Interesting choice to not include any Liliana of the Veil or Liliana, the last Hope. I guess LotV is brought in in similar Matchups as Lingering Souls? How has that built worked out for you? And out of curiosity, how many Stubborn Denials do you play in the MD?
I actually like the idea of an extra land in the sideboard. A lot of the sideboard cards (sweepers, lilianas, staticaster and K-command) are 3 CMC and reaching those 3 lands by turn 3 is key. Adding an extra land goes a long way. I have not found that having those four slots for lingering is a problem yet.
What does your 75 look like? And in which MUs would you bring in the extra land?
Running some online leagues with my list from lyon I've struggled vs the BBE decks (rg eldrazi and jund mainly, the value that BBE presents is insane), which annoys me about the unbannings I was very happy with my deck and basically had found a deck I was happy to stick with but until we have a settled metagame I'm trying out some jund bbe shadow lists which have felt very good (I have madrid in a few weeks).
perhaps we need to look at GDS with a lingering souls sideboard plan again.
I have been messing around with it the last few days and the main problem that I faced was that the package just takes up so much space. I don't think the manabase can support Godless Shrine in the MB so we're looking at 4-5 slots in the SB. That's basically one third of our sideboard dedicated to Lingering Souls. That space can be used much more efficiently.
I am currently in the process of preparing for a fairly large local Modern tournament and need some help. The tournament itself is comparable to a PPTQ from my past experience so I expect most people to not bring their casual decks. So for the last few days I tried to figure out what I am most likely to face:
- I think I am more likely to face BBE Jund than JTMS decks. Jace is still an expensive card while BBE is only about 3-5€ and we always had a lot of BG/x players whenever those decks were viable in the meta. I expect a lot of them put Jund back together since they have a lot of experience with the deck and just got a new toy to play with.
- The blue players will either play JTMS decks, meaning UW or UWr control, or have not yet bought Jace and try to play a somewhat faster strategy, for example UR Pyromancer.
- Tron has been on a steady rise the last few months in the area and I expect them to be there in full force trying to beat up on Jund and the blue decks, which is a good strategy to be on in my opinion.
- We also always had a lot of Affinity pilots and I expect them trying to take advantage of the unsettled meta trying to be faster than everyone else. Affinity is good at doing that last time I checked.
tldr; I expect Jund, blue decks with or without JTMS, Tron and Affinity to be most popular.
So where do I go from here? Control decks have been problematic in my experience while Jund is a close matchup. The addition of BBE is likely to shift that in Junds favor in my opinion. The card is strong and gives them an edge in the late game, especially when cascading into Kolaghan's Command or LotV. Tron is manageable as far as I can tell: Ceremonious Rejection, Disdainful Stroke, Thoughtseize and Stubborn Denial paired with a huge Shadow or Delve threat is a plan I like to be on when facing Tron. Affinity on the other hand can be really hard. They are super fast, they can deal an explosive amount of damage and Etched Champion is a beating. We rely on drawing removal and having a fast clock at the same time.
This is my current deck that I ad a fair amount of success:
I want to include a second Bolt in the maindeck since it can kill a Jace after Brainstorm and more easily kill BBE than Fatal Push does. So my first change would be:
-1 Fatal Push
+1 Lightning Bolt
Now on to the SB: I want more cards that are good against Jund, Affinity and blue decks. What immediately came to my mind was Lingering Souls. The card crushes Jund and other Shadow Decks while also chumping Affinity all day long. It threatens JTMS and makes his -1 as well a Path to Exile look silly. For that, I need 4-5 new SB slots. That's a lot. 1 Godless Shrine is necessary for the needed access to white mana and then 3-4 copies of Lingering Souls. I feel like 4 is too many and since we cycle through our deck so fast and can dump them into our graveyard with Thought Scour as well, 3 should be enough. So what do I cut? The first and most obvious cut for me are the Young Pyromancers, since they become irrelevant when playing Lingering Souls. But besides that? I am not really sure what else to cut. Disdainful Stroke is a pet card of mine and I would hate to cut it since it's one of the only answers to Primeval Titan. I thought about cutting 1 LotV since she comes in in the same matchups as the Souls do, not sure though. What do you guys think? And please let me know if you disagree with my assumptions!
