MTG Salvation

That doesn't seem like an Anti-GDS meta to me at all. It seems people start to pack some cards to beat GDS and the format is regulating it while not diluting their decks too much. Obviously there are some decks that are good in this particular metagame because of GDS but that's natural in my opinion.

Other than that, Combo is still heavily represented in MTGO, and RG Valakut has picked up some steam. I guess Titanshift players learned how to beat GDS? Not sure.

Regarding Banlist: Nothing should be unbanned IMO. Nothing should be unbanned until Standard bring some anti-combo tools to the format. Modern is still too Combo-Centric, which leads to too many non-games. Temple and Valakut itself are pretty overpowered, and it's amazing how a deck that relies on having a 2-mana X/3 on the battliefield in format full of removal is so good. That screams for better answers or better deckbuilding(Possibly a mix between the two).

I can only imagine what horrors could bring us a DS ban. DS DEFINITELY looks like the good guy in this film.

PS: UW Control destroying MTGO and GDS not having big finishes are most likely connected. GDS is still the best deck in the format, and UW in an open meta is still not this good.

Im gonna do a small tournament report from a "Win a Ticket to GP Sao Paulo" 50-person(Kinda).




Six rounds plus Top 8. Finished 3-3, pretty bad-medium but there's more to it.

R1: Storm(L 0-2)

I'm not going into specifics here, G1 he had Blood Moon MB which i didn't expect at all and he screwed me. G2 i incorrectly let resolve a Baral instead of Mana Leaking it, and went for the Ritual, he had Dispel backup, i take that loss, i play horribly. However, the matchup seems poor since our clocks aren't super fast and we have to draw a lot of SB to stand a chance.

R2: Affinity(L 1-2)
G1 he didn't start super fast but when you don't find Verdict it gets hard, and that's a problem i have a lot with UW. Verdict is a huge reason to play this deck, and not finding it is backbreaking agaisnt Aggro. Couldn't hold his swarm and died.
G2 he kept a 1 lander which stayed that way for a few Turns and i manage to capitalize with Vendilion Clique and Cryptic Command on full tempo mode bouncing his land drop, he conceded before dying.
G3 i kept what i thought it was an okay hand but in retrospective, super clunky. Seas,Wall and Mana Leaks don't win games against Affinity. He T3'd me lol. I died with Supreme in hand and his hand was T1 Overseer T2 Plating with me durdling like a pro. GG good beats.

R3: WB Tokens( W 2-0)

They guy didn't have a lot of idea what was going on, and eventhough his deck was complete with all the WB stapes like Ally of Zendikar, Bitterblosom and such, he had it borrowed and didn't had a clue what to do, super easy 2-0.

R4: UB Mill(W 2-0)

Friend of mine, he plays no Bridge but Snapcasters and Surgicals. I demolished him via counters and PW beats.

R5: Grixis Shadow (L 1-2)

Another acquaintance of mine. All games he had average hands. GDS average hands are ridiculous. Multiple discard spells, and crazy top decks. The games i lost i didn't find enough Verdicts(I think i resolved 1 in 3 matches). The matchup felt good but closer to 50/50 than i expected. Rest In Peace + Colonnade wrecked him G2. All my hands were functional and good. I was pretty bummed to lose this match since i really wanted to beat him. I had a lot of confidence in the DS matchup but they are still the best deck in the format. Respect that deck, always.

R6: Mono W Sisters (W 2-0)

Verdict and Jace where powerhouses. This matchups are practically a bye to be honest.


Conclusion: I won my games against Non-Tiers. Lost my games against the Tiers. I have to say that all my games against the Tiers where either close or i lost because missplays/bad keeps. The deck felt good and was super fun to play. Little Gideon was above average. Jace and D-Sphere too. Pretty much all cards felt good and in place, except Spreading Seas. It felt worse than medium in ALL matches. I know i didn't play in the All Star Seas matchups, but even against GDS, it was practically a 1U: Draw a Card-Sorcery. Against Affinity it was too slow. I guess against Eldrazi and Midrange it's that good, but it was the first time i felt it BAD. Going forward i'm going to test something like this and see how i fare without the claimed Seas.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/707991#paper

I fear not hitting my land drops without the critical mass of cyclers, but this midrangey versions feels good if you want no Spreading Seas.

