
Im sort of in the "board by intuition" school, I think you generally get a handle on the deck, and you quickly realize which cards do close to nothing in a matchup. Once youre comfortable with the deck youll have a pretty good idea of what to take out. also legacy decks in general have fairly linear game plans so its pretty common to have dead cards to take out in each match. With binek's sideboard:
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Counterspell
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Energy Field
1 Humility
1 Disenchant
3 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Red Elemental Blast
swords comes in vs aggro. fine vs reanimator and its ok vs tinfins.
tutor comes in when any of your enchantments can end the game.
cards that autowin can be rest in peace, blood moon, and sometimes you desperately want a turn 2 counterbalance, maybe energy field. its just super match dependent.
the extra counter is good for control mirrors. can be fine vs combo too.
explosives is good vs aggro and also good vs chalice decks, which can be a pain to play against when they turn 1 chalice for 1.
bridge is for show and tell. fine vs tinfins as well, but a bit slow.
canonist is for storm, high tide, etc. it will for sure be abrupt decayed.
energy field is mostly just good for burn. most decks are probably already boarding in abrupt decay vs you so dont expect too much from this card vs. decks that can cast it.
humility is for show and tell. its really only good if you let them resolve show and tell though, not something you want to just jam on turn4 and pass as they will just bounce it.
giest - im not really wild about it but apparently its to put a clock on combo. i prefer clique for that.
clique - i think clique is great vs combo as it puts a clock and disrupts a bit. can be great in response to a show and tell, but still with some risk obviously.
reb - the real reason to splash red. great vs show, tide or any deck with jace.
think thats roughly the idea. im sure im forgetting a few things.
I suppose that makes sense. Ive generally had cliques for the same reason as it feels safer to play at instant speed and provides a little disruption as well. Would be pretty nervous jamming a turn 3 giest vs high tide. But I guess I should just try it out.
no use for aura shards?
well ive been boarding in 3 ancient tombs, so mana wise, compared to a normal sneak list, you are just missing 2 city of traitors, but you get 4 probes 4 rituals and 2 moxes. obviously casting sneak attack and activating it is much more awkward than casting show and tell. probably worth making the main deck swamp into a badlands for that reason. may even want the tundra to be a volcanic. ung... how valuable has that tundra been for you?
how often are you using things like kor haven? With so many nonbasics nimbus maze still works ok?