After playing RG Titanshift for almost a year now, I decided I wanted to go back to the more traditional Scapeshift list and settled on BtL with a black splash. I have played this version before and really enjoyed having access to Damnation, Maelstrom Pulse, Slaughter Games and Olivia Voldaren (personal super secret SB tech) so that's what I started building. I always like BtL as a toolbox card but enjoyed the three color nature of RUG a lot more. After looking at my old lists, I realized I was only playing 4 different red cards in my MB: Lightning Bolt, which is not a card I want to be playing at the moment, Electrolyze, which hasn't been performing well for me for a long time, Izzet Charm, which was always nice but never something I was happy to be drawing and lastly: Anger of the Gods, which I value more as a SB card in the current meta. SO I decided to drop red from my MB, added Fatal Push and a 2nd Snapcaster Mage. This is what the list currently looks like:
I haven't done a lot os testing, but so far it has felt great. Dropping red reduces the need to fetch a red source and thereby decreasing the likelyhood of having too few mountains in the deck and allows me to fetch for more basics which is a great BM insurance and also a lot less painful. Hitting a black source early hasn't been too hard with all the fixing available to the deck but I still want to modify the manabase. So far my thinking has been to drop 1 Misty Rainforest in favor of 1 Verdant Catacomb and dropping 1 Cinder Glade/Stomping Ground for a Blood Crypt. The manabase is really tight unfortunately, so there is not a lot of switching possible....
I agree with what you are saying only i am saying why hold the entire color blue hostage. They cannot print good cards in the color blue when this combo exists. The fact that it got to be a normal deck and then win out of nowhere. Meant if you were playing a dedicated combo deck the SOONEST it would be allowed to win is turn 4...... so WHY would you play that deck when you can play twin?
Twin was the only reason to play blue in Modern if you wanted to play the best decks. If you didn't want to play the best decks, you wouldn't have cared about Twin being the better combo deck. If you want to play the "best" decks in Modern, you don't play a blue based deck. Simple as that and equally sad.
Are you purposefully twisting my words? or are you honestly confused? Twin is nothing like Valakut because it was not a combo deck. It was a tempo/control deck with a combo finish.
I know what you're trying to say, but I can't get behind your logic. Why should a deck, that is a Tempo/Combo Deck, be banned because it is "the best" and better decks would violate the T4 rule? That makes no sense at all.
The main difference was that twin should be dead. It is the epitome of stifling diversity. Why play another combo deck when you can play a tempo deck that has a better combo than you? Lets face it if a combo deck is better than twin(winning even a half turn sooner with any consistency) it gets banned. There is no reason to brew in the combo section anymore. The best deck that won't be banned is already here.
So...Meaning now RG Valakut shoud be banned because it can consistently win on T4 with Scapeshift/Primeval Titans and every deck that is going to be faster violates the T4 rule? And now the next fastest deck should be banned because every deck that is going to be faster violates the T4 rule and we go on like this until there is no T4 combo deck left to ban?
I was saying that since twin could win on turn 4 but decks are not allowed to win on turn 3 it was automatically "the best".
RG Titanshift is a combo deck that can consistently win on T4. Is it now "the best" deck as well and should be banned?
The main difference was that twin should be dead. It is the epitome of stifling diversity. Why play another combo deck when you can play a tempo deck that has a better combo than you? Lets face it if a combo deck is better than twin(winning even a half turn sooner with any consistency) it gets banned. There is no reason to brew in the combo section anymore. The best deck that won't be banned is already here.