I think Supreme Will is not unplayable garbo. I think it fits our curve quite nicely, and has a mode that makes it never a dead draw(+It digs pretty deep to find an immediate answer).
In a slow metagame it could be unplayable since the first mode dies rather quickly. But in a combo metagame, it could be good since it curves your counterspells from 2 to 4 and it has the added bonus of finding pressure or lock pieces. I tested it a couple of matches and found it ok, not bad but not particularly great.

Yeah that was pretty much what i was asking. The version i was referring was Titanshift. I hesitate when to counter Ramp spells and Tribe Elders. When i saw Gabriel Nassif play against Titanshift he countered Ramp spells and often he got his Seas on Forests or Duals just to screw him up. That's principally why i find myself hesitating so much.

How do you guys play against RG Scapeshift Titan? I sometimes win, but that's when i have Tec Edges and Counters for days, other than that i find it difficult to know when to apply pressure and whhich lands to Spreading Seas.

Does someone with XP can give me some simple lines of play?

Thanks!

PS: I was playing Benny's last list with Supreme Will and Surgical in the SB.

Those scenarios are out of context though. T4 Smasher with nothing behind is meh to be generous. A nice curve of Chalice>Reshaper>Smasher is different.
In a vaccum(which is not very realistic) i prefer to get T4 Smashed than get T4 BBE+something of high impact like Liliana or Ancestral Vision.

T3 Coco is good, but the cards you often get are low power by themselves, however jamming both of your best creatures in that deck(Any CoCo deck) is very powerful, especially because there's a toolbox effect with a random factor attached. Having said this, i prefer to get T3 CoCo than T1 Thoughtseize,T2 Goyf, T3 Removal,Discard or whatever midrange play, T4 BBE into Liliana. That curve pretty much beats all decks in the format.

T3 Karn is definitely more powerful than T4 BBE(again, in a vaccum).

My point is, BBE isn't as innocuous as some make it to be. I see you have Jund as one of your signature decks, and i can see the emotional attachment. However you need to keep those off this type of discussion since it doesn't really represent actual and objective theorycrafting.
SFM falls in the same category, although that one has been discussed extensively and the card seems to objetcively align with the formats most played cards.

My opinion is that neither SFM nor BBE will get unbanned since it none of those deal with Moderns real problem which is Combo decks being rulers of the format. It has been since the formats inception and every midrange deck that could keep up with those decks, got banned. Grixis Shadow deals with combo in a fair way, which is very good for the format.

Had some of the same feelings towards the mana base. Ben says it's imperative to hit your first land drops(and even you late land drops too), but 26 lands has been painful. It's like we´re playing in a different league(like a Standard league) and we hang on only by exploiting certain metagame weaknesses.
I find myself drawing 3 lands in a row too often, and sometimes too many tapped ones.

Other than that, the other 34 cards seem very well tuned and determined.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YHLkcoeiFM

Corey Burkhart playing his own take on UW Control. Decent showing although i'm not particulary into his list.

Finally he says that UW is probably just good because of Eldrazi and Death's Shadows. He says the deck is bad against Combo and Value although he is talking about his list and finishes by saying that Gideon of The Trials is the card that he really wants to test and could potentially solve those issues.

I'm playing UW since the Probe ban and it's been pretty ok to be honest. Gideon of The Trials really made the deck better overall since you don't need to play unsynergistic value sticks like Kitchen Finks, and gives the deck a more well-rounded Prison plan to go along your Seas and Wraths.

Burn is practically unwinnable without Walls, with them it's 50/50 depending on your sideboard. The matchups comes down to you having tons of cheap counters like Dispel and Negate, +a clock like Geist/Queller/Clique/Gideon. If you manage to stabilize you are ok.

Against E-Tron, it comes down to their draws more than yours. If they go bananas with a lot of Temples and/or quick Tron, it's hard, since the Eldrazi creatures are good clocks by their own. Chalice of the Void gives them more free wins than they deserve. At most the matchup feels 50/50 in both games.

I always liked Walls playing control even in Jeskai. They stop aggro very good, Elves, Burn, Goblins,Eldrazi Tron(Matter reshaper is a pain and wall helps but bant play Hierarch so it's worse there). It blocks the Sakura tribe elder which puts us in combo range.

