There is a good reason to play different colors, and that is budget.
If you can't afford Mox Opals,Glimmervoid, Thoughtsieze, or IoK you should plan on being slower and sticking to 2-3 colors. Don't try to be 5-color, work within your limitations.
When I first started with this deck, I built it as Blue-Black. Trinket Mage, Dimir Charm. There is a better budget list that I believe is Red-Green. Either way, since you are slower, you will need more control tools. Hand disruption, creature removal or bounce, burn.
Recent spoilers that haven't been mentioned. Some are very meh, but mentioning them anyway for pure discussion and because someone would bring them up eventually.
Era of Innovation: 1U Enchantment, Whenever an artifact or creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may pay 1. If you do, get EE. EEEEEE, sacrifice Era of Innovation: Draw three cards.
Honorable mention for people looking for an Energy Counter variant. Woodweaver's Puzleknot, Aether Hub, Attune with Aether, Dynavolt Tower, Aetherworks Marvel. Hopefully see more utility in the next set. Dynavolt Tower isn't an impressive finisher, but it can be used for removal. An ideal wincon can be part of the lock itself. Aetherworks Marvel is great for accelerating the lock, potentially better than Tezzeret.
Perpetual Timepiece: 2 Artifact, T: Put the top two cards of your library into your graveyard. 2, Exile Perpetual Timepiece: Shuffle any number of target cards from your graveyard into your library.
Only being able to mill ourselves is already lackluster. Milling two at a time is a bit reckless. Its 2nd ability can be good for deck thinning late game, protecting from graveyard removal or extract effects. Overall, would never use it.
Reckless Fireweaver: 1R Creature, Whenever an artifact enters the battlefield under your control, Reckless Fireweaver deals 1 damage to each opponent.
Dies to Lightning Bolt, but evades Hexproof. However, only 1-2 damage a turn since we are only Artifact Storm the first few turns.
Cathartic Reunion: 1U Sorcery, As an additional cost to cast ~, discard 2 cards. Draw three cards.
Draws deeper than some other red draw, and doesn't require that double red. Still prefer Faithless Looting though.
Metalwork Colossus: 11 Artifact Creature(11/11), ~ costs X less to cast, where X is the total converted mana cost of noncreature artifacts you control. Sacrifice two artifacts: Return ~ from your graveyard to your hand.
Neat card. Some Timmy's could try to make it work, but the Bridge will make it hard. Having it in your graveyard lets you sacrifice any even number of artifacts if the situation demands it. If an artifact is targeted for bounce and you would prefer it in your graveyard, for example.
Bomat Courier: 1 Artifact Creature, Haste. Whenever Bomat Courier attacks, exile the top card of your library face down. (You can't look at it.) R, Discard your hand, Sacrifice Bomat Courier: Put all cards exiled with Bomat Courier into their owners' hands.
Ideal use: Lives in the sideboard, replaces a mill rock or bridge against decks that the lock isn't very effective against. This lets you focus on digging through your own deck for the right answers, and having a surprise clock. Unfortunately rarely going to find the perfect matchup. Need an opponent with no creatures who uses actual removal instead of burn.
Mishra's Bauble can definitely work. We are a combo deck at heart, so burning through your deck faster can definitely help. If you do use it, you can adjust deck ratios around 56 cards. Such as 1 less land and mill rock.
Now the main downside is that it makes mulligans much more difficult. The more Baubles in your opening hand, the less info you have. Another downside is that we are also a toolbox deck, so finding 4 cards to cut really affects matchups.
@DrLemniscate
Psychogenic probe in dmg wincon too.
Synergise like crazy with most of our tools, stack with itself, and they pay the iron price when they fetch to try to escape the lock.
Oh and it bypass leyline (which is a ******* pain in the ass for this deck )
Psychogenic Probe is a weaker wincon, as it gives your opponent a choice. They don't have to search off of a Ghost Quarter, they can just sit back while you dredge yourself. You would have to rely on mandatory shuffle effects like recurring Surgical Extraction. It also does not contribute to the game much, outside of winning (except for the occasional damage redirect to Planeswalkers). Psychic Surgery is a slower equivalent for mill that contributes to the lock.