So...Meaning now RG Valakut shoud be banned because it can consistently win on T4 with Scapeshift/Primeval Titans and every deck that is going to be faster violates the T4 rule? And now the next fastest deck should be banned because every deck that is going to be faster violates the T4 rule and we go on like this until there is no T4 combo deck left to ban?
Regarding the "Sideboard Battle" topic and the difference between boarding against Affinity and Dredge:
Someone alse already said something about Affinity, that I think is really important: Most decks have the ability to fight Affinity G1 because most of them play removal spells. If I play Grixis control, my deck contains 3-4 Terminates, 4 Lightning bolts and 2-3 Kolaghan's Commands. I don't actually have to sideboard that much to fight Affinity. In my Titanshift deck, I run 3 Lightning Bolts and 2 Anger of the Gods in my MB. Same thing goes for Burn. I can kill their Goblin Guides, I can counter their Atarka's Commands, I can preserve my life total by fetching not as aggressively as I would do in other Matchups. Against Infect, I can Bolt their Elf. I can destroy their hand with discard. But still, most of the time, I am not favored in Game 1. After sideboarding, I have the chance to board in Ancient Grudge, I can board in Melira, I can board in Leyline of Sanctity and many other viable SB options. Those cards then improve my chances of winning in G2 and G3 but I do not completely rely on drawing them to win post board games. My chances are a lot better when I do draw them, but I can still have a chance without them.
Dredge is a prime example of what I think is then "Sideboard Battle" they were referring to. There are no good maindeckable answers, that I do not only have to run because of Dredge. My MB answers are completely useless. They do work against Affinity, Burn or Infect, but they are complete blanks against Dredge. That means that I have to include a lot more hate against Dredge in my SB than I need to against other decks, against which my MB configuration is at least still viable. Those MB Bolts still work well against Affinity and I now have some copies of Ancient Grudge to fight them more efficiently, but I do not rely on having them as hard as I rely on having GY hate against Dredge. That results in postboard games coming down to basically: "Did I draw my SB hate?". Of course that also applies to other decks. I still have to include SB hate for other decks. But against most decks, I do not win or lose based on wether I drew those hate cards or not. Against Dredge, exactly that is the case.
I think this is the reason why they are okay with Affinity, but not with Dredge. Same thing goes for Bogles, but that deck loses by far too often against itself and is horrible against Liliana and discard, keeping it at bay. But the same principle applies as well. The deck blanks almost all maindeckable answers and forces the player to draw those SB cards or lose. This is also the reason, why some decks are just not fun to play against. Those decks are, most of the time, exactly those kind of decks I just described. They blank most of your deck and force you to a)play super narrow SB cards and b)draw them.
Have been playing RG Titanshiftfor the last half a year or so, but I decided I want to go back to the more traditional RUG Scapeshift decks. My current list is the following:
(The Sideboard is a mess, haven't really tweaked it so there are a lot of weird choices in there)
So as you see, I just took the Madcap/Emperion Combo and jammed it into my Scapeshift deck. I don't think the combo is good enough to create a whole new archetype, but rather needs an existing deck. To my surprise, it works quite well. Emperion does a lot of things I want against multiple decks I usually have not a great MU against, especially against aggro decks like Zooicide, Burn and to an extent also Affinity (as long as they were not on the Infect plan from the beginning). Some decks just fold to it because they have no way of dealing with a resolved Emperion on T3/T4 and it feels great being able to pressure the opponent or even kill them while searching for Scapeshift instead of trying not to die while casting Cryptic Commands and Remands to hold them back. The amount of counterspells in the deck are also great at protecting the big, friendly giant while he bashes in the opponent face (not literally). And hardcasting him is also possible, so he is not a completely dead card in hand. During the early turns you can pitch him to Izzet Charm and later he can act as a second wincon besides Scapeshift. It also creates and interesting dynamic during sideboarding where the opponent has to think about boarding out removal or keeping it in the main deck.