It completely sucks against spell based combo like Storm and Nauseam or KCI but you can't be well poised in MB against everything.

All your points are valid and very real in my opinion. I don't like particular choices of your build like the 2 Logic Knots(I fear having trouble casting them and making Snapcaster worse), Mana Leak has been good to me and obviously it sucks in some scenarios but i don't think Leak vs Knot is that far. You can live with a combination or either of them. However, the things that you point out came to my mind when testing BH list. Too many taplands have been brutal in some games, where my curves get completely hacked and i go on losing those matches.
I think i'm going to try your mana base.

Other than that, Cryptic #3 seems reasonable and i don't think it's really a deck changer.

To sum up, my biggest trouble has been the mana base(all testing and conclusions drawn from Ben's list). The taplands have been slaughtering me. If i manage to find a configuration which lets me cast my spells on curve consistently, i think i'm going to lose a lot less games. Having said this, BHs mana base isn't that off, i think it's something like 1-2 lands away from the sweet spot, i'm not sure how he has been destroying MTGO though lol.

No question about that. What works best for everyone should be respected. I was just defending Mana Leak in UW and making some points of why it's good in Benny's list. Basically it helps with the alignment of answers to threats control struggles with. Logic Knot is good too but it's harder to enable.

On the Clique discussion: You can try to protect your life gain spells but again, the deck is so redundant that taking 1 of their 7 Skullcrack effects seems almost trivial. I will say thoug, that Queller blocks better than Clique. It blocks Guide and Swift favorably. Anyways, none of those are lights out against Burn IMO.

@Slowgod I'm not sure where are you coming from with that comment but a friend of Benny has a league on Youtube in which he trades 1 Jace for 3rd Command. He went 4-1 and made some bad punts by misclick. He makes his case for that swap in the Deck Tech.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSqFr7VmfZcG430jfNt5UGg

I like Clique as well but i find the body a little to fragile. Against Burn for example, the ability is close to useless since it's a 4-of deck in every card, Clique is not good against non-combo redundancy. I think Queller being a reactive card is better since the tempo swing favors you most of the time.
Having said this, i never went to a tournament playing as control and not have at least 1 Clique in my 75. I'm wondering how Queller matches up against certain metagames in contrast with Geist and Clique(Geist has won me a ton of games against combo though).

On the Mana Leak matter: Something that has cross my mind a lot from playing control since i started Modern is that, Blue Control decks without universal counterspells like Mana Leak or Remand(which is not really a counterspell) makes those decks feel too fragile and inconsistent. Modern is full of nonsense starting from T2 and on. While Path and Mana Leak are a nonbo, and Leak is already pretty bad on its own, it's still a necessary evil. It's like discard spells in black based decks, it protects you from random plays and nonsense. Having that two mana counter to answer whatever play your opponent can come up with in the early game is fundamental to actually getting to the late game(which is where we want to go). Logic Know is a suitable sidekick, but in UW you can't jam them as if they were better than Leaks because they aren't. I'm liking the Leaks in all my matches playing UW except the ones with Caverns, where stack control isn't relevant anymore.

I have a question regarding SB clocks. Ben plays the package of Geist and Clique as 1-ofs to complement his Gideons in the MB. However, MTGO grinder Gul Dukat plays 4 Spell Quellers. I know that Queller is very good when you cut Wraths and basically against any combo deck it's an auto include. My issue is whether one strategy is better than the other. Queller is a super powerful tempo play, but Geist and Clique are more versatile and hit way harder(especially GoST). What are you guys running and what am i missing regarding those cards and possible metagame calls.

Lastly, continuing on the Queller topic, i usually board out Verdicts against Burn, and i know Ben brings Geist and Clique, does Queller fit in the same category against the Burn decks?.

Thanks in advance!

In my opinion, UW is a being a big player in this metagame because Supreme Verdict is such a beating for the 3 best decks in the format(Affinity,Eldrazi and GDS). Also, being basically hate-proof is one of the sweetest thing about UW. The card that wrecks you(and sees play in Modern) is Cavern of Souls and even then, that allows creatures into the battlefield which your sweepers and removal can take care off easily.