(2) it can play some other role in the deck. Either a land based wincon, planeswalker, part of the lock, or can kill creatures. I love land wincons, but just beware of the Blood Moon.
(3) is more of a preference to speed up games, since I have had many games where Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver gets tucked early game from Ancient Stirrings, and I have to sac a Lantern or a Ghost Quarter just to get a shuffle. Lands and (most) Artifacts can be grabbed with an Ancient Stirrings, so your wincon could be one of those. Of course, having an Enchantment might give you more security if you anticipate artifact hate.
Damage wincons:
Damage is popular because it requires no additional cards to support it, as it can come naturally with the lock. You can sometimes have a quick Game 2 by milling all of Game 1 against a low-creature deck, then explosively burning in Game 2 after they start fetching/shocking recklessly (although it may be better to just side out some of the burn if they have a low creature count).
Don't start putting all your resources in to burning their face when they still have a full board of creatures being held back by a fragile bridge. Take some time to clean up the board, and you will be rewarded in the long run. You can often get a scoop by demonstrating your burn recursion on their creatures. If you just start burning their face, they will draw some hope from their full board.
The best damage wincons will have the ability to target creatures as well as players.
Galvanic Blast - Recur with Codex Shredder + Academy Ruins. Usually 4 damage every other turn (giving up half of your natural draws), but may be able to reach 4 damage a turn late-late game.
Pyrite Spellbomb - Recur with Academy Ruins. Same clock as Blast, less mana intensive but forgoes all of your natural draws.
Goblin Boom Keg is another recursion target, but the 4cmc is prohibitive.
Shrine of Burning Rage - Set it and forget it, but will be a bad topdeck late game. Curse of the Pierced Heart may be better for a cheaper mana investment, but cannot target creatures and is harder to recur.
Granite Shard - 1 damage can kill a lot of creatures in Modern.
Keldon Megaliths - Awesome cheap wincon, just don't include it in your mana base as much, since it ETB tapped.
Stensia Bloodhall - Doesn't enter tapped, but is very expensive and can't remove creatures.
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas - Classic wincon that everyone keeps coming back to for a reason. Each ability will be useful in some way, great topdeck lategame as he can ultimate the turn after you play him. Mana cost and colors are prohibitive, since most blue sources people run are just the standard 5-color sources.
Mill is attractive because the lock already contributes to it, and you are sometimes halfway there by the time you really have the lock going. Remember not to be too reckless; don't mill everything you can at your opponent's EoT if they might have an Instant cantrip. Use your wincon pieces as part of the lock when possible.
Nephalia Drownyard - Great option, as it easily fits in your mana base. Only downside is milling multiple cards at once that you might have Pyxis'd otherwise (Emrakul, Snapcaster/Tasigur target, etc).
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea - Similar to Duskmantle, but less color intensive. Really need your lock set up to use this, but can help draw you in to more mill pieces.
Sands of Delirium - Most flexible of the mill rocks, pour whatever mana you can spare in to it. 3cmc may be prohibitive to some people.
Millstone - Not as flexible or fast, but smaller initial mana investment at 2cmc.
Grindclock - Use it as part of the lock when needed, charge otherwise. Sands will often be better; both shine in late game, but by late game you have a lot of spare mana anyway. Optimal charging time is usually floor(sqrt(Deck Size)), but will be lower since you will be milling from Shredder/Bell.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver - Spitting out creatures isn't too useful, but does a great job at padding your life total by effectively starting at 5 and climbing 2 a turn after that. Slower wincon (especially when topdecked late game), but very effective. Exiling cards can be extremely relevant, what with Snapcaster Mage being the 3rd most popular card in Modern.
Curse of the Bloody Tome - Can definitely represent a clock that isn't hit by artifact hate, but I prefer having more control over their deck/graveyard.
Mesmeric Orb - Seen this mentioned. End result is your opponent usually turtling up while you have to tap several things to keep the lock going.