But of course the comboalso has its drawbacks. Terminate and Path to Exile can easily deal with Emperion, have a low cost and are wildly played in Abzan, Jund, Grixis and Jeskai Nahiri. On the other hand, the land you get from Path should not be underestimated since we usually enjoy every land drop we can get. But still, that doesn't change the fact that it answers Emperion pretty easily. the combo also requires between 5 and 7 slots in the MB that could otherwise be filled with more Snapcasters, Bolts or Serum Visions.
I have been testing this configuration for the last two days and this is basically the "Alpha Version" of the deck. So far I have been enjoying it and it looks promising, but there is still a lot of testing to be done.
Oh, and RUG Madshift is simply a grest thing to call the deck.
Currently testing a 3/2 split of Madcap/Emperion in my RUG Scapeshift Deck, has worked quite well so far. Will post further results once I'm finfished testing.
So I'm going to be attending a PPTQ in a few weeks and am revising my Sideboard plan at the moment. Right now, I have 2x Relic of Progenitus as my graveyward hate but thinking about replacing it with 2x [Grafdigger's Cage[/Card]. The Cage has the added Advantage of stopping a Nahiri ultimate while still being effective against Dredge and Abzan Company. What's your opinion?
Souls are also great against control.
What does your 75 look like? And in which MUs would you bring in the extra land?
I have been messing around with it the last few days and the main problem that I faced was that the package just takes up so much space. I don't think the manabase can support Godless Shrine in the MB so we're looking at 4-5 slots in the SB. That's basically one third of our sideboard dedicated to Lingering Souls. That space can be used much more efficiently.
- I think I am more likely to face BBE Jund than JTMS decks. Jace is still an expensive card while BBE is only about 3-5€ and we always had a lot of BG/x players whenever those decks were viable in the meta. I expect a lot of them put Jund back together since they have a lot of experience with the deck and just got a new toy to play with.
- The blue players will either play JTMS decks, meaning UW or UWr control, or have not yet bought Jace and try to play a somewhat faster strategy, for example UR Pyromancer.
- Tron has been on a steady rise the last few months in the area and I expect them to be there in full force trying to beat up on Jund and the blue decks, which is a good strategy to be on in my opinion.
- We also always had a lot of Affinity pilots and I expect them trying to take advantage of the unsettled meta trying to be faster than everyone else. Affinity is good at doing that last time I checked.
tldr; I expect Jund, blue decks with or without JTMS, Tron and Affinity to be most popular.
So where do I go from here? Control decks have been problematic in my experience while Jund is a close matchup. The addition of BBE is likely to shift that in Junds favor in my opinion. The card is strong and gives them an edge in the late game, especially when cascading into Kolaghan's Command or LotV. Tron is manageable as far as I can tell: Ceremonious Rejection, Disdainful Stroke, Thoughtseize and Stubborn Denial paired with a huge Shadow or Delve threat is a plan I like to be on when facing Tron. Affinity on the other hand can be really hard. They are super fast, they can deal an explosive amount of damage and Etched Champion is a beating. We rely on drawing removal and having a fast clock at the same time.