I play enough Discard and Pyxis/Surgical main that I actually go for gas flooding. If I can discard/mill/exile/exract Pyromancer Ascension and Past in Flames. I care not how much gas they have. Sure I will mill Manamorphose if I feel I need to, but I can just respond to morphose if they would draw one of the 2 engines which is only 6-8 cards out of 60. The only cards other than the engines that really bother me and will try to mill are Sleight of Hand and Thought Scour, which would let them draw a card I cannot control. But the rest of the rituals and draw spells don't bother me as they will fizzle on their own, even Goblin Electromancer is something I'd give them knowing I can keep them off the engines and I can kill it or bridge up if they go for the attack win.
Game 2 its easier with Tormod and more discard/hate for the engine pieces.
Not that it wouldn't work disrupting their gas though, as usual with this deck you have to adjust to the game state and go from there, I have even been able to beat storm through land denial and even by extracting Grapeshot after a discard spell. Theres a few ways around it, but for my particular list most of the time its better to just keep them off the 6-8 engines and flood them with rituals and "controllable" draw spells.
thnkr, that works for me, I could PM you dropbox links to selected replays. Ok.
EDIT: 24 people reading the thread. Did something happen in magic world? Did I miss something?
EDIT: 31 people. What the hell am I missing? New article? Live event? What? lol
When I first heard the name "Blue Moon" for a modern deck, I thought it was someone playing Mind Bend with Blood Moon to make it more flexible and/or to use in conjunction with Boil.
0-2-1 at FNM. Had enough people to do 3 rounds then Top 8.
My local meta has been leaning towards control, so I adjusted my main for more discard. Faced mainly aggro decks tonight, so that didn't work out as well as I hoped.
Round 1: Affinity 1-1-1
Quick death in Game 1. He had pretty much a god hand, and a T2 IoK revealed nothing but land.
Game 2 went much quicker, with 10 cards sided in (4 Pyroclasm, 4 Nature's Claim, 2 Ancient Grudge). Steadily milling, eventually slowed down when I milled the first Ancient Grudge. Made sure to have 1 Bridge more than he had removal in his yard. Had to tuck Ashiok from an early Ancient Stirrings. Should have shuffled with a spare Lantern to draw in to it earlier so I could try to win Game 3.
Game 3, we drew with 2 minutes left.
I think my sideboard options for Affinity may be overkill, so I might change that up.
Round 2: Zoo 0-2
Game 1, Got the lock online, but not before he got me in burn range.
Game 2, questionable mulligan to 6. Good hand (Bridge, Droplet, Pyroclasm), but 1 land, Probe and Bauble. On the draw, I figured I could find a 2nd land in 4 draws. Nope. Not in 5, 6, or 7 either. Of course, Pyroclasm would probably only be hitting his Swiftspears. May go for a 2-2 or 3-1 split with Pyroclasm and Firespout/Anger of the Gods. I play against this guy frequently, and Creeping Corrosion is popular around here. Think I might put a couple Welding Jars in the side just for some insurance.
Round 3: Anafenza 0-1-1
Game 1, Lock online, Pithing Needle on Viscera Seer, but not before he gains 10 Billion life. Take a while to find Drownyard, and am steadily milling him away. 2 Droplets out, but no painland to gain life, so his Heirarchs are just chilling. Eventually gets a Redcap out which I could have stopped, but thought I remembered it being 2 damage, not 3. Redcap and Heirarchs kill me the turn before I would be able to start recurring Pyrite Spellbomb to clear the Heirarchs. Blaming this one on being tired after a long day at work (did I mention I have arthritis in a million places?), and wanting to go play some EDH with friends.
Game 2, T3 Ashiok, Bridge online, things going great. Even +2'ing Ashiok each turn isn't quick enough to close this game out before we go to time and draw. He may have been stalling a bit, but I did take like 40min on Game 1.
Overall, I was disappointed in Ashiok for getting itself tucked twice to Ancient Stirrings. Ended up going to time twice, whereas last week I finished all my games with time to spare. May just switch it out for a 2nd Nephalia drownyard, since I the -X has not been relevant enough as it usually comes down too late. Also could use some better sideboard options against Zoo which does see some play around here; Pyroclasm has primarily been useful against Affinity and Young Pyromancer decks in my meta, but I already have a lot of hate towards Artifacts.
Modern PTQ tomorrow (later today). Think I will give my other list a go, and throw in Tezzeret and Infernal Tutor. If I have to play on little sleep, may as well die or win quickly.
I think Sadistic Sacrament could be awesome in a dedicated MBC deck with Ensnaring Bridge. So many decks have few if any answers to the Bridge mainboard.
Hadn't thought about Haunting Echoes in that way. Good catch.
Has anyone played around with Surgical Extraction or Extirpate? Mainboard graveyard hate, more hand information to help know what to color screw.
But the best part is exiling up to 3 lands from their Library/Hand to help keep them mana screwed. Then on your first pass through their Library, you can make a note of what lands they run 3-4 copies of, for the best future targets. I think only Merfolk and Burn run more than 2-3 basics, but it is still a very metagame call, and subpar in meta without T1 decks at every turn.
@thnkr, Those games, where you want to board in Sun Droplet but they aren't necessarily good or plan A... but you also kind of need them, those games are the reason I'm using a Bow of Nylea in my board. It does the same thing but a little bit more. It proactively puts you out of "little bits of damage" range, as well as offer a tad more utility (normally not needed compared to the +3 life a turn). The bow is not hard to cast and is an Artifact.
I tried the bow at GP Minn last year, but found the 2GGG cost to play and use it too prohibitive. That being said, I may try it out again in thinkr's variant, as it may be easier to use there. The Bow can net you more life, but the Droplet won't be stopped by Pithing Needle or Stony Silence. I wouldn't mind blanking a surgical extraction again with the Bow
@Shadowgripper: Gemstone Mine will always get you some colored mana early game. Of course, one of the things I love about this deck is that every build seems to have 2-4 flex spots for various colorless utility lands. So if Gemstone Caverns is colorless mana at worst, it can often do more for you than Darksteel Citadel.
Ghost Quarter can also do more than stop/slow down Bloom Titan. Use it in response to the Amulet untap trigger, depriving them of the Karoo mana and still making them bounce a land.
Whilst Abrupt Decay is awesome, how often are you forced to use it on a subprime target to stay hellbent? You can always grab it back with a Codex Shredder, but it's not always an option. How often would Seal of Primordium have worked better for you? It can also evade counters in its own way, by being played earlier in advance of prime targets. It has been discussed before, particularly when we were hoping for an Academy Ruins for Enchantments in Theros.
The main problem with Linear Programming here is that you have to rely on heuristics to build your assumptions. So you have this very technical process sitting on top of a vague foundation. So, really, the hard part is perfecting these assumptions. thinkr's spreadsheet builds these assumptions differently, such as gauging the effect some creature removal has by comparing that to how much damage from one swing it prevents.
The main effect of Mishra's Bauble or Gitaxian Probe is that it allows you to effectively work with a deck that is less than 60 cards. To really see their effect, you would need to incorporate some probability. Their are much simpler ways to gauge this effect (ex: Mishra's Bauble is 1/15 or more of a Bridge), but using the Hypergeometric or Multivariate Hypergeometric distribution will be your best option.
Example:
In a 60 card deck, say I have 4 Lanterns, 4 Bridges, 8 Mill rocks, 18 Mana sources, and 26 other cards.
If I want to draw at least 1 of each piece and 3 mana sources by your 5th turn (say 12 draws), you have a 19.3% chance.
In a 56 card deck, the number of other cards is reduced to 22 (although you could also take out 1 mana source).
Same setup, drawing at least 1 of each piece and 3 mana sources by your 5th turn, you end up at a 24.2% chance.
Another way to approximate this in a 60 card deck is by looking at the expected number of Mishra's Bauble you would see by your 4th turn, which is a little less than 1. Using the model from the 60-card example, but drawing 13 cards instead of 12 gets you a 25.1% chance which is close to the 56-card probability.
Of course, this is just from natural draws, so doesn't include any digging spells. It also doesn't take in to account the weakness of cards that replace themselves, which is deciding on mulligans. The 'slowtrip' part can be accounted for similar to the above where we look at how many Bauble we will draw by the 4th turn, and use that to build 5th turn probabilities.