This is my current deck that I ad a fair amount of success:
4 Death's Shadow
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Street Wraith
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Gurmag Angler
Spells (27)
1 Lightning Bolt
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Serum Visions
2 Stubborn Denial
3 Fatal Push
4 Opt
4 Thought Scour
4 Thoughtseize
1 Terminate
2 Temur Battle Rage
1 Dismember
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Island
1 Steam Vents
1 Swamp
2 Blood Crypt
2 Watery Grave
3 Scalding Tarn
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Stubborn Denial
1 Collective Brutality
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Pyroclasm
2 Young Pyromancer
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Liliana of the Veil
I want to include a second Bolt in the maindeck since it can kill a Jace after Brainstorm and more easily kill BBE than Fatal Push does. So my first change would be:
-1 Fatal Push
+1 Lightning Bolt
Now on to the SB: I want more cards that are good against Jund, Affinity and blue decks. What immediately came to my mind was Lingering Souls. The card crushes Jund and other Shadow Decks while also chumping Affinity all day long. It threatens JTMS and makes his -1 as well a Path to Exile look silly. For that, I need 4-5 new SB slots. That's a lot. 1 Godless Shrine is necessary for the needed access to white mana and then 3-4 copies of Lingering Souls. I feel like 4 is too many and since we cycle through our deck so fast and can dump them into our graveyard with Thought Scour as well, 3 should be enough. So what do I cut? The first and most obvious cut for me are the Young Pyromancers, since they become irrelevant when playing Lingering Souls. But besides that? I am not really sure what else to cut. Disdainful Stroke is a pet card of mine and I would hate to cut it since it's one of the only answers to Primeval Titan. I thought about cutting 1 LotV since she comes in in the same matchups as the Souls do, not sure though. What do you guys think? And please let me know if you disagree with my assumptions!
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Snapcaster Mage
Spells
3 Fatal Push
2 Farseek
4 Remand
2 Worldly Counsel
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Search for Tomorrow
3 Cryptic Command
1 Damnation
1 Hunting Wilds
3 Scapeshift
4 Bring to Light
2 Breeding Pool
1 Cinder Glade
2 Forest
3 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
4 Steam Vents
4 Stomping Ground
1 Swamp
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
1 Watery Grave
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Nature's Claim
2 Negate
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Crumble to Dust
3 Obstinate Baloth
3 Ravenous Trap
1 Shatterstorm
1 Slaughter Games
I haven't done a lot os testing, but so far it has felt great. Dropping red reduces the need to fetch a red source and thereby decreasing the likelyhood of having too few mountains in the deck and allows me to fetch for more basics which is a great BM insurance and also a lot less painful. Hitting a black source early hasn't been too hard with all the fixing available to the deck but I still want to modify the manabase. So far my thinking has been to drop 1 Misty Rainforest in favor of 1 Verdant Catacomb and dropping 1 Cinder Glade/Stomping Ground for a Blood Crypt. The manabase is really tight unfortunately, so there is not a lot of switching possible....
Twin was the only reason to play blue in Modern if you wanted to play the best decks. If you didn't want to play the best decks, you wouldn't have cared about Twin being the better combo deck. If you want to play the "best" decks in Modern, you don't play a blue based deck. Simple as that and equally sad.
I know what you're trying to say, but I can't get behind your logic. Why should a deck, that is a Tempo/Combo Deck, be banned because it is "the best" and better decks would violate the T4 rule? That makes no sense at all.
RG Titanshift is a combo deck that can consistently win on T4. Is it now "the best" deck as well and should be banned?
So...Meaning now RG Valakut shoud be banned because it can consistently win on T4 with Scapeshift/Primeval Titans and every deck that is going to be faster violates the T4 rule? And now the next fastest deck should be banned because every deck that is going to be faster violates the T4 rule and we go on like this until there is no T4 combo deck left to ban?
Someone alse already said something about Affinity, that I think is really important: Most decks have the ability to fight Affinity G1 because most of them play removal spells. If I play Grixis control, my deck contains 3-4 Terminates, 4 Lightning bolts and 2-3 Kolaghan's Commands. I don't actually have to sideboard that much to fight Affinity. In my Titanshift deck, I run 3 Lightning Bolts and 2 Anger of the Gods in my MB. Same thing goes for Burn. I can kill their Goblin Guides, I can counter their Atarka's Commands, I can preserve my life total by fetching not as aggressively as I would do in other Matchups. Against Infect, I can Bolt their Elf. I can destroy their hand with discard. But still, most of the time, I am not favored in Game 1. After sideboarding, I have the chance to board in Ancient Grudge, I can board in Melira, I can board in Leyline of Sanctity and many other viable SB options. Those cards then improve my chances of winning in G2 and G3 but I do not completely rely on drawing them to win post board games. My chances are a lot better when I do draw them, but I can still have a chance without them.