If you are looking for more restrictions on your LP, you can go by slot instead of card. Say I want 5 cards in my discard slot, and I have IoK, Thoughtseize, and Duress to choose from.
There are also other interactions that can be accommodated through restrictions. I don't like to play Thoughtseize without Faithless Looting, so I can pose this to the LP with something like: [Thoughtseize]*[Faithless Looting] > 0 OR [Thoughtseize] = 0
When it comes to Sideboarding, each game is really just a state of a Markov Chain. The goal here is to either find the best 60 cards for your initial game, or the best sideboard plans that vastly turn the next 2 games in your favor.
Thank you very much Zerodown!! First of all i'm sorry for my bad english but i'm italian and i don't speak english since the end of highschool (2012).
Now, i played in my local game store so i have not the video, i can say you that his deck is an experiment, and i know that in modern there is only a low % of rogue decks in the tournament, so your maindeck could be completely right and doesn't need changes.
I can remember something: he had the first surgical in the starting hand/before getting the lantern, he plays 4x, and i remember to have milled away all the others that were on top (but at that point i was already losing for no outs..) .
I can remember for sure an error, i didnt knew his hand, i played a quite useless fourth land, and he used tectonic edge on my academy ruins, and the second error was: i had the last academy ruins in play, he had 3 lands in play but only 1 that could give red mana..on his top molten rain, i decided to mill it (he plays also 4 simisn spirit guide), now on top stone rain=mill, on top mountain=mill (he had 4 cards in hand, i thought that with the fourth mana or with the second red mana could play a LD spell), my fourth and last mill went to a rough/thumble..at this point i was all tapped in his upkeep, and he revealed another rough/thumble, played on the academy ruins (even if he didnt know that that move was a complete KO for me)..so after some turn were both played "draw-go" i conceded..well i think that i could do better and that this kind of decks doesnt really exist in a competitive way. I don't know if the 4th mox is really needed, but time and testing will say it.
one more thing, what are the reasons for playing 3 pyxis and 1 ghoulcaller's bell? lingering, grudge, emrakul, and?
thank you very much!
This deck thrives on the "draw-go" games, as you will often win through mill. You just need to get in a comfortable place with the lock, then have some patience as you control the rest of the game.
Pyxis - Also, Snapcaster Mage is the most played creature in Modern (3rd most played card overall), and the most popular deck right now plays several copies of Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Think of your combo as needing 7-8 Mill rocks (pieces that mill 1 at a time); you definitely want 4 Codex Shredder, so the other 3-4 can be a mix of Ghoulcaller's Bell or Pyxis of Pandemonium. The exile doesn't hurt us too much, as long as you do it smart. Many of our cards could be considered dead after the lock is in place.
If you can't afford Mox Opals,Glimmervoid, Thoughtsieze, or IoK you should plan on being slower and sticking to 2-3 colors. Don't try to be 5-color, work within your limitations.
When I first started with this deck, I built it as Blue-Black. Trinket Mage, Dimir Charm. There is a better budget list that I believe is Red-Green. Either way, since you are slower, you will need more control tools. Hand disruption, creature removal or bounce, burn.
Era of Innovation: 1U Enchantment, Whenever an artifact or creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may pay 1. If you do, get EE. EEEEEE, sacrifice Era of Innovation: Draw three cards.
Honorable mention for people looking for an Energy Counter variant. Woodweaver's Puzleknot, Aether Hub, Attune with Aether, Dynavolt Tower, Aetherworks Marvel. Hopefully see more utility in the next set. Dynavolt Tower isn't an impressive finisher, but it can be used for removal. An ideal wincon can be part of the lock itself. Aetherworks Marvel is great for accelerating the lock, potentially better than Tezzeret.
Perpetual Timepiece: 2 Artifact, T: Put the top two cards of your library into your graveyard. 2, Exile Perpetual Timepiece: Shuffle any number of target cards from your graveyard into your library.
Only being able to mill ourselves is already lackluster. Milling two at a time is a bit reckless. Its 2nd ability can be good for deck thinning late game, protecting from graveyard removal or extract effects. Overall, would never use it.
Reckless Fireweaver: 1R Creature, Whenever an artifact enters the battlefield under your control, Reckless Fireweaver deals 1 damage to each opponent.
Dies to Lightning Bolt, but evades Hexproof. However, only 1-2 damage a turn since we are only Artifact Storm the first few turns.
Cathartic Reunion: 1U Sorcery, As an additional cost to cast ~, discard 2 cards. Draw three cards.
Draws deeper than some other red draw, and doesn't require that double red. Still prefer Faithless Looting though.
Metalwork Colossus: 11 Artifact Creature(11/11), ~ costs X less to cast, where X is the total converted mana cost of noncreature artifacts you control. Sacrifice two artifacts: Return ~ from your graveyard to your hand.
Neat card. Some Timmy's could try to make it work, but the Bridge will make it hard. Having it in your graveyard lets you sacrifice any even number of artifacts if the situation demands it. If an artifact is targeted for bounce and you would prefer it in your graveyard, for example.
Bomat Courier: 1 Artifact Creature, Haste. Whenever Bomat Courier attacks, exile the top card of your library face down. (You can't look at it.) R, Discard your hand, Sacrifice Bomat Courier: Put all cards exiled with Bomat Courier into their owners' hands.
Ideal use: Lives in the sideboard, replaces a mill rock or bridge against decks that the lock isn't very effective against. This lets you focus on digging through your own deck for the right answers, and having a surprise clock. Unfortunately rarely going to find the perfect matchup. Need an opponent with no creatures who uses actual removal instead of burn.
Now the main downside is that it makes mulligans much more difficult. The more Baubles in your opening hand, the less info you have. Another downside is that we are also a toolbox deck, so finding 4 cards to cut really affects matchups.
Psychogenic Probe is a weaker wincon, as it gives your opponent a choice. They don't have to search off of a Ghost Quarter, they can just sit back while you dredge yourself. You would have to rely on mandatory shuffle effects like recurring Surgical Extraction. It also does not contribute to the game much, outside of winning (except for the occasional damage redirect to Planeswalkers). Psychic Surgery is a slower equivalent for mill that contributes to the lock.
The ideal wincon for this deck would:
You can justify ignoring (1) if you run Faithless Looting, as is done with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas.
(2) it can play some other role in the deck. Either a land based wincon, planeswalker, part of the lock, or can kill creatures. I love land wincons, but just beware of the Blood Moon.
(3) is more of a preference to speed up games, since I have had many games where Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver gets tucked early game from Ancient Stirrings, and I have to sac a Lantern or a Ghost Quarter just to get a shuffle. Lands and (most) Artifacts can be grabbed with an Ancient Stirrings, so your wincon could be one of those. Of course, having an Enchantment might give you more security if you anticipate artifact hate.
Damage wincons:
Don't start putting all your resources in to burning their face when they still have a full board of creatures being held back by a fragile bridge. Take some time to clean up the board, and you will be rewarded in the long run. You can often get a scoop by demonstrating your burn recursion on their creatures. If you just start burning their face, they will draw some hope from their full board.
The best damage wincons will have the ability to target creatures as well as players.
Galvanic Blast - Recur with Codex Shredder + Academy Ruins. Usually 4 damage every other turn (giving up half of your natural draws), but may be able to reach 4 damage a turn late-late game.
Pyrite Spellbomb - Recur with Academy Ruins. Same clock as Blast, less mana intensive but forgoes all of your natural draws.
Goblin Boom Keg is another recursion target, but the 4cmc is prohibitive.
Shrine of Burning Rage - Set it and forget it, but will be a bad topdeck late game. Curse of the Pierced Heart may be better for a cheaper mana investment, but cannot target creatures and is harder to recur.
Granite Shard - 1 damage can kill a lot of creatures in Modern.
Keldon Megaliths - Awesome cheap wincon, just don't include it in your mana base as much, since it ETB tapped.
Stensia Bloodhall - Doesn't enter tapped, but is very expensive and can't remove creatures.
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas - Classic wincon that everyone keeps coming back to for a reason. Each ability will be useful in some way, great topdeck lategame as he can ultimate the turn after you play him. Mana cost and colors are prohibitive, since most blue sources people run are just the standard 5-color sources.