Dredge is a prime example of what I think is then "Sideboard Battle" they were referring to. There are no good maindeckable answers, that I do not only have to run because of Dredge. My MB answers are completely useless. They do work against Affinity, Burn or Infect, but they are complete blanks against Dredge. That means that I have to include a lot more hate against Dredge in my SB than I need to against other decks, against which my MB configuration is at least still viable. Those MB Bolts still work well against Affinity and I now have some copies of Ancient Grudge to fight them more efficiently, but I do not rely on having them as hard as I rely on having GY hate against Dredge. That results in postboard games coming down to basically: "Did I draw my SB hate?". Of course that also applies to other decks. I still have to include SB hate for other decks. But against most decks, I do not win or lose based on wether I drew those hate cards or not. Against Dredge, exactly that is the case.
I think this is the reason why they are okay with Affinity, but not with Dredge. Same thing goes for Bogles, but that deck loses by far too often against itself and is horrible against Liliana and discard, keeping it at bay. But the same principle applies as well. The deck blanks almost all maindeckable answers and forces the player to draw those SB cards or lose. This is also the reason, why some decks are just not fun to play against. Those decks are, most of the time, exactly those kind of decks I just described. They blank most of your deck and force you to a)play super narrow SB cards and b)draw them.
1x Snapcaster Mage
2x Platinum Emperion
2x Anticipate
2x Izzet charm
3x Peer through Depths
4x Remand
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Electrolyze
4x Search for Tomorrow
3x Cryptic Command
3x Madcap Experiment
4x Scapeshift
1x cinder Glade
1x Flooded Grove
3x Forest
3x Island
1x Lumbering Falls
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
4x Steam Vents
4x Stomping Ground
2x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
3x Obstinate Baloth
1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1x engineered Explosives
2x Dispel
1x Negate
2x Sudden Shock
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Pulse of Murasa
(The Sideboard is a mess, haven't really tweaked it so there are a lot of weird choices in there)
So as you see, I just took the Madcap/Emperion Combo and jammed it into my Scapeshift deck. I don't think the combo is good enough to create a whole new archetype, but rather needs an existing deck. To my surprise, it works quite well. Emperion does a lot of things I want against multiple decks I usually have not a great MU against, especially against aggro decks like Zooicide, Burn and to an extent also Affinity (as long as they were not on the Infect plan from the beginning). Some decks just fold to it because they have no way of dealing with a resolved Emperion on T3/T4 and it feels great being able to pressure the opponent or even kill them while searching for Scapeshift instead of trying not to die while casting Cryptic Commands and Remands to hold them back. The amount of counterspells in the deck are also great at protecting the big, friendly giant while he bashes in the opponent face (not literally). And hardcasting him is also possible, so he is not a completely dead card in hand. During the early turns you can pitch him to Izzet Charm and later he can act as a second wincon besides Scapeshift. It also creates and interesting dynamic during sideboarding where the opponent has to think about boarding out removal or keeping it in the main deck.
But of course the comboalso has its drawbacks. Terminate and Path to Exile can easily deal with Emperion, have a low cost and are wildly played in Abzan, Jund, Grixis and Jeskai Nahiri. On the other hand, the land you get from Path should not be underestimated since we usually enjoy every land drop we can get. But still, that doesn't change the fact that it answers Emperion pretty easily. the combo also requires between 5 and 7 slots in the MB that could otherwise be filled with more Snapcasters, Bolts or Serum Visions.
I have been testing this configuration for the last two days and this is basically the "Alpha Version" of the deck. So far I have been enjoying it and it looks promising, but there is still a lot of testing to be done.
Oh, and RUG Madshift is simply a grest thing to call the deck.