Other subpar options include: Razortip Whip, Honden of Infinite Rage, Furnace Celebration, Searing Meditation with minor lifegain sources like Sun Droplet, Mogis, God of Slaughter, Keranos, God of Storms.
Mill wincons
Nephalia Drownyard - Great option, as it easily fits in your mana base. Only downside is milling multiple cards at once that you might have Pyxis'd otherwise (Emrakul, Snapcaster/Tasigur target, etc).
Duskmantle, House of Shadow - Safer, slower, less efficient version of Drownyard. I prefer the Drownyard.
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea - Similar to Duskmantle, but less color intensive. Really need your lock set up to use this, but can help draw you in to more mill pieces.
Sands of Delirium - Most flexible of the mill rocks, pour whatever mana you can spare in to it. 3cmc may be prohibitive to some people.
Millstone - Not as flexible or fast, but smaller initial mana investment at 2cmc.
Grindclock - Use it as part of the lock when needed, charge otherwise. Sands will often be better; both shine in late game, but by late game you have a lot of spare mana anyway. Optimal charging time is usually floor(sqrt(Deck Size)), but will be lower since you will be milling from Shredder/Bell.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver - Spitting out creatures isn't too useful, but does a great job at padding your life total by effectively starting at 5 and climbing 2 a turn after that. Slower wincon (especially when topdecked late game), but very effective. Exiling cards can be extremely relevant, what with Snapcaster Mage being the 3rd most popular card in Modern.
Curse of the Bloody Tome - Can definitely represent a clock that isn't hit by artifact hate, but I prefer having more control over their deck/graveyard.
Mesmeric Orb - Seen this mentioned. End result is your opponent usually turtling up while you have to tap several things to keep the lock going.
*cough*
edit: nevermind, you already saw that. I do post links to the primer on Reddit whenever it comes up.
My local meta has been leaning towards control, so I adjusted my main for more discard. Faced mainly aggro decks tonight, so that didn't work out as well as I hoped.
Round 1: Affinity 1-1-1
Quick death in Game 1. He had pretty much a god hand, and a T2 IoK revealed nothing but land.
Game 2 went much quicker, with 10 cards sided in (4 Pyroclasm, 4 Nature's Claim, 2 Ancient Grudge). Steadily milling, eventually slowed down when I milled the first Ancient Grudge. Made sure to have 1 Bridge more than he had removal in his yard. Had to tuck Ashiok from an early Ancient Stirrings. Should have shuffled with a spare Lantern to draw in to it earlier so I could try to win Game 3.
Game 3, we drew with 2 minutes left.
I think my sideboard options for Affinity may be overkill, so I might change that up.
Round 2: Zoo 0-2
Game 1, Got the lock online, but not before he got me in burn range.
Game 2, questionable mulligan to 6. Good hand (Bridge, Droplet, Pyroclasm), but 1 land, Probe and Bauble. On the draw, I figured I could find a 2nd land in 4 draws. Nope. Not in 5, 6, or 7 either. Of course, Pyroclasm would probably only be hitting his Swiftspears. May go for a 2-2 or 3-1 split with Pyroclasm and Firespout/Anger of the Gods. I play against this guy frequently, and Creeping Corrosion is popular around here. Think I might put a couple Welding Jars in the side just for some insurance.
Round 3: Anafenza 0-1-1
Game 1, Lock online, Pithing Needle on Viscera Seer, but not before he gains 10 Billion life. Take a while to find Drownyard, and am steadily milling him away. 2 Droplets out, but no painland to gain life, so his Heirarchs are just chilling. Eventually gets a Redcap out which I could have stopped, but thought I remembered it being 2 damage, not 3. Redcap and Heirarchs kill me the turn before I would be able to start recurring Pyrite Spellbomb to clear the Heirarchs. Blaming this one on being tired after a long day at work (did I mention I have arthritis in a million places?), and wanting to go play some EDH with friends.
Game 2, T3 Ashiok, Bridge online, things going great. Even +2'ing Ashiok each turn isn't quick enough to close this game out before we go to time and draw. He may have been stalling a bit, but I did take like 40min on Game 1.
Overall, I was disappointed in Ashiok for getting itself tucked twice to Ancient Stirrings. Ended up going to time twice, whereas last week I finished all my games with time to spare. May just switch it out for a 2nd Nephalia drownyard, since I the -X has not been relevant enough as it usually comes down too late. Also could use some better sideboard options against Zoo which does see some play around here; Pyroclasm has primarily been useful against Affinity and Young Pyromancer decks in my meta, but I already have a lot of hate towards Artifacts.
Modern PTQ tomorrow (later today). Think I will give my other list a go, and throw in Tezzeret and Infernal Tutor. If I have to play on little sleep, may as well die or win quickly.
Felt relieved to go play EDH and combo off with Daretti, Scrap Savant.
Hadn't thought about Haunting Echoes in that way. Good catch.
But the best part is exiling up to 3 lands from their Library/Hand to help keep them mana screwed. Then on your first pass through their Library, you can make a note of what lands they run 3-4 copies of, for the best future targets. I think only Merfolk and Burn run more than 2-3 basics, but it is still a very metagame call, and subpar in meta without T1 decks at every turn.
I tried the bow at GP Minn last year, but found the 2GGG cost to play and use it too prohibitive. That being said, I may try it out again in thinkr's variant, as it may be easier to use there. The Bow can net you more life, but the Droplet won't be stopped by Pithing Needle or Stony Silence. I wouldn't mind blanking a surgical extraction again with the Bow
Ghost Quarter can also do more than stop/slow down Bloom Titan. Use it in response to the Amulet untap trigger, depriving them of the Karoo mana and still making them bounce a land.
Whilst Abrupt Decay is awesome, how often are you forced to use it on a subprime target to stay hellbent? You can always grab it back with a Codex Shredder, but it's not always an option. How often would Seal of Primordium have worked better for you? It can also evade counters in its own way, by being played earlier in advance of prime targets. It has been discussed before, particularly when we were hoping for an Academy Ruins for Enchantments in Theros.
Excel has a Linear Programming add-in. link
The main problem with Linear Programming here is that you have to rely on heuristics to build your assumptions. So you have this very technical process sitting on top of a vague foundation. So, really, the hard part is perfecting these assumptions. thinkr's spreadsheet builds these assumptions differently, such as gauging the effect some creature removal has by comparing that to how much damage from one swing it prevents.
The main effect of Mishra's Bauble or Gitaxian Probe is that it allows you to effectively work with a deck that is less than 60 cards. To really see their effect, you would need to incorporate some probability. Their are much simpler ways to gauge this effect (ex: Mishra's Bauble is 1/15 or more of a Bridge), but using the Hypergeometric or Multivariate Hypergeometric distribution will be your best option.
Example:
If you are looking for more restrictions on your LP, you can go by slot instead of card. Say I want 5 cards in my discard slot, and I have IoK, Thoughtseize, and Duress to choose from.
There are also other interactions that can be accommodated through restrictions. I don't like to play Thoughtseize without Faithless Looting, so I can pose this to the LP with something like: [Thoughtseize]*[Faithless Looting] > 0 OR [Thoughtseize] = 0
When it comes to Sideboarding, each game is really just a state of a Markov Chain. The goal here is to either find the best 60 cards for your initial game, or the best sideboard plans that vastly turn the next 2 games in your favor.
This deck thrives on the "draw-go" games, as you will often win through mill. You just need to get in a comfortable place with the lock, then have some patience as you control the rest of the game.
It sounds like you could benefit from some knowledge of what is in their hand - Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, Duress, or Gitaxian Probe.
Pyxis - Also, Snapcaster Mage is the most played creature in Modern (3rd most played card overall), and the most popular deck right now plays several copies of Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Think of your combo as needing 7-8 Mill rocks (pieces that mill 1 at a time); you definitely want 4 Codex Shredder, so the other 3-4 can be a mix of Ghoulcaller's Bell or Pyxis of Pandemonium. The exile doesn't hurt us too much, as long as you do it smart. Many of our cards could be considered dead after the lock is